Rebane's Ruminations

Mismanaging Covid-19 News and Response Policies

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 2 December 2020.]

The nation’s response to the Covid pandemic has been an episode of our history quite unlike anything that any of us have experienced before.  Those who pay attention know that most of what has been proposed, done, and reported has been wrong, either because the science was incomplete and politicized, and/or the news we received was purposed to serve a political agenda and not report what was really happening.  And all of it continues to this very day.  Americans remain misinformed and confused about literally every aspect of the Covid pandemic.

Today the news breathlessly reports on the new surge of infections telling us how many recently infected joined the total number of US Covid cases, which we are told are now north of 14 million.  To add emphasis to the dire situation, we are further told that this is the largest number of Covid cases of any country in the world.  On top of that, America’s Covid death toll is the world’s highest.  The message is clear, the Trump administration has mismanaged the country’s response to the pandemic, and it could have been otherwise.

Begrudgingly we are told that vaccines are coming, but there is no effective way to distribute them and properly prioritize who should be the first to be vaccinated.  Our schools are to remain shut because we don’t want to endanger our children or their teachers.  Lockdowns on small businesses are prescribed all over the land for reasons no one can provide – the mantra ‘follow the science’ should ring hollow in people’s ears for there is no definitive science that provides such backing.

Returning to the number of reported Covid cases – it actually represents an erroneous estimate of the cumulative number of people infected by the virus during this year.  The average person takes this to be the number of people still ill and suffering, especially since that number is reported in conjunction with the latest mortality count.  All of these millions remain in danger of losing their lives.  The better-read person knows that most of the infected are asymptomatic and therefore unknown to the counters.  And of the symptomatic, the disease runs its normal course in two to four weeks during which you either overwhelmingly recover or rarely die.  Furthermore, of the few who are symptomatic, a small fraction of those require hospitalization.

What is not reported are the rates which put into perspective that we are a large and mobile nation of at least 330 million people.  So what we need to hear is not the large gee-whiz numbers, but instead the rates of infection, hospitalization, morbidity, mortality, recoveries, etc per hundred thousand or per a million.  Comparing America’s raw numbers with those of smaller countries like Canada, Denmark, or Germany has sent the wrong, but perhaps desired, message to people deciding who to vote for during this election year.

We should remember that reaching herd immunity – naturally or vaccine aided - is how every infectious epidemic peters out and ends.  Politically incorrect scientists have been telling us for months that the real number of Covid cases is enormously higher than those recorded by the healthcare establishment.  It turns out, as reported in the prestigious journal Nature, that the real number of cases should include what is called sero-prevalence.  The sero-prevalence survey of a population reveals the vastly larger number that have been exposed, and available antibody testing data show that this number is over 50 times higher than those symptomatic and recorded clinically.  This finding is so critical that the World Health Organization has now a program to establish sero-prevalence rates worldwide.

These important findings, based on already available data, indicate that the Covid mortality rates, instead of being in the reported 3% range, may actually be an order of magnitude lower in 0.2-0.3% range.  This makes the Covid fatality rate closer to the flu season that we encounter annually.  Recognition of this fact alone should impact response policies and eliminate business lockdowns, stay-at-home quarantines, and shuttered schools.  There are many more important aspects of this pandemic that have been politicized beyond recognition.  While there is not enough time in this short commentary for me to list them all, I strongly recommend listeners to look deeper into the reporting on the progress of the Covid pandemic, and not base their understanding solely on what they hear on the mainstream media’s daily six o’clock news.

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 relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum]  According to John Hopkins University, the proportion of US deaths in the various age categories has not been visibly impacted by the C19 pandemic.  “Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.” (more here)

As I have attempted to explain, this result is not surprising since older people are already ‘scheduled’ to die from any number of causes in their sunset years.  Substituting C19 as a cause for one of the other causes doesn’t move the needle much on the total count.

And here are some citations to expand on the sero-prevalence points made in the broadcast commentary.  The interview with Dr Bhattacharya also presents data on the comparative death rates with other recent viral infections and the experience with our annual flu season. (here and here)

Protein Folding – Solved!

George Rebane

Rejoice!  We have all lived to see the practical solution to one of the most complex and important processes that defines and determines how all critters live and die.  It’s called protein folding, and it describes how a very long string of bio-molecules called amino acids first hook up with each other, and then snap into a (minimum energy) shape that enables it to function with other bio-molecules. (more here)  These other bio-molecules may be on the surface of or inside various kinds of living cells.  And here is how MIT Technology Review describes it –

“A protein is made from a ribbon of amino acids that folds itself up with many complex twists and turns and tangles. This structure determines what it does. And figuring out what proteins do is key to understanding the basic mechanisms of life, when it works and when it doesn’t. Efforts to develop vaccines for covid-19 have focused on the virus’s spike protein, for example. The way the coronavirus snags onto human cells depends on the shape of this protein and the shapes of the proteins on the outsides of those cells. The spike is just one protein among billions across all living things; there are tens of thousands of different types of protein inside the human body alone.” 

The basic idea to grasp here is that proteins do their work physically through the way they are shaped with all kinds of complex sticky-out parts that enable it to latch onto other molecules or even ‘destroy’ them.  It turns out that all the complex stuff that goes on inside the deep recesses of living things depends on how giant ‘LEGO games’ are assembled and played in very tiny but complex universes. 

There exist myriads of different proteins numbering in the, who knows, hundreds of thousands (millions?), with the possibility to assemble gazillions more different shaped proteins that don’t yet exist in nature.  And here has been the rub.  We can write down and/or derive the chemical structure of a protein in a form that all high school chemistry students were taught with all the N, C, H, O, … atoms hooking up to each other through various combinations.  But that only tells us the ‘stretched out’ sequence of the protein's constituents.  However, that’s not how they exist and do their work.  When the necessary ingredients for a given protein are put into a ‘soup’, they tend to hook up according to one or more of the possible stretched out versions, and then instantly this long and complex string of atoms folds or bunches up into a very special shape that gives it the ability to do its work.

The very special folded shape (see graphic) is brought about by the folding molecule, like all conformable structures in our universe, seeking its minimum energy state.  The energy level of a bunch of connected atoms is determined by their resultant electric field which in turn is determined by the physical configuration of the atoms with respect to each other.  And now you can see that for a bio-molecule, with thousands of strung together atoms, there are a lot of possible shapes each with its own very complex electric field and corresponding energy content.  Now which of these gazillions of shapes is at the lowest energy level?  Or said differently –

“Identifying a protein’s structure is very hard. For most proteins, researchers have the sequence of amino acids in the ribbon but not the contorted shape they fold into. And there are typically an astronomical number of possible shapes for each sequence. Researchers have been wrestling with the problem at least since the 1970s, when Christian Anfinsen won the Nobel prize for showing that sequences determined structure.”

Google’s Deep Mind AI outfit has come up with a humongous deep-learning neural net called AlphaFold that was trained to recognize and analyze hundreds of thousands of known protein molecules.  The bottom line here is that when it is given the stretched out structure of the thousands of hooked up atoms, it is able to ‘very quickly’ figure out how the stretched out version folds into a very specific minimum energy form with various sticky-out parts, dents, and deep holes that make it in/compatible with certain other bio-molecular structures in a critter, plant, or organic broth. (more here)

To give you an idea of the breakthrough, in the old days (i.e. yesterday) our fastest computers would wrestle with a given stretchy structure for months or years looking for the absolute minimum energy configuration.  (Each configuration requires the computation of millions of unimaginably complex electric field shapes from the physical position of a single feasible configuration of atoms that is allowed by the physics of our universe.)  Today AlphaFold has reduced that time ranging from a few hours to a few days.  This opens up whole new worlds of bio-molecular design for all kinds of new medicines, energy conversion bio-molecules, foods, materials, … .

And to show how technology is accelerating, there is an even faster algorithm working on a recurrent geometrical network (RGN) that promises to be “a million times faster” than AlphaFold, able to solve the folding problem in seconds.  And as all this work is being published, a hundred entrepreneurial efforts will launch, not only to implement RGN based folding tools, but also use them to solve important problems to provide humankind with better healthcare, cleaner environments, cheaper energy, and new foods – all affordable like never before.

There is a lot more to be said about this breakthrough – e.g. development of an entirely new type of bio-computer that is faster and more energy efficient than today’s von Neumann silicon-based computers.  And perhaps the intelligent machine that achieves Singularity peerage with humans will be an auto-configuring bio-computer.  Now ain’t minimally regulated and taxed capitalism wonderful?

Scattershots – 30nov20

George Rebane

Power went out again on Hind Tit Rd at 10:50am this morning.  When Jo Ann called it in, they had no clue that an entire ridgeline neighborhood in the community was without power.  In a call back they gave no reason other than that they would send a technician to “investigate” and provide an update at 2pm.  At that time three hours later, they reported that they were still “investigating the reason for the outage.”  It’s noteworthy that we Californians (at least most of us) have become completely inured to having our power today being supplied by a third world utility.  There is no hew and cry from the public about these frequent outages; as in countries like Venezuela, it has become the norm.  Some of us still remember, back before the state became a Democrat political monopoly, when we had reliable utilities.  Power outages were few and far in between.  Incompetent public utility commissions and utility managements were responsive to their overlords of varying political hues.  When parties frequently changed power, it was harder and more expensive to bribe both of them than to keep today’s single and reliably stable political party off your backs, and keep doing the same ol’ same ol’.  Easy money.

Reflecting on the above, consider how we have already arrived at an unresponsive government that regularly tells its citizens to go pound sand if they complain about poor maintenance and services provided to the public sector.  And also consider how this will more closely match the world's authoritarian regimes as time goes by, while today the double dummies still stuff ballot boxes with ever more demands for gimmes and wealth transfer programs.  The more government promises to tax and provide for us, the less benefit we get - 'twas ever thus.

More later.

We do remember … (updated 30nov20)

George Rebane

This list of memories was sent by a correspondent.  I think it makes a strong point.  After four years of a continuous national effort to destroy a legitimately elected presidency, if the Dems think they have an equivalent list then Biden is blowing bubbles out of his butt with all his cynical kumbaya talk.  The email follows.

Here is my issue with the whole, let us all be a “United States” again, message from Joe Biden and the Democrats.  For the last 4+ years, the Democrats have gone and scorched the earth. You have salted the fields and now you want to grow crops.  The problem is we have memories longer than a hamster’s.

1. We remember the women’s march the day after inauguration. We remember Democrats not going to the Inauguration.
2. We remember the 4 years of attacks and impeachments
3. We remember “not our president” and the “Resistance…”
4. We remember Maxie Walters telling followers to harass us in restaurants.
5. We remember the Presidents spokesperson being kicked out a restaurant.
6. We remember Trump supporters being physically attacked.
7. We remember Trump supporters getting Doxed, and fired from jobs.
8. We remember riots, and looting
9. We remember “a comedian” holding up the President’s severed head
10. We remember a play in Central park paid with public funding, showing the killing of President Trump
11. We remember Robert de Niro yelling “F*** Trump” at the Tony’s and getting a standing ovation.
12. We remember Nancy Pelosi tearing up the State of the Union Address.
13. We remember the total in the tank move on the mainstream media
14. We remember the non-stop and live fact checking on our President and his supporters.
15. We remember non-stop in your face lies and open cover-ups from the media.
16. We remember the President and his staff being spied on.
17. We remember a Republican congressman shot on a ballfield.
18. We remember every so-called comedy show turn into nothing but Trump hate fest.
19. We remember 95% negative coverage in the news.
20. We remember the state governors asking and getting everything they ask for and then blaming Trump for their problems.
21. We remember Operation Warp Speed and then Kamala Harris saying she wouldn’t support it if it had anything to do with Trump.
22. We remember a Trump top aid verbally assaulted in two DC restaurants.
23. We remember people banging on the Supreme Court doors.
24. We remember the treatment to Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
25. We remember Nancy Pelosi not fighting for stimulus so she couldn’t give Trump credit.
26. We remember that we were called every name in the book for supporting President Trump.
27. We remember that Hollywood said they would leave after Trump was elected but they stayed.

This list is endless, but you get the idea.

[30nov20 update]  Again a helpful reminder to the reader new to these pages, and perhaps to comment streams in which people of the Left and Right contend.  Note that no leftwinger will ever acknowledge the above list of their ongoing efforts to destroy a presidency; they are always the only victims in the country’s political battles, all others are evil.  This microcosm reflects the nature of the national debate.  We again note the results of the Media Research Center poll, one of several that showed how the lying lamestream media was material in defeating Trump by highlighting what material facts were withheld from the public in their reporting. (here and here).

A Carefully Happy Thanksgiving - 2020

George Rebane

This year Jo Ann and I wish our readers a very special, carefully conducted and happy Thanksgiving.  It has not been the best of years, and for the first time in several years we apprehensively face a very uncertain future for our beloved country and for our families, friends, and loved ones – all are targets of an historic collectivist assault on our health, wealth, and freedoms, an assault not witnessed since FDR’s New Deal over eighty years ago.  That one required a tragic world war, with the participants of two (three?) iconic tyrants who became known to all Americans, to overcome and work out.  What will be our saving grace this time?

In the meantime, the classic Norman Rockwell painting, celebrating a very American Thanksgiving, illustrates a gathering that in much of the country today is unconstitutionally illegal.  A most egregious example we find in Oregon where such get togethers can land you fined and in jail, but a progressive state where it is now totally legal to shoot heroin or ingest any other mind-killing substance of choice.  One such policy is intended to destroy our familial culture, the other to destroy the ability to be a productive and politically discriminating citizen.  Compliance and dependency über alles.

My wish for you is to ‘just say NO!’, and join together as you will and have always done.  You will know how to do it right.

In the Wake of the Lying Leftwing Lamestream

George Rebane

The country continues to suffer under the devious reporting of the lamestream media.  The progressive propaganda outlets regularly output two important types of lies (here) in their published content.  The first type is not reporting certain information critical for readers' decision making, the second type is outright false/fake news, in other words making statements that are blatantly false.  As readers have been advised for years in these pages, our Fourth Estate is dead but not buried.  It continues to live and thrive in a zombie-like existence, first impeding, then devouring the nation’s ability to think critically.  Two examples follow.

The lamestream elected Biden.  This conclusion is supported by more than several years of witnessing anti-Trump lies in every dominant leftwing news and entertainment media outlet – most of the them have been detailed and debated in these pages.  But a post-election poll provides, perhaps, the clearest evidence of that. (here)  About 17% of Biden voters – an outcome changing percentage - would not have voted for him had they known a number of salient facts about him and his record as a politician – all of these facts were prominently absent from the lamestream’s content during Biden’s candidacy and purposely subverted after he received the DNC’s imprimatur.  RR’s liberal commenters have provided reams of additional evidence of that as they regularly accuse me (and other better-read commenters) of making up stuff that is already known nationally, but not through the ‘information’ channels they regularly consume.

Then there’s withholding critical information on various proven effective Covid-19 (C19) therapeutics, this because a more successful approach at early intervention could have markedly changed the course of the disease for the better.  Specifically, I’m talking about the suppression of fluvoxamine, ivermectin, and hydroxychloroquine as safe, proven drugs for early intervention. (here)  Instead, the Democrat politicians and their lamestream lackeys made clear on the daily national news that such drugs were risky and not to be trusted.  The latter on the basis that the Trump administration was an early promoter of these medicines.  Because of that the nation’s healthcare clinicians took the legally less risky route and eliminated wholesale prescription of these medicines to early-stage patients.  Instead, all this supported the continuation of command/control unproven dicta of lockdowns, social distancing, and masks.  Even herd immunity was denied and Operation Warp Speed denigrated as being ineffective in combatting C19.  Because of that criminally misguided messaging, thousands of additional people died who could have been helped by vigorous intervention with these proven medicines.  But the progressive narrative was saved, and worth every life sacrificed in its service.

Voter Fraud 4.0 … until the fat lady sings (updated 26nov20)

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?

[26nov20 update]  Attorney Sidney Powell’s ‘Krakens’ were released into (onto?) the courts of Georgia and Michigan.  Her website was immediately blocked by Twitter as false and unsuitable content to the delicate sensibilities of its readers.  We on RR have no such weaklings frequenting these pages, our readers are made of sterner stuff so that I can readily link to Powell’s websites (here and here) from which (and here) you can download both the Georgia Kraken (104 pages) and the Michigan Kraken (75 pages).

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.