By Bill Sniffin, publisher
With Covid behind us, it seemed like there could never be an April Fool’s Day like April 1, 2020, when the plague really overwhelmed everything in the country.
But there have been a few oddball things both nationally and locally recently that deserve some mention.
My favorite local story concerns our friend Sen. Anthony Bouchard of Cheyenne whose bill concerning gun issues got so bogged down with amendments, he decided he could not favor it and voted against it. Not sure how many times in history a Wyoming legislator turned around and voted against his own bill, but this was a first for me.
Biggest international April Fools story is the that gigantic container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for days. This ship is so big – it is as long as the Empire State Building in New York City is tall.
My friend CJ Peiper of Rock Springs took the image of the ship and photoshopped it into two photos to show its relative size. The first was at the north end of Flaming Gorge at the Buckboard Marina and the other was in the center of the Green River in the town of Green River next to Expedition Island. Wow, a ship with 20,000 huge containers is a big ship, indeed.
On a national level, it is easy to pick on the Democrats. Two of their most popular governors are in terrible trouble. This is no April Fool’s joke for them, but to the rest of us it makes sense. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is fighting for his political life with everybody in the Empire State demanding that he resign for bad behavior. He deserves to go. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsome is facing a recall for his handling of the Covid crisis and other things. His ineptness kept showing up. Good riddance.
We also heard a rumor that President Joe Biden’s future presidential library will actually be in the basement of President Kamala Harris’ Presidential Library, due to Biden’s predicted short time in office and to signify his favorite haunt during the 2020 election campaign.
Although it happened in late March, that huge dump of snow on Wheatland, Cheyenne, and Laramie made most folks cringe. It was a truly dangerous time and not a joke, at all. Our congrats to everyone for their fortitude and perseverance during those times. Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins called it “a zombie apocalypse.”
With gasoline prices rising and electricity customers facing blackouts around the country, the future of energy is a serious issue. Wyoming has been the energy breadbasket for so long – this portends to be a true April Fool’s Day joke on all of us.
I was bragging to some Casper folks about Lander having the mildest winter I had seen in 50 years. They reminded me that Casper had its coldest February ever. Gosh, sorry about that.
So far, the year 2021 has been one long bad April Fool’s Day joke for our Congresswoman Liz Cheney. She had every right to vote to impeach President Donald J. Trump. But in one fell swoop, she went from being a very popular representative to being doggie doo in the eyes of a surprisingly large group of folks in the Cowboy State. In five decades of watching Wyoming’s political figures, I have rarely seen a fall this hard and this swift. She will still be a front-runner to win reelection but it is not going to be as easy as the slam-dunk it would have been for her without that vote.
Down in Colorado, that state’s governor Jared Polis decided to declare a “meat free” holiday, which resulted in an enormous hue and cry from the thousands of cattle and sheep ranchers. Ag is a very big business just south of us and this governor needs to have his head examined.
It reminded me of a few years ago when Montana had an inept governor named Judy Martz. People in that state had bumper stickers on their cars that read: “Our governor is dumber than your governor.” We tip our hat to Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon who was smart enough to declare an “eat more meat” holiday. Well done!
Perhaps my favorite of all April Fool’s Day jokes occurred a week or so ago when a dumb Californian attempted to drive his Mini-Cooper sports car onto a snow-packed Interstate 80 Highway. He got stuck and prevented snow plows from getting to work for over five hours. You can’t make this stuff up.
