Pvt. George McLean of Jamaica, Long Island, foreground and in the rear L to R: Pvt. Larry Leonetti, N.Y.C., and Pfc. Dominic Recentio of Philadelphia manning a water cooled .50 Browning M2 on New Britain, January 4, 1944.
Today in World War II History—January 4, 1944: 80 Years Ago—Jan. 4, 1944: Church authorities at the Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy give the Luftwaffe permission to remove artwork to Germany.
Sarah Sundin.
The move was taken to attempt to protect it from destruction.
Sundin also notes that the Italian Social Republic seized Jewish assets and restricted the Jewish ownership of property.
The Red Army took Bila Tserkva and further pushed the German Army Group South beyeond the pre war Polish border at Sarny. It also took Kaluga, southwest of Moscow.
German radio announced a decree to mobilize school children for war purposes.
At that point, the German people really should have realized the war was irrevocably lost and have risen up against their government.
The Polish Home Army commenced Operation Tempest, a series of local uprising that would go on for a year.
Carrier born U.S. aircraft struck Kavieng on New Ireland, damaging the destroyer Fumitsuki.
Argentina recognized Bolivia's military government.
The Roosevelt's deeded their Hyde Park house to the U.S. Government.
Jean Tatlock, American psychiatrist, and a Communist who wrote for the Western Worker, was found dead of suicide. He burned her correspondence prior to calling the authorities.
She is best remembered for having been a romantic interest of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
De la Huerta's confederates claimed control of Mexico's oil.
The German government issued the Emminger Reform abolishing juries in favor of a mixed system of professional and lay judges as a cost savings measure. Lay judges were in turn abolished by the Third Reich on September 1, 1939.
The jury system is uncommon in continental Europe, in any event. It was briefly restored in Germany between 1948 and 1950, but upon formation of the Federal Republic of Germany it was again removed save for Bavaria, which adopted the system as it existed prior to this date.
Conclusions were being drawn about French inflation.
How we all imagine legislatures once were. . . because they didn't have the opportunity to put every dumb thought they had out on Twitter.
At least Wyoming can be thankful that its citizen legislature can't afford to be in ongoing session.
May 21, 2023
Minnesota, deciding that Americans aren't stupid enough, and don't already have enough in the way of options to make themselves even stupider, voted to legalize marijuana.
It also passed a new gun measure.
June 3, 2023
Connecticut banned marriages under 18 with no exceptions.
September 7, 2023
California has banned caste based discrimination, which is something prevalent in the Indian culture. The Governor has not indicated if he will sign the act.
While I agree with the measure, this is frankly an example of a Western culture declaring its values to be superior to that of an Asian one. Western cultures have a Christianity based concept that all people are equal. Lots of cultures hold the polar opposite.
Massachusetts has passed funding for universal "free" school lunches.
Of course, they aren't free, they're government funded. And the government doesn't make an income through production, so they're tax funded. This means they're taxpayer funded. Massachusetts has ain income tax, so this means that Massachusetts is separating cash from the wallets of everyone in the state in order to buy lunches for school kids, irrespective of parental obligations to pay to feed their kids.
October 3, 2023
Nebraska is requiring transgender youth seeking "gender-affirming care", the Orwellian term for gender mutilation, to wait seven days to start puberty-blocking medications or hormone treatments under emergency regulations as well as to receive at least 40 hours of “gender-identity-focused” therapy This followed a Nebraska law that took effect on Sunday which bans "gender affirming" surgical mutilation for those under 19.
Nebraska, intentionally or not, is following a global trend here which is limiting such procedures in minors, with the data showing its frequently regretted.
October 8, 2023
California has put into effect a law requiring requires public and private US businesses with revenues greater than $1 billion operating in California to report their emissions comprehensively.
January 4, 2024
Passed last year, some new state laws:
A new Minnesota law allows authorities to ask courts for “extreme risk protection orders” to temporarily take guns from people deemed to be an imminent threat to others or themselves.
Colorado has banned "ghost guns"
A Connecticut law requires online dating operators to adopt policies for handling harassment reports.
A North Carolina law requires pornographic website operators to confirm viewers are at least 18 years old by using a commercially available database. Parents can sue for failure to comply with the law.
A new Illinois law allows lawsuits by victims of deepfake pornography,
Bans on chemical gender mutilation of minors take effect in Idaho, Louisiana and West Virginia.
A new law in Hawaii requires new marriage certificates to be issued to people who request to change how their sex is listed.
In Colorado, new buildings wholly or partly owned by government entities are now required to have on every floor where there are public restrooms at least one that does not specify the gender of the users.
A new Indiana law makes it easier for parents and others to challenge books in school libraries.
A new Illinois law blocks state funding for public libraries that ban or restrict books.
Kansas dropped the sales tax on groceries drops from 4% to 2% . It plans to eliminate the slaes tax on groceries entirely.
Connecticut and Missouri reduced their state income tax rate.
When I put this up on January 1, I also posted this calendar image on Reddit's 100 Years Ago sub. Somebody came by and remarked on how tiny the glass the young woman is holding was.
And indeed it was.
Coca-Cola for years came in a 6.5 oz bottle, not 12. It's interesting to reflect on as it really says something about proportions.
Coke's iconic bottle was a 6.5 oz bottle until 1955.
Its competitor Pepsi started using 12 oz bottles in 1934. In fact, that as one of its marketing devices, as it came in a 12 oz bottle, having a jingle that went
Pepsi-Cola hits the spot
Twelve full ounces, that's a lot!
Twice as much for a nickel, too
Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you.
It says something about the quality of Coke, or at least the original recipe of it, that people would in fact pay the same amount for half of what they'd get if they'd bought Pepsi instead. It also says something about soda in general that it's so cheap to make, the added 6 oz of product really doesn't do anything to the economic bottom line.
In 1955, Coke switched to 10 oz bottles and 12 oz bottles and offered a "Family" sized bottle of 26 oz. The move was not without internal company controversy, however. One company executive stated that “bringing out another bottle was like being unfaithful to your wife.”
But that 55 10 or 12 oz bottle isn't gigantic.
When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, when you went to a fast food restaurant and got a soda, large was a 12 oz serving with ice. Starting in the 80s, somehow, that doubled, with stores, particularly convenience stores, advertising what was essentially double that.
24 oz of Coke is a lot.
And it went on from there.
McDonald's, when it was first getting up and running, served Coke in 7 oz cups. After Coke switched, it started serving it in 16 oz cups. In 1980, 7-11 introduced the "Big Gulp" which weighed in at an absurd 32 oz. In 86, 7-11 introduced the 44 oz Super Big Gulp, and everyone went down that road thereafter.
Indeed, now, getting a small or medium soda draught is really what a person should do, and on the rare occasions when I get fast food, I try to get that. But most people don't. Even little kids get the 55 gallon size soda drink.
The USS Turner suffered a series of internal explosions while in harbor off of the Ambrose Light in New York. 138 of the 256-man crew died during the incident. A Coast Guard Sikorsky HNS-1 flown by Lieutenant Commander Frank A. Erickson flew two cases of blood plasma, lashed to the helicopter's floats, from New York to Sandy Hook, saving many of the injured crewman, and providing the first incident of a helicopter used in that fashion.
Commander Frank A. Erickson, USCG and Dr. Igor Sikorsky, Sikorsky Helicopter HNS-1. The HNS-1 had been in service for slightly under a year at this time.
Gregory "Pappy" Boyington was shot down and became a Prisoner of War of the Japanese.
The Red Army took Olevsk, a mere ten miles from the pre-war Polish border.
The Reichskanzlei was hit during an RAF raid on Berlin, which otherwise caused little damage but which resulted in the loss of 27 Lancasters.
William Tubman took office as the President of Liberia, which he would remain until 1971.
Yucatán's governor, Filipe Carrillo Puerto, was executed by de la Huerta rebels for failing to support their revolution. Eleven others were murdered with him, including three of his brothers. He was 49 years old.
The last edition started wiping out everything on the front page for some glitchy computer reason, and was hard to post in. So, already on to a new one, with which we start with this interesting item:
November 21, 2023
But there happen to be better numbers than the ones Cohn and his prophesizing colleagues are citing. And they show Biden well ahead. The prediction markets for elections — essentially investors putting money on candidates — has a Biden win trading at 43 cents, which implies a 43% chance of victory, according to the Financial Times. Trump is trailing at 37 cents, while the other candidates are long shots.
What might make these markets a better indication of the candidates’ prospects than those political polls? For one thing, they have a better record of accurately predicting the winner.PredictIt is currently the biggest legal site for political-prediction trading in this country.
A smaller political predictions market is Iowa Electronic Markets, at the University of Iowa. Like PredictIt, the Iowa market operates under the academic exception made by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). PredictIt works in a nonprofit arrangement with Victoria University in New Zealand.
The Financial Times sets forth the argument made by PredictIt founder John Aristotle Phillips that “prediction markets are a truth generator, powered by the invisible hand. ... If you trade based on fake news or half-baked punditry, you’re going to lose your money.”
From Harrop: Actually, Biden is ‘polling’ really well in the markets.
Whose running, check the last edition, it hasn't changed.
Breaking tradition and protocol, Speaker of the House Johnson has endorsed Trump.
On a different note, one of the panel members on This Week came absolutely unglued at the argument that Trump is a threat to democracy.
Now, frankly, I think Trump is a threat to democracy.
However, the commentator's point was a good one, which was that the Democrats don't believe that. His argument was that if they did, they wouldn't be fielding Biden.
Now, I think many Democrats are correct that Trump is very much a threat to democracy, but it is hard to ignore the fact that it's hard to believe their sincerity in the argument when they only think they're will got five voters is a warmed over Cup of Joe. People keep asking to see the menu, but the waitress just asks, "can I reheat that cup for you?"
Not only that, I'd note, but at the same time that Democrats are arguing that Trump is a threat to democracy, they're also arguing that all third party choices must not be considered.
Eh?
Um, in a functioning democracy they would be considered.
Of course, the reason for that is, to extend the analogy above, you might walk across the street and look at somebody else's menu. "Hmmm. . . I think I've had enough of this coffeee, do you want to walk across the street and get some ice cream?" What? What, are you crazy? Ice Cream will make you fat! Let me reheat that for you.
December 5, 2023
Doug Burgum has dropped out of the Republican contest.
While other candidates do remain, basically this race is down this Haley, DeSantis, Trump and Christie, with it appearing increasingly unlikely that Christie has a chance.
December 6, 2023
Criminal Defendant Donald Trump, in an interview with Sean Hannity, stated:
I love this guy. He says, 'You’You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?' I said, 'No, no, no. Other than Day One.' We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.
So, contrary to the headlines, Trump in fact confirmed that he'd act like a dictator, but confined it to a single day, which gets back to his delusional comments that anything can be done in a day.
President Biden indicated he likely wouldn't be running again, but for Trump, in which case he should not be running, as most Democrats don't want him to be and it looks like he'll lose to Trump.
Liz Cheney is hinting that she may run for the Presidency as a third party candidate.
December 17, 2023
Jefferson Davis, a man whose times have seemed to return.
Drawing his lines clearer than ever, Donald Trump unleashed a series of far right dog whistles this past week, including those that recall strongly racist and fascists elements. To start with, regarding immigration:
TRUMP: No, nobody has ever seen anything like this. And I think we could say worldwide. I think you could go to the... you could go to a banana republic and pick the worst one, and you're not going to see what we're witnessing now. No control whatsoever. Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions. . . insane asylums. We know they're terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It's poisoning the blood of our country. It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have. And I got to know a lot of the heads of these countries. They're very cunning people. Very street-smart people. If they're not street-smart, they're not going to be there very long. And when they send up those caravans, and I had it ended, we had the safest border in the history of our country, meaning the history, over the last 80 years. Before that, I assume it was probably not so bad. There was nobody around. But, we had the safest in recorded history by far. The least amount of drugs in many, many decades. The least amount of human trafficking, which is a tremendous problem. But, when you look at what's taking place now, nobody's... first of all, it's not sustainable by any country, including ours, even from a (inaudible) standpoint. And, you know, we built over 500 miles of wall. We were going to put up another 200 miles. And, we had it bought. Everything was bought. Everything was purchased. They were going to ready. It could have been done within three weeks. Another 200 miles, all done. And they didn't want to do it. When you look at the numbers of people coming in, and the numbers, Raheem, are much bigger than anyone understands. I really believe it's going to be 15 million people by the end of this year during this administration. That's larger than New York state. Ok, this is what we have.12
Trump also stated that immigrants would be subjected to stout entry testing, including determining if they agree with "our religion".
One Twitter commentator that I follow stated that this was the most anti-American statement he could imagine, but it really isn't. It's a very Southern populist viewpoint, of the type that we haven't seen openly from the 1960s and which most people believed was behind us.
This is ample evidence of how a genuine problem, the absurdly high level of immigration, legal and illegal, that has existed in the country for decades now, but which has been consistently ignored, has festered in the rust belt and populist populations. It could have been addressed in an equitable fashion before, but now it's threatening to breakout in a really malevolent fashion. This issue alone may end up defeating Biden, and we should take Trump fully at his word in what he intends to do.
The citation to religion, we'd note, is ironic, as Trump is not a religious man in any fashion, which again demonstrates the extent to which Southern Cultural Christianity has crept into the GOP, and particularly the New Apostolic Reformation movement. Apostolic Christianity and Judaism are full of Biblical injunctions that immigrants are to be welcomed, something that has long made conservative American Catholics uncomfortable. But this approach that Trump has now adopted is radical in pledging a religious test for entry, something that has never existed in the country's history. This too has been a smoldering cultural problem, although it's camouflaged here. Prior to Ted Kennedy's redrafting of American immigration, US immigration policy strongly favored immigrant pools that reflected existing American demographics. His reforms, adopted by Congress, changed that, and many have been uncomfortable with those changes, and this is again erupting in a malevolent fashion.
Trump also quoted Vladimir Putin about Joe Biden being a threat to democracy, which is absurd, but which again demonstrates the very weird Putin/Trump connection which has never been fully explored.
The truly scary thing here is that we seem to have gone over a tipping point where these views aren't shied away from, they're being endorsed by large segments of American society.
Footnotes:
1. Once again, I'm left amazed by some of the ignorance and weirdness in Trump's speech. The repetitious childishness of his speech patterns, and in this case prior to "80 years ago" "there was nobody around".
Trump just isn't right. Why is this being ignored?
2. Some have noted that the "poisoning the blood" language recalls Mein Kampf. In fact, it does. Hitler uses that line repeatedly, for example:
Unfortunately the German national being is not based on a uniform racial type. The process of welding the original elements together has not gone so far as to warrant us in saying that a new race has emerged. On the contrary, the poison which has invaded the national body, especially since the Thirty Years' War, has destroyed the uniform constitution not only of our blood but also of our national soul. The open frontiers of our native country, the association with non-German foreign elements in the territories that lie all along those frontiers, and especially the strong influx of foreign blood into the interior of the Reich itself, has prevented any complete assimilation of those various elements, because the influx has continued steadily.
The religious test quote Trump made, makes a person wonder if he's genuinely holding views of this type, although his language recalls anti desegregation Southern whites more strongly in my view.
December 20, 2023
The Supreme Court of Colorado, just as we predicted, has disqualified Donald J. Trump from appearing on the Colorado ballot.
Under the doctrine of full faith and credit, every state is now legally obligated to do the same, or at least give serious weight to Colorado’s decision. At least some other states will follow this route and as some, like Wyoming, will decry it, it will head to the United States Supreme Court. I’ll predict right now that the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold the Colorado decision, putting an end, although a precariously late one, to Trump as a candidate.
December 28, 2023
The case noted above has been appealed by the Colorado GOP to the United States Supreme Court, while at the same time, a similar effort in Michigan has failed to take Trump off of that state's ballot.
Should the U.S. Supreme Court take this matter up, which the Trump lawyers also say they will seek, it will prove to be an error and likely end up removing Trump from the race entirely.
Regarding Colorado, a surprise move by Lauren Boebert:
In a true Colorado political surprise, U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert announced Wednesday night that she will abandon the congressional district she has represented for nearly three years — and seek her party’s nomination in 2024 on the other end of the state.
Boebert said she will run to represent Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, vying to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, a fellow Republican.
“Personally, this announcement is a fresh start following a difficult year for me and my family,” Boebert said in a video announcement on Facebook. “I will not allow dark money that is directed at destroying me to steal this seat. It’s not fair to the 3rd District and the conservatives there who have fought so hard for our victories, of which I’m incredibly grateful.”
Boebert must be in real political trouble in her district to attempt this move, which very well may fail. She's going to have to relocate to get on the ballot, and presumably she'll have to resign her current seat when she does.
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.
The work tally for the prior year is in, for good or ill. The heavy lifting of the upcoming year, and there will be some, has not yet begun. The last two weeks of any year are, for most occupations, darned near idle, and so whether days are taken off or not, a sort of holiday atmosphere of ease prevails.
The National Maximum Speed Law reduced the speed limit on the nation's highways to 55 mph.
While ultimately hated, the law had an immediate impact in reducing highway deaths, which of course was not its actual intent. Reducing the consumption of petroleum was.
The first Supplemental Security Income (SSI) checks were mailed in a program designed to address those disabled but unable to qualify for Social Security. The law allowing for this to occur had come into effect the prior day.
The People's Republic of China announced that eight senior military figures were being reassigned in an apparent attempt to disrupt their ability to form a base of power.
Early country music pioneer and actor Tex Ritter died at age 68 of what was believed to be a heart attack. His son, John Ritter, would die in 2003 at age 54 of aortic dissection and its likely that this was actually the cause of his father's death.
Just two days after Adolf Hitler had warned the German people to expect more hardships and setbacks, one came. The Red Army captured Radovel, placing themselves within 18 miles of the pre World War Two, and post Russo Polish War, Russian border.
Much of the attention in late 1943 had been on the war in Ukraine, but this frankly was more than a little ominous. The Soviets were not only recovering lost ground, they were about to enter ground they had not been on since their 1939 invasion of Poland.
The US landed troops of the 32nd Infantry Division at Saidor in New Guinea in Operation Michaelmas, an operation which would ultimately involve 13,000 U.S. troops in an effort to cut off 6,000 Japanese troops.
The 32nd Infantry Division was comprised of National Guard units from Michigan and Wisconsin and had seen significant participation in World War One. Immediately after the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor, the unit was designated for shipment to Northern Ireland and ordered to move to embarkment locations, however, Japanese advances caused it to be redesignated for the Pacific, at which time, after having suffered some manpower losses due to restructuring, it was given only three weeks to make the cross-country trek and embark. It was not fully equipped at the time. Manpower shortages were filled out, however, by recent conscripts. It was then sent to Australia.
Division patch.
While the unit's early commitment to combat was problematic, the unit achieved many first during the Second World War. It was the first US division to deploy as an entire unit from the US and the first to be shipped in a single convoy. The 128th Infantry Rgt, part of the division, was the first to be airlifted into combat. It was the first US unit to launch a ground assault against the Japanese. At Saidor, they became the first US division to make a beach landing in New Guinea. They later became the first US division to supply eleven battalions at one time from the air.
They were one of the "last" units as well, in that they were fighting Japanese soldiers on the Philippines the day after the Japanese surrender. They then went into occupation duty in Japan, and returned in 1946.
Bulgaria gave former King Ferdinand, who had been in exile since 1918, permission to return to Sofia.
He had been living in Coburg, Germany, oddly enough, given that the German monarch was also in exile. He noted, while there:
Kings in exile are more philosophic under reverses than ordinary individuals; but our philosophy is primarily the result of tradition and breeding, and do not forget that pride is an important item in the making of a monarch. We are disciplined from the day of our birth and taught the avoidance of all outward signs of emotion. The skeleton sits forever with us at the feast. It may mean murder, it may mean abdication, but it serves always to remind us of the unexpected. Therefore we are prepared and nothing comes in the nature of a catastrophe. The main thing in life is to support any condition of bodily or spiritual exile with dignity. If one sups with sorrow, one need not invite the world to see you eat.
Yugoslavia issued an ultimatum objecting to his return.
He in fact did not return, and having taken steps to secure his fortune, lived a quasi bucolic life, marked by family tragedy, and carried on in Germany, dying in 1948. The prior year, he married a third time, to his secretary, age 26.
Simon & Schuster, the legendary publishing house, was formed.
The U.S. Winter Olympic team left for the first Winter Olympics.
1924 Winter Olympics including Beatrix Loughran, Joe Moore, Valentine Bialis, Richard Donovan, Harry Kaskey, Charles Jewtraw, and William Steinmetz aboard the ship SS President Monroe on January 2, 1924.
The Constitutionalist government of Mexico reported that is forces had achieved a victory over the rebels of Adolfo de la Huerta at Zacualpan.
The war in Mexico, and other age-old lethal vices, were making headlines far away:
Flooding in Paris closed the railroads.
Sabine Baring-Gould, composer of "Onward, Christian Soldiers", died at age 89. Clara Abbott, American businesswoman who had been the first woman to serve on the board of a major American corporation, Abbott Laboratories, died at age 66.
United States Senators Frazier and Johnson were photographed working.
A new flag for Iowa was unveiled.
It is, frankly, ugly.
It had been adopted in 1921. Iowa had lacked one before that.
I cannot ever recall seeing legislators write an op-ed about judicial nominees in Wyoming. But here's one. As the op-ed states:
Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Kieth Kautz, after having served three decades, will be required by law to retire in March 2024, and the Commission has already presented its three names to Governor Gordon: Stuart Healy (currently serving as District Judge in Campbell, Crook, and Weston Counties), Robert Jarosh (a Cheyenne attorney), and Tim Stubson (a Casper attorney).
We are alarmed by the selection of Mr. Stubson, not because we disagree on nearly every political issue under the sun, but because of his active participation in divisive, partisan politics. Not only does Stubson regularly engage in partisan political debates on social media (which any judicial officer knows to refrain from), Cowboy State Politics has discovered that he is currently the chairman of two active Political Action Committees: the Wyoming Caucus PAC and the Team Wyoming PAC. Serving as the head of a PAC is an inherently partisan activity, which is why PACs are heavily regulated by the Wyoming Legislature and Secretary of State’s Office.
This editorial is directed at Stubson, and this part specifically aims at him:
Partisan politics are fun. Helping out on a political campaign or two can be exhilarating, especially when your candidate for governor wins. Going on PBS News Hour to share your love for Liz Cheney is definitely an accomplishment. But these are not the kind of activities an impartial jurist participates in.
Mr. Stubson served in the legislature, and then later ran for Congress. He was one of the three top vote getters the first year that Liz Cheney ran. Indeed, Stubson and a Teton County candidate likely put Cheney over the top, as they split the majority of the GOP vote, leaving her the top vote getter as a result.
Since then, Stubson has left the legislature and been a regular old citizen, practicing law, as the op ed notes. But he has been vocal in regard to the tragic shift of the GOP into the populist right, as has been his wife.
His partisan activities are the only reason that those authoring the op-ed are against him.
Is that a good basis to oppose him?
Well, judge's positions are political ones, no matter what we might wish to pretend. Judge Freudenthal, a retiring Federal District Court judge in Cheyenne, was nominated when her husband was the Governor. Judge Buchanan, a recent pick by Governor Gordon, stepped down from his elected office as Wyoming's Secretary of State in order to aim for that position, something that was quite controversial at the time.
But a greater issue is what's going on with Wyoming judicial picks in general.
There's not a single judge that I've experienced who is currently sitting whom I think is a "bad judge". But Governor Gordon's picks have been, in my view, lacking quite often. Indeed, this is so much the case that it's backroom talk amongst the lawyers, and not all that long ago the judicial nominating committee's Chief Justice chair complained that the committee was no longer getting all that many applicants for judicial positions. Be that as it may, that didn't stop the committee from picking a very young lawyer to a judicial position who had been the Chief Justice's clerk.
Moreover, by and large, civil litigators have the doors barred to them. Under Gordon, the picks have been largely out of the criminal law or domestic fields, thereby removing a huge field of talent. One of the three names up this time is out of the criminal law field, but I would note that the other two are out of the civil law arena.
The prior governor, Governor Mead, who was a practicing lawyer, had a dedicated, and open, policy of addressing the gender imbalance on the bench. Given a female option, he normally went in that direction. His choices were good ones, but it did mean that male applicants were pretty much out of the running in many instances through no fault of their own. But since then, things have declined.
I've liked Gordon as a Governor, except in certain instances. This is one of them. Recent choices have been very young and in some cases hard to justify if merit alone was the qualifier. The applicants do go through a process, but frankly, influence from the Supreme Court and the Governor's Office weighs pretty heavily. The entire process has declined, and now potential applicants just sit it out.
At least by some measures, New Years are supposed to be periods of introspection. If so, the annual arrival of New Year’s this year certainly has been for me.
2023, by which I really mean the period from October 2022 to the present, has been the worst year of my life, and that’s saying something.
Probably only people who know me really well would know that I’ve had, at least by western world standards, a rough life to some degree. My teenage years and early (20s) adulthood was overshadowed by the physical and accompanying mental decline of my mother, something that still hangs over me like a dark cloud in a lot of ways. It certainly sprung me from being a child at age 12 to an adult at age 13 virtually overnight, and not in ways that were good really, but in ways you can’t ever get back. My relationship with my mother really didn’t recover in some ways until she was near death, and it never recovered in some ways. I’m still working on that, trying to understand that what happened to her wasn’t her fault, or anyone else’s.
Added to that, the death of my father at age 62 was an irreparable loss to me that I’ve also never recovered from and won’t be able to. As I noted here the other day, being an only child meant that I didn’t have a sibling to help endure this loss with, and when he died the person then closest to me in the world died, leaving me with an obligation to my mother that was a very heavy burden under the circumstances.
In short, things haven’t been always a treat.
But then, are they for anyone?
It may in fact be the case that everyone’s life is rough, to at least varying extents. Maybe its best if you don’t even recognize that fact.
Anyhow, in October, 2022, as I’ve noted here before, I had colon surgery, following a colonoscopy that revealed a polyp too big to be removed in that process. I really waited well beyond the age at which you should have your first colonoscopy, which was inexcusable on my part. Had I gone in earlier (a lesson for everyone who might read this), the surgery would never have been necessary. Ultimately the polyp proved to be precancerous, and was “as close to cancer as it can be without being cancer”.
I was 59 years old when I went in for that and that’s the very first instance of surgery, other than I suppose oral surgery to have a broken molar and the nearby wisdom tooth, taken out. What I didn’t really grasp, but should have even due to the oral surgery, is that I wasn’t going to bounce back right away. I expected to. I didn’t even really expect to be out of work for more than a couple of days, in spite of everything that everyone told me.
Well, I’ve never fully recovered from the surgery and I’m not going to, that’s clear by now. I notice it mostly in the mornings. I just can’t eat. Things make me sick, no matter what they are, as a rule. The onset of late in life lactose intolerance has made that even worse. For decades what I ate for breakfast was cereal with milk. I can’t really eat that anymore.
So be it, but what really surprised me was the onset of really deep fatigue. I was simply worn out from the surgery and it lingered for months. I was tired like I never had been before in my life.
To compound it, when the diagnostic films were done for the colon surgery, a MRI was done all the way up to my neck which revealed I had a sizable polyp on my thyroid. The same surgeon recommended that the thyroid come out and seemed to look at the question as to what to do as almost absurd. I was so surprised, and so beat up from the first surgery, that I went to my regular doctor for a second opinion. He referred me to an endocrinologist. That doctor had no qualms at all about what needed to be done. It needed out, the risk of cancer was so high, I was informed, that it was almost certainly cancer.
Great.
I ended up having a partial thyroidectomy in Denver. I was extremely hesitant about the whole thing.
Well, the polyp turned out to be benign, which overjoyed the medicos but made me feel like I'd done something I could have avoided. After surgery, I hoped to avoid medication (I've never had daily medications), but wasn't lucky there either.
Since the thyroid surgery, and particularly at first, on a lot of days I've just been in a fog and tired all the time. It’s a difficult thing to describe, as it’s a feeling that’s internal. I don’t think anyone else noticed it at all, but plowing through my days, and that’s what it felt like, I just didn't feel right. I complained a lot about it to my wife, but in retrospect now I realize that if you complain a lot about certain topics, it become routine and won’t be paid too much attention to, particularly if there are no external manifestations that are obvious.
There were in fact external manifestations, but they weren’t obvious to anyone but me. Normally, I look forward to the weekends and feel disappointed if I have to work on Saturdays, which I often must do. I was so tired and dragged down, however, that I actually started to look forward to having to be in my office on Saturday. I’d drag myself out, a little, to go fishing and hunting, but my feet felt leaden and I just wasn’t having the fun I normally did, the exception being when my kids were here.
I just went in for a follow-up and upon examination just recently. At that time the doctor asked me how I was doing and I reported what I was feeling and experiencing. He gave me a physical examination. I didn’t have bloodwork yet, as doing this on December 26 meant that I didn’t have the chance to get it done. Based on the physical examination, they determined they needed to up my meds. “Everything will be fine”, I was told.
The bloodwork came back and showed everything to be just what it should be. They immediately cancelled the doubling of the meds.
Long story short, what’s going on is post-surgery depression, a thing I didn't know even existed.
This is, apparently, particularly associated with thyroid surgeries, although most people don’t experience it. To just sort of note what’s out there, here’s a medical journal report on it:
Thyroid surgery is usually recommended for thyroid cancer and can be to remove one lobe of the thyroid (partial thyroidectomy) or to remove the entire thyroid (total thyroidectomy). Thyroidectomy may also be recommended for certain non-cancerous disorders including hyperthyroidism and large goiters. The results of a total thyroidectomy is hypothyroidism which requires lifelong treatment with a thyroid hormone pill. Several recent reports have highlighted a decrease in the quality of life and an increase in depression in some patients with hypothyroidism due to thyroid surgery. Therefore, the authors have examined if there is an association between thyroid surgery and a new onset of depression.
Great.
Apparently post-surgery depression is a thing with older adults anyhow, and I’m 60. But to make it even niftier, depression is even more associated with colon surgery. Another medical journal notes
The prevalence of anxiety, depression and PTSD appears to be high in patients who have undergone colorectal surgery. Younger patients and women are particularly at risk.
I don’t know the cause of all of this, and there could be a bunch of them that occur to me, some of which actually wouldn’t explain it in my case. But being honest with myself, one of the things has to do with a family history and my early life.
Anxiety of a type is a condition which occurs on my mother’s side of my family. Not everyone has it by any means, but some do and at least in one case, my maternal grandfather, it was really noticeable. He was by all accounts an extremely intelligent man, but as a young man he suffered enormously from anxiety which kept him from building a career at an age, in that era in particular, a person normally did, and which in turn kept him from marrying at an age when people normally did. My grandmother was his fiancé forever, and its actually a bit surprising that she waited for him, but then she had her own background haunting her, that being that she was highly educated and intelligent, but her own mother was not particularly fond of her, and was open about it.
Ultimately my grandfather found a career in real estate in Montreal, and did well until the Great Depression. When the Great Depression hit, and funds trailed off, he turned to drink, something that plagued him for years. Remarkably, probably in the late 40s or early 50s, a Catholic Priest apparently told him to stop drinking and he did then and there, cold turkey. Even more remarkably, my Grandmother suffered a miscarriage with what would have been her eighth child and went to a Priest, maybe the same one, and asked if she could stop performing the Marital Debt. He said she could. That means that my grandfather, for the last ten or more years of his life, didn’t drink anymore, which is where he had taken refuge from stress, and also lived in a sexless marriage, which must have added enormously to his stress. Amazingly, he seems to have actually pulled his act together, and lived out the balance of his life as a happy guy before dying at age 58. His siblings, however, never got to where they trusted him and that ended up being taken out, after his death, on his widow and surviving children.
That’s an extreme example, of course, but there are a couple of others. Something afflicted my mother, but nobody has a clue as to what it was. She recovered from a condition pronounced to be terminal, and therefore the early diagnosis was either wrong, or her recovery was miraculous (which is what I think it was). Her recovery, while real, was never complete, however. As another example, one of my cousins on this side of the family, named after my mother, and one year older than me, was so conscious of anxiety being a factor in her makeup, she purposely chose a scientific lab career in order to avoid it. In her early 60s, the impacts of this have not hit her, but she’s dying of cancer presently.
I know now that anxiety has impacted me my entire adult live, although largely unacknowledged by me. I don’t recall it being a factor at all until I was an adult, but the trauma of what I went through as a teen probably didn't help, long term. The first time I really experienced it was when I worried about going to basic training, but I got over it quickly when I was there. After that, it became clear to me that I experienced travel anxiety, which is a condition that is something that uniquely occurs in some people. It’s hard to explain. Ironically, I've traveled in my adult life a huge amount, and generally like where I'm going, once I'm there.
It’s when I became a litigator that I really became conscious of anxiety, however.
Litigation is an extremely stressful career as it is. Anxiety runs rampant in the field. According to the ABA, for lawyers in general, a study revealed:
•64 percent of lawyers report having anxiety.
•28 percent lawyers suffered from depression
•19 percent of lawyers had severe anxiety
•11.4 percent of lawyers had suicidal thoughts in the previous year
And that’s just regular lawyers.
There have been study after study on this topic, and they all come about the same, with some coming out much worse. I’ve seen one article that has dissed these findings, but just one. My guess is that probably double these figures (except for the self reporting anxiety, which would amount to a statistical impossibility) would be the case for litigators.
Indeed, I’ve long noted that most litigators actually won’t try a case. I have tried a lot of cases, and one of the reasons why is that I’ve always been conscious of the duty not to allow a person’s anxiety to keep them from dutifully fulfilling their duty to their client. I”ve sometimes worried, in fact, that I might possibly try more cases than others in order to counter the fact that anxiety might be infusing my views, but I don't think that's the case. Anyhow, anxiety in litigation is so bad, as noted, that a majority of litigators actually won’t try a case. I've always just been aware that it was there, can impact how you think, and set it aside.
In other contexts, I’ve long seen the impact of anxiety working itself out in destructive ways in the legal field. I’ve known lawyers who were drug addicts or alcoholics, or who engaged in other destructive life choices. I’ve known two who quit practicing due to anxiety, one self-declaring that and the other just not being able to overcome an addiction to alcohol otherwise. One really well respected plaintiff’s lawyer actually disappeared from his household and family for a couple of weeks until he was found in a hotel in another state where he’d gone on a profound days long bender. Three I’ve been aware of just disappeared, two resurfacing in a seminary and one in the People’s Republic of China.
This all being the case, while I’ve been a successful lawyer, law probably wasn’t a field that I should have gone into. One lawyer friend of mine from Germany, whom I remarked to on this, dismissed this, saying “you are an intellectual, your choice was to become a lawyer or a priest”, which is an interesting way of looking at it, but had I been smarter, I’d probably have chosen the path of my scientific cousin in order to avoid the stress.
It doesn't matter now. Like the Hyman Roth character in Godfather II, "This is the business we've chosen". And by and large, it worked out well. Being honest with myself, I've been able to do a lot of interesting things, and have constantly learned new fields and topics, all the time. If you are an autodidatic polymath, it's hard to imagine a field that would actually offer so much as the law. And if you do like visiting obscure places, at least prior to COVID, it really allowed you to.
In saying all of this, what I’m saying now is that looking back on the past horrible year, I can look back decades and see the points at which the stress rose up and made me act in ways I never would have, although never in a professional sense. Each time, really, was a cry for help, but cries for help don’t really come through that way if they’re not posed that way. And sometimes, there is no existential help, you just need to pick up your pack and carry on.
This past year, however, with the fog of post-surgery depression setting in, I was really unaware of it.
I should have been, as I didn’t mentally feel right. I did keep mentioning that “I feel slow”, but that means you feel slow. The real warning was when I absolutely exploded on two partners who have been keeping a long running irritating argument going for years, permanently ending it. It needed to end, but blowing up on them was the wrong thing to do, and in retrospect I’m amazed that I wasn’t told to take a hike.
In Catholic theology there’s something called “the problem of evil”, which boils down to “why does God allow bad things to happen”. There are various answers to that question, but a universal partial response is that God doesn’t allow something to occur if he cannot bring good out of it. In our temporary lives that can be awfully hard to accept, but I believe it to be true. In this instance, I can now in fact see this at work. In a way, this allows me to go back, but clear minded, to the beginning of my career as I now approach its end, but to be a kinder, more thoughtful person, and a more grateful one. I do believe that people can and do change if they wish to, and while it’s not as if I’m now going to become an Iron Man competitor, or something, I am in a way following a bit of the same path taken by a friend who was very bitter about his legal career, and openly so, but in the last few years has become very grateful for it. I have a lot to be thankful for.
I also have the chance now to beat anxiety that was lurking there, rather than to sort of give into PTSD, which is basically what I have had in a way. That condition, known as combat fatigue originally, or shell shock, has been determined to be much wider than originally thought, and the frequent comparisons of litigation to combat are pretty accurate. But knowing what’s what is frankly more than half the battle.
Part of that also I think is following a bit of what Alcoholics Anonymous and other addition programs have in their “twelve steps”. I’m not saying I need to join AA or NA, or something but rather the page AA took from the advice of a Catholic Priest, which is similar to what Jews do on Yom Kippur, is to apologize to people you’ve hurt. I’ve done that with four people already, which is probably the set I needed to. But beyond that, part of it is being more tolerant to the people and conditions we routinely encounter, something that is difficult in a judgmental profession like the law.
So, in the end, I’m grateful to have an outside professional let me know what was going on, and that its connection to surgery, twice will remediate, and indeed already are. But beyond that, I’m grateful for the door it opened and which I’m walking through to be more aware.
Syria became independent theoretically, but the French mandate continued.
The RAF bombed Berlin again.
The War Department was pondering its policies regarding African American soldiers.
From Sarah Sundin's blog:
Today in World War II History—January 1, 1944: Gen. Alexander Vandegrift replaces Gen. Thomas Holcomb as commandant of the US Marine Corps. US penny production switches from steel to a copper & brass alloy.
USC Trojans beat the Washington Huskies 29-0 in the Rose Bowl, Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets defeated Tulsa Golden Hurricane 20-18 in the Sugar Bowl., the LSU Tigers beat the Texas A&M Aggies 19-14 in the Orange Bow, the Cotton Bowl Classic ended in a 7–7 tie between the Randolph Field Ramblers and the Texas Longhorns.
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