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.

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.
If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.

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!

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.

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: 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.

Alt Left: Left Libertarianism and a Rejection of Carceral Liberalism and Leftism

I’d say I definitely have some serious Left Libertarian tendencies. Are you familiar with the term “carceral?” I am seeing that used a lot now. Carceral feminists (10

I hang out on Reddit a lot, though I am banned repeatedly. That place is sickening. They’re all liberals or Left, but they’re the Carceral Left or Carceral Liberals. They’re constantly screaming to throw more and more people in jail in prison, mostly men for either having sex with women or trying to do so. Apparently there’s no worse crime for a carceral libbie than trying to get laid. I think they’ve never met a law they don’t like. They’ve never met a jail or prison they are not ecstatic about.

Which is why I don’t understand why they hate cops so much. Wait. You never met a law you didn’t like (and in fact libbies are constantly screeching for more laws, greater penalties and toughening up laws). You can’t get enough of prisons and jails, especially since they’re full of men and there’s nothing libbie faggots hate more than men. So they love laws, love prisons, love jails…but they hate cops?! They yell about defunding the police but they want to throw all of us men in jail for even looking at a woman. Forget flirting and dating. That’s all harassment now. Forget sex. It’s all rape and abuse now.

I’d say that the  Alt Left, if anything, should be a civil libertarian movement. We should be an anti-carceral movement. The problem isn’t so much cops. Sure, they enforce the laws,  but they don’t write them. The problem is the whole shitstem. The cops, the DA’s, the judges, the bailiffs, the jail and prison guards, the parole and probation officers, the jails, the prisons, and more than anything else, the goddamned legal code.

These maniacs have already made half of ordinary life illegal, but that’s never enough. Every year on January 1, I wake up and there’s 50-100 stupid new laws in my state, supposedly one of the most liberal states in the country but actually the home of Carceral Liberalism.

I advocate, for starters, wiping lots of laws right off the books. Anything that doesn’t obviously and directly harm an innocent person is an objective way needs to go. I want to make it do prisons and jails cannot be filled past capacity. Our California penal institutions are still 12

This is my dream. We’ve reduced all the jails and prisons to 10

I was alive back in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  Cops had a reasonable attitude back then. They would often arrive at places where people were breaking the  law but they would simply choose to not do anything about it. I was there on several occasions when police came out and said,  “We don’t usually waste our time on  this crap,” or “We don’t usually like to get involved in this stuff,” or “Look, we have better things to do than waste our time with this BS.”

That seems to be gone now.  Cops nowadays seem to be itching to arrest anyone they can for spitting on the sidewalk. I don’t get it. Someone clue me here. They bored? Change of culture? Not enough action?

There was a sense of finesse, of nuance, of reason, logic, rationality, and sense. That’s how the law is supposed to be, from the cop on the beat all the way to robes in the courts. The law is a grey area. It’s supposed to be enforced and and prosecuted that way. It’s supposed to be an area free of heated emotion that distorts cold logic and reason.

I actually read legal journals. You might want to try it some time. It’s not as hard as you think. One thing they keep talking about is keeping emotions out of the laws and courts. The ways they do this is to write hard legal codes into court decisions that tie the hands of judges and force them to rule as logically as possible, the reason being that of course judges to say nothing of juries are subject to the worst whims of emotions that distort, warp, twist, and wreck both law and justice.

Alt Left: Face It: The Latest Riots are Multiracial Leftwing Antiracist Riots

Alpha Unit: I am responding to this narrative that all this destruction and violence is a “Black” thing. That’s not the whole story.

I would agree with you that the riots are not all a Black thing. Head on over to American Renaissance and see how these are being portrayed as Black riots. Well, there are Black riots in this country, but these don’t really qualify. In some cities, in these riots it is mostly Blacks rioting. Those are cities in the South like Atlanta, Louisville, Birmingham, and some other places that elude me at the moment. I believe there were Whites in the crowd in Atlanta though.

In general, the rioters were a mix of young Black, Hispanic, and White men, mostly antisocial and living on the edge of society, most without decent or any jobs or much to lose. I saw many young men rioting right alongside the Blacks. The Whites looked like skate punk and Antifa types. A lot of Whites were holding up BLM signs and chanting BLM slogans.

In LA, most of the rioters tended to be Hispanics.

In Las Vegas, the crowd was very mixed, mostly Hispanics with some Whites, even including White women, with a few Blacks in the mix too. The white rioters seemed to have more of the fancier materials you need to start a riot.

In Minneapolis, many of those smashing and setting things on fire were young White men, often skate punk types. In some cases, they worked right alongside inner city type Blacks. However, I did see an interview with a Minneapolis Black gang member who said that all of the gangs in the city (mostly Black) were working together in these riots to cause mayhem even though a lot of them were enemies normally.  So there is also a criminal gang element, but that shouldn’t be surprising.

The riots seem quite multiracial in New York, but it was hard to get a breakdown. There were a lot of Blacks but also some Whites.

There were many Whites in the Washington DC riots but also a lot of Blacks of course.

Rioters in Seattle and Portland tended to be young antifa type Whites.

Chicago seemed to have a lot of Blacks, but there were also Whites mixed in.

The truth is that these for the most part are multiracial riots. Yes, many rioters are Black, but there are quite a few young White and Hispanic men in the mix.

I will say one thing. It seems like most of the looting is being done by Blacks. I did see a few Whites looting in Minneapolis and New York. Hispanics are known to loot but I’m not aware of how many of them did. In the Rodney King riots, the looters were heavily Black and Hispanics. However, when they moved up to Hollywood, a lot of more or less regular young White men got in on, targeting high end items.

I was happy to see the stores of the rich looted and smashed up though. That’s who they should be targeting.

Looting does tend to be a Black thing. Hispanics don’t seem to loot as much, and it seems like a lot of Whites, even White rioters, are averse to looting. A White rioter will smash stuff up, set a building on fire but then refuse to loot other buildings. Not sure why that is, but I think Antifa doesn’t like looting. Plus a lot of Whites are afraid to steal or perhaps they even consider it morally wrong.

Alpha Unit: And leftwing people are not delusional for thinking there are rightwing people out there seeking to capitalize on these protests.

Correct, but I am seeing little evidence of this.

Three Bugaloo Boys went to a demonstration and tried to turn it violent, but the crowd did not buy it. Further, the Bugaloos are a mixed bag. Yes most are rightwingers, often racist ones. However, there are other Bugaloos who are on the left and a number of them are antiracists. So the Bugaloos are just a group of “tear it down” folks who are insurrectionists against the government for a variety of reasons – right, left, racist and antiracist. The only thing that unites them is the desire to smash it up and take down the state.

I am watching leftwing subs on Reddit, and all they ever say about these riots is that it’s White Nationalist racists and undercover police instigators who are setting off the  riots or even doing most of the damage. I went to the page of one liberal, and he said all the destruction was being done by White nationalists and undercover police instigators. He also said Russia was behind the riots.

Black people don’t want to think it’s their people rioting. That’s a typical human Dindu reaction. They are correct, the Black rioters are having a significant  amount of White and Hispanic help. That’s the better response. Pawning it off on cops and rightwing racists ain’t gonna cut it.

Leftwingers and antiracists object to the notion that these are leftwing antiracist riots. Once again this is the typical human Dindu reaction. Dindu reactions tend to be more of a human response than a Black cope. People don’t like to take responsibility when their group does bad things, so they blame it all on outsiders or better yet, their enemies.

Rightwingers are notorious for this but as we can see, leftwingers and antiracists are not immune to it either. The defenses are Denial and Projection. “Blaming other people” isn’t just something pathological people do. Most people go through life blaming other people in some way or other. I don’t object to blaming other people, but I think the less you do it, the better.

But that’s exactly what they are – these are indeed leftwing antiracist riots. And antifa-type and BLM (neither of which are organizations) elements do appear significant. The young Whites may be apolitical, or if they vote at all, they vote Bernie. The Blacks and Hispanics just vote straight Democratic if they even vote at all. I think a lot of these rioters are apolitical in the sense that they are outside of organized politics and might not even vote.

Coronavirus Has an Affinity for Cold Weather

SHI: Many Asian cities are very urbanized, and there is also a lot of air travel. We will have to watch out before concluding more about patterns. Who would have thought a month ago that Wuhan, the origin of this virus, would now be returning to normalcy. Even as we speak, the number of cases in India, Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, etc. is rising very fast. I still don’t think it will get as bad as Italy in these parts.

It’s rising a lot faster in colder parts of the world than in hotter. Even in China, Southern China is not much affected. Nor is Taiwan, SE Asia, Philippines, Indonesia, or even India for that matter.

In Italy, it mostly hit the mountainous north. The south has hardly been affected.

In Austria, most cases were in the Alps in the west.

In France and Germany, most cases were in the Alps SW Germany and SE France.

Switzerland was hit bad.

Netherlands and Belgium were hit hard.

In Iran, it is hitting mostly in the mountainous north of the country.

In the US, it has hit Washington State and the Northeast very hard. In California, it has hit the Bay Area and Sacramento for the most part.

The Southern Hemisphere is being spared.

Africa and the Middle East are little effected outside of Iran, which is a cold country.

Central and South America and the Caribbean are scarcely effected.

There are 25 countries in the Southern Hemisphere. If it hit the South as easily as the North, there would be 12 countries in the South in the above average sphere and 12 in the below average sphere.

Instead, 3 nations in the South are in the above average sphere and 22 are in the below average sphere.

An easy explanation is that the South is experiencing summer right now, or late summer anyway whereas we are in winter or late winter anyway.

SHI: By the way, anti-malarial drugs such as chloroquinine have been found to be effective cures for Coronavirus although not laboratory-tested fully. What do you make of that?

By the time you are going to the hospital, you pretty much can’t breathe. At that point, drugs will do fuck all. You’re going on that ventilator, unless you are in Italy where they will decide if your life is worth saving or not. If you are being placed on that ventilator prone as you see in some of those videos out of Italy, you are in pretty bad shape, I guarantee.

There are lots of drugs that are being found effective for this illness. What all of that boils down to right now, I don’t know because here in the US, they tell you it’s viral pneumonia, and there are no drugs to treat it because it’s a virus. Also US rates are very low because many, many people are being refused tests due to a test shortage.

Locations of Madera And Fresno County Coronavirus Carriers Revealed for the First Time

There is presently two persons infected with coronavirus in Madera and Fresno Counties, one in each. Both are elderly men who caught it on the Princess Cruise Line. People are wondering who and where these people are because authorities are not releasing information about the person’s location. Both carriers are elderly men who are self-quarantining.

I pinned the Madera County man’s location down to Oakhust, a Madera County community in the Sierra foothills. I tracked the single Fresno County infection to the Sierras too, possibly near Shaver Lake. I used the coronavirus case map of the US to pinpoint these locations. The Oakhust and Fresno County dots denoting a disease patient were located right at those two locations.

The virus is presently not spreading via community transmission in Fresno or Madera Counties that we know of. Certainly it is not spreading anywhere in the Valley in those two counties, nor is there a single case in the Valley yet. Or at least it’s not known to be spreading there. Perhaps it is and we don’t know. Also, perhaps it will spread in Fresno and Madera Counties in the future.

I did some research on this virus, and it is one ugly virus all right. It is extremely contagious and quite virulent in terms of disease. 1

People below 60 have a less than average death rate, and the 18-20 death rate is about the same as the overall normal flu death rate. More people have underlying conditions than you think. I am 62 years old and I have asthma. I have a 1

Dana Rohrabacher Is Gay

Dana is in the news a lot lately.

Just thought I would tell you. My Mom used to work for a clinical psychologist, Dr. R., who knew both Dana and Dana’s brother Kim well. Kim died in 2007 at age 62. Dr. R. once told her that Kim loved women, unlike Dana, is how he put it. Kim was a notorious womanizer who rampaged through small armies of women.

Dr. R’s implication in saying Dana didn’t like women was that he liked men instead, i.e., he was gay. My mother called me up on the phone and told me about the conversation and that the implication was that Dana was gay.

I suppose it could mean that he was simply a celibate heterosexual, but people usually don’t talk that way about such straights.

He married in 1998 soon after gay rumors about him got going in a strong way. Word on the street at the time was that the wife was a beard. He did have triplets with her recently though, but a lot of gay men marry and have kids.

Turns out I am not alone in this speculation. Dana said, apropos of nothing and out of the blue, that he was not gay, to a reporter interviewing him. The reporter was taken aback as there was no reason for Dana to say that.

Dana said that the DA, Mike Capizzi, in a case against Dana’s friend Scott Baugh, a California Republican Assemblyman, had been spreading a rumor that Dana was gay. Dana denied it.

However, Baugh is almost certainly gay. Soon after these rumors went a-swirling, Baugh married a woman. So did Dana.

Capizzi beat around the bush about whether Dana was gay or not, but he did say that he didn’t spread any rumors. Nevertheless, he appears to have lied about that. A prominent member of the Republican Party in Newport Beach told reporters that Dana was gay.

The local paper The Orange County Register tried to help Dana counter the rumors by running a story about his antics in straight bars. The story never showed up, probably because Dana does not go to such places. In Dana’s first election, several people who knew Dana reported to the local media that he was gay.

Dana shared a house with another man for many years. Rumor is that the man was his boyfriend. A gay activist who specializes in outing homophobic gay politicians has listed Dana as one of the ones he wants to out.

I’m not sure if we will ever be able to prove this about Dana until people come forward saying they had sex with him, especially now that he’s married up.

Incidentally, Dana’s legislative record is wildly anti-gay. I know that the “homophobes are gay” argument is pure nonsense. A few homophobes are gay men engaging in reaction formation, but most are not. They’re just assholes who hate your guts. Nevertheless it is common for closeted gay politicians to be stridently anti-gay.

Just Watched LA Confidential

Based on James Ellroy’s novel of the same name. I’ve never read any of his stuff, but I’m told that he’s great.

Quite a movie!

Anyone here watched it?

Interestingly, True RomanceMulholland Drive (had to be), Se7en (believe it or not!), and LA Confidential (duh) were all set in LA! Of course, I am an LA man myself, born and raised. I was born in Inglewood, believe it or not. That was when it was livable, before it become Inglewatts.

Even after it became Inglewatts, we still went to the LA Forum there all the time to see rock concerts. Also the LA Lakers always played at the forum. It was Black and dangerous when we went to concerts there, but you just parked in the parking lot, and it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Just try not to get out of your car on the way in or out if you can help it. You really don’t want to be in the hood after dark. I’ve been in the hood many times in daytime, mostly driving but sometimes even walking (!) around. It’s not particularly dangerous but I didn’t go far away from my workplace. There are some crackhead women out there, but they’re not really dangerous. They’re just nuts.

Never had any problems walking or driving around the hood in the daytime all my years except for one time when I was a boy, and that was in Watts.

I did go to Lynwood at night once though. I used to drive around there all the time ion daytime to go out to get lunch. It was nothing.

But once I went there after dark for some insane reason, and I was absolutely terrified. I was at a red light, and the guys in the car in front of me all turned around and looked right at me. They were all Black or Hispanic or mixed (that’s quite a common mix in the hood nowadays, especially in Lynwood). The looks on their faces were of stark, homicidal hostility and perhaps incredulity that I was even there at all.

Seriously, don’t go to the hood at night if you can help it. Day and night are two different worlds in the hood. One’s doable but not optimal by any means (mostly bad scenery), but the other is sheer, utter terror.

Even in the Hood, There’s Better and Worse Areas

Jason: I’m sorry you had a rough time in LA – but I wouldn’t take it to heart.

Ah, it’s ok, man. That was a long time ago. I get over things. Here’s another meaning of life lesson. Get over stuff. Don’t hold grudges. Sure it made you mad when it happened back then but that was then and this is now. Drop it. Get over it. It’s the past and the past is dead.

Life’s basically a shit test, right? Well that was one serious shit test, teaching those Black kids. But from 10th-12th grade, they act pretty good. That’s because you can legally drop out by 10th grade and all the bad ones are on the street, in juvenile hall, or dead. The only ones that are there want to be there.

They won’t do any work of course, but they are quite jolly, and the whole class is pretty much a sort of chatty party. I gave up on trying to get them to do any work. I would just go over and sit with the kids and join the chat party, usually. They were very friendly so it was easy to join their chat party. And get paid $20/hour for doing so, too. And this was 30 years ago. It’s probably a lot more now.

The Black administrators know it’s a fucking zoo, and they basically don’t care. It’s sort of like a an actual warzone. You’re a hero just for showing up on the front and you’re a hero just for surviving another day alive. The Black admins treat you like a rescuing hero just for showing up for work.

“Whoa! Look at this heroic White man, come to the fort to teach our people!”

Plus they figure you’re not that racist because no racist White would do a job like that. I don’t care what SJW’s say. They just wouldn’t. Everyone who is there is there by choice.

Jason: Well, people are always saying “man up” – but honestly, if you were saying “join the KKK”, then that stuff bothered you.

Well, yeah. Sure it bothered me. It stresses you out really bad. Sometimes on break I would fume and rage in my classroom alone, pounding on desks and cursing to myself. I used to have a lot of fantasies.

I’m not sure if I fantasized about killing them, though I might have. A lot of them pretty much deserved it, but they wouldn’t be worth the homicide rap. Anyway even a lot of them probably start acting a lot better in adulthood if they even make it that far, so murdering them in their temporary sociopathic youth wouldn’t be right ha ha..

I do remember fantasies of tying them to their chairs so they couldn’t pop up out of their chairs every 30 seconds like human jack-in-the-boxes. That actually didn’t seem all that cruel to me, and it seemed to be the only sane way to deal with them.

Jason: It’s just that majorities tend to be tyrannical – picking on the minority – especially if you got on their bad side.

I’ve seen them act pretty bad towards Black teachers too, especially Black men. I saw a couple of Black men who looked like they were being driven insane or to ill health by those kids.

One man had bloodshot eyes – hypertension or heart disease? The poor guy looked like his heart was going to literally explode and splatter all over the room. I felt so sorry for him.

Another poor Black man, a fellow sub, actually was literally being driven crazy. He was shaking, raging at the kids, and he’d also turned paranoid. He was start shaking and raging at the kids and the kids would start ridiculing him. The Black boys would say, “Ohhhhhh, you’re niiiiiiiice.”

It was mean but their insults were actually pretty funny. They’re evil but a lot of them are still pretty damn funny. I talked to him though, and I really liked him a lot and vice versa. He wasn’t a bad person. Just a good person being driven insane by bad people.

There was a light-skinned Black man, a fellow sub, who was being driven crazy by them too. He and I became pretty good friends. He would come over to my class and help me teach or hang out with me on breaks. I forget why he was in the class with me. I think we were teaching the class together for some insane reason.

This was all at junior highs in Compton and one in LA. For some reason the female teachers control them a lot better at that age.

Black kids are a handful, man, especially in the ghetto. Black adults act far better than Black kids. Imagine teaching a class full of Black adults. Unless it’s a class in a prison, they probably act pretty damn good if they’re civilized enough to set foot in a classroom as an adult.

Now, why would some comment about Black teenage fathering push the brats overboard?

They’re ghetto shits, typical ghetto monsters. It was at a place called Centennial High School. You can look it up. And I was in Compton right next to Willowbrook, too. Which is right next to Watts. Even in the hood some places are better than others. That for example would be the very deepest and frankly Blackest heart of Compton.

As you get deeper and deeper into the hood, people seem angrier and angrier, and there’s more and out and out ghetto nig behavior. But it’s not real dangerous, at least in daytime. I used to leave a lunch and walk over to fast food joints and buy food. There were just crazy crackhead women walking around, but they aren’t dangerous. They’re just nuts.

And even the Black teachers start looking hostile, especially the women, and Black teachers are generally quite nice and civilized. They just look pissed off and when they saw me, they got even more pissed off.  Their faces got this stone cold, hard, and determined look. Resentment, I would call it.

And the faces on the residents actually get darker too. Go to the hood sometime and drive towards Watts if you dare. Once you get to Watts the Blacks themselves will actually be a lot darker. I saw Blacks in Watts who had faces that were so Black they were almost blue, blue-black or very deep purple. The behavior and the humans themselves get darker as you move deeper into the heart of the ghetto.

Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys, “Different Drum”

A truly incredible song. From 1967! Linda Ronstadt from the hippie era! She was one of the original hippies. Later a solo artists and girlfriend of Jerry Brown. And noted cocaine user. She had several operations on her nose due to excessive cocaine use. I believe she likes girls too if I am not mistaken.

This is one of her best songs ever. LA flower power from the Summer of Love! Yep, there was a hippie movement here in LA too. You better believe it. Go ask Jim Morrison. Mostly around Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice and around UCLA. Later around Venice, the Hollywood Hills, and especially Malibu. It wasn’t quite San Fransisco, but it wasn’t that far off either.

A lot of tie-in with the film industry of course. Jim Morrison went to film school at UCLA, remember? My father graduated from there. My Mom spent her freshman year at UCLA. 18 years old and homesick the whole time. A mere girl. I was supposed to go there but I couldn’t pass high school Algebra 2, so I couldn’t go. My father was very disappointed.

And the music industry has always been headquartered right here in El Lay.

Hollywood and Las Vegas: Two Fun but Cruel Towns

Polar Bear: As far as Hollywood as a gay mecca, Eyes Wide Shut is the closest most will see of it, but there are always VIP orgy gatherings. Kat Williams, Richard Nixon, and others have walked into some gay shit. Spirit cooking parties, Bohemian Grove, etc. are on record. I don’t believe they’re all gay, but gay sex is part of the rituals.

The music industry is highly involved in this stuff too. Check out Celine Dion promoting transgender baby clothes.

Any A-list star with long lasting fame has done some rituals. Don’t do the ritual? Go make low budget movies. If you don’t play ball, you’re a one-hit wonder or an underground artist.

I am afraid that Polar Bear is onto something here. I was around that place for many years. Hell, I practically lived there on weekends. It’s a blast but it’s insanely fagged out and so degenerate it almost makes you want to puke. And I’m a libertine!

Hollywood is a mean, vicious town. It literally eats people alive, chews them up, and spits them out when it’s done with them. Las Vegas is another cruel town. It also eats people alive and bulimically vomits them out when it’s done. Neither town gives a damn about you – or anyone, really.

Both towns are all about money and the nice things that money can buy, like everything in the world, including humans for sex – sex which is pretty much pump and go to the club to grab a new one. There’s narcissism everywhere in  Hollywood. Hollywood literally breathes, eats, sleeps, and even shits narcissism. Narcissism is the gas, Hollywood is the engine. No narcissism, no Hollywood.

Both towns are predatory, with the rich preying on the poor suckers filled with the naive hope of fame or riches in both places. Both cities seem soulless and post-Christian or possibly never even Christian in the first place, as in heathen.

Both Hollywood and Vegas are in a race for the bottom behavior-wise, and no one gives a damn in either place. No one gives a damn about what? Anything. No one gives a damn about anything.

A lot of people move to Hollywood and LA to party their brains out for a while and then die. LA is literally a suicide trip for a lot of people. If narcissism is the gas for the Hollywood engine, nihilism is the exhaust.

Check out Sunset Boulevard in cinema, Nathaniel West or John Rechy in literature, or the Eagles, X, and the Germs in music for more. LA’s right on the edge of the sea after all. One earthquake and it all falls into the surf. LA is literally the end of a continent, and after you spend some time there, it really feels like it. It’s a lot of fun if you can take it, but it’s basically a stone evil town with pretty much zero morals about anything.

Alt Left: What’s Behind California’s High Housing Costs and High Rates of Homelessness, Poverty, and Welfare Use?

Tulio: Hey RL, just a bit off topic, I was recently reading that California when adjusted for cost of living has the highest poverty rate in the country and that it also has the most welfare recipients.

The Right has been going nuts in the Trump era bashing California and called it a failed 3rd World state that looks the way it does because it’s controlled by Democrats. A lot of that is of course hyperbole, but there is a lot of struggle in California.

I’ve always found this argument a bit specious because there are 15 or so other states where Democrats control the governorship and legislature that don’t have the same quality of life problems. The Right will ignore of course that the majority of high-poverty states are red states.

But there is a question I’m wondering. Is the demographic change of California from majority White to now mostly Latino the reason for these economic problems? It stands to reason that if most of your demographic change is coming from immigrants of a poor country, it will make your state a poorer place.

And this has nothing to do with people voting Democratic per se. If tomorrow 10 million Central Americans immigrated to Nebraska I’m sure you’d see similar issues emerge.

Good question.  This is an excellent hypothesis, actually. I just don’t think there is much of anything to it.

High Cost of Housing: The Secret Behind All of the Problems

The adjusted poverty rate is due to the high cost of housing. Everything else flows from that. What are we supposed to do about it? This is a problem of capitalism. Explain what the state is supposed to do about this housing problem.

I mean we are trying to do a lot of things but the money’s not available for a total solution to the problem. Also our solutions are running into a lot of NIMBYism.

The Homeless Cataclysm

We are fairly kind to our homeless here, so other states kindly put their homeless on buses to California, especially cities like San Francisco. We are trying to deal with this homeless problem as best as we can. What are we supposed to do? The homeless problem is also tied into the housing problem.

Problems of Penal System Reform

The problem is also drugs. Face it, a lot of the homeless are mentally ill or alcohol or drug addicted. They can’t work even if they wanted to. We have decriminalized a lot of drug use here and we released a lot of inmates and reduced a lot of crimes from felonies to  misdemeanors. Also our jails and prisons are badly overcrowded. Hence a lot fewer minor offenders are getting locked up and a lot of them are just roaming the streets instead.

Problems of Drug Decriminalization or Legalization

Everyone says we ought to decrim drug use and I have always tended to agree. But this is what you end up with when you do that. In Seattle, they look the other way on minor drug use and possession, hence there is a huge amount of open drug possession, use, and dealing, a lot of it right out in the open and associated with the homeless.

The drug of choice is often methamphetamine, which can make you act pretty crazy. So you have these crazed meth heads roaming around the streets scaring everyone, certain streets no-go zones due to open drug use, homeless everywhere, even sleeping on sidewalks  where you have to step over them, and rampant crime, mostly petty thievery from stores as addicts steal like crazy to get money for their habits.

I am at a loss to do about any of these problems, sorry. I just want to throw up my hands.

What’s Wrong with Social Programs?

So we have a lot of welfare? Big deal. That’s the state trying to deal with the poverty problem. Good for the state! Keep in mind that to these guys, everything is welfare: Section 8, Food Stamps, Disability, Workman’s Comp, reduced utility bills, on and on.

Serious Limits on What a Mere State Can Do about These Things

We are a very liberal state with a very liberal Legislature that cares a lot about these problems, but they are beyond the scope of the state government to deal with, much less fix. But we are trying our best. Ask these Republicans what we ought to be doing instead.

I don’t think changing from a majority White state to a majority Hispanic state has much to do with it. There is a lot of poverty, here but there is also a lot of wealth. Keep in mind that California has the 8th largest economy on Earth, higher than the vast majority of actual countries. And we’re not even a country. We are just a state.

Bald Eagles In North America

Polar Bear: Just woke from a dream pondering why bald eagles favor North America? Well, they favor Alaska specifically. The last remnant of old untapped forests that was the early North American frontier.

Those birds favor colder areas for the most part, I believe. Anyway, they only evolved in North America. I believe there are other types of large eagles down in South America. There are definitely warm weather jungle eagles in the Philippines, but they are almost extinct.

Bald eagles are actually water birds that tend to be fish eaters, specifically favoring dead fish. They’re basically scavengers – not very dignified animals. It’s weird how we think of our national bird as this proud, dignified creature because they’re not. They simply look regal and impressive  – they don’t act that way.

They’re found around large bodies of water – lakes and large rivers. Alaska is wild, yes, but it’s also full of large rivers and lakes, especially in the southern part. They especially favor the large rivers which often have huge salmon runs. Large numbers of eagles congregate on these rivers to feed on the salmon.

We actually have bald eagles in the local area in the Sierra Nevada at a lake called Bass Lake. They’re been breeding there for years. I went one time to a bar on the shore of the lake and looked at a couple of bald eagles on a nest on a treetop. There’s been a pair breeding there for years.

They’re very rare down here in the Central Valley. I finally saw a bald eagle here locally after we had a huge amount of rain, and there were small lakes formed all over the local grazing land. I looked out at this huge flooded area and saw a huge animal. At first I thought it was a cow, except it wasn’t a cow. Next I thought it was a dog, except it was way too big to be a dog.

I pulled over, confused, and got out of my car. Sure enough, it was a bald eagle! The thing was absolutely huge, one of the most massive birds you will ever see. It took off when I pulled over, as other animals like coyotes usually do if you pull over and look at them. It was a damned impressive sight, man.

Alt Left: Absolutely Everything Is Now Officially Racism Now in California

Recently I have had a number of awkward experiences in which my comments were interpreted as “extremely inappropriate” by the people I was talking to. The comments had to do with race and they were apparently inappropriate I would assume due to racism. Here they are:

I was in a coffee shop:

Barista:  “Hey Bob. Joe!”

Me: “Joe what?”

Barista: “Joe Mama!”

Laughs all around. I point out where the phrase comes from.

Me: “That phrase actually comes from Black culture. Apparently this is a racist comment!”

Me: “That comment means,’Joe Mama stand on de corner.’ Your mother stands on the corner. It’s calling someone’s mother a prostitute. It’s an insult.” Extreme racism, plus maybe #metoo crap for unwanted sexual comment.

Me: “In Black culture it is an extreme insult to attack another man’s mother.” Extreme racism!

Me: “You might actually get killed for insulting  someone’s mother in that way. They make a really big deal out of it. It’s a huge insult in Black culture.” Extreme racism!

Barista makes some cryptic remark implying that my comments are extremely offensive!

Other barista shakes his head like he can’t believe I just made such offensive remarks.

Look, I’m sorry. This is just weird. I actually learned this at home at from talking to my parents. They told all of us kids what that phrase meant. I guess my parents are extremely inappropriate! I’ve talked about this a number of times over the years with many different people and no one gave two fucks about. All of a sudden this discussion that I have been having all my life is extreme racism!

More to the point. I have no idea why this comment is even racist. Pointing out that the comment has its origins in Black culture as an insult of someone’s mother is racism? How in the Hell is that racist? It’s simply true. The truth has been racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and bigoted for a long time now in this insane country.

But honestly, truth is a defense against racism. Obviously you might want to phrase certain truths about groups carefully because the Goddamn facts about certain groups are frankly shocking and don’t make them look all that good. But the truth is never bigoted or hateful. That’s preposterous. How can proven scientific fact be “hateful?”

This stuff is just getting weird. I’m obviously not keen on out and out hardcore racist comments, particularly in public where people can hear them. But now it’s like the very mention that race exists at all is profoundly racist and “hateful.” This is bizarre and furthermore, it’s insensible.

There’s no logical reason for society to think like this, unlike we want to live in Snowflake World, where everyone’s feelings are on the verge of falling apart at any time, where folks have their antennas out all day long to make sure that no one says or does anything that makes “uncomfortable,” that most people are fragile weaklings who break down and have panic attacks over the most innocent behaviors and comments.

You all really want to live in Snowflake Land like this where you have to walk on eggshells all the time because everyone is on edge and on the verge of been made to feel “uncomfortable” at any time for any reason? Why? That sounds like a drag. Like no fun. Like party pooper, prig, prudish, uptight, tense, dour no fun.

Here is another one.

In a hair salon where I get my haircut talking about a beauty supply store where they suggested I go to get something I need:

Salon people: “It’s at 41 and Fresno Street.”

Me: “Do they even intersect? I thought they ran parallel?”

Salon people: “Yes, they do. Farther down they intersect.”

Me: “Oh! I know where that is! That’s the Black part of town, right?” Uncomfortable looks around the room like I said something wrong. Actually it is the Black part of town. Apparently saying there is Black side of town is a very racist remark!

Me: “Actually a lot of Black women wear extensions, right?” Apparently extreme racism.

Me: “Black women like to have their hair straight because it looks better that way so they are always straightening their hair and whatnot.” Apparently extreme racism!

Me: “But Black men don’t look good with straight hair. Have you ever seen a Black man with straight hair? Like James Brown? It doesn’t look good for some reason.” More extreme racism.

How on Earth is a discussion of Black people’s hair habits racist, in a damned hair salon for Chrissake, a perfectly appropriate place for such a conversation? Everything I said was straight up truth. Magazines, especially women’s and beauty magazines, talk about this sort of thing all the time. These are well-known facts.

This stuff is just getting weird. I’m tense a good part of the time when I am out, monitoring my every word and action to make sure I don’t do or say something that violates SJW bullshit. It’s not really a very fun place to be. I feel like I’m in a prison, and the world feels like a scary place now where anyone can get offended and upset for any reason at any time about my behavior. This is supposed to be fun or something?

This is making the world into a huge drag where entire subjects are completely off the table at all times. It’s like have turned into a nation of church ladies. Not to mention, SJW offense over the 600,000 things you can’t say and the 300,000 things you can’t do is profound moralfaggotry because it shames people and tells them that they are bad human beings simply for stating inoffensive and uncontroversial facts of life.

Calling people immoral, bad, and evil for fairly innocuous statements and behaviors is the essence of moralfaggotry. Face it. SJW’s are extreme moralfags, some of the worst in our entire benighted land.

Stray Cats in the US

While there are few stray dogs in White areas, there are some stray cats in these places. We don’t really like them, but we tolerate them. Some people trap them and pay to have them neutered, which is the best policy. Also a lot of people feed them. I don’t really like it as those wild cats kill an awful lot of rodents, small reptiles like lizards, and especially birds.

Cats kill an incredible number of birds in the US every year. There’s a town called Antioch in Northern California where there are supposedly 26,000 cats and they are hammering the birds something awful. Sorry, you have to start killing them when it gets like that. The town are trying to kill a lot of those cats, but the cat-lovers are up in arms over it.

Animal control goes out, catches a dog or cat, and brings it to the “pound.” The dog or cat stays in the pound for a week or two, at which time anyone can adopt it assuming it’s not totally wild. Wild cats cannot be adopted at all, and if they have been wild even for a short time at the beginning of their lives, say 2-3 weeks, there is a wildness that gets imprinted on them that stays with them for the rest of their lives – could be 18 years.

If no one adopts the pet after a week or two, they take the animal and put it in a chamber that has some strong tranquilizing gas pumped into it. The pet more or less falls and asleep and dies soon after.

There are now no-kill shelters, which I think are irrational. My Mom loves them, as she is a cat-lover. These places somehow just house all these stray cats forever. There is one near here called Cathouse on the Kings. My Mom and sister have been there a few times. There are literally hundreds of cats on a small enclosure.

These cat-lovers don’t make sense. They’re irrational. They’re mostly women, so of course they’re irrational, right? They think we can solve the stray cat problem with catch and euthanize. It’s a great idea except it doesn’t work. We catch and euthanize lots of them, but the numbers still don’t go down, as the others are breeding, or the numbers of stray cats are always being replenished by new stray cats.

A lot of stray cats are former pets. I adopted one once. This is a part of White culture that is no good. It’s ignorant working class White culture. People move and when they move, they usually don’t take their cats. For one thing, cats don’t travel well at all.

A lot of Whites like this turn their cats loose in the wild instead of taking them to the pound and killing them as you are supposed to. They think it’s more humane to turn the animal loose in the woods somewhere than to take it to the pound and kill it.

Except it’s not, really. Most former pets turned loose die horrible deaths maybe a week or two after being abandoned. I have seen what appear to be former pet cats when I was out walking in the woods. One was emaciated and looked ill. But it wouldn’t let me near it. Most former pets don’t know how to hunt or survive in the wild very well.

Or these working class Whites refuse to fix their female, so it has kittens. $25 is just too much money. She has kittens a lot and they just take the kittens out and abandon them somewhere. I have no idea if other ethnicities do this. I know that middle class Whites think working class Whites are disgusting morons for throwing their cats out to the wild like that.

Alt Left: Venezuela: What Capital Flight and Capital Strikes Look Like

Let’s suppose that half the employers in the US simply closed up their shops and shipped all their money overseas to sit in investments. They had plenty enough money to live off of anyway. If you asked them what they were doing, they would tell you that they are refusing to invest in the California economy because they hate the liberal California government.

Well, in a nutshell, that’s part of what happened in Venezuela. A country cannot just sit there while everyone with any money at all ships it out of the country instead of investing it in their homeland. Obviously that’s not going to work. So Chavez put in capital controls to try to stem the capital flight.

It worked but then it created a whole host of other problems. And even with the laws against it, Venezuela has continued to see $50 billion/year flow right out of the economy, generally right to Houston or Miami.

In recent months, all capital controls were eliminated and the exchange rate was finally allowed to float after all this time. Inflation collapsed but so did the economy and it was already racing downhill anyway.

How do you cure runaway inflation? Real easy. You reduce demand. How to you do that? You make it so wages are so low and goods so high that hardly anyone is buying anything anymore. Since inflation runs on supply and demand as its cause and effect, generally you reduce demand and prices tend to drop. You increase demand and they tend to go up. It’s Economics 101.

Nice little doomsday comment here from one of our commenters:

Francis Meville: Anyway, the US are heading towards another worse Vietnam. Venezuela will turn socialist as they can no longer afford to live in a liberal economy. What Venezuela is experiencing right now is not socialism but mass lay off by capital, like half the Californian population living on the streets because the cost of living is way too high.

And most American media tell the yokels all that happens because California is run by the radical Left just one notch below Venezuela as a harbinger of the plagues to befall everybody if were don’t vote more and more reactionary politicians with the decades passing.

You know that California has nothing socialist, so what is happening in Venezuela has as little relationship with the evil they pretend.

This time Trump has committed some kind of hubris America will never recover from. Trump imagines he can arrive in Caracas aboard an aircraft carrier and by helicopter to proclaim like an angel Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela and then depart at the head of a ticker-tape parade of triumph.

It is disappointing relatively to the slowdown or cessation of projects that government had instituted for its people mostly due to high-tech American hybrid wars techniques, but it is not a catastrophe.

Maduro is not the economic genius it would have taken in face of such a foe, but he is being pushed back down to his own level of top competence as per Peter’s principle: class war and union action, where he could tower even over Uncle Ho. Good night America!

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