Wolverines Extinct in Sequoia – Kings Canyon?

A new study using baited trap stations, done during winter, failed to find any California wolverines in either Sequoia or Kings Canyon National Parks in the southern Sierra Nevada.

The survey utilized many trap stations set in winter for a couple of months. It was designed to test for wolverines persisting at very low densities.

It failed to find any wolverines, and the researchers concluded that the California wolverine is likely extirpated from the Southern Sierra Nevada. Many other recent studies have also failed to find any wolverines.

The researchers advocate that wolverines be reintroduced to the Sierras, since they seem to be absent from most of the range.

However, in 2009, a wolverine was photographed north of Lake Tahoe by researchers studying pine martens. DNA analysis has subsequently shown that this animal is from the Rocky Mountains and is not a California wolverine. It is not known how this male wolverine got to the northern Sierra Nevada, since the nearest population is in the Snake River Valley in Idaho far to the north.

 

A map of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks showing the locations of the bait stations used in this survey. It also includes sightings since 1980. In the past 28 years, there have been nine wolverine sightings. That is about one sighting every three years, not a very good record.

I believe that California wolverines may continue to persist at very low levels in the Sierras.

Historical wolverine sightings in Yosemite National Park. Once again, sightings were much more common from 1920-1955 or so. But there were still quite a few sightings in the 1990’s. However, I am aware of some recent sightings in Yosemite in the 2000’s that were not included in this map. I believe that the wolverine may continue to persist at low levels in Yosemite. Click to view.

Wolverine sightings in California in the past tended to be concentrated in Kings Canyon and Sequoia Parks. This area was long held to be the last stronghold of the wolverine in California. Many detailed sightings were made from 1900-1930 in Sequoia National Park. In one, a wolverine chased two adult bears away from a horse carcass.

A map of historical wolverine sightings in Kings Canyon – Sequoia Parks. As you can see, sightings were much more common from 1920-1955 or so and have dropped off quite a bit ever since. Click to view.

Wolverines have been sighted as far south as Monache Meadows in the Dome Land Wilderness on the Sequoia NF, but the last sighting was in the 1950’s.

In 1980, definite wolverine tracks were seen at two locales in Kings Canyon National Park by trained wildlife biologists. However, tracks always count as “unverified”. But not to me. I say that at least 28 years ago, wolverines were present in Kings Canyon National Park.

I am also aware of another sighting out of Bishop, California on the Sierra crest in 1980. This sighting was by a wildlife biologist. The location of this sighting was just off this map to the north of the station labeled EV, north of Kings Canyon National Park. So from 18-28 years ago, wolverines were present in and around Kings Canyon. Whether they have been extirpated since 1990 is yet an open question in my mind.

There have also been sightings on the Sequoia National Forest adjacent to these two national parks and the Sequoia National Monument. According to the study, the last sighting was in 1988.

I am also aware of tracks spotted at Courtright Reservoir in 1990. Courtright is possible wolverine was heard near the Lodgepole area in Sequoia in 1995. It growled a frightening growl at a passerby from a small hole in some rocks that seemed too small to hold a bear.

A backcountry ranger for Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park said that he was 9

In August 2006, there was an unverified sighting of a California wolverine in the Soda Creek drainage northeast of Rainbow Mountain in the Mineral King area of Sequoia National Park.

The Soda Creek Drainage in Mineral King, where there was an unverified sighting of a wolverine on the northeast slope of Rainbow Mountain in August 2006. This is at the confluence of Soda Creek, Lost Canyon Creek and Big Arroyo Creek in the Kern River Watershed. I have been to Mineral King once backpacking in 1973. It’s a pretty amazing place. If you can handle difficult hiking, it is worth the trip.
This part of the Sierra Nevada is a lot drier than the northern part of the Sierra where the wolverine photo was taken recently. According to a topo map I just found, the part of the Soda Creek drainage on the northeast slope of Mt. Rainbow would be very high, at about 10,826 feet. This shows that wolverines may well range above 10,000 feet in the Southern Sierras.
Fishing is banned here to preserve a population of endangered Little Kern Golden Trout. There are also endangered Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep in the area. I have seen these sheep in the mountains just outside Los Angeles. A once in a lifetime experience!

 

I recently received a report of a wolverine sighting on the South Sierra Wilderness in Cow Canyon at the 8,511 foot level. The sighting occurred in the summer of 2008 on July 19 at 2 PM. The wolverine was sighted on the east side of Cow Canyon about 20 feet from the canyon bottom. This is only 1 1/2 miles east of Monache Meadows at the far southern end of their traditional range. The sighting was by an older man who grew up in national parks and knows wildlife very well. A spreadsheet of the sighting location is here.

A webpage states that wolverines continue to exist in Mineral King.

On April 19, 2010, a woman reported to park authorities that she saw a wolverine crossing a road in Kings Canyon National Park. She picked a wolverine out of a sequence that also included photos of bear, fox, weasel and beaver as the animal that she saw.

The suggestion to reintroduce wolverines to the Sierra is probably the correct one.

The California wolverine as a proven subspecies is still controversial, and it seems to persist at either very low numbers in California or is extinct.

References

Graber D.M. 1996. “Status of Terrestrial Vertebrates.”. SNEP Science Team and Special Consultants. Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project Report 25: 709-734.
Graber, D.M. 2006. “Disturbing Yosemite.” California 117:4.
Hudgens, Brian R., Garcelon, David K. 2008. Giant Sequoia National Monument Management Plan Final Environmental Impact Statement.” United States Forest Service, USDA.
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California Wolverine Re-discovered After 86 Years

Note: Repost.

In stunning news, researchers at Oregon State University snapped a photo of a possible California Wolverine (Gulo gulo luteus) north of Lake Tahoe between Truckee and Sierraville in the Tahoe National Forest. This is the first proven detection of a wolverine in California in 86 years – the last one was shot dead in 1922.

According to new data, the wolverine in the photo at the top of the page is from the Rocky Mountains and is not a California wolverine. Reginald Barrett, dean of furbearer studies in the West, told me in an in a recent interview that he felt that this wolverine had come down from Idaho through the Great Basin into California.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, California wolverines never left this state.

The actual location was on Sagehen Road in the Sagehen Creek area at the Sagehen Creek Field Station. This station is in the Sagehen Creek Experimental Forest. The field station itself, where the photo was taken, is at 6,375 feet.

California wolverines seem to exist more at lower elevations as one travels north in California. Towards the south in the Sierra Nevada, they are found more at 8,000-9,000 feet if sightings are any guide. It is 8.4 miles north of Truckee and 20 miles north of Lake Tahoe. Sagehen Basin itself ranges from 5,900 to 8,700 feet.

Despite much theory stating that wolverines hate any human presence, the area where the photo was taken is only 1.5 miles away from a major highway, Highway 89.

An excellent brochure about the Sagehen Creek area, listing hydrology, geology, geography, botany and biology, including insects, reptiles, amphibians and mammals, is here. Katie Moriarty, the graduate student who took the photos, was probably staying at the field station, which has excellent lodging facilities for researchers and has served as the study area for more than 80 theses and dissertations.

A photo of the first California Wolverine documented since 1922. This wild region where they were found in being proposed as a wilderness area by Senator Barbara Boxer. The probable proposed area is the proposed Castle Creek Wilderness Area . The photo shows the wolverine from the rear view.
It is probably next to a Red Fir.
In the background is what appears to be a White Fir and the tree in the foreground looks like some kind of pine. In this part of the Sierras, the Red Fir Zone (where this photo was probably taken) starts around 7,000 feet elevation.A much larger version of this pic, too large to put on this blog, is available here on the researchers’ website.

The area is in the central Sierra Nevada Mountains in Northern California.

What they mean by confirmed sighting is that it has to be backed up by a photo or a specimen. They say fur or scat also counts, but apparently that is not true, as California wolverines were confirmed via fur samples from Del Norte Siskiyou and Shasta Counties by the California Department of Fish and Game in the late 1980’s.

I know that a wildlife biologist saw one above Bishop, California in 1980, and I understand that there have been a number of other sightings by biologists. There have been quite regular sightings of these very elusive animals in California down through the years.

Live wolverines have also been trapped in far Northern Washington state in the Cascades near the Canadian border in the past couple of years.

The natural range of the California wolverine extends in California only and has been separated from wolverines in the Washington Cascades for at least 2,000 years, according to genetic studies. As a subspecies, it is controversial and is not yet accepted across the board by the scientific community.

The first description of a California wolverine was published in the Field Colombian Museum of Zoology Zoological Series in 1903 (rare online copy here). You can see in the description of the type specimen from Mount Whitney that the California wolverine was much paler than the wolverine normally found in the rest of North America.

The California wolverine is a subspecies of wolverine that split off from other branches about 2,000-11,000 years ago. The California wolverine formerly ranged into the Cascades of California and even over towards the Coast in the Northern Coast Range all the way down to San Fransisco.

It then ranged down the Sierra Nevada Mountains all the way down to the southern end of the range at the Southern Sierra Wilderness, where they were last sighted in the 1950’s. Monache Meadows is usually given as the southern end of the range, but the Southern Sierra Wilderness is south of there.

Based on sightings, it was felt that the California wolverine had declined to a very low level near extinction in the early 1930’s and then the population had been increasing slowly ever since. William Zielinski is an expert on wolverines who participated in this study.

Thomas Kucera, a researcher at San Fransisco State University, undertook a wolverine survey in the state in the early 1990’s with bait stations and cameras.

They saw quite a few animals, including many martens, a few fishers, coyotes, bears, bobcats, and mountain lions, but they found no wolverines in the exhaustive survey. The guarded conclusion then was that California wolverines were extinct in the state. I did a web search on the California Wolverine recently and most experts were saying that the the general conclusion was that they were gone from the state.

Wolverines in the Sierra Nevada

I never thought this animal went extinct in the state because I was aware of regular sightings, mostly around the Sierra National Forest, which is near where I lived for 16 years.

There has been an undated sighting of a wolverine four miles west of the Snow Canyon Research Natural Area on the Amador Ranger District of the El Dorado National Forest. This area is near Highway 88 about three miles south of Carson Pass, and part of it is in the Mokelumne Wilderness.

There have also been undated wolverine sightings in the Pacific Valley area north of the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness, an area that connects the Carson-Iceberg with the Mokelumne Wilderness on the El Dorado National Forest. Pacific Valley (map) is being considered as an addition to the Carson-Iceberg. The date of these sightings is not known.

There have been sightings at Green Island Lakes, a National Forest Service Research Station at 6,100 feet in the Lassen National Forest in Plumas County.

Wolverines have also been sighted around Eagle Lake on the Lassen National Forest.

There have been two sightings on the Collins-Almanor Forest, a large commercial forest northwest of Lake Almanor. This area is where the Northern Sierra Nevada meets the Southern Cascades.

There was also an unverified sighting of a California wolverine four miles west of Truckee on Highway 80. It had scavenged road kill from this busy interstate highway and was dragging it down into the rocks to eat it. I traveled over Donner Pass in Summer 1979. It’s quite a beautiful area.

 

Approaching Donner Pass from the east. Highway 80 does not actually cross Donner Pass itself anymore but actually goes two miles to the north at Euer Saddle. Donner Pass gets 415 inches of snow a year, making it one of the snowiest places in the US. Wind gusts of over 100 miles an hour are common during winter storms.

North and east of Yosemite, in the Hoover Wilderness Area, wolverines are said to persist. One was spotted there near the Virginia Lakes in the 1970’s.

In 1978, there was an unverified sighting of a wolverine near Disaster Peak (10,047 feet) in the Sonora Pass area in the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness. I went through the Sonora Pass area in 1987.

In 1979, a wolverine was spotted at Hilton Creek Lakes near Mt. Stanford (map). This area is east of Lake Edison and west of Tom’s Place in the John Muir Wilderness on the Sierra National Forest.

Hilton Creek Lakes in the John Muir Wilderness, elevation 10,705 feet. This area is near Stanford Peak. Access is out of the Rock Creek Trailhead on the East Side of the Sierras. A wolverine was seen here in 1979.

In 1980, a wildlife biologist saw a wolverine in the Robinson Flat area of the Foresthill Ranger District on the Tahoe National Forest.

In 1984, the district ranger of the Sierraville Ranger District, near where this photo was taken, saw a California wolverine running down a road in the middle of the day.

 

California wolverine tracks were seen here, at Courtright Reservoir, in 1990. The tracks were verified by a Forest Service biologist, but this counts as an unverified sighting, since tracks don’t count (Go figure!)
On the Downieville Ranger District on the Tahoe National Forest, a wolverine was sighted in 1989 in the Haskell Peak area.
Also on the Downieville District, another wolverine was seen in 1990 in the Upper Sardine Lake area.

Around 1990, tracks were sighted near Courtright Reservoir at 8,200 feet near Kings Canyon National Park in the southern Sierra National Forest. A local Forest Service biologist had seen the tracks.

Around 1990, a wolverine was spotted on the back side of Lembert Dome in Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park the middle of winter.

North of Yosemite on the Stanislaus National Forest, there was a wolverine sighting in the Emigrant Wilderness in 1990.

There are wolverine sightings near South Lake Tahoe. In 1990, a wolverine was sighted two miles from where Highways 50 and 89 meet in South Lake Tahoe and the southern end of the lake (map). This area is close to Emerald Bay, DL Bliss, and Sugar Pine Point State Parks. I have been to all of these parks on the shore of Lake Tahoe, but that was 45 years ago. It’s a beautiful place.

A wolverine was sighted in 1991 in the Euer Valley on the Truckee Ranger District in Tahoe National Forest.

A wolverine was seen in 1992 in the Harding Point area on the Tahoe National Forest northeast of Sierraville, and this sighting was confirmed by tracks.

In 1992, as wildlife biologist saw a wolverine in the Granite Chief Wilderness Area on the Tahoe National Forest.

In 1992 and 1993, a Biology teacher at the local high school in Oakhurst, Gary Spence, saw them two years in a row at Spotted Lakes (9,100 feet) in the far southeast corner of Yosemite National Park near the National Forest border. Spence is a good biologist and he used to go out on field surveys with the local Forest Service biologist.

Also on the Downieville District of the Tahoe National Forest, a wolverine was seen in 1993 in the Gold Lake Road and Salmon Lakes Road area.

In 1993, a wildlife biologist on the Lassen National Forest sighted a wolverine in a den near the headwaters of Deer Creek at 5,000 feet (note that even sightings by wildlife biologists are said to be unconfirmed). This area is near Child’s Meadow and is next to the southern border of Lassen National Park.

Lassen National Park’s draft management plan proposes to reintroduce wolverines to the park.

 

Child’s Meadow at the headwaters of Deer Creek near the southern boundary of Lassen National Forest. A wildlife biologist spotted a wolverine in a den here in 1993.

Those who keep saying that California wolverines no longer exist ought to note that all sightings are regarded as unconfirmed, even those by wildlife biologists.

Tracks are also regarded as unconfirmed sightings. This area was in private hands and was recently purchased by the Nature Conservancy. Incredibly, the private landowner wanted to put a golf course in here!

There was also a sighting in 1994 in Kaiser Pass near Huntington Lake at about 9,200 feet in the Sierra National Forest. The local Forest Service biologist said she believed the man who saw it.

 

Kaiser Pass east of Huntington Lake in the High Sierras. I was here in the summer of 1991 when I drove a relative and a friend to a drop-off at Florence Lake further on down the road. The road across Kaiser Pass was truly horrid and terrifying at the time, and I doubt if it has been improved. It’s beautiful up there though, and if you get the chance, check it out. A unverified sighting of a California wolverine was reported here in 1994.

 

The area to the west of Lake Tahoe continues to get sightings. A sighting was reported from Island Lake in the Desolation Wilderness Area just southwest of Lake Tahoe in 1994.

Another sighting was from the north shore of Loon Lake Reservoir near Lake Tahoe on the El Dorado National Forest on July 7, 1994. This is a few miles to the west of the Desolation Wilderness.

 

A Panorama of Loon Lake Reservoir west of the southwest shore of Lake Tahoe. A wolverine was seen here in 1994.

Another was seen in Lyell Canyon at 8,900 feet in eastern Yosemite in 1997.

 

Lyell Canyon in Yosemite National Park, where there was an unverified California wolverine sighting in 1997. This area is east of the Tuolumne River and southeast of Tuolumne Meadows. The Pacific Crest Trail runs through here, and Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep are known to exist in this area. Bighorns have been being devastated lately by mountain lions. This is poorly understood.
It appears that Bighorns are staying up high to avoid the mountain lions instead of migrating downslope as they normally do. Hence, they are being killed by avalanches when they stay in the high elevations for the winter. Bighorns and mountain lions evolved together, and it is not known why this dynamic is occurring. Domestic sheep grazing in this area is totally pointless and is ongoing.

Also in 1997, there was an unverified sighting of a wolverine off Highway 120 just after it passes Tioga Pass to the east, looking down into Lee Vining Canyon. The wolverine was sighted running away about 1,000 feet down below.

 

Lee Vining Canyon just east of Tioga Pass. I was near Tioga Pass in August 2003, but I did not continue down the road a ways to the pass itself. In 1997, there was an unverified sighting of a wolverine running away over a snowy ridge about 1,000 feet below near where this photo was taken. Tioga Pass is at 9,943 feet, so the wolverine was at about 9,000 feet.

In 1998, a wolverine was seen once again on the Downieville District on the Tahoe National Forest near Bassett’s Station.

The very wild area north of Lake Tahoe, especially the Granite Chief Wilderness, was considered to be one of the most likely places for the California Wolverine to be found due to the very high number of sightings in the area. In 2000, there was an excellent sighting of tracks in this area.

In 2001, a biologist spotted a wolverine somewhere on the Stanislaus National Forest, but the location was not given.

Donner Pass is where the famous Donner Party tried to cross into California in the winter of 1846-47, became trapped, turned cannibal, and ate half of their own party due to starvation. There was an unverified sighting of a California wolverine here in 2004 dragging roadkill off the highway to eat it. There have also been sightings north of Tahoe National Forest.

In 2004, there was a reported sighting north of Polly Dome Lakes at 8,500 feet near Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park.

 

The Polly Dome Lakes near Lake Tenaya, where there is an unverified California wolverine sighting from 2004. I was here in the Summer of 2003. I stayed at White Wolf campground and paid money for a cabin. Any lazy, old or out of shape person can do this, even you!
You drive your car into the campground and stay in a cabin! All you need is money. I even, at age 46, hiked up the murderous trail to Lukens Lake. You can do this too! All you need to do is get off your butt. Along the way, I saw a shrew running along the forest floor. Come on, when do you ever see such a thing?
I took a drive one day down the Tioga Road to Tuolumne Meadows and went by Lake Tenaya, where the scenery looks about like this. This part of Yosemite is beautiful! If you are in the area, take a drive up there in the summertime. There’s a nice highway, you don’t have to worry about a thing, and you are in the most beautiful scenery on Earth.

In 2004, apparent wolverine tracks were photographed on the trail up to Possible wolverine tracks photographed in July 2004 at Gabbot Pass on the Sierra Crest west of Bishop by Australians David Noble and Lizzy Went. There have been consistent sightings in the area west of Bishop and east of Courtright Reservoir and just north of Kings Canyon National Park over a 28-year period now.

The view from Gabbot Pass is at 12,240 feet, where an unverified sighting of wolverine tracks was made in July 2004.

In 2005, a wolverine was spotted in Tuolumne Meadows, again in winter. The observer had taken zoology courses at UCLA for seven years.

Forest Service employees have made quite a few wolverine sightings in both the northern Tahoe National Forest and in the southern Plumas National Forest in recent years.

In addition, in the Duncan Canyon Proposed Wilderness Area on the Plumas National Forest, there have been two wolverine sightings in recent years. This area is near French Meadows Reservoir.

Also on the Tahoe, in 2006, a wildlife biologist saw a California wolverine at the San Fransisco State University’s San Fransisco State University’s Sierra Nevada Field Station, 32 miles northwest of the Sagehen Creek photo site. There was an unverified sighting of a California wolverine here by a wildlife biologist in 2006.

In September 2010, a wolverine was seen on the Pacific Crest Trail near Red Cones, which is near Devil’s Postpile and Mammoth Mountain.

Wolverines on the North Coast and in the California Cascades

On the North Coast and in the California Cascades, there have been wolverine sightings in Del Norte and Trinity Counties east through Siskiyou and Shasta Counties.

There have been sightings in the lower Pit River watershed near Carberry Flat and on the Lassen National Forest at Bald Mountain and Kosk Creek Basin.

There were a number of sightings in this area from 1960 to 1974. For instance, there was a The very deep forest on the road between Hyampom and Hayfork in Trinity County. A wolverine was spotted here in 1974.

In 1980, Forest Service personnel on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest observed a wolverine on the Lower McCloud River at Chatterdown Creek several miles downstream from the Nature Conservancy McCloud River Reserve. This sighting was in Shasta County.

 

The Lower McCloud River at Ah-Di-Nah near the Nature Conservancy Reserve. Note the very deep forest here. A wolverine was sighted near here by Forest Service workers in 1980. Photo by Lily G. Stephen.

 

Dillon Creek on the Klamath National Forest is a Class V+ rapids stream. This area is extremely rugged, and it is almost impossible to hike out of this canyon. A wolverine was sighted in this area fairly recently.

There were numerous wolverine sightings in the Klamath Mountains of California in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

A wolverine was seen in Corral Bottom, 10 miles north of Hyampom, in the winter of 1989. It ran along the road in the snow for a hundred yards or so, then disappeared into a water cave in the three-foot deep snow.

Wolverine tracks were seen two times in Hyampom in the winter of 2010. Hyampom is located east of Eureka in the Trinity Alps.

The most recent sighting of a wolverine on the Klamath River was at Dillon Creek on the Klamath National Forest, 20 miles below Happy Camp (map) in 2000. This sighting occurred in Siskiyou County. The elevation here appears to be only 500 feet. Wolverines occur in deep forest at much lower elevations on the North Coast.

In Shasta County, recent sightings around 2009 are known from the secure and not endangered in the Idaho Sawtooths at the moment.

They were formerly present in many other states in the US, including Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, South Dakota, Nebraska (!), Iowa (!), Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland (!), New York, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. A good historical and present range map is here (Figure 2).

There are 14 different subspecies of the wolverine. The species is more or less circumpolar, ranging from northern Canada to Alaska across Siberia to Finland, Sweden and Norway. There are 500 wolverines in Scandinavia and 1,500 in Russia. They formerly occurred all through Norway and into Southern Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Northeastern Poland.

Wolverines in Europe

The southern populations have been extirpated except for a wolverine recorded in Estonia in 1986, which means they may be reclaiming former habitat there.

In Sweden they are limited to the far northwest where their numbers are growing but their distribution is irregular. There are 265 wolverines in Sweden. The population declined from 1870 to 1970 when they received protection. Since 1970, the population has been growing.

There are 150 wolverines in Norway. 100 years ago, they ranged through the whole country, but since then, they have been aggressively hunted to where they were limited to the north. Since 1970, they have recolonized the south-central area and remain in the north. Protections are in place.

In Finland it is an endangered species with a population of about 115. At the turn of the century, 50 wolverines a year were killed there. They then declined until they were protected in 1982. A good report on wolverines in Scandinavia is Wolverines in Eurasia

They are still common, though declining, in Russia, where they are common in the far east. The are most common in the Komi region (population 880). With the return to capitalism, they have undergone radical declines in the Kola (population 160) and Karelia (population 80) regions. The chaos and insanity of the return to capitalism have probably resulted in unrestricted hunting in Russia.

Wolverines in East Asia

There is estimated to be a population of 200 wolverines in the Wolverines in Canada

They were formerly found through much Canada but are now uncommon in Ontario (though increasing), extremely rare in Quebec, and extirpated from Labrador. An excellent report on wolverines in Ontario can be found on the Internet on theWolverines in Alaska

They are common in Alaska but sporadic on the islands of the southeast.

Some Interesting Facts about Wolverines

Wolverines have a reputation for being solitary and antisocial creatures. It is said that they are barely social enough to reproduce. Nevertheless, there is a good bond between mothers and kits. Kits are known to stay with the mother for up to 14-15 months. That is a very long time for a mammal.

The notion that wolverines are like orangutans in being antisocial loners is being challenged. Findings out of research in Idaho’s Sawtooths have shown a three-year old male traveling with a male juvenile, showing him the ropes and how to avoid predators and find food. They also saw a grown male playing with a juvenile female in a meadow.

Previously it was thought that females alone raised kits, and males had nothing to do with their offspring like mountain lions and so many other mammals. Females reportedly remember their natal dens and recover them when their mother dies. Males may assume the role of patriarch by fathering kits with multiple females and may visit the females periodically. The legend of wolverine unsociability may have to be rewritten.

In the West, dens are made very high in the mountains near treeline. Denning is probably the major risk to wolverines in the US, as mothers readily abandon dens at the slightest disturbance. Hence, we may need to limit snowmobiling and cross-country skiing to help preserve American wolverines.

I do not think logging has much of an effect on wolverines since they live at such high elevations. It may even be beneficial if it increases the numbers of rodents, which they prey heavily on.

Wolverines are said to be scavengers, and there is something to this, but they are also omnivores who eat just about anything. They cover amazing distances in their never-ending search for feed. They are so ferocious that they have very few enemies.

There is a recorded instance of a wolverine stealing a mountain lion’s kill and then chasing the puma away. However, a black bear was recently recorded killing a wolverine in Yellowstone National Park. The intrepid and ferocious wolverine had tried to steal the bear’s elk kill right out from under the bear’s paws.

The wolverine is member of the weasel family, and it is best described as a weasel on steroids blown up to King Kong size. They have a reputation for ferocity and viciousness. This reputation is derived in part from the tales of fur trappers.

Wolverines were notorious for following fur trappers along their lines and destroying and eating any animals caught in traps. To trappers it often seemed that the wolverine was doing this out of pure spite. Wolverines also had a reputation for entering trapper’s cabins when trappers were away and destroying everything inside. To top it off, they would spray their foul scent from their glands all over the cabin.

A wolverine is hardly man’s best friend. Here a sweet, cuddly wolverine purrs and spreads the love around. Old-timers in the Truckee area, near where the photo was shot above, say it takes only two swoops of those claws to kill a dog. The old-timers said that wolverines in that area “lived in holes.” I have seen the claws on a road-killed badger, though, and those were just amazing.

It is often said that wolverines love wilderness and refuse to have anything to do with humans. This is not necessarily true.

In Northern Ontario, many sightings were made by trappers within 1/2 mile of Amerindian settlements.

In the Yukon, wolverines frequently raid garbage dumps on the outskirts of towns.

In Scandinavia, they prey quite heavily on sheep and reindeer such that they are becoming a major predator problem. Further, they are recolonizing former territory that is now inhabited by humans, with homes, towns, roads, etc.

Wolverine fur is very valuable. It is the only fur that has the ability to withstand frost without freezing over. Hence it is often used to line the areas of parkas right around the mouth where the breath comes out. Otherwise, moist breath tends to cause frost buildup around the parka wearer’s mouth.

The low elevation record for a wolverine in California is an unbelievable 1,300 feet in Tulare County.

Conservation organizations have repeatedly petitioned the US Fish and Wildlife Service over the past decade to list the wolverine in the lower 48 as an endangered species. The petitions are constantly returned on a Catch-22 basis – the wolverine has to be studied, especially population dynamics, to determine if it qualifies as an endangered species, and it is so rare that it is almost impossible to study it.

Earlier, a wolverine petition was returned by the Bush Administration as invalid. After that, on March 11, 2008, the Bush Administration denied listing the wolverine in the Lower 48 on the basis that healthy populations in Canada and Alaska should be able to keep the wolverine from going extinct even if the wolverine is extirpated from the Lower 48.

In this, the Bush Administration took a new tack. Under Clinton and probably under all previous Presidents, a number of species were listed even though they had healthy populations in Alaska and Canada. After all, most of us live in the Lower 48, not Alaska, Canada or Mexico. And it seems odd to depend on the kindness of nations to the north and south of us to keep species from going extinct.

One problem of the lack of listing of wolverines is that wolverines can still be trapped. 8-18 are trapped every year in Montana, and biologists feel that none should be trapped anymore in the state. It appears that trapping in Montana is untenable based on new evidence.

A great wolverine article is here. It’s written by Physical Geography Professor Randall J. Schaetzl of Michigan State University. Among many other fascinating observations, he notes that the last Michigan wolverine was killed in 1860, not the early 1800’s. So the Ubly sighting was the first in about 150 years, not 200 years as most references state.

References

Armentrout, S. et al. (Watershed Analysis Team). 1998. “Watershed Analysis For Mill, Deer, and Antelope Creeks.” USDA: National Forest Service, Lassen National Forest, Almanor Ranger District.
Biodiversity Legal Foundation, Predator Conservation Alliance, Defenders of Wildlife, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, and Superior Wilderness Action Network. 2000. “Petition for a Rule to List the Wolverine (Gulo gulo luscus) as Threatened or Endangered under the Endangered Species Act within the Contiguous United States.” Submitted to the U.S. Dept. of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service on July 11, 2000.
California Department of Transportation. 2007. “ED-89 PM 8.6-13.8 Water Quality Improvements U.S. Highway 50/State Route 89 “Y” to Cascade Road. El Dorado County, CA. Initial Study with Proposed Negative Declaration.” Marysville, CA: Caltrans Office of Environmental Management.
Devine Tarbell & Associates, Inc. Sacramento Municipal Utility District. 2004. “Upper American River Project (FERC No. 2101). Mesocarnivore Technical Report.” Sacramento, CA: Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
Elliot, Daniel Giraud. 1903. “Descriptions Of Twenty-Seven Apparently New Species And Subspecies Of Mammals. All But Six Collected By Edmund Heller.” Publication No. 87. Volume Fieldiana Zoology 3:14. Chicago: Field Colombian Museum.
Groves, Craig R. 1988. “Distribution of the Wolverine in Idaho as Determined by Mail Questionnaire.” Northwest Science 62, 4:181-5.
Hesseldenz, Thomas F. 1981. “Developing a Long-Term Protection Plan for the McCloud River, California.” Paper presented at the California Riparian Systems Conference, University of California, Davis, September 17-19, 1981.
Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. 2005. “Heavenly Mountain Resort Master Plan Amendment 2005.”. USDA: USFS.
Lassen County Planning Department. 1981. “The Eagle Lake Area Plan, A Part of the Lassen County General Plan 1990.” Lassen County, CA.
Moyle, P.B., P.L. Randall, and R.M. Yoshiyama. 1996. “Potential Aquatic Diversity Management Areas in the Sierra Nevada.” In Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project: Final Report to Congress, Vol III, Chap. 9, p. 15. Davis: University of California, Centers for Water and Wildland Resources.
Nachlinger, Janet and Miller, Connie, eds. 2002. “An Ecological Survey Of The Snow Canyon Research Natural Area, Eldorado National Forest, California.” Berkeley, CA: Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experimental Station.
Pace, Felice. 2008. “Protecting Far Northern California’s Unprotected Wilderness – Time to Rethink California Wilderness Strategy?” Sierra Club California/Nevada Regional Wilderness Committee. Words of the Wild XI: 1. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club.
Predator Conservation Alliance. 2001. Predator Conservation Alliance’s Literature Summary – Draft – January 24, 2001 – Draft Conservation Status and Needs of the Wolverine (Gulo gulo) .
Randla, T. 1986. “On a New Occurrence of Wolverine in Estonia.” Eesti Ulukik 4: 77-78.
Schempf, P. F. and M. White. 1977. “Status of Six Furbearer Populations in the Mountains of Northern California.” USDA: Forest Service, California Region, San Francisco.
Shasta County Board of Supervisors. 1993. Shasta County General Plan. Redding, CA: Shasta County Department of Resource Management, Planning Division.
Stanislaus National Forest. 2001. California State Parks Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division, 2001/2002 OHV Grant and Cooperative Agreement Application, Wildlife Habitat Protection Plan. USDA: USFS.
Southern California Edison Company. 2001. Final Technical Study Plan Package (FTSPP) for the Big Creek Hydroelectric Projects (FERC Project Nos. 67, 120, 2085, and 2175). Terrestrial Resources – Chapter 13 – Mesocarnivores. Rosemead, CA.
Tahoe National Forest. 2002. Final Environmental Impact Statement. Red Star Restoration Project. USDA: USFS, Pacific Southwest Region, Forestville, CA.
TC Dot and Hughes Environmental Consultants. 2003. If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.

Wolverines in Colorado and Utah

Repost.

This post was split off from an earlier post that got too large, California Wolverine Re-discovered After 85 Years. This particular post will deal with the question of wolverines in the states of Utah and Colorado.

Wolverines in Utah

The Manti-La Sal National Forest in Utah in Sanpete County. This county in central Utah is believed to harbor a wolverine population. This area is northeast of Fillmore, Utah, which is the sighting nearest to Nevada.

Also in March 1979, a man junction with Coyote Gulch (Wolverine Bench” on the map in the Escalante Canyon area, and wolverines used be found into Northern Arizona. If wolverines existed in Northern Arizona, clearly they existed in the Glen Canyon area. Wolverines live in very similar habitat in the Snake River Canyon in Idaho.

The Upper Escalante River Canyon is in the Aquarius Plateau, which has 50,000 acres of land above 11,000 feet. That’s clearly wolverine habitat. The junction of Coyote Gulch and the Upper Escalante is a ways away from the plateau, but it’s likely a dispersing juvenile could be found in the area. A photo of the terrain is here.

In recent years there have been documented sightings of wolverines around Salt Lake City and the Great Salt Lake. One was photographed running through a suburban development!

Wolverines in Colorado

There was an unconfirmed and undated sighting of a wolverine chasing a boy on a motorcycle down a road in the Routt National Forest in far Northern Colorado some years ago. The Routt is near Steamboat Springs up by the Wyoming border.

There have also been incredibly, near Sterling on the Great Plains in Northeastern Colorado, which seems very odd, but looking through all of these reports, it becomes apparent that wolverines in Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Iowa, and Minnesota may indeed use prairie habitat.

An incredible photo of a tornado over Sterling, Colorado from a storm-chaser page. Storm-chasers chase tornadoes so they can get pictures of them, or just to watch them. Pretty dangerous sport. Click to enlarge. I think it is quite clear by now that wolverines do use prairie habitat. Even aboriginally, prairie was thought to be marginal for wolverines, but perhaps that was wrong. Pre-contact, vast herds of buffalo roamed the prairie, and there would be plenty of dead buffalo for the scavenging wolverine to eat.

Recently, there was an unconfirmed wolverine sighting 4-5 miles up Red Sandstone Road in Vail, Colorado on the White River National Forest.

A photo of Vail ski resort and the town of Vail, Colorado as seen from Red Sandstone Road, which goes north of town. A wolverine was seen on this road recently. Click to enlarge.
The famous Maroon Bells in the White River National Forest in Western Colorado. Aspen and Vail are also located in this forest. I spent a week skiing in Aspen in 1978. Great place! The White National Forest is believed to harbor a wolverine population. Along with Pike NF, these may be the only populations in the state.

Wolverines are present in Colorado on the Pike and White River National Forests and in Utah in the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains and in Sanpete County in Central Utah.

 

The Pike National Forest in Colorado.

A Colorado Department of Wildlife biologist spotted one south of Trapper Lake in Flat Tops Wilderness in the mid-1960’s. The Flat Tops is partly in the White River National Forest and partly in the Routt NF in Colorado.

 

Trapper Lake in the Flat Tops Wilderness. Canyon walls tower up to 1,000 feet at this late at the 9,500 foot elevation level. Fishing is very popular in this lake and it is said to be very good.

In July 1977, a man found a In June 1978, a man took The spectacular Trinchera Peak in the Sangre de Cristos in  Southern California. Bighorns roam on the top slopes of the mountain.

In March 1979, three biologists with the Colorado Department of Wildlife Rifle Mountain Park, 13 miles north and just beyond the Rifle Falls Fish Hatchery, the largest fish hatchery in Colorado. There is great ice climbing here during the winter and mountain climbing the rest of the year. You don’t even have to worry about rain much because the cliffs catch so much of it and you can always take shelter under one. A wolverine was seen near here in 1979.

In June 1979, a man A photo of the Aspen Canyon Ranch in Parshall, Colorado. A wolverine was seen here in 1979. Parshall is not much of a town. It is really just an unincorporated collection of small homes and trailers. There are dude ranches all around here. That may be the Colorado River in the photo, as it runs through town here near its headwaters. Fishing is supposed to be great in the river here.

In the late 1980’s, there was an unconfirmed sighting of a wolverine in the Uncompagre Wilderness on the Uncompagre National Forest. The Uncompagre is in Southern Colorado and is located about 20 miles northwest of Telluride.

There was another unconfirmed sighting of tracks from the Flat Tops Wilderness in 2003.

There have been Petition for a Rule to List the Wolverine (Gulo gulo luscus) as Threatened or Endangered under the Endangered Species Act within the Contiguous United States . Submitted to the U.S. Dept. of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service on July 11, 2000.

Nead, D. M.; Halfpenny, J. C.; and Bissell, S. 1984. Predator Conservation Alliance’s Literature Summary – Draft – January 24, 2001 – Draft Conservation Status and Needs of the Wolverine (Gulo gulo).
If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.

Additions to the Wolverine’s Range in Idaho

Repost.

The wolverine in Idaho is generally considered inhabit three main areas:

The first and southernmost population is in the Sawtooth National Forest (northern part), Challis National Forest, Payette National Forest and Sawtooth National Recreation Area in central Idaho.

Yet another population is the central population in the Lochsa River Drainage in the Clearwater and Bitterroot Mountains in Clearwater National Forest.

A third population is the northern population to the north in the Selkirks along the Canadian border.

The three populations are considered to be separated from each other, although at least the first population is thought to be healthy.

Nevertheless, we continue to get reports of wolverines in other parts of Idaho. A previous post noted a wolverine on a telephone pole along the Snake River Valley in King Hill, Idaho, earlier this year.

A radio-collared wolverine recently traveled from the Grand Tetons in Wyoming across the Blackfoot and Caribou Mountains in the Targhee and Caribou National Forests in Southeastern Idaho, across private lands to the Portneuf Range west of the The breathtaking Portneuf Range east of Pocatello, Idaho, where the radio-collared wolverine ended up. It promptly turned right around and went back to the Tetons. In the Basin and Range Region.

A grazing allotment on the Blackfoot Mountains in southeastern Idaho. Lance Armstrong, the peripatetic wolverine, crossed this range on his way from the Grand Tetons to the Portneuf Range opposite Pocatello, Idaho. Grazing is thoroughly devastating BLM and Forest Service land in this region.
The problem is particularly acute in Southern Idaho, as it is more arid.
All livestock grazing pretty much needs to be banned in at least these areas.Incredibly, livestock grazing is allowed in National Forest wilderness areas. This was one of the only ways that the 1964 Wilderness Act could get passed was to grandfather in these grazing allotments. It’s insane that grazing is allowed in wilderness areas.
Grazing is particularly devastating in high-elevation forests of the Sierra Nevada and anywhere in the arid West. The cow evolved in England and prefers a cool climate with lots of water. In the arid West, cows congregate during the summer in the riparian areas, which they completely devastate. A grand total of
Public lands grazing is welfare – the allotments are rented out to the ranchers at far below market value, so the taxpayer gets totally screwed.
Not only do we get ripped off on the rental of our lands, but we also get our lands devastated in the process. The whole thing is completely insane. If ranchers can’t make it ranching on private land, they need to get out of the business.
Furthermore, increasingly, public lands ranchers, like everything else in US capitalism, is going corporate. Mom and Pop ranchers are going out and ranching corporations are in. A large number of public lands grazing allotments are now being run by corporations as investment vehicles.

The long-ranging wolverine above was finally killed by a trapper just over the Montana border in the Centennial Range. Since the Centennials range into Idaho, we ought to add the Centennial Range in the Targhee National Forest to the wolverine’s range in Idaho.

 

The spectacular Centennial Range on the border between Idaho and Montana. This is where the long-ranging wolverine named Lance Armstrong was finally killed by a trapper over the border into Montana.

Montana still allows trapping of wolverines, which takes about a dozen a year. Studies are showing that even that small take may be too much for wolverines to sustain. However, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission recently voted to set limits on wolverine trapping for the very first time.

Additional searching around the net noted that a wolverine had been shot dead by some boys in the Snake River Canyon in Idaho a few years back. They were worried and they brought it in to the Department of Fish and Game office, but the wardens let them go because they were kids and did not know what they were doing, although the wolverine is protected in Idaho.

 

The Snake River Canyon near Twin Falls, Idaho. Some teenage boys shot dead a wolverine here about three years ago, but were not charged. Clearly, wolverines do exist in this part of the Colombian Plateau. This is where Evil Knievel tried his ill-fated motorcycle jump across this canyon decades ago.

There are various definitions about what constitutes the this large document (page 6 for instance) they are actually doing surveys for their dens.

Included in the appendices is a report called Survey of Wolverine Dens in the Seven Devils Mountains of Hells Canyon.

 

The gorgeous Seven Devils Range in the Payette National Forest in Idaho. This range borders on Hell’s Canyon and may serve as a steppingstone for wolverines to travel from Idaho across the Snake River to the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon.

There are also reports of wolverines in the Wood River Valley area. Part of the Wood River runs about 30 miles north of Twin Falls, but the Wood River Valley refers to private land about 60-70 miles north of Twin Falls. It includes the towns of Ketchum, Sun Valley, Hailey and Bellevue. We should extend wolverine habitat down from the Sawtooths into the Wood River Valley.

There have been recent sightings in the Sun Valley area.

On the The spectacular Deep Creek Range in southeastern Idaho. It is about 40 miles long, and is bounded by Arbon Valley on the East and Rockland Valley on the West as it ranges through Power County. Wolverines may well exist here. Another Basin and Range mountain range.

The Bannock Range in southeastern Idaho. Both the Bannock and the Deep Creek Ranges are southwest of Pocatello. The Bannocks extend from Pocatello 85 miles south into northern Utah through the Caribou National Forest. Wolverines may well exist in this range. Also located in the Basin and Range region.

Photos of all of these beautiful ranges can be seen on Ralph Maughan’s excellent blog. Maughan is a professor of political science at Idaho State University in Pocatello. He’s also really big on wolves.

Incredibly, the Bush Administration removed all protections for all wolves in the United States! The Rocky Mountains population is doing fairly well, but they completely removed the wolves from the endangered species list and handed management of them over to the states, who proceeded to slaughter them as fast as they can!

Web page on myths about wolves. Wolves are hardly dangerous at all to humans. Predators killed 12,100 sheep in Idaho last year. Of those, a little more than

Ranchers claim that wolves are devastating Idaho’s cattle industry. Wolves killed 24 cows in Idaho last year, .03 of all losses. All predators accounted for only

This is a clear consequence of White Rule in America. White Rule has meant a total corporate takeover of every nook and cranny in this nation, along with utter devastation of our environment and every non-utilitarian form of non-human life in it.

What’s odd is that surveys of Americans, including most Whites, show that they are strong environmentalists. But environmentalism is way down on the list. What’s high on the list? Although most US Whites will tell you that they are not racist, the movement of US Whites towards the Republican Party from 1980-present has been pretty much predicated on race.

It’s coincided with a dramatic decrease in the White

Since 1980, our White World has gotten darker and darker. Whites have dropped from 8

During the 1990’s and into the Bush Administration, we are now dealing with quite possibly the most rightwing President this country has ever seen – and it’s all the fault of White people. Why are Whites voting more and more reactionary with time? Because their rule is coming to an end.

This is a predictable political trend for any ruling group which is desperately trying to hold onto power in the face of rising opposition. In truth, ruling groups often opt for dictatorship and often fascism as they desperately try to cling to power.

In summary, occupied wolverine habitat in Idaho should be extended beyond the description at the beginning to the post to Power County, Elmore County, the Snake River Valley, the Blackfoot Mountains, the Centennial Range, the Caribou Range, the Snake River Range, the Big Hole Mountains, the Targhee and Caribou National Forests, the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, the Portneuf Range, the Seven Devils Mountains , the Snake River Canyon and possibly the Bannock and Deep Creek Ranges.

References

Biodiversity Legal Foundation, Predator Conservation Alliance, Defenders of Wildlife, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, and Superior Wilderness Action Network. 2000. Petition for a Rule to List the Wolverine (Gulo gulo luscus) as Threatened or Endangered under the Endangered Species Act within the Contiguous United States . Submitted to the U.S. Dept. of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service on July 11, 2000.
Edelman, Frank and Copeland, Jeff. 1999. “Wolverine Distribution in the Northwestern United States and a Survey in the Seven Devils Mountains of Idaho.” Northwest Science 62:181-185.
Groves, Craig R. 1988. “Distribution of the Wolverine in Idaho as Determined by Mail Questionnaire.” Northwest Science 62, 4:181-5.
Predator Conservation Alliance. 2001. Predator Conservation Alliance’s Literature Summary – Draft – January 24, 2001 – Draft Conservation Status and Needs of the Wolverine (Gulo gulo).
Wildlife Conservation Society. 2004. “Wolverine Takes A Road Trip: Scientists Track Male Animal over a Three-state, 550-mile Walk-about.” Science Daily.
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Wolverines In Wyoming

Note: Repost.

This post was split off from an earlier post that got too large, California Wolverine Re-discovered After 86 Years. This particular post will deal with the question of wolverines in the state of Wyoming. Wolverines in Wyoming do not seem to be in very good shape, but there are increasing sightings in recent years, and a few have been trapped and road-killed. Further, they seem to be expanding their range.

In Wyoming, wolverines are mostly found in the northwest near Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, where the population at least appears sustainable, particularly in and around Yellowstone.

However, there was a sighting in the Medicine Bow Mountains in Southeastern Wyoming in 1991.

The Medicine Bow Mountains in Southeast Wyoming. A wolverine was sighted here in 1991.

In 1996, a wolverine was accidentally trapped near the town of Horse Creek, east of the Laramie Mountains and northwest of Cheyenne.

The scene near Horse Creek, Wyoming, where a wolverine was accidentally trapped in 1996. Actually, most of this area is drier Basin and Range or almost prairie type habitat, complete with buffalo, “hogback” mountains, and real, live cowboys.

I spoke with a man recently here in California who saw and heard a wolverine underneath a cabin where he was staying with his sons at 10,000 feet on Cloud Peak in the Bighorn Mountains near Sheridan, Wyoming. The wolverine was rummaging around under the cabin for hours and later was gnawing up a nearby woodpile. The sighting occurred in 1996.

There was a 1997 sighting from the Bighorn Mountains, a range in North-central Wyoming on the Montana border that extends south to near the town of Sheridan.

In March 1998, a wolverine killed several sheep east of Buffalo, which is east of the Bighorn Mountains.

Interstate 90 drops down into the Crazy Woman Basin east of Buffalo, Wyoming. A wolverine killed several sheep here in March 1998 and was spotted by a rancher. This area, the Powder River Basin, is undergoing a huge amount of methane natural gas extraction which is sucking a huge amount of water out of the ground and spraying it on the surface.
This is causing homeowners’ wells to go dry. They lose all the value of the home, and the natural gas companies refuse to reimburse them because the homeowners do not own the mineral rights under their land. That’s the way capitalism works in America – the score is Capital-100 Humans-0, and masochistic Americans just can’t get enough abuse.There is also a fear that many area watercourses, such as the Powder River and Crazy Woman Creek, are going to dry up part of the year, endangering many fish endemic to the area.

A young wolverine was captured only two miles north of Cheyenne, Wyoming, the state capital, in 1998. Cheyenne is a city of 53,000 people.

Cattle grazing in Veeda Vou Park north of Cheyenne. A subadult wolverine was captured just two miles north of Cheyenne in 1998.

A wolverine was killed by a car along Highway 30 in 2004 near Fossil Butte National Monument near where Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho all come together.

The view down into Chicken Creek that runs through the heart of the Fossil Buttes National Monument in Southwest Wyoming. Fossil Buttes is on the left. A wolverine was roadkilled here in 2004. Some think that wolverines have their winter range in the lower Basin and Range sagebrush zones. Here the terrain is mostly sagebrush, but aspens grow at higher elevations. Very large numbers of fossilized fish have been found in this area.

There are also sightings from the Wyoming Range in Far Western Wyoming south of Jackson Hole.

In 2005, a female wolverine was being monitored in the Salt River Range along the Idaho border. She was also using the Wyoming Mountains. The Salt River Range is next to the Wyoming Mountains.

Wolverines also are thought to live in the Tetons and the Gros Ventre Range south of Yellowstone and in the Absaroka Range east of Yellowstone near Cody. Jackson Hole is located in the Gros Ventres.

A couple of wolverines were documented on the Wind River Range about 75 miles southeast of Jackson Hole near Lander in recent surveys.

In general, wolverines in Wyoming are thought to be in poor shape. They seem to be slowly recovering territory and spreading out into new areas. One reason for this may be that the large wolf population in Yellowstone is providing a good source of carrion for wolverines with all of the ungulates that they are killing. Another reason may be much less broad-spectrum predator poisoning in the state in the past few decades.

References

Biodiversity Legal Foundation, Predator Conservation Alliance, Defenders of Wildlife, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, and Superior Wilderness Action Network. 2000. Petition for a rule to list the wolverine (Gulo gulo luscus) as Threatened or Endangered under the Endangered Species Act within the contiguous United States. Submitted to the U.S. Dept. of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service on July 11, 2000.
Predator Conservation Alliance. 2001. Predator Conservation Alliance’s Literature Summary – Draft – January 24, 2001 – Draft Conservation Status and Needs of the Wolverine (Gulo gulo).
If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.

Wolverines in New Mexico

Repost.

This post was split off from an earlier post that got too large, California Wolverine Re-discovered After 85 Years. This particular post will deal with the question of wolverines in New Mexico.

Wolverines may yet exist in New Mexico. Latir Peak in the Latir Peak Wilderness Area in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Taos, New Mexico. A wolverine was sighted in tundra here in 1985.

There have been several other Lake Fork Peak in the spectacular Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico. The red line indicates the route taken by mountain climbers who bagged this peak. There have been several sightings of wolverines in this rugged range in recent years, and northern New Mexico was formerly wolverine habitat.

References

Frey, J.K. 2006. Robert LindsayPosted on Categories Americas, Animals, Carnivores, Endangered Species, Environmentalism, Mammals, Mustelids, New Mexico, Regional, USA, West, Wild, Wildlife, Wolverines15 Comments on Wolverines in New Mexico

Wolverine Sighted in Shasta County, California

There was an unconfirmed sighting of a wolverine in Shasta County, California a year ago, on Friday, September 26, 2008. The sighting occurred at 1 PM on a sunny day. The wolverine was crossing Highway 89 from north to south. It was walking fast more than running.

It was described as paler than most photos the observer had seen – more of a dark tan. This color is actually common for wolverines, and if this was an actual California wolverine, this subspecies was known to have a much lighter coloration. He observed it crossing the road at about 50 feet away until it vanished into the forest.

The observer assumed it was a pretty common animal until he went on the Net and did some research and found out how rare it was. He reported the sighting to this blog, and I believe him. Anyone who wants to talk to the observer about this sighting can try to contact him via me at my email

This area of California has actually had a number of wolverine sightings in recent years, including some by wildlife biologists. In addition, loggers, utility workers and Forest Service workers have been reporting sightings in the Lassen/Almanor area for years now. Bizarrely, even sightings by wildlife biologists are said to be “unconfirmed”.

The sighting was around Dead Horse Summit, about 20-30 miles west of McCloud, between the small towns of Bartle and Pondosa. This area is near MacArthur-Burney Falls State Park. That’s a really beautiful area. This part of California is very White, deeply conservative and very sparsely settled. I have been near this part of California, but it was so long ago, I don’t even remember it.

Dead Horse Summit. This is where the far southern end of the Cascades Range of Washington, Oregon and northern California meets the far northern end of the Sierra Nevada. This is an area where the California spotted owl probably intergrades with the Northern spotted owl. Wolverines are already known to exist at decent populations in southern Oregon.
These are definitely California wolverines. If the California wolverine subspecies is to repopulate California and the Sierra Nevada, it will be through this corridor linking the two ranges.
There is a fascinating old railroad track that runs through this area. You can take these little several man-railroad cars that cruise along the tracks and check out this train track. It’s really popular with model railroad fans for some weird reason. I’m not even sure if this track is even used by real trains anymore. As far as I can tell, it’s a tourist trap for model railroad dudes. Funny.
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Wolverine Spotted in Snake River Valley

Repost.

This is actually a pretty interesting sighting. We have always known that there are wolverines in the national forests of mountainous central and northern Idaho and there are some sightings in the Hell’s Canyon area of the Snake River along the Oregon/Idaho border, but I was not aware of any recent sightings in the Colombian Plateau of Idaho until I read this article.

The terrain in King Hill, Idaho. Not exactly prime wolverine habitat, but wolverines have been road-killed and trapped in similar locales recently in Wyoming, Oregon and Utah.

However, recent sightings and roadkilled wolverines in similar habitat in the West in Utah, Oregon,and Wyoming indicate that wolverines do use such habitats, possibly especially when dispersing.

This wolverine was actually sitting on a telephone pole in the middle of the day near a small town!

A wolverine got stranded on a telephone pole in King Hill, Idaho on March 25 of this year. That photo actually looks kind of ridiculous. Tell me again how these animals hate people so much that they can’t stand to go anywhere near us. Right.

It was spotted along Montgomery Road near King Hill, Idaho. King Hill is located about 57 miles northwest of Twin Falls, Idaho. Wildlife officials were called in and decided to just wait around until the wolverine climbed down off the pole.

The initial caller had reported a badger on a telephone pole, but badgers don’t climb. They can dig a hole faster than any animal alive, but they can’t climb a thing. Badgers and wolverines appear to be relatives – they are both very large weasel-type animals.

There have been two other sightings of wolverines in “the valley” (apparently the Snake River Valley, whatever that encompasses) in the past two years. I don’t know much about the economic base of this county, but at least wine grapes are grown here.

Sagebrush terrain in the Eastern Snake River Valley of Idaho. King Hill is at the western end of the Eastern Snake River Valley. Pretty odd to find wolverines here, but they have been spotted at least 3 times in 2 years in this region.

The fact that wolverines are dispersing out in the Great Basin may mean that some day in the not too distant future they may return to Nevada. King Hill is a mere 63 miles north of the Nevada border.

References

Biodiversity Legal Foundation, Predator Conservation Alliance, Defenders of Wildlife, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, and Superior Wilderness Action Network. (2000). Petition for a rule to list the wolverine (Gulo gulo luscus) as Threatened or Endangered under the Endangered Species Act within the contiguous United States . Submitted to the U.S. Dept. of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service on July 11, 2000.
Groves, Craig R. 1988. Distribution of the Wolverine in Idaho as Determined by Mail Questionnaire. Northwest Science 62, 4:181-5.
Predator Conservation Alliance. (2001) Predator Conservation Alliance’s Literature Summary – Draft – January 24, 2001 – Draft Conservation Status and Needs of the Wolverine (Gulo gulo).
If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.

Wolverines in Nevada

Repost.

This post was split off from an earlier post that got too large, California Wolverine Re-discovered After 86 Years. This particular post will deal with the question of wolverines in the state of Nevada. The standard line is that wolverines do not exist in Nevada and have not been reported there since the late 1800’s, when they were reported from the ranges in the northeastern part of the state.

However, it was recently discovered that there was a verifiable wolverine sighting in far east-central Nevada close to the Utah border, near Great Basin National Park, in 1972.

But given that wolverines seem to be in the process of recovering their range in the Western US, it seems plausible that wolverines may reappear in Nevada at some date. They have been seen on Steens Mountain in southeastern Oregon near the Nevada border. It is also possible that they may drift down from southern Oregon into northern Nevada.

At any rate, this post will examine historical locations for wolverines in Nevada, and include photos of the ranges where they may have been spotted.

John Muir reported wolverine tracks from Wheeler Mountain (map here) in what is now Great Basin National Park in 1878, but there were no sightings. Since then, a wolverine skull was found in Snake Creek Burial Cave near Great Basin National Park 11.3 miles south of Baker, Nevada, and only 2 1/4 miles west of the Utah border.

That skull was found amidst bones from over 10,000 years ago and has not yet been dated, so it may not be a recent find. On the other hand, the Pleistocene assemblage at that elevation continues to occur nearby in Great Basin National Park, albeit at higher elevations. The nearest known occurrence of a wolverine to the Sand Creek skull is in Utah, 93 miles to the east near Fillmore in Millard County.

Fillmore, Utah, the nearest wolverine sighting to the skull found at Sand Creek Cave, Nevada. It’s amazing that wolverines can live in this kind of high Basin and Range territory. There is very similar terrain on Highway 395 north of the California border on the way to Carson City, which I visited 21 years ago. Pinyon-juniper is common in this terrain.

In addition to Muir’s report, there are reports from pre-1900 of wolverines in the northeastern part of Nevada.

Snowside Gulch in the Jarbridge Wilderness in northeastern Nevada. The Jarbridge Mountains are to the north of both the East Humboldt and Ruby Mountains and rest on the border with Idaho. Wolverines may have occurred in this range before 1900.
The Ruby Mountains in northeastern Nevada. This may have been one of the ranges where wolverines occurred in Nevada pre-1900.
Chimney Rock in the East Humboldt Range to the north of the Ruby Mountains in northeastern Nevada. Wolverines may have occurred here before 1900.

References

Aubry, KB, McKelvey, KS, Copeland, JP. 2007. Distribution and Broadscale Habitat Relations of the Wolverine in the Contiguous United States. Journal of Wildlife Management 71, 7: 148-158.
Barker, M. S., Jr., and Best, T. L. (1976). The Wolverine (Gulo Luscus) in Nevada. The Southwestern Naturalist 21: 133.
Biodiversity Legal Foundation, Predator Conservation Alliance, Defenders of Wildlife, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, and Superior Wilderness Action Network. (2000). Petition for a Rule to List the Wolverine (Gulo gulo luscus) as Threatened or Endangered under the Endangered Species Act within the Contiguous United States . Submitted to the U.S. Dept. of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service on July 11, 2000.
Predator Conservation Alliance. (2001) Predator Conservation Alliance’s Literature Summary – Draft – January 24, 2001 – Draft Conservation Status and Needs of the Wolverine (Gulo gulo).
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Alt Left: A 100 IQ Doesn’t Mean Much of Anything, Really

Although American Whites (100) may collectively seem smarter than the Blacks(85) and Hispanics(90), they too are fucking stupid. An average IQ of 100 is nothing special. Even an IQ of 115 is nothing special when compared to people with IQ’s 125+. A whopping 8

Although those are the official numbers, I refuse to believe American Whites have an average IQ of 100. Europe’s White trash left for the new world. Sure there were some aristocrats and geniuses that may have made their way over here, but most of those people weren’t exactly high quality Whites. I estimate the average IQ of White Americans to be about 95. Europeans just seem more cultured and intelligent in comparison.

This disparity becomes readily apparent when you are in a flyover White trash red state. Everything is so rundown and the people are noticeably dirtier and uglier looking. You may not agree that White Americans as a collective have an average IQ of 95, but you have to admit that Middle America is blatantly dumber than Coastal America (east and west). Everybody, or at least the smart and talented people leave for the major cities, of which a disproportionate amount of are located on the East and West Coast.

There is a problem with your analysis.  First of all, a 100 IQ score means just about zip! Let us suppose that the average IQ scores doubled in the next 100 years. IQ’s rose on average of 100 points in the US. What would the average IQ in the US be? 100! So in that case, a 100 IQ score would be twice as high as it is today and we could no longer say that 100 IQ is not that smart. You follow? 100 is just sort of a placemarker or a tag. It all depends on how you are norming your population.

Also, you would think that an  IQ like mine (147) would be 4

Average IQ is 100 is because they’ve always normed these tests on US populations. Lately they switched to US Whites = 100 and that makes the average US IQ = 98. Our average IQ used to be 100.

So we’ve dropped 2 IQ points with all of this unrestricted low-quality immigration. Nothing wrong with immigration per se, but the last thing this country needs is more uneducated low skilled peasants and workers from the 3rd World. They’re a drag on the economy and they absolutely do increase the crime rate, run down cities, create gangs, etc. I speak about unrestricted Hispanic immigration, which is just stupid. With 10 fewer IQ points, of course they are going to drag places down, lower test scores, increase crime and probably gangs, etc.

That’s just a given. Now if you wanted to important Hispanics with average IQ = 98, I’d be right on board. In fact all of our legal immigration should be average IQ = 98 or maybe better yet, minimum 98 IQ to even get in in the first place. Letting in millions of dumber people to crash your country’s IQ score has to be one the stupidest things a country could do.

Body Found in Grand Teton National Park!

Update 4 PM PST: Police announced that the body they found is that of Gabbie Petito. How they figured that out so fast, I have no idea.

From the Instagram site of the missing young woman, Gabbie Petito. They were searching in the area of a campground where her van had been photographed on August 27 by a couple documenting their road trip on their vacation. Her hat is sitting on the dash and her sandals are on the ground. Why did she leave her hat? Who takes their sandals off and goes walking in the woods?

After August 27, Brian was seen three times, but he was always alone. Her boyfriend, Brian Laundrie, was seen in West Yellowstone in a bar at 10:30 PM soon after this. He must have abandoned the van in Grand Teton, possibly down near Jackson and then hitchhiked up to West Yellowstone. He then probably walked or hitchhiked with a tarp to sleep on down from West Yellowstone back through Grand Teton to Jackson where he abandoned her van. He was next seen on August 29 carrying a tarp and walking down a road in Grand Teton National Park. A couple gave him a ride. He seemed agitated and nervous and offered to pay them $200 for the ride. The problem is they were almost out of money when she was last seen. Where did he get all this money?

They let him out short of his destination. He was seen later that night at 10:30 PM in Jackson, Wyoming. He seemed agitated and angry and was angrily throwing items in a trash dumpster. Her van was right next to him.

He next drove all the way from Wyoming to Florida in only three days, showing up in Florida on September 1. He told no one where she was and did not report her missing. She was not reported missing until 10 days later by her family. He has retained a lawyer and is refusing to speak to anyone about what happened or where Gabbie is. He is now missing or more probably in hiding. He has not yet been arrested for this crime. Her van was seized by police and some items were taken from his home.

They documented almost their entire trip on the Internet with photos following them everywhere she went. Gabbie singled out four locations in Grand Teton on the Net, apparently places where she wanted to go hiking. One of those is the campground at which his van was photographed with her sandals on the ground. Police have been searching this campground. I assume the body was found in the campground because that is where they were searching. I am pretty certain that is the body of Gabbie Petito.

Brian Laundrie’s Instagram page is here. He’s an artist and he has a lot of his drawings up there. A lot of them have very dark, twisted, Satanic, murderous, or evil overtones. I’m not sure what all that dark artwork means. It often means a dark mind, but that in and of itself doesn’t prove much of anything about the person, only that they like to think of dark things.

He is continuing to work on his Instagram page so he is still active on social media. He’s deleting followers and blocking some people.

True Crime: Joseph Edward Duncan III

Originally posted as a repost from the old site in 2008. I recently looked over this old piece and I was surprised at how good it was. I think it’s time for a re-run. Feel free to comment. Warning: long, runs to 28 pages.

On August 27, 2008, Joseph Edward Duncan III was sentenced to death by a federal court in Idaho after being charged with ten federal charges for the homicide of Dylan Groene, age 9, in Montana in 2005. He served 13 years on death row, but he died on March 28, 2001 of glioblastoma, a brain tumor, before he could be executed.

I don’t know any of the principals in this case, but Thrillseekerman knows Steve Groene and Chris Groene, Doperman knows Chris Groene and not Steve, and Sexmaniacman knows Steve Groene but not Chris. T-man went to elementary school with Steve Groene and his brother, Chris Groene. Steve Groene is the father of Shasta Groene, Dylan Groene and Slade Groene. I called Thrillseekerman, Doperman, and Sexmaniacman to get their recollections of these two guys, who I never really knew. Their recollections are at the end of the article.

Joseph E. Duncan III broke into the victims’ house on May 15, 2005, tied everyone up, and then bludgeoned Slade, 13, his mother Brenda, 39 and his stepfather, Mark McKenzie, 37 to death with a claw hammer. He took Dylan and Shasta so he could torture and molest them.

Police who came upon the scene were stunned by the sight. There was blood and gore everywhere, and the faces were nearly unrecognizable. One officer who came upon the scene was so shocked by the sight that he quit police work for months afterward. An APB went out for Shasta and Dylan.

Duncan took them in a stolen 2000 Red Cherokee jeep with Missouri license plates to a very remote campsite in the Lolo National Forest in Montana and kept them there for a few weeks, having sex with both of them and torturing Dylan. He made a video of the crimes, and the video was shown to jurors and those in the courtroom. He raped Shasta and forced Shasta and Dylan to perform sex acts on each other.

May 2005: Murder of Dylan Groene in the Lolo National Forest, Montana

“The devil is here, boy, the devil himself. The demon couldn’t do what the devil sent him to do so the devil came himself,” Duncan yells in one of the videos. “The devil likes to watch children suffer and cry.”

Duncan cracks sick jokes through the videos.

In one video, Duncan jokes, “They kidnapped me – they won’t let me leave.”

In another video, he cracks, “I shouldn’t be taking pictures of you pulling up your pants like that, young man – people might think I’m a pervert.”

In another video, Duncan asks the kids about their wishes. Dylan says he just wants to go home.

One video showed Duncan raping and torturing Dylan in various ways. At one point, he took Dylan into an old shack, where he forced Dylan to perform a sex on him and whipped him with a belt. Then he told Dylan to stand on a bench, hung a wire around his neck, and masturbated as he watched Dylan nearly die from hanging. “Then Jet took him down and said, ‘Wake up, wake up, wake up,'” Shasta Groene said in a police interview.

She said Dylan screamed when he woke up because he thought he had been in heaven. Duncan then offered the half-dead Dylan an opportunity to watch his “death” by hanging on tape. A little while later, he forced Shasta to drag the half-dead Dylan through the campfire with a rope around his neck, burning him horribly. Then Duncan “accidentally” shot Dylan in the stomach with a shotgun.

Dylan was alive and possibly could have lived for a few hours, though his guts were hanging out. Duncan decided that there was no way to save him, so he shot him in the head. It was later determined that he probably did not shoot Dylan “accidentally” after all. After Dylan was dead, Duncan chopped his body into little pieces and filmed himself forcing Shasta to throw the body parts on the fire. Then he forced Shasta to pick the body parts out of the fire and filmed that too.

Whew. Wow. Whoa.

This must set some sort of a record for evil, but I’m not sure. The FBI did say that this was the first time that they had ever heard of anyone murdering adults just to get at kids, so it does set a depravity record in that sense. Details of whatever he did to Shasta have not been made available yet, but she was definitely raped. Normally, in this sort of thing, the name of the living kid, Shasta, would be kept secret, but her name was already out there as an APB Amber Alert, so the cat was out of the bag.

I guess you are wondering why no one heard all this mess up in the mountains. The makeshift campsite is at the end of a very remote logging road. It’s a one-hour drive down a terrible road to get to the remote site at the bottom of a cliff. It seems like hardly anyone ever goes there.

There are a lot of remote places out in the Western forests where you can stay for weeks at a time and not see another human. One article said the video was shot at a cabin, but I think it was just a campsite. They also went to various other campsites and drove long distances while Duncan bragged to Dylan and Shasta about killing the kids’ Mom, brother, and stepdad.

July 2, 2005: Arrested in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho with Shasta Groene

Later, on July 2, 2005, Duncan went back to a Denny’s restaurant with Shasta in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, where she was immediately spotted by a resident who went in and told the manager who then wisely called 9-11. It was 1:30 AM and the cops pulled in with their lights off. Duncan saw the cops and took Shasta into the bathroom with him. He came out later and the police quickly surrounded the table and asked him to come outside. Shasta was taken back to her father her Mom and stepfather were dead.

Steve was briefly considered as a suspect but then they cleared him. They told him that he failed a polygraph, but lots of innocents do. They also suspected Steve’s eldest son, 18. They gave him a polygraph also and told him he failed too. Good thing neither one gave a fake confession in the midst of those interrogations.

The son was also into drugs – I bet meth – had a significant criminal record, and was most recently in jail for burglary. He said that that imprisonment was going to make him go straight.

Brenda Groene and Mark McKenzie were also drug users, but they were primarily recreational users. Brenda was a good mother. Initially, drugs were thought to be involved in the murders. Meth and pot were found in the systems of both Brenda and Mark. The couple ran with biker types who are in abundance in this area. Brenda had a criminal record for possession of drug paraphernalia and had served time for this offense.

Robert Roy Lutner was an original suspect in the case since he had a criminal record for relatively minor offenses and owed Mark and Brenda $2,000. They thought he killed them over the financial dispute. Further, he had visited them on the evening of Sunday the 15th, when the murders occurred. He turned himself in immediately, passed a polygraph, and was let go.

After he took the kids, Duncan was spotted in a sporting goods store with them in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, asking for directions to Libby, Montana. An APB went out but they were nowhere to be found.

Soon before he was caught, a video camera caught Duncan and Shasta entering what looks like a 7-11 about 40 miles outside of Coeur D’Alene. The girl looks mad and has her arms folded angrily across her chest. They buy something, get back in a red jeep, and leave. This footage was not discovered until later. Soon afterward, they were caught at the Denny’s in Coeur D’Alene.

Police discovered that the man was Joseph Edward Duncan III, a 43 year old fugitive sex offender from Fargo, North Dakota. He had recently been charged with molesting a 7 year old boy he knew who lived near him. He was born, one of five in a military family, in Fort Bragg, Virginia, in 1963. His parents soon moved to Tacoma, Washington, where he grew up. He was described as lonely and displaced in high school, especially after his parents’ divorce in 1979. He soon dropped out of high school. He engaged in sex at age 8 with two of his sisters. They apparently initiated it. What this had to do with his later offenses, I have no idea.

1975: Age 12, Arrested in Tacoma, Washington for Rape of a 5 Year Old Boy

He committed his first serious offense at age 12, when he raped a 5 year old boy, but he was not caught. In this way, he resembles Ted Bundy, who probably committed his first homicide of an eight-year-old girl who delivered the papers in his neighborhood at age 14. Bundy was never charged with this offense.

1978: age 15, Arrested in Tacoma, Washington for Rape of a 9 Year Old Boy

By age 15, he was charged with raping a 9 year old boy and sent to juvey. There he admitted that he had bound and raped six boys already.

1979: Age 16, Had Already Raped 13 Young Boys in Tacoma, Washington

He later said had already raped 13 younger boys by the time he was 16.

1980: Age 17 Arrested in Tacoma, Washington for Auto Theft

The following year, he was arrested for stealing a car.

1980: Age 17, Sentenced in Tacoma, Washington to 20 Years in Prison for Rape of a 14 Year Old Boy at Gunpoint

At age 17, he was arrested, charged and sentenced to 20 years in prison (apparently as an adult) for raping a 14 year old boy at gunpoint. The tortures that he put the boy through were similar to those seen on the Dylan Groene tape.

At the time, he was diagnosed as a psychopath, or antisocial personality disorder under the current rubric. In my opinion, knowing little about his upbringing, he is a pure psychopath. This condition is largely genetic. They are just born bad from seemingly Day One. This condition is impossible to treat, though some of them burn out and often descend in alcoholism and depression in their 40’s. Duncan is clearly not one of those.

He was paroled 14 years later at age 33 and sent to a halfway house in Seattle. A man named David Woelfert had testified at the parole board that Duncan was no threat whatsoever. He had loaned Duncan $3,000 and had found a place for him at the halfway house. Woelfert was also homosexual, and for a while, Duncan and Woelfert had a gay relationship. It looks like Woelfert was conned too. In 1996, Duncan was released from the halfway house.

1996: Sentenced in Seattle, Washington to One Month for Parole Violation

Almost immediately after his release from the halfway house, he violated parole by using marijuana and possessing a firearm. He was given 30 days and released.

July 6, 1996: Disappearance and Subsequent Murders of Carmen Cubias, 9, and Sammiejo White, 11, in Seattle, Washington

Apparently soon afterwards, 9-year-old Carmen Cubias and her 11-year-old half-sister, Sammiejo White, went missing from the motel where they were staying with their homeless family. A while before, Duncan was living only three blocks away from the motel where they vanished. These girls later turned up dead, and they were definitely killed by Duncan.

The girls were last seen by their 16-year-old brother at 8:30 pm on July 6, 1996 after they left the Crest Motel in Seattle, where they were staying with older and younger siblings and their mother. The girls were used to be out at all hours and knew their way around the neighborhood very well. They said they were going to the Taco Time where they were going to bum some spare change so they could eat and get some money for a pack of cigarettes for their brother. Apparently they never made it.

It turns out that Duncan has confessed to Shasta Groene that he killed two little girls in Seattle. He made the same confession to investigators, but he said he did not know their names. At the time of their disappearance, Duncan was living and working in Bothell, Washington, where the girls’ bones were found almost two years later in February, 1998, by a transient staying in an abandoned barn. They had both been murdered violently, but the details could not be ascertained. But both of their skulls had been crushed.

After Duncan was arrested for the Idaho killings, a woman came forward and said that she had worked at the Quality Food Mart in Bothell that summer. That summer she repeatedly saw a man she now says was Duncan come into the store to buy stuff accompanied by a frightened little girl, who she now identifies as Carmen Cubias. Once again, we see that Duncan kept his victim alive for a long time, molesting and possibly torturing them before killing them.

When talking to investigators, Duncan revealed enough details of the crimes, without confessing, to convince the cops that he killed the two girls. After he confessed, his lawyer convinced him to clam up about any other crimes he may have committed.

March 26, 1997: Disappearance and Murder of Deborah Palmer, 7, in Oak Harbor, Washington

On March 26, 1997, Deborah Palmer, age 7, disappeared on her way to school in Oak Harbor, Washington, about 50 miles away from Seattle. Palmer disappeared while walking the two blocks from her Kettle Street apartment home to school.

Duncan had an appointment in Seattle to take a polygraph test at an unknown time. Oak Harbor would have been a 1 1/2 hour drive away. Palmer may have been killed in Deception Pass State Park, near where her body washed up.

The week before, around March 19, Duncan had tested positive for marijuana, which would have violated his parole. Eleven days later, he quit his Bothell job, stole his girlfriend’s car, and fled his Seattle home for California to visit his father in Pahrump, Nevada. That was the very same day that Deborah Palmer’s body washed up on a Pacific Ocean beach seven miles away from Oak Harbor, and the story was all over the news.

She had been raped and strangled. The previous day, Deborah’s backpack and jacket were found at a gravel pit. There is no direct evidence linking Duncan to this homicide. There are also suspicions that a family member was involved.

April 1997: Disappearance and Murder of Anthony Martinez, 10, in Beaumont, California

After he fled to California, he killed again. This time, he took off from his Dad’s house in Vista and went to Beaumont, California, where he approached 10 year old Anthony Martinez and his brother who were playing in alley behind their home. He asked them to help find a lost cat, and they declined. Duncan then put a knife to Anthony’s throat and shoved him into a white car.

On April 19, Anthony’s nude body was found in a shallow grave 110 miles away in the desert near Indio, California. He had been raped and beaten to death and his skull had been crushed.

After his arrest in the Idaho killings, Duncan confessed to interrogators that he had killed a little boy in California. He also quite closely resembled the composite drawing of the suspect in the Martinez case. Cops then looked into the Martinez case and amazingly found a match for a thumbprint on the duct tape used to bind Anthony’s body and Duncan’s prints.

August 27, 1997: Sentenced to Three Years in Prison for Parole Violation in Kansas City, Missouri

In May, Duncan was back in Northern California. On June 2, he met Dr. Richard Wacksman (see below) at a coffeehouse in San Francisco. At this point, he seemed to have been living on the streets. Four months later, on August 27, 1997, Duncan was arrested by the FBI at his sister’s house in Kansas City, Missouri for a parole violation and sent to prison for three years.

At the hearing for the parole violation, a Fargo, North Dakota doctor, Dr. Richard Wacksman, testified that Duncan was not dangerous anymore and that upon his release, he could stay at Wacksman’s home in Fargo. The parole board disagreed and sent him away. Upon his release on July 21, 2000, he moved to Fargo, North Dakota, but I believe it was not long before he started killing again.

After his release, in 2000, he visited Wacksman at his home in Fargo. The neighbors found out about it and confronted Wacksman. Duncan did not return to Wacksman’s home, and Wacksman soon moved to Florida. Duncan then visited Wacksman numerous times at his Florida home, where Duncan liked to scuba dive.

I do not think this Wacksman fellow is a bad guy. Psychopaths are often very charming and have the ability to convince all sorts of decent people that they are really ok, including Dr. Wacksman. However, it should be noted that Wacksman, while married and with family, was bisexual. It seems certain that Wacksman and Duncan had a homosexual relationship.

After he moved to Fargo, Duncan began attending North Dakota State University there, working on a BA in Computer Science. He would have graduated in May 2005, but he decided to go on a homicide spree instead. At the university, he worked in software development for both the college and a local business called iCat.

He also worked as a teaching assistant at Edmonds Community College where he taught introductory programming courses. He frequented at least one Korean Personals site where he said he was looking for “something more than just sex.” At the time, he was also taking karate lessons at the university (photo from his karate class in Spring 2003). While Duncan was living in Fargo from 2000-2005, I believe that he did not stop killing.

February 12, 2001: Disappearance and Probable Murder of Steven Earl Kraft, Jr., 12, in Benton Township, Michigan

On February 12, 2001, Steven Earl Kraft, Jr., age 12, disappeared while walking his dogs between 8-9 PM about 1/2 block from his home. The dogs were found later, but Steven is still missing. Duncan may have been involved in this kidnapping and probable homicide.

On April 21, 2001, Duncan set up his Jazzi-Jet gay website on the Pridesites gay website. Although the links have been deleted, on one page he was shown in a black dress and makeup talking about how much he liked to get fucked in the ass. Oh, well.

Duncan talked about how much gay sex he had in Walla Walla Prison, getting screwed by 50 different guys in there, getting gangbanged once by seven guys, being the “queen of the prison,” and being owned by a great big Black inmate named “Al”, all while posing in suggestive gay poses. On another deleted photo, Jazzi-Jet was once again done up like a woman. In one picture, he was masturbating, but you couldn’t see that very well. He touched up one of the pics to make it look like he has breasts.

On February 12, 2002, Duncan created July 12, 2002: Disappearance and Murder of Russell Turcotte, 19, in Grand Forks, North Dakota

Russell Turcotte, age 19, a Turtle Mountain Chippewa, was last seen at a truck stop in Grand Forks, North Dakota, on July 12, 2002, after spending the night with friends in Fargo, North Dakota. He was returning to his home in Wolf Point, Montana from a Rainbow Gathering in Michigan.

Surveillance cameras have now revealed that Duncan was at that truck stop hours after Turcotte was there. Turcotte was hitchhiking with a backpack home on a desolate stretch of Highway 2 west of Grand Forks at around 2 AM. I believe he was picked up by Duncan and taken to a side road near Grand Forks Air Force Base. He was probably raped there. He was then taken to Devils Lake, 90 miles west of Grand Forks, where his partially nude body was dumped and covered with brush. His possessions vanished, probably tossed into one of the area’s many rivers and lakes. His skull had been crushed.

The previous day, his mother had wired him some money. He was living with a girlfriend and running low on cash. Months later, in November 2002, his skeleton was discovered by a rancher in a clump of trees.

Objections have been made to the notion that Duncan committed this crime. First is that he would have had to drive 85 miles north from Fargo to Grand Forks and then another 90 miles west to dump the body. However, I believe that since 1997, Duncan had started killing quite a ways away from where he lived. His first two killings seem to have pretty close to where he lived. The Seattle girls were abducted while Duncan was living in Bothell, 20 miles away.

Deborah Palmer (assuming he killed her) was killed in Oak Harbor, 30 miles from his home in Bothell, and her body was found nearby. He’s clearly capable of driving 80 miles away from his home to kill someone. Similarly, Beaumont was about 85 miles away from his father’s house in Vista where Duncan was staying.

Anyway, the surveillance camera had Duncan at the truck stop within hours of when Turcotte was there, so the distance question seems to be ruled out. Furthermore, July 12 was a Friday, so Turcotte was last seen on a Friday night. I believe that Duncan picked him up hitchhiking about 2 AM on the morning of Saturday, July 13 and killed him soon afterward. At some point he drove 90 miles east to dump the body.

Duncan was a college student at this time and was probably working too. It’s certainly possible that he had the whole weekend off. He had lots of free time and was always traveling to the Lakes Country in Minnesota to go scuba diving. Also, Turcotte’s skull had been crushed in the same manner that Anthony Martinez, Sammiejo White, Carmen Cubias, Slade Groene and Mark McKenzie had been dispatched.

Another question about the Turcotte killing is that Turcotte seems old for Duncan’s tastes. However, it has been pointed out that the 19 year old looked very young for his age. A photo of him taken before his death seemed to belie that, but another picture taken by his girlfriend shortly before he died showed him very thin, unhealthy, and quite young-looking.

Hunter Bear, an American Indian retired university professor and leftwing activist, had a webpage up about Turcotte. Here is a description of who he thought the killer is, written in 2003 before anyone knew about Duncan:

I continue to feel that Russ’ killer is an Anglo, maybe in his late 30s or early 40s, a so-termed “professional” person with a quite good, reassuring kind of car and out-of-state license plates. It’s obvious that he is a criminal psychopath.

Not bad, huh? At the time he wrote that, Duncan was 40 years old (!), White, and though not a professional, he could certainly come off as one. It seems like he liked to drive nice cars too. About the out of state plates, I have no idea. Hunter Bear said that the cops did not try very hard to find the Turcotte’s killer, at one point saying that they had no interest in a routine store surveillance camera tape that filmed Turcotte at the last place he was seen.

Hence, the tape was destroyed. Hunter Bear made a good case that the population and the police in North Dakota and Idaho were very racist towards American Indians. We don’t see much of it out here in California, but it seems to be more of a big deal back there. Some people are still looking at Seattle, Tacoma, or Portland as the connection between the killer and Turcotte, but I am pretty certain that this is a Duncan crime.

This is a Web Archive cache of the original Jet Gazette, Jet’s own online magazine that he made all about…himself! This page is dated July 29, 2002, and that would have been about 17 days after Turcotte was killed.

March 26, 2003: Disappearance and Murder of Dalton Mesarchik, 7, in Streator, Illinois

On March 26, 2003, Dalton Mesarchik, 7, of Streator, Illinois vanished from the front yard of his home. His body was found the next day in creek. His skull had been crushed with a hammer. That’s Duncan’s style. In June 2003, Duncan began going on trips to Minnesota and Michigan to scuba dive. He went on dives all summer.

On October 3, 2003, Duncan was visited by three police officers who accuse him of harassing women downtown. The women knew who he is from the Sex Offender database, and they had photos of him. He was accused of repeatedly asking them out and not going away when they told him to. That doesn’t sound like much of a crime to me. The cops said they knew who he was and they watched him all the time. Guess they did not watch him enough. He wrote about this incident later on his blog, The Fifth Nail.

Here is the final edition of the Jet Gazette, with photos of his scuba diving trips and videos that he made.

February 15, 2004: Disappearance and Probable Murder of Justin Phillip Edwards, 13, in Casper, Wyoming

Between late February 14 and early February 15, 2004, Justin Phillip Edwards, 13, disappeared. He was living at R. L Mills Home, a state-run facility, located at 116 East “H” Street in Casper, Wyoming since the summer of 2003. He was 5′ tall and weighed only 100 pounds and was retarded. He had the mind of a 6 year old. In his blog entry of February 16, Duncan said he went skiing for the first time that weekend, alone. Some think he may have been involved in Edwards’ disappearance.

July 3, 2004 Molestation of a Boy, 7 and Attempted Molestation of Another in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota

On July 3, 2004, Duncan molested a 7 yr old boy and tried to molest another boy at a school playground. He had a video camera with him. He was not caught until later.

March 4, 2005 Charged in Minnesota for the Molestation Incidents

In March 4, 2005, Duncan was charged with molesting a 7 year old boy and attempting to molest the boy’s young friend in Detroit Lakes, Becker County, Minnesota. On April 5, a judge set his bail at $15,000. This was the July 2004 incident above.

The same day, a Fargo businessman, Joe Crary, wrote a check for that amount to the court and bailed out Duncan. Crary said he befriended Duncan when they both rode their bikes on bike trails in Fargo. Somehow, Duncan gave off the impression of being polite, soft-spoken, and seemed sincere about wanting to turn his life around. Duncan also seemed sincere that he was innocent of the Minnesota charges.

I will never understand how psychopaths fool people like this, but they do it all the time. The ability to con and lie with a straight face in these people is amazing. Crary is now maligned, but I feel he was just another good person that this psychopath conned. It should be noted, however, that Crary is apparently a homosexual who had a sexual relationship with Duncan beginning in early January 2004.

After being bailed out, Duncan made plans for his crime spree. He purchased night vision goggles and a video camcorder at a Walmart. He also purchased a shotgun, shells, and a claw hammer. On April 15, 2005, he rented a 2005 red Jeep Cherokee in St. Paul, Minnesota.

After the rental agreement was up, he never turned it back in, and on May 4, auto theft charges were filed against him. On the same day, the key tag to the stolen car was found in Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area in Wyoming, so Duncan must have been here at some point in his travels. Between those two dates, Duncan traveled all the way to the far southwest portion of Missouri, where it meets Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas. There, on April 27, he stole license plates off a vehicle and placed them on his vehicle.

Then he continued his travels. No one knows where he went during this period, but I believe that he was in Spokane using GPS to stalk young children at a preschool, Kindermusik, which has kids from toddlers up to age 7. While in flight, a warrant was issued for his arrest in Fargo for failure to appear in a court date stemming from the Minnesota case. He stopped in the Wolf Lodge area eight miles east of Coeur d’Alene. This post from Duncan’s horrifying blog, The Fifth Nail, was somehow posted from Wolf Lodge just four days before he committed the Idaho crimes.

May 13, 2005 Murders of Brenda Groene, Slade Groene, and Mark McKenzie in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

On May 12 or 13, he ended up on Frontage Road at the home where the crimes occurred. He spent the next two or three days scoping out the house, and on Sunday night, he entered the home with gloves, night vision goggles, a claw hammer, and a shotgun.

He pointed the gun and Brenda, Mark, and Slade and tied them up or forced them to tie each other up. Brenda Groene called Shasta down to the living room from where she had been sleeping. Dylan also came downstairs. Duncan quickly hustled Shasta and Dylan outside and into his van. Then he went back in to kill the others. With blows of the claw hammer, he dispatched them.

Shasta heard Mark scream, then she saw Slade try to run out of the house, wounded. He was hauled back in and dispatched. The kids in the van did not witness the killings, but Duncan later told them how he had killed her family. He told her that the name of the hammer was a Fatmax and she learned to call him “Jet” for his initials, Joseph Edward Duncan.

After his arrest, Duncan started blogging again with the help of others from inside prison. The blog is here. Here is an undated picture of Jet. Here are two awesome time lines (Timeline One, Timeline Two) on Duncan’s life on the great The Cellar blog which is devoted to this case. This is a website Duncan made, the usual whining stuff about how terribly society treats convicts.

I interviewed my friends Thrillseekerman, Doperman, and Sexmaniacman about Steve Groene, the father of the three child victims and Chris Groene, his brother. All these guys, Doperman, Thrillseekerman, Sexmaniacman, grew up together with me in Southern California, and we all ran with the same crowd. They’re scattered to the five winds now, but all still keep in touch by phone and Internet.

I can’t say where they are, but they’re all still in the USA! I grew up with all of them, but I don’t remember Steve Groene or Chris Groene. I think the Groenes and I knew some of the same people, but I don’t remember the Groenes specifically.

Thrillseekerman shared his reminiscences about the Groenes:

Hi Bob, this case really wears on my mind. It’s amazing that I know this guy, and I know his brother, Chris, too. I haven’t seen Steve in 27 years, and I haven’t seen Chris in probably 25-26 years. Doperman knows Chris but I don’t think he knows Steve.

We all grew up together, Steve, Chris, Sexmaniacman, Doperman, and me, Thrillseekerman! And all the rest of the gang! And you, Bob! Ha ha! I heard about the case and saw the strange name, Groene, and wondered if it was him.

I saw his pic and knew it was him, though at the time I had not seen him in 24 years. He looked like he’d had a hard life; I don’t know if there is any better way to put it. His sister now says he already had cancer at the time. I don’t know enough to comment. Life’s hard on all of us in one way or another. Hang in there, Steve!

Steve was into drugs when I knew him, but then so was I! Ha ha! We all were! Ha ha! I think I went to grade school with the guy in Orange County and he was in my grade, but I’m not entirely sure.

I never really knew him that well, but I went to see him play with a blues band at a party in an industrial park one night in 1980. He’s a damn fine blues musician and I have good memories of that party. I was drinking Heinekens and later on smoking some dope.

Later I got to know Steve better, and somehow in 1981 I was buying Thai weed from him. I realize that sounds bad, but I was a dealer too! For many years! Ha ha. All of us – my friends and I – were drug users and dealers for many years. Ha ha! Plus, Steve sold me some damn good Thai weed too! Eat your hearts out, puritans!

Steve was working in the carnivals, traveling all around as a carny, was in with the biker crowd, and he was doing methamphetamine, but I don’t think he was doing very much. He was just a recreational user. Back in those days, the only people doing meth were bikers and carnies, people like that. Now meth is this huge deal.

He used to come over once in a while, mostly to sell me pot. I was just a pothead at the time. That’s all I know about Steve Groene and dope. Pothead, occasional meth user. But that was Summer 1981, and I never saw him again. I won’t guess about the rest of his life.

I remember he came over once. I was living in an apartment and there was this young guy staying there. He was really mentally ill and he needed a place to stay. He was living on the couch. Ha ha! There was a guitar case owned by this guy, a great guitarist who was going through a manic episode.

There were cigarette burns all up and down the case, and I pointed to them, shocked, then to the guy in the midst of the manic episode. Steve gave a smile, of sadness,  wisdom, truth, and life itself. And then he said, “That’s the blues, man.” That’s right, Steve, you got it, man. The blues is life, and life is the blues. Ain’t that so true now, though? Damn.

I realize that I may be trashing his reputation here, but Steve has already admitted to being a heavy drug user as a younger man. Besides, what’s wrong with being a doper? Ha ha! I’m 50 years old, and I’m still a stoner! By the way, can you get me any good pot? Ha ha!

I want to point out that Steve Groene was always the nicest guy to me, a real warm and kindhearted person, always was. I value that, and I’ll always remember him for that.

I also knew Chris Groene, too.

That handsome face, beautiful long hippie surfer hair, and words of honey – no wonder the girls ate him up! Ha ha! Chris was a doper too, a pothead! Ha ha! We all were! He was a juvenile delinquent as a kid, but hey, a lot of us were. Even me! Ha ha! A nice, friendly, charming delinquent. I think Chris was probably a better thief than I was, though. Ha ha! I never was good at stealing.

Chris was also a real nice and warmhearted guy the whole time I knew him. I guess he outgrew that delinquent stuff. I still saw him later, into the early 1980’s, and he was still a kind, warmhearted person. I understand he’s got a really good job now.

I see in a recent pic Steve’s got himself a really nice looking new girlfriend. And he’s still a blues musician, which he always was. He’s a damn good musician, too. I’m amazed that Steve has appeared to hold up pretty well in all this. Two of his kids and his ex-wife were brutally murdered, and his daughter was kidnapped and molested. But in the last pic I saw of him, he seems to be holding up. I think I would have snapped a long time ago.

All of us, me, Doperman, Chris, Steve, and all our friends, and you, Bob! Ha ha! We were bad boys, rebels, longhairs, surfers, stoners, mavericks, and trillseekers. Badass middle class dopesmoking White boys! Ha ha! We were White Punks On Dope ! Ha ha! Those were the days, man.

I’ll always remember Steve and Chris Groene. Whatever else they’ve been in their interesting lives, they were never mean. They both have hearts as big as the ocean. You don’t see that a lot in this world. Even, with the ravages of time and an unknowable future, if my heart becomes cold and hard, there will always be a tiny warm place there set aside just for Steve and Chris Groene.

Steve and Chris Groene, presente!

Doperman reminisced about Chris Groene:

I was working at the local elementary school as a janitor when I was 16. It was 1974. One night Chris, then age 15, came up to me and wanted me to give him access to the auditorium so Chris could steal a microphone. I guess Chris was a musician too? He almost talked me into it, but I eventually chickened out.

Chris was more of a charming type, and he had natural good looks, really long hair, and he got all kinds of girls and women. He could charm the poison right out of a cobra. This dude had style, man! He was one slick guy! I liked Chris Groene, Bob.

He was always really good to me, even when he was trying to convince me to participate with him in a juvenile crime! I think he grew out of that delinquent stuff, and I hear he has a great job now. You go, Chris! A ghost from your past!

Sexmaniacman recalled Steve Groene. The only recollection he had was one night 30 years ago when he was out of mind on LSD:

“I remember one time, it was the summer of 1978, it was around 10 PM, and I was flying on LSD! I think I was with my buddy Craig L. Anyway, we were headed to this party at Alan B’s place. We came to the street where the party was, and there were cops there! I was on acid, driving a car, and I looked right into this cop’s eyes! With my huge saucer eyeballs! Scary!

Well, we went inside, and I was flying on fucking LSD! Oh man! Steve Groene was there! He had this big, friendly, warm smile, enough to light up the whole room, like always. It was Alan B’s party, an Italian guy. A hippie and an acidhead! Ha ha!

Well, I walked in and there’ was this beautiful Mexican chick, about 20 years old, sitting on the couch. She was kinda big, but not too big. Just big enough, baby! Lotsa curves! Well, she was looking at me the whole time. I was kinda looking back, but I didn’t really know what to do.

So after a while Steve Groene said, way too loud, “Hey! Sexmaniacman! Why don’t you get her a beer, Sexguy? She wants you to get her a beer, Sexman!” He was smiling and laughing, but he was also like, “You idiot! Pick up on the chick! She likes you! Go for it, dummy! Like, duh!” So I go and get her a Heineken. I forget what happened after that. I fucked up; I don’t think I even got her number. I was so stupid sometimes.

Later that night, I was in Alan’s bedroom. I told him I was on LSD. He said, “Hey, Sexmaniacman! Let’s do some more acid and go to Black Star Canyon and fry all night!” I opened up a box full of blue LSD tablets. But we never did it.

I love Steve Groene, Bob, I really do. He’s a good person, and his heart is solid gold. He ran with a rough crowd, and he looked like a pretty tough guy, but he was good people all the way. A shout out to Steve Groene! Blast from the past!

Alt Left: The Entire US Moved 10 Points to the Left between 2016-2020

Found on the Internet:

Not too long now. Arizona, Texas and Florida are going to be firmly Blue in the not too distant future.

Guess what, the fantasy of the Demorats will be in their grasp, total control.

I guess the poster doesn’t like Democrats, but other than that, I’m afraid the poster is correct. If we do get total control as he puts it, I hope we don’t abuse it. We don’t like the Republicans when they act anti-democratic, so we shouldn’t do it either. Two wrongs and all that.

Arizona’s barely blue as it is and heading blue fast. In 10 years, Arizona will be as blue as Virginia.

Texas is barely red (2-3+ red) and teetering on the edge. It is slowly getting more and more blue with time. The thing is, the Republicans lose Texas and it’s all over. They will never win the Presidency again. If all of those electoral votes go blue, there’s no way they can cobble together 270 electors under the present political calculus. It’ll be code blue for the Republican Party. This is why the Republicans in Texas are so frantically trying to seal in a minority rule dictatorship for as long as they can.

And on a national level, that’s what’s with all of the vote suppression, the slowing down of the mail, and ultimately the attempted coup de etat in the capital on January 6. Not to mention that Trump tried everything he could to overturn the results of a democratic election and install himself instead in an electoral coup. That’s why Republicans packed the stolen Supreme Court with ultra-rightwing freaks, so the court could rule in hack rulings to allow a Republican minority rule dictatorship. That’s why they are packing the lower courts with the same.

That’s why the Florida Legislature overturned the amendment passed by the people enfranchising 775,000 felons and enabling them to vote.

 

That’s why Georgia just passed a law allowing the Republican legislature to throw out any county vote commissions that they want. These are the people who count and certify the votes. If they don’t like the outcome of the democratic vote in some county, they can simply fire the commission and put in their own Republican hacks and overthrow the Democratic win by declaring the Republican the winner even when he lost. That’s why the Republicans are working overtime to gerrymander as many legislative and House of Representatives seats as they can based on the latest census which was fraudulently counted by the Trump Administration.

All of this boils down to righting authoritarian rule or a rightwing dictatorship, basically along the Latin American model. Generally speaking, nowadays rightwing authoritarian regimes or dictatorships are referred to as fascist. Fascism means a rightwing dictatorship in current parlance.

So we see now that the Republican Party is now an openly fascist political party, modeling itself on the rightwing fascist minority rule parties in Latin America.

Back to Arizona and Texas. Both states are being swarmed with Californians. This is what is tipping both states blue. Almost no new conservatives are moving into either state.

Let’s look at Florida again. Florida is the ultimate purple state. Looking at polls, Florida strikes me as a very rightwing state. It doesn’t seem to be getting bluer or redder but if all those felons voted, Florida would be bluer.

An infusion of retiring mostly liberal northerners is balanced out by continuous infusions of rightwing Latin Americans, especially Cubans, Venezuelans, and to a lesser extent Nicaraguans. The continuous Latin Right infusions keep it purple, otherwise it would have gone blue some time ago. Also, the Cubans are moving to the Right, mostly the younger ones. They moved 16 points to the Right under Trump. In addition, the retirees, though they come from the liberal Northeast, may not be as liberal as you think because the type of retiree who moves to Florida is often attracted to the low state taxes, so Northeastern retirees may be more Republican than the ordinary Northeasterner.

Screw the votes. They’re all being stolen now anyway with voting machines since 2003 when voting went digital with Karl Rove and Jack Abramoff’s Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Since 2003, we have seen one bizarre poll failure after another and all of the failures are in one direction – Republican. Both pre-election and the even more accurate exit polls have been going off.

Prior to 2003, pre-election and exit polls had been so accurate that some people were suggesting that we do away with elections and just decide electoral contests on polling numbers. Then suddenly all of the polls started failing all over the country, and they’ve kept failing for 17 years. There’s no way that this is happening by chance, especially with all of the failures only going towards the Republicans. The only conclusion is that Republicans have been engaging in massive electoral fraud since 2003 by stealing elections with voting machines.

I calculated national polls for all 50 states and then plotted them against the 2016 results. The results were stunning. The entire country went 10 points blue from 2016-2020. Even the reddest states like Wyoming and West Virginia went ~10 points blue and of course, so did the bluest states. Some states like Ohio and Florida are reliably purple for decades for whatever reason.

But not even one single state got redder from 2016-2020.

The Republicans will either have to become a rightwing dictatorship and engage in minority rule (apparently that is the goal with all as outlined above) or they will have to move to the left with the rest of the country if they want to be relevant at all. Since 2000, the US electorate has moved on average 5-10 to the left. The only reason this has not shown up in voting is due to election fraud. The Republican Party either have to move left or die.

The problem is that that the Republican Party cannot move to the left. That’s because if Republicans move to the left, they won’t really be Republicans anymore. The Republican Party is one of the most rightwing major parties on Earth. It’s an outlier on a world scale. Most of the world is basically socialist in some way or another or at least social democratic.

Oligarchic political parties that represent the aristocracy instead of the people like the Republican Party are anti-democratic by their very nature because few majorities (other than Americans, oddly enough) anywhere wish to vote for a party that represents the aristocrats instead of the people. Which begs the question of why Americans routinely vote for aristocratic rule and reject democratic rule. Do tens of millions of Americans literally think they are aristocrats? Is that it?

Alt Left: Shut Up, Virginia Giuffre

Serial liar, faker, and professional victim Virginia Giuffre has filed a fake lawsuit against Prince Andrew, lying like a bitch that Andrew raped and sexually abused her repeatedly when she was underage at 17 years old.

Problem? Nobody raped anyone and Virginia (The Liar) Giuffre never got raped one time.

I suppose you could argue that Andrew may have committed statutory rape, but that’s not rape at all. Instead it’s simply illegal intercourse.

Second problem? Virginia Giuffre is a whore. A lowdown, lying, scamming prostitute of the lowest variety, lower even than most disgusting whores, and that’s pretty low.

What happened?

Giuffre decided at age 17 that her goal in life was to be a whore! That’s right, a prostitute. Such a noble calling. She somehow got in with Epstein and Maxwell’s blackmail ring, and she was basically offered a job working as a little teenie whore for Epstein’s Mossad spying blackmail ring. Of course, since her life dream was to be a lowly prostitute, she jumped at the chance.

Epstein et al were soon pimping her out to famous people, except it’s hard to call it pimping because they let her keep all the money.

The one famous incident with Prince Andrew occurred in the Virgin Islands. Giuffre was paid a measly $15,000 to have sex (excuse me, to get raaaaaaped) by Andrew. She reportedly had lots of fun screwing the guy, since by all accounts she was a little teen nympho slut.

Problem? 17 year old Virginia was not underage! She was legal in the Virgin Islands, perfectly legal fresh teen pussy.

Now we move on to the other fake charges.

Turns out she had sex with Andrew several more times in New York, Florida, New Mexico and the UK.

Problem? 17 year old Virginia was perfectly legal teen snatch in New York, New Mexico, and the UK. No rape. No statutory rape. No any kind of rape, except in her ditzy teen whore brain.

Now, moving on to Florida, we do have another matter. If she had sex with Andrew in Florida, she would have been underage, because the Age of Consent there is 18. But notice she was legal and of age in four different states or countries and illegal and underage in only one state? Big deal! That’s barely even a crime.

Statutory rape of a 17 year old girl is a garbage crime anyway. 17 year old girls are perfectly legal to fuck anyone they want to, even a 90 year old man, in most of the world. They’re only illegal in a few backwards places like Florida.

It’s perfectly reasonable to set an AOC at 16 or 17. Most of the world has it at ~16. Most of Europe has it at 15! There have been absolutely zero problems reported in any of these places by setting the AOC at 15-17.

Now, setting an AOC at 15 is sketchy in the US because we are too backwards, puritanical, and weird to handle that low of an AOC. Europeans, being civilized, can cope with, it but Americans are uncivilized backwards boors and sex-hating super-prudes, so we can’t deal.

However, there is an argument for making a Romeo and Juliet clause for 15 year old girls. In many states they are legal for men up to 18 or 19. Colorado is particularly reasonable in this regard, as 15 year old girls are legal for men up to age 24. I dated a lot of 15 year old girls as a boy and for few years into adulthood. They’re horny as Hell and from the point of view of a young man 18-21, they seem quite mature, about as mature as you are.

Now the problem is that wherever you put that AOC, men are going to start fucking those girls. Put it at 17? Men will fuck 17 year old girls. Put it at 16? Men will screw 16 year old girls. Put it at 15? Men will gleefully bonk 15 year old girls.

And if you put it at 13 or 14, men will jump on 13 and 14 year old girls. I’m not entirely comfortable with that, though sex with 14 year old girls and 18-21 year old men doesn’t bother me. The thing about this sort of sex is it seems a lot more ok when the man is very young because after all, college boys and young men have been screwing high school girls forever. It’s so natural it’s almost set in stone. But as the man gets older than, say, 25, a lot of people start getting a lot less comfortable with it for all sorts of reasons. And as he gets older and older, it gets less and less ok. This is fine with me and I understand people’s distaste for this sort of thing.

I’d like to keep the 13 and 14 year old girls illegal for most adults, though we definitely need a Romeo and Juliet clause for both of them. I’m not sure where to put the limits though.

I met some 14 year old girls at the store a while back. They were fooling around like teenagers. I looked at them real close and I thought, “You know what? These girls need to be protected from us men. And even more so, we men need to be protected from those girls!” We both need to be protected from each other. A good way to do that is with an AOC law because most men beyond age ~21 will start to seriously think twice about underage girls, and men significantly older than that will avoid them as if they’re radioactive. Which they are, in a sense. Teenage girls are dangerous!

I think 13-15 year old girls ought to be legal for boys 13-17 though at the very least. We really need to stop putting kids in jail and on sex offender lists for having sex with each other. Guess what? Teenagers have a sex drive, often a raging one. And many, many of them engage in sexual behaviors and even have intercourse before age 18. It’s as common as dirt.

Now we do run into problems with Andrew and Giuffre due to the fact that Giuffre was more than just a teen slut. In fact, she was an out an out real thing teenage prostitute! What a noble, morally elevated female!

Now the problem is that in most of the US at least, it was perfectly legal to screw Giuffre for free, but automagically, one you pay her, you’ve committed a crime. You can screw them all you want, but you just can’t pay them for it! I sort of like this law. We should extend to all women, not just the teenies. It sure would save us men an awful lot of money!

Now, buying a teenage prostitute under age 18 is illegal in the US. It doesn’t strike me as much of a crime because there are many enthusiastic schoolgirl prostitutes. But I don’t see how you make it legal either. Make it a misdemeanor. Instead, it’s a serious crime and worse that, it’s somehow or other sex trafficking!

Now sex trafficking is a completely abused term once the US Justice Department got a hold of it after Congress made a retarded law in the midst of a Sex Panic. Sex trafficking used to be pretty serious. It meant more or less sex slaves. These women are out and out sex slaves, being imprisoned or locked into service by evil pimps, mostly men. A lot are literally locked in and can’t escape while they are ordered to have sex with man after man.

It’s really gross and it’s a very serious crime. And the truth is that most pimping probably is trafficking. If the prostitutes are free to leave the pimp, it’s not, but when are they ever free to leave? Not real often. Pimps threaten to harm, hurt, or kill any prostitute who leaves their harem, so most prostitutes with pimps feel locked into them. Obviously, pimps are one of the dirtiest aspects of this dirty business.

However! The Justice Department decided to somehow include all underage teen prostitutes under the rubric of “trafficking,” which is quite dubious. I don’t mind a crime called Prostituting a Minor, but it sure as hell isn’t “trafficking.” Even worse, any man who patronizes an underage teen prostitute is himself somehow guilty of trafficking! You paid this 17 year old whore for sex, did the deed, and walked out. Turns out you just committed an act of sex trafficking! That’s absolutely ridiculous, but that’s the crazy new law.

As expected, the feminists took the ball, ran away with it, and were never seen again. The feminists have somehow decided that not only are sex slaves and teeny prostitutes being “trafficked,” but in fact, every single woman who is engaged in prostitution is engaged in sex trafficking! More properly, since feminists insist that women have no agency, they are “being trafficked (by others, basically men).”

Notice how when feminists talk, women never have any agency? That means that they’re basically children and not responsible for any of their actions. Women never do anything. Everything that happens to a woman is not because she did it because I guess she can’t do anything, but instead it got done to her by someone else (typically an evil man).

I would say that according to this silly logic, prostitutes in business for themselves, which is lots of them, are apparently trafficking themselves! But feminists logically say this is not possible, and I agree. Instead they are argue that prostitutes in business for themselves are being trafficked by the male customers who purchase their services! So every time a man buys a whore, he’s “trafficking” her. Ridiculous, huh?

So it appears that the morally upright Ms. Giuffre, now older, wiser, and probably a lot less horny, was never raped even one time, ever. Statutory rape doesn’t count. It’s a bit hard to argue that she was being trafficked, but Maxwell and Epstein caught her trying to leave them a couple of times and brought her back and threatened her. Ok, now they’re trafficking her, so she was trafficked some of the time.

Giuffre was working very profitably for as a prostitute for the rich and famous from ages 17-23. So for most of her career, from ages 18-23, she was an adult, a grown woman. Giuffre claims that during this entire time, she was being “sexually abused” or “abused.” She never had real sex the whole time. Instead she had some weird abuse masquerading as sex. Are you sure you didn’t like it, Ms. Giuffre? A lot of women like that sort of thing, you know.

“Sexual abuse” is a term that has been tortured, raped, and murdered by sex-panicked morons for a very long time now. It used to refer to child molestation, which involves adults and children under 13. From 13-17, depending on the laws, there is no sexual abuse. There’s just statutory rape or illegal intercourse. It’s not possibly to sexually abuse a teenage girl and you certainly cannot abuse a grown woman because no matter how infantile her silly little brain is, she’s still an adult, at least chronologically. Sexual abuse literally means child molestation and I don’t mind referring to child molestation and sexual abuse. It’s a logical way to see it.

Somehow now teenage girls with ravenous, nymphomaniacal sex drives get “sexually abused” a good part of the time when they have sex, even when it’s consensual. In other words, the term for child molesting got inflated by dumbshits all the way to teenage girls and from there all the way to so-called adult women, assuming there even are any in an emotional sense.

It’s bullshit. It’s nonsense.

Poor Virginia suffered through the horrific ordeal of getting paid $15,000 to fuck a hot, sexy older man. It boggles the mind. No doubt this indignity was inflicted on the poor virginal Virginia endless times. How did she ever recover from getting paid $15K to get laid by some hot dude? Obviously, she’s a survivor. How she survived such a horror is simply beyond me.

Poor girl! Girls are crying! Poor Virginia! Virginia is crying! Poor women! Women are crying!

She never got sexually abused even one time except in her tiny little pea brain. And of course she never got raped even one time except in the   fever dreams of her mind. Now she may well have been trafficked.

Virginia, I will take time out for abusing your sorry ass here to tell you that I am very sorry that these low lifes basically imprisoned you as a sex slave. I really am truly sorry.

And I hope whatever damage this may have caused you – and it may well have done so – you are able to get over it and move it. I’m sorry you got taken back and threatened when you tried to run away. At that point, Epstein and Maxwell were trafficking you. That’s a serious crime, and I hope you can make peace with it, and I mean that with all my heart, dear.

Now that I am done addressing Ms. Giuffre, back to the story.

9

Demographics and Especially Population Movements Spell Doom for the Republican Party

Present demographics in the US means that demographics is not on the side of the Republicans. Whites, the base of the Republican Party, continue to decline every year while the Hispanic population grows.

Even more important than that is a general movement of blue staters to red states and almost no movement in the other direction. Show me one red state that is losing population because it’s people are moving to blue states. There’s no such thing.

There’s more going on than that. Blue states have a far larger population than red states.

Virginia turned blue because Northerners kept moving down there for high paying jobs.

Georgia and North Carolina are on the same track for the same reason, and both may well in fact have gone over. Northeasterners have flooded to the Research Triangle in North Carolina, and Atlanta has been attracting floods of Northeasterners for a long time. The Republicans just stole a Senate seat in North Carolina due to mass election fraud, otherwise the Democrat would have won.

Florida is the only state resisting the trend towards blue due to continuous injections of rightwing Latin American immigrants and their offspring into the state.

New Hampshire has gone blue, probably due to invasion from more liberal NE states.

Pennsylvania is already history for the Republicans the same reason, mostly liberals moving out of the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area into the Philadelphia area.

Ohio and Iowa are on tied, but they have been tied for a long time, or at least Ohio has been.

Ohio swung hard to the right in 2016 or Trump in line with working class Whites voting Republican. But it swung back pretty hard in the other direction in 2020. In the last election, the electorate voted 5

Iowa was a Democratic state that recently went red as part of a trend of working class White states going red, similar to Ohio, which it resembles. As in Ohio though, it swung back hard blue in the 2020 election. I’m convinced Democrats won the Senate seat there in 2020.

Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota are all long gone over to the Democrats despite massive election fraud on the part of Republicans. The legislatures of Michigan and especially Wisconsin remain in Republican hands due to massive gerrymandering by Republicans. In order to Democrats to win 5

Missouri and South Carolina are both trending blue, slowly but surely. Republicans only won by three points in South Carolina last election. I’m not sure why either state is going over unless it’s part of a general trend. Missouri used to be the bellweather state, but it went hard Right with the movement of the White working class in that direction in recent years, so it’s no longer a weathervane state. However, it swung somewhat back towards blue in 2020.

Colorado and New Mexico are solid blue now. In Colorado, this is due to mass influx of Californians to the state. New Mexico’s been fairly blue for some time and has only gotten more so.

Nevada’s pretty much gone for the Republicans for the same reason – Californians moving in. It’s been a traditionally conservative Republican state, but with so many Californians moving into the Reno and especially Las Vegas areas, it seems gone to the Republicans, although it’s still a bit close there.

Arizona appears barely blue now for the same reason – Californians flooding in to Tuscon and especially Phoenix – but it’s very much on the verge, and the legislature is still red, probably due to gerrymandering.

Blue states are getting bluer. I can’t think of one blue state that is becoming less blue.

Beyond that and even more ominous for Republicans is that almost all red states are getting less red with time. The average heavily-red state went a full ten percentage points blue in the last election, from Wyoming to West Virginia to Alabama. That’s terrifying from a Republican point of view.

The future looks ominous indeed for the Republican Party. The only way they can stay in power will be by stealing elections, which they are already good at, or moving to the left, which they almost cannot do because if the Republican Party moves left, it won’t be the Republican Party anymore.

It’s not so much racial demographics as mass movement from blue states to red states and almost zero movement in the other direction.

Want to See the Future of America? Look at Latin America

White nationalists are constantly fearmongering that the future of the US is South Africa.

Let’s look at some statistics:

Percentage          Whites   Blacks  Other

US                      62         13       25

South Africa        9           88       3

Tell you what. When the Black population of the US nears 8

Instead, look south. Yes, yes, yes look to Latin America. A 100X yes! However, I cannot find a Latin American country which will resemble the US in the future. Look at California. Our state is probably the future of the country. Liberal Democrats, basically, and trending left. We’re almost going social democrat here; we’re hardly even liberals anymore!

Other than that, a number of our cities have degraded somewhat because as a city goes from White to Hispanic, there is a decline, though not a great one. It becomes a fairly upgraded version of Mexico. But crime is pretty low and behavior is pretty civilized. Be careful who you make friends with because a lot of Hispanics are not ok. They don’t bother strangers. The gang feuds are often not major problems, and they leave Whites out of it, as we are not in their wars.

Most Hispanics IMHO consider themselves honorary Whites or almost Whites. They don’t look at us as aliens. They all came from countries were Whites are just another meaningless ethnic group. Most don’t hate Whites at all.

Where a city goes full Mexican, it essentially collapses and turns into Mexico. As long as there is a base of at least 1

Other than that, there is a sense of alienation in Hispanic cities as if one is living in a foreign country in your own land, along with foreign mariachi music and a fairly foreign and quite socially conservative culture. The men are very macho so if you act masculine, you’re one of them. It’s a patriarchal society, so if you’re a man, you’re now part of the ruling group.

Spanish is spoken everywhere, so you might want to learn a phrase or two. You speak two sentences of their language, and they treat you like family and almost try to hug you. I speak Spanish fairly well so they love me.

Plus I don’t hate Hispanics. I’ve almost become an honorary Mexican myself. Mexican after all is not a racial group. Most of them are pretty nice people, especially the recent immigrants who hardly speak a word of English. I speak Spanish to them so they treat me like a hero.

There’s little feminism because most Hispanics hate feminism (social conservatives). Gays are very toned town too if they exist at all because the culture doesn’t like it. Young Hispanic gays in cities like mine usually just take off for some gay Mecca. Homosexual behavior in straight men, common among Whites if not hip, is extremely frowned upon. You call a man a fag here, and you will get hit! However, among 2nd and especially 3rd generation young Hispanics, all of this is changing, and there is a lot of SJWism, BLM support, and acceptance of sexual weirdness.

Overall, Hispanics are not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but you can live with them, or at least I can. I will not live with Blacks, that is, cities with large Black populations. Get out of here with that noise.

Alt Left: That $15/Hour Minimum Wage

The Democrats are trying to push a bill that will raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour. This is part of the Push for Fifteen movement sponsored by labor and the Left in general, especially the Bernie Sanders crowd.

This is part of the Democrats’ $1.9 billion COVID relief package. I generally support this, and the $1,400 is certainly much needed, especially around these parts, as in, my humble abode.

However, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona, the  two most conservative Democrats in the Senate, vow to oppose the $15/hour minimum wage. Well, good for them! See? Here I am, rooting for the most conservative Democrats in the Senate. I think that shows more than anything else how insane and extreme the modern Democratic Party is on so many issues. I never support conservative Democrats on anything!

Manchin somehow always manages to get re-elected in a state that Trump won by 39 points in 2016 and 29 points this time around. But West Virginia has a long tradition of electing conservative Democrats. Remember Robert Byrd? Sinema managed to win in purple Arizona, long a very conservative state, home of Barry Goldwater after all. She probably won by billing  herself as a conservative Democrat. Just to show you that conservatives are as woke as liberals nowadays, Sinema is openly bisexual. The Culture War is over. The Left won. Time to pull down the flag and go home, social conservatives.

Manchin and Sinema are proposing an $11/hour minimum wage. Well that lifts families of one and two persons out of poverty at least. It leaves families of three $1,000 short and families of four $4,500 short. I don’t mind this compromise. I’d prefer $12/hour, but I will settle for $11. Anything’s better than $7.25/hour.

Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton (Tom Cotton! He’s one the most rightwing people in the Senate!) are proposing a slow increase in  the minimum wage to $10/hour in 2025. I guess it raises at ~60 cents an hour. That seems awful meager.

And it’s also linked to E-Verify, and mandates all employers to use it. I believe it submits the worker’s Social Security # if he even has one and sees if they are eligible to work in the US.

You realize that illegal aliens engage in mass identity theft of other people’s social security #’s, right? You all think that’s ok? Why is that ok? How would you like it if some crook who sneaked into your country illegal was using your SS# to steal a job from an American citizen or legal immigrant.

This E-Verify is utterly reasonable. How this is unreasonable is beyond me. Insanely, the ACLU went to court to put an injunction on E-Verify at the federal level, apparently because it messes up sometimes. Oh, my God! Something doesn’t work right all the time! So let’s throw it out and never use it!  Try applying that to every object you own and see how that works.

I completely support full implementation of E-Verify at the federal level. Maybe then we can get a lot of these damned illegals to self-deport.

For some insane reason, the Democratic Party is opposed to E-Verify! Why?! Do illegal aliens automatically have a right to work in this country? No other country on Earth allows such nonsense. Go to any country on Earth and try to work if you’re not a citizen or a legal immigrant. Good luck with that. But we are America, and the whole damn world has a right to sneak in here anytime they want!

Biden also opposes E-Verify. Why, for God’s sake? What in the Hell is their reason? What good reason is there to oppose such a completely reasonable measure?

The present minimum wage is way too low. It’s $ 7.25/hour. It’s been stuck there since 2009. Obviously it needs raising. Question is by how much. It is stated that the present minimum wage is not a living wage. I haven’t the faintest idea what a living wage even means. What in the Hell does that mean?

$7.25/hour definitely puts a single worker above the poverty line. That’s all I think the minimum wage should do. Poverty level is ~$13,000/year for one person. Try living on that sometime. Good luck!

Family of two? $17,420. With the present federal minimum wage, a family of two would live in poverty. That’s not ok. You would need a minimum wage of $9/hour to lift that family out of poverty.

Family of three? $23,000. Well, you would need a minimum wage of $11.75/hour to lift them out of poverty.

Family of four? $26,500. You need a minimum wage of $13.50 to raise that family out of poverty.

What is the purpose of a minimum wage? If it is to keep one person out of poverty, the present wage is fine. If it is to keep a family of two out of poverty, we need to go up to $9/hour. If it is to keep a family of three out of poverty, we need a minimum wage of $11.75/hour to raise them out of poverty. Is it to raise a family of four out of poverty? Then we need to raise it to $13.50/hour.

We can also go by the historical minimum wage. It was at its highest level in 1968, when it was the equivalent of $12.20/hour. I say to raise it to that level. Raise the minimum wage to $12.25/hour to match it with the highest it ever was in the past.  Reasonable, right? It also lifts a family of three out of poverty, though a family of four is still $2,000 below the poverty line.

Someone needs to tell me what the ideal purpose of the minimum wage is? To raise a family of one out of poverty? A family of two? A family of three? A family of four?

Here in California, we have a minimum wage of $12/hour. That’s $24,000/year. That seems like quite an acceptable minimum wage for these parts. I would certainly be happy to make that much money.

I’m quite dubious about a $15/hour minimum wage. That just sounds way too high. Why not raise it to $50/hour then if we are going to keep jacking it up. Why stop at 15?

Repost: Englishes, Portugueses, and Chineses

In the comments to a previous post, Goyta made several comments. First of all he noted that the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese are considerable, especially when a Brazilian hears a less educated, working class or rural Portuguese.

He also said that when European Portuguese are interviewed on Brazilian TV, Brazilians wish they had subtitles. Wanting to have subtitles when you see a video of someone speaking is actually a symptom that you are dealing with another language. He said the differences are particularly severe when it comes to IT. He said he cannot understand 9

It does appear that the differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are pretty significant, more significant than the differences between US and British English.

On other hand, I find Hibernian English spoken in Ireland to be nearly incomprehensible, though it is said to be just a dialect of English. It’s clearly been influenced extensively by the Irish language. Scots, the regional English spoken in Scotland and exemplified by the movie Trainspotting , is actually a completely separate language from English. That movie actually needed subtitles. On the other hand, there is a Scottish English dialect that is not Scots that is pretty intelligible.

We can always understand British English no matter who is writing it. Same with understanding spoken Australian and New Zealand (Kiwi) English. British English is often written a bit differently in slang expressions, but we pick them up. The formal writing is totally understandable.

There have been huge fights on Wikipedia between British English and US English speakers with complaints from the Brits of bullying by the Americans. There was an attempt to fork the English Wiki into Br and US versions but it failed. Wikipedia demands that you have an ISO code in order to get a Wikipedia and ISO codes only come from SIL, who publishes Ethnologue. I petitioned for a few new languages a couple of years ago and they all got shot down.

There is an ongoing war between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese on the Portuguese Wikipedia with complaints from the European Portuguese of bullying on the part of the Brazilians. Gotya noted that he, a Brazilian, could not read Portuguese IT materials. This is unfortunate. All written British is intelligible to us. We can read anything written in the UK, though most of our reading material here is from the US. I can read The Economist and The New Standard and The Spectator with no problems at all.

As a Californian, I speak completely normally, of course, and have no accent whatsoever! Haha. We can understand the Midwest accent perfectly, though it can be different. It sounds “flat”. They also insert rhotic consonants before some consonants at the end of a word and the raising of the preceding vowel – “wash” becomes “worsh”.

The Oklahoma accent is different and sometimes it can be hard to understand. I heard some people speaking Oklahoman in the doctor’s office the other day for a minute or so I thought they were speaking a foreign language! Of course they were mumbling too. Then I asked them where they were from and they said Oklahoma. At that point, I had caught onto their accent and could understand them perfectly.

I do not know why the Texan accent is said to be hard to understand. We understand it perfectly, but it sounds funny. We make a lot of jokes about it. George Bush has a strong Texan accent. There is also an Arkansas accent (Arkies) that is different but understandable. This is also the source of jokes. In this part of California there are many Whites who still speak Arkie and Okie. They are the descendants of those who came out here from the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s. Steinbeck wrote a book about this called The Grapes of Wrath.

Other than that, there are no accents in the West.

There is some sort of a Kentucky-Tennessee accent, but I am not sure if they differ. This is also a source of jokes. It’s sort of a general Appalachian accent, and it’s the source of jokes about inbred hillbillies and whatnot.

The Southern accent is well-known but usually understandable. My brother went to live in Alabama though and he said that the workers in the factory he worked at were often completely unintelligible. The Blacks were worse than the Whites, and they had separate accents. He has imitated their incomprehensible accent to me and it’s pretty hilarious.

I have heard poor Blacks from Memphis on the Cops show who were completely unintelligible to me. People with more money and status tended to be more comprehensible. I sometimes have a hard time understanding a Mississippi or Alabama accent, but it’s no problem. Our Southern politicians all have thick Southern accents.

Cajun English from Louisiana is often unintelligible to us, but the people with more money and status are quite intelligible.

There is also a Black accent from the coast of South Carolina called Gullah that is hard to understand. The Blacks from around there speak something like it and you can pick it out if you are sharp. It has a pretty, lilting sound to it. It’s different from the standard Southern accent and is sort of charming. Moving up the coast, there is a Virginia accent that is softer, pleasant and charming.

There is the famous New York accent, which to us laid back Californians sounds horribly rude, obnoxious, loud and belligerent. Some forms of it also sound ignorant – these tend to be associated with working class Whites in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

One thing they do is to glide and lengthen rhotic consonants – “New York” becomes New Yawwk” “Brooklyn” becomes “Bwwoklyn”.

A similar accent seems to be spoken in New Jersey, but it may be different. One again, it involves lenition of rhotic consonants, in this case turning them into dipthongs with long vowels. “New Jersey” becomes “New Joiisey”. This is also a source of jokes. There is a Boston accent which is completely understandable. Ted Kennedy speaks that. It involves the lenition of hard consonants into glides and the end of a word – “car” becomes “caw”.

I believe there is a sort of a slow drawl from Vermont and New Hampshire too. Those people, especially the older men, are known for not talking much. Men of few words.

Some Blacks around here still talk with thick Black accents that sound Southern even though they were born in the Central Valley. There is also an “Ebonics” English (for lack of a better word) that is spoken here by sort of ghettoish or semi-ghettoish Blacks. It is frankly, almost completely unintelligible. They seem like they are talking with their mouths full, mumbling and speaking extremely fast, running all of the sounds together.

Everyone who talks like this can also speak Standard English thank God, and they can quickly move in and out of that Ebonics talk when you talk to them. It’s sort of a language for them to talk so that we can’t understand them, I think. To us, it sounds sloppy, low class and ghetto, but it reportedly a full-fledged language. The Blacks in the Caribbean do not speak English! That makes me feel good because I can hardly understand a word they say. Each island has its own form of Creole English which is a completely separate language.

I think that Indian English (Chichi derogatorily) and West African English need to be split into separate languages because they are often incomprehensible to us. This is a case of regional Englishes evolving on their own. Further, West African English often differs a lot in its written form.

Indian English is often so mangled in its written form that it is incomprehensible, but more educated writers are comprehensible. The tendency to drop articles is very annoying and makes written Indian English sound ignorant to us. Don’t mess with our damned useless articles!

Reading about the Chinese languages, there are efforts underway to get speakers to speak proper Putonghua, whatever that means. Speakers from different parts of China still speak Putonghua with an accent that can be heavy at times.

Here in the US, we do not have this problem. Even our politicians still speak in heavy regional accents, and no one cares. We can always understand them. There is no national effort to get everyone to speak proper English that involves wiping out regional accents, though I understand that in the corporate world, they are offering classes to help people get rid of Southern accents, which are stereotyped as sounding backwards, ignorant and racist. I think this is sad. Our regional accents are what makes this country great.

Goyta also notes that Brazilians are starting to speak Spanish and the neighboring Spanish speaking countries are starting to speak Portuguese. When I was dealing with them 5-10 years ago, most Brazilians did not speak much Spanish (They acted like it was extremely low on their list of priorities) and Spanish speakers had zero interest in learning Portuguese (In fact, they regarded the suggestion as offensive and preposterous!)

Goyta notes that with regional integration, more Portuguese are speaking Spanish and more Spanish speakers from nearby countries are learning Portuguese. Spanish is becoming a prerequisite to getting a good job in Brazil. This is good as it’s good to see Latin Americans getting together.

It is also true that in China there has been a big fight over Chinese language classification. The unificationist – fascist types, associated with the Communist government (and actually with the Nationalist government before also – this is really a Chinese elite project) insist that there is only one Chinese language. This goes along with racism of Northern Chinese against Southern Chinese and to some extent vice versa. This racism is most evident in the Cantonese vs Mandarin war in China.

Cantonese speakers say that they speak the real Chinese and that Northern Chinese speak a bastardized tongue derived from the old Manchu language. Cantonese speakers also resent that a Northern Chinese was turned into the national tongue and imposed on them against their will. They also say that Northern Chinese are really from the South and that the real NE Asians are the Mongolians, Koreans, Manchu, Japanese, etc. Genetic studies show that this is not the case.

Northern Chinese say that Southern Chinese are not real Chinese and their blood is “contaminated” with Tai types like the Tai, Zhuang, Vietnamese, etc. There is probably something to this. Although Putonghua is the only official language in China and there is a war going on against the regional Chineses, enforcement has been held off against Cantonese. And Cantonese  areas are still where you will hear the least Putonghua and the most regional Chinese in all spheres of life. Cantonese is also allowed on the radio and TV, whereas regional Chineses had previously banned from the media.

The Putonghua-only campaign has been too successful and regional Chineses are being wiped out. There is now a regionalism movement arising in China to promote and retain regional Chineses.

I think that the Putonghua campaign has been good, but that China should promote bilingualism. The Putonghua campaign has not yet been successful. As of 2001, only 5

China clearly needs a language that they can all speak. For its entire history, many Chinese have not been able to speak to each other, including folks from one village to the next if you go to the southeast and the central coast. Provinces like Fujian, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Henan and Hunan are notoriously multilingual.

Most of these places have a lot of very high mountains, and transportation was typically very poor. Even today, you can scarcely get around by vehicle and you sometimes have to walk from one place to the next, sometimes for dozens of miles! Bottom line is they were very isolated from each other.

These places also retained a tradition of being hideouts for “hillbilly” types where there was a lot of unemployment and many folks turned to crime. Also criminals fled to the mountains where they could hide. Upshot was that due to all of this, and people seen as backwards, lazy, stupid and thieving, people from the rest of China had no interest in going to these places anyway. When people left these parts of China to go to big cities, they were stereotyped in a way similar to how ghetto Blacks and Browns are in the US. This made them want to stay in their mountains.

Amyl and the Sniffers, “I’m Not a Loser”

Amyl and the Sniffers, “I’m Not a Loser.” This is probably my favorite song by this band. It’s like Wendy O of the Plasmatics and Debbie Harry of Blondie somehow had a baby. Don’t ask me how that’s possible, but come on, man.

It’s 2021! Get with the program, bigots! It’s a new world now. Men have breasts, vaginas, huge clits, and even get get pregnant. Women have penises. There’s no such thing as men and women anymore, Nazis. There’s penis-havers and vagina-havers. Guys get knocked up all the time. Lesbians have dicks, big ones sometimes! You’d be surprised. You haters need to get out more. I bet most of you aren’t even pan, huh? Come on, it’s the 21st Century. Everyone’s pansexual, get with it, dammit!

Ok, now that is some very, very nice music. This is what I remember punk rock was like. Sure, it’s derivative, but so what? Like punk rock wasn’t all derivative of itself? Of course it was. But this is the real thing. It’s the most 70’s or 80’s song I’ve heard in a while, and it was recorded only two years ago. Those British accents? Nope. Australian accents! This is an Australian band! And this song is live in LA at a club called The Echo that I’ve never even heard of! Have to check out some more of this music. I do like this one song though.

Band name is perfect too. And of course, so is the song title! Hot lead singer reminds me a bit of Debbie Harry but that’s not quite it. More like the chick lead singer of the Avengers, the great San Francisco punk rock band from the 1970’s. And they sound very much like them indeed.

ZZ Top, “La Grange”

“La Grange” by ZZ Top, off their great third album, Tres Hombres. Their first two albums, ZZ Top’s First Album and Rio Grande Mud, didn’t sell real well, but this one really hit the spot. They were these sort of hippie redneck freaks from Texas playing this weird country/blues/jam boogie Southern rock.

The lyrics to the song are about a famous brothel in La Grange, Texas called The Chicken Ranch. This brothel was also the theme of the play Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. After all these years, I had no idea the song was about that!

This music jams like Hell! They just don’t make music like this anymore.

Rumor spreadin’ a-’round in that Texas town ’bout that shack outside La Grange and you know what I’m talkin’ about. Just let me know if you wanna go to that home out on the range. They gotta lotta nice girls ah.

Have mercy. A haw, haw, haw, haw, a haw. A haw, haw, haw.

Well, I hear it’s fine if you got the time and the ten to get yourself in. A hmm, hmm. And I hear it’s tight most ev’ry night, but now I might be mistaken. hmm, hmm, hmm.

Ah have mercy.

Alt Left: About That Long Electricity Outage in Venezuela in March, 2019

Found on the Web: When I first read this story, I thought of the power outages in Venezuela the past year. Those attacks must have hit hard, especially patients in hospitals or care residences.

Last year there were a number of attacks against the Venzuelan electric system. The system runs via hydropower from dams. The hackers somehow had access to the software that ran the dams. They took the dams electricity production capability out, so Venezuela had little no electricity for 3-4 weeks.

Of course the despicable Western media played this up as yet another failure of Venezuela’s perpetually mismanaged “socialism.”

The message: All forms of socialism, including (or especially) social democracy, lead to utter failure and a collapsed economy, sort of like the way that we associated the Soviet model of Communism with abject economic failure. In other words, install social democracy in your system like 9

In reality, Venezuela is barely a socialist country as almost the entire economy is in private hands and is run by the capitalists, who of course have been waging economic war on the economy since 2002. Just about the only thing the state runs is the oil industry, and that was nationalized in 1976, long before Chavez took and during the period that the Western press crows about being the Golden Age of Venezuela.

It is important to note that like in the fake Roaring 20’s, when only 2

Most people were poor and they had no running water, no safe housing, no secure employment, no sewer systems (the shit from the toilets simply ran downhill in the gutters of the slums of the big cities, few education choices as education funding was starved, and no access to medical or dental care at all, as all of this was privatized and public medicine was starved for funds.

For much of this time, Venezuela was run by “social democratic” parties which were actually members of the Social International such as AD (Accion Democratica or Democratic Action). In Latin America, don’t be fooled. Just because a party calls themselves socialist or social democratic doesn’t mean jack.

Many Latin American social democratic parties simply enforce elite rule, which their leaders and members benefit from. To give you an example, Juan Guaido’s political party, probably the farthest righting party in Venezuela, calls itself social democratic and they have actually joined the Socialist International. The International is rapidly becoming meaningless. They need to start throwing out rightwing parties and parties that govern from the right while using the fig leaf of socialism. They’ve started to a bit of that lately.

I know quite a bit about those outages in Venezuela. The attack against the hydroelectric system was very well-planned. The people who did it were Venezuelan exiles in Canada and Houston, Texas (a lot of the opposition moved to Houston in addition to Miami). The opposition is very, very good, and they sit up there in the US plotting schemes to destroy the economy.

For instance, for a long time the fake exchange rate was being set by an opposition person in Houston who ran his own exchange rate site. He always deliberately inflated the street exchange rate in order to cause a currency crisis, which would devastate the economy. A lot of things caused that exchange rate crisis, but that guy sitting in Houston sabotaging the exchange rates to cause a monetary crisis was no small part of that.

The attacks were staged out of Canada and Houston. The people who did it had very intimate knowledge of those systems, mostly because those systems were using software made in Canada. The people in Canada had access to the source code of that software.

Perhaps the company itself was in on the sabotage in the same way that the voting machine companies are in on rigging the voting machines to steal elections for Republicans. In that case, Republican operatives have taken over the voting machine companies, and the election hacking is done by those companies like E S & S themselves in coordination with people like Karl Rove and the Bush and Romney families. All of those computer machine companies are owned by the Bush and Romney families, and Karl Rove also has a huge stake in them.

So it’s quite possible that that Canadian software vendor that sold the software which ran on Windows XP, was taken over by Venezuelan opposition people to gain access to the source code so they could hack those systems. With knowledge of that code, they hacked the systems from Canada and Houston. They were very good, excellent hackers. It’s not known if they had state help from the US and Canadian governments, although I definitely would not rule it out.

The civilian programmers who did this are criminals in the literal sense. Ideally they ought to be caught and tried for murder for the death of all of those Venezuelans in hospitals and nursing homes who died due to the power outages.

The information about how the attacks were done from Houston, Texas and Canada came via Russian intelligence. Notice the Canadian connection. Trudeau in particular has gone full fascist in his fanatical support for the Venezuelan opposition fascists.  Even worse, his foreign secretary, who is actually a member of the actual social democratic party in Canada (the liberal party is not officially social democratic), a fairly leftwing political. She has been a full-throated supporter of  US imperialism and Canada has supported all of the recent fascist coups undertaken by the CIA.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov stated at the  time:

According to the country’s legitimate government headed by President Nicolas Maduro as well as information from other credible sources, the electricity sector of Venezuela came under attack from abroad on March 7 of this year. We provide all necessary assistance to Venezuelan friends on the basis of requests from the legitimate government.

This attack was done via comprehensive remote influence on the control and monitoring systems of the main power distribution stations where the equipment produced in one of the Western countries has been installed. They and the instigators of sabotage are responsible for the deaths of people, including of those in hospitals which were left without electricity.

LSD and the LSD Manufacturing Underground in California, 1965-1990

Doses were pretty strong back in the day. The stuff around nowadays,  if you can even find it, is pretty weak.  It comes on blotter paper with some goofy caricature on it and it’s usually around 50 micrograms. Sure, you get a trip, but you get a much heavier trip when you start upping the dose up to 100 micrograms.

LSD back  then used to range from 250-500 micrograms. The famous Orange Sunshine LSD had 500 micrograms per pill. I took 125 micrograms one time, and that was plenty enough, thank you very much. I think I did take 250 micrograms once. That was one Hell of a trip, man.

Orange Sunshine was all manufactured by Timothy Leary’s group in Laguna Beach called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, situated mostly in Laguna Canyon. My friends used to go down there and they said there would be these hippie guys sitting way up high in the eucalyptus trees. They were lookouts. The Brotherhood distributed millions of tabs of that variety of LSD, and they made a ton of money off of it.

Most LSD around this time was being manufactured by a man named Owlsley. I don’t think they ever caught him. I saw a documentary on TV about LSD in 1990.

The DEA agent said 9

LSD is quite difficult to manufacture and you almost need a Chemistry degree to make even one batch. I’m told that making it is pretty crazy because when you do, the stuff gets all over you, and you end up ingesting the stuff the whole time you’re making it. So you’re frying the whole time you make a batch, a process that could last a month or so. I don’t think I could handle a month-long trip. An 8-hour trip was bad enough.

Alt Left: A Look at Partial Drug Legalization Efforts in the US

Rambo: I wonder what percentage of these murders are in some way drug-related? I’ve never seen actual numbers but would have to guess those numbers would be pretty high. It just seems that in so many of these cases drugs were at least the “chain of events” starter that led to alot of these murders; an ever present link in the chai

RL: Most of these Black on Black shootings in our big cities these days are gang warfare. And what sustains the gangs? The drug trade. Legalize the drug trade and for what purpose will the gangs exist? How will they make money? They may just fold up altogether. Those gangs are primarily money-making operations.

So since most of the shootings are gang related and the gangs exist because of the drug trade, I would say that probably the vast majority of these murders are drug-related in that sense. Not so much related to the consumption of drugs as in people getting high and crazy and blowing each other way but more related to the sale of drugs.

Rambo: Which brings up the question once again: should all drugs be legalized? A lot of Libertarian types say it’s the obvious solution to halt murderous gangersterism, but since Libertarians never get elected to anything, aren’t they just banging their heads against the wall? If all drugs were legalized, how would hardcore drug addicts get the money to acquire the narcotics they desire? Would drug-related crimes increase? Since addicts aren’t likely to be long-term job holders, how would this affect the society at large? It’s not an easy issue to address.

Good question.

This has already been tried in a sense in Seattle and in some ways, it is being tried in other places like the city of Fresno very close to where I live.

In Seattle, possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine are legal. However, drug dealing is still illegal.

In Fresno, meth addicts state that police are not prosecuting meth possession crimes of under a certain amount. So users are carrying precisely this amount with them and possibly dealers are delivering packages in this precise amount. It’s not a tiny amount of meth either.

Legalizing possession of hard drugs in Fresno and Seattle has not led to a decline in drug use, of course. And since drug sales are not targeted and remain illegal, the problem of drug trade-fueled gangsterism obviously carries on regardless.

Legalization of cannabis promised to put a stop to all cannabis-related crimes, but now illegal street sales of cannabis are somehow competing with legal cannabis sales in cannabis shops. I’m not sure on what basis the illegal sales are competing. But legal cannabis is very heavily taxed, possibly taxed so highly that the price has become noncompetitive, and street sales can beat the cannabis shops on price. Border Patrol agents are still seizing huge amounts of marijuana at the border and arresting people for trying to smuggle it across, but this strikes me as absurd considering that restricted use and sales of the drug are already legal in much of the US.

In Seattle, police were arresting street people and the homeless, the vast majority of whom had either mental illnesses or drug addiction issues, regularly for all sorts of petty crimes. The local jails were overcrowded and typically they would be jailed for a month or two and then released. Police complained about a revolving door involving these petty offenders, but it’s hard to see what else could be done. This situation is very much ongoing.

Since use is legal, entire sections of downtown Seattle streets have been taken over by mostly homeless addicts using meth, cocaine, and heroin right out in the open. Low level drug dealing is also ubiquitous.

As a result of all of this, Seattle has become a magnet for homeless people all over the country who are flooding there due to the good treatment the homeless receive there. Nevertheless, downtown streets are now full of homeless people sleeping rough on the sidewalks. People going to work have to step over these human eyesores as they negotiate their way to their jobs very morning. Mentally ill homeless people regularly act loudly and frighteningly crazy right on the sidewalks and streets, creating huge embarrassing and scary scenes. Not much seems to be done about these lunatic ravers.

Perhaps most importantly, now that drug use is legal, addicts have swarmed to the city, and petty theft rates in local businesses have skyrocketed as addicts steal goods to pawn to buy their dope.

So, sure, partial legalization solves some problems, but it also creates a whole  lot of new ones.

As usual,  I have no ideas on how to ameliorate this situation. I’m going to throw up my hands on this one like I always do.

Alt Left: The California Political and Geographical Landscape in Terms of Republican-Democrat Lean

I’ve been around conservatives my whole life here in California. If fact, most of my friends, even best friends, were conservatives. I grew up in Orange County, and every White person you meet there is a Republican.

Sure the Bay Area and LA have liberal Whites, but that’s about it.

And the Central Coast Whites are liberal, albeit not as much as the Bay Area types.

Around the Delta, you have conservative Democrats.

Here in the Central Valley, it’s always been all Republican, although we do have some conservative Democrats now and again.

Most every city I lived in was a White city in California and they were all Republican bastions.

Most of LA has gone over to Democrats, but the Antelope Valley has always been very conservative, and we just lost an election there.

Orange County has been Republican Central forever. We are finally starting to win a few elections there, but the Democrats are probably rather conservative. The area around Diamond Bar, Walnut, etc. has always been conservative. We just lost another one there.

The San Diego County coast has been conservative forever, but we are finally starting to win some elections there.

San Diego proper has always been extremely conservative (military town), but it’s starting to go over now. But the area around La Jolla is still pretty rightwing (Darrell Issa’s district). We are barely losing it now.

Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, long bastions of White redneck working class conservatism, have completely gone over.

Inland San Diego County is still very rightwing.

The Imperial Valley is Democrat.

The Mojave Desert and the Owens Valley are extremely conservative.

The Southern San Joaquin Valley around Bakersfield, Visalia, and Tulare has been very conservative forever.

All of the foothills and mountains of the Sierra Nevada, save for the odd Alpine County outlier, are Republican.

The Sacramento Valley tends to be Republican as does the Shasta-Weed region in the far north.

Northeastern California around Susanville is Republican.

North of the Bay Area, things have gone over to Democrats.

Santa Rosa and the Napa Valley region are now Democrat.

Further north it tends to be Democrat until you get to the Eureka region in far northwest California, still Republican.

Most particularly, White California has been Republican forever. Even today you have to be careful talking politics with any White person, at least around these parts, and it’s been that way my whole life. Chances are they’re a Republican. White Californians only barely started voting Democratic by a couple of points in the last two elections.

So people don’t understand California at all. It’s not a bastion of liberalism. There are still many conservative Republicans here, and they are just as  crazy and fanatical as they are anywhere else.

Alt Left: The Machinations of the CIA, with Special Focus on the Kennedy Assassination

The CIA uses drug smuggling, theft, and other criminal activity to finance its black budget. Right now, the US military is leading convoys of oil tankers out of Syria to Iraq full of the oil that Trump is stealing from Syria in the east of the country.

The oil goes to a US controlled entity in Iraq. Rumor is it is being used to fund the CIA’s black budget. The black budget is the CIA’s underground budget that is not accounted for. It’s used for all manner of dirty deeds, not necessarily done dirt cheap. False flags, fake attacks, provocations, you name it, if it’s dirty and scummy, the CIA will do it. There’s almost no limit to how low the CIA will go to achieve their aims. You name it and they’re probably capable of it.

By the way, the CIA killed John F. Kennedy. Probably working with Texas oilmen, the Mafia, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, Lyndon Johnson, and even Castro himself, who may have smuggled the assassins out of the country via Mexico. No one quite knows Oswald’s role except that he may indeed have been a patsy. Jack Ruby’s role is also very mysterious. He was sent to prison and refused to talk. He said he was put up to the homicide by powerful people. He was terrified that if he talked, they would kill him. He was probably right.

See Mr. Epstein. By the way, Epstein didn’t commit suicide. See how fast they covered that up? The people who run this country are very dirty indeed! I feel that Epstein was killed on orders of Bill Barr.

A friend of mine had lunch a while back with Lyndon Johnson’s former personal attorney. He says that Johnson was in on the Kennedy assassination. My friend asked him who killed JFK and the man said, “The foreign policy establishment of the United States.” For those of you who don’t know, shorthand for that term is nothing less than the Deep State. That’s all the Deep State is: the foreign policy establishment of the United States.

Alt Left: Liberal California? Californians Voted Rightwing on Eight out of 12 Propositions on the Ballot

Why people keep saying California is liberal is beyond me. My city is 8

Let’s look at the ballot propositions. Either Californians are dumb and get swayed by the big money and their fake lying campaigns on the propositions or they’re just not that liberal. Because the vote wasn’t very liberal.

Californians Voted Rightwing on Eight out of 12 Initiatives

Proposition 15: A fake privacy law bolstering law written by criminals like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of the Silicon Valley crooks that actually weakened privacy laws passed! “Liberal” Californians sided with crooked tech billionaire enemies of the people to screw over consumers!

Proposition 16: Bring back affirmative action in employment failed badly. I like that result, but face it, it’s rightwing. So California “liberals” supported an anti-affirmative action proposition.

Proposition 18: Allowing 17 year olds to vote in primaries if they will be 18 in the general in the fall (Big deal!) failed. That’s a very rightwing vote. California “liberals” voted rightwing again.

Proposition 21: Putting in some common sense rent controls in this insanely overpriced housing market failed again. It always fails! Some liberal state! The Legislature won’t pass it either because all the “liberal Democrats” in there are bought off by extremely wealthy landlords. Some liberals!

Proposition 22: Reclassifying gig workers are contractors so their crooked billionaire employers can keep ripping them off and paying them $5/hour, which is what Lyft and Uber pay their drivers (!) passed! “Liberal” Californians voted for big business crooked bosses and ripped off poor workers!

Proposition 23: Regulating the criminal dog capitalists who run crooked dialysis facilities preying on poor workers suffering kidney failure terribly! They’re not regulated at all right now and that’s terrible for sick workers. California “liberals” voted to keep the dialysis crooks unregulated!

Proposition 25: Changing the cash bail system which keeps workers accused of crimes in California’s”liberal” jails that are as terrible as a Hieronymus Bosch painting before they have even been convicted of a thing, sometimes for years, to let non-dangerous people who haven’t even been convicted of a thing out of jail until they go on trial failed! “Liberal” Californians voted to keep poor workers in California’s Dantesque jails just because they’re not rich enough to afford bail!

Californians Voted Liberal on Four Initiatives

Proposition 14: Funding stem cell research barely passed.

Proposition 17: Restore voting rights for felons on parole passed.

Proposition 20: Increasing penalties for some crimes failed.

Proposition 21: The vote to make some large property owners pay the going rate for their property taxes barely passed. The only “homeowners” it applied to had three or more houses! If you own 3+ houses, you’re a “homeowner?” Get out.

There were 12 ballot initiatives. “Liberal” Californians voted rightwing on eight of those 12 initiatives and voted left on only three of the 12, and two of those barely passed with the skin of their teeth!

California “liberals” are not even all that liberal. They’re more like liberal Republicans. The only way they are left is Fake Left which means SJW Left, which isn’t even left at all. It’s just a bunch of bourgeois “fake rights,” most of which attack Whites and men and vastly privilege sexual degenerates and mentally ill freaks who think they’re the opposite sex against people who are normal sexually and do not have a psychosis about their genitals.

Anyone who thinks that is “left” is insane. Remember the Communist countries of the 20th Century? Remember how socially conservative they all were?

Homosexuality was often illegal. Castro put gays in prison.

Trannies would be sent to an asylum where they belong.

Men were free to be men and women to be women.

No Communist country on the face of the Earth was anti-White. In fact, the USSR and the East Bloc were some of the most pro-White countries the world has ever seen.

Porn and gross, open sexual degeneracy and perversion were banned.

That’s the Real Left. The Real Left is left on economics but fairly conservative on the BS social issues..

Alt Left: Voting “Liberal” and “Progressive” on Heavily Financed California Ballot Initiatives Usually Means Voting Rightwing

Let’s look at the awful California ballot initiatives this year.

Proposition 15: Making businesses pay the market rate for their property tax, like – Everyone else? – will drive out Mom and pop businesses all over California. Mom and pop! Oh no! Poor Mom and Pop! Poor corner market!

Proposition 19: Making big rich landlords maybe pay the market rate for property tax, like – I dunno? Everyone else in the country? – will massively increase taxes on poor homeowners like Mom and Pop, forcing them to sell their homes and go homeless! Poor Mom and pop! They’ll have to move! But only if they have three houses already!…But that means they’ll have to sell one and move into the other two. But that will mean poor Mom and Pop will only have two houses to live in except for three! How will they survive? They’ll probably have to eat cat food or go homeless!

Proposition 21: Voting for putting some sane controls on the insane rents bankrupting Californians actually meant voting to increase your rent. It will drive rents sky high! You don’t want that, do you? Besides your poor landlord will have to sell one of his yachts! Oh noes!

I know the landlord-criminals always rent control makes rents go up, but how does that even work anyway. Rent control literally sets limits on your rents. I’ve met people who lived in rent controlled apartments in San Francisco and their rent was much lower than their non-rent controlled neighbors.

Ok, so rent control makes your rent go up! So, instead, let’s...not have any rent control! Then rents will totally go down and stay affordable and stuff! Whoops, I was wrong. They went sky-high because there were no limits on them.

So…no matter what you do, your rent’s going to go sky-high while your landlord gets to add new rooms to his mini-mansion! We can’t win! No matter what we do, we’re fucked! Time to pour another drink.

Proposition 22: Voting for giving Uber drivers some rights meant an all-out war on poor Uber drivers, forcing most of them out of their jobs! Help save the Uber drivers! Vote yes! Thank you Uber and Lyft!

Proposition 23: Voting to put a regulation or two on the dialysis industry meant an all out war on those poor suffering dialysis patients! Poor patients! They’re all gonna die! Oh noes!

Proposition 24:Voting for increased privacy on the Net actually meant voting for less privacy. Sponsored by Facebook and Twitter, the best friends of consumers who are totally out to protect your privacy!

My brother’s a hardline partisan Democrat, and I think he even voted rightwing on a couple of those crappy initiatives.

Every time I get fancy mail telling me to vote some way on a proposition, especially to be please vote liberal and progressive on this measure, I’m immediately suspicious. I figure it’s some Big Money scam tricking me into voting for their greedy BS, and I’m almost always right. That’s why I need those voter guides. Without those I’d be dead. But who reads one? It’s pretty hard for me with a genius IQ to figure out those evil initiatives written by (((crooked, lying, cheating, thieving lawyers))).

The initiative process has been completely upended. It was initiated ~1910 in this state to put measures on the ballot to control out of control scumbag robber baron corporations like Southern Pacific Railroad, which seemed like they owned half the state.

The initiative process was supposed to be a way for the ordinary working person to have a voice against the rich and the corporate tycoons because like Hell was he ever going to get a voice in the Big Money-controlled state government. It was supposed to be a progressive, grassroots citizens’ voice thing. Now half the propositions were put in there by huge corporations, usually totally deceptive propositions where they tell you to vote “liberal” except if you vote liberal, you actually vote for the rightwing big money initiative!

I was originally fooled by most of these BS initiatives. Most are written to be as dishonest as possible and the No campaigns are always very dishonest. You can always tell which ones not to vote for because those are the Big Money campaigns flooding your mailbox with slick campaigns telling you to vote for some groovy liberal and progressive things which is always neither. The good campaigns actually but out of the Left never have any money of course, so you hardly ever get brochures from them.

Kim Carnes, “Bette Davis Eyes”

From her 7th album,  Mistaken Identity, 1981. Song was originally written by Jackie De Shannon in 1974 but never got big until 7 years later. Waddy Watchel on guitar, from Linda Ronstadt’s band. That’s the LA rock hippie crowd from the 1970’s. They lived it up in the canyons of the Hollywood Hills. Linda’s home was Party Central. The song is supposedly about cocaine, but I don’t understand that part.

Her hair is Harlow gold Her lips sweet surprise Her hands are never cold She’s got Bette Davis eyes

She’ll turn her music on you You won’t have to think twice She’s pure as New York snow She got Bette Davis eyes

She’ll expose you, when she snows you Off your feet with the crumbs she throws you She’s ferocious and she knows just what it Takes to make a pro blush All the boys think she’s a spy, she’s got Bette Davis eyes

She’ll let you take her home It whets her appetite She’ll lay you on her throne She got Bette Davis eyes She’ll take a tumble on you Roll you like you were dice Until you come up blue She’s got Bette Davis eyes

And she’ll tease you, she’ll unease you All the better just to please you She’s precocious And she knows Just what it takes to make a pro blush She got Greta Garbo stand-off sighs, she’s got Bette Davis eyes

She’ll tease you, She’ll unease you Just to please ya She’s got Bette Davis eye She’ll expose you When she snows you Cause she knows you She’s got Bette Davis eyes She’ll tease yous

She’ll expose you, when she snows you Off your feet with the crumbs she throws you She’s ferocious, and she knows just what it Takes to make a pro blush All the boys think she’s a spy, she’s got Bette Davis eyes

Well, isn’t that just beautiful? Music doesn’t have to be serious. But the best music is always beautiful. That’s the whole idea of it. What is Aesthetics after all? The same as any disciple of science:

The Search for the Perfect Relationship*.

*Among things that is, not people.

Alt Left: Why California Is Having Rolling Blackouts

People are yelling and screaming and hollering for various people’s heads because we are going through some rolling blackouts here in the state. Our electricity is run by PG&E, a private corporation that is a “regulated monopoly.” But as is usually the case with this bullshit, the regulators are completely in bed with the corporation doesn’t get regulated at all.

This is not a bug in capitalism. It is actually a feature! If you have capitalist economy, this is what you get: regulators who refuse to regulate industry. I’m not sure of the solution, but in Europe for some reason, regulators actually regulate, fine and threaten corporations with shutdown all the time. Like all cowards, corporations typically buckle when you get in their face and actually threaten them. I would like to ask the capitalist fanboys how they would deal with this problem. You can’t, can you? Didn’t think so.

The were many fires here a couple of years ago, a number of the worst of which were indeed caused by PG&E wires. Not through any particular fault of their own except that they had not been upgrading it enough which once again is a feature, not a bug, of any capitalist corporation. They always lag on upgrades and keeping up their equipment. Every single time. From utilities to airlines, how many times have we seen this. Maintaining equipment cuts into profits, so corporations typically start skimping.

Anyway many fires ensued with deaths, loss of many structures including homes, etc. PG&E was barraged by accusations and threats. They got their asses sued off by everyone and their second cousin. The result was they went bankrupt and had to be bailed out. After that humbling experience, PG&E has decided that this is not going to happen again. Sometimes you have to punch a man in the face to get him to see the light, and the corporate equivalent of a punch in the face also works wonders. Anyway, PG&E has vowed that no more fires are going to be blamed on them.

The result, in part, has been new guidelines during very hot weather with certain other weather conditions.

Hence the rolling blackouts. Why rolling blackouts? For safety reasons. They are trying to prevent their lines from being starting costly brush and forest fires. When heat, humidity, and other weather conditions reach a certain level, PG&E can no longer pump the same level of power through the lines as before because the weather has already heated up the lines too much. If they keep shooting the normal amount of power through the lines, fires will start. So they have to push less power through. Less power = rolling blackouts.

The solution is to come up with new material for power lines that can withstand more stress so PG&E can push more power through very hot wires without starting fires. But that technology may not exist yet.

Alt Left: What’s CP and What’s Child Erotica or Harmless Material?: Legal Dilemmas of Child Pornography Law

There’s legal or softcore child porn (CP) and illegal or hardcore CP. Most people are idiots and don’t know the difference, including this fool who reported a bunch of perfectly legal sites.

Bottom line is creepy pictures of little girls don’t cut it. There’s plenty of that out there. It’s hard to describe but it’s pretty little girls often in some rather skimpy clothes. They are often posing seductively and sometimes they have their tongue hanging out of the side of their mouth. Gross, huh? Sure, but it’s all completely legal.

If they have their clothes on, it’s pretty much legal. Nevertheless, there have been some recent very bad rulings that found that even pics of clothed little girls could be CP. These rulings were very bad because just looking at the rulings, it would be very hard to say exactly what is legal and what is illegal.

Even nudes of little girls are often legal if they look natural enough. It’s disturbing but it’s quite legal. There are nudist sites all over the Net with pics of kids, teenagers, and adults bare-ass naked.  All completely legal.

To be illegal it has to appear posed, unnatural, uncomfortable, a position the child was unlikely to get into on their own, and most importantly, must display lascivious display of the genitalia. This is called the Dost Test. The Dost Test has never even been litigated all the way to the Supreme Court, so we don’t have any idea how constitutional it is. It resulted from a case in California that laid out exactly what CP had to contain in order to be illegal and not simply child erotica, which is 10

That’s for children’s pics with no sex involved. Once you get sex involved, it’s a whole new ballgame, and any photos of kids having sex, either with themselves (masturbation photos are illegal), each other, or with adults, are absolutely illegal. They can’t even be posed with an adult looking like they are about ready to have sex. I could describe pics like that I saw and reported, but I don’t want to gross you out.

CP cartoons (including manga and hentai) and 3D are mostly legal. In some places like Germany they are illegal. In other places like Japan they are completely legal. In the US, it’s mixed. Apparently it’s illegal to create them but it’s not illegal to possess them, as if that makes sense. The clothed models have been a mess ever since the terrible Black Cat Scans case. In that case, the men who created the website went to prison, but the 25 million who went to the site and downloaded the pics got off scot free.

It’s generally considered a miscarriage of justice, especially because when those men, who happened to be of a certain (((type))), made that site, they checked out the law and figured that the site was completely legal. And it was. But after the site had been up a few years, the government decided absolutely criminally to try to redefine CP to include the Black Cat Scans which had previously been excluded. So those guys got blindsided. It’s as if spitting on the sidewalk has always been legal. So you spit on the sidewalk from time to time.

One day the Feds decide to reinterpret some vague law called “Antisocial Behavior” to include “Spitting on the Sidewalk,” although that act had never been included before. So you get taken to court and the Feds make the case that under their new interpretation of the Antisocial Behavior law, they now include Spitting on the Sidewalk, though it was always legal before. They try the case and some hack judge convicts you for a crime you weren’t even aware was illegal.

Bottom line is you can possess all the clothed model pics you want to (But why would you want to?) but I guess you can’t make websites putting them up there and charging people to see them. I guess.

Clothed models are usually little girls around pubertal age (11-13) dressed up in some pretty dirty clothes (like lingerie) and posed in some pretty dirty positions (guess). They’re creepy as all get out, but it’s not CP. Most of the girls were from impoverished families in rural Russia. In every case, their mothers got them involved in the modeling.

A number of the girls got followed up and by 18-20, almost all of them had married the local rural Russian thug and already had at least one kid. Some were single Moms already. There was an uproar when the men went to prison. 20-40 former models all made videos testifying to the fact that they were not harmed at all by this modeling and how well the photographer had treated them.

The photographer had treated all of the girls and their mothers very well and there had been no sexual behavior at all between him and the girls. The girls and their mothers were all very fond of him. The videos are still sitting up on Youtube if you are interested. It’s a pretty sorry case all around.

Central to weird CP theory is that CP is the portrayal of a crime and hence is illegitimate. Except shooting clothed model pics isn’t a crime, so strike that one out.

Next is the argument that the girls are harmed by being photographed even if there is no sex involved. This applies to pics of girls alone nude and posed in various ways. Merely by getting posed that way and  having  photos taken and certainly if they know the photos are on the Net for anyone to see is enough to cause harm. That’s an interesting argument.

But for the clothed models, the photographs were basically legal, the girls were clothed, and no girl was harmed by getting pics taken of her.

Where’s the crime?

Next we see how CP law keeps creeping upward and upward to encompass more and more things.

No crime? No matter. Girls not harmed at all and quite willing? No matter.

Because a brand new idea has been thrown out. The concept of a record of a crime and harm to the girls is dead because now we have new reasons!

The new reasons say that “CP” is bad even if there is no crime, no girls were harmed because the material is being used by pedophiles to masturbate to. Which I guess is evil or something. This is how they roped in the cartoons and the 3D stuff. No crime of course. And no harm of course. Hell, there are not even any real humans to be victims of a crime or to be harmed! The things being victimized by crime and harmed are pictures, drawings,  and 3D graphics. They’re not even real people! They’re completely fake!

But now they’re illegal too because they turn pedophiles on. That seems a dubious reason to make something illegal.

How bout if a man takes photos of boys walking to and from school?

How about a man who orders a video of little girls during majorette exercizes?

And how about if these men are pedophiles who use these perfectly harmless photographs to masturbate to pedo fantasies? So what? What’s wrong with that? But, guess what? Feds (FBI jerkoffs) have arrested men for possessing photos they took of boys walking to school and for ordering videos of girls doing majorette exercizes.

Because pedos were using them to jerk off. That misinterpretation of the law seems very wrong, sorry. That’s absurd. Also, you are arresting men for thought crimes. After all, the photos and videos are only illegal because of the thoughts that go through these men’s heads when they look at them.

Ridiculous. If I look at those same videos (not sure why I would but anyway) I would most certainly not experience sexual fantasies about either the girls or the boys. So I get to possess this material because it doesn’t turn me on (because I don’t have illegal thoughts), whereas these pedos go to prison for possessing the same material, apparently because they have illegal thoughts while looking at the material.

Back to the female who got solo photos of her taken as a child. What if the female is not aware that her pics are out there? People are looking at them and she hasn’t a clue? How is this automagically harming her? Osmosis? Via another dimension? Some psychic mechanism. Clue me. She’s not being harmed by the people looking at her pics.

Another argument is that even if the female is not aware her pics are out there, the mere memory of her having those pics taken as a girl is going to continue to harm her, assuming she even remembers such things. That’s a better argument,  but that harm is going to take place whether the pics went up in flames and are gone or whether they are in 10,000 places on the Net, right?

Als,o believe it or not, I met a woman who was molested and later had statutory rape committed against her by her uncle and his friends from ages 12-17. They took videos of the whole thing. She has reconciled herself to what was originally a trauma by deciding that this was fun and it turns her on.

She’s actually looking for the videos now, which seems a bit dangerous. Well, there’s one woman who had pics taken at age 12 and doesn’t care. Furthermore, she presents an interesting case. Yes, the videos portray a crime. Sure, she was legal from 16-17 so all this sex was legal at that point. But shooting videos of it wasn’t. She was still underage and although she can consent to sex, she can’t consent to making porn, which is probably a good idea.

We need an 18 to do porn law because as soon as we start lowering that number, the Net will be flooded with the newly legal girls. Now you can do porn at 17? Fine. Except in a week the damned Internet will be flooded with “17 year old girls doing hardcore porn!!!” Because pornographers have no basement on sleazy. They’ll go as low as you let them. I don’t particularly care about teenagers making this stuff consensually and people looking at it at home. But keep it off the damned Internet!

But the girl was going along with it quite happily, so one wonders what the big deal is. Further, the girl is not being “revictimized” by this videos being out there because by her own admission, she likes these videos.

I don’t know what to say. Considering her age, most of those videos could well be floating around anyway. After all, hardcore with 14-17 year old girls is said to be everywhere on the Net,  mostly unlabeled.  No one seems to care much. But the early stuff is creepy. I don’t want videos of grown men having sex with 12-13 year old girls legally floating around on the Net. I don’t care if she likes them. I don’t care if she didn’t get hurt and isn’t getting hurt by them. I just don’t want that crap out there on the Net. Maybe if you keep it your drive to yourself, it might be ok. But I don’t want that garbage floating around legally.

What about the case of creep shots and surreptitiously taken photos of little girls and teenage girls. That stuff’s out there too. In this case, the female doesn’t even know anyone took pics of her. Furthermore, she probably doesn’t even know if her pics are floating around. It’s really hard to make a case that she got harmed at all by some creep using a hidden camera. Sure it’s an invasion of privacy but the person doesn’t even know their privacy got invaded, so what of it? I guess it probably ought to be legal but I’ll be the first to say the pics are creepy and uncool.

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