Rebane's Ruminations

Fetus + 12 inches = Baby

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 17 May 2013.]

OK, if you’ve been habitually glued to the lamestream media, you probably just recently heard of the murder trial of late term abortionist and now convicted hat trick killer Dr Kermit Gosnell.  According to court testimony Gosnell ran a lucrative back alley abortion clinic right out in the open, visible from the street, and accessible from the sidewalks of Philadelphia.  His dilapidated storefront, cynically named ‘Women’s Medical Society’ with logos of a happily bouncing toddler between mom and dad, had not been inspected by a pro-abortion city health department for more than 15 years.   During this time the sleazy and filthy walk-in was the scene of hundreds, perhaps thousands of murders until some of his employees simply could no longer take it.

Gosnell was convicted for killing three live babies out of the uncounted thousands that actually died at his hands during the many years his death factory was in operation.  Babies, that he or his staff were unable to kill twelve inches before the point at which they exited the womb, were then immediately dispatched after their births.  These live human beings, as witnessed and testified by Gosnell’s workers, were then quickly murdered by jamming scissors into the backs of their necks to cut their spinal chords.  The defense unbelievably argued that the delivered and visibly viable babies were already dead, but it left hanging the question as to why they then had to be killed again.

Now consider that our current pro-choice understanding is that a baby, a universally acknowledged human being, a human who could go on to live a productive and rewarding life, can be just twelve inches and seconds from having been designated a fetus.  And as a fetus, it is legally only a lump of protoplasm liable for summary execution by one of a dozen ways.  Gosnell’s preferred method was an in utero lethal injection that did not always do the job.  But not to worry, the clinic’s ‘medical staff’ was twelve inches and seconds away, ready and waiting with the scissors.

So here’s the logic of the matter – if twelve inches separate a live baby from a formerly live fetus, does that not also mean that twelve inches separate a live fetus from being a live baby, a live human being?  This is what the legalization of late term abortions comes down to in our civilized society.  Twelve inches and seconds between an innocuous clinical procedure and a prosecutable murder.

I apologize for the brevity of this commentary, but there simply isn’t anything more to say beyond reminding you that there are still many more Gosnells out there.

My name is Rebane, and I expand on this and related themes on NCTV and on georgerebane.com where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However these views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

Ruminations – 16may13 (updated 18may13)

George Rebane

The flowering Obamagate scandals are simply “controversies” as National Propaganda Radio spent a great deal of time this morning assuring its audience.  Nothing special here, the President always comes out to the formally prepared East Room in the evenings to remark on little kerfuffles or differences of opinion.  Everyone go back to sleep.

Pioneer aviator Lyman Gilmore was celebrated yesterday at the school of his name.  There was a big ceremony for students and speakers to recognize Nevada County’s contribution to early aviation.  The event included an organized overflight by a large group of local aviators, some of  them with national reputations.  The flight was comprised of 18 private aircraft led by Jim Booth in his now familiar yellow AT-6 warbird followed in close formation by three members of the Ryder Flight.  Getting all those airplanes in the air, oriented and lined up, and then back on the ground on a very windy day was a grand feat of organization and heads up piloting by all participants – H/T to our own Bob Hobert (Ryder Flight leader and RR reader, who also sent me the pic) for organizing and getting everyone briefed and debriefed.  I was happy to be invited by Jim to again fly in the rear seat of the T-6.

“Untruth” versus lie.  The media, led by Fox News, seems to have some problem with those terms.  Even the conservative Dr Charles Krauthammer (around our house known as ‘The Bonze’), their most noble of nationally syndicated commentators, dripping with gravitas, can’t bring himself to call a lie a lie – well, he did once last night.  On the air politicians aren’t lying, they’re telling “untruths”.  For us with simpler minds, an untruth is any statement that is not true independent of the intent behind its utterance – misreading a clock and then falsely reporting the time is an untruth.  A lie is a known untruth told with intent to deceive.  Most politicians are inveterate liars, it’s part of the job requirements – let’s call a spade a spade when their lies are obvious to the whole country.

Rosa Koire will present an update on Agenda21, and how this UN inititiative has been making progress ‘Behind the Green Mask’.  Here’s the info –

When:  Tuesday May 21, 2013, 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Where: Grass Valley Veterans Hall, 225 S. Auburn Street, Grass Valley
Admission: $20 at the door; $15 in advance
Advance tickets: BriarPatch Co-op, online at www.cabpro.net (special events tab) or by calling CABPRO (530) 478-1331

Those of us a bit paranoid about government training guns on its own citizens (aka us), should keep their eye peeled on the first steps that our military has now taken in this direction.  Obama’s Pentagon has “unilaterally” granted itself powers to aid local law enforcement agencies to curb “civil disturbances” by changing some wording in the US Code covering ‘Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies’ (more here).

[update]  New  speech codes will be sweeping the nation starting with the college campuses and the revision of what consists of sexually harrassing speech.  This will not stop with either the campuses or sexual harrassment.  All the while our astute progressives are protesting, 'What new regulations? there're no more new regulations.  And let's talk about Bush instead.'  Obama's fundamental transformation is on a roll.  (more here).

[18may13 update]  Well, it looks like it's CYA time in embassy land, at least in the mid-eastern part of the world.  Now that everyone's attention is on the Benghazi debacle, tragedy, and cover-up, no ambassador in that part of the world is going to be left behind in alerting the mother temple (aka Foggy Bottom) that threats to their embassies and consulates are increasing.  (more here)  For sure Kerry is not going to hang on to Hillary's hand as he helps Obama throw her under the bus.  So we are sure to see some visible muscle deployed closer to where the action is anticipated.  And playing his cards right, maybe ol' John can emerge out of all this as the new, improved, and heroic hopeful for 2016.  Crazier things have happened.

Living in Obamastan – what’s not to like?

George Rebane

What was foretold has come to pass, he has delivered with a vengeance and a promise of more to come.

1.    Benghazi – ineptness, tragedy, cover-up, lies, demonstration of weakness, …
2.    Syria – inattention, ineptness, tragedy, loss of prestige and confidence, …
3.    Obamacare – national healthcare and economic disaster, ultimate partisanship, ineptness, uncertainty, lies about implementation, effect, costs, …
4.    Iran – ineptness, uncertain ally to mid-east friends, meaningless ‘red lines’, invitation to war, Islam’s war on west promoted, …
5.    Iraq – inept withdrawal, total loss of influence, waste of sacrifices made, bolster Iran
6.    Afghanistan – confusion, withdrawal guaranteed to leave region unstable, wasted sacrifices, Taliban will triumph, …
7.    North Africa – Al Qaida expands and triumphant, no clear policy, leading from behind in the wrong direction, relinquishing an entire continent, …
8.    IRS politicized – responsive weapon to target opposition groups, institutions, and individuals, agency radicalized, cover-up, lies, …
9.    EPA – rogue agency, congressional bypass, executive hammer, economic brake, fear in the land, uncertainty, disastrous impediments to a beneficient national energy policy, …
10.    Immigration reform – borders remain porous, amnesty, Democrat voter fast track, Reconquista, …
11.     US Economy – on permanent slow track, regulatory hell, uncertainty, inept/perfidious economic policy, systemic unemployment growth, constructive nationalization of business and industry, …
12.    American culture – in last stages of destruction, war on Christianity and European heritage, massive loss of freedoms, replaced by growing mass of government regulations, education system propagandized, class warfare ignited, …
13.    Fundamental Transformation of America – Agenda 21 provisions adopted while denied, military being castrated, intelligence/security apparatus remains stovepiped and compromised to combat homeland terror, government arming to combat Americans, goal to become a compliant peer member of the new global order, progress to mediocrity is on track.

This list is incomplete.

The Senate’s Amnesty Bill (updated 10apr13)

George Rebane

The Senate will “mark up” and pass their version of immigration reform, probably tomorrow.  What is turning out to be an amnesty bill has drawn a lot of fire from the Right for a lot of reasons, not all of them flying in tight formation.  For example, the Heritage Foundation has published a report outlining some of the bill’s shortcomings and delivering the punch line that the net life-cycle cost of the legislation to the American taxpayer will be $6.3T over the 50-year time horizon covered.  Full report here.

The Cato Institute has declared the report to be bull pucky because Heritage did not use "dynamic modeling and scoring" when they simulated the impact of putting 11M+ illegals through the Senate’s immigration process.  Instead, Cato's analysis says the Senate bill would “increase U.S. GDP by $1.5 trillion in the ten years after enactment.”  Yes, you got it right, they’re talking past each other comparing apples and oranges.  More here.

The Senate bill does have the usual Democratic flaws – no secure border, early start of government benefits, and shortened path to citizenship.  But I have a couple of concerns to add to these.  First, I don’t think that the 11M illegals will behave any differently from Americans with the same education levels enjoying the same benefits.  I don’t think that these new immigrants will continue ‘doing the jobs that Americans refuse to do’, instead they’ll behave just like Americans.

Second, I think that to keep their snouts in the trough, they will work and vote for candidates who promise to keep that trough filled.  (Their pardons will also motivate the rest of the Hispanic Americans to vote for their munificent providers.)  In short, as these people become franchised voters, they will provide the Democrats with an unassailable majority to pursue the provisions of Agenda21. 

Speaking again of systemic unemployment (an enduring topic on RR), this cohort of illegal aliens has nothing to recommend it in alleviating the current levels of under- and unemployed.  The cited dynamic models don’t account for the dynamism of accelerating technology; these ever hopeful models don’t recognize how the workforce now ratchets downward with every recession leaving a lower fraction of eligible workers participating in the workforce.  When the smoke clears from immigration reform, we will have just added to the level of systemic unemployment in the country.

With runaway debt levels, unfunded liabilities, mounting regulatory burden, insane healthcare, unabated green initiatives, and mounting tax burdens, the country is headed for its next economic shock that will most likely occur before 2016.  None of this is being discussed or even anticipated in the design of a reformed immigration law that will serve Americans’ interests.

[9may13 update]  The nearby photo of the Verizon ad in today’s WSJ is apropos to the discussion of immigration reform.  It shows a STEM worker contemplating a whiteboard full of squigglies.  I spent a good part of my time in harness in that position, either alone or with colleagues.  In those sessions time disappeared and reappeared only when the janitor stuck his head into my office or conference room where we were huddled, or the inevitable call from one of our wives informing us that we had missed dinner since the children had to be fed.  All that came with the territory.

The text at the bottom of the ad is not readable in the photo, but it is relevant when we consider how to prioritize whom we should attract to these shores.  It reads - Brains matter.  Particularly when you’re dealing with robots and algorithms.  But at Verizon’s Innovation Centers, you’ll see another constant.  Passion.  Smart people working overtime.  Running on fumes.  Because they know what technology can solve.  They know it can help doctors make a more informed diagnosis in seconds instead of months.  They know if we think long and hard enough, we can help insure a constant supply of clean energy.  Or help a fire fighter see through a blaze.  The hours are long.  But great.  Because we believe the world’s biggest challenges deserve even bigger solutions.

[10may13 update]  In my 'Teach Them to Code' post I argued that learning a programming language was a critical skill for young people to acquire.  Learning the elements of programming requires the student to be able to take a specification (or objective), break its achievement down into parts (or tasks), and understand the sequence and content (process or work required) in each of the parts.  In short, programming skills are transferable to countless other job areas beyond writing code.  And also vice versa; if a person has trouble learning to write simple code, they will probably have trouble organizing a job assignment.

In the 10may13 WSJ, Kirk McDonald, president of PubMatic, writes an open letter to this year’s new baccalaureate graduates telling them not only why he won’t hire them, but why they will have trouble getting a job anywhere – ‘Sorry College Grads, I Probably Won’t Hire You’.  His message is summarized by “If you're at all interested in media, technology or related fields, please learn a little computer programming."

McDonald reviews an oft ignored stat – in the next decade(!!) the US will produce only 40K computer science BS degrees, and also 120K new jobs requiring that degree.  And that’s only in computer science and not the entire STEM field of jobs in which the equivalent stats are even more distressing.  We all know where these jobs are going, and from where the needed people to fill them are coming.  In short, Americans will not be able to fill such gratifying career jobs, and McDonald’s point reinforces one often made on RR that such graduates with deficient degrees will not be able to fill very many positions that require college degrees.

The bottom line here is that our immigration policy should be heavily weighted toward attracting the talent needed to fill the burgeoning STEM and other wealth producing jobs versus inviting in people to do jobs that Americans have been taught are below their station in life.  A much needed national initiative should focus on getting Americans to do all jobs available in our land, and not further burden the country with more welfare programs and eager illegals willing to take any available job.

Breaking Bread – ‘2nd Amendment and Gun Control’ (updated 10may13)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 3 May 2013.  I have included an extensive addendum to memorialize the structure of the current gun control debate in our country’s widening ideological schism, and to illustrate key factors in the asymmetric understanding and approach taken by the Left and Right when they meet in a public forum such as was provided by the 1may13 edition of ‘Breaking Bread’ on NCTV.  To view this and past episodes go here and search archives with 'Breaking Bread'.]

Last month our community television station NCTV launched Breaking Bread, a new independently produced program airing monthly and available online.  Breaking Bread is an hour-long program featuring discussions of national issues and current events.  At the start I want to emphasize that the program’s objective is to present and clarify the different perspectives in our socio-political landscape from which people view the issues that “alter and illuminate our times”. 

The program will feature co-hosts and guests who as a group will represent a diversity of views and seek to make them understood.  And where possible, we will also try to reach some consensus.  Therefore Breaking Bread is not intended as a debate but an open, unformatted, and unrehearsed get together wherein the participants offer their own views on the topics discussed.

The program debuted on 5 April during which its five co-hosts were introduced discussing ‘Language and Labels’.  You can access the inaugural edition on NCTV’s website at nevadacountytv.org or from this commentary’s transcript posted on my website.  The same will be true for all subsequent editions of the program – after all, this is the 21st century.

We recorded the second edition of Breaking Bread, titled ‘The 2nd Amendment and Gun Control’, on 1 May, last Wednesday.  The program was co-hosted by Paul Emery, KVMR news director, and me, George Rebane, introduced as “a conservetarian blogger and commentator with a lot of birthdays and, some say, a contentious ideology.”

Joining as guests were Nevada County’s Sheriff Keith Royal, Mr Norm Sauer, a retired lawyer who lectures on constitutional affairs, along with Mr and Mrs Nick and Amanda Wilcox who tragically lost their daughter Laura to gun violence.  They are prominent gun control advocates and supporters of the Brady Bill.

In framing the discussion that followed, I reminded viewers that people of the Left, who advocate for stronger gun controls or even confiscation, approach gun ownership from an episodic or topical point of view.  Their stated objective is to reduce gun violence, or more specifically, gun deaths.  And the statistics they cite, along with descriptions of horrific episodes of murder and mayhem, are designed to grossly simplify the issue, and get the listener to focus on events that everyone wants to prevent, and wishes that had never happened.  Liberal academics have identified this common and effective tack of public debate as ‘issues activism’, basically a bottom up approach that the Left uses to induce the desired public opinion.

The Right approaches gun ownership top down through the 2nd Amendment, arguing the intent and writings of the Founders in their drafting of our Constitution.  They see the real purpose of grassroots gun ownership as necessary to keep government from going rogue, and if it does, then as a last resort, to launch a successful revolution.  This, after all, was the explicit intention left to us in the legacy of our country’s early years.  While the Right does admit to the need for some regulation in who gets to own what armaments, it points to history that records tyrannical governments killing their own citizens in the hundreds of millions during the 20th century - all as a matter of intended policy, and not related to wars or combat.  Such killing by governments is called democide, which took over 260M lives during the 20th century.

So, of gun violence one must ask, ‘Would you sacrifice ten lives to save 10M lives?’  Yes, of course.  Or ‘Would you sacrifice 10M lives to save ten lives?’  Of course not.  But for such a trade-off the correct answer for each of us lies somewhere in between, and in the realworld the numbers are never known for certain, but must be estimated using probabilities.  For those who don’t understand the role of probabilities in assessing realworld uncertainties, as is required in making public policies, then any reasoned discussion of such policies will be inaccessible to them.  Instead, we will hear from them nothing but their emotional outpourings on the matter.  But then, reasonable discussion has never been a necessary prelude to legislation or regulation.

My name is Rebane, and I expand on this and related themes on NCTV and on georgerebane.com where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However these views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

Addendum:  The Asymmetry of Information and Tactics in the Gun Control Debate

With this addendum I want to reflect on the experience from taping the second edition of Breaking Bread (BB2) covered in the above transcript of 3may13 KVMR commentary.  The experience of that telecast both confirmed and expanded on the asymmetry of information and tactics used by the Left and Right in today’s gun control debate.

Ruminations - 30apr13 (edited)

George Rebane

New York is airing a series of hilarious ads claiming that it is now the best place in the nation to start a new business or find a home for an existing one.  And the basis for the hilarity?  Why, New York’s low taxes for such businesses coming to the Empire State.  Now you have to recall, especially if you are of our Left brethren or cistern, that a liberal tenet of economics is that tax rates don’t affect economic behavior.  Liberal economists from Krugman on down have made that case.  Aghast, upon learning of this fractured belief, I even posted on it in The Liberal Mind section.  But here we are, with Gov Andrew Cuomo himself all smiles, telling business execs and entrepreneurs that special low taxes, low tax rates, and even tax holidays await them when they re/locate in New York, aka the penultimate high tax state in the Union.  Somebody give the good governor the DNC’s phone number.

Benghazi is baaaack!  Fox News broke the story that there are at least four whistle blowing insiders and survivors of last September’s jihadist attack on our Benghazi consulate in Lybia.  They want to testify in front of Congress on some of the “Who cares …!!” stories that the White House and State Department told America earlier this year.  These four and others say they have been warned of very short career prospects should they come out with anything that materially contradicts the official Benghazi narrative that long ago received a quiet burial in the lamestream.

Nevertheless, now all lawyered up, these whistleblowers are seeking security clearances for their counsel so they can be shown the classified evidence for the new claims – e.g. that help was available but denied.  When Fox asked President Obama this morning about supporting the country’s knowing about the new developments, without blinking the President said that he had not heard anything about the matter, “but I’ll find out.”  Now can you imagine that the President’s morning brief – you know, the one a Secret Service agent hands him while still in his skivvies – omitted a heads up on what the nation was told on Fox the day before, and what was sure to be asked of him during his news conference later that morning?  (BTW, Benghazi was in the first question.)  As long contended here, the man is a consummate liar and/or employs the most incompetent staff 1600 Pennsylvania has ever seen.

Speaking of Obamacare, as more reports come out on who wants exemption from it (correct answer: unions, Congress, corporations), the lies told about that legislation are now so obvious that even prominent Democrats are denouncing the possibility or benefits of its implementation.  They are still looking for one single thing it will do as advertized.  It is safe to say that everyone today is looking for how to put a bullet into Obamacare without damaging their careers.  You should have heard the pained discussion about it on National Propaganda Radio this morning.  And the lamestream has put its best crickets on the story.

‘Pay for Delay’ – a capitalist quandary

George Rebane

Big pharma has been playing a very dubious game that doesn’t speak well of free markets, and free enterprise.  Over the years its lobbyists have convinced Congress to put in place some pretty dodgy laws that allow it to skirt the legal edges of what most people understand about anti-trust strictures in this country.  The name for the practice is ‘pay for delay’.

Here’s the short version.  As a big pharma’s patent on a very profitable drug approaches expiry, or another smaller pharma has cracked the code on how to circumvent the patent, the big and smaller company strike a deal to screw the consumer by keeping the price high and the market share of the big company intact.  We all know that as a drug ‘goes off patent’ other pharmas enter the market with knock-off generic versions of the drug at greatly reduced prices.  After all, they didn’t have to pay for developing the drug or the costs to build the market for it, therefore they have no recovery accounting to do in their financial planning.

So what happens?  Well, the big pharma company approaches the smaller company that is the presumed threat, and says ‘we’ll pay you $X under these terms to delay your entry into our drug’s market with your generic version, whaddya say?’  Of course the deal works the other way also with the smaller company approaching the big company saying, ‘We’re about to launch a generic version of your big blockbuster drug that will plummet your financials and share price into the mud.  We want $X under these terms to delay the introduction of our generic version, whaddya say?’

And what can we make of that? it’s clearly price collusion to the detriment of the consumer.  But the involved entities are private companies dealing with their very own intellectual properties.  Why should it be anyone else’s business regarding how they settle their affairs?

We all know the socialist/progressive echo chamber here – they don’t think much of private property to begin with – 'you developed it using public roads for transport and public police for security and …, therefore the damn thing already belongs mostly to the public'.  In short, “You didn’t build that!”  But let’s put this aside for a moment.

As a conservetarian and dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, I could cite chapter and verse from the Austrian school, and tell the Left to go pound sand.  But on second thought, if with what little social consciousness I’m allowed ;-) I consider the situation from the perspective of the (hang on now) capitalist collective, I might come up with a different response.  I do want anyone who develops a beneficial drug that helps millions to get one helluva reward, but do I want them to get it forever?  Maybe I do, since that will draw other competitors to develop better alternatives to get a piece of that pie themselves.

Or do I want someone to come in from the side (usually carrying a very large gun) and tell the pharma what the ‘fair reward’ will be for their risk, expense, and labors.  We kinda already do that with limiting the lifetime of patents – you gotta get it while you still got it.  I dunno, it’s a hard problem that SCOTUS is chewing on right now (more here).  Thoughts?

H/T to a RR reader for the heads up on this.

Ruminations - 26apr13 (updated)

George Rebane

Lady Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, I keep coming back to it.  The occasion was one of those rare opportunities to recognize a giant in the pantheon of modern world leaders, and nations sent their most distinguished there to honor her achievements for her country and for demonstrating to the world the art of the possible.  President Obama had the good sense to send former Secs State Kissinger, Shultz, and Baker, instead of selecting some subset from the current diplomatic dwarves that form the leading echelons of his own administration.  Kudos to the President.

In the aftermath of the Boston bombing, Bostonians celebrated their police cadres' service to the city – perhaps too prematurely.  Upon reflection, of which there is a lot going on now, in the 26apr13 WSJ Dr Judith Miller of the Manhattan Institute draws a distinction between what the NYPD has been doing since 9/11 and the dropped balls of Boston’s finest (and, of course, the feds).  In essence, the city fathers and mothers of Boston – the birthplace of 9/11 – decided not to do anything serious about tracking domestic jihadists.  Therefore, the contribution of their constabulary was strictly reactionary wherein, as from a Keystone Cops movie, we saw combat armed cadres trundle hither and yon while shutting down an entire city.  After all is said and done, it was the private citizens who fingered the terrorists, Muslim jihadists that weren’t even on the Boston PD’s radar before they set off the tragic explosions.  The police action ended with an entire platoon of Boston’s finest heroically pouring automatic rifle fire into a boat in which the surviving terrorist was already bleeding to death.

Helicopter Ben of the Fed is looking to raise interest rates because he has to.  No matter his promise to keep them low until our hoaky unemployment rate drops below 6.5%, or at least until 2015.   He is quietly checking with the big banks as to how/whether they might survive if their lending portfolios would suddenly be ‘marked to market’, and consequently plummet as interest rates took off.  Right now QE3 at $80B+ per month of Treasurys buying is keeping rates low.  That new money is actually not doing the economy much good (witness today’s disappointing 2.5% GDP growth update) since banks don’t want to lend the stuff at current low rates while anticipating the return of sanity when the markets actually start setting interest rates again.  Have seatbelts handy.

Econuts and divers sorts of animal activists are the leading phalanx of 21st  century luddites.  Two recent reports of their insanities highlight the cadre of terrorists that uniquely derive from the far Left.  One report – ‘Animal-rights activists launch a rodent rescue and set back research that might help cure Alzheimer's or autism’ – details of how these western moral equivalents of ragheads trashed years of research at the University of Milan, research that was heading to broadly benefit humankind.   Another reports on how American econuts have isolated King Cove, a remote Alaskan town, from its medical life line with the fiat-emplaced Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.  The administration's wildlife idiots will not even allow a gravel road through the ‘refuge’ (already laced with such roads) on which an ambulance or EMT vehicle can be used in medical emergencies.  The result, “A dozen residents have died attempting to reach medical attention since the preserve's creation.”  Details here of yet another chapter from the record of our fundamental transformation to socialism.

[update]  RL 'Bob' Crabb's cartoon in the 27apr13 issue of The Union draws our attention once again to the scumbags in Sacramento.

Boston and pan-Islamism – some early ruminations

George Rebane

The end of round one in Boston’s latest experience with pan-Islamic jihad brings to mind several observations before round two gets under way.  My working name for round two is ‘Positioning for political justice’.  But here I’d like to put down some thoughts about two aspects – the larger frame of the Boston bombings, and the mighty law enforcement response visible on Boston’s streets.

In our public square many (most?) of us are still hesitant to connect the dots from such acts of terror to what, hopefully, is finally starting to be labeled a part and parcel of a global pan-Islamic jihad.  Some politically correct and evidence resistant pilgrims in public office continue to view incidents like Maj Hassan’s Ft Hood killing spree as “workplace violence” or some other equally inane appellation.  Others, including members of Congress (e.g. Reps Louie Gohmert, Peter King), are beginning to call for added surveillance of our Islamic organizations to match what has already been going on in keeping an eye on the so-called ‘rightwing extremist organizations’ that now include tea parties and veterans associations.

Many students of history and current events know that Islam is not unified unto itself.  Its 1.3B adherents come from many cultures all over Asia and Africa.  After the prophet’s death, Islam quickly devolved into many sects, each considering the other apostate and launching murderous attacks on the other.  About the only thing they all agreed on was that anyone not accepting their version of the prophet’s message deserved death, and that Islam was to rule the world by the sword and the Quran.  Once Muslims left Mecca and conquered Medina, Islam no longer pretended to be a religion of peace, save in their practice of taqiyya.

Teach them to code (addended)

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 19 April 2013.]

OK, those of you out there in radio land who want to help a young person find an awesomely interesting and well-paying career, pay close attention to what follows.  The jobs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM areas, going unfilled number in the millions, and are growing at a rate three times that of non-STEM jobs according to the Dept of Commerce.

Our ability to fill those American jobs continues to sag because our teachers lack the skills to teach and motivate students to enter STEM fields.  We have to remember that it is the STEM fields that provide the country’s major sources of wealth and ability to remain competitive in global markets.  And by any and every measure applied, today we simply are not cutting it.  When a STEM job is created in the United States, it has a shelf life that measures in the months and not years.  If it doesn’t get filled by an American, it gets filled by a foreign national, or worse, it goes overseas.

The fundamental skill that enables rapid progress in a STEM curriculum and in the STEM job markets is the ability to program a computer, to write computer code, or simply to code in one or more of the popular programming languages.  Computers can do nothing without executing some piece of code, and today computers do everything in our society.  Put it all together, it’s not hard.

We need to encourage more pre-teens to start writing code for fun and profit.  And it is fun to see what you have conceived, typed into a text editor, and then executed to perform some interesting task or graphic display that before was just the result of a mysterious process that followed the click of a mouse.  Coding requires learning to reason and think logically, and to conceive of processes in our minds that don’t yet exist – in short, coding requires creativity on steroids.

The easiest and most practical stepping stone to writing your first code is learning the basics of using a spreadsheet program.  Why the spreadsheet?