San Diego Local Order of Bloggers

Finally Taking Care Of An Old Friend

K T Cat
5/6/2024 7:23:15 AM

Outside of your family, with what living thing have you had the longest relationship?For me, it's a cast iron plant. Yes, I am that pathetic. I've had this character in my life for 43 years, having rescued it from certain death outside a friend's dorm room. It's lived in a pot the whole time. It got root-bound ages ago, but I never planted it in the ground until yesterday.43 years and I haven't bothered to give it a name.It was horribly root bound because while I kept it alive, I never got around to re-planting it in a bigger pot.Finally It's in the ground and can spread and thrive. I need to go through my filing cabinets and find the to-do list from 40 years ago and check off "Put cast iron plant in the ground."Yes, life[...]

Men Are Called To Adventure

K T Cat
5/5/2024 4:48:38 PM

Intro for Newbies: I'm a Catholic who goes to Mass every week. I live in San Diego, one of the wimpiest dioceses in the Church. Sitting through each week's sermon, I've identified 3 types.God is loveForgive othersCare for the less fortunateI lump all these together under the category of kissy-kissy love-love. There's no edge to any of them. It's all flaccid sweetness all the time. It makes me want to vomit.We had another kissy-kissy love-love sermon in church today. It was all good though, because it was 1st Communion for a bunch of kids. The deacon did a really nice job.Still, I sat and ruminated while he talked to the kids at the first grade level.It's not the love, it's the lack of villains. I just turned on a Jordan[...]

CalPERS Fail

W.C. Varones
8/4/2023 5:59:23 AM
Despite the awesome bull market this year, CalPERS again missed its return target, earning only 5.8% vs. its required 6.8%.CalPERS has missed its return targets for the trailing 1-, 3-, 5-, 15-, and 20-year periods.When CalPERS fails to make its' required returns, California taxpayers are liable for making up the difference for California's uber-generous public pensions.

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,[...]

Defunding Minneapolis

B-Daddy
6/8/2020 10:05:46 PM

Which would be the result of actually implementing this whole #DefundThePolice nonsense.  To catch you up:From The Guardian:The Minneapolis city council has pledged to disband the citys police department and replace it with a new system of public safety, a historic move that comes as calls to defund law enforcement are sweeping the US.  Speaking at a community rally on Sunday, a veto-proof majority of council members declared their intent to dismantle and abolish the embattled police agency responsible for George Floyds death and build an alternative model of community-led safety. The decision is a direct response to the massive protests that have taken over American cities in the last two weeks, and is a[...]

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[...]