Rebane's Ruminations

Sandbox - 28feb22

[A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country.  Well, there's a very simple answer.  Nobody bothered to check the oil.  We just didn't know we were getting low.  The reason for that is purely geographical.  Our OIL is located in: ALASKA, California, Coastal Florida, Coastal Louisiana, Coastal Alabama, Coastal Mississippi, Coastal Texas, North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas.  But our dipstick is located in the White House! (H/T to correspondent)]

The Adulation of a Murderous Thug

George Rebane

With the horrendous historical preambles of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, the world now knows that Russia’s Vladimir Putin is a murderous thug.  What our Left misses or means to misinform is the manner in which many of us on the Right assess Putin’s geo-strategic actions, especially when compared in the same arena to the sophomoric efforts of Team Bumblebrain.

To assess Putin’s strategy, concerning his latest effort to expand Russia’s borders and sphere of influence, with attributes such as clever, shrewd, adroit, and even brilliant has no bearing on the man’s character, values, mores, or any other trait laudable by the international community.  A scoundrel can be all these things without ever being mistaken for a person of high principles and moral character.  To the discerning, assessment can be and has always been received and rendered as independent of adulation.

It is in their political desperation that the Democrats have revived their fabricated Russia Collusion hoax to again paint Trump as a Putin toady.  Their dumb-as-doorknobs lamestream trumpets have dutifully picked up the chorus, and when reporting on the matter, even FN has had trouble always making the distinction between assessment and adulation.  But Democrats can count on their lightly-read minions to lap up the ‘new evidence’ that Trump has always been subservient to the Slav with dirty pictures of him.  Lakoff (q.v.) would approve of such posturing as maintenance of the established TDS frame.

Scattershots – 22feb22 (updated 24feb22)

George Rebane

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.  As of tonight, our weak and incompetent president has done nothing to deter Putin from re-establishing dominion over Russia’s “near abroad”.  The Biden administration’s much-touted ‘prompt and severe’ sanctions are clearly neither, as they are revealed to be low-grade-ore that even now hang fire.  Contrary to the administration’s abysmally ignorant and hesitant assessment of Putin’s strategy, the Russian president’s image as the post-Stalinist incarnation of Russia’s next strong-man leader continues to grow in the eyes of his adoring people, and also in the calculations of the growing cohort of our geo-strategic enemies led by China and Iran.  We are still looking for that single thing that President Biden has accomplished for the benefit of the United States and its citizens.  Unchallenged, he solidly occupies one of the historical performance bookends of our presidency.

[23feb22 update] Many in the West saw the end of the Cold War as proof that free markets and the rule of law were universal values. When the EU began admitting eastern European and Baltic states, a few of its officials thought this was not a geopolitical ploy aimed at Russia but the product of “inevitable globalization,” said Adam Tooze, a historian at Columbia University.  Eastern Europeans didn’t share that view. Mr. Tooze said  accession to the EU, like NATO, was “a way of securing themselves against Russia, full stop,” while Russia similarly “refused to see NATO and the EU as separate entities.” He said the EU may be a bigger threat because while Russia can compete militarily with NATO, it can’t compete with the social, cultural and economic appeal of Europe. … Economic integration didn’t make Russia or China more liberal; they doubled down on autocracy and state capitalism.  (more here)

[24feb22 update]  It appears that the west’s day-late and dollar-short sanctions, advertised for weeks by Team Biden as a “deterrent” to Russian invasion, have gone over like a warm bucket of spit.  Today even Bumblebrain was forced to admit to the world that his invasion deterrent won’t kick in until about four weeks after the Russian invasion started.  That is an excellent example of this idiot’s ‘foreign policy expertise’, much vaunted by Democrats during the 2020 election campaign.  Every day continues to pour in more evidence that this administration, in its entirety, has no idea what are America’s interests and how to marshal the west to resist Putin, and Xi waiting in the wings.  Our front line offense seems to consist of cancelling the credit cards belonging to the kids of Russian oligarchs, and then threatening to really get tough and cancel their debit cards.  That should get Putin to order his armor out of the Ukraine and send in Russian contractors to fix the Ukrainian buildings that got damaged in the last 48 hours.  Then again, maybe not.

Sandbox - 21feb22

[Still no internet, and ATT can’t figure out why.  Three tech teams have worked on the problem to date, and one is here now.  Bear with me, and spare prayers gratefully accepted.  gjr

Reunification? Fuhgettaboudit!

George Rebane

A dear friend of more than half century who insists he is a middle-roader and considers both sides before coming to conclusions had an extremely revealing but unsurprising email exchange with me minutes ago.  We had just finished watching the news, a great part of which was the coverage of Durham’s announcement and court filing last Friday concerning the Clinton Russiagate scandal.  Now my friend is very well educated and seeks not to be identified as a polarized American.  He is even an active member of No Labels as confirmation of his claim of being politically independent.  (No Labels is patently leftwing.)

For any conservetarian and most right-leaning readers of my many years’ experience who might examine the writings and opinions of my friend, they would immediately identify him as a dyed-in-the-wool leftist cum progressive.  One who is even insular along with run-of-the-mill Democrats who drastically limit themselves only to lamestream sources – all others are considered suspect political propaganda from the Right.  So here is our little email exchange less than an hour ago.

George: What's your take on the latest Durham finding and court filing that came out last Friday? 

Friend: Durham as in NC? I have followed that. Is it on gerrymandering or something else?

More conservative outlets such as the WSJ, FN, Washington Times, Newsmax, … have had wall-to-wall coverage of this latest revelation which in itself is much more devastating and sheds light on the illegal subterfuge in our corrupt government than Watergate ever was.  And from the reports this evening on media coverage, we find that more than half of the country is totally ignorant of Durham’s latest findings and filings.  (more here)

Someone out there with a keener mind than mine, please find us some hope.

As a coda to this bleeding artery, consider conservative pundits like FN’s Brit Hume sonorously informing us that with this latest finding the lamestream cannot help avoiding an ample helping of egg on their face.  Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.  The lamestream doesn’t give a big rat’s ass about what rightwing journalists, pundits, and commentators know or think.  Their focus is on the great unwashed.  As long as they know that they control what that cohort of Americans knows and believes, the rest makes no never mind.  We confirm that at every election

DHS ratchets free speech (addended)

George Rebane

The source of any problem you encounter in the public forum is more than likely due to some institution, agency, or bureau of government; bet on it.

Political commentator Kim Iverson writes ‘Disagree with government policy?  Homeland security says you’re a ‘terrorist’ if you speak out’.  The Dept of Homeland Security is on the lookout for people, including unconnected individuals, who spread “misinformation, disinformation or malinformation (MDM)”.  Of course, there is no rigorous, let alone broadly accepted, definitions of MDM; they are to be used to proscribe speech unacceptable to government bureaucrats in the manner of Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty – ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’

Your iniquities of government convenience are spelled out in the just released 7feb22 Bulletin of the National Terrorism Advisory System.  According to this document, you are guilty of such domestic terrorism, if according to the DHS or any of its cooperating agencies, your communications “sow discord or undermine public trust in US Government institutions.”  The internet and blogosphere is therefore chock full of MDM and an easy picking for any progressive politician or bureaucrat.

And Iverson reports that it doesn’t matter if things change.  “It was originally a conspiracy theory that there would be vaccine mandates.  It was misinformation to say the vaccine doesn’t prevent spread.”  Tomorrow Humpty Dumpty can change its federal mind and get you coming or going.  “By issuing this bulletin they’ve effectively given themselves the freedom to halt any dissent they don’t like under the guise of ‘it could lead to violence.’”

And for those who want to confirm which political side is ALWAYS in favor of more autocracy, keep an eye on the sound of silence emanating on this from our progressives and their lamestream media.  (H/T to reader)

[Addendum]  One of our astute readers notified us of the latest bombshell in our president’s rush to destroy America and relegate it into a second-world socialist country (here) compliant to the establishment of the new global world order.  The Heritage Foundation publishes the much read and respected ‘Index of Economic Freedom’.  This year the US has descended to a new low on the index.  In the categorical rankings ‘Free’ consists of the top seven countries.  The next category is ‘Mostly Free’ in which the US resides at rank 25. (more here)

The more backward nations that would benefit most from increasing their economic freedoms do exactly the opposite.  Their populations, ruled by autocrats and tyrants, are composed of overwhelmingly ignorant and under-educated people who have never had the opportunity to bloom and make their way in the world.  It is a foreboding picture of what America will become as our electorate becomes increasingly ignorant and votes for politicians and policies that demonstrably lower our country’s quality of life – and the doofuses have no clue where they are taking the country.  California, of course, is the poster child.

Ideology and a nitpick with VDH

George Rebane

Readers know that I am a longtime admirer and student of Victor Davis Hanson.  I have met him and spent time talking with him (here).  But when he writes ‘Why Ideology is the Ancient Enemy of Civilization’, I have to pick a nit with him because there he uses a too narrow of a semantical brush to condemn a perfectly good and useful word.  Most dictionaries define –

Ideology – “a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy – e.g. "the ideology of democracy".  The science of ideas; the study of their origin and nature.” (dictionary.com) 

Here on RR I have refined the definition somewhat to ‘A structured and communicable belief system that in its best expression is composed of tenets defendable by and malleable to reason. Ideologue – a person who is willing to communicate and defend his ideology.’

In his referenced essay VDH goes through a litany of current ideologues and historical ideologies, the practice of which devastated the populations under which they were forced to live.  But limiting the definition to only those dark ideologies and their hypocritical ideologues does a disservice to the correct and comprehensive semantics for which these terms were originally fashioned, and have correctly been used over the years.  Peremptorily cutting off the good parts of both is another example of amputating the language and thereby reducing its ability to efficiently convey information.

There is no need for this kind of surgery.  Learning to live with such disabled terms, how then would one describe salutary and beneficial belief systems along with their adherents and practitioners?  

From Lakoff to McConnell to Biden

George Rebane

Berkeley professor, cognitive linguist, and progressive philosopher extraordinaire George Lakoff is the celebrated author of Don’t think of an Elephant (2014), which in its first (2004) edition became the best selling definitive bible of neo-Marxist thought, policy, and communication.  He is the intellectual darling of the Left who has spelled out the belief systems of today’s progressives and conservatives, and how to communicate these to the masses.  One of his strong theses is that the difference between the Ps and Cs is organic and can be traced to the basic way each cohorts’ brains are wired.  Readers may recall my introduction of this notion by citing a University College London clinical study (here).  And he confirms the existence of totally different worldviews of both sides, including understanding of logic and perception of truth.  In short, as these pages have asserted over the years, we see and understand very little in common even when we are looking at the same thing.

Lakoff educates his readers on both the mores and values of Ps and Cs.  He, as I, don’t give much credence to the claimed existence of the middle-road ideologues, their belief system is a muddle of tenets cobbled together from both sides that result in a mutually incoherent amalgam which really doesn’t work.  Both sides do their best to convert these ‘independents’ and attract them into their respective camps.  But in the larger context of Lakoff’s message to his congregants, he really has no idea what conservatives believe and practice.  Nevertheless, his strong construction of current progressive beliefs – mores and values – is an illuminating compendium of neo-Marxist tenets that we conservetarians and others of the Right hold foreign to human nature.

An example of Lakoff’s broad-brush of P and C distinguishing characteristics is that P families are “nurturing” environments in which to bring up children, and C families hew to the “strict father model” wherein children are taught “absolute” rights and wrongs.  The bottom line of such up-bringing environments is that Ps produce good people, and Cs produce bad people with all kinds of social deficits.  Today from what we observe being reported in the media and taught in our public schools, it is clear that Lakoff’s strict differentiation between Ps and Cs is taken as ground truth by our national leftwing.  Again, I recommend Lakoff’s Elephants … as an illuminating read to all my right-leaning and mid-road compatriots.

Moving on to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, we see that he has succumbed to the Left’s framing of the 6jan21 Capitol riot as a “violent insurrection”.  We have covered the use of such language 20 ways from Sunday in these pages, and witness his use of such language with great disappointment, and also surprise.  There definitely is a growing faction of Republican leadership that is not clear on the concept of what the Democrats want to achieve in molding the pre-election public mind.  I don’t know whether Mitch is losing it or he really has a rationale for starting to adopt the Left’s lexicon.  It all started with seemingly innocent sounding malaprops such as ‘illegal immigrant’ and ‘climate change’.  What makes it all the more destructive is that our ability to communicate in the public forum is diminished daily by such degradations of our language.  In any event, Sen McConnell appears as the able leader of the politically silent majority Republicans who have so much to tell our electorate, but only make a peep now and then.

Finally, I have to give a pseudo-kudo to ol’ Bumblebrain, our president.  He is finally acting a bit like the leader of the world’s white hat hegemon with his agonizingly belated aid to Ukraine, sending them armaments and moving more American military into trip-wire positions in Russia’s near-abroad NATO neighbors. (more here)  Rebane Doctrine has backed and promoted America’s role as the powerful hegemon sheriff of the post-WW2 world order.  Ever since George Kennan laid out our cold war strategy of containment in his 1946 Long Telegram, the US has been doing mankind an enormous good by selectively holding back the spread of totalitarianism in its many forms.  As Kennan warned us, this job is neither cheap nor easy, but it beats hell out of having a nuclear WW3 or a global autocracy a la Orwell or Red China.  And America has been the only player on the world stage qualified in means and mindset for the job – long may it wave.

Sandbox - 10feb22

[Now that we are an inflation nation, anyone care to predict how much of the dollar will be destroyed this year?  gjr]

Scattershots – 6feb22 (updated 11feb22)

George Rebane

Numbers never speak for themselves.  Instead, they always deliver the substance of adroitly framed messages by astute spokespeople.

‘Climate Scientists Encounter Limits of Computer Models, Bedeviling Policy’ is the title of a comprehensive survey article in the 6feb22 WSJ, that echoes and confirms most of the points made in these pages about general circulation models (GCMs) that have been used to predict Earth’s temperatures in the long-term.  Over the past decades the number of competing (and some complementing) GCMs have grown to several hundred.  Almost all of them tell their own stories about the future.  And all of them gain ‘credibility’ in the eyes of science-free politicians and activists by being meticulously tuned through adjusting their myriads of ‘knobs’ (constants) so that they can take past data and generate today’s climate as their outputs.  As those trained in data analysis and estimation will tell you, perfecting past performance to predict the present is no guarantee that predictions of the future will then be on the mark.  (Kinda sounds like the copy delivered by your financial advisor.) The current big bugaboo is the impact of clouds, which no one really knows how to model their impact on radiation reflection and/or heat retention.  One thing that GCMs have in common is the prediction of higher temps in the out-years.  These numbers continue to be embraced by all true believers in the coming climate catastrophe, and will be used to justify even more draconian policies to combat what they devoutly embrace as preventable man-made global warming.

[7feb22 update] Picking up on the reparations thread in the last Sandbox, I’d like to throw my native Estonia’s hat into the ring for its due in the ‘past-due payments to make up for historical bad behaviors’ gambit.  The Ests (large Viking tribe of oak tree worshippers) lost their independence in the 1200s when German Teutonic Knights conquered the entire Baltic region extending north to Estonia.  Since then, Estonia has been a ‘bailiwick’ ruled in turn over the centuries by Germans, Russians, and Swedes.  The culturally insular and obdurate Estonians were always kept as serfs cum slaves to work the land for their foreign masters.  They never acclimated to their forced last-class social status and rebelled every couple of generations (here), only to be put down ruthlessly by the established ruling order du jour.  This ended with the revolution of 1918 in which Estonia finally freed itself from the most recent centuries of rule by Russia.  Independence lasted until the start of WW2 in 1939 when the Soviets overran the country and once more made it a Slavic satrapy, this time under the communists.  Estonia again became free in 1991 with the fall of the USSR.  So, for all those centuries of languishing under the brutal heels of the Germans, Swedes, and Russians, doesn’t Estonia belong somewhere at the head of the reparations equity line that many think should now start extracting social justice checks from all kinds of historical bad actors?  But then again, do we really want to open that Pandora’s Box?

[8feb22 update]  DHS’s domestic terrorist watch is now in full swing as described in the 7feb22 DHS National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin.  We are again on a WW2 keep-an-eye-on-your-neighbor footing – remember ‘If you see something, say something’.  Report suspicious stuff to your local FBI field office or Fusion Center.  And this includes anyone who still has doubts about the 2020 election, or thinks the government hasn’t been straight with us about fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.  Personally, I’m waiting for the posting of cash rewards, at which time I plan to turn all of you in.  Guilty as alleged and/or until proven innocent.  H/T to reader for the heads up on this.

Masks for Covid are butt stupid is the blunt conclusion of a compendium of studies, citing verifiable sources, from Swiss Policy Research – ‘Are Face Masks Effective?  The Evidence’ - that one of our astute readers posted in a RR comment stream.  Rather than let it languish there, I’m giving it more prominence here.  This is another important document that blows the cover off the political corruption that continues to pander this pandemic, and that is made worse by the cohort of compliant ignorance that pervades the land.

[11feb22 update]  The Left is rapidly discovering that there is no ‘settled science’ on which they can hang their political hat.  All Covid response policies and the formerly immutable truths of ‘followed science’ they were based on are rapidly changing as the November mid-term election approaches.  What you will never see out of a leftwinger or their lamestream lackies is recognition that they have been wrong and their mistakes have led to thousands of avoidable deaths, irretrievable educational losses to our youth, and tens of thousands of businesses and livelihoods destroyed.  Hopefully now these functional idiots will realize that we have an endemic virus, like so many others that we have learned to live with.  But no premature rejoicing, these same worthies have plenty of opportunities to harm us and the country with their ongoing work on border security, climate change, the economy, K-12 education, ... .

For all you racists out there who want to hide your racism from black folks, here is a little how-to piece that will serve you well.  It is written by a black lady who has given the problem a lot of thought.  She has a list of attributes that racist white folks cannot help but exhibit sooner or later.  Of course, them racist white people can use the same list to practice hiding their inevitable racism, or, if so motivated, attempt to purify themselves from that societal stain.

Walk or Run in the Rain?

George Rebane

Time for little respite from matters political and geo-strategic.  Years ago I came up with a TechTest problem that asked if there were an optimal speed that minimized the amount of rain coming through the area of a car’s missing windshield.  A few days ago I ran into another form of this problem in one of my techie subscriptions.  The question this time was whether you would get more wet or less wet if you ran or walked some distance to get to shelter.  These are essentially the same problem, and I learned that the problem has a long history and debated solutions among techies versed in quantitative STEM.

Well, if you frame the problem correctly, the solution readily reveals itself along with an interesting twist.  So, I decided to re-solve it using the missing windshield version because that makes all the variables and resulting math unambiguous and intuitively clear.  We start with an area A, at angle φ to the vertical, moving horizontally at speed v_A through a steady rainfall in which the drops fall at speed v_R at an angle θ off vertical as shown in the figure below.  When you add these two velocities (speeds with angles), you get v_RA at angle α, the windshield-relative velocity of rain coming down.  We need one more parameter to characterize the problem, and that is the water density ρ that characterizes the intensity of the falling rain.  Important to note here is that no matter the resulting v_RA speed and direction, the water density (e.g. gals/ft^3) in the volume that A, the hole of the missing windshield, sweeps out remains unchanged.

The problem then becomes twofold – as a function of the vehicle speed v_A, what is the rate that water comes in through the hole, and if you had a distance D to travel to shelter, how much water will have come through the hole.

Solving this problem requires a bit of trigonometry and some straightforward squiggly pushing that I include in the box below.  Out of this comes the formula for the rate r_R (through the area that is perpendicular to v_RA), and the formula for V_R(D, v_A), the volume of water through the hole until distance D is covered at speed v_A.

To illustrate the answer to the stated problem, I’ve put together a little scenario with actual numerical values as indicated in the figure, and programmed it up in MS Excel™.  The quick answers are shown in the graphs.  The blue line shows how r_R (gals/sec) increases linearly with vehicle speed v_A as expected.  The faster you go, the more water comes pouring through the whole.  As v_A goes to infinity, so does r_R as long as the hole’s orientation φ presents some frontal area to v_RA which approaches v_A as the vehicle’s speed gets very large.  Note that if we make the hole face parallel to v_RA (i.e. - φ = α) then r_R goes to zero, again as expected.

But if you only have a certain distance D to go to reach shelter, the orange curve shows that the faster you go (i.e. the higher the v_A) the less water V_R you take through the hole.  The limiting value is just the volume of rain at density ρ swept out when your speed reaches infinity.  In the illustrated scenario this volume of rain V_R (D,∞) = 3,733.5 gallons.  So the answer for 'should you run to get out of the rain?' is a definite YES; however, if you want to minimize the rate of water coming through the hole, then don’t move (i.e. v_A = 0).  As the r_R equation shows, setting v_A = 0 reduces the gals/sec to just the volume to the area perpendicular to and increasing at the rate of v_R.  And its easy to also see that V_R will go to infinity since you will be standing still and making no progress to the shelter at distance D.  (Isn’t math wonderful?)  Bottom line – run, don’t walk to get out of the rain.

Lockdown Lunacy vs Fringe Ideas

George Rebane

Litmus test for autocracy – ALL autocracies actively proscribe ideas that are fringe to what the state prescribes as mainstream thinking.  Rebane Doctrine

The recent study from Johns Hopkins University unequivocally shows that lockdowns don’t work in reducing Covid-19 death rates. (here, here, and here) The mortality rate data for this also comes from around the world.  In the developed world state-imposed lockdowns have devastated economies, families, and individuals of all ages.  This pandemic will be studied for generations by historians, political scientists, and autocrats.

The impact of lockdowns has so many dimensions in the realms of their implementation and causal effects.  Most independent (i.e. not on the government tit) epidemiologists, economists, and other science-savvy analysts decried the lockdown policies from the start.  Only the central planning/control elites and ignorantly compliant local jurisdictions promoted the months of insane mandates handed down from on high that began in the spring of 2020.

Half the country is populated by those reliably labeled sheeple.  To the ruling elite these are the recipients of received wisdom known as ‘mainstream thought’, which is comprised of an ever-changing roll of diktats a la Orwell.  These people have been taught since grade school to unquestioningly accept and put to practice whatever and whenever Big Brother mandates.  No critical thought needed nor tolerated – such thought, being constituted of ‘fringe ideas’, is to be rejected as anti-social and dangerous, polluting the purity of state mandated groupthink.  To witness them, one need only go to the local shopping mall or read The Union.

The trained progressive has had excised from his education any notion that all benefits to mankind over the millennia have always been introduced as fringe ideas.  Mainstream thought has always been the home of thought-free compliant stasis and stagnation.  At no time in the last hundred years have we witnessed in the developed world a more complete practice of such mainstream thought than over the last two years – and the beat goes on.

So now we have the latest from Johns Hopkins that once more confirms what the greatly denigrated Barrington Declaration already told us back in the fall of 2020 (here).  That piece of work was endorsed by thousands of accredited scientists and medicos, and ruthlessly put down by our federal government and their lamestream lackies.  Hundreds of thousands more died needlessly and/or went bankrupt.

No recognition of, let alone apologies for the Big Lies were forthcoming, and no one today is holding their breath.  The dead and financially destitute are a price the leftwing elites were willing to pay for their great experiment in the fundamental transformation of America into a satrapy under a global government.  And you can bet that there’s more to come from the same team, still fully in control and totally insulated from any legal or public repercussions by a corrupt DoJ and judiciary.  According to those propagandists and their local true believers, Joe Biden has had a banner year since he was inaugurated.  And the Democrat devotees across the land still revere and believe in the gospel according to Saint Anthony of Fauci, the Beatified - “The fact that we shut down when we did, and the rest of the world did, has saved hundreds of millions of infections and millions of lives.”  (17 June 2020)

The tactic of ‘accuse them of what you do’ is a tried-and-true formula for shutting down any real opposition from the recumbent Republicans.  (Does anyone know on what are they spending their political capital?)  No better example of that can be had than the established fact that Russian appeasement has been a leftwing monopoly as once again illustrated by Victor Davis Hanson (here).  To this day lamestream outlets trumpet that Trump was the Great Colluder.