Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, October 10, 1923. Giants win, State rests. Three piece suits.

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, October 10, 1923. Giants win, State rests.:

The Giants one game one of the World Series and the State had already arrested in the dimming headlights murder trial of a former deputy sheriff.

It was the first World Series game played at Yankee Stadium.

Strange. . . these suit wearing dudes don't appear anywhere near as glamorous as those affecting this style in the current Polo lineup do. . . 

The idea of a vocation.

The idea of vocation attaches to work a cluster of other ideas, including devotion, skill, pride, pleasure, the good stewardship of means and materials. Here we have returned to intangibles of economic value. When they are subtracted, what remains is ‘a job,’ always implying that work is something good only to escape.

Wendell Berry.

How to have your letter to the editor ignored.

There's no better way to have it ignored than by starting off:

As a new resident of Casper and Wyoming, I am curious if  you recognize yet how you . . . 

Why would anyone local pay the slightest bit of attention to this? 

And on this:

I’m asking the Wyoming Game & Fish Department to feed our wildlife this winter. All the future trends by the weather forecasters say the upcoming winter will be just as bad as last year’s winter.

No, you aren't, you're expressing your views to a handful of people who will read your letter in the mostly electronic Trib. If you want to ask the Game and Fish something, ask them.

Absolute government

We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Lies and secrets.

Lies and secrets, Tessa, they are like a cancer in the soul. They eat away what is good and leave only destruction behind.

Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

Franklin on secrets.

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack

Escaping to North Korea would be a punishment in and of itself.

Cheat the Prophet.

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children’s games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called “Keep to-morrow dark,” and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) “Cheat the Prophet.” The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.

For human beings, being children, have the childish wilfulness and the childish secrecy. And they never have from the beginning of the world done what the wise men have seen to be inevitable. They stoned the false prophets, it is said; but they could have stoned true prophets with a greater and juster enjoyment. Individually, men may present a more or less rational appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming. But humanity as a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle, delightful. Men are men, but Man is a woman.

G. W. Chesterton. 

A declaration.

I want the nation to know that, if I am elected President, I will rescind Nixon's pardon and seek that he's tried and convicted.

Yes, I know that there's no precedent for that, and I know that Nixon is dead, but that won't stop me.  After all, Cromwell was beheaded after he was dead, and if our ancestral parliament can do that, I see no reason not to sentence Nixon in postmortem abstentia.  

Pardoning Nixon, together with Reagan's Southern Strategy, are the two prongs on the fork of national disaster that have wrecked conservatism and given us the problems we now face.

Democracies and self murder.

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

John Adams

No matter what you think of the crime, the woman accussed of torching the Casper Abortion Clinic. . .

 

is just about the happiest looking criminal defendant you'll ever see.

She just looks genuinely happy.

No real comment here, other than that.

Chaos

“I will answer the Call of Chaos and Old Night. I will ride on the Nightmare; but she shall not ride on me.” G.K. Chesterton. 

G. K. Chesterton.

Misplaced Priorities

 

Vox: We Need to Consider the Suffering of the Unborn (Chickens)

But not that human fetuses feel pain?

Going big.

You don't see headlines like this every day:

Wyoming Man Accused Of Threatening FBI Agent Had Just Come Home From ER Wounded From Shootout

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, March 15, 1943 A Wyoming Federal Reservat...hmmm. . .

Lex Anteinternet: Monday, March 15, 1943 A Wyoming Federal Reservat...: Today In Wyoming's History: March 15: 1943  Franklin Roosevelt used executive authority to proclaim 221,000 acres as the Jackson Hole National Monument, the predecessor to today's Grand Teton National Park.  Governor Hunt threatened to use the Highway Patrol to prevent Federal authority on its grounds.  Congress, for its part, refused to appropriate money for the monument. 

His principled stance on McCarthyism aside, it's just this sort of thing that makes it so you can't really be too sorry that the Legislature didn't honor Hunt this session.

That awkward moment in which . . .

somebody, based on your background or location, makes a political joke that assumes that your views are the same as their views, or at least they know your views.

Uff.

I had that happen today, in which the jester assumed that as I'm from Wyoming, and they're from Texas, we must both be opponents of Liz Cheney and really dislike her.

That's not my opinion at all.

The educational agency of mankind.

The group consisting of the mother, father, and child is the main educational agency of mankind.

Martin Luther King

A few things.

1.  There's always some "bill in Congress" that won't pass that organizations seeking money can use to scare the gullible with on the telephone.

2. By the same token, if you live in an area that's on the political extreme, your Congressman or Senator sponsoring a bill that's also extreme is not a reason to believe that it'll pass, or even be particularly excited about it, should you either favor or oppose it.

3.  A paid telemarketer is not likely to have the slightest interest in the actual subject that they're calling on.  They'd probably call for the opposing side, if the money was there.

4.  If the telemarketer is inarticulate and botches your name, that ought to be the end of it.

5.  If an organization that is seeking to have you donate money is using a paid telemarketer, part of what you are donating for is probably telemarketing.

6.  If certain events keep happening, and certain solutions keep being proposed, responding that your rights are being trampled or about to be, isn't really an adequate response.  You have to have a real basis to your argument.

7.  There's really no reason to pay any attention to Marjorie Taylor Greene on anything, so we shouldn't.

All of these will make your life easier.

Why?

Why do some people who are signed up on neighborhood email lists/websites feel compelled to report every time they see a dog that's not with a person?

Seriously?

Just seeing a dog out isn't a crisis.  It'll probably go home.  And if it's out, whomever you are trying to reach by email probably isn't sitting at a computer.

The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Rating.

 

Full democracies   9.01–10.00   8.01–9.00 Flawed democracies   7.01–8.00   6.01–7.00 Hybrid regimes   5.01–6.00   4.01–5.00 Authoritarian regimes   3.01–4.00   2.01–3.00   1.01–2.00   0.00–1.00 No data   

We should not want to be in the flawed category, but there is reason to have us there, which should concern us all.

Of course, the second something like that is said somebody is going to rush out and state "but we're a republic, not a democracy".