County Seat Towns, in 1880

An excerpt from our family reading, Mr. Edwards visits the Ingalls family in The Long Winter (before the long winter becomes a looooong winter):

This here country, it's too settled up for me. The politicians are a-swarming in already, and ma'am if'n there's any worst pest than grasshoppers it surely is politicians. Why, they'll tax the lining out'n a man's pockets to keep up these here county-seat towns! I don't see nary a use for a county, nohow. We all got along happy and content without 'em.

Donald Rumsfeld's Presidential Campaign

I have to admit I wasn't following politics very closely in 1987, but I saw Donald Rumsfeld comment on his presidential campaign recently and I had to look it up. From the Chicago Tribune, this was refreshing (the business attitude, not the regulations):

After more than a year and a half of quiet and unofficial campaigning, Chicagoan Donald Rumsfeld announced Thursday that he will not seek the 1988 Republican nomination for president.

Rumsfeld, who acknowledged he had been a "dark horse" candidate in the GOP scramble for the nomination, attributed his surprise decision to the difficulties of coping with the rules on campaign financing.

...

Rumsfeld said he discussed the problem with, among others, Sen. John Glenn (D., Ohio) who is still stuck with a $2.7 million debt from his 1984 presidential campaign and is being sued both by former campaign staffers and the Federal Election Commission.

Rumsfeld said Glenn, a former Marine and astronaut, told him that "he went through two wars and the space program and never lost any sleep" but that he now lies awake nights agonizing about the debt. Rumsfeld said he and his wife have each sent Glenn $1,000 for his debt retirement fund.

"Deficit spending plagues this country," Rumsfeld said in the memo announcing his decision. "Having just spent 10 years in the world of business, meeting payrolls and being accountable to shareholders, I am unwilling to proceed on a deficit basis."

Snow Mountain Sunset

The snowdrifts in our road were cleared into what now looks like a range of snow mountains. Here's the sunset from Wednesday evening:

Snowdrifts

Just a few pictures from Saturday. We didn't have any new snowfall, but the wind shifted and gave us some big drifts--including nineteen inches in the previously-cleared driveway.


The snowdrift between the house and the future orchard measured 27 inches.

Senator Thune on Obama's Legacy

South Dakota's Senator John Thune, writing in the National Review, notes that "after losing large majorities in the House and Senate" President Obama came to rely on executive actions instead of compromise legislation to accomplish his goals. The result:

In short, most of the president’s legacy is paper-thin and may not outlast his final year in office. Even the president’s two actual legislative achievements may not long outlast his administration. Obamacare is already collapsing under its own weight, and parts of the president’s Dodd-Frank law are under scrutiny by Congress. Thanks to the president’s decision to bypass the people’s representatives in Congress, his real legacy may turn out to be that he doesn’t have one.

This is a good reminder for those who falsely claim that Congressional Republicans have given Obama everything he wanted--he has not had a legislative achievement since before Republicans took the House of Representatives in 2010.

Read the rest here.