Rebane's Ruminations

Name the bastards!

George Rebane

Rep Tom McClintock (R-CA4) writes ‘A Nation Without Borders Will Cease to be a Nation’ in the Washington Times.  In the piece he gives his usual erudite arguments that support his banner thesis.  But this open border travesty is not due to some natural disaster or act of God.  The closest he comes to ascribing the cause is to blame the “Biden administration”, a polyglot of faceless, anonymous, and unaccountable minions.  The congressman and I have had several talks on how ineffective such responses are in today’s political wars.  When the Democrats attack Republicans, they identify their targets by name and pile on them additionally fabricated faults.  To the voters this makes the cited problem real, one that is caused by known and dastardly Republicans.  It also makes a news story interesting and worth reporting in the vein of ‘let’s you and him fight.’

I have strongly advised our local congressmen (LaMalfa, McClintock, Kiley) in face-to-face conversations to always include names of the Democrat(s) guilty of foisting the latest feckless, foolish, and/or anti-American policy on the country.  While I have received mild agreement and no pushback on my recommendation, I have also gotten no traction as is again evident from the above column.  If the Republicans want their opposition to Democrats be heard, they need to name names of the guilty bastards who introduce and support the continuous stream of insanities which comprise progressive legislation.  Such one-on-one counters make news which people can understand, while word-smithed intellectual repartees will go on to sustain the sound of Republican silence across the land.  Engage, dammit!

Underserved, really?

George Rebane

Underserved groups used to describe populations without adequate access to goods and services, e.g. education, medical care. This included rural, elderly, low-literacy, blue collar, and poor populations. Minorities (i.e. Blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals, transphiles, illegal aliens, …) per se were not included, but often belonged to one or more or the included categories.  The current politically correct definition first and foremost characterizes all minorities as being underserved, and therefore needing wealth transfers along with a growing slate of “socially equitable” laws, regulations, rights, and permissions.

Today the underserved minorities are grist for the Democrat voting machine.  But the government’s own wealth transfer data from its myriads of welfare programs tells a markedly different story.  Starting around 1970, when the Great Society laws and programs started kicking in, it turns out that if anything, the minority populations in the big urban areas have been overserved.  (Culture and public education explains away why these monies have not been used more wisely.)  What keeps the underserved Big Lie alive in the lamestream is the way that progressive government bureaus, agencies, and departments keep score on the dispensed cash.

A good illustration of this is the cited statistics on the country’s child poverty rate.  Nationally prominent economists Phil Gramm and John Early debunk (here) the leftwing claim that currently one in six (over 16%) children live in poverty.  When you look more closely, you find for openers that “the Census Bureau’s tallies still don’t include $1.9 trillion in government transfer payments. … If the Census Bureau had included the missing $1.9 trillion in transfer payments, child poverty would have been only 3.2% in 2017, compared with the official rate of 17.5%.”

A similar Big Lie treatment generates the “myth of American income inequality”.  The authors treat this issue in an excellent online version (here) of their similarly titled book.  The income inequality ‘facts’ are cooked from statistics that garble earned income and the myriad of transfer payments that induce people not to work.  The continually cited poverty stats range in the one in five or six level (16-20%), when the actual rates are really less than one fifth (about 3+%) of that.  This fact is known by all illegal aliens who risked life and limb to get here.

The bottom line of all this is that these lies are used by our Left to perennially bolster their voter rolls with the unread and diseducated of the land.  At the same time this narrative forms the basis for the Democrats’ constant drumbeat of promoting vote-buying payments to these populations which require ever more taxes and national debt increases.  You can bet the farm that none of this has been covered in the Dems’ lamestream media, and therefore at least half the country has no idea of who is underserved, and to what extent these populations are actually being overserved.

Sandbox – 22sep22

[Bumblebrain’s foreign policy bungling and catastrophes have boosted the fortunes of America’s enemies who have now organized themselves into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization of Asian nations, anchored by China and Russia with India and Pakistan already ensconced, Iran ready to step aboard, and Erdogan working to bring Turkey into the fold.  The SCO promises to become China’s answer to NATO and support its Belt and Road advances into the Middle East and Africa.  While the US continues tangled up in its political nightmare, Team Biden knows as much about this as it does about our "secure" southern border. (more here)  gjr]

Scattershots – 21sep2022 (updated 23sep22)

George Rebane

Do any of them know what they’re talking about?  Here’s a comment from a liberal sackhead –

I sense much desperation on this site from the host's diatribes against women, blacks, and the march toward MAGA extremism. ... The hosts(sic) denigrates educated women, and assumed anyone not a rank MAGA is an idiot when in fact the QAnon prone MAGA are far more dangerously ignorant and mind controlled.  Posted by: Whole Foods | 21 September 2022 at 07:21 AM

As the record shows, RR contains no “diatribes against women, blacks,” nor has it ever given evidence of any “march toward MAGA extremism.”  Does the commenter have a definition for ‘MAGA extremism’, or even know the tenets of MAGA?  My money is on ‘Not even a clue’.  Naked allegations without a shred of substance behind them is the progressives’ de rigueur of accepted indictments.

They also have a very coarse, actually a binary, concept of ‘hate’.  Their lexicon between embracing and hating is a barren desert.  Once you criticize something or someone, especially one of their totems, then you are automatically accused of hate.  Nuanced semantics are relegated to their never-neverland.  An example of the other bookend, once someone embraces any one of the many conspiracy theories promoted by QAnon, they are automatically relegated to membership in the internationally fractionated and unstructured organization, along with embracing the entire smorgasbord of socio-political worldviews attributed to QAnon.  There is no middle ground.

On the lighter side.  Here’s a brain teaser reputed to have even caused Einstein a moment of puzzlement.  An old car is to drive a stretch of 2 miles, up and down a hill (one mile up and one mile down). Being so old, it cannot drive the first mile (the ascent) faster than with an average speed of 15 miles per hour.  How fast does it have to drive the second mile (on going down, it can, of course, go faster) in order to have an average speed of 30 miles an hour for the whole journey?

[23sep22 update]  Democrats’ partisan 501c3 charities use tax deductible contributions to register leftwing voters.  Such charities are not supposed engage in partisan activities.  The evil party has done this for decades knowing that the IRS will continue to give them a pass (consider if the Repubs did this).  Kim Strassel provides chapter and verse about this crap in the 23sep22 WSJ, “America’s charitable giving laws have been an enormous force for good, but Democrats are cynically abusing the system for partisan gain. If Congress wants to keep dollars and politicking in the political sphere—and under the remit of the Federal Election Commission—it needs to change tax law to prohibit ‘charities’ outright from taking part in voter-registration or get-out-the-vote drives. The problem isn’t ‘dark money’—it’s the sham ‘philanthropy’ voter-registration racket, taking place in broad daylight.” (more here)  Talk about election fraud; and what has the incompetent GOP leadership done about this?  Nothing, absolutely nothing.

A One-Party Humanitarian Crisis (updated 17sep22)

George Rebane

‘Humanitarian crises’ in ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions set up by progressives across the land.  Sending a few scores of illegal aliens from overcrowded border towns to sanctuary cities and exclusive enclaves is trumpeted as a “humanitarian crisis” by the Left and their lamestream media.  To do that is a “cruel, inhumane way to treat people” who have been enticed by the Biden administration to travel thousands of dangerous miles, paying cartels and coyotes their life savings to chance getting across our border without being raped, human trafficked, or killed in the process.  None of what the Democrats are putting the poor of the world through to get them illegally into America is seen by progressives as the greater humanitarian crisis compared to the final plane ride or comfortable bus trip to a community that advertises itself as a welcoming sanctuary.

What’s more galling is that so-called conservative commentators are unable to compare and contrast all this to their audiences.  They are joined by the eternally dumbfounded Republicans in ignoring the ongoing travesty, not even being able to point out how Democrats ignore the secreted midnight planes rides they sponsor to transport unannounced illegals to various cities in Republican governed states.  And all this is done to the continuously headlined Big Lie from the White House that “our border remains secure” and the problem is our “broken immigration system” which was caused by then President Trump.

And the biggest tragedy, as we approach the election, is that half the electorate that is eternally ignorant and/or consumes only lamestream outlets has no idea that all this is going on pursuant to a purposed and dedicated Democrat policy which is part and parcel of their ongoing successful program to fundamentally transform America.  The eternally timid and out-to-lunch Republicans have given us a one-party country that now openly operates under a dominant neo-Marxist ideology.  This means that the other half of the country has no effective representation in national politics and policies.  The Republicans were the only game in town to stop the march of collectivism over the last half century, and today they have demonstrably failed to deliver.

[17sep22 update]  National Conservatism – we encountered news of the new direction in America’s conservative circles in the last Scattershots (here).  Now we get the announcement that the venerable Heritage Foundation has announced this ideological tweak in its socio-political philosophy (here).  I find nothing outrageous in this change, and have long encourage a more robust use of limited government resources by the Right to direct and implement socio-economic policies in our republic – and mainly for the Republicans to get off their collective ass and start making themselves heard on our behalf, especially in the face of the Left’s now desperate campaign of wall-to-wall lying bordering on ‘save democracy from semi-fascist, white supremacist, domestic terrorists’.

According to Heritage, the new direction will engage in “promoting a more restrained approach to foreign policy and a more active government role in the regulation of big tech, while moving away from the conventional wisdom that conservatives shouldn’t use government power to advance their interests.”  We’ll see how the rest of the Republican leadership adopts and implements this change.  And there will be more to say on all this.

‘The Real Threat to Our Republic’ (updated 12sep22)

George Rebane

Over the years I’ve touched on the impact that the ‘educated’ liberal woman have had on our society and our republic.  My own experience with such people has been uniformly informative and corroborated by many readings on the subject.  I’ve been meaning to write a definitive piece on these females who pervade our big cities and suburban communities, and now Jack Cashill at the American Thinker has beat me to it with his excellent essay, ‘Why ‘Educated’ Liberal Women Are the Real Threat to Our Republic’.  Along the way he coined ELF as the efficient acronym for future reference.

Through my many years I have had the opportunity to take the measure of ELFs in divers social and professional situations.  They all share a set of common characteristics which start with a collectivist ideology expressed through fewer than 50 tried-and-true leftwing shibboleths and slogans, an ideology which they can neither dissect nor defend, and which is sustained on a solid foundation of unwarranted hubris held together by generous dollops of ignorance and one-sided mis/disinformation.

These are the women who will proudly vote Democrat regardless of soaring inflation, rising gas prices, rampant crime in the streets, the unchecked flood of illegal aliens, and oppressive COVID policies that have irreparably damaged all children, the poor most notably.

Institutionally, they have co-opted formerly non-partisan organizations such as the League of Women Voters and the American Association of University Women.  Additionally, in academe they have been stalwart foot soldiers in both pedagogy and administration to turn our public schools and institutions of higher learning into critical-thinking-free zones operating under the façade of ‘education’.

At the core of the ELFs' (intellectual) vulnerability is their ignorance, if not at the top, certainly among the masses.  This should not surprise.  Everywhere and always, men have performed better on political knowledge tests than women (just as conservatives routinely outperform liberals and independents).  Researchers exploring this particular gender gap long ago gave up on questioning whether this was true and have focused instead on why.

When ELFs vote, they vote as a homogeneous block.  The DNC and Democratic leadership have long been painfully aware of this, and the fact that they only trust and get their news from the lamestream media and social media sites.

In the not too distant past, women attended college with the expectation of finding a spouse.  Today, they would have much better luck hanging out at a construction site.  As late as 1970, there were five men for every four women in America's four-year colleges.  By the fall of 2021, there were almost two women for every man. … Once in college, the progressive grooming that began discreetly in high school now publicly and proudly moves to center stage.  A study of faculty voter registration at 40 leading U.S. universities showed a more than ten-to-one ratio of Democrats to Republicans with the numbers skewing higher in liberal arts and among young faculty.  In some fields, there are no Republicans at all. … Lacking a male counterpoint in their lives and often majoring in subjects with a social justice agenda, college women enter the political arena not so much uninformed as misinformed.  Given that communications/journalism faculty members skew 20 to 1 Democrat, the media these young ELFs consume will only reinforce the biases nurtured in college.

Jack Cashill expands on all these points, citing many studies that corroborate the above characterization of ELFs and the institutions under their influence.  We can put a bow on it for now by also recognizing the current thrust of the Democrats’ divisive pre-election rhetoric, especially Biden’s Philadelphia speech that could not have been better staged by Joseph Göbbels himself.

In November, Biden needs the ELFs to vote en masse.  This will happen only if they remain ignorant of the things that should worry them — the border, crime, inflation — and scared silly of things that need not.  Something tells me that the producers of Biden's Nuremberg-style spectacle knew what they were doing.

Incapable of giving it further thought, the ELFs will confidently vote us into the kind of American autocracy that the socialist wing of the Democratic Party has been planning for decades.

[12sep22 update]  Victor Davis Hanson’s recent essay ‘American Delira’ puts the above threat to our country in its greater and proper context.  In recent years such essays have appeared regularly, not only from his pen, but also from other astute observers of the American saga.  Nevertheless, VDH has a unique gift of being able to wordsmith a comprehensive description and analysis of what has brought us here and what we are doing now to undo ourselves.  A hat tip to one of our regular commenters who has also regularly been the first to alert RR readers to the timely contributions of VDH and others.

Sandbox - 9sep22

[I wonder if anyone is counting Biden's daily lies.  And I'm talking only about material lies, the kind that affect our current or future QoL because they impact policy and legislation; and not political campaign or bombast promises that have not come true or have no chance of being realized.  Examples are, 'Our borders are secure', 'Taxing something does not affect its supply/availability', 'Injecting excess cash (not supported by increased production) into an economy does not cause inflation'.  I would like to see these lies, including their daily repeats, be tallied somewhere, mainly because these affect the beliefs of the lightly read population, especially before an election.  gjr]

Scattershots – 8sep22 (updated 14sep22)

George Rebane

Accuse them of your own sins.  That longstanding advice to our Left comes from both Lenin and Alinsky.  Today no one knows that the Democrats were the first election deniers, seeking to overturn the 2004 election in favor of John Kerry by not certifying Ohio’s electoral votes on the House floor on 6 January 2005.  Fortunately, the 31 Democrats’ votes were not enough to carry the day and Bush2 remained our president.  One of those election deniers was James Clyburn (D-SC) whose last-minute endorsement of Biden flipped his faltering campaign just before the election.  Imagine what would have happened had the corrupt FBI also not helped mangle the 2020 election by keeping Hunter’s laptop under the rug.  (more here)

Economists are becoming more dismal than ever.  (Don’t even call it ‘the dismal science’, there is nothing scientific about that field of pseudo-sorcery.  Be especially wary when an economist argues with equations.)  The latest example comes from the “leadership” of the American Economic Association that announced the mandates for attendees at their January 2023 New Orleans conference.  All must have been vaccinated with one additional booster shot, and wear a mask that at least as good as the N-95.  Nowhere else at the hotel venue, in the city, or overwhelmingly in most of the country, are people still subjected to such unscientific protocols.  It’s hard to think of another ‘discipline’ in which its demonstrated error-prone practitioners are still accepted and continue to be cited. (more here)

One of Jo Ann’s ‘Hits & Misses’ in today’s Union was censored.  She has been one of the longest-serving members of the paper’s editorial board, and under previous publishers has never had any of her submissions rejected, even the occasional ones critical of the publication.  She submitted the following Miss regarding the recent treatment of RL Crabb’s cartoons, which have recently been printed in hard-to-read, washed out, black and white while other cartoons continue in their full color formats - Miss to The Union which demoted favorite, local political cartoonist RL Crabb’s offerings to a faded black and white format.  That’s no way to treat such talent. Please bring back his witty, vibrant political cartoons in color.  The times they are a-changin’.

Addendum - Please allow me to expand the reasonable basis on which one may conclude that Bob Crabb’s work has been discriminated against.  In an email exchange The Union’s leadership claims that they have no control over which pages the printer decides to print in black & white, to them it is a random process.  Now allow for a moment that we consider the last two months or nine weeks during which The Union has published 45 op-ed cartoons.  Bob submits two per week, and the rest are selected from a potpourri of syndicated cartoonists.  That means that Bob submitted 18 cartoons, all of which appeared in faded black and white.  While I don’t recollect any b/w syndicated printings, but to be generous, assume that one in ten of the 27, or between two and three of the syndicated ones also appeared in black and white.

With this understanding in hand, we know that the probability was 0.1 that the first Crabb cartoon happened to be black and white.  The probability that his second one was similarly b/w is 0.1 x 0.1 = 0.01.  In the same manner, the third b/w cartoon appeared with probability 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1 = 0.001, or a chance of one in a thousand.  Continuing this calculation for all 18 of Bob’s cartoons yields the mind boggling miniscule probability of 10^(-18) = 0.000,000,000,000,000,001 or one billionth of a billionth that such a run of b/w cartoons would have occurred from the claimed random process – talk about highly improbable.  It is clear that any reasonable person with a smidgen of understanding of the above would reject the The Union’s characterization of the process along with the claim of no bias against RL Crabb’s work.

As a coda to the above argument, I want to remind readers that RR has always supported the rights of private sector enterprises to manage their own relationships and conduct their business affairs as they see fit – subject as always to a minimum set of regulations and laws that prevent parties from doing gratuitous harm to each other.  In this case The Union and RL Crabb are both private sector parties, and are free to negotiate any mutually acceptable working relationship, including one that contains discriminatory provisions.  At the same time others, including the customers and consumers of products and services provided by a business, are always free to criticize the business for any reason or no reason at all.  In sum, I oppose the kinds of discrimination against RL Crabb and Jo Ann Rebane described above, and I do it without impugning The Union’s right to so discriminate.  The discriminating reader(sic) will understand that an instance of discrimination and the right to discriminate are independent notions/issues.

[11sep22 update]  Seattle has cracked the homeless problem.  They plan to spend $66.5M to build a “homeless megaplex” that will house 500 homeless to be maintained by 400 staffers costing in excess of $22M/yr to keep open, and the indigents and crazies from killing themselves and each other. (more here)  Fantastic!  That comes to costing more than $50K/yr for getting one homeless off the streets.  So let’s apply the Seattle solution to the national problem consisting today of about 575,000 homeless.  That will cost the country’s taxpayers about $76B to kick off the program and over $25B/yr to keep the nation’s streets clean of derelicts, needles, and feces.  Not sure who all are going to pay for the Seattle project.  I suspect they’re going to pass the hat to the rest of America to solve their problem in the Puget Sound area.  And, of course, if this template is applied nationwide, then we all pay.  But think of the extra benefit from such a public ‘investment’; it will require the training and hiring of about 460,000 low skilled (pre-homeless?) workers to take care of the 575,000 homeless, an almost one-for-one ratio of government keeper per bum.  Bum?  That was a popular label in less enlightened years that described “a person who avoids work and sponges on others; loafer, idler, tramp, hobo, or derelict.”  Bring on the megaplexes, one in every neighborhood.

 [14sep22 update]  Nevada County’s sales tax will be increased by 0.5% if a majority of voters approve Measure V in November.  The anticipated $12M annual take will go into the county’s general fund to be spent as the supervisors determine.  However, the tax is being sold under the guise that “the money would go toward fire prevention and mitigation efforts.”  A local judge ruled that the voters would not be confused by this double labeling of the new tax.  According to the unfathomable legal logic used in our corrupt legal system, the judge stated that “… this court is satisfied that should Measure V be adopted, the public would have been adequately informed that it was adopting a general tax.” (more here)  Experience advises otherwise – all will focus on the wildfire aspect and few will discern that it is really a general tax increase which depends on the promise of politicians to be spent as advertised.  Would it be correctly represented to the voters as a specific use tax, then it would require a 2/3 super-majority approval to pass it.  IMHO the tax passage requirements should be reversed – 2/3 to approve a general fund tax, and simple majority to approve a specific purpose tax.  Better yet, 2/3 to approve all tax increases.  Thoughts?

National Conservatives are a relatively new branch of the GOP and have some nuanced yet important differences with those who view themselves more as ‘Reagan conservatives’.  I find some tenets of their ideology attractive, and easily accepted by the conservetarian in me.  Since we’ll be talking more about national conservatives and national conservatism, I recommend that interested readers get acquainted with this version of conservatism.  (more here)

Democrats’ Rubicon?

"As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault; we do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise."  Joe Biden

George Rebane

Last night President Biden delivered an historically horrendous milestone speech at our republic.  It was positioned by Democrats as an official federal government stance and interpretation of the political state of our union.  In it he revealed the utter fear the country’s Left has of our citizens who oppose what the Democrats have been doing during their control of the Executive and Legislative branches of our federal government.

Bumblebrain’s carefully fashioned speech tread in the exact footsteps of Lenin with his Bolsheviks, and Hitler with his Nazis after gaining a tenuous grip of their countries’ governments.  Both tyrants lashed out against their political opponents, characterizing them with all the sins they themselves had and were committing, and identifying factions of their citizens as homegrown enemies of the people bent on policies to enslave the land.  Last night I and people like me were identified as “semi-fascists” and “enemies of democracy” deserving of all the opprobrium that a properly constituted state can lavish on us in preparation for more draconian measures reserved for enemies of the state.

With 300 carefully chosen disciples and Orwellian visual backdrops in place, the speech was a clear ‘us and them’ declaration intended as a rallying cry for all who have been convinced by the lamestream that former president Trump is Satan incarnate, and the cadres of “MAGA Republicans” are a cult of his irredeemable disciples who should be forcefully constrained if their re-education does not work.  Most certainly none of them should henceforth be tolerated in public life or let alone public office.  (more here and here)

Sandbox – 1sep22

[No doubt Jackson, MS (thanks for correcting my MI blooper) is also a shithole city under Democrat rule, and has been for decades.  Today’s water system breakdown is typical of how Soviet-style jurisdictions took care of their infrastructure with public monies going mainly into the pockets of corrupt politicians.  Today’s mayor of Jackson is Chokye Antar Lumumba, a proud textbook socialist who describes himself as a “progressive, socialist, and political revolutionary”.  Like with most of his ilk, maintaining a functioning infrastructure is not high on his governance to-do list.  Again, the overwhelmingly black residents of the city continue to bring it on themselves.  (more here) gjr]

California Exodus Refuted?

George Rebane

A reader and correspondent sent me the following article – ‘A Shocking Number of Californians Are Moving to Texas Unless You Do Basic Math’.  Therein the author cites data and analysis from a market data firm Placer.ai which sidesteps the long-running and well-established California exodus phenomenon, focuses on the California-to-Texas migration, and erroneously concludes that there is nothing unexpected about the numbers that Placer has collected.  To wit –

The logic here is very simple. Some people move between states every year for normal life reasons. That’s good and normal and not cause for alarm. And California has the most people of any state. Therefore, all things equal, we’d expect lots of people from California to be moving to Texas. In fact, we would expect that more people from California would be moving to Texas than from any other state, again, because California has the most people. This would not in itself imply anything is wrong with California or great about Texas. It would simply mean people are doing what we would expect them to do. The only way this particular data point would suggest something is indeed amiss is if a disproportionate number of new Texans came from California relative to California’s population.

That may sound confusing, but doing some quick math makes it all very clear. The population of the United States minus Texas—because people already in Texas cannot move to Texas—is 300.86 million people. California’s population is 39.35 million, or 13 percent of the U.S.’ non-Texas population. Therefore, more than 13 percent of Texas’ new residents would have to be Californians in order for there to be something of note going on here.

But that’s not the case. According to Placer.ai, which uses “foot traffic data” gleaned by tracking people's phones, 11.1 percent of new Texans from July 2019 and July 2022 are from California. That’s actually slightly less than one would expect based on an even distribution. If anything, the pertinent question from Placer.ai’s data is: Why are so few Californians moving to Texas?

The main flaw in the argument here is that people move randomly between states with ingress and egress rates proportional to source and target populations.  This is a gross error in the current situation where most of migrating Americans are motivated by economic (taxes, regulations) and socio-political (crime, education) reasons.  For example, Texas receives many new residents from so-called shithole cities in states like New York, Illinois, New Jersey, in addition to California.  Such movements can invalidate any arguments based on randomness.  For example, California’s lower percentage of “new Texans” can be completely explained away by the greater number of the state’s immigrants arriving from the other escape-worthy states that need have no relationship to population proportions, and greater numbers of Californians moving to other states such as Idaho, Wyoming, and Florida.

Bloomberg reports, “The long-term migration out of California accelerated during the Covid-19 crisis, with Texas, Washington and Florida as top destinations for people moving out of the state, according to a study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.” (here)  The LA Times continues its ongoing reports of the exodus with ‘California Exodus Continues: LA, San Francisco lead the way’.

Liberals across the land are desperate to refute the mass migrations out of the major shithole regions that Democratic administrations have created since the launch of Great Society programs.  This gives rise to a number of loudly argued but logically weak pieces that appear in various lamestream outlets.  The fundamental reality is that California continues to create conditions that drive out large numbers of its wealth-generating workers and businesses.  This is apparent from all types of correctly analyzed data starting with what we learn from the Dept of Commerce (Census Bureau) and going all the way down to California’s historic first-time reduction in the number of representatives we send to Congress.

‘There Is No Climate Emergency’

George Rebane

Similar to the subsequently corroborated Great Barrington Declaration on Covid (here), a new declaration on climate change was released in June 2022 entitled ‘World Climate Declaration: There Is No Climate Emergency’.  This declaration is signed by hundreds of scientists and thousands of technical professionals from almost every country in the world (here).

In asserting that there is no climate emergency, the undersigned state –

Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.

Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.

Warming is far slower than predicted The world has warmed significantly less than predicted by IPCC on the basis of modeled anthropogenic forcing. The gap between the real world and the modeled world tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.

Climate policy relies on inadequate models Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. They do not only exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases, they also ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.

CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. More CO2 is favorable for nature, greening our planet. Additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also profitable for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.

Global warming has not increased natural disasters There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, there is ample evidence that CO2

They conclude with –

To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. Should not we free ourselves from the naive belief in immature climate models?

Need I be fearful of most black people?

George Rebane

My clear answer is yes – let me explain.  Yes, I am physically afraid of blacks in the urban neighborhoods.  They have demonstrated to all that there is inherent danger to life and limb in neighborhoods where blacks rule the streets.  This same sentiment has been publicly acknowledged by black leaders such as the Rev Jesse Jackson.  The criminality of young black males is now well established, and it is not a minor fraction of the population.  Their historical arrest and incarceration rates attest to this.

But perhaps my greater fear of blacks is when they join the ranks of the America’s voters and make their presence felt at the ballot box.  They have now demonstrated across many generations that they do not vote to promote their own best interests.  They elect dismally stupid, corrupt, cynical, racist, rapacious, and/or simply crooked people to represent them in the halls of political power.  It would not be so bad if their voting habits only impacted their own communities.  But that is not the case.  Black-elected politicians (no matter their color) extend their unfortunate ethics, socialist ideologies, and corrupt practices far beyond the precincts that voted them into office.

To be sure, black communities suffer most from the ministrations of their political leaders.  No one has done more harm to our African-Americans than the politicians who regularly garner their votes through promises of ineffective policies or those never kept.  And again, as history has shown, no learning takes place from one election cycle to the next.  Generation after generation, they send the same people to occupy the same seats of power and expect different results, while decrying their carefully taught lamentations about white supremacy and systemic racism.  It is these politicians with black constituencies who join with those voted in by ignorant whites et al that have launched national programs to usurp American culture over the last half century by engaging in the ongoing fundamental transformation of our country.

I write this in response to the column by Mr Daryl Grigsby – ‘Need I be fearful of most white people?’ – which appears in the 27aug22 Union.  As an African-American, Grigsby goes on to answer the question with a YES, and then continues to back-up his sentiment with yet one more diatribe against Trump, filled with the familiar ignorant tedium comprised of all the usual unsubstantiated allegations.  He opens with –

I am troubled by this possibility (of fearing most whites). As an African American who has lived all over this nation, I have seen and experienced much that raises this question. At the same time, my life has been enriched by generous, affirming, justice-seeking white Americans. … Yet, the opening question often plagues me. By “most,” I don’t mean the overwhelming majority. I do mean some number more than half. Anything more than half is “most.”

… and closes with -

Republican candidates who stand against Trump lose their seats, voting in Black communities is a hurdle instead of a right, Anti-CRT movements flourish. The real question is, do we want a just and multi-racial society, or one of white privilege and dominance?

And what of Black Lives Matter? Professor Treva B. Lindsey says, “to even have to proclaim ‘Black Lives Matter’ and know that people will dispute it, or counter with ‘all lives matter,’ is a result of entrenched and learned anti-blackness. In what world would saying ‘Black lives matter’ prompt a rejoinder? A fundamentally anti-Black one.” I am hopeful we can create a society different than described by Professor Lindsey.

No amount of skulduggery(sic), lies, treason or corruption deters millions of white Americans from supporting Trump. What explains that devotion? Anger? About what? Fear? Of who(sic)? As white militias grow and the internet rumbles with threats, I fear the majority is silent. I believe but a small fraction of white America is prone to racist violence. That small group, however, is dangerous if the majority does not stand up. … Believe me when I say, I don’t enjoy thinking this, and frankly, I would be happy to be proven wrong.

His reasonable tone withstanding, it is clear that I and mine have a lot to fear from the Grigsbys of America who cast their ballots within the collectivist glow of goodness and light, as they send the next tranche of corrupt fools to the nation’s capitols.  The exoduses from California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey are exhibits of their political accomplishments.