SocraticGadfly

Texas Progressives look at the rest of Merikkka

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 14:59:17 +0000

I split my version of this week's Texas Progressives roundup into two parts. The in-Texas stuff comes later this week.

Democratic insurgents are stepping front and center, as Abdul El-Sayed looks to get the US Senate nod in Michigan (as Elissa Slotkin tries to surf between the lines) and Francesca Hong (recently profiled by Klippenstein) leads the race for Wisconsin's gubernatorial nod, despite incumbent Tony Evers' meddling. It appears lessons from Maine and elsewhere are being learned slowly, if at all. And, to the degree insurgents are staking out antizionist stances, the old guard may not be learning them at all. Ken now has an update piece about both.

Matthew Cole and Max Blumenthal are in various stages of legal battles against the government on its attempts to discover sources on their electronic devices. In Max's case, the problem was instigated by the person I called "Loony Laura Loomer, lying lizard."

Your Local Epidemiologist urges everyone (Republicans) to leave Dr. Fauci alone already. I will, YLE, if he admits his many screwups, which I rounded up in writing about his not-totally-noble original Platonic lie (also calling out his defenders, which include you), a follow-up less noble yet Platonic lie about herd immunity, followed by the set of non-public, totally ignoble, less than Platonic lies exposed by his emails. Kuff, if you're going to include a link like this in your version of the roundup, it's not going to run here without being thoroughly backgrounded. Rand Paul et al are largely full of shit, but Fauci is a piece of work himself.

Southworst officially shits the bed — personal vacation experience, non-Zionist version

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

For “Southworst,” we’re talking about the legacy airline (you are) officially called Southwest, and for non-Zionist version, we’re riffing on Paul Singer, creator of Elliott Investment Management, to whom the then-current Southworst board and top brass repeatedly and incrementally caved in to in 2024-25, and who is himself indeed an ardent Zionist.

(On that? Washington Report on Middle East Affairs wrote back in 2019 about Singer’s efforts to fund growth in Israel’s high-tech industry. In other words, spyware like Pegasus may be in part funded by the guy who now owns a chunk of Southworst. And, a year earlier, Mondoweiss called out New Yorker for “Zion-washing” its profile of Singer. I have added both links to his Wiki profile; we’ll see if the changes stick. Given Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales’ own well-known Zionism, I won’t hold my breath.)

The first cave (for the general public) was eliminating the old iconic “cattle car” open seating in fall 2024. (The actual first cave was a month earlier, with six board members stepping down and chairman and former CEO Gary Kelly agreeing to leave not too long later.)

As regular Southworst fliers know, the company ended its iconic “bags fly free” in the summer of 2025.

I had not, before that, taken a non-Southwest flight anywhere in more than a decade, probably since Southworst decided to not follow legacy airlines in not charging for checked bags.

That was even though, in October 2024, among the other changes, it had indicated bags would still fly free because an internal survey, per this story, said:

Southwest, which has built years of advertising campaigns around bags-fly-free, estimated that bag fees would raise about $1.5 billion a year, but eliminating the perk could drive away passengers, costing the airline $1.8 billion, or a net loss of $300 million a year.

But, nine months later, they decided to charge for bags anyway.

As a result, I flew American out of DFW rather than Southworst out of Love Field for New Year’s week time off last year.

OK.

Summer vacation time.

Closest major or semi-major airport to Yellowstone is Salt Lake City. Bozeman, Montana, actually had a nonstop on the AA, but omigod the rental car price difference humongous and not worth it.

So, Southworst it was.

And, my non-free bags, I learned, certainly didn’t pay to improve the flight experience. They probably are doing nothing but enriching Singer’s moneybags, which as a good Zionist, to get back to the second part of the header, means, they’re enriching Satanyahu’s bags, a legionary demon I am currently powerless to drive out.

And, Southworst it was.

Outbound from Love Field? More than an hour late.

Why? Our pilot was running another bird, and it was running late. Southworst has a habit of doing this. It’s happened to me personally at least once, if not twice, before.

Return from SLC? About 2.5 hours late. Our bird was coming with our pilot from Baltimore, and who knows where before that. The Midwestern heat dome and too early in the day for heavy thunderstorms shouldn’t have delayed it that much. But it did, including delays before Magic City.

But this is the new Southwest, per this airline industry website piece that notes it is LITERALLY at the bottom of the heap now on on-time percentage. Header:

65% On-Time: Southwest Falls From America’s Most Punctual To Rock Bottom
In 6 Months

Just wow.

Now, the piece notes this is in part due to Southworst’s flight model, which, while not fully point-to-point, is quasi-so, with a semi-hub backbone of sorts. (I long ago saw a term for this, never wrote it down or saved the website, and have never seen it again.) It does mean fewer cancellations, but at the expense of delays that mount up more and more, as well as spreading more and more within the system. Like a Zionist virus? Yes, I went there.

And, after giving you one chance? As I texted back on my Sunday phone alert when told my return flight would run late, after starting with “Fucktards,” said I would be looking American-first again on future flights.

Now, if only McKinney, northeast of Dallas, could expand their soon-to-be commercial airport and get Delta, United or — whoever else is left among the legacy, not the enshittified from the start JetBlue airlines of the world — anybody else reasonable there, per my story about signing up with the AA.

“Enshittification,” he said, per Cory Doctorow.

Yes, and like Southworst’s flight delays dominoing because of their operations model— and also, their long-enshittified crew scheduling software and system still not supposed to be updated until 2028, because “the chariots and horsemen and Merkavas and Uzis of Israel” need more money or something — this dominoed. (Anyway, the main point is that Southworst’s bags fees aren’t paying yet for fixes. If Paul Singer really cared, this would be addressed by now.)

My rental from Hertz? I didn’t thoroughly check when I left SLC’s rentals lot. I noticed when I stopped for a Coke in Ogden or wherever, that the back of the passenger side mirror was gone. Didn’t take a photo at the time, because, running late and Grand Teton is a long ways away. I didn’t notice until even later, and didn’t include it on my initial post-return report to Hertz, which enshittifiedly (I can invent that word) is limited to 500 words, that the vehicle had no driver’s floormat, either, so who knows how long it had been since they’d really checked it anyway? So now we get to see if Hertz accepts that, if that rental car insurance peddled by Travelocity is actually worth anything and more.

The 2.5 hours late on return flight? I didn’t get back home until midnight Sunday night/Monday, and didn’t get unwound enough and late-night fed enough to sleep until after 2 a.m. As I type this on Tuesday, I remain in a bit of brain fog. (SLC being hotter than the greater Metromess didn’t help, nor, probably, did me hiking in 100-plus heat up to the last half-hour before having to return the rental.)

I also couldn’t stop by a Barnes & Noble on the way home, as originally planned, to try to snag a copy of the new issue of Dave Campbell’s Texas Football, de rigueur for people in my line of work here in Tex-ass.

Scratch that. B&N ain’t open at 11 p.m. It would be (I think) at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday.

As for a vauntedly low cancellation rate? Per the Transportation Department itself, cancellations are the cause of ONLY ONE PERCENT of late arrivals. Do NOT NOT NOT let Southworst gaslight you on that.

Plus, isn’t a delay of 2.5 hours essentially a cancellation anyway?

Or, to put it in Paul Singer terms?

About 2.5 hours may be how often in a day an Israeli kills a Palestinian.

There.

If there were a god, I’d think I was being punished for some moral violations. I don’t even have that opening.

Southworst are also chickenshits. Can't find a specific email address I want on the website. They've deserted Shitter, with an account inactive for 2-plus years, as well as deserting Book of Face, where I no longer am. (They have no linked logo for either account.) They're not on Threads or Instagram, either. Only LinkedIn and Pinterest of all things. Social media as turd polishing is what that one is.

Loony Laura Loomer, lying lizard

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

It's for the alliteration, not David Icke, but if a non-antisemitic anti-Zionist shoe pinches? So be it.

LLL, for short, walks, talks and quacks like being a paid Ukrainian agent while in lying denial of how she got to this point. Here's that:

“I’ve come to realize I was bamboozled by Russian propaganda and I came to believe a lot of untrue things about Ukraine. I used to think that this was a country full of Nazis,” Loomer told Zelenskyy as she interviewed him for her show on Rumble, an online video platform.

Loomer blamed her indoctrination on getting banned by American social media platforms, leading her to try Telegram, where Russian media is widely shared.

I quoted the second of those two paragraphs when I posted the link to Shitter Monday night, the Shitter where LLL is a blue-check verified (and "verified!") account that I tagged. It's an account that's active and used regularly.

Per this piece, that's the same Shitter that did NOT ban her when she raised anti-Russian conspiracy theories about the "why" of Lindsey Graham's death. I actually thought the Zionist god of Elijah, the god of "the chariots and horsemen and Merkavas and Uzis of Israel," had called him home. On Shitter at the time of Huckleberry J. Butchmeup's death and claims by her and others to this end, I joked about Vlad the Impaler shooting him in the butt with a polonium-210 pellet, but seeing that it was a cardiac problem that killed him, I said that was more likely to have come from snorting too many lines of coke with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Zionist and other neocon reptilians, Jew and Goy alike, lie out their asses in Hitlerian ways, of course.

Back to the first piece, and this:

Loomer has said repeatedly that Ukraine did not finance her trip and insisted she had traveled in her own capacity.

“I can guarantee you I wasn’t paid by anybody. I certainly wasn’t paid by the government of Ukraine to come here,” she said.

Really?

Per the book of Proverbs, the guilty flee when nobody is pursuing. Sounds like you probably are paid and are trying to get ahead of the game.

Other parts of her nuttery talk about Ukraine being Mooslimrein, but seeming to insinuate Russia has problems because it's NOT Mooslimrein.

Maybe Jim Stiles wasn't all wrong, and not just about Utah's red rock country

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

These thoughts were provoked by this Substack piece about a Wilderness Study Area on the South Fork of the Crooked River.

For the unknowing, here are two definitional points.

First, here's what a wilderness study area is:

Wilderness Study Areas (WSAs) are lands that have outstanding features such as naturalness, opportunities for solitude and recreation, and other qualities that make them suitable for inclusion in the National Wilderness System. Other factors used to determine eligibility as a WSA were historic, scientific, geological, ecological, or scenic values.

There you go.

Second, there are several activities prohibited in actual wilderness lands. (Unfortunately, per the piece above, cow shit is not one of them. "Mr. Reclamation," per Marc Reisner in "Cadillac Desert," Colorado Western Slope Congresscritter Wayne Aspinall, insisted that shitting cows be allowed to remain inside wilderness areas before he'd let the eventual 1964 Wilderness Act see the light of day.

One of them is "mechanical transport," which, per this federal law site, has always been understood to include bicycles. Mountain bikers hate this. Too bad.

With that said, yes, a wilderness study area is not wilderness. But, it's preserved in wilderness-like status.

So, why the hell is the Oregon Desert Land Trust promoting mountain biking in the South Fork of the Crooked WSA? I quote:

Spanning both sides of the river, the South Fork Crooked River parcel helps ensure public access to fishing, hunting, hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding in the basin.

Yeesh.

And, I have emailed both their "info" general contact email and their executive director. I've heard nothing back.

As in, I started writing this piece two weeks ago, before I went on vacation, and have heard nothing back.

Friend Lyle Lewis suspects they want their capitalist piece of the action, so that's surely why.

So, that gets me to where I say the late, long-term Moabite curmudgeon Stiles was maybe more than half right.

Or maybe still less than half right.

Directly relevant to the current environmental and land preservation situation, Stiles went apeshit, not over Trump shrinking Bears Ears, but Dear Leader wanting to preserve it better (sort of) a decade ago.

And, on that part of the story, Stiles was dead wrong. As of 18 months ago, 65 percent of Utahns wanted to keep both it and GSE as is, as part of expressing support for all monuments "as is." That said, I'm not sure if that means size unchanged, or just keeping them rather than eliminating them. Of that, 51 percent were "definitely" in favor. And, 54 percent of Utah Republicans were in favor, with 30 percent definitely in favor.

The Substack that comes from fudged a bit. Yes, more than 71 percent approve of keeping Bears Ears, but that's without the "as is," which is for all national monuments.

Speaking of? My comments on this Substack that "branding" by naming both GSE and Bears Ears National Park Service national monuments from the start might have helped is getting a lot of support. And, several commenters agree with my take on the modern Democratic party.

Texas Progressives round up the news of the region

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Off the Kuff goes back to the future with the latest school finance lawsuit, filed by Midland ISD.

Neil at Houston Democracy Project Blog said Hitchcock City Council in Galveston County voted to reject formal cooperation with ICE. They said it would tank local trust in law enforcement & placed concern for people of Hitchcock over Abbott & Trump.

SocraticGadfly wondered if, post-Trumpian world, more and more public radio and TV that are university-affiliated or owned will sever ties.

Texas Monthly celebrates Butthole Surfer Summer.

CultureMap introduces us to the 2026 State Fair of Texas' music lineup.

Gwen Howerton is being driven insane by crappy AI-generated flyers around Houston.

D Magazine is done with the Alamo Drafthouse.

Deceleration reports on anti-ICE activity in San Antonio.

Law Dork recounts the many screwups of the Trump Justice Department in their effort to subpoena reporters from the New York Times.

Franklin Strong finds a whole bunch of classic books that have been removed from school libraries, and says that was an intended effect of the school library censorship law.

Texas Progressives

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:11:00 +0000

The Texas Progressive Alliance hopes that the Guadalupe River takes a nice long break from flooding in the future as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff enjoyed the political theater of an illegal voting complaint filed against Ken Paxton for his incorrect voter registration.

SocraticGadfly talked about how data centers have their expansions all planned in advance. .

Your Local Epidemiologist answered your cyclospora questions.

City of Yes celebrated rowhomes.

Deceleration lauded human-created art.

The Austin Chronicle reported on the Texas GOP's obsession with IVF and surrogacy.

Texas Monthly examined the longstanding fight to keep Galveston wild.

In the Pink Texas found the week's most important news.

Snowden and "his" files and the Intercept

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:00:00 +0000

I've never been a 100 percent fan of Edward Snowden. While noting that, in balance, he did a service to the country, he also has his fair share of lies and more, stuffing full the pages of "Permanent Record," as I noted after reading it.

That said, I had long wondered what his reaction was to Glenn Greenwald, with agreement of Jeremy Scahill and others at The Intercept, but withOUT advance agreement from Laura Poitras, turning over the 95 percent of the files that had not been used, to Intercept owner and Nat-Sec Nutsacks™ techdudebro player Pierre Omidyar.

I already knew that Glennwald had kind of "used" him, while still wondering if somebody in Russia had honeypotted him in the first place.

Turns out, on Snowden, per a Blogger site called Electrospaces that I stumbled upon while doing some searching on teh Google for stuff related to Scahill's time at The Intercept, he didn't know in advance, and reading between the lines, didn't fully like it.

That said, while we still haven't seen those other documents, per pieces at Electrospaces in both 2023 and earlier this year, we have had new writing about at least bits of those other documents. (That latter is more about peering around the edges of already published files that may have had bad redacting work.)

R/AskHistorians mods are pretendian leftists as well as unethical

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 22:47:00 +0000

A couple of years ago, I was banned from the subreddit because I challenged their claims that every European interaction with American Indians was genocidal. Read more here.

About 9 months after that, one of the mods — without disclosing that they were one of the mods — used Reddit research tools to ask me and other people banned from the sub about our experiences.

I reported that person, Sarah Gilbert, as a Cornell prof, to the people overseeing the research project. Those people said it was an accident and did nothing further, including not throwing out my responses. As I noted, this meant, accident or not, that the research was not appropriately "blinded."

OK, I had already thought their leftism was kind of an identitarian tribalism. I actually, before being banned, called them "librulz" and "pseudoleftists."

A few weeks ago, looking up possible critiques of Edward Baptist's "The Half Has Never Been Told" and Sven Beckert's "Empire of Cotton," I come across a piece from R/AskTribalistHistorians. [sic]

And, they throw both under the bus, specifically using a critique by a pair of economic historians who are clearly mainstream neoliberals. Here's an academic piece on the same subject by the pair, Alan Olmstead and Paul Rohde. Interestingly, they list Beckert among people assisting them, but not Baptist. From my own email interactions with him, he probably told them to fuck off.

Further refudiating these non-leftists and neolibs and upholding the broad thesis of Baptist and Beckert? Mark Peterson, in "The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution," notes that in 1860, MISSISSIPPI had the highest per-capita income of any state. Yes, today's "at the bottom" Mississippi. Also, remember that, whether at 100 percent or 3/5 a person, that per capita included Black slave numbers. Toss that out, and it's even worse. (Note: The Census had per capita income estimates by region, not cold facts by state, but the Lower Mississippi, led by Mississippi cotton and Louisiana sugar, led the country.)

In any case, my first impressions of r/AskTribalistHistorians got confirmed.

Post-Trump, will public media stations with university ties reconfigure?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

I say this over Austin's KUT firing its general manager last month. Indirectly, at least, the firing seems related to the political big chill that has descended on the UT System, as well as the A&M and Texas State university systems, in the past 18 months.

This:

Is the nut graf.

The festival dispute raised questions about UT-Austin’s relationship with KUT. The university holds the station’s broadcast license, KUT employees are university staff and the newsroom is housed in the Moody College of Communication. But the station says it operates with editorial independence and relies almost exclusively on donations rather than university funding.

Does KUT think it still has editorial independence?

That's especially with the Evangelist [sic, see story name] who fired Hiott telling PR lies in a folo story.

If not, what are its options? Note that I said "post-Trump." Before then, it surely has no options.

After that, unless we get an even bigger wingnut, it can either try to wrest the current license from the university, or apply for a new one, and if it gets it, set up shop on its own.

That said, KUT is nowhere near alone in this predicament, per another public station, KISU, affiliated with Idaho State:

More than half of NPR’s 1,000 member stations are licensed to or affiliated with colleges or universities, according to NPR’s website. A 2019 PBS article listed 49 university and college public television licensees, a majority of which belong to public institutions—many of them flagship or public land-grant universities, but some community and technical colleges as well.

Ouch. Now, as the likes of Dick Tofel have written about nonprofit-status newspapers, any situation with a nonprofit boss is fraught. But, the media landscape? Even more.

And, no, it's not just "red" states. I don't know if Harvard or other Ivies have NPR stations or not, but we're at two-plus years and counting of their Zionist-based anti-Palestinian stances.

New Reddit blocks

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 19:26:00 +0000

Slayer of Deez Nuts. NAFO Nazi or fellow traveler. Accuses people like me of being ignorant.

Nikki Smithson. Some weird-ass poe-er.

"Without Precedent" but WITH looking at Scotus through left hand of the duopoly framing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights by Lisa Graves
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

~~3.5 stars rounded down.~~ 3.0 stars period at the end of my thoughts, per the bottom. Little new for a deep reader. I hadn't before read the details of Gorsuch's frat-boy college life, but could have found them elsewhere, and didn't know that Barrett, as well as Roberts and Kavanaugh, was involved with Bush v. Gore work.

And, that's it.

It's written from the left hand of the duopoly.

And, as a non-duopoly voter (and no, I didn't "really" vote for Trump; shut up), it's got holes.

Take the "god" chapter. Never mentions the Bladensberg Cross case (technically American Legion v American Humanist Association, nor Breyer's disastrous concurring opinion (with Kagan riding along), written in part, IMO, to make his opinion in Van Orton into precedent.

Or, beyond "god," take the "First Amendment" chapter.

I'm sorry, there is none. So we don't get to read the reality of Ginsburg bagging on Colin Kaepernick and other issues.

Beyond that, Democratic-appointed justices past and present have at times been squishes on civil rights and related issues, especially if they involve people arrested for crimes. So far, Ketanji Brown Jackson has been pretty good, but who knows if that will last. (Related? Don't forget that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act was passed while the Slickster was prez. The Senate could have easily overriden a veto, but he might have gotten enough representatives to change their minds to sustain. That, of course, was just one of several issues where Clinton squished out in 1996.)

And, IMO, contra the author, this is as serious issue as Congress, in 1988, passing the Supreme Court Case Selections Act of 1988 that, as cited by her, lessened the Supreme Court's mandatory cases. But, Reagan was president in 1988, so from a duopoly framework, it's easier to bag on this than bag on Clinton.

This Wiki page shows a decline in rulings before 1988 that moderately accelerated for a few years after that, but looked like the decline might be slowing down again, until after 1996.

Finally, per her epilogue, and the background to it, Trump v United States, one can indeed argue it was wrongly decided, but the ruling was not 100 percent de novo. Related? Blame the Nixon Administration's Office of Legal Counsel within the DOJ for wrongly claiming that sitting presidents can't be indicted, and blame John Sirica and Leon Jaworski for accepting that idea. See here.

In other words, the idea of the president as king has a longer history than Graves presents, and the left hand of the duopoly, or at least people touted by it, have played their part in making that what it is.

I could rate it lower than 3.0 stars, and I could give it the mendaciousness tag, but I'm holding off. Graves believes these things sincerely, so I won't accuse her of conscious mendaciousness. Yes, I could say "Mendacity," but I used the other word for my bookshelf and besides, I'm an editor; I can invent that word. For similar reasons, it didn't get the "disappointment" tag but it DID get the "meh" tag. Otherwise, I won't rate it lower than 3 stars because it's good for showing how the left hand of the two-party duopoly can go down a tribalist road.

Yes, the left hand of the duopoly is better than the right hand, but that's small potatoes. And, per what I said early in the review, it wouldn't surprise me if Graves saw my takes and did claim that I "really voted for Trump."

And, all of the above is once again why the annual four-year cry of #BlueAnon, "Oh the SCOTUS," sways me not.

View all my reviews

Texas Progressives are steaming hot about ICE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

UNT kills "ICE Pops" art display by Victor Quiñonez. I would have done to see it had I known about it. Per the story, then-Provost Michel McPherson, now a senior advisor to UNT President Harrison Keillor, pushed to kill it to suck up to Strangeabbott and the Lege. UNT strikes me more and more as being more and more Nazi even beyond state-mandated anti-DEI initiatives and other things. Anyway, to see what UNT's Nazis didn't want you to see, click the link.

Off the Kuff has written multiple times about Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the Houston resident killed by ICE.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project reported on what each member of Houston City Council initially said the day after the ICE killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. Many are calling for an independent investigation now. Thatâ€™s not quite what most of them said at first however.

SocraticGadfly, like many others, spent 20 minutes visiting with Mitch McConnell, and was fortunate enough to see Dr. Jeebus H. Trump apply his ministrations.

The Monthly looks at what happened to all the Texas public school teachers who actually or reportedly said mean things about Charlie Kirk, including noting an active lawsuit by the Texas branch of the American Federation of Teachers against TEA and its head Nazi, Mike Morath.

The Monthly also then looks at the rise of anti-Indian sentiment in Frisco, and notes that in many cases, it's actually coming from outside Frisco.

Jose Ralat supports Tex-Mex restaurants charging for their chips and salsa.

Chris Tackett calls out Republican blame evasion.

Levi Asher defines the three jobs of a campaign manager.

The Barbed Wire introduces us to the Weird Moms of Fort Worth.

The Texas Signal introduces us to YouTuber and Christian right antagonist Taylor Leigh.

Bayou City Sludge has some feedback for the Houston Chronicle's op-ed page.

Texas data center behemoths have this all planned out

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:52:00 +0000

The Trib talks about how how much greenhouse gas emission would be caused by the plants, not that any climate change denialists running Tex-ass government actually care.

The story also notes that, even if built inside a city limits, with more restrictions, Big Tech companies with high-dollar lawyers will look for and find any and all loopholes in local government zoning and development ordinances.

This, on a site in Abilene:

In 2024, Stargate’s developers secured permission to operate 10 gas-powered turbines and 62 backup diesel generators through minor permits known as “permits by rule” and “standard permits.” Under the minor permits, Stargate’s fleet of turbines and generators are currently allowed to emit more than 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases and 1,000 tons of combined harmful air pollutants every year. Despite being permitted for continuous use, Stargate’s developer, Crusoe, told Floodlight that the turbines will only be used for back up power.

Widely understood to be used by low-level polluters across the country, these permits don’t require environmental studies, public notice or public comment periods, according to experts like Kathryn Guerra, who spent nearly four years at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality before joining the watchdog group Public Citizen.

“Those lower level permits get granted very quickly and often without the public knowing,” Guerra said — and “that feels pretty intentional.”

But, it's not just them:

Since 2024, at least 38 data centers across Texas have received minor permits to operate on-site power sources, according to a Floodlight analysis. As a result, Texas regulators quietly sanctioned the use of more than 2,100 backup diesel generators across the state.

Activist residents, you need to get your city and county governments to close every loophole they can, and agree to not sign nondisclosure agreements. The story goes on to note that some of these companies — more than half, per the story — are finally calibrating their emissions, up to just 1/10 of a percent or so of tripwires for more stringent permitting.

Because what comes next is moving from minor permits after initial buildout to request for more major permits.

We also, beyond the local level if their hands are tied, need to lean on TCEQ. And lean on the Lege to give TCEQ more staffing:

“The data center industry is expanding at a rate that is beyond the capability” of TCEQ to sufficiently regulate, Guerra said, adding that the agency’s enforcement backlog consists of more than 1,400 cases.

“This past year, they were able to resolve 39 of those 1,400 cases. At that rate, it’s going to take them 35 years to resolve all of them,” she said.

“Every single permit that this agency issues, in my opinion, is one more than they can effectively regulate,” she added.

Oh, I have no doubt, and that's even if the TCEQ WANTS TO regulate that much, itself an assumption.

And, it notes that the people elected to oversee these governments, and the staff appointed to do much of the actual running thereof, are suckers for promises and so, all too willing to sign nondisclosure agreements.

A related story talks about pushback against data centers in the Lufkin area.

Why you shoud tell the National Park Foundation to fuck off when it asks for money

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Its sponsorship and organization of Dear Leader's neoliberal-based celebration of the National Park Service's centennial was, is and should be reason enough. (I warned about that already in 2014. I also noted that NPS head Jonathan Jarvis wanted to extend the neoliberalism beyond the centennial.)

I also also noted that under Dementia Joe, the National Park Foundation massively increased its sellout.

If it isn't?

Its America 250 wing becoming a shell corporation for Trump's Freedom 250 is plenty more reason.

Public Notice and The Ringer both have good articles.

I noted myself, just two months into Trump 2.0's term, that the NPF seemed to be going in the tank.

Big Bend border wall update briefs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 17:36:00 +0000

As CBP continues to schwaffle about any plans to put up a physical border wall in the Big Bend area, Forrest Wilder at the Monthly continues to wonder how much good it would do, especially an anti-vehicle version.

At the Observer, Sam Karas agrees on the stupidity while warning all of us not to take any premature victory laps whenever we here claims that walls aren't going up in Big Bend. A very good point.

A historic Catholic chapel in Mission will not be cut off by border wall construction there; Team Trump had threatened eminent domain to take over the land. (Good thing it wasn't Mooslim; it would be crushed.)

RIP Huckleberry J Butchmeup aka Lindsey Graham

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 18:00:00 +0000

The South Carolina Senator has died, reportedly after a brief and unexpected illness.

Note my addition of "reportedly." Do you really believe this? If so, I've got space at a straight-folks only nude beach in Charleston for sale.

Speaking of, will Gay Trowdy, I mean Trey Gowdy, and Tim Scott be pallbearers? Named in the will?

And how fitting that Nancy Mace is interested in filling the seat. A walking big boob to be followed by a walking pair of big boobs, especially if there's a walking pair of boobs carrying the casket.

On the more serious side, Graham lied on behalf of Israel and Ukraine, and on behalf of himself, when he folded like a cheap suit to Trump after saying he wouldn't. That's doubly true, per AP's political obit story, after Jan. 6, 2021.

Meanwhile, the most laughable political obits will surely be the ones coming from Never Trumpers, like what Steve Schimdt penned. Know what, Steve? Had Havana Ted or Huck his own self gotten nominated in 2016, half of Trump 1.0's executive changes would still have been done, we would have gone largely down the same road on Israel as reality and even worse in Ukraine.

They're the hypocrites as much as Graham, as fellow "Three Amigos" per the AP story, John McCain and Joe Liberman, would be supporting Trump's war on Iran for the sake of Israel if alive today. Graham may not have been a personal piece of shit the way McCain was, per my takedown obit, but no, on geopolitics, he was not alone, other than the fold to Trump. (I never did a takedown obit on Lieberman; today, digging up his carcass, stuffing it on an airplane and throwing it out over Gaza would be enough.)

That said, yes, dishonest, too.

If he'd been more honest, maybe Dr. Jeebus H. Trump would have visited him just like McConnell.

Meanwhile, for yesterday's conspiracy theory nutters on Shitter?

Yes, Russian President Vlad the Impaler Putin, learning from shooting Litvinenko with a Polonium-210 pellet, shot Lindsey Graham with digoxin. A more likely cause of heart-attack death would be Graham snorting too many lines of coke with Zelensky.

At least we know that some late-life fast-onset version of AIDS didn't kill him. Right?

The reality is that he beat Mitch to the heart attack finish line.

More cold water thrown on Elizabeth Loftus

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

I have repeatedly, for years, many more times than once, called out Elizabeth Loftus and her claims on child memory.

At that "many more" link, I first estimated that she may have made as much as $500,000 for her "expert witness" testimony in courtrooms. I also called her out for erecting what I called a stereotypically Freudian version of memory repression and using that as a strawman.

And, now, without her being named by name, it turns out that claims like hers are overblown.

The two authors, a post-doc researcher and a professor of child psychology, both at University College London, did metadata type work on 49 studies covering almost 40,000 people.

This:

Over an average gap of two and a half years, people’s memories of maltreatment barely budged, supporting the case for using a single time-point assessment in both research and clinical practice. That said, we still don’t know whether this stability holds over longer stretches of time, so more research is needed.

Is the key.

So, unless there's a particular psychologist trying to ramp up their career with something like ritual satanic abuse claims, listen to the kids, just like listening to the women.

The authors do introduce caveats, but these caveats still don't give carte blanche to Loftus-type claims:

That’s not to say memory is perfect. About one in five people did change their response over time. This shouldn’t be read as evidence that someone was lying, though.

Memories can shift for all sorts of reasons, such as how someone comes to interpret what happened to them, ordinary quirks of memory, how comfortable someone feels disclosing sensitive information in a given setting, or simple human error.

This is why any record of maltreatment disclosure, whether in research or in clinical practice, should also capture the context in which it was made. This may well shape how consistently that account holds up later.

There you are.

Near the end, the pair has one more observation that pretty directly kneecaps Loftus:

Finally, we found that while adults’ memories of childhood maltreatment were very stable over time, young people’s memories of maltreatment were less stable and decreased over longer gaps between assessments.

Boom.

I too talked to Mitch the Kentucky Turtle for 20 minutes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 18:38:00 +0000

I am so going to MAGAts hell …

Plenty of people are claiming to have talked to the Kentucky Turtle for 20 minutes, I guess in some Pythonesque attempt to prove he’s not quite dead yet:

I am really going to MAGAts hell now.

Let’s start with the unreported people speaking with the Kentucky Turtle, if not for 20 minutes.

First: Dr. Jeebus H. Trump, of course.

“He laid hands on the young boy on his head and said to him, “Talya koum!” (which means “Little boy, I say to you, get up!”). Immediately the boy looked as he was starting to raise up from the hospital bed and began to slide out of the hospital bed as if to walk around (he was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give him something to eat.”

Next, Elaine Chao:

“Xi says hello and he’s going to let us name a Chinese merchant vessel after you. Oh, I have to go back to China. We’re negotiating a new trade deal. Don’t you like that I got people to stop worrying about you by saying that I didn’t need to come back here originally?”

Rand Paul:

“I wanted to thank you for your inspirational leadership as the senior senator from Kentucky and how I can’t wait to take over.”

Thomas Massie:

“Mitch, if only I could have gotten you to be a real fake anti-MAGAt. I’ll run for your seat after you’re dead.”

Gov. Andy Beshear:

“As a cojones-free Democrat, I of course can’t say who I will choose to fill your seat if you should die and need a short-term successor, because I can’t do that, because I couldn’t stop your fellow Republicans from removing that power from me.”

Kim Davis:

“Is it true that you were secretly homosexual? Maybe God punished you in advance with polio. Oh, if I were in power, I wouldn’t sign your death certificate. Besides, you married a non-Merikkkan woman.”

John Marshall Roberts:

“Thanks for all your help with the Supreme Court. If you’ve committed any potential crimes, or want to commit any actual crimes before you die, we’ll fix it for you with a special ruling.”

Alison Lundergan Grimes (pronounced Alice in Wonderland Crimes):

“I am glad to have represented military ConservaDems losing races to Republicans by falling to you in 2014. I’m sad that I can’t lose again to a great patriot like you.”

Scott Jennings:

“It’s me sir, Scott Jennings, not the Jeopardy guy. But I’m sure you’ll inspire lots of Jeopardy rounds in the future.”

Bagger Vance:

“There’s nothing I can say beyond what our lord and savior Donald John the Evangelist Trump has already said.”

Buck Dharma:

“Don’t fear the reaper. Let Juliet Elaine fix you up with some Chinese fentanyl.”

The Socratic Gadfly:

“Back up, everybody.

“Sorry, Buck, the Mitch bot’s hardware is frozen again. He can’t break on through to the other side right now. He’s frozen so stiff he can’t become a frozen stiff.”

(Opens Chao’s purse, looks. Finds a vial. Opens it.)

“This shit, Buck? Xi ripped her off. Fentanyl with a 98 percent sugar cut. I’d get out of that shipping deal, too, if not too late, Elaine.

“As for you, Bagger? There’s nothing you can say, period.

“As for you, Kim Davis? Go thou and do likewise.

“Where did Grimes go? Oh, she disappeared? And Beshear with her? Shock me.

“John Marshall Roberts? If only I could get all of America’s non-duopoly voters to elect me, I’d play Andy Jackson to your Marshall.

“Rand Paul, return that squirrel hair to its rightful squirrel. Massie, ditto with the better-groomed squirrel hair.

(Yanks.)

“Shit, really, that’s real hair? Squirrel hair might be better.”

“Folks, I’m not a doctor, and I don’t play one on TV. I also don’t play either a doctor, a Jeebus pretendian, or a bald-faced, semi-bald-headed liar on social media.

(Glares at Jeebus H. Trump.)

“All of you are the problem, including Alison Wonderland and Andy Pasture from the left hand of the duopoly.

(Hears a moaning whisper. Bends his head near Mitch’s mouth.)

“No, I don’t know the frequency, and stop calling me Kenneth.”

(Hears another moaning whisper.)

“Yes, Trump’s still here. And Vance.”

(Another soft moaning whisper.)

“Actually, your sin is worse than the sin against the Holy Ghost.”

(A murmuring whimper whisper.)

“The United States of America is dying like you are. Your sin is to be part and parcel of making it a failing state.”

(Hears the remaining people in the room all getting louder and louder, topped by Trump’s brief, then breathless, bellows.)

“Who am I? Mark Twain talked about my uncle and I.”

Top blogging of June 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

As normal, not necessarily posted in June, but per Blogger stats, the most commonly read in the month.

The normal drumroll counting backward:

At No. 10, I wrote contra Barbed Wire on Whataburger, or as I spell it, What? A Burger?, one of Texas' three biggest retail/food cults. That was from May, and carried over into June.

At No. 9, from March, about how global warming is apparently speeding up, a worrisome issue in the climate crisis, of course.

No. 8? From April, where I talk about the economic boondoggle and environmental destructiveness likely to result from Texas' 2025 constitutional Proposition 4.

No. 7, also from April, about the city of Denton, Texas' net-zero hypocrisies.

No. 6, I talked about James Hansen's zeal for nuclear power as a weapon in holding off the climate crisis, a zeal with which I don't totally agree. Also from April!

No. 5 may be bot-driven? Who knows any more. It's a 2017 post about the Texas Green Party's drive to gain party-line ballot access by running a candidate in the general election in a statewide race for which no Democrat filed.

No. 4? Finally, one from June. "John Cornyn: Walking self-dead."

No. 3? Appropriate for the Semiquincentennial, it's pretty much the last time I offered presidential ratings and ranks. From 2017.

No. 2? From June, about finding a real nutter on Substack. I've got a post just about a massive round of blocks slated for early July, but this guy was so nutter he got his own.

No. 1? From June, about Kenny Boy Paxton's impeachment attorney endorsing James Talarico and related matters.

Platner: Deflated, not just deflating like a cheap balloon, with my own callout of Klip

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:35:00 +0000

Riffing off my Substack version of this, earlier and shorter, Platner is now deflated, past tense. He has "suspended" his campaign. Two years ago, I had people attack me when I said Brainworm Bobby was quitting the presidential race after he "suspended" his campaign. We all know what it means, so STFU Brainworm MAGAt MA-HAt asshats. (I know other sites have reported he has "ended" his campaign or is "resigning" as the Democratic nominee, but this one is better.)

Most politically minded people have probably already heard the claims that Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner raped a woman he was dating. I saw that via Payday Report, on my blogroll. There, Mike Elk added that Hasan Piker found it believable.

Meanwhile, some people are claiming, like this Rhombus Ticks, that it's all a setup. Unfortunately, I was replying to his reply to someone else, so I can't counterblock him. Damn, Substack needs to fix that. Other readers of this? Please block him. (He claimed this was all a nothingburger compared to Epstein, was a conspiracy, and also that the self-implosion/takedown of Al Franken was also a conspiracy.)

This is no surprise.

The Platner engine was leaking oil at the start of the week. A Maine teevee station notes as part of its story that he had already postponed some campaign events. Also per that? Jenny Racicot did not come out of nowhere. She first spoke to the NYT five days before the Maine primary, without mentioning details.

This Substack, a piece at All Your Days, says he talked to staff Monday night and, by saying he's in control of who replaces him, indicates he's planning on resigning — for the right replacement.

So how did we get here? Oppo research done on the cheap, per All Your Days:

Here’s how the disaster unfolded. The Wall Street Journal reports that Dan Moraff, the progressive strategist who recruited Platner and ran his launch, asked a Democratic research firm for an expedited, cut-rate review of the candidate rather than the thorough background check that has become standard in major Senate races. That would have been a weeks-long process costing roughly $20,000. Instead, New York-based Northside Research delivered a brief risk-assessment memo in three days for $6,250, federal disclosures show, in place of the usual research book that should have run hundreds of pages.

Northside’s memo flagged some of Platner’s problematic Reddit posts, but it missed the full trove. It also missed the death’s-head tattoo—the one resembling the Nazi SS Totenkopf—that Platner wore for 18 years before learning, he says, what it evoked. It similarly missed the sexually explicit texts he sent to several women after his 2023 marriage—texts his own wife discovered and reported to his aides, who decided they were a private matter.

Ooops.

I suspect that Dan Moraff will be toxic from here on out, as will Northside Research. According to search-engine grabs of this paywall-protected WSJ piece, Moraff said he wanted to blow up how Democrats do campaigns. Well, he blew up two things — his reputation and probably Dems' chances of regaining the Senate.

That said, it's not just Moraff doing stupidities, per All Your Days:

In North Carolina, Schumer and the party’s Senate campaign arm reached into the primary and anointed Cal Cunningham, a clean-cut veteran who, the Associated Press noted, was a star recruit of the minority leader himself. Cunningham was straight out of central casting for the Schumer biopic, perhaps, but in October 2020, his sexts to a woman who was not his wife became public. Sound familiar? Nonetheless, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee shoveled millions more into the race. Cunningham lost a must-win state by two points after leading in the polls, as Sabato’s Crystal Ball recounts.

Shock me. There's more there.

As for Northside? If this is the correct website, the teh suck minimalist design itself speaks volumes. Per a description of the company, the website and head honcho Jonathan Davis on this piece, that has to be it. A 2023 issue of the Intelligencer has a bit more. Coming next? Finger-pointing, of course.

This guy, meanwhile, answers the Rhombus Ticks nutters, beyond what Elk said.

That said, many others. like Rhombus Ticks, are surely wondering "why now"? (Some, like him, aren't wondering, in reality, they're "just asking questions" about both "why now" and "who is she"?)

It appears the June story was a "marker," if you will. But, with Mills having suspended her campaign, who could pick up that marker? The one real progressive alternative, Amanda LaFlamme, had to run as a write-in after not getting enough signatures. See my coverage here.

That said, in writing earlier about the Totenkopf, I mentioned oppo research! And other "progressive" concerns that a leftist non-Democrat would have! Here:

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

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

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

Still rings true. (Speaking of, why was his eliteness not called out more? Or, in light of all of the above, did nobody look at why he dropped out of Hotchkiss?)

Addenda to this versus my Substack post Tuesday.

I'm sure after July 27, there will be more time to answer all of this. (That is the deadline for Maine Dems getting a replacement, assuming he resigns by July 13.)

Per a Drop Site reporter's Twitter, Platner volunteers want him to resign and have a candidate: Troy Jackson.

Contra Black Twitter like this guy retweeting this?

Yeah, you were stanning for a Black candidate like Kamala Harris the Zionist genocidalist, while I, actually skeptical, rejected Jill Stein as a hypocrite and voted for the Hispanic Communist Claudia de la Cruz.

Or per first guy retweeting this?

Sure, Blacks have a higher degree of skepticism. Where are the Black "Nones," let alone agnostics or atheists? And, Black buy-in to evangelical Christianity explains Black sex on the down low and greater AIDS rates.

If you're going to be tribalist, you're going to get it back.

Per other thoughts in general, note that I noted months ago, besides the other issues, "Hotchkiss," meaning I didn't totally buy the "working class" narrative. Note per my observance about Amanda LaFlamme and her getting generally shunned by Maine unions that I further didn't buy it.

Speaking of? I called out Klipp, who had a non-apology for previous support for Platner, which arguably, per a previous post he linked, included support for Platner deliberately not being given a full vetting by Moraff. In a highly competitive primary, you have the money to spend on an additional $20K or whatever for a more thorough vetting.

Here's what I said in restacking him.

Per my own piece, with link to an older Blogger piece, I DID WONDER, long before the Maine primary, if Platner’s team had done in-depth self-oppo research. We of course now know the answer was “no,” and that this was deliberate. Did you wonder about that in the past?

Per this comment near the end of your current piece:

Ruling out anyone with Reddit post-level flaws bars millions of otherwise decent people from politics. The only people left are the exact kind of squeaky-clean, McKinsey consultant politicians that was the entire point of my piece in the first place.

You’re presenting a twosiderish fake dilemma and at least backdoor endorsing a campaign whose recruiter deliberately did this.

You’re been around this biz yourself at the national level long enough, you know that’s why real self-oppo-research is done. Per my piece, Mainers had options to Platner and Mills, and unfortunately one of them in particular never got traction. Feel free to report about that, and other things, next time.

Ken also boo-hooed about Popehat Ken White's callout of him.

I wrote about that on Substack; see there rather than a repeat here.

I do want to add that it's far more than Popehat kicking Ken in the nads, and others are now kicking him for his smug take on Popehat. Here's a good one; it also calls out Ryan Grim. There are plenty of others.

I think Ken is trying to insist that he was just and only writing about upsetting the Democratic politics as usual applecart. But, the terms and field of debate aren't yours alone to define, Ken.

To put it another way? If you have shit in one hand and New Coke shit in the other, you still have shit in both hands.

And, Ken, until you admit that, you're still going to be holding shit, and stanning for shit, too often.

Why didn't you ask how somebody who went to an elite prep school like Hotchkiss got labeled as a workingman populist? For that matter, why didn't you ask if he dropped out, or if he got kicked out?

Mike Elk on Payday Report HAS, in fact, raised that issue, in his piece about Platner's possible and hoped-for replacement, Troy Jackson:

While many complained that Graham Platner, who hailed from a wealthy family, presented himself as a “working class” guy, the 58-year-old Jackson grew up in poverty in the north of the state and has a history of direct action as a unionized logger.

That said, Mike links to David Dayen at The American Prospect, who notes that the Maine Democrat Party could squeeze Platner supporters in what appears to not allow voters a chance at participating in choosing Platner's replacement. Give the whole thing a read.

Mike also, in another piece, has a callout of Moraff based on personal experience.

Jeet Heer, with this subhed:

Democratic leaders have rightfully lost credibility. But that’s no excuse for political adventurers to seize the moment and pump up false saviors.

followed by this:

This is even though, during his rapid ascent and equally quick plummet from political stardom, Platner waved more red flags than the track marshals in a hundred auto races. Among the major scandals he endured were: the Nazi tattoo on his chest; six years of employment as a private defense contractor (in other words, as a mercenary) for the firm then known as Blackwater; a history of lurid, misogynist, and generally inflammatory Reddit posts; a recent pattern of sexting other women while married; and allegations of abusive behavior towards women.

Yeah, Blackwater? Should have been immediately disqualifying besides his problems with women.

and Katha Pollitt are also weighing in on the bad vetting, as I await Klipp sticking his turtle head out of his shell.

And it keeps getting worse. Looks like somebody should have vetted Moraff better.

Mike Elk reports that Pittsburgh-area Congresscritter Summer Lee booted him from her 2022 campaign over allegations of sexual harassment against HIM. Maybe that's why he just gave Platner nickel-version vetting.

And more yet, with a sort-of callout of Bernie Sanders, too:

You GO, Mike.

While campaign videos distributed by the Sanders campaign described Platner as a working-class oyster farmer, this was far from the truth. Platner’s grandfather, Warren Platner, was a wealthy interior designer and architect who designed the iconic restaurant Windows of the World on top of the World Trade Center and the headquarters of the Ford Foundation.

His father was a wealthy attorney and his mother owned a high-end restaurant outside of Bar Harbor, Maine. His father gave him the money to buy a house and his mother bought his oysters for her high-end restaurant outside of the tourist haven of Acadia National Park. Platner lived on a $60,000-a-year military pension and by all accounts did not struggle to pay bills.

This is all related to the "Hotchkiss" stuff that caught my attention. Platner WAS and IS NOT a "working class everyday person."

And? Maroff has now fired back, calling Elk part of the political establishment. What a laugh. (And he did it in the New York Post.)

Will Klip do the same?

Meanwhile, Brains, with an assist from Ted Rall going down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, is staking out at least partially the same stance. Shock me. It is interesting to note only 4 comments to and 14 reposts of that Shit, counting mine. Ted not having that much reach any more? Did he ever?

Texas Progressives talk semiquincentennial and more

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Off the Kuff analyzes the NYT poll of the Texas Senate race.

SocraticGadfly offers critical reviews of a pair of books broadly related to the semiquincentennial — an interesting new take on the formation of the Constitution and a "resistance" book.

Eric Berger of Space City Weather (and Ars Technica) is still hopeful for America.

The Trib takes a deep look, including interviewing survivors, one year after the Kerrville-area floods. It's a long read.

The Lege still isn't talking about a bill to require training for county emergency management directors.

Trump lies, and a physical border wall is back on the plate for at least one stretch of the Big Bend area.

The Observer covers the Texas Democratic convention. This:

The lack of diversity at the top of the ticket, clashes over Israel, and debates over progressivism versus moderation represent a battle for the future of the party that was thinly veiled by constant calls to unity.

Is a biggie. As I told Kuff, and am writing here, one example? Has comptroller candidate Sarah Eckhardt made a specific anti-BDS pledge? The answer? She is sympathetic to pro-Palestinian protestors, but has not made a specific pledge like that. And won't.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project attended a new weekly pro-democracy protest in League City, Galveston County. It’s essential people see others willing to stand openly & confidently for democracy no matter the aggression of the right.

Steve Vladeck has a roundup of second-tier SCOTUS rulings.

Alison Cook encourages you to plant a fig tree.

Bayou City Sludge introduces you to some of the fat cat Republican donors in our fair city.

The Current showcases the party platform differences on data centers.

The Lone Star Project argues every Texas Republican that supports Ken Paxton is as unfit for office as Paxton is.

The Waco Bridge shows how to swim safely in nature.

Amanda Marcotte suggests Texas Republicans may come to regret mandating Bible studies in the classroom. And I may regret posting anything by Amanda Marcotte the Hillbot. It turns out to be mainly speculation which is more likely wrong than right.

Strangeabbott hires the Schatz to give Texas elections the Schitz

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 18:16:00 +0000

Strangeabbott hires nutter Nate Schatzline to somehow try to fuck around with elections and do T-Rump's bidding. That's what it means, Kuff. NOT hiring him to replace Jane Nelson as secretary of state is kind of a tell. Outside of fucking around with elections, as the story notes, he'll be Strange's point man on trying to get the Lege to OK closed primaries. Note that Schatz pushed a bill to that end in 2025 but it never got out of committee, meaning Strange is going to probably have to do a fair bit of strongarming.

Schitz — yeah, let's just go there — is also a 2020 election falser and more.

And, in re that Trib piece, as I said on Kuff's posting of it:

Once again, the Trib tries to erase third parties. I don’t know who the Libertarians might be running or not, but I know the Greens have a practicing Muslim, Shehla Fahzi for comptroller, who promises to trash all anti-BDS language in the Comptroller’s office, a pledge I am unaware of Dem Sarah Eckhardt making. (I’m going in part on an interview the Observer had shortly before primaries, when it never raised that issue with her.)

Shock me.

Eckhardt? She is sympathetic to pro-Palestinian protestors, but has not made a specific pledge like that.

TIme for another round of Substack blocks

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

This follows on my previous one, published in April.

We start with likely racialist if not actual racist, and Zionist fellow traveler, Stetson. He reads both racist Richard Hanania AND a second Substack where Hanania coauthors, and Zionist genocidalist Bari Weiss, along with Jesse Singal of the Harper's letter bullshit. Oh, and Sully, Andrew Sullivan the rac(ial)ist. He also follows at least one COVID contrarian, plus Freddie De Boer and others. Oh, and yes, Hanania is still a rac(ial)ist. Jamelle Bouie has the goods.

Racist, genocidalist, homophobe and more (language like "sandfaggots") Chet S.

No More Lies? Rothschild comments, especially with claims the US went bankrupt in 1871 and was refounded as a corporation with Rothschild help? We've gone from anti-Zionism to antisemitism, and into conspiracy theory. Also a COVID denialist. And a climate change denialist. Also, his URL is "No More Lies 1"; gack, is there another? Also also, he has a Jeebus picture as his icon.

Silvia Rousseva? Saw No More Lies as a climate change denial restack by Silvia. Even more of a COVID denialist; follows naturalist fallacian Mike Adams, among others. Calls Charles III "lizard king" and quite possible means it in the Icke sense. Also a Bulgarian nationalist, I guess, who says that Bulgaria joined NATO "under Foreign Minister Solomon Passy (no, this is not a Bulgarian name, in case you’re wondering)." I guess a Rumanian name like Silvia Rousseva, if real, also isn't a Bulgarian name. (It is interesting that Adams seems to loathe MAGAts. Does he loathe MAHAts too?) For right now, he's just muted.

Among those he follows? Don Jeffries. He's a Trump assassination conspiracy theorist, a "ZOG" person, and via his self-published level books on Goodreads, a JFK assassination conspiracy theorist and a COVID conspiracy theorist. (He's blocked there, too.) He's also a flat racist, per this piece. AND also, GACK, a "crisis actor" conspiracy theorist, per this piece.

Another followed? Vigilant Fox. COVID conspiracy theorist, presumably an antivaxxer if they're "MAHA" as well as MAGA. Claims to have been a "healthcare worker" during COVID, which as we anti-COVID conspiracy theorists know, can mean about anything. Even if you're "licensed."

"Dr." Wojak. Quotes are deliberate scare quotes. COVID denialist and even a "hoaxer." Ebola denialist. Tick conspiracy theory promoter. (Don't even bother asking if you haven't heard.) Measles epidemic denialist.

These above all came directly (Rousseva) or indirectly via this piece at The Dissident. Dood remains good on rounding up stuff tangentially or directly related to Israel, and personally has not crossed THAT line, but he sure attracts a lot of people who do.

The Truth About Cancer? Rod Dreher-level religious nuttery, combined with pseudomedicine, including touting ivermectin (natch) for cancer. And contrails! And false claims about glyphotate. (Via Mike Adams of course.)

Scott Carney for promoting things like Trump assassination conspiracy theories. And, although she didn't write this one, Nina Burleigh is part of the listed team at that Substack. Also, no dood, Trump is not in any literal sense the (nonexistent) antichrist. Nor did he steal the 2024 election through a device of inventing fake counties. Yes, Carney, you admitted you got p'wned. You didn't admit you're a sucker enough to get p'wned.

Another Dissident post, about Zelensky's state funeral for Nazi and former OUN leader Andriy Melnyk, has led to more blocks.

Via Zionist "Pickles" in his feed I hit Zionist "JTexaynes," full of Zionist drivel. Pickles comes off as a less-than-fully-odious conservative Zionist.

Binky LaRue: Antisemitic, not anti-Zionist, if he's talking about how ALL the Jews in Israel aren't semites (on a modified version of the Khazar hypothesis, still, most Ashkenazi have some semitic ancestry, and certainly Mizrahi, Sephardi, etc., and also talking about what Henry Ford said about the "Protocols." Later claims the Protocols are true. Also a conspiracy theorist, claiming Patton was killed by "them" (natch) because he claimed we were fighting the wrong war. Has other "them" notes.

Off him, Tariq Acknickulous, who's antisemitic, anti-anti-Zionist with strawmanning to boot, clueless about why many people join the US military and sounds like "privilege" himself, and more.

Also off Binky? SRK.

Off SRK? The Dutchess, with a "truth about Hitler" post. And "Freedom Fighter." Avowed National Socialist. Fraktur / Gothic font. "1488" part of name. Actually reported that one, too. Hertz with funky letters. Another Nazi.

Off the second of two Dissident posts about Larry Johnson claiming Iran already has one or more nukes, pseudo-leftist Tedder 130. Muted first. Now blocked. Between bitching that he hasn't informed himself better in comment to a comment by me (why bitch? get started!) to reading non-leftists like Taibbi, Tracey, and the antisemitic-flirting John Helmer, that's not anti-imperialist in a principled sense, it's a grab bag of shit.

Pickles? Small-grade generic Zionist liar. But, more and more time on social media makes me quicker to pull the block trigger.

Someone followed by a commenter there, Dude? White Rabbit. Also Nazi with the Gothic font. Runs not just one but two shithole Nazi sites. And, Zyklon Bee (duh) whose home page of activity says "Jews, Jews, Jews." Off that person, blocked NatSocToday and Aryan Revolutionary (who looks awfully dark to be one), Right Winger Austin (also has "1492" in name) for general racism and virulent sexism, off him, the regularly restacked Ben L (with the @ of "peniszone"), off Ben L the guy named Randall Flagg (@ of "reinesblut") off HIM the Pragmatic Prognosticator (who is anything but). Blocked again directly off Dood? Debarelli, antisemitic, chemtrails. Off her, SiriusRex (antisemitic, Masonic coonspiracy theories and what I'll call volkish ideas about biology) and Die Welt gehört uns (complete with Nazi logo and slogan), Phantom Pain (one of several people with the fake quote from JFK 1939 about Jews in Israel blowing up their own telephone lines as a false flag, and talking about "Rothschilds").

Off Dude, in a different direction? Meryl Nass is a COVID conspiracy theorist, climate change conspiracy theorist and more, connected with Dr. Malone, too, on her website, even nuttier than her Substack. She got her medical license suspended in Maine and has since then engaged in false representation. Of course, I blocked Dude himself.

Rolf Kvalik? JFK assassination conspiracy theorist, of the new Israel did it breed. An 8-part series, 6 of them paywalled, claiming the "new" 2025 document dump was a smoking gun. He goes further and laughably claims someone "most Americans have never heard of," Meyer Lansky, was the fixer in all th is, which of course brings in the Mob.

Never Trust a Wizard. 9/11 truther and COVID denialist. I had subscribed to him without realizing all that.

David Carroll? Zionist trying to reverse troll.

On something else? I'll block Kevin Levin as soon as I can block him after his immediate block or autoblock of me for having the temerity to mention Lincoln and colonization on his Civil War History site. (The subject is never discussed by him.)

San Marcos says "no" to data centers; what's next?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 18:27:00 +0000

San Marcos is Texas' first incorporated city to essentially ban data centers. Sen. Paul Bettencourt, invoking the Lege's 2023 "death star" law, says this is an illegal moratorium. Others note that reconfiguring zoning laws is not a moratorium. Expect Lege wingnuts to push a new law next year, followed by ignoring the state and US constitution's prohibition on ex post facto laws, and then to go after San Marcos. This will be justified under the idea of the new law simply "clarifying" the 2023 death star bill. The story notes that some smaller cities have already followed a "lite" version of San Marcos' idea.

Then, there are cities that don't have zoning, like Alvin, mentioned in the story, and of course, Helltown. Like unincorporated areas in places like Hood County that considered incorporation to hold off either data centers or crypto-mining sites, maybe this will spark a change of mind.

Or maybe not. That Hood County incorporation election fairly soundly lost last fall. Those who voted it down will continue to bitch, continue to not look in the mirror, and continue to vote for Rethuglicans for the Lege, gov and lite gov. Once again, contra Kuff, this won't be a Democrat wedge issue, in part,

Because ...

Strangeabbott has called for a ban on data centers in rural areas. Treat this as a worried midterms election stunt/pledge until proven otherwise.

Pro Publica offers up a trio of climate change stories that speak truth

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 14:00:00 +0000

First, carbon capture doesn't work, which I have long known, but needs to be told again and again and again, versus the lies of Big Oil and the companion lies of Big Neoliberal Government.

Pro Publica has a great piece. It notes that projections for how much carbon capture and storage can do have increased even as the world fiddles while the planet burns more and more, and we get more and more behind the curve of serious action.

THIS:

Right now, globally, we’re permanently burying less CO2 than a single large power plant can emit in a year.

Is the bottom line.

That's followed by the lies of Big Oil and Big Neoliberal International Government being exposed:

Some experts point to the CO2 that gets pumped into the ground to help extract oil as proof CCS works. But that process, called enhanced oil recovery, isn’t designed to function the same way and isn’t monitored as stringently.

Global leaders are betting on carbon capture working now more than ever.

The models used in the latest United Nations assessment presume the technology succeeds.

IEA representatives and U.N. modelers say their projections reflect what the world has to do to achieve its goals of averting extreme warming.

There you are.

The story then crunches the math.

On carbon-capturing plants? We'd have to plant THREE Texases or a bit more; or one Mexico, which is that same size. You see that happening?

Plus, we'd need to be building countless injection sites — after doing proper geological study to determine each one works — AND monitoring all of them. You see that happening?

And the price tag:

[B]y 2050, the world could be spending half a trillion dollars — more than China’s military budget, and 10 times more than the U.N.’s humanitarian and development aid budget — each year.

To coin a phrase: You see that happening?

Related? Pro Publica does a deeper dive of how Big Oil, and specifically BP (stands for "Bullshitting about Petroleum") specifically bought off Princeton scientists in its "Wedges" study 22 years ago, and bought them off on ... carbon capture.

Yes, bought them off:

While its chief executive, John Browne, was rebranding his company as Beyond Petroleum, BP sought out researchers who were already thinking about how to address climate change without replacing fossil fuels. The company found them at Princeton University, where it set about amplifying their work by donating $15 million to start the Carbon Mitigation Initiative. The research program was framed around finding solutions to climate change while keeping fossil fuels in play, focusing heavily on carbon capture.

What else is there to say?

Maybe this:

BP executives were deeply involved throughout the paper’s creation, according to an investigation by ProPublica and Drilled. [Robert] Socolow and [Stephen] Pacala, the authors of “Wedges” and the new center’s co-directors, not only discussed ideas with the company but, in a departure from academic norms, passed drafts back and forth and welcomed extensive feedback.

Like a book publisher shaping a clunky early draft into a bestseller, an executive at the company suggested the scientists punch up the language, which they did. Browne himself suggested wording that became a part of the title. Together they helped make wonky scientific ideas more digestible for popular consumption. BP even tried — unsuccessfully — to revise a version of it.

“Chaps, I have had a go at rewriting the paper,” Browne’s climate adviser wrote the researchers at one point.

THERE's the smoking gun.

The two scientists of course deny anything nefarious:

Socolow and Pacala say they were sincere in their intent to solve climate change in the best way they believed possible, at a time when it was not obvious that wind and solar would succeed the way they have today. The researchers say BP had no control over the scientific content of the paper. They rejected the view that technologies didn’t exist to start solving climate change immediately and hoped carbon capture offered, as Pacala said, a way to make fossil fuels “climate safe.”

OK, well, do I totally believe that?

Not really.

Per his Wiki, post-retirement, Socolow has been a big pusher of the "personal carbon footprint." You know who else pushes that? Big Oil. "Guiltwashing" is a form of "greenwashing."

You know what else Socolow does, per a link on his Wiki? He continues to push carbon capture, and that's as of a 2024 Washington Post op-ed. In other words? He's a liar.

That said, BP wasn't alone, of course. It was simply the most aggressive oil major, in part as the biggest non-American, non-national, oil company.

That said, not only was BP not alone, Princeton was also not alone.

In the trifecta? As described by Pro Publica in detail in another story, just like Big Tobacco, is Big Oil buying off scientists to do its bidding.

This:

Corporate funders sponsored entire centers, paid the salaries of researchers, kept offices on campus and in some cases had veto power over projects.

Companies maintain they are supporting innovation and needed science. Universities say that with safeguards, sponsorship enhances research programs while preserving academic independence.

Still, the impact of funding constitutes a pattern that Benjamin Franta, an associate professor of climate litigation at University of Oxford, called the “colonization of academia.”

Is just right.

SocraticGadfly

Texas Progressives look at the rest of Merikkka

Southworst officially shits the bed — personal vacation experience, non-Zionist version

Southwest, which has built years of advertising campaigns around bags-fly-free, estimated that bag fees would raise about $1.5 billion a year, but eliminating the perk could drive away passengers, costing the airline $1.8 billion, or a net loss of $300 million a year.

65% On-Time: Southwest Falls From America’s Most Punctual To Rock BottomIn 6 Months

About 2.5 hours may be how often in a day an Israeli kills a Palestinian.

Loony Laura Loomer, lying lizard

Maybe Jim Stiles wasn't all wrong, and not just about Utah's red rock country

Texas Progressives round up the news of the region

Texas Progressives

Snowden and "his" files and the Intercept

R/AskHistorians mods are pretendian leftists as well as unethical

Post-Trump, will public media stations with university ties reconfigure?

New Reddit blocks

"Without Precedent" but WITH looking at Scotus through left hand of the duopoly framing

Texas Progressives are steaming hot about ICE

Texas data center behemoths have this all planned out

Why you shoud tell the National Park Foundation to fuck off when it asks for money

Big Bend border wall update briefs

RIP Huckleberry J Butchmeup aka Lindsey Graham

More cold water thrown on Elizabeth Loftus

I too talked to Mitch the Kentucky Turtle for 20 minutes

Top blogging of June 2026

Platner: Deflated, not just deflating like a cheap balloon, with my own callout of Klip

Texas Progressives talk semiquincentennial and more

Strangeabbott hires the Schatz to give Texas elections the Schitz

TIme for another round of Substack blocks

San Marcos says "no" to data centers; what's next?

Pro Publica offers up a trio of climate change stories that speak truth

65% On-Time: Southwest Falls From America’s Most Punctual To Rock Bottom
In 6 Months