The Brennan Center of Justice asks Americans to practice their proud right and vote.

....Stand up for democracy (click here) now by pledging to vote and to help others exercise their right with these four simple steps:

1. Make a Plan: Verify your voter registration status, find your polling location, and learn what’s on your ballot.
2. Sign up for Reminders: You’re more likely to vote if you get emails or text reminders. Sign up here.
3. Tell your friends and family that you plan to vote. Research has shown that this simple act can increase turnout.
4. Protect the Vote: Spread the word about the people who are here to help. Call 866-OUR-VOTE if you have problems on Election Day — they are nonpartisan volunteers who’ve got your back.

Sign now to pledge to vote and to help others exercise their right. After you sign, we'll send you a reminder of the steps you can take to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard.

The Nation 
The Brennan Center for Justice 
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law 
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Daily Kos 
18MillionRising.org
Rock the Vote 

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it must be a very slick duck.

October 31, 2016
By Franklin Foer

Registration of site (click here and enter any code, the registration is there) 

...In late July, (click here) one of these scientists—who asked to be referred to as Tea Leaves, a pseudonym that would protect his relationship with the networks and banks that employ him to sift their data—found what looked like malware emanating from Russia. The destination domain had Trump in its name, which of course attracted Tea Leaves’ attention. But his discovery of the data was pure happenstance—a surprising needle in a large haystack of DNS lookups on his screen. “I have an outlier here that connects to Russia in a strange way,” he wrote in his notes. He couldn’t quite figure it out at first. But what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue....

...The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn’t the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation—conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank....

...That wasn’t the only oddity. When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages. They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses. A small portion of the logs showed communication with a server belonging to Michigan-based Spectrum Health. (The company said in a statement: “Spectrum Health does not have a relationship with Alfa Bank or any of the Trump organizations. We have concluded a rigorous investigation with both our internal IT security specialists and expert cyber security firms. Our experts have conducted a detailed analysis of the alleged internet traffic and did not find any evidence that it included any actual communications (no emails, chat, text, etc.) between Spectrum Health and Alfa Bank or any of the Trump organizations. While we did find a small number of incoming spam marketing emails, they originated from a digital marketing company, Cendyn, advertising Trump Hotels.”)

Spectrum accounted for a relatively trivial portion of the traffic. Eighty-seven percent of the DNS lookups involved the two Alfa Bank servers. “It’s pretty clear that it’s not an open mail server,” Camp told me...

...“The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive. This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project.”...

The color is to delineate the different sources of information.

05 March 2014
By Our Foreign Staff

...20th February 2014

More than 100 people (click here) reportedly die in 48 hours as protesters and police clash in Kiev, with government snipers opening fire...

OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) (click here)

The Ukraine/Russia-related sanctions program implemented by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) began on March 6, 2014, when the President, in Executive Order (E.O.) 13660, declared a national emergency to deal with the threat posed by the actions and policies of certain persons who had undermined democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine; threatened the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Ukraine; and contributed to the misappropriation of Ukraine’s assets. In further response to the actions and polices of the Government of the Russian Federation, including the purported annexation of the Crimea region of Ukraine, the President issued three subsequent Executive orders that expanded the scope of the national emergency declared in E.O. 13660. Together, these orders authorize, among other things, the imposition of sanctions against persons responsible for or complicit in certain activities with respect to Ukraine; against officials of the Government of the Russian Federation; against persons operating in the arms or related materiel sector of the Russian Federation; and against individuals and entities operating in the Crimea region of Ukraine. E.O. 13662 also authorizes the imposition of sanctions on certain entities operating in specified sectors of the Russian Federation economy. Finally, E.O. 13685 also prohibits the importation or exportation of goods, services, or technology to or from the Crimea region of Ukraine, as well as new investment in the Crimea region of Ukraine by a United States person, wherever located...

...While the researchers went about their work, the conventional wisdom about Russian interference in the campaign began to shift. There were reports that the Trump campaign had ordered the Republican Party to rewrite its platform position on Ukraine, maneuvering the GOP toward a policy preferred by Russia, though the Trump campaign denied having a hand in the change. Then Trump announced in an interview with the New York Times his unwillingness to spring to the defense of NATO allies in the face of a Russian invasion. Trump even invited Russian hackers to go hunting for Clinton’s emails, then passed the comment off as a joke. (I wrote about Trump’s relationship with Russia in early July.)...

All Russian oligarchs of Alpha Bank needed was a front man.

Where is the FBI? 

Where is the NSA? 

Where is Edward Snowdon? Edward needs to be brought home with a degree of immunity. I think it is very foolish to leave him in Russia.

There is no such thing as a secure cyber space.

The way he made his billions matters.

October 31, 2016

By David Barstow, Mike McIntrire, Patricia Cohen and Russ Buettner

Donald J. Trump proudly (click here) acknowledges he did not pay a dime in federal income taxes for years on end. He insists he merely exploited tax loopholes legally available to any billionaire — loopholes he says Hillary Clinton failed to close during her years in the United States Senate. “Why didn’t she ever try to change those laws so I couldn’t use them?” Mr. Trump asked during a campaign rally last month.

Legislatures, regardless whether it is Hillary Clinton or Harry Reid, don't have the slick billionaire in mind when they are looking for a fair minded IRS. This is ridiculous. His behavior is near criminal and of course everyone in the federal legislature knows about every bit of criminal like activity that occurs.

Donald Trump makes ridiculous statements. Legislators are suppose to hold hearings when there is something wrong within the IRS. The hearings held since the Republican majority of 2010 hardly pursued criminal like behavior. They were far more interested in playing politics with the taxpayer's monies than anything recognizable as progress through a better tax system.

But newly obtained documents show that in the early 1990s, as he scrambled to stave off financial ruin, Mr. Trump avoided reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income by using a tax avoidance maneuver so legally dubious his own lawyers advised him that the Internal Revenue Service would most likely declare it improper if he were audited.

Thanks to this one maneuver, which was later outlawed by Congress, Mr. Trump potentially escaped paying tens of millions of dollars in federal personal income taxes. It is impossible to know for sure because Mr. Trump has declined to release his tax returns, or even a summary of his returns, breaking a practice followed by every Republican and Democratic presidential candidate for more than four decades....

Donald Trump is SLICK. Understand that? He runs up incredible debt with a bank so the bank has to pander to him to receive their monies back. He found that a very interesting method to maintain some degree of wealth in his life.

That matters.

Being a slick billionaire is hardly a man of integrity. He also treated his companies as if they owned him more than the income he received, the beauty queen contests were playgrounds for his voyeurism.

There isn't anything moral about him in any of his activities. His enterprises were designed to fail in bankruptcy so he had a better cash flow. He exploited businesses that contracted with him. It is amazing any contractor will actually sign a contract with him. 

All to often the wealthy persons lining the halls of the Democratic Party are complained about. I think I get it now. If a person comes by their wealth honestly and within moral standards, they aren't members of the "Clubs of the Corrupt and Corruptible."

Donald Trump's wealth came to him through corruption and exploitation. If he didn't carry out immoral standards, he'd be a pauper.

Health Care Savings Accounts are not replacements for Health Care Insurance.

I've had Health Care Savings Accounts, but, I also had health care insurance for myself and my children. 

The Health Care Saving Accounts were to cover the deductibles, but, the payment of all those deductibles are still the subscriber's responsibilities. Only after the deductibles were paid could the receipts be submitted for reimbursement. I was fortunate enough to have an income that allowed me to pay the deductibles twice. First to establish the health care savings account and then to pay the deductibles to submit for reimbursement. Not all Middle Class families are that fortunate to have that level of disposable income to achieve that outcome.

For those that cannot afford a Health Care Savings Account the expanded Medicaid program is a sincere answer for them. 

There is one other downside to Health Care Savings Accounts and that is correctly estimating the monies that will be paid for deductibles annually. If the submitted receipts do not equal or exceed the amount paid into the Health Care Savings Account that money is lost to the company holding the monies for reimbursement. These are tax free dollars and coming to an accurate amount of monies to be used for deductibles or bills is very important otherwise it does not pay to set up the account.

There was some confusion when the Orlando police responded to the Pulse shooting and deaths.

That may be an issue in training, but, there is also the greater issue that Mateen purchased his weapons in Florida. It was a gun purchased in Florida and ultimately killed Floridian citizens and those visiting the Orlando area.

October 31, 2016
By Gal Tziperman Lotan, Rene Stutzman and David Harris

The man on the phone (click here) said he was the person who had just opened fire June 12 inside Pulse nightclub, but Orlando police could not be sure.
The caller, later identified as Omar Mateen, repeatedly hung up on the Orlando police negotiator who had to call him back more than a dozen times.
From about 3:15 a.m. to about 3:20 a.m., officers could be heard in the background trying to pinpoint where Mateen might be. The background noise was "sterile," said one officer, as if he were in an office. Or a bathroom, said another.
"I'm still not convinced this guy's in there," the negotiator said as Mateen's phone rang. Law enforcement officers were going to Mateen's address in Fort Pierce to check whether he was home, and Orlando police pinged his cellphone to establish his location.
Despite his misgivings, the negotiator, who identified himself as Andy, treated Mateen seriously when they talked....

It takes a woman.

November 1, 2016
By Seema Mehta 

It was the home of Richard Nixon, (click here) the cradle of Ronald Reagan’s career and, for decades, a virtual synonym for the Republican Party of California.
Now, for the first time since the Depression, Orange County stands on the verge of choosing a Democrat for president, potentially ending the longest streak of Republican presidential victories of any county in the state.
That possibility symbolizes how the American political map has been upended by Donald Trump’s campaign: He has sped up a decade-long shift in which the GOP has gathered strength in white, blue-collar regions that once routinely elected Democrats, but traditional Republican suburbs increasingly have turned blue.
From Chester County outside Philadelphia to Gwinnett County east of Atlanta and on to Fort Bend County near Houston and Tarrant County west of Dallas, big, affluent suburban regions seem likely to shift significantly toward Hillary Clinton this year, according to analysts who track county-level voting trends....

October 31, 2016
By David Zahniser and James Queally

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office (click here) said Monday that it would review a series of campaign contributions made by donors with ties to a developer who secured approval for a controversial $72-million apartment complex.
On Sunday, a Times investigation showed that more than 100 donors who were directly or indirectly connected to developer Samuel Leung had made donations totaling more than $600,000 to L.A.-area politicians while his 352-unit Sea Breeze project was being reviewed....

The statement today by Burr is more than inappropriate. What is he thinking?

I suppose private gun ownership is legal in the USA for private wishes of assassination? Really?

That is a very irresponsible statement.

October 31, 2016
Sen. Richard Burr (click here) privately suggested gun owners should put a “bullseye” on Hillary Clinton, according to audio obtained by CNN from the Republican’s get-out-the-vote event over the weekend. Burr, who is currently facing a tough re-election race in North Carolina, remarked that during a recent visit to a gun shop, “nothing made me feel better” than seeing a gun-related magazine with a photograph of Clinton on its cover. “I was a little bit shocked at that—it didn’t have a bullseye on it," he said, prompting audible laughter from the Mooresville, N.C., crowd made up of Republican volunteers. “But on the bottom right [of the magazine], it had everybody for federal office in this particular state that they should vote for. So let me assure you, there’s an army of support out there right now for our candidates.” Burr later apologized, telling CNN in a statement: “The comment I made was inappropriate, and I apologize for it.”

Huma Abedin states she is unaware of emails on her former spouse laptop.

I think what will come out of this is the power of computers.

I don't doubt Ms. Abedin at all. She has proven to be a great person, a great American and more than willing to cooperate with investigation.

I believe what will come out of the email investigation is the ability of computers to pull delicate information to other computers without the knowledge of the authors/owners.

We are all familiar with the ability of our own computers to draw in all the entries of a conversation, whether they are meant to be viewed or not. Certainly, my computer is not the only one that does that with Windows 8 and Windows 10.

If that is the case, then the capacity of computer software needs to be examined for such characteristics. That should not occur and is definitely an invasion of a person's privacy. If the Weiner emails prove this capacity to be true it enhances the ability of foreign governments to enter supposedly private computers. I would expect such a capacity from Russia of it's own people.

Hopefully, Michel Aoun will be a peace maker in Lebanon.

October 31, 2016

By Bassem Mroue

Beirut — Lebanon’s parliament on Monday (click here) elected Michel Aoun, an 81-year-old former army commander and strong ally of the militant group Hezbollah, as the country’s president, ending a more than two-year vacuum in the top post and a political crisis that brought state institutions perilously close to collapse.

Aoun secured a simple majority of votes in the house after a chaotic session that saw several rounds of voting because extra ballots appeared in the ballot box each time. He garnered 83 votes out of 127 lawmakers present at the session.

He also failed to get elected by a two thirds majority in the first round, as had been widely expected.

Members of parliament broke out in thunderous applause after Aoun finally was declared president by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. His supporters across the country erupted in cheers as they watched the proceedings on huge screens set up in the streets. Brief celebratory gunfire could also be heard in the capital....

October 15th was the last day for extensions to be filed with the IRS. The 2016 tax return for Trump can't possibly under audit.

Q: Is it true that he has no investments in Russia?

A. We don’t really know. (click here) Trump has not released the financial documents that would shed light on the issue, particularly his tax returns. Breaking a tradition dating to Richard Nixon, he says he won’t make those documents public because he is being audited by the IRS.

In honor of International Women’s Day, (click here) Russian news service Russia Beyond the Headlines (RBTH) has anointed the 12 most beautiful women in Russia. The list includes supermodel Natalia Vodianova(above), Roman Abramovich‘s gorgeous girlfriend Dasha Zhukova and tennis star Maria Sharapova (below) as well as sexy spy Anna Chapman, who was kicked out of the U.S. last summer following espionage charges. Here’s the full rundown of RBTH’s Russian beauties; it’s unclear whether they’re ranked in order of pulchritude, but if so Anna Chapman clocks in high at #3, Vodianova is #4, Sharapova is #5 and Zhukova....

April 25, 2014
By Mark Snowiss
Washington - Anyone familiar with the New York or Miami real estate markets (click here) knows the buying power of Russia’s moneyed class – from the super-rich to the merely well-off.
But two alarming trends in the Russian Federation – the steady build-up of jingoistic rhetoric from President Vladimir Putin and a sharp downturn in the economy – are significantly altering the investment decisions of Russia’s wary elite.
And with tensions over Ukraine on the rise, Russian investors are changing their strategies within the American market. That's according to U.S.-based real estate agents and lawyers who cater to clients from the former Soviet Union.
“The high times are over,” said Edward Mermelstein, a New York lawyer who represents foreign investors in the U.S., including many Russians....
In 2011, a trust linked to the eldest daughter of potash fertilizer magnate Dmitry Rybolovlev paid $88 million for a four-bedroom penthouse at 15 Central Park West – the most expensive New York City apartment purchase ever....

August 16, 2016
By Matthew Bodner

In 2012, a United States court sentenced Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout to 25 years in prison. The Russian government wants him back. 

...Precisely why Russia (click here) might think the U.S. would trade Bout and Yaroshenko for a dozen unidentified Americans and Klotsman is, at first glance, hard to understand. That is before you look deeper into Klotsman's background. There, you see a rich history of fraud and shady business dealings, much of it with another Russian-American businessman, Felix Sater.

When Sater was eight years old, his family emigrated to Brighton Beach, a popular neighborhood for Soviet expats in New York. His father is said to have Russian mafia connections, according to Dawisha. Sater himself has well-publicized links to real estate developer and presidential candidate Donald Trump. His business cards identify him as a senior advisor to Trump....

Russian sanctions get a little rough on the Trump organization.

November 12, 2013
By the Moscow Times

U.S. tycoon Donald Trump, (click here) while in Moscow for the finale of his Miss Universe pageant Saturday, announced that he was planning to build a skyscraper in the Russian capital.
"I have plans to start business in Russia," Trump said, Itar-Tass reported, "I am currently in talks with several Russian companies to build a skyscraper on the model of Trump Tower in New York." The businessman did not name his partners or the size of the investment.
Trump Tower, located on 5th Avenue, is 58 stories high and contains offices, apartments and a hotel.
Araz Agalarov, the billionaire owner of Crocus City Hall, the Miss Universe venue, said his company had "started talking about joint work in the field of real estate a few days ago" with Trump.

Ukraine's "Party of Regions" is mostly dissolved in Ukraine since the change in government, but, it was the party of Viktor Yanukovych. If a former ally, such as Donald Trump, reaches the USA presidency, the outcomes of Ukraine are in doubt.

August 19, 2016
U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign (click here) chairman Paul Manafort has resigned amid allegations he illegally lobbied for Ukraine’s former pro-Russian government.
Ukrainian journalist and politician Serhiy Leshchenko reported Friday that he had uncovered ledgers which reveal Ukraine’s Party of Regions made undisclosed payments to Manafort.
The cash payments, made between 2007 and 2012, were worth $12.7 million, The New York Times reported.
Manafort, who has previously offered consulting services to ousted former president Viktor Yanukovych, is accused of having secretly lobbied in Washington for Yanukovych’s pro-Russian ruling party alongside his deputy Rick Gates....

Removing any Russian financial sanctions will directly benefit the Trump Organization. Changes in USA relationship with Russia and NATO can be made at the Cabinet level.

Q: What about investments from Russia in Trump’s businesses?

A. There is strong evidence that Trump’s businesses have received significant funding from Russian investors. Most notably, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. made that very claim at a real estate conference in New York in 2008, saying “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” Donald Trump Jr. added, “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”...

The emails cannot be revealed if there are laws that were broken.

The Weiner emails are now evidence.

October 30, 2016
By Pete Williams and Tim Stelloh

...The revelation (click here) ignited fierce criticism. Citing the longstanding practice of avoiding even the appearance of acting in a manner that could tip the political scales, former Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller said that "most people, when they hear that the FBI is involved, automatically assume the negative."

Clinton called the move an "unprecedented" departure from FBI policy, and on Sunday, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid scolded Comey for potentially breaking the law....

...Reid also accused Comey of shielding Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump from scrutiny over his connections to Russia, saying "it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination" between Trump and his advisers and the Russian government....

What I don't understand is why hasn't the FBI also started an investigation into legal cases regarding pedophilia with Trump and a 13 year old? Are there no statues of limitations that are federal? If that is the case then there needs to be an investigation started to determine the statue of limitations through court test.

I am not making this stuff up, there are women stating they were minors when Donald Trump visited their dressing room and otherwise. The visits to women's dressing rooms is nothing short of voyeurism.

23 March 2013
By Marcia A. Hamilton

...Legions of victims of child sex abuse (click here) will tell you that when they were finally ready to talk to a prosecutor or a lawyer, the criminal and/or civil statutes of limitations (SOLs) had already expired.  Across the United States, one victim after another has been surprised by these cruel and arbitrary legal deadlines.

For decades, states have been adjusting their child sex abuse SOLs in response to fresh stories of horror.  At one time, states measured the SOL from the date of the abuse, giving victims only a few years in which to sue.  Then, they set age 18 as the moment when the clock started ticking.  Now, we have a true 50-state experiment, with a wide variety of approaches among the states....

I have to state this? It is a fact that Donald Trump not only visited dressing rooms of beauty queens, the women were told by employees to the pageants to fawn over him.

Like.

What? This is a man that is candidate for President? I don't think so.

What is truly interesting is that the Democrats are the victims of these FBI investigations with impunity to the Republicans. The Republicans standard operating procedure are lies, as exhibited by Gowdy, and they are left alone to continue to deceive the people while pandering to big money of Wall Street. Why is that accepted in the USA?

Gowdy is a moron. The Hatch Act only applies to FEDERAL EMPLOYEES .

The Hatch Act, (click here) a federal law passed in 1939, limits certain political activities of federal employees, as well as some state, D.C., and local government employees who work in connection with federally funded programs. ​The law’s purposes are to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, to protect federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and to ensure that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political affiliation.​​​​ ​​

His accusations of President Obama and Senator Reid is typical of his lies and deceptions to the American people. He attacks Democrats with these tactics all the time. Gowdy is another example of the lack of professionalism of the Republican Party. They deceive first and apologize later.

Elected officials are NOT federal employees. 

The lives of elected officials obviously over lap their private lives as in the case with President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Lynch. President Obama has an obligation to campaign for his political party as well as do fund raising. That is also the case with President Bill Clinton. 

Gowdy is an idiot who actually believes the American people are stupid enough to believe a word he says. It speaks eons to the fact the UNDER EDUCATED and QUESTIONABLY HEALTH WHITE MEN of the 4th district of South Carolina actually do believe what he says. These statements by Gowdy regarding the Hatch Act are lies and nothing short of it, unless, he actually wants to admit he had no clue about the fact the law applies to federal employees only. 

Lies. That is his skill (stock) and trade. A lawyer? He needs to be hauled before the South Carolina attorney ethics committee for sanctions.

Morning Papers

The Rooster 

"Okeydoke"

October 29, 2016
By Autumn Crouse

On the north side of Topton (click here) some residents have not been as quick as others to welcome a new neighbor in town, a neighbor that just so happens to be an all white rooster.

Onlookers chuckled as they walked along the sidewalk.

“Is that a rooster?” a woman laughed as the rooster let out a heavy crow.

Meanwhile another woman passed by shaking her head explaining that a family member, who works the night shift, is frequently awakened by the noisy crows during the early morning hours.

In the Borough of Topton there is a local ordinance permitting no livestock in the borough and borough officials state that they have been working diligently to find a resolution to the issue....

"Good Night, Moon"

New Moon

0.3 day old Moon

0.1  percent lit

Witches will fly on their brooms and no one will see them. Wolves will not howl at the moon on Halloween. "Trick or Treaters" will have to use flash lights. Yes, indeed, Halloween of 2016 will be remembered as the darkest one of all time.

October 28, 2016
By Victoria Jaggard

Find out (click here) what a black moon is, where it will appear, and why this year’s dark orb is a celestial oddity.

Darkness will reign on the spookiest night of the year, with the arrival of a “black moon” on Halloween.

Although it’s not a term used by astronomers, black moon has become the popular moniker for the second new moon to fall in a calendar month. It’s the opposite of a blue moon, which is often defined as the second full moon in a month.

For parts of East Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, the new moon occurs on October 31 at 4:38 a.m. local time (5:38 p.m. UTC on October 30). This region already saw an October new moon on the first of the month, making the Halloween event a black moon....

This is a map of the deposits of elements along the Great Lakes. This is not secret information. The mining has occurred for a long time. This is the extent the inland lakes have contributed to the USA's economy.

Calcite and dolomite, (click here) when heated and in some cases slurried or combined with salt, are used in making many everyday products such as paper, glass, paint and varnish, soap and detergents, textiles, refractories, baking powder, and pharmaceuticals, including milk of magnesia and bicarbonate of soda. Finely ground, they are used to control coal mine dust, to collect sulfur dioxide from power plant exhaust, to sweeten soils, and as ingredients in fertilizer and stock feeds, to name a few. Limestone is used extensively in Michigan to refine beet sugar.  When burned in a kiln to drive off gases, calcite and dolomite form burnt lime. Among the uses for burnt lime, in addition to steel making, are water and sewage treatment, acid waste neutralization, and road base stabilization. Crushed calcite and dolomite are used in concrete, road construction, building materials, and as a filler in asphalt....

It is amazing to me how many uses there are for porous rock. Calcium carbonate is organic. It is very organic. Right? I talked about it's highly ionic and reactive properties in the first few entries. Right? Albert Einstein's desk and the quality of education in the USA.

It is no surprise that I am not a fan of mining. I think mining is very mismanaged. Rather than securing the mining for safety, mines are not secured because it cuts into profits. 

This is the year 2016. As a society and world we are well into the 21st century. It is time to realize we need all the water we can find and lower pollution impacts as much as we can. The innovation of the current generations are incredible. This is one more area where critical thinking can bring about streamlined and efficient operations in areas that are benevolent to life on Earth. 

Mining and producing cement consumers enormous amounts of energy in the way of heat energy. There have to be better answers to all these operations to conserve energy, maintain water quality and minimize abuse of the environment. 

CO2 in the abundance that exists today effects Earth's oceans. The scientific community calls it acidification, but, in actuality it is less alkaline. The normal pH of the oceans is 8.2 with some variations in micro-environments within the marine environment. The CO2 turns into carbonic acid and pulls the pH toward the neutral 7.0 and then if it continues it will move into the acidic side of the pH scale.

The calcium in the oceans is vital for fish, especially shellfish. Calcium is what is used to form their shells, of which they need to survive. The oceans have had a pH of 8.2 for eons. There was never a time on Earth when the oceans were acidic. This change in pH of the oceans is anthropocentric. There is no natural process that changes the pH of the oceans. I mentioned some micro-environments are slightly different, up to 0.3 pH, but, that is due to such things as local dissolving rock, etc. The issue of ocean acidification is completely man made.

I have no more patience for the idea the human path forward can continue as if what nature is telling us is a lie. The sincere problem is Earth has been warning human beings for over a century now. Leaders during the Industrial Revolution, such as Henry Ford, fore told this scenario, hence his work with the electric car. There is no reason for leaders in this world to look the other way while abusive cultures are indifferent to the problems they are causing with other peoples. 

Insensitivity is rampant in the right wing culture in the USA, including the fact tornadoes are no longer singular and in the mid range of the Fujita Scale. The tornado outbreaks in the USA are killing people. In 2016 there is a total of 12 deaths to date.

2016 Fatalities by Circumstance: (click here)
In Home:3 In Manufactured Home:7 Outside:0 In Building:0 In Vehicle:2 Unknown:0

No back sliding. The future of our children and their children is precious. The current generations need to do the hard work and insure an economy with a livable Earth. Now there is an idea. An economy based in returning the balance of Earth's troposphere. Yep. There is a definite economy in all of that. There is a panel of scientists just waiting to advise the generations on the way forward. I heard the scientists on that panel came from some of the best universities in the world. The panel's title is the much maligned IPCC; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It's a pretty cool name. "Intergovernmental." Yep, it sounds like the smart folks in the world. Who in this world would ever come up with such a homogeneous and communal name as that. "Intergovernmental." Yep. That's the smart folks. They are very trust worthy, too. "Believe me."

This was a paleontological dig site in Florida.

This is an academic dig site. Imagine this as a commercial site. It would be a complete disaster.

Uploaded on Dec 7, 2006

Dredging goes on at a limestone quarry that is also the location of the Haile 7G paleontological dig site. The dig site is the location of the Florida Museum of Natural History's "Tapir Challenge," which I joined as a volunteer on December 6, 2006. More about the "Tapir Challenge" is at:

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/vertpaleo/20...

Photos from my day there are at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30268343...

(Close up the space before "6372" -- I can't seem to do it here.)
The water shown in this video is part of the Florida aquifer.

Moist climate dictates karst topography, especially, with limestone as the basement rock.

Limestone mining can pollute water and create sinkholes. When limestone dissolves while it's still in the ground, caves and gullies form, a natural phenomenon known as karst (click here). Although this doesn't hurt the environment in its natural form, once the limestone is mined out, sinkholes can form and disrupt underground waterways. This changes the natural water table. The actual mining process also changes existing waterways, adding additional water to streams and other bodies of water that not only floods the surrounding area, but adds pollutants to it as well. At the same time, it draws water from other features such as lakes and ponds.

Limestone can be damaged by the environment through weather and water erosion. The stone absorbs water that can cause it to deteriorate over time. If the water has a high acidity content, the damage is more immediate. Wind can wear away stone detailing. Limestone is also prone to discoloration by exposure to oil, dyes or even organic material, such as bird droppings or decomposing plant matter. It can even get rust stains if exposed to oxidizing iron.

Contractors drained the swamps and built retirement communities. What were they thinking? The government states, "...sink hole deaths are rare." SO! Therefore, what?

August 19, 2015
By Jason Silverstein

The hell hole has come back. (click here)
A sinkhole in Florida that fatally swallowed a man two years ago has now reopened, police said Wednesday morning.
The second-time sinkhole in Seffner is 17 feet wide and 20 feet deep, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokesman Ronnie Rivera told the Daily News. It has not swallowed anything or anyone, he said.
“We’re not expecting it to get bigger,” Rivera said. “It has not spread. It just opened again.”...

The community and their supporters are correct. Mining limestone in Florida is a horrible idea.

October 27, 2016

By Cecilia Fox

Miami  County — Citing opposition to the proposed operation, (click here) Piqua Materials withdrew their application to develop a surface mine in Washington Township.

The company withdrew its application on Wednesday.

“While confident that Piqua Materials would win on the legal merits of its application, those opposed to this move have raised a number of issues which need to be addressed. Accordingly, the better course of action is for Piqua Materials to take a step back to further engage the community on its proposed move,” Piqua Materials President Dennis Garrison said....

...The conditional use permit application was filed with the Miami County Planning and Zoning Department in late September. The application sought approval to develop a 93-acre site in Washington Township for the extraction, processing, and sale of limestone products....

Florida is a karst topography. What does karst mean? Karst topography is underlain by limestone that has been eroded by dissolution, producing ridges, towers, fissures, sinkholes, and other characteristic landforms.

It is insane to put an open pit mine in Florida. 

My favorite limestone deposit in the USA is Bryce Canyon. It is a national park and it is breathtaking.

Grand Canyon (A), Chocolate Cliffs (B), Vermilion Cliffs (C), White Cliffs (D), Zion Canyon (E), Gray Cliffs (F), Pink Cliffs (G), Bryce Canyon (H)

It is called stratigraphy and is the most fascinating way to study the time scale of Earth. Statigraphy is the branch of geology concerned with the order and relative position of strata and their relationship to the geological time scale.

Yes, a geological times scale. What this cross section of USA's statigraphy shows is the rise and fall of Earth's oceans. For every layer of rock in this cross section there is a time period when Earth's ocean rose above the land and deposited rock that would become this vast and beautiful vista of color and composition. 

Sea Level Variations over Geologic Time 
By M. A. Kominz
2001

...Long-term Sea Level Change Estimates (click here) are also made from sedimentary strata deposited on the continents. This is actually an excellent place to obtain observations of sea level change not only because past sea level has been much higher than it is now, but also because in many places the continents have subsequently uplifted. That is, in the past they were below sea level, but now they are well above it. For example, studies of 500}400 million year old sedimentary rocks which are now uplifted in the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains indicate that there was a rise and fall of sea level with an estimated magnitude of 200}400m. This example also exempliRes the main problem with using the continental sedimentary record to estimate sea level change. The continents are not Rxed and move vertically in response to tectonic driving forces. Thus, any indicator of sea level change on the continents is an indicator of relative sea level change. Obtaining a global signature from these observations remains extremely problematic. Additionally, the continental sedimentary record contains long periods of nondeposition, which results in a spotty record of Earth history. Nonetheless a great deal of information about sea level change has been obtained and is summarized here....

The Grand Canyon has the oldest EXPOSED rock in the USA.

The Grand Age of Rocks: The Numeric Ages for Rocks Exposed within Grand Canyon (click here)

Grand Canyon National Park [see Photo 1] is one of the best places in the world to gain a sense of geologic, or “deep,” time because the canyon exposes a great swath of geologic history. Rocks exposed in Grand Canyon are truly ancient, ranging from 1840 million years old (m.y.), or 1.84 billion years old (b.y.), to 270 m.y. The Grand Canyon landscape is geologically young, being carved within just the last 6 m.y. There are younger geologic deposits in Grand Canyon too, such as the Ice Age fossils found in caves, a 1000-year-old lava flow in the western canyon, and even the debris flow deposits that continue form each year....

Bryce Canyon National Park (click here)