Showing posts with label 2020s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2020s. Show all posts

Monday, May 19, 2025

Say no to those who would undermine Wyoming’s independent judiciary

Say no to those who would undermine Wyoming’s independent judiciary: The current judicial selection process doesn't need reform. It works well precisely because it's merit-based, attorney Khale Lenhart writes.

The 2026 Wyoming Legislature, Part 1. The way too early edition.


April 10, 2025

Freedom Caucus leader John Bear went on record at a meeting of legislators on how to handle the upcoming populist initiative to reduce property taxes by 50%, after they've just been reduced by 25%, as favoring completely eliminating property taxes in favor of sales taxes.

On the imported geezer reduce my property taxes on the house I bought after I moved here from California initiative, he feels that the effect wouldn't be cumulative (50% of the just reduced 25%), while other legislators do.

May 2, 2025

A press interview of Freedeom Caucus member Bear reveals the WFC wants to treat the Wyoming budget to some DOGEy style actions, particularly in regard to grants and loans.

May 4, 2025

I don't know anything about the woman from Teton County who was his competition, but Miller was another individual who spent a career in the military, and therefore was a lifelong recipient of public funds, and who has now returned as an opponent of the Federal government.

May 7, 2025

Wyoming Legislature finalizes list of ‘off-season’ topics for study

May 9, 2025

Chuck Gray Supports 22 New Election-Reform Bills, Committee To Study 10

Some of these bills are frankly nuts.

May 19, 2025

Wyoming lawmakers go after funding for state associations that sometimes oppose their bills: Green River Rep. Marlene Brady is leading the charge on prohibiting cities, towns and counties from paying dues to elected officials’ associations.

Related threads:

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus and the 2025 and 2026 Legislatures. Some things to keep in mind.

The Madness of King Donald. The 25th Amendment Watch List, Second Edition.

Trump at a college commencement on May 1, 2015.  Probably a copyrighted photograph, but posted here under fair use to show Trump's bizarre character.
Barry R McCaffrey@mccaffreyr3 19h

Trump to rename Veterans Day as ‘Victory Day for World War I’ - POLITICO — This is nuts.
He's clearly nuts.  But not just nuts, he's stupid, and mean.
There's an entire selection of recent news interviews recently where King Donny is rambling and incoherent, but here's another example of his oddity.  Trump is going to rename Victory In Europe Day to “Victory in World War II Day” even though it VE Day really was only a victory in Europe.

The war raged on against Japan after VE Day.

And for a complete collection of ramblings, etc.:


The man is demented.

Of course, added to this pathetic scene, Trump posted a photo of himself dressed like the Pope last week.  


This brought immediate condemnation, but it also broke "oh, it's just a joke".  First of all, for a dignified office, sophomoric jokes should be out of the question.  The man occupying the position that is routinely cited, probably inaccurately now, as the most powerful in the world, should not be acting like a 7th grader.  But he does so all the time.

Assuming it is a joke.  Quite a few things that Trump does that are not taken seriously turn out to actually be his real views.

I dare say that this sort of conduct by any other President in the past would have resulted in the invocation of the 25th Amendment by now.  It's not here, as those backing Trump need him for their agenda.  National Conservatism and Project 2025 depend on him.  His loyal base apparently has no problem with his antics, and those running the show depend on those people.  That probably explains why J. D. Vance is not President yet, as nobody can be sure of who, if anyone, supports him.

This will get worse.

May 5, 2025

Two gems this morning.

A tariff on foreign movies, and this:


Alcatraz is a National Park now. When it was open it was plagued with battling the elements.

May 5, 2025
Keith Olbermann@KeithOlbermann7h
Something that is underscored every time an actual world leader goes to the White House: Donald Trump is wildly and increasingly insane.

May 8, 2025

Reporter:  We are seeing the ports here in the US—the traffic has really slowed and thousands of dock workers and truck drivers are worried about their jobs”.

Trump: “That’s good, it means we lose less money”.

May 15, 2025

This is the guy running my administration. His name is Stephen Miller... We need a building like this back home.

Trump in Abu Dubai

We have costs are way down. Groceries. We have a term grocery. It’s an old term, but it means basically what you’re buying, food. It’s a pretty accurate term but it's an old fashioned sound.

Trump again.

March 16, 2025

Oh yeah. . . thats a comment by a "stable genius". . . 

May 19, 2025

Really losing it.

Related threads:


Last tragic edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 6. “Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs.”

Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs.

The Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2025.

May 14, 2025

Wyoming Delegation Not Supportive Of Trump's Idea Of Tax Hike For The Rich

So Barrasso and Lummis separate from Trump on this?

Neither one of them are actually Trump supporters in terms of their personal beliefs, but have adopted his views for political survival in Wyoming, which is fanatically pro Trump.  Everyone is well aware that the budget is in a crisis stage and at some point soon the US needs to have a balanced budget. That can only be done through raising taxes, and they know it.

Additionally, taxing the wealthy will not hurt the economy, and everyone knows that.  Tax rates for the wealthy were much higher in prior decades with no ill effect on the economy.

A matter of critical interest.

Wyoming Is The Second Most Expensive State For Beer Lovers

And one Wyomingites just won't believe

Reaction To Trump Tariffs Helps Push Wyoming Oil Prices To Four-Year Low

This is an absolute fact, but if you follow the story on Facebook, a lot of Wyomingites just won't believe it. That would mean Trump is hurting the local economy, and they can't accept that. . . at least not yet.

Oil is at $62.02/bbl this morning.

May 15, 2025

Given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren’t able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins. 

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon.

Oil is at $61.60/bbl.

May 17, 2025

Thanks to Republican mishandling of the economy, specifically increasing debt, Moody's downgraded the economy from Aaa to Aa1.

The GOP can't seem to grasp that you actually have to pay for the government.

New Jersey transit engineers are on strike.

Trump's "Big Beautiful Budget Bill", which would add $4T in debt, failed 16-21 in the House Budget Committee.

The irony is that those voting against it want more spending cuts, but only increased taxes will address this developing crisis.

Let's put this in bold, as people just don't seem to grasp it.

THE UNITED STATES CAN'T "CUT" ITS WAY OUT OF ITS BUDGET CRISIS.  IT MUST RAISE TAXES.

Cont:

It's really time to stop calling Trump a businessman:

He's a real estate developer. Clearly he's otherwise a business illiterate.

May 19, 2025

The Trump deficit expanding budget bill made it out of committee on a 17-16 vote with those who were to vote no, voting present.

This bill will be a disaster for already an already irresponsible Federal government.  Taxes need to be raised on income, particularly upper incomes to make the budget balance and this insanity cease.

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 5. The Roller Coaster Edition.

Sunday, May 18, 2025

Going Feral: Looking for Nate Champion.

Going Feral: Looking for Nate Champion.

Looking for Nate Champion.

He which hath no stomach to this fight,

Let him depart; his passport shall be made,

And crowns for convoy put into his purse;

We would not die in that man's company

That fears his fellowship to die with us.

Shakespeare, Henry V.

The views of average Wyomingites, by a huge margin, are clear on public lands.  We want them to remain public.

And yet our Congressman voted to transfer 500,000 of FEderal land in Arizona and Utah over to private hands. It's clear that at least one of our Senators is okay with doing something similar in Teton County.

Wyomingites aren't in favor of this at all.  Indeed, one of the most rabid Trumpites I know actually expressed bewildered opposition to this.

So here's the problem, and the question.

Why are Wyomingites still supporting the people who support this?

Politics are varied and complicated.  The reasons that Wyoming has gone so far to the right in its recent politics are as well.  A lot of it has to do with social issues, abortion, transgenderism, immigration, and so on, and much of that, here, has to do with the death of the Democratic Party and there being, seemingly, no where else to go.

But at least on the local level there certainly is, and what Wyomingites are presently doing is not in their own best interest.

Much of what they're currently doing is, frankly, based on a host of lies.  Donald Trump was not the victim of a stolen election with Joe Biden won.  Joe Biden won.  Global warming is not a fib.  The long drift away from coal cannot be arrested.  The state's petroleum industry was never under any governmental assault (leases went up under Biden).  There is no war on the West.  The region's agricultural sector isn't under governmental attack, but rather under real estate developer attack.  The Democrats really weren't advancing gun control.  

But we've been bought off on a bunch of dramatic assertions designed to cause the rise up of what plaintiff's lawyers call our "lizard brain".

Well, now we have a whole host of legislators, many from out of state, who don't share local values at all, and a Congressional delegation that is more interested in supporting the agenda of the far right and its ostensible leader, a nearly 79 year old real estate developer suffering from dementia, than paying attention to what we actually believe.

And that's because that's exactly what we let them do.

In reality, those close to the inside know that John Barrasso doesn't believe  what he's supporting.  It's pretty clear from her past that Cynthia Lummis doesn't either.  Harriet Hageman, well she probably does, as she's a political family that has always had this set of views.  Having said that, and importantly, she intends to run for Governor next election and Chuck Gray, who is a Californian with very little connection to Wyoming, will run for House.

In the next election Wyomingites have a chance to make their views known, although they really need to start doing so right now.  That can have an impact.  John Barrasso, in the last election, adopted a whole host of new views he probably doesn't hold at all to hold off an attack from his right.  Lummis just quietly mostly didn't say what her views actually are the last time she ran, which she could do under the circumstances, and which leaves her room to maneuver.

Maneuvering will, it must be noted, need to occur.  In 2026 the House is going to be Democratic and the MAGA reign will be over, save for in Wyoming, where there's every reason to belive it will keep on keeping on.

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus of its day, the Johnson County invaders.

Much of this, we'd note, is perfectly consistent with Wyoming's history.  Early on Wyoming sent a solidly Republican group of legislatures to our solon in  Cheyenne in spite of its association with large outside agricultural interest which were oppressing local interest.  That didn't end until the invasion of Johnson County in 1892 which briefly swept the Republicans out of power, and brought Democrats into the legislature and which sent Governor Barber packing, although not until after he tried to actually remain as Governor a la Trump insurrection in a way.  That event, however, shows the electorate can react.  It also shows us that politicians can too, as Francis E. Warren managed to survive the event, career entact, when really she shouldn't have, by changing views.

And this is happening in Montana, which was a little in advance of Wyoming in tilting to the far right, right now.























Just sitting and complaining "well that's not what we think" won't get much done.  

Politicians from any party ought to represent the views of their state.  They ought to also intelligently lead.  There's not much intelligence being manifested in the populist far right, which is mostly acting with a primitive response on a set of social issues combined with false beliefs, andy in Wyoming, with views they brought up from their own states which don't have much to do with us here.  We aren't Sweet Home Alabama.

But that won't happen unless Wyomingites educate themselves as to the truth, and what is truly going on, and how they're simply being fed raw meat for the dogs.  Until that occurs, we're going to go further into the abyss.


Saturday, May 17, 2025

The Aerodrome: Air Force One.

The Aerodrome: Air Force One.

Air Force One.

Air Force One has been in the news a lot recently, and it  started before the Qatari proposal to give the United States, or Donald Trump (it isn't clear which) a luxury outfitted Boeing 747.

Technically "Air Force One" is a call sign, and merely denotes an airplane the Chief Executive is a passenger in.  If a President rode in an Air Force Cessna, that would be Air Force One.  But everyone knows that it refers to one of two Boeing VC-25s, militarized 747s, that are designated for the Presidents use.

RD-2

Interestingly, the first aircraft designated for Presidential use was a Navy airplane, an amphibious Douglas Dolphin RD-2 that was luxury outfitted for use by President Roosevelt.  It was used from 1933 to 1939, and obviously not for transglobal flight.  The President didn't really do extensive travel until World War Two.

Roosevelt's once used VC-54C.

In spite of concerns over commercial aviation being used to carry the President during the war, it was in fact used and it wasn 't until 1945 that a new designated Presidential aircraft was acquired, that being a  Secret Service reconfigured a Douglas C-54 Skymaster (VC-54C) which was named the Sacred Cow.  It contained a sleeping area, radiotelephone, and retractable battery-powered elevator to lift Roosevelt in his wheelchair. It's only use by Roosevelt was to fly the then dying President to Yalta.  Truman used it thereafter, but it was replaced by military DC-6 (VC-118) thereafter.

Truman's VC-118.

President Eisenhower, who of course knew planes well, to Lockheed C-121 Constellations, Columbine II and Columbine III. The Constellation was a very popular airplane at the time, and Douglas MacArthur also had one, that one spending many years after its service at the Natrona County International Airport on an abandoned runway.

Columbine II was the first Presidential aircraft to receive the designation Air Force One.

At the end of Eisenhower's Presidency Boeing 707s came in, in part because the Soviets were using a jet to transport their Premier.  707s remained through the Nixon era, giving good service in this role.

747s, as VC-25s, entered specialized manufacture for use as Air Force One during Reagan's administration, although the first one would enter service after that.  They've been used ever since.

These aren't normal 747s.  They are packed with communications and electronic warfare equipment in order to have combat survivability.  

Replacing the current two aircraft that are used as Air Force One is a topic that the Air Force started looking at quite a few years ago.  The 747 variant which the VC-25 isn't made anymore.  Production of 747s stopped in 2023 in favor of more modern aircraft.  Still, the airframe remains useful in this role, and after the Air Force started to look into options, updating a 747-8 appeared to be the best option.  Only Boeing was interested in the project anyway, and it will take a massive financial loss to do it.  

The aircraft that are being retrofitted for this role was built, originally, as a commercial airliner. The projected is a massive one, and the delivery date will be in 2027.

What the new Air Force Ones will look like.

Enter Qatar.

Qatar has offered to give the US (I guess) a luxury Boeing 747-8 for use as Air Force One until the other 747-8s are complete.  But here's the thing.  Boeing has been working on the complicated task fo converting the two existing 747-8s for this use for several years. After all, it's basically a combat aircraft.  All accepting the plane would do is give Boeing a third one to convert, which wouldn't be ready for years.

Trump is being childish about this, as he is about a lot of things.  He doesn't seem to grasp the nature of the aircraft, and likely a lot of other people don't as well.  In his case, this is inexcusable.  It's a combat airplane.

Frankly, it's a Cold War combat airplane.

Which gets to this.

The 747 was a big massive airliner in an era in which it was the queen of the sky. That era is over and airlines have moved on to more modern aircraft.  The world in which Ronald Reagan ordered 747s is gone as well.  It's still useful to have an aircraft that can be used in a global thermonuclear war, which is what it is, but that's not going to happen and it makes no sense to use it to go on weekend golfing trips to Florida.

But that's what Trump tends to use it for.

That raises an entire series of other questions, many of which have little to do with aircraft, but some of which do.  It's notable that other Presidents have used lighter aircraft for more mundane trips.  In November 1999, President Bill Clinton flew from Ankara, Turkey, to Cengiz Topel Naval Air Station outside Izmit, Turkey, aboard a marked C-20C.  In 2000, President Clinton flew to Pakistan aboard an unmarked Gulfstream III.  In 2003, President George W. Bush flew in the co-pilot seat of a Sea Control Squadron Thirty-Five (VS-35) S-3B Viking from Naval Air Station North Island, California to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with that latter obviously being an exception. Barack Obama used a Gulfstream C-37 variant on a personal trip in 2009.

Trump can use something else than a 747 for what he uses Air Force One for in almost every single instance.

Indeed, the entire topic brings up a lot of things about the risks of having an airplane like this, a luxury airliner inside, which is really a combat aircraft.  It makes it easy to forget what it really is, and it makes a President feel like an Emperor, which he is not.

Friday, May 16, 2025

The Cost Meter. A Trade War Index.


April 5, 2025

Petroleum:  $61.78/bbl (Wyoming crude become unecomic at $59.00/bbl).

Coal:  Coal 99.40/ton

Coffee (USd/Lbs) 372.60.

Levis at Penny's:  $55.65.

April 7, 2025

Petroleum:  60.80/bbl.

One of Trump's minions cited this, fwiw, as evidence that inflation isn't kicking in and things are fine.  On the contrary, the price of petroleum is dropping on fears of a recession.  A recession reduces oil consumption.

Indeed, because of the bizarre nature of tariffs, trading prices on some things in general may go down, while the price rises for Americans.

April 8, 2025

From the Wall Street Journal yesterday:

It's about $61/bbl this mooring.

cont: 

$58.10. Below marketability in Wyoming.

April 9, 2025

Oil opening this morning:

56.03

April 10, 2025

Despite the strong relief rally on Wednesday, following President Trump’s 90-day pause of tariff hikes on most countries except China, the U.S. benchmark oil price is now lower than the breakeven for the shale industry to profitably drill a new well.

 OilPrice.com

West Texas is $59.16/bbl.

April 11, 2025

U.S. reached a new record-high of $6.23 per dozen. 

Oil is opening at 60.10/bbl.

May 2, 2025

Oil and Natural Gas.

WTI Crude 58.57 -0.67 -1.13%

Brent Crude 61.49 -0.64 -1.03%

Murban Crude 61.41 -0.93 -1.49%

Natural Gas 3.502 +0.023 +0.66%

A note, below $59.00, US crude doesn't move.

The inflation rate right now is 2.39% with the tariffs about to hit.

May 6, 2025

WTI Crude • 58.28 +1.15 +2.01%

Brent Crude •  61.39 +1.16 +1.93%

Murban Crude • 62.20 +2.24 +3.74%

Natural Gas • 3.594 +0.044 +1.24%

Coal:  98.50/ton

Coffee:  388.45

Levis:  $55.65.

May 16, 2025

WTI Crude 61.95 +0.33 +0.54%

Brent Crude 64.88 +0.35 +0.54%

Natural Gas 3.345 -0.017 -0.51%

Coal:  99.00/ton

Coffee (USd/Lbs) 373.79


Thursday, May 15, 2025

Lex Anteinternet: A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .The Thomas Crown Affair.

Eh? 

Allow me to explain.

I posted this yesterday:

Lex Anteinternet: A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .:   Cary Grant and Myrna Loy from  Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. O.W. Root @NecktieSalvage · 1h People think I am exaggerating when I ...

Last night, I tried to watch the Thomas Crown Affair.

I'm generally a fan of older movies, and often watch ones older than this.  But I couldn't make my way through it.  The appearance of the characters and the urban settings were just too much for me.  The thing is, I"m pretty sure it was accurate.

All the office workers and businessmen are dressed in contempoary suits, some of which were quite nice and still would be today.  The hats really stood out, with every man wearing a Trilby, something really identifiable with teh 1960s, but which when we look back on the 60s, is easy to forget.

The 1960s may have been the era of Haight Ashbury and hippies, but it was also the era of men still wearing suits and ties in the office.  It isn't really into the 1970s that this began to change.  The wide lapel  loud color suit came out of the 60s, but it didn't show up until the early 1970s, which is really, culturally, part of the 1960s.  Even so, men were wearing coat and tie in the office.

The other thing I encountered leading to this thread was a link from something on Pininterest, which lead to a set of photos that a high school teacher/photographer, took of high school students in his school in the 1970s.  I'm not going to linke them in, as some of the photos he took were, in my view, a bit lacking in modesty (not anything illegal, but just something I wouldn't really think a person should photograph), but maybe that was his point.

It wasn't that I didn't recogize the photographs.  I really did.  That's the thing.  All the boys and girls in tight fitting t-shirts.

I have my father's high school annual from 1947, and I've written on the appearance of the studends that appear in it before:

Standards of Dress. Attending school


This is a 9th Grade (Freshman) Class in high school, 1946.  Specifically, is the Freshman class at NCHS in 1946 (the Class of 1949).

Now, some will know NCHS who might read this, others will not. But in 1946 this class attended school in a city that had under 30,000 residents.  It was a city, but it was a city vastly surrounded by the country, as it still somewhat is. This class of boys (there were more in it than those just in this photograph) were from the town and the country.  None of them were big city kids. Some were ranch kids.  I recognize one of them who was.. Some came from families that were doing okay, some from families that were poor.

So how do we see them dressed?  One is wearing a striped t-shirt.  Exactly one.  Every other boy here is wearing a button up long sleeved shirt.  Of those, all but one are wearing ties.

One of the ones wearing a tie is one of my uncles.

Did they turn out with ties just for their photographs that day?  Probably they did.  I suspect so, but even at that, they all actually could come up with ties.  And somebody knew hot to tie them.  None of these boys appears to be enormously uncomfortable wearing a tie.

NCHS Juniors in 1946, this is therefore the Class of 1947.

Here's a few of the boys in the Junior class that year.  Here too, this is probably a bit different depiction of high school aged boys than we'd see today. For one thing, a lot of them are in uniform. As already mentioned in the thread on JrROTC, it was mandatory at the school.  Based upon the appearances of the boys at the time the photograph was taken, this probably reflects relatively common daily male dress at NC.  Most of the boys are in uniform.  Of those who are not, most are wearing button up shirts, but no ties.  A couple have t-shirts.  Nobody's appearance is outlandish in any fashion, and nobody is seeking to make a statement with their appearance.

NCHS girls, Class of 1947, as Juniors in 1946.

Here are the Junior girls that year.  As can be seen, NCHS had a uniform for girls at that time, which appears to have been some sort of wool skirt and a white button up shirt.  They appear to have worn their uniform everyday, as opposed to the boys who must not have.

Uniforms at schools are a popular thing to debate in some circles, and I'm not intending to do that.  Rather, this simply points out the huge evolution in the standards of youth dress over the years.  This is s cross section of students from a Western town.  The people depicted in it had fathers who were lawyers, doctors, packing house employees, ranchers and refinery workers.  They're all dress in a pretty similar fashion, and the dress is relatively plan really.  No t-shirts declaring anything, as t-shirts of that type weren't really around. And no effort to really make a personal statement through dress, or even to really stand out by appearance.


I don't know that things had changed enormously by the mid 1950s.

Kids still new how to dress fairly formally, by contemporary standards, and girls are always shown wearing relatively long skirts and blouses.  Boy nearly are always wearing button up shirts, not t-shirts.  For something more formal boys still appear quite often in jacket and tie, or suit and tie. Consider the school dance here from the 1950s:

Dance.

Not ties in a quick review, but still pretty cleanly dressed for the boys and very well dressed for the girls.

By the 60s, things were evolving.

And by the 1970s, they had really changed.


And not really for the good.

In the 70s, men still wore coat and tie to the office, but the trend line is pretty obvious. 

If anything, youth dress hit rock bottom in the 1970s.  It's intersting that office dress has hit rock bottom, right now.

And, like Atticus Finch noted, dress does matter.