It was a Saturday.
Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business.
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Lex Anteinternet: New UW President chosen.: Today In Wyoming's History: April 2 : 2026 Brig. Gen. Shane Reeves, currently the dean of the Academic Board at the U.S. Military Aca...
I posted this the other day.
As noted, I don't feel good about this choice.
What's more, I"m not really sure why I don't feel good about this choice. I just don't.
Part of it is that I'm tired of guys who leave the state, spend 30 years doing something for the Federal Government, and then coming back in when they're darn near retired or retired. But there was very little chance that we were going to get a local for UW President and indeed, for the most part, few locals would be qualified.
Except here, one actually was. The fellow who finished second works for US already and is in agriculture.
For that reason, he seems a better fit to me.
Added to that, right now I'm not trusting military figures too much. We're in an illegal war and it part of the way we got into one is that we have a military that's way too large. That made sense during the Cold War, but it doesn't now. In my view its time to go back to the original military establishment system for the US, which would mean that we'd have very little in the form of a standing Army and a Navy that had to rely on reservists I don't think we need West Point anymore at all.
And I fear that this fellow might have been brought in because of the Freedom Caucus's shots at UW. Where does a serviceman fit in, in that fight.
I dunno.
An article about the topic:
University of Wyoming campus sizes up its next leader, but lack of online access raises questions
I know more than a few guys who were career servicemen and I considered it, so I'm probably just paranoid right now. And its not like I wrote to the Trustees either.
By the way, this is them:
To learn more about each Trustee, including their background, professional experience, and term details, please click on their name. This will take you to a dedicated page with a full biography and additional content about their role on the board. Chairman, Elected May 2024
Appointed 2017; Term expires 2029
District 2, Laramie, WY
Vice Chairman, Elected 2024
Appointed 2015; Term expires 2027
District 4, Sheridan, WY
Treasurer, Elected May 2024
Appointed 2018; Term expires 2029
District 2, Rock Springs, WY
Secretary, Elected May 2024
Appointed 2019; Term expires 2031
District 5, Cody, WY
Trustee
Appointed 2017; Term expires 2029
District 4, Gillette, WY
Trustee
Appointed 2025; Term expires 2031
At-Large, Worland, WY
Trustee
Appointed 2019; Term expires 2031
District 6, Newcastle, WY
Trustee
Appointed 2021; Term expires 2027
District 3, Jackson, WY
Trustee
Appointed 2023; Term expires 2029
District 1, Wheatland, WY
Trustee
Appointed 2015; Term expires 2027
District 1, Cheyenne, WY
Trustee
Appointed 2025; Term expires 2027
At-Large, Pinedale, WY
Trustee
Appointed 2025; Term expires 2031
District 7, Casper, WY
RoseMarie LondonExecutive Director & Deputy Secretary, UW Board of Trustees
Laramie, WY
Today In Wyoming's History: April 2: 2026 Brig. Gen. Shane Reeves, currently the dean of the Academic Board at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, was offered a contract by a vote of the UW Board of Trustees. He accepted.
He beat out finalist Kelly Crane, who has served as dean of the College of Agriculture, Life Sciences, and Natural Resources since 2024. Crane served UW Extension as an area educator and range specialist from 1994-2002. He was the principal consultant for Frontier Natural Resource Consulting until 2008, when he accepted the position of assistant professor/range extension specialist at the University of Idaho, which he held from 2008-2011. He came back to UW in 2011 as associate director for UW Extension. In 2019, he was appointed associate dean and director of UW Extension.
Reeves was a 1996 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. He went on to get a law degree from William and Mary in 2003 and is admitted to the Virginia bar. He's been serving as the Dean of the Military Academy. He's originally from Sweetwater County, but obviously hasn't lived there for 30 years.
Hmmm. . .
I think they made the wrong choice.
Anyhow, a news story sets out his early priorities.
An interesting one from TNR:
Trump Erupts in Fury Over His War Failures—and Exposes a Big Weakness
His rage at NATO is actually an admission that he needs our allies’ help—and that he wants somebody to blame as his war goes from bad to worse.
Somewhat related, I had a conversation with my MAGA associate, whose been pretty quite recently (he has five boys that are all old enough to have his own views and who are sick of the US supporting Israel on everything. . . I bet this war has been interesting at home. . .). He noted, however, "I almost feel sorry for those mullahs, hiding in caves".
Now, he's never served in the military and doesn't know much about military matters, at all. I noted that must be pretty bad, and then the fortunes of war became the topic. I.e., how will this war end.
"We've already lost" was my statement.
He looked stunned.
We have already lost. When you launch a war with war aims that are based on your experiences as a real estate developer, you are a fool.
Trump has no real world experience in anything. He's just been a real estate developer, and that's not much. That's based on money.
An existential war, and that's what a war between Israel and Iran is, isn't based on that. It's based on two fundamentally opposed world outlooks. Israel's war aim is to end Iran as a military threat forever, and under Netanyahu, it's been willing to commit genocide in order to achieve security. Nobody is looking at Gaza anymore. Nobody is looking at Lebanon either. Basically, Israel is fighting the war, with the US as a mercenary dupe, quite frankly, the way the mob war is depicted in the Godfather.
Trump stupidly thought that the Iranians, who have a theocracy, think like he does. He'd give them the dope slap and they'd give up, or if they didn't, there'd be a January 6 type revolution in the streets. Nope, nothing like that has happened or is going to. Even the Kurds, who would like to be independent, have so little faith in King Donald that they're not rebelling.
Now a series of really horrific choices are before him. For one thing, under the War Powers Act, he's running out of time to submit this to Congress and it appears fairly certain that there's a real chance that Congress would say "nope". He's running out of money quicker that that, and is going to have to go to Congress and ask for $200B, with some Republicans already indicating they won't support that.
It's clear, moreover, that he can't bomb his way into victory. That's never worked, and it isn't working here. Indeed, not only is it not working, the limits of airpower are really showing. We've done a massive aerial assault and yet the Iranians keep hitting back.
And the Iranians have hit on the idea of waging an economic war, which is a strategic use of airpower, missiles in the air in this case, knowing that there's little support of the war anywhere, and that people now get to think about how foolish King Donald is every time they go to the pump. Indeed, an economic war against the US as an Islamic warrior concept has been around for a long time, and is actually what Osama Bin Laden had in mind when he staged the Twin Towers attacks. Bin Laden turned out to be an economic moron as that had no effect on the economy at all, but this is.
And the Iranians have shown themselves to be able to effectively close the Straits of Hormuz, locking up 20% of the globe's oil supply. Wharton School of Business graduate Trump (I'm now at the point where Wharton ranks in my mind with correspondence courses in the back of cartoon books) apparently has no grasp at all on how the global oil market works.** His stupid, and it was stupid, reply is "well we have lots of oil". Yeah., we do, in a global market.
J. D. Vance, or whatever his name is, had the comment "well other people are suffering more than we are", which is also moronic. That's saying that yes, you are suffering.
The only way to open the Straits of Hormuz back up is to land Marines on the north shore of the Straits and make a broad beachhead. A broad beachhead is subject to broad attack, which in turn requires a deeper beachhead. Choose the analogy that you want, but pretty soon you are looking at either Da Nang in 1965, in which we went from Marine beachhead, to expanded perimeter, to full intervention in the Vietnam War, or Anzio in 1944, which turned into a man eating mess. Optimistically, a Marine force to open the Straits of Hormuz would have to be backed up, in the end, by a two division commitment form the U.S. Army, and that would be just to hold on to some real estate, not to win the war.
Of course, it'd help in the current pseudo chief executive had cracked a history book from time to time, but Trump just isn't that smart.
Winning the war would actually require a full scale ground invasion. We could probably pull that off, but it would require an investment of manpower on a scale not seen since the Vietnam War. The Korean War would be a good analogy, actually. It'd require a full scale call up of the National Guard and Reserves, and the standdown would not come for many years. It'd cost something like 20,000 men killed, optimistically, and accelerate inflation at an unsustainable rate under the current tax structure. In other worlds, unlike the Cold War in which budgets were less out of control, we couldn't keep this running long and would actually have to raise taxes, and massively, something that should be done in any event.
So, here we are. Israel got a a war that Bibi wanted, although winning that war now depends more on Dick and Jane in Hastings, Nebraska, than it does on anyone in Israel. The US got into an illegal war it didn't want at all, and which nobody can honestly state has a goal that makes sense. Pete Hegseth and his Evangelical friends got a fever dream in which they bring about the end of Islam, which isn't going to happen.
Well, if its any consolation, Trump gets bored pretty easily. Marco Rubio probably still wants to invade Cuba. There's a fairly good chance that Trump will just pull the U.S. military out of the war, effectively surrendering to Iran but without his pen on anything. We'll go on to invade Cuba with just as little grasp of what that will take. Republicans in Congress will still sit around acting like they're getting paid to do something.
Sic transit Gloria Mundi.
Footnotes:
*Recalling Æthelred the Unready, the terrible Saxon king, whom after his death was lampooned as being "unready", i.e., "ill advised".
You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
Matthew, Chapter 24.
Give me the money that has been spent in war, and I will purchase every foot of land upon the globe. I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire that kings and queens would be proud of; I will build a school-house upon every valley over the whole habitable earth; I will supply that school house with a competent teacher; I will build an academy in every town, and endow it; a college in every state, and fill it with able Professors; I will crown every hill with a church consecrated to the promulgation of the gospel of peace; I will support in its pulpit an able teacher of righteousness, so that on every Sabbath morning the chime on one hill should answer to the chime on another, around the earth's broad circumference; and the voice of prayer and the song of praise should ascend like a universal holocaust to heaven.
Charles Sumner, c.1840
Quand les riches font la guerre, ce sont les pauvres qui meurent.
Jean Paul Sartre
March 2, 2026
The US and Israel v. Iran War.
Even before the weekend news show hits, the Administration and its GOP proxies were trying to form a theory of why the US, in concert with Israel, had attacked Iran.
Why Israel did it is fairly clear. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a mortal enemy of Israel and an existential threat. The fact that the US was going to war with Iran gave it a great opportunity. And not just Israel, according to some information that seems fairly credible, at least Saudi Arabia saw things the exact same way, sort of.
In both instances, those conflicts were religious in nature, at least form Iran's prospective. Iran sees the world in apocalyptic terms and a struggle against Israel is a part of that weltanschauung. Iran sees Saudi Arabia as representing Sunni Islam, and a virulent variant of it at that. In fact, Saudi Arabia was in fact allied internally with Wahhabism, although that's long ceased to be the case. Be that as it may, Sunni Islam and Shia Islam depart from each other radically and have been enemies since the latter first formed. For that matter, Persia and the Arabs have been enemies for ever. Persia was a major civilized empire before Islam, and it knows it. Persia, Iran, could be a great nation without Islam, and it knows that.
But what about the United States?
According to the befuddled Donald Trump we attacked Iran, because, well it was a big honking monster threat to us. The thing is, that dog didn't really hunt.
They were going to have a nuclear weapons, Donny told us, with in the next two weeks. But then, it was realized, that would mean the befuddled Donny, dressed like a toddler in his trucker's cap, had been wrong when he told us that we'd bombed Iran back to the nuclear stone age in what is now being called the Twelve Day War.
Oops.
Well, explanations for that being wrong, other than Trump Is Always Wrong, needed to be found, as the GOP mantra worships Trump almost as much as Trump worships Trump.
They were fibbing in negotiations over the nuclear weapons program we destroyed was tried next, was the next thing.
They were going to have missiles that could hit the US was tried, but it was pretty quickly revealed that at some point they might, but it would be years from now, plenty of time to go to Congress and ask for a declaration of war. Well, they were going to have missiles that could hit Europe, which is much more credible, but the problem is that the Europeans, whom we've been telling need to fend for themselves, have had a "m'eh" reaction to that. The country that really can hit Europe with missiles, and has a demonstrated ability to do it, Russia, which Trump has a crush on so large that it probably looms larger in his nighttime dreams than Melania, who of course is mostly in New York, helicoptering over Barron, whom we might note will not be joining the Armed Forces to serve in this war, putting him in good company with the ancestral Trumps. Since Frederick Trump first set foot in the United States, the Trumps have missed the Spanish American War, the Philippine Insurrection, World War One, World War Two, the Korean war and the Vietnam War, a record few American families could match, including my own.*
Anyhow, that dog wasn't going to hunt either, so a new one had to be developed.
Which raises this point. Up until now it was just our strategy to wait that out. . . and it was working pretty well.
Cleary, things had not reached a point where all of a sudden we needed to go to war on an emergency basis with Iran. And under the U.S. Constitution, this excuse is complete horseshit. In order to deploy force like this, in this way, we would have had to have been suddenly attacked.
We weren't.
This was completely illegal.
Not only that, it was highly ill advised. If Iran has been plotting against us for 47 years, it's had plenty of time to prepare for this day, and so far, it's been fighting back pretty well. Our burn rate of high tech munitions is unsustainable. It's burn rate on missiles might frankly not be. And its allied, for all practical purposes, with Russia. We're allied with Israel, which frankly depends on us for military support.
This was not smart.
We're going to be hit domestically. Iran is capable of waging an asymmetric war and will. It may have started that, in Austin, today. It's believed that it has targeted Trump in the past. If so, it will now, and there's no reason to believe it'll only target Trump.
The irony is, of course, that its likely not Trump who causes this to occur. While not meaning this to sound the way it might, Israel, knowing that Trump is a demented fool, may very well have played the sad bloated corpse of the once playboy, now hoping for redemption and to be remembered, twit. Saudi Arabia may very well have as well. And then there's Pete Hegseth and Mike Huckabee, holding variant of Christian beliefs that Apostolic Christians, back during the Crusades, would have regarded as heretical. They may have thrown us into a holy war that we'll pay for, for decades.
At least it will be an American Evangelical Protestant Crusade. Due to the Black Legends, a common Protestant, and then atheist, argument stopper has been "what about the Crusades".
Well, MAGA, now you are the Crusader you imagined we were, even though we were never that.
At the end of the day, nobody publicly knows why we attacked Iran. The best guess is that it's a combination of Neo Conservatives (Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz), foreign influence (Israel and Saudi Arabia) and far right Evangelicals trying to being about the end of the world (Huckabee and Hegseth).
All brought about illegally and through influence on a very weak mind, that being Donald Trump's.
Oh, 150 Iranian school girls were murdered for this.
May the perpetual light shine upon them. Some of them were probably Christian.
Pete Hegseth, cultural warrior.
Heavily tatted Pete Hegseth, emblazed with Crusader images, but whom the Catholics of the Crusades, and the Orthodox through whose lands the Crusaders traveled would have regarded as a weird heretic, was busy, just before Donny launched a war against Iran, in the Culture Wars.
First, he engaged in a skirmish with wokeism and the Boy Scouts.
We're not completely unsympathetic with this. We've noted this cultural zeitgeist before.
Boy Scouts no more.
I frankly didn't realize that Pete's an Ivy League graduate himself. Princeton. It really surprises me.
Which brings me to this. I think, that MAGA hates education in general. They Wyoming Freedom Caucus seems to. And if Hegseth, Cruz, Trump and Chuck Gray can come out of such vaunted schools and still be so blistering ignorant as they seem to be, it really backs up my long held opinion that the Ivy League and associated schools are a dumpster fire, but not for the reason that Pete and company would hold it.
Rather, they just aren't doing a good job of educating. Look at Trump and Hegseth. It's hard to believe they have more than 5th grade education. Or Chuck Gray. He comes across like a 7th grade brat.
Diverting
Back on Trump, while I completely discounted it for a long time, it's getting hard to ignore that the US is getting into more and more grave matters as the Epstein files begin to hit closer and closer to home. The thesis that some hold that Trump is creating diversions is getting a little hard to ignore.
People keep saying, even now, that there's nothing "to implicate" Trump. Oh bull, there most certainly is. There's apparently direct testimony of his "abusing", which means screwing, a teenage girl. No, I'm not saying he did it, but the information we already have about who he hung around with is pretty damming. And his conduct with adult women has been less than admirable. Even that gets ignored, however, for no good reason. There's no reason to believe that Carol Alt is lying about being groped by Trump, for example, but people ignore it.
We've dealt with it before, but if Trump didn't have his hands in the underaged cookie jar it would have been an act of restraint for a guy who otherwise has shown no restraint. It might be time to start really looking at these claims vis a vis Epstein.
But then there's a war going on.
Speaking of underaged girls, one of the first things that happened in the war against Iran was a school was hit and 150 girls were killed.
There's always collateral damage in war, to be sure, but this war wasn't legally launched. Killing those girls, therefore, is something akin to manslaughter, if the US did it. It'll go unpunished however.
Noblis Oblige
Theodore Roosevelt's sons served in World War One, and World War Two, one winning the Congressional Medal of Honor. FDR's sons served in the Second World War. Beau Biden served in Iraq.
This war gives the Trumps to finally serve the nation. They sure haven't done so, so far. At least Eric, Tiffany and Barron are young enough to serve.
They should.
They won't.
Americans have already died in the war. Nobody who dies will be a Trump.
It's probably fairly safe to assume that most of the children of those who visited Epstein Island won't be serving in harms way.
Footnotes:
*My father served in the Korean War. One of my mother's cousins served in Vietnam and he wasn't even an American citizen. I have uncles who served in World War Two and great uncles who served in World War One, albeit in the Canadian Army. One of my Canadian uncles served in World War Two as well.
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