Rebane's Ruminations

Ruminations – 30jul20 (updated 5aug20)

Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks.  Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away, poor fools.  And their grandchildren are once more slaves. - D.H. Lawrence

George Rebane

‘America’s Summer of Cultural Suicide’ from Victor Davis Hansen is another voice that corroborates the sentiments of these pages.  With what we used to call the ‘silent majority’ practicing ever more persistent forms of quietude as our woke progressives rampage to transform the country, the chances for any return to normalcy have faded and now range between slim and none.

The Left’s desperate spinning of the country’s violent riots as “peaceful protests” has now become a staple in their stable of pre-election Big Lies.  When shown dated videos of mayhem on our city streets to counter their lies, they and their lamestream lackeys double down by calling the reporting of existential evidence as just rightwing Republican “narrative”.  The Left is confident in the effectiveness of such outrageous denials because they know their constituents are either ignorant or only lap up lamestream outlets, as we confirm in our comment streams.

Nevada County’s “Urgency Ordinance” to fine the bejeezus out of business and people who violate the notched-up version of Gov Newsom’s latest C19 diktats was tabled by the BoS for rewrite and clarification.  Now that everyone seems to be playing by the latest version of the lockdown rules, is there still any reason to prescribe fines at the draconian levels in the ordinance’s first go-around – in short, why do it to ourselves?  And the question still begs, ‘Why can’t an already informed populace in a remote rural county with low incidence of the pandemic not be allowed to take their own risks in following the guidance to wear masks, social distance, and not congregate in big gatherings where there is a higher chance of getting infected?’

'Stupid on Steroids' is how Bob Crabb has branded me and all conservatives for the above sentiments.

Mystery seeds from China.  "The U.S. Department of Agriculture said consumers in at least 22 U.S. states and several other countries had received unsolicited packages of seeds. Canada, the U.K. and Australia all are investigating the matter."  One of the Rebane clan in the county received such a seed package this week.

[31jul20 update]  Congressional Republicans are coming across to this commentator as somewhere between double dummies and dreadfully incompetent.  My general lament about today’s Republican Party (here) didn’t go into specifics, so I’ll highlight a couple of pieces of evidence here.  Thankfully retiring Rep James Sensenbrenner’s (R-WI) performance yesterday as the ranking member of the House Antitrust Subcommittee was a travesty (here).  As shown on FN’s 30jul20 news, every point he made was lame, and he phrased every question as a wrongway, unrevealing puffball to the tech execs.  He made a perfect Republican doppelganger of Democrat double dummies like Rep Hank Johnson (D-GA) who showed concern that Guam would tip over if we added additional military personnel to our base there (here).

Meanwhile, the ongoing Republican incompetence in the Senate is highlighted by WSJ’s Kim Strassel (here) – “As Congress spent another tortuous week nonnegotiating a fifth virus-relief bill, it finally dawned on Republicans that they are being played for fools. Democrats don’t want a bill; they want to win an election. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—who may go down as one of Washington’s greatest cynics—knew exactly what she was doing in May, when she cooked up the $3 trillion monstrosity known as the Heroes Act. If the GOP said no to her outlandish demands, Democrats would brand them as uncaring, unable to lead, unworthy of controlling Washington. If instead she bludgeoned them into swallowing her spendathon, Democrats would wave the win as proof they should control Washington. Heads Democrats win; tails Republicans lose.”  There are indications that McConnell and his caucus are finally having an epiphany as to the requirement for the Repubs to present a plan that robustly contrasts their approach with that of the Dems.  About f*&!ing time.

[1aug20 update] Rep John Lewis RIP.  As readers have come to expect, my take on the life and times of John Lewis runs counter to the national paeans raised in his honor and remembrance.  The historical record shows that he was indeed a courageous and self-sacrificing civil rights leader in the early 1960s, as he helped launch the landmark integration and voting acts of 1964 and 1965.  But then in the remainder of his public career, he reverted to join and then lead the other cynical Congress critters who went on to pass bill after bill that served to destroy the black family, deny education to their young, and create enduring murderous ghettos in our inner cities.  In these, residents mistakenly placed their last vestiges of hope on government largess, which did nothing but install an attitude of ingrained victimhood that kept them in place as they continued to vote for their calculating political ‘benefactors’, who perennially promised a better life that they had no intention of delivering.  Nevertheless, history will be kinder to John Lewis than this politically incorrect, socially unjust, yet factually accurate remembrance.

[2aug20 update]  Another nail in journalism’s coffin.  WSJ’s Paul Gigot joined all the lamestream journalists in reporting that the economy shrank 32.9% during the 2^nd quarter.  That’s like the GDP dropping almost a third in three months.  Notice they didn’t say it dropped at the annual rate of 32.9% during the 2^nd quarter, which is in fact what happened.  For the numerate out there, they tap a few calculator keys and quickly determine that the GDP actually shrank only 7.4% last quarter, and were it to repeat that for the next three quarters, then and only then would an annual drop of 32.9% come to pass.  The average Joe and Josephine on the corner don’t have a clue, and their takeaway is that Trump is mismanaging the economy so badly that it loses a third of its value in three months.  Journalists compete for the bottom of the barrel with politicians, public school teachers, and lawyers in the minds of the diminishing number of Americans who still pay attention.

The newest Big Lie from Democrats is convincing the already confused Joe and Josephine that all mail-in ballots are alike, and that since we have had absentee voting with mail-ins for years with no problems, expanding to all voting via mail-ins will follow suit opposed only by Republicans who want to reduce the minority vote.  Again, nothing is further from the truth.  County registrars mailing a mail-in ballot to all on their voter rolls are already causing reams of problems where such practices have been tried (and all of these in Democrat jurisdictions).  Almost all voter rolls across the country are woefully out of date, containing names of people moved, people dead, and people not qualified to vote – e.g. California has over 500,000 of these non-voters on the state’s active voter rolls.  On the other hand, absentee ballots are only sent to people who request them with appropriate vetting information.  Democrats love all the creative things that can be done with blanket mail-in votes.

[5aug20 update]  Insurrection Act of 1807.  OK boys and girls, here’s the skinny on sending in the feds, including the military and National Guard, to quell rioting in cities.  The act has been invoked numerous times by presidents since it was passed – last time by Bush1 in 1992 against the LA riots.  To pull the trigger on the full use of the act, the president needs to “publish a proclamation ordering the insurgents to disperse.”  Which in effect President Trump has done numerous times.  Check it out here.  (H/T to an astute reader who sent me the link.)

The Dilemma of a Disillusioned and Disaffected Republican (updated 31jul20)

George Rebane

To some questions a silent answer speaks volumes.

Say that someone is a longtime Republican who, after much thought, has come to believe that –

1. The national Republican Party (RP) is no longer a viable custodian, communicator, or champion of conservative and classical liberal values.
2. The RP is in full ideological retreat with one or another of its politicians succumbing daily to the demands of the radical Left and the Democrat Party.
3. The few remaining and widely accessible champions of the Right are found on radio, cable news, and the internet. Other conservative/libertarian media outlets and rightwing institutions are mostly echo chambers preaching to their choirs.
4. Rank and file conservatives are reserved, avoid public notice, and appear to be waiting for the arrival of a ‘man on a white horse’ to lead them. Donald Trump has shown himself not up to that task, even though his policies, as opposed to his mouth, have on the whole been quietly welcomed by Republicans.
5. Democrats at all levels have increasingly shown themselves to be virulently anti-American, now hell bent on transforming our republic into an anti-capitalist, command/control autocracy. Today their three generations of carefully public-schooled constituents – illiterate in history, governance, and the language – will expectantly follow their voluble demogauges anywhere.
6. Locally Republicans are almost invisible, reticent to show their colors in public, and they don’t support fellow Republicans who do champion conservative values in the public square – when attacked by Democrats and socialists, these are abandoned to swing in the virulent winds of the Left.
7. The Nevada County RP leadership is also reticent, having political imaginations firmly in the furrow of the same ol’ same ol’, while expecting a different outcome.
8. The California RP has published no realistic plan for its resurgence to again become a viable political entity in the state.
9. Does not know of anyone with a plan for California RP’s resurgence, nor does he know of anyone who knows anyone who claims to have such a plan.
10. The RP can still be revived if it can attract a courageous, communicative, and competent leadership, from some of their current back benchers.
11. Nevertheless, the now fallow RP remains on the political landscape as the only realistic opponent of Democrats today bent on establishing a socialist America.

The alternatives available to him include –

1. Do nothing.
2. Quietly re-register as an Independent.
3. Quietly re-register as a ‘Decline-to-State’ (remaining Republican)
4. Quietly re-register as a Libertarian
5. Volubly re-register as an Independent
6. Volubly re-register as a Libertarian.
7. …?

This grim outlook on the Republican Party is shared by most of my conservetarian friends and acquaintances.  For that reason I sent these thoughts to a well-known congressman with whom I have enjoyed years of exchanging ideas during visits, with emails, and through telephone conversations.  I was seeking his own observations on the matter, and also his counsel to such party members and supporters.  To date our other conversations continue, but on this his response has been the sound of silence.

[31jul20 update]  Some examples of my frustration with today’s Grand Old Party are posted in today’s update to the 30jul20 ‘Ruminations’.

Sandbox - 27jul20

[Does everyone know what Nevada County Supes are planning to vote on tomorrow?  Heidi Hall (District1) plans to introduce Urgency Ordinance Measure 37 that would impose draconian fines on local residents for not wearing a mask, even while social distancing.  This is the latest of the power-mad disease infecting political pinheads across the country.  Write your supervisor or be there.  gjr]

Election2020 – Electoral College Predictor

George Rebane

Something is possible when it can happen with non-zero probability; something is probable when the chance of its happening will impact a decision.

One of our commenters pointed me to 270towin.com, a website that presents a map-based tool to predict the Electoral College (EC) votes which will determine our next president.  They show how the states are going to vote given various pundit assessments and polling results.  The site also lets you assign to each state whether and to what degree it will vote Republican or Democrat.  The degrees shown for each party are – Safe, Likely, Leans, Tilt, and Toss-up.  You can also add ‘Tilt’ to the spectrum.  Assigning such degrees to each state allows the site’s visitor to come up with his own prognostication.

The problem with 270towin is that its algorithm to compute the total EC votes for each candidate is not revealed.  To overcome this shortcoming and make the EC predictor more useful and transparent, I constructed a rigorous one in the spreadsheet form shown below (click on image to enlarge).

This has the trending categories shown along with their 1 thru 9 trend numbers that identify each one uniquely.  As per convention, the blue numbers are to be input by the user, the black numbers are calculated by formulas (keep you mitts off of them).  All the 538 EC votes are shown for the states and DC.  Inputting your own trend numbers will recalculate the expected number of EC votes each side will get along with their underlying probability distribution.  This permits some math to be applied to compute the actual probabilities of each side winning the EC vote – i.e. getting more than the needed 270 required to win.

And here’s the good part.  In my model, the win probabilities that quantify each trend category are shown and can be changed by the user.  Mine are 0.51, 0.55, … shown in blue under the Republican side and replicated in black on the Democrat side.  If you don’t like my picks for each of the indicated trending categories, then substitute your own, and fill in the trend numbers for all the states and DC.

The model outputs are shown in the yellow block, and consist of the expected number of Dem and Repub votes along with the probabilities that the Dems and Repubs get at least the needed 270 votes to win.  The trend numbers shown were the current ‘consensus’ assignments from 270towin, and with my assigned probabilities, a Democrat win is practically a certainty.  I will put in my own trend numbers as time goes by, and so can you.  You can download the spreadsheet here – Download ElectCollege2020

I will publish your assessments if you send me an image of the relevant cells as shown above – put your own name and date YYMMDD in the cell under the copyright notice.  Have fun.

And despite today's bad EC numbers, here is a little Lucky Strike Extra for all of you without TDS.

Letters from the Revolution – 24jul20 (updated 26jul20)

George Rebane

No one’s interests, objectives, values, … will exactly match yours.  The best you can ever do is support those with whom you share the most in common.

Kudos to our local restaurants Old Town Café, Sergio’s, and Friar Tucks for remaining open and in business despite Gov Newsom’s unconstitutional diktats and the compliantly cringing Nevada County Environmental Health Department’s threats to close and fine them.  The poster on their doors says it all.

[update] ‘News Media Becomes Fluent in Newspeak’ observes Gerard Baker in the 20jul20 WSJ.  He cites Orwell’s “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength”, and writes, Part of George Orwell’s genius lay in his insight that manipulation of language was essential to the revolutionary project. If you can command popular compliance with a lexicon that reorders—or even inverts—the widely understood meaning of political terms, you can remake society as much as you can with any law, mandate or act of force. Thought is constrained by the limits of language, and so language becomes a vital tool for placing limits on thought.”  Baker apparently is not aware of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of which Orwell undoubtedly was.  S-W makes the strong claim that one can only think thoughts that can be expressed in the language(s) one knows.  The Left quickly became the leading practitioner of this facet of human cognition, and has applied it worldwide where it has come to control the institutions of education, news media, and entertainment.

[26jul20 update]  Democrat Big Lies just continue washing over the country.  The latest is from Dem big city mayors who tell their know-nothings that the president’s sending federal forces into their cities to enforce federal laws, which the mayors refuse to do, is unconstitutional.  As former AG Michael Mulkasey patiently made clear on FN, the truth is exactly the opposite.  The Constitution requires the president to send in federal LE forces wherever they are needed in the country in order to enforce federal laws – e.g. secure and defend federal property.  Another longstanding Dem whopper is the ongoing charge that Trump has mishandled the federal C19 response, which ‘mishandling’ no one seems to be able to define.  So, when Bumblebrain was asked on MSNBC what the correct response should be when he is president, he stuttered through his ‘six point plan’ containing items each one of which had already been initiated by President Trump and is already in operation.  The liberal interviewer was either too ignorant to call Biden on his purloined ‘plan’, or didn’t want to tell her audience that Bumblebrain had blown another one.

 

The Reliability Roulette of Testing (updated)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 21 July 2020.]

It’s again time to bring up testing for the Covid-19 virus.  Let me start by saying that testing has shown no value in formulating reasonable pandemic response policies by public officials.  It has become an election year political football, a game played by both parties and all our healthcare institutions starting with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.  And there’s a lot more to be said to support such a strong and wide-reaching assertion.

Scattershots – 22jul20

George Rebane

Our indigenous North American natives (aka Indians) may not have politically clean hands after all.  Now that it’s OK to go back in history to any desired time in order to dredge up the iniquities of our forefathers (and mothers), we have discovered that the most recent arrivals before the white man probably were not very nice to the people who were here before them.  “For most of the 20th Century, archaeologists were convinced that big-game hunters known as the Clovis people, identified by the fluted flint spear points they made, were the first Americans, arriving about 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. More recent finds from Oregon to Chile, though, showed that other groups had arrived 16,000 years ago or more.”  So is it not now time to start tearing down the history of our redskins, so we can proceed to a clean sweep of all the bad that preceded this fundamentally transformed age of purity in thought and deed? (more here and here)

More later.

The communists try again … (updated 17jul20)

George Rebane

From The Patriarch, David Nasaw’s mega-biography of the life and times of Joseph P. Kennedy, we read –

The Depression, as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., noted in the first volume of his The Age of Roosevelt, offered “radicalism its long awaited chance.”  The unemployed, underemployed, dispossessed, and hungry were not sitting idly by waiting for prosperity to return.  Many were too numbed, too crushed, to protest, but a small and vocal minority were not.  The Socialist and Communist parties more than doubled their tiny memberships and exploded in visibility.  Communist Party organizers were actively operating in city neighborhoods from Harlem to Detroit, in the coal fields of Pennsylvania an Kentucky, and the River Rouge plant in Dearborn, among tenants and sharecroppers in the South and migrant workers in California, and outside and inside closed and closing mills and factories in the Northeast.  Their argument was simple: capitalism had failed and needed to be replaced.

In the 1930s FDR’s big government nostrums kept the country in a depression so deep and enduring that it took the greatest war in history to bring us out of it (aided through Truman’s fortuitous rejection of the post-war return to FDR’s alphabet soup agencies) and reject communism.  What is it going to take this time in today's Democrat-promoted recession as their socialists/communists again marshal their forces in the streets and in the ballot boxes?

[17jul20 update]

Scattershots – 15jul20 (updated 19jul20)

George Rebane

Putin’s favorite party is the Democrats by far.  As they lavish their baseless stream of Big Lies on America’s electorate about Trump’s Russia collusion, for which there is absolutely no evidence after years of investigations cum witchunts, the truth again is the Alinsky opposite.  Since they can’t do it through legislation, the Left continues to stifle the production, transport, and distribution of America’s fossil energy through legacy regulations and litigation.  This has made America’s sale of natural gas to Europe uncompetitive with what Putin can deliver through its expanded Baltic pipelines to countries like Germany et al.  (more here)  There is no doubt that Putin, Xi, and the Iranian ragheads (e.g. recipients of pallets of cash) favor our demonic Dems over any Republican.  Besides crippling our country’s lead as the world’s energy producer, our progressives continue to do everything they can to weaken our ability to project power as the world’s white hat hegemon.  And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet until they really rule the roost in Washington.  Our Left has given new meaning to colluding with despots.

[16jul20 update] In ‘The Politics of Hydroxychloroquine’ Allysia Finley presents an update of results from the clinical applications and testing of HCQ.  The bottom line of it is that HCQ has very large domain of beneficial use in fighting the corona virus where it saves lives and greatly reduces the morbidity of the disease.  Finley correctly argues that the physician, taking this information into account, should determine its use on a per-patient basis.  However, almost all of these results are still suppressed in the lamestream media (we recall that the socialists’ utility for fighting the pandemic is to maximize mortality while suppressing economic recovery).  Not only that, but much of the politically motivated anti-HCQ reporting continues to be fraudulent – ‘fake news’ is too mild of an appellation for murderous journalism.  HCQ is overwhelmingly safe when applied according to its standard of care, and has been for decades.  Banning it has been part and parcel of the TDS toolkit for defeating Trump in November.  Since the end has always justified the means – being a socialist means never having to say you’re sorry.

A rational liberal answers.  I asked a longtime friend, who has been drifting leftward over the years and purposely limits his intake to overwhelmingly lamestream outlets, to comment on the video of Rep Ilhan Abdullahi Omar (D-MN) with the question “How do you interpret her remarks and her goals for America?”  His answer sheds a lot of light on how far we have drifted apart, and by no means is he alone in the ranks of the thinking Left who view themselves as mid-roaders. 

I’m not overwhelmed by carefully extracted snippets from the most radical edge of the Democratic Party. She and her opinions couldn’t get elected in 90% of the other Democratically held districts, so I don’t consider her a spokesperson for the Party. Additionally, she didn’t propose a Government-controlled, centrally planned economy, the abolition of private property, pro-Communism, or any of the other things that are attributed to the radical left by conservatives. I believe that the present system is not cost-effective from an income distribution perspective. I think the economy would be stronger and more robust if more of the income were in the hands of the lower 50%. They have to spend all their money, so it goes directly into the consumer portion of the economy. Most of that is spent on food and shelter and would directly help the Agriculture industry overcome the shortfalls that have resulted from the Tariff War with China. The challenge, of course, is the choice of mechanism for broader income distribution. The problem is the conservatives either don’t see income disparity as a national problem or are convinced that the cure would be worse than the disease. I don’t believe wanting to fix it makes one a Communist.

[17jul20 update]  Opening schools this fall.  I have no idea why our politicos are making this into a cause celebre.  Every day confirms that there is no ‘settled science’ on the C19 virus or its prophylactics and prescriptions.  Rebane Doctrine gives kudos to President Trump for using his bully pulpit to push for school attendance for a number of good reasons.  Local school districts have the final word, and should do their best to max the hours kids will spend in classrooms.  But all the controversy would come to an end if we adopt the public policy that honors the wishes of the parents (what a concept!).  Let the parents be the final arbiters on whether and how their children will attend school.  Problem solved.  (Also fight those evil politicians who want to take school choice away from parents, and support those who work to expand school choice across our land.)

The liberals really do fear Trump the dictator.  I want to share another bagatelle from correspondence with my longtime buddy who claims to be a mid-roader (and member of No Labels) and writes – “It is my humble opinion that President Trump with his need for total control, his egomania that everything revolves around him, his penchant for punishing any foe or less-than-loyal friend has established the most invasive Central Government the US has seen in a long time. He has threatened to defund schools if they don't open fully in the Fall, attacked (both verbally and legally) States and Cities that offend him, sent members of Federal Law Enforcement Teams into cities (DC and Portland) without uniform markings in plain vehicles to seize citizens without a shred of due process.”

 

An African-American by any other name …

George Rebane

Why is someone designated ‘black’ when they clearly are not completely of African descent – e.g. they obviously have caucasian or oriental ancestors?  Assigning the black label to everyone with even a tinge of Negroid heritage makes it seem as if such ancestry is a blight.  A condition that once you have even a smidgen of it, you’re tainted or glorified in its completeness forever.

And why is it asymmetric?  Why is not a mostly Negro person with some white or Asian ancestry not then labeled ‘European-American’ or ‘Asian-American’, or simply ‘white’ or ‘Asian’?  Why does every mixed-race person’s identity have to immediately revert to ‘black’ or ‘African-American’ when they are visibly a mulatto or of some other mixed-race ancestry?

The best I can tell is that this kind of labeling is entirely political.  Collecting such people under the ‘black’ and ‘African-American’ label somehow forces on them an identity that induces them to adopt the politically assigned pejoratives of victimhood, and immediately makes them to then be beholden to the benefactors of the plantation on which they see themselves unjustly interned.

I also wonder how long such mixed-race Americans will let themselves be treated as second class citizens by their self-proclaimed benefactors – politicians and ideology-agendaed ‘activists’ who must retain their purloined powers only by fooling all the so-labeled African-Americans all the time.  These unasked questions are the rhetorical gorillas studiously ignored today in America’s tense and stressed public forum.  It reminds me of the real-life version of 'The Emperor's New Clothes'.

Sandbox – 11jul20

[Given this week’s SCOTUS ruling on Indian lands in Oklahoma (here and here), the future of all 19^th century abrogated treaties with our indigenous Americans will come up for review.  All this will create chaos in the governmental jurisdictions involved, not the least being the status of non-Indians and their property rights.  gjr]

This Young Collectivist’s Column is NOT a Caricature

George Rebane

Recent NUHS graduate Michael Sekerak is working hard to reshape our society and community.  He wrote the cri de Coeur ‘Time to elevate those marginalized in our community’ which The Union published in its 8jul20 edition.  What is remarkable about Mr Sekerak’s column is that it so exemplifies the education, indoctrination, and mentality of the youth that our long-politicized and polarized public education system produces.  His column and the way he expresses his deeply felt sentiments would be considered a tongue-in-cheek caricature of current collectivist expression were I or another conservetarian to compose such, and then claim that its prescriptions correctly represent the pap that passes for progressive thought.  Our liberal readers would take me to task for composing such an obviously naïve collection of leftwing talking points, insisting that this would be yet one more ‘racist perspective’ from the Right (what else?), and that their real nostrums for us come from higher, socially just, and more sophisticated sources.

In any event, I present the entirety of Mr Sekerak’s composition below so that our readers can appreciate the product of our public schools.  As matter of fact, Nevada County would be one of the least likely locales in which to find individuals who have been marginalized by our community.  But that, of course, is not the proper woke attitude or outlook – America’s persecuted, denied, and aggrieved are everywhere marbled into our racist and white privileged communities, even unto these remote foothills now filling with liberal nest-soilers from the cities yearning to breathe free.

From the following copy, the casual reader will note that Mr Sekerak’s heartfelt desiderata, when even partially implemented, will further reduce our schools’ academic content and increase its level of dysfunction as an educational institution.  His accusation of our schools’ deficit of woke, and call for additional Newspeak instruction, and claims of “never given the opportunity” to “discuss systemic issues” is, of course, both ignorant and specious in today’s America.  Enjoy.

In light of the recent protests, we must make long-lasting and direct changes that critically challenge how we frame our community and our place in the nation’s history.

The letter below calls upon our local county public high schools to address problems concerning the diversity and cultural acceptance in our education system. We need more than a transient reaction from our schools. Through this petition, we provide a direct means for our local leaders to stand with black, indigenous, people of color (POC), lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQIA+) individuals, and all other marginalized peoples in the Nevada County community and across the country.

We urge Nevada Joint Union High School District to implement policy changes to become intentionally anti-racist and inclusive of the many diverse communities who make up our past, present, and future in all aspects of this county’s educational infrastructure. In your June 9 statement, you made a commitment to “ensure equitable outcomes for all students.” This can be achieved through a number of direct actions:

(1) Redefine the district’s mission, values, and student conduct codes to directly reflect anti-racist and inclusive positions.

(2) Expand the body of anti-racism, racial justice, cultural diversity, and inclusivity literature assigned in the social sciences and humanities curricula.

(3) Create identity-based affinity groups (Black Student Union, Asian Student Alliance, Queer and Questioning Groups, etc.) as a brave space for students to explore their identities.

(4) Re-evaluate the hiring process of administrators, faculty, and staff.

(5) Increase training on implicit bias, equity, inclusion, and restorative justice systems.

(6) Invite diverse speakers and take students on field trips that directly address matters of racial justice, inclusivity, and white privilege in the NJUHSD student body.

If you support this proposal, please sign the petition.  It is time we work together to elevate the voices of our marginalized community It is time we work to educate ourselves and our future generations to stand up against injustices. In order for this to happen we must first address the gaps in our local education system. How can you discuss systemic issues if you are never given the vocabulary to do so? How can you discuss systemic issues if you are never given the opportunity to do so?

Our education system should have provided us with the tools we needed to critically challenge the systems we have in place. And it did not.

Michael Sekerak graduated from Nevada Union High School, Class of 2013.

Letters from the Revolution – 8jul20 (updated 9jul20)

George Rebane

Reports of the number of cumulative C19 cases in any given jurisdiction misses the point.  Nobody should care about cumulative cases, only the number of active cases, and maybe the number who have died.  It’s the active cases that communicate some measure of risk for those who are out and about.  The ones who had it and were “released” (died or recovered) are history.  The 7jul20 Union headline piece (129 total cases as of last Friday) misses the point and tells us nothing about how risky it is to go grocery shopping.  This kind of reporting is shared by our crack journalism industry across the country.  (more here)

Our Bob Crabb is again flying hot, true, and normal in the Left lane as is evident in his latest graphic contribution in yesterday’s Union (filched below).

Bob's cartoon falls right in line with the nation’s lamestream outlets advancing the narrative that it’s the people from the Right who are the dangerous gun-toting rioters out there amongst the righteous folks of Left filling the streets with their "peaceful protests against racism".  The falling statues, looted shops, and burning buildings can easily be explained away by natural expressions of social justice and spontaneous combustion – remember, correlation is not causation.  Bob would do a lot to rescue his ‘mid-road’ credentials were he to draw something that illustrated the riotous actions of clearly identifiable Antifa and BLM thugs.  But with high likelihood that could also cause  the locals to pull his Leftwing License, and maybe even get him booted from The Union – worse things have happened for less to those progressives who stray from the straight and narrow.  We are reminded that revolutions first and foremost eat their own.

The causes of “gun violence” in minority neighborhoods continues to be ignored by the nation’s pro-communist commentariat.  Even FN (‘fair, balanced, and scared shitless’) is using that label in reports of the mass murders occurring every weekend on a Democrat-controlled urban plantation near you.  So when the next anti-2A push comes, you won’t have to worry your little head in the effort to discriminate between law-abiding ownership and use of guns, and the ongoing onslaught on black lives that really don’t matter.  Everyone wants to stop gun violence, right?

Speaking of legal guns, entering our Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital yesterday, I was again reminded of the utter insanity of policies that put up signs reading ‘The carrying of firearms in this facility is prohibited.’  This ensures that the facility is a ‘free fire zone’ for any deranged shooter until the police arrive, and then get organized to enter and confront the shooter.  Experience has shown that an in situ CCW-armed individual is the fastest way to stop the murderous mayhem and save countless lives.  For those not familiar with the safety stats of America’s CCW holders, consider that you are six times more likely to be murdered by a criminally rogue LE officer than a CCW civilian.  And here we’re not talking LE shootings caused by mistakes and/or incompetence.  Given the background checks and vetting required for a permit, CCW holders are the nation’s safest cohort of gun-carriers.

[update] The Bumblebrain Administration.  It is now old news that his VP woman of color will exercise historic powers in the Executive Branch; the DNC will have it no other way (and you heard it here first, I think).  But now a cascade of leaks from the Dem leadership also inform us that it’s “inconceivable” that Bumblebrain would run for reelection.  (Recall, for me it’s inconceivable that he’ll complete his first term.)  Additionally, in order to calm their constituencies, the Dem king-makers want our presumptive president to identify the complete spate of nominees for his cabinet, preferably by convention time.  Then everyone will know that capable and politically progressive people will be in charge of the various arms of government, and a vote for Bumblebrain will really be a worry-free vote for a socialist POTUS-optional government – the fundamentally transformed country’s first steps toward a post-constitutional Politburo.

[9jul20 update]  Victor Davis Hanson, one of my many mentors, makes a curious argument in his ‘The Fragility of the Woke’.  He correctly points out their fecklessness, insanities, and virulent ideology, but makes no case for the movement’s fragility.  In fact, he seems to do the opposite and confirm what we all witness in the news and daily round.  The woke movement, along with its militant BLM and Antifa arms, Democrat political support, and Soros et al financial support, appears to be the most robust, dangerous, and long-lasting  anti-American enterprise yet launched by the Left as their latest political road to socialism.  I’m confused as to why anyone keeping up with today’s events would consider this movement to be fragile as more and more institutions fall to its socio-political dicta.

Among the cavalcade of Dem Big Lies is Pelosi’s daily refrain about “the president is not above the law.”  What her constituents apparently are too dense to puzzle out is that President Trump has never been above the law, but has always gone through the bowels of the appropriate legal processes, defending himself as the law allows everyone to defend themselves.  And this is what is happening with the recent SCOTUS ruling concerning his financials and tax returns.  It’s only the lying leftwing loonies who continue to portray the process as the president somehow remaining above the law.  Now you have another litmus test to tell if a person is an idiot – just ask him if what the president is doing is above the law.

The Looming post-Covid Civil Liberties Battle

George Rebane

As most on the Right and Left understand, the country’s command and control collectivists see the Covid-19 pandemic as a godsend.  Given the educational state of our electorate, there are enough cognitively deficient voters out there to swallow unhesitatingly the socialist propaganda which today blankets their waking hours.  The viral scourge could not have arrived at a more propitious moment.  The Dems entered 2020 without a viable candidate against an incumbent who had America firing on all cylinders going into the presidential election which also seats one-third of the Senate and all of the House.

To all who could hear him, their standard bearer is a failing septuagenarian who is seen to be wedged somewhere between a has-been and a never-was.  Rumors had team Pelosi and the DNC cooking up all kinds of plans with which to plausibly banish Bumblebrain Biden from the November ballots.  And most of them are still viable, but perhaps no longer needed given the hit to our economy that the federal panic to lockdown our country’s commerce that caused the loss of tens of millions of jobs and added trillions of bailout dollars to our national debt.  How can you not be able to paint the man in the White House as an incompetent idiot, especially when you have never been restricted to a truthful narrative?

But the real price to our now lightly camouflaged socialists is the opportunity to pass all kinds of collateral legislation with the bailout bills to turn today’s federal and state lockdown restrictions into some serious and enduring laws that make permanent the hunker down regulations when the pandemic is over.  (see also ‘A Nation Risk-Averse, Scared, Cowering, and Compliant’)  And don’t be surprised if this is the first pandemic for the ages – in one form or another, it will never be officially over.  Such a contagious disease can easily serve as the proxy of foreign danger that communist regimes used during the last century to keep entire countries as poverty-stricken prisons wherein citizens were required to perpetually suffer and sacrifice so that the state could maintain adequate defenses against ever-present enemies, which in fact were its own population.

Remaining compliant was the socially correct and patriotic thing to do, with the wayward and complaining ones being declared clear enemies of the people.  The potential recurrence of C19 and its variants will well serve a similar purpose.  Watch for the spate of lockdown laws to become a permanent part of US Code and state laws.  All autocracies on their road to tyranny have known that the ability to immobilize a disarmed citizenry is the penultimate guarantee of an enduring regime.  (more here and here)

Scattershots – 5jul20 (updated 6jul20)

George Rebane

Division is caused by Trump’s speeches is now the steady narrative from the national propaganda outlets.  Specifically, it’s the speeches in which he mentions the protests cum riots that result in death and destruction that have now emerged as the daily visible signs that divide our country.  Were they not of evil intent, then one would have to ascribe to them ignorance of how primitive causality works.

‘Settled science’ is the fools’ errand on which the Dems have sent the country’s light thinkers.  Evidence abounds from countless sources that even the basics of ‘standard of care’ for C19 is an item of lively debate among health workers.  This was detailed in the 1jul20 WSJ in the report ‘Months Into Coronavirus Pandemic ICU Doctors are Split on Best Treatment’.  In these parts I wrote a Union piece in the attempt to enlighten the local leftwing loonies about settled science (here), and was lambasted by the know-nothings as therefore being against science.

“Invest in Black America” is another movement inviting more monies be spent on enterprises for racist reasons.  Their rallying organization is on gatheringforjustice.org.  Originally founded by Harry Belafonte aggrieved by hearing of an unruly black girl being taken out of a classroom by police, and now operating with renewed purpose on the streets across America.  Today the organization demands that both public and private funding be funneled into black holes (double entendre intended) with an equal likelihood of getting any return or benefitting African-American communities.  That for the simple reason that billions have already been spent for no visible benefit (according to their own assessments), and there has been no change in the recipient communities to support any reasonable expectation that this time it will be different.  It was then a recalcitrant culture which prevented progress, a culture which has now grown even more hostile to self-reliance, enterprise, and capitalism.

America’s dumbth – in these pages a perennial paean to our dysfunctional education system – is now being reported on by so many authors, analysts, and observers of the national scene.  One of the most recent pieces appeared in the NYT (gasp!) book review reporting on a just published book by Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.  From there we read, “If only Americans knew more about the world.  It’s a common refrain among many foreign policy intellectuals, and Richard Haass joins the chorus in The World: A Brief Introduction. Young Americans suffer from poor educations, he contends, while older people find it hard to keep up with profound changes that have unfolded since the Cold War order crumbled three decades ago. The consequences of ignorance, Haass warns, are serious: American disengagement from the wider world and poor decision-making at a moment of mounting global dysfunction.”  Our country’s wholesale ignorance is so pervasive that it can be seen in daily interviews with the rioters who have no clue about the basics of Americana, deficits also corroborated by our local leftwing loonies who frequent here and our community’s media.  The latter have no concept of the intellectual state of our nation, let alone their own abysmal deficit as can be seen by their desperate denials of this state of affairs, and baseless accusations of people (e.g. me) who attempt to enlighten them.  Again, is it evil or simply profound ignorance?

[6jul20 update]  First black Fed president Raphael Bostic writes that “systemic racism is a yoke that drags on the American economy.”  In his recent paper Dr Bostic states that the pandemic “has coincided with a rethink inside the Fed of how it should evaluate the impacts of its policy decisions on those at the margins instead of focusing on broad aggregates”.   His Fed colleagues agree with this shift of priorities, perhaps because of the central bank’s poor overall record of dealing with the country’s economic aggregates and now with the Left ascendant, it would be an excellent time to instead give minding the margins a try.  There’s gotta be a prudent policy pony in there somewhere.  (more here)

President Trump’s Mr Rushmore speech was judged by most (not burdened by TDS) to be his best since inauguration.  However, and in lockstep, the hate Trump chorus immediately broke out with the same song – “At Mt. Rushmore, Trump uses Fourth of July celebration to stoke a culture war.”, LA Times;  “Trump Uses Mount Rushmore Speech to Deliver Divisive Culture War Message.”, NYT;  “Trump pushes racial division, flouts virus rules at Rushmore”, AP;  “At Mount Rushmore, Trump exploits social divisions, warns of ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ in dark speech ahead of Independence Day.”,  WaPo.  A less hate-filled reading would reveal that the speech contained an accurate assessment of the state of the nation, and nothing divisive nor racist, save that today’s thought police consider any mention of the riots and turmoil in the streets to be prima facie evidence of divisive racism.  It is people like me, and those who counsel the inevitable Great Divide as an alternative to tyranny, who may be accused of being judiciously divisive.  (more here)

Happy Fourth, if you can (redux and up a notch)

George Rebane

On this year’s Fourth our beloved land is in more disarray than in my living memory, and that’s a fer piece in anyone’s book.  Half the country does not know where we have been, what we have done, nor shares a common vision of our future.  These dark clouds were already gathering a year ago during which some prescient words were recorded in these pages (here).

Yet those of us who hold dear what has been and continues to be the America we love will join today in a special celebration of our birthday.  And we do this with the pledge that we with our families and friends will always keep this day a sacrosanct observance, even in the face of sinister forces that now work to erase the greatest country built by people of all races, creeds, and backgrounds joined together.  May God continue to bless the United States of America.

Sandbox - 3jul20

[Alex Berenson on the real skinny behind Covid-19 reporting.  Short book and very much worth a read if you’re interested in debating the pandemic, how it’s reported, and various response policies (here).  Apologies for letting the last sandbox languish a bit too long; we're working through a family medical emergency here.  gjr]

Western academe’s sunset years

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 1 July 2020.]

The current insanity sweeping the western world that started with the George Floyd killing is now way past that outrage and moved on to much bigger objectives.  The event served as a trigger to launch the ready and waiting socialist and anti-capitalist factions to start their push toward a global collectivist world by first weakening or doing away with sovereign nation-states that have cultures built up over the centuries which today are the glue that unify their populations.  The socialist elites and their fielded militants in the streets have identified several critical weak points in the ties that bind nations.  One of them involves the flawed histories that each developed western nation has, which includes their role in colonizing the third world and fighting religious wars among themselves.

All of these pursuits are ample demonstrations that violate today’s standards of political correctness, social mores and values, treating all peoples and races equally and with appropriate respect for their indigenous cultures.  Western nations did little of that when they conquered and colonized the more backward civilizations of Africa, the Americas, and southern Asia.  All of that history is used by the global Left to indict today’s mostly white and European-derived countries of everything ranging from ‘cultural appropriation’ to genocide.

The west’s public educational systems have long been co-opted by progressive cadres injecting leftist principles at all levels of curriculum.  The generations of the so-educated are now primed as they doubt their own worth to humanity, and are ready to adopt a more virtuous course forward that demands fundamental changes in each nation’s basic and foundational institutions.  The ‘evidence’ for this ongoing stratagem overwhelms us daily every time we tune into mainstream media outlets.