Hmmmm. . . I wonder if this caption is correct:
Destruction of liquor by order of Pancho Villa, Columbus, New Mexico, ca. 1916.
The city depicted looks far larger, and more developed, than those I've seen of Columbus, New Mexico in this time frame.
Thoughts?
The U.S. 1st Ranger Battalion, "Darby's Rangers", took El Guettar Tunisia from surprised Italian forces.
William O. Darby, their commander, was a pre-war artilleryman who was exposed to British Commandos while stationed in Northern Ireland. Darby sought and was granted a leadership role in the 1st Ranger Battalion when it was formed in 1942. The Rangers at that time were heavily made up of volunteers from the 34th Infantry Division, which was a National Guard division made up of units from several states. That the rangers had this origin is often missed.
Darby was killed in action in Italy shortly before the war ended.
United States Army Air Corps bombardier Jack Warren Mathis was killed in action. He'd be awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on this day. The citation reads:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy over Vegesack, Germany on 18 March 1943. First Lt. Mathis, as leading bombardier of his squadron, flying through intense and accurate antiaircraft fire, was just starting his bomb run, upon which the entire squadron depended upon for accurate bombing, when he was hit by the enemy antiaircraft fire. His right arm was shattered above the elbow, a large wound was torn in his side and abdomen, and he was knocked from his bombsight to the rear of the bombardier's compartment. Realizing that the success of the mission depended upon him, 1st Lt. Mathis, by sheer determination and willpower, though mortally wounded, dragged himself back to his sights, released his bombs, then died at his post of duty. As the result of this action the airplanes of his bombardment squadron placed their bombs directly upon the assigned target for a perfect attack against the enemy. First Lt. Mathis' undaunted bravery has been a great inspiration to the officers and men of his unit.
Mathis had joined the Army in 1940 and had served as an enlisted artillerymen until his brother joined the Air Corps. He then transferred to it.
The German recapture of Kharkiv was completed. The Red Army evacuated Belgorod.
Of note, now regarded as a Russian city, it had been a Ukrainian one prior to the USSR redrawing the map.
The British Canadian Star, Clarissa Radcliiffe, Dafila, Kaying, the US SS Ogelthorpe, Molly Pitcher, Walater Q. Gresham and the DutchTerkolei went down in the Battle of the Atlantic.
The Vichy administration of French Guiana was deposed.
American Nazi leader, German-born Fritz Kuhn, was stripped of his U.S. citizenship.
Deportation of Jewish residents of Bulgarian occupied Thrace commenced.
In a New York Times interview with British mountain climber George Leigh Mallory, the adventurer gave his reason for looking forward to a third attempt on Mount Everest as "Because it's there".
Mallory did attempt the climb in 1924, losing his life in the attempt.
From UPI:
March 13 (UPI) -- The recreational and commercial salmon fishing season has been canceled along the coasts of Oregon and California, through the middle of May, due to dwindling numbers of Chinook salmon in the states' largest rivers following years of drought.
Not good. Not good at all. Even with all this years rain and snow.
Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus
I declare that I, Patrick, – an unlearned sinner indeed – have been established a bishop in Ireland. I hold quite certainly that what I am, I have accepted from God. I live as an alien among non-Roman peoples, an exile on account of the love of God – he is my witness that this is so. It is not that I would choose to let anything so blunt and harsh come from my mouth, but I am driven by the zeal for God. And the truth of Christ stimulates me, for love of neighbours and children: for these, I have given up my homeland and my parents, and my very life to death, if I am worthy of that. I live for my God, to teach these peoples, even if I am despised by some.
With my own hand I have written and put together these words to be given and handed on and sent to the soldiers of Coroticus. I cannot say that they are my fellow-citizens, nor fellow-citizens of the saints of Rome, but fellow-citizens of demons, because of their evil works. By their hostile ways they live in death, allies of the apostate Scots and Picts. They are blood-stained: blood-stained with the blood of innocent Christians, whose numbers I have given birth to in God and confirmed in Christ.
The newly baptised and anointed were dressed in white robes; the anointing was still to be seen clearly on their foreheads when they were cruelly slain and sacrificed by the sword of the ones I referred to above. On the day after that, I sent a letter by a holy priest (whom I had taught from infancy), with clerics, to ask that they return to us some of the booty or of the baptised prisoners they had captured. They scoffed at them.
So I don't know which is the cause of the greatest grief for me: whether those who were slain, or those who were captured, or those whom the devil so deeply ensnared. They will face the eternal pains of Gehenna equally with the devil; because whoever commits sin is rightly called a slave and a son of the devil.
For this reason, let every God-fearing person know that those people are alien to me and to Christ my God, for whom I am an ambassador: father-slayers, brother-slayers, they are savage wolves devouring the people of God as they would bread for food. It is just as it is said: ‘The wicked have routed your law, O Lord’ – the very law which in recent times he so graciously planted in Ireland and, with God's help, has taken root.
I am not forcing myself in where I have no right to act. I have a part with those whom God called and destined to preach the gospel, even in persecutions which are no small matter, to the very ends of the earth. This is despite the malice of the Enemy through the tyranny of Coroticus, who respects neither God, nor his priests whom God chose and granted the divine and sublime power that whatever they would bind upon earth would be bound also in the heavens.
Therefore I ask most of all that all the holy and humble of heart should not fawn on such people, nor even share food or drink with them, nor accept their alms, until such time as they make satisfaction to God in severe penance and shedding of tears, and until they set free the men-servants of God and the baptised women servants of Christ, for whom he died and was crucified.
The Most High does not accept the gifts of evildoers. The one who offers a sacrifice taken from what belongs to the poor is like one who sacrifices a child in the very sight of the child's father. Riches, says Scripture, which a person gathers unjustly, will be vomited out of that person's stomach. The angel of death will drag such a one away, to be crushed by the anger of dragons. Such a one will the tongue of a serpent slay, and the fire which cannot be extinguished will consume. And Scripture also says: ‘Woe to those who fill themselves with what does not belong to them’. And: ‘What does it profit a person to gain the whole world and yet suffer the loss of his or her soul?’
It would take a long time to discuss or refer one by one, and to gather from the whole law all that is stated about such greed. Avarice is a deadly crime. Do not covet your neighbour's goods. Do not kill. The murderer can have no part with Christ. Whoever hates a brother is guilty of homicide. Also: Whoever does not love a brother remains in death. How much more guilty is the one who stained his hands in the blood of the children of God, who God only lately acquired in the most distant parts of the earth through the encouragement of one as unimportant as I am!
Surely it was not without God, or simply out of human motives, that I came to Ireland! Who was it who drove me to it? I am so bound by the Spirit that I no longer see my own kindred. Is it just from myself that comes the holy mercy in how I act towards that people who at one time took me captive and slaughtered the men and women servants in my father's home? In my human nature I was born free, in that I was born of a decurion father. But I sold out my noble state for the sake of others – and I am not ashamed of that, nor do I repent of it. Now, in Christ, I am a slave of a foreign people, for the sake of the indescribable glory of eternal life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If my own people do not recognise me, still no prophet is honoured in his own country. Could it be that we are not of the one sheepfold, nor that we have the one God as our Father? As Scripture says: ‘Whoever is not with me is against me’; and ‘whoever does not gather with me, scatters’. But it is not right that one destroys while another builds. I do not seek what is mine: it is not my own grace, but God who put this concern in my heart, that I would be one of the hunters or fishers whom God at one time foretold would be here in the final days.
They watch me with malice. What am I to do, Lord? I am greatly despised. See – your sheep around me are mangled and preyed upon, and this by the thieves I mentioned before, at the bidding of the evil-minded Coroticus. He is far from the love of God, who betrays Christians into the hands of Scots and Picts. Greedy wolves have devoured the flock of the Lord, which was flourishing in Ireland under the very best of care – I just can't count the number of sons of Scots and daughters of kings who are now monks and virgins of Christ. So the injuries done to good people will not please you – even in the very depths it will not please.
Who among the holy people would not be horrified to take pleasure or to enjoy a banquet with such people? They have filled their homes with what they stole from dead Christians; they live on what they plundered. These wretched people don't realise that they offer deadly poison as food to their friends and children. It is just like Eve, who did not understand that it was really death that she offered her man. This is how it is with those who do evil: they work for death as an everlasting punishment.
The Christians of Roman Gaul have the custom of sending holy and chosen men to the Franks and to other pagan peoples with so many thousands in money to buy back the baptised who have been taken prisoner. You, on the other hand, kill them, and sell them to foreign peoples who have no knowledge of God. You hand over the members of Christ as it were to a brothel. What hope have you in God? Who approves of what you do, or who ever speaks words of praise? God will be the judge, for it is written: ‘Not only the doers of evil, but also those who go along with it, are to be condemned’.
I do not know what to say, or how I can say any more, about the children of God who are dead, whom the sword has touched so cruelly. All I can do is what is written: ‘Weep with those who weep’; and again: ‘If one member suffers pain, let all the members suffer the pain with it’.[Nota] This is why the church mourns and weeps for its sons and daughters whom the sword has not yet slain, but who were taken away and exported to far distant lands, where grave sin openly flourishes without shame, where freeborn people have been sold off, Christians reduced to slavery: slaves particularly of the lowest and worst of the apostate Picts.
That is why I will cry aloud with sadness and grief: O my fairest and most loving brothers and sisters whom I begot without number in Christ, what am I to do for you? I am not worthy to come to the aid either of God or of human beings. The evil of evil people has prevailed over us.We have been made as if we were complete outsiders. Can it be they do not believe that we have received one and the same Baptism, or that we have one and the same God as father. For them, it is a disgrace that we are from Ireland. Remember what Scripture says: ‘Do you not have the one God? Then why have you each abandoned your neighbour?’
That is why I grieve for you; I grieve for you who are so very dear to me. And yet I rejoice within myself: I have not worked for nothing; my wanderings have not been in vain. This unspeakably horrifying crime has been carried out. But, thanks to God, you who are baptised believers have moved on from this world to paradise. I see you clearly: you have begun your journey to where there is no night, nor sorrow, nor death, any more. Rather, you leap for joy, like calves set free from chains, and you tread down the wicked, and they will be like ashes under your feet.
And so, you will reign with apostles and prophets and martyrs. You will take possession of an eternal kingdom, as he (Christ) testifies in these words: ‘They will come from the east and from the west, and they will recline at the table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens. Left outside are dogs and sorcerers and murderers; with the lying perjurers, their lot is in the pool of eternal fire’. It is not without cause that the apostle says: ‘If it is the case that a just person can be saved only with difficulty, where will the sinner and the irreverent transgressor of the law find himself?’
So where will Coroticus and his villainous rebels against Christ find themselves – those who divide out defenceless baptised women as prizes, all for the sake of a miserable temporal kingdom, which will pass away in a moment of time. Just as cloud of smoke is blown away by the wind, that is how deceitful sinners will perish from the face of the Lord. The just, however, will banquet in great constancy with Christ. They will judge nations, and will rule over evil kings for all ages. Amen.
I bear witness before God and his angels that it will be as he made it known to one of my inexperience. These are not my own words which I have put before you in Latin; they are the words of God, and of the apostles and prophets, who have never lied. ‘Anyone who believes will be saved; anyone who does not believe will be condemned’ – God has spoken.
I ask insistently whatever servant of God is courageous enough to be a bearer of these messages, that it in no way be withdrawn or hidden from any person. Quite the opposite – let it be read before all the people, especially in the presence of Coroticus himself. If this takes place, God may inspire them to come back to their right senses before God. However late it may be, may they repent of acting so wrongly, the murder of the brethren of the Lord, and set free the baptised women prisoners whom they previously seized. So may they deserve to live for God, and be made whole here and in eternity. Peace to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Patrick, Bishop of Ireland.
The History of the Democratic Party
That process too took years to complete, but as it did, entire sections of the post 1932 Democratic coalition evaporated away, with some of it still evaporating. The Democratic Party remains the largest party in the US by far, but it's in deep trouble even if it doesn't recognize it fully. Catholic Democrats, once a large component of the party in the North, left the party for the GOP or to become independents when their consciences couldn't tolerate left wing positions on abortion and gender issues. This included large ethnic components, some of which had weakened simply due to time, such as the Irish Democrats", but the process is being experienced now with Hispanic Democrats, and even with African Americans. In the rural West the party simply died.
So, over time, what has it meant to be a Democrat? Well, the following:
Khemer Air Force pilot Cpt. So Patra, son-in-law of former King Norodom Sihanouk, bombed the presidential palace in Phnom Penh, killing 36 people. He then flew his T-28 to Hainan Island, a Chinese possession.
Arrests followed.
A large release of the few remaining US POWs in Vietnam began, including the release of Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm of the U.S. Air Force.
A remarkable photograph, it depicts Stirm's 15-year-old daughter greeting her father with the rest of the family behind them.
Stirm had already received a Dear John letter from his wife, Loretta, informing him of her intent to divorce him. They did divorce. She died in 2010 from cancer.
His children all had the Pulitzer Prize winning photographs hanging in their homes. He couldn't bear to.
Plures efficimur, quotiens metimur a vobis: semen est sanguis Christianorum.
Tertullian.
The Japanese destroyer Akikaze Maru took 39 mostly German Catholic missionaries, from the island of Kairiru. Eighteen of those were nuns, six were priests, and one was a Bishop. Included was a Chinese woman and her two children.
The ship then proceeded to Manus Island and picked up an additional 20 individuals, again mostly German, most of whom were Protestant in that case. Outside of the Germans picked up there, there was one Hungarian missionary and some Chinese civilians, six of whom were women.
The commander of the ship, Lt. Commander Tsurukichi Sabe took steps to care for the prisoners and assumed they'd be offloaded at New Britain, but at Kavieng, where he next put in, he received orders to murder all of them, which took place on March 18th.
On the 18th, the ship's crew killed them over a three-hour period, dumping their bodies in the sea. Most were shot, but some children were simply thrown in the sea.
The ship would be sunk by a submarine when it intercepted torpedoes fired at the Jun'yō, an aircraft carrier, on November 3, 1944, going down with all hands including, of course, all those still living who had participated in the murder.
Why did this happen? All we can really say is that it wasn't atypical for the Japanese. The Germans and other Europeans were just that, Europeans. The Chinese were Japanese enemies. Killing them all was a pretty Japanese approach to things.
In spite of cooperating with Germany in the export of Jewish residents of Yugoslavia, the Bulgarian parliament balked on plans to do the same in Bulgaria and refused to allow Bulgarian Jews to be taken out of the country to their deaths, thus saving them. It might be noted that the actions taken by the Bulgarian Army in Macedonia and Thrace were not parliamentary directives, so here too, in spit of being an Axis ally, the parliament was not like so many German allies and willing to follow the Germans into murder.
Irish Prime Minister Eamon de Valera delivered his The Ireland We Dreamed Of speech on the radio, in which he stated:
The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age.
The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live.
With the tidings that make such an Ireland possible, St. Patrick came to our ancestors fifteen hundred years ago promising happiness here no less than happiness hereafter. It was the pursuit of such an Ireland that later made our country worthy to be called the island of saints and scholars. It was the idea of such an Ireland – happy, vigorous, spiritual – that fired the imagination of our poets; that made successive generations of patriotic men give their lives to win religious and political liberty; and that will urge men in our own and future generations to die, if need be, so that these liberties may be preserved.
One hundred years ago, the Young Irelanders, by holding up the vision of such an Ireland before the people, inspired and moved them spiritually as our people had hardly been moved since the Golden Age of Irish civilisation.
Fifty years later, the founders of the Gaelic League similarly inspired and moved the people of their day.
So, later, did the leaders of the Irish Volunteers.
We of this time, if we have the will and active enthusiasm, have the opportunity to inspire and move our generation in like manner. We can do so by keeping this thought of a noble future for our country constantly before our eyes, ever seeking in action to bring that future into being, and ever remembering that it is for our nation as a whole that future must be sought.
The Washington Bears won the World Professional Basketball tournament, prevailing over the Oshkosh All Stars. The Bears were an all black team.
Threats
of the IRA notwithstanding, Irish boxer Mike McTigue fought and defeated world
champion Light Heavyweight Louis Mbarick, the Battling Siki.
A bomb was in fact detonated, wounding two children, but the fight
carried on anyhow.
McTigue was Irish by birth but had immigrated to the United States at age 21. After a long boxing career he retired to successfully run a saloon, although in later years he declined into ill health and poverty. He died at age 73 in 1966, a fairly old age for somebody with this early career.
Dobrolet, the predecessor to the world's most dangerous airline Aeroflot, was formed by the Soviet merger of private airlines.
U.S. Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty announced that Warren G. Harding was going to run for reelection, unless ill health precluded it. An announcement through the Attroney General would be regarded as odd now, and was regarded as odd then.
Harding in fact was plagued with health problems, not to mention personal problems, that would take his life later that year.
The local paper ran a tribute to the Irish, something that probably didn't hurt circulation given the large Irish community that then existed.
Former ally of Adolph Hitler, and a man whose overreach in dealing with his Nazi Allies had resulted in his country entering the war, Joseph Stalin, wrote Franklin Roosevelt.
The letter from the Marxist mass murderer read:
MOST SECRET AND PERSONAL MESSAGE
FROM PREMIER J. V. STALIN TO PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT
Now that I have Mr Churchill's reply to my message of February 16, I consider it my duty to answer yours of February 22, which likewise was a reply to mine of February 16.
I learned from Mr Churchill's message that Anglo-American operations in North Africa, far from being accelerated, are being postponed till the end of April; indeed, even this date is given in rather vague terms. In other words, at the height of the fighting against the Hitler troops—in February and March— the Anglo-American offensive in North Africa, far from having been stepped up, has been called off altogether, and the time fixed for it has been set back. Meanwhile Germany has succeeded in moving from the West 36 divisions, including six armoured, to be used against the Soviet troops. The difficulties that this has created for the Soviet Army and the extent to which it has eased the German position on the Soviet-German front will be readily appreciated.
Mr Churchill has also informed me that the Anglo-American operation against Sicily is planned for June. For all its importance that operation can by no means replace a second front in France. But I fully welcome, of course, your intention to expedite the carrying out of the operation.
At the same time I consider it my duty to state that the early opening of a second front in France is the most important thing. You will recall that you and Mr Churchill thought it possible to open a second front as early as 1942 or this spring at the latest. The grounds for doing so were weighty enough. Hence it should be obvious why I stressed in my message of February 16 the need for striking in the West not later than this spring or early summer.
The Soviet troops have fought strenuously all winter and are continuing to do so, while Hitler is taking important measures to rehabilitate and reinforce his Army for the spring and summer operations against the U.S.S.R.; it is therefore particularly essential for us that the blow from the West be no longer delayed, that it be delivered this spring or in early summer.
I appreciate the considerable difficulties caused by a shortage of transport facilities, of which you advised me in your message. Nevertheless, I think I must give a most emphatic warning, in the interest of our common cause, of the grave danger with which further delay in opening a second front in France is fraught. That is why the vagueness of both your reply and Mr Churchill's as to the opening of a second front in France causes me concern, which I cannot help expressing.
March 16, 1943
The letter was either shortsighted or full of hypocritical crap, although perhaps he was blind to its hypocrisy.
In fact, the Western Allies had opened a third front with Operation Torch, or rather continued it as the British were fighting in North Africa prior to Stalin's blundering getting the Soviet Union into the war on the Allied side. This would count the Battle of the Atlantic, a titanic naval battle which apparently Stalin didn't regard as a front, as a front, but which in fact very much was.
This would of course discount the entire Pacific campaign, which was for the Western Allies already a "second" front, but which was keeping the Japanese off of the Soviet's back, or at least arguably so.
The Soviet peoples were suffering enormously, to be sure, a condition they had been in since Stalin's bloody bedfellows had subjected them to the purification of the "worker's state", assuming we do not backdate that to 1914 when Imperial Russia entered World War One, but mass bloodletting in the USSR was a thing long before World War Two. That it got much worse during World War Two cannot be discounted, to be sure, although part of the Soviet suffering was due to Stalin killing competent Soviet officers prior to the Second World War and terrorizing his own population.
What can you say? Keeping up the fable that Stalin needed a "second front", rather than acknowledging he had one, and then some, was in everyone's best interest.
On one of those fronts, on the Atlantic, the largest wolfpack attack of the war occurred as 22 Allied merchant ships were sunk.
"Second" front indeed.
This TBF had a close call on the Atlantic while landing on the USS Charger, an escort carrier.
Anthony Eden visited the Roosevelt's.
The Covered Wagon appeared in theaters.
Odd to think of, but there were people living who had crossed the West, as very young people, at the time.
The IRA threatened to bomb the La Scala Opera House in Dublin on St. Patrick's Day if a boxing match between Mike McTigue and Battling Siki went forwards as scheduled.
What a bunch of fun suckers.
This exceedingly weird aircraft was photographed:
Lex Anteinternet: Monday, March 15, 1943 A Wyoming Federal Reservat...: Today In Wyoming's History: March 15: 1943 Franklin Roosevelt used executive authority to proclaim 221,000 acres as the Jackson Hole National Monument, the predecessor to today's Grand Teton National Park. Governor Hunt threatened to use the Highway Patrol to prevent Federal authority on its grounds. Congress, for its part, refused to appropriate money for the monument.
The final weeks of the 67th Legislature brought to light the tension within the Republican Caucus. It is clear to any follower of the Legislature that Republicans are divided by two different world views: for purposes of this column, these sects will be referred to as the “conservatives” and the “uniparty.”
From a Cowboy State Daily editorial by Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams
Uniparty?
Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, a highly conservative legislator from Park County, has chosen to refer to the factions in the GOP by these newly minted terms.
I'd question her perception in coining them.
Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams is highly conservative. I don't know what her overall views are, but on social issues, there's no doubt of that. Frankly, I'm also highly conservative on social issues.
Most of the establishment GOP in Wyoming is pretty darned conservative, but traditionally not all that conservative on social issues, which may surprise a lot of people and which was probably a definite surprise to Freedom Caucus freshmen. Somebody like Jeanette Ward, fresh off the Interstate from Illinois who made sounds about Illinois being "fascists" and how she was glad to be in a maskless state was probably pretty surprised to find that anti mask legislation bit the dust, and by now she's probably surprised to learn that while she was fleeting The Prairie State for the Equality State to avoid having her children mask up, we were making children mask up too.
Well, Texas is still open for those wishing to so relocate. . .
Anyhow, "Uniparty" would mean, by linguistic derivation "One Party". Why is the more traditional conservative to moderate conservative wing of the GOP, which has been the dominate party here since the 1970s, the "Uniparty"?
Indeed, arguably, that term would better apply to the insurgent populists who have taken over the GOP organization here and who hold the position that a person dare not question Trump in any fashion, lest ye be tossed from the warm hearth of the Republican fire and tossed out into the cold domain of the wolves in sheep's clothing, the Democrats?
Her overall editorial isn't bad, but this demonstrates something I posted on just yesterday. The GOP here traditionally hasn't been populist. They're the new arrivals.
Uniparty, I learned, is a new Trumpist word, whic his the height of irony, as the GOP since his mid term has taken pretty much the Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Führer approach to things. Trump is not to be questioned and we are to work towards the leader and apply the führerprinzip. Use of term, therefore, suggests that the speaker is tapped into Trumpist populism. A Political article notes:
“The Uniparty” is the latest populist buzzword to seize the imagination of the drain-the-swamp crowd, those who see grand conspiracies in the machinations of the “deep state” and globalist-corporate forces. It has a crisp clarity, instantly conveying the idea of an establishment cabal, Democrat and Republican alike, arrayed against their outsider hero, Donald Trump.
So, in using the term, Rodriquez-Williams essentially asserts that the populists, who aren't really clearly conservatives (more on that in an upcoming post. . . after first discussing the Democrats. . . who originally were a populist party), are the real conservatives, where as the other folks in the GOP are part of a joint Democratic/Republican establishment mob.
You know, the one where Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney agree with Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi as demonstrated by. . . . um, well, anyhow.
At least Rodriguez-Williams didn't resort to the grossly inaccurate name-calling that some in the populist camp do, and for all I know, she may not be a populist. Consider, instead, the Cowboy State Daily editorial by Rep. John Bear:
Liberals, who had maintained control of legislative leadership during the interim, formulated committee bills taking advantage of the growing revenue surplus while failing to provide a long term solution which would require the government to to tighten its own belt.
Liberals maintain control of Wyoming's legislative leadership?
Ummm. . . in order to take that seriously, I'd have to be willing to accept that Elvis is alive and running a flower shop in Portland, Jim Morrison actually didn't pass in Paris but changed his name and joined the U.S. Navy, following in the footsteps of his father, Amelia Earhart didn't disappear in the Pacific, but flew on to Chile in jet stream winds and became a barista, George Armstrong Custer didn't die in Montana but joined the Sioux and spent the rest of his days on the Reservation, and that Bigfoot works in the coop in Laramie.
Okay, the last one of those is true, but not the rest.
There are some liberals in the legislature, but they're few, and they're all Democrats.
Of minor interest, Rodriquez-Williams is from California, which is a bit ironic as her article protests against Sommer's complaints about out of state ideas. Bear is from Trenton, Missouri.
Which points out again, a lot of the Wyoming far right, came from far away.
Does it matter? Certainly it doesn't legally. A person is free to run and be elected, as long as they qualify for office, which doesn't require much. Indeed, Jeanette Ward didn't even qualify to hold office until after she won the primary.
But here's the thing. To a very large degree, a person's Weltanschauung is formed in their formative years, and the things you worry about or care about tend to be ingrained in you then. Rodriquez-Williams is from California, although she came here as a highway patrolman and worked in that role for a while. Chuck Gray is from California and was schooled in Pennsylvania and has very little connection with Wyoming. Foster Freiss, the hard right's recent, darling here, was from Wisconsin and kept a second home in Arizona. Bear is from Missouri. Ward is from Illinois. Bouchard is from Florida.
None of them went to high school with the sons and daughters of local welders or oilfield workers. Probably none of them ever worked on a drilling rig, or served in the local National Guard to help pay for school. None of them probably worked on a ranch or cut hay. None of them grew up in a state where a raging blizzard meant your parents told you to put on your rubber overshoes and then shoved you out the door.
Populism is supposed to bring the wisdom of the people to politics. But if you aren't part of the people, whose wisdom are you bringing?
Related threads:
