Bummer: Climate Doom, Environmental Justice Removed From Portland Area Bridge Plans

By William Teach April 22, 2026 – 3:10 pm

It took them 21 months to build the huge St. John’s Bridge in Portland, starting in 1929. These days it takes longer than that just to figure out what kinds of dumb crap they’re going to consider

Climate change, environmental justice sections removed from Interstate Bridge project final analysis

The arrival of a new presidential administration in 2025 prompted significant changes to the federal environmental review process for the Interstate Bridge Replacement (IBR) project, including abandoning or downplaying much of the review’s climate change and environmental justice impact analysis, according to a final version of the project’s Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement released last week.

The Environmental Impact Statement is the culmination of the federal review process for infrastructure megaprojects, providing a comprehensive analysis of how a project will affect the surrounding environment and community. It is typically produced in conjunction with agencies such as the Federal Highway Administration, and its release is one of the last steps for a project to win final federal approval.

I’m fine with environmental reviews when they make sense and are realistic, but, they tend to be the very definition of turning the amp up to 11 in practice.

The final IBR document comes in at 944 pages, excluding appendices, making it 16 pages shorter than the draft version released in 2024. The final version is fairly similar to the draft, with some sections expanded and most largely unchanged — but while the climate change and environmental justice chapters totaled over 70 pages in the draft, the final version reduces them to a single paragraph each.

Those paragraphs explain that a series of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump in January 2025 and a subsequent memo from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy directed the federal government to stop considering greenhouse gas emissions and climate analysis in the federal review process.

Good. None of that is necessary, especially the unhinged, political “environmental justice” garbage.

Some of the replacement paragraphs reference a new document called the State Environmental Policy Addendum, which is intended to satisfy the requirements for climate change, greenhouse gas emissions and environmental justice analyses under Washington and Oregon state law — though it adds that the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transportation Administration “were not involved in the development of the SEPA Addendum” and “did not consider the document in the Final SEIS.”

None of this is necessary to build a bridge. Of course, with or without the crap it will probably take a decade to build the bridge, especially in deep Dem Portland. The lawsuits will surely fly the minute the plan is approved. And when construction is about to start.

Read: Bummer: Climate Doom, Environmental Justice Removed From Portland Area Bridge Plans »

Posted in Global Warming | No Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach April 22, 2026 – 1:00 pm

…is flooding from carbon pollution driven Extreme Weather, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Geller Report, with a post on lawmakers introducing bill to deport immigrants with extremist ideologies.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

DOJ Charges Southern Poverty Law Center With Fraud, Money Laundering

By William Teach April 22, 2026 – 10:30 am

Oh, and then there’s the whole part about funding extremist groups to create raaaaacism and hate

DOJ Charges Far-Left SPLC with Fraud, Money Laundering, ‘Manufacturing Racism to Justify Its Existence’

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was charged with fraud and money laundering involving “violent extremist groups.”

In a press release from the Office of Public Affairs for the DOJ it was revealed that the SPLC was charged by an Alabama grand jury “with 11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.”

According to the press release, an indictment says that “starting in the 1980s, the SPLC began operating a covert network of individuals who were either associated with violent and extremist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan”:

According to the indictment starting in the 1980s, the SPLC began operating a covert network of individuals who were either associated with violent and extremist groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or who had infiltrated violent extremist groups at the SPLC’s direction. Unbeknownst to donors, some of their donated money was being used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups at the same time that the SPLC was denouncing the same groups on its website.

The SPLC also allegedly “funneled more than $3 million donated funds to individuals who were associated” with groups such as the National Socialist Movement, United Klans of America, and the Aryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, between 2014 and 2023, according to the press release.

Oh, and how about this

I wonder how many who fomented on January 6th were funded by the SPLC? Let’s check this utterly unbiased BBC article

The SPLC has long had a sour relationship with the Trump administration. In October, the FBI ended its relationship with the group after accusing it of being a “partisan smear machine”.

Some Republicans have also accused the group of unfairly targeting conservative groups such as Turning Point USA, the Family Research Council and Moms for Liberty, as well as individuals aligned with the Trump administration.

We got that high in the article before we got the real details like

It states that the SPLC sent more than $270,000 to a person who helped to plan, and attended, the deadly white nationalist Unite the Right event in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. It does not specify why that person was paid or what type of work they did for the organisation.

It’s an old media trick: bury the details in the article where people will have already moved on. The BBC, like many other news outlets, are making this look like a hit job before discussing the reality.

In a news conference, Blanche said: “The SPLC is a non-profit entity that purports to fight white supremacy and racial hatred by reporting on extremist groups and conducting research to inform law enforcement groups with the goal of dismantling these groups.”

“The SPLC was not dismantling these groups. It was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.”

How many made it to that quote, with the 3 paragraphs/30 second rule? The AP finally gets around to the heart of the matter deep in their article

The indictment says the center told donors the money would be used to help dismantle violent extremist groups, but did not disclose that some of the funds would actually be used to pay members of those groups. Some legal experts say it’s an unusual legal approach.

“That’s a new way of going after a charity — I’m somewhat surprised,” said Phil Hackney, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Typically, when a nonprofit group is charged with fraud, it’s because someone is accused of pilfering donated funds to line their own pockets, Hackney said.

But in this case, the government is targeting the method and intent in which a nonprofit used its money, he said.

This should be fun, as more and more information comes to light.

Read: DOJ Charges Southern Poverty Law Center With Fraud, Money Laundering »

Posted in Liberal World, Unhinged Tools | 16 Comments | Trackback URL

And Now Your Cooking Oils Are Bad For Hotcoldwetdry

By William Teach April 22, 2026 – 7:15 am

These cultists are always looking for something to be doomy over

Are Vegetable Oils High Carbon & Bad For Climate Change?

After writing about some of the worst foods for climate change, which are beef and dairy products, farmed shrimp, lamb, and pork, I wondered if vegetable oils too have a high carbon footprint. It turns out, they do, according to this article about a 2022 study: ““Whilst vegetable oils might not seem like one of the biggest food groups, they can in fact be found everywhere. Production of the crops that produce vegetable oil also takes up around 20 percent of arable land worldwide, so vegetable oil production is definitely a big contributor to global GHG emissions, as well as other sustainability issues such as biodiversity loss,” says Alcock.”

Vegetable oils, though commonly used, are actually not necessary for health nutrition or consumption. There is an idea that they are better for human health than using butter and lard, for example. However, no one must consume lard or butter and therefore, there is nothing mandatory about consuming vegetable oils either. Some cuisines may have used butter and lard for many years before nutrition and health science discovered how unhealthy they can be and how they have contributed to heart disease in humans.

So, it seems logical to replace them with healthier alternatives, but in fact, there is an alternative which is simply to stop consuming butter, lard, margarine, and vegetable oils. None of them have ever been essential for human consumption and in fact can be detrimental to human health.

These people are just so depressing.

Read: And Now Your Cooking Oils Are Bad For Hotcoldwetdry »

Posted in AGW Scaremongering, Global Warming | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

NY Times Super Concerned Over All Those USAID Employees Still Out Of Work

By William Teach April 22, 2026 – 7:00 am

This might play well with the hardcore Dem base, but, not with average Americans

A Year After U.S.A.I.D.’s Death, Fired Workers Find Few Jobs and Much Loss

She was fired by email while on maternity leave, given 24 hours to clear out her desk and left with three days of health insurance and no severance pay. She had worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development or related groups for more than two decades. She made $175,000 a year.

That was Jan. 28, 2025. Today Amy Uccello and her husband, who also lost his job when U.S.A.I.D. funding for his nonprofit dried up, rely on food stamps, Medicaid and a supplemental nutrition program for women and children that helps with their now 19-month-old daughter.

Does anyone think it, I don’t know, a massive conflict of interest that her husband’s NGO was getting gobs of money from the wife’s government agency? Did they consider saving money? Maybe it’s time to audit them to see where the money to the NGO was going

When the Trump administration dismantled the sprawling global aid agency last year, it wiped out virtually an entire industry — international development — that had been based in Washington since U.S.A.I.D.’s creation in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy. Nearly all of the agency’s 16,000 employees were laid off. An estimated 280,000 contractors, partners and local hires worldwide lost their jobs as well.

A year later, people have plowed through savings, cashed out retirement funds and moved in with friends and relatives. Former U.S.A.I.D. workers who have done informal surveys estimate that less than half have found full-time work, with many making less than before. An estimated third are unemployed. Others are in part-time work. The District of Columbia currently has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, at 6.7 percent, in large part because of major reductions in the federal work force, including U.S.A.I.D., and cuts to government grants and contracts.

It’s almost like they really have few work skills that have value in the real world.

Jobs are also gone at the many nonprofits and partner agencies once funded by U.S.A.I.D. “Everyone I know is also up the creek, all my bosses, my mentors, the people you would normally go to, the people providing me references,” said Catherine Baker, 36, who, as a contractor, made $127,000 a year recruiting staff and helping to start up U.S.A.I.D. projects. Ms. Baker now volunteers as a manager for OneAid, which helps former U.S.A.I.D. workers, and works nine hours a week as a companion for two elderly women.

I feel zero sympathy for these people who pretty much made a boatload of money off the taxpayers for very little in return. Remember how Marco Rubio said that only about 20% of the aid was making it to recipients? Here are some things as noticed by Robert Sterling from the article

EVERY person in this story was making well into six figures:

USAID employee: $175,000
USAID contractor: $127,000
USAID-funded NGO employee: $272,000(!)
USAID advisor at the DOD: $195,000
USAID contractor: $200,000

There were 16,000 employees at USAID, and the New York Times was only able to interview one making less than $175k. Worldwide, there were an estimated 280,000 contractors.

Oh, and the NY Times notes

Others acknowledged that there was bloat and waste in the agency and a need for reform. Much of the $35 billion it managed in 2024 went to Washington-based contractors, not directly to people in need overseas. The success of many projects was hard to measure.

But all of those interviewed said they were still incredulous that an agency that amounted to less than 1 percent of the federal budget had been so quickly obliterated and reduced to a skeletal operation within the State Department. U.S.A.I.D. workers who once thought of themselves as ambassadors for American “soft power” said they worried about the trust in the United States that was lost overseas. They said they were still burning from President Trump’s characterization of them as “radical-left lunatics.”

You know how it could have stayed in business? By not being 80% graft and waste, full of Do Gooders who were enriching themselves, friends, and family. They dug their own pink slips.

Read: NY Times Super Concerned Over All Those USAID Employees Still Out Of Work »

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Dozens Of Governments Will Take Fossil Fueled Trips To Try And End Fossil Fuels

By William Teach April 21, 2026 – 3:00 pm

This is being pushed by the governments of Columbia and The Netherlands

To avoid COP mistakes, Santa Marta conference must be shielded from fossil fuel influence

Next week, dozens of governments will gather in the Colombian city of Santa Marta for a conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels.

The conference is a first of its kind, in name and in practice. It’s a welcome change to see a platform for global climate action actually acknowledge the primary cause of the climate crisis – fossil fuels. This sends a clear message about what needs to be done to avoid tumbling off the climate cliff edge we are precariously balancing on.

The agenda set for governments to hash out goes further than any other multilateral space has managed to date. Over the week, participants will discuss how to overcome the economic dependence on fossil fuels, transform supply and demand, and advance international cooperation to transition away from fossil fuels.

Alongside the conference, academics, civil society, movements and others are convening to put forward their visions of a just and forever fossil fuel phase out. The conference can help shape pathways and tools governments can use to achieve a fossil-fuel-free future, particularly if the dialogue begins with an honest assessment of “fair shares.”

They couldn’t do this over a zoom call to avoid all those fossil fueled flights?

Unless platforms like the UNFCCC take concerted action to protect climate policymaking from the profit-at-all-costs agenda of polluters, the world will not deliver the climate action people and the planet deserve.

And the fuck are you to tell the rest of us what to do? To tell us how we can live our lives? If you really want to end fossil fuels why not spend all this money to create a working, affordable, dependable alternative?

See that link in the 2nd paragraph of the first excerpt? Read that whole thing. It is an amazing bit of Modern Socialism, unhinged and pretty much devoid of science, because that’s what this whole thing is, a political movement. Economic liberation? Transforming supply and demand? These are phrases for, really, far far right Authoritarianism. Coming from people who really have no clue how to run a business.

  1. Thirty years of climate negotiations have not addressed the poison in the system: fossil fuels. Santa Marta must be the summit that starts designing the cure: a binding global Treaty to transition away and phase them out.

  2. We face not a single crisis, but a web of them — climate chaos, mass extinction, economic instability, and conflict — all fueled by the same source. The Fossil Fuel Treaty is the comprehensive solution that addresses them all at once.

  3. The recent International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion changed the rules. New fossil fuel projects are not just dangerous, they risk breaking international law. Santa Marta is where governments must act on this new legal reality.

  4. Real security in the 21st century doesn’t come from controlling oil & gas fields, but from liberating every nation from the tyranny of fossil fuel dependency and debt entrapments. The Treaty is our shared security strategy.

Real security comes from the government owning your life, you know. While the big wigs take long fossil fueled trips to beautiful seaside vacations spots. Seriously, this conference is really giving the game away.

Read: Dozens Of Governments Will Take Fossil Fueled Trips To Try And End Fossil Fuels »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach April 21, 2026 – 1:00 pm

…is an area flooding from too much carbon pollution Bad Weather, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Cold Fury, with a post on the plane that would not die.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 16 Comments | Trackback URL

Weird: ActBlue Employees Take The Fifth 146 Times

By William Teach April 21, 2026 – 10:30 am

Two things: first, pleading the 5th does not say someone is guilty in a court of law. It is an important Constitutional basis to avoid self incrimination, for which prosecutors can ramrod a guilty verdict.

Second, we’re just talking about donations for political activity, right?

Report: ActBlue Employees Plead the Fifth over 100 Times During House Depositions

Current and former employees of the Democrat fundraising machine, ActBlue, reportedly pleaded the Fifth more than 100 times while testifying before several House committees.

In a press release, it was revealed that the House Judiciary Committee, House Administration Committee, and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report titled, “Fraud on ActBlue, Part II: Illicit Foreign Donations and a Cover-up Sour Mass Resignations and Firings on ActBlue’s Legal and Compliance Team.”

The press release revealed that the “five current or former employees at ActBlue who appeared for depositions all invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self incrimination during questioning – for a total of 146 times.”

“The Committees conducted five depositions with key ActBlue fraud-prevention and legal personnel to obtain more information about the fraud-prevention failures detailed in the Committees’ first report and the cover-up detailed here,” the report says. “The employees invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in response to every single one of the Committees’ substantive questions—146 times in total. Their unwillingness to testify only amplifies the Committees’ concerns.”

In reality land, they were taking donations they shouldn’t have been taking and doing things they shouldn’t have been doing and certainly knew about it and were probably enabling it willfully.

The 120-page report explains that the three House committees “are charged with ensuring the integrity of American elections,” adding that the committees “are examining allegations that ActBlue, a leading political fundraising organization, allowed bad actors, including foreign actors, to exploit its online platform to make fraudulent political donations.”

They should offer someone amnesty and see what kind of information they will get.

Read: Weird: ActBlue Employees Take The Fifth 146 Times »

Posted in Democrats | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Good News: We Can Look To Ancient Poop To See How Seabirds Deal With Climate Doom

By William Teach April 21, 2026 – 7:15 am

Well, it seems to me that seabirds have survived warm and cool periods during the Holocene just fine, but, hey, if they want to play with poop, that’s on them

Ancient poo offers insight into how seabirds will fare as climate warms

Scientists were collecting peat cores on South Georgia’s Bird Island when they made a surprising discovery – one which offers new insight into how climate change will affect seabird populations.

Researchers were analysing the geochemistry of the cores, to get an insight into historic wind speeds on the island, when they found layers of ancient bird poo preserved in the peatland.

This bird poo, or guano, now gives them a window into 8,000 years of seabird history, in one of the most important seabird breeding sites on Earth: Bird Island is home to vast colonies of wandering albatrosses, petrels and penguins.

The island is subject to the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds: powerful bands of wind that circle Antarctica and drive much of the Southern Ocean’s behaviour. Studying their past activity helps to improve predictions of how this might change as our climate warms.

Like it’s done many times before?

Since the first seabird colonies formed, the researchers identified five major phases of population expansion – all five coincided with periods when the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds were less intense.

This connection between wind strength and seabird abundance has implications for the future. These Southern Hemisphere westerly winds have been intensifying in recent decades, driven by climate change, meaning we could see dramatic declines in seabird numbers on the island in years to come.

So, what caused those warm periods previously? Therein lies the central question.

Read: Good News: We Can Look To Ancient Poop To See How Seabirds Deal With Climate Doom »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

Bummer: Chicago Has Already Cancelled This Year’s Cinco De Mayo Celebration

By William Teach April 21, 2026 – 7:00 am

I have to wonder: how many Mexicans actually celebrate this? It actually seems more of a holiday adopted by Americans as a reason to drink, as pushed by beer manufacturers

Cinco de Mayo parade in Little Village canceled for second year as immigration enforcement concerns persist

For the second year in a row, the annual Cinco de Mayo parade in Little Village has been canceled due to immigration enforcement concerns, organizers said.

The parade typically draws hundreds to the neighborhood and celebrates Mexico’s victory over Napoleon III’s French army in the Battle of Puebla in 1862. But this year, Chicago’s Mexican community is still on edge in the wake of “Operation Midway Blitz,” the aggressive deportation campaign the Trump administration launched across the Chicago area last fall.

“Many families are experiencing fear and uncertainty due to increased immigration enforcement actions and the ongoing threat of raids,” organizers with the Cermak Road Chamber of Commerce and Casa Puebla said in a statement.

People are still avoiding public gatherings out of fear, organizers said, adding, “there is nothing to celebrate.”

We could make most of the raids go away if the government would turn in the illegals who committed crimes. If the illegal community would turn the criminals in.

Since then, Chicago and the suburbs were targeted by masked federal agents, who detained residents while at times deploying chemical irritants like tear gas. Widespread protests and grassroots efforts to protect immigrants followed. The ramped-up enforcement actions eventually waned, but the impact to Latino communities like Little Village, Pilsen and the Southeast Side has lingered.

They’re scared and concerned? Good. That’s part of the reason for massive actions.

Read: Bummer: Chicago Has Already Cancelled This Year’s Cinco De Mayo Celebration »

Posted in Illegal Immigration | 6 Comments | Trackback URL
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