Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: The Father's House, Crow Agency Montana

Churches of the West: The Father's House, Crow Agency Montana:

This is, admittedly, an odd photograph, and not intended to be disrespectful, but it is a bit startling in a way.  This is The Father's House, a church in Crow Agency, Montana.  The church shares a parking
lot with a casino, hence the sign.  From what little I can determine, this Prairie Gothic style church was built as a Catholic Church and was at some point moved to this location.

We unfortunately did not get the opportunity to stop and take a proper photograph, but in the future, if we get the chance, we will.  The reason that we didn't is that a lightening caused grass fire was roaring just outside of town, and it looked as if the highway might soon be closed.

Why Are the Patriots The Villains?

They're not, as far as I'm concerned, as their owners isn't as far as I know, buying up ranch land.

Go Patriots.

The Best Posts of the Week of January 29, 2017

The Coal Thieves

The Office Boy.

The Waitress

What's wrong with ranching today.

The Gewehr 1898

Continuing on at looking at weapons of this time period, perhaps this is where we should have started:



The German G98.

The 98 is one of the greatest weapons designs of all time, and it remains in production today.  Indeed, arguably it is the single greatest military rifle of all time.  Maybe the greatest rifle of all time.

The G98 was the last bolt action rifle designed by Peter Paul Mauser, one of the Mauser brothers that worked their entire lives in the arms industry.  By the time Peter Paul Mauser designed this amazing design, he'd basically perfected the bolt action rifle.



The fact that this design was so well made impacted not only militaries around the globe but also bolt action rifles down to this very day.  98 actions are still made for hunting rifles and even old actions continue to be used for construction of hunting rifles.  The design's influence has been enormous.




And its part of the story we've been telling here, and more directly than  the other rifles featured in the videos we've been linking in.  The 98 had been adopted by Mexico prior to the Mexican Revolution in 7x57 and, together with the 94 variant that had been adopted before that, made up a large number of the rifles used by all sides in the contest.

Journée Varoise

Getting a clue

I often don't post these things on the same day I start them, and sometimes that's a good thing.

This is one story I started off that was worrisome at the time I started it, but developments changed it into a positive. This is the story of the misbegotten strike at the Public lands by Utah Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz.

Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Congressman from Utah's 3d District who got a clue.

Like, quite frankly, Wyoming's Congressional representation, Chaffetz has been on of these folks back in Congress who has been yapping about transferring the public domain to the state.  And in his case, his state is Utah, which is the epicenter of this horrible idea.

Chaffetz has, for years apparently, been sponsoring a bill that would sell off, that's sell, mind you, public lands that Clinton Administration identified as "surplus" including over 600,000 acres in Wyoming.  This came about as a result of a Clinton era study on these lands, many of which were landlocked.

Now, since that time this situation has been addressed for thousands upon thousands of acres through land exchanges.  So the lands identified by the Clinton Administration may not even be publicly held anymore, but rather may have been exchanged for other lands to improve access and block up public holdings.  But at any rate, it was never a popular idea in the West.

And apparently it still isn't, and not even in Chaffetz's district.

Chaffetz' district, it should be noted, includes Salt Lake City.  And Salt Lake City, we'd note, is not traditional Utah.  We note that as we suspect that this movement, in Utah, has roots that fall outside of the "pox on D.C.'s house" that seems to animate much of it elsewhere.

Well, in any event, there was a firestorm of reaction, much like there was on the transfer amendment here in Wyoming.  To Chaffetz's immense credit, however, he reversed course really fast, unlike the backers of such ill begotten proposals in Wyoming.  In doing so, he came out in favor of the public lands and public use of them.

Liz Cheney, Mike Enzi, and Dr. John, are you listening?

What's wrong with ranching today.

From the Great Falls Tribune:

The owner of the Super Bowl-bound Atlanta Falcons and the co-founder of Home Depot bought the 6,300-acre West Creek Ranch in Montana’s Paradise Valley.

This is Arthur Blank’s second ranch in the area and is adjacent to the Mountain Sky Guest Ranch, which he bought in 2001.

The West Creek Ranch is a working ranch and will serve as an additional platform for The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation’s philanthropic work in the West, according to a news release from Arthur M. Blank Family of Businesses, the entity that operates Blank’s business interests.

Elizabeth and Carl Webb sold the ranch to Blank. Carl Webb is a co-managing partner of Texas-based Ford Financial Fund.

The foundation will use the ranch to expand its scope of philanthropic work focused on conservation of natural resources and wildlife habitat.

Nice, eh?

No, its a disaster, of a type.

Let's be brutally frank. We've reached the point where only people like Arthur Blank, who may be a terrific guy (I have no idea) can buy working land like this.  He won't make a living from it and does not need to.  Indeed, he'll loose money owning it, more likely than not. But what won't happens is that a ranch family won't own it, and make their livelihood from it.

I don't know anything about Blank personally.  He may be the nicest guy going and the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation may be great.  Slight, and I do mean slight, research reveals that he has had a hugely successful career in business, he's been married three times, he's survived prostate cancer and he gives away half of his income to charitable causes annually.  The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation defines its message as follows:

The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation promotes positive change in peoples’ lives and builds and enhances the communities in which they live. We seek innovative solutions that enable young people, families and communities to achieve results beyond what seems possible today.

I don't really know what that means, but I'll accept that its all worthy.

But the greatest "philanthropic work in the West" he and his well funded kind would do, would be to stay out of ranching and let real ranchers, ranch.  Beyond that, if he supported efforts to let the average men and women who make up the labor on ranches, and the small ranches which are really true family operations, thrive, that would be great. But that won't happen by his, and the super wealthy, buying the land. They tend, however, to be the only ones who can afford to do so today.

But that's not going to happen. And its not going to happen because the American concept of land ownership is an absolute.  The fact that we're going from a country which allowed the poor to become middle class farmers to one in which only the rich will own land, and that this is a universally bad thing, is beyond our capacity to grasp.

This isn't Arthur M. Bland's fault, but a purchase like this is illustrative of the problem.  In our collective minds we imagine a country like that depicted in Red River where an average Thomas Duson can work the land.  But we're becoming more like the one depicted in something like Pride and Prejudice, where only the upper class owns land.  This is not a good thing at all.

Well, if nothing else, I now know who I'm rooting against in the  Super Bowl.  Boo hiss Atlanta Falcons.  May you go down in an earth shatter record defeat.

The Wyoming Tribune for February 3, 1917. Getting close to war

The Guard was in the news again. . . but not because it was being demobilized.

Woodrow Wilson Addresses Congress

Woodrow Wilson addressing Congress, February 3, 1917

Gentlemen of the Congress:

 

The Imperial German Government on the thirty-first of January announced to this Government and to the governments of the other neutral nations that on and after the first day of February, the present month, it would adopt a policy with regard to the use of submarines against all shipping seeking to pass through certain designated areas of the high seas to which it is clearly my duty to call your attention. 

Let me remind the Congress that on the eighteenth of April last, in view of the sinking on the twenty-fourth of March of the cross-Channel passenger steamer Sussex by a German submarine, without summons or warning, and the consequent loss of the lives of several citizens of the United States who were passengers aboard her, this Government addressed a note to the Imperial German Government in which it made the following declaration: 

"If it is still the purpose of the Imperial Government to prosecute relentless and indiscriminate warfare against vessels of commerce by the use of submarines without regard to what the Government of the United States must consider the sacred and indisputable rules of international law and the universally recognized dictates of humanity, the Government of the United States is at last forced to the conclusion that there is but one course it can pursue. Unless the Imperial Government should now immediately declare and effect an abandonment of its present methods of submarine warfare against passenger and freight-carrying vessels, the Government of the United States can have no choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire altogether."

In reply to this declaration the Imperial German Government gave this Government the following assurance:

"The German Government is prepared to do its utmost to confine the operations of war for the rest of its duration to the fighting forces of the belligerents, thereby also insuring the freedom of the seas, a principle upon which the German Government believes, now as before, to be in agreement with the Government of the United States.
"The German Government, guided by this idea, notifies the Government of the United States that the German naval forces have received the following orders:

In accordance with the general principles of visit and search and destruction of merchant vessels recognized by international law, such vessels, both within and without the area declared as naval war zone, shall not be sunk without warning and without saving human lives, unless these ships attempt to escape or offer resistance.

"But," it added, "neutrals cannot expect that Germany, forced to fight for her existence, shall, for the sake of neutral interest, restrict the use of an effective weapon if her enemy is permitted to continue to apply at will methods of warfare violating the rules of international law. Such a demand would be incompatible with the character of neutrality, and the German Government is convinced that the Government of the United States does not think of making such a demand, knowing that the Government of the United States has repeatedly declared that it is determined to restore the principle of the freedom of the seas, from whatever quarter it has been violated."

To this the Government of the United States replied on the eighth of May, accepting, of course, the assurances given, but adding,

"The Government of the United States feels it necessary to state that it takes it for granted that the Imperial German Government does not intend to imply that the maintenance of its newly announced policy is in any way contingent upon the course or result of diplomatic negotiations between the Government of the United States and any other belligerent Government, notwithstanding the fact that certain passages in the Imperial Government's note of the fourth instant might appear to be susceptible of that construction. In order, however, to avoid any possible misunderstanding, the Government of the United States notifies the Imperial Government that it cannot for a moment entertain, much less discuss, a suggestion that respect by German naval authorities for the rights of citizens of the United States upon the high seas should in any way or in the slightest degree be made contingent upon the conduct of any other Government affecting the rights of neutrals and non-combatants. Responsibility in such matters is single, not joint; absolute, not relative."

To this note of the eighth of May the Imperial German Government made no reply. 

On the thirty-first of January, the Wednesday of the present week, the German Ambassador handed to the Secretary of State, along with a formal note, a memorandum which contains the following statement:

"The Imperial Government, therefore, does not doubt that the Government of the United States will understand the situation thus forced upon Germany by the Entente-Allies' brutal methods of war and by their determination to destroy the Central Powers, and that the Government of the United States will further realize that the now openly disclosed intentions of the Entente-Allies give back to Germany the freedom of action which she reserved in her note addressed to the Government of the United States on May 4, 1916.

"Under these circumstances Germany will meet the illegal measures of her enemies by forcibly preventing after February 1, 1917, in a zone around Great Britain, France, Italy, and in the Eastern Mediterranean all navigation, that of neutrals included, from and to England and from and to France, etc., etc. All ships met within the zone will be sunk."

I think that you will agree with me that, in view of this declaration, which suddenly and without prior intimation of any kind deliberately withdraws the solemn assurance given in the Imperial Government's note of the fourth of May, 1916, this Government has no alternative consistent with the dignity and honor of the United States but to take the course which, in its note of the eighteenth of April, 1916, it announced that it would take in the event that the German Government did not declare and effect an abandonment of the methods of submarine warfare which it was then employing and to which it now purposes again to resort.

I have, therefore, directed the Secretary of State to announce to His Excellency the German Ambassador that all diplomatic relations between the United States and the German Empire are severed, and that the American Ambassador at Berlin will immediately be withdrawn; and, in accordance with this decision, to hand to His Excellency his passports. 

Notwithstanding this unexpected action of the German Government, this sudden and deeply deplorable renunciation of its assurances, given this Government at one of the most critical moments of tension in the relations of the two governments, I refuse to believe that it is the intention of the German authorities to do in fact what they have warned us they will feel at liberty to do. I cannot bring myself to believe that they will indeed pay no regard to the ancient friendship between their people and our own or to the solemn obligations which have been exchanged between them and destroy American ships and take the lives of American citizens in the willful prosecution of the ruthless naval program they have announced their intention to adopt. 

Only actual overt acts on their part can make me believe it even now. 

If this inveterate confidence on my part in the sobriety and prudent foresight of their purpose should unhappily prove unfounded; if American ships and American lives should in fact be sacrificed by their naval commanders in heedless contravention of the just and reasonable understandings of international law and the obvious dictates of humanity, I shall take the liberty of coming again before the Congress, to ask that authority be given me to use any means that may be necessary for the protection of our seamen and our people in the prosecution of their peaceful and legitimate errands on the high seas. I can do nothing less. I take it for granted that all neutral governments will take the same course.

We do not desire any hostile conflict with the Imperial German Government. We are the sincere friends of the German people and earnestly desire to remain at peace with the Government which speaks for them. We shall not believe that they are hostile to us unless and until we are obliged to believe it; and we purpose nothing more than the reasonable defense of the undoubted rights of our people. We wish to serve no selfish ends. We seek merely to stand true alike in thought and in action to the immemorial principles of our people which I sought to express in my address to the Senate only two weeks ago,—seek merely to vindicate our right to liberty and justice and an unmolested life. These are the bases of peace, not war. God grant we may not be challenged to defend them by acts of wilful injustice on the part of the Government of Germany!

Lex Anteinternet: Exercising the 1950 Soviet Option. So what should the Democrats do?

I just published this the other day:

Lex Anteinternet: Exercising the 1950 Soviet Option. Democratic bl...: S enate Republicans, as we recall, held up, or actually prevented, the vote on Barack Obama's final Supreme Court nominee. Now some..

So what should the Democrats do?  That is, assuming holding their breath and turning filibuster blue isn't the proper option.

Rediscovery the electorate and democracy would be a good start.

As a conservative textualist what Gorsuch will bring to the court is fairly simple.  It was the same thing, but perhaps a bit more so, than Scalia did. He'll bring intellectualism, which is needed on the Court (Justice Kennedy, are you listening?).  More than that, he'll bring something that's a simple proposition which is sorely needed.

And that's just this.  The law means what it says, nothing more, nothing less.  It means only what it meant when it was written, nothing more, nothing less.  If you don't like it, go see your representation in Congress.

Shocking, I know.

Democrats really don't like this as they really don't like democracy much anymore.  They quite liking it sometime in the 1960s.  Around that time, misunderstanding the lessons of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, which was to allow those who had been extended basic human (civil) rights to exercise them, they went on to discover new "rights" only  they could find.  Rights that "emanated from the penumbra" from the Constitution.  I.e., they made them judicially up.

That approach has been the liberal "progressive" approach for forty years and its done tremendous damage to the law and respect for the law.  It's also converted the Democratic Party from one that vigorously defended the franchise to one that's opposed to in a real sense.  It's made the party lazy as its come to rely on the courts to get what it wants, which also gives the court license to do what it wants.  Democrats who complain about what they perceive as right wing judicial activism have no real complaint, as they've already established the principal that its okay for the courts to just make stuff up.

Well, the court really isn't the body of Plato's enlightened rulers and most people don't really want to be ruled on social issues by nine elderly lawyers.

So the lesson there is that the Democrats need to relearn to pitch what they're pitching at the ballot box, and not in the courtroom.  Put another way, acting like President Obama did as a supporter of the traditional definition of marriage when first a candidate and then lighting up the White House in rainbow colors after the Supreme Court rules is, well. . . .chicken.

Conservative textualist are not the same as conservative jurists.  There are conservative jurists of other stripes.  Gorsuch will not be arguing for the straight application of the natural law, and while the natural law appeals to me, and did to the United States Supreme Court for many years, such a justice would truly be radical in context.  Gorsuch is far from that.

So, what should the Democrats do?  Participate and support him, and then, if they have a point go out and stump for it.

Teenage Florist Delivery Boy. February 2, 1917

Abe Singer, age fourteen, delivering flowers for Wax Florist in Boston Massachusetts.

Note that, in this pre driving license era, he was apparently delivering these by car.

Continuation School Girls, Ipswich Mills, Boston. February 2, 1917.

More continuation school students.  In some of these photos the students are studying the textiles.

Continuation School Girls, Age 15, working at the Bonanno Laundry

A continuation school is, apparently, sort of an at risk, or work study, type of high school. All of the girls in these pictures were students of such a school and employed at the Bonanno Laundry, in Boston. They were all photographed on this day, in 1917.

Exercising the 1950 Soviet Option. Democratic blundering just keeps on, keeping on.

Senate Republicans, as we recall, held up, or actually prevented, the vote on Barack Obama's final Supreme Court nominee.

Now some Democrats are taking a similar position in regards to Trumps nominees of all types, and at least the New York Times has declared war on Trump's nomination of Justice Gorsuch.  Consider their editorial of February 1:

So what can Democrats do? 

First, they need to make sure that the stolen Supreme Court seat remains at the top of the public’s consciousness. When people hear the name “Neil Gorsuch,” as qualified as he may be, they should associate him with a constitutionally damaging power grab.

Second, Democrats should not weigh this nomination the same way that they’ve weighed previous ones. This one is different. The presumption should be that Gorsuch does not deserve confirmation, because the process that led to his nomination was illegitimate.

Wow.

So is that the approach the Democrats should take?

Only if they're as dense as a box of rocks.

But, so far, the Democratic leadership has been showing itself to be rather granitic in outlook.

Gorsuch isn't what many feared.  Hes a solid textualist and quite frankly an excellent nominee.  Fans of democracy, which Democrats and Liberals generally, frankly, are not (they prefer a Liberal, Imperial, Court), should rejoice.  Gorsuch himself notes that a good Justice should never like all of his own opinions.  Basically, his view is that the law is to be applied as written, and if people don't like the law, they ought to get in touch with their representatives and change it.

You'd think people in favor of the franchise would think, yeah!, nifty!

Well, the Democrats don't think that, as truth be known, they don't really trust voters to "do the right thing" as they see it. No, they trust the courts to tell people what they ought to think and make it the law.  Right now, they truly believed they were on the verge of an extreme liberal revolution in which the Court would hold there are no genders of any kind, there are no borders, etc., and we were on our way to a genderless, self defined society.

Well, we aren't.

And that's what they think was "stolen" from them.

And now the plan, at least on some nominations, is to sit around and do nothing.

Which was the Soviet Union's plan when the United Nations met to consider the North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950.

The USSR had a Security Council veto.  But it walked out of the UN in protest of action being considered and more particularly as Red China was not admitted, at that time, to the UN. And, accordingly, the UN adopted a resolution to enter the war on South Korea's side, the one and only time that's ever been done by the UN.

The USSR could have stopped that, by showing up.  It didn't, as having a snit seemed like the thing to do over its view about Chinese admission.

Which is what the Democrats are now doing.

If they don't act, as a minority, the result will be. . . .well the result will be that the Republican Senate will give Trump everything he asks for without any Democratic input.

The Republican, or at least Trumpist, dream.

Why would they do that?

Well, why would they pit two elderly white candidates against each other, one of whom was detested on a wide scale, insult Catholics and Jews, and all that?

Should they make sure that the "stolen" seat remains in the public consciousness?  They should, by showing up. But they also ought to keep in mind that the public isn't that impressed by the Court.  Generally, the public thinks it knows best and the Court doesn't. The public also thinks that a collection of elderly jurists is unlikely to know what people under, oh, . . .let's say 60, think about what they want to the country to look like.  In other words, most people don't think Justice Kennedy is a cool hipster.  Maybe they think that about Ruth Bader Ginsberg. . . . 

So, in a fight over Gorsuch, what the Times implicitly suggests, is that the public ought to be reminded of all the decisions that have taken votes away from legislatures in the name of redefining society.  And that will appeal to the Times' readers, as they fear the American electorate.

But maybe the Democrats ought to consider that it really isn't 1973 anymore.  And maybe they ought to get outside a bit, if only to the zoo or park, where nature is.

The anti democratic court was likely the deciding factor in the 2016 Presidential election.  The Democrats don't seem to realize that.  For the first time since the late 1960s, really, Catholics voted somewhat as a block. Hispanics, most of whom are culturally Catholic, defected from the Democrats in surprising numbers.  45% of women, including vast numbers of young women for whom 1973 doesn't stand out to their demographic any longer like 1776, 1793 or 1917 does to some demographics, did so in larger numbers.  The anti democratic Supreme Court was responsible for a lot of that, and those voters, who want to keep a say and who have a more realistic view of life and nature than the Court, and the Democratic Party, acted accordingly.

The Democrats pointing that out is a good idea. . . . for the Republicans. 

Count Tarnowski, Ambassador to the United States from the Austro-Hungarian Empire arriving in New York City on the SS Noordam.

On this day, in 1917.

The Family Bakery

 Vincenzo and Angelo Messina, ages 15 and 11, working in their father's bakery at night.   February 1, 1917.

The Company Hospital

Scenes from Cambridge Massachusetts Hood Rubber Company's hospital, from this day in 1917.

Frank DeNatale, Boy Barber

Frank DeNatale, age 12, shaving a customer in his father's barber shop located at 416 Hanover Street, Boston Massachusetts on this day in 1917.  He worked there after school and Saturdays.

Leslie's, February 1, 1917

And the nominee is . .

Neil Gorsuch of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

He's a conservative textualist who is well suited to replace the late Antonin Scalia.

A fine choice.