Juneteenth. What the new Federal Holiday Commemorates

Today is a Federal Holiday.  And for the first time.

Emancipation Day celebration, Richmond Virginia, 1905.

The holiday is Juneteenth.

The creation of the holiday is certainly proof that the Federal Government can in fact act quickly.  The bills on this were very recently introduced and this just passed Congress earlier this week and was signed into law yesterday, giving Federal employees the day off today. On Monday, they weren't expecting a day off.

So what is it?

The day basically celebrates the end of slavery, but in a bit of an unusual way. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on September 22, 1862.  Juneteenth, however, marks the calendar date of June 19, 1865, when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, after the end of the war, and issued proclamations voiding acts of the Texas legislature during the war and proclaiming the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation.  His General Order No. 3 was read aloud in the streets. Hence, June 19 became recognized, regionally, as the day that the Emancipation Proclamation reached the most distant outposts of the slave states, bringing slavery finally to an end.

Band for Texas Emancipation Day celebration, 1900.

Celebration of the day in Texas started almost immediately, being first observed just one year later, by the state's freed African American population.  Interestingly, the day was generally known as Emancipation Day.  However, the revival of segregation in the South in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century caused the day to suffer a decline, until it began to be revived in the 1950s.  Upon revival, the name Juneteenth began to apply to it.  It was made a state holiday in Texas in 1979.  The day received recognition in 47 of the states since then, with North and South Dakota and Hawaii being the only ones that had not up until now.

Talk of making it a Federal holiday has existed at least since the 1980s.  Generally there's been very broad support for the move, but it obviously has taken years to accomplish, if we regard 1979 as the onset.  It's interestingly been an example of states largely being out in front of the Federal Government on a holiday, and not surprisingly the various ways that states have recognized it have not been consistent.

Gen. Gordon, who brought news to African Americans in Texas that they'd been freed two years prior.

There's been next to no opposition to the holiday being created which is interesting, in part, as the current times have been very oddly polarized in all sorts of ways.  The measure had bipartisan support, although fourteen Republican members of Congress voted against it.  One interestingly voted against it as he thought the official name confusing, Juneteenth National Independence Day, which in fact it somewhat is.  That individual wanted to use the original name, Emancipation Day, which is a view I somewhat sympathize with.

It'll be interesting to see what the public reaction is given that this happened seemingly so quickly.  By and large people who are aware of it seem pleased, although Candace Owens, the African American conservative columnists and quasi gadfly, predictably wasn't.  It'll probably be next year until there's widespread national recognition of the day.

In very real ways, what it commemorates is the suffering of one of the most American of all American demographics, the African Americans, who have been in the country since its founding, but who still were the victims of legal discrimination all the way into the 1960s and whose economic plight remains marked.

Friday Farming: What's Wrong With the World "West Texas Ranch Up for Grabs Is One of State's Largest" and may sell for $200,000,000

 A price so large, it can't ever balance economically.  Ag land as playground for the super wealthy, in other words, rather than the most basic way of making a living in the most vital industry that exists.

West Texas Ranch Up for Grabs Is One of State's Largest

In Memoriam. Larry McMurtry

Ranch raised Larry McMurtry was the best known, and perhaps the greatest, of what we might regard as Texas centric writers.  Unlike some of the other really well known ones, he actually was from rural Texas and lived his live in Texas.

McMurtry didn't live in a house that contained books until he was 8 years old, at which time a cousin who was leaving for military service in World War Two dropped off a box of books.  He became an avid reader at that age and was a dedicated bibliophile.  His family's ranch was near Archer City, Texas, and that's where he died.  A major antiquarian bookstore owned by him is located in the small town.

McMurtry will be best remembered for Lonesome Dove, which may be the greatest Western novel of all time, perhaps rivaled only by the much shorter and much less epic, The Virginian.  His greatest book, however, in my view, is Horseman, Pass By! which chronicled a contemporary ranch family with an accuracy only somebody who had grown up on a ranch could do.

Several of his works were made into well known films, of course, notably Horseman Pass By, which was released in the film version as Hud, The Last Picture Show (which I don't like) and Lonesome Dove.  He was 84 years old.  He's a notable example of very successfully "writing what you know".

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part 9. Democrats Leap Left, McConaughey for Governor?, Stats of the Wyoming Electorate, Carbon Engineering, Why not Nuclear?, Pop Tarts and Superficial Politicians, Time Travelers, Mopey Monarchy, Bed Bugs On Board.

No organized party

Will Rogers famously quipped that because he belonged to the Democratic Party, he didn't belong to an "organized party".

The entire staff of the Democratic Party in Nevada resigned.  All of them.

That's because the state organization in Nevada is the mirror image of the Republican GOP organization in Wyoming, if you recall that mirror images are right/left reversed.  That is, "Progressive" Democrats, and indeed candidates backed by the Democratic Socialist of America, took over the party.

Which is why, in spite of what we've been noting about the mess in the GOP, the Democrats will ultimately fail and are now well on their way to doing so.  

The Democratic Party tends to creep up on liberal positions and then, as soon as it has its toes in the water, it dives fully into the deep side of the pool, and drowns.

The American public really isn't liberal, or as the press and liberals now like to term it, "progressive".  It's really pretty conservative.  Indeed, something that the Democrats don't get, and the press very much doesn't get, is that a lot of the concerns that Trump gave voice to really do reflect the concerns of common Americans, and not in the way that the press imagines.

The press has repeatedly suggested since January 6 that Trump supporters are "racists".  Some probably are, and frankly the Democrats have some pretty racist members as well, with their racism just directed in a different direction.  But most aren't.  And they resent having their concerns framed in that fashion, which is actually hardening their opposition to the Democrats.

It isn't racist to be worried about the massive immigration rate into the country and to be concerned that its out of control.  Worrying about what seems to be an assault on traditional culture and even basic human nature in favor of newly defined and hyper evolving woke definitions doesn't make a person a bigot either.  A concern over traditional values and even traditional activities isn't an improper concern.

The left wing of the Democratic Party, looking at Donald Trump's loss in the last election, and the disarray in the party right now, is drawing the wrong conclusion.  The country hasn't leapt to the left.  Indeed, the overall vote would suggest its crept a bit to the right.  People just didn't like Donald Trump, who in more than one way seemed to be an assault on democracy and even an example of the personal opposite of what conservatives and populist stand for.  Lots of principled conservatives and populists have left the GOP. . . for now, but that doesn't mean that they're digging out their posters of Trotsky and Lenin. Far from it.

But the Democrats will think so. By 2024 they'll be running a Kamala Harris that they've pushed even further to the left of her natural left, which is pretty far left, and flame out.

Indeed, lots of people, myself included, have wondered how the Republicans are going to get their act together following the late stage disaster of the 2020 election.  The Democrats are providing the answer.

The Democrats just passed, but only barely, a massive COVID relief bill.  More money will not be spent, in real terms on relief for the pandemic than was spent on the New Deal.  Indeed, twice as much money is being flooded into the economy through the pandemic bills than was spent on the entire New Deal.  There's absolutely no way on earth that this isn't going to be damaging to the economy, none.  For retirees and near retirees, this may be the death knell of their retirements because if it isn't inflationary it will be simply stunning.  And if it turns out to be inflationary, the fact that the GOP had abandoned fiscal responsibility under Trump will be rapidly, and deservedly, for gotten.

Moreover, the Democrats have already flooded the legislative machinery with bills that leap to the left.  New gun control bills are being introduced and while the press routinely claims that the populace is for them, the voting populace never seems to be.  Democrats are dragging out the Equal Rights Amendment, a vestige from the 1970s that now would have little meaning, in part because the 1970s were the golden era of Democratic liberalism and the failure to pass the ERA was a failure.  They're also advancing bills regarding gender issues when the American public only recently came to accommodating itself to the Supreme Court's actions in the era, and if state legislatures are any clue, the legislative tide may be flowing in the opposite direction at the local level.

All of this is going to anger conservative and middle of the road voters.  If the GOP can get Donald Trump out of the way, and the simple operation of time may accomplish that, they're going to come roaring back and the Democrats will have themselves largely to blame.

A sane Democratic Party would concentrate on a few issues that have wide backing, and there are some, and push them through now, while, as Pentangli would have it, they have the muscle.

They won't.

Well, Reagan ran

Matthew McConaughey is considering running for Governor of Texas.  He is a Texan.  It's not clear what party his a member of.

The Texas gubernatorial race, like Wyoming's, is up next year.  He'd be running against the incumbent, Greg Abbott.

And why the heck not?  Abbott and McConaughey are both native Texans.  Abbott is a lawyer, and nobody like lawyers, and McConaughey is an actor who exudes authenticity.  Who knows if he's authentic or not, after all he's an actor, but the same could have been said about Reagan when he started off in politics.

And McConaughey is a good decade younger than Abbott, and therefore out of the Baby Boom generation.  He's married, moreover, to a hot Brazilian model who is a Latina Catholic, where as McConaughey is an Evangelical Christian, and they have three children, so he probably fits the rank and file younger Texan profile somewhat.

Grasping Statistics 

Regarding races, and this one the Wyoming House Race, a letter in the editor last weekend demonstrated a grasp of statistics beyond that commonly understood which those reporting on the alleged discontent with Liz Cheney should consider.

Indeed, as I've already noted, letters to the editor seems to show that more people support Cheney, by a huge margin, than oppose her. What the letter writer noted is that around 40% of Republicans are reported being really miffed at Cheney for her vote to impeach Donald Trump. That might be right, but the letter writer also noted that only about 1/3d of eligible voters casted votes.

I thought that must be wrong, but in actuality, it's worse than that.  About 50% of those eligible to vote registered to do so, and of those, only 1/3s showed up to vote.  That's horrifically bad.  But what that also means is that the cry that "Wyomingites" are mad at Cheney is probably pretty far off the mark.  That "40%" actually reflects less than 1/6th of the state's eligible voters.  When other factors are considered, Cheney probably has lost next to none of her support.

What that also means is this.  The hard right of the GOP is incredibly vulnerable to being turned out if average Republicans show up at the polls in 2022.  No wonder that the current party is trying to restrict voting.  The more people that actually vote, the less chance that the hard right keeps on keeping on.

It also means that the Democrats in the state have a lot more in the way of opportunity than the common evidence might suggest.  Wyoming is a "Republican state", but only half of Wyomingites are registering to vote which actually means that, as far as we can tell, less than half of Wyomingites are actually declared Republicans. That disinterested and disaffected remaining 50% is almost certainly outside of the diehard GOP camp.  They're not all Democrats, but probably a lot of them would have Democratic sympathies.

Finally, if the electorate gets really owly or just motivated, Cheney could swamp the hard right candidates next year.  It just depends on people showing up.

Shopify and CO2

Shopify has contracted with Carbon Engineering in Canada to contract for the latter's direct CO2 from the air removal process.

I've long wondered about this and strongly suspected it will become a viable technology.  Lots of places have been working on it and I've long thought it a viable technological pursuit.  Carbon Engineering is running a plant in Canada that does this right now, and Spotify may be pointing the way to the future on this.  But entering into a contract with Carbon Engineering, what Spotify is doing is contracting to remove its carbon footprint through directly removing the equivalency of what they re putting into the atmosphere.

As this technology develops, it will become more viable.  And at some point that's going to work its way into public policy as well as private effort.  Indeed, that day seems to have arrived.

This is, by the way, one of those industries Wyoming should look at.  So far the state's solutions to the rapid decline of the coal industry and the feared decline of the petroleum industry has been to try to require the operators of coal fired refineries to keep them in operation no matter what, and to invest in clean coal technology that has so far failed to yield results.  This technology is yielding results.  It'd make more sense to invest in this to offset the state's carbon footprint than to try to keep power plants generation that their operators wish to close.

Why not nuclear?

I have a separate post I'm doing on this, but with the Wyoming legislature working on bills to force coal fired plants to keep on keeping on, why isn't any thought given to the state building nuclear power plants?

I know, this will be "socialism", but it isn't exactly free market to force power companies to keep power plants into operation that they'd otherwise retire.

Wyoming once had a really viable uranium mining industry.  There are three still in operation.  There could be more.

Again, more on that coming up.

The House Judiciary Committee and Pop Tarts

Donny Osmond. . . um Matt Gaetz.  Superficial Gadfly.

Two Republican House Judiciary Affairs Committee members, Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordon, want the committee to hold hearings on Brittney Spears conservatorship.

Jim Jordon, right before he lost his sports coat, or started trying to look like the coach in The White Shadow. . . it isn't clear.

Wyomingites will recall Gaetz as the Donny Osmond second who came to the state to protest against Liz Cheney.  Cheney's record was actually more pro Trump that Floridian gadfly Gaetz up until she voted to impeach Trump for the January 6 insurrection.  Jim Jordon was the former coach who appeared consistently in hearings sans jacket, as if he was on the floor of an overheated basketball court.

This is really stupid.  It's been pointed out by Spears' father that she can file a motion to remove him as conservator or to terminate the conservatorship, but hasn't.  And no matter what the virtues of Spears may be, the fact of the matter that the national legislature wasting time on a state issue of this type is really absurd.

Supporters of Gaetz and Jordon, and they do have them, really ought to consider this. When Wyoming gets Gaetz flying in here to lambast Cheney, and then he next goes back to D.C. and declares that the former teen chanteuse's conservatorship is a matter of national importance, the state ought to brand him with the mark of superficiality.

How did Florida elect that guy?

Time Travelers

A group of U.S. Senators, a bipartisan group no less, has introduced a bill to make daylight savings time permanent.

Here's an idea. . . why not just ban daylight savings time and go back to the idea that time is connected to nature?

Superficiality tour de force

Æthelstan, King of the Anglo Saxons from 924 to 927, and King of the English from 927 to 939, the first English monarch to claim that broad of sovereignty and is widely regarded as the first King of England.  He never married and he had no children.  He's probably displeased over the current silliness in his kingdom.

There appears to be a serious flap involving the British Royal Family that stems from Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan's interview with Oprah.

If nothing else reveals the complete superficiality of the English speaking world at the moment, this certainly does.

I wonder to what degree that absurd fascination with the British Royal Family is an American deal.  I know that it happens in the UK too, but the American fascination is freakin' bizarre.  They aren't our Royal Family and they haven't been since we gave the King the middle finger salute in 1776.  Indeed, when we put the government together a few years later, we turned our back on all monarchs, a trend that we seemingly don't get much credit for launching as we didn't do what the French did and cut the head off of our former monarch. But then, he was right  there for the French. King George III was a long ways away.

Cutting off your king's head is a line of demarcation that, even if you bring kings back later, your society never gets over, so by and large the French don't get all atwitter wondering what the Bourbons are up to, and they're still around.  Some Bourbons would like the French to be fascinated with them but the French pretty much yawn and ignore them.  Probably more Reddit Rubes who are Americans or other English speakers care what is going on with the Bourbons than the French do.  Indeed, of all the English speaking peoples we seem to have the greatest fascination with the English monarchy.  You don't see Canadians or Australians lining up to interview Prince Harry.

Apparently we sure care what the Windsor's are up to for some reason, although I have no idea what it is.

We also care what Oprah has to say even though she's a superficial pop tartian.  Just having an opinion on everything and being able to write about it doesn't mean that your opinion is worth listening to or it has value.  Nonetheless, Oprah has come to virtually define the American Civil Religion in some ways.  You know. . all religions are valid . . you can get money just by thinking about it, and that sort of stuff.  

I didn't listen to interview of the Harry and Meghan so I'm ill equipped to comment on it.  I was amused, however, by the recent entry on James Proclaims, linked in on the right as a blog we follow, as he didn't either but still commented.  Apparently the ex pat royals have accused the Royal Family of being racist and went after the English press.

The English press is nasty, but it has been for some time. That's nothing new.  Being a Royal puts you in the crosshairs of the British press. That's just the way that is.  Indeed, even before the English press was that, the English themselves delighted on dissing the Royals, who have traditionally given people plenty of stuff to diss them on. Prince Harry surely knew that all along.  If Duchess Meghan didn't, well she should have.

On racism and the Royal Family, I don't know if individual members of the family harbor racist ideas but  would note that the King and Prince Consort are crowding 100 years old.  People will instantly say "that shouldn't matter" but frankly when somebody is approaching the centennial mark you have to cut them some slack if for no other reasons you can't expect people on death's door to be changing whatever attitude they've held for 10% of a millennium.  Both the Queen and the Prince Consort were born into an era when people still pretended that the British Empire mattered, even though it was fading.  Fading thought it was, however, all sorts of people all over the globe still took the view that the English had the right to rule all sorts of other people as they were English.  And at that time, and indeed up until fairly recently, nobility took all the rules pertaining to marriage, or should we say intermarriage, very seriously, which would also be bound to give you an odd view of the world.  People who were expected to marry only their cousins, the prime consideration in their marital choices, and one of the primary reasons for the social and physical ills that they suffer, on the basis that their interrelated blood lines were "special", can't be expected to shed themselves of some retained concept of that now that it isn't, particularly as the fact that it now isn't demonstrates how weird monarchy really is in the first place.

That's all faded but, if anything, the European Royals have all proven themselves to be amazingly adaptable.  Frequently the titular heads of state churches, they switch religions quickly for marital convenience and have long intermarried in spite of national allegiance.  If anything, the oddity of the most recently Royal marriages is that they're tending to go British, with Markle being an exception.  The Prince Consort, Prince Phillip, is from the deposed Greek royal family and grew up in the Greek Orthodox Church before becoming an Anglican for marital purposes, something that would make very little sense for anyone who took Orthodoxy seriously.  One of the Queen's great grandfathers was an Austrian.  This all fits into the common pattern of royals in which a Lutheran princess ends up the Russian Orthodox Czarina.  You get the picture.  For a class of people that Monarchist hold stand for the traditions of their countries, Royals really don't..  They just adopt them.  In recent years that's meant adopting the concept that average folks can be royals too, and that's been the pattern everywhere from England to Japan, but that's a fairly recent concept.  Earlier, they could abandon countries and faiths, but abandoning the royal bloodlines was an anathema.  Now it isn't.

That's actually return to monarchical origin, in which the King was kin and just head of the family, but expecting that to be picked up overnight by centenarians is asking for a lot, particularly when at least the Queen is next to uneducated.

And the whiny approach of Harry is really a bit much.  Harry has always been a whiner, seemingly, although he seemed to have found a home in the British Army.  Meghan, however, made him a whiner again and he gave up at least one of his more many pursuits, although its one engaged in by women as well, that being hunting.  That sort of behavior used to be defined by a crude term I'd hear a lot when younger which was something not admired at all when men were still allowed to be that in common culture but which is now something of an anathema itself.

Biological Attack

USS Connecticut

The USS Connecticut, an American submarine, has a bed bug infestation. 

That's gross.

It's also a serious problem.  Bug infestations have always been a problem that submariners  have tried to guard against.  Once you got one rolling, it'd be hard to address it.

A more serious infestation problem was recently gamed by the Navy.

The U.S. Navy recently ran a war game in which the US is the subject of a surprise Chinese military biological strike on Naval and air installations.  In the game, the U.S. rapidly lost and the Red Chinese invaded Taiwan.

The American public may not be paying that much attention to it, but the Department of the Navy is seriously concerned that the U.S. is going to get attacked by China.  Indeed, in historical terms, the Navy is essentially where it was at in the 1920s and 1930s when it was studying an oncoming war with Japan that it was convinced was coming.  

In that case it was right, and there's real reason to be concerned that its right again.

China isn't analogous so much to Imperial Japan of the 1930s as it is to Imperial Germany of the 1890s-1910s, or even the 1930s-1940s, and that's the problem.  Its a massive country with resources and its occupying other cultures against their will.  It's flexing its muscles and in the same way that Germans in the first half of the 20th Century dreamed of an Anschluss of the German speaking peoples, and in particular Austria, China dreams of the same with all the  Chinese speaking peoples.  It's pretty much crushed the special status that Hong Kong once had and it seems to be seriously aiming to drag Taiwan back into Peking governance.  It's been building a navy.

Our Navy is gaming the future war.  The Marine Corps under President Trump determined to adopt a plan to re invent itself, the same way it did after World War One with Japan in mind, with China now in mind, and that's an extremely serious development.  The Army doesn't seem focused on it, but it would have no real reason to be until that time came. The Air Force has quietly been building some forces with China as an anticipated enemy.

Something to be concerned about.

The Eyes Of Texas. . .

 are upon you, which may be creepy, but it isn't racist.  Read the report here.

Eyes Of Texas Report

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part 6. Cruz goes to Mexico and I wonder why I should care, Electrical infrastructure, Not renaming National Monuments, McConnell v. Trump, Idle princes, Slammin' Spammy

Cruz vacation plans and why should I care?

News reports were having it that Senator Ted Cruz went to Mexico on vacation during the Texas cold snap.

So what?

Cruz returned, indicating at the time that he had gone down only to facilitate the trip for his daughters, but the vigilant press reported that in fact he'd planned to stay originally and that this trip was pre booked prior to the emergency brought about by the weather.

Let me be frank.  I don't like Ted Cruz as a politician.  When he ran in 2016 he came through this state asserting that he wanted to transfer the Federal lands to the state, which would be a disaster for Wyoming and which indicates that he was taking advice from somebody on the far right wing edge of the GOP.  I figure that you don't get bad advice like that, which the overwhelming majority of Wyomingites oppose, unless that's the company you keep.  That view was cemented by his self serving challenge of the election results on January 6 and his prior bizarre offer to argue Trump's case in front of the United States Supreme Court as if he's some sort of legendary jurist.  

But he's entitled to a vacation as much as anyone else.

Heck, for that matter, under the conditions Texas has been in the past week, why wouldn't somebody want to go to Cancun?

Cruz really can't do anything about the power emergency in Texas.  Texas can, but it can't overnight.  Part of what Texas could do is to cease the 1930s vintage system in which Texas is its own power grid.  There are not doubt technical things beyond that, but that would be a good start.  But Ted Cruz can't do that.

Ted Cruz did go to President Biden, as did the Governor of Texas, and ask for the Lone Star State, whose AG sued over the Biden election just a few weeks ago, to certify Texas as a disaster area, which Biden did. That's about all he could do.  And he did that. Sitting around freezing in Texas isn't going to accomplish a lot more, no matter what critics like Robert Reich think.

What this probably confirms is that Cruz pushed his political future off the rails back in January.  That this was going to obviously occur isn't news, but its' starting already, just as the 2022 election is.  In a world in which Mitch McConnell is struggling to regain control over the party and people like Cruz were attempting to co-opt it, just like a roll of the dice in an Avalon Hill game, nobody can game for the weather.

But I don't want to read about where Ted Cruz goes on vacation for the next four years, and frankly, why wouldn't he have gone to Cancun? Get a grip.

Um. . . he's a Republican

Donald Trump Jr. criticized the "Democratic Governor of Texas" over that state's response to the weather emergency.

Problem is, he's a Republican.

This is similar, we'd note, to Ted Cruz last year criticizing the "green" power infrastructure of California.  Yes, that Governor, who is in major political trouble right now, is a Democrat, but you ought not to throw rocks at glass houses. . . 

At least Cruz, when this was point out, admitted he had no response to it.

The Zeitgeist is not forgiving.

Infrastructure

It might be worth noting, when this rubble all falls to the ground post cold snap, that the US has an infrastructure problem.  In the 2016 election everyone promised to fix it.  Clearly, it hasn't been fixed.

Old stuff needs to be repaired.  For a nation where people seem to be buying new stuff as its new constantly, that fact seems to escape us.  Americans buy new houses not because they really need a new one, but because its new.  People replace appliances as there are new ones.  Lots of modern stuff flatly can't be fixed anymore as nobody fixed it anyway so its not built to be fixed.  Had a television repaired recently?  Of course you haven't.

So the concept of maintenance seems to have completely escaped us.

For a nation that likes new so much, the fact that we aren't building new high tech infrastructure or even really looking at it is bizarre.  Yes, we're bringing new power generation technologies on line, and we're replacing old ones, whether people like it or not, but we haven't really rethought it.

In at least my view, power grids are like computers.  Back in the day, places that had computers, which were few, had giant banks of them. Then the towers came. Then the laptops.  There's now more computer muscle power in your phone than there was on board any of the Apollo craft.

What this may mean is that they day has arrived for smaller, not larger, electric power grids, but ones that are also interconnected, like the Internet.  

No Changing The Name

Devil's Tower, for at least the time being.

Cynthia Lummis has introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate that would preclude the government from changing the name of Devil's Tower National Monument.  Senator Barrasso has signed up for it.

Lummis was last in the news largescale when she followed Ted Cruz into voting against the Pennsylvania vote on the very day of the January 6 insurrection. She's been hailed by Trump supporters locally just as Cheney has seemingly been condemned, although letters to the paper suggest that at least the rank and file who are willing to pick up a pen support Cheney fairly overwhelmingly.  This is going to be an issue in the 2022 election for Cheney, and given the chatter background, she's in good shape.

Lummis isn't as far as having any influence on anything right now.  Paybacks, as the old phrase goes, are a bitch, and as a freshman Senator in the first place she has no pull on anything without somebody giving her some. She's not on the right side of Mitch McConnell right now, as he is clearly a Trump enemy and she's welded to Trump given her tactical decision to abandon her earlier expressed disdain for him and now praise him.  We don't know what's going on in the background, but chances are strong she's on the "we'll get back to you on that" list in regards to the GOP in the Senate right now, and on the "Cynthia who from where?" list as far as the Democrats are concerned.

The press has openly speculated about "what now" in terms of Wyoming's political influence in the Senate. The answer is pretty obviously none whatsoever.  This bill is extremely unlikely to go anywhere for that reason right now, but it will serve to keep her name in the press on an issue where most Wyomingites will agree with her.

As for the name, there's real confusion on how it came about.  It seems to have first been suggested by the Army following Custer's survey of the Black Hills, which it is located in.  It seems that the translation given may have been incorrect, however, as various native groups do not seem to have called it that. The Lakota called it Bear Lodge, and in 2014 they petitioned that the batholith and nearby community be renamed that. The Cheyenne also used a name associating the feature with bears.  Other native names associated it with eagles and noted its resemblance to a buffalo horn.

There is precedence for returning such topographic features to their native names, with Mount McKinley being the prime example.  Nobody calls the tallest mountain in North America that any more, and everyone knows it now by Denali, its original and restored native name.  As a Wyoming native, I don't think I'd object to the feature being restored to a native name, as its pretty clear that the present name was due to a translation error in the first place.  I.e., the original intent was to translate, into English, the native name, but the translator got it wrong.

No matter, this is one of those issues that's tailor made to create a flap.  Lots of people are going to get their backs arched up on it, and a lot of those people will be people who live here now, but actually aren't from here originally had have low connection with the state and its geographic and topological features.

Detestation

Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, President Trump, and Vice President Pence.  Not a single one of these guys, other than Trump, likes Trump anymore, and probably only Pence ever did.

Mitch McConnell reportedly detests Donald Trump and always has.

Politics is full of marriages of convenience.  While it may not be a really good example, Admiral Canaris was reportedly plotting against the Nazis the entire time he was very ably serving them, for example.  Stalin and Bukharin had been buddies, but for a lot of the latter's period before his fall, he was really a dedicated opponent, even though from the outside world you'd never have known it.  Eisenhower was a very able assistant to MacArthur when MacArthur was chief of staff, but they really didn't like each other.

McConnell is a master tactician, and he put up with Trump as he could use him to advance the causes he really cared about.  He used Trump, and Trump needed him. The question is where this all is at now.  McConnell is trying to put things back in order in the GOP, which would restore a conservative alliance between the various spectrums of conservatism.  Trump doesn't seem interested in a conservative GOP without Trump as the central figure in it.

Betting against McConnell would be a mistake.

Prince Harry chooses not to resume royal duties

I just wish he'd go home.

I'm not super keen on the Royal Family anyhow, although in recent years the Queen has risen considerably in my scale of approval.  Prince Harry, when he was still somewhat of a guy, was okay, but since he married Meghan Markle, the present Duchess of Sussex, he's become a real wimp. 

I may be wrong, but I thought that Meghan had to renounce her American citizenship when she entered the Royal family. So why are they here?  They aren't citizens and they hold not necessary skills that the U.S. can't fill on its own.

This is one more example of how U.S. immigration laws are really whacked.  There are probably engineers in Syria who aren't working as they're on the wrong side of the regime we could really use, and instead of them being here, we're housing a soy boy prince and his whiney bride.

Stupid Spam

"Kamala's Backdoor".  

I started getting that one almost as soon as the new administration came in.

I really wonder who bites on all of this stuff.  For a long time there was one I'd get almost daily about a secret that President Trump was revealing even though the Pope wanted him to keep it a secret. Really?  

By the way, Hormel sponsored a B-25 during World War Two that was named "Slammin' Spammy".  It's nose art featured a M1917 helmet wearing pig throwing a bomb.  Hormel is, of course, the processor of the real SPAM, the canned chopped ham.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part 5. Scrabble

Scrabble

Brittney Spears, now a long way from being a child being exploited for her appearance, and still subject to a guardianship run by her father, reports that sometimes its fun to make words up when playing Scrabble.

Spears has been the subject of a documentary about her plight recently, although she apparently isn't participating in it herself.  She's also the subject of a popular "Free Brittney" movement.

Spears is a study in pathos, having been really basically exploited for her appearance as a near child and then living in the wake of her prior fame.

Texan Exceptualism

Texas has its own power grid.

That's right. It's own grid.

Most of the Western United States is in one grid, and the Eastern half in another, but Texas has its own.  It goes by the name ERCOT.

This dates back to the 1930s when Texas power companies sought to evade interstate regulation.  Texas was big enough that power companies in Texas could simply operate a grid within it, although in fairness some of Texas is served by neighboring systems.  In 1970 this system became formalized.

The system has been getting a lot of attention recently due to power failures in Texas.  Last year Texas Senator Ted Cruz criticized California's policy on renewable energy but now Texas is having a major problem of its own.  People were quick to focus on the reliance in Texas on renewables, but it turns out that while there were truly failures, failures in the traditional energy sector were at a higher rate.  Wind turbines did ice up and fail to work, but then there were also failures associated with coal and nuclear power sources.

This raises a lot of questions, probably all of which will suggest areas where blame should be focused and not all of which will be correct.  One question which may come up is the desirability of having its own system in 2021.  The system also had problems in 2011, at which time it imported some power sources from Mexico, so there have been problems before.

Of course, this was an extraordinary storm, and that may mean that anything that occurred is really a bad example.  Texas is prepared for heat waves, but not freeze outs.

As posted here the other day, while the U.S. has gone to very large grids, the new energy systems might argue for small localized ones, or at least the incorporation of smaller ones into larger systems.

Laramie County Censures Cheney

And it, like the rest of the Wyoming GOP, better hope that it doesn't look foolish in the eyes of history.

Congress appears set to do a 9/11 style commission on the insurrection.  It's clear that it'll show at least as much as has already been shown, which means that the GOP will of course be free to pretend it doesn't mean anything and that it isn't happening.

By the time this is put up it will be probable that the GOP has lost 200,000 members in those state, far from all, where that can be tracked. Assuming the trend exists elsewhere, it's likely more than 300,000.  For those states where the tally has been close, this is really bad for the GOP in more ways than one.  Mitch McConnell has his eyes focused on 2022, but Trump has his focused on punishing those who opposed him. One of the sets of people punished this go around were Republicans in Georgia, resulting in the loss of their Senate seats.

If the riff in the GOP isn't healed, it may indeed turn out to be "Trump's Party" in 2022 and 2024. But that party will be smaller and therefore that development would be a gift to the Democrats. By leaning increasingly into Trump as the permanent figurehead, rather than emphasizing their issues, the Trump wing of the party is risking dragging it into irrelevance.

On censures, what does that really mean anyway?  So far Cheney has given the "M'eh" reaction and Ben Sasse treated the threat of one from Nebraska's GOP as if they were a bunch of toddlers having a tantrum.  And after all, it really doesn't do anything to the censured person.

Australia blacksout itself.

The Australian parliament passed a bill to make Google and Facebook pay for Australian journalism on its site, resulting in Facebook just blocking the stories, a move which caused some Australian government communications to cease.

Australia called Facebook's move arrogant, but the question may be levied where the arrogance was, or at least the hubris.

August 3, 1920. A mostly grim Tuesday.

The headlines were fully correct.  The Red Army was advancing on Warsaw and a Soviet victory appeared inevitable.

In Center Texas, a mob broke into the jail and lynched 16 year old Lige Daniels who had been in the jail for suspicion of murder since July 29.  The grisly image of his lynching was turned into a postcard.

He was totally forgotten until 1999 when his image appeared on the cover of the book Without Sanctuary which was written by an antique dealer who had collected such images that had seen such use.

On the topic of lynching, this map from a report to Congress shows the "Red Record of Lynching" in this time frame.

Probably some of this is surprising, but in other ways it isn't.  If states show up where lynchings are a surprise, as in the 34 for Wyoming, keep in mind that a lynching is an extrajudicial murder and actually not a racist hanging.  Many, and indeed in the South undoubtedly most, were racist murders, and some of those, as we've recently seen, extended outside of the South. But they'd also include the murders of others by any means that were extrajudicial in nature.

President Wilson's physician, Admiral Cary Travers Grayson, went on faction, the President now being deemed recovered from his stroke.

Admiral Grayson

The news broke that Mildred Harris of Cheyenne, originally, had sued Charlie Chaplin for divorce.

Given her tender years at the time of their marriage, if the whole affair had occurred today it would have been part of the Me Too set of stories.

Enrico Caruso acted a caricature artist at a benefit fair.

July 31, 1920. Sojourns

Bearpaw Mountains, Montana.  July 31, 1920.  Viewing scenes like this before the widespread introduction of the automobile was a fairly involved endeavor.  After the automobile. . . not so much.

The hottest month of the year was coming on, and people were getting out in automobiles, still a new innovation in 1920.

And accordingly still being celebrated on the cover of magazines.

In a hot region of the United States, the U.S. border with Mexico, Laredo, Nuevo Laredo and Ft. McIntosh found themselves being photographed.

Cities of Laredo Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. July 31, 1920.

Fort McIntosh, Texas, 1920.  This post dated to 1849 and was named after a U.S. Army officer of the Mexican War.  It's now part of the Laredo Community College.

At the same time it looked like the Mexican conflict in Lower California was cooling down.

Worried about the male casualty rate of the Great War, France banned every type of contraceptive.  Part of that concern was founded in the fact that France's pre war birth rate was at 2.5 children per woman, which is statistical replacement, not growth. France had slipped below replacement during the war, and it never returned to it, pointing out something that I discussed in another post here earlier this past week.

Communism continued its bloody rise as lands went over to it and others hoped to take lands into it.  Byelorussia saw the formation of a local Communist Party on this day following the recent occupation of Minsk by the Red Army. The Communist Party remains strong there to this day.  In the UK, the Communist Party of Great Britain was formed.  It reached its high water mark in 1946 with 60,000 members, but fell so low that it disbanded in 1991 following the fall of the Soviet Union.

Blog Mirror: 2020 Rural Land Value Trends Report

2020 Rural Land Value Trends Report

June 9, 1920. In Memorium.

Fort Worth, Texas.  June 9, 1920.

Fort Worth was the subject of wide lenses on this day in 1920.

I've been to Fort Wort and this looks sort of familiar today, but I'm not familiar enough to really comment on it.  Is anyone who stops in here familiar with the town?

War memorials Council appointed by the Secty. of War as an advisory group for consultation with the War Dept. in matters respecting the deposition of overseas dead.

In the US the council appointed by the Secretary of War dealing with overseas war dead had their photograph taken.  In the UK, on the same day, the Imperial War Museum opened.  It is one of the greatest military museums in the world.

May 11, 1920. Necessity, Long rides, and Representatives.

Necessity, Texas.  May 11, 1920.

Sailor Tony Pizzo passing through Washington on a Coast to Coast bicycle run handcuffed to his machine. The Handcuffs were sealed by Mayor Hylan in New York April 24th and were not to be opened until his return to that city.

 Prince Kalanianaole, Hawaii's delegate to Congress.  May 11, 1920. 

April 25, 1920. Settlements that didn't settle.

Attendees at the San Remo Conference on this date in 1920.  Matsui, Lloyd George, Curzon, Berthelot, Millerand, Scialoja and Nitti.

This was the last day of the San Remo Conference in which the victors of the Great War, absent the United States, met to determine the fate of various territories left in their hands or at least believed to be left in their hands.  On this day, the issued the San Remo Resoution, which stated,

It was agreed –

(a) To accept the terms of the Mandates Article as given below with reference to Palestine, on the understanding that there was inserted in the proces-verbal an undertaking by the Mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine; this undertaking not to refer to the question of the religious protectorate of France, which had been settled earlier in the previous afternoon by the undertaking given by the French Government that they recognized this protectorate as being at an end.

(b) that the terms of the Mandates Article should be as follows:

The High Contracting Parties agree that Syria and Mesopotamia shall, in accordance with the fourth paragraph of Article 22, Part I (Covenant of the League of Nations), be provisionally recognized as independent States, subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The boundaries of the said States will be determined, and the selection of the Mandatories made, by the Principal Allied Powers.

The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust, by application of the provisions of Article 22, the administration of Palestine, within such boundaries as may be determined by the Principal Allied Powers, to a Mandatory, to be selected by the said Powers. The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

La Puissance mandataire s’engage a nommer dans le plus bref delai une Commission speciale pour etudier toute question et toute reclamation concernant les differentes communautes religieuses et en etablir le reglement. Il sera tenu compte dans la composition de cette Commission des interets religieux en jeu. Le President de la Commission sera nomme par le Conseil de la Societe des Nations.

The terms of the mandates in respect of the above territories will be formulated by the Principal Allied Powers and submitted to the Council of the League of Nations for approval.

Turkey hereby undertakes, in accordance with the provisions of Article [132 of the Treaty of Sevres] to accept any decisions which may be taken in this connection.

(c) Les mandataires choisis par les principales Puissances allies sont: la France pour la Syrie, et la Grand Bretagne pour la Mesopotamie, et la Palestine.

In reference to the above decision the Supreme Council took note of the following reservation of the Italian Delegation:

La Delegation Italienne en consideration des grands interets economiques que l’Italie en tant que puissance exclusivement mediterraneenne possede en Asie Mineure, reserve son approbation a la presente resolution, jusqu’au reglement des interets italiens en Turquie d’Asia.

As noted, above, the Italian delegation reserved its assent given that the conference hadn't reached a resolution on its interests in Asia Minor.

The results of the conference were momentous and continue to play out today  The British took Palestine as a mandate and the French Syria.  The borders of these mandates were not determined.  The Turkish delegation purported to accept the decisions made at the conference.  The conference also, although not reflected in this resolution, accepted the independence of Armenia and set the monetary amount of annual German reparation payments.

While the US was not there, it continued to exhibit an influence, as the conference also accepted Wilson's proposal on Fiume, even if the Italians really didn't.

As the Cheyenne paper made plain, scandals that are more commonly associated with later eras in fact occurred in earlier ones. And Texas said no to Carranza.

In just a few short months the French would sustain a military defeat against insurgent Syrians and the British would accordingly rush to draw the borders of Transjordan, which is Jordan today, out of concern that the rebellion would spill into territory it was administering. That would set the borders for Palestine.  An insurgency already underway in Turkey would cause the decisions of any Turkish delegation to be questionable, but it did not act in any fashion to attempt to assert any claim to Mesopotamia (Iraq), or its former colonies to the south.  It would not accept, however, the independence of Armenia, which the conference had separately recognized, or the Greek role in Anatolia, which had been assured by the conference.  And Carranza's bid to control who became his successor was turning disastrous for him.

World War One's results were playing out in a different fashion at the Battle of Koziatyn, Ukraine in which a Polish cavalry division penetrated deep behind the Soviet lines.  Over two days it would envelop Soviet forces and destroy two Red Army divisions.

Elsewhere movies with rural settings were being released, both dramatic and comedic.

April 18, 1920. Dallas skyline.

Dallas Texas, April 18, 1920.

February 4, 1920. Pershing reviews the troops.

General Pershing reviewing troops at Ft. Sam Houston, Tex., Feb. 4, 1920.

November 22, 1919. Carlisle Missing, Labor having a party, Petroleum and its costs.

Those following the posts here recently (fewer in number now that the Great War and the drama associated with it are over, somewhat), have been reading about the quixotic flight of Wyoming train robber, Bill Carlisle and may be disappointed to not find him here again.  Well, the pursuit having fizzled, he was off the front page.  He was out there, hiding, or something, but posses headed for the Hole in the Wall or expecting another train robbery were disappointed, and therefore the local newspaper's readers were as well.  Instead, they read about the coal strike and increased tension with Mexico.

First national convention of the Labor Party, Chicago Ill.  November 22, 1919

In Chicago a new political party was meeting, the Labor Party of the United States. This back when third parties still had a chance of success.

This party wouldn't have much, as such.  It merged with another party in 1921 to become the Farmer Labor Party.  That party lasted until 1936 when a further merger created the Federated Farmer Labor Party, which became the Minnesota Farmer Labor Party at that time.  It lasted until 1944.

The populist party was a left wing populist social democratic party.  Three of its members occupied the Minnesota state house as governor from 1931 until 1939, showing it to be successful.  It also sent Congressmen to Washington every year from 1918 until 1942, save for one year.  One year it sent five Congressman back east.  Four Minnesota Senators were also members of the party or associated with it.  In 1944 it reorganized and became the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party which is affiliated with the Democratic Party, meaning that its relevance is minimal in real terms.  Democrats in Minnesotal are part of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party whether they know it or not, meaning that current Presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar is a member of it.

"Block 818 from the west".  November 22, 1919.

Down in Texas more panoramic photos of big oil fields were being photographed.  

Elsewhere, the Gasoline Alley bunch was meeting and pondering the costs of transportation.

Thanksgiving Day, then as now, was coming right up.  On this Saturday The Literary Digest anticipated the holiday on its cover with a Rockwell illustration.  Thanksgiving day itself in 1919 was on November 27.

Scenes from September 20, 1919.

Veterans, Chilton, Wisconsin, Sept. 20, 1919

Potomac Boat Club, September 20, 1919.

Burk-northwest extension, September 20, 1919.