Access to Courts and Contempt of the Law

Well, that right there may be the reason you've had difficulty findin' gainful employment. You see, in the mart of competitive commerce... 

Ulysses Everett McGill, Oh Brother Where Art Thou?

I've probably started this thread three times and shelved it all three.  It's too easy to misunderstand what its about.

As everyone now knows Donald Trump and his backers have filed a host of lawsuits all of which are biting the dust, as any legal observer would expect, at high speed.  Such high speed, and so predictably, that there's a lot of speculation on exactly why he would do it.  The common claim of just exhausting legal remedies is basically a dog that doesn't hunt unless the administration has a delusional mindset.  

Indeed, at this point it's really hurting the GOP, which makes a person further wonder what exactly is wrong with the Republican leadership.  It may be just flustered.  It's was clear going into the election that the chances of Trump vacating the office were high, and the party did much better than it was possibly imagined that it would do.  The Republicans have a chance to build on that but there's also a real chance that they're going to lash themselves to the Trump deck and look really bad.  That would covert a chance to take back the House in 2022 to a chance to lose seats there and, moreover, it may well flip Georgia to the Democrats who, right now, are looking a bit better in that early campaign than the GOP is.

Beyond that, however, the damage that has been done and is being done to the profession of the law as a result of all of this is immeasurable.  People assume something about the filing of lawsuits, if they aren't lawyers, which simply isn't true, that being that suits have merit simply because they are filed.

Now, most lawyers are careful about not filing meritless suits.  But there are suits that are meritless or otherwise on the legal fringe.  Because the American system highly values "access to courts" this is regarded by lawyers as just part of the price we pay so that everyone has access to the courts.  But when suits become absurd and serve another purpose, that begins to really break down.  The reason for this, long recognized in the law, is that average people take the "where there's smoke there's fire" approach to lawsuits.  Something must be there, right, because it was filed.

Nope, that doesn't mean that at all.

Indeed, because that doesn't mean that, there are two tort actions, malicious prosecution and abuse of process, that are designed to be counter weapons for the wrongfully sued, and a Rule of Civil Procedure, Rule 11, that also seeks to address that. The problem here is that they're really hard to obtain any relief from, so people usually just are content with their victory, if they obtain it, and call it good. That doesn't stop all the back channel whispering that goes on after you've been sued, however.

As an example of this, I stumbled upon a post in a political blog where the author of the article, commenting on a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump regarding counting ballots in Pennsylvania, gushed on and on about how it was "brilliant" and how even Ruth Bader Ginsburg fault to be totally bowled over by the logic of the compliant.

What total bullshit. Truth be known the Judge assigned the case in Pennsylvania is likely to go through it like shit through a goose, and about as quickly. He or she probably already has.

Lawyers know that a complaint is the initiating document in a lawsuit. The plaintiff lines out his allegations and tries to put them in the framework of the law, and then asks for legal relief.  In this situation, a "speaking complaint" was done, which is what lawyers occasionally do when they're writing their complaint for the press, rather than the court.  Most complaints are pretty dry.  In this one, when you get to the relief part, it looks like the scrivener plans on getting dumped by the Court, which is a logical presumption.

Quite a few of these suits are being filed and the result is that they're creating a delusion of probable legal success in certain demographics that desperately want to believe that there's something to them.  Cold to them at first, the GOP has eventually sort of come around to them and is backing them in their statements.  The local GOP has put up a couple of meme type things on their site, one of which says "We will win" (no, you won't) and another, bizarre one, which features a quote falsely attributed to Joseph Stalin to the effect that its not the number of votes cast, its who counts the votes that counts.

On that last one, Stalin never said that, but why anyone with any American political party, let alone the conservative party, would try to quote Stalin is totally beyond me.  If Stalin had said such a thing it would have been because the result in the Soviet Union was foreordained and baloney.  Arguing for that result is weirdly anti democratic.

Presumably what whoever put that up meant was that there were illegal votes that shouldn't be counted and the right folks will get to the bottom of it.  And, as Republicans who lukewarmly endorses Trump's efforts last week noted, if there are illegal votes, they shouldn't be counted. The problem is that there's really no evidence whatsoever of illegal voting.  Stories of illegal voting exist principally in isolated partisan groups that circulate them to themselves.  This year, that's among disappointed Republicans.  Earlier its been with disappointed Democrats.  

I even saw a post this year that the courts are about to bust wide open a the conspiracy that Q has warned us about, and there was live feed on the news of voter fraud, and during the election the President and his staff were in a secure room in the White House watching it, which oddly was photographed and leaked to the public, and you could see the "Red Castle" in the background.  

None of this is true.  The courts aren't about to bust open some big conspiracy as there isn't one.  There probably are some illegal or improper votes, and some of them will be Democratic and others Republican.  There won't be many, however, and even the body in Trump's administration that oversaw the election pronounced it to be the most secure in the nation's history.  It's another one of Trump's successes really, that his supporters should be proud of, and he should be too. 

Okay, so what's the concern here?  The courts will dump all these suits, nothing will go to the Supreme Court, and if it does, nothing will happen there.  On January 20 Joe Biden will be sworn in as President, like it or not.  No harm no foul, and the lawyers get to pick up some extra cash bucks in troubled times.

Well, that latter item is the problem.

Americans have a love hate relationship with lawyers already. They always have. But the reputations of American lawyers had sunk so low by the 1870s that the American Bar Association formed as a conservative, at that time, legal organization seeking to improve the standards of lawyers and raise their reputation in the public eye.  A classic guild, it sought to impose standards on its own members.

Formed in 1878, the ABA was a huge success. By the first quarter of the 20th Century it had already succeeded in really reforming the American standards of practice.  Highly conservative, it came ultimately to rate law schools and judicial applicants, and by the mid 20th Century most practicing American lawyers belonged to it.

That's no longer true.

It's no longer true in part because starting in the 1970s the same generation that argued in Taking Care Of Business that doing nothing all day was better than working (or at least being in a rock and roll band was) converted the law into a determined money making business.  Prior to that it emphasized its role as a profession, and sort of a tweedy one that was somewhat relaxed.  The generation that went into colleges and universities in the 1960s and came out in the 70s with a social justice mission welded that concept, self servingly, into one that emphasized money.

Now, in the US, you can sue anyone about anything. Everyone knows this.  It isn't that you'll win, but you can do it. The goal isn't to get to court as a rule, it's to get a settlement.  

Added to that, the Supreme Court in the 1970s struck down the provision that prohibited lawyers from advertising. Advertising doesn't have a dignity standard and not all lawyer advertising has been helpful to the image of the profession.

And even more, as the Boomer lawyers came up in the ABA, they converted it from a wall of conservative professionalism to an organization split so that its an activist organization in some quarters. Branches of the ABA has adopted progressive causes and essentially seek to back them through the courts.

The US isn't, contrary to what may be supposed, the most litigious nation in the world.  But its population per capita of lawyers is the highest in the industrial world.  It isn't the highest in the world, that would be Uruguay, but that's not an enviable comparison.  The fact that we spend so much time suing each other isn't a really good look or a really good thing.  Lawyers defend it as living in part of a free and fair society.

But when lawyers get around to attacking a free and fair election, the mask has really come off.  Lawyers serving to advance an effort that they know is pointless at best or part of a tactical effort to do just what Donald Trump falsely or delusional asserts he's the victim of, election stealing, are really harming the nation.

Probably because of that, the lawyers from one of the suits, and indeed I think its the one I've referenced above, have withdrawn from the case.  That is some of the lawyers from one of the firms have informed the court they aren't going forward in it.  Rumors last week held that there was internal dissension in that firm, which hadn't been shy about unpopular causes in the past, about their representation here.  They must have been, as they're now out.

And that's really to their credit.

What isn't to the profession's credit is backing this effort at all.  There is no merit to the cases.  It'll be interesting to see if any of the Judges sanctions anyone as a result of this.  Probably not, but I'd guess it a remote possibility.

And in terms of things remote and near, this means that going into 2021 there are going to be a collection of individuals who will absolutely believe the election was stolen. Believing in a false narrative of defeat is extremely dangerous and usually destructive in the long run. American democracy will be damaged and, ironically, a real chance for the GOP to build a new conservative coalition, based on some of the populist ideas that Trump advanced, and some of the real conservative ideas that his administration advanced, and based on demographic trends just beginning to operate, may be lost.

Some predicted that the end of the Trump Presidency might be the end of the GOP.  Ironically, the end of the Presidency proved not to be, but the Republicans might achieve that all on their own by advocating its own version of the Imperial Staff's 1918 "stabbed in the back" myth.  At this moment, every tortured Republican and Independent who voted against Trump in the General election, and every conservative Democrat who returned back to the Democrats as they feared Trump, has had those fears vindicated.  By looking back rather than forward, when they have a chance to do so, they may be destroying themselves. And by embracing a fantasy of false victory, they certainly are hurting themselves.

And lawyers at this point sort of jumped the shark.  We won't be getting the reputation of the profession back. All of the noble claims that we've made about representing the downtrodden in desperate causes, etc., well. . . . they don't look too true either.   When the scales came off, as they did about 1918, it's going to be obvious that just because a lawyer files something it doesn't mean anything, except perhaps about lawyers.

Monday Morning Repeat for the Week of September 6, 2009.

 It was the only post that week.

Slow medicine

Sunday Morning Scene. Churches of the West: Abandoned Church, Sinclair Wyoming

Churches of the West: Abandoned Church, Sinclair Wyoming: 

Abandoned Church, Sinclair Wyoming

Given the Spanish style of this abandoned, but apparently still maintained, church in Sinclair, my guess is that it was contemporaneous with the  construction of Parco, as the town was originally called.  All the principal buildings that were built in the early 20th Century along the refining town on the Lincoln highway, were built in that style

I'm not sure what denomination used this church, or even when it was last in use.  As noted, it's still receiving maintenance even though it is not serving as a church and is partially boarded up.  Oddly enough, the Baptist Church in Sinclair is using the giant Parco Hotel of the same vintage for its church.

Best Posts of the Week of November 8, 2020

 The best post of the week of November 8, 2020.

Lex Anteinternet: Kasie Hunt should replace Chuck Todd, now.

The frustrating big game season of 2020.

Lex Anteinternet: For Veterans' Day: In Memoriam by Ewart Alan Mackintosh

The Casualty of the Dress Code and COVID 19

A range breakfast. 1905

Mud

The 2020 General Election

Dueling Agendas

November 14, 1920. Russian and Irish Tragedies

November 14, 1920. Russian and Irish Tragedies

Remnants of the Imperial Russian Black Sea Fleet steam away from Sebastopol forever carrying the remnants of Pyotr Wrangels White Russian Army and refugees.  The fleet managed to continue to exist as an entity until 1921, going first to Turkey and then to France.  In 1924 the ships were turned over to Soviet control but found to be unserviceable, and were sold as scrap.

On  this day, the fight of the Russian Whites in the eastern half of what had been the Russian Empire came to an end and the Russian White forces under Pyotr Wrangel abandoned Sebastopol and fled on the remaining loyal elements of the former Imperial Russian Black Sea Fleet, together with refugees.  Allied ships also departed the port taking with them their own nationals.  While fighting would go on in the east, it was the effective end of the Russian Civil War in the west, and the effective end of the war in general in terms of who would ultimately prevail.

Poster of Wrangel in Cossack regalia.

Wrangel would attempt to lead Russian refugees after his exile and formed, for a time, an organization that attempted to centralize that effort and to plan for a future war against the Communists in Russia, a quixotic effort under the circumstances.  In 1927 he moved to Belgium and became a mining engineer.  He was poisoned in 1928 by the brother of his butler, who is believed to have been a Soviet agent.  His descendants have refused to have him reinterred in Russia as the current Russian government has not denounced the evils of Communism.

Wrangel, who was part of the Russian military community descended from German origin, a surprisingly common demographic in Imperial Russian military leadership, had such close German roots that his grandfather had in fact been Lutheran.  Pyotr Wrangel was Orthodox however and had in fact been trained as an engineer prior to joining the Imperial Russian Army.  Like many senior military figures, he had actually dropped out of the service at the time of the Russian Revolution and only joined the Whites after having been arrested by, and escaping from, the Communists.  Such experiences were surprisingly common and to a degree demonstrate how Red paranoia actually fueled the war against them.  He was a very able commander and highly successful in the Russian Civil War before his reversal of fortunes.  A failure to find an overall command for the White effort partially explains this failure.

Wrangel, of wealthy and aristocratic background, obviously managed to find some success after his exile.  Most Russian refugees, however, were of much more modest means.  In the west they spread out among a collection of countries, with France being a common one, and rebuilt new lives in new countries while also retaining their Russian identity.  Their fortunes varied considerably from their compatriots who fled into China a few years later where economic conditions were dire.

Fr. Michael Griffin.

On this same day, Father Michael Griffin, a Catholic Priest in Ireland who sympathized with Republicans, and who had been missing since November 14, was found in an unmarked grave.  He is believed to have been murdered by the Black & Tans.  He is remembered in the name of a road in Galway, where he was from, and in the name of an Irish football club which is called The Father Griffins.

Eileen Quinn

This event shows the way the Anglo Irish War was starting to go, with guerilla extrajudicial killings becoming common.  Just a few days prior the pregnant Eileen Quinn, age 24, was shot by a police auxiliary, a police unit of the Royal Irish Constabulary often confused with the Black & Tans, when she was out in front of her tenant farmhouse nursing a baby.  She was wounded in the stomach and died later that day.  She and her husband Malachi were tenants of Lady Gregory Augusta, an Anglo Irish playwright of nationalist sympathies.  The death of Mrs. Quinn left her husband a widower and her three children without a mother.  Her husband had been away at the time of the killing attempting to negotiate a purchase of land.  A subsequent military investigation came to the conclusion that the killing was accidental and from a random shot designed to attempt to clear the area.

Both killings resulted in a way from the IRA ambush and murder of Sheriff Frank Shawe-Taylor the previous March, which had brought the Black & Tans and Auxiliaries in.

Black & Tan in Dublin, 1921.  He is armed with a Lewis Gun and an incredibly low slung .455 Webley revolver.

The British government had, as noted here the other day, just extended home rule to Ireland, but events like this showed that the measure had come too late.  Additionally, their heavy handedness resulted in contempt in both Ireland and the United Kingdom over them and support in Ireland for the IRA.

Mud

Mud:  

Mud

 

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Pouring Bureaucratic Syrup on the Wolves

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Pouring Bureaucratic Syrup on the Wolves: Gray wolf (Colorado Parks & Wildlife) The people have spoken: Coloradans voted by a roughly 1% margin to order Colorado Parks & Wild...

Off-Road Climb up Pikes Peak with Chevrolet truck in 1957

Blog Mirror: Jenkins: This land is your land

 

Jenkins: This land is your land

Where's the Beef?

Governor Mark Gordon's Press Conference on COVID-19 - November 13, 2020

November 13, 1920. Those teenage years.

A photographer was at work in Craig Colorado, where he took a photograph of the students of the school there, which must have been a unified (all grades) school.  He also photographed the athletic teams of Craig and Meeker.

On the same day, a band of teenagers in Omaha pulled off what was, up until that time, the largest train robbery in the United States, taking over $3,500,000 in fresh United States currency being shipped from a mint.  It involved breaking into into a train car and then departing it at its first stop, where there was a waiting car. So it was a planned thing.

In current dollars, that would amount to $46,000,000.

They burned most of it shortly thereafter, although some of what was taken was in the form of coins.  The amount of money must have spooked them, and therefore they didn't profit by their crime and, in the end, the US really didn't lose much.

Not to condone theft, but burning the cash was really stupid.

A range breakfast. 1905

 

The Casualty of the Dress Code and COVID 19

I participated in a deposition by Zoom the other day.

I've been doing a lot of those since March.  And during that time I've watched the lawyer dress code, which was suffering in the first instance, decline and simply fade away.  I'm not sure that it'll ever actually come back.

When I was first practicing law, if you went to a deposition, you wore a tie, assuming that you were male.  Usually a coat of some kind, like a sports coat, as well. Over the last decade that's really been dropping off.  I found that I was often the only one dressed in that fashion.

Now, however, I'm seeing for the first time lawyers wearing t-shirts on Zoom depos.  I guess if you aren't leaving your house due to COVID 19. . . well, why dress up?  

It's really been remarkable.

And I'm not sure, really, in a good way.

Loving truth

When we really love truth we love even the unpleasant truths.

G. K. Chesterton

Did you get, or take, Veterans Day off?

Just curious.

The answer here would be no.  I don't think I've ever worked anywhere where it was a day off.

Blog Mirror: Tom Hanks; We Are Still Living the Legacy of World War II

 

We Are Still Living the Legacy of World War II

November 12, 1920. First and lasts in sports, and in life events.

November 12, 1920: Man o' War's final run

Read about it at the above, an unfortunately seemingly inactive blog.

On the same day, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was hired as the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, and at the same time the major leagues took on their present organizational form.

This occured, of course, in the wake of the Black Sox Scandal and as part of an effort to address deficiencies in the organization of the sport and clear up its name.

Italy and what would become Yugoslavia entered into the Treaty of Rapallo. The treaty adjusted territorial boundaries between the nations, which had been disputed in the wake of World War One and the creation of the new state.  The new South Slav kingdom and Italy shared populations that were of the ethnicities of the other state. While the treaty did leave few Italians in Yugoslavia, about 500,000 South Slavs remained in what became Italian territory.

The border would be readjusted following World War Two.

Former resident of Cheyenne and teenage lover of Charlie Chaplin, actress Mildred Harris, was granted a divorce from Chaplin.

Harris' sad story, as well as her peculiar role in history (she's at least partially responsible for Wallace Simpson meeting King Edward VIII, has been addressed elsewhere on this blog.

President Wilson refused to sign the execution warrant for Sgt. Anthony F. Tamme, who had been convicted of espionage during World War One.

2020 Election Post Mortem V. Conservatives down ballot, Marching through Georgia, and what it means.

One seat.

That's all that will make up the difference between the Democratic majority and the Republican minority in the House of Representatives in the next Congress.  The Republicans will have 217 seats.  The Democrats 218.

A razor thin difference.

And all because the Republicans lost a seat in Georgia after picking up six elsewhere.

And the Senate may have that same razor thin margin as well. We don't know yet, as we will have to endure two Georgia Senate runoffs.

What does that all mean?

Well, if the Republicans win, they'll have 52 seats, and retain control of the Senate.  And they really only need to keep one in order to do that.

The Democrats need to take both to tie up the Senate, which would mean that Kamala Harris may have the tie breaking vote on a lot of party line votes. That would occur because the Vice President is the President of the Senate and can take that role.

Which would make the office of Vice President unusually important for at least two years.

And agenda wise, that would make all the difference in the world for Vice President Elect Biden.  A tied Senate would give him two years to achieve an agenda.  A Republican Senate, on the other hand, would mean that he'd need to cut a lot of deals with the Senate, and historically Presidents who had been Senators have not been very effective at doing that.  And getting those deals would depend upon a Mitch McConnell willing to enter into them, rather than hedging his bets that the Republicans would pick up the House in 2022.

So the race in Georgia is going to be the most heavily contested Senatorial race in American history.

Beyond that, however, these results show that conservatism is much stronger than pundits would have had it. We believe that's an evolving trend, as we've recently addressed here.  To have watch recent press reports from earlier last year, and to listen to the pundits leading up to the election, you would have had the impression that a new era for Progressives, and a permanent one, was about to be launched.  That turned out to certainly not be the case, at least, for this election.  Conservatives, as Mitt Romney pointed out on last weekend's Meet the Press, did quite well.

Populist (People's Party) candidate from 1892, James B. Weaver.

Indeed, conservative populism is much stronger than we supposed, which we didn't see as a trend, and which some liberal organs like The Guardian are now worried about.  That populism was growing has been obvious back to 2016, where it was growing in both parties, given us both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.  It's a dirty word to pundits, but it's a political fact one way or another, and its one that has always been an element of American politics.  Sometimes its been a very strong one, and in that sense, we've returned to a long running and continual stream of political thought in the US.

Left wing Populist Party, and then Democratic Party, Presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan.

Another area where the punditry would appear to be wrong, therefore, would be the predictions of the death of populism and the death of conservatism, which aren't the same thing and aren't necessarily always aligned.  Both might be nearly as strong in Joe Biden's first two years of his oncoming term they have been in the last four and potentially a bit more organized in opposition than it was in partial power.

Mitt Romney has indicated that he thinks this shows the overall strength of conservatism and that the country is basically center right.  He may be very well right and that's how I'd interpret it as well, which if that is the case its good news for Joe Biden as he has traditionally been center left and should be able to find some common ground.  If that analysis is wrong and we really have two hard and fast camps, whoever, nothing will be occurring in the next two years.

But I don't think that's the case, and so far I've been getting things more accurate than most of the pundits, which doesn't amount to 100% accuracy by any means.  

So, going into 2021, the nation is really divided, but more crowded towards the center than has been supposed. It didn't vote for anything radical and there doesn't appear to be any support for radical measures.  Even while divided left and right, it may be more united with certain populist leanings providing the surprising union between the two side, which also means that the nation may be opting just not to decide certain things that people on the left and right argue should be, and which the current Supreme Court is going to throw back to the legislative branch to decide.

Biden has just two years to achieve something as the Republicans are amazingly posed to take the House back and almost did.  Making predictions now would be risky, but it would be my guess that they'll achieve that in 2022.

That may depend, however, on what occurs in the next couple of months.  The election turned out to be a referendum on Trump himself.  Now that the election is over, longshot options based on court action aren't going to be popular with the electorate and they aren't going to succeed.  Choosing the courts as hills to die on will achieve just that, lasting voter animosity.  And that would amount to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory for conservatives at a moment in which they did very well.

Blog Mirror: Róisín Ingle: Lockdown strikes again – I’m thinking about getting a dog

 

Róisín Ingle: Lockdown strikes again – I’m thinking about getting a dog

Lex Anteinternet: For Veterans' Day: In Memoriam by Ewart Alan Mackintosh

Lex Anteinternet: For Veterans' Day: In Memoriam by Ewart Alan Mack...: 

For Veterans' Day: In Memoriam by Ewart Alan Mackintosh who was killed in action on November 21, 1917.

So you were David’s father,
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.

Oh, the letters he wrote you,
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting,
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year get stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,
And I was his officer.

You were only David’s father,
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight -
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.

Oh, never will I forget you,
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your fathers’,
For they could only see
The little helpless babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you while you died.

Happy and young and gallant,
They saw their first-born go,
But not the strong limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
They screamed “Don’t leave me, sir”,
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer.

The Oval Office on Veterans Day

I do not hold, as some seem to, that the Oval Office should necessarily be occupied by a veteran.  Indeed, we're a democracy with a traditionally small military which has civilian leadership.  And that's a good thing.

But it's' interesting to note that the position, which places the occupant into the role of being the Commander In Chief, and which was first occupied by a veteran in the figure of George Washington, hasn't had one for awhile.

Joe Biden was of military age during the Vietnam War, but he had a series of deferrements to the draft before asthma ultimately disqualified him from being eligible for service.  Asthma is a real condition and no joke, so I'm not claiming anything by noting that.

Kamala Harris (dob 1964) also lacks military service, but she's a post Boomer and hence post conscription and there's no particular reason I'd have expected her to have seen service.

Donald Trump didn't see military service as a young man and there is reason to question why that's the case.  Mike Pence, however, is a late Boomer (dob, 1959) and again, that would mean that he was in the post conscription era.  Having said that, quite a few men did still join the much larger service during that era.  

If that seems like a double standard in regard to Harris, it isn't meant to be.  Men then had, and still have, a much higher service joining rate than women.

Barack Obama (1961) was a very late Boomer, or maybe a post Boomer, so we wouldn't automatically expect military service in his background and we'd be correct.

And that takes us to George W. Bush, who had.  He was, as we've noted in the past, a pilot in the Texas Air National Guard.  That is real service.

His Vice President, however, did not see service and had a series of deferrements.  Ironically that individual, Dick Cheney, served as Secretary of Defense under Bush I.

George W. Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton, didn't see service, but his Vice President, Al Gore, saw it in Vietnam as a member of the U.S. Army.

Significant?  Maybe, maybe not.  It does reflect a real change, but in some ways a return to periodic prior times.  If there's been a big war in the relatively near past, usually that means that a President and his Vice President are likely to have seen service.  If there hasn't been, its unlikely.  As a rule, while Americans since World War One are careful to honor veterans, we're really not a martial nation, and that reflects itself in our leaders.

We are, and it should be remembered, a "nation of laws", and that sure reflects itself in the Oval Office.  Biden and Harris are lawyers.  Pence is a lawyer.  Obama was a lawyer.  Clinton was a lawyer.  You get the picture.

Related Threads:

• They Were Soldiers. . . notable people who had military service, but are notable for something else.

Lex Anteinternet: An odd thought on Veterans Day

Lex Anteinternet: An odd thought on Veterans Day: I'm now the only veteran in the office. When I first worked here, we had two World War Two veterans and one Vietnam War veteran. Now...

Veterans Day

 

November 11, 1920. Armistice Day.

It was, of course, Armistice Day.

In the U.S., veterans gathered.

In France and the UK, their unknown soldiers were interred.

In the UK, Parliament passed the Government of Ireland Act which provided for home rule in Ireland, in two separate political entities, north and south Ireland.  It never went into effect in the south due to the Anglo Irish War.  It simply came too late.

Blog Mirror: November 11 – Veterans Day and The Dogs of War

 

November 11 – Veterans Day and The Dogs of War

November 10, 1940. The Armistice Day Blizzard

 1940  Here's an unusual item, although not a Wyoming one, that shows us, in part, how much things have changed even in regards to weather reports. We're so used to relatively accurate ones now, we don't recall the days when the weather was often a real surprise.  We should note that this winter event did stretch out across the plains to Wyoming, even though it didn't have the devastating impact here that it did in Iowa.

Iowa's 1940 Armistice Day blizzard.

 

I posted a separate link on this event yesterday:

Blog Mirror: November 10, 1940. BAR ROOM BANTER: ARMISTICE DAY, THE DAY 85 DUCK HUNTERS DIED

 BAR ROOM BANTER: ARMISTICE DAY, THE DAY 85 DUCK HUNTERS DIEDED

2020 Election Post Mortem IV: A Non Story? Kamala Harris and "firsts".

It didn't really occur to me, until after the Press finally got around to noting that the Biden/Harris ticket had succeeded (several days after that was obvious), that Harris is the first female Vice President.

That's because, although we're not supposed to mention it, that first isn't really interesting anymore.

That a woman can be President and can be elected to that office is abundantly clear.  Hillary Clinton got more votes than Donald Trump in 2016.  D'uh.

So, what about her being the first VP "of color".

Well, I suppose that might matter, but President Obama was black so how that really matters in regard to the Vice President is questionable.  And Vice President Elect Harris actually has a fairly thin claim to that title in that she shares no common heritage with most African Americans other than having African heritage.  She does, of course, have African heritage, but unlikely the majority of African Americans, her ancestors didn't arrive prior to the 20th Century and weren't held in cruel bondage against their wills as slaves, nor did they endure the horrors that her race endured post slavery and for generations.  Her parents, both of whom are immigrants, were economic migrants, something that the immigrant ancestors of most African Americans were not.  Indeed, the fact that she's half Indian may be more significant, but for the fact that average Americans don't regard Indians from India as an ethnicity, in the weird way that Americans calculate such things.

So, firsts. . .yes, but do they matter?

Probably not very much.

Maybe somewhat, however. She's the first Vice President woman of color, which says something.  It nearly says as much that, in the general community of the electorate, it was hardly noticed.

Mid Week At Work Blog Mirror: A Career in Wireless: 1920

 

A Career in Wireless: 1920

An interesting look at an article from Boys Life in 1920.

In 1920, radio was just coming in.  I wonder how the radio careers that existed then, compare to the ones that exist now?

November 11, 1920

1st Division Reunion, November 10-11, 1920.  Camp Dix, New Jersey

 

Today In Wyoming's History: November 10, 1945. The Closure of the Heart Mountain Internment Camp.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 10: 1945  Heart Mountain interment center closed.

See also:  

Today in World War II History—November 10, 1940 & 1945

Blog Mirror: November 10, 1940. BAR ROOM BANTER: ARMISTICE DAY, THE DAY 85 DUCK HUNTERS DIED

 BAR ROOM BANTER: ARMISTICE DAY, THE DAY 85 DUCK HUNTERS DIedED

2020 Election Post Mortem IV: Don't "go to law"

 At least going into the weekend it was widely believed, as the Trump administration and its supporters were stating it, that they'll file an entire series of lawsuits this morning on the election.

They shouldn't.

They'll all fail, and rapidly. There will then be a push to appeal to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court is unlikely to take anything up and if it does, it isn't going to reverse the election anyhow.

Going to the courts, in these circumstances, would be an undignified way to leave office.  Perhaps for that reason, those close to Trump are urging him not to take this step.  Perhaps they'll succeed.

If they don't, as noted, the best thing that could result would be an undignified end to the Trump presidency, although that end would ratify the choice made by many Republicans and independents to vote against Trump in the election.  

But it'd do more than that.

For one thing, it would tarnish the already tarnished image of the law.  Suits that can't win don't serve a purpose in the long run but the lawyers still get paid.  To take on an attempt to secure the office judicially will come across by many as an attempted coup, and it'll look like lawyers participated in that.

If there are real irregularities anywhere, which there probably are and they're probably minor, they should be addressed.  But at this point, Trump should concede.  Right now, he remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party and the election seems to have at least partially ratified his views on many things, while also expressing discontent with him personally.  A statesman would take the hint and proceed into the next stage, where he could still have influence.

Or at least opt for a dignified departure.

2020 Election Post Mortem III. Democratic infighting

The Democrats have turned to infighting very quickly following the election, essentially recognizing what Mitt Romney stated, the electorate voted for the center.  "Progressives" are being blamed by other members of the party for a poor showing overall.

The party really misread where the electorate was going, and not for the first time.  The punditry did as well, which in some ways excuses the failure.  Basically, the really left wing candidates that rose up in 2018 have turned out not to represent a massive shift in the electorate's views, irrespective of what the punditry thought, and to some extent still thinks.  

This happened to the Democrats in the years prior to Barack Obama's election as well, and the fact that they restrained their most left leaning candidates and positions in that period help explains President Obama's election.  Following Donald Trump's election, however, the leftward side of the party staged what amounted to an uprising.  It hoped to really do well in this election and really bring in the full sweep of its views.  That now appears unlikely to happen and the center of the Democratic Party is blaming the progressive for the loss of a seat in the House and the failure, so far, to take the Senate.

One thing this may due is to cause the stars of the Progressive movement to fade, and perhaps by their own acts.  The most well known of the group, AOC, has lamented that she may quit politics altogether.

But I’m serious when I tell people the odds of me running for higher office and the odds of me just going off trying to start a homestead somewhere — they’re probably the same.

It's hard to imagine her as a "homesteader", but being a bit more humble might serve their cause quite a bit better than the bull in the china shop approach taken so far. 

2020 Election Post Mortem II. A vote for the center

Mitt Romney appeared on this past weekend's Meet The Press and, in his very polite way, gave the best summation of the 2020 race that really can be given.

The voters didn't vote for a radical anything, and in the end, they generally voted for the path of government, a general centerist one, that they've had for the past four years.

The just didn't like Trump personally, by a fairly slim margin.

Monday Morning Repeat for the week of August 2, 2009. The Speed of Cooking

 

The Speed of Cooking

Monday Morning Repeats. An Election Recollection Issue. The best post of the week of November 5, 2017.

We are running two Monday Morning repeats today, for two reasons.

One is that we missed last weeks, so we're making up for it.

The other is that this is suddenly timely again, but likely forgotten.

Lex Anteinternet: Go Donna! In a week of revelations, Donna Brazile...

Had Brazile had her way, the recent election probably would have been on whether or not to reelect Joe Biden. . . and his opponent probably would have been a much younger Republican.

2020 Election Post Mortem I: The Conspiracy theorists.

Let's start with something that has seemingly been forgotten about the 2016 General Election.

Hillary Clinton got more votes than Donald Trump.

Pause. . . let that sink in.

She won the popular vote.

That's why Democrats have been talking about abolishing the Electoral College since 2016, and why Republicans have been defending it. When Cynthia Lummis noted in her campaign that "they even want to do away with the Electoral College" what she was really stating is that if the popular vote decided Presidential elections HIllary Clinton, not Donald Trump, would have been running for reelection.  I.e., the majority would decide.

Democrats didn't like that, until probably now.  This race is so close that Democrats will now be able to take advantage of the Electoral Vote exaggeration.  I.e, at the time I'm writing this Donald Trump has 214 elector votes and Biden 290.  Biden is probably going to exceed 300.  It'll look, therefore, like he swamped Donald Trump.  He didn't.  He barely won.

He did get more votes than Trump, however.

Which isn't too surprising, there are more Democrats than Republicans.

All of which brings me to this.  There were more votes for Democratic Presidential candidates in 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008 and 2000.

More.

So all this stuff about voter fraud. . . is just hoping against hope.

It didn't happen.

Pretending it does is adopting a fiction, and that's dangerous to those who adopt it and in the end to reality.

Conservatives did really, really well this election. They might have kept the Senate, we don't know yet, and they gained in the U.S. House and State Houses.  That's something to build on.

And Donald Trump, in spite of all of his vices, had some real accomplishments.  Judiciary appointments were prime among them.

Moving forward involves looking forward.  The Presidential Election of 2020 shouldn't become the Republican Lost Cause.  The 2016 Presidential Election, in real terms, was a gift, and 2016 to 2020 breathing room.  Conservatives need to move on.

Blog Mirror: Why the Congressional Review Act May Still Be Important, Even If Republicans Win the Senate

 

Why the Congressional Review Act May Still Be Important, Even If Republicans Win the Senate

The frustrating big game season of 2020.

This has been a disappointing big game season, to say the least.

I'm what some people call a "meat hunter",  and approach what some people call "subsistence  hunter".  I'm radical enough at it that I'd be a subsistence hunter but for the fact that my long suffering spouse would not like to participate in that, particularly in a year like this one.

For the second year in a row, and I'll have a post on that later, I failed to draw any "limited draw" tags, which in this case means that I didn't have a chance to go antelope hunting at all.  Never in my life up until two years ago had I failed to draw an antelope tag, and now I've repeated that disappointment twice.  

Unlike some, I like antelope so this is a real disappointment.  

As an additional disappointment I also didn't make the left over license draw date.  I just flat out didn't make it.  There's no good excuse for that, I was just busy.

That left me with only general deer and general elk, and I didn't buy an elk license (I still could, but I'm running out of time).  

And then I didn't get out for the opening day of deer season as I was working. . . something I never used to let happen.  I was too busy, or at least I told myself that.

I didn't get out opening Saturday either, as I had to work cattle that day. But I did get out opening Sunday, with my son.

I had some hope for that, as I had a hunch that people did not go where I'd seen a large buck last year.  I was wrong.  There were people there. But very late in the day, based on another hunch, I got us into a spot that had a lot of deer.  However, it was a spot I hadn't been in before, and our approach didn't quite work out.  We could have taken shots, but the shots would have involved shooting at a moving deer.  I've shot deer that were moving before, but only where I'm confident that it'll be a lethal shot, and I wasn't under these circumstances.  So, we didn't get anything.

I planned on going back, but the season there was incredibly short.

The next weekend I didn't get out again as I was working cattle on Saturday and Sundays both, recalling the line from The Cowboys, "There ain't no Sundays west of Omaha".

So that left this past weekend.

By now, my son had returned to university and so I was left hunting deer on my own, something I haven't done for a really long time.  When my father was living, which is now a long time ago, I usually went with him, or with a friend, and then rarely on my own when I was first working.  After his death, I often went for awhile on my own as my friends were off on their early work careers, which in the United States tends to mean that you have to move away and work in some urban craphole.  But after my son was big enough, and then my daughter, that changed.

I guess I'm somewhat back there now.

On Saturday I went out to an area that was still open, which is an "any deer" area.  I'm not, as I mentioned, a head hunter, so that was good with me. And I've run into deer in there often.  In fact, I did right away, but the single deer I saw was a terribly long shot and a moving one again.  After that, I hiked for miles and miles and hours and hours.  Lots of scenery, which I enjoy, but no deer.  Indeed, perhaps I was lucky as if I'd run into a deer, I'd have been packing it out on my back.  I was prepared to do that, but it have been an exhausting endeavor to say the least.

It took me from early morning to early afternoon to do that, and then I determined to drive home through the mountains.  On the way out, I found a spot and took a small buck.  And that's okay by me.

So I guess this is a success story.  But it's a cautionary tale as well.

Just this past Wednesday I published an item about a man who has become his work, or his work has become him.  Or he's let his life pass by in some ways.

And that's easy to let happen.

Lex Anteinternet: Kasie Hunt should replace Chuck Todd, now.

Lex Anteinternet: Kasie Hunt should replace Chuck Todd, now.: I'm totally serious. Hunt, whose first MSNBC show Kasie DC just wrapped up, and whose second Way Too Early just started, is a good, ef...

Not kidding, like right now.

As in, on today's Meet The Press. 

Churches of the West: St. Barbara's Catholic Church, Powell Wyoming

Churches of the West: St. Barbara's Catholic Church, Powell Wyoming:

St. Barbara's Catholic Church, Powell Wyoming

This is St. Barbara's Catholic Church in Powell, Wyoming.  This church was built in 1964 on the site of the original St. Barbara's which it replaced.

November 7, 1940

The Tacoma-Narrows Bridge collapsed in high winds, 11/7/1940.

Best Post for the Week of November 1, 2020

 The best posts for the week of November 1, 2020.

Blog Mirror: Catholic Stuff You Should Know; Political Spin Class.

The 2020 Election, Part 10

The speed of the news.

Pandemic, Part 4

Kasie Hunt should replace Chuck Todd, now.

'm totally serious.

Hunt, whose first MSNBC show Kasie DC just wrapped up, and whose second Way Too Early just started, is a good, effective, reporter, and doesn't come across as a partisan chihuahua on crack like Chuck Todd does on television election nights, or as a completely unhinged biased partisan as he does on Meet the Press, not that Todd lets her get very many words in edgewise (which, I'll note, brings an effective slight sneer from Hunt, which she's really good at).

NBC.  Send Todd to a well deserved rest. Given Hunt Meet the Press.

Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally.

For those watching, still, televised election returns. . .

Casualties of the COVID Recession Part II

The 2020 General Election