Sir Douglas Haig ends the effort at the Somme on this day in 1916

Douglas Haig brings to a conclusion the British effort at the Somme.

Big Metal Bird: Episode 8 – Turbulence

Because I hate turburlance, but I like United's Big Metal Bird series.

Painted Bricks: Houston sidewalks

Painted Bricks: Houston sidewalks

Lessons Learned: No Dynasties

One clear message from this election is no more Bush's and no more Clinton's.  Enough is enough.

Political insiders believe in dynasties  They think that because you are the son, wife, cousin, or whatever, of somebody who was in office, the public likes you.

Not hardly.

The public things you are trying to become royalty.

In the history of the American republic there's been only two exceptions to this.  The Adams and the Roosevelt's.  We got two of each, and that was it.  I don't know about the Adam's, but with the Roosevelt's there were others who did indeed have serious opportunities to rise to high office, but in the end they backed off.  The family is still around today, and still as smart as it ever was.  But it doesn't run for office.  There are living descendants of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  They don't run for office as they know better.

Indeed, there are living Theodore Roosevelt's and living Franklin Roosevelt's.

The Bush's and the Clinton's should have visited them this year.

No matter, I'm sure that there are those in the beltway looking at what Chelsea Clinton and various young members of the Bush family can be positioned for right now.

Lessons Learned. I guess there weren't any.

I'm tempted to stop this series of posts, and likely will slow them down or halt them for awhile, somewhat.   There's been a flood of post election commentary and so there's hardly any point in doing any more, which doesn't seem to mean that anyone is stopping however.

Nonetheless, in the spirit of warning those who will not learn from history, I cannot help but note that part of the Democratic and left of center commentary has been a howling scream of "we did nothing wrong and we intend to keep on doing the same".

It's truly been amazing.

There has been, to be completely fair, a fair amount of post election analysis in these quarters that's pretty biting, quite analytical, and likely correct.  But there's also a lot that's flat out delusional.

In that category, there have been some who have been floating suggestions along the lines of "if Trump really wants to work with us, like he says, he'll (fill in terms of surrender to the Democrats here).

First of all, I haven't heard him saying that at all.  Indeed, I think the great self delusional element in much of the post election analysis is that Trump isn't going to keep on keeping on in the direction he's been going.  He will.

So, I don't think he's really that worried about working with Democrats.  He really doesn't have to.

He has to work with Republicans, but they also have to work with him and they know it.  Republicans now will have no excuse at all for not doing things they've paid lip service to, but have not done.

Chief amongst the more off the rails suggestions I've seen is that if Trump really wants to show that he can work with Democrats (a doubtful proposition) he should renominate Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.  That's largely the same in nature as suggesting that if Lincoln really wanted to show the South that the nation was one again, in 1865, he should allow slavery to continue.  I mean, seriously?  There's no freaking earthly way that's going to happen, and indeed it should not and could not.

Now, as noted, I'm not a Trump fan (and I wasn't a Clinton fan either), but a person like Trump doesn't get elected to go in and say, "oh, I guess everything is okay here".  Not hardly.  And cherished items such as a left wing Supreme Court were the very things that probably served, in this instance, to torpedo the Democrats chances this year.

Indeed I think a good case can be made for the proposition that the turning point for the Democrats in this election was the Obegefell Decision.  Like it or hate it, it was on legal ice so think that a person could have taken a steam bath in it.  As such decisions are inherently anti-democratic, and that decision certainly was as well as being legally anemic, celebrating it the way the White House did, combined with major Democratic figures announcing that they no longer stood by the things they'd said, when they had to say them to get elected, a few years prior may very well have doomed them.  So essentially saying that the Supreme Court should be turned over to the hard left for a generation, maybe, as a peace offering is really out there.

It's not the only such suggestion that's out there, however.

A less obvious one is the suggestion that the Democrats blast into the future by putting their party in the hands of the same sort of thinking that got them where they are now.  Basically their decision is akin to the "once more over the top" thinking from World War One.  "What, we've been mowed down. . . huh. . . well, let's try it again"

There's a popular suggestion that Keith Ellison be put in charge of the party.  Have you listened to him?  His stated comments, so far, sound pretty much like a repeat of failure.  The New York Times, in an op ed, suggests that Chuck Schumer, one of the most detested Democrats outside of the East Coast, will be given a leadership role. Really, NYT, wouldn't a better suggestion be that Schumer simply keep quiet?  Outside New York, he's not exactly super popular.

In fairness to the Times, however, Schumer was mentioned as an inevitability, along with Sanders, who at least deserves a voice.   They urged the party to look towards younger leaders and I'll note that at least Ellison, who is a few months younger than me, actually fits that definition by Democratic terms.  Not in human terms.  53 years old is not young.  But when the two candidates who ran for the Democrats this year in the primaries have a combined age of over 140, well, I guess its youngish.

Shelby Foote born, this day in 1916

Again, this isn't the "this day in 1916" blog, but we are noting things of interest that occurred in 1916, in part of our effort to develop the warp and woof of the Punitive Expedition era, if we dare call it that.

Therefore, we've noted a few, and very few at that, birthdays that relate to 1916. As most births aren't national news at the time of the birth, this is being done on a very limited basis.

Anyhow, today we do note that this date is the 1916 date of birth for Shelby Foote, who is best remembered for his epic three volume history of the American Civil War, his magnum opus, and a truly great work.  He also wrote a few novels that are not well known to readers today, but which are generally well regarded.

Foote was of Southern birth but strove to remain objective in his history of the Civil War.  Ironically, his own military record was peculiar in that he joined the Mississippi National Guard in 1940, rising to the rank of Captain, only to be court martialed in 1944 for falsifying a record pertaining to a Jeep when he borrowed it to visit a girlfriend, whom he later married, who lived two miles beyond the military limits in Northern Ireland, where he was then stationed.  Returning to the United States his new wife divorced him after coming to the United States in a warship convoy and he soon thereafter joined the Marine Corps as an enlistedman.  The war ended before he saw combat.  Therefore, while he was steeped in the Civil War due to growing up in the South, and was familiar with the military himself after having served in the Army and the Marines, he never saw combat in the largest war the United States had fought after the Civil War.

Foote had a soft, classic Southern accent that became well known to Americans for his role in Ken Burns' famous documentary, The Civil War, which Foote played a prominent role in.

Blog Mirror: Harvard Business Review; What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class

 From the Harvard Business Review:

My father-in-law grew up eating blood soup. He hated it, whether because of the taste or the humiliation, I never knew. His alcoholic father regularly drank up the family wage, and the family was often short on food money. They were evicted from apartment after apartment.

Worth reading.

And why its worth reading:

For months, the only thing that’s surprised me about Donald Trump is my friends’ astonishment at his success. What’s driving it is the class culture gap.

Seems like I read that elsewhere. . . oh yeah.  Here.

And this:

“The white working class is just so stupid. Don’t they realize Republicans just use them every four years, and then screw them?” I have heard some version of this over and over again, and it’s actually a sentiment the WWC agrees with, which is why they rejected the Republican establishment this year. But to them, the Democrats are no better.

Both parties have supported free-trade deals because of the net positive GDP gains, overlooking the blue-collar workers who lost work as jobs left for Mexico or Vietnam. These are precisely the voters in the crucial swing states of Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that Democrats have so long ignored. Excuse me. Who’s stupid?

This article refers to a couple of books, Limbo and Hillbilly Elegy.  I'd only heard of one.  But there's something they are on to, even if I'd refine the thesis.  Here's the Amazon synopsis for Limbo:

In Limbo, award-winning journalist Alfred Lubrano identifies and describes an overlooked cultural phenomenon: the internal conflict within individuals raised in blue-collar homes, now living white-collar lives. These people often find that the values of the working class are not sufficient guidance to navigate the white-collar world, where unspoken rules reflect primarily upper-class values. Torn between the world they were raised in and the life they aspire too, they hover between worlds, not quite accepted in either. Himself the son of a Brooklyn bricklayer, Lubrano informs his account with personal experience and interviews with other professionals living in limbo. For millions of Americans, these stories will serve as familiar reminders of the struggles of achieving the American Dream.

And here it is for Hillbilly Elegy, which seems to take a darker view, but which is focused, really, on Appalachia, I think (based on an interview I heard of the author):

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class.

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility.

But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

I don't agree, off hand, with all of the apparent conclusions of these books are, but there's something, well more than something, to the concept of the middle class having roots in a different world than the upper middle class does, and that's significant.  Part of it is for this reason, noted in the article:

“The thing that really gets me is that Democrats try to offer policies (paid sick leave! minimum wage!) that would help the working class,” a friend just wrote me. A few days’ paid leave ain’t gonna support a family. Neither is minimum wage. WWC men aren’t interested in working at McDonald’s for $15 per hour instead of $9.50. What they want is what my father-in-law had: steady, stable, full-time jobs that deliver a solid middle-class life to the 75% of Americans who don’t have a college degree. Trump promises that. I doubt he’ll deliver, but at least he understands what they need.

Right on point.  But there's another item here, where at least locally, I think she's off point, but it leads to a significant point nonetheless.

One little-known element of that gap is that the white working class (WWC) resents professionals but admires the rich. Class migrants (white-collar professionals born to blue-collar families) report that “professional people were generally suspect” and that managers are college kids “who don’t know shit about how to do anything but are full of ideas about how I have to do my job,” said Alfred Lubrano in Limbo. Barbara Ehrenreich recalled in 1990 that her blue-collar dad “could not say the word doctor without the virtual prefix quack. Lawyers were shysters…and professors were without exception phonies.” Annette Lareau found tremendous resentment against teachers, who were perceived as condescending and unhelpful.

At least by my observation, blue collar people don't actually resent professionals uniformly, although they sometimes do as a class (particularity in regards to lawyers). They tend to think that professionals in some categories, well lawyers again, don't really work.  I had, for example, a really working class client I rarely do work for call up the other day and say, as a half joke, "well get your feet off the desk and get back to work. . . " when he called, a joke he repeats every time he calls.  But at the same time law and medicine have long been viewed as the escape hatch from the lower middle class to the upper middle class by lower middle class families.

But that element of struggle, noted immediately above, actually was and still sort of is there.  When I was young a huge number of the professionals I knew had parents who were very blue collar or had been farmers and ranchers.  And, in terms of outlook, those professionals really basically remained at or near those classes themselves.  This even went on to the next generation, and I'd put myself in that category and I'm not the only one I know.  It may seem odd, but there are a lot of lawyers my age, 50 and up, who tend to be more naturally comfortable in a social setting with farmers and ranchers rather than people who are in the high dollar business world, even if they work in the high dollar business world themselves (which doesn't mean they are uncomfortable with the latter).  And at the same time, more comfortable doesn't mean comfortable, as one thing that any lawyer, and I imagine doctor, finds out is that once you have obtained that status, you will never be looked at the same way again by your blue collar fellows.

Still, it's interesting to think that even now, and particularly for men my age and up, being a professional might still mean that your outlook on many things is defined by that and retains at least one foot there.  An odd example of that is in terms of automobiles.  My father always drove a pickup truck as his daily driver and I've always driving a four wheel drive.  I have two regular vehicles I use myself now, one being an old Jeep, and the other an aging Dodge D3500. That latter vehicle is my best one (I'm not counting the vehicle my wife drives, which I do not usually).  It's a 1 ton 4x4 truck.  I occasionally have younger lawyers express amazement at my driving it, but I use it for hauling horses and cattle as well, and I've never not had a fairly plain 4x4 truck.  And this isn't uncommon for older lawyers here.  I've always been amazed by the amazement, but when I look at what they're driving, I see they're driving something rooted in the more urban professional world than I am.

I note all of that as what I think this analysis lacks is that for a lot of people in the middle class the call is truly back to another world.  Just because the younger kids had to leave the farm or ranch doesn't mean that mentally they ever did.  The likes and dislikes of the sons of machinist and boilermakers often remains exactly what their parents were.  I once had a hugely successful Dallas lawyer lament his life and career there, then excuse his choice in the same manner that Arnold Rothstein did in the Godfather, "This is the life we chose".  But all of that may mean that the entire culture is looking back more than many suppose.

The Cheyenne Leader for November 15, 1916: Mexicans repudiate pact for joint border control, train robbed in Missouri, trouble in a synagogue.

Some interesting news for November 15, 1916.

An attempt at a pact on the Mexican border appeared to fall through, to the frustration of the U.S. delegates.

A train was robbed in Kansas City, Missouri. The paper referenced Bill Carlisle, the famous Wyoming train robber who is usually credited with the last train robbery in the US.  This story would obviously cast doubt on that claim.

In Cheyenne there was dissension on the rabbi that had been serving there.

Lessons Learned: Nobody cares what celebrities have to say about politics

Late in the election the Clinton campaign drug out a platoon of celebrities.

A television advertisement was run in some venues featuring them.

Miley Cyrus, Jay Z, and Beyonce all chipped in for Clinton.

It turns out that nobody cares what these people have to say.  Nor should they.

Now, so its clear, I also don't think anyone should care what Clint Eastwood, or other figures that people claim hold right wing views (I don't know if they really do or not) say about politics either.

I don't wish to cast aspersion on anyone personality (although I will below) but entertainers are entertainers.  That doesn't make them wise sages.

Indeed, as a class, entertainers are amongst the most screwed up people on the planet.  I sometimes wonder if the fact that their fame is based on performing, rather than on something deeper than that, is the reason why.  I don't know that, but I wonder that.  Indeed, as a rule, most modern performers aren't performing things they have directly created it, but interpreting something someone else has.  That is, truly, an art, but it isn't the same as creating it.  At the end of day, in other words, we tend to remember Shakespeare, not the Shakespearean actor.  I guess with singers its a bit different, as we tend to remember the performer rather than the author.  I.e, we associate Me and Bobby McGee with Janis Joplin, not with Kris Kristofferson. 

Anyhow, while not commenting on the candidates directly, yet, the fact that the electorate apparently doesn't care who Beyonce is going to vote for is a mighty good sign.  Indeed, the fact that the electorate doesn't care who Miley Cyrus supports, given as she's become the poster child for creepily pathetic, is a very good sign.

That doesn't, once again, amount to an endorsement of Trump or Clinton.  But, quite frankly, the image of a 69 year old woman appearing on stage with Beyonce and Jay Z is weird.  And awkward.

I guess if Janis Joplin were still alive, Clinton appearing with Joplin would have been less weird, as Joplin would be older than she is. But that's the point.  Appearing with the hip kidsters makes you look like an unhip oldster.

Lance Sergeant Hector Hugh Munro, "Saki", killed in action.

English short story author Hector Hugh Munro was killed by a sniper on the Western Front on this day in 1916.  Munro was serving in the Royal Fusiliers at the time at the rank of Lance Sergeant.  He had enlisted in 1914 as a trooper in the 2nd King Edwards Horse, having refused a commission, and being overage at the time (43).

His short stories were known for their sudden, surprise, endings.

Thanks go out on this one to Reddit's 100 Years Ago Today subreddit.

Dissent Jabot

Until today, I didn't even know "jabot" was a word.

The Notorious RBG wears her dissent jabot.

What's It Mean? The Federal Judiciary

Amongst real conservatives, and by that I mean real ones, not libertarians (who aren't conservatives) and not amongst country club Republicans, but the real deal, one of the few saving graces of the Trump election is that it would appear to mean that appointments to the Federal bench will be made up of individuals who take a conventional approach to statutory interprestation, rather than excessively straining the text to reach what a very ancient body of judges think is an emerging social context, something they should not be doing.

You know, the kind who read the law, and actually apply it.

That sounds, I know, extremely harsh, but right now on the Supreme Court we have at least a few judges who are tending to sort of make stuff up.

Judicial interpretation of statutes can be difficult, if they are poorly written, but that usually isn't the case. Usually, you can read the text, and its plain meaning is obvious.  That is is, in fact, the first principal of judicial interpretation.  Read it.  Does it make sense?  Do that.

If it doesn't quite make sense, then the second thing you are supposed to do it to see if the intent of the drafters can be discerned. That's  more difficult, but often can be.  If the left notes, discussions, text of their debates, you can research them, and find out what they meant, quite often.  Then you do that.

If you can't do that, you have a problem.  Indeed, a maxim of interpretation is "void for vagueness".  That means, "I can't tell what this is supposed to do, so it does nothing".

What you don't do is interpret by "evolving social norms" or pretend that a bunch of text on a paper is a "living document".

You do not want, for example, a judge to say "the text of the statute says that the speed limit, where not posted, is 30 mph, but the evolving social norm says 45 mph is super nifty, so 30 means 45!"

No you do not.

But that's exactly what the Supreme Court has done within the last year.

This is particularly problematic as its highly undemocratic, and when the Court renders decisions of any kind based on what it thinks the law ought to be, rather than what it is, and contrary to the opinions of a sizable percentage of the electorate, it creates havoc and dissension.   As a general rule, the only times taht this doesn't occur when the Supreme Court gets out on a limb is when an overwhelming percentage of teh population has already reached the opinion the court has.

Otherwise, people prefer to have a voice of their own, and that's the way that the system is generally designed. There are, surely, liberties and rights that are protected in the Constitution, but only where that is clear are people generally willing to accept rulings that are otherwise contrary to their personal views.  For example, a lot of people would squelch some speech, and some people would interject religion into law, and lots of people would be happy with broader police powers to search, but they accept that the  Constitution restricts all of these things.  Where such acceptance is wide it will occasionally express itself in an effort to amend the Constitution accordingly, such as efforts to restrict Congress' ability to pass deficit budgets, or for the President to serve more than two terms, or for states to allow the sale of alcohol, etc.

When the Court just makes stuff up, however, it tends to spark real bitterness and disrespect for the Court.  And it puts the nation into what are sometimes decades long efforts to overcome what a nine judge body has determined ought to be the law.  Ironically, this often tends to assist the very body that the Court was seeking to oppose.  The Dred Scott decision did receive acceptance from abolitionist, Roe v. Wade was not accepted by opponents to abortion.  Obegefell will not be accepted by people who wish to retain the traditional, natural, definition of marriage.

Indeed, Supreme Court decisions that do violence to the actual text of the Constitution not only do not receive acceptance, they actually tend to focus and sharpen the arguments that are contrary to the Court's opinion.  In those instances in which the Court, made up of nine older folks, attempts to get out in front of state legislatures and foist a minority view on the nation, those who were campaigning for that minority view tend to go home, but the losers go to work.  Of note, for example, support for abortion has massively declined since the generation that saw Roe v. Wade become law aged out.  The support for the opinion is largely gone.  Support for abolition became so high the country fought a massive Civil War after Dred Scott.  During the period during which the right to keep and bear arms was sort of regarded as mushy by the Federal Courts support for gun control, which was extremely high in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, evaporated.  Those rejoicing over Obegefell, if they really support the holding, ought to hope that the Supreme Court reverses itself immediately so they can try to get back into the legislatures while they still have time.

Because, while people will support clearly spelled out rights, they won't support an anti democratic body telling them what they ought to think.

No matter what else the results of Trump's election may be, based upon his campaign, the one thing actual conservatives can probably safely take some relief on is that the next couple of Supreme Court justices are unlikely to be judicial liberals.  That may actually be the one thing that can safely be predicted about the upcoming next four years.

Pavel Miliukov's speech to the Duma, 14 November 1916. The stupidity or treason speech

Gentlemen, Members of the State Duma! 

With a heavy heart I ascend this tribune today. You remember the circumstances under which the Duma met over a year ago, August 1, 1915. The Duma was then suffering from the blows of our military failures. These were due to the scarcity of munitions; and for this scarcity the Minister of War, Sukhomlinov, was responsible. You recall how at that moment the country, under the influence of the terrible period that had become obvious to all, demanded a union of the national forces and the formation of a ministry composed of persons in whom the country had confidence.  . . . You remember that the government then yielded. The ministers who were odious to the public were then removed before the convocation of the Duma. Sukhomlinov, whom the country regarded as a traitor, was removed, and, in response to the demand of the popular representatives, Polivanov, at the session of August 10 announced to us, amid general applause, as you may recall, the a commission of investigation had been appointed . . . our army obtained what it needed, and the nation entered upon the second year of the war with the same enthusiasm as in the first year. 

What a difference, gentlemen, there is now, in the 27th month of the war! . . . We are now facing new difficulties, and these difficulties are not less complex and serious, not less profound, than those that confronted us in the spring of last year. . . . 

We ourselves are the same as before; we, in this 27th month of the war, are the same as we were in the tenth and in the first month. As heretofore, we are striving for complete victory; as heretofore, we are prepared to make all the necessary sacrifices; and, as heretofore, we are anxious to preserve our national unity. But, I must say this candidly: there is a difference in the situation. We have lost faith in the ability of this Government to achieve victory, because, as far as this Government is concerned, neither the attempts at correction nor the attempts at improvement, which we have made here, have proved successful. . . .

And, if we have formerly said that our Government had neither the knowledge nor the ability which were indispensable at the moment, we say now, gentlemen, that this present Government has sunk beneath the level on which it stood in the normal times of Russian life. And now the gulf between us and that Government has grown wider and impassable. Gentlemen, a year ago, Sukhomlinov was placed under judicial investigation. Then the hateful Ministers were removed before the opening of the Duma session, but now the number of such ministers has been augmented by one. . . . 

The twenty-eight presidents of guberniia zemstvo boards, who met at Moscow on the 11th of November of the present year [said]: "Painful, terrible suspicions, sinister rumor of treachery and treason, of occult forces fighting for the benefit of Germany and striving, through the destruction of national unity and the sowing of dissension, to prepare the ground for a disgraceful peace, have reached the point where it is generally felt that an enemy hand is secretly influencing the course of our State affairs. . . ." 

Yes, gentlemen, there is a vast difference between that meeting of ours, under Goremykin, which took place on the first of August, 1915, and even in February, 1916, and the meeting taking place today. These meetings are just as different as is the general condition of the country. At that time we could talk about organizing the country with the help of Duma legislation. had we then been given the opportunity to carry through the laws which we had planned and prepared for passage, including the law on the volosts, Russia would not now be so helpless in the face of the food supply problem. That was the situation then. But now, gentlemen, the problem of legislation has been shifted to the background. Today we see and understand that with this Government we cannot legislate, any more than we can, with the Government, lead Russia to victory. Formerly, we tried to prove that it was impossible to start a fight against all the vital forces of the nation, that it was impossible to carry on warfare within the country when there was war at the front, that it was necessary to utilize the popular enthusiasm for the achievement of national tasks, and that otherwise there could be only killing oppression, which would merely increase the very peril they were trying to avert by such oppression. 

Today, gentlemen, it seems that everybody feels convinced that it is useless to go to them with proofs; useless when fear of the people, fear of their own country, blinds their eyes, and when the fundamental problem has become that of hastening the end of the were, were it even without gain, merely to be freed from the necessity for seeking popular support. On the 23d of February, 1916, I concluded my speech with the statement that we no longer dared to address our appeal to the "political wisdom of the Government," and that I did not expect any answer from the existing Cabinet to the questions which agitated us. At that time, my words appeared to some people too pessimistic. But now we go further, and perhaps those words will sound clearer and more hopeful. We are telling this Government, as we told it in the declaration of the Bloc: "We shall fight you; we shall fight with all legitimate means until you go!"

It is said that a member of the Council of Ministers,--and this was correctly heard by Duma Member Chkheidze--on being told that the State Duma would on this occasion speak of treason, exclaimed excitedly: "I may, perhaps, be a fool, but I am not a traitor." Gentlemen, the predecessor of that Minister was undoubtedly a clever Minister, just as the predecessor of our Minister of Foreign Affairs was an honest Minister. But they are no longer in the Cabinet. And, does it matter, gentlemen, as a practical question, whether we are, in the present case, dealing with stupidity or treason? When the Duma keeps everlastingly insisting that the rear must be organized for a successful struggle, the Government persists in claiming that organizing the country means organizing a revolution, and deliberately prefers chaos and disorganization.  What is it, stupidity or treason? Furthermore, gentlemen, when the authorities, in the midst of this general discontent and irritation, deliberately set to work stirring up popular outbreaks, that is to say, when they purposely provoke unrest and outbreaks,--is that being done unconsciously or consciously? We cannot, therefore, find much fault with the people if they arrive at conclusions such as I have read here, in the words of those representatives of guberniia administrative boards. 

You must realize, also, why it is that we, too, have no other task left us today, than the task which I have already pointed out to you: to obtain the retirement of this Government. You ask, "How can we start a fight while the war is on?" But, gentlemen, it is only in wartime that they are a menace. They are a menace to the war, and it is precisely for this reason, in time of war and in the name of war, for the sake of that very thing which induced us to unite, that we are now fighting them. . . 

And, therefore, gentlemen, for the sake of the millions of victims and the torrents of blood poured out, for the sake of the achievement of our national interests--which Sturmer does not promise us--in the name of our responsibilities to that nation which has sent us here, we shall fight on until we achieve that genuine responsibility of government which has been defined by the three points of our common declaration. . . .

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Fellowship Baptist Church, Yale Oklahoma

Churches of the West: Fellowship Baptist Church, Yale Oklahoma:

This stone church is located in the small Oklahoma town of Yale.  In some ways, its appearance causes me to suspect that it was converted to this use from some other use, but at the same time it's general shape supports the idea that it has always been a church.  Otherwise, I have no information on it.

A D- Analysis: "Energy, Cheney helped fuel Trump's success in Wyoming"

The Tribune has a headline today that declares:

Energy, Cheney helped fuel Trump's success in Wyoming

An article follows.

Oh, what complete bumpkis.

Trump won in Wyoming because he was the GOP candidate.  Absent a spectacularly successful and credible third party candidate, that was never in doubt.  The GOP candidate was going to win here no matter what.

The bigger story is that there were actually over 2,000 write in votes in the Presidential campaign in the state this go around. Given the small population of the state and the accordingly small number of voters, that's the story.

And Cheney aiding Trump?  As if.

Cheney won because Tim Stubson and Leland Christenson tore each other apart in the primaries. Together they took more votes than Cheney.  A person can argue about it, but if one of those two had dropped out, chances are not bad that person, not Cheney, would be the new Representative.

I suspect that Liz Cheney is much less popular than people suppose.  She was, however, the Republican and that seat was going to a Republican. Greene ran a good campaign, it should be noted, but his early support for Bernie Sanders and the fact that he came out in support of Clinton sank any chance he ever had, as my analysis on the local races noted.

But energy and Cheney aiding Trump?  Nah.

What's It Mean? Getting the "race" story all wrong

 The American concept of race has been long lasting, but who fits into a "race" has changed dramatically over the years.

One of the most persistent stories we have heard before the election, and now after, is that Donald Trump won the election due to "white people". Even George F. Will, citing demographic information that supports this "white people" thesis, notes this in his lament over Trump's election in his recent post election column.

The problem is, who are the "white people"?

The press, when it talks about this, tends to redefine it if it looks at it in depth, as the analysis doesn't seem to work from the very onset, so we soon learn that they aren't talking about all "white people", but something like white men without college educations, or maybe white people without college educations, or maybe white people who are or were blue collar.

Well, bumpkis.  This is part of the whole, clueless, press analysis this year.

Here's the problem.

This way of looking at demographics is racist, but fits in with an historical American approach.  Traditionally, although not for a long time, "white people" meant White Anglo Saxon Protestants.  The mere fact that we, in the US, define who is white and who is not dates in large measure to this.  Speaking of WASPs was common when I was still young, and it basically fits this mold, except that the WASPs, to the extent its any kind of real classification, doesn't really fit what actually occurred in this election or what is supposed to have occurred either, let alone what actually occurred.  It does have a lot to do, however, on how Americans inaccurately categorize "race".

This is actually a flyer for an old detective movie, but the press could use some historical detectives themselves.  They use the term "white" as if it is a real classification, which is questionable, without even pondering what it means and how it came to mean anything.

I've written on this before, but this entire way of looking at the world dates to an era when to be a "real American" meant you were probably descendant from a British Isles Protestant.  Some continental Europeans got a pass, but only somewhat.  But many didn't.  If you look back at literature of a century or more, you'll see that Italians, Irish, Greeks, and Eastern Europeans were not "white people".

Oh, surely you say, that can't be right.

It most certainly can be.

All of these groups shared certain characteristics, the most common of which is that they were not likely to be Protestants.  They were likely to be Catholics or Orthodox. Virtually nobody admitted that their racial concepts were based on this, but in fact, they largely were.

Added to this is that the British went into a period during the Victorian Era when they hugely admired the Saxon invaders of their homeland and came to the conclusion, erroneously as we now know, that everyone in England was descendant from the Saxons as surely the Saxons had killed off all the Britons who didn't end up in Wales ultimately. As it turns out they did nothing of the kind, and the English are, genetically, more Celtic than Germanic, but at the time, they were imagining the opposite. This fit neatly into the early views of the United States which emphasized British colonist as being on a civilizing, Protestant, mission.

At the tend of the day, therefore, what defined "white" was whether or not you were part of the culture of the Reformation.  The English fit that nicely, the Scots less so as they were not Germanic, but they were British, and were given a pass, and even the continental Germans and Dutch were as they had to be to fit this definition.  And oddly enough, this definition persists.  In looking at this earlier, I noted: 

So turning to race in general once again, consider that up until probably World War One or so Italians and the Irish were regarded as separate races, and as much so as American Indians or blacks.  Jews were very much a separate race.
Indeed, so were the "Anglo-Saxons".

And that tells us a lot about how "race" categorizations are false.

The early colonist in this country were largely from Great Britain. They were also almost all Protestant, if not all the same type of Protestants. And their view of the world was that they were the vanguards of Protestant Christianity against Catholicism and Heathenism.  They were English and Scots pioneers, and they viewed themselves as right thinking.  People could come around to their way of thinking, or get out of the way. Those who didn't, even if it was King George III, would be pushed out of the way.

Over time, what happened to these various non white (in the concept of the time) is that they were assimilated into the American mix and became "white" Americans.  It sure didn't happen all at once, however.  With the Irish it started with the Mexican War but it lasted all the way until the 1920s and the real assimilation was accomplished by World War Two. This is true of the Italians as well, who were some sort of weird, swarthy, dirty people in the public eye up until after World War Two when they were just part of that great old American melting pot society.  

 Political cartoon from the 1860s, depicting the fear that the United States would be consumed by Irish and Chinese immigrants, who are both depicted as odd looking races.  In the cartoon, the Irish and Chinese immigrants swallow the US, and the Chinese immigrants swallows the Irish one.  Today, nobody would regard the Irish as a separate race, and by and large Asians tend not to be either.

Of course, in this time frame some things had actually changed, both in these groups and in our view of them. The odd accents, and in some cases the strange languages, became less common. And as they worked themselves into positions in the Middle Class, association with them caused familiarity and they seemed more American all the time. And of course, they actually became more American.

And as that occurred, they became "white". That was a pretty significant development, as in doing this, the meaning of "white', except apparently to the American press, changed quite radically.  Irish Americans would never have been regarded by early 20th Century Americans as real whites.  But by the mid 20th Century anyone would laugh at that notion.

And that's because concepts of race are purely cultural, and not without prejudice, having no other basis in anything at all, other than perception.  The culture had changed to accommodate Christian people who weren't Protestants.  Bizarrely, it still hasn't accommodated African Americans to the definition, keeping its oldest racial category, in spite of the fact that most African Americans are more a part of the culture than many more recent arrivals, and more part of the original colonizing culture, which forced them over and into it, than many of the later ones now regarded as "white".

Perhaps one of the best examples of this are Lebanese Americans, of which there are a lot.  They're regarded as white.  I have a large collection of Lebanese-Irish cousins and nobody would ever put them in some separate race.  Nor would I.  But, in terms of DNA, they share genes from the Middle East, which some Americans today would regard as the land of a separate "race".  Most Lebanese Americans are Catholics and always have been, and indeed Christianity is the sole defining thing, really, between who was Lebanese and who was Syrian at one time.  I suspect most Americans today would regard most Muslim Syrians as members of another race.  They aren't.

Because, as noted, race is cultural and a matter of perception.  

Or let's take Bernie Sanders.  He's white, right?

Well, he is today, but a century ago he would have been a mistrusted member of the "Hebrew Race".  Indeed, one of the 1916 newspapers I just ran referred to Americans who were Jewish in that fashion.

Modern Americans don't regard Jewish people as members of a separate race even though they have a distinct culture.  And we haven't had that view for a long time.  The reason is that acceptance of the entire culture came in as they largely assimilated.  This came to be so much the case that an entire meaningless word was adopted to rationalize it, that being "Judaeo-Christian".

Judaeo-Christian as  word, is entirely meaningless. There is no such thing as a Judaeo-Christian culture and the United States is not a Judaeo-Christian nation.  The US started off, basically, as a nation with a Protestant Christian culture and its evolved into one with a broad Christian culture, although its still more Protestant than anything else.  We just adapted our definitions and accepted the Jewish culture into our redefined definition.

Which brings me to election puditry babble.

The entire concept that there's a "white vote" is a completely erroneous way of looking at the election demographics.  What it does is make a false assumption that skin color defines how a person thinks and what they are, and it more particularly acts as if being an Hispanic or a Latino is some deep DNA classification that defines how a person thinks, as if they are a separate species.  

And this is important, by speaking of the new "minorities" or "diversity", in an ethnic sense, the Press, while it includes other groups, mostly means Hispanics.

In truth, as we've noted before, the term Hispanic is so broad a person can be an Indian, black, or a European American and still be attached that label.  It's a fairly meaningless label, therefore.  

It's particularly meaningless as quite frankly but for the fact that most are of relatively recent arrival, and have Spanish names, a large percentage of these individuals would otherwise be classified by people who must make such classifications as "white".  And this is what will occur in fairly short order.  Here's what we noted before:

This brings me to Hispanics and other new groups.  I'm constantly reading that the country is becoming more "diverse".  Maybe it is, but I suspect that Hispanics are a group that's going to be regarded as its own race, now that they are a significant demographic, about as long as Italians were, and for the same reasons.  Fifty years from now, to be Hispanic will be to claim a certain ethnic heritage, and that will probably be about it.

Indeed, it's already the case that I read piles of wedding announcements in the newspaper every week between people with Spanish surnames and English, or other, names. These cultures are already mixing at an extremely rapid rate, and not just in terms of marriage, but culture.  Some time ago I attended something at Mass where a person self identified as Hispanic, but who would have been impossible to identify that way by appearance, and this is becoming the absolute norm.  Hispanic last names are rapidly only indicating ethnic heritage and not race, and usually mixed American ethnic heritage, the same way Irish, German or Italian last names do.  Hispanics may have been a strongly identifiable minority in many places, and indeed they still are, but they're rapidly entering the mainstream and vice versa, the latter being an interesting process we rarely think of.  Just as minority cultures pick up and adopt large parts of the majority culture, the majority culture adopts parts of the minority culture as well.  Across the street from my office, for example, there's a Mexican restaurants that's really Mexican.  It's very popular with local Hispanics, but most days at noon, any more, it's swamped with everyone else.  An establishment that started off being patronized mostly by members of its own culture now no longer is, even though it hasn't changed a bit.  Restaurants are, of course, a superficial example, but it's also interesting how many people now celebrate Cinqo De Mayo in some fashion, and Our Lady of Guadalupe is celebrated at Catholic parishes everywhere.

This doesn't mean that any one ethnic group doesn't have its own unique cultural aspects to it, of course. But the differences in culture do decline over time. St. Patrick's Day, for example, is still a serious day with strongly Catholic Irish Americans, but it's also a national party for those looking for one.  Cinqo De Mayo has already gone from being a date somewhat remembered in Mexico as the anniversary of a battle against the French, to being an excuse to have Mexican food.  Columbus Day still brings out Italian Americans in some parts of the country, but in most regions they ignore it like everyone else.  And of course the American habit of intermarriage means that after awhile everyone is pretty much everything.

And this is why the Press is so far off the mark.

This election wasn't about "race", but rather culture and economics.  And the cultural war here isn't between "white America" and " the new more diverse America".  It's between the deep urban white upper middle class and upper class America and middle and lower class America.  So, if there's a cultural war going on, it's between two different "white" demographics, with any other ethnic groups merely filling in, in a highly temporary fashion, where it suits their immediate needs.

This is certainly the case with the Hispanic demographic.  Almost completely missed in this entire story if the fact that while a large Hispanic minority many be somewhat new, that same demographic is assimilating so fast it soon will not be there in the sense that the press imagines it to be.  In this fashion, that particularly demographic strongly resembles that other "race" of our early history, the French.

What, you didn't know that French were a race?  Oh yes they were.  Or at least the early English colonist thought they were, as long as they were Catholic, which they almost all were.  And they did something the English did not, they intermarried at a high rate with other cultures.  This is true, we should note, of Hispanics as well.

A person can get into the history of this, and we need to a little, but the entire topic would be a lengthy one.  Basically, it gets back to their Catholicity.  Anglo Saxon, i.e., English, culture of an earlier period discouraged intermarriage.  It's a complicated story, but the English colonist to the United States and elsewhere saw themselves as a superior, Protestant, civilizing people, as noted above.  No matter how down and out you were, at least you were English, and that made you, in the 17th, 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries, part of a civilizing mission to the world.  I don't want to be all down on the English, who did a much better job of colonial administration than most other European people, but that was part of their outlook at the time.  The French were bad colonial administrators, and in their later colonial period they also saw themselves as missionaries for French secular Republicanism, but early on, and shared with the Spanish, their rank and file colonist were fairly devout Catholics who believed that everyone was an equal before God.  So intermarriage was not uncommon at all, resulting in a highly mixed population wherever the French and Spanish went.  This carries right on to the present day and unlike some other immigrant cultures they do not spend the first several generations principally amongst themselves.

Which doesn't mean that their culture evaporates.  Like the Irish Catholics, and Italian Catholics, it'll tend to assimilate with the existing culture.  The  point is that people who imagine that the Hispanic culture is some mysterious other, and practically genetic in nature, with a genetic affiliation for the Democratic Party that will cause it to rise up unaltered once again, are fooling themselves.

Indeed, we should note that this year it was the GOP that ran one Catholic Hispanic and one Protestant Hispanic in the primaries, while the Democrats ran two really old white people.  Cuban Hispanics, which would describe the two individuals just noted, are already highly assimilated and. . . gasp. . . frequently Republican.

Hmmmm.

And New Mexico has had Hispanic governors twice who were. . . Republicans.

Gee.. .

Anyhow, that takes us to the next step of this.

If this years vote doesn't amount to a pure racist "I'm white and you are not" vote, what does it mean?

Well, I've already noted a lot of what it means just recently.

But what I think it means is that people paid their $20.00 to come to Ray Kinsella's field.

Eh?

Recall this line from Field of Dreams:

Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.

Okay, what do I mean by that?

Well, this.

People don't like what the United States has become and they're sick of being told to accept it.

This has been going on for a long time.  Indeed, it's always going on to some extent.  But its been much more noticeable over the past twenty years and now a lot of average people are really fed up. They're fed up in part because the GOP has kept telling them that it would address their concerns, and the Democrats  kept telling them to learn to love the new reality that the Democrats would bring and that everyone would be happy on that bright, shiny, Greenwich Village on the Hill.

So what are they fed up about?

By and large, contrary to what pundits tend to believe, and particularly contrary to what the political left believes, and to the surprise of people from other nations, Americans culturally are a fairly conservative people who go through bouts of liberal fevers.  They have private libertarian tendencies, but they aren't "liberal" or "progressive" in the way that the Democrats would like them to be.  Basically, therefore, to put it crudely, a lot of voters looked at the Democratic Party of Hillary Clinton and barfed up all over it.

As noted earlier, what people are saying is that they liked the more rural, more working class, lives they once had.  They are also saying that they value traditional societal views even if they don't adhere to them, which has often been the case for a lot of people.  They were appalled when, and it may have been the final straw for them, when Anthony Kennedy wrote a legal opinion that said that there really wasn't any difference between men and women, as they know that there is, as unlike Kennedy, they live in the real world.  They're sick of being dragged to the cultural left. And they want things to slow down, and even reverse. And that's their right.  That doesn't make them bigoted, and it doesn't make them wrong.

Also, and very importantly in this context, we are also seeing something within the "white" culture that seems likely to spread to the "Hispanic" culture as it assimilates.  And that's that the Catholics, who have never defined "whiteness" in this society, suddenly rediscovered themselves as a voting block and bolted the Democratic Party. This is a huge, and missed, development.

No Catholic voter could have been comfortable with Trump, but sincere Catholic voters found themselves in a situation in which they cold not morally vote for Clinton. Clinton defined the death from cradle to grave view that Progressives have taken up.  Indeed, its been noted a bit that the demographic that's most identifiably Democratic, the white, urban, Protestant, upper middle class is now in the self eliminating mode as it doesn't reproduce. A person can analyze what that means, but it is curious that a group that has come to define marriage in terms of "happiness", "life support" and economics is the one that backs gay marriage. It would, as it has come to believe that sex is a species of entertainment and that personal Joy is the end of life, and that at that end, that's pretty much that.  Most people don't think that way at all, as they live in the real world, and Catholics definitely don't think that way.

Indeed, not only most people not think that way, most people don't live in an economic strata that would allow them to.  Most people still have children, still have bills, and still struggle to some extent to get by.  It's easy to imagine how nifty the new economy is if you are a comfortable urban sophisticate in the high value condo district, with two  high incomes, not children, parents you don't need to take care of, and enough surplus cash to afford anything you reasonably want to your exclusive enjoyment, but that doesn't define most people.  It's come to define, however, many in the upper echelons of the political class. Think Huma and Anthony, before the implosion.  I may be completely unfair (knowing nothing about them personally), but do they match the nature and appearance of the couples of the same vintages you know?

Catholics have generally been Democrats since they first showed up in the country in numbers as the Democrats were good at organizing them and passing out patronage.  That tradition reflects itself in the Hispanic community today, but with it assimilating so rapidly, that's unlikely to continue.  If this election is any guide, the demographic time bomb may be going off inside the Democratic hall, not the Republican one.  Indeed, it may have exploded this election.

This election it appears that a majority of Catholics, who are a minority in the country (recall, they weren't even mostly "white" until the 20s and 30s, the way the culture defines it) voted for Trump. They likely held their noses and voted for Trump, but they did.  They felt they had no choice.  This is huge, however, as its the first time that they've voted as an identifiable voting block since the 1960s, its the first time that they really strongly followed the homily from the ambo on a political issue in all that time, and its the first time that the Church itself came out with blistering attacks on cultural issues in the political sphere.

Snotty Progressives did notice that this was going on early on, but their reaction was to bitterly attack the beliefs of the Church and make no effort to accommodate a demographic that had been loyal to them, and indeed Progressive, for well over a century.  Now they're gone.  John Podesta should get a dope slap for his insulting comments on Catholics and should have been fired about 30 seconds after they went public, but instead the Clinton campaign kept him on, just as it stupidly entrusted its campaign to people too close to the Weiner scandal.  Now, Hispanics are overwhelmingly Catholic in culture, even when they are not individually Catholic. As their economic fortunes increase and they come more and more into the American mainstream (i.e., as they become "white", as the press defines that) they'll quite being Democratic for patronage reasons and start acting more on their individual cultural beliefs.  That doesn't bode well for the Democrats at all.

Does all of this make Trump nifty?

Not hardly.

Indeed, its flat out bizarre that multiply married, super rich, former Democrat Trump became the choice for voters in this class.  As a salesman, he tapped into the current and read it right.  That doesn't mean that he personally believes any of it.  We have no idea.  But as a salesman, with something to sell, we can suspect that he'll keep selling it for at least four years.

During that four year period the GOP and the Democrats have a chance to reform. But will they?  I doubt the Democrats will.  The Democratic Party's halls of power seem to be mostly populated by the ghosts of the politicians of the 1970s.  George McGovern seems to be their guiding hand every year.  A party that claims to represent minorities can't seem to find a single person of color to run. This is particularly bizarre in that African Americans, who have been highly loyal to the Democrats since Franklin Roosevelt, just can't seem to get into the Presidential race and be treated seriously.  The only black candidate this year who performed at all was in the GOP.  This does not mean that there should be a racial litmus test to run for President, but how could a party that actually ran a post Baby Boomer black candidate, successfully,  the past two terms only mange to find a pants suit wearing 1970s throwback and a pre Baby Boomer New Yorker (yes, I know he was the Senator from Vermont, but he's a New York) to run this go around?

Indeed, are there no viable Democrat candidates located outside of New York state?

It's hard to take the Democrats seriously and the voters didn't.

And my guess is that they won't reform.

The Democratic Party is too controlled by crowed that go to trendy cocktail parties in big cities to begin to grasp that most people aren't vegans who wear their trousers five sizes too small.  A world in which women gush at little babies, where boys oogle attractive girls, where those girls seek to be chased, where men go hunting on the weekends, and where crowds spill beer rooting for baseball teams that have no chance of winning is completely foreign to them.  If they have any chance of success, after this, they have to find some candidates that 1) aren't ancient, 2) don't see every womb as a chance for sterilization; 3) seem to care about the native born; 4) don't hate Catholics, Orthodox, and Orthodox Jews.  But are there any left that have a chance?

This doesn't mean that the GOP can sit on its laurels either. The GOP basically lost this election at the Presidential level, as Trump isn't a recognizable Republican.  He's something else, somebody, the way he ran this time, who would have been more at home in the old Populist Party of the 19th Century.  But as he ran as a Republican, and as the Republicans held on to Congress, and as Trump adopted the positions of the social conservatives, they have an opportunity that they didn't before.

They also have a duty to act on it.  If the GOP doesn't act right away to curtail abortion and to reverse the court imposed redefinition of marriage, it's sunk.

It also has to act on immigration, as Trump does, but it ironically has an opportunity here to begin to reshape itself into something that the new immigrant communities and the old persistent minorities  can recognize and support.

Immigration in the US has been controversial along ethnic lines forever.  But in modern times, and seemingly now forgotten, the post World War Two battles over restricting immigration came originally from the far left.  It was organizations like Zero Population Growth that argued for strict immigration control, and still do, on environmental grounds. They argue, and frankly correctly, that you can't take in an infinite number of immigrants and still have a country that is nice living in, basically.  Put another way, we don't want to have the population density of India or China. That has nothing at all to do with "race".

Democrats and Republicans, at the Congressional level, have given lip service to immigration issues but at the end of the day the Democrats imagine every immigrant as a Democratic voter and the Republicans imagine every immigrant mowing their lawns.  So they've done nothing.  But poorer Americans, white, black and whatever, know that more immigrants mean more competition for jobs.  And middle class Americans who are not on the threshold of being rich know that more people in general make for towns, cities, and a countryside, that's more crowded.  All of that's what fuels anger over immigration, not really the culture of the immigrants.

Indeed, immigration at the level we have is most harmful to urban blacks, who often have a really seething resentment towards new immigrants for that reason.  The late Richard Stroud, a liberal, used to argue that the employment impact on American blacks was so severe that immigration should be shut down completely until blacks achieved economic parity with whites. That's hardly a "conservative" or "racist" position, but it's one that a lot of people hold instinctively.

Beyond that, no national conversation about immigration has taken place for at least thirty years other than the incredibly lame "we're a nation of immigrants" argument that everyone hauls out.  I often think that if you are Sioux or Shoshone, etc. that argument must be really aggravating, as in "yeah. ..  your nation is one of immigrants, Wašíču".

Anyhow, as the public is reacting on this, and the GOP has to accordingly, this is a chance for the GOP in numerous ways.  If the GOP doesn't begin to appeal to the social views of Hispanics while taking in its more corporate and collective cultural concerns, it has to be staffed by idiots. At the same time, if it doesn't seek to rebuild an immigration policy based on the countries present population, actual economic needs, and the special concerns of African Americans and Indians, it will have missed the boat as well to come across as more rational less bombastic in an odd way.

And indeed, the GOP has to.

This is the last chance, I suspect, for both of these parties.  The voters have screamed that they don't want any more lies and they're willing to gamble on a nearly completely unknown on the hopes that he'll do what he says, as much as that may scare most of the politically attune.  In doing that they've told the GOP we don't want any more boring Bush's and we don't want your country club culture either.  They've told the Democrats they don't want any more Clinton's and they don't want to have their likes and religious beliefs insulted or ignored.  Maybe this guy won't get the job done of getting that message through, but they're willing to gamble that he will, or that he won't be worse than getting ignored anyhow.

It's going to be a wild ride, that's for sure.

But it doesn't have anything to really do with race, in the mind of the average voter.

Indeed, as close as this election was, and it was incredibly close, if Trump hadn't gotten the support of Catholics, he would have lost.  If he didn't get the support of cross over Democrats, he would have lost.  If he didn't get the support of some African Americans, he would have lost.  If he didn't have the support of some Hispanics, he would have lost.

And for the Democrats, he Clinton didn't have the support of most Hispanics, an eroding base of support, she would have done much worse.  And if she didn't have the support of African Americans, the Democrats most loyal and most ignored based, she would have done even worse.

A clear wake up call for both parties.

But not one based on "race".

The Laramie Republican for Monday, November 13, 1916. Record Cold.

The weather a century ago definitely isn't what we're experiencing this year.

Holding meetings and flat out ignoring the comments

Arrogance.

That's how I'd define it.

A legislative committee, styled the Federal Natural Resource Committee, met this week in Riverton Wyoming for a public hearing on a proposal to amend the Wyoming Constitution to provide that there'd be no net loss of public lands acquired from the Federal Government, should the state acquire any.

Keep in mind the Wyoming Constitution presently "disclaims" any claim to the Federal lands, and has since Wyoming became a state.

A large crowd appeared at the hearing.  Opposition to the transfer was hugely overwhelming.  

The Committee voted to keep on keeping on, but to look at amending their draft.  In other words, they voted to wholly ignore the public on this issue.

Not that this is new, they've been ignoring the public on this all along. It's a disgrace.

Here are the names and email address of the Committee members:

Senator Eli Bebout: eli.bebout@wyoleg.gov
Senator Larry Hicks: larry.hicks@wyoleg.gov
Senator Gerald Geis: gerald.geis@wyoleg.gov
Representative JoAnn Dayton: joann.dayton@wyoleg.gov
Representative Norine Kasperik: norine.kasperik@wyoleg.gov
Representative Tim Stubson: tim.stubson@wyoleg.gov

I wrote all of them.  I received a reply from only one, Senator Bebout, which is to his credit.  I'd note that Rep Stubson is leaving the legislature and won't be in the next one, having given up his seat to run for US House.  Stubson was one of the two Wyoming candidates who basically cancelled out each other resulting in Cheney's advance.

These guys deserve a lot of email.  They also desire, save perhaps for Sen. Bebout who at least graciously and clearly writes back, to be retired forever from Wyoming's politics.  If they can't listen to the voters perhaps the voters need to send them a message with their future that they can't ignore. . .  go home.

There's obviously a battle coming up in the upcoming Legislature.  If you care about access at all, better let your representatives know that this is a no go.

Oh, and why am I so sure?

Well history is one reason. But I'll give another recent example.

Just recently, a couple of weeks ago, my son and I went deer hunting.  Or tried to.  We were shadowed, however, by the reluctant goons of a local rancher (I know him) to make sure that we didn't step foot on any private land.  They can't keep you off public land. . . yet, of course.  But their shadowing was so persistent that was the effective impact.  "There an automatic $1,000 trespass fee".

Oh, bull.

Because I could tell these guys were very reluctant in their role as the Stasi, I didn't bother to tell them that they'd just threatened me with a threat that wasn't legal and I'm a lawyer, and that as a result I'd ponder all the next week what to do about it.  They did point us towards where we could go, and they very clearly felt that they'd been given a sh**y job by their employer.

But it's also quite clear to me that given any chance, people who take this approach would do what they could to lock up the land entirely.

This ranch, by the way, has a nice story that's published to go along with it about how it was founded by a European over a century ago who immigrated here as he dreamed of being a cowboy. Rags to riches. Well, they ought to remember that the essence of that is that the Federal Government stole the land from the native population and had it nearly free for the taking, discounting the massive amount of risk and labor it entailed to homestead, for those willing to do it.  It worked close to the way its recounted in the opening of Red River:

Dunson: Tell Don Diego, tell him that all the land north of that river's mine. Tell him to stay off of it.
Mexican: Oh, but the land is his.
Dunson: Where did he get it?
Mexican: Oh many years ago by grant and patent, inscribed by the King of all of Spain.
Dunson: You mean he took it away from whomever was here before. Indians maybe.
Mexican: Maybe so.
Dunson: Well, I'm takin' it away from him.
Mexican: Others have thought as you, senor. Others have tried.
Dunson: And you've always been good enough to stop 'em?
Mexican: Amigo, it is my work.
Dunson: Pretty unhealthy job.

Now, I'm not casting moral blame on anyone. But this recounting is pretty good film dialog and not bad history.  People who sit on land today that their poor ancestors acquired can't sit back and really have a "we built this land" attitude, cleanly.  Partially, yes.  But partially, it's simply "we got here 20 seconds before you did, so it's mine all mine".  Not good.

And there's a further lesson to be learned as well. There's a general feeling right now that money always talks. Well, people who have that view and are in the Wyoming Liberty Group mindset best realize that they just watched a massive populist revolt seize the White House and burn down both political parties.  Populist aren't libertarians. . . they're a species of liberal actually, at the bottom, popular, level.  People who would lock up land should recall that there's a large group out there, much larger than the monied interest, who aren't really keen on ranchers being on the public land at all.  I'm not in that camp by any means.  But keep out one or two Ohio hunters who aren't rich enough for "trespass fees" or guides and . . . pretty soon you have an Ohio Congressman who not only doesn't think that you should be able to buy the Public Domain, maybe you ought not to be using it at all.

Well, for me. . . Politician/Rancher mentioned above, next time I see your name on the ballot the answer is "no", and the next time I see you at a branding you're getting an earful.

The anti war film War Brides released, November 12, 1916

A now lost American film, War Brides was a melodrama in which a young pregnant widow leads a protest against her country's monarch after he seeks to have his nation's young women marry departing solders to produce another generation of fighting men. The heroine actually commits suicide in front of the monarch after leading a female protest.

If the plot sounds far fetched during World War Two the Nazis did in fact encourage SS men to marry appropriately "Nordic" women for the very purpose noted, one of their many weird efforts during WWII.

Lines at the time of the release were reportedly so long that people waiting in line with the $2.00 admission fee had to be turned away.

Sunday State Leader for November 12, 1916: Guard to remain Federalized, Villa avoids encounter with Carranza's troops.