What's next for Colorado River Compact states?

Jumping a level above BuRec, Team Biden's Interior Department released an environmental analysis Tuesday that's pushing the states toward working on more water use cuts. The analysis itself doesn't propose a specific route to get there, though. 

And, after BuRec's Camille Touton threatened a banhammer last year, the six non-California states released one plan, only for California to release another a day later. (Oh, for the glory decades past, when Cal would try to pick off one or more Upper Basin states.)

NM Political Report has more, noting this is within a context of the feds wanting to revise the 2007 "minutes" about Glen Canyon and Hoover dams. Of key note is that the feds will not (currently) prioritize Powell over Mead or Mead over Powell. And, of course there's no plan to decommission Glen Canyon Dam because DC won't put a price tag out there.

Since the fake banhammer, but before the big winter snows, the seven states engaged in more sound and fury, while Yale Climate proposed an "interesting" tech-neoliberal based partial solution.

Realistically, since the Interior analysis includes a "do nothing" option, this is a mix of CYA and performance theater.

When social book reviewers get it wrong — wronger than the book

I just recently finished "The Bright Ages," which as you might guess, is a claim that the Middle Ages weren't all the Dark Ages. Between bad framing, narrow focus and outright errors, I knew halfway through that it probably wasn't even a 3-star book and the question was (since no half-stars from Goodreads after its self-vaunted [can others vaunt you?] website overhaul) was whether it would even hold 2 stars.

It doesn't, and shall also get only 1 even on Storygraph.

That said, what's funny, or more, "funny" with scare quotes, is the preconceptional whiffs of other 1-star reviewers, and a few 2-starrers.

A full one-quarter go full wingnut/Trumpy on their reviews, talking about "woke" presentation of women at this time and more.

And, almost as many of the reviewers on the "other side" (there's more than two sides by far here, per Idries Shah and as I shall show) actually exemplify "woke" (in the wrongful sense) attitudes, using words like "mansplaining" or "whitesplaining" in their takes.

It's neither. And I knew that before I checked it out from the library.

It's Catholic apologetics, or Catholic-splaining to use a modernized mash-up.  And, not getting that is why both the Trumpys and the Wokeys blew it. And, it's Catholic-splaining with a twist. Per a Google, after coming across this Medium piece which was a rejected form of an LARB of the book, David Perry is Jewish. Could have fooled me. The book still reeks of Catholic apologetics. That said, having seen this person's Twitter feed on it, no, the LARB editors were right in rejecting the original. The reviewer seems engaged in check-marking appropriate boxes, like calling out Gabriele and Perry for not mentioning "trans and queer folk," yet, since he has the option of doing so himself on Medium, not doing so! And, his review has other problems. It references "African Europeans," whose book website says: "As early as the third century, St Maurice—an Egyptian—became leader of the legendary Roman Theban Legion." Yes, true, but you couldn't have gone "up the ladder" to Emperor Septimius Severus? There's also the issue that both St. Maurice (patron saint of the HRE, namesake of St. Moritz) and the the Theban Legion are fictional.

That said, while the book is largely pabulum, it’s NOT pabulum for the reasons Trumpy 1-star reviews claim. (The wrongfully woke are closer to the mark, bad narratives and framing aside.) And, yes, their reviews reek of it, even as they ignore the reeking above because it doesn’t fit THEIR narratives. That then said, the portion of 1-starrers that call it out for "mansplaining" also miss the boat, though not quite as bad as the Trump-splainer types.

What follows is a selected version of my review.

The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe by Matthew Gabriele
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Brights book …. Flip side of Dennett’s Brights, it comes off as being!!! But, no historian has called all of the Middle Ages the Dark Ages. That said, if we look at the remains of the Western Roman Empire, the period 843-962, from the end of the Carolingian realm to the start of the HRE, could honestly merit the moniker. Those dates being the Treaty of Verdun ending the unitary Carolingian lands, then the start of the HRE.

So, yes, from the start, we’re going to be in the lands of strawmanning and cherry-picking. And, all in the service of Catholicism. And, yes, it still seems that way. To me, the whole book reeks of the Catholicism of its authors. While a modern evangelical half of fundagelical Protestants might have written a book like this, a traditional Lutheran, Calvinist or practitioner of Orthodoxy would not, nor would have a secular historian. And, yes, the word “reek” is deliberate. And, yes, it still seems that way.

Interesting to see Myth of Martyrdom author Candida Moss blurb it when the intro talks about a bunch of Catholic saintly martyrdoms that likely didn’t happen. (Sidebar: As people in the book publishing world, or familiar with it, know, this exemplifies one or both of two things. First is, that unless specifically barred from doing so in some way, marketing staff often take blurb comments out of context. Second is that blurbers often don't read the full book.) Those claims start, chronologically, in this book, with Peter in Rome, which certainly never happened.

Then, there’s other fun stuff, like the claim that the Western Roman Empire didn’t end when Odovacer deposed Romulus Augustulus. Oh, yes it did. And, yes, Rome became a sinkhole of population and other decline that was nowhere close to fully replaced.

Then, the claim in a chapter on Charlemagne that the HRE didn’t come until the later 12th century, not 962. Yes, the “sacrum” in Latin didn’t attach until Barbarossa, but any history book will tell you it began with Otto the Saxon.

Then, in the chapter on Vikings, I learned the Dneiper and Volga rivers are in western Asia! Neat! I halfway seriously wonder if this was a deliberate take, to de-Europeanize either Russia or Orthodox Christianity. Given that Slavic lands are nowhere further discussed, nor are details of the rise of Kievan Rus, I’m sure it’s deliberate.

There’s also a weird, and AFAIK, totally untrue claim that the Khazars later became Muslim. (I personally believe the bulk, tho not all, after the fall of the Khanate went on to become PART of Azhkenazi Jews. This is not anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist, contra the likes of Wikipedia, in one of its more iffy entries. The Ashkenazi/Sephardi split is itself a linguistic one, not an ethnic or sub-ethnic one, after all. And, I don't give a fuck if David Perry his own self sees this part. It's true.

First Crusade chapter overlooks cannibalism at the Siege of Ma’arra. Besides the cannibalism, the intolerance of Frankish surrender terms go unnoted. BUT, the authors DO engage in a nice bit of “presentism.” As in, a LOT of it.

Petrarch as in inventor of the idea of Renaissance is mentioned, mainly a an object of polite opprobrium. The earlier 12th-century Renaissance is mentioned in passing.

Weirdly NOT mentioned by two Catholic authors a Catholic author and a fellow traveler is previous reformations before THE Reformation. These surely would have fit the “bright ages” idea.

So, too, would the conversion of the last portions of Europe, the Balto-Finnic lands. Not mentioned.

Other one-star reviews go into more depth. Several go into Trump-splaining, with their takes perhaps even worse than this book.

View all my reviews

Sidebar: Not sure whether the bigger time-waster was this book or the Medium review.

The Observer's uninformed meh on teacher pay

The Texas Observer remains alive, unpaywalled, ad-free and otherwise mismanaged. I take that back; it has a house ad on the website asking for my suckers to pound a new load of sand down a rathill. It does have a halfway good story on underfunding of schools, but, what makes this unique in a way that a story by the Trib or one of Texas' major metros doesn't cover? 

Answer? Nothing.

First, the "three-legged stool" framing isn't unique. 

And, as for no state income tax? (And, this is a shout-out to the likes of the Trib as wellas the Observer, if or when they go down the same road.) Even if Texas Democrats jefe Gilberto Hinojosa sees his wet dream of a Dem gov overseeing a Dem Lege come true, that ain't changing, unless I'm way mistaken. Besides, Texas is not the only state with no income tax. Florida, with higher incomes and more ritz than Tex-ass, is another. So why bring it up? (In addition, Wyoming, yet another state with no income tax, was the ONLY state to get a AAA rating from US News on school funding equality issues.)

And, beyond THAT? I've blogged before about MSM misframing of teacher pay nationally and other things, like Beto-Bob's pandering stupidity in Muleshoe last year. I'd like to know the dollar amount the teachers cited in detail by the Observer actually make.

Now, old jokes aside, I know that teachers (generally) aren't off most the summer. I do know that, in Merikka, they have benefits in most states that the average John/Jane Doe don't. As in, state retirement system that includes retirement medical insurance. Having extra retirement money, plus not having to work the Medicare safety "net" of tissue paper that many people have to, is a benefit there.

Maybe they can't work from home or do hybrid work, but in rural areas (back to you, Muleshoe Bob), about nobody does.

Other issues? The stats, including the one that the Observer cited not being quite right, and the many others it didn't cite, or made incorrect suggestions about.

As of 2021, Texas was square in the middle of student-teacher ratio, square in the middle of salaries, about right at No. 40 (not just six states lower) on funding, and only 17th-highest on percentage of funding coming from the local level. That comes from some wingnuts, right? Yep, the notorious wingnuts at the National Educational Association.

And, that link and a couple of others came to me with 30 seconds of Googling. 

Would I pay for the Observer if it fully paywalled? Probably not. But, I mentioned paywalls plus advertising. And, until the mag gets over its purity test holiness (and, on management, has an actual publisher, not the Texas Democracy Foundation board of directors), I won't give it money.

And, yes, I am going to hammer this a little bit.

Could Kacsmaryk ban COVID vaccines next?

Or, could he try, at a minimum? At least the mRNA vaxxes, with all the conspiracy theories about them?

Frankly, I'm surprised nobody has yet court-shopped to file a case with him.

I have no doubt that's running through the head of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla as one of 200 signatories from the Big Pharma world asking for Kacsmaryk's ruling on mifepristone to be overturned.

The pharmaceutical heads are (rightly on this count) worried about someone gutting FDA's science-based (in general) process, and of course worried about someone (other than themselves) gutting FDA's review process in general.

Per Alexander Zaitchik, as reviewed by Joe Costello, the regulatory capture movement by Big Pharma is nothing new, either, but goes back to the Greatest Generation era emerging from World War II.

So, this is 90 percent legit, but also 10 percent whose ox is being gored.

And, if somebody DOES do the court-shopping and Kacsmaryk said "no," then his hypocrisy would truly be laid bare.

Texas Progressives round up the Lege's latest meh

Parents protest Houston ISD takeover by TE. Abetted by activist lawsuits As I said more a week about about Houston vs Marlin on Twitter and Kuff's site, where were you with Marlin half a dozen years ago? And, it clearly was not a stalking horse for privatization.

Strangeabbott is refusing to accept the House's "no" for an answer on vouchers. That's even though rural Texans (my GOP legiscritter was among the 86 "yes," that is "no," votes) don't want them.

SocraticGadfly talks about Bryan Hughes hating on third party and independent candidates.

Off the Kuff looks at the dearth of competitive Congressional districts under the new map.

Daniel Perry guilty of murder for shooting protestor Garrett Foster. (That said, I opposed at the time and still oppose today a protestor, no matter their political angle, carrying an AK-47. Nor do I like #ProtestBlueMAGA not discussing that today. THAT said, that doesn't justify Abbott talking about a pardon. And, where is Granny Merrick Garland, on trying to tee up a possible federal civil rights case.)

We all know about Matthew Kacsmaryk and his latest stupidity. That said, the Monthly, in its story, notes that the DOJ has started the process of potentially clipping his wings on future such cases.

Strangeabbott, Danny Goeb and Kenny Boy all went down a potentially anti-semitic road by invoking the name of George Soros. My question? Do Jewish Rethuglicans ever speak up about this?

Truth Social is more like Broke Social.

Melvin Goodman nails it on the limits of what the US can do to "fix" Syria.

Tomas Pueyo gives a topographic analysis of the Texas Triangle. 

Grits for Breakfast excavates some interesting 19th-century human history.

Your Local Epidemiologist takes another close look at the leading cause of death for children in American — guns.

Nonsequiteuse writes about her wildflower garden.

Raw Story reports on how the city of Waco managed to avoid getting stiffed by The Former Guy for expenses incurred by his recent rally there.

Alvin Bragg's suit against Jim Jordan is well-needed, but at the same time, the backstory within it further shows the apparent weakness of his case, not that BlueAnon will pay attention.  

Oil sanctions hitting, but NOT crippling, Russia

Yes, sanctions are biting on Russian oil. No, contra a meme-poster on Medium, Russia is not doomed. 

In his response to my response to his semi-interesting “Schrödinger’s Sanctions” piece, Yaakov C Lui-Hyden claimed that Urals oil was indeed trading below sanctions prices and that Russia was losing money. He also claimed that Russian cuts were fictitious because Russian production had been declining for a decade or more.

Reality? This, which is an expanded version of my response to his second response.

First, fair enough on Ural oil price, which I know is the mainstay. That said, Urals is trading at a $30/bbl discount to Brent, NOT a $30/bbl discount off its old price. That said, as I mentioned before, that gets us back to the OPEC+ cut. 

And, per that link, your claim about Russian production cuts being a farce comes off as handwaving. If your farce were really true, then why would Russia be lining up ghost fleet tankers and why would these tankers be obliging them? The reality is that Russian oil production has been stable for 20 years. (His response to this ignored this issue entirely, indicating he can't be taken that seriously.)

Beyond THAT, also from OIl Price: China and India are NOT abiding by G7 price caps. Now, it’s true that G7 actions give China and India room to extract a de facto price cap. But an actual one? Not happening, and definitely not happening if WTI/Brent hit $100/bbl. (His response to this was little more than doubling down on his original.)

NOT a farce: Ukraine’s been losing a shitload of troops and has nothing but green cannon fodder in undermanned, undermunitioned brigades for that vaunted spring offensive. And, please don’t claim that Pentagon leak is actually Russian disinformation. (His response to this was saying he'd never talked about this issue. True, but I guess he doesn't understand the idea of pre-emptive shots across the bow. Anyway, he didn't get another response on Medium. Not worth the time.)

The Pentagon leak about Ukrainian and Russian capabilities

Don't have too much say about it that the best of some leftists skeptical of the US waging a proxy war have had to say. (I wonder how Ukrainian fanboi Eric Draitser is handling this at Counterpunch or elsewhere.)

The best place for an in-depth dive is Simplicius. Grayzone (yes, I know) has a solid basic summary that is itself not short. Photo files here on Google drive.

The big ticket question is: is this real, a deliberate US intelligence leak of misinfo before a Ukrainian spring offensive expected next month, or similar Russian misinfo? Both second and third elements are in play because some of the photos involved in the leak, as originally released on Telegram, were photoshopped, apparently by Russians. And, some of the "more credulous precincts of the left" that sometimes get overly non-credulous for the wrong reasons saw the New York Times publishing this stuff and wigged out about American empire, etc. (It didn't help that Smelling Musky was banning Twitter accounts sharing the info; more on that below, too.)

I think they're real, though bits of disinfo could still be sprinkled in by either Russia or the US.

The US/Five Eyes would want to make Ukraine either look even weaker than it is, or more, try to promote disinfo about the location of the spring offensive. Russia would presumably want to look even stronger, or share misinfo about its spring plans.

Otherwise, assuming this is largely true?

First, the Armed Forces of Ukraine look like shit. Per Simplicius and some of his links, if you're launching a spring offensive with that, with a fair chunk of your tanks being the same T-54/55 types that NAFO "fellas" were laughing at Russia for on Twitter a month ago, you're up shit creek right there. (Simplicius has a good post elsewhere looking at how this has become a social media war, which I have long known, with all the Ukrainian pix of girlchicks in fatigues, etc. I guess it's had some degree of success in Western capitals and recruiting green mercenaries.) You're even more up shit creek with little ammo for the tanks and artillery. And yet more with largely green cannon fodder to run this.

Second, behind this is Simplicius' analysis of just how loose of a leash Zelenskyy has via the US and NATO and more to the point, how much he keeps them in the dark. Subpoint is how much Ukrainian rogue forces are on a loose leash, as shown by things like the recent cafe bomb in Russia. Ukraine looks like a giant-sized Serbia circa 1912-14 in many ways, but with these rogue forces perhaps even more tenuous in their connection to the government than Serbia's Black Hand.

That leads to some rhetorical questions under two major groupings.

1. Assuming this is real, that AFU is indeed shit but the spring offensive is launched anyway, and is a glorious (Slava!) fail, what next? Will Zelenskyy double or triple down on begging for munitions and will he be successful? Will Biden send even more kitchen sinks of stuff he can send without Congressional approval? Will he try for another Congressional appropriation? Will the House GOP resist?

2. What is a possible end game? Ukraine muddling more with approximately the same foreign support and this becoming a frozen war? Russia trying an assassination attempt? A Ukrainian coup/revolution?

Simplicius responds:

Partly it depends on what Russia does next, i.e. if they launch a back-breaking offensive afterwards to take advantage of the now gravely weakened AFU, and how successful this hypothetical Russian offensive will be. 

But the other more important thing is something I discussed at length in one of the recent articles, which is that the 2024 election cycle is coming up soon. It will be absolutely disastrous for Democraps to have a losing war on their record plaguing them like an open sore DURING the actual election campaign run etc. So this seems to imply to me that IF Ukraine fails this last hurrah, the Democraps will have to neatly tie this war up in any way possible by 2024. It will be an extremely uncomfortable season of questions for Biden or whoever is the candidate, during debates etc., if at that point Ukraine is on the verge of defeat, American Abrams tanks are seen burning on TV screens nation wide, etc. It will be an even worst scandal than the Afghanistan withdrawal. That means I believe by 2024 they have to wrap this up somehow, and I doubt they'll truly think deep down Ukraine stands a chance IF its new offensive fails spectacularly and breaks the armies back. That leaves the only other choice that they would have to push for a peace settlement desperately and urgently. Most likely they will attempt to force Zelensky to compromise to freeze the conflict even if "temporarily" so that a 'peace deal' can be spun in some way to look like a Biden victory. However they can then hope to continue pumping weapons and restart the war later on after the election is over. 

They will do this by basically telling Zelensky "don't worry, just give up Crimea, Donbass etc for now and after our election we'll support you for a new war effort." Basically it would be Minsk 2.0 all over again.

Related to this, and a few paragraphs up: Does Zelenskyy believe in / smoke all his own press clippings? Or rather, does he realize he's put himself up a creek without a paddle, or way too far out on a limb that he doesn't know how to get off of?

==

Sidebar: John Helmer, often stimulating on current issues, though not always right, thinks they're US fakes. He says much of this is not actually secret, and notes the full month before the Pentagon objects. He also notes that the different pages of links have different secrecy classifications, even though all were issued in the same briefing.

Several issues.

First, is he dealing with the Photoshopped or the originals? Don't know.

Second, on the classification issues? Papers are re-classified all the time. Maybe some had different classifications earlier. Or maybe they all got their original classification some time before the briefng being referenced.

As for why? He offers two angles.

One is what Simplicius says: A US leak to gut more warmongering, or else a Ukrainian ops to grift for more weapons and ammo or else to head-fake Russia.

His co-host, George Eliason, may have "broken" many stories from Donbass. But, his Twitter feed is his best bio and he tilts wingnut. And, especially on retweets, he tilts REALLY wingnut. And, per his Twitter bio, he also has a Gab account. Not Truth Social, which nobody joins, but also not the Johnny-come-lately Parler. He's on Gab.

His co-host in a later segment, Alfred Vierling, flirts with global far-right people. And, TNT Radio has a fair amount of people like that, COVID denialists and more. It makes me wonder, just as Helmer has called out Sy Hersh for being a useful idiot for the US government a month ago, how much he's a useful idiot for other actors himself at times.

Beyond that, especially compared to some other things of his, this is both simplistic (his own speech on his podcast, in written words, without transitions to Eliason, would be no more than 300) and twosider. And regular readers here know I don't like either one.

And, with that, my early discovery new love for Helmer has pretty much been dissolved.

Update: The leak also lists US and NATO ally special forces inside Ukraine. That seems the type of stuff that would NOT be part of a disinfo campaign.

Update two: As the world knows, Massachusetts National Guardsman Jack Teixeira has been arrested on suspicion of being the leaker. Given what Snowden said years ago about looseness of controls and ease of security classifications, given the CIA leak several years ago and much, much more, this isn't surprising, should it pan out. And now, Helmer looks like he's either in full Dum Fuq territory (he didn't caveat his claims, as in, he did NOT say "they're probably fakes," or similar), or else a backdoor shiller for you know who.

==

Sidebar 2: Re Musk scrubbing Twitter? Remember, he still wants Pentagon money to pay for Ukraine using Starlink. 

Sidebar 3: No, Mark Ames, this does not confirm Sy Hersh' fan fiction is true, either. Seriously, even though you're out the outs with each other in a lot of ways, did you and Taibbi infect each other with a case of teh stupidz back in your Moscow days?

Sidebar 4: Slava Ukraina shitposters like Barry Gander on Medium said nothing about the leak in hte first 72 hours.

Sidebar 5: If the Discord leaks source is true, OTOH, it would make me more suspicious. Why would Russia's FSB pair with Emiratis? On the third hand, the "leaking them all" is interesting. And, given what the AP says about US intelligence electronic counterintelligence leaking like a sieve for years, that would reinforce the "they're original."