AOC running for prez? Neoliberal Overton windows coming up; Stephen A? Barf

Well, in talking with The Ax, David Axelrod, last week, she certainly left the door open.

Given that she's already been part of stealing the Green New Deal from the Green Party, then watering it down, backed off cow farts to eat burgers and other things, how much more neoliberal will her Overton Window shift be?

That said, of the 19 listed candidates for Democrats that USA Yesterday (have to make up a nickname, even though, as when it was still Gannett, it's Craphouse that wags that dog), many will not run. 

Mark Kelly will, if nothing else, not want to put wife Gabby Giffords through this, I think.

"Hawaii Gov. Josh Green." No, really?

Stephen A. Smith? He talks out of both sides of his mouth so much (last week, a day after saying that Wembanyama should be suspended for Game 5 against the Minnesota Timberwolves, he saluted the NBA for NOT suspending him) he could try to run for both duopoly parties' nomination at the same time. Speaking of, USA Yesterday ignores how much he cuddles up to Republicans. 

Amy Klobuchar? After her 2020 disaster?

Tim Walz? Tarnished.

Josh Shapiro? Too ardent a Zionist for many Democrat voters, even if elites try to push him.

Mayor Pete? Don't think so. 

Marge shoots down Trump UFO release with Jewish space lasers but misses the likes of Rod Dreher

I see what I did there.

Marge of course being Trevor Lawrence, aka Marjorie Taylor Greene. Trump being Trump.

The UFO release, which is totally bullshit, is this.

What she said? 

Former representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, took to social media to deride the release, calling it “‘look at the shiny object’ propaganda” while the administration waged foreign wars. 

“Unless they roll out live aliens and test demo UFOs or actually admit what we know this really is then I have way better things to do on this Friday,” she wrote.

True.

Note for Rod Dreher and his off the wall Religious Right friends who think this is actually demons?

Even if Rod doesn't believe this bullshit:

There has been for decades a group within the government called the “Collins Elite” — Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in the intelligence world who know that UFOs are real, but who believe they are demonic, and who have been fighting disclosure.

Putting it on paper just gives it more credibility. 

Besides, you used the word "know," at least of the UFOs, if not of the claim that they're demonic. He further indicates he believes the organization does exist, and with another chance to deny that aliens have been found, and that they're actually demons, once again won't say no. 

It gets worse from there. Dreher conflates anti-zionism and antisemitism, then claims this is a sign of the "end times" while also getting into supersessionism, and per my comparing him to Paul Kingsnorth, actually mentions "The Machine." 

Listen to Marge, and haul Beelzebub to JPL or some other science research lab and let's test! 

Let's start even before that? Digital camera or smartphone? The actual memory card to look at the original photo. (Ditto for film and negatives.) That's part of how you be actually skeptical about UFOs, skeptical enough to realize it's laughable that actual aliens would be visiting us. When not laughable, it's incredibly ego-solipsistic, aka narcissistic, on the part of the claimant.

Roswell? Nah, an actual military conspiracy (for "obvious" Cold War reasons) trumps an alien visit conspiracy theory, one that, like Christian gospels, accumulates an ever bigger patina or tarnish (take your pick) of legend with each "telephone"-like expansion of the original. 

Besides, UFO fundagelicals like Daniel Brito never honestly look at economics, energy expenditure, and many other things. Per a second follow-up to that, as well as what I mentioned in the original, they also never discuss lies and confabulations, recycling material already proven to be fake, grifting, helping others grift, and more. 

Texas Progressives

Off the Kuff interprets a pro-Cornyn election projection that assumes Republicans are already in deep doo-doo for November in Texas. 

SocraticGadfly did some light numbers-crunching and wondered if all of Texas' big metros really need to kowtow to Strangeabbott on the issue of ICE non-collaboration vs state grant funding cutoffs.

The Trib has a follow-up on Strangeabbott's thuggery, now being put in the service of Islamophobia, of course.  It notes he's being doing this for more than a decade.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project reports on a conversation with a Houston City Councilmemberwho flipped on the ICE ordinance, and asks at what point will we advocate for freedom against our authoritarian/ white supremacist state and federal governments. 

If you get stuck in Big Bend, here's the guy who could be your ultimate salvation.

Speaking of? The Border Patrol has officially abandoned plans to run a border wall through the park. 

Vo must go? 

There's a new McMurtry bio; the Observer reviews. Let's hope it's better than the previous one.

El Paso Matters told how delays and gaps in reporting on measles statistics made the response to it much more difficult.  

Deceleration reports on how Texas cities are gearing up to deal with rising heat.

The TSTA Blog advises you to trust Thomas Jefferson on the question of religion in public schools, and not Dan Patrick.

The Dallas Observer does the grim task of documenting all of the mass shootings so far this year in Texas. 

For different listening, this episode of the Care and Feeding podcast, featuring Houston's Mandy Giles, founder and CEO of Parents of Trans Youth, with some advice for a listener about their nonbinary child.

Graham Platner's tattoo (and other things)

I'm not wasting massive time on it. And, I'm only providing one link as a direct reference link — Snopes. Then two other backgrounders plus an image.

I broadly agree on two things.

One is that, unless we have a much better photo than an underlit video-grab from more than a decade ago, it's hard to say how closely his tattoo resembled the Totenkopf.

And, that — the Totenkopf — is the second link. Not to justify it, today, but it has a pre-Nazi and even a pre-German past. 

And, not even a past! The Royal Lancers in the UK use their own version of it today. 

As for him not knowing what it meant?

Quite possible. How much does the average 22-year-old or whatever Marine enlisted man who has not gone past high school level know about this imagery, versus of course the swastika. For all you doing callouts, was the Totenkopf covered in your high school world history class? Did you know what it was before you decided this was a good opportunity to dogpile on him? 

And, that would be one thing enough if he got it at a bar near an American base.

Instead, he's in Croatia getting drunk in a bar with fellow Marines. Did ANY of them know what this symbol meant?

Or rather, per pre-WWII Germany and today's Royal Lancers, did it just look cool? 

Likely the latter, though not as cool as the Royal Lancers.

Meanwhile, an ultra-Orthodox retweeting racist Richard Hanania to try to "own the Zionists" or whatever he was doing is on pretty shaky ground doing a callout of Platner, then getting indignant when I called them a Zionist. Lie down with fleas ...

Now, as for the Croatian tattoo shop owner? Given the Ustashe in World War II, complete with a Croatian SS unit (founded before the 1st Galician of modern Russia-Ukraine infamy) followed by the right-wing thuggery of Franjo Tudjman as first leader of post-independence Croatia, I have little doubt they knew at least the general history of the Totenkopf. 

This is not to say that I don't find Graham Platner troubling.

Obviously, I can't read all his deleted Reddit posts. They were written years later. For someone who claims they were leftist by then, a certain amount of them cut against that grain. And, yes, PTSD is serious and real. But, per the Latin bon mot, "in vino veritas," PTSD doesn't necessarily cause an "alt-persona" to arise. 

This also show that he's a political novice. Experienced candidates running for something as high as a US Senate seat do "oppo research" on themselves to find out in advance what opponents might dig up, and to be prepared in advance. 

I didn't think to check his Wiki much in advance. I'm as troubled by the fact that his family was moneyed enough to send him to an elite prep school like Hotchkiss as anything else, even if he got financial aid. Did he get booted, though? That's not the only high school he attended. The other is also private, originally Catholic but now nonreligious. 

British local elections: winners and losers

A brief hot take on who won and lost last week in British local elections.

Losers:

1. Der Starmer. Yes, that's what I call him. If you recognize the bad pun and like it, pass it on. If you don't like it, that's on you. If you don't get it, sorry.

2. Your Party, or as Paul Braterman called it, My Party, aka Jezza Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. What, you can't be a formally organized party to field local candidates yet? Yikes.

3. Zionists. On Shitter, by Sunday, they were already flinging the same false antisemitism claims that once got hurled at Corbyn at ..

1. Green Party and leader and leader Zack Polanski, who actually is Jewish and I hope has sharper elbows that he throws more vigorously than Corbyn. (Beyond being a wet noodle on the attacks against him, Corbyn's lie to the Labour caucus meeting about allegedly giving a vigorous defense to Remain is another reason I have low, low regard for him. He made his own bed long ago.)  Indeed, Polanski is more truly Jewish in some ways than his Zionist attackers — one of whom on Shitter, in response to me called Corbyn a "trot."

2. Gordon Brown. If Der Starmer's response to the shellacking includes resurrecting your political corpse, Gordo, you're a winner.

3. British politics. If Corbyn and Sultana can't get their shit together, the GP is already moving forward and providing an actual option on the left. We'll see what tea leaves to read out of the King's Speech today, otherwise: Starmer's one of those passive-aggressive types who won't step down without a shove and without breaking at least one deal. Would Labour backbencher anger at him rise enough for a confidence vote if he attempted to block it within the party?

Even keel

1. Nigel Farage and Reform. Other than Zionist rabbis inviting Farage and his antisemitic past to address them while excluding Polanski (and showing themselves to be big losers), they're not winners. Don't believe claims otherwise from the likes of the Beeb. 

Getting stuck in Big Bend, getting Yankee salvation — even when you're an idiot

If you get stuck in Big Bend, here's the guy who could be your ultimate salvation. And, he's a Yankee from Massachusetts.

That said, despite his big heart, there's info in the story that shows some people don't belong in the back country of one of the largest, and almost surely the second most primitive, of national parks this side of Death Valley. (The Maze district of Canyonlands is still well ahead, and may directly challenge some of the worst of DV, though not being as hot in summer as Big Bend, let alone Death Valley.)

Now, those ... idiots?

This:

In March, four college kids in a Land Cruiser got a flat tire on Black Gap Road, in Big Bend National Park, and were so low on gas that they couldn’t run the air conditioning. The road is technically closed due to flooding damage last year, so the chances were slim that anyone was going to drive by. At 4 p.m. on a 101 degree day, they were able to send a message to one of their dads, who joined several Big Bend Facebook pages and was directed to Cary. By sunset, Cary had contacted them and made a plan to meet up first thing the next morning with gas so they could at least stay cool. All in all, he spent seven hours fixing the tire and helping them get on their way.

First, riffing off the warning at the end of the piece, Land Cruisers DO have a full-sized spare. If you don't know how to access an under-carriage spare tire when you buy or rent such a vehicle, you should familiarize yourself well before driving a place like Black Gap Road, even when it's truly open.

For more on how tough Black Gap Road is? The Park Service notes it is "not maintained and requires 4-wheel drive." More here. Both links have multiple photos.

Second, you shouldn't be an idiot on running that low on gas in a place as big and as remote as Big Bend. I would have known that in college, even with a lot less money than these kids have. And,  yes, money and class are getting mentioned here.

Third, what would you have done without a cellphone signal? (This is likely to lead to a push to put even more cellphone towers — a totally wrong push, of course, and another reason to visit more and more non-national park federal land. The subreddits about national parks sometimes reinforce that idea.)

Fourth, yes, it's a stereotype, but things like this are the reasons stereotypes of Millennials more and more come off like generalizations, not stereotypes.

(Per my take on modern informal logic and its split of the old deductive vs fallacious on arguments into deductive, inductive and fallacious, an observation about a group that's more than 50 percent true, even if not 100 percent true, is a generalization not a stereotype.) 

And, in the case of Big Bend, this is based on personal observations beyond the story. From 2001-11, I went a dozen times, maybe one or two more. It was mainly at Thanksgiving, but I did a couple of Christmastime trips and a couple of spring ones. By, oh, 2007 or so, I considered myself a "veteran." That was not just due to my own hiking and exploring, but also due to listening to the tales and information from veterans in front of me and even super-veterans. (Big Bend, like Death Valley, attracts people like this.)

I got out there once, maybe twice, but I think only once, during the 2012-15 period and after that, not until 2019. The park had changed; they were already then doing reservations for the primitive drive-in sites. I can't remember if they were trying to clamp down on or eliminate dispersed backcountry camping outside of designated sites. (My second or third trip, I backcountry camped in the vicinity of the Marufo Vega trail.) 

Anyway, my first night at the hot springs, I'd already had a day of, between hikes, overhearing millennial types seemingly not interested in the traditions, and other matters, a day of disenchantment. Running into millennials at the springs being frou-frou was the last straw. I wasn't expecting them all to be in the springs nekkid, like the folks possibly from Hippy Hollow my first night at the springs on my first trip. But, I was wishing for them to be other than what they were, that late in the night after dark. 

A look at the nitty-gritty of plugging abandoned oil and gas wells

Inside Climate News reports on the Well Done Foundation, a private entity trying to assist in the work of plugging abandoned wells.

Here's how bad the need is:

In a 2023 peer-reviewed study, researchers led by McGill University civil engineer Mary Kang estimated that 13 percent of Americans—about 4.6 million people—live within about a half-mile of an AOOG well. “These wells have the potential to contaminate water supplies, degrade ecosystems, and emit methane and other air pollutants … present[ing] risks to climate stability and to environmental and human health,” the study stated.

The story goes on to note details of the problem, details well known by many people in the Permian Basin:

Some are relatively inert on their own, but other unplugged wells might vent hydrocarbons like methane, volatile organic compounds like the carcinogen benzene or deadly gases like hydrogen sulfide. Some leak oil, or a brine called “produced water” contaminated with heavy metals, chemicals or radioactivity. Some pollute underground aquifers or nearby surface waters. Others create their own noxious lakes. Changing subterranean conditions can make previously stable AOOG wells vent or leak. 

Wastewater from oil and gas production is typically disposed of by pumping it into spent, adjacent oil and gas wells, but overpressurized underground disposal reservoirs can force it back to the surface where it can disrupt production from other oil and gas wells.

On federal, often BLM land, the problem is that bonding requirements haven't been updated in 40 years. On the state level, in the greater near Southwest, Colorado and New Mexico, though not perfect, are better than Texas in various ways. I don't know about Oklahoma, but wouldn't hold my breath.

That said, since wingnuts like to talk "moral hazard" so much, isn't this work by a private company kind of enabling moral hazard? 

That said, kudos to Curtis Shuck for founding Well Done Foundation and the work it's doing in Oklahoma. And, since a photo is sometimes worth more than 1,000 words, click the link.

RIP Bobby Cox, still getting a roiding pass

The long-time Atlanta Braves (and shorter-time Toronto Blue Jays) manager, voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame a number of years ago, has died at the age of 84.

And, he continues to get a pass on his managing of alleged, certain in my opinion in one case for sure, steroid-using (or other PED-using) players. The two managers voted in with him, Tony La Russa and Joe Torre, have faced much more scrutiny (while pumping out much more denialism). Cox hasn't.

Indeed, ESPN's own story, at the top link, doesn't even mention this, though at that very place, Rick Reilly mentioned all three, and the hypocrisy, when they were voted into Cooperstown.

Why? Maybe it's because, other than the borderline case of Gary Sheffield, Cox didn't manage any clear HOFers, or players with dramatic performances? (As a St. Louis Cardinals fan, I don't think Mark McGwire is a HOFer even with his PED-influenced numbers, but he did have dramatic performances.) But, outside of Barry Bonds, Torre managed both Roger Clemens and A-Rod. Even deducting for the enhancements, all three continue to be shut out by veterans committees in the first two cases, after the BBWAA took a 10-year pass. A-Rod is likely to face the same fate.

Yet the trio of denialist managers plus former commissioner Bud Selig are all in Cooperstown.

It's a big steaming pile of shit.

I think Cox knew, as much as La Russa and Torre, even if Atlanta wasn't as much of a "locus" as Oakland's dugout or that of the Yankees. (The Texas Rangers became another node when Jose Canseco went there but they've not had a HOF manager until Bruce Bochy, who will go in with a Giants hat. And, the Mac/La Russa Cardinals being a possible node has also flown under the radar screen because, of course, that's not the Cardinal Way.)

Riffing off Reilly, by the early 2000s, all three were managerial elder statesmen. Certainly they were after their 2013 elections. Yet all engaged in denialism both before and after. Denialism extends to fans in the case of Cox, per a post on Reddit's r/mlb, where my comments to this end have been massively downvoted.

And, no, "not too soon," either, no more than with a takedown or semi-takedown obit of a politician. 

This piece sounds about right on Putin and Russia

Beyond Putin's "tightening the screws," which we'll get to, first, per Kai Ryssdal (who's actually a neoliberal ass) "let's take a look at the numbers" in this piece from the New Yorker. 

It acknowledges that the Russian economy grew by 4 percent or so in both 2023 and 2024, but saw that rate contract in 2025, and that the economy is actually shrinking 2 percent so far this year. And, per the US definition of two consecutive quarters of contraction, yes, Russia is not quite two months away from officially being in recession.

Not a horrible one, but a recession. 

At the same time, inflation continues to rise. Russia's central bank has its prime rate at 14 percent, nearly double that of the pre-war era.

Ahh, that.

I call the invasion neither justified nor unjustified.

I do call it botched, though.

Contra people who, going beyond condemning NATO to being full apologists for Vlad the Impaler, his original plan was to capture Kiev, which Joshua Yaffa notes in this piece. And by not devoting enough men, machinery or materiel to the original effort, Putin blew it. Period. People like, at least halfway, the problematic Simplicius, who claim that was not the original plan, are lying. There's no way to — and no reason to — put it more politely. Indeed, after that initial January 2025 callout of him at the link in this paragraph, by last fall, I was wondering if he's a Russian disinformation agent. Speaking of, and ignoring what Yaffa rights, that Vlad the Impaler has downsized the regular Victory Day parade on Red Square because of the Ukrainian drone threat, Simplicius plays up Moscow's counterthreat if Kyiv tries something.

Here's the reality:

Earlier this month, the Kremlin announced that this year’s Victory Day parade, held every May 9th in Red Square to commemorate the Soviet victory in the Second World War, which is typically a show of Russian might, would be a modest, small-scale affair. The usual columns of tanks and missile launchers and marching soldiers will be absent—they present too inviting a target for Ukrainian drones. (Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, acknowledged the “terrorist threat.”)

Straight from Putin's horse's mouth. 

Followed by this related in the next paragraph:

Then, on May 4th, multiple news outlets published stories on a leaked report from an unnamed European intelligence agency which describes disorder in the Russian security services over their inability to protect the country from Ukrainian drone attacks and assassination attempts.

Well, there you go. 

I said last fall, at the end of the piece, that I was "snarking" on him being a Russian disinformation agent. Maybe I need to nuance that snark with a bit of seriousness. 

Related to the economy of Russia now being officially in reversal, Russia's attritional gains are slowing down. (Simplicius does handwaving and gaslighting over that.)

That said, while not knowing if asking for less than maximalist demands would actually have led to serious negotiations or not, we know that Putin asking for maximalist demands a year ago tanked that idea totally.

The future? Yeah, per Yaffa, with Prigozhin blown to bits, nobody else is coming after Putin's crown. But, the atherosclerosis of hardening Russian arteries will surely be accompanied by the same symptoms in him. 

Time to list a second round of Substack blocks

This is an update to a piece from last November, about many of my early blocks .

And was sparked by a February piece by The Dissident about the Washington Post claiming antisemitism is behind many Epstein files comments.

One guy posted this Josh Who nutter. I'm not sure if he's antisemitic as well as anti-Zionist, but Josh dude is a generally unhinged wingnut and conspiracy theorist, as his Shitter showed. (He's blocked there, too.) I didn't block the poster. 

One guy posted the already blocked Paolo Kirk. Looking at his feed, Paul Haeder reposts him WAY too much; other things he says has him approaching antisemitism, at least, even if not going as fully over the line as Kirk. That said, when I checked his reads and saw David Irving? That was it. (He also follows the laughable — and conspiracy theorizing — Rainer Shea, the tankie from The People's Republic of Humboldt County.) Ars longior, vita brevis, and bye.

Bill Shannon, spotted on a Dissident piece a few days later. Reads both Hanania and Rufo. And Sailer. Foams at the mouth over "Bolsheviks" and is also a possible COVID minimalist. Bye. 

Paul, a general nut. I would accept his libertarian reads, but Milkshake Andy Ngo and others? Pass.

Lynn2C, wingnut enough to call the ConservaDem who beat Joe Kent a "Leftist." 

Celina101, a Gen Z "commenter on culture" who doesn't publicly disclose being an "alt-white Gen Z commenter." 

Fi666, who liked a comment of mine on The Dissident? Antisemitic, not just anti-Zionist, and some sort of cultural Christianist/decline of the West type. I was suspicious with the "666." Reposting shit like "Vaclav Havel is owned by Big Jews" is a giveaway. They're British anti-immigrant alt-White types.

They're actually neo-Nazi with this:

Jews need to be burned alive. None of this Zyklon B tickbath disinfectant lie. Proper extermination this time. Otherwise we're all fucked.

And this:

I'm glad there's no censorship on here. Except several stacks I follow/ subscribe to were coming up with only a restricted message for a while and won't even load now. So far I've noticed NatSocToday, White Rabbit, and most recently Ava Wolfe. I see a theme here

Shit. Gee, what is "NatSocToday"?

The person posting the Vaclav Havel bullshit? Gemma O'Doherty. Irish traditionalist Catholic, probably of Opus Dei type if not further right. Talks about "Holohoax" so antisemitic. And, yes, Tim O'Neill, that's still in many conservative Catholics' roots. On their personal website and an alleged newspaper, talk about the "Great Reset." 

SF Bay Area Local is a generic Trumptard, but also a MAHA, a generic antivaxxer and other such things. They're also Zionist and Islamophobe. Reposts many name Zionists.

A lesser-name Zionist, but also hard-right, if not full Trumptard? Roy Ben-Tzvi. 

Richard Jaffee? Garden-variety Zionist liar. 

John B? General fucking "anti-woke" idiot. Drinks MAGAts Kool-Aid,

CG? Generic antivaxxer and generic genocidalist wingnut. 

Now, that all said? Substack's blocking system ain't that good.

One person claimed that the person blocked can still see you. Taint so, looking at people who have blocked me.

That said, the biggest problem is, contra both Shitter and Fuckbook, it's one-way. If someone has blocked me, I can't block them back. 

Update about "OK Doomer," aka "Jessica Wildfire""

I've written before about the "OK Doomer" nutter and my guess on her background, here in Part 1 and a follow-up here in Part 2.

Curiosity led me to teh Google, about what she might be up to recently. 

She's off Medium and now at a new place called "The Sentinel Intelligence." Her "about" pretty much confirmed old sleuthing. PhD college English prof. To update my pieces above, she got the tenure she was chasing. (She still has her Substack, where I'm blocked, after an interaction that came after I wrote the two pieces above.)

She's also still grifting, getting some non-profit fund founded in 2021 on her side.

The details of the financial relationship aren't mentioned at either site but there you are. She has a 2.0 version of her survivor prepping guide as part of that:

Her current project, Project C, is an illustrated survival manual — a practical guide to homesteading, preparedness, and self-sufficiency for a world where the systems we take for granted may not hold. AKET provides sustained support for Jessica's work because a voice this clear, this honest, and this useful should not have to fight for survival in the economics of independent writing.

OK now.

That confirms my part 2 above, that she's grifting off the prepper world, offering a more librul version of that than you usually find. One of the five coauthors at her Substack explicitly identifies as a prepper.

As for the couple behind that Alfred Kobacker and Elizabeth Trimble Fund? His father started a shoe store in Ohio that he eventually sold to Payless, per his obit. (There's NO "about" on the fund's website.)

She also occasionally admits she's wrong, or more likely, doesn't like getting called out; she deleted the "we're running out of food" piece that I linked to in both part 1 and part 2.

She doesn't care a lot about one big geopolitical event. She wrote in early November 2023 to claim that the start of Israel's genocide in Gaza was about oil and gas. Wrong. And, she also apparently is, or was, sympathetic to Zionism:

Let's start with a couple of chilling facts. The war in Gaza has nothing to do with democracy or human rights. It also has nothing to do with Israel's right to defend itself. Until yesterday, that's what I thought.

Ouch. Yet more reason not to like her. (A search finds "Zionism" nowhere on her site, and this is the last piece she wrote about Gaza.)  Two of the other five "contributors" there wrote before that, in more detail, but not that much more.

She did get tenure, per this piece, but says "she gave it up." Contra several items? You got paid in summer; it's part of your contract. You just don't get paid EXTRA in summer. And colleges, unlike high schools, have LONG had summer sessions.

The pay? It's about what I would have guessed for someone at either assistant professor or associate professor rank at a second-tier state university in a Southern state. As for the drop in enrollment? Happening at K-12 everywhere, including first-ring suburbs of the Metromess here in Tex-ass. It's a second "baby bust," following with about expected timing after a dropoff from the original Baby Boom hit colleges in the middle 1980s.

That said, this doesn't tell the full story.

She doesn't work the entire summer. She may work parts of it, but not the entire summer. And, "writing books and articles"? After you have tenure and don't have to worry about publish or perish, that's not part of your job anyway. It's something chosen.

Then, she actually BITCHES about students taking independent studies. I guess you long ago stopped being very idealistic as a prof.

She also, at a state university, was in the state employees' pension system. Not a lot of people have on-the-job pensions any more, and of those that do, a lot of them aren't a defined-benefit pension, which I am guessing hers is. She also probably has better health insurance than the typical private-sector employee. 

She's right that universities generally aren't librul. They're certainly not leftist.

Oh, as of a year ago, she was still being a Doomer on COVID. And, she claims to be a quasi-clairvoyant "disaster whisperer"; that's where the phrase "sentinel intelligence" for her website comes from.

OK, the other co-contributors at her Substack? One thinks the Democratic Party invented the "Green New Deal." Green Party nowhere mentioned. 

Where IS Farris Wilks?

The Monthly wonders what happened to Farris Wilks.  Reportedly, there's been some sort of break with fellow bazillionaire nutbar Tim Dunn, but it doesn't say what that might be about?

Maybe a gay relationship on the down low imploded? "Just asking questions," wingnuts. Deal with it.

Semi-seriously, or more than that, the piece says that the two started shorting out over the Nick Fuentes' brouhaha in late 2023, a meeting with Wilks and Dunn operatives that also included Matt Rinaldi and Former Fetus Forever Fuckwad Jonathan Stickland. (Ahh, who can forget him? The Texas GOP pretty much has.)

Apparently this got deeper in June 2024 when Wilks may have been the unnamed Daddy Warbucks to cut funding to the True Texas Project. Amarillo's not-totally-wingnut bazillionaire Alex Fairly notes that it was about this time that Tim Dunn first recruited him. Surely no coincidence. 

Maybe, per the end of the story, there was a gay threesome involving the Forever Fuckwad? Did I just make you throw up in your mouth with that scenario? Per Stickland's own language, and my sense of alliteration, that would then make him Former Fetus Future Faggot Forever Fuckwad. If only this could be true. (I can throw Fuentes in for a foursome if you want.)

Texas Progressives talk polls and nukes

Off the Kuff brings you two more polls showing James Taalrico leading the race for US Senate in Texas. 

SocraticGadfly loves him some James Hansen, agrees that we're in a climate crisis, not just climate change, that will lead to 5°C of temperature increase in a century without strong action soon, knows that WAY too many people still don't get this, and hates that the likes of Michael Mann have attacked him as alarmist, BUT explains in great detail why he is far more skeptical than Hansen about nuclear energy being a major part of the solution.

Inside Climate News notes the great number of commercial lithium mining claims that are on American Indian tribal land. 

The Observer warns even wingnut landowners on the border to read the fine print on Team Trump's requests to survey their land. 

Too bad, in its runoff overview, the Observer won't tell you to vote for neither Colin Allred nor Julie Johnson and to undervote this in the general. 

Camp Mystic will not reopen this summer. Next question: Will it next summer? 

Is Havana / Cancun Ted Cruz running for president again in 2028? He's clearly working on the Trump Toady angle.

Contra Kalshi's claims, and riffing off the Trib, wondering why both Dannie Goeb and Kenny Boy have been slow to act or react, I think predictions markets are gaming, not a commodities-like futures market. Pro sports sub-reddits very much agree. 

ICE may have deported a US citizen. 

UNT has a massive budget shortfall, mainly cuz Trumpism has led to a big drop in international students. Faculty buyouts are a partial solution; per the Trib, a number of humanities profs are gladly accepting, saying UNT has gone well beyond the state-mandated minimum in anti-diversity. 

More Pete Hegseth brilliance — wanting to build a data center in the aridity of Fort Bliss. 

Chris Hooks extends his John Cornyn bromance to Shrub Bush and isn't worth further effort on addressing. 

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project spoke about empowering ourselves at a May Day event at a Unitarian Church in The Woodlands. As always-The next action is when you organize it.

Steve Vladeck and Law Dork critique the SCOTUS "ruling" in the lawsuit over Texas' Congressional re-redistricting.

Space City Weather answers your questions about El Nino, why it always rains on weekends, and more.

The Texas Signal talks to some drag performers about what they feel they can legally do now.

Texas Rural Reporter uses the example of a kid from Spearman being drafted by the NFL to show how important public schools are in rural communities and why the voucher program is a threat to them.

City of Yes talks about making space for the things we don't like but still need.

Contra Barbed Wire on Whataburger

Contra Barbed Wire, Whataburger, or as I call it, What? A Burger? has never been all that, other than being one of Tex-ass' three retail cults along with HEB and Fuck You the Beaver.

THAT said, re my own comparison of it with In and Out, yeah, we don't go there any more for exactly the reason BW says it should be beloved by Texans. I don't need a fucking burgers version of Chick fil A. That said, What? A Burger? likes to push the bible hard itself, or a least it does on the walls of the location nearest me.

Beyond all that, What? A Burger? is overpriced. I definitely will take Jack in the Crack over it. 

Really on Alexander Cockburn? And really, St. Clair?

According to Jeff St. Clair in a recent Roaming Charges there, Cockburn thought that Jerry Ford was the best president since FDR. It appears to be serious. That said, Jerry was less a warmonger than the others, overall. Of course, he had shorter service.

As for Jeff's claim of Secret Service incompetence and its being traceable to Trump? Doesn't this ignore the "whores" under Obama? Between the JFK assassination and that incident, it had plenty of other scandals and screwups. It also ignores that Congress has repeatedly refused to ease the Secret Service burden. A good idea would be splitting the Protective Division from the rest of the Secret Service as well as providing more funding. 

As for the USA USA USA after assassinations? St. Clair misses on the angle that gunz are one of the few things made in America, and also the claim that all gunz are made in America is not true. Many Glocks come from Austria. Ditto, many Heckler and Koch come from Germany. 

On both of these two points, St. Clair is drifting toward becoming a Blue Anon type of Never Trumper. 

Finally, re Friday's date (I originally had "yesterday's" as I was going to post it on Saturday), and nothing about May Day in the piece? Like mine?

Is it budgetarily necessary for Texas cities to cave to Strangeabbott over ICE?

First, the Fifth Circuit screwed illegal immigrants by saying their advocates lacked standing to fight Texas law allowing state and local cops to make arrests. 

ICE has, in turn, just arrested an interpreter of Indo-Pakistani languages. 

Speaking of, how big a portion of a city's budget are these public safety grants that Abbott has threatened to cut unless cities kowtow to him on having police cooperate with ICE? In Austin's case, $2.5 million is 0.04 percent of $6.5 billion. For Dallas and Houston, it may be bigger, but still. Since part of Dallas' money is World Cup security related, and I believe ditto for Houston, why not just call Strangeabbott's bluff?

Update, May 10: The Trib has a follow-up on Strangeabbott's thuggery. 

Brief Iran updates and Sy Hersh speculation

Sy Hersh said Thursday that he heard speculation Trump would pay $25 billion to reopen Hormuz. 

Tosh on that actually happening, IF the speculation is true. I saw it May 1 — May Day, or Mayday? — and nothing had happened. That's a lifetime for weathervane Trump. Second, without actual concessions, Trump can't bribe Iran like that. 

Weirder yet? The info is from Tel Aviv, not DC:

“He wants out,” the Israeli insider told me, and the Israeli leadership “is very upset because Trump”—in his fear of the political cost to him of a continuing blockade of the strait “has shown a willingness to ignore Israeli interests and desires.” People in the Israeli leadership “say he’s lost it. He doesn’t think of the consequences. You cannot do negotiations with Iran because every step we make he immediately broadcasts it on his social media posts. He is so obtuse.”

Sure. Sure, Sy.

There's then this:

The president is said not to share Israel’s existential concern about the need to destroy or neutralize the large depot of partially enriched uranium that is allegedly stored in at least three deep tunnels in Iran. Iran as a member of the world’s nuclear club may be an existential threat for the Israeli leadership, but not for the president of the United States.

Trump, weathervane and all, would never, ever confess to that, IMO, not even in private if he thought it would be leaked. Plus, already in his first term, he derided Obama's deal and killed it.

Is Sy being played? We know that's happened before.

Is someone in Tel Aviv floating a trial balloon? If so, there's people there stupider than I would have thought. More on this below.

Maybe Sy discussed that further below his paywall. That's harder to tell in opinion, let alone speculation pieces than it is in straight news.

It also doesn't accord with what we know of Trump's psychology, in my opinion. And, on his psychology, two things from childhood are key, as I said on Mearsheimer's site.

One is his desire to impress his dad with how much tougher he was than his siblings.

The other is their attending Norman Vincent Peale's church and drinking deeply from the proto-New Agey "The Power of Positive Thinking." Trump to this day believes that if he believes something hard enough, it is or will be true. Period. It's also, if you will, an updated version of Schopenhauer and his "The World as Will and Idea." (I still like the old version of the title in English.) This goes back to WWII, where Hitler thought Stalin had reversed the tide of Barbarossa at Moscow, then, unevenly at first, rolled it back — he had a stronger belief, and passed this on to his generals, than German generals did. (Hitler never examined what this said, in his system, about the power of HIS belief!) That said, Stalin engaged in this too, in the late spring of 1941, thinking that if he believed hard enough, Hitler wouldn't invade.

Anyway, because Sy is a raconteur, I doubt he actually delved deeply into analyzing the story he was told and why he was told it.

This is a problem Hersh has had off and on way in the past, but that first really took off with Butowsky and the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, followed by people like Caity in Oz triangulating off him and Mooning Alabama trying to cover for him. Sy never really did admit that he had been played, let alone that he let himself get played. So, since then, my thought is that people who know he's a contrarian but how he can also be a tool have targeted him more. This does not come off as one of his ax-grinding pieces, but we should be reminded he has a history of that, too.

My guess on the particular issue at hand? Someone at least halfway close to Bibi feared Trump might actually be thinking along these lines and wanted to cut it off at the pass.

== 

Related? Having been rebuffed once, he's again begging for "allied" help to clear the strait. 

Second? He needs billions to repair the damage Iran has done to US military bases in the Middle East. NBC reports that's the estimated cost. CNN concurs, saying Iran has damaged 16 US sites — a majority.

Meanwhile, NBC reports — per Jeff St. Clair, breaking news that CBS used to break, pre-Bari Weiss — Iran is digging out old weapons. 

==

Monday, May 4 updates: Scahill calls Trump's announcement the US will "escort" ships outside of Hormuz an attempt to goose oil futures markets. Meanwhile, still no sign of him bribing anybody. 

Happy May Day from a non-Marxist leftist

First, pretty much adapted from last year?

Two things to note.

One? This should be the date that "Labor Day" is celebrated. It's the date of International Workers' Day. It's the date that the American Federation of Labor called for the eight-hour day to be implemented, in 1886. And, that exact date is the day the Haymarket rally started.

Per the first link, ConservaDem President Grover Cleveland pushed for the September Labor Day date precisely to "defang" it and remove Haymarket connections.

Even worse? Per that page, Ike, Mr. "one nation UNDER GOD" Pledge of Allegiance president, declared May 1 to be Loyalty Day. Because "godless Communism," of course. 

Remember that the American imperial class will co-opt anything they can, then claim America is "classless," then get many American people to buy it. 

Second, riffing off a piece from last year?

Once again, no, we don't actually need yet another Communist Party. 

Beyond Marxism being pseudoscience, with more on that here, with the degree Marx was locked into the exploitation of the natural world ideas of capitalism, we don't need any form of Marxism in today's climate crisis. 

 

Sequoia Serenity

It had been at least as long for me to visit Sequoia National Park as it had been to visit Death Valley. One problem of sorts with doing the two on the same vacation is of course that there is no road THROUGH the Sierras from the southern tip and Walker Pass until the Tioga Pass Road through Upper Yosemite.

I putzed around the morning of Friday, March 27 in the Lake Isabella area after leaving Death Valley. I'd done this briefly once, but more this time, with about 3 hours total. I did see one lifer bird, that theoretically I should be able to see in North Texas — the northern house wren. I saw some bright western bluebirds and spotted California poppies, so I didn't have to worry about skipping Antelope Valley.

And, I hauled ass for Sequoia, where I got about 6 hours or a little more of visitation time, but it was worth it.

Traffic is one issue. I'd driven up through Porterville once, long ago, and long after sunset. Today, early afternoon, through it and Visalia, gack!

That said, I did get the semi-cloying — not quite cloying, but not non-cloying, either — smell of orange blossoms from the groves. Picture orange scented dish soap, aerosolized, with a lighter orange smell, a much lighter, but existent, soap smell, and hints of related smells.

Finally, Sequoia!

I have half as many photo albums as Death Valley. That said, not all are place-based. The "water" album includes not only the rapids of the Middle Kaweah, but a ribbon fall higher in, and water and moss in the heart of the park. 

That would be: 

That. I posted that instead of a rapids photo, because, I do like shooting rapids video, like this:

That was about 3 miles above the Foothills Visitor Center. 

Next, it's off to the good old general — General Sherman. Either I didn't have an ultrawide on my last trip to Sequoia, or I didn't go to the Sherman on that trip. I did this time. With these, like with coastal redwoods, it's the way to shoot. (I didn't think of shooting a brief "pan" video; the day was rushed and of course the site was semi-crowded. It's not like Redwood National Park, where you have to get a permit for the Tall Trees Grove, and the drive to that trailhead is an unpaved road, and the hike to that is a dirt, unpaved trail, all of which control visitation levels.)

Anyway, I went on to shoot other pictures of sequoias, in their own small album, in the Congress Grove and elsewhere, of sequoias, toppled sequoia roots, sequoias burned by the 2021 KNP Complex Fire and more. (I also shot things besides sequoias here, but hang on to that.)

That would lead to the "other flora and fauna" album. I saw a turkey hen just inside the visitor center. I saw several California tortoiseshell butterflies on the Congress Trail, and got a decent photo of one. I heard, then saw, an incessantly chirpy fox sparrow. I saw a bush-like, not tree-like, western redbud among the flora while driving. 

There's the General; it embiggens and is much bigger in the album.

Speaking of generals? I was rushing to get to the General Grant grove before full dark.

But, I did several putz-around stops on the way.

And, it led me to be at Redwood Mountain Overlook just in time for sunset. Views were great. 

You could also see damage from the KNP, which is mentioned specifically in the link above. While editing my photos, and realizing I had not looked for a name for this spot while there, I at the same time realized how much I missed a decade or more of not visiting Sequoia, and even felt a bit sad about rushing the trip. It is different from Redwood State and National in that you have no coast, but you do have mountains. And, as of this point in my life, Lower Yose is just too overrun, plus, even though it's part of nature, the bark beetle deaths near the Wawona Tunnel are a turn-off. Upper Yose is nice, but I think another trip into Kings Canyon, not yet open, but even more sparsely visited than Upper Yose, is my next desire for the Sierras. (I've seen bits of the northern Sierras outside of national parks.)

OK, obviously I wouldn't have much light left for the other general. In fact, it was twilight or nearly so when I got there, and as also noted in the very brief album, I didn't actually see the General Grant. On the trail to it, I missed some sign or something. No worries, I had seen it before. And, what I saw was nice, and tranquil, and quiet, with the bonus of bits of moonlight at about half-phase. 

But, also, the above-average, though perhaps below record-setting at this point, hotting up of the Sierras was cooling off a fair amount with darkness. 

But? I've skipped something, saving the best for last.

I hiked a fair portion of the Congress Trail, the trail that wends generally southward from the General Sherman. And, on the way back, thanks in part I think to quiet hiking, my rushed trip was all paid off on the matter of timing.

There you are.

It's the third time for me to see a sooty grouse. I've also spotted them at Lassen and Rainier. I do think they're almost as "tame" around people as the stereotypically tame spruce grouse. But, as I note in my small album, a lot of people hike less quietly and less observantly. Had I not shushed other hikers on the trail and then pointed, they might not have gotten enjoyment. 

Enjoy a still of this lovely bird below.

And, that's a wrap of that trip, but not of the reflections.

I checked through old vacation notes, and sure enough, it had been even longer since my last visit than Death Valley, which I last hit in 2016.

Sequoia, last visit was 2015, then an 11-year gap before that, to 2004. And, 2004 as well as 2003 was one day, no more. The 2015 trip was fire-season challenged. Kings Canyon was closed. 

Texas Progressives talk finances, 25th, more

SocraticGadfly read The New Republic's interview of George Conway, and realized that Never Trumper Republicans and Blue Anon Democrats remain largely clueless about the actuality of the 25th Amendment. 

Off the Kuff rounded up the Q1 campaign finance reports for Texas Democratic candidates for Senate and Congress.

Kuff actually has a better piece, on Jonathan Mitchell's latest self-inflicted pie in face on his abortion doctor and abortion medications lawsuits. 

Why is the CCA taking so long to hear and rule on Melinda Lucio's case? 

Will Camp Mystic get its deficient emergency plans up to snuff in 45 days? 

The Monthly rightly wonders why Trump running his border wall through the National Butterfly Center (on my visit wish list) has not attracted the same level of outrage as running it through Big Bend. You may not even be able to get in it!

[Executive director Stephanie] Lopez has met with CBP lawyers about design plans—there isn’t yet even a guarantee that the barrier will include a gate for visitors to pass through—and the center is consulting its own lawyers about what recourse it may have.

Santa Ana NWR, also mentioned in the story, is also on my visit wish list. 

The state is about to execute another potentially innocent man, one convicted in part because of unconstitutional jury strikes. 

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project offered six observations from the gutting of the ICE/City of Houston ordinance. At bottom line, there is no abuse from our authoritarian, white-supremacist state & federal governments that will cause Houston city government to meaningfully advocate for our rights.

Steve Vladeck breaks down the moment when SCOTUS decided that the rules no longer applied to it.

Law Dork digs into the disgraceful indictments of the SPLC filed by the Trump Justice Department.

Super El Niño could mean a new global temperature record

Both Inside Climate News, referencing James Hansen among others, and Live Science have the details.

First, it's coming, period and end of story.

Second, per Hansen, its likely effects are not only another wakeup call for the planet in general, and a wakeup call for wingnuts and denialists who won't listen, they're a wakeup call for climate change Obamiacs or climate change neoliberals (I use both terms), like Michael Mann, who have accused the likes of Hansen of being alarmist.

This:

Even a moderately strong El Niño during the next 12 to 18 months could drive the average global temperature to about 1.7 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level, climate scientist James Hansen told Inside Climate News. Hansen doubts the world will meaningfully cool back down to below the 1.5 degree Celsius mark after the El Niño fades.

Is the reality. 

The kumbaya that Mann, Katharine Hayhoe, Bob Kopp and others want to sing is not. And, like head-faking canaries in a coal mine, they keep singing.

And, the further part of the reality is that this is likely to be a strong one, not just a moderately strong one. 

Per Live Science, the World Meteorological Organization has already issued a 61 percent of a "strong" El Niño, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a 25 percent chance of a "very strong" one by November. (Cue somebody in the Trump Admin to try to quash that.) 

==

James Hansen says that due to increases in forcing, with an accelerating rate of global warming (discussed by me briefly here last month) this is likely to be a record year even without an El Niño. 

Love me some James Hansen, but I'm more skeptical of nuclear power than he is

Here's Hansen writing about IPCC censorship of climate change warming and forcing last year. And, since the UN is a government, even though it has no First Amendment, that is censorship in the narrow, proper sense.

In parts of the piece, about halfway down, comes the more problematic part.

First, I had this in my "restacking" comments.

Comments are interesting. I’m not deadset against nuclear power, but I’m more skepticaal than many of the commenters, including Hansen. I’m skeptical of nuclear power being as green as claimed (though it’s certainly better than gas, let alone coal). Also, having grown up in Gallup, New Mexico, and being old enough to remember the collapse of the tailings pond dam at the Church Rock mine, I still look carefully at safety issues on uranium mining and processing as well as nuclear plants. I don’t know if most commenters here do that or not. 

As for more modern reactors? Especially the touted thorium ones? If state-capitalist China actually out commercial reactors, or even conclusively demonstrates that its just-launched experimental reactor can scale up, we can talk.

We'll go from there. 

Hansen's first comment, the halfway down, starting with a 1990s starting point on this by him:

Almost unlimited subsidy of renewable energies was adopted in many U.S. states and some other nations via “Renewable Portfolio Standards,” requiring utilities to obtain a growing fraction of their energy from renewable energies. This approach, as contrasted with “Clean Energy Portfolio Standards,” spurred the development of natural gas as the complement to intermittent renewable energy, and, as a consequence, expansion of fracking, pipelines, and methane leakage. Nuclear power, given the costs of the fuel and materials to build a power plant, has potential to be the least expensive among the firm, dispatchable, energy sources, but attainment of its potential, as with other sources, requires extensive R&D and experience. Thus, it is ironic that the COP now suddenly asks for nuclear energy output to be tripled

Well, to be cynical more than skeptical, but, at bottom line, "on the one hand, I have shit, on the other, I have potential." 

Second, per later comments, yes, some of the Gang Green enviros may have been partially "captured" by the natural gas portion of fossil fuels. Sierra certainly was. But, I don't really listen to anybody to the "right" of Center for Biological Diversity, while noting I don't know its stance on nukes.

Third, "intermittent renewable energy"? Maybe not in the 1990s, but there IS today this thing called "battery storage." Also, Hansen should know that in places like Denmark and Norway, the entire country has, for brief periods of time in the last couple of years, "metered backward" because 100 percent of electricity was coming from renewables and overflowing.  

Now, let's jump earlier in that same paragraph:

[F]ailure to support development of nuclear power as a carbon-free source of energy was widespread.

Uhh, totally not true, as far as lifecycle emissions, James. 

This ignores, per this piece of mine, with the aid of Counterpunch, carbon costs of uranium mining, uranium refining, long-term waste storage, and the high carbon costs of concrete containment domes.

Here's your graphic detail:

Per Counterpunch, those estimates come from a professor at Stanford, not exactly a bastion of leftism as a university. Mark Jacobson's whole piece is here, with link to PowerPoint slides that are basis of a book by him being here. Now, per Hansen's rightful bashing of the IPCC on other grounds, the fact that Jacobson references IPCC estimates, even though the numbers are from his own work, may be used to take him down.

I wouldn't do that unless one's on very solid ground. Beyond that, per notes 18 and 19 on his Wiki page, he has responded to critics. 

But, let's say Jacobson is off by a factor of three. Nuclear is still no better than wave or tidal, then. (In case you're wondering, not just because of the massive concrete for a dam, but because of backed-up decaying plant life in the lake behind a dam and other things, yes, hydro is not all that green.)

Beyond that, per Counterpunch, with the global warming portion of climate change, in many places, summertime cooling water for nuclear plants will become less and less available, not just because of potential lack of water, but warming of shallow water in already-warm locations.

Anyway, now, back to Hansen. 

His piece doesn't at all discuss safety issues.

I am NOT primarily talking "Iranian terrarists stealing uranium from a nuclear plant," let alone plutonium from a breeder reactor. 

Rather, I am in part talking long-term waste storage, since we have no Yucca Mountain, and unlike France, have not bribed some rural ghetto part of Merikkka to take the waste, and unlike China or Russia, are not authoritarian countries who can force decisions on where nuclear waste is buried. 

Second, there's mine safety issues.

As I note in that piece, I grew up where the "other" 1979 nuclear safety incident happened.

Gallup, New Mexico, just east of Church Rock, where the dam for a tailings pond broke and dumped radioactive water in the Puerco River, and nobody told rural Navajos, or the city of Gallup, right away.

I also know from that area about the exploitative treatment, especially in early years, of Navajo and Pueblo miners. And, while not a conspiracy theorist in general, per Karen Silkwood, Kerr-McGee was ultimate owner of that Church Rock mine. 

Today, in places like Congo, uranium miners are exploited as bad or worse.

And, on the environmental side, things aren't better today. Modern injection-extraction uranium mining?  It's as nasty, or potentially so, as fracking on steroids. It's also highly water-intensive.

Finally, on uranium, given how low-grade much of current commercially mined ore already is, on the economic side, there's the issue of scalability. 

Thorium-fuel reactors? Yes, per one commenter, the US once had an experimental thorium reactor. Or two; a late 1960s one at Oak Ridge, then a bigger 1970s one at Shippingport. There's others that have been built occasionally in other countries. China just started one. If it's all it's cracked up to be, why aren't there more? Well, per Wiki's piece, thorium reactors have disadvantages as well as advantages. It says China plans to have commercial thorium reactors by 2030. We'll see. It's a country with a state capitalism economy and authoritarian government, and with limited oil and natural gas reserves. If thorium was the bee's knees, don't you think China would be further down this road? On the other hand, China gets only 5 percent of its electric power from nukes today, versus nearly 20 percent in the US.

To put it bluntly? The Shippingport experimental thorium reactor was 50 years ago. If thorium is so damned good, why hasn't some country in the world started a commercial thorium reactor by now? And, no, here in the US it wasn't entirely killed off by chasing uranium breeder reactors,

And, while we're here, contra this Reuters piece, no, nuclear fusion is not just around the corner. 

And while we're really really here?

Ahh, this guy Brent James, apparently trying to play gotcha with this comment, as part of a semi-conspiratorial take on the rise of renewables.

The correct answer is the one I’ve given — both wind and solar themselves have become more efficient, as has battery storage. HOW MUCH more efficient, I don’t know. More efficient? Yes. And, with costs continuing to drop.

I don’t need to be a registered and licensed utility electric engineer to know that. And, if renewables don’t integrate into the grid perfectly, even if not as badly as he insinuates? The fault, dear Brutus, may be in part with the grid, not renewables being tied into it. 

As for the oilfield loving renewables? Even in Texas, there's a push to decarbonize, plus, as the western and more remote part of the Permian becomes ground zero for new fracking, it's a helluva lot easier to drop a few solar panels in the field rather than trying to tie into the existing grid. 

As for another comment of his? I did give him an AI summary off Duck Duck Go's search.

"Renewable electricity storage batteries are improving significantly, with battery storage costs declining by 93% from 2010 to 2024, driven by technological advancements and increased manufacturing. Additionally, the adoption of lithium-ion batteries, particularly lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistries, has surged, enhancing efficiency and lifespan, making them more effective for energy storage applications."

He never responded. And, after I edited and updated my first response to him to note that? He blocked me.

Finally, let me get back to the semi-conspiratorial ideas about Gang Green environmental groups, fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear power, that certainly seem to be held in some degree by Hansen himself, not just this Brent James.

As noted above, I'm well aware of Sierra, and to some degree, other Gang Greens pushing the narrative of natural gas as "clean." I'm also aware that money was behind that, and primarily to be anti-coal. See this piece from Time.

Gang Greens bit on that before renewables really started surging. Gas was better than coal, and nuclear power was back-shelved anyway. Post-2003, and "mushroom clouds" in Iraq, and the disintegration of the old USSR, nuclear proliferation worried had proliferated. Not building nuke plants was one way of lessening that.

Otherwise, even years after 2003, the natural gas segment of the fossil fuels world was just pushing gas, period, as far as I see it. It wasn't pushing renewables behind that, nor was it pushing against nuclear behind that. If anything, it might already then thought it had more to fear from renewables.

As for Hansen's belief? And James' even more? Per this site, yeah, we seem in the land of the conspiracy theory. And, contra it, Jacobson did NOT "lose" his lawsuit. See his Wiki page.

Otherwise, that site (top hit on Duck Duck Go when I asked if natural gas companies were trying to kill nukes through Sierra et al) has no links to its "originating members." Web searches of half a dozen at random left me less than impressed.

One of them, somewhat more impressive on background, Ripudaman Malhotra, thinks that fusion, if not just around the corner, is closer than it's been before. I don't believe it's that much closer, and with Commonwealth CFS, note its CEO's ties to Trump. Follow the money.

Another piece by that guy ignores non-chemical "battery" storage of surplus renewable electricity, such as water systems. In another piece, on nuclear waste, he doesn't scale up the amount of waste that will be produced with a massive nuclear power expansion. Also, contra his implication otherwise, France still has nuclear waste even after reprocessing. (Sigh) See Wiki, which also breaks down waste by radioactivity level and lifespan, and rather than using cute descriptors like:

The total volume of all the spent fuel is 22,000 cubic meters, which would fill one football field (100 yards by 55 yds) to a depth of 13 feet!

Gets straight to cubic meters.

And, in reality, France alone has almost 4,000 cubic meters of high-radioactivity, long-life waste, which could eventually hit 25,000 cubic meters. 

That said, this guy does NOT tout thorium.

One more issue. Union of Concerned Scientists, touted by many of the pro-nuke groups and individuals, per this piece, DOES worry about nuclear waste. It also notes many of today's currently operating nuke plants are marginally profitable to unprofitable. So, a massive nuclear expansion would do what to electric bills? This has LONG been a problem in the industry, and largely ignored by nuke pushers. 

And, that said, speaking of UCS, I suggest Hansen, and people uncritically agreeing with him, I suggest they read Andrew Cockburn, and via him, Edwin Lyman of UCS. Lyman talks about continual weakening (not just by Trump) of US reactor safety standards and more. That includes the abandonment of requirements for concrete containment domes. That and other relaxed standards SHOULD BE scary as hell.

Finally, I don't know about UCS, but none of the other people, including Malhotra, talk about mine worker safety, only power plant and waste safety.

Finally, and yes, while not operating 24/7, wind is as efficient as nukes in producing electricity. 

And, I've wasted enough time. 

Texas Tech expands draconian "Don't Say Gay" stance

Texas Tech gets worse, officially adopting a policy that, per Erin in the Morning, is basically "Don't Say Gay," not only for profs, but for students on dissertation and paper subjects and such. And, it's not just for Tech itself, but the whole Tech System, that also includes Midwestern State, Angelo State, and two health science centers.

Here's the nutgraf:

Under the new policy, all majors, minors, certificates, and graduate degrees "centered on" sexual orientation or gender identity will be eliminated. Provosts at each university must identify every affected program and submit finalized lists to the chancellor's office by June 15, 2026, at which point an immediate admissions freeze will take effect—no new students will be allowed to enroll in or declare any of the targeted programs. Currently enrolled students will be allowed to finish their degrees through a teach-out process, but once the last of them graduates, the fields will cease to exist at Texas Tech entirely.

Yikes. 

How much will this affect their bottom line, that is, enrollment? Many public as well as private schools face enrollment problems due to already bulging college costs. Why pay to go to a censorious university that won't let you study what you think you should study, not even for one class, that unconstitutionally tried to censor your right to protest, and will be losing professors?

I mean, just tuition at Tech for an in-state student is more than $10,000 a year. Total attendance cost is $25K or more for an on-campus in-state student.

I went to a private college long ago, with approximately $6K a year paying the full freight. (It wasn't a fancy one by any means.) Even adjusting for inflation, that's $18K a year today. 

I mean, college costs in general are ridiculous today, but add this on top of that? 

Final question: who sues? This clearly strikes me as First Amendment viewpoint discrimination.

Chris Hooks undercuts himself on redistricting battles

Here's CD Hooks' take on the state-by-state redistricting semi-wash (not a wash yet with Virginia's on judicial hold):

When Texas needs something from the Feds—say, disaster aid after a hurricane—it benefits from having both Democrats and Republicans from its congressional delegation in senior positions in Congress. Republican state lawmakers advocated for the gerrymander by arguing that it was in the state’s core interest to ensure that the next Congress was Republican-controlled. But Democrats are likely to win control of the House—likelier to do so now because of what the Texas Legislature did—so the Legislature has weakened the negotiating position of the state in D.C. by shrinking the number of Democrats in the delegation and knocking out at least a few more well-regarded Democratic incumbents.

Sidebar: Ain't it funny to see the number of anti-gerrymandering opinion pieces in places like the NY Post AFTER the Virginia vote? 

That said, Hooks spoils it by entering the land of naivete:

There just might be a silver lining to this mess. If, after the midterm, there is national momentum toward a kind of grand bargain on redistricting, a meaningfully good thing will have come out of the Texas Legislature. The nation could, in theory, work out some kind of compact to limit redistricting to set intervals, say, or task independent commissions with drawing district lines on common criteria—proposals that are already favored by Democrats. But the change will have come from Texas lawmakers themselves learning the hard way that when you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.

Can I have the hopium you're smoking? Dems are not winning back the state House and certainly not the state Senate. 

Yes, the other half of his narrative is true, that state Rethuglicans screwed themselves. But, the final fallout of redistricting will have empowered Trump, if anything. After the midterms, we'll get even more "fake elections" rants and even more push for state voter data. 

Ten Commandments in Tex-ass schools? Constitutional, per Fifth Circuit

In a 9-8 full court ruling, the Fifth Circuit upheld Texas law about cramming the Ten Commandments into public schools. Contra Kuff, I am actually kind of shocked. Wingnuts they may be otherwise, but the court has in the past generally been decent on First Amendment issues.

This quote:

“It does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams,” according to the ruling. “It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason.”

Is bullshit.

First, it DOES tell children in public schools what they should believe. THAT is the definition of establishment of religion.

Slate notes in detail how it's coercive, riffing on the Supreme Court's support for parental rights in various rulings:

If it’s true that parental rights are so important, then the 5th Circuit has to be wrong in upholding the Texas Ten Commandments law. The court tried to downplay this point by saying that it is just a “poster” and therefore lacks any coercive effect. But posters exist in educational settings so that they can educate. This is not a photo of a kitten saying “Believe in yourself!” A reproduction of a major religious text is bound to have an impact on the classroom experience. What happens when the first student asks a question about that large poster on the wall? If the teacher answers in a manner that showcases approval of the Ten Commandments, won’t the student feel pressured to agree? Or what if the teacher tells the student, as the 5th Circuit suggests, to simply ignore the poster? Could the state then punish the teacher for showing “anti-Christian” bias?

It also notes how it defies Supreme Court precedent:

What’s most remarkable about the decision, though, is not its support for theocracy, but its direct defiance of the Supreme Court. In 1980, justices struck down a law virtually identical to Texas’, forbidding states from placing the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. By flouting this precedent, the 5th Circuit effectively went rogue, daring the Supreme Court to check its brazen disobedience.

That said, that was 1980, Slate. The Roberts Court has overridden precedent left and right. Somewhat in light of that, Slate notes:

What’s most remarkable about the decision, though, is not its support for theocracy, but its direct defiance of the Supreme Court. In 1980, justices struck down a law virtually identical to Texas’, forbidding states from placing the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. By flouting this precedent, the 5th Circuit effectively went rogue, daring the Supreme Court to check its brazen disobedience.

 You think the Blind Umpire is really that worried? The only way he and other Catholics get concerned is if the Calvinist/Baptist version, barring graven images, is the only version allowed.

Frankly, per Slate's reference to 2022's Kennedy case, the court might now be looking for a reason to explicitly junk Lemon. We shall see. 

And, even if SCOTUS overturns, the damage will have been done. 

Net zero hypocrisies in Denton

The Observer reports on Denton's hypocrisies of more roads (and other things) versus a carbon net zero pledge. The bottom line:

Population pressure is real, and much of this construction is driven by state and county decisions Denton cannot fully control. But the city still holds levers it is not using. It can prioritize sidewalk and trail funding at the same level of urgency with which it funds road bonds. It can align development approvals with transit access rather than car dependence. And it can ensure that its positions on state-level highway expansion are consistent with its net-zero commitment. 

These choices have concrete costs. Ground-level ozone is already a documented crisis in this region, and every additional lane mile compounds it. The Climate Action Plan already identifies the tools needed to change course. The question is how consistently those tools are applied in practice. The orange barrels will eventually come down. The question is whether Denton will use the years of construction ahead to make different choices, or simply wait for the next plan to also go unread.

There you are. 

Living north of Little D, I find the I-35 expansion in Cooke County totally unnecessary not just for today but beyond, and of course, there's limited mass transit up here.