Rebane's Ruminations

Sandbox - 29mar19

[Well, the Dems are looking to an approach to 'Medicare for All' designed by a couple of Univ of Mass economists that promises "You'd be able to keep your doctor with no premiums or copays, and overall spending would decline."  Now where have we heard all that before?  The many holes in this plan (here) also recommend its alternative use as a sieve.  gjr]

Ruminations – 29mar19 (updated 2apr19)

George Rebane

For our approval poll watchers, Politico counsels a little prudence in that department and not put too much stock into those reports.  “If the election were held today, Mr Trump would likely ride to a second term in a huge landslide.” (emphasis mine)

The Democrats’ agenda?  There ain’t none, as I’ve been pointing out to our leftwing readers.  This was echoed by Rep Cheri Bustos (D-IL), head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, earlier this week in a Democrat caucus where she admonished members that “voters have little idea what the Democratic policy agenda is; the party urgently needs to move beyond 2016.”  My advice is to pay her no attention.

Some ‘obstruction’ crumbs is all that Mueller could leave the Trump haters.  Since he was not able to interview the president (who submitted written answers to questions), Mueller claimed that a robust exoneration could not be granted.  Instead, he left that task up to AG Barr, which, of course, was the right thing to do.

Responding to the Staid and Fearful

George Rebane

RR readers who comment on these pages have a record of discussing and debating the most critical and germane questions that face our country and society in these times of fracturing polarity (albeit not always in the most churchillian manner).  I am a declared conservetarian (q.v.), and over the years of this weblog I have outlined in detail my credo, my semantics, and my prescriptions for the orderly evolution of America’s governance in this ‘last great century of Man’.  In a recent comment stream, a reader again contends these prescriptions, not on their existential merits, but on their provenance which for him is qualified only to the degree that the proposed be limited to that practiced in the past.  Here I offer a short counter to such constraints and criticism.

The ability to see futures without exemplars from the past is admittedly and obviously a gift not shared by the many.  Most people, perhaps fortunately, can only see the future as reflections in their rearview mirrors – if it isn’t there to be seen, then there’s no such possibility of it yet to come.  Then there are those relatively few who live on the edge of the arts of the possible, and who traffic in ideas and enterprises that have neither been nor yet to be.  Both cohorts of Man serve needed functions which, when tempered, benefit and power the advancement of civilizations.

The former of the staid cohort function as brakes, shock absorbers, and even anchors to dampen, absorb, and integrate the possibly chaotic and non-coherent novelties that those of the latter, living on the bleeding edge, can see, build, and seek to introduce into the established orders.  Fate, the gods, and my parents assigned me to the bleeding edge cohort, of which long ago I became a credentialed, accomplished, privileged, punished, and blessed member.

So, when people of my ilk do their work, it is almost always in the untrammeled domains where few or none have trod, and where reward always lies behind a mountain of risk.  My life’s journey through this terrain is recorded by the scars on my back and the coins in my purse.

So when I have outlined the desiderata of governance from a conservetarian perspective, it is not an exercise of just ‘cut and paste’ of the elsewhere and from the elsewhen.  Seeing something strange and new, the question of the staid always belies their fearful admonition to never go where we have not been.  I neither hail from nor have I lived in such lands.  As a native Estonian, I take pride in the innovations in education, technology, and governance that that little nation has always had the courage to adopt and practice.  As a naturalized American, I continually bless the memory of our Founders’ dedication, intellect, foresight, and courage to bring forth a land then unknown to Man.  All Americans are daily blessed by our Founders not being deterred or stayed in their enterprise by those who asked them for proof of existence and success for such a new country they gathered together to bring into the world.

Our Road to Venezuela

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 27 March 2019.]

Socialism used to be the third rail of American politics, no more.  A form of governance that requires and ever-larger government to handle the people’s everyday affairs was anathema after WW2, especially with the country having had its brief love affair with socialism during FDR’s depression years.  Ever since the Great Society’s programs began to get traction in the 1970s, the workings of socialism in America, if not its name, became more and more acceptable as our governments created more programs every year to solve this or that social problem, most of which its then previously entrenched programs had created.

Every economic slowdown and recession since then has been an opportunity for liberals to introduce and launch more ‘people oriented’ programs, the first purpose of which was to buy votes to re-elect those politicians promising the new largess to be paid for with other people’s money.  Funding these required ever higher taxes and more borrowing.  And each one created more Americans who could not conceive of getting along without a regular government check.

Kim Strassel on the Real Scandal (updated 27mar19)

[“Americans deserve a full accounting of the missteps of Comey and the FBI.”  So argues WSJ’s Washington columnist Kimberley Strassel in the paper’s 25mar19 edition (here).  The real scandal has been a burr under my blanket for a very long time, and I was going to compose some pithy rhetoric on the injustice that has cloaked that entire sordid affair.  Then I read Strassel’s piece, and that lady puts it together better than I could, and most certainly in a more civil format.  So I’m doing a first for RR here, and filching the entire piece for your reading pleasure.  But lest you mistake my editorial retreat, I am pissed and will remain so until I see some semblance of an appropriately transparent and vigorous investigatorial draining of that swampy part of the Deep State.  gjr]

 

Mueller Is Done, Now Probe the Real Scandal

Kimberely A. Strassel

Attorney General William Barr has reported to Congress that special counsel Robert Mueller has cleared President Trump and his campaign team of claims of conspiring with Russia during the 2016 election. This is more than an exoneration. It’s a searing indictment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as a reminder of the need to know the story behind the bureau’s corrosive investigation.

Mr. Mueller’s report likely doesn’t put it that way, but it’s the logical conclusion of his no-collusion finding. The FBI unleashed its powers on a candidate for the office of the U.S. presidency, an astonishing first. It did so on the incredible grounds that the campaign had conspired to aid a foreign government. And it used the most aggressive tools in its arsenal—surveillance of U.S. citizens, secret subpoenas of phone records and documents, even human informants.

Sandbox – 25mar19

[OK boys and girls, now it’s time to talk about the massive mega-lies the Democrats and their lamestream media lackeys have been telling us for the last two years.  To begin, I have to confess to a large error, before Russiagate I thought that the journalistic profession was the demonstrated refuge of mostly ass-kissing ignorameouses, my opinion of the commentariat and the news media was pretty low.  I was totally off base, because it wasn’t anywhere near low enough.  They have demonstrated and continue to demonstrate themselves as a herd of evil snipes who have no regard for their lightly read audiences as they continue their crusade of lies and innuendo to bring down a legitimately elected administration, diverting the electorate’s attention from its achievements and urgent national needs – e.g. education, immigration, debt, … .   gjr]

Ruminations – 23mar19 (updated 25mar19)

George Rebane

Thought I’d try something different on this cloudy and wet Saturday morning.  The Mueller report is in AG Barr’s hands, and from the early assessments it is a nothing burger for the TDS Dems.  If so, they are looking at it merely as a speed bump on the road to Trump’s impeachment, which we are assured will follow when the next tranche of “clear evidence” of some, any, wrongdoing will be dug up by the Left’s congressional witch hunts that have yet to get their second wind.  I’m going to hold back my sage assessment of the progress toward nailing the president before the 2020 election.

That China’s going to eat our lunch seems like a much more relevant issue to dwell on.  So argues AI expert and prominent VC Kai-Fu Lee in his AI Super-Powers – China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (2019).  Lee, a Chinese national, has impressive credentials – Google’s speech recognition head, then chief of Google China, then major VC funding AI start-ups here and in China.  He goes into great detail outlining our two countries’ different approaches to AI/products development and marketing, and the mentality of the entrepreneurs involved.  The punchline is that China has caught up or soon will in all the major arenas of commercializing and researching AI.

A careful read between the lines, makes me think that Lee really wrote this book for China’s communist leadership, complete with data-supported observations, comparative analysis, and critiques of both countries’ government support of their AI sectors.  He makes a case for state-controlled support of China’s AI, while carefully outlining the weaknesses of lawless competition and a command research environment that’s not all that conducive for creativity.  He ends the essay with a very hopeful vision of how AI-induced systemic unemployment may be alleviated (yes, Lee flies in tight formation with Rebane Doctrine on several important fronts).  The only big hole that I saw that he ignores the fact that half of our workforces have 2-digit IQs, and therefore cannot be ‘upskilled’ to fill future jobs.  Lee sees them providing the human touch and delivering “love” in human2human caregiving work.  No matter, for those interested in the last great century of Man, this is a worthy read.

Sandbox - 20mar19

[The Dems want to bump up SCOTUS membership so that they can also have a majority in that branch of government, and do away with the Electoral College to "make every vote count", and give the Hormonal Hordes with WIP brains the vote.  And if that's not enough, then do away with the 1A and 2A, and, aw hell, just do away with the Constitution while we're at it.  The fundamental transformation of America as promised.  gjr]

NZ Massacre – the Left’s new perfect storm

“Conservatism is corporatism in disguise.  I want no part of it. … The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China. … Conservatism is dead, thank God.”  Australian Brenton Tarrant, NZ shooter

George Rebane

The Christchurch massacre has been covered extensively and also received an initial go-through by RR commenters.  As always happens in the coverage of such massacres, they are characterized as ‘insane’, ‘the acts of a deranged person’, and ‘senseless killings’.  I have always thought that we’re missing something significant about these mass killings when we dismiss them as such.  Years ago, I gave my own take on these killers of the Islamic persuasion in ‘Of Ragheads and Racism’.  However, it should be clear that those sentiments are not restricted to terrorists of only one persuasion; there is a lot happening in this world which requires a wider and more detailed look.

Scattershots – 18mar19 (updated 21mar19)

George Rebane

Sen Liz Warren wants to reduce the size of big techs.  As we know, big corporations get that way and survive by practicing the fine art of corporatism.  That means essentially working with politicians and bureaucrats to buy competitive advantage through laws, regs, taxation, etc (all the ways that govt mangles markets) in exchange for contributing their monies through various channels to assure re-election success.  If Warren were an honest woman, she would know that corporations automatically resize themselves once you pull out the mechanisms of govt support.  IBM and GE discovered that for themselves.  There is nothing magical about big centrally controlled bureaucracies in the private sector being more efficient than the same organizational structures in government – both ultimately reach an inefficient size.  Corporations must suffer the uncompromising feedback from competitive markets, while governments – with the power of the gun – are immune to productive feedback and can keep on screwing up forever.  (more here)

TechTestJr 2019 was given on 5-6 March at the corporate campuses of AJA Video and Telestream (NC Tech Connection is also a corporate sponsor).  This year over 100 fifth through eighth graders took the STEM merit scholarship test which is sponsored and administered by the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation.  TTjr was launched eight years ago by Mr Mike McDaniel, and board member Mr David Pistone has been the director of TTjr for the last six years.  TechTest2019 for Nevada County juniors and seniors will be administered again this year on 30 March (9-1pm) in the NUHS Science Lecture Hall.  This is TT’s 13^th year as the county’s premier merit scholarship test for students heading for STEM majors in college.  The annual test is preceded by two seminars of which I gave the last one this past Saturday morning at NUHS.  (I have written the test and given these seminars since the beginning, and am now in the process of turning over the writing and reins of this project to younger turks.)  NUHS math teacher Mr Kevin Baker is the TT Academic Coordinator who will administer the test. (more here)

Union columnist George Boardman followed Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters Greg Diaz off the rails with his 18mar19 column repeating the fake news with his “WHY DOES the Nevada County Tea Party want to discourage people from voting in the special election? Are they afraid the wrong Republican will win?”  This politically motivated error was covered in my last KVMR commentary, ‘Election Integrity – one more time’.  Mr Boardman’s insistence that he views our fables and follies “… from the center stripe” continues to bring a smile to those who can clearly see from which side of the road he continues to do his reporting.

[20mar19 update] Brainless Beto in the White House? Now there’s a jarring thought argued by David Marcus in The Federalist (here) “Beto O'Rourke looks a lot more like recent Democrats who won the White House than any other candidates. Don't underestimate him.”  And rubbing salt into such a wound, that lightweight promises to pick one of the Democrats’ female proto-communists as a running mate.  Can you imagine an O’Rourke/Warren or O’Rourke/Harris or … ticket?  Such a revoltin' possibility most certainly will cramp the cockles of me heart.

Reparations for blacks is on the Democrats’ marquee again.  All the usual collectivist congress critters are signing up for that proposal as a sure-fire way to insure the black vote in 2020.  Jason Riley asks “How can centuries-old oppression be to blame for problems that became sever only recently?” (here)  And no one dares mention the ‘reparations’ (e.g. Sec 8) that have been continually paid to blacks since the Great Society days, all to no avail as the Democrat mismanaged inner cities have become killing fields for drugs and crime, and home to millions of unmarried single moms trying to raise and educate their kids.  So we see once more how keeping them on the Democrats’ plantation works – they are always there, ready and willing, when their masters beckon with another manufactured social injustice.

[21mar19 update]  Democrats continue leftward march. The party is now starting to show some cracks as the more saner members try to put on the brakes.  In these parts the local lefties have been totally unaware of this massive ideological lurch which shifted into high gear under Obama.  These pages are replete with our leftwing commenters' arguments dunning the 'ignorance' of the conservative readers for not being aware that, according to their dim lights, the Dems have not moved, but it's been the Repubs who are drifting right.  This same knowledge base is amply reflected here in their other fractured assessments of the country's goings on.  Here' a hot flash for our lefties, the Repubs are also worried that their more mushy members are beginning to kowtow to the Dems' proto-communists. (more here)

Sandbox - 14mar19

[“USC, Yale University among colleges sued by Stanford students amid college admissions scandal” (more here and here)  Boys and girls, this is going to get big, real big.  gjr]

Election Integrity - one more time

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 13 March 2019.]

We have a special election coming up to fill the state’s Senate seat for District #1.  Nevada County is in District #1 and election day is Tuesday March 26^th.  This special election has again raised concerns about who may and how should people be able to vote.  Mr Greg Diaz, Nevada County’ s Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters has stepped into the dialogue in a highly partisan manner for someone holding a non-partisan office.

He gave an unfortunate interview in the 12mar19 Union (here) in which he falsely characterized Nevada County Tea Party’s position on voting, claiming “I can't have it when someone's telling people not to vote, or not to vote their vote-by-mail ballot”, and stating that “Their true intent: is to make it more difficult for folks to vote.”  These highly political charges are wrong on all counts, since the Tea Party actually supports the advice and counsel of California’s Election Integrity Project, and clearly says that on its website (here).

Scattershots – 11mar19 (updated 14mar19)

George Rebane

Looking for national conspiracies?  Now here is one that involves everyone from George Soros through the DoJ/FBI to the DNC/Hillary.  “A dark money group with links to several high-profile liberal activists contributed $2 million to The Democracy Integrity Project, an organization founded by a former Dianne Feinstein staffer that has contracted with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to investigate President Donald Trump.” (more here)  But no one gives a hoot after the FBI’s historical public exoneration of Hillary after confirming that she did indeed break several laws dealing with national security and destroying subpoenaed evidence.

The EU’s socialist-burdened, debt-ladened countries have had a hard time taking advantage of the global upswing in business, and appear to be heading for a slowdown if not recession.  With low growth rates and still high unemployment, the continent added another harbinger as investors are exiting stocks and bidding up government bonds.  The German bund last Friday was paying 0.04% or essentially no interest as a safe haven for cash.  This, of course, sets up a vicious circle in which left-leaning countries regulate and tax their businesses to low profits, which causes their shares to be sold off, which reduces business expansion and hiring, which bids up bonds thereby lowering government debt service costs, which provides governments essentially free money to borrow and dispense into programs that grow bureaucracies and launch more programs of socialist largess, which makes the business climate even worse, which … .  Our Democrats are taking notes on how to replicate such policies on this side of the pond.

[12mar19 update]  Finland’s government collapses over healthcare costs (here).  Other Nordics are not far behind as has been reported here for some time now.  None of these socialist programs nationalizing this or that are sustainable – it’s only a matter of time when other people’s money runs out.  H/T to a Sandbox commenter for finding an early report of it.  You can bet the ranch that the lamestream will hide this as long as it can, and proto-communists like Bernie and AOC will lie through their teeth about the news.  Their solution will, of course, be even higher taxes (aka wealth redistribution).  We all await our progressive pundits’ response for an enlivening conversation; sure hope they don’t send in their cricket corps.

NPR’s Morning Edition today featured a segment on what our 2050 world will look like after we have stopped emitting CO2 and global warming has been stopped in its tracks.  The reporter was almost delirious with joy reporting from the future and looking back on what it took to get to the brave new world where people live in ‘stack & pack’ housing, suburbia was no more, private electric vehicles cost a lot, were taxed a lot, and all roadways charged dynamic fees to keep you using public transportation. That future world was envisioned quite accurately by Orwell’s 1984, and even portrayed more honestly in Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago.  Big suburban houses will repurposed for multi-family living, and standard houses will be home to 4-5 people sharing kitchen and bathroom facilities.  (The Rebanes lived almost five years in such lodgings after WW2.  See ‘My Story’)  What the report conveniently omitted was what draconian measures it would take for government to herd people into such warrens and then keep them from revolting, and what would happen to the economy when taking risks was no longer rewarded, or even allowed by central planners and controllers.

[14mar19 update]  Second Amendment attack by Connecticut's Supreme Court in ruling that manufacturer of the Sandy Hook AR-15 can be sued. (more here) This is more than a gun control nose under the 2nd Amendment tent.  If this ruling is allowed to stand, then where will this kind of rogue litigations stop?  The implication is that the manufacturer of a tool legally made for legal use can be held accountable for its illegal uses.  What then of knife makers, or hatchet makers, or baseball bat makers, or rat poison makers, or rope makers, or even manufacturer of a car used by a terrorist or drunkard to kill people?  What then of the item's distributors and dealers?  You get the idea.  'The Left is evil' gets another confirming check mark.

The Amygdala Struggles (updated 10mar19)

George Rebane

Peggy Noonan (8mar19 WSJ) draws a useful parallel between Mao’s 12-year Cultural Revolution and the present-day antics of the Blue Mobs on campuses and our streets.  Both roilings have involved pre-intellectual young people, mostly students in each country’s academe.  And both sought/seek to banish politically incorrect traditions, customs, learning, behaviors, and thinking.  Mao’s revolution followed a devastating famine, brought on by his extremely ignorant economic policies, which reportedly killed Chinese in the high tens of millions by several post-Mao accountings.  (Liberal media have since sought to reduce that number down to the low millions.)

And today as then, both types of ‘gatherings’ with shouting throngs of young people were directed to identify and publicly shame those politically incorrect who sought to speak, comment, write, or attend in places their betters identified as being out of bounds.  These ‘struggle sessions’ (Chinese term), conducted by the youth who became the Red Guards, would take place in streets, conference halls, legislative chambers, classrooms, administrative offices, and wherever else such targeted people could be found, hounded, transported, or summarily executed.  As then, today the so-accused also have learned to quickly admit their guilt in the attempt to limit added opprobrium.  Leading the currently accused by the hard-Left are self-deprecators from the ranks of Democrat politicians like Kirsten Gillibrand and Joe Biden who have quickly pled ‘guilty as charged’ and recanted.

Sandbox - 8mar19

Quo Vadis Nevada County? (updated 8mar19)

George Rebane

Actually, Nevada County is going nowhere now that it has adopted ‘San Francisco values’ to contribute to the state’s new appellation as the ‘Far Left Coast’ described by Dr Charles Kesler, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.  Our Democrat controlled state has seen a steady decline that has recently accelerated as a one-party state with super-majorities everywhere you look.  The last election gave us what can only be called Democrat hyper-majorities that are kicking our adoption of socialism into high gear.  Kesler observes –

The Democrats’ crushing dominance allows them to use California as a progressive policy laboratory. As a result, the state has the highest welfare numbers (a third of all Americans on welfare live in California), the largest contingent of illegal immigrants, a burgeoning homeless population, onerous regulations on business and private property, mediocre public schools, high income taxes (the highest marginal rate is 13.3%) and sales taxes, a yawning gap between rich and poor, its own summer blend of expensive gasoline, bedraggled and crowded roads to punish people further for driving, and a widely mocked high-speed rail boondoggle. (more here)

Not to be a laggard in the race to the Left, Nevada County progressives today are promoting programs that promise to put us at the bottom of the bottom in the state.  It appears that the only community-wide programs and policies we encourage are those designed to attract the poorest, most indigent, homeless, substance abusing, and least educated.  In the latter case the Nevada Joint Union High School District has announced that it will cut the last Advanced Placement Calculus course from its curriculum due to declining enrollment, explaining that "We are not trying to push students to move too fast in math, as the experts in the field have placed greater value in foundational algebraic skills."  According to Dan Frisella, NJUHSD Assistant Superintendent, “the state created new standards five years ago that put a higher emphasis on slowed progression in mathematics. The result was supposed to bring long-term success in the subject.” (more here)  Well, guess what? - their experts’ “result” ain’t doing no such thing; we are instead skidding downward according to state rankings.

Having worked with many of the county’s top STEM students for the last twelve years, I can confirm that the last concern NJUHSD should have is moving their students too fast in math.  The adoption of Common Core has dunned the state’s public education system in more ways than we can count and have covered in these pages.  The result of all this dumbing down of curriculum and tests is that grade school has become an extension of kindergarten, high school has become an extended grade school, and most lower division college curricula are now remediation high schools.  For students already here who desire to pursue STEM careers, they are being told to shift for themselves and find alternative educational outlets in order to find courses that prepare them for the higher education they need to compete in the job markets.

In the meantime, our leftwing political leadership in the county continues to tout their dedication to attracting businesses, high-tech, and middle-class families to these foothills.  However, what they actually promote are programs that “(divert) resources toward students in need of more help, which is a growing population, according to the district.  ‘Forty percent of our students come from low socio-economic status backgrounds, are English language learners, foster youth or homeless youth.’”  It is easy to see what kind of population the county is working to attract, and even easier to see how this cements a voting majority that will continue importing SF values and help insure the permanence of the Democrats’ hyper-majorities in Sacramento and across the state. 

Does any of this give anyone looking at Nevada County reasons why they would want to come here to start a cash-importing business or raise their family?

[8mar19 update]  It appears that the NJUHSD did not terminate the entire AP Calculus offering at NUHS.  The Union published this “clarification” on their website –

Clarification: The entire AP Calculus program was not cut. While AP Calculus BC was phased out at Nevada Union, AP Calculus AB is still ongoing.

However, given what Democrat-controlled Sacramento has done over the decades and continues to inflict on the Golden State, this rollback of STEM curriculum is still part and parcel of both the symptom and expression our state’s progressive disease.

As Nevada County stagnates and our remaining businesses bring in fewer dollars, the maintenance of our quality of life falls more and more on the tenuous tourist business and that silent cohort of resident retirees.  It is the retirees who so generously give of their time, talents, and treasure to support our community services, eateries and other local businesses, and cultural institutions by volunteering, serving on boards, and writing big checks.  And for that contribution to the community, these major cash importers and generous consumers are the same people who tread gently and require so little in return from our city and county governments.  Were these successfully retired residents to be driven out by the ever more visible SF values on our streets, alleys, and surrounding forests, there would be a run on 4x8 sheets of plywood.

Sandbox - 3mar19

[No more swallows on RR.  gjr]

Ruminations - 3mar19 (updated 6mar19)

George Rebane

California's ruling families.  Well, here are some interesting links among the Browns, Newsoms, Pelosis, and Gettys on the goings on in California politics.  It appears to be a very cozy bunch.  I invite our leftwing brethren (and cistern) to counter any of the presented facts - in short, shoot down the message and ignore the messenger.

The UFK's knowledge of Warmbier's death is independent of the US declaring that NK was responsible for a reprehensible violation of human rights, and neither can be characterized as heaping "lavish praise" on the Ugly Fat Kid.  Why is that such a difficult concept to parse in our national dialogue?  Could it be that there might be some anti-Trump cynicism involved?

Nuclear power is the answer, a persuasive argument by Michael Shellenberger of the Environmental Progress in his ‘Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet’.  This is something we techies have known and been able to demonstrate for some time now.  Shellenberger, a dedicated environmentalist, adds some more reasons why the politically powered renewables industry has the potential of actually destroying the planet, and (seatbelts please) even climate scientist Hockeystick Hanson has calculated that nuclear power has saved 2M lives to date that would have been lost to air pollution had that power been generated by fossil fuels.  The piece is worth a read, especially by those who have been making a living on the government's renewable energy subsidies tit.

[4mar19 update]  Globotics Upheaval by Richard Baldwin is about today's growth of systemic unemployment and asks “How do we cope with a sudden trade-related loss of jobs that can’t be stopped with quotas or tariffs? How do we keep society together when most employment in the information, service and financial sectors can abruptly be shifted abroad to workers earning much lower wages? And how do we deal with the anger that is likely to swell as articulate, well-educated people find their skills devalued by technological changes that they cannot escape? These are questions Mr. Baldwin deserves credit for raising.”  Well, longtime RR readers know that Baldwin and his reviewer Marc Levinson are members of a cadre with high-falootin’ credentials, all of whom today are about 15 years late in recognizing and becoming concerned about this pre-Singularity ‘upheaval’.

[5mar19 update]  A reader sent me a link to a Brookings Institute site that has a lot of tables and graphics which are compiled under 'A vast majority of counties showed increased support in 2018 House election'.  The data presented, if it holds, does not look good for Republicans in 2020.  Which again makes me think of Jefferson's 'A nation ignorant and free ...'.

[6mar19 update]  The lamestream is finally reporting the national crisis at the border, but without actually calling it such.  For months the Border Patrol et al have been reporting record numbers of illegal aliens, including families, penetrating the border and being arrested.  The number who evade capture are unknown.  But now Congress is taking testimony from people like Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin MacAeenan who reports that our ability to handle the border’s illegal traffic is now overwhelmed, and “the situation is not sustainable”.  Meanwhile, our anti-American Left along with a congressional cadre of useful idiots keep telling the country that there is no national emergency. (more here and here)

“It’s very clear that the president obstructed justice.” Claimed Jerry Nadler, House Judiciary Committee chairman, adding that “we don’t have the facts yet” and that’s why “impeachment is a long way down the road.”  Conclusion first, supporting facts later. Adam Schiff is the like-minded Red Queen of the House Intelligence Committee who is already certain that Mueller screwed up by not finding any evidence of Russia collusion, and to him TrumpJr’s meeting with the Russian lawyer in Trump Tower is evidence enough that Donald and Vladimir threw the 2016 election.  We notice the same tack of evidence-free conclusions routinely taken by our leftwing readers in these pages. (more here)

'Investigations over economy' is the Dems’ strategy for 2020 reports Jason Riley of the WSJ and Manhattan Institute.  The progressives are totally bereft of any productive national policies at which thinking people don’t cringe, so their strategy is to create enough dust and fog to overwhelm any news of the country’s continuing economic progress under Trump.  Somewhere Team Nancy cum Chuckie decided that since they can’t put a cork into the Left’s butt-stupid, socialist initiatives like Green New Deal and Medicare for All, they have to raise the noise level in their compliant fake news channels with the only thing they have left – congressional investigations in the House.  (more here)

Great Divide – it’s a’comin’

George Rebane

The Democrats have re-outed themselves as the resurrection of the Socialist Party of America, now with detailed near-term policy objectives to make the country into a socialist state over the next two decades.  To achieve this, their plan calls for the certain election of a proto-socialist President in 2020, with a supportive Congress to follow directly.  The only thing standing in the way is the re-election of Donald J Trump, and this possibility has driven the Democrats and their media lackeys into a state of political hysteria not witnessed in the history of our republic.

The Democrats are justifiably convinced that the only way to get one of their own into the White House is to prevent President Trump from completing his first term in office, and to do it in such a way as to deny the country any additional beneficial policies like those he fostered during the last two years.  In the process, perhaps the biggest lie from the Democrats circles around their constant narrative that Main Street and the poor have not benefited at all from Trump’s policies, and only the ‘rich’ have enjoyed this president. 

The Left knows that Americans are very focused on the President’s walk and not his talk.  The other countless lies from the Left maintain that no one likes the man, Americans don’t like what he’s done, and they don’t like what he will do going forward.  Were that really the case, then leftwing politicians such Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Elijah Cummings, Adam Schiff, and Mad Max Waters would not have to continue making fools of themselves every day in front of the cameras; believing their own words, they could just lay low, continue to introduce socialist legislation, and watch The Donald self-destruct.  But that clearly is not the case, and they are all sanitarily scared that the electorate will sense the truth if they tone down their investigative histrionics – no, no, no, the Cavalcade of Diversions must go on.  (BTW, one of RR’s favorite historians and observers of the nation’s churn is coming out (5mar19) with A Case for Trump, his new book that confirms and expands the points made above.)

In the meantime, more and more people today see the fiscal and social havoc that the progressives have created across the country, especially in states like New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and poster-child California.  Victor Davis Hanson addresses our home state in his 27feb19 ‘California’s Rendezvous With Reality’ that pretty much destroys the la-la land lies with which the state’s progressives are trying to paint over each of the new social, environmental, regulatory, and fiscal cracks that continue to widen.

In concert with this national charade, even some of the more observant on the Left are beginning to understand that our ship of state is no longer holding a steady course into the future.  Even progressive thinkers are beginning to consider new political configurations for the United States.  These governing structures range from new breakaway states, through “mega-regions” based on coherent economies (here), to political units hearkening back to the historical city-states of Europe (here).

However, as we continue to shout past each other in the manner much documented in these commentaries and comment streams, the Great Divide debates are starting to embrace a new and more ominous timbre.  Two WaPo reporters have noticed that pundits from both sides today see the country at loggerheads that have not been witnessed since 1860, the eve of our previous ‘civil war’.  When considering the prospect of a shooting war, a recent poll found that “more than 40 percent of Democrats described such a conflict as "likely," compared with about 25 percent of Republicans.”  Even our venerable VDH has voiced his portents, asking, "How, when, and why has the United States now arrived at the brink of a veritable civil war?" (more here)

(H/T to readers and correspondents who share my concerns.)