Signaling the beginning of a new ear in the Court, the U.S. Supreme Court found segregation of interstate bus passengers to be illegal.
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May 12, 2026
Drugs coming by sea, by ocean, by water. A lot of people say, What do you mean by sea? Is it see? Like vision? No, it’s sea. SEA.
Donald Trump on the maritime transportation of illegal drugs. Absolutely nobody was confused on this topic, maybe other than Trump.
We have a man who is doing a great job. I knew it! Because he kept me out of jail for years. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. He kept me out of jail.
Ummm. . .
We're building a beautiful ballroom. I'm very good at ballrooms.
The ballroom, which will either never be built or will be ripped down, is a Trump obsession.
A new name I came up -- dumbocrat. I think that could be a good one. I've come up with some extraordinary names. But I was talking about Hakeem Jeffries. He's a low IQ person. He's a dumb guy.
Trump has an obsession on intelligence like only a man who isn't intelligent can have.
Without you, we have Somalia. A fine place where we have a congresswoman who brilliantly came over to the country by marrying her brother. That was the first law she broke. She comes from a country where they have nothing but crime, bedlam, filth. Elan Omar.
Ilhan Omar has been married three times, and none of her husbands were her brother.
This accusation taps into the deeply racist nature of a lot of MAGA in particular and the American far right in general. This has laid under the surface following the 1960s for years, but it resurfaced with the rise of Barack Obama which caused this demographic to flip out. Trump tapped into it early with his clams that Obama, who was born in Hawaii, was born in Kenya.
Funny thing here is that Obama and Trump share a common item here in that both of them were born to a couple in which one of them was an immigrant. In Trump's case, however, the immigrant was a white Christian, as opposed to Obama's. This item here really shows something that's deeply ingrained in the MAGA movement. It really doesn't like anyone who isn't white and it really doesn't like anyone who isn't culturally Christian.
Otherwise, it's perfectly okay with people like Trump, who marry foreign women of a certain appearance and then divorce them later on, and whose Christianity is a variant of it that doesn't really require any actual effort or adherence to the Gospel.
The people that did it -- these people did not work for me. They said they work for me. They come from a different part of the country. But they were good. The people that worked for me recommended it and they recommend we do it this way. But I recommended it to them because I'm very good at construction.
Tide D Bowl.
No Republican has ever spoken to me about Cuba, which is a failed country and only heading in one direction - down! Cuba is asking for help, and we are going to talk!!! In the meantime, I’m off to China! President DJT
Donald Trump.
We'll address the super creepy "Trump babies" in another thread.
A note here. Trump's 18 month mark will be July 20, 2026. If I'm right, we're now in the final phases of his administration as he'll be removed by the 25th Amendment by then.
May 13, 2026
Trump, who came to office principally because he promised to deport the 10M to 12M illegal aliens in the US, most of whom are Hispanic, now wants to annex Venezuela, with a population of 31M, and make it a state.
The population of the US is currently 20% Hispanic. Annexation of Venezuela and making its citizens US citizens would convert the country to being a 30% Hispanic country overnight. MAGA has a strongly nativist anti Hispanic bias. It'll amusing how they bend that to supporting this, but they will.
The entire thing is amusing about King Donny. He's so dim that all he ever thinks about is the cash value of something, and Venezuela has oil. He apparently doesn't realize that Venezuela, which is a large country which would probably come in as more than one state if it did, is also a Socialist one. The Republican Party would be effectively dead, and the US would be far more left wing than it currently is.
This won't happen, as it would require the cooperation of Congress. At least I don't think it would. But the fact that MAGA will support this just shows how dim that movement is.
MAGA politicians, including Harriet Hageman and John Sycophant Barrasso, should be quizzed on this, and don't let them weasel out of answering or tell you its a joke. It isn't.
On issues closer to home:
Farmers and ranches who supported Trump were reading something into him that just isn't there and will regret it.
May 14, 2026
This item raises some really good and interesting points.
Bare minimum, as the wheels come off the Trump administration he's getting increasingly erratic. Richardson proposes some darker motives, but even if there not there, there appears to be a dedicated effort to say things now to distract as things get worse and worse.
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Famous African American aviator Bessie Coleman was killed along with passenger, her mechanic and promoter, William D. Willis when her Curtiss JN-4 crashed. A post accident investigation found a wrench jammed in the controls which jammed them.
To the Editor of the National Republican:
Sir: Admirable as is the monument by Mr. Ball in Lincoln Park, it does not, as it seems to me, tell the whole truth, and perhaps no one monument could be made to tell the whole truth of any subject which it might be designed to illustrate. The mere act of breaking the negro’s chains was the act of Abraham Lincoln, and is beautifully expressed in this monument. But the act by which the negro was made a citizen of the United States and invested was the elective franchise was pre-eminently the act of President U. S. Grant, and this is nowhere seen in the Lincoln monument. The negro here, though rising is still on his knees and nude. What I want to see before I die is a monument representing the negro, not couchant on his knees like a four-footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man. There is room in Lincoln park for another monument, and I throw out this suggestion to the end that it may be taken up and acted upon.
Frederick Douglass.
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That's the birthright citizenship case.
Trump's going to lose this case, which will be another example of the wheels coming off of his administration. His presence at the Court will not impress anyone, let alone the Justices. Trump seems to have lost any sense that he's not that impressive to about 70% of Americans.
His attendance is, frankly, appalling.
Cont (April 1, 2026)
JUSTICE NEIL GORSUCH: Do you think Native Americans today are birthright citizens under your test and under your friend's test?
D. JOHN SAUER, U.S. SOLICITOR GENERAL: I think so. I mean, obviously, they've been granted citizenship by statute ...
GORSUCH: Put aside the statute. Do you think they're birthright citizens?
SAUER: No, I think the clear understanding that everybody agrees in the congressional debates is that the children of tribal Indians are not birthright citizens.
GORSUCH: I understand that's what they said. But your test is the domicile of the parents, and that would be the test you'd have us apply today, right?
SAUER: Yes, yes. So, if a tribal Indian, for example, you know, gives up allegiance to ...
GORSUCH: Are tribal members born today birthright citizens?
SAUER: I think so, on our test, if they're lawfully domiciled here. I'm not s—, I have to think that through, but that's my reaction.
GORSUCH: I'll take the yes. That's alright.
Gee Louise, this administration is really something.
The Strategic Air Command and the Tactical Air Command were created.
And so does TAC, which has been inactive since 1992, when it was merged into SAC.
I've been meaning to do a post on reorganization of the U.S. military, which the illegal war on Venezuela and King Donny's War shows to be a desperate need, but I haven't gotten around to it.
The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure went into effect.
French forces engaged in the The Battle of Thakhek in Laos, allowing the French to reestablish themselves in that portion of French Indochina.
Kenny Washington became the first African American to sign with a professional football team since 1933.
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The final adjudication of the cases of Japanese internees who had renounced their citizenship during World War Two concluded, resulting in the closure of Tule Lake War Relocation Center. The litigation reversed their loss of citizenship, but the Justice Department would reverse that. It would take until the 1960s for their citizenship to be restored.
Almost all of those who had renounced their citizenship had recanted, and for that matter not all of the renunciations were genuine.
There were two air disasters in the news:
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Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal lifted restrictions on assignments for Black sailors.
Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg delivered his "What is Russia up to now" speech in which he criticized the Truman Administration's policy of cozying up to the Soviet Union.
Who would guess that 80 years later the GOP President would have the biggest crush possible on the leader of Russia? But then who would guess that the GOP would evolve into a party of sycophantic stooges?
Truman asked Herbert Hoover to help convince Americans to aid in worldwide famine relief.
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This is a topic that tends to fascinate people as a relic of the past:
Mail Order Brides: When Wyoming Men Outnumbered Women 10-1, They ‘Imported Wives’
The truth of the matter is, of course, that since the Internet arrived, mail ordering spouses has returned. Witness the discussions on Reddit:
I am "mail order bride" ask me anything
20f Mail Order Bride, husband is 53 AMA
I'm 26 and married a mail order bride from Cambodia and I could not be happier - AMA
This, from a Thai in the AFA Reddit threads probably explains a lot of it currently:
If you want to get out of Thailand, you marry a foreigner. It's a better life for me, and my family as I bring them over. So my parents, my sisters and I are all here in the US now.
I met Paul online through a mail order bride agency when I was 16. We talked, and he flew here when I was 17 to meet me, and he met my family. He got the approval from my parents, and when I turned 18 we got married and he brought me to the US.
I have a nice house, a man who cares and takes care of me, and a good job. I don't think I would have this back in our home country. I'm glad for Paul, and everything he's done for us. So, I am happy.
Icky aspect of this aside. . . well maybe the whole thing is icky, this probably defines things in a way, then and now, for mail order brides. Economic desperation. Perhaps more then, a bit, than now, but both.
African-American historian Carter G. Woodson initiated "Negro History Week", the precursor of Black History Month. This is considerably earlier than I would have guessed this occured.
The Italian army took the Libyan city of Jaghbub, the home of the Senussi movement.
The village is actually much closer to Egypt than to any settlement in Libya.
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Congress enacted the War Brides Act allowing for admissible alien spouses, natural children, and adopted children of American troops to enter the U.S. as non-quota immigrants. The act expired in 1948.
Before expiring, about 70,000 British,, 150,000 to 200,000 Europeans, including 14,000 to 20,000 Germans, 50,000 to 100,000 from the Far East, including 51,747 Filipinas and 50,000 Japanese, and 16,000 Australian or New Zealander women came in through the act. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the numbers, in some ways, is the high number of Germans, given the nature of the war, and the comparatively high number of Japanese. Also remarkable is that the marriages from Asia were interracial.
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This comes as bit of a shock, as well as evidence of how slow news actually travels in our current age in which everything seems flash driven:
Giving some credit to the news, I'll note that this hit smaller news venues earlier, which I guess leads me to wonder a bit about how well Natrona County is served by the media.
Anyhow. . .
The church is this one:
Sts. Cyril & Methodius Catholic Church, Rock Springs Wyoming
This Romanesque church was built in 1912 after a protracted period of time in which efforts were made to build a church specifically for the Catholic Slavic population of Rock Springs, which was quite pronounced at the time. The church was named after brothers Cyril and Methodius who had been the evangelists to the Slavs. The first pastor was Austrian born Father Anton Schiffrer who was suited to the task given his knowledge of Slavic languages.
The news broke just before the celebration of the church's 100th anniversary, which isn't great timing, but no doubt that was simply coincidental.
To my surprise, there are three Catholic churches in Rock Springs. I was aware of there being two. The Catholic community seems to be served there in the same way the community in Casper is, as a Tri Parish, rather than three separate parishes.
Here's the announcement that was given by the Diocese:
As its copyrighted and I don't have permission to post it, I'll merely note it, it was of German women in their children, formerly of Lodz, waiting for a train in Berlin with hopes of going to the west. One of the children is sick, and died during the photo session.
The First President of the LDS issued a postwar statement on the draft to Utah's Congressional delegation.
Press reports have for some months indicated that a determined effort is in the making to establish in this country a compulsory universal military training designed to draw into military training and service the entire youth of the nation. We had hoped that mature reflection might lead the proponents of such a policy to abandon it. We have felt and still feel that such a policy would carry with it the gravest dangers to our Republic.
It now appears that the proponents of the policy have persuaded the Administration to adopt it, in what on its face is a modified form. We deeply regret this, because we dislike to find ourselves under the necessity of opposing any policy so sponsored. However, we are so persuaded of the rightfulness of our position, and we regard the policy so threatening to the true purposes for which this Government was set up, as set forth in the great Preamble to the Constitution, that we are constrained respectfully to invite your attention to the following considerations:
1. By taking our sons at the most impressionable age of their adolescence and putting them into army camps under rigorous military discipline, we shall seriously endanger their initiative thereby impairing one of the essential elements of American citizenship. While on its face the suggested plan might not seem to visualize the army camp training, yet there seems little doubt that our military leaders contemplate such a period, with similar recurring periods after the boys are placed in the reserves.
2. By taking our boys from their homes, we shall deprive them of parental guidance and control at this important period of their youth, and there is no substitute for the care and love of a mother for a young son.
3. We shall take them out of school and suffer their minds to be directed in other channels, so that very many of them after leaving the army, will never return to finish their schooling, thus over a few years materially reducing the literacy of the whole nation.
4. We shall give opportunity to teach our sons not only the way to kill but also, in too many cases, the desire to kill, thereby increasing lawlessness and disorder to the consequent upsetting of the stability of our national society. God said at Sinai, “Thou shalt not kill.”
5. We shall take them from the refining, ennobling, character-building atmosphere of the home, and place them under a drastic discipline in an environment that is hostile to most of the finer and nobler things of home and of life.
6. We shall make our sons the victims of systematized allurements to gamble, to drink, to smoke, to swear, to associate with lewd women, to be selfish, idle, irresponsible save under restraint of force, to be common, coarse, and vulgar, all contrary to and destructive of the American home.
7. We shall deprive our sons of any adequate religious training and activity during their training years, for the religious element of army life is both inadequate and ineffective.
8. We shall put them where they may be indoctrinated with a wholly un-American view of the aims and purposes of their individual lives, and of the life of the whole people and nation, which are founded on the ways of peace, whereas they will be taught to believe in the ways of war.
9. We shall take them away from all participation in the means and measures of production to the economic loss of the whole nation.
10. We shall lay them open to wholly erroneous ideas of their duties to themselves, to their family, and to society in the matter of independence, self-sufficiency, individual initiative, and what we have come to call American manhood.
11. We shall subject them to encouragement in a belief that they can always live off the labors of others through the government or otherwise.
12. We shall make possible their building into a military caste which from all human experience bodes ill for that equality and unity which must always characterize the citizenry of a republic.
13. By creating an immense standing army, we shall create to our liberties and free institutions a threat foreseen and condemned by the founders of the Republic, and by the people of this country from that time till now. Great standing armies have always been the tools of ambitious dictators to the destruction of freedom.
14. By the creation of a great war machine, we shall invite and tempt the waging of war against foreign countries, upon little or no provocation; for the possession of great military power always breeds thirst for domination, for empire, and for a rule by might not right.
15. By building a huge armed establishment, we shall belie our protestations of peace and peaceful intent and force other nations to a like course of militarism, so placing upon the peoples of the earth crushing burdens of taxation that with their present tax load will hardly be bearable, and that will gravely threaten our social, economic, and governmental systems.
16. We shall make of the whole earth one great military camp whose separate armies, headed by war-minded officers, will never rest till they are at one another’s throats in what will be the most terrible contest the world has ever seen.
17. All the advantages for the protection of the country offered by a standing army may be obtained by the National Guard system which has proved so effective in the past and which is unattended by the evils of entire mobilization.
Responsive to the ancient wisdom, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it,’ obedient to the divine message that heralded the birth of Jesus the Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the world, ‘. . . on earth peace, good will toward men,’ and knowing that our Constitution and the Government set up under it were inspired of God and should be preserved to the blessing not only of our own citizenry but, as an example, to the blessing of all the world, we have the honor respectfully to urge that you do your utmost to defeat any plan designed to bring about the compulsory military service of our citizenry. Should it be urged that our complete armament is necessary for our safety, it may be confidently replied that a proper foreign policy, implemented by an effective diplomacy, can avert the dangers that are feared. What this country needs and what the world needs, is a will for peace, not war. God will help our efforts to bring this about.
Respectfully submitted, GEO. ALBERT SMITH, J. REUBEN CLARK, JR., DAVID O. MCKAY, First Presidency.
I actually ran across this on Reddit, where it has been posted by an unhappy former Mormon. It might be noted, of course, that at that age a large number of Mormons go on missions, which is an effort to consolidate them in their faith, so there was no doubt some reason for Mormon's to be concerned. While I've heard it claimed that there's no pressure for them to do so, as a demographic, by my observation, they tend to marry young as well, which relates to one of the things noted in the letter, maybe more than one.
Still, the points made are interesting, and not necessarily invalid. Indeed, almost every point raised in this letter is correct.
There is actually a lot to unpack here, and my own views on this have changed back and forth over the years. In 1945, when this letter was written, there had only been a single instance of conscription into the Federal Army during peacetime in U.S. history, and that came right before World War Two. There was a history of mandatory militia service, but that had fallen by the wayside after the Civil War.
Also of note, the National Guard, in peacetime, still did not receive Federal basic training in 1945. Entry level soldiers were trained by their units by older NCO's delegated that task. Given this, the nature of the training was always local, but it obviously varied in other ways depending upon who was delivering it. In the case of this letter, the author could be assured that enlisting young men would have been trained by older soldiers of a like mind, with therefore much of the societal dangers noted avoided. I'm not sure when the training system actually changed, but I suspect it was by the very late 1940s or certainly by the 1950s. By the time I was in the Guard the Guard was incredibly integrated into the Regular Army, which is even more the case today. Enlisting men received regular Army basic and advanced training, and were in the Army when they received it.
When I was younger, I held the view that conscription was a bad thing, save in times of war, as it forced a person to serve against their will. That's a less developed point than the set of points noted above, but there is a point to it. Having said that, what I don't think I appreciated earlier is the dangers of a large standing Army, which is why the US had a militia system for defense in the first place. We're seeing a lot of those dangers come into fruition now. That's not directly related to conscription, it might be noted, but it somewhat is as we have a large, all volunteer, armed forces, which inevitably leads to a sort of military class. Armed forces with conscripts are much less likely do to that, and therefore they make a much more democratic force that's much less likely to act as praetorian guards for a would be dictator.
Additionally, as I've grown older I've noted that there's a distinct difference between people who served when asked, and those who avoided it. Our narcissist in chief in Washington D.C., who avoided serving due to shin splits, is a good example. Donald Trump would have benefited enormously from two years as an enlisted man in the military. But it's not just him, I've noted this in a lot of men who found a way not to serve. Their characters would have been better off if they had.
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