Saturday, March 15, 1924. Passing symbols and elections.

Today In Wyoming's History: March 15: 1924  The wreck of the six masted schooner Wyoming was located off of Pollock Rip, Massachusetts.  She went down with all 18 hands.

Maj. Gen. DeRosey Cabell, age 62, Chief of Staff during the Punitive Expedition under Pershing, died.  He had been retired since 1919.

Cabell.

Brig Gen. Richard Henry Pratt, former head of the Carlisle Indian School and advocate for cultural assimilation of Native Americans, died at age 83.  He coined the word "racism", but also advocated for the policy that he expressed as "Kill the Indian...save the man."

An election was held in the Dominican Republic for its president and Congress.

Kenya held a legislative election under its new constitution

King Fuad I opened the initial session of Egypt's first constitutional parliament.

Blog Mirror. The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian(s) of the Week: The Southern Agrarians.

The Agrarian's Lament: Agrarian(s) of the Week: The Southern Agrarians.: 

Agrarian(s) of the Week: The Southern Agrarians.

Farm in Louisiana, 1940.

A few weeks ago, with John Pondoro Taylor, on our companion blog Going Feral, we made a controversial entry.  Keeping with that theme, we do the same here.

If a person has agrarian interests, there's no escaping The Southern Agrarians as there is not escaping their magnum opus, I'll Take My Stand.  It is one of the great, if highly flawed, works of modern agrarian thought.

The irony, I suppose, of the work and the group needs to be mentioned from the onset. They did not make their living from the land, although it's not necessary to do that in order to be an agrarian. Rather, they were twelve men of letters who wrote what amounted to an agrarian last stand, which they were very conscious of it being at the time.  They were:

• Donald Davidson, from Tennessee, poet, essayist, reviewer and historian. He was also a segregationist.
• John Gould Fletcher, from Arkansas, poet and historian.  He was the first Southerner to win the Pulitzer Prize
• Henry Blue Kline, a writer educated at Vanderbilt who taught at Tennessee, before ironically taking government employment for the rest of his life.
• Lyle H. Lanier, an experimental psychologist from Tennessee.
• Andrew Nelson Lytle,, also of Tennessee and also of Vanderbilt. a poet, novelist and essayist
• Herman Clarence Nixon, of Alabama and a political scientist.
• Frank Lawrence Owsley, also of Alabama and Vanderbilt. a historian
• John Crowe Ransom, of Tennessee and Vanderbilt poet, professor, essayist
• Allen Tate, poet, and of Tennessee and Vanderbilt.
• John Donald Wade, of Georgia, and a professor at Harvard and Columbia, biographer and essayist
• Robert Penn Warren, of Kentucky, and who was a university professor in a variety of universities, and a poet, novelist, essayist and critic, later first poet laureate of the United States
• Stark Young, of Mississippi, a novelist, drama and literary critic, playwright

What marks them is their monumental work, which was a Depression Era, anti-New Deal, strike against the modern world and capitalism. It is flawed, in that its view of the American South was highly romantic, and frankly they were not bothered by its inherent racism and manged to basically not even see it.  The work, while important, includes muted strain of Lost Cause yearning which are not admirable at all.  Indeed, it's hard not to notice that they didn't notice that the class that was hurt the most by New Deal farm policies were African American tenant farmers.

Still, as noted, there'rs no escaping this work.  It remains the magnum opus of American Agrarianism.

Friday, February 11, 1944. The Factory Falls.

The Germans took "The Factory" from the British 1st Division at Anzio.

The Red Army took Shepetovka, Ukraine.

Wah Kau Kong (江華九), the first Chinese American fighter pilot, scored his first victory, showing down a FW190 while piloting a P-51B.  He'd be killed in a dogfight just eleven days later.  On that occasion, his wingman reported:

I was leading squadron in leader position of red flight, providing escort and target support for bombers with targets at Oschersleben and Halberstadt. 2nd Lt. Wau Kau Kong was my wingman. Enroute to target area, Northeim and Wernigerode, at 1350 hours I attacked a ME-410 which was pressing attack on a straggling B-17 at 16,000 feet. I fired a long burst from 300 yds, observing parts flying off the tail assembly and smoke pouring out of the right engine. All my guns stopped except one and I broke off attack to let my wingman finish off E/A. I circled and saw Lt. Kong fire at E/A from close range. The right engine of E/A burst into flames. As Lt. Kong broke off over the E/A the rear gunner must have hit him as his plane exploded and disintegrated in the air.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—February 11, 1944: First mission of the US 357th Fighter Group in P-51 Mustangs from England—this group would produce the most aces (42) in the US Eighth Air Force.

The U-424 was sunk off the Faroe's by a Wellington piloted by the RCAF.

Father Claude H. Heithaus, S. J. delivered a homily in what must have been a week day Mass at Saint Louis University denouncing racism.  It ended up getting him forcibly transferred out of state, but the school started admitting African Americans six months later, the first historically white Southern university to do so.

A photographer visited the USS Saratoga.

Commander Maurice Sheehy, Catholic priest and Chaplain Corps, on board USS Saratoga (CV 3), February 11, 1944.  The highly respected Fr. Sheehy would rise to the rank of Vice Admiral, the highest rank ever obtained by a Navy Chaplain.  He had taught at the Catholic University of America before the war, but after it became a pastor in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  He passed away in 1972.

Monday, February 11, 1924. Booting Denby

The Senate began to move against Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby.

The vote was 47 to 34 to remove Denby, which would actually be something that Coolidge, not Congress, could do.

The Negro Sanhedrin, an attempt by the City of Chicago to have an all race congress to address racial issues, convened with representatives of trade unions, civic groups and fraternal organizations. The specific goal was to devise a program to protect the rights of African American tenant farmers.

The 2024 Election, Part XII. The March To Moscow

 

Napoleon leaving a burning Moscow, which also burned his provisions, and resulted in France's ultimate defeat.

January 16, 2024

In a surprise to no one, Trump won the Iowa Caucuses.  The Republican, and perhaps the nation's, march to disaster commences.  The GOP is set, absent some of the predictions set out below, to either elect a vengeful septuagenarian juvenile who will take them into defeat yet again, or who will become an unprecedented in character President who will hold that office with a minority of Americans having actually voted for him.

Either way, it's the death of the GOP.  Backing a repeat loser isn't a path to long term success. The overall question is when a replacement for the GOP emerges, and whether the Democrats reform themselves in the meantime.  If there's any silver lining to a Trump victory, and that's a big if, both of those things would be it.

A repeat from yesterday:

June 15, 2024 

Martin Luther King Day

Wyoming Equality Day

Iowa Caucus Day

On This Week, a Democratic member of Congress noted that Republican politicians who had opposed Trump were now rushing to endorse him, least they meet the ire of the MAGA crowed. 

Probably two of the recent Wyoming endorsements fit that category.

Tonight at 7:00 p.m. the Iowa Caucus's will open in frigid weather, apparently not taking note that this is at least technically a day off for a lot of people (it isn't for most people).  Gathering at 7:00 p.m. in order to choose a candidate for your party will be weighed, by many, against the agony of going out in the cold.

That's the only hope for those running against Trump.

It cannot help but be noted that the Iowa Caucus, while it probably made sense at one time, emphasizes the antiquated and downright stupid way the US picks its President.  States position themselves to be first to pick, which none of them have the right to be. At least caucuses are party elections, not funded (I think) by the state.  Most states have primaries which are party elections on the state's dime, which isn't just, and is arguably, in my view, unconstitutional.

To add to things, this year, Trump's ability to even hold office is presently in front of the United States Supreme Court.

Given all of this, I'm going to close this issue out with a few predictions, giving percentages.

I think Trump will take Iowa, and I'd give that a 100% chance.  Biden will of course take Iowa.

I'm giving Haley a 60% chance of taking New Hampshire.  New Hampshire doesn't like to look like Iowa's lapdog and it is a East Coast state with a history of acting independently.

Irrespective of that, if I'm wrong on the matters noted below, there's a 75% chance that Trump is the GOP nominee and a 100% chance Biden is the Democratic nominee.

Now, here's where some will think we're off the rails.

I think there's a 60% chance the United States Supreme Court will find Trump an insurrectionist unqualified to hold office.

When they do that, if they do, there will be a massive outbreak of right wing violence across the country.

If they do that, Haley will be the nominee.

I feel there's a 55% chance that Trump, who is an old man, who looks unhealthy, and who in my view is showing signs of dementia, will die before the election.  He's showing signs of decline every day.

If he dies, and I think he will, Haley will be the nominee.

I feel there's a 40% chance that Biden will pass away of natural causes before the election.

If he dies, and I don't think he will, I have no idea who the nominee will be.

In a Biden v. Trump rematch, Trump will win.  I don't want him to, but he will.

In a Biden v. Haley match, Haley will win.  The Democrats seem incapable of accepting that they're going with an unelectable candidate.

Assuming that Biden and Trump are the nominees, at some point after Super Tuesday, there's a 55% chance that somebody announces a major third party run.  I'm not sure who it will be, but Christie, Manchin and Cheney are all figures in that.  My guess is that it will be Manchin for President, with Christie as VP.

Everyone always states that no third parties ever win, even the GOP itself was a third party that in fact won, displacing the dying Whigs.  A third party here would displace the dying GOP.  I'd give a third party as 60% chance of winning.

Given the furor he stirs up, there are a lot of things I fear this election many feature that I'm not going to post, as I don't want them to look like something I'm endorsing by mentioning them.  Indeed, I'm afraid that they'll happen and desperately hope they do not.

This will close this edition.  The next one will come out on the morning after, so to speak, of the Iowa Caucus.

People should pray for the nation.

DeSantis came in second, defying hope for rising Haley.  Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out, and is likely to disappear from politics forever, unless Trump wins, in which case he'll resurface as some sort of early Trump cabinet choice.

The current tally:

Republican:  

Donald Trump:   20 delegates

Ron DeSantis:  8 delegates

Nikki Haley:  7 delegates

Vivek Ramaswamy:   3 delegates

Democrats:

Oddly, they aren't releasing their results until super Tuesday, March 5, but it's obvious who the winner is.

Cont:

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has dropped out of the GOP race.

January 19, 2024

Donald Trump, the son, grandson and twice the "husband" of immigrants if you discount that Christianity (he claims to be a Presbyterian) recognizes marriage once, for the period of a person's natural life, mocked Nicki Haley, the daughter of an immigrant, by calling her "Nimbra".

Not that it will matter.  Trump loyalist are so enamored with the one time Democrat that at this point there is literally nothing whatsoever he can do to dissuade their loyalty, including the fact that in a second Trump administration it will largely be others with an agenda who govern.  This base is now the majority of the GOP, the party having largely ceased to exist on an historical basis.

January 20, 2024

Former Presidential GOP candidate Tim Scott, whose campaign didn't go anywhere, has endorsed Donald Trump.

This may be cynical, but frankly I think Scott is angling for the VP ticket, and I'd guess he has a good chance of getting it.  He would, in fact, be a good choice for Trump.

cont:

Donald Trump pretty clearly confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi in a New Hampshire campaign rally, claiming that Haley was in charge of all the "troops", meaning that she could have called on National Guardsmen to protect the capitol.

Haley wasn't in office at the time.

Haley in turn called on his mental fitness.

More people should be. Trump doesn't act like somebody who okay mentally.  He's old, and in the footage of the rally, he does not look well.

January 21, 2024

Asa Huntinchinson endorsed Nikki Haley.

Trump, in a weird sort of way, endorsed Viktor Orbán:

There's a great man in Europe. Viktor Orbán… He’s a very strong man. It’s nice to have a strongman running your country

Orbán is the poster child for the far right's endorsement of Illiberal Democracy.

Trump also rejected the rule of law in the executive in the same rally, stating:

And you will have the rogue cop,  the bad apple, and perhaps you'll have that also with President But there's nothing you can do about that. You're going to have to give the President immunity. I hope The Supreme Court will has the courage to do that.

These statements from a man who will only be a "dictator for a day". 

Trump, on the same day he confused Haley for Pelosi, made reference to having run against President Obama, which he never did.

Cont:

And now it's down to two. DeSantis dropped out and then endorsed Trump.  His dropping out, however, probably does Haley a favor.

January 22, 2024

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum has now endorsed Trump, having dropped out of the race some time ago.

It's clear where all this is headed.  Republican politicians are going to go to Trump on bended knee, irrespective of what that means.

January 23, 2024

The Democrats, being the party that doesn't lose elections, but throws them away, are doing that right now by putting Vice President Harris on a "Reproductive Freedom", i.e. Infanticide, Tour.

Everything about this strategy is wrong.

First of all, the Democrats do not need to campaign as the party of infanticide, everyone knows they have blood on their hands and wish to continue odd making them wet.  Those supporting infanticide have nowhere else to go, and are going to vote Democratic no matter what.

Secondly, the numerous center right voters who would normally vote Republican but who are rational about Donald Trump and what he stands for have been working their way around to vote for Biden/Harris, but being reminded of this, particularly if they are devout or at least adherent  Catholics/Orthodox/Muslims will drive them away as it'll make the election about abortion and they can't go there.  This section of the electorate is big enough to determine the election.

Finally, Kamala Harris is one of the most dis-likeable candidates imaginable.  Joe Biden won the election in spite of her lat time, not because of her.  Nobody needs to be reminded that if in the high likelihood Joe Biden dies or becomes disabled in his second term, she becomes the far left successor President.

So, it was at this point, the Democrats lost the 2024 election.  The question is, who will win it?

Doug Burgum, who ran a disappointing race against Trump for the GOP nomination, will not run for another term as the Governor of North Dakota.

While it's mere speculation, a lot of Republicans are lining up to kiss Trump's ring (or other things) in hopes of becoming his VP.  Of those doing that, Burgum is actually a good choice.

On other matters, Elise Stefanik, attempting to explain away Trump's obvious mental lapse the other day, managed to issue one of the most confusing attempts at the same ever.  Stefanik has prostituted her talents to Trump and obviously will plumb any depths in her effort to sell herself into a position in his anticipated administration.

Oh Rich, but for Wales.

One of the things that Trump has been promising is to drill, which his audience likes to hear.  Funny thing is:

January 23, 2024

U.S. oil production has been holding at or near record highs since October, topping the previous peak from 2020, even though the number of active domestic oil drilling rigs is down by nearly 30% from four years ago.

New technology is the reason why there is higher production with fewer rigs.

And also:

The U.S. set a new annual oil production record on December 15, based on data from the Energy Information Administration. Although the official monthly numbers from the EIA won’t be released for a couple of months, we can calculate that a new record has been set based on the following analysis.

Prices at the pump have been declining.

Huh.

The irony of this is that Biden can't advance this matter for two reasons.  One is that while he hasn't restricted domestic production, as some in the GOP like to imagine, he also hasn't promoted production either.   This is happening on its own and is technology driven.  It shows how the economy, absent radical moves in it, is impacted much less by a President's policies than by outside economic forces.

January 24, 2024

Trump took the New Hampshire primary, Biden, who wasn't actually running in it, took the Democratic one.

Trump used the opportunity to threaten Haley.

Just a little note to Nikki, she is not going to win, but if she did she would be under investigation by those people in 15 minutes. I could tell you five reasons why already, not big reasons, little stuff that she doesn’t want to talk about, but she will be under investigation in minutes and so would Ron have been, but he decided to get out.

January 25, 2024

Biden received the endorsement of the United Auto Workers. 

Trump has declared that donors to the Haley campaign will be barred from Camp MAGA.  In the same tweet he called Haley a "bird brain"

Trump doesn't appear to be well, in my amateur diagnosis.  A nation that can vote for somebody saying these things isn't well, either.

January 26, 2024

I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is … really appalling.

But the reality is that, that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president not to try and get the problem solved. as opposed to saying, ‘hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’

Mitt Romney 

January 27, 2022

John Barrasso's second wife, Bobbi, died of brain cancer this past week.  She was a very nice person and had been a judicial law clerk after graduating from law school.  I knew her somewhat from law school and her service as a clerk.

The Governor noted her passing:

Governor Gordon Statement on the Passing of Bobbi Barrasso

 

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Mark Gordon has issued the following statement on the passing of Bobbi Barrasso, wife of Wyoming Senator John Barrasso. Bobbi passed away in Casper after a two-year battle with Glioblastoma brain cancer.

Bobbi was a treasure, a Wyoming native who always put her family and the people of the state first. Jennie and I send our prayers and deepest condolences to John and their family. 

Bobbi was a longtime friend, a stalwart supporter of Wyoming and a resolute warrior against cancer. She always put service ahead of self. As a compassionate soul, she advocated tirelessly for Wyoming children, education, mental health and suicide prevention. She made a difference, and has left an indelible legacy. The Lord doesn’t make many as good as Bobbi. Wyoming was blessed to have known her. She will be missed.

The Governor will issue a flag notification once services have been announced.

A former coal executive who claims to be "Trumpier than Trump" has announced for Joe Machin's seat in West Virginia.

January 31, 2024

In Illinois, a hearing officer in an administrative process on Trump's eligibility to be on the ballot found Trump had engaged in an insurrection, but recommended the election board demur to the courts. The board in turn found that it lacked the power to remove Trump.

cont:

Elected Park County Precinct Committee members who were booted from their positions by the county Party for failure to attend meetings, including former Senator Alan Simpson, have been reinstated, although it may be temporary.  Other's booted include former Wyoming House speaker and party chairman Colin Simpson, Powell Mayor John Wetzel, Park County Commissioner Scott Steward and Northwest College Trustee Dusty Spomer.  At least Alan Simpson claims that they were booted for failing to meet the party's current ideological expectations.

A petition has been filed with the state party to keep them booted.

February 1, 2024

In the play stupid games category, the Oregon Supreme Court ruled that ten Republican state senators who refused to attend the state Senate for six weeks in an attempt to stall Democratic-backed bills cannot run for reelection.

February 4, 2024

Joe Biden won the Democratic South Carolina primary.  Oddly, the Republican one is on a different day.

February 5, 2024

Listening to the weekend shows this weekend brings on a sense of despair.

Trump now leads Biden by 5 points in the polls.  Granted, November is nine. . . only nine, months away.

J.D. Vance came on television and outright advocated for Trump to ignore the rulings of the Supreme Court if they're against him.  Increasingly, the hope that Trump will not be the next President has been placed on the U.S. Supreme Court enforcing the 14th Amendment. While Vance didn't say that Republican Secretaries of State should ignore such a ruling, it's impossible now not to regard that as highly likely, meaning that we're headed for a grave constitutional crisis in which it is potentially the case that the Supreme Court declares him ineligible, states place him on the ballot anyhow, and he wins the electoral vote, but cannot be seated.

In that instance, the next four years will be rough, and frankly, there will be violence regarding this.

A decent candidate, in these circumstances, would suspend his race. Trump is not decent.

Kristi Noem has been banned from the Pine Ridge Resevation.

Mexican Border Crisis

On the weekend shows, a preview of the extensive bipartisan Senate border bill was featured.  Mike Johnson is pretty clearly going to oppose it as he has orders from his puppet master. A Republican Senator threatened to push Johnson into a vote over his speakership, which apparently there had been a backdoor deal with Democratic Senators to try to prevent when he was nominated.  This was based on the assertion that he'd broken his promises in that closed door meeting.

Governor Kristi Noem was banned from the Pine Ridge Reservation for declaring she wants to send razor wire and National Guardsmen to the Texas border.

February 6, 2024

Intersting article on what local GOP figures are going to do re Trump, if their prior positions on Trump or Cheney are known.

Some Cheney 'Never Trumpers' Now Support Trump; Others Won't Budge

Quite a few are falling in line with Trump, not surprisingly. Some are not, however, notably Cale Case and Alan Simpson.

Last Prior Edition:

The 2024 Election, Part XI. The Winter of Discontent Edition.

Related Threads:

Witnessing a decline in mental status. Donald Trump on the campaign trail.

Watching the Democrats choosing to lose the 2024 election.

You don't have to accept a "two party" system.

Choosing to lose.

February 4, 1824. Thomas Jefferson to Rev. Jared Sparks.

 

The topic was African slaves in the United States, and what to do about/with them.  Jefferson advocated for establishing an American colony in Africa.

Sparks was a very early Unitarian minister who had served as the Chaplain for the House of Representatives, and who would go on to serve as the President of Harvard.  He died in 1866 at the age of 76, having therefore had a life span which would have overlapped the War of 1812, the Mexican War and the Civil War.  Fairly typically for the era, he'd been married twice, his first wife having been taken by death when they'd been married only three years.

Choosing to lose.

Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic candidate for President.  He was honest, and Catholic, which made him unelectable.

Kamala Harris says when she talks to parents on the campaign trail, one of their top concerns is that their daughters won't have access to abortion in college

Charlie Spiering, summarizing a recent Kamal Harris interview.

I come from a sufficiently well-educated family such that my grandmother, Agnes, on my mother's side, had attended and graduated from university.

If you consider that she was born in 1891, that's quite the feat.

Now, I'll admit that my father was the first one to attend university on his side of the family, but his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, had all been successful businessmen at a time at which you didn't need a college education to be one, or even a high school education for that matter.  My father's father, who I never met, was universally regarded by those who knew him as extremely smart.

Indeed, I once was stopped on the sidewalk by an elderly lawyer who knew my father and his father, who asked about the family.  My son must have been in high school at the time, and the odd question "is he extremely smart. . . " like all of the members of the family.

I often, frankly, feel that I'm on the bottom end of the family intelligence pool compared to my own father and my kids.

No real college parents anywhere have, as one of their top concerns, that their daughters won't be able to commit infanticide, unless they've drunk so deeply of the left wing Kool-Aid they're perusing brochures from The Young Pioneers.

Democratic campaigns for the Oval Office, or Democratic campaigns in general, are not smart.  

They're about as dumb as can be.

From 1914 until 1980 the Democrats were masters at coalition building.  The party kept hardhat workers, urban Irish Catholics, Hispanics, and the entire South together, which was frankly quite a feat.  It supported unions and working class families, and generally was pretty pro farmer.  It had a left wing, but it also had a conservative one as well.  Starting in 1968, when it embraced American battlefield defeat to a degree, and then in 1973, when it took the bloody abortionist hand, it took a turn toward the left, and as it did that, it dumped democracy like a hot rock in favor of an imagined Platonic body of robed elders who would tell the people what to do, and they'd like it.

Absolutely everything about the current Democratic message is wrong, including some things that shouldn't be regarded as wrong, but which are in the current political atmosphere.  One thing that's definitely wrong is the concept that infanticide is a winning ticket.  It isn't. The Democrats have read single issue matters on ballots here incorrectly.  Maybe in that'st the only thing on a ballot, you get the voters only concerned about that to come out.  Otherwise, people aren't going to vote that way.

Moreover, if Harris is really being told this by the parents of college women, it's because she's talking to the most liberal parents imaginable, and they're going to say crap like that no matter what.  Moreover, the college educated are largely voting for Biden already.  Biden/Harris need to get votes that they don't already have.  The college educated have largely already left the GOP.

What's left of the electorate that is in the GOP is made up of the working class, small business owners (some college educated), and residents of rural regions (including quite a few well-educated ones in those areas).  They don't believe "diversity is strength", they aren't interested in tolerating non "Judeo-Christian" religions, or gender mutilation, and they feel that their lives and livelihoods are threatened by out of control illegal immigration.  They love their regions, but they're largely incapable of believing in climate change in spite of the evidence.  They quit listening to scientist and social scientist of all types because they were lied to about some things, and therefore don't believe any of it.  They listen to Evangelical pastors who tell them what they want to hear, and who make their massive departures from Christian doctrine irrelevant by not mentioning them (ever hear any of them criticize Trump for living in an adulterous relationship, which by conventional Christianity he is?  Or of an Evangelical Church refusing to marry two people who have been married before?)

When I first started practicing law, a firm partner, a true Christian gentleman, told me about litigation that "this isn't a nice game".  It isn't.  Politics is even less so, and you have to be smart about it.

There's 0 reason that the Biden/Harris ticket needs to mention abortion at all.  Where that's been an issue, they had no role in it. And they're driving Democrats away right now who are Catholic, which includes the Hispanic voters they imagine they'll be gaining.  And their absolute incompetence on the border is in fact a good reason to vote against them.  A competent ticket would shut up on abortion and would make a very serious effort on the border.  

Obama, it might be noted, had a very controlled border.  And while he was President before Dobbs, he didn't say much about abortion either.

He won twice.

Pointing out that more IRS agents punishes the wealthy, not the middle class, would help too.  Pointing out that Trump has been a personally immoral man, might as well.  Pointing out that he was the one who surrendered to the Taliban would as well. 

And parking Harris somewhere would be a good idea, if not dumping her entirely.

And that's where you have to say thing that re uncomfortable.

Al Smith was the Democratic nominee for President in 1928.  He would have won, but he was Catholic.  Yes, that meant a lot of the electorate was bigoted, but it also meant that the Democrats weren't smart in running him.

They would be now, but Smith wouldn't be a Democrat any longer.  He'd likely be an independent.  He wasn't willing to compromise on his Catholicism, like Joe Biden has, and he wasn't a liar of any kind either.

Kamala Harris is like Al Smith in one fashion.  She reminds bigoted voters who they hate.  She's a lawyer (regular people hate lawyers), she's the child of two immigrants (MAGA people don't like immigrants), one of whom was Indian and the other Jamaican, making her a "person of color" (a lot of MAGA people really don't like people of color, let alone immigrant people of color), she's married to an entertainment lawyer (oh, oh) who is Jewish (again, MAGA people like Israel, but Jews. . . ) and the children of the couple are from his first marriage, meaning she has low parent street cred.

Are any of those items a reason not to vote for Harris?  Absolutely not.  Her policies are a reason not to vote for Harris.  But will some MAGA people vote for Trump for these reasons? You bet they will, and in a race this close, in a handful of states that matter, that's a problem.

I don't know who would be a better VP candidate.  Amy Klobuchar strikes me as one who would be better in every fashion.  If you could find an American Christian Levantine politician (and there definitely are some) they'd be absolutely perfect, particularly if the choice was a woman.  But what I am saying is that in a race with democracy itself on the ticket, choosing to go with a candidate this old for President, and a VP who is so disliked, is just dumb.  And emphasizing the aspects of your campaign that the populist right hates, even if they do so wrongly on some of them, and the nervous middle aren't comfortable with, isn't very smart either.  Having the disliked person, even if the dislike is immoral, who people fear might end up President isn't very smart, either.

This isn't a nice game.  Sometimes choices have to be made in the candidates and the strategy that aren't very palatable.  A lot of Republicans will do what Cynthia Lummis admitted to doing in 2016 as to Trump, and "hold her nose and vote".  The Democrats should hold their noses and make some smart choices.

But they will not.

The Ongoing 2023 Legislative Session of Other States.

How we all imagine legislatures once were. . . because they didn't have the opportunity to put every dumb thought they had out on Twitter.

At least Wyoming can be thankful that its citizen legislature can't afford to be in ongoing session.

May 21, 2023

Minnesota, deciding that Americans aren't stupid enough, and don't already have enough in the way of options to make themselves even stupider, voted to legalize marijuana.

It also passed a new gun measure.

June 3, 2023

Connecticut banned marriages under 18 with no exceptions.

September 7, 2023

California has banned caste based discrimination, which is something prevalent in the Indian culture. The Governor has not indicated if he will sign the act.

While I agree with the measure, this is frankly an example of a Western culture declaring its values to be superior to that of an Asian one.  Western cultures have a Christianity based concept that all people are equal.  Lots of cultures hold the polar opposite.

Massachusetts has passed funding for universal "free" school lunches.

Of course, they aren't free, they're government funded. And the government doesn't make an income through production, so they're tax funded.  This means they're taxpayer funded.  Massachusetts has ain income tax, so this means that Massachusetts is separating cash from the wallets of everyone in the state in order to buy lunches for school kids, irrespective of parental obligations to pay to feed their kids.

October 3, 2023

Nebraska is requiring transgender youth seeking "gender-affirming care", the Orwellian term for gender mutilation, to wait seven days to start puberty-blocking medications or hormone treatments under emergency regulations as well as to receive at least 40 hours of “gender-identity-focused” therapy   This followed a Nebraska law that took effect on Sunday which bans "gender affirming" surgical mutilation for those under 19.

Nebraska, intentionally or not, is following a global trend here which is limiting such procedures in minors, with the data showing its frequently regretted.

October 8, 2023

California has put into effect a law requiring  requires public and private US businesses with revenues greater than $1 billion operating in California to report their emissions comprehensively.

January 4, 2024

Passed last year, some new state laws:

• A new Minnesota law allows authorities to ask courts for “extreme risk protection orders” to temporarily take guns from people deemed to be an imminent threat to others or themselves. 
• Colorado has banned "ghost guns"
• A Connecticut law requires online dating operators to adopt policies for handling harassment reports.
• A North Carolina law requires pornographic website operators to confirm viewers are at least 18 years old by using a commercially available database. Parents can sue for failure to comply with the law.
• A new Illinois law allows lawsuits by victims of deepfake pornography,
• Bans on chemical gender mutilation of minors take effect in Idaho, Louisiana and West Virginia. 
• A new law in Hawaii requires new marriage certificates to be issued to people who request to change how their sex is listed. 
• In Colorado, new buildings wholly or partly owned by government entities are now required to have on every floor where there are public restrooms at least one that does not specify the gender of the users.
• A new Indiana law makes it easier for parents and others to challenge books in school libraries. 
• A new Illinois law blocks state funding for public libraries that ban or restrict books.
• Kansas dropped the sales tax on groceries drops from 4% to 2% .  It plans to eliminate the slaes tax on groceries entirely.
• Connecticut and Missouri reduced their state income tax rate.

Saturday, January 1, 1944. Sort of independence.

Syria became independent theoretically, but the French mandate continued.

The RAF bombed Berlin again.

The War Department was pondering its policies regarding African American soldiers.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—January 1, 1944: Gen. Alexander Vandegrift replaces Gen. Thomas Holcomb as commandant of the US Marine Corps. US penny production switches from steel to a copper & brass alloy.

USC Trojans beat the Washington Huskies 29-0 in the Rose Bowl, Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets defeated Tulsa Golden Hurricane 20-18 in the Sugar Bowl., the LSU Tigers beat the Texas A&M Aggies 19-14 in the Orange Bow, the Cotton Bowl Classic ended in a 7–7 tie between the Randolph Field Ramblers and the Texas Longhorns.

Tuesday, December 18, 1923. Liking Prohibition.

Some news that read like news of the decade prior, and some that was truly horrific.

A murder simply over a man staying at a hotel.

Farmer James D. Cummings and draftsman J. Earl McLeod of Washington, Kansas, filed the patent application for the bulldozer.

It's amazing to think that bulldozers did not exist before that time.

The Tangier Protocol was signed between France, Spain and the United Kingdom, creating the Tangier International Zone in Morocco.  It governed the international zone of the city, and would exist until 1956 when Morocco became independent.

Andrew Volstead of Volstead Act fame told a law enforcement conference that the American public was working around towards supporting prohibition.

The Lost Cause and the Arlington Confederate Monument. Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 53d Edition.

Laying the cornerstone in 1912.

Coming at a particularly odd time, given the resurgence of the type of views that the monument represents¹, the Federal Government is removing the Confederate Memorial from Arlington National Cemetery.

A massive allegorical work, the monument by Moses Jacob Ezekiel² portrays the Southern cause heroically, and includes a slave in the "mammy" role, saddened by the departure of her soldier owner.

Probably always offensive, the work was part of the rise of the Lost Cause myth in the early 20th Century, which is when many of these monuments date from.  It's being removed and will be relocated at a park dedicated to Confederate monuments.

This process has been going on for a while. Under President Biden, military posts named for Confederate generals have been renamed, but even before that, monuments in Southern states started coming down on a local basis.  Interestingly, right now the Southern cause is strongly in mind as Donald Trump tacks closer and closer to the secessionist's view of the nation that brought the war about and which preserved racial segregation for a century thereafter.

The monument itself was located in the Confederate Section of Arlington, which was created in 1900 at the request of those who felt that Confederate dead in the cemetery should be located together.  Ironically, the move was opposed by some in the South, who felt that they should be relocated to "Southern soil".  Laying of the cornerstone of the monument came in 1912, and it was dedicated, Woodrow Wilson in attendance, in 1914.

Wilson at dedication of the monument in 1914.

Things like this are particularly problematic in various ways. For one thing, the monument is a work of art, and as such it has its own merits, no matter how dramatically flawed its image of the Southern cause was.  And they have, interestingly, an image of the South which was, while false, sort of bizarrely aspirational in that it depicted, as many such monuments of that period for that cause do, a South which was a yeoman state, when in reality the South was controlled by strong large scale economic interest to the detriment of the Southern yeoman, and certainly to the massive detriment of Southern blacks.

And they also reflect a period of American history, lasting roughly from the end of Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Era, when the nation as a whole adopted a false view of itself, or at least a large portion of itself.  They reflect, therefore, the zeitgeist of that time and our own.  Removing the monuments is understandable, but it doesn't cure the massive defect of past racism and slavery.  It does serve to help us forget how racist we once were, and not only in the 1776 to 1865 time frame, but the 1865 to mid 1970s time frame as well.

Footnotes:

1.  Just this past week Donald Trump, whose acolytes sometimes brandish the Confederate battle flat at his events, or in support of him in general, spoke of immigrants "poisoning" the blood of Americans, much like Southern Americans sometimes did in regard to desegregation in the 1960s.  The Nazi allegory has come up frequently, but to my ear, perhaps because I'm old enough to remember the tail end of that era, it sounds more the Southern view of the 60s or even 70s.

2.  This work is by far Ezekiel's best known one.  Interestingly, another major one is an allegorical monument from the 1870s dedicated to and entitled Religious Liberty.

Last Prior Edition:

Lame. Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 52nd Edition.

Thursday, December 13, 1923. Mexican Federals Mobilize

Ruth Muskrat presented Gustavus Elmer Emmanuel Lindquist′s book The Red Man In The United States to President Calvin Coolidge.  Highly educated, the Oklahoma native had a Cherokee father and an Irish/English American mother.  A pioneer in many ways in both societies, she was a professional educator and died in 1982 at age 84.

The Federal Government was mobilizing in Mexico. 

And booze was flowing south.

Lord Alfred Douglas was sentenced to six months in prison for libeling Winston Churchill.  He had printed a newspaper article claiming that Churchill had been paid to release a false report about the Battle of Jutland in order to cause stocks to decrease in value so that a group of Jewish investors could take advantage of it, all of which was false, as well as racist.

Lawrence Sperry, age 30, inventor of the autopilot and the artificial horizon, died in an airplane accident over the English Channel. Taking off in fog, his airplane simply disappeared.

Tuesday, September 25, 1923. German resistance ends.

The German government ended its campaign of passive resistance to French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr.  The move enraged the far right, which then began to organize towards more radical action.

Locally, there was some interesting news.

Mostly I posted this as the thought of a bond election with only one no vote is simply stunning. That wouldn't occur now.

And the Governor of Oklahoma was calling out the Guard to resist a racist impeachment attempt.

Monday, September 24, 1923. Governor faces impeachment by legislature. . .

almost reads like a current headline, eh?

Governor Walton of Oklahoma called upon Oklahoman to be prepared to take up arms to assist the state as the legislature began to move towards impeachment, unhappy, as it was, due to his taking on the Ku Klux Klan.

Saturday, August 25, 1923. Involuntary population exchanges.

The Greek government ratified the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, following the Turkish ratification two days prior.

1.5 million Orthodox Christians from Turkey were accordingly involuntarily sent to Greece and 500,000 Greek Muslims involuntarily sent to Turkey.

Violence broke out in Carnegie Pennsylvania when 10,000 Ku Klux Klansman held a rally on a nearby hill and moved towards the heavily Catholic town.  Town residents threw rocks and ultimately a Klansman was shot dead.

Sometimes missed, the Klan was not only racist, but nativist, and anti-Catholic.

Memories of Klan violence still echo in Carnegie today

Bob Podurgiel: When the Klan came to Carnegie

Germany put workers on the gold basis rate in an attempt to stem inflation.

The government was trying to stave off coal labor problems again.

And a lecturer declared Woodrow Wilson's idealism too advanced for the world.

Thursday, August 23, 1923. Trotsky schemes, Turkey votes yes, Bluebeard's 8th Wife, Nancy Hayes Green dies, Fr. Giovanni Minzoni assassinated.

The Grand National Assembly of Turkey ratified the Treaty of Lausanne.  British, French, and Italian troops were withdrawing from Istanbul in accordance with the treaty.

Germany announced that it was introducing heavy taxation in order to address the country's economic woes.

Trotsky persuaded the Politburo, in a secret meeting, to finance the German Communist Party, the KDP, in order to overthrow the Weimar Republic.  A revolution in October was the goal, which planned for a Communist Germany to develop the agricultural Soviet Union, demonstrating how Communism, at the end of the day, always has an industrialized corporatism view of things, posters of smiling buxom peasant girls aside.

Bluebeard's 8th Wife was released.

Nancy Hayes Green, born in 1834, died after being hit by a car as a pedestrian. The car had hit a laundry truck.

Born into slavery in Kentucky, Green was already a widow by the end of the Civil War, having suffered the loss of her children as well.  Relocated to Chicago, she was employed in the household of Charles and Amanda Walker, transplanted Kentuckians.  Upon the Walkers recommendation, she was hired to portray "Aunt Jemima" for the RT Davis Milling Company.   The role was frankly demeaning by modern standards as it portrayed a happy picture of the antebellum south, including the status of slaves.  She continued to play the role for twenty years until replaced by Agnes Moodey, as Green would not travel to the 1900 Paris Expedition.  She used her fame from the role to advocate for the poor and for equal rights.

Portrait of Green, maybe, in character.  This could also be successor model Anna Robinson.

The depiction used for the pancake mix changed over the years as society became awakened to its inherent racism.  There was no real way, in the end, to disassociate it with its racist past, however, and Quaker Oats, the then owner of the brand, discontinued the image in 2020, during which time a variety of such depictions of brands were taken out of use by various companies.

Horrifying 1909 advertisement using the Aunt Jemima theme.

1935 Quaker Oats advertisement using a more familiar theme.

The name of the brand was changed completely to Pearl Milling Company, but interestingly minor use of the name and its branding continues by current owner, PepsiCo, so as to not have it become abandoned and become public domain.  Descendants of Robinson, it might be noted, protested the change in branding on the basis that ignored the history and heritage of the brand and American society, for good or ill.

Fr. Giovanni Minzoni, age 38, a Catholic Priest who opposed the fascist rule of Mussolini, was murdered in Argenta.  It is widely assumed that fascist Italo Balbo ordered his murder.

Balbo briefly resigned from office, but would return and was the Governor General of Libya when World War Two broke out.  He died in 1940 when an airplane he was a passenger in was shot down by friendly fire while trying to land at Tobruk.