Lex Anteinternet: Planning for little emergencies

Lex Anteinternet: Planning for little emergencies: Planning for little emergencies : Because we never know when we, or someone else, will be in need, it's best to live life ready to share...

Blog Mirror: Couple Donate Legacy 38,000-Acre, $21 Million Cattle Ranch To Keep It A Ranch

 

Couple Donate Legacy 38,000-Acre, $21 Million Cattle Ranch To Keep It A Ranch

Lex Anteinternet: Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. Ignoramus* Watch Part 1.

Lex Anteinternet: Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. I...:   Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Martin Luther King Jr. Ignoramus, Latin for we ...

Yes, this is off topic, but frankly we've reached the point of such blistering ignorance in Cheyenne that this really can't be ignored by the residents of the state.

Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. Ignoramus* Watch Part 1.

 Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Ignoramus, Latin for we do not know.*

Etymology of the word Ignoramus.

October 31, 2025. 

Claims ‘chemtrails’ poison citizens spur Wyoming lawmakers to advance ‘geoengineering’ ban: Claims ‘chemtrails’ poison citizens spur Wyoming lawmakers to advance ‘geoengineering’ ban Nano particles released from Department of War jets are sterilizing soils, blocking sun, lawmakers hear from Wyomingites and YouTuber before backing bill.

What the f***?

"Chemtrails" for those who are unfamiliar with this, is a conspiracy theory.  As Wikipedia summarizes it:

The chemtrail conspiracy theory /ˈkɛmtreɪl/ is the erroneous belief that long-lasting condensation trails left in the sky by high-flying aircraft are actually "chemtrails" consisting of chemical or biological agents, sprayed for nefarious purposes undisclosed to the general public.   Believers in this conspiracy theory say that while normal contrails dissipate relatively quickly, contrails that linger must contain additional substances. Those who subscribe to the theory speculate that the purpose of the chemical release may be solar radiation management, weather modification, psychological manipulation, human population control, biological or chemical warfare, or testing of biological or chemical agents on a population, and that the trails are causing respiratory illnesses and other health problems.

Uff. 

The fact that this passed committee suggest that every member of this committee needs to return to kindergarten save for Barry Crago and Karlee Provenza

So who is on it?

Bob Ide

Barry Crago (voted no).

Taft Love

Troy McKeown

Laura Pearson

John Winter

Dalton Banks

Bob Davis

John Eklund

Steve Johnson

Pepper Ottman

Karlee Provenza (voted no).

Mike Schmid

Tomi Strock

Apparently global warming coming up with some blaming that on chemtrails.  How ignorant can a person be?  It's amazing that they actually will acknowledge that its occuring, and man made, but has to be caused by some bat shit crazy conspiracy theory.

Don't vote for anyone on this list after this, save for Provenza and Crago.  You can judge them on their merits otherwise, but they didn't fall for this whacky shit or tolerate it.

Simply amazing, and depressing.

Footnotes:

*I'm using the word Ignoramus in its original English connotation, as derived from the Latin. I.e., an ignorant person.  

Not a stupid person.

To willfully believe something stupid is ignorant, particularly when done by intelligent people.  Some of these people are undoubtedly highly intelligent, and I don't know that any of them are stupid, but they're willfully voting for something that is just a weird silly conspiracy theory.

And that makes it all the more shameful.

Related threads:

The ascent of the ignorant.

The Agrarian's Lament: What an Eejit

 You really don't have to vote for people who voted yes on something so stupid.

Lex Anteinternet: An East Wing Post Mortem. Outrage over our Gilded Overlords.

I've posted a fair amount on this story. 

Lex Anteinternet: An East Wing Post Mortem.:   Comparative air photos posted by CBS News. Put up under commentary and fair use exception. I've never seen the East Wing of the White ...

One of my old friends, whose become a hardcore right wing populist, while also interestingly being a hardcore corner crossing advocate (the two are in fact mutually exclusive), posted this on his Facebook feed:

The President, and "your President" decides to renovate the Whitehouse, with donations and on his own dime mind you, and he is “Destroying Democracy?” Some of your hypocrisy cancels your outrage. I’m so sick of this crap. It’s just another reminder that the other side has nothing to offer Americans other that staged outrage over bull. TDS much??

Some on the far right have completely swallowed that this is "staged outrage".  The irony is that the exact same people were outraged about everything that Joe Biden did, and Barack Obama did.  Some of that outrage was because they were told to be.

And here's the next thing. The ballroom is probably not going to be completed before Trump leaves office.  Frankly, as the matter is now in litigation, there's going to be some delay.  If a judge is really upset, which is unlikely due to the way courts work, there's precedent for returning the structure ot the status quo ante before anything goes forward, which would in and of itself likely take years.

That's unlikely of course, but there's going to be a district court ruling and then an appeals court ruling. All that will take six months on a project that would normally take several years to complete.

But that's not the point.

The next President, unless its J. D. Vance, is going to take this down, it it gets built  If its a Republican like Thomas Massie it'll gleefully be torn down.  If its a Democrat, it's also coming down.

Let's make it clear.

The ballroom, if its built, or however much of it that's built, will be taken down and erased from the public memory.

At that point in time, will those who support Trump in whatever he does state: The President, and "your President" decides to renovate the Whitehouse, with donations and on his own dime mind you, and he is “Destroying Democracy?”

Not hardly, even if no public funds are then used.  They'll be outraged about how its "destroying" the legacy of a "great" president.

So why does this bother me?

Well in part because I'm an agrarian and this entire project is an insult to agrarians.

Ballrooms are the high school basketball courts of the super wealthy  A place where the extremely wealthy can meet and mingle and do those things Trump noted, have drinks in the foyer, etc.  The kind of place where you can talk shop and meet with the rich and powerful, and heads of state.  Maybe have the Saudi king over, or rub elbows with guests like Prince William. . . or maybe Harry and Jeff Epstein.  It's a public building, no matter whose tribute is used to pay for it, but you can't book your wedding reception of bar mitzvah reception there.

Because you are a peasant.

The entire concept of a massive ornate public building like this is that you peons will love it because you love to bask in the glory of your benighted leaders.  And those benighted leaders, having been born into wealth, really believe that.  You love them as they love themselves, and you are happy to serve the glorious benighted.

That's the antithesis of the American concept.

Here's what the White House grounds should return to, and I'm not joking.

The West Wing also dates back to TR's time in the White House with the construction of what was supposed to be a temporary structure.  That structure was expanded in 1909 and ultimately came to be the White House office space.  I don't doubt that they need office space, but as noted, maybe it can just be somewhere else.

And in fact, for the most part, it should be.

Taft family milk cow Pauline Wayne, one of two milk cows the Tafts kept and allowed to freely roam the White House grounds. What is now known as the Eisenhower building is in the background.  This is as things should be.

Sometime last week I was somehow the recipient of a real estate brochure entitled "Land".

I didn't get around to looking at it until today, even though I knew what it was going to be.  Agricultural land turned into the playgrounds of the rich.

That should end.  People who hold agricultural ground, or even large blocks of ground, should have to make their livings from it and nothing else.  The wealthy holding such ground hurts those who would make a living in this simple manner.

We live in a new Gilded Age.  That age gave rise to the Progressive movement and swept into office people like Theodore Roosevelt.  Something like that needs to happen again.

Yes, I'm outraged over the East Wing coming down for a ballroom, and the very concept of a ballroom outrages me.  I'm outraged that common people have fallen for outright lies and believe everything Donald Trump tells them.  I'm outraged that the extremely wealthy are running the show on everything while, at the same time, our Gilded masters tell us to hate the poorest of the poor.  I'm outraged that Congress will not do its job.  I'm outraged that our military is being ordered to murder people in the Caribbean.  And I"m outraged that our local politicians tell us to support this crap when they do so, in at least 2/3s of the instances, as it keeps them in their elected jobs.

Lex Anteinternet: An East Wing Post Mortem.

Lex Anteinternet: An East Wing Post Mortem.:   Comparative air photos posted by CBS News. Put up under commentary and fair use exception. I've never seen the East Wing of the White ...

An East Wing Post Mortem.

 

Comparative air photos posted by CBS News. Put up under commentary and fair use exception.

I've never seen the East Wing of the White House, and of course, now, I never will.  I have very little, as in no, interest in touring Washington D.C. and  have even less interest than that now that the illegitimate Trump gang of insurrectionist is occupying the nation's capital.  

This has been a very revealing series of events however, and we can take some things away from it.

The first thing we have learned is how utterly desperate Donald Trump is to amount to something.  He started too late in life and his character is too fixed in order to achieve that, absent late in life inspiration of an existential type which would require him to make a profound change in his behavior.  Born into wealth and a playboy by character, he's desperately trying to buy and build himself into seriousness and relevance.  In the back of his mind, or frankly maybe in the forefront, he knows that he's a fart in a windstorm.  After he's out of office, and no amount of far right fantasizing is going to keep him there, his successor, right or left, will begin the process of trying to repair the damage Trump has done.  If its a right wing leader, like wannabe NatCon J. D. Vance, it'll be National Conservative far right, but less insane than Trump.  It probably won't be Vance however, but somebody from the political center, particularly if the Democrats get their act together and dump their own wackadoodle far left, which there are signs they will, or from the actual libertarian populist right.

My prediction, early though it is, is that the next President will be Tammy Duckworth, maybe on a Duckworth Klobuchar ticket.  I can see, however, Thomas Massie and Rand Paul taking a run at Vance's dreams and keeping them from happening.

Vance would keep the Trump monument to himself up and pretend to like it, as he only is where he is now due to Trump, but as soon as somebody who wasn't a Trump sycophant is in the Oval Office, it's coming down.  That will be symbolic of the entire Trump legacy, destruction that will ultimately come down, and have to be rebuilt.

Trump want to see himself as a great man, a sort of Napoleon being crowned, but knows that he's more like Napoleon on Elba.  He's not going to get there.  He's really extremely pathetic.

Also sad is the degree to which it has been demonstrated that a life of extreme wealth is corrosive.  Trump's entire life of largess already showed this, but he really does believe that the White House needs a huge overblown rushed ballroom as he's seen those of failed monarchies in Europe.  The republics, or in one case dictatorship, that inherited that stuff still uses it as it's a human instinct not to rip things down.  That's why the Brandenburg Gate, which should have been blown to rubble in 1945, is still standing.  Yes, it's a monument to German militarism, but it's big and already there so we keep it around.  That's the reason the Eiffel Tower is there, even though its a giant ugly radio tower, or why the "egg beater" thing in Casper Wyoming is still there.  We just can't bring ourselves to rip things down, no matter hideos they are, or how symbolically problematic.

The egg beater in Casper Wyoming.  It's ugly.

This will come down.

It'll come down in part as it just won't work with an 18th Century large house built on a budget.  It wasn't constructed to be a palace, but just a big house.

Which brings me to my next point.

Perhaps the West Wing, after actually going through the proper process, ought to be taken out as well.

No attachments to the structure are really consistent with its original concept.  It isn't supposed to have a lot of offices and the entire concept of the First Lady needing room for anything is absurd.  The First Lady is simply the President's wife, or Trump's case in regard to the monarchical role to which he aspires, the current concubine, or in the American Civil Religion context, his current wife. 

Maybe it ought to be just scaled back to its original footprint.

Some would object that that would mean that it wouldn't have enough room for its purpose Well, No. 10 Downing Street has less room than the White House.  And if more space is really needed, they can find it somewhere else in Washington D.C.  Nixon actually did that with the nearby Eisenhower Building.

The White House in 1846, when it was first photographed.

Restoring the White House back to scale would also be symbolic.  The entire office of the Presidency needs to be restored to scale.  Right now, Trump is in fact ruling as a dictator, with the complicitly of the Dixiecrat Party that has taken over the GOP.  That needs to end, and end to an enormous degree.

The drift towards an imperial presidency started with Theodore Roosevelt, who is a person I admire, but whom I admire more than I once did.  TR, like Trump, tended to act unilaterally, the difference being that Roosevelt was a profoundly intelligent and moral man, where as the opposite is true of Trump.  The East Wing started off in his administration as the fairly modest East Terrace, which looked nice and wasn't an overblown Sun King structure like the proposed ballroom will be, but it nonetheless got the modification trend rolling.

It would be TR's cousin Franklin that really got the modern Presidency established, however, and that due to the emergency of the Great Depression and World War Two.  Franklin Roosevelt did not rule as a dictator, although people liked to accuse him of that at the time.  Ironically, a President that the Republicans hate to this very day is the one, in some ways, that Trump has tried to emulate, even to the extent of wishing for a third term, which he cannot legally occupy.  Franklin, of course, redid the East Wing, which was done in part due to the bomb shelter that was constructed underneath  it.

The West Wing also dates back to TR's time in the White House with the construction of what was supposed to be a temporary structure.  That structure was expanded in 1909 and ultimately came to be the White House office space.  I don't doubt that they need office space, but as noted, maybe it can just be somewhere else.

And in fact, for the most part, it should be.

Taft family milk cow Pauline Wayne, one of two milk cows the Tafts kept and allowed to freely roam the White House grounds. What is now known as the Eisenhower building is in the background.  This is as things should be.

What an Eejit

Donald Trump is a delusional eejit.

A headline:

Trump urges US cattle ranchers to lower prices as he touts tariffs

Donny obviously knows nothing about how cattle prices work.

Cattle prices are high, as the herd is down.  It's a supply and demand sort of thing.  Not a profiteering type of thing.  And it isn't just the price at the supermarket that's up, replacement cattle are up too.

And this, from his wee brain:

The Cattle Ranchers, who I love, don’t understand that the only reason they are doing so well, for the first time in decades, is because I put Tariffs on cattle coming into the United States, including a 50% Tariff on Brazil,

Prices have been going up for years, and this dates back to Biden.  It has nothing to do with tariffs.

Republicans don't care a whit about agriculture as a rule.  Trump's going to hurt us.

Unique Whiskey Made From Ancient Grain Grown In Wyoming Called Emmer Debuts