Saturday, September 12, 2026
The 2026 Election, 22nd Edition. The Stupid on Stilts Edition.
We're making a fortune. So if the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000. It will be called the Trump Dividend. Congratulations.
Donald Trump at the GOP Midterm Convention.
A person would have to be stupid on stilts to believe that promise, and a similar one has been extended before.
Seriously, what kind of a dumbass believes anything Trump promises at this point?
The fact that the GOP is having a "Midterm" convention is itself an example of outright desperation and hubris on the part of Trump. Trump loves Trump and you must love Trump, so he's reminding you of Trump Love so that you love him and vote for the GOP candidates to show your mindless cult like love.
The fact of the matter is that everything associated with Trump is going badly and his approval ranking is sinking like a rock. In Wyoming it's down to 54% and the impact of the tariffs on Canada haven't even hit yet, much. The war hasn't ended, inflation is about to ramp back up, and Trump's own weirdness is now too weird for anyone to ignore. The result is that Democrats, who were slated to take back the House, now appear likely to take back the Senate as well. Even in Wyoming there's some hint that the Senate may be in play and it's clear that a large number of people really aren't keen on Chuck Gray, who has been pretty quiet since the primary.
Indeed, I've seen a little lashing out at John Barrasso, who isn't running for anything. Now days we mostly see Dr. John looking at Donald Trump as if he, Barrasso, is suffering from a severe case of constipation. He may be, as he's kept his true views on everything, none of which we know, bottled up inside of himself for so long. Anyhow, if people are mad at Barrasso, who seems to have forgotten which state he's from, it doesn't bode well for Hageman and Gray, although they are both clearly the favorites.
This does bring us to some questions that should be asked in the next two months, however. Those being:
1. Do you support the undeclared war against Iran, and if yes, how do you justify no declaration of war existing?
2. On data centers, a big deal here in Wyoming, are you against them like seemingly the majority of Wyomingites are, or for them, like Donald Trump is?
3. What is your position on public lands?
4. For people who go outside, there are clearly environmental matters to be concerned about. Do you have any concerns, and if no, just don't tell us "it's a big fib", as that's just telling us that you'll lie for votes. What is your justification?
5. Epstein files. Why aren't they being released.
6. What is your real plan for balancing the budget and addressing the debt and show us that it works.
7. Do you support ending the trade war with Canada?
A note, prior endorsements on running candidates are below in a separate thread as an Appendix, which is also linked in below.. I'm doing that in this edition so as to not clog up the first part of it too much.
September 11, 2026
Two events occured yesterday which should; 1) cause a sane nation to invoke the 25th Amendment and 2) cause every Republican running for office to have to answer where they stand or never be voted on again.
The first.
Trump sworn his acolytes in so that they will be able to be called up as Long Knives to attack the upcoming Republican defeat in November.
It's not the pledge to go out and vote. Frankly, most MAGA isn't paying any attention this anyway.
It's the pledge to cheat.
Things Trump says cannot any longer be dismissed. People who think that one liner means nothing are ignoring recent history. He intends to steal the election. If he pulls that off, if he's still living and semi coherent, he intends to serve a third term.
The second was a truly bizarre video based on the Paul Harvey "God made farmers" video of years ago with a "God gave us Trump" theme.
This latches on to the extreme Evangelical leg of the MAGA stool. It would make most Christians of any branch absolutely cringe, and to claim a Divine mission like this may be very well blasphemous.
The questions that should be asked, and of any Republican candidate?
1. Will you support the results of the November election no matter what they are. If there's any hedging at all, tell the person they don't have your support for anything whatsoever.
2. Do you believe that Trump has a Divine mission? Any answer than an unqualified no should disqualify the candidate.
I can guarantee you that almost any GOP candidate, particularly if they don't know your view going into the question, will waffle and not give a straight answer.
Carrying on a bit, the religiosity of this midterm Republican convention is really something else. Protestant ministers showed up to speak at it and Tim Scott sounded like an Evangelist. At some point Protestants who are members of these communities really have to ask their pastors how they can reconcile their faith with a man who so clearly ignores Christianity.
Closer to home, Harriet Hageman is ignoring calls for a debate with James Byrd and Byrd is calling her out on it. His post from Facebook:
James Byrd for United States Senate
IF YOU WON'T FIGHT FOR WYOMING ON A DEBATE STAGE, WHO ARE YOU FIGHTING FOR?
Harriet Hageman won't stand on a stage. She won't return calls. She won't even respond. And now her silence is about to cancel the one chance Wyoming voters had to see both Senate candidates side by side.
You don't get to represent this state if you won't show up and defend what you believe in front of it. Silence isn't leadership. It's a candidate deciding Wyoming doesn't deserve a real conversation at all.
Tell Wyoming PBS: don't let her refusal to stand for what she believes in decide this for the rest of us.
Stand and fight.
That really is a chicken move by Hageman, but it seems to me she's taken that approach in the past as well.
In the past it struck me as arrogance. She stopped debating as a wave of the hand type of move, although Grey Bull pulled down 25% of the vote in 2022 and Cameron 23% in 2024. Here, it strikes me as fear. Gray Bull was a good debater and still drew 25% in a year that heavily favored Hageman. Now, with four years in, Hageman has an extremely exposed record. She poked Wyoming voters in the eye on public lands and basically called them dumb. In the category of dumb, her family's homestead burned to the ground but she still is a climate change denier. She was endorsed by Trump and has yet to explain how Wyoming farmer and ranchers should view South American beef. It's unfortunate that she lost to Mead, who was such a better candidate.
It's pretty questionable how she'd do in a debate against Byrd. Byrd would likely best her, and what's more, he knows that. So he's making her chicken move an issue.
Hageman ought to be held to account for hiding.
AN OPEN LETTER TO WYOMING PBS
August 11, 2026
To the Leadership of Wyoming PBS,
On August 10, our campaign was notified that Wyoming PBS would not be holding a primary debate for U.S. Senate, because our opponent declined the invitation to participate. A similar notice was given to Lisa Kinney, one of the Democratic candidates for Wyoming's U.S. House seat, whose opponent also declined. As a result, neither of Wyoming's federal Democratic primary races will be represented in a debate on Wyoming PBS this cycle.
I want the public to know directly: I did not refuse this invitation. I remain ready and willing to speak to Wyoming voters in this format, and if Wyoming PBS were to offer me the opportunity, I would be there.
We understand the position Wyoming PBS is in. Federal equal-time provisions limit what a broadcaster can do when only one candidate is willing to appear, so PBS can't simply offer a solo forum in place of a debate, and balancing that against the responsibility to keep voters informed is a hard job. We don't take issue with that constraint itself.
But we do take issue with the precedent this sets.
If one candidate declining is all it takes to cancel a debate outright, then any candidate who wants to dodge scrutiny now has a guaranteed way to do it. That's not a neutral policy. It rewards avoidance and punishes the candidate who actually showed up. It hands one side the power to decide, unilaterally, whether Wyoming voters get to see a debate at all. That is not how this is supposed to work.
When journalism requires the participation of good faith actors, rather than holding all individuals to account regardless of whether they participate, it will ultimately fail at its own goal of accountability. It is always easier to hide than to be held to account.
We've also noticed a related pattern: nominees who clear a primary and then simply skip general election debates too. Put these trends together, and debate participation stops being something candidates owe their constituents. It becomes optional for anyone who calculates they have more to lose than gain by showing up. That should worry Wyoming PBS as much as it worries us.
We are asking Wyoming PBS to make a public commitment that the U.S. House and Senate debates ahead of the Nov. 3, 2026 general election will occur, period. That commitment should hold true regardless of the participation of our opponents.
If a candidate refuses to show up, hold the debate anyway and leave their podium empty. Stations across the country already do this when a candidate declines. It lets voters still hear from the candidates who did show up, and it makes the absent candidate's choice visible instead of erasing the event altogether. Voters deserve to hear from all candidates in each race. Short of that, they deserve to see plainly which candidates showed up to answer for their records and which ones didn't. No candidate should get to use their own absence as a weapon to keep another candidate off the stage.
We'd also push Wyoming PBS to rethink its approach for future primary cycles. One candidate's refusal shouldn't be enough to cancel a debate outright, and that shouldn't hinge on how many candidates happen to be on a given party's ballot. A party fielding one or two contested candidates deserves the same debate access as a party fielding a dozen. Anything less penalizes voters for the size of their party's field, not for anything they did.
We appreciate the work Wyoming PBS does for this state, and we expect a response.
Sincerely,
James Byrd
Byrd for Wyoming See less
September 12, 2026
It turns out that neither Gray nor Hageman are willing to debate.
I'd have much less faith in Kinney being able to really do well in a debate against Gray, although she was a practicing lawyer and has been a legislator. Additionally, Gray's default setting when he gets stressed is asshole.
Both Hageman and Gray's campaigns are defending their position to be chickens. So are their diehard supporters. But it isn't a good look.
Friday, September 11, 2026
Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Al Qaeda's attack on the Twin Towers and Washington D.C. and where we are today.
Today will be widely marked as the 25th Anniversary of Al Queda's attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and attempted attack on the White House and Pentagon.
This blog existed at the time, but it was very inactive. Indeed, most of the posts that are found in the 2001 section of this blog were posted, actually, in 2026 and then moved back to that date as they track historical events in sequence. At that time my computer time was devoted to a forum on cavalry topics.
I'm not going to go into huge depth on the topic. It's 25 years ago but seems like yesterday in a lot of ways to me, but at the same time it must be noted how much time has passed. The country really rose to the occasion, and then starting in the 2010s betrayed itself massively, showing that history isn't written at the onset, but the conclusion. I've written a prior partial introspection on the event here:
September 11, 2001. Where we were then, and where we are today.
Al-Qaeda is of course the entity that made the assault. It was, and remains, a radical Sunni pan-Islamist militant organization who seek to restore an Islamic Caliphate. Various caliphates have existed since Muhammed, but the last anyone could claim that one existed was in 1924. That year the Ottoman Empire dissolved and the caliphate that was claimed by the Ottomans dissolved with it. Like all such larger empires, it'd had grown fairly icky, and nobody would want to restore an empire of that type. Al-Qaeda has more of a hardcore Sunni empire in mind.
The organization was founded in 1988 with that goal in mind and the intent to use violence to bring it about. Contrary to what some people like to claim, forcing a goal such as this is common in Islam. Islam itself was forced upon the Middle East by violent expansion. At the time of Muhammed, the Middle East was well in the process of becoming an entirely Catholic region of the globe, although large populations of pagans and Jews lived throughout the region. The extent to which Muhammed founded a religion that would mirror Islam today is quite debated, and frankly there are quite strong reasons to believe his original religious views were significantly different from modern Islam's. It seems fairly evident that Muhammed was influenced by his first wife, Khadija, who was either Catholic or Coptic. While Muslims hate the idea, and therefore reject it, his much older wife (she was 40, he was 25, when they married) had one daughter who clearly was Catholic and was married to a Catholic.. Muhammed also was influenced by an uncle of hers who seems to have been a Nestorian priest as well as Catholic monks.
Like a lot of would be religious reformers, he seems to have started off pretty conventional, to the extent we can tell, and then basically justified his own vices through his claim to be a prophet. He'd adopt polygamy and clearly had an eye for women. This extended right down to minors as the youngest female he married, Aisha, was only six years old at the time and was nine when he first had sex with her. Fully sanctioning armed expansion of his faith by that time, he seems to have justified taking sex slaves in order to satiate the lust of his troops who were complaining about being away from their wives.
All this sounds gross, and it is, but it's not really unique. Other would be Christian leaders have gone off the rails along these lines as well, sort of, with Joseph Smith perhaps being the best example of a conventional American lay preacher who founded his own religion.
Anyhow, in Islam there's no separation really between the faith and government. There's also no one real head, and the divisions within the faith are gigantic. It's never been the case that all Muslims have accepted one religious or secular ruler, but Al Qaeda would force that, which is why, in spite of American confusion on the issue, Al Qaeda has no support in Shi'a cultures, including the one we're presenting loosing a war to.
The rise of Al Qaeda in general reflects an odd event that the end of the Cold War helped bring about. In 1992 Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History arguing that with the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy and the dissolution of the Soviet Union humanity has reached "not just ... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
He was way off the mark.
Indeed, what Fukuyama, and darned near everyone else, failed to realize that that the Cold War had resulted in the suppression, some voluntary, some not, of hardcore, non liberal, conservatism, everywhere. In the Middle East much of the regions underground, and above ground, political forces had been completely secular. Communist parties and movements were strong. The Baath Party was a fascist party. There wasn't a single country in the Middle East that took the took the thought of an Islamic state seriously until the Islamic Revolution installed a theocracy, to everyone's surprise, in Iran in 1979, which was thought to be a freakish exception attributable to Shia, which is a minority millennialism branch of the faith.
But the end of the Cold Wat took the lid off of such forces everywhere. They were there all along, but with the threat of Communism gone, and the support of the USSR ended, very conservative religious forces emerged and began to threaten the stability of Islamic states, and for that matter non Islamic ones. Indeed, the US is going through such a struggle right now with millennialist Evangelical conservatism.
Al Qaeda's complaint with the United States is and has always been significantly different than Iran's. What Al Qaeda objected to was the presence of U.S. military forces in the region, which it regarded as intolerable and a sort of religious defilement.
On February 26, 1993 Islamic terrorists, some with connections to Al Qaeda, attempted to blow down the World Trade Center, something that seems to now be completely forgotten. In October 2000 Al Qaeda itself attacked the USS Cole. After that action, it was ready to try something more bold.
By that time the organization was hiding in Afghanistan and Pakistan, having effectively been driven out of Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan was ruled then, as it once again is due to Trump's surrender, by the Sunni Taliban, which was at that time engaged in a civil war against more moderate forces.
The concept, which was inept, was that attacking the towers (again) would destroy the U.S. economy and attacking the Pentagon and the White House would decapitate the U.S. government.
Of course, that didn't occur.
We could play out the conventional history from there, but we'll large omit it. The US and its Allies went to war in Afghanistan, and mistakenly in Iraq. The Baath government was defeated in Iraq, which now has a shaky democracy. A long war in Afghanistan more or less defeated Al Qaeda there, but the American people grew tired of the long protracted was there and betrayed the Afghanis, with Donald Trump surrendering to the Taliban.
A budding civil war is developing there. As we've often stated here, wars change everything, and the wars this sparked are no exception.
The US overreacted to what was effectively a criminal assault on the US by converting it into sort of a global war. Domestically the US government consolidated agencies into the Naziesque named Department of Homeland Defense, creating a sort of permanent war time footing where it did not need to exist. It acclimated itself to the use of the military, and intelligence organizations, in extra legal operations. "First Responders", in the form of firemen and policemen, were regarded as heros, legitimately, with their occupations, along with that of veterans, to go on and receive hagiographic treatment, which is not good at all.
An entire generation of Americans have grown up thinking this is normal. First
And the structure and atmosphere that created set up a condition in which a rogue President could use that force in a way that no Cold War era President ever could.
After World War One strong empires ruled by hereditary families supported by ultra conservative forces fell. In some countries, the war brought about more liberal governments, which an expansion of democracy. In others, it brought about radical right and left wing governments.
Al Qaeda did not bring about a caliphate as a result of September 11, 2001. It did succeed, however, in making the world worse. The US can pull out of its own descent into fundamentalism, but the question is whether it will or not.
Wednesday, September 11, 1946. Longest scoreless tie.
The Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds played the longest scoreless tie in Major League Baseball history. Nineteen innings in 4 hours, 40 minutes,
The game was called because of darkness.
The United States turned over $1,121,400,000 worth of surplus U.S. Army property to the Philippines.
Ida Stover Eisenhower, mother of Dwight Eisenhower, Milton S. Eisenhower, Edgar N. Eisenhower, Arthur Bradford Eisenhower, Paul Dawson Eisenhower, Roy Jacob Eisenhower, and Earl D. Eisenhower. died at age 84.
Dwight was, of course, Commander of SHAEF in World War Two, and later President of the United States. The military had actually been a default career for him, and not his first intention. Milton S. Eisenhower was an accomplished academic. Edgar was a lawyer. Earl an engineer and Kansas legislator.
Ida was a runaway. Family deaths and circumstances had left her in the care of an aunt and uncle who did not believe in female education, so she took off in order to go to high school. Her husband, David, was an engineer by training, but his personality left him impoverished and withdrawn.
She was a pacifist.
Blessed Francesco Giovanni Bonifacio was brutally murdered by Yugoslavian Popular Guards for being a Catholic Priest.
He was ethnically Italian, although the region of Italy he was born in was part of the Austro Hungarian Empire at the time of his birth. The region he was killed in was part of Italy at the time, but became part of Yugoslavia, and is now part of Croatia.
Johnny Allen Hendrix was renamed by his father to James Marshall Hendrix.
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Tuesday, September 10, 1946. The call within a call.
Saturday, September 11, 1926. Assassination attempt on Mussolini.
A bombing attempt against Mussolini by Italian anarchist Gino Lucetti failed.
He escaped imprisonment in 1943 only to die in a German air raid that same year.
Mussolini survived six known assassination attempts. Far fewer than Hitler, but still quite a few. I note that as the assertion that Donald Trump survived two such attempts and therefore is favored by God deserves some reflection, accordingly. Granted, I'm not suggesting that assassination is in any way warranted. I wouldn't have said that about Mussolini either. Murder is not sanctioned by God.
I'd also note that anarchist were big into assassination, although its difficult to see how that advanced their goals, assuming that their goal was not to be hated.
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Wednesday, September 8, 1926. The Vatican denounces Action française.
Monday, September 11, 1911. The Bird of Paradise.
The Bird of Paradise opened introducing Hawaiian music to the mainland US.
Hawaiian music would enjoy a major following in the US in the mid 20th Century and the guitar style it featured would influence the blues.
The Pittsburgh Pirates, third place in the National League, lost in an expedition game to the local all black West Baden Sprudels in West Bend, Indiana.
California State University, Fresno, Fresno State, began classes as the Fresno State Normal School.
A massive German military war game of 900,000 troops began.
Mount Etna erupted rendering 20,000 people homeless.
The Chinese war vessel Hai Chi arrived in New York, the first Chinese warship to do so.
Commissioned on the eve of the 1911 Chinese Revolution, she'd serve in the Imperial Chinese Navy and the Republic of China's Navy. She was scuttled in 1937.Last edition:
Friday, September 8, 1911. Disarming the Moros.
Wednesday, September 11, 1901. McKinley doing well.
President McKinley's physicians told reporters, "Good news, good news, nothing but good news. We have washed and fed the President, and moved him to another bed" and "that a count of his blood shows that it is in a normal condition, and we feel that we can announce definitely that there is not the least indication of blood poisoning."
The Director-General of the Pan-American Exposition announced plans for "a day of special thanksgiving, a day of national jubilee over the escape of President McKinley from death".
Clergymen attending a national conference in Chicago proposed a second Thanksgiving Day in honor of McKinley's escaping death.
Cousins Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and Czar Nicholas of Russia met on the Kaiser's yacht, SMY Hohenzollern, which made a rendezvous with the Tsar's yacht off of the German coast. The Czar was ferried to the location on his yacht, the Standart.
The U.S. Circuit Court for New York ordered a refund of $490,139.09 to the American Sugar Refining Company for improper tariffs. The tax was imposed on sugar from Puerto Rico, which was except.
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Tuesday, September 10, 1901. Goldman arrested.
Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 10, The Autarky Edition.
Autarky is the economic concept of producing everything a nation consumes within its own borders. It's been tried numerous times, and inevitably leads at best to high prices and deprivation. At worst, it results in warfare.
Autarky was the official economic model of the Nazi Party after German economist Hjalmar Schacht joined the party in 1926 and after Gregor Strasser was ousted from party influence.* Nazi Germany provides a perfect example of how it doesn't work. Germany was a major industrial power leading up to, during and after World War Two (it still is), but it could never produce enough of anything for its own economy, even in peacetime. Moreover, it didn't have the raw materials to supply all it did produce. It imported 20% of its food supply in the early 1930s, and by the late 1930s the Nazis had only managed to boost that to 83%.
The solution was simple.
What the Germans did have, they could just seize from neighboring countries through war, and then either kill off the native population or subjugate it. That's exactly what it attempted to do. It pursued that murderously in Poland and the Soviet Union, and through vassal states in the form of France, Romania and Spain. Where that proved to be impossible. . . for the time being, it used bullying and threats, such as in regard to Sweden.
Even at that, it was never able to do it.
That seems to be to some extent what Donald Trump is advocating right now.
If we were playing hardball, all we'd do is say we're going to do no trading with Canada. If we did no trading with Canada would save $90 billion.
We could do tremendous good for ourselves by just not trading with countries.. We lose with Mexico $195 billion a year. They have nothing that we have to have, I mean. Hot tamales, tomatoes, a couple of things
Trump seems to believe that by closing the economic border with Canada and Mexico, and everyone else, unless they essentially become vassal states, the US can simply go it alone and not be harmed. Where it's obvious that won't work, we'll force acquisition, as we have now done in Venezuela and keep threatening to do with Greenland.
This is immoral, and stupid.
You'd think that a guy who went to Wharton would have a basic grasp of economics. Open economic borders, truly open economic borders, make countries rich, not poor. That doesn't mean that there's never a place for tariffs, including for protectionism, but it's generally a bad idea.
What makes for more sense is for the United States, Mexico, and Canada, to have a seamless economy with no tariffs at all. The US and Canada had a nearly duty free relationship prior to Trump, save for the infamous very high ones on dairy, poultry, and egg products. Those latter tariffs were absurd, but the US also has absurd tariffs in the agricultural sector. The US relationship with Mexico is, right now, duty free.
An absolute lack of tariffs is how it should be between the three major North American economies. Only an an economic ignoramus would disrupt that.
And only an immoral person would advocate taking the oil of another nation that is providing it under the gun. The US has been an oil addict for a century, but was showing signs of getting off the stuff. Trump, with his "it's always the 1950s" mindset can't seem to get out of that.
Trump should really know better. Wharton has a reputation as one of the best, maybe the best, business school in the country. He owes us an explanation, which he seems to be incapable of articulating, for his idiotic economic views. Wharton, and I'm serious about this, does as well. I know one Wharton graduate personally, and he is brilliant. But the example of Donald Trump is to weird to explain. For that matter, the example of Wyoming's Chuck Gray, who is an absolute Trump sycophant, is as well.
We need a combination of supreme moral sensitivity and economic knowledge. Economically ignorant moralism is as objectionable as morally callous economism. Ethics and economics are two equally difficult subjects, and while the former needs discerning and expert reason, the latter cannot do without humane values.
Wilhelm Röpke, A Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market
September 8, 2026
Retaliatory Canadian tariffs took place today with duties ranging from 15% to 50% across hundreds of U.S. products worth a total CA$27.6 billion, including dairy, agricultural equipment, paper, household appliances and electronics.
This will hurt Canadian consumer through increased cost to them, and American producers due to decreased demand.
Cont:
And as this wasn't enough, 5he United States is banning the import of some dairy products motorcycles and most alcoholic beverages from Canada.
This is rank stupidity. Peter Navarro ought to be sent to kindergarten and Wharton declared a clown college.
So, if you can, go out and buy a Can Am motorcycle and some Crown Royal.
Cont:
U.S. wholesale inflation hits 5.4% annually in August 2026.
More good news from the Trump administration.
September 11, 2026
Lame duck defeated state senator Bob Ide used the Hilltop disaster to say something monumentally stupid.
Hilltop Bank Shutdown Just Confirms Why Wyoming Needs Gold, Lawmaker Says
Bob, that's stupid.
Footnotes
*Strasser was permanently ousted from influence in the Night of the Long Knives.
Schacht is interesting in that he was never a Nazi himself and was involved in prewar anti Nazi plots. He served in the German government nonetheless.
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