King Donald's War, Part 13. A Second Rate Military lead by a Third Rate Clown College with a Secretary of War who should be impeached.

As we noted yesterday, Thomas Massie has introduced articles of impeachment upon Pete Hegseth.

They actually stand a chance of passing.

They provide, in relevant part:

Massie needs a simple majority in the House to pass the resolution.  It would require 2/3ds in the Senate to impeach and remove Hegseth.

Massie is nothing if not independent.  I don't agree with him on everything, but he's been one of the few Republicans in Congress, as opposed to the pack of willing sycophantic cowards that claim to be Republicans.  When the history of this era is written, he'll be a hero, whereas people like Mike Johnson will be pathetic weirdos, and people like John Barrasso spineless wimps.

Everything in this bill is correct.

One thing that isn't is incompetence, which this administration has shown itself to be on military matters.  The US Military has been revealed to be, frankly, pathetically bad, or at least its Navy has has been.  We're losing the war against a power that has outfought us, and out thought us.

Hegseth promised a renewal, of sorts, in the U.S. Military. Frankly, it needs one, and has for a long time.

Hegseth seems to have imagined a military that was pre 1948 in some ways.  All white, and mostly men.  The date we really need to look back to is this one:

Today In Wyoming's History: September 16, 1940. Conscription starts and the National Guard mobilized.

September 16, 1940 is the day the US went from a peacetime establishment and peacetime military to a wartime establishment and a wartime military.  We've been there ever since.  To at least some degree, we've kept a huge military with a huge military establishment, massive arms requirement, and a very large professional military class.

That needs to end.

What Hegseth got right, sort of, is that the Military began to be used for odd social experiments and it never stopped.  People look back to the 1948 integration of the military as being when that started, but that really misses the point. Segregation of the Army (not the Navy) started during the Civil War when the Army took in large number of black troops for the first time. With the inherent racism of the country, it simply would not have been possible to integrate black soldiers into regular units.  They would have been killed.  Establishing black units in and of themselves was a major accomplishment, and one only the war could have brought about.

Some efforts to integrate the military more fully occured in the 19th Century, but inherent racism in American society really just didn't make it possible until World War Two when it started to occur on a smaller and localized scale.  American reaction to German racism reflected back in the face of Americans and made integration of the military not only fully possible, but inevitable, after the war.

Minorities have always been a huge success story in the military, and that's been the case all along.  It simply provided opportunities to them that didn't exist elsewhere.  That lesson was learned but started to be misapplied in the 1970s when the Carter Administration saw the military as a way to advance the cause of women in society.  That evolved into allowing women into combat MOS's which was a huge mistake. Women and men are different. And then the Obama Administration allowed "transgendered" individuals into the military starting in 2016, which was turning a blind eye to a medically enhanced mental illness.

Women in combat units did create an internal reaction in military units that went unnoticed to some degree.  Male combat troops didn't and don't like it, and react accordingly whereas the influence of young women had a feminizing and softening, even cutsey, impact on the military.  Look up "Battle Boo" on Youtube and you'll see what I mean.  

Having troops set against their political leaders is a bad thing. But that has occured.  This created the perfect situation for a sort of Curragh Mutiny, and it's happened.

The thing here is that this all needed correction, but competent correction, which would have required a an actually conservative administration to bring about.  We don't have one of those.  In stead we have a demented megalomaniac octogenarian who is surrounded by sycophants, weirdos, and dimwits. Pete Hegseth is a good example.  A Evangelical Protestant Zealot with tattoos recalling the Crusades, which weren't done by Evangelical Protestants, a record of hard drinking and philandering, he presents himself like an insecure frat boy trying to hang out with college football players.  He also, as noted, not only claims to want to restore the "warrior" ethos to the military, he seems to have something against minorities and a bias against women that extend to their just being women.  

Like much of the overgrown bloated U.S. Military, he doesn't seem to have grasped that its not 1941 any longer either.  The war in Ukraine has shown that the age of drones is here.  Iran and the Houthis have shown an ability to launch missile strikes that would have made Peenemunde pound.  Believing that the US could take on Iran with Naval air alone, something GMT Games had already shown you could not, US forces were left heavily exposed in Middle Eastern bases which were wiped out by Iran nearly immediately.  Logistical tails were stepped on and the USS Abraham Lincoln became a symbol for the entire country, a rusting psychologically stressed hulk.

There doesn't seem to have been a lot of clear thinking going on.

Speaking of not thinking, and related to this war:

But with your money.  

What the crap?

President Trump’s administration is planning to sell to Israel a munitions package worth $2.8 including 2,000-pound bombs which will be funded by a Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grant.

That's right.  The heavily indebted United States will be spending money it doesn't have for Israel's military.

One thing that this war has caused and is causing is a rethinking of the US relationship with Israel.  It's long overdue.

The common line is that "Israel is our only ally in the Middle East".  Israel isn't a formal US ally at all.  Indeed, in terms of formal allies, the only Middle Eastern one we have is Turkey, not Israel.  

The US has a close relationship to Israel for historic and demographic reasons.  The US was horrified to a greater extent than any other nation to what happened to Jews during World War Two and reacted by giving its strong support to the establishment of Israel, ignoring the fact that importing thousands of immigrants into a land already occupied by somebody else would result in problems.

Put another way, if Europe demanded that thousands of Mexican immigrants be allowed into Texas to create a new country, we'd freak out.

Added to that, the US has a substantial Jewish minority, although it has not been and has never been huge.  It's about 2.4% of the population today.  Somewhat ignored in this is that the US also has notable population of Middle Eastern immigrants, most of whom up until a couple of decades ago were Lebanese and Syrian Christians and Armenians.  Perhaps because they were all members of Apostolic Christian faiths, that was just easy to ignore in some ways.  It's France, for instance, that has traditionally defended the rights of the Lebanese.  The US once concerned itself with the plight of Armenians, but that's been a long time ago.  To some extent, perhaps because they were a more distinct minority, Jewish populations in the US have tended to be relatively better organized.

Anyhow, almost from day 1 Americans really bought off on the concept of the establishment of Israel being a really noble cause.  In my household growing up I remember my mother feeling that way, although my father had a much more nuanced opinion.  The plight of Arabs in the same region was generally ignored by Americans up until relatively recently, and only because populations of Palestinian and other Arabs have immigrated into the US. They're still a much smaller percentage of the population than Jewish Americans are.

Added to that, Islam has tended to really freak Americans out, and for good reason.  

Israel has very divided politics and is going through something akin to what the US is, with the current Israeli government being, in my view, extreme.  Nobody has ever stated it, but it seems relatively clear that there are those in Israel who would outright force Palestinians out of what had been Mandatory Palestine.  There are Americans who have equally extreme views about modern Israel and its place in the world from a religious perspective.

Whatever brought the current Israeli government to power, it's also clear that there are huge numbers of Israelis who are horrified by recent events and would take Israel in another direction.

At this point, I'm with those who, like my father so many decades ago, take a much more nuanced view on Israel.  Like Ukrainian born Argentinian-Israeli author Jacobo Timerman, I view Israel as a Middle Eastern state that has to learn to live in that neighborhood.  It also, at this point, has to learn to get by on its own.  It can build its own weapons and pay for them itself.

For that matter, while its a topic for another thread, the US wasn't a serious supplier of arms around the world until World War Two.  It needs to stop being one now.  Selling arms to some countries is, okay, in my view, but not to as many as we do, and for cash, not best wishes.

I'll note that it is interesting that a lot of our former arms client states have stepped out on its own in recent years.  South Korea, for example, manufactures its own armored vehicles, artillery and small arms.  Israel does produce some weapons of its own, but not all that many.  I'm not for selling them arms anymore.

When people are killed by American arms, no matter who uses them, we're implicated.

Back to the illegal war in the Middle East that Israel got us into.

A resolution requiring the US to get out of that war passed the House yesterday.

H. CON. RES. 93

Directing the President, pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution, to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities with Iran.

---

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

April 28, 2026

Mr. Moulton (for himself, Mr. Crow, Mr. Ryan, Ms. Houlahan, Mr. Panetta, Mr. Auchincloss, Ms. Goodlander, Mr. Vindman, and Mr. Scott of Virginia) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs

---

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

Directing the President, pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution, to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities with Iran.

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That, pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1544(c)), Congress directs the President to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran, other than those elements of the Armed Forces that may be necessary to defend the United States or an ally or partner of the United States from imminent attack provided that the President complies fully with the requirements of section 5(b) the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1544(b)) with respect to any such use of the Armed Forces, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or a specific congressional authorization for use of military force against Iran.

It's not going to go anywhere, but it's not irrelevant.  At least some are speaking up and standing out.

And some who claim to adhere to certain values should take note.  In the Particular Judgement Mike Johnson is going to have to explain supporting all this killing and standing with Israel isn't going to excuse it.  But then Johnson will have a lot to answer for.

cont:

The Houthis shot down a Saudi F-15 with a domestically produced missile today.

cont:

And Mike Johnson sent the House home early to avoid the impeachment vote.

That'd suggest either there were enough votes to pass it, or there were Republican Congressmen afraid to go on record.

They won't be back until November 9. They'd only been working for seven days since they came back from their last recess.

September 17, 2026

So it turns out the administration sent representatives to meet with the Houthis.

The same man who betrayed the Afghanis and surrendered their country to the Taliban is now negotiating with the Houthis while refusing support to Saudi Arabia.

Figures.

cont:

Apparently a deal was reached:

Yemen’s Houthis have agreed to allow US shipping unfettered Red Sea access if Washington refrains from direct military involvement in the Saudi-led war. That’s according to US reports which say the two sides struck the deal amid a Houthi offensive along Yemen’s Red Sea coast.

Al Jazeera.   

So King Donny stabbed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the back, not that he is a nice guy.

Not that the Houthis are either.

The Houthis (Ansar Allah) are a Zaydi revivalist and Shia Islamist organization allied with Iran, which supports them.  They've been a player in the Israel/Hezbollah War, as was Iran, and are attempting to gain control of all of Yemen.  

Their emblem:

The phrase on it translates as "God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse be upon the Jews, Victory to Islam".

Some deluded sots who supported the Trump participation in the ongoing war against Iran maintained early on that it was sort of a Protestant crusade. The US had a Divine mission, some argued who were in the military, or the Department of Defense, to take on Shi'a Islam.

Well, apparently not so much.

For the second time, Trump has surrendered to an Islamist organization and betrayed somebody we supported.

Anyone relying on Trump  for support is a fool.

And with this stab in the back, we will conclude this edition.

Last edition:

King Donald's War, Part 12. The "Economic D-Day" edition. CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 152nd Edition, the irony edition.

25th Amendment Watch, 24th Edition. He's crying for help, or completely insane.

You know the drill.

Republicans will claim he's "trolling".  MAGA will say "watch the libs, har, har, har, pass me my twelfth Bud. . . "  Mike Johnson will claim he was too busy to notice. John Barrasso will look like he's badly constipated.

The Trump will do it.

J. D. Vance will claim it's a good idea, while going back to spruce up his resume for his inevitable Starbucks job application.

Seriously, he's either completely insane, or crying out for intervention.

This is not normal.  Trump is not normal. He's not alright.

September 8, 2026

And then there's this: https://x.com/Amy_Siskind/status/2097119661884162247/video/1

Yesterday he appeared to be lecturing a Marine Corps helicopter pilot shortly after Marine Corps One landed and omitted saluting the guards, which has become an unfortunate tradition.

Part of Labor Day he devoted to a deranged series of tweets.

He's insane and the Republican Party just won't do anything about it.  It's up to the voters, but even at that we'll be facing two more years of untold destruction due to GOP cowardice.

cont:

The government of Iceland has summoned the US ambassador to the country for Donald Trump's having posted an image yesterday showing the island nation as a U.S. possession.  Mexico, Canada and Greenland were included in the same crazy image.

cont:

I just thank my people. I was building a big building in New York and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened and they had no hesitation. Everybody went down with me. We went down as a big group of people ... we thought it was coming down on top of us ... two fireman lifted me up and started running with me. 

Two fireman, big strong guys, they grabbed me under the arms -- 'got to get our of here!' -- and they literally lifted me up, and they started running with me.

Donald Trump about 9/11.  It's a complete lie.

cont:

And later today:

The Failing New York Magazine wrote a story that I wasn’t down at the World Trade Center after the Tragedy of September 11th, because nobody saw me there. Well, I don’t think I would be the first thing on anyone’s mind but, I was there, obviously not on the same day as the collapse, but shortly thereafter…

The Fake News doesn’t want to listen, even when they know their story is false. That’s why their approval ratings are at an All Time LOW, but mine are VERY HIGH! 

On another September 11th front, Maggot Hagerman continues to say that I did not go to the New York World Trade Center event, but the Pentagon instead, because they wouldn’t let me speak in New York. Maggot knows that this is a lie!

This is actually a fairly big event as Trump was caught in a lie so large that he was forced to attempt to step away from it.  He wasn't there, and was called on it, and admitted he wasn't there.

He's a liar whose occupation of the White House dishonors the country.

September 12, 2026

King Donald and Number 4 at 9/11 memorial.  ©Reach Publishing Services Limited. Posted under fair use exception.

It's difficult to see how MAGA continues to call Joe Biden "Sleepy Joe".

Getty Images, same event.  Fair use exception.

September 16, 2026

Trump's hand picked board on the Kennedy Center closed it ostensibly for renovations but Trump made it clear beforehand that it would be closed unless it's named after him.

Trump has been a Tour d' Wacky all week.

The man is insane.  Supporting a person who supports Trump is unconscionable.

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 9, 25th Amendment Watch, 23d Edition. The Canadian Harvard and Oxford doctor in economics vs. the Wharton playboy. The Trade War with Canada edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, 25th Amendment Watch List, Canada, Distributism, Donald Trump, Economics, Mark Carney, Solidarity, Subsidiarity, The Madness of King Donald, Trump Trade Wars, United States, Wyoming, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 9, 25th Amendment Watch, 23d Edition. The Canadian Harvard and Oxford doctor in economics vs. the Wharton playboy. The Trade War with Canada edition. First set of Additional labels.

 

The 2026 Election, 15th Edition. Trump will attempt to steal the election.

Trump fired the last three members of the Election Assistance Commission, the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials.

Donald Trump does not want to go to jail.

When the Democrats resume Congressional power in January, 2027, Trump's effectiveness as a President will be over. Frankly, he's not terribly effective right now.  He is terribly disruptive.

But the chances of his going to prison will climb enormously.  He stands a serious risk of being impeached and tossed out, to be followed by being sent to prison.

Bare minimum, his endless vanity projects will be done for, as will most of his power.

Trump will do whatever is necessary to avoid the outcome of the 2027 election.  It's going to be severely bad.

And I'll give him about a 60% chances of pulling it off, aided by people like John Barrasso, Harriet Hageman, and Chuck Gray.

Last edition:

The 2026 Election, 14th Edition. The “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor" edition.

Labels: 120th Congress, 2020s, 2026, 2026 Election, Alaska, Chuck Gray, Colorado, Distributism, Enemies of Public Lands, Graham Platner, Lisa Engebretsen, The 2021 Insurrection, Wyoming Freedom Caucus, You heard it here first

Supporting Immorality in War is Immoral.

Gun camera footage from a P-51 strafing Japanese civilian fishermen during World War Two, a gravely immoral act.  We've conveniently forgotten how much of this sort of thing happened during World War Two, but a lot did.  Allied fighters routinely strafed German farmers during  the war, and I have heard of one account of an Italian farmer being killed by being strafed.  This isn't warfare, it's flat out murder.*

 

III. SAFEGUARDING PEACE

Avoiding war

2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

Section 2309, Catechism of the Catholic Church. 

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution:

[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; . . . 

The American war against Iran is not a just war.  It's not a legal one, either.

Iran is a world sponsor of terrorism that has sponsored terroristic acts for decades.  Most of those acts of terror were against other sovereign states, not the US, but some can logically be argued to be directed at the us.  That's almost certainly not what the war is about.

Much more likely, Trump is a pathetic doddering senile fool who has spent a life of utter pointlessness.  His wealth is inherited and founded originally on a grandfather who engaged in providing prostitutes to Alaska miners, a gravely evil act.  His father did nothing like that, but the family wealth was used to build more wealth, and Trump in his adult years, after not serving his country (a family tradition to some extent) went on to make and lose fortunes doing that.

Real estate development is, from an agrarian and distributism prospective like that I maintain, a fairly dubious occupation in and of itself.  Not clearly immoral, but frankly I have real trouble with some of it.  Be that as it may, I particularly have trouble with the sort of behavior that Trump exhibited in that questionable occupation.  I wouldn't admire the Wharton graduate for that reason alone.  But the way he has spent his wealth is abominable.  He's a serial polygamist and its getting very difficult to say "there's no evidence" that he didn't sexually fish in the shallow end of the pond.

There's more credible evidence that he's a kiddy diddler, which I'm not affirmatively saying there is, than that he's a Christian.  There's not one single outwardly Christian act that I can think of that he's committed.  What he is, is a shallow opportunist, and he's used desperate Christians to advance his career.  

Knowing that the grave is looming up on him, and with his mind slipping away from him at a rapid rate, Trump has spent much of his second, illegitimate, occupation of the White House trying to build monuments to himself.  He wants a ball room as he's a rich product of the 60s and 70s when things like that mattered to somebody.  They don't anymore, and it'll either never be built, or ripped down.  He wants a triumphal arch, which is simply absurd.

And he wants to be remembered as a great hero, adding to the US landmass, or at least defeating a supposed major enemy.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a scary man in his own right, but not a demented fool, saw that he could play the demented fool in the White House.  Netanyahu, like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, sees the Trump dotage as a time to "address all family business".  Seeing a dolt he could play, like Putin has, he's coaxed Trump into a war for Israel's own purposes.  This is, the way Netanyahu sees it, Israel's last best hope to destroy the radical Islamist regime in Tehran.  Israel can't do it on its own, and no future US administration will support doing it.  Israel is not held in that high of regard in much of the world for a variety of reasons, and never has been.  Nobody else is going to play the willing muscled fool for Netanyahu.  If Netanyahu is Corleone, Trump is Luca Brasi, a brutish dolt who is willing to act as an enforcer.

Trump entered this war thinking it would be a two or three day exercise.  He'd bomb Iran and the Iranian people would give up.  Or, maybe, Iranians theocrats would act like American property owners and cut him a deal.  Well, say what you like about Shiite theocrats, but they're a lot less shallow than American businessmen.  They hold to an existential, and unlike Trump it's not all about money and women.  

Oh oh.

So they didn't give up and they aren't going to give up.  They've fought back by striking economic targets and U.S. military installations around the Middle East (and now as far away as Diego Garcia).  And they've closed the Straits of Hormuz.

By closing the Straits, they've also demonstrated that the US is, in fact, not as powerful as it pretends it is.  We can't open them and we've been begging for help.  Nobody else is willing to get into an endless war for Israel, and therefore that help isn't coming.  In order to open them we will have to engage in a ground invasion.

Trump is trying desperately to avoid that, for a variety of reasons.  One thing is that he's probably been told it will be a bloody mess.  Body bags will be coming home to "Red" cities all around the country.  People already don't support the war and they definitely will not when Johnny or Mary come home to be buried in Riverton Wyoming, or Billings Montana, having died for Bibi Netanyahu.  

And then there's this:

There's not going to be a draft, but the satiric suggestions that he serve are not wholly ingenuine.  Right now, the US is getting into one war after another.  Franklin Roosevelt's children served, so did TR's. Why not Trump's?

Because Trumps don't serve the country, they take from it. That's why.

In his desperation to end the war, Trump is now threatening to bomb Iranian power facilities if they do not open the Straits of Hormuz.  He broadcast this on social media, which is idiotic  It also won't work.  The Allied bombing campaigns against Germany did not work in World War Two.  They didn't work, save for the Atomic bomb, against Japan, either.  Nor did they work against North Vietnam.  They won't work here.  Instead, civilians will be killed and whatever support for a new regime replacing this one in Iran exists, will evaporate.

What Trump is doing is criminal. The US is killing people for. . . what?

The whole war is criminal from the first place, from a US prospective.  We're using military force to kill people with no declaration of war.  And now we propose to engage in a tit for tat campaign of economic retribution against them as we can't beat them.  We haven't been able to articulate a single reason for the war, other than Iran cannot be allowed to have the same thing that Israel, the United States, France, Russia, North Korea, the United Kingdom, Indian, Pakistan, and South Africa have. . . an atomic bomb.

There is some logic to that, of course.  An Iran with an atomic bomb would be scary, just like North Korea with an atomic bomb is scary.  But given our ill thought out military adventure here, we are actually making this situation worse.  North Korea, it might be noted, is improving missile capabilities, and why wouldn't they.  If North Korea has not determined an absolute need to be able to hit the continental United States due to Donald Trump, it'd be amazing.  And if Iran, which has its nuclear material yet, has not concluded that it has an absolute need to complete a nuclear project, that would be amazing.

But it's clear that Trump never thought this out.  He went, we're told, with his gut, which is nearly always wrong.

So, here we are in this long winded thread.

And here's to the point.  Supporting immorality, is immoral.  Everyone engages in "remote cooperation with evil", which you can not do much about.  Using illegal drugs is illegal, but paying the pizza guy when you know he's going to use some of that cash for illegal drugs isn't.

Here, we now have an interesting situation.

We are in an illegal war and doing immoral acts.  The Republicans in Washington are mostly sitting around on their ass doing nothing about it. They're afraid.  They're not paid nor elected to be afriad.

And all over the country the MAGA element of the GOP just lies down like the 13 year old girls at Epstein Island and gives into whatever Trump wants.

It's immoral.

For years and years Christians, particularly those of my faith, voted for Republicans in spite of reluctance because we opposed abortion and the Democratic Party supported it.  Even as late as the last election I heard Catholics with severe doubts about Trump say they were voting for him for that reason.

Abortion is a grave moral evil.  Engaging in an illegal war and targeting civilian targets is a grave moral evil.

I'm not saying vote for the Democrats without thinking, but I am saying that supporting this Administration and the Republican Party at this point is supporting moral evil.  When John Barrasso and Harriet Hageman come around backing the war, they're backing a moral evil.  When Chuck Gray declares his undying love for Trump and promises to be the most loyal of his political concubines, he's expressing a love of a moral evil.

Most Germans during the Nazi era did nothing.  Most Republicans aren't going to either.  In future years, they'll be looked at with utter disgust.

Christians believe that they'll have to account for their sins in the next world.  I very much doubt that bothers Donald  Trump as he's stupid and ignorant, which is sort of a defense, and I very much question if he has any belief in God at all.  For that matter, while I have only the incidents to raise the question, I doubt the beliefs of many in Congress who claim they have one.  For those of us who do believe, and frankly a person who doesn't has simply blinded themselves to reality, it's all too easy to believe that our self interest must be moral.  Protestant churches have, for instance, by and large completely given up on being concerned about sexual morality for the most part.

God will not be mocked.  Christians who declare Trump to be a "Godly Man" are willfully blinding themselves or outright lying.  None of us are around here all that long.  The "why did you support the murder of my children" question is coming up, and the "well, I supported Trump", or "well, the Iranians were baddies", or "well, the Iranians were Muslims" line is not likely to be a sufficient excuse for being complicit in murder.

Footnotes

*This may seem like a strange point to start in this thread, but wars routinely devolve, even when they fit the just war criteria, into flat out murder and the US has not been exempt from this.  Arguably the cleanest war the US ever fought was World War One, with the Korean War being relatively clean.  World War Two may be recalled as a uniformly just war, but the bombing campaigns against urban Japan and the use of nuclear weapons was outright not.  And the tolerance of what is depicted above, which was very widespread, was not.

Tuesday, March 16, 1976. Wilson resigns at the point where Trump should have.

Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced his retirement at age 60 due to what he knew was advancing dementia, although, in those years before this was as understood as well as it currently is, he cited physical and mental exhaustion.  He would die in 1995, although his dementia never took fully hold.

The more power to him.  Right now, in the United States, we have a demented President in a family with a history of dementia, who is sending people off to war based on his feelings.  History will not forgive us for putting up with this.

John Thune, in the Senate, is too old for his job.

John Barrasso, in the Senate, is 73, way too old for his job.

And the people who will die in the current war can take no comfort in that, as Congress is composed, on the Republican side of abject cowards.

Last edition:

Saturday, February 21, 1976. AC/DC on Australian Bandstand.

Labels: 1970s, 1976, 1976 Olympics, Australia, China, China (Beijing), London Metropolitan Police, Music, Olympics, police, pornography, Richard Nixon, Rock Music, United Kingdom, Women

New Year's Resolutions for Other People.

Some years I do this thread, other years not.  2025 was such a serious year, I'm tempted not to.

Maybe that's when you should.

I'm going to start of with a minor one.

Heather Cox Richardson, for goodness sakes pay some attention to the production values of your Vlog.  It's absolutely horrific and yes, it does matter.  Sitting in front of a coast map may be something you can get away with as a professor to your students, but frankly everyone else just wonders on to Erza Klein.

The ones with Joanne B. Freeman are the absolutely worst, not because you both don't have things that are serious to say, but because it comes across like two elderly professors in the faculty lounge who are annoyed with undergraduates.

You have good content.  Improve the production values.

Okay, now that we have that out of the way. . .

Cabinet members, invoke the 25h Amendment.

You know that Donald Trump is getting increasingly bat shit crazy and he's making everything worse.  The point at which he serves as razzle dazzle is over.  It's no longer safe.  Remove him.

And once he's removed, do a serious investigation into what his thing with Putin is.  It's weird, bare minimum, but is there more there?

Some will note, and indeed people already are, that if Trump goes Vance is in. This is true.Vance has his own dangers, but he's not likely to nuke Denmark.

Regarding Vance, Vance probably is who he always was, or so it seems to me, but his philosophical underpinnings have developed enormously, whether you like them or not.  It occurs to me that people who were charmed by Hillbilly Elegy were charmed by it as they didn't regard it as a call for action for a hillbilly class, but rather as a fun thing to lament over while sipping some weird tea based drink and watching Heather Cox Richardson.  Nope, it was a call to arms.

Vance, or whatever your name is, its time for you to be open about your beliefs.  Either the American public accepts them, which they probably do not, or they'll reject them and you can try to convince them.  

Also, reconsider their harshness.  It's easier to be Kevin Roberts if you are an academic.  In the real world, Pope Leo XIV makes a lot more sense.

Wyoming Freedom Caucus.  Go back to your homes and leave Wyoming alone.

John Barrasso.  Grow a spine and start backing Wyoming.

Chuck Gray. See item on Freedom Caucus.

Wyoming Democrats.  Be like what  you once were, moderate Republicans.  You're never getting anywhere running as the French Socialist Party.

Wyoming voters, quit screwing yourself.  I swear, the things you keep voting to support are so darned dumb it defines description.  Voting for politicians who will grab Federal lands would sell them in a heartbeat.  Coal is not coming back. Climate change is real and needs to be addressed.

And, if you are a new Freedom Caucus type voter, go home.  We'll even buy you a box set of the Dukes of Hazzard if you leave.

Members of the Evangelical Protestant right wing community (and maybe Evangelical Protestants in general). Read some history.  You guys are carrying out a historically discredited effort that's contrary to the Church.

Also, knock off the divorce doesn't matter thing.  It does.  

Last edition:

New Year's Resolutions for Other People, sort of.

Labels: 2020s, 2024, 2025, An hoc pertinet ad naturam?, Donald Trump, Joseph Biden, Natural Law, New Apostolic Reformation, New Year's Resolutions, Politics, religion

Epstein survivors issue urgent plea to Congress, Trump now wants materials released, and the ultimate corruption of money.

Hmmm. . . that's interesting.  Trump's now okay with it.

Trump and his acolytes went from demanding their release, to absolutely opposing it.  Now they're in favor of it again.

What gives?

Well one thing may simply be that so much time has gone by, these files are now scrubbed.  Sounds conspiratorial, I know, but files can be scrubbed, or lost.

The problem here is that the whole thing sounds so, well, all over the place that an effective scrubbing might be impossible.

Another one is that Trump might already know it won't get past the Senate.  Just yesterday loyal flunky John Barrasso stated he wasn't sure if they'd vote on it or not.  Figures like Barrasso figure their Senate seats are so safe that they're untouchable.  They aren't, and he was running pretty scared last time, but they tend to think that way.

Or it just isn't worth the political capital that it was burning up.  That would suggest that whoever is getting protected just isn't worth this level of damage, particularly that some formerly loyal MAGA's have gone overboard into the lifeboats.  The Republicans only barely control the House now and are set to lose them in the midterms.  If only two or three more Republicans in the House abandoned ship, Mike Smarmy Johnson is done for and the GOP would start to break free of King Donny.  Two Republican House members, including amazingly Marjorie Taylor Greene, are openly poking the king and he's been able to do nothing about it.

Yet another is that, related to above, Trump just intends to lie his way out of whatever they say, if they're damaging to him, and so far we have no reason to believe that in spite of his personally gross behavior towards women, that he's implicated in kiddy diddling.  At the worst, it's possible that he knew what was going on and didn't do anything about it,  and there's likely a lot of rich and powerful people in that boat.  Or maybe he actually didn't.  Epstein was a creep, but just having young bikini wearing women on the premises doesn't necessarily mean that diddling is going on.  So whatever is in there, he may be confident won't touch him directly, and whomever it does, well he can always say it includes Democrats too, which it probably does.

Which may be, after all is said and done, the biggest lesson.  Since Ronald Reagan this country has followed the absurd notion that's what's good for the wealthy is good for everyone.  As Oliver Bullough has stated; "All money corrupts, and big money corrupts bigly".   

Businessmen plotted to take over the government and install fascism in the 1930s.  The plot failed, and nobody was prosecuted.  Reagan sold the American public the idea that vast wealth trickles down.

Epstein hung out with the rich and powerful. Some of them he supplied with teenage girls.  The money didn't trickle down, and its not trickling down.  Rather, it's morally corrosive and effectively the Business Plot ultimately won out with the election of Donald Trump, aided by the Democrats prime strategy being a judicial coup rather than an oligarchic one.  

There's still time to reverse that. This might be a good place to start.

"Wyoming's Doctor" being a complete Trump tool.

Re releasing the Epstein files:

. . . this is not about truth, this is about an attempt by the Democrats to make President Trump a lame duck president and I'm not gonna aid and abet them in their effort to do that.

Geez, Dr. John, find a pair, be a man, and do something honorable.

Trump's out in 2028.  Barrasso ought to be next time he's up for reelection. He's not representing the State.

Barrasso Honors Cheney Despite Complex History, Silence From Trump

Wow, the first independent action by Barrasso since. . . well a long time.

Barrasso Honors Cheney Despite Complex History, Silence From Trump

Lex Anteinternet: The Vandals.

Lex Anteinternet: The Vandals.: American democracy has several great weaknesses, the primary one being that Americans believe that we have a "two party system". W...

The direct vandalism today was done by a Washington area demolition company that's been business for over 80 years.

Not too surprisingly, nobody had really taken much note in them until today, but apparently today they received it to their surprise, in spades.

What to make of that?

Well, people are really angry.

They probably shouldn't have taken the job, but then, things shouldn't be taken out on them either. 

Genuinely surprised is Donald Trump and his administration, which is trying to downplay the entire event.

The Trump illegitimate regime is losing popularity, and this likely won't help.  Trump has always had abysmal approval ratings and its getting worse.  Still, there's a year to go until the midterm elections and the GOP is hard at work trying to gerrymander their way into surviving them.  If they don't, much of this will come go a screeching halt in January, 2027.

That's a long ways off.

When it comes, Trump needs to be held to account. Some of this appears to be illegal.  Trump today has claimed he's entitled to $230,000,000 from the DOJ for being investigated.  Here he's acting without legal authority, maybe, to the tune of $250,000,000.  He should be sued for damages.

And this monstrosity will come down.  The question is how rapidly.  It would be best if it came down following January 2027, but it's more likely that it will be at the beginning of the next President's term.  Chance are this giant garden shed won't even be all up by then.

Chances are also good that Trump will have died of old age, or be so demented by that time as to have no idea what's going on.  People hoping for Trump to suffer retribution for his actions are going to be disappointed.  He's already advancing into senility and will be quite far gone by the second half of his term, if he doesn't expire prior to that time.  

The people who will have to suffer damage to their reputations will be people like Thune, Barrasso, and Johnson.  That process is well under way.

Having been attached to this will be a stink that will not wash off for some, however. The architect in particular, who has done fine work in the past, will not look good.  Donors like Google and Lockheed are going to have a lot of explaining to do as well.  The utter corruption of the Corporate Capitalist system has been fully exposed, but that will be very hard to address.

A Wyoming Party, and some other thoughts. We're on our own.

Jane Banner: Shouldn't we wait for back up?

Ben: This isn't the land of waiting for back up. This is the land of you're on your own.

Wind River. 

In the film Wind River, set on the Wind River Indian Reservation, Tribal policeman Ben and FBI agent Jane Banner are confronted with gunfire while investigating a crime and have the exchange noted above.

Wyomingites love that quote, and there's a lot to it.*

Not only is there a lot to it, its very much the case regarding politics in this state.  Our Congressional delegation doesn't support or represent us on many of the existential matters at play in the state.  Not one darned bit.

And they're not going to.  Just as in Wind River the two policemen, and an Animal Damage officer, were  under assault by those that they were going to have to take on, on their own, so are the residents of this state.

The other day I saw a lifelong member of Wyoming's Republican Party, who once held positions within it, decried. Wyoming's Congressional Representation as "bought and paid for".  This followed, by a period of a couple of years, a similar claim by a former significant Wyoming politicians that I somewhat know. Another person I know describe all three of Wyoming's Congressional delegation as "ass kissing sycophants".

There's something to all of that.

The vast bulk of their large campaign war chests comes from out of state money.  Compared to it, the money from  Wyomingites doesn't even amount to a drop in the bucket.  It's more like a drop in a 55 gallon barrel.  Wyoming public media, in a news story on the topic, reported:

JU: OpenSecrets reported that Rep. Harriet Hageman received $15,000 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Sen. John Barrasso has received over $70,000 from a private equity firm based in New York and California [from 2019 to 2024]. And Sen. Cynthia Lummis received over $100,000 from the Club for Growth, a conservative PAC [from 2019 to 2024]. In the face of more powerful organizations like those, how do individual or local donors in Wyoming make their voice more impactful? Or their donation more impactful?

Some group calling itself the Americans for Prosperity have been running non stop adds on social media thanking John Barrasso for his role in the Big Ugly.

Who are these people and organizations?  Wyomingites?

Not hardly.  Wikipedia says of them:

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), founded in 2004, is a libertarian conservative political advocacy group in the United States affiliated with brothers Charles Koch and the late David Koch.[6] As the Koch family's primary political advocacy group, it has been viewed as one of the most influential American conservative organizations.

Club for Growth is a radical right wing economic outfit as well.

American Israel Public Affairs Committee:  What does have to do with the average Wyomingite?

Not freaking much.

In a couple of place around town, there are billboard featuring all three of our Congress people with the Tetons in the background thanking all three for standing with "American Energy", by which they no doubt mean petroleum and coal, not wind, solar and nuclear (as we've recently learned locally).

The bigger problem is that the Congressional delegation flat out ignores the views of Wyomingites on some major issues, public lands being one.  Wyomingites are overwhelmingly opposed to the Federal lands going to the states, and are opposed to public lands being sold.  That well known fact hasn't done anything to keep our Congressional delegation from supporting those things, and it's done nothing whatsoever to keep the Wyoming GOP from backing land transfers.

Dr. John Barrasso, who after all is a East Coaster and looks like one, has his head so far up Trump's ass on a daily basis that he can examine Trump's tonsils from the backside.  He has no use for Wyoming anymore.  My guess is that he's in his last term as he knows that he's not going to be the Senate Majority Leader so being a fascist flunky will be his career achievement, and he's okay with that.

Who knows what's up with Lummis.  She's always been a Cheshire cat in the first place, with a sort of snarky smile. She goes her own way, and that way isn't yours.

Harriet Hageman is the most honest of the bunch. Sure, she's stuck in the Powder River Campaign, but her views, while not the same as most of hours, re honestly  and openly held.

Chuck Gray?  Gray is just using Wyoming, that's about it.  And his politics bend with the wind.  He's a far right winger Greenpeacer if you can make sense of that, and he's  hoping you can't and will yell at you until you are distracted.

Right now, the Wyoming GOP is the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. The Wyoming Freedom Caucus is packed with people who are not from Wyoming, and how have brought their dumbass ideas with them and want to impose them on Wyoming.

They're succeeding in doing so. There's really no saving the GOP in the state. The old GOP, which was uniquely Wyoming in view, is dead, taking the path of the old Wyoming Democratic Party, which did as well, and which died first.

In its place we have the Dixiecrats and those whose one and only value is their pocket books.

They need to go.

But it would appear unlikely that they can be dislodged from the current GOP, put on plane, and shipped back to the their home states, like they should be.

The only two things the two failed parties agree on is that you should never vote for a third party.  That's how we got into this mess.

So maybe it's time for some new parties not beholding to the crap these parties are.

And why not local parties?

Let's start with something that should be clear to all, but really seems not to be.

There's nothing American or Constitutional about a "two party system". The founders, while they rapidly fell into parties, didn't approve of them at all.  A primary system, such as we and most other states have, is existentially anti democratic and existentially unconstitutional.  They're nothing more than state funded party elections that are geared to conspire against any person from a third party, or just an independent running.  Primary elections would make sense only if no party affiliation was noted on the ballot at all.  Get 1,000 signatures to get you on, perhaps, and you are on.

Moreover, it's really time to allow for recalls of Congressional representation.  If we had that, all three of our Congressional people would be facing a recall election right now.  John Barrasso, who earnestly believes whatever you believe as you believe it, and even more than you do, would now be leading armed raids into Utah against Mike Lee if that was the case, rather than spending all of his time kissing Trump's ass.

Suffice it to say, we're not being served well.

What would a party that actually reflected Wyoming's values look like?

Well, of course, in stating something like that, I'm inevitably going to post what a party that reflected my values, mostly, would look like.

• It'd protect public lands.
• It'd have a land ethic.
• It'd protect democratic values, as in voting.
• It'd realize that science isn't a fib, and that some things have to adjust because of scientific reality.
• It would have a tax system that accepted that out of state imports with huge amounts of cash should be taxed.

Frankly, it'd look a lot like what the GOP here used to look like.

It's be overall conservative, without a doubt, but conservative in a Wyoming sort of Way, not in a Dixiecrat sort of way.

Most Wyomingites who are from Wyoming, save those who had drank the MAGA/Charlie Kirk Kool aide, would likely vote for it.

We're sure not going to be saved by the Democrats. They'll do anything they can to wreck their own chances at the ballot box. And we're not going to be saved by the Republicans either.  The GOP has wiped out the real party and put in place a party that Nathan Bedford Forest would be proud of.

We're on our own.

Footnotes:

*I'll confess that I've done a lot of legal work on the Wind River Reservation, and it haunts me.  This is a really good move, and I've watched it twice in the theatre, but I can't get through it again.  May the perpetual light shine upon many there.