Lots of folks are still mulling over the surprise result of our last presidential election, aren't there? As money muscles its way against people, their choices will matter less and less. How small did Grover Nordquist say he wants government to get?

I am amazed at how people bend themselves into cognitive dissonance pretzels rather than admit that psychological pressures work on all of us. Maybe we should make ourselves aware of these effective pressures, if only to see when we are being snookered.

Lewis Powell was a learned man of his times that eschewed, I suspect, the majority of what the boob tube offers. He therefore dismissed the telly. Why, though, merely watch and criticize what you could simply buy and dominate?

Podcasting is not an up-to-date pursuit. Some listeners arrive when the sound files are freshly minted; others years later. For that reason, it's best not to confuse later listeners with DailyExcitement! from the past. I thought I would back up a bit.

I here take issue with an author who seems to ignore the Powell Movementeers in his reading of recent history.

We've heard all about this phenomenon, but what constitutes that so-called "fake news?" I here suggest that the answer can be found simply enough: wherever you find the sources that funds the news, you find as well the most likely source of fakery.

There are complexities and nuances learned when you split wood for, oh, 40 years. Often, you've got to not only bring out the wedges, but know how to use them. Splitting wood has quite a bit in common with splitting electorates using issues as wedges.

It's bad enough that most radio is so filled with commercial interruptions that I and others find it unlistenable. Thanks to a rule change, however, one has to watch out for more than just crap in the breaks sneaking its paid influence into one's brain.

Sometimes conventional wisdom consists of nothing more than reasonable assumptions explaining evidence that, without those assumptions, appears incongruous. When we avoid looking at those obscured-by-assumption incongruities, we miss something important.

There are, I believe, a few select documents that, if known, reveal possible reasons behind actions that might otherwise go unappreciated or even unnoticed. I shared the first in The Powell Memo. It is time to share the second: The Wedge Strategy.

Our English language is a mashed mush of a stew with ingredients from so many different sources that it is a discipline to guess from where any given word might hail. I thought it would be neat to offer a misplaced word to you, Dear Listeners.

Recordings can be persuasive, sometimes in ways that give us goosebumps. Persuasive, sure·. But what if what we hear or see can work on our brains far more effectively than we know? I here share and rave about Max Berry's excellent book, “Lexicon.”

We constantly hear that the left is in trouble. No wonder, since the voices most often heard on the “left” are those co-opted by quite un-left forces, who utter stammers of compromise to the forces of reaction in every attempt to champion progress.

I have to remind myself that, when I start a task of reading and dissecting, I should read and dissect ALL of it, not just the parts I think would be interesting. Those boring parts can be interesting… like with textbooks.

Lewis Powell said that higher education was too liberal, and that good people who believe in the enterprise system should be brought to campus to speak. I here suggest that inciting protest might be the real reason speakers are chosen today.

Sometimes, reality can bitch-slap us right upside our heads with its patented Clue-By-Four. Reality did that to me. This is a follow-up to my last episode, where I let other voices tell you how bad things have gotten.

Wealthy fund the foundations, which fuel the thinkers, who publish the bunkum, which redefines the debate, which helps defeat some legislation and introduce new. But who can remove those unprofitable rules already on the books, perhaps once and for all?

So far, I've shared the fortunes amassed into foundations, and the gobbledygook, bunkum and distortions that bought. At what point, though, could we say with some degree of certainty that these investments started to bear fruit? How about 1978?

Lewis Powell, Jr. was adamant that his United States and its enterprise system, business culture, capitalism, call it what you will, was under assault. He was most explicit, though, about the primary source of that assault: academia.

One bit of nonsense can be called gobbledygook. The same can be said for a bit of bunkum, true; but I'd like to expand the meaning of that word to refer to the coordinated fraud in its entirety that takes place in perpetrating falsehood for profit.

I here rehash a book review I wrote years ago for my neighbor's magazine, and explore the history behind the word I chose to use to define it and others of that category.

Here I finish my deepish dive into a good example of a Distortion Factory, one that suckered me in back in '90 or so: The Breakthrough Institute.

Once a bunch of extremely rich people established philanthropic foundations; once they weaponized them with professional staff, the best money could hire; what happened then? I here dive deepish-ly into a good example of a Distortion Factory.

The legal entity chosen by many previously discussed Unusual Suspects, the legal format that has benefited many a billionaire and corporation over the years, has been the philanthropic foundation. Many not only rolled with foundations: they rocked them.