Rebane's Ruminations

Ruminations – 18jul19

George Rebane

Gold-backed dollar or not?  Interesting debate now going on over how to set the value of the dollar which is fiat money but still the world’s leading reserve currency.  Gold is pooh-poohed by governments and pundits as just an “alternative asset class” which serves many as a “speculative store of value”.  Interesting to note is that it is the governments who hoard massive amounts of gold and use it to clear inter-nation trade accounts.  Hmm?

Counting Trump’s ‘lies’ has become another favorite pastime for leftwingers.  Books have been written on the subject.  On closer inspection, such counts include all the bravados and projections and predictions and promises that politicians over the ages and of all hues have generously poured into their constituents’ ears.  Today’s under-educated TDS sufferers know nothing of this, and feel proud that they are plowing new ground in such endeavors.

AOC for all seasons and reasons.  Seldom has a politician come along who gives so much pleasure to both sides campaigning in a highly polarized political landscape.  Today both Repubs and Dems hope that AOC and her brood will continue spewing loud and clear their anti-American assessments and prescriptions for a fundamentally transformed US.  Karl Rove calls her “the gift that keeps on giving.”

Toward our transhuman future

George Rebane

Elon ‘I’ll try anything new’ Musk just announced a new development in brain-computer communications that was made at Neuralink, his recent investment in man-machine symbiosis.  Yes, it will take a while before we can command Alexa or Siri with our thoughts and have the results delivered as directly perceived knowledge/data.  But Neuralink’s approach (shown below) is the first that will connect 1000+ wire threads directly to neurons in your brainbone and record the time-series signal of their activity (i.e. firings).  Algos will be developed to decode those firing patterns into something understandable, and a computer connected to anything from prosthetics to the Internet will do the rest. (more here and here)

A handful of other companies are working on similar interface technologies, and Musk blowing his trumpet is guaranteed to have the others put their pedals to the metal.  In these pre-Singularity years it is the significant baby steps like this that tend to set off an avalanche of development.  For years we have talked about the Singularity and the requirement for H. Sapiens to climb aboard once that event occurs (as shown in the figure).  That climbing aboard the transhuman express will be made much more facile if we have some of the required tools developed and already in use.  Congratulations to the Neuralink team and Elon Musk.

Sandbox - 17jul19

[The Secure Act going through Congress will do a significant modification of how you can and must dispose your retirement accounts, and it will also open the door for the gummint to come in and tax a portion of it.  And we know what will happen to the size of that 'portion' as time passes.  All in favor, say Aye.  gjr]

Scattershots – 13jul19 (updated 16jul19)

George Rebane

Thistle and Shamrock is a weekly program of Irish music on NPR hosted for years by Fiona Richie who speaks in a rich Irish brogue.  On weekends at our house we hear about the first ten minutes of it before one of us turns it off or to another station.  And that is because neither of us have developed an ear for rhythmic Irish tunes, the kind that are played by small combos at gatherings or in public houses.  To us they all sound pretty much alike.  The deficit is clearly ours, because we like many varieties of music and have always supported this cultural art form.  Every time I hear another Irish tune on the radio, the long-held notion always crosses my mind that I could write and program an Irish tune-composing algo that could readily pass the Turing test – i.e. people alternately listening to such machine and human composed music would in their aggregate judgments not be able to tell which is which.  Maybe some music major could do that in a graduate program.

Our language continues to languish under progressive pedagogy. So many words have lost their unique meanings as they are required  to carry excess semantic baggage that makes their parsimonious use obsolete and obfuscates their meaning, especially in today's political commentary.  My latest addition to this list of overburdened words is ‘hate’, ‘hatred’, ‘hateful’, et al.  (It joins established residents like ‘racist’ and ‘hero’.)  In days gone by, the semantic for using anything from the ‘hate genre’ was reserved for feelings and expressions of “intense dislike, or extreme aversion or hostility.”  Not anymore.  Today our liberal literary lightweights append the hate-word to any and every person, group, behavior, or expression that simply disagrees with any one of the limited number of shibboleths that for most progressives comprise their politics and worldview.  If you happen to disagree with some Democrat or communist’s prescriptions or assessments, and write or talk about it, that is immediately labeled as ‘hateful’ or ‘hate speech’.  And make no mistake, they are the final arbiters of such judgments, from which there is neither appeal nor available eleisons.  The real scary thing is that they all want Big Brother to become the all-seeing and powerful censor of everything that to them is hateful.

Mighty today, missing tomorrow. ‘Remember Visicalc?’ asks Christopher Mims (here) in the 13jul19 WSJ.  Visicalc was the first spreadsheet and killer app, and I remember the relief of switching to it around 1980 after spending a weekend programming a cash planning model on the HP-85 for an electronics manufacturing company I was just hired to turn around.  In those days it cost about $10K and over a week to have your accountancy firm do a cashflow projection for, say, the next 8 quarters, and $5K for every subsequent update of the model.  Once Visicalc arrived, I turned my people on to it and quickly became a spreadsheet ‘expert’ – suddenly the PCs had a real and unique business use.  Soon Lotus 1-2-3 came along and we all jumped on that bandwagon, until Bill Gates brought us Excel, and we’ve stayed with that ‘forever’ (while always keeping an eye out for the next better thing).  Anyway, the succession of spreadsheet makers illustrates the history and ongoing saga of companies making it big, and then failing by missing the newest big wave.  Next into the breech is Google according to Daniel Colin James in his very readable ‘This Is How Google Will Collapse’.  Many are now eagerly awaiting its demise, especially since it so obviously and salaciously abandoned ‘Do no harm.’

[14jul19 update]  Even the vaunted WSJ sometimes comes off the rails, as they did recently in a column written by some worthy claiming economist credentials.  He patiently explained to the reader that markets work and trades occur when buyer and seller value equally what they are willing to give each other in the trade.  You don’t need to be an economic maven to understand that such an arrangement is patently not true.  If both parties value equally what they already have, then there is no reason to go through the risk and bother of a trade.  It is ONLY when both parties view what the other has as being more valuable to him than what he currently holds that then make functioning markets and dealing possible.  When prices are set at value parity or higher, markets stagnate.  (Methinks the writer has strong grounds for demanding a refund on his tuition, since he can now demonstrate that they taught him nothing.)

[15jul19 update]  President Trump screwed up again tweeting the recommended return of the Democrats’ Squad members to their native countries.  With another swipe at the English language, Pelosi called his tweets “xenophobic”.  Representative AOC and her House rabble rouser squad have their origins in Somalia, Puerto Rico, Palestine, and Africa.  To be fair, Trump did advise them to go back to fix the obvious problems in their native lands.  However, IMHO he should have called attention to their outrageous policy proposals by pointing out that they are seeking to bring to America the same kind of policies and political methods that have devastated places from which they and/or their ancestors hailed.

NYC’s DeBlasio is now hands down the top Democrat big city incompetent idiot.  Single-handedly he has reversed the city’s years-long declining crime rates by denying the legitimacy of its justice system.  In the process “He propagates the smear that the majority-minority NYPD unjustifiably targets minorities when conducting street investigations. He knows there is nothing racially proportionate about reported violent crimes in the city, which in the busiest precincts affect only minorities. His posturing and gamesmanship provide fuel for the worst kind of conspiracy theories and hate speech against officers. Never has a mayor been more disdained by his police.”  Lest you think this turkey is the current Lone Ranger in these generations long urban disasters of governance, DeBlasio is joined by like-minded incompetents from his party in a long list of cities that begins with San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles.  (more here)

[16jul19 update]  "We have a really hard time (“connecting with voters”),” Sen Hirono (D-HI) lamented (here), "and one of the reasons it was told to me at one of our retreats was that we Democrats know so much, that is true. And we kind of have to tell everyone how smart we are and so we have a tendency to be very left brain."  Unfortunately, that is neither true nor anywhere close, as Will Rogers said, “It’s not what you know that worries me, it’s what you know that ain’t so.”  However, she did nail the Dems’ attitude about their constituents; intellectually they are a challenged lot as we have pointed out for years.  And Sen Hirono herself is one great example of a Deficit Diva leading her flock of gimmes.  (H/T to RR commenter for digging this out.)

Berkeley SETI Research Center visit

‘Any sufficiently advanced civilization will have capabilities that seem like magic to us.’ A.C. Clarke.

‘Where are they?’  Enrico Fermi

George Rebane

“The Breakthrough Listen Initiative is a ten-year program that represents humanity’s most significant effort to date to quantify the distribution of advanced life in the Universe.  Listen uses the world’s most powerful observing facilities (including the Green Bank Telescope – the largest steerable radio telescope in the world) to search for signatures of technology.  Additional Listen facilities include the 64-meter Parkes dish in Australia, and the Automated Planet Finder telescope in California. …”

Launched with $100M budget from a private donor, Breakthrough Listen (BL) at the UC Berkeley’s SETI Research Center (BSRC) has become the new “800-pound gorilla” in the community of organizations searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence.  The program is directed by Dr Andrew Siemion, and the center is ensconced in the university’s School of Astronomy (Campbell Hall).  BL is staffed by about twelve post-doc researchers and engineers, and doubles its staff with student interns and paid associates from all over the country.  The community’s former lead organization is the SETI Institute located in San Jose that operates the Hat Creek Radio Telescope (described elsewhere on RR).  Other SETI research organizations are located at UCLA and around the globe.  All of them vie for time on the growing number of huge radio telescopes in various countries.

RR readers are familiar with my lifelong interest in cosmology, AI, Singularity, and the evolution of intelligence.  The discovery of ETI will shake our human civilization to its roots, and contact with such an advanced civilization will definitely set the course for our future or terminate it.  So you can see the importance of answering Fermi’s plaintive query.  Most of us students of ETI ‘know’ they are out there or already among us.  My own focus in this research was summarized in ‘A copernican answers Fermi’.  (However, there are still some significant doubters like Nick Bostrom of Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute who explains here his hope that SETI will find nothing.)

I explain my own cosmology in the referenced copernican answer.  It dovetails somewhat with the school that holds ETI to be highly probable, however, I have some differences - specifically, that a specie’s bio-intelligence is the initial yet brief phase in the evolution of its civilization.  This dictates that such civilizations have a unique constraint imposed on their detectable electro-magnetic (EM) transmissions – these EM transmissions will last at most two or three of our centuries and then ‘blink out’.  This is a crucial argument which, when analyzed quantitatively with the latest data on exoplanets, produces a remarkable conclusion.  Intelligent life in our galaxy (hence in the Universe) is abundant, yet very hard to detect with searches of the sky for EM ‘techno signatures’.  Therefore, I foster alternative approaches be attempted to discover and contact ETI.

So I sent a copy of ‘A copernican answers Fermi’ to Dr Siemion at the BSRC, and much to my surprise I received an answer within a couple of hours inviting me to visit him, have a tour of the research center, and have lunch to further discuss my ideas.  He also sent me a copy of ‘Area Coverage of Expanding ET Signals in the Galaxy: SETI and Drake’s N’ by Claudio Grimaldi, et al – a group of Swiss and American astronomers that includes the well-known Frank Drake.  Coincidentally, the paper was published about the same time last year as my own research along the same lines.

The interesting difference between my paper and Grimaldi’s is that his analysis indicates that Earth should now be bathed by EM transmissions from millions of ETIs in our galaxy, and my analysis shows why we are most likely NOT able to see any such transmissions from the same millions of intelligent civilizations living in the Milky Way.  In short, I answered Fermi, and Grimaldi instead increased the conundrum to a new level – why then are we not able to see the millions of ETI transmissions washing over Earth?  (BTW, consider the above 'Mercator projection' graphic showing the galactic plane and exoplanet locations, and an archive of over 4,000 recently discovered exoplanets that NASA just released – here.)

Dropout Derby Update - 9jul19 (updated)

George Rebane

OK, Swalwell bailed yesterday 8jul19, and today that in/out/in again Tom Steyer threw his hat into the Dems' candidate carousel ring.  Tom Steyer will be #26 in the Dropout Derby, and those who wish can resubmit their dropout lists by inserting Steyer's number into their existing list with no other changes in their ordering.  These will be accepted before the next Dem comes to his senses and hits the silk.  And I'll do this update only once on the scoring and then lock down this competition with 26 declared candidates, 25 remaining as of today.  Additional hopefuls will be ignored.  The fun has already begun.

[update]  Mr Tozer submitted his updated dropout list.  You'll notice that he put Steyer in exactly the same place that I did (we did not consult).  The figure below shows the current dropout lists.  Those with zeros at the end have not updated and are invited to do so.  The 'CumScore' row lists the cumulative score to date as the dropout continue.  (You'll note that I'm bringing up the rear.) Recall that each dropout's score is equal to ((26-1) - miss distance)/(26-1).  Miss distance is the absolute value of (dropout list entry - actual dropout location).  If you nailed it - miss distance is zero - then your score for that dropout is equal to 1.0 .  If you would have put Swalwell (#20) in position 26, you would get a zero score added to your cumulative score.  Of course, no one did that, and as the dropouts proceed it will be more difficult to get low scores, but perfect scores will always be possible.

Sandbox - 9jul19

[Epstein, Epstein, Epstein - how many politicians will you threaten to take down if they send you to the big house?  gjr]

Loony Tunes – 6jul2019 (updated 8jul19)

George Rebane

To our categorical ‘observations and interpretations of events from the last great century of Man’, we must add a section in which, from time to time, some real doozies can be collected and commented.  We all witness and shake our heads at them as they appear in serious publications and outlets.  This morning we start with a couple from our own Union and the ultra-serious coronet of capitalism, The Wall Street Journal.  The record would be incomplete should we omit such observations and interpretations as a seminal characteristic of our times.

Nevada City resident Ron Lowe, writing (here) in the 6jul19 Union, is astounded to discover “that liberty must be kept by force”, and that the country is now so polarized that “crazy Republican white religious extremists” are actually ready to defend their liberties with the use of force.  This worthy has never heard of the American Revolution and the conditions that gave rise to it.  His fervent hope today is that our government has “contingent plans to call out the US military to quell these Republican radicals if they start their revolution against America.” (emphasis mine) In his letter he makes it clear that citizens’ right to bear arms sufficient to resist an autocratic government is anathema to the social order of his liking.  I wonder what free nations he knows of that did not gain their freedoms through the use of force, and then remain prepared to use force to maintain those freedoms.  In embracing such beliefs Mr Lowe has plenty of company.  (My own opinion on such use of force by the citizenry was covered here and here.)

Then we have author, war correspondent, and journalist Gordon Dillow who writes a sober ‘The Asteroid Peril isn’t Science Fiction’ in the 7jul19 WSJ.  He goes to great length to describe the peril and inform us that we have no answer for “what to do about an asteroid hurtling toward Earth”  So what’s loony about such an alarming dissertation?  Well, in outlining ways in which mankind could counter such cataclysmic catastrophes, most of which will not work, he considers an approach that has the best chance of working – using a nuclear bomb to divert/destroy the asteroid – and then tells us that this is not a viable alternative.  Why?  (Seatbelts please) Because “the nuclear option faces serious hurdles in the real world. Sending nuclear weapons into space … makes lots of people nervous and could violate international treaties governing the militarization of space.”  There you have it.  Millions would die, or even civilization could end, and it’s all worth it if we can keep lots of people from not getting nervous about “nuclear weapons in space”, especially if this may “violate international treaties …”.  In publishing this piece, I don’t know whether the WSJ editorial staff decided to pull our collective legs, or they just overlooked Dillow’s ‘reasoned’ basis that opts for wholesale human annihilation.  Now imagine such an argument being brought up in the White House war room while our senior leaders consider how to counter a killer asteroid heading for Earth.  Should they then just shoot the sumbich on the spot, or take the time and effort to seek psychiatric aid?

[8jul19 update] One of the looniest tunes from the Left playing out today is their legions of public school teachers continuing to declare their heartfelt concern for the education and welfare of the children they are paid to educate.  As we have documented for years in these pages, nothing could be further from the laughable truth.  The Democratic party and their union minions/handlers (take your pick) have taken America’s public education to new lows with every passing decade over the last half century during which they have been in charge.  The 8jul19 WSJ published ‘An Education Horror Show – a case study in public school failure and lack of accountability’.

The latest posterchild of this ongoing tragedy of America’s culture is the Providence, RI public school system, an horrific example that was pointedly not even mentioned at the past weekend’s NEA convention that saw prominent visits by a phalanx of Dem presidential candidates.  I urge you to read the details such as the testing which demonstrates the Providence’s pedagogic plague in which children get dumber the longer they attend the city’s schools.  There is much more involved here.  And all of it in a district that “spent nearly $18,000 per pupil in 2017—about 50% more than the national average.”  Finally, to put a bow on it that applies across the land, the incompetent, cynical, and shameless “Democrats as ever blame a lack of funding”.

Happy Fourth, if you can (updated)

George Rebane

This patriotic graphic was posted on last year’s 4^th of July.  Continuing our national trend, this year’s celebration has gotten a bit more tense.  We now have invented and baked in the country’s psyche the national notion that everything ante-bellum that was part of American history is fair game to be attacked, withdrawn, denied, silenced, or destroyed.  The latest is the very familiar Betsy Ross flag, the first Stars and Stripes to grace our newborn country with its familiar ring of thirteen stars for the original thirteen colonies.  No more.

Picking a Politically Proficient Heritage

George Rebane

Kamala Harris’ insistence that she is African-American, in spite of the Jamaican detour of her father’s lineage, raises an interesting and, perhaps, important point on how we claim our racial roots in this age of political correctness. (more here)  Not imposing any reasonable limits on climbing up our ancestral tree would, of course, allow each of us to call ourselves African-American.  That would effectively kill that label’s semantic in American politics.

(A language derives its power from the accuracy and precision of its words or lexicon which allows its users to readily discriminate between shades of meaning.  Therefore, the more words - precisely defined, meticulously preserved, and correctly used – within its lexicon, the more effective are the communications that a language supports in the sense of enabling complete, clear, and compact messaging.  Semantically prostituted words with multiple meanings are inefficient and ambiguous, and require additional discriminative words to correctly communicate ideas and assertions.  Today’s English is a mess created by our educational system.)

So, how far back should we go in claiming and projecting our ethno-racial heritage?  In my case, I could call myself a Mongo-American since my racial derivation is from the Finno-Ugric segment of Europe’s Nordic clans.  The Ugric tribes originally migrated westward from Mongolia, leaving some in the Ural Mountains of Russia before spreading out into eastern Europe.  Estonians and Finns are genetically identical, and both speak what modern linguists call a Finno-Ugric language.  Or perhaps I should proclaim myself to be an Ugric-American.  I don’t know, but Estonian-American sounds as bland as Jamaican-American.  Neither effectively communicates its aggrieved past as required in today's proper public use of identity politics.  So what kind of hyphenated American are you?

Anything to undermine America (updated 7jul19)

George Rebane

The Democrats and their lamestream media are now in high gear doing anything and everything they can to undermine this administration and weaken the US in the eyes of its adversaries.  The first and most important victims of the Left’s lies are their constituents relegated to the low end of the bell curve on smarts.  As evidence, they are so bamboozled by the sleazebags that only 17% of them believe that Trump’s tax cuts benefit them, when IRS data shows that almost everyone benefited from the tax cuts.

And to put a ribbon on it, only 47% of Americans believe that Trump’s policies pulled the economy out of its Obama doldrums of under 2% growth, making no never mind of the fact that when Trump took over the GDP growth rate jumped over 60% and has remained there.  The lamestream has made certain than none of these light thinkers ever hear of Obama’s famous prognostication, “To get the GDP to grow at 3% again will require a magic wand.”  Well, our current president most certainly has that magic wand, which today’s market underlined by finishing the highest June gain in over 80 years.  (For the non-investors, the summer months beginning with June are historically the doldrum months on the stock markets.)  In spite of all this, the Dems have convinced 53% of Americans that Trump is mishandling the economy.

On the foreign policy front, Trump has exposed longstanding and dramatic shortcomings in our agreements for trade, mutual defense with allies, nuclear proliferation by rogues, and border security.  For decades America’s position in each of these areas was being taken advantage of by nations who saw us as weak and without direction.  Trump has changed all that, and in every area he has gotten people off the dime and things moving.  Now the feckless Democrats are criticizing him and telling their know-nothings that Trump is not doing any good because he hasn’t solved all the decades-old problems in his first two years in office.  And none of them, not a single one, has anything better to offer than to stick our head back in the sand and let friend and foe steal us blind.

In the meantime, the Democrats have totally abandoned their former positions and goals, as they have wrapped themselves in socialism to tout Marx’s message to the masses of the western hemisphere, ‘Workers of the world unite.  You have nothing to lose but your chains!’  And where do you think that all of this uniting of the workers will take place as our formerly porous borders disappear completely?

[2jul19 update] This painting by Jon McNaughton titled 'National Emergency' says it all.  (H/T to reader)

[3jul19 update] A regular reader suggests that to better understand what the Democrats in Congress and our own leftwing socialist commenters share as worldviews and objectives to strive for can be found in the Jacobin Magazine.  Take a look at the real meaning of free speech as we celebrate an independence they are working to take away.

[7jul19 update]  Here’s another big lie pushed by one of our favorite communists, Umair Haque, who writes ‘The origins of America’s unique and spectacular cruelty’.  America is the one nation in the world that has THE preeminent culture of altruistic giving to those afflicted and less fortunate.  Yet this propagandist exercises his 1A right to constantly reel off lie after lie about America, Americans, and our role in the world’s community of nations.  The importance of his thought is that it is shared by almost all the Democrat presidential candidates who daily echo his words.

Ruminations - 1jul19 (updated 2jul19)

George Rebane

George Boardman writes ‘Trump wants to turn the 4^th of July into a political rally’ in the 1jul19 Union.  Students of American history know that patriotic holidays, especially the 4^th of July, have been used by politicians – incumbents and wannabes – to meld their message within a patriotic mantle.  It is the recently educated who have no knowledge of our country’s past, and today are using everything to excoriate Trump.  I could have sworn Mr Boardman to be old enough to know better.

Kamala Harris owes her career to being a privileged mulatto – Jamaican father, Indian mother – which in today’s racial labeling allows her to call herself a black - “I am black and I am proud of it.”  She has played the black card for advancement all her life, and now she is beating her fellow Democrat presidential candidates over the head with it.  And it might even get her the nomination, unless one of her opponents has the courage to tell voters that her claims of having risen through racial discrimination is just politically motivated bull crap.

Bullet buying background checks start today in California.  This new law will have no impact on criminals and their use of firearms to commit crimes.  But it will further constructively restrict the Second Amendment rights of the state’s law-abiding citizens.  And after all, the constructive confiscation of guns is the objective of all socialists, especially those still in denial.  The objective has always been to restrict guns to government and criminals, and out of the hands of citizens who might one day choose to revolt as autocracy evolves into tyranny.

[2jul19 update] Under Obama, porous borders admit a dull roar of illegals who are incarcerated with children in separate quarters.  Millions are subsequently deported under our immigration laws, Republicans promote border security infrastructure, but do not criticize the stark detention quarters.  Under Trump, Democrats issue international invitations to disgruntled foreigners to enter the US illegally with promises of amnesty and citizenship.  Millions respond, creating a security and humanitarian crisis at the border.  The Democrats refuse to fund either border barriers to slow the flow or increased detention facilities to house the illegals as required by law.  Instead, they attack the president and Republicans for “separating families” as our law requires, and having created the crisis by not allowing free access through our border, sufficient welcoming succor at our border, and the unvetted and unconditional release into America’s interior.

Sandbox - 28jun19

[Facebook Inc. last week unveiled plans to launch Libra, a payment system it describes as a new “global currency.” It’s based on blockchain, the same technology that powers bitcoin, and is backed by real assets and pegged to stable government securities. Over two dozen corporate partners are on board, including financial companies MasterCard Inc., Visa Inc.,PayPal Holdings Inc. and Coinbase. Partners contribute a membership fee of $10 million each. Facebook’s goal is to line up a total of 100 corporate partners and $1 billion in assets. - 28jun19 WSJ]

The 2020 campaign – capitalism vs socialism (updated 3jul19)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 26 June 2019.]

Today’s dramatic tack to the left by the Democratic Party and its legion of presidential candidates has brought capitalism vs socialism to center-stage in the public forum.  The Democrat candidates share a common vision for their fundamentally transformed America, but each of them has fashioned their own particular path to their promised land.  By this I mean that each has outlined a particular sequence of wealth transfer and confiscation policies designed to solidify support from their leftwing core and attract the maximum of mid-road and undeclared voters to the collectivist cause.

Their message is simple and effective – ‘we’ll give you a lot more free stuff, and tax the bejeezus out of the evil and greedy rich to pay for it all’.  After half century of controlling public education in America, we now have at least two generations of voters who know absolutely nothing about capitalism, and little or nothing about socialism.  What the Millennials and the lightly read have been taught is that socialism works – look at how we describe Europe.  Today capitalism for these Americans is akin to a dirty word that refers to a broken social order which allows the rapacious rich to rape the middle-class and the poor who have no opportunities to advance.  America’s history has been taught as a three century long dystopian trail of tears that has spread its misery worldwide.

Scattershots – 24jun19 (updated 27jun19)

George Rebane

The Left wants nothing measured the public reporting of which it cannot control, or that goes against their established narrative.

Our intrepid progressive pundit and Union columnist George Boardman is all exercised in his ‘Double dipping at the public trough, in the spotlight, and just the facts’ published in the newspaper’s 24jun19 edition.  There he leaps off the rails to rail those double dipping Dahles, while totally missing the definition of double dipping as it pertains to government payees.  Megan Dahle plans to run for her husband Brian Dahle’s recently vacated California Assembly seat since winning his seat in the state’s Senate.  If Mrs Dahle wins, she will become the elected representative from her district, doing the work of an assemblyman, and on her own merits and efforts earning that position’s pay.  That having a second member of the family also performing an independent job in government is in no way double dipping, save it serve a distinctly progressive political narrative.  Apparently Mr Boardman misses that significant nuance that spouses of elected politicians are also individuals with a duplicate set of rights to independently seek employment and recompense as they see fit.  Ah, the bespoke blinders of the Left.  (On the same op-ed page see also Manny Montes’ commentary that helps explain Mr Boardman’s values.)

In the 24jun19 update to my ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ commentary, I posited the following observation about cultures.

Peace and prosperity were generally maintained as long as such a governed society’s culture was allowed to evolve without obvious interdictions by government.  It is easy to see why this approach to organizing societies worked as long as the dominant culture was sufficiently cohesive.  A little reflection reveals that culture is able to inculcate and control the most complex sets of human behaviors, and allow their natural expressions in new environments/situations without having to write down a single law or regulation.  Behaviors (acceptable and unacceptable) are learned in the family and in the village square, and ‘enforced’ by the culture’s collective – i.e. everyone.

In searching for exceptions to the above, the Talmud of the Jewish diaspora occurred to me.  The Talmud is an extensive collection (or collections if you consider separately its Babylonian and Jerusalem parts) of Jewish civil and ceremonial law along with its ethnic legends.  It comprises quite a collection of volumes that painstakingly detail a comprehensive body of behaviors and processes permitted and proscribed to practicing Jews everywhere.  And ‘everywhere’ here is the key idea.  After the Romans destroyed their Jerusalem temple in 70AD, the Jews were driven from their traditional homelands, and found themselves spread all over Europe and northern Africa.

While always seeking to stick together wherever they found themselves, they were necessarily separated and for centuries mostly out of touch with other Jewish communities.  So how to retain, practice, and promulgate the culture that defined them and their very Jewishness when so dispersed?  The answer was through the formalization of their culture in written form, which, as I have often argued, requires many volumes to record, study, and teach.  The Talmud is thus the exception that highlights and supports my dissertations on the function and efficiency of cultures in prescribing normative behaviors within coherent populations.

[25jun19 update]  The lamestream outlets are exorcising President Trump for his new sanctions against individuals in the Iranian leadership.  Specifically, vindictive opprobrium is dished out at Trump’s sanctioning Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister and leading negotiator who has been our main point of contact in the sub-rosa diplomatic efforts between the two countries.  Their common wisdom is that now we have lost someone with whom we have been able to communicate.  What these pinheads and pundits miss is that the president has to include Zarif in the sanctions if he is to remain as our point of future contact.  Omitting Zarif’s obviously needed inclusion would have made him suspect among the raghead mullahs, and cost him his job or worse.

[26jun19 update] "Remarkably, a recent study cited in The Atlantic (gasp!) found that “the most politically intolerant Americans” tend be white, highly educated urban progressives. ... Long ago, religious zealots embraced feudal ideals, but increasingly it’s the ultra-secular progressives who reprise the role of Medieval Inquisitors."  Whoulda thought?  (H/T to reader)

[27jun19 update] Photo journalism at its worst as far as providing information to impact public policy - that is conveyed by the photo of the drowned father and his toddler daughter floating face down at the water’s edge (here).  This emotional picture drives all reason and logic from viewers’ uncritical minds; whatever narrative you want to connect with that image will now be taken as God’s truth about illegal border crossings, immigration, President Trump’s border security policies, … .  No one will consider factors such as the abnormally low death rate that is connected with illegal border crossings per se – illegal aliens die before getting to the border, and a few die after successfully entering the US, but given the circumstances, the death rate is mercifully low.  How do we know?  Had there been any previous border crossing deaths, crack photo journalists would have had such pictures posted and published in every imaginable outlet all over the globe.  Fortunately, that is not the case.  I do note that the father did a very foolish and deadly thing by stuffing his daughter into his t-shirt, thus guaranteeing the toddler’s death should he not be able to stay afloat with that ungainly load in the roiling waters.  In any event, now we are guaranteed another spate of public policies based on emotion and the absence of reason.

Democrats continue to dramatically disrespect and discount the intellect of their base and those voters they desire to attract.  A particularly specious attractant their presidential candidates are using is their promise to forgive student debt.  They are betting that their supporters will be like the now-infamous video clip of an Obama voter who believed that all the promised goodies she received would be paid for out “the President’s stash”.  OPM continues to be the salve Democrat elites will use to fix everything that ails us if you just give them your vote.  Michael Solon in the 27jun19 WSJ adds to the obvious when he writes - Debt forgiveness punishes those who did the right thing, made sacrifices, and acted wisely and frugally, as well as those who simply didn’t have the opportunity to go to college. Isn’t this the sort of private gain at public expense that people on the left claim to abhor? … Such forgiveness would also eliminate a quality-control device that drives students to ensure their investment can be monetized to cover their costs. A student who borrows must make sure his future earnings will be enough to pay off the loans. If that incentive disappears, with free debt or free college, the graduate and the nation would suffer economically.  (Also see my ‘Student Loan Scam Solution’)

Dropout Derby Updated 23 June 2019

George Rebane

I don’t know how much of this piling on of Democratic presidential candidates will go on, but that 23-member gaggle just got two more wannabes to join the race.  Talk about a snow ball’s chance in hell IMHO.  Nevertheless, I am adding #24 Mike Gravel and #25 Joe Sestak, with indicated ID numbers to the list of 23 candidates shown in my original 5jun19 Dropout Derby post (here).  I’m not sure that either of them will do much as candidates at this late date – the debates start on 26 June – but I’ll continue to accept new and updated lists until the first dropout bites the dust.  Please submit them in the vertical list format as you did before.  Thanks.

Trump, Turing, and the RAF

George Rebane

Regarding the content and direction of his message to voters, President Trump can learn a thing or two from Alan Turing, who is considered by many to be a sanctified founder of computer science and machine intelligence.  Turing was also credited for being the technical head of the British team at Bletchley Park that broke the back of Hitler’s Enigma crypto-communications system. But few people know that Turing also did the RAF a strategic service when in 1941 he was asked to recommend the placement of armor on the RAF’s Spitfires and Hurricanes which were suffering unacceptable losses at the hands of the Luftwaffe and while flying through German flak.

Turing asked to see the data on the damage to the returning RAF aircraft, and also the existing plans to place armor on the fighters.  The prevailing RAF wisdom called for armoring the parts of the airplane that suffered more hits.  After some thought and a bit of analysis Turing recommended placing additional armor under the skin where seldom was found a penetration on the returning fighters.  Astonished, the RAF mavens demanded an explanation for such an outlandish recommendation.  Turing’s answer was simple.  The hits on the aircraft would be pretty much evenly distributed from their air combats and AA barrages.  On the returning fighters there was a consistency in the areas seldom hit.  So Turing reasoned, correctly, that those planes which suffered damage in the seldom hit areas were the most likely to go down; ergo put the extra armor there.  The RAF’s resulting epiphany had them do exactly that, and the survival rate of the Spitfires and Hurricanes improved markedly and immediately.

What’s the connection to Trump?  Well, in his public and campaign pronouncement the president continues armor plating his monologues where he least needs them.  His core supporters are not fragile and brittle, threatening to abandon him at the first hint of his reducing their daily allotment of red meat.  They are exactly the opposite; his core is extremely resilient and strong; they have no Plan B save Trump, they have nowhere else to go.  So Trump doesn’t need to spend all his valuable air time bolstering his core, at this point they are bullet-proof.

What is required of him is to armor plate the sides of his ideological corpus with appeals to the cohorts of voters he still needs to attract.  And they require a totally different kind of message that does not recount the history of progressive atrocities so pleasing to his core.  He needs to tell those he seeks to attract of his plan forward.

The armor plate there will be made up of a description of Trump 2.0 with plans for the next stage of tax reforms, of a new list of judges and justices, of new term limits initiatives, of block grants to states for food stamps, Medicaid, housing, etc, of new initiatives to continue draining the swamp, of bipartisan justice reform to eliminate “over criminalization” and asset forfeiture, of new infrastructure projects, of school choice for parents, of solving the ideological train wreck in higher education, of outlining his existing plans to expand STEM education and vocational training programs.  This list goes on.  There’s so much that he can say to attract the undecideds from all sides, and put on the needed armor to deflect the barrage of slings and arrows against these initiatives from his enemies who have nothing more to offer than their frenetic ‘Never Trump!’ exhortations. 

‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ (updated 24jun19)

George Rebane

Yes, that is the advertised name of the event in public libraries, including our own, during which a man, who dresses and wears make-up to look like a woman, will gather children ages 3-8 around him and read them stories.  Our 21jun19 Union reports (here) on the program and the community’s reaction.  Therein we hear Supervisor Heidi Hall extoll of overwhelming public support for the program, and assert that “naturally open and curious” children in that age bracket will be “better off” when they “see that the world is a big place with a lot of variety.”  And some supporters even feel that such a ‘flaunting display of sexuality’ will be of special benefit to young boys who “could use a little bit of help in growing up and not being jerks.”

Here I want to record my reaction to this most visible evidence of the recent years’ rapid transformation of what was our culture.  It has been a long-enduring intention and objective of our country’s progressives to convince Americans that what we formerly considered as aberrant should now be seen as just another aspect of an accepted and embraced ‘normal’ in our society.  In this case, we should not look askance, let alone discourage, a young boy traipsing around in his mother’s dress and heels.  And even more so when he wishes to expose this different mode of expression on days he goes to school wanting to feel like a girl.

Ruminations – 22jun19

George Rebane

Another feather in the Millennials’ intellect.  They are having a hard time finding places to live – buy, rent – due to the housing shortage and sky-high rents.  The cause, invisible to them and their progressive mentors, is nothing but governments at all levels doing their best to regulate open market housing development down to a politically correct trickle.  And these dummies keep voting for Democrats.

Liberalism isn’t what it used to be.  We conservetarians have known that for some years now, but things are really hitting the fan when liberal national and local columnists are beginning to notice the Democrats’ rush to socialism, and then starting to practice the organizational rites of collectivists in herding their own.  These matters are explained by Michael Blechman in the 21jun19 WSJ and our own Darrell Berkheimer in the 22jun19 Union.  Meanwhile the local know-nothing lefties continue their vehement denial that they are goose-stepping to Marxism.

Wind and solar energy costs continue to decrease, but making that electricity cost competitive requires upgrading our power transmission grid with new lines that can take the energy from where it’s generated to far off places where it’s needed.  Guess what’s standing in the way of building these power lines? – you guessed it, government.  As per one of the most effective Rebane's Rules is still – if society has a problem, government is the cause until proven otherwise.  (more here)

Progressives celebrate prohibitive usage of public properties.  I had a bit of schadenfreude noting how our leftwingers view the existential takings of public lands from the people by progressive governments implementing Agenda21.  These mini-minds admonish those of us complaining of increasing restrictions and costs to use such properties as opposition to the ‘people’s ownership’ of public lands.  The designation and then restriction of public properties usage has been the hallmark of socialists cum communists.  The Left has never recognized, let alone acknowledged, that you own something only to the extent that you can dispose of it as you wish.

Sandbox - 22jun19

[Now that President Trump has revealed that he does incorporate reasoned decision processes and make prudent decisions about engaging US forces in response to abundant provocations by murderous dictatorships, I wonder if the Dems will allow their minions to hear any of this on the media.  One can niggle about whether he should have revealed how the latest all came about.  gjr]

Rich Ulery – CA escapee writes

[Rich Ulery was a longtime resident of Nevada County.  As a professional realtor Rich found time to give generously to the community through various leadership positions he held in civic organizations.  He also served as the chairman of the NC Republican Central Committee.  Rich and his bride are among the great exodus from California, having pulled up stakes and moving to Arizona last year.  I post Rich’s email as received by permission.  gjr]

Hi George,

I read that Nevada County supervisors just approved the 2019-20 budget of $258 million. While I understand the difficulty of comparing two different county budgets in two different states, I do find it interesting that Pima County, Arizona is wrestling with the approval of its $1.4 billion budget. Pima County has slightly more than 10 times the population of Nevada County, meaning that it costs Nevada County taxpayers almost 2X what it costs Pima County taxpayers to operate the county government. 

Certainly, the impact of Federal and State mandates and differing demographics will pollute this comparison. There are also cost of living considerations, although I will assure you that Nevada County COL is not double Pima County -- not even close. I will also assure you that Pima County has negligible unfunded pension liabilities. I suspect Nevada County is still hovering close to $200 million.

I'm not sure what conclusions, if any, to draw from this, but I found it at least intriguing.

Rich Ulery