Rebane's Ruminations

Scattershots – 22jul20

George Rebane

Our indigenous North American natives (aka Indians) may not have politically clean hands after all.  Now that it’s OK to go back in history to any desired time in order to dredge up the iniquities of our forefathers (and mothers), we have discovered that the most recent arrivals before the white man probably were not very nice to the people who were here before them.  “For most of the 20th Century, archaeologists were convinced that big-game hunters known as the Clovis people, identified by the fluted flint spear points they made, were the first Americans, arriving about 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. More recent finds from Oregon to Chile, though, showed that other groups had arrived 16,000 years ago or more.”  So is it not now time to start tearing down the history of our redskins, so we can proceed to a clean sweep of all the bad that preceded this fundamentally transformed age of purity in thought and deed? (more here and here)

More later.

This Young Collectivist’s Column is NOT a Caricature

George Rebane

Recent NUHS graduate Michael Sekerak is working hard to reshape our society and community.  He wrote the cri de Coeur ‘Time to elevate those marginalized in our community’ which The Union published in its 8jul20 edition.  What is remarkable about Mr Sekerak’s column is that it so exemplifies the education, indoctrination, and mentality of the youth that our long-politicized and polarized public education system produces.  His column and the way he expresses his deeply felt sentiments would be considered a tongue-in-cheek caricature of current collectivist expression were I or another conservetarian to compose such, and then claim that its prescriptions correctly represent the pap that passes for progressive thought.  Our liberal readers would take me to task for composing such an obviously naïve collection of leftwing talking points, insisting that this would be yet one more ‘racist perspective’ from the Right (what else?), and that their real nostrums for us come from higher, socially just, and more sophisticated sources.

In any event, I present the entirety of Mr Sekerak’s composition below so that our readers can appreciate the product of our public schools.  As matter of fact, Nevada County would be one of the least likely locales in which to find individuals who have been marginalized by our community.  But that, of course, is not the proper woke attitude or outlook – America’s persecuted, denied, and aggrieved are everywhere marbled into our racist and white privileged communities, even unto these remote foothills now filling with liberal nest-soilers from the cities yearning to breathe free.

From the following copy, the casual reader will note that Mr Sekerak’s heartfelt desiderata, when even partially implemented, will further reduce our schools’ academic content and increase its level of dysfunction as an educational institution.  His accusation of our schools’ deficit of woke, and call for additional Newspeak instruction, and claims of “never given the opportunity” to “discuss systemic issues” is, of course, both ignorant and specious in today’s America.  Enjoy.

In light of the recent protests, we must make long-lasting and direct changes that critically challenge how we frame our community and our place in the nation’s history.

The letter below calls upon our local county public high schools to address problems concerning the diversity and cultural acceptance in our education system. We need more than a transient reaction from our schools. Through this petition, we provide a direct means for our local leaders to stand with black, indigenous, people of color (POC), lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQIA+) individuals, and all other marginalized peoples in the Nevada County community and across the country.

We urge Nevada Joint Union High School District to implement policy changes to become intentionally anti-racist and inclusive of the many diverse communities who make up our past, present, and future in all aspects of this county’s educational infrastructure. In your June 9 statement, you made a commitment to “ensure equitable outcomes for all students.” This can be achieved through a number of direct actions:

(1) Redefine the district’s mission, values, and student conduct codes to directly reflect anti-racist and inclusive positions.

(2) Expand the body of anti-racism, racial justice, cultural diversity, and inclusivity literature assigned in the social sciences and humanities curricula.

(3) Create identity-based affinity groups (Black Student Union, Asian Student Alliance, Queer and Questioning Groups, etc.) as a brave space for students to explore their identities.

(4) Re-evaluate the hiring process of administrators, faculty, and staff.

(5) Increase training on implicit bias, equity, inclusion, and restorative justice systems.

(6) Invite diverse speakers and take students on field trips that directly address matters of racial justice, inclusivity, and white privilege in the NJUHSD student body.

If you support this proposal, please sign the petition.  It is time we work together to elevate the voices of our marginalized community It is time we work to educate ourselves and our future generations to stand up against injustices. In order for this to happen we must first address the gaps in our local education system. How can you discuss systemic issues if you are never given the vocabulary to do so? How can you discuss systemic issues if you are never given the opportunity to do so?

Our education system should have provided us with the tools we needed to critically challenge the systems we have in place. And it did not.

Michael Sekerak graduated from Nevada Union High School, Class of 2013.

Cultural cohesion, it’s a’comin’

George Rebane

The country is well along its increasingly insane path to the long sought and much promised fundamental transformation.  As our recent commentaries and many excellent reader contributions in the related comment streams attest, the well-funded madness is growing by the day.  The latest expansions involve initiatives to completely erase and remake America’s history, moving from tearing down our national totems to closing museums which house the artifacts and tell the soon to be forbidden stories of our ‘evil past’.  Our public K-12 schools and academe have long prepared for these events, and produced the millions of mindless moilers now making mayhem in our cities and towns.

What I want to point out here is that in their expanding rage they are co-opting a Rebane Doctrine tenet, namely, society is best organized when people exercise their natural right to live among others who share their values, mores, customs, traditions, language, worldview, …, in short, abide with those who share a common culture.  Expressing the desire to do so is not evil per se, as the Left has been telling us all along.

On this road to revolution the Left is visibly reversing itself, and now not only approves of society living within a cohesive culture, but will define such a command culture for all to accept, with no exceptions.  The specifics of such command cultures have been most evident under communist regimes which force their morally imperative diktats onto the masses under the banners of ‘common good’.  In our major governmental and private institutions, including our post-capitalist corporations, these cultural strictures are already solidly ensconced and perfidiously policed to identify, shun and/or oust the non-conformists and historically tainted.

Today a wrong word or an ideological imperfection discovered in your record, no matter its vintage, is more than enough to get you fired, career ruined, or even qualify to be investigated for some bespoke civil or criminal infraction.  In the early days of the revolution, no provision for appealing the verdicts of the righteous mob is made.  Only later, as the revolution matures into the instruments of power will our new masters establish the traditional institutions to isolate and redeem those wearing the indelible mark of the identified deplorables.  We have seen that happen with the Soviet Gulag, the Cambodian and Vietnamese re-education camps, and the wholesale forced labor incarcerations of hundreds of millions carried out by the Chinese communists during their cultural revolutions, and who currently house their culturally incorrigible Uighurs in massive prison complexes. (more here)

My point is that finally the Left has also accepted and declared its mandate for a culturally cohesive society that will be conformed for the common good.  America’s Right has always promoted the existence of divers culturally cohesive communities living in harmony – e.g. the Quakers, Amish, Mormons, … .  The methods we have historically used to separate such communities have not always been civil, and some have had definite racist motivations – e.g. against African-Americans and the Irish.  Nevertheless, the criterion has been maintenance of cultural conformity and not the genocide of the expelled culture.  In the last century we also learned that anyone of any genetic make-up can and has been accepted into any given culture.  In sum, ‘race’, however it’s defined, is no longer a relevant factor for cultural membership.

(In my native land, Estonians were for centuries considered genetically inferior and culturally corrupt in turn by their German, Swedish, and Russian conquerors.  We were treated as slaves and then serfs by our masters who even imposed ‘first night’s rights’ on newly married brides in order to ‘improve the breed’.  It was not until the mid-19^th century that Estonian culture came to be recognized, and was then able to work its way into peerage among established European cultures.)

So where are we on the adoption of culturally coherent communities?  Well, both sides have now declared their in-principle preference for them.  The big difference is that the Right wants Americans to have the ability to establish such communities according to their own desires and in places where similarly minded people can move to join together in various locales/regions across this land.  The Left wants to impose its new one-size-fits-all politically correct culture on everybody in America.  It wants to organize our transformed society on the historically failed models of its collectivist forebears, with the claim that this time we’ll do it right, embodying all the inclusiveness, social justice, and equality that were the watchwords used to sell the great unwashed on previous versions of socialism cum communism cum tyranny.  So once again it has started with ‘we’ll take from the greedy and racist rich and give to those who can’t or won’t’, all that’s required is unquestioning conformity.

And it has already started with Job One – the utter destruction of America as we have known it – now going on in a neighborhood near you.

Letters from the Revolution – 23jun20

George Rebane

It is only the reality of force that makes peaceful diplomacy possible.

As our buildings burn, more black lives end that don’t make no nevermind, as China continues to build its muscle to rule its ‘near abroad’, Germany bitches about America not doing more to defend its carefully cloistered butt, and Democrats are busy readying Bumblebrain for prime time, the nation’s cops continue to compete with our politicians for the Cringe Cup while BLM and Antifa thugs rule our city centers.

The revolution has long left behind its George Floyd Memorial Starting Gate.  From the ongoing body counts and mounting casualties in our cities, you have to be a real idiot to keep believing that all this destruction still has anything to do with regaining civil rights denied.  No siree, all eyes are now on a much bigger prize, one that has been waiting in the wings ever since the Wall came down in 1989 - now we are fully advancing onto the ramparts of socialism.  Just ask Bernie, AOC, Warren, Harris, …, ask any of them.  Ask even the members of Team Nancy who are doing their best to hang on to the tiger they know they are riding.

It is all coming about so quickly, just as we have warned readers for years.  And I don’t claim rocket science for that prognostication, only a little more than a casual reading of history and watching what has been going on since WW2.

To date no one is even attempting to talk them down or demonstrate that our traditional culture has the wherewithal to resist the mobs who demand more today than they did yesterday.  The tagline to this missive is something totally beyond the ken of peaceful progressives who passively consume every bit from the wisdom of the demanding signs.  They have no clue of what they condone.  I’d like to conclude that the conservatives do know what lies at the end of the road now traveled, but they (we) have somehow misplaced their (our) gumption.  I have no idea for what the rest of us are waiting – that somehow it will all quiet down and everyone will again play nice.  Well, they haven’t for years, so Rodney King’s ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ has never worked (least of all in his life).

It doesn’t matter whether we attempt negotiations with America’s anti-American thugs, or the Chinese, when your opponent realizes that your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) is capitulation, then diplomacy fails.  It was ever thus.  The only thing that makes sense attempting to talk down a crisis is that your opponent knows you have a BATNA with balls.  And even that doesn’t guarantee a peaceful stand-down.  For you negotiators out there, that requires a ZOPA (zone of possible agreement) that has something to offer.  (ZOPA is the set of all deals that are at least as good for each party in a negotiation as their respective BATNAs.)

Rig for ram.

Scattershots – 10jun20 (updated 13jun20)

George Rebane

Beware of people who need outliers to make their point, and then use these to cloud the big picture.

Food prices are soaring even though plants are coming back on line and distribution problems have been solved.  The producers’ argument is that worker safety requires reconfiguration of work spaces and the introduction of new automation.  The real answer is that this opportunity to permanently reduce labor costs can not be wasted.  Stand by for the next surge of systemic unemployment as the C19 pandemic wanes – keep an eye on the workforce participation rate that was already at a low of about 62% before the virus hit; can we return to that level?

‘Gone With the Wind’ and ‘Cops’ have been pulled by their distributors in fear of knee-bender mobs who have assumed the role of the country’s new thought police.  GWTW’s distributor HBO Max stated, “Gone With the Wind is a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society. These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible.”  America is retreating toward the Russia1918 and Germany1934. (more here)

Liberal thought leaders Dr William Galston, Brookings Institute Fellow, and VP-candidate-in-waiting Stacey Abrams base their messages on the beliefs of the ill-informed mass of Americans who hold that George Floyd’s death is a common occurrence at the hands of our police, and that the perennial poverty and crime in black communities are entirely due to Republicans suppressing the black vote over the last half century.  The data record supports none of these assertions.  The glaring bottom line here is that black lives do NOT matter to blacks, nor to their plantation politicians whom they keep in their sinecured offices.  All this mind-boggling mass action is possible with people subjected to utterly failed schools and a perennially propagandizing entertainment and news media. (more here and here)

On violent black deaths, the posterchild statistic is the comparison of the 9 unarmed blacks who died at the hands of police to the 7,400+ blacks who were murdered by fellow blacks. “The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, N.J., who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.” (here)

[11jun20 update]  Increasingly Great Divide ducks are lining up.  The leading elements of our Left are taking the initiative with more than just lootings, burnings, and killings of the established order, they have now assumed control of a major city’s central section, declaring it to be a new (communist, socialist?) “autonomous zone” while controlling ingress/egress to their new domain.  About all this the timid leftwing governor of Washington claimed no knowledge.  Meanwhile some are beginning the calculus of a portending civil war (here), and others have decided to take up arms in the defense of their communities against imported Antifa thugs.  An example ignored in the lamestream (and the scared shitless Fox News) is Coeur d’Alene where hundreds of the good citizens of Idaho made their presence known in town, which subsequently saw no violent mob activity. (here and here)   Meanwhile, leftwing sites claim that the Antifa threat was all a hoax.  My 30may20 third question (here) is being answered.

The clamped down minds of lamestream journalism are starting to denounce their own.  Today one wrong slip of the lip, and you’re history.  So discovered the NYT’s editorial page editor, the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the editors of Bon Appétit magazine.  The Left is finally in a position to actively start denying 1A rights in the name of suppressing their obscure but ubiquitous definitions of racism. “The issue here is not about the assertion that racism is endemic in the U.S. The issue is the willingness by many to displace the American system of free argument with a system of enforced, coerced opinion and censorship, which forces comparison to the opinion-control mechanisms that existed in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.” (more here)  Samizdat lives. 

[12jun20 update]  Russian collusion is alive and well in the belief and propaganda systems of the Left (witnessed by our leftwinger comments).  To the rest of us it is astounding that the progressives’ hatred of Trump impels them to continue one their most vicious Big Lies, day after day telling the country that Trump did indeed collude with the Russians.  But more importantly, that part and parcel of this collusion enabled the Russians to interfere in the 2016 so successfully that it was the impact of their efforts that sealed the ‘fraudulent election’ in Trump’s favor.  This narrative continues unabated to this day.

Re my C19 response policy.  Readers may be curious as to what my policy would be for public gatherings and general behavior in public forums.  To save my burying it in some comment stream, I’ll put it here for all to see.  I don't support further lockdowns even though we will have succeeding 'waves' of C19 until a reliable vaccine is developed. None has been developed yet for the garden variety flu, and we have succeeding waves of it every fall and winter which cause tens of thousands to die of it. No one has been social distancing, wearing masks, locking down, and turning off the economy for that, at least for a century. Rebane Doctrine calls for the government and healthcare institutions to publish the latest risk data (accounting for demographics, comorbidity, and geography) for C19, flu, ..., and all other contagious diseases, along with what lowers the probability of people getting infected. Then everyone can decide for themselves where to go and which events to attend. Laws should be passed that you get to sue no one if you catch the bug.

[13jun20 update]  Both the Right and Left understand that a robust free press is required to maintain a liberal democracy.  The Left opposes a free press and promotes the censorship of ideas they don’t favor.  What does that say about the Left’s real intentions to maintain a liberal democracy?  The Left promotes the Big Lie that the killing of George Floyd and other black males is a common police activity and not a rare outlier (see above).  Is there anything Trump does that anywhere near approaches that for dividing the country?

Hurricane George Floyd

“In October 1913, the Bolsheviks were a small radical Russian faction. No reasonable person would have predicted that within a mere four years they would take over the country.” Y.N. Harari, Sapiens (2014).

George Rebane

The on-camera, tragic and unjustified killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman has unleashed a social storm across America that is unprecedented and potentially ruinous to our constitutional republic.  Anti-American coalitions have united to sanctify a habitual criminal and elevate him to a unique martyrdom for the purpose of disrupting our established, albeit imperfect, yet overwhelmingly beneficial social order that is the envy of the world.  All of these cohorts – ranging from Antifa to the Democrat Party - see today’s nationwide protests and riots as an opportunity to create the chaos from which each has the possibility to bring about their own version of a fundamentally transformed United States.

President Barack Obama started stacking the dominoes with his view of an irretrievably flawed America that needed to be fundamentally transformed into a socialist democracy that would function under a revised, reinterpreted, or totally rewritten constitution.  Today we are witness to the other dominoes all waiting in a row – rotten cities, uncontrolled homelessness, “mismanaged” pandemic, crippled economy, historically high unemployment, politically-biased media, dismally uninformed and innumerate electorate, advance of disruptive technologies, dysfunctional public schools, distrust of businesses and enterprise, rejection of capitalism and markets, looming systemic unemployment, firmly ensconced victimhood of minorities, socially polarized nation, unpopular President with maladroit communication skills, corrupt and timid justice system, Democrat plurality fomenting socialism, lame Republican Party sans backbone, … .

All of these self-inflicted and manufactured flaws today stand in a row ready to be tipped by the riot-prone protests perfidiously promoted by the several political factions sharing various shades of collectivist ideologies in their agendas for a brave new global order.  And the question now is whether that serendipitous video, seen around the world, of the police murdering George Floyd was the flapping of the butterfly wings that has now set in motion a storm the final impact of which no one knows.

From my readings of history, I am reminded of what the previous year’s events gave rise to in the Russia of 1918 and the Germany of 1934.  Today WSJ columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes (here) –

Indiscriminate property damage and looting descended on some 140 cities across the U.S. in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd while in police custody. Business owners, workers and customers in minority neighborhoods were hard hit. And in the years to come they will pay the steepest price for the unchecked violence done by rampaging mobs claiming to represent them.

To be clear, the near universal outrage over the video of Floyd’s death, expressed by an overwhelmingly nonviolent majority of demonstrators, is the lawful exercise of free speech and the right to assemble. This is central to what it means to be an American and to reaching peace and reconciliation.

Violence is another matter entirely. There is evidence that it has been instigated by organized militants trained to leap into action when opportunities present themselves. While they don’t represent the majority of protesters, they use them as shields. What is more, their brutal aggression is politically effective and only mildly condemned. One reason, I would venture, is that they are the mailed fist of a broader movement that has infected academia, the media, popular culture and politics with the notion that Western traditions are oppressive and should be destroyed. … The bad news is that the drip-drip-drip of an intellectual narrative aimed at destroying Western values and publicly shaming anyone who resists the ideological corrosion is here to stay.

I join with those who do not accept the glorification of George Floyd nor the assessments of the street wisdom and fomenting politicians about the irredeemable state of our Union.  From our media we are awash with deceitful propaganda that frames events into formats not supported by any collected data.  In other words, the numbers in the public record (discussed many times in these pages) don’t support the misappropriated emotions of the protesters, politicians, and even police who seek indemnification and redemption for professed sins with every opportunity to ‘take the knee’.  My sentiments about the happenings during the last two weeks are best expressed through the words of Candace Owens in a Facebook video (on Powerline here) now seen by tens of millions.  No one stands taller than this woman against the current tide of insanity.

Riot Reflections – 1jun20 (updated)

‪"Black votes matter to many politicians — more so than black lives. That is why such politicians must try to keep black voters fearful, angry and resentful. Racial harmony would be a political disaster for such politicians."‬ Thomas Sowell (and an oft-cited tenet of Rebane Doctrine)

George Rebane

Well, given what we see in the streets, we can safely conclude that the pandemic lockdowns are over, and all business are open except those that have been boarded up or burned down.

Starting with local police departments, all fielded LE units/agencies are now conducting defensive operations to preserve themselves.  They are no longer out there to protect persons or property.  The compelling explanation for this kind of CYA behavior is that they don’t see support from their political leaders, the law-abiding public, and most certainly not from the protesters and rioters.  Law enforcement today stands politically abandoned.  They are indicted by a long history of law enforcement ‘mistakes’ that recently have culminated in the outrageous public murder (execution?) of George Floyd, a black petty criminal, by the Minneapolis police, and the killing of Breonna Taylor, an innocent black woman gunned down in her own home by Louisville Metro Police mistakenly raiding her house in the middle of the night.  Both should be seen as preventable crimes by institutions that have lost sight of their reason for being.

No one has really determined the make-up of the legitimate protesters in the streets, nor if they are the same ones who turn into destructive rioters after the peaceful phase of their demonstrations are concluded.  Does the non-violent cohort then go home to be replaced by the violent ones who mostly conduct themselves as Antifa members?  (To my knowledge, Antifa is still a distributed national protest movement that shares literature, values, dress, street tactics, …, but having no common leadership, managed funding, or central control.)  From the reports from the media and police on the scene, the non-violent protesters appear to morph into violent rioters at some point, mostly after the sun goes down.  Today the violent are all masked (perhaps because of the pandemic) and therefore act with impunity because their anonymity is secure.  In the meantime, the cities’ progressive political leaders are desperately looking for the illusive out-of-town white supremacists who are really the instigators of looting and burning.

Today’s street conflicts are also culturally confused and confusing.  There is no common social contract in evidence among the street borne polyglot.  Everyone is doing their own thing, milling from here to there or just idly standing by and watching the show.  Some have come with prepared signs with the usual slogans demanding justice and change.  But when interviewed, no one has a clue as to what exactly needs to be done to bring about the change and the new age of justice.  Moreover, no one even thinks that there need be some deeper thought behind the demands on the displayed placards – their histrionics are sufficient unto themselves.

If really pressed for specifics, black leadership in the media can drill down no deeper than spout the Democratic Party talking points – ‘Shut down white supremacy and white privilege.’  This is the closest that any leftwinger can come to specifying what needs to be done to bring about the “change” that the protesters are demanding.  What white supremacy should be shut down how?  Which white privileges should be legislated into criminality?  And their political party and political leadership are equally clueless as to what specific and feasible programs should be implemented across the land to prevent future Floyds and Taylors being killed at the hands of various law enforcement agencies.

In the meantime, there is political hay to be made in this election year that has already given our Left so much ammo against President Trump and the Republicans.  For a party without a single viable idea of how to better respond to the virus, let alone how to revive the economy, all they have to offer is solution-free partisan vituperation to convince their constituents and light-thinking lackies that a new glorious age will spontaneously start if we can only get Trump out of the White House, Republicans out of Congress, and pack SCOTUS with an enlarged bench of progressive justices.  The rest will miraculously take care of itself under a distended government that will redistribute the country’s wealth, hire more of the unemployable incompetents, pay everyone regardless, and become the major player in our economy – i.e. socialism on steroids.

When the dust settles, what will the gutless politicians do with police departments that are becoming more insular and frustrated as they are charged with keeping the peace in public environments ever more conflicted in values, mores, attitudes, perceived pasts, fearful futures, …, all existing under a shroud of confusing, contradictory, unknown, and variously interpreted and randomly enforced laws, regulations, and codes that become more impenetrable by the day?  The cop on the beat can no longer reliably predict anyone’s behavior, and must therefore become a programmed automaton who survives his shift by avoiding conflicts and strife whenever possible, and when not, then apply one-size-fits-all rules in the most self-defensive and often ruthless manner possible.

[update]  We just finished watching the evening news that covered the ongoing demonstrations from several big cities across the country.  The President made a ‘law and order’ speech in which he separated those lawful protesters from the thugs, looters, arsonists, and now killers on our streets.  We hear people of all ranks, starting with the Floyd family, calling for the violence to stop, that such behavior is not serving the memory of their murdered son George, nor anything good that hopefully would come out of this after the dust settles.  The politicians calling for calm and calling out the rioters are all from the Right.  The only political leader voices from the Left are using this ongoing national tragedy to attack the administration, and to further divide us and convince all that there is no hope of unity in the future.  They realize more than any of us that those on the streets are their imperturbable constituents, loyal voters, and their very political lifeblood – they can do no wrong.

If a progressive wanted to counter any of this shameful behavior by their political leaders, one need only ask, ‘Where are the Pelosis, Schumers, Obamas, Bidens, Jacksons, Sharptons… with their messages of peace and calm, calling for the protesters to abide by the law and rioters to stand down?’  The only words from their and their lamestream lackies’ mouths do nothing but throw fuel on a raging partisan fire, and give their imprimaturs to the lawlessness on the streets by pledging their solidarities from which are absent any condemnation of the riotous mobs.  Even the word ‘riot’ is not in their vocabulary when they occasionally stray from lauding the “just protests” on our cities’ streets.  In Democrats’ eyes, it is all one homogeneous nationwide protest against Republican racism and social injustice.  For them this indeed is one helluva crisis not to let go waste.

Riot Reflections - 30may20 (updated)

George Rebane

The videod murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police gave rise to justified public protests that quickly turned into destructive and violent riots which have little to do with the death of Mr Floyd, and instead have again revealed that we Americans are no longer ‘one people’ who can be called to ‘come together’.

Law enforcement agencies of all stripes provide daily demonstrations that they are an institution unto themselves, there to overwhelmingly look after their own interests and provide little or no security for those who pay them to preserve society and civilization.  As clearly admitted by the Minneapolis police chief who publicly stated the reason his officers are standing back, standing down, and hightailing it from rioters is that he does not want to put them in harm’s way in situations that could turn dangerous.  Think about that.  What if firemen would only fight unrisky fires?  What if the FBI adopted a similar policy, no field operations in which their agents were put at risk?  What if the Secret Service would protect the President only to the extent that it would not be dangerous to them?  What if our military didn’t want to commit troops into situations in which casualties would result?

So the police et al, those who do attend the riots now taking place in cities across the land, simply gather in solid self-defensive phalanxes to watch the rioting mob loot and burn.  Over the lamestream media we are informed in an ongoing stream of commentary that these are not riots (a word absent in lamestream reports) led by criminal thugs, but simply justified “protests” attended by “protesters”.  The rest of us are told by our politicians that any criminality that is evident is justified, and that we must simply let it play out.  Actually, its more than that as FN’s Tucker Carlson explained in a landmark monologue last night – ‘Our leaders have sided with the agents of chaos – we're told crimes of the mob are our fault’.

Local business owners who witness their life’s work and savings go up in flames are seen pleading with the mob to no avail.  Some are again taking up arms to defend their lives and livelihoods, and most cynically, the police are arresting those who dare shoot (at) rioters inside their premises in acts of arson and looting.

No doubt one can draw a connection between the lengthy pandemic lockdowns and the number of urban dwellers eager to get out of their houses and small apartments to protest undeniable injustices at the hands of law enforcement and our entire ‘justice system’.  But in doing so, they do underline that we are not one people as former DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile asserts in her ‘We are one people’.  The rioters are not people who built this country, as they claim, and are therefore entitled to ‘burn it down’.  These are people who have their very own and distinct social contract with the institutions of our government – contrary to their protestations, they have rights and privileges, demonstrated daily, that people like me and mine wouldn’t dream of having in a civilized society.

Here’s an interesting question – what would the police do if law abiding folks of all colors showed up armed in downtowns to protect and defend the properties and property owners against the rioting mobs?

And here’s an even more interesting question – what would local governments and law enforcement agencies do if the streets were filled with peaceful protesters of all colors who looked like you and me?

And finally – what if all those law-abiding peaceful protesters against LE injustice showed up also demonstrating why Americans are unique with their constitutional 2A rights?

[update] A reader sent me a link to a Powerline article on the Twin Cities riots.  It appears that both Democrat Mayors Jacob Frey and Melvin Carter are doing their best to dodge any and all responsibility for what's going down in their mismanaged metropolises, even to the anticipated desperate accusation that the riots are being instigated by out-of-state "white supremacists".  How do self-respecting Democrats elect such misfits to office?  (more here and here)

‘Seize the Moment’

George Rebane

So exhorts The Economist (here), Britain’s famous weekly ‘newspaper’ since 1843 that has metamorphosed over the years into a leftwing trumpet with an international audience.  The lead editorial in its 23may20 issue counsels countries, especially the US, to use the coronavirus pandemic to include in their government aid machinations additional laws, regulations, codes, restrictions, taxes, fees, fines, … to advance the global socialist agenda while their citizens are focused on maintaining health and hearth.

The number one supernumerary policy having nothing to do with the pandemic relief involves climate change legislation and subsidies.  They are more open than Team Pelosi about not wasting this crisis – “The covid-19 crisis reveals how hard it will be to tackle climate change – and creates a unique chance to do so.”  Specific recommendations focus on first instigating new “carbon pricing”, their code for passing massive new carbon taxes which “schemes” they claim will “use the power of the market to incentivise consumers and firms to cut their emissions, thus ensuring that the shift from carbon happens in the most efficient way possible.”

Anyone with even a smidgen of capitalism in their veins knows that such government dictates have nothing to do with “the power of the market”.  In enforcing the use of uneconomical alternative energy sources with the government gun simply mangles the markets beyond recognition, and in its wake leaves an economy mired in ‘mother-may-I’ mandates that will impede economic recovery wherever it seeks purchase to climb out of its current hole.

Socialists use their gross misunderstanding (or cynical ignoring) of the ‘Broken Windows Fallacy’ (here) first illuminated by Frederic Bastiat a little after The Economist was launched.  In his ‘That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Not Seen’ Bastiat introduces us to the important economic concepts of “crowding out” which denies the existence of “idle resources”, and the little recognized distinction between wealth and employment.  The parable has a hooligan break a baker’s window which act is ameliorated, actually even celebrated, by onlookers as being beneficial to the economy in that it now will create extra business for the glazier when the baker spends to replace his broken window (that which is seen).  However, this creates no new wealth or work since the baker had other uses for the money he lost, uses that would have expanded his business creating more wealth and other income for his suppliers (that which is not seen).

Socialist economists like Paul Krugman agree with the crowd in the fable, and in their ideologically-blindered, profound ignorance don’t recognize that “if that which is not seen is taken into consideration, because it is a negative fact, as well as that which is seen, because it is a positive fact, it will be understood that neither industry in general, nor the sum total of national labor, is affected, whether windows are broken or not.”  And so it will go with the funding and created jobs of climate change to replace existing, cheap energy sources, with manmade make-work before the market is ready to accept them.  We will never know what other unseen advances and social benefits we will deny ourselves by implementing such still uncompetitive ‘sustainable energy sources’ through the seen artifices like punitive carbon taxing.

Which now brings us to the more fundamental crisis that pre-dates the pandemic – why our country is terminally polarized and “why we hate each other”.  The real answer to those questions is more often than not papered over by various kinds of feel-good pabulum.  An example is the op-ed ‘Why We Hate Each Other’ by Scottie Hart in the 28may20 Union.  She cites “solid research” by sociologists that point the finger at our loneliness being caused by modern technology-induced isolation.  Put simply, our online virtual relationships are not cutting it.  “A wide array of prominent health organizations now recognize deep, pervasive loneliness as a major public health issue, eroding our lives and often prematurely ending them. … Even before COVID-19, long-term trends have changed, and will continue to change our lives. As we negotiate the enormous shift from an industrial, manufacturing world to a near-virtual, technological world, it is no wonder we feel disoriented and vulnerable.”

Ms Hart is a self-avowed, good-hearted liberal who totally misses the deeper schism between us.  The country now is home to two cohorts of citizens with profoundly different beliefs about what constitutes a beneficial and preferred socio-economic structure for maximizing our quality of life.  Those of the various flavors of the collectivist Left see an ever-encompassing growing government that will ultimately provide succor, sufficiency, equality, and social justice to all its citizens through central planning and control, a social structure in which citizens will gladly trade their liberties and freedom for promised risk-free living where the meritocratic competition between the competent and incompetent will be banished forever.  This course has been successfully pursued now for over fifty years, and there is no indication that it will do anything but accelerate.

The various flavors of the conservetarian Right see the Left’s pursuits as leading to an enforced egalitarian amalgam ruled over by a corrupt elite that wields all power.  Given all the diverse human frailties, the Right recognizes that life does contain more than a modicum of risk for any individual in their pursuit of happiness.  But that risk is worth taking within a society that recognizes and promotes individual initiative and enterprise, with all the necessary freedoms and liberties, under a social contract based on laws under which we are all treated equally.  And yes, the outcomes there will be unequal where those who can and do will naturally want to provide for those who can’t or won’t in order to maintain the social order.

Such views are intrinsically incompatible within one sovereign nation-state, and that is why we are polarized and, as the Ms Harts among us observe, that we ‘hate each other’.  Today we are two incompatible countries trying to live within a single border under an increasingly dysfunctional state.

Memorial Day – 25 May 2020

George Rebane

On this Memorial Day we reflect on the words of General Jack Keane (Ret) about those who risked all - "None of them wanted to die, certainly. What's different about them is that they were willing to and they were willing to put at risk everything that they care about, you know, having a long life, having friends in your life, being a parent, having love in your life to love and to be loved, … People said, 'Why would they do that?' I've been around these troops forever and I think the answer is, it's pretty simple. ... It's out of a very simple yet profound sense of duty. And it's also because they do it for one another. And I think that's true honor. And we can never, ever take that devotion for granted."  (H/T to RR commenter)

Some flavors of mindlessness (updated 25may20)

George Rebane

In the mindless department, we start with a letter from a Skip Pollard in the 22may20 Union that takes to task the 6may20 column by Terry McLaughlin where she substantiates the thesis -  

“No one could have predicted with certainty a viral pandemic arising in 2020, and no human being could have been entirely prepared in the moment to make the perfect decisions that would best preserve life and livelihoods.” – and substantiates it with a timeline of C19 pronouncements and assessments made by various agents worldwide.  That assessment didn’t sit well with the TDS crowd who still proclaim to their followers that Trump’s "mismanagement of the pandemic" has caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths.  But here is the example of the “omission” cited by Pollard to make his case that McLaughlin “cherry picked” the C19 timeline –

April 23: President Trump says, “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs.”

Now what in hell does that perfectly good observation and question asked by the president have to do with the timeline of policy pronouncements on the pandemic’s progress assembled by McLaughlin; logically it can’t even be shoehorned into a timeline of similar events.  But to TDS sufferers like Skip Pollard, this liberal logic makes all the sense in the world.  The mentality of such people is literally unfathomable to the unafflicted, and explains a forte why communication with them is futile.  Perhaps one of our liberal readers can help Mr Pollard by citing a substantive omission from Ms McLaughlin’s column.

Long before I warned you of Dr Fauci, President Eisenhower did.  In the same farewell speech in which he called for vigilance of the doings of the country’s “military-industrial complex”, Ike also warned us that scientists dependent on government contracts and grants might cripple scientific breakthroughs. Specifically, he said “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”  And all this because “the prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”  Yes, if you follow the money, then scientific consensus becomes the order of the day, and those innumerates innocent of science will not be the wiser, as they continue their habituated genuflections before anything proclaimed as ‘scientific’.  In Ike’s words, “partly because of the huge costs involved (in scientific research), a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”  So, today Dr Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is one of the “scientific-technological elites” that Eisenhower warned against. (more here)

Others have echoed and expanded on this new secular religion of science.  Author Tom Bethell in his Politically Incorrect Guide to Science tells us -

Government funding has… promoted the idea that a theory can be regarded as true if it enjoys enough support. … Consensus discourages dissent, however. It is the enemy of science, just as it is the triumph of politics. A theory accepted by 99 percent of scientists may be wrong. Committees at the National Institutes of Health that decide which projects shall be funded are inevitably run by scientists who are at peace with the dominant theory."

Here we note that 99% of scientists accepted ALL theories that were subsequently toppled by new discoveries during the age when science was still “an open platform”.  A fundamental truth that you can bank today is that “when any single source of funding dominates, science will almost certainly become the handmaiden of politics.”  And we have seen that happen countless times during the last half century, most recently in the politically stifled science that promotes preventable man-made global warming.

As one of today’s ‘scientific-technological elites’, Dr Fauci’s words are to be taken as unquestioned gospel about the recent coronavirus disease and the nation’s response to the pandemic.  We do so at our peril. 

[update]  ‘America is Reopening for Summer and Tensions are High’ in the 22may20 WSJ reports that “Tensions are intensifying between those celebrating the end of shutdowns and those fearful of the virus’s re-emergence, between those driven by economic desperation and those eager to resume a semblance of normalcy. As restrictions eventually fall in large cities including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, those dichotomies are likely to become more acute.”  What I find puzzling is the report of tensions between those wanting the lockdowns to remain and those who don’t.  What’s the big deal?  Anyone is free to quarantine themselves to their hearts content.  And if the rest of your neighbors risk themselves and contribute to economic recovery, then those who remain hunkered down will receive even more and better services from those who don’t.  Everyone gets to exercise their own risk tolerance, and the only ones with noses out of joint are them that demands a ‘one size fits all’ America.

[25may20 update] As we pointed out almost two months ago, the C19 quarantines would soon cause more corollary mortality and morbidity than any reasonable estimate of health benefits (including number of deaths) from the pandemic.  Now we are beginning to see reports coming in telling of people dying at home from chronic and topical (including psychological) maladies that would have been addressed through normal visits and access to the medical industry.  One recent article reports ‘California doctors say they’ve seen more deaths from suicide than coronavirus since lockdowns’ (H/T to reader).  Add these to the butt-stupid policies like Gov Cuomo’s sentence of almost certain death to those New Yorkers he condemned to be transferred to 24/7 care facilities, and then round out what our dreadfully incompetent governments have inflicted on us in their power panic to appear to ‘do something’ that looks to most like we’re fighting the virus.  In the final analysis the fault of it all belongs on us mal-educated citizens who shrink from every politically identified risk, and demand that government immediately leaps in to keep us safe, no matter the cost in dollars or liberties.  With the passing years, fewer of us remain who still understand that growth of government power is a one-way ratchet toward revolution.  For the rest, the state is ever the benevolent Big Brother.

Fair, Balanced, and Scared Sh!+less (updated 25may20)

George Rebane

‘Fair, balanced, and unafraid’ has been the smug, self-preening tagline for Fox News, most prominently used by Bret Baier as the sign-off to his daily flagship Special Report program.  Perhaps that was once true, but during the last couple of years FN has changed by markedly migrating toward the lamestream media.  While still covering news items totally absent or buried on leftwing outlets, the network bends over backward to feature as many progressive guests and commentators as possible on every issue of current interest.  Today it is literally impossible for a middle-road viewer to determine the ideological bent of most of FN’s programming during the 24-hour cycle.  The only exceptions to this are perhaps Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham.  These, however, are balanced with other FN stars such as Chris Wallace with a marked and longstanding tilt to port.

The biggest change is that the palpable lies and propaganda narratives of leftwing guests and interviewees are no longer challenged for their verity.  These days the leftwinger can tell an obvious whopper, and the FN host will go on to the next question or subject without so much as lifting an eyebrow.   Led by Baier and Martha McCallum, the remaining daytime FN personalities do everything they can to avoid controversy on the air, and therefore leave its viewers to sort things out as they witness equal time and voice given to leftwing opinions and interpretations that not only go unchallenged, but are presented as having equal weight with any and all opposing opinions and interpretations.  Is it really fair to present obvious falsehoods without so-much as giving the audience some factual context within which to interpret such assertions?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not asking FN to limit featuring its parade of leftwingers making news and shaping opinions.  But I am asking all so-called journalists to have the guts, then and there, to call out the obvious lies and baseless opinions of their guests, be they from the Right or Left.  (As RR’s polarized commenters have been doing for years.) And here’s the critical question every media interviewer should have the timely wits and courage to ask their guests each time they land a load of crap onto the airwaves –

‘Your viewpoint is fairly controversial, where can our viewers go to see the evidence that made you say that?’

Timidly scurrying on to the next question or topic doesn’t cut it for the claim of being ‘Fair, balanced, and unafraid.’  Time to reinstall that backbone.

[25may20 update] 'The ‘Liberal Leaning’ Media Has Passed Its Tipping Point’, so confirms Van Gordon Sauter, former president of CBS News.  This is the belated point that many on the national scene are finally beginning to recognize.  A phenomenon that became apparent to many of us at the grassroots level years ago (RR stands on its 14-year record).  No one well-read on the socio-politics of America for the last 50 years believes that the country’s Fourth Estate will ever regain its credibility - journalists are all biased ideologues lying to their audiences about being 'fair and balanced'.  All we are now doing is the Great Divide two-step that is becoming more pronounced with every passing month.  Any semblance of a middle ground disappeared years ago.  Look at the 14-year record of RR comment streams, which confirm an unpretentious, simple yet significant reflection of Main Street America’s understanding, beliefs, and sentiments.

Hunker Down Diary – 27apr20

George Rebane

Today is HD51 for the Rebanes.  As most people, we have been doing extensive Facetime with family and friends, and Zooming in for meetings.  We also meet surreptitiously for dinners with equally hunkered family and friends. The rest of the time is taken up with household chores and deskwork.  RR readers know what I’ve been noodling about.  Jo Ann has been busy with her Republican Women Federated, NC Republican Central Committee,  and Union editorial board work.  My labors on the boards of MIM and SESF have been minimal since the C19 lockdown.  And now that the weather guessers are predicting warm weather going forward as far as the eye can see, it’s time to get the farm going and the horseshoe court spiffed up for competition.

We are also participating in weekly online cocktail sessions with other couples.  These have turned out to be more fun than we anticipated, and all of us look forward to the next week’s happy hours.  So all in all, social life continues along newly created paths.  We always have a fire going during the evenings which are divided into TV nights and reading nights.  The TV fare is all prerecorded stuff of various series, new/commentary programs, movies, and documentaries.  (Years ago, we pretty much weaned ourselves off of live broadcasts, everything gets put on the DVR – we pace the presentations, they don’t pace us.  I suppose everyone now does that so it’s hard to see why advertisers still pay to advertise, unless some people still watch live TV.)

Today we had to make a trip into town for bags of soil and sand – soil for Jo Ann’s farm and sand for refurbishing my world-class horseshoe court.  She gets the best manmade soil you can buy which contains all the nummies that her veggies want, including 15% chickenshit.  Long ago we decided not to run the numbers on the actual cost of our vegetables – we’re not in competition with Safeway, but they are with us.  It has turned out to be a labor of love and the pure joy of eating loads of home-grown veggies.  We even enjoy the late night hunts for tomato worms with our UV flashlight.

But my big report of the day is that regardless of what our out-of-step governor dictates, the people of Nevada County are not staying at home.  Traffic on the roads and Brunswick Basin was somewhere between normal and heavy.  The nursery parking lot was so full with people coming and going that they had two clerks out there directing traffic.  Picking up sand at B&C was no different.  The entire shopping center’s parking lot was full of cars, and the store full of  people.  More than half the people were not wearing masks.  It is clear that it is the people who have ended the lockdown – rural Californians are not waiting for the word from Sacramento.  The only thing we are still waiting for is the county to get their jackboot off our necks and let the restaurants, bars, churches, and theaters open up for sit-down food, worship, and entertainment.

Sometime in the not too distant future I’d like to see some constitutional legal beagles from the Left argue the legality of the government’s peremptory shutdown and destruction of our economy and social life.  From my perch, this has not been the finest hour for enterprising and independent America.  And now the data is coming in from multiple sources overseas and within our borders that national lockdowns are wrongheaded and more dangerous, most certainly in the long run, than hunkering down.  (more here)

Scattershots – 25apr20 (updated 27apr20)

George Rebane

The C19 timeline again shows that the WSJ does not walk on journalistic water.  In its 29jan20 edition the newspaper published a whopping load of bullcrap, reporting that “Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told President Trump the coronavirus epidemic was under control.” Turns out he said no such thing, nor did he say/imply a number of other claims that the article by Rebecca Ballhaus and Stephanie Armour reported.  The Federalist has a detailed timeline (here) that should dispel the other lies that also continue from the Left’s lamestream about how Trump’s administration fell down on the job responding to C19.  Should be interesting reading, especially for those suffering from chronic TDS.

Death by ‘doctor’.  Longtime RR readers know of the respect I have for the medical industry that is lead by the untouchables who hubristically exhibit their exalted position in our society and resort to high dudgeon whenever their opinions or performance is called into question by the lay public.  It turns out that I have been a bit soft on the sawbones and the whole lot that supports them when I have cited that they and theirs kill almost 200,000 of us annually through what are swept under the rug as “under-recognized medical mistakes”.  Well I was wrong.  Johns Hopkins Medicine, you know the data guys on C19, has just concluded a new study that shows “medical errors are now the third leading cause of death in US.” (more here)  Almost 10% of all US deaths are due to medical screw-ups.  Today that amounts to over a quarter million (251,454 to be exact) buckets kicked prematurely even way back in 2013.  What would you say if America’s airline industry plowed three wide-bodies chuck full of passengers into the mud every day, day-in and day-out, year after year?  And our political leaders and the media don’t make a peep.  They keep their high-flying jobs by making it very hard to get that MD after your name, and reducing the types of available healthcare providers who could more economically minister to our everyday ills.  ‘First and foremost, do no harm.’ (Primum non noceres’, as the ol’ Hypocrites used to say.)  Hah!  Double Hah! 

California’s next economic enema.  The state is in dire financial straits because of the way it has set up milking its high earners for tax revenues while buying votes from the welfare throngs who pay little or no taxes.  The Hoover Institution explains the matter here, and points out that “in every recession, California inflicts its own fiscal wounds by relying on a tax system "that is explicitly designed to collect gobs of revenue during booms, but which completely goes in the tank during downturns, much more so than any other state. … To give you a sense of the inefficiency of California’s tax system, consider California’s economy just after the financial crisis of a decade ago. In fiscal year 2010, California revenue fell by 20 percent, compared to less than a 2 percent drop in state GDP.”  And the double dummy Democrats in Sacramento have brought this upon all of us as the decades-long political custodians of the once Golden State.

[26apr20 update]  How to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.  From time to time RR presents various pieces of generally useful information as a public service.  This is a short video that summarizes the comprehensive recommendations from our authorities on how to correctly combat C19 in these trying times.

The C19 interviews with ‘experts’ and talking heads are getting beyond boring.  If you can predict exactly how the person will answer, it’s like playing the same record over and over again.  And it is very easy to do once you know whether the person is a Lefty or healthcare professional, or a Rightie.   If your choice was to add another trillion to the national debt or accept one more C19 death, then the answer for most people is easy and it bookends the dollar value of a human life.  And if your choice was to pay $10 more in annual taxes to save a particular person from dying, most people would pay, thereby establishing the other bookend value of a human life.  So now that we’ve established that human lives have a dollar value, we can cut the ‘… if it can save even one life, then we should …” crap.  The problem that makes TV interviews boring I covered in ‘Fighting C19’ where we illustrated the different utility functions for the Right, the Left, and the healthcare people in the middle.  The latter only concern themselves with policies that would save one more human life, so you know what they’re going to say.  The Right is concerned with saving the economy by assuming risks to minimize additional C19 deaths; the Left simply wants the economy to tank, preferably while keeping the death rate high.  After all November is just around the corner.  Meanwhile the pabulum pours out of the boobtube.  So, dear reader, if you’re a thinking person, how many additional dollars would you add to national debt to prevent another C19 death?

[27apr20 update]  Today’s WSJ reports on a “Secret Group of Scientists and Billionaires Pushing Trump on a Covid-19 Plan."  They are working around the clock to cull the world’s most promising research for what they describe as a virus-era Manhattan Project.” (here)  This self-identified group of “America’s top scientists and a collection of billionaires and industry titans” with high-access to the Trump administration has been doing a lot of research on C19.  They have published a short readable report on their conclusions to date that you can download here – Download Scientists_to_Stop_COVID19_2020_04_23_FINAL.  Bottom line, some of their pharma recommendations on repurposing of existing drugs are already dated (e.g. the hoped for effectiveness on Gilead’s remdesivir - here), but their assessment of tests and testing strategies are valid and totally in line with what my fevered brain deduced starting a month ago – no one knows jack about test reliabilities, and effective testing programs require tests administered wholesale and frequently to everyone who desires to be out and about.  The rest of today's hyper-ventilation about tests and testing is just that.  They give short shrift to herd immunity and see the conquest of C19 to be based on medicines and new vaccines.  Until then they accept the RR recommendation I gave (here and here) for getting our economy back on its feet.  

Ruminations – 20apr20

George Rebane

“We are all in this together.”  Who make up the “we”?  What defines the “this”?  Porter Stansberry makes a very compelling cast that this assertion by the governments and their loyal lackies is the Big Lie of today (here)  – we are not all in this together, and the ‘this’ is different for all of us who live in various regions of the country. Its main purpose is to convince good-hearted people to overlook the realities of the C19 epidemic and follow the ever more invasive and pervasive dicta of the authorities who laying in command and control procedures that will survive the end of the epidemic by decades.  What’s happening now that we’re hunkering down is training us to accept a whole slew of new constraints on the liberties that our Constitution guarantees.  Again, harbinger Numero Uno is when they come for our guns.

The Great Divide confirmed more than ever.  Cohesive nation-states have always come together and shown their fundamental unity when confronting an external threat or national emergency.  America has been a posterchild of such unity since the War Between the States (erroneously still called the Civil War).  No more.  As we have been observing now for over a decade, the divisions between us today are unfathomable and too large to overcome.  Nowhere is this demonstrated with greater unambiguity than in our response to the C19 pandemic.  Here in this election year, one party is doing its best to heal the nation and return to normalcy, while the evil party is doing everything possible to extend the human misery, bring longterm destruction to our economy, and blame America under the current administration for any and all ills across the world.  Their goal is to bring the US to its knees as the disease abates, in order to present the global collective a fundamentally transformed nation that is weak, compliant, and chastened.

Under ‘Autocracy Rising’ we are getting reports of new egregious behaviors by our LE cadres as they start imitating Stasi tactics across the land during this pandemic.  One Florida student who caught C19-type symptoms on a high school band trip and recovered, posted her experience on Instagram.  The school became enraged and sicked the local cops on her.  These showed up at her residence and threatened to “start taking people to jail” for “disorderly conduct” unless she immediately removed her post, which she did.  Later it was pointed out that our Constitution makes no “pandemic exception” for denying 1A rights.  Sign of the times – bend over and spread ‘em. (more here)

More on Autocracy Rising - NYC mayor and its Stasi’s Oberführer Bill de Blasio is now exhorting New Yorkers to report social distancing infractions by neighbors to the authorities (here). He wants the citizen snitch to take a picture of the scofflaws, and send it immediately to the police so that “we can get help there to fix the problem.”  Gotta love them Dems – give ‘em an inch, and they’ll take … .

A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place

[This was submitted by reader and Nevada County resident Don Bessee.  It is posted as received. gjr]

Don Bessee

Commercial activity in Residentially Zoned neighborhoods is fundamentally in conflict with their land use protections that everyone agreed to when they signed their title papers that included mandated disclosures.

There are allowed things like piano lessons and day care and there are limits on the traffic those produce in your neighborhood that are meant to protect your peace and personal space.

There is a concept that your home is your castle, but I would submit that your home is your place to relax and enjoy the fact we live in a pine forest and the joy that brings to us all. Avian joys as well as the critters wandering around who are not threatened by us. Ticks notwithstanding.  A tranquil island of peace in a sea of turbulence if you will.

For some reason the County is considering an assault on our homeowner’s rights by expanding COMMERCIAL activity in peaceful residentially zoned neighborhoods.

They are still looking to abuse the neighborhoods again by trying to repeal or grossly modify the OUTDOOR EVEN ORDIANCE that became necessary to protect our neighborhood from folks that didn’t care about your block’s peace or your property values. It was all about the Benjamin’s for those abusers.

Some years ago there were people who disrespected their neighborhoods to grab a quick buck and endangered their Fire Evacuation routes in spite of their zoning not allowing their commercial party plans. It was the Road Association Folks who were having their pockets picked for road maintenance to support 1 properties commercial parties that led the way from across the county to stop it with the outdoor event ordinance.

The wedding planners who did not want to pay their way were incredibly aggressive against the neighborhoods in the committee that developed the ordinance with rhetoric that did not stand up to the actual wedding license activity record. Then Chair Beason bought their own industrial journal to refute the spin and hyperbole! I believe the video is still available.

Then Chair of the Board Beason and Supervisor Anderson were on that committee with me that included department heads, County Council,  both sides of the issue as well as Fire,  Law Enforcement to speak to the reality on the ground and the very real fire threat to Neighborhoods as well as Environmental Health issues.

Code has no presence on Friday afternoon to Monday to protect you and they knew it.  That’s why we need the Sheriff to protect the neighborhoods peace on the weekends.

Recently I was being lobbied with the line that the hospitality industry was crushed by the heartless Outdoor Event Ordinance.

Yet again the facts do not support the narrative no matter who is repeating the tired narratives.

The numbers tell the story as they always do.

Weddings are a trackable metric with the license data just like they were the last time around.

The average number of wedding licenses issued in Nevada County over the last 5 years was 453.

In 2015 there 435 licenses issued.

In 2016 there were 480 wedding licenses and that was very near the highest ever.

In 2017 there were 465 licenses issued.

In 2018 there were 432 licenses issued.

In 2019 there were 457 wedding licenses issued in Nevada County.

If you live in LOP or lake WW you might think its not your issue because of your CC& R’s that won’t allow a property to do that there.

The real financial threat my friends is that they want to do for profit events that will not generate new business but just cannibalize the business of those venues that have to pay a ton to support their commercial infrastructure in the properly zoned areas such as country clubs and event centers.

The idea to double the allowable events to 8 from 4 in your neighborhood is intolerable.

1 Saturday event in your neighborhood means trucks moving in on Friday to setup then departing, the event and all the cars of the attendees in and out, then another caravan to breakdown on Sunday.

Does that sound like something you want 8 times a year in your neighborhood?

The Ag tourism project portion of this proposal looks totally viable and appropriate.

If you live in a R1 or RA neighborhood then you are threatened by this erosion of your established rights as a homeowner. If you live in WW or LOP the financial stability of your country club/restaurant is at risk.

Tell your supervisors what you think of this assault on neighborhood rights.

He is Risen!

George Rebane

Hearing that strong assertion, the Christian answers joyfully, ‘He is risen indeed!’

For us, Christmas is the promise, and Easter its fulfillment.  The summation of all Christianity is Christ’s covenant in the promised transcendence of Man, all concentrated into one simple declaration – ‘He is risen!’  Without this, our faith is a fraud; with it, Christianity promises Man to become an unending part of God’s love of all Creation.

Scattershots – 28jan20 (updated 2feb20)

George Rebane

Mizzou is tracking student class attendance in hopes of increasing academic standards.  This to me is mind boggling.  What kind of majors are today’s students pursuing that allows them to pass and graduate with spotty or no class attendance??  Don’t answer that.  This report on FN is no doubt unique; can’t see any lamestream outlet admitting to this kind of woke academics for whatever generation is now going through the progressive halls of ivy.  Another confirming factor as to why they come out dumb and compliant.  In my course of study, and I’m a lifetime student, I could not conceive of cutting class without getting detailed notes of the lecture and still expect to do well in the course.  None of the stuff that any of us studied in the bygone era could you skate to a decent grade by just cramming for the mid-term and final from some course text.  Every course had something unique (usually new research results) contributed by the professor that went beyond the text, and you could bet the ranch that one or more exam questions would require mastery of that special approach or technique.  The University of Missouri is now desperately tracking the whereabouts of students during their class hours in order to encourage regular class attendance.  What kind of majors are these pinheads pursuing?!

[29jan20 update] Trump’s Israeli/Palestine peace plan calls for a two-state solution.  The Palestinians are rejecting it on the basis of their not getting an authentic sovereign nation-state out of the deal.  Israel will not permit the new Palestine to have a military and the plan calls for the disarming of Hamas and Hezbollah.  Also Israel will have oversight of Palestine’s foreign policy and maintain control of a narrow band of territory immediately contiguous to its borders.  Given past history, the plan looks reasonable including its provision for a transportation tunnel connecting Gaza to the West Bank.  To me the sticking point in all these attempts has been the lack of an economic incentive for Palestinian Arabs to trade complete autonomy for riches.  For years I have argued that any proposed solution include making Gaza into a freeport.  Freeports come in various legal and operational configurations, but their main function is to cut red tape and taxes/fees so as to enable facile and free movement of goods between nations.  Gaza is conveniently located near the Mediterranean end of the Suez Canal, at one of the world’s trade crossroads.  Rebane Doctrine for world peace and prosperity calls for building a large harbor at Gaza (there are gazillions of tons of dirt, rocks, and sand nearby), and making that strip of land a cash cow for the Palestinian people.

Wanna see the turd in the pipe to progress in California?  The California Environmental Quality Act is one of the most egregious pieces of legislation that has proscribed property rights, free enterprise, liberty and progress in general in California.  All of it brought to you by the progressive socialists already successful in reducing California as one of the least desirable states in which working people, entrepreneurs, and job creators would want to put down roots.  Each successive study shows more self-reliant people leaving the state while the gimmes are pouring in.  Here's one of the more significant hurtles you have to clear if you want to build anything in California.

[30jan20 update]  ‘Civilization is History at Yale’ convincingly argues art critic and commentator Roger Kimball.  The university is drastically and dramatically changing its decades-long curriculum on western civilization that now has focused on the arts.  The claim of the progressive professors is that “great art is too white, straight, European and male”, so it’ll have to give way to the latest socialist cum communist agitprop.  Instead, as reported in the Yale Daily News, art history will now be taught from a wider perspective that emphasizes “Globalism, gender, class, race, capitalism, (and art’s) relationship with climate change will be a key theme.”  Given the mind-bending Orwellian tack already firmly ensconced in our public school curricula, it’s not a big leap to consider that our universities are now graduating people who embrace values and purposes that we used to connect with the Manchurian Candidate of yore.  And they are emerging by the thousands to begin careers in public institutions, politics, news media, education, and the entertainment industry.  'Lux et veritas' indeed.

[2feb20 update] ‘The Democrats May Have Lost – But They’re Still Smarter than You’ is a report on some analyses on the matter by Clarice Feldman in 2feb20 American Thinker.  Longtime readers know that our liberal commenters have touted their intellectual acumen viz us knuckle-dragging conservetarians et al.  Well, this article presents the opposite view, which “should not be too surprising. On the 22 General Surveys using the verbal ability scale since 1974, for every single one, conservative Republicans score significantly higher than the rest of the public combined. As for Republicans overall, they score significantly higher in verbal ability than democrats in all five decades, including the 2010’s combined. … In 1996, the GSS employed another module lifted from a standard 1Q test, one testing analogical reasoning. Again Republicans and conservative Republicans in 1996 performed significantly better on analogical reasoning than the rest of the public and significantly better than Democrats.”

On Western Civilization

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 22 January 2020.]

Across the globe western civilization is under an historic and relentless assault.  Today most countries – developed and developing – have adopted and practice many fortuitous aspects of western civilization with attributes and social norms developed in the west.  Nevertheless, the world’s leftwing institutions, in their work toward universal collectivization, see the stubborn survival of western culture, along with its mores and values, as the main impediment to achieving one-world governance of a homogenized global population.

Today the unifying objectives for this globalization effort are summarized in the United Nation’s Agenda 2030 (formerly known as Agenda 21).  This coherent effort is strongly denied, and identified as a fake news conspiracy by the progressive press.  You can make up your own mind on this by reading the UN’s globalization objectives, and comparing them to the public policies adopted and proposed by the Left’s political parties in the West.

When we examine the contributions of western civilization to humanity, we are overwhelmed by how the adoption of its tenets and practices dramatically increased standards of living, survival rates, and the quality of life across the globe.  It was western culture that was key to the ending of slavery worldwide, increasing literacy rates and access to education, emancipating women, and eradicating starvation along with many of our dreaded diseases. (more here)

Harvard historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Niall Ferguson, identifies key contributions of western civilization that include the notion of competition, the scientific revolution, property rights, modern science-based medicine, consumer societies, and the win-win rewards of the work ethic.  These are sometimes referred to as western civilization’s “killer apps”. (more here and here)

Ferguson points out that these apps “are all interrelated to developments that occurred concurrently in the West. Property rights and the work ethic of the West rise directly from Christianity. They stem from a respect for the person and their property, a rejection of corruption (theft via bribes to those in power), and respect for the laborer. Christianity isn't as pro-business as Judaism, but the Christian West thrived after it gained respect for business and allowed reasonable interest on debt. That led to consumer society, reinforced by the work ethic.

The scientific revolution wasn't possible before Christianity reformed to become less fundamentalist, though the belief that God was rational and study was morally acceptable, was only possible in the Christian world. In the Islamic world, to question Allah is to risk being murdered for blasphemy, (which explains) why science stalled in the Muslim world once the religion became a majority faith in any area. In Chinese society, the belief that everything is part of a complex, inseparable whole prevented development of math-based scientific laws. Only Christian society, that both permitted science beyond mere observation and belief you COULD develop such rules without risking your safety, explains why the West alone had a scientific revolution. And that led directly to modern medicine.”

The value and success of these so-called killer apps became apparent wherever their European and American practitioners showed how they worked.  As a result, over the last century they were quickly adopted by people of all cultures who understood them.  And as Ferguson points out, “The rapid rise of Singapore, Japan and South Korea after adopting these "killer apps" of prosperity show you don't have to be Christian or of a Christian derived culture to benefit from them.”  But today, Ferguson points out, Western predominance is waning since the world ‘downloaded’ and now uses these killer apps, “while the West has literally lost faith in itself.”

As a struggling Christian, I remain undeniably a child, student, and defender of Western Civilization.  Long time listeners to these commentaries know I am also a conservetarian, and view the world through the lenses of one who has survived both the catastrophic events of Stalin’s communism and Hitler’s Nazism. (more here) To me, these collectivist ideologies and their practice are not merely intellectual theories about how to organize society.  To millions of us they were existential, we experienced them in their unmediated raw form.  These experiences shaped me, and today in these commentaries, they shape my words in defense of the West.

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

Scattershots – 21jan20 (updated 27jan20)

George Rebane

RL Crabb is prominent in today’s (21jan20) Union lambasting AB5, the latest socialist outrage from Sacramento. (more here)  This piece of dreadful anti-work legislation has finally caught enough of our liberal artsy-fartsy crowd to also get them squawking – less known, AB5 impacts at least as many of California's high-tech STEM consultants and freelancers.  Our cartoonist friend Bob Crabb’s distress (here) puts paid on what most of us have known about his true ideological colors – for shur he ain’t no middle-roader.  Regardless of his ire against the state’s Democrats – it’s akin to my ire against the state’s Republicans, but I don’t pretend to be a mid-roader – he cannot countenance the other side, even in the face of AB5.  “I also do not agree with those who want to steer clear of partisan politics. This bill is 100% Democrat. It was written by an assemblywoman who curses like a sailor and dismisses us as whiners who are too dense to understand how fortunate we are to have her party looking out for our well-being.  It passed on a straight party line vote. It was signed by a governor who just dedicated millions of dollars to enforcing it.  California Democrats believe they have little to fear from the riffraff at the bottom tier of workers. We are, after all, musicians, journalists, community theaters, and cartoonists. What are we going to do? Vote for Republicans? Ha ha ha!”  As you can see, regardless of the years of collectivist crap flowing from our Democrat legislature, Bob would not change his vote to give us bottom tier riffraff a chance to sell our services as we choose – a few eggs have yet to be cracked and sacrifices have to be made.

California leavin’ should be the title of a new musical lament for all those folks heading out of state.  But there’s enough of us disgruntled Golden Staters to take and remake the places where we land and put down new stakes.  An example is Star, Idaho, a small town near where one of our dear departed California expats and RR readers now lives.  Star’s population has more than doubled in the last ten years as couples like JT and Mary Jo Turnipseed (their real name, honest!) left SoCal and moved in to experience small town living at its best.  Well, no more.  “Now Star is grappling with some of the same problems the Turnipseeds left California to escape. The town’s main drag, where ranchers once drove their cattle, is clogged with traffic during rush-hour commutes. Sprawling subdivisions have sprouted up around farmland, as have new chain stores. The median home price has more than doubled to nearly $400,000 since 2010.” (more here)  The most amazing thing to me is still the utter blindness of our states overwhelming population of leftwing loonies who deny that any of this exodus is going on.  It mirrors exactly their grossly distorted perception of the realworld which is their daily drink from the lamestream.  For them, another sip of that Kool-Aid, and all’s right with the world.

SB419 – Stupid becomes stupider

George Rebane

There is no lower bound to progressive stupidity.  This truth is again confirmed and demonstrated to boot by SB419 signed into law by our Gov Nutjob.  Adding to all the other problems with our progressively punished public education in California, the new law installs ‘the willfully defiant classroom’ into our schools.  It legalizes “willful defiance”, which until now has been a reason for teachers and principals to impose disciplinary action and suspension when 6-8^th grade students willfully defy teachers and staffers in our schools.  The law effectively removes the ‘willful defiance’ clause as a violation from our education code EC48900(k).

Actually, it’s even worse than that.  In its broader interpretation, the new law makes it legal for such kids to defy any adult, including their parents who will now be in violation when they attempt to discipline their unruly little darlins, or any kids for that matter.  The real reason for this stupid response from Sacramento is that suspended kids don’t generate cash for the schools which get certain kinds of government funding based on attendance.  A quirk in the law is that the schools may still use EC48910 to send the little idiots somewhere else, but not home.  One possible destination will be the new “intervention room” appropriately staffed by people the kids can ignore and raise hell.  I have no idea how that will work out, and neither do the pinheads in our legislature led by our paramount pinhead Newsom. (more here and here)

And the real pinheads are our neighbors, those who year after year vote for ever more ignorant and ideologically sclerotic legislators.  Recall, the plan was to first make them into double dummies through our public schools.  That has worked, and now they are compliant nebbishes who get their daily marching orders from the lamestream media.

Why Black Lives Don’t Matter to Blacks

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 8 January 2020.]

Do black lives really matter?  Well that clearly depends on whose talk and whose walk you pay attention to.  The loud talk from our congresscritters and black leaders is that black lives very much matter, and that it’s the police and white racists who are wantonly killing blacks across the land.  But by their walk and the abundant facts on record over the last half-century, these same people demonstrate that they really don’t care much about how African-Americans live and die.  They only demonstrate their concern and ire after a rare and unfortunate incident occurs where a black American is killed by a law enforcement officer.  Then it is time to gather their constituents in the streets and continue the narrative that blacks are dying in great numbers at the hands of cops and whites.

The reality is quite different in that blacks die by the hundreds every month at the hands of other blacks.  This ongoing carnage does not raise a murmur in the national news.  No black leaders or members of Congress, or media outlets express their outrage on Monday mornings after another weekend of murder and mayhem in the Democrat controlled urban ghettos.

From the conservative National Review we learn the big picture that “From 2000 to 2015, the mean African-American homicide-victimization rate, adjusted for age, was 20.1 per 100,000. That’s more than three times the Hispanic rate of 6.4 (despite disadvantages comparable to those of blacks) and over seven times the average white rate, 2.7. Moreover, … from 1976 to 2005, 94 percent of the killers of black murder victims were other African Americans. In short, this is about exceptionally high as well as overwhelmingly intraracial black violent crime. White-on-white homicide is equally intraracial, but the rates are not astronomically high. … (And) in the contemporary period, from 1976 to 2014, it is estimated that (over 198,000) African Americans died nationwide at the hands of black killers. That’s (more than 5,200) deaths per year on average, roughly 19 times the annual number of deaths of African Americans in confrontations with police.” (more here)

There have been a few short-lived programs attempted that effectively reduced crime rates in our urban centers.  The most notable of these was carried out under NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a white Jewish liberal politician now running for president.  The ‘Broken Windows’ and ‘Stop-and-Frisk’ programs during his 2002-2013 tenure saved over 21,000 lives of which 90+% or over 19,000 of them would have been black.  So what happened?

The response after Bloomberg left office was immediate and disastrous.  Under leftwing Mayor DeBlasio, stop-and-frisk, which took hundreds of illegal guns off the streets, was discontinued because cops ‘unfairly’ stopped and frisked more blacks than people of other races.  As reported in the WSJ, “the rap on stop-and-frisk was that stops of African-Americans were disproportionate to their percentage of the population. That is true. But as (Mayor Bloomberg) pointed out, they were not disproportionate to the descriptions of the people committing crimes given by witnesses.” (more here)  No matter, progressive views on political correctness and social justice demanded that neighborhood maintenance was no longer required, illegal guns returned to the streets, and, as predicted, the crime rate began increasing.  And blacks again started dying at the hands of other blacks in greater numbers.

So today, the Democrats know that they have no chance against Trump without the black vote.  And for reasons no one dares to study or answer, our urban African-American populations demand policing policies that cater to proportions propagandized by Democrat politicians, instead of caring that black lives matter.  So now we have candidate Bloomberg doing a 180 on the stop-and-frisk apology circuit for having saved thousands of black lives, and promising never to do it again.

The questions no one is asking are, ‘Was it fair to blacks that an effective policing policy was discontinued, thereby again raising black-on-black murder rates?’, and even more importantly, ‘What does all this say about the priorities and/or the understanding of the black voters who year after year return disastrously incompetent and corrupt politicians to office, who then perpetuate their lives on the “plantation”?’  As reported in the Washington Post, Candace Owens has a YouTube video (here) that explains the matter – I recommend it to you.

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

'OK Boomer!'

Woke free speech is now defined as the right to interrupt others' speech.

George Rebane

‘OK Boomer!’ is the new dismissive epithet directed at anyone older by Millennials and post-Millennials (e.g. Generation Z).  Its most common usage is as a retort to attempted guidance from the older generation, today simply known by the label ‘Boomer’.  Baby Boomer (born 1947-64) is now passé and too restrictive.  The young moderns would like to simplify things as much as possible in order to function in a society that endowed them with a terribly deficient education and lexicon.  They resent learning that they are forced to make do from the dark side of the great knowledge gap, and they justifiably take exception to that.

But they are overreacting.  Instead of attempting to correct their deficits, they reject wisdom a fortiori if it comes from those who have been successful in life.  ‘Boomer’ is now attributed by some to be the new N-word, especially when directed toward white male seniors.  And ‘OK Boomer’ is delivered as the blatant rejection that conveys, ‘You have nothing to teach us.’

So here is a generation who have yet to develop skills that can continue creating wealth at any level close to their plans to then take that wealth from other people, and spend it to create a world like that which their Marxist mentors have taught.  And they are now so stupid that they refuse to do what previous generations have done since time immemorial – stand on the shoulders of those who built and work the world which today gives them the ability to create a future without a successful past.

Happy Thanksgiving - 2019

Jo Ann Rebane: Thanksgiving reflections from my childhood 

My family lived in Alhambra (southern California) and so did my maternal grandparents, my bachelor uncle, and my paternal grandmother.  We always dressed up for any meal at my grandparent’s house, especially Thanksgiving.  Daddy wore a suit, Mama wore a nice dress, and my sister and I often wore matching dresses that my mother had sewn for us, and of course our good shoes.

Grandma Clara was a fine cook, roasted a turkey to perfection, made tasty smooth gravy, and was a master of flaky pie crust which usually had a pumpkin filling.  The dining room table was set with Grandma’s fine china decorated with little yellow flowers, thumbprint Fostoria crystal goblets, and white linen table cloth and napkins.  My Grandparents sat at either end of the table.  My mother sat between my sister and me with our backs to the buffet while Daddy sat between his mother and my uncle on the side of the table facing us. 

The Thanksgiving table scene could have been straight out of the above Norman Rockwell painting.  Grandpa Charles sat at the head of the table and to my right.  Between us was a card table where the side dishes resided.  After my father said grace, Grandpa, a butcher in his youth, conducted the ritual sharpening of the carving knife against the steel.  Then he proceeded to create perfect slices of white meat and laid them on the edge of the turkey platter.  He released the drumstick and skillfully worked between the tendons to separate the dark meat. 

My job, which I took seriously, was to serve a portion of each side onto each plate after Grandpa had placed the turkey on it and then pass it along.  Conversation centered on school and church news, sports, and my uncle’s recent experiences in the Navy.  After the meal, Grandpa excused himself to listen to the ball game on the radio (before TV).  Daddy followed his little girls into the front room to read the newspaper, or watch us color, and also read when we were older.  Clean up was conducted in the kitchen with Grandma washing every dish, pot and pan, Mama rinsed, and my uncle did the drying, often flourishing the dishtowel like a matador’s cape.  

Later the adults played canasta at a card table set up in the front room where a fire crackled in the fireplace.  This was followed by the best part of the day - for a late snack we each made our own turkey sandwiches on good bread onto which I liked to put on lots of mayonnaise, crispy lettuce, and pickles.  After that we all said good night and Daddy drove us home in the dark.

Scattershots – 3nov19 (updated 6nov19)

George Rebane

Our increasingly dysfunctional school system makes itself felt every time any of us uses a text editor such as MS Word, or one embedded in some app such as the TypePad comment box.  The programmers who write the code that edits what you type are really drawn from a class of dimwits who are not very familiar with the English lexicon, contemporary American usage, spelling, and most certainly grammar.  And yet they blithely generate code that, for example, will take an obvious usage of a plural and make it into an erroneous singular possessive.  What’s really astounding about the de minimis qualifications of these turkeys (most certainly all of them wet behind the ears) is that they live in the 21^st century where our technology driven language continually morphs into novel word forms, yet their software continues to reject anything new that the writer seeks to use or compose, and instead imposes a garden variety proximity algo which converts the desired string into something out of a 20-year-old Webster’s dictionary.

The recent lackluster GDP growth numbers are now trumpeted by Democrats as something, anything to use against the stellar performance of the economy since Trump took office.  Their attempt to convince their constituents (who don’t even know the three branches of government) and fellow hangers on that such GDP growth is the important and impactive number that tells the real tale.  What they completely miss is that Main Street’s conception of the economy is formed of much more pragmatic data that people can experience where they live, shop, and work.  And there they see the real picture composed of record low unemployment, especially for minorities.  They see more open jobs wanting workers, they experience steadily rising wages, continuing low inflation and interest rates for their mortgages and debt, and enjoy store shelves filled with goods that they can afford.  They understand why consumer confidence numbers are so high because they are living daily in that sector of commerce.  And then they have to put that together with an editorializing ‘news’ reporter on some lamestream outlet telling them that Trump ‘lied’ when he promised them 3% GDP growth.  What all these TDS pundits don’t understand is that to the man-in-the-street GDP is at best just a confusing proxy for an economy, one that never trumps direct experience.

The Great Divide is both dunned and promoted by the Democrat brain trust.  They cannot abide the thought of separating themselves from the cash they drain from the country’s middle class, small businesses, retirees, and the wealthy who would abandon them in a heartbeat were life possible under an alternative form of governance than the fundamentally transformed America now promised by our Left’s proto-communists.  And yet the double-dummies continue to pursue a transparently partisan inquisition to overturn the 2016 election.  Even the November issue of the leftwing The Atlantic prominently laments that ‘Americans Hate One Another. Impeachment Isn’t Helping’, wherein they report – “According to a growing body of political-science research, Americans largely no longer feel a shared sense of national identity. Democrats and Republicans see their political opponents as enemies with totally incomprehensible beliefs and lifestyles. On impeachment, members of the two parties see things radically differently, not just because they have dissimilar political opinions, but because they have entirely divergent views on how to approach life. The vicious impeachment fight ahead may further exacerbate polarization in America, leaving Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between feeling even more suspicious of one another.” (emphases mine)  And the local leftwing loonies continue to believe that serious consideration of a Great Divide was invented in these foothills and remains a mental masturbation for some solitary and senile seniors.  (and more here)

[4nov19 update] Big tech companies in the Bay Area subsidizing housing is breathlessly reported by some liberals as vindication of capitalism transforming into altruistic collectivism – a long-held dream by all socialists.  I addressed one of our local breathless types in the last Sandbox with this - What some light (non?) thinkers miss is that CA’s state govts have put big tech’s tit in a wringer with its no growth and anti-housing policies so that the employees they need no longer have affordable housing available to them within commuting distance. So their PlanB is to pay such employees astronomical wages, or attempt the alternative of subsidizing their housing costs. None of this is altruistic or intended to alleviate the state’s mid-class housing shortage or provide homes for the homeless. Lefties, desperate to find any salutary evidence for socialist governance, will grasp at any straws, no matter how fantastic, to sustain their perpetually absurd narrative.

More homeowners are staying put longer.  This is the big finding from looking at the country’s real estate inventory numbers (here and google ‘homeowners stay put’).  Given the general shortage of housing in many states – on steroids in CA – this creates a problem for new home buyers, especially the middle-class folks trying to locate near their jobs.  Even though mortgage rates are low, the appreciation of house prices in a demand driven market makes the tax bite huge for sellers seeking to upsize for growing families or downsize for empty-nesters.  So people are staying closer to 20 years in their homes, where ten years ago their average stay in a house was about 10 years – hence, slower sales and a depressed housing market.  And all this is created by your state and local governments with their anti-development laws and regs as the economy is booming with jobs, wage growth, and consumer confidence at their highs.

‘Government is the problem’ has been a constant message in these pages since the launch of RR in 2007.  The examples provided by me and our right-leaning commenters over the years are legion and a matter of record – and, as seen above and below, they continue pouring in.  A more precise form of this truth is that ‘Upon closer examination, almost every one of society’s problems can be traced back to poor public policies adopted, implemented, and enforced by large self-serving, disconnected governments and their incompetent bureaucracies.’  In view of this history, today I am advancing ‘Government is the problem’ to axiomatic status in the Rebane Doctrine.  Recall that in reasoned apologetics an axiom is a statement of self-evident truth that requires no further proof in the logical development of an argument.

Sen Warren and her multifarious ‘plans’ illustrate a problem with ‘self-evident truths’, and nowhere more visibly than in her plan to nationalize America’s healthcare industry.  It is clear to me and mine that we share dismally few self-evident truths in common with her and hers.  Over the last days more and more people are taking a closer look at what her ‘Medicare for All’ proposal entails.  And an alarming number of people from both parties today conclude that the woman is either delusional or extremely ignorant about the ways and means of government operations.  Besides providing little to no realistic basis for paying for the $5T+ annual cost of this monstrosity that would double the federal budget, her ‘free healthcare is a human right’ fantasy would markedly increase the country’s cost of healthcare from what it is today.  And it would immediately bring to bear the EU’s practice of rationing (actually, every government-run health system in the world rations care”), and firmly ensconce ‘death panels’ at all levels in the attempt to contain runaway costs. (more here)

[6nov19 update]  The Big Lie has ALWAYS been the fundamental plank in the platform of collectivists – aka, socialists, communists, and the Democratic Party.  Their eternal goal is to form a comprehensively pervasive leviathan government that directs all human behavior into an amalgam of a compliant society based on Huxley’s Brave New World model.  Realizing that such organization for society is only preferred by those who neither ‘know’ nor ‘can’, they have perfected the Big Lie over the last century since Bolshevism first revealed that it was based on the Big Lie.  Today Democrats are the inheritors of American socialism that maintains socialism’s goal and the Big Lie in its well-oiled public relations and political toolset.  A commenter offers just one more piece of evidence of this in an admonishment by ABC’s Joy Behar for Dems to hide their true political intentions until after they are elected (here).  WSJ’s liberal columnist William Galston in his ‘Elizabeth Warren’s Health-Care Hara-Kiri’ takes Sen Warren to task for prematurely revealing her ‘Medicare for All’ catastrophe.  Note the response to all this from our progressive commenters.

A brief note on the formerly unbelievable level of national dumbth – the evidence just keeps rolling in.  According to current polls, fewer than 20% of Americans state that they do trust the federal government, yet over 50% of them prefer policies that would immensely enlarge it so as to control and provide for more of their lives.  We have known for some decades that our population in the aggregate (>95%) is innumerate.  After two generations of unionized public schooling, we now have daily demonstrations that we are a nation with few if any remaining critical thinking skills.  And this not because our genetically influenced intelligence levels have suddenly dropped, but simply because our government-managed knowledge base about reality continues to shrink.  At this point it’s always proper to cue Thomas Jefferson’s ‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’  Bottom line - the Democrats have a winning strategy.