Rebane's Ruminations

Mending Wall (updated 12jan19)

Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

 

[12jan19 gjr update] From some of the comments below it appears that a word of clarification is required, not only about Frost’s poem but also walls, fences, and other things that demark and control access.  Such constructs are nothing more than the existential and visible attributes of contracts that define property rights within a society.  These transmit the unambiguous message that this side belongs to me, and the other side belongs to someone else; and I don’t want someone from the other side coming unbeknownst to me onto my property from where I have constructed my wall/fence or any other kind of barrier.  For access to my property at certain locations I have provided gates, the states of which I can control, and therefore control access to my property.

People who don’t share the value of such rights, and perhaps feel that these delineated things should be owned in common, or at least be shared unhindered, will oppose physical barriers that unambiguously define ownership and provide for non-owner access only at the pleasure of the owner.

Today such values are very much the topic of hot debate between ideologically estranged peoples and nations.  Conservatives and libertarians are very much proponents of property rights and such expression of these rights.  They believe that property (and any asset of value) that is owned by everyone is owned by no one, and treated as such.  (cf. Garrett Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons')  Everywhere that property is ‘owned by the people’, it is actually owned by their government which visibly deports itself as owner.  The definition of ownership is straightforward – you own something only to the extent that you can dispose of it as you will.  The thinking person immediately understands that ownership is not a simple ‘you own it, or you don’t’.  Instead, they know that ownership is very much nuanced, and that anything owned can also be taken insidiously and stage wise from the weaker by the stronger.  In the US we have seen such erosion of ownership occur with many things, including real property and firearms.  In an autocracy (which we are fast becoming) such subtle transfers of ownership are replaced by more direct and unambiguous methods.

(In understanding ownership, be careful not to confuse that notion with the responsibility for and/or accountability for the disposition of said property by its de juris owner or any third party.)

Scattershots – 27dec18 (updated 30dec18)

George Rebane

LIBERAL BILLIONAIRE APOLOGIZES FOR FUNDING RUSSIAN BOT ‘FALSE FLAG’  Those fun-loving Democrats just can’t leave well enough alone when the go to work getting out the vote.  In the 2016 national election Crooked Hillary and her DNC had to do some numbers ginning up dirt on the opposition, and even putting down the hammer on one of their own kind who didn’t get the hint that it wasn’t his turn (ever).  But most recently it was “billionaire Reid Hoffman (who) apologized Wednesday for funding an effort to dupe Alabama voters into believing Russian bots were fueling Republican Roy Moore’s failed senatorial bid.”  Yep, you really don’t want to get yourself into the cross-hairs of that bunch.

Truthout.org, the ultra-left (well, actually communist) opinion shaper and progressives’ moral voice, is now calling for acts of sabotage to bring down the Trump administration.  This week the summons went out to Democrat constituencies across the country (‘We Can’t Wait on a Savior to Remove Trump. We Must Resist En Masse’), followed by a specific call directed at government employees for “federal disobedience” and “noncooperation” (‘Federal Disobedience: Why We Must Support Federal Worker Noncooperation’).  It is literally impossible to make this up.  Today’s Left is no different from the Bosheviks of old; when the established (constitutional) order cannot be brought down by their ideas in the public forum, then it must be attacked by all other trans-rational means available.

Most longtime RR readers know that people of the Left get a very one-sided view of the world that is dispensed by their favorite ideological wordsmiths and talking heads.  They stick to their own kind when it comes to forming their picture of the world.  And because of this, our local leftwing contingent continually creates comic relief in these comment streams when they unknowingly show up with their blinders on and claim that RR has a solo hold on ideas that counter their carefully cultivated credos.  When other readers provide links and point out contrary references in my commentaries, that information is simply ignored by our lefties as if it didn’t exist – they just continue their critiques cased in the comfort that not only do these ideas have local provenance, but that they also have limited purview.  Hence, if they can be stamped out here in their cradle, the outside world will not be infected.  BTW, here’s a laundry list of fake news that our progressives swallowed hook, line, and sinker during the past year from their faithful fountains of facts.

That old-time religion in America is on the skids.  We have been pointing out for years how the media and our educational systems have been composing recessionals to Christianity as part of their assault on western culture and civilization.  Every time new stats are collected and composed, the story becomes bleaker for our Judeo-Christian heritage.  The evidence for that is most visible during the year-end holiday season when secular humanity makes its strongest assault on the faith of our fathers.  I was directed to a current compendium on this cultural transformation by Joel Kotkin (‘As the Old Faiths Collapse, the Greens, Social Justice Warriors, and Techno-Futurists Aim to Fill the Void’) by a reader and correspondent.  After giving us the dreary numbers of how our traditional religions are being forsaken by the young moderns, despite heroic efforts by churches and temples to inject socio-political ideology into their liturgies, Kotkin documents the parallel social phenomenon of the Left desperately cobbling together new faiths to serve new gods, so that they will not miss out on that ineffable something that they see gracing the lives of the remaining Christian and Jewish holdouts.  (Here is Truthout's report this.) The real interesting news here is about the outliers of secular humanists’ fabricated faiths.  These involve the new trans-humanist faith(s?), and those churches of god without god.  Kotkin concludes his essay with –

The loss here would not only be for the faithful but the entire society. Religious institutions rooted in the past also serve as ideal transmitters of traditional culture and identity; the new ones see themselves largely as warriors of the future, based on perceived social and scientific truths. Trans-humanists, for their part, seek to reduce reality to data, rejecting much of what makes us different not only from other animals, but machines. … Ultimately, the new religions, seeking to fill the void left behind by traditional faiths, offer little to families in search of moral instruction or guidance for how different kinds of people can get along. They have no answers for addressing the reality that almost all of us alive today, despite the scheming of the trans-humanists, eventually will die. A world without the old faiths may still be spiritually engaged, even hysterically so, but we may lose the lessons of community, sacrifice, discipline and faith that the old religions taught to bind our societies together.

[28dec18 update]  “Climate change has always been the cover story, not the real issue which (is) Agenda 21 Sustainability.” writes a reader and correspondent in this morning’s email.  This year’s IPCC special report SR-15 details the real agenda that was pursued at this year’s international climate change conference in Katowice, Poland. (more here)  The global warming bamboozle continues in full force, but the real objectives for arguably the greatest wholesale fraud ever attempted on the entire world’s population are now leaking out, and there to see for everyone who cares to pay attention.  Unfortunately, humans in the aggregate are not that bright.

‘China Reins In Its Tech Giants’ reports the 28dec18 WSJ.  “The closer scrutiny of tech companies comes as Mr. Xi seeks to restore the Communist Party's pre-eminence as a force in people’s lives and to establish that the Party—and not the private sector—is charting the course for China’s future.”  Communism, like our progressive sector, has always claimed to be society’s most reliable moral compass.  Therefore, kowtowing to the Party, China’s industries like ride-sharing Didi are now hiring thousands of “Communist Party members as role models for customer service.”  For our global competitive position, this is the best news coming out of the Middle Kingdom in years.  (Here our Dems will do their best to emulate China starting 3 January 2019.)

Nokidhungry.org maintains that childhood hunger is prevalent in over ten million American households.  And this goes on under governments that have uncountable programs for helping and feeding even mildly or totally unneedy families and individuals.  Congress just passed an $867B (dreadfully misnamed) ‘farm bill’, of which 85% or $737B goes for food stamps for the poor.  For the hungry households, this computes to over $73K for each household’s annual food budget.  Cut that in half and half again, and you’d still come up with over $18K per year for groceries.  What do each of these messages convey about the extent of children going hungry – ‘In America 1 in 6 kids is starving’, ‘- does not have enough to eat’, ‘- faces hunger’.?  (nokidhungry uses the last one in its ads).  But the real question is, what’s wrong with this picture?  (Extra credit:  What’s the political persuasion of the overwhelming share of bureaucrats who have been running the food stamps program for years?)

[30dec18 update]  I was graced by Union columnist George Boardman to appear in his tomorrow's (31dec18) offering.  He quoted from the addendum to my 3jan18 KVMR commentary - "I believe the present state of affairs in the world order are the result of the spontaneously coordinated efforts of fundamental Islam and western socialism’s striving to meet Agenda21 objectives."  I invite readers to reread the complete addendum.

‘Do We Need Our Country Anymore?’

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regularly scheduled KVMR commentary broadcast on 26 December 2018.]

Dr Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, asks that question in the latest (Dec 2018) issue of the Imprimis.  The answer that our public schools have been teaching for the last half century is NO.  As Arnn points out, “World leaders are now accustomed to call for the subordination of the nation for the good of the globe.”  All in preparation for “the peoples of the world (to) enter a new age of global peace, prosperity, and cooperation.”

The latest to call for the abandonment of sovereign nation-states was French president Macron on the 100^th anniversary of the WW1 armistice.  The embrace of nationalism, he argued, is the cause of wars.  And the solution is to rid ourselves of nationalism, which he defines as a people’s desire to put the interests of their nation first and foremost to a degree that ignores all transnational cooperation with other nations.  On a roll, the French leader went on to claim that “patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism.”  In other words, if you’re a patriot, you will work to subsume your country into a larger world order, or in essence, to make it disappear.

Macron called for world leaders to “take the UN’s oath to place peace higher than anything.”  To which Dr Arnn then asks, “Higher than freedom?  Higher than justice?  Higher than the lives of our children?”

Churchill maintained that, since time immemorial, “the central principle of civilization is the subordination of the ruling authority to the settled customs of the people, and to their will as expressed through (a) constitution.”  That says civilization is constituted by populations of people with shared customs under a constitutional umbrella that explicitly spells out the communal processes and procedures they agree practice in order to form a mutually sustained society.

And for any population this can only take place under a government that has “received the broad assent of large majorities” of its citizens.  Such broad assent can only occur among a population with broadly shared values, mores, and customs.  Then other people, whose values etc differ, will also want to join with their like-minded brethren; and when they do, another political unit is born, identifying itself as a kingdom or nation distinct from all the others.

A civilized people united under a foundational document or constitution enjoys a government that settles affairs by talking things out.  The alternative is a government by force, one which rules over a fragmented and fearful population not permitted or able to talk things out.  A government that uses force to keep the peace in such a population is known as a tyranny.

There is zero chance that all the world’s peoples under a global government will be of a sufficiently like-mind on any given social issue.  Under such a behemoth government, one that preserves itself through the most sophisticated and efficacious technologies, where then can smaller groups of the like-minded go, save to the re-education camps or worse that Leviathan has prepared for such anti-social miscreants?

The clear alternative to such a future is the maintenance of a world order of sovereign nation-states comprised of peoples capable of giving broad assent for common solutions to shared problems.  With this understanding, today’s real question becomes, ‘Is America any longer such a country?’

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.  And in this holiday season Jo Ann and I wish you and our entire KVMR family a healthy and productive new year.  Thank you for listening. 

Scattershots – 27nov18 (updated 28nov18)

George Rebane

Climate Hysteria Continues.  Along with many other analysts, Steve Koonin in the 26nov18 WSJ reports (here) that “Headlines warned of economic doom after the U.S. government released its fourth National Climate Assessment last week. Yet a close reading of the report shows that the overall economic impact of human-caused climate change is expected to be quite small.”  The report has more holes in it than swiss cheese, but it is the latest blast to continue political pressure on the ignorant and poorly read to start ‘doing something’ to materially hobble the US economy in order to ‘prevent a climate catastrophe’.  None of it holds water, and as Koonin points out, a closer reading debunks its main alarums.  Here assemble government agencies that in their best days cannot reliably predict next week’s weather or next quarter’s GDP, all pretending to tell us what the world will be like 75 years from now.  The report’s survival in the public forum does not reflect well on our collective intelligence.

Presumption of innocence is one of the seminal starting points of any adjudication of guilt in enlightened western societies, and has been so for a couple of centuries now.  Not so according to a Mr Pete Williams as he pits his logic against the recent Kavanaugh hearings.  His letter in the 26nov18 Union (here) argues “the presumption of innocence applies in criminal cases, not civil law suits or administrative matters such as applications for security clearances, job interviews, or hearings to gather information on prospective appointees, like Kavanaugh. The theory behind the presumption of innocence applying only to criminal cases is that it is better that a guilty person escape conviction than for an innocent prison(sic) to be sent to prison. The Supreme Court hearings are not a criminal proceeding — and thus the presumption of innocence was not applicable to the Kavanaugh hearings.”  This terminally progressive gentleman reveals what will be the demeanor of their star chamber courts when the socialists cum communists finally achieve their primacy in the halls of our government (e.g. Stalin’s purge trials of the 1930s).  What the gentleman totally misses is the significant nuance that the receipt of a security clearance or similar benefice (e.g. corporate job) is not a constitutional right, it is a privilege to be properly granted by the government charged with the nation’s security.  Its refusal does not destroy the applicant.  However, in cases – administrative, civil, congressional, etc – where a nominee’s reputation, ability to continue his career, and to care for his family is put on the line, all western civilized cultures have tacitly accepted the premise that the burden to prove condemning accusations rests on the accuser, and not their defense on the gratuitously accused.  This distinction is totally lost on our Left, hence RR and other voices consider these lopsided sentiments to be a danger to the very foundations of our way of life – but apparently not of theirs.

[28nov18 update] As the last echoes of the election die down, we should always be reminded of the words of Josif Vissarionovich Stalin - "It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

Lost Words from Our Childhood

Russ Steele

I belong to an eclectic writers group that often shares items they have discovered in the world of words. Below is the latest contribution and it brought back a lot of memories for Ellen and me. We shared with friends, and George encouraged me to post on RR. If you are not over 65 some of these words may need explanation, ask your grandmother or grandfather.

Mergatroyd!… Do you remember that word? Would you believe the spell-checker did not recognize the word Mergatroyd? Heavens to Mergatroyd!

The other day a not so elderly (I say 75) lady said something to her son about driving a Jalopy; and he looked at her quizzically and said "What the heck is a Jalopy?" He never heard of the word jalopy!! She knew she was old..... But not that old.

Well, I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle.

About a month ago, I illuminated some old expressions that have become obsolete because of the inexorable march of technology.

These phrases included: Don't touch that dial, Carbon copy, You sound like a broken record, and Hung out to dry.

Back in the olden days we had a lot of moxie. We'd put on our best bib and tucker, to straighten up and fly right.

Heavens to Betsy! Gee whillikers! Jumping Jehoshaphat! Holy moley!

We were in like Flynn and living the life of Riley; and even a regular guy couldn't accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill. Not for all the tea in China!

Back in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when's the last time anything was swell? Swell has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers, fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes, and pedal pushers.

Oh, my aching back! Kilroy was here, but he isn't anymore.

We wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, “Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!” Or, “This is a fine kettle of fish!” We discover that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent, as oxygen, have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our keyboards.

Poof, go the words of our youth, the words we've left behind.  We blink, and they're gone. Where have all those great phrases gone? 

Long gone: Pshaw, The milkman did it. Hey! It's your nickel. Don't forget to pull the chain. Knee high to a grasshopper. Well, Fiddlesticks! Going like sixty. I'll see you in the funny papers. Don't take any wooden nickels. Wake up and smell the roses.

It turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter has liver pills. This can be disturbing stuff! (Carter's Little Liver Pills are gone too!)

We of a certain age have been blessed to live in changeable times. For a child each new word is like a shiny toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory.  It's one of the greatest advantages of aging.

Leaves us to wonder where Superman will find a phone booth...

See ya later, alligator! Okidoki

WE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE FABULOUS 50'S...NO ONE WILL EVER HAVE THAT OPPORTUNITY AGAIN...WE WERE GIVEN ONE OF OUR MOST PRECIOUS GIFTS: LIVING IN THE PEACEFUL AND COMFORTABLE TIMES, CREATED FOR US BY THE “GREATEST GENERATION!”

I hope you found a memory of two to enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving 2018

George Rebane

Jo Ann and I wish all our RR friends and readers a very happy Thanksgiving.

PS. I've long been puzzled by how individual secular humanists think about and celebrate this day as they observe it with family and friends.  Since giving thanks is a show of gratitude for having received something - mostly unbidden and/or undeserved - to whom do such people show gratitude and for what?

Nationalism cum Patriotism

'Nationalism unites; tribalism divides.'

George Rebane

The concept and notion of nationalism is now thoroughly misunderstood and misconstrued across western countries.  The gist of the conversation or debate over nationalism is that it has been incorporated into the Left’s trans-national narrative as something that today portends giving rise to the more sinister angels of our collective nature.  To be more precise, leftwing politicians here and in Europe have unleashed the message that nationalism implies ‘white nationalism’ which implies ‘ethnic exclusion’ which represents the strong form of ‘racism’.  The lamestream media's daily outpouring makes all this very explicit, and it is swallowed hook, line, and sinker by the leftwing grassroots.  An example of this reveals itself in recent comment streams found in these pages.

French president Macron did no one a favor by lecturing Trump that “nationalism is counter to patriotism” while defining his understanding of neither term (more here).  Such simple and unexamined semantic conquests continue to be the modus operandi of how language is co-opted into politically correct newspeak.  In more measured moments each of us can look up the pre-progressive definition of nationalism to find it means –

"Nationalism is a political, social, and economic system characterized by the promotion of the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining sovereignty (self-governance) over the homeland." (Wikipedia)

Nationalism is “a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.” (Merriam-Webster)

Nationalism, “the strong belief that the interests of a particular nation-state are of primary importance. Also, the belief that a people who share a common language, history, and culture should constitute an independent nation, free of foreign domination.” (dictionary.com)

From these, and other such definitions, we see a common thread in an operational sense.  Nationalism is simply the ideological tenet that describes a nationalist as one who puts the interests of his own nation first when contending, comparing, or competing with other nations.  As such, there is nothing pejorative about any of these semantic variants.  And anyone of any color, religion, ethnicity, etc can join with others similarly distinguishable as a fellow nationalist to promote the sovereignty of a given nation-state.  (Sen Marco Rubio also expands on this here.)

Patriotism is nothing more or less that the expression of national pride within “the ideology of love and devotion to a homeland, and a sense of alliance with other citizens who share the same values.” (Wikipedia)  In other words patriotism is the display, exercise, and/or implementation of nationalism - i.e. patriotism is the practice and maintenance of nationalism.

Things get dicier when we start adding modifiers to create ‘white nationalism’ and ‘black nationalism’.  A white nationalist is not simply a nationalist of the Caucasian variety.  No, no, no.  The progressive definition of white nationalist has overt racial overtones such as white supremacy AND white separatism (two semantically orthogonal notions).  Today being called a white nationalist clearly assigns you to the deplorably racist neo-Nazi camp without any chance of redemption or opportunity to explain yourself using more precise language.

A black nationalist is not so encumbered, and enjoys a very asymmetrical definition.  “Black nationalism is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism in the United States which seeks to promote, develop and maintain a black national identity for people of black ancestry.” (Wikipedia)  Nation of Islam and Black Power are functional expressions of such black nationalism.  Any such reciprocal notions of promoting, developing, or maintaining a white national identity for people of white ancestry is strictly forbidden.  Moreover, evincing any efforts in those directions will get you placed on several lists of suspect and bad people that are maintained by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies.  And should such leanings be known in your workplace, you likely will soon be unemployed.

For the record, there is no evidence that nationalist Republicans, Libertarians, conservetarians, conservatives, or Tea Party members embrace additional attributes of nationalism than those included in the above definitions.  However, this conclusion does not fit the narrative of the Left, ranging from so-called moderate Democrats to their most fringe socialist cum communist cadres.  The America of the non-Left is, has always been, and will remain an evil nation-state.  And of this, our children must continue to be carefully taught in union dominated public schools and academe.

Scattershots – 29oct18 (updated 31oct18)

George Rebane

Growing numbers of liberals now embrace the notion that voting for a living can be more lucrative than working for a living.

Hallelujah!  Our distinguished liberal columnist and RR reader George Boardman comes out strong for the educated voter.  In today’s (29oct18) Union he writes, “If you haven't yet taken the time to familiarize yourself with the issues and candidates, if your vote is based on emotion, or prejudice, or party affiliation, what your neighbor says, or that you had a fight with one of the candidates in the third grade, do your country a favor and throw out that mail-in ballot. An uninformed vote is much more dangerous than not voting at all.” (emphasis mine)  That, of course, has been a major conservetarian tenet of these pages for years (most recently here), and I welcome him as a fellow promoter of the educated vote.  However, now Mr Boardman should prepare himself to be pilloried by the local panel of progressive pinheads who believe and preach that encouraging voter education is akin to proposing the return to the Jim Crow voter policies of the post-bellum South.

The Pittsburg massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue is the latest installment of the ongoing tragedy of our times that should remind us of the nature of these kind of deranged and lunatic killers.  They should not be confused with the several flavors of organized terror such as sponsored by the various Islamist groups.  These desperate lone wolves seek to put meaning into their pitifully empty lives, and are terminally ignorant to boot.  They have no idea that their killings promote exactly the opposite effect than that which their fevered little minds conceived.  Today the killer’s “All Jews must die!” has redoubled the pride that Jews have in their faith and the strength they draw from it.  And it has also brought the rest of us closer to the Jewish community, and more determined than ever to fight the age-old scourge of antisemitism as the poster child of faith-targeted persecution.

[Later]  While the Democrats and their lamestream lackeys are busy tying the massacre to our president, even the rabbi of The Tree of Life and the Israeli ambassador join in praising President Trump in his strong condemnation of the massacre and its antisemitic character.  Neither of them blame the the president for contributing to this tragedy.  Any bets on how this exculpatory news is covered in the lamestream which has already fulminated about the 'Trump connection'? (more here and here)

A reliable sign of a corrupt and/or out of control government is when it increases taxes for 1) no other reason (benefit to the public) than that it can, and/or 2) because it must do so in order to pay for under-budgeted existing but politically critical promised programs that no longer are sustainable (if they ever were from the start).  Of the first, the latest is Britain’s planned ‘digital tax’ – an additional tax on technology companies that deliver online services (e.g. social media, ecommerce, …) and yet another on the consumers using such services.  These are taxes that do nothing to improve or make such services more facile – it is just the next taking, because it can take.  (more here)  For an example of the second type we have Lawrence W. Reed, professor of economics and president of the Foundation for Economic Education, who draws a startling parallel in ‘Are We Rome?’ of today's America with the downfall of Rome, a nation which first declined from a republic to an autocracy that then bought its degenerating survival through public welfare programs which first destroyed its economy and then its means to defend itself.   

[31oct18 update]  I took to task Susan Rogers, liberal editorial board member of The Union, in my 18oct18 post.  In there I highlighted one of her more regrettable ‘Hits’ in which she opined that “any patriotic citizen should not have a problem with the concept of urging all eligible voters to vote.” (emphasis mine).  Today, after an apparent mini-epiphany, the lady shows us one of her (probably many) redeeming sides by a penning a course-reversal column – ‘Vote Smart or Vote Stupid’ - that advocates for the educated voter.  While she has yet to draw the proper conclusion about what an uneducated voter should do – as long proposed by your commentator and now joined by Union’s George Boardman (see above) – Ms Rogers does provide the reader with ample specific citations where the responsible and concerned voter may get needed information before marking hiser (my own contribution to gender-free pronouns) ballot.

Ruminations – 21sep18 (updated 26sep18)

George Rebane

Fall equinox (22sep18, 1845PDT) observance preparations should be completed in time by the devout and/or deluded for tomorrow evening’s passage of the sun directly overhead (somewhere) at the equator on its journey south for our fall and winter seasons.  (This is a public service announcement.)

Scattershots – 14sep18 (updated 16sep18)

George Rebane

Judge Ken Starr, special prosecutor of Clintons fame, is pushing his new book Contempt that details the in and outs of the Clinton investigations.  On FN last night he made the surprise announcement that he and his team almost indicted Crooked Hillary who was questioned by Starr for all her dirty doings and wasn’t able to help matters by telling her interrogators over 300 times that she had forgotten all about the salient goings on in her shady past.  We know that she gathered strength from Starr’s ethical conduct – he knew she was crooked, but by his high standards for evidence that was lacking, he did not go forward with the indictment.  Meanwhile, Hillary went on to embellish her reputation as a bad ass bitch who was not and still is not accountable to anyone.

Sen Feinstein has been sitting on a letter she received last July that supposedly has the telling dirt on Judge Kavanaugh.  The anonymous letter is rumored to detail something from Kavanaugh’s high school years that would torpedo his SCOTUS nomination.  California’s scumbag senator has been sitting on this apparently nothing-burger deciding to threaten to reveal it now that everything else the Dems have tried has not worked.  So she kept this scurrilous script for a last minute desperation Hail Mary lob into the gears of the Senate, stating that she has given it to the FBI, and all things on the Kavanaugh confirmation should grind to a halt until the FBI completes its hoped for investigation.  This is how scumbags operate.

Puerto Rico has been the closest thing to a shithole country that the United States has had the pleasure of dealing with since the Spanish-American War.  Its culture is distinctly Latin, with all that this unfortunate baggage entails.  For generations its population, US citizens all, have had one of two objectives – make it on the island’s take in corruption, or make it to the US.  Nobody there considers the island and its established power structure as anything fixable.  But still, our progressive elites today are convincing their light-thinking lackeys that PR’s problems started with Trump not giving enough federal aid after Hurricane Maria devastated the island – that is blatant BS.  Sixty years ago it was already a place to leave as Leonard Bernstein made clear in his West Side Story.

[16sep18 update]  The lyrics to 'America' that I originally posted here from a website turned out to be considerably abbreviated.  As a commenter pointed out, a critical phrase was omitted.  Upon further research, there were even more phrases left out.  It turns out that there were at least two versions of lyrics to this and other WSS songs.  Anyway, I have deleted the incomplete version and give you a link to a site that seems to have the complete versions from both the Broadway show and the 1961 film.  The message re Puerto Rico remains unchanged.  (Enjoy the video here.)

Scattershots – 10sep18 (updated 11sep18)

George Rebane

What’s wrong with this picture?

The Left likes to make lying a pastime unique to Republican politicians, especially President Trump.  None of them probably noticed that literally all of the Dems’ leading lights on the Judiciary Committee told whoppers when they grilled Judge Kavanaugh in their vain attempts to pry something loose that wasn’t there.  One of them claimed Kavanaugh’s nomination should be thrown out because he was nominated by a president who is an “unindicted co-conspirator”, which Trump is not.  And another one claimed to be the modern-day self-sacrificing Spartacus for releasing committee documents against committee rules, documents that the committee released to him the previous day.  But the lying demagogue just had to have his grandstand for the cameras.  (It turned out that the document in question to show Kavanaugh’s racism was a nothing-burger that indicated exactly the opposite.)  The other Democrats on the panel all did their best to bamboozle their constituents when it came their turn, and given the nature of their constituents, some were undoubtedly successful.

NPR’s daily dump on Trump featured author Bob Woodward talking about his new book.  The interview revealed either how little Woodward knows about executive decision making, and/or the severity of his TDS.  Those familiar with how an executive uses staff for solving problems knows that asking the right questions (formulating the problem) and generating good alternative solutions are the most difficult parts of the process.  Woodward and the mainstream are now citing how a staffer surreptitiously took a supposedly disastrous letter off the president’s desk before he could sign it.  The truth of the matter is that the letter (to South Korea on trade), clearly marked as a draft/WIP,  was one of several alternatives for the president’s review.  Then Woodward takes the president to task for asking ‘why do we have NATO troops in Europe?’ and the same question for South Korea.  Trump is represented here as a double dummy for ‘not knowing the answer’, and SecDef Mattis’s proper answer is characterized as making things clear to an ignoramous.  The real ignoramous is Woodward and Team Lamestream, who have no idea that asking ‘zero base questions’, especially when concerning long unquestioned totems, is a fundamental task of an experienced executive in the process of taking critical decisions.

The Coddling of the American Mind describes the cognitive fragility and brittleness of today’s young.  The just-released book written by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt - two lifelong Democrat academics - raises yet another alarm about how the progressives have managed to screw up an entire generation plus of Americans with massive deficits in being able to “understand nuances” of arguments, and being totally intolerant and fearful of any idea, concept, or notion that questions or goes counter to their carefully taught intellectual and socio-political underpinnings.  This, of course, is massively denied by the country’s Left as witnessed even in these pages.  Neither author is able to suggest a ready remedy to bring these millions of mind-mangled minions back into the realworld.

California proves itself once more “100% certifiable” as a government of grifters sustained by an electorate of malleable idiots.  Our progressive Democrats now mandate that the state get 50% of its electricity from renewables by 2030, and 100% by 2045.  The impact of all this will be utility bills through the roof that will devastate the unsubsidized poor and drive more wage earning taxpayers to other states.  Only the coastal elites will not notice the economic devastation.  Today Californians already pay the highest rates for electricity which have increased more than 25% since 2013.  Given the natural gas-powered back-up plants required, the heavily subsidized wind and solar alternative will not even make a noticeable nick in reducing CO2.  (more here)

[11sep18 update]  Global alarmists claims refuted by another score of credentialed experts in their individual fields.  The details can be accessed on Russ Steele's blog here.  His report concludes with "The well-documented invalidation of the 'three lines of evidence' upon which EPA attributes global warming to human-caused CO2 emissions breaks the causal link between such emissions and global warming."  Worth checking out as we continue doing battle with the politically motivated True Believers in consensus science.

This year's 9/11 memorial will again be held at the gravesite of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Grass Valley this morning.  The Nevada County Republican Women Federated maintain the ambassador's grave, and regularly observe various anniversaries there throughout the calendar year.

Quo Vadis Democrats? (updated 31aug18)

George Rebane

It turns out that my ongoing assessments of our Great Divide have been in error – the gulf between America’s Left and Right is significantly wider than what I have been reporting.  This latest epiphany came to me as I was perusing ‘Another Day of Conflicting Realities’, Bob Crabb’s latest post and comment stream in which he takes me to task for my posting “left/right polarization will make a quantum leap to a much higher level in the next twelve months, exceeding by far anything we have witnessed to date” (here), and then goes on to verify this assertion.

Scattershots – 14aug18 (updated 15aug18)

You can get away with a lot of  illiberal theatrics and demands in a liberal society, and one of the great, eternal challenges for democratic governments is to figure out how much one can tolerate before the forces of illiberalism corrode the liberal order.  Jonah Goldberg (2018)

George Rebane

‘Google gives back’ gushes the 13aug18 Union reporting that the company “invests $100K (gasp!) for Nevada workforce development”.  The affair lasted one day and was a marketing event for the company’s business software under the guise of “helping Nevadans develop digital skills needed for job placement and advancement”, which ‘development’ in one day is a joke.  But it did give Reno’s JOIN, a government sponsored workforce development agency, a little feather in their cap – at least they’re doing something.  Meanwhile, Google got a real PR boost and advertising multiplier by spending less than they accidentally drop off their loading docks on any given day.  The real news to note was the mention of Nevada’s net yearly migration rate of 5.5% - #2 in the nation – ably boosted by emigrants from California driven out by our state’s butt stupid palette of public policies, regulations, and taxes.

Trump’s ‘the press is an enemy of the people’ understood contextually is something that has needed to be said and explained in more detail than possible in a punchline tweet.  The few center right news outlets, compared to the legions of leftwing outlets, survive primarily because of their outsized audiences who frequent them for the markedly more comprehensive coverage of what’s happening than is available in the carefully self-censored lamestream media.  A local confirmation of that over the years have been RR’s leftwing readers whose comments reveal that they first ‘hear’ of events, ideas, and happenings from RR commentaries and its commenters.  They then label and attack the same as products of a few isolated and fevered far-right brains from these foothills, being completely unaware of the related national reportage and debates.  If CNN, MSNBC, HuffPost, NYT, … didn’t cover it, then it never happened.  When such news coverage blankets the country, then Americans who are already overly challenged, under-educated, and busy with their daily affairs are effectively propagandized from one perversely ideological perspective.

Today's contribution from our cartoonist RL Crabb, filched from the pages of the 14aug18 Union, is a view from the purported mid-road vantage that appears to suffer a bit from Bob's ongoing bout with TDS.  I wonder what pinned dolls he would have pictured with Obama had he been so inclined.

Speaking of the lamestream’s promotion of the ‘white supremacist threat’, it turns out again that there is no such threat simply because the number of white supremacists in the country is insignificant.  Their only voice is the one manufactured and given to them by the Left which needs an ideological bogeyman against which to play their socialist siren song.  The weekend’s ‘Unite the Right 2’ march of the 20 gave ample evidence of that, as it also demonstrated the alt-Left’s ability to marshal mobs of counter demonstrators, numbering in the thousands, whose hate-filled prescriptions for the United States and its leadership were duly recorded on numerous videos, of course, not aired on the lamestream.

“Curmudgeon” nobelist VS Naipaul (Literature, 2001) died over the weekend.  Naipaul had the courage to observe that all cultures are not of equal worth or quality, and “unapologetically insisted on the universality of Western beliefs.”  For this he was vilified by progressives as a racist.  Naipaul identified “the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement” as the tenets of a “universal civilization” contributed by the west that stood in stark contrast to the Islamist world’s “philosophical hysteria”.  This hysteria has yet to be recognized and denounced by the Left, whose elitists see it as a manageable and existential force that can be used to weaken and bring down western civilization.

[15aug18 update] Sen Fauxcahontas Warren (D-CT) finally exposed her communist destination for us by introducing legislation in Congress that would launch the biggest government grab of private property in the country’s history.  She describes it in ‘Companies Shouldn’t Be Accountable Only to Shareholders’ in the 15aug18 WSJ.  There she instructs us that “American corporations exist only because the American people grant them charters. Those charters confer valuable privileges—such as limited legal liability for their owners—that enable businesses to turn a profit. What do Americans get in return?”  Well, for openers, the answer to that is EVERYTHING that we see around us.

Her Accountable Capitalism Act would remove corporations generating more than $1B annually from shareholder control and make them assume “fiduciary responsibilities beyond their shareholders”.  The new order would make such businesses into “benefit corporations” under a hodgepodge board and management structure which is guaranteed to completely truss up for-profit enterprises in new deep layers of regulation and litigation.  More specifically, “Benefit Corporations fundamentally change how a company is permitted to act. In addition to creating shareholder value like other for-profit companies, a Benefit Corporation must provide a general public benefit, namely, a material positive impact on society and the environment as a whole. Specific examples include providing low-income individuals or communities with beneficial products or services, preserving the environment, promoting economic opportunity, and improving health in the community.”

If that socialist cum communist has her way, then ‘Venezuela here we come’ will be the new tune on everyone’s lips.

The Democratic Party is now our openly declared socialist party in fact and deed.  It has finally realized the reason the Socialist Party of America closed its doors in 1956 – ‘the Democrats are adopting all of our social goals’ – as its former members migrated to their new political home.  Today, according to a just released Gallup poll, almost three of five Democrats view socialism favorably over capitalism, and confirm that ‘Democrats are Officially the Party of Socialism’.  But you can bet the farm that once they get back in power, they ain’t stopping there (see Fauxcahontas above).

Scattershots – 29jul18 (updated 31jul18)

George Rebane

Speaking of wholesale lying to the public, the Left’s lamestream is now telling America that the current economic surge under President Trump 1) is really just the planned outcome of all the things that Obama got started, or 2) a spontaneous act of nature like particularly wet season after a drought – actually they can’t make up their mind on that.  Today NPR’s Mara Liasson did her best on Morning Edition to downplay the latest quarter’s 4.1% growth as just the roll of the dice – sometimes good stuff happens, but don’t count on it to last.  At no time did she mention Trump’s tax cuts or regulatory roll backs, or the subsequent jump in biz confidence metrics which then were confirmed by huge increases in capital equipment investments.  The latter alone promise to give the Trump economy legs as it railroads through the midterms into the 2020 election.  Talk about the spread of Trump Anxiety Disorder (TAD).  If the economy were going south, whose name do you think the lamestream would be blaming in neon lights?

[31jul18 update]  Last night we attended a fundraising dinner for Congressman LaMalfa in Chico.  The featured guest was Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, who joined LaMalfa on the stage for an after-dinner conversation about the Russia collusion investigations.  Compared to Rep Nunes measured words on national TV, I was surprised at how much his extemporaneous and lively remarks about the investigations sounded like RR commentaries and the comments of our right-leaning readers.  He confirmed that the FBI placed and paid for at least one informer to work the Trump campaign.  And he also reported that he and the committee have seen no evidence of Dem alleged collusion, and opined that Mueller also has no evidence of same, else that would have already been leaked to the committee co-chair Dem “Shiftless” Schiff who would instantly have told every lamestream outlet about it.  Finally, Nunes went on at length wondering why Hillary and the DNC are not being investigated for Russian collusion for which evidence abounds with the Steele dossier and other communications and meetings between Dems and Russians.  In short, what we have been concerned about in these pages correctly represents the views and concerns of congressional Republicans.  Some real smelly stuff is going on in Washington.

Our Declining IQ Numbers

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 20 June 2018.]

Listeners to these commentaries over the years have heard me report on the advance of America’s national dumbth – a term coined by the late Steve Allen to describe the overall state of our understanding, interests, and intellectual acumen.  The reasons for this have been many, but mainly due to the de-emphasis of rigorous academics in our public schools over the last fifty years or so.  In any event, I was surprised to receive from a correspondent news of recent studies on the decline of IQs reported by our National Academy of Sciences, and other similar organizations in the developed world.

Ongoing longterm studies in Denmark, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Finland, and Estonia all corroborate the “downward trend” observed here in America.  First, let’s be clear that what we are talking about is not how much people know – people’s so-called knowledge base, which, of course, has also been declining over the same period.  But IQ is a prime measure of a person’s ability to process data, acquire knowledge, and make decisions.  This human attribute is critical to a society, especially technologically advanced societies, in that it directly impacts people’s ability to participate in our rapidly changing job markets.

During most of the last century our IQ scores were found to be increasing, something that came to be called the Flynn Effect by psychologists and people who keep track of such things.  IQ scores for men kept increasing until about 1975, and then something unexpected happened.  Continued testing showed that IQ scores started steadily decreasing among men born after 1975.

Detailed analysis showed that the decline was not due to a “long-believed theory known as the dysgenic fertility theory, which states that unintelligent people have more children, leading to a ‘dumbing down’ of society.”  No, research shows that the dumbing down was identified as caused by “environmental factors (which) could range from nutrition, changes in the educational system, less reading and more time spent online, (and) to changes in the media environment.” (more here, here, and here)

Others have acknowledged that we may also need to adapt IQ testing and “other traditional methods of measuring intelligence”, since times have changed and today “people are exposed to different intellectual experiences, such as changes in the use of technology, for example social media” which indicate that “educational methods need to adapt to such changes.”  But the bottom line is still that, in the aggregate and compared to their older generations, today younger people cannot do and/or readily learn to do the things that need to be done to operate a civil society.

These observations across a broad swath of developed western countries should sound an alarm that something has gone wrong with the way we as parents raise kids, and then how we as a society educate them to become the next generation of a productive, competitive, and advancing civilization.  However, there is also a danger that these warnings will be ignored or actually denigrated by political factions for reasons ideological that dictate a more homogenous world.

One political vulnerability of such research is that it continues to corroborate the longstanding differences in IQ based on race, showing that the mean IQ scores of Asians rank highest, followed by Caucasians, with the Negroid scores being significantly lower.  The American Psychological Association acknowledges these rankings despite “the absence of any adequate explanation of it, either environmental or genetic.”  (more here)

Finally, a strong corollary of all this is the increase of mental illness among young people in developed countries.  Alarming fractions of our youth are now regularly diagnosed and medicated for clinical depression and behavioral problems. (more here and here)  Statistics on the need for remedial education and teen suicide rates all tell different parts of the same story.  Among things like our public education system, we may also want to reexamine and change the way that well-to-do parents are today required to monitor and restrict our children’s activities, and how among the poorer strata, where broken families abound, kids are turned loose to find their own way on the meanest streets in town.

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 – 29may18 (updated)

George Rebane

The Great Divide debate continues as muddled as ever.  We refer to leftwing commenter jon smith’s 134pm re my 1104am in the 26may18 Sandbox.  The man(?) is apparently not aware of the years-long Great Divide debate in these pages and in the national dialogue (also referenced here, see RR’s ‘Great Divide’ category).  In this debate the Left has always taken the position that the country is to remain unified and continue its progress toward a socialist state.  The Right’s position has been to acknowledge the growing and irreversible ideological chasm, and therefore counsels adoption of a new form of republic to keep alive the Founders’ idea that the US would go forward as a multitude of ‘laboratories of democracy’, each governing according to their interpretation of the Constitution, and each implementing ‘best practices’ from other states as needed.

The Right has suggested various solutions for the Great Divide that range from partitioning existing states (e.g. SoJ movement) to forming coalitions of states into a confederacy of like-minded regions.  The Left, as also witnessed here, has always been in vehement denial of such peaceful solutions, claiming that these are treasonous, and retorting with the dictum, ‘My way, or the highway’ for those opposing their promotion of Agenda21 collectivism.  Well, at least that was so until alt-Left Californians recently started floating the idea of the state’s secession from the Union.

What one can draw from these lopsided opposing attitudes is that the Right would very much like to be relieved of those Americans who embrace the Left’s insane public policies that are leading us to tyranny through an economic morass and growing autocracy.  And conversely, we see the Left rejecting any such separation and/or change in direction, seeking instead to keep the wealth producing Americans under their heel while denying the ideological leaning of the these wealth producers.  What gives lie to their demogauging is that, if they really believed the Right to be an economic burden that is being shouldered by the Left, they would be more than happy to relieve themselves of such a burden through a Great Divide that provides appropriate economic isolation of the two schools of economics.  In short, we would be happy to be rid of them, but they don’t want to be rid of us.

California’s education woes continue.  The 29may18 SacBee reports (here) that more primary and secondary school teachers left the state (most to Texas) than we were able to attract and/or graduate from our colleges.  Census data shows that in the 2003-16 interval California lost a net of 18,000 teachers in such an out-migration.  All of this, of course, makes no nevermind to Sacramento’s collectivist chorus and their local lackeys who just continue singing ‘All is Well, All is Well’ louder than ever.  Those of us who point out our educational calamity are simply dismissed as ‘gripers’.  (H/T to reader for the heads up on this report.)

[update] On Bob Crabb’s blog I responded to Steve Frisch’s under the ‘History Regrets Itself’ post as follows – “Well, here's a revelation.  I didn't know that the Left considered Trump and Hitler to be so much alike that it would take "mental gymnastics to differentiate Trump from Hitler."  And the chasm continues to grow.”

Attempting to post my comment, I ran into a new feature of the Security Question that compels the commenter to answer a simple arithmetic problem – in my case it was supplying the answer to 10+8 – before the comment is accepted.  Instead of being able to type in the answer as usual, the site now supplies a list of possible answers from which, presumably, the commenter is to select the correct one.  In my case the supplied list contained only the numbers 12, 10, 15, 6, and allowed no other direct entry.  Since my education in this case was demonstrably deficient, I couldn’t post my comment, and am here reduced to lamenting that I may have run into a sample of Common Core math on a liberal site that would put so many of us at a disadvantage.  I assume Mr Crabb’s regular readers have no problem with this new challenge.

When will Mueller’s criminal collusion investigation (aka “witch hunt”) end?  The Left’s answer has been the easy one – it will end when Mueller finds something from which he can make a criminal case against President Trump, and not a day before.  The rest of us are hoping for a more reasonable termination the time of which we can only guess.  But it turns out that we can do better than that if we appeal to a method published way back in 1993 by Professor J. Richard Gott.  Gott applied what we in these pages may term ‘Copernican reasoning’ to derive a formula that calculates the probability that a minimally known process will terminate between now and a specified future time.  Here the minimal knowledge required is only the age of the process, or how long it has been in operation.  I have used Gott’s result and expanded on it in my work over the years – a version of it is summarized in ‘… and this too shall pass’.  (and more here)

So, what are the chances (probability) that Mueller’s investigation will stop in the next month, four months from now, before the election in November (in the next 5 months), …?  Accepting 20 months as the acknowledged duration of the ongoing investigation, we can use the appropriate Gott-Rebane formula to compute the following graph of the increasing probability of termination over the numbered future months.  As we see, the chances are one out of five that Mueller will hang it up before the election.  Now you can make book.

Mr Boardman’s dabble in STEM education

George Rebane

Our irrepressible Union columnist George Boardman’s Memorial Day contribution (here) took a swipe at those of us who “are always griping about the lack of emphasis on the STEM subjects, the math and science course that can get you a good paying job in our information-based economy.”  It’s not clear what Mr Boardman’s position is on promoting STEM oriented curricula in secondary schools, but he does attempt to make a positive impact by suggesting that the country’s high schoolers can learn STEM stuff better if the subject matter were “framed in real life situations students can relate to.”

As an example, he cites a recent NYT article about “Calculating the Risk of Getting Shot” while attending school, and recommends that students across the country busy themselves with a “math exercise to determine the chance any given high school will be the scene of the next mass shooting?”  Mr Boardman recommends this little brain teaser as the vehicle to get some math and probability learning into the little darlins’ heads since “several math concepts would be utilized in the exercise to determine the probability of a school joining the list of over 200 school shootings since the Sandy Hook massacre six years ago.”

Well, a numerate citizen would immediately realize that actually only one trivial ‘math concept’ would be used to get us the answer to this “real world math” problem.  Since there has been no evidence that any particular kind of secondary school, located anywhere in the country, would be more or less likely to be “the scene of the next mass shooting”, all secondary schools have an equal opportunity of becoming the next such scene.  The Dept of Education reports that there are 26,407 public high schools and 10,693 private high schools, or a total of 37,100 secondary schools in the country.  Hence the probability that any given school will be next is just 1/37,100 = 0.000026954.  And since there are at least hundreds of students in every such school, the probability that any given individual, such as his cited palpitating pupil, will be killed by an armed lunatic then becomes vanishingly small.

However, kids addressing this problem could learn more about propaganda and lamestream media induced histrionics – to which Mr Boardman appears to be a willing contributor - in their school shootings reports designed to abet the Left's gun control (aka constructive confiscation) agenda, than absorbing low-grade STEM concepts.  For openers they could be taught about the ongoing stream of law enforcement failures that would have prevented many of these shootings, instead of being encouraged to spend time demonstrating against the NRA, the country’s leading organization teaching gun safety and promoting Second Amendment rights.

Memorial Day - 28 May 2018

George Rebane

Once more we gratefully contemplate the terrible price paid by those who gave their all so that America may remain the land of opportunity and the home of the free.  The words and photo from Memorial Day - 30 May 2011 still apply, and this video will explain the cost.

The 21st Century Progressive Dating Game (updated 9may18)

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.  Mark Twain

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 2 May 2018.]

For millennia females in all cultures were shielded by their families.  Marriages were arranged for commercial or political benefit, love was optional and came later if at all.  Extra marital trysts and affairs were di rigeur at all levels of society.  Females were treated as chattel, to be kept on the shelf in a perfect condition for display until a desirable customer came along.

In the west, the female perquisites of love and, therefore, choice began to emerge during the Renaissance in the 1400s, and blossomed during the French Enlightenment (ca 1740).  Although almost all proper marriages were still arranged, or at a minimum still required the blessing of the prospective bride’s closest senior male relative or appointed male guardian.  As the years passed, requiring the male imprimatur became totally optional in the most developed nations during the 20^th century in the aftermath of the Great War.  This signaled the liberation of both partners, giving each gender the freedom to go through a semi-formal game of ‘pick and choose’, during which a number of prospective partners were given the ‘try before you buy’ treatment.  The dating game was on between boys and girls of all ages.

Scattershots – 19apr18 (updated 24apr18)

George Rebane

Democracy and Morals.  In the 17apr18 WSJ there was an exemplary letter on this topic, and it is posted below.

It is hard to disagree with William Galston’s contention in “The Perpetual Battle for Freedom” (Politics & Ideas, April 4) that in liberal democracies the preservation of freedom for all rests on a bedrock of fair opportunity for all.

One guesses that most people agree with Mr. Galston’s all-for-one and one-for-all sentiments, but we might not find as much common ground when it comes to what is necessary and right to heal our country. As we jettisoned Judeo-Christian values and “bourgeois norms,” our culture embraced behaviors that are impediments to achieving the American dream—at least without a massive helping hand from government. It now is deemed offensive to say that a path out of a cycle of poverty is to have children after getting married, finish high school (and, preferably, college) and find a job. Telling someone that religious faith is linked to happiness and personal generosity also is frowned on. Too many in the afflicted groups cited by Mr. Galston don’t want help from individuals doling out charity out of the goodness of their big hearts. They want help that they feel entitled to from a system that they think has let them down.

It is far easier to address partisan rancor than it is to settle on core values and collective responsibilities in our new secular-progressive culture. I suspect that restoring traditional values isn’t what most progressives have in mind when they define what they know in their hearts is necessary and right to heal our country. Collective responsibility for individuals and individual freedoms for the collective may be an unworkable formula for a secular-progressive society.

Jay Carter, Silver Spring, Md.

Mr Carter draws our attention to a society that just a short time ago would have been deemed unbelievable.  Political correctness expands and mutates faster than Newspeak and global alliances did in Orwell’s 1984.  I want to add to your thoughts the consideration of a democracy as a commons that must needs suffer all the weaknesses that Garrett Hardin described in his 1968 landmark essay The Tragedy of the Commons.

Reckless and criminal parents.  To go along with the above look into progressive insanity that has firmly ensconced itself in our fair land, I draw your attention to another well written summary on today’s draconian principles – enforced by the government gun and prison time and potential loss of your children – that dictate what parents can(not) do with their kids.  And we wonder where all these snowflakes came from.  Here’s an apropos letter from the 16apr18 WSJ.

Let me see if I have this correct: Contemporary American children as young as five years old are considered educated and wise enough to choose their gender, which will have life-altering affects due to the nature of how the brain hard-wires itself at such a young age, yet allowing children of any age the free range and responsibility to simply play up the street from their own home is a prosecutable crime. (“Parents, You Can Stop Helicoptering” by Lenore Skenazy, March 30).

It’s the absolute truth to say virtually everything my parents did to raise me and my four siblings back in the 1960s and ’70s is illegal and prosecutable by today’s standards. Who knew my parents and other adults in those days were so reckless and criminal?

America has become a very sick society, and if the whole of the population doesn’t take a deep introspective examination of itself then the social damage will be too deep to correct. The tragic irony is that all this child-protecting excess in today’s America is having the unintended consequence of creating the exact opposite environment to producing happy, healthy children who grow up to live as well-adjusted adults. It’s tragic.

Kevin A. Capps, Corona del Mar, Calif.

[22apr18 update]  Jonah Goldberg, editor of the National Review and Fox News commentator, has written a new book (see cover image) with an accompanying essay (here) which I just finished reading before ordering the book that comes out this Thursday.  The essay and the book are scholarly extensions of what we have been discussing on RR for over a decade – The death of Western culture, the impetus for a Great Divide, and the assault on the “miracle” of liberal-democracy and capitalism.  For progressives – especially the local liberal worthies who continue believe that all such thoughts are the ravings of the few, the old, the isolated - who really want to know the historical basis for what has rendered us into a polarized nation with no visible means of rapprochement, they should read Goldberg.  There is little/no hope of changing minds, but as we shout at each other over the growing chasm, understanding what the other thinks might be important to know.  (more here and here)

[24apr18 update]  Lack of housing for the homeless concerns the Rev Becky Goodwin in the 24apr18 Union.  After giving us her lifetime resume of good works, she laments the shortage of needed affordable roofs over the heads of Nevada County’s homeless population (indigenous and imported).  Her best advice is to have rental unit owners lower their rents to charity levels so that those needing low cost housing can afford to live there while the landlord loses money (and can’t get rid of his new found ‘permanent’ renters).  Unfortunately, the dear lady shows no understanding of the difference between market-driven low cost housing and government-mediated affordable housing.  She makes no appeal to our county’s governments to roll back regulations on developers who would gladly supply the appropriate low cost housing that would satisfy demand, and perhaps too well.  But we continue to muddle forward with California’s horrendous self-inflicted homeless problem repeating our Board of Supervisors’ mantra, ‘There’s nothing we can do about building regulations.’

The animal shelter kerfuffle.  Placer County is bidding against Nevada County’s contractor Sammy’s Friends to become our next animal care and adoption agency.  Placer County’s facility is in Auburn where you would have to go to adopt an animal should you be so disposed.  I haven’t a clue why we just don’t give the contract to the most distant bidder available so as to minimize the somewhat questionable tendency of some people wanting to bring the mutts back to Nevada County.  I suspect that many of them will be recycled into that ‘catch and release’ program when the adoptive owners go through their ‘Oh s#!t’ experience with their new critter sporting a dubious/unknown resume.  To show the unique tinges of insanity in our new progressive culture, Nevada County stores display at checkout counters about three to four contribution boxes for critters for every one for humans.  I guess that’s because it’s the gummint that’s supposed to help humans, and there’s no one else to keep the unwanted animals out of our gasless euthanasia chambers.

SacBee on the slippery slope to the great beyond.  A correspondent gives us a heads up that this much celebrated liberal rag cannot make it in the capital of America’s socialist vanguard.  The recent round of layoffs cuts through the meat and right into the bone.  Their “job cuts includes (sic) 14 journalists, 12 of whom were represented by the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Another eight positions were cut from the newspaper's production department, said Ed Fletcher, a reporter at the Sacramento Bee and a representative of the guild.”  They have been a ‘woke’ newspaper in the heart of liberal land, and still nobody gives a crap about the pabulum they continue to spew.  All that their former readers want is more ‘social justice’ that is measured by a bigger government check.

Par Force in the Second Amendment

George Rebane

On the morning of 19 April 1775, the communities surrounding Boston were awakened by riders alerting the colonial Americans that a battalion of British were marching out of Boston toward Lexington and Concord.  They were coming to confiscate a cache of arms and ammunition that the colonials had collected for the anticipated mounting resistance to years of tyranny by the Crown in distant England.  Later in the day the British regulars would be met by an ad hoc militia who would drive them back toward Boston while taking heavy losses before the colonials, out of ammunition, had to withdraw.

Word of the successful armed resistance spread throughout the colonies like wildfire.  The demonstration of what armed citizens could accomplish against arguably the best army in the world was simply inspirational and communicated the very hopeful art of the possible.  The battle marked the beginning of our Revolutionary War, and was soon followed by equally inspirational pitched battles such as that on Bunker (Breed’s) Hill a few weeks later.  The revolution was on.

In the early part of the war, all citizens forming into militias were required to provide their own weapons, ammunition, and generally their entire kit for operations in the field.  They were required to respond to the call to arms “at a minute’s notice”, hence they became known as Minute Men.

Ruminations – 9apr18 (updated 14apr18)

George Rebane

‘No Labels’ is a mighty effort by some Washington DC types from both sides to propose what they see as carefully crafted bipartisan solutions to our nation's problems.  The activities of these good-hearted people have been covered here before.  But it appears they have overstepped their Left-approved bounds endorsing the wrong Democrat candidate in an Illinois congressional district, and consequently were severely vilified by the “far left” (more here).  Apparently it is OK to be ‘bipartisan’ as long as you toe the approved line, and don’t get carried away with moderation. 

That blacks now practice a racist attitude against whites in academe – seeing “white privilege” everywhere – is recounted (here) by Zachary Wood, president of Uncomfortable Learning that promotes free speech on campuses.  He describes his conversation with a noted African-American historian at Harvard who is “not interested in negotiating with racists”.  These racists are whites considered not to be “woke”, the new term of art describing people who accept the progressives’ worldview and, if white, acknowledge their intrinsic racism and guilt in an obligatory preamble to every conversation with a black.  It seems that black elites have now consigned the rest of their genetic peers to the kingdom of eternal victimhood from which the way out is not known.

Smog is NOT made up mostly of vehicle exhausts.  That's a new shot in the shorts for our econazis who most recently got on President Trump’s case for rolling back Obama’s fuel-mileage regulations.  A new study by the Univ of Colorado, and published in the prestigious Science, showed that gasoline fuel and exhaust contribute to and make up less than a third of the ozone and smog which have plagued cities in the past.  It’s illuminating to find out all the other contributors to smog, including dirt, which according to another recent study reports that “cropland and natural sources contribute up to 40% of California’s NOx emissions – about 10 times as much as the California Air Resources Board has estimated.  Motor vehicles make up about 30%.” (more here)

[10apr18 update]  So far the Dems in Congress have initiated 50 cloture votes to deny committee vetted candidates for various offices nominated by President Trump.  There were only 15 TOTAL of such clotures for the previous four presidents - Obama, Bush2, Clinton, Bush1.  The Dems are sowing the wind and we know what they will reap.  And all of it abets the Great Divide.

Calexit and the Great Divide.  Does anyone else notice how easily the Left welcomes the calving of a state from the Union when it is done to promote the cause of socialism, and weaken the United States?  And California's socialists are using the same argument that is used by the State of Jefferson movement to create Northern California WITHIN the Union - namely, that the aggrieved are not properly represented in the next highest jurisdiction of governance.  But when SOJ proponents advanced their arguments about the absence of representation in Sacramento - a controlling one-party, super-majority legislature under a hyper socialist governor - then the Left filled the pages of our media, including RR comment streams, with accusations that characterized such an enterprise, as somewhere from foolish to treasonous.  (google 'Calexit')

A dominant superstition of the Left is "the belief in the miraculous powers of the mighty state and its institutions" (N. Taleb), the misplacement of which has been demonstrated countless times; to which progressives respond, 'Yes, but this time it will be different.'  Einstein had something to say about such hopeful assessments.

[14apr18 update]  Union columnist Darrel Berkheimer tells us how “Republicans (are) facing decline to irrelevancy” (here).  We have covered some previous contributions of Mr Berkheimer who continues to expose his historically sheltered side to the public.  While his intended audience joins him in the clueless class, many of us remember similar celebrations in 2014 and most recently in 2016.  These pages serve as a handy record of offerings from the devotees of a one-party state.

Syria gets a wee slap on the wrist to satisfy required international political optics as the US, Great Britain, and France pepper three inconsequential facilities with precision missile strikes so as not to hurt anyone too badly, or maybe at all.  Nevertheless, as Ramirez points out, there are a bunch of bad actors in the Levant and mid-east who have yet to be dealt with.

We’re honored: The Union wins 16 California Journalism Awards, including first place for General Excellence

Here's one to frost the external plumbing of certain alt-Left extremists hereabouts.  The Union, much denigrated by those who consider themselves journalists several notches above our mighty little Nevada County trumpet, has pulled down some impressive accolades.  Much credit to the our paper's publisher and editor, and the fine staff that they manage to pull the whole thing together.  We are proud and fortunate to have such a newspaper right here in River City - Congrats guys and gals!  

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 of Creation.

Scattershots – 24mar18 (updated 28mar18)

George Rebane

Today’s Union has an excellent editorial – ‘Our View: This community is all our backyard’ – in which it takes to task those of us who tend to oppose anything that will bring needed change to our county.  The editorial goes through a number of recent and current development initiatives that have again run into strong headwinds from the usual contingents.  Even though our electeds make a significant contribution to the sand in our gears, but “we can't lay all the problems we face at the doorstep of our elected leaders. Our community could use a sea change about what shape it should take and what direction it should go.”  And in these pages we have been promoting such a sea change for years as our population stagnates, families move elsewhere, and potential new businesses give us a pass once they get a good whiff of the county’s new political face.  I give a big ‘Amen’ to that sea change, and a H/T to Bob Crabb for his contribution (filched from the 24mar18 Union) to the dialogue.

This weekend the nation’s progressively propelled pubertistas are marching in opposition to what they know not, but easily accept as ‘gun violence’.  In a recent post we covered the launch of this nascent lamestream-lauded movement under ‘Progressives Pander Pubertistas’.  What should continue to interest all of us is how the country’s adults view these marches comprised of ignorant and emotional young people, enthralled in the first flood of hormones evolved to mediate the journey from childhood to an adult.  Easily assembled and directed, all of them sport brains that clinical science tells us are yet years from being fully formed for taking reliably rational decisions.  To see who seeks to benefit from franchising these anxious and anxiety ridden works-in-progress, just take a look at the politicians, organizations, and media that promote them.  Long ago our Founders built on the then already known progress of human development, and made it law of the land that no one could be elected into a federal policy making office before the age of twenty-five.  And we also know how past childrens’ crusades have ended.

[25mar18 update]  Meteorologists, you gotta love ‘em.  The recent couple of weeks here in Northern California have again amply demonstrated their prowess at forecasting what they are paid to forecast – the weather.  These guys make economists and stock pickers look good, and I have no idea how they steel themselves before accepting another paycheck for their work.  As one who has some acquaintance with estimation theory, the work of the meteorologists is below sophomoric; most certainly, none of their computer models work.  It is clear that any claim of having improved their sophistry over the years is not due to their increased understanding of the processes that drive the weather.  Their performance, such as it is, can all be laid to having a better view (data and imagery from orbit and reporting surface stations) of what is ‘upstream’ of their prediction area.  Then they look at past records of what such observations have actually delivered, and go from there.  But even then they screw up, apparently never having heard of the good Rev Bayes as their ‘100% chance of rain’ pronouncements confirm.

[28mar18 update]  WSJ's leftwing columnist William Galston may have had an epiphany which, in all fairness, I must recognize.  In the paper's 28mar18 edition he writes a piece on 'The Case for Responsible Nationalism', and surprises us with -

National governments are not required to value the citizens of other countries as highly as their own. A degree of self-preference is morally justified and politically essential. Leaders in advanced countries are not obligated to practice global utilitarianism or lift up the global poor at the expense of their working and middle classes. ... There will probably never be a real world government. There are no “global citizens.” People belong to sovereign states with different languages, cultures and institutions. Free societies are composed of citizens who agree to share a common fate and to work out their destiny through accountable politics. They undertake special responsibilities toward their fellow citizens, and the policies of free governments must take these reciprocal commitments into account.

Those Who Can, Can’t, or Won’t

George Rebane

Colleges and universities will “soon begin to divide into two entities—the STEM fields and related practical subjects (i.e., business and economics), and the social sciences and humanities, which would start to shrivel under the weight of the degradations the left has inflicted over the last 40 years.”  So writes Steven Hayward in ‘The Higher Ed Crack Up Begins’ to which a reader and correspondent draws our attention.  The degradations to public education have been covered extensively in these pages over the years, and the anticipated ‘crack up’ described by Hayward is long overdue.

Our public institutions of higher learning already naturally divide their curricula into what I will call productive courses and today’s leftwing ideological “fever swamps”, consisting mostly of the ‘xx studies departments’ – you know the ones I’m talking about.  Carrying out this kind of divisions over the land will not be easy, and there are plenty of opportunities to unintentionally cut off some desirable meat with the proverbial fat.  Hayward points to some things that must be carefully considered in doing this surgery.

If we want to view this restructuring from a more encompassing perspective, we inevitably encounter and must answer the question, ‘What is the function of education within a defined society?’  The answer quickly begins forming around the society’s attempt to achieve two prime objectives – survival and enhancing the quality of life.  To survive, a society must successfully pass on to future generations the culture that defines it and makes it unique – among such cultural attributes are its language, history, values, mores, traditions, religions, …; essentially their commonly held ontology.

To provide the economic basis for enhancing a society members’ quality of life, it must also pass on needed skill sets, functioning infrastructure, and the means by which wealth can be created and accrued.  We are, of course, clear on the mutual support that achieving these two objectives provide each other.

The members of societies long ago realized that some of the educational efforts required to achieve these things necessitate collective action – pooling their private resources to work together in an organized manner.  This immediately called for the formation of collective institutions to carry out needed functions – among these are the military, emergency responders (e.g. law enforcement, fire, medical), and, of course, education.  But why education?