Birding lifers on spring vacation

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

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

Let's go in order.

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

Full album is here.

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

We first have a common gallinule:

Then a ruddy duck:

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

Full album here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Full Pixley album here.

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

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

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

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

Screwy about screwworms

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

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

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

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

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

Texas Progressives talk

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

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

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

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

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

Black history unveiled and preserved in San Antonio. 

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

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

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

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

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

This picture should say it all, or nearly so:

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

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

 

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

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

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

First, the lady pictured:

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

Well, there you go.

And more, from her husband:

Well, there you really go.

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

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

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

They hope to bring more Muslims into the Republican Party.

And this:

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

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

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

Yes, it will get worse.

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

Here you are on that:

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

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

Have fun coming back in 2028.

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Health care fails by The Atlantic and Mona Charen

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

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

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

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

And, it's dangerous. 

And Ms. Cushing tells you none of this. 

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

==

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

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

Really? 

Yes, as next we get strawmanning and whataboutism:

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

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

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

My quote in my quote-restacking? This:

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

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

And should say it all.

==

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

Who's the biggest bullshitter on the Iran non-peace treaty as the MOU threatens to unravel?

That header is of course the first thing to remember. There IS NO "peace treaty."

There is a 60-day ceasefire which now SEEMS to be OK, with a "Donald John Trump" signature on the US side Wednesday of an MOU where he clearly TACO-ed, along with the signature of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

On Shitter, and presumably on other social media, Israeli Zionist Jews, American Zionist Jews, American Zionist goys, and general neocons are all excoriating Trump, including Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ affiliated with any of those groups.

MAGAts who aren't necessarily pro-Israel or anti-Israel, but just blind suckers of Trump's micropenis are in an ongoing state of denial. Wednesday night, after posting my Substack version of the actual treaty and Trump's clear TACO-ing, I finally said explicitly: I block you unless you admit T-Rump TACOed. And I did with multiples.

The flip side? Not everybody in Iran is signed off. The opposition is no more powerful, I think, than in 2015, but they've got T-Rump 1.0 and 2.0 facts in evidence to support their case. Here's the nutgrafs:

A major factor pushing even a government heavily influenced by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to seek detente with the U.S. is the dire economic condition inside Iran after years of sanctions and the destruction of Iranian civilian infrastructure during the recent war. Several million Iranians are believed to have lost their jobs directly or indirectly as a result of the recent fighting, blockade, and internet shutdown. The International Monetary Fund now projects that Iran’s GDP will contract by 6% in 2026, with consumer prices rising nearly 70% during the same period. 

The Iranian economy is dominated by a network of semi-governmental institutions with ties to the security establishment. These firms largely control the flow of imports, exports, and energy resources, and are also tasked with navigating the complex web of sanctions the country faces when trading abroad and repatriating funds from the sale of oil and gas. 

For conservative skeptics of the MOU, who doubt the deal will bring a durable end to the war, these powerful business conglomerates are seen as the forces pressing the government hardest to move forward. Known in Persian as “khusulati”—a blend of the words for “private” and “government”—these firms stand to regain access to billions of dollars of frozen funds, as well as new business opportunities in Iran’s oligarchical economy.

That said, despite the ultra-hardliners, who may in this case get their heads thumped by Khaminei fils, Mojtaba Khamenei et al, they know they can close Hormuz again.

And, anybody who saw T-Rump's post-signing news conference knows he looked crushed, and fully 80 years old. 

(Sidebar to the link above? There ARE female journalists in Iran, contra the lying Islamophobes.) 

That said? there’s plenty of stated and unstated asterisks in that statement that are bridges to be crossed between now and June 19.

Bibi has spoken, to say he doesn’t feel bound by the agreement vis-a-vis Lebanon.

Will Trump do more fake yelling at Satanyahu? Will The Dissident, and even more, John Mearsheimer, not fall for that this time? 

In Drop Site’s first piece, various Iranian talking heads already noted that attacks on Lebanon would not go unaddressed. Will only Israel be attacked, or will the Great Satan (Greater than Satanyahu?) have Middle East military bases targeted again as well?

Quite possibly yes, according to a new piece from Drop Site. Iran has warned Trump that unless he restrains Bibi in Lebanon as forcefully as needed, it will torpedo the MOU by an unannounced attack on Israel.

That said? As noted in my Substack link, Point 1 has degrees of ambiguity about Lebanon. The Iranians know that, too. 

“Regarding Lebanon, we have warned both the mediators and the American side that if the regime fails to comply with the existing agreement, Iran will respond with substantial military measures without prior public notice,” said the Iranian official, who is not authorized to speak publicly. “Should the United States intervene, conditions particularly those related to the Strait of Hormuz could rapidly revert to a wartime environment.”

On the "not authorized to speak publicly," is this one of the ultra-hardliners mucking around? Maybe not: Those "technical talks," scheduled to start today, have been postponed. 

Technical talks that were scheduled to begin Friday in Switzerland were postponed, with Iranian officials citing the continued attacks in Lebanon. Some officials have also denounced the prospect of Iranian leaders being photographed meeting with Trump or other U.S. officials responsible for assassinating the country’s Supreme Leader. U.S. officials have acknowledged the delay, but have not confirmed the reason. Late Thursday, the White House said Vice President JD Vance—who has been put forward as the public face of the U.S. negotiations—would not be traveling to Switzerland as previously announced, saying, “The logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable.” A senior Pakistani official claimed the meeting was canceled because of religious observances related to the Islamic month of Muharram, a period of mourning for Shia Muslims.

As for the reason for cancellation? The Iranian claim of Muharram, especially important to Shi'ites? Per Scott Anderson in "King of Kings," 40-day mourning anniversaries and similar litter the Shi'a religious calendar.

The piece then goes on with lies by Bagger Vance and other things. That said, behind the lies is Vance being sent out to publicly attack Netanyahu, and his allies in both Israel and indirectly in the US. Also of note is that the IAEA-overseen process for dealing with Iran's enriched uranium is what it had proposed before the first attack. 

That said, why should we assume this is anything much more than a more intense round of performance theater? Yes, the piece is by Jeremy Scahill, and he's pretty smart and pretty connected, but John Mearsheimer, to name a name I've named before in the last month or two, has fallen for the Trump-Netanyahu schtick before and Scahill isn't otherwise perfect. (Biggest example of that is Scahill going along with Glennwald in turning over all the "unused" Snowden files to Pierre Omidyar, as noted here. ) Beyond that, Politico reports that Trump is basically pushing Vance to stick his neck out on all things Iran.

Beyond that, in the same rant, Bagger Vance said that he does not think the MOU requires Israel to withdraw from Lebanon. Due to the ambiguity of point 1, it's possible. 

And, with the Switzerland talks on hold? The Lebanon ceasefire is now off again. 

As for “Peace Deal”? Yeah, Pakistan’s prime minister called it that, as noted on The Dissident’s piece and elsewhere. And? First, it’s not true; it’s just a ceasefire. Second, he’s got reason to puff it.

Here's links from Tuesday evening, updated in light of my Substack piece up top.

First, the NYT.

• Iran says “no tolls, but fees,” at Hormuz. Per Spock, “a difference that makes no difference is no difference.” Apparently that's going away, though.

• Per Bagger Vance and my link whole thing is only about a page and a half long. That’s about right for an actual ceasefire, actually. That’s why Vladimir Vladimirovich doesn’t sign off on fake ceasefires proffered by NATO.

• Iran’s president said most the major stakeholders are cautiously on board. He's now signed, so he's on board.

• Speaking of Vlad the Impaler? Trump thanked him and Winnie the Pooh, Xi Jinping, for their help. Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, if they haven’t started asking already, being still stuck on kvetching about Trump’s surrender to Iran, will soon start asking how much Trump surrendered to one or both of them. And, what Trump said about Xi is a flat lie, as, with coordination with Iran, Chinese-bound (even if not Chinese-flagged) tankers HAVE sailed through Hormuz after Iran shut it down.

• Trump claims it’s stopped Iranian nukes. It did no such thing, and besides, you started Iran on the path to partial enrichment because you abandoned the Obama deal.

• Lebanon? Trump joins Satanyahu and claims it’s not part of the deal. Really? Then why your most recent play-acting yelling. Pakistan as well as Iran says it is.

So, right there, the prologue to a ceasefire isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Could there be deliberately ambiguous language? Possible. It happens all the time in diplomatic negotiations.

But, it almost never happens when specifics of battle are mentioned. Something is either on the table or off.

That leads us to the bottom line, not only from the NYT, but in general:

Hanging over the next round of U.S.-Iran negotiations will be “a history of broken promises, non-compliance, and even the tearing up of agreements,” Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, said in comments reported by state media. “We are planning the negotiation process and the implementation of the agreement on the basis of mistrust, past breaches of commitments, and previous experiences.”

Another NYT piece speculates about what’s not in there that Satanyahu is mad isn’t in there. Nuff ced.

OK, next?

Drop Site reported that Iran used professional psychologists to craft its messages to Trump. Nice idea. May have helped in the short term. Won’t make a degree of difference in the long term.

Now, on to Nat-Sec Nutsacks™, Never Trumper Rethugs and other detritus.

The Bulwark uses poop emojis to call it a “Giant Bag of Dogshit.” That it is, but there’s a neocon or four running around there who would still like Bibi to off Iran.

Francis Fukuyama, mad that he can't lament The End of Iran™, gets a bunch of shit wrong, starting by framing a memorandum of understanding to establish a ceasefire as though it were an actual agreement.

Now, like others, he uses this as an occasion to excoriate Trump. Natch. But, Trump deserves excoriation from an anti-Zionist angle, from an anti-imperialist angle, not from Nat-Sec Nutsacks.™

Now, like others, he uses this as an occasion to excoriate Trump. Natch. But, Trump deserves excoriation from an anti-Zionist angle, from an anti-imperialist angle, not from Nat-Sec Nutsacks.™

He gives the game up here:

The MOU that Trump celebrated is a worse agreement than Obama’s 2015 deal, which Trump endlessly castigated in the past.

Shock me.

Just before that, after listing everything NOT in the MOU, Fukuyama said:

The reported “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) kicks all of the contentious issues down the road into negotiations that are to take place during the 60-day ceasefire. Trump treated all of these issues as having been conceded already, but if that were the case, why weren’t they in the MOU? It is very unlikely that Iran will budge over the next two months, since it is precisely these issues that speak to the regime’s core identity.

He does get one thing right. Trump’s bullshit is on the rise:

Trump stated that if Iran didn’t agree to these outstanding terms, he would re-commence the war and possibly make the United States “the guardian of the Middle East” in return for 20 percent of the region’s revenues. It is hard to know whether such an initiative is more ludicrous from the standpoint of countries in the Middle East, including U.S. friends like Saudi Arabia or the UAE who would now be paying explicitly for U.S. protection, or from domestic opinion in the United States, where everyone would like to be done with the region as soon as possible.

As for what I said about him above? The Persuasion Substack, in addition to him, has Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ junior member Yascha Mounk as founder, Glenn Greenwald wannabe and walking odiousness Thomas Chatterton Williams, wingnut David French, etc.

Speaking of Trump bullshit? A Tuesday evening AP story has the roundup. Lies about Obama sending cash to Iran in 2015 of course top the list. Claims that oil is already flowing and other bullshit. In reality, oil won’t get back to normal for months, even if there is a formal signing on Friday. That 60-day clock will be ticking, especially with Iran talking about “fees” for Hormuz and Bibi still running off at half-cock.

Finally, let’s turn to Mondoweiss, as always a voice of reason.

Dissident, Mearsheimer and others could stand to read it for this gimlet-eyed take on the T-Rump/Satanyahu relationship alone:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that “We will remain in the security zones for as long as required to defend our country.” Security zones, in Netanyahu-speak, mean occupied territories.

He went on to say, in Trumpian fashion, “Iran was racing toward a nuclear weapon. If we had not acted at the time we did and with the power we did…Iran would already have atomic bombs.”

That is, of course, a complete lie, one contradicted by every intelligence assessment in Israel, the U.S., Europe, and everywhere else that has assessed Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

It’s a mark of Netanyahu’s desperation that he feels the need to say it. It is also a mark of his need to pacify Trump by affirming the false narrative of an American victory.

Bingo.

Actually, not quite yet bingo.

Add this follow-up:

Tehran is surely as unimpressed as so many of us are with Trump’s public, epithet-laced scolding of Netanyahu. As I’ve noted, Netanyahu is also unimpressed with it. Words, no matter how harsh or vulgar, carry no weight here. Only the threat of real consequences will force Netanyahu to back off in Lebanon, and no one, including the Iranians, knows whether Trump will impose them on his ally.

NOW “Bingo.” What’s so hard about understanding that?

So, why did Iran sign off if the Lebanon issue isn’t decided, among other things?

Mondoweiss is good there, too.

It starts by referring to the January protests. It notes that, even if Israel played a fair role in them as instigator, the net result was that Iran killed thousands of its own people and remains an authoritarian, repressive government highly unpopular with some swaths of the populace, and at least moderately unpopular with huge segments. The Revolutionary Guards are still massive grifters, to boot.

==

Finally, Israhell and that "Samson option," especially nuclear versions.

Much of what you have heard is true. 

The Institute for Middle East Understanding has the basics.

Israel has nuclear-missile submarines as part of its weaponry. The Germans sold them the subs as "conventional" ones knowing they could be upgraded. 

Israel is believed to have stolen both bomb-grade uranium and technical know-how from the US, possibly as much as 100 kilograms on the uranium, per Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Or possibly 250 kilos, per Wiki's page. Weirdly, Sy Hersh, in his book "The Sampson Option," claims Israel did NOT steal any HEU.

See also the Guardian. 

==

That said, no, Israel did NOT whack Jack. Stop it. 

Talarico Pander Bear alert: Gas tax holiday

I knew that Donald John Trump had proposed a gas tax holiday from federal fuel taxes to try to ameliorate his continued shooting of himself and Merikkka in the foot over the Iran war.

I somehow missed that Teenybopper Talarico had also proposed that, and way back on April 21, which is before Trump did, IIRC. The Observer has the details, along with at least a mild call-out of TT. 

Per that callout, what if the federal gas tax isn't restored in, say three months? Second, even three months, even if it comes back, and is indeed only like scrounging for quarters in a junk drawer, causes problems. Third, doesn't this just encourage national Rethuglicans to not really care about federal deficits until they're not in power? Fourth, doesn't this ignore that, in a non-punitive way, we do need some sort of federal, and state, road use tax for EVs? Fifth, speaking of EVs, doesn't it ignore something else?

Here's pundit Mark Jones:

“Especially here in Texas, they would prefer not to raise the climate issue, because that just opens the door to Republican accusations that Democrats are bad for the oil and natural gas industry,” said Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University. “We’re increasingly seeing Democratic politicians fight fire with fire by engaging in populist rhetoric similar to that of Donald Trump, even if from a policy perspective it’s irresponsible.”

Amen.

The piece also notes that Dementia Joe, er, Uki-Tankie Joe, proposed a holiday in 2022. 

As an independent non-duopoly leftist, it's another reason not to trust Talarico, who talks about ending the Iran war while still not having a clear and unambiguous statement about the genocide in Gaza. 

Hey, Democraps, Trump is clearly not under Putin's thumb

I had originally scheduled a piece about pumping the breaks on calling Trump a fascist for this time slot. 

In the wake of multiple news stories from the G7 summit this week, I've moved that back to next week, and this makes a good lead-in for that.

The first was from Tuesday, where Trump said he supported returning to the pre-Iran war level of oil sanctions against Russia.

The second was from yesterday, with the background of French President Emanuel Macron playing Trump, a cheap pawnshop fiddle, as though he were a Stradivarius, including making the Donald think he is a Strad.

The upshot of that story? This:

The G7 countries, including the United States, backed more sanctions against Russia and on Wednesday pledged “unwavering support” for Kyiv, promising new defense capacities while praising its “new momentum” on the battlefield. 

“The tide is turning on Ukraine,” European Council President António Costa tweeted. 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said: “There has been a change in the United States’ position in the discussions on Ukraine, we consider this position to be more realistic regarding the situation on the battlefield.”

Beyond Democrats, I am wondering how two other classes of people will play that.

One is the "realists" of political science and international studies, the John Mearsheimers.

The other is the Russian flaks, flunkies and fellow travelers on Substack like Simplicius.

Contra both groups, I don't think Russia is winning. Mearsheimer has talked about the war becoming frozen at some point, while continuing to claim Russia is currently still winning.

I disagree. I think the battlefield is close enough to being frozen that, per Spock, the difference makes no difference. 

I'm more curious what fellow leftists, and non-imperialist conservatives, have to say.

Setting aside Trump's flightiness, any commitment to further Ukrainian armament by the US, along with the return of previous oil sanctions, let alone new ones, will squeeze him harder. Will he take inspiratoin from Trump TACO-ing to Iran and finally pull back from his maximalist demands? How much CAN he afford to pull back? 

All's fair in love and war but gads the Russkies are stupid

Supposedly, according to the Beeb, the son of a senior Russian official, himself a diplomatic official, recruited a Ukrainian national to set fire to British Prime Minister Der Starmer's [sic] house.

OK, here's teh stupidz. It is the same teh stupidz of Guccifer 2.0, the Russian hacker who got into Democratic National Committee computer servers — AND into Republican National Committee ones as well, the best refudiation of the godawful Seth Rich Conspiracy theory nutters. For more on the truth of all of the above, see my very long piece.

Anyway, here's teh stupidz, per the Beeb's reporting on the trial of the originally recruited person and two confederates:

There was no mention in the trial of what the posters put up by Lavrynovych on EL's orders actually advertised: a purported far-right group called Direct Action UK. 

The group sought to appear as an organic British creation. But we found that Direct Action was created online by Russian operatives to cause division among ordinary people in the UK. 

Messages sent in the group bore a Moscow timestamp, used Cyrillic letters, and placed pound signs at the end of numbers, rather than at the start - as in Russian.

Can you NOT hide this better? (EL is the initials of the diplomatic official.) 

As for the amateurishness? Julian Assange used the similar amateurishness to claim that proved Guccifer 2.0 was indeed Russian. No, it proved they were amateurs, though not as much as this time — unless the bad timestamps and other things were deliberate, as part of sending a message. 

Texas Progressives talk Strangeabbott, Talarico, more

Off the Kuff notes Greg Abbott's minor flip flop on data center mania. (My take, updating a previous piece calling out Kuff for thinking this would become a Democratic electioneering point, is here.)

SocraticGadfly offers his thoughts on a trio of All Things Talarico. First is a brief look at former Ken Paxton impeachment lawyer Dan Cogdell's Talarico endorsement. Second, he notes that the Observer is interestingly somewhat non-sanguine about Talarico's chances. Third and also over an Observer piece, he does a detailed, skeptical, even somewhat crushing dive into Sam Brockman's framing of Talarico's religious background.

A Boston federal judge told Kenny Boy to stick it on his suit against ActBlue. 

Mimi Swartz infiltrated Turning Point USA's Women's Leadership Summit, led by Erika Kirk (there's three KKK letters in that name!) her own self. (I disagree with Swartz about one thing. Kirk ain't that good looking, and leans way too heavy into the makeup.) 

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project visited friends & family in Cincinnati. While there, he connected with pro-democracy advocates doing the work just as so many in the Houston-region are doing.

Steve Vladeck pens an obituary for the Purcell Principle.

The San Antonio Report documents how the Kerrville Folk Festival became a hub for recovery.

D Magazine talks to the daughter of I. M. Pei, the architect of Dallas' City Hall, about the proposal to tear it down.

Evil MoPac talks to Austin journalist Hannah Rucker about her work with foster children.

Robert Wilonsky is back in the journalism saddle. Good deal.  

Reporting from the Tex-ass GOP confab

For the Monthly, CD Hooks wrote about heading to the state GOP confab, complete with its ousting of current chair Abraham George and his replacement with another far-right wingnut-squared. He adds observations that Scott Presler, aka The Pustulence as I call him on Shitter (and did not know he was gay) was in town campaigning for Kenny Boy. 

The Trib stuck its nose in as well, noting unity is still not there, to the point that state House Speaker Dustin Burrows, the first to attend a GOP convention, got booed. 

It adds this note about Dannie Goeb and Big John still fighting:

In his Friday speech, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick suggested that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn was a “sore loser” after being defeated in his primary runoff by Attorney General Ken Paxton. He chastised Cornyn for making “bad comments” after the May 26 race and not backing Paxton. 

“Patrick is worried about losing in November,” Cornyn said Saturday. “He should be.

Hah! That said, wake me up when Big John shakes himself free of Donald John in DC.

But, per that piece, the Islamophobia bullshit remains the biggest crowd-pleaser. 

The Trib also notes that beyond the usual nuttery about Sharia law, Strangeabbott also repeated the usual nuttery about 2/3 votes for local property tax increases. 

Strangeabbott's bullshit executive order on data centers

Two weeks ago, I wrote about how Kuff was surely wrong on issues with data centers were a big campaign issue for Democrats, or could be.

Well, now we have Strangeabbott's order on firm electric supply (though the issue of needing water was left semi-AWOL) insuring this isn't a Democratic talking point. And, yes, Strangeabbott did talk about them needing a closed-loop water supply, but the water in that closed loop can still be stolen from existing water, exacerbated by the fact that Tex-ass still thinks groundwater and riverine water are largely separate things.

That is only one part of how this is more bullshit as politics than anything else. 

It should also be noted that Strangeabbott's executive order says not a thing about cryptomining. The Observer notes a cryptomine in water-starved Corpus Christi used 11 million gallons last year, and this year, its water usage is being hidden. Oh? State law allows Corpus to hide individual users' water consumption. 

So, first of all, wake me up when Strangeabbott has a similar executive order on crypotomines.

Secondly, wake me up when both EOs say more about water usage, and water pollution.

Thirdly, wake me up when they mention noise pollution. 

 

I'll eat my hat if Texas Dems flip 12 state House seats

They claim they can, per the Trib.

I know why they think that.

One reason is, like 2018, Trump is on the downslope, and it's in a midterm.

So, context? The 2017 House was 95-55. That was cut to 83-67 in 2019. That's probably not a fair comp, as the 95-55 split was incredibly high. So, with Trump actually running for that second term in 2020? 

The House split was unchanged. It then widened 3 in 2023 and 2 more in 2025. 

Also, Trump was not yet that unpopular with Never Trumper Rethuglicans in 2018, too. I can't remember what was behind the big shift and the Trib offers no insight.

As for the other reasons they think they have a shot? 

Kenny Boy Paxton will not be such a lead anchor for the GOP as they think, and Teenybopper Talarico will not be such a boost. It's possible that many Texas Hispanics who flopped to Trump two years ago look at Talarico and stay home. They don't vote Paxton, but they don't vote Talarico either.

The third reason? We'll see if redistricting overreach plays out in the state House as well as US Congress. Might be room around the edges but no more.

Otherwise? If a fragile would-be cease-fire gets extended beyond the 60 days of June 19, if ratified then, gas prices keep going down and Trump keeps looking better that way.

Strangeabbott has partially removed data centers as an electoral issue, though not totally. 

Platner wins; DC dishes as Klipp misses

As political junkies all know, political novice and oysterman around town Graham Platner won Maine's Democratic Senate primary Tuesday night.

I offered my thoughts on his Totenkopf tattoo and other matters of his campaign about a month ago. That was before the sexting after marriage came out, and before the newest allegations of some form of abuse came out as well. Early voting in Maine also started about that time, meaning, especially since Democrats generally are more likely to vote early than Rethugs, that Platner didn't have to fully face the music on these issues in the primary.

That leads me to Klippenstein.

Ken used his space on Substack Tuesday to dunk on national Democraps and media punditry types for trying to boost Gov. Janet Mills and her walking dead campaign, while calling out the media punditry for publishing allegations against him as fact.

Ken says:

The New York Times was so desperate to align itself with the Party in Washington that it published allegations that it said it “could not independently corroborate” — something I’ve literally never seen them do before.

Versus something it claimed was corroborated, but wasn’t, like the story claiming Palestinian rapes?

Versus something I don’t think the NYT even tried to corroborate, but just took a “trust us” stance, like Judith Miller on Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction”?

Maybe not in exactly the way it did with Platner, but yeah, the NYT. has done this before, or similar.

As for his chances in the general, Ken is pretty right that Maine is hard to poll in primary races, in part because of ranked choice voting. But, unless there's a "name" third candidate, whether independent, Green or Libertarian, in the general, the RCV issue itself isn't in that much play. And, on the ticket-splitting and him looking at Collins overcoming polling takes to beat Sara Gideon in 2020? That one cuts both ways. Wiki's piece on the Maine 2026 Senate race notes Collins has outperformed other Republicans on the Maine ballot in all previous races.

The miss? Ken has uses this race to bash DC, rather than to talk about Democratic alternatives to both Platner and Mills.

Like Amanda LaFlamme. I only learned about her on Tuesday when I did teh Google to find out what other candidates were in the race. I don't know why she was only a write-in. The Bangor Daily News reported in February that she actually filed in 2025, plenty of time to get the 2,000 signatures necessary. But the first piece says "failed to get." So, did more progressive Dems in Maine deem Platner a lock? Well, he only filed in August 2025, two months after her.

She sounds like she could have been good on multiple issues, but, for whatever reason, got no traction. I'm sure there's something I'm missing, but I don't know what it is, and teh Goggle hasn't really helped me.

Since Platner was and is a flawed candidate, and yet he's the best Maine Dems could present, I'd like to hear more about why LaFlamme failed to gain that traction and less, for now at least, of dunking on Chuck Schumer and national media. 

The Maine Green Independent Party had its state convention May 30, and per Wiki's page on the election, per Ballotpedia, and per the party's book of face and website, sadly appears not to have a candidate. Ballotpedia lists three minor candidates, but they all appear to be Democrats who dropped out of the Doink primary. A sad election in many ways it shall be. 

Texas Progressives

Off the Kuff highlights the Texas Railroad Commissioner race as the latest example of Republicans getting even worse.

SocraticGadfly notes that Trump's education voucher tax credit could explode on top of Texas vouchers in January; looking to this November, he thinks data centers are not a big political needle-mover.

Some Texas Lege wingnuts and the "public policy" orgs want to further expand the 2023 "Death Star" bill. Given that this was the model for the abortion law by providing "enforcement" by private lawsuit, some of the push is to let the AG sue.

Related? More than 130 primarily smaller-sized Texas towns have their tax rates frozen over lack of annual audits, and now must play catch-up, with the lessened funding hindering catch-up. 

Israhell even shoots Palestinian babies. 

Trump AG Todd Blanche faces a June 14 ticking time bomb. (I doubt he'd actually be disbarred in New York, but you never know.) 

Daniel Vaughn calls on barbecue gourmands and smokers alike to remember that Texas barbecue was not based on brisket and doesn't need to be limited to it today.

Chris Hooks says, in hindsight, that impeachment was the best thing to happen to Kenny Boy. 

Dan Crenshaw lets it rip with the Monthly. 

Space City Weather spells out what you need to know for the 2026 hurricane season.

The Texas Signal presents an updated brief history of Pride in Texas.

Law Dork analyzes the appellate court ruling that protects current enlisted transgender service members from discharge.

Texas Public Opinion Research asks some broader questions about current issues.

Franklin Strong explains what's going on with the SBOE's bizarre required reading list, and what you can do to help.

Scott Pelley keeps speaking out while Lesley Stahl, other vets, staying for now

Here's Pelley talking to the NYT. Let's start with the Nick Bilton hiring and his take.

Nick Bilton wrote an email to the staff, introducing himself. And it was so insulting. He told us that it wasn’t 1968 anymore, and he helpfully noted that gasoline doesn’t cost 32 cents anymore, suggested that we had all been frozen in amber in 1968 when the program first went on the air, and that nothing had improved. He said in his email that it was “strange” that “60 Minutes” is only on the air at 7 o’clock Eastern time on Sunday once a week, when we’ve been on the air 24-7 globally, online, for well over a decade. It betrayed the fact that Nick Bilton didn’t know anything about us, didn’t know anything about our culture, and yet was being imposed on us as our new leader.

Well, there you go. 

Next, like a Trump-fired federal government employee, on the video, he talks about peers who are still "trapped." 

As for the speaking out, and why him? This:

First of all, our entire senior staff had been wiped out. They’re not there. I looked around the room. I’m the only correspondent there, which surprised me very much. I learned that my colleagues were out shooting stories, as they should be in the month of June, but I’m the only correspondent. And I looked at my friends and colleagues in the room and realized I was the senior person.

Summarized it. 

He notes also the insensitivity of many staffers there being fired right after the Emmys and right before Bilton was hired. He notes the lack of experience of Bilton. 

He notes it was like losing "family." As he starts tearing up:

It was the wholesale nature of it. Senior staff wiped out after a triumphal year. One of the things Nick Bilton said in that ill-fated email to the staff was that he was excited — I’m paraphrasing here — to tell the staff about the new crop of correspondents. And when I saw that, I thought, “They’re going to fire all of us, eventually.” So that’s why I use these admittedly, for a journalist, hyperbolic terms. They capture the scale of what happened.

Again, nails it. 

More, from the video: 

When someone wipes out — murders — a large number of your family members, people are hurt and shocked and in disbelief and just desperate for some explaination.

Ouch.

I think that's what pissed him off above all. The lack of explanation. Pelley went on to refute Bari Weiss on this. 

There still has been none.

None as in no explanation. 

== 

The second half of the header? This, from Deadline.

The three remaining fill-time correspondents on 60 Minutes — Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim — said Friday that they will remain with the show. 

“We feared that our returning might be construed as an endorsement of the existing power structure,” they wrote in a joint memo on Friday. “That is simply categorically not the case. Here’s why we are staying: We don’t want to see 60 Minutes die.”

OK.

Isn't "60 Minutes" as you previously knew it already dead?  And, if you're actually believing what Nick Bilton is promising, I have beachfront property in North Dakota for sale.

==

As for calls by Pelley for CBS or its Paramount parent to fire Weiss? Not happening and Scott knows.

That said, beyond the ideological agenda she's foisting on the network's news? She has nowhere to go.

She's not going to peel off significant numbers of MAGAts from Fox, and the post-MAGAts to the right — Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, etc —are already lost over the strident Zionism. I don't know about the never-full-MAGA types like Dan Crenshaw, where he's at on Israel and Gaza, but surely not totally in Weiss' ballpark at a minimum. 

==

Pelley's background? He, per Wiki, got yanked from running CBS Evening News because he complained to (and about) brass then as well. This time, it was over the network's slow response to "Me Too" and related. 

Talarico fellation and religious inaccuracies from the Texas Observer

Fresh off him throwing secularists halfway under the bus (despite him having previously written about the secular movement) and not looking very deeply at the roots of Hanukkah in a piece at the Observer last December, which I eviscerated, TCU professor David Brockman now writes that Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico is firmly within Presbyterian tradition.

The first big fail is pretending that the Presbyterian Church USA is the only Presbyterian denomination in Merikkka. Wrong. The PCUSA is the biggest, but even with setting aside splinter groups, it's far from the only one. Wiki has the details. It list the PCUSA at 1,045,000 members. The conservative Presbyterian Church in America, which split off from the southern half of the predecessor to the PCUSA, is at 400,000, or 40 percent of its size. Let another split of the PCUSA, the ECO, has 125,000 members. The Evangelical Presbyterian Church split off the Northern Presbyterian predecessor to the PCUSA back in the 1980s and also is at 125K.

OK, adding up the three main conservative groups and you're at 650,000, or 65 percent of the PCUSA. So, we've got a fail by Brockman right there. Or a lie by hand-waving. 

Now, the big differences, per this site which does not list the ECO, but does have a 1930s splitoff from the northern Presbyterians, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

PCA is men-only pastors; ECO and EPC, that's an adiaphoron. All three non-PCUSA believe in an inerrant bible. Homosexual acts are a sin.

Brockman claims Talarico is also within the mainline Protestant tradition. Wrong. While conservative Lutherans may not add up to 65 percent of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, they break 50 percent. Actually, they break 75 percent; I didn't realize, per Wiki, that ELCA membership has cratered in the last decade or so. (It's 55 percent, per Pew, if you talk about people who "affiliate with" the different wings.) The UMC, now entering the schism world, lost 25 percent of its US churches after its 2024 general conference.

Brockman also is a weasel-shit in another way.

He nowhere discusses Talarico's claim that the Annunciation in Luke is about being pro-choice, which I noted last month is bullshit. 

The three non-PCUSA churches in my link, and I will venture the ECO as well, all consider abortion wrong. 

Interestingly, per the "mush god" stereotype of librul Protestantism, he's a very easy grader and prof in general, per Rate MyProfessors. 

Look, Prof. Brockman, if you want to just say you're "chill" with Talarico from your personal religious perspective (he was at SMU before TCU, and says in one piece that he's "high church Episcopalian"), say so.

But, don't think you can bamboozle all readers out in the wild like freshman college students in a 100-level class. 

In 2022, for the Observer, he wrote about Southern Baptists facing up to a denominational history of sexual abuse. Actually, the denouement on that was sweeping it under rug and forcing dissenters out of the denomination, as much as possible. 

Observer has surprisingly non-sanguine take on Talarico odds

The Observer notes not all Republican pundits are afraid of Talarico swamping Paxton. This:

Brendan Steinhauser, a GOP strategist in Texas, isn’t so confident that Talarico’s theology will land with swing voters. While O’Rourke was, and Talarico is, a young, dynamic candidate able to make the Senate race highly competitive, Steinhauser believes Talarico will have a harder time maneuvering around his past. “O’Rourke was a much fresher face, like he had more room to define himself.” 

Since Talarico secured the Democratic nomination, Paxton has seized on past Talarico statements about trans kids and God being “nonbinary” to deride the Democrat as a fake Texan, fake Christian, and radical leftist. Steinhauser said that while Paxton should focus more on his accomplishments as attorney general, culture-war issues remain a strong motivator among the moderate to conservative base. “Those words are going to get played in a loop all the way to November,” said Steinhauser. That’s a standard Republican playbook: In 2024, Ted Cruz’s campaign plastered the state with ads attacking Democratic challenger Colin Allred—who ultimately lost by about eight points—on the issue of transgender kids in sports.

Is an interesting observation. 

For many "moderates," not just conservatives, transgenderism and transsexualism are a "third rail." State and national Democratic apparatchiks may not like that, but that doesn't change the fact on the ground. 

I'm already on record as thinking he doesn't do much better than Beto-Bob did against Havana Ted in 2018. 

==

Meanwhile, the Pander Bear watch on Talarico continues. He promises to help farmers by reducing the federal tax on diesel. Gee, isn't Trump talking about that? He did also mention the war in Iran, but "somehow" avoided mentioning the country behind that.

US Fish and Wildlife — even if on higher order — stabs dunes sagebrush lizard in the back

Anymore, NOTHING in the way of actions by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, especially Endangered Species Act listings, surprises me. 

In fact, over the lesser prairie chicken last year, I accused the agency of deliberately tanking ESA listings.

And now, meet the dunes sagebrush lizard. It's how I met online Fish and Wildlife "dissidents" Chris Nagano and Lyle Lewis, who gave me the backstory of how shamefully FWS was acting decades ago.

 

I have blogged more than once about former Texas Comptroller Susan Combs' voluntary, landowner-based plan for habitat conservation, or rather, "conservation," for the dunes sagebrush lizard, most of whose habitat happens to be in the oil-rich Permian Basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, and whose voluntary habitat conservators, or "conservators," happen to be oilmen.

I first noted that is was the conservative half of a neoliberal idea that rancher/oil lover/Interior Secretary Kenny Boy Salazar loved, and agreed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in charge of Endangered Species Act issues, should accept. Shock me.

As part of that, I noted that Combs was being sued by two of the more activist, non-Gang Green environmental agencies, with Center for Biological Diversity in the lead, because the people and groups overseeing her voluntary "conservation" were about as transparent as most things involving Texas government.

Unfortunately, as I noted next, Combs got a federal judge to agree with her that the oversight agency, officially a private entity and therefore exempt from the state's Public Information Act, should stay that way and remain non-transparent.

And then, CBD and Defenders of Wildlife, a few months ago, lost in federal district court their attempt to reverse the Fish and Wildlife + Combs + oilmen agreement, discussed here with links.

Well, there's a backstory to this.

At about the time CBD and Defenders were losing their case in district court, Fish and Wildlife, documented here, was entering into a legal settlement with the former top official in Texas, who sued after being pushed out of his job.

And, why was he pushed out of his job?

Because he was fighting Kenny Boy Salazar and Susan Combs on the dunes sagebrush lizard, and saying everything about lack of enforcement and lack of transparency that I and the environmental groups were saying.

One person, however, did lose his job: Fish and Wildlife's top official in Texas, Gary Mowad, who ran afoul of his bosses after raising concerns about the decision to place the long-term survival of the lizard in the hands of those who opposed the listing. 

Mowad had told internal investigators that the federally approved plan to conserve habitat for the reptile through voluntary pacts between the state and landowners was not legal, verifiable or enforceable under the Endangered Species Act.

Oh, but wait, it gets better. 

He has civil service protection, so he couldn't be fired. Instead, like a surplus Japanese salaryman, he got the risutora treatment:

Within three months, Mowad was removed from his job in Austin and transferred to regional offices in New Mexico, where he had no significant work to do, according to testimony by him and colleagues before a judge in a whistleblower case. The power play, he said, forced him to retire prematurely. 

Fish and Wildlife has denied the allegations, but the agency decided to settle with Mowad last October for an undisclosed amount in spite of historically long odds against federal employees winning such cases. ... 

(N)o phone, no computer and no housing awaited Mowad when he arrived in Albuquerque in October 2012. And there was no significant work. He helped put out cookies and drinks for a meeting and afterward collected comment cards from the attendees. 

With no end date for the assignment, Mowad filed a 19-page request for a federal investigation, alleging reprisal for his claims of scientific misconduct within the service.

Those claims of scientific misconduct? Mowad had gone to FWS' Inspector General after it signed off on the Combs plan. And, why did it do that, only a couple of years after Mowad had been named top biologist in Texas for the agency and hired for his specific skills?

Bigger backstory, involving financial/service favors ... and who knows what else.

First, the backstory to the lizard's needs.

It was first identified for ESA listing in 1982. But, as with many other species, through a mix of understaffing and underfunding on one hand, and FWS foot-dragging on the other, it wasn't actually brought up for consideration until 2010. However, with the Permian Basin started to rebound from its latest, Great Recession-caused bust, that looked problematic.

Our story picks up again:

The Fish and Wildlife Service needed to sign off on the Texas plan, and Mowad was asked to assign someone to review it. But Mowad's first two choices — two of his most experienced biologists — were rejected by the agency's deputy regional director, Joy Nicholopoulos, a scientist who led the Texas office before him. 

The third choice? 

(Mowad) asked if Nicholopoulos wanted a biologist named Allison Arnold to lead the review and was told that she did. 

Here’s the real backstory. 

Mowad said he would not assign her without being ordered. The biologists he offered "would just do the science, let the science take 'em where it takes 'em," he testified. But in addition to having less experience, Arnold was living rent-free in a Driftwood house owned by Nicholopoulos, leading him to question whether she had undue influence over the staffer.

Then, Nicholopoulos’ boss, Bemjamin Tuggle, who had touted Mowad’s hiring for the Texas spot, upped the political ante.

"There was no way we were going to list a lizard in the middle of oil country during an election year," Tuggle said.

That comment, although Tuggle (a Shrub Bush appointee to his position) later claimed he was joking, is what led Mowad to talk to Fish and Wildlife’s inspector general.

So, it's clear that FWS higher-ups, however high the chain of higher-ups goes past Tuggle, had the fix in. And, because of this financial/rental arrangement, they knew who to pick to sign off on Combs' plan.

The rest of the story is worth a read in itself. It discusses Mowad’s whistleblower hearing, including noting that federal employees rarely win them, but that FWS had a documented history of retaliation against employees like this.

It's also an illustration of the bad ethics there, vis-a-vis the rental situation. If anybody should have been disciplined by FWS, both Nicholopoulos and Arnold should have been suspended without pay.

 

OK, that's largely from back in 2015, but you need to know just how oily FWS is. 

 

Oily? Yes, literally, as in placed like Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge, whoring themselves out to the oil business. That's part of why I said Fuck the USFWS a year ago.

 

Oily on the management side? Mowad is not the only person to face retaliation from USFWS management. More on that in this piece. 

 

FWS finally gave an Endangered Species Act listing to the lizard in 2024, relatively late in the Biden Administration, and possibly because they knew Trump 2.0 would kill it. 

 

It was a punch-pulling listing, anyway, as I noted at the time. Why? It did not list a critical habitat for the lizard. It's pretty basic that you need to say what habitat of an endangered species is most important to it, right?

 

Well, that's all academic now. Last week, which I didn't notice until this week, Fish and Wildlife officially did another political cave-in, in response to a suit by the oily Ken Paxton, and agreed to delist it again as part of settling the suit. 

 

Here's the official tanking language:

But the service now believes it made a "serious and fundamental" error by improperly assuming that habitat restoration could not occur, and by discounting experimental efforts that "showed promise," the U.S. Department of Justice said in a Wednesday court filing accompanying the settlement. 

That error "led to an incomplete and potentially inaccurate assessment of the potential and ongoing conservation efforts in New Mexico and Texas," the Justice Department said.

What lies. 

 

Above all, how can you assume that habitat restoration could not occur when per your 2024 press release:

The designation of critical habitat was found to be prudent but not determinable at this time. The Service has up to one year from the time of listing to propose critical habitat.

You never determined critical habitat! And, per Center for Biological Diversity and others, you were likely playing a stall game there, too.

 

What liars. 

 

Lewis notes the push from this surely comes from above USFWS' head, as in somewhere inside, near the top, of the Department of the Interior. (Doug Burgum's been as bad a Trump-tard as any other Cabinet member.)

 

That said, somebody at USFWS, even if an Anon Y Mous, holds for public consumption that it made a "serious and fundamental" error. In other words, Interior may be leading the push, but it has flunkies at Fish and Wildlife. It did 15 years ago, when Mowad called bullshit on management. Even if the push for his risotura came from higher up in Interior, somebody still wanted to do that. Look at other FWS people who have faced revenge.

 

Lewis notes that an Undersecretary at Interior reviews critical habitat designations. Here's DOI on that, not on the big picture, but some specific issues. From the Dear Leader era, too, take note. Tis also true, but? In 2024, again, FWS never proposed anything. I presume then Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, from New Mexico, might know what the dunes sagebrush lizard is, even if 350 miles away from Laguna Pueblo.

 

That said, that top management at FWS proposed changes to the ESA cuz oil drilling late last year. 

 

And, not directed at Lyle, but at the general oversight. First, where's the Forest Service fit? Last I checked, it's not part of Interior.

 

A president with cojones would either make all of USFWS an individual stand-alone agency like EPA, or at least its core protective services, or else carve them out of FWS and add them to EPA.

 

Remember the timeline goes back to the 1980s. Democratic presidents since then include Clinton and Obama as well as Biden. It's amazing that Democratic presidents, or agencies under their control, can often wait until the last year of a presidential term to take action. Obama did this on increasing the pay cutoff for wage vs salary, and with an immediate near-doubling without phase-in, in 2016. It's like he figured it would be overturned anyway and he was being a pretendian. 

 

==

 

And, per the various rulemaking changes to the ESA, how semi-toothless is it anyway? I may have to write something just on that.