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:

World’s Top Producer of Condoms Raises Prices as Iran War Rattles Supply Chains

The Malaysian company Karex, which produces about five billion condoms a year, said it was raising prices by 30 percent because of higher raw material prices and global shipping disruptions.

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

Trump gives go-ahead to major new oil pipeline into Wyoming

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.

May 7, 2026

Headline:

Trade Court Rules Trump’s 10% Global Tariff Is Illegal

A panel of federal judges found that President Trump could not legally impose the tariff on most imports.

No surprise whatsoever.

Anyhow, now this money will have to be refunded too. And Mad King Donny still hasn't refunded the money owed from the last such ruling.

May 13, 2026

Inflation rose to 3.8% last month with the fastest rise in prices in three years, caused by an illegal war with Iran which the demented Mad King Donny has no idea how to end.

Mad King Donny has gone to China.  It'll be a disaster. The best possible result would be if he just gets lost over there, thinks the Chinese babes are cute, decides to marry one, and stays.

June 4, 2026

Casper's car radio store, Car Tunes, is closing after forty years.

And now this:

As an Agrarian, I really hate this.

June 5, 2026

And another one I hate:

Trump Sending $700 Million To Coal Industry, Boosting Wyoming Coal Mines

If we're going to be Socialist in regard to coal, which we shouldn't be, why not just nationalize the industry?  I ask this seriously, as now we're spending public money on a dying industry.

And not one that's just dying, the rest of the world is racing beyond fossil fuels while the ancient leaders of the United States continue to believe its 1954.

With this pathetic news, we'll start a new edition of this thread.

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 3. The Wharton Way.

Labels: 2020s, 2025, Benjamin Netanyahu, Chuck Gray, Economics, Iran, King Donald's War, Petroleum, Stupidity, The Ivy League, Trump War Inflation, United States and Israel v. Iran, Weird, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

Sunday, June 4, 1876. Fast train.

"Lightning Express goes coast-to-coast in 83 hours (in 1876!)"

June 4, 1876 Are We There Yet?

Last edition:

Friday, June 2, 1876. Breaking the Snow Camp.

Labels: 1870s, 1876, Dakota Expedition, Dakota Territory, Great Sioux War, Weather

Wars and Rumors of War, 2026. Part 7. La unión es la fuerza*

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom

Matthew, Chapter 24.

June 4, 2026

Bolivia 

Oh oh.

Footnotes:

"Unity is strength", the motto of Bolivia.

Last edition:

Wars and Rumors of War, 2026. Part 6. Two things greater than all things are edition.

King Donald's War, Part 6. The Dunce in Chief and the The Four with Conscience. The Lions Lead by the Yappy Chihuahua Edition.

Rufus T. Firefly: Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: he really is an idiot.

Duck Soup. 

Trump doing is signature creepy old guy dance..

June 4, 2026

Tom Barrett of Michigan, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Warren Davidson of Ohio and Thomas Massie of Kentucky crossed party lines to vote with Democrats in favor of the resolution to end the illegal assault on Iran.

The measure goes on to the Senate.  We'll see what happens there, as Trump's stabbed some Senators in the back, and they're ready to gut him like a fish now.

The action of the Senators is based on conscience.  I believe its the right one, but it also serves to remind us that we're now in an incredibly bad spot in regard to the war against Iran, and in the Middle East in general.

It should have been obvious to anyone that decapitating the Iranian regime would not lead to a liberal democracy.  The Iranian people have no real ability to overthrow their government and when they tried before the war, after we urged it, they were mowed down.  It's the IRGC that has the guns.  

When the July 20 plotters mapped out their attempt to kill Hitler, in the attempt that almost worked, it involved wiping out the Nazi state.  The idea wasn't just to kill Hitler, but to remove the Nazis in every form.  Men like Himmler, Goebbels and Goering would have ended up against a wall had the plot succeeded.  Removing those in the seat of power just opens up a vacuum for those positions to be filled.  Moreover, in the Iranian case, they'd planned for such eventualities, which we should have known as prior selective US assassinations didn't change the direction of the regime at all.

Moreover, the regime has no place to go.  It's not as if they can walk out of their offices retire to cabbage farms.   They have to remain in power.  Like the German SS in 1945, the IRGC has no place to go.  It has to keep the regime in power.

All of this is obvious.

It was likewise obvious that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz and that would so severely disrupt the world's petroleum supplies that it would actually boost the move to green energy, although people still have really awakened to that reality.

And it should have been obvious that those advocating for the war had ulterior agendas.  Israel doesn't care about U.S. global considerations and is well aware that the U.S. is a declining power.  Convincing a weak minded Trump to go to war with Iran was completely in its interest, and it doesn't care about considerations about defending Taiwan or South Korea.

Pete Hegseth and the pack of far right wing Evangelical would be Crusaders don't care what this will cost.  In the view of those in that minoritarian group of American Protestants, a big war will bring on the end of the world and the return of Christ, now.  They don't worry about the Just War Theory, as their convinced this is a Divinely ordained mission.

And, it's obvious right now, that the Iranian regime can in fact outwait Trump and its doing it.  

The war can only come to an end in one of two ways.  We quit, and leave the mess we created as it is, which is a complete and total defeat, or we undertake a largescale ground invasion.  Those are the only two options.

The second one leaves open the question of should a country pursue a victory against a legitimate enemy when the war started illegally.  It's only a hypothetical question, however, as Trump, who was so stupid as to believe the war would end in a few days, does not have the stomach for that.  That really would cause there to be a vote on the war and he knows he'd loose it.

That means the only other option for ending the war is simply leaving, which is a complete defeat.  Trump also can't bring himself to do that, as he can't stand the thought that he is what he is, a loser.

So, Trump's option will be increasingly just to ignore the war.  He basically just hopes it will go away.  In the meantime, like Hitler in the bunker, he plays with models of a reimagined gaudy capital city.

And increasingly look like this to the world.

Last edition:

King Donald's War, Part 5. Quagmire. The $25,000,000,000 and thirteen American lives later, "So we (but not Donald) were in Vietnam for 18 years. Iraq, many, many years....I've been doing this for...six weeks" Edition.

Labels: Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump, Gallipoli, Ignorance, Iran, Israel, King Donald's War, Pete Hegseth, Petroleum, Saudi Arabia, Straits of Hormuz, U.S. Navy, United States, United States and Israel v. Iran, War

Chuck Gray having a meltdown.

 

Wow, this is the worst perfomance in an interview by a politician I've ever seen.  Absolutely incredible.

Monday, June 3, 1946. Irene Morgan and the bus.

Signaling the beginning of a new ear in the Court, the U.S. Supreme Court found segregation of interstate bus passengers to be illegal.

Last edition:

Sunday, June 2, 1946. Latinate elections.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Christian Democrats, Communism, France, Italy, Personalities, Socialism, The written word

Thursday, June 3, 1926. Pole Mountain designated as a Wyoming National Guard training range.

Pole Mountain, which had been in use with a temporary designation since 1924, was designated as a approved Wyoming National Guard training range.  It would retain that status up until it was begun to be phased out in 1938 in favor of the New Camp Guernsey, but even at that, training would remain at Pole Mountain right up to until mobilization for the Second World War.

Last edition:

Tuesday, June 1, 1926. Marilyn Monroe and Andy Griffith.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, actors and actresses, Andy Griffith, California, California (Los Angeles), Marilyn Monroe, North Carolina, Personalities, television, The relationship between men and women, The Roaring Twenties

Saturday, June 3, 1911. Magonistas elect Mosby.

Curtiss Farnum biplane, Wenatchee, Washington, June 3, 1911

Jack Mosby, an IWW member, deserter from the United States Marine Corps, and son of the Confederal general, won an election for the position of Magonistas commander in Baja California, which the Magonistas had declared the region an independent People's Republic the day prior.   

The Magonistas were struggling with internal politics and a lack of supplies, which was preventing them from advancing on Federal forces in the rest of Baja California, which they wished to take in defiance of the surrender of the Diaz government to Madero. 

Delaware Water Gap, Pa., June 3, 1911.

Last edition:

Friday, June 2, 1911. Post revolution journeys.

Labels: 1910s, 1911, Florida, Florida (Fort Lauderdale), Francisco I. Madero, Francisco León de la Barra, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, panoramic, Railroads, Texas, Texas (El Paso), Texas (Houston)

Monday, June 3, 1901. 9th Infantry arrives in Manila, Boers attack Willowmore.

Elements of the 9th Infantry Regiment arrived in Manila after being withdrawn from China.

German troop commander Count Alfred von Waldersee departed Beijing with a huge ceremony.

Boer commandos under Commandant Scheeper attacked Willowmore, Cape Colony, but were driven back after an all day battle.

Last edition:

Sunday, June 2, 1901. Frederick Russell Burnham.

Labels: 1900s, 1901, 1940s, 1947, Alaska, Boer War, Boy Scouts, British Army, Conservation, hunting, Japan, Klondike Gold Rush, Personalities, Robert Baden-Powell, Soldiers of fortune, Theodore Roosevelt

King Donald's War, Part 5. Quagmire. The $25,000,000,000 and thirteen American lives later, "So we (but not Donald) were in Vietnam for 18 years. Iraq, many, many years....I've been doing this for...six weeks" Edition.

 

King Donny before he was a national embarrassment, and just working on being a family one.

April 30, 2026

Secretary of Defense Hegseth testified the war had cost the US $25B so far.

We clearly have absolutely no idea how to get out of it or win it.

May 1, 2026

Iran responded to King Donny's threats to ramp up the war on Iran, now in a ceasefire, with threats of their own.

They seemed rather unimpressed by Donny.

Donny's administration says it doesn't have to comply with the sixty day provision of the War Powers Act due to the ceasefire.

May 3, 2026

Iran sent the US a fourteen point peace plan.  

May 4, 2026

The U.S. rejected Iranian peace proposals and is now going to escort ships through the Straits of Hormoz.  Iran threatened to strike the ships and has already claimed to have hit a U.S. Navy craft with missiles, which the U.S. denies.

cont:

Iran attacked ships in the straits today with small surface vehicles and it resumed drone strikes on the UAE.

May 6, 2026

Yesterday was Taco Tuesday, and so we have this headline from the Tribune.

Well of course we do.  Trump's an ignorant man with extremely limited world experience with a cabinet of sycophants.  This was a war run by ignoramuses.

Trump paused his latest version of the illegal war with his escort program in the Straits of Hormuz.  We have no way out of the war that anyone in D.C. grasps.

The US has clearly and absolutely lost this war, not succeeding in a single one of its objectives.  At this point, absent ground operations, this is humiliating US defeat, worse than the loss in Vietnam.

May 7, 2026

Taco's flip on the most recent operation is because Saudi Arabia denied the US use of its airspace.

It seems to be the case that Taco didn't inform the kingdom of the operation before coming up with it.

cont:

So, now we're hitting targets in Iran again, the war we won several weeks ago, and which was definitely over before we started blockading Iran.

Compared to this, the Allied landings at Gallipoli in World War One were an absolutely stunning success.

May 10, 2026

Headline from the CST:

Let's be honest, the Administration is incompetent.  Governed by flaky theories, linked to a romantic image of the past in more ways than one, and headed by a person with dementia.  Of course it's no closer to an end.

The US sent a counter proposal to Iran. They haven't replied.

What is new is that the UK and France are deploying ships to the region in anticipation of using them to keep shipping lanes open.

We'll remind everyone once again that this war is completely illegal, and Trump should be impeached and removed from office for the illegality.

May 11, 2026

Iran's counter proposal was rejected by the US.

May 18, 2026

The UAE was hit by drones yesterday, and an attempt was made on Saudi Arabia.

Donald Trump warned Iran it was running out of time.

The New York Times informed readers that Israel had constructed a secret base over a period of a year in Iraq for the war.

May 19, 2026

Trump threatened Iran with massive devastation and then called it off claiming that regional states asked him to. 

Whatever.

The ignoramus has backed himself and the entire country into a corner and has no idea what to do.

May 20, 2026

Aided by a defecting Bill Cassidy and some other defecting Republicans who finally decided they weren't a complete pack of cowardly little sissies, Congress advanced a War Powers bill.

This isn't the same as voting on it, they're just advancing it so it can be voted on. Still, it's a blow to the Big Sissie.

May 24, 2026

Contrary to what reports are holding, no lasting solution to the conflict with Iran has been reached, particularly in regard to the nuclear material.

We appear to be on our way to something no better than what Trump ripped up in the form of what President Obama had negotiated.

And he didn't have to kill a bunch of Iranian school girls to get it.

May 26, 2026

Americans are waking up the news of more war in the war that Trump said he'd already won and a couple of days ago said a deal was close to ending.

These strikes were on missile locations and boat launching sites.

May 28, 2026

Iran retaliated with an attempted strike on a US base in Kuwait.

Trump threatened to "blow up" Oman, a US ally, if it didn't cooperate on the Strait of Hormuz.

Israel declared a swath of Lebanon a "combat zone".

And with the entry demonstrating Trump's insanity, we will close out this issue.

May 29, 2026

Iran and the US agreed to a ceasefire extension involving opening the Strait of Hormuz and starting nuclear weapons talks.

June 1, 2026

The U.S. and Iran exchanged strikes yesterday, and Iran's civil government announced it was completely yielding to the Revolutionary Guard.

Israel pushed deeper into Lebanon.

cont:

Iran is withdrawing from peace talks.  Donald Trump claims he doesn't care.

June 2, 2026

From this afternoon.

Seems like a good place to start a new entry on a war that was only going to last a few days and which Trump has repeatedly told us all is over.

Last edition:

King Donald's War, Part 5. After 13/15 U.S. deaths, Hundreds of Iranian deaths, $50B spent fighting it, and a massive increase in the price of oil, King Donny surrenders to the Iranians. The "If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied" edition.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, F. E. Warren AFB, Food, Hypocrisy, Iran, Israel, King Donald's War, Lebanon, Lies, Sic transit Gloria Mundi, Straits of Hormuz, Trump Derangement Syndrome, United States, United States and Israel v. Iran, War

Sunday, June 2, 1946. Latinate elections.

Shield of the Italian Christian Democracy Party, Democrazia Cristiana.

Italians abolished the Italian monarchy and elected seats to the Constituent Assembly in a nationwide vote, the same being the first in which women were allowed to vote.

The Christian Democracy party won 207 out of 556 seats and formed a coalition government with the Socialists (115) and Communist (104) parties.  The CD would lead successive Italian governments until 1981.  The party was dissolved in 1994 with the successor party being the Italian People's Party ( Partito Popolare Italiano)

In French parliamentary elections, the French Communist Party lost its plurality (from 159 to 153), the Popular Republican Movement (MRP) gained 16 seats (from 150 to 166) and the Socialist Party dropped from 146 to 128.  No one party had a majority.

Carrie Ingalls of her sister Laura's Little House on the Prairie fame died.

Last edition:

Saturday, June 1, 1946. Cochin China.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, French Empire, French Indochina, French Navy, Harry S. Truman, North Vietnam, Personalities, Romania, South Vietnam, Strike Wave of 1945-1946, Vietnam, War Crimes, World War Two

Friday, June 2, 1911. Post revolution journeys.

Madero left El Paso on a Southern Pacific train which took him to Spofford Junction, Texas.  He crossed the border there into Mexico where he boarded another train on his trip to Mexico City to meet interim Mexican President de la Barra.

Prominent Porfiristas José Ives Limantour, Guillermo de Landa y Escandón and Leopoldo Batres left Mexico City en route to destinations in the United States and Europe where they'd go into exile.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was incorporated.

Houston, Texas, June 2, 1911.

Last edition:

Wednesday, May 31, 1911. "Moriré en México"

Labels: 1910s, 1911, Antonio López de Santa Anna, boats and ships, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Nicaragua, Porfirio Díaz