Rebane's Ruminations

Nisenan Nostrums (updated 4jun22)

George Rebane

The 26may22 Union reported (here) that there is a new initiative being launched to have the Nisenan Indians reclaim some of the land that the US government screwed them out of more than a century ago.  The history and Nisenan claim is anything but simple, but this indigenous local tribe, now numbering less than 150, want their land on which to build a cultural center that will anchor a venue in which they can maintain their traditions and educate the rest of us about their heritage.  At least that’s what I understand of their claims.  

The parcel they want is called the Nisenan or Nevada City Rancheria, and consists of almost 80 acres located in the Cement Hill area north of town, next to the old Nevada City airport property.  The old hand-drawn map shown below is all they have on their heritage websites which don’t really define how the tribe is currently organized, if at all. (here, here, and here)

I have taken the old map which shows one section (640 acres or one square mile) of land on which two lower left 40-acre parcels are labeled “Indian Colony” on the old map, and drawn it on the map of the Nevada City area shown below.  To date there have been no claims made on any specific parcels.

We don’t yet know where all this is going, but given the progressive propensities of Nevada City residents, it’s not a long shot to anticipate some serious heat starting to be generated about returning land to the ‘rightful indigenous owners’ before any light is produced.  I wouldn’t be surprised if in the process we don’t have hundreds of would-be Nisenan emerging out of the woodwork to militate for some sort of government reparations ranging from land to cash payments.

The whole situation is not unique to Nevada County and has been and is being played out elsewhere in the country (note the mess in eastern Oklahoma).  Which all calls into question as to what current productive residents of a land owe to people who claim to be deprived relatives of long-lost primitive ancestors who presumably spent centuries on the land, and were able to develop some woven baskets and stacked stick residences as their contribution to advance their progeny.

Full disclosure - the Rebanes have more than a passing interest in this matter since we have lived on one of the so-called ‘rancheria’ parcels for the last twenty years.

[4jun22 update]  The Union’s editorial board (of which Jo Ann is a member) gave their very measured view on the Nisenan issue (here).  They back giving land to the surviving members of the tribe.  More than likely this would be a hunk from the western end of Nevada City’s ‘airport property’ that abuts the recorded ‘Indian Reservation’ (the rancheria) shown on the above map.  For federal recognition of the tribe, a part of the land must include at least a “sliver” of the rancheria which is now private property.  No one yet knows what constitutes a sliver.  The editorial board’s position concludes with – “But we can make a decision at this moment to support a project that is warranted. We can acknowledge the harm that was done, and work toward a better future, not just with a recognition at the start of a council meeting, but a federal recognition supported by real action from Nevada City and this county.”

Secret Sauce for a New World Order

George Rebane

Rebane Doctrine: Stingers and Javelins are the secret sauce of the new world order.  What’s happening in Ukraine is proof of what we should be doing for Taiwan – shipping them vast quantities of Javelins and Stingers to enable them to thwart a D-day-like invasion by Red China on their shores.  These weapons demonstrate that the old days of using massive slowly moving war machines no longer gives advantage to the aggressor against highly mobile light cavalry units armed with Stingers and Javelins.  A wise administration would have already started supplying Taiwan with large quantities of sub-rosa shipments of these weapons, and then informing Beijing, again sub-rosa, of that accomplishment so that no face needs be lost in the international forum.  Download video here - Download VIDEO-2022-04-23-22-14-35

The same can be said for highly mobile, relatively inexpensive shore-to-ship missiles that will quickly reduce both carrier strike groups and amphibious assault groups to smoldering wrecks.  The whole scenario of how large nations project power will have to be rethought.  And we haven't even started talking about hypersonics yet.  The only foreseeable defense for such missile attacks is with directed-energy weapons which are not yet operational, and for which the sensor and fire control problems have yet to be solved.

And now we are getting back-channel news (reported here by The Blaze) that intelligence sources state Chinese preparations for an imminent Taiwan invasion are underway.

Sandbox - 26may22

[Please post your mass killings comments under '... to protect the children'.  Thank you. gjr]

“… to protect the children.” (addended with 9jun22 update)

George Rebane

That is the only slim thread of agreement that the Republicans and Democrats have for new legislation pursuant to the mass killing of students and teachers in Uvalde, Texas this week.  Yet the Dems’ solution continues to be to enact senseless gun legislation to stop senseless mass shootings.  Their entire initiative is based on appealing to the hoped for raw emotional response of their constituents to ‘do something’, or anything that can be used to advance the final objective of removing firearms from the country’s law-abiding civilian population.

The Dems’ entire argument is that since ‘guns kill people’, the “gun lobby” (aka NRA) wants more people killed through the unhindered sale of more guns.  For the Left there are no other considerations for the private ownership of guns, least of all the antiquated and misconstrued Second Amendment to defend against rogue government.  Every successive gun control measure is understood to be nothing more or less than a ratchet toward socialist autocracy’s final objective of an unarmed, compliant citizenry.

In a country with over 340 million variously un/registered firearms, there is no guarantee that a quietly deranged person with no previous criminal record or recorded history of mental instability will be stopped from a serendipitously inspired and spontaneously launched mass murder.  LE officials have told us for decades that no level of gun restrictions will bring an end to what happened in Uvalde.

What journalists and clear-thinking politicians don’t ask, during the inevitable gun control hysteria that follows every mass shooting, is ‘what is the evidence that this legislation would have stopped the previous mass murderers, or will stop them in the future?’  Posing this question will quickly reveal the real purpose for the newly proposed gun control measures.

The real solution – possibly unattainable – is what may be called a ‘cultural reset’.  The American culture of, say, fifty years ago prevented such mass murders occurring in a population equally populated with firearms – both semi-auto pistols and long guns.  Today, wholesale human life is cheapened and cheap.  With widespread and instant salacious news coverage, we continually hear of hundreds of people gunned down weekly without giving it much if any thought.  Unless the life belongs to family or close friends, the deaths don’t matter much irrespectively how they are snuffed out.

And our polarized society no longer supports community-wide solutions.  Remaining solutions have become very personalized – you pull up stakes and move to a safer place if you can, or you stay put, become insular, and hunker down while the killing continues around you.  That will continue in perpetuity as long as the state makes it so that only criminals have guns to use with impunity on an unarmed citizenry.  To various extents this has proven to be true both under so-called liberal democracies and police-state tyrannies.

A cultural reset, even if attempted, will take at least a generation to gain traction in our society.  In the meantime, IMHO we should recognize the ground truth that active killers with guns are stopped only by defenders with guns.  So, if we really have an interest to do something to protect the children, then we must always remember that when seconds count, LE is minutes (or more) away.  Actually, an hour away in Uvalde and similarly at previous shooting sites.  As far as the killer is concerned, LE has not arrived until he is assaulted with arms.  It doesn’t matter how quickly LE arrives on the scene, the clock starts when the killer perceives that his further intentions will now be curtailed.  For example, LE getting to the Uvalde school and dicking around for an hour before a Border Patrol agent confronted and shot the killer, means that LE effectively arrived an hour late.  So consider -

Policies that don’t work – place one security officer per school.  These have proven to be career-limited, marginally trained, timid people who either have no idea that killing is taking place in another part of the school, or who will not confront the killer until summoned LE people (‘back-up’) arrive to take control of the incident.

Policies that have a chance of working – Every teacher and certain staffers are trained and required to be concealed-carry armed when on duty.  This policy is then made public.  Israel has demonstrated the efficacy of such policy.  (more here)

[Addendum]  In ongoing discussions about solutions to such wanton and unpredictable massacres, it was brought out that there may be a significant share of teachers who will refuse to be trained and armed.  The point makes sense since so many teachers are liberals/progressives whose logic doesn’t always concur with reality – e.g. similar to those leftwingers who believe that declaring a building or facility a ‘gun-free zone’ will hinder instead of attract the manic mass murderer.  No matter, for whatever reasons, not all teachers can qualify or be relied upon to be armed and confront their students' would-be killer.

The alternative to concealed-carry teachers in the classroom is a cadre of volunteer CCW holders who would also receive the required additional training.  These would come from the students’ parents, grandparents, and (retired) friends or community volunteers.  I’d bet the farm that there would be more than enough volunteers to sit in the back of classrooms while instruction is going on.  Each school could have a ‘security coordinator’ volunteer to coordinate with the school’s administration, maintain the active roster, and manage the ‘duty calendar’ for the classroom security volunteers.  The marginal cost to the school district and community would be nil.

Given today’s mobile devices (laptops, pads, smart phones, …), the security volunteers can easily be productive on their own projects as they carry out their assigned watches.  I know from our family’s circle of friends and contacts, that almost everyone would volunteer who could pass the training requirements.  As an example, for years I was a member of the Banner Mountain firewatch team and pulled many a 4-6 hour morning and afternoon stints on the tower (until the tower was decommissioned).  It was a rewarding experience, as I’m sure it would also be to serve as a classroom security volunteer.

(For the record, America's CCW holders are the most reliable and law-abiding cohort of citizens when it comes to psychological stability, gun safety and proficiency, and criminality/gun violence.  Statistically, you are six times more likely to be assaulted by a rogue LE officer than a CCW permit holder.)

[28may22 update]  A commenter raised a valid question about the availability of sufficient volunteers to implement the above described classroom security approach.  I’ve taken a more detailed look at the numbers, and it appears to be doable.  These back-of-envelope calculations are available here -  Download Classroom Security Volunteers.  Readers thoughts are always welcome, especially as they point out any errors or weaknesses (not already covered in the comment stream below).

[4jun22 update]  Certify retired military personnel to serve as armed school security guards – so proposes Sen Lindsey Graham (R-SC).  Above I have made case for such a solution that can be implemented more rapidly than any ineffective anti-gun legislation.  (more here)

The Left, of course, is dead-set against such a practical solution, and surprisingly they are joined by some folks from the other side who also think it’s the dumbest thing they ever heard of.  Nevertheless, that kind of solution, using trained and certified volunteer security guards, is staring us in the face with no reasonable opposition save ‘schools should remain a gun-free zone’, or more simply, ‘it’s a stupid idea that will never work’.

[9jun22 update]  Well, things may be looking up with getting more defensive guns into schools and classrooms.  Reports are coming in that in certain red states teachers are volunteering to carry guns (here).  And we now hear that even in progressive New Jersey militant parents are convincing school districts to hire off-duty and retired LE officers to serve as added security in schools (here).  These people will be paid.  So that brings us a few steps closer to the volunteer security concept outlined here as the affordable solution to protect our children.

BTW, does everyone notice that the ‘do something’ new gun regs coming out of the House have nothing to do with protecting the children?  (They’re just a desperate Dem election issue since everything else they propose is a demonstrable disaster for the country.)  And no Republican has the balls to resist the new ‘do something’ hysteria by asking why existing gun regs – from past ‘do something’ hysterias - aren’t being enforced and/or have proven to be totally ineffective in reducing ‘gun violence’.

Performance Registered Advisor

George Rebane

In the 21may22 Union’s inserted adverts there was a slick one from local investment advisor and financial columnist Marc Cuniberti.  He is now “accepting new clients for the markets of 2022”, who no doubt have formed a line outside his office door.  Jo Ann and I are lifelong investors who, from time to time, have allowed various investment advisors and wealth managers to manage a part of our portfolio.  All of these people have been of good reputation, trustworthy, ethical, professional, and careful, quick, and kind.  But none of them have been able to match our own acumen in the markets, and all of them have required payment of perverse money management fees.  So, we have switched them out, and finally decided that, while we can do well in portfolio management, we’re not worth a hill of beans in picking investment advisors.

In recent years I have been given to quite a bit of puzzling in the financial engineering field, and quite successfully, I might add.  My claimed forte is in the areas of monetary utility and risk tolerance. (see figure)  In those endeavors I have had a jaundiced attitude toward the wealth management industry that charges you a fee regardless of the performance they deliver on your portfolio – they play a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ game.  As an entrepreneur and algorist I offered our last advisor an opportunity to retain our account by modifying his fee structure so he would have more skin in our game.

In the new ‘skin in game’ (SIG) fee structure, we would split our portfolio’s annual gain, say, 80/20, with him during profitable years, and we would pay no fee for years with no gain.  Instead, we would then get a dollar amount credit for the year’s end market value loss in our portfolio.  The credit would be applied toward gains in profitable years.  There were a few more obvious details involved, but you get the idea.  If he made us a bunch of money, he would also get a heap more than the percent or so of the total year end value of our portfolio.  In other words, he, like us, would be betting on his performance with a SIG fee structure.  Sadly, he wouldn’t touch that deal with a ten-footer, and since then I have talked with a number of money managers in our circle of friends, and they were of the same mind – ‘No way Jose!’

So circling back, how do we choose a money manager in today’s investment world?  Then looking at Mr Cuniberti’s ad this morning, the idea of a Performance Registered Advisor (PRA) came to me.  To become a PRA, an investment advisor would first qualify for some existing certifications that put letters after his name before applying to Portfolio Registration Services (PRS), the auditing and clearinghouse that vets and maintains the nation’s PRAs in good standing.  PRS would charge a nominal fee for its services from its members.

To become a PRA, an investment advisor will have to have at least one half of his gross assets in a registered and audited portfolio of investments of the type that he offers to his clients for two years – in short, at all times his clients would be able to invest in the same securities that make up the advisor’s R&A portfolio.  Each PRA’s R&A portfolio would be audited monthly for its market value and yielded dividends.  With modern brokerage houses, this would be a completely automated process.  The PRA would then publish monthly the financial performance metrics of each PRA, and allow the PRAs to include these nationally-reputable metrics in their advertisements and other promotional materials.  For obvious reasons the R&A portfolios’ specific securities and asset allocations would remain confidential.  The published metrics would include such items as percent gains/losses YTD, 1-year, 2-years, …, 5-year, etc.  The PRS may also publish (for a fee?) the PRA’s performance by investment sector – say, real estate, energy, high tech, commodities, etc.

With this data available, the retail investor now has reliable information on the investment performance of the candidate advisors he is considering in his short list.  And, of course, if a wealth advisor chooses not to become a PRA, then the client would want to know why, before giving the candidate further consideration.  But the bottom line is that such a new and transparent view of the investment advisor industry would immediately cut through the BS in which today’s investors find themselves inundated by all the slick ads that address none of their concerns about the management of their portfolios.

Scattershots – 20may22 (updated 22may22)

George Rebane

‘Biden’s Strange Help for Cuba’  To be charitable, Team Biden’s foreign policy continues in chaotic shambles.  Cuba, Russia’s prime ally in the western hemisphere, is economically and politically on its ass, and Biden is now going to help stabilize the country by relaxing travel restrictions, money transfers, and commercial financing from the US.  From the 20may22 WSJ, “The Administration says it wants to help the Cuban people. But like the Obama Administration, Team Biden fails to acknowledge that the cause of the island’s privation is the regime itself.”  This is the same for America today where Biden daily denies that the cause of our privations is his incompetent cum anti-American regime.

[21may22 update]  To those of us who continue to suffer the outrageous slings and arrows of woke progressives in our daily round of jousts, the words of Charles Mackay (1814-1889) are an ever-timely tonic.

[22may22 update] ‘Russia/Putin & the West’ is an extensive two-part pro-Russian harangue on today's geostrategic politics and the evolving world order by someone signing himself as ‘Sam Parker’.  The document is published on an extensive website called Behind The News Network, and it was composed just before the Ukrainian invasion which it anticipates.  The piece came across my desk from a correspondent questioning the authenticity of the essay, which in Part1 starts out as sober and neutral look at the modern history of Eurasian Russia cum USSR, and then (in Part2) morphs into a pro-Russian propaganda piece detailing the country’s military superiority over anything the US and NATO can muster to counter Russia’s just aims to militarily defend itself against the geo-strategic machinations of the sinister US-based ‘Rockefeller Empire’.  To me it comes across as a sophisticated outlet of anti-western fake news.  Judge for yourself.

The Great Replacement (update 21may22)

George Rebane

All socio-economic problems depend on their numbers, not understanding these replaces reasonable discussion with emoting.

The ‘great replacement conspiracy’ is the latest kerfuffle to rise to national prominence.  The Left is accusing the Right of fostering this theory of dark-skinned immigrants and illegal aliens being welcomed into America to outvote and outbreed the European-descended whites.  (more here, here, here, here)  History tells us that such replacement concerns first started in France long ago, and in the US ascendant Democrats have crowed for years, and continue to do so today, that the Republicans are being replaced as their party shrinks.  But no matter where it started, the point I want to develop is that in our innumerate nation, almost everyone today is ignorant of what replacement means and really is.  And the evil party is using this ignorance to continue to divide us.  So let’s clear up some cobwebs in order to correctly assess what all the fuss is about.

The general notion of replacement requires first and foremost the existence of a defined ‘container’, be it a region of square miles full of people, a jug that can hold fluids, or a bowl containing different colored marbles.  Given the container, we now have to consider two distinct cases.  Case1 in which the container has a not-to-exceed carrying capacity, and Case2 in which the container’s carrying capacity is not limited.

Case1.  Suppose we have a small bowl that can hold five marbles, and to start, it contains three Amarbles and two Bmarbles.  We all understand that if Bmarbles are reduced to one by adding one Amarble or one Cmarble, that Bmarbles are being replaced both in their absolute number and in their share of the bowl’s contents (going from 40% to 20%), now leaving the A, B, C marble count at 3, 1, 1 respectively.  No one should have a problem understanding this kind of replacement.

But is it possible for replacement to occur if a categorical population (e.g. Bmarbles) remains unchanged or even increases?  Well yes, this gives us Case2 where we suppose Amarbles increase by two to five, Cmarbles double to two, and Bmarbles remain unchanged at one.  Now the share of Bmarbles has dropped from 20% to 1/8 or 12.5%.  The Bmarble share has definitely been replaced by the greater shares of Amarbles and Cmarbles.

The more interesting Case2 scenario is when the number of all three kinds of marbles increases over time.  Let’s suppose that Amarbles increase at the rate of 4/year, Bmarbles at 1/year, and Cmarbles at 3/year.  If at the beginning of the year we had A, B, C marbles numbering 3, 1, 1 respectively, then at the end of the year they would number 7, 2, 4.  So focusing on Bmarbles, we see their number double, but their share drop from 20% to about 15%.  Again, Bmarbles had 5% of their share replaced by the population increase which was taken up by the shares of Amarbles and Cmarbles.  So it’s easy to see that replacement can take place in populations that also increase over time, but only at a rates lower than that of the other population cohorts.

Sandbox – 17may22

[President Bumblebrain rushed up to Buffalo today to make some political hay out of the latest killing spree by a deranged shooter who claims to be a leftwinger, and is accused by the lamestream as being a “white supremacist” rightwinger.  In his speech to the nation our fearless leader’s pabulum included, “I promise you, hate will not prevail.”  What his adoring legions don’t understand is that hate doesn’t have to prevail.  Delivering occasional massacres here and there, hate can just keep boiling along at the current rate, as long as the killers know that wherever they decide to open fire, they will be the only ones with a gun.  gjr]

Picking on Piketty

George Rebane

Admittedly not a difficult task.  I just finished Brief History of Equality (2022) by Thomas Piketty.  Darling of the international Left, we have encountered this French economist before in these pages (here).  Our American Left is in thrall with the man’s wisdom, prescience, and prescriptions for a better world.  Piketty’s thoughts and nostrums on economics and the future global order are important for Americans to understand since they form the illustrated intellectual basis for much of the Democrats’ social, economic, and even foreign policies.  Piketty’s extensive neo-Marxist works give our Left the veneer of legitimacy to sway the country’s center and undecided toward wholesale collectivism.

In my previous remarks on Brief History I concentrated on some of the technical points from his earlier works, specifically points that evinced his massive blindspots about human nature, especially when it comes to our economic behavior in the presence of monetary risk.

In this coda I want to put a ribbon around his arguments promoting the new world order he has invented and labeled “federalized democratic socialism”, along with various other derivative names.  This is a destination form of collectivism that Piketty describes as “decentralized” socialism, hence the appended ‘federalized’ attribute.  Such decentralization will result when the masses come together to “develop new forms of sovereignism(sic) with a universalist vocation.”  If you understand any of this ideo-babble, you’re a better man than I.

Open Letter to Don Rogers

[This piece was published in the 11may22 Union op-ed pages here.]

Your weekly column – ‘The gritty middle way’ - in the 6may22 Union (here) was a thoughtful, well-written piece that I and many of your readers enjoyed reading.  By now, most of the newspaper’s readers know that, counter to your protestations, you have become markedly left-of-center in your politics.  We have all witnessed the transition over the last few years.

The essay’s great opening – “Humans live in tension between the collective and the individual, neither ant drones nor lonely snow leopards.” – sets the stage for a good discussion of that gritty tension.  As you might expect, your words will sound very different to right and left readers who don’t necessarily inhabit the extremes of their respective polar regions.

The discerning reader is jarred a mite when he runs into “the farther right and farther left have uncannily similar root worldviews in common. Just understand that America’s actual risk of living under the thumb of fascist overlords or critical-theorist Marxist mobs amounts to the same fever dream born of indigestion from bogieman stories repeated mostly on blue screens.”

This observation and a couple of others can qualify as a litmus test for an intellectual leftist – they do not see the asymmetries in the ideological foundations of individualism and collectivism.  For them, “our yearnings in politics would have us believe that the end of the rainbow, the prize, lies at one pole or the other, sweet relief to be found there.”  However, that is not true.  Were we to believe polls and voting patterns, we would know the overwhelming share of liberal voters embrace large government collectivism, seeing no natural limits to taxation, regulation, and centralized control – reaching for the undefined but uniformly applied ‘common good’ dominates all political thought.  This is the foundation of the ‘fair share’ dictum - from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs – enforced equity über alles.

On the right the conservative, most certainly the conservetarian, sees no desired end in fascist governance.  For after all, fascism is the other dominant form of collectivism that also requires a very large autocratic government to implement its principles of social order and economics.  This is anathema to the overwhelming share of those on the Right.  Perhaps unrealistically, but the mainstream rightwinger’s desiderata are based on a smaller government minimally regulating open markets, staying out of people’s lives, and subsisting on minimum tax revenues.  The real political bookends for us are quite different than those apprehended and preached by the Left.  An easy proof of this is in the readings of your cited Levin, who describes a leftist society accepted by the Left, and Lakoff, who demonstrates repeatedly that he has no idea what the Right believes and seeks.

What the left-leaner also misses is that his desired social order requires the practice of wholesale altruism to make it work, and populated by perfected Marxists who have always been beyond the pale of human action (see Hardin’s ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’).  Historically, all leftwing nostrums to achieve such a glorified state of affairs require an initial phase of large-scale authoritarian social conditioning, wherein some eggs have to be cracked to make the sought for omelet.  This road, de rigueur to the intellectual Marxist, is kept hidden from the hoi polloi lest they up and embrace the ever-present siren song of the capitalists.

So, in sum Don, your commentary invites the reader to an admittedly difficult, yet reasonable, and reasoned middle path, avoiding both sides bounded by indistinguishable brambles and thorns.  Sadly, as attested by more than two hundred years of history, along with today’s petabytes of data, that is not the real world – it never was.  May the conversation continue.

Always with respect and best wishes,

George Rebane

Scattershots – 6may22 (updated 14may22)

George Rebane

The 2016 election integrity and voter fraud issue is far from dead.  Besides the many tomes presenting evidence that somehow didn’t reach the courts or were summarily dismissed by dismissive judges, there is a whole trove of (video and smartphone tracking) evidence of hundreds of paid ‘mules’ stuffing multiple ballots into ballot drop boxes in selected voting precincts across the nation (more here).  The whole thing is documented in a new film ‘2,000 Mules’ by documentary filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza.  It is now showing at a big screen near you, and you can also watch its online 7may22 premier for pay here on Youtube.  The lamestream has been hyper-silent about this movie, and you can bet the ranch that neither Bumblebrain, Ms Pelosi, nor SFB Schumer will watch it.

[13may22 update]  In ‘Imagine the Unimaginable’ Victor Davis Hanson succinctly lays out the dire straits in which our beloved republic finds itself.  As he makes clear and most RR readers know, all of our maladies are self-inflicted.  VDH ends his warning of the radical Left in America’s fundamental transformation – “When revolutionaries undermine the system, earn the antipathy of the people, and face looming disaster at the polls, it is then they prove most dangerous — as we shall see over the next few months.”

[14may22 update] ‘Abortion-Rights Marches Planned Across U.S. to Protest Possible Overturning of Roe v. Wade’  Here’s a photo of certifiable young idiots created by the evil party Democrats who continue to broadcast their latest Big Lie that federalizing abortion rights will outlaw abortions and end up “killing women”.  Even Scientific American (here) and the prestigious British medical journal Lancet (here) have decided to expand into American law and politics to proscribe the anticipated “blood on their hands” SCOTUS ruling that would allow the several states to make their own abortion laws.  This is more corroborating evidence that idiocy is independent of intellect.

Democrats speak in ‘poetic truths’ (updated 10may22)

George Rebane

Hoover Institution senior fellow and national commentator Shelby Steele has coined an appropriate tongue-in-cheek label for the gigantic lies that issue daily from our Left.  It turns out that such lies may be viewed as “poetic truths” when broadcast by politicians and political activists.  Poetic truths are "narratives that play down or disregard reality and facts to advance a favored ideological position."  The current claimant of the most audacious poetic truth is Ms Nusrat Choudhury (pictured), whose statement that “the killing of unarmed black men by police happens every day in America” patently qualifies (emphasis mine and Sen Kennedy’s).

She maintained the correctness of this statement to Sen John Kennedy who questioned her during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that revealed her (lack of) qualifications to become a federal judge pursuant to having been nominated by the nation’s First Incompetent, President Bumblebrain himself. (more here)

When the dissemination of prime-time, first-rate whoppers comes up for discussion, our leftwing neighbors, both national and local, volubly maintain that both sides are at least equally guilty, with the Republicans dispensing the majority.  By any comparative listing of such poetic truths (aka Big Lies), the contest is not even close, nor has it ever been.  Historically socialists are the big liars, for that is the requirement for their public square bamboozles to gain any traction in governance.  Today’s examples overwhelm –

‘Our southern border is secure, there is no border crisis’,

‘Crime rates are not up, there is no urban crime wave in America’,

‘Increasing taxes will not exacerbate the ongoing stagflation’,

‘Increasing taxes will grow the economy’,

‘Tax rates do not affect investment and productivity’,

'You can keep your doctor ...',

'Obamacare will reduce national healthcare costs',

‘Fossil fuels are bad and unnecessary; our energy needs can be met entirely by renewables’,

'America is better off being energy-dependent on foreign suppliers,'

‘Illegal immigration and illegal aliens in the workforce are necessary for economic growth’,

‘Capitalism and minimally regulated markets are arbitrary, cruel, and don't work’,

‘Men and women are exactly the same, making sexual distinction racist and unnecessary’,

‘Christians are intolerant’,

‘Trump’s collusion with the Russians swung the 2016 election’,

‘The tenets of Critical Race Theory are not taught in our K-12 schools’,

‘Merit based education (especially in STEM subjects) is racist’,

'Western culture is intrinsically racist',

‘America is a systemically racist country’,

‘Blacks don’t overwhelmingly kill blacks, cops gratuitously kill blacks,’

‘Government enforced equity motivates better than equal opportunity,’

‘Multi-cultural factionalism serves to unite America,’

… and on and on.

[10may22 update]  Poetic truths also come in the complimentary form of the sound of silence.  The evil party again demonstrated its true colors when both the administration and Democratic congressional leaders chose to remain silent on the historical travesty of compromising SCOTUS deliberations by leaking a draft of the forthcoming ruling on the continued federal involvement on abortions.  The leak, if allowed to become a precedent so prevalent in other governmental branches, departments, agencies, … will completely politicize the last vestige of non-political functions of our federal government.  The Democrats quickly doubled down on their ‘ascent by silence’ with a chorus of Big Lies about the impact of the upcoming Roe v Wade ruling that would range all the way from summarily prohibiting abortions in the land, to banning every other social activity that today we are free to perform – e.g. gay marriage.  The poetic truths Democrats perpetrate on the poor and the poorly informed knows no end.

As always, Democrats are invited to counter.

Sandbox – 3may22

[California’s 2021 population shrank for the second year in a row. (here)  Our local leftwingers have continued to ignore this phenomenon in the large, and most certainly deny its most proximal cause that can be remedied by rolling back the atrocious tax and regulatory policies with which our one-party monopoly legislature has burdened the once Golden State, and continues to do so unabated.  Reporting on this, the lamestream media (e.g. NPR) explains to its audiences that all this is due only to lower birthrates, Covid deaths, and not enough ‘immigration’ (aka influx of illegal aliens).  Nowhere is mentioned the ongoing Great California Exodus of businesses and workers numbering in the hundreds of thousands annually.  The state’s Democrats continue to count on their double dummy constituents to keep them in office and pay no attention to those behind the curtain who have put California at the bottom in about every measured QoL category. gjr]

Roe v Wade v Dodd (updated 6may22)

George Rebane

According to a leaked draft, SCOTUS appears prepared to rule on Mississippi’s Dodd v Jackson challenge to the longstanding and contentious 1973 Roe v Wade decision to legalize abortion as a constitutional right in all 50 states. (here and here) By various attempts to overturn RvW since then, many states have additionally ruled that RvW really only grants abortion rights during the first 30 or so weeks of pregnancy.

Now DvJ has reduced this down to the first 15 weeks. (more here) And this started the brouhaha that was appealed all the way up to SCOTUS, which, according to the draft, promises to reconsider the whole question of constitutionality and to reinstate federalism by again allowing the several states each to legislate their own abortion laws. 

The Left, generally against federalism, hates this and anybody and everybody who wants to restrict a ‘woman’s right’ to an abortion, up to and including a post-partum killing.  And for good measure, all progressives want the state to pay for such abortions on demand.

My own take on abortions is included in the 2012 post ‘Abortion and the Two Bodies Problem’.

[4may22 update]  There was a gathering of Nevada County’s ignorant and double dummies to protest the SCOTUS draft on Broad Street. (here)  It is hard to believe that any of these fellow citizens and neighbors, among whom we must live, know the contents of RvW, Mississippi’s DvJ, or the leaked draft.  The depths of their considerable deficits allow them to comfortably demonstrate for democracy while denying the ability of Americans in the several states the ability to vote for the abortion policy that they and their fellow residents support.  The facile way they continue to be manipulated by the nation’s leftwing elites recalls Lenin’s definition of ‘useful idiots’.

[6may22 update]  Another illustration of the intellectually brain-dead Left is their ongoing charge Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh broke their promise to the Senate that they would honor Roe after being confirmed.  There is no evidence whatsoever that they made any such commitments during their hearings, yet the Democrats and their lamestream have now adopted that as their latest Big Lie, adding it to their already historic collection that continues to grow at an increasing pace as the November election approaches.  Another one of their 'poetic truths'?

On the lighter side, the photo below was recaptioned by one of our regular readers.  He didn’t specify whether the new non-scalable fence is supposed to keep the Republicans in or out.

Scattershots – 1may22

George Rebane

‘Workers of the world, arise and celebrate the day that brings us together to again be thankful for the blessings of collectivism that unite us in a revolution to make socialism available to all peoples everywhere.’ - or something similar.  I just thought it would be appropriate to make up that piece of crap on May Day.

Inflation Tax.  Last year many of us already saw the salacious intents of the Biden administration in how they were systematically going about to ruin the nation.  Among the many disasters they were cooking up was inflation.  Well, it’s here now, and the piece I posted then (here) is definitely worth reviewing by those who are impacted by inflation and those who are planning to be so impacted.  I count myself among the latter, so it’s time to review the taxing aspects of inflation (here).  And for those who are spreadsheet challenged, I made a spreadsheet with the formulas from the ‘Inflation – up close and personal’ post. Download InflationInvesting2

Wealth tax:  The Build Back Bullshit agenda is still not dead and buried.  Team Bumblebrain has every intent on passing most of its provisions, especially those increasing our taxes.  The administration's entire team on economics are double dummies who couldn’t pass Econ 101.  They continue to tell the sheeple that we can tax ourselves out of an inflationary spiral.  Even Keynes, the lord of demand-siders, counseled against raising taxes in an inflation infested economy. (more here)

Election corruption right here in River City?  My bride and a commenter picked up on a thinly disguised campaign ad in the 30apr22 Union for Natalie Adona, our Soros'(?) foreign plant Assistant Registrar of Voters, who is running for the county’s Clerk Recorder – Registrar of Voters in the 7jun22 election.  The ad, pictured below, is made to look like a public service announcement from the Nevada County Clerk Recorder – Registrar of Voters office.  Notice the formal seal in the lower right corner.  Were it a bona-fide voter info notice from that office, then it would have been published under the aegis of our current holder of that office, Greg Diaz.  It does not speak well for The Union to have allowed this campaign ad to appear without some corrective editorial comment.