Jack in the Boat
by HuntingLife BlogsMarch 31, 2009
You do not need a calendar to tell you when spring arrives here in Virginia. Just like clockwork everywhere around you things start happening. Spring brings the promise of renewal and the circle of life. Temperatures warm, toms start gobbling, the dogwoods begin to bloom and the shad arrive in the James River.
Each year I get so anxious for spring to finally get here. Deer calls have long been put away and my decoys have been sitting wadded up in a ball of maddening tangles for weeks. The cobwebs of February are brushed off and cabin fever finally slips away as the outdoors open up again with some of my favorite activities.
The shad/herring run starts around the end of March here in Richmond. You can tell that they are here when you drive over the I95 bridge and it looks like we are being invaded by some foreign navy. There will be anywhere from twenty to over fifty boats all vying for a relatively small patch of water. Navigating the crowds can get interesting and proper boating etiquette should be used to avoid a coarse word or two. If you like jetskies then more power to you but I would advise you to head down river unless you are some sort of water born ninja capable of matrix like reflexes as the shad darts start flying.
What Will Be Biggest Takeaway from Obama’s Euro Trip?
by Matthew SheffieldMarch 31, 2009
Let the Spinning Begin
by Jennifer RubinMarch 31, 2009
The hotly contested NY-20 special election race ended in a near dead-heat. Republican Jim Tedisco was down by 65 votes after round one. 6000 absentee ballots will be counted on April 8. So what to make of it?
If you like the Democratic spin, the Republican failed to match Republican registration figures, and a “comeback trail” story for the Republicans can potentially be short-circuited if Democrat Scott Murphy holds on for the win.
If you like the Republican spin, the Democrats thought they had this in the bag and then blew it. When it came down to GOTV, the Republicans made up 3-4% and all the union help plus the president’s mailer couldn’t maintain the lead. Tedisco ran essentially even in a district that went Democratic in the congressional race just a few months ago by a 62-38% margin. (Obama carried it 51-48%. Although Republicans lead in registration Hillary Clinton carried the district in the Senate race in 2006 as did Chuck Schumer in 2004.)
And of course we have yet to determine a winner. Or undertake the recount. Or go through the lawsuits. And, then, perhaps a House race in upstate New York is just a House race in upstate New York.
President Builds Conservation Legacy in Signing Historic Lands Bill
by HuntingLife BlogsMarch 31, 2009
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama today signed into law a broad-based public lands bill and ensured the conservation of millions of acres of public lands and hunting and fishing opportunities, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership announced today.
TRCP President and CEO George Cooper attended the White House signing ceremony for the legislation and invoked the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt in assessing the president’s actions.
“Theodore Roosevelt once said, ‘We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune,’” said Cooper. “With today’s events, Roosevelt’s words take on a new and deeper meaning. Ratification of this historic measure represents an important victory for sportsmen, as well as for our natural resources and activities that rely on our nation’s public lands.
Flotsam and Jetsam
by Jennifer RubinMarch 31, 2009
In a sobering interview, Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck (beginning at 1:27) predicts a “very deep” and “relatively long” recession. He thinks that state intervention in the financial sector should be “fast, strong and short” but instead is “long, shallow and will continue for many years to come.” And inflation? “The stimulus projects that are being put into place mean the printing machines are starting to work.”
Gotta love those Daily News headlines.
A guide to new taxes: “If it exists, it can be taxed.”
Except for Democratic nominees. Yup — there is another one.
Sarah Palin replaced by Newt Gingrich at major GOP fundraiser. The former seems unable to shake her run of unfavorable news. Maybe she doesn’t want to be a 2012 hopeful?
Treasury still is not accounting for TARP funds. Not exactly news, I suppose.
All the GOP senators finally on the same page — on using budget reconciliation to push through healthcare. So they have the nerve to grind the senate to a halt?
Michael Gerson has some interesting stats: “According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Americans who disapprove of Obama’s job performance increased by nine points from February to March. Among Catholics as a whole, his disapproval rating jumped 14 points. And among white, non-Hispanic Catholics, the figure doubled — from 20 percent to 41 percent. Catholics are having second thoughts, but it could get much worse.” He argues Catholics in essence are realizing they were hoodwinked into thinking Obama was receptive to their views on social issues. Well, if it makes them feel better, lots of people pegged Obama wrong.
Why isn’t the head of the UAW getting shoved out? Well, he has a legal right to be there, he has a constituency, and it’s not the government’s job to . . . oh. . . wait. Oh puleez. Big Labor spent a fortune to elect Obama and he’s not about to treat them like mere corporate executives.
Did Treasury rig the rules for the toxic asset plan to limit the participants to a few funds? Yup. Imagine if a Republican came up with a get rich quick scheme like this for a handful of financial players.
Judd Gregg: “Instead of tightening Uncle Sam’s belt the way so many American families are cutting back these days, the president’s proposal spends so aggressively that it essentially adds $1 trillion to the debt, on average, every year. Except for some accounting gimmicks, the budget makes no attempt to cut wasteful spending or find savings. It ignores reform for major entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, which are on track to cost us $67 trillion more than we have over the next 75 years. The new spending is coupled with the largest tax increase in U.S. history — $1.5 trillion over 10 years.” That cabinet thing never would have worked out, I guess.
GOP New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie moves to nail down his conservative base: “Bret Schundler, who became the darling of national conservatives during his nine years as Mayor of Jersey City and won the Republican nomination for Governor in 2001, today endorsed Christopher Christie for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.”
Le Grand Iowa Woman Wins 2009 Pheasants Forever Chevy Truck Giveaway
by HuntingLife BlogsMarch 31, 2009
Truck giveaway benefits Pheasants Forever's wildlife habitat conservation mission
Saint Paul, Minn. – March 30, 2009 – Pheasants Forever (PF) announces Danielle Hotchkin of Le Grand, Iowa, as the winner of the 2009 Pheasants Forever/Chevy Truck Giveaway. Hotchkin won a 2009 Chevy Silverado 1500 4WD Extended Cab with a suggested retail value of nearly $35,000 after her Dad purchased her ticket to the Jasper County (Iowa) Chapter PF banquet.
Giveaway tickets for the Chevy truck were available at PF chapter events in Chevrolet's North Central Region. Hotchkin attended the annual Jasper County event with her father Dave Kaisand, and then picked up her winning truck at Clemons Chevy in Marshalltown, Iowa.
NY Times Story Gives Huge Waxman-Markey Global Warming Tax Bill One-Sided Treatment
by Amy RidenourMarch 31, 2009
When the New York Times today told its readers about the massive Henry Waxman-Ed Markey 648-page draft global warming bill, it bent over backwards to report the pros and cons of the proposal.
Not.
The March 31 story, supplied by Darren Samuelsohn and Ben Geman of Greenwire:
* Included sponsor Rep Waxman's claim that "this legislation will create millions of clean energy jobs, put America on the path to energy independence, and cut global warming pollution," without a balancing rebuttal or reference to the economic damage passage of the bill would almost assuredly cause.
* Followed that favorable quote by California liberal Democrat Waxman with a favorable quote by California liberal Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
* Followed those two favorable statements with seven sentences quoting Democrats Rep. Charles Gonzales (D-TX), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and Rick Boucher (D-VA), who have quibbles on the margins about the proposal but who like the concept.
* Followed that with two sentences from the lone voice of rebuttal, the only Republican/conservative quoted, and the only person quoted who addressed the massive negative impact the bill, if adopted, would likely have on the economy, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX).
* Followed the two sentences allocated to Rep. Barton with 32 paragraphs of discription of the bill, none of it a critical analysis.
* Concluded with seven paragraphs headlined "Reactions," which covered quotations and opinions from four organizations on an ideological spectrum ranging from very left-wing to far left-wing: The Environmental Defense Fund, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Oxfam America and Environment America. No economists, energy experts, free-market groups, businesses or business groups or any other individual or institution other than left-wing environmental organizations were quoted or cited.
No one with a straight face could call this a balanced story.
Cross-posted on Amy Ridenour's National Center Blog.
Bozell Column: Washington Polling Games
by Brent BozellMarch 31, 2009
It has become almost amusing, watching how the so-called "news" media are manipulating their own polls to keep the political weather sunny for their hero. The Washington Post kicked off President Barack Obama’s European trip with the headline "Blame For Downturn Not Fixed on Obama." Of course, what was "fixed" was the poll itself.
They did the usual tricks for a more liberal sample of "public opinion" – they polled on the weekend and oversampled Democrats (36 percent Democrat, 25 percent Republican). By themselves, these things are shameless – but expected. And still that wasn’t enough of a slant. Check out the way this question was asked by the Post pollsters.
"How much of the blame do you think [fill in the blank] deserves for the country’s economic situation?" The choices were corporations, banks, consumers, the Bush team, and the Obama administration. There’s a built-in pro-Obama bias in there already: assigning blame to Obama for the current economy when he’s been in office for nine weeks just seems harsh to most people. But just because they (correctly) don’t blame him as the primary cause for our current woes, this doesn’t mean for a second that the public endorses his "solutions," as the Post suggests.
But the Post questioners traveled beyond natural polling for politeness. They wanted to know why we fault these sectors. Is it the corporations "for poor management decisions"? Is it the banks, for "taking unnecessary risks"? Did consumers take on "too much debt"?
These are fair descriptions, I think we can say. But now check how they identified the problem when it was a politician: Should the public blame Bush for "inadequate regulation of the financial industry"? Or is Obama to blame for "not doing enough to turn the economy around"?
What kind of left-wing pollster wrote these questions? Is Obama "not doing enough"? We’re being buried in trillion-dollar Obama proposals and he should be faulted for "not doing enough"? How about the crazy idea that maybe, just maybe, he’s doing too much? This question makes sense only if the goal is to assist Obama politically.
The Post drew the numbers they wanted: while every other politician and group was blamed "a great deal or a good amount" for the downturn by at least 70 percent in the poll, Obama was only blamed to that extent by 26 percent.
So Obama’s trying to implement socialism at 120 miles per hour, and with a straight face, the Post reported that 62 percent of those surveyed still see Obama as a "new-style Democrat who will be careful with the public’s money," while 32 percent see him as an "old-style tax-and-spend Democrat." An accurate assessment by the Post would conclude that a) Obama’s accelerated socialist policies make most conservatives pine for the good old days of "tax-and-spend Democrats" and b) 62 percent of the public has no idea what is going on in Washington – primarily because they rely on outlets like the Post for their "news."
Then there were poll questions that the Post editors didn’t want on the front page – or even anywhere in the poll story by political reporter Dan Balz and pollster Jon Cohen. On the front page, Post readers saw the big news – a bar graph showing that 60 percent approve of how Obama is handling the economy. But if you look at the Internet and read the actual poll, there’s another number the Post deliberately left out. Pollsters asked "Do you approve or disapprove of the federal government's overall response to the economic situation?" Forty-nine percent said they supported the overall federal government response.
So who, boys and girls, is the "federal government? It’s controlled by a Democratic president, and a strongly Democratic Congress. One could clearly state, then, that less than half of the public supports President Obama’s economic agenda. But the Post ignored this so as to trumpet the opposite.
This is one important reason why newspapers are on shaky financial ground. Washington Post readers who are not completely on the Obama bandwagon should see the discrepancies described here and feel completely manipulated. The Post is loading on the bias, coming and going, manipulating the polls after it paints pretty presidential pictures on the front page.
In Pursuit of a Problem Beaver
by TrapperMarch 31, 2009
My neighbor down the road had a problem. A beaver problem. I’d seen this type of problem before. A beaver had moved into his complex of farm ponds from a nearby stream and decided to make his winter home there.
It was late fall, and this big rodent wasn’t wasting any time getting ready for winter. The first objective was to build a home, which was accomplished by burrowing a tunnel and hollowing out a home under an island in one of the small riverside ponds. After home was built, it was then time to establish a food base by doing what beavers do best: cutting down trees.
The tree cutting, in addition to plugging up the pond drain, was the main reason the landowner had asked me to take a look at the situation. Sure enough, the pretty aspen trees that surrounded the pond were, one by one, becoming victim to this toothy engineer.
Since trapping season hadn’t yet begun, I spent my first visit to the site wrapping the remaining trees with chicken wire. While the landowner had lost a number of cottonwoods to the appetite of castor canadensis, we were able to save a number of the remaining trees. Now, if he decided to try cutting down the remaining trees, Mr. Beaver would have to chew through 16 gauge wire.
On opening day, I started up the truck and headed down the road. I was loaded down with all of the necessities of beaver trapping, including 330 conibears, drowning rigs, cable snares, steel stakes, conibear setters; basically every imaginable thing Average Joe trapper might need, and a little more.
I’d scouted out all of the beaver’s travel routes during my initial visits, and knew where I wanted to set traps once the season began. So that morning, it didn’t take long to get four 330 conibears set up in travelways among the farm ponds, and between the ponds and the river. I set up quickly that morning and headed off to work. I was confident that I’d find that beaver in one of my traps the next morning.
Four conibears, but five trails. That’s what I found out when I illuminated the previous night’s sets during my first check. That gosh darn beaver had avoided all of my sets! He had moved, though. A trail that had been seldom used before now appeared like a major travelway. It appeared as though the beaver had noticed the conibears and decided to avoid them.
I decided to keep the sets as they were and wait another day.
Next morning, I checked traps that hadn’t moved. It was obvious that this beaver knew what was going on, and had avoided my sets again. No problem. I needed to make some new sets.
Instead of conibears, it was time to try something new. I pulled a couple of snares out of the truck and started to set them up. Two 3/32″ cable snares were hung two inches off the ground over trails that the problem beaver had recently used. The conibears stayed where they were, and I waited another day.
On the third morning, I arrived at the ponds with great anticipation, but a bit of doubt resulting from two unsuccessful days of pursuit. I neared my traps, shone the spotlight around, and saw movement. There he was! The problem beaver was caught in one of the snare sets.
I quickly dispatched the beaver and visited the landowner to display my bounty. He was happy to be rid of the animal that was cutting down all of his trees, and I had a new valuable pelt to skin, flesh, stretch, and sell in the fur market. I had also learned a bit more about beaver trapping. When you’re going after problem beavers and conibears aren’t quite working, try setting a few snares. You may be pleasantly surprised with the results.
Good trapping!
No Podcast Today
by Michael BaneMarch 31, 2009
