The topic was African slaves in the United States, and what to do about/with them. Jefferson advocated for establishing an American colony in Africa.
Sparks was a very early Unitarian minister who had served as the Chaplain for the House of Representatives, and who would go on to serve as the President of Harvard. He died in 1866 at the age of 76, having therefore had a life span which would have overlapped the War of 1812, the Mexican War and the Civil War. Fairly typically for the era, he'd been married twice, his first wife having been taken by death when they'd been married only three years.
On "X", fka "Twitter" a man who was the father to a large family of daughters (it was either 7 or 9), and who is very conservative, posted an item expressing relief for Taylor Swift.
His points were really good.
Populist right commentators are all up in arms about Swift right now, for reasons that are darned near impossible to discern. It seems to stem from her expressing support for Democratic candidates in the past, including Joe Biden in 2016. Well, guess what, she has a right to do that. You have a right to ignore it.
She also expressed support for abortion being legal. I feel it should be illegal. That doesn't mean she's part of a double secret left wing conspiracy.
But, and here's the thing, there are real reasons to admire her, or at least her presentation, and the father in question pointed it out. He'd endured taking his daughters to Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, "Lady Gaga" etc., and found them disturbing.
Indeed, they are.
Miley Cyrus went from a child actress to being a freakish figure posed nude on a ball, looking like she was a meth addict who was working in a strip club. Ariana Grande has at least one song that's out right graphic about illicit sex. Lady Gaga has made a career out of being freakish, until she couldn't any longer, and like Madonna is another woman who was the product of Catholic Schools who took to songs that are abhorrent in terms of Christian, let alone Catholic, morals.
Swift, in contrast, can only be criticized a bit for dressing semi provocatively on stage, but only somewhat so. Off-stage, she's always very modestly dressed. Indeed, she's a throwback, with her ruby red lipstick and classic nearly 1940s appearance.
And in terms of relationships, it's noted that she's dating a football player.
Now, we don't know what their private lives are like, but they're admirably keeping them private. It's hard to know what Swift's views are on most issues. And we really don't need to. But in their visible relationship, made visible to us only because of media fascination, they're quite proper. As the poster noted, the football star is "courting" her.
It's not that there's nothing to see here. There's nothing to see here which any conservative in their right mind wouldn't have an absolute freak out about. They're behaving exactly the way in public that supposedly Christian conservatives want dating couples to do. No piercings, no weird tattoos, no scanty clothing.
Which would all suggest all the angst is about something else, and what that is probably about is the secret knowledge that huge numbers of real conservatives can't stand Donald Trump and won't vote for him.
The Andy Griffith Show
I was at lunch two days ago at a local Chinese restaurant, and across the way an all adult family was discussing the plot of the prior night's Andy Griffith Show rerun. It struck me that that may not have happened since the 1960s.
It's interesting.
The Andy Griffith Show went off the air before the Great Rural Purge in Television, but not my much. It ran from 1960 to 1968. It was consistently focused on the rural South, and it felt like it depicted the 1950s, which it never did, save for the fact that what we think of as the 60s really started in about 1955 and ran to about 1964. Indeed, while the show was in tune with the times in 1960, it really wasn't in 1968.
But that in tune with the times is what strikes me here. The family was speaking of it as if it was a currently running show, not like it was something from 60 years ago. That suggests that in some ways people have groped their way back in the dark to idealizing the world as it was depicted then, rural, lower middle class, devoid of an obsession with sex (although it does show up subtly in the show from time to time), and divorce a rarity.
Now, the world wasn't prefect in 1960 by any means. But the show didn't pretend to depict a perfect world, only one that was sort of a mirror on the world view of its watchers. To some degree, that world view had returned.
Epilog
The Taylor Swift story also appears on the most recent entries for City Father and Uncle Mike's Musings, both of which are linked in on this site.
Today in World War II History—February 3, 1944: 80 Years Ago—Feb. 3, 1944: In Italy, New Zealand Corps is formed under Lt.-Gen. Sir Bernard Freyberg, over New Zealand 2nd Division and Indian 4th Division.
Freyberg was born in the United Kingdom but raised in New Zealand. He was a championship swimmer when young, and was licensed as a dentist in New Zealand in 1911. He left New Zealand in 1914 to join the Villista's, and served as a Captain in those forces. He left the fighting in Mexico, however, in August of that year upon learning that World War One had broken out, taking time to win a swimming championship in Los Angeles, and having earned passage to the UK by boxing. He served first in a ground unit of the Royal Navy, and then transferred to the British Army. He remained in the British Army between the wars.
A controversial general outside of British circles, he's somewhat emblematic of the British Army of the period in that his nationality was pretty fluid, but always British. He was appointed Governor General of New Zealand after World War Two, and passed away in 1963.
German POW's, Anzio. February 3, 1944. Note the mixed uniforms, and also that some of these men are wearing camouflage smocks. German POWs at this stage of the war often look very bitter about having been captured.
The Germans sealed off the Anzio beachhead.
Eniwetok, February 3, 1944.
The U.S. prevailed at Kwajalein. Task Group 58 raided Eniwetok. US forces landed on Burton Island.
Soldier's of the 7th Infantry Division moving a light artillery piece on Kwajalein. Note the mid to late war characteristic baggy clothing of the US Army, with cargo pockets appearing.
75mm Pack howitzer on Kwajalein.
Bangalore torpedo team, 7th Infantry Division, Kwajalein. February 3, 1944.
The Red Army encircled the Germans at the Korsun Pocket, where Hitler, on the same day, ordered them not to retreat. Manstein organized an armored force with the goal of relieving the pocket.
Off of the Solomon's, the Japanese sank the U.S. Navy light cruiser Juneau, which took 687 men with it, including five brothers of the Irish Catholic Sullivan family of Iowa.
The Sullivans.
It's commonly asserted that after this the U.S. military would not allow siblings to serve together, but in fact many siblings were already serving together in combat in North Africa as members of Federalized National Guard units. Entire towns would end up loosing huge numbers of their male citizens in the combat actions to come. There was a policy change, which relieved a sole survivor from military service, but it did not come until 1943, and was partially due to the deaths of the Borgstrom brothers of Utah as well. Indeed, the Navy already had a policy precluding siblings from serving on the same vessel, but they did not actively enforce it.
A sister of the Sullivan brothers remained in Navy service. Indeed, their enlistment in the Navy, or in once case a reenlistment, was to avenge the death of her boyfriend, who died at Peal Harbor.
The Sullivan family was not informed of the death of their sons until 1943, at which time their father was informed of all of their deaths at one time. The Navy would commission a ship in their honor during the war, and oddly enough, one of the sons of the one of the men lost would later serve as a post-war officer aboard it. That ship has been decommissioned, but a second The Sullivans was commissioned to take its place.
The current The Sullivans.
The tragic story was also made into a patriotic movie during the war itself, which was released in 1944.
The Sullivan story was the inspiration for the film Saving Private Ryan, although it's obviously in a much different setting.
The Renunciation Act of 1944 made it possible for a US citizen to renounce their citizenship during time of war by applying to the US Attorney General. The hope was that interned Japanese Americans would do so, so that they could be deported to Japan.
It's doubtful that many would have ever exercised that option, but it should be noted that by this time of the war, the news was dealing with American advances in the Pacific nearly daily. Hard fighting was occurring, but the Japanese were losing and that was fairly obvious. Internees had full access to the news and to the extent that this tempted anyone, that surely would have reduced that desire.
Australian lumberjacks, February 3, 1944. New South Wales.
While we keep harping on it, and yes medicine has really advanced since 1924, Wilson's death at age 67 wasn't surprising then, and really isn't now. He was old, by age 67. Electing a President older than that is foolish.
Alimony, a film, was released.
Like many films of this era, the plot is melodramatic and a bit hard to follows. Apparently, the female protagonist sells her inventor husband's nifty invention to a wealthy oilman who covets her. She leaves her husband due to a made up affair, demanding a huge alimony, which she obtains. However, she wasn't fooled, and goes on to marry him again on her terms, whatever that means.
John Howard "Pondoro" Taylor was a near contemporary to last week's entry, Jack O'Connor. O'Connor bore an Irish last name, and Taylor did not, but Taylor was a Dublin born son of a well-to-do surgeon and fit into the Anglo-Irish Protestant class that basically ran Ireland until the Anglo-Irish War. Indeed, it is rumored that Taylor may have gotten into trouble somehow with the IRA, resulting in his relocation to Africa.
I've read the Peter Hathaway Capstick's biography of Taylor, but I've forgotten almost all of it. I usually retain a great deal of what I read, but Capstick is not my favorite author and I've lost the details. That means this entry is, to a large degree, uninformed.
First, does Taylor deserve a spot here at all?
Taylor was an Ivory hunter, and frankly, he was a poacher. That puts him outside of the classification of subsistence hunter, to be sure.
More on that in a moment.
Taylor went to Africa in the golden age of African big game hunting, which roughly stretched from the 1890s until 1950, and which coincided with the height of late stage European colonialism. A "remission man", that class of English man who was sent overseas by their family, with a sort of allowance, in order that they not cause trouble in their line of succession, he was a prolific hunter but oddly solitary. He had no interest in guiding hunting clients at all. As noted, he was an ivory hunter, and a poacher, at a time when that was not admirable, but which did not threaten the game populations, but he also hunted other African species very widely, to include African game bird species we otherwise very rarely think of.
Taylor is known to us today as he was well-educated and very literate. He authored two books, one of which is an absolute classic to this day in terms of big game cartridges. His book on African cartridges basically picks up where Jack O'Connor's leaves off. He cannot be discounted as an expert on big game hunting, or on cartridges.
All together, Taylor write at least five books, with African Rifles and Cartridges being an absolute classic. There is a sequel to it, which I have not read, just on hunting cartridges alone. Interestingly, his last book, Shadows of Shame, was not only his only novel, but it apparently had subtle homosexual themes, with Taylor widely believed to be homosexual himself, which may have led to his explosion from Africa. He was also a slaveholder, in this case the two being linked as he purchased a young man in the bush from the boys desperate parents, with the African man going on to be the object of his attention later on.
Slavery and pedophile behavior cannot be excused, so the question is why list Taylor, who ended up dying in poverty in London? Perhaps he's a reminder that some individuals of great talent also have enormous faults. At any rate, he lived by his rifles for most of his life, existing off of what he shot for food and an income. He's not wholly admirable by any means, but his written works remain among the best ever written on rifle cartridges.
CHEYENNE,
Wyo. - Governor Mark Gordon has ordered the Wyoming State Flag be flown at
half staff statewide from sunrise to sunset on Saturday, February 3,
2024 in honor and memory of Bobbi Barrasso, wife of U.S. Senator John
Barrasso. Bobbi Barrasso passed away January 24, 2024.
Please
note that this notice is only for the Wyoming State Flag
statewide. Other flags should remain at full-staff.
Questioner: "Why did you leave the Republican Party?"
George F Will: "The same reason I joined it. I am a conservative."
If I were to listen to people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, or some of the Freedom Caucus here in Wyoming, it would be go.
If I listen to lifelong residents here in the state, including some lifelong Republicans whom would currently be classified as RINO's by the newly populist Wyoming GOP, it would be stay. Alan Simpson, who is an "anybody but Trump", former U.S. Senator, and who the Park County GOP tried to boot out as a elected precinct committeeman, is staying.
The problem ultimately is what time do you begin to smell like the crowd on the bus?
Konrad Adenauer of the Christian Democratic Union, West Germany's first post-war chancellor. He worked towards compromise and ended denazification early, even though he'd speant the remaining months of World War Two in prison and barely survived. By CDU - This file was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a German political foundation, as part of a cooperation project., CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16173747
To put it another way, I'd give an historical example. It's often noted that quite a few Germans joined the Nazi Party as it was just a way to get by, or advance careers, etc., during the Third Reich period of German history. When I was a kid, there was a lot of sympathy, oddly enough, for that view amongst those who were of the World War Two generation, although at the same time, there was a widely held belief that militarism, combined with radical nationalism, were something that was basically in the German DNA. The US, as is well known, didn't even particularly worry about letting former Nazis into the country.
The Germans themselves pretty much turned a blind eye towards this, so many of them had been in the Nazi Party. Even post-war German politicians who had spent the war in exile did, as it was the programmatic thing to do.
Since that time, however, that view has really changed. It started to in 1968 when German students rioted and exposed former Nazis in the police. Germans haven't really come to terms with it, but having been a member of the Nazi Party is a mark of shame, and it's become to be something despised everywhere, even if a person did it for practical reasons and wasn't really involved in the party.
And it should be a mark of shame.
Americans have been sanctimonious about that for a long time, but starting in the 1970s lots of Americans became ashamed, in varying degrees, of our own ancestors in regard to various things. Ironically, the backlash to that, symbolized by Confederate battle flags, is part of what brings us to our current crisis.
Ed Herschler, former Marine Corps Raider, and Democratic lawyer, who was Wyoming's Governor from 1975 to 1987. Herschler probably wouldn't have a home in today's Democratic Party in Wyoming.
I registered as a Republican the first time I was old enough to vote. The first Presidential Election I was old enough to vote in was the 1984 Presidential election, in which I voted for Ronald Reagan. The first election I was old enough to vote in was the 1982 off year election. I honestly don't know who I voted for Senator. Malcolm Wallop won, but I very well have voted for the Democrat. Dick Cheney wont reelection that year against Ted Hommel, whom I don't recall at all. I probably voted for Cheney. I know that I voted for the reelection of Democratic Governor Ed Herschler, who was one of the state's great Governors.
A split ticket.
Split tickets were no doubt common in my family. My father would never reveal who he voted for in an election. The first Presidential election I recall was the 1972 Election in which Nixon ran against McGovern, and I asked who he voted for when he came home. He wouldn't say, and I don't know to this day.
I knew that my father registered Republican, but not everyone in my father's family did. My grandmother, for one, registtered Demcrat,somethign I became aware of when we were visiting her, which we frequently did, at her retirement apartment here in town. She was pretty clear that she was an unapologetic Democrat, which made sense given that she was 100% Irish by descent. Most Irish Americans, at that time, were Democrats, and all real ones were Catholic. Reagan, who claimed Irish ancestry, woudl have been regarded a a dual pretender for that reason by many of them.
My father's view, and it remains mine, that you voted for the person and what they stood for, not hte party.
But being in a party means something, and that has increasingly come to be the case.
I switched parties after that 1984 election. I was, and remain, a conservative, but the GOP was drifting further from a conservative center in that period, and as I've noted, the election of Ronald Reagan paved the path for Donald Trump, although I won't say that was obvious then. And also, Democrats were the party that cared about public lands, as they still do, and cared about rural and conservation issues that I cared about and still do. The GOP locally was becoming hostile to them. So I switched.
Campaign image for Mike Sullivan, Democratic Governor from 1987 to 1995.
I remained a Democrat probably from about 1984 until some time in the last fifteen years. Being a Democrat in Wyoming meant that you were increasingly marginalized, but finally what pushed me out was that it meant being in the Party of Death. The Democrats went from a party that, in 1973, allowed you to be middle of the road conservative and pro-life. We had a Governor, Mike Sullivan, who was just that. By the 2000s, however, that was becoming impossible. Locally most of the old Democrats became Republicans, some running solid local campaigns as Republicans even though they had only been that briefly. Even as late as the late 1990s, however, the Democrats ran some really serious candidates for Congress, with the races being surprisingly close in retrospect. Close, as they say, only counts with hand grenades and horseshoes, but some of those races were quite close. The GOP hold on those offices was not secure.
Dave Freudenthal, Democratic Governor from 2003 to 2011.
Before I re-registered as a Republican, I was an independent for a while. Being an independent meant that primaries became nearly irrelevant to me, and increasingly, as the Democratic Party died and became a far left wing club, starting in the 2000s., it also meant that basically the election was decided in the primaries. Like the other rehoming Democrats, however, we felt comfortable in a party that seemingly had given up its hostility to public lands. And frankly, since the 1970s, the GOP in Wyoming had really been sui generis. Conservative positions nationally, including ones I supported, routinely failed in the Republican legislature. Abortion is a good example. The party nationally was against it, I'm against it personally, but bills to restrict it failed and got nowhere in a Republican legislature.
The Clinton era really impacted the Democratic Party here locally. Wyomingites just didn't like him. That really started off the process of the death of the Democratic Party here. As center right Democrats abandoned the party in response, left wing Democrats were all that remained, and the party has become completely clueless on many things, making it all the more marginalized. But just as Clinton had that impact on the Democrats, Trump has on the GOP.
Throughout the 70s and 80s it was the case that Wyoming tended to export a lot of its population, which it still does, and then take in transients briefly during booms. In the last fifteen or so years, however, a lot of the transient population, together with others from disparate regions, have stayed. They've brought their politics with them, and now in the era of Trump, those views have really taken over the GOP, save for about three pockets of the old party that dominate in Natrona, Albany and Laramie Counties. A civil war has gone on in some counties, and is playing out right now in Park County. In the legislature, the old party still has control, but the new party, branded as the Freedom Caucus, which likes to call its rival the UniParty, is rising. The politics being advanced are, in tone, almost unrecognizable.
Like it or not, on social issues the old GOP's view was "I don't care what you do, just leave me alone". That attitude has really changed. Given a bruising in the early 1990s due to a Southeastern Wyoming effort to privatize wildlife, the party became pro public lands for awhile. That's change. The party was not libertarian. That's changed.
Money helped change it, which is a story that's really been missed.
Like the Democrats of the 90s, a lot of the old Republicans have started to abandon the party. If there was another viable party to go to, floods would leave. A viable third party might well prove to be the majority party in the state, or at least a close second to the GOP, if there was one.
There isn't.
So, what to do?
While it'll end up either being a pipe dream or an example of a dream deferred, there's still reason to believe that much of this will be transitory. If Trump does not win the 2024 Presidential Election, and he may very well not, he's as done as the blue plate special at a roadside café as the GOP leader. Somebody will emerge, but it's not really likely to be the Trump clone so widely expected. And the relocated populists may very well not have that long of run in Wyoming. Wyomingites, the real ones, also tend to have a subtle history of revenge against politicians who betray their interests. Those riding hiding high on anti-public lands, anti-local interests, may come to regret it at the polls later on.
The Johnson County invaders of 1892. The Republican Party, whose politicians had been involved in the raid on Natrona and Johnson Counties, took a beating in the following elections.
Or maybe this process will continue, in which case even if Trump wins this year, the GOP will die. By 2028, it won't be able to win anything and a new party will have to start to emerge.
We'll see.
None of which is comfortable for the State's real Republicans.
American forces completed offensive actions at Roi and Namur.
Lieutenant Colonel Donald L. Dickson puts up flag on coconut stump. The sign says Namur Press Office. On right is Staff Sergeant Martin Kivel, a Marine Corps Combat Correspondent. February 2, 1944.
Fighting on Kwajalien carried on.
Today in World War II History—February 2, 1944: Soviets enter German-occupied Estonia. In Italy, US II Corps enters outskirts of Cassino town and takes Italian barracks area at Montevilla.
Sarah Sundin's Today in World War II History—February 2, 1944. Indeed, the Soviets took Vanakula.
As part of this, the Battle of Narva and the Battle for Narva Bridgehead began.
The German force was heavily represented by SS forces, with non-German SS units participating. The German resistance was fierce, and the battle would go on for months. Estonian conscripts were also used on the Axis side.
The Germans won the Battle of Cisterna, part of the Battle of Anzio, wrecking the Rangers deployed to it.
PT-216 taking Lieutenant General Mark Clark to the advance command post at the Anzio Beachhead, February 2, 1944.
While an American loss, it did disrupt German plans to launch an assault on the Anzio beachhead. In a way, therefore, while a German victory, it was a Pyrrhic one.
Locals schools were about to be named for Presidents, including one that I went to.
Wilson did fall into a coma that evening.
Albert B. Fall, 2/2/24.
Fall refused to testify.
Alexei Rykov took over for the dead Lenin as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, and Felix Dzerzhinsky became the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy.
And, yes, Rykov fell from grace under Stalin, was arrested in 1938, and killed in 1941.
Dzerzhinsky, a Pole, would save Stalin the trouble by dying of a heart attack in 1926. He got to remain a Soviet hero that way.
Weekly magazines were out.
Three generations of an Irish family posed for a photographer beside their lodgings at Alexander Street, Waterford.
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Boots: The history of retiring old boots on fence posts runs deep in American western culture. Why it got started, let's find out. These boots...
The Red Army commenced the Kingisepp–Gdov Offensive on the Leningrad Front.
Kingisepp was taken on the first day.
The French Forces of the Interior (FFI), uniting all French Resistance movements, was formed.
Clothing restrictions were lifted in the United Kingdom.
"The butcher of Warsaw", Austrian Nazi SS-Brigadeführer Franz Kutschera, age 39, was assassinated by the Polish Home Army. He was a figure in the repression of the region and was noted for his extreme harshness. The Poles had subjected him to a trial in absentia, and carried out the operation once his location in Poland was learned. 300 Poles were executed as a reprisal for his assassination.
He left behind a pregnant Norwegian girlfriend, Jane Lilian Gjertsdatter Steen, who was subsequently "posthumously married" to him, in a pagan ceremony. Posthumous marriages had been introduced by Hitler during the war to legitimize the offspring of German soldiers under these circumstances. She had been serving as a German Army nurse and remarried after the war and lived in Norway, in spite of the feelings of post-war Norwegians towards those who had sympathized with the Nazis. Their son, Sepp Kutschera, became a notable mountain climber.
She had several more children by her second, Norwegian, husband.
Sarah Sundin notes:
Today in World War II History—February 1, 1944: Allied leaders issue Neptune Initial Joint Plan for D-day, including a 5-division front. US Marines land on Roi & Namur in Kwajalein Atoll in Marshall Islands.
Japanese fuel dump burning on Eniwetok, February 1, 1944.
The Umikaze was sunk off of Truk by the USS Guardfish.
The Bolu–Gerede earthquake killed nearly 4,000 people in northern Turkey.
The entry above was obviously written while Enzi was still living. He died, after a bicycle accident, in 2021, shortly after his retirement.
Enzi was a really decent guy who liked to work behind the scene in Wyoming's politics. He was never flashy, he was highly intelligent, and he did not tend to be controversial. He frankly is one of the politicians who would not fit in well into today's' GOP.
Enzi's term as Senator may have ironically, in retrospect, have been extended by Liz Cheney, who assumed he was retiring earlier than he intended to, and therefore ran briefly against him in 2014. At least by appearances, when Cynthia Lummis ran to replace him, Cheney was still considering a Senatorial run in 2020 when Lummis announced, seemingly causing some animosity between them. Had Cheney announced first, she might well be our Senator now, as it would be less likely that she would have been defeated in 2020, and Tim Stubson would have been our Congressman going into that election.
Hiester Richard Hornberger Jr., better known by his pen name, Richard Hooker, was born in New Jerseay. A physician who practiced in Maine, he's remembered for his novel M*A*S*H which was based on his experiences as an Army doctor during the Korean War.
Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) is resigning from Congress effective January 21. This leaves the balance in the House at 219 Republicans to 213 Democrats, with three seats still vacant.
The GOP can only afford to have two members break ranks before it cannot pass legislation.
Bill Johnson is resigning in order to become President of Youngstown State University.
January 8, 2024
Congressional leaders have reached a spending limits agreement that may, perhaps, help avoid more government shutdown brinksmanship this month.
January 12, 2024
Re the January 8 item, not all are happy in the GOP ranks. Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio:“I’m not going to sit there and listen to that drivel, because he has no plans to do anything but surrender"
Johnson could be in trouble.
January 14, 2024
Congress reached a budget deal, featuring of course a continuing resolution that kicks the can into March.
January 21, 2024
Marjorie Taylor Greene has been booted out of the House Freedom Caucus for attacking other GOP members in the House, most particularly, apparently, Lauren Boebert.
Green appears to be the one single person in the House absolutely nobody can stand.
I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is … really appalling.
But the reality is that, that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border. And someone running for president not to try and get the problem solved. as opposed to saying, ‘hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’
Mitt Romney
January 27, 2024
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson declared that a budget measure that the Senate did pass providing aid to Ukraine and addressing the US/Mexico border may be dead on arrival at the House.
Trump appears to wish to preserve the border issues, and a second of today's GOP opposes aid to Ukraine. An unresolved weirdness of populist and Putin, acquired from Trump, remains unresolved.
January 29, 2024
A House committee has released two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas regarding failing to enforce immigration laws and control the border, which is ironic given that the House has made it plain that it won't take up an immigration bill from the Senate which addresses the crisis at the border.
The house will approve impeaching Mayorkas and this will go for a trial in the Senate, which would have to vote 2/3s to remove him from office. That's not going to occur, and the bigger question is whether and in what form the Senate takes this up at all.
One more example of how the American government is not working right now. Something like less than 30 bills have passed the 119th which instead is engaging in political theater like this, particularly in the House.
Only once before in US history has a Cabinet member been in impeached. That was in 1876 for taking kickbacks. As a high crime or misdemeanor is required, this is really absurd. It's risky as well at this point, as it points out that this is being done as the GOP in the House is upset with Biden's failure to defend the border, and thinks that's an impeachable offense, whereas most of them didn't think that sparking an insurrection and acting in a seditious manner was an impeachable offense. Reductio ad absurdum.
January 31, 2024
February 1, 2024
The House passed a bipartisan tax bill that would expand the child tax credit and reinstate some tax cuts for businesses, in spite of the fact that the Government isn't remotely close to paying for all its spending currently.
_flies_the_ship's_battle_flags_during_exercises_at_sea.jpg)
_-_2.jpg)
.jpg)
(c).jpg)
,_bolshevik_revolutionary_and_official._Portrait).jpg)
