See the article by clicking here.
— MRW
What a crock of sh*t that was!
Can anyone imagine Churchill pulling a stunt like this? Why does Zelensky get away with it (for the most part)? Both sides are corrupt, Russia and Ukraine alike . . . Did reasonable people pick one side over the other when the Capone mob pitted itself against Bugs Moran’s gang in 1920s Chicago?
Frankly, both Putin and Zelensky deserve to rot in Hell.
— MRW
If I had ever been able to move way back into the boondocks, you’d best believe I’d have been armed with the best tool for personal protection!
— MRW
Read the opinion piece from Anchorage Daily News by clicking here. Copied below in its entirety:
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As bad as things have gotten at Anchorage’s Centennial Park campground this summer, the situation could be much worse. Imagine, for instance, what might happen if a brown bear family were to wander into our city’s newest homeless camp, say at night and undetected.
By nature, brown bears, or grizzlies, are much more aggressive creatures than black bears, particularly females with cubs. If one were to enter an occupied tent in search of food, the resulting encounter could have — and very likely would have — disastrous, perhaps deadly, consequences.
As I write these words in late July, brown bears have so far stayed clear of that repurposed municipal campground. But there’s a good possibility that a brown bear will be lured into the city-sanctioned homeless camp by the smells of human food and garbage, before Mayor Dave Bronson’s administration ends its badly planned and executed experiment sometime this fall.
If done properly and with forethought, a secure and supervised homeless camp could have merit. But the way this one was thrown together, and given its placement along the city’s eastern edge, near forested land that is known to be prime bear habitat, the Centennial camp has proved to be an awful and yes, dangerous, strategy.
Besides all the other problems reported by local media, it’s shameful — and, I would argue, unconscionable — that our mayor and his staff would create a situation that ignores and, even worse, contradicts many of the guidelines and regulations that the city and other government agencies, both state and federal, have put in place to minimize bear-human conflicts in the Anchorage area.
Above all else, there’s been a long and ongoing local campaign to prevent bears from getting into human food and waste, for the simple fact that once bears learn to associate food with people, all bets are off. Animals that are normally wary of people — and that includes both black and brown bears — almost inevitably become bolder and more aggressive after they’ve become what wildlife biologists call “food conditioned.”
Bears, after all, are “opportunistic omnivores” and will naturally go for easy meals when they’re available. Every year, Anchorage-area bears are killed once they’ve learned they can easily obtain food from human neighborhoods, because of the potential danger such bears present.
There’s a reason for the saying, “A fed bear is a dead bear.” Local authorities, whether employed by the state’s departments of Fish and Game and Public Safety or the municipality’s police department, will kill any bear that’s shown it has lost its innate wariness of people because the animal has been rewarded with easy food.
As state wildlife manager Dave Battle recently explained to Alaska Public Media, city Parks and Recreation staff are normally able to monitor the Centennial Park campground and ensure that campers follow “clean camping” rules. Those who refuse to do so are required to leave. That’s no longer the case, now that it’s become a homeless camp. Again, to quote Battle, “We know there’s food in a lot of the tents in Centennial, and there doesn’t seem to be anything anybody can do about it.”
Yes, some number of bear-resistant food containers have been provided and campers instructed to use them. But all the evidence suggests that plenty of Centennial Park’s homeless campers are ignoring such instructions. And some, perhaps many, are keeping unsecured food in their tents, an invitation to a hungry bear to check out what’s available.
Almost from the moment his administration removed the last of Sullivan Arena’s homeless occupants — and despite all evidence to the contrary — Mayor Bronson has insisted the Centennial Park campground is not part of the city’s homelessness strategy. And he’s refused to accept responsibility for the campers’ well-being.
This is simply one in a series of irresponsible actions — or inactions — by our mayor.
I understand that our city’s homeless, including those camped at Centennial Park, face many other challenges beside hungry bears. But because I care deeply about our species’ complicated relationships with other creatures, I am particularly disturbed that the mayor has placed both humans and bears in harm’s way by the manner in which his administration has mismanaged its Centennial Park campground “solution.” And I’m incredulous that he can say it’s safer than the Sullivan Arena or other homeless camps, considering the violence and death that have already occurred there, beyond the human-bear conflicts that have arisen.
It disturbs and saddens me when animals are killed because we humans act ignorantly, neglectfully or mean-spiritedly. In the case of bears, what we often call a “bear problem” is in fact usually a people problem, directly connected to our own bad behavior. This seems especially true at Centennial Park.
Instead of a being positive role models for our city’s residents, the mayor and his staff have been the worst possible examples of behavior that sets up bear-human conflicts and leads to the unnecessary death of bears, including cubs.
The only remaining question, I suppose, is whether the mayor’s Centennial Park strategy will lead to human injury or even death because of the continued bear-human encounters that are almost certain to happen. As Battle has noted, bears will continue being drawn to the Centennial Park campground by the promise of food, and some “are going to try to come into tents, and those people that are there are going to be put in danger.”
The only proper solution is to end this campground’s use as a dedicated homeless camp and move its current residents to a safer place away from the city’s edge. But that’s not likely to happen given our mayor’s stubborn and reckless ways. I’m not sure even a mauling would be enough to change his mind.
I’d wager that our mayor doesn’t give a damn about bears. The question is whether he really cares about Anchorage’s homeless people.
Anchorage nature writer and wildlife/wildlands advocate Bill Sherwonit is a widely published essayist and the author of more than a dozen books, including “Living with Wildness: An Alaskan Odyssey” and “Animal Stories: Encounters with Alaska’s Wildlife.” He also writes a weekly “City Wilds” column for the Anchorage Press.
— MRW
Read the commentary by Michael Reagan (with Michael R. Shannon) from Newsmax by clicking here.
A few years ago, I was a regular paying customer of the King Soopers on Table Mesa in Boulder, which offers an in-store Starbucks; of course, that coffee shop was also a magnet for BUMS who are so numerous in this city. One seat for each homeless person and a second seat for the ton of (mostly useless) stuff they dragged around all day! I haven’t been in that grocery store since December, 2017 and I can’t speak to the situation there today, but unless Starbucks’ management requires a purchase in order to park your butt in their space I’m sure that it hasn’t improved.
— MRW
Also alarming is the apparent serious consideration the Biden administration is giving to trading a notorious Russian arms dealer in federal prison for that dumbass dope-fiend, Brittney Griner. One Fox News reader put it this way: “Just remember, there’s no problem so bad that Joe Biden can’t make it worse.”
— MRW
Read about the program I participated in as a state-certified GED tutor back in Missouri. I worked three one-hour classes four days a week, and earned one of the top-tier inmate salaries at $30/month. (Instant coffee, candy bars, Little Debbie cakes, the ubiquitous ramen noodles, and various hygiene items were my typical purchases from the prison commissary.) It helped to keep my mind sharp, and I enjoyed it greatly.
Many of my students were gangbangers, a few of them from back in the ’60s. I got along with everyone, and they gave me the nickname OG.
GED teachers were overwhelmed with paperwork, and most of the actual instruction was done by tutors one-on-one with student inmates. About 70% of all those incarcerated in Missouri DOC are high school dropouts, a figure that initially astounded me.
In any case, this job kept me from scrubbing floors or picking up litter in the exercise yard — really boring chores.
I can’t think of any good reason that homeless men and women using shelter / services shouldn’t be required to attend GED classes, also . . .
— MRW
These series in the 90 Days universe are generally boring as can be, but this brief clip is still enough to have me rolling on the floor with tears streaming . . .
— MRW
— MRW
See the story from NBC News by clicking here. Copied below in its entirety:
By Benjamin Ryan and Matt Lavietes
The global monkeypox outbreak is primarily being driven by sex between men, according to the first major peer-reviewed paper to analyze a large set of cases of the virus.
The outbreak, which epidemiologists believe initially began in mid-spring gatherings of gay and bisexual men in Europe, has since alarmed such experts by ballooning to nearly 16,000 cases worldwide.
Now infectious disease specialists are developing an increasingly refined understanding of the predominant conduits of monkeypox transmission, as well as the typical disease course patterns.
“These data point clearly to the fact that infections are so far almost exclusively occurring among men who have sex with men,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University, of the new study, which was published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. “And the clinical presentation of these infections suggest that sexual transmission, not just close physical contact, may be helping spread the virus among this population.”
“This large, multicountry study provides the most complete set of clinical and demographic data on monkeypox cases occurring outside endemic areas,” said Nuzzo, who was not involved with the study.
No one has died of monkeypox infection outside of Africa during this outbreak. And for many people, the disease is relatively mild and resolves on its own in a few weeks without any need for medical intervention. However, the new paper reports that monkeypox can cause pain so intense that a substantial proportion of people with the virus require hospitalization for pain management.
“We have seen patients with severe rectal pain that worsens every time they go to the bathroom, genital pain every time they urinate and throat pain every time they swallow,” said Dr. Jason Zucker, an infectious disease specialist at Columbia University Department of Medicine. (Emphasis is mine — MRW)
In the United States, confirmed cases of monkeypox have increased dramatically in recent weeks, to 2,593 as of Thursday. With fears mounting among infectious disease experts that the virus will become endemic in the U.S. and around the world, the Biden administration has been subject to intense criticism by activists and the public health community that its health agencies failed to act quickly enough to stem the outbreak.
The recent sharp rise in U.S. monkeypox diagnoses could be driven in part by increased testing, especially after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention brought onboard five commercial testing companies during the past two weeks.
Public health experts also theorize that major LGBTQ Pride gatherings in June may have facilitated transmission of the virus. And given the infection’s incubation period — the new paper puts it at seven days, with a range of three to 20 days — the nation is now possibly seeing the resulting downstream effects of sexual encounters in late June and early July.
For the new study, a consortium of scores of researchers pooled data on 528 cases of monkeypox that were diagnosed between April 27 and June 24 at 43 sites in 16 countries. These cases included 84 people (16%) in the Americas and 444 (84%) in Europe, Israel and Australia.
All the cases were among men, including one transgender man, 98% of whom identified as gay or bisexual. This stark demographic finding is in keeping with data on the outbreak from around the world, such as a recent report from the British Health Security Agency finding that of the 699 monkeypox cases for which there was available information, 97% were in gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men. New York City, the U.S. epicenter, has seen only one woman diagnosed with the virus out of 639 cases confirmed through July 19.
Accordingly, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has characterized the risk of monkeypox to the general public, in particular those not engaging in sex with multiple partners, as “very low.” In a recent meeting, Dr. Agam Rao, a medical officer in the CDC’s Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, used the same words to characterize the general public’s risk.
In the new global study, the men had a median age of 38 and ranged between 18 and 68 years old. Three quarters are white, and 41% have HIV.
Despite some public health officials, including those at the CDC, cautioning the public about the risk of household transmission of monkeypox, just three of the 528 cases, or 0.6%, were believed to have been acquired through such means. And just four, or 0.8%, were considered to have transmitted through nonsexual close contact.
The study authors reported that 95% of the cases were likely transmitted through sexual close contact. What’s more, their paper offers strong new evidence that anal sex itself, although not necessarily ejaculation, is a major source of transmission.
“The strong likelihood of sexual transmission was supported by the findings of primary genital, anal, and oral mucosal lesions, which may represent the inoculation site,” the study authors wrote.
“The finding that 95% of cases may have been transmitted during sex provides reassurance that this outbreak is primarily caused by very close contact and may explain why it’s been largely limited, so far, to dense social networks of men who have sex with men,” said Dr. Jay K. Varma, an infectious disease expert at Weill Cornell Medicine.
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So, just as schools and many other venues were CLOSED due to COVID-19 beginning in 2020, how soon can we expect public health officials to shut down gay bathhouses and mass demonstrations of gay activists? I hate to say it, but I think it’s more than likely that our government at every level will repeat the PC do-nothing approach of the 1980s when HIV / AIDS began to spread to the general population.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the more deluded faux-progressives in America and
Europe continue to loudly declare that buggery is one of man’s unalienable rights.
NO, I don’t hate gays! But I do hate selfish, irresponsible behavior that threatens the good health of others.
— MRW
homelessphilosopher 