Rebane's Ruminations

Scattershots – 31oct20 (updated 2nov20)

George Rebane

A progressive argues that America’s income inequality has actually increased under Obama, instead of having decreased per their national narrative.  This is shown in RL Crabb’s comment stream (here) where I contended with a typically snarky liberal about the Gini Index worldwide rankings.  I used a 2007 CIA table that gave GI = 0.45 for the US, and the liberal used the more recent Wikipedia value of 0.47.  GI ranges between 0 (total equality) and 1 (total inequality).  In reality, GI changes slowly because it reflects the slowly changing income distribution over an entire economy.  The liberal then argued that America’s income distribution became more unequal under Obama.  BTW, my point on Bob’s blog was to illustrate that the GI is not a reliable indicator of autocratic vs liberal governance, showing that both kinds of countries had GIs both greater and less than that of the US.  This point was totally lost on the liberal genius.

Lest we forget –

The Left claims that the Hunter Biden scandal is a manufactured ‘October Surprise’.  Seamus Bruner is the associate director of research at the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) counters, “A lot of people think this is, you know, (an) October surprise or just for the election to tarnish Joe Biden’s name … These stories were released in 2018 in a book called ‘Secret Empires’. … Joe Biden wasn’t a candidate, we didn’t ever think Joe Biden would run for president, we kind of just followed the money.”

I love capitalism.  We just got back from the weekly shopping at Safeway.  I bitched to the manager last time that they were always out of tonic water; they should change their inventory policy on that SKU.  He thanked me and promised he’d solve the problem.  And sure enough, today there was tonic water galore.  Also, their first edition of plastic grocery bags were on the fringe of fragile.  They saw the problem and had their supplier up the heft, and now we have plastic bags so sturdy that they are reusable.  In more regulated economies – those I’ve experienced in Europe – if you lodged such a complaint to a clerk, you’d get the gimlet for being a disaffected nonconformist.  And in places like the USSR/Russia, your complaint would be noted on your state dossier for future reference as a noncompliant misfit.  In North Korea the Ugly Fat Kid would have you and your family being re-educated in a labor camp.  Guess which of our politically polarized poles likes the UFK’s solution.   

[2nov20 update] CDC-attributed corona deaths are a Big Lie according to their own accounting. (more here) It's the money and lamestream promotion of the Democrats that give rise to maintaining one of this year's biggest lies in order to influence the election in favor of Bumblebrain.  (H/T to reader)

Sandbox – 31oct20

[Halloween will be extended by several weeks this year as the scary election returns and adjudicated ruling start coming in.  In the meantime, I invite those prognosticators of the presidential race to use the spreadsheet with assignable probabilities to express their views.  Using that model, instead of the limited information point estimate maps provided online, allows us to also calculate the chances that either candidate can win, and let’s us see how the probabilities shift as the state’s shift their electors.  The innumerates keep fooling themselves that our universe is constructed with predestined point quantities, instead of an unending sea of probability distributions that define all apprehended knowledge, and from which reality is sampled with the passage of time. Gjr

https://rebaneruminations.typepad.com/rebanes_ruminations/2020/07/election2020-electoral-college-predictor.html ]

Biden Family Scandal Debunked

George Rebane

News media's search for balance is an errand for hubristic fools.

Here I am, writing this mea culpa with a red face.  Over the past week or so, I was among the millions of rightwingers who took in the news - hook, line, and sinker - about the business dealings of Hunter, Jim, and Joe (“the big guy”) Biden.  This morning my eyes were opened by an incisive and revealing op-ed piece – ‘Never mind COVID, how about Hunter?’ - in the 30oct20 Union by its publisher Don Rogers.  There he details a vast bamboozle, now in full swing, managed by Team Trump in the attempt to again illegitimately influence the election.  Reading the tightly worded expose, one immediately sees how these shenanigans all fit together to produce a conspiracy of size, depth, and scope never attempted in the history of our Republic.

The first thing I learned from Mr Rogers’ piece was that the country cannot continue executing its C19 response while also attending to the Biden scandal news.  I must admit, I never thought of that important detail.  We live and learn, when our betters shine the light.

The whole conspiracy apparently started by a rightwing Mac repair shop owner producing a laptop he claimed belonged to Hunter.  We should have known that this was a plant because it’s very unlikely that any “Trump follower” and “patriot” would ever operate a computer repair shop – a dead giveaway.

And then more evidence of a bamboozle when Trump’s lawyer Giuliani was given a copy of the alleged emails supposedly on Hunter’s laptop.  Everyone knows that Giuliani is in the bag and easy to involve in any of Trump’s shenanigans.  And everyone knows that Giuliani in his travels to Ukraine and points east has already been compromised by the Russians, and is now one of Putin’s Pals.

Where it gets really interesting is the report that the FBI was given the computer, and has had it for a better part of a year.  But that dog won’t hunt either.  We know how the FBI has been complicit in a lot of underhanded doings; it wouldn’t take any silver-tongued devil, say, like Bill Barr (no doubt in on it from the start), to talk the FBI’s leadership to join the conspiracy.  Again, I was blinded by FBI Dir Wray et al announcing that Hunter has been under criminal investigation since last year.  A clever ruse that has convinced too many of us unsuspecting naïfs.

What really should also have alerted all of us to the magnitude of the conspiracy was how Trump paraded DNI Ratcliffe in front of the nation to announce that the entire intelligence community had analyzed all the doings, and had not been able to find any Russian connection.  That that was clearly a lie came to light when we heard of the letter from 50 retired intelligence sector managers.  These distinguished gentlemen assured the country that the laptop and emails affair had all the earmarks of a Russian operation.  In fact, so much so, that any reasonable person would agree that no further evidence was needed to prove that point.  Again, plain as day, the allegation of so many retired intelligence professionals should have, then and there, made clear to all what was really going down.  But I and people like me just went ahead believing.  (Readers know that I was also bamboozled by all the findings discrediting the Steele dossier – too soon old, too late smart.)

What really took us in were the obviously placed reports of other colleagues of Hunter who had received some of the alleged emails.  To include such unknowns in the game was a no-brainer.  The real clever and well-thought-out ruse was the whole affair involving retired Navy officer Tony Bobulinsky.  Bobulinsky, supposedly CEO of a Hunter set-up company, was put up in a LA hotel room in front of Tucker Carlson (already another dead giveaway) to sing like a bird.  Some may argue that since Bobulinsky, from a long and honorable military family, was already wealthy, therefore he would not be on the take for a few more mere millions.  But we all know that rich guys are greedy and forever on the take; it really didn’t take much to get him to play along.  Anyway, the entire Bobulinsky thing is a sideshow and charade, especially his claim of discussing the whole alleged scam with Joe Biden himself, and now adding on that the FBI has listed him as a "material witness" in its criminal investigation of the Bidens.  The whole country knows what a straight-up guy VP Joe has been, a man who would never be involved in crass undertakings such as family-wide influence peddling.  Again, another missed dead giveaway.

And now we hear reports that the NY Post, the rightwing rag that broke the story, contracted a well-known cybersecurity expert to authenticate Hunter’s Burisma emails (more here).  That desperate ploy itself should have put the kibosh on the whole conspiracy.  But no, all this time we have had more rightwing media outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal acting out their roles like a bought-and-paid-for chorus giving credence to the fabricated dirty linens manufactured in Russia, and coordinated here from the White House.

Involving those major discredited rightwing news sources should have put paid on the whole sordid affair.  This was made doubly clear by the entire cadre of progressive networks, cable news, and newspapers bravely and professionally refusing to cover any of this insidious conspiracy, lest it poison the minds of the more malleable folks so close to the election.  I see this now as a public service of the first rank, and have to admit that it shades all of my misdirected diatribes over the years against the journalistic profession and our Fourth Estate – one of our sacred and celebrated public institutions.  And were it not for courageous and diligent journalists like The Union’s Don Rogers, so many of us would never have been the wiser.  For me, it’s better late than never.

Misguided Public Safety Power Shutoffs

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 28 October 2020.]

Dear Gov Newsom – This is an open letter to you from an old and very disgruntled citizen who has spent the last 63 years of his life in this beautiful state.  During these decades I went to school, earned my living, raised my family here, and watched the steady decline of a once golden state.  And I can attest that it truly was the Golden State because I was there.

Today, after decades of a virtual political monopoly in Sacramento, our state has landed on the bottom of the barrel with several other equally discredited states.  We purposely raised our taxes to the highest levels, became the leader in regulatory burdens heaped on our businesses and homeowners, and are now the hands down mecca of the nation’s welfare recipients – one out of three live here.  We lead the nation in the number of homeless, and invite their filthy tent favelas that now stretch from the coastal cities to the Sierra foothills.  Our food and fuel prices have sky rocketed to the highest in the nation.  Our roads, bridges, and other infrastructures are in third-world disrepair, public employee pensions are unfunded to the tune of unpayable billions, and businesses and middle-class taxpayers are departing in droves to greener pastures.

Add to this California’s highest electricity costs and disastrous power outages that now resemble the availability of electricity in second and third world countries, and you almost have the complete picture of where we are today and the direction we’re headed tomorrow.  (more here) And that, because the state’s legislative and regulatory pipeline is chuck full of a lot more of what already pains us.  But governor, this is just a short summary of California’s deficits and decline, about which long and detailed books have been written.  On top of all this, the state’s political leaders and bureaucrats have created a problem that’s even more up close and personal, one that affects all Californians, especially those of us who live in the rural counties.

Scattershots – 25oct20 (updated 28oct20)

George Rebane

Exciting times, youngest granddaughter Fi just gave birth to Maybelle at Sierra Memorial to our fifth great-grandchild.  Daddy Shawn was there to catch it on the first bounce or sooner.  They’re not allowing visitors during these trying times, so our family's welcoming committee will have to form when the new mama and baby get discharged.  Oh well.

Dodgers v Rays at 2-2.  From the record, the chances that the winner of the 2-2 game goes on to win the series is 65% or about two out of three.  I dug up this stat to see how close it matched the chances for two equally capable teams each having a 50-50 chance of winning a subsequent game.  Going into the 3-2 game, the ‘3’ team has a 75% chance of taking the series, and the ‘2’ team’s chance is 25%.  So the record book’s 65% stat of actual 3-2 winners is a mite low, but still commanding.  Were we to do a little bit of probability math and compute what the actual probability of the series champ winning the subsequent games that yield the recorded 65% stat, we would get 41%, or about two out of five, as the probability of winning each subsequent game.  This says that during the history of baseball, winners of the 2-2 games, those who went on to win the series 65% of the time, were actually the poorer of the two teams who just managed to make it to the 2-2 game score in the series.  That explains that if they were better to at least be 50-50 equal with the other team, they would have won the series 3 out of 4 times instead of 2 out 3 times.  Throw a brainbone around that.

[26oct20 update]  The DJA is down 2.50% (707 points) as I write; supposedly on fears that there will be no stimulus bill, Nancy won’t allow it, and the "uptick" of C19 cases.  A week before the election, and things are looking dim for President Trump and the Republicans.  It reminds me again of the difference between our polarized politics.  One side has a tougher row to hoe since it bases its message on building and growing the fortunes of Americans.  And that’s hard, especially when the other side does all it can to diminish, dampen, and destroy the opportunities for all, save their elites – especially their black constituents whom they have had in the bag since the Great Society days.  It’s much harder to build than to tear down.  With all this news the Democrats are dancing in the streets. 

The WH correctly maintains that we will “defeat” C19, but we “cannot control it”.  Unfortunately, to most people this will seem like a conundrum – how can we defeat something we can’t control?  Of course, the Dems and their lamestream media will make the most out of this statement, claiming it’s proof of Trump’s failed C19 response policy.  Those more used to critical thought realize that we have managed to defeat (with vaccines and therapeutics) many diseases in the sense that we can go on with our lives in a normal manner without the ability to control when and where any such disease will again turn up.  The list of such defeated but uncontrolled bugs and viruses is long.  This statement from the WH is meant to promote getting back to normal sooner than later, but that’s not how it will be spun to the all-believing hoi polloi.  Sad, but it is what it is.

A new study proclaims that “2.5 Million Person-Years of Life Have Been Lost Due to COVID-19 in the United States”.  We read (here) that Harvard Medical School geneticist Stephen Elledge, says he did the analysis to correct "the false impression that the impact on society of these deaths is minimal" because they are concentrated among the elderly.  Actually, Dr Elledge misses the point completely with his mathematical manipulation of C19 mortality statistics.  His study does not consider who actually suffers the loss of so many million life-years lost.  By any known metric our society (and world) is not lacking for the billions of life-years lost through whatever causes.  However, one can instead make the case that our society and world (i.e. the aggregate cohort of survivors) do suffer today from too many life-years lived. (more here)

[27oct20 update] Rebane Doctrine re status of country correctly summarized in ‘The American Experiment is on Life Support’ by Andrew Michta, dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.  And then there’s our eternally confused progressive Union columnist Darrell Berkheimer, in whose ‘Why does ‘socialism is bad’ myth continue?’ he demonstrates again that he understands neither socialism, capitalism, America’s governance, nor human nature.  The ways he achieves this state of ignorance are too many to count.

Thanksgiving 2020 is cancelled for all intents and purposes.  Gov Newsom has done it again.  In our progressives' search for ever more ignorant, harmful, and useless public policies, this 9oct20 ‘Guidance for Private Gatherings’ from the California Health and Human Services Agency takes the cake.  But not to worry.  Give it a couple of days, and an even more stupid one will soon be coming down from the heights of Mt Sacramento.  (H/T to reader)

Thousand plus looters rampage through Philadelphia stores “for hours” as a smattering of assembled police stand by and do nothing (more here).  Jim Kenney, Philadelphia’s Democratic mayor, saw fit to order no enhanced police presence as leftwing rioters ransacked store after store.  The message to fellow Democrat mayors is clear – no need to enforce the law and take a political hit from the Left, since the Democratic leadership and the lamestream media will do its job of calling the whole thing a ‘peaceful protest’ and sweep the rest under its self-censoring teppich.

Journalism’s unstoppable ‘Leftward Ho!’

George Rebane

[Apologies for the late posting of this commentary.  My writing workflow always has several pieces in concurrent development, and sometimes one of them with time-dependent content gets overlooked for too long, but one that I still want to have archived as part of RR’s record.]

California’s passing of a racial diversity law that prescribes the composition of boards of corporations headquartered in the state.  This new legislation, now signed into law, is one the most blatant racist mandates by government that the morals-bleating Left have imposed on residents.  (more here)  This law joins the gender-biased legislation that requires female representation on boards and takes another step away from merit-based make-ups of publicly traded corporate boards.

There is no question that such laws continue to hobble the engines of wealth creation in California, but wealth creation has never been the objective of socialist governments.  The state has assumed the mantle of leadership in the Union for destructive collectivist initiatives designed to fundamentally transform America from a capitalist economy and society to one of comprehensive government planning and control.

Along this road to autocracy, we encounter questions raised for years on RR.  Now others are beginning understand the societal benefits of more culturally coherent societies, as we witness the daily destruction of every aspect of America’s traditions, cultural values, and institutions (more here).  Our Fourth Estate has long abandoned their traditional role in bringing reliable and timely news to their audiences.  They all are invested in one or the other side of a terminally polarized citizenry, and there is less and less of the ‘other side’ remaining in the cadre of media outlets.  No conservative broadcast outlets remain.  There is only Fox News which used to be a solidly “fair and balanced” outlet that also gave conservative voices a podium.  That stance is now fading as FN succumbs to the fear of being left behind in the virtue signaling competition, as it includes ever more liberal talking heads and left-tainted news copy.  When Rupert made his liberal son Lachlan CEO of Fox Corporation that owns FN, he started revamping both the Fox News and Fox Business cable outlets.

Sandbox -25oct20

[That our news media have no desire to follow-up the Hunter Biden email revelations of Biden family corruption is a bigger untold story than anything else so far connected with this sordid affair.  And that includes the (non)response of the FBI and the 50 former intelligence officials' successful attempt to disseminate fake news about the provenance of the emails on Hunter's laptop (here).  As far as our lamestream media are concerned, the US is now officially a banana republic in how its citizens are fed 'information' that they are to believe.  And no one, not the Republicans nor Fox News, is making much beyond clucking their tongues at what appears to be a super-scandal stillborn.  gjr]

A Purposely Politicized “Pseudo-pandemic”

'A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.'  Thomas Jefferson

George Rebane

Today reporting on the corona or Covid-19 virus (C19) resembles a chaotic cacophony.  I wanted to pull together some salient factors that help me sort things out in this blizzard of mostly junk journalism, agenda driven by election year politics.  So, with apologies where needed, I offer the following potpourri.

We have analyzed the science and response policies invoked by the C19 outbreak twenty ways from Sunday, and the evidence continues to mount that this year the globe has been subjected to a “pseudo-pandemic” driven by politics and political/ideological agendas.  The science behind C19 is complex and has been mostly banished to be brought up when a political statement needs some additional support.  Then the science is almost always misrepresented or abbreviated beyond recognition (more below).  And there’s the real problem, the science is beyond the attention spans and comprehension of 99.99% of the people who just listen to the loudest and oft repeated voices.

RR commenters are a blessing

Live with those from whom you can learn; let friendly intercourse be a school for knowledge, and social contact a school for culture; to make teachers of your friends is to join the need of learning to the joy of converse.  Gracian #11

George Rebane

In blog years RR is now considered to be somewhere between long-of-tooth and ancient, along with its host in human years.  Rummaging around the very accessible archive of this online publishing effort, I always find it remarkable to rediscover the breadth of topics we have covered to various levels of depth.  And I’m not only talking about the almost 3,400 posted commentaries, but the extensive comment streams appended to most of the commentaries -  comment streams in which readers expand and amplify the topic, and provide other readers not only with their own insights, but also with informative links that substantiate their assertions.

Many of the over 175,000 (to date) appended comments are themselves lengthy essays, sometimes longer than the topical post itself, that highlight the quality of thought by their authors.  And I mean to include in this cohort of thoughtful scribblers a few of our liberal commenters, those who have taken the time to deliver extended arguments for their positions that go beyond countering snarks and ad hominems.

In its 14^th year this blog continues to be a welcoming arena for ideas, opinions, and apologetics from all quarters.  To be sure, ours is an arena in which every contributor should be prepared for dharma battle (q.v.).  And no one should take umbrage that their ideas are assaulted, instead such umbrage should be reserved for ideas ignored.

That said, I thank all RR readers and commenters for their precious hours that they have spent over the years in these pages.

Scattershots – 20oct20 (updated 22oct20)

George Rebane

This afternoon the FBI and DoJ stated their concurrence with DNI Ratcliffe’s revelation (here) that the Hunter Biden laptop email scandal had nothing to do with or was any part of Russia’s disinformation campaign to undermine confidence in our November election.  The laptop emails are real.  Claiming otherwise over the last week has been a prime example of the Democrats’ Big Lie campaign, which here will be corroborated by our leftwing readers practicing their SNEP (Socialist Narrative Exclusion Principle) responses.

[21oct20 update]  Continuing proof that most (not all) liberals are functional idiots.  To this day, these mental midgets do not understand that fascists are collectivists of the autocratic cum tyrannical variety, who work for a leviathan government that directly controls most of its industry, imposes stacks of regulations, is anti-religion, collects enormous taxes, suppresses individual liberties, and maintains a large internal police apparatus to enforce the whole thing.  This is exactly the opposite of the kind of governance that rightwing conservatives desire.  In today’s 21oct20 Union we have an example of one of these midgets, a Mr Robert Lobell, who labors mightily to present ‘building evidence’ that President Trump is a fascist (here), and instead presents evidence that he doesn’t have a clue about what is going on in Washington, among other places.  But he does describe precisely the major tenets of the now likely Harris/Biden disaster.

The Hunter Biden email scandal is mounting with the FBI’s “nothing to add to Ratcliffe’s statement”, more email recipients confirming veracity of the collection, confirmation of the laptop’s chain of custody, Secret Service matching travel logs, documented ‘pay for play’ shares, … .  With all this coming out, Bumblebrain has now stated that there is “no basis” for the claim that his son profited from trading influence with foreign governments.  And to keep things as quiet as possible, the overwhelming share of America’s news industry, affectionately known as the lamestream media, does not even make a peep about what is clearly the greatest corruption high-level corruption scandal in modern US history.  SNEP on steroids.  (more  here, here, here, and here)

They really don’t know squat.  We just got back from a political luncheon meeting where part of the conversation revolved around the dissemination of the Hunter Biden emails.  And a common experience of some of the assembled was that their liberal friends literally knew nothing of what’s going on with Hunter’s laptop and the emails on it.  One couple has a son who works on the staff of a Democrat state office holder.  They asked his thoughts on the matter, and he drew a complete blank.  We are now effectively subjected to a Deep State controlled news and entertainment media enterprise comprised of what can best be described as the vast Progeny of Pravda.  When political workers of one side are so insular in their knowledge of national happenings, then control of the electorate for all intents and purposes is complete.  The rest of us are really just pissing into the wind.

[22oct20 update] The real Russian colluders have turned out to be the Democrats; we’ve been aware of this for at least two years.  Hillary’s misdeeds are known and await indictment.  The newest pals of all things Russian and Chinese are members of the Biden cosa nostra, and it turns out there are plenty of them.  More evidence of how that group of grifters operated for years is now turning up daily.  Given the upcoming election, the stimulus bill negotiations, and other divers things to attend to, the Dems are having a hard time fitting in all the denials and accusations of a vast Republican “smear campaign”.  Typical of the daily fare now is this piece just out – ‘New Documents Shed Light On Hunter Biden’s Links To Russian Billionaire Oligarch’.  The difference between the Democrats’ “evidence” and evidence of the misdeeds of the Clinton Clan and the Biden Bunch is that the latter is specific and verifiable.  All that’s now required is the growth of some political balls to get it all in front of a grand jury.

 

More registered than residents (updated 20oct20)

George Rebane

Here’s one hot off the press.  ‘New Data Analysis Finds 353 Counties With 1.8 Million More Registered Voters Than Residents’.  It appears that this is just the tip of the ‘voter irregularity’ iceberg.  There are 3,141 counties in the US, and these 1.8M 'ghost voters' are concentrated in just 353 or 11% of them.  Awake (not woke) readers recall that county, hence state, elections have been flipped and/or decided by just a few thousand voting this way or that way.

The registration data came from the American Community Survey section of the US Census Bureau.  In LA County alone, there are more than 1.5M ‘inactive voters’ who have now received ballots which could literally be voted by anyone.  But, as I said, this is just the tip.  Last year it was found that 372 US counties had more registered voters than they had voting age residents.  Included in these, no doubt, we today have eight states – Alaska, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont – that have statewide registered voters that total to more than 100% of their states' voting age residents.

Tom Fitton, president of the non-profit Judicial Watch, said, “This data highlights the recklessness of mailing blindly ballots and ballot applications to voter registration lists. Dirty voting rolls can mean dirty elections.”  Of course, all this remains a SNEP (q.v.) issue to all Americans left of Chief Justice John Roberts.  Not to worry, what could go wrong?

PS.  Oh yeah, 'Pennsylvania Rejects 372,000 Mail-in Ballot Applications, as Voters Err'.

[20oct20 update] The non-partisan, non-profit Election Integrity Project has been monitoring California elections for some years now.  This year its work is really cut out for them and all volunteer poll watchers across the nation.  In California, as usual, we suffer the most from every progressive policy foisted on the state’s citizens (note, I didn’t say ‘residents’).  The EIP has discovered that California’s SecState has mailed out 440,000 ballots that, at best, are identified as “questionable” for a number of reasons (more here).  On the road to making this November’s election the nation’s first intentionally corrupt national vote, our SecState Alex Padilla has instituted new regulations to make this election the most opaque in the state’s history.  The EIP finding ‘With a One-Two Punch, CA Secretary of State Destroys Election Transparency’ details the ongoing corruption of this year’s universal mail-in ballots will be handled, and how observation of the handling procedures will be thwarted.  The evil party at work.

Deep State Agencies/Bureaus/Administrations identified.

George Rebane

According to Rebane Doctrine, when an organized unit or authorized agent of any of the three branches of our federal government makes a legitimate request for information from a federal agency/bureau/administration, it should be promptly acknowledged and its commitment to fulfill stated.  If fulfillment is not forthcoming for some reason, then an appropriately placed agent in the branch that oversees said agency/bureau/administration should respond with a timely explanation of why the request cannot be honored.  When such an agency/bureau/administration simply stonewalls a legitimate requestor and no other timely response is forthcoming, then that is prima facie evidence of the existence of an unelected Deep State as a sovereign unconstitutional fourth branch of government, and declaration/identification of the requestee as a member of the Deep State.

Within this understanding, such a Deep State does indeed exist within the U.S. federal government, with various federal agencies, bureaus, and administrations making their memberships known on a very regular basis.  In recent years this has been more than corroborated by the IRS and several intelligence/investigative units of our government.  Currently we witness the Deep State’s FBI refusing to answer questions from Sen Ron Johnson (R-WI), chair of the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee, regarding the veracity of details concerning Hunter Biden’s recently disclosed laptop.  FBI Director Wray is silent, and neither the WH nor the DoJ are responding (more here).

Ruminations – 17oct20 (updated 19oct20)

George Rebane

The selective silence of socialists.  For some years now, many of us have been aware of a definite trend in these comment streams, especially in the debates between those of the Right and Left.  To again confirm this trend, I did a little research in RR’s archives.  We of the Right ALWAYS and substantively respond to and enthusiastically counter, as appropriate, the assertions of the Left (mainly because it’s easy to do, so we shouldn’t be too prideful).  However, those of the Left rarely counter the Right’s assertions, or even defend their own assertions with anything beyond a snark or gratuitous ad hominem.  It was ever thus, … and still is, and continues to warm the cockles of me heart.

[update] Socialist Narratives Exclusion Principle (SNEP)  The above rumination on ‘selective silence’ has been repeated often over the years by commenters and me.  Selective silences continue to be a recurring response phenomenon by the leftists, both here on RR and elsewhere.  Socialists have always simply ignored inconvenient truths that don’t fit their ongoing narrative du jour on an issue/happening, and go on with the dialogue as if it was never introduced.  We have also described such silences as invoking their crickets.  So, in order to parsimoniously refer to such ad hominem/snark/silence response behaviors and/or to anticipate their application in response to a post, I will attempt to remember to simply tag it with a concluding SNEP, instead of rehashing a longer explanation.  You are free to do the same.

Corporatist giant Twitter is making massive changes for the worse in what/how they permit, publish, and propagandize their users’ tweets.  Among other changes, Twitter will now “provide context” to the tweets.  These contextual wrappers will enlighten the great unwashed as to the real import and portent of the posted messages.  (more here and here, and H/T to readers)

“Joe Biden reads from a giant teleprompter at another sparsely attended rally.”  (more here)  Nuff said.

Here’s a wet dream in case of a Biden win.  He grows a pair of balls and follows neither Sanders nor AOC in their lurch to the left.  But instead fashions some mid-road policies to garner widespread support, finishes his full term, and then tosses Harris under the bus and endorses another Democrat who will keep America from succumbing to a fundamental transformation.

Open letter to Dan Henninger, WSJ deputy op-ed editor.  Jo Ann and I are decades long WSJ subscribers and devoted readers of your columns and commentaries on the ‘Editorial Report’.  However, here’s the burr under our blanket.  Please, please, please include a contact email address in the op-ed’s tombstone, and have your columnists put their email addresses under their columns.  Laudably, you are the only one who has the courage to hear from your loyal readers. Also, get your news department to stop their butt stupid style policy of reversing the order of citing numerical changes.  The oldest one comes first, followed by the current/latest one, because that’s the way humans think.  Your editors having reversed that order is cognitively jarring; cut it out and demote/retrain the worthy who implemented that misguided policy.

'The Biden Emails Prove Impeachment was a Sham'  Now who here had an inkling of that?

Another batch of ‘y’all come’ mail-ins – ‘Pennsylvania rejects 372,000 mail-in ballot applications, leaving many voters confused’  What could possibly go wrong?  Think a liberal will touch this one with a ten-footer?

Mt Everest swept under the rug – FN confirms Biden-China payoff.  The lamestream is doing an impressive job hiding the almost hourly developments in Biden/Biden scandal(s?) – we’ve actually lost count.

[18oct20 update] FN confirms Biden/China payoffs.  The country's Left and its lamestream again claim it's all a Russian pre-election disinformation campaign to which the Right has fallen prey. (here)

[19oct20 update]  The emails belong to Hunter Biden as several sources, including at least one other recipient of the emails, confirm to FN.  On FB’s Maria Bartiromo program (here), DNI John Ratcliffe denies that US intelligence has advised anyone in Congress (including champion liar Rep Schiff-for-Brains) that Hunter’s laptop is filled with Russian composed emails.  In fact, he states exactly the opposite – our intelligence services have determined that Russia had nothing to do with the contents of that laptop.

Dumb idea du jour – the House Intelligence Committee has abandoned intelligence as it mulls ways to stop what they call an “infodemic”.  They’re really considering establishing a Ministry of Truth, and launched the effort with a hearing titled “Misinformation, Conspiracy Theories, and ‘Infodemics’: Stopping the Spread Online”.  No one says that there is not a lot of online bullshit, but to have the government become the arbiter of truth, verity, and scout’s honor when it can’t pass a day without passing out a passel of lies, rumors, and partisan propaganda – c’mon man! (more here)

National Propaganda Radio in this morning’s news report stated that the United States now has “over 8 million people who have been infected with the corona virus”, and that the number of new infections is growing.  How are the light readers supposed to interpret the report of a growing population of infected millions running around the country.  Not one word of explanation that the overwhelming share of the 8M have already recovered, are not contagious, and contribute to our growing herd immunity – moreover, that today’s resurgence of active cases was expected (and that EU countries lead us in the resurgence which is occurring regardless of the variety of response policies the various countries practice; what does science say again?)  Nope, it’s simply all Trump’s fault – can anyone spell f-a-i-r  e-l-e-c-t-i-o-n?

Sandbox – 17oct20

[I’ve been writing about the contrary Covid counsels coming from science, with each political side finding plenty to support their respective positions on correct response policies.  Isn’t it a bitch now that the Europeans, held up by our Left as the paragons practicing proper pandemic public policies, are now also suffering the resurgence of Covid cases no matter how much they lockdown or not, distance or not, wear masks or not?  Brings out a chuckle or two when I note how the lamestream is trying to hide all this from their double dummies.  gjr]

‘I want Trump to die’ addended

George Rebane

[Apologies for the late posting of this promised follow-on commentary.]

Thoughtful comments from readers expanded the scope of my 4oct20 ‘I want Trump to die’ commentary to encompass social behaviors that may or not be acceptable and/or legal under our current form of governance.  And this includes a wide variety of people’s aspirations for regicide and its modern versions that include the leaders of more representative and therefore more liberal governments.  More specifically, comments from progressive readers such as Steven Frisch who strongly asserts, “I have stated here on many occasions that I do not believe that political violence is justified in American society. I have also stated on many occasions that I believe that some of the rhetoric used on this page, and the tacit acceptance of the threat of, or insinuation of, political violence is philosophically un-American and un-patriotic.”

As a conservetarian, I take great issue with such a belief while acknowledging that it is held by most, but not all, liberals and progressives in America.  The new neo-Marxist wing of the Democratic Party has no such inhibitions against political violence.  In fact, in the written manifestos on their websites, neo-Marxist organizations such as BLM, proudly declare their support of, and even the necessity for such violence to topple corrupt and unjust political orders.  They back this up with their actions in the streets and voluminous statements to the press justifying politically motivated riots.

In these pages over the years I have often argued that in a liberal and free country, the citizens’ right and ability to violently oppose their government should always be recognized, celebrated, maintained, and not be insidiously abridged by government.  Although and without contradiction, if such a purposely violent cohort does arise, the non-violent citizens opposing that cohort have every right to petition and support their government in opposing such violence with all the force provided it by established laws.  In short, a free people are free only to the extent that they retain their ability to successfully resist their government in order to be able to fundamentally transform it through reform or revolution.

We understand these truths from the historical fact that America was born through political violence, and that the subsequent exercise of political violence has served to preserve the Union many times since.  To now declare that political violence has suddenly become “un-American and un-patriotic” as a basic right of a free people, provided for in our Constitution, is both preposterous and ignorant of the fundamental principles and means of our country’s founding and maintenance.

Here I once more expand on the rationale for these beliefs in ‘Versions of Fundamental Transformations’ which you can download here -  Download VersFundTransforms.  Long time readers are aware of the bases for these beliefs from the collected tenets of my credo and related commentaries over the years – see also the Bastiat Triangle, a Conservetarian Credo, and the Rebane Doctrine category of this blog.

Corporatist Censorship in Full Bloom

"The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."  Vladimir Ilich Lenin

George Rebane

There is no longer any reason to deny the death throes of the First Amendment.  The country’s Left, working hand-in-glove with its media, public education, and corporatist lackies, has won the Newspeak and censorship wars.  This morning we heard from FN and Politico that President Trump’s Twitter account has been “suspended”. (here)  Why?  Well, our chief executive dared to point out the burgeoning Hunter Biden email scandal that the New York Post uncovered and dared to publish.  (more here)  Of course, the NYP had its social accounts quickly taken down as the lamestream media pitched in to try and kill the story.

These are just the latest in a rapidly growing trend of social media companies censoring any and all content that goes counter to the Left’s narrative of the country’s ills which require its prescribed fundamental transformation of America.  The alarums, now being raised here and there by opposing voices, point to this avalanche of avaricious one-sided virtue signalers.  However, these voices are getting little or no traction in the public square.  The careful media consumer already has seen FN, that formerly stalwart bulwark of 'fair, balanced, and unafraid' news, begin its quiet ‘go along to get along’ with the loud voices of the Left.

Nevertheless, some worthies are not giving up without a fight.  Evidence that FN is not yet fully committed to the devil’s den, it has posted ‘Ex-Facebook honcho Tim Kendall says Big Tech is a “threat to democracy”, calls for social media reform’. (H/T to reader)  Therein Kendall makes the point that big tech is engaged in a “global assault on democracy”.  He has produced ‘The Social Dilemma’, a film streaming on Netflix, in which he and other epiphanied high tech execs give their versions of the deluge of fake news, misinformation, and behavior modifying stimuli that pour out of the web pages of today’s social media giants.

“There are studies that show false information or fake news spreads six times faster online than accurate information. The attention-based business model of social media companies perpetuates outlandish, extreme, and controversial content that tends to receive more clicks and views. Content laced with misleading information that undermines faith in elections and other institutions vital to democracy is particularly dangerous for our society. In the near term, everyone should tune out the noise online and vote with confidence, whether by mail or in-person, and participate in this crucial democratic process.”

Before the metastasis of this communications cancer, we already witnessed corporatists willingly sell socialists the rope with which America's capitalists will be hanged.  Today this enterprise has expanded to corporatists vying with each other to hand that rope gratis to our country’s comrades.  

The Durham Disgrace

George Rebane

According to our DoJ, in the spring of 2019 attorney John Durham was tasked with “exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,”  His mandate included determination of whether “intelligence collection activities by the U.S. government related to the Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign were lawful and appropriate.”

He has been at the task for over 18 months, and has produced little (one insignificant guilty plea) and reported diddly-squat on his progress.  Bottom line, no one outside his boss AG Bill Barr knows what progress he has made, or what Durham is currently pursuing.  The only reports about the investigation we hear are admonishments that there is “concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done.” (more here)

Well, hell yes!  The prime purpose of the investigation is to maximally inform the American electorate BEFORE the election about which low-lifes did what to whom with all the visibly criminal things that went on in Obama’s DoJ, FBI, et al to foment the ongoing attacks on Trump’s campaign and presidency.  There are smoking guns all over the place, and Durham was supposed see if there was enough to tie a bow of criminality on the whole affair.  For that he has had the widest latitude in how and where he can poke his nose.

And now we hear that he will not issue a report before the election, why?  Because it might affect the election.  Again – well, hell yes! If there is evidence there that would impact the election in the minds of reasonable voters, then we should be made aware of it in a timely manner.  There is NO dictum from anyone, including Barr, that Durham’s probe has to be all done with a nice stack of bound final reports coming from the printer before we know what he found out or didn’t find.  He can always publish an interim report, and let us know what he has discovered to date, AND then continue with his investigation as long a AG Barr lets him.

And as I’ve recommended before, if he has stuff that’s culpatory and that can’t be released, he should just say that, and then escrow his time-stamped evidence and investigative intents with an appropriate court or the DoJ.  But leaving the country in the dark as we head for the most impactive election of our lifetime, an election that already stinks to high heaven, should not be accepted by anyone in Congress or the administration concerned about the timely discovery of truth.  Holding in secret today evidence that would inform and advise the electorate is an historical crock of crap, and we all appear to have been made docile enough to accept it without a peep.

Unreasonable Partisan Fears

"We have nothing to fear but those who live in fear." – BH, RR reader and contributor

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 13 October 2020.]

Our Left has been telling Republicans for years that Democrats are the party of intellectuals and the highly educated.  Republicans are viewed by the Left as mostly Bible-thumpin’and gun totin’ knuckle-draggers, categorized simply as those ‘irredeemable deplorables’ on our political landscape.  Among the many deficits allegedly shared by those on the Right is their disdain for science, which the Democratic Party claims is the guiding star for their public policies and gives imprimatur to the pronouncements of their elites.

The strongest substance for that belief is the oft-cited ratio of white college graduates who claim party affiliation.  The Atlantic sits solidly on the throne of leftwing wisdom and light, from whence it advises us that ‘America Is Divided by Education’, and asserts that “the gulf between the party identification of white voters with college degrees and those without is growing rapidly. Trump is widening it.”  Actually, there is no evidence for that, and the National Center for Educational Statistics has shown a growing fraction of those of all races and ethnicities who obtain bachelor’s or higher degrees (here).

What really is more than puzzling is the lack of published numbers on party totals of those who have a 4-year college degree or higher.  It is well known that Democrats enjoy higher percentages of black and Hispanic members, but we don’t know how many of these with college degrees make up or contribute to each party’s cohort of the well-educated (more here ) .  The best we can tell from Pew Research is that “about a third (34%) of those with a college degree or more education identify as Democrats, compared with 24% who identify as Republicans.”  Note that this doesn’t answer what fraction of Democrats v Republicans have a college degree or more.  (more  here and here)

So, let’s attempt to leapfrog this gap in our knowledge and find out how the parties react to the most up-to-date science regarding Covid-19.  The World Health Organization has recently concluded that lockdowns as a pandemic response don’t work, and instead do great damage to the poorest segments of the world’s population.  This conclusion was amplified by last week’s publication of the Greater Barrington Declaration drafted by health scientists from Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford, and co-signed by thousands of professionals from all walks.  Its authors cite extensive clinical evidence to confirm the WHO conclusion, and strongly recommend that all nations immediately stand down from their ineffective and insane lockdown policies.  Even more strongly, they conclude that the additional deaths and morbidities, on top of the economic disasters caused by such policies, actually constitute “crimes against humanity” of the kind last litigated in Nuremberg in 1946.  (more here and here)

For reasons we don’t have time for here, the leftwing news outlets have covered none of this.  And apparently the country’s declared Democrats don’t look much beyond what they are told on MSNBC, CNN, et al.  So, when Gallup assembled a recent panel for a survey on how men and women of both parties view and respond to Covid-19, they discovered and published some interesting results which reflect on the educational levels as characterized by Democrats.  (see Addendum)

Gallup asked the panel questions about ‘concern over catching the virus’, ‘concern about exposure at work’, ‘avoiding going to public places’, and so on.  They concluded by asking who would be ‘ready to return to normal activities right now’.  Overwhelmingly, the results indicated that Democrats were significantly more fearful of the pandemic than Republicans, and women of both parties were more hesitant than men to interpret the science news that went counter to that released within the Democrat narrative about proper responses that recommend ongoing lockdowns, widespread social distancing, and perpetual wearing of masks.  Given the widely published mortality statistics, the presented results do not bode well for the party that claims to be more educated and attuned to the findings and contentions of science.

These conclusions explain why people in liberal states like California continue to be both docile and sanguine about their states’ ongoing draconian Covid-19 response policies - policies no longer supported by scientific consensus or internationally reputable scientists and clinicians.  It is clear that America’s public policy responses to this pandemic have been completely co-opted to serve greater political agendas in this election year.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with additional data and relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum]  Here is the table of compiled results by Gallup showing how respondents felt about loosening up on Covid-19 response policy protocols.

The Union Decimates its Other Voices

George Rebane

A new editorial policy has descended on The Union.  Since former editor Brian Hamilton left, several columnists, including regular Other Voices columnists Terry McLaughlin and Manny Montes, have had their submitted columns edited to the point of being shredded.  Specifically, the newspaper’s new line editors not only have removed entire sections of pieces that contain major points, but also have decimated submissions by eliminating critical citations included to substantiate important arguments made by authors.

Most recently Ms McLaughlin’s 7oct20 column ‘Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation’ had its print edition abbreviated, and the online version was restored only after the author’s complaint to the new acting editor Alan Riquelmy.  Mr Montes’ 10oct20 column had an entire section cut out of the print edition that contained the main thrust of his piece.  The supposed 750-word allowance for Other Voices columns was reduced to 440 words.  Given Mr Riquelmy’s response to Ms McLaughlin, we may presume (hope?) that he has also responded promptly to Mr Montes’ concerns.

As a former Union columnist and now a some-time Other Voices contributor, I add this concern to those that I have noted here over the years.  The previously already left-leaning newspaper has recently taken some noticeable steps toward presenting itself as an unabashed outlet of all things progressive.  Its nods toward conservative views have become more disproportionate.

Readers may recall that back in 2015 my bride Jo Ann (before becoming a member of its editorial board) did an extensive survey, lasting several months, of the Union’s op-ed page contents that quantified a definite liberal bias, and reported the results to its management.  The Union acknowledged this through an ‘Editorial Page Challenge’ inviting readers to corroborate the findings.  Only Jo Ann and one other (liberal) reader responded to the challenge with their results that covered the contents of January 2016 (more here) As expected, both surveys gave opposite results.  Jo Ann’s results were 40 conservative, 56 liberal, 46 neutral.  This showed a 40% liberal bias in that month’s op-ed page contents.  The liberal lady’s results were 34 liberal, 40 conservative, 71 neutral – a 17.6% conservative bias.  No doubt according to her lights a good portion of her neutrals were seen as liberal by Jo Ann.

But that was then and this is now.  The beat toward the Left has continued, and I’m willing to bet a pretty penny that what we see in our beloved Union is now overwhelmingly left-leaning.  But please don’t interpret this as my having a hissy fit about what appears in the newspaper.  There are no complaints against the motivations of their management and staff – they are good people and our neighbors.  And we must never forget that the newspaper is a private enterprise and news outlet, one which its owners and editors can tilt in any ideological direction they desire.  No blame, no shame there as long as we all understand which way its winds are blowing and filling the sails of Nevada County voters.

Ruminations – 11oct20 (updated 13oct20)

George Rebane

Sen Chris Coons (D-DE) invented the newest Democrat Big Lie when he claimed today that the Republicans are the ones “packing the court” with their nomination of Judge Barrett to fill RBG’s seat and bring SCOTUS back to its 150-year level of nine justices.  But his real slam is against the Democrat constituencies who he thinks are dense enough to believe him.

Leading leftwing lights go off the rails on Judge Amy Coney Barrett.  Bill Maher declared nationally that “she’s a fucking nut” and a Catholic who “speaks in tongues”.  Democrat commentator Keith Olbermann advises all that she “should be prosecuted” and “removed from our society”.  Given Judge Barrett’s vitae and reputation, these men most clearly expose the evil heart of the Democratic Party and its dim assessment of the American electorate.

“America is sleepwalking into soft totalitarianism.”  So argue several survivors from post-war communist East Europe.  A revealing interview (here) with author and commentator Rod Dreher gives basis for that argument (and substantiates those found in these pages).  “In the Orwellian, Soviet, Stalinist society, the state-controlled people by inflicting pain and terror on them. But in the soft totalitarianism that I see coming here, the state will control people—and not only states, but even more importantly, corporations and institutions like universities will control people by manipulating their access to the economy and to status and to all the markers of middle-class life.”  And this is only the first step, which in California is in aggressive advance (here).

[update] WHO now opposes lockdowns.  The World Health Organization has come out against lockdowns as a C19 response policy, stating that these are "a terrible, ghastly, global catastrophe".  I draw you kind attention to the 11oct20 update to 'Crimes Against Humanity'.

[13oct20 update]  Biden doesn’t know, has forgotten, or has yet to be told what his policies would be on everything from packing the court to regulatory reform.  All candidates in our history have made it a point to inform voters of their governance desiderata which they consider their strong points.  Not so with Bumblebrain, whose forte has been reeling off Big Lies, well documented in these pages since he became the Dems’ nominee.

Another shot in the shorts of our communally held sensibilities.  From the party of low-lifes we have the latest contribution.  Sen Mazie Hirono (D-HI) asked Judge Amy Coney Barrett if she has ever sexually assaulted someone (here).  They truly are a party of evil scumbags.

Sandbox – 10oct20

[Businesses and taxpayers are leaving California, the census stats tell the tale that almost all CA leftwingers deny, especially the really dense local ones.  Recent notable departures are conservative commentators Joe Rogan (moved to Texas) and Ben Shapiro, who is taking his small business with 70 employees to Nashville – he tells his story here.  Even the very liberal Bill Maher when interviewing Rep Schiff takes him to task for the California exodus (more here), and cites a litany of butt stupid Democrat policies (more recent ones here) starting with high taxes and regs, and going all the way down to crap and needles on sidewalks populated by the tents of the untouchable indigents.  Schiff can only manage a lame, ‘I see no reason why progressives and businesses cannot coexist, we should work on that.’  Well no s#!t Red Ryder.  And our local lights of the Left continue denying the whole thing.  gjr]

‘Crimes Against Humanity’ (updated 11oct20)

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”, Richard Feynman

George Rebane

Almost everything you’ve heard about Covid-19 (here also C19) from politicians, the media, and publicized scientists and clinicians is wrong.  Here at RR, early on I started looking at the pandemic with a gimlet eye.  I did this as a science professional and a longtime student of how politics and scientification have been illicitly cohabiting for decades, to the point that today it’s difficult to tell which is the john and which is whore.  The C19 pandemic has brought it all together, and now invites serious review of the disease, its hysterical public response policies, and the real prophylaxis and collateral damage that has resulted from the variously implemented policies.

For the better part of this year we have been subjected to pronouncements delivered from on high about C19's sacrosanct ‘science’, and the irrevocable wisdom of ‘following the science’.  All this as if science was a singular, unitary, and all-illuminating oracle speaking to us from Olympus in a clear and unambiguous voice.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and over the months more and more serious and credible people are beginning to find their voice and speak out against such specious beliefs.  For openers, I suggest that readers begin with ‘What the pandemic has taught us about science’ by Matt Ridley, MP in the House of Lords, that appears in the 9oct20 WSJ.

The levels of clinical, scientific, and political fraud launched at global populations is of historical proportions.  It may be argued that never before have so many billions of humans been so thoroughly bamboozled by their political leaders, abetted by a willing media citing grant-sucking scientists, go-along healthcare professionals, and profit-motivated pharma.  This has reached levels which have invited a German-based investigative committee headed by Dr Reiner Fuellmich to launch a multi-national class action suit, making the case that such cynically enforced policies have caused enough death and destruction worldwide to amount to a ‘crime against humanity’, a charge last litigated in Nuremberg in 1946. (H/T to reader)

Fuellmich gives an extensive presentation of cited data and information about the advent of C19, its history, and reactions to this corona virus.  In it he presents data and information (prepared for the lawsuit) about the characteristics and progress of the disease that I venture few of us know.  The video of the presentation takes a better part of an hour, but the educational takeaway is well worth it for those concerned about our governments’ reactions, and the continuing diktats of its truly insane response policies.

One of the strong points Fuellmich brings out is the testing scam based on the widely used PCR-based diagnostic test that produces essentially worthless results as it is applied here and abroad.  For a broader look at how our FDA views the C19 tests and testing landscape, you can visit their website here.

Finally, of the hundreds of clinicians, scientists, and public health professionals who have looked askance at the governments’ dealings with the C19 pandemic, three internationally prominent scientists in the field gathered last weekend in Great Barrington, Massachusetts to draft a declaration and give interviews (here) on the planet’s misguided responses to the virus.  Drs Martin Kuldorff, Sumetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya, professors respectively at Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford Universities, came together to put their appeal to sanity out in the public with their ‘Great Barrington Declaration’ which I reproduce in its entirety below.

Debate Derby – 8oct20

George Rebane

The Pence/Harris debate was at least an exercise in civility.  We finally got to compare what the socialists want for America, and what wants they’re not willing to admit to Americans.  We compared this with the capitalists’ plan for the next four years.  What a difference.  Harris spent most of her time lying (she got to speak 4 more minutes than Pence).  Her major lie kept focusing on Trump’s handling of the C19 pandemic, which according to the Dems’ Big Lie has been a preventable unmitigated disaster to which they would have responded almost identically as has President Trump.  Well, truth be told, their copycat version leaves out a couple things that this administration accomplished.

What’s interesting to me is that no one points out the comparative C19 stats between the US and other advanced, but much smaller countries.  The US is a huge country composed of diverse cohorts of free people who are about as easy to control as herding cats.  We are undoubtedly the most mobile folks on the planet, continually darting across our big land this way and that.  Somebody gets sick with an infectious disease, it won’t be long until others have the same malady in many different parts of the country.  Our R0 transmission rate is necessarily higher, and there is nothing that either party could do to reduce it other than tell lies.

And those lies are simply all that the Dems have to wave in the faces of voters this election season.  This is not to say that they have mistaken the intellectual acuity of our electorate.  But I will say that the ‘mishandling C19’ ruse has successfully camouflaged their true aim to make America into a world-class socialist autocracy.  With the Democrats' taxing and regulatory burdens on us increasing by the year, we are witnessing up close and personal the truth of Jefferson’s ‘a nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’

To sum up last night’s VP debate, I think everyone out of the Left’s hard core camp saw Harris as the slimly and snarky scumbag that she is – the evening did not bode well for her.  But is it enough to move the needle, even though one of them may well be our president before the next four years are up?  That is hard to tell.  Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist has more here.

President Trump has responded to next week’s second presidential debate being conducted virtually.  His opening salvo is that he won’t participate under those conditions.  There appears to be no reason for changing the second debate to an online version since “people infected with Covid-19 can stop isolating 10 days after the onset of symptoms, as long as they haven’t had a fever in 24 hours and their other symptoms are improving, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.”  And the WH reports that the president is symptom-free and has already started developing C19 resistant antibodies, all of which strongly indicate that not only will he not be contagious at a town hall debate, but that he will also be immune to further infection.

I’m not sure what kinds of thinking has gone into the decision not to participate.  It seems to me that in the virtual debate Bumblebrain will have all kinds of opportunity to give the long-winded answers that usually reveal his mental acuity and perhaps even his party’s embrace of BLM and Antifa’s neo-Marxism.  My recommendation would be for Trump to not miss an opportunity to go mano a mano with Biden. (more here)

Scattershots – 6oct20 (updated 9oct20)

George Rebane

Trump’s C19 infection and hospital visit is now providing the Democrats and their lamestream lackeys their latest ration of rage.  Everyone of them with access to a mic or website is lambasting the president on why and how his encounter with the virus came about and was then dealt with.  In their eyes it was all wrong and laden with conspiracies.  Everything from when was the last negative test recorded, to super-spreading WH events, to how sick did the president really get, to the Walter Reed physicians are lying or at least prevaricating about his current condition, to … , and even that he took his mask off too soon when he stood on the WH balcony after returning home.  If we didn’t have so many double dummies registered to vote, the whole exercise by the Left would be patently silly, but unfortunately that is not the case.

Fake drivers licenses from China as reported (here) by FN – “In the first six months of 2020, Customs and Border Protection officers seized nearly 20,000 counterfeit U.S. driver’s licenses at Chicago’s O’Hare airport alone, according to a report.  The 19,888 licenses and other fake documents were included in 1,513 overseas shipments, mostly from China and Hong Kong, CBP said, according to FOX 5 in New York City. Others were from South Korea and Britain.  Ralph Piccirilli, CBP’s acting area port director in Chicago, called the counterfeits (made mostly for people in their twenties) ‘very realistic.’”  The add-on to this report is that the names on the licenses are phony, and yet all are registered to vote as Democrats.  For some odd reason, this news is not reported on MSNBC or CNN.  [7oct20 - According to a number of news and fact-checking outlets, the names are indeed phony, but there is no substantiating evidence that those phony names are registered to vote.]

'Polling Phollies' was a piece I posted on 4 September 2016 in the throes of the last election season.  It bears reading again in light of the feverish debate we are once more engaged in our Sandboxes.  From this commentary you can download a paper I wrote to clarify the error bounds on poll results.  The overlap of these error bounds are especially relevant when the polls return two-candidate results near the midpoint or 50-50 ratios.  For those who can understand the material, it should really take a lot of steam out of the results constantly reported and debated in the current comment streams.  But I think those comments may satisfy a different purpose than enlightening their readers.

[7oct20 update]  ‘Schools Tackle Racism’  Evanston, IL racist school superintendent Devon Horton is giving a dose of “equity for Black and brown students, for special education students, for our LGBTQ students”, by letting them have first dibs on limited classroom seating.  The rest can attend online.  He’s doing this because “a disproportionate number of Black and Latino students are struggling in school and it is that struggle—not their race—which will get them priority.”  Such an assessment, on its face, is both racist and false.  In Evanston schools these minority students have received the same educational advantages as everyone else.  They are doing poorly only because they are NOT “struggling” as so many minority students struggling to learn have successfully demonstrated across the country.  Horton’s racist claim is that these students need special dispensation because they have a learning deficit apparently due to their skin color or sexual preference (special education kids are a different story).  Upon closer examination, it is again culture that determines kids’ - minority or otherwise - attitude toward education and learning, racist school policies will not. (more here and here)

What is a nation?  Samuel Stone of the Charlemagne Institute takes a good cut at an answer (here) that more than less ties with what I have proposed in Rebane Doctrine.  Stone starts by correctly positing that ‘nation’ is one of the words that today has lost its meaning; not that people can’t point and say ‘that’s a nation’, but because they can’t give it a literal definition.  One of the main determinants that a nation must have is a defined territory with secured borders within which its state (i.e. government) is sovereign.  He then goes on to cite our Founders and their political philosophers about the shared traits of a people which comprise, occupy, and own the nation – traits like a common history, values, beliefs, traditions, language, … .  And under it all is a foundation of justice as “the end of government” (Federalist 51).  However, that view of justice must be held in common by the citizens of a nation; multiple or polarized views of justice in a land cannot hold it together.  In our scripture (Mark 3:25, et al) Jesus said it best, “If a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand.”

[9oct20 update]  Today’s Nevada County’s Covid count is reported by the crack journalists at The Union.  From its front page we learn that there have been 20,735 recorded cases of the infection this year, with 18 cases currently active.  Two of these remain hospitalized, with the C19 body count that now stands at eight.  These numbers are mainly worthless, save the number who have died.  Presumably, the dead were correctly diagnosed and counted.  But given the real nature of the disease, and its wholesale misrepresentation that has led to an historical international panic, the recorded and currently active cases are totally unreliable, therefore meaningless.  The number hospitalized speaks only to the misunderstanding by local health officials about susceptibility to and the virality of this latest form of a corona virus, and their consequential draconian measures against our local businesses.  Bottom line, there is even less there to worry about C19 than meets the eye.  More on this later.

Sandbox - 5oct20

[Under the last Scattershots reader Mr Bill Tozer posted a link to a very important essay on the migration of California, its current condition, and its journey to becoming the leading shithole state in the Union.  I draw it to your kind attention - 'Be Afraid, Very Afraid: CALIFORNIA AS CASE STUDY OF AMERICA’S POSSIBLE FUTURE'. gjr]