'It's warm water now': climate change strands sea turtles on Cape Cod shores

The Gulf of Maine’s rapidly warming waters draws in larger numbers of Kemp’s ridley turtles, enticing them to stay longer

At the New England Aquarium’s sea turtle hospital in a repurposed shipyard building south of Boston, the casualties of climate change swim in tanks as they recover after being pulled stunned from the beach.

Every year, as autumn turns to winter and ocean temperatures off Massachusetts drop below 10C (50F), dead, dying and stricken sea turtles wash up on the shores of Cape Cod as those shelled reptiles that have failed to migrate south start to die in the chilly waters.

In the 1980s, the number of sea turtles stranded on the shores of Cape Cod every year averaged in the dozens. That average went up through the 1990s and 2000s, but over the past decade it has risen dramatically: 2014 saw more than 1,200 turtles make landfall. This year, more than 790 sea turtles have washed up on Cape Cod so far. Some 720 of those are Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, a critically endangered species that nests on the shores of the much warmer Gulf of Mexico.

It is an event unmatched in magnitude anywhere else in the world.

Those who study sea turtles say part of the reason that annual strandings are up in Massachusetts is that efforts to conserve and boost Kemp’s ridley populations have been successful. But the other part is that the Gulf of Maine is rapidly warming in the face of climate change and proving to be a more hospitable environment for turtles than it used to be, drawing them in larger numbers and resulting in them staying longer into the year.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/26/climate-change-sea-turtles-massachusetts


-snip-

Edward Filangeri is a volunteer pilot who helps the organisation Turtles Fly Too to move turtles from Massachusetts to other facilities. Every year since 2014, Filangeri has flown his single-engine aircraft up from New York’s Long Island, where he lives, to Massachusetts to pick up turtles packed in banana boxes and ferry them south. By flying during November and December he has to contend with winter weather while also working to keep the temperature in his small aircraft turtle-friendly.

“When we get the temperature just right they want to start swimming and I know we’re doing a good job when I hear a lot of cardboard rubbing in the back of the plane,” he said.

Those working to save the turtles say every bit of help they can give is worth it.

“Personally I spend a lot of my time doing this and the network spends a lot of their time doing this because we all believe that this does make a difference,” said Sampson, the Noaa turtle stranding and disentanglement coordinator. “These are an endangered species, we have to do all we can to help recover their population.”

We Found 95 New, Undisclosed Trump Appointees

Among the latest hires: a longtime DuPont manager who is now at an EPA position that is typically not a political appointment.

by Derek Kravitz Dec. 21, 2:29 p.m. EST

We have obtained a list of 95 new Trump administration appointees made over the past six months. Following a pattern we’ve detailed before, many of the hires previously worked on President Donald Trump’s campaign or at conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation. In other cases, appointees seem to have little work experience at all.

We compiled the information from Freedom of Information Act requests and have added the appointees to our Trump Town app, which lets you search the disclosures of nearly 3,000 of them.

Here are a few of the recent appointments:

Lynn DeKleva, who worked for decades at chemical giant DuPont, was appointed to a job as an environmental engineer in the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety and pollution prevention office in October. Typically, environmental engineering positions are not political appointments. DeKleva did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comments. The EPA said in a statement that DeKleva “brings considerable product stewardship experience and knowledge with her to assist” the agency.

Ileana Garcia, a co-founder of the campaign’s Latinas for Trump, was appointed in October as deputy press secretary in the Department of Homeland Security.

Todd Thurman, a Heritage Foundation staffer who used to write for the Daily Signal and Breitbart, was appointed as the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s digital strategy specialist in September.

Antonin Scalia, the namesake grandson of the late Supreme Court justice, was appointed in September as a temporary assistant in the State Department. Scalia graduated from college last year. Scalia and the State Department did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comments.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-town-95-new-undisclosed-trump-administration-appointees

The last one especially Antonin Scalia ...................

Trump says federal workers want his shutdown. But they're not having it.

"F*** THE WALL," one federal worker said on Twitter.

JOSHUA EATON
DEC 26, 2018, 10:33 AM


As President Donald Trump’s partial government shutdown drags on over Congress’ refusal to fully fund the wall he wants to build along the nation’s southwest border, federal workers’ frustration is spilling into public view.

Trump told reporters Tuesday that “many” federal workers support the shutdown, saying he’s heard from federal workers who want him to “stay out until you get the funding for the wall.”

“These federal workers want the wall,” Trump said during a question-and-answer session in the Oval Office on Christmas Day. “The only one that doesn’t want the wall are the Democrats, because they don’t mind open borders.”

That angered many federal workers who are furloughed or going without pay over the holidays. Trump has refused to sign funding legislation until Congress gives him money for a border wall. While the two sides square off, many federal workers are wondering when they’ll get another paycheck.

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-says-federal-workers-want-his-shutdown-but-theyre-not-having-it-d10afb034807/


January 3, 2019 cannot get here fast enough................

Trump has a story of how his presidency's going. Here's what the numbers say.

It's not pretty.

RYAN KORONOWSKI
DEC 26, 2018, 9:00 AM

According to Donald Trump, who was elected president just over two years ago, his administration is among the greatest in history, with the greatest economy in American history and a nation finally respected again. As he told Bob Woodward this summer, “nobody’s ever done a better job than I’m doing as president.”

The United Nations could not hold back a laugh in September when Trump said in a speech: “In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.”

This lofty rhetoric certainly seems farcical as 2018 draws to a close with government (controlled by the president’s party) shut down, markets in free-fall, and allies abroad fearing an increasingly unpredictable president.

With such a schism in reality — between the president and his supporters who think things are going fine and critics alarmed by each new tweet and headline — numbers are often helpful to get some objective truth.

Here is the truth of how the Trump administration is doing, looking at the numbers.

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-administration-year-two-by-the-numbers-730702644d2d/


January 3, 2019 cannot get here fast enough...........................8 more days

Trump has a story of how his presidency's going. Here's what the numbers say.

Emerson, Lake & Palmer I Believe In Father Christmas

The Supreme Court takes up a secret case involving Robert Mueller and a mystery company

"Individual 1," meet "Country A."

IAN MILLHISER
DEC 24, 2018, 9:54 AM

Chief Justice John Roberts handed down a fairly routine order over the weekend, which temporarily halts a pending case until the rest of his Court has time to consider the matter. Yet, while orders briefly pausing cases are common at the Supreme Court, everything else about this case is bizarre. It involves a mystery company from a mystery country — and is widely believed to involve special counsel Robert Mueller.

The parties to this case, which bears the non-descriptive title In re Grand Jury Subpoena, are an enigma. A lower court order ruling against the mystery company identifies that company only as “the Corporation,” and notes that this corporation is “owned by Country A.”

Nothing in that order mentions Mueller or his team, but on Sunday Politico connected the case to Mueller after one of their reporters “heard a person connected to the appeal request a copy of the special counsel’s latest filing in the case.”

The legal issue in the case involves a grand jury subpoena seeking unknown information from the Mysterious Corporation From Country A. As this company is owned by a foreign nation, it argued that it may ignore this subpoena under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), which provides that “a foreign state shall be immune from the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States and of the States” except in certain limited circumstances.

https://thinkprogress.org/the-supreme-court-takes-up-a-secret-case-involving-robert-mueller-and-a-mystery-company-7319abb219dc/

To all of the DU'ers..................have a wonderful Holiday..............and THANK YOU

C-SPAN caller: It's 'treasonous' not to support Trump's government shutdown

DAVID EDWARDS
24 DEC 2018 AT 11:30 ET

A C-SPAN caller asserted on Monday that government workers who do not support President Donald Trump’s shutdown of the federal government are guilty of treason.

During a Christmas Eve edition of C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, an Indiana man named Chris called in to complain about people who are not backing the current government shutdown.

“Everybody agrees with what’s going on to support our president,” Chris insisted. “It’s just the bottom line. You have to support your president. Everybody else is treasonous.”

“What do you make of the folks who are going to be out of work?” the C-SPAN host asked.

“Having been laid off several times,” Chris replied, “I look at all this as people are concerned about what their agenda is. Not all of us went to liberal arts schools. Some of us just made our living by our hands, working hard, paycheck to paycheck to put our kids through college.”

According to Chris, complaints about Trump do not “seem fair and right to those who follow the rule of law all of their lives.”

“And then they see political interest groups getting what they want ahead of us,” he remarked. “Sixty-three percent of all money going out to public assistance goes to non-Americans, at least according to the last census if I heard it correctly.”

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/12/c-span-caller-treasonous-not-support-trumps-government-shutdown/


Hey, Chris.......................your "guy" is a fucking traitor......................public assistance asshole..................you fucking drive on a road from public assistance.....................

Four Republican members of the Supreme Court just said that Trump can ignore the law

It's hard to find a clearer statute than the one Trump is violating.

IAN MILLHISER
DEC 21, 2018, 3:52 PM

On Friday, the Supreme Court denied the Trump administration’s request to reinstate an unlawful effort to prevent many refugees from seeking asylum in the United States. This order is not surprising, as the Trump administration’s arguments are so weak that they literally were rejected by the judge who wrote infamous Bush era memos authorizing torture.

What is surprising about Friday’s order in Trump v. East Bay Sanctuary Covenant is the vote. The decision was 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the four Democrats in the majority. All four of the remaining Republicans, including Brett Kavanaugh, voted to grant the stay.

Since joining the Court, Kavanaugh staked out more moderate positions in a handful of cases than his performance during his confirmation hearing suggested. After Kavanaugh was credibly accused of attempting to rape psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford while both he and Ford were in high school, Kavanaugh delivered an angry rant to the Senate Judiciary Committee where he appeared to threaten revenge on Democratic senators.

“What goes around comes around,” the Supreme Court nominee told senators.


https://thinkprogress.org/four-republican-members-of-the-supreme-court-just-said-that-trump-can-ignore-the-law-f8d6ac3e89ce/

You and Gorsuch shouldn't even be on the bench Kavanaugh..................that's the bottom line and you both should be annulled........................