As readers may know, the northeast corner of the Texas Panhandle has had a series of wildfires for more than a week. The largest, the Smoke House Fire, has burned  1,058,482 acres and as of this afternoon is 74% contained. Wild grass fires are a fact of life and have been for centuries in the Great Plains.

Above: Map of fires in northeast Panhandle (Oklahoma to the right)

Supposedly the largest in Texan history (it probably isn’t, but may be the largest in the last two centuries), we are now hearing people claiming that this wildfire was intentionally ignited by the FedGov as part of a “War on Texas.” Just as it is claimed that the wildfires on Maui were ignited by some horrible energy beam because everyone knows that grass fires don’t cause houses and barns to burn and explode.

One of those is Mike Adams, the “Health Ranger.” He also claims that the death of 6,000 head of cattle in the fires is “proof” that the FedGov has a war on Texas, on ranchers, and on meat supplies, tying it to apparently intentional Israeli starvation of poor, peaceful Arabs in the Gaza Strip.

Let us address the facts in this nonsense: First, Texas has an estimated 12.7 million cattle (of the 92 million estimated in the States overall). 6,000 is a rounding error. We are not dismissing the impact on the ranchers of Roberts and Hemphill Counties, or the rest of the area. But this is not any significant impact on the availability of hamburger or beef baloney or steaks in the States or the world. And if is some kind of FedGov Uncle Biden war on ranching, it is about as effective as one of his stump speeches. More cattle often die from big blizzards and flooding. (Rest assured: beef isn’t going to vanish from your local store or the price double because of a million-acre fire: Uncle Joe and crew (including Republicans!) will find other ways to do that.)

And is it the FedGov? Some superweapon? Well, Xcel (a regional electrical power supplier) has already stated that the fire started with a downed powerline from a broken pole – documented and verified by local firefighters. So unless some FBI type snuck in and broke that power pole…

Adams is far from the only one who does not understand Texas, the Great Plains, the Westm, cattle, or wildfire. But he is an example of people that we cannot trust to know and tell us accurately what is going on.

Which is no different than government elected officials, bureaucrats, and jackbooted thugs. Is it?

We will discuss more examples of craziness in a future commentary.

Let us know your thoughts on Texas, the FedGov “war on Texas” and other fun things!