In Michelle Malkin’s syndicated column today, she chooses to describe the Obama administration’s environmental “green” movement as, “the high priests of eco-destruction”. Little did she probably know how literally accurate she just might be. But that’s another story.

Malkin provides readers with ample material and links to keep a feller busy for several hours touching only on the topics of the National Parks Service’s Jon Jarvis, Interior Sec. Ken Salazar, issues with the delta smelt and the San Joaquin Valley and dam issues along the Klamath River in California. This barely scratches the surface of the fraudulent and twisted science, greed and corruption that drives the environmental movement.

I pray the day will come when people will begin to realize that what government tells you is all lies….all lies! ALL LIES!

Tom Remington

Hornady® Recalls 7 Lots of 500 S&W 300 grain FTX® Custom™ Pistol Ammo

Congress Asked to Hold Oversight Hearings to Review Possibly Politicized EPA Grants

Oversight Hearing Should Review Objectivity of Grant Recipients, Goals and Appropriate Funding Level

FOIA Requests Being Filed

Washington, D.C. – The National Center for Public Policy Research is today calling on Congress to hold a series of oversight hearings over possibly-politicized grants made by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The National Center’s general counsel, Justin Danhof, has also filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking additional details about several of those grants totaling nearly a half million dollars, made to the Pacific Institute in California.

The president of the Pacific Institute, Peter Gleick, has this week confessed to misappropriating the identity of another individual in order to obtain confidential documents from a rival think-tank, one that has reached different conclusions than has the Pacific Institute on the causes and significance of global warming.

Gleick said in a statement that he did so because of “frustration” over differences between persons and institutions within the global warming debate.

“The Pacific Institute receives federal grants related to science research while participating ardently in public advocacy on science-related issues,” said Amy Ridenour, chairman of the National Center for Public Policy Research. “While it is possible to be objective during research while simultaneously conducting public advocacy, it is difficult. It most likely is especially difficult when a research institute’s CEO is so overcome with the passion of his convictions that he cannot restrain himself emotionally while in pursuit of his advocacy goals.”

Ridenour continued: “In 2006, in response to another controversy related to maintenance of high objective standards in climate science research, the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations conducted hearings about the so-called ‘hockey stick’ graph of Professor Michael Mann of Penn State University, which had been used by the United Nations’ IPCC for advocacy purposes. The hearing, predictably, did not settle the global warming issue but it did provide lawmakers and the public with the opportunity to hear from prominent climate scientists and statisticians with a variety of viewpoints. It was a form of peer-review, necessary in our view because the traditional peer-review process within science is insufficiently rigorous, particularly when it comes to the highly-controversial issue of global warming, over which very many billions of dollars are at stake.”

The 2006 hearing also reminded scientists and other professionals of the importance of maintaining the highest standards of objectivity.

The oversight hearings the National Center now recommends would have three purposes. 1) To review the grants made during the last two Administrations to make certain sufficient standards of objectivity are in place; to 2) obtain the views of respected scientists as to whether the EPA grant program is focusing its resources in the most promising areas of research with an eye toward maximizing public benefit; and 3) to examine the question of whether the grant program, at a time of 15 trillion-dollar federal government debts, is at an appropriate spending level.

“While Congress itself should not be deciding every EPA grant,” added Ridenour, “Given the amount of dollars involved and the potential for abuse, it makes sense for Congress to call eminent scientists before it every few years to obtain their views on whether these grants are sufficiently advancing the public interest.”

The National Center recommends that grants from the Obama and Bush Administrations be equally evaluated so as to eliminate any suspicion that Congress’s legitimate oversight function is being used for partisan purposes. The evaluation should not be limited to grants made on issues related to global warming.

The National Center has so far filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the EPA related only to grants to the Pacific Institute, it expects to file additional FOIA requests in the coming days.

Expose these freaks for who they are.

As I continue my reread of the adventures of Lewis and Clark, often times the reading is dry with weather reports and what they saw on the right and saw on the left and how many miles they covered. At times however, both Lewis and Clark write in relative depth about certain issues and observations.

Included in the expedition that was sanctioned by President Jefferson and headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were what was then considered “professional hunters”. I have no idea what qualifications these men possessed that earned them the distinction of professional hunters, but nonetheless throughout the entire journey they were on a daily basis dispatched by Lewis and Clark to hunt and gather food. Sometimes this involved having the hunters go ahead of the expedition and cache food along the riverbanks and/or trails for the troops.

Finding food was not always an easy chore. As a matter of fact, the expedition was forced many times to kill and eat horses they had bought from the Indians. Through many days travel from the Continental Divide and down through the Columbia River, Lewis and Clarke bought dogs from the Indians to feed their troops. During their first winter camping alongside the Missouri River, the expedition may have starved to death had it not been for the modest supplies of dried foods the natives had that Lewis and Clark were able to trade for.

In my reading at present, Lewis and Clark are camped for the winter near the mouth of the Columbia River where it flows into the Pacific Ocean. It rains and storms nearly everyday. Conditions are miserable, to say the least. Troops work everyday in the lousy weather building shelters, smoke house, supply storage and fort walls. Because of the conditions and hard work, the troops are suffering injuries and illness. Generally speaking conditions are not great and to add to it, the availability of fresh meat is just not reliable.

Several Indian tribes take up their winter residence in the same area. These natives eat a different diet than do the white men involved in the expedition. The natives mostly subsist on fish, roots and berries, Lewis and Clark are forced to buy a lot of this food from the Indians because there is not a lot of easily found meat, i.e. elk, deer, etc. nearby. They also struggle in keeping their meat from spoiling even though at this point they have constructed a smoke house used to cure meat.

Needless to say, the adventurers have learned to eat many different things along their journey, including spoiled meat as well as fresh meat from just about every wild critter they could kill.

During the time that Lewis and Clark spent on the coast of what is now Washington and Oregon, both Lewis and Clark wrote in their journals comments about eating certain meats that today in our society would be unheard of.

Written January 3, 1806 by Clark in the Journals of Lewis and Clark:

“Our party from necessity have been obliged to subsist some length of time on dogs, have now become extremely fond of their flesh; it is worthy of remark that while we lived principally on the flesh of this animal we were much more healthy, strong and more fleshy than we have been since we left the buffalo country. As for my own part, I have not become reconciled to the taste of this animal as yet.”

At the time this was written, I’m half guessing that perhaps William Clark was waxing a little nostalgic, hungry and missing those moments when fresh elk and deer meat were readily available for sustenance. The expedition’s hunters were able to locate and kill some elk, at times great distances from the newly built fort, there was never enough of this meat to feed the troops on a regular basis. Because of the great distances away where the elk were shot and killed, by the time the hunters, with help from the troops, retrieved the meat and brought it to the fort, it was spoiled or beginning to spoil. Smoking the meat didn’t take away the spoil.

At this time, both Lewis and Clark had expressed dissatisfaction with being forced to eat the dried fish the natives had and that which the expedition had to purchase or barter to get because of the lack of fresh meat. Also it was noted a few times that Lewis and Clark could not sustain trading away all of their supplies in order to subsist.

In short, I’m not sure that Lewis and Clark fully anticipated having the struggles they did to eat well on a consistent basis.

It was only two days later that we find where Capt. Lewis makes comment about what he eats. To set the stage for these comments, Meriwether Lewis had ordered some of his men to take canoes and travel to the beaches of the ocean and find a likely place in which they could set up and make salt. This place ended up being several miles from the fort.

After about 6 days had passed since the salt making party were to have returned to the fort, Clark and others went looking for them. In the meantime, the salt party returned to the fort temporarily and brought with them about a quart or so of fine quality salt they had been successful in making.

In the context of the below comments by Capt. Lewis, he is writing about how some of the men were excited to have salt to dress up, if you will, their meat and meals. Lewis makes note that he really could care little about whether he had salt and makes the following comments.

Capt Lewis, January 5, 1806, from the Journals of Lewis and Clark:

“The want of bread I consider as trivial provided I get fat meat, far as to the species of meat I am not very particular. The flesh of the dog, the horse and the wolf, having from habit become equally familiar with any other, and I have learned to think that if the chord be sufficiently strong, which binds the soul and body together, it does not so much matter about the materials which compose it.”

Part of the motivation to write this piece comes from comments that have been made by some animal rights groups about the recently released movie, The Grey. The movie is about people that survive a plane crash in the snow climes of the north country, smack dab in the middle of packs of wolves.

I’ve not seen the movie but evidently at some point for survival, some of the wolves that have been killed as the result of attacks by the wolves on the survivors, are eaten by the people. The comments from animal rights groups and other ignoramuses, are that nobody can eat a dog and there is nothing nutritious in them.

This of course is quite the contrary. Not only in our own history books, as I have shown above, and world history has the eating of dogs been a regular occurrence, in some societies today, the habit still happens.

Tom Remington

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*Editor’s Note* The posting of videos or snippets of information does not indicate in any way a political endorsement by me or anyone affiliated with this web site.

Please use this open thread to post your ideas, comments and information concerning issues not relevant to the content of published articles on this web site. Thank you.

On a message board called New England Outdoor Voice, of which I am a member and an occasional poster, in a discussion about catch and release fishing, the topic, as always, turned to whether catch and release fishing is ethical. This particular discussion took a step a bit further than is the norm. The poster wrote: “when PETA C&R talking points are used here to denigrate C&R that IS “aligning” with PETA.” The argument here became that anyone who took a stand against catch and release (c&r) for ethical reasons automatically must be “aligned” with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) or other animal rights groups. I think making a statement of assumption that one is “aligned” with PETA because they opposed C&R fishing for ethical reasons, is equal to making the same assumption that those that promote C&R fishing are also “aligned” with PETA.

I am not qualified in any way to discuss any scientific need for C&R fishing for the overall health and good of a fisheries, so I will make every attempt to avoid that topic. It is also not my intention to try to somehow influence readers to my way of thinking as it pertains to ethics in the context of hunting, fishing and trapping. Within the laws written, my ethical barometer differs from all others. I am willing to share my thoughts but who am I to try to somehow force my ethical beliefs on others?

The author above wrote that when talking points of radical animal rights groups were used by a fisherman this “aligned” them with those groups. Not knowing exactly what the author’s intent of a definition for “aligning” is, I will turn to the dictionary: “to bring into cooperation or agreement with a particular group, party, cause, etc.: He aligned himself with the liberals.” (Note: I did not add the example of the sentence for the use of the word “aligned”.)

The definition says to “bring into” which implies some kind of action is needed in order for this to happen. One could therefore argue that if someone happens to make a statement that is similar or exactly like the position of any animal rights group, one would have to actually make an effort to “bring into” their “aligning” with such groups.

If I were to claim that the richest people in America should pay their fair share of taxes, because that is the position of the democratic party, does that “align” me with the democratic party and make me one of them? Perhaps if I had said, “I strongly agree with the democratic party on their position of paying taxes, I would be “bring[ing] into” an alignment with the party. I might even send them money or support them in other ways. To call me a liberal because of one small statement is dishonest and intended to mislead.

Those willing to study and understand the positions and years of statements and actions conducted by the large number of animal rights groups in this country, do gain an appreciation of the tactics used by these institutions to further their agendas. Often denied, incrementalism is used. This is the action of taking away any and all, tiny if necessary, freedoms and liberties enjoyed by hunters, fishermen and trappers. The ultimate goal is to end these activities.

One very successful stratagem used by groups like PETA and HSUS (Humane Society of the United States), is to convince the general public that hunting, fishing and trapping are not “necessary”, that no longer do people “need” to hunt, fish and trap because we have grocery stores. Their goal is to indoctrinate the people that there is no requisite for these activities and over the years have successfully labeled hunters, fishermen and trappers as “sports” or that the activities they enjoy are for sport and entertainment only.

If that battle becomes successful, the greater war on the abolition of “sport” hunting, sport fishing and sport trapping will be sooner realized. When the need to hunt, fish and trap is removed, then all that is left is the entertainment value. When the general public begins to perceive these activities as entertainment, then the task of classifying outdoor sportsmen as a blood thirsty, perverse and, yes, unethical lot, becomes so much easier.

Doesn’t it therefore make sense that someone who enjoys hunting, fishing and trapping would not be looking to “align” themselves with groups that want to take away their enjoyment? To make the claim that anyone opposing C&R fishing is “aligning” themselves with PETA, either doesn’t believe anything about the objectives of animal rights activists or they have another agenda.

The same twisted logic can be used to claim that anyone who promotes C&R fishing aligns themselves with PETA or other groups. If you believe what these organizations write on their websites, it doesn’t take long to see that what seems to be bees in their bonnets is when people are “cruel” to animals and use “unethical” means of exploiting them. And, if anything, they seem to offer a bit of slack in cases where people “need” to hunt, fish and trap for sustenance.

For those that argue against C&R fishing for ethical reasons, using the same logic, can accuse those who promote C&R fishing as being “aligned” with PETA. I don’t believe for a minute this is the case, no more than I believe those who oppose C&R fishing align in the same way. This is simply a matter of personal ethics.

I have heard it said about hunting, fishing and trapping that ethics is what a person does when nobody is looking. The meaning being that this is the time that a person will do what they believe right in their heart. Perhaps the conversations about ethics, more accurately described as preaching about my own ideals, should be left to the families around the dining room table.

What needs to be understood is how does C&R fishing effect the fishery?

Tom Remington