Rebane's Ruminations

US ‘Recovery’ – it’s even worse than we thought

George Rebane

Tax rates have no effect on private sector spending and investments.  Progressive shibboleth

The big news this morning (except in the lamestream) is that the US economy has grown markedly less than even the poor statistics we have been shown, and directly experienced, over the last years.  The report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis revising the published GDP data concludes that we are witnessing an even weaker recovery than what has already been identified as “the worst recovery in seventy years” (only FDR's Great Depression recovery was worse overall, and that recovery required WW2 and the destruction of ALL of the developed economies thereby leaving us king of the hill.  Mr President, what do you have in your wallet?)

I could put up any of a number of graphics that compare this loudly hyped ‘recovery’ from real recoveries in the past, but as RR readers, you’ve already seen them.  The 31jul15 WSJ reports – “From 2011 through 2014, the economy grew at a paltry annual rate of 2%, down from the previous estimate of 2.3%.”  In toto, since 2009 the economy has grown at an annual average of 2.1%, so the growth rate is not getting any better (more here).  Progressives rejoice, you have achieved another notch of peerage with socialist Europe and the second-world countries.

Team Obama and the Dems own this ‘recovery’ lock, stock, and barrel.  They have burdened the country with regulations, laws, taxes, rogue agencies, and about every other device available to sclerotic bureaucracies known to stifle initiative, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation.  In the process, they have lowered job creation to levels that require the most ambitious regimens be brought to bear in order to put lipstick on the unemployment pig.  Their draconian policies alone explain away the stagnation in wages.  From the WSJ -

The slow-growth Obama era has given way to multiple explanations and excuses from the President’s economic advocates. They blame the hangover from the financial crisis (even six years later), foreign economic problems, the failure of government to spend and tax more, an aging population—anything but the policy differences between those previous eras and this one.

Leading lights on the left have even thrown up their hands to suggest we no longer really know what produces faster growth. Larry Summers calls it “secular stagnation,” as if it’s an illness we somehow caught. Others claim 2%-2.5% growth is about as good as we can now do, so get used to it—and keep interest rates at near-zero for as far as the eye can see.

(The numerate reader with pencil and back-of-envelope can quickly calculate that today’s celebrated 200K/month job growths don’t come close to the 300K/month jobs required to absorb population growth and indicate a real recovery.  Until then, the fed’s Lying Machine may overheat pumping out ‘data’ to invite happy dancing in the streets.)

Today the nostrums promised by leading 2016 Democrat candidates all identify the business class as the greedy who are behind purposely reducing the buying power of their customers (yes, you read that right).  And, of course, the Left’s heavily gruberized constituents respond in chorus with a mighty ‘Amen!’ when either Bernie, Lizzy, or Hillary mount the podium to repeat this mantra, the latter adding her latest lament about “quarterly capitalism” – which she promises to ‘correct’ as soon as she is elected.

The latest statements from the Democratic candidates confirm that, should one of them win, the best we can expect from any of them is Obamanomics 2.0 – that is, to double down on a demonstrable disaster.  And should Bernie or Lizzy stand behind the presidential seal on 20 January 2017, then Katie bar the door – Newsweek can again run their ‘We Are All Socialists Now’ cover.

‘A Rose by any other name …’

George Rebane

Lately, readers claiming not to know my definitions for and usage of ideological labels have accused me and others on the Right of inserting these labels to identify our leftwing counterparts in a pejorative manner.   Unfortunately that is an ignorant error.  To clarify, I have selected a few past RR posts that should remedy the matter.  And those seeking to continue prosecuting their assertions should quote chapter and verse from these posts to which I add the ever accessible ‘A Conservetarian Credo’ in top right margin - else send in the crickets.

Who is a Socialist

The Views of a Rightwing Extremist – Indictment without Evidence

Ideologies and Governance – A Structured Look

Liberals and Conservatives Don’t Tell the Whole Story

The Educated Liberal

The Value of Stereotyping

And Orwell summarized nicely why the progressives have tenaciously controlled public education in America.

If you control the language, you control the argument,
If you control the argument, you control information,
If you control information, you control history,
If you control history, you control the past;
He who controls the past controls the future.  

    – Big Brother, 1984

 

Planned (alternative to) Parenthood

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary aired on 29 July 2015.  Later - a slightly edited version of this piece was published in 7aug15 issue of The Union and on its website here.]

By now we have all seen the videos of Planned Parenthood physicians at lunch enjoyably selling their wares into an apparently lively market of fetal body parts.  The casual abandon evident in those conversations was one upped by the most recent release of a video made in a body parts lab where the staff displayed sampled remains of tiny humans ready for shipment (see nearby photo).  Whether you’re for or against abortion, the new revelations of these dealings in purposely killed human flesh gives most of us pause, and perhaps asks us to re-examine what kind of industry have we created, and where such obviously callous treatment of human life can take us.  First some background.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health over 860,000 abortions are performed annually in the US.  Over 330,000, or almost 40%, of these are performed in Planned Parenthood clinics.  Never mind that they claim these abortions make up only 3% of their “services”, because of the way a ‘service’ is defined the real scope of the organization’s abortion factory is hidden from the casual reader.  Another way to size the problem is to consider that more than one out of six pregnancies in America terminate in an abortion.

What, you ask, is really being aborted?  We can all acknowledge that it is a pre-born human being who at 25 weeks into gestation has more than a 50-50 chance of surviving birth and growing into a normal adult.  And by law, such premature infants are guaranteed the care they need to survive.  Nevertheless, until 2003 Planned Parenthood and other private abortion clinics regularly performed partial birth abortions in which a viable baby was killed by mangling its brain with scissors or snipping its spinal cord while any part of it remained in the birth canal.  Today it is still possible to kill a viable human in the same manner through an intra-uterine procedure – in short, you can circumvent the law by doing the deed before any legally defined components of the child are sticking out.  Within these considerations it is up to each of us to define at what point in the gestation cycle, including the baby’s birth, does ‘fetal tissue’ become a human being.

Now we know that fetal tissue has been used beneficially for medical research for some decades, so that is not the issue here.  Such tissue can be obtained from miscarriages and emergency abortions that sacrifice the child to save the mother’s life.  No one is arguing that the use of tissues obtained from these fetal deaths should not be available for beneficial medical research.  What we are considering is at what point in the development of a viable human being is it still legal to put it to death without due process.  And what is the impact of that on today’s society, especially on the lives of the poor, and where is making abortion cheap and facile taking us as a society?

Today the careful crunching of babies is legal, and strongly motivated by both the profit motive and an encompassing government that seeks to inject itself into the most intimate parts of our lives.  It is easy to see how profit motivates, but understanding government’s involvement requires digging a bit deeper.  First, let’s dispense with notions like ‘Black lives matter’ – given the overwhelming murder of blacks by blacks, and that the share of abortions performed on poor black women, we know that black lives matter only in the rare cases when there are non-blacks involved in the death of a post-partum African-American.  And in those cases it is obvious that another agenda is being promoted wherein such deaths, no matter their legitimacy, serve a useful purpose.

So where are we going as we demand that government pay for more and more of our daily upkeep?  The more it does that, the more government claims a right to make decisions for the common good at the cost of denying the claims of any individual.  How long until a subsequently diagnosed three-week old baby is put to death in order to save society the enormous cost of subsidizing its lifelong care, and spare its family the burden of giving such care?  So for the common good, does it not serve a more noble purpose for Planned Parenthood to determine where best to crunch such infants so that their short lives can be of greatest benefit to us all?

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on georgerebane.com where the 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.

[We close with a H/T to reader for alerting me to Ramirez whose cartoons say so much in so little space.]

Dump Trump? (updated 2aug15)

George Rebane

Columnists from the national (Victor Davis Hanson) to our local (George Boardman) scene have concluded that Donald Trump may actually be hitting a nerve with voters who are sick and tired of politicians side-stepping and mealy-mouthing important issues like the illegal alien influx and crime, immigration policy, and how to deal with a dangerous and failing Mexico.  VDH writes ‘Donald Trump and the Fed-up Crowd’, a compelling piece that concludes –

To explain the inexplicable rise of Donald Trump is to calibrate the anger of a fed-up crowd that is enjoying the comeuppance of an elite that never pays for the ramifications of its own ideology. The elite media, whose trademark is fad and cant, writes off the fed-up crowd as naïve and susceptible to demagoguery as the contradictory and hypocritical Trump manipulates their anger. In fact, they probably got it backwards. Trump is a transitory vehicle of the fed-up crowd, a current expression of their distaste for both Democratic and Republican politics, but not an end in and of himself. The fed-up crowd is tired of being demagogued to death by progressives, who brag of “working across the aisle” and “bipartisanship” as they ram through agendas with executive orders, court decisions, and public ridicule. So the fed-ups want other conservative candidates to emulate Trump’s verve, energy, eagerness to speak the unspeakable, and no-holds barred Lee Atwater style — without otherwise being Trump.

Sandbox - 26jul15

[The old sandbox again filled more rapidly than I expected.  Thought I'd start the new one off with a comment of my own which was motivated by a report from the radio as it announced the start of a new day. BTW, I am noticing the tendency of some commenters to get back into ad hominems.  Attack the ideas, not the ideologues.  gjr]

Do We Invite Carnage? (updated 26jul15)

George Rebane

This is in the Letters to the Future department.  We recently had two more multiple killings in the US – one man killed two and wounded nine with a handgun in a Louisiana movie theater, another two young brothers stabbed five family members to death in their Oklahoma home (more here).  This follows the murder of five military service members in Tennessee the week before.  And it wasn’t that long ago before more multiple murders were committed, and before that even more.  There definitely seems to be a correlated sequence of multiple killings from unexpected ambush going on in our land.  And none of them are crimes of forceful takings; there was no robbery or confiscation of material things by the killers, they just wanted to kill as many people as possible before (usually) taking their own lives or being killed by police.

All of these killings receive extensive media attention.  Regular programming is interrupted with detailed reports, more often than not containing very little additional information but repeating in great detail what was reported before.  The media outlets seem to be in a frenzy to compete with each other as they broadcast live from the crime scenes the very latest developments no matter how insignificant, just to have another excuse to comfort their audiences so that they will not miss a jot or jiggle about the latest tragedy.

The killers seem to be of two distinct groups – the mentally weak/deranged and the ideologically driven.  The Tennessee killings were definitely motivated by Islamic globalism, and was the latest of a long string of such inspired killings in America.  The Louisiana killing had components of both a deranged ideology and a deranged psychology.  The Oklahoma killings were committed for unknown reasons by two deranged sons of a larger family, and seem to have no greater motivation than some intra-family tensions.  Yet they all have a common thread in that whatever the dissatisfaction was, it was best solved by multiple killings that would draw a known measure of national and international attention to the killers and their causes.

To me it becomes more clear with every episode that such killing sprees are triggered and, perhaps even motivated by the coverage that the previous occasions of murder and mayhem received.  The common mentality of the killers seems to be that their final ‘moment in the sun’ is clearly worth the loss of their lives and/or lifelong freedom.  The question quickly arises how would the frequency and magnitude of such killings be affected if they each did not receive the media circus that each has to date launched.  Would they continue to be so attractive to the next potential killer if the ‘glory component’ were removed or greatly reduced?

When you consider the number of borderline deranged or ideologically primed people out there who are drawn and positively impacted by today’s lurid and drawn out coverage of these events, it staggers the imagination about what is yet to come.  We can get a sense of the numbers when we consider poll results of our indigenous Muslim population.  The results from a poll by the liberal Migration Policy Institute are reported here.

To arrive at an estimate of the deranged one need only to consult the ‘Mental Illness Facts and Numbers’ published by the National Institute of Mental Health (Download Mentalillness_factsheet).  It would be extremely conservative to assume that in the US at least one person in 100,000 is in a mental state that a continuing reportage of single person carnage would trigger them to seriously consider perpetrating one such event themselves in order to bring their own condition to some state of conclusion or resolution.  If we expand that into a population of 320 million, then there are at least 3,200 of such desperate individuals out there looking at the news and seeing their own vindication in a similar act.  Out of such a population, it is not unreasonable to accept that two or three per year would commit to such a crime, and at least one would proceed undetected to execution.  As the NIMH report indicates, the actual numbers are most likely higher.

So the question stands – do we entice our own mentally ill and religious zealots to commit mass murders by the exhaustive coverage of such events.  I believe we do.  But if that is the problem, then the cure is not clear in a liberal nation whose population is in the large stimulated by circuses rich in death and destruction.  The state cannot readily shut off such reporting, the demand for which has become a cultural imperative for us.

[26jul15 update]  As expected, our liberal commenters would rather not address the point of the above commentary, but immediately rewind and replay their sermons on ‘gun violence’.  This relatively new term is used today by people given to socialism and central planning as a blanket pejorative in their unceasing efforts to disarm America’s civilian population.  One typical approach is to cite the average number of people whose death is caused by firearms, the implied point for the light thinkers being that if we only removed guns from the law abiding population, then this many deaths would be avoided and lives saved.

Today public sentiment dictates that their approach to banning guns must be surreptitious and piecemeal, essentially proscribing the legal usage of guns, making their acquisition range from difficult to impossible, and reducing the availability of ammunition and other gun related equipments.  But their fundamental tack is still to add more gun laws to the books to augment and complicate the unenforced laws already in place.

Apropos to that, Associated Press reports that almost all the recent mass shootings were committed by people whose possession and acquisition of guns was already prohibited by existing laws (more here).  The killers obtained their murder weapons either because government did not enforce a law, or the law’s enforcement went awry through one or more bureaucratic mistakes.  Nevertheless, our progressives’ eternal solution is to pass yet more laws which are guaranteed to suffer the same fate at the hands of criminals, crazies, and the dedicated combatants.  And so goes our national gun debate in 2015.

Cosby’s Crash Reconsidered

George Rebane

OK Martha, take the children upstairs, we’re gonna talk about sex and the male urge, or whatever you call it when men start thinking below the belt.

I’ve been a lifelong fan of Bill Cosby way back from the ‘I Spy’ days when he co-starred with Robert Culp.  We have followed his career on to the stage, TV series and specials, and even driven to other towns to see his solo performances.  His message to blacks, especially those on dole and drugs in the ghettos, has been particularly resonant.  And then the country was told that national icon Dr William Henry Cosby Jr is really a scumbag who had drugged young women in order to make them more compliant to his sexual advances.  We were devastated and asked ourselves one more time, ‘Is there nothing sacrosanct anymore?’

What causes otherwise upstanding males to risk reputation, career, family, friends, … just to get into someone’s pants on the sly?  Is it the fact that our culture pays lip service to monogamous relationships?  What would happen if our culture recognized the need for (some, many?) heterosexual males to openly enjoy the company of females for sex the same way they could enjoy such company for, say, a game of tennis singles or playing an instrumental duet?

Such a sexual need has been recognized for centuries by many cultures, some of which continue the accepted and open practice of male dalliance to this day.  Jews could marry multiple wives in biblical times, and polygamy is still permitted in Islam and several other religious traditions.  Some cultures like the Hmong people on the Indochina peninsula even condone gang raping young girls, which is admittedly beyond the pale for us in the west.

In recent years we in the west have become more open sexually.  We have allowed the homosexuals to leave their closets and marry and raise children.  We fully accept and even endorse couples ‘living in sin’ together before or instead of getting married.  Now our European brethren are revisiting ‘incest is best’; at first between siblings, but once this taboo falls, parent/child sex will not be far behind.  So our society has already embarked on that slippery slope away from puritanical mores, and our slide is picking up speed.

So why not institutionalize what we once approximated with ‘open marriage’, and allow both sexes in an otherwise monogamous and loving relationship (family, home, children, inheritance, …) to openly seek diversity, stimulation, and relief(?) outside such an anchoring and avowedly permanent marriage.  Why not remove the last vestiges of moral misgivings from wanting to have occasional sex with partners other than your dearly beloved?

One wonders whether all those stories of kidnappings, rape, and murder would not be drastically reduced were we to take this next step toward removing ‘licentiousness’ and ‘adultery’ from our vocabulary.  If two or more partners are willing to enjoy themselves, who is some third party to say that they shouldn’t because it is against an existing (outdated?) law or some ancient morē?  We even have social media standing by and ready to facilitate such legitimate liaisons for fun and profit.  Think about it, why does it have to be surreptitious?  Why couldn’t Bill Cosby have talked it over with his then presumably copasetic wife before going out on the town for the evening?  He wouldn’t have had to use drugs or even stay out overnight.

Sandbox - 22jul15

[We have been hearing a lot of chest beating about the demise of the Republican Party during the last year.  And to hear the same prognosticators, 2016 will pretty much bury the GOP.  Here's a little graphic to ponder.  gjr]

The Muslim question is not going away (updated 20jul15)

George Rebane

That we have a politically dysfunctional government is now beyond debate.  That it is approaching operational dysfunction is open for reasonable debate.  After the latest Islamic terror attack within our borders – ninth during the last six years involving a military facility – our national debate has crossed the border between imbecilic to idiotic.  Some observations.

1) Islam is a trans-national religion the major aspects – e.g. Sharia, Taqiyya, martyrdom, … - of which are inimical to American and western cultures in the same manner as is international communism.

2) Starting with FBI chief Comey, the feds and all other constabularies admit that there is nothing they can do to stop the lone wolf Islamic martyr from carrying out such terror killings at will.  And all agree that our feckless response to the advances by ISIS, Al-Quada, Taliban, etc will motivate more and more of America’s Muslims to make the ultimate sacrifice to Allah.

3) The administration cannot come to allow military personnel trained in the use of firearms to be armed as they go about their business.  The concern, we are told, is “citizen safety”.  Giving our GIs the ability to defend themselves against the next raghead attack is considered a risk – having armed people in a shopping mall (gasp!).  However, there are no laws in almost the entire country – most certainly in places like Chattanooga – that  prevent CCW bearing civilians from walking around armed.  Knowing that military facilities will be future targets, we are at least one bridge beyond idiocy.

4) We continue to totally misunderstand our enemy.  The media are full of soundbites by politicians, police, federal officials, … calling people like Abdulazeez  “crazies”.  That is a deadly mistake.  Abdulazeez was not a ‘crazy’ before he decided to martyr himself.  No one, starting with his family and friends, suspected that this recently graduated electrical engineer would choose to end his life in Dar al-Harb through a glorious and globally publicized murder of infidels.  These people are dedicated soldiers of Allah whose zeal in the service of their god is beyond our comprehension.

5) Rebane Doctrine – Sharia observing/yearning ‘moderate Muslims’ who justify violence against infidels in the spread of Islam constitute an existential fifth column in America.  By their silence they shall declare their allegiance.

The preamble to this post is ‘Another Moderate Muslim turns Radical Raghead’.

[20jul15 update]  In addition to denying the terror threat from our indigenous Muslim population, America’s Left is also in terminal denial about the massive amount of crimes committed by illegal aliens within our borders.  In the past this denial was implemented by the lamestream not reporting illegal alien crimes.  Given the narrow-casting of liberals’ input sources, our friends on the left have been totally ignorant of such happenings and have reflected their ignorance in comment streams like those in these pages.  But since Donald Trump weighed in on the subject, the denials by the Left have gone into hyper-drive.

To counter such denials a reader did some research and posted a link to a summary report on illegal alien criminality.  It covers the actions of one of our most liberal flagship outlets, NBC, which went out of its way to cover up what is known to more informed Americans who have access to such data from the Government Accountability Office itself.  In part we read that –

The (GAO) report tallies approximately 3 million arrest offenses attached to the incarcerated criminal alien population. Of these offenses, half a million were drug related, 70,000 were sexual offenses, 213,000 were for assault, 125,000 were for larceny/theft, and 25,000 were for homicides. Based on the GAO’s sample of criminal aliens, they estimated that their study population of 249,000 criminal aliens was arrested about 1.7 million times, averaging about 7 arrests per criminal alien.  By definition, not one of these crimes would have occurred absent the immigrant who committed it – in other words, without admitting these individuals, there would have been at least 70,000 fewer sexual assaults, 25,000 fewer slayings, 125,000 fewer robberies, and so forth.

When NBC was asked by Breitbart why it declared that “We couldn’t find a single study that links violent crime and immigration.” , it responded ‘No comment’.  This is the kind of crap that flows daily out of the lamestream to inform the worldview of America’s gruberized.  The interested reader may confirm this from the extensive progressive apologetics that are included in RR’s comment streams.  In addition to reading Ann Coulter's heavily documented Adios America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole, you can download GAO’s ‘Criminal Alien Statistics: Information on Incarcerations, Arrests, and Costs’ from here.  Hat tip to Walt Branson.

Another Moderate Muslim turns Radical Raghead (updated 21jul15)

 

George Rebane

Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez murdered four US Marines in Chattanooga before dying in a gunfight with police.  The FBI immediately took charge of the investigation, discovered some culpatory tweets from unknown locations, and briefed the President.  Our president then assumed his long-established stance of immediate amelioration by identifying this obvious raghead as just a “lone gunman” about whom there is an ongoing federal investigation.  The words ‘radical Islam’ again never left his lips, nor were any obvious dots connected to let the nation know that our law enforcement is not as dense about what is happening in the world as is the White House.  In fact, more astute commentators this afternoon are correctly concluding that Obama did everything he could to “disconnect the dots.”

Contributing to the President’s pabulum was Ray Mabus, the U.S. Navy secretary, who called the shootings “both devastating and senseless.”  Senseless??!!  Again one more administration official from another planet.  When considered from the viewpoint of organizations like ISIS or Al-Qaida, these long-promised attacks make all the sense in the world.  Yet the administration disconnects another set of dots with inane statements like this.  At least he got the ‘devastating’ part right.

What surprised me most was the Chattanooga mayor telling the nation that he “was surprised” that such an attack could have happened.  Where in hell has he been?  Even those poor souls who could not add two and two have been told from the highest law enforcement levels that murderous radical Muslims are living among us; that we should expect such lone wolf attacks whether directed from overseas or self-motivated.  Polling America’s Muslims has revealed that hundreds of thousands of so-called moderate Muslims believe perpetrating violence in America to achieve Islamic ends is fully justified. (more here)  Abdulazeez was by no means the first moderate Muslim turned murderous Islamist within our borders, and you can bet the ranch that he will not be the last.

As a footnote, it also turned out that the feds’ pronouncement of the existence of ‘no credible threat’ surrounding the July 4th holiday was a lie (aka 'untruth') as reported by Catherine Herridge chief Intelligence Correspondent of Fox News.  Therefore such statements in the future will have about as much credibility as Hillary describing the disposition of her emails.  But the credibility we now seek is from the real moderate Muslim communities in America rising up with one strong unassailable voice to denounce not only the latest raghead, but also that interpretation of Islam that gives rise to his ilk.  And some better polling results would be much appreciated.

[17jul15 update]  This update is offered as a public service to the FBI and other federal agencies currently confounded by and busy attempting to determine the motive that Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez had for his 16jul15 attacks in Chattanooga.  While their claims of being puzzled about such things are remarkable in themselves, their mischaracterization of this radical Muslim is even more disturbing.

Let’s clear up the motive first.  Abdulazeez launched his attack to make existential the longstanding threats of international Islamic jihadists like ISIS and Al-Qaeda to demonstrate that Islam’s ability to project terror knows no bounds.  They and their indigenous adherents are already in place everywhere, and there is nowhere – especially in the very heart of the Great Satan – that they cannot strike to kill the infidel and sow fear into the hearts of those who would resist the spread of Islam as Allah has commanded.

And please don’t confuse motive with the exact nature of the relationship(s) Abdulazeez would have had with various overseas sponsors of Islamic terror.  That is a wholly separate area of investigation.  The thing to always remember is that such terrorists can arise from the midst of our moderate Muslim communities, unknown and unannounced to the best of our intelligence efforts to predict and interdict such attacks.  One-way communications from terrorist websites to resident Muslims who are psychologically and spiritually prepared is all that is necessary and sufficient to carry out, continue, and expand such attacks indefinitely.

Also, you folks seem not to know with whom you are dealing, especially those of you high up in the ranks of law enforcement and counter-terrorist agencies.  In front of cameras you sound like know-nothing politicians when you describe people like Mr Abdulazeez as being a “coward” or “cowardly”.  Given Islam’s perspective of western civilization as interpreted within their belief system, Abdulazeez was anything but a coward.  This young man, raised and educated in America, concluded on his own to sacrifice his life for his god and civilization to perform what he knew to be a limited yet very symbolic act that would unambiguously communicate the success and dedication of Islam in striking at the heart of its greatest enemy.  He knew his sacrifice would inspire thousands of like-minded Muslims who daily contemplate how best to offer their own contribution to the spread of Islam.  To those thousands, both here and worldwide, his was an act of supreme and glorious sacrifice to be admired and imitated.

(And we on our side abet and invite more such sacrifices as we writhe in our various attempts to mollify Islam, especially in America.  An example and object of such contempt to the zealous jihadists is the mayor of Seattle who is seeking ways – fasten seat belts – to facilitate the influx of Sharia law-abiding Muslims into the greater Seattle area by finding ways they can finance home purchases without having to pay the interest so loathsome to Islam’s true believers (more here).  Is this elected public official addled, or does he represent a broader sensibility of progressives working to transform America?)

[21jul15 update]  It's not clear whether the FBI peeked at the above correct answer, but today they announced that Abdulazeez's murderous rampage was indeed an act of terror.  Now you, I, and at least another 100M American's knew that within the hour of the news report.  But when government competence is considered, then we can rejoice that it took only a week for them to reach the conclusion.  And that, for some mysterious reason, then allowed the White House to fly its flag at half staff.  Go figger.

The Millennials have Sustainably Tipped Us (updated 16jul15)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary aired on 15 July 2015.]

You’ve all heard of generational groupings like the so-called Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, and Gen Xers.  Well, the latest are the Millennials, those born between 1980 and 1997.  This cohort is now in their young adult years, and they have arrived on the scene with a markedly different worldview and priorities than their predecessors.  For openers, none of them lived through or understood the Cold War.

Their view of the United States is not so much tempered by our exceptionalism, patriotism, capitalism, or even our beneficent role serving as the world’s sheriff.  They do not see Russia, China, and even Iran as geo-strategic competitors or possible foes of America, but as peer nations on the global scene doing pretty much normal stuff to serve their national interests without seeking hegemony over their neighbors.  And for the first time the new demographic cohort contains more self-declared liberals than conservatives – 30% to 28%.  Given the recorded sentiments of the so-called Moderates at 40%, I would conclude that during the last decade the country has swung markedly toward the Left.

The Cato Institute has published an informative compendium of recent polls and studies of the Millennials which concludes they are “more liberal, more ethnically and racially diverse, more technology centered, more supportive of government action to solve problems, and the best-educated generation in US history.” - the latter at least when counting the number of issued high school diplomas and college degrees.

Millenials see the US and the world heading toward a global order.  While not quite trusting human nature and individualism, Millennials hold that bigger and more comprehensive governments will be able to calm and control man’s animal spirits.  In such an environment Millennials see the world as a less threatening place than do their predecessors.  And without perceiving sharp outlines of global threats, Millennials don’t see the need for America to project power.  Today only 2% of Millenials have served in the military, and to them talk of the Cold War and how the world was then is a turn-off.  Their schooling has given them a distinctly counter-image of what it was like when the US and the USSR maintained peace through the threat of mutual assured destruction.  But that was then, and this is now.

Sandbox - 15jul15

[While the recent revival of MJ ordinance updates are being sorted out in the overflowing 10jul15 sandbox, here's a fresh one.  I would invite consideration of the columns in the 15jul15 Union written by liberal Lynn Wenzel and conservative Norm Sauer (paywalled here and here).  Both speak to the Constitution as a "living document" that today writhes this way and that under the vagaries of SCOTUS' new legislative powers instead of its established process of amendments.  According to my lights, that fundamental difference of how we view laws and our foundational document is the ripping point for the Great Divide.  gjr]

Scattershots – 14jul15 (updated 15jul15)

George Rebane

Heidi Hall is running for District 1 county supervisor, so think a lot of folks in Nevada County.  She is a well-spoken woman and a trained leftwing ideologue who currently has an unopposed soapbox provided by The Union newspaper.  Her weekly column keeps her in the public eye, and allows Union readers to hear her opinions on issues and proposed solutions to a variety of local and national problems.  I think this is an excellent way for voters to get to know a candidate, and I would not diminish her voice in any way.  What I would like though is for a potential candidate of a more conservetarian bent to also make a regular appearance in the newspaper’s op-ed pages.  Perhaps the two of them could even contend on some important local issues.

I don’t know what is preventing the early appearance of Ms Hall’s opponent in next year’s election.  Maybe it’s because three-term Supervisor Nate Beason has not made clear his plans for a fourth term.   I don’t know who would want to run against Nate if he throws his hat in the ring again.  And the longer he delays declaring his intentions, the more he assures that he will be the only candidate who will be able to defeat Ms Hall.  Bowing out later than sooner will give Heidi a leg up on the race.   In any event, if our supervisor decides to run again, and get the next major county building named after him, then I will once more support Captain Nate Beason, USN (Ret).

San Francisco, a murderous sanctuary city.  Actually, there are tens of cities and towns across the country that have openly declared and demonstrated that they not only will not abide certain federal laws, but will actually work to thwart their execution.  It should surprise no one that the lamestream and progressive pundits have never taken such jurisdictions to task for actively inviting and harboring illegal aliens.  You see, it’s OK for liberals to pick and choose which laws they want to follow – it’s a top-down thing that starts at the White House.

I wonder if it’s possible to use such a precedent at the county level.  There’s a lot of crap handed down to us from Washington and Sacramento that really runs counter to our best interests.  Why don’t we just pick and choose which laws are appropriate for us here in the Sierra?  We could list the bad ones and put them onto a 'Just Say NO!' referendum ballot.  Federal and state laws that don’t get 51% support will be ‘scrupled’ by Nevada County.  (A tenet or law to which exception is taken is said to be scrupled.)

Ruminations – 10jul15 (updated 11jul15)

George Rebane

After carefully perusing ample evidence on the matter, I am sad to conclude as gently as I can that Board Trustee of the Nevada Joint Union High School District Ms Linda Campbell is an idiot.  My non-accredited belief is based on following her previous public correspondence, and was confirmed this morning by a reading of her ‘Capitalism is not an ideology’ in the 10jul15 Union.  Her long involvement in public schools and secondary education goes quite a distance to explain how people like her created the national tragedy that today we call our public education system.  It is clear that there must exist other more salubrious assessments of her intellect which differ from my considered opinion, and therefore she is in no danger of being relieved of her position in guiding the education of our county’s young.  I grieve alone.

Hillary lies and the lamestream buys.  How can you deny being subpoenaed by the United States Congress when the subpoena is a matter of public record the delivery of which is fully documented, and the damn thing can be held up in front of any TV camera and published online?  If you or I copied Hillary, the US Marshall would have our butts behind bars before we could mumble our name, rank, and serial number.  Any Republican ever try that?

Given the response to the insane Greek referendum last weekend, and the kind of rotten apples that the coming grexit will shake from the EU tree, I wonder what tune our national (and local) celebrants of ‘European style socialism’ will sing.  The reason that Greece’s pinprick of an economy on the European butt is so important is what it reveals about the financial state of other EU stalwarts like Italy, Spain, and, gasp!, France.  All of them are in debt up to their eyeballs with no credible way of paying it off under the economic futures made possible by their embrace of socialism.  If Greece gets off paying its debts with drachmas, what keeps the socialists in Italy, Spain, and France from demanding equal time for the lira, peso, and franc?  RR has been pointing out for years the unsustainable spending these lunatics have been doing.  In spite of that, our progressives still want to saddle America with the same system.  I hope more than the Collective Cricket Corps will respond to these revealing developments.  Many more of us should share Angela Merkel’s fears.

Sandbox - 10jul15

[Hopefully the Donald Trump dust-up will work itself out in 3jul15 sandbox, and this one can expand on the new thread of illegal aliens and states rights.  But it's only a hope.  gjr]

Fourth Amendment Compliance

George Rebane

FBI director James Comey complains that his bureau is having a hard time tracking home-grown raghead recruits because as soon as they get hyped up and contact an outfit like ISIS, they’re directed to get an encrypted smartphone for all subsequent communications with the jihadists.  And modern encryption techniques are so powerful that third parties, including the FBI and NSA, cannot decrypt their conversations.  So the government has been pushing the big tech companies to make all smartphones with a ‘back door’ for which government has the key.  The tech companies correctly point out that “there is no technical way to protect their users’ legitimate privacy with encryption while also enabling intelligence agencies and law enforcement to gain access to what terrorists plot online.”

So reports Gordon Crovitz in his 6jul15 ‘Why Terrorists Love Silicon Valley’.  However, there is a technical approach that would go a long way to satisfying the feds, but the tech companies have every reason to contest it on at least two grounds.  First, implementing the approach makes ‘cracking the code’ easier, and second, why allow demonstrably incompetent agencies of a technologically imbecile government to have access to their customers' information.  The probability approaches certainty that any data that feds can sniff from your private affairs will soon be in the hands of every bad guy in the world.  Over the last years it has become obvious to all but the most obtuse progressive, that the bad guys out there are at least as smart as our feds on their best day, a fact they now admit to almost daily.

But Director Comey argues his case for such a technological compromise on the basis of the Fourth Amendment that grants government the right to conduct “reasonable searches and seizures”, and this is my focus here.  Crovitz sides with Comey who one ups the Constitution by claiming that the Fourth then also “creates duties for responsible companies to be able to comply” - i.e. facilitate government searches and seizures.  However, this interpretation would require a reading of the Constitution similar to SCOTUS’ recent rewriting of the ACA providing subsidies to states without Obamacare exchanges – simply turn English on its head.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it state that private citizens must compromise their own security or privacy so as to make it easy for government to search and seize as permitted by the Fourth.  Government’s right to conduct legal and reasonable searches and seizures is totally independent (orthogonal) to the citizen’s right to secure his property and affairs.  There are no laws that require you to put weaker locks on your door so as to make it easier for government to bust in, even when they have a legal writ in their mitt.  The locks (and other security devices) on your property are purposely as stout as you can afford, and you put them there to keep out thieves.

The Constitution requires of no man that he consciously open himself to predation just to facilitate government’s ingress to his affairs.   That government may on occasion obtain and exercise its reasonable and legal right to search and seize what’s yours, by no means automatically implies that you then must at all times maintain your property and affairs in a compromised state that also makes such search and seizure more facile for criminals.

Zapping Drones

George Rebane

Recent reports of private drones being flown above active wildfires again makes me lose another dollop of faith in the brainpower of my fellow citizens.  Why anyone would want to endanger the fire attack spotters and tankers fighting the fire is beyond me.  So I started noodling on how to solve the problem.  The easiest would be for either the OV-10 spotter or a ground-based unit to just zap the drone with directed EMP.  That would fry enough of the drone’s electronics to bring it down.

From some back of the envelope calcs, such a ‘weapon’ would not be bigger than a small refrig to have a directional beamwidth sufficient to concentrate the EMP’s energy to an altitude of about one or two thousand feet above ground level.  When a rogue drone is spotted, the incident commander is notifed and queried as to its legitimacy; and if illegitimate, it is zapped.

Then I googled ‘directed EMP’ and got a snootful.  It’s not a surprise that a lot of people have been thinking about various versions of such a device.  For example, here.

Now you would think that DARPA would already have put out a couple or three contracts to create such a portable, short range, directed EMP device for military purposes if nothing else.  But as an old electronics engineer, it seems to me that such a gizmo could also be developed in your garage were you of a mind.  Who knows, there might arise a lively market for the Mk1Mod2 Drone Zapper all across America as people begin to see unknown drones hovering around their properties.  Think of all the legal ramifications if such drones start showing up missing.  Can privacy be a legal justification for zapping a drone hovering outside your window or over your house?  Is it legal to remove a bug you discover in your house, or a surreptitiously placed surveillance camera in your yard, or a hovering drone outside your window?

How about self-defense?  ‘The damn thing came down at us at a threatening angle, we didn’t know what its intent was or what it would do, so we zapped it.’

Anyway, I think the DZ may be the coming thing at a fire house, police department, or at a neighbor with an attitude.  Who knows, maybe someone has already built one, we know the Russians have.  Rumors and reports abound as to how something that was probably a more powerful and less directed EMP weapon, mounted on a Russian Sukhoi fighter which then ‘attacked’ and compromised major electronics systems on a US destroyer in the Black Sea.  I’d bet the ranch that the Pentagon is at least developing systems of equivalent or greater capability.  Creating EMPs with a nuclear explosion is so yesterday.

Anyway, keep checking your Hammacher-Schlemmer (say that fast three times) catalog for a Christmas gift this year for that buddy who has everything.

Happy 239th America!

George Rebane

As you again wish America a happy birthday, take a look at this rendition of 'God Bless America' led by John Wayne and all the show biz greats of 1970 some of whom get a mite choked up.

Sandbox – 3jul15

[While the old sandbox was getting full, the comment thread on the externalities post kind of petered out and segued into looking at the externalities implied by AGW, and then it started circling the old climate change barn again.  A request was made to continue it here – fair enough.

But before diving in one more time, I’d like to point out some strongly orthogonal aspects of discussing climate change cum AGW.  Having ignored or not understood them in the past has led to the predictable Nowhere.  Here’s a partial list –

- Verity of paleo climate records, - Verity of recent – last 50K years – climate measurements,

- Definitions of earth’s atmospheric temperature,

- Definitions of sea levels,

- Data handling methods to create a usable sets of inputs to models,

- Knowledge of climate physics – terrestrial and extra-terrestrial – viz sub-processes and their large scale integration (e.g. the earth’s carbon cycle, cosmic rays impact on cloud cover),

- General Circulation Models (GCMs) – their design, programming, and testing,

- Validating GCMs – data sets used, performance criteria, selection/tuning of model constants, sub-model transfer functions and stabilities (bifurcations to chaos), sensitivity to inputs, …

- Interpretation of GCM outputs – obtaining reliable variance measures, accept/reject criteria, …

- Understanding the impact of human interventions on climate (let alonge AGW).

In a reasonable world (not the one we live in), debating climate change between people who understand the science, math, and modeling (of complex, stochastic, dynamic systems), and those who don’t is not possible.  One side can cite and interpret the technical literature, and other side can only appeal to ‘consensus science’ or my scientist(s) are smarter than your scientist(s).  Nevertheless, in today’s world such debates are exciting, important, and even fun – each side viewing the other as unredeemable troglodytes.   When the participants are tired of finally insulting the quality of their opponents’ double helixes, and the debate “is heard no more: it (was again) a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”, nevertheless but advising public policies penned by grossly ignorant and hubristic central planners.  Have at it.  gjr]

A Look at Externalities

George Rebane

'We know best what's good for the people.' -  from the Central Planning Bible

Lately several readers have been discussing the whys and wherefores of (economic) externalities.   It’s a slippery concept to apply as may be deduced from its definition.

An externality is “a consequence of an economic activity that is experienced by unrelated third parties. An externality can be either positive or negative.”  - Investopedia.

If a producer (Agent A1) provides a quantity (Q1) of goods/services to a customer (Agent A2) willing to pay price P1 for them, then we have the costs of production and price driven demand represented by the classical producer-demand curves showing the market realities arrived at by A1 and A2 – that is, Q1 exchanged for $P1.  In this situation each agent has satisfied his own utility for money and goods.

Now enters agent A3 who is neither a producer nor consumer, and he determines that there are people out there negatively impacted by such production/consumption transactions.  By fiat A3 (usually the government) has the power to assess, attribute, and allocate what it determines is the ‘social cost’ of such unhampered transactions.  It attributes such a cost to a given industry (economic activity) and, in its wisdom, allocates a portion MEC (marginal external cost) to A1 - as a tax, tariff, license fee, imposed purchase of, say, carbon credits, etc – that A3 claims is a negative externality.  But in reality A1 experiences MEC as an added cost of production to his existing MPC (marginal private cost) of production.  This yields a new MSC (marginal social cost) production curve experienced by A1.  And the new price point now shifts to P2 at which price A2 is willing to buy only quantity Q2. (See my modified figure below from Environmental Economics.)

Anticipate a Promising 4th

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 1 July 2015.]

Today the country is under terror alert, and the FBI is setting up counter-terrorism control centers across the land as the rest of us prepare to celebrate America’s 239th birthday this weekend.  We know the world is broken, and when we contemplate the state of our Union, it is clear that we also have a lot of mending to do.  Many recognized students of the American scene tell us that today “Political polarization is at unprecedented levels, with large portions of the electorate convinced that the other side is not only mistaken in its political views, but evil.”

Here in Nevada County radicals have threatened to disrupt the annual 4th of July parade when the local Tea Party unit marches by after having been told, “If you continue to support this anti-constitutional, anti-Christian ideology, start packing or pay the consequences of the outing of the cruel inhuman people your T Party represents.”  Local law enforcement is taking this seriously.

But in spite of the worldwide killings by Islamic radicals, and the political turmoil that grows inside our borders, we can still reconcile if we remember how we once were as reported by our 19th century visitors.   We were seen and saw ourselves as a unique people who were open, neighborly, generous, egalitarian, feisty, and prideful with over the top patriotism.  We had a passion to get ahead and see what’s over the next hill.  And all those qualities were wrapped up with an undeniable individualism; we knew what made me only me, and no one else.

Because of that we were not of one mold.  Our Founders knew that and gave us an America that was not meant to be the same America for everyone; our land was intended to accommodate diversity.  Artist, writer, and professor of computer science David Gelernter said, “The founders designed a vast garment for America that hugs where it should hug and stretches where it should stretch; each state creates its own society, and the Constitution stitches them all together into a comfortable, sensible union suit.”

However such an America has not been our recent direction.  Long ago we were warned by de Tocqueville that when government “covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform” such that it “compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people”, then we have arrived at the doorstep of tyranny.

Sociologist and political philosopher Charles Murray believes we can begin finding common ground by joining to oppose those patently ridiculous rules and laws which stupefy and compress us all into a bi-partisan misery.  Is it not ridiculous that any American lacks the means to live a decent life?  Is it not ridiculous that our towns and cities can no longer afford to provide basic services?  In a nation as diverse as America, is it not ridiculous to impose one-size-fits-all national policies that involve morally complex cultural differences?  Without giving up our core beliefs, we can all work together to eliminate such ridiculous conditions in our land – and that joint effort can serve as a start for more things to mend America that will bring us back together.

We should think about these things as we make plans for this weekend.  And may I suggest that we all experience such togetherness this coming Friday evening, 3rd of July, on the Great Lawn of the Nevada County Fairgrounds at the ‘Happy Birthday USA’ festivities.  This celebration is brought to you by our own Music in the Mountains.  Get your tickets online and bring your camping chairs, blankets, and picnic baskets full of good things to join your neighbors as you listen to great American music and songs performed on stage by Nevada County’s own world class symphony orchestra and chorus.  It will be good to experience America again.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on georgerebane.com where the 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.

Incest is Best?

George Rebane

Berlin – the German Ethics Council recommends that the Bundestag remove the legal prohibition of incest between siblings, citing that “in the case of consensual incest among adult siblings, neither the fear of negative consequences for the family, nor the possibility of the birth of children from such incestuous relationships can justify a criminal prohibition.” (more here)

I have no idea of how the Germans got ahead of California on this one, but there is plenty of room for us to take the lead again.  We note that the Germans only expanded legal incest to siblings, parents and children having intercourse or making other kinds of whoopee is still prohibited.  That is open territory for Sacramento to sweep the field in opening up the pursuit of comprehensive “sexual self-determination”.

LGBTQIA stands for “Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, and asexual” according to the Urban Dictionary that also informs us “LGBTQIA people are the only minority not federally protected.”  Not knowing what ‘intersex’ is, my immediate concern focuses on whether the existing 'I' covers incest, or do we need another one.

In any case, will marriage be next?  Consider the possibilities. Given the SCOTUS rulings and all that, will 2015 be remembered as Springtime for Brave New World?