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

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

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

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

Brief Iran updates and Sy Hersh speculation

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

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

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

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

Sure. Sure, Sy.

There's then this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

== 

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

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

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

==

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

Happy May Day from a non-Marxist leftist

First, pretty much adapted from last year?

Two things to note.

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

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

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

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

Second, riffing off a piece from last year?

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

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

 

Sequoia Serenity

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, Sequoia!

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

That would be: 

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

That was about 3 miles above the Foothills Visitor Center. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There you are.

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

Enjoy a still of this lovely bird below.

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

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

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

Texas Progressives talk finances, 25th, more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Super El Niño could mean a new global temperature record

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

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

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

This:

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

Is the reality. 

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

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

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

==

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We'll go from there. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's your graphic detail:

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

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

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

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

Anyway, now, back to Hansen. 

His piece doesn't at all discuss safety issues.

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

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

Second, there's mine safety issues.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And while we're really really here?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gets straight to cubic meters.

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

That said, this guy does NOT tout thorium.

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

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

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

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

And, I've wasted enough time. 

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

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

Here's the nutgraf:

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

Yikes. 

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Hooks undercuts himself on redistricting battles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This quote:

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

Is bullshit.

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

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

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

It also notes how it defies Supreme Court precedent:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Net zero hypocrisies in Denton

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

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

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

There you are. 

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

Mojave National Preserve is full of shit

No really and yes literally. I noticed it myself on vacation last month. I thought I was in Grand Staircase-Escalante or Cascade-Siskyou national monuments, which are respectively, for the not knowing, BLM and USFS lands. I knew it had to be grazing leases and not just inholdings, based on the trail I was on, signage and fencings.

I did the google and got that link above, and it's even more disconcerting 

As of five years ago, at least, cows were even allowed in wilderness areas of the preserve, which, unlike the two sites above, is a National Park Service unit.

Ridiculous. What's being preserved?

It's like Dear Leader when he expanded Cascade-Siskyou because "sensitive habitat" and never made any effort to cut down on grazing leases. 

The issue is that this (under Clinton) and later actions under Obama and Biden are how Democrat presidents pretend to be environmentalists. 

That said, this sign: 

Shows larger problems with the NPS. What's blacked out? Why? How many years ago? Will the services that have been blacked out ever be fixed? If not, will NPS ever pay for permanent new signs?

When I saw this, I was reminded of a restaurant bleeding money that starts cutting items from the menu but is too cheap to print new menus to reflect that.

And no, this isn't "all Trump's fault." I am sure the black tape blackouts were done more than 15 months ago. 

Also, per friend Lyle Lewis, it's not the only NPS unit with grazing leases still active.

Also not Trump's fault, but the fault of both halves of the duopoly in Congress, which refuse to raise federal grazing rates to match that of private land in the West. About 3 percent of all your Merikkkan beef is grazed on federal land of any sort in its life. About 0.3 percent is grazed on (theoretically) protected federal land. In other words, this wouldn't affect the price of your steak at all.

And, I said both halves of the duopoly?

Look at the related issue of mining, where the government consistently refuses to raise rates and fees for hard-rock mining on federal land. For many, many years, the lead opposition to that was Democratic Sen. Harry Reid. I've long said we need to up both.

Then, there's the issue of inholdings.

A lot of NPS units have them, but Mojave is one of the worst. The boundaries of the preserve, as presented on the park's map as shown on the website and printed on the "trifold" slick brochure have little connection to reality. And, most of the inholdings are ranch land. I originally thought that the shit I saw near the Rings Loop trail was due to inholdings, not grazing leases, until I first checked details of how fences ran and knew it couldn't have been an inholding, then did teh Google and got the link above. 

And we haven't even touched on all the National Recreation Areas in the NPS, most of which are damned lakes behind damned dams, all of which violates the Organic Act. I've called them out for this before.

That said, this isn't new and isn't limited to Mojave. Carsten Lien's excellent book on the history of Olympic has a fair amount of discussion of the dirtiness of the Park Service in general. 

And, speaking of cows and cow shit, let's not forget Point Reyes. 

Texas Progressives roundup — special elections, nature vacations, more

Off the Kuff considers the possibilities for a special election in CD23. 

SocraticGadfly talks about "Death Valley Days" — the heart of his recent vacation, not a remake of the 1950s black and white TV oater.

Even if ERCOT is off by a factor of two, a doubling, not even a quadrupling, of electric power demand in just six years would be massively alarming. 

Will the Texas Medical Board's sanctioning of three doctors over inadequate care for pregnant women with complications, because the doctors were worried about the state's abortion ban, get either the Texas Lege or TMB to further address the issue next year? Probably not. Will yet more OB/GYN docs either quit practice or else leave the state? Possibly. 

Ibogaine clinical trials? Sure, cuz Dannie Goeb, alt-medicine, pseudomedicine and ivermectin in the wingnut world. And, per the story, it's likely a boondoggle.

Allen West: Not wingnut enough for Dallas County GOP. 

The Monthly visits the annual confab of the Philosophical Society of Texas, which can't be too philosophical if Shrub Bush is a member. 

Tech being sued over free speech and Charlie Kirk's death. 

Ten years ago, Elizabeth Bik upended the scientific research publication world. 

Mondoweiss says that Israhell is rushing to do more West Bank settlements because an opportunity is closing. I am skeptical of Dems, if they regain Congress, cutting off aid pipelines that much, especially if Trump vetoed any bill they were a part of. 

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said we must show up for ourselves to speak, or in protest, at Houston City Council at Public Comment Session, Tuesday, 4/21. We must contact Council. Repeal of the ICE ordinance at command of Abbott means Houston is run by the far-right such as the police union.

The Texas Signal wonders what will happen when Texas experiences another disaster.

Pete von der Haar contemplates the Pope.

Your Local Epidemiologist expounds on EKGs and women's health, with a story line on The Pitt as a starting point.

The Dallas Observer checks in on Fort Worth ISD as it starts its taken-over journey.

Franklin Strong presents the Book Loving Texans' Guide to the May 2026 Elections, which this time allows for more of a focus on good candidates than on bad ones.

Proposition 4 will really, really be a boondoggle

I warned you, even before Charles Perry's plan reached constitutional amendment size.

I warned you after the state admitted it didn't know how much water data centers would use. 

Beyond the boondoggle, I also warned you that environmental orgs and the Texas Green Party weren't telling you it was also an environmental disaster in the waiting, and also warned you that High Plains farmers and ranchers like Suzanne Bellsnyder needed to look in the mirror and admit, per the bible, "physician, and rancher, heal thyself."

Well, without even talking about Prop 4, we know Tex-ass' water needs are a lot more pricey than we knew earlier:

Texas communities will need to spend $174 billion in the next 50 years to avert a severe water crisis, a new state analysis revealed Thursday. That’s more than double the $80 billion projected four years ago, when the Texas Water Development Board last passed a state water plan.

Oops.

Per a Trib link, Prop 4 would be a drop in the bucket on that, but the Perrys of the world may see it as an invite to shovel more cash. 

 

Earth Day 2026: And?

As I noted on Shitter, and in comment to a good piece of snark on Substack by friend Lyle Lewis?

Earth Day is the day when pseudoenvironmentalists and environmentalists lite pretend to deeply care about environmental issues. 

But, it's true?

Look at Jared Huffman, claiming to be an environmentalist, except when it comes to letting cows continue to shit in Point Reyes. Result? Cows drive away tule elk. Ravens eat plover eggs when they run out of worms in cow shit. Park Service ignores the former and ropes off a section of Drake's Beach as critical nesting habitat for the latter rather than addressing the actual problem.

Per a piece I heard on NPR this morning, asking listeners what they saw as the biggest problem?

For me, No. 1 is the climate crisis. And, we're past "climate change." The Colorado River is drying up and will continue to do so the rest of this century. We're on target for 4°C, maybe 5°C, of increased heat from pre-industrial times within 100 years. That's 7-9°F. That latter faces neoliberal climate change Obamiacs like Michael Mann, perhaps worse at times for the cause than climate change deniers.

That said, the climate change deniers don't help. And, in the western US, that means increased wildfires, like the KNP Complex Fire in Sequoia five years ago:

Or the Dixie Fire blowing up in Lassen the same year. I was there the day it blew up.

No. 2 is the Sixth Mass Extinction. Besides megafauna and lesser fauna, globalization and related issues threatens a lot of flora. So does mass monocrop agriculture. The chemicals behind that threaten many birds.

No. 3, as Lyle talks about in that piece and elsewhere, is "overshoot," the overextraction of vital resources. Beyond petroleum, water is an obvious one. Overusing the Colorado River is a clear example. Another, as I said in calling out Suzanne Bellsnyder over Proposition 4, is groundwater — in her case, the Ogallala Aquifer.

No. 4 is what's behind all of this — neoliberal capitalism. That's the bottom line.

So, with Earth Day now 56 years old, we can celebrate accomplishments, like the Endangered Species Act in the US, while at the same time note failures, such as US politicians of both duopoly parties, not just Republicans, undercutting it and other environmental issues when they get in the way of capitalist economics. We can globally note Dear Leader conspiring with Xi Jinping to keep the Paris climate accords entirely voluntary. And, we can note climate change Obamiac scientists overselling Paris in the past.

Don't be fooled again. 

That said, a side note or two, riffing on my Earth Day 2016 piece.

National parks not only can get loved to death, they do. This has gotten worse in our COVID and post-COVID world, abetted not only by Trump slashes to federal nature funding, but death by a thousand paper cuts or stasis from Obama and Biden.

Second, Earth Day was founded about urban environmentalism. The record there since 1970 isn't perfect either. But, to be better? Start at home. In cities and towns, pick up trash. Homeowners, businesses and apartment complex owners? Stop overwatering and overfertilizing lawns. Plant native plants. Stop using petroleum-wasting Amazon so much.

Third, lets note that "wilderness" areas don't stay wilderness without management, and at least since not the development of agriculture, but organized pastoral nomads and even large-scale hunter-gatherers, "natural" environments have been managed by humans. Stop calling American Indians "Roussellian noble savages." It tain't so. 

Am I perfect on this? No. I just took a big old jet airplane on vacation, per the Sequoia photo. But, I have a reasonable amount of striving. I boycott a few companies over environmental issues, just like others over Israel. I fight the temptation to use artificial intelligence, and its electricity consumption, beyond already being here on the Net. I stay attuned to local nature. 

Growing number of Texas Dems want Kendall Scudder gone — eventually

I laughed, and cringed a bit as well, when the Texas Democratic Party executive committee elected ConservaDem Kendall Scudder as party chairman a year ago.

After that, I mocked the Texas Observer for uncritically fellating him,  an issue made worse by editor-in-chief Gus Bova personally doing the fellatio.

I laughed more, while doing the critical thinking Bova didn't, when Kendall pissed off a fair amount of TDP leadership and rank and file with his mockable plans to move the party headquarters out of Austin. I'll add now that this smacks of something like Trump's plans for Interior. 

Now? Per the Trib, we're at the point of the header. Three dozen state Dems want him to not run for re-election.  

The letter, signed by a substantial contingent of party insiders, reflects a persistent level of discontent among Texas Democrats after changes made by Scudder, including decentralizing the party’s base from Austin and overhauling staff positions, threw the party into a state of upheaval last fall.

That said, party insiders, such as Executive Director Terri Burk and finance head Vlator Smith, have pushed back hard. And, per the dissidents, even if he didn't run again, you're stuck with him for the almost three years remaining on his current term. Have fun.

Also have to love Kuff taking a full pass on this. (A week later, he still has.)

Looking at the background of James Talarico

The Observer talks about James Talarico's rise starting with his time in Teach for America, above all noting that it gave him an early and strong networking system. The piece is also honest about some of the big money that has helped TFA and its political leadership spinoff, and their support for charter schools.

TFA’s recruitment, with its many rounds of interviews and an ostensible audition, promises to field an annual crop of future leaders in education. For most participants, their plans involve this short stint in the classroom before heading off to work in law, campus administration, policymaking, business, or the sprawling tentacles of the nonprofit industrial complex. TFA is less a teacher preparation program than it is a finishing school for future decision-makers in the multilayered technocracy of education policy, one dominated by elites who have historically boosted charter-school expansion. I am a rarity in that I still teach in the city and campus where I did my TFA stint.

The big names include Netflix' Reed Hastings and LinkedIn's Reed Hoffman, Walton family heirs and former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Read the whole thing, and realize that, if elected, while Talarico will be an agent of change from John Cornyn, he will NOT be an agent of change from standard neoliberal Democracy. 

That networking background helps explain his $27M 1Q campaign haul. 

George Conway, Never Trumpers and Blue MAGA, and the 25th Amendment and general stupidity

This article is based in fair part on an interview that Never Trumper Conway, now running for Congress as a Democrat for Congress, had with the New Republic, and in part on the latest development of my thoughts on the general stupidity of both Never Trumps and Blue MAGA about the 25th Amendment.

Conway's stupidity is reflected in the extended subhed for the story:

Conway, the former GOPer turned Trump critic who’s running for Congress as a Democrat, lays out his case that Republicans will eventually have no choice but to remove the president before his term ends.

Sure they'll have choices, George. That starts with the remaining portion of the part continuing to cower in fear, or however you phrase it. 

Let's do simple math.

For the next Congress, after the midterms, to remove President Donald J. Trump from office by the one means that is a Congressional prerogative — impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate — would require one-sixth (approximately) of Republicans in the Senate to vote aye for conviction. (Impeachment itself needs a simple majority.) Trump could launch a tactical nuke at Iran and that wouldn't happen.

Rethuglicans talking anonymously to Politico is not the same as Rethuglicans casting a record vote, and thinking that, even if they've done good head-counting on paper, an ultimate vote like this is actual nut-cutting, not more academic head-counting. 

Also, re the Anon Y. Mice talking to Politico, with summer vacations coming soon and other items, getting the creaky wheels of Congress to go through and complete the whole process before the November election day? Not happening. (That said, the Politico piece, linked by the TNR, is general bitching; not one of the Mice, let alone a named Trump flunky, mentions actually getting rid of him.)

Conway then raises Option B:

And you see it also in a lot of the Republican influencers—the Megyn Kellys, the Joe Rogans, and the Tucker Carlsons of the world. They’re basically talking about the 25th Amendment now.

Well, as someone who swatted that down, repeatedly, during Trump's first term, let's look at the actual amendment (Wiki link) again. 

The first two sections are about the Veep explicitly becoming president, then the process to get a new Veep, so not relevant here. The third is about a president declaring himself temporarily constrained; it's been invoked more than once during serious presidential medical procedures. 

So, to the "nut graf" of Section 4? In reality, it's more convoluted than most people think, and to the degree Congress might have to become involved, has higher hurdles than impeachment and trial.

Let's dig in:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. 

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department [sic][note 2][7] or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

OK, several things.

One, on the political side, unless Trump clearly has a memory-loss dementia, does Bagger Vance have the balls to initiate this process. You know better than that, and Conway should know better; if he doesn't, he has less business being in Congress than Eric Swallowell. (sic) 

Basically, in anything short of a clear memory-loss type dementia, or a clear brain injury similar in level to JFK's but with a president still living, the 25th Amendment essentially requires a coup d'etat against the president by the vice president, per the first paragraph.

Per the first half of the second paragraph, it requires them to hold their own feet to the fire against an enraged president.

And should that play out, beyond the impeachment process, there's the higher hurdle of how a veep and fellow plotters must convince two thirds of BOTH houses of Congress they're right. 

And, that process plays out over 21 days, plenty of time for plenty of machinations.

Behind all this, and deliberately left vague in the framing of the amendment, what constitutes being "unable to discharge the powers and duties of [the] office," or "inability"?

Back to Conway:

They have a guy who—they’ve overlooked his mental disorders in the past, dismissed them. They’ve overlooked his lies, they’ve overlooked his depravity. They’ve overlooked the fact that he is basically an adjudicated sexual abuser, that he’s a convicted criminal. They overlook these things because it served their purposes. It no longer serves their purposes.

None of those are "inability." You, and some Anon Y. Mice in the GOP, and plenty of Blue MAGA, might not like HOW Trump is "discharging," but that's not the same as "inability."  

Left unaddressed is what if a president fights his way back into power, but then looks worse? There's nothing to stop a veep, with Cabinet backing, to go down this road again. And, there's nothing to stop a president from fighting it again. 

I'll quote more Conway, the next paragraph after the previous quote, which ties to that, and other political issues:

And in terms of what happens in the U.S. Senate—which we can get back to, and why that matters, of course—the Senate is full of cowards. The Republican senators are cowards and they’ve been afraid of Trump.

Yeah, one-sixth of the Senate (plus one-sixth of the House, which Conway doesn't mention and which shows his ignorance of the actual 25th Amendment) ain't doing that. 

I modify that. Later in the piece, Conway indicates his knowledge:

We need to, basically, I think we need to possibly even put criminal sanctions in place for people who refuse to spend the money in accordance with Congress’s will. And there’s also—I talked about this even before I launched the campaign—we need to create that advisory body to act as the judge of whether the president is fit to continue in office, and replace the cabinet.

Yeah. The Washington solution — Congress punting responsibility to a committee, in hopes the problem goes away or resolves itself in 21 days. At the same time, there's more ignorance. Such a body ONLY gets a bite at the apple of the president, not the cabinet, and only comes into play when the veep gets a majority of the cabinet to tell Congress the president isn't fit, if that's what Conway meant. If it just means replacing the cabinet as who makes the call? It still requires the veep to start the process.

Note that "AND" word at the start of Section 4 carefully. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is inoperable without the participation of the sitting vice president. 

And, if you think Bagger Vance has the balls for that? You're really a fucking idiot. 

Finally, as for Conway and other Never Trumpers, whether still Republican or now ex-Republican? No sympathy. Trump was a serial liar, a racist, a thug with Mafia ties and a publicly admitted sexual predator before he was elected the first time. 

==

The 25th Amendment is limited in another way, directly connected to the JFK assassination that inspired it, and that itself could inspire some evil genius to do particular acts. Say that, in Dallas 1963, Oswald's first shots are pretty much as they happened, but the third shot is, say, 1 cm higher. Jack Kennedy survives but is pretty much brain dead. Say that Oswald gets off a fourth shot, or even fourth and fifth, and then takes out LBJ in his car, and he's stone cold dead.

There IS NO Veep to start the 25th Amendment process, and a brain-dead president is unable to nominate one. 

In short, while the 25th Amendment is better than nothing, it's not that good.

It also, for people who worship at either the originalist or liberal originalist, King James Version or New King James Version, of the Constitution of the United States, shows the structural failure of the strong-presidential system of government, at least in the US. (France has an impeachment process similar to the US, but a Google says nothing like a 25th Amendment. That said, like the 25th, it involves a two-thirds vote of BOTH Assembly and Senate, and per Le Monde, is at least as convoluted as the 25th.)

In the UK? If similar were happening? Tories would be looking for a no-confidence vote and trying to round up sufficient Labor, Lib Dems and others in the Commons for a simple majority vote. 

Outpoping the pope on the art of war and the art of blasphemy

Both Bagger Vance and a Catholic priest flunky of Bari Weiss, Gerald Murray, think they know more about the theology of just war and related issues than does Pope Leo XIV.

Bagger Vance is of course fine with authoritarian religious hierarchy as long as its headed by AI Jeebus, Donald Jesus Trump.

But, Leo XIV? Bagger thinks he knows more theology than Leo, in fact warning him:

“I think it's very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” Vance said.

There you are. If you can't teach from The Book of Armaments, Chapter 5, about counting to three before lobbing a Holy MOAB of the Pentagon at Tehran:

You need to shut up, Leo. 

Jokes about AI Jeebus aside, that IS where we're at.

Trump lying, which he does as soon as he wakes up, and claiming he thought that was a doctor.

As I said when first posting the link, Vance doesn't even have the excuse of dementia.

He then gets worse, with a laughable self-own:

Vance said the pontiff should be as careful talking about theology as the vice president is when talking about public policy.

Really? You're as careful about that as you would be about not checking wind direction before peeing outdoors. 

And, beyond Bagger, other elected Rethuglicans, by not calling the piece blasphemy, enable him:

"I know he's trying to be funny, but it was a foolish post," said GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who has been a critic of some of the president's policies. "I saw a lot of Republicans commenting in it last night. Some saying he's just trolling, and others saying it's anti-Christian. When you divide your own party it is self destructive. To me it was a gaudy and juvenile post."

And, yes, Religious Right wingnuts, if they were true to theology (back to YOU, Bagger) would call Trump's AI Jeebus for the blasphemy it is. 

One person actually did:

"The media is paying attention to podcastistan breaking with Trump over Iran," conservative podcaster Erick Erickson wrote on X. "What they really should be paying attention to are the Christian Trump supporters who have stood with him through Iran, who are waking up to his blasphemy."

There you are. 

So, re Bagger, if Satanyahu is the actual Satan of Tel Aviv, then Bagger is the Satan whisperer in Trump's ear, and of course Trump is not telling either one of them to get behind him.

Now, off to Fr. Murray, himself no Brother Maynard. 

He, too, is a liar, right in the subhed of the piece:

Eliminating a nuclear threat from a determined enemy is a noble reason to make war.

He doubles down shortly before the paywall: 

The United States and Israel undertook the attack on Iran principally to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons.

Anybody who knows the truth about Iran knows that it has never actually sought a nuclear weapon. Anybody who knows the truth of the current situation knows that Iran avowed that in the negotiations before Trump started the Iran war at the behest of Satanyahu. 

Even if Iran has one-half metric ton of 60-percent enriched uranium, and even if it would not take that much more work to enrich to 90 percent, you still have to convert that uranium hexafluoride to metal. You have to have, even for a crude U-235 "gun" bomb, the assembly mechanism. You have to have a bomb big enough and an airplane big enough, if you're doing that old method, or a missile big enough, for delivery. 

Israel, on the other hand, already 20 years ago had missiles that could deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in the Middle East. And, that's from a US government-funded organization that writes the bare bones about Israel, but attacked Iraq at the run-up to the Iraq war, and now Iran.

As for why Iran has enriched to the 60-percent mark? The US-Israel dynamic duo brought this on. 

Leo is probably thinking something along the lines of "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest," if Fr. Murray is even on his radar screen. 

This is Murray's first piece for Bari Weiss's Zionists, but his profile page notes he's already a commentater for Fox News. He's also a commentator for EWTN, which Pope Francis accused of bad-mouthing him. For the unfamiliar, Eternal Word Television Network is the Catholic equivalent of a conservative evangelical, but not fundamentalist, Protestant television network.

National Democraps still refuse to address the Zionist element in their room

After the DNC's 2026 meeting last week, many attendees said Israel isn't on their constituent radar. They mentioned these three:

But party leaders say once they’re back home, the conversation shifts dramatically. In interviews, many state party chairs, candidates and elected officials did not name AIPAC or Israel funding as a top-three concern they’re hearing from rank-and-file voters. Instead, it’s the nuts and bolts of the economy that are weighing down their constituencies, they say, with the cost of housing and food and the availability of health care all top of mind.

Really? Inflation isn't caused in part by high gas prices caused by a war against Iran waged at the instigation of Israel? And, at least part of your grassroots constituents know that.

I mean, later on, the story even directly calls out national Democraps' lie by omission: 

During recent focus groups observed by NBC News (produced by Syracuse University and the research firms Engagious and Sago), Democrats in Michigan and Maine voiced significant criticism of Israel’s government around its conduct in the war with Hamas in Gaza, with a handful calling Israel’s actions “genocide.”

The lies were called out more explicitly by one of their own Congresscritters, for doorknob's sake! THIS:

Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., said she polled her own district after the contentious March primary, and her internal survey showed 80% of respondents had heard of AIPAC. “It’s higher than some members of Congress’ name ID in their own districts,” she said. 

Ramirez, of Chicago, said the average voter in her district is mostly concerned about the cost of gas and groceries as well as immigration enforcement overreach. But the “more informed voter,” she said, is agitating against any Democratic alliance with AIPAC. She said DNC leaders would be wise to reconsider how its handling the issue, particularly as it attempts to cultivate a younger generation of leaders.

Denial is a river that doesn't just flow through 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I guess. Neither is peeing on someone's leg and telling them it's raining. 

It's called gaslighting, like that by the Democratic Majority for Israel that I told to fuck off on Substack:

“We’re pleased that the DNC Rules Committee rejected a set of divisive, anti-Israel resolutions. These measures would be a gift to Republicans, would further fracture our party, and do nothing to bring Israelis and Palestinians closer to peace," Democratic Majority for Israel president and CEO Brian Romick said in a statement. "The DNC and party advocates need to keep focus where it belongs — on building a united Democratic Party that can win back Congress this November.”

 It's "divisive" because Zionist genocidalists make it so while appealing to duopoly tribalism.

There you are. And, it's why I said "duopoly exit" on Substack while telling Romick et al to fuck off.

Death Valley Days!

Not the TV show, nor the 20 Mule Team brand of borax that sponsored it, but we'll tie that in soon enough.

I got two and a half days of recent spring vacation time crammed into Death Valley. It was the first time I had been there in a decade. That trip, I think, had just two days even. And, before that, although some part of my mind says I had a brief visit, photo albums show the last visit before that was three days in 2006.

It was time. It was more than time.

Dayum, I shot a LOT of photos there and created a LOT of small albums. 

And, I shot a decent amount of video, too.

I think I finally really realized how much I had missed not being there for a full decade on Day 3 of my visit, when I got to Keane Wonder Mine and saw a pair of chuckwallas getting ready to do the "muskrat love." I'd seen chuckwallas, or a lone male, once before, 20 years ago — at Keane Wonder Mine.

Oh, my god. 

With that, let's dig in, with albums in general order, and a pullout picture from some of them to whet your appetite.

Badwater Day 1. I came in from Pahrump, Nevada, in part to squeeze in every molecule I could of Nevada-priced gas. The side benefit was coming in to Badwater quicker this way, with one of the lovely shots that I like shooting where a highway invites you into the scene. 

I had no idea that the reincarnation of the prehistoric Lake Manly was still in place, but there it was. Heaven or nearly so; one of those "I've seen this and can die in peace moments" while embracing the heat, at about 105.5°F, or 41.5°C at 3:30-4 p.m., as the massive heat wave that had started a week earlier was not dissipating yet.

I was reminded of ice floes at salt crystals emerged from the drying, evaporating lake. The stylized photo shows that.

This feeling increased a day later. 

For a narrative overview, here's a brief video: 

And here's the album.

From there, it was off to the Furnace Creek visitor center, seeing what the official temperature was. "Only" 105.

Then, I got out to Zabriskie Point at sunset. What many people think is Zabriskie Point is actually Manly Beacon. Here it is.

Zabriskie Point is either, on details, where you're actually standing when you walk up from the parking lot, or land to the south. Here THAT is: 

I also shot the second of several Death Valley videos here. (In many case, much more highly compressed versions are in photo albums.)

And, the album is here. 

And thus endeth Day 1.

Day 2 started in Mosaic Canyon. I got there early in the morning to get strong colors when the sun was still largely below the canyon rim. One close-up photo in the album will show the actual mosaic nature.

But let's give you a good, wide color photo.

Album is here. 

After that? 

Salt Creek to see desert pupfish. Here's one of those critters:

While dodging deerfly-like biting flies, I also saw a birding lifer, a pipit. Photos of it and the contrast of Salt Creek, saltier than the ocean, with the bits of green that grow along it, are in the album. 

Next on the agenda? Harmony Borax Works, complete with "20 mule team" wagons and the borax refining ruins. The photo shows it with part of Mustard Canyon's colors in the background. 

 In the album, I've got two descriptor signs giving you the lay of the land. 

If that's not enough, here's a narrative video:

And, after that? It was off to the West Side Road, on the west side of Badwater Basin. 

It's amazing how the various salts can color the water, like various chemical compounds can color the rocks and sand in "painted desert" fashion. Here's the album. 

Then, back to Badwater itself, looking for different angles than Day 1. Here's the results.

It was even hotter than the day before?

"How hot was it?" per old Tonight Show joke? 

This:

At the Furnace Creek Visitor Center, official National Weather Service measurement, 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 25. 

To cool off? Climb to nearly 6,000 feet, or 1,800 meters, of elevation, to Dante's View, where I had never been before. I got a very good sunset — not quite great, because of lack of clouds — with a high-level view of Lake Manly:

And, it was 30 degrees F cooler. And windy, windy, as the video will attest.

Here's the album: 

Day 3?

Getting into the spirit of desert photography, I decided to start the morning going out to the original well at Death Valley once enough Anglos started setting there. The well was eventually marked with a stovepipe, so travelers would find it and it wouldn't be hidden by blowing sand. Stovepipe well? Yes, that's now Stovepipe Wells village.

And, here's a sample of that creativity:

And, here's the rest of the album. (Lepidopterist types will love the painted lady on desert sand.)  

Next, after some putzing around in the area around the Hells Gate highway intersection, it was off to the Keene Wonder Mine. God, what a blast. Second time in my life to see chuckwallas. First time? Solo male 20 years ago, right on this spot, after hiking up the mountainside to the top of the ore tramway. I think at this point I was realizing just how much I'd missed Death Valley in not being here in a decade.

And, here's a male-female pair getting ready to do the muskrat love:

Here's a brief narrative video of the site:

And here's the full album. 

Then, off to Titus Canyon. To hike, not drive through by car. This semi-slot canyon is an iconic place within Death Valley. One photo will show you why:

A brief video will let you hike with me: 

Full album is here:  

We're not quite done yet!

From here, it's a mad dash back out of the park to the east, to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.

Why? Well, the possibility of seeking spring migratory waterfowl, though birding there, even with allowances for cramming in just 90 minutes or a little more of pre-sunset time, wasn't that good.

But, also to see this:

As in, a very, very rare Amargosa pupfish. Given low light conditions and other things, not bad.

The full album has information and links on the nuttery that led to this becoming an NWR. 

==

How did I deal with the heat, some may wonder? That's especially since I'm not 21 or even 41 any more.

First, on my first and second days, I did shorter hiking, especially from noon-5 pm, than on Day 3. Titus Canyon, especially in the shade, was probably 2.5 miles/4 km or a bit more round trip. And, after 5 p.m. day 3, at the wildlife refuge, I did at least that much.

I did feel a touch slightly woozy, to be honest, late afternoon of Day 2; that was when hiking the Natural Bridge trail, if but briefly, then getting out and doing short hiking for better photo angles in a brief album of Artists Palette. It was as much sitting in a vehicle (even with air conditioning generally turned off) but then getting up from a sitting position, getting outside into that heat, and starting to move. (I still at times, at a height of 6-5 or 1.95 meters, have postural hypotension and the heat surely aggravates that whenever I have it.) So, I would stop for a minute and take an extra slug of water before moving on. Ten years ago, and certainly 20, I might have tried to do more — while presumably having some sense of pacing still.

Now, I'll use the climate of Death Valley to transition into a bit about its natural history and geology.

Other than the evaporative humidity of Lake Manly, especially at these temperatures, Death Valley is not just dry, it's VERY dry. In addition to fame for often being the hottest point on the planet, and containing the lowest spot in North America, it's there with the Atacama Desert, Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter and a couple of other spots for driest place, going by relative humidity. (As Lake Manly shows, it does get a full 2 inches/50 mm of rain per year on average even at Badwater.)

The love of Death Valley is in large part the love of geology. And, Death Valley is one of the best places in the world to look at so many different gnarly metamorphic rocks!

That geology is also why it's so dry. Four mountain ranges in all stand between the actual valley and the Pacific Ocean to the west. In the main Sierra Nevada, Mount Whitney at 14,494 feet, or 4418 meters, is about 55 miles or so due west of Badwater. The Panamint Mountains, the easternmost of the four? Telescope Peak (still snowcapped at top in photo and video from Badwater Day 2) is 11,043 feet, or 3366 meters, and only 15 miles, or 25 km, west of Badwater Basin.

On the mountains? The highest ones on the east side, like that Dante's View or higher, can get up to 6500 feet or 2000 meters. So, a pressure system that would come in from the east can't bring much rain either.

On the geology, it's an extreme example of the entire "Basin and Range province," all slip-strike type faulting, then collapses on fault lines, in the period between the formation of the Rocky Mountains and that of the Sierra Nevada. Beyond embracing the general existential nature, it's just a fascinating place to stare at rocks in all sorts of different light levels.

So, on an unseasonable 110F in late March, or a semi-normal 125F in July? Your relative humidity will not just be below 20 percent. It will probably be below 15 percent, and maybe down to a flat 10 percent.

And that, combined with no shade from no trees, is how an extreme desert can kill. You lose water not just from perspiration, but respiration out your lungs.

It's also why the third wagon on the borax train was a water wagon. Even with mules' conservativism with water versus horses, you needed to haul that much for them, plus the people driving the wagon.

As for the ruggedness of the rock in general, California has some other good sites for that, like Point Reyes, but nothing compares overall to Death Valley. Big Bend here in Texas is the one other larger-scale landscape that's halfway in the same ballpark.