More Bad News For Trout

Looks like global warming is beginning to impact the western U.S. in a negative way for trout anglers. What's really too bad is that Dick "Sick Dick" Cheney, a supposedly avid fly angler, just doesn't give a flying fuck about the fish. Let the free market make these fish extinct, so? It's more important to kill people in Bu$hCo's vanity war.

Sunset on the Bighorn River

Nice Fish

Big brookie for Wisco. Good for this young person. Here's more info on this member of the char family. This image of a brookie is not of the one the boy caught. Sure is a beautiful creature.

Yellow Dog Plains

This must be stopped. Can't these mining companies just leave us alone? If they would spend just half their money & half their time developing alternatives to the metals they destroy for, we'd all be in better shape.

The battle is over sulfide mining - an inherently destructive technique of extracting (in this case) a deposit of nickel and copper from the ground. Unfortunately, this deposit, sought by Kennecott Corporation, underlies the headwaters of the Salmon Trout River, believed to be among the last spawning streams on the south shore of Lake Superior for the native coaster brook trout. Sulfide mining is a process that releases toxic sulfuric acid into nearby water. It's like putting a chemical factory in one of the wildest places in Michigan - and then counting on good-faith promises not to leave an expensive mess behind for taxpayers to pay for. But acid mine drainage has already polluted more than 12,000 miles of rivers and streams and over 180,000 acres of lakes and impoundments in the U.S.

Nice Fish Department

World Record brookie. Good for the char. Good for the lake. Good for the angler. & good for National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame. & so sorry to the vanquished fish.

Mrs. coldH2O & I saw this fish in Thunder Bay, Ontario way back in 1972. We were married in January of that year & for a honeymoon toured the beer factories of Milwaukee. It was there that I learned an important life skill: tap beer is best at the brewery. Later in '72 we went on a more official honeymoon with two friends & their son. We went up north of Thunder Bay, & it was a fun trip. We did catch some brookies, but nothing like this one. It was displayed at a small tourist information building. It had been skinned & then plastered to a piece of slab wood. It was cool.

Here is the new record brook trout. By the way, the brook trout is actually a char, that's why I am using both terms char/trout interchangeably.

NOTE: There are a lot of links in this post, click on them all if y'all want to find out some good stuff. Remember, it's fish like this that we must save for our grandchildren, at least my granddaughters. & that's why we fight for peace, & NOLA, & against Bu$hCo.

Of Course

Tonight Bu$hCo will announce, once again, that he is going to do something right. &, of course, it will be wrong. Anyone with at least one functioning set of synapses knows that this troop escalation will do nothing to stop this failed war of choice. This is tactics, not strategy. Bu$hCo is only trying desperately to save his crappy Yale legacy. Mike Lupica today:

This isn't some politician talking, one like Cheney, who set world records for draft deferments during Vietnam and now wants to fight the whole world. This isn't some war-loving television or radio yahoo who has never served a day of active duty in his life. This is an American soldier who believed the men who sent him there but no longer believes enough in those same people to let them send him back.
....
Finally, he is expected to talk about sending more over there, sending more young Americans to get their asses shot off as a way of covering his own.

You go sportswriters.

& Dan Froomkin also is in the tactics not strategy camp.

As Washington journalists debate whether to call President Bush's plan to send 20,000 more American troops into Iraq a "surge" or an "escalation," they are letting the White House get away with a much more momentous semantic scam.

The White House would have you believe that Bush tonight will be announcing a new strategy. But from all indications, all Bush will be talking about -- yet again -- is changing tactics.
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They don't want American soldiers held hostage to sectarian violence and the Iraqis' inability to form themselves into a peaceful, Western-style democracy. They want the troops to start coming home. Their preferred strategy is to make it clear to the Iraqis that they'll soon be on their own -- and that they have to solve their problems themselves.
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1) It's not just, as The Washington Post points out today, that Bush is breaking with his generals; it's that he seems to me to be channeling Vice President Cheney. Unwilling to change course, Bush has apparently adopted Cheney's overheated arguments that failure would set off a domino effect of geo-political disasters.2) The White House simply cannot answer the seminal question: Why should we think things will be different this time?

He's right, of course. Bu$hCo will keep killing people, both Iraqis & Americans, not to mention other coalition of the coerced. & he will keep doing it because he's a big, fucking baby. Someone who wants to get his way no matter what. This isn't courage or resolve, it's monumental stupidity. My granddaughters, the cutest babies in the history of the world, will be paying for this mistake long after I'm adding ash nutrients to some tag alders on the banks of the White River.