San Diego Local Order of Bloggers

The week in review with Bill Katz, the editor of Urgent Agenda

Silvio Canto, Jr.
8/26/2026 2:00:00 PM

     Guest:   Bill Katz, the editor of Urgent Agenda.   The Trump administration  declares economic war on Iran.  "Bodegas" vs in New York City.   Former Secretary Clinton calls what's happening in the Democrat Party is a healthy experiment......

Green is bad

Silvio Canto, Jr.
8/26/2026 11:16:01 AM

                Green is bad: Why is gasoline more expensive in LA than just about everywhere else?Click to read:https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/08/green-is-bad/--------------------------------------------Before the Iran war, or before the affordability crisis could be blamed on President Trump's gas prices, gasoline was very expensive in California. I remember a friend visiting Los Angeles and telling me that he saw $6 gasoline when it was slightly over $3 in Texas. That's a lot of cash going from your wallet to the pump. I was surprised to hear that gas was so expensive out there.    So why was gasoline more expensive in LA than just about everywhere else? The[...]

Software Development With AI

K T Cat
8/24/2026 8:12:41 AM

 ... is enormously productive, within limits.Among other things at work, I develop Groovy-coded customizations for a large Jira instance. Jira is the world's top project tracking tool. Groovy is a Java derivative that is used by a Jira plugin called ScriptRunner which allows you to access Jira's API and do anything you want. I don't have a development environment, so I work directly on the live production system. I have hundreds of users, tens of thousands of live tickets and a 10-figure gross budget worth of work riding on the use of Jira.I joke that working on the live production system while people are using it is like fixing a car as its being driven down the freeway without the driver or passengers knowing. I've[...]

Arday Was Just A Catalyst

K T Cat
8/20/2026 9:17:58 AM

 ... or maybe he was an indicator. I'll leave it to you to come up with the right descriptive word.Dig this. The professor who pursued the Arday story and brought his fraud and fabulism to light, Nathan Cofnas, used to teach at Cambridge, but was hounded out of the university for uncovering Arday's deceptions and the university's willing compliance. From there, he went to Ghent University in Belgium. Ghent is no slouch, ranking as the second best university in Belgium and in the top 100 globally.Ghent just suspended Cofnas.Ghent University in Belgium announces it is taking appropriate action against the academic who *exposed* the Arday plagiarism.The rectors says they attach great importance to academic freedom, but it[...]

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,[...]

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[...]

Himalayan Landslide Triggers Catastrophic Flood at Nepal-Tibet Border 

Leslie Eastman

A torrent of mud, rocks and water through communities, leaving a trail of destroyed homes, roads, bridges and power infrastructure. Over 40 Americans are among the hundreds dead or missing.The post Himalayan Landslide Triggers Catastrophic Flood at Nepal-Tibet Border first appeared on Legal Insurrection.

Trump Space Policy Targets 1,000 U.S. Launches, Reentries Annually by 2030 

Leslie Eastman

SpaceX changed the launch game. Trump wants U.S. infrastructure to catch up.The post Trump Space Policy Targets 1,000 U.S. Launches, Reentries Annually by 2030 first appeared on Legal Insurrection.