Norse plate showing a weapon's dancer followed by a berserker. This nearly perfectly illustrates the current problem, the glorification of martial arms and the creation of a sick, violent individual. Berserkers may be glorified in legend, but chances are they were just messed up teens deployed in this fashion as it was handy for those doing it.
That's what Asa Hutchinson, the Governor of Arkansas, said this past Sunday on Face the Nation.
He was talking about the rise in a certain sort of murder, committed mostly by alienated, and often mentally disturbed, young mean. His "forty year" reference was to the AR15, stating that they'd been around for 40 years.
Hutchinson was wrong on the "forty year" figure. AR15s were first marketed by Colt for civilian sales in 1964. That's not forty years ago, it's almost 60 (sixty).
Something has happened in the last forty years. . . or more accurately, really in the last sixty.
Hutchinson's point was absolutely correct, but he didn't provide the answers to the "something".
I think we have, at least partially.
We did here when we noted what has happened to a certain demographic of young men in American society:
Because this is subject to a left/right divide, and part of the culture wars, we're not going to be honest about it. But the essence of this is that you can't drop out the marginal young men of society, ignore all the signs of mental illness until something happens, wipe out jobs due to technological advances, wipe out jobs due to an epic immigration rate, glorify armed violence in video games, keep shilling that everyone needs to be armed against domestic insurrection and home invasion, and probably with an assault rifle, and not produce this result.
The "we've changed" is right.
Fifty years ago, not forty, Salvatore Ramos would have been in a state mental institution since his early teens, and his two criminal parents would have been in jail and the subject of public disgust and scorn.
The Democratic Party made sure that this couldn't happen anymore.
Fifty years ago a local gun store would have been unlikely to have an AR15 on the shelves as they weren't well regarded, and military weapons were the province of collectors. A gun shop in Southern Texas would have had Winchester Model 70s and lever action rifles for hunting, and that would be about it. If anyone had a semi-automatic military rifle, it would have been the M1 Garand or an M1 Carbine at a pawn shop, most likely, and they wouldn't have been big sellers, if even there, which more likely than not, they wouldn't have been.
Endless promotion of the AR and its pals made sure that changed.
How do you get back from that?
Well, doing anyone thing won't do it.
It'll require those with a real interest in firearms to change the current culture of things. You really don't need an M4 carbine to defend your house and unless you are a target shooter, or a real firearms' aficionado, you probably don't need one at all. Indeed, if you are using it in the filed, for hunting, you're better off with a bolt action.
And it'll require a recognition by the public that the mentally ill and the young incorrigible aren't better off being unaddressed. That requires a massive reversion in the law so that people demonstrating behaviors we all know are sick are addressed in a fashion that not only helps them, but is weighted towards protecting society. Right now, under the current status of the law, that isn't even really legal all that often.
And like so many of our current problems, the two political opposites are miles apart as they can't even see the intervening ground.
Lots of submarine action this day, including German submarines in the Atlantic, and a Soviet one, which sank a Turkish vessel, in the Black Sea, and a British one in the Mediterranean.
Perhaps the most interesting ones were the Japanese launch of a float plane from the I9 to survey damage from midget submarine raids on Diego Suarez Harbor in Madagascar. Three Japanese midget submarines also tried to enter Sydney Harbor, with all three lost in the process. One was caught in torpedo nets and scuttled by the crew, which went down with it, another by depth charges. A third escaped but was abandoned, with the fate of its crew unknown.
The Luftwaffe bombed Canterbury in reprisal for the RAF bombing of Cologne.
Observers here may have noted that I failed to put up a post for Memorial Day when this post was first made, in 2012.
This is in part due to Memorial Day being one of those days that moves around as, in recent years, Congress has attempted to make national holidays into three day weekends. That's nice for people, but in some ways it also takes away from the holiday a bit. At the same time, it sort of tells you that if a holiday hasn't been moved to the nearest Friday or Monday, next to its original location on the calendar, it means that the holiday is either hugely important, a religious holiday, or extremely minor. The 4th of July and Flag Day, one major and one minor, do not get moved, for example.
Anyhow, Memorial Day commenced at some point either immediately after or even during the Civil War, depending upon how you reckon it, and if you are date dependent for the origin of the holiday. In American terms, the day originally served to remember the dead of the then recent Civil War. The holiday, in the form of "Decoration Day" was spreading by the late 1860s. The name Memorial Day was introduced in the 1880s, but the Decoration Day name persisted until after World War Two. The holiday became officially named Memorial Day by way of a Federal statute passed in 1967. In 1971 the holiday was subject to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act which caused it to fall on the last Monday of May, as it does now.
The day, therefore, would have always been observed in Wyoming, which had Grand Army of the Republic lodges since prior to statehood. But, like many holidays of this type, observation of the holiday had changed over the years. In the 1960s and 1970s, by my recollection, the day was generally observed by people visiting the grave sites of any deceased family member, and therefore it was more of a day to remember the dead, rather than a day to recall the war dead. This, however, has changed in recent years to a very noticeable extent. Presently, it tends to serve as a second Veterans Day, during which veterans in general are recalled. This year, for example, Middle School children in Natrona County decorated the graves of servicemen in the county with poppies, strongly recalling the poppy campaigns of the VFW that existed for many years.
Wyoming has a strong military culture, even though the state has lost all but two of its military installations over the years. The state had the highest rate of volunteers for the service during World War Two, and it remained strongly in support of the Vietnam War even when it turned unpopular nationwide. The state's National Guard has uniquely played a role in every US war since statehood, including Vietnam, so perhaps the state's subtle association with Memorial Day may be stronger than might be supposed.
On remembrance, we'd be remiss if we didn't point out our Some Gave All site.
It's worth remembering here that Memorial Day has its origin in a great act of national hatred, the Civil War. That is, the day commenced here and there as an effort to remember the Civil War dead, which, at the end of the day, divide sharply into two groups; 1) those who gave their lives to keep their fellow human beings in cruel enslaved bondage, and those who fought to end it.
Now, no doubt, it can be pointed out that those who died for slavery by serving the South, and that is what they died for if they were killed fighting for the South, didn't always see their service that way. It doesn't matter. That was the cause they were serving. And just as pointedly, many in the North who went as they had no choice were serving to "make men free", as the Battle Hymn of the Republic holds it, irrespective of how they thought of their own service.
And it's really that latter sort of sacrifice this day commemorates.
The first principal of democracy is democracy itself.
And because of that, it is inevitably the case that people will win elections whom you do not wish to. Perhaps you may even detest what they stand for.
Democracy is a messy business and people, no matter what they claim to espouse, will often operate against democratic results if they don't like them. In the 1950s through at least the 1990s, the American left abandoned democracy to a significant degree in favor of rule by the courts, taking up the concept that average people couldn't really be trusted to adopt a benighted view of the liberalism that they hoped for which would be free of anything, ultimately, liberally. An enforced libertine liberalism.
The results of that have come home to roost in our own era as a counter reaction, building since the 1980s, has now found expression in large parts of the GOP which have gone to populism and Illiberal Democracy.
We have a draft thread on Illiberal Democracy, which is a term that most people aren't familiar with, but it's best expressed currently by the Hungarian government of Viktor Orban, to the horror of Buckeyite conservatives like George F. Will.
Defining illiberal democracy isn't easy, in part because it's most commonly defined by its opponents. Setting aside their definitions, which it probably would be best defined as is a system in which a set of beliefs and values are societally defined and adopted which are external to the government and constitution of a county, and a democracy can only exist within it. The best historical example, if a good one can actually be found, might be Vichy France, which contrary to some assumptions was not a puppet of Nazi Germany so much as a species of near ally, but which had a right wing government, with elections, that operated only within the confines of the beliefs of the far right government.
Much of what we see going on now in the far right of the country, which is now the province of the GOP, is described in this fashion, although not without its ironies. Viewed in that fashion, the January 6, insurrection actually makes sense, as the election was "stolen" because it produced the wrong results, culturally. I.e., if you assume that the basic concepts of the Democratic Party fall outside of the cultural features which the far right populist wing of the GOP holds as legitimate, such an election would be illegitimate by definition.
The United States, however, has never viewed democracy that way. Not even the Confederate South, which may be the American example that treads on being the closest to that concept, did. The Southerners felt comfortable with human bondage, but they did not feel comfortable instituting an unwritten set of values into an unwritten constitution. Slavery, the core value of the South, was presumed justified, but it was written into the law.
Much of the nation now does.
Indeed, in the Trump wing of the GOP, or the wing which came over to trump, and brought populist Democrats into the party, that is a strong central tenant. When the far right in the current GOP speaks about being a "Constitutional Conservative", they don't mean being Constitutional Originalists. Rather, they are speaking about interpreting the Constitution according to a second, unwritten, and vaguely defined "constitution".
The ironies this piles on are thick, as the unwritten social constitution this piles on looks back to an American of decades ago, much of which has indeed unfortunately changed, but much of which the current backers of this movement are not close to comporting with themselves. The imagined perfect America that is looked back towards, the one that we wish to "Make Great Again", was culturally an Anglo-Saxon Protestant country, or at least a European Christian one, with very strong traditional values in that area. Those who now look at that past as an ideal age in part because social movements involving such things as homosexuality and the like need to appreciate that the original of the same set of beliefs and concerns would make heterosexual couples living outside of marriage and no fault divorce just as looked down upon. Put another way, the personal traits of Donald F. Trump, in this world, would be just as abhorrent as those of Barney Frank.
This is not to discuss the pluses or minuses of social conservatism or of social liberalism in any form. That's a different topic. But American democracy, no matter how imperfect, has always rested on the absolute that its first principal of democracy is democracy. Taken one step further, a central concept of democracy is that bad ideas die in the sunlight.
That has always proven true in the past, and there's any number of movements that rose and fell in the United States not because they were suppressed, but because they simply proved themselves to be poor ideas. In contrast, nations which tried to enforce a certain cultural norm upon their people by force, such as Vichy France or Francoist Spain, ended up doing damage to it, even where some of the core values they sought to enforce were not bad (which is not to excuse the many which were).
All of that may seem a long ways from Memorial Day, but it's not. No matter how a person defines it, as the end of the day the lost lives being commemorated today were lost for that concept of democracy and no other. Those who would honor them, from the left or the right, can only honor them in that context.
That means that those who would support insurrections as their side didn't win, aren't honoring the spirit of the day. And those who would impose rule by courts, as people can't be trusted to vote the right way, aren't either.
Frankly, in my view, it was about time, a long time ago.
And, frankly, this shouldn't stop here. Joe Biden, President of the United States, should receive such a letter from his Bishop as well, whomever that is.
Ever since the candidacy of John F. Kennedy, American Catholics have endured the public spectacle of increasingly bad and immoral positions being taken by Catholic politicians and, frankly, have accommodated themselves to them to the point where there are now quite a few who imagine that they can hold all sorts of positions clearly condemned by the Church.
And more heartening yet, as this occurs, a lot of Bishops around the country, including a second one where Pelosi maintains a second home, have followed suit and stated they will honor the Archbishops decision.
Of course, there is a notable exception, the Archbishop of Washington has not followed and Congressman Pelosi received communion in that jurisdiction over last weekend, before launching criticism back at her home Archdiocese. Indeed, the Archdiocese in Washington accidentally released an internal statement that it was ignoring press requests for comments.
Pelosi, after receiving communion in D.C., basically attacked the church on all of its traditional positions on nature and marriage.
As a politician, you can take any position on anything you want. But as a human, if your views aren't informed by your metaphysics, no matter how inconvenient, you really stand for nothing at all.
I don't know that this needed to gone to Part VIII, but the last version was long enough that it was hard to edit. So here we are.
April 25, 2022.
Okay, who the heck is running anyway?
House of Representatives
All the press is on this race, and it's all concentrated on the Cheney v. Hageman race. Having said that, it's been quiet for a while.
This is no doubt in part because as time moves on, and more and more is known about the January 6, insurrection, the more quiet rank and file Republicans and independents are likely moving towards Cheney. This might be best summed up by op eds from last Sunday's Trib, which we noted here:
April 24, 2022
Fremont County's Sen. Cale Case, a long time Republican conservative, wrote an Op Ed published in the Tribune today going after the State's Central Committee. He urges Republicans who have left the party to get back in and run for office and precinct positions to reclaim the party.
My prediction is that by the end of the day Case will be branded a "Rino".
Harriet Hageman also has an op ed asserting that her role as an attorney with the New Civil Liberties Alliance in a suit opposing Federally mandated cattle ear tags shows she's advocating for Wyoming, as she has this role while, she asserts, Congressman Cheney has been spending time on the January 6 Committee rather than being on the Resources Committee.
Her point that one represents Wyoming more than the other can fairly obviously be debated on an existensial sense.
Put another way, if a long term Republican is asking Republican traditionalist and moderates to "come back", and the primary contender for Cheney's seat is asserting her role with an organization fighting cattle ear tags vs Cheney's role in the January 6 committee as proof of her better concern for Wyoming, it's sort of telling where things are going.
Republicans for the House:
Liz Cheney. The embattled incumbent.
Harrient Hageman. Hageman, former Cheney supporter and Trump opponent who has switched on both in what Cheney has proclaimed as "tragic opportunism".
Robin Belinsky: Belinsky is a businesswoman from Sheridan who is billing herself as Wyoming's Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Anthony Bouchard: Bouchard is a member of the legislature from Goshen County who has been in a lot of local political spats and who is a far right firebrand in the legislature and who is still running in spite of having no hope of getting past the primary.
Bryan Eugene Keller: He's a resident of Laramie County who has registered, but I don't know anything else about him.
Denton Knapp: Knapp is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and a current Brig. Gen. in the California National Guard who is still, surprisingly, running.
Democrats for the House:
Nobody, yet.
Somebody will show up. . . probably.
Independent
Casey Hardison. This is a gadfly campaign as it is based on drug legalization. Indeed, he has a case on appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court right now for felony marijuana delivery.
It seems like we get these campaigns every election now.
Governor's Race.
This race was heavily contested in 2018 and was the first Wyoming race to really feature the outright split in the GOP. It's where Hageman first emerged as a candidate, although at that time she wasn't anti-Cheney, but then nobody was. Gordon won, of course, but that somehow left those on the far right embittered.
Nonetheless, this seat is now safe for Gordon.
Republicans for the Governor's Office.
Mark Gordon: Gordon is the incumbent. He's going to get the nomination, and he's going to win the General Election.
Harold Bjork. Who Bjork isn't really clear, but he's started a Facebook and internet campaign for Governor.
Aaron Nab: Nab is a truck driver from Southeastern Wyoming who views Gordon the same way that Hageman supporters view Cheney.
Rex Rammell: Rammell is a perennial and unelectable candidate who ran last time and will again. His views can be characterized as being on the fringe right/libertarian side.
Democrats for the Governor's Office.
Nobody. Democrats really have to find somebody, sacrificial running though it will be, or they'll look completely irrelevant in the state.
Secretary of State
Ed Buchanan. He's the incumbent.
State Auditor
Kriti Racines. She's the incumbent.
Superintendent of Public Instruction
This race featured very recently the problem that Cale Case just noted.
Rather than submit the really qualified candidates for this office, the state's GOP chose to submit three names for the vacant office that fit into a sort of red meat narrative. Of the three, Schroeder was the best pick, which doesn't mean that he's a name that would have gone anywhere in an open race or that would have been submitted in normal times.
This office is likely up for the picking.
Brian Schroeder. Schroeder is the presumptive nominee.
Megan Degenfelder. She has an education background but who has been working in the petroleum industry, announced for Superintendent of Public Education.
She was once employed as the department's Chief Policy Officer.
April 25, 2022, cont.
Brian Kemp of Georgia has received the NRA's endorsement. That might not be that surprising, but when it's considered that Trump, who the NRA has been a big back of, has endorsed Kemp opponent David Perdue, it is.
Trump has really been gunning for Kemp. The NRA obviously isn't, and it may very well have figured that Perdue is going to lose.
There's been a lot of speculation this election on how much Trump's endorsements will really mean. Here we now have a contest between an NRA endorsement and a Trump one.
April 28, 2022
An anticipated action by the Republican Central Committee to strip Laramie County, the state's most populous county, and one which is opposed to the far right direction of the Central Committee, for rules violations at their county convention has led that country to request that a rules' violation by Sublette, Albany and Crook also be addressed.
This highlights the ongoing civil war inside the state's GOP. A better indicator, although one that is little noted, is that far right GOP legislators now caucus in something called "The Freedom Caucus" rather than with the Republicans, meaning it's actually now operating as two parties in the legislature.
April 29, 2022
Wyoming's voter ID law has been challenged by a lawsuit filed by former Democratic legislature Charles Pelkey.
May 10, 2022
Incumbent State Treasurer Curt Meir has announced for a bid for a second term.
The State GOP reduced Laramie County's delegation to a handful due to a minor rules violation. A counterproposal to sanction other counties for minor rules violations, filed in retaliation, failed. As a result of the strike against Laramie County, its delegation walked out of the ongoing state convention.
Natrona County's delegation has already been reduced for failure to pay dues.
The net result is that the far right wing of the GOP has decapitated its opposition by depriving the most populous counties with the largest delegations from participating in the party.
Long serving Republican Senator Cale Case, who recently wrote an article in the Tribune asking for departing members of the GOP to come back and reclaim their position in the party, faces a censure complaint in his county organization for acting "contrary to the will of the party and the Wyoming Republican Party platform".
These last two items are serious indications that the party is seeking to eliminate all dissent within it, including dissent which, ironically, comes from someone like the highly conservative Case.
May 11, 2022
Fremont County's GOP censured long serving and highly conservative Republican Senator Cale Case.
There is a move to unseat the head of the Laramie County GOP following the loss of most of its delegates.
May 16, 2022
The new legislative district maps are out. Here they are:
Some have changed, so it's best to check. FWIW, in Eastern Natrona County, including areas of Casper, and western Converse County, it's particularly important to check.
May 27 is the final date for candidates to register to run.
May 17, 2022
It seems that getting attacked by the Republican Party has freed Liz Cheney to say things that we normally wouldn't have expected, to wit:
The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse.
leaders must renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.
That was a bold thing to say, concerning the Buffalo, New York shooting that occurred over the weekend. It also puts squarely in issue the factor of the more extreme elements of the GOP (which is not to say that the Democrats don't have their own far left members), and certain conspiracy theories that have been circulated in recent years. Now Hageman, who likely doesn't share those extreme views internally, but who is extreme enough on a state policy level, is placed in the position of either denying they exist, endorsing them (which she will not do), ignoring the matter entirely, or trying to deflect the issue, the latter being the most likely approach for her.
May 18, 2022
And he changed his mind. We earlier reported:
Secretary of State Ed Buchanan. He's the incumbent.
He is of course the incumbent, and he had announced that he was running, but he announced yesterday he's decided not to run, as he's tossed his had in the ring for a judgeship in his native Torrington that just came open.
The judicial nominating process means that his acquiring the position is not a sure thing. He'll have to be one of the three finalist for the position, and the Governor will have to pick him, but frankly all money would be on bets that he'll get the slot, given his connections.
Upon Buchanan making his announcement, President of the Senate Dan Dockstader announced for Secretary of State.
In Natrona County, former interim Assessor announced that she is running against controversial incumbent Matt Keating.
Some of the other races are changing too, and likely will continue to. So, right now.
Governor's Race
Only those in bold are actually registered right now. All are Republicans. Gordon will win the primary so all of the other candidats are quixotic to some degree.
Mark Gordon: Gordon is the incumbent. He's going to get the nomination, and he's going to win the General Election.
Brent Bien. Yet another retired career military officer returned and running for office, something we've been seeing a lot of in recent years.
Harold Bjork. Who Bjork isn't really clear, but he's started a Facebook and internet campaign for Governor.
Aaron Nab: Nab is a truck driver from Southeastern Wyoming who views Gordon the same way that Hageman supporters view Cheney.
James Scott Quick: Owner of an oilfield service company in Douglas, which is about all that is obvious about him so far.
Rex Rammell: Rammell is a perennial and unelectable candidate who ran last time and will again. His views can be characterized as being on the fringe right/libertarian side.
Treasurer's Race
Again, only Republicans so far.
Curt Meier. He's the incumbent.
Bill Gallup: I don't know who he is, but he's running.
Superintendent of Public Instruction
This race is heating up.
Republican candidates.
Brian Schroeder. Appointed incumbent.
Megan Degenfelder. She has an education background but who has been working in the petroleum industry, announced for Superintendent of Public Education. She was once employed as the department's Chief Policy Officer.
Thomas Kelly: One of the three finalist for this position, and hence one of the controversial ones. He's from the far right and won't go anywhere.
Democratic Candidates
Sergio A. Maldonado, Sr. Long time Fremont County political figure and, I believe, an enrolled member of one of the Wind River tribes.
Something ought to be said about primary races coming in elsewhere, which in my view have been badly analyzed by the press. Frankly, at least up until yesterday, Trump's picks have not done that well. Yes, J. D. Vance one in his primary, but the author with populist roots may have anyway. Up until yesterday Trump endorsements have not, in fact, been the deciding factor in races.
Yesterday they weren't really either, maybe. Trump endorsed the winning candidate in the GOP Governor's race, but last week, when it was obvious he was going to win.
Having said that, the PA Senate race is too close to call, with Mehmet Oz neck and neck with David McCormick. There was some thought that a third candidate would pull ahead.
Why on earth anyone would vote for Dr. Oz simply defies description.
Well, maybe it is explicable. Oz is described as MAGA, McCormick as More MAGA, and the third candidate was Ultra MAGA.
Still, the thought the race would develop with Oz as the least MAGA candidate and a credible contender is a scary thought, as Oz is . . .well OZ.
Idaho's Governor Brad Little easily beat far right Janice McGeachin, who is is lt. governor. McGeachen was Trump endorsed, but you'll probalby see little press about her going down in flames.
CPAC starts its convention this week in Hungary.
May 19, 2022
Yesterday controversial right wing House member Chuck Gray, who had filed to be reelected to his Casper seat, announced for Secretary of State, leaving his Natrona County Republican spot open and, unusually anymore, only a Democratic contender presently running for that office.
Gray is a far right politician who had announced early that he was running against Cheney. That campaign never took off. He obviously aspired to higher office, so now he's taking a run at Secretary of State, but he almost certainly has in the back of his mind, or maybe the forefront, running for higher office yet once the opportunity presents itself, which it likely will after Governor Gordon serves out his next term.
Gray has not been universally popular in the legislature and was the center of a story in which he was insulted in an open mike moment last session. He became involved in the erroneous Arizona ballot problem episode after the last Presidential election.
Donald Trump urged Mehmet Oz to declare victory before the votes were done being counted in the PA Senatorial primary race.
May 20, 2022
WyoFile, the online newspaper, has just published a long article on the head of the Wyoming GOP. It's intersting reading, which will be guaranteed to offend at least some of his followers. The article is here:
In news elsewhere in this current election season, Archbishop Coridileone has notified Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that she is not admitted to Holy Communion, stating in part:
After numerous attempts to speak with her to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, and the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that the point has come in which I must make a public declaration that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion unless and until she publicly repudiate her support for abortion “rights” and confess and receive absolution for her cooperation in this evil in the sacrament of Penance. I have accordingly sent her a Notification to this effect, which I have now made public.
This is long overdue.
May 21, 2022
WyoFile's investigative reporting scouped the Trib, but it also opened up a lead for it. The Tribune is now running the story WyoFile broke on the state GOP head Frank Eathorne.
Park County rejected a proposal to by the Park County Republican Men's Club to hand count the upcoming 2022 ballots. A proposal to recount the tallies of the last election, which would be pointless, by hand, is pending.
Such recent efforts have been styled as efforts to reassure voters of the legitimacy of the election, but are achieving, if anything, the opposite.
Look for "election security" to be a major theme of Chuck Gray's race for the Wyoming Secretary of State.
May 24, 2022
Chuck Gray seems to have recruited a person of like mind to Gray to run for the House seat he's leaving. The new candidate has been in Wyoming for less than a year, and previously lived in Chicago where she was a controversial school board member at one time.
While its only a guess, my guess is that there were be one or more additional Republicans enter this contest. Indeed, fwiw, the Democrats have a good chance of recapturing this seat if that does not occur.
May 25, 2022
Tara Nethercott, a legislature from Cheyenne and a lawyer in that city, has entered the race for Secretary of State.
Nethercott was in the news during the last legislative session when a far right figure subjected her to a series of extremely insulting language.
The Trump appearance for Harriet Hageman scheduled to occur at the Ford Wyoming Center over the Memorial Day Weekend is expected to add signficantly to emergency services costs to the City of Casper on a weekend that already features high school graduations and the large three day Memorial Day car show. The scheduling of the event on a day during Casper's already busy Memorial Day does raise questions about the wisdom of the planning entailed.
Brian Kemp won the Georgia Governor's primary, defeating Trump ally David Perdue. Likewise, Brad Raffensperger defated a right wing Trump ally in his race to be renominated as the Republican Secretary of State candidate. Given this, the Trump anger at Georgia Republican office holders did not go anywhere in regard to them. Trump endorsed football legend Hershal Walker did win his race, but he likely would have without Trump.
May 26, 2022
In 2019, when Cynthia Lummis was pondering entering the race to take the place of retiring Senator Mike Enzi, who is missed now more than ever, there were persistent rumors that Liz Cheney might be contemplating the same run. When Lummis announced, there was at least one commentator. . . me, who posed the theory that she might have announced when she did in order to prevent Cheney from announcing first. Even after that, for a time, Cheney would not confirm that she was going to run for the seat, and it was widely speculated that she might.
We bring that up as it now seems relatively clear that Trump's endorsement of Hageman may have been due to Lummis.
In an interview with KTWO Radio, the former President stated:
I had some good people. I really did have some good people, but I just felt that [Hageman] was very good and your wonderful senator up there ... who’s a tremendous person by the way, was very strong on her, wanted her very badly
Barasso's office denied that they had any role in picking a contender for the seat. Lummis' office did not, but they darned nearly confirmed obliquely. Lummis has called Hageman "an inspired choice".
Lummis was inspired in the 2020 race to switch her tune on Trump, going from somebody who had stated she was going to hold her nose and vote from Trump to backing the Ted Cruz effort to question the election. Here it appears that whatever occurred in 2020 between her and Cheney may not have been forgotten.
Or at least it could be interpreted that way. Given as the only notable difference between Cheney and Hageman on at least domestic issues (foreign policy issues haven't entered the race in any fashion yet) is support for Trump, Lummis may have well felt that Hageman was an establishment Republican who was willing to go along with Trump for political reasons, which might very well be said of Lummis too, rather than a real radical like Bouchard or Gray, who were contenders at the time.
A Democrat has now filed for the Governor's race, the same being Theresa Livingston. She's apparently from Worland, has run for the State Senate from there, and has no chance whatsoever.
May 26, cont.
Liz Cheney officially filed for reelection, releasing this video at the same time.
Also, the Trump rally released information that a collection of Trump suppoerters and accolytes will appear at the Hageman rally in Casper this Saturday, including Florida Congressman Gaetz and Colorado Congressman Boebert. Frank Eathorne, head of the Wyoming GOP will also speak, although a party head is not really an appropriate speaker in a contest between two Republicans. Reps. Kevin McCarthy of California, Elise Stefanik of New York and Ohio's Jim Jordan will appear in a special video address, making it plain where they stand in regard to the Republican internicene dispute.
Interestingly, Trump's star has been waning as some of his primary choices in other states have been losing.
May 27, 2022
In spite of the mounting evidence that it does not pay off for states, and increases an already growing problem of an indigent population, South Dakota will have the topic of recreational marijuana on the ballot, due to a citizen's initiative.
We haven't posted on this for a while, but as the legality of marijuana has increased across the US, so have the wrecked lives and social problems associated with it. This is a trend that will peak at some point with the discovery of the obvious, but not before a lot more damage is done.
With this being the last day to register, registrations are rolling in.
For the House of Representatives, so far, the following are registered.
Cheney
Bouchard
Hageman (who must have also registered yesterday).
Denton Knapp
Robyn Belinsky.
Belinskey and Knapp must be examples of hope springing eternal, as they're completely wasting their time at this point.
May 27, cont.
For unclear reasons, the Hageman rally scheduled in Casper has been moved indoors, which means half of the anticipated crowd (which of course might not be anywhere near what is anticpated) will be left out in the parking areas.
Attendees may not bring toasters.
I'm not making that up.
The Trump organization has stated that “all guests attending Saturday’s rally are highly encouraged to wear masks and facial coverings during the entry and screening process to the event where 6ft of social distancing is not available" which is ironic, to say the least, as the populist pro Trump wing of the GOP is highly associated with hostility to masks and vaccination.
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