Rebane's Ruminations

Sandbox - 30oct16

[Boy did I screw up.  We all got involved in the election and I didn't even notice that I'd forgotten to freshen up the sand until readers began to shoe horn in important off-topic topics in what seemed the closest fit.  My apologies again.  But I would appreciate a crisp nudge from any reader who has something that doesn't fit under any of the recent topics which don't include a recent sandbox.  Thanks.  gjr]

‘Our Presidential Election: America’s Brexit’

[This commentary was submitted by RR reader and correspondent Mr Norm Sauer who is also a member of The Union’s Editorial Board.  His writings have graced these pages before, and today’s contribution is a spirited assessment of our future under Hillary that concludes with a compelling endorsement of Donald Trump for president. This piece also appears in today’s (29oct16) edition of The Union.  gjr]

Norm Sauer

On October 20, 2016, the Washington Times reported Hillary Clinton has aligned herself closely with a vision for America laid out by her benefactor—left-wing financier George Soros.  Soros is a Hungarian Jew who, without guilt or remorse, assisted the Nazis in confiscating Jewish property during WWII. 

Soros promotes international governance, more open borders, increased Muslim immigration into the West, and diminished U. S. global power.  He has donated nearly $11 million to Hillary’s campaign and three major Super PACs.

Hillary, who at the presidential debates never wore an American flag pin, was exposed by WikiLeaks’ data dump telling Brazilian bankers her “dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders.” 

Open borders means we have no country, and open trade means no new jobs—rather vital concepts in a presidential race.  However, WikiLeak’s disclosures were buried by CBS, NBC, and ABC morning and evening shows between October 7 and 13 which spent 4 hours 13 minutes on Trump alleged sex assaults versus 36 minutes on various WikiLeaks’ disclosures during one week. 

Why did the media systematically ignore WikiLeaks’ whistleblowing disclosures?  Because those e-mails thoroughly damaged Hillary and her campaign.

The Clintons are dangerous and we all know it.  They are corrupt and will stop at nothing to gain power and money.  If Hillary becomes our next president this corruption will continue to be institutionalized on an even larger scale than now.

Look what happens when Democrats are in control.  The Justice Department, the FBI, the IRS, the State Department and the EPA have all been politicized.  Hillary’s abuse of our national security doesn’t even merit a wrist slap.  The corruption of the Clinton Foundation is ignored, and the media buries the disclosure of DNC operatives engaging in voter fraud and inciting violence at Trump rallies.  (Google: ‘Project Veritas videos.’)

Do we Americans wish to stay in this forest primeval, where nightmare and danger reign, and only the New York to Washington D.C. knights of darkness prevail, while we the people are without a champion?

Despite being politically manipulated, most Americans know our future with a corrupt government means working 70 hours a week to feed ourselves and make ends meet while the government, corporate and media elites wine and dine with their fellow progressive socialist rulers.  These elites are the true oppressors while we ‘the unwashed’ continue on the road to serfdom.

Diminishing expectations faced the people of Great Britain who were being stripped of their borders and overwhelmed by Muslim immigration by the socialist E.U. controllers from Brussels.  By over a million votes, British nationalism and love of country resulted in a vote to leave the E.U., even in the face of early victory celebrations by the media and elites that Brexit would fail.

We Americans are faced with the same threats as the British.  Can we survive as a nation with open borders, open trade, and global socialist governance? Americans need to buck up and vote like our lives and our country depend on our vote, because they do. 

We need a warrior, a ruthless fighter, and a patriot.  In my view, we have these qualities in Donald J. Trump.  Mr. Trump is by no means perfect, but he is a man with dash and total conviction, combining conservative substance and celebrity style with a good portion of go-to-hell panache.

While the propaganda main stream media has incessantly urged women to hate Mr. Trump, many nevertheless still realize this presidential election is not about social justice but rather saving our exceptionally great country, its Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Our propaganda media that teaches us to hate the oppressed and love the oppressors, tells us Clinton has already won the election, even in the face of polls that 87% of Americans don’t trust the federal government.

So, as Americans we must rise above the noise and clutter of our broken politics and embrace that great faith and optimism that has always been the central ingredient of the American character, and there is nothing better or stronger than an American character. 

Most Americans do not want illegal immigration, wide-open borders, more Syrian refugees, more hard drugs coming into our country, and more taxes on the middle class.  They want to preserve liberty, our personal freedoms, and our sovereign nation. 

Realizing a Clinton administration would be more of the Obama administration, ie. rotten from the top down, our choice is clear:  Vote Trump for President.  He’s a winner.

Ruminations – 28oct16 (updated 31oct16)

George Rebane

Ever wonder why the IRS has not audited the Clinton Foundation?  You are not alone as that organization’s true nature has been revealed over the last 18 months.  Things got so bad last year to worry Chelsea enough about the foundation’s shenanigans that she hired a top-tier law firm to do an internal investigation of the organization.  The emails about its findings have now been leaked (more here), but the IRS continues its established role as a rogue agency in the pocket of progressives.

Latest in the ongoing leftwing assault on free speech is happening in Washington state.  Passage of their measure 1464 (courtesy of the Washington state Public Disclosure Commission) would put the state’s political speech police on retainer to keep 50% of the fines they assess – and remember, with these people you are guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.  Now the state’s Left is doubling down on Lizzy Warren’s nationwide stealth program to have government at all levels become the unassailable interpreter of the First Amendment (more here).

The revelations of Team Hillary’s hacked emails would have torpedoed past candidates so indicted by the record of their corruptions.  Today, Wikileaks’ October surprise elicits a yawn from the terminally isolated from information that cannot be succinctly summarized in a tweet.  [update]  Well sumbich! maybe Comey will redeem himself after all.  Breaking news (here and here) comes of the FBI reopening the criminal investigation of Hillary's emails and the operation of her private email server.  This net may yet cast wider than expected.

RR has tracked the progress of our national dumbth for the last ten years.  At no time has our intellectual descent been more visible than in the recent presidential elections when promises by demonstrably incompetent candidates, adulated by the lamestream media, have proved impervious to arguments based on history and the public record.  It is as if most Americans today are ready to abandon all in order to get their promised ‘fair share’ from the country’s wealthier citizens without giving a thought (even if they had one to give) as to how and in what kind of environment such wealth may be created.  As our freedoms evaporate unnoticed and unmourned, we have lost count of how many times the road to tyranny has been paved with these exact same arguments for ‘social justice’.  Again the echo of Jefferson’s ‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’

[30oct16 update] OK, here’s question I haven’t seen asked yet.  It’s now reported that the FBI has discovered hundreds of thousands (about 650K) of stored emails on Weiner’s laptop, many of them related to the Clintons - how and why did they get there?  A plausible answer is that Weiner’s wife and Hillary’s left lobe Ms Abedin stashed them there as an insurance policy should she ever fall out of favor with the Clinton Machine (more here).  The job of poring over these emails will take weeks if not months, accompanied by a new invigorated drip-drip of releases and announcements that contain enough to cover Comey’s butt with a very pissed off DoJ (recall LorettaL gets to keep her job under Hillary; alternatively, will Trump keep a rehabilitating Comey?).  Connecting this shifting blizzard of dots has got to be better than fantasy football.

[31oct16 update]  Grossly stupid or evil, or sporting generous dollops of both is the leftwing Southern Poverty Law Center now branding as ‘Anti-Muslim’ moderate Muslims working for the reform of their faith and communities.  The recent SPLC report teaches us “that criticizing Islamist movements, ideologies and regimes, and Islam itself, is the same as hating Muslims.”  You simply can’t make this stuff up, especially when they apply the standard to Ms Hirsi Ali and Mr Majeed Nawaz, two internationally prominent Muslim reformers.  Their great sin? They both argue the obvious, that there is “an ideological and theological dimension to what used to be called the war on terror.”  Further evidence of the progressive mind revealed and justifiably reviled.  (more here)

Voter fraud in America has been endemic for some years according to the Pew Center.  Millions of 'voters' have invalid registrations of are misregistered (every 1 of 8), millions are registered in at least two states, and almost two million are getting help voting from the grave. (more here) Exit question: Members of which party are happy and/or deny the whole thing?   

 

Dump Trump and Pillory Hillary – 27oct16 (updated 29oct16)

George Rebane

While I’m working on a piece to again attempt – more graphically this time – to explain the fragility of highly categorized poll results, the news of the election’s uncertain outcome pours in.  Readers should take special note of the financial markets in which the big kids such as the very wealthy, institutional funds, corporations and corporatists, and nation-states play.  A look at the way they are placing their bets today indicates these people are extremely anxious in their ignorance about the results of 8 November.  As an example I point you to today’s ‘Selling Sweeps Global Government Bonds; U.S. 10-Year Yield Above 1.8%’ that reports on how the market for the ‘risk free’ securities is behaving.  The financially astute recall it is the risk-free Treasuries’ rate that underpins all other rates for leveraging the purchase of everything from houses through commodities to corporations.

However, in these pages we are fortunate to have readers who are blessed with powers of insight that totally abolish all such doubts, having replaced it with the certitude of Job to know and assure the rest of us on the outcome of the upcoming election, especially when we focus on the race for president.  Perhaps it would be a public service if some of these shrewd rural county Californians would deign pick up the phone or write an email to those nail biters on Wall Street and the world’s financial centers, and share their wisdom to resolve the matter, thereby restoring a blessed quietude over the roiling markets.  Methinks it would be the least they could do in these troubled times.

[28oct16 update]  Ramirez pretty much sums it up.

 

[29oct16 update]  A reader and correspondent with a penchant for simple but effective solutions suggests a simple but expedient household implement to explore how Hillary might look under a less corrupt justice system.  Such exercises also help lighten the mind-numbing news and pundit commentaries that overflow pre-election cable programming.

America’s Anger Will Remain and Grow

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 26 October 2016.]

Today’s polls, rigged or not, make it look like Hillary Clinton will be our next president.  Donald Trump has made about every mistake possible on the campaign trail, and most would agree that any of the other 16 Republican candidates would have taken Hillary in a walk.

The real question is about the attitude with which she and the Democrats will attempt to govern.  All, save her hard core supporters, know her to be damaged goods.  Of course that doesn’t mean she will not do her best to spin her victory as a triumph of progressivism, and see a mandate to inaugurate a “second progressive” era as explained in the Washington Monthly.  But there’s good reason to believe that Hillary won’t be able to pull that off any better than did Lyndon Johnson when he beat Goldwater in 1964 and attempted to launch America into a another New Deal.  Although I have to admit that Johnson’s Great Society did the next best thing to set the country on a path to big government socialism and also put conservatism on the map.

The real point here is that Hillary’s victory may well sweep away Trump’s political career, but it will not erase the national anger that has grown over the last decade.  Today well over half the voters believe that the federal government is more than less incompetent, and that includes even some of the folks who are getting regular government checks.  A recent Gallup poll revealed a solid 54% majority who favor a less intrusive government in Washington.  And half of Americans see the federal government as “an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens” according to Gallup which in 2003 measured that sentiment at only 30%.

Obamacare Collapsing

George Rebane

Shorten your search for the cause of all social problems by first ferreting out how government is involved.

As we all knew back in 2010, the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act would create a government system that was neither affordable nor would provide the needed healthcare.  Today after six years of covered up collapse Obama’s flagship legislation is the travesty everyone with basic knowledge of economics and human nature predicted.  The only ones still in the true believers ranks are the far leftwingers whom Hillary Clinton’s own campaign emails describe as “naïve, radical, and dumb”.

Obamacare is now in its acknowledged “death spiral” with the Republicans vowing to replace it with a more free market version cum safety net version, and the Democrats promising to “repair” it as they seek to also replace it, but with a nationalized healthcare system that will be an even bigger disaster than what they passed in the dead of night so, a la Nancy, we could find out what was in it.  Well, what we know that’s in it is all bad, and we still don’t know what bigger disasters it holds for us.  We do know that states’ insurance co-ops have collapsed, insurance companies are pulling out of healthcare markets, remaining premiums are increasing an average of 25% per year, and fewer people than ever can afford it.

Oh yes, there is a constant stream of propaganda from the pinhead progressive pundits telling us that now 20M more Americans have healthcare than before Obamacare.  They don’t tell you that of the 35-40M who didn’t have healthcare before, only 9M or less than 3% of the population said they didn’t have it because they couldn’t afford it.  The others just didn’t want to buy it, and more of them still are not buying it even under Obamacare.  To have provided healthcare for the presumed 9M needy, a much cheaper solution was available than ruining the nation’s healthcare industry.

(Here the progressives are quick to remind us that the affordability is not all that bad since the government will help some of the needy with subsidies for the their increased premiums.  Well, where in hell does that money come from except from taxpayers?!  That is not a cost reduction, it's just another wealth transfer payment hidden only from the liberal mind.)

Every promise that was made by Obamacare’s supporters has turned out to be a lie.  The funniest may be the one about “bending the cost curve” of healthcare.  That almost turned out to be true except that what even the White House is now admitting is that the curve is now bending the wrong way.  Of all the many big National Lies that have issued from this administration, Obamacare has a good chance of taking first place.  And as usual, every time leviathan demonstrates another corrupt and incompetent solution, their promised remedy always doubles down with more money, more bureaucracy, and more regulations.  Look around you to see what kind of Americans continue to believe that doing more of the same thing will yield a better solution next time.  Perhaps you can even discover a characteristic that is common to these people.

Lucky Strike Extra – What California city has demonstrated fiscal responsibility in its handling of public employee pensions and given lie to the politicians’ claim (including from our own Rood Center) that there was nothing that could have been done to avoid the coming crushing burden of unfunded liabilities?  Answer: Fresno which has also amassed a $300M surplus and is one of only seven cities in the US that are not encumbered by unfunded public pension liabilities.

Scattershots – 22oct16 (updated 23oct16)

George Rebane

Dan Henninger’s ‘Dumb and Dumber’ is a corroborating essay on the relentless growth of ‘dumbth’ in America.  As technology accelerates, the failures of government unionized schools grow more impactive on our social order in everything from understanding governance to finding a job.  President Obama, the Left’s penultimate liar (now overshadowed by HRC) continues to trumpet his faux successes in education by citing higher graduation rates.  But he doesn’t mention that those graduating don’t measure up to the country’s needs, especially in the job markets.

No better source of information exists on this than employers, especially manufacturers, who say U.S. schools, notwithstanding claims of improved “graduation” rates, are not producing sufficient numbers of workers able to perform at the level they need for the realities of the 21st century workplace. Apparently the universal skill of being able to manipulate a cellphone to take a selfie isn’t enough.

In today’s (22oct16) Union Bob Hren writes an excellent rebuttal – ‘Yes, It’s Time to Put Country Over Party’ - to a recent piece by the very progressive Nancy Eubanks.  Ms Eubanks takes Republicans to task for opposing Hillary, who in liberal eyes is the country’s political paragon of prudence and virtue.  Mr Hren destroys her one-sided call by citing the public record of HRC’s dismal career of bamboozling the information resistant voters she claims to champion.  What the Hren/Eubanks essays illustrate is how remarkably one-sided is the lamestream in its selective omission of reporting facts, events, and writings/quotes that do not support their one-world collectivist agenda.  Even in these pages otherwise learned readers have admonished us by citing the moral high ground occupied by Hillary since she has not yet had to wear ‘correctional orange’.  It’s as if such folks really restrict their reading to the narrowest of information sources.

Dump Trump and Pillory Hillary – 19oct16 (updated 20oct16)

George Rebane

I want to get this post up in a timely manner for tonight’s last debate of the most fractious political season since the Confederates finally decided to open fire on Ft Sumter.  In my decades I have never seen the country so frustrated and choose our candidates so unwisely.  For the Left, the years of revisionist education in unionized government schools has finally paid off.  My fear is that we will look back on the advent of Obama as our Ft Sumter.

Tonight we are having debate night with friends at Casa Rebane.  A big fire in the fireplace, hot pizza and crisp salad, with freshly baked apple pie.  And all washed down with appropriate amounts of martoonis and other libations to satisfy the anticipated need for analgesics and anesthesia.  Hope you all are also fortifying yourselves for a night to remember.  More after we recover whatever wits remain after the debate.

[Later]  Well, save for accepting the results of the election, the Donald did himself proud against Hillary, who was wooden and prerecorded.  Trump's correct answer should have been, 'Chris, of course I'll accept the election results like everyone else in the country; unless, of course, something real smelly turns up.  At that time I would look at our legal options and take appropriate actions.  What would you do instead?'

[20oct16 update]  Looks like the whole country has discovered and succumbed to a new clinical condition that affects the masses, Hanging Chad Amnesia.

But the good news is that another tenet of the Left’s belief system has leaked out in Queen Hillary’s response to Trump’s “wavering” on pre-accepting election results.  She was all agog at the notion – “That’s horrifying.  That is not the way our democracy works!”

But of course that is exactly how our democracy works.  For over two centuries our elections have been contested by a free people when they suspected that something wasn’t right.  The uncountable recounts and court challenges are part and parcel of the glorious history of our democratic republic.  It is under collectivist authoritarian regimes in which the results of elections – no matter how unbelievable – are accepted quietly by the unsuccessful candidates and a compliant public.

And only our Left maintains that our elections have a miniscule record of voter fraud.  In the process they accuse thousands of volunteer poll workers of lying over the years when these have submitted reports of tens of voters with the same address, the long dead voters, voting in multiple jurisdictions, more votes for one candidate than the total registered, unidentifiable people voting, and on and on.  That these grass roots volunteers never have the wherewithal to mount a court challenge against the establishment leaves all these reports fallow, and confirms to the cynical and/or light thinkers on the Left that all is good and proper with our electoral process.

Last night Chris Wallace’s question on the topic was simply inane, and demonstrated his acumen as a correspondent while revealing his well-established bias.  The breathless post-debate pundit commentaries on Fox News and today’s banner headlines – “Trump Wavers on Committing to Results of Election” – in so-called conservative newspapers like the WSJ demonstrates that the Fourth Estate is in lockstep against a Trump presidency.   These principles-optional pragmatists would rather have an incompetent and a demonstrated crook dripping with scandals occupy the White House, than risk an outsider who promises to shake things up in a town encrusted in corruption.

But the saddest thing of all is still our Great Divide.  On this morning’s NPR interviews with supporters of both sides, one thing stood out crystal clear – the two sides live in different universes.  The Left believes in a Hillary that is as innocent and pure as the pristine figure she cut last night in her snow white outfit.  Among the evidence rejected is the entire collection of emails which are written off as having been doctored since they came from Wikileaks presumably supplied by Russian hackers.

To get the flavor of all this from one of our neighbors, I refer you to our local leftwinger Ms Lynn Wenzel on The Union’s editorial board.  Today (20oct16) she writes an exculpatory column ‘Setting the Record Straight’(sic!!??) in which the entire massive rightwing conspiracy against “the most honest politician of the 2015-16 campaign” is explained.  That Wenzel’s views are shared by tens of millions of Americans is the real problem for the rest of us.  With so much evidence pouring in, I and the other tens of millions of Americans can confidently continue to conclude that no progressive today will represent our interests in how our society should be informed and governed.

 

Scattershots – 18oct16 (edited)

George Rebane

[edited] RR reader Mr Gary Smith comments that this short speech to players attributed to Clark Hunt, CEO and Owner of the Kansas City Chiefs most likely is a piece of hopeful fiction.  With apologies for the original post and many thanks to Mr Smith, I still wish that Hunt or some other NFL owner would have the balls to say these words. "You are all simply paid performers on a stage and that field is my stage!  You will stand, with your hand over your heart and with respect, when our country's national anthem is being played or you will no longer be a Kansas City Chief, a Coach for the Kansas City Chiefs or have any association with the Chiefs Organization!  I will immediately fire you, no matter who you are! You can make your political statements off the field, but when you're employed by me and I'm signing your check, I demand that you make our fans proud and not embarrass them."  (more here)

That huge fractions of our young, specifically the voting Millennials, are abysmally ignorant should not come as news to RR readers.  But how dumb they really are and what that portends for our nation is simply breathtaking.  The well-respected polling organization YouGov published a recent poll on the knowledge and attitudes of our young people that included the 16+ year olds with Millennials (born from about 1980 to 2000).  The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation published a report on attitudes toward socialism held by younger Americans who appear ready to vote themselves into an autocracy.  Some of the beliefs they hold are -

• 45% of 16-20 year olds would vote for a “Socialist”; 21% for a “Communist”
• One-third of Millennials Believe George W. Bush Killed More People Than Stalin
• Vast Majority Unaware of Communism’s Death Toll
• More Millennials Prefer Words of Karl Marx Over the Bible
• Bernie Sanders’ Philosophy Wins More Support Than Milton Friedman’s

HR departments are becoming a danger to tech companies, something I already experienced about 15 years ago as an executive at a high flying dotcom.  A reader sent me this piece by Helen Smith writing in PJ Media – ‘Could Social Justice Warriors Ruin Your Tech Company?’.  There we read –

Over a third of adults under 35 now live with their parents. Young men are working much less and playing video games much more as they fail to find good jobs, and the rates of marriage and family formation are way down. More people of all ages have given up trying to find a job. Meanwhile, companies report a shortage of skilled workers, and many good jobs remain unfilled for months or years. … Human Resources (HR) departments are widely disliked, and job searchers are generally advised to contact the hiring manager directly if they really want to be considered for a job. There are good reasons why HR acts like an arm of the government bureaucrats pressuring companies to hire more protected minorities and women--because that's what they are, in many companies.

Evidence that Hillary Clinton broke the law now rolls in daily in the continuing release of Clinton emails and the detailed reading of those already in the public domain.  Yesterday we discovered additional evidence directly from the FBI that ‘The FBI’s Own Investigation Summary Proves that Hillary Clinton Broke The Law’.  (H/T to reader)

Her long record of misdealings augmented now with ample evidence of criminal behavior, is an existential assault on our justice system for every day that she walks unindicted and free.  And the insult is amplified an order of magnitude when we see her flaunt Title 18 of the US Code as a candidate for the highest office in the land.

Finally for balance, we read Bret Stephens in the 18oct16 WSJ where he inveighs on ‘The Plot Against America’, a hit piece on The Donald as an anti-semite-in-waiting while being careful to state that “there is no evidence” of Mr Trump’s “personal animus toward Jews”.  Nevertheless, Stephens argues that Trump’s candidacy is “manna to every Jew-hater.”

With some trepidation I look forward to tomorrow night’s last presidential debate moderated by Fox News’ Chris Wallace.  Wallace is FN’s most liberal frontline host and joins colleagues Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier as the network’s anti-Trump triumvirate.  (More moderate to pro-Trump in FN’s frontline are Bill O’Reilly, Brit Hume, and Sean Hannity.)  I also believe Wallace to be FN’s weakest interviewer who does not effectively pursue issues, misses the obvious follow-on questions (especially with Democrats), and focuses mostly on softball sensationalism du jour.

Boardman on new taxes and “immigration” (updated 26oct16)

George Rebane

I have to take issue with Mr George Boardman’s 17oct16 Union column – ‘We don’t need no stinking taxes for libraries, pot or cigarettes’.  First let me say that Mr Boardman and I read each other’s scribblings on a regular basis, and we enjoy wide areas of agreement and differences, the latter making for interesting discussions which are always civil.  Mr Boardman is a gentleman and contributor of substantive thought in our community.

In his latest support of new taxes he somewhat gratuitously takes Republicans, “who apparently only like to spend money on law enforcement and the military”, to task.  Specifically he duns the local conservatives for not supporting Measure A, an increase in local sales tax, part of which would go for the county library, and Measure B, the high school bond proposal.  Mr Boardman’s arguments treat those issues in the classical liberal manner, painting opponents as philistines and knuckledraggers who neither understand nor support the pillars of western civilization.  (OK, I did go a little overboard here, but you’ll get my drift when you read his column.)

The part that our columnist misses is that we already collect local monies sufficient to handle funding the library and deferred maintenance of our high schools.  The problem as these pages, and most recently Mr Rich Ulery (‘When you see tax increases or bond issues, think pensions’), have pointed out is that we piss these monies away into “the bottomless pit of public employee pension costs and unfunded liabilities.”  Nevada County’s carelessly and cynically negotiated public employee pensions now have its unfunded liabilities north of $180M, which puts a substantial annual draw on county tax revenues.  This looming problem was raised to the supervisors ten years ago by SESF, at which time we were dismissed as fiscal illiterates bringing up an issue not important in the scheme of managing the public weal.

The standard response of progressives and other can-kickers to the county’s cash shortfalls has always been to ignore payment for past sins and just commit new ones through more tax increases.  In short, cut the feedback to inform and motivate responsible voting with – ‘But there is nothing else that we can do.’ - the perennial whine from the Rood Center.  Our political betters never consider that we can also do without as they explain to the electorate where the sufficient sums are going, and why they are being paid to Sacramento and not used here for libraries and schools.  Not making this the public issue it deserves to be allows more crappy agreements to be negotiated that quietly create more unfunded liabilities.  All of it underlines the fact that we citizens know better what to do with our earnings than dump good money after bad.  And don’t get us started that we needed to pay for excessive pensions in order to hire high quality talent to run the county; that dog no longer hunts.

Before ending this diatribe let me just get in one more lick.  From his “center stripe” sidebar Mr Boardman, with some self-satisfaction, observes that “ALL BUT one of America’s Nobel laureates this year are immigrants.”  This little semantic sleight of hand illustrates what I’ve been crabbing about for years.  Yes, many/most of our Nobel laureates are immigrants, notables who are not to be confused with our problem illegal aliens as Mr Boardman and his ideological ilk attempt to do at every opportunity (more here and here).  Would the revealing and truthful “ALL BUT one of America’s Nobel laureates this year are immigrants and not illegal aliens.” been as politically impactive?

[20oct16 update]  In an email Mr Ulery stated, "I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but the linked article (here) is another confirmation of the points I raised in my recent op-ed in The Union. An overwhelming percentage of tax increases statewide, purported to be for basic governmental services, are really to replace the general funds diverted to pay pension costs."

[26oct16 update]  The difference between 'illegal immigrants' and 'illegal aliens' is best illustrated in this updated graphic that has appeared several times in these pages.

 

The STS Crisis??! WTF!

George Rebane

The progressive plague is well on its way into the STEM fields, seeking to put their moralizing stamp on what our STEM workers should (and ultimately can) think about and work on.  The same progressive pinheads have finally concluded that the discoveries of science and the developments of engineering are not ‘value neutral’ as they have been since the Enlightenment.  Yes indeed, the fruits of STEM can be both sweet and bitter, and since today we only believe in the newly issued one-sided coins, the bitter side must be banished.

To accomplish this requires the application of stronger stuff than STEAM (more here).  The pinheads have established STS (science, technology, society) studies, a new field now ensconced in the ‘liberal arts havens’ on the other side of campus.  But the STS folks have already convinced university administrations (birds of a feather) that STEM workers should be required to keep one eye on some definite notions of social good as they noodle new stuff and expand existing technologies to work in new ways.

You see, the STS pinheads today demand that STEM workers should anticipate the problems that may arise at some future time from the discoveries they make today.  And doing so will enable these techies to holler a timely ‘Whoa!’ and flip a switch to enable them to forget the potentially bad discovery, concept, or idea they had.  To ensure that this will be done in STEM fields, the STS police intend to hold the techies responsible in some yet to be determined but not hard to imagine ways.  Think of the expanded tort laws and whole new areas of litigation all this will open up.  Engineers and scientists will have to take out ‘Bad Idea’ policies to protect their families and nest eggs.

To insure that the impact of STS will fall on STEM sooner than later, the pinheads now want to move their departments physically into the campus science and engineering buildings.  And soon every STEM company will have its own STS compliance department keeping tabs on and educating workers how to correctly conduct inventing and discovering so that only social good will result from such properly managed efforts.

The pinheads really believe that STS policing is possible and will have no effect on America’s innovation engine.  The more cynical and pragmatic progressives already realize that STS is another way to bring the United States to its knees, for that is the only way that we can be made to stagger willingly toward the new world order.

To show the progress made in promoting STS, please read ‘STEM Crisis? What about the STS Crisis?’ in the October 2016 issue of the formerly hallowed IEEE Spectrum (full disclosure, I am a Life Member of the IEEE).  This piece by its new and progressive editor-in-chief Susan Hassler (pictured and not a techie) ends with –

In the 20th century it was possible for scientists and engineers to plead ignorance. In many ways we really didn’t understand the impact of the inventions we made until we saw them in action. But now, deep into the 21st century, there can be no excuse for failure on the part of technologists to imagine—and take responsibility for—the futures they are creating for us all.

By her works this woman knows very little of human nature, less about the functioning of society, and nothing of the creative process in science and technology.  In sum, her piece goes beyond what the Catholic Church attempted with its Inquisition during the Renaissance.  And with that history under our belt, we categorize such attempts to implement STS as being beyond evil.

 

In the Wake of the Great Divider

George Rebane

The collectivist of whatever hue avoids reasoned debate wherever he encounters it because he quickly finds that his cherished arguments are but baseless slogans that will not even support a conversation thread let alone serve as a riposte to reason.  Moreover, he also discovers that attempts to seek refuge in history, science, or economics are denied him, for what he holds dear is simply foreign to those fields of knowledge.  His desperate search for support culminates once more in the warm embrace of familiar emotions which defiantly and reliably repel reasonable access.  All’s well that ends well.

Having experienced and lived through the last eight years, I inevitably come back to the stark reality that President Barack Hussein Obama has been our most divisive leader since Honest Abe lived in the White House.  President Lincoln was divisive because he sought to preserve the Union under conditions that half the country found unacceptable.  President Obama is divisive because he seeks to sacrifice the Union for a global governance that half the country again finds unacceptable (the other half has no clue about what’s going on).  And in that he is the Great Divider of our age.

The country’s liberals and socialists vehemently reject this notion, which in an absurd manner adds one more reason to conclude we indeed are divided – ‘I’m not anything like you.’, ‘Oh yes you are!’ is a very odd argument to buttress unity.  The fault lines run through many major institutions of governance.  For example, we hear recently that 40% of Californians believe our justice system is unjust and doesn’t work.  This is a serious division in which people of the Left and Right participate, each citing their own reasons to make their case.  At the federal level we have seen many pieces of evidence in the actions of the Department of Justice, FBI, SCOTUS, and the administrative courts that hide in the folds of large federal departments and quietly wreak unreported havoc on thousands of helpless citizens on the wrong side of political agendas.

When I raise these divisions on RR, the Left sings its usual chorus of my being a member of a small calcified contingent of conservatives who refuse to march with the times – their times.  That populism now has reared its ugly or refreshing head (depending on your perch) gives lie to how small the group of my fellow travelers really is.  Their Plan B counter is to play the race card and accuse us of injustice and prejudice against our first black president who ascended what quickly became a throne by declaring himself to be the Great Unifier.  Well, to begin with Obama’s not black, but he is a mulatto which gives me just as much reason to call him white if I’m left with just two racial boxes.  And besides, his divisiveness has nothing to do with race, but only his being raised in a communist Kinderstube which markedly colored not only his ideology but also the manner in which he does his political business.

Those who decry his identification as a divider, they all share the Left’s iconic ‘mark of the devil’ – the active suppression of opposing speech.  Since the Left does not do well in reasoned debate, the only alternatives left are to tuck tail and run or seek to silence the opposition.  In journalism the Left’s media leave entire fields of ideas, revelations, celebrations, and atrocities in silence when it does not easily fit with the socio-political narrative on which their communications are based.  This suppression takes many forms from stealing election signs on one end, to the regular attempt to pass laws and regulations that abrogate the First Amendment in making its practice a government monitored and metered privilege, and no longer a right.

In the latter case the practice by the Left is felt at the grass roots level.  All communities today have auto-anointed progressive censors who can be paired with likeminded politicians (readers to these pages are acquainted with our arbiter of goodness, truth, and beauty).  Many of these individuals seek to be the untrammeled voice of the community through their practice of what may generously be called ‘yellow journalism’.  When an opposing voice gains traction, they immediately accuse it of dangerously rending the community, and argue not for its defeat in a competition of ideas, but simply its silence and banishment from the public forum. Their kind will find ready employment in the promised new ‘fundamentally transformed’ world.

In the meantime, let’s pay attention to how the current regime seeks to hand the baton to its rightful successor, Crown Princess Hillary who is definitely cut from the same cloth as demonstrated by her record and the daily outpouring of her revealing emails.

[Addendum]  So what to do? as we have been discussing here for some time now while watching the country roil as Americans find more reasons to identify themselves with different factions holding different values and views for our common future.  My own tepid response has been to lean toward Trump for reasons primarily prophylactic as these pages have witnessed over the past months.

Yesterday I read a well-argued piece by Dr David Gelernter, prominent system scientist and Yale professor, who also counseled a vote for Trump.  His ‘Trump and the Emasculated Voter’ resonated with me, perhaps, because he is a kindred spirit (in technology and ideology), speaks my language, and echoes my arguments.  His piece is definitely worth a read.  And for those who share such a worldview of today’s goings on and are comfortable with a bit of decision formalism, it is not hard to see oneself as a resident in the basket of irredeemable deplorables this coming November. 

Our Pernicious Progressive Press

George Rebane

‘The Press Buries Clinton’s Sins’ writes WSJ’s Kim Strassel as she outlines the overwhelmingly one-sided reporting “as reporters focus on Trump, the miss new details on Clinton’s rotten record.”  By “miss” she means pernicious failure to report the daily mounting evidence that defines the public record of Hillary’s actions, actions which for others have brought criminal prosecutions and jail time.  In its vigorous promotion of Hillary campaign, the electorate receives a completely one-sided picture of the candidates.  The Fourth Estate today functions as a proxy Fifth Column for Team Clinton.

The press does similar dirty work when it comes to reporting on its claim of calamitous ‘climate change’.  Dr Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus exposes just one of the many facets of yellow journalism run rampant to promote its progressive political agenda.  In his recent article – ‘About Those Non-Disappearing Pacific Islands’ – he highlights the actual data on Pacific Island land areas during the last half century and examines how the hysteria is being promoted and taken advantage of in the US trust territory of the Marshall Islands which have been featured in media coverage of climate change.  Lomborg, in a peer reviewed paper, reveals that “residents are leavine the Marshall Islands, but not because of climate change.  Hype and exaggeration serve no one.”  About the dynamics of the Pacific islands’ land area, in the aggregate their land areas have remained unchanged or have increased.  You won’t read any of that in what amounts to progressive pulp fiction.

Examples such as these abound, but you get the idea.

Minorities – “Unaware and Compliant” Voters

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 12 October 2016.]

The bottom line is that blacks and other minorities have not made much progress for their unstinting and unexamined loyalty to Democratic politicians and policies.  And as recently discovered Clinton emails reveal, there is an ongoing effort to induce them to become more “unaware and compliant”.  This would make it easier to again swallow the same promises which have been made to them over the last half century. (more here)

I join the black academics and writers who wonder why the nation’s African-American community once more prepares to vote wholesale for the same progressive Democrats while expecting a different outcome.  This in light of the Democrats’ obviously failed social programs in public education, income, and jobs which they celebrate and promise to continue.  And for the minorities, competition for a bigger piece of the pie will become even fiercer as Hillary gears up her now revealed globalist plans.

Sandbox - 10oct16

[A sign of the times.  The election is dominating commenters' bandwidth to the extent that the last (1oct16) sandbox garnered only 45 comments.  The present one is opened with fresh sand just to make available a more recent repository to readers who may wish to share a thought not connected to the iceberg that our ship of state will collide with on 8 November 2016.  gjr]

‘Immigration in 1958 vs. 2016’

[Under the same title this piece by Ms Annamaria Sauer was published in the 8oct16 edition of The Union.  Ms Sauer emailed the article and at her request it is happily posted here as received.  The Sauers are friends, and as an ethnic Estonian I share an ancient relationship with Annamaria the ethnic Hungarian for we are both Finno-Ugrics (more here).  Our common ancestors migrated to eastern Europe from northern China and Mongolia more than 10,000 years ago.  I share much of Annamaria’s pre- and post-immigration experiences which are described in a series of autobiographical sketches found in the My Story category of RR, and best read by posted date.  gjr]

Annamaria Sauer

I was born in 1943 in Budapest Hungary during WWII. Due to new US immigration laws I did not inherit my mother's US citizenship although she was born in Chicago Ill.

Post war Hungary was ravaged by war. Life was hard. I grew up during the darkest, most brutal days of the Soviet socialist oppression led by a Moscow-trained communist regime. All gun ownership became illegal. Private property ceased to exist. People deemed class enemies were deported from their homes, without notice or simply disappeared. Factories, farms, and government was in the hands of inexperienced, incompetent bureaucrats, who were good party members. There were critical housing shortages. Endless lines for the most important food necessities and essentials like toilet paper were the norm. Coal and wood for heating were hard to come by. When available we were limited to one cube of butter, small rations of flour, sugar, and one or two eggs at a time.

In the fall of 1956 there was something in the air. Revolution! On the afternoon ofOctober 23 as our last class was dismissed early, we heard whispers about demonstrations by students in the city. My friends and I decided to join them in the morning.

Dump Trump and Pillory Hillary – 8oct16 (updated 12oct16)

George Rebane

Who among us could stand to have their each and every private utterance displayed on a klieg lit national billboard?  Donald Trump’s most recently revealed transgression is causing an affected coast-to-coast hyperventilation at an intensity that for some more sensitive souls may result in a medical problem.  Upon close inspection there is nothing in the Trump/Bush ‘tape’ that is untoward or unusual about what two heterosexual men may banter about the opposite sex in their private moments – the so-called locker room conversation.  Its extension beyond that illuminates the gender hypocrisy that now runs rampant in the land.

Scattershots – 5oct16 (updated 8oct16)

George Rebane

ALL authorizations of government actions not related to national security shall be identified to the specific person responsible, duly recorded and archived citing applicable authority, and subsequently made available to the public upon legitimate inquiry.  ALL such government actions whose authorizations turn out anonymous shall immediately be deemed illegal on their face, and those affected will have just cause to seek redress, including rapid injunctive relief, through the courts.  Proposed constitutional amendment from Rebane Doctrine.

“Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for US intelligence” reports Reuters (here).  Already an internet company on its last legs, Yahoo decided to get in the bag with the fed intelligence agencies and write a program that scans customer emails in real time looking for keywords and phrases prescribed by the agencies.  They appear to be the first to cave after Apple made its refusal to do so very public last year.  As readers here know, if it’s on the internet it is there for all to see and forever. (H/Ts to correspondent and also commenter in last sandbox.)

Obamacare, “the craziest thing in the world” is now the public assessment of Sweet William.  The cynically named Affordable Care Act has been a failure from the gitgo with mounting outrages reported monthly for the last six years, and even more being kept hidden by the feds and their lamestream lackeys.  Even Democrats are now abandoning this festering pile of garbage.  Nevertheless, the intellectual deficits of our electorate are still highlighted by Hillary’s poll numbers as she continues to laud and take credit for Obama regime policies while out of the other side of her mouth she promises an endless number of fixes that are testimonials to eight years of failure in EVERY aspect of governance.

The Pence/Kaine debate sure showed another glaring difference in this November’s choices.  Kaine, who to me looks and talks like an amalgam of a shyster lawyer and a used car salesman, couldn’t keep his mouth shut during Mike Pence’s turns to answer – Kaine interrupted Pence over 70 times.  His own apologetics for the new policies of HillaryCare (not to be confused with the failed attempt in the 90s) illustrated the low grade ore that we can expect at best if Mrs Clinton wins.  My proposal for all future debates is to seat both candidates in soundproof glass ‘isolation booths’.  The moderator would have the ability to switch on/off the mike in either booth.  This would let a more civilized debate be delivered even by weak moderators like last night’s Elaine Quijano of CBS News who could not control the loudmouthed lout Kaine.  The debate continued to highlight the Left's determined effort to stifle the speech of their opponents.

[6oct16 update] Yesterday the Cato Institute released its 13^th biennial comprehensive assessment of state governors – ‘Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors – 2016’ - which “uses statistical data to grade the governors on their taxing and spending records—governors who have cut taxes and spending the most receive the highest grades, while those who have increased taxes and spending the most receive the lowest grades. … Five governors were awarded an “A” on this report: Paul LePage of Maine, Pat McCrory of North Carolina, Rick Scott of Florida, Doug Ducey of Arizona, and Mike Pence of Indiana. Ten governors were awarded an “F”: Robert Bentley of Alabama, Peter Shumlin of Vermont, Jerry Brown of California, David Ige of Hawaii, Dan Malloy of Connecticut, Dennis Daugaard of South Dakota, Brian Sandoval of Nevada, Kate Brown of Oregon, Jay Inslee of Washington, and Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania.”

As expected, California occupies its usual place in the bottom of the barrel when it comes to benefiting its citizens.  NPR reported this morning that Moonbeam intends to yet again increase taxes on the "rich" to pay for the state's eternal shortfalls in education.  Nevada County's Measure B school bond issue brings it all home.

[7oct16 update]  The spiraling Insanity of liberalism.  Football coach fired for making a repeat offender bully take a couple of laps.  Reason?  He wasn’t trained to specifically handle bullying situations according to new state norms, therefore he should have let it pass again with an admonishment.  The long past tipping point is fast disappearing in the rear view mirror.  (more here)

[8oct16 update]  Today The Union reports that the musical chairs for the principal's job at Nevada Union HS continues.  This reminds us that a major scourge of progressivism's one-size fits all rules of political correctness is that it discourages good creative and competent leadership.  No capable person with alternatives wants to be saddled with a job that requires hewing to a slavish set of constraints in what can and should be done that are mandated from above.  Such a policy, now practiced across the land, leaves only the mediocre and meek dolts and grinders to manage our public institutions.  This is one of the many diseases of collectivism that brought down the USSR, and today continues to make life miserable in socialist/communist countries.  Sadly, many of these nations are held up to our youth as role models for a more perfect United States.

 

Dump Trump and Pillory Hillary – 3oct16 (updated 6oct16)

George Rebane

Trump is having trouble with his feet again.  He’s either shooting at them or sticking them in his mouth.  This gives a lot of ammo to the critics who say that it doesn’t matter with how many smart people President Trump will surround himself, because he simply won’t listen to them.  In the meantime News Corp (owner of WSJ and Fox) has really turned out to be the fifth column for Hillary.  The number of regularly published anti-Trump columns and commentaries in the WSJ is more than remarkable, and Fox News is not doing The Donald any favors with lightly camouflaged liberals like Chris Wallace, the drivel delving host of their Sunday flagship.  Even Bret Baier can’t get his daily Special Report to report on anything special, as he continues to faithfully follow the topics agenda set by the lamestream media.

The real news is that Trump continues to hang in there in the polls despite the most visceral and vicious opposition from literally all quarters save main street.  And that in the face of the most forgiving and forgetting establishment organs that are now gathering en masse to anoint and crown Queen Hillary, the most crooked and corrupt candidate presented to the American electorate since Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall fame.

[6oct16 update]  Piling on to my thesis about Fox News and News Corp, we now hear of an open break between Fox's Megyn Kelly and The Donald.  Ms Kelly has in recent weeks become so fairly unbalanced that she now does a creditable imitation of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow when interviewing any member or supporter of Team Trump.  Her latest is a blast at colleague Hannity on whose program Trump appears regularly while refusing to be assaulted on Kelly's show.

Sandbox - 1oct16

[Apologies again for delaying fresh sand for conversations such as those that respond to our perennial progressive critic, Mr Steven Frisch of the Sierra Business Council.  Please reserve our 'Dump Trump and Pillory Hillary' editions for election related comments and commentaries.  gjr]