Birding lifers on spring vacation

I had an incredible vacation this spring, as attested by my posts about my time at Death Valley and Sequoia.

While the three national wildlife refuges I hit weren't scenic, between them and parkland in Las Vegas, I saw nine lifer and three semi-lifer birds. (By semi-lifer, I mean I had seen it before, but had either no photo or else a crappy one.) As I said on Reddit's r/birding, I'm not counting the magpie duck I saw, because they're a domestic AND they're non-native.

Let's go in order.

The first was at Red Rock Canyon, a Woodhouse's scrub jay:

Full album is here.

Next, Clark County Wetlands Park plus a city park on the north side.

We first have a common gallinule:

Then a ruddy duck:

I saw more ruddy ducks, many, at Kern National Wildlife Refuge, but this was the closest I got to one as well as being the first I saw.

Full album here.

Desert National Wildlife Refuge, just a little bit further north?

I heard the Lucy's warblers, which I knew nothing about before getting there. They're basically the one US warbler that lives entirely in desert and semidesert. They're hard to shoot, even for warblers, in mesquite shrub.

I also saw what I puzzled out to be a Nashville warbler:

I kept both of these smaller as they're lower-grade photos.

Full album, including some cool spiny lizard photos, here.

Next, at Death Valley, my first semi-lifer, an American pipit.

Showing the suckitude of Google's own AI-bot search through Google Photos, "pipit" returned nothing; I had to go into the individual album for Salt Creek.

I had seen one before at Bombay Beach, which I didn't realize at the time, but with a crappy photo. I saw one at Pixley NWR after Sequoia.

After that, in an area where I was just putzing around, some national forest land near Lake Isabella, I spotted a new member of the wren group, a northern house wren.

Full album is here. Again, a low-resolution photo that I'm keeping smaller.

Next, in what Google Images first tried to tell me was a golden eagle, a Swainson's hawk from Pixley NWR.

They don't normally come as far east in Texas as where I am. And Google Photos is teh suck again, not returning photos for "Swainson."

Next? The second semi-lifer, a Bullock's oriole.  I had seen one before in Salida, Colorado, but no photos. They do semi-regularly come this far east in Texas, but I've never seen one locally.

Full Pixley album here.

Next, an eared grebe at the other wildlife refuge, Kern.

Google was again teh suck on searching my albums, so I had to search by file name on my computer to remember where I had seen it. Again, this is a kind of ragged photo so keeping it smaller.

Also at Kern, but much better? Greater white-fronted goose:

I was pretty sure this was a new bird when I saw it, and knew it was not a grebe and pretty sure not a duck, even at distance, though it was mixed in with shovelers and other ducks. Full album, with many other birds, is here.

Screwy about screwworms

The Texas Observer semi-laughingly hopes for a quick end to screwworm, without mentioning climate change, and also without interviewing a representative of the Texas Farmers Union, like you know, Democrats' candidate for Ag Commish. Bernard Rapoport is turning over in his grave again. 

Laugh my ass off that auctioneers and ranchers are talking about the New World screwworm ultimately being good for cattle cuz "survival of the fittest."  

Most ranchers and auctioneers claiming this ignore that climate change allows the fittest screwworms to overwinter ever further north, which is why I said "semi-laughingly" about the Observer. What if it crosses the Red and stays across the border in a mild, wet El Niño winter? Oooopppsssss.

And, the typical rancher probably rejects the broader theory of evolution by natural selection. Many ranchers, and even more, farmers, admit something about climate change while still being in a degree of denial about how bad it's going to get. 

(That said, TFU's parent, the National Farmers' Union, is bad on climate with its support of E15 fuel.) 

Texas Progressives talk

Off the Kuff contemplates the plight of the unhappy Republican and what they might do about it. 

SocraticGadfly talks about all the loopholes in Strangeabbott's executive order for data center electricity supply.

State Board of Ed is finalizing its list of bibul verses for K-12 students to be brainwashed into. Cue your next First Amendment lawsuit.

Presidio's EDC is suing Team Trump over border walls AND/OR other possible barriers in the Big Bend area. 

The Observer wonders why Laredo-area officials aren't being quite as tough. 

Black history unveiled and preserved in San Antonio. 

Neil at Houston Democracy Project said HPD has unlimited $ to police rank & file Democrats advocating for basic rights, but Texas State Republican Convention offers bigoted, anti-democracy hate with no impediment.

Melissa M. López and Dylan Corbett call on Congress to protect DREAMers for the benefit of us all. The Texas Signal looks at the joy and the fear around the World Cup in Texas.

Texas Monthly notes the surge of AI-generated political ads in our campaigns.  

Law Dork analyzes the latest Trump Justice Department attack on ICE protesters in Minnesota. Franklin Strong makes one more appeal to try to influence the SBOE's statewide reading list.

Self-hating Blacks, Hispanics and Muslims attend Texas GOP convention

This picture should say it all, or nearly so:

Samar Halabi is the lady on left. That's clearly an African-American woman at right, and apparently a Hispanic in back.

And, they are self-hating, the Black and the Hispanic, even if they don't recognize it.

 

The Texas Trib has the details of the Texas Republican state convention. 

It's a version of Martin Niemoller's old poem, augmented by the fact that racist wingnuts HAVE ALREADY come after you in the past, and some, whom the Texas GOP, or at least its biggest donors, have not disavowed, like Nick Fuentes, are trying to come after you again today, along with Mooslims.

But, I included Muslims in the self-hating, did I not?

First, the lady pictured:

Halabi, a teacher, declined to say how she would vote in November, but said that she is a Republican and always votes.

Well, there you go.

And more, from her husband:

Well, there you really go.

Halabi and her husband, Amjad Muhtaseb, were both registered as delegates for the convention. 

Muhtaseb, an engineer and business owner, said Muslims are conservative by nature. 

“We believe in Adam and Eve,” he said. “We don’t believe in this, multiple gender. We don’t drink. We don’t gamble. We are against pornography.” 

They hope to bring more Muslims into the Republican Party.

And this:

When it comes time to vote in the midterms, Tarek Hussein plans to support his party where he feels it’s deserved. 

“I will vote Republican for the good Republican candidate,” he said.

You've been kicked in the teeth, and told things will get worse in two years at the 2028 state convention, but you're back for more.

Yes, it will get worse.

Strangeabbott last year designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations a terrorist group. Muhtaseb and Tarek Hussein, who founded its Houston chapter, were both not just state GOP attendees but delegates.

Here you are on that:

Throughout the week, members of the convention attempted to remove them as delegates. 

Ultimately, the party concluded that even the full convention did not have the power to boot them. However, the convention on Friday updated its rules so that next time it meets in 2028, the Credentials Committee could vote to remove delegates with ties to a terrorist organization.

Have fun coming back in 2028.

 

Let's add in that CAIR national is suing Strangeabbott over the designation. 

Side note: This illustrates to a T the problems with a Westminster first-past-the-post political system when combined with a strong-presidential leadership model, or strong-governor model at the state level. Conservative Muslims have no home in a party rife with bigotry and third parties that might have room have no traction. That said, the American Solidarity Party, an American version of the Catholic-oriented Christian Democrat parties of Western Europe, would welcome conservative Muslim voters, I'm sure.

 

That said, sometimes, you move. Period. As a third-party voter who’s extended that third-party voting past presidential races to governor and senator, and now past that to lower-level races, I know that.

 

None of this is to suggest that every Black and Hispanic Republican is "self-hating." But, every one engaging in open bigotry against some other race, or here, a world religious organization, or elsewhere, against sexual orientation, is "self-hating" in my book. Note that I did not say you had to become Muslim — or teh gay. But, tolerance without open bigotry? Yeah, short of that, you're self-hating. 

Trump a fascist? Let's pump the brakes a little bit on that

I've long been uncomfortable with such statements, and events of last week only increase my discomfort.

Note, this was originally set for last week, but I held off when I instead had material for a post about Trump backing new sanctions on Russia and restoring old ones, as it's a good lead-in to the ideas here, namely that Trump is not under Putin's thumb. 

First, Trump's name has been removed from the Kennedy Center, after a judge's ruling. That piece, written last Saturday, is an update from this story, written last Friday, which said the Kennedy Center's Trump-flunky board voted to appeal the ruling. THAT said, per this Saturday story, the DC Court of Appeals rejected that appeal, which had requested a freeze on the original ruling.

Second, another judge ordered the Department of Interior and National Park Service to restore signage depicting the actual full story of American history in the parks, including slavery and climate change, and to do so by July 4. The Trump administration does not appear to be directly resisting the order, though foot-dragging on the date will likely happen. 

The point is that Trump is not a Hitler or Mussolini, or even a Peron or Franco. Sure, people inside the administration and out, like his bald-headed Goebbels Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, surely wish it were otherwise, but it's not. 

Yes, Jan. 6, 2021 is the big exception. And, his current maneuver to order the USPS to restrict the return of mail-in ballots (which almost certainly will be overturned) is another. Weirdly, the federal judge with initial oversight allowed that one to go forward, not because he agreed with it, but because he said it had so many unanswered questions he couldn't rule on it yet. Excuse me Judge Nichols, but isn't that a good reason to rule against something?

Yes, it's true that Hitler and Mussolini came to power by legal means before destroying what had been the previous system of legality. Federal courts have helped Trump around the edges, but nothing like in Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany. (And, some things, like the continued gutting of the Voting Rights Act, are a Republican project in general, not a specifically Trumpian one.) 

I think this in part boils down to a difference between leftists and liberals, and on a partially parallel track, between people who are members of the left hand of the duopoly and the less insane portion of the right hand of the duopoly versus people who are outside it to the left. (Centrist "independents" are usually semi-tribalist when push comes to shove and don't think outside of duopoly frameworks.) 

Health care fails by The Atlantic and Mona Charen

And boy, were both of them two weeks ago big ones.

At the Ett-Lantic, an Elizabeth Cushing talked about the shortage of, and spiking price of, whey, without mentioning several relevant facts.

One is that protein over-supplementation is the latest, and ultimate supplementation craze. It's part of the American gospel of quick fixes that go along with American exceptionalism.

It's been goosed even more by much of the MAHA world.

And, it's dangerous. 

And Ms. Cushing tells you none of this. 

Eating too much protein can be hard on your kidneys, among other things. It causes dehydration from the extra water needed for its digestion. The extra water for digestion plus the extra water needed for the elimination of digestion byproducts stress your kidneys. That, in turn, can cause kidney stones. Especially because it's normally part of a low-fiber diet, whether with too much red meat or supplementation, it can screw with your colon. And, speaking of red meat, a diet with too much meat protein can cause not just kidney stones but end-stage kidney disease. It can also cause that old old disease of conspicuous consumption — gout.

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Meanwhile, on Substack, Charen was poo-poohing the risks of even moderate drinking. The nut graf, semi-conspiratorial angle and all, is at top:

IS A GLASS OF WINE WITH DINNER going to increase your chance of getting cancer or another serious illness? For the past few years, we’ve been deluged with studies and news accounts suggesting that the answer is yes. This week, the USDA reinstated a caution in its dietary guidelines about limiting alcohol. Note: This is the Trump administration. No sane person seeking guidance on a health matter would look to their science-trashing witch doctors.

Really? 

Yes, as next we get strawmanning and whataboutism:

The Trump clown show to one side, even if the federal government were staffed only by science-respecting people, we’d still have a problem when it comes to recommendations like whether or not to have that glass of wine, because our society is not good at evaluating risks. Not at all. For example, most parents drive their kids to school or walk them to the bus stop every day. They don’t permit their 8- or 10-year-olds to go to the corner shop by themselves or take a city bus. Why? Because they believe, wrongly, that if kids are left on their own there is a serious risk of kidnapping. In reality, stranger abduction is incredibly rare (abduction by non-custodial parents is another matter).

I don't know if Charen has alcohol abuse disorder, but these are the types of things otherwise intelligent alcoholics say. 

It gets worse. Ignoring the 1964 Surgeon General's report on tobacco, and follow-up work after that, she essentially claims that all the studies on the health risks of alcohol not only are correlational without being causational, but can never rise to the level of proving causation.

My quote in my quote-restacking? This:

Strawmanning, gaslighting and red herrings, Mona Charen. First, governmental agencies AND non-governmental health organizations have warned about the cancer dangers of moderate drinking even before Trump returned to office. In fact, those observations started before this century, and first became more specific when OBAMA was president. 

Second, per cancer and tobacco, at some point, observational studies, and analysis of them, become strong enough to become causation, not just correlation.

And should say it all.

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Sidebar: Joe Mercola, yes, HIM, has dropped his antivaxxer stance in re Vitamin K shots for infants. Will wonders ever cease.