Rebane's Ruminations

Scattershots – 22apr24 (updated 5may24)

George Rebane

The worldwide climate ruse continues.  Now it’s come out that for years NOAA has been reporting and continues to report bogus temperatures from non-existent “ghost” recording stations.  For its nationally accepted temp data NOAA relies on published reports from the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) that operates the stations.  “NOAA fabricates temperature data for more than 30 percent of the 1,218 USHCN reporting stations that no longer exist. … They are physically gone—but still report data—like magic.”  Anyone who cares to look under the hood of the ongoing climate change hysteria would see countless holes in the reported ‘science’ and the legions of just plain lies broadcast daily about a non-existent catastrophe intended to more firmly establish the control of the elites both nationally and globally.  (more here and here)

“There’s nothing wrong with trying to influence an election. It’s called democracy,” advised Trump lawyer Todd Blanche. (here) That should be obvious to anyone with even a room-temp IQ – but apparently it is not.  This little item came up about the 2016 election during Trump’s hush money trial.  The entire purpose of election campaigning is the attempt to influence voters to vote for this rather than that; it was ever thus.  But not according to the Democrat pinheads prosecuting the former president.  And while we’re at it, can anyone really make a reasonable case against confidential agreements between private individuals concerning their private relationships that don’t violate any laws and don’t injure third parties?  If Trump reported the hush money payment as a legal expense, then that frequently encountered ‘error’ should be the concern of the IRS and so adjudicated, instead of making it an obviously trumped up felony prosecution.  The only more stupid and vindictive prosecution would involve parties, all of whom were willing and profiting participants, in which no one was harmed.  (Oh yes, Trump has one of those going on also.)

California’s plunge to authoritarian destitution continues.  This morning I had a blood test with a phlebotomist; a very nice young lady, native of Nevada County, loves what she does, and a lifelong happy camper in California.  But now she is moving to Colorado because, as she tells it, even though single, she can no longer afford to live in our socialist state.  Certified phlebotomists in California make $35K-53K a year.  These are hardworking, lower-tier, middle-class people, who constitute part of our ‘makers’, who contribute to the hoard of taxes and fees that the state and its local minions extract from citizens.  It’s been the oft-told story of upper and middle class exodus from the once golden state – they are the job-makers and those trying to build a nest egg for retirement.  We have become blasé about those folks turning tail for greener pastures.  But now the gun-toting government grifters are reaching down to people on the lower economic rungs who remain here trying to build careers.  Even for the Sacramento socialists that is a new low.  I can still hear her plaintive “Would you believe I had to pay $5.46 for a gallon of gas yesterday?!”

[24apr24 update]  Biden had his SecDHS Mayorkas divert congressionally approved border wall construction funds to do environmental studies and mitigation on the harm caused by the already built wall sections, instead of continuing to secure the border.  Meanwhile the SOS (sack of …) kept lying to the public at every chance that the “border is secure” as millions of illegal aliens used their Biden free-pass to invade the country.  (here)

Criminal campaign conspiracies exposed.  David Pecker (yes, that’s his real name), chief exec of American Media, testified that he agreed to publish only good stuff about Trump and bury the bad stuff (‘Catch and Kill’) during the former president’s 2016 campaign.  The hush-money trial prosecutor claims that this was a “criminal conspiracy” designed to influence the election’s outcome.  Well, no sh!t Red Ryder.  Thanks for that epiphany on a practice that the lamestream media has practiced for years using fabricated lies and paid pejorative sources against Trump while backing every leftwing candidate.  Showing media bias for your candidate is only allowed for Democrats, for others today such longstanding campaign practices are considered criminal conspiracies.  (more here and here)

[1may24 update]  Developing: Russia is jamming the heck out of GPS around the Baltic Sea, the Financial Times reported Sunday, citing the foreign ministers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The jamming, which seems to have escalated since December, is so disruptive that two Finnish airliners en route to the Estonian city of Tartu were forced to turn around on Thursday and Friday last week. 

The jamming is also affecting boats in the region, “leading to warnings from the Swedish navy about the safety of shipping,” FT reported. Unnamed experts told the outlet they believe there to be possibly three different sources for the jamming, “with one seemingly based in Kaliningrad, another responsible for the disturbances in Estonia and Finland, and a separate source affecting the far north of Norway and Finland.”

This was sent to me by a longtime friend and correspondent.  It is remarkable that such ongoing aggressive electronic warfare by Putin has not been part of the daily news about the thug’s plans to expand Russia’s control of its near-abroad lands.   NATO, with US leadership, needs to respond; isolationism is not a long-term solution for peace.

The Niagara of evil and dumb Democrat policies keeps washing over the country.  Jason Riley outlines Gavin Newsom’s California idiocies that inevitably go on to infect our land (here and here), and now we hear that Bumblebrain has been sneaking illegal aliens into the country via a taxpayer sponsored airlift directly from their countries of origin.  But the latest is that our excuse for president is also planning on importing America-hating Palestinian Arabs in a program that will guarantee them a fast track to citizenship.  It’s hard to come up with more destructive ideas for our country than those proposed daily by the woke and progressive Democratic left.

[5may24 update] Christian Nationalism – The Left’s new target.  “The label is ‘assigned’ to Americans who believe there is a link between faith and freedom.” (here and here)  It is a historical fact that our Founders forged a specific form of republican democracy that would only endure with a citizenry that is educated and shares a common culture of morality.  At the time (ca 1790s) they thought they were on firm ground with that prescription since the country was in-the-large uniformly Christian.  But even then they had some apprehensions – witness Benjamin Franklin’s “A republic, if you can keep it" response to “What kind of government have you given us Dr Franklin?”.  The last fifty years have clearly demonstrated that in America’s ideologically fragmented multi-cultural society we no longer enjoy such a common morality, and require more and more the presence of laws, regulations, and the government gun in the attempt to keep the peace.

Sandbox - 19apr24

[Hard to say what hasn't been said?  Have at it.  gjr]

Dumbing Down Denied (updated 28apr24)

George Rebane

For years RR and its more enlightened readers have lamented and documented the degradation of our public schools and also of our higher educational institutions.  Over the last half century this decline has been relentless and extensively reported as anti-American socialists of all shades adopted policies and curricula designed to produce a workforce of diminishing value to our employers and benefit to our society.

Today with the woke movement the state of our education has reached new depths of idiocy.  Based on utter nonsense, school curricula are being removed, downgraded, restructured in order to eliminate what the Left says is our country’s ‘structural racism’ promoted by cadres of ‘white supremacists’.  These are identified primarily as whites of European descent who are now irredeemably racist, sexist, homophobic, …, the list goes on.

Apropos to this I refer to the latest op-ed, ‘Any learning loss recovery at local high schools?’, by my sweetie-pie Jo Ann.  Her piece in the 22mar24 Union (here) cited chapter and verse of the dismal numbers that document the downfall of our local public education system.  Since its publication the column has drawn a continuous stream of ire from our local leftwing loonies who also demonstrate their lack of prowess with the written word.  The initial criticisms were of Jo Ann’s purported attack on the incompetence of the teachers.  She did not single out teachers, but identifying the public school districts as part of the culprits hit close to home, and brought out the defense of the obviously weak component of our public education.  In that me thinks their ample protests are revealingly welcome.

To date these rebuttals have come in the form of the newspaper’s Other Voices columns, Hits & Misses entries, and Letters to the Editor.  This morning I was reminded of the Left’s desperate denial of this travesty by yet another letter to the editor, this time by one of our more prominent local Marxist worthies (here).  This time the criticism was not of Jo Ann’s quoted performance statistics, or of their perceived unfair umbrage against teachers, but the accusation that only rabid rightwing MAGA Republicans would dare point out such a devastating and divisive national deficiency.  The politically correct response to this ongoing educational tragedy and its long term impact on our workforce should instead be a prudent silence.

[28apr24 update]  I note the almost complete lack of interest in the dumbing down of the nation’s electorate.  It seems as if no one cares or is aware that it all starts with an ignorant horde of voters as our Founders feared and Bryan Caplan -The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (here) - pointed out several years ago and RR has argued forever.  It is such voters who believe the politicians’ bullshit about the economy, how government can spend money better that they can, and how the rich are taking it away from the poor.  And perusing the news confirms that people really like to focus on the knock-on and silly ephemeral impacts of national dumbth.  I suppose the readers of this little blog just reflect the country’s real interests.

Sandbox – 8apr24

[Been contemplating soliciting reader submissions of the most stupid and/or unreasonable thing that prominent leaders/spokespeople for the Republicans and Democrats have done during a given week.  Candidates would NOT include some dumb thing someone in the party’s fringe has said or done.  I’m talking about nationally recognized people and proposed/passed public policies.  An example candidate would be CA’s $20/hr minimum wage law, or Biden’s national security adviser telling the country that Biden’s threat to withhold aid to Israel (if they don’t clear their operational war plans with Washington first) does not represent a change in US policy toward Israel.  Such examples would serve to confirm that there is no common ground between our two sides to begin a path to rapprochement. gjr]