Rebane's Ruminations

Sandbox - 19feb23

[Here's an interesting backlash from the more conservative faction of our nation's youth reacting to the nation's woke tsunami. (here) "'Asbury Revival' marathon worship enters 10th day, similar services grow on other college campuse."  And then take a look at what is happening with the recertification kerfuffle of the University of North Caroling, Chapel Hill as the school attempts to augment its curriculum with actual mainline courses that the Left opposes. (here) Light at the end of the tunnel? gjr]

New California – Our 51st State?

George Rebane

The initiative to launch part of California as a new state, provided for by a number of treaties, agreements, and founding documents, has begun (here).  No matter how legal and above board the effort to liberate at least part of the golden state from its mire of tyranny, this effort will be opposed by all the usual political, monied, and anti-American institutions in the land.  However, our interest should be peaked in this kind of initiative because it shows that the desire for a return to constitutional liberties and governance is not yet dead and buried.

Stupid is in residence

George Rebane

Robert Summa, the new minder and regional editor of The Union, is a functional idiot.  Gold Hill California Media, the new owner of the newspaper, is on a rampage buying up small town newspapers all over the west with the aim of introducing neo-Marxism to the heretofore conservative hinterlands in laying the groundwork for the advent of Agenda30 (aka Agenda21).

Certain of his emails censoring reader letters discussing CRT and Wokeism (here) have been made available to me.  The man refuses to publish such communications on the basis that he is not aware of what wokeism is beyond a rightwing dog whistle that denigrates progressive ideas.  Really, he is so auto-insular that he has never heard the Left use or discuss the notion and concepts of wokeism (here) that have swept the land from academe to the military, of which he will “not continue to platform conspiracy theories and disingenuous arguments that lead to violence or is purposefully spreading misinformation or disinformation to harm others …”.

His ignorance binds him so tightly that he has not even heard of the multi-edition, best-selling leftwing manual to promote wokeism – Don’t Think of an Elephant – and its author, nationally celebrated progressive philosopher George Lakoff (here).  Nor is he aware of the massive response from the country’s Right to counter wokeism – e.g. Counter Wokecraft.  In this sense, in addition to ignorant, we must add ‘stupid’ to his assemblage of professional attributes.

Scattershots – 5feb23 (updated 12feb23)

George Rebane

Chinese spy balloon.  One of the more intriguing and scary test purposes for the balloon could easily have been to see how easy it would be to float EMP nuclear devices over the American mainland.  The published altitude range for effective EMP explosions is about 60K-80Kft.  Such considerations make it even more important to immediately shoot down these incursions as soon as they enter US air space into payload recoverable territory.  I suppose then if an EMP device or test package was found, it could be considered an act of war.  But in such a contingency things would immediately get very complicated with the introduction of a lot of other factors.  The news about today’s underwater recovery results are guaranteed to be lies and propaganda; we should not tell the Chicoms what we found or didn’t.

[7feb23 update]  Microsoft to integrate ChatGPT into Bing in today’s announcement (here).  ChatGPT is the ‘complete natural language’ response system that represents the latest quantum leap in advanced deep learning systems and has already demonstrated how the new generation of smart machines will converse with users on a rapidly expanding base of human knowledge.  My son-in-law who does advanced AI research at Microsoft Research tells me to “stay tuned, this could be history in the making.”

[12feb23 update]  From post-SOTUS media reports, Democrats finally admit that Republicans have a totally opposite direction they want to take the country, and that neither side believes in each other’s facts.  Given such terminal incongruity, what could then be the purpose of pursuing common goals for returning to or going forward to seek an unhappy state of America’s reunification.  Isn’t it past time to start negotiating a peaceful Great Divide?

Sandbox - 1feb23

[About time for fresh sand.   Please note the new Trump post for things Trump related.  Thanks. gjr]