Rebane's Ruminations

The Varieties of Reason in Another Attempt at Discourse

“Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.”  Saul Alinsky in ‘Rules for Radicals’

George Rebane

In the effort to reflect here ‘observations and interpretations of events from the last great century of man’, illuminating the ideas and attitudes of our polarized population is part and parcel of RR posts.  Here we do a little dissection of today’s leftwing vs rightwing thought to illustrate how early 21^st century polarization is progressing.  To wit, we again have on parade in these pages a delicious example of how the liberal mind works – especially in its ability to apply standard garden variety logic to reason.  The comment stream of ‘Ruminations – 26sep19’ is an education in progressive thought and another Exhibit A on the machinations of such minds when they attempt to understand and then address a contended issue.  In this example it all started with commenter J. Barron stating –

It is blatantly obvious that if billionaires can save millions in their taxes from going to the under class, they can invest that money in something else. Jets, hot tubs, young boys . . . it's famously known as trickle up economics. Show us the proof that ain't so. Reagan would not approve.  Posted by: J. Barron | 29 September 2019 at 09:02 PM

To which I made a generic observation on Barron’s attempt to contribute to the resolution of his strong assertion about misspending of tax savings by billionaires.  I observed –

In more tempered and reasonable societies the one making an assertion is required to substantiate it with some supportive evidence. In insane societies it's the asserter who demands that his audience prove his assertion to be false, else it must be taken to be true.  Posted by: George Rebane | 29 September 2019 at 09:53 PM

In such references to ‘insane’ I use the term in its technical sense as in describing approaches and solutions to problems in the fields of mathematics, the sciences, and engineering.  This exchange gave rise to an intense discussion thread into which several additional progressives contributed the fruits of their thought.  The careful reader will immediately note that none of them understood my 953pm, or they thought it better for their case to change the subject.  In either case, my critique of Barron’s 902pm was not only not addressed, but it was duly mischaracterized as something completely unsaid – a common liberal tactic displayed in these pages over the years.

Ruminations - 26sep19 (updated 28sep19)

George Rebane

'If you nominate Loony Liz, you won't get any money from us.', say heavy Dem donors to the DNC.

Dem Rep Schiff's characterization of the Ukraine telecon transcript is historically one of the most audacious stream of lies fabricated out of whole cloth and bearing no relationship to what was in the released document.  Does anyone know of a lamestream outlet that has called him out on that?  (and more Dems' lies here)

[27sep19 update] Socialist "France said it would cut taxes on individuals and businesses by €10.2B as Macron seeks to revive his economic overhaul."  Whouda thought, as our lefties have been telling us for years that tax rates don't affect economic behavior? (more here)

[28sep19 update] The recent spate of spontaneous worldwide demonstrations against AGW are really not that spontaneous nor even locally sponsored.  Turns out they're the handiwork of a bunch of progressive rich people contributing money through something called Climate Emergency Fund, that then sends the cash to the worldwide chapters of Extinction Rebellion which actually collects and organizes the know-nothings into newsworthy protests primarily picked up by lamestream outlets. (more here)  H/T to reader.

Toward the Singularity via super-intelligence

George Rebane

Knowing my relationship with Dr Judea Pearl, fellow blogger Russ Steele sent me a link to a recent interview (here) on AI with Judea.  Longtime RR readers recall pieces citing my friend, colleague, and mentor Judea Pearl as the inventor of Bayes and causal nets, and one of the true pioneers of AI and winner of the Turing Award (here and here).  I was privileged to be one of his very small group of doctoral students contributing to his research and the writing of his landmark Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference (1988) introducing Bayes nets for which I was able to contribute my research in machine learning that wound up in what is known as the Rebane-Pearl algorithm (here and here).

Early on (late 1980s) our little group began to understand that the alternative ‘causal net’ that was also used in the literature for Bayes nets may not be appropriate.  To be frank, we were somewhat guilty of introducing that appellation ourselves before we recognized that our enthusiastic reach exceeded our grasp of causality as provided by our research.  In our paper on the Rebane-Pearl algorithm I introduced the concept of a ‘causal basin’ and showed (in my hand-drawn figure which somehow made it into the paper and Judea’s book) how the algo could take a dataset and divide it into several causal basins.  I recall having long discussions with Judea on the relationship of probabilistic inference and ‘true causality’ as we humans ascribe to the goings on in our environment.

A decade earlier Judea and I spent time during our family social get-togethers ensconcing ourselves with a bottle of wine to speculate on the future of intelligent machines and what computational, perceptual, and cognitive requirements they would need to achieve peerage with humans.  Over such discussions it became clear to both of us that machines would have to include the ability to handle the subjunctive and counter-factual ‘thoughts’, in addition being able to reason probabilistically a la Bayes nets.  It was Judea who came upon the idea that causality was a distinct cognitive beast that could not be tamed and understood through mere extensions of Bayes nets – a whole new calculus would be required.

Sandbox - 25sep19

[Anybody have any thoughts about a workable public policy that would sufficiently shield  PG&E so that it doesn't have to conduct its CYA power outages?  gjr]

Scattershots – 23sep19 (updated 24sep19)

George Rebane

George Boardman again flies his true colors with his Union column ‘Trump’s great economy?  Depends on where you are on the food chain’.  He hits all the Democratic Party talking points, and even elevates the top 20% of Americans into the ‘enemy of the people’ class.  Why?  Because they’re getting the largest dollar benefits from our revived economy.  He ignores the wage gains of the middle class and denigrates the historic benefits to our minorities who now have historically low unemployment rates and are leaving entitlement rolls in record numbers.  The Democrats’ fear is clearly evident in his dour assessment - if the dark-skinned among us are able to leave the Progressive Plantation, then from where will come the votes to elect enough leftwing politicians to control Congress and keep alive the country’s lurch to the left?  For a more sober assessment of the country’s economy, you may peruse articles here, here, and here.

Negro names – Deion, Jamar, Keshawn, Lavaughn, Mashawn, Naeem, Rashon, Salim, Dericia, Kanesha, Lachelle, Moesha, Quisha, Talisha, Temima, … (more here) – are the latest and clearest expression of our African-American population’s desire to differentiate themselves and proudly declare their solidarity with their own kind.  Among other such minority initiatives to separate the races (e.g. segregated clubs, institutions, living quarters, …), such initiatives in race-based discrimination are now celebrated, laudable, and promoted behaviors among all non-white peoples.  Our leftwingers again demonstrate their selective blinders by not being able to connect the dots between such expressions and the general characteristic of humans (and other critters) that have the great propensity to dwell among their ‘own kind’ (shared culture and values) rather than having to be politically incorrect strangers in their own land.  BTW, my use of ‘Negro’ is an intentional button push guaranteed to loosen the latest charges and confirmation by the looney Left of my being a racist.  Here is a more reasoned discussion of the current status on the use of that formerly proper and much-employed label. 

Mark Zuckerberg is busy rebuilding human communities to counter their disintegration due to everything from rampant drug addiction to murderous totalitarian regimes.  At the 22jun17 inaugural Communities Summit he lamented that “for decades, membership in all kinds of groups has declined as much as one-quarter.  That’s a lot of people who now need to find a sense of purpose and support somewhere else.”  So Mark has been ‘using AI’ to build up new communities that “will start to strengthen our social fabric and bring the world closer together”, and he’ll “change Facebook’s whole mission to take this on.”  What a nice guy to make such a selfless sacrifice with his business.  And while we’re patting him on the back, guess how and where these new communities will be formed?  Hint1 – it won’t involve real estate.  Hint2 – it will be an enormous new bonanza for harvesting data on people’s propensities, inclinations, and fears.  OK, here’s Hint3 – it starts with an ‘F’.

[24sep19 update]  Biden, ‘I never talked to my son about business.’  That bullshit is so far off the rails that it brings up the biggest concern about floating it in our public forum.  The Democrats know that their base and hanger-on constituents are so terminally stupid that they will actually believe that a very political father will not talk to his beloved underachieving son about a business opportunity from which he can make a load of dough for doing nothing save peddle his father’s influence.  That is really a dumb bunch of voters out there who constitute the biggest threat to our republic.  ‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’  Thomas Jefferson.

On Fox News this afternoon we saw Iran’s President Rouhani eat Chris Wallace’s lunch.  It was an extremely informative interview and it will play very well back in Iran.  Rouhani was calm, erudite, and had more than an answer and a counter to Wallace’s attempts to conduct some sort of an expose on the crap that Iran has been pulling in its 40-year effort to become the mid-east hegemon.  Much to our chagrin, Wallace couldn’t lay a glove on him.  Next time we should send someone on varsity to interview smart and fast-thinking people.

Nancy Pelosi has now given her imprimatur to an “official” impeachment inquiry against President Trump.  The problem is that this only moves the peanut ahead in the above mentioned mini-minds of Democrat constituents.  Such an official inquiry is no different than what has been going on until now.  What she has failed to launch is a ‘formal’ inquiry which constitutionally allows the issuance of subpoenas and the empanelment of the congressional version of a grand jury.  And having over-the-hill John Lewis (D-GA5)) make the announcement in the well of the House lends special flavor to this three-ring circus.

The House Judiciary Committee got all worked up about getting the Ukraine telecon “whistleblower” to testify in the face of the President releasing the transcript of that conversation which was monitored by a dozen people here and in the Ukraine.  The question which no one, especially Nadler, is asking is on what information beyond the transcript did the whistleblower base his “serious and critical” complaint.  If it was nothing beyond his second hand reading of the transcript, then that means serious egg on the collective Democrats’ face.  But no one has said that he had anything beyond what everyone in the intelligence communities already knew.  Ukraine’s President Zelensky, who has consented to the transcript’s release, is going to throw some cold water on this witch hunt during his UN visit and talk with Trump.

Mayor Reinette Senum of Nevada City is a sincere and dedicated worker for the common good.  She wrote a Union column (here) discussing the ways and means of broadband connectivity – especially 5G – for western Nevada County.  Although I’m seldom in sync with Reinette, I consider her a friend and have defended her right to express and promote her initiatives, no matter how far off the rails they seem to me. She wants broadband to come to our community in a “technology-neutral way”.  Now why would anyone want that???  I thought we all want technology to come our way definitely biased to our greater benefit; forego the losers and go with the winner.  She also wants to place our wellbeing in the hands of “independent scientists and well-informed medical professionals” when it comes to local radio frequency transmissions, but not when it comes to global warming, the impact of which is OK to leave in the interpretative hands of bureaucrats and consensus science.  Nevertheless, I credit her with informing us that the California constitution contains the following - “All people are by nature free and independent and have inalienable rights. Among these are enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness, and privacy.”  This, of course, is anathema to the A21 (now Agenda 2030) promoting governor and Democrat overwhelmed California legislature daily taking more private property away from Californians.

Where Are They Indeed?

George Rebane

There are about 2,500 galaxies (not stars) in the picture below – each of even the smallest dots is a galaxy.  Each such galaxy has about 300 billion stars, and each star has at least five planets.  Today we can see over 2,000,000,000,000 = 2 trillion such galaxies.  Fainter galaxies exist but don’t show in such photos.  This means that we can visualize only a part of our universe which itself contains 3x10^23 (a 3 with 23 zeros following it) planets.  Of these, at least 1% are in the ‘Goldilocks’ zone from their sun.  This suggests that there are about 3x10^21 planets that could potentially have an environment that supports life as we know it. (There are undoubtedly other forms of life about which we are ignorant.)  In our own galaxy there are about 11 billion of such planets.

To further illustrate the vastness of our visible universe, consider that the above photo is a magnification of what our telescopes see when looking at a part of the entire sky surrounding Earth that is less than 1/33 of (or more than 33 times smaller than) the size of the period at the end of this sentence when held out at your arm’s length.  This means if you printed a page with a period (from Times New Roman size 12) on it, and made a hole with a very sharp needle through and exactly the size of the period, then holding it out at your arm’s length you would be able to ‘see’ over 84,000 galaxies through that pinprick, no matter in which direction you looked in the night sky.  Of course, your eye would have to have the magnifying power of a big telescope (like the Hubble) to resolve all those galaxies as shown in the above photo.  Perhaps this understanding would allow us to better contemplate the size of our visible universe and consider all the extra-terrestrial civilizations that have already existed, are now in existence, and will come to be in the interminable future.

The background to this meditation was posted as ‘A copernican answers Fermi’, and later I’ll have more to say about the portents of all this. (more here)

Dropout Derby - 21sep19 update

George Rebane

I guess DeBlasio's dropout now means that the poor citizens of NYC will have to put up with more of his great urban administrative skills.  Oh well.  With his departure our Estonian Fox and Mr fish have leaped into the lead.

 

Scattershots – 20sep19 (updated 21sep19)

George Rebane

The Daily Signal of the Heritage Foundation discovers ‘The Real Reason for Trump Derangement Syndrome’.  RR readers have been discussing and debating the real reasons for the Left’s virulent TDS ever since the 2016 election.  Yes indeed, with foot firmly planted in mouth, our president is still our champion in the “multifront pushback—politically, socially, economically, and culturally—against what might be called the elite postmodern progressive world.”

Piers Morgan, liberal commentator and journalist, is concerned about where today's liberals and progressives are going with their political correctness cum incipient Soviet communist society.  This video interview (here) on Real Clear Politics is a bit lengthy (hence complete), but the first 10 minutes makes clear that most of what we have been saying in these commentaries for some time is not only shared by conservatives and libertarians, but also by many of those leaning liberal who are alarmed by the utter insanity that now grips the Left.  Morgan summarizes it very well.

Climate hysteria is scheduled on 27 September 2019 to reach globally coordinated proportions with a “first ever international General Strike for Climate” planned by Earth Strike and its affiliated organizational members. (more here)  Their intention is to literally stop the world doing its business.  They must take to the streets to disrupt for the simple reason that their attempts at presenting their arguments for preventable manmade global warming simply don’t hold water in the public forum.  So now it is time to disrupt society in order to push their narrative before the last of their consensus science withers and dies.  Nothing they have prognosticated and presented has panned out, and their cause looks more ridiculous with each passing month.  Hence, the time has come to rout reason.

[21sep19 update] The utter stupidity of AB5 (here) has been picked up by both sides of the political divide now that it is law.  Here is what our favorite cartoonist Bob Crabb published in the 21sep19 Union.

Agenda21 to SDGs to Agenda 2030

George Rebane

RR has covered the Agenda21 story extensively over the years primarily in its role as a template for leftwing objectives that their politicians’ public policies seek to fulfill.  (see 'Agenda 21' category) This non-binding UN initiative was formalized in 1992 and signed by over 100 nations.  The US (under Bush1) became a signatory.  A21’s objectives and means of achieving them on the level of local jurisdictions was and continues to be taught to government officials and properly politically oriented NGO staffs through a global network of ICLEIs.

ICLEI or the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives was launched under the aegis of A21.  The ICLEIs almost immediately began distancing themselves from the A21 relationship as the latter’s objectives started to be highlighted by various rightwing media outlets, politicians, and conservative blogs as harbingers of global autocracy.  The goals taken in toto were an antithesis for the retention of sovereign nation-states as the fundamental structure of world order.  A21 called for an authoritarian global government whose operational goals were actually to markedly lower human population, reduce its consumption of earth’s resources, and restrict people’s access to most of earth’s land area and natural resources.

This obviously made A21 and all references to it anathema to most Americans, and made connecting A21 to the Left’s globalist narrative a no-brainer.  Hence, the Left immediately launched a nationwide denial campaign, claiming that A21 was really some hare-brained Big Brother conspiracy cooked up by the Right.  Their proof of that was showing that none of their public policies which existentially abetted A21 objectives, actually called out A21 or mentioned A21 objectives in the laws and regulations they passed and their publicized desiderata for future legislation.  In short, A21 had to be banished from the public mind.  And so it was.

Today the objectives of A21 are all alive and well, but they have had to be repackaged by the UN under the new rubric of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and wrapped into its newly introduced Agenda 2030.  The clear hope is that within such new adornments, the public will be bamboozled a bit longer as the global Left continues to fashion and form ever more restrictive boundaries through SDG-supportive public policies, all of which need an ever larger state to administer and enforce them.  And, of course, all that will cost much more than we are used to paying now, hence the new levels of mandated tribute to Leviathan will be justified as fulfilling part of humanity’s overall moral imperative in its march into the globalist 21^st century as prescribed by Agenda 2030.  The beat goes on.  (more here, here, and elsewhere – google ‘Agenda 2030’)

The happier place, America or Europe? (updated 25sep19)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 18 September 2019.  An edited version was printed (here) in the 21sep19 edition of The Union.]

Our national Left has loudly included in their narrative to fundamentally transform America, that the Europeans are a much happier lot than we poor polarized and poverty-stricken wretches on this side of the Pond.  The citizens of the EU are described as a people happy with their subsidies and socialism, cared for from cradle to grave with extended vacations, shorter work weeks, job security, and lavish no-cost healthcare.  What’s not to like?

Actually, the Europeans have a lot of worries, and when you talk to them on a personal level, they are ready and willing to go through the long list.  We just returned from two weeks in Europe where we had a reunion with our German families, and then went on to visit and talk with people in Switzerland, France, more Germany, and Holland.  Here’s part of the laundry list that keeps Europeans up at night.

All EU countries are struggling with low to no economic growth, due mainly to over regulation and high taxes.  The future of indigenous Europe is hampered by devastating demographics which are characterized by a growing cohort of the ever more feeble and ailing elderly.  No country is close to delivering the 2.1 births per fertile woman required for mere stability of a population.  Germany is today at 1.2 which is equivalent to Russia’s alarming shrink rate.  The richer countries’ declining workforces are made up of an ever greater fraction of mid-easterners, Africans, and southeastern Europeans from poor countries such as Rumania and Bulgaria, who do jobs that northern Europeans refuse to do.

Sandbox - 18sep19

[The Union tells us that there will be demonstrations 'Striking for the Earth' at the NC and GV city halls this Friday.  These deluded citizens have no idea that their anthropomorphized Earth doesn't give a big rat's ass about ongoing climate change.  And what still eludes these sincere but factually deficient folks is that consensus science is NOT science - discovering ground truths about our universe is NOT a democratic process.  gjr]

Scattershots – 16sep19 (updated 17sep19)

George Rebane

The Trump haters led by the NYT did their best to relaunch the smear campaign against Justice Kavanaugh.  The formerly prestigious newspaper continued to dig its journalistic grave by publishing a carefully constructed story of another sexual escapade the Justice was supposed to have participated in as an undergraduate, and then later had to ‘amend’ it in response to a public outcry for the truth.  Well, it turns out that in the process the NYT rolled another fake news honey wagon down the street, immediately onto which jumped about twelve leading Dem presidential candidates to start spreading its contents through the lamestream media.  Our moral high-ground progressives (witness also these pages) have decided to respond with their usual crickets.  It’s telling that even Nadler is not going to touch this one with a ten-foot ladle.

Fox News should review the grade school credentials of some of its news editors.  Tonight on Bret Bayer a map showing the latest Iran/Saudi crisis had Oman labeled as the UAE, and the entire Arabian Sea as the greatly expanded Persian Gulf.  Our criticisms of the post-Great Society disaster in educating America’s kids is confirmed daily in what we see and hear on the news.

[17sep19 update]  My main desktop computer died on Sunday morning.  And I mean died, like in DEAD – even its operating system Windows10 did not load, it just got to BIOS and went belly up.  The tech mavens at Quietech (my goto PC docs) diagnosed it as having a hardware failure that required ordering a replacement part from China which will take at least a week to arrive.  Having PCs since ‘Day One’, I have never experienced such a failure in over 40 years.  We always have a bunch of computers around the house, but losing my main brain left me somewhere between devastated and discombobulated (I think psychiatrists know the difference).  The emotional experience was/is an interesting episode, and very revealing about my dependencies.  The dearly departed and about to be resurrected is a very large and very fast Alienware laptop game computer that can juggle multi-million element matrices in a single bound (yes, I still spend time messing with such beasts).  Now Jo Ann has the only working Windows box left in the house; the rest of our laptops, pads, and phones are all Apple products – e.g. I’m typing this on my MacBook Pro which lives in the front room by a comfy couch.  My self-indulging response to all this is having another super-fast (AMD 8-core, 16 thread) Windows tower built that will be delivered with a new 32 inch high-res monitor which will join my formerly biggest 27-incher.  Both of us got addicted to two-monitor setups some years back, and having only one screen to work with is now downright stifling.  Anyway, that’s more than you wanted to know about my current emotional shock and functional deficit.

Dropout Derby - 13sep19 update

George Rebane

Last one out to date is Gillibrand.  Mr fish leaps into the lead.

California’s latest dumb to dumber (updated 14sep19)

George Rebane

The litany of inept, incompetent, ineffective, destructive, and corrupt public policies from Democrat controlled Sacramento just keep cascading over this once golden state.  The latest pair involves the statewide rent control law and the forced reclassification of consultants as employees.

“First California makes homes unaffordable, then it imposes statewide rent control” observes the 12sep19 WSJ.  California’s government imposed housing shortage is now known worldwide.  Over 700,000 wealth producing Californians have left the state since 2010, inevitably to be replaced by welfare recipients (1 in 3 live here) and succored illegals.  Rent control distorts the information which open market prices relay about supply and demand.  Here, as elsewhere, rent control will put a further damper on housing development, induce gratuitous rent increases to the new max (5% plus inflation), and reduce/remove incentives to keep rental properties properly maintained.  Today “the upshot is that an ‘affordable’ housing unit in California costs $332,000 to build and nearly $600,000 in San Francisco, according to state budget figures. Developers can’t turn a profit on low- and middle-income homes despite abundant federal and state subsidies.”

Consultants (I used to be one in my career) form a valuable component of the state’s workforce, especially when it comes to starting and expanding businesses.  Consultants quickly bring valuable expertise at reasonable cost to businesses when the need for their specialized knowledge may be for a short term and/or when the future is too uncertain to commit to a premature hiring decision.  Consultants usually have more than one concurrent client, and that lets them and the hiring company only use as much of the consultant’s hours as is necessary to do their special work.  All these advantages go out the window when the new law (now AB5) imposes draconian conditions on who may or may not be called and hired as a consultant.  The law is one more confirmation of Sacramento’s idiocy regarding business development and operations, and also of its desperation for additional revenues – employees get taxed more - into its general fund (giving lie to all the ballyhoo about the state’s budget reserves and financial wellbeing).  In sum, socialists don’t do business right.

[13sep19 update]  It was time for another comment from one our leftwing regulars (JigW 859pm) that again confirms the assessment that those folks are intellectually handicapped beyond repair.  This comment, while not acknowledging the content of my above commentary, repeated the oft offered ‘if you don’t like California, then leave’, augmented by the observation that ‘it sucks to have a life like yours since you’re not going to convince California to change course’.  The sackhead’s attempt to include the notion of ‘logic’ in his diatribe just confirms his disabilities.  Overall, I have seen little evidence that progressive readers understand anything in my commentaries, or similar commentaries elsewhere.

More attentive longtime readers know I have maintained since the launch of RR that CA is beyond the tipping point ideologically, and that it is headed for a socio-economic train wreck as it drives out wealth producers and attracts the hordes of gimmes and illegals with its maelstrom of misguided public policies.  I’m not aware of anyone here embracing the belief that we will miraculously miss the disaster, let alone hoping that their missives will change progressive minds.  That is a notion that people like Jig aggrandize themselves with as having viewpoints that others consider important enough to seek to alter.  The man himself says it best – “If you see things differently and actually believe you are going to convince California and it's progressives to change the course, then let us in on your little secret. I can tell you right up front your plan is delusional at best. Insane more likely. Logical . . . not.”

But what is important to continue noting is the Left’s confusion of criticism as the necessary precursor to change.  I might remind those confused with RR’s tagline – Observations and interpretations of events from the last great century of Man.  This blog is my own public diary of such observations and interpretations to which I invite participation from those with the ability to think critically and conduct a civil dialogue.  As readers can tell, that invitation has been accepted by a broader audience not all having such qualifications.

I offer this invitation because I am a copernican who has no special access to goodness and truth, and is therefore prone to errors that, upon serious consideration (after all I’m supposed to be a trained scientist), may cause me to change my mind.  And to me such redirections are a (sometimes bittersweet) joy.

Although I have been graciously accused of having a unique perspective here and there, generally I find that my views are shared by a significant cohort of learned people who are also students of the human condition.  However, over the years this fact has been totally invisible to the above cited local leftwingers.  As archived in RR’s comment streams, these poorly informed worthies continue their uninterrupted braying that all my commentaries and critiques are the unique offspring of an old, miserable, and lonely mind in these foothills, the defunct offal of ideas about which no one cares – and yet they come.

[14sep19 update]  For a broader compendium of reasons to oppose AB5, please read today’s lead Union editorial, ‘Assembly Bill 5 an out-of-touch overreach’ (following publisher Don Rogers' 12sep15 column on the same issue).  This well-worded criticism of the unbelievably butt-stupid bill comes from the editorial board of our decidedly center-left newspaper.  And it further demonstrates how virulently radical are the above discussed remarks of one of our more calcified socialist ideologues, an ilk whose debating powers are constrained by ‘agree with me or begone!’

Sandbox - 12sep19

[Back from our travels, and lots of insights about what's going on in the minds of many Europeans.  gjr]

“Never forget” what?

George Rebane

Today marks the 18^th anniversary of 9/11, the day radical Islam claimed the largest number of innocent American lives through terror as part of its global jihad against western civilization.  Since then the anti-American lamestream media has tried its damnest to propagandize an Islam-free narrative to memorialize that day of infamy.  The day is now marked by commemorative blather that describes “some people” flying “airplanes (that) took aim and brought down the World Trade Center” as if the event was a hurricane or earthquake that caused the deaths and destruction.

Ads are run that ask us to “never forget”, but stop short of saying what we are to never forget.  Had 9/11 been a natural disaster, then almost everyone not directly involved would already have forgotten what happened.  Every memorializing message that omits the real intent and cause of those killers who hijacked the airliners is in reality asking us to specifically forget the real intent and cause of that day’s terror-borne tragedy, and the resulting celebrations all across Islam.

Sandbox - 5sep19

[Apologies for the delay in providing new sand.  You all seem to have covered every imaginable issue in the last Sandbox.  And there is more to be said about it all.  Haven’t heard of more dropouts in the derby beyond Gillibrand - we’ll update scores when I get home.  Sally forth!  gjr]

Scattershots - 5sep19

Trip report.  We’re now on the Rhine heading for Koblenz to view some historical fortifications.  On this trip we landed in Munich, and drove to Bad Worishofen for a big reunion with four German families we have known and visited for decades, and ate ourselves silly at different places in the foothills of the Alps.  Very interesting was that no one wanted to talk politics very much - a staple of German conversation.  Then we drove to Basel through Austria and Switzerland to catch our Viking river longship.  The trip down the Rhine has been wonderful, especially the tour of the actual battlegrounds of the little known Colmar salient (contemporaneously fought with the Battle of the Bulge and the campaign made famous by Audie Murphy).  The daylong walking tour of Strasbourg was almost a reminder of the march up the Bataan peninsula.  We’re again traveling with friends with whom we done this before.  So far we’ve been through four countries and will add Holland before coming home.