The 2024 Election, Part XVII. Standing on their feet or crawling on their knees.

April 24, 2024

And, yes, we already have yet another edition.

First, this:

Russo Ukrainian War

The aid bill passed the Senate 79 to 18.  Wyoming's two Senators, who normally would have voted yes, voted no, so they can bow down to the Populist Party.

Mike Johnson, after receiving intelligence briefings on the Russia war in Ukraine and praying about it, reversed his prior position heroically.  Wyoming's two Senators, who undoubtedly are not in favor of Russian winning the war in Ukraine, and who must at least suspect that voting against aid to Ukraine might mean the butchered bodies of American soldiers in Europe next year or the year thereafter, voted against it anyway.

Politicians are rarely held responsible for willfully wrong votes. Cheney was penalized by the voters for doing the right thing, but had the courage to do it anyhow.  Lummis and Barrasso are doing the wrong thing so as to avoid suffering her fate.  When the day comes, and if Russia prevails there's a good chance of it happening, and Russia crosses the Curzon Line, or the Balkan frontier, and the US finds itself obligated by its NATO treaty to defend Europe, assuming that Donald Trump, who hasn't upheld his oath to the Constitution, or his marital vow(s) would honor our treaty obligations, will those Wyoming politicians, who are too old to serve themselves, at least recognize that they have blood on their hands?

Probably not.

Let's look just a little bit on some of the current local races.

Senate

Lummis isn't running for reelection, but Barrasso is.

Barrasso is in political trouble as his opponent, Reid Rasner, who is from the Populist Party, is giving him a real run for the money, or so it seems.  Barrasso, therefore, is running to the right of himself.

No Democrat has announced as of yet.

Wyoming House District 35

NCSD employee Christopher Dresang is running against Rep. Tony Locke, R-Casper, a Freedom Caucus member.  Dresang is a Casper native who is a graduate of the Catholic school system's St. Anthony’s, and then Natrona County High School, Casper College, the University of Wyoming, and Montana State University-Bozeman.  Locke, unlike many Freedom Caucus members, is actually from Wyoming and has a MS in engineering, making him all the more unusual as he's highly educated and yet apparently a populist.

Wyoming House District 56

Jerry Obermeuller, who was a really good legislator, announced last weekend he was not running for reelection and expressed the hope that a Republican (non Populist) did.  

Elissa Campbell announced her run for that seat yesterday.  She's a Wyoming native, unlike the numerous imports that make up the Invader wing of the Freedom Caucus, and she owns a consulting agency in Casper.  She has two BA's, one in Philosophy one in Environmental Ethics from the University of Wyoming.   The press interview lacked very much useful content and all we really know is that she's a mammal.  Those who know her, however, feel that she'll be much like Obermeuller in outlook.

Wyoming House District 57

Another Wyoming native, and a former teacher, Julie Jarvis, is running against Jeanette Ward, an Illinois Populist who the Wyoming Education Association has been taking on, and a prominent member of the Invader wing.  Ward is amongst the most extreme in every fashion of the Populist, and was an extreme school board member in her native state of Illinois.  Ward has managed to keep her patrim fairly quiet, so nobody has every really looked at it much, even though her presentation alone has a fish out of war element to it.  Jarvis is Wyoming Basque from Buffalo, and came out swinging against her.

This promises to be an interesting race as every Basque I've ever known was really smart and extremely feisty.  Jarvis grew up, it might be noted, in a farming family. What kind of family Ward grew up in is a mystery.

Last prior edition:

The 2024 Election, Part XVI. The Compromised Morals Edition

Saturday, February 26, 1944. „Nie” dla linii Curzona

The Polish Government in Exile rejected the Curzon Line as Poland's eastern border. 

While their resistance to the border being moved is admirable, and had to be expected, it was of course doomed.

The Soviets launched a nighttime 600 bomber raid on Helsinki.  Finnish air defenses prove ineffectual, which was typical for any nighttime raid, and only three Soviet Air Force planes are lost.  

The Red Army captured Porkhov.

The French Resistance attack the SOMUA armor plate works at Lyons, but their explosives fail to detonate.

Leigh Light fitted to a Royal Air Force Coastal Command Liberator, February 26, 1944.

The U-91 was sunk by the Royal Navy.

The United States Army Air Force discover the source of the Orinoco River in British Guiana in an overflight.

Captain Hugh H. Goodman, USN, Commanding Officer of USS Gambier Bay (CVE 73) making first dungaree inspection on board ship, somewhere in the South Pacific, February 26, 1944.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—February 26, 1944: Japanese retreat from Sinzweya, Burma, ending “Battle of the Admin Box." US Navy nurses are given actual commissioned rank instead of relative rank.

Monday, February 21, 1944. Eniwetok secured, Japanese staff changes.

Today in World War II History—February 21, 1944: 80 Years Ago—Feb. 21, 1944: US secures Eniwetok Island in Eniwetok Atoll, and lands on and takes 7 other islands in the atoll.

Sarah Sundin's blog.

The islands had been fiercely defended by the Japanese. 

On the same day, Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo became the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Japanese Army in addition to his political role..  Admiral Shimada replaced Admiral Nagano as Chief of Staff of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Japanese resistance on the Green Islands ends.

It was Day Two of the Big Week.

US crewed German anti tank gun, Cisterna, Italy.  February 21, 1944.

Churchill informed Stalin that the Polish government in exile would accept the Curzon Line and that they would cooperate in the future with the USSR, but Stalin remained recalcitrant.

On the same day, the Red Army took Soltsy and Kholm.

Lt. Col. Henry G. Leanard Jr. explaining assault tactics to visiting Russian naval officers at the U.S. Assault Training Center. February 21, 1944.

Thursday, January 20, 1944. Crossing the Rapido, Trying to persuade the Poles.

The Battle of the Rapido River began in Italy when the 36th Infantry Division crossed the river at night.  They'd establish a beachhead, but things would not go well.  Within a couple of days, the 36th would have to withdraw back across the river.

The attack, widely regarded as producing a disaster, was ordered by Gen. Mark Clark over the objection of the 36th's commanding officer, Gen. Fred Walker, who had experience with a disastrous river crossing in World War One. 

Walker, who at 56 years of age was the oldest divisional commander in the Army at the time, was correct in his assessment.

The 36th Infantry Division assigned to the task was a division of the Texas National Guard.

Walker, who complained that Clark and Gen. Keys were ignorant of the difficulties of the assault, was in ill health at the time, but a very good officer.  Helping to make up for his physical condition was the fact that two of his sons were on his staff.  He was returned to the United States in June, where he went on to command the Infantry School.  In spite of ill health, he lived until 1969, dying at age 82.

Winston Churchill met with the Polish Government In Exile to attempt to convince the Poles to accept the Curzon Line for discussion purposes.  Churchill promised that he'd resist Soviet efforts, in exchange, to influence the makeup of the post-war government.

By radek.s - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1720759

The Curzon Line had been first proposed as a demarcation between the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union following World War One by Lord Curzon and Herbert James Paton, and it was based on demographics. Poles did live to the east of the line, but they became increasingly mixed with other populations in what has been termed, quite appropriate, as "the Bloodlands' in a fantastic book on the post World War One era of the region by Timothy D. Snyder.  Like every other imperial domain in Europe, Imperial Russia had regions of strong ethnic uniformity and others of mix ethnicity.  The region that became the westernmost region of Poland had a large Polish population, but also had a Belarusian population and a Ukrainian one, as well as many areas of Jewish populations.  From 1918 into the early 1920s, every country in the region, to include Lithuania, had fought to establish their borders.  Poland had been remarkably successful, throwing back a massive Red Army assault in the Russo Polish War, but even at that the Second Polish Republic did not extend as far to the east as it had originally sought to.

Ethnographic map of Poland, based on pre World War One census data.

None of the parties in Post World War One Eastern Europe were ready to accept the Curzon Line and so the proposal went nowhere at the time, contributing to the wars between Poland and the USSR (which would have occured anyhow), Poland and Ukraine, and Poland and Lithuania.   The result of those disputes resulted in the post-war border, but Communist Russia had always had an appetite that stretched into Germany.  The mixed population in the area to the east of the line, however, guaranteed that it would be uniquely subject to bloodletting, with the Soviets wanting the territory, the Germans wanting to eliminate the Slavs entirely, and the nationalist Ukrainians wanting to expel the Polish and Jewish population on lands that they had claimed or wanted to.  Every culture in the region, for that matter, disliked the native Jewish population in varying degrees.

With the Soviets crossing the frontier of pre-war Poland, the Polish Government In Exile became increasingly concerned that the Soviet Union would annex what it wanted and replace the Polish government with a Communist one.  It was completely correct in both of those fears.

A 40mm gun of the 251st Coastal Artillery (AA), 14th Corps, California National Guard, on Bougainville. Mt Bagana, 6560 feet, an active volcano, is in the background.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 20: 1944  Marjorie Woodsworth and Paul Kelly, motion picture actors, appeared at the University of Wyoming to open the 4th War Loan Drive.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.