The Congressional Oath Does Not Include “Until Death Do Us Part”

 I'll note that Dreher is right to be worried, but he's part of the National Conservative crew that got us here.

‘ I’m Worried About Weimar America’

“It may not be Hitler 2.0. It may not be Stalin 2.0. It might be something all American, but it’s not going to be what we’re used to,” the author Rod Dreher argues.

Saturday,July 4, 2026. What I intend to do (or not) for the 250th Anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The Betrayal of the Revolution.

Protest by non observance, that's what I intend to do.

Or it's what I intended to do.

My attitude, which is quite pronounced on this, is already getting me in some trouble around the house, but I won't be "that guy" who has to answer why they didn't do anything at all when a tyrant was on the rise.

Everyone always imagines themselves on the side of right.  "If I'd lived in Nazi Germany, I wouldn't have gone along. . ."  Well, bull.  If recent history has shown us anything, it's that people will continue to travel along a path well after its obvious that they're being lead by a disaster.  People stampeded into voting for the NSDAP in 1932 were still supporting them in 1936, and if disquieted by September 1939, they went along still.

That's exactly what's going on now.  Trump's administration is authoritarian to the core and has people in it who hold shockingly racist views.  Just this past week there were cries to sterilize foreigners if they entered the US.

"Oh, they don't really mean that. . .they won't execute the Jews".

When the United States declared independence 250 years ago, it claimed, amongst its justifications, the following:

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

Trump has done this.

• He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

Trump has done this.

• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

Trump has effectively done this.

• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their substance.

Trump has done this, in the form of DOGE and ICE.

• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislature.

Trump has done this, in the form of ICE.

• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

Trump again has attempted to do this.

• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

Executive orders, anyone?

• For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

ICE and deployments of the National Guard.

• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

Trump is effectively attempting this.

• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

January 6?

Trump has always been a completely illegitimate President, although nobody has bothered to challenge this at law.  Insurrectionist, which he is, are not allowed to serve in the office, and it has never previously been the case that those known to be insurrectionist are required to be proven such at law.  As he is an illegal occupant, he has no actual authority, other than what negligence affords him.

And that has been done on a vast scale.  He's take the country all the way into a war in the Middle East he cannot win, and which Americans are going to pay the price for, for years.

Freedom wasn't taken from the American people.  They surrendered it to a demented oligarch.  They did it through their votes, and their not bothering to vote.  This is going to get much worse before it gets better.  Some of the damage will be permanent, but it may also be the case that necessary reforms will come about.

More than anything, this betrayal of the founding principals of the nation has come about due to the abject cowardice of the American people.  People know this is wrong, but they aren't willing to say anything to anyone about it.

A cowardly people doesn't honor their brave ancestors by setting off fireworks.  In this case, those people would be best honored by turning their backs to a celebration which King Donald has tried to make all about himself.  Indeed, at last, their starting too.  The large "state fair" King Donald admiration fest is being ignored.

The entire Fourth of July should be ignored this year.  The nation dishonors the Revolution by attempting to celebrate it with an increasingly fascistic would be monarch in office.

Other folks noting the same thing:

Also, I read in article in the Washington Post that a fairly percentage of people like me who can remember the Bicentennial are sitting this one out, upset about the country falling into fascism.  

***

But a fairly high percentage will also likely find, like me, that family celebrations and whatnot will likely intervene.  

We'll have to be careful.

Honest, but careful.

***

Pope Leo addressed the United States, his home nation, yesterday.

ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE LEO XIV

ACCEPTANCE OF THE LIBERTY MEDAL OF

THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION CENTER (USA)

Friday, 3 July 2026

Dear friends,

I am honored to accept the Liberty Medal of the National Constitution Center in this year that marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America with the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. On the eve of this momentous occasion, I offer a warm greeting to all those assembled at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. As a son of this great country, founded by courageous men and women who dreamed of liberty and of a better life for themselves and for their children, I join you in asking God’s blessings upon America’s future, that the lofty ideals enshrined at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence may continue to guide the flourishing of the nation in unity, justice and peace.

From our youth, most of us have admired the eloquence of those words, with their resounding appeal to the law of nature and to nature’s God as the basis of their assertion that all men and women are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. While couched in the language of the Enlightenment, that claim is ultimately grounded in an understanding of the human person inspired by the great biblical vision of man and woman being created in the divine image. It is indeed here that we discover the basis of human dignity; dignity which precedes the establishment of any State, and whose custody constitutes its very purpose.

In these past two-hundred and fifty years, for so many peoples throughout the world, it was the firm resolve to achieve the noble vision of the nation’s founders that made America a byword for freedom, as the country opened its doors to successive waves of immigrants, enabling them and their children to play their part in shaping the future of the nation. It was this same love of freedom that inspired the United States, in the darkest hours of the last century, at the time of the two world wars, to look beyond itself and, at great sacrifice, to champion the cause of freedom beyond its own borders. 

As every American knows, however, the path to building a society that would embody those high ideals of liberty and justice for all was not always easy and, in many respects, is still a work in progress.  Indeed, the effort to realize this vision is one that must be taken up anew in each generation and in the face of ever new challenges. Today, as we look to the future, this historic anniversary presents us with the opportunity to reflect once again on the nation’s founding principles in the hope that America will remain ever true to the dream that has earned it the title of land of the free and home of the brave.

The first right enshrined by the nation’s founders was the right to life, for no one who is deprived of life can enjoy liberty or pursue happiness. A country’s vitality is deeply tied to the value it affords to human life in every form and condition, acknowledging the dignity endowed upon every human person by virtue of their very existence.  The inherent worth of every human life has led the noble hearts of generations to praise the marvelous works of the Creator (cf. Ps 139:14) and stand in reverence before so precious a gift. Indeed, it is precisely this reverence that we must continue to cultivate — one that sways the hearts of individuals and inspires laws that recognize and safeguard the gift from the moment of conception to natural death.  Reverence, too, will aid us in discovering that we are guardians and stewards of those entrusted to our care. In this regard, the moral greatness of a nation is manifested, above all, in its capacity to support, protect and cherish the lives of all, especially the most vulnerable and those whose worth is questioned.

Following the right to life, liberty was and is preeminent among the principles revered by the men and women who have sought within this nation’s borders a new beginning, often equating it with previously undreamed-of hope. Though frequently understood as the ability to act as one would like, authentic freedom runs much deeper.  It is founded upon the human person’s capacity to know the truth and adhere to what is good, even at great cost — a sacrifice well known to many who have labored to shape this country.  The desire for truth and freedom, as well as the very pursuit of happiness, continues to inspire people of all generations to ask fundamental questions regarding the meaning of life, our ultimate purpose, and indeed about God, and it is proper for magnanimous hearts to endeavor to answer these questions with sincerity.  These answers inevitably determine the direction which we seek to give to our lives, and America has long championed the religious freedom necessary to follow responsibly the dictates of conscience in this regard, free from fear and coercion, as enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

It is this freedom that holds sacred the inner sphere of the person where convictions are formed and where conscience can guide the decisions made in the intimacy of the human heart.  This same freedom also ensures the right of every person to worship according to one’s own belief, and of individuals, communities and associations to give public expression to their faith.  In fact, religious freedom gave rise to the American tradition of allowing for interfaith dialogue and interreligious cooperation in promoting the public good and enriching the debates on the great moral and ethical issues that have faced the nation and shaped the course of its history. It is my hope that this tradition will continue to bear fruit in a public discourse marked by moderation, respect for the views of others and an ongoing effort to find common ground in promoting the cause of peace and reconciliation, at home and abroad. 

The forbearers of this country, men and women of diverse backgrounds, religions and languages, were able to find that common ground and the strength necessary to pursue a better future.  The principles that inspired America’s founders, rooted as they are in the truth of the human person, brought them together in a single cause, a common dream. Unity lent strength to that dream, giving rise, under God, to the United States of America. E pluribus unum — out of many, one.  In order for a nation to flourish, it must be truly united; united not by goals bound to momentary endeavors, but by ideals that do not fade with the passing of time.  May the principles we have reflected upon today — a shared human dignity, equality and the rights laid out in the Declaration of Independence — ever be a source of such unity and a guiding light for the present moment and for the years to come. 

In accepting this award, I therefore pray that this, the 250th anniversary of the founding of this great nation, may be the occasion of a solemn recommitment to these ideals that have made America a country that values peace and prosperity, a country characterized by generosity and nobility of heart. I commend all of you, as well as the future of the Nation, to the One who is himself the source of true freedom and lasting peace, the One whose very name is Peace.

May God bless America! Thank you!

This is, I'd note, copyrighted, but I'm claiming the fair use exception here.

Pope Leo has really been a shining light for Americans who are horrified by Donald Trump.  He's particularly a shining light for people like me, who are conservatives horrified by Donald Trump. He's proof to the world that not all Americans are some sort of strange Dixiecrat vandals.

Related Threads:

The Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A reminder to that it is time to be the people that founded the country.

Labels: 1600s, 1620, 1770s, 1776, 2020s, 2026, 250th Anniversary of American Independence, Agrarianism, American Revolution, Distributism, Donald Trump, Evolutionary Biology, Mexican Revolution, Russian Revolution, The Wealthy

Why the cowboy hat?

 

I'd note that the Father wears a proper ranching style cowboy hat.  

Cowboy hats are something a person either looks natural in, or they don't.  Not everyone who wears one is a rancher or a farmer by any means, but usually a person without a real rural background can't pull it off.

Notably this year Florida lawyer Frank Campman can't.  At age 58, Chapman is a retired Florida lawyer who has the thick girth of somebody whose worked behind a desk.  The hat he's chosen to wear, now that in his retirement he's relocated to Teton County and become a dude rancher, is right out of 1950s television Westerns and doesn't fit.  It looks absolutely absurd.  His boots look absurd as well, and he walks like they're hurting his feet.  At least carpetbagging Chuck Gray hasn't tried to don a cowboy hat, which with his tiny physical size would be likely to cause him to simply disappear.

Locally, there's a lawyer whose a transplant from back east who wears a cowboy hat with a rolled brim, a gift from his spouse.  He's a nice enough guy, but it looks absurd.  In contrast, a local judge wears one that looks very natural, but he's from here.

Part of it is, I think, being comfortable in your own skin.  We've all heard "fake it until you make it", but in truth, you can't.

When I become President, every golf course in the United States will be grazing land.

Same thing with shopping malls.

National Park Service Uprooted on the National Mall

I know how to play golf, but I don't golf.  It's boring and sanitized.  The kind of sport for people who want to go outside, but fear the outside, or are hopelessly urban.  Granted, that's not the fault of all of the hopelessly urban, and that's the place for golf.

Golf is one of those sports that underwent an evolution in my mind when I was quite young.  I won't say that is rational or correct. 

My mother was a first rate golfer.  My father didn't golf at all.  None of the men I knew when very young golfed, and when I came to know some that did, as I aged, they were men who didn't do the things, or didn't do them to the same extent, as the men I knew.  Golfing men didn't hunt much, they didn't fish much, they weren't going to be found at brandings.  They all tended to be from the upper upper middle class, or the lower wealthy.  In my mind, they were effeminized as they were playing what seemed to me to be an effeminate sport.

That view of golf hasn't changed much for me and indeed its been reenforced as I've grown older.  I know that there are some really manly men that golf, but I don't know very many.  Of guy's guys that I know that golf, there's one really nice guy I know who does, and that somehow fits him.  He's a computer guy.  And there's one that's just too out of shape to do anything else, and you can be pretty out of shape and play golf if you use a cart.  Neither of them are effeminate.

I don't think, actually, that these feelings are as unique as a person might think.  At one point in time lawyers were associated with golf (not anymore) and some golfed as they felt they had to.  This was particularly the case with new lawyers.  I've known at least two new lawyers who golfed as they thought that's what lawyers did.  Interestingly, of those two lawyers, I know a third person, a woman, who insists that one of them is "gay" just by her observations of him, even though he's been a married man for years.  Maybe the golfing was too effeminizing.

In a weird sort of way, Donald Trump emphasized this a couple of years ago when he simply gushed over his probably totally fictional observations of the size of Arnold Palmer's penis.

Seriously?

Oddly enough, golf was definitely associated with lesbianism at one time.  This was the case for decades, and in some ways it cuts against what I'm noting here.  As a sport, it was a sport that women could participate in and do very well as professionals, and so perhaps, maybe, women who were sort of masculine in their internal inclinations participated at a higher rate that would have simply existed in the general population.

Oddly, golf at one time was highly segregated in every imaginable way.  Blacks flat out weren't allowed on private golf courses, but often women weren't either.  Lawsuits were required to end that.  Wealth played a role to play on private courses, and still does.  Indeed wealth played a role in keeping women off of golf courses, as business deals were conducted on them from which they were omitted, and that helped bring about the lawsuits later on.

All that probably offends my Irish egalitarianism.

I can't say much for golf. 

Golf also seems to me to be the ultimate boring urban upper middle class excuse for a sport, at least at one time.  Manly men might shoot hoops, or go play flag football, or something, but at one time towns and real estate developers put in golf courses as it was the default sport for aging white people.

Tennis is the other urban sport, or was.  It's joined by basketball and pickle ball in that category, the latter being a newer sport whose existence I don't understand.  The thing is, however, that to play any of those sports well, you really need to be in shape.  The same kind of guy that can really drive a tennis ball over the net can drive a baseball right down the field at lethal speed.

Supposedly golf has declined in popularity in recent decades, and its notable that at the same time the demographics of the country are changing.  Golf was heavily racist at one time and indeed it was more recently than a person might imagine, although there have been some really notable Hispanic and Black golfers.  Golf is apparently of Scottish origin, where it would have been pretty darned manly, so its an import of the British Isles.  People from other cultures don't really have any roots in it, and for that matter, lots of European Americans don't.  Shooting was the sport for Germans, and competitive shooting, like polo, was a major military sport.  Shooting was, and in fact is, a major civilian sport in many parts of the country.  Basketball is an American sport, as is baseball, and both were played by rural and lower middle class demographics at first.  Basketball is particularly interesting this way as it comes from farming country with bitter winters, so its a good indoor sport for a lot of pretty athletic people.

Football is actually of British origin, but the origin is from the British lower class and it reflects that origin to this day.  Hunting is a male human universal, which recent anthropology suggest had more female participation in antiquity than previously imagined.

Gardening, hunting, shooting, walking, running and nearly anything just seems to have more merit that golf.  But it hangs on in the minds of the elderly, a game of privilege from their youth.

So that a bloated old man with money would choose to wreck things for golf, makes sense.  People tend to hang on to the era in which they were young, and the wealthy have more of an ability to do that than other people.  The super wealthy have the ability to afflict that on everyone else.

I have an upcoming post related to this, but I'll start here on the topic with this excellent essay from Angry Staff Officer.

Citizen-Soldiers – not “Warriors”

A Fossil Fuel Free Future is Here.

This was obvious, but will remain unrecognized for quite some time, for the same reason that coal is almost dead, but people don't grasp it.

Average people's ability to really grasp an existential change in something is pretty poor as a rule.  It's not so much that people choose to live in the past as it is that they have no grasp that the past of their younger lives and of their parents lives, the latter of which a lot of people hold to in a sort of mythical way, evolves.  We see that a lot in the U.S. right now.

The entire imaginary economy of Donald Trump is one that's grounded in a mythical 1970s, when he was young and clubbing and men lusting after girls in their teens was basically okay, du e to the sexual revolution.  MAGA, for its part, imagines a mythical 1950s economy, not understanding why the economy of the 1950s was the way it was.  In both instances, and particularly in regard to the 1970s economy, things were not as rosy as imagined.

Coal has been dying ever since the Royal Navy went to oil for ships.  We've discussed that before here:

Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry

Labels: boats and ships, British Navy, Coal, Daily Living, Industry, Lodging, Mid-Week at Work, Petroleum, Railroads, Transportation, U.S. Navy, United States Fuel Administration

Coal is not coming back.  In fact, it's demise is accelerating.  Lot of the globe, including China, in spite of what a demented Donald Trump thinks, is racing towards renewables.  Trump can't really imagine it as he's 80 years old and in the 70s there weren't very many big windmills, although even then there was a push towards renewable power.

Indeed, that push was started by the Arab Oil Embargo and people have been working on the technology ever since.  Now renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels for power generation.  Only nuclear can compete.

Every since the 70s engineers have been working on electric vehicles as well. Their day has arrived.

And Donald Trump started a war that will accelerate the pace of this change, rapidly.  Trump might end up being recalled as the greenest President ever, accidentally.

The change just won't be a switch to clean electrical power, and that switch is rapidly coming and no amount of John Barrasso and Harriet Hageman calling for the mythical "clean coal" will stop it.  It's also going to be a switch away from the sort of vehicle based economy we have now.  People aren't going to stop owning cars, but already a younger generation really isn't all that enamored with them.  Self driving vehicles, as much as I hate the idea, are coming in. With them will come self driving semi tractors and more importantly, in my view, remotely driven electric trains.

There's no reason that railroads can't be controlled like giant model train layouts.  Model trains already provide the model for it.  We're not far from that day.

That day is coming now whether Donald Trump, Harriet Hageman, John Barrasso, or people with an emotional tie to fossil fuels like it or not.  Your livelihood depending on it won't matter either.

It's already happening.

We need to amend the Constitution. Introduction.

If Donald Trump's illegal occupation of the Oval Office (he's an insurrectionist and not legally qualified to occupy the office with out Congressional relief) has shown us anything, it's that much of the way American government has been working is identical to the way the British one does. . . we just figure it works this way.

Trump, who is not a very smart man, smashed that as Trump is all about Trump, and doesn't what he wants.  He's therefore demonstrated where all the holes are, although frankly quite a few of them have been obvious for some time.  

In this series, we'll look at what needs to be fixed, and how to fix it.

"We can't just quit now". Yes, we can.

The argument was predictable, so its no surprise.  Republican supporters of Mad King Donald are arguing that, well, sure it might have been a big whopping mistake, but we can't quit now.

Oh yes we can.

We've done it before.

We did that in Vietnam after seventeen years of effort and 50,000 dead.  Heck, we left and felt good about leaving, blaming our embarrassing departure on the South Vietnamese, whom supposedly we were there to help.

Mad King Donny did that with Afghanistan, actually surrendering to the Taliban and leaving the mess for his successor Joe Biden to handle.  To Trumpites everything is always Joe Biden's fault, but the abandonment of the Afghanis was Donny's fault.  

So he has experience in losing wars and pulling out already.

We went into this war because Israel basically duped Donny into it.  Knowing that Donny was of weak and declining mind, they convinced him that an Israeli strategic goal was an American one, as they couldn't achieve it on their own.  The entire concept was lame in the extreme.  We'd bomb Iran for two or three days, murder the leadership of the Islamic Republic, and suddenly everyone in Iran, exercising their Second Amendment Rights, would rise up and turn the country into a liberal democracy, complete with a representative government that loved us, and proper voter identification.

It was a stupid idea.

The Iranians are a captive people, but they aren't armed the way we are, and for that matter, if the Trump administration is any guide, even freedom loving. AR 15 toting, patriots will roll over like a dog when the government tells them to, even accepting that, well, guns are bad as King Donny said so.  Sparking a revolution in a foreign country by bombing the crap out of it won't achieve that goal.  Indeed, if the Germans, North Koreans, North Vietnamese, etc., are any example, bombing a civilian population causes support for the government.  At some point, some person whom wanted freedom is burying a child and hates your guts.

Not that Trump could appreciate this.  Trumps haven't served in the military the entire time they've been in the US.  Heck, the founder of the Trump dynasty in the US was regarded as a draft dodger in the German state he was from, although that can be debated (he was, after all, busy in the US serving food and running a house of prostitution).

So, now we have the Iranians proposing terms to us.

In order to "win" this war we'll have to seize the country.  Given the population of Iran, that will mean calling up the National Guard and occupying the country for at least a decade.  My guess is that we'd sustain at least 20,000 dead, not as much as Vietnam, but a lot more than any war we've fought since Vietnam.

Let's not.

Chances are pretty good that King Donald is going to accept whatever terms the Iranians dictate to the US and call it a victory.  It's a bit of an American tradition, after all.  The British and the Canadians beat the crap out of the US in the War of 1812 and we still pretend that we won it, when in fact the British dictated terms to us.  We won the Mexican War but only by forming our own Mexican body to surrender to us, legitimate Mexican authorities never did.  We declared victory in the Philippine Insurrection when the war became too unpopular to continue to fight, through which we dictated to the Filipinos that they'd have to go independent, just like they were fighting to be.  We went into Mexico in the Mexican Border War and then came back out, tail between our legs.  We flat out lost the Vietnam War but got out before everything folded up and then blamed it all on the South Vietnamese.

And of course, as noted, we surrendered to the Taliban.

Trump is going to Congress and asking for $200B to fight this war.  Just say no, Congress.  Trump will then declare victory and claim that we wiped out Iranian nuclear material, which we claimed to have earlier wiped out, and go home.  

This problem can be left for the adults.

If this war is to go on, one modest proposal.  The Trump family ought to serve in it.  Every single one under age 55. And in combat roles.  The Trump family head of household can make that happen.  And Trump lovers, like Chuck Gray, who are under 55 should sign up and go.  To not do so would be hypocritical.

Shoot, it would make this a rich man's war, and a poor man's fight, if that didn't happen.

But, the better course, just stop.  Chances are that's exactly what we're going to do anyhow.

Giving up completely on the GOP.

I've noted my political history here before.

I'm a Westerner and an Irish Catholic.  That informs my vote pretty heavily.

When I first registered to vote Ronald Reagan was President.  Marine Corps Raider veteran Ed Herschler, a Democrat, was the Governor of Wyoming.  D-Day veteran Teno Roncolio, also a Democrat, was our Congressman.  Republicans Malcolm Wallop and Alan Simpson were our Senators.  

That was sort of the political landscape here at the time.   More Republicans than Democrats, but there were still Democrats, and those Democrats tended to be pretty tough conservative people.  Republicans were already tacking off into batshit crazy economic theories but they weren't completely bathed in them yet.

I registered as a Republican.

I didn't stay a Republican for a really long time.  I don't recall when exactly I switched parties, but by the time I was at the University of Wyoming, I had registered Democratic.  I stayed in the Democratic Party for a long time.  I was still a Democrat when I became a lawyer and I know that I was when I was married.  However, sometime after that, I couldn't stand the sea of blood the Democratic Party had become.  I became an independent.

As an independent you missed the primaries pretty much, however, and starting in the Clinton era in general Wyoming Democrats began to drift over to the GOP.  After all, the mainstream of the Democratic Party wasn't all that different from the traditional mainstream of the local GOP.  After awhile, I registered as a Republican.

Little far right Dixiecrats like Chuck Gray like to scream that people like me are "RINOs", when in fact they're the malignant innovation into the GOP.  That element hadn't entered the GOP at the time I was first in it, and didn't for a long time.  Gray himself, who nobody really knew anything about, was probably the first, followed by Jeanette Ward, who served one term in the legislature before losing a bid to retain her seat.  While she lost, that showed the direction things were headed in.  Carpetbaggers who knew nothing about their state moved in and wanted to convert it into pre 1964 Alabama.

It's not as if the Democrats stood still.  As moderate Wyoming Democrats left the party, it too became delusional.  If the Republicans became increasingly fascistic or Dixiecratic, the Democrats lived intellectually in the Greenwich Villages' Stonewall Inn in 1969.  It made going back into the Democratic Party an outright impossibility for people like myself, particularly as they lashed themselves increasingly to abortion and perversion. 

More recently, I'll note, that seems to be wearing off.  The Democrats are still "pro choice", but they don't talk much about it.  For that matter Republicans who were really gung ho on being pro life have sort of lost their fire for that as well, following the lead of Orange Mussolini.

What the Republican Party, nationally, has become is flat out insane.  No thinking person can be a member of it and be comfortable.

There are still good Republicans here in Wyoming.  They began a big fight against the Dixiecrats prior to the legislature and largely prevailed this session, in spite of the fact that the diehard adherents of The Lost Cause were theoretically in control of the solons.  That should give local Republicans who aren't literally whistling Dixie some hope.

But with the current national Trumpites in control, the line has been drawn. 

For years people like Dixiecrat Chuck Gray, or Dixicrat Bextel, have claimed that the Republican Party here was infiltrated with Democrats. Well, it was. They're the Democrats.  Democrats from 1960 Alabama. They just don't know it.  But the screaming lunacy that they've espoused does have an effect after awhile.  Yell at people that "you are a RINO" for long enough, and they'll take it up.

I'm remaining registered in the GOP.  Chuck Gray's efforts to disenfranchise voters has been enough for me in and of itself not to change registrations.  Frankly, if I was to take a run at the House of Representatives, and I've thought about it, I would switch parties as right now that would give a person a place in the November election no matter what.  But I'm not going to do that.  I'm old, worn out, and very tired. 

So I'm remaining in the GOP in no small part so that I can vote for the decent primary candidates, of which there are some right now.

At this point, merely stating that you are "pro Trump" will be enough to cross my vote for you off the list.  At least three House candidates are promising to be Trump's biggest lover, and they're all of the list.  I hope I run into some of them during their campaigns.  I probably will.

And I've already quit giving MAGAs in my midst slack.  Frankly, since the start of the assault on Iran, that's been easy, as the "never war" MAGAs can't explain that one without sounding like hypocrites, and they know it.  Even a few have begun to look as if Valentines to Trump weren't a good idea.

But in the Fall.  I'm not voting for any Republicans for anything.

That won't exactly be easy.  So far here only one candidate from the Democratic Party has signed on to run for a statewide office.  He has my vote even though I like the only Republican whose announced for the same position.  And just because I'm not voting for a Republican doesn't mean I will vote for Democrats.  In my state house district a really decent Republican holds the seat and a young woman from the Democratic Party has announced against him. She's already on the sea of blood ticket.  I can't vote for her, but I won't vote for the Republican I've voted for many times before.

To vote for Republicans in 2026 you have to accept that a low IQ, deranged, octogenarian should have complete dictatorial control over the Federal Government, can start major wars on his own, can demolish parts of the White House as he has the tastes of a bordello owner, can cause the hiding of files on a major pedophile ring, and can have a domestic army occupy the streets.  It also means you have to be willing to sacrifice the environment of the planet for scientific denial.  You have to be willing to endorse lies at a never before seen rate, which makes you a liar yourself if you do. 

I can't go there.

Nolan Finely beat me to the punch:

Nolan Finley: It’s time to end the State of the Union

He is quite correct.  The show of the State of the Union Speech, based on the reporting, would have been more proper for Baathist Iran, North Korea, or Nazi Germany.  It wasn't a real State of the Union Address.

There hasn't been one for some time.  

Television destroyed what was once a serious endeavor.  If you look at old State of the Union addresses, particularly when they were still written, they were serious matters.  Now they have all the dignity of a pole dancer performing at a strip club, and they're getting worse.  

Any honest State of the Union delivered since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic would have to start off with "the State of the Union is grave" or words to that effect. An honest one now would have to start off with "the State of the Union is gravely imperiled" and go on from there.  The United States is in really bad shape, not all due to Donald Trump, but with everything about Donald Trump making the nation's condition much, much, worse.  

The nation is hugely polarized.  About 40% of the nation have fallen under the spell of an unintelligent but effective salesman.  Hatreds long thought in the past have revived in an aggressive form.  Congress has completely failed to perform its job, something it started to do at least as far back as the 1980s.  An attack on education and science that began under the Ronald Reagan administration has produced a drove of ignorant ill informed voters.  Ignoring a growing immigration crisis that started in the 1970s fueled massive Rust Belt discontent.  Over funding an all volunteer military has resulted in the creation of a post Cold War military class that's become an a danger to the nation itself.  Ignoring global warming is imperiling the entire plant while lining the pocked of an oligarch class that's rapidly depriving the same Rust Belt class that's now supporting it of any middle class way of making a living.  Ignoring science has also lead to a complete inability to understand basic human biological facts. 

This country is an utter disaster, and it's lead right now by a stupid man whose intellect is crashing into dementia.

Trump is a mentally ill man to start with.  Raised in a family that managed to avoid serving in times of war and whose wealth was started off by a German immigrant (ironically) who engaged in the sex trade, he's always been a self centered man focused on greed and engaging in lust.  In his dementia, he cannot see the world in any manner other than acquisition, and believes his own propaganda about his having a unique understanding of the "art of the deal".  He's the laughing stock of the globe, and at a some point fairly soon in the United States, he'll be regarded as the worst president in the nation's history and the worst human being to ever occupy the Oval Office.  If there's anything redeeming to Trump's reign at all it will be that his profoundly bad occupation of that office has demonstrated how severely various reforms to the Constitution are needed.

Be that as it may, the nation is not going to emerge from Trump the nation it was.  It will be a second rate nation, and that will be due to him, and those who served him.  The US will crawl back to the family of Western nations, but it will just be one of them, not the leader of them.  That's now fallen to the European Union.

When that occurs the millions who followed Trump will deny it, including some of those working for him now . Vance and Rubio will be two who will assert that they were never Trumpites.

On that, we digress.  State of the Union addresses were once written and they were much better when they were. Those days should return.  They were not intended to be an perverted administration's stripping performance while lustful inebriated fans cheered the stripper, which is what they now are.  Today's state of the union addresses are embarrassing in the extreme and not something a mature dignified nation would do, but then, right now, we are not a mature dignified nation.

State of the Union addresses should go back to being written.  If they are delivered orally, they should be given during the work day as they should reflect serious work.  And, frankly, there should be a mechanism, and a severe one at that, that if they are dishonest, there should be an immediate impact.  For example, although now it would have no legal impact, immediately after any oral State of the Union address there should be a vote of confidence.  If a simple majority votes note, the authority of the President should be suspended until he can come back in front of Congress and the nation and not act like a buffoon.

That would require, of course, a serious Congress as well, which we also lack.