Earth Day 2026: And?

As I noted on Shitter, and in comment to a good piece of snark on Substack by friend Lyle Lewis?

Earth Day is the day when pseudoenvironmentalists and environmentalists lite pretend to deeply care about environmental issues. 

But, it's true?

Look at Jared Huffman, claiming to be an environmentalist, except when it comes to letting cows continue to shit in Point Reyes. Result? Cows drive away tule elk. Ravens eat plover eggs when they run out of worms in cow shit. Park Service ignores the former and ropes off a section of Drake's Beach as critical nesting habitat for the latter rather than addressing the actual problem.

Per a piece I heard on NPR this morning, asking listeners what they saw as the biggest problem?

For me, No. 1 is the climate crisis. And, we're past "climate change." The Colorado River is drying up and will continue to do so the rest of this century. We're on target for 4°C, maybe 5°C, of increased heat from pre-industrial times within 100 years. That's 7-9°F. That latter faces neoliberal climate change Obamiacs like Michael Mann, perhaps worse at times for the cause than climate change deniers.

That said, the climate change deniers don't help. And, in the western US, that means increased wildfires, like the KNP Complex Fire in Sequoia five years ago:

Or the Dixie Fire blowing up in Lassen the same year. I was there the day it blew up.

No. 2 is the Sixth Mass Extinction. Besides megafauna and lesser fauna, globalization and related issues threatens a lot of flora. So does mass monocrop agriculture. The chemicals behind that threaten many birds.

No. 3, as Lyle talks about in that piece and elsewhere, is "overshoot," the overextraction of vital resources. Beyond petroleum, water is an obvious one. Overusing the Colorado River is a clear example. Another, as I said in calling out Suzanne Bellsnyder over Proposition 4, is groundwater — in her case, the Ogallala Aquifer.

No. 4 is what's behind all of this — neoliberal capitalism. That's the bottom line.

So, with Earth Day now 56 years old, we can celebrate accomplishments, like the Endangered Species Act in the US, while at the same time note failures, such as US politicians of both duopoly parties, not just Republicans, undercutting it and other environmental issues when they get in the way of capitalist economics. We can globally note Dear Leader conspiring with Xi Jinping to keep the Paris climate accords entirely voluntary. And, we can note climate change Obamiac scientists overselling Paris in the past.

Don't be fooled again. 

That said, a side note or two, riffing on my Earth Day 2016 piece.

National parks not only can get loved to death, they do. This has gotten worse in our COVID and post-COVID world, abetted not only by Trump slashes to federal nature funding, but death by a thousand paper cuts or stasis from Obama and Biden.

Second, Earth Day was founded about urban environmentalism. The record there since 1970 isn't perfect either. But, to be better? Start at home. In cities and towns, pick up trash. Homeowners, businesses and apartment complex owners? Stop overwatering and overfertilizing lawns. Plant native plants. Stop using petroleum-wasting Amazon so much.

Third, lets note that "wilderness" areas don't stay wilderness without management, and at least since not the development of agriculture, but organized pastoral nomads and even large-scale hunter-gatherers, "natural" environments have been managed by humans. Stop calling American Indians "Roussellian noble savages." It tain't so. 

Am I perfect on this? No. I just took a big old jet airplane on vacation, per the Sequoia photo. But, I have a reasonable amount of striving. I boycott a few companies over environmental issues, just like others over Israel. I fight the temptation to use artificial intelligence, and its electricity consumption, beyond already being here on the Net. I stay attuned to local nature. 

Growing number of Texas Dems want Kendall Scudder gone — eventually

I laughed, and cringed a bit as well, when the Texas Democratic Party executive committee elected ConservaDem Kendall Scudder as party chairman a year ago.

After that, I mocked the Texas Observer for uncritically fellating him,  an issue made worse by editor-in-chief Gus Bova personally doing the fellatio.

I laughed more, while doing the critical thinking Bova didn't, when Kendall pissed off a fair amount of TDP leadership and rank and file with his mockable plans to move the party headquarters out of Austin. I'll add now that this smacks of something like Trump's plans for Interior. 

Now? Per the Trib, we're at the point of the header. Three dozen state Dems want him to not run for re-election.  

The letter, signed by a substantial contingent of party insiders, reflects a persistent level of discontent among Texas Democrats after changes made by Scudder, including decentralizing the party’s base from Austin and overhauling staff positions, threw the party into a state of upheaval last fall.

That said, party insiders, such as Executive Director Terri Burk and finance head Vlator Smith, have pushed back hard. And, per the dissidents, even if he didn't run again, you're stuck with him for the almost three years remaining on his current term. Have fun.

Also have to love Kuff taking a full pass on this. 

Looking at the background of James Talarico

The Observer talks about James Talarico's rise starting with his time in Teach for America, above all noting that it gave him an early and strong networking system. The piece is also honest about some of the big money that has helped TFA and its political leadership spinoff, and their support for charter schools.

TFA’s recruitment, with its many rounds of interviews and an ostensible audition, promises to field an annual crop of future leaders in education. For most participants, their plans involve this short stint in the classroom before heading off to work in law, campus administration, policymaking, business, or the sprawling tentacles of the nonprofit industrial complex. TFA is less a teacher preparation program than it is a finishing school for future decision-makers in the multilayered technocracy of education policy, one dominated by elites who have historically boosted charter-school expansion. I am a rarity in that I still teach in the city and campus where I did my TFA stint.

The big names include Netflix' Reed Hastings and LinkedIn's Reed Hoffman, Walton family heirs and former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Read the whole thing, and realize that, if elected, while Talarico will be an agent of change from John Cornyn, he will NOT be an agent of change from standard neoliberal Democracy. 

That networking background helps explain his $27M 1Q campaign haul. 

George Conway, Never Trumpers and Blue MAGA, and the 25th Amendment and general stupidity

This article is based in fair part on an interview that Never Trumper Conway, now running for Congress as a Democrat for Congress, had with the New Republic, and in part on the latest development of my thoughts on the general stupidity of both Never Trumps and Blue MAGA about the 25th Amendment.

Conway's stupidity is reflected in the extended subhed for the story:

Conway, the former GOPer turned Trump critic who’s running for Congress as a Democrat, lays out his case that Republicans will eventually have no choice but to remove the president before his term ends.

Sure they'll have choices, George. That starts with the remaining portion of the part continuing to cower in fear, or however you phrase it. 

Let's do simple math.

For the next Congress, after the midterms, to remove President Donald J. Trump from office by the one means that is a Congressional prerogative — impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate — would require one-sixth (approximately) of Republicans in the Senate to vote aye for conviction. (Impeachment itself needs a simple majority.) Trump could launch a tactical nuke at Iran and that wouldn't happen.

Rethuglicans talking anonymously to Politico is not the same as Rethuglicans casting a record vote, and thinking that, even if they've done good head-counting on paper, an ultimate vote like this is actual nut-cutting, not more academic head-counting. 

Also, re the Anon Y. Mice talking to Politico, with summer vacations coming soon and other items, getting the creaky wheels of Congress to go through and complete the whole process before the November election day? Not happening. (That said, the Politico piece, linked by the TNR, is general bitching; not one of the Mice, let alone a named Trump flunky, mentions actually getting rid of him.)

Conway then raises Option B:

And you see it also in a lot of the Republican influencers—the Megyn Kellys, the Joe Rogans, and the Tucker Carlsons of the world. They’re basically talking about the 25th Amendment now.

Well, as someone who swatted that down, repeatedly, during Trump's first term, let's look at the actual amendment (Wiki link) again. 

The first two sections are about the Veep explicitly becoming president, then the process to get a new Veep, so not relevant here. The third is about a president declaring himself temporarily constrained; it's been invoked more than once during serious presidential medical procedures. 

So, to the "nut graf" of Section 4? In reality, it's more convoluted than most people think, and to the degree Congress might have to become involved, has higher hurdles than impeachment and trial.

Let's dig in:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. 

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department [sic][note 2][7] or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

OK, several things.

One, on the political side, unless Trump clearly has a memory-loss dementia, does Bagger Vance have the balls to initiate this process. You know better than that, and Conway should know better; if he doesn't, he has less business being in Congress than Eric Swallowell. (sic) 

Basically, in anything short of a clear memory-loss type dementia, or a clear brain injury similar in level to JFK's but with a president still living, the 25th Amendment essentially requires a coup d'etat against the president by the vice president, per the first paragraph.

Per the first half of the second paragraph, it requires them to hold their own feet to the fire against an enraged president.

And should that play out, beyond the impeachment process, there's the higher hurdle of how a veep and fellow plotters must convince two thirds of BOTH houses of Congress they're right. 

And, that process plays out over 21 days, plenty of time for plenty of machinations.

Behind all this, and deliberately left vague in the framing of the amendment, what constitutes being "unable to discharge the powers and duties of [the] office," or "inability"?

Back to Conway:

They have a guy who—they’ve overlooked his mental disorders in the past, dismissed them. They’ve overlooked his lies, they’ve overlooked his depravity. They’ve overlooked the fact that he is basically an adjudicated sexual abuser, that he’s a convicted criminal. They overlook these things because it served their purposes. It no longer serves their purposes.

None of those are "inability." You, and some Anon Y. Mice in the GOP, and plenty of Blue MAGA, might not like HOW Trump is "discharging," but that's not the same as "inability."  

Left unaddressed is what if a president fights his way back into power, but then looks worse? There's nothing to stop a veep, with Cabinet backing, to go down this road again. And, there's nothing to stop a president from fighting it again. 

I'll quote more Conway, the next paragraph after the previous quote, which ties to that, and other political issues:

And in terms of what happens in the U.S. Senate—which we can get back to, and why that matters, of course—the Senate is full of cowards. The Republican senators are cowards and they’ve been afraid of Trump.

Yeah, one-sixth of the Senate (plus one-sixth of the House, which Conway doesn't mention and which shows his ignorance of the actual 25th Amendment) ain't doing that. 

I modify that. Later in the piece, Conway indicates his knowledge:

We need to, basically, I think we need to possibly even put criminal sanctions in place for people who refuse to spend the money in accordance with Congress’s will. And there’s also—I talked about this even before I launched the campaign—we need to create that advisory body to act as the judge of whether the president is fit to continue in office, and replace the cabinet.

Yeah. The Washington solution — Congress punting responsibility to a committee, in hopes the problem goes away or resolves itself in 21 days. At the same time, there's more ignorance. Such a body ONLY gets a bite at the apple of the president, not the cabinet, and only comes into play when the veep gets a majority of the cabinet to tell Congress the president isn't fit, if that's what Conway meant. If it just means replacing the cabinet as who makes the call? It still requires the veep to start the process.

Note that "AND" word at the start of Section 4 carefully. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is inoperable without the participation of the sitting vice president. 

And, if you think Bagger Vance has the balls for that? You're really a fucking idiot. 

Finally, as for Conway and other Never Trumpers, whether still Republican or now ex-Republican? No sympathy. Trump was a serial liar, a racist, a thug with Mafia ties and a publicly admitted sexual predator before he was elected the first time. 

==

The 25th Amendment is limited in another way, directly connected to the JFK assassination that inspired it, and that itself could inspire some evil genius to do particular acts. Say that, in Dallas 1963, Oswald's first shots are pretty much as they happened, but the third shot is, say, 1 cm higher. Jack Kennedy survives but is pretty much brain dead. Say that Oswald gets off a fourth shot, or even fourth and fifth, and then takes out LBJ in his car, and he's stone cold dead.

There IS NO Veep to start the 25th Amendment process, and a brain-dead president is unable to nominate one. 

In short, while the 25th Amendment is better than nothing, it's not that good.

It also, for people who worship at either the originalist or liberal originalist, King James Version or New King James Version, of the Constitution of the United States, shows the structural failure of the strong-presidential system of government, at least in the US. (France has an impeachment process similar to the US, but a Google says nothing like a 25th Amendment. That said, like the 25th, it involves a two-thirds vote of BOTH Assembly and Senate, and per Le Monde, is at least as convoluted as the 25th.)

In the UK? If similar were happening? Tories would be looking for a no-confidence vote and trying to round up sufficient Labor, Lib Dems and others in the Commons for a simple majority vote. 

Outpoping the pope on the art of war and the art of blasphemy

Both Bagger Vance and a Catholic priest flunky of Bari Weiss, Gerald Murray, think they know more about the theology of just war and related issues than does Pope Leo XIV.

Bagger Vance is of course fine with authoritarian religious hierarchy as long as its headed by AI Jeebus, Donald Jesus Trump.

But, Leo XIV? Bagger thinks he knows more theology than Leo, in fact warning him:

“I think it's very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” Vance said.

There you are. If you can't teach from The Book of Armaments, Chapter 5, about counting to three before lobbing a Holy MOAB of the Pentagon at Tehran:

You need to shut up, Leo. 

Jokes about AI Jeebus aside, that IS where we're at.

Trump lying, which he does as soon as he wakes up, and claiming he thought that was a doctor.

As I said when first posting the link, Vance doesn't even have the excuse of dementia.

He then gets worse, with a laughable self-own:

Vance said the pontiff should be as careful talking about theology as the vice president is when talking about public policy.

Really? You're as careful about that as you would be about not checking wind direction before peeing outdoors. 

And, beyond Bagger, other elected Rethuglicans, by not calling the piece blasphemy, enable him:

"I know he's trying to be funny, but it was a foolish post," said GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who has been a critic of some of the president's policies. "I saw a lot of Republicans commenting in it last night. Some saying he's just trolling, and others saying it's anti-Christian. When you divide your own party it is self destructive. To me it was a gaudy and juvenile post."

And, yes, Religious Right wingnuts, if they were true to theology (back to YOU, Bagger) would call Trump's AI Jeebus for the blasphemy it is. 

One person actually did:

"The media is paying attention to podcastistan breaking with Trump over Iran," conservative podcaster Erick Erickson wrote on X. "What they really should be paying attention to are the Christian Trump supporters who have stood with him through Iran, who are waking up to his blasphemy."

There you are. 

So, re Bagger, if Satanyahu is the actual Satan of Tel Aviv, then Bagger is the Satan whisperer in Trump's ear, and of course Trump is not telling either one of them to get behind him.

Now, off to Fr. Murray, himself no Brother Maynard. 

He, too, is a liar, right in the subhed of the piece:

Eliminating a nuclear threat from a determined enemy is a noble reason to make war.

He doubles down shortly before the paywall: 

The United States and Israel undertook the attack on Iran principally to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.

Anybody who knows the truth about Iran knows that it has never actually sought a nuclear weapon. Anybody who knows the truth of the current situation knows that Iran avowed that in the negotiations before Trump started the Iran war at the behest of Satanyahu. 

Even if Iran has one-half metric ton of 60-percent enriched uranium, and even if it would not take that much more work to enrich to 90 percent, you still have to convert that uranium hexafluoride to metal. You have to have, even for a crude U-235 "gun" bomb, the assembly mechanism. You have to have a bomb big enough and an airplane big enough, if you're doing that old method, or a missile big enough, for delivery. 

Israel, on the other hand, already 20 years ago had missiles that could deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in the Middle East. And, that's from a US government-funded organization that writes the bare bones about Israel, but attacked Iraq at the run-up to the Iraq war, and now Iran.

As for why Iran has enriched to the 60-percent mark? The US-Israel dynamic duo brought this on. 

Leo is probably thinking something along the lines of "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest," if Fr. Murray is even on his radar screen. 

This is Murray's first piece for Bari Weiss's Zionists, but his profile page notes he's already a commentater for Fox News. He's also a commentator for EWTN, which Pope Francis accused of bad-mouthing him. For the unfamiliar, Eternal Word Television Network is the Catholic equivalent of a conservative evangelical, but not fundamentalist, Protestant television network.

National Democraps still refuse to address the Zionist element in their room

After the DNC's 2026 meeting last week, many attendees said Israel isn't on their constituent radar. They mentioned these three:

But party leaders say once they’re back home, the conversation shifts dramatically. In interviews, many state party chairs, candidates and elected officials did not name AIPAC or Israel funding as a top-three concern they’re hearing from rank-and-file voters. Instead, it’s the nuts and bolts of the economy that are weighing down their constituencies, they say, with the cost of housing and food and the availability of health care all top of mind.

Really? Inflation isn't caused in part by high gas prices caused by a war against Iran waged at the instigation of Israel? And, at least part of your grassroots constituents know that.

I mean, later on, the story even directly calls out national Democraps' lie by omission: 

During recent focus groups observed by NBC News (produced by Syracuse University and the research firms Engagious and Sago), Democrats in Michigan and Maine voiced significant criticism of Israel’s government around its conduct in the war with Hamas in Gaza, with a handful calling Israel’s actions “genocide.”

The lies were called out more explicitly by one of their own Congresscritters, for doorknob's sake! THIS:

Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., said she polled her own district after the contentious March primary, and her internal survey showed 80% of respondents had heard of AIPAC. “It’s higher than some members of Congress’ name ID in their own districts,” she said. 

Ramirez, of Chicago, said the average voter in her district is mostly concerned about the cost of gas and groceries as well as immigration enforcement overreach. But the “more informed voter,” she said, is agitating against any Democratic alliance with AIPAC. She said DNC leaders would be wise to reconsider how its handling the issue, particularly as it attempts to cultivate a younger generation of leaders.

Denial is a river that doesn't just flow through 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I guess. Neither is peeing on someone's leg and telling them it's raining. 

It's called gaslighting, like that by the Democratic Majority for Israel that I told to fuck off on Substack:

“We’re pleased that the DNC Rules Committee rejected a set of divisive, anti-Israel resolutions. These measures would be a gift to Republicans, would further fracture our party, and do nothing to bring Israelis and Palestinians closer to peace," Democratic Majority for Israel president and CEO Brian Romick said in a statement. "The DNC and party advocates need to keep focus where it belongs — on building a united Democratic Party that can win back Congress this November.”

 It's "divisive" because Zionist genocidalists make it so while appealing to duopoly tribalism.

There you are. And, it's why I said "duopoly exit" on Substack while telling Romick et al to fuck off.