Showing posts with label Disease. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Disease. Show all posts
Monday, October 5, 2026
Saturday, September 12, 2026
Thursday, September 12, 1946. Wallace takes a different route.
Commerce Secretary Henry A. Wallace delivered a speech at Madison Square Garden contradicting the speech just delivered by Secretary of State Byrnes. The speech criticized the administration's foreign policy and ultimately made almost everyone mad.
Truman had reviewed a draft of the speech and when asked by a reporter if it representing the policy of his government, he said that it did, only to rapidly attempt to claw that back when he realized what the speech said.
The speech brought Wallace's career, which saw him rise to the position of a Vice President under Franklin Roosevelt, come to an end.
Wallace is an interesting character in that he's the most far left Vice President the nation ever had, and had Roosevelt died during his third term, it would have brought to power an administration that would have been on the extreme left. Indeed, Wallace was dumped in Roosevelt's last run as those close to FDR knew that he would not live through it.
Wallace had a bit of a track record of making embarrassing speeches. He'd made one regarding a prior Commerce Secretary in 1943.
Wallace was a curious figure. He was from the political far left and has been accused of being a Communist, which historians discount. He ran against Truman in the 1948 Presidential election on a revived Progressive Party ticket with Sen. Glen Taylor of Idaho. He became the editor of The New Republic in one of its down cycles. Interestingly, when TNR turned 100, one of the editor of the "back of the magazine" asserted that Wallace was a Communist.
He was an expert on chickens.
A headline that, thanks to vaccines, we don't see anymore.
Last edition:
Wednesday, September 11, 1946. Longest scoreless tie.
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
Thursday, August 26, 1976. Ebola emerges.
The first known outbreak of Ebola, more correctly Zaire ebolavirus, occurred in the village of Yambuku Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Mabalo Lokela, a 44-year-old teacher, was the first person to report with the disease. He died on September 8.
The virus is believed to have diverged from its progenitors between 1960 and 1976. It was genetically consistent, it is believed, before 1900. Climate change or a change in human activity spurred its evolution. It's genetic diversity has dropped off, although recombination events in apes have resulted in outbreaks in human populations since then. It does seem to be responding to its human host as well.
Last edition
Thursday, August 19, 1976. Ford prevails over Reagan.
Labels: 1970s, 1976, 1976 Election, 1980, 1980 Election, 1980s, Gerald Ford, inflation, Kansas, Ronald Reagan, Southern Strategy, Watergate
Saturday, August 15, 2026
Sunday, August 15, 1926. Martyrs of the Cristero War and open rebellion.
He was rushed to hospital and operated on immediately for a ruptured appendix.
As noted yesterday, Father St. Luis Bátiz Sainz, Manuel Morales, David Roldán Lara, and Salvador Lara Puent were executed by firing squad.
In response, ranchers led by former colonel Pedro Quintanar seized the municipal treasury of Chalchihuites and declared themselves in open rebellion.
After attending a party the prior evening, recently ailing Rudolph Valentino collapsed at the Hotel Ambassador in New York City.
A mail train was robbed in Wyoming:
I'm not sure what was going on with the local elections, but a candidate was really mad at a newpaper editor:
Last edition:
Monday, August 3, 2026
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 147th Edition. Have we reached an "Is Paris burning?" moment?
Is Paris Burning?
Something remarkable happened last week. Charges were dismissed against a former Olympian for vandalizing the reflecting pool. Anyone who looked at the story knew the charges were false. Indeed, they were so patently false that anyone who sincerely believed them would have to be regarded as a dim besotted delusional
The really remarkable thing, however, is that the dismissal document basically admitted that. It pegged the source of the reflecting pool problem as what it is, a bad Rhino Lining job. That's stunning.
And what's more stunning is that, after a couple of days, Trump was complaining about the charges being dismissed.
That might mean we've reached an "Is Paris burning?" moment.
On August 1, 1944 Dietrich Hugo Hermann von Choltitz was appointed as the military Governor of Paris.1 The appointment came two months after the Allies had landed at Normandy and mere days before the Allies landed in Southern France. Already it was obvious to astute German commanders and the gig was up. Indeed, just two weeks prior some of them had attempted to blow Hitler off the face of the Earth so that they could affect a coup and work towards a negotiated settlement of the war.
On the same day, August 15, that the Allies landed in southern France, the French police in Paris went on strike. On August 19 the city erupted in a general insurrection. On August 23 Hitler ordered that the city be completely destroyed before it fell into Allied hands.
Von Choltitz didn't do it.
In fact, he stayed in Paris and surrendered.
Dietrich von Choltitz with Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque and Jacques Soustelle in the M3 Scout Car after the fall of Paris.
How is this relevant to our current situation?
Well, Von Cholitz had been a loyal commander up to that point. But he did know right from wrong. And he was clear eyed. He could see the Allies would win. He could see that there'd just been an open attempt to overthrow the government. He chose to openly disobey his orders rather than perform them, which is why Parish was spared destruction.
This appears in a way to be what just happened.
A couple of weeks ago a Trump cabinet official admitted, for the first time in a television interview, that Joe Biden won the 2020 election (he hasn't been seen, to my knowledge, on television since). That was a direct attack on the foundational myth of the Trump interregnum. Basically, it was an explosive device placed in Der Fibber's aircraft that failed to go off, or perhaps that figures throwing a lifeline out to reality as he can read the handwriting on the wall. The act of the Justice Department's lawyers, however, was an outright "we don't care what outrageous lie Trump told we're not doing it" moment. It was outright rebellion.
And Trump's reaction to it has been anemic, or as he likes to say, low energy. He's complained about it like a toddler.
While this is going on, the Senate has made it fairly clear that they won't confirm Todd Blanche if there's any risk of the Trump judicial slush fund going forward, and some are making it clear they just won't do it. Of course Wyoming's Senators, the outgoing Cynthia Cyberbucks Lummis and John Stern Look, Lim Noodle Barrasso are supporting Trump. They can be planned on supporting Der Fibber right up until its not politically convenient to do so, at which point they'll reveal that they never loved him. Be that as it may, Harriet Hageman has shoved Trump out of the pickup in order to vote against the appropriations bill with the SAVE Act in it, even though Trump endorsed her. She might not have to fear Trump endorsing anyone else, although a late in the day switch to John Holtz might be amusing (it won't occur).
Suddenly, rather obviously, disobeying Trump is really setting in. The bloom must be off the rose and the stinkweeds starting to set in.
Die Alter Kämpfer
A big event in Nazi Germany, for Nazis, was the annual November 8 gathering in which they celebrated the failed Beer Hall Putsch. The last time Hitler attended was November 8, 1943. After that, the war just was going too badly.
Stalingrad had been retaken by the Red Army in February.
The purpose of the annual gathering was like any nostalgic event, even though it celebrated events that weren't really all that far in the past. Hitler's speech on that occasion was fiery. He'd never be back. Nazi Germany's end was approaching pretty quickly, even if at that point the public didn't realize it. Some in the German military already did, however, and were actively looking for a way to put an end to the regime.
This past week Trump's Alter Kämpfer in Congress, now a diminished set, gathered in true Nazi style to berate Dr. Anthony Fauci. Many outsiders have been baffled. They should not have been. The Nazis have gathered to relish their past and to remind themselves of their hatred of the Jews, or, in contemporary terms, to gathering around one of their great myths, COVID was a fib and Anthony Fauci is a monster.
The public large reacted with, eh?
Frankly, Rand Paul shot the last bolt of credibility he had left, having gained some during the descent of Thomas Massie, who dared to take on the Epstein files. Now that's gone. But he's not the only one.
Still, you can see the Alter Kämpfer rally one last time around around the Blutfahne. In spite of it all, the seas of dead, see they were right all along. . . except they weren't. But that hasn't stopped such figures as Ken Pendergraft from coming out, in his case, to say see, we weren't "knuckleheads".
No, you were anti scientific ignoramuses and we all know it.
This same spirit is part of the reason that all of a sudden Reichsgesundheitsführer Kennedy has been fully released. Kennedy is a complete nutcase and a quack. For the most part, the Administration has kept him under a lid so he couldn't be too destructive. But now, like Stephen Miller, he's been loosed as there's nothing left to lose and maybe the deluded can be deluded again.
Kennedy is back out there unleashed making statements against vaccinations. Over the weekend he said that Lyme disease and came from gain-of-function research, stating:
Lyme disease almost certainly came from these experiments and is now devastating our country.
That's idiotic.
The 5,300 mummified body of Ötzi the Iceman contained the bacteria that causes Lymes disease. Genomic tracking can trace the disease back 60,000 years.
Genetic tracking of RSV shows a common ancestor between human RSV and bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV) to have existed 921 years ago. 338 years ago is the point at which human RSV-A and RSV-B split from their shared ancestor. That would make it a newish disease, compared to Lymes anyhow, but it's not a result of "gain of function research". It's a result of agriculture.
Das Ende
As we progress towards the fall election, and on into next year, we can look for these trends to accelerate. Der Fibber, just like Der Fuhrer, has an accelerating mental health collapse. That is making him more and more erratic. His policies are failing and he will lash out as they continue to fail. A war he was supposed to easily win is being handily lost and dragging on. Heads will roll.
But disloyalty will now increase. Already some out in the field are openly disobeying Der Fibber and no longer working towards Der Fuhrer. At the end, in 1945, even Himmler was looking for a way to betray Hitler and cut a deal of his own. We can bet that Vance and Rubio contemplate such a means out every day, and probably every hour of every day. Traditionally, in a lame duck term, cabinet ministers begin to flee as soon as the midterm results are in. In this administration, that will happen in spakes as people hoping for a political or administrative future look for a way to surrender, and to distance themselves (with tell all books) from Trump.
The true believes, of course, people like Stephen Miller, will remain, and their influence will accordingly grow. The next two and half years are going to be chaos.
January to May 1945 were the bloodiest months of the war in Europe.
Fußnoten
1. I've generally tried to avoid comparing the Trumpites and Trump's administration to the Nazis, but frankly it's impossible not to do so now.
I had originally avoided calling the administration fascist, but it is. It has all the classic features of fascism and it's perfectly comparable to fascism in early fascist Italy while democracy was still liming along a bit. That's right where we are at. The question is whether we descend further into it, or pull out. Right now, it looks like we might actually be able to pull out.
It's often debated if Nazism is fascism or sui generis. It certainly has fascist elements at a large scale. What really distinguishes it is the degree that Nazism was autarkic where as fascism favored state capitalism. Strong elements of both are present in the Trump administration's economic policies.
The other defining characteristic of Nazism that was lacking in fascism was the absolute racial hatred that was a feature of Nazism. Both it and fascism are extremely nationalistic, but fascism doesn't really feature racial hatred to anywhere near the same degree as Nazism. Racial hatred has been an increasing element of Trumpism as time has gone by and it has members who outright advocate for making the United States a white Protestant nation.
Last edition:
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 146th Edition. What does the SAVE Act, Groypers, A coup in progress, Dominionism, Women staying barefoot and pregnant, and the Lumpenproletariat have in common? A movement, it's leaders, and it's really dim backers.
Sunday, August 2, 2026
Friday, July 31, 2026
Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 6. The screwworm edition.
Exports of petroleum products and capital goods jumped to record highs reducing the U.S. trade deficit.
The capital goods item is interesting and I haven't seen it explained. That is a positive trend, if sustainable. The oil exportation one is not as it depletes a diminishing resource at the expense of U.S. consumers. A lot of it seems to be related to AI exports, which isn't necessarily good, aircraft production, and war related purchases. If all that is correct, it won't be sustainable at the current levels, probably.
Screwworms have reappeared in Texas after a sixty year hiatus. The Trump administration is blaming the Biden Administration, as that's its default thing to do, but the Trumpistas lifted protections that were in place and allowed importation of Mexican cattle via ports in a probable attempt to lower beef prices. This is likely to have the opposite effect. It's a more likely cause, although there were concerns about animals moving across the border illegally during the Biden Administration.
Mexico itself was screwworm free as of 1991. Somehow that got reversed one way or another, and now the problem is back. Given that, it probably was coming back no matter what. It is a major crisis.
Nobody has cited the weather, but it is spread by a fly, and that may very well have resulted to the spread of the flies range.
Inflation is up to 4.2%.
cont:
Reporter: Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning?
Trump: No, I love it. I love the inflation.
Johnson is already saying that's not what he meant.
June 14, 2026
Indeed, this would be horrible news:
Wyoming Outfitters, Hunters Say Screwworm Would Be Wildlife Disaster If It Hits State
And Carney continues to press for the new reality of American unreliability.
‘A global rupture’: Carney calls for Canada-EU unity before G7 summit
June 19, 2026
Those of us in the livestock industry should pray for rain. We also ought to realize that voting for climate change deniers like Harriet Hageman is basically putting a knife to the through our our children, and then cutting their arteries.
Wyoming Ranchers Pray For Rain As Drought, Demand Push Beef To Record High Prices
Drought? Get real. This isn't a normal drought.
June 22, 2026
Senate overwhelmingly passes sweeping bipartisan housing affordability bill
A rare distributist bill. It bans private equity acquisition of homes.
It will be challenged
Senate overwhelmingly passes sweeping bipartisan housing affordability bill
June 26, 2026
West Texas is at $69.53.
June 30, 2026
The 1.5-gigawatt Prometheus Hyperscale data center will now all be in Natrona County on the Falls Ranch property owned by Texas billionaire carpetbagger Russell Gordy.
Trump called the housing bill that passed both houses "a big yawn". He's holding it hostage in hopes it makes congress pass the antidemocratic SAVE Act.
July 1, 2026
ABC reports that President Trump has earned more than $1 billion from his cryptocurrency ventures while in office.
July 2, 2026
Grand Teton National Park employees unionize
July 9, 2026
Wyoming coal company wins federal money to extract critical minerals from Powder River Basin
July 14, 2026
Illegal tariffs being refunded pushed the June federal budget deficit up to $120 billion.
July 15, 2026
Headline in the CST:
Low US birth rate may create future housing glut
Also a headline in the CST:
Out of reach: Research: More young Americans can’t afford to buy a starter home
In truth, the two headlines actually aren't contradictory. An era of declining population will come, and that will cause a housing glut. And that's all a good thing.
July 20, 2026
The illegitimate demented fool occupying the White House as Congress is too cowardly to boot him out, is attempting to raise tariffs on Canada 50%.
Yet another dumb ass diversion
It'll fail in the courts.
July 22, 2026
Trump approved a 30 year deal with Saudi Arabia that will provide the it with a civilian nuclear program and potentially open the door to uranium enrichment in the kingdom.
The Saudi's likely want this as they know that oil is a finite resource, which we seemingly do not, and they know that global warming is not a fib, which the GOP does not.
What an irony, however. Nuclear deal with a theocratic Islamic state while we're at war with another nearby theocratic Islamic state for having a nuclear program.
And, an interesting examination of petroleum prices:
July 24, 2026
The Trump administration is imposing new tariffs of 10% and 12.5% on 60 trading partners, including the European Union, on the pretext of lax enforcement of forced labor bans.
It comes right as the 10% tariffs expire and it'll be challenged in court, and fail.
It's really difficult to believe that an administration that won't release all the Epstein files, which involved a sort of child sexual labor, is concerned about forced labor. This is absurd but fits into the Navarro economic model Der Fibber has bought into.
July 30, 2026
Coal and the Wyoming Congressional Delegation. They always have your back:
July 31, 2026
Growth fell in the second quarter, despite the AI business spending boom.
Cont:
The Trump administration announced it will end the Medicare Part D subsidy program in 2027.
Last edition:
Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 4. Economics in the Dementia Ward.
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Sunday, March 31, 1946. Arresting Nazis, Russia pays up, you have to wonder about Дональд, Field Marshall Gort passes.
7,000 Allied soldiers served warrants on Nazi officials. Ausgezeichnet!
The first Greek elections since 1936 took place, with the Communist Party of Greece refusing to participate.
Russia, as a political subdivision of the USSR, paid its U.N. dues of $1,725,000, under the thesis that the USSR had multiple representation in the UN.
Trump would probably support an effort of Russia not to pay, which was feared at the time, sending the leader of the nation a Я люблю тебя, Дональд note, like he does in an implied way to the current leader of Russia constantly.
What's up with that?
Field Marshal John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort became yet another World War Two senior officer to die following the war, albeit his death was due to liver cancer.
He was a recipient of the Victoria Cross in World War One.
Last edition:
Monday, January 14, 1946. Wartime and Post War foodstuffs.
Labels: 1940s, 1946, Army, Cartoons, Iran, J.R. Williams, Mountain Troops, Personalities, The Cold War, U.S. Navy, United States, USSR, World War Two
Thursday, February 5, 2026
Thursday, February 5, 1976. Swine Flu and Conrail.
Just as with the 1916 Flu Epidemic, the 1976 Swine Flu Outbreak commenced on an Army post, when Private David Lewis died of the disease.
President Ford signed the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act into law creating the Consolidated Rail Corporation to operate freight trains in the northeastern United States. The act united much of the rail systems of the Penn Central, Ann Arbor Railroad, Erie Lackawanna Railway, Lehigh Valley Railroad, Reading Company, Central Railroad of New Jersey and Lehigh and Hudson River Railway into Conrail.
Last edition:
Monday,. February 2, 1976. Moynihan resigns.
Saturday, December 27, 2025
Wednesday, November 5, 2025
Thursday, November 5, 1925. The Big Parade.
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Released on this day in 1925, the film is regarded as one of the greatest films about World War One.
The picture also would be associated with a level of tragedy for its stars. John Gilbert died in 1936 at age 38 due to alcoholism. He managed to marry four times in his short life, and was not married at the time of his death. His costar in the film, Renee Adoree made the transition to sound movies, but died in 1933 at age 35 of tuberculosis. She'd married twice, but was not married at the time of her death.
Born in the Russian Empire, with his true name never definitively learned, Sidney Reilly, a British spy, was executed by the Soviets.
He had a prolific career as a spy, leading to his nickname as The Ace of Spies. He was reported a model for James Bond. Early in his life as an emigre he went by the last name of Rosenblum, which would suggest Jewish heritage. In the late 19th Century he seems to have worked for Scotland Yard as a paid informant on immigrant matters. He married widow Margaret Thomas at Holborn Registry Office in London in 1898 after her husband had died under conditions that suggested poisoning, something of note as Rosenblum was working as sort of a herbalist at the time. She was wealthy and that, by extension, made him wealthy. Soon after that, he began his career as a spy, spying for the British and the Japanese in the lead up to the Russo Japanese War.
While it is difficult to determine the range of his activities, it is claimed that:
- He pretended to be a Russian arms merchant to spy on Dutch weapons shipments to the Boers during the Boer War.
- He obtained intelligence on Russian military defences in Manchuria for the Kempeitai.
- He obtained Persian oil concessions for the British Admiralty in events surrounding the D'Arcy Concession.
- He infiltrated a Krupp armaments plant in prewar Germany and stole weapon plans.
- He seduced the wife of a Russian minister to glean information about German weapons shipments to Russia.
- He attempted to overthrow the Russian Bolshevik government and to rescue the imprisoned Romanov family, actions which lead to his being sentenced to death in absentia.
- He served as a courier to transport the forged Zinoviev letter into the United Kingdom.
He had been lured by into the Soviet Union by the Cheka, posing as anti Soviet agents.
It's difficult to tell the overall truth of his activities. British intelligence is notoriously able to keep its secrets for one thing. Reilly was good at keeping them as well, and as he worked for various entities he had a strong reason to. Like the James Bond character that's supposedly based upon him, he had a strong affinity for women and married up to three or four times, with other alleged affairs in addition. His last marriage was to actress Pepita Bobadilla.
Last edition:
Wednesday, November 4, 1925. Now or then?
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Wyoming reports first measles case since 2010
Wyoming reports first measles case since 2010: Infected child may have exposed people in Casper hospital’s ER waiting room to highly contagious virus.
Saturday, May 24, 2025
Saturday, May 24, 1975. Virus variola major.
The last naturally occurring case of the smallpox virus variola major was found on a woman named Saiban Bibi in the Assam state of India.
The last case of variola minor was found in Somalia, at Merca, in October 1977.
The elimination of the disease is a scientific triumph that occured in an era in which the lethality of diseases was still widely appreciated.
Last edition:
Friday, May 23, 1975. Leaving Laos.
Labels: 1970s, 1975, 1990s, 1992, Cambodia, Crime, Diplomacy, Gerald Ford, Laos, Laotian Civil War, Lebanon, Refugees, Unions, United States, Vietnam
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