Boer General P. H. Kritzinger authorized Boer troops to shoot any blacks who were riding a horse without the permission of an employer. The illegal order was based on the concept that such Cape Colony blacks must be spies.
The London School of economics was incorporated.
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For the first time in US history, more Americans are moving to Europe than the other way around.
Indeed, European immigration to the US is at historic lows. US emigration is at historic highs.
Why?
Simple, the US has become a dumpster fire. It's no longer really a democracy but a semi democracy presently ruled by an insane (if we don't assume worst) megalomaniac who is destroying the economy. We look like uneducated morons, which a lot of us actually seem to be. There are absolutely no positive indicators which the US tops the charts at. We are the 23d happiest country on the planet. Finland, Iceland, and Denmark are the first three. We cling to obsolete signs of greatness, such as refusing to have a national health care system and having a tax system that grossly under taxes Americans and funds a government that benefits us little, while people like Reid Rasner campaign for even lower taxes. We've gone from being a country that had nearly no military to having one that has a bloated military that serves an insane President.
What's not to love?
Well, there is the country, but that involves being realistic, which will get you accused of being a left winger (which should not in and of itself be regarded as an insult) by insufferable twat waffles like Chuck Gray.
We are really due for an overhaul.
Ironically, the orange buffoon destroying the White House probably helps show us the way on this. He's shown us where we have massive institutional defects. And he's taken us off the global map as a great power and made us a second rate one. Part of our descent into ignorance was a legacy of what was then a noble Cold War response to things, including a big military and governments that meddled bigly.
Now we are going to have to dance to the tune of others, but the good thing is that the others are adults.
To progress at all, which doesn't mean a return to high immigration or anything of that sort, we're really going to have to get back into education, which people like the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and other right wing zealots hate. Better to be dumb is their default position.
Better to be smart, and educated, and face our problems honestly.
And the sooner the better.
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What a bunch of flaming dipshits. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus decides that the new UW President is too "woke" to serve in that role:
Who is UW's New President?
UW's newest leader criticized for bringing woke academics to West Point
I'll admit, I criticized this choice as well, but not for this reason.
But then I would not have guessed that there would be some people who would try to include in the GOP platform that Wyoming is a "Christian State".
Seriously, this hillbilly dipshitery has got to stop.
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It was a Saturday.
Big Business and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business.
.webp)
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".
