Thursday, August 20, 2026

Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. Ignoramus Watch Part 4. Dr. Hegseth countermands George Washington edition.

 


April 22, 2026

During the Revolutionary War, George Washington ordered his troops inoculated against Small Pox.

This week Pete Hegseth lifted the requirement that troops be inoculated for influenza for "religious" reasons.

The current GOP is heavily anti scientific.

Opposition to vaccinations has been in American history largely a thing of smaller Christian and non Christian sects which are fairly anti scientific, as opposed to the majority of Christians who have no objection to vaccination.  However, when the far right of the country started to turn weird, listening to such medical lights as boob model Jenny McCarthy, that began to change a bit. Covid really made it worse as a significant portion of the country turned anti vax under the leadership of Donald Trump, who got the vaccine, but who recommended some really lethal approaches to the crisis as well.

Troops who don't get inoculated ought to just be given dishonorable or less than honorable discharges.  That's what should have occurred to those who refused the Covid vaccine.

April 24, 2026

The war department stands ready for what comes next. Locked and loaded. May God continue to breast—bless our warriors each and every day and on each and every mission.

Hegseth. 

Breast?

Okay, I get that it's a slip of the tongue, um, well, but it's an odd one.

May 12, 2026

The Aryan Nation, the Nazis, and the KKK are not far-right organizations.  Those are far-left organizations, and they always have been. The KKK was created and started by the Democrats in the United States to prevent blacks from being able to participate in the political arena, if you will. So, I'm going to say they've never been associated with the right, they've always been associated with the left.

Harriet Hageman.

Hageman's no dummy and she knows this is crap, or has drank so much of the Kool Aide she'll spout stuff that's absurd.

Every one of these organizations is from the far right and any claim to the contrary is patently absurd.  The claim about the Nazis, which I've seen before, comes from the party's very early, and frankly pre Hitler, days  and its name, the National Socialist Party.  The absurdity of that claim fails to realize that "socialism" in the context of nationalist parties doesn't necessarily mean Marxism, but "for society".  In the case of the Nazis, way early on their did espouse Socialism but by the time they'd come to power they'd abandoned it in favor of autarky and the early socialist in the party were sidelined or expelled.

And the claim about the KKK being founded by the Democrats and therefore left wing completely ignores that originally the Republican Party was the left wing party, and the Democrats were a right wing party.  The Democrats didn't evolve into the political left until the 20th Century and in the American South remained the conservative party into the 1980s.  Hageman herself is old enough to have voted in Reagan's first run for the Oval Office and therefore should be well aware of that.

This is totally reprehensible.

Cont:

Reporter: What extent are Americans’ financial situation motivating you to make a deal?

Trump: Not even a little bit. I don't think about Americans’ financial situation.

May 13, 2026


So it turns out that Trump's advisors uniformly told him not to launch the war against Iran, but he did anyway, and the advisors, not wanting to be blamed for his stupidity, leaked.  He wants them prosecuted for treason, and sycophant Todd Blanche is looking to to it.

The real crime here is Trump's, who launched an illegal war.  With no declaration of war, every single Iranian killed in it has been the victim of some sort of crime, and every American who has died has been the victim of some sort of crime ultimately attributable to Trump as well.

Blanche is pathetic.  When this is over, and it will be, his careers should be flushed down the toilet.

And then there's this:

PabloReports: Ted Cruz called you a parasite and disparaged your work as a bartender.

AOC: I think it’s funny that he’s been taking a government paycheck for 23 years but has the audacity to criticize someone who has come from a family that had to work their way up and earn their place here.

This is really becoming a Republican specialty around here.  We get retired servicemen who come in after sucking on the government tit for 30 years, retire, and then start sucking on the other government tit, and then run for office on the "I hate the government" ticket.

In that sense, the Democrat running against Collins in Maine is really refreshing.  He's given a speech about his combat service and then noted how he can't figure out how that's relevant to being a Senator.  It isn't.  

Recently I saw somebody post something in favor of Brent Bien here in Wyoming, noting that he's served in combat or dangerous conditions all over the world, and how that will make him ready to lead.  Yeah, lead troops, not a state government. 

We have a whole host of candidates from the He Man Government Haters Club running locally.  They have a right to run, but while they're doing it, they shouldn't be draining their mommy.  It's hypocritical.

June 22, 2026

Unqualified for her office Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said her office would prosecute individuals caught vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

That would mean prosecuting Donald Trump, which should be done for a variety of reasons.

June 24, 2026

The ideology of the Mooslims is slightly different than the ideology of the Catholics. We have the Catholics and the Mooslims. Slightly different. But Venezuela has been great and Iran has been great.

Donald Trump.

Insulting in the extreme.

The ideology of Catholics, of which I am one, is the ideology of Christianity, as Catholicism is the first and original Christian religion  It's more than "slightly different" than Islam.

This provides a good reason for those Catholics who support Trump to really question what they are doing.

June 26, 2026

Under President Trump the U.S. unemployment rate is at a historic low of just 4.3%. It was at a dismal rate of 3.4% under Biden.

Karoline Leavitt.

What the crap?

June 27, 2026

The new special edition passports with a glowering Supreme Leader Trump's image in them features the words, "Welcome!  But be good".

Apparently some moron didn't realize that these were passports, not visas.

Related thread:

August 7, 2026

After an embarrassing display of conspiratorial lunacy, in which Rand Paul notably played a part, a panel of Republican dimwits voted to send a measure to the Senate floor to hold Dr. Fauci in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer their moronic questions.

The basic truth of the matter is that the GOP has become completely scientific and dimwit conspiratorial in nature.  Basically, Flat Earthers, really.  I'm sure the whole panel will hold an investigation soon on whether we really went to the moon, and decide we didn't.

Not really on ignorance, but on the perversion that surrounds everything Trump, Republicans have been more or less silent on Rep. Max Miller after having a fit about Graham Platner.  Miller has been accused of abusing his wife by pouring boiling water on her and breaking the collar bone of his daughter.  Even his father in law, who is in the Senate, has been reluctant to criticizes him.

That's your party of family values.

August 20, 2026

We have a spike in oil prices that I don't really understand

Scott Bessent.

Seriously?

Last edition:

Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. Ignoramus Watch Part 3. The Quack Edition.

Sunday, August 20, 1911. Marriage of Emiliano Zapata and Josefa Espejo Sánchez.

Massive pro Madero protests occurred in Mexico City.

Emiliano Zapata married Josefa "La Generala" Espejo Sánchez in a Catholic ceremony.


While it is sometimes noted that Zapata was a Catholic and self identified that way, he had a weakness for women and fathered sixteen known children by nine different women, of whom only two were by his wife, neither of whom survived into adulthood.    Many of his illegitimate children were born after his marriage, suggesting that the union didn't produce any long lasting fidelity.

Pancho Villa, who never had any pretense of conventional relationship, had up to twenty children by six or seven women.

The New York Times sent the first round-the-world cable message. The message took 16+1⁄2 minutes to circle the globe.

Pilot Lincoln Beachey broke the world altitude record piloting his aircraft to a height of 11,642 feet.

Deadly tornadoes hit North Dakota.


Last edition:

Saturday, August 19, 1911. And now the House on Arizona and New Mexico.

Sunday, August 20, 1876. Murder of Preacher Smith.

Henry Weston Smith, “Preacher Smith”, was shot and killed by an unknown assailant outside of Deadwood S.D.

We discussed him here:

Sunday, May 7, 1876. First Black Hills sermon, maybe.


Supposedly the first Christian sermon in the Black Hills was preached at Custer City, South Dakota by Methodist layman Henry Weston Smith.

He would be murdered that following August.

Last edition:

Thursday, August 17, 1876. Grant expands the Ute reservation.

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

Thursday, August 19, 1976. Ford prevails over Reagan.

U.S. President Gerald Ford edged out challenger Ronald Reagan, 1,187 to 1,070 in delegate votes, on the first ballot to win the Republican National Convention in Kansas City.  He thereafter chose Sen. Bob Dole as his running mate.


The choice would prove fateful.  Ford was swimming upstream against an insurgent Carter due to the impact of Watergate, when Americans still cared about corruption, and high inflation.  Carter, of course, would prove to be a weak President, giving rise to a successful run by Reagan in 1980, who in the meantime had developed a Southern strategy that would ultimately destroy the GOP.

Last Edition:

Wednesday, August 18, 1976. Panmunjom axe murder incident (Korean: 판문점 도끼 살인 사건).

Saturday, August 19, 1911. And now the House on Arizona and New Mexico.

And the House approved the resolution admitting Arizona and New Mexico.  The resolution was conditional on Arizona withdrawing its statutory provision for recall of judges.

Anti Jewish riots broke out in Tredegar, Wales.  The riots would spread over a series of day throughout Wales.

Last edition:

Friday, August 18, 1911. Trying again on Arizona and New Mexico.

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

The 2026 Election, 20th Edition. Primary Voting Commences Edition. Vote like your future and that of your state depends on it, because it does, part four.

Governor's seal.

When I started this thread and entered what is now the fourth part of what was supposed to be the last pre primary edition, I had no idea that there's be so many posts in that relatively short amount of time.

It's been a busy primary, including a busy final couple of weeks in the primary.

The election is Tuesday.

There's a lot at stake.  Indeed, it wouldn't be exaggerating too much to say everything's at stake.  The GOP dominates in Wyoming and the Republican primary will determine if the state goes into the fully delusional right, or pulls back, gets a strong cup of coffee, and wakes up to what's happening.  So far, it's pretty clear the MAGA wing of the GOP hasn't done that.

I voted for:

Governor:  Barlow.

Senate:  Mead

House of Representatives:  Christensen.

Secretary of State:  Short.

Superintendent of Public Instruction: Harshman

There are some candidates that really need to be sent packing this election, which doesn't mean they will be.  Earlier editions of this series discuss those people, often in depth.

One prediction on packing.  If Chuck Gray loses, and I sincerely hope he does, he'll leave the state.  There's nothing to hold him here in the first place, and he truly isn't one of us.

That's been the focus of a late mailer and some television ads.  This election cycle has featured both in unprecedented levels.  Quite a few of them are disgusting, dealing in lies and half truths, but a few do hit home.  The late one on Gray being from Los Angeles, educated in a prep school, and then going to Wharton is one.  Anyhow, the money wasted on this election cycle is absolutely unconscionable.  Multimillionaire Steve Friess is flooding the zone with them and ought to lose for that reason alone.

Well, this really will be the last of this edition, and it'll be short.  We'll start a new one Wednesday, after the primary.

August 17, 2026

Wyoming Public Radio reports almost all of the Freedom Caucus members who received checks in Checkgate cased them.

As of Friday, who candidate still hadn't reported on his campaign finances.

Wyoming Debrief: August 17, 2026

August 18, 2026

This will be the last day for this thread, as a new one will take over. Today is primary election day.

Still, there's some outgoing news.  First, this:

August 18, 2026


Good news:

Retired Cheyenne attorney renews legal challenge to Secretary Gray’s handoff of voter data feds

Gray violated the law on this and needs to be held fully accountable. Courts looking at this issue have uniformly supported the states that refused to provide the information.

Gray should be made to recover the information he supplied.  This was illegal.  

What Gray did was absolutely unconscionable.  He supplied confidential information to the Federal Government illegally, and only because Donald Trump is President.

There's no earthly way he would have done the same thing if Kamala Harris had asked for the same information.  He should suffer the full impact of violating the law, which is a misdemeanor.  He's insist the same if somebody had done the same thing and a Democratic President was in office.

Gray's occupancy of the Secretary of State's office has always been because he saw it as a stepping stone to higher office.  His campaign was based on lies.  He won the office in a nasty three way race, made nasty by him, against lawyer and legislator Tara Nethercott and geologist Mark Armstrong.  Nethercott fell about 12,000 votes short, and Armstrong's presence in the race scrubbed away 14,292 votes.  Even a candidate who had withdrawn, Dan Dockstader, drew 3,465 votes.  Given that, he received less than half the votes caste and there's always been a strong element in the state who opposed him, just as MAGA's have adored him.  

This race will show in the bloom is of the love Chuck rose.  Chuck didn't anticipate a well funded campaign to his right from another carpetbagger, Steve Friess, and he appears to be in real trouble.  Moreover, Christensen has been, according to what data we can derive, really coming up and may be ahead of Chuck at this point.  Christensen would make the best choice for the office of Congressman.

Something must be going on in MAGA world as an old friend of mine who is deeply MAGA and who serves as precinct committeeman suddenly indicated he was not supporting Harriet Hageman for Senate, which is almost unthinkable.  He's lockstep with GOP recommendations otherwise and has been all along.  He's indicating he's not voting for anyone for Senate and he's predicting that a lot of other people will not either.

For a precinct committeeman to openly declare that nobody is worth voting for in their party is extraordinary. He's wrong, Sam Mead is a good candidate.  For somebody who is so died in the wool on the GOP's straight jacket endorsement policy this is also remarkable, as now he's in open defiance of the GOP litmus test.  

I don't know what occured.  Obviously, something did, but you'd have to probably be part of MAGA to know what that is.  My guess, and its just that, is that some MAGAs who are working class folks and sportsmen suddenly realized that Hageman is an enemy of Public Lands and always has been.

A reminder on that topic:

SELLOUTS vs. CHAMPIONS

Protect Wyoming's list of legislators and their record on public lands:

SELLOUTS vs. CHAMPIONS

This is really worth knowing. While this is directly copying most of the page, here's what they founds:

top SELLOUTS

Note: While Senators Tim French and Laura Pearson are not up currently for re-election, they are the legislators most actively trying to privatize and sell off our wildlife. So we want folks to take note, even though they’re not on the ballot this year.


top CHAMPIONS

Note: Senator Nethercott is not up for re-election in 2026, but has been one of the most vocal defenders of sportsmen and women on the Senate floor, and deserves a spot in the Top Defenders.

all legislator scores

 I don't know all the legislators by any means, but the antis I know are no surprise. The pros I know aren't a surprise either.  Unfortunately a couple of them are leaving the legislature.

Anyone on the anti list here should be voted out of office.

And also:

Lex Anteinternet: The 2026 Election, 17th Edition. Primary Voting Co...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2026 Election, 17th Edition. Primary Voting Co...: Republican icon Theodore Roosevelt, who would have detested Donald Trump and been appalled by the Dixiecrat Wyoming Freedom Caucus. The prim...

And some important information from the Wyoming Sportsmen for Public Lands.
IMPORTANT PRIMARY ELECTION INFORMATION REGARDING WYOMING’S CONGRESSIONAL RACES! The following are our recommendations for the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives.
Our recommendations are based on our knowledge of the candidates, especially their positions or voting records relating to public lands, conservation and wildlife. Also important is their commitment to the democratic necessity of making decisions based on science and listening to their constituents, rather than strict adherence to party dogma. We hope you will seriously consider these recommendations which are derived, in part, from 10 years of administering this Facebook page. Note: an email address is provided for top candidates if you want to request a yard sign or assist with their campaign.
The House Candidates are:
• Jillian Balow, Republican: does not merit consideration
• Bo Biteman, Republican: does not merit consideration
• Kevin Christensen, Republican: merits serious consideration, kevin.for.ushouse@christensen2026.org
• Richard Dodson, Republican: does not merit consideration
• Steve Friess, Republican: does not merit consideration
• David Giralt, Republican: does not merit consideration
• Keith Goodenough, Republican: merits serious consideration, senatorgoodenough@gmail.com
• Chuck Gray, Republican: does not merit consideration
• Reid Rasner, Republican: does not merit consideration
• Elena Del Real, Democrat: does not merit consideration
• Lisa Kinney, Democrat: merits serious consideration, lisakinney2026@wyoming.com
• Jeff Haggit, Constitution Party: does not merit consideration
• Shawn Johnson, Libertarian: does not merit consideration
The Senate candidates are:
• Jill Edwards, Republican: does not merit consideration
• Harriet Hageman, Republican: definitely does not merit consideration
• John Holtz, Republican: does not merit consideration
• Sam Mead, Republican: merits serious consideration, info@meadforwyoming.com
• Jimmy Skovguard, Republican: merits serious consideration, jimmy@grassrootsmvt.org
• Billy Benevidez, Democrat: does not merit consideration
• James Byrd, Democrat: merits serious consideration, info@byrdforsenate.com
The primary election on August 18th is very important, so please vote. But be careful who you vote for because several of the candidates would be very bad for public land.
See less

Vote like the future of your state depends on it.  It does.

In Texas, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico hired a five-year veteran of Republican Sen. John Cornyn's office to help defeat GOP nominee Ken Paxton.  And Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs picked Republican-turned-independent Mayor John Giles as her running mate.

These moves aren't stunts.  It shows the Democratic Party, in spite of a lot of angst about it becoming Democratic Socialist, is in fact moving to the center in some locations.  James Byrd in Wyoming is an example of that, and so are these events.

Talarico was nearly dismissed as a gadfly by Republicans early on but now there's very serious GOP concern that he'll defeat Ken Paxton, who so covered with the crap of his own misdeeds that it won't wash off.

Cont:

Alaska and Florida also have primaries today.

Cont:

The NRA sent out an email today backing Campbell in Natrona County, which is to their credit as she's a moderate Republican facing a challenge from the far right.

Last edition:

The 2026 Election, 19th Edition. Primary Voting Commences Edition. Vote like your future and that of your state depends on it, because it does, part three.


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 two.Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,