National Stew

  Carlson’s Firing: Was it Over Liability or Money? Like a rousing game of Pong, the Tucker Carlson saga continues to amuse.  In this case I run up against two of my favorite concepts for making judgments. The law of parsimony, and the principle of “follow the money” There may be others involved but these are, for the reason mentioned already, the most obvious: Parsimony: The simplest answer is almost always the right answer! That is Parsimony, also often called Occam's Razor, named for the hometown of Willam of Ockham.  Liability Carlson was fired because he was a legally indefensible liability to Fox particularly after several liable trials including the last one with Dominion voting systems.  If this is the case, a couple of other questions come to mind: Will Carlson's firing mitigate the legal case involving future legal action involving Carlson which occured before his termination? Will Carlson be on his own in any such future legal battles? Follow the money: At first glan

   Socialism and Economic Nationalism are just the two wings of the same scavenging Collectivist bird! Socialism By the normal definitions of socialism as it has been since its inception, socialism is an economic system based on collectivist ideas of equality of outcomes by government ownership of the means of production. Its political system is usually Communism. National Socialism and Fascism It is very much like its collectivist twin brother National Socialism, a term used by several different groups and based in the collective ideology of Fascism. In economic terms, Fascism incorporates elements of capitalism and socialism. Fascist economists favor self-sufficiency and private profit, but seek government subsidies of corporations and industrial policy.  It is really not Socialism by the definition given above but a form of Populist Nationalism similar to what we see today inside the American right. It seeks to control the outcome and output of private owners, via industrial policy

  Congress passes off more of its power to the administrative state! Congress delegates more of its non-delegatable authority to unelected officials. See if this makes sense to you. Endowing the Secretary of Commerce with: Power to "...determine what is an “undue or unacceptable risk...” Power of “...sole and unreviewable discretion...”  Power to “...otherwise mitigate...” Think about this, the unelected official is given the authority to determine what problems exist, and has no one to challeng him and can have no challenges, and has the power to do whatever he thinks best to deal with these issues! This is the best description of a monarchy I have ever seen! The bill is properly named. It is intended to RESTRICT anything the Secretary of Commerce thinks is an issue, and do anything about it he wishes to do, all with congressional approval! Text of t he Restrict Act

  Patterns of Silliness, Nothingberders and Coveffee! Patterns, we start to see them if we observe. Some of them are simple and we catch on quickly. Some are not and it takes more time or distance.  Chaos theory is a good example of those patterns. If we were distant enough in time and/or space and continued to observe, we would see these patterns emerge, and know that nothing happens without cause and effect.  The pattern Every day Red State sling some gibberish onto a page and it passes unnoticed except by the most calcified of trumpist minds.  Then about one day a week they will post something by a little known but not yet totally rejected writer, covering a story from an opinion piece from some other writer of some notoriety on the fake right, proclaiming that irrefutable evidence has proven that something the other side says or does has been destroyed and the whole movement is about to fall and then Republican Nirvana will be revealed!  Every week this happens, and every week it f

  Republicans have lost the culture wars and are losing the abortion battle on the culture war front. They won that war in the courts but were unprepared to win the peace and are losing the war in the culture. Abortion and unwanted pregnancies were slowing under Roe, with compassion and education. That is now shifting. Some sanity is in order, but does not seem to be within reach. Republicans have lost the culture wars and have nothing to show for the battles. They have fought the culture while halting any serious attempt to stop big government or big spending! In fact, they have embraced big government as a weapon to wield against their enemies in the culture. Instead of being conservative, they have waged war on Mickey Mouse.

 TOP SECRET:  The Best Way to Get Out The Word On Anything seems to be to classify a document as Top Secret and try to keep it quiet by putting it in the hands of public officials!  This seems to have become high level government policy on spreading the word about anything! More when we have more!

 Trump Surrender To Taliban Made Clear Today! My assessment based on my reading of Doha has been proven completely correct by the State Department and the Military today!  The Trump/ Pompeo surrendered to the Taliban, the release of 5000 Taliban fighters and leaders and the allotting of time for them time to secure the Afghan government and military, including the equipment left for the Afghan military has been further proven by the department of state and the military today!  The Biden administration was stuck with an agreement left by the former administration, with no planning or information presented to them by the former administration to the current administration, which left only one choice:  Restart the 20 year war, or leave! Former administration reaction: The former administrations defenders pushed backed against this story, seeking to give the former president credit for ending the war in Afghanistan while blaming the current administration for the exit they set in motion! I

 The Criminal History of Donald J. Trump so far Critics have accused Donald Trump of a number of crimes, both before, during his presidency, and now, with the addition of stolen classified documents kept hidden at his private residence, after his presidency. Some of the most serious allegations include: Obstruction of justice:  Trump is accused of trying to obstruct the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election by firing FBI Director James Comey and trying to pressure then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to drop the investigation. Campaign finance violations: Trump is accused of paying hush money to two women who claimed to have had affairs with him in order to influence the 2016 election. Tax fraud:  Trump is accused of using his businesses to defraud the government out of millions of dollars in taxes. Incitement of insurrection: Trump is accused of inciting the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by telling his supporters to "fight like hell" to ov

  This has been on my mind for a long while, and I think now, on this first day of April 2023, is the most proper of times to crack the subject open and spill it out over the internet as far as my limited reach will allow. The case that brings the issue on which I intend to focus, into focus, is the Dobbs decision which the Supreme Court decided in 2022. The court's decision overturned both Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), moving the power of regulating abortion from the federal level to the individual states. Please note that it is not the case itself or the rightness or wrongness of the decision which is at issue here, but the basis on which the case was decided which is of interest to me. Particularly the concurrence written by Justice Thomas. Justice Thomas believed the court should go further in future cases, by revisiting past SCOTUS cases which granted rights based on "substantive due process" such as Griswold v. Connecticut (the right to