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July 13th, 2023

Midsummer report

My apologies for the long absence here. Summer is in full swing and our family has been operating at full tilt speed. Time only for doing things, and none for writing about it all, until now.

First off, our oldest kid was married on Independence Day. Held at a pretty and historic farm, it was a fantastic wedding, and we feel like we acquired a wonderful addition to our family. However, the preparation necessary for that event took up a lot of time and energy, for many months. And then there was the recovery week. And then there was the vacation week. Hence no blog posts. Full credit to my wife for all of the wedding planning.

At least I myself am back in the saddle, while other people around me are still recovering from their vacation. Not everyone does well with the surf fishing bum lifestyle, including sleeping on the beach, eating questionable food from a warm cooler that has been pawed over and drooled on by feral raccoons, and drinking fetid water. I myself thrive in this kind of environment, and so I am back to report back to our three readers.

What can I say about the wedding other than I fired our small black powder cannon seven times, for good luck. It was Independence Day, and while the venue does not allow fireworks, they did allow the cannon (it’s a cast iron, steel sleeved replica swivel gun with a 1.75″ bore). And in my speech as the bride’s father, how could I miss an opportunity to point out that Independence Day was brought to us by citizens with guns? That is a fact, is it not?

And (of course, I guess) I heard back afterwards that some of our wedding guests were offended by the cannon and also offended by my mention of the origins of American freedom – citizens with guns. You can’t make this stuff up if you tried, like it’s a Hollywood movie script caricature of spoiled rotten children who get everything that Planet Earth can provide and yet nonetheless complain about it. Something like “The food here is terrible and the portions are so small.”

Are Americans now really offended by Independence Day fireworks? Are they offended by displays of patriotism and mentioning of historical facts that unfortunately run contrary to some evil political narratives that privately owned guns are bad and our freedom was brought to Americans by a immaculately conceived federal government that descended from Heaven? Are some wedding guests now so crass that they actually complain about the bride’s father setting off his celebratory toy cannon for the enjoyment of all the normal fun-loving people in attendance?

I have a hard time believing these things, but I did get to witness this stuff. America is in big trouble when its own citizens, young and old, hate its founding and can’t give a proud father his one moment and some space to celebrate it. Jiminy crickets.

Just returned from a subsequent beach trip to a a long spit of federally managed property on the east coast. The National Park Service rangers were 99% normal, nice, intelligent Americans, thank you very much, Gage, Donald, and Stephen.

In this national park there is a problem with artificially high numbers of deer, foxes, and racoons. They have no natural predators and they are multiplying at breakneck rates and having huge negative impacts on the environment and local ecology. Vegetation shows a distinct deer browse line about four feet above the ground, and the racoons are everywhere, aggressive, and aiming to ruin your trip. I watched a red fox steal a camper’s breakfast sausage meal right off of his plate on the guy’s picnic table. We had raccoons patrolling our campsite and under our table as soon as we broke out our food. They will grab your food right out of your hand. It is a fact that raccoons are host to some nasty parasites they excrete in their poop, which was abundantly displayed all around the campsites. Raccoons are also the number one vector for rabies among wildlife.

Aside from posing health threats and incessantly badgering the humans who are trying to enjoy the park, the foxes and raccoons also eat the eggs of rare nesting shore birds. These rare birds enjoy huge swaths of cordoned off human-free dunes and beaches in the park (and also on federal and state lands out on Long Island, like Orient Point and Montauk). And yet the same exact NPS staff enforcing the human no-go dune zones policy are absolutely fine with the overabundant nest-raiding foxes and raccoons that render all the no-go zones meaningless. The staff do not support hunting or trapping these destructive pests, either to improve the park visitor experience or to protect the natural environment.

How can the rare birds successfully nest on the ground and hatch their chicks there when the artificially super overabundant egg-eating raccoons and foxes are allowed to roam at will?

Talking with various National Park Service staff about this problem resulted in exposure to various levels of education and serious/unserious mindset. Most of the NPS staff acknowledged there is a wildlife problem on site that must be addressed. Hunting the deer and trapping the foxes and raccoons is the normal and responsible way to deal with this artificial human-caused environmental problem. These are the responsible and serious ways of addressing a visitor problem on land that is owned by the US taxpayer and whose management is entrusted to taxpayer-paid bureaucrats.

However, when I mentioned the above normal solutions to a young, handsome, tall NPS Park Policeman patrolling our campground, he responded “The same can be said about humans — there are just too many humans. And your solution to the overabundant raccoon problem is not humane.” He would get rid of the humans and allow the artificially high numbers of nuisance wildlife to proliferate. With taxpayer-paid federal employees of this guy’s low caliber and high wokeness quotient, the park visitor experience is going to degrade. C’mon, NPS, you can screen your employee applicants better than this. This foolish people-hating young guy should never have a gun and a badge, much less wear an NPS uniform.

Overall the surf fishing was fun if mostly unproductive. Probably due to the high heat and ferocious sunshine. I can report that catching cownose/ bullnose rays on strong surf tackle is a hoot, but then safely decoupling that animal from the tackle is a whole other thing. They whip their barbed tails around trying to nail the fisherman, who is trying to release them back into the ocean (I learned to place something heavy on the tail while using heavy pliers to remove or break off the hook). We did witness a large shark violently feeding close to shore, and it would be a fair guess to say it was probably eating these rays, which we caught and saw in abundance on both the bay side and the ocean surf side.

So that is the mid-summer report. Fast action, lots of family, some big family celebration and lots of family movement across the beautiful American landscape for work and vacation. I hope that you the reader are also enjoying your summertime. Summer is such a glorious time to be with family and friends, to visit new places, to camp out under the stars and cook over an open fire, to think through life’s normal challenges and to spend time with people we love…and then it is over just when we are all starting to really get into it.

So make the most of your summer.

Campsite neighbor Steve, a PhD engineer ex-patriot Brit and defiant leftist, helped MAGA Maniac Josh fix my malfunctioning headlamp, demonstrating that it’s easy to be enemies when separated by keyboards and easy to be friends when living side by side

Nice level NPS campsites with fire ring and grill

Each campsite has a pavilion and a picnic table. Is this really camping?

Asbury Park Brewery is a local flavor that I was happy to support. No sign anywhere of Bud Lite or Budweiser anything, thankfully

Symbol of foolish National Park Service policies seeking to protect rare shore birds by excluding people from their habitat, but allowing artificially overabundant populations of nest-raiding raccoons and foxes to roam at will.

Beach goers nonetheless entered this area because there were zero nesting birds in it and there were literally tons of foxes running around in it. Come on National Park Service, you can do much smarter than this

Ahhhhh… summer vacation on the Atlantic Coast

By Josh • Posted in Family • No Comment
April 22nd, 2021

Earth Day Myths

Earth Day…talk about climate change, the climate and meaning of this ‘hippie holiday’ has really changed since it was first declared. What began as a plea for help and attention as so American rivers were so polluted that when the Cuyahoga caught on fire, it was only slightly more fascinating than the huge fish kills in the lower Hudson, is today a sort of Mother Earth May Day Against Capitalism. Gone are the clear lines in the sand that modern industrialization had gone too far with its pipelines dripping green goo direct from factory floor work aprons to the local waterway. Now, today, Earth Day is not about fixing polluted waterways, but about “fixing” capitalism to death.

Somehow the people pushing this attack are conveniently forgetful that the greatest industrial pollution has occurred not under capitalist markets, but under rigid authoritarian socialist governments. But people like me are not forgetful, because to forget is to see freedom dry up and vanish; capitalism is fundamentally about human freedom and choice. Socialism being “green” is a myth, because socialism is never about choices, like the choice to be free of pollution. Rather, socialism is about top-down control and coerced obedience, at any cost. And in Russia and China, the environment was the very first thing to be sacrificed for industrial mass production.

Here are two big Earth Day-related myths.

Myth Number One: Environmental Groups are About Environmental Quality. Sorry, hate to say it, but most so-called environmental groups today are not about the environment or protecting environmental quality. Rather, most environmental advocacy groups are politically partisan about implementing socialism, and attacking capitalism, and the environmental issues they talk about are just one pathway. Have you ever seen an environmental group criticize Democrat Party officials? Like really get after them and hound them.

Nope, not like they demonize Republicans.

Some years ago, Pennsylvania had a Democrat governor, Ed Rendell. Like all good liberals, Rendell could not stay away from money to buy votes with, and so he dropped the natural gas drilling bomb on Pennsylvania public lands. Environmental groups were silent as our state forests went from quiet hinterlands to super industrialized moonscapes in just months. Crickets chirped and not a human voice was raised in opposition to this huge damage to our public lands.

However, literally the day Rendell’s successor took office, Penn Future and other environmental advocacy groups were out in force at the Capitol with bullhorns proclaiming Tom Corbett to be “Governor Corporate,” because of his supposed unhealthy commitment to….natural gas drilling. The guy hadn’t been governor for one minute and already the supposed green groups that had looked the other way while Pennsylvania public lands were criss-crossed with pipelines and drilling rigs were proclaiming him the environmental anti-Christ. Corbett had made zero decisions about drilling on Pennsylvania public lands, but because he was a Republican and Rendell a Democrat, the supposed environmental groups lined up and attacked Corbett and protected Rendell.

So don’t be fooled; the environmental groups are not so much about the natural environment as they are about shaping the political environment inside the US Capitol and state capitols around America. They are mostly fakes. I give land trusts and conservancies credit for actually doing real environmental work, but even they have become infected with the PC buzzwords and partisan political nonsense to the point where their credibility is often at stake.

Myth Number Two: Climate Change is About Environmental Quality. Human-caused climate change, as it is propounded by the various bullies supposedly expert in it, is based only on really lousy computer models and scanty data at best, faked data at worst. Other than these two weak legs, the notion of human-caused climate change stands on literally nothing. The climate change movement has been riven with scandals (East Anglia University, my alma mater Penn State’s Michael Mann etc) and scientists who are facile about jumping back and forth over lines separating science and policy and politics. These scientists decided the cash was greener on the side of climate alarmism, and so they went with the corporate foundation money.

Earth’s climate is changing. It has always changed. Volcanos, huge storms, meteors, tectonic shifts, glaciers advancing and receding and advancing again without any human intervention…Planet Earth is a really dynamic place. Its climate is a product of all kinds of factors, most of which are outside human control. But this reality does not diminish climate change’s usefulness as a vehicle for advancing big government totalitarianism.

My main objection to human-caused climate change alarmism isn’t so much that it is obviously and shamefully fake, or even that it is another evil effort to destroy democracy and gain absolute control over free people. Rather, climate change alarmism detracts from the very real and potentially solvable problems of invasive species, ocean overfishing, surface water pollution, forest fragmentation, farmland loss, and other actual, verified environmental issues. That are not as sexy as the climate sky is falling message. Fake climate change casts its pall over all real environmental issues, and undermines their claim on people’s attention.

If the conservative movement is overly skeptical about environmental anything, to the point where deriding even real environmental issues has become its own form of conservative political correctness, it is because the very fake environmental advocacy groups gave up their integrity and believability, by polluting real environmental issues with fake climate change nonsense. Their adherence to evil climate change religion did it.

As scary media-creation child activist Greta Thunberg admitted, climate change isn’t really about the environment; it is about gaining political control and force-implementing socialism and changing a whole array of policies in Western Civilization, at great cost, while China, India and Pakistan move forward with their gushing pollution-based economies, at no cost.

What kind of normal job-holding American can really get on board with that?

 

 

By Josh • Posted in Government Of the People... • No Comment