Most Wyomingites, a lot of whom are imports of course from the southern oil producing states, are so wedded to the concept that if they make money from it it must be perfectly okay, believe global warming is a fib. Their delusion is aided in that by the fact that most of them didn't live here when we still had really cold and long winters, so they think the weather they had in Lawton, Oklahoma, is the weather we're supposed to have here. And a lot of people are just willfully ignorant.
Renewables have been a weird, weird, issue in this election cycle. Everyone should be supporting them to some degree, which doesn't mean supporting them in a wild unregulated fashion, but even though Wyoming is ideal for some types of solar, rooftop solar being one of them, every politician pretty much is opposing them.
Foster Friess, Chuck Gray, Harriet Hageman, and Reid Rasner would support pouring 10W30 on your kids Cheerios if the issue came up.
Wisconsin judge and World War Two Marine Corps veteran Joseph McCarthy defeated longtime U.S. Senator Robert M. La Follette Jr. in the GOP primary for that state.
The Indian Claims Commission was established to fix a fair market value for land taken from Native Americans "at the time the land was taken".
British author H. G. Wells died at age 79.
I've never been a fan of Wells'.
Minnesota Congressman William James Gallagher, notable for his humble work background before being elected to Congress in 1944, died in office at age 71.
Ugh, just when the first corn fed, cornfederate legislature was safely in the history books, the Management Council met. Of course, the same dumb ideas that get rejected repeatedly are back up for reconsideration, at least in part.
I hear we want to do the election review again and redo the same bills that just died three weeks ago ... in exchange for 911 funding.
Tara Nethercott.
The corner crossing bill won't be back, which is too bad.
Vote the WFC out and send them back to pre 1964 Alabama where they'll be happy.
I was aware this legislation had been introduced. Frankly, Anti SLAPP provisions are really tricky as they're based, basically, on pre judging a litigants intent.
The money has to come from somewhere. Property taxes rise because in no small part new people come in and overpay in the local housing market, and otherwise inflate it.
A better idea would be to have an unrealized sales tax on the sale of real property from other states that is used by a person within five years of moving to Wyoming.
We'll note something that wasn't noted when this was originally posted. The report of an Iranian threat was from Israel. The CIA regarded had "low confidence in the report.
Hmmm. . .
Well, it's not like most of us have to worry about such threats in general. I guess I can't, therefore, gauge the reaction to it. It is interesting that man with such fatalistic comments about the threat of death earlier has this reaction. . or is it? We're sometimes told that when threats happen, as in the January 6 insurrection when Trump tried to go down to his fellow Confederates, the Secret Service will completely take over.
It also sort of puts the whole who goes, and who risks getting killed matter, in a different light. Or does it?
Well, with all of this, I don't believe there was ever an Iranian threat. I suspect that Israel was picking up background noise from Iran. It's not impossible that a rogue Iranian unit might have attempted to assassinate Trump, and of course he made himself an Iranian target by participating in the assassination of their leadership. But I bet there was never a central effort to do it.
Indeed, it's not in their best interests. Iran is a lot better off with Trump in charge. The incompetence of the Trump Administration and the abject cowardice of the Republican Party has proven to be their best ally. They'll dictate terms to us by November which the Trump Administration will accept.
It's been revealed (leaked?) that Trump flew out of Turkey not an an older Air Force One, as he'd claimed, but on a C-32A .
The C-32A is a militarized 757.
This would indicate that the Iranian threat against Trump must have been deemed fairly serious, which would necessarily give rise to the question of whether or not the threat still exists.
While I'm a frequent Trump critic, and don't even believe he's actually a legitimate President, I don't blame the efforts to sneak Trump out on another plane if the threats were deemed credible. I do regard the stationing of AAA at a New Jersey golf course to be questionable while we're running out of AAA in the Middle East due to Trump's illegal war there. He could just skip golfing or risk it.
Perhaps of more interest is who was put on the catering van to make the switch in aircraft with Trump. They were Dan Scavino, Walt Nauta and Natalie Harp. The only one you may have heard of is Harp, whose a tall blond fitting into the general Trump harem appearance profile and who has some sort of flunky job with Trump. The White House Press Corps rode the substituted Air Force One back as did some senior White House officials.
Now, I'm not saying everyone should have been on the 757. I do find it interesting that the figures who were allowed to ride the substitute C-32A were not really important people. I'm also not saying that Harp and Trump are doing anything illicit, although I do find Harp to be an odd figure.
I also wonder if every President would have taken this option. I suspect not, but I suspect some would have.
I'm also noting how embarrassing this is. The claimed most powerful military in the world has been defeated by Iran, whose Air Force is so depleted it rarely gets anything in the air, although contrary to some claims, it has during this war, having put an F-14 in the skies on at least one occasion.
Robert M. Carey, left, Robert D. Carey, right. Robert M. Carey was a lawyer, rancher, judge, and Congressman, Senator and Governor of Wyoming who received the Democratic nomination for the office in 1910 after determining to leave the Republican Party in order to defeat its machine. He followed Theodore Roosevelt into the Progressive Party and never returned to the GOP. Robert D. Carey was his son was a Converse County banker and rancher who was part of the Progressive Party National Committee from 1917 to 1918 and who was elected to the position of Governor as a Republican in 1918. He later served a single term as U.S. Senator from Wyoming. Both men are proof who don't have to be a lockstep sycophant to be an effective politician.
Less than one week to go until the primary, which unless something bizarre happens, Trump defects to Russia taking Chuck Gray with him. . . Hageman and Degenfelder join the CPUA. . ., that will be the election for a lot of positions.
Although maybe not quite all.
As earlier noted, I've already cast my vote. And honestly, in spite of the really disappointing overall choices at the statewide level, there were a few really good candidates.
I voted for:
Governor: Barlow.
Senate: Mead
House of Representatives: Christensen.
Secretary of State: Short.
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Harshman
Everyone of these candidates was somebody you could really get behind.
There are others. I'd note, more locally, Campbell for the House as well as Jarvis. And Engebretsen for the Senate.
And then there are a collection that really need to be sent packing. Ide, Bear, Allemand, for example. For that matter, Rasner, Gray, Friess and Hageman need to be retired from politics by the electorate.
We have, we note, only discussed the GOP candidates for the most part. The GOP, now, is practically two parties in and of itself. There's the Republican Party, and then there's the Calvinist Theocratic Party, the WFC. They could not be more different. One is a conservative party and the other a Protestant Christofascist party. That sounds extreme, but unfortunately, it's true.
We haven't discussed the Democrats hardly at all, and for the most part, they stand no chance. There are some exceptions. Provenza in Albany County will go back into the legislature, for example. But there are a few others worth noting. James Byrd, who is running for the U.S. Senate, is one. If Mead doesn't win, Byrd may give Harriet Hageman a real run as on Wyoming issues, he's a better candidate. I think Mead would beat him as Mead is a good candidate. If Hageman defeates Mead, and then defeats Byrid, it will be simply because a fair number of people right now would vote for Josef Mengele if ran as a Republican.
The race for Superintendent of Education features two good Democrats, Ana Cordova and Sergio Maldonado. Again, in a normal functioning democracy, either one would be a good contender in the general election. Probably neither stands a chance this year, but if Harshman does not win the primary, the race will at least be interesting.
This whole thing is sort of inside baseball. In terms of outright goofball positions Rasner is every bit as far right as anyone in the WFC. Distinguishing their positions from his own is impossible, as they're the same.
Gray, however, unpacked the Freedom Caucus from his carpetbag and is one of the founding members of the populist movement in the state, which figures, as he isn't from the state, like almost all of its major members. In endorsing Gray, they endorsed one of their own. They couldn't have not endorsed him as that would have caused a major rift in the organization and would really have been unthinkable.
And Rasner has always been the odd man out in other ways, one being that he's an acknowledged homosexual, even if he's not noisy about it in any fashion. He is noisy about almost everything else.
The WFC defended Gray and attacked Rasner in its response;
Reid Rasner is a failed career candidate who has brought division, dysfunction and political games to our state. Wyoming deserves strong conservative, like Chuck Gray.
Calling Gray "strong" is really rich. He's a whiny little weenie who likes to call people names. And more than that, really.
Gray is noisy, but Wyomingites know almost nothing about him whatsoever. Rasner has a much more open history, including having once run for a municipal position in Las Vegas and having been in a same sex legal union ending in divorce. We know Gray is from Los Angeles originally, went to Wharton, and then moved to Casper to work at his daddy's radio station, where he had a vitriolic radio show. His personal history is a complete mystery. He's not only not known to have a love interest, he's not even known to have a like interest.
And then there's Bo Biteman.
Biteman was regarded as fully WFC in the last legislature. WFC members, save for some of the core members, can usually disavow their membership when convenient as they keep no formal records of whose in and out. Biteman said, according to the article;
The Freedom Caucus brings plenty of noise, I’ve ignored them when they’ve attacked me, I’ve ignored them when they’ve taken credit for work I helped lead, and I’m going to keep ignoring the distractions.
Well, suck it Bo. You are WFC and simply pretending you aren't hasn't kept people from knowing that.
David Giralt, whose positions seem to be about as far right as Gray's, Friess' and Rasner's, but who is more soft spoken about them, also threw rocks at the WFC, accusing them of “very aggressive culture war tactics that, at the end of the day I think, just work against what the legislative process should be: holding true to your political ideological convictions and then working to get things done.”
What a joke. Giralt may be a nice guy, but being a nice guy and a veteran doesn't excuse having the same set of positions as the WFC, as far as we can tell.
Friess took a page out of the national playbook, arguing that Republicans “fight the real enemy, the radical left AOC/ Mandami Socialists.”
M'eh.
Balow, at least, was honest, endorsing their views, but noting that they're a bit nasty in pursuing them. Her endorsement of their weltanschauung is part of the reason why we abandoned her in favor of Christensen. Christensen, for his part, noted how ideologically driven the WFC is and how that had a detrimental impact on the 2026 Legislature.
The fact that members of the populist hard right, both going down in flaming defeat in next week's primary, are now throwing rocks at the WFC is really remarkable. The WFC has always been downright nasty and full of hypocrisy, and they may now being getting ready to take on water. This is a good time to get off the ship.
Overall, however, this is a really interesting development. As campaigns begin to fail, and Biteman's, Rasner and Giralt's are failures, with Rasner's being a career ending failure, people are starting to be a more honest about things. Frank Campman, freed of tight fitting cowboy boots that look like he got them in the children's department, and his Woody's Roundup cowboy hat, move way to the center almost immediately after he dropped out of the race. Rasner just recently exposed Chuck Gray's campaign manager, Gabe Saint, who was terminated from his intern position with Harriet Hageman due to the Francoist websites he'd been following, which is unfortunately a story that didn't go anywhere because Rasner is such a gadfly and had his own hosts of absurd extreme reels, such as promising to prevent Sharia Law from entering the state.
So, the far right Carpetbagger Caucus Revolution is in trouble and its outliers, those who were always a bit careful about it, and those whom it wouldn't let in the door, are now attacking it. It hasn't seen that happen before.
There were some primaries across the country yesterday.
An amusing one is Mike Lindell, the "My Pillow" guy, going down in flaming defeat. Lindell comes across as not particularly smart, which puts him in the MAGA Not Particularly Smart Branch of that movement. Lindell has endorsed every wack job conspiratorial theory on Trump's 2020 election defeat that Trump has put out, and even was monkeying around with Wyoming's vote that election which was for Trump. Lindell recently left his company to run for Governor of Minnesota.
Lindell had no chance of winning the primary as only the stupid and ignorant would vote for him. That's what happened. He's not accepting that however, claiming, in true Trump/MAGA style that there were "irregularities".
Lisa Demuth won the race with 43.4% of the vote. Lindell did bring in 32.5% of the vote, which some have been shocked by. One person asked if his supporters were stupid.
Well, probably a lot of them are.
Let's be honest about stupidity, as the country has a real stupidity problem right now.
The United States has always had a strong anti intellectual streak, which endorsed the native intelligence of the common man. Frankly, it's been one of the problems the country's always been afflicted with. But at the same time, up until now, there's never been an era in which education was despised. Right now, we're seeing a lot of that. The reason is fairly simple. The really intelligent, through technology, have made it possible for the stupid to have a voice.
Which brings us to the bell curve.
Human intelligence it not really very well understood, even today. Perhaps in some ways we don't know that much more about it than we ever did. Btu what we do know is that in an average population, there's a mean. Half the people are above it, and half below it.
More than that most of the people are somewhere on the middle part of the curve. But if you divide it into thirds, 1/3d of it is considerably above the rest in terms of intelligence, and 1/3 considerably below. Like Larry David's skit lampoons, we let the bottom third vote.
Therefore, it'd be somewhat fair to say that Lindell's 1/3d of the Minnesota vote represents "the stupid ones", and to some extent, it actually does. While some of low intelligence would have voted for other candidates, Trump uniquely appeals to stupid.
He also uniquely appeals to the ignorant, which is not the same. And that's where the story of intelligence gets complicated, particularly in voting. I have a friend, for example, whose highly intelligent, but completely disinterested in politics. He still votes. A lot of rural people I know are big Trump supporters, not because they're dumb, but because they listen to their neighbors and they've all collectively bought off on BS Trump conspiracy theories. As part of that, however, I'll note, that they're mostly poorly educated.
Anyhow, take the dumb, the ignorant, and the poorly educated together, you probably have at least 33% of the population. Technology makes the difference. In prior eras, those people were influenced by the smarter and the well educated around them. Now, they're influenced by themselves.
Amy Klobuchar, who have (and still would) make a good President, won the Minnesota Democratic nomination. She's going to be Minnesota's next Governor.
In the Wisconsin gubernatorial race, Democrat David Crowley narrowly beat Democratic Socialist Rep. Francesca Hong.
This was a failure in the polls, by the way, as Hong was heavily favored in polls to win.
Whether they should be or not, Democrats are probably breathing a sign if relief over that, but they probably should actually be taking stock on what's really going on. It's being interpreted as the party base going to the radical left, but in reality Democratic Socialism is simply the smarter kid brother of MAGA. I.e., it's populism wearing the educated team jersey rather than the Kelly's bar and grill jersey. There was always a really strong chance that MAGA's today would be rooting for Bernie Sanders tomorrow, and its starting to happen. And frankly some of the Democratic Socialist platform, like universal healthcare, are ideas that have not only arrived, they arrived and should have been adopted 80 years ago. In other words, as we've said before, the rise of Democratic Socialism isn't necessarily a bad thing, but both the Democrats and the GOP need to find a way to steal its popular platforms.
In a sane political system, it'd be really easy for the American Solidarity Party to enter right here, but unfortunately we lack that.
Trump backed Tom Tiffany, a Freedom Caucus member, won the GOP nomination.
The Republicans hold the legislature in Wisconsin, the Democrats the Governor's office. My predictions is that the Democrats retain the Governor's office and gain the Senate there.
Showing the emerging trend, in Connecticut 78 year old Democratic Rep. John Larson went down in defeat to 47 year old Luke Bronin, the former Hartford mayor and a former Navy intelligence officer. The Democrats are booting out the boomers.
About time.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was on This Week as the Press is treating her as the national leader of the Progressives and the Democratic Socialists. I really think that this is wholly in error, although she was a very early member of a Democratic Socialist chapter to be elected to Congress.* There's a lot of things I disagree with Ocasio Cortez politically, including her support of abortion, but her analysis on the state o things in these elections, which came before yesterday's' primaries, was astute. She noted that Millennials are mad, and are implicitly mad at the Baby Boomers. They are, and they aren't the only ones. Generations Jones and Generation X are also really angry with the Boomers, even though the Boomers seem wholly clueless about this.
Going back to Minnesota, progressive, but not Democratic Socialist, candidate Peggy Flanagan defeated a centrist Rep. Angie Craig for the Democratic Senatorial primary. She'll now face Republican winner Michele Tafoya, a former National Football League sideline reporter.
Flanigan is a Native American.
The seat is presently held by Democrat Tina Smith. Flanigan is likely to win it.
cont:
From the Governor:
OP ED by Governor Mark Gordon: Wyoming Doesn’t Need More Mud Slinging
August 12, 2026
My friend and erstwhile opponent in the 2018 Primary for Governor approached me a few days before election day and said, “Mark, I might actually beat you.” He had good reason to think that. It had been a hard campaign.
His entrance into the race had been a surprise to the entire field, but he approached it with grace, humor, and enthusiasm grounded in his faith. He earned his spurs, so to speak, by traipsing all over Wyoming with the rest of us, walking parades, answering questions at forums and debates. Campaigning is tough for anyone but this 79-year-old man, it was clear, had demonstrated he had the stuff it takes to be a strong leader.
I took his comment seriously. By then he had Chuck Norris backing him and Donald Trump Jr. Foster Friess was a fierce competitor eventually gaining President Trump’s endorsement shortly before the primary.
Foster and I agreed to keep the race above board – and I believe we did. Sure, there were some clumsy and ineffective 3rd party shenanigans towards the end, but neither of us ever condoned them.
Foster was always a gentleman, as were Sam Galeotos and Taylor Haynes. All were among the first to offer help to a new Governor with so much to learn from each. I am grateful because I know it isn’t easy to offer a hand after such a hard fought election . It sucks to lose and it really hurts.
This election, similar to the one two years ago, has amplified the sorts of big city, big money, nasty half-truths and flat-out lies or falsehoods that have become all too common in other states. It’s not the Wyoming I know.
Here we respect the Code of the West, and most candidates always worked to discourage that sort of campaigning. They understood it was offensive to Wyoming people, who pretty well know right from wrong. Contrast is one thing, but bearing false witness is taboo for a population that appreciates all ten of the Commandments.
Where has that sensibility gone? This election we have been abused by cynical political operatives whose stock-in-trade is to twist facts and foment suspicion with incomplete, dishonest tales and misinformation. Especially galling are out-of-state political operatives who get paid big bucks for duping voters. I hope their vilification is misplaced in the Cowboy State. Wyoming voters are honest and they care.
I believe voters will see through the baloney that passes for politics elsewhere and will come to rest on those candidates who know what they are talking about, know and care about Wyomingites and know what is important to Wyoming – jobs, family, the economy, and our way of life.
Ask yourself, is this candidate talking mostly about someone else, or, as they should be, are they listening and talking about the things that will keep our core industries vital, our way of life secure, our kids safe, and our communities whole. Ask yourself if what they are saying is valuable to your community, to your family, to your grandchildren – or is it just political blather and mud?
Ask what a candidate has actually done to make the state better and why. Ask for details.
I say enough with the name calling, the false information, the nasty for nasty sake. Enough with the schlock that uses Wyoming voters as fundraising bait. Let’s elect people for who they are and what they will do, not for what some mysterious, never-heard-of-them-before organization ginned up to make voters mad. Let’s elect people to represent our interests, not puppets who parrot consultants’ talking points.
Ride for the brand!
Cont:
The number of mailers per day has now reached the absolutely insane level.
Real attack mailers are now coming, and they are quite frankly absurd. The ones directed at Barlow are at the level where the authors should be forced to memorize the Summa Theologica in the original Latin and be able to recite it back without looking, particularly the part on lying.
One that came today compared Liz Cheney to Reid Rasner.
Seriously?
That would be in favor of Reid Rasner.
Harriet Hageman's today emphasized her protecting Second Amendment rights. What flaming carp. The 2nd Amendment hasn't been under attack now for decades.
There were three Steve Friess ones, all devoid of content, as all of his hard. He promised to use his "Conservative" values to help President Trump.
Trump isn't a conservative, he's a fascist, with it often failing to be noted that both fascism and communism are populist movements (so is socialism). And at this point, for those wanting to "help" Trump, these questions should seriously be asked:
Do you intend to help him launch more illegal wars?
Do you intend to pursue the illegal wars without a declaration of war, and are you willing to bear the cost of the dead on your souls?
Do you intend to support illegal tariffs?
Do you intend to help subvert the result of the election?
Do you intend to help Donald Trump get richer while the lower middle class gets poorer?
Do you intend to help wreck Christianity in the country by pretending that Trump's a Christian?
Why the crap would anyone pledge to help Trump?
Conservatives wouldn't.
Apparently nobody thinks about the heepings of bullshit that go into the real far right mailers. But Wyoming voters are polite in not asking any politician about his background. Right now, for instance, you don't know anything about the carpetbagger candidates save what they have chosen to tell you.
Footnotes:
*She's not the first. The first outright Socialist to be elected to Congress, which she is not, was Rep. Victor L. Berger of Wisconsin, who was elected in 1923. The first Democratic Socialist to be elected to Congress was Korean War Marine Corps veteran Ronald Vernie Dellums of California, who was elected in 1971. He served in that position until 1998.
It's notable that with quite a few Democratic Socialist their affiliation is rather mixed. It's almost more akin to being a member of a Caucus, like the Freedom Caucus, than actually being a member of a party, even though it is a party. Typically, Democratic Socialist run as Democrats, just as Freedom Caucus members run as Republicans rather than as fascists or Francoist.
The 2026 Election, 18th Edition. Primary Voting Commences Edition. Vote like your future and that of your state depends on it, because it does, part three. Yet more labels.
A good article getting at some of the things that I've wondered about:
This article notes the influx of out of staters into the Game and Fish. I've really noticed it. This has been going on before Bruce was installed, but her installation really emphasized it, and it's not a good thing at all.
We've noted that here before.
We used to really think highly of the Wyoming Game & Fish Department, but it's really dimmed over the years. I still do, but it's not what it once was. I've noted that a bit here:
Indeed, I was recently stopped by a warden and frankly he wasn't very nice. That's a new trend as well. I don't like it. But not only was he not nice, he was extremely intimidating carrying a government issued handgun on a government issued gunbelt and wearing a government issued flak jacket.
I've really hated the militarization of the policy and this is all part of it. Everytime I see a policeman anymore, including a game warden, they're dressed like they're going into Hue in 1968. All policemen of every type are civilians. They're simply deputized civilians. They shouldn't look like an occupying army. And if the treat people rudely, and many do, and are standing their armed treating you like you are a detained Vietnamese villager, it's scary.
I've mentioned such encounters a number of times on this blog. The first time was when I went to great efforts to Jeep into an area all while on public land. I'd done it before, and received a compliment from the warden then serving that area. On this latter occasion, which was only about a year or two later, the warden basically flat out called me a liar and followed me out in his pickup truck, which he was lucky not to roll. He apologized. He was from California. The year after that, I did the same and was outright harassed in a very hostile manner by a different game warden. It was so bad I called to complain about it. I received an apology from the District Warden on that occasion. This past year I had the encounter above, which was scary to a degree.
On that one, it had a bit of a happy, sort of, ending. I called to complain but couldn't get in touch with anyone. Somebody I knew, however, who has a different sort of relationship with the Game & Fish called and it had a huge reaction from the warden himself, who is now my best buddy in the field when I encounter him.
He, at least, is from Colorado.
Anyhow, every time I look up a new warden, they're from somewhere else, and in the case of the Director, she was.
I didn't follow her service much. I do know, however, a man and his son in which the son had a live desire to be a Game Warden. He pursued it in college. He didn't get on. It's very difficult to get on, but he attributed it to a sort of agenda. I don't know if it's really the case that the agenda exists or not, but I sure liked the wardens better when they were mostly locals.
I don't want an out of state head of the Game and Fish.
