Saturday, June 28, 2025

Hoping this is true.

I'm really hoping this is true.  Lee has shown a total disregard for the wishes of nationwide voter.

And Hageman, Barrasso and Lummis have shown a contempt for Wyoming's voters that the electorate should remember.

This is only one aspect of the Big Ugly Bill that will come back to haunt us in spades. But at least, if this is true, this is past us.

Hopefully Lee is too.  Utah's voters should send him back to the private sector.

Lex Anteinternet: Public Lands demand Action This Day.

Lex Anteinternet: Public Lands demand Action This Day.:  

Public Lands demand Action This Day.

 

It appears the Big Ugly Bill with Mike Lee's scheme to sell public lands that fall within the former putative state of Deseret, which he acts as if he represents, will occur today or tomorrow.

Call your people in Congress today and inform them you are opposed.

If you live in Wyoming, inform them that they better start putting in their resumes for post Congressional punditry right now, as you'll not vote for them for anything ever again.  They aren't representing you if they vote for this.

In spite of overwhelming public opposition, Mike Lee's public land sale provision remains in the budget reconciliation bill.

Action this day.

Tribune editorial: Public lands, with public access, are what make the West the West Tell Congress that Mike Lee’s planned sell-off is not what Utahns want.

Tribune editorial: Public lands, with public access, are what make the West the West

Tell Congress that Mike Lee’s planned sell-off is not what Utahns want.

Killing people through lies and disinformation

Lex Anteinternet: Killing people through omission.:   

‘A lot of Americans are going to die’ courtesy of RFK Jr.


The Trump Administration is well on its way towards being one of the most lethal in modern American history through the spread of lies and medical disinformation, and the withholding of funds for aid where it can be effective.

At some future point in history, historians are going to look at this era as one in which rational thinking simply broke down into mass delusion.

June 28, 1975. Death of Rod Serling.

American screenwriter and television producer Rod Sterling died at age 50 of a heart attack.

Serling was an extremely heavy smoker, which was no doubt the cause of his death.  He'd been a paratrooper during World War Two, serving in the Pacific.

He's best remembered for The Twilight Zone.

Serling in 1959, at which time he would have only been 34 years old.  This photo gives us a good example of what we've noted elsewhere, about how people aged more rapidly in the past.  The cigarette in hand would have helped contribute to that.  World War Two probably didn't help either.  Serling's bracelet features Army jump wings.

Last edition:

Thursday, June 12, 1975. Searching for the meaning of Vietnam.

World War Two and US Beer.

A couple of the blogs we follow have been discussing this topic.  A summer theme?

Schlitz Beer In the South Pacific, Part I.



Blog Mirror: The “Luckiest Generation” Got Started in the 1940s

 

The “Luckiest Generation” Got Started in the 1940s

The U.S. and beer during World War Two.

 

BEER and the MILITARY WWII



Blog Mirror: From Munitions to Mass Consumption: America After WWII

 

From Munitions to Mass Consumption: America After WWII

Thursday, June 28, 1945. Moving in new directions.

Stricken plane landing on aircraft carrier, June 28, 1945.

While 23,000 Japanese troops remained in the field, in isolated areas, MacArthur announced that operations on Luzon were complete.

They weren't, really.  The 8th Army and the Filipinos would remain to mop the remainder up.

The Soviet backed Provisional Government of National Unity in Poland, made up of  the PPR: 7 ministers, Socialist Party: 6 ministers, People's Party: 3 ministers, PSL: 3 ministers and  Democratic Party: 2 ministers, was formed.

The Polish Government in Exile did not recognize it, although several of its members were from the Government in Exile.

The last B-24 to be produced at Ford's Michigan Willow Run plant was completed.

Last edition:

Wednesday, June 27, 1945. Giving Japan a warning.

Sunday, June 28, 1925. Executing the Kurdish rebels.

Dmitri Shostakovich and his cat, June 28, 1925.

Forty Seven Kurdish participants in the Sheikh Said rebellion.

Last edition:

Friday, June 27, 2025

Five Republicans listening to their base.

 



The margin on this bill is so tight that five votes has a very good chance of sinking it in the House.

Good for the five.

And shame on Wyoming's delegation in Congress if it does not follow suit.

Public Lands demand Action This Day.

 

It appears the Big Ugly Bill with Mike Lee's scheme to sell public lands that fall within the former putative state of Deseret, which he acts as if he represents, will occur today or tomorrow.

Call your people in Congress today and inform them you are opposed.

If you live in Wyoming, inform them that they better start putting in their resumes for post Congressional punditry right now, as you'll not vote for them for anything ever again.  They aren't representing you if they vote for this.

Public lands rally draws large, varied crowd to Wyoming statehouse

Public lands rally draws large, varied crowd to Wyoming statehouse



Killing people through omission.

 

The DOGE lead cuts on USAID, which ended up in eliminating the entity for all practical purposes, have lead to at least 300,000 deaths around the globe.

And now Robert Kennedy, who is a quack in terms of medicine, vaccines, and diet, has announced that the United States won’t contribute anymore to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, until the global health organization has “re-earned the public trust".

Wednesday, June 27, 1945. Giving Japan a warning.

Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bard suggested giving Japan a warning about the atomic bomb.

US forces completed the occupation of Luzon's Cagayan Valley.  The island is accordingly nearly fully under US control.

The I-165 was sunk east of Saipan by a US PV-2 Harpoon.

The USS Bunker Hill was struck by a kamikaze resulting in the death of 373 men.

Dr. Emil Hacha, age 73, the former president of the German sponsored "Bohemia-Moravia Protectorate," died in the Prague prison hospital while awaiting trial.

Edward Stettinius resigned as Secretary of State to take up the post of ambassador to the United Nations.

Last edition:

Tuesday, June 26, 1945. The United Nations Charter signed, Manhattan Project scientists worry, Marilyn appears in Yank,

Saturday, June 27, 1925. An earthquake in Montana.

 








 A 6.6 magnitude occurred near Townsend Montana.

Last edition:

Friday, June 26, 1925. The Gold Rush.

French Dip Sandwich (1908 0r 1918) on Sandwiches of History

Officer Bill Gannon Sandwich of Dragnet (1952) on Sandwiches of History⁣

Officer Bill Gannon Garlic Nut Butter Sandwich of Dragnet (1960s) on San...


Ewww. . . . 

Thursday, June 26, 2025

Mike Lee’s Revised Land Grab Still Mandates the Sale of Up to 1.2 Million Acres of Public Land After telling outraged hunters that he was listening to their concerns, the Utah senator is doubling down on plans to sell off a large amount of federally managed public land in the West

 

After telling outraged hunters that he was listening to their concerns, the Utah senator is doubling down on plans to sell off a large amount of federally managed public land in the West

Maybe its time for Barrasso and Lummis to pack their bags.

From the CST:

Barrasso and Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyoming, did not oppose the original proposal, though Republican senators from Montana and Idaho did. But Wyoming’s congressional delegation heard concerns from a range of constituents. State Rep. Andrew Byron, R-Hoback, is among the Teton County residents making their voices heard opposing the proposed federal public lands sale.

Byron overnighted two letters to Barrasso and Lummis on Friday and emailed their chiefs of staff . By Saturday afternoon, he was on the phone with Barrasso. He said he has yet to receive a response from Lummis and her office.

Byron said Tuesday that he and Barrasso had a productive conversation, but the senator “downplayed” the concerns brought to him. Although Barrasso didn’t reveal his position on the public lands sale, Byron said Barrasso didn’t share his sense of urgency.

They're disregarding the voters.  

Send them home if they don't correct this.

They're counting on us forgetting this, and there's some outside incentive, or fear, for them ignoring us.  We need to be the bigger incentive, and they need to fear for their positions and reputations.

Related threads:

Wyoming's broken politics.


Utah, you have a lot of explaining to do for electing Mike Lee.

WTF Utah?


When Mike Lee isn't busy promoting taking public lands from the public, he apparently launches into all the dimwitted far right stuff he conceivably can.

And makes absurd statements about murders.


Utah, make this guy go home, or at least get him out of Congress.

As Wyoming protests, public land sell-off ‘just getting started’ - WyoFile

As Wyoming protests, public land sell-off ‘just getting started’ - WyoFile: Utah senator trims plans, calling targeted BLM land “unused,” “mismanaged” and “only appropriate for housing.”

Friday, June 26, 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges

June 26, 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges

Only a decade?  

It seems like a lot longer.

I felt at the time, and I still do, that the Obergefell decision was an absolute disaster.  It was legally deficient in its reasoning, which was pathetic.  Justice Kennedy's text failed to grasp the existential nature of marriage, but perhaps that was understandable as Kennedy, currently 88 years old, was in his 20s and 30s in the 1960s.  Indeed, he turned 30 in 1966, by which time Americans were well on their way to forgetting what the biological purpose of sex is, and what the nature of marriage is.

Kennedy's opinion embraced a sort of Age of Aquarius sense of "love" being the reason for marriage, at its core root.  Love is an aspect of marriage, hopefully, and there's a lot to that, but sex is as well and the type that leads to children, at least frequently.  Indeed, the entire institution and everything about it is oriented in that direction.

That has very little to do with homosexuality in that unions between the same gender don't result in children.  I know the arguments about adoption and the like, but that's fairly far from the point as well.  Indeed, in a way, that gets into the following topic about IVF that we covered recently.

IVF and a Half-Cath | June 11, 2025

Something that the generation that came of age after World War Two really brought into the culture is sort of the opposite of the Rolling Stone's skifflesque You Can't Always Get What You Want.  That generation pretty much got almost all of what they wanted, and still are.  That sense of entitlement resulted in cultural self centeredness in which you are entitled to be what you want to be and everyone else has to darned well accept it and the consequences.

The problem was and is, however, that Obergefell, as it strayed so far from the law, and so far from where  the culture then was (it's a horrible example of the old trying to get ahead of the culture) that it was bound to spark a massive reaction.  And it did.

The populist right rage that developed soon after was already burning, but Obergefell poured gasoline on the fire.  The culture had lost much of the conservative wisdom on the nature of sex and marriage already, and had gone through Chesterton's fence with a bulldozer in this regard.  A culture that had accepted, prior to the early 1950s that sex was properly in marriage, and properly between married men and women, had gone to pretty much accepting that sex was entertainment and marriage was a celebration of love rather than a loving (hopefully) childrearing, economic, natural unit.  People basically forgot what their natures produced and men in particular figures that they were entitled to play around with Fran Geraud, and women figured they had to endure it.  And that's where we remain today.  A culture that basically thinks the Hawk Tuah Girl is amusing rather than a tramp.

But once that moral decay had reached the point where people who could excuse their own conduct could imagine themselves to somehow still be good Christians suddenly were confronted with homosexuals making the same intellectual arguments, and that being adopted by the Supreme Court, it was just too much.

It was also clear, in spite of what Kennedy thought, that Obergefell was going to open the floodgates of radical sexual behavior.  Same sex sexual conduct, no matter what a person thinks of it, had been around for time immemorial, although it frankly even now is not really very well understood.  But transgenderism had not been, or at least not in the same fashion.  The groups backing the concept of transgenderism rushed into the field and gained ground enormously, which large numbers of people were not and are not willing to accept, including some homosexuals and included many feminists.  

That this was going to cause massive civil disintegration was obvious.  Disorganized groups on the right and middle that were already upset by the loss of industrial jobs and immigration now were faced with a massive social advance on the left which did not square with their basic understanding of themselves, and for good reason.  To add to it, it was forced upon them.

None of this was necessary.  Various states were moving towards various civil unions for homosexuals as it was.  The slow march of legislation would have brought about a change, whether it was a good one or not, at a pace that would have been accepted.  That's what happened to the disaster of no fault divorce.  Instead Kennedy's opinion forced it all, and more than he had anticipated, all at once.

It destroyed respect for the Court and gave traditionalists of all types massive pause.  It started the rush towards right wing populism which was already going on.

It lead directly to Donald Trump.

Related threads:

The Supreme Court tries a bit to mop up a dog's breakfast. Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.


Tuesday, June 26, 1945. The United Nations Charter signed, Manhattan Project scientists worry, Marilyn appears in Yank,

The United Nations Conference on International Organization concluded with the United Nations Charter being signed at the San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center by 50 of the 51 original member countries.

Poland was unable to send a delegation, and therefore did not sign.

While many people in the world were becoming optimistic about the post war world, the Manhattan Project scientists were getting worried.


And fighting in the Pacific was still going on, including mopping up operations on Okinawa, and new landings in the Ryukyus where Marines landed on Kume to establish a radar station.

The US dropped paratroopers near Aparri to link up with the 37th Infantry Division.

The Chinese army took Liuchow airfield.

The United States Army Air Force commenced B-29 raids at night against Japanese oil refineries.

Bombed Out Refinery, Nagoya Japan.

Bombed Out Refinery, Nagoya Japan. Early 1950s

A photograph taken by my father in Nagoya Japan, depicting refinery damage from World War Two.

Norma Jeane Dougherty, later known as Marilyn Monroe, appeared as the Yank centerfold.


The title of Generalissimo of the Soviet Union was introduced aand assigned next day assigned to I.V. Stalin, who declined to use it, favoring Marshall.

Last edition:

Monday, June 24, 1945. Brandenburg Ballerina.