Wednesday, December 29, 1943. Rationing Bicycles

F.F. Calkin, of Cadillac, Michigan, and J. Ferber, of Camden, New Jersey, using British bicycles for transportation in England, 1943.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 29: 1943  Wartime quotas of new adult bicycles for January cut in half, with 40 being allotted to Wyoming.Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

Bicycles at high school in Texas, 1943.

This was no small matter.  Bicycles had increased enormously in importance due to the war.  The National Park Service notes:

The government rationed bicycles from July 1942 to September 1945. The goal was to reduce the amount of wartime materials used for bicycles, but also to ensure that those who rode instead of drove could get one (thereby saving on car tires and gasoline).[10]

Shortly after the December 1941 Japanese attacks, the government took over control of the bicycle industry. They halted the bicycle trade entirely, and forbade bicycles from leaving “a factory, a jobber, a wholesaler, or a retailer’s place of business after 11:59 tonight” (April 3, 1942). They hoped this would prevent hoarding, and also gave them the opportunity to evaluate supply and demand.

The government issued specifications for what became known as Victory bicycles. These were designed and built only for adults; bikes for children were not manufactured during the war. Victory bikes were lightweight, weighing no more than 31 pounds (lighter by about a third than pre-war). They were made of steel only with no copper or nickel parts, and a minimum of chrome plating. Paint was used instead on handlebars and wheel rims. Accessories like chain guards, bells, and whitewall tires were removed, and a maximum tire width of 1-3/8" was set.[12] Behind the scenes, there were disagreements between the OPA and the Wartime Production Board (WPB) about the necessity of bicycle rationing – were bicycles a luxury? Was the rubber needed to make bicycle tires better used for other war needs while people continued to put wear on the car tires they already owned? This debate was eventually resolved, and Victory bikes went into production.[13]

When rationing began in July 1942, the OPA had 150,000 Victory bicycles and 90,000 pre-war bicycles to divide up. To get a bicycle, you had to apply at the local rationing board and prove you needed a bicycle. For example, your job was too far to walk to, and there was no good public transportation. By August 1942, access to bicycles was further limited to health care workers, school teachers, fire fighters, and others in critical occupations. New and used bicycles became much in demand, as thousands used them to get to their war jobs.[14] Despite this, the numbers of bicycles made and allocated by rationing boards never met the actual demand.[15]

Sailors who had bicycled to Arlington Farms, a residence for women who worked in the U.S. government for the duration of the war, from Washington in search of a date, 1943.

Leo Pasvolsky of the State Department finished the draft for the United Nations Charter.

Gen. Eisenhower ordered Allied Commanders to avoid attacking historic Italian monuments to the extent that this was possible; stating:

We are bound to respect those monuments so far as war allows. If we have to choose between destroying a famous building and sacrificing our own men, then our men's lives count infinitely more and the buildings must go. But the choice is not always so clear-cut as that. In many cases the monuments can be spared without any detriment to operational needs.

The Royal Air Force resumed bombing Berlin, its Christmas hiatus having ended.

The Red Army took Korosten in Ukraine.

The Italian submarine Axum was scuttled after running aground off of Morea, Greece.  The boat had a very successful war record.

Saturday, December 29, 1923. The dawn of television.

Russian-born engineer Vladimir K. Zworykin filed for a patent on his Television System, which would evolve into television.  He was employed by Westinghouse at the time, having immigrated to the U.S. during the Russian Civil War.  He died in 1982, living to an undetermined age in his early 90s.

Television advertisement from 1939.

Zworykin wasn't the only individual working on televised images, and his system wasn't the only one that was around.  A system by a rival inventor,  John Logie Baird, would be the first one on the market, coming at an amazingly early 1928, with the first television station, WRGB, then W2XB, broadcasting from the General Electric facility in Schenectady, NY.  For various reason, however, television didn't really take off until after World War Two, with the 1950s really seeing an explosion in its use.  Even at that, however, many households did not have televisions until the 1960s.  I can recall the first television our family had, which must have been acquired in the mid 1960s.  My mother bought it as a gift for my father, but had as an additional motive the hope that he'd spend more evenings at home rather than stop by to visit his mother, who lived a couple of blocks away.  Indeed, my father took to television (my mother never did), and her hopes were realized.

Test pattern from when local television stations quit broadcasting at night, and reappeared in the morning, with this image.  I can recall this appearing on our television early in the morning when my father first turned it on.

That experience really shows one of the frankly negative aspects of what would prove to be a groundbreaking technology.  Prior to television, while radio had arrived, there was still a great deal of "make your own entertainment" and the visiting of friends and relatives in the evenings.  Television helped end all that, which proved to be a radical shift in long held societal patterns.  Interestingly, television itself has never portrayed that change, and continues to depict life in large part as it had been before its arrival.  You don't see television programs in which people sit around and watch television.

As we've noted here before, early television was all locally broadcast, from locally owned stations.  Indeed, the FCC strictly regulated this latter aspect of television, which of course broadcast over the public airways.  Cable made major inroads, however, not television and a near deregulation of the industry has mean that it now broadcasts over multiple channels, in multiple ways, 24 hours a day, with local ownership often not existing.

Televisions ultimately became so common that by the early 2000s, most American households contained three of them.  The number is now down to 2.5, reflecting the advance of computers, which has cut into television use.  

All in all, while undoubtedly there are other opinions, television has been enormously corrosive and detrimental to society.

Germany agreed to pay France's and Belgium's expenses for occupying the Ruhr.  The UK objected to the French collecting taxes on a British owned mined in the region.

The SS Mutlah disappeared in the Mediterranean with all of its 40 hands lost.

The Mexican Federal Army was advancing towards Vera Cruz, the rebels having been routed. . . and industrial school girls were on the warpath.

The Saturday magazines were out.

Blog Mirror: Sergeant Dennis Fisher and Marine Corps Combat Photography in Vietnam

 

Sergeant Dennis Fisher and Marine Corps Combat Photography in Vietnam

The Post Insurrection. Part VII. The Insurrectionist.

August 3, 2023

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3.

Called for a Federal takeover?

The defendant will have some sort of initial appearance in court today on the latest charges.

August 15, 2023

Trump Indicted In Georgia

Make no mistake about it, this Georgia indictment is far more serious trouble for Trump than anything that came before it.

He will be convicted.

He cannot pardon himself (he can't anyway, but he'd try) for State crimes.

It's likely that he's going to go to prison.  If convicted, he will be ineligible to serve as President.  It will spark a Constitutional crisis, as he's already shown that he'll try to disregard the Constitution and his followers will as well.

It will go, in that scenario, if he were to be elected, to the Supreme Court.

The Court will rule him ineligible.  It will have to, in part because he will be, and in part because if it does not, it will destroy the Court.

A normal person, including a normal politician, wouldn't put the country through this.

August 16, 2023

But Trump, as we know, is not normal.

One thing I'm glad to see about the Georgia indictment is lawyers included in it. As a lawyer, the entire Trump episode has really drug the profession into the mud, if I'm to put it politely, and that includes the lawyers currently defending him.  

Everyone has a right to a defense, but that doesn't justify a lawyer taking any defense.  Right now, Trump would be best served by lawyers who were telling him to negotiate, not defend, and so would the nation. Instead, he'll fight it out and the lawyers who are providing him with a defense will go home with a tidy sum, probably, fate the nation irrespective.

That this earlier collection may serve time is a good thing.

August 23, 2023

Another weird blathering from the former President.

August 23, 2023

John Eastman, who traded his role as a law professor to being an advisor with a crackpot legal theory in Trump's effort to subvert the vote, surrendered to Fulton County authorities.

It's interesting in that he cited the right of attorneys to advise their clients as a defense.  Attorneys do not have a right to advise their clients, but not with made up crap that justifies anything.

But that's exactly what attorneys in the US have been doing in some instances for years, and with impunity.  If nothing else comes out of this, that this may have reached its limit is at least a good thing.

August 25, 2023

Booked in.

September 1, 2023

John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani are complaining about being indicted for giving legal advice.

Frankly, it's about time that lawyers giving batshit crazy legal advice bore some penalty for it, no matter how polished the crap may be.

Trump's trial in Georgia will be livestreamed, which I feel to be a mistake, quite frankly.

September 6, 2023

Trump has been found liable in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, so when it proceeds to trial on January 15, the only issue will be damages.

September 9, 2023

DA Wills replied to Representative Jim Jordan, giving him a dope slap.

This is thick with irony.  Not only has Willis basically told Jordan he's a butt sitting ignoramus, but Jordan's actions flew in the face of a favored populist idea that states have supremacy over the Federal Government.  Willis actually exercised an example of where the states are in fact supreme, state criminal charges.

It has also been learned that the grand jury wished to bring in broader referrals than actually resulted in charges, including one against Lindsey Graham.  I tend to agree with the prosecutor's choice to limit the number of accused to what was done, but that should be a warning signal to Trump et al. The Grand Jury was obviously irate, and the criminal jury is likely to be as well.

October 5, 2023

Mike Lindell, the "my pillow" guy who became a fanatic Trump backer, is seeing his lawyers attempt to withdraw from representation in defamation suits against him for non-payment.

All lawyers are mercenaries, something clients are oddly inclined to forget.

October 20, 2023

Sidney Powell, lawyer who supported Trump in crackpot election theories, plead guilty to six misdemeanors in Georgia, thereby avoiding trial.

It's likely that part of the deal that lead to this means she'll now turn on her former political champion, who will in turn be dissing her with nicknames soon.

In a court hearing yesterday, one of Trump's lawyers more or less called the court's judicial law clerk stupid, which was a very stupid thing to do. The court ordered an apology.

October 24, 2023

Jenna Ellis has now plead guilty, expressed remorse for having become tied up in the matter, spoke unkindly of Rudy Giuliani.

Where are all those people who were claiming the prosecutor made a strategic error in this matter?

November 14, 2023

While it will make no difference to his followers, former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis' proffer to Georgia prosecutors has been released.  In it, she states that Trump official Dan Scavino told her that Trump would refuse to leave the White House despite losing the election.  There was apparently more damaging information, but it was not released.

This came before the assault on the capitol.

Ellis recounted the exchange coming when she apologized for the lack of success in the absurd post election litigation, something that was never going to work  In reply to this Ellis recounted:

 

"And he said to me, in a kind of excited tone, 'Well, we don't care, and we're not going to leave, And I said, 'What do you mean?' And he said 'Well, the boss', meaning President Trump -- and everyone understood 'the boss,' that's what we all called him -- he said, 'The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power. And I said to him, 'Well, it doesn't quite work that way, you realize?' and he said, 'We don't care.'"

This should really lead to sedition charges against Trump, which have never been filed, in part due to the absurdly slow pace that American justice currently works at.  The fact that hasn't occured is putting Trump in a position to imperil American democracy again.  Should he live through a four-year term, should he be elected to the discredit of the country, it's not impossible to imagine him refusing to leave office.  My guess is that there certainly will be an effort to repeal the Constitutional amendment limiting Presidents to two terms.

November 22, 2023

While I failed to post it at the time, the Court in Colorado found Trump to be an insurrectionist, but then bizarrely found he could remain on the ballot.

Of interest, laymen seem to find this ruling confusing, but it isn't.  His being found to be an insurrectionist was likely a relatively easy call, given the mountains of evidence as to what occured on January 6 and thereafter.  Sooner or later, the glacially slow process will result, I suspect in his being charged with being a seditionist, and he'll be likely to be convicted.  The real question is whether that will occur in 2024, or 2029.

Anyhow, the part that's a big aggravating is the court's leaving him on the ballot, but then Colorado's judges stand for retention and this was somewhat of a safe way out of this for the Judge.  Her ruling was massive, and I've linked it in elsewhere, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find for those wishing to.  I've linked it in the following quote:

Regarding efforts to keep Trump off the ballot, the trial court in Colorado found that Trump did engage in insurrection, but that the office of the President was not included in "officers of the United States" to which the Fourteenth Amendment applies.

A better ruling, however, would have been that he was ineligible to be on the ballot.  Some excellent commentary for that is available here.

Now Trump's legal team is trying to certify the question of his having been an insurrectionist to the U.S. Supreme Court.  My suspicion is the Court won't take it.  If it does, this will prove to be a massive legal mistake, as my guess is that the Supreme Court would uphold the Colorado ruling.  Trump's team, however, must be worried that other courts will give the ruling full faith and credit.

Also, in an effort to have a gag order lifted, Trump found himself faced with a Federal tour de force on what they intend to show at his Federal trial. They intend to maintain that he was an agent in a conspiracy giving rise to the insurrection.

These two things together are really monumental, quite frankly. The Federal Government intends to show that Trump was a seditious insurrectionist. The Colorado trial level judge has already said he was an insurrectionist.  He's now taking this latter matter to the U.S. Supreme Court. . . if they allow the certification, which they likely will not, in an effort to hold that ruling off.

If the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Colorado ruling, it may have the effect of amounting to res judicata on that issue, disqualifying him from the Presidency, and basically getting to a conviction, almost, in Federal Court before he's even tried there.

November 23, 2023

The Colorado Supreme Court is taking up the issue of the 14th Amendment in an appeal from the district court.

My prediction here is that it will adopt the district court's finding that Trump is an insurrectionist, but remand for an order depriving him of a position on Colorado's ballot.

This holding, should it come first, will then be used as a persuasive argument, or even on a full faith and credit basis, in other states.

December 1, 2023

The court in New York reimposed a gag order after a series of harassing Trump statements about the Court and its personnel.

December 7, 2023

The Colorado Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the Colorado 14th Amendment case yesterday.

December 9, 2023

One I managed to miss earlier this week, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose filed amicus briefs in the Colorado suit.

December 11, 2023

Trump will not be testifying at his civil fraud trial today, no doubt because his lawyer want him to shut up.

December 24 2023

The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the lower court's decision that Trump is guilty of insurrection, but remanded the court's decision that he wasn't subject to the 14th Amendment.  He is therefore barred from Colorado's ballot.

The Republican Party of Colorado has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for review.  Trump indicates he intends to do the same.

That will prove to be a massive, campaign ending, error, should the Supreme Court take the matter up.

The Michigan Supreme Court rejected a 14th Amendment claim against Trump, holding he can remain on the ballot there.

cont:

Colorado Supreme Court Ruling in Anderson v. Griswold Appealed to U.S. Supreme Court

Denver, December 28, 2023 - The Colorado Republican Party has appealed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision in Anderson v. Griswold to the U.S. Supreme Court. With the appeal filed, Donald Trump will be included as a candidate on Colorado’s 2024 Presidential Primary Ballot when certification occurs on January 5, 2024, unless the U.S. Supreme Court declines to take the case or otherwise affirms the Colorado Supreme Court ruling.

Secretary of State Griswold has commented: “Donald Trump engaged in insurrection and was disqualified under the Constitution from the Colorado Ballot. The Colorado Supreme Court got it right. This decision is now being appealed. I urge the U.S. Supreme Court to act quickly given the upcoming presidential primary election.”

On December 19, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the Colorado 2024 Presidential Primary Ballot due to the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Colorado Supreme Court simultaneously stayed that ruling until January 4, with that stay remaining in place in the event of an appeal.

Key Upcoming Dates:

• January 5: Deadline for Secretary of State Griswold to certify the names and party affiliations of candidates on the 2024 Presidential Primary Ballot.
• January 5: U.S. Supreme Court conference day
• January 20: Deadline for 2024 Presidential Primary Ballots to be sent to military and overseas voters.
• February 12: First day 2024 Presidential Primary Ballots can be mailed to active registered voters.
• February 26: First day of in-person voting for the 2024 President Primary.
• March 5: Colorado 2024 Presidential Primary Day, polls close at 7:00 PM Mountain Time.

cont:

Frankly, the decision above by the Colorado Secretary of State, unless there's more to it that I don't know, is flat out wrong.  Her court has decided that Trump is unqualified. An appeal doesn't matter without an order from the appellate court staying the decision.

She's wrong.

Anyhow, now the Secretary of State for the State of Maine has determined that Trump may not appear on Maine's ballot.

Maine won't be the last state to decide in this fashion, and now there's a split set of decisions. The Supreme Court will have to intervene.

Last Prior Edition:

The Post Insurrection. Part V. Wyoming politicians react to the Trump Indictment and pour another heartly glass of Trump flvored Kool Aid for the voters.

The Post Insurrection. The Defendant. Part VI

Can you say "slavery"?

Why does this absurd version of the Civil War still exist in the South? The war was about slavery. At the time, the Southern states fully admitted it.

It had nothing whatsoever to do with "economic freedom".

Friday, December 28, 1973. The Endangered Species Act.

On this day in 1973, the Endangered Species Act, having passed by the House of Representatives, 355 to 4, with the only opposing votes coming from Congressmen Earl Landgrebe of Indiana, H. R. Gross of Iowa, Robin Beard of Tennessee and Bob Price of Texas, was signed into law.

The Nixon Administration, now mostly remembered for Watergate, and the duplicitous end to the Vietnam War, had a remarkable record of passing environmental legislation, including this landmark example.  Perhaps more remarkable, at this point in time, Wyoming's Congressman, Teno Roncolio, voted for it.

My, how things have changed.

And more amazing yet, Teno Roncalio, was a Democrat, the last Wyoming Democrat to hold that position.  For that matter, one of the two Senators from Wyoming, Gale McGee, was as well.  McGee is the last member of the Democratic Party to hold that office in Wyoming.

Presently to admit that the ESA is a great piece of litigation is to invite castigation in Wyoming, and the world "Democrat" is nearly slanderous in nature.

On the same day, Nixon signed the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) which provided to train workers for jobs in public service.

Whatever else may be the case about him, the country owes a debt to Nixon for legislation passed during his administration.

Solzhenitsyn's tome The Gulag Archipelago was published. The very first published edition on the horrors of the Soviet penal system were in French.

Bobby Darin (Walden Robert Cassotto) died at age 37 following a surgery to repair artificial heart valves he had received three years prior.

Darin had been a major Ameican entertainer of the 50s and 60s.  Of Sicilian descent, his early life was complicated, having had a grandfather that was a member of the mafia.  He was raised believing that his mother, who had borne him out of wedlock at age 17, was his sister, something she did not reveal to him until he was 32.

Tuesday, December 28, 1943. Battle of the Bay of Biscay.

The Battle of the Bay of Biscay was fought between the Royal Navy and the Kriegsmarine. Numerically outmatched, two British light cruisers fought a destroyer and a torpedo boat flotilla of the German Kriegsmarine, the British sank the T26, T25 and the destroyer Z27.  The German contingent included a combined eleven destroyers and torpedo boats and had been intended to escort the blockade runner Alsterufer, which had been sunk the day prior.

Mickey Rooney visited the USS Intrepid.

Mickey Rooney on board USS Intrepid (CV 11), December 28, 1943.

The Australian Army prevailed in the Battle of the Pimple in New Guinea.

The Soviet Union began the forcible relocation of 100,000 Kalmyk's to Siberia, having abolished the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic the prior day, as punishment for a Soviet conception that they had supported the Germans. Survivors were allowed to return in 1957 and the region granted autonomy again in 1958.

The Kalmyk's are the only traditionally Buddhist ethnic group in Europe, having relocated originally from Northern China.

The Battle of Ortuna ended in a Canadian victory.

U.S. Army Air Force pilot Lt. Douglas McDow and aviation cadet Clarence A. Thompson disappeared on a training mission after taking off from Douglas, Arizona.  The wreckage of their plane, and their remains, were not located until 1974.

Navy dance, Oregon.

Friday, December 28, 1923. Plays, No Picketing, and Radio.

 Premiered on this day.

And in Casper, the City Council banned picketing, while people looked forward to a radio station commencing operations.

Blog Mirror: Adler: A law court will affirm Colorado's ruling on Trump

 

Adler: A law court will affirm Colorado's ruling on Trump

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Meaning of Life

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Meaning of Life: God is love. 1 John 4:8            https://youtu.be/MpIC6RQ5lH4         

Monday, December 27, 1943. Seizing the railroads, again.

People like to imagine that World War Two was a period in which the whole country simply pulled together for the war effort, and we put our differences behind us.

Well, to some extent, but not as much as imagined.

On this day in 1943 President Roosevelt seized the nation's railroads by executive order in advance of a strike scheduled for December 30.  The Army took control of the rail lines.

This had last happened on December 26, 1917, for the same reason.

The Battle of the Pimple commenced on New Guinea between the Japanese and the advancing Australians.

Allied advances stopped at Monte Cassino.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 27: 1943  The USS Casper, a Tacoma Class frigate, launched.

The Americans extended their beachhead at Cape Gloucester with the Japanese offering little resistance.

The German blockade runner Alsterufer was sunk by Allied aircraft in the Bay of Biscay.

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XVI. And then the day arrived.

Our lifestyle, our wildlife, our land and our water remain critical to our definition of Wyoming and to our economic future.

Dave Freudenthal, former Governor of Wyoming/

 

December 3, 2023

Oil field, Grass Creek, Wyo, April 9, 1916

Snippets of news articles from this morning:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Fifty oil companies representing nearly half of global production pledged to reach near-zero methane emissions and end routine flaring in their operations by 2030, the president of this year’s United Nations climate talks said Saturday, a move environmental groups called a “smokescreen.”

 Smokescreen it doesn't seem to be. That's a major commitment.  But not as big as this one:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The United States committed Saturday to the idea of phasing out coal power plants, joining 56 other nations in kicking the coal habit that's a huge factor in global warming.

U.S. Special Envoy John Kerry announced that America was joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which means the Biden Administration commits to building no new coal plants and phasing out existing plants. No date was given for when the existing plants would have to go, but other Biden regulatory actions and international commitments already in the works had meant no coal by 2035.

None of this should be a surprise.  This is where we've been heading for some time, and it's inevitable.  Indeed, I touched on this back in 2017 here:

Coal: Understanding the time line of an industry

And I cautiously dipped my toe in the water, wondering if Wyoming should ponder a fossil fuel free future here:

Lex Anteinternet: Issues In the Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue No. 1 (a). The Economy again. . . the extractive industries

And here:

Before the Oil. And after it? The economies of Wyoming and Alaska.

Well, now it's coming.

Not that we'll accept it. We'll do anything but.  Our senior Senator in Washington will claim its part of Joe Biden's "radical green agenda", a radical agenda now sought after by the majority of people in the United States, and in the World.  He doesn't believe that, but it sells back home.  With a Republican Party in the state that was ready to boil Governor Gordon in WD40 for daring to say that Wyoming needed to look at a carbon-neutral future, he doesn't dare say anything else as it would imperil his position.  Our junior Senator will likely say nothing at all.

Well, the voices are getting too loud to ignore, and they include people in the oil industry and now even entire nations that depend on petroleum.  From the President, to the Pope, to the Governor of the state, the message is getting pretty clear.  We're going to have to figure out a post fossil fuel economy here.

Quickly.

But, we'll choose not to.  We'll pretend that somehow we can force others to consume the product that we wish to produce, as we've produced it for over a century and a half, and it's our economy.

That, however, isn't the way economies work.

Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.

Kurt Vonnegut

On another topic, the current owners of Remington are closing the doors this week to its Ilion, New York factor.  The company had been headquartered there since 1816.

It'd gone through hard times in the past.  It nearly went bankrupt after World War One when the United States Government cancelled contracts for M1917 Enfield rifles overnight, leaving them with a large stock of unfinished and partially finished rifles.  The Wilson Administration proved to be quite bad at demobilizing.  

Remington, while profitable, had the very bad fortune to be bought by the aptly named Cerebus which focused on AR15 production and drove the company under. Our prior thread on it is here:

Remington Arms Manufacturing Company's bankruptcy. A Distributist Economic Lesson and a National Tragedy. And Chrysler Too.

Cerebus is virtually a symbol of all that is wrong with corporate capitalism.  Named for the three-headed dog that mythologically guards the gates of Hades to contain the dead therein, it might well be recalled, at least since Dante included it, that the creature is in Hell and of it.

Remington's history was mostly associated, over its long existence, with hunting rifles.  That's what the company was founded on in 1816.  It did manufacture military arms on occasion, however.  For example, it was a large scale supplier of contract rifles for the Union during the Civil War.  It's widely admired by riflemen rolling block rifle had a military variant that was purchased by some states in preference to the Trapdoor Springfield series of rifles, and it was in fact better than the Trapdoor.  The rolling block was widely sold overseas as a military rifle.

By and large, however, it never invested heavily in military sales until the Great War, when the British first contracted with it to produce the rifle that had been intended to replace the SMLE, but adapted to .303 British.  The P14 was a major British rifle of the war, but its production ceased in 1917 when the US entered the war, and the same rifle was adopted to the .30-06 and used by the U.S. as the M1917 Enfield.  Remington's production capacity was so vast that somewhat over half of all U.S. troops in World War One carried that rifle, rather than the M1903, and it continued to be used into World War Two.  But the experienced badly burned Remington and nearly left it bankrupt. After that it was extremely reluctant to make military arms, and it only reluctantly took to producing, ironically, M1903s during the Second World War when the government again needed help.  No original Remington arms were invented for the war as Remington didn't try to undertake that as a project, although it did make a continual series of changes in the M1903 which resulted in the M1903A3, nearly a new rifle in some ways.

After the war and into the Cold War, Remington didn't bother with military arms.  It wasn't a contractor to the M14 like H&R was.  It didn't try to enter a rifle into light rifle contests, like Colt did with the AR15 and Winchester did with its M1 Carbine derived competitor.  That all changed when Cerebus bought the company in 2007.

Cerebus also bought the AR15 manufacturer Bushmaster, which was highly regarded in that field.  By 2012 Remington was making M4 Carbines for the Army.  It leaped wholesale into the "America's Rifle" baloney with a hunting variant of the AR15.  It reentered the pistol market, which it had not been in since a brief foray after the Civil War, with a version of the M1911 pistol.  Cerebus didn't seem to understand what it was that Remington actually made.

Indeed, it was telling that a brilliant move by Remington to introduce a fairly cheap 98 Mauser hunting rifle, the 798, came in 2006, the year before Cerebus bought the company, and it quit offering it in 2008, the year after.

In name, it still exists, but now it's headquartered in Madison, NC.  It was the oldest manufacturer in the United States at the time of its bankruptcy, and it died a victim of American capitalism.

December 13, 2023

Governments gathered in Dubai agreed to the:

transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science."

and; 

accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power" and for "tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

This is a major action, if the committing countries are able to stick to it.  Environmentalist will complain that it is too little, too late, but as economists have shown in the past once efforts are made to really commit to a goal, it tends to be reached much more rapidly than anticipated. 

In Wyoming, where the Governor has been taking flak by noting that Wyoming will have to transition away from a carbon based economy, this is going to result in howls of derision, including claims that its part of a "radical green agenda" and "impossible".  It's neither.

December 14, 2023

We can’t reverse market trends, but we can be prepared. Blaming OSMRE — or, more ridiculously, President Biden — only provides another distraction as Wyoming politicians continue to whistle past the graveyard, averting our attention from planning for our future — a new lower-carbon economy that is coming whether we like it or not.

Bob LeResche former Alaska Commissioner, former Executive Director of the Alaska Energy Authority, in the Casper Star Tribune, December 14, 2023.

I used the same phrase, "whistling past the graveyard" here recently at least twice.

But some, it would appear, are not:

This will likely spark outrage in certain quarters of Wyoming, particularly in the GOP far right.   There were howls of derision concerning Governor Gordon's statements that Wyoming needs to plan for a carbon neutral future.  But that future is coming.  Moreover, what this demonstrates is that there are quarters of Wyoming, and Wyomingites, who see things much differently.  

Fremont County does have an interesting mix of residents, people who have retired there, people who have moved there (which includes everywhere else in Wyoming now), people who work in oil and gas (and live mostly in Riverton), people involved in outdoor industries, and residents of the Reservation.  Lander is the county seat, and borders the Reservation, but it is not an oil town.  The same resolution would likely pass easily in Jackson, maybe Pinedale, and Laramie. Cheyenne?  It might.

What about Evanston?

Well, probably, maybe, not, but Evanston is mad at the Wyoming Department of Transportation's plan to put in a semi tractor/trailer parking lot that will hold over 350 trucks and trailers during emergencies.  They don't like it, even though not all that long ago, almost any Wyoming Interstate highway town would have just shrugged their shoulders and figured that some of those truckers would at least order pizzas while stranded.

December 15, 2023

Global coal demand, on the other hand, was at an all-time high last year, due to use in developing countries.

General Motors is closing two plants and laying off 1,300 workers.

Closer to home, it's clear that Governor Gordon, who will not be running for office again (too bad) feels himself free to speak what he really believes.

Gov. Gordon Agrees Climate Change is Real, Says Decarbonizing the West is Possible

On national TV and in Idaho workshop, Gordon promotes his ‘all of the above’ energy strategy

This is of course going to get him a lot of criticism, including the class "he's a RINO" by people not realizing that they're the ones who are departing from the traditional Republican mindset.

December 18, 2023

All new cars in Canada must be zero emissions starting in 2035.

December 27, 2023

10,000,000 Americans will receive raises with boosted state minimum wages on January 1. The new rates apply in 22 states.

December 28, 2023

From the AP:

MEXICO CITY — Mexico launched its army-run airline  Tuesday when the first Mexicana  airlines flight took off from Mexico City bound for the Caribbean  resort of Tulum.

Also, from the AP:

So far in 2023, Americans have bought a record 1 million-plus hybrids — up 76% from the same period last year, according to Edmunds.com. As recently as last year, purchases had fallen below 2021’s total. This year’s figures don’t even include sales of 148,000 plug-in hybrids, which drive a short distance on battery power before a gas-electric system kicks in.

Last Prior Edition:

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XV. The 2% solution?

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Inner Peace

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Inner Peace: 

Inner Peace

Aquire inner peace and a thousand around you find salvation. - St. Seraphim 

           https://youtu.be/qXwvKz9_4tU         

A Presupposition: Office Hours: Are today’s campus protests against the war in Gaza as justified as were campus protests against the Vietnam War?

I can't read this one as the paywall subscriber thing applies to it.

Office Hours: Are today’s campus protests against the war in Gaza as justified as were campus protests against the Vietnam War? 

Here's the thing, though. The headline presupposes the Boomer Generation protests on campuses during the Vietnam War were "justified", at least in some fashion.

Perhaps they were, but it is a presupposition, not something that is necessarily automatically a fact.

Which is not to say every protest on campus today regarding the Hamas War is justified, although it isn't to state that ones which are not anti-Semitic, but based on something else (if there are any), do not have some justification.

Sunday, December 26, 1943. Boxing Day. The Battles of Cape Gloucester and North Cape

Marine at Cap Gloucester, December 26, 1943.

Marines landed at Cape Gloucester on New Britain.

Marines wading ashore at Cape Gloucester.

The USS Brownson was attacked by Japanese aircraft during the landings, and sunk.

The Moro River Campaign in Italy ended in a stalemate.  The Germans were holding their own against, in this case the British 8th Army, but also against the U.S. 5th Army, which did take Monte Sammucro on this day.

The German battleship Scharnhorst was torpedoed and sunk by the HMS Duke of York.  All but 36 of her 1,943-man crew perished.  The action was termed the Battle of North Cape.

The NFL Championship Game was played, with this coming after Christmas for the first time in the NFL's history.  The Bears beat the Redskins 41-21.

Wednesday, December 26, 1923. Acknowledging disaster.

The Dixmude was lost, there was no doubt, but the French were making that known.

Totally unrelated, France ran a budget surplus of 568 million francs, determined as of this date.

Dietrich Eckart, German writer and Nazi, and a major influence on Adolf Hitler, died of a heart attack at Berchtesgaden at age 55, too early to see the horror that Nazi ideas would bring upon the world and Germany.

Blog Mirror: Christmas 1934 played important part in Harper Lee's 'TKAM'

 

Christmas 1934 played important part in Harper Lee's 'TKAM'

Merry Christmas

 

Christmas Day, 1943.

1st Marine convoy en route for invasion of Cape Gloucester, New Britain.

Raids on Berlin by the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Force were temporarily halted.  The Luftwaffe likewise conducted no raids on the United Kingdom.

Sixty-four prisoners tunneled out of the Ninth Fort in Lithuania.  The facility housed mostly Lithuanian Jews.  About half would be recaptured by mid-January.

U.S. Task Force 50.2 raided Kavieng, New Guinea, with aircraft, sinking a Japanese transport ship.

The Scharnhorst departed northern Norway to attack Convoy JW-55B.

The epic The Song of Bernadette was released.

The film tells the story of St. Bernadette Soubirous, the French peasant woman who saw the Virgin Mary at Lourdes.

Attending movies at Christmas, and even on Christmas Day, is a tradition with a lot of people, although I've never done it.  

Christmas service on USS Card, December 25, 1943.

USS Brooklyn (CL 40), galley, Christmas morning, 1943.  Malta.

Blog Mirror. Uncle Mike's Musings: A Yankees Blog and More: Sunday, December 24, 2023 Problematic Christmas Songs -- 2023 Edition

 

Problematic Christmas Songs -- 2023 Edition

Blog Mirror. Angry Staff Officer: A Tale of Two Christmas Carols

 

A Tale of Two Christmas Carols

Blog Mirror. Thoughts from the Orachard: Christmas Past and Present

Thoughts from the Orchard: Christmas Past and Present

Blog Mirror: 100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #39: It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

 

100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #39: It's a Wonderful Life (1946)