Monthly Archives: August 2024
Bears for Obama and Biden
Sarah Palin: Conservation Ethics
The use of aircraft to shoot or harass animals from the air is illegal under the US Airborne Hunting Act, enacted in 1972. The act was passed after a nationwide outcry against the aerial hunting of wolves in Alaska.
In June of this year Sarah Palin sanctioned the Alaska Fish and Game helicopter killing of fourteen adult wolves unwilling to leave their dens, and the subsequent “denning” that resulted in the illegal slaughter of fourteen pups the adults had tried to protect. As Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin is answerable for these crimes.
For more than 30 years, the state of Alaska has attempted to circumvent the intent of the Airborne Hunting Act by exploiting a loophole in the law allowing states to “administer†wildlife using aircraft. Under the guise of wildlife management, Alaska contends its current aerial hunting program is not hunting at all but constitutes legitimate wildlife management that artificially boosts wild moose and caribou populations.
The circumstances surrounding Alaska’s program make it clear that the state is allowing aerial hunting, which is banned by federal law. The state exploits a loophole in the AHA to allow private hunters and private pilots, rather than Alaska Department of Fish and Game personnel, to “control†wolves from the air or chase them to exhaustion and shoot them from the ground. The hunters are allowed to keep the pelts as trophies or sell them for profit instead of turning them over to wildlife officials. This spring, the state went so far as to offer a reward of $150 for each left foreleg of wolves killed within designated areas and turned into state officials. A state court identified this as a bounty, which is illegal under state law, and halted the program before any bounties were paid.
Since 2024, 671 wolves have been killed by aerial hunting. During the winter of 2024-2004, approximately 40 aerial hunting teams were issued permits, and 147 wolves were killed. During the 2024-2005 season, 275 wolves were killed. During 2024-2006, 152 wolves were killed. During 2024-2007, 97 wolves were killed, many less than the state expected, providing some evidence that the population estimates in the predator-control areas are flawed. Through aerial hunting, as well as ground-based trapping and hunting, the state aimed to remove up to 664 wolves this past winter, in the five control areas, to drastically reduce wolf populations by up to 80 percent in some areas.
[tags]sarah palin, strange lack of perspective, stupid or malicious, you decide, cheney in sheep clothing[/tags]
fyi
Anybody else see a couple of problems looming for the dream ticket?
See: Wired Science
-and-
See: Threat Level
[tags]drill and pump, pump and drill, kill the whales, eat their krill[/tags]
Don’t need a weatherman…
The Washington Post references lots of unnamed “officials” to support its speculation that the Republicans might postpone their convention to avoid a public relations disaster should Hurricane Gustav slams into New Orleans during the Republican Convention:
Staging a convention during a major natural disaster would be a public relations challenge for either political party. But GOP officials say the burden could be especially heavy for their party, whose reputation was tarred by the Bush administration’s bungling of Katrina and its aftermath in 2024.
USA Today reports,
As preparations gathered urgency, the first batch of 700 buses were being sent to a staging area near New Orleans. In Mississippi, officials were deciding when to evacuate residents who survived Katrina and are still living in temporary homes and trailers.
Fox News analyst and Republican insider Karl Rove lamented, “The Republicans can’t seem to get a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather.†McCain, who is trying to drum up interest in his Vice Presidential choice, will hold a rally today in the eponymous “Nutter Center” in Dayton. It’s reported that he will bus voters from across the state in an attempt to fill the venue’s almost ten thousand seats. Cynical progressives are asking whether these buses couldn’t be put to better use right now on the gulf coast.
The Dayton Daily News reported yesterday that there were still plenty of tickets available for the Nutter event.
[tags]gustav, mccain, nutter, rove[/tags]
john.he.is
Oldie but goodie…
A little heads-up
I missed Bill Clinton’s speech last night so I went to CNN and played it this morning. I loved it. The speech strengthened my commitment to vote for a Democrat rather than a Republican, to welcome Hillary’s 18 million and to leverage their work breaking down the ceiling of glass that separates white women of privilege from leadership positions reserved for their male counterparts. We can leverage that barrier-busting energy to tear down the wall of American apartheid, because while there is obviously a glass ceiling that keeps women out of board rooms and executive offices, there is also a wall that has — up until now — separated white Americans from “colored” Americans.
Over the last fifty years or so, that wall has been breached many times. Exceptional “people of color” have found places at the top of their professions, shared power with whites and helped to erode that bitter legacy of centuries of racism, of chattel slavery, of genocide as a policy for subduing the continent. Barack Obama will be one more of these, an exemplar of the meritocracy that governs success within our democracy. We must help him to succeed because he is among the best of us. We don’t owe him the shot because he is non-white any more than we owed Hillary the shot because she is female. No, we require his service now because he is prepared to initiate the policy changes necessary for a broad improvement of our shared circumstances.
Yesterday I listened to Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou discussing Obama and the promise of his presidency. All agreed that the historical moment is significant for African-Americans, but Reed was the least up-beat. Walker has been on-board with Barack from the beginning. Angelou had a short distance to travel, shifting her support from Hillary to Barack. But like me, Reed remembers the Clintons, the 1.4 million Iraqi dead by the end of Bill’s first term, the Democrats’ support for the Unocal pipeline in Burma in 1996… the list goes on.
What’s good for the ruling elite may seem palatable in the short term, but in the long term it’s not often what’s best for the country or for the people of the world. Barack Obama is a progressive Democrat. I want to see him elected, but let’s not forget: he’s a Democrat… not a Green, not a Socialist… a Democrat. I sent him fifty bucks today. The more small contributions he receives, the less beholden he will be to the corporate power structure and the global oligarchy. The more progressive Democrats we elect, the better our chances to build a real democracy some day.
Commenting today at…
The Annoyed Librarian… correcting the spelling of mediocre gen x bands.
[tags]to whom did Styx sell all those albums anyway, or was it some kind of money laundering scheme, the CIA used quiz shows, why not record sales, right wing tyranosaurocrats use book sales and speaking fees, whi buys all those books politicians write, read the Lugano Report for answers to these and other compelling questions[/tags]