Rebane's Ruminations

Ruminations – 29jun17 (updated 3jul17)

George Rebane

Do not confuse allegations with evidence.

It appears that most RR commenters are practiced psychologists who not only can ascertain, but overwhelmingly enjoy providing free diagnoses of other commenters’ cognitive and character disorders that give rise to their erroneous assertions and assessments.  And many do this rather than dissect and display the errors in the others’ delivered rhetoric.  Surely our readers are blessed.

Seattle’s 2014 minimum wage law is a shot in the shorts for the city’s poorest workers.  As predicted here and elsewhere, a new study on its impact concludes “the $13 (headed for $15) wage is a killer for lowest-paid workers”.  Hours worked have decreased by 9%; average loss per low-paid employee is $125 a month.  And the damage is even worse when disqualification for welfare benefits are factored in.  Another benefit from the progressive mind.  (more here)

NPR reported this morning that Sacramento is going to raise the state’s earned income tax credits (EITC) qualification for employees affected by the increase in the state’s minimum wage laws.  This so no one will be cheated out of their entitlement with their pay increases.  As our Franchise Tax Board’s loopy logic (here) informs – even “if you do not owe taxes, Cal EITC will provide you with a tax refund (sic??!!) when you file your return.” And here all along we thought that the higher minimum wage was supposed to help lift people out of the depths of dole.  Instead, the dole is now going to keep pace to make sure that the votes stay bought and paid for.

[30jun17 update] Google (now Alphabet), a private company and not a public utility, was fined $2.71B by the EU for acting in its own best interests when delivering search results.  The judgment also forces Google to present results which are less relevant to the user.  Socialism running amok.  (more here and here)

The London apartment fire was manufactured by the government concludes an investigation into the tragedy that killed 80 and injured hundreds.  Turns out the agency procuring the government housing forced the building contractor to cut costs on the building’s “cladding” by using a cheap product containing a highly flammable plastic.  The same mentality has been in place for years prescribing permitted therapeutic procedures in the country’s National Healthcare System which quietly contributes to thousands of premature deaths.  And we are in the throes of fighting such a single payer system taking root in America.

Trump’s tweets continue to outrage progressives and flummox Republicans as the president lashes back at historically unique attacks by the Left against his physiognomy, mental health, character, business interests, family, … .  The country’s leftwing media manufactured mood is sufficiently malleable to generate the desired polling results which are then paraded in the news cycles that completely ignore the important stuff going on in Washington.  We may be on the eve of an east Asian war involving nuclear North Korea.  The discussions of this with visiting President Moon of South Korea was totally overlooked by the manic media in the Rose Garden news conference, as the only topic of interest to the ‘journalists’ was President Trump’s tweet re a female MSNBC hostess who has been particularly insulting in her ongoing descriptions of the president.    

[1jul17 update]  It now turns out that voter fraud is real and has been more widespread than expected.  So imply Democrat attorneys general of more than 17 states who refuse to turn over their states’ public domain voter rolls to the Pence Commission assembled to study the actual data from the states and publish their findings.  The reason that these Democrats don’t want this data analyzed is that it would “legitimize” the decades long charge that the Left has been the vehemently denied purveyor, organizer, and defender of voter fraud.  You literally can’t make this stuff up.  It is in the Democrats' interest to continue with elections where dead people, non-citizens, out-of-state residents, … continue to vote early and often.  RR readers are already debating this in the most recent 'Sandbox – 27jun17'.  (more here)

[3jul17 update]  You wanna see how Mr Jeff Kotowski, a local leftwing pinhead, demonstrates that allegations constitute prosecutable evidence?  Then read his ‘Impeach Trump Immediately’ in the 3jul17 Union.

 

Just a couple of burrs

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 28 June 2017.]

Today Washington is buzzing with more fake news, scandals, investigations, and legislative brouhahas than people can remember.  This week, instead of delivering one of my usual exhaustively researched and well-thought-out four minute commentaries, I am going cover just a couple of the burrs that irritate under our communal blanket.

Small towns and counties educate their kids who then can’t wait to leave for schools and jobs elsewhere, never to return.  Now that has been happening for at least the last hundred years, or as the WW1 song says, ‘How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?’  Nevada County is a poster child for such out-migration of our young.  Hereabouts we have little drawing power left for our young people once they’ve gone to college elsewhere, save perhaps fond memories of their youth.  But those memories don’t put food on the table, and most certainly are not enough for choosing to raise a family here.

As covered in recent studies and news reports, this phenomenon is national in scope where the young leave rural counties and small towns for bigger cities.  Understandably, this process grows the economic inequalities that everyone is concerned about.  And here in our neck of the woods we sustain our twenty-year stagnation by doubling down on every anti-development regulation that reaches us from state and federal bureaucrats.  What’s worse, when the educated young don’t return, local businesses also suffer because they have no replacements for those who quit and retire.  The Wall Street Journal recently put some numbers together on rural youth chasing big city dreams, and they don’t look good for small communities. (more here)

In Nevada County, our progressives have created a politically correct quagmire to which people with dreams for something better will not risk coming off the beaten path and battle ‘city hall’ every step of the way to start a new enterprise, build a low-cost house, or even look for a job.  And these same voices continue to dun our mostly conservative retirees, the only remaining residents who import cash that is spent locally to keep alive the stores, shops, restaurants, and cultural offerings left in our community.  It is somehow their fault that businesses don’t locate here, followed by young families attracted by career building jobs.

On the national healthcare debate, we have a similarly massive blind spot which the national media purposely overlooks.  Obamacare has literally failed to deliver on all of its promised benefits and features, and even a growing cadre of Democrats now admits that it is crashing around us as we speak.  One of its humongous failures is Medicaid, the uncapped cancer that is destroying the fiscal underpinnings of every state government charged with its delivery.  Medicaid is an endemic fiscal disease that is well on its way to bankrupting the country.  The entitlement is totally unsustainable in every state that administers it.  You know something is unsustainable when year after year it eats up an ever-larger share of available resources required to maintain it, with no end to its appetite in sight. (more here)

The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity writes, “In nearly every state, Medicaid is either the largest or second-largest budget line, as well as the fastest-growing category. Every year state lawmakers, trying to carry Medicaid’s heavy burden, are forced to make difficult choices about what else to cut: education, roads, public safety.”  When discussing the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, the progressive media mention nary a word of the existential failure of the current healthcare program.  Instead they scream bloody murder about any plan that seeks to cap the cost of Medicaid as if the now rogue entitlement could go on forever, were it only left alone.  The opponents of any prudent measures to limit Medicaid remind me of passengers on the Titanic who refuse to get into a lifeboat because its seats may be uncomfortable.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations 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.

Sandbox - 27jun17

[Fresh sand for the free for all.  Anyone want to review the latest clinical evidence that liberals/progressives process critical thought with different parts of the brain than do conservatives/libertarians?  gjr]

On Responding to Russia

George Rebane

One would think that the record of these pages, which includes a considerable revelation of my background, would have cleared up any questions of how I view America’s relationship with and policy toward Russia – apparently not.  So let me attempt to spell it out.  For those expecting a simple view about Russia with a three-word policy epilogue, the sequel will disappoint, and to those I recommend other reading materials.

Russia is a thugocracy of about 145 million mostly slavic souls that is sovereign over a 6,590,000 square mile resource rich patch of earth that covers two continents.  It is a nuclear power with totally undefendable borders that has historically counted on its land area and winters to defeat its enemies.  Since these barriers will no longer serve in modern times, it has resorted to MAD as its defense against military invasion by a peer nuclear power.  This policy supports the proposition that nuclear weapons have saved hundreds of millions of lives since their invention and demonstrated use.  Russia today projects power by military bluff of small police actions – e.g. Georgia – but mostly through political skill – e.g. witness its dealings with the EU and Obama - and now technology based subterfuge.

As a thugocracy, the system of Russian governance is marginally stable as a standoff between Putin and his praetorian guard against oligarchs who generate wealth primarily through extractive enterprises which they can barely finance given the rate at which they export cash to more secure repositories across the world.  What is left over from such corruption (of which Team Putin is a party) makes up what may be called state revenues.  In short, Russia’s economy is in tatters which brings in the third leg of instability, namely its demography dominated by an aging population whose contingent of young bear children at 1.3 per fecund woman (2.1 is the accepted replacement rate).

To extend its life as a sovereign nation-state, Russia must conquer its more productive neighbors or morph into a law-abiding capitalistic state.  Socialism was tried, it didn’t work then, and what’s left of it now doesn’t work either.  Russia itself is still composed of many ethnic peoples with their own cultures who desire their own place in the sun that they lost after the Muscovy Russians started expanding in the 14^th century with the decline of the Mongols.  If today’s ‘greater Russia’ does not provide its citizens scattered over its large land area with a working economy that gives promise for future generations, then it will balkanize into political entities that will look much as they did in the 1300s.

The policy of the United States leading the western countries should be to bring an end to Russia’s thugocracy through a ‘soft landing’ similar to that which happened in 1991.  This will require 1) judicious containment by our demonstrated willingness to use military force to stop Russia’s current ‘outreach’ efforts, and 2) vigorous meddling in Russia’s internal affairs to support the oligarchs’ desire (efforts?) to topple Putin by assuring the new Russian democracy legitimate standing in the community of nations when they demonstrate themselves to be nation of laws.  A sweetener could be our assurance to the oligarchs to side with Russia in its defense of eastern Siberia (where a lot of oligarchs have their extractive industries) against the inevitable attempt by China to extend its borders northward to the Arctic Ocean.

So until Russia is governed by laws, not men (which I doubt under Putin), the US has to contain and compromise the thugocracy until one of the above scenarios plays out without provoking Putin to destabilize the world with his nukes.  This may involve coordinating with the Russian military to allow his and his family’s extraction to a life of opulent exile.  The preceding may be considered part and parcel of Rebane Doctrine as memorialized in these pages.

I hope that our left-leaning readers can understand the above response as to whether or not I “run with the crowd” of RR readers who show little concern for Russia’s now demonstrated inability to either change or influence any American votes.  In the meantime, we should do all possible to minimize their meddling in our affairs and maximize our ability to meddle in theirs.  Stopping criminal leftwing leakers in our security services would be a good place to start.

Great Divide – 25jun17 Update

George Rebane

Updating the recent progress report (here), Arcadia is the working name for a new confederation to be formed by the secessions of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.  Trump’s election has people now redoubled making plans for the reformation of the United States into a continent of seceded states and re-constituted regions to form a new, perhaps confederated, union of more like-minded political units.  Where before the country’s Left considered any talk of the Great Divide to be radical, insane, or even treasonous, today that mood has changed as California leads in its desire to become an independent sovereign nation-state of like-minded leftwingers.  Suddenly the notion of a North (aka State of Jefferson) and South California don’t seem so foreign any more.

As described here over the years, the Great Divide is a name that covers all the initiatives, organizations, and perhaps even conspiracies directed toward a new political map of North America consisting of parts that will have forsaken our Constitution, the historical United States, and the legacy of our Founders.  The leader of the Arcadia faction is New Hampshire that is reported beginning to ‘fight for its independence.’  (more here) 

In the 24jun17 Union Manny Montes of Auburn writes about the Left’s ongoing effort to have America accept that the Constitution does not mean what it says, but instead is a ‘living document’ to be interpreted in new ad hoc ways to reflect the times.  There is no need to amend it as has been the past practice which the Founders anticipated.  All we need do is just redefine the meaning of the original words as required by this or that new law, and then have an appropriate left-leaning court to bless the new interpretation, and voila, the Constitution lives!  The result of such proceedings means that the Constitution will no longer have the unifying power that it has had for over 200 years to hold our nation together and strong.  The intent of the Left is to make our Constitution like those of those other nations that rewrite theirs every ten years or so to mark the end of one period of uncertainty, division, and strife, and the start of the next.  Mr Montes commentary can be found here.

Progressives have held up Canada as a paragon of how the United States should become so that it would become a more inclusive, sharing, and socially just state.  This week Canada took its next big step into the future by criminalizing wrong speech.  “Canada passed a law Thursday making it illegal to use the wrong gender pronouns. Critics say that Canadians who do not subscribe to progressive gender theory could be accused of hate crimes, jailed, fined, and made to take anti-bias training. …Canada’s Senate passed Bill C-16, which puts “gender identity” and “gender expression” into both the country’s Human Rights Code, as well as the hate crime category of its Criminal Code by a vote of 67-11,”  Our progressives look with envy at what their northern neighbors have achieved that stands in such contrast with their own thwarted attempts to reinterpret the First Amendment.  But they will not give up and promise us down here that it’s a comin’.  (more here)

Democrats or Russians – which to fear most? (updated 25jun17)

George Rebane

In the comment stream of a recent post ‘Elections or Polls – take your pick’, a reader posited the thesis that Democrats were a greater danger to the American Republic than is Russia.  This launched a debate thread in which the left-leaning commenters saw those supporting the thesis to range from the ignorant to the traitorous. (The RR reader and commenter is former county supervisor and local blogger Mr Todd Juvinall, who has also expanded on this topic here.)

I and most right-leaning readers understand the argument to be a restatement of the classic warning uttered by countless historians and observers of the American experiment who concluded that America by its size, resources, location, and enlightened governance will not be toppled by foreign invasion, but instead, if it is to fall, it will fall because of an internal systemic fault.  Here is a list of some such quotes which should convince even the most lightly educated that this thesis is fully matured in America’s ongoing dialogue and debate about how we should rule ourselves.

The most recent advances from the Left to ‘fundamentally transform’ America started under FDR during his obvious and unabashed flirtation with and introduction to socialism in the 1930s.  The sought for transformation really got its legs under Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, and has made steady gains for socialism over the last half century.  These gains have been successfully camouflaged by our public school system, the co-opting of which was an early victory for the country’s progressives.  (The objective of the school system has been to produce an ignorant and politically compliant electorate and that, for all intents and purposes, has today been achieved.)  And most recently the Left’s progress toward their objective is such that candidate Barack Obama could publicly proclaim that he and a Democratic Congress would finally make the federal government’s overt goal to “fundamentally transform America.”  The historical record of his administration puts paid on the thesis of from whence the greatest danger lies to a continuance of our constitutional democratic republic.  (See also Agenda21)

As a comporting sideline, it should be noted that not only American thinkers, but also foreign leaders and students of America agree with this thesis.  Regarding modern Russia and its massively armed progenitor USSR, both Stalin and Khrushchev were among the prominent world leaders to concur with the observation that the United States would fall from within, and fall into the lap of socialism cum communism.  From what we have seen happening around us and in our daily lives during the recent decades, their predictions appear more prescient by the day.  The arrival of our most ignorant generation – the millennials – has made me conclude that we are beyond the tipping point and, at a minimum, headed for the Great Divide (q.v.).

So yes, when comparing the established protocols and practices of the Democratic Party and Putin’s Russia, it is not rocket science to conclude that today’s Democrats are a greater danger to the maintenance of a constitutional America than any other political force on this earth.  However, anyone agreeing with this thesis/assessment does not automatically declare himself to be a Russia ‘cuddler’ or colluder.   Drawing and advancing such conclusions is at best another example of the leftwing’s lame logic.  Nevertheless, with the lightly educated such accusations do get traction, but that is another issue we have covered and will again engage in these pages.

[25jun17 update] “A Washington Post report revealed Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself ordered Russian operatives to interfere in the U.S. presidential election between then-candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.”  This is a typical report appearing in the media re the ongoing Russian Influence Imbroglio (RII).  The statement communicates the subtle message that the report was true, when in fact no such assessment could be made since no substantive basis/background was included in the WaPo piece.  It was simply yet another unfounded allegation at best based on an illegal leak from a supposedly CIA source that is totally unverifiable.  (here is access to the entire RII according to WaPo)

To the unwary, the use of ‘revealed’ in the above statement is either careless or pernicious journalism.  When one states that something was revealed, the unmistakable implication of the verb usage is that something real was made known which formerly was hidden or not known to the target audience – but in any case, that something is true and factual.  There is no necessity, nor is it even possible, to ‘reveal’ known untruths or things that are not verified.  In short, reveal has a unique and powerful meaning to English speakers in the realm of communications.  An honest and correct wording of the opening statement would have read, ‘Washington Post reported Friday that …’.  But that factual statement falls flat, and communicates none of the desired subterfuge about the RII that is on WaPo’s political agenda as a leftwing outlet.  Indeed, when you own the words.  (more here)

For completeness we note that to cast doubt on the verity of a report or assertion, the useful term of art that serves is ‘claim’, as in ‘The senator claimed that he was at home that night’, or ‘The motorist claimed he was within the speed limit’.  No matter how true a stated assertion may in fact be, by presenting it as ‘claimed’ immediately injects doubt in the mind of the target audience, especially if they are judged to have little or no knowledge of the matter.

SummerFest2017

George Rebane

This year the annual Music in the Mountains SummerFest returns to the Nevada County fairgrounds.  It features the six concerts shown below assembled by MIM Artistic Director Peter Nowlen and Executive Director Mieko Hatano.  Except for the 25jun17 chamber music concert at St Joseph’s, the remainder will be performed out of doors.  Four of them on the Great Lawn of our beautiful fairgrounds.  Bring your lawn chairs and picnic stuff, come early, and enjoy good food and friends followed by beautiful music under the stars.

The variety of offerings should have something for everyone.  I am especially looking forward to ‘The Songs of Leonard Cohen’ produced by our very own Paul Emery.  Also keeping us enthralled will be the Russian Spectacular featuring virtuoso Natsuki Fukasawa (whom RR readers met here) on the piano in ‘Rocky’s Big #2’.  The series ends with our traditional 3^rd of July Patriotic Pops concert featuring the music we all traditionally enjoy on our Independence Day that will start off with the now obligatory warbird formation flyover.  More info on the MIM website here.

Elections or Polls – take your pick

George Rebane

The Left predicted that yesterday's elections would be a referendum on Trump - well, it turns out they were right.

Yesterday was a disaster for the Democrats, and today everyone from their media mentors to their grassroots minions are scrambling to put enough lipstick on last night’s election results to distract the distractable.  CNN’s Eric Bradner writes, “Democrats tried an inoffensive moderate message in Georgia.  They ran a banjo-strumming populist in Montana.  They called in the cavalry in South Carolina and tried to catch their foe sleeping through a long-shot in Kansas.  None of it worked. … Now party officials, strategists and candidates are pondering what went wrong – how can they turn it around in time for the 2018 midterm elections.  … Seth Moulton (D, MA) tweeted ‘… better be a wake-up call for Democrats.’" (more here)

As another example of the reliability of political polling, the Georgia race was supposed to be a neck-to-neck race into which Dems poured tens of millions of out-of-state money to finally derail the Trump train.  Instead, Republican Karen Handel walked away from her Democrat challenger Jon Ossof with an almost six-point lead – a landslide in any political contest.  But that makes no never mind to those policy-poor liberals who, for over a year now, have put their faith in polls while voters continue to pay no attention to these futile exercises in propagandized political prognostication.

Locally we see this pattern replicated by progressives who have long since abandoned embarrassment as the usual response to being so consistently wrong for so long with ceaseless citing of their favorite poll results – ‘Never mind the election results, keep looking at how much Trump’s approval rating dropped since last week.’

These desperate loyalists have now surpassed their calamitous climate change comrades, some of whom are starting to admit in the media that their temperature predictions are in gross error and that we really have no reliable way to tell whether preventable manmade global warming is really occurring.  Scientists sensing a funding sea change under Trump are coming out of the woodwork to reveal that the General Circulation Models IPCC used for their catastrophe calculations are terribly flawed.  (Something that the rest of us familiar with the technology have known for years.)

So what to do?  Well, the Russia affair still provides some traction, so let's go back to Allegation Alley and see whom we can mug next.

Sandbox - 20jun17

[OK boys and girls, here's your Happy Summer Solstice sandbox, all ready to receive another tranche of exhilarating polling reports with follow on debates guaranteed to boost sales of all caffeine-related products.  However, those wishing to consider other topics may gain inspiration from the winning entry in a Dutch artwork contest depicting Europe’s multi-culturalism problems that is making the rounds.  My only criticism of it is that there is way too much rope in the coil.  gjr]

Ruminations – 16jun17 (updated 19jun17)

George Rebane

Clarification of the 1^st Amendment kudos to Union publisher Don Rogers for explaining again that the ‘free speech’ amendment applies ONLY to what our government cannot do to limit communications, no matter how wise, dumb, outrageous, … the message may be.  Private parties that control/own media and entertainment outlets are free to limit any and all speech that goes over such outlets, and that includes even the regulated ones.  Our leftwing neighbors, of course, neither understand nor tolerate the exercise of any such rights that conflict with their ideas.  You should read Mr Rogers’ ‘Fictions of Free Speech’, especially if you are one of those who really knows what people should be able to see, hear, and read.

Safe Spaces, Federalism, Great Divide – A Progress Report

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 14 June 2017.]

With all the anti-Trump furor going on, there is a more important national pot that is slowly coming to a boil, and it brings together a number of issues and recent happenings ranging from safe spaces, free speech, re-segregation, federalism, states’ rights, and even secession under the aegis of our ongoing Great Divide.

Over the past century the received wisdom from the Left has been that separation, discrimination and the desire for cultural cohesion are evil throwbacks to more primitive and less tolerant times.  All that is now changing as the Left’s intellectual champions have started re-segregating us along multiple lines that include culture, ideology, religion, ethnicity, and even race.

Sandbox – 14jun17

[Lots of stuff happening – members of Congress shot on baseball diamond, public housing fire in London, old basketball player negotiating with young idiot in NK, Dylan accused of plagiarism, … .  What’s the world coming to, or is it already there?  gjr]

Scattershots – 12jun17 (updated 13jun17)

George Rebane

Investigations will cease only after all allegations have been proven – Dictum from The Swamp

The ‘Robot-Human Alliance’ is a hopeful promotion by Dr Kenneth Goldberg, a UC Berkeley engineering professor (here).  He sees little to worry about human job markets with the advance of ever more intelligent machines, and bases his sanguinity on discovering that humans and AI machines can still do useful work together, and that AI tools allow some people of more modest skills to get gainful employment.  He feels that this is such a significant discovery that it deserves a most inappropriate name with an extremely lame definition – “Multiplicity: diverse groups of people and machines working together to solve problems.”  It turns out that early 19^th century threshing machines also supported multiplicity.  Professor Goldberg’s problem seems to be one of a limited horizon.  Yes, humans and smart machines will be able to work together; and yes, AI based machines can act as a workplace prosthetic for the inadequately skilled, but all this describes is a temporary palliative for the pre-Singularity years in which we find ourselves.  With each passing month AIs are able to permanently displace more and more workers, and this replacement pace is increasing.  Only government’s regulatory intercession can slow it down using the fiat of the gun.  The important problem to solve today is how we will manage a guaranteed national income for the systemically (read terminally) unemployed.  The ongoing impact of AI on the workforce is longstanding theme in these pages - see Singularity Signposts.

The Beveridge Curve is the anointed name of a plot of unemployment rate vs job openings rate (see nearby graphic from the 12jun17 WSJ).  The curve abets the previous reflection on Goldberg’s multiplicity. This presents a “dissonant reading (that) points to an increasing mismatch between workers’ skills and the roles employers are seeking to fill.”  Increasing mismatch indeed, and we ain’t seen nothing yet.  (more here)  A more detailed discussion of this mismatch problem was presented in these pages here.

George Boardman’s column in today’s (12jun17) Union gives a person pause.  In his ‘It’s time to start affirmative action program for campus conservatives’ the man does a solid recounting of liberal bias and suppression of free speech in today’s academe, and goes on to recommend positive measures to correct the situation and expose the resident snowflakes to some heat from opposing ideas (here).  Mr Boardman’s contribution does much to regain the tilt of his perch as that of a mid-roader IMHO – in recent months it had gone a bit wopperjob toward port.  Given his words today, I am more interested than ever in learning what are the tenets of his assuredly complex credo.  As readers are aware, no one left of the conservetarians here have deigned to reveal any of their core beliefs in a clear list of tenets that define their ideological ontology.  (Mine is found in the upper right panel.)

[13jun17 update]  The Union’s columnist and mistress of trivia, Ms Hilary Hodge, makes a mighty attempt to elucidate ‘Housing in Nevada County’ in today’s (13jun17) paper.  But her attempt goes awry immediately after she once more establishes the nature of her sexuality for the chance new reader.  In lieu of serious editorial content, that seems to be the lady’s never-ending message.  (Full reciprocal disclosure, I am a lifelong heterosexual.)  Her column’s preamble forewarns us that this is but “the first part in a three-part series looking at housing in Nevada County.”  Unfortunately, after sliding in the now obligatory “my friend and eventual wife”, the sequel rambles off into the underbrush of her arcane anecdotal archives to retrieve some memories of their moving to Nevada County, snippets (or perhaps the entire opus?) of her vitae, and the subsequently understandable travails of finding employment here.  The patient reader departs with the hope that she still has two more chances to at least get a base hit on housing.  Nevertheless, given the other more appropriate sections of the newspaper, the question still ignored by The Union’s management - ‘Is our op-ed page really that desperate for content?’ 

As a relevant afterthought, for substance compare a Hilary Hodge column to The Union's other prominent women columnists Mses Lynn Wenzel and Terry McLaughlin.

TRUTH WILL OUT

[This commentary was submitted by Mr Norm Sauer - regular byline contributor, columnist, and member of the The Union's editorial board - to be published on RR concurrently with its appearance (here) in today's 10jun17 edition of the newspaper.  As always, it is posted as received.  gjr]

Norm Sauer

One doesn’t have to look too hard to know there is a mainstream media bias to destroy the Trump administration.  So far, the media’s desired outcome of impeachment continues blindly in search of a justification. 

The media’s incessant drumming of collusion based on anonymous sources has 59% of Democrats believing Russia hacked the November vote to give Trump the election according to an Economist/YouGov poll conducted May 20-23.

The media’s propaganda may also be responsible for the murderous rage and irrationality demonstrated by some on the Left against President Trump.  An example is this week’s viral photograph of Kathy Griffin holding up a bloodied decapitated head of President Trump, and Portland mayor cancelling a pro-Trump rally because a murderous knife attacker supported Bernie.

For going on a year investigations by our intelligence agencies and oversight by Congressional committees have found no evidence of Russian collusion.  This lack of evidence of collusion has been publicly stated by Senator Feinstein (D Cal.) (twice), former Obama CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and CIA chief Mike Morrell, as well as House Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff (D Cal.).

To those of you not suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, I suggest you look at and compare the past actions of Democrats in their relations with the Russians.  Consider:

--Trump never delivered a “Reset” button to the Russians, Hillary Clinton did.

--Trump was never a business partner who received $35 million dollars from the Russiana investment fund nicknamed “Putin’s Child.”  John Podesta, Hillary’s campaign manager, was.

--Trump was never paid $500,000 for a speech in Moscow by Renaissance Capital which was tied to Russian intelligence.  Bill Clinton was.

--Trump never approved the sale of 20% of American uranium while Secretary of State to Rosicom, the Russian State Nuclear Agency.  Hillary Clinton did.

--Trump never lied and said he wasn’t part of the Russia uranium deal.  John Podesta and Hillary Clinton did.

--Trump never scored $145 million from the shareholders of the uranium company one-fifth sold to the Russians.  Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation did.

--Trump never received millions of dollars of donations from the Russian oligarchs as part of a Russian nuclear research cluster. The Clinton Foundation did.

--And, a reporter’s diligent search of Canadian tax records didn’t find Trump connected in financial dealing with the Russians.  Hillary Clinton was.

There is solid evidence, not anonymous unsubstantiated rumors, of inappropriate dealings with Russia pointing to John Podesta, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the Clinton Foundation.  Yet, little is said about these matters by the main stream “lamestream” media.  And those who subscribe to Leftist ideology have neither an appreciation of this truthful evidence nor unselective memories.

The mainstream media recently tried to establish a story that proved false that Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, tried to establish a communications ‘back channel’ with the Russians.  Really!  If the Trump team colluded with the Russians before the 2016 election why was Kushner now trying to establish back channel communications with them?  Hateful desperate people will grab at anything, even the irrational and inconsistent, to fulfill their evil ends.

No evidence of Trump collusion with the Russians means no crime.  But, to Democrats and their media cohorts this doesn’t matter.  They have recently switched tactics and are now accusing the president of covering up a non-crime by heating up an obstruction of justice scandal to impeach President Trump even though there is no apparent wrongdoing or collusion by the Trump team with Russia.

This scandal without a crime can put the Democrats in a bind.  With 59% of Democrats now believing Russia hacked the November vote based on a steady stream of unfounded media attacks on the president, even the New York Times reported “liberal activists are courting a backlash of their own as they demand of their lawmakers nothing short of driving the president from office by any means necessary.”  Democrats and left wing media have overpromised about what was possible.

Retired Assistant Attorney General Andrew McCarthy argues the only way to counteract the left’s attempted annihilation of the president is evidence-based counter attacks.  First, investigate the Obama administration’s abuse of government surveillance powers for the purposes of political spying.  Also, Congress should investigate whether Obama’s Justice Department colluded with the Clinton campaign to influence the 2016 election outcome.  And, third, Congress should investigate the collusion between the Russians, the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation.

May truth will out.

Mueller’s Perpetual Motion? (updated 10jun17)

George Rebane

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is charged with investigating the Russian affair with last year’s election.  Specifically, allegations that Russia interfered and/or impacted our election, and more allegations that person or persons on Team Trump criminally colluded with Russia to achieve God knows what.  There is no evidence of a crime having been committed save the unmasking of former national security adviser Flynn’s name as the subject of a federal investigation.

The question that comes to my mind regarding this kind of investigations is at what point do they stop – if they find no prosecutable evidence, when will the investigation be terminated?  It is never understood that since there was an allegation there must have been a crime, and therefore we presume evidence exists to indicate/prove such a crime.  And therefore we’ll keep looking until we find it or run out of money to continue investigating.  This is not Director Mueller’s charge, so can we set a date?

The ending point question would be moot if Mueller would be investigating a bank robbery caught on security cameras.  There we would know that a crime was committed and the investigation is attempting to identify and find the culprits.  And in that case no one would presume to ask the investigators to specify an end time for their investigation.  But that is not the case with Director Mueller.

So I come back to my question, which apparently is of no interest to the press – how long will we continue to search for what we don’t know that we don’t know?  At a minimum, could the DoJ at least specify the conditions or criteria for ending an investigation that has failed to find any evidence confirming the allegations of criminality?

[10jun17 update]

Sandbox – 9jun17

[Well, there you have it.  Former FBI director Comey is a politician for all seasons.  Where else can you find a man who can deliver to both sides of a terminally divided Washington a smorgasbord version of events that can concurrently bring pleasure if not outright glee to both sides of the aisle?  Everyone found much to like in what he said - a tour de force performance by the now ever copasetic, cautiously comportable (yet cowardly?) Comey.  gjr]

Ruminations – 6jun17 (updated 10jun17)

George Rebane

Hey, let’s rag on the millennials a bit more.  Every peek under the collective kimono of that celebrated cohort reveals another shortcoming.  Now we hear that a prime reason why their critical thinking skills need a little tweaking is that they’re not learning much of that in the college careers.  The revealing report starts out, “Freshmen and seniors at about 200 colleges across the U.S. take a little-known test every year to measure how much better they get at learning to think. The results are discouraging.”  You’ll read the rest here.

The above little tidbit goes hand in glove with the report that college degrees are not worth that much anymore. (more here)  The problem is, whouda guessed, that employers aren’t that certain that a college degree means its holder can think critically when the situation demands.  But in today’s world it seems natural that if every kid got a trophy for everything they did, then why shouldn’t everyone also not get a college degree for whatever they did in college.

President Trump can’t let well enough alone.  What was all that tweeting about the London mayor?  We dunned Obama for not being able to say anything without a teleprompter, now we have a president who shouldn’t say much without a teleprompter.  Somebody please put a cork in him. 

[7jun17 update]  The Kathy Griffin dustup has yet to settle.  In today’s Union columnist Lynn Wenzel writes a commendable defense of the First Amendment (here), and this prominent Lady of the Left even cites the free market in her arguments.  My only problem with her discussion of Griffin’s cancellation was her evidence-free insinuation that one or more rightwing veterans acted like rock apes – “And the cowards who threatened the Center. Really? There are individuals in this community who found Griffin’s act so distasteful they are going to attack their very own Veterans Hall? ... Shameful.”  But then again, maybe she meant something else.  However, we can take The Union to task for not bolstering their Griffin story with some evidence about the source of their reported threats.  Historically the Left has been known to be the perpetrators against their own in order to garner the public’s sympathy.

[10jun17 update]  From various letters to editors and blog commenters it becomes more clear than ever that both the Left and Right are convinced the other is doing their best to roll back our freedoms and make America into an autocracy.  The Left wants the freedom to be increasingly regulated by an ever-larger government, and the Right wants the freedom to be less regulated by a minimalist government.  And, indeed, should one or the other prevail, they will promptly proceed to exercise their freedoms.

Progressives’ True Colors Reexamined

George Rebane

Progressives embrace any science only to the extent of how many other progressives embrace that science.  That is sometimes called consensus science, auto-repressive science, or simply circle-jerk science.

The copy progressives, and the Left in general, have put out for over a century is that they want to transform society into its new and improved version.  History shows that nothing could be further from the truth, and also explains why the Left has always been busy revising history in whatever venue it gains a foothold.  Socialist (cum communist) countries have always instituted the most repressive form of morals that their captured cultures have practiced in the past.  In the taxonomy of governance, socialism and its big brother communism are the best known forms of collectivism – governance informed and dominated by central planning and control.  Under such regimes individualism is neither condoned nor tolerated; people belong to classes, and classes are the proper units of humanity to be managed.

Progressivism arose in the United States during the late 19^th century, and immediately became the fount of American collectivism, ultimately finding a warm welcome within the Democratic Party whose principles had been revealed in its embrace of slavery, practice of post-war repression of blacks, and rejection of the Founders’ legacy at every turn.  With its new progressive allies the party saw the masses as a sea of humanity that needed strong guidance, and even culling (see eugenics and forced sterilization) in its promotion of human progress.  But the problem was that progressives saw the masses divided between the educated elite – the social technocrats – and everyone else who needed their strong hand for guidance.  And the solution was a step back to the top-down form of governing that hearkens a direct return to the ancient autocracies and tyrannies of church and monarchies – the proposed approach forward was functionally equivalent to doing an about face and going backward to the days of princes, priests, and peasants, albeit now in different garb.

The bottom line of all this is that today’s progressives are peddling a form of stasis and repression that their undereducated minions can barely perceive.  The latest generation of their minions has been either coddled beyond comprehension or left in a permanent state of dependency to wallow in neighborhoods where dodging bullets and drugs are the only skills needed to survive.  Today’s more fortunate young progressives are blanketed with safe zones, trigger warnings, and other politically correct prophylactics to shield them from untoward (read ‘all imaginable’) risk and assuage their tender psyches.  When we witness their mass protests against a more demanding and invigoratingly brisk society, we understand why the metaphor ‘snowflake’ accurately describes their fragility and brittleness.

Sandbox – 3jun17

[Looks like President Trump nailed it in Europe when he took fellow NATO members to task about their defense spending.  Besides Merkel’s epiphany, other countries are starting to realize that they’re pretty much incapable of doing sh!t when comes to defending themselves.  Now that's presidential leadership.  More here.  gjr]

TechTest2017 Scholarships Awarded

George Rebane

Last night at the Nevada Union High School awards celebration Ms Barbara Ross of the Nevada Joint Union High School District presented scholarship checks to the top scoring seniors on TechTest2017 which was given on 1 April 2017.   The 1^st prize of $6,000 went to Jack Devlin, the 2^nd prize of $4,000 went to Harrison Costantino, and the 3^rd prize of $2,000 went to Keegan Zetterberg, with nine additional honoraria of $300 each going to the next highest scorers.  (more here)

This was the eleventh annual TechTest which is administered each spring to participating Nevada County high school seniors who are going on to study for their STEM careers.  Ms Ross is the TechTest academic chair under whose auspices the test is administered and graded.  TechTest and TechTestJr are sponsored by the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation.  Both tests are the flagships of SESF’s youth education program.  I have had the privilege of writing TechTest and working with the test takers in their preparation for the merit scholarship competition. 

The test itself is a four-hour ordeal of a level that STEM students will encounter early in their lower division college studies.  Awards are determined strictly on the basis of highest ranked test scores.  The tests and solution sets are available for inspection and download at sesfoundation.org.  

Mr David Pistone, SESF board member, chairs the TechTestJr committee which designs and administers these merit-based tests annually to two cohorts of 5^th – 6^th and 7^th – 8^th graders.  The fifth annual TTJr tests were also given this spring.

Schumer Sells ‘Broken Windows’ (updated)

George Rebane

The US adopting the dreadful Paris Accords is the hot topic now.  The accord is a voluntary agreement to further cut carbon emissions by the participating countries.  The major emitters get a pass, with the other developed countries having not even met their past commitments.  And everyone is hollering about President Trump not signing up America to be the only patsy in the group.

[update] 'Trump Quits Climate Deal He Says Is Unfair To US Workers'