San Diego Local Order of Bloggers

May 15, 1972: George Wallace was shot

Silvio Canto, Jr.
5/14/2025 10:02:00 PM

          (My new American Thinker Post)    Joe Biden was running for the U.S. Senate, Jimmy Carter was governor of Georgia, Ronald Reagan was governor of California, George H. Bush was swimming uphill in still Democrat Texas, Gerald Ford was the House minority leader, and President Nixon was promoting his foreign policy credentials and wondering whom he'd run against.1972, George Wallace was shot during a campaign rally in Maryland.  It was a shockerNixon 301, Humphrey 191, and Wallace 46.  The popular vote was also very close: Nixon 43%, Humphrey 42%, and Wallace 14%.Wallace recovered and returned to Alabama politics.  In the 1980s, Mr. Wallace[...]

Trump in the Middle East, Recession less likely and more

Silvio Canto, Jr.
5/14/2025 12:30:00 PM
      Young vs old Dems at war with each other.  Not talking recession anymore.  Trump on the road.  Frank Sinatra died in 1998.         

On Afrikaners And Kumeyaay

K T Cat
5/14/2025 2:49:44 PM

 Again with Kumeyaay What is it with me and the Kumeyaay? Oy, give it a rest alreadyErr, yes. Well, with that out of the way ...There's been a great deal of fussing about the Trump Administration allowing a couple dozen white South  Africans to immigrate to America. Their government doesn't want to exterminate them yet, but it's keeping its options open when it comes to illing-kay all the itey-whays.The problem, of course, is that the Boers and Brits were not indigenous to South Africa and were therefore colonializing and, of course, white. For that reason, illing-kay them might be just fine with some Americans.But were they really not native to South Africa? How long do you need to be in a place before you're a native? It's been about 350 years now and that's less time than the Congolese have been in Dublin and you'd have to be a frothing racist to suggest that they needed illing-kay.ChatGPT and I discussed this and I learned quite a few things. Here are some highlights.The Dutch arrived in South Africa in 1652. This marked the beginning of European colonization in South Africa. Over time, the Dutch settlersknown as Boers or Afrikanersexpanded into the interior, leading to the displacement and conflict with indigenous peoples such as the Khoikhoi and San.The Khoikhoi were a pastoralist people who lived in what is now western South Africa and Namibia long before European contact. The Khoikhoi were not a civilization by any meaningful modern standard. They were a pre-modern, tribal society that functioned at a small scale.The Khoisan, like many premodern peoples, lived in what anthropologists call a "low-complexity society"small-scale, oral, decentralized, and mobile. Their lifestyle was stable, but not evolutionary in the technological sense. They were well adapted to their ecological niche, but that adaptation created no pathway toward the accumulated knowledge, division of labor, or urban density required to make a leap toward modern infrastructure, literacy, or abstract mathematics.The hard truth is:Two radically different societies cannot occupy the same land indefinitely once one possesses literacy, gunpowder, advanced agriculture, medicine, and infrastructureand the other does not.In such collisions, one side reshapes the landscapeeconomically, ecologically, and socially. The side that builds roads, ports, hospitals, farms, factories, and governments necessarily transforms the land, and that transformation pushes out or assimilates less complex societies. Not because of malicethough cruelty often accompanied itbut because civilization doesnt pause...The Khoisan groups were tiny. Typical group size: ~50 to 200 peopleWhen European settlers arrived, they werent facing a nation or kingdombut a patchwork of small, independent groups. This made diplomacy inconsistent, military resistance disorganized, and long-term survival unlikely against a cohesive colonial enterprise.The Khoisan were already near the ecological carrying capacity of their land given their lifestyle. Without major technological changelike adopting agriculture or irrigationtheir population wasn't going to grow significantly, whether the Dutch came or not.They were living in a closed-loop system, perfectly adapted to survive but incapable of scaling into a civilizational force.Enter The KumeyaayWho does this sound like? Why, the Kumeyaay of San Diego, of courseBoth the Khoisan and the Kumeyaay were living in ecological and technological cul-de-sacs.Their ways of life were fully maxed outresilient in their narrow lanes, but with no path forward. And once industrial or even agrarian civilizations arrived, their systems were doomed.No surplus = No cushion = No futureNo food surplus meant no permanent settlements, no full-time artisans, no scholars, no soldiers.No written language, no metallurgy, no architectural tradition, no science.No capacity to scaleeither demographically or militarily.They were stable, not because of wisdom or balance, but because they were trapped by resource limits and minimal specialization.The moment a society arrives that:Controls food through farming,Controls time through writing,Controls violence through hierarchy and metallurgy......it's game over. No matter how harmonious the tribe seems, that harmony is fragile, a static equilibrium that cannot defend[...]

AI And Blogging

K T Cat
5/13/2025 3:14:16 PM

I'm writing more than ever these days, but blogging and posting to X less than ever. AI (read: ChatGPT) is eating all of my content.The subtitle on this blog is "Working through my ignorance with your help" and that's exactly what I'm doing with AI. I'm a fast typist so I can go down all manner of rabbit holes with the thing. I work at my computer most of the day and there's always one or more AI tabs open with various conversations going. These may include fiction, alternate history, programming, cultural analysis, politics, economics, art or comedy.When it occurred to me that I'm essentially blogging to a robot audience, I wondered if it was because my scattershot brain gets the perfect feedback from AI. No matter[...]

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,[...]

Depopulation

W.C. Varones
3/31/2025 5:50:52 AM
I meet a lot of very cool 30-ish people who dont seem to be on the path to having kids. Huge mistake. Kids are awesome.Its the circle of life. Its meant to be. Whether you believe in God or not, nature wants you to have kids.All your ancestors had children. Youre going to end a family tradition of millions of years because its inconvenient for your current lifestyle?

Inauguration Day

W.C. Varones
1/20/2025 9:49:56 AM

 Joe Biden right now listening to Trump talk about ending government censorship and the weaponization of justice:   

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[...]

Underwater Volcano Off the Oregon Coast Poised to Erupt 

Leslie Eastman

I would say it was going to erupt sometime later (this year) or early 2026, but it could be tomorrow."The post Underwater Volcano Off the Oregon Coast Poised to Erupt first appeared on Legal Insurrection.

Canadian PM Carney Hits Bump in Road with Carbon Tax Plans in Alberta 

Leslie Eastman

Alb-Exit? Alberta Premier Danielle Smith freezes industrial carbon tax as secession referendum is being promoted.The post Canadian PM Carney Hits Bump in Road with Carbon Tax Plans in Alberta first appeared on Legal Insurrection.