San Diego Local Order of Bloggers

Happy # "2,000 something" to the city of Roma

Silvio Canto, Jr.
4/20/2026 10:04:00 PM

      They tell us that this is the day that the city of Rome was founded:  According to tradition, on April 21, 753 B.C., Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, found Rome on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants. Actually, the Romulus and Remus myth originated sometime in the fourth century B.C., and the exact date of Romes founding was set by the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century B.C.OK.   We won't argue details.    Nevertheless, happy birthday to Roma.     It gives us a good excuse to listen to Dean Martin's "On an evening in Roma".    P.S.  You can listen to my show.  If you like our posts,[...]

April 21, 1865: Abraham Lincoln's funeral train left Washington

Silvio Canto, Jr.
4/20/2026 10:01:00 PM

                  On this day in 1865, the Lincoln funeral train left Washington DC.     The train traveled through 180 cities and seven states on its way to Illinois.   Millions lined up to say goodbye to the 16th president.    P.S.  You can listen to my show.  If you like our posts, please look for Donate on the right column of the blog page.         

The MGB Is Gone, But Not Forgotten

K T Cat
4/20/2026 6:22:58 PM

In our yard, we have low voltage lighting. Three of the lights don't work any more after only 2-3 years. I dug up the first one and found that it was tied in to the main power line with a cheap dagger connector. It's the kind that clamps on to the power cable and puts a narrow, conductive dagger through the insulation to make the connection. Water, such as it is here in the SoCal desert of San Diego, had rusted that conductive dagger to the point of dissolving.Enter my experience rewiring the MGB. I pulled out my crimp connectors and heat-shrink tubing and voila or should I say, "there you go*" and the lights were working again.    My heat shrink tubing was too narrow for the multi-wire end of the connectors so in[...]

They're Just Looting The State

K T Cat
4/19/2026 9:17:45 AM

Two more data points describing the looting of California.  IT'S OFFICIAL: HHS Sec. RFK Jr. and the Trump admin SHUT DOWN nearly 500 hospice providers for fraud in LA alone......and NOT A SINGLE ONE asked for the funds to be reinstated.Because they are FRAUDSTERS. And invented addresses."They were going and giving people in poor pic.twitter.com/BorWZ17veL Eric Daugherty (EricLDaugh) April 18, 2026     California Dems just passed the "Stop Nick Shirley Act."Instead of uncovering Waste, Fraud & Abuse Dems want to fine the journalists uncovering it by Silencing the PressTheJusticeDept, this is against the constitution and needs an injunction pic.twitter.com/3RUGoHM4UI C-Reason (CreasonJana) April 19, 2026[...]

Why does America keep winning?

W.C. Varones
12/12/2025 8:48:00 AM

X:          Yes. But also, America's abundance of natural resources and history of fortuitous developments kinda seems like God shed His grace on thee.        Capitalism and divine providence are like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. 

Inflation is always and everywhere a progressive phenomenon

W.C. Varones
11/13/2025 9:31:17 AM
Excerpt from a text conversation with a young "democratic socialist":DS: Every time the US has become progressive, the right wing and the centrists said the policies were too unrealistic, but the civil rights movement still passed, and FDR is currently looked at as one of the best presidents of the past hundred yearsWC: Some times the right wing and the centrists are right. LBJ's Great Society has trapped millions in multigenerational welfare dependency. Obamacare has made health care unaffordable and is bankrupting both families and the US governmentLBJ's Great Society (and the Vietnam War) was what forced the US government to break the gold standard under Nixon, leading to all subsequent inflation crises. Inflation and all[...]

What Ails Us - But First Some Background

B-Daddy
4/6/2025 5:10:10 PM
Someone close to me asked me to give an overall take on the current state of politics and the prospects for our future. I thought to answer, but first want to explain how I analyze the political landscape.Here are some key principles that are worth repeating because we seem to forget them.1. A chicken is an eggs way of making another egg.      To influence the the size and numbers of your chickens, manage egg production and consumption. Demographics are destiny.2. Eggs are rare, sperm is plentiful.      Combined with 1 above, the most important variable component of demographic destiny is female reproductive behavior and strategies.3. Testosterone confers greater strength and aggression[...]

Bezos vs Burnham - Robber Baron vs Managers

B-Daddy
1/26/2022 8:32:44 PM
 Well not really; and not just because Burnham isn't a household name. James Burnham authored key insights on "managerialism" and predicted its eventual triumph over capitalism in his 1941 book "The Managerial Revolution," summarized here, but skip ahead 5 minutes (this is a great podcast). George Orwell provided this summary in 1943.Capitalism is disappearing, but Socialism is not replacing it. What is now arising is a new kind of planned, centralized society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic. The rulers of this new society will be the people who effectively control the means of production: that is, business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers,[...]

Natural Born Citizen Definition

Doo Doo Econ
1/19/2016 6:08:58 PM

    Once again Americans are facing questions about the definition of a Natural Born Citizen (NBC).This is the simple and indisputable definition: Two citizens who have a child, naturally create a new citizen. This is a Natural Born Citizen.There is absolutely no expert either legal or historical who will argue to the contrary. They may argue to include additional citizens, but this is the core of the definition.Two people who have a child in a location, have a citizen who is native to that land. This is a Native Born Citizen. Thus, terms like "Native American" which imply a location and not an allegiance to a country.A person can be both Natural Born and Native Born, or in the United States we also have Naturalized[...]

Obama Fuels Eternal Islamic War on America

Doo Doo Econ
8/5/2015 5:00:00 AM

                Do you remember the headlines when Obama apparently declared America a Muslim country on French television?    Taken from an Islamic perspective this statement is dangerous. It sounds as if the President of the United States sees America is a Muslim nation. When you consider translations, this may presented to the masses as exactly that, American President Hussein (an exclusively Islamic name)  Obama declares America to be Islamic. Thus America would be "al-Islam", or territory which may never be ceded to non-Muslims.Semantics, right? Over-reaction, right?Except, this is a long standing meme from not only the President, but also his staffers.   [...]

And Where a Salon Scribe Gets a Tad Out of His Swim Lane

Dean
11/11/2015 9:22:09 AM
Over the weekend, Salon writer, DAVID MASCIOTRA, caused quite a dust-up on social media with his own salute to the troops ahead of Veterans Day . Here is the headline, followed by the sub-headline and then followed by the first paragraph of the piece:You dont protect my freedom: Our childish insistence on calling soldiers heroes deadens real democracyIt's been 70 years since we fought a war about freedom. Forced troop worship and compulsory patriotism must endPut a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as heroes.If you desire, you can read it[...]

Football rules changes...? You've come to the right place

Dean
1/31/2015 2:04:56 PM

    Theres no denying that over the last few decades most all on-field rules changes made by the NFL have been exercises in increasing offense and scoring. This has created an arms race in a sense where the pendulum swings back and forth between the NFL offenses and NFL defenses whereby the offenses get aided by rules changes and the defenses counter with a combination of innovative schemes and superior athletes. To wit, for years, its been conventional wisdom that the best athletes in the world were in the NBA. Now days, we would add NFL defensive backs and possibly outside linebackers/rush ends into that mix (you dont think dudes like Richard Sherman, Darrelle Revis and J.J. Watt can ball a little?).But[...]