Rebane's Ruminations

Ah yes, the religion of tolerance and peace …

George Rebane

One wonders if western progressives will ever come to understand Islam and its impact on people who hold it dearest in their hearts.  I don’t think so, since they have invested too much of their intellectual capital in their home countries as apologists for that religion.  After all, Islam is the most available tool to create the required disorder and chaos in the liberal democracies of the west in order to prepare them for the new world order.  (In the United States, the current path to that future is obamunism.)

Associated Press reports from COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh, “Thousands of Bangladeshi Muslims angry over an alleged derogatory photo of the Islamic holy book Quran on Facebook set fires in at least 10 Buddhist temples and 40 homes near the southern border with Myanmar, authorities said Sunday.”

The beat goes on.

Prognosticators – An invitation to the dance (updated 8oct12)

George Rebane

Over the year’s RR has attracted a bevy of readers with keen minds and extraordinary abilities to peer into our collective futures.  The certitude of some of these Que Sera predictions have most certainly been breathtaking to behold.  In this election season these prognositcators make their considerable talents known to one and all at a prodigious rate in these pages.  But how good are they really, or are they just blowing some cleverly contoured smoke?

Not too long ago we ran into a similar question about ourselves as members of a small informal investor group which met about every two weeks or so to puzzle out the markets and discuss what each was investing in or considering.  Assessing the future of certain critical markets was part of our regimen, and we wondered how good we were at it.  The answer to that question will hold until another time, however the methodology we used to obtain the answer may be of interest in the present.

Being a ‘quant’ versed in these things, I devised a simple scoring algorithm based on the probabilistics of the boxcar (or uniform) density function.  The boxcar is the simplest measure of a random variable like the predicted value of the closing price of gold in London on 31 October 2012.  Of course, we can pick any other quantity we like, and I’ll get to that in a moment.  But first, here is what a boxcar density looks like for some random variable x.


The boxcar says that with certainty (probability = 1), x will fall between xLow and xHigh  (more formally x >= xLow AND x <= xHigh).  So the length of the boxcar is simple (xHigh – xLow).  Since the height of the boxcar is uniform over the range of x, its value is the constant 1/(xHigh – xLow), and it is called the ‘likelihood’ of the boxcar density.

So we picked some markets of interest and submitted our highs and lows for them at a given date.  Scoring was simple.  If the market value fell within your boxcar, you were awarded a score based on the likelihood value of the boxcar that you predicted.  As you can see from the formula above, the shorter your boxcar, the higher your score.  If you think about it, that’s the reasonable way to assess the worth of any quantitative prediction.  Consider the relative worth of predicting gold to be between $1,500 and $1,550 on New Year’s Eve, and the prediction that it will then be between $1,000 and $2,000.  Your score will be zero if the actual value turns out not to be in your boxcar.


To make things concrete and illustrate the simplicity of it all (see above figure, click to enlarge).  I have extracted an example spreadsheet illustrating four competitors who have predicted the value of the SP500, Gold, Crude Oil, and 10-year Treasury interest rate on the given date.  The actual 31dec09 values are shown as are the predicted boxcar limits and resulting scores for each competitor.  The exact score value is calculated by taking the likelihood and multiplying it by the realized value of the predicted random variable (here the four markets).  Total score across the markets is just the sum of the individual scores with the ‘Leader’ indicated.

We published the intermediate scores of the competition to see how everyone was doing as the end date approached.  Our payoff was that the losers would pay pro-rata for a lunch or dinner attended by everyone and their guests. Lots of fun.

The Proposition.  So I propose that those who wish to participate state their predictions under the soliciting post.  I will do the math to report progress and tabulate the winner.  Each competitor would agree to send a check for a pre-specified amount to a 501c3 (tax deductible) recipient designated by the winner and in the winner’s name.  The winner will supply all the relevant recipient data.

To gauge interest, I offer the invitation for a $20 contribution to predict the first publication of the of a poll by Gallup on what fraction said Obama won the 3oct12 debate, AND the same poll’s fraction who favored Romney as the victor (we’ll leave out any ‘undecideds’).

Please feel free to suggest other such charitable prognostications we may have an interest in holding a competition - e.g. predict what fraction of voters will vote for Obama, Romney, ...  .  The only requirement is that we have a robust, accessible, and mutually accepted adjudication source.

[4oct12 update]

"So, who do you think won, honey?"

[8oct12 update]  The resulting scores for the competition are posted below.  All entrants are invited to send their checks to SESF's TechTest2012 Scholarship fund with much appreciation.

 

Headwinds for the American worker

George Reban

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[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary that was broadcast on 28 September 2012.   To this transcript I have added some obvious links not included in the broadcast commentary.]

Jobs and the economy are on everyone’s mind as we hear that our GDP growth was again downgraded – second quarter growth was reduced from an anemic 1.7% annual rate to a glacial 1.3% rate.  The innumerates in our electorate just slough this off – after all it’s just numbers.

In addition to this piece of news, we hear that new job creation is at historic lows, and that there are over 3M jobs in the country going unfilled.  Let’s take a look at why that is, and what hurdles face our new workers trying to find a job.  In sum, there are four stiff headwinds that affect each of the over 4M new young people hitting the job markets every year.  Never mind the 24M plus currently un and under employed; to absorb the new yearly crop of would-be workers our economy must create between 200 and 250 thousand jobs each and every month.  In recent years it has not come close to that number.

Ruminations – 25sep12

Gain the name of being a gentleman, for it is enough to make you loved.  Courtesy is the stem of culture, a species of sorcery, and so gains the affections of everybody, just as discourtesy wins scorn, and universal hatred.  Baltasar Gracian #118

George Rebane

China commissioned its first carrier to begin projecting power far beyond its borders.  The ship will anchor the first of its carrier task groups that will be similar to the eleven that are now the backbone of the US Navy, and which comprise the prime means of stiffening American diplomacy when so used by our President.  Since it will take a few years for the Chinese to learn how to land on and operate such ships, we have some time to consider how we will respond to China’s increasing nationalism and presence in the western Pacific.  Watchword – in international affairs, power talks, bulls**t walks – a not very progressive thought.  More here.

President Obama gave a speech at the UN today that was directed at the American electorate in order to shore up his foreign policy credentials (full text here).  In studying its text, I saw nothing there that would cause international Islam to increase its respect for America.  It was another kumbayah effort similar to Lyndon Johnson’s invitation to ‘come, let us reason together’ which fell flat during the Vietnam era.  From Obama there was no takeaway of ‘if you mess with our legitimate interests, we’ll whump you.’ – a message understood by all bad actors since biblical times.  More here.

As if on track with Team Obama’s ongoing obstinacy about recent riots, National Propaganda Radio continues to report that it was “the video that prompted the killing of the US ambassador” to Libya.  This is part of a more comprehensive lamestream anti-Romney effort that includes the recent developments at Soros funded trumpet Media Matters.  Evidence now surfaces that MM is another government shill outlet coordinating its anti-Fox, anti-conservative messages with the Dept of Justice.  More here.

Prominent prognosticator Nate Silver has written a new book ‘the signal and the noise’ in which he takes us down the alleys and byways of the prediction business and shows how fallacies can crop up and one can fool and be fooled by statistics.  His bottom line message appears as a more breezy, yet extensively footnoted, repetition of Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow that includes Bayesian decision making long promoted and explained in detail in these pages (here and here).  Silver’s advice to those entering the forecasting business echos my own and is to “become Bayesians”.  

On the economy, both sides are spot on

George Rebane

WSJ’s Neil King Jr in his ‘Political Perceptions: The Red-Blue Economic Views’ is a bit confused when he structures his argument that only one side can be right in their opposing partisan views on the economy.  He says, “Digging deeper into the data, one finds the same phenomenon noted by Purple Strategies: that views on the economy are anything but impartial. Obama voters overwhelmingly think the economy is getting better, and Romney supporters think it is getting worse.”

There is no dichotomy here, both sides looking at the same economy and the growth of obamunistic policies should the President be re-elected, are spot on.  Obama’s supporters in anticipation as recipients of bigger government checks ("the President's stash") see an economy with excellent portents.  And Romney’s supporters, seeing themselves as having to write those checks, are looking at a bad economy.  No problem at all, capice?

PS. It’s those middle roaders, those that can’t figure out whether they’ll be the receivers or writers, who have a problem.

What makes a good community? (addended 25sep12)

George Rebane

It all depends on your definition of how is it ‘good’ for whom.  The notion (meme?) of assessing and/or building a good community started as a thread in my ‘… = Sleazebag’ post.  But it deserves its own venue, because the arguments from the Left and Right will reveal much of what is considered by both sides to be wrong with America today.  Being residents of a small and remote rural county in these Sierra foothills allows us to dissect this issue from its generalized national scope down to the level of our own intimate main streets.

In the following, I use ‘culture’ as defined in the RR Glossary & Semantics category. 

Let me proceed with some premises and questions.

The real jobs problem – shhh! (edited)

 

George Rebane

The importance and magnitude of EVERY social problem lies in its numbers.  If you don't understand the numbers and how they relate, all you can do is emote about the problem.

In these pages I have written an uncounted number of laments regarding the country’s dismal and deteriorating job situation.  Various organizations estimate that today there are about three million jobs in America that go unfilled.  Why?  Well it turns out that it isn’t all about not having enough STEM skills in the workforce.  No doubt, science, technology, engineering, and math trained people are in great demand, but there is also a big demand for workers who can demonstrate that they have the so-called ‘soft skills’.  The near term problem is that available jobs outnumber workers with the required skill sets.

As an example, due to a skills shortage 600,000 manufacturing jobs went unfilled in 2011.  Yes, manufacturing, the sector that we have been moaning and groaning about that is being exported overseas.  With somewhere in excess of 20 million workers unemployed, employers still can’t even connect one out of forty of those to jobs that require strapping stuff together and moving it around.

Nick Schulz of the American Enterprise Institute outlines some of the basic shortcomings of our unemployed workforce (here).  These start at the low end of just being able to properly answer the telephone.  They also have little knowledge of the social contract that makes our culture (or the lack of it?) work, i.e. they lack certain “forms of social discipline” essential in a multi-person workplace.  But perhaps ranking right up there in our workforce deficits is “the lack of elementary command of the English language” which includes things like “simple grammar and spelling”.  This shortcoming is primarily present in the younger contingent who have been most recently blessed and passed through our unionized public education systems ranging from K-16.

How much softer can a skill set get than having these elements, skills which were much more prevalent in the 2007 workforce than today when the unemployment rate was four percentage points lower?  And I notice that in this election season no politicians of any stripe are pointing these facts out to the country for fear of offending tens of millions of voters with realworld facts, as Romney recently found out.  If you can’t find a job, and you kinda think that your problem is a chronic one as outlined above, then it doesn’t take rocket science to know that you’ll probably vote for the candidate who is going to send you more money, preferably forever.

As technology and investment increase, so does worker productivity – each worker accounts for more of the country’s generated wealth, thereby requiring fewer workers to pump out any given level of GDP.  The ONLY solution to this conundrum is a healthy and predictable environment for a high-level of economic growth, as we will see below.  Sadly none of this is fostered by the current federal government which is hell bent to implement obamunistic policies to restrain America from a timely exit from its economic doldrums which I believe history will record as Depression2.

Blazing Skirt continued (updated 29sep12)

George Rebane

I wonder if our UN ambassador Susan Rice will now resign after being told to go on five talk shows last Sunday and make a fool of herself.  Team Obama sure hung her out to dry.  The cause of last week’s murderous Benghazi consulate attack has again revealed how ineffective and feckless this administration is in doing its constitutionally mandated job.

After three days of ridicule, compounded by interviews and hearings, the administration today casually flipped and said it was “self-evident that it was a terrorist attack”.  I mused that it might have been a spontaneous outpouring of rage from Benghazi residents after getting word from Cairo about the denigrating video – see ‘Blazing skirt hits airwaves’.  But it was hard to pull together the part about all the RPG launchers and machine guns in the picnic baskets.

So the evidence now comes pouring in that this was a carefully planned attack by al Qaeda terrorists in Libya to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary.  And that Obama was just absolutely off-base and out of touch when he lit into Romney saying what the world already knew about that incident.  And even today Obama continued stonewalling on the Latino Univision interview about how pissed the Muslims really were about that video.  Moreover, in her wisdom Hillary ran an apology ad on Pakistani TV today to apologize for the video, distance the administration from it, but mainly to draw more attention to the anti-Muslim video and hope that the demonstrations continue.

But it all makes sense again and Occam will rest in peace when we consider the objectives of obamunism.  No matter that the attack was terrorism carried out by a resurgent al Qaeda that was supposed to by now be on its butt, the important thing is to keep the demonstrations going about the video.  The sheeple will quickly forget the instigating events and focus on the evening news of Islam in riot about the video.  Should things slow down a little prematurely, Hillary will run a couple more apology ads in Muslim countries, and the Big O will go on another TV interview and point out all those millions hating the US, not because of anything that he did(n’t) do, but because of that damn video.  The lamestream will, of course, fall in line and we’re off in a new misdirection with a significant flock of sheeple in tow.  Sweet.

[29sep12 update]  The Obama administration is now in complete disarray as to what it is putting out from all corners of its mouth (here).  Today one part of it finally admits that the Benghazi assault was an organized terrorist attack, planned before the video riots, by an al Qaeda (in the Maghreb) unit that is doing quite well in large swaths of Africa.  This gives lie to the claim that al Qaeda is on the run.

At the same time, the big O himself is still bamboozling along with his number one blazing skirt (Rice is number two) claiming the information is still "evolving".  All this while the FBI's forensic team assigned to investigate the attack has yet to set its foot in Libya for reasons cited as the country being 'too dangerous'.  What happened to our ability to fly the FBI in with a Seal team for security.  Time is of essence since much of forensic evidence if frangible.  If they wait too much longer, we'll be reduced to investigating the incident from perusal of history books.  But that again may be part of the playbook of an administration that does not want to find much of anything in that consulate compound.

In any case, we should never forget that the whole world knew within 24 hours that his was a very successful planned terrorist attack that our administration has been trying to dissemble since it happened.  Only Romney had the guts to call a spade a spade, and let the international community know that America was not filled with naifs.

Journalist ≠ FUE = Sleazebag

George Rebane

These pages rarely mention Jeff Pelline or comment on his work.  The exception here is pursuant to an email I received this morning that contained the most recent egregious posting on Pelline’s blog that again misrepresented and attacked me.

For newer readers not familiar with the gentleman pictured nearby, Pelline was at one time editor of The Union.  From our first and only meeting, we didn’t hit it off – the differences between us were too great, literally in every dimension imaginable.  As the capacity and countenance of the total man became known in the community and at the newspaper, the Former Union Editor was terminated as being redundant.  This deprived the very liberal, self- and loudly-proclaimed journalist of his accustomed trumpet and caused his nose to become disjointed, in which condition it has remained since.

By any measure, Pelline is a dedicated leftwinger who attempts to present himself as a middle-roader to those unfamiliar with the country’s political terrain.  He has a following that he deems wholly insufficient for his obvious grandiosity.  With that following he communicates through the blog which he started after leaving The Union.  His posts continue to reflect a persistent bitterness toward his former employer, containing “scooplets” of local news that seek to compete with our newspaper.  These droll postings of local store openings, entertainment events, etc are regularly interspersed with diatribes attacking what he understands about and/or fabricates from what is happening on the Right.

But the real burr under his blanket seems to be RR and the extension of its themes through my Union columns and KVMR commentaries.  Even though my voice is an admittedly small one, it seems to be of the type that needs to be muted if not silenced in the worldview of his politics.  My monthly columns and biweekly commentaries should be proscribed because they do not represent the middle-mind of the county as Pelline sees it.  And being the Grand Arbiter of Political Placement and Correct Thought, he sees my views as being harmfully divergent from the permitted latitude of local thought.

The Employment Picture - Who's on first?

George Rebane

A correspondent from up north sent me this thoughtful dialogue that puts currency on a comedy routine some of us remember from the golden age of TV.

COSTELLO:  I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America .
ABBOTT:  Good Subject. Terrible Times. It's 9%.
COSTELLO:  That many people are out of work?
ABBOTT:  No, that's 16%.
COSTELLO:  You just said 9%.
ABBOTT:  9% Unemployed.
COSTELLO:  Right 9% out of work.
ABBOTT:  No, that's 16%.
COSTELLO:  Okay, so it's 16% unemployed.
ABBOTT:  No, that's 9%...
COSTELLO:  WAIT A MINUTE. Is it 9% or 16%?
ABBOTT:  9% are unemployed. 16% are out of work.
COSTELLO:  IF you are out of work you are unemployed.
ABBOTT:  No, you can't count the "Out of Work" as the unemployed.  You  have to look for work to be unemployed.
COSTELLO:  BUT THEY ARE OUT OF WORK!!!
ABBOTT:  No, you miss my point.
COSTELLO:  What point?
ABBOTT:  Someone who doesn't look for work, can't be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn't be fair.
COSTELLO:  To whom?
ABBOTT:  The unemployed.
COSTELLO: But they are ALL out of work.
ABBOTT:  No, the unemployed are actively looking for work.  Those who are out of work stopped looking.  They gave up.  And, if you give up, you are no longer in the ranks of the unemployed.
COSTELLO:  So if you're off the unemployment roles, that would count as less unemployment?
ABBOTT:  Unemployment would go down. Absolutely!
 COSTELLO:  The unemployment just goes down because you don't look for work?
ABBOTT:  Absolutely it goes down. That's how you get to 9%. Otherwise it would be 16%. You don't want to read about 16% unemployment, do ya?
COSTELLO:  That would be frightening.
ABBOTT:  Absolutely.
COSTELLO:  Wait, I got a question for you. That means there are two ways to bring down the unemployment number?
ABBOTT:  Two ways is correct.
COSTELLO:  Unemployment can go down if someone gets a job?
ABBOTT:  Correct.
COSTELLO:  And unemployment can also go down if you stop looking for a job?
ABBOTT:  Bingo.
COSTELLO:  So there are two ways to bring unemployment down, and the easier of the two is to just stop looking for work.
ABBOTT:  Now you're thinking like an economist.
COSTELLO:  I don't even know what the hell I just said!
ABBOTT: Now you're thinking like a politician.

Exit quiz: If just one more person would lose their job, then millions of unemployed Americans would again find employment.  Can you identify that worker?

Romney's 47% Assessment

A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.  Thomas Jefferson

George Rebane

Spontaneous truth can damage your political health.  Gov Romney’s remarks about who gets government bennies and who is likely to vote for him are now echoing around the world.  His core message may be lost if he attempts to walk back what he said.  The data part of all the percentages getting this and that are well covered in the media – here is the WSJ’s report on it which is worth perusing before getting our undies in a bundle about the whole thing.

The bottom line though is that socialism’s encroachment, especially under the current brand of obamunism, has brought the country to the condition that our Founders (and political philosophers before them) warned us about.  Once you get enough people on the government’s tits, each hoping to suck out more than they put in, you have entered into a downward spiral from which democracy has historically had a hard time recovering.

For the strategic collectivist – most certainly our current obamunist – this is a surefire approach to the vaunted sustainable future inhabited by the Perfected Man.  Anyone who disparages a single tit in the array is immediately branded as an out-of-touch elitist at best, and an evil and greedy money grubber at worst.  Yet there is no way back from our decline save the medicine that Romney and others are urging us to take.

Being clear to his backers about the propensity of those voters who have become over-dependent on transfer payments may be an unrecoverable electioneering ‘sin’.  But I agree that the watchword of today should be ‘carpe diem!’ - expand the message, and let those voters who still think make their choice.  Obama can lie about delivering unending benefits paid for by ‘the rich’, but like the autocrats and dictators that surround and preceded him, he cannot deliver and can only enslave in the attempt.

Blazing skirt hits airwaves (updated 20sep12)

From a 16sep12 email – “…inspired by the performance of the execrable Susan Rice today; just once, I’d like to see an administration official on TV who doesn’t make me wonder how the f*** they got that job.”

George Rebane

The crap has been hitting the fan in such volume the last couple of days that I have to resort to this format for some abbreviated coverage.

From the above quote, Obama has loosed his A Team of Liars, aka the ‘They’ll Believe Anything Brigade’, that hit all the talk shows yesterday.  On Chris Wallace’s Fox News program the man had to search for a prosthetic to help keep his slack jaw in place as our UN ambassador Susan Rice recounted with a straight face that the administration is absolutely sure that the Mideast riots, that coincidentally started on 9/11, were all due to the sleazy video that was posted last July.

The RPGs and heavy machine guns in a coordinated assault supported by indirect fire was a normal consequence of Banghazi families always carrying such items in their picnic baskets as they were coming home from their weekend BBQs in the park.  The mortars?  Oh, that was also normal - the usual weekend maneuvers and indirect fire competitions that the city’s mosques carry out in lieu of cricket or soccer matches.  It's a cultural thing, lots of fun.

The woman was serious in maintaining that everything for a coordinated assault was already in place, and merely had to be redirected when someone realized, ‘Oh, that video!’, and they all started heading for our consulate.  The worldwide riots have absolutely nothing to do with America’s foreign policy.  And the administration has proof from the FBI forensic teams, …, or they will have when they are allowed into Benghazi.  It’s only a matter of time, in the meanwhile, these certifiable conclusions from senior administration officials are neither premature nor mistaken.

You really want evidence?  Well, we’ll see what ol’ Eric Holder has to say about releasing these privileged communications that the FBI will surely provide the President in the fullness of time.  In the interval, let’s get back to Romney and excoriate him for not having spelled out a proper and timely security policy for our Mideastern embassies, not that there was anything wrong with the one we had in place.

Besides, our ambassador and staff could also have died from some unfortunate friendly fire, because it is widely known that since Obama 'reset' our Muslim attitudes, the US is now loved and respected in Islamic lands.  Anyway, these things could happen to anybody, and it is only that self-serving Romney who played politics by injecting the whole matter into a campaign that was really supposed to be focused on his suspicious tax returns.

Exit rumination: And this sock puppet - at best an empty skirt - is on the short list for SecState in Obama's second term?!

[20sep12 update]  Well, it’s turning out that as more time passes and more undeniable facts pour in about the Cairo and Benghazi embassy riots, the Blazing Skirt’s (aka UN ambassador Susan Rice) performance was really comedy central.  A routine that has now been backed up by more unbelievable briefings from the WH and Foggy Bottom.  The only remaining true believers that Obama’s foreign policy is not in tatters are the lamestream, and those whose brainballs they monopolize.

Remember the big PR ceremony with Hillary and Russia’s foreign minister pushing the big ‘reset button’ of Russo-American relations that Bush2 was supposed to have messed up.  It appears that these relations were at their zenith during the W’s reign, and have been going into the mud ever since they put the red button back into a drawer.  Today we learn that Putin has kicked out US AID from Russia.  Under this international program America has pumped about $3B into Russia since its rebirth.  Putin’s reason? – US AID has tried “to influence political processes, including elections of various types.”   Foiled by Russia on every US foreign policy front, Obama continues to deny that his foreign policy here has been an utter failure.

Local Control of Business Development – we’re basically screwed

George Rebane

Last Friday I attended a part of what has now become institutionalized as a biennial ceremony that passes for efforts to develop business in Nevada County.  I think I have attended about five of these during the years we’ve lived here.  This one featured the elected city councils and the county’s Board of Supervisors as the target audience.  The public was invited to witness the doings and have a short Q&A at the end.

I lasted through the first panel presentation which included Machen MacDonald (Sierra Commons Faculty), Steven Frisch (Sierra Business Council), and Brent Smith (Sierra Economic Development Corp).  Messrs Frisch and Smith gave extended and informative presentations of what their organizations do to foster business in the Sierra.  Mr MacDonald stood up and mumbled something about businesses “not being in alignment” which turned out a bit too complex for this commentator to follow – mercifully, the message was short and he sat down.

Homeland Security Muscles Up

First they came for the veterans, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a veteran; then they came for Tea Party members, and I didn’t speak out because I didn’t belong to the Tea Party; then they came for …; and then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

George Rebane

Photos taken on America’s streets and highways of some very serious looking fighting vehicles with the comforting ‘Police/Rescue’ painted on their sides.  Hard to figure what kind of police would use such war machines to rescue whom from what (reportedly these vehicles have been ordered in the thousands).  It appears that our Homeland Security Administration is preparing for complete social breakdown within our own borders, or even something more sinister.


We note that our regular military, for which these equipments were designed and built, is an unreliable instrument of authoritarian force within our own borders.  Anyone who has been in the military, or knows current active duty personnel will tell you that Washington will have one hell of a time getting our armed forces to fire on American citizens.

Plan B is to have an obamunistic “civilian national security force” manned by bureaucratic goons up and running ASAP.  Don’t know what to make of it if you connect the dots between new FEMA camps, the arming of traditionally unarmed agencies, purchase of over half billion rounds of small arms ammo, field manuals for large scale incarceration of civilians, …, and the newly revised national security directive.  Perhaps we’re not supposed to look behind the curtain.

The Advent of Obamunism

George Rebane

[This is the submitted form of my column to The Union published in their 15sep12 print and online editions.  The new Union website doesn't appear to have date-specific URLs, and its contents, including my column, have no apparent permalinks.  The column is available in their 'e-edition' which is an image of the print edition.  There I see that some unfortunate edits have taken place that include the substitution of 'hegemony' for 'hegemon', and the capitalization throughout of obamunism.  A reader points to the previous use of obamunism on protest signs, one of which I have added to this post.  Obamunism is also added to the 15sep12 version of the Glossary & Semantics pdf.]

To say that President Obama is a unique piece of work in the Oval Office would be the understatement of this young century.  This man, held in thrall by the country’s liberals, and also in increasing contempt by world leaders – friends and enemies alike - has devised and carried out a set of policies, procedures, and prerogatives in the Executive Branch that is turning out to be truly breathtaking in its sheer audacity.  Because there is a good chance that we may see at least four more years of such a form of governance, we need to give it a name and an informative definition.  Reasoned debate about it in the years to come requires such an extension of language.

I propose we call it obamunism – the ideology and form of administration that President Obama has practiced and promises to continue if he is re-elected as our Chief Executive.  History will show that although certain previous presidents have also displayed aspects and vestiges of obamunism, Barack Obama is the nation’s first full-fledged obamunist President.

An Amateur in the White House

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 14 September 2012.]

The events of this week continue to highlight the long held conclusion that we have an amateur in the White House.  As more becomes known about the attacks on sovereign US territories in Cairo and Benghazi, we are discovering the utter ineptitude of this administration as it overlooked visible evidence, and ignored prudent preparations against the likely 9/11 assaults by radical Muslim organizations in countries with unstable and/or embryonic Islamic governments.

The murders of our ambassador to Libya and members of his staff were not the consequence of spontaneous riots by Muslims infuriated by an insulting video supposedly produced in America.  Our long notorious lamestream media has done its usual diligent cover-up of the relevant events that led to this year’s 9/11 attacks.  The posting of the video was a convenient but unnecessary trigger that covered the planned assault by a hundred-plus, well-armed company of Islamic terrorists.  Seldom do spontaneous demonstrators show up with rocket propelled grenades and machine guns, and carry out their work with the active co-operation of the local constabulary.

But what all this calls attention to is what has not been going on within this administration and its conduct of foreign policy.  Besides ignoring strengthening terrorist attacks against western diplomats in north Africa and the mid-east, our President has demonstrated to our Muslim enemies that the United States is disengaging from that part of the world, and discounting the advances of expansionist Islam.

Ruminations - 14sep12

George Rebane

Well, it appears that Glenn Beck is back, and in spades.  Where before he had just an hour on Fox News, he has virtually taken over Dish TV’s channel 212 programming.  His format is basically the same with some news programming added on.  I still don’t understand how many of his hour long programs are new during the day.  Setting my DVR for recording only the new stuff produced five one-hour recordings.  Some of them had the same content and could have been just repeats.  It sure fooled my DVR.  (For more, google ‘glenn beck, dish network’)

I was impressed by the credentials of the guests he had on various panels that came from recognized institutions, Congress, and foreign diplomatic corps.  The appearance of Israel’s number two from its US embassy was surely a tweak to Obama in the current awkward relationship that our community organizer has slipped into.

Speaking of Obama and Romney, and the campaign, NPR this morning interviewed the Brookings Institution expert stationed in Doha about the ongoing anti-American unrest in the world’s Islamic lands.  What he made clear right away was that the ugly video in question was definitely a pretext for launching the Cairo and Benghazi demonstrations.  He was somewhat chagrinned (it is Brookings after all) at the ineptness of Obama’s diplomatic team in how the Cairo embassy’s pre-riot and post-rioting apologies about the video were mishandled.

And if the kid from Chicago’s south side doesn’t already have one foot in his mouth, he deftly stuck in the other in short order by not identifying Egypt as America’s bought and paid for ally.  This pissed everyone off around the world, since we have bribed them to the tune of about $80B in aid and regularly train their officer corps at various US installations and military schools.  We have been doing it for over thirty years, and everyone knows it.

And it is now clear that Romney’s quick draw criticism of Obama’s diplomacy was timely and on the mark.  The left-leaning lamestream and local liberals all fell into a synchronized rant on Romney’s remarks, led of course, by El Lidder’s ‘he sometimes seems to shoot before he aims’.  That’s what it must look like to a guy who himself is a bit slow on the draw.

We now get to listen to the open mike audio of colluding lamestream ‘journalists’ coordinating their question to nail Romney on his left-manufactured gaffe.  It was beyond comedy that in a ten minute session these crack reporters spent over 9.5 minutes grilling Romney in the attempt to get him to admit a mistake, and less than 30 seconds on the important worldwide events unfolding, and Romney’s take on them.  Unfortunately, that’s all that is made available to our progressives monitoring their favorite pundits like Maddow.  As the 13sep12 WSJ observed about those pundits, “They’re upset that Mitt Romney had the gall to criticize the State Department for a statement that the White House itself disavowed.”

I’ll have more to say about these goings on in my KVMR commentary this evening, the transcript of which will be posted here as usual.

Exiting on a funny, I note on Martin Light's blog there is a picture of Bush2 musing, "If Obama is elected for a second term, just think of the mess he will inherit this time."

Mitt Romney exposed

George Rebane

This arrived in an email from a friend and correspondent.  Thought it might be worth rolling an eyeball over.  Thoughts?

Remembering 11 September 2001 (more updated 12sep12)

George Rebane

9/11 was a horrific day in American history, when we were attacked by Islamic religious zealots who willingly sacrificed themselves in the service of their jihad against western civilization and its “Great Satan”, the United States.

A similar surprise attack occurred on 7 December 1941 when Imperial Japan decided to disable America so that it could proceed with the establishment of its ‘Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere’ then in progress.  But Japan had no intent to destroy or conquer the United States.

Could you imagine someone in 1942 calling for 7 December to be “a day of charitable service and doing good deeds” in remembrance of “a day that will live in infamy”?  Well the moral and functional equivalent of such an enterprise, called the 9/11 Day Movement, was launched in 2002.  I ran into their half-page ad in today’s WSJ asking “What Will You Do This 9/11?”.

There is no end to the responses they have received from people.  Responses wholly in the vein of “I will let my family know I love them”, “I will volunteer at a child’s school”, “I will plant a tree”, “I will donate my winter coat to help the homeless”, … .  These are not the responses of people who understand what is going on in the world.  These also are not the responses of people who are willing to stand up for anything they believe in – and perhaps it’s that they believe in nothing that is worth defending.

On their website the 9/11 Day Movement invites us to join and leave our own message of what we will do.  My own response is –

I will remind everyone I can that there are hundreds of millions of Muslims in the world who believe that the main impediment to a better life for themselves and their loved ones is the existence of the United States as the exemplar of western civilization.  Also that there are thousands of them who have already sacrificed themselves in service of their faith, and untold thousands more who stand ready to sacrifice themselves in the destruction of America, its values, and its way of life.  And that their demonstrated weapons are terror and colonization.  9/11 is a day of remembrance that evil exists, that it can be identified, and that it is active against each one of us individually.

[12sep12 update]  Our Old Glory is flying at half staff for a second day in honor and memory of the murder of Christopher Stevens, our ambassador to Lybia, and three other Americans on his staff.  This latest of anti-American and anti-western atrocities, committed on sovereign US territory, is a continuing display of Islam's tolerance for our way of life.  For sure we can expect the usual effete and apologetic voices among us to blame the recent filmakers for insulting their prophet.  But exercising the First Amendment is our prerogative, no matter how egregious it may appear to others.  In America we don't respond with fire and brimstone, and raze a local mosque every time an insult is delivered against Christianity or Judaism by Muslims.  If we did, there would be little left of America's Islamic community.

But their ragheads can gratuitously machinegun an entire busload of Christian tourists, and our response here is to 'regret' the incident, hold a memorial service, and plant a tree.  These primitives do not respect anything other than our strength and its ready use.  When they see it withheld, even in circumstances that violate and insult our own sense of justice, they know we are a weak and declining civilization, one that does not respect itself, is worthy of humiliation, and invites more forceful attack.

I reprise further thoughts on this first expressed in 'Of Ragheads and Racism' as most appropriate at this time.

[12sep12 more update]  A correspondent sent this link to RadicalIslam.org to a piece entitled 'Bay Area Imam Nabbed With Hezbollah Cell in Mexico'.  As reported here for years, taqiyah is in full swing and most likely operational at a mosque near you.  Its success depends on the density of kafir progressives that serve as Islam's apologist shield in America.  I am still waiting for reciprocal peaceful demonstrations against the Libya killings announced by our 'moderate Muslims' to mirror those of the Egyptian Coptic Christians protesting the anti-Islam film.  Perhaps they have asked the crickets to put out the word.

And to abet my point about the hundreds of millions of anti-American Muslims, Stratfor reports today on the level of widespread hatred of America that "New Islamist governments in North Africa must balance religious credentials with unpopular relationships with the West."  A more naive person at this point would wonder why the lamestream has not picked up on these two 9/11 reports.

Spinning the Jobs Report

George Rebane

For the last year plus we’ve heard from Team Obama about how his policies have improved the economy by “creating” 4+ million new jobs since 2009.  It is on the other side of astounding how his supporters lap this up as being some kind of improvement rather than the actual disaster that it is.

We have over 4 million people annually entering their working years.  For the economy to keep pace with this influx, it needs to create 200-250K jobs each and every month.  And that requires robust GDP growth in the 3% per year rate.  This is not possible with ever higher taxes and more regulations arriving at an unknown time in the future.  And most certainly not possible with the US business taxes and labor costs being the highest in the world.  Not one of Obama’s lemmings asks ‘why should a business take on new risks in the US when way more friendly environments and markets beckon overseas?’

Right now the economy is somewhere around 24 million jobs short of where it should be had the recession not started in 2008.  This growing number must be made up, otherwise America will fundamentally transform into a state with a systemic unemployment rate that is just under 20%.

FDR screwed up by deepening and extending Depression1 with his massive Keynesian intervention.  Having learned nothing in the interval, Obama is reapplying Keynes – the federal government is pulling out 25% of GDP for its wealth transfer programs – with equally devastating results.  By that I mean that the real unemployment iceberg is mostly not visible since people have opted out, gone on more government distribution programs, entered the gray or black markets, and generally doing everything they can do to survive by gaming our increasingly centrally planned and very gameable system.  And as I mentioned, businesses are doing their part to escape the pain.

All that leads to everyone seeking alternatives to the historical norm of making things work for them and their families – hearken back to the USSR and how its economy did not work.  This is not the way to run a country that is supposed to be on the road to recovery instead of edging closer to a full-blown Depression2.  Which brings us back to the question of what Obama and his cadre of elites are really trying to do with America.  Even wholesale stupidity – always a good short answer - doesn’t explain everything that the feds and state governments like California’s are doing.

Biden opens, Obama has the middle, Cardinal Dolan wraps (updated 7sep12)

George Rebane

Well, the Democrats wound up their quadrennial bash with a big night of Joe Biden who kept both feet firmly on the floor and out of his mouth.  I thought his was the best speech of the night.  Timothy Cardinal Dolan did the anchor leg with a closing prayer that could easily have passed for one of the evening’s warm up speeches.  He touched on everything in creation including the sanctity of the unborn, and even had some spillover blessings for Romney and Ryan, should they succeed in becoming our next leaders.

And as in a sandwich, the main part was in the middle.  President Obama delivered a workmanlike speech, actually very well delivered or ‘cadenced’ as the more experienced pundits called it.  It, like all of the Dems’ speeches, suddenly got really heavy on the God references after their platform pissing match on the topic gave everyone pause – hearing professional liberal politicians invoke the Almighty in penance was a bit humorous.  But you gotta go where the votes are.

President Obama did not hit it out of the park.  His high points included being a little contrite about his past accomplishments and revealed abilities – he finally admitted that his socks got wet when walking on water.  However, not a whit was left out about the class warfare against the rich – he would never condone letting the rich go untaxed another notch if it meant that little Susie in Nebraska would be denied participating in a government funded pre-school program.

The whoppers that stuck out were many.  The one that stayed with me was when, with stern visage cemented in brow, he looked into the center camera and promised he would never countenance big bankers who “tricked people into signing a mortgage they couldn’t afford.”  This, of course, was his cause for the whole financial mess that started on Bush2’s watch.

His big hit on the Romney/Ryan team was that they lacked foreign policy experience, and that they never spelled out how they were going to accomplish their goals.  What eluded all in the audience was that Obama arrived in the White House without having experience in absolutely ANY of the skills required of an American president.  He has stumbled by for almost four years doing OJT – on the job training.

While Romney/Ryan gave a five point plan for accomplishing their objectives (that summarized the hernia packs each of them had written on their own), Obama blared out nothing but new objectives delivered as the next set of promises.  He correctly deduced that his audience had no idea about the difference between an objective and the plan to achieve it.  We need to hear more details from both sides, and the comparison should be entertaining.

This time the President was “hopeful” instead of selling “hope” for a future that had a lot of “hard work ahead”.  The speech was not the powerhouse delivered in Denver, but the floor cameras showed a lot of upturned faces with glistening eyes as El Lidder worked himself and crowd to another highpoint of delivered wisdom.  The election is exactly two months from today, and the race is tied as both sets of candidates adjust their feet in the starting blocks for the home stretch which starts tomorrow morning.

[7sep12 update]  To get an idea of the intellectual tenor of attendees at the Dem convention, Peter Schiff stuck a mike in the face of some and got them to opine about corporate profits.  Talk about the economics disabled and the Great Divide.  Were it not for the ease of modern video, the recounting of these interviews would be unbelievable.  And this is the half with whom we are to find middle ground??!!  The liberal mind indeed.

The big 'success story' that Obama and his minions did want to talk about was "saving the automobile industry" through their massive bailouts.  The auto industry is still on its butt, and the bailouts were simple vote buying of union workers whose jobs were saved at the cost of stiffing the owners and creditors of GM and Chrysler.  Government, by force and fiat, stopped a legal bankruptcy process and enforced arbitrary and extra-legal procedures to 'save a million jobs'.  Most of these jobs would have been saved anyway through bankruptcy as the companies' productive assets were taken over and operated by receivers as prescribed by law.  However, none of that is accessible to the dufus divisions that warmed the chairs in Charlotte as witnessed by the above video.  The Cato Institute has more here.

Intermission – NC Clerk-Recorder part of federal lawsuit

George Rebane

In this heated election season this little piece of correspondence I received might come across as a bit of administrivia.  But since it involves a local elected official – Clerk-Recorder Gregory Diaz – it may be worth a look in passing given his performance on the recent disastrous AtPac suit (q.v.).  It seems that Mr Diaz was not following federal law on how military service members’ and overseas voters' absentee ballots were handled.  He was notified of this, and even got a federal grant of $77,000 to fix the problem.

Well he didn’t, and the federal government sued California in which Nevada County was named as a non-compliant county.   The resulting judgment requires higher ups to keep an eye peeled on how we handle military absentee ballots in the future.  You can read all this yourself.

Here’s the grant announcement.  Here’s the federal complaint; see paragraphs 32-33.  And here’s the final settlement.

Oh yes, in case you wonder whether this post is racist, please see the excellent video on Martin Light's blog that explains the whole matter.

Meanwhile, back to Charlotte for the big speech … .

Democratic Convention in another universe (updated 6sep12)

George Rebane

Watching the show from Charlotte tonight and listening to speaker after speaker, one thing is clear.  The only future worth having for America is the one that is selected, directed, and “invested” in by government.  I am still looking for a shred of middle ground on which purchase could be had to start a dialogue.

We don’t agree where we have been, we don’t agree how we got here, and least of all, it turns out, we don’t agree where we are today.  Everything we understand is totally different.  We don’t even speak the same language, the words don’t have the same meanings.  It is truly unbelievable.  All we can hope for is that this is a temporary malady that will heal after, …, after what?

[6sep12 update]  After Bill Clinton's speech last night we are now waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Yes, it looks like Obama has become the other shoe at his own convention, but let's let the man speak before we seal that label on him.  In the meantime I notice that another election-relevant movie is coming out before 6 November.  'Atlas Shrugged Part 2' will open nationwide on 12 October.  From a promo, "The global economy is on the brink of collapse. Unemployment has risen to 24%. Gas is now $42 per gallon. Brilliant creators, from artists to industrialists, continue to mysteriously disappear at the hands of the unknown. ..."  Trailer here.

A couple of years ago I said that we would soon see $5 gas.  Two days ago on I-5 gas was selling for $4.80.  And known energy reserves continue to go up.  Exciting times for a fundamental transformation.

Ruminations - 2sep12

George Rebane

Last year a polarized Congress came up with Satan’s Sequester as the compromise for raising the debt ceiling and not shutting down the government.  That infamous sequester was not a plan anyone expected to execute, it was just to let everyone get on with electioneering in hopes of winning the spending cut and tax increase battles during the 2012 campaign.  It’s important to recall who brought what to the compromise.  The Repubs put massive entitlement cuts on the table with no tax increases; the Dems would only play if there would be tax increases, less cuts in transfer payments, and a massive cut in military spending.  The Dems won that one as the Repubs were scared into being again blamed for ‘shutting down government’.  They made a deal with the Devil.

Now that Taxmageddon and Satan’s Sequester are barreling down on us, the called for military cut backs will actually gut our military as Obama’s SecDef continues to point out.  Meanwhile, to divert attention from the Dems maintaining their vote buying transfer payments, they and their union chorus are hollering that the Repubs now "own" gutting the military because of their "buy in" to the total sequester package.  Moreover, the Dems seem quite happy to actually allow the sequester to take effect and hobble our already inadequate strategic weapons systems from maintaining pace with the greatly increased military spending by China and Russia.

There doesn’t seem to be any plan from either Obama or congressional Dems to pull the nation out of its insane power dive.  Obama will then finally get the economically devastated and globally compliant nation that has been the single objective of his administration.  That end will give the feds all the "flexibility" they need to put the final muzzles on individual liberty and private enterprise.  For a view from another angle, read ‘Are Entitlements Corrupting Us?’.  (With apologies to Clint Eastwood, we have augmented his empty chair with an empty suit so as to leave as little as possible to the imagination.)

In search of the ‘hard right’ – our nation's Lefties continue to parade their emotionally charged yet intellectually empty attacks against effigies of their own making.  They have no clue as to what the discriminating tenets are in any part of the ideological spectrum.  As one of their own discovered and then lamented, liberals are forever focused on “issue activism” (cf. ‘Liberals’ Intellectually Baseless Ideology’).  Consequently they are bereft of the prerequisietes for reasoned debate.  An invitation to disprove the good progressive professor’s findings on RR stands.