Saturday, December 30, 1916. Grigori Rasputin Murdered.

Russian mystic and controversial friend of the Imperial household, Grigori Rasputin, murdered.

Rasputin was such a controversial figure during his lifetime, and lived in a land that remains so mysterious to outsiders today, that almost every aspect of his life is shrouded in myth or even outright error. To start with, contrary to what is widely assumed, he was not a monk nor did he hold any sort of office of any kind within the Russian Orthodox Church.

Rather, he was a wondering Russian Orthodox mystic, a position in Russian society that was recognized at the time.  His exact religious beliefs are disputed and therefore the degree to which he held orthodox beliefs is not really clear.

He became a controversial figure due to his seeming influence on the Emperor and Empress, who remained true monarchs at the time, and therefore his influence was beyond what a person might otherwise presume.  Much of this was due to his ability to calm or influence bleeding episodes on the part of the Crown Prince who was a hemophiliac.  Ultimately concerns over his influence lead to his being assassinated although even the details regarding his death are murky.

He was 47 years old at the time of his death.

Friday Farming: The Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916

Recently I've been posting the centennial of certain events as they occur.  Yesterday one such landmark passed by, that being the centennial of President Wilson signing into law the Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916.  I noted that event here:

Today In Wyoming's History: December 29, 1916. Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 becomes law.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 29:

 

Abandoned post Wold War One Stock Raising Homestead Act homestead.

1916  The Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 becomes law.  It allowed for 640 acres for ranching purposes, but severed the surface ownership from the mineral ownership, which remained in the hands of the United States.

The Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 recognized the reality of  Western homesteading which was that smaller parcels of property were not sufficient for Western agricultural conditions.  It was not the only such homestead act, however, and other acts likewise provided larger parcels than the original act, whose anniversary is rapidly coming up.  The act also recognized that homesteading not only remained popular, but the 1916 act came in the decade that would see the greatest number of  homesteads filed nationally.

Perhaps most significant, in some ways, was that the 1916 act also recognized the split estate, which showed that the United States was interested in being the mineral interest owner henceforth, a change from prior policies.  1916 was also a boom year in oil and gas production, due to World War One, and the US was effectively keeping an interest in that production.  The split estate remains a major feature of western  mineral law today.

I've noted the Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 before, but having noted it in series, in association with the horrific events of World War One, the onset of Prohibition, the reelection of President Wilson and the Punitive Expedition has put this into focus.  This change in the homestead laws, allowing stockmen to claim a square mile, 640 acres, rather than a mere 40 acres.

40 acres had been the Eastern standard for a yeoman farmer, but in the west agriculture was based on animal husbandry, not farming, and a lot more than 40 acres was necessary.  Indeed the unrealistic 40 acre size of homesteads had contributed to the development of two competing systems that ultimately attempted, unsuccessfully, to sort itself out violently in the Johnson County War.  The Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 recognized this unreality and tried to make homesteading entries a bit more realistic in size, although they still were about half the size that they really needed to be in order to be realistic.  Still, at that size entrants could more realistically adjust.  It should be noted that a prior attempt, the Desert Lands Act, had been tried in 1877, so this wasn't the first effort at fixing the unrealistic size of the original Homestead Act.

In this sense the Stock Raising Homestead Act was a necessary revision.  In other ways, however, it was a bit late.  It came on the cusp of a massive, World War One inspired, boom in homesteading, but most of the homesteads would fail. That had always been the case, but the peak of homesteading of this era would have a fairly spectacular fall in the end. For the most part, at least in the Rocky Mountain West, that failure was cushioned by assistance from local banks and also from neighboring ranches of more substantial size acquiring the smaller units through purchase.  In a few instances, such as in the Thunder Basin, the Federal Government would come in to purchase back the smaller units that came in too late.

To some extent the Stock Raising Homestead Act reflected the end of an era, although that was not obvious at the time.  It would really only remain in effect for sixteen years, at which time further entrance was withdrawn.  It has had a lasting impact, however, in that it established the concept of a spit estate with a reservation in favor of the Federal Government, a feature of Western lands ever since.

The Cheyenne State Leader for December 30, 1916: Discussions breaking down.

In spite of an accord having been signed last week, this week it looked like the agreement with Mexico might be going nowhere.

HMS Resolution commissioned

The HMS Resolution was commissioned on this date in 1916.  She would serve through both World Wars and survived being torpedoed during the Second World War.

Reaping what she sowed.

Hmmmm

Ariana Grande has a Problem with our culture's reductive view of women, and she's not going to be silent about it anymore.

Or so a news story on the net reported.

Later the net was reporting that she was reacting to pushback she was receiving from her comments.

Well, I'm sorry, but people like Ariana Grande are part of the Problem.  I agree that our culture has a reductive view of women. Pop Tarts who appear in videos displaying their butts in spandex and singing about sex contribute to that reductive view.  Indeed, Ariana usually has her wares on display so she's effectively prostituting her image for her career, which also contributes to that.  And if she's pushing back, she needs to wake up on that.  She's pushed herself in everyone's face already and she's pushing a view of the relationship between men and women, musically, that's deeply flawed.

Here's how this apparently came about.

Grande is dating somebody, I don't know who because I don't know who most of these people are.  Some fan of that guys commented in a lewd manner about what we was presumably doing to the aforementioned Grande.

Yes, that's inexcusable and indeed it is an objectification.

However, Grande, who has a decent voice, has made a career in part out of dressing like a tramp.  That objectified herself.

And most recently she released a song, along with another female artist whose wares on are display, all about illicit sex with a male of poor reputation.  Indeed, the gist of the story is that this illicit activity has gone so far its impaired her walk. 

Well then, if this is a song released to the general public for its consumption the general public has a right to feel that Grande endorses this sort of activity.  Complaints at this point about what a male friend is presumed to be doing to her are quite misplaced.  It can't be said that she deserves the commentary, but she can't really defend her self on it either.

But those who defend women can, both about the comment, and about Grande.

I've long maintained that the single biggest block to women obtaining equality is that their sisters prostitute their images.  It only takes one Ariana Grande, or Miley Cyrus to wipe out the work of a 1,000 Hope Solo's or (dare we say it) Hillary Clinton's, or Condoleezza Rice's.  Worse yet, it only takes one song like Side To Side to pervert the expectations of legions of teenage boys and not a few teenage girls.

So, Grande, you brought this on yourself.  And worse yet, you brought it on millions of girls and women as well.

Everyone ought to be ashamed.

If his sowing is in the field of self-indulgence, then his harvest from it will be corruption;

Galatians, Chapter 6.

The Casper Weekly Tribune for December 29, 1916: Carranza official arrives in Washington, land for St. Anthony's purchased, and the Ohio Oil Co. increases its capital.

While a protocol had been signed, a Carranza delegate was still arriving to review it.  Keep in mind, Carranza had not signed it himself.

Also in the news, and no doubt of interest to Wyomingites whose relatives were serving in the National Guard on the border, Kentucky Guardsmen exchanged shots with Mexicans, but the circumstances were not clearly reported on.

In very local news two locals bought the real property on North Center Street where St. Anthony's Catholic Church is located today.  The boom that the oil industry, and World War One, was causing in Casper was expressing itself in all sorts of substantial building. As we've discussed here before, part of that saw the construction of three very substantial churches all in this time frame, within one block of each other.

St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Casper Wyoming.

The news about the Ohio Oil Company, at one time part of the Standard family but a stand alone entity after Standard was busted up in 1911, was not small news.  Ohio Oil was a major player in the Natrona County oilfields at the time and would be for decades.  It would contribute a major office building to Casper in later years which is still in use. At one time it was the largest oil company in the United States.  In the 1960s it changed its name to Marathon and in the 1980s moved its headquarters from Casper to Cody Wyoming.  At some point it began to have a major presence in the Houston area and in recent years it sold its Wyoming assets, including the Cody headquarters, and it now no longer has a presence of the same type in the state.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 29, 1916. Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 becomes law.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 29:

 

Abandoned post Wold War One Stock Raising Homestead Act homestead.

1916  The Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 becomes law.  It  allowed for 640 acres for ranching purposes, but severed the surface ownership from the mineral ownership, which remained in the hands of the United States.

The Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 recognized the reality of  Western homesteading which was that smaller parcels of property were not sufficient for Western agricultural conditions.  It was not the only  such homestead act, however, and other acts likewise provided larger  parcels than the original act, whose anniversary is rapidly coming up.   The act also recognized that homesteading not only remained popular, but the 1916 act came in the decade that would see the greatest number of  homesteads filed nationally.

Perhaps most significant, in some ways, was that the 1916 act also  recognized the split estate, which showed that the United States was  interested in being the mineral interest owner henceforth, a change from prior policies.  1916 was also a boom year in oil and gas production,  due to World War One, and the US was effectively keeping an interest in  that production.  The split estate remains a major feature of western  mineral law today.

Mid Week at Work: Big Metal Bird: Episode 6 – Flight Attendants Onboard and Big Metal Bird: Episode 7 — Flight Attendant Training

A job that always impresses me as being really difficult and under appreciated.

The Wyoming Tribune for December 28, 1916: Villa commanding 10,000.

The Tribune carried disturbing news about a resurgent Villa and a reluctant Carranza.

And now the secondary impacts begin. . . the pool again.

The Casper Swim Club, the amateur  youth team, has suffered 75% attrition in its membership, its reporting.

The reason? 

Pool time.

It hasn't been able to get adequate pool time with the School District down to one pool.  With recent renovations to that pool, moreover, its now a 25 yard pool rather than a 25 meter pool.

Not that this wasn't predictable.

Says something in and of itself.

From the Wyoming Department of Transportation's website:

The Wyoming Department of Transportation has exceeded the maximum map loads per day for the High Bandwidth Map.

We are currently in the process of developing a new map to address this issue and will have a version available for the public to test drive in early 2017.

In the meantime, you will be redirected to www.wyoroad.info in 15 seconds...

Movies In History: Brooklyn

This is a film I'd hoped to catch in the movie theater but didn't.  I wish I had.

Poignant might be the best description for the film.

This movie surrounds the story of Eilis (Saoirse Ronan, herself born in Brooklyn to Irish parents but raised in Ireland), a young Irish woman who immigrates to the Brooklyn, New York in the 1950s.  The movie follows her experience including living in an Irish boarding house, meeting an Italian American suitor, and a return trip to Ireland.

In some ways this is an usual modern example of a "small story" movie, very well done, of a type we rarely see anymore.  The 1950s Marty comes very much to mind.

It might seem odd to see a film like this on this blog, but this movie has a close attention to detail that makes it not only charming but well worth watching.  Eilis finds herself in an alien world that's only barely alien to us.  It's an urban tale about immigrants and children of immigrants that a huge number of Americans will personally recognize.  It also shows a world only barely removed from our own but in some ways quite a bit more real.  Eilis immigrates out of a type of poverty but not of the street kind we think of.  Ireland remains a strong call to her, so much so that she wonders in one scene why a group of older Irish poor men have not returned to Ireland.  The very close supportive connection with the Catholic Church for Irish and Italian communities is quite accurate.  The torment over a personal decision while back in Ireland might seem, for that reason, an accuracy departure but for those who know the legalities of what's depicted accurately it isn't.  The need to live in a boarding house for her, and in an apartment with his family for the Italian American man she meets is completely accurate for the era. 

This film is well worth viewing and portrays an era, or rather the end of an era, in the United States that we still sense but don't really dwell on too closely quite well. 

Movies In History: The Imitation Game

This is a movie that I considered seeing at the theater when it came out but which, for one reason or another, I didn't.  I happened to catch it recently on Netflix.

First let me say its a good move and I enjoyed it.  Secondly let me say that people shouldn't take their history of Benchly Park, MI6's code breaking operation during World War Two, and the British work on code breaking from this film.

The film is a fictionalized account of the story of Alan Turing, the British mathematician who was a central figure in breaking German ciphers associated with the German use of a the military Enigma machine.  The story, if taken at the 30,000 foot view, gives a rough approximation of what occured in that endeavor, but only if taken at that view.

That doesn't make The Immitation Game a bad movie by any measure, except perhaps as the straight historical one.  Turing truly was central to the story of breaking the codes associated with Enigma and with the construction of the Bomba, a proto-computer that allowed the British to break an appreciable percentage of Engima coded messages.   The portray of Turing's character seems to be on,. and the story is loosely, although I'd emphasize loosely, portrayed correctly albeit in a ficationlized and very simplified fashion.  And that's the problem for a person who is historically minded.

An accurate story of these events would be supremely interesting, but quite complicated, and slightly disappointing.  The effort involved by Turing, and others, was so supremely cerebral that it would frankly be extraordinarily difficult to depict in film.    And the story of British code breaking is much more complicated than simply that of Enigma.  The British broke, for example, another German cipher based on wire telegrammetry that didn't involve Turing and actually was nearly completely simply due to the mental deductions of the character who broke it.  The use of Ultra, as the broken code information was called, was also highly complicated and not accurately portrayed in the film.  Soviet penetration of Benchly Park was much more extensive than the film would allow and not at all winked at by MI6 as suggested. 

In short, it is a much more complicated, and interesting, story than set out in this film.

One thing that should perhaps be mentioned is that it does seem, to the extent I'm familiar with it, that the film got the story of Turing's homosexuality correct.  That has little to do with his code breaking, of course, but it is an element of his personality and that part of the story seems to have been done correctly, to the extent I'm aware of his personal story, which isn't all that much.

So, a decent film worth viewing, but don't take it as an in depth history of MI6 or Benchly Park.

Lex Anteinternet: Viewing Milestone

This ran on October 25, 2016:

Lex Anteinternet: Viewing Milestone: Sometime yesterday this blog went over the 200,000 views mark.  Pretty remarkable in some ways.

On the other hand, this blog has been around for quite awhile, so perhaps not.   While there are a few postdated entries here, the actual first post came on May 1, 2009.  200,000 views in seven years isn't exactly an Internet sensation by any means.  Of course, early on the blog was very inactive and therefore its not surprising that it received little in the way of readership. 

It's readership has picked up a lot this year.  It has ups and downs, but starting in March it really picked up. That was the anniversary of the Punitive Expedition and we started posting a lot on that.  Searches on that, perhaps, might explain it.  The frequent insertion of newspapers from 1916 also seems to have had a marked impact.  Given that we were basically running some things in "real time", so to speak, we also started linking some of those threads into Reddit's 100 Years Ago Today subreddit, which also had quite an impact.

Indeed, an impact of 100 Years Ago today is that the longstanding list of most viewed threads changed nearly completely.  Only one of the threads on the all time top ten, the one on hats, was on that list before Reddit impacted the list and changed it nearly completely.  Posts on Arminto, Wyoming, young Queen Elizabeth II in Canada and the Niobrara County courthouse left the top ten, presumably for all time.  Most of those thread would have about half of the views they'd need to be on the top ten list, even though some of them had been on it for years.

Indeed, some of the newer threads on the list have gone over 1,000 views in a day, pretty remarkable when we consider that getting about 500 used to guarantee that the thread would be on the top ten list.  Right now, the site gets over 15,000 views per month.  Prior to March of this year, the all time high had been September 2014 which had seen 5,000 views that month.  In February 2015 the number was back down to a little over 2,000 per month.  March of that year brought it back up to a little over 4,000 and it hovered around that for a long time.  March 2016 brought it back up to nearly 5,000.  Last month in had a little over 19,500.  It's had just over 16,000 this month, with the month nearly over, so my guess is that September 2016 will be a peak for some time.

Thanks go out to everyone who reads the blog.  Special thanks go out to everyone who has commented on a thread.  This blog remains mostly a learning exercise, so I particularly enjoy any engagement we receive.

Some time to today the blog went over 250,000 views.

Everything I said in the post above remains true, except the number of monthly views.  The past couple of months its been averaging about 20,000 views per month and this month might actually top out at 30,000.  As before, I thank everyone who bothered to stop in her and read the blog.

I hope that some of the interest continues after the close day by day tracking of the Punitive Expedition and the events surrounding it, including the day to day life of 100 years ago, drops off.  We're approaching the end of the American expedition in Mexico, although quite a bit of close attention to the upcoming centennial of events in 1917 shall remain.  I also hope that folks who have comments of any kind add them, I very much enjoy reading them as I'm sure those who stop in here do as well.

Merry Christmas!

USS Arizona heads into New York Harbor, December 25, 1916

The USS Arizona heads into New York Harbor following sea trials.

Brother Albert Chmielowski dies on this day at age 71.

Albert Chmielowski, a Polish painter whose concern for the poor lead him to become a Franciscan monk died at age 71.

Chmielowski was born to a wealthy family and studied agriculture in order to step into the role of managing his family's estates.  Drawn to politics he joined in the Polish uprising of 1863 in which he lost a leg.  Following the Polish defeat he relocated to Belgium where he developed an interest in painting.  In 1874 he returned to Kraków, Poland where his interest in politics and the poor ultimately lead him into the Franciscan order in 1887.  By that time his identification with the poor had already lead him to a voluntary life of poverty.  He founded the Brothers of the Third Order of Saint Francis, Servants of the Poor in 1891.

Lex Anteinternet: The Hornet's Nest: TheRussian Bear in Syria is st...

Lex Anteinternet: The Hornet's Nest: TheRussian Bear in Syria is st...:  American Committee for Relief in the Near East poster from World War One.  The tragedy of the Middle East just keeps going on and on. ...

One thing that I haven't clarified on this is that the attacker in Germany turns out to be Tunisian. The poor Pakistani guy who was arrested just happened to be there.  Talk about a nightmare for him.

The Tunisian attacker seems to have spent most of his time in Europe in Italy, where he was a troublemaker but not an Islamic troublemaker. This shows, perhaps, the propensity for extreme causes to attack the messed up, sort of like the SA attracted thugs who gave their allegiance to Nazism, but who were thugs first.

This also stands out as an item of both curious reporting and good Italian police reaction.  In reporting, the US news seemed baffled about how the attacker could travel "so far" across "so many borders". Really? The EU has open borders amongst members so that should be no more difficult than traveling across state lines. And for that matter, Milan isn't really all that far from Berlin.  Sort of like driving from Denver to Oklahoma City. 

Italian police stopped him and when it went badly they came out on top in a gun battle. That speaks favorably for their reaction abilities and marksmanship.

Lex Anteinternet: Coal and Oil stabalizing, maybe, but does it help?...

Lex Anteinternet: Coal and Oil stabalizing, maybe, but does it help?...: I haven't been reporting on the price of coal and oil for awhile as in some ways not much has been going on.  But enough has been to at ...

Maybe it does, or maybe something else is going on.  According to the Tribune, local retailers are finishing the year out with a really strong finish.  Better, apparently, than even Black Friday.

The Mexican American Commission actually comes to an agreement.

On this day the commission, which had seemed to have reached an agreement back in November, actually reached one.

They agreement provided that the US would leave Mexico within forty days.

This agreement would not be signed by Carranza, but it didn't need to be.

Coal and Oil stabalizing, maybe, but does it help?

I haven't been reporting on the price of coal and oil for awhile as in some ways not much has been going on.  But enough has been to at least put in a little.

On coal, the price of coking coal, it has been noted, is up, which generally reflects increased industrial output.  That's been noted in reports on local coal but Wyoming's coal isn't of the coking grade so that likely doesn't mean much.  On the other hand coal producers are coming back out of bankruptcy and the situation at least appears relatively stable.

A report in the Tribune today states that its unlikely that oil shall exceed  $55/bbl in 2017, which if true means not much will be going on in terms of new exploration in the US.  It needs to rise above that for anything to really happen. 

On other combined news its reported that Wyoming's unemployment rate has improved but that the state's population dropped last year.  Those are really part of the same story.

The Cheyenne State Leader for December 23, 1916: Stock Raising Homestead Act passed

While it only merited a single paragraph, it did make the front page.  The Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 had passed.

This was a major change in the homesteading laws in that it was the first of two homestead acts that recognized the stock raising and arid nature of the West. Rather than grant 40 acres, as the original Homestead Act had, it allowed for 640, an entire section.  It would be signed into law by President Wilson on December 29.

While we do not associate this period with homesteading it was actually the height, and close to the finish, of it.  A large number of entries were being taken out, and soon a large number would fail in the post World War One agricultural crash and drought.

The Wyoming Tribune for December 23, 1916: Carranza loses cities.

The Wyoming Tribune reported that Carranza was losing cities, suggesting he was losing the civil war in Mexico.  At the same time, the paper reported that people were being generous to Pershing's command in Mexico.

Fred Sawkins - December 23, 1916

The Massive Decline in Violence (shout out to 100 Years Ago Today Subreddit)

The purpose of this blog has been, and remains, to explore all things, technology, culture, society, etc, of the approximate 1890 to 1920, more or less (adding, probably, something like 50 years on either side of that).  I stray from that a lot, as any reader very well knows, but I tend to come back to it.

Recently I've been running 1916 is century delayed real time so often that a person could be excused for thinking it was the 1916 day by day blog, or something like that, but it isn't.  I've been doing that do the centennial of the Punitive Expedition.  Once that story basically concludes the near day by day entries will slow down as well, to the likely relief of everyone who stops in here, but some of the newly added features that are basically slice of life type entries will likely keep on keeping on, maybe.

Anyhow, in keeping with this, I've found that there are a couple of other sites that run 1916 in delayed real time, one of which is Reddit's 100 Years Ago Subreddit.  I like it, and I post quite a few of the entries here that are posted on the centennial of their happening as links there.  But I read those entries over there was well.

Recently one of the moderators of that Subreddit posted an end of the year item noting that the murder rate in 1916 in the US was 145% of today's.

145%.

Now, this shouldn't surprise the readers here, but I still wonder to what degree we fail to appreciate that violence has really declined.  Massively, in fact.

We have run a lot of items on this before, including, Violent society? andPeculiarized violence and American society. Looking at root causes, and not instrumentalities.  So this should not  be a surprise to readers here.  But what an impressive statistic.

And how interesting in terms of how we look at the world we live in. In terms of violence, in spite of spectacular examples to the contrary, this is about the best era there is to live in, unless of course you are a victim, in which case, no doubt, that's no comfort at all.

Wind Power approaches maturity.

Coincident to my posting this:

Lex Anteinternet: Today In Wyoming's History: December 19: A Very B...: Today In Wyoming's History: December 19 : 2016  A recorded gust of wind reached 88 mph on the base of Casper Mountain, a new record 14...

the Tribune reports that wind power is now the cheapest form of electrical generation in some regions now.

The cost per kilowatt of generating electricity from wind has long been one of the main points of its critics. But, as tends to be the rule, costs go down as a technology advances.  That's now happened with wind which in turn means that wind generation has joined hydroelectric, coal, gas and nuclear as viable means of generating electricity on an industrial basis.  Wind, therefore, will not be going away in the power generation field.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 19: A Very Blustery Day

Today In Wyoming's History: December 19:

2016  A recorded gust of wind reached 88 mph on the base of Casper Mountain, a new record 14 mph higher than any previously recorded gust in that location.  Clark Wyoming reported a blast of 108 mph.  It was a very blustery day.

The Casper Weekly Press for December 22, 1916: Wars everywhere

The Casper Weekly Press issued on December 22, 1916 warned that "Uncle Fears War". The papers were full of war warnings which, looking back, not only proved accurate but also can't help to call to mind that Woodrow Wilson had just been elected for keeping us out of war and yet the news was headed rapidly, and accurately, in the other direction.

In terms of other wars, the Casper paper reported that Villistas had killed 50 Constitutionalist soliders, hardly a large number by European standards but a scary one for a nation that had been worried about the direction the war in Mexico was taking for months.

In other grim news, two died in a refinery fire in Casper.  There is at least one famous refinery fire in Casper's history but it's not this one.  I can't find any details about it.

Finally the American Automobile Association, which I didn't even know existed that long ago, came out in support of a concrete highway across Wyoming. Such an improved highway remained quite a few years in the state's future at that time, but it's interesting to note how people were already pondering it.

First flight of the Sopwith Camel, this day in 1916

The Cheyenne State Leader for December 21, 1916: Mexican raid into Arizona threatened.

The terrible fire at the Inter-Ocean was still very much in the news, but we also learned that there was concern over a potential raid into Arizona by some Mexican bands.  Of course, the Wyoming Tribune had reported on this yesterday.

President Wilson's peacemaking efforts also hit the news.

The Irish Canadian Rangers sail for Europe.

The Irish Canadian Rangers set sail from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on this day in 1916.

 

 

The unit had been formed from and sponsored by Montreal's Irish Canadian community (of which my ancestors were part).  It was centered around the Montreal Polo Club to some extent.  In spite of diligent efforts it was never up to strength and additional recruiting efforts would take place in Ireland itself to attempt to bring it up to its full allotment.

 

The unit would note end up being deployed in France as a unit, but instead would ultimately be used to provide replacements to other units.

Mid Week at Work: Big Metal Bird: Episode 5 – Aircraft Heavy Maintenance

The Hornet's Nest: TheRussian Bear in Syria is stung in Turkey, and an Islamic radical strike in Berlin

 American Committee for Relief in the Near East poster from World War One.  The tragedy of the Middle East just keeps going on and on.

Yesterday brought us two terrible news stories that relate to the ongoing disaster in the Middle East.

The first of them was the assassination of the Turkish Ambassador to Turkey by a Turkish policeman.  Before he was shot down himself he claimed his act to be an act of vengeance for Aleppo and Syria in general.

Time will tell if he was part of a larger movement, or merely enraged to extreme violence by the  Russian participation in the war.  Anyway you look at it, and saying something that you are not supposed to, this was pretty predictable.

Here on this blog, from the very onset of the war in Syria, I've taken the position that getting involved in the Syrian mess would be a huge mistake.  I've thought that we should take on ISIL, but I have also thought all along that people who thought that there was a nice way in and out of Syria were delusional.  Recognizing that I would have simply stepped back from there except to take on the specter of ISIL which grew as time went on.

Russia, lead by neo-Tsar Vladimir Putin, took the opposite course and in so doing reverted to a heavy handed type of warfare the world has not really seen since World War Two.  Nations simply do not bomb cities into oblivion anymore.  It isn't done, as it isn't right.  A person can (and quite a few do) go back and debate the morality of what occurred in the Second World War, but everyone accords that this is not allowable now.

Russia's mere presence in Syria is an odd thing, quite frankly, and in some ways we can take a little of the blame for that.  Delusional in our own right, we supplied arms to factions that we knew little about and which had (as I noted here all along) no chance of winning. But even poor combatants can lengthen a war and make it worse.  That may well be what we achieved and as that occurred the forces we really opposed grew in strength there.  In the end a Syrian government that was always fascistic but which looked somewhat to the West turned to the only friends it could find, Russia and Iran, and Russia took the role in that civil war that Germany did in the Spanish one, with similar results.

Well, he would live by the sword will die by it, and now inflicting violence on Syria has been revisited on a Russian diplomat in Turkey.  The Russians will react badly, but this won't end there.  Putin is one of those characters who can read the signs in his own times, but can't seem to read history accurately.

 

In terms of not reading history accurately, President Obama, while he played out the combat in this region masterfully (and contrary to the way I would have gone about it) may deserve a bit of blame as well for drawing lines in the sand he wasn't prepared to enforce.  It would have been better to draw no lines at all, but perhaps that was not possible.  At least one commentator has noted that drawing "red lines" and then doing nothing about them probably taught Putin that he could steal cyber secrets and nothing would happen to him.  I suspect that was a lesson badly learned, as something will likely happen now.

In a lot of ways, quite frankly, Russia is a paper tiger.  It's a mere shadow of the USSR with large scale suppressed internal opposition and an involvement in two internal wars. The USSR could not endure an arms race with the West and Russia can't either.  I don't know what the US will do to counter Russia (and with Trump coming in its really difficult to tell, to say the least) but mounting a counter electronic attack would likely be pointless.  They have a lot of hackers, but we depend on computers a lot more than they do.  

But they do depend on oil for their economy.  They are vulnerable there. The US domestic oil industry has been crying for assistance in the wake of the crashed prices and that same phenomenon has hurt Russia.  Closing Russian oil experts would devastate Russia, and it wouldn't hurt us a bit.  It would hurt Europe however.  Still, there may be an avenue there, if cooperation for the effort could be amassed.

Beyond that, a nation involved in two smouldering wars can't really afford to have their opposition really supplied.  Getting into Syria now would be an error for us, but backing the Ukraine to a much greater degree may not be.  Even simply training and supplying a good Ukrainian army is a problem for Russia.

Of course we'll see what actually occurs.

What did occur also yesterday  is that another Islamic attack occurred in Europe, this time in Berlin.  The suspect in the bus assault is Pakistani, so he falls outside of the region, for Europe, that we'd expect this to occur, but that may show the power of Islamic extremism to attract the Islamic dispossessed everywhere.  The sad fact is that this is not going to be the last of this.

On a more positive note, however, while the story has been barely noted, exposure to European culture and an open society is corroding Islamic adherence amongst the refugee population at large at the same time its attracting some to violence.  Priests in Germany and France have noted that in some places their pews are now full. . .with Arab refugees who have converted or are converting to Christian faiths.  A faithful people, in the free market of ideas, that faith is going away from Islam.  And even here in the US a couple of weeks ago a nominally Islamic Washington Post reporter announced that he was being baptized a Catholic, as was the former Miss USA who was the first Muslim to obtain that title.  

Changes in the wind.

Stabbed In The Back. . . . a self deluding thesis

First of all let me note the following.

Russia is not our friend (Romney, who was widely derided when he was the Presidential candidate for noting that, was close to correct, to a degree).  

And the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee's emails, their attempt to do so on the Republican ones, and their general behavior in these regards is so abominable that it must be addressed.  Indeed, while I haven't researched it, I wonder if it technically amounts to a causi belli, although it will not come to that.

Anyhow, some history.

By the fall of 1918 the German war effort was shot. They were incapable of winning the war.

Everything the Germans had calculated on, and gambled on, had failed.  The United Kingdom did not collapse due to a submarine blockade before the United States effectively fielded an army in Europe.  The Micheal Offensive did not break the Allied lines and take Paris, throwing France out of the war.  The introduction of poisonous gas had not proved to be a battlefield tide turner, or even particularly effective.  The surrender of the Russians under Lenin did not turn out to release a flood of men and supplies as German avarice required the deployment of German assets to keep on at nearly full strength.  Backing the Communists in Russia had helped turn the tide in the East but then had gone right to the German navy yards were it was having the same effect as it had in Russian ones.

They had lost.

They still hoped to secure a satisfactory diplomatic resolution, and in fact they actually did, but it wasn't the one they hoped for.

And soon, psychologically, they refused to accept it.

Which is just what the Democrats are doing about the 2016 election right now.

What German society did is well known.  By November 1918 they had no choice at all but to accept Allied terms. Those terms, in spite of the way they have been repeatedly portrayed, were not really all that harsh. A big part of this is that Germany had slid into a revolution at home, which strangely gets underplayed in the English language histories.  Just as in Revolutionary Russia, in Revolutionary Germany idle sailors betrayed their employers and became an unruly dangerous uniformed mob. As things disintegrated at home the Germans had to deploy its army on its own territory against its own people, a situation which would keep on keeping on after the war with the Allies ended.

By the late 1920s, however, they'd convinced themselves they hadn't actually lost the war at all, and certainly not through their own actions.  It was somebody else's fault. And that somebody became, in their imaginations, the Jews, a fairly absurd proposition anyway you look at it. But an absurd proposition that was used to launch the political career of a figure who emphasized the very worst elements of German culture and who attacked the best elements of it.

What does that have to do with the Democrats?

Well, the Democrats lost this election through their own ineptness, just as the Germans lost the Great War through their own fault and miscalculations.  I would have thought they would have won, but not because of their great campaign, but because Trump seemed to be incapable of winning. The Democrats, as we've explored already, ran a person well out of her own time, who wasn't likeable, emphasizing, where they emphasized anything, failed positions, while insulting some of their base.

Now, and here's where the stab in the back comes from, we know about some of those insults due to leaks.

It is now known that the Russians penetrated the Democratic National Committee and swiped their emails.  That's a criminal act, but we also know that t he Russians tried the same with the Republicans and failed as the Republican firewall worked. Why didn't the Democratic one work? 

And the Russian release of information, it's worth noting, did not release anything that wasn't true.  It's hard to complain, or should be hard to complain, about the truth of your own views being released.  If DNC operatives detested the Catholic Church, for example, they detested us.  The Russians letting us know that doesn't mean it isn't true. Rather, they were embarrassed by the truth.

But not so much, apparently, that they now feel they need to change at all. They don't.  They've propped up the same old, same old for their leaders and they, or at least those organs that support them, are crying about the Russians. "Stabbed in the back".  Donna Brazile and Leon Panetta were both on over the weekend  on the news shows addressing the email situation and neither of them would acknowledge that the problem, for their campaign, wasn't that emails were stolen, but what the stolen emails said.  Brazile went so far as to claim the emails were "weaponized" but if they were weapons, they were handgrenades with the pins pulled out before they were tossed out the cyber window. The real problem with them is that they let voters see how the Clintonites actually thought.

I think that its time to put Putin and his cronies in a corner.  We can't pretend that it isn't a crime, and frankly it creeps up on being nearly an act of war. 

But that doesn't mean it actually influenced the election.  I highly doubt that, to say the least.  At most they tended to confirm what the confirmed already thought.  That doesn't excuse it, but nor will there be any excuse for the Democrats to run repeat elections in 2018 and 2020, which right now is exactly where they are headed.

The Wyoming Tribune for December 20, 1916: Troops Rush to Forestall Border Raid (and a truly bizarre comparison made in the case of a Mexican American militia)

A story of a near raid in the Yuma era with a rather bizarre comparison between a claimed Mexican American militia and the KKK.   Apparently the authors there had taken their history from D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation rather than reality.

It's rather difficult, to say the least, to grasp a comparison between a Mexican militia of any kind and the KKK which wouldn't exactly be in the category of people sympathetic to Mexican Americans.  And it's even more difficult to see the KKK used as a favorable comparison.  Cheyenne had a not insignificant African American, Hispanic, and otherwise ethic population associated with the Union Pacific railroad and I imagine they weren't thrilled when they saw that article.

Apparently the "war babies" referred to in the headline were stocks that were associated with Great War production, which logically fell following the recent exchange of notes on peace. As we saw yesterday, the Allies weren't receptive to them, so I'd imagine they those stocks rose again.

David Lloyd George addresses the German Peace Proposal and Ambassador Page telegrams the text.

 British Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

Later that same day, the U.S. Ambassador to the UK telegramed the Prime Minster's speech on the same topic to Secretary Lansing:

London, December 19, 1916.

5344. The Prime Minister made the following statement in the House of Commons to-day:

The new government had hardly been formed when there came the declaration of the German Chancellor. I propose to deal with this at once. The statement made by the German Chancellor in the Reichstag has been followed by a note presented to us by the United States of America without any note or comment. The answer that will be given by the Government will be given in full accord with our brave Allies. Naturally there has been an interchange of views not upon the note, because it only recently arrived, but upon the spirit which propelled it, inasmuch as the note itself is practically only a reproduction of the speech.

 

The discussions have been informal but I am glad to say we have each of us separately and independently arrived at identical conclusions.

I am very glad the first answer to the statement of the German Chancellor was given by France and by Russia.

They have an unquestionable right to give the first answer to such an invitation—the enemy is still on their soil; their sacrifices have been greater. The answer they have given has already appeared in the papers, and I, on behalf of the Government, give a clear and definite support to the statements which have already been made.

Any man or set of men who abandoned the struggle without achieving the high purpose for which they had entered into the war would be guilty of the costliest act of foolery ever perpetrated by any statesman. I should like to quote the words of Abraham Lincoln under similar conditions: “ We accepted this war for an object—a worthy object—and the war will end when that object is attained. Under God, I hope it will never end until that time.”

Are we likely to achieve that object by accepting the invitation of the German Chancellor? That is the only question that we have to put to ourselves.

There has been some talk about proposals of peace. What are the proposals? There are none.

To enter on the invitation of Germany, proclaiming herself victorious, without any knowledge of the proposals she proposes to make, into a conference, is to put our heads into a noose with the rope in the hands of Germany—and this country is not altogether without experience in these matters.

It is not the first time we have fought against Military despotism in Europe and it will not be the first time we have helped to overthrow such a despotism. We feel we ought to know before we give consideration to the offer of the German Chancellor that Germany is prepared for peace to be obtained and maintained in Europe, and these terms which have been stated by all the leading statesmen of the Allies are: complete restitution; full reparation; and effectual guaranties for the future.

Page

The UK response to the German peace proposal is communicated to the US.

The U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Walter Hines Page, telegrammed Secretary Lansing on this day about the British response to the recent German peace feeler.

London, December 19, 1916, 6 p. m.

5343. Your circular December 16, 5 p. m.Lord Robert Cecil has just informed me that the British Government will decline the German proposal to discuss peace because it contains no concrete terms with which such a discussion might begin and for other reasons; and that the Prime Minister will set forth the Government’s position in full in the speech which he is now delivering in the House of Commons.

I will telegraph the text of what the Prime Minister says at the earliest hour possible.

Lord Robert informed me that the British Government had requested the French Government to draw up the reply of the Allies to the note of the Central powers.

Page

An increase in creepy crimes?

I've come to the conclusion, I think, that something really creepy is going on in society.  Truly creepy.

Now, let me note that I started this post weeks and weeks ago.  So long ago that I can't remember, actually, when I started it.  Sometime in 2016, but I'm not sure when.  I revived it when the creepy story about Brock Turner, the Stamford University student and swimmer who was hardly sentenced for his horrific assault on a young woman following a party came up.  But then I let it sit again and getting back to posting it was inspired by that.  Frankly, that event takes this to such a horrific level that it almost stands to wipe out my point, so I'll start where I was going to start in just a moment.  I most recently returned to this story when a 19 year old man was sentenced in the last couple of days for sexual assault, that crime involving having impregnated a 12 year old girl, when he was 17, in a closet at a home in which he was staying with that girls family. That crime came to light, apparently, through the girl having reported to a physician pregnant and then revealing the story.

That guy got something like two to six years (I forget the exact sentence, but it was something like that).  The prosecutor wanted more.  His defense attorney wanted less on the basis that he was the sole support for his mother and sister.

Hm.

Hardly a day goes by anymore where I don't read of some hideous assault by a man upon a female victim, and frankly usually they're are young women, i.e., teenage girls.  This would be bad enough if I was reading of these events every few months, worse if it was every month, but frankly now its darned near every day.  Yes, almost every day here there's an assault by a male upon some teenage girl, or even girls.  Indeed just this past week there was a story that broke here of a family that had groomed a family friend's daughter for sadomasochistic acts.  Creeps.

Now, that should make it clear, I suppose, that we're sometimes speaking of crimes that may have an element, or not, of consent by the victims.  The  17 year old impregnating a 12 year old apparently did, as they exchanged texts about sex before they engaged in the activity. Looking for trends or commonalities in the crimes, I'd note that one that shows up in more than a few is enticement by drugs or alcohol. But that's far from the rule.  Quite a few are just outright assaults.   The victims report them nearly immediately, quite often, thank goodness, and they perpetrators are arrested quickly, and usually tried and convicted.

Beyond the drugs and alcohol there seems to be little in common save for that the perpetrators are often vagabonds or nearly so, although not always.  Almost all of them are on the bottom end of the economic scale, to say the least, although not all are.  A not un-appreicable number, no matter what a person believes stating this means, are Mexicans. I'm not claiming that all Mexican immigrants are perpetrators of this sort of stuff by any means, but if a person is honest you cannot help but note that the perpetrators who are Mexican who show up in this category here exceed their percentage of the population.  If a person reads between the lines, its usually clear that those who fit that category are actually from Mexico, FWIW, not people of Mexican heritage from the US (and no, I'm not claiming by a long shot that all Mexican men are perpetrators waiting to happen).  Not that this is uniform, indeed several years ago one of the fellows who was enticing young teenagers in this fashion was a local lawyer.

Added to this, I'd note, that hardly a week goes buy in which somebody isn't busted for the illegal downloading of icky photos in the above referenced category, and they aren't usually immigrant Mexicans, I'd note. Again, I'd not be surprised if this happened occasionally, but its freaking constant.

So what's going on?

Something is.

I suppose maybe this sort of stuff (well. . . not the downloading obviously, as you couldn't download anything forty years ago) may have always happened, but it just didn't get reported, or the victims didn't report it.   Maybe, but I doubt it.  There's just way too much of this for this all have to been kept quiet years ago, and frankly the perpetrators are largely in the class that doesn't get much legal slack.  So I think there really is more.

But why?

I've noted before on this site that statistically the amount of violence, including violent crime, is way down in the US.  And killings are certainly quite uncommon here. So are examples of violent physical assault, or mayhem, or things like that. But these sort of creepy crimes have to be way, way up.  I just can't ever recall a prior era in which they showed up in the press nearly daily.  Indeed, in a lot of prior eras here, when we were fairly acclimated to fights going awry, we would have been horrified by something of this nature.

And I think that has to do something with the decline in morals, i.e., the emphasis on personal virtue in regards to your own conduct in this area.

Maybe that's a leap, but I do.

I think our culture, at this point, is so awash in images and projections suggesting that all women are available to any man, that a certain class of men now believes that.  And beyond that, the line of what is acceptable or not, on a societal basis, is now so faded that unless a person has picked up a line from outside of the cultural mainstream its extremely difficult to tell where that line may be.

A look at any of the popular television shows (yes, I know, television is stupid, but maybe its a type of mirror  also) is illuminating in these regards.  A show like, for example, Friends shows the young engaged in constant libertine activity.  The Big Bang Theory is the same way.  The "reality" show Vanderpump Rules depicts a group of people whose morals are so far in the sewer it would take a rotorooter to find them (did we really need to import these people from the UK, seriously?).  A recent pop song celebrates Blurred Lines. Singer who originally made acquired their fame as cute child stars appear naked darned near anywhere they can.  Any sexual act or inclination is celebrated as being normal, irrespective of the evidence.  The examples are nearly endless.

I do not mean to excuse any of this conduct, as its reprehensible.  But seriously, if you take a society and simply endlessly bathe it in sexual content, and sexual content, and then argue in its courts and solons that any act at all is normal, is going to produce this result.  And it has.

So, the biggest criminal of all turns out, in some ways, to be our current culture itself.  And we end up all being the victims.

The Wyoming Federal Natural Resource Management Committee tells the voters it knows better.

The Wyoming Federal Natural Resource Management Committee met on December 14 in Cheyenne.  It was a public hearing.  Not that the public was really going to be listed to.  This committee decided to ignore the public with finality, apparently, back in November and is now only willing to consider amendments to a proposed Wyoming Constitutional Amendment that has received widespread public opposition.

The Committee was meeting on the language of a proposed amendment to the Wyoming Constitution that's basically in aid of the some in the state's effort to grab the Federal Domain against the wishes of the residents of the state and contrary to the oaths the Legislators took when they signed on to do their jobs.  The legislators were surprised that public opposition to a proposal that's quite popular amongst Wyoming's politicians received such widespread opposition from the public.  At least, to their credit, they have tried to do something about that, as opposed to our Congressional representation in the House and Senate which has supported it and simply flat out ignored the voting public.

The concept that transferring the public lands would benefit the state in any fashion is completely erroneous. The state would, sooner or later, and likely much sooner rather than later, sell the lands to the highest bidders that would invariably be rich out of state interests.  When this occurred we'd simply become a rural version of Ohio in which the residents of the state would have to be content with whatever the towns have to offer unless they were willing to pay a sufficient tribute to what would ultimately become out of state landlords.  To try to ease the fears of those who know that this amendment is being pushed.

The idea that a Constitutional Amendment would prevent this is delusional, as that would, at best, keep the Legislature from such an attempt for a single session or so, until a way around it was found.  Indeed, the Legislature right now does not seem to be able to recall  Article 21, Section 26 of the Wyoming Constitution which provides:

The people inhabiting this state do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries thereof, and to all lands lying within said limits owned or held by any Indian or Indian tribes, and that until the title thereto shall have been extinguished by the United States, the same shall be and remain subject to the disposition of the United States and that said Indian lands shall remain under the absolute jurisdiction and control of the congress of the United States; that the lands belonging to the citizens of the United States residing without this state shall never be taxed at a higher rate than the lands belonging to residents of this state; that no taxes shall be imposed by this state on lands or property therein, belonging to, or which may hereafter be purchased by the United States, or reserved for its use. But nothing in this article shall preclude this state from taxing as other lands are taxed, any lands owned or held by any Indian who has severed his tribal relations, and has obtained from the United States or from any person, a title thereto, by patent or other grant, save and except such lands as have been or may be granted to any Indian or Indians under any acts of congress containing a provision exempting the lands thus granted from taxation, which last mentioned lands shall be exempt from taxation so long, and to such an extent, as is, or may be provided in the act of congress granting the same.

There's actually no proposal to repeal this section, so it would remain in effect, essentially saying "you can't get any more Federal Domain but if you do. . ."  Ah. . . a Constitutional Amendment that only courtroom lawyers will benefit from. . .

As Legislators, those on the present committee should recall that they swore an oath to uphold the Wyoming Constitution, and in these regards, efforts contrary to this provision seem to fairly clearly violate it.  Not that this has been something that's restrained the Legislature in recent years.  This doesn't seem to bother them much as only one single committee member cast a "no" vote on November 8 to approve the amendment even though nearly everyone who gathered at the November hearing spoke against it.  But we need to keep in mind that this body has seemingly been fairly comfortable with voting on unconstitutional acts in recent years and very recently got into a fair amount of trouble for just that.

Several nights ago in Cheyenne, 100% of the speakers from a large crowed spoke against the amendment again.  This time, however, the committee informed the speakers that it was already a done deal, they'd already voted against the wishes of the state's residents and they were only there to consider amendments.  They apparently agreed to a few. But its hard not to view this as being rather insulting to the voting public.  The committee well knew that a large crowed would be in attendance.  It also knew, of course, it had already voted for approval. But it is not the case, as these bodies will want to believe, that they can't unring the bell. They could have.  It just wouldn't suit the views out of four of the five people on the committee.

Now the whole thing goes on to the State Senate and, should it survive there, the House.  If it passes two thirds of both bodies then it must be voted on by the voters in the next election.  The Governor, for what it is worth, who has already spoken as to the illegality of acquiring the Federal Domain, has no role in this.

If this passes our legislature, at least from my prospective, the voters nearly have to pass the bill to try to protect the lands from these same people. Everyone well knows that this amendment is mere camouflage for an effort to violate the state's organic act and to violate the state's constitution and grab the Federal domain.  The amendment will be the only way to protect the land, even though this entire issue shouldn't even be on the plate.  That ironically argues for and against it at the same time.  We practically need it as our representation in Cheyenne has shown a determination to vote against the will of the citizens', but at the same time this simply aids their effort.

Here's the proposed amendment, before the apparent and anticipated amendments to it.  Note that this wold not take effect until 2019, giving a land transfer plenty of time to take first well before it, and for this thing to accordingly mean nothing whatsoever.  That's a bit odd.  And also note that this does nothing to preserve the lands the state already holds.

Note also that it appears in Article 18. Article 21 above remains in effect. So the net result of that is that this would make a mess out of the state's constitution, which is one of the few of the same that's actually survived the test of time.  Most state's have been trough several by now.  What would a court do with this?  Nobody knows.  But both sections clearly cannot stand together.  It would be equivalent to the U.S. Congress proposing an amendment to legalize banning speech in a clause separate from the First Amendment. 

Article 18, Section 7
Public lands management and access

(a) Notwithstanding any other provision of this constitution and when in accordance with the purposes of a grant of land to the State of Wyoming from the United States, lands granted to the state after January 1, 2019 shall be managed for multiple use and sustained yield, including public access for hunting, fishing and other recreation, as prescribed by the legislature.

(b) The legislature may provide for the exchange of state lands acquired pursuant to subsection (a) of this section. The legislature shall ensure that any exchanges of lands acquired pursuant to subsection (a) of this section collectively cause no more than a de minimis loss or gain of the state lands, either in value or size.

(c) Any exchange of the lands acquired pursuant to subsection (a) of this section shall maintain or increase public access to those lands.

And of course this doesn't consider that in addition to the State's constitution the State's organic act also disclaimed the public lands.

Here are the names of the Committee members.  In Cheyenne earlier this week they'd said they'd already voted, but that doesn't mean that voicing your opinion, should you have one (either way) won't suddenly cause that to magically reverse.  Over a long period of time I've learned that governmental entities of any type which state "we can't do that" can and will "do that" when it becomes too uncomfortable not to.  I've even heard one agency officer tell me something was illegal and then approve it as not illegal in less than 30 seconds.

Eli Bebout

Gerald Geis

Larry Hicks

Norine Kasperik

JoAnn Dayton

Tim Stubson

Dayton is the only one who voted no on the November 8 vote to ignore the voters.  She apparently listened to her constituency.

She's also the only Democrat on the body, and this is why I think we'll see an increase in Democratic fortunes in the upcoming election. The last unconstitutional bill passed by the legislature caused a revolt in the GOP amongst its hard right/libertarian wing which is still smoldering.  The Public Lands issue is in fact causing some long time Republicans I  know to vote Democratic.  Alienating both sides of the GOP locally is not really a very good idea.

Of those mentioned I should note that Stubson is on his way out, having run for Congress and lost.  He actually won't take his seat in January as Jerry Obermuller will instead, Stubson having determined not to run in order to run for Congress.  This is presumably his swan song as a legislator, assuming of course that he doesn't run again and obtain a seat at a later date.

Bebout is the only one who responded to my email the last time, to his real credit, with a well stated letter, albeit one I disagree with.  It takes guts and dignity to write somebody who is opposed to you, and I respect him for that.  Geis' email bounces back so I can't comment regarding him.  They're all likely getting hundreds of emails, as they well should be.

Stuff like this, I should note, really creates a distrust of democracy.  The concept always is that the people who go to the state house and Congress will uphold our views.  But here they aren't, and aren't coming close to it.  They're upholding a view that regards Washington as our enemy, a view that's really been stoked in recent years, and they also clearly believe that if we just get "Washington off our backs" the money will really flow.  But all the studies of this show that the state can't afford to administer the lands.  Ironically, moreover, transferring the Federal Domain doesn't make all regulation evaporate by any means and the Federal Government is not necessarily any harder to deal with than the state can be.  And at the end of the day this is poking the sleeping giant of the American urban population right in the eye, which isn't such a good idea.  A change in political fortunes can easily go from "give us the land" here in Wyoming to "it's all park land now" back in D.C.

If there's a silver lining in any of this it would be that Secretary of the Interior nominee Zinke is a very strong opponent of the transfer the lands movement and so is Donald Trump, Jr. who apparently had his father's ear on this one.