Rebane's Ruminations

Voter Fraud 4.0 … until the fat lady sings

George Rebane

Well, the fat lady is in the wings, we can hear her warming up.  She will most likely be applauded onto the stage when Sidney Powell’s last hurrah is thrown out of court.  I still can’t believe why this successful and prominent lawyer got herself into such an embarrassing and career-ending pickle.  It occurred to me that there may be one way that she can salvage her reputation and ability to continue making money as a lawyer, and that all hinges on Adam Schiff.  After lying for years about having incontrovertible evidence of Trump’s Russia collusion, all of which turned out to be a blatant nothingburger, that sumbich continues his career unabated, and is still genuflected to by Democrats as one of their most illustrious intellectual lights.  Sidney should schedule some time with Adam to see how that was done.

Meanwhile, Team Trump forges ahead under the leadership of Coach Giuliani who is obviously stressed out a bit when called to perform under the klieg lights.  I have no idea what they expect to get out of SCOTUS, assuming they stick to their strategy of wending their way through the intermediate appellate process.  My question remains – how will this pursuit of 2020 voter fraud beneficially inform our upcoming 2022 and 2024 national elections?

Finally, who among our local leftwingers will receive invitations to attend one of Biden’s balls?

Sandbox -24nov20

[I'm thinking of inviting readers to compete picking the date on which the post-Biden president will be sworn in.  Readers can express it as a date certain or a distribution (say, a Gaussian or a MAB) on the calendar.  Selecting a date certain (i.e. 20 January 2025) makes sense only if you believe that Biden will serve out a full term, otherwise ... .  Maybe I'll even make a donation to the winner's favorite tax-deductible organization.  Thoughts?  gjr]

‘No Enemies’

George Rebane

Chartist poet Charles Mackay (1814-1889) wrote a poem he titled ‘No Enemies’, which appeared in an anthology of works celebrating and honoring social protest in 19^th century Great Britain, much like the protests that come so naturally to both sides in today’s polarized America.

Looking for Uncounted Votes (updated 20nov20)

George Rebane

Daily we hear of another discovered tranche of uncounted votes.  And these announcements are followed by a chorus of leftwingers (Democrats and their talking heads) pooh-poohing the latest discovery because it isn’t enough to swing the majority.  These come with admonitions that such efforts should cease because they ‘prove’ that there are not enough such remaining votes to make a difference.  Actually, that is not only a self-serving criticism of the continuing effort to find more uncounted votes, but it is also a profoundly illogical conclusion and most certainly a very unscientific deduction to come from the party of science.

I’ll soon get to the technical aspects of why it pays to keep looking, but there is also a simpler explanation that is accessible to wider audiences.  The bottom line may be summarized as the ‘tip of the iceberg’ principle.  When you find some more of which you already know there are many more, then there’s a good chance that what you found is neither the only nor the last of such a thing to be found.  If the find is valuable, you keep on looking for more.  This satisficing policy evolved into critters of ALL sizes hundreds of millions of years ago – when you find some food in a region that does not completely satisfy your hunger, you don’t assume that this was the last morsel to be found and you quit looking – not at all, you look around for more.

Scattershots - 17nov20 (updated 23nov20)

George Rebane

Coming to a private conversation near you, we can look forward to our socialists putting more screws on our liberties.  Those lovable Scandinavians are again taking the lead in showing our progressives how a compliant and controlled citizenry can be managed.  Reason.com reports (here) – “Norway has banned hate speech against "gender, gender identity or expression" and "sexual orientation," including remarks said in private. The law, approved by the legislature without a vote, calls for up to one year in prison for private remarks and up to three years in prison for public remarks that incite hatred, persecution, or contempt against protected groups or remarks that dehumanize them.”  How about government monitored smart phones that report your private conversations should these be subversive, seditious, or sexually incorrect?

‘Your money or your life?’  Actually, the government already has rules in place to take both with its draconian financial monitoring programs and death committees denying healthcare for nationalized programs like Medicare and Obamacare.  Now we hear that the feds intend to tighten the screws on monitoring your banking habits and monetary behavior.  They propose to lower the ‘travel rule’ threshold to $250 to capture and record all international transfers down to that amount. (more here)  This is just the latest ratchet in America’s massive financial surveillance system already in place functioning quite efficiently, thank you. (more here)

More social signposts on 21st century's return road to serfdom.  Just shelter and feed us regularly, and we promise not to make a sound.  Friedrich Hayek laid it out for us almost 80 years ago.

Thanksgiving 2020.  Safeway ratted us out.  So now we have Gov Newsom’s new dicta about how we should spend our holidays and behave inside our homes.  The brave new world of constant compliance has arrived, and no one has a shred of ‘science’ to show that lockdowns work or have worked with infectious diseases.

[20nov20 update] Ineptocracy (new English word) – A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least likely makers, and where those least likely to sustain themselves (takers) are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of the diminishing number of makers.  It appears that we have just voted ourselves into an ineptocracy.

[23nov20 update]  “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public” is just the latest of the growing number of medical experts’ admonitions about Covid-19 (more here).  It has been clear for some months now that the lamestream promoted information about the pandemic is mostly adulterated bullcrap.  When the dust settles, and assuming we still have a free press, C19 will be recorded as the world’s first and largest Political Pandemic to serve the agendas of the global Left and their corporatist allies.  The worldwide spread of this virus truly has become a crisis too valuable to waste in terms of its manageable transformative power.  The astute reader will notice 1) the absence of any ‘science’ that supports the population control dicta of the various governments, and 2) the active suppression of clinical studies and therapeutics that contest the cited lockdown mentality.  Everything in the news is so, simply because they say it is so.

‘Defecate or relinquish the receptacle’ has been my sentiment in these pages about releasing evidence to substantiate Team Trump’s claim of an historically massive electoral fraud.  Not all readers have agreed, but I take comfort that VDH is now making a similar call - “But in the world of politics and perceptions, if the Kraken is really not to be birthed as a canary, overwhelming data should be produced immediately, given the arena is not just electoral and legal but now political.” (more here)

Voter Fraud 3.0 … until the fat lady sings

George Rebane

President Trump’s Executive Order #13848 may be the real bombshell of this election as it is brought to light in the Foreign Policy section of the White House website.  It is titled ‘Notice on Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect To Foreign Interference In or Undermining Public Confidence In U.S. Elections’ (here)  The enforcement of this EO will make more people culpable for aiding and abetting foreign interference to undermine public confidence in the 3nov20 election than we can count.  What I find intriguing is that this EO was explicitly continued on 10 September 2020.  (H/T to two RR readers)

Here is what one blogger, a Mr Rip McIntosh, who soberly advises his readers to check out this fairly breathless commentary on the potential impacts of EO #13848 before swallowing it hook/line/sinker – I advise RR readers to do the same and inform all of us if/where they may see this issue reported.

Sandbox - 16nov20

[A lot more news about the candidates (and other issues) is coming out every day besides that which can be connected to voter fraud.  Please extend your discussions of these to the fresh Sandbox.  gjr]

From Fox News to …? (updated 14nov20)

George Rebane

OK boys and girls, things have gotten rotten in the Murdoch media empire.  I’ve been pissing and moaning about Fox News for months now (always did have my gimlet eye trained on them) as their news coverage and copy kept drifting, now visibly sliding, toward lamestream journalism.  Their ‘fair, balanced, and unafraid’ has always brought out a chuckle in me and mine, but today the ‘unafraid’ part is an out-and-out farce – they are very afraid of straying too far from the progressive narrative.  (As I’ve noted many times before, ‘fair’ and ‘balanced’ has always been a fool’s errand that only convinces the naïfs.)  For lack of a better target, I blame the entire transformation on Rupert’s liberal son Lachlan now in charge of their news outlets.  The even more liberal son James has already departed Fox because it still wouldn’t follow the leftwing narrative well enough, especially the coverage and promotion of climate change (i.e. preventable manmade global warming).  So now the cat is out of the bag.  Once daddy left the business to his sons, things immediately started listing to port.

FN’s and FB’s stalwarts like Bret Baier and Neil Cavuto have already tossed in the towel and joined their liberal colleague Chris Wallace and former colleague Shepard Smith in how they select and wordsmith their news reports and interviews – today the prematurely departed Smith would feel very much at home at FN.  But the real canaries in the Murdoch media mine are conservative stalwarts like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham (and maybe even Jesse Watters).  If any of them start leaving FN, then that network’s turn to the dark side is a done deal.

It would be interesting to see where such conservative commentarians would take their established brands.  Newsmax is an obvious destination.  And there are more conservative streaming news outlets available like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly’s new homes that would get a tremendous viewership boost if they garnered any of FN’s big three.  And now we’re starting to hear rumors that a former president Donald Trump may again be in the business of starting his own news network or buying into an existing one and turning it into Trump TV (more here).

To all this I will add our country’s losing fight with the First Amendment as the forces of darkness continue to throttle free speech and religious liberties.  A significant telltale about the ‘progress’ of progressives in this arena was SCOTUS Justice Alito’s recent speech to the Federalist Society on these topics of America’s freedoms. (more here, here, here, and here)

Exciting times ahead as the nation starts its foreplay with socialism after Biden’s inauguration.  I’m hoping that our intrepid RR readers, who seem to know all that’s happening on the web, will keep the rest of us informed as to the best post-Fox destinations on cable or online.

[14nov20 update]  Bill Whittle at Instapundit.com delivers the first of a multi-part series (here) on the downfall of America’s media and the particulars of how the election was impacted by their fake news and daily streams of lies.  (H/T to reader)

Following the science, really? (updated 12nov20)

George Rebane

[This is the updated transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 11 November 2020.]

‘We follow the science’ has been heard across the land for some months now, mostly from shady politicians, but also from politicians of all shades.  This pompous and gratuitous claim is put out primarily to shut off further debate about whatever issue that is sheltered under the science umbrella.  The politician or media talking head knows that his audience is woefully unprepared to understand, let alone contest, any proposition so couched.

The effectiveness of this kind of communication hinges on the level of numeracy enjoyed by our population at large.  Numeracy is the mathematical partner of literacy.  Numeracy is the analog of literacy - communication by letters and words - in the sense that the numerate person can understand every day issues involving arithmetic calculation, basic logic, chance, utility, elements of finance, graphical presentation of information, the scientific process, and ability to think critically.  As a person does not have to be a professional wordsmith to be literate, then also a person need not be a professional in the mathematically based disciplines to be considered numerate.  Numeracy is just another arrow, albeit a very important one, that an educated person has in his quiver.  Innumeracy, like illiteracy, is the converse of having such tools at your disposal.

Adult innumeracy is the longstanding and silent scourge of our country and of our times as confirmed by longitudinal surveys done by the Dept of Education.  Americans are overwhelmingly innumerate, with about 1 out of 20 of us having the skills of a numerate layman.  In a liberal democracy the importance of voter numeracy is based on a simple truth – ALL social issues in our community and across the land are significant only because of their descriptive numbers.  And without the ability to process those numbers, we really don’t understand the issue and can only emote about it.

Voter Fraud 2.0 … until the fat lady sings (updated 15nov20)

George Rebane

To describe what is going on with this election as hanky-panky is to diminish what appears as the first verifiable assault on the seminal institution that we use to maintain our democratic republic – the right and practice of franchised citizens to regularly impact the governance of their country.

Evidence is pouring in from all quarters about voter fraud, evidence that has been filed by poll workers, poll watchers, and witnesses who have provided sworn affidavits and statements – punishable as perjury if falsified – of a wide spectrum of illegal and criminal activities taking place at polling places and vote counting centers.  Enough of this has been happening to cause the DoJ to order all US attorneys across the land to begin investigating these allegations.

Last night on FN Tucker Carlson went through a litany of some of the evidence that the US attorneys will be looking at (here).  (Odd that FN has pulled this commentary from its site.)  You don’t have to be a fan of Carlson to note the factual content of his commentary, confirm it yourself, and compare it with what you’ve seen on the lamestream.  An important part of the data that is now a matter of record is the history of grossly inaccurate polling results with which the country has been blanketed in the weeks leading up to the election.

It turns out that the polls across the board were grossly wrong in favor of Joe Biden.  The more important impact of such erroneous polling was how they influenced the vote.  University of Michigan (here) and McGill University (here) have done studies of this which delineate how polls favoring this or lambasting that affect voter attitudes.  In America our polls were off, sometimes hundreds of percents and of opposite polarity, for electoral contests ranging from the president to the states’ down-ticket candidates and issues.  And for some odd reason, they were overwhelmingly in error toward the Left.  This was similar to the late-discovered ballots and mail-ins arriving at vote counting centers that defied voting demographics, voting history, and elementary statistics in their one-sidedness (more here and here).  And we haven’t yet come to the vote changing software (here) that people have alleged was used (and exposed unintentionally on CNN (here) where Trump’s vote count goes down the precise amount that Biden’s went up before the cutaway from the scene).

All the Dems and lamestream outlets are ostracizing the closer examination of this election's fraud, claiming that, no matter if true, none of what has been reported is enough to change the election's outcome.  That in itself may well be false because the actual validations and recounts have not been completed.  But the logic of the admonition itself is grossly faulty, for it assumes that all the fraud discovered to date is all that there is.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  (For the technically inclined, consider the individual allegations as a sequence of events in a minimally known process.  Then compute the probability that the process ended with its most recent event.  To help you do this Download TN2011-1_DiscreteEventR-Gprobs )

The greater impact of this on our institutions and ultimately on Americans’ trust in their country’s electoral processes is summarized by Victor Davis Hanson (here).  The bottom line is that we are done as a liberal democracy once the people no longer believe in elections or that their legal votes matter.

[11nov20 update] There is now a chorus of commentators on various media outlets (yes, even some liberal ones) who correctly opine about completing the investigations of the numerous reported election irregularities and alleged voter fraud around the country.  What our Left predictably pooh-poohs as rightwing sour grapes, and tells to “suck it up” and get on with it will not work in the country’s longer-term polity.  We have lost faith in the election process as it now stands.  There are at least half of us in America who want the reported incidents of malfeasance resolved, one way or the other, before trust is restored in our elections.  A democratic republic cannot continue to function under liberal governance once its elections are seen by a major fraction of its citizenry as corrupt and corruptible.  The natural progression of such a state of affairs is to a strong-arm autocracy.

The truth of the matter, not considered by today’s light thinkers, is that the Left will be equally put out again when they lose another major election.  I say ‘again’ because they were maximally put out for years after Hillary lost in 2016, and showed the country how they could disrupt, not only the duly elected administration, but also the rest of the federal government.  These progressives and their militant radicals not only rejected the legitimacy of the election, they also rejected the findings of the many subsequently launched investigations that failed to find their claimed faults – and they hold these beliefs to this day.  For them, the Republicans remain guilty as alleged.

So yes, we have to let Team Trump and the other involved federal and state level investigative agencies complete the process to either sanitize the recent election, or declare that it was not soiled in the first place.  At that time we’ll all have to suck it up, bid good-bye to Donald Trump, and accept Joe Biden as our new fearless leader (while continuing to keep a gimlet eye on the sumbich until his influence peddling family affairs are resolved AND he renounces the emerging communist wing of the Democratic Party).

[15nov20 update]  Now we have a fairly complete recounting of the provenance of Hammer/Scorecard and how it came to be applied to the current election.  The testimony is "according to whistleblower Dennis Montgomery, who was granted immunity by the DoJ and the FBI for exposing illegal US domestic surveillance."  (H/T to reader and more here)

Voter Fraud … until the fat lady sings (updated 9nov20)

George Rebane

'We don't want to go where you want to take us.' - the fundamental reason for no possibility of common ground.

The uncensored part of the web is buzzing about developing evidence on how the Trump vote scorecard got hammered during the past week.  Actually, a whistleblower has come forward who describes the use of two data manipulation programs, Hammer and Scorecard, that have been used internationally and were used to modify data during transmission from the voting precincts to the central vote collecting servers.  This cleverly designed software modifies data on the fly during transmission so that the process is essentially undetectable under normal circumstances.  FB’s Lou Dobbs with Flynn lawyer Sydney Powell and Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch broke the story here.

Here are some initial factors that bear on the entire investigation into what may turn out to be the largest national voter fraud case in history.  A lot is developing.

1. Statistically impossible tranches of uncounted votes, ALL favoring Biden, turned up during the week to make Trump’s lead vanish. I pointed out early that this was statistically impossible; now this argument is being picked on the national conservative media.  The lamestream, of course, continues to be silent.
2. The DoJ and FBI have finally become involved in these investigations.
3. The continued silence of the Republican Party on the matter is puzzling. The most influential sites of potential voter fraud are in the battleground states – Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan – all of which have both of their legislative houses controlled by Republicans.  These legislatures have the power to investigate and determine the make-up of the electors who will represent the states in the Electoral College.
4. The Hammer and Scorecard whistleblower has been identified and will aid in the investigation. Apparently the vote transmission logs exist for the node-to-node data pathways, and they can be forensically examined by our intelligence services for any hanky-panky that the vote counts may have suffered in transmission.

Our readers will, of course, look into this and also provide reports which I’ll summarize here.  

[Update] That all such discoveries as Hammer and Scorecard may have no effect on the conduct of national affairs is to me very likely, given, say, the impact of three major issues – 1) the Joe Biden video of firing the Burisma investigator, 2) the total denial and burial of the Hunter Biden influence peddling emails, and 3) the months-long allegations of C19 response mismanagement by Trump.  The proper (and historical) treatment of any one of these by our Fourth Estate would have instantly, and I do mean instantly, derailed the Harris/Biden campaign.

Our nation ignoring the clear video evidence of Joe admitting and bragging about how he got the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the Burisma corruption scandal fired, while son Hunter sat on the company’s board collecting millions, is both astounding and terrifying.  Why?  Because it illustrates the level of ready belief and sanguine compliance to which the overwhelming fraction of Americans have been reduced.  Without interest or thought, these millions of fellow citizens will literally believe anything that the lamestream puts out.  And if these leftwing outlets refuse to report it, then it simply doesn’t exist in their world of managed and lightly exercised thought.

That manner of practicing democracy was further abetted by the ignoring then denial of the confirmed HunterB laptop and tens of thousands of culpatory emails which outlined the years of influence peddling by the Biden family.  And finally, the nothing-burger of dunning the nation’s C19 response which clearly had the largest impact on the sheeple.  It was blared out by all media channels daily, and accepted as gospel here and abroad without a shred of evidence.  The sheeple were told that science speaks with one consensual voice, and that politically correct voice (no matter how much it varied over the months) confirmed the president’s mismanagement that was the sole cause of hundreds of thousands of preventable C19 deaths.  The simple allegation, repeated thousands of times, was enough - no further evidence was and still is necessary.  And they all believed; not only that, but also that JoeB had a plan to fix the whole thing once he was voted in.

These three shameful episodes delineating our decline are sufficient evidence for me to believe that, no matter the ultimately demonstrated veracity of voter fraud, America has entered the epoch of nationalized voter manipulation that makes possible nationalized voter fraud.

[More update]  And here are couple more of some curious coincidences that now seem to be pouring in.  It was really a miracle that 450,000 more votes were discovered in battleground states, all of them for Joe Biden - whouda thought?  When you're popular, you're popular.  This little piece was reported this morning on FB by Sydney Powell on Maria Bartiromo's program (here).  And wait, don't go away.  Another coincidence has Gateway Pundit reporting that "Nancy Pelosi’s Chief of Staff Is Chief Executive and Feinstein’s Husband a Major Shareholder at Dominion Ballot Counting Systems" (here).  Things are getting curioser and curioser.  Now if you don't want to hear about any of this, may I suggest going to any lamestream outlet. (H/T to reader)

[9nov20 update]  President Trump’s Warp Speed vaccine development program announced first fruits from Pfizer and BioNTech, these are the first two pharmas completing successful testing and now apply for final FDA approval before its distribution.  Other pharmas working on C19 vaccines will soon follow.  This development is historic beyond compare, and exceeds even the most optimistic predictions when the administration’s program was announced – Even Dr Fauci opined that nothing could be expected before 18 to 24 months (compared to the approx. 10-year normal development time).  All pro-American people are cheering as they welcome this sea changing news for our country and the world.

All except Bumblebrain Biden and minions who rushed out to attempt a pre-emptive public statement and launch what we may expect for some time to come as the first edition of Biden’s Bamboozle Bullshit.  He let the us know that the country’s real response to C19 will start after he is sworn in, citing his newly formed C19 committee that will “follow the science”.  The clear message throughout his blurb was that nothing has been done to date, and the steps he outlined will save us all after they are implemented during his administration.

The hogwash was obvious to all who know what Trump has done, and that Biden’s proposals are literally nothing new.  He gave the most passing mention to the coming vaccine and was only concerned about its equitable distribution.  His newly discovered solution to preventing C19 spread continues to rely on masks and social distancing.  Actually, Bumblebrain has now also discovered that the feds can’t mandate national mask wearing, that has to be done state by state.  No apologies for the contrary bullshit he and Kamala spewed during their campaign.  As usual, he took no questions and hustled out immediately after his prepared remarks.  The “Biden Plan” is literally nothing more than a belated and partial implementation of what the Trump administration already has in place – and the nation’s double dummies continue to lap it up.

The one who really blew the Democrats’ cover about Covid this morning was Gov Cuomo.  He made it clear that the most important thing about the vaccine was its politically correct distribution to the poor, minorities, and tribes.  His message was that until such “equitable” distribution means were in place, the vaccine should be withheld – it don’t matter how many people would die in the interval.  Readers will recall that I presented the correct Democrat pre-election (now pre-inauguration) utility function for their public policies – minimize economic growth and maximize C19 deaths.

Sandbox - 6nov20

[Just on the off chance that some readers may want some fresh sand to discuss something other than election related topics (for which we have live postings), I thought that a new Sandbox should be made available.  We shall see.  gjr]

The Flaws and Fate of Public Opinion Polling

George Rebane

We must always remember that, more often than not, the public mind is fickle, frenzied, and foolish.

There was no sign of the ‘Blue Wave’ predicted by the pollsters and ballyhooed by the lamestream.  This is the second (third?) national election in a row about which the polls have been drastically off the mark.  And, of course, the leftwing lamestream media has already demonstrated itself to be an extremely unreliable source of news, relegating itself to serve the DNC as its propaganda trumpet.  Fox News didn’t become the top news channel through only its own efforts; it has had a lot of help from the progressive journalist industry continuing to pander to the people and shooting itself in the foot over and over again.

The bottom line is that according to the prominent leftwing outlet The Atlantic, the pollsters blew it, which resulted in ‘The Polling Crisis Is a Catastrophe for American Democracy’.  It correctly concludes that “If public-opinion data are unreliable, we’re all flying blind.”  But the catastrophe is avoidable since we know its cause and how to avoid it.  I explained all this in the excellent article – ‘Polling Phollies’ – that I wrote in September 2016 leading up to Trump’s unpredicted victory.

Polling has some very obvious and very subtle twists and turns to it.  The reasons that give rise to bad results are mainly due to a few poll design factors that involve sample size, sampling method, the size/share of true population preferences, and the number of ‘bins’ into which the poll wants to estimate the population’s preferences.  In the latter, you can have a poll that asks for preference among two or, say, three or more candidates.

(For those wanting more detailed and technical information on these factors and polling errors, you can go here and here for a good place to start.)

The punchline is that the reason for all the polling errors is almost always due to a too small sample size that yields huge error boundary overlaps, especially when the actual population ratios for two alternatives/candidates is in the 0.5 region.  As explained and illustrated in my 2016 article referenced above, it is in that region where any given sample size experiences its largest error bounds that more often than not (like today between Trump and Biden) overlap significantly.  (For example, a sample size of 1,000 is way too small for error bounds separation.)  Such large overlaps also give rise to the back and forth changes of the lead as the vote count proceeds.

So before we get all worked up about voter fraud, it’s prudent to look at other viable causes for what looks like someone is monkeying with the count as the hours pass while pundits are trying to make their points from ‘I told you so’ to exquisite CYA explanations for piss-poor prognostications (more here)

Finally, I’m more than disappointed that no one has presented in easy to understand graphic form (again my 2016 report) the reasons for all the polling follies, and what’s required to eliminate them.  The bottom line is that the pollsters must get their technical act together, explain the accessible particulars to their audiences, and work hard now to regain their credibility with the public.

I fear for our beloved Republic (updated 7nov20)

George Rebane

With the election over and unknown thousands of votes yet to be discovered, counted, and adjudicated, we have entered a virgin and wild land untrammeled in our history.  Having arrived therein, today we are literally a polarized population of pioneers who see the other as savages to be subdued.  Common ground for launching a healing dialogue was forsaken long ago.

Reminding readers that these pages contain ‘Observations and Interpretations from the Last Great Century of Man’, we now begin in earnest to witness and partake in our country’s dissolution – the Great Divide has arrived, what remains is how we can go forward to a mutually satisfactory political solution that describes the form and functions of a newly divided continent.  If we cannot resolve this peacefully, then we may have our country’s first true civil war in which both sides wish to take over and rule the entire land.

History students understand that the conflagration of 1860-65 was not a civil war, as it is erroneously described today.  In reality it was a War for Southern Independence launched by secessionist states that had no desire to ‘take over’ the United States of America.  Were violence to be our fate, then one can foresee a similarly purposed conflict with the Right wanting to secede, and the Left opposing secession with the force of arms.  That is a political asymmetry the Left has refused to acknowledge, as it vigorously opposes its natural outcome.

The Right wants to live in a land where it can practice its values of liberty, freedom, enterprise, and capitalism.  The Right has no desire to force other people to adopt their values and mores.  The Left, as the perpetual hatchery of totalitarian regimes, will force everyone it can control to adopt and practice its ideology, even if that necessitates a vast gulag and re-education camps.  The Left has demonstrated again its perennial practice of soiling its existing nests, and then emigrating to unspoiled regions and communities to repeat the process.  There is no evidence of emigrations in the opposite direction; the people of the Right continue to escape to a shrinking collection of unspoiled pastures with the vain hope that they will not be followed.  It is anyone’s guess how long this pattern of migrations can continue.

The election of 2020 is yet to be decided, but the outlook for Republicans does not look good.  I assess President Trump’s chance of being re-elected at less than 5%.  The only hope for America dodging the fundamental transformation bullet for the near term is that Republicans retain the Senate, and that SCOTUS will revert to a strong constitutionalist bench in adjudicating the blizzard of cases it will encounter.  With a Republican Senate under Majority Leader Mitch, we can hope for blockage of the most egregious socialist GND legislation that will issue from Speaker Pelosi’s House.  Under the Harris/Biden administration gridlock will be good.

What disturbs (terrifies?) me the most is the fraction of the electorate that support a fundamental transformation of our Republic from the historical country of Makers to a country of government promoted Takers.  This is the key attribute that illustrates our divided house, and therefore portends the Great Divide.  None of our leading thinkers ensconced in their Institutions of Thinking has a clue on how to stop the ever-widening chasm so well illustrated this week, let alone providing even a rough outline for bringing us back close enough to preserve the Union.  I say this because the Takers have been taught to believe that the only means to reduce their pain – real, imagined, or self-inflicted – is to have government take more from the Makers.  As has been shown in so many other countries passing through socialism, there always comes a time when the Makers quit making.

The 2022 election will respond to whatever pain the Democrats inflict on the country.  Even though fewer Republican Senate seats will be up for grabs, the solution of inducing more Makers to make more is not on any progressive horizon.  If the Senate flips to the dark side, then Nellie bar the door; even a conservative SCOTUS on the way to the packing house will be of no help.  This election, now going for the bumblebrain and socialist-in-waiting, demonstrates that we Americans no longer have the collective wisdom to preserve our liberties or our land of the free.  Once a political monopoly is established at the federal level, it will take the country down the trail so visibly blazed by California and its like-minded coastal calamities.  What happens then is anyone’s guess, but for sure it will not be pretty.

During this tendentious week, my final wish is that President Trump will act presidential when this election’s dust settles.  And if he must depart, that he does so with newfound dignity and decorum, that were it practiced more frequently during his years in office would have guaranteed him a second term.

[7nov20 update]  "Joe Biden is Elected the 46th U.S. President"

Election 2020 Scattershots (updated 4nov20)

George Rebane

All nations that have yielded to a political monopoly have descended into autocracy on the road to tyranny.

[3nov20]  Starting today – Election Day – we are going to witness an historic ramping up of fake news, Big Lies, and propaganda from the Left’s lamestream media channels.  This will be the likes of something we have never seen, exceeding or at least rivalling the 19^th century ante-bellum press reports and political commentaries.  Finding reliable news sources to monitor the progress of the election and public square responses in the coming days will be difficult.  Readers are invited to share links to outlets they consider reliable.  And our leftwing readers are encouraged to present evidence about conservative outlets that are participating in this national charade.

Reader Barry Pruett sent this photo of Reno voters waiting in a long line to vote.

[4nov20 update]  Fox News election reporting is a puzzle.  Their projections continue to change without providing any evidence as to why.  I’ve been a longtime critic of their claim to be “Fair, balanced, and unafraid.”  As even some national conservative commentators (e.g. Rush Limbaugh) are starting to point out, FN has added a new reason to be afraid – the ire of the Murdochs, their ‘Never Trump’ owners.  ‘Fair’ and ‘balanced’ are unachievable, and FN has always been a bit skittish in straying too far to the right of the lamestream.  The choice of verbiage for their news copy is a dead giveaway.  It’s a sad state of affairs when the best available outlet is also visibly tainted.

The Economist is clueless when it comes to interpretations of Americana and what’s going on in the United States, and its reportage regularly reflects that.  But that ‘newspaper’ has something going for it that makes it a rare remaining class act in journalism.  It is a privately owned enterprise and makes no pretense of being fair and balanced.  It has a definite list to port of which it is proud, and you can see it reflected in almost every news article it publishes where it marbles its editorial ideology with its interpretation of the reported happenings; and that goes double for its opinionated commentators.  Now that is what I call unafraid journalism.  Take a look at the front cover of its most recent print edition – no puzzle there as to their position on our politics.

Pass the barf bag.  I’ve had it to the gills with all these heavy duty journalists and experts on TV finding new and not so ingenious ways of saying, ‘I don’t know, beats the hell out of me’ when asked a question about who may win this or how that state will go.  They’re paid big bucks to lay their balls on the line and make some kind of firm prognostication from all the data they’ve seen, the elections they’ve covered, and time they’re now spending puzzling on probable outcomes.  I can say ‘I don’t know all by my lonesome.’  The only reason I tune in to those chowder heads is to glean some insight that my little pea brain has missed.  Instead, we get these tautologies, ‘Well, if it keeps going like this, then X will happen, and if it turns around and goes the other way, then Y will happen (or worse, simply ‘X will not happen’)’.  Well no shit Hoppy!  What a load of crap they feed us between 5-minute commercial breaks.

 

A reader’s hopeful election assessment

George Rebane

Under the ‘Estonian Fox’ moniker, one of our east coast readers has been a regular on these comment streams.  He emailed me his filled out electoral college predictions in the spreadsheet format that I developed and made available here.  The first figure below shows his vote assignment per state at the various probability levels.  His bottom line is that Trump’s expected electoral votes are 278 (270 required to win), and Biden’s expected is 260.  This squeaker projects a 0.52 probability that Trump wins.  In the second figure EFox assigned ones and zeros to the candidates who had the higher probability of taking each state from his first assessment.  This kind of ‘all or nothing’ figuring give Trump 325 votes and Biden 213 – a clear Republican glory road.  Well, from his mouth to God’s ear is all we can hope for.

Scattershots – 31oct20 (updated 2nov20)

George Rebane

A progressive argues that America’s income inequality has actually increased under Obama, instead of having decreased per their national narrative.  This is shown in RL Crabb’s comment stream (here) where I contended with a typically snarky liberal about the Gini Index worldwide rankings.  I used a 2007 CIA table that gave GI = 0.45 for the US, and the liberal used the more recent Wikipedia value of 0.47.  GI ranges between 0 (total equality) and 1 (total inequality).  In reality, GI changes slowly because it reflects the slowly changing income distribution over an entire economy.  The liberal then argued that America’s income distribution became more unequal under Obama.  BTW, my point on Bob’s blog was to illustrate that the GI is not a reliable indicator of autocratic vs liberal governance, showing that both kinds of countries had GIs both greater and less than that of the US.  This point was totally lost on the liberal genius.

Lest we forget –

The Left claims that the Hunter Biden scandal is a manufactured ‘October Surprise’.  Seamus Bruner is the associate director of research at the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) counters, “A lot of people think this is, you know, (an) October surprise or just for the election to tarnish Joe Biden’s name … These stories were released in 2018 in a book called ‘Secret Empires’. … Joe Biden wasn’t a candidate, we didn’t ever think Joe Biden would run for president, we kind of just followed the money.”

I love capitalism.  We just got back from the weekly shopping at Safeway.  I bitched to the manager last time that they were always out of tonic water; they should change their inventory policy on that SKU.  He thanked me and promised he’d solve the problem.  And sure enough, today there was tonic water galore.  Also, their first edition of plastic grocery bags were on the fringe of fragile.  They saw the problem and had their supplier up the heft, and now we have plastic bags so sturdy that they are reusable.  In more regulated economies – those I’ve experienced in Europe – if you lodged such a complaint to a clerk, you’d get the gimlet for being a disaffected nonconformist.  And in places like the USSR/Russia, your complaint would be noted on your state dossier for future reference as a noncompliant misfit.  In North Korea the Ugly Fat Kid would have you and your family being re-educated in a labor camp.  Guess which of our politically polarized poles likes the UFK’s solution.   

[2nov20 update] CDC-attributed corona deaths are a Big Lie according to their own accounting. (more here) It's the money and lamestream promotion of the Democrats that give rise to maintaining one of this year's biggest lies in order to influence the election in favor of Bumblebrain.  (H/T to reader)

Sandbox – 31oct20

[Halloween will be extended by several weeks this year as the scary election returns and adjudicated ruling start coming in.  In the meantime, I invite those prognosticators of the presidential race to use the spreadsheet with assignable probabilities to express their views.  Using that model, instead of the limited information point estimate maps provided online, allows us to also calculate the chances that either candidate can win, and let’s us see how the probabilities shift as the state’s shift their electors.  The innumerates keep fooling themselves that our universe is constructed with predestined point quantities, instead of an unending sea of probability distributions that define all apprehended knowledge, and from which reality is sampled with the passage of time. Gjr

https://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2020/07/election2020-electoral-college-predictor.html ]

Biden Family Scandal Debunked

George Rebane

News media's search for balance is an errand for hubristic fools.

Here I am, writing this mea culpa with a red face.  Over the past week or so, I was among the millions of rightwingers who took in the news - hook, line, and sinker - about the business dealings of Hunter, Jim, and Joe (“the big guy”) Biden.  This morning my eyes were opened by an incisive and revealing op-ed piece – ‘Never mind COVID, how about Hunter?’ - in the 30oct20 Union by its publisher Don Rogers.  There he details a vast bamboozle, now in full swing, managed by Team Trump in the attempt to again illegitimately influence the election.  Reading the tightly worded expose, one immediately sees how these shenanigans all fit together to produce a conspiracy of size, depth, and scope never attempted in the history of our Republic.

The first thing I learned from Mr Rogers’ piece was that the country cannot continue executing its C19 response while also attending to the Biden scandal news.  I must admit, I never thought of that important detail.  We live and learn, when our betters shine the light.

The whole conspiracy apparently started by a rightwing Mac repair shop owner producing a laptop he claimed belonged to Hunter.  We should have known that this was a plant because it’s very unlikely that any “Trump follower” and “patriot” would ever operate a computer repair shop – a dead giveaway.

And then more evidence of a bamboozle when Trump’s lawyer Giuliani was given a copy of the alleged emails supposedly on Hunter’s laptop.  Everyone knows that Giuliani is in the bag and easy to involve in any of Trump’s shenanigans.  And everyone knows that Giuliani in his travels to Ukraine and points east has already been compromised by the Russians, and is now one of Putin’s Pals.

Where it gets really interesting is the report that the FBI was given the computer, and has had it for a better part of a year.  But that dog won’t hunt either.  We know how the FBI has been complicit in a lot of underhanded doings; it wouldn’t take any silver-tongued devil, say, like Bill Barr (no doubt in on it from the start), to talk the FBI’s leadership to join the conspiracy.  Again, I was blinded by FBI Dir Wray et al announcing that Hunter has been under criminal investigation since last year.  A clever ruse that has convinced too many of us unsuspecting naïfs.

What really should also have alerted all of us to the magnitude of the conspiracy was how Trump paraded DNI Ratcliffe in front of the nation to announce that the entire intelligence community had analyzed all the doings, and had not been able to find any Russian connection.  That that was clearly a lie came to light when we heard of the letter from 50 retired intelligence sector managers.  These distinguished gentlemen assured the country that the laptop and emails affair had all the earmarks of a Russian operation.  In fact, so much so, that any reasonable person would agree that no further evidence was needed to prove that point.  Again, plain as day, the allegation of so many retired intelligence professionals should have, then and there, made clear to all what was really going down.  But I and people like me just went ahead believing.  (Readers know that I was also bamboozled by all the findings discrediting the Steele dossier – too soon old, too late smart.)

What really took us in were the obviously placed reports of other colleagues of Hunter who had received some of the alleged emails.  To include such unknowns in the game was a no-brainer.  The real clever and well-thought-out ruse was the whole affair involving retired Navy officer Tony Bobulinsky.  Bobulinsky, supposedly CEO of a Hunter set-up company, was put up in a LA hotel room in front of Tucker Carlson (already another dead giveaway) to sing like a bird.  Some may argue that since Bobulinsky, from a long and honorable military family, was already wealthy, therefore he would not be on the take for a few more mere millions.  But we all know that rich guys are greedy and forever on the take; it really didn’t take much to get him to play along.  Anyway, the entire Bobulinsky thing is a sideshow and charade, especially his claim of discussing the whole alleged scam with Joe Biden himself, and now adding on that the FBI has listed him as a "material witness" in its criminal investigation of the Bidens.  The whole country knows what a straight-up guy VP Joe has been, a man who would never be involved in crass undertakings such as family-wide influence peddling.  Again, another missed dead giveaway.

And now we hear reports that the NY Post, the rightwing rag that broke the story, contracted a well-known cybersecurity expert to authenticate Hunter’s Burisma emails (more here).  That desperate ploy itself should have put the kibosh on the whole conspiracy.  But no, all this time we have had more rightwing media outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal acting out their roles like a bought-and-paid-for chorus giving credence to the fabricated dirty linens manufactured in Russia, and coordinated here from the White House.

Involving those major discredited rightwing news sources should have put paid on the whole sordid affair.  This was made doubly clear by the entire cadre of progressive networks, cable news, and newspapers bravely and professionally refusing to cover any of this insidious conspiracy, lest it poison the minds of the more malleable folks so close to the election.  I see this now as a public service of the first rank, and have to admit that it shades all of my misdirected diatribes over the years against the journalistic profession and our Fourth Estate – one of our sacred and celebrated public institutions.  And were it not for courageous and diligent journalists like The Union’s Don Rogers, so many of us would never have been the wiser.  For me, it’s better late than never.

Misguided Public Safety Power Shutoffs

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 28 October 2020.]

Dear Gov Newsom – This is an open letter to you from an old and very disgruntled citizen who has spent the last 63 years of his life in this beautiful state.  During these decades I went to school, earned my living, raised my family here, and watched the steady decline of a once golden state.  And I can attest that it truly was the Golden State because I was there.

Today, after decades of a virtual political monopoly in Sacramento, our state has landed on the bottom of the barrel with several other equally discredited states.  We purposely raised our taxes to the highest levels, became the leader in regulatory burdens heaped on our businesses and homeowners, and are now the hands down mecca of the nation’s welfare recipients – one out of three live here.  We lead the nation in the number of homeless, and invite their filthy tent favelas that now stretch from the coastal cities to the Sierra foothills.  Our food and fuel prices have sky rocketed to the highest in the nation.  Our roads, bridges, and other infrastructures are in third-world disrepair, public employee pensions are unfunded to the tune of unpayable billions, and businesses and middle-class taxpayers are departing in droves to greener pastures.

Add to this California’s highest electricity costs and disastrous power outages that now resemble the availability of electricity in second and third world countries, and you almost have the complete picture of where we are today and the direction we’re headed tomorrow.  (more here) And that, because the state’s legislative and regulatory pipeline is chuck full of a lot more of what already pains us.  But governor, this is just a short summary of California’s deficits and decline, about which long and detailed books have been written.  On top of all this, the state’s political leaders and bureaucrats have created a problem that’s even more up close and personal, one that affects all Californians, especially those of us who live in the rural counties.

Scattershots – 25oct20 (updated 28oct20)

George Rebane

Exciting times, youngest granddaughter Fi just gave birth to Maybelle at Sierra Memorial to our fifth great-grandchild.  Daddy Shawn was there to catch it on the first bounce or sooner.  They’re not allowing visitors during these trying times, so our family's welcoming committee will have to form when the new mama and baby get discharged.  Oh well.

Dodgers v Rays at 2-2.  From the record, the chances that the winner of the 2-2 game goes on to win the series is 65% or about two out of three.  I dug up this stat to see how close it matched the chances for two equally capable teams each having a 50-50 chance of winning a subsequent game.  Going into the 3-2 game, the ‘3’ team has a 75% chance of taking the series, and the ‘2’ team’s chance is 25%.  So the record book’s 65% stat of actual 3-2 winners is a mite low, but still commanding.  Were we to do a little bit of probability math and compute what the actual probability of the series champ winning the subsequent games that yield the recorded 65% stat, we would get 41%, or about two out of five, as the probability of winning each subsequent game.  This says that during the history of baseball, winners of the 2-2 games, those who went on to win the series 65% of the time, were actually the poorer of the two teams who just managed to make it to the 2-2 game score in the series.  That explains that if they were better to at least be 50-50 equal with the other team, they would have won the series 3 out of 4 times instead of 2 out 3 times.  Throw a brainbone around that.

[26oct20 update]  The DJA is down 2.50% (707 points) as I write; supposedly on fears that there will be no stimulus bill, Nancy won’t allow it, and the "uptick" of C19 cases.  A week before the election, and things are looking dim for President Trump and the Republicans.  It reminds me again of the difference between our polarized politics.  One side has a tougher row to hoe since it bases its message on building and growing the fortunes of Americans.  And that’s hard, especially when the other side does all it can to diminish, dampen, and destroy the opportunities for all, save their elites – especially their black constituents whom they have had in the bag since the Great Society days.  It’s much harder to build than to tear down.  With all this news the Democrats are dancing in the streets. 

The WH correctly maintains that we will “defeat” C19, but we “cannot control it”.  Unfortunately, to most people this will seem like a conundrum – how can we defeat something we can’t control?  Of course, the Dems and their lamestream media will make the most out of this statement, claiming it’s proof of Trump’s failed C19 response policy.  Those more used to critical thought realize that we have managed to defeat (with vaccines and therapeutics) many diseases in the sense that we can go on with our lives in a normal manner without the ability to control when and where any such disease will again turn up.  The list of such defeated but uncontrolled bugs and viruses is long.  This statement from the WH is meant to promote getting back to normal sooner than later, but that’s not how it will be spun to the all-believing hoi polloi.  Sad, but it is what it is.

A new study proclaims that “2.5 Million Person-Years of Life Have Been Lost Due to COVID-19 in the United States”.  We read (here) that Harvard Medical School geneticist Stephen Elledge, says he did the analysis to correct "the false impression that the impact on society of these deaths is minimal" because they are concentrated among the elderly.  Actually, Dr Elledge misses the point completely with his mathematical manipulation of C19 mortality statistics.  His study does not consider who actually suffers the loss of so many million life-years lost.  By any known metric our society (and world) is not lacking for the billions of life-years lost through whatever causes.  However, one can instead make the case that our society and world (i.e. the aggregate cohort of survivors) do suffer today from too many life-years lived. (more here)

[27oct20 update] Rebane Doctrine re status of country correctly summarized in ‘The American Experiment is on Life Support’ by Andrew Michta, dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.  And then there’s our eternally confused progressive Union columnist Darrell Berkheimer, in whose ‘Why does ‘socialism is bad’ myth continue?’ he demonstrates again that he understands neither socialism, capitalism, America’s governance, nor human nature.  The ways he achieves this state of ignorance are too many to count.

Thanksgiving 2020 is cancelled for all intents and purposes.  Gov Newsom has done it again.  In our progressives' search for ever more ignorant, harmful, and useless public policies, this 9oct20 ‘Guidance for Private Gatherings’ from the California Health and Human Services Agency takes the cake.  But not to worry.  Give it a couple of days, and an even more stupid one will soon be coming down from the heights of Mt Sacramento.  (H/T to reader)

Thousand plus looters rampage through Philadelphia stores “for hours” as a smattering of assembled police stand by and do nothing (more here).  Jim Kenney, Philadelphia’s Democratic mayor, saw fit to order no enhanced police presence as leftwing rioters ransacked store after store.  The message to fellow Democrat mayors is clear – no need to enforce the law and take a political hit from the Left, since the Democratic leadership and the lamestream media will do its job of calling the whole thing a ‘peaceful protest’ and sweep the rest under its self-censoring teppich.

Journalism’s unstoppable ‘Leftward Ho!’

George Rebane

[Apologies for the late posting of this commentary.  My writing workflow always has several pieces in concurrent development, and sometimes one of them with time-dependent content gets overlooked for too long, but one that I still want to have archived as part of RR’s record.]

California’s passing of a racial diversity law that prescribes the composition of boards of corporations headquartered in the state.  This new legislation, now signed into law, is one the most blatant racist mandates by government that the morals-bleating Left have imposed on residents.  (more here)  This law joins the gender-biased legislation that requires female representation on boards and takes another step away from merit-based make-ups of publicly traded corporate boards.

There is no question that such laws continue to hobble the engines of wealth creation in California, but wealth creation has never been the objective of socialist governments.  The state has assumed the mantle of leadership in the Union for destructive collectivist initiatives designed to fundamentally transform America from a capitalist economy and society to one of comprehensive government planning and control.

Along this road to autocracy, we encounter questions raised for years on RR.  Now others are beginning understand the societal benefits of more culturally coherent societies, as we witness the daily destruction of every aspect of America’s traditions, cultural values, and institutions (more here).  Our Fourth Estate has long abandoned their traditional role in bringing reliable and timely news to their audiences.  They all are invested in one or the other side of a terminally polarized citizenry, and there is less and less of the ‘other side’ remaining in the cadre of media outlets.  No conservative broadcast outlets remain.  There is only Fox News which used to be a solidly “fair and balanced” outlet that also gave conservative voices a podium.  That stance is now fading as FN succumbs to the fear of being left behind in the virtue signaling competition, as it includes ever more liberal talking heads and left-tainted news copy.  When Rupert made his liberal son Lachlan CEO of Fox Corporation that owns FN, he started revamping both the Fox News and Fox Business cable outlets.