The Conservative Cave

Pablo Escobar has been dead for more than three decades, but one part of his private zoo apparently never got the memo. Four hippos were brought to Hacienda Nápoles in the 1980s, one male and three females.

From Nature.com:

Quote

The introduction of hippos into the wild in Colombia has been marked by their rapid population growth and widespread dispersal on the landscape, high financial costs of management, and conflicting social perspectives on their management and fate. Here we use population projection models to investigate the effectiveness and cost of management options under consideration for controlling introduced hippos.

We estimate there are 91 hippos in the middle Magdalena River basin, Colombia, and the hippo population is growing at an estimated rate of 9.6% per year. At this rate, there will be 230 hippos by 2032 and over 1,000 by 2050.

Escobar died in 1993, but the hippos stayed, and then they got busy.

Colombia now estimates the population has passed 200. Without strong control measures, officials project roughly 500 hippos by 2030 and close to 1,000 by 2035.

senseandsensibility (26,949 posts)

This should be the response from all Dem leaders today:

Trump promised five thousand stimulus checks from DOGE cuts. You got 0. Trump promised two thousand stimulus checks from tariffs. You got 0. Trump promised $1.98 gas. You got $4 plus.
Trump now has more promises for you.

Thanks to Ron Filipkowski for the above reminder. The emphasis should be on the fact that he's lying! Again.

https://democraticunderground.com/100221496888

Sekou Dukuly had quite a résumé. He was running Liberia's government-owned port system while remaining the licensed director of three Minnesota group homes more than 5,000 miles away.

From APM Reports:

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In 2024, at a ceremony in the Liberian capital of Monrovia, an emcee praised the business acumen of Sekou Dukuly, the newly installed director of the West African nation’s government-owned port system.

Dukuly had been “delivering multimillion-dollar profit increases everywhere he worked,” the emcee said.

Dukuly didn’t make his money in international shipping, however. He cashed in on Minnesota’s booming group home industry.

Minnesota companies linked to Dukuly collected at least $36 million in taxpayer funds over the past 10 years, according to Minnesota Open Checkbook, a state website that provides transparency in government spending. Dukuly has had a hand in businesses that have run at least two dozen group homes, almost all in the northwestern suburbs of the Twin Cities. The state issued licenses and paid Medicaid dollars for those businesses to provide care and supervision to Minnesotans, typically those with mental illnesses or physical disabilities.

But an investigation by MPR News and its national investigative unit, APM Reports, shows that Dukuly’s financial success has come at a human cost, with multiple instances of residents being neglected and even dying in group homes linked to him. And the money has gone into bank accounts tied to alleged financial schemes in Minnesota and abroad — raising questions about the state’s oversight of the group home industry and the billions of dollars that have flowed into it.

You better get ready for ... war." Across the country, radicals are openly planning for the next stage of their movement, and notably, the Democratic establishment is not part of their plans. Despite the talk of a "Big Tent Party," socialists are riding high on a surge of support and talking purges and revolution.
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