MaxRedline

Is There Anything That DOESN'T "Worry Outdoor Groups"?

Proposed bills aiming to let states manage segments of federal forestlands so they can produce more timber have drawn concerns from outdoor recreation and fishing groups. They warn the move would prioritize timber over other uses, circumvent current planning processes, restrict public access and pave the way toward privatizing public lands.

Well hey, you "concerned outdoor groups" - how do you like all of those wildfires that happen more frequently and with increased intensity year over year do to the fact that the feds have been unable to properly manage the forests? And why has that situation come to pass?

The answer to the latter is straightforward: it's in large part due to years of ever-increasing litigation by "concerned outdoor groups" whose primary function involves not forest management, but litigation. To put it another way, the problem is not forest management itself; it's you.

Legislators have pointed to the fast spread of insects and wildfires when federal lands are not properly managed, and they have emphasized the closing of sawmills and the loss of jobs over the years.

It's obvious that you don't care about forest management, wildfires, or millions of trees killed by invasive bark beetles - and even less about jobs and local economies.

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Disturbing Is One Word For It

In the wake of the Brexit vote, which was largely to have been related to finance and independence issues, Formerly Great Britain has devolved into a mob scene, complete with the firebombing of a halal butcher shop. And the anger is not aimed purely at the masses of incoming Muslims, many of whom may well be actual refugees (though terror groups chortle that they've been sending in their agents among them), but people presumed to originate from anywhere other other than the U.K. itself. Thus, there have been beatings, threats, business windows smashed, and more.

The way things seem to be going, the U.K. is well on its way to devolving even further, into competing tribes.

It's one thing to vote to regain independence from an oppressive globalist government, but quite another to use that as an excuse to descend into barbarism.

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Let The Games Begin!

Arrivals at Rio de Janeiro's international airport were warmly welcomed by first responders on Monday:

If that doesn't give the old confidence level a real booster-shot in the arm, it's hard to say what might.

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Holiday Weekend Approacheth

NOAA would like to take this time to remind you not to pick up any baby seals you may find lying on the beach. Above all, do not place them in your shopping bags or put them in your shower or bathtub. There have been a large number of the these sorts of occurrences along the Pacific coast of late, the most recent of which involved a couple (doubtlessly visiting) in Garibaldi, Oregon who happened across a baby harbor seal and, deciding somehow that it had been abandoned, wrapped it in a beach towel, placed it into their car, drove over to their place, and stuck the seal into their shower.

The seal was subsequently returned by wildlife staff from NOAA to the site of its discovery, but died overnight.

City people are remarkably stupid.

Actually, that might also explain why government in general is so messed up; city people without a collective ounce of common sense are running it.

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The Killing Fields

WOODBURN, Ore. (KOIN) — Three people were killed and another critically injured in a shooting Monday at a berry farm outside Woodburn.

Reports of the shooting came in around 11:05 a.m. and police arrived at the farmhouse on the 13000 block of Killiam Road NE about 15 minutes later.

Two men were pronounced dead at the scene, and the third person, a woman, died later, officials told KOIN 6 News.

Bonifacio Oseguera-Gonzalez, 29, was arrested in connection with a triple homicide. (MCSO)

The victims, along with the alleged shooter who was caught while trying to make a getaway heading east on I-84, have all been identified.

Ruben Rigoberto-Reyes, 60, and Edmundo Amaro-Bajonero, 26, died at the scene. Katie Gildersleeve, 30, was rushed by ambulance to Legacy Emanuel Hospital in Portland. She later died from her injuries.

The 4th person, Refugio Modesto-DeLaCruz, was taken by ambulance to OHSU. He is critically injured but is expected to survive.

Legacy Emanuel and OHSU are the two trauma centers in the Portland metropolitan area.

Although Woodburn is crawling with illegal alien Latinos, it's unclear how such an event could have occurred, since Bonifacio would most certainly have purchased his weapon legally, in accordance with existing gun laws.

As a side note, it's worth observing that it is well-known around here that if one wants to obtain a green card or a Social Security card, they can be inexpensively obtained in Woodburn. Nobody seems to know how that happens, but what is quite apparent is that the feds aren't interested.

Homelessness, Bum Camps, And Portland City Council

Here's a homeless camp in downtown Portland that many folks - particularly Portland politicians - find disturbing:

Portland City Council members want to move this camp, referred to as "Right 2 Dream Too" (R2D2) over to the southeast industrial area, where it won't be so noticeable. Yet what I see when looking at it is a place that's clean and well-organized. And while it would be nice if they had actual homes rather than having to live in tents, they seem nonetheless to possess a level of dignity and self-respect not found in other areas around the city, where what I refer to as Bum Camps abound; those folks seem to lack fundamental dignity, self-respect, and concern for others.

Let's take a moment to examine a photo of a typical Bum Camp. The difference should be immediately apparent:

Portland City Council members (and Multnomah County commisioners) seem to believe that all the guy below needs is for taxpayers to pay a few hundred million dollars to build him some "affordable housing".

All of those politicians are completely out of touch, and most Oregonians know it:

Is a lack of affordable housing the root cause of homelessness?

Some local affordable housing advocates are making that argument as they press Portland and Multnomah County leaders to spend millions of dollars to create more affordable housing.

But most people in Oregon and the Portland area don’t agree with that premise, according to a recent survey by DHM Research. Although the vast majority of respondents believe the state and region is facing a housing crisis, most believe homelessness is best viewed as a separate issue that requires other solutions.

In looking at the issue of homelessness, a large majority of respondents, both in the Portland area and across the rest of the state, attribute homelessness not so much for lack of "affordable housing", but to other factors such as chronic unemployment (number one according to respondents). In fact, lack of "affordable housing" came in well down the list in terms of most cited causes. Unemployment was number one:

It was followed by personal choice, poverty, the lack of mental illness services, low-paying jobs, and the lack of substance abuse services. The lack of affordable housing came in seventh with only 22 percent.

Clearly, the Democrat politicians are completely tone-deaf; the only drum they can come up with to bang on is that taxpayers need to give them (in the city of Portland and the County of Multnomah) some $300 million so that they can build "affordable housing".

It doesn't seem to occur to them that getting involved in the real estate and construction industries doesn't fall into the category of core government functions.

Now, doing things like maintaining infrastructure such as roads does fall into that category, but having spent decades on frippery, they now complain that they don't have the money to do what they should have been doing all along. Public safety is another item that falls into the core function category, but as noted here recently, the city's police chief - under multiple investigations after having shot his drinking buddy and then lying about it - has resigned. And the Sheriff in Multnomah county is facing scrutiny over his actions as well.

Neither government seems able to address the core function of public safety, yet they have somehow concluded that they should get millions more in tax dollars to build "affordable housing" for the homeless.

Right.

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Death On The Rocks

A 54 year-old mother of three collapsed and died while hiking in Central Oregon last Saturday morning.

A Michigan state representative was nearing the top of Misery Ridge — a viewpoint on central Oregon's Smith Rock — when she said she didn't think she could go any farther.

An autopsy is scheduled for today, but it's suspected that she suffered a massive coronary infarction.

Julie Plawecki, a former teacher and medical technologist, was vacationing in Oregon with her youngest and eldest daughters. Her husband said the eldest, Rachel, 24, lives in Portland and works for a nonprofit. He said the youngest, Monica, 19, is a junior at the University of Michigan.

They hit Portland, Crater Lake and Smith Rock and had planned more before the trip was scheduled to end Tuesday.

Sadly, the trip for the legislator ended today at a morgue.

Misery Ridge likely derives its name from the fact that although it's a short trek, it's quite steep, so getting up there - especially in the early days - was truly an exercise in misery. And unfortunately, there is no possible way for EMT assistance to arrive on site with anything remotely resembling speed. Because the hike is relatively arduous, those who are not in excellent shape should probably not make the attempt - or if they must, they should at least take frequent rest breaks along the way up. Rest breaks do add time to the duration of the ascent, but there's no rule that says you have to get to the top of the rock in half an hour. The breaks afford an additional measure of safety, and that's really all that's important.

Burning California

A record number of dead trees in the southern Sierra Nevada has the Forest Service on alert. These trees - dead or dying from drought stress and a massive uptick in pine beetle infestations - are adding tinder to the already risky wildfire situation in the parched state.

In an aerial survey, the US Forest Service identified 26 million trees dead in the southern Sierra Nevada area of California since October 2015, a number added on to the already 40 million trees statewide that have died since 2010 for a total of 66 million dead trees.

And bark beetles are spreading like wildfire, which will likely add to the numbers of dead trees in the coming years. You just know that the professional litigant groups like Sierra Club are going to fight Forest Service plans to undertake a massive effort to remove the tinder in order to reduce the likelihood of more massive wildfires; an approach that will involve a lot of chain-saws and salvage logging operations over a number of years.

The USFS was tasked with managing our forests, which involved keeping brush in check and allowing logging companies to purchase contracts to cut in areas where trees were growing too closely together; the contract-holders are also required to replant a certain percentage of trees after logging. None of that's easy work, as I can attest, having spent a summer planting near Coos Bay in the early 1970s.

But today, well over half of the USFS budget is consumed by wildfire containment and fighting litigation that is constantly pursued by so-called "environmental groups", which leaves little left over in their budget for actual forest management.

 

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That's A Lot Of Balloons!

Helium has been considered a dwindling resource, and one of the big uses for the gas is in medical imaging - especially  in MRI machines - which partly explains why imaging costs so darned much.  The Federal Helium Reserve in Texas, which contains nearly a third of global reserves at roughly 24 billion cubic feet, has suddenly been dwarfed by a huge discovery:

What scientists are calling a "game changer" for society has been discovered deep in Tanzania's Rift Valley: a massive helium gas field with enough of the precious commodity to fill more than 1.2 million MRI scanners, Phys.org reports. Researchers figure there's about 54 billion cubic feet of helium in just one section of the valley.

Interestingly, the researchers from Durham University and Oxford University didn't just stumble across it (as is usually the case; discoveries of trapped helium have been accidental, associated with oil and natural gas drilling operations). These folks have developed a new approach designed specifically to locate helium stores. No wonder it's being called a "game-changer".

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Left Loses A Pinata

For over a year and a half, the left have enjoyed pointing to former Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell as an example of Republican corruption - and they lost their toy yesterday, when SCOTUS overturned the September 2014 conviction of McDonnell and his wife on bribery charges. Tantrums and accusations that SCOTUS is "packed with conservatives" are almost certain to follow.

Expect great wailing and gnashing of teeth in the wake of this ruling.