Sunday Morning Scene: Painted Bricks: Virgin Mary Mural in Salt Lake City

Painted Bricks: Virgin Mary Mural in Salt Lake City:

I'll admit that this is a bit unusual for this page, but this is a spectacular mural of the Virgin Mary in downtown Salt Lake City. These photos, taken on my cell phone, do not do it justice in any sense.

This building serves as an art gallery and a pizzeria.

Ruth Law landing at Governor's Island

Avitrix Ruth Law arriving at Governor's Island, New York, after her flight from Chicago in November 20, 1916.

Ruth Law dressed as military aviator, World War One.

Ms. Law would go on to campaign for allowing women to fly as military pilots during World War One. That idea had clearly not arrived.

Somewhat unusual for  the time for a pilot, she went on to live a long life and died at age 83 in San Francisco.

The Best posts of the week for the Week of November 13, 2016

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

Some economics and politics for you.

Poster Saturday: Russian recruiting poster, World War One.

Blog Mirror: Aviation History Month: Aircraft and Paratroopers in the Forest Service

Aviation History Month: Aircraft and Paratroopers in the Forest Service

Posted by Donavan Albert, Office of Communication, U.S. Forest Service, on November 18, 2016 at 11:36 AM 

Airplane fire patrol circling Mt. Jefferson in the Cascade Range. (Credit U.S. Army Air Service 1920.)

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the U.S. Forest Service relies heavily on fixed wing and rotary aircraft to accomplish the agency’s mission. Employees take to the skies for forest inventory surveys, prescribed fire support, firefighting or to get to remote locations. Since 1919, aircraft has been an invaluable resource for the agency. . .

Great reading!

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.