Take care.

Have a GREAT day.

People can read where the money came from but if the checks come from the U. S government and bounced, that’s a rubber check.

Could you please explain to the home owner and tell him or her not to worry when the government issued check can’t be cashed? They will be glad to hear from you that all is well with the country while they still sit with damaged homes and properties.I’m sure after you explain your thesis, they will be happy living in their tent until they can get their money. They might even offer you a bottle of water they received from the Red Cross.

Take care and have a GREAT day and weekend.

Open question, but there are unmistakable signs they simply may not be. Political issues or faithfulness to long-cherished philosophical principles is at least making it difficult for the agencies to admit simple facts, and spurring them to make statements that are misleading at best.

In one article in The Marquette Mining Journal:

The DNR chiefs’ recommendation was recently revised to include the latest wolf population winter survey results, which showed the minimum number of wolves in the Upper Peninsula had dipped from 687 in 2012 to 658 this year.

DNR bear and furbearer specialist Adam Bump said biologists think there could be several reasons for the decrease, including some stabilization of the population.

“It’s within our confidence level,” Bump said. “It’s within the error rate that we expect. It’s not a significant decline.”

Enough to illustrate the point. Michigan wolf numbers have been steadily, moderately increasing every year by about 12% a year. Not just averaging to that, but within about 2% between every winter count like a straight line, while they repopulated the available habitat in the UP. It probably seemed like a good bet to assume that was going to continue and change to every other year counts, but it was not. The 687 wolves in winter 2011 did not become 770 in 2012 and then 860 for this year’s count instead of the actual 658.

This is more than significant. And not within any reasonable error rate. The Michigan wolf numbers would have to increase 45% this year to reach the 960 wolves next winter to maintain the “population curve isn’t changing” theory. It’s dead, Michigan wolves have never managed 15% since returning in any numbers. It lowers the confidence level for the population still increasing “historically” to near zero and raises the confidence that it is not very high.

The count is within a confidence level and error rate for a population that has already completely stabilized. Just not enough lower to show confidently the population has more than done that, and is continuing down. None of this sounds like what Adam Bump is saying. Why?

These statements, at least as quoted, are biased towards defending sport hunting of wolves for their population control, and such distortions a normal preparation for it being presented as an equally desirable to control wolf population as the wolves limiting themselves. At the same time such facts as wolf hunting directly decreasing pack sizes and increasing reproduction are studiously ignored (though the opening of habitat for dispersing wolves to form new packs is noted in the DNR’s presented wolf hunt proposal as a likely confounding factor reaching the goals), along with increases in livestock predation caused by hunts in the western USA.

The officials running the Minnesota and Wisconsin wolf hunt proposals will be presenting at the next Michigan NRC meeting, where the NRC’s version of Michigan’s wolf hunt will be announced. What they will say, beyond perhaps how popular and profitable and desirable their wolf seasons are, how happy they are to be in states without veto referendum provisions and voter initiatives to prove otherwise, and how important they feel it is to turn wolves into a commercial harvest, is hard to say. Hopefully it won’t promoting a hugely increased, free-for-all attempt to slash through Michigan’s stabilizing wolf packs settling in, aping seasons in their own states, accompanied by a “just by an amazing coincidence…” announcement of the same by the NRC.

I doubt it will be in favor of preserving Michigan as the last state where natural wolf populations can be studied instead of battered by yearly tribute taken from most of their packs, or pleading not to throw away the only control to validate their own experimental hunts’ success, toss away as trash the last chance, maybe ever, to find out if wolves can continue to control their own numbers, with several times as many of their prey as they could control the growth of present, and also if they reduce crop and browse damage and lower disease transmission by altering deer behavior despite not reducing deer, or have other beneficial effects. Will bias make the NRC treat these as all too outlandish possibilities to test, while ignoring that a nice routine sport hunt of wolves drives up their reproductive rate as surely as it preserves the number of now damaged packs? Will bias cause an idiotic claim such packs are undamaged, and any wolf can take on the role of any other wolf, magically cancelling the effect of losing a “harvested” ones contributions feeding pups and infirm wolves and defending against other now larger packs?

David Mech and Rolf Peterson are also scheduled to make or have read statements at the meeting. I’m not sure what they will be. Hopefully they will not be ones stating the obvious like “it won’t endanger them” when the real question is if it will benefit anything, and if so what; statements that the wolves will be able to replace losses to high “harvests” that leave out the vital information of how high the number of wolf packs and wolf breeding rate is driven by such a hunt compared to Michigan’s mild/no growth; or other such predictable attempts to mislead by, effectively, changing the subject to a very strictly true answer to a very carefully worded question. Such things have been all too common before.

Thank you for all your comments.

The individual gun owner militia is not well-regulated enough when there are drive-by shootings, felons with straw-bought guns, and mentally deficient who shoot dead families. NRA, get the gun owning culture straightened out so these things don’t happen.

For example, gun owners – all gun owners – should be mustered monthly with their guns to insure guns are in good operating order as in the military, gun operators have not suffered a debilitating blow to the head or some disease, and are not in some other way compromised in their decision making.

And remember, our founders had militia armories where military weapons were secured so as not to be available to the unsound. Where are those today, militia commanders?

Have a GREAT weekend.