Thursday, May 7, 2026
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 133d Edition. What happened to that Board of Peace?
The Trump Administration breaks down crying and asks for help from adults.
The Trump administration is desperately seeking UN intervention in the war it started as the US is on the verge of a complete defeat in the war with Iran.
Remember the much vaunted and completely absurd Board of Peace that Trump rolled out when he liked to pretend he was a peacemaker? The countries that joined were Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Egypt, El Salvador, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
Ask them for help. . .
Go ahead Marco, call them up. . .
Go ahead, have him do it.
Yesterday the Trump Administration rolled back into existence the Presidential Fitness Test which Eisenhower had put into effect in 1956 and Obama did away with in 2012, replacing it with the Presidential Youth Fitness Program. Trump can't have anying Obama. . . like a peace deal with Iran that dealt with nuclear stuff . . anyhow. . .
Secretary of Batshit Crazy Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. made a joke about Trump being able to do a fifty mile hike and Trump joked back that he could do it.
Go ahead. Let's see him manage that. . .
Mass Mailings
We've been getting tons of political mass mailings from three candidates. I noted that here:
All three of these candidates essentially have the same message. They love Trump as only Trump loves Trump. They love Trump more than Trump's children love Trump. They love Trump more than Melania, assuming of course that she loves Trump.
Trump retains a hold on the minds of MAGA and the GOP has descended into the Party of Trump. There really aren't real Republicans anymore. As I've noted here already, there's a really good chance that after November the GOP will simply cease to exist.
But is being more Trump, than Trump, a liability in Wyoming? I guess we'll see.
Not that the mailings are all identical. Gray's just asserts his Trumpiness. Rasner, who has a MAGA truckers cap J.B. Welded to his head, takes shots at Gray. Freiss mostly accidentally shows himself to be super rich and not really knowing what, or where, Wyoming actually is.
Anyhow, the mass mailers are so irritating I took a little time to see if I could return them to senders. The USPS Reddit, which isn't an official page, makes it clear that would be pointless. They just throw them away. The topic really irritates mail carriers, as they'd rather you just throw them away yourself. I can see their point.
Apparently a lot of people just throw them on the ground, which really irritates mail carriers also
What do we know about these guys?
It's occurred to me that Wyomingites have been voting for people they know absolutely nothing about.
This isn't true about candidates from other states. We know all about Colorado's BoBo and Alaska's Peltola. Why don't we know more about these people who claim to have all these super duper values that are supposed to reflect the state's?
Take Gray for example Next to nothing about him is publicly known. He could be robbing liquor stores on his off hours and we wouldn't know.
All we know about him is he grew up near Los Angeles and graduated from high school there in 2008, after he went to Wharton, where based on the economic example of Donald Trump, who also graduated from Wharton, must educate its students with Archie cartoons. He spent his summers in Wyoming growing up, and when he graduated from Wharton, he went right to work for his father's radio station where he broadcast political babble. That's pretty darned close to never having had to work in the real world. He rose to his current position by barely beating Tara Nethercott for the Secretary of State by constant hystericaly spewing of lies.
He was a founding member of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus which was heavily funded by out of state and rich carpetbagger money. I know that he's a Catholic, but only because when he lived in Casper I'd see him at Mass on odd occasion. My presumption is that he regularly attended Mass, although I don't know that. He went to a different parish than I do. Frankly, if I'd been a parish priest, I'd have called him out for lying.
He's unmarried at age 36 and nobody is ever mentioned as a love interest. Maybe he has one. For all I know he could be dating AoC. But the question is never asked. It should be, as being unmarried at 36 is frankly odd and we have a right to know if people are personally living up to their declared political values. It's one thing if he's so dedicated to work, or whatever, that he doesn't have time for gals. Maybe he just isn't interested, some percentage of people, a small number, aren't. But if on the other hand he hangs out with the dancers from The Clown's Den every night, and I'm in no way suggesting he is, we ought to be so informed.
Press, you aren't doing your job.
We don't know much about Reid Rasner either, although the fact that he keeps suing people for defamation (and people have said some awful things about him) has revealed a little. In one suit he admitted, if "admission" is the correct word, to being a homosexual. In the suits he's filed he's taken grave exception to being accused of molestation of somebody below 18, or molesting anyone, and I don't blame him a bit for that. I suspect that some people just believe that every homosexual does things like that, which is certainly not the case, but suspecting such a thing is just flat out wrong. The suits therefore make sense, although its really risky for a politician. He's some sort of investment businessman. So all in all, we know a lot more about him than we do Gray, which is really odd. I don't like his politics at all, but the fact that he's been open about these things is really to his credit.
With both of these candidates what we don't know is if their mailing appearance matches anything about them in real life. Chuck likes to wear Western cut wool shirts now, but he looks really uncomfortable appearing that way. His button-down and blue blazer looked a lot more natural. He's been videoed on oilfield locations, where he's never worked, and on a four wheeler, which looks unnatural to him.
Rasner likes to be photographed with firearms. So does Freiss. But do they really use them? Maybe, but do we really know that?
Freiss, I'd note, is another one. His father was a super wealthy carpetbagger and he seems to be the same. Go home, carpetbagger.
Balow, who is the best candidate so far, is from Laramie. As already noted, Gray is a carpetbagger from California. Rasner is from Casper. She was a career educator who took over as Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction after the disastrous Cindy Hill, who brought full blown batshit into that office. Balow held that office and then took the same one in Virginia, where the position is (sensibly) appointed. People have held that against here here, which is really ironic. If that's bad, Brent Bien ought to be exiled to the far side of the moon.
We know a lot more about Hageman, Barrasso, Lummis and Gordon, although I'd even question that to some extent. There's some questions I'd ask Hageman and Barrasso which I think are legitimate, but which just aren't done.
Anyhow, Press, why don't you tell us something about these people? You report on them so little, that it's honestly the case that a triple ax murderer could move into Wyoming.
Or maybe it doesn't matter.
Last edition:
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 132nd Edition. Voting with their feet
Afflicted with the world they helped make, and afflicting it on everyone else. The Baby Boomers, old age, the Sexual Revolution, and expelling the Barbarians.
This is going to be harsh.
But not as harsh as it started out to be. I actually toned it down.
And yes, it's another dissing the Baby Boomers thread.
This past week there's been two articles in major journals regarding the aging of the Baby Boomers. One I had to hunt for as it was published in The Free Press, and I don't subscribe to that. Still, I found it here.
The Long Boomer Farewell
This will not be a clean handoff. It will be an extended interregnum.
The article is well written and largely correct, although in my view, much more gentle than it should be. It will be an extended interregnum because, like actual regents, the obsolescent monarchy cannot accept that the obsolescent monarchs should go, and go right now.
I said that this would be harsh.
But not as harsh as it started out to be.
I've been dealing with this topic directedly, recently. The entire country has been in fact. On a personally local level, I'm presently so frustrated with it that, as a member of Generation Jones, I'm about ready to drop out of employment in my "good office job" right now. I don't only because a panicked spouse feels that's financial devastation, even if she's wrong. I keep on keeping on only for domestic peace, that's it.
In this, I've been dealing with the intersection of the stubborn refusal of an entire generation to yield power on absolutely anything, while at the same time, watching how their choices and that of the post WWII era continually to negatively impact an entire society today.
In my experience Boomers just will not yield in offices, or in office. Indeed, right now, Donald Trump, who is clearly demented is lamenting former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani being in the hospital in critical condition. Giuliani is an 81 year old serial polygamist like Trump, age 79. A hallmark of the generation is that it just thinks its going to live forever and that none of the rules that held society together from when the first Vandal was taught to read until 1968 apply to them.
They've never stopped to ask about the reason the rules were there and what tearing them down would do . . . even to themselves.
Or acknowledged they'll die.
They will, they are but they will not acknowledge it or yield, and they are well on their way to going from being celebrated, albeit mostly by themselves, to unlamented.
In professional offices, and often in politics, where they were granted power in their 30s and 40s, they retain it as a last ditch matter no matter what. For two weeks running I've seen a Boomer confronted with the "it's time to go" reality and simply refuse. That person would rather retain an presence in an office where the person is not wanted rather than leave with dignity. It's bad enough that Gen Y and Gen X in that situation cites the Boomer presence as a reason that they might now want to commit to what the older person cites as his "legacy".
Well, if they have to work it, they may just let his legacy die in an economic desert.
Regarding one such struggle, I've seen a number of minor requests made recently of a Boomer, and some not so mild ones. The latter come from an awareness by the Boomer's fellows that there's some cognitive decline. "Whose project is this?" is the question, followed by, well Boomer took it in. . .
Oh oh.
Less significantly, a minor request made by one Gen Xer to the effect of "can you move your office so the most active person in it could occupy it as we want that person up front was met with "No." It's a prime example of the Afghan Warlord Principal. As we previously noted:
It's not actually the physical trappings that concern anyone in this latter instance, it's just the stubborn grasp on the institution itself. A better space is available for somebody who needs it, or who can better profit through its use. That person, whose in Generation Jones, cannot have it. It'll sit, instead, largely empty a gaping Arch de Trump type monument to somebody who is largely not htere.
Things like this are the reasons that quite a few professional firms have a partnership agreement that actually expels a person at age 65.
In the meantime I'm familiar with the descent into oblivion of another person, Gen X I think, who is killing herself with cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. I think it's intentional, but it's also putting the person into a situation in which she can really no longer be employed.
That'd be tragic by any measure, but the entire time I've known the person she's had the same grossly underemployed "boyfriend" that she's shacked up with. Her life is the job she's no longer able to do, pet cats, the deadbeat long-term underemployed boyfriend, and bar hopping. If she was in her 20s it'd still be bad, but redeemable. Now it really isn't.
Left to Gen Jones to clean up, I'd note.
Related to this, the aforementioned Boomer was approached by another Boomer, also in her 70s, about a job. Her company is closing, and no wonder. Also a professional company, it just never was successful in recruiting anyone young to work with it, save for the son of one of the partners who has decided to leave the field and go into a new one with his wife, who has a successful business. No succession plan, just an end. At least the owners of that business were able to successfully bring it to an end. Nothing of it will remain.
She's worked for them for something like 30 years. In the 30 years that I've known her she was never married. I don't know if she was ever married, although I dimly recall it being mentioned that she had a daughter. She's been hinting to another professional firm in her office that she "needs to work" and needs to find a job, which was a broad hope that they'd offer her a job. She finally just flat out asked. . . the Boomer, for one. A 70 year old office worker asking a 70 year old professional for a job which everyone else would have to pay for.
Gen. Jones vetoed it.
They don't doubt she needs a job. They just don't have one for her. They're not going to hire her based on her resume for a position that doesn't exist.
And here's the harsher reality.
People love concept of romantic love, which is a real thing. But on top of it, marriage is, as so often noted, a fundamental aspect of society. An institution so ancient that it seems to be full ingrained in hte species, the Boomers broke that, and they're inflicting the damage on everyone.
When lifetime marriages went out the gate, and bed hopping and living for yourself came in, did nobody think that there would be implications?
The main Boomer I noted here is divorced. He's shacked with somebody too, which is extremely unseemly for somebody in their 70s, but it means that not only does he have no attachments, his attachment to his (former, more or less) place of employment is massively disordered. He won't go, as it that is what he dedicated his life to, and he's clinging to it as if its his life.
It is, but like life itself, it won't life on forever.
Estranged from his family, living in a relationship of convenience, and hostile to religion, he has the four walls of his old office.
Would that have been different in prior eras?
It's hard to say, but at least to a degree we can say yes. Their father's generation had their families, and families first.
The two women in this story?
Well, had marriage remained the institution it once was they'd both have spouses and children to rely on, at least to some degree. Maybe the one has a child, but that gets to another point below.
The first point, however is that societal structures existed for a reason. Marriage has always featured love, in spite of what some may say, but it also was society's protection against children and destitution. Married couples provided for the needs of their children, not the Department of Family Services and the school free lunch program. And husbands provided for their wives, unless a husband was too sick to do so, in which case the reverse was true.
People did very often work into old age, and we should not pretend otherwise, but I have to say that the Boomer woman in this scenario would very likely not be in it, but for the destruction of structure mentioned.
Likewise, before anti biologic pharmaceutical's women could not become the sexual playthings of men save at great risk. The younger woman mentioned above would be married. And the pressures of society would have bene such that the man in question, who could get a real job, would have gotten one.
The FDA allowed the first pharmaceutical birth control pill in 1960. The Boomers had taken it up in spades by the late 60s and were engaging in illicit sex on a broad scale. No fault divorce was first introduced in California in 1969, and spread throughout the country rapidly. Abortion was made a right by the Supreme Court in 1973.
No matter how it was sold, the impact was pretty clear. The Sexual Revolution reduced women to sex slaves and slaves in general. In essence, Western women had their status stripped to what it had been in pre Christian times. Toys for sex, who very soon had to work. Feminism didn't liberate them, it enslaved them, prisoners of war of the Sexual Revolution.
But not just them, men too became casualties of the war.
So here we are. Crediting Generation Jones, as we should, as a real generation, the youngest Boomer is now 72 years old. Save for those who solely own a business, or who are in family businesses actually run by their families, not one single one should be working. Those who have the means to retire, absolutely should. Those who are in position of societal power should not be. Sure some may be in great shape, and "want to contribute", but most aren't, and aren't contributing in a meaningful way.
But not all can retire. For one thing, a lot of them don't have the spouses that would help them to. Many lack the children that would provide guidance. Even those with children are finding that the warehousing of the elderly they advocated and participated in, and the warehousing of children they advocated for and participated in, has come back to haunt them. The damage they did to societal structures, in particularly their churches, has aided in all of that.
But the expectations remain there. Gen X and Gen Y will still employ us, right?
No, they won't. They have their own families and priorities, often much more traditional than yours.
Well Generation Jones will, won't it?
No, we're tired. We had to struggle our whole lives due to you Boomers and are ready to lay our burdens down ourselves. We will go, however. You often never had a place for us, and we're not going to end our lives finding one for you.
The past was far from perfect, in every sense. Women got married as they had very few options for a single life, if that's what they would have preferred. Couples that did not have children, prior to 1960, or actually some time following that, did not have them due to what was usually a tragic medical situation, or because the marriages were truly ones of convenience. Children didn't always grow up in a home in which they were really valued and wanted, but then of course that's true now.
But it is also the case that in fact much more of life had to wit with the family, and was much kinder. My paternal grandmother, for instance, was in close contact, often daily contact, with all of her children. My maternal grandmother was in close contact as well, in spite of her children being spread across two, and often three, countries. One of her sons lived with her until he died, and then his siblings were careful to take care of him.
Now, well the barbarians are back through the gate. The Boomers let them in. Everyone behind them is struggling in some ways to toss them out.
Sic transit Gloria Mundi.
Saturday, May 6, 1911. One Colorado Senator.
Colorado's Senate adjourned after having failed to appoint a replacement for the late Senator Charles J. Hughes. There would be only one Senator from Colorado until January 20, 1913.
It was a Saturday.
Last edition:
Friday, May 5, 1911. La Cruz Blanca Neutral.
Monday, May 6, 1901. 15,000 dead.
The British Ministry of War announced that 14,264 enlisted men and 714 officers had died, to date, in the Boer War.
The first issue of Gorkhapatra, Nepal's oldest still publishing newspaper, was issued.
The House of Commons of the United Kingdom voted 333 to 227 to approve a tax on the sale of coal, still then a major source of power, heat, and coke, in the United Kingdom.
Last edition:
Saturday, May 4, 1901. The Caste War of Yucatán ends.
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 132nd Edition. Voting with their feet
For the first time in US history, more Americans are moving to Europe than the other way around.
Indeed, European immigration to the US is at historic lows. US emigration is at historic highs.
Why?
Simple, the US has become a dumpster fire. It's no longer really a democracy but a semi democracy presently ruled by an insane (if we don't assume worst) megalomaniac who is destroying the economy. We look like uneducated morons, which a lot of us actually seem to be. There are absolutely no positive indicators which the US tops the charts at. We are the 23d happiest country on the planet. Finland, Iceland, and Denmark are the first three. We cling to obsolete signs of greatness, such as refusing to have a national health care system and having a tax system that grossly under taxes Americans and funds a government that benefits us little, while people like Reid Rasner campaign for even lower taxes. We've gone from being a country that had nearly no military to having one that has a bloated military that serves an insane President.
What's not to love?
Well, there is the country, but that involves being realistic, which will get you accused of being a left winger (which should not in and of itself be regarded as an insult) by insufferable twat waffles like Chuck Gray.
We are really due for an overhaul.
Ironically, the orange buffoon destroying the White House probably helps show us the way on this. He's shown us where we have massive institutional defects. And he's taken us off the global map as a great power and made us a second rate one. Part of our descent into ignorance was a legacy of what was then a noble Cold War response to things, including a big military and governments that meddled bigly.
Now we are going to have to dance to the tune of others, but the good thing is that the others are adults.
To progress at all, which doesn't mean a return to high immigration or anything of that sort, we're really going to have to get back into education, which people like the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and other right wing zealots hate. Better to be dumb is their default position.
Better to be smart, and educated, and face our problems honestly.
And the sooner the better.
Last edition:
CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 131st Edition. Ballroom Blitz
Friday, May 5, 1911. La Cruz Blanca Neutral.
La Cruz Blanca Neutral, a medical relief organization taking a neutral stance in the Mexican Revolution, was formed. The Red Cross refused to treat rebels in the conflict.
Last edition:
Monday, May 1, 1911. Light v. United States. "All the public lands of the nation are held in trust for the people of the whole country."
Labels: 1910s, 1911, 1912, Agriculture, Bill Allemand, Colorado, Court, Enemies of Public Lands, law, Nebraska, Public Land, Weather
Court Watch Part VII. When the last law was down.
Lawyer, St. Thomas More, who was executed for his adherence to his faith.
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
The Justice Department is going after James Comey for posting a photo of seashells arranged to spell "8647" on a beach somewhere, asserting it was a death threat on President Trump. Apparently this is due to the old use of the term "86" to do away with and "47" for Donald Trump's completely illegitimate but widely accepted illegal claim to be President.
It wasn't.
This prosecution will go nowhere whatsoever, but it is more evidence that everyone in the Trump Administration is essentially a fascist with no regard for reality or the rule of law right now. We are in monumentally dangerous territory. It's 1534 in the United States with Donald Trump our King Henry VIII.
And the spirt of the age has spread:
What Gray did was flat out illegal. Gray is relying, in essence, on the advice of the Attorney General and when that's a defense, the attorney client privilege is waived. The AG's office knows that, but it has to defend the privilege It's being pretty assertive about it.
Gray needs to suffer the penalty of the law here.
Nobody is more opposed to abortion than I am. I wouldn't allow for the largely bogus "rape and incest" exceptions that many people will. But this is really beyond the Pale. Powell should be ashamed of itself for even appoint this guy to its city council.
Elsewhere, in a nation where we brought a modern justice system, it's still functioning.
South Korean court extends prison sentence for wife of ousted president
May 5, 2026
Headline in the CST:
Judges reject Trump push to obtain state voter rolls
But of course our Secretary of State, Chuck "If you disagree with me you are a radical communist, fascist, monarchist, podiatrist" Gray just handed Wyoming's over.
Last edition:
Ballroom Batshit. A demented president goes full bonkers. The 25th Amendment Watch List Fifteenth Edition and Court Watch Part VI.
Monday, May 4, 2026
Painted Bricks: The vanity presidency He's trying to turn the whole country into a tacky branded property.
Painted Bricks: The vanity presidency He's trying to turn the whol...: The vanity presidency He's trying to turn the whole country into a tacky branded property.
Saturday, May 4, 1901. The Caste War of Yucatán ends.
The Caste War of Yucatán came to an end with General Ignacio Bravo marching his troops into the Mayan capital at Noh Cah Balam (Chan Santa Cruz).
The war had been running since 1847.
Italy rejected a request from the Ottoman Empire to help prevent the settlement of foreign Jews in Palestine.
It was a Saturday. Some interesting items.
A lot of people in the Middle East may be asking the same question Judge did, in light of the U.S. war on Iran which has been clothed in some circles with Protestant millenialism.
While there probably are some merits to not starting out too near the top, it seems an older generation is always willing to suggest the youngest one needs to start at the bottom.
Last edition:
Friday, May 3, 1901. The Panic of 1901.
Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 4. Economics in the Dementia Ward.
May 1, 2026
We're constantly told that tariffs are good for everyone. But then monarchs come and they're lifted.
He's lost his mind.
Cont:
cont:
Well, war not only changes everything, as we've noted in our laws of history, but the law of unintended consequences applies in spades:
May 3, 2026
Discount airline Spirit dissolves.
It was a victim of high aviation fuel, something brought about by Donald Trump's illegal attack on Iran.
May 4, 2026
This has been in the news for awhile, but I haven't posted it yet.
Frankly, the impact of pipelines is mostly in their construction, to it's temporary. At least for the state. These pipelines tend to transport Canadian oil, so the impact is less than it might seem.
And the state has got to get over its addiction to petroleum.
Regarding petroleum, the U.S. is now exporting a record amount due to the war with Iran, which doesn't help U.S. citizens whatsoever, as it cause the price of the product to rise, and accelerates U.S. depletion of the resource. Export of it, save for conditions in which the petroleum cannot be refined here, should be banned.
For that matter, as a resource that nobody contributed to putting in the ground, some thought should be given to nationalizing the resource in some fashion.
Some members of Congress are threatening to ban the import of Chinese electric vehicles as the GOP searches for ways to make a bad situation worse.
Last edition:
Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 3. The Wharton Way.
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