Before and after photos

Can you spot the difference?

Q: Can any dollar value be placed on clean air, or is that communism or socialism?

I heard something.

 Something, apparently, is going to happen at 8 PM tonight. 

I assume it's meant to be EST.

Does anyone know what is gonna happen tonight at 8 PM?

Should I have the remote ready in case?

Or can I just ignore any rumors or suggestions and go back to watching hockey?

Trump breaks the US Forest Service to help break democracy

Trump proposes degrading US Forest Service (FS) functions from management and public service to a resource for private interest plunder. The proposed changes include (1) moving FS headquarters from Washington, DC, to Salt Lake City, Utah, (2) closing all ten regional offices that have structured FS management for over a century, (3) closing more than fifty FS research facilities in thirty‑one states, and (4) getting rid of senior FS employees with experience in forest management science. As is usual for Trump and MAGA politics, the overall impact is to shift power away from career federal land managers and the public interest toward Western state governors and special interests who can profit from taking ownership of public lands and exploiting the new resource. Link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4

This kleptocratic authoritarian war on the public interest functions of the FS is not a one‑off bureaucratic reshuffle in the name of efficiency. This is another part of MAGA’s broader project to redirect wealth and power from the public interest to a few oligarchs and loyalist interests. Trump’s economic record clearly shows that tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, and targeted deals consistently enrich billionaire donors and politically connected corporations while working‑class supporters are told to wait for a populist payoff that, not surprisingly, never arrives. Link 5, link 6

Mugging of the public interest like this advances Project 2025’s explicit agenda to politicize and “weaponize” the federal workforce by replacing independent civil servants with morally compromised, ideologically reliable appointees. By degrading merit‑based hiring and protections, MAGA elites have turned pro-public interest federal agencies into instruments of presidential will and power and profit for allied special interests. This has nothing to do with respect and support for law, science or the public interest. It is the opposite of that. Link 7, link 8

Ideologically, this is demagogued as “anti‑elitism” and rebellion against snotty coastal experts. In reality it is radical right authoritarian class warfare against knowledge workers who stand between rapacious MAGA elites and our precious public resources they. Scientists, career land managers, and regulators are smeared as enemies of “the people” precisely because their professional norms oblige them to protect the public interest, future generations and the environment. Link 9, link 10

Clearly, the authoritarian move here is to make democracy itself look impotent and corrupt. Trump and MAGA are doing that by corrupting and breaking public institutions so they cannot deliver for the people. When national forests burn, watersheds degrade, and communities suffer, MAGA leaders blame “broken government”. That conveniently ignores the fact that MAGA is systematically breaking government to justify taking more power from the people and the public interest and transferring it to authoritarian ideologues and private interests. Constraints from science, law, and the common good are all being, as Trump would put it, obliterated.

Regarding a persistent global warming propaganda myth

A major climate change propaganda myth that oil giant BP and other major pollution for profit corporations popularized decades ago still persists. The myth is that dealing with global warming is a personal matter, not a political issue. That false idea still poisons millions of people’s thinking about how to deal with global warming. An analysis of survey data from 2025 indicates that many Americans are very concerned but still do not see climate change as political.

Decades ago, BP hired the propaganda firm Ogilvy & Mather to create one of the first large‑scale personal carbon footprint calculators, as part of a global propaganda campaign. The strategic aim was to shift public attention from corporate to individual responsibility and make climate change a personal responsibility problem, not a fossil‑fuel production and lack of regulation problem. It was a brilliant bit of deceit and deflection. It successfully kept a lot of public attention away from major climate change corporations. 

Sociologist Robert Brulle argues that the myth of individual responsibility has deep roots in about 40 years of US politics and ideology, especially from the Republican Party. The GOP fostered a social order or mindset fixated on individualism. That led many people to not see government as a necessary instrument to deal with climate change. Research on the climate science denial and delay industry clearly shows that fossil‑fuel corporations, conservative (now authoritarian) think tanks, and allied political non-profits coordinated propaganda narratives that prompted personal responsibility framing along with outright denial. The special interest's propaganda effort has successfully blocked serious policy responses to this day.