Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 70th Edition. But for Wales, Welcome to Appalachia and pointless Presidential Sedevacantism musing.
Today Congress will certify the results of the 2024 election. Unlike last time, as Trump agrees with the results this time, it'll go smoothly and with little drama.
It's a good time for this post.
The good, the bad, and the ugly.
We ran a couple of items on historic Wyoming inaugurations yesterday, one for Ed Herschler and the other for Nellie Tayloe Ross
Sunday, January 5, 1975. Ed Herschler inaugurated.
But for Wales.
For Wales? Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales!
A Man for All Seasons.
President Biden indicated the other day he was giving former Wyoming Congressman Liz Cheney the second highest award that a civilian can be given.
Our Senator, John Barrasso, has condemned this, stating:
President Biden was either going to pardon Liz Cheney or give her an award. She doesn’t deserve either. She represents partisanship and divisiveness — not Wyoming.
Barrasso is the Senate Whip right now, and in Donald Trump's GOP, now that McConnell has stepped aside as the leader of the Senate Republicans, that means the Whip does Trump's bidding.
Barrasso is probably right that Congressman Cheney no longer represents Wyoming's view. We don't really know what his views are, as they've sort of blown with the wind as he started to sense he was in political trouble going into the primary. There was no doubt what so ever that his main opponent was definitely a Trumpite and far to the right. If anything, Barrasso moved to the right of that candidate.
But I'll confess that I don't understand many of our current politicians, or certainly our Republican ones. I've met some in one way or another. At least Barrasso would never have said what he did about Cheney prior to Trump.
I don't believe that he believes, really, what he said.
I don't understand wanting an elected position so badly that you'll compromise yourself and say what you don't believe. I particularly don't grasp it in the case of a man who is 72 years old and who could, and really should, retire.
Is being whip that intoxicating?
It must be.
And how odd that at the same time that Barrasso is condemning somebody that he once got along with, he's praising, along with Cynthia Lummis, the late President Carter as “the personification of the American dream,”
That statement, I'd note, comes along with the usual crap that Carter rose from humble yeoman peanut farmer to the Oval Office. Carter, as we've already noted, was a Naval Academy trained nuclear engineer who had served in the Navy's submarine service. To have done that means he was a genius.
He was also deeply Christian and wouldn't compromise his views for anything.
Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., stated, on Twitter:
President Jimmy Carter worked tirelessly for the country he loved, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for his service.
How can we owe Carter a debt of gratitude, which I agree we do, and not owe the same to former President Obama, or former President Biden?
A Catholic saint who had been a lawyer (I've forgotten his name) declared to a friend before entering the Priesthood that he was leaving the law as it was too easy to lose your soul in the profession. How much more true must that be for politicians, for reasons that I can hardly grasp.
Entering a season of danger.
I fear that we're entering what will prove to be a very destructive and dangerous era.
We shouldn't be surprised.
Politics is always full of extreme claims, but starting with the Obama Presidency, they began to enter the Bat Shit Crazy region, and not through Obama or the "establishment" Democrats. The reaction to Obama was in some quarters very extreme.
Trump picked up on that and has incorporated it into his schtick. A salesman by trade who formerly hung out with the rich and shallow, he realized that a disgruntled body of Americans were ready to listen to him, no matter what he said.
Since his defeat in 2019, he's yielded to really crazy and hateful statements. People hate the comparison, but he's used the same demonization tactic that Hitler did. Your problems are caused by somebody else, and that person is evil. By January 6, 2020, a substantial body of the public had come to believe that.
That event was sort of our Reichstag moment, and things are going to get worse. So now we have a deluded and likely mentally ill U.S. Army Master Sergeant blow himself up in a Tesla in front of a Trump hotel, in Los Vegas, claiming to be in support of Trump.
MSG Livelsberger was likely pretty nuts and perhaps suffering from injuries that contributed to what he did. But what's not really been circulated is what his full note said. Somebody has published it, but I didn't save the link. The truncated note says:
We are the United States of America, the best country people to ever exist! But right now we are terminally ill and headed toward collapse.
This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives?
Why did I personally do it now? I needed to cleanse my mind of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.
An email he left states:
In case I do not make it to my decision point or on to the Mexico border I am sending this now. Please do not release this until 1JAN and keep my identity private until then.
First off I am not under duress or hostile influence or control. My first car was a 2006 Black Ford Mustang V6 for verification.
What we have been seeing with "drones" is the operational use of gravitic propulsion systems powered aircraft by most recently China in the east coast, but throughout history, the US. Only we and China have this capability. Our OPEN location for this activity in the box is below.
China has been launching them from the Atlantic from submarines for years, but this activity recently has picked up. As of now, it is just a show of force and they are using it similar to how they used the balloon for sigint and isr, which are also part of the integrated coms system. There are dozens of those balloons in the air at any given time.
The so what is because of the speed and stealth of these unmanned AC, they are the most dangerous threat to national security that has ever existed. They basically have an unlimited payload capacity and can park it over the WH if they wanted. It's checkmate.
USG needs to give the history of this, how we are employing it and weaponizing it, how China is employing them and what the way forward is. China is poised to attack anywhere in the east coast
I've been followed for over a week now from likely homeland or FBI, and they are looking to move on me and are unlikely going to let me cross into Mexico, but won't because they know I am armed and I have a massive VBIED. I've been trying to maintain a very visible profile and have kept my phone and they are definitely digitally tracking me.
I have knowledge of this program and also war crimes that were covered up during airstrikes in Nimruz province Afghanistan in 2019 by the admin, DoD, DEA and CIA. I conducted targeting for these strikes of over 125 buildings (65 were struck because of CIVCAS) that killed hundreds of civilians in a single day. USFORA continued strikes after spotting civilians on initial ISR, it was supposed to take 6 minutes and scramble all aircraft in CENTCOM. The UN basically called these war crimes, but the administration made them disappear. I was part of that cover-up with USFORA and Agent [Redacted] of the DEA. So I don't know if my abduction attempt is related to either. I worked with GEN Millers 10 staff on this as well as the response to Bala Murghab. AOB-S Commander at the time. [Redacted] can validate this.
You need to elevate this to the media so we avoid a world war because this is a mutually assured destruction situation.
For vetting my Linkedin is Matt Berg or Matthew Livelsberger, an active duty 18Z out of 1-10 my profile is public. I have an active TSSCI with UAP USAP access."
Okay, he was pretty much bat shit crazy. But in an era in which people listen to Tucker Carlson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., . . . well you are going to get bat shit.
And then there's Luigi Mangione.
We haven't heard from him yet, but we all know that Luigi Mangione murdered the head of United Health Care seemingly because he was the head of United Health Care.
Moreover, some people are celebrating the murder.
That's outright scary. And its interesting. I can't recall terrorist attacks against corporate officers, except in extreme times. There was of course the famous Wall Street Bombing of 1920, which shows up on this site as we covered its 100th Anniversary.
Who would have expected something like that to return?
And then there were the radical groups of the 1970s, which seemed to be something that was behind us.
A lot of the same rage that fueled the rise of Trump fuels an anger like this, even though Trump himself is a very wealthy man and is now backed by the world's richest man, Elon Musk.
On New Years Day a Muslim American from Texas, who was a U.S. Army veteran, performed an act of terrorism in New Orleans. The perpetrator may have also entered the bat shit region. Apparently he left a note that he originally intended to act in support of ISIL by killing his family, which is downright bizarre. He changed his mind and hit New Orleans, leaving a note that he conceived of himself in a war between believers and non believers. Hitting New Orleans makes sense, in that contexts, although the press seems to have missed it, as its so heavily associated with a Catholic religions event, lent, in the form of a heavily secularized observation, Mardi Gras.
This attack is definitely different, I guess, and actually feeds into something that Trumpites have long maintained, that being that non Christian societies don't necessarily integrate well here. Indeed, an irony of the 2024 election is that Muslims upset about the US supporting Israel in the current war didn't support Harris, and now are going to see a President who is in the Israel can do no wrong camp.
Am I blaming Trump for all of this?
No.
Some of it?
Well, sort of.
The same sort of ardent anger that gave rise to populist MAGA and the January 20 insurrection gives rise to an atmosphere where some serving members of the military feel they need to strike out against an imaginary domestic enemy. Moreover, those inclined to political violence over their plight, often have no clear direction in how they do it.
Students of history would do well to recall that more than one member of the Nazi Party had been members of the German Communist Party. The rage that fueled a misbegotten fanatic love of the worst President in American history can just as easily turn on him, or on those conceived of as being class enemies, or contribute to an atmosphere of violence in general.
I have some predications regarding this. And I'm going to leap back to Sen. Barrasso, who posted this in the wake of the attacks.
After what we saw in New Orleans, it is critical that the Senate confirms President Trump’s national security team as quickly as possible.
Eh? How so?
Well, seeing as this refers to New Orleans, my first prediction is that the MAGA camp that is hostile to all immigrants is the one that will prevail. Rather, the one that is hostile to all "alien" cultures is the one that will prevail. Sorry Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy, you ain't a White Anglo Saxon Protestant, so you need to leave.
That will be the view.
I'm not saying that's Dr. Barrasso's view. I strongly suspect that the Wyoming Senator's views on things are much, much, much, much further to the left than his statements suggest, and much, much, much further to the left than those even held by traditional Wyomingites. I don't even think he thought that out. It just sounds like a good thing to say in your role as whip.
I will note that both attacks share one single commonality. They were carried out by veterans of the United States Army. There has been an ongoing investigation into extremism in the military, but my guess is that this isn't what Sen. Barrasso is talking about. Indeed, the GOP was quick to leap on the thesis that the New Orleans attack was carried out by a recent immigrant, which it wasn't. And the second attack. . . that was carried out by a Green Beret.
One of my predictions is that we're going to see a violent couple of years.
The other is that within a year and a half the editorial pages of the American Rifleman, who fawned over Trump, will be decrying a GOP embrace of gun control. Fans of radicals who proclaim themselves to be for democracy and freedom while ranting about others as enemies should here to study history.
Gun control came in to the USSR with the Communists, after they'd secured power at the barrel of a gun. It was the Irish Republicans who brought gun control into Ireland, after the republic had been won with guns. People like to claim the Nazis brought gun control to Germany (they didn't), but those who like to yell that should recall that Hitler was elected into office as part of a populist movement that promised to fix the economy and which hated "others", so to speak.
As soon as Trump sees the populace as the enemy to his safety, he'll act to preserve himself. It's not, after all, as if he's been competing at Camp Perry and he doesn't need anyone's vote in four years. If he acts, what are those who supported him on this issue going to do, join the Democrats?
A third, and final, prediction. Wyoming won't see one single good thing come its way due to the Trump Administration. All the things that people imagine will occur, won't. There won't be more oil drilled in some magic fashion. The coal industry won't come roaring back. Agriculture, and by that I mean real agriculture, will suffer due to trade policies. Inflation will increase.
Waiting in the wings.
One final prediction.
There's a really good chance that much of what I'm noting won't come about for one reason.
J. D. Vance.
I don't want to sound like a Vance booster. I'm not. I do think he'd make a much better President that Trump, however, as he's not demented.
My guess is that Vance has an 18 month schedule for removing Trump.
Presidential Sedevacantism. Musing on something that won't occur.
I've noticed that some have been developing a desperate set of legal theories proposing that Donald "Felonious Balonius, Potty Mouth" Trump can't be sworn in as President.
Well, he will be, but its interesting.
Let's start with this.
Donald Trump won the 2024 election, taking the popular vote as well as the electoral. The popular vote part is really amazing, quite frankly, and something that probably even Trump didn't anticipate. Indeed, it wasn't all that long ago that the Republican Party itself seriously wondered if it was doomed to demographic extinction, and the Democrats planned on it being and Trump was already creating lies on why he'd lost.
We'll note we were ahead of the curve on the demographic aspect in predicting that the Democrats, and for that matter the Republicans, on that, were likely wrong.
So Trump was elected, he will be sworn into office, and he will be the President in late January. I'm not going to say for the next four years, as frankly, I've been amazed that neither Trump or Biden expired due to natural causes before now, and I don't really expect either of them to make it through the next four.
I also expect, as is obvious, for Vance to wheel him out the door into managed health care at Mara Largo.
They are, after all, old.
Okay, so what are people pondering?
Well, purely as an exercise, could a case be made that Trump will not be the President? Some are musing on that.
Well, you can (even though this is not going to occur).
Trump, is a felon. He was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
This is an odd conviction, frankly. I really think those charges were fairly weak. I question if they'll hold up on appeal. But, be that as it may, he's been convicted of 34 counts of what amounts to a felony.
Let's look at felonies.
Blackstone, looking back at the long history of the term, maintained that “the true criterion of fel e also acknowledges a change in meaning over time: “The idea of felony is, indeed, so generally connected with that of capital punishment that we find it hard to separate them . . . .”19 As the definition of felony became less definitely tied to forfeiture and the use of capital punishment became more general, the number of felonies in English law multiplied. The traditional common law felonies were nine: murder, manslaughter, arson, burglary, robbery, rape, sodomy, mayhem, and larceny.20 Many more were added by statute. Francis Bacon, writing around 1620, listed some thirty-four felonies, including witchcraft and harboring a priest.21 Blackstone lamented that, in his day, “no less than a hundred and sixty [offenses] have been declared by act of parliament to be felonies . . . or, in other words, to be worthy of instant death
Sedevacantism is a hyper ultra extreme traditionalist Catholic thesis by a tiny minority that holds that the Seat of Peter, i.e., the office of Pope, is vacant and has been since 1958, or maybe even early.
It's frankly out to lunch, and so the thesis advanced below, a political thesis, likely is as well.
But I'll advance it anyhow.
Donald Trump cannot legitimately be sworn in as President in January, and therefore the administering of the oath of office to him will work a nullity, and there will be no President for the next four years.
Eh?
A felon cannot be sworn into office due to forfeiture. That's the essence of forfeiture.
Now, the Constitution doesn't mention felonies at all. Indeed, it'd hardly have to as the death penalty for the collection of them would make it unlikely that a felon would ever run for office.
That's likely why the Constitution just speaks of "high crimes and misdemeanors" when it refers to impeachment.
And it also says that Congress "may" impeach for those reasons, not must.
Anyhow, not going to happen.
A more interesting one is the application of the 14th Amendment, which bars insurrectionist from office.
Trump is an insurrectionist, so those who claim he's barred by the 14th Amendment are 100% correct. He is.
But the 14th Amendment is a 19th Century amendment and much of the law before the early 20th Century was vague by modern standards. Indeed, this is constantly a problem with Constitutional interpretation, and provides the reason that scholars and the courts have to look back in time to try to figure out what the drafters meant.
This is a really interesting one. When drafted, everyone knew who the insurrectionist were, they were the Southerners who betrayed their country by serving in the Southern governments and thier armies. But it doesn't' actually say that.
Apparently, nobody felt it had to. The amendment worked just find and when people wanted back in, after repenting of their treason, they were provided with a legal means of doing so.
Given that, the way this works is really weird in a current context. You are supposed to just presume somebody is an insurrectionist, if they participated in an insurrection, and its up to them to ask for legal forgiveness. If you don't think you were guilty of insurrection, you'd have to challenge it in court and prove you weren't, which is the reverse of the legal norms.
This causes all sorts of problems in a modern context. There's been no legal declaration, outside of Colorado, that an insurrection occurred. Does that work? Who knows, it hadn't been tested.
Indeed, what this would require would be an immediate legal challenge in the Federal Courts, or a mass refusal to swear Trump in, neither of which are going to occur, and frankly probably shouldn't. It would provoke a constitutional crisis, at this point, which is likely to be worse than having Trump be the presumed President, at least for the next 18 months.
But if we assume all of this is correct, and that its' challenged, and ultimately a Federal Court gets around to ruling, "yup, he wasn't President", who would be?
Well, until somebody was sworn in, maybe nobody.
More likely, the Court would backdoor in his status until the legal decision was made.
None of this, we'd note, is going to happen. No court challenge is going to be made, and probably none should be.
Last edition.
