Rebane's Ruminations

Just Weather

George Rebane

While at breakfast with friends this morning, conversation turned to the historic snow storm raking the mid-Atlantic states.  This storm follows several unseasonably cold and snowy winters that are expanding their footprint over the last years.  The climate change true believers, who have yet to predict anything correctly with their hokey models, continue ignoring the evidence that is apparent to anyone not having strapped on a tight set of ‘peer review’ blinders.  (I’ll have more to say on the whole peer review issue in a future post.)

Right then and there I decided to call my pal who lives right in the middle of it.  Got through to his iPhone.  He gave us the report on my iPhone with the speaker turned on.  We couldn’t believe our ears.  He then said he’d go out and take a picture and send it to my phone – modern times.

The photograph is a shot down the street where my friend lives in northern Virginia near WashDC.  He is without power now for over 24 hours, trees that grew tall during warmer times have fallen all over the place.  His house temperature is down to 42F and the only heat comes from the fire place.  The trouble is that they ran out of firewood and the roads out are not only blocked by snow (as you can see), but also downed trees that keeps the snowplows from reaching them.  Their solution to keep the place above freezing was to start burning some of the older pieces of furniture.

They plan on packing up and trudging out so that they can go over to their kids’ house to watch Super Bowl this afternoon.  All this is going on as most people back there wish that someone would plant Waxman and Markey head down in a snow bank somewhere.

Meanwhile we can still hear the parrots, ‘Weather! It’s just weather! Squawk!’

Of Ragheads and Racism

George Rebane

We are in an ‘all in’ war between two civilizations – western civilization of the European pedigree, and Islamic civilization formerly of the Arabic and now of a broader pedigree.  In their own words they declare that the west and Islam can no longer co-exist on this planet, and their intent is to prevail using every means available to them.  To the world they have amply demonstrated the truth of their intentions.

 

In response, the west is at its wits end with our European neighbors all tangled up in their apologetic history, while we Americans are in total denial.  Nine years after the towers fell, with the intervening years dominated by two constrained military land campaigns, we still talk about conducting a “war on terror”, and are now doing our best to downgrade even that into the moral equivalent of a civil law enforcement campaign against organized crime.

I count myself among those who see this as a global clash of cultures and have expanded on it in ‘We Believe What We Need to Believe’.  Ascribing the current conflict as a “war on terror” is about as informative and intellectually destructive as calling WW2 a ‘war against the mechanized division’.   

Ruminations – 6feb2010

George Rebane

- Abdulmutallab - give up the country to defend the party
- The causes of the Great Recession
- Singularity and the Great Recession

When they Mirandized jihadist Abdulmutallab, it was clear to half the country or more that this had been a big mistake by the Obama administration.  Attorney General Eric Holder is currently dangled in the bus lane for that gaffe.  The part that really worries the Democrats is what the independent voters think about criminalizing acts of war against our country.  The questioning of the Islamist was an early issue, what could they squeeze out of him before his lawyers stuck their feet in his mouth.  The resultant scramble to open him up again seems to have worked.  And now the Democrats, eager to absolve the first screw-up, are telling the world what Abdulmutallab is telling them.  Communicating all this to al-Qaida is, of course, screw-up number two.  Peggy Noonan makes a point of this in her 6feb10 WSJ piece.  It seems that the administration is compromising new intelligence gained in order to cover their collective butts.  Community organizing must have been a lot easier.

KVMR Commentary - 5feb2010

George Rebane

Today I returned to doing radio commentaries.  I will be doing a new commentary every other Friday on  KVMR-FM 89.5, Nevada County's public radio station.  This was broadcast today.

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Contending ideologies and ideologues are very much in the news these days.  When people hear either of those words, they usually come up with a negative response.  From the media we receive the daily dose that ideologues are some kind of over-zealous and closed-minded people who promote ideas off the beaten track, ideas that maybe are even inimical to the American way.  Regular Americans are not supposed to be ideologues.

Hello, my name is George Rebane.  I am an ideologue with an ideology that most closely matches the conservative/libertarian mold.  I am also a retired systems scientist, a local blogger, and a columnist for The Union newspaper.  The management of KVMR has kindly asked me to share some of my thoughts and observations with you from time to time as part of their policy to bring you a diverse, and hopefully stimulating, compendium of opinion and commentary.  You can find out more about me at georgerebane.com.

In the coming weeks I will talk to you about ideas and issues a bit off the so-called balanced center that you may find thought provoking.  In general, I will be talking about things real, sometimes uncomfortable, and possibly even hackle-raising.  I promise not to feed you pabulum.

Administrivia - oi veh!

George Rebane

Dear Readers - I am in the middle of the usual frustrations of going through changing from my old computer system to the super-duper new one I just got.  Over the years (since about 1981) I have upgraded my computer every two to three years because I was in the technology business - all of us had to do it, but that didn't mean we liked it.  We moved to Nevada County in 2002 with new computers, and like clockwork bought new ones in 2005.  But that changeover was a bit more difficult since I had to do it myself instead of having the IT department at my beck and call.  The whole thing was managed with greater pain than ever - our system was now complex with lots of special purpose software and all computers (four) working on our home LAN.

That episode must have left deep and hidden scars because neither Jo Ann nor I even considered upgrading after two years.  Things worked beautifully (given the vicissitudes of Windows and the Evil Empire) and we were not about to fix what wasn't broken.  Well, the years passed and the boxes started to creak and groan as the software was updated with patch upon patch.  Windows XP was still trying its best - we hadn't touched Vista with a ten footer - but it was getting tired.

After some unappreciated adventures with our aging system we looked at the calendar and exclaimed 'holy hard drive, these antiques are five years old!'  Long story short, I bought a new HP Envy 15 stuffed to the gills.  It is now out of the box and learning how to live on our LAN.  Like a young colt, it is still bucking and kicking a little bit, and I really don't yet know how to ride System 7 too well.  But I'll soon get the kinks worked out, and then it'll be Jo Ann's turn to go through her own sturm und drang with her new box.

Full confession - this time I didn't even try to do any of the fancy stuff required to transfer data and software and email accounts and ... .  I just called a wonderful gentleman who has been helping out naifs like me for the last twenty years or so.  His name is Ben Hannebrink (ben@hannebrink.com) and he knows the care and feeding of Windows systems forwards and backwards.  Plus he is of the old school and will do what he says he will do and comes when he said he would.  Ben has made the crossing of this river about as easy as it can get.

Bit by Slow

George Rebane

 

Meanwhile in More Prudent Quarters

George Rebane

H/T to a regular RR reader who is in the know about such Nevada County doings.

Iran – Simmer Coming to Boil?

George Rebane

The Israeli intelligence/news service DebkaFile reports (here) of active preparations for a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities taking place in the offshore waters of that country.  Our ‘friendly’ Arabs are complaining that they have not been apprised.  We recall Ahmadinejad who has been promising that all kinds of hell will break loose around 12 February to punish western countries.  The US Navy has two carrier strike groups within range to support Israeli forces.  Actually one is already on station supporting Afghan ops, and the other one on its way to Thailand from the Arabian Sea can return very rapidly (see map).  Meanwhile Stratfor is putting out a lot supportive but seemingly peripheral reports on Iran.  It is again one of those times when the muffles are coming off the war drums.  Keep an eye on your metals and energy stocks.

 

Public Sector Unions on the March (Updated)

George Rebane

Membership in public sector unions keeps growing, while private industry union membership is declining.  The crossover has occurred and public union membership now dominates.  I am among those who strongly believe that public sector unions are a clear and present danger to a democratic republic.  Early 20th century liberals were of the same mind.  Political icons of the Democratic Party like Mayor LaGuardia and FDR “believed fervently in industrial unions. But they believed public employees had a special social obligation and could too easily exploit their monopoly position.” (2feb10 WSJ)

When these obvious truths are voiced today, it elicits a predictable chorus of denouncements from the progressives.  To the rest of us this response illuminates their more deeply held hopes and intentions for the future of our republic.  The WSJ continues -

In private industries, union workers are subject to the vagaries of the marketplace and economic growth. Thus in 2009 10.1% of private union jobs were eliminated, which was more than twice the 4.4% rate of overall private job losses. On the other hand, government unions offer what is close to lifetime job security and benefits, subject only to gross dereliction of duty. Once a city or state's workers are organized by a union, the jobs almost never go away.

Packin’ Heat

George Rebane

Our friends at the CABPRO Report published ‘A Novel Idea. Register non-gun owners’, a report on the latest 2nd Amendment doings in Vermont.  Well, there’s more to be said about that.

We recall that our collectivist friends (currently again calling themselves ‘progressives’) firmly believe that all power grows out of the barrel of a gun.  That is why they are busier than squirrels in September working every which way to get guns out the hands of law-abiding citizens.  They want the state to be the only ones with the guns because then such things as individual liberty, personal security, and private property can be dealt with properly by those who know what is best for all of us.  It’s them pesky guns spread all over the country side that keep slowing things down.

When that world-class Numero Uno arch-killer Chairman Mao succinctly summarized what our Founders knew and practiced, everyone said, ‘Oh yeah, that makes sense.’  Well, not everyone.  Some good-hearted people continue to think the pen that scribbles a powerful argument or turn of phrase on the side of goodness and light would carry the day.  They are students of ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.’

I recall that around WW2 the Pope belonged to the same group and came out with a devastating declaration against totalitarianism and for human rights.  When Stalin was informed of this, he asked how many divisions did the Pope have.  Pius went back to sprinkling holy water on the Vatican visitors.

I happened to believe our Founders as summarized by Mao, and am a bit dumbfounded that otherwise straight ahead conservatives like Glenn Beck reject the notion of prime power blooming from barrels.  Beck and think-alikes nobly argue that the pen of the First Amendment is the most important of the Bill of Rights.  They are dangerously mistaken.  On the other hand, I side with those who know that it ALL depends on the Second Amendment.  Been there, seen that.  (Please spare the EU gun rights experience.)

If the progressives thought that the pen is mightier than the sword, then they would attempt to first ban our pens instead of our guns.  A better dictum to guide and keep us free –

The pen is mighty only to the extent that it can inspire the sword.

Treasury: ‘TARP tanked’

George Rebane

AP reported that Treasury’s Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky ran some numbers, and has now informed the Administration that TARP has tanked.  The bank bailouts, started under Bush and continued by Obama, have not increased bank lending, nor have they stimulated jobs, and will “almost certainly” result in a loss to taxpayers.  And Barney Frank has already fessed up (here) that the new bank tax is exactly what I called it on the 12jan10 RR post after it was first announced (pat, pat).  The government is just trying to pile on and get a cut of the profits from continuing risky investments that they have publicly decried.  The wink-wink under the table to the banks is that ‘Go do it again.  And, like last time, we’ll cover your backside if you fail.’  Shame?  The scumbags inside the Beltway never had any, don’t have it now, and don’t hold your breath.

Anybody out there willing to make book on how history (written by anybody but the SEIU) will judge the benefits of ARRA?  ‘Do Nothing, Sooner!’  Old Ludwig’s advice to government sounds better every day.

“I am not an ideologue” ??!!

George Rebane

This guy gets more unbelievable by the hour.  Obama claims not to have an overarching ideology that informs his decisions??!!  An ideology is a coherent and cohesive set of tenets that comprise the socio-political part of a well-formed belief system.  And according to the dictionary, an ideologue is one who has such an ideology.  A reasoned ideologue is one who will modify any of his tenets when presented with compelling evidence that his current ones are wrong.  Recall Keynes’ famous reply to a reporter, ‘I change my mind when presented with new evidence, what do you do?’

Are we to believe that the community organizer got to be President without having an ideology that he uses as the basis (or utility function for you decision analysts) for making the hard decisions that are called for by his office??  What kind of BS is that to feed to the nation via yesterday's meeting with Republicans?

Does this make him doubly stupid or does it elevate him to the pantheon of gods where his decisions from Olympus come down to us in their purity, and to us mortals their basis is a mystery hidden in the mists.  He has behaved as the most ideological President since FDR, and if he now claims to have done it without benefit of a stable and defendable ideology, then what does he do, use that eight-ball with the little round window?

(Full disclosure – Dear reader, I do my best at being a reasoned ideologue.  But you knew that.)

How We Are Ruled

George Rebane

These pages, along with my Union columns, have shined a light on the government employee crisis that is already in the oven.  Every time I have reported on the abuses of government employee unions, government employee pay, and the approaching unfunded liabilities train wreck, there arose an obligatory and automatic hew and cry from the leftwing gallery.  They denounce not only the facts as presented, but also that someone would dare expose the matter to light.  Name calling and ad hominem attacks are the norm, no reasoned counters are offered.

The actual situation is worse than what I have characterized.  Steven Greenhut of reason.com has compiled a major article – ‘Class War’ - on the unadulterated crap that is now routinely shoveled down the throats of the taxpaying public.  This is not good.

H/T to Russ Steele for the heads up on Greenhut’s piece.

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

George Rebane

 

Today President Obama assembled the Republican members of Congress and presented a very reasonable case for the two parties to work together to achieve the Objective Du Jour – jobs.  It was all for the good of the country, no one could deny it.  And then he popped out the “party of No” line, inviting the Republicans to do something more than just be obstructionists.

But, of course, Republicans have been giving legislative alternatives to Obama’s progressive programs all along.  The reason that many in America still swallow the Party of No line is that the MSM (save Fox) has not reported on the Republican alternatives and just focused on the No parts.

Returning to jobs – the Republicans this morning pointed out again to Obama that, according to Obama’s own models and the CBO, the Republican alternative of a broad-based tax cut to the Democrats’ $787B ARRA stimulus (Nevada County’s involvement shown in my weekly plot) would have cost half as much and created twice as many jobs.  Obama didn’t want to field that question and kept talking about working together in 2010.

For anyone with a bit of sense, the politics behind this Kumbayah ceremony is not hard to understand.  The Republicans have witnessed the bum’s rush to socialism that happened last year.  It was possible only with the Democrats’ super majorities in both houses.  The bum’s rush will resume in spades if the Democrats come out of November 2010 with their majorities intact.

So for Republicans, job one is to increase their numbers in Congress in an attempt to return the country to bi-partisan centrism.  This will not happen if they roll over and just play nice with Team Obama, at the end of which the Chief Organizer and his congressional gnomes will remind the electorate that all these benefits accrued under the now tried and true progressive management.  As they have in the past, the Democrats would, of course, return the favor were the shoe on the other foot.  That’s the reality of bipartisan politics.

Still in Shock (updated 1feb2010)

George Rebane

It took better men than me to digest Obama’s State of the Union.  All I can do is sit here and shake my head.  While having a filibuster-proof Congress and shoveling payola to his own party’s scumbags, he actually accused Republicans of obstructionism and playing politics with his grand agenda for the ‘American peepuhl’.  Readers wanting a more cogent report on what happened in the House chambers last night should visit sites like the Heritage Foundation.  Or maybe they should visit some progressive blogs (here) or the NYT.  Or better yet, wait until his words are chiseled in stone and erected in some Washington DC grotto as the beginnings of an anticipative memorial to the great man.  First Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and then Mmm, Mmm, Mmm Barack Hussein Obama.

Now don’t throw a hissy fit on the anticipative part.  The man got the presidency with the anticipation that he could benefit from the first ‘earn while you learn’ program reserved for promising Chief Executives.  And that after getting a pass in the two senatorial seats that he held.  Across the pond, the Nobel committee threw in the Peace Prize on the same premise.  Maybe year two will be better.

Then again, maybe not.  We now find out that he’s also a slow learner – to think otherwise would be to accuse him of being evil.  I mean, as he stared down the Supreme Court justices, he actually made us all believe that he didn’t know the laws prohibiting foreign institutions and enterprises from contributing directly or indirectly to influence American elections.  From a careful perusal of the speech, one can conclude that his advisers told him to bet on the prospect that, in the aggregate, the American voters are dumber than he is.  Oi!

[1feb10 update] RR is always grateful for constructive criticisms and suggestions for improved content.  H/T to a regular reader who recommends the following more succinct and focused summary of the President's speech.

Steve Enos Files Brown Act Complaint

George Rebane

RR reader, critic, and former Grass Valley city councilman Steve Enos has filed a complaint against the City of Grass Valley citing violations of the Brown Act.  Steve’s email to me this morning summarized his concerns and the nature of his complaint.  With his permission, the following is extracted from his email and the copy of the filed five-page complaint Download EnosComplaint_26jan2010.

… Please feel free to post on your site about this and post my full initial complaint.

Also understand that the City and Cookson failed to disclose any of this in advance of the Council meeting. I contacted the City last week and made the initial complaint about violations by Cookson and long running violations of by (sic) City since April 2007. This should have been disclosed in the staff report for Tuesdays item and it was not. No public disclose (sic) by the City or Cookson in advance of the Council meeting, none in the staff report and no discussion or disclosure at the meeting.

Will our electeds ever understand that they work for us, the people? Will they ever understand the critical importance of a transparent government? Will they follow the Brown Act that clearly states the requirements and benefit of informing the public as they conduct the people's business? …

Steve also stated that The Union is “working on this now” and that Jeff Pelline has a post with comments on the complaint.  Having said that, I think the word is out.

‘From P-books to E-books’ to iPad

George Rebane

Today Steve Jobs of Apple brought out the long-awaited iPad.  It is the gizmo that Apple hopes will become the way we will do most of our information gathering and online communications.  Well actually, the iPad does even more as you can read from their brag sheet here.

I have been predicting the demise of the dedicated ereader since Amazon recently introduced its Kindle, and now a bunch of others have jumped into the same frying pan.  Today we see that it didn’t take long for the dedicated ereaders to be eclipsed by galloping technology, because the iPad delivers ebooks as just one of the many other things that it also lets you do.

We may think of this as all new stuff, but it really isn’t in the sense that all of the functionality of such gizmos was anticipated and described way back when.  When?  At least in the seventies when Ted Nelson was talking to everyone about something called Xanadu.  He’s the visionary who gave us the words ‘hypertext’ and ‘hypermedia’, and the descriptions of how they would work.  Too bad he was a bit eccentric, ahead of his time, and missed out on the big bucks.

At the Birth of Pork

George Rebane

Did you ever stand on the bank of a mighty river like the Missouri and contemplate its majestic and massive flow?  There it appears mighty and unstoppable in its progress to the ocean where it is swallowed up without a trace.  And then your thoughts turn to how such a behemoth starts from a hundred sources somewhere in faraway mountains. 

If you trace one of its tributaries up to the very trickle that emerges out of some crevice on a scenic mountainside, you can stay or divert that trickle with one hand.  It is these numberless trickles which unite into the mighty flow that carves the broad valleys that go on for hundreds or even thousands of miles.  And being at the start of something that big has a special feel to it, you are witnessing the birth of what will eventually become an earth changing force.

Washington DC is also at the mouth of such a mighty and unstoppable river of cash known as ‘set asides’.  This river springs from unknown sources through the working of little known forces dispersed all across the width and breadth of our land.  We also call this mighty flow of appropriated cash by its simple working name ‘pork’.  And we know that when pork passes the Potomac, it also disappears, dispersing into the ocean of local projects, uncountable, yet each one carefully fashioned or chosen to provide succor to its elected sponsor.

Standing on the steps of the Capitol, we may seek to replicate our quest for origins and ask whether we could trace the flow of pork to its very source.  This will be a harder task than tromping up some hillside following an ever narrowing creek, for we know that the headwaters of pork are also countless, unmarked, and work in quiet spurts that are hard to detect and harder to time their unannounced moments.  In plain talk, you have to be lucky to be there at the precise instant to actually witness that first little spurt, not apparent to all, that starts the flow which builds into the mighty, constant, and unstoppable flood of pork.

Well folks, yesterday afternoon I was lucky enough to bear such witness.  I may have been the only one paying enough attention to detect the little sliver of fatback that popped up right there in the middle of a town hall meeting in Grass Valley.

Ex Plures Duos (updated 28jan2010)

George Rebane

For the last thirty years or so we have been awakened by NPR’s morning program.  Locally that means listening to KXJZ 90.9 from Sacramento.  The format starts with inter/national news and then California news slanted toward our part of the state.  Both news programs seem to be politically pretty vanilla.  Oh, every once in a while the particular choice of a word – e.g. ‘claimed’ instead of ‘said’ – is thrown in there to indicate political preference.  And we also note what happenings are prominent by their absence.

But the real show starts at ten after the hour.  Around here we sometimes call it 'comedy central' when set pieces on various issues and topics are covered in five and ten minute segments.  Monday mornings liberal commentator Cokie Roberts is invited for a little Q&A.  This morning she was analyzing President Obama’s recent rocky road and calmly identified as “obstructionist” last year’s Republican efforts to influence legislation, and lamented that all those wonderful programs have now been put on the slow road.  No mention was made of the Republican alternatives or the Democratic lock-out of dissent.

Then the Administration’s new emphasis on job creation was cast into a two way straightjacket – creating jobs requires government stimulus, but government stimulus increases the deficit.  An economist from the union sponsored Economic Policy Institute outlined the quandary and lamented about opinion polls showing that the foolish public wants both more jobs and lower deficits.  Given the only two arrows in this man’s quiver, it could not be done.  Again tough luck for the President.

The casual listener is left commiserating with the President, never being told that there is a third arrow – lower taxes on businesses and investment returns.  For the left this is a non-starter that does not even need to be mentioned in such discussions lest some light bulbs turn on in radio land.

Over the years the NPR listener is left with a distinct set of ground truths such as ‘it’s really the government’s money and they let you use some of it for a while’ and ‘government is the country’s wealth creating agent’ and ‘government creates the jobs that grow the economy’ and … you get the idea.

This is just one example of how America is really two countries in one.  One that has more or less fixed conservative values and mores, and another that has ‘liberal’ values and mores that are more compliant or “pragmatic” to current needs.