My Dodge D3500 recently had a Wouxun KG-1000G GMRS radio installed in it. GMRS is not Ham. Prior to that, I swapped the MXT115 I have back and forth between the Jeep and the D3500.
So what, you may ask.
Well, radio is a bit addictive in some ways.
Which leads to this thread.
The last time I had anything to do with a vehicle mounted radio, it was a military radio. The PRC 77, to be specific.
PRC 77 radio (top) with KY 38 encryption device in Vietnam.
And that's to say that I know nothing at all about radios in a real sense.
The PRC 77 would jack into a vehicle mount, after which it clipped into a big whip antenna. It had great range, I thought, but according to Wikipedia its actual range was five miles. If that's correct, well that's really pretty sucky, frankly.
Anyhow, it was a giant sized field radio that could operate from your Jeep or truck or whatever. I called in a lot of artillery with the PRC77 from a ground mount and giant ground antenna.
When the kids were small, I picked up hand held "walkie-talkies". I thought they'd be really cool for hunting and fishing and, in fact, they really are. The entire time, I kept thinking that I wish I had a vehicle mount that would work with them.
In my naïveté, I thought that they were all "CB" radios. Nope, they're not. Not even close, as it turns out. CBs are in the 27 MHz range and are technically really low powered shortwave radios. No license is required to use them. The little hand helds, on the other hand, are low powered FRS radios in the UHF bands. They have much superior performance, apparently, than CBs do/did. As they're up in the 462 to 467 MHz bandwidth, they don't communicate at all with CBs.
And then there's GMRS.
GMRS is up in that range as well, in the upper range, but can go up to 50 watts of power. The little FRS radios put out a fraction of that. GMRS radios require a license to operate.
I had no idea of that until I bought a truck mounted Midland, the aforementioned MXT115. Reading the stuff that came with it (yes, I actually read the owner's manuals) I learned I needed a license. So, I got one, and a nifty call sign and all of that.
The MXT115 is a 15 watt GMRS radio. I had meant to get the MXT400, but I saw the MXT115 in a sporting goods store and assumed that's what it was. Nope, the MXT400 is a 40 watt radio, and as I was soon to learn, that's not the only difference.
Anyhow, the MXT115 was and is neat. Now I could call the handhelds from my Jeep or pickup. And the range was better. . on the broadcasting end. On the receiving end, it's incredibly dependent upon line of sight. Something in the way, it's going nowhere. But I was happy. I got 25 miles on it with one test, and that was to and from a handheld.
On the other hand, only getting 2 or 3 miles is pretty common as well, it is in town.
And then I went to Denver.
Around here, there's little radio traffic in the FRS/GMRS bandwidth. But in Denver there are piles of it. But oddly, I couldn't check in on what I was hearing. "Radio test" brought no replies. How odd, I thought.
Well, in looking it up, I found out that this is because the Denver radio traffic is all on repeaters, with programmed in input and output. The MXT115 receives and broadcasts on the same channel, which makes sense, but repeater clubs don't like that, so use "split tones" to restrict their broadcasting and reception.
Which caused me to learn that the GMRS folks in repeater clubs have all programmed their radios. In looking that up, I learned, after much searching, that the MXT400 . . . of that era (a mere couple of years ago) could be programmed, but you really had to do a bunch of workarounds to learn it. Apparently, actually doing it is really simple. Midland didn't seem to want people to do it, but it can be done.
And that led me to believe it can be done for the MXT115 as well. Indeed, as I frankly suspected, but don't know, that the difference between the MXT115 and the MXT400 isn't all that great, I was, and am, tempted to try it now that I know how to do it with the MXT400.
I have done it for my Wouxun KG-1000G, although I'm not quite sure if I did it right.
The reason, I'm not sure, is since then I bought a new MXT115 (radios are addictive) and it was easily programmable. And it now picks up repeaters that are far beyond the range that I'm supposed to be able to pick them up at.
Why did I get another?
Well, I received as a gift a unit built out of a small ammo can that makes the MXT115 into a mobile radio, for use basically as a camping base station.
And I do use it.
But using it meant that I had to pull the radio from my Jeep. That was okay if I was using the Dodge, but not the Jeep. I bought, therefore, a second MXT115, but that was right before they introduced the programmable model.
Fortunately, um. . . unfortunately, that one was defective, so I soon bought the programmable one. I love it.
And now Midland has dropped its MXT500, which brings me back to this thread which has been pending for months.
I really love my Wouxun KG-1000G, but I'm tempted by the somewhat more expensive MXT500 as it appears to be a radio, like the MXT115, that I can simply pull from my vehicle when I'm in town so that it doesn't get stolen, something that's a useful feature for a convertible.
Now, practically anyone anywhere in the GMRS radio world is on several GMRS Facebook forums and some websites. And, no matter what, you're going to get these conversations on them.
The new MXT500 just dropped, anyone getting one?
Argh, you dumb bastard, why would you buy Midland, you should buy a dozen old Kenwoods and reprogram them yourself using Subotai's Underground Programming modual from Ulaanbaatar. . .don't you know any better?
But I just want a good radio out of the box.
What are you, some kind of lazy slug, while when I had the Radio Rating as a Mess Mate from my service during the Spanish American War. . . um, anyhow, get some used Kenwoods from Bob's Country Radio Bunker and program them yourself.
But Kenwood programming sucks, Dave, you know that.
Sure it sucks, but Midlands are crap.
Why are the crap?
Because they're easy to use right out of the box, you ignorant sot. Why when I reprogrammed the radio on the Yamamoto in 43, say has anyone seen the Japanese Hentai Yamamoto. . she's hot.
This will go on for some time.
Sooner or later, you'll get this.
Skip GMRS, go for Amateur Radio.
But I want to be able to talk to my friends and family when we're camping and. . .
Oh nonsense, if your friends won't get a Ham License, they aren't your real friends. . .and you can always get a new family.
Probably all hobbies are like this.
Now, there are some super GMRS folks out there, particularly the folks who run the websites, so I may be casting way too broad of net. And they're super helpful. But this does occur. . .
The one thing, and seemingly right now the only thing, that Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on is that democracy in the United States is in extreme peril, although not for the same reasons. Democrats have looked out stunned at the Republican failure to defend democracy in the wake of a Trumpist coup attempt and wonder what happened to the Grand Old Party. Republicans, or at least many of them, seemingly not aware that they are a minority party whose membership erodes daily, have accepted the lie that it simply can't be possible that they lost, and are further revealed to basically hold Democrats in deep, deep suspicion if not outright alien enemies. To some degree, that's a Republican response to a Democratic belief that Republicans are basically stupid, a view reinforced by the public face of the insurrectionist and the stunning acceptance of a patently false lie.
Now, it seems that Republican populist are set to attempt a second coup and the Republican establishment won't stand in the way of it, and Democrats have demonstrated themselves to once again be legislatively incompetent. While I don't think we'll get there, lots of Americans believe we're about to drive democracy right over a cliff.
So what can be done?
Well, the Democrats do have a proposal, or actually two, in front of Congress to address this, one being The Freedom To Vote Act and the other being The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I don't know that either actually are aimed to address the problems we're now facing, however. What would address them is taking on and amending The Electoral Count Act of 1887, which everyone agrees is a sloppy statute to start with, and which the hold out Democrats want to amend. Mitch McConnell has hinted he'd like to take a look at it. Of course, Chuck Shumer, for inexplicable reasons, doesn't, a typical boneheaded Democratic leadership position.
So let's start there, but let's get a little background.
The founding fathers, . . . they didn't always get things right.
Our Original System.
Whenever we get into this, we tend to get the American version of ancestor worship, with people sooner or later dragging out the Founding Fathers as if they took a break from giving recommendations to the Oracle at Delphi to draft the Constitution. They didn't, and were just men, and therefore there's no reason to endow them with perfection, but nonetheless, let's take a look at the system they created, so we can get a grasp of the structure that we largely still hold
This is how it worked.
The House of Representatives was based on the British House of Commons, and was directly elected by the citizenry. The British system is based on ridings, where the voters reside, and ours was based on districts organized in states. It's a modified and actually somewhat less democratic variant of the House of Commons, as the Commons aren't organized into political subdivisions such as states. But the Constitution was heavy on states, as we are after all the United States.
We still have that system.
The Senate was elected by the State legislatures and was to represent the states as states. It was not directly elected.
The President was elected by the Electoral College. This was as compromise between those who wanted the President elected by the state legislatures, directly elected, or elected by the Congress. The first President of the United States, who was not George Washington, was elected by the Senate. Nobody liked that system much, and the Constitution proposed to give the Executive branch grater powers than he had under the Articles of the Confederation. The question was how to pick him. Radical democrats wanted the people to elect him. Reluctant aristocrats weren't so keen on that, and after all we already had the House of Representatives. But then, we also had the Senate.
So the Electoral College was come up with, with the original concept being that the people would vote for electors who were to vote for the winning candidate, with the second place person getting the Vice President slot, but with there being some room to say now if the people voted for a dud.
What we have now
The electoral college system proved to be problematic right from the onset, as did having the runner up end up Vice President. That just meant the runner up could spend four years throwing rocks as the President, so the system was modified to make the VP a slot that was tied to the President.
By the time of the Compromise of 1877 (that again) it was clear that the Electoral College didn't make very much sense any longer as the President had been an office directly campaigned for nearly the entire time. Moves existed to abolish it but Reconstruction made that problematic and instead the system was modified statutorily in 1887 to attempt to prevent a Constitutional crisis. Early inklings that the nation was headed into a crisis over the College resulted in the House voting to approve an amendment to the Constitution in 1969 to abolish the Electoral College. It passed overwhelmingly in the House in 1969 but failed in the Senate in 1970.
So its still around.
In 1913 the Constitution was amended to make Senators directly elected.
So what's that all mean?
Well, what it all means is that we retain an Electoral College that's subject to influence of outside forces and which sets up a system in which a President can be elected after having lost the popular vote. This was regarded as being nearly impossible up until George Bush won over Al Gore, but now it's repeating. In each instance, it's been in the case of very close elections, hence Trump's efforts to frustrate the mail-in vote and to "find" votes in Georgia.
It also means that the system which imagined the voice of the people coming through the House of Representatives and the voice of state governments coming though the Senate is completely torpedoed. Frankly, all Senators are, really, is long serving Commons members from giant ridings.
So what?
Well, this system has slowly evolved to where the government isn't really functioning except through its long serving beurocrats. Gerrymandering of districts has made most districts safe, so things don't change much. Like it or not, the House is ineffective even though the Democratic Party outnumbers the Republican Party, as it splits pretty evenly most of the time anymore. The Senate does the same. There's not much change, and Senate rules designed for a collegial body operate to prevent any action in one that's pretty divided.
And with the Imperial Presidency first brought in by Theodore Roosevelt, an outsized Executive has powers far beyond that imagined by the framers, a fact that's aided by a Congress that hasn't been governing for nearly twenty years.
Can that be fixed?
Oh yes, it can.
Fix No. 1. Abolish the Electoral College.
If this was done, the entire crisis that we're now in, regarding the Oval Office, would not exist or at least it'd make it much harder to come about.
I used to support the Electoral College as, at one point, as George F. Will used to point out, it amplified the popular vote giving the illusion of a mandate in an election that's typically pretty evenly divided. Now its not doing that at all,, but that frankly is its only remaining purpose.
The Presidency is the one office that is supposed to represent the opinion of everyone. The Electoral College only existed as plutocrats feared that the people wouldn't install plutocrats. We don't want to install plutocrats, however.
We should do what Congress attempted to do in 1969, abolish the Electoral College. There's no excuse not to, even though Republicans right now come out against it. The real reason they do that is they fear they can't win the Oval Office if it's abolish, and in fact they would not have elected a President since George Bush I if it didn't exist. That, however, is a Republican problem they should fix. As they win state elections easily enough in spite of being a minority party, nationally, they can fix it.
The overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of abolishing the Electoral College. Abolishing it might not fix anything else, but if we are going to continue to have an outsized Presidency, we ought to at least make it one in which election mischief can't develop into a coup.
Fix No. 2. Repeal the Seventeenth Amendment
Eh? Have Senators elected by legislatures?
Yes.
Now, at first blush this would appear to flying the face of Fix No. 1, which I'd do at the same time. But it doesn't.
The Senate was always intended to be the voice of states, not of the people. If it is a directly elected office, it actually serves no point whatsoever and should be abolished (which will be fix no. 3). All the Senate is right now is a place for really long serving members of a Commons district with state boundaries. Why bother?
Indeed, because the Senate has retained rules from an earlier era, and because its nearly evenly split liek the House, it can't get anything done. Right now, it's divided 50/50.
If Senators were chosen by legislatures, however, it wouldn't be.
This is a little tricky, but basically (but not really quite) the GOP controls 30 legislatures our of 50, or 60%. If this was reflected in the US Senate, which it would not be perfectly, the Senate would be 60% Republican.
It'd likely be a little higher or lower than that, but the point is that the Senate would be cleanly the house of one party, the Republicans, reflecting its original purpose of representing the states. And with those numbers, it could actually do something.
Yes, this is less democratic than the existing system, but it was intended to be. That was the point of the Senate. And it would ironically function much better this way.
But if we don't like that, then;
Fix No. 3. Abolish the Senate
If all the Senate is, is a giant House of Representatives, which is exactly what it is right now, just do away with it. We don't need it.
Indeed, right now, it's hard to see what the Senate actually does. It has some Constitutional roles, to be sure, but they can simply be transferred to the House if it is just a big House with huge ridings.
This may sound radical, but this is how Nebraska's legislature works right now, and Nebraska has not descended into left wing anarchy. If we really want a democratic senate, well, let's just not have one. The House reflects the vote of the people better and in a more cogent fashion.
That of course means that we'd be creeping up on a modified parliamentary system. Well, so what. The British, who over the years have more and more sidelined the House of Lords, and most other democratic nations, work just this way.
Indeed, if we did this, once again, much of the current drama wouldn't be there, as the Senate, which is serving as the blocker of things right now, wouldn't be in the way. Yes, Republicans would be upset, but if the Electoral College was also gone, they'd be working hard to appeal to the voters directly, rather than being mired in conspiracy theories.
Now, am I really in favor of this? No, I'm not. I'm in favor of the Senate functioning the way it was originally supposed to, but in the absence of that, this would be the next best thing.
Fix No. 4. Do away with the quasi official nature of the parties.
Listen to any political discussion, and sooner or later you'll hear the falsehood that "the United States has a two party system".
It does not, at least not existentially.
It has a two party system as we became lazy and let the parties create one, and because of the operation of Duverger's Law which holds that plurality based deliberative institutions devolve into two parties, whereas as proportional institutions evolve into multi party institutions.
It nearly goes without saying that multi party institution are of course more democratic than two party systems.
The two party nature of our political culture has become so ingrained that Congress itself has organized itself accordingly, and in many state laws things have evolved to where boards are supposed to be made up of members of both parties. The Democratic Party and the Republican Party, therefore, while vying for control of the government, become, to some extent, arms of it.
This could, and should, be addressed by wiping out the aspects of our system which favor this.
The first thing to do would be to make all elections non-partisan. The 49 member Nebraska legislature provides an example here again. It's non-partisan. Nebraska's Senators, which is what they are termed, are elected in a single non-partisan election. Get the top vote, and you are it.
That's the way the elections for every elective office should work. Yes, you could be a member of a party, and yes, you could let everyone know that, but there'd be no primary and whoever the top vote getter would be, would be the winner.
Taking that a step further, not only should that be how the larger US elections work, but in the national legislature itself the practice of having caucuses and Majority and Minority Speakers and Leaders should be abolished as official practices. If the Republicans and Democrats, when they are out of power, want to gather in a basketball court somewhere and vote somebody their spokesman, have at it, but that person ought to get no special cred in the chambers of Congress itself. The Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader are real positions, to an extent, so they'd stick around, but no more organizing on party lines officially.
Would that make a difference? I think it would.
For one thing, you'll hear around here that Harriet Hageman came in third when she ran for Governor behind Gordon and Freiss. But not really. Mary Throne, the Democrat, came in second. If the race had actually been come all and come in, how would that have looked? I suspect that Gordon would still have one, but I strongly suspect that probably Throne would have been second or third, giving the current reflection back on the state's Governor a considerably different one than we now have. Indeed, in Wyoming politics, nearly every election would be pulled toward the center as the Democrats and the middle of the road Republicans would have more of a voice, which they should as they are part of the population. The primary system silences those voices.
And wiping out the party organizations inside of Congress itself would definitely have an impact on government. Minority leaders could run around trying to martial opposition or support for something, but their impact would be much smaller. Without the ability to control committee membership and the like by party, at least openly, a greater emphasis would develop on getting things done and getting along, rather than getting in the way.
Taking this to the Oval Office itself, if the Presidential election was the top vote getter, in one single election, there's no earthly way we'd have had the last several Presidents. Trump would not have been President at all. Nor would have Barrack Obama. Nor would have George Bush II. Only a long primary system lead to their rise. One election, in November, would have no open winnowing system and now way to weed out people's real views.
Yes, that would mean that a President might frequently get in with only 30% of the vote. But that President would also be less imperial by default.
The Japanese declared war on Holland, which was already occupied by the Germans, but whose government in exile retained its overseas possessions.
They also landed troops on the Dutch East Indies, commencing their invasion of those Dutch holdings.
The Japanese had launched their war on the West in the name of resources, and their invasion of the oil rich East Indies had always been a principal target. They'd been fighting the Dutch Navy nearly since December 7, so none of this was a surprise. Their first target was Tarakan, an oil rich tiny island off of Borneo. Later the same day they'd move on to the Celebes and land paratroopers at Kakas and Menado.
The actions raise a little noted but interesting point on the respective strengths and weaknesses of the Axis powers, and their relationship with each other. Japan remained on the rise, showing the ability to really hit targets far from the home islands. It's plan of knocking the U.S. Navy out of the war for a sufficiently long enough time to grab things appeared to be working perfectly. At this point, it was truly achieving its war aims, and against Western powers.
Nazi Germany, however, was in trouble. On this day, the Red Army captured German supply dumps at Sychevka and its 11th Cavalry Corps made a massive mounted charge through the German 9th Army. Whether the Japanese noticed that its European ally was no longer achieving its war aims is unknown, but it wasn't.
Moreover, by grabbing Dutch possessions, and by already having effectively grabbed French ones, the Japanese were taking possessions that arguably could be claimed by its Axis allies and also-rans. Oddly the French possession in Indochina had kowtowed to their defeated regime, but the Dutch ones had not as the Dutch government had not.
The East Indies would also prove to be an exception, somewhat embarrassingly, to the rule in regard to Japanese occupation. The Japanese proved to be universally detested whatever they went in World War Two, except for the East Indies where their collaborationist government would not taint those who cooperated with it. The reason was that the Dutch themselves were more detested than the Japanese, and for good reason. For those same reasons, following World War Two the British would not allow the Dutch back in.
The British evacuated Kuala Lumpur.
A Japanese submarine 500 miles southeast of Oahu torpedoed the USS Saratoga, which made it back to Pearl Harbor under her own power.
German U-boats took up positions off of the American East coast for a planned submarine offensive.
Boxer Joe Louis, who regained his heavyweight title the day prior, joined the U.S. Army.
Joe Louis sewing on Sergeant First Class stripes.
Louis was initially assigned to the cavalry, which came about due to a love of horsemanship.
As a slight aside, this really shows wartime conditions in that the recruiting station was open on a Saturday.
Mickey Rooney, age 21, married Ava Gardner, age 19. It was the first of eight marriages for Rooney, three for Gardner, and would last only a year, mostly broken up due to Rooney's behavior, which included womanizing. It's interesting, I suppose, in the context of Rooney, at that time, having a very youthful and childlike appearance, and having played rather innocent roles. Gardner, at that time, was practically unknown.
Rooney, FWIW, would not enter the service until 1944.
Even while things were getting increasingly desperate in the Philippines, the Japanese presented their first surrender demand to the forces at Bataan on this day, the first US troop convoy departed Halifax, Nova Scotia, for Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland would be a major staging area and training area for US forces in the British Isles early in the American participation in the war.
German forces in the Soviet Union began to suffer general reversals in the face of the Soviet Winter Offensive and the weather.
The Ford Motor Company received a contract to manufacture Jeeps.
The history of Ford Jeeps is slightly complicated. Willys had secured the contract to make 1/4 ton trucks for the services but production needs were obviously going to exceed what Willys Overland could produce. Accordingly, a contract to produce the standardized Willlys pattern of Jeep issued to Ford. Ford would build 300,000 Jeeps during the war, whereas Willys made 363,000.
Willys, Ford and Bantam had all competed for the contract for the 1/4 ton truck prior to the war, with Ford having introduced a very light vehicle, just as Bantam had.
Ford "Pygmy" competition vehicle for the 1/4 ton truck.
Pre-production numbers were actually produced in some volume, although almost all of them were supplied to the British and the Soviets via lend lease. Production of the standardized Jeep has started the prior summer, but the vehicle was still brand new and no examples of it were overseas in spite of it being shown in movies in that role quite frequently.
As we discusssed here on our companion site; Today In Wyoming's History: January 10: 1922 The Laramie County Sheriff conducted a series of raids on stills. Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.
Southern Tariff Association at White House who visited White House on this day i 1922.
Arthur Griffith was elected President of Dáil Éireann. Already overworked, he'd hold the post until his death at age 51 in August, effectively a casualty of the civil war in the country which had already broken out.
The Democratic Party has been so moribund in Wyoming for the past two decades that its as if it doesn't exist at all.
It'll start to make news here shortly, however, and from an unexpected quarter for Wyomingites. That will be the Federal Court.
The Democrats control the US House and Senate, albeit barely, which means that they're the party that now makes judicial nominations. Soon a new nominee for the Federal Bench in Wyoming will occur, and that will be a Democrat.
When that occurs, there will be howls of protest from the far right in Wyoming about elections being stolen, etc. etc., and how Liz Cheney, by voting her conscience, has "betrayed" Wyoming. Indeed, that's pretty much the GOP theme in the state right now.
And that theme is quietly ripping the GOP apart.
It back rooms, living rooms and kitchens, average Republicans are quietly voicing their opinions that the GOP in the state is off the rails. I've heard hopeful speculation, for example, that one of the state's former moderate Republicans will enter the House race and displace Cheney and Hageman from the center.
And this truly reflects more of the native base. Many of the real howls of "betrayal" come from transplants outside the state, not Wyoming natives. Hageman is a Wyoming native, but long observers note that she actually comes from the GOP base, not its new populist right wing, and they'll therefore accuse her of opportunism, which Cheney has also done.
All of which brings up this.
In a year like this, the Democrats might have a chance, albeit a slight one, to take the House seat back.
Yes, I said back.
Teno Roncalio.
Wyoming's last Democratic Congressman was Sweetwater County lawyer and World War Two veteran Teno Roncalio. Roncalio held the seat from 65 to 67 and from 71 to 78. A tough Italian American Wyomingite, he was a strong proponent of environmental bills and a tough opponent of the Vietnam War from a state with the highest volunteer rate in the country for the armed forces during the war. He's seen war up close, of course, winning the Silver Star in Normandy. He took the seat the first time from incumbent William Henry Harrison. He gave the seat up, rather than be defeated, both times.
He's also the last Democrat to occupy it. Dick Cheney occupied it after his second term.
So why haven't there been any more Roncalio's?
Well, there sort of have been, in the Governor's office.
Democrat Ed Herschler occupied the office from 75 to 87. The tough Marine Corps World War Two veteran and Wyoming lawyer was followed by the genteel Natrona County Democrat Mike Sullivan, who occupied it from 87 to 95. After that came a Republican occupant, but it returned to the Democrats in 2003 with Dave Freudenthal, who occupied it until 2011.
That's just a decade ago.
And they're not the only ones. While most of Wyoming's Congressmen have been Republicans, nearly as many Democrats have occupied the State House as have Republicans.
And that's telling.
But what does it tell us?
For one thing, at least up until a decade ago, Wyoming wasn't as fanatically Republican as it would now seem to be. Running around calling somebody a "Rino" doesn't cut nearly as much credit when actual registered Democrats were capable of winning a statewide race. In the last race Mark Gordon took 68% of the Gubernatorial vote against Democrat Mary Throne's 27%, but maybe the constant wining from some quarters that Gordon is a "Rino" misses the point. If a moderate Republican like Gordon pulled down 68% against a real Democrat's 27%, how many more votes would have gone to a hard right candidate like Hageman or Freiss? More for certain, but how many more. 10%? 20%. An added 20% may well have put Thorne in office, and while it's unlikely that would have occurred, it's not at all impossible.
So what the lesson may be is that there is room for Democrats to be Democrats, but not to be left wing goofball Democrats.
And that has tended to be what the state's Democratic Party has been faced with since the Clinton era.
Now, Throne certainly isn't a left wing goofball, but the Democratic primaries have tended to feature them. Usually there's one good candidate, who may be a weak one, and a slate of far left candidates that can't win here. Having said that, in the last House race the surprising Lynette Gray Bull emerged, who was a good fresh candidate who pulled own 25% of the vote against Liz Cheney in a year in which the state was in full GOP ire.
If it happened next year, with Hageman the candidate, Gray Bull would do a lot better than 25%.
Indeed, a lot f Hageman's cache evaporates against Gray Bull. Hageman can claim to be a third generation Wyomingite raised on a ranch, and Wyoming tough, but Gray Bull can claim to have roots so long in the state that it makes third and fourth generation claims look like a sad joke. Beyond that, Ms. Hageman may be Wyoming tough, but Gray Bull is Wind River Reservation tough, which is pretty tough indeed.
Now, I'm not doing a "run Lynette run" plea here, but rather I'm pointing out that while still long shots, there may be more room than we might imagine for a Democratic candidate.
The GOP is ripping itself apart right now. As Tim Stubson, who had run against Cheney in 2018 stated, the only difference between Cheney, whom he knows supports, and Hageman policy wise is that Hageman "doesn't think Cheney loves Trump enought". And loving Trump comes with cost with the silent GOP Wyomingites, who may not be as keen on the post insurrection Trump as the GOP active seem to be.
Mike Sullivan became Governor in a year in which the GOP candidates ripped themselves apart in the primary. He announced late, entered the race undamaged, and people were sick of the Republicans in November.
This year, the House race will feature Hageman, whose policies are completely indistinguishable from Cheney's, demanding she be removed for, implicitly, not endorsing a lie. Cheney isn't inclined to back down and won't be having any of that.
If there's a Democrat out there. . .maybe Gray Bull, or maybe somebody like Roncalio, a veteran with a profession and a blue collar background who isn't a far right populist, but isn't a squirrel nut zipper liberal either. . .
Okay, so who is running right now?
Liz Cheney.
Harrient Hageman.
Those two are, of course, the GOP race, but others are still trying to run, including:
Robin Belinsky: Belinsky is a businesswoman from Sheridan who is billing herself as Wyoming's Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Anthony Bouchard: Bouchard is a member of the legislature from Goshen County who has been in a lot of local political spats and who is a far right firebrand in the legislature. Most recently, however, he's been in the news for the revelation that when he was 18, he got a 14-year-old girl pregnant, and the drama that ultimately followed that. This also revealed that he's originally from Florida, something that was pretty vague before.
Bryan Eugene Keller: He's a resident of Laramie County who has registered, but I don't know anything else about him.
Denton Knapp: Knapp is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and a current Brig. Gen. in the California National Guard. He's from Gillette originally and claims to be generally fond of the Cheney and to respect her past role in Congress.
Marissa Selvig: Mayor of Pavilion. Selvig announced early and has a website, but has received very little attention thereafter.
And of course we have the Governor's race as well, which features:
Mark Gordon: Gordon is the incumbent.
Harold Bjork. Who Bjork isn't really clear, but he's started a Facebook and internet campaign for Governor. From what little you can tell about him, he's a self-declared "conservative" who is running pretty far to the right of Gordon and who is strongly opposed to the now expired mask mandate.
Rex Rammell: Rammell is a perennial and unelectable candidate who ran last time and will again. His views can be characterized as being on the fringe right/libertarian side.
December 8, 2021
Harriet Hageman has released the first of her paid ads in her campaign, according to a news report.
Featuring Western themes, and the "Cowboy Ethics" list adopted by the state, and written by James P. Owen, formerly of Wall Street and now of San Diego, in the form of "ride for the brand", the ad accuses Cheney of not riding for the "brand", and refers to Trump, apparently meaning that Trump, formerly of New York and now of Florida, is Wyoming's brand.
It's really a fairly startlingly proposition, but it is in fact what a lot of Cheney opponents seem to believe. Loyalty to Trump is the centerpiece of Cheney's opponents. By not endorsing the demonstrably false stolen election mantra, and voting to impeach Trump, she's not "ridden for the brand".
The irony is, of course, while Hageman is trying to paint Cheney as an ally of Pelosi, they otherwise are both establishment Republicans and have nearly identical views on everything else. Only their view of loyalty to Trump over loyalty to democratic principals separates them overall, if we credit Hageman with holding the pro Trump line sincerely.
December 15, 2021
While not directly related to the election. . .and yet it is, two interesting things related to the January 6 insurrection have been in the news.
One is the text messages received and sent by White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who briefly was cooperating with the January 6 Committee but who no longer is. They showed that Donald Trump Jr. and Fox News personalities were in contact with Meadows trying to urge him to get Donald Trump to issue a statement to hopefully halt the insurrection. This makes it clear that they understood what was occurring and that Donald Trump didn't react.
It also makes it plain that Fox's near contemporaneous willingness to entertain the conspiracy theory that left wing fifth columnists were actualy staging the insurrection wasn't believed at the time, and frankly it no doubt isn't believed now. By extension, that means Fox frankly is exposed for knowingly telling falsehoods.
In other news documents hacked by a "whistleblower" have revealed that head of Wyoming's GOP belongs or belonged to a group called the Oath Keepers.
I'm frankly unaware of the group, but the FBI desribes them as a "paramilitary group". Their name stems from the oath taken by members of the military, police, and others to "protect and defend the United States Constitution", apparently, which if correct would suggest that they express the trend of recent years of some members of the far right taking an alternative interpretation of the Constitution which is not supported by the law. This popped up in the last legislative session in which there was an attempt by a group to support a bill which would have required, in essence, members of the legislature to ignore rulings by courts in some circumstances.
The list was apparently hacked and released in October, but WyoFile apparently just went through it. Their news story indicated that there were 191 members of the group in Wyoming, but an interview with one acknowledged former member (Eathhorne declined to speak to WyoFile) suggests that it was active at one time but ceased to be well before the January 6 attack. Indeed, if the interview is correct, it may have been part of a far right chat group that basically fell apart well before the election before things got really extreme.
In other news Converse County's rightfully declined to "discipline" Larry Hicks, who is mentioned above.
December 16, 2021
Apparently Casper and Cheyenne are in contest to see who will host a rally for Harriet Hageaman lead by ex President Donald Trump over Memorial Day weekend.
December 29, 2021
No Democrat has announced, but former Republican Melissa Selvig had said she's now running in the Constitution Party.
In doing so, she slammed the GOP claiming that it had engaged in negative politics, gone with big money candidates and further that there had been closed door discussions about who it really supported.
The Constitution Party lacks sufficient support to appear in the primary so it will choose its candidate at a convention in April.
Assuming nobody else runs in the Constitution Party, she'll receive its endorsement and then go on to defeat in the general election.
January 9, 2022
Not shriking from a fight, Liz Cheney last week called out membes of the state GOP organization as being "radical". While not called by name, she specifically referenced Frank Eathorne, head of the state organization, who earlier expressed some sympathy with a gafly Texas suggestion that Texas would succeed from the Union. Eathorne had said this during an interview on radio, indicating it was being watched.
Eathorne has subsequently been identified as a (possibly former) member of the Oath Keepers, an organization that is identified with the far right wing populist ideology. He and then candidate Darin Smith were in Washington D. C. during the "Stop the Steal" event, but both claim that they were not at the insurrection itself.
January 10, 2022
Aaron Nab, a feul truck driver, has announced he's running against Governor Gordon. Based upon his interview with the press, he's from the populist right wing. He stands no chance whatsoever. His point, in the interview, was that Gov. Gordon should not have imposed mask mandates when he did, something that is now old news and will not be happening again.
So far, this election season has only seen Cheney, who would normally not draw a serious opponent, drew a serious opponent. Democrats continue to remain nearly completly silent.
Pope Francis commented on childless couples and pets.
Before I go into that, I'm going to note that one of the things about Pope Francis is that he tends to be incredibly hard to pigeonhole, even though his fans and critics love to go around doing just that. And here we have just such an example. Only weeks away from making it pretty clear that the Latin Tridentine Mass needs to be a thing of the past, as far as he's concerned, and while he's the Bishop of Rome, he says something that's radically. . . traditional.
Here's what he said, in so far as I tell, as I can't find a full transcript of his remarks.
Today ... we see a form of selfishness. We see that some people do not want to have a child.
Sometimes they have one, and that's it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children.
This may make people laugh, but it is a reality.
[This] "is a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us, takes away our humanity", he added.
Oh you know where this is going to go. . .
Right away I saw predictable "I'm not selfish, it's my deep abiding love of the environment. . . "
Yeah, whatever.
Apparently there were a fair number of comments of that type, as a subsequent article on this topic found that, nope, most childless couples are childless as they don't want children, not because of their deep abiding concern about the environment.
Indeed, tropes like that are just that, tropes. People tend to excuse or justify conduct that they engage in that they are uncomfortable excusing for self-centered or materialistic reasons for more ennobled ones, or even for ones that just aren't attributed to something greater, in some sense.
Not everyone, mind you, you will find plenty of people who don't have children and justify that on that basis alone. Indeed, in the 70s through the mid 90s, I think that was basically what the justification was, to the extent that people felt they needed one. More recently that seems to have changed, although there are plenty of people who will simply state they don't want children as they're focused on what the personally want, rather than some other goal. Others, however, have to attribute it, for some reason to a cause du jour. In the 80s it was the fear of nuclear war, I recall. Now it's the environment, although it was somewhat then as well. I suppose for a tiny minority of people, that's actually true, but only a minority.
Whatever it is, the reaction to the Pope's statement will cause and is causing a minor firestorm. Oh, but it'll get better.
The same Pope has already made some Catholic conservatives mad by his comments equating destroying the environment with sin. And there's a certain section of the Trad and Rad Trad Catholic community that's unwilling to credit Pope Francis with anything, even though he says some extremely traditional things, particularly in this area.
A comment like this one, if it had been made by Pope Benedict, would have sparked commentary on the Catholic internet and podcasts for at least a time. There's no way that Patrick Coffin or Dr. Taylor Marshall wouldn't have commented on it, and run with it in that event.
Will they now?
Well, they ought to.
Am I going to?
No, not really.
I could be proven wrong, but I doubt I will be.
The Pope's point will be difficult for the childless to really grasp. I don't think I became fully adult until we had children, really. People who don't have children don't really know what its like to, I think. And I think that probably includes even those who grew up in large families.
At any rate, I have a bit of a different point, that being my ongoing one about the industrialization of female labor. In no small part, in my view, childless couples in general have come about as our modern industrialized society emphasizes that everyone's principal loyalty should be to their workplace or a career, without question. As put by Col. Saito in the epic The Bridge On The River Kwai, people are to be "happy in their work".
That means that they don't have time for children, they believe, and moreover the children are societal obstacles to the concept that the only thing that matters is career. It's the one place that ardent capitalist and ardent socialist come together. And, as its often noted, particularly by both working mothers and folks like Bernie Sanders, it's difficult to be both a mother and worker, with it being my guess that the more education that goes into a woman's career, the more this is the case. Society, and by that we mean every industrialized society, has no solutions to this, and there probably aren't any. About the only one that Sanders and his ilk can come up with is warehousing children sort of like chickens at the Tyson farms.
It's also a lie, of course. Careers, by and large, don't make people fulfilled or happy, for the most part, although there are certainly individual exceptions. Statistical data more than demonstrates that.
The Pope, by the way, is not against pets.
Messe ocus Pangur Bán, cechtar nathar fria saindán; bíth a menma-sam fri seilgg, mu menma céin im saincheirdd
Caraim-se fos, ferr cach clú, oc mu lebrán léir ingnu; ní foirmtech frimm Pangur bán, caraid cesin a maccdán.
Ó ru·biam — scél cen scís — innar tegdais ar n-óendís, táithiunn — díchríchide clius — ní fris tarddam ar n-áthius.
Gnáth-húaraib ar gressaib gal glenaid luch inna lín-sam; os mé, du·fuit im lín chéin dliged n-doraid cu n-dronchéill.
Fúachid-sem fri frega fál a rosc anglése comlán; fúachimm chéin fri fégi fis mu rosc réil, cesu imdis,
Fáelid-sem cu n-déne dul hi·n-glen luch inna gérchrub; hi·tucu cheist n-doraid n-dil, os mé chene am fáelid.
Cía beimmi amin nach ré, ní·derban cách ar chéle. Maith la cechtar nár a dán, subaigthius a óenurán.
Hé fesin as choimsid dáu in muid du·n-gní cach óenláu; du thabairt doraid du glé for mu mud céin am messe.
I and Pangur Bán, each of us two
at his special art: his mind at hunting (mice), my own mind is in my special craft. I love to rest—better than any fame—at my booklet with diligent science: not envious of me is Pangur Bán: he himself loves his childish art. When we are—tale without tedium—in our house, we two alone, we have—unlimited (is) feat-sport—something to which to apply our acuteness. It is customary at times by feat of valour, that a mouse sticks in his net, and for me there falls into my net a difficult dictum with hard meaning. His eye, this glancing full one, he points against the wall-fence: I myself against the keenness of science point my clear eye, though it is
very feeble. He is joyous with speedy going where a mouse sticks in his sharp-claw: I too am joyous, where I understand a difficult dear question. Though we are thus always, neither hinders the other: each of us two likes his art, amuses himself alone. He himself is the master of the work which he does every day: while I am at my own work, (which is) to bring difficulty to clearness.
Pangur Bán, a poem by an unknown Medieval Irish monk.
The Seamus Heany translation, which I like better. It really gets at the nature of the poem:
I and Pangur Bán my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.
‘Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes
a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!
So
in peace our task we ply, Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Practice
every day has made Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.
The Values candidates
Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who was a pacifist, and voted against delcaring war in 1917 and in 1941. She's a hero, as she stuck to her declared values.
While I’m at it, I'm developing a deep suspicion of conservative candidates and figures that express certain highly conservative social positions but don't quite seem to adhere to them in their own lives. This coming from somebody who is obviously highly socially conservative themselves.
This comes to mind in the context of "family values", "protecting the family" and the like. I see and read stuff like that from conservatives all the time. So if you are saying that you strongly value the family, and protecting the family, etc., why don't you have one?
Now, some people are no doubt deeply shocked by that question, but it's a legitimate one, and I'm not the first person to raise it. If a person might ask if I seriously expect people to answer the question, well I do.
Now, in complete fairness, all sorts of people don't have children for medical reasons. But more often than that, if a couple don't have them, they don't want them. That's what's up with that. And you really can't campaign on your deep love of the family if you are foreclosing that part of the family in your own lives, absent some really good reason. More often than not, the reason is money and career.
Recently I saw, for example, a statement that a person is deeply committed to family and loves spending time with their nieces. Well, everyone likes spending time, for the most part, with nieces and nephews. That's not even remotely similar to having children, however. Not at all.
I'll go one further on this and note this as I do.
The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.
Luke, 16:10.
I note this as some of the conservative value candidates, if you look into their backgrounds, have question marks that should give pause for the reason noted above. If a person doesn't keep to their principals in small things, or basic things, why would they keep them on anything else?
One conservative candidate that I'm aware of, when you look up that person's background, was born of an ethnicity that's overwhelmingly Catholic and went to Catholic schools growing up. That person was undoubtedly a Catholic. That didn't preclude, however, the candidate from getting divorced and remarried to another person who was divorced.
Now, that's quite common in our society, but it's completely contrary to the Catholic faith without some explanation. Maybe there is one. I don't know, but it's a fair question, just as it would be if a Jewish candidate grew up in an Orthodox household but operates a delicatessen featuring ham. That may seem odd, but if you are willing to compromise on small things, you'll get around to the big ones, if the small ones also express a deep principle.
If you won't compromise on small things, or things that are represented as elemental to your declared world view, you are dependable in a crisis. On the other hand, if you participated in a faith, and were educated by it, and okay with its elements, and it formed part of your worldview . . right up until you had to do something difficult and chose the easier path. . . well, there's no real reason to believe that haven gotten there once, you won't do it again.
The candidate, I'd note, has been stone-cold silent on the insurrection. From that, you can tell the candidate knows it was an insurrection, but is unwilling to say diddly.
The Primordal Connection
St. Jerome with lion. St. Jerome is supposesd to have taken a thorn out of a lion's paw, and the lion thereafter stayed with him. While some might doubt some aspects of this, St. Jerome's lion is also recounted as having caused fear in the monestary in which he lived, and having adopted the monestary's donkey as a friend.
Back to pets for a second, one added thing I think about them is that for a lot of people, they're the last sole remaining contact with nature they have.
There are lots of animal species that live in close contact with each other and depend on each other. We're one. We cooperated with wolves, and they became dogs as they helped us hunt. Cats took us in (not the other way around) as we're dirty, and we attract mice. We domesticated horses, camels and reindeer for transportation. And so on.
We miss them.
One more way that technology and modern industrialization has ruined things. Cats and dogs remind us of what we once were.
And could be, again.
Warped legacies
An awful lot of what the Pope is tapping into has to deal with the combined factors of moderns forgetting what, well, sex is for, and what its implications are, and that root morality and human nature remain unchanged. There are probably more generations between modern house cats and Pangur Bán than there are between your ancestors who were waking up each morning in the Piacenzian and you.
Which takes us to men, behaving badly, and everyone turning a blind eye.
And, of course, Sex and the City.
She is fiercely protective of Carrie Bradshaw and livid that she and everyone else at the show has been put into this position, It is not about the money, but rather her legacy. Carrie was all about helping women and now, under her watch, women are saying that they have been hurt.
Sarah Jessica Parker on the scandal involving James Noth.
M'eh.
A note from Wikipedia regarding the series:
When the series premiered, the character was praised by critics as a positive example of an independent woman in the vein of Mary Richards. However, retrospective analysis tends to place more emphasis on the character's repeated and often unrepentant infidelities, with many critics instead viewing her as narcissistic.
Carrie was about helping women? Well, excuse me if that was deluded.
Scary legacies
This news item came out the same day, I'd note, that Ghislane Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking. And by that we mean procuring underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein.
Eew, ick.
Connection? Well, none directly.
Or maybe. More narcissism and obsession with unrestrained desire, or lust.
It sort of seems that you can't unleash this without it oozing out as filth sooner or later.
On Maxwell, because I tend to get my news by reading, I'm left perplexed by how a person says her first name, Ghislaine. I have no idea. I heard it on the nightly news the other day, but the spelling is so odd, I immediately forgot how to pronounce it.
Boston Marriages
Some recent headlines from the ill historically informed press department:
What is a Platonic life partnership? These couples are breaking societal relationship norms
And:
Platonic Partnerships Are On The Rise, So I Spoke To These Friends Who Have Chosen To Live The Rest Of Their Lives Together "I don't think our love and commitment together should pale in comparison to romantic love."
Oh my gosh! This means that people don't always default to acting like their characters in Sex In The City or Sex Lives of College Girls!
Could this be a new trend?!? Oh my oh my, what would it mean.
Well, maybe people are just defaulting back to normal, but we're unable to grasp that as we've been steeped in seventy years of Hugh Hefner pornification of absolutely everything.[1] This isn't new. Indeed, we've dealt with this here before in our Lex Anteinternet: The Overly Long Thread. Gender Trends of the Past...
post. Let's take a look:
But there is more to look at here.
Another extremely orthodox cleric but one of an extremely intellectual bent, and who is therefore sometimes not very predictable, is Father Hugh Barbour, O. Pream. I note that as his comment on same gender attraction in women was mentioned earlier here and came out in a direction that most would not suspect in the context of a "Boston Marriage". Father Barbour did not license illicit sexual contact, i.e., sex outside of marriage, in any context either, but he did have a very nuanced view of attraction between women that's almost wholly unique in some ways. Like the discussion above, but in a more nuanced form, it gets into the idea that modern society is so bizarrely sexually focused that its converted the concept of attraction to absolute need, failing to grasp the nature of nearly everything, and sexualized conduct that need not be. Barbour issued an interesting opinion related to this back in 2013, at which time there had just been a huge demonstration in France regarding the redefinition of the nature of marriage.
Katherine Coman and Katherine Lee Bates who lived together as female housemates for over twenty years in a "Wellesley Marriage", something basically akin to what's called a Boston Marriage today. Named for Wellesley College, due to its association with it, Wellesley Marriages were arrangements of such type between academic women, where as Boston Marriages more commonly features such arrangements between women of means. Barbour noted these types of arrangements in a basically approving fashion, noting that its only in modern society when these arrangements are seemingly nearly required to take on a sexual aspect, which of course he did not approve of.
Hmmm. . . .
Men and women who don't marry have always been unusual, but the sexualization of everything in the post Hefner world has made their situation considerably more difficult, really. Society has gone from an expectation that the young and single would abstain from sex until married to the position that there must be something wrong with them if they are not. This has gone so far as to almost require same gender roommates, past their college years, to engage in homosexual sex. I.e, two women or two men living together in their college years is no big deal, but if they're doing it by their 30s, they're assumed to be gay and pretty much pressured to act accordingly.
Truth be known, not everyone always matches the median on everything, as we will know. For some reason, this has been unacceptable in this are as society became more and more focused on sex.
At one time, the phenomenon of the lifelong bachelor or "spinster" wasn't that uncommon, and frankly it didn't bear the stigma that people now like to believe. It was harder for women than for men, however, without a doubt. People felt sorry for women that weren't married by their early 30s and often looked for ways to arrange a marriage for them, a fair number of such women ultimately agreeing to that status, with probably the majority of such societally arranged marriages working out. Some never did, however.
For men, it was probably more common, and it was just assumed that things hadn't worked out. After their early 30s a certain "lifelong bachelor" cache could attach to it, with the reality of it not tending to match the image, but giving societal approval to it. In certain societies it was particularly common, such as in the famed Garrison Keillor "Norwegian Bachelor Farmer" instance or in the instance of similar persons in Ireland, where it was very common for economic reasons.
People didn't tend to assume such people were homosexual, and they largely were not. Indeed, again contrary to what people now assume, except for deeply closeted people or people who had taken up certain occupations in order to hide it, people tended to know who actually was homosexual.
I can recall all of this being the case when I was a kid. My grandmother's neighbor was a bachelor his entire life who worked as an electrician. After he came home from a Japanese Prisoner of War camp following World War Two, he just wanted to keep to himself. A couple of my mother's aunts were lifelong single women and, at least in one case, one simply didn't want to marry as she didn't want children, and the other had lost a fiancé right after World War One and never went on to anyone else. Her secretary desk is now in my office. In none of these instances would anyone have accused these individuals of being homosexual.
Taking this one step further, some people in this category did desire the close daily contact of somebody they were deeply friends with, in love with if you will, but that need not be sexual. Love between women and love between men can and does exist without it having a sexual component. Interestingly, it is extremely common and expected when we are young and up into our 20s, but after that society operates against it. People form deep same gender relationships in schools, on sporting fields, in barracks and in class.
Some of those people won't marry, and there's no reason that their friendships shouldn't continue on in the post college roommate stage.
Well, society won't have it as everything needs to be about sex, all the time. Haven't you watched The Big Bang Theory?
Tatting for attention?
Kourtney Kardashian, I think (I can't really tell the various Kardashians from one another and don't really have a sufficient interest to learn who is who), apparently is now all tatted up now that she has a tattooed boyfriend or fiancé or something that is. And by this, we mean heavily tattooed.
Like, enough already?
Apparently Salena Gomez has a bleeding rose tattoo. I don't get that either, but I'm sure that piles of ink will be spilled on it.
Footnotes:
It would be worth noting here that early on a female researching on Hefner's early publications noted how much of it was actually in the nature of barely disguised child pornography, with cartoons particularly depicting this. This lead to an investigation in Europe, and the magazine rapidly stopped it, but it's interesting in that the magazine was so debased that it not only portrayed women as stupid, sterile, top-heavy, and nymphomaniacs, but also underage.
The impact however had been created, and by the 1970s the full on sexual exploitation of child models was on. As debased as society has become, it's at least retreated from this.
