Rebane's Ruminations

Republican Candidates – a desperate bunch indeed (updated 13jan2012)

George Rebane

On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, they’re all chucking mudballs at the pack leader Romney no matter how many principles they have to discard or sully.  Romney was once in the business of restructuring failing and/or underutilized companies.  This required at times for him to downsize and restructure business units which involved laying off people, and even shutting some operations down.  Now the pack trailers, avowed capitalists all, are braying that he was a heartless Scrooge who doesn’t care about the American worker.  What a sight, Republicans outdoing each other criticizing capitalism.

Then we have the interesting notion that says better debaters make better presidents.  There is no evidence that the ability to respond in a second with a good one-liner or zinger indicates that you will make better decisions in the Oval Office.  But we have now had ten such pitched podium battles, and then after each one analyzed the bejeezus out the candidates’ performance with the unstated conclusion that a fast lip marks a good leader.  And here I thought that the President of the United States always has the power and presence to say, ‘Hold your horses, this is important and I want to noodle on it some more.’  And then the horses would be properly held until the President was good and ready.

And heaven forbid that over the years a candidate has used subsequent information to change his mind.  That would make him an unreliable ‘flip-flopper’, instead of what? the inscribed granite monument that should always occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

We voters are a strange breed.

[13jan2012 update]  Ramirez nails it again, this time with desperate Repub candidates misrepresenting free market capitalism in order to try to bring down Romney.  N/T to RR reader.

Campaign 2012 Summarized

George Rebane

If you want to save yourself some time watching all the candidate debates and the endless primaries, then just grok the following graphic as an accurate summary of what we'll be hearing from both sides until 6 November 2012.

Obamination #4,317: AT-6 Award to Brazil company

George Rebane

So much crap happens under the radar of our dysfunctional lamestream.  The Air Force is about to procure the new propeller-driven counter insurgency aircraft from a Brazilian company with connections to Soros, thereby leaving Hawker-Beechcraft of Wichita, Kansas high and dry.  They won't even let the American company bid.  More here from Flying magazine.

With Obama's announced plans to castrate our core military (excluding Iraq and Afghanistan stand-downs), the message to the services is 'Play ball on procurement or we'll cut your a$$ off.'  The progressive beat to kill American jobs and strategic capabilities continues on all fronts.

The Liberal Mind – It afflicts all levels

George Rebane

The guiles of socialism should never be discounted or ascribed to only this class/intellect or that.  As many others since then, the Bolshevik Revolution probably ate many of its own children when it applied overly simple rules for liquidating classes that were the designated enemies of the people.  For example, during the Russian Civil War (1918-1923) marauding communist partisans stopped trains to examine the hands of passengers who were lined up along the tracks.  Those with ‘soft hands’ were summarily executed on the spot.

We received a non-Christmas card from friends (actually friends of one of our daughters) that contained the obligatory annual family news summary.  These friends are about fifty, and both are highly educated and accomplished technology professionals.  They are also what I would call members of the 'soft hands' far Left intelligentsia - well to do, having benefitted immensely, and continuing to benefit from the free market capitalist system.   And yet all their non-professional energies go towards a fundamental transformation of our country’s economy and social order.  Their college age kids have been carefully taught, and are now sources of great pride to the parents.

The following excerpt is from their news letter (names changed).

… Bob’s big claim to fame this year was getting himself arrested (on purpose) in Washington DC by protesting the Tar Sands pipeline construction.  Here he is in front of the White House on August 30th (behind Daryl Hannah).  He returned to Washington in November to join the 12,000 people who circled the White House in protest of the pipeline.  The demonstrations seem to have worked, at least delaying approval for the pipeline.

Elaine has always been interested in social equity, so it was no surprise when she joined the Occupy movement representing the 99%.  She spent a month living in a tent at Occupy Oakland and participating in protests.  The tent community that was set up in front of city hall (shown here) was quite impressive with kitchen, library, first aid, child care, yoga classes, and nightly general assemblies.  It has been a real education in self-governance and non-violent protest for all of us.

The 2011 Time Magazine person of the year is “the protestor” and we’re very proud to have two of them in our family.

Scattershots – 5 January 2012

George Rebane

•    Iowa produced a tie between Romney and Santorum (within counting error).  It still looks like Romney is stuck at the 25% level when he’s competing with a field of candidates.  This could change in New Hampshire where he is a part time resident.  The interest in the Republican race should continue to grow as Newt Gingrich threatens to become the kamikaze Newt Gingrinch, and a dissed by the mainstream Ron Paul sails off to libertarian la-la land some time between now and the convention.  Both can spoil the Republicans' Christmas.  Unless Romney gets a new writer, look for at least two undeclared Republicans to throw their hats into the ring.

•    The notorious economist Keynes had a clear moment when he famously replied to a reporter, ‘I change my mind when new facts warrant it.  What do you do?’  Yet, for some reason we punish our politicians who make the case for changing their mind on issues as new data becomes available.  Small minds, it seems, demand consistency über alles in their candidates.  And as Henninger (5jan12 WSJ) points out, this is a prevalent syndrome.  (Let’s not confuse a ‘promise’ with a new assessment.)
•    China’s military expansion seems to be sliding under America’s media radar.  Or is this issue one of many that the lamestream finds too complex to handle?  The development is doubly important since they are our major trading partner, economic competitor, major creditor, and ‘natural enemy’ in the western Pacific.  With Obama’s projected "leaner" military, they may soon also be our natural enemy in the eastern Pacific.
•    The people of Indiana see the benefits of becoming a right-to-work state.  This is opposed by the Left as “union busting”.  Doesn’t this confirm that union membership, destructive as it always is in the longer run, is most effectively built with the help of government guns?  Compare the economies of right-to-work states with ‘union states’.  Indiana Democrats are again boycotting their legislature a la Wisconsin.  Maybe they can write off any jaunts to neighboring Chicago as 'continuing education' in the Chicago Way.
•    Where does our know-nothing Harvard professor of constitutional law get off making recess appointments when the Congress is specifically not in recess to prevent his making of such appointments?  Hubris achieving new heights?

Wood fires

George Rebane

We have always had lots of firewood and kept a fire going in the fireplace most of the year.  As a camper and backpacker, I have made a fire or two in the woods over the decades.  And I've often been asked about how I build and maintain a reliable and long-burning wood fire.  As a techie, I started studying the behavior of small fires at an early age, and here I distill my approach to the care and feeding of indoor and outdoor wood fires - Download 'On making and maintaining a wood fire'.  In any event, it's a diversion to the usual stuff that appears in these pages.

The Liberal Mind – A culture-free universal morality

George Rebane

In discussions on these pages during the last months a new aspect of the liberal mind has revealed itself.  It has always been there, but those of us not blessed with the thinking abilities of the liberal mind seem to overlook this strong characteristic of progressive thought.  And this is that there exists some universal overarching set of morals that 1) is totally independent of and not anchored in any cultural framework, and 2) that the tenets of this universal morality should be imposed on a selective, as needed basis, to promote the spread of collectivistic society.  (My own thoughts about morality are here.)

A corollary to the existence of such universal morality is that access to it as a reliable standard with which to laud and/or lament other peoples’ behavior is reserved for the extra-cultural collectivist – people who admit to no cultural membership, judge all cultures to be of equal merit to humankind, and would prefer that cultural boundaries disappear from the face of the earth.  To promote the latter goal, they all foster and celebrate multiculturalism in western societies, knowing what effect such social tolerances have on each culture so compacted.

Universal morality is the prime unstated basis for large masses of people being persuaded and aggregated by such notions as ‘income equality’, ‘social justice’, ‘social fairness’, and a never-ending expansion of ‘rights’ whose implementation is funded by others belonging to ‘predatory’ classes that are the cause of the world’s problems.

Universal morality is supra-legal.  It can be used to variously indict those who have prospered through no infraction of a country’s laws.  By ‘variously indict’ I mean that the tenets of universal morality can be fashioned at will out of whole cloth for a cause célèbre du jour, and then abandoned when/if they become inconvenient for the next engagement.  It is for this reason that it is hard to nail any of these tenets to the wall.

[In an apparent attempt at a universal morality, a Dr Kent M. Keith, Ed.D. has copyrighted(!?) and sells what to him is ‘The Universal Moral Code’.  It’s not clear whether he wants you to ask permission before attempting to put any of the code’s tenets into practice.  Nevertheless, their examination reveals that there is little more there than what we are taught in the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Most certainly the interpretation of their adherence or violation is no easier, and in a more perfect social order such interpretation and enforcement should be left to “servant-leaders” of “existing major institutions” transformed by “new regenerative forces operat(ing) within them.”  The institutionally naked individual apparently has no place in a new world adhering to universal morality.]

New Year’s Prognostications – A Fantasy

George Rebane

Perhaps at no other time, save at the turn of an election year, are we exposed to so many predictions and prognostications about the future.  Unfortunately, for the careful listener these are for the most part useless noises that convey little information beyond confirming that the pundits believe that their interviewers and audiences are a bit thin between the ears.  And so the nonsense continues year after year because the pundits are right on both counts.

But if we do pay attention, we discover that the pundits’ predictions are almost always rhetorical tautologies (“… a series of statements that comprise an argument, whereby the statements are constructed in such a way that the truth of the proposition is guaranteed.” ) – ‘Sam will surely die in the coming year if a safe falls on his head before next New Year’s Eve.’

Watching such pundit programs, especially during this time of the year, I often fantasize about a reporter who could be found to conduct an interview along the lines that follow.

Reporter:  Welcome to the program Senator, as a prominent congressional leader, we’d like to hear your thoughts about the coming year.  Let’s start with the Iowa caucuses; who do you think is most likely to walk away as the winner?

Senator:  Well, that’s hard to say.  If candidate A does a good job convincing the undecided voters, and candidate B continues to sink in the polls, then I think that A has a good chance in taking Iowa.

Reporter:  With all due respect Senator, that statement didn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know.  You gave us a rhetorical tautology – of course, garnering the undecides, while B’s popularity plummets, will make A the probable winner.  Your value on programs like this is to give us your considered opinions, and then share the considerations which persuade you.  Given your position in our country’s political leadership, I was hoping that our viewers would take away a bit more than that.

Senator:  That’s a pretty harsh comeback.  The Iowa caucuses are a complex political event, and it’s hard to be definitive about the result given the imponderables and the jockeying of all the candidates in the race.  I gave you my best answer.

Reporter:  Senator, I only asked you to be “definitive” about your assessment of who the most likely winner will be.  If to you all the candidates look pretty much equally likely to win, then we can take your answer as an ‘I don’t know’ and move on.  What do you think the chances are that Israel will launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities this year?

Senator:  The Middle East is a very complex geo-political environment with many players and many conflicting national interests.  There are several contingencies that will make Israel’s attack on Iran more likely.  Say, if Iran demonstrates that it has a nuclear weapon by conducting a successful underground test, and at the same time our administration remains firm that another round of sanctions will convince the Iranians to dismantle their nuclear weapons program; then I believe the chances will increase measurably that Israel will seriously consider a pre-emptive attack.

Reporter:  Senator, to quote a famous man, ‘there you go again’.  You have once more labored the obvious and totally sidestepped my question.  Given all the information to which you are privy, I asked you about the chances of Israel’s attack.  The answer that we were looking for was preferably something such as a statement of odds like ‘one out of ten’, or at least an adjectival assessment like ‘very probable’ or ‘not likely at all’.  You instead delivered another rhetorical tautology, and concluded it with a totally useless ‘serious consideration of an attack’ by Israel.  Sir, your answer could not have been more uninformative.  In any event, thank you for taking the time to be with us today.

With this I wish all RR readers a year of minimal exposure to rhetorical tautologies and other bamboozles purposely disguised to pass for information.

[PS. Martin Light retires as CABPRO's Exec Dir to be replaced by Todd Juvinall.  Announcement here.]