by Alex Gimarc                                Mon., January 12, 2009

Interesting Items 1/12 -

Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy -

In this issue:

1. Yellowstone
2. Moose
3. CPSIA
4. Retirements
5. Hamas
6. Pakistan

1. Yellowstone. The Yellowstone caldera st arted off the New Year with a bang. There was and e arthquake swarm with hundreds of small quakes ranging in strength from 2 – 3.8 on the Richter scale. Disaster mongers on the net immediately st arted beating the drums, warning about the next Big One, eruption on the scale of the last super eruption 600,000 years ago. University of Utah geologists who monitor the caldera have it listed at a normal level of activity. On a cautionary note, the hot spot under Yellowstone is very active, and erupts much more often than the super eruptions that eject thousands of cubic kilometers of material. A 2001 article by Christiansen noted that there were at least 17 major eruptions out of the Yellowstone caldera over the last 170,000 years, each emitting tens of cubic kilometers of material (between the size of Katmai – Novarupta in 1912 or Tambora in 1815). Should one of those occur, it will be a large, awful mess, but not the end of Life As We Know It.

2. Moose. Last weekend, the local fishwrapper ran a story originally out of the Chicago Tribune bemoaning the loss of moose populations in Minnesota. Of course, the sm art guy biologists quoted all immediately pointed the finger at manmade global warming and control of carbon dioxide emissions. They even held a meeting where they blamed everything on Bush and the Republicans, demanded carbon taxes to control manmade global warming and the rest of the current song and dance. Now for the rest of the story. One of the things we have discovered up here in Alaska is that if you allow the predator numbers to get too far out of control, those predators will destroy the numbers of ungulates – moose and caribou up here, moose, elk and deer down south. If you do a search on wolf populations in Minnesota, you find that they are well on their way to reintroducing “healthy” populations of wolves in Minnesota, proudly doubling total numbers from around 1,500 to over 3,000 since 1989. While wolves are not normally capable of taking down a fully grown and healthy moose, they are more than capable of taking down calves and the old, sick and infirm. Wolf number increases in Minnesota are sufficient to explain a long slide in moose population. Along with an increase in wolf numbers, you also get an increase in coyote populations. The biologists call them as different species, but they can all interbreed and make new, healthy young that can breed also. Dogs, coyotes and wolves are all different flavors of the same species. While coyotes cannot take down moose, like wolves, they can certainly go after the young, which is what appears to be taking place in Minnesota as the decline in moose numbers is a long, slow slide. The other predator that takes moose up here are bears, and northern Minnesota has a black bear population over 30,000 animals as of 2001. State Fish & Game wants hunters to take over 7,000 of these yearly (NPR article from 2001). My dime says that Minnesota doesn’t have a global warming problem with their moose. They have a predator problem and if they choose not to control the numbers of wolves (including coyotes) and bears, they are going to quickly run out of moose.

3. CPSIA. In the name of saving The Children from the evils of lead and phthalates in their clothing, congress passed a revision to the Consumer Product Safety improvement Act in 2008. This Nanny State legislation was intended to protect The Children from evil ChiCom chemicals that showed up in toys and clothing manufactured in China and sold here in the US over the last few years. Provisions of the legislation require testing for the chemicals by clothing manufacturers and stores that sell the products. This is not normally a problem for new clothing. More importantly, they also require resellers – charities, thrift and second hand stores – to do the same testing. Now charities, thrifts and second hand clothing stores do not have the ability to test donated children’s clothing for these chemicals. As a result, they are no longer carrying the clothing, choosing instead to discard them. There will be no children’s clothing available after the new regulations go into effect on Feb 10 unless congress changes their mind and repeals them. This is yet another in a seemingly endless series of examples of what can happen when congress mucks around in the marketplace, creating a larger problem than they are solving, and putting charities, thrifts and second hand stores that provide a real service to the poor and indigent with children out of business. They have just made it a bit harder for all of us to live our lives.

4. Retirements. As it stands today, it looks like there will be at least four sitting Republican US senators retiring and choosing not to run for reelection in 2010. The current list is thought to be Kay Bailey Hutchison (R, TX), who is thought to be interesting in running for Texas governor; Kit Bond (R, MO); Sam Brownback (R, KS); and George Voinovich ( RINO, OH). Of these four, Voinovich has been the largest disappointment and won’t be missed. Additionally, Jeb Bush announced last week that he was not going to be running for US Senate from Florida in 2010. On the democrat side, we will have Obama’s replacement in Illinois – whoever that may be, Biden’s son in Delaware, Hillary’s replacement in NY, and possibly a replacement for Dianne Feinstein in CA, who has been rumored to be interested in running for CA governor. 2010 may be a year where we have the opportunity to reshuffle the deck in the senate and elect some strong conservatives to respond to the mess that Obama’s economic team and the 111 th congress is well on its way to creating.

5. Hamas. The war against Hamas continued last week and apparently Hamas is not doing so very well. CNN broadcast a Hamas produced video of several Hamas medical people doing CPR on a dying child. Of course they weren’t really doing CPR, as they were barely touching the kid. The video was outed as yet another Hamas produced and directed anti-Israeli hit piece by several bloggers. CNN doubled down and attacked the bloggers. The Israelis hit a UN school and reportedly killed 40 children in that school. A couple days later, they announced that the school was being used by Hamas as a mortar firing position and that the school was turned into a weapons dump by Hamas, apparently with the tacit approval of the UN people running it. The politics on this operation among the Israelis will be interesting to watch play out, as Prime Minister Olmert took no small amount of well deserved criticism for his half-hearted, half-baked execution of the war against Hezbollah in 2006. It is clear that he and his hand-picked successor Tizipi Livni, who have taken a soft approach to both Hamas and Hezbollah in the past, are trying to be more forceful this time around. But it also appears that they are not up to the task of using the IDF to completely eliminate Hamas from Gaza. Expect this operation to continue for another week or two and for the rockets to start up again as soon as the IDF leaves. Israeli elections are scheduled sometime in February.

6. Pakistan. India presented the Pakistani government with an extensive dossier of information collected following the Bombay (Mumbai) massacre last month. The package included telephone intercepts; GPS location and tracking data; recorded discussions between the terrorists and their handlers in Pakistan; a detailed confession from the only captured terrorist; and a variety of information about equipment used in and in support of the attack. I have seen at least one report of a Pakistani General Officer being involved with the attack as a handler, though I am unable to find that citation as I write this. Will say it is rumored for now. The Indian government also briefed over a dozen other nations on the dossier. In the olden days, such a release of information to a neighboring government would be quickly followed by some sort of ultimatum to do something about it. As I understand it, this one did not. However, it may provide the newly elected Pakistani government sufficient impetus to start with a housecleaning in the Pakistani ISI, which has been infiltrated by the Islamists and has been actively supporting their efforts in the tribal areas of western Pakistan. We do not want tensions between India and Pakistan to increase. We do want to put pressure on Pakistan to step up to the plate and solve their problem. Hot Air, Tues.

More later –

           - AG

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.