Scattershots – 7aug16 (updated 12aug16)

George Rebane

More evidence that our Great Experiment has failed.  Great Experiment?  - self-governance, the raison d’etre the Founders nominated for our Republic, ‘Is common man capable of governing himself?’  Today we have finally ‘educated’ our dumbest generation ever – the Millennials.  These young people are now overwhelmingly ignorant of history, modes of governance, economics, and general American civics to a degree unmatched and unimaginable.  For example, they seriously doubt that capitalism has been more beneficial to mankind than has collectivism, and are ready to demonstrate their credentials in the voting booth.

They care not a whit that the US today owes $122,000,000,000,000 which is more than the value of everything else we own that comes only to $121,000,000,000,000.  And that unsustainable debt will explode as interest rates return to normal market levels.  The proximal result is that all entitlements, from retirements to government healthcare, will simply end with the destruction of the dollar.  Their own economic futures have been irredeemably pawned, and they have no clue.

Today there is clear indication that a majority of voting Americans have no idea that the protectionism promoted by both major candidates would make our country into an insular island of expensive labor and high priced goods/services that will be out of reach to most of our people.  These people believe that government allocates capital better than the private sector, that economic decisions are not affected by tax rates, that wages can be raised by fiat without regard to productivity or value delivered by labor, and that the balance of risk and potential profits do not impact investment.  Our union schools have purged it all from the minds of the most recent generation since the launch of President Johnson’s Great Society in 1965.

Whoever wins in November, America can never retreat from being a leading participant in global commerce.  If it tries, chaos would ensue.  More here from Dr Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations.  The only thing here is not to confuse the control of our borders with starting a trade war.  With almost 40% of our workforce refusing to enter job markets, these to aspects of foreign and economic policy are totally independent issues.  The Democrats continue to hitch ‘The Wall’ to trade isolationism because they can field no legitimate reason to oppose it in the context of a new immigration policy.

The Obama years.  These years have literally NOTHING to show for them that has benefited the country.  Obama was presented with an unprecedented opportunity in 2009 with a dominant Democrat Congress to soar like an eagle.  The recession that was in full swing when he arrived was merely a superimposed boil on an otherwise healthy economy.  And he could have shown what a rocket ride America could have in its recovery.  Instead, he squandered the whole thing with an ideological disaster, a program we now call Obamacare.

On the face of it Obamacare, passed in the dead of night with only Democrat votes, was a road to ruin.  Now years later all of what reasonable people could see (including on these pages) have come true, and much more sewage is in the pipeline for the country to swallow.  The progressive central planners wrote into the legislation terms that would limit the profit margins of large insurers to 5% (remember progs believe they know how much profit is socially just) which turned away investment capital as predicted.  Also predicted was that the only ones who want to buy Obamacare are the destitute already on the dole, and the deathly ill heading for the final round-up – not much profit in either cohort.  Now insurers have already started pulling out of the states’ programs with Aetna being the latest to bail.

All of this goes to sustain the Rebane Doctrine tenet that progs are butt stupid when it comes to most aspects of governance, and that goes double for managing an economy.  As further corroboration, we notice that in this campaign the progs are not highlighting any of the last eight years’ accomplishments, and are thankful that The Donald has been been equally stupid in reacting to their tweets designed to keep him off message.  Can you imagine the shift in polls if Trump ever gets his sh!t together and goes after Crooked Hillary, the weakest and most shameful candidate the Democrats have fielded in memory?  By comparison Jimmy Carter was a giant.

[11aug16 update]  Nevada starts ending solar subsidies.  Very little has been covered about that in the lamestream.  Nevada taxpayers (through their utility company) finally said enough is enough.  They’ve been putting up with this folly for 18 years and concluded that if that industry cannot sustain itself after all these years of state help, then it’s time to pull the plug (more here).  However, the government tit has been so comfortably exercised for so long, that a sudden stoppage of the $16M annual cost is not in the cards; they’ll do it over a number of years.  The econuts are, of course, screaming and demand at a minimum that the 17,000 subscribers to the scam be able to continue their artificially low rates.  We’ll see how this bamboozle goes down with the rest of the Nevada’s taxpayers.  In the meanwhile, other states (e.g. California) with similar programs have yet to come to their senses, and some are even planning to double down on the insanity.

Meanwhile, Marxist Maduro plans to further mangle Venezuela’s economy that is already down for the count.  The tyrannical president and holder of western hemisphere’s functional idiot title will hire Spanish communist economist Alfredo Serrano (pictured) to come and help revise the country’s economy (more here).  Serrano has diagnosed Venezuela’s problem as not having enough government control of the economy.  These people are the heroes of America’s own progressives who can’t figure out how come it’s so hard to fix the economy when it’s so easy to double down on government control.  Now isn't this guy exactly the type Obama needs to figure out why his nostrums haven't worked.  Don’t expect the lamestream to cover this, or our liberal minded readers to rein in their over-worked crickets.

DOJ's Loretta Lynch will continue her AG job under Clinton.  That appears to be enough of a reason to shut down FBI's investigation of the Clinton Foundation from which the latest emails draw a compelling corroboration of 'pay for play'.  Yes sir, nothing to see here folks.  Just keep it moving along.  (more here)

[12aug16 update]  Focus on farts.  The Left outdoes Trump every single day in the sinister silliness they spread across the land.  As the latest example, in California we have cow farts that progressives now want to regulate and police to meet the state’s GHG target for 2030 (more here).  It seems that Bossie’s is the next source of methane that needs to be plugged.  The econuts have put their crosshairs on destroying California’s dairy industry by drafting regulations that will make our milk and cheese prohibitively expensive, because fighting flatulence is fiscally frightful to dairy farmers many of whom have already planted their pastures with nut tree orchards.  And from the lamestream we hear the sound of silence.

Comments

[fish]

I'm sure that someday we will fondly reminisce on the foreign policy skills of the O'organizer administration......someday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/world/middleeast/military-syria-putin-us-proxy-war.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad&_r=0

.......like turning a busload of short school bus passengers loose in the control room of a nuclear power plant.

Nothing good comes of it!

[fish]

In which I am shown to be correct yet again......

jeffpelline says:

August 8, 2016 at 11:52 am

There’s a Phil Zink of Nevada City who works for Caltrans, according to an internet search. Can you boycott Caltrans? LOL.

This is why Pork Linkerson is so obsessive about real names.....the ability to "Name and Shame".

[George Rebane]

I draw your kind attention to the 8aug16 update of 'Reinette Senum - the aftermath'.
http://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2016/07/reinette-senum-the-aftermath-1.html

[Russ Steele]

Electric Vehicles Don’t Have A Chance Unless Oil Prices Increase 1,000 Percent.

The batteries for electric vehicles cost, on average, about $325 per kWh, which means the price of oil would need to pitch upward by nearly 1,000 percent before Tesla’s auto fleet and the Nissan Leaf would be cheaper than gas-powered vehicles, researchers at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute noted in February.

The number are not likely to change much over the next few years, as oil traded at an average of $49 per barrel during 2015 and is currently trading at a paltry $39.51 a barrel.

“While alternative sources of energy and energy storage technologies have vastly improved, lowering costs, they still have a long way to go before they are cost competitive with fossil fuels,” Chris Knittel, co-author of the study and director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, said in a press statement announcing the study’s findings in February.

Another classic case where the Progs live in a green dream world. And, they are in legislative control in the State of California. There dream will die someday, "real soon new" as the next little ice age approaches.

[Bonnie McGuire]

Russ you once again demonstrate the ignorance of those running things. Tesla wanted Americans to have an inexpensive supply of electric energy when he invented the alternating current (and more) but found himself surrounded with greedy, corrupt individuals...including Edison, who would say anything to discredit and distract from the truth.
Unable to challenge AC electricity on technical merits, Edison turned to using scare tactics like saying, "Just as certain as death [AC power] will kill a customer within six months!" Leaflets about the dangers of AC current were printed and distributed. Lobbying efforts were made in New York State to limit legal levels of electricity to 800 volts, making AC distribution impractical "as a matter of public safety".

That immorality bothered Tesla a lot. Judging by what's happening today, human nature never changes when it comes to who gets to profit.

[George Rebane]

Paris in Siege - Media Silent - Political Correctness rum amok.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD7UA1d-WnA

[Account Deleted]

At 3:43 - Sumpin' wrong with your youtube link. Tried to capture it all with copy and paste but it seems the whole string didn't get posted.
Electric cars will 'compete' just fine with another dose of massive govt subsidy. The wealthy can always count on middle class left wing morons to underwrite their lifestyle. Hillary's most ardent supporters are the super wealthy and the American Communist Party. No, it's not a oxymoronic situation, it's completely normal for the left.
As for poor Tesla - he did get used and abused by Edison, but he was a bit of work himself. He was pretty cavalier about spending investors' money for any darn new thing he dreamed up and rarely paid back one dime let alone made anyone else rich. Genius for sure, but was mostly a P. T. Barnum type in the public. In the lab, he came up with astounding new developments, but rarely could he bring anything successfully to market. Just too ahead of the times.
He was the exact opposite of Henry Ford. Ford used pre-existing (and primitive) tech to bring a new way of transportation to the masses, while Tesla dazzled the masses with tech he could never make available in low cost.

[George Rebane]

ScottO 552pm - Sorry Scott, try it now.

[Account Deleted]

Works fine - and I see a lot more of the same type of videos are available for viewing. It's fine to have people be able to move to another country with the intention of learning the language and customs while becoming integrated with the local populace.
That's not what's happening now, for the most part.
The TV and newspapers are showing the few that are working hard and adapting to their new country, but mostly the new sort of migrant just wants to show up and demand stuff and start trouble. They have no intention of integrating into their new surroundings.
The fact that this new open borders arrangement is leading to increasing trouble and violence is always explained away by blaming 'nativists' and 'xenophobes'.
The wealthy and powerful that push for open borders of course never have to live near or deal with any of these new arrivals.
A good read on that topic:
http://takimag.com/article/give_me_your_keys_then_we_can_talk_about_open_borders_jim_goad/print#axzz4Gh7dfu8M

[Bill Tozer]

Sorry, did not know where else to put this, The Obama years: Told ya seperate but unequal was coming. Wonder how they will get this by Title IX. Flat out illegal. Now they will be ensnared by the very rules they created to ram through their parallel universe.
Say what? Say it ain't so. You mean in our colorblind kind non-offensive welcoming society, birds of a feather do flock together and prefer it that way? It's a human nature thang. Tribal stuff and the herd instinct I reckon.

http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=7964

Picture time.
https://www.facebook.com/lastamericapatriots/photos/a.235087906641439.1073741826.235086849974878/688612561288969/?type=3&theater

[Account Deleted]

Oh, Bill - you're just being tedious. It's easily solved. Just have the enrolling student say he 'identifies' as an African-American.
And remember, Bill - never throw back what a leftie says verbatim to their face about race - that is just sooooo racist.

[George Rebane]

Dear People - I feel your pain. New sandbox coming up.

[Robert Cross]

Electric Vehicles Don’t Have A Chance Unless Oil Prices Increase 1,000 Percent.-- What about the atmosphere? What kind of a chance does it have under the current fossil fuel regime? Money should not be a consideration of quality of life.

" as the next little ice age approaches." Really? And just when is that going to happen? How long must we suffer from record high global average temperatures that seem to be piling up before your "ice age" occurs.

Do people just make this stuff up to defend climate change denial?

[Todd Juvinall]

Global warming caused n man is a hoax. CO2 is the food of the planet's green things. Pretty simple.

[Gregory]

Cross 9:01, there are multiple lines of evidence pointing to a little ice age starting right about now and lasting a few score years. Solar Cycle 24 (now waning) was originally forecast to be of record strength as have been common since the middle of the 20th century, but instead was about half the intensity of cycle 23 and continues to wane faster than expected.
http://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/solar-cycle-sunspot-number.gif

Forecasts for cycle 25 are decidedly Maunderish. An example of Maunder Minimum weather is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames_frost_fairs#/media/File:Thomas_Wyke-_Thames_frost_fair.JPG

We'll know soon enough. If you think warm is dangerous, wait until we get cold. Right now New Zealand and Peru are both having record cold snaps, but because it's record cold it doesn't qualify as anything but "weather".

Some of the most interesting work forecasting an imminent little ice age (these things start and end slowly) is Russian astrophysicist Habibullo Abdussamatov, but he's far from the only one who has noticed the solar changes. Google him yourself.

[Gregory]

Cross, regarding the perhaps hasty forecast of 2016 being a record warm year (if only by a hundredth of a degree or so) was helped along by it being an El Nino year that was expected to be warm. You may have not gotten the news the El Nino has broken, atmospheric temps are plunging as expected in the aftermath, and 2016 is not now expected to be exceptional... but the adjusters of the terrestrial records may manage to fudge a catastrophic press release despite this.

Here's the current satellite record
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_July_2016_v6.jpg
'98 was the last El Nino

[Robert Cross]

Gregory-- Isn't climate a lot like geology in that a "little ice age" is like an earthquake, just a bump in the road, and we should be more concerned with the long term trends which pretty much appear to be an overall warming?

[Gregory]

Cross, did you ever take a science class beyond something like "Your Friend, the Amoeba" to fill some general ed requirement with minimal effort?

The answer to your question is "no". Warming due to CO2 is small compared to natural variations, and some of those natural variations are solar.

Atmospheric physics is not at all like geology.

[George Rebane]

RobertC 958am - Apropos to what Gregory has said, stipulate that "climate (is) a lot like geology". As we don't understand fundamental processes of geological evolution (rise of magma bubbles, earthquakes, seafloor spreading, ...) neither do we understand the fundamental processes of climate (Earth's carbon cycle, radiation induced cloud formation, off-diag elements linearized climate transfer functions, ...). People who tell you that they do understand these at a level of detail to support predictions sufficiently accurate for public policy making are counting on your ignorance of science, estimation, computability, ... (the list is long). Most people embrace this ignorance along with what they are told by politicians of 'consensus science'. Are you one of these?

[L]

All- Global temps have been overall decline since the "Holocene Climate Optimum", some 8kya. Why do you think mainstream science calls it "optimum", because it was cold?

[Walt]

Gotta love the "mainstream" tag. You mean the ones who are in the pockets of LIB gov.?
If they say otherwise, the money tit dries up.
OK "L".. what do you have to say about the sun going into a cooling trend? Don't think that will have any impact on global temps? Or has Man been using too much solar energy, and it's "our fault".
There have been more than one who have said man should have never figured out how to tame fire. It was the beginning of AGW.

[Bill Tozer]

The Obama years: business failures surpass business start ups.
http://www.gallup.com/businessjournal/180431/american-entrepreneurship-dead-alive.aspx

[Bill Tozer]

Cow farts are bad, but nothing like cockroach farts. They say those La Cucaracha pedos can survive an all out GeoThermal Nuclear War.

[Bill Tozer]

Re: 8/11/16 Update.

That did not take long.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/44329