Showing posts with label Republican Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Republican Party. Show all posts

Thursday, June 5, 2025

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 6. “Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs.”

Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs.

The Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2025.

May 14, 2025

Wyoming Delegation Not Supportive Of Trump's Idea Of Tax Hike For The Rich

So Barrasso and Lummis separate from Trump on this?

Neither one of them are actually Trump supporters in terms of their personal beliefs, but have adopted his views for political survival in Wyoming, which is fanatically pro Trump.  Everyone is well aware that the budget is in a crisis stage and at some point soon the US needs to have a balanced budget. That can only be done through raising taxes, and they know it.

Additionally, taxing the wealthy will not hurt the economy, and everyone knows that.  Tax rates for the wealthy were much higher in prior decades with no ill effect on the economy.

A matter of critical interest.

Wyoming Is The Second Most Expensive State For Beer Lovers

And one Wyomingites just won't believe

Reaction To Trump Tariffs Helps Push Wyoming Oil Prices To Four-Year Low

This is an absolute fact, but if you follow the story on Facebook, a lot of Wyomingites just won't believe it. That would mean Trump is hurting the local economy, and they can't accept that. . . at least not yet.

Oil is at $62.02/bbl this morning.

May 15, 2025

Given the magnitude of the tariffs, even at the reduced levels announced this week, we aren’t able to absorb all the pressure given the reality of narrow retail margins. 

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon.

Oil is at $61.60/bbl.

May 17, 2025

Thanks to Republican mishandling of the economy, specifically increasing debt, Moody's downgraded the economy from Aaa to Aa1.

The GOP can't seem to grasp that you actually have to pay for the government.

New Jersey transit engineers are on strike.

Trump's "Big Beautiful Budget Bill", which would add $4T in debt, failed 16-21 in the House Budget Committee.

The irony is that those voting against it want more spending cuts, but only increased taxes will address this developing crisis.

Let's put this in bold, as people just don't seem to grasp it.

THE UNITED STATES CAN'T "CUT" ITS WAY OUT OF ITS BUDGET CRISIS.  IT MUST RAISE TAXES.

Cont:

It's really time to stop calling Trump a businessman:

He's a real estate developer. Clearly he's otherwise a business illiterate.

May 19, 2025

The Trump deficit expanding budget bill made it out of committee on a 17-16 vote with those who were to vote no, voting present.

This bill will be a disaster for already an already irresponsible Federal government.  Taxes need to be raised on income, particularly upper incomes to make the budget balance and this insanity cease.

May 22, 2025

The House of Representatives passed by a margin of one a funding bill that will swell the deficit disastrously while making cuts in Medicaid and food stamp while adding to border security.  Taxes will be cut, when they should be raised, and will irrationally be eliminated on tips and overtime.

Trump, who speaks oddly at best, has called this his "big beautiful tax bill"

Walmart is cutting 1,500 corporate jobs.

The stock market is crashing because of the bad tax bill. The bond market is flat.

West Texas crude is back down to $60.96.

Cont:

The "tip" exemption appears to be for "cash tips".

FWIW, bar tenders tend to get cash tips, but restaurant workers less and less.  FWIW, cash tips are notoriously underreported anyway, as they're impossible to keep track of.

May 23, 2025

Hageman’s Budget Vote Critical As House Passes One Big Beautiful Act 215-214


The next one is interesting:

Republicans are for state's rights, except when the state exercises the right to do something they don't like.

Likewise, the GOP is for local control, but really isn't.

At Lusk Town Meeting, Locals Say Wind Projects Have Ended Friendships

Developer Of Controversial Casper Gravel Mine Wants To Renew State Leases

Trump:


What does the "thank you for our attention to this matter" intend to do?

May 29, 2025

Federal trade court blocks Trump's emergency tariffs, saying he overstepped authority

That the power wasn't there was obvious.  Now the question is whether the Trump administration will obey the Court.

May 30, 2025

An appeals court is allowing the tariffs to be collected while the matter is on appeal, which is a poor ruling.

June 2, 2025

Well, of course. . . 

R&D job postings down 18% since president took office

From the same article, about the impact on the economy:

A 25% cut ultimately would reduce gross domestic product by an amount similar to the decline seen during the Great Recession, they said.

cont:

“Was it all bullshit?"

Donald Trump, reportedly, about Musk's promise to cut $1B from the government spending.

That anyone could seriously think that $1B could be cut from the discretionary budget demonstrates that the person has no grasp on the Federal budget whatsoever.

June 3, 2025

Elon Musk on the "Big Beautiful Bill".

It is an abomination, but so was the work that Musk was doing:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist 85th Edition. DOGE dipshittery and Clinton efficiency.

June 4, 2025

Oh my.

The CBO predicts Trump's Big Ugly Bill will cut taxes by $3.7T and raise the deficit by $2.4T.

It's pretty obvious what Congress should do.

A lot of House members are suddenly declaring they didn't read the bill.  That's a pretty good sign its in trouble.  Speaker Johnson claims the magic of supply side economics, which hasn't been dragged out since the Reagan years, will make it all okay.

Elon Musk and the Trumpites are now in a full fledged word war with each other.

Trump is threatening to hike steel and aluminum tariffs 50%.

June 5, 2025

The Wind River Job Corps in Riverton, was ordered to "pause" its activities in anticipation of getting the axe from Congress.

cont:

Proctor and Gamble is laying off 7,000 employees.

cont:


Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 5. The Roller Coaster Edition.

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Wednesday, April 22, 1925. Thought police.

The Peace Preservation Law was enacted in Japan allowing the Special Higher Police (Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu or Tokkō) of the Home Ministry to arrest "anyone who has formed an association with the aim of altering the kokutai" (the "national essence" of Japan) or having "joined such an association with full knowledge of its object".

Criticism of the government could be considered an attempt to alter the national essence.

This is exactly the way the Republican Party is acting today.

A  "Thought Section" of the Tokubetsu was created to monitor "dangerous thoughts" or "thought crime" within Japan and its territories.

The Saltair pavilion,  in Saltair, Utah at the Great Salt Lake in the United States, was destroyed by fire.

Last edition:

Tuesday, April 21, 1925. The loss of the SS Raifuku Maru. Saudi Arabia wipes out the gravesites of members of the family Muhammad.

Friday, April 18, 2025

Thursday, April 17, 2025

The 2026 Election, 1st Edition: Spring Training Edition.

Walter "Big Train" Johnson, April 11, 1924.

Yes, the 2024 Election hasn't even occured yet, and the 2026 one is clearly on, at least locally.

What we can tell for sure is that Chuck Gray is running for the office of Governor.  He always was.  The Secretary of State's office was very clearly a mere stepping stone in that plan, and the plan probably goes on from there.   By coming to Wyoming, a state with a low population and a pronounced history of electing out of staters (we nearly have some sort of personality problem in that regard), it was a good bet, particularly when combined with his family money, although it was never a sure bet that he'd make the legislature and on from there.  His plan requires, however, or at least he seemingly believes it requires, that he keep his name in the news, which he's worked hard to do, being involved in lawsuits, which is probably unconstitutional on his part, and releasing press releases that are extraordinary for his role, and for the invective language they contain.  Mr. Gray has probably used the term "radical leftists" more in his two years of office than all of the prior Wyoming Secretaries of State combined.

This explains something that was otherwise a bit odd that we noticed recently, which was Secretary Gray's appearance in Casper in opposition of something he'd otherwise voted for:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 63d Edition. Strange Bedfellows.

 


Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

The environmental populists?

Politics, as they say, makes for strange bedfellows.  But how strange, nonetheless still surprises.

Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who rose to that position by pitching to the populist far right, which dominates the politics of the GOP right now, and which appears to be on the verge of bringing the party down nationally, has tacked in the wind in a very surprising direction.  He appeared this past week at a meeting in Natrona County to oppose a proposed gravel pit project at the foot of Casper Mountain.  He actually pitched for the upset residents in the area to mobilize and take their fight to Cheyenne, stating:

We have a very delicate ecosystem, the fragility up there, the fragility of the flows … the proximity to domestic water uses. All of those things should have led to a distinct treatment by the Office of State Lands, and that did not happen.

I am, frankly, stunned.  

I frankly never really expected Mr. Gray to darken visage of the Pole Stripper monument on the east side of Casper's gateway, which you pass by on the road in from Cheyenne again, as he's not from here and doesn't really have a very strong connection to the state, although in fairness that connection would have been to Casper, where he was employed by his father's radio station and where he apparently spent the summers growing up (in an unhappy state of mind, according to one interview of somebody who knew him then).  Gray pretty obviously always had a political career in mind and campaigned from the hard populist right from day one, attempting at first to displace a conservative house member unsuccessfully.

We have a post coming up which deals with the nature of populism, and how it in fact isn't conservatism.  Gray was part of the populist rise in the GOP, even though his background would more naturally have put him in the conservative camp, not the populist one.  But opportunity was found with populists, who now control the GOP state organization.  The hallmark of populism, as we'll explore elsewhere, is a belief in the "wisdom of the people", which is its major failing, and why it tends to be heavily anti-scientific and very strongly vested in occupations that people are used to, but which are undergoing massive stress.  In Wyoming that's expressed itself with a diehard attitude that nothing is going on with the climate and that fossil fuels will be, must have, and are going to dominate the state's economy forever.   The months leading up to the recent legislative session, and the legislative session itself, demonstrated this with Governor Gordon taking criticism for supporting anything to address carbon concerns.  Put fairly bluntly, because a large percentage of Wyoming's rank and file workers depend on the oil and gas industry, and things related to it, any questioning on anything tends to be taken as an attack on "the people".

Natrona County has had a gravel supply problem for quite a while and what the potential miner seeks to do here is basically, through the way our economy works, address it.  There would be every reason to suspect that all of the state's politicians who ran to the far right would support this, and strongly.  But they aren't.

The fact that Gray is not, and is citing environmental concerns, comes as a huge surprise.  But as noted, given his background, he's probably considerably more conservative than populist, but has acted as politicians do, and taken aid and comfort where it was offered.  Tara Nethercott ran as a conservative and lost for the same office.

But here's the thing.

That gravel is exactly the sort of thing that populists, if they're true to what they maintain they stand for, ought to support.  It's good for industry, and the only reason to oppose the mining is that 1) it's in a bad place in terms of the neighbors and 2) legitimate environmental concerns, if there are any.  But that's exactly the point.  You really can't demand that the old ways carry on, until they're in your backyard.  

Truth be known, given their nature, a lot of big environmental concerns are in everyone's backyard right now.

The old GOP would have recognized that nationally, and wouldn't be spending all sorts of time back in DC complaining about electric vehicles.  And if people are comfortable with things being destructive elsewhere, they ought to be comfortable with them being destructive right here.  If we aren't, we ought to be pretty careful about it everywhere.

There actually is some precedent for this, FWIW.  A hallmark of Appalachian populism was the lamenting of what had happened to their region due to coal mining.  John Prine's "Paradise" in some ways could be an environmental populist anthem.

Right about the time I noted this, Rod Miller, opinion writer for the Cowboy State Daily, wrote a satiric article on the same thing:

Rod Miller: Flip-Flops Around The Ol’ Campfire

We have no idea, of course, who his opponent will be, unless it's Gordon, who is theoretically term limited out, but we already know from prior litigation that the restraint on his running again is unconstitutional.  And Gordon clearly doesn't like Gray, a dislike that's not limited to him by any means.  Gordon would have to challenge that in court, however, unless 1) a group of citizens does, and 2) the court ruled they'd have standing.

As voters, they should.

If that happens, I wouldn't be surprised to see Gordon run again, and to be asked to run again.  While he was a candidate initially I worried about him, as he was further to the right on public lands issues than any candidate since Geringer, but he's actually acted as a very temperate Governor, something made difficult by 1) the intemperate level of our current politics, and 2) the occasional shortsightedness of the legislature.1

Anyhow, if you've ever had the occasion to see, Gordon and Gray together in an official setting, it's clear they don't get along.  Indeed, on the State Land Board, it's clear that Gordon isn't the only one that's not keen on Gray.  Gray for his part reacts back, as he did recently when he sent an unprecedented lengthy letter to the Governor on his vetoes. 

Gray, like Donald Trump, has some feverish admirers.2  Indeed, this seems to be a hallmark of the populist right.  They not only run candidates, but they develop personality cults routinely.

Rod Miller, again, in a recent column noted a real problem that Gray has.  As, so far, they haven't really been able to advance their agenda without the help of conservatives, they have an advantage there as they always portray themselves as besieged by the numerous barbarians, the last legionnaire on Hadrian's Wall.  Trump has actually, at a national level, worked to keep that status by ordering his party to defeat immigration legislation that was probably a once in a lifetime conservative opportunity.

Anyhow, as noted, Rod Miller recently noted a problem that Gray has.  He's not married.

Rod Miller: Bride Of Chucky – Or – Advice To The Lovelorn From The Ol’ Campfire

Is this actually a problem?

It shouldn't be, but it might be.

Indeed, without going into it, there was a figure in Wyoming decades ago whose marriage was questioned by whisperers on the basis that they believed he married just to end the speculation on why he wasn't married.   The marriage lasted a very long time, so presumably the rumors were without foundation, but there were questions, which is interesting and shows, I guess, how people's minds can work.  

Another way to look at it, I supposed, was prior to Trump if a person was a conservative people would ask about things that appeared to be contrary to public statements about conservatism.  Not being married, for a conservative, was regarded as odd, and for that matter there are still people who whisper about Lindsey Graham, while nobody seems to worry about AOC being shacked up with her boyfriend or whatever is going on with Krysten Sinema. 

And then there's Gray's age.  It will make people suspicious of him at some point, or people will at least take note.  Indeed, some of his critics from the left already have, but in a really juvenile way.

Actually determining Gray's age is a little difficult, and indeed, knowing anything about his background actually is.  But Cowboy State Daily, a conservative organ, managed to reveal about as much as we know.

Gray was born in California and raised outside of Los Angeles.  According to somebody close to the family, or who was, he was homeschooled by his mother.3 He felt uncomfortable about his birthplace, and stated in the campaign

I come from a divorced family, like many people in our country. A judge said I was to live in a different place, but my dad lived here, built a business here, and I spent my summers here during the time that was allocated by the judge.

According to the same source, he didn't seem all that happy in Casper, Wyoming as a kid, but the circumstances could well explain that.  The same source, who probably isn't a family friend anymore, reported to the Cowboy that Gray's father had a focus on the family owned radio station impacting legislation at a national level.  Photos have been circulated of the father with President Reagan.

Gray graduated from high school in 2008 and the respected University of Pennsylvanian in 2012, which makes it all the more remarkable that he's been a success in Wyoming politics.4   If we assume the norm about graduation ages, he would have been 22 in 2012, which would make him 34 now.

In Wyoming, the average age for men to marry is 27.8 years on average, while for women it's 25.6.  Gray's now notably over the median age, but that is a median.  I was over it too when I married at age 31.  My wife was below the female one.  That's how averages work.

My parents, I'd note, were both over the median, although I don't know it with precision for the 1950s.  In the 50s, the marriage age was actually at an unusual low.  My father was 29, and my mother 32.

So his age, in the abstract, doesn't really mean anything overall, although it might personality wise.

As has been noted elsewhere on this site, Gray is a Roman Catholic and indeed I've seen him occasionally at Mass, although I would never have seen him every weekend as there are a lot of weekend Masses and my habits aren't the same as his.  I have no reason to believe that he didn't attend weekly as required by the church.5  Catholics are supposed to observe traditional Catholic teachings in regard to sex and marriage.  I'm not really going to be delving into that, but again we have no reason to believe that Gray isn't observant, in which case, as he is not married, he should be living as a chaste single man, and he probably is (something that has casued juvenile left wing ribbing).

Wyoming, however, is the least religious state in the union and while Catholics, Orthodox, Mormons and Protestants of traditional morality observe that morality, here, as with the rest of the United States, the late stage mass casualty nature of the Sexual Revolution means that a lot of people in these faiths don't, and the society at large does not.  We've gone from a society where such outside the bounds of marriage behavior was illegal in varying degrees, to one where, nationwide, society pushes people into things whether they want to or not.

Be that as it may, save for Casper, Laramie, and probably Cheyenne, sexual conduct outside the biological gender norm is very much looked down upon.  Indeed, in a really dense move, a Democratic Albany County legislator went to a meeting in Northeast Wyoming a while back on homosexual issues and was shocked by the hostile reception she received.  She shouldn't have been.

No, I'm not saying this applies to Gray.  I have no reason to believe that, and indeed I believe the opposite.

However, we've gone from a state whose ethos was "I don't care what you do as long as you leave me alone" to one in which, largely due to the importation of Evangelicals from elsewhere, a fairly large percentage of the population really care about what you do, particularly if they don't like it.

Indeed, at the time that Matthew Shepard was murdered, I was surprised when I heard an anti-homosexual comment.  Such comments do not surprise me now, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear one now in the context of a murder.  As noted, the exceptions seem to be Laramie (where Shepard was murdered, but which has never been hostile to homosexuals), Casper (which has had a homosexual 20 something mayor and which has a lesbian city council member) and Cheyenne (which has a homosexual member of the state House, as does Albany County).  Well, I omitted Jackson and should include it here too.

At any rate, being an open homosexual and aiming for major office probably is impossible, although for minor ones it hasn't proven to be.  The point is, however, that Miller is right. At some point, people are going to start wondering why staunchly populist Gray isn't married.

Maybe it's because he is in fact a staunchly populist out of state import.  There aren't that many women in that pool.  Indeed, having a one time vague contact with our staunchly populist Congresswoman, I was very surprised when it turned out she was a populist, or even a conservative.  I'm not saying that she's not, I'm just surprised.

Gray is in a sort of oddball demographic.  Not being from here, he wouldn't be in any circles in which women from here, professionals or otherwise, would be in.  He appears to really be a fish out of water in terms of the local culture.  When he appears at things, he does wear cowboy boots, but you can tell they've never been in a stirrup, and he otherwise is, at least based on my very limited observation of him, always dressed in what we might sort of regard as 1980s Denver Business Casual.  I'd be stunned if I saw him on a trout stream or out in the prairie with his bird dog, Rex.  I've seen him at a bar once, for a grand opening of something, but I don't imagine him walking up to the tender at The Buckhorn or The Oregon Trail and ordering a double Jack Daniel's either.

I was once told by an out-of-state lawyer who had been born in the state but who had moved to Denver after graduating from law school, regarding Wyomingites, that "you have to be tough just to live there".  People who live here probably don't realize that, but there's more than a little truth to it.  I'm often shocked by the appearance of populist legislature Jeanette Ward, as it's so clear she just doesn't belong here.  She's not the kind of gal who would be comfortable sitting next to the ranch girl chewing tobacco who has the "Wrangler Butts Drive Me Nuts" bumper sticker on her pickup truck.6   Gray probably isn't comfortable with such a gal either.  "Tomboys", as they used to be called, are sort of the mean average for Wyoming women.  

Gray is well-educated, of course, which is part of the reason that I suspect a lot of his positions are affectations.  I don't think he really believes the election was stolen, for example, unless he's doing so willfully, which would mean that he really doesn't believe that.  Recently he's taken on the topic of firearms arguing, as part of the State Facilities Commission, that the state needs to open up carrying guns at the capitol, which is frankly absurd.  While I don't know the answer, I suspect that Gray isn't really a firearms' aficionado. 

Up until very recently, Wyomingites knew a lot about the people they sent to the legislature and public office, often knowing them personally to some degree.  We actually knew the Governor and the First Lady on some basis other than politics, quite frequently, and our local reps we knew pretty well.  The populist invasion defeated that to some degree, and in some cases, a great deal.  The question is whether this is permanent, or temporary.  It wasn't until the last election that people looked at Gray's background at all, and they still have very little.  People haven't really grasped until just now that many of the Freedom Caucus are imports, not natives.  We don't know much about some of them or their families, and chances are an average Wyomingite, or at least a long term native, would regard them as odd on some occasions.  Chuck Gray just ran an op ed that was titled something like Only Wyomingites Should Vote In Wyoming's Elections.  Most long term and native born Wyomingites feel that strongly, and wouldn't actually regard a lot of our current office holders as being Wyomingites.

There's evidence that the populist fad is passing. We'll see. This and the 2026 election will be a test of it.  2026 is a long ways off.  For that matter, it's sufficiently long enough for these candidates to evolve if they need to. Some are probably capable of doing that.  Others, undoubtedly not.  The question will be if they need to.

May 11, 2024

It's very clear, to those paying any attention, that Wyoming elected executive branch officials really dislike Chuck Gray, including those who are very conservative.  This became evident again when Superintendant of Education Degenfelder indicated Wyoming would join a Title IX lawsuit in opposition to the Federal Government's new rules on "transgender" atheletes.  Degenfelder indicated that she'd been working behind the scenes with Gov. Gordon on this matter.  In doing so she blasted Gray who earlier made comments wondering where the state's officials were on this matter, even though his office has less than 0 responsiblity in this department.  Degenfelder stated in regard to Gray, "I would encourage Secretary Gray to join those of us actually making plays on the field rather than just heckling from the sidelines".  Gray, who is a Californian who has lived very little of his life in Wyoming save for summers here while growing up, declared in response he was on "Team Wyoming".

FWIW, Wyoming really doesn't need to particpate in lawsuits maintained by other parties, as they're already maintained.

July 8, 2024

Now here's an interesting development. . . 

I may have mentioned on this blog before that I feel Gov. Gordon should consider running, text of the Wyoming Constitution aside, for a third term.  In doing so, if I did (I know that I've discussed with people) I've noted that the Constitutional prohibition on him doing so violates the Wyoming Constitution.

Turns out that I'm not the only one speculating on that.

Chuck Gray Says He Won’t Certify Candidacy If Gordon Seeks 3rd Term

And it turns out that Chuck Gray doesn't like the idea at all.

January 7, 2025

I managed to miss it, but back in November, Brent Bien announced for Governor.

Bien is on the far right, and is a Wyoming native, but he spent 28 years in the Marine Corps before retiring in 2019 and coming back to the state.  This puts him in the camp of far right Republicans in the state who spent their entire working lives drawing on one of richest portions of the government t** while also never actually having to make sure a business actually functioned.  

I've never quite grasped "trust me, I know how run things for the common man. . .I've never actually had to work in a business. . . "

Moreover, Bien was a prime mover on the initiatives that will be on the ballot to cut property taxes 50%, essentially meaning he's backing bankrupting local governments and schools.  So, after living off of taxpayers for his adult life, having retired, with a retirement funded by taxpayers, he doesn't want to pay them himself.

Well, Bien will have competition, as we know.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 70th Edition. Inside Wyoming Political Baseball

March 14, 2025

Cynthia Lummis ‘Gearing Up For Reelection’ To US Senate In 2026


Rob Hendry leads slate in sweep of Natrona County Republican Party leadership

Footnotes

1. There are numerous examples of this, but a really good one is Gordon's effort to buy the UP checkerboard, which the legislature defeated.  It would have been a real boon for the state, but fiscal conservatives just couldn't see it that way.

Recently, Gordon hasn't been shy about vetoing highly unadvised bills that have come out of the legislature, or shutting down bad regulations that come out of the Secretary of State's office.

2.  And not just Gray, Harriet Hageman does as well.

3. Homeschooling, for whatever reason a person does it, can be developmentally limiting.  I don't know about Gray's case, but its notable that some on the far right have done it, as they believe that schools are left wing organs and there are things they don't want their children exposed to them.  The problem this presents is that children who are homeschooled grow up in a very narrow environment, whereas, at least here, those who go to public, and for that matter religious schools, do not.

4. There used to be a school interview of him from the University of Pennsylvania, in which he expressed a desire to become a lawyer.  He's clearly not going to do that now, unless of course his political career ended, which is perfectly possible.

5.  As noted here in prior posts, lying is regarded as a potentially serious sin in Catholicism, and lying about something like who won the 2020 election would be, in some circumstances, a mortal sin if you were a political figure.  

6.  Ward is from Illinois and openly calls herself a political refugee. At the time of moving here, she posted something about her children not having to wear masks in our public schools, adopting the far right wing view that trying to protect others in this fashion is somehow an intrusion on liberty.  I suppose it is, but not relieving yourself in public is as well.  Anyhow, at some point, presuming those children remain in public school, she'll be in for a shock as Casper's schools truly have a really wide demographic and are not exactly made up of an Evangelical populist sample of the population.

March 25, 2025

Hmmm. . . the tide seems to be coming in.

Former Wyoming Legislators Win Big In County Republican Party Elections

March 29, 2025

Donald Trump has endorsed Cynthia Lummis.

April 2, 2025

While a non partisan race, in Wisconsin the liberal Democratic candidate for the Supreme Court prevailed over the Musk backed conservative Republican.

The race was widely regarded as a test of how people are feeling about Trump.

In Florida two Republicans won election in open House seats in heavily Republican districts, but the Democrats did better than expected.  A Democratic victory would have been a huge upset, so in some ways this also showed that people aren't keen on the GOP path.

April 17, 2025

And the race for Governor is sort of on.

Now in the GOP race are two declared candidates, one of whom has filed, Joseph Kibler.  Brent Bien has said he's running as well.

Both are in the far, far, right.  Kibler moved to Wyoming (his wife is from Wyoming) in 2020.  Bien is a Wyoming native, but completed a Marine Corps career and therefore fits into the crowed of Wyoming anti government candidates whose careers were in the government.

Related threads:

Want to Play a Game? Global Trade War Is the New Washington Pastime. Two dozen trade experts gathered recently to simulate how a global trade war would play out. The results were surprisingly optimistic.


Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 70th Edition. Inside Wyoming Political Baseball

Monday, March 31, 2025

Blog Mirror: Trump Says He’s ‘Not Joking’ About Seeking a Third Term in Defiance of Constitution, by Erica L. Green

The worst President in American history, and the worst human being to occupy the office, seemingly has no bounds in his love of himself.

Trump Says He’s ‘Not Joking’ About Seeking a Third Term in Defiance of Constitutionby Erica L. Green

White House spokesmen immediately went into spin mode, but if we've learned anything about Trump is that we should take him at his word on his plans, no matter how illegal they may be.  He's going to try this, there's virtually no doubt.   And the GOP will support it.

One of the ways Trump thinks he can do this, which won't work, is to have J. D. Vance run for office, with Trump on the VP ticket, and then resign.  That is against the Constitution but it also assumes that Vance is willing to be a giant patsy.  Maybe he is, but. . . 

By the way, Julius Caesar used the elephant as a symbol. . . 

Thursday, March 27, 2025

Razor Thin.

 


This is interesting.  The GOP margin has been thin all along.  But there are two elections coming up in Florida. Those have been predicted to go to the GOP, but maybe its looking like they will not.

Sunday, March 2, 2025

The week of February 23, 2025. The week the US became Brazil.

J. D. Vance boring Peru, Tuvalu,  and Kiribati while the adult nations meet elsewhere.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Martin Luther King Jr.

This last week saw the conclusion of existential shift in the United States.  The country went from being a great nation, albeit with greatness foisted upon it due to World War One, World War Two and the Cold War, to becoming a second rate regional power hated by its neighbors and regarded as an also ran by the rest of the world.

Basically, since November, and concluding last week, we went from being what the country was following World War Two, to Brazil.

The concluding act was Donald Trump, whom the nation is pretending to be President, berating a heroic embattled President of a heroic embattled nation.  At that point, every head of state around the globe just switched the senile narcissist developer off.  He showed himself to be stupid and by extension, showed the US to be worshipping stupidity. 

Why would anyone care what we think.

In the next few days the act will play itself out.  The US will impose tariffs on our neighbors and sink into a recession that will last a decade or more.  We'll be lucky if it isn't a depression. This assumes, of course, that we're nto at war with China within a year and a half.  If that occurs, we'll fight it, and lose, on our own.  Our former allies have written us off all over the globe, and for good reason.  As an importing nation, we're about to find out economically that we just slit our wrists and everyone is going to let us bleed out.

And they should.

The decline of the US was perhaps inevitable.  Americans, and its Americans, not their government, have never figured out how to live within their budgets.  Government wise, we ran a big government from 1932 on, but always had a hard time balancing it.  We went off the charts thsi way in the first Trump administration, with the country lead by a stupid man who never had to live wthin his own budget.  The country, which has always had a strong element of anti intellectualism as Richard Hofstadter well explored in his published in 1963 Pulitzer Prize winning book on the topic in which he concluded  both anti-intellectualism and utilitarianism were in part consequences of the democratization of knowledge but also embedded in America's national fabric as a result of its colonial and evangelical Protestant heritage. He believe,d and we've recently discussed, that Evangelical American Protestantism's anti-intellectual tradition valued the spirit over intellectual rigor.  In the turbulent times that have come from 1963, that's festered and become a near worship of ignorance over science, something that the Reagan Administration's abandonment of science fostered.

But its also the case that being ain international power is expensive and nobody has been able to maintain a singular global status forever.  The British run of it, for example, was much shorter than generally imagined. So was Spain's.  The Japanese effort barely got off the ground bfore it collapsed.  So our 1945 to 2025 run probably was a good run.

But it didn't need to end this way, with the nation collapsing as an international joke.

Some nations have come to this point and managed to transition with dignity.  The United Kingdom particularly did, realizing after the failed 1958 Suez Canal intervention that it could no longer hold on it its empire.  It simply announced the arrival of The Winds of Change and worked with those winds.  In the 1960s the United Kingdom was still a major colonial power. By the 1970s it no longer was, and was then a European power.  Today, it's one of the leading European nations.

A former British colony, however, provides a contrary example.  Unable to accept those winds, Rhodesia chose to stand against them and declared itself independent and unyielding to change.  Change was violently foisted upon it, giving us the mess of Zimbabwe today.

France may really provide the example we need to consider.

In the 1930s France was a political mess and appeared to be teetering on the edge of taking the same path that Spain had, a civil war between a strong left and a strong right.  World War Two interrupted that, but it also temporarily completed it, throwing the government to the far right autocracy of Marshall Petain.

France from 1940 to 1944 was not the every Frenchman in the Resistance nation that France and Hogan's Heroes pretended existed by any means.  A huge percentage of the French were comfortable with a new France that replaced "liberty, equality  and fraternity" with "work, family, and country".  Petain was, in significant ways, what Franco also was, an earlier version of National Conservative.  He was also, and this should not be forgotten, part of an elected government that even the Socialist who remained supported.

Not all Frenchmen supported the rightest government, of course, and as the months rolled by, and it was a mere matter of months, World War Two for France became a French civil war.  After June 6, 1944, and then after World War Two itself, Franch struggled with what it was to become and made a desperate effort to hang on to its empire, failing first in Indochina and then in Algeria.  France was lucky to have Charles de Gaulle, heroic, haughty, deeply Catholic and committed to democracy.  De Gaulle saved France, but huge elements of French society, particularly within the military, were opposed to his agreeing to dismantle the remaining parts of the empire and become, once again, a major European country.  De Gaulle and French democracy barely survived.

We're effectively in the same position these countries were after World War Two. And indeed, there were things to address.  The United States acclimated itself to running huge deficits and the last two chief executives, Biden and Trump, or rather Trump, Biden, and Trump again, vastly accelerated out of control spending.  The US remains a powerful global power, but this would have resulted in some reckoning sooner or later.  The American public has become poorly educated in many was post Ronald Reagan, and it no longer grasps why the US should be a world power.  Basically, Americans are like the French of the Vichy era, folding in on themselves into work, family, and love of a country that doesn't have to deal, they think, with anyone else.

National Conservatism, which will follow Trump's demise will fail. The US won't convert itself into isolated mythical kingdom, and it won't enjoy being the temporarily biggest bully on the block.  The real question is whether or not it will enjoy being Brazil.

Trump's stupidity and lack of releavant experience has caused the United States to be removed to the children's table.  The opinions of the country no longer matter on the global stage.

And honestly, some of this will be a good thing, while much will be bad.  While the US has been a major force for democracy and good in the world since the Second World War, starting with the Trumpist decline in the Republican Party, suppressed elements of real ignorance have been harming the world, chief among them being a stubborn refusal to recognize that the fossil fuel era needs to change, and quickly.  We've been, essentially, like China in that regard.

Now with the Western World's axis shifted back to Europe, with Canada and the other English speaking nations with it, the US will have to change, and quickly.  A blistering sense of arrogance and ignorance that has come to define Americans in recent years will have no currency and will not be tolerated. We'll be told what to do, and like it.

All empires fall. Some fall into stupidity.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

The best entries of this sad week:

We started to look into the elements that have caused Americans in this era to worship the rich and reject knowledge, and started with this one.

What's wrong with the United States? The Protestant Work Ethic.


We also looked back on an event from when we were a great nations.


What were the Trumps doing in the war. . . . well not fighting.

We posted one we thought would be controversial, but which received very little attention.


We also looked at another source of our ignorance and arrogance.


We reminded people that all of this is happening under a man who isn't even the President, he can't legally qualify to be that, but who has no mandate at all.



We also revived our warning that Christians in general are going to take a lot of this on the chin.






We concluded our first entry on wars for 2025 with Trump's petulant childish tantrum, which is basically where this thread starts.

Last edition:

Best Posts of the Week of February 16, 2025.