Tuesday, June 30, 2026

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.

May 16, 2026

Smith hasn't been confirmed as US Attorney for Wyoming yet.

May 21, 2026

It appears that Trump's settlement deal in his IRS suit may actually prove to be a bridge too far for Senate Republicans.  

The deal, which frankly is the epitome of corruption, would create a slush fund to pay pardoned January 6 criminals for their inconvenience in being prosecuted as traitors to their country.  That's what they are, and they should not have been pardoned, but Trump sought to go one step beyond that and reward the pack of Horst Wessels.  Frankly, as soon as possible, the pardons should be unrung as illegitimate (Trump isn't a legitimate President and can't pardon anyone).  Anyhow, Republicans are openly balking on the slush fund, amazingly.  It must be really angering constituents, or just too much to stomach.

Indeed, they not only are balking, they sidetracked the ICE funding bill, showing that they're actually willing to do something that is guaranteed to send the Orange Mussolini into a screaming fit, but the fit will pit Trump's ICE demands up against his now open and obvious corruption and the hemorrhaging of the US budget.  It'll be interesting to see where this goes, as once they break with Trump, their relationship with Trump is broken, and if he doesn't come to heel, they can't.

By way of an analogous example, Massie wouldn't come to heel on the Epstein files, but he was one man.  Once it's a pack, it tends to grow.

So, a match is on.

May 29, 2026

A court ruled that Trump's adding his name to the Kennedy Center was illegal and ordered it removed within two weeks.

A different judge enjoined the IRS settlement slush fund from going forward.

June 2, 2026

Trump's insurrectionist slush fund seemed to be getting questioned by the court and now the Attorney General is saying it won't occur.

While Wyoming's Congressional delegation didn't protest it, a lot of Republicans in Congress were finding it to be a bridge too far.

June 3, 2026

Lawyers ask Wyoming Supreme Court to intervene in Gray voter data complaint

June 4, 2026

A Wyoming district court held that the whiney fascist crybabies leading the GOP have to follow state law and seat elected Republican precinct members, something another court did two years ago. The state central committee didn't want to do so as that keeps it from picking fascists.  

It argues that its a private entity and doesn't have to follow state law. . . except of course when it comes to getting preferential places on ballots, having the state run party elections for it, and getting to pick members of certain offices when they become vacant. It's fine with all of that.

Satire aside, this would have been an opportunity for the Court to wipe all of that out, and it should have.

June 5, 2026

Wyoming GOP sues state, challenges constitutionality of ban on pre-primary candidate endorsements

All they really have to do is to quit having state funded primaries.

June 15, 2026

Last Friday retired Judge Campbell struck down a series of provisions regarding abortion.  There was some chance that these would survive challenge, as they did not directly restrict abortion, such as there being a time delay after seeking one, an ultrasound, etc., but he ruled that the Wyoming Supreme Court's earlier decision meant that these were in the nature of health care and could not stand.

I disagree with him on that, but given the absurd Wyoming constitutional provision on health care I've addressed here before, and the S.Ct. decision, it's an understandable result.  It'll go on to be challenged at the Wyoming Supreme Court level, probably.

I keep wondering if anyone has argued the true existential aspect of the questions.  I don't know if that's been done or not.

On the nature of things, one of the local news outlets has had photos of a woman protesting holding a sign that says "Forced Birth = Violence".

Almost all abortions in the US are due to people who just had sex, and then sex resulted in what it results in. That's not forced birth, that's nature.  The common "well what about ten year olds" and the like brings up a case scenario that's exceedingly rare.  The reply to that would be to ask that person if they're opposed to all other abortions, which they are not.

Even at that, however, killing is killing.  It would be just as logical to go out and determine every living American who came about due to rape or tike and shoot them dead now.  Yes, rape and incest are horrible.  Murder is probably the ultimate horrible, however.

Apparently the S.Ct asked, in its opinion, why those challenging abortion in Wyoming don't seek to amend the constitution.  It was a constitutional amendment that got us here, so that makes sense.  So far nobody's lifted a finger to do that.  The likely reason is that they know that amending the provision to allow for making abortions illegal won't pass in the state.  Instead, they feel their odds are better litigating about it, or complaining about it.

On other matters, the case challenging the primary system filed by Skovgaard is a pro se case, as I suspected, meaning it has about zero chance of actually succeeding.

June 18, 2026

Gordon sues Board of Equalization, asks court to enforce property tax cap

The governor filed suit against the 3-member board he appointed after it said it could not certify non-uniform residential property tax assessments.

In other news, some members of the WFC are criticizing Wyoming courts as "activist", an absolutely absurd accusation, for not upholding the most recent abortion laws when the legislature itself is completely responsible for the constitutional amendment that causes those laws to do down in defeat.

The legislature could forward a repeal of that amendment, but it won't, as it's afraid that would go down in defeat.  The whole thing is an example of playing a stupid game and winning a stupid prize.

June 19, 2026

Court sides with challenger to law banning drug users from possessing guns

What could go wrong?

On the topic mentioned above, we'll note that that you heard it here first, but now the drumbeat pointing out the hypocrisy is getting pretty loud:

Tom Lubnau: Sure, Pass Unconstitutional Bills And Blame 'Activist Judges'

Lubnau really throws the gauntlet down, stating:

The fix is simple. Pass a proposed constitutional amendment. I'll draft it for them: Article I, §38 is amended to add subsection (e): Abortion is not healthcare for purposes of this Article. 

Come on Sanchez-Williams.  Come on Bear.  But your legislating where you claimed values are. 

June 29, 2026

A good result:

Court prevents Trump from firing Fed governor


A 5 to 4 decision, with Thomas writing the dissent.

A bad result:

Court allows Trump to fire FTC commissioner and overturns major restraint on presidential power

A great result, but again 5 to 4:

Justices uphold state law allowing for late-arriving mail-in ballots

Trump's already bitching about this one, complaining that this provides why the SAVE Act needs to be passed.

And another good result:

Supreme Court will not consider $5 million verdict against Trump

Cont:

Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship

Yikes, that was the right result, but razor thin.

Cont:

And a bad one:

Justices strike down campaign finance law

Cont:

And a correct one:

Court rules that states can exclude transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports teams

Last edition:

Ballroom Batshit. A demented president goes full bonkers. The 25th Amendment Watch List Fifteenth Edition and Court Watch Part VI.

The SAVE Act. Ihre Papiere, bitte.

When I was young there used to be periodic calls for a National Identity Card.

The concept was that the card would show you were a US citizen, be your social security card, proof of ID, etc.  

Everything in one package.


President Clinton proposed national IDs during his administration as part of his administration's health care plan. Some people on the right and left proposed it as a way to combat illegal immigration.  

Frankly, it'd make a lot of sense, or it did, in context.  The card could be general proof of your identity, be your SSN card, your medicare card, your draft card, etc.

It was always opposed by the far right.  Indeed, opposed fanatically.  Ronald Reagan joked that it would be "the mark of the beast", but that was a joke that tapped into the Evangelical element of his base.  A halfway joke, basically, pitched at people who were already afraid that the Antichrist was soon to appear.

But the left opposed it too, and adamantly.


I note this for the current irony.  The Trump Administration is boosting the SAVE Act as a means of trying to keep the "wrong" people from voting.

We all know who those people are. . . . wink, wink.

And that's because they know that in the fall they're going to lose.

But ironically, they're basically proposing that millions of adults do, and millions won't be able to do, what would have been done decades ago, if they hadn't run around preventing it.

Of course, that wouldn't have required a national seizure of the elections, but that isn't required now, either.

It's funny, we used to think that the state demanding your papers was fascist.

Now, Chuck Gray just gleefully turns voter roles over to the Federal Government. . . . which doesn't mean that the state demanding paper is not, in fact, fascist.

Ihre Papiere, bitte.

Sunday, June 30, 1946. Wartime powers expire.


The OPA's emergency wartime powers ended at midnight in spite of an effort by President Truman to extend them.

The Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) authority also expired at midnight as did the authority of the War Relocation Authority.

Surplus military vehicles  were being sold.


Sunday was apparently the cheesecake edition of the News.  A photo of an actress was given the full page treatment for no other discernable reason, while later in the paper the famous Jane Russell Outlaw poster was also.


And an add depicted teenagers advertising at home.

A sham election in Poland placed the country under the Communist Party and approved the post war borders with the USSR.


Last edition:

Saturday, June 29, 1946. Operation Agatha.

Friday, June 30, 1911. The Navy acquires an airplane.

The U.S. Navy acquired a Curtiss A-1 Triad, becoming the first navy the world to acquire an airplane.

The Fuerzas Regulares Indigenas, the "Regulares" was founded as an infantry battalion in the Spanish Army.  It was initially composed of Moroccan soldiers under the command of Spanish officers and it still sort of does in that the recruits are from two autonomous Spanish cities on the North African coast of Morocco.

Last edition:

Thursday, June 29, 1911. Maryknoll.



Friday, June 30, 1876. A rainy day.

The wounded from the Battle of the Little Big Horn reached the steamer Far West.  It was a rainy day.

The steamer departed at 1:40, continually hitting the banks of the river on the way downstream.

The Cheyenne who had been at Little Big Horn had moved down near where they had fought Crook on the Rosebud.  They were pursuing game.

Gibbon was left completely in charge of his command at 4:00 p.m. that day.  A roster was called of the 7th Cavalry to see who remained.

Frank Grouard, who was half polynesian, and who had been captured by, and had lived with, the Sioux as a young man, taking a Sioux wife.  In spite of that close association he later "escaped" and became a scout.  His biography is particularly odd and complicated and this barely touches on it.

Crook's troops remained in camp on Goose Creek on what was a rainy day there as well.  Scout Frank Grouard went sent scouting and returned finding nothing.  In fact, Sitting Bull's camp was moving straight for them.

Three miners strayed into the camp and told Crook that natives had told them of a large battle in which cavalrymen had been wiped out. Crook didn't believe them and began to organize a hunting party into the Bighorns in what would become one of the greatest hunting and fishing expeditions of all time.

Last entry:

June 29, 1876. Evacuating the wounded and turning east.

Going Feral: Utah's burning while Deseret Mike Lee is grinning.

Going Feral: Utah's burning while Deseret Mike Lee is grinning.: The U.S. Forest Service closed Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument and Dark Canyon Wilderness on Sunday, June 28, due to the catastrophic Ba...

Utah's burning while Deseret Mike Lee is grinning.

The U.S. Forest Service closed Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument and Dark Canyon Wilderness on Sunday, June 28, due to the catastrophic Babylon Wildfire. The same day, the National Park Service (NPS) announced it was closing the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park as well.

Wake up Utah. 

This is the result of climate change.  You keep electing people like MAGA zealot Deseret Mike Lee.  In Lee's case he feels climate science is a fib, and, based upon his background, he wants to take the public lands for housing (and development) so that as many souls can be downloaded onto Earth as soon as possible to bring about the end of the world, under his belief system, probably.

Vote these people out.  It's not too late to reverse this idiocy.

The 2026 Election, 14th Edition. The “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor" edition.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

Desmond Tutu

 


June 26, 2026

The candidate running against Bob Ide:

Lisa Engebretsen: Protect Wyoming’s Public Lands and Reject the Seminoe Dam Project

Getting rid of Bob Ide should be an absolute priority for anyone who cares about: 1) Wyoming's wildlands, and 2) anyone who is not a multimillionaire. A diehard MAGA/WFC who was in Washington D.C. at the time of the January 6 insurrection (he did not take part in it), his "less government, more freedom" is an absolute joke.  He's a major Natrona County landlord whose very livelihood depends on the government protecting his rental lands property rights, which only exist due to the government.  He is apparently unaware of the hypocrisy.  

He's been amongst the most extreme members of the WFC.

June 30, 2026

The carpetbaggers of the WFC immediately resorted to name calling, of course.  Everyone who opposes them is "left wing", even if they aren't.

In Alaska there will be two Dan Sullivans on the ballot, one an incumbent and some other guy.

Last edition:

The 2026 Election, 13th Edition. The choosing lanes edition.

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 6. The screwworm edition.

Exports of petroleum products and capital goods jumped to record highs reducing the U.S. trade deficit. 

The capital goods item is interesting and I haven't seen it explained. That is a positive trend, if sustainable. The oil exportation one is not as it depletes a diminishing resource at the expense of U.S. consumers. A lot of it seems to be related to AI exports, which isn't necessarily good, aircraft production, and war related purchases.  If all that is correct, it won't be sustainable at the current levels, probably.

Screwworms have reappeared in Texas after a sixty year hiatus.  The Trump administration is blaming the Biden Administration, as that's its default thing to do, but the Trumpistas lifted protections that were in place and allowed importation of Mexican cattle via ports in a probable attempt to lower beef prices. This is likely to have the opposite effect.  It's a more likely cause, although there were concerns about animals moving across the border illegally during the Biden Administration.

Mexico itself was screwworm free as of 1991.  Somehow that got reversed one way or another, and now the problem is back.  Given that, it probably was coming back no matter what.  It is a major crisis.

Nobody has cited the weather, but it is spread by a fly, and that may very well have resulted to the spread of the flies range.

Inflation is up to 4.2%.

cont:

Reporter: Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning?

Trump: No, I love it. I love the inflation.

Johnson is already saying that's not what he meant.

June 14, 2026

Indeed, this would be horrible news:

Wyoming Outfitters, Hunters Say Screwworm Would Be Wildlife Disaster If It Hits State


And Carney continues to press for the new reality of American unreliability.

A global rupture’: Carney calls for Canada-EU unity before G7 summit

Canada’s prime minister has warned that the ‘rules-based’ global order is ‘breaking down’ amid superpower dominance.

June 19, 2026

Those of us in the livestock industry should pray for rain.  We also ought to realize that voting for climate change deniers like Harriet Hageman is basically putting a knife to the through our our children, and then cutting their arteries.

Wyoming Ranchers Pray For Rain As Drought, Demand Push Beef To Record High Prices

Drought?  Get real.  This isn't a normal drought.

June 22, 2026

Senate overwhelmingly passes sweeping bipartisan housing affordability bill

A rare distributist bill.  It bans private equity acquisition of homes.

It will be challenged 

Senate overwhelmingly passes sweeping bipartisan housing affordability bill

June 26, 2026

West Texas is at $69.53.

June 30, 2026

The 1.5-gigawatt Prometheus Hyperscale data center will now all be in Natrona County on the Falls Ranch property owned by Texas billionaire carpetbagger Russell Gordy.

Trump called the housing bill that passed both houses "a big yawn".  He's holding it hostage in hopes it makes congress pass the antidemocratic SAVE Act

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 4. Economics in the Dementia Ward.

Monday, June 29, 2026

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 142nd Edition, 25th Amendment Watch 21st Edition. The Vietnam Rag, Red Scare Editions.



Donald Trump posted a picture of himself in uniform, purporting to be of himself at age 20, next to one of Barack Obama smoking a cigarette and wearing a panama at, when he was 18 years old.  In truth, Trump was 17 or 18 years old in the photo he posted and he's in the Ne wYork Military Academy, where he was a student from age 13 to 18.

He was sent there because his parents found him to be a bullying asshole.  At that time the thought was common that if you sent a kid to military school they came out a better person.  That was still the thought when I was young, although in the wake of the ongoing Vietnam War, that was getting hard to believe and the schools were dying off.

Put another way, military discipline hadn't turned William Calley into "a plaster saint" as Kipling would put it.

The New York Military Academy itself reflects this.  It's one of the oldest ones in the United States, but it went bankrupt in 2015.  It's been reorganized, but it's student body is a shadow of its former self.

I don't know anyone who went to a military school prep school, unless you count the mandatory high school JrROTC that my high school had before it was eliminated in the late 60s or early 70s (a net search says that was in 1968, which seems early, but which would also show how much the Vietnam War was impacting things everywhere).  I know one person who was sent to a Catholic boarding school in Nebraska as he was a difficult to handle kid. The school was probably Mount Michael, a Benedictine school which has a strong focus on science. According to that person, who later became a lawyer, it really helped him and he was grateful his parents sent him there.

If being sent to military school was more of a threat than a reality for most boys, being given the option of joining the military rather than going to jail was not  I know one person who did just that, and by  his account, it did straighten him out.  He opted for that right after the Vietnam War and part of the process on his end was to volunteer to be a Ranger so he didn't have to serve with the deadheads who were part of his regular advanced training cycle.  That may sound amusing, but when the Army was large that was more common than a person might think.  A major reason for soldiers to volunteer to become paratroopers during World War Two is so that they'd be serving with a better class of soldier.  Anyhow, in this person's case, while he knew he didn't want a military career, it did straighten him out as well.

Military school didn't serve to straighten Trump out at all.  The characteristics that caused his parents to send him to military school are still there.  A person has to wonder if he'd served in the Army if he'd be a less dismal human being.

Trump's draft card. His signature changed enormously between 1962 and when he signed it on a pornographic Epstein birthday card where it symbolized female pubic hairs.

Trump's draft classification is a bit more complicated than is generally acknowledged.  He was initially classified as 2-S, meaning he had a student deferment.  He was reclassified as 1-A after graduating from university in 1968, meaning he was fully eligible for the draft at that time, but he held that status only briefly.  In October 1968 he was reclassified as 1-Y, which meant he was only eligible in the event of a national emergency and in 1972, which was at the point the draft was really winding down, he was reclassified as 4-F.  It's the October 1968 and 1972 classifications which are the now famous bone spur classifications.

Student deferments started to become problematic during the war in 1966 and in 1969 they were hugely overhauled so that student deferments became much more problematic.  Of course, by 1969 Trump was beyond the student deferment classification anyhow.  An eligible person was very much liable for the draft at t hat time, and draft number for the years of the war are as follows:

1964 112386
1965 230991
1966 382010
1967 228263
1968 296406
1969 283586
1970 162746
1971 94092
1972 49514
1973 646

1968 was, accordingly, the high water mark of the draft, but nearly as many men were drafted in 69.

Was Trump's bone spur 1-Y nad 4-F bogus?  I have no way of knowing and neither does anyone else at this point.  I do know that bone spurs can make you ineligible to serve, but only in an odd way.  A soldiers I was good friends with in basic training was having pretty severe foot problems and went in to sick call as a result  He was diagnosed with bone spurs and given a medical discharge from the Army, although that still required him to visit his National Guard unit upon his return home.  He was almost done with AIT at the time.  When he went to the Guard and reported, they asked him how he was doing, he said fine, and they reenlisted him as prior service.  Ultimately, he went on to a career in the Army and retired as an officer.

Bone spurs don't go away on their own, but they can be asymptomatic, which is presumably what happened here.

Anyhow, Trump didn't serve in the Army.  If he had, he probably wouldn't have served in Vietnam.  Most of the troops in Vietnam were volunteers, something commonly forgotten about the wartime draft.

Anyhow, serving in the military would have done him good.  IT would have forced him into a world where money doesn't mean that much and isn't everyone's focus, and it would have forced him to deal with people who weren't rich, like himself.

Barack Obama turned 18 years old in 1979.  Conscription was over, and he was a university student.

Part of the reason that the photo of Obama was put up by Trump was the sort of hip appearance that Obama affected in the photographs.  People vary, but a lot of people really don't look the way they do professionally in their first year of college.  Trump in 1979 had already affected a young businessman look, which is what he was.

The last President with military service ws George Bush II.  His father was the last President with combat experience.  No member of the Trump family has ever served in the U.S. military.

One of the things I've really noted about the Baby Boom generation is that there's a lot of guilt felt by men who avoided the draft.  They were given a hard time about it when they were young, but defended it. At some point in the 1980s that began to change.  The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now came out in 1979, and they are definitely anti war films that a draft evader or draft protester could love.  But 1986's Platoon showed a marked shift.  It's an anti war film, but anti war.  It is pretty sympathetic to the troops and even the Army in a way that the earlier movies were not. Every Vietnam War movie since them took that point of view until We Were Soldiers which is about as rah rah Army as can be.  Somewhere in there the public view of the troops changed.

I've known a handful of men who either avoided the draft or felt like they did.  One I know avoided service in Vietnam by joining the Army Reserve, which is still military service.  He remained perfectly comfortable with his decision.  One National Guard officer I knew was upfront about that being his original reason for joining the National Guard.  He felt guilty immediately, and then ironically his Guard unit actually was one of the few that went to Vietnam.

More commonly, however, I've noticed that the men who felt they didn't go later developed almost sort of a hero worship of those who did.

Trump likes to portray himself as a hero.  He isn't.  He's really quite pathetic and his life is meaningless in al arger sense, as he's accomplished nothing of enduring value.  Barack Obama, whom I frequently disagreed with, will always retain a place in history as the nation's first black President, an accomplishment which seemed to suggest we were finally over the legacy of slavery and egregious racism.  It turned out not, and that helped bring Trump about.

Trump's casting about widely for some success to be measured by.  As his mind deteriorates he's attacking his own past, and that of others.

The man that Trump should be comparing himself to is Vlad Putin.

By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70906985

Both Putin and Trump unilaterally got their countries into wars with smaller powers that they expected to rapid win, and are losing.  Putin, this past week, started to be openly threatened by members of his own military.  Russia has a long history of supporting enormous military suffering and then suddenly rebelling.  When Russian soldiers show discontent, usually a revolution is right around the corner.  If there is one, and right now the odds of there being one are relatively high, Putin will be killed.

The United States has no tradition of military rebellion, but Trump has created the same national crisis.  Putin can't win the Ukrainian War and is losing it.  Trump can't win the Iranian war and is losing it.  The difference is that Putin has absolute control of his country, and Trump does not.  There's some suggestion that Trump is now upset with Steve Witkoff and his son in law Jared Kushner, two people whom he naively allowed to negotiate with Iran because Trump knows nothing about negotiating with foreign powers at all.  He knows that hasn't been working so now he's thrown J. D. Vance under the bus.  Both Vance and Rubio opposed the war.  Trump, whose been an asshole his whole life, is effectively requiring an opponent of the war to find a way out of it knowing tha t if he can't, that person's political career is over.

It'll be over, as Trump as an effective President will be over.  Right now, the House is slated to go Democratic in November and there's a decent chance the Senate will as well. Even Lindsey Graham appears to be in real trouble.  According to insiders Trump may want that as he likes being an asshole better than actually leading.  The irony here as been pointed out by Thomas Massie. The GOP controls everything and yet they're still running around all pissed off.

So it's time for a Red Scare.



The US has had two Red Scares, one post World War One and another post World War Two.  The second one actually made more sense than the first.  The first one resulted in illegal actions by the Federal Government.

Both of those scares were more genuine than the current one by a long measure.

The current one is trying to be ignited due to the recent success of Democratic Socialist in New York state.  Absent something really wild, New York will have a Democratic Socialist in Congress next year.  This is nothing new. There have been actual Socialist in Congress before, and right now there are seven members of Congress with Socialist affiliations.

M'eh.

Socialism is the same as communism by a long shot.  A person can be a strong believer in Democracy and, while it is regarded it its real form as antithetical to Christianity by Catholics (who also have strong criticism of Capitalism), there are Christian socialist.    Usually American socialism is so watered down economically that it's capitalism, but the supposed socialist supports child care or something.  Pretty tepid.

The US has had three Presidents whom you could accuse, or celebrate depending upon your views, who advocated or caused to be enacted socialist programs.  Theodore Roosevelt was the first, but it came in his last unsuccessful run when he advocated for what ultimately became Social Security and also for government regulation of large corporations as public utilities.  His cousin Franklin had a lot of socialistic programs, and enacted Social Security, although much of what he did was temporary.  Harry Truman advocated for national health care, but then so did Richard Nixon.  I guess that could bring us up to five, with the final entry, Donald Trump.

In some of his economic policies Trump is an outright Socialist.  He's advocated for government ownership of shares of companies and for seizing foreign oil as if the US owned it.  He frequently sees things as if the US is one big corporation and he's the dictatorial CEO.

That's Socialism.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist 141st Edition, 25th Amendment Watch 20th Edition:. Sure, we lost a war to Iran, and the war in Lebanon continues on, and the $13 Rhino Lining treatment of the Reflecting Pool is coming up, but King Donny got a shiny new toy!