Texas Progressives talk this and that

Off the Kuff interviewed four Democratic statewide candidates: Rep. Jon Rosenthal, Sen. Nathan Johnson, Clayton Tucker, and Sen. Sarah Eckhardt. (Your author wrote about Eckhardt yesterday and Tucker last week.)

SocraticGadfly, with author Jack Herrera providing his email on Twitter and asking for feedback, strongly critiqued and fact-checked Texas Monthly's piece on the Rio Grande water crisis, and got no response from Herrera — and, unsurprisingly, none from the Monthly, either. (Side note: Not for this reason, but others, no Monthly links this week; its updates since last week are meh.)

John Cornyn and a few other Republicans have condemned Bo French's latest racism. Too little, too late, especially since Strangeabbott was always in his corner and Dannie Goeb flip-flopped after he won the GOP primary for Railroad Commish.) Karl Rove said he's doing more than condemning, and voting for Democrat Joe Rosenthal.

Texas Supreme Court tosses out Galveston County's midsummer redistricting. 

US Senate Majority Leader John Thune's Super PAC is finally dropping some money for Kenny Boy Paxton.

What the Trib calls "public pressure" other people would surely call "corporate pressure" as the PUC approves yet more 765 kV power lines.  It does disclose its sponsors at the bottom, but doesn't disclose, as these lines are supposed to help the Awl Bidness, that it has pulled its punches there in the past.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project noted that Mayor Whitmire & HPD changed city policy on mandatory investigation of shootings involving federal law enforcement not long after Trump started his 2nd term. Maybe this action had a part in Whitmire saying off the bat that the city had no role in the ICE killing of Salgado.

Paradise in Hell did a yard sign survey. (Your author's note: Yard signs mean little; Beto-Bob outnumbered Havana/Cancun/Calgary Ted by about the same ratio in certain areas. Plus, per the infamous Literary Digest poll, this is nowhere near scientific. The link even admits that, then tries to deny it admitted that. I leave it in part for the possible mocking should Talafreako lose to Kenny Boy.)

Laura Rodriguez considers a lesson she learned from 9/11.

City of Yes reflected on the absence of the Twin Towers.

The TSTA Blog finds no moral imperative to send public funds to private schools.

Chris Tackett documents the polling place closures ordered by the Republicans on Tarrant County Commissioners Court.

Proof Sarah Eckhardt is a squish on BDS in the Texas Comptroller's race

I've already said this about the Comptroller's race, where the Austin-area state senator is the Democratic candidate vs interim Dreamy Don Huffines, that compared to Green Party candidate ???, Eckhardt is a squish on the issue of pledging the state to stop being anti-BDS on its investments.

ConservaDem Charles Kuffner recently interviewed her, and it may be in part that Kuff, himself being very much a squish on BDS or anything anti-Zionist, didn't ask her, but in the Word document transcript of the interview, neither "BDS" nor "boycott" is there. Kuff even says in one question that the comptroller's office has gotten in trouble at times in the past for "policymaking." Perfect place to ask about BDS, right?

Shehla Faizi has already adamantly pledged to trash that shit, as I noted back in March, as the Green candidate. I also noted back then Eckhardt being a squish. I don't know the position of Libertarian V. Alonzo Echavarria-Garza. For places like Community Impact and other media sites, he's refused to answer questionnaires. Maybe he's afraid the city of Hearne will fire him as city manager.

Climate and environmental news roundup

Two from the group of young Hawaiians who sued the state over climate change several years ago, with the case eventually settling out of court, talk to Yale Climate about where they're at today.

Otherwise? The year 2045 is too far out for the state's transportation department to target on "decarbonization," even without a likely scrambling for loopholes.

== 

Reminder: The feds' Colorado River Compact update plan is voluntary. Remember, part 2: Even more than his general not understanding shit about shit, Trump really doesn't understand this. 

==

New England, as well as the western states, faces new firefighting challenge, some climate-driven, others related to Trump's cuts and reorganizations (which build on earlier, duopoly-bipartisan handling of the U.S. Forest Service). 

==

Corpus Christi hates birds while still loving green lawns. 

Sure, rural voters will turn Texas blue

That's what Politico is claiming.

Sure. 

Looking at the two main statewide races?

Talafreako consistently has a small lead on Kenny Boy Paxton. That could change with Trump's big ad buy. Or it could not. In most cases, the lead is within the margin of polling error.

Gina Hinojosa and Strangeabbott keep flip-flopping, and neither one has posted a lead beyond the margin of error in any poll.

And, where have I heard this before?

Oh, yeah, already 20 years ago, jefe Gilberto Hinojosa was bleating about Hispanic demography turning Texas blue. 

I first wrote about that issue, not quite 20 years ago, but yes almost 15. My most in-depth follow-up was two years later.

It's like finding a pile of hay and thinking that means a pony is inside it. Kuff isn't alone among Texas Democrats believing this shit.

Could it happen? Yeah, but I'll believe it when I see it. It's like the Hood County voters butt-hurt about data centers but refusing to vote to incorporate themselves to give themselves at least a modicum of control.

A lot of speakers at meetings and such are anti-virtue signaling. Maybe that's the same in polls. 

Many of these folks are "Yellow dog Republicans," to riff on an old phrase. They're telling Abbott they'll vote him out. They're telling the polls that. They're even smartly not trusting him on his data center "audits." The high-voltage power line additions? Strangeabbott is out of step even with non-rural elected leaders in his own party. I know Lite Guv Dannie Goeb explicitly asked the PUC not to approve them and let next year's Lege take a further look.)

But actually vote for Hinojosa? Many will stay home, sure. A few savvy ones may vote Libertarian or write-in.

But, actually pulling the D lever? I doubt it. 

If I'm wrong, I'll admit it after Election Day. If Dems, or Politco, are wrong I invite them to do the same. I won't hold my breath. Otherwise, as I told Kuff, this is like actual AI, or nuclear fusion power. It's always going to be just around the corner.

Back to the story, first with Greg Torres from rural McCulloch County:

Torres in McCulloch County said Texans are going to have to make a choice about the state’s future. 

Do they want the romanticized version of Texas — with cowboys and wide open spaces — or a Texas that’s hyperfixated on business? 

“Are we just going to sell off our version of Texas for money?” Torres asked. 

Torres said he still plans to vote for Abbott. He said Abbott is responsive to public pressure, even though he doesn’t think Abbott is sincere in his attempts to regulate data centers or lessen the impacts of the 765-kV lines.

There you are. 

As for the rural voters? Especially if you live west of I-35, climate change is coming for your farms and ranches. The "hollowing out" will only continue. 

As for Suzanne Bellsnyder? She's a hypocrite on water use, and surely knew that Strangeabbott was a fake on rural understanding back in 2014. 

And, if Hinojosa DOES win? She'll be one-term. GOP talking heads will find somebody better than Strangeabbott. She'll be stuck with a Lege in opposition, to boot, and Goeb perhaps relishing the opportunity to play obstructionist and also to play gov kingmaker. (Hell no he doesn't want it himself. Get a clue.)

Finally, the story was two weeks old when Kuff posted it. (That's where I saw it.) Things change near the election finish line. 

Roger Waters is dead to me as an anti-Zionist

Tucker Carlson, or Cucker Tarlson, has never meant anything to me politically other than being a capitalist chattering class talking head willing to say anything to increase his Swanson heirship big bucks that he already has.

So, I don’t care if he’s promoting yet another conspiracy theory.

I do care, though, if Roger Waters is promoting that conspiracy theory, as both reportedly are.

“There is no way the North and South towers and Building Seven came down because of airplanes hitting. Just not possible,” Waters said during the interview.

Waters suggested the buildings were brought down in controlled demolitions and questioned who might have been responsible. He also raised the possibility that elements within Israel or the US government had prior knowledge of, or involvement in, the attacks.

First, per my piece, your first paragraph is ignorance. Willful ignorance, just like other 9/11 Falsers. That, with link to the Popular Mechanics story refuting your ignorant ass, is in my 9/11 anniversary piece.

Also at that link? Since I called “Israel did it” type 9/11 conspiracy theories antisemitism, not anti-Zionism, you’re dead to me.

The full shebang? Listed here. The International Center for 9/11 Justice is an official falser group.

“9/11 was the first step in the plan for US-Israel hegemony in the Middle East.”

I wish I had a better link than Times of Israel, but I’m not wasting that much time. That said, apparently Waters has been a falser for some time. Had I known so, I wouldn’t have defended him in the past. That said, it has one interesting point. $150 a pop to go to this event. So, some good capitalist grifting as a sidebar.

To look at a few more known names?

Dennis Kucinich continues to deny being a 9/11 falser. More and more, though, it rings about as hollow as Dr. Jill Stein denying being an antivaxxer. He’s also a UFO falser of some sort and other things.

Bret Weinstein? GACK. Even if not a 9/11 falser, he’s a definite conspiracy theorist and general nutbar.

Jimmy Dore? GACK. General conspiracy theorist, including JFK assassination, 9/11 and Seth Rich.

Karen Kwiatkowski? Member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, presumably part of the majority who endorsed the Guccifer 2.0 idea and thus, by default and silence, also endorsed, or gave a pass to, the odious Seth Rich conspiracy theory. Indeed, her Wiki says she was a founder of the group.

William Rodriguez? NOT the “last survivor,” but that apparently hasn’t stopped his capitalist grifting either.

Meryl Nass? Low-grade COVID conspiracy theorist and general nutter, part of an early summer round of Substack blocks.

For extra shits and grins, speaker James Li is apparently a Charlie Kirk killing conspiracy theorist.

9/11, conspiracy theories and more

This is a pretty highly edited and reorganized version of a recent newspaper column. Paywalls don't exist here on Blogger, but it's enough different from the original that I did not paywall a similar version on Substack. (I almost totally omitted Trump refusing to adhere to Santayana’s dictum about learning from the past — namely, Shrub Bush’s past — and emphasized other things more, namely, the "conspiracy theories" angle.

Two things about 9/11 need to be put up front on this 25^th anniversary.

The first is that 19 hijackers connected to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in a degree that both duopoly parties still try to hide to some degree took control of the two planes that flew into the World Trade Center, the one that was flown into the Pentagon, and the one that passengers force-crashed in Pennsylvania.

Period and end of story. More on that down below. But, no, Mr. Drain the Swamp Trump has no desire to touch this swamp with his Saudi friends and Abraham Accorders involved. Neither did Genocide Joe, after trying briefly to mildly push back against the Bone Saw King, Mohammad bin Salman.

No, it was no false flag, nor similar, “9/11 Falsers,” and that’s what I usually call you. Deal with it.

The two worst conspiracy theories are claims of a false flag controlled demolition and the claim that Mossad or some other agency of the nation of Israel did it.

As for the former? Popular Mechanics’ story, written in 2005 after a preliminary investigation and follow-up report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, explains in detail just how the two jet collisions could have caused what they did, including the collapse of WTC 7. It was eventually included in a larger book about 9/11. Lightly updated, still online, and without a paywall, it’s easily available.

Second, the spooks and snoops of the CIA and NSA? The ones who didn’t figure out Snowden until it was too late, a dozen years later? The ones who missed CIA, NSA and FBI spies, for Russia, Israel and other countries, for years? They couldn’t have pulled off a false flag.

As for the latter? It deserves no more comment. And I consider it antisemitic, not anti-Zionist, at bottom line and in most versions. That's especially with the "dancing Israelis" subtheme, or the "Jews didn't show up to work" subtheme. That said, the "dancing Muslims" claim is just as loathsome.

Within the Middle East, though, beyond Israel and Iraq, the ongoing whitewashing of Saudi Arabian connections should not be forgotten. With Mohammad bin Salman hopping in bed with Trump and vice versa, and Abraham Accords papering over the Middle East and further kicking Palestinians down a shithole, this cannot be emphasized enough. And, the House of Saud will continue to give Palestine the back of its hand for the foreseeable future.

The second main thing is 9/11’s role in conspiracy theorizing in general.

For a younger generation, I think 9/11 has replaced the John F. Kennedy assassination as the most popular conspiracy theory. (Well, that is, other than the “Zionists whacked Jack” asshattery.)

Spoiler alert: Lee Harvey Oswald did it, acting alone, six months after nearly killing Gen. Edwin Walker with the same Carcano rifle. It’s not that hard a shot for a Marine-trained sharpshooter at best rating, especially if you go to the Sixth Floor Museum, or even on the ground at Dealey Plaza and scope the scene. I’ve done all of that, and walked Dealey Plaza many a time, including on a Nov. 22 that fell on Thanksgiving Day.

That said, for some far-righters and a few far-lefters, the far more odious Seth Rich conspiracy theory may also be in the running as the most popular one today. Spoiler alert: The Russkies hacked both DNC and RNC servers. See my long and detailed piece, building off Duncan Campbell, refuting various nutters within “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity,” refuting Patrick Lawrence (who has never written again for The Nation, good, even though it’s duopoly), and refuting various Greenies within VIPS like Ray McGovern, who was already way behind the 8-ball in my world.

Even more than 9/11, the Internet drove that conspiracy theory, and especially the social media world.

Otherwise, I reject conspiracy theories in general.

First, I know the difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. Beyond that, which covers specific actual conspiracies as well as conspiracy theories, I wrote about third parties and conspiracy theories. (That, in turn, ties indirectly to my David Keith Cobb obit.)

Otherwise, per the World War II cautionary dictum of “Loose lips sink ships,” most conspiracy theories have way too much faith in the ability of, or the desire to, keep secrets by participants in the alleged conspiracy. Even Saudi involvement in 9/11 partially reflects that, as a lawsuit continues its slow journey. Meanwhile, the pretendian tankies at r/AskHistorians really show they’re not leftists by running flak.

That’s more true than ever in today’s social media world.

Per the World War II cautionary dictum of “Loose lips sink ships,” most conspiracy theories have way too much faith in the ability of, or the desire to, keep secrets by participants in the alleged conspiracy. That’s more true than ever in today’s social media world.

Speaking of? Via Joe Costello, Hunter S. Thompson used that phrase in the last paragraph of his column written in the immediate aftermath.

The lid is on. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Don't say anything that might give aid to The Enemy.

So, was he gonzo? Or was he going over to the dark side? Or rather, was this calling out the dark side? A closer read shows he was calling out the dark side one last time, but with dashes of his gonzo style.

Otherwise? Good old Occam’s Razor, named after the medieval theologian though going back as far as Aristotle, otherwise still holds true, and the average conspiracy theory multiplies ideas way beyond necessity. Speaking of medieval worlds, conspiracy theory in general reminds me of the ancient religious movement called Gnosticism. I wrote about that as further thought vis-a-vis the Seth Rich conspiracy theory’s ongoing legs and related issues. Being a theoretically secret party to insider knowledge is attractive, along with being able to move up the rungs of a movement by becoming devoted to the conspiracy theory cause. In a nation now over the 340 million mark, feeling “in” in such ways surely has its social psychology attractions.

RIP AccommoGreen David Keith Cobb

 Cobb and Ruthi Engelki, 2021, screengrab off a public Facebook post.

Saw the story via Ballot Access News, then went to his Wiki.

"AccommoGreen" is the Green Party version of "ConservaDem" in my book. Here's a search return, since I never created a tag. Another way of putting it is that they're one step left of DSA Roseys. They exist to push Democrats left, first, to focus on the needs of a third party, only second.

Cobb pledged a "safe states" strategy in 2004. That said. St. Ralph of Nader promised the same in 2000, and lied about it. (People like Jeff St. Clair at Counterpunch, still butthurt over the 2004 Green nomination process, won't tell you that, nor will they tell you that Nader isn't that much of an environmentalist, and that he's not at all pro-labor, being in fact a crappy boss. For a whole shitload of reality on St. Ralph of Nader, go here.)

I briefly referenced Cobb in my "hello world" Blogger post, and not much else. 

Otherwise, as a now-ex Green, yes, it's time for a moment of reflection.

The first part is the "if only," per that link.

If only I had started on Blogger, if not a full year earlier, even six months earlier, to write more fully about the Democratic nomination process for president that year. Maybe, like Josh Marshall getting lucky with his pretending to be a New New Democrat or whatever, then spouting bullshit about third parties in 2004 (link rot at my link), I would have had a small bit of "empire." Not his, of course.

I'm not sure which of the "big three" was the most hypocritical. I was banned by Kos (well, frozen out, to be technical, because that's the way the tech world works) for being too Green. Josh didn't have a contributors' forum, but he has shown his not-totally-liberal Zionist colors in the decades since then. Atrios? Good snark, but how much depth did he ever have?

Meanwhile, in the Green world?

AccommoGreen Cobb. He later became an advisor to Gang Green Sierra Club. In 2009, when they were promoting natural gas as the "bridge fuel" and getting payola to do that promoting. Remember that? "Beyond Coal"? Funded by Aubrey McClendon, the disgusting founder of Chesapeake Energy. It ran from 2007-2012; Cobb joined Sierra's "Corporate Accountability Committee" in 2009 as noted. The Liberty Tree Foundation? DSA Rosey types.

Then Cynthia McKinney, for whom I voted with extreme holding of my nose. And, here she is today, Libertarian, and as antisemitic at times, not just anti-Zionist, in good company with the Mises Mice.

Then Jill Stein three runs in four elections, the last one doubling down on her investments hypocrisy.

In between, one run by the earnest Howie Hawkins, generally good, generally too close to the left hand of the duopoly on Russiagate. 

I dropped everything above on Substack to knock something out. I wanted something longer here, after a bit more marination time. I'm not sure how much more I'll let this marinate before I post. 

I will say I wasn't that familiar with his background at the time. (He ran for Texas AG in 2002, and had been legal general counsel to St. Ralph's 2000 run, per the Wiki about his 2004 run.) 

I already knew that he and Libertarian Michael Bednarik — The Man Who Drove Without a License™ — asked for a recount in Ohio in 2004. That wound up bringing conspiracy theory nutters out of the woodwork. Badnarik died four years ago.

More on the reality of Ohio 2004 from Mark Hertsgaard. (Sadly, he's a duopolist Biden greenwasher.) Anyway, I wrote more about the Bob Fitrakis nuttery in that 2004 recount here. Let's also not forget Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog. (This is what started leading to my separation with Brains.)

It also had a semi-bright line to Stein's recount request in 2016. That was bullshit I refused to co-sign. AND, doubled down on that. In turn, Stein started grifting off that. 

Before that, in that same election cycle, Cobb was jumping into bed with Caity Johnstone and her red-black alliances. Fallout from that is when I first started really looking askance at David Bruce Collins as well. (Collins still loves himself some Caity, or at least he did a year or so ago, per his most recent Shits on Shitter.)

Finally, for one last swift kick? Cobb was a 9/11 Falser, or at least a "just asking questions" Falser Lite. The petition he signed was 3 years after, and distributed by the odious 9/11Truth. Plus, since I am both somewhat skeptical and somewhat cynical about him? That was less than two full weeks before the 2004 election. Politics, anybody? The statement/petition isn't a false flag in the narrow sense of "America did it"; it is in the larger sense of insinuating the US government deliberately let this happen.

Most the actual questions are bullshit. (I refuse to link, even with a "no follow.") For example, Flight 77 turned around unnoticed because hijackers turned off its transponder. The Pentagon did not, "supposedly" or actually, have special missile batteries. Yes, the Counterintelligence center said the terror dashboard was "blinking red," but it did not know in advance about the specifics of 9/11. Bush kept reading "My Pet Goat" to avoid mass panic.

(Oh, the rest of that link shows Cobb not a Green any more, or so it appears, but a DSA Rosey. Shock me.) 

This all gets to my Venn diagram in this piece:

 

Can't we get less nutty leftists? 

The answer is, probably not. Actually, the "better" answer is, almost certainly not.

As an ex-Green, looking ahead to the 2028 prez run? I'll take a non-AccommGreen, non-hypocrite. If not, I'll most likely undervote. Voting for Claudia de la Cruz was itself a bit of nose-holding in 2024. 

(Sidebar: Can we once again get less sucky Firefox? I still can't post pictures by URL on Blogger in Fuckfox; I have to use Google. I'll admit I haven't tried Safari on that in a long time.)

One last thought or two going back to 2004, and moving through 2016.

I still didn't know much about the Green ecosystem then. I learned more since then. I'd say it was two-thirds the party trying to screw Ralph, but one-third Ralph had made his own bed, and even invited the screwing. I don't know if Cobb played any personal part in that or not. After all, he might have been playing nice with Ralph and shivving him at the same time. 

On the Stein recounts, and her claiming they weren't plumping for the left hand of the duopoly, even when they were, I see Cobb's AccommoGreen fingerprints on that. I have long seen Stein as some degree of AccommoGreen herself, anyway. 

==

I have posted this, harder-hitting than my Substack piece, as a comment to the Green Party US Substack's RIP piece. We'll see how much I get flamed there, or blocked, or whatever. I made sure to note the 9/11 Falser issue (and I called it that there) because I posted it on Sept. 11. 

Texas Progressives roundup

Off the Kuff provides a Big Bend construction update.  

SocraticGadfly reflects on ethical issues involved with using AI and apps to promote environmentalism, as well as the issue of how much "AI" actually exists.

The Monthly mildly calls out Gina Hinojosa for running an anti-abortion ad in drag, rather than an ad about her trisomy 21 daughter carried to term, that doesn't document how Texas women today can't get the procedure she could have. Back to undervoting that race?

I'll believe that rural voters turn Texas blue as soon as Hispanic voters do. Nice try, Politico. I'll write more on that.

Trump cabinet members like Brooke Rollins, just like Trump himself, are war-profiteering off the conflict with Iran. 

Trump won't give up on mail ballots; will SCOTUS stop being chickenshit, realize Trump doesn't care for legal niceties, and fully take the bull by the horns? 

The State Bard of Education jumped fully into the Islamophobia tank. 

San Ignacio, southeast of Laredo, is another new border wall battleground. 

Kuff, as a good Democrat trooper, continues to be chickenshit on radio silence about ongoing butt-hurtedness by Jasmine Crockett against James Talarico. 

Fuck no I'm not getting in one of Elmo's Cybercabs. 

Strangeabbott says Trump should give Texas hospitals Medicaid bucks they're supposedly due. But Kenny Boy, although he sued Biden over the same thing, isn't suing Trump.

I'd have more but Kuffner once again didn't mail out his version of a roundup. Keep doing that, Kuff, and I'll stop running you in my version. 

Fact-checking Texas Monthly on Rio Grande water supply

The Monthly never responds on either Hucksterman or Shitter, so when reporter Jack Herrera, on his personal Shitter account, asked for feedback on "The War for the Rio Grande," he got it.

It's good in some ways, but has a mix of errors and Texas exceptionalism hyperbole.

First, if one goes by more than water supply, per American Rivers, neither the Rio Grande nor the Colorado is on the ten most endangered list. (Both have been on its list in the past, the Colorado more often, the Rio Grande more recently, aka last year.)

Second, no, Geronimo didn't flee from Arizona into Chihuahua, it was into Sonora. 

The Colorado gets more headlines because it passes through more states, and more, because a lot more agriculture depends on it than the Rio Grande. So does more urban water supply.

The High Plains, not the small, HIGH-elevation San Luis Valley, is the heart of Colorado's ag industry. The Grand Junction area with its orchard fruits is arguably No. 2.

You're totally right on the 1944 treaty, but could go further. It needs to be redone. 

I disagree with you on not targeting certain crops. Lots of pecans like the ones Rogers grows sell overseas, just like the alfalfa you mentioned going to Saudi Arabia. Yes, Rogers has a market — and outside of Trump tariff stupidity, a lot of that market is in China.

El Paso scientists are right — the drought in the Southwest is expected to last the rest of this century, due to climate change. Water recycling has been done in LA's Southland for what, a decade or more? Here in Texas, Wichita Falls started it a few years ago. Neither one may have as fancy of an operation as El Paso plans, but the concept in action is itself not new. If there's something special and new in El Paso's details, it should have been spelled out more. Saying it's "the first of its kind in the nation" is incomplete at best and possibly inaccurate at worst unless it's massively different from others.

I concluded by telling Herrera what I start with here and I was waiting to see if anything would be different this time on responsiveness. 

=

A second piece, whether prequel or sequel, is better. 

Setting aside Herrera's untruths about the San Luis Valley as the heart of Colorado agriculture (pre-Spanish entrada, it wasn't, either; that would be Colorado's part of the Four Corners) his story about his trip to the headwaters of the Rio Grande is more worth it. I've not hiked to the headwaters myself, but I've been to Creede, and have hiked in American and Yankee basins on the west side of the Continental Divide just above the headwaters.

=

Sidebar: Neither story has the magic phrase "climate change." 

==

Follow-up: A full week later, and no response from Herrera, who's obviously a liar. And, no response from either him or the Monthly on Shitter or Hucksterman. Shock me. I guess Herrera didn't fall far from the Texas Monthly apple tree.

All Things Paxton as 2026 elections hit their post-Labor Day finish line

I see what I did there, NPR.

With Big John Cornyn refusing to help Kenny Boy Paxton in his fundraising get at all, as announced last month, The Eyes of Texas, certainly MAGAts Republican eyes, turned to The Donald.

And Trump's PAC has now shoved $10 million in the Paxton ad buy offering plate, the Trib reports. That said, its subhed gets a framing issue wrong. For Trump, this is ultimately not about this race now being an unexpected key to which duopoly party controls the Senate. Rather, it's about his (hedged) backing of Paxton over Cornyn through the GOP primary and runoff. It's personal. 

That said, the content of the ad buy looks un-Trumpian bland and impersonal. Attacking Talarico over taxes rather than past statements of his like "god is nonbinary"? WTF?

At the Monthly, Dan Solomon snarks on the Trump official endorsement that accompanied the ad buy. 

Elmo just dropped a quarter-mil. Chump change for him, and chump change for what Kenny Boy actually needs. 

Meanwhile, Kenny Boy appears to have violated U.S. Senate Ethics Committee wealth and assets disclosure rules. Shock me. Nothing will happen until after the election, if anything happens then. Before the election, the SEC won't even send an official warning letter.

This one deserves an extended pull quote to show how bad it is:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears to have violated federal ethics law in significant ways when filing recent disclosures of his assets and liabilities, creating confusion about his net worth and holdings, a review by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found. 

Among them: Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, reported owning seven homes but said he earned no income from any. Yet all but one was listed for rent during the reporting periods, and some current residents and neighbors at those addresses confirmed that the properties were rented, the news organizations found. Receiving income and not reporting it is a violation of federal disclosure law, three ethics experts said. 

Additionally, Paxton did not disclose mortgages for three condos at a Utah golf resort that federal law requires him to list as liabilities if they are not personal residences. 

He also valued his stake in a vacant plot of Texas land at up to $50,000 on last year’s filing, but his business partner told the newsrooms Paxton’s share for years has been worth about $1 million. Federal financial disclosure law requires property to be listed at fair market value. 

The apparent errors and omissions the newsrooms found obscure the extent of Paxton’s income streams, assets and debt, making it difficult for voters to make sense of his finances as they mull whether to support him in November’s election, the ethics experts said.

Shocked? Not me. And I'm certain it's deliberate, not sloppiness, regarding the next paragraph after the pull quote.

It's also stupid, whether stupidity born of sloppiness or of arrogance, because it triggered this story. Yes, as the story notes, if he wins, it makes it harder to track Senate conflicts of interest. But first, he has to win. 

But, per the end of the story, here's how you know he's off the hook, other than for stupidity:

The ethics committee did not respond to requests for comment. Candidates or senators who willingly falsify financial disclosures can be fined up to $50,000 or prosecuted for making a false statement to the government, a felony. The committee rarely investigates senators and has not formally sanctioned a member in 19 years.

Bingo. The Senate, contra the House, maintains this level of false collegiality.

==

US Senate Majority Leader John Thune's Super PAC is finally dropping some money for Kenny Boy Paxton. 

Top blogging of August 2026

As is normal, not all of these were written last month. Rather, per Blogger's sometimes-dubious stats, they reportedly were the most popular for last month.

No. 10 was from not too far away, in July. It was an update on the unethical moderators at the r/AskHistorians subreddit, who it turns out are pretendian leftists. 

No. 9, from last month, asked "What if Jason Arday WERE a fraud"? 

No. 8, from late 2023, was a roundup of thoughts on the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, broken trust between leftist Israelis and Palestinians, and Putin punking Western sanctions.

No. 7, a Texas Progressives roundup from late July. (More and more, the term "progressives" is of course tohu w'vohu.) 

No. 6, my splitting of a Texas Progressives roundup from August, where I actually called out, myself, both halves of the duopoly, specifically both Kenny Boy Paxton and Talafreako Talarico.

No. 5, an oldie but goodie from 2014, my gloating over skeptic, and libertarian fusing his libertarian politics with skepticism, Brian Dunning, found guilty of wire fraud. 

No. 4? Trending because I posted it recently on the r/DeathValleyNP sub-Reddit, my piece about Steve Curry getting himself killed because he chose to hike Golden Canyon in midday sun in July 2023 — at the age of 71. At age 62, this spring, when in Death Valley during the big hottening up in late March, when Furnace Creek was hitting 110 some days, I paced myself in the afternoon.

No. 3 was from 2024 and was an extended review of Steve Vladeck's book "The Shadow Docket." Gee, why is that trending again? 

No. 2, even more than the Dunning one, is a synopsis, which due to timing, turned into a semi-takedown obit, of Alan Smithee, aka Actual Flatticus, IRL Chris Chopin, whom I still suspect of being a poseur of some sort, if. not controlled opposition.

No. 1? From 2018, a callout of the hypocrisy and lies of Sema Hernandez, who had challenged R.F. Beto-Bob O'Rourke for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in Texas that spring. 

Artificial intelligence and environmentalism, apps and detaching

I love me some Lyle Lewis and have for what, a decade or so?

That said, this comment of his, in reply to a comment on a piece of his about bats acting strangely, made me think more about the issue in the header, specifically because it's from Lewis. 

First, the heart of Davy Kydd:

i have another kind of observation about the landscape of your words. more and more in the wildlife of writing, readers are noticing an eerie sameness, as if the habitat of possible sentence structures is shrinking. the robotic repetitiveness, the lifeless pose of predictable syntax . . . pretending to be alive. 

like the world's beleaguered teachers inundated by ai essays, the substack habitat too is being infiltrated. we feel a bit cheated. 

even though the planet’s hyper-populated human landscapes are creating pressures on artists to use ai to trick their audiences and generate $$$, i wonder if we might help substack to maintain its integrity by requiring authors to inform their audience each and every time ai is used in their writing or photography.

That's it. (He later removed the note. And, his take on environmentalism is basically kind of antropomorphic mushy, which is not my take or Lyle's. That said?)

Here's the nutgrafs of Lyle's response:

For my own work, I care much less about preserving some imagined purity of literary production than I do about understanding what is happening to the living world. 

I am not particularly worried about whether the ecosystem of sentence structures on the Internet is sufficiently diverse. 

I am worried about the actual ecosystems. 

I am worried about bats and insects, forests and grasslands, rivers and oceans, predators and prey, ecological relationships disappearing before we understand them, and a human civilization transforming the planet faster than either science or society can comprehend the consequences. 

If new tools allow me to examine those questions more deeply, connect information more rapidly, challenge my own assumptions more effectively, and communicate what I find to more people, I am going to use them. 

And I am going to remain responsible for the result. 

That seems to me the standard that matters. 

Don’t ask whether a machine touched the prose.

I don't know how much extra electricity his AI use generates. It does of course generate some. I don't know if he's even tried to calculate that. I don't even know how easy it would be to guess, or to go meta and use AI to try to get an answer.

But I am going to guess he's not thought of that. 

For me, it's a bridge too far.

Not primarily on AI words, where I am not at Lyle's level of environmental knowledge sets, but mainly on AI photos. I played around with one or two sites once the technology started taking off a couple of years ago, and used it once on one Substack piece with a bit of regret.

No more. 

Beyond the truth-value reasons for its use, beyond worries about it being another addiction, I think this has to be asked all the time. 

And, in pieces like this? He uses what certainly looks like an AI photo. I mean, it's a nice illustration for a great story, but I couldn't do that. I'd either find a way to Photoshop different stuff together, or not have an illustration. I would also have it labeled as being a Photoshop illustration, not an actual photo, and definitely labeled as AI-generated if I did.

Massimo Pigliucci is not an environmentalist or climate scientist, but he is a scientist as well as philosopher, and, as in this piece, regularly uses AI photos. 

Besides, per physicist Angela Collier (long YouTube but the first 5 minutes or so will give you the basics) AI doesn't exist anyway. She goes into machine learning in her field, pivots from that to alleged AI, and then goes philosophy with black box references. In the sense that she's rejecting the "I" half of the shorthand, she's correct. 

Five-minute mark: "These programs are great, they're interesting, they're useful, but they're not AI."

That then said, old Davy has himself "liked" and even restacked more than one post from other accounts that use AI images. 

==

That said, both to not look like I'm just picking on Lyle, or a lesser degree, Massimo as well, and because another pet peeve came up the same day, last Sunday? 

It's time to call out Bird Item News for once again pushing the Merlin smartphone app.

From least to greatest, there's several problems.

First, the folks there don't tell you what I told them in a comment. That's that Merlin just ain't that accurate. Folks at the r/birding subreddit field semi-regular bitches about it. 

Second, if you, like me, bird by sight first, sounds second, Merlin ain't that helpful. I doubt it has a draw and drag ID feature like Google Images and besides, I have a real camera; I don't shoot birds with a smartphone.

Third and the biggie, and roughly related to my plaint about Lyle, since that piece I link is about something like an Optimus Prime level of "wilderness"?

Don't know about Hap Ellis and Lisa Noschese of Bird News Items, but whether on a vacation, or a weekend hike at the nearby national wildlife refuge or a closer one at a city park or lake? I'm out there to detach from technology.

On local weekends, my smartphone is generally off.

On vacations, after Monday evening or Tuesday morning to check in with my pinch-hitting owner boss, it's off.

Ellis, per his "clean tech" (is there such a thing?) background, strikes me as a more modern, Shrub Bush rather than Poppy Bush backing, version of bird-watcher Dick Davenport from Doonesbury. 

THIS, presumably from his half of the weekly contribution:

The world can be divided into two types of people — those who have already downloaded the free Merlin Bird ID app, and those whose lives have yet to be enriched by doing so. Dubbed “Shazam for birds”, being able to hold your phone up and within seconds see names and photographs identifying all the birds singing around you has unlocked the secrets of the natural world for millions, revolutionizing birdwatching (or should I say bird listening?) as a hobby.

Not only ignores all of the above, but is an insult to people like me. 

Texas Progressivess round up the weekly thoughts

SocraticGadfly talks about the reality, and non-reality, of Interior's mandatory cuts in Colorado River water supply.

The PUC ignored calls to wait from the Texas Lege and even Dannie Goeb his own self and OKed Oncor building two big, and bigly controversial, high voltage transmission lines to West Texas. The voltage — 765 kilovolt, a first in the area — as well as the routing, is part of the angst.

They don't — and won't for the foreseeable future — make Republicans like Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker any more. RIP. She stands in history as the first woman elected to the Senate without previously being named to fill a vacancy of her late husband's seat.

Will some people actually move out of the Guadalupe River basin rather than face a likely round 3? Will the Monthly use the words "climate change" next time it writes such a story?  

If your school district faces a takeover, blame Mike Morath. 

The Current reviewed Greg Abbott's cursed summer playlist.

The Dallas Observer reported on the use of Flock cameras on college campuses.

Texas Monthly talked to Billy Gibbons about the future of ZZ Top.

Caroline Pitchkolan copes with the fear created by immigration enforcement.

The Texas Observer has a message for Dan Patrick about his book-banning obsession, from an Abilene public school librarian.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project Blog reported on the Houston City Council Public Safety Committee meeting where HPD Chief Diaz failed to show up. The bottom line appears to be we can’t have HPD/ICE transparency because HPD isn’t following the law.

Ten years of Kaepernick, ten years since "Notorious RBG" was "dumb and disrespectful"

Yes, it's that long, folks, per a new NBC piece that says Kaep has a bio coming out later this month.

 Per the story, and per my header, I still have a fair amount of loathing about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who did call his actions "dumb and disrespectful." Deal with it, left hand of the duopoly. See here and here.

Actually, especially since we've now had not only the rise of Black Lives Matter but the genocide of Gaza, we're reminded that she was a Zionist, though not the worst, and also that she had other types of baggage, per this piece, and wasn't a big friend of American Indians, per this.

That said, I have a bigger back of the hand now, than I did years ago, for Kaep. 

I first wrote about his pledge to remain seated, before he started "take a knee."  

I largely agreed with him, then agreed with the shift. 

That said, well, he, uh ... lied about the background to that. He's now come clean, but a full decade later:

Even though the story of the protest has been told countless times since 2016, Kaepernick set the record straight on one key detail: who came up with the idea to kneel in the first place. 

Before the Sept. 1 game, Kaepernick was approached by [teammate Eric] Reid, who wanted to support the protest. It was Reid who suggested the idea to kneel, Kaepernick says. Not Army veteran Nate Boyer, as was widely reported at the time and since. 

Boyer, a Green Beret and former Seattle Seahawk, had penned an open letter to Kaepernick in the Army Times, writing: “Even though my initial reaction to your protest was one of anger, I’m trying to listen to what you’re saying and why you’re doing it.”

That said, it was Reid who actually started the false claim. But Kaep was the one who ran with it:

As for why Kaepernick didn’t clear up the misconception at the time, he says he and Reid wanted to focus on their message, not get caught “in a personal back-and-forth over whose idea it was.”

Why didn't Boyer say more at the time?  That's certainly not addressed here. 

As for Kaep as a player?

I didn't think he was worth $18 million in those days, and said so, with more in-depth thoughts here. I did think his personal workout after refusal to sign an NFL waiver was at least partially a stunt. Just before that, he wanted $20 million from a minor-league pro football group. I laughed.

As for human rights issues? I still agree with Costas asking why he he (and the likes of LeBron) didn't speak out about China. We know why. 

He's still right about the NFL. He's still wrong about China by silence and his own perceived past value as a player. 

Ginsburg in her grave remains wrong about Kaep, about Israel, and about American Indians. 

Or, going outside this piece, but because he needs another good kick? Enes Kanter FreeDumb remains wrong in trying to pretend to actually care about Palestinians.

 

 

Let's hold on here on Clayton Tucker for Ag Commish

When I first read his bio, per his website, I thought, good stuff. Being secretary of the Texas Farmers Union, part of the National Farmers Union, and much better than Texas/American Farm Bureau Federation and not on the take for Big Ag, was a key note. Opposition to data centers is of course good.

That said, his small business? Grassroots Nation is a spin off Netroots Nation, in part, though it also has nonpolitical clients. 

And, on the issues? On water, does he think Proposition 4 was a good deal or not? It wasn't.

Glyphosate? The problem is Roundup Ready crops create Roundup Resistant weeds. The cancer angle is still overstated, I think.

Health care? He supports better access, but I see nothing about single-payer, or even pushing the Lege to opt into Obamacare Medicaid expansion.

Climate change? I see climate-smart farming practices. His family raises goats. Where's he stand on cows and cow farts?

Or, where's he stand on Big Oil, since wingnut Rethuglican Nate Sheets says he wants to cover all farmland with renewable energy?

Well, Nate links to Clayton's financial disclosures.

It's under 100 shares in both cases, but Devon Energy, and even more, Energy Transfer, isn't so good a sign. Vitesse Energy bills itself as a non-owner investor in oil and gas wells. Three strikes, you're out on climate change.

UPDATE: An Energy Transfer gas-processing site in Shreveport, Louisiana is listed as the largest methane super-emitter in the country. 

And, I'm one of those environmental leftists who opposes expanding nuclear power without a LOT more safeguards, contra the likes of James Hansen. So, owning stock in a uranium company is also not good. 

This isn't a "gotcha" the way Nate thinks, but it is problematic. 

So, let's not stop there.

Three JP Morgan funds. One private equity fund if not more. Multiple real estate investment trusts. Invesco, which is listed as an ethically responsible investor.

Royalty Pharma is not Big Pharma, but is a bit tangential.  

And, this isn't because he's left hand of the duopoly.

Two years ago, I called out Jill Stein for being an investments hypocrite. (Yashar Ali and Hillz screwed the pooch on that in 2016 by forgetting about early voting.) In 2000, I undervoted rather than vote Ralph Nader, for similar reasons. 

Also, while all of these are less than 100 shares, we're talking more than 40 different holdings. For someone who's just 35, he's doing pretty well.

Let's say 40 investments, 50 shares each. That's 2,000 shares. Let's say $6 per share per year. 

He's got $12,000 per year in investment income. 

Texas Progressives talk elections and suits

Off the Kuff analyzes the two most recent polls of the Senate race.

Strangeabbott's "pause" (not "halt," and the Trib correctly uses the first word) on state grants for Flock cameras appears to be about as much of an election-driven stunt as does his "vaunted" audit of data centers for electricity needs. (My county's sheriff has one such grant, and he gets ever more defensive about it, and engages in ever more obfuscation, talking about the protections his office has without ever mentioning Flock other than admitting it's Flock cameras.) 

Joe Joplin still hasn't forgotten about Kenny Boy Paxton stealing his Montblanc pen. And yes, "stealing" is the right word; Joplin said he considered filing charges.  

Former Alamo Trust CEO Kate Rogers had her suit against Patrick and Land Commish Lindsay Dawn Buckingham OKed to proceed. 

Also in the legal world, Talafreako wants to see Paxton's depositions from his securities fraud case. 

Jon Ossoff — 2028 Democratic presidential candidate? 

How WILL the "Farm Belt" vote? 

"No money for you!" Big John Cornyn tells Kenny Boy Paxton. 

Contra new Comptroller Don Huffines' politicized claims, Texas schools and cities are hurting for money. The Observer keeps its head up the ass of the left hand of the duopoly on this race, though, and doesn't name Green Shehla Faizi. 

Can MAGA Moms win the gov's office for Gina Hinojosa? The Observer weighs in. (Calling out Strangeabbott on Flock cameras is a nice sidebar to the focus on public schools.) That said, I still think it's Abbott's race to lose, and even though he's a fucktard with fingers in the edges of the cookie jar of corruption, he's not an openly corrupt fucktard, unlike Kenny Boy Paxton. 

 

 

Foreign policy roundup — Robert Kagan denialism and more

Responsible Statecraft has a great and eviscerating interview with Bob Kagan. Highlights include his still-ongoing defense of the Iraq War and claims for its necessity, denial that he's a neocon while (natch) claiming the whole idea is antisemitic and more. He does say US foreign policy is too guided by Islamophobia.

"They Saw it Coming" is a long, hot read by Amerikanets, an up-and-coming hot foreign policy Substack. It's quite interesting, but, given degrees of dislike and or distrust of half the Substacks they follow, I haven't followed them yet. (Kit Klarenberg and Simplicius top that list.) Especially given that said person has been on Substack since 2024, and they write in this depth and don't follow more people raises a bit of an eyebrow.

This Mark Ames tweet is from Aug. 2, but it would confirm that Zelensky's war as PR offensive, or vice versa, has once again failed on the ground, and in the context of Donald J. Trump, though not with mainstream media. That's as Russia figures out how to make cruise missiles cheaper than its old ones, but that can also evade more Ukrainian defenses, per Bloomberg. And, yes, links from Simplicius. Meanwhile, some European media wonder if taste for supporting Ukraine is finally drying up.

THe reality behind the snark of semi-fake bison burgers

Last week at Substack, I wrote this bit of snark about bison burgers at Yellowstone.

Sadly, per a comment I left, the reality is even worse outside of Yellowstone.

The last bit of the snark in the story is courtesy of something I saw on Shitter about 10 days ago. Sprouts, a company I wouldn't have associated with such an idea, has started selling meatballs with lab meat. For some of my latest thoughts on the economics of lab meat (and, the healthiness of plant meat and a callout against Grist on that), go here.

For a callout of neoliberal Mother Jones ignoring some of the costs of lab meat (maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised by Sprouts) go here.

For more yet on the costs of lab meat, go here.

Finally, per the theme of this piece, it should be added that Sprouts' meatballs are primarily plant "meat" with just a dusting of lab meat. Shock me. It's all capitalist turtles, all the way down.

I warned you about Proposition 4 and now the "produced water" shit is about to hit the fan

Proposition 4 being the Texas constitutional amendments 2025 election Proposition 4.

I called out the Trib and librul blog sites like Lone Star Left. I called out Gang Green enviros at the Sierra Club. I called out Suzanne Bellsnyder for being a hypocrite. I called out the Texas Green Party. This year, I called out the Observer.

I said again this year, as I had before the election, that it would be an economic boondoggle as well as environmentally damaging. 

Now, especially on the latter, companies wanting to "recycle" fracking wastewater are pushing, pushing, pushing to go full speed ahead with minimal oversight from TCEQ, as well as minimal discussion of electric needs. Shocked? Why? 

Aridzona's day of water reckoning has come; or has it?

(My Photoshopped version of Glen Canyon Dam, above.)

Or, at least, the day of reckoning has come for the Valley of the Sun. Or has it?

The climate change deniers and minimalists will probably try to poo-poo this, starting with saying it's only for two years. Which moves back to the rhetorical question ending the paragraph above.

But, Aridzona losing one-third of its Colorado River water rights in the next two years, per the official Department of the Interior announcement, is serious. It takes the largest haircut among the three Lower Basin states as the price it paid to get the Central Arizona Project, which delivers water to Phoenix and Tucson.

Per a link in that story and discussion elsewhere, will the state actually sue? If so, between "slim" and "none," what are the odds of success? 

Beyond that, the day of water reckoning isn't enough. Per this New York Times piece:

The river’s flow is diminishing and reservoirs are drying up, but communities and farms still use unsustainable amounts of water.

That's the bottom line. 

Another version?

"The water usage is still too damned high." 

On the suits? The current proposal just makes firm, that same piece says, voluntary offers already on the table. 

Beyond that, as I said 15 years ago, Obama blew a chance to further cut water usage. He could have made Phoenix and Las Vegas recent homebuyers "whole" by letting them out of mortgages if they moved (back) to where the water is — Cleveland, St. Louis, Omaha, et. And, he could have done the same for homebuilders, mortgage brokers etc., to make them whole IF they took a "haircut" on how many houses they could build in places like Phoenix with federal mortgage guarantees. 

Beyond that? "Water banking" is semi-fraudulent in my opinion, and in some day will have an unpayable real bill to be paid. Sorry, California's Colorado River water sherpa, but be more honest than this.(At least he admitted California is way behind Nevada on cutting water use, while also saying nothing about WHY it’s way behind.)

Interestingly, on the issue of lawsuits, the first one has been filed — by Nevada. The reason they’re suing? No mandatory cuts for the Upper Basin.

Fully fraudulent? The Big Oil companies as climate denialists, who took a page from Big Tobacco. A new Inside Climate News piece says that Big Oil is responsible for half the Colorado River basin’s water loss in 2014-24 due to climate change causes. 

As for Aridzona? Per the second link, I have little doubt that groundwater pumping will only accelerate more, and that alfalfa farmers will beg the state for monetary help to pay for deeper and deeper wells. Soil subsidence will continue, and homeowners will ask for help on that.

Sadly, a super El Niño may provide enough snowpack for the seven basin states to continue to dodge a long-range new deal on the river. Per this story, that's why we're at where we are now — a two-year imposition by Interior based on a ten-year planning document. 

I've written before, most recently a few months ago, about the reality of the seven Basin states willing to continue to deny reality. 

Of course, Glen Canyon Dam was itself built on a lie, a lie that's inside the visitors' center:

Oops! And, maybe we should call the refusal to be skeptical about the water flow numbers used to create the Colorado River Compact a century ago a lie themselves.

If "water's for fighting over," per the old western bon mot, in modern terms, and contra Kumbaya John Fleck, who doesn't like my comments on his site. it's also for suing over. 

Per Nevada’s lawsuit, another thing Kumbaya John gets wrong is being wedded to the Upper Basin/Lower Basin division. If there’s going to be a lawsuit rumble over basin supply anyway, elect me president and my federal government will knock heads on this issue.

More Talafreako the hypocritico

Building on its revelation a week ago that James Talarico seems to be a hypocrite in his stance on pastors endorsing political candidates from their pulpits, written about here by me, we now have a part two from the Texas Monthly.

Ostensibly, the piece is about what they would want to ask both him and Kenny Boy Paxton in a debate, if one happens, but some of the best "issues" are Talafreako's.

He seems two-faced if not outrightly hypocritical on veganism. But, that's minor.

Sexually-affirming care (that's the word, not "gender-affirming," Monthly) for minors who hold themselves as transsexual (that's the word, not the truncated pronoun "trans") is much bigger. 

At a Pride event in 2023—after the Lege passed SB 14, which banned gender-affirming care for minors—he called the bill “the most dangerous” one of the session, and one that “infuriates me.” In early June, though, after clinching the Senate nomination, he appeared on the podcast of Houston lawyer Dan Cogdell, who served as Paxton’s personal attorney for a number of years. During that appearance, Talarico said, “I oppose gender reassignment surgeries for minors.” Then, when asked about his support for the LGBTQ community on Rachel Maddow’s MS NOW show in early August, his tone shifted yet again: “I don’t think we win by selling people out,” he told the host. “We’re refusing to do that in this campaign.”

Yeah, "code switching." Or worse. 

Texas Progressives talk books and cooking the books

With some reservations but much more scorn, Off the Kuff laughs at Dan Patrick's bizarre obsession with "dirty" books in school libraries.

Franklin Strong at Anger and Clarity has even more. 

SocraticGadfly called out Don Huffines for his immediate politicization of the Comptroller's office.

The state's maternal mortality committee's next report will omit post-Roe pregnancy death. 

If you're on city of Austin municipal electricity, or a rural co-op, guess what? State laws restricting cutoffs during heat alerts don't apply to them and so don't help you. The Observer notes how much this varies from utility to utility.

The Tex-ass Lege and Strangeabbott refuse to even consider serious floodplain building rules and building standard rules, even as more Hill Country type flooding remains likely. The Trib reports. 

But, what if Jason Arday WAS a fraud?

Yes, per the likes of The Nation, hereditarianism (formerly known as "racialism") should be called out in general, and Nathan Cofnas in particular.

That said, per the header, what IF?

Substacker Aurelien, of whom I said in restacking this piece:

On the surface, about Jason Arday, but below the surface, about much more, from someone who may be at least in the same sport, if not necessarily the same ballpark, as my skeptical leftism.

(Note the caveats.) 

Tackled just that.

Let's start here:

These ideas had been vaguely circulating at the back of my mind for a while, but they were brought into focus by the bizarre and almost unbelievable case of the late Jason Arday, the confidence trickster who secured a Chair at the University of Cambridge before being revealed as a liar, a cheat, a plagiarist and fantasist who probably needed treatment.

Painful? Yes.

Then, lots of details:

Very briefly, Arday, the youngest Black full Professor in the history of Cambridge claimed to be born autistic, not to be able to speak until about the age of about ten (the details vary) or able to write until the age of eighteen. Somehow he went on to a dazzling academic career including a Doctorate, with visiting fellowships at other universities, and he was an international athlete and an ultra-marathon runner. Oh, and he raised millions of pounds for charities and appeared a lot on TV. Again, many of these details changed over the weeks : their only common features are that they are either lies, or cannot be verified, or there are severe doubts (as with his Doctorate) about whether they were actually honestly gained.

 That's the big picture.

Assuming this is all grounded on actual claims Arday made?

Yeah, he's a confidence trickster, and if The Nation isn't going to address that, it remains partially part of the problem. 

Aurelian, who seems British, or at least from the non-American Anglosphere, by things like "-ise" versus "-ize," has more at that link. On the big picture beyond Arday, he does use the word "wokery" once. Beyond that? He does talk a lot about pomo French philosophy, i.e., Foucault, Derrida and others. He also talks about the "professional and managerial class."

But, he goes on to talk more about Arday in academia, narrowing the focus again:

To return to Arday for a second, he was awarded a Doctorate by Liverpool John Moore’s University, (previously Liverpool Polytechnic teaching trade-related skills), named after a pioneer of sports betting in the UK. A couple of things are clear. One is that he was pretty much unsupervised (it is alleged that he saw his supervisor only once), and the other is that he copied and plagiarised most of his work. It’s astounding that he was awarded his degree in the first place, but it’s actually beyond debate that he indeed copied and plagiarised, and that the university authorities knew about it, but didn’t care.

But, that's not all.

Going beyond The Nation's take on Cofnas, there's this:

[T]here are now Internet sites through which students can be instructed to submit their work, and which have an excellent record of detecting plagiarism. Arday’s work was apparently submitted to the Anglo-Saxon site known as Turnitin (there is a European equivalent called Urkund, although the two are merging.) These sites run a search, and produce a Similarity Index (SI) for each submission, flagging up extracts which directly resemble other identified texts, thus enabling the examiner to make word-for-word comparisons. In most subjects, there will be some similarities, if only because standard bibliographies and the use of common citations and a common vocabulary will produce an SI higher than zero. For the sort of subjects I’ve taught over the years, an SI of 10% isn’t necessarily a problem. Over 15% could be a problem, and if I see an SI of over 20% my heart sinks, because it means that at a minimum the student hasn’t produced work that is original enough. The risk is always, at best, of an argument held together with long quotations from other people.

In other words, somebody else, and someone not necessarily a full-bore racialist, could have outed Arday. 

Oh, but it gets worse? According to Aurelien, Cambridge knew about the possible plagiarism. The Liverpool university did before him. That, I cannot verify, so it puts him on the wrong foot.

Speaking in European political science terms, he may be a left-wing version of a classical liberal. 

But, we can turn to Arday's Wikipedia page. 

He claimed all this, and per the links, people other than Cofnas were wondering why:

Arday said that at the age of three, he received diagnoses of autism, global developmental delay, deafness, and dyscalculia, and was non-verbal until the age of 11.[9] The claim of being non-verbal was later contested in the media.[1] Arday also said he could not read or write until he was 18, and that he received a diagnosis of dyslexia in his first year of university.[10][11][12] The statement that he was illiterate until 18 also came under media scrutiny.[13] 

Arday reported being attacked at the age of 18 and developing epilepsy as a result. According to Arday, two of his attackers later became his students, with one asking him to be the godfather of his child and Arday "gratefully accepted".[3] He claimed that in 2006, aged 21, he went to Brazil with the charity WaterAid to install water pumps for poor communities in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro; media later disputed this, as WaterAid did not send volunteers abroad.[3][14]

There's more bullshit here: 

He claimed to have completed his PhD in two-and-a-half years,[18] and to have relearnt the content of his dissertation weeks before defending it due to memory loss following the removal of a brain tumour and suffering a transient ischemic attack, or mini-stroke.

Again, why weren't non-skeptical leftist opinion sites jumping in earlier? 

Wiki's page notes that questions arose on plagiarism back in 2023. And, when called out, he called the police and made a harassment report against the accuser. And, yes, Aurelian is at least semi-right on Liverpool giving him a pass:

Having been alerted to allegations of plagiarism in Arday's PhD thesis in 2025, Liverpool John Moores University—who had awarded him his PhD—established a misconduct panel. Arday did not dispute the allegations of plagiarism, but said he had not received adequate supervision given his autism and learning disabilities, and described the allegations against him as being part of an "insidious and relentless" strategy to undermine black academics. Accepting that there were problems with Arday's supervision, the panel concluded that the similarities between Arday's thesis and an earlier PhD thesis by another academic were the result of "honest and reasonable error", not deliberate plagiarism, and were "well within the accepted range of compliance with the academic standards of the time".

And again, where was The Nation? (The author of The Nation's piece doesn't mention any people, or dates, pre-2026.)

And, today, where are the "Why" questions?

That's the bottom line.

Assuming he was a confidence trickster, why? Is this, to go in a different direction than Aurelien, part of the social media world? Did some other Black second-generation immigrant from his neighborhood do better academically? Was he pressured by teachers?

As for his hurdles? Without being a trickster, being not only Black but a second-generation African immigrant were real hurdles. Without the lies, though, get a real bachelor's degree and a basic job, then night school on a master's if you're ready. 

As for that immigrant hurdle?

There are also others with hurdles to get over.

People who actually have autism.

People who actually have epilepsy.

People who are child abuse survivors.

People who grow up in the homes of drug or alcohol addicts. 

As for Cambridge? Yes, if it had only six Black professors at the time of Arday's hiring, that itself is an issue. That said, as his Wiki notes, Cambridge had other options on "people of color" they interviewed for the chair they eventually gave to Arday.

This gets back to the old bon mot of skepticism: If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. 

Finally, it's a reminder of my Venn diagram piece about non-twosiderism. 

Tex-ass chickenshittery on Big Bend

Per the national parks and environment half of last week's Texas Progressives roundup, I am not at all shocked that Tex-ass Rethuglicans have gone semi-AWOL to fully so on a Big Bend border wall. The Monthly has the details, complete with "Texas toughness rating."

Besides the elected officials, it adds a bonus, that also doesn't shock me. Matthew McConaughey is also chickenshit, and is being called out for it.

Texas Progressives roundup: The back end

Neil Aquino and a few of Kuff's roundup choices didn't fit into either the two big races or into national parks and environmentalism.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project went to a recruitment/organizing meeting of the Space City Marshals. The Marshals do good work to keep Houston protesters safe. Check out the post & read their pitch for support.

Chris Tackett gets into the Tarrant County election site situation, and like other #BlueAnon, ignores that the original cuts were recommended by the county's election official, not by the Commissioners Court. I don't know about the previous races he mentioned, whether it was an actual 3-2 vote, or he's just including the GOP members in a 4-1 or 5-0 bit.

G. Elliott Morris explains why primary polling is so fraught. And, if you've really been following things, doesn't explain much and doesn't talk at all about partisan polling.

The Current talks to music icon Steve Earle, in town to receive that city's Emissary of the Muses award.

The Bloggess experienced some technical difficulties.

Presidential rankings: This blogger's newest review

This is an update over an early 2017 piece, with notable changes. 

With nine years of hindsight and us now in Trump 2.0, I am revising to put him in the bottom malebolge with Andy Johnson, Buck Buchanan and Frank Pierce. I’d also revise to push Lincoln from A+ to A, even with grading on a curve, and maybe even A-. I’d still keep him No. 1, which would pull Washington down to A-, too. 

Since it’s a popular task for both armchair and more professional historians, I’m going to wade into the battle myself. In fact, it's so popular, this is an edited and updated version of one I did the year before Dear Leader was elected president. Hence, one reason for the update.

Beyond that, I've read, over that decade, numerous new historic books that have covered in detail all or part of several presidencies, including Fillmore, Taylor, Benjamin Harrison, Wilson and McKinley, among others.

Presidents are ranked by numeric order and given a letter grade on the standard A-F scale, including pluses and minuses. Contra historical writing, since I’m analyzing presidents, not presidencies, Cleveland’s two presidencies are lumped under one rating.

Several presidents have made moves several places up or down (more that a couple have moved sharply down) from my previous ranking.

I've also decided to put some "tiers" in place. And, tried to do some thematic work with the tiers.

(As for the most recent occupant? A brief preliminary take is at the bottom.)

Tier One

1. Abraham Lincoln, A/A-. Even with grading on a curve, I can go no higher. I don’t believe in perfection, but Lincoln comes very close. This is no longer true, due to how much I've read about his stance on colonization of Black Americans, an issue that, had he not been assassinated, he likely would have pushed into his second term. I don’t strongly denigrate his early views on race, but do note he was a moderate, not a true progressive, when coming to the White House. But, he evolved and grew, including through his personal meetings with black leaders such as Frederick Douglass. My final comment quotes Secretary of War Edwin Stanton: “He belongs to the ages.”

2. George Washington. A-. He set the tenor for the office of the presidency, being amongst the people without being too much of the people, something that Reagan recognized but Carter and Clinton didn’t; the same can be said of many members of the House in Washington’s own day. My one minor knock is his adding “so help me God” to the oath of office, thereby giving the “civic religion” so beloved by the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justice Antonin Scalia its first bit of nose under the camel’s tent. (And, per my response to a commenter below, even if that isn't true — and I'm now willing to call it "undecided" but not a myth — good old George still chose to be sworn in on a Bible.) He moves down because I still rank Lincoln higher.

Tier Two — the "good to very good, but" presidents

3. FDR. A-/B+. I can’t see any other Democratic candidate in 1928 — certainly not either Al Smith or John Nance Garner — handling the Depression nearly as well as Roosevelt did. The only major fault is that he didn’t think of a national health insurance plan at the same time as Social Security, which of course wasn’t his original idea anyway. (Actually, supposedly, Hopkins and a few others were hoping national health care would be part of the deal.) Not so much moved down as placed in Tier Two and graded lower, as I think more about how conservative his 1932 campaign was. He also had his political stumbles, like not pulling back his court-packing bill when the "Switch in Time that Saved Nine" happened just a month after he announced it. That said, Walter Karp thinks this was deliberate. It could have been to some degree, but not the way Karp spelled it out.

4. TR. A-/B+. Though not an actual bigot (well, actually, kind of yes on blacks and 'genteel Eastern Establishment' anti-Semitism0 his less than fully-enlightened (even for his day, compared to the best) racial attitudes, as exemplified in the Brownsville Army incident, knock him off the A pedestal. And, too many people give him credit for too much of what Taft did. (Grade dropped.)

5. James Monroe. B. He stayed under the radar screen, didn’t screw anything up, and got Quincy Adams to pen the Monroe Doctrine. He presided over a cabinet that had two 1824 presidential candidates and a third that switched to Veep.  (Imagine Calhoun making that a five-man race; probably would have undercut both Jackson and Crawford.) He also navigated the shoals of Missouri's admission to the union as part of the larger Missouri Compromise. (Moved up.)

6. LBJ. B/B-. In his own words, that “bitch of a war,” which knocked the props from beneath the Great Society, keeps him from being in the top five. Nonetheless, as Republican hacks have shown today with politicizing the so-called “War on Terror,” LBJ’s fears of being tarred with the label of “first president to lose a war” weren’t to be taken lightly. (Unfortunately, not being a regular part of JFK's ExComm, he didn't know Kennedy swapped missiles for missiles over Cuba, and may have felt he had to be that hawkish on Vietnam.) But, even though he followed the lead of the Best and Brightest on Nam, he could have gotten off the ride sooner.

7. Ike. B/B-. I think Eisenhower deserves more of his modern reassessment than what Truman got more than a decade ago. Yes, it’s easy to skewer Levittown, duck and drop nuclear bomb drills in schools, and such, but, Ike was prescient about the military-industrial complex, in possibly the best farewell message besides Washington’s, kept those duck and drop practices from ever having to become real, and presided over the economic boom times that allowed Levittown and suburbia. (Dropped because he took the Supreme Court literally, and probably deliberately so, with its "all due deliberation" statement on its Brown II ruling. And because his administration was the heyday of CIA-coup plotting, with the military-industrial complex being replaced by the spook-coup complex.)

8. Truman. B/B-. High marks for desegregating the Army and for how he handled MacArthur, though European allies in the Korean War had hoped for even swifter action. Further kudos for attempting to get national healthcare, though he couldn't overcome the three legs of opposition from the AMA, the national Chamber of Commerce, and ... unions. But, his domestic accomplishments were relatively modest, and his administration was marred by arguably the worst cronyism in hiring since Harding. Plus, he was intemperate at time on Cold War issues, and started loyalty oaths on his own, even before McCarthy got to running hog wild.

Tier three — the "good, but" presidents

9. Jefferson. B-. Ranked lower than other presidents based on presidential years only. Louisiana Purchase was given to him, not initiated by him; the Lewis and Clark voyage was originally, in essence, espionage. His embargo on American commerce during the Napoleonic wars wrecked New England’s economy and he was basically clueless. Other high points, though, for submitting to a Supreme Court ruling defining the bounds of executive privilege, and getting the Adams-era Alien and Sedition Acts repealed. Gets dinged further for presidential and post-presidential retreat from earlier views on slavery-related issues. Gets dinged yet further for his attempt to invoke presidential privilege, his near-conspiratorial angle toward Aaron Burr and more. (Moved down.)

10. Carter. B-. A president of integrity and principle on a variety of domestic political issues, he got pummeled for it. Doesn’t get his share of credit for fall of the Soviet Union, as he started the “Reagan” defense build-up. Not ranked higher due to lack of political flexibility and acumen. Also not rated higher for being, in some ways, the first neoliberal president, a fact overlooked by many and obscured by his post-presidential career. That all said, he was less neoliberal than later presidents, and, apple-polishing aside, of higher moral rectitude.

11. Taft. B-/C+. Yes, he did initiate trust busting beyond cases inherited from TR, and he didn’t really screw anything up, but he had no vision for the office otherwise. Of course, he didn't want it as much as the Supreme Court in the first place. His wife pushed him into it, then had two strokes within his first year in office. If she had been fully healthy, he might rank higher yet. (Moved up several spots.)

12. Arthur. B-/C+. Credit for backing civil service reform after Garfield’ assassination; unclear if he would have done so otherwise. (Moved up.)

13. Hayes. B-/C+. Elected president in 1876 by a bipartisan commission of SCOTUS justices and Congressmen, that just “happened” to break 8-7 on party lines, he restored integrity after the Grant corruption years and by promising not to run for re-election. Nonetheless, he got his hands tied by GOP agreement to end Reconstruction — which the Grant Administration had been phasing out anyway. (Moved down more as I think about his strike-busting activity, among other things.

14. James K. Polk. B-/C+. If we’re ranking him solely on morals, the way he provoked war with Mexico would get him severely dinged. But, as far as achieving the goals he proclaimed in 1844, he hit a grand slam. A B seems like a compromise, if we don’t look too hard at the slavery issue. (Moved down from previous, in part because he had already written a war message ready for delivery to Congress even before hearing about Zachary Taylor's scrape with Mexican troops in disputed territory at Palo Alto.)

15. Kennedy B-/C+. Let’s puncture the myth of Camelot. He blew the Bay of Pigs by not either going all-in, including air support, or else scrubbing it. His post-Pigs obsession with Castro gets him dinged, as does the illicit sex, not on account of the sex itself, but for ditching the nuclear “football” while doing so. Pluses for calm in handling the Cuban missile crisis and offering inspiration to a younger generation.

Tier four — Reagan and his wannabes, along with names from the past

16. John Quincy Adams C+/C (would get an A+ as Secretary of State and A as Congressman). His administration itself was not bad, but honoring the “corrupt bargain” with fourth-place presidential finisher and former Speaker of the House Henry Clay by making him Secretary of State (at that time the normal stepping-stone to the presidency). He should have had the political sense to know that would guarantee a one-term presidency, and that Clay favored him over Jackson anyway. However, he had good ideas as president, even if many were laughed at. (Moved up, primarily due to slippage of several others.)

17. Clinton. C+/C. Took the worst of the edges off welfare reform and gave us a balanced budget, among other things. Gave us NAFTA and the WTO, on the other hand, and botched health care reform; probably, any bill would have been tough to get past Congress, but his plan didn’t make it any easier. The D shows how much I’m disappointed that he expanded the Bush I privatizing of the Armed Forces and started, though not to the degree of Bush II, illegal “renditions” by the CIA of terrorism suspects.

18. Obama. C+/C See this recent post for more on him.

19. Madison. C. A decent man and a great political theorist, promoted over his head into the presidency.

20. Reagan. C+/D+. Reagan wasn’t all that bad in his first term, relatively speaking, and, although he had to lie to himself about what a tax increase was in 1982, he swallowed the need for it. D+, or lower, for the second term, for Iran/Contra. Plus, it’s a legitimate question to ask if the onset of Alzheimer’s was influencing some second-term decisions, although from what we know about Iran-Contra, that doesn't seem true.

The late 1800s (and others) "meh" tier

21. McKinley. C/C-. While he didn’t screw much up, his pious platitudes about taking on the “white man’s burden” in the Philippines, while annexing Hawaii, introduced imperialist America to the world stage.

22. Garfield. C/C-. His relatively short term makes it hard to offer too much judgment. He might have done a Pendleton Act "lite" on civil service reform and not much more.

23. Cleveland. C and D. The C is for his first term, his principles on budgetary matters, and for being reasonably principled in general. The D is for his second term, for his anti-labor stance and his role in exacerbating, or at least exacerbating the pains of, the Panic of 1893, arguably the country’s first modern industrial depression.

24. Ford. C-. Political ineptitude, not to mention ethical questionability, for his pardon of Nixon, especially its unseemly speed after taking office. He could have stalled thing out until after the 1976 election, as far as the political sensibility of not pardoning Nixon right away.

25. Bush, George H.W. C-/D+. Handled the Gulf War well, but the blame is ultimately his for April Glaspie. Too slow to “cut losses” with Gorbachev rather than Yeltsin, and otherwise react to a post-Cold War world.

26. Benjamin Harrison. C-/D+. Quiet administration that didn’t screw much up. A nonentity otherwise, other than not having a clue about the rise of organized labor. However, his push to admit new Republican states on the Plains sparked the last conflicts with the Sioux, among other things. (Downgraded moderately.)

27. Adams. C-/D+. Avoided war with France in 1798; but, first president to manipulate immigration and civil liberties for political advantage by signing into law, and personally backing much of, the Alien and Sedition Acts. Arguably, with hyperworry about French radicals, THIS, not A. Mitchell Palmer in 1920-21, was the first Red scare.

28. Fillmore. C-/D+. Yes, some version of the Compromise of 1850 was probably necessary, but Fillmore was certainly lacking in leadership in some ways in crafting the bill, especially in not anticipating the reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act. However, he was pretty skilled in working behind the scenes to get the other parts passed, which passed individually in the Senate first, not as an omnibus. In addition, he thought more highly of himself than warranted. (Moved up)

29. Grant. C/D. He did enforce Reconstruction pretty vigorously in his first term, but then started backing away. (The Supreme Court's Cruikshank ruling reined in executive power on Reconstruction somewhat, but not totally.) Possibly the most corrupt administration in presidential history, and a president with a mix of obstinancy and a high susceptibility to flattery, plus a thin skin, even though often courteous to others. (Moved down, then moved back up due to Ronald C. White's new bio.)

Tier XXX?

30. Coolidge. D+. Failed to address the agricultural depression happening throughout the “Roaring ’20s” and also failed to see the stock market house of cards building up already in 1928. Term otherwise undistinguished. But, not as laissez-faire as sometimes pictured, and tried to override the worst of isolationism.

31. Hoover. D+. Far more intellectually qualified than any other of the D-rated presidents, his stubbornness about his idea of the role of the federal government, even though he tried some tinkering at the edges later in his term, get him ranked here. I did give him a plus because this is partly myth from the chameleon on plaid, FDR.

32. William Henry Harrison. D/Inc. Yes, he only served a month, but giving a two-hour inaugural laced with Latin maxims while standing without a hat in the rain indicated a lack of common sense.

33. Tyler. D. Stuck by his principles when succeeding W.H. Harrison; nonetheless, outside of hating Jackson, such principles should have kept him firmly in the Democratic party. Little accomplished.

34. Van Buren. D. Cluelessness about the country’s first major recession and its causes, and failure to step out from Jackson’s shadow, say enough to put the country on a better financial footing.

35. Woodrow Wilson. D. At times, one wishes Wilson’s two terms could be considered separately, like two presidencies. That said, the major accomplishment of his first term, the establishment of the Federal Reserve, is probably overrated, and just as Taft inherited some trust-busting from Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson inherited some from Taft. The four constitutional amendments of a direct income tax, women’s suffrage, Prohibition and direct election of U.S. Senators, were the doings of Congress and state legislatures; Wilson could have used a bully pulpit, especially on women’s suffrage, but didn’t. Besides, Taft got the 16th Amendment voted out of Congress and sent to the states. And his racism, which began from the start of his first term and his official segregation of the executive branch is an indelible blot. Plus, even though stroke-afflicted, he presided over the first Red Scare. With giving Hoover a D+, plus what Coolidge already had, I needed to move him down, and decided going below all other D's besides Biden was right.

36. Biden. D. It wasn't an actual promise, but breaking the hinted-at idea of running just one term, and him digging in his feet before being pushed out, are half of why he ranks no higher. The other half is Israel and Gaza, and willingly letting Secretary of State whitewash Israel. Actually, this is overdetermined. His mid-level response to COVID plus an early removal of the degree of advanced safety net he extended is another one-quarter. So is his continuing the NATO "barking at" Russia via Ukraine, then presumably agreeing with Boris Johnson on nuking peace talks, is yet another one-quarter.

The bottom tier, with an asterisk

37. George W. Bush, D. The only reason he is not ranked dead last is the following three presidents’ failings were even more egregious, and at more dire times in our country’s history. (Moved up primarily because others moved down.)

38. Taylor. D/D-. While his Jacksonian resolve to hang Southerners who refused to accept the admission of California as a free state is admirable, it, if he had lived, would have thrown gasoline on the Compromise of 1850. And, his idea, as influenced by the Svengali named William Seward, that he could ram through the admission of New Mexico as a free state after California, was ludicrous. His death spared the nation the possibility of a civil war a decade earlier.

39. Harding. D-. Not an F, because he recognized, if belatedly, the cronyism and corruption in his cabinet and started trying to do something about it when he died. But, he never, ever should have been there in the first place, and he didn't pass on the opportunity to run.

40. Jackson. D-/F+. His blatant disregard of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Cherokee removal (even if some of that is mythical), combined with his cluelessness about the Bank of the U.S. and his temper, amply earn this ranking, for the first imperial presidency.

41. Nixon. D-/F+. Gets bumped out of pure “F” territory for having more brains than the four below him. The combination of Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos, on the one hand, and Watergate on the other, offset détente and environmental legislation.

42. Trump 1.0. D-/F+. A somewhat greater level of caution in action than Trump 2.0 has shown gets this rating.

The bottom malebolge of hell

43. Pierce. F+. The slightest of bumps above the three bottom dwellers, but his signing off on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and Missouri slaveholder corruption in Kansas that led to “Bleeding Kansas” and accelerated the march toward secession, is bad enough.

44. Andrew Johnson, F. Intemperate when sober and even more so when drunk — stubborn, petulant and politically a butterfingers — Johnson refused to see that he in fact wasn’t following what Lincoln’s Reconstruction policy had been moving toward before his assassination. Lincoln never would have been Thaddeus Stevens, but he would have been closer to him, far closer in spirit, than to Andrew Johnson.

46. Buchanan, F. His failure to stand up for the United States of America in the face of secession says enough.

46. Trump 2.0. F.

==

As for Donald Trump? Per this good piece from Counterpunch, I think he'll need work indeed to get in that bottom malebolge. He might be in the "bottom tier" just above it, but even that isn't guaranteed. Very tentatively, I'll but him somewhere between Taylor and Harding at this time.