Day: August 31, 2022

Closing Thought–31Aug22

If you visit many buffets these days one of the big draws is crab….Dungeness, King, Snow, Blue and Stone….all you can eat for 19.95….but sadly like the Atlantic Cod the King and Snow crabs are getting scarce….

Where did the Alaskan king and snow crabs go? The tasty crustaceans have all but vanished from their usual haunts within safe range of Alaska’s crabbing fleet. Per the Washington Post,king crabs—by far the larger of the two species—have been in decline for years, but the industry was unprepared for the sudden collapse of the snow crab population. Commercial crabbers, including many small business owners, went deep into debt in anticipation of a great 2021 snow crab harvest. Those expectations were based on 2018–19 surveys showing record populations of juveniles; but when 2021 rolled around, the stock of mature snow crabs was down by some 90% compared to prior years.

The state sharply reduced the allowable snow crab harvest from 45 million to 5.5 million pounds, but fishers didn’t even get that much. Many now face bankruptcy or are looking for creative ways to make ends meet. Meanwhile, there was no 2021 season for king crabs, and the state will announce what’s in store for 2022 on Oct. 15. Per the Anchorage Daily News, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council is also developing a “snow crab rebuilding plan,” which it is on track to unveil in December. In any event, the outlook seems grim, not only for crabbers but also for dozens of remote, indigenous villages in western Alaska, where crab processing is the only economic game around.

The Bering Sea has experienced several straight years of above-average temperatures, and while scientists aren’t sure of the exact reasons for the mass crab die-off, temperature seems to be key. Higher temps could make crabs more vulnerable to parasites or predators like cod, which shy from frigid waters. In any case, the decline is dramatic in both scale and speed. Mike Litzow, director of the National Marine Fisheries Service lab in Kodiak, refers to it as the “borealization” of the Bering Sea, which, like the nearby boreal forests, is rapidly transforming due to climate change.

Climate change claims another victim….

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What’s Next For Liz?

The mid-terms are just a mere 60 days away and time for IST to take a closer look at the possibilities of our vote.

The big story is that Liz Cheney was beaten in Wyoming in the GOP primary.

So what’s next for the beaten Repub?

But first let’s talk about Liz for a moment…..

Liz Cheney didn’t do the one thing she was meant to do: convince any of her fellow Republicans that Trump was a threat to the Republic and, by extension, the “values” of the Republican Party, because Trump’s “values” are now symbiotic with those of the GOP. So, she was a failure. In fact, the Cheneys–Dick, Lynne & Liz–have been agents of political corruption since Dick’s tenure in the Nixon Administration, steadily eating away at whatever frail ethical foundations the party may have had for three decades, rotting clean through by 2001–the detritus providing the seedbed from which the toxic tendrils of Trumpism sprouted. So it is fitting that this is her political end, undone by the savagery of a party her family re-shaped in its own depraved image.

Ideologically Liz Cheney was pretty much in lockstep with Trump, backing nearly every vicious social and economic policy he sent to the Hill. (She voted for Trump bills 93% of the time.) She might as well be Stephen Miller’s political doppelgänger. Liz only diverged from Trump on those few occasions when he went soft on foreign policy–on Russia, Iraq, Syria, North Korea and Afghanistan. She’s always been a guard dog of her father’s ruinous legacy. Her objections to the J6th insurrection were to its overtness, which risked exposing the way the continuity of power–real power–is maintained in the US, from one administration to the next, with little real change in policy. Call it the Deep State if you like–though it’s really just “the State.” If anything, it was the clumsiness of Trump that offended the sensibility of the Cheneys. Because Liz and Dick both know from experience there are subtler ways to fix the outcomes of elections.

During her abbreviated tenure in Congress, Cheney voted Liz Cheney against restoring the Voting Rights Act, against raising the minimum wage, against the Equality Act and the Equal Rights Amendment, against the George Floyd Act, the Build Back Better and Infrastructure bills, against the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, against the $35 Insulin bill, against the Women’s Health Protection Act and against anti-gas price gouging bill. A real hero for our time…

Just a quick look at candidate Liz……

There are those out there that like Liz and think she would do well as an independent presidential candidate…..I do not agree….in fact she would probably help Trump (if he decides to run)….

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) confirmed last week that she is considering running for president in 2024.

But a new poll shows that if Cheney runs as an independent, her campaign would backfire and help former President Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee against President Joe Biden.

In fact, Yahoo News said Cheney would “single-handedly swing the election to Trump.”

Specifically, the poll discovered that in a hypothetical matchup between Biden and Trump, Biden would win by three points, 42% to 39%; 20% of respondents said they are not sure who they would support.

But when Cheney is thrown into the race as an independent spoiler, Biden’s re-election chances sink completely — and Trump is propelled to victory.

With Cheney in the race, Trump would win by eight points over Biden, 37% to 29%, while Cheney would secure 11% of support. Nearly one-quarter of respondents (23%), however, said they are unsure of who they would support in such a scenario.

So if you are considering that independent candidate I would re-think that decision and do a little research before casting your vote.

As I always say….choose wisely.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”