The 2021 Season

 It wasn't a great one, for a variety of reasons.

The Dude after the last day of hunting.  We finished up with an attempt, unsuccessful, on Chukars.  He was tired.

As with most hunters, the season doesn't quite follow the calendar year.  For me, it starts sometime in spring when spring turkey season opens up.  When that closes down, its fishing season for me, even though my state doesn't really have a dedicated fishing season.  You can fish all year long.

Indeed, when my daughter was at home, fishing season started as soon as waterfowl ended in January, with that being ice fishing season.  She's away at university now, so there hasn't been any ice fishing recently.

Anyhow, there's turkey season, and then fishing season, followed by sage grouse and dove season, antelope season, deer season, and elk season.  This assuming I didn't draw any special tags, like moose, and that would be a safe assumption.

Big game season yields into waterfowl season.

Seasons dictated by nature, the weather, and I guess the game and fish department.  A better calendar, however, than one dictated by professional sports or by actuaries.

Indeed, if I had my druthers, which would mean having the extra time, I'd add gardening season and this would effectively be my life.  Just the other day a slightly younger colleague of mine spoke about his dreams for retirement (which with five kids, only one of whom is in college, I'll predict will remain a lifelong dream).  They involved "travel", and when I mean travel, I mean global travel.

I have utterly no such desires whatsoever.  I've crossed oceans by plane more than once and if I never do so again, that's okay by me.

I'm a simple man.

Anyhow, in terms of unrealized dreams, this has been a year of unrealized dreams for me in a lot of personal ways.  2021 won't go down as a happy year for a lot of people, spirit of the times and all, and it certainly won't for me.

I did start off the year with turkey season.

Me early in the turkey season, dog behind me.  Yes, the dog goes.  The rifle in this picture may have been near its last hunt, as it was stolen this past year.  The hat is a heavy duty Park Service dress campaign hat.  The year before last my old reproduction, heavy duty, beaver felt M1911 campaign hat, which had become my fishing hat, and then hunting hat, bit the dust and, worse yet, blew out of my Jeep on the same day that the Dude was bitten by a rattlesnake.  The jacket is a surplus Swiss Army smock.

For quite a few years, I had access to some farm ground with turkeys on it.  That ground sold in 2020 and my access went with that.  This meant, of course, that finding a turkey, in the general season, in my region, was made quite a bit more difficult, but that's the way such things go.

I stumbled on an area which in 2019 I was the only one who was hunting turkeys.  Even better, early in the turkey season, you have to really hike in.  Last time I really did this heavily, in 2019, I was about the only person I saw.

The season started off that way, and I did run into turkeys.

I’m probably the only guy who takes his hunting dog out for turkey hunting, although I'm not hunting turkeys with him.  He's hiking.  Things have gotten so that I can't go out the door on a weekend anymore without the dog.  He won't allow it to happen.  This is detrimental to turkey hunting, however.

I did find a turkey at one point, but I was armed with a .22 Mag rifle, and it was in a tree.  I frankly didn't have a good enough view of it, from a distance, to tell if it was a tom or not.  I passed on the shot, and eventually he flew off.

The next trip, my luck on isolation ran out.  When I was up on the mountain, I could hear the motorized ATV brigade down in the valley.  Trying to pursue a turkey down a heavily wooded slope, I could hear them coming up. They never saw me, but I sure could hear, and then see, them.  I'm sure every turkey in the county could as well.  On the way down they passed me, and then when I was loading the dog they went by me again.

Now, like a lot of folks who are gasoline jockeys, they weren't very attune to what they were doing and where they were going.  I've had this happen twice this past year (I'll get to the other in a moment), but I was worried for the dog.  Frankly, I was highly distracted.  I put the rifle on the hood of the Jeep to load him so he wouldn't get hit.  When they passed, with the dog in, I got in and started to drive off.  I realized, however, that the rifle wasn't in the truck, and I went back to get it.

It was gone.  I walked the entire area that day, more than once, and again the next day, and again one more day after that.

I was the only one there, other than them.  I'm certain they took it.

And by took it, I mean stole it.  It wasn't hard to figure out whose it was.

I've never liked ATVs much as I think they're an insult to nature, frankly, and people abuse them.  I see people roaring over the sagebrush with them, and with their asses so welded to them that they just can't seem to get out on foot.  It's not all that uncommon for me to find somebody who will state that they didn't see anything. . . 

Yeah. . well if you are as noisy as the Afrika Korps, you aren't going to.

I did go back later, but, no turkeys.  I did run into them, but I could never get up on them.  I'm more than a bit unusual for a turkey hunter in that I stalk them, and I lack a call.  Very few people hunt them that way.  But when I first hunted them as a teenager, that's what we did, and I'm not patient enough to wait in one spot for a long time.

Then came fishing season.

Now, about that, I’m mostly a stream fisherman and always have been.  I will fish other bodies of water, and I certainly do, but that's my focus.

I can't really complain about fishing this year, other than that due to my work schedule I didn't get out nearly as much as I had hoped. And that's something to complain about.  Otherwise, my main complaint would be, I guess, that my son was off at school for most of the summer and my daughter had to have back surgery.  My daughter is a long time fisherman and my son has taken it up with more earnest recently.  

It's an odd deal to look back and realize that in some ways you're repeating your own father's history.  He taught me to fish, but at some point I became a fanatic outdoorsman and there were plenty of times that I went out on my own.  When I went to school, of course, he was left in that position, and he was a great and frequent fisherman.  So he was fishing quite often on his own.

Now I am.

One of the creeks I fished this year, and should have done a lot better in than I did.

Anyhow, before late summer yielded to other concerns, I did get out some, fishing the creeks in the mountains.  I reconfirmed a finding I'd make the prior year that a spot I found that looks good is, in fact, not.  It also looks like it ought to be populated by bears, and it probably is.

Getting into the spirit of things.

The first bird hunting season around here is blue grouse.

This has been frustrating due to interactions with novice game wardens the past few years who can't quite bring themselves to accept that a person of six decades residence knows more about how to get onto this spot and never touch foot on private ground than they do, having just arrived from California as they have, and seeing the world from a 3/4 ton pickup as they are.  When proven wrong, they varied from apologetic in the first instance, to blisteringly aggressive and rude in the second.^[1]  This year, however, the local chief warden took the matter in his hands and wrote me a note, for which I am greatly appreciative.  So I got up in to the high sticks without incident.

Didn't see a single bird, however.

That, I suspect, is because it had been so dry.  No water, no birds.

I also ended up doing this by myself.  This used to be an annual routine for me and my son, and one year for me my son and my daughter.  Indeed, since my son was hold enough to hunt birds, I've never had a bird season where I didn't have him accompany me at least once, but this year, due to university, that was the case.  And not only for blue grouse, but for everything, save for fishing and antelope hunting.

Blue grouse here is followed by the short sage chicken season.  I'd seen a lot of sage chickens in the summer, but ran into one during sage chicken season. Actually, the dog found it, not me, and I wasn't ready for it. 

No sage chickens.

After that, both kids came home, but on different weekends, for antelope.

I managed, for the third year in a row, not to draw an antelope tag, and I'm not happy about it.  I like antelope as food.  I don't like the fact that my state weights out of state tags more heavily than any neighboring state.  I am, after all, a killetarian and I figure that if you live in New Jersey there are deer in New Jersey.  Hunt them.

Lots of economic interests don't figure it that way, however.

Both kids got really nice antelope, I'll note.

Deer came after that.  I only got out once, although now I can't recall why.  I didn't see any deer, but I did get stuck pretty bad in the high country.

Well, that's not quite true.  I did get out a second time, but it was marked by the fact that I fractured a tooth, and hadn't realized it, about a day prior.  It impacted severely that morning and by the time I was where I was going, I was unbelievably sick.  I barely made the long drive home, and during that time frame a storm had come in, and the highway became a sheet of ice.  A tooth extraction followed.

And then came waterfowl.

It was a fantastic waterfowl year, the best in years and years.  I did do really well hunting ducks and geese, and got to spend some blind time with one of my oldest friends.  The only sad note is that due to various things by mid summer things were a bit sad on other score and that lingered as I recalled that my trips out to hunt ducks and geese, with more around than there have been for eons, were again alone.

It was in the late waterfowl season that I had my second vehicular run in of the year, and it was similar to the first.  I was duck and goose hunting on a stretch of the river.  Up until the last few years, this stretch, which is 7,000 feet high, closes to fishermen because of the weather.  Nobody wants to fly fish in 80 mph winds when it's 10F.

That's started to change, however.

For one thing, in spite of the high altitude, it hasn't been as cold up that high recently.  It's still really windy, however.  On the day I was out there, it was probably around 35F with 80 mph winds.

I'm a fisherman too, but when hunting starts, for me fishing stops.  I'm more of a hunter than a fish hunter.  My father was the other way around.  Anyhow, I sort of figure that guys who have the run of the river from April until late August, can ease up a bit in September through December, and most in fact do.  If you see a fisherman on any other stretch of the river from August on, they tend to be friendly as a rule and share the river.  I try to avoid them.

On this stretch its different, however, and that's because most of the fishermen who tend to be in this stretch are from the big rectangular state to our south.

Now, I'm not the only waterfowler on this stretch of the river.  A few other dedicated guys are dedicated blind hunters on the same stretch.  It must be the case that they stake their claim and the fishermen avoid them.  I generally avoid the fishermen.

On this day, however, I drove down to a stretch of the river in this area that I knew was empty.  I got things, and the dog, out a couple of hundred yards away from the river and then, as the dog was milling about, a Rectangular State SUV came blasting down the two track and nearly hit my dog. Worse yet, they saw him.  

What that was about was them getting to the river before me. They probably thought I was a fisherman too, or they knew I was a hunter and they wanted their stretch of river. I hunted it anyway.  They knew they'd been assholes as they kept looking back as I walked the long stretch down and the long stretch back.  On top of it, they put in on what amounts to a wind tunnel (I knew that) and had no luck.  

There was no need for that.

Last year I took up chukar hunting in earnest.

Me chukar hunting.  Why am I dressed like I'm in the Swiss Army?  Well the reason is that I'm too cheap to buy the quuality hunting clothes that other people do, and I grew use to miltiary style clothing as a National Guardsmen and I like its features, particularly the zillions of pockets.  On  this day, the wind was bad, and hence the hood up.  Also, I'm wearing GI field pants over Levis for the same reason.

The reason has to do with having run into chukars in a major way in 2020.  I knew all the spots they'd been in, and therefore I went back. I got. . . one.

Indeed, I saw them only once.

Another reason that I've taken chukars up is that in the last few years I haven't drawn an elk tag and chukars take me into rough country and I tend not to be very good at it.

I'm not one of those people who run around looking for challenges in life.  Indeed, quite frankly, my life had plenty of challenges early on, and I don't need anymore.  Frankly, for that matter, I tend to find people who claim to take up occupations because they're "challenging" to be full of  bull.

Having said that, I'm completely different with outdoor endeavors.  Maybe I do like a challenge, and perhaps that why I'm after chukars.

While not exactly on my seasons, my failures at chukars caused me to try to find out more about them and that lead me to this excellent blog:

The Reigning Chukar Champions

It's a great read.

Anyhow, different year, different hatch.

Last day of the season.  Yep, more unecessary camouflage for the same reason.  The jacket is an Australian wind proff SAS smock that an Australian friend gave me, the trousers are U.S. Army pants.  I'm wearing a Charhartt coat for wamrth.

Footnotes:

1. In the first instance the game warden followed me out, at my invitation, and in the end relented with "I didn't think that this could be done".  On the way, I somewhat worried about him rolling his pickup truck and warned him about a hill, turn and traverse across a dam that's no big deal for a Jeep, but is a big deal for a pickup, but he did it.  He probably didn't believe me that this was a way in and out.

Well, in the end, he did.

In the second instance, the warden started off as rude and argumentative. When I explained the road that I came on, he said "it isn't a road", claiming that 4x4s had just created it the past few years.

That claim was absolute bullshit.  I looked him up, and he was a relatively recent arrival from California.

I should note that several years prior a different game warden was hugely enthusiastic that anyone had gone to such an effort to get where I was went, which was just a jumping off point at that for a hike in the mountains in pursuit of grouse.

Anyhow, with the experience noted of the two difficult wardens, I actually called ahead for the second year in a row.  The first time I didn't get a call back, and then I got the rude warden.  I did it again this year and got the regional warden, who was apologetic about his green underlings, and wrote me a note so that they'd leave me alone.  I kept hoping to run into them, but didn't.  Indeed, coming out of the hills the only one I ran into was on the main dirt road, and he'd just stopped a party of University of Wyoming female ag students who were on some sort of expedition.  I stopped, but he just waved me on, which is what I would have done if I were him.

Blog Mirror: 1922 Definitions: Home Economics, Domestic Science, Household Engineering, Etc.

 

1922 Definitions: Home Economics, Domestic Science, Household Engineering, Etc.

Blog Mirror: History of the Field Watch

 

HISTORY OF THE FIELD WATCH

Wednesday, February 4, 1942. Men of miscalculation.

In North Africa, an odd event known as the Abdeen Palace Incident occurred, as was reported by Sarah Sundin in her blog:

February 4, 1942: In North Africa, British retreat ends at Gazala, Libya. Japanese take Ambon, Netherlands East Indies, from a small Australian garrison. British troops surround Egyptian palace in Cairo to force King Farouk to abdicate.

I'd note, FWIW, that I disagree with that date for the Japanese taking Ambon, I think it was February 3.  But the date for the British coup in regard to King Farouk is quite correct, although he did not abdicate.  Rather, he was forced to accede to a new government.  He remained the king for another decade.

King Farouk in 1946.  He as a member of the Turco-Circassian elite in the country, which owned 3/4s of the land at the time.

Farouk was, suffice it to say, an interesting figure who was the king over an interesting country.  He was of Circassian, Turkish, French, Albanian and Greek descent, meaning he lacked Arab or Egyptian genetic heritage.  His bodyguards were Albanians, the only people he trusted in that role.  His actual heritage was more Circassian than anything else, due to the presence of various Circassian slave girls in his heritage.  He became king at age 16 and never got along with the country's British representative, Miles Lampson.  He strongly favored Italians over the British.

Egypt had technically been an Ottoman possession until World War One, and after that was technically independent but was in fact a quasi British satellite with various treaty obligations to the British.  It was not a declared combatant in the war, but treaty rights in which the British had the right to station troops there to defend it meant that it was in fact a combat theater.  Beset by a complicated domestic travails, including the lack of a male heir, he lived a lavish lifestyle which, early in the war, caused him to lose favor with the Egyptian people who were aware that the British royals were sacrificing during the war.  His palace did not adhere to blackout provisions in Cairo.

The British exerted heavy pressure over who would hold office in the Egyptian government and Farouk generally yielded to them, but on this day their displeasure over the makeup of the government boiled over.  Farouk asked his military leaders how long they could hold out against the British if they refused British demands, and were informed that they could only do so for two hours.  On this night, the British presented Farouk with an ultimatum and troops surrounded his place.  Ultimately, they stormed it.  Farouk capitulated and a new Egyptian government was formed.  The British representative, unbeknownst to him, was lucky to leave with his life, as Farouk's body guards were hidden in the room, ready to open fire if he was touched.

Ironically, the event caused the Egyptian people to rally behind Farouk, who resented the obvious British termination of their chosen government in favor of one that would do the British bidding. Farouk did not rise to the occasion, however, and the event marked part of his slide into increased gross personal excess in every imaginable fashion.  It also marked a turning point in Egyptian politics as Egyptian military leaders became opponents of ongoing British presence, something that would ultimately lead them to depose Farouk and take over the country, with their rule effectively continuing on to the present day.

Farouk's popularity with Egyptians did not last, and he was deposed in 1952 as noted, spending the rest of his life in Italy.  The entire matter ultimately proved to be a British disaster.

As an aside, his sister, Princess Fawzia Faud, would be Queen of Iran in an arranged political marriage with the Shah of Iran from 1941 to 1948. The marriage brought Iran added status, not Egypt, as the latter was the more important state. That marriage ended in divorce.  She remarried an Egyptian army officer/diplomat and lived the rest of her life in Egypt, dying in 2013.

Also on this Wednesday, February 4, 1942, Hermann Goering met with Benito Mussolini regarding the invasion of Malta.  Mussolini wasn't impressed.

Suffice it to say, the day for German invasions had really passed.  The Germans had essentially concluded that it was incapable of invading Great Britain and had turned its eyes East, oddly partially, at least, for that reasons.  That of course brought about the invasion of the Soviet Union, which was not going well.  

The Germans and Italians were not going to invade Malta.

In North Africa, however, the Germans and Italians were doing fairly well, which perhaps gave rise to the delusion that they'd be in the position for a Maltese offensive.  On this day they took Dema, Libya.  British lines, however, were forming.

Lord Beaverbrook was appointed head of the Ministry of War Production, which had been created on this day.  He resigned after occupying the office for two weeks.  The Ontario native clashed with another figure in the administration and determined to depart the agency.

Saturday, February 4, 1922. Ford buys Lincoln.

An illustration by Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle graced the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on this day in 1922.

Ford Motors announced it had purchased the financially distressed Lincoln Motor Company.  The purchase out of receivership was for $8,000,000.

Japan agreed to withdraw troops from Shandong, restore German interests, surprisingly, in Qingdao, and given the Jinan railway back to China.

A mob in British India burned down a police station in Chauri Chaura killing 22 policemen. The action had been sparked by police killing protesters some time earlier.

The family of newly elected Congressman John. L. Cable posed for this photograph:

Sailor suits for boys remained popular at the time, as this photo demonstrates.

The 2022 Election Part VI. The Early Landing Lights Edition

January 11, 2022

Well, we've clearly reached a new stage of the campaign.  Last week, on the anniversary of January 6, Liz Cheney not only made it clear that she was not backing down in the face of a local and national party organization which now defines itself, to a large degree, with something akin to Trump, love him or leave us, but intends to campaign instead on "democracy, love it or leave it."  She didn't hold back her opinions at all.

The local GOP mostly sat January 6 accordingly, sitting it out, a telling move in that it suggests that more than one of the stolen election acolytes doesn't believe that at all.  Harriet Hageman, who has never said that she believed it, but instead is taking the loyalty to Trump theme while ignoring what that means, out of political calculation, was silent. After the date safely passed, however, the GOP party organization hit back, noting once again that Cheney wasn't loyal to Trump and that on January 22 they're going to hold a straw poll of who party heads in the state are voting for, and predicting it won't be her.

That's a safe, if meaningless, prediction.

What isn't clear is how far down the lie has sunk in, or how close it is to average Wyoming Republican voters.  Cheney could lose in the primary, giving the state a Representative whose views are not much different on most things but one who will obviously be in Trump's and the populist's debt, and completing the conversion of the state's GOP into a right wing populist party from what was a uniquely Wyomingite party for at least the time being.  If she wins, however, it'll be a sign that average Wyomingites are much more politically attune and independent and that maybe the GOP itself is returning to a small "d" democratic party.  

The party has been struggling over its identify for at least a decade, if not more, and this may definitively determine that for the time being.  Depending on how it resolves, it could also result in a stampede for the door, an action going on in much of the country's GOP already.

This same struggle is playing out in the national party. The overwhelming majority of senior leaders of the party don't accept the stolen election fable, but they are so cowed by Trump's acolytes that they have remained silent on it.  Having said that, a small but growing number is starting to speak up, if only cautiously.  

Mike Rounds, Republican from South Dakota, for example suggested that Trump should potentially be subject to criminal prosecution in a surprising interview on last week's This Week.  That provoked an amazingly childish, and even stupid, reply from Donald Trump which was truly in the nature of a tantrum, to which Senator Rounds did not back down but doubled down.

Rounds, I'd note, did not sound optimistic about the future of American democracy and put the blame squarely on Kevin McCarthy.  It was plain that Rounds felt that if McCarthy had not gone to Mara Lago to kiss Trump's ring, we'd not be where we now are.

Ted Cruz decried the insurrectionist as terrorists last week, before trying to retreat in front of Fox personality Tucker Carlson.  Cruz has been less than honorable in the wake of the insurrection and returned to form in from of Carlson, but ineffectively.  Meet The Press played an entire string of Cruz comments on Trump which probably, however, reflect his actual feelings, which show both how he really feels, and how much he is willing to grovel at the same time.

We'll see.

So who is running right now?

Republicans for the House: ^[1]. 

The big contest, of course, is in the House of Representatives where Liz Cheney is only one of two Republican Congressmen who is willing to admit so far, publically, that Donald Trump attempted what amounts to a coup in a bid to remain in office.  She voted to impeach Trump, which has become the casus belli for her opponents, a GOP captured by the right wing populist branch which has accepted the Trump line demonizing his opponents and attributing them with illegal machinations to co-opt the election, which in fact it was the other way around.

Liz Cheney:  Cheney really hasn't been in the House long, but she went from junior Republican to GOP leader remarkably fast.  However, she retains a streak of highly conservative independence, and a devotion to democracy, which has caused her to fall from populist favor as she's put the reality of the election ahead of devotion to Donald Trump.  That's the only thing the House race is about.

Harrient Hageman.  Hageman is a former Cheney supporter and Trump opponent who has switched on both in what Cheney has proclaimed as "tragic opportunism".  Her political positions, other than devotion to Trump and a willingness to benefit from the lost election fable, even if not really come out and endorse it, is her only distinguishing present political characteristic.

Hageman comes from a Wyoming political family of long-standing and is the only real candidate left in the race against Cheney, although others hang on.  She's had political ambitions for a while, having previously run for the Governor's office and coming in third behind Foster Freiss, which does show how deep the right wing populist line of thought has become in the party.

Robin Belinsky:  Belinsky is a businesswoman from Sheridan who is billing herself as Wyoming's Marjorie Taylor Greene.  While apparently still running, she has no chance and has been nearly silent for months.

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.

Bouchard is effectively out of the running at this point, and is somewhat like a high school boy at a dance whose date has jilted him and who is no longer attracting the eye of any suitors.  He still has his supporters, but they're a thin and now pretty disgruntled minority on the populist side.  He'll be noisy, however, in the final stages of the campaign.

Bryan Eugene Keller:  He's a resident of Laramie County who has registered, but I don't know anything else about him.  We can probably regard him as effectively standing down.

Denton Knapp:  Knapp is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and a current Brig. Gen. in the California National Guard who is still, surprisingly, running.  He's from Gillette originally and claims to be generally fond of the Cheney and to respect her past role in Congress.  It's really difficult to see where Knapp things his support is.

Democrats for the House:

Nobody, yet.

Chirp, chirp. . . 

The Democrats, as we know, have very little chance of winning this election, but they cannot be completely discounted.  Their silence might be an example of party discipline.  If they pick one of the few remaining Democratic leaders in the state or. . . . less likely but still possible. . . if they get an old time centrist Republican to cross over (more possible than might be imagined), and if that person registers late after Hageman and Cheney have spent months ripping each other apart, there's a chance.

That chance grows considerably if Hageman is the nominee, as she'll be associated with populist extremism by default.

Who fits in this category?  Mary Throne?  A cross-over Matt Mead (or his wife)?  We don't know yet, but if this occurs, it'll be interesting.

Constitution Party for the House.

Marissa Selvig: Mayor of Pavilion.  She recently announced she was switching to the Constitution Party.

That party no longer pulls enough votes to be on the primary ballot automatically, so while she will have its nomination, she's effectively a doomed write in candidate at this point.

Governor's Race.

Republicans for the Governor's Office.

Mark Gordon:  Gordon is the incumbent.  He's going to get the nomination, and he's going to win the General Election.

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.

Aaron Nab:  Nab is a truck driver from Southeastern Wyoming.  It's wroth noting that this is Hageman's base, and he seems to be riffing off of her campaign, but with none of the political background she has, and out of an assumption that Wyomingites remained enraged about the early 2020 mask mandates.

Politically, those events are as far removed as the Punic Wars and this campaign will go nowhere.  Indeed, it never would have.

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.

Democrats for the Governor's Office.

The Democrats have to run somebody, but so far nobody has shown up.  That person is a sacrificial lamb no matter what, but they have to nominate somebody decent for that role, so whomever they otherwise nominate won't taint their House candidate.

Secretary of State

Nobody has filed.

State Auditor

Nobody has filed.

Superintendent of Public Instruction

Nobody has filed.

January 23, 2021

A straw poll of the Republican Central Committee went to Harriet Hageman. She took 59 of 71 votes, including those cast by her own family.  Cheney took 6, Bouchard 2 and Knapp 1.

The poll, however, only means something to the extent it reflecst the Republicans at large, which is at least somewhat doubtful.  Right wing candidat Bryan Miller, for example, beat out Cythnia Lummis in the poll in the last Senate race.

In perhaps somewhat related news, Natrona County was cut from 33 delgates to 6, on the basis that it had not paid its dues.  The Natrona County party is in litigation against the state organization over representation.

January 25, 2022

On a totally different topic, and not really related to the election directly, the Wyoming Superintendant of Education recently resigned, which means a new one has to be picked.

That entails forwarding three names chosen by the populist controlled far right Republican Central Committee to the Governor.  The Committee has now chosen their three picks. They are:

1.  Thomas Kelly, who occupies a position with the American Military University, and who indicated in his application that he relocated to Wyoming, which he did only very recently, from Colorado as Colorado's schools, he asserted, were teaching climate change, mulitple genders and white supremacy.

2.  Brian Schroeder, who is an educator by profession and head of Veritas University, a Christian K through 7 school in Cody.

3.  Marti Halverson, a far right wing Republican East Coast/Chicago ex pat who arrived in Wyoming in 1996 and who has been in the legislature.

The choices were obviously very political and fit in with the Central Committee's current populist hard right wing view.  The last superintendant to fit that bill, who was elected to the position, proved to be highly unpopular with Wyomingites.  Nonetheless, the Central Committee's candidates leave the Governor with little choice but to pick somebody far to the right.

Chances are, I'd guess, it will be Schroeder, who appears to be the most qualified and least politicized.

One committee member, Tom Lubnau of Gillette, raised concerns that the process used to pick the candidates was unconstitutional, as the committee is not longer proportionally representative. Given the current atmosphere everywhere, that should be a clear warning that whomever is chosen is likely to end up with their qualifications to hold office challenged in court.

Governor Gordon has five days to pick from amongst the three.  Whether he has a choice to send back for a redo I don't know.  He does with judicial nominees, but that process is likely different.

Whoever occupies this position will only be doing so until November, or upon their reelection in November.

This entire development sort of nicely tees up the current conflict in the GOP and the state's poltic's in general.  Traditionally the WEA, the teachers union, has been one of the very few strong unions in the state and used to have a very strong influence over who occupied this position.  None of the candidates in question will have that relationship with the WEA.  Jilian Balow had been careful to monitor the spirt of the times, while not diving too deeply into it, but chances are that two out of the three here would not be so restrained.

January 25, 2022 cont.

Tom Lubnau's prediction of a lawsuit was correct.  It was filed today, and he's one of the plaitniff's.

This is an extremely interesting development as it would suggest the mainstream part of the GOP is attempting to stage a comeback, and throught he court.  With the GOP having just sidelined the Natrona County delegation, and this suit now coming on, the party may be facing a litigation backlash that will be essentially taking on the current leadership.

Anyway a person looks at this, this is going to amount to airing some dirty laundry, and the nominees to the Governor aren't going to get up there quickly. Chances are the court will order a stay on the nominees and this will carry on for at least a little while.

At the same time, a Carbon County Legislature raised the eligibility of a Laramie County Legislature who has been very active as a respected establishment Republican to continue to serve in the Legislature, asserting that redisctricting may have zoned him out of his district. This was raised as an asserted question, but it can't help be noted that the challenge comes from the populsit righ against a legislature who openly spated with Anthony Bouchard of the populsit right.  The matter has been referred to the Secretary of State.

January 26, 2022

Federal Judge Skavdahl enjoined the Governor from slecting a Superintendant of Public Education until he could consider the issues in the new suit.

January 27, 2022

The Trib is reporting that the Court ordered the Governor not to make a choice until he "makes a decision" today.

Wrong.

What he did, is to enter a termporary order holding:

ORDERED that Governor Gordon shall not fill the vacant position of Superintendent of Public Instruction with any candidate forwarded to him by the Case 0:22-cv-00016-SWS Document 11 Filed 01/26/22 Page 1 of 2 Defendants prior to issuance of this Court's Order on the Motion for Temporary Restraining Order, which shall be issued no later than 12:00 p.m. MSI on January 27, 2022.

That doesn't mean that the Court will have made a decision on the case.  Far from it.  The Court, today, will make a decision on the Temporary Restraining Order.

January 28, 2022

Yesterday, the Court lifted its TRO on the basis that the plaintiffs' suit was unlikely to prevail on the merits.  Accordingly, Governor Gordon selected Brian Schroeder as the new Superintendent of Public Instruction.  Schroeder was fairly clearly the only realistic pick out of the three who were nominated.

Indeed, with the injunction lifted, the Governor was statutorily obligated to make his choice yesterday.

It has to be presumed that Schroeder will announce for this position and run for it, rather than simply choose to occupy it for a few months.

January 29, 2022

The legislature is set to add two new House districts and one new Senate district.

A proposed Natrona County House district would run basically from eastern Natrona County outside of downtown Casper to the Converse County line, and is supposed to be more of an "energy district".  A Senate district is proposed to include the "central eastern" parts of the state and would include parts of Natrona County and Converse County, again seperating out parts of the same region.

The legislatures redistricting map can be found here.

January 31, 2022

The Tribune ran an op-ed by Tim Stubson yesterday on the topic of the Superintendant of Education.

Stubson is a former Wyoming legislator and one of the three candidates that split the vote when Cheney first ran for the U.S. House.  If Jorgenson had not run, he'd be our Congressman right now.  For that matter, if he hadn't run, Jorgenson would be.

Stubson is no longer in politics and he must not have any plans to return, as he's been vocal recently and his article was blistering.  He declared all three candidates to be unqualified and noted that his son's backpack had more experience in Wyoming schools than two out of the three finalist, one of which was the one chosen.  On that one, he noted that up until recently he'd been a pastor.

He even stated:

The whole sorry process shows that the majority of the Central Committee are not primarily concerned with improving public education. Instead, their priority is what every political hack’s priority is; feed the outrage machine, stoke fear and generate donations.

Stubson deserves a lot of credit for his article.

The statute that governed this process states the following:

22-18-111. Vacancies in other offices; temporary appointments.

 

(a) Any vacancy in any other elective office in the state except representative in congress or the board of trustees of a school or community college district, shall be filled by the governing body, or as otherwise provided in this section, by appointment of a temporary successor to serve until a successor for the remainder of the unexpired term is elected at the next general election and takes office on the first Monday of the following January. If a vacancy in a four (4) year term of office occurs after the first day for filing an application for nomination pursuant to W.S. 22-5-209, the temporary successor appointed shall serve until the first Monday in January following the second general election thereafter. The following apply:

 

(i) If a vacancy occurs in the office of United States senator or in any state office other than the office of justice of the supreme court and the office of district court judge, the governor shall immediately notify in writing the chairman of the state central committee of the political party which the last incumbent represented at the time of his election under W.S. 22-6-120(a)(vii), or at the time of his appointment if not elected to office. The chairman shall call a meeting of the state central committee to be held not later than fifteen (15) days after he receives notice of the vacancy. At the meeting the state central committee shall select and transmit to the governor the names of three (3) persons qualified to fill the vacancy. Within five (5) days after receiving these three (3) names, the governor shall fill the vacancy by temporary appointment of one (1) of the three (3) to hold the office. If the incumbent who has vacated office did not represent a political party at the time of his election, or at the time of his appointment if not elected to office, the governor shall notify in writing the chairman of all state central committees of parties registered with the secretary of state. The state central committees shall submit to the governor, within fifteen (15) days after notice of the vacancy, the name of one (1) person qualified to fill the vacancy. The governor shall also cause to be published in a newspaper of general circulation in the state notice of the vacancy in office. Qualified persons who do not belong to a party may, within fifteen (15) days after publication of the vacancy in office, submit a petition signed by one hundred (100) registered voters, seeking consideration for appointment to the office. Within five (5) days after receiving the names of qualified persons, the governor shall fill the vacancy by temporary appointment to the office, from the names submitted or from those petitioning for appointment;

The pending lawsuit, which the Federal Court stated did not have a high liklihood of success, challeged the constitutionality of this statute on the basis that it violated the one man, one vote, principal.  It pretty clearly does.  That might not explain the court's action, however, as court's are generally loath to get involved in politics.  So the statute could be struck down which would recreate the vacancy again, but it's unlikley.  If it does get stricken down, it'll likley be at the appellate level and come after the next election.

Frankly, while I understand the Governor's actions, given this situation it's interesting to ponder what a Governor less under the gun and a bit more stalwart would have done.  The Governor is required by law to appoint one of the three within five days, so he complied with the statute as written, but he's also to appoint individuals who are "qualified" of which there are supposed to be three.  Under the interpretation of the statute that seems to have applied, that would mean apparently that they were qualified to hold the office as they were residents of the state over 18 years of age and weren't felons.  In terms of actual qualifications, its clear that three truly qualified applicants were not submitted.  A pretty decent argument can be made that the Governor, given as this is likely unchallenged, could have refused the applicants on the basis that he had not received three qualified applicants.

Should he have done so?

At any rate, he didn't.  So Schroeder it is, and he'll be the incumbant in November.  He'll almos surely run for reelection.  But given the process, this might turn into an interesting race.

February 1, 2022

Liz Cheney has raised $2.05M in the fourth quarter of her campaign and has over $4M in her campaign war chest.  Harriet Hageman has raised about $1M total and has $381,000 in her war chest.  Bouchard has raised over $600,000 but is down to five digits presently.

February 4, 2022

In a really outrageous example of interfering in a state election, Republican leaders meeting in Salt Lake City reached an agreement to potentially fund Harriet Hageman against sitting Republican House member Liz Cheney.

That's correct. This would be an example of the national party taking on and trying to unseat one of their own members.

This came in the wake of the state party leadership making this request.  While Hageman has raised more money from individual Wyoming donors than Cheney, although it's still not a vast amount, she is far behind in overall donations and the state party is attempting to intervene on her behalf, and against at least two of its other primary candidates in effect, and have the national party fund Hageman.

This comes in the form of a censure resolution that holds that she and Adam Kinzinger are no longer members of the GOP.

Wyomingites generally don't like outsiders telling them what to do, and it'll be interesting to see what the voters do with outsiders telling them who to vote for.

As noted here previously, while they'd still face long odds, if ever there was an opportunity for Democrats to reemerge in the state, this is it.  If Hageman is nominated in this process, a solid Democrat really has the opportunity to paint her as beholden to anti-democratic forces.  No Democrat has yet emerged, of course, but there's still plenty of time for one to do so while the Republicans rip each other apart.

Footnotes:

1.  Yes, this is blue.  I'm not going to adopt the "Red=Republican" theme here, as international red equals the left.  The red/blue color scheme in American politics is historically inept.

Last Prior Edition and Related Threads:

The 2022 Election Part V. Waiting for the party of Jefferson, Jackson, Herschler, Sullivan and Roncalio.

School Daze. Does Wyoming's Superintendent of Education Selection System Make Sense?

2022 Wyoming Legislative Session. Part III. Okay, Boomer.

 

And yes, the phrase came from a legislature, albeit not ours.

A bill.

HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. HJ0001

 

 

Supreme court justices and district judges-retirement.

 

Sponsored by: Joint Judiciary Interim Committee

 

 

A JOINT RESOLUTION

 

for

 

A JOINT RESOLUTION proposing to amend the Wyoming Constitution by amending the retirement age requirements for Wyoming supreme court justices and district court judges.

 

BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WYOMING, two-thirds of all the members of the two houses, voting separately, concurring therein:

 

Section 1.  The following proposal to amend the Wyoming Constitution, Article 5, Section 5 is proposed for submission to the electors of the State of Wyoming at the next general election for approval or rejection to become valid as a part of the Constitution if ratified by a majority of the electors at the election:

 

Article 5, Section 5.  Voluntary retirement and compensation of justices and judges.

 

Subject to the further provisions of this section, the legislature shall provide for the voluntary retirement and compensation of justices and judges of the supreme court and district courts, and may do so for any other courts, on account of length of service, age and disability, and for their reassignment to active duty where and when needed. The office of every such justice and judge shall become vacant when the incumbent reaches the age of seventy (70) seventy-five (75) years, as the legislature may prescribe.; but, in the case of an incumbent whose term of office includes the effective date of this amendment, this provision shall not prevent him from serving the remainder of said term nor be applicable to him before his period or periods of judicial service shall have reached a total of six (6) years. The legislature may also provide for benefits for dependents of justices and judges.

 

Section 2.  That the Secretary of State shall endorse the following statement on the proposed amendment:

 

Currently, the Wyoming Constitution requires Wyoming Supreme Court justices and district court judges to retire upon reaching the age of seventy (70). This amendment increases the mandatory retirement age of Supreme Court justices and district court judges from age seventy (70) to age seventy-five (75).

 

The Constitution also currently provides an exception to the mandatory requirement to retire upon reaching age seventy (70) for justices and judges who had not yet completed six (6) years of judicial service as of December 12, 1972. The proposed amendment would remove the now-obsolete six (6) year service guarantee.

Seriously?

At some point, why don't we just declare the Boomer Generation the only one that is qualified to run the government, the courts, and industry, so that they can have unchallenged control of absolutely everything until the last one passes at age 120.

Why does American Society hate youth with such burning passion?

This has already reached the absurd level. The retirement age in our society, for positions such as this, shouldn't be moved up.

It ought to be moved down.

Give the youngsters a break, man.

2022 Wyoming Legislative Session. Part II. Red Meat for the Wolves or Being Proactive, and other matters.

Yesterday we noted, and quoted for the first time in the long-running (seven months) first part of the 2022 series on the legislature, some bills of interest.

Well, maybe not all of interest to everyone.

One that will be in the press a fair amount is SF 50, a Senate File, but which also has some House sponsors.  That bill is:

AN ACT relating to school sports; prohibiting biological males from athletic teams and sports designated for females in public schools; establishing related causes of action and protections for individuals and educational institutions; requiring rulemaking; and providing for effective dates.

It is sponsored by:

Senator(s) Schuler, French, Salazar and Steinmetz and Representative(s) Gray, Haroldson and Jennings

Only Gray commented.

This is an interesting bill in that it addresses a socially hot topic, that being men who have had surgery and take chemicals to affect a female appearance.

Now, we'll be frank.  We pretty strictly apply biology to things.  All things.  And part of this is that men and women are very different, including very physically different.  We've stated previously:

Eleventh Law of Human Behavior:  Men and women are different.

What?  You're joking, right?  That's obvious.

Well, you'd think so but to a surprising degree people don't really grasp that and occasionally even when they do they want to explain it away to socialization.  It isn't due to that, it's deep in our DNA.

By different, I don't mean that our physical morphology is different, that's obvious.  No, I mean psychologically, and not due to our society or learning or early childhood experience.  We were truly made that way.

For anyone who has spent any time at all on this planet, this would seemingly be obvious, but it's something that some people seriously will dispute.  Indeed, I heard a radio show the other day in which a caller, a university professor (without children, which is probably critical to his delusion) argue, in spite of being married, that gender differences were entirely due to socialization.  Baloney.

We're all in the same species, to be sure, and as human beings we share more than we are different, but there are deep differences in the psychological make up of men as opposed to women.  Over time, this has been very much supported by the sciences of biology and evolutionary biology.  Men and women handle stress differently, with women generally handling it better than men.  The anger and return to norm curves are significantly different in men and women. Women generally have better language skills than men (which isn't to say that there aren't those with good language skills in both genders).  Women also tend to see shades of color more distinctly than men, which isn't really a psychological aspect of our beings but  which is related to it in that color perception is processed in the brain.

And whether we like to admit it or not, just watching a group of men and women over time will demonstrate a significant difference in what they generally like as amusement.  In spite of all the efforts to create a different situation, women do generally like personal relationship dramas much more than men, and men tend to like stories of violence more than women (see the Tenth Law of Human Behavior above).  

Again, all this goes back to our primitive pasts and the different roles men and women played in that past. This doesn't mean that we must recreate and be frozen in the roles, but it does mean that we have a certain mental makeup and which it serves us to be aware of.

Part of the way we're very different concerns physical strength.

The social movement, and that's what it is, that comports to the recent Western concept that a person's Weltanschauung is governed by their own personal perceptions, and therefore each person has their own personal reality, is a falsehood. This isn't related to matters of sex and gender alone by any means (indeed a few years ago it was, oddly, briefly discussed a lot in the context of "race", which is also a social construct).  But as we're a very wealthy society and therefore have lots and lots of time to contemplate sex, our society does that a lot.

This is, I'd note, sort of a symbol and a symptom of too much societal wealth.  The other is food.  Americans in particular sit around pondering food constantly even though virtually nobody is starving, and we likewise are constantly pondering what we term "diets", which are often self imagined odd food rituals.  Sex has become much the same.  

Anyhow, as part of all of this we've moved to the "self realization" concept which holds that no matter what your DNA may hold, you can be the opposite gender.  Medicine and our understanding of chemicals has gotten good enough that, with constant intake of pharmaceuticals to suppress your natural ones, you can obtain the appearance of the opposite gender, somewhat, and you can have similes that somewhat replicate the opposites genitals, although they won't actually work in remotely the same fashion.

Which has led to the phenomenon of men who've obtained surgery and are on pharmaceuticals getting access to female sports.

If there's any plus to this at all, and it's hard to see where there is one, it ironically ends up proving the old point that, yes, men really are stronger and much more dominant in physical contests and endeavors than women. The entire US Military, dominated by the current social atmosphere and safe as we're in no wars, may be ignoring this, but women trying to compete against men who have entered their teams cannot.

Now, a safe way, presumably, to address this would be simply to abolish the male/female distinction in sports.  After all, if we can put women in basic training (and reduce the standards to help them get through it), we can simply do away with gendered sports entirely.

Why not?

Well, the reason is that we know (just as we know with the military) that if we do that women will soon make up a fraction of the membership of any team sport they're in.  There's still be, for example, female competitive swimmers, but how many?  Probably most teams would be 90% male, at least.

Hence, the statute.

So it makes sense to take it up, right?

Well, not so fast.

First of all this isn't a problem in Wyoming yet. 

Secondly, this may be a self eliminating problem.

Long term, it probably is.  The current movement we're addressing is probably a feature of a historical wealth bubble that shows signs of ending. While not really a good thing, in the larger sense, there's good reason to believe that a society that spends a lot of time contemplating its bits and bites will be refocused by economics, and hopefully only economics.  It's happened before, in different contexts.

Secondly, there's also reason to believe that part of the feature of our times is a rising if grasping lurch back towards standards, and part of that may be the discovery that nature actually applies to us and that there is a human nature.

None of which says anything about the individuals who have this as a genuinely strong interior desire. That's another topic, and we'll touch on it briefly.

And this is a budget session.

That's relevant, as bills aren't supposed to deal with anything other than budgets unless there's some sort of bonafide emergency going on, and there isn't here on this topic.  Given that this will take a super majority to get introduce, what the heck is up with this?

Well, I wonder somewhat if it isn't what Tim Stubson noted in another context the other day.

The whole sorry process shows that the majority of the Central Committee are not primarily concerned with improving public education. Instead, their priority is what every political hack’s priority is; feed the outrage machine, stoke fear and generate donations.

The legislator who commented is one of the most vocal populists in the legislature, and after Trump's defeat spent some time down in the Arizona circus that showed, in the end, that Trump lost by a wider margin there than had been previously believed.  He was a candidate for the House until Harriet Hageman concentrated support in the My Honor Is Loyalty campaign that she's' running.  He was a confederate of Anthony Bouchard, who is curiously absent as a supporter of this bill, who is still running and who ended up having harsh words for Gray after he started running.

Now, I don't know what any of these legislators reasons were for introducing this bill during a budget session, and that would include Gray.  I also don't know anything about the real world legislative process.  Maybe a bill needs to be floated and die in a session before it gets picked up and passed in another, in the real world.  But I do know that many of these social bills are drafted by organizations and that they don't always comport with a state's own laws.  Last session one such bill was introduced to try to give the legislature a veto, through a special committee, over the state Supreme Court.  That foreign bill even included its own special oath, not the ones that legislators actually take in Wyoming.  Essentially, in the guise of the "real' Constitution, it was a legislative coup enabling act.

It didn't get anywhere, but in these tense times, it seems every session there are some bills that seem to serve to "feed the outrage machine" and "stoke fear".

When the drafters of Wyoming's constitution penned it out, and that's in fact what they did, they thought that so little really occurred in the real world that the heavy lifting could be done every other year.  On off years, the task was a budget.

This seems to be widely disregarded now.  Some of the disregard is hard to figure.

Finally, it turns out the body that governs  high school sports already has an existing policy on this and doesn't feel it needs one.  It's been quiet about this, but there was testimony from one of its representatives at the hearing on this bill, and they don't feel they need a statute. What the policy says I don't know, but the organization's quiet approach, which avoids making a spectacle out of a difficult situation for those involved, is to be admired.   They want a chance to let their policy to continue to work, and having gotten there first, they probably ought to be given just that chance.

Primum non nocere.^[1]

Footnotes:

1. "First, do no harm."

Related Threads:

2022 Wyoming Legislative Session. Part I.

We like everything to be all natural. . . . except for us.

Genetics I: After all the propoganda, this is what actually matters.

The Overly Long Thread. Gender Trends of the Past Century, Definitions, Society, Law, Culture and Their Odd Trends and Impacts.

But what if we are wrong?

Wars and Rumors of War 2021, Part Three.

 Sgt. Joshua Smith, a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, chats with an Afghan boy during an Afghan-led clearing operation April 28, 2012, Ghazni province, Afghanistan. The soldier studied the Pashtun language prior to his deployment to southern Ghazni. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod)

October 3, 2021.

China v. Taiwan

The People's Republic of China made a major incursion into Taiwanese airspace over a two-day period, sending some 38 combat aircraft into Taiwan, aka Nationalist China's airspace.

China doesn't recognize Taiwan's status as being independent from China, and for that matter Taiwan has never officially declared it.  However, with there now being over 70 years of separation between the two, and not only de facto separation but a major Taiwanese political party with that as part of its platform, its status as an independent nation is relatively clear.  So is the Chinese desire to reject that, and the growing threat that it will attempt to force a reunion.

Yemeni Civil War

A group of Southern Transitional Council troops were killed in an explosion at a khat market yesterday.

The Southern Transitional Council is an umbrella group that wishes to restore Southern Yemen's independence, although they are oddly allied to the government of Yemen. Yemen united in 1990  and has been embroiled in a civil war since 2014 in which Houthi separatist have sought to separate the southern part of the country.  The war has seen intervention by Saudi Arabia and Egypt. on the side of the government.

October 4, 2021

Afghan Civil War

Fighting occurred yesterday between the Taliban and ISIL in Kabul.  A mosque was targeted for a bombing, but who is responsible for that is not yet known.

Korean Conflict

North and South Korea have restored their border hotline phone.

October 9, 2021

Afghan Civil War

A second mosque bombing, this time in norther Afghanistan, occurred yesterday, this one targeting Shiia Muslims and the Taliban by an Islamic State bomber. The action was purportedly due to the Taliban's willingness to deport Uygher's to China.

November 3, 2021

Ethiopian Civil War.

Ethiopian rebels are advancing on the capital and the government is asking civilians to arm themselves.

This grew out of the government's assault on Tigray, which has now gone obviously very badly.

November 29, 2021

Ethiopian Civil War.

Artillery fell in Sudan due to the ongoing problems in Ethiopia, causing Sudanese troops to cross the border to deal with Ethiopian militias. Sudanese forces in turn lost twenty men in the encounter.

December 5, 2021

Russia v. Ukraine.

Russia is massing troops on its border with Ukraine with a probably offensive in mind.

December 6, 2021

Niger

Government forces engaged in a large gun battle with Islamic militants in the western part of the country over the weekend.  Niger has ongoing problems with an ISIL affiliate and the Boko Harem.

January 14, 2022

Russia v. Ukraine and the West

I haven't updated this thread this year, although there's been the opportunity to do so.  I probably ought to now.

Russia has been supporting Russian separatist in the Donbass of Ukraine, which reflects both the messy nature of Soviet imperialism and Slavic history.  Ukrainians and Russians are closely related people, and they're both closely related to the Poles, but there are real distinctions between them.  Be that as it may, as they were both territories held by the Russian Empire, and for historical reasons, their populations have traditionally bled into each other, rather than have clean lines.  Thanks to forced population moves after the Second World War, this is no longer true for the Poles, but it is for Ukraine, which the Soviet Union never intended to see independent again.

As part of their policies, the Soviets settled Russians in areas of the Russian Empire it then controlled and also moved entire populations around. This very much impacted who lives where inside regions like the Ukraine. Most of Ukraine is populated by Ukrainians, but the Donbass region has a significant Russian population.  

While if I was an ethnic Russian living in the Donbass I'd prefer to live under the democratic Ukrainian government, many Russians there would not, and Putin, who has said that the Ukrainian and the  Russians are one people, has been supporting, heavily, a separatist movement there.  Recently it's appeared that he may invade Ukraine, and its not clear on what scale.

Faced with this, the West has threatened to hit Russia with epic level sanctions if Putin carries his threat out, which is about as anemic of a threat as possible. The West might as well threaten not to send him a Christmas Card.  The thread is absurd and won't work.

Putin hasn't backed down, but is now threatening to send troops to Cuba and Venezuela, and equally stupid and hollow threat.  I suspect troops sent to Cuba, if they are, won't really be wanting to go back to Russia really.

January 15, 2021

Russia v. Ukraine

Yesterday news broke, probably leaked, that Russia may be planning a false flag operation in order to justify an invasion of Ukraine which, if true, is amazingly inept.

Such operations stage a false attack upon your own forces in order to justify military action.  Such an action was staged by Nazi Germany in September 1939 in order to justify the German invasion of Poland, and another was staged by the Soviet Union in order to justify their invasion of Finland in 1940.  As the outsized nature of a Russian intervention in Ukraine is so one-sided, nobody is going to believe that Ukraine attack Russia or Russian allies in a manner that would justify a Russian attack on Ukraine.

January 24, 2021

The United States ordered dependents of Embassy staff evacuated from Ukraine.

The Russians have amassed 100,000 troops on three sides of Ukraine.  Ukraine's military is 280,000 men in size, but in terms of available combat troops, the imbalance of the sides is obvious.  The US approved the shipment of arms to Ukraine from NATO allies who had received the same from the US.

Current positioning of the Russian Army along the Ukrainian border:

Map.

February 3, 2021

US. v. ISIL (or related groups).

The US conducted a raid of some sort in Syria which involved an "air drop" and which was followed by air strikes.

This appears to be the first such strike of the Biden Administration and while the details are murky, if correct, it's pretty significant as well as unusual.

February 4, 2021

News on yesterday's raid reveals that the target was an ISIL leader and that upon the arrival of US troops he detonated a bomb in the house, cowardly killing himself, and murdering members of his family.

Suicide and murder don't comport with the tenants of Islam, which really points out how questionable these figures religious tenants really are, in spite of what they claim them to be.

Prior Threads:

Wars and Rumors of War. 2021, Part Two.

Tom Tugendhat speech on Afghanistan

Wars and Rumors of War. 2021

Wars and Rumors of Wars

Magnet Fishing Surprise: South Florida Man, Grandson Reel In Sniper Rifles

No, they didn't.

From the looks of it, they reeled in two AR platform rifles.  Not sniper rifles.

It's interesting, but either ignorance or a sense of drama miscast the story.

Magnet fishing itself looks interesting.  Anyone here do it?

Friday Farming: Eat Good, Feel Good.

 

Eat Good, Feel Good

Tuesday, February 3, 1942. Japanese air and land actions.

Port Moresby under bombardment.

On this day, as noted in Sarah Sundin's blog, the Battle of Port Moresby began. 

February 3, 1942: Japanese begin air raids on Port Moresby, New Guinea. Chiang Kai-shek agrees to send Chinese troops to aid the British in Burma. Canadian Women’s Auxiliary Air Force is redesignated RCAF, Women’s Division (nicknamed “WD” or “Wids”).

It's significant in that it was an all aviation contest, to some degree. The battle commenced in the form of Japanese air raids against Australian held Port Moresby, but by the end of the battle in August 1943 the contest included Australian and American aircraft.

The initial raid by Japanese aircraft was by flying boats.  The raids threatened the Australian mainland, which were only 250 miles distant.

The Japanese took Ambron, an island in the Dutch East Indes that was defended by Australian and Dutch troops.  In the next few days, 100 would lose their lives there.

The Afrika Korps took Timimi in Libya.

The British fixed clothing prices as a war measure.