Rebane's Ruminations

RR commenters are a blessing

Live with those from whom you can learn; let friendly intercourse be a school for knowledge, and social contact a school for culture; to make teachers of your friends is to join the need of learning to the joy of converse.  Gracian #11

George Rebane

In blog years RR is now considered to be somewhere between long-of-tooth and ancient, along with its host in human years.  Rummaging around the very accessible archive of this online publishing effort, I always find it remarkable to rediscover the breadth of topics we have covered to various levels of depth.  And I’m not only talking about the almost 3,400 posted commentaries, but the extensive comment streams appended to most of the commentaries -  comment streams in which readers expand and amplify the topic, and provide other readers not only with their own insights, but also with informative links that substantiate their assertions.

Many of the over 175,000 (to date) appended comments are themselves lengthy essays, sometimes longer than the topical post itself, that highlight the quality of thought by their authors.  And I mean to include in this cohort of thoughtful scribblers a few of our liberal commenters, those who have taken the time to deliver extended arguments for their positions that go beyond countering snarks and ad hominems.

In its 14^th year this blog continues to be a welcoming arena for ideas, opinions, and apologetics from all quarters.  To be sure, ours is an arena in which every contributor should be prepared for dharma battle (q.v.).  And no one should take umbrage that their ideas are assaulted, instead such umbrage should be reserved for ideas ignored.

That said, I thank all RR readers and commenters for their precious hours that they have spent over the years in these pages.

Scattershots – 20oct20 (updated 22oct20)

George Rebane

This afternoon the FBI and DoJ stated their concurrence with DNI Ratcliffe’s revelation (here) that the Hunter Biden laptop email scandal had nothing to do with or was any part of Russia’s disinformation campaign to undermine confidence in our November election.  The laptop emails are real.  Claiming otherwise over the last week has been a prime example of the Democrats’ Big Lie campaign, which here will be corroborated by our leftwing readers practicing their SNEP (Socialist Narrative Exclusion Principle) responses.

[21oct20 update]  Continuing proof that most (not all) liberals are functional idiots.  To this day, these mental midgets do not understand that fascists are collectivists of the autocratic cum tyrannical variety, who work for a leviathan government that directly controls most of its industry, imposes stacks of regulations, is anti-religion, collects enormous taxes, suppresses individual liberties, and maintains a large internal police apparatus to enforce the whole thing.  This is exactly the opposite of the kind of governance that rightwing conservatives desire.  In today’s 21oct20 Union we have an example of one of these midgets, a Mr Robert Lobell, who labors mightily to present ‘building evidence’ that President Trump is a fascist (here), and instead presents evidence that he doesn’t have a clue about what is going on in Washington, among other places.  But he does describe precisely the major tenets of the now likely Harris/Biden disaster.

The Hunter Biden email scandal is mounting with the FBI’s “nothing to add to Ratcliffe’s statement”, more email recipients confirming veracity of the collection, confirmation of the laptop’s chain of custody, Secret Service matching travel logs, documented ‘pay for play’ shares, … .  With all this coming out, Bumblebrain has now stated that there is “no basis” for the claim that his son profited from trading influence with foreign governments.  And to keep things as quiet as possible, the overwhelming share of America’s news industry, affectionately known as the lamestream media, does not even make a peep about what is clearly the greatest corruption high-level corruption scandal in modern US history.  SNEP on steroids.  (more  here, here, here, and here)

They really don’t know squat.  We just got back from a political luncheon meeting where part of the conversation revolved around the dissemination of the Hunter Biden emails.  And a common experience of some of the assembled was that their liberal friends literally knew nothing of what’s going on with Hunter’s laptop and the emails on it.  One couple has a son who works on the staff of a Democrat state office holder.  They asked his thoughts on the matter, and he drew a complete blank.  We are now effectively subjected to a Deep State controlled news and entertainment media enterprise comprised of what can best be described as the vast Progeny of Pravda.  When political workers of one side are so insular in their knowledge of national happenings, then control of the electorate for all intents and purposes is complete.  The rest of us are really just pissing into the wind.

[22oct20 update] The real Russian colluders have turned out to be the Democrats; we’ve been aware of this for at least two years.  Hillary’s misdeeds are known and await indictment.  The newest pals of all things Russian and Chinese are members of the Biden cosa nostra, and it turns out there are plenty of them.  More evidence of how that group of grifters operated for years is now turning up daily.  Given the upcoming election, the stimulus bill negotiations, and other divers things to attend to, the Dems are having a hard time fitting in all the denials and accusations of a vast Republican “smear campaign”.  Typical of the daily fare now is this piece just out – ‘New Documents Shed Light On Hunter Biden’s Links To Russian Billionaire Oligarch’.  The difference between the Democrats’ “evidence” and evidence of the misdeeds of the Clinton Clan and the Biden Bunch is that the latter is specific and verifiable.  All that’s now required is the growth of some political balls to get it all in front of a grand jury.

 

More registered than residents (updated 20oct20)

George Rebane

Here’s one hot off the press.  ‘New Data Analysis Finds 353 Counties With 1.8 Million More Registered Voters Than Residents’.  It appears that this is just the tip of the ‘voter irregularity’ iceberg.  There are 3,141 counties in the US, and these 1.8M 'ghost voters' are concentrated in just 353 or 11% of them.  Awake (not woke) readers recall that county, hence state, elections have been flipped and/or decided by just a few thousand voting this way or that way.

The registration data came from the American Community Survey section of the US Census Bureau.  In LA County alone, there are more than 1.5M ‘inactive voters’ who have now received ballots which could literally be voted by anyone.  But, as I said, this is just the tip.  Last year it was found that 372 US counties had more registered voters than they had voting age residents.  Included in these, no doubt, we today have eight states – Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont – that have statewide registered voters that total to more than 100% of their states' voting age residents.

Tom Fitton, president of the non-profit Judicial Watch, said, “This data highlights the recklessness of mailing blindly ballots and ballot applications to voter registration lists. Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections.”  Of course, all this remains a SNEP (q.v.) issue to all Americans left of Chief Justice John Roberts.  Not to worry, what could go wrong?

PS.  Oh yeah, 'Pennsylvania Rejects 372,000 Mail-in Ballot Applications, as Voters Err'.

[20oct20 update] The non-partisan, non-profit Election Integrity Project has been monitoring California elections for some years now.  This year its work is really cut out for them and all volunteer poll watchers across the nation.  In California, as usual, we suffer the most from every progressive policy foisted on the state’s citizens (note, I didn’t say ‘residents’).  The EIP has discovered that California’s SecState has mailed out 440,000 ballots that, at best, are identified as “questionable” for a number of reasons (more here).  On the road to making this November’s election the nation’s first intentionally corrupt national vote, our SecState Alex Padilla has instituted new regulations to make this election the most opaque in the state’s history.  The EIP finding ‘With a One-Two Punch, CA Secretary of State Destroys Election Transparency’ details the ongoing corruption of this year’s universal mail-in ballots will be handled, and how observation of the handling procedures will be thwarted.  The evil party at work.

Deep State Agencies/Bureaus/Administrations identified.

George Rebane

According to Rebane Doctrine, when an organized unit or authorized agent of any of the three branches of our federal government makes a legitimate request for information from a federal agency/bureau/administration, it should be promptly acknowledged and its commitment to fulfill stated.  If fulfillment is not forthcoming for some reason, then an appropriately placed agent in the branch that oversees said agency/bureau/administration should respond with a timely explanation of why the request cannot be honored.  When such an agency/bureau/administration simply stonewalls a legitimate requestor and no other timely response is forthcoming, then that is prima facie evidence of the existence of an unelected Deep State as a sovereign unconstitutional fourth branch of government, and declaration/identification of the requestee as a member of the Deep State.

Within this understanding, such a Deep State does indeed exist within the U.S. federal government, with various federal agencies, bureaus, and administrations making their memberships known on a very regular basis.  In recent years this has been more than corroborated by the IRS and several intelligence/investigative units of our government.  Currently we witness the Deep State’s FBI refusing to answer questions from Sen Ron Johnson (R-WI), chair of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee, regarding the veracity of details concerning Hunter Biden’s recently disclosed laptop.  FBI Director Wray is silent, and neither the WH nor the DoJ are responding (more here).

Ruminations – 17oct20 (updated 19oct20)

George Rebane

The selective silence of socialists.  For some years now, many of us have been aware of a definite trend in these comment streams, especially in the debates between those of the Right and Left.  To again confirm this trend, I did a little research in RR’s archives.  We of the Right ALWAYS and substantively respond to and enthusiastically counter, as appropriate, the assertions of the Left (mainly because it’s easy to do, so we shouldn’t be too prideful).  However, those of the Left rarely counter the Right’s assertions, or even defend their own assertions with anything beyond a snark or gratuitous ad hominem.  It was ever thus, … and still is, and continues to warm the cockles of me heart.

[update] Socialist Narratives Exclusion Principle (SNEP)  The above rumination on ‘selective silence’ has been repeated often over the years by commenters and me.  Selective silences continue to be a recurring response phenomenon by the leftists, both here on RR and elsewhere.  Socialists have always simply ignored inconvenient truths that don’t fit their ongoing narrative du jour on an issue/happening, and go on with the dialogue as if it was never introduced.  We have also described such silences as invoking their crickets.  So, in order to parsimoniously refer to such ad hominem/snark/silence response behaviors and/or to anticipate their application in response to a post, I will attempt to remember to simply tag it with a concluding SNEP, instead of rehashing a longer explanation.  You are free to do the same.

Corporatist giant Twitter is making massive changes for the worse in what/how they permit, publish, and propagandize their users’ tweets.  Among other changes, Twitter will now “provide context” to the tweets.  These contextual wrappers will enlighten the great unwashed as to the real import and portent of the posted messages.  (more here and here, and H/T to readers)

“Joe Biden reads from a giant teleprompter at another sparsely attended rally.”  (more here)  Nuff said.

Here’s a wet dream in case of a Biden win.  He grows a pair of balls and follows neither Sanders nor AOC in their lurch to the left.  But instead fashions some mid-road policies to garner widespread support, finishes his full term, and then tosses Harris under the bus and endorses another Democrat who will keep America from succumbing to a fundamental transformation.

Open letter to Dan Henninger, WSJ deputy op-ed editor.  Jo Ann and I are decades long WSJ subscribers and devoted readers of your columns and commentaries on the ‘Editorial Report’.  However, here’s the burr under our blanket.  Please, please, please include a contact email address in the op-ed’s tombstone, and have your columnists put their email addresses under their columns.  Laudably, you are the only one who has the courage to hear from your loyal readers. Also, get your news department to stop their butt stupid style policy of reversing the order of citing numerical changes.  The oldest one comes first, followed by the current/latest one, because that’s the way humans think.  Your editors having reversed that order is cognitively jarring; cut it out and demote/retrain the worthy who implemented that misguided policy.

'The Biden Emails Prove Impeachment was a Sham'  Now who here had an inkling of that?

Another batch of ‘y’all come’ mail-ins – ‘Pennsylvania rejects 372,000 mail-in ballot applications, leaving many voters confused’  What could possibly go wrong?  Think a liberal will touch this one with a ten-footer?

Mt Everest swept under the rug – FN confirms Biden-China payoff.  The lamestream is doing an impressive job hiding the almost hourly developments in Biden/Biden scandal(s?) – we’ve actually lost count.

[18oct20 update] FN confirms Biden/China payoffs.  The country's Left and its lamestream again claim it's all a Russian pre-election disinformation campaign to which the Right has fallen prey. (here)

[19oct20 update]  The emails belong to Hunter Biden as several sources, including at least one other recipient of the emails, confirm to FN.  On FB’s Maria Bartiromo program (here), DNI John Ratcliffe denies that US intelligence has advised anyone in Congress (including champion liar Rep Schiff-for-Brains) that Hunter’s laptop is filled with Russian composed emails.  In fact, he states exactly the opposite – our intelligence services have determined that Russia had nothing to do with the contents of that laptop.

Dumb idea du jour – the House Intelligence Committee has abandoned intelligence as it mulls ways to stop what they call an “infodemic”.  They’re really considering establishing a Ministry of Truth, and launched the effort with a hearing titled “Misinformation, Conspiracy Theories, and ‘Infodemics’: Stopping the Spread Online”.  No one says that there is not a lot of online bullshit, but to have the government become the arbiter of truth, verity, and scout’s honor when it can’t pass a day without passing out a passel of lies, rumors, and partisan propaganda – c’mon man! (more here)

National Propaganda Radio in this morning’s news report stated that the United States now has “over 8 million people who have been infected with the corona virus”, and that the number of new infections is growing.  How are the light readers supposed to interpret the report of a growing population of infected millions running around the country.  Not one word of explanation that the overwhelming share of the 8M have already recovered, are not contagious, and contribute to our growing herd immunity – moreover, that today’s resurgence of active cases was expected (and that EU countries lead us in the resurgence which is occurring regardless of the variety of response policies the various countries practice; what does science say again?)  Nope, it’s simply all Trump’s fault – can anyone spell f-a-i-r  e-l-e-c-t-i-o-n?

Sandbox – 17oct20

[I’ve been writing about the contrary Covid counsels coming from science, with each political side finding plenty to support their respective positions on correct response policies.  Isn’t it a bitch now that the Europeans, held up by our Left as the paragons practicing proper pandemic public policies, are now also suffering the resurgence of Covid cases no matter how much they lockdown or not, distance or not, wear masks or not?  Brings out a chuckle or two when I note how the lamestream is trying to hide all this from their double dummies.  gjr]

‘I want Trump to die’ addended

George Rebane

[Apologies for the late posting of this promised follow-on commentary.]

Thoughtful comments from readers expanded the scope of my 4oct20 ‘I want Trump to die’ commentary to encompass social behaviors that may or not be acceptable and/or legal under our current form of governance.  And this includes a wide variety of people’s aspirations for regicide and its modern versions that include the leaders of more representative and therefore more liberal governments.  More specifically, comments from progressive readers such as Steven Frisch who strongly asserts, “I have stated here on many occasions that I do not believe that political violence is justified in American society. I have also stated on many occasions that I believe that some of the rhetoric used on this page, and the tacit acceptance of the threat of, or insinuation of, political violence is philosophically un-American and un-patriotic.”

As a conservetarian, I take great issue with such a belief while acknowledging that it is held by most, but not all, liberals and progressives in America.  The new neo-Marxist wing of the Democratic Party has no such inhibitions against political violence.  In fact, in the written manifestos on their websites, neo-Marxist organizations such as BLM, proudly declare their support of, and even the necessity for such violence to topple corrupt and unjust political orders.  They back this up with their actions in the streets and voluminous statements to the press justifying politically motivated riots.

In these pages over the years I have often argued that in a liberal and free country, the citizens’ right and ability to violently oppose their government should always be recognized, celebrated, maintained, and not be insidiously abridged by government.  Although and without contradiction, if such a purposely violent cohort does arise, the non-violent citizens opposing that cohort have every right to petition and support their government in opposing such violence with all the force provided it by established laws.  In short, a free people are free only to the extent that they retain their ability to successfully resist their government in order to be able to fundamentally transform it through reform or revolution.

We understand these truths from the historical fact that America was born through political violence, and that the subsequent exercise of political violence has served to preserve the Union many times since.  To now declare that political violence has suddenly become “un-American and un-patriotic” as a basic right of a free people, provided for in our Constitution, is both preposterous and ignorant of the fundamental principles and means of our country’s founding and maintenance.

Here I once more expand on the rationale for these beliefs in ‘Versions of Fundamental Transformations’ which you can download here -  Download VersFundTransforms.  Long time readers are aware of the bases for these beliefs from the collected tenets of my credo and related commentaries over the years – see also the Bastiat Triangle, a Conservetarian Credo, and the Rebane Doctrine category of this blog.

Corporatist Censorship in Full Bloom

"The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."  Vladimir Ilich Lenin

George Rebane

There is no longer any reason to deny the death throes of the First Amendment.  The country’s Left, working hand-in-glove with its media, public education, and corporatist lackies, has won the Newspeak and censorship wars.  This morning we heard from FN and Politico that President Trump’s Twitter account has been “suspended”. (here)  Why?  Well, our chief executive dared to point out the burgeoning Hunter Biden email scandal that the New York Post uncovered and dared to publish.  (more here)  Of course, the NYP had its social accounts quickly taken down as the lamestream media pitched in to try and kill the story.

These are just the latest in a rapidly growing trend of social media companies censoring any and all content that goes counter to the Left’s narrative of the country’s ills which require its prescribed fundamental transformation of America.  The alarums, now being raised here and there by opposing voices, point to this avalanche of avaricious one-sided virtue signalers.  However, these voices are getting little or no traction in the public square.  The careful media consumer already has seen FN, that formerly stalwart bulwark of 'fair, balanced, and unafraid' news, begin its quiet ‘go along to get along’ with the loud voices of the Left.

Nevertheless, some worthies are not giving up without a fight.  Evidence that FN is not yet fully committed to the devil’s den, it has posted ‘Ex-Facebook honcho Tim Kendall says Big Tech is a “threat to democracy”, calls for social media reform’. (H/T to reader)  Therein Kendall makes the point that big tech is engaged in a “global assault on democracy”.  He has produced ‘The Social Dilemma’, a film streaming on Netflix, in which he and other epiphanied high tech execs give their versions of the deluge of fake news, misinformation, and behavior modifying stimuli that pour out of the web pages of today’s social media giants.

“There are studies that show false information or fake news spreads six times faster online than accurate information. The attention-based business model of social media companies perpetuates outlandish, extreme, and controversial content that tends to receive more clicks and views. Content laced with misleading information that undermines faith in elections and other institutions vital to democracy is particularly dangerous for our society. In the near term, everyone should tune out the noise online and vote with confidence, whether by mail or in-person, and participate in this crucial democratic process.”

Before the metastasis of this communications cancer, we already witnessed corporatists willingly sell socialists the rope with which America's capitalists will be hanged.  Today this enterprise has expanded to corporatists vying with each other to hand that rope gratis to our country’s comrades.  

The Durham Disgrace

George Rebane

According to our DoJ, in the spring of 2019 attorney John Durham was tasked with “exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,”  His mandate included determination of whether “intelligence collection activities by the U.S. government related to the Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign were lawful and appropriate.”

He has been at the task for over 18 months, and has produced little (one insignificant guilty plea) and reported diddly-squat on his progress.  Bottom line, no one outside his boss AG Bill Barr knows what progress he has made, or what Durham is currently pursuing.  The only reports about the investigation we hear are admonishments that there is “concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done.” (more here)

Well, hell yes!  The prime purpose of the investigation is to maximally inform the American electorate BEFORE the election about which low-lifes did what to whom with all the visibly criminal things that went on in Obama’s DoJ, FBI, et al to foment the ongoing attacks on Trump’s campaign and presidency.  There are smoking guns all over the place, and Durham was supposed see if there was enough to tie a bow of criminality on the whole affair.  For that he has had the widest latitude in how and where he can poke his nose.

And now we hear that he will not issue a report before the election, why?  Because it might affect the election.  Again – well, hell yes! If there is evidence there that would impact the election in the minds of reasonable voters, then we should be made aware of it in a timely manner.  There is NO dictum from anyone, including Barr, that Durham’s probe has to be all done with a nice stack of bound final reports coming from the printer before we know what he found out or didn’t find.  He can always publish an interim report, and let us know what he has discovered to date, AND then continue with his investigation as long a AG Barr lets him.

And as I’ve recommended before, if he has stuff that’s culpatory and that can’t be released, he should just say that, and then escrow his time-stamped evidence and investigative intents with an appropriate court or the DoJ.  But leaving the country in the dark as we head for the most impactive election of our lifetime, an election that already stinks to high heaven, should not be accepted by anyone in Congress or the administration concerned about the timely discovery of truth.  Holding in secret today evidence that would inform and advise the electorate is an historical crock of crap, and we all appear to have been made docile enough to accept it without a peep.

Unreasonable Partisan Fears

"We have nothing to fear but those who live in fear." – BH, RR reader and contributor

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 13 October 2020.]

Our Left has been telling Republicans for years that Democrats are the party of intellectuals and the highly educated.  Republicans are viewed by the Left as mostly Bible-thumpin’and gun totin’ knuckle-draggers, categorized simply as those ‘irredeemable deplorables’ on our political landscape.  Among the many deficits allegedly shared by those on the Right is their disdain for science, which the Democratic Party claims is the guiding star for their public policies and gives imprimatur to the pronouncements of their elites.

The strongest substance for that belief is the oft-cited ratio of white college graduates who claim party affiliation.  The Atlantic sits solidly on the throne of leftwing wisdom and light, from whence it advises us that ‘America Is Divided by Education’, and asserts that “the gulf between the party identification of white voters with college degrees and those without is growing rapidly. Trump is widening it.”  Actually, there is no evidence for that, and the National Center for Educational Statistics has shown a growing fraction of those of all races and ethnicities who obtain bachelor’s or higher degrees (here).

What really is more than puzzling is the lack of published numbers on party totals of those who have a 4-year college degree or higher.  It is well known that Democrats enjoy higher percentages of black and Hispanic members, but we don’t know how many of these with college degrees make up or contribute to each party’s cohort of the well-educated (more here ) .  The best we can tell from Pew Research is that “about a third (34%) of those with a college degree or more education identify as Democrats, compared with 24% who identify as Republicans.”  Note that this doesn’t answer what fraction of Democrats v Republicans have a college degree or more.  (more  here and here)

So, let’s attempt to leapfrog this gap in our knowledge and find out how the parties react to the most up-to-date science regarding Covid-19.  The World Health Organization has recently concluded that lockdowns as a pandemic response don’t work, and instead do great damage to the poorest segments of the world’s population.  This conclusion was amplified by last week’s publication of the Greater Barrington Declaration drafted by health scientists from Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford, and co-signed by thousands of professionals from all walks.  Its authors cite extensive clinical evidence to confirm the WHO conclusion, and strongly recommend that all nations immediately stand down from their ineffective and insane lockdown policies.  Even more strongly, they conclude that the additional deaths and morbidities, on top of the economic disasters caused by such policies, actually constitute “crimes against humanity” of the kind last litigated in Nuremberg in 1946.  (more here and here)

For reasons we don’t have time for here, the leftwing news outlets have covered none of this.  And apparently the country’s declared Democrats don’t look much beyond what they are told on MSNBC, CNN, et al.  So, when Gallup assembled a recent panel for a survey on how men and women of both parties view and respond to Covid-19, they discovered and published some interesting results which reflect on the educational levels as characterized by Democrats.  (see Addendum)

Gallup asked the panel questions about ‘concern over catching the virus’, ‘concern about exposure at work’, ‘avoiding going to public places’, and so on.  They concluded by asking who would be ‘ready to return to normal activities right now’.  Overwhelmingly, the results indicated that Democrats were significantly more fearful of the pandemic than Republicans, and women of both parties were more hesitant than men to interpret the science news that went counter to that released within the Democrat narrative about proper responses that recommend ongoing lockdowns, widespread social distancing, and perpetual wearing of masks.  Given the widely published mortality statistics, the presented results do not bode well for the party that claims to be more educated and attuned to the findings and contentions of science.

These conclusions explain why people in liberal states like California continue to be both docile and sanguine about their states’ ongoing draconian Covid-19 response policies - policies no longer supported by scientific consensus or internationally reputable scientists and clinicians.  It is clear that America’s public policy responses to this pandemic have been completely co-opted to serve greater political agendas in this election year.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with additional data and relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum]  Here is the table of compiled results by Gallup showing how respondents felt about loosening up on Covid-19 response policy protocols.

The Union Decimates its Other Voices

George Rebane

A new editorial policy has descended on The Union.  Since former editor Brian Hamilton left, several columnists, including regular Other Voices columnists Terry McLaughlin and Manny Montes, have had their submitted columns edited to the point of being shredded.  Specifically, the newspaper’s new line editors not only have removed entire sections of pieces that contain major points, but also have decimated submissions by eliminating critical citations included to substantiate important arguments made by authors.

Most recently Ms McLaughlin’s 7oct20 column ‘Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation’ had its print edition abbreviated, and the online version was restored only after the author’s complaint to the new acting editor Alan Riquelmy.  Mr Montes’ 10oct20 column had an entire section cut out of the print edition that contained the main thrust of his piece.  The supposed 750-word allowance for Other Voices columns was reduced to 440 words.  Given Mr Riquelmy’s response to Ms McLaughlin, we may presume (hope?) that he has also responded promptly to Mr Montes’ concerns.

As a former Union columnist and now a some-time Other Voices contributor, I add this concern to those that I have noted here over the years.  The previously already left-leaning newspaper has recently taken some noticeable steps toward presenting itself as an unabashed outlet of all things progressive.  Its nods toward conservative views have become more disproportionate.

Readers may recall that back in 2015 my bride Jo Ann (before becoming a member of its editorial board) did an extensive survey, lasting several months, of the Union’s op-ed page contents that quantified a definite liberal bias, and reported the results to its management.  The Union acknowledged this through an ‘Editorial Page Challenge’ inviting readers to corroborate the findings.  Only Jo Ann and one other (liberal) reader responded to the challenge with their results that covered the contents of January 2016 (more here) As expected, both surveys gave opposite results.  Jo Ann’s results were 40 conservative, 56 liberal, 46 neutral.  This showed a 40% liberal bias in that month’s op-ed page contents.  The liberal lady’s results were 34 liberal, 40 conservative, 71 neutral – a 17.6% conservative bias.  No doubt according to her lights a good portion of her neutrals were seen as liberal by Jo Ann.

But that was then and this is now.  The beat toward the Left has continued, and I’m willing to bet a pretty penny that what we see in our beloved Union is now overwhelmingly left-leaning.  But please don’t interpret this as my having a hissy fit about what appears in the newspaper.  There are no complaints against the motivations of their management and staff – they are good people and our neighbors.  And we must never forget that the newspaper is a private enterprise and news outlet, one which its owners and editors can tilt in any ideological direction they desire.  No blame, no shame there as long as we all understand which way its winds are blowing and filling the sails of Nevada County voters.

Ruminations – 11oct20 (updated 13oct20)

George Rebane

Sen Chris Coons (D-DE) invented the newest Democrat Big Lie when he claimed today that the Republicans are the ones “packing the court” with their nomination of Judge Barrett to fill RBG’s seat and bring SCOTUS back to its 150-year level of nine justices.  But his real slam is against the Democrat constituencies who he thinks are dense enough to believe him.

Leading leftwing lights go off the rails on Judge Amy Coney Barrett.  Bill Maher declared nationally that “she’s a fucking nut” and a Catholic who “speaks in tongues”.  Democrat commentator Keith Olbermann advises all that she “should be prosecuted” and “removed from our society”.  Given Judge Barrett’s vitae and reputation, these men most clearly expose the evil heart of the Democratic Party and its dim assessment of the American electorate.

“America is sleepwalking into soft totalitarianism.”  So argue several survivors from post-war communist East Europe.  A revealing interview (here) with author and commentator Rod Dreher gives basis for that argument (and substantiates those found in these pages).  “In the Orwellian, Soviet, Stalinist society, the state-controlled people by inflicting pain and terror on them. But in the soft totalitarianism that I see coming here, the state will control people—and not only states, but even more importantly, corporations and institutions like universities will control people by manipulating their access to the economy and to status and to all the markers of middle-class life.”  And this is only the first step, which in California is in aggressive advance (here).

[update] WHO now opposes lockdowns.  The World Health Organization has come out against lockdowns as a C19 response policy, stating that these are "a terrible, ghastly, global catastrophe".  I draw you kind attention to the 11oct20 update to 'Crimes Against Humanity'.

[13oct20 update]  Biden doesn’t know, has forgotten, or has yet to be told what his policies would be on everything from packing the court to regulatory reform.  All candidates in our history have made it a point to inform voters of their governance desiderata which they consider their strong points.  Not so with Bumblebrain, whose forte has been reeling off Big Lies, well documented in these pages since he became the Dems’ nominee.

Another shot in the shorts of our communally held sensibilities.  From the party of low-lifes we have the latest contribution.  Sen Mazie Hirono (D-HI) asked Judge Amy Coney Barrett if she has ever sexually assaulted someone (here).  They truly are a party of evil scumbags.

Sandbox – 10oct20

[Businesses and taxpayers are leaving California, the census stats tell the tale that almost all CA leftwingers deny, especially the really dense local ones.  Recent notable departures are conservative commentators Joe Rogan (moved to Texas) and Ben Shapiro, who is taking his small business with 70 employees to Nashville – he tells his story here.  Even the very liberal Bill Maher when interviewing Rep Schiff takes him to task for the California exodus (more here), and cites a litany of butt stupid Democrat policies (more recent ones here) starting with high taxes and regs, and going all the way down to crap and needles on sidewalks populated by the tents of the untouchable indigents.  Schiff can only manage a lame, ‘I see no reason why progressives and businesses cannot coexist, we should work on that.’  Well no s#!t Red Ryder.  And our local lights of the Left continue denying the whole thing.  gjr]

‘Crimes Against Humanity’ (updated 11oct20)

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”, Richard Feynman

George Rebane

Almost everything you’ve heard about Covid-19 (here also C19) from politicians, the media, and publicized scientists and clinicians is wrong.  Here at RR, early on I started looking at the pandemic with a gimlet eye.  I did this as a science professional and a longtime student of how politics and scientification have been illicitly cohabiting for decades, to the point that today it’s difficult to tell which is the john and which is whore.  The C19 pandemic has brought it all together, and now invites serious review of the disease, its hysterical public response policies, and the real prophylaxis and collateral damage that has resulted from the variously implemented policies.

For the better part of this year we have been subjected to pronouncements delivered from on high about C19's sacrosanct ‘science’, and the irrevocable wisdom of ‘following the science’.  All this as if science was a singular, unitary, and all-illuminating oracle speaking to us from Olympus in a clear and unambiguous voice.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and over the months more and more serious and credible people are beginning to find their voice and speak out against such specious beliefs.  For openers, I suggest that readers begin with ‘What the pandemic has taught us about science’ by Matt Ridley, MP in the House of Lords, that appears in the 9oct20 WSJ.

The levels of clinical, scientific, and political fraud launched at global populations is of historical proportions.  It may be argued that never before have so many billions of humans been so thoroughly bamboozled by their political leaders, abetted by a willing media citing grant-sucking scientists, go-along healthcare professionals, and profit-motivated pharma.  This has reached levels which have invited a German-based investigative committee headed by Dr Reiner Fuellmich to launch a multi-national class action suit, making the case that such cynically enforced policies have caused enough death and destruction worldwide to amount to a ‘crime against humanity’, a charge last litigated in Nuremberg in 1946. (H/T to reader)

Fuellmich gives an extensive presentation of cited data and information about the advent of C19, its history, and reactions to this corona virus.  In it he presents data and information (prepared for the lawsuit) about the characteristics and progress of the disease that I venture few of us know.  The video of the presentation takes a better part of an hour, but the educational takeaway is well worth it for those concerned about our governments’ reactions, and the continuing diktats of its truly insane response policies.

One of the strong points Fuellmich brings out is the testing scam based on the widely used PCR-based diagnostic test that produces essentially worthless results as it is applied here and abroad.  For a broader look at how our FDA views the C19 tests and testing landscape, you can visit their website here.

Finally, of the hundreds of clinicians, scientists, and public health professionals who have looked askance at the governments’ dealings with the C19 pandemic, three internationally prominent scientists in the field gathered last weekend in Great Barrington, Massachusetts to draft a declaration and give interviews (here) on the planet’s misguided responses to the virus.  Drs Martin Kuldorff, Sumetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya, professors respectively at Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford Universities, came together to put their appeal to sanity out in the public with their ‘Great Barrington Declaration’ which I reproduce in its entirety below.

Debate Derby – 8oct20

George Rebane

The Pence/Harris debate was at least an exercise in civility.  We finally got to compare what the socialists want for America, and what wants they’re not willing to admit to Americans.  We compared this with the capitalists’ plan for the next four years.  What a difference.  Harris spent most of her time lying (she got to speak 4 more minutes than Pence).  Her major lie kept focusing on Trump’s handling of the C19 pandemic, which according to the Dems’ Big Lie has been a preventable unmitigated disaster to which they would have responded almost identically as has President Trump.  Well, truth be told, their copycat version leaves out a couple things that this administration accomplished.

What’s interesting to me is that no one points out the comparative C19 stats between the US and other advanced, but much smaller countries.  The US is a huge country composed of diverse cohorts of free people who are about as easy to control as herding cats.  We are undoubtedly the most mobile folks on the planet, continually darting across our big land this way and that.  Somebody gets sick with an infectious disease, it won’t be long until others have the same malady in many different parts of the country.  Our R0 transmission rate is necessarily higher, and there is nothing that either party could do to reduce it other than tell lies.

And those lies are simply all that the Dems have to wave in the faces of voters this election season.  This is not to say that they have mistaken the intellectual acuity of our electorate.  But I will say that the ‘mishandling C19’ ruse has successfully camouflaged their true aim to make America into a world-class socialist autocracy.  With the Democrats' taxing and regulatory burdens on us increasing by the year, we are witnessing up close and personal the truth of Jefferson’s ‘a nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’

To sum up last night’s VP debate, I think everyone out of the Left’s hard core camp saw Harris as the slimly and snarky scumbag that she is – the evening did not bode well for her.  But is it enough to move the needle, even though one of them may well be our president before the next four years are up?  That is hard to tell.  Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist has more here.

President Trump has responded to next week’s second presidential debate being conducted virtually.  His opening salvo is that he won’t participate under those conditions.  There appears to be no reason for changing the second debate to an online version since “people infected with Covid-19 can stop isolating 10 days after the onset of symptoms, as long as they haven’t had a fever in 24 hours and their other symptoms are improving, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.”  And the WH reports that the president is symptom-free and has already started developing C19 resistant antibodies, all of which strongly indicate that not only will he not be contagious at a town hall debate, but that he will also be immune to further infection.

I’m not sure what kinds of thinking has gone into the decision not to participate.  It seems to me that in the virtual debate Bumblebrain will have all kinds of opportunity to give the long-winded answers that usually reveal his mental acuity and perhaps even his party’s embrace of BLM and Antifa’s neo-Marxism.  My recommendation would be for Trump to not miss an opportunity to go mano a mano with Biden. (more here)

Scattershots – 6oct20 (updated 9oct20)

George Rebane

Trump’s C19 infection and hospital visit is now providing the Democrats and their lamestream lackeys their latest ration of rage.  Everyone of them with access to a mic or website is lambasting the president on why and how his encounter with the virus came about and was then dealt with.  In their eyes it was all wrong and laden with conspiracies.  Everything from when was the last negative test recorded, to super-spreading WH events, to how sick did the president really get, to the Walter Reed physicians are lying or at least prevaricating about his current condition, to … , and even that he took his mask off too soon when he stood on the WH balcony after returning home.  If we didn’t have so many double dummies registered to vote, the whole exercise by the Left would be patently silly, but unfortunately that is not the case.

Fake drivers licenses from China as reported (here) by FN – “In the first six months of 2020, Customs and Border Protection officers seized nearly 20,000 counterfeit U.S. driver’s licenses at Chicago’s O’Hare airport alone, according to a report.  The 19,888 licenses and other fake documents were included in 1,513 overseas shipments, mostly from China and Hong Kong, CBP said, according to FOX 5 in New York City. Others were from South Korea and Britain.  Ralph Piccirilli, CBP’s acting area port director in Chicago, called the counterfeits (made mostly for people in their twenties) ‘very realistic.’”  The add-on to this report is that the names on the licenses are phony, and yet all are registered to vote as Democrats.  For some odd reason, this news is not reported on MSNBC or CNN.  [7oct20 - According to a number of news and fact-checking outlets, the names are indeed phony, but there is no substantiating evidence that those phony names are registered to vote.]

'Polling Phollies' was a piece I posted on 4 September 2016 in the throes of the last election season.  It bears reading again in light of the feverish debate we are once more engaged in our Sandboxes.  From this commentary you can download a paper I wrote to clarify the error bounds on poll results.  The overlap of these error bounds are especially relevant when the polls return two-candidate results near the midpoint or 50-50 ratios.  For those who can understand the material, it should really take a lot of steam out of the results constantly reported and debated in the current comment streams.  But I think those comments may satisfy a different purpose than enlightening their readers.

[7oct20 update]  ‘Schools Tackle Racism’  Evanston, IL racist school superintendent Devon Horton is giving a dose of “equity for Black and brown students, for special education students, for our LGBTQ students”, by letting them have first dibs on limited classroom seating.  The rest can attend online.  He’s doing this because “a disproportionate number of Black and Latino students are struggling in school and it is that struggle—not their race—which will get them priority.”  Such an assessment, on its face, is both racist and false.  In Evanston schools these minority students have received the same educational advantages as everyone else.  They are doing poorly only because they are NOT “struggling” as so many minority students struggling to learn have successfully demonstrated across the country.  Horton’s racist claim is that these students need special dispensation because they have a learning deficit apparently due to their skin color or sexual preference (special education kids are a different story).  Upon closer examination, it is again culture that determines kids’ - minority or otherwise - attitude toward education and learning, racist school policies will not. (more here and here)

What is a nation?  Samuel Stone of the Charlemagne Institute takes a good cut at an answer (here) that more than less ties with what I have proposed in Rebane Doctrine.  Stone starts by correctly positing that ‘nation’ is one of the words that today has lost its meaning; not that people can’t point and say ‘that’s a nation’, but because they can’t give it a literal definition.  One of the main determinants that a nation must have is a defined territory with secured borders within which its state (i.e. government) is sovereign.  He then goes on to cite our Founders and their political philosophers about the shared traits of a people which comprise, occupy, and own the nation – traits like a common history, values, beliefs, traditions, language, … .  And under it all is a foundation of justice as “the end of government” (Federalist 51).  However, that view of justice must be held in common by the citizens of a nation; multiple or polarized views of justice in a land cannot hold it together.  In our scripture (Mark 3:25, et al) Jesus said it best, “If a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand.”

[9oct20 update]  Today’s Nevada County’s Covid count is reported by the crack journalists at The Union.  From its front page we learn that there have been 20,735 recorded cases of the infection this year, with 18 cases currently active.  Two of these remain hospitalized, with the C19 body count that now stands at eight.  These numbers are mainly worthless, save the number who have died.  Presumably, the dead were correctly diagnosed and counted.  But given the real nature of the disease, and its wholesale misrepresentation that has led to an historical international panic, the recorded and currently active cases are totally unreliable, therefore meaningless.  The number hospitalized speaks only to the misunderstanding by local health officials about susceptibility to and the virality of this latest form of a corona virus, and their consequential draconian measures against our local businesses.  Bottom line, there is even less there to worry about C19 than meets the eye.  More on this later.

Sandbox - 5oct20

[Under the last Scattershots reader Mr Bill Tozer posted a link to a very important essay on the migration of California, its current condition, and its journey to becoming the leading shithole state in the Union.  I draw it to your kind attention - 'Be Afraid, Very Afraid: CALIFORNIA AS CASE STUDY OF AMERICA’S POSSIBLE FUTURE'. gjr]

‘I want Trump to die’

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Da Shadow do!

George Rebane

That wish by the president’s opponents and enemies has been reported numerous times since he tested positive for Covid-19 and was admitted to Walter Reed.  Many commentators, led by Tucker Carlson of FN, immediately reacted to such remarks with condemnation, citing moral strictures and other value statements, supposedly both communal and personal.  The bottom line was that all such wishes were evil in and of themselves, and most likely those who expressed them were also evil persons.

However, there is another perspective to be had on such statements from the Left.  A correspondent and RR reader questioned the automatic attribution of ‘evil’ to both the wish itself, and more strongly to the wishers.  The argument offered is based on how a nation’s military is motivated and trained to kill when its members carry out the legitimate orders of its government.  In the combat arms branch of every military service, the fighter is motivated to kill by being told that the enemy wishes to destroy his country and everything that is dear to him should that enemy prevail.  Therefore, to prevent this, the fighter is taught to fight and kill the designated enemy.  And during this process there is no moral deficit that is attached to such killings.  On the contrary, this kind of killing is celebrated, and the bravest and most successful killers are recognized, congratulated, often decorated, and always appreciated for carrying out a task of great and unquestioned benefit to the fighter’s society – nation, way of life, culture, … - in short, the fighter is a defender of all that is good, and a patriot of high order.

Upon deeper examination, the rationale for such justified killings and sentiments that promote your enemy’s death is that the enemy’s survival endangers the survival of things that you value (starting with your own life), hold dear, and the succor of the environment in which you and yours want to live.  When your hopes or actions are motivated by such beliefs, then such hopes and actions are not attributed to be evil.

Now stepping back to a peacetime political environment; if a group of people sharing an ideology and worldview which holds that the ascendancy/survival of a politician will result in a disaster for their country and its citizens, a disaster that will give rise to uncounted subsequent deaths of innocents through tyrannical and/or negligent public policies, then is it evil to hope for the early and imminent demise of the so-identified dastardly political leader?  From that group’s perspective such a hope is socially just and a responsible sentiment.  For all of them see a benefit to the nation’s common good were that politician to die.

A counter argument might be that only governments can be morally justified in wanting, preparing for, and carrying out the death(s) of its enemies (individuals, armies, cities).  But such sentiments, let alone acts, are denied, nay proscribed, to smaller groups or to individuals no matter their strong beliefs about dire consequences.  Killings by appropriately sized collectives are then seen to rise unblemished above the moral boundaries that contain and restrict lesser cohorts and individuals.

So what are we to make of those who wish President Trump dead?

America’s Economic Recovery Narrative

George Rebane

The Dems are trying to bolster their Big Lie about Trump’s disastrous economy by pointing out that growth measures are slowing down.  (For you techies this is appealing to earliest derivative of a function that makes your case; in this case it’s the second derivative of, say, job creation or GDP, since the first derivative is still positive.)  For the nation’s innumerates, citing such data may well make a cynical impact that serves to detract from Trump’s luster, because most such folks have no means to understand what’s happening or scope out the real nature of the Big Lie.

The anti-Trumpers are communicating that since the cited growth metric is slowing down, the economic recovery is not going to happen, and therefore it illustrates another failure of the Trump administration.  What the masses miss is that we are witnessing a natural progression that describes countless dynamic processes native to our universe, economic recoveries being among them.

All complex processes that transit from one level to another higher (or lower) one start their journey slowly, then pick up speed until they reach about the mid-point of their destination level.  After that they start slowing down and decreasing their growth rate until the metric levels off and the recovery is over.  When plotted, such a process traces out a curve (function) called a ‘sigmoid’ which I’ve drawn in Figure 1 below.

In the figure we see a typical sigmoid representing the growth of some metric like employment or consumer confidence during a recovery.  It starts off slowly, reaches its maximum growth rate around time t_A at level A which is about half way to its destination level B.  At t_A the growth curve starts bending down (the second derivative turns negative) while still growing, until it flares out at level B.  This traces out a typical sigmoid of natural growth.  A similar sigmoid may represent a decreasing metric - say, unemployment rate (here) – that starts out high and then decreases while picking up speed, and again flaring out at the bottom near an unemployment rate that results at what is known as the ‘full employment’ level.  

For those wanting a closer look at sigmoids and their role in describing Covid pandemic processes, I refer you to my post on the topic, ‘Sigfor: A Data Driven Pandemic Response Policy Evaluation Tool’.

The alternative to the sigmoid that comprises the Dems’ Big Lie here is that they are telling their constituent naïfs that a recovery looks like what is shown in Figure 2 above.  Here we see the recovery rate curving ever upwards and increasing its pace until it hits its destination ‘recovered’ level and slams to a halt right then and there (technically a ‘hard limit’).  No real process behaves like that.  They all slow down before reaching their ‘saturation level’.  But a factual explanation like that does not serve the Left’s national narrative, so the Big Lie continues to be broadcast day in and day out during these weeks before the election.

Another of the many ways the Dems are misleading the American public is lying to them that we know how C19 behaves, and therefore we know how to respond correctly to the pandemic – a response about which they remain silent.  The truth is, as witnessed by the president’s C19 diagnosis and treatment now transferred to the Walter Reed Medical Center, that we are still learning.  The president is at Walter Reed because he is the nation’s high value patient and his response to the disease is still unknown.  Therefore, he needs to be within minutes of the treatments that the nation’s best clinicians can administer as they are already giving him drugs that have yet to clear Phase 2 testing.  The risk related probabilities dictate that he should be given this treatment before it even enters Phase 3 trials in order to provide him with the most effective response known to date.

The dastardly Democrats deny this truth, and continue to tell their dimwit constituents a story about Covid response possibilities that is pure fantasy and fiction.  They do not care about how many additional lives such perfidy will eventually cost, nor the impact it will have on our economic recovery and the livelihoods of millions of Americans.  The Democrats’ bet is that they and their lamestream lackeys will be able to successfully blame it all on President Trump.  That is the choice that we face in November.

Debate1 Reflections (Addended)

George Rebane

President Trump did not pull off a good debate last night.  His biggest mistake was again his motor mouth – he kept interrupting Biden’s long answers in which the man had the best chance to display his faltering mental faculties.  To such welcome interruptions Biden’s response was always a cherubic smile as he sent another ‘Saved again, thank you God’ heavenward.  Hopefully, Trump’s debate coaches Giuliani and Christie will tell him to STFU next time when Bumblebrain is required to give a long answer.

The former VP spent most of his mic time just repeating unsubstantiated lies, the main one being that the president has totally mismanaged the country’s C19 response, and has no plan for it going forward.  No one in the country has had the brains to make him answer as to what he would have done that would have produced markedly different results with his declared penchant to keep the economy locked down.  The second biggest lie was that Obama put him in charge of the country’s economic recovery in 2009, and that singlehandedly he did an outstanding job – talk about the invisible man during those years.  And perhaps the biggest obvious whopper was that the Democrats’ published platform does not back implementing the Green New Deal.  The only benefit that Trump got was Biden being the first to launch ad hominem attacks – “clown”, “racist”, … - against the president.

Then it was Trump who left a lot of strong points and rebuttals on the table – was it poor prep or just his motor mouth getting in the way of considered thought?  He didn’t say anything about creating an economy that delivered the lowest minority (especially black) unemployment rates in living memory.  He didn’t say anything about being the most effective Mideast peacemaker in the last 50 years, and now being internationally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.  He didn’t effectively rebut the ‘climate change causes wildfires and hurricanes, and the US going green will stop them’.  His proper response would have cited the recent reports by NOAA and the IPCC (also in these pages) stating that neither agency could conclude that climate change has had any effect on the frequency and intensity of both kinds of disasters; that constant repetition of preventable manmade global warming nostrums continue as just politically motivated hysterical hype.

Finally, the president got a fantastic opening from Biden on the latter’s claim that his economic plan, based on green energy, would create 4M new jobs and result in a $1T marginal contribution to GDP.  Since none of these new jobs would provide any benefits that current market-driven technologies already provide, their being mandated through more stifling government regulations and subsidies would actually inhibit economic growth – in short, they would have the same in/effect as  did FDR’s depression era alphabet soup agencies.  Frederic Bastiat explained the whole thing in his easy to understand ‘Broken Window Fallacy’.  This would have been a major rebuttal to the socialists’ perennial approach to building economies, an approach that has failed every time it has been tried – you can’t build an economy with gratuitously created jobs and unnecessary spending.

Hopefully President Trump will do a much better job in Debate2 by letting Bumblebrain bumble, and remembering his list of strong responses.

[Addendum]  At first I decided to leave out evaluation of Chris Wallace’s strictly one-sided performance as the debate’s moderator.  At home we were aghast at how blatantly and asymmetrically Wallace conducted the session, lobbing softballs at Biden and Democratic talking-point gotchas at President Trump. (more here)  Among his many egregious tactics was Wallace preventing Trump from correcting Biden’s continuous stream of obvious lies and indicting innuendos.  This made it clear that the president was debating both Biden and Wallace.  Overall, it was a very unprofessional and somewhat incompetent performance by Fox News’ star leftwing correspondent and host of its Sunday commentary program.

With regard to a better control of debaters talking out of turn and over each other so that no one can understand what either is saying, I am in favor of the moderator having control the debaters’ microphones.  When it’s time for one participant to stop their diatribe and let the other one respond, then just turn on-and-off the appropriate mics.  The mics can also be of the kind, or even baffled, to make them very directional – i.e. they will greatly attenuate sounds that arrive off-axis of their receiving beams.  In Debate1 this would have allowed Wallace to effectively silence Trump, and permit Biden to deliver much longer and more revelatory responses with his usual acumen for extemporaneous public speech.

Scattershots – 29sep20 (updated)

George Rebane

AI remains a mystery.  To the overwhelming share of people AI is nothing short of software magic.  Latest evidence of this is how smart gasoline pricing systems formed duopolies and oligopolies in Germany’s gas station sector.  This surprised the so-called experts who had recommended installing such systems in gas stations, so they could dynamically adjust prices in any given neighborhood in order to squeeze the last euro out their customers.  The AIs worked beautifully, increasing margins up to 30% as they were fed data on nearby competitor prices.  But then someone noticed that the implemented pricing policy resembled that of collaborating duopolies and oligopolies.  Well, no s#!t Red Ryder.  Given their embedded utility function of increasing margin amounts, they would naturally work together to boost prices to the maximum ‘hilt’.  And they did it without any obvious collusion other than knowing what others in the region were charging, and their own sales volume.  And FYI dear reader, it doesn’t take a very smart system to achieve such results.

‘Let my people go!’,  Moses called out to the pharaoh a few thousand years ago, an appeal which we all should echo as we face toward Sacramento.  The lockdown powerplays by our power-hungry, socialist party politicians are doing nothing but provide grist for their anti-Trump propaganda mill.  The CDC has underlined the wrongheadedness of this policy in publishing its latest findings on Covid-19 survival rates –

Ages 0-19: 99.997%
Ages 20-49: 99.98%
Ages 50-69: 99.5%
Ages 70+: 94.6%

For those who have some trouble with probabilities, these survival rates apply to people who have been infected with C19.  To get the actual measure of C19 risk, i.e. the probability that you will contract the disease and die, you have to multiply one minus the above numbers by the probability that you’ll get infected.  Say, that your probability of infection over the next year is a generous one in ten thousand or 0.0001.  Using this number, your probability of succumbing from C19 is shown below –

Ages 0-19: 0.0000003% or 3 chances out of one billion;
Ages 20-49: 0.000002% or 2 chances out of one hundred million;
Ages 50-69: 0.00005% or 5 chances out of ten million;
Ages 70+: 0.00054% or 54 chances out of ten million.

Now how do you spell s-t-u-p-i-d, or is it c-y-n-i-c-a-l?

[Update] Lamestream media continues its policy of fake news, a practice which includes omitting major news events that go counter to the narrative dictated to them by the Democratic National Committee.  This past weekend more that 50,000 Americans gathered on the Washington Mall for a prayer march from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial. (more here)  Not a peep of this major gathering of religious Americans was told to the rest of the nation.  To the Left, these deplorables are to be terminally shunned by all politically correct Americans, and that they are.  We have to remember that those denied such a major news event are people our progressives characterize as sensitive, inclusive, non-discriminatory, multi-cultural, non-racist, … .  Were they to be shown such scenes of mass attendance at a prayer march, who knows what levels of PTSD or other psychological distress they might suffer?

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are neck and neck vying for the top spot for the Leftwing Liars championship.  Schumer is currently pulling ahead with his repetition of the Democrats’ Big Lie du jour, that the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett was “illegitimate”.  He does not even attempt to substantiate his allegation with a citation of what law or constitutional provision her nomination and subsequent empanelment violates – why? because he doesn’t have to.  He knows that the most evil part of such material Big Lies is that they totally bamboozle the lightly read voter who has neither the intellect nor the gumption to check out the crap his party’s leadership dishes out.  So, trusting scumbags like Schumer and Pelosi, he winds up voting against his own and his family’s best interests.  And, of course, our local leftwing lackeys will again send in their Collectivist Crickets Chorus to respond to such reports.

On Covid-19 The Economist blows it again

George Rebane

When the latest issue of the “world’s oldest newspaper” (aka the left-leaning The Economist) arrived this week with its cover story ‘Why governments get it wrong’, and promised to reveal how government can get it right, I got all excited.  Finally, someone is willing to step forward and tell us what the proper response should have been to the Covid pandemic.  All of us in the US have heard about eight months of Democrats telling everyone who would listen that President Trump has done it all wrong and thereby cost the nation tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.  Moreover, candidate Biden has had the correct response tucked under his armpit the whole time, and now is the time to get Bumblebrain into office so that under his (her?) leadership we can finally be rid of this dreaded disease.

Of course, it’s already turned out that Biden’s Monday quarterbacking has nothing in it that Trump doesn’t already have in play, and he didn’t even think of putting vaccine development into an historically novel overdrive with Project Warp Speed.  But all that makes no never mind to the legions of loyal leftwing lackeys (you know, all those people with college degrees) – perhaps the country’s most unaccomplished presidential candidate is still their man with all the answers, just as soon as they swear in the Harris/Biden administration.  The bottom line of all this campaign hyperventilating is that it delivered no specifics as to what Trump should have done when, a response policy that would have saved all those thousands of lives, and not put the economy into lockdown life support.

Enter the 26sep20 issue of The Economist. With its lead piece claiming that governments have been playing whackamole when the correct response strategy lay at hand.  And then you continue to read their rhetoric which turns out to be nothing but a rehash of the year’s global Covid history of various responses, in all of which governments are “failing” to practice “the basics of public health”.  And what exactly are these failures?  Well nothing that is not already being done in various forms by all governments guided by their own situations and executing their available best practices.  Ignoring this, the newspaper’s editorial worthies blithely go on to advise that “governments must identify the trade-offs that make most economic and social sense.”  Specifically they laud British Columbia “that set principles and invite individuals, schools and workplaces to devise their own plans of realizing them, will be able to sustain the effort in the months ahead.”  Whaaat?!! Does that critique and advice sound like going in circles?  

What also brought a smile to my lips was the quiet insertion of “The increase in Europe’s diagnosed cases reflects reality, but the global effect is an artefact of extra testing, which picks up cases that would have been missed.”  Do you recall what the Democrats and their lamestream media did when President Trump pointed out that increased testing contributed to the jump in Covid cases?  This eminently reasonable conclusion was shouted down, and Trump was accused of practicing medicine without a license, of claiming that testing caused Covid and its cure was to minimize testing.  In short, the president was made out to be an imbecile by all leftwingers (including those who read RR), when anyone with a 3-digit IQ could understand the effect on Covid case count from the widespread testing of more people.  Did anyone hear of a retraction by our Democrat brethren and cistern?  Or perhaps we missed their red-faced admission that they were the actual imbeciles?

And finally, The Economist admits that, among all the governments’ errors, in America it was the CDC, “once the world’s most respected public-health body”, that was “plagued by errors (and) poor leadership”.  As a responsible leader, President Trump correctly pointed this out to Americans as the CDC continued to miss its projections, and waffled this way and that on its recommendations.  But in the view of the revered, almost two-century-old newspaper, it all was President Trump’s fault for “denigrating” the agency.

So the conclusion I draw from such reportage is that TDS has also become a global political pandemic, little remains of what once was known as journalism, and that in the 21^st century the public may have little or no chance of finding reliable information about anything that issues from the current cacophony of broadcast and online news outlets.

Sandbox – 28sep20

[Pelosi and her team continue to accuse President Trump of having violated laws and the Constitution without providing a shred of evidence or supportive back-up.  And their vastly more college-educated leftwing constituency laps it hook, line, and sinker up without ever asking which laws or constitutional provisions the president has violated.  As we have observed, it all turns out to be part and parcel of progressive jurisprudence - all allegations from the Left are on their face to be accepted as evidence sufficient for indictment.  gjr]

Empaneling 2016/2020 SCOTUS Justices Explained

George Rebane

Democrats are going through a nationwide hissy-fit about President Trump’s announced nomination today of the replacement for the late Justice Ginsberg.  Their anguished screams ring hollow as they attempt to ascend Mount Morality to denounce the Republicans’ election-year nomination and confirmation of a new justice to fill the ranks of SCOTUS, and thereby avoid an irresolute court that must inevitably adjudicate the results of the most momentous election of our lifetime.

The charge against Republicans is hypocrisy – In 2016 Majority Leader McConnell denied an election year hearing for President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, yet now in 2020 he is proceeding apace to rush through President Trump’s (presumed) nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett.  But giving the matter a smidgen of thought (not a widely shared ability) quickly reveals the practical and coherent reasoning behind these seemingly disparate actions.

First and foremost, let’s start with the acknowledgement that what was done in 2016 and being done now is legal and constitutional, and, thanks to former Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid, procedurally correct.   Second, the appointment of SCOTUS justices is a political act intended to bias the court’s future rulings that will promote the ideologically motivated stratagems of the party in power.  Appeals to alternative reasoning on the matter are intended for the ideologically ignorant or sclerotic.

To understand the Republicans’ reasoning then and now, we have to review the divergent governance goals of the Left and Right.  Democrats seek to fundamentally transform America into a weakened socialist state with a crippled sovereignty that is no longer a global hegemon and prepared to accede to a one-world order.  Democrats view people, not as individuals with diverse needs, wants, and aspirations, but as members of various controlled and compliant classes, the societal roles of which will be mandated and managed by a cadre of the governing elite.  In short, Democrats are now avowedly Marxists, and all of their proposals and programs are readily predictable within this ideological framework.  And continuing on this tack, the Left remains anti-science, now with their ‘woke science’ programs they again return to the practice of science (cf. eugenics and Lysenko) that must first and foremost support the party’s political predicates du jour.

The Republicans, on the other hand, reject any notion of a one-size-fits-all global government, and believe that a peaceful communion of more or less culturally coherent, independent, and sovereign nation-states, will provide for a world order that benefits all humankind in the widest sense.  In this social framework, individuals are seen as discrete agents maximally free to pursue their own dreams as they work in co-operative commercial environments to satisfy their daily needs.  Government is seen as a minimalist social enterprise that only undertakes tasks and performs functions for the common good that are ill-suited for businesses competing in minimally regulated capitalistic economies.

Returning now to 2016, we see a federal government viz SCOTUS divided along party lines with a Republican Senate and a Democratic Executive.  With the prospect of a Democrat victory likely, McConnell makes the politically astute decision to reject Obama’s nominee, with the off-chance hope that Trump will win and then have the opportunity to nominate a suitable candidate more likely to support Republicans’ goals.  It is clear to all who can reason, that should Hillary win, then she and the Democrats could subsequently exercise their option to nominate, and the people’s will would be served.  In short, there was no intrinsic harm to either party in delaying Merrick Garland’s hearing in the outgoing Congress.

Now in 2020 the federal government viz SCOTUS is structured differently with a Republican Senate and also a Republican Executive.  Moreover, a month before the election, the current odds of a Trump victory do not look good.  We add that Trump’s election was based on his promise to shift the country’s court system toward the right, and correctly interpret his retention of the political prerogative to continue implementing that shift as long as he is in office.  In sum, getting Judge Barrett empaneled may be Trump’s last hurrah, one that he and the Republican Party dare not pass up, given the country’s rush toward a socialist autocracy.  The Republicans see a conservative SCOTUS as perhaps the remaining redoubt from which to impede our anti-American Left that has promised its minions a new socialist dawn.

And to think that all this was made possible by Dirty Harry.

[Update] Heritage gives a short summary of SCOTUS FAQs here.

Scattershots – 25sep20 (updated 26sep20)

George Rebane

SCOTUS term limits are now proposed by Democrats.  A bill limiting justices to 18-year terms is to be introduced in the House (here).  The Constitution only specifies that there will be a SCOTUS, and then gives Congress the permission to organize it and set up lower courts.  Why Democrats are suddenly considering reducing the life terms of justices is an interesting speculation.  Is that their alternative to packing the court after President Trump’s third nominee is sworn in?  How will that legislation read – will the sitting justices be grandfathered with their life terms?  If not, how will they be unseated?  The whole process looks like it will be another dust-up between the parties.  It will have no chance of passage until the Dems sweep both houses, and maybe even require their taking the WH.  All such moves are intended to remove the checks and balances built in by our Founders to establish and maintain a democratic republic, and not let it lapse into a pure democracy which is so appealing to the nation's double dummies.  However, the Democrats’ plan for an American autocracy requires that we first become a democracy with an ignorant and malleable electorate.  Then the rest will be easy.

Obamacare popularity drops 5% since 2018.  In the ten years of its existence, the unaffordable Affordable Care Act has managed to eke out only 8.3 million subscribers out of a population of 330 million Americans. (here) There is no more robust statistic that communicates the ‘popularity’ of this unfortunate program of nationalized healthcare that continues to be mismanaged by governments at all levels.  Yet, hearing the Big Lie Democrats talk, you’d think that if Obamacare were replaced by some other safety net program, then the entire country would be on their own, putting on band-aids to treat cancer in the kitchen.  Nothing could be further from the truth; our healthcare system is still the envy of the world which receives a steady stream of medical migrants coming to get treatments unavailable to them at any cost in their nationalized healthcare countries.

[26sep20 update]  Politics causes dementia is a plausible proposition, especially in the ranks of collectivist politicians.  California qualifies as Exhibit A.  Here we have a governor, one who can easily be replaced by a 2x4 with a face painted on it, mandating no more fossil-fueled cars sold in the state after 2035.  In the interval we are supposed to be transitioning to EVs for which no provision is being made for expanded charging stations, let alone expanding the now shrinking power grid as the natural gas and nuclear generating stations are taken off line.  California's sky high electric rates now will soar to heights only seen in third world countries.  Our one-party Democrat politicians are busy actively exploring new frontiers of idiocy.  This is known to all middle-class taxpayers, many of whom are packing their U-Hauls as they join the Great Exodus to greener pastures, and all while our socialists – legislators to locals - are welcoming more welfare recipients and illegal aliens with attractive unfunded programs to succor their every need.  To Democrats reliable voting constituencies are worth every penny they can extract from you.

‘Our Upside Down World’

[I received this little summary of today’s anti-American insanity by an anonymous writer from a correspondent.  I post it as received.  gjr]

Today I woke up and I realized that everything is about to change. No matter how I vote, no matter what I say, something evil has invaded our nation, and our lives are never going to be the same.

I have been confused by the hostility of family and friends. I look at people I have known all my life--so hate-filled that they agree with opinions they would never express as their own. I think that I may well have entered the Twilight Zone.

You can't justify this insanity. We have become a nation that has lost its collective mind!

• If a dude pretends to be a woman, you are required to pretend with him.
• Somehow it's un-American for the census to count how many Americans are in America.
• Russians influencing our elections are bad, but illegals voting in our elections are good.
• Twenty is too young to drink a beer, but eighteen is old enough to vote.
• People who have never owned slaves should pay slavery reparations to people who have never been slaves..
• People who have never been to college should pay the debts of college students who took out huge loans for their degrees.
• Immigrants with tuberculosis and polio are welcome, but you'd better be able to prove your dog is vaccinated.
• Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate to the US must go through a rigorous vetting process, but any illiterate gang-bangers who jump the southern fence are welcome.
• $5 billion for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for "free" health care is not.
• If you cheat to get into college you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country you go to college for free.
• People who say there is no such thing as gender are demanding a female President.
• We see other countries going Socialist and collapsing, but it seems like a great plan to us.
• Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, and other people are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.
• Criminals are caught-and-released to hurt more people, but stopping them is bad because it's a violation of THEIR rights.
• And pointing out all this hypocrisy somehow makes us "racists"?!

Nothing makes sense anymore, no values, no morals, no civility and people are dying of a Chinese virus, but it racist to refer to it as Chinese even though it began in China. We are clearly living in an upside down world where right is wrong and wrong is right, where moral is immoral and immoral is moral, where good is evil and evil is good, where killing murderers is wrong, but killing innocent babies is right.

Wake up America, the great unsinkable ship Titanic America has hit an iceberg, is taking on water, and is sinking fast. The choice is yours to make. What will it be? Time is short, make your choice wisely!

These are Not my words, but very accurate and disturbing!