Friends of Hagerman, whoring themselves out for oil

The Friends of Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge support group has come up with a new one, that ... well, on things like monarch butterflies and the dunes sagebrush lizard, reflect US Fish and Wildlife's "environementalism lite," if I'm being charitable.

A week from today, at the refuge, you can "learn" (be indoctrinated) on how oil rigs (allegedly) benefit the refuge. No, really!

First, the backstory. Hagerman is on the south side of Lake Texoma. When the Army Corps of Engineers (also "environmentalism lite" if that) was building Denison Dam in the 1930s to back up what would become Lake Texoma, it had an approximate but not exact idea of what the lake's boundaries would be at normal high water, normal low water, floods etc. So, it bought out private landowners, plus a "cushion," and also some higher-land areas that were basically mostly surrounded by buyout land, as well as farmers, or ranchers, willing to sell worn-out cotton lands or overgrazed ranch land.

Problem? Just one. 

Because there wasn't much if any oil drilling yet in this area, the feds bought only the surface estate and not the mineral rights. Now, you have more than a dozen muleheads on the high-ground areas, with oil tank storage batteries and such near them. That's bad enough as far as leakage pollution.

You have another dozen or so muleheads on pads that extend into Big Mineral Arm of Lake Texoma, and so ooze bits of oil into the lake.

This map shows the in-lake pumpjacks on those "islands" with mini-"isthmuses" leading to them:

Now, the fore-story.

E&E News had a story a full decade ago, based out of Hagerman, from a large flood there, about problems with FWS oversight of oil and gas on refuge. Looks loverly in that image, doesn't it?

The Mary Maddux who is hosting Hagerman's presentation next week is cited there. And, speaking of? Did you know that FWS has "oil and gas specialists"? Yee gads.

Here's more fore-story, in general:

As far back as 1984, the General Accounting Office found that over 90 percent of FWS managers with oil and gas exploration or production in their refuges considered such activities a threat to natural resources. Five years later, GAO, which now stands for the Government Accountability Office, concluded that fossil fuel production was "incompatible" with the refuge system’s mission and recommended "bold action" to address the conflict.

Yet there are still 5,002 oil and gas wells on 107 of the National Wildlife Refuge System’s 563 units, according to a study from FWS researchers published April 27 in PLOS ONE, a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal. Nearly a third of those wells — 1,665 — are in active production.

There's more at the link.

Meanwhile, that story gets into the backstory again, not just for Hagerman, but in general:

The service’s authority to regulate the oil and gas activities of people who retained their rights to minerals when they sold lands to the federal government "is limited under current law," the watchdog said in a report more than a decade ago. ...

In interviews, refuge officials in Texas and Oklahoma said they have few options to oversee oil and gas activities on FWS lands other than to rely on producers to prevent spills or leaks as well as to stop and recover from them when they do occur.

Enforcement is largely left up to state regulators and, in serious situations, U.S. EPA, officials said.

There you are. Actually, not quite. There's more local stuff from that 2015 story, too:

In a similar 2012 incident at the Hagerman refuge, a brine leak killed 84 hardwood trees that were each more than 2 feet in diameter and over 150 years old. The spill affected 2 acres on the forested uplands of the refuge and caused about $154,000 worth of damage. FWS could only get the operator to develop a brine management plan and pay $30,000 into a mitigation fund.

Now, it's possible that things have changed since then. But, likely? That was halfway into Dear Leader's second term, with him facing GOP majorities in both houses of Congress. Then came Trump. Then Biden, focused on other things, but still "all of the above" on energy, and facing a hostile Congress the second half of his term. So, while the GAO had six recommended changes, I doubt many, if any, of them happened.

But, we're not done!

We have 2015 bullshit from Maddux:

In the grand scheme, FWS oil and gas specialist Maddux doubts the leak she spotted May 28 — estimated at 30 gallons of oil — will do significant damage to Hagerman or the plants and animals on the 12,000-acre refuge.

"They have it under control right now," she said last week of the leaseholder, Houston-based Blackwell Oil Production. The spill is "still going to have impacts, but they’re going to be minimal."

Contradicted by the refuge's then-manager:

But the bigger concern for refuge manager Kathy Whaley is the overall impact of oil and gas operations at Hagerman.

During spring and fall, when temperatures fluctuate wildly, the refuge can experience a minor fuel or brine leak every couple of weeks, she said. Additional drilling in the refuge also cuts into the habitat relied upon by Endangered Species Act-protected whooping cranes, least terns and piping plovers, along with other wildlife native to the area.

"What I think is important for us to be thinking about now and in the future is, not only just site-by-site impacts but cumulative effects," said Whaley, who has worked at FWS since 1990. "At some point, it’s very likely you’re going to get where you’re not going to meet your mission."

There you go.

The refuge itself did a simulation of a major tornado hitting the site and causing oil spill problems six years ago.

Add in that, if you don't have mulehead pumpjacks in the middle of the refuge, you don't have power poles stringing out power lines to them, either.

Update: Rather than this blog, I posted a link to just the 2015 story to the Friends of Hagerman Facebook group on the afternoon of Monday, Feb. 3. Crickets so far.

Germany looks like it could implode after the next election

That thought is triggered by learning that the Christian Democratic Party made a deal with far-right populist part Alternative für Deutschland to get an (anti-)immigration bill passed.

I didn't know that until I read that long-time former Chancellor Angela Merkel rebuked her successor as CDU party leader Friedrich Merz, who last November:

(Explicitly pledged to prevent the AfD from playing a decisive role in Bundestag votes. “This proposal and the stance associated with it were an expression of great state political responsibility, which I fully support in its entirety,” she added.

Well, guess that's no longer a working statement.

With just three weeks until that general election, this can't help the CDU. It's going to expose rifts within the party and probably will not peel any significant votes away from the AfD. Beyond that, Merz did NOT make a deal with the AfD on stopping the flow of arms to Ukraine, part of why AfD, per the story, is now polling second in election polls.

Related? Current Chancellor Olaf Sgt. Scholz ("I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!, Col. Hogan." on either Israeli genocide or Russia-Ukraine issues) has also responded, saying that a return to the "grand coalition" currently governing the country ain't happening. That piece adds that the Free Democrats joined with the CDU/CSU to pass the anti-asylum measure. Hold on to that.

So, what DOES happen on, and after, Feb. 23?

First, look at the current polling:

While noting that the current government coalition, per Wiki, is Scholz's SPD, German Greens (warmongers on Ukraine, and AFAIK Zionist genocidalists on Gaza) and one independent.

The SPD has "held steady" over the past six months, but, earlier than that, per Politico's polls, had declined a bit from one year ago. Greens at 13 percent are where they were a year ago. (Both fell behind AfD about 18 months ago.)

My guess, if the polls were held today? Greens move up from current 117 to, say, 125. SPD drops from current 207 to 180. That total of 305? Would current German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier sign off on a coalition government that small? No more than 42 percent of the Bundestag? The fact that Scholz brought up a "grand coalition" only to deny it shows that he doesn't think it's likely.

The BSW and die Linke aren't likely to join. Per Scholz's own comments, he would have to rule out the FDP also, would he not?

So, where does that leave things? Polls and my guesses say that the BSW falls from 10 down to, say, 5, and die Linke gets up to 35. We'll bump the 8 "non-attached" to 10 in a fragmenting Bundestag. I'll give the FDP 100. I'll give AfD 100 as well. I'll say that with "overhangs," the next Bundestag is at 735 total seats. All other parties are at 555, leaving the CDU/CSU at 180, off their current 196. And, those calculations also don't take into account what effect Elmo Musk's months-old hard-on for the AfD, now doubled down on again, will have. It's likely to be beneficial, but by no means guaranteed.

If the CDU bites the bullet even more, it, the AfD and the FDP together have an outright majority, if a slim one, at 380. The top story link references what could happen, or sort of does, near the end:

With just weeks until the federal election, the fallout from the vote has further polarized the race. Merz now faces a choice: Double down on his rightward shift or attempt to reassert the CDU’s firewall against the AfD — a decision that could define his political future.

But, that surely shatters the party, as in shatters it officially, with enough desertions to put the remainders in a minority and presumably drawing a no-confidence vote.

Would the two left groups partner with AfD and FDP in some sort of truly weird grouping? That's still just 240, far away from getting a coalition nod. The left parties aren't coalitioning with the current SPD-Green bloc unless those parties change their stance on the two foreign policy issues, also not likely, since Sholz blew up the Bundestag rather than change stances on weapons for Ukraine and the funding thereof.

OK now, Simplicius

Two weeks ago, I wrote how, if the MSM is dying, some alternative venues that are single-issue with potentially too narrow a focus may die as well.

I was thinking primarily of some, like Simplicius, who has made the "MSM is dying" claim, with his narrow focus, for the most part, on the Russia-Ukraine war.

And, contra Simp's raison d'etre, Russia-Ukraine, no Trump does NOT want to end the Ukraine war tomorrow. If you don't see that, like Simplicius, who still didn't fully see it two weeks ago, though he was starting to self-enlighten, you're fixated or something. But, last week, he went backward again, as he still doesn't seem to get that this is the actual Trump on Ukraine. There's no "faltering," it's the actual Trump. I'll buy you a coffee if you'll wake up and smell it. Let's not forget — in case Simplicius has never mentioned it — that Trump sold Ukraine weapons that Dear Leader Obama refused to sell. Let's also remember to discount most of Trump's Deep State blatherings, unlike the guy up top. Trump chose to sell these weapons to Ukraine.

Update: Turns out he has a second Substack (and maybe more?). 

And, he's got "subverticals" within that. On one of them? This, which both approaches conspiracy theory and shows that he's got an ultimately Eurocentric view of history.

But first, the conspiracy theory part:

Without losing ourselves down the rabbit hole, we can say that Milner and his cohort—the likes of which included Lord Nathaniel Rothschild, Cecil Rhodes, and every other influential baron and titan of the day—orchestrated conflicts from the Boer War to WW1 to advance their stake

Uh, no, dude. Gavrilo Princip, from a Serbian "emerging state" that was still 50 percent pig farmers, wasn't controlled by any of those people.

He goes on about other stuff. Using Qwant, not Google, first hit for the Milner Group? Insurance company founded in 1958. Wikipedia has no such entry; it has a subsection "Quigley and the Milner Group" under its Carroll Quigley entry. It notes that Quigley first talked about the Round Table movement and was also a big ass conspiracy theorist. At the end of that quoted paragraph? Simplicius calls said Quigley a "famed researcher." He previously mentions the Round Table movement. That and Lord Milner's Kindergarten (both with Wiki entries) are also not what Simplicius implies.

Per a site called Lobster Magazine, seen via another Wiki entry, the mandarins of the "deep state," at least in Britain, do do enough stupidity to fuel such theories.

What's really weird in all of this, beyond Simplicius' own weirdness, is that Quigley himself was an archivist for the Council on Foreign Relations, itself the subject of many a conspiracy theory beyond its actual stupidities hither and yon. 

As for Quigley's other claims? The dominions themselves replaced the British Empire with the Commonwealth so they had control over their own foreign policies. Milner's group, all British, had nothing to do with that.

From there, it's off to John Dewey allegedly working for a post-WWI incarnation of the New World Order, because that's what secular humanism is all about, isn't it?

As for wars and all of the above? Stock exchanges throughout Europe shut for the first weeks, if not the first couple of months, of WWI. Conventional macroeconomics says the world of finance doesn't like the uncertainties of at least the start of wars. And, Simplicius ignores that Nathan Rothschild in the UK wasn't the only member of his family running around various countries of Europe at this time.

As for post-WWII restructuring? He ignores that Uncle Joe Stalin also had a hand in it. The Marshall Plan started because Stalin was trying to get Turkey, neutral in WWII, give up Turkish Armenia. He also, already at Potsdam, was trying to claim possession of Libya, which had been an Italian colony, because of Italians having fought on the Eastern Front. And — and this was NOT the reason Truman dropped either bomb —in the USSR's entry into the war against Japan, he was eyeing Hokkaido.

See, Simplicius, or Max Blumenthal, or whoever the hell you are, I can call out non-Western as well as Western imperialism, and do so without conspiracy theories. (No, I don't think he really is Max; but, by only critiquing Western imperialism, he comes off as someone like Max. Actually, with his Anglo-American elites conspiracy theories, he sounds even more like John Helmer.)

But that's not all. Riffing on a piece by Freddie de Boer, he says:

The truth is that the majority of homeless people aren’t ‘temporarily displaced’ or ‘underemployed’, but rather people who have voluntarily checked out of a society they no longer feel comfortable, or capable of, navigating. Even if you were to offer them a “job” and a place to live, a good portion of them would turn it down in favor of the purity of the wild.

Uh, no, dood. These people have not "voluntarily" checked out. I've talked here, and even more at my other blog, about what I generally call "psychological constraint" on free will, or something similar. The idea is that traditional determinism is wrong, or Not.Even.Wrong, but past, or present, life issues, place psychological constraint on our action. With both mental illness and drug addiction, that's definitely true.

As for "purity of the wild" bullshit? Compounding your first error with some neo-Rousselian take makes it only worse.

Now, he may, or may not, be right about problems with UBI, but that's besides the point.

Finally, contra Simplicius, any of his stanners, or an apparent tankie I ran into on Substack and quickly enough uncrossed paths again? I know the difference between conspiracy and conspiracy theory.

Another ban at another Nazi subreddit

That would be r/Texas, which welcomes libruls (sic) of the BlueAnon type, tolerates MAGAts, but doesn't like lefists who call a librul a librul.

And, contra the lying ban message, I am a leftist. And you the mods are still libruls. I wonder if I triggered two different mods, too. Showing up one message newer in my email, though time-stamped to the same minute, I also got a 28-day mute suspension notice. Maybe my doing a Stephen A. type troll on the Cowboys for the second time triggered another mod for another reason?

Here's my comment:

Hi, Raven I'm a leftist (as in non-duopoly leftist) who sees more concern about Trump 2.0 than Trump 1.0 but still believes a lot of librul (sic) panic attacks are overstated. And, I'm not alone. Non-leftists of note like Ryan Grim and Ken White, aka Popehat, have had broadly similar takes. (I'll take any downvotes.)

And, yes, I am a leftist, contra the Anon Y. Mouse coward(s) behind the "mod team." Maybe individual mods are hidden now that I'm banned, but I doubt that.

The chuds obviously think any call-out of the sainted Democrat Party and BlueMAGA thinking can only be done by MAGAts. Cue up yet another crappy election cycle in 2026 and 2028, if this thinking is very pervasive.

In a related matter, I was already planning some sort of piece about how more and more subreddits are banning Shitter links, and I will eventually follow through.

Meanwhile, the "Nazi-hunters" within the BlueMAGA world inside and outside of Reddit? Many of them have, per the Dissident, per Mark Ames, Yasha Levine, Ivan Katchanovski and others on Shitter, etc., long tolerated Ukrainian fascism. It's been at least since the semi-coup (still can't see it as a full coup) at the Maidan in 2014, per that Dissident link. And, we haven't even talked about the BlueAnon supporters of Kamala is a Zionist Cop supporting the fascists in Israel. And yes, per Mondoweiss and many others, they are; as it told Elmo, you can be both a Zionist and a fascist.

At the same time, the ever-greater number of ads at Reddit make it less and less interesting.

Texas Progressives: Stuff Kuff missed

Welcome to this week's Texas Progressives Roundup, as we enjoy a bit of laughter at Texas Democratic House leader Gene Wu and his minions touting the success of all their ranking minority members on committees! (You know it's bad when Kuff is still submitting his election analysis of 2024 downballott Harris County races.)

And, when going to state news sites, let's lead with stuff Kuff missed (or took a pass on).

Per the opening paragraph, there's the new House rules, which officially made all committee chairs Republicans, but did officially create a state-level version of ranking minority members. More seriously, omitted in the discussion is that the Speaker, not committee chairs, now controls who sits on subcommittees within a committee.

Per a global event of earlier this month, and since Charles loves to talk about Palestinians, there's the Trib report on Texas reactions to the Israel-Gaza cease fire. (That said, the Trib is either ignorant as fuck or lying through its teeth when it says the ceasefire has held since the start; Israel's already been violating it at the margins and will probably opt out of the second phase.)

Beyond Texas Palestinians, we have the utter disgustingness of Switzerland — home of various Geneva Conventions — arresting Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada for daring to come to Switzerland to talk anti-Zionism.

=

In what comes off looking like a whitewash, the Texas Ethics Commission has already dismissed Houscritter Cody Harris' intimidation complaint against state GOP head Abraham George on the grounds that it claimed it was not within its remit. Harris noted: “I think they chose the politically expedient way out.” Of course they did. Remember that when the state GOP gets sued in spring of 2026 when it tries to enforce a primary ban.

SocraticGadfly looked at issues of gullibility and bad coverage in recent Libertarian Party news reporting.

And, there's Dannie Goeb, upping the vouchers payola from 2023 to $10K now.

Patrick also wants to clarify current Texas abortion law concerning Texas doctors and mothers with at-risk pregnancies. What sort of clarification he wants wasn't spelled out in detail, and he ain't going there. 

The Barbed Wire has suggestions for spending down the rainy day fund rather than sending yet more money back to taxpayers who will get addicted to this. 

It also out-snarked the Monthly. (With more and more of its stuff getting paywalled, it's here less and less.)

RIP Cecile Richards, from the Texas Observer. Jeff Rotkoff also eulogizes Cecile Richards at The Barbed Wire.

Off the Kuff analyzed three more Harris county races from 2024, in which Democrats did considerably better.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project wrote about 8 full years & still going strong of the John Cornyn Houston Office Protest. It has never been more important for people to see others like themselves standing up for democracy.

Your Local Epidemiologist warns of the dangers that RFK Jr's "back to nature" pablum would bring. CultureMap has the snow day pictures of zoo animals you were looking for. The Dallas Observer reviews the last four years of Ken Paxton lawsuits against the Biden administration. 

City of Yes has an optimistic take on transportation policy under Trump. (We spell it out here, unlike Kuff's "Tr*mp." I should ask Brains to deliver him a pussy hat.)

Blogroll update in progress

As promised, I am creating a new blogroll. I can't edit the old one; however I tweaked Blogger's XML to get past the 10-blog limit, the sidebar won't let me either add or delete one bit; the moving finger moves on, per Omar.

And, I've been wanting to update.

So far, for sure, I am deleting:

• Orac/Insolence
• James Dorsey (Turbulent World of Mideast Soccer)
• The Rag Blog

I will probably delete:

• Independent Political Report.
• Ballot Access News

I may/will possibly delete

• Counterpunch
• Skeptophilia
• Off the Kuff 
• Schneier on Security
  

Here's why, on each.

Orac continues to be a BlueAnon tribalist on all things COVID and will only be insufferable politically the next four years.

Dorsey? Hasn't added anything majorly new to the Middle East discussion since Oct. 7, 2023, even at the Substack that replaces his blog.

Rag Blog? Does nothing for me. 

The two probablies? 

IPR? "Nuña" had ruined that place even before the election, plus the addition of Cloudfare made it hard to pick up a feed. Nuña's stupidity and would-be bullying has gone nowhere since the election, for the most part, and the feed issues are still there.

BAN? Recent idjitry by Richard Winger in fellating the Libertarian Party and outgoing chair Megan McArdle, blogged about last week, plus his doubling down on comments. (And, on the matter at hand, IPR went halfway there, too.) Beyond that, I'm rethinking some ideas here, and also rethinking my focus on politics in general and details of third-party politics in particular. Also, Nuña had semi-polluted BAN on occasion. I had originally put them on the updated blogroll, but removed them again.

The maybes, or first the semi probably, getting close to the two above?

Counterpunch? Written repeatedly here in the last six months about it becoming more BlueAnon like in the past six months, plus weirdness of what qualifies for its paywall and more. It's "meh." (It's also doing a new round of stanning for Ralph Nader.) And, it recently slipped into vote fraud conspiracy theory over Ohio 2004, long ago refuted. In addition, especially with the unpaid material, whether by "casuals" or regular contributors, there's relatively little. editorial focus.

Skeptophilia? His relative lack of skepticism is becoming more and more common. His duopoly identitarian politics are becoming more common to this leftist. I've written about him occasionally, primarily at the "Philosophy of" blog. On the other hand, he's corrected a couple of mistakes I mentioned, so he'll likely stay for now.

Kuff? Probably violates fair use on what he copies and pastes into his blog text, and the days of me anti-virtue signaling David Bruce Collins and Brains and Eggs by having him on my list have long passed. Add in that DBC doesn't write anything any more.

Schneier? My comments never get posted after sitting in its moderation cue, and also, most of what Bruce does is bulletin-board service link posting and that's it.

Stuff lower than that on my original blogroll has gone inactive for a year or more, or else, as in the case of Nautilus (which is also semi-paywalled) has feed issues.

I am adding, or will add, some Substacks I follow and actually read, like Ken Klippenstein and Ken Silverstein.

Dustin Burrows' rubber is about to hit the road

I noted a week ago, based on what I said six weeks ago, that House Dems were likely buying a mess of pottage with Dustin Burrows vs David Cook rather than sitting out.

Steven Monacelli at Barbed Wire reminds us of just how conservative Burrows is, and reminds us even more of how conservative the Texas GOP is, and how we'll see what Burrows is made of when we see how he handles wingnuts-squared House bills that, by and large, had already been filed before the Speaker's election.

CIA says yes, COVID could have been a lab leak

Here's the details. (Politico was the first to come up after the paywalled NYT.) And a heads-up RIGHT at the start.

For the #BlueAnon / #BlueMAGA claiming this is just because John Ratcliffe is now CIA head? Ahh, wrong! This was being worked on before Jan. 20. That said, the change of administrations prodded its release.

For the #MAGAts claiming the CIA said it "IS" a lab leak? Wrong! "Could have been" is not ≠ "is."

The tribalism extends elsewhere.

Richard Ebright, called out moderately by me once on Twitter for going beyond that into some sort of halfway conspiracy theory, has blocked me.

Now, the Politico piece isn't perfect; it passively-aggressively tries to debunk the lab leak idea.

The AP has more, and is better; it notes now-former FBI head Christopher Wray said in 2023 that it was "most likely" a lab leak.