Rebane's Ruminations

Sandbox - 29jul17

[Ah yes, the filibuster debates are again in season.  Republicans are being admonished by the eternally innocent progressives about messing with the filibuster, as if that were a tradition brought down on the tablets and one that has remained unblemished since then.  It would be utterly       unconsciounable to bring up the recent history of who exercised the 'nuclear option' and under what conditions they pulled the trigger.  In the meanwhile, we are on our way home and thank RR readers for keeping the sandboxes exercised and the comment candles burning.  gjr]

Sandbox - 25jul17

[Can the Republican congress govern?  Given the powers it has abrogated to Mueller, the Dems, et al, the question has merit.  More here.  gjr]

Sandbox - 21jul17

[Trigger warning - we are on travel, and connectivity might be iffy, so this sandbox might become a bit ripe if I can't freshen it in a timely manner.  To preserve hygiene, be sure you're only flinging sticky mud balls at each other that may stick to the walls ;-)  gjr]

CALIFORNIA VOTERS ARE BEING DISENFRANCHISED

[This commentary was submitted by Union columnist and editorial board member Mr Norm Sauer.  It appears concurrently in the newspaper's op-ed pages.  gjr]

Norm Sauer

Surely, everyone agrees that protecting our citizens’ right to vote to choose their leaders is most important. Votes that are stolen from Americans who vote lawfully are negated as a result of voter fraud and insecure elections by illegal aliens voting, voting for the dead, or people voting who should not vote.

On Wednesday, July 12, 2017, Thomas Elias’s column gushed about California Secretary of State Alex Padilla’s flat refusal to honor any part of the request of President Trump’s Advisory Commission on Electoral Integrity. Even those on the left, like Bernie Sanders voters, should be concerned with this intransigence.

Research by Pew Foundation and Migration Policy Institute discloses that California houses between 2.35 to 3 million illegal aliens. Jesse Richman, Political Science & Geography Professor at Old Dominion University, conducted in depth research into illegal aliens voting nationally between 2008 and 2012, and found 2.4 percent of those surveyed said they were registered to vote, had validated voter registrations, and had voted.

There is an admitted, systematic well-funded effort by Democrats, including California’s super-majority Democrat party, to dismantle the integrity of the election administration system in our country and state. When 80% or more of illegal aliens vote Democrat, California promotes open borders and being a sanctuary state, policies which change the members of our voting public.

Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act requires states to clean their voter rolls periodically to remove non-citizens, those who died or moved away, or others no longer eligible to vote. It is a federal crime for non-citizens to vote and a second federal crime for a non-citizen to cast a vote in a federal election in the United States.

Having clean voter rolls is important to election integrity. Non-citizens, dead persons, and those moving away should be cleaned from the rolls periodically. Many states, including California, show 20% of the rolls are not clean.

For eight years these federal election integrity measures were fanatically suppressed by President Obama’s Justice Department. Now, the revived enforcement of these laws concern Democrats in California who wish no light shed on our state voter’s rolls.

In the opinion of many, California probably has one of the most unreliable voter registration systems in the country. California issues driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants allowing them to automatically be registered to vote under the federal motor-voter laws. Since AB60 passed in 2015, 806,000 illegal immigrants received a driver’s license.

Adding to our disenfranchisement, beginning in 2018 California is moving us toward implementing all mail ballots thereby closing election precincts or voting places. With all mail ballots everyone on the voter rolls gets a ballot, even if non-citizen, deceased, or no longer residing in the voting county if not otherwise removed. And those ballots are returned and counted. They are illegal votes, they offset your and my legal vote, and we won’t know the extent of it. But we do know our right to vote is not being protected by our Democrat politicians.

Until last year, our California Constitution had barred incarcerated felons from voting. In September 2016, Governor Brown signed into law a Democrat-sponsored bill allowing felons who were moved to county jails to vote despite widespread opposition from law enforcement. How many incarcerated felons will be casting votes hereafter? Who knows?

Another failure to protect our voter integrity is California does not belong to the “Crosscheck” verification program that allows states to check voter registration lists with each other to see if they had duplicate voters.

And in our county, I have observed same-day voter registration and voting being allowed. Many of these people vote in more than one state or county in our state. What sort of audit is done to assure these people haven’t voted twice or more? I’m aware of no cross-checking.

There is no good way to guarantee voter integrity without pristine voter rolls. And the Democrats continued denial of voter fraud, refusal to be transparent, and their questionable manipulation of our voting laws will only perpetuate dirty voter rolls and undermine the integrity of the vote of each of us who are lawful citizens.

For me, this is unacceptable, and it should be for you, too. And, as for Secretary of State Padilla and columnist Thomas Elias, I say shame on them. They obviously subscribe to changing the public demographics of who is allowed to vote to include non-citizens, dead people, felons, and same-day registered voters thereby disenfranchising law-abiding citizens while securing one-party rule in California.

GOP – Defecate or Relinquish the Receptacle

George Rebane

Were I king, I would order the 52 GOP senators into a big room set up with tables, chairs, cots, and plenty of coffee.  They would be advised to bring their nighties and toothbrushes, and then told to stay in that room until 1) they have hammered out a healthcare bill that ALL 52 could live with and vote for, or 2) they would emerge as members of at least two separate and distinct political parties whose founding documents they had in hand.

Unless they can deliver some major pieces of legislation, given that they have historical control of COTUS, POTUS, and SCOTUS, Republicans are no longer one united political party that can produce enduring public policies which fulfill the longstanding promises that got them elected, and still hew to the principles they have wrapped themselves in for generations.

Political parties are supposed to be composed of people with sufficiently overlapping ideologies that make them politically functional in the public forum, and effective institutions when given the opportunity to govern.  If the opportunity to govern serves only to reveal seminal schisms that constructively paralyze them while in power, then they should partition themselves into more cohesive ideological cohorts and as such represent themselves honestly to the electorate.  Doing otherwise, while displaying a facade of apparent power by their sheer numbers, is to promise a fraudulent hope on which they, as a body, cannot deliver.

So Republicans, find the means to act in unison, or divide yourself into smaller assemblages that can better reflect and represent the fractionation of the country.  BTW, the Democrats are no better in this department, however they were able to put a unified shoulder and a blind eye to the wheel and pass Obamacare in the dark of night, trusting that they would subsequently like whatever they passed.  No one is asking the Republicans to practice the Pelosi Principle.

In sum, get your act together and do what you were elected to do; or, if you can't, strike that so-called ‘big tent’ because what it covers isn’t working.

Sandbox – 15jul17

[Check out what is happening to our (and all?) economies with the advent of the giga-corporations – Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook - that have created oligopolies in several markets.  And the commentary on what these companies know about the dark sides of human affairs – e.g. sources and distribution of fake news – is more than a bit disturbing.  More here.  gjr]

Roll on A21 - rollin’, rollin’, rollin’!

George Rebane

We continue on our unintended road to the world described in the UN’s Agenda 21 objectives for ‘voluntary global sustainable development’.  Few people know that A21 is the tacit goal quietly accepted by governments across the world (more here).  On RR, we have been railing against this surreptitiously mandated brave new world for years.  But with progressives intractably embedded within all of our government bureaucracies, there is little hope that our course back to liberty from ‘stack & pack’ collectivism can be directed by any democratic means.  Even our own Nevada County staffers have been trained at the nearby ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) on the means by which progress toward A21 can be quietly achieved (more here).  Here I offer a couple more examples that appear innocuous to the casual reader, and are totally invisible to the low information type citizens.  (As an exercise, see how easy it is to find out what ICLEI stands for; they don’t want to publicize how globalism is reaching its grasp to local levels.  And no progressive will admit that A21 has any influence on America's public policies - which itself can be used as a handy litmus test for identifying a progressive.)

The New World of Social Commons

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 12 July 2017.]

Today’s intense debate over what to do about healthcare once more highlights the country’s divisions.  The socialists want a ‘single payer’ system of homogenous nationalized healthcare, others of a more conservative bent promoting freer markets want a decentralized system of distributed healthcare services and providers.  But what we overlook in this debate is the little-known idea of a society’s social commons, and how single payer will become one more such a common.

Moving nations toward new forms of governance based on the ideology of social commons is today quietly being promoted by leftwing institutions as an attractive middle ground for closing the schism between the Left and the Right. (more here, here, and here)  We are told that with the advent of the new order of social commons replacing the remnants of capitalistic market driven economies, we will again enjoy the “conviviality of traditional Main Streets and public spaces, the freedom of the internet, the fertility of knowledge in the public domain, the patrimony of nature that we are bidden to pass along improved rather than diminished”, making a place “where the new conservatism and the new progressivism can unite.”

Under a social commons world order we will have income equity, availability of jobs, universal healthcare, free education, and equal access to all resources.  No more will the top 1% be the top 1%.  But what we forget when examining such futures is the established rule, ‘them that pays the piper, calls the tune’.  Socialists think that since government will then pay for healthcare, it should also manage its delivery to minimize costs by what services it will provide to whom under what circumstances, and how it will control demand for different services.  Because after all, in addition to equal access, reducing costs is the prime motivation for changing our healthcare system into a social common.

And therein lies the rub.  In his now classic ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, the late Garrett Hardin taught us about the care and feeding of social commons.  Hardin pointed out that since a common is owned by no one, its prudent consumption depends on the altruistic behavior of its consumers, which historically has been in short supply.  The main takeaway is that all commons have an intrinsic carrying capacity – think of the Boston Common where the community’s cows grazed – which causes all commons to be eventually destroyed by over consumption, because those altruists who can and don’t over-consume the commons will come up short when compared to their more selfish neighbors.

People know this and therefore have established public commons - such things as roads, bridges, waterways, air quality, national security, community policing, education, and so on - to be managed by someone with a big stick, aka governments.  In a strict sense this does away with the commons and hands the resource over to some government department or bureau to manage and husband.  We have done this over the years with the fervent hope that government, as our trusted agent, will competently manage the common resource for the benefit of us all.

But management of a common requires the government to also manage our behaviors and life styles.  If some enjoy life styles which put an extra burden on the common, others will complain and demand that government rein them in.  In matters of public health, we have already seen this in how tobacco, fatty foods, and narcotics are being managed for our benefit.  (more here)  The inevitable problem comes when funds to support a common resource become scarce, then the prudent manager will demand further concessions by raising taxes and reducing services to consumers.  This we already see in the EU countries where people are used to leading a much more regimented life.

The promoters of social commons argue that these problems arise because we have not yet completely purged capitalism, markets, greed, and inequality from society.  And as soon as we do that by setting up more and more social commons to satisfy our needs, then we all will have equal access to health, prosperity, and fulfillment in a new world where contentment and peace will reign forever.  Amen.

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

[Addendum to be added in the fulness of time.  Just got back from an afternoon of shooting with one my pals in 92F weather, slaving over a hot scope on my new 30-06 (we both have identical rifles and scopes), and now we’re ready for some prime sour mash squeezins on the rocks sitting on the porch with our feet up.  Life is good.]

Sandbox - 11jul17

[Administrivia - RR readers are a vigorous and feisty bunch who have many things on their minds, strong beliefs, and lots to say.  I celebrate the forums that spring up in our comment streams with topic threads spontaneously bursting out in all directions.  My only and oft-repeated desire is that RR commenters record their grand thoughts and pronouncements about a topic under its most recently posted commentary by yours truly.  Pay particular attention to the topics as they appear in the 'Ruminations' and 'Scattershots' posts, and don't continue collecting everything in the mishmash of threads that make up the last sandbox.  Many thanks from your tireless host seeking to keep some semblance of order ;-)  gjr]

Ruminations – 11jul17 (updated 13jul17)

For people whose work is the written word, reporters can be stunningly indifferent to what words actually mean. onthecommons.org

George Rebane

California is now a one-party state, as recognized by everyone in the land (more here).  The Democrats have sealed their decades-long control with an uncontestable supermajority in the legislature, and dominate all state elective offices.  Now they can really get to work on vacuuming up other people’s money to insure their autocracy.  The student of history knows that tyranny is the most stable form of governance – it just renews itself with a series of new cliques of elites that displace the old.

The latest attempt to derail the Trump administration has now fastened on Trump Jr’s meeting with a Russian lawyer last summer.  Since there’s no there there, the media has been reduced to reporting what other media are reporting about the inconsequential meeting.  But then, posit that the lawyer could have given Trump Jr some actual (not alleged) dirt on Hillary.  Would it not have been only proper, but also long-established protocol, for an opposition party to use that in a political campaign?  Our country has meddled in exactly the same way in other countries’ elections – it’s all a popular and classic game of thrones.  Aren’t we all glad that we found out about Hillary’s servers making classified information criminally available to the world, and the DNC emails conspiring to screw Bernie?  If Trump did something criminal, we would all want to know; but continuing an expanding number of investigations that will be halted only when all allegations have been proven is more than a bit beyond silly.

Compassionate secession by our Left is the constructive advice of America’s liberals as highlighted under ‘Healthcare from Hell’.  Since we can’t see ourselves letting illegal aliens die in the streets, and we won’t seal our borders, their only counsel is for America to slowly succumb to the onslaught of unassimilating mass migrations across our open borders.  Achieving Agenda21’s post-American globalism with no fuss or muss.

[12jul17 update]  The lamestream and Dems have tacitly admitted that the ongoing Russia investigations have so far been pursuing a will-o’-the-wisp.  The enthusiasm and excitement with which they have fastened on to the blatantly inconsequential TrumpJr meeting, while completely ignoring their formerly ‘substantial allegations’, lends credence to the fact that so far they had nothing, and that this latest revelation is all that’s left with which to bring down the Trump administration.  One of our left-leaning readers has diagnosed that only “God knows what dirt the Russians have on Trump.”  If he is correct, perhaps continuing the investigations from a house of worship will be more conducive to their speedier conclusion through divine revelation.

[13jul17 update]  Reading about all the political attacks and politically correct proscriptions happening across the country, added on to what thoughts and speech are already prohibited as being at least 'micro aggressions', does anyone else have the feeling that we are starting to reprise the age (1478 - 1834) of the Spanish Inquisition??

Speaking of inquisitions, now we can generate totally fake videos of people saying things in their own voice that they never actually said.  All that using new technology developed at the University of Washington (more here).  Talk about producing some real convincing fake news that will convince millions that a targeted person is culpable of something totally fabricated.

Scattershots – 8jul17 (updated 9jul17)

George Rebane

Have you heard anything about disgruntled and terminally progressive EPA employees having a tough time finding new jobs as they seek to leave an agency that is finally coming under some adult supervision?  Well, neither have many of us.  But it turns out that many of the bleeding hearts in the agency who decided to quit rather than serve under President Trump are having an unexpected tough time.  Now they can’t find jobs, confirming (as maintained here for years) that government really is the employer of last resort, and that they, as civil servants or ordinary citizens,  have no real skills to sell on the open job market.  I would rather pay these wallet suckers unemployment than have them remain as overpaid leeches on the federal payroll impeding national progress and harassing hardworking taxpayers.

The national liberal mind at work was again illustrated by the flak that the very progressive NPR got for its broadcast reading of our Declaration of Independence.  The double dummies dunned their flagship trumpet for what they thought was a promotion of a totalitarian government.  Then a few days later worthies from the same leftwing cohort of the politically astute went after President Trump when in his Warsaw speech he quoted the roar of the Poles responding to Pope John Paul 2’s historic speech during his 1979 homeland visit.  They thought Trump’s inclusion of “We want God!” was an unabashed violation of their version of the Constitution’s separation of church and state.  Were it possible for progressives to be embarrassed by such shows of intellectual acumen, then perhaps they might even reexamine what union dominated government schools have (not) been teaching our youth for almost two generations.

Ohio governor John Kasich is turning into a progressive RINO.  His promotion of his state's extension of Medicaid is bizarre in its contradictions to his recent sermons delivered during a spate of lamestream interviews.  It appears that the man is now positioning himself for his state's 2020 primaries which he believes will favor a more pronounced tack to port. (more here)

[9jul17 update]  And now an update from our favorite communist blog, truthout.com.  Those ever hopeful worthies are looking forward to a time when conservatives and libertarians can no longer “undercut hard-won reforms through measures that have now become core to Republican practice: decentralization, devolution, federalism, privatization, and deregulation.”  You can get a real snootfull of the hard-left’s view of today’s political landscape and goals from reading the interview with author Nancy McLean entitled ‘Misinforming the Majority: A Deliberate Strategy of Right-Wing Libertarians’.  In that Mercatus Center economist Tyler Cowan (featured in these pages) is taken to task as the reactionary racist theoretician working hand-in-glove with the secretive Kochs to enslave us all.  Unless you read what these guys are spewing, you might think that some of my posts are exaggerating.

Healthcare from Hell (updated 8jul17)

George Rebane

Union columnist Terry McLaughlin writes an excellent expose of nationalized healthcare in the newspaper’s 6jul17 edition – ‘Government run healthcare wouldn’t be cheaper; more efficient’.  In there she includes a detailed report from New Zealand, one of the countries often cited by socialists of how a healthcare system should work.  As you might expect, the revelation isn’t a pretty picture, but it is one of which RR readers are very familiar.

The bottom line of all this push toward a (horribly misnamed) “single payer system” (SSS) is that, for all the reasons known to thinking people everywhere, no country has a laudable and/or sustainable government run healthcare system.  All of them are ragged bureaucracies, delivering already bad services for a very high price.  And all of them are looking for ways to deliver even less at a higher cost in ways that are difficult to discover while you’re healthy, and that immediately obvious but too late to fix once you become a victim (aka ‘patient’).

I recommend Ms McLaughlin’s review of why we should do everything possible to avoid a SSS, and at the same time open up the delivery of healthcare products and services to the widest array of competent suppliers.  To argue that our pre-Ocare system already did that demonstrates a gross ignorance of our national economy, existing healthcare systems, and current affairs.

Finally, let’s dwell for a moment on the almost hysterical push for SSS we hear in the lamestream and in the exhortations of leftwing politicians, to remind us again of the seminal differences between people devoted to all things collectivist, and those who promote freedom, entrepreneurship, and market-driven solutions.

When in a social setting, peel back the daisy talking veneer of a collectivist, and you are instantly flooded with a monologue detailing the evils of selfish individualism and greedy capitalism, the remedies for which are government, and yet more government.  By definition, the collectivist sees a fulfilled human as one drawing all things good from being a compliant member of a politically legitimized collective.  By himself, the individual is nothing but a suffering derelict cast adrift on a sea of socially destructive competition that worships raw merit which inevitably gives rise to inequality and injustice.  It is the establishment, expansion, and submission to a comprehensive collective which gives rise to a society that provides succor to all of our ‘legitimate needs’ through a correct redistribution from those who can and must, to those who can’t or won’t – “From each according to his ability, to each …” (Marx, et al).  Examples of such collectives still abound.  

[update]  For those true believers in government healthcare, we draw examples of ‘healthcare from hell’ right here in the good ol’ USofA.  Everyone by now has heard, save perhaps the devotees of the lamestream media, of what the Veterans’ Administration has done in caring for the health of our veterans.  To this we can add the atrocity that is the system of, yes, federal hospitals charged with providing healthcare to Native Americans (pc for American Indians).  To get a snootful of what we can expect from SSS, and others around the world are already getting, you can read ‘‘People Are Dying Here’: Federal Hospitals Are Failing Native Americans’ in which we find that – In some of the nation’s poorest places, the government health service charged with treating Native Americans failed to meet minimum U.S. standards for medical facilities, turned away gravely ill patients and caused unnecessary deaths, according to federal regulators, agency documents and interviews. … The IHS, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services, operates a network of hospitals and clinics, much like the Veterans Health Administration. Under U.S. treaties that date back generations, the service is legally responsible for providing medical care to about 2.2 million tribal members.

[8jul17 update]  I couldn’t figure out where to post the tragic story of little Charlie Gard – the lamestream had no problem with just judiciously ignoring it – whether it is an example of hellish healthcare or of yellow (aka progressive) journalism.  Charlie suffers from a rare genetic disorder that gives him a very small chance of surviving, and that small chance is being reduced to zero by the National Healthcare System of the British government whose death panel has ruled that the state 1) will not let Charlie’s parents, at no cost to the UK government, take Charlie to the US for treatment, 2) deemed Charlie’s case too expensive to treat under their NHS ‘single payer’ system (which is financially on its ass), and 3) have taken Charlie away from his parents and made him a ward of the state whose life will be officially terminated (they will ‘pull the plug’) so that “he can die with dignity” and fulfill his state determined "duty to die".  UK’s socialist controllers cannot afford the precedent of returning the decision for an ailing person’s fate to his family.  Our progressives are purposely blind to these goings on, but the rest of us should pay close attention to how this plays out so that we can correctly evaluate the Left’s Single Payer Über Alles that is coming down the pike. (more here)  For a wider and deeper understanding of what's in store for us, explore the widespread advent of state promoted 'duty to die' euthanasia across Europe.  I suppose ordering your premature death is probably the most direct way for governments to reduce the extent and cost of services of their socialized healthcare systems.

News sources legitimate, credible, impartial, and biased (updated 7jul17)

George Rebane

‘Legitimate’, ‘credible’, ‘impartial’, ‘biased’ are labels hung on news sources.  These days with fake news flooding the web and other channels, different people append such labels to news sources with which they agree or not.  And often they do it with little thought given to what those labels really mean, thereby increasing the heat and confusion in any subsequent dialogue.  So let’s get these monikers for news sources straight in our minds –

• Legitimate – true to an established AND known set of standards/rules/protocols that constrain what and how they can report something.
• Credible – having established and continuing to maintain the reputation of being factually correct.
• Impartial – evincing no clear partisan flavor or favoritism in their published syntax.
• Biased – evincing an obvious partisan leaning or position regarding what they choose to publish, and what syntax to use in their reporting.

The amount of semantic orthogonality of these labels should become clear with a little thought.  For example, credible sources may also be biased or impartial.  Legitimate sources may or not be credible and/or biased, and so on.  More specifically, the same credible and factually correct event may be reported by various non/partisan sources as –

• Leftwing: ‘Hillary Clinton confirmed that she had deleted no work-related files.’
• Impartial: ‘Hillary Clinton stated that she had deleted no work-related files.’
• Rightwing: ‘Hillary Clinton claimed that she had deleted no work-related files.’

Or regarding the 6jul17 NPR report - “Trump pointedly omitted mentioning NATO’s Article 5 during his last trip through Europe.”  Compared to an impartial ‘Trump’s remarks did not include NATO’s Article 5 in his last trip to Europe.’

[7jul17 update]  To overwhelm you with examples of ideologically biased reporting, take a look at any article from this list of Politico pieces on leak investigations in light of the above discussion.  There you will learn that what the Trump administration is really doing is stifling “in-depth reporting” by launching numerous leak investigations by the FBI and other national security units of the federal government (in addition to Congress).

According to Politico’s progressive reporters, in-depth reporting requires criminal leaks of national security compromising allegations from anonymous and surreptitious sources labeled simply as “high level official in (fill in name of bureau)”, “former (fill in name of bureau) official”, … .  So now Politico accuses President Trump of “creating fear” of what it calls “witch hunts” when national security organizations are conducting their own leak probes and revising need-to-know policies to limit and identify staffers who are privy to certain areas of classified information.  Bottom line – national security compromising criminality is a fundamental component, if not an outright First Amendment right, of progressive journalism.

By Whose Rockets’ Red Glare? (updated?)

'Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.'

George Rebane

After North Korea’s demonstration of its ICBM a few days ago (here), I am more convinced than ever that China will do nothing to remove that threatening thorn from our side – it will never happen.  Bear with me as I weave some of my reasoning on this conclusion that I have not seen in the pundits’ press.

NK has been on a tear launching various kinds of missiles into the Sea of Japan over recent years.  The pace and variety of missiles launched costs a pretty penny, and it defies understanding how an isolated, sanctioned draconian dictatorship that is financially on its butt can develop and then test the necessary technology that the launches and nuclear tests entail.  The simple answer is that by itself it can’t, no matter how much of what it can dig out of the ground it sells, and mainly to China.

To the technically astute, the ICBM launch demonstrated that NK now has a kit of very sophisticated capabilities in not only an impressive transport vehicle, but also the means to control where that vehicle goes.  The 1,700 mile apogee combined with its landing a mere 500+ miles at sea demonstrated a set of remarkable skills.  It is hard to achieve and control such a high angle trajectory, especially into a small and politically sensitive impact area.  There is, of course, no doubt that all these launches and underground tests also serve as advertising to promote the sale of NK’s missile/nuclear technology to other rogue states – a kind of a twofer when its provoking the flailing foreign policy of the US is considered.

So, if NK cannot accomplish all this very expensive sophistication while under the heel of the fat kid, then how do they do it?  To me the simplest answer comes courtesy of applying the tonsorial tool attributed to Friar Occam – NK is the long-serving surreptitious and sinister shill of the People’s Republic of China.  More specifically, NK serves China as its test bed for missile, nuclear, and other weapons technologies developed in/by China, while it displays a different geo-public face.  The world sees China mainly as focused on expanding its commercial and economic footprint, a peace-loving country that does little to stir the pot of international crises for the benefit of its national interests.  Its South China Sea expansions are just local territorial disputes with no expansive geo-strategic impacts.

(Were I our CinC, I would order our Navy to retrieve NK’s missile components that land in the sea.  We have the capability to go down to over 20K feet deep, do useful work there, and bring stuff to the surface.  It would be most interesting to get a peek at the chipsets, pumps, piping, and other precision machined parts and confirm their provenance for all to see.)

So how does NK act as the supplier of restricted materiel and technology to its customers when we are known to stop and search their suspicious ships on the high seas?  Again, the simplest answer is that these ‘goods’ go through and/or via China on board its merchant marine which plies all oceans and is welcomed in all the world’s ports.  And so does the reciprocal trade that supplies NK’s elites with their forbidden goodies along with enough foodstuffs to keep the millions of serfs from hunger rioting. 

NK is the necessary and completely compliant component of China’s geo-strategic plan for achieving global hegemony.  China can push the buttons and turn the valves on NK to direct its irritations wherever and whenever it feels necessary, while at the same time putting up appearances that NK is a hard to manage sovereign nation-state. When one considers this explanation, it immediately becomes clear why no amount of international sanctions will have any material effect on NK’s behavior.  And NK giving hints that these may bear fruit, usefully serves to confuse the west and keep our Left active opposing the adoption and/or execution of a workable NK policy.  China has successfully managed to keep us talking to their puppet while giving scant lip-service as to who is pulling the strings.

They have successfully practiced this drill for decades.  However, we now have a president who doesn’t seem to play by any of the rules established by his predecessors, all of whom believed the political pinheads about how one more dollop of diplomacy would be just the ticket to bring NK’s current murderous tyrant into the community of peaceful and cooperating nations.  Kinda reminds me of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown.  On his G-20 trip The Donald will have a chance to set us, and perhaps others, on a new course regarding North Korea, but it should not be one that lets China continue business as usual with the fat kid as the dirty end of its anti-west foreign policy.

[update]  With profound apologies to our master cartoonist, RL 'Bob' Crabb.

Sandbox - 5jul17

[So what happened to all the investigations hysteria?  If on his G-20 trip Trump breaks into a smile anywhere within 50ft of Putin, will that be incontestable evidence of election collusion between Team Trump and Russia?  gjr]

Happy INDEPENDENCE (sic) Day!

The Seething Cauldron of Trump (updated 2jul17)

George Rebane

President Trump appears to have entered a new phase of his administration with the escalation of this Tweet Travails and the second faltering of ‘Replace and Repeal’ while tax reform waits (withers?) in the wings and the national budget is not even on the back burner (‘Continuing Resolutions’ don’t count).  When MOCs return from their 4^th of July speech makings, they will have only about 33 working days left in the fiscal year unless McConnell makes them stay in the Capitol during the dog days of DC – remember, Washington was a mosquito infested swamp before they did the original draining.

So we continue hereunder the discussion thread exhaustively expanded (over 230 comments) under ‘Sandbox – 27jun17’ that involves trials and tribulations of President Trump.

[2jul17 update]  Ms Amanda Ripley, senior fellow at the Emerson collective, wrote a heartwarming appeal in the 1jul17 WSJ entitled ‘America, Meet America’ that recognized the historical polarization of our country and offered her best shot at how we could all just get along – her shot missed badly.  Her essay was filled with the pabulum advice of just getting together and talking about things other than the relevant ideological differences people have.  Such meetings, according to Ms Ripley, would then start the healing process, and before you know it a kumbaya epiphany descends to heal all schisms.  Her anecdotal episodes offer no proof of her thesis.  But that kind of commentary illustrates why such placebo palliatives utterly fail simply because they don’t recognize the seminal nature of today’s schism.

On the other hand, WSJ editor James Taranto interviews noted historian Allen Guelzo in ‘Divided America Stands – Then and Now’ to discover our historical schisms and how the current one compares.  Bottom line, we are divided now as never before save during the prelude to the War Between the States (it wasn’t a ‘civil war’).  Mr Guelzo does not think that we’re on the brink of reprising that conflict simply because then the differences then were regionally compact, inviting a clear ‘we’re here and you’re there, we should separate’ attitude.  Today our differences are perhaps even more fundamental and nuanced, but they are held by Americans who are more than less marbled together across our country, there is no clear ‘the Left is here, and the Right is there’.  Professor Guelzo does an excellent job leading an exploration and explication of our multifarious ideological terrain from which the reader can assess the existential effectiveness of calls for a national kumbaya.

‘The beatings (by both sides) will stop only after morale improves.’

President Trump appears to have entered a new phase of his administration with the escalation of this Tweet Travails and the second faltering of ‘Replace and Repeal’ while tax reform waits (withers?) in the wings and the national budget is not even on the back burner (‘Continuing Resolutions’ don’t count).  When MOCs return from their 4^th of July speech makings, they will have only about 33 working days left in the fiscal year unless McConnell makes them stay in the Capitol during the dog days of DC – remember, Washington was a mosquito infested swamp before they did the original draining.

So we continue hereunder the discussion thread exhaustively expanded (over 230 comments) under ‘Sandbox – 27jun17’ that involves trials and tribulations of President Trump.

[2jul17 update]  Ms Amanda Ripley, senior fellow at the Emerson collective, wrote a heartwarming appeal in the 1jul17 WSJ entitled ‘America, Meet America’ that recognized the historical polarization of our country and offered her best shot at how we could all just get along – her shot missed badly.  Her essay was filled with the pabulum advice of just getting together and talking about things other than the relevant ideological differences people have.  Such meetings, according to Ms Ripley, would then start the healing process, and before you know it a kumbaya epiphany descends to heal all schisms.  Her anecdotal episodes offer no proof of her thesis.  But that kind of commentary illustrates why such placebo palliatives utterly fail simply because they don’t recognize the seminal nature of today’s schism.

On the other hand, WSJ editor James Taranto interviews noted historian Allen Guelzo in ‘Divided America Stands – Then and Now’ to discover our historical schisms and how the current one compares.  Bottom line, we are divided now as never before save during the prelude to the War Between the States (it wasn’t a ‘civil war’).  Mr Guelzo does not think that we’re on the brink of reprising that conflict simply because then the differences then were regionally compact, inviting a clear ‘we’re here and you’re there, we should separate’ attitude.  Today our differences are perhaps even more fundamental and nuanced, but they are held by Americans who are more than less marbled together across our country, there is no clear ‘the Left is here, and the Right is there’.  Professor Guelzo does an excellent job leading an exploration and explication of our multifarious ideological terrain from which the reader can assess the existential effectiveness of calls for a national kumbaya.

‘The beatings (by both sides) will stop only after morale improves.’

Assault on Cemental Hill

George Rebane

Our irrepressible yet lovable port-side cartoonist RL ‘Bob’ Crabb offers his latest in the 1jul17 Union which I have filched and included here for your edification and entertainment.

Sadly, as time has passed, Bob has seen less and less to like about what he finds in these pages.  But what the above graphic commentary clearly illustrates is that he has not taken the time to carefully examine RR’s pro/con debate on the county’s homeless, and the result is his fairly crass characterization of the opinions expressed here.

In particular, he has ignored our discussions of affordable vs low-cost housing, universal national income, wealth redistribution, education, apprenticeship training, and non-profit service corporations for a start.  I submit that nowhere on the NorCal blogosphere save RR are such issues materially debated with all sides weighing in with opinions ranging from the admirably considered to the crudely contentious.  But then again, it is so much easier to convey the polarized leftist view, than to see things from his claimed mid-road perch - a point on the ideological waters akin to the lukewarm, weed-clogged Sargasso Sea - from which the futile search continues for communicable tenets that are relevant in the national debates.