Mitch Rubman's Coffee Cup Club

Mitch Rubman's Coffee Cup Club
Night Coffee

Sunday, November 29, 2020

A note from a Nurse

My hospital is full. Electives canceled. Watching people in stores, in restaurants is a massive trigger. Folks we literally are deciding life and death right now. Do you want to be one of the ones we cannot help? WTH is wrong with you people!?! Stay home. Please. Help us. 

The Rose of Hollywood

 








Saturday, November 28, 2020

President Trump gutting bird protections












The Trump administration moved forward Friday on gutting longstanding federal protections for the nation's birds, over objections from former federal officials and many scientists that billions of more birds will likely perish as a result.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published its take on the proposed rollback in the Federal Register. It's a final step that means the change — greatly limiting federal authority to prosecute industries for practices that kill migratory birds — could be made official within 30 days.

The wildlife service acknowledged in its findings that the rollback would have a “negative” effect on the many bird species covered by the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which range from hawks and eagles to seabirds, storks, songbirds, and sparrows.

The move scales back federal prosecution authority for the deadly threats migratory birds face from industry — from electrocution on power lines, to wind turbines that knock them from the air and oil field waste pits where landing birds perish in toxic water.

Industry operations kill an estimated 450 million to 1.1 billion birds annually, out of roughly 7 billion birds in North America, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and recent studies.

The Trump administration maintains that the Act should apply only to birds killed or harmed intentionally, and is putting that “clarifying” change into regulation. The change would “improve consistency and efficiency in enforcement,” the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

The administration has continued to push the migratory bird regulation even after a federal judge in New York in August rejected the administration’s legal rationale.

Two days after news organizations announced President Donald Trump’s defeat by Democrat Joe Biden, federal officials advanced the bird treaty changes to the White House, one of the final steps before adoption.

Trump was “in a frenzy to finalize his bird-killer policy,” David Yarnold, president of the National Audubon Society, said in a statement Friday. ”Reinstating this 100-year-old bedrock law must be a top conservation priority for the Biden-Harris Administration" and Congress.

Steve Holmer with the American Bird Conservancy said the change would accelerate bird population declines that have swept North America since the 1970s.


The long rays of the sun

 




Blue Cookie Monster spotted on Fairfax Ave.