The Observations Podcast

It's the day before the Iowa Caucus, and we look ahead at what it means. Are the polls correct, with Donald Trump Having a lock on victory? Or is something else going on? What does it mean for the nomination race? Democrats are already prepping the electoral battlefield, declaring Donald Trump to be an impending dictator. Maybe Trump will win, maybe he won't. But it's a mistake to to think that MAGA will fade away, no matter what happens.

Our holiday hiatus is over, so we're back to talk about Trump's "removal" from the Primary ballot in CO and ME. We also discuss Claudine Gay's resitgnation from the presidency of Harvard.

After we discuss the cultural implications of a senate staffer recording themselves having sex with another man in a US Senate hearing room, we turn to legal matters. Rudy Giuliani lost a $148.1 million jury verdict in the defamation case bought by two Georgia election workers. Meanwhile, Sidney Powell pled guilty to six misdemeanor counts, and Keneth Cheseboro pled guilty to 1 felony count, in their Georgia election interference cases. The Supreme Court took up a case questioning the validity of charging January 6 protestors with the "obstructing an official proceeding" statute, which could overturn many J6 convistions, as well as drop charges from Donald Trump's upcoming trial. Finally, we look at the latest Harvard/Harris poll.

Interest payments on the National Debt have ballooned to $900 billion per year. For the first time in two decades, debt service now costs more than the entire military budget of the United States. This is not a sign of good economic times ahead. In other news, Hunter Biden's sweetheart deal from Federal prosecutors is dead as fried chicken, with a new series of indictments filed, though he is still getting a bit of a break. Other topics: UPenn's president resigned, Trump won't testify in NY, Ukraine funding got halted in Congress, and Blackrock's Larry Fink doesn't want to talk about ESG anymore.

It was a bit of a rough start, since Dale forgot to hit the Go Live button, but we first get into how House Democrats are abandoning "Bidenomics" as a 2024 Election slogan. We move from there into the many other failures of the Biden Administration. Whatever the policy area may be: Defense, Energy, Immigration...you name it, Joe Biden has the worst possible policy for it.

Libertarian anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei has won the presidential election in Argentina. Putting aside the irony of an anarcho-capitalist running the government, his victory makes us wonder if he can actually implement actual change to Argentina's political culture, which has largely been a long-running love affair with fascist corporatism. That, in turn, makes us wonder whether any electoral change in this country could turn around our political culture's decline into authoritarianism.

The American body politic, and indeed, that of the entire West, has been infested with Progressives. They control every major cultural institution. At this point, it doesn't matter whether the capture was the result of an intentional "Long March Through the Institutions", or happened organically. The only thing that matters is finding a way to defeat the Progressive ideologues who want to weaponize our principles of individual liberty against us.

This week we discuss the myriad ways in which the Federal government refuses to enact policies that help the American people. There is almost no policy implemented by the Federal government, from the budget, to immigration, to law enforcement, in which the interests of the American people are represented.

Hundreds of Israelis are dead and thousands wounded after a massive terrorist attack by Hamas from the Gaza Strip. Israel has moved to a war footing, and an assault against the Gaza Strip by the IDF is expected. The world seems like a powder keg, and we wonder where this might lead.

We start by discussing the disastrous state of the presidential race for 2024...which leads us to a more general question. And it's one that's super important: If our political class was intentionally destroying the country's society and economy...what would they be doing differently?

The Canadian Parliament celebrated a speech from Volodomyr Zelenskiyy by inviting--and giving a standing ovation to--a 98 year-old "Ukrainian Freedom Fighter". Turns out that he fought for Ukrainian freedom as a soldier in the the Nazi 14th Waffen-SS Division. Attorney Lin Wood has decided to turn state's evidence in Trump's criminal trial in Georgia, though what he can say that everyone doesn't already know is unclear. Finally, Real Clear Politics produced a poll on free speech that indicates one-third of Americans seem perfectly happy to let the government censor disfavored speech.

Nearly every institution in modern society is corrupt. We can depend on them to enforce their preferred political, idological, and social views, regardless of truth, and with no pretense of neutrality. Yet, at the same time, they work on a day-to-day level. The same DoJ that will try to cut sweetheart plea deals with Hunter Biden will also successfully hunt down the average kidnapper or bank robber mercilessly. The conundrum is what to do about this, since we can't simply eradicate every institution.

We return from our Hurricane Hilary hiatus with an article from Tablet (https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/guide-understanding-hoax-century-thirteen-ways-looking-disinformation) that lays out, chapter and verse, how the US Government, NGOs, media, and academia have built a massive censorship operation for social media. Anything the government doesn't like is classified as "misinformation" to be censored. It's beyond Orwellian, but a new Ministry of "Truth" is already up and running.

How do you find the truth in a culture where every institution, whether left or right, lies to you? In a culture of lies, how do you anaylze current events? This is the central thread for all of our topics this week, whether it's the Special Counsel announcement for the Biden investigation, whether the January 6th comittee saved all of its records, or whether there was voter fraud in Michigan. Every institution involved has a narrative, and none of the narratives are true.

We start by taking a look at the Hunter Biden plea deal that fell apart when he appeared in court this week. It's difficult to believe that either side of this deal did not fully know what was agreed, and it looks...fishy. Meanwhile in Reedley, CA, local cops uncovered a secret biolab in a disused warehouse. In addition to Covid and Covid-infected mice, there were samples of pneumonia, chlamidia, and herpes. How did this happen, and how many more are there? Finally, we discuss the declining religious belief in our culture and we wonder what it means. (Link to article: https://dalefranks.com/blog/meaning-and-socialization-in-the-information-age)

A common thread runs through all of our stories this week: which is the lack of competence that's taking over all of our institutions. Much of it might be attributed to foolishness or ideology. But From the FBI investigating the Bidens, to COVID Policy, to regulations on water heaters, much of it looks like malevolence. And most of it has, as a goal, to control the way you live.

Dale starts by discussing the Injunction announced this week by Federal Judge Terry Doughty, preventing the FBI and other government agencies from contacting any social media company to induce them to restrict Constitutionally-protected speech in any way. It's a clear win for free speech. He them moves onto the vitriolic response to the movie, The Sound of Freedom, linking it explicitly to Qanon, primarily to prevent normal people from going to see it. Still, human trafficking, as the Variety review points out, is a growing and serious issue. While the vast majority of government effort goes into drug interdiction, uncounted numbers of children--and adults--are routinely trafficked into sexual slavery, forced labor, or child soldiering. Perhaps going after drug dealers is just more profitable, and stopping child trafficking just isn't worth the effort.

A week of riots broke out in France this week after police shot an immigrant teen during a traffic stop. Starting in Paris, it spread to other cities across the country. We wonder how and if something similar might happen here. Hint: Yes. We then turn to the four big Supreme Court decisions announced this week, and their immediate fallout.

This weekend, Yevgeny Progozhin launched a brief attempt at...something in Russia. Was it a coup attempt against Vladimir Putin? An armed revolt against Defense Minister Shoigu? A desperate cry for help? Whatever it was, after launching it on Friday, it was over on Saturday, and Pregozhin was winging his way to Belarus. Where, presumably, he'll fall out of a 22nd-story window in a few months. Russia. It's crazy, man. Then there was the IRS whistleblowers who alleged to Congress that the DoJ did, in fact, interfere heavily into the investigation of Hunter Biden's taxes, even to the point that AUSA Lesley Wolf is alleged to have tipped off Hunter Biden's attorneys about an upcoming search warrant. We're not sure how this system can ever be reformed.

This week, a special counsel indicted Donald Trump for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. We spend some time looking at the indictment, but the bigger--much bigger--issue is the response to what increasingly seems like a two-tiered system of justice, and an increasing loss of faith in the American government's fairness and impartiality. There are two completely different, and completely unreconcilable views on the the nature and purpose of government in America. Neither side of this argument wants to be ruled by the other. For decades, this conflict has been piling up a huge mound of gunpowder under American culture. All it's going to take is a match to light that gunpowder and kick off a crisis, one which may very well culminate in a Yugoslavian-style civil war. That would be a disaster not only for the US, but the entire world.

We start this week by looking at the theory proposed by Dale last week, and looking at examples of both how democratization if in formation is overcoming gatekeepers, and how gatekeepers are trying to keep their Book Age power. We then dive into the latest events in Disney's Federal case against Ron DeSantis. They lost their hand-picked judge, Obama appointee Alex Walker, who threw a petulant little fit on his way out the door. His replacement is Trump appointee Allen Winsor, who's already ruled in DeSantis' favor in previous cases. We then ask why Disney would undertake this risky legal strategy, in light of the relatively marginal effect losing Reedy Creek would have on the company. Finally, we geek out on some Star Trek.

In this Podcast, Dale makes up for Michael's absence by presenting a theory about why our societies seem to be going through so much turmoil. From 1450-2000, we were living in the Book Age, which created a world and culture built on the innovations and cultural changes that followed the creation of the movable type printing press in 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg. Since sometime around 2000, we've moved out of the Book Age, and into a new Information Age. It's going to be every bit as disruptive, illuminating, exciting, dangerous, and unpredictable as the Book Age was in replacing the Age of the Church in 1450.

After briefly discussing the arguments about using the 14th Amendment to override the debt ceiling, we delve into the latest Harvard-Harris Poll. We discuss the dichotomy between the political/media class and the general electorate, along with how the two political parties appear live in what are almost entirely different factual realities.

This is a complex one, though each of our topics this week ties together into a single theme: The prosecution of Daniel Penny, lawlessness at the border, failure to enforce gun laws, ignoring prima facie evidence of Joe Biden's corruption, the FBI refusing to comply with a Congressional subpoena...all of this points to a system where the rule of law is routinely ignored. Whatever you might want to call the American system, it is no longer a system that values--or provides--justice.