Rebane's Ruminations

NZ Massacre – the Left’s new perfect storm

“Conservatism is corporatism in disguise.  I want no part of it. … The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China. … Conservatism is dead, thank God.”  Australian Brenton Tarrant, NZ shooter

George Rebane

The Christchurch massacre has been covered extensively and also received an initial go-through by RR commenters.  As always happens in the coverage of such massacres, they are characterized as ‘insane’, ‘the acts of a deranged person’, and ‘senseless killings’.  I have always thought that we’re missing something significant about these mass killings when we dismiss them as such.  Years ago, I gave my own take on these killers of the Islamic persuasion in ‘Of Ragheads and Racism’.  However, it should be clear that those sentiments are not restricted to terrorists of only one persuasion; there is a lot happening in this world which requires a wider and more detailed look.

Scattershots – 18mar19

George Rebane

Sen Liz Warren wants to reduce the size of big techs.  As we know, big corporations get that way and survive by practicing the fine art of corporatism.  That means essentially working with politicians and bureaucrats to buy competitive advantage through laws, regs, taxation, etc (all the ways that govt mangles markets) in exchange for contributing their monies through various channels to assure re-election success.  If Warren were an honest woman, she would know that corporations automatically resize themselves once you pull out the mechanisms of govt support.  IBM and GE discovered that for themselves.  There is nothing magical about big centrally controlled bureaucracies in the private sector being more efficient than the same organizational structures in government – both ultimately reach an inefficient size.  Corporations must suffer the uncompromising feedback from competitive markets, while governments – with the power of the gun – are immune to productive feedback and can keep on screwing up forever.  (more here)

TechTestJr 2019 was given on 5-6 March at the corporate campuses of AJA Video and Telestream (NC Tech Connection is also a corporate sponsor).  This year over 100 fifth through eighth graders took the STEM merit scholarship test which is sponsored and administered by the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation.  TTjr was launched eight years ago by Mr Mike McDaniel, and board member Mr David Pistone has been the director of TTjr for the last six years.  TechTest2019 for Nevada County juniors and seniors will be administered again this year on 30 March (9-1pm) in the NUHS Science Lecture Hall.  This is TT’s 13^th year as the county’s premier merit scholarship test for students heading for STEM majors in college.  The annual test is preceded by two seminars of which I gave the last one this past Saturday morning at NUHS.  (I have written the test and given these seminars since the beginning, and am now in the process of turning over the writing and reins of this project to younger turks.)  NUHS math teacher Mr Kevin Baker is the TT Academic Coordinator who will administer the test. (more here)

Union columnist George Boardman followed Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters Greg Diaz off the rails with his 18mar19 column repeating the fake news with his “WHY DOES the Nevada County Tea Party want to discourage people from voting in the special election? Are they afraid the wrong Republican will win?”  This politically motivated error was covered in my last KVMR commentary, ‘Election Integrity – one more time’.  Mr Boardman’s insistence that he views our fables and follies “… from the center stripe” continues to bring a smile to those who can clearly see from which side of the road he continues to do his reporting.

 

Election Integrity - one more time

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 13 March 2019.]

We have a special election coming up to fill the state’s Senate seat for District #1.  Nevada County is in District #1 and election day is Tuesday March 26^th.  This special election has again raised concerns about who may and how should people be able to vote.  Mr Greg Diaz, Nevada County’ s Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters has stepped into the dialogue in a highly partisan manner for someone holding a non-partisan office.

He gave an unfortunate interview in the 12mar19 Union (here) in which he falsely characterized Nevada County Tea Party’s position on voting, claiming “I can't have it when someone's telling people not to vote, or not to vote their vote-by-mail ballot”, and stating that “Their true intent: is to make it more difficult for folks to vote.”  These highly political charges are wrong on all counts, since the Tea Party actually supports the advice and counsel of California’s Election Integrity Project, and clearly says that on its website (here).

Scattershots – 11mar19 (updated 14mar19)

George Rebane

Looking for national conspiracies?  Now here is one that involves everyone from George Soros through the DoJ/FBI to the DNC/Hillary.  “A dark money group with links to several high-profile liberal activists contributed $2 million to The Democracy Integrity Project, an organization founded by a former Dianne Feinstein staffer that has contracted with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to investigate President Donald Trump.” (more here)  But no one gives a hoot after the FBI’s historical public exoneration of Hillary after confirming that she did indeed break several laws dealing with national security and destroying subpoenaed evidence.

The EU’s socialist-burdened, debt-ladened countries have had a hard time taking advantage of the global upswing in business, and appear to be heading for a slowdown if not recession.  With low growth rates and still high unemployment, the continent added another harbinger as investors are exiting stocks and bidding up government bonds.  The German bund last Friday was paying 0.04% or essentially no interest as a safe haven for cash.  This, of course, sets up a vicious circle in which left-leaning countries regulate and tax their businesses to low profits, which causes their shares to be sold off, which reduces business expansion and hiring, which bids up bonds thereby lowering government debt service costs, which provides governments essentially free money to borrow and dispense into programs that grow bureaucracies and launch more programs of socialist largess, which makes the business climate even worse, which … .  Our Democrats are taking notes on how to replicate such policies on this side of the pond.

[12mar19 update]  Finland’s government collapses over healthcare costs (here).  Other Nordics are not far behind as has been reported here for some time now.  None of these socialist programs nationalizing this or that are sustainable – it’s only a matter of time when other people’s money runs out.  H/T to a Sandbox commenter for finding an early report of it.  You can bet the ranch that the lamestream will hide this as long as it can, and proto-communists like Bernie and AOC will lie through their teeth about the news.  Their solution will, of course, be even higher taxes (aka wealth redistribution).  We all await our progressive pundits’ response for an enlivening conversation; sure hope they don’t send in their cricket corps.

NPR’s Morning Edition today featured a segment on what our 2050 world will look like after we have stopped emitting CO2 and global warming has been stopped in its tracks.  The reporter was almost delirious with joy reporting from the future and looking back on what it took to get to the brave new world where people live in ‘stack & pack’ housing, suburbia was no more, private electric vehicles cost a lot, were taxed a lot, and all roadways charged dynamic fees to keep you using public transportation. That future world was envisioned quite accurately by Orwell’s 1984, and even portrayed more honestly in Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago.  Big suburban houses will repurposed for multi-family living, and standard houses will be home to 4-5 people sharing kitchen and bathroom facilities.  (The Rebanes lived almost five years in such lodgings after WW2.  See ‘My Story’)  What the report conveniently omitted was what draconian measures it would take for government to herd people into such warrens and then keep them from revolting, and what would happen to the economy when taking risks was no longer rewarded, or even allowed by central planners and controllers.

[14mar19 update]  Second Amendment attack by Connecticut's Supreme Court in ruling that manufacturer of the Sandy Hook AR-15 can be sued. (more here) This is more than a gun control nose under the 2nd Amendment tent.  If this ruling is allowed to stand, then where will this kind of rogue litigations stop?  The implication is that the manufacturer of a tool legally made for legal use can be held accountable for its illegal uses.  What then of knife makers, or hatchet makers, or baseball bat makers, or rat poison makers, or rope makers, or even manufacturer of a car used by a terrorist or drunkard to kill people?  What then of the item's distributors and dealers?  You get the idea.  'The Left is evil' gets another confirming check mark.

The Amygdala Struggles (updated 10mar19)

George Rebane

Peggy Noonan (8mar19 WSJ) draws a useful parallel between Mao’s 12-year Cultural Revolution and the present-day antics of the Blue Mobs on campuses and our streets.  Both roilings have involved pre-intellectual young people, mostly students in each country’s academe.  And both sought/seek to banish politically incorrect traditions, customs, learning, behaviors, and thinking.  Mao’s revolution followed a devastating famine, brought on by his extremely ignorant economic policies, which reportedly killed Chinese in the high tens of millions by several post-Mao accountings.  (Liberal media have since sought to reduce that number down to the low millions.)

And today as then, both types of ‘gatherings’ with shouting throngs of young people were directed to identify and publicly shame those politically incorrect who sought to speak, comment, write, or attend in places their betters identified as being out of bounds.  These ‘struggle sessions’ (Chinese term), conducted by the youth who became the Red Guards, would take place in streets, conference halls, legislative chambers, classrooms, administrative offices, and wherever else such targeted people could be found, hounded, transported, or summarily executed.  As then, today the so-accused also have learned to quickly admit their guilt in the attempt to limit added opprobrium.  Leading the currently accused by the hard-Left are self-deprecators from the ranks of Democrat politicians like Kirsten Gillibrand and Joe Biden who have quickly pled ‘guilty as charged’ and recanted.

Ruminations - 3mar19 (updated 6mar19)

George Rebane

California's ruling families.  Well, here are some interesting links among the Browns, Newsoms, Pelosis, and Gettys on the goings on in California politics.  It appears to be a very cozy bunch.  I invite our leftwing brethren (and cistern) to counter any of the presented facts - in short, shoot down the message and ignore the messenger.

The UFK's knowledge of Warmbier's death is independent of the US declaring that NK was responsible for a reprehensible violation of human rights, and neither can be characterized as heaping "lavish praise" on the Ugly Fat Kid.  Why is that such a difficult concept to parse in our national dialogue?  Could it be that there might be some anti-Trump cynicism involved?

Nuclear power is the answer, a persuasive argument by Michael Shellenberger of the Environmental Progress in his ‘Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet’.  This is something we techies have known and been able to demonstrate for some time now.  Shellenberger, a dedicated environmentalist, adds some more reasons why the politically powered renewables industry has the potential of actually destroying the planet, and (seatbelts please) even climate scientist Hockeystick Hanson has calculated that nuclear power has saved 2M lives to date that would have been lost to air pollution had that power been generated by fossil fuels.  The piece is worth a read, especially by those who have been making a living on the government's renewable energy subsidies tit.

[4mar19 update]  Globotics Upheaval by Richard Baldwin is about today's growth of systemic unemployment and asks “How do we cope with a sudden trade-related loss of jobs that can’t be stopped with quotas or tariffs? How do we keep society together when most employment in the information, service and financial sectors can abruptly be shifted abroad to workers earning much lower wages? And how do we deal with the anger that is likely to swell as articulate, well-educated people find their skills devalued by technological changes that they cannot escape? These are questions Mr. Baldwin deserves credit for raising.”  Well, longtime RR readers know that Baldwin and his reviewer Marc Levinson are members of a cadre with high-falootin’ credentials, all of whom today are about 15 years late in recognizing and becoming concerned about this pre-Singularity ‘upheaval’.

[5mar19 update]  A reader sent me a link to a Brookings Institute site that has a lot of tables and graphics which are compiled under 'A vast majority of counties showed increased support in 2018 House election'.  The data presented, if it holds, does not look good for Republicans in 2020.  Which again makes me think of Jefferson's 'A nation ignorant and free ...'.

[6mar19 update]  The lamestream is finally reporting the national crisis at the border, but without actually calling it such.  For months the Border Patrol et al have been reporting record numbers of illegal aliens, including families, penetrating the border and being arrested.  The number who evade capture are unknown.  But now Congress is taking testimony from people like Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin MacAeenan who reports that our ability to handle the border’s illegal traffic is now overwhelmed, and “the situation is not sustainable”.  Meanwhile, our anti-American Left along with a congressional cadre of useful idiots keep telling the country that there is no national emergency. (more here and here)

“It’s very clear that the president obstructed justice.” Claimed Jerry Nadler, House Judiciary Committee chairman, adding that “we don’t have the facts yet” and that’s why “impeachment is a long way down the road.”  Conclusion first, supporting facts later. Adam Schiff is the like-minded Red Queen of the House Intelligence Committee who is already certain that Mueller screwed up by not finding any evidence of Russia collusion, and to him TrumpJr’s meeting with the Russian lawyer in Trump Tower is evidence enough that Donald and Vladimir threw the 2016 election.  We notice the same tack of evidence-free conclusions routinely taken by our leftwing readers in these pages. (more here)

'Investigations over economy' is the Dems’ strategy for 2020 reports Jason Riley of the WSJ and Manhattan Institute.  The progressives are totally bereft of any productive national policies at which thinking people don’t cringe, so their strategy is to create enough dust and fog to overwhelm any news of the country’s continuing economic progress under Trump.  Somewhere Team Nancy cum Chuckie decided that since they can’t put a cork into the Left’s butt-stupid, socialist initiatives like Green New Deal and Medicare for All, they have to raise the noise level in their compliant fake news channels with the only thing they have left – congressional investigations in the House.  (more here)

Scattershots – 28feb19 (updated 2mar19)

George Rebane

Trump won big in Hanoi.  By walking away with a smile when the Ugly Fat Kid overreached by offering to give some to get all, our president maintained his creds and caused the UFK to call a midnight news conference to claim a misunderstanding – ‘No, no, no, we didn’t demand that all the sanctions be lifted.’  Bullshit; Trump would never have left had not the UFK overplayed his hand.  Now, with visions of a prosperous Vietnam in his head, the UFK will be ready for some real give and take – I predict that he will seek the next meeting before the end of this year.  In the meantime the friendly parting will maintain the UFK’s good behavior – no testing.  All in all, a brilliant piece of foreign policy with a country that for 60+ years no other president has made any progress.

RR has concluded early and often (here) that our Millennials are America’s dumbest generation – both they and their parents were ‘educated’ in leftwing unionized public schools.  That most of them now view socialism favorably over open market capitalism gives abundant testimony that they will readily vote America into tyranny.  The culmination of dumbth indeed.

Union columnist Terry McLaughlin reminds us (here) in detail of how biased and one-sided are our lamestream media.  After two years of investigating Trump’s supposed “collusion” with Russia to throw the 2016 election, on 12feb19 NBC reported, “After two years and interviewing more than 200 witnesses, the Senate Intelligence Committee has not uncovered any direct evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. That's according to sources on both the Republican and the Democratic side of the aisle."  During this time the lamestream devoted more than 36 hours of intense coverage attempting to convince America that the evidence for collusion existed and was about to be released.  Instead of banner headlines for this announcement, all the lamestream outlets together basically ignored the bipartisan announcement from the Senate committee.  “But just take a moment to sit back and compare 2,202 minutes of media coverage of potential collusion with Russia — with supposedly unbiased journalists accusing a sitting American president of misconduct, lack of patriotism, impeachable offenses, or worse — to the less than one minute of coverage within the first 48 hours of an announcement that no evidence has actually been uncovered in a serious two-year bipartisan investigation, and it is abundantly clear why many Americans have lost faith in the honesty and trustworthiness of the media.”

Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein, our favorite manager of the masses (here), has a new book On Freedom.  There he argues that too much freedom is really not all that good for us – “What if people do not know how to find their way?” - that certain unnamed elites should really be in positions to mercifully limit our choices to only the proper ones, and then “nudge” us to the correct one before we stray too far from the social ideal, this to be prevented by structuring the country’s “choice architecture”.  While Big Brother looms large in the background, Sunstein never quite explains “which of us deserves the exalted position to design and impose nudges on others, and for what ends?” (more here)  But not to worry, after the Green New Deal gets into gear, Bernie, Nancy, Chuck, and AOC will know exactly how to set up such ‘exalted positions’; all we have to do is vote correctly in 2020.

Italy will offer Universal Basic Income real soon now.  They’re going to make up the shortfall for all people earning less than their poverty threshold – but wait!  If you subsequently get a job or a better paying job, then the government will cut back you UBI payments to the extent that your earnings exceed that threshold.  Now that brilliant tactic is really going to motivate people to go work and get paid less. (more here)  Finland already had to roll up its experiment with UBI because people got real used to living on unearned handouts and only put forth effort in the black markets to increase their (untaxable) incomes.  To their benefit, even a bunch of Italy’s leftwing politicians are worried about this UBI’s impact on the national fisc which, next to Greece, is Europe’s shakiest.  The UBI was ushered in by the electorate voting for socialist Luigi Di Maio who was able to marshal Italy’s byzantine legislative machinery to launch their UBI.  That’s what enough not-too-bright voters and socialists candidates can do – given our Millennials, along with Bernie, Liz, and Kamala, we should not be too sanguine when next year rolls around.

[2mar19 update]  The crippling counters by our leftwing politicians and courts to stopping illegal entrants and contraband is having the predicted impact – more people than ever are climbing border fences and walls.  Government stats cite “The proportion of foreign nationals attempting to cross the border illegally rather than reporting to legal ports of entry has risen in the past year, according to the data. Those crossing illegally made up 73 percent of all border crossings from October 2017 to January 2018 and then rose to 83 percent for the same period of time ending on Jan. 31, 2019, NBC News reported Friday.” (more here)  Why’s that?  Well, we all know that most entrants claiming asylum don’t have a leg to stand on, and before Trump they were admitted at legal crossing points, told to appear in a US immigration court at some future date, and then turned loose never to be seen again.  Today we tell such asylum seeker to stay in Mexico until their court date comes up.  But the overwhelming share of them know they can’t qualify for asylum, so they go back to Mexico and then attempt illegal crossings somewhere down the line where they think the border is most porous.  Today they’re coming in over such porous spots at just the underside of a million a year because we can't do the right thing and build the needed wall/fence border security infrastructure.  And the anti-American Left continues to trumpet through their lamestream outlets that this does not constitute a national emergency.  (BTW, the size of an army division is about 15,000 troops.  At 80,000 illegal entrants per month, that is like an invasion force of five divisions each and every month.  And we haven’t even started reviewing the growing dollar cost of illegals in the country.)

CA GOP RIP (soon)

George Rebane

Last week I attended a candidates’ luncheon put on by the NC Republican Women Federated, undeniably the most active and productive party organization in the county.  Featured were the four candidates running for State Senate from our district – Brian Dahle, Rex Hime, Kevin Kiley, Theodore Dziuba.  Each a fine gentleman, and each gave good account of themselves during their turn at the mic.  When Q&A time came, my card was one of those drawn for the candidates to answer – ‘What plan does the CA Republican Party have for its resurgence in the state?’

None of the four knew of any such plan, and each spent their time rehashing pabulum for the assembled that we must all work harder for the 2020 election to seat more Republicans – and this was right before the party’s big statewide convention this past weekend.  On a follow-up question I pointed out that statewide and local Dems were organized to a tee, demonstrating every issue at every opportunity, prominent in the media, harvesting voters at the grass roots level, and in general eating our lunch.  The candidates' individual responses could be summed by ‘Well yeah, we could do that also.’  Most attendees were a bit aghast at such a presentation by local party stalwarts.

The CA Democrats’ super-majorities in all things political has pretty much stunned the Republicans, and the malady seems to have spread statewide.  Edward Ring, co-founder of the California Policy Center, has posted ‘California’s GOP Plays It Safe, When Safe Equals Death’, which may be considered as a pre-post-mortem for the CA GOP.  (H/T to correspondent)

Longtime RR readers are aware of my litany of criticisms about how the CA Republican Party has been organizing the state’s conservatives and libertarians to stand up and promote their values and vision for America’s future and the revival of our Golden State. 

Scattershots – 25feb19 (updated 26feb19)

George Rebane

In ‘America’s Second Civil War’ by Dennis Prager, he makes the case of the Great Divide stating that, save for slavery, Americans are further apart in how they think about their country and in which direction should be its future, than during the “First Civil War” in the 19th century.  He writes in Townhall.com that “Liberalism -- which was anti-left, pro-American and deeply committed to the Judeo-Christian foundations of America; and which regarded the melting pot as the American ideal, fought for free speech for its opponents, regarded Western civilization as the greatest moral and artistic human achievement and viewed the celebration of racial identity as racism -- is now affirmed almost exclusively on the right and among a handful of people who don't call themselves conservative. … The left, however, is opposed to every one of those core principles of liberalism. … Like the left in every other country, the left in America essentially sees America as a racist, xenophobic, colonialist, imperialist, warmongering, money-worshipping, moronically religious nation.”  This has been a seminal part of Rebane Doctrine and the RR commentaries that have expanded on these points over the years.  This message will continue here as long as it is allowed to be published.

Gov Gavin Newsom is part of the leftwing clatch that supported CA’s bullet train to nowhere and blew billions in its abortive and aborted construction.  CA having violated literally every part of the agreement with the feds for getting dollars from Washington, Trump now has stopped further funding and wants to claw back what the state has fraudulently received.  Newsom unabashedly lies in stating that the state has complied, and is really not stopping the project, but merely reducing its scope to have it now go from nowhere to nowhere on the remaining funds. (more here)  Ultimately he’ll have to go back to CA voters for more money, and he’ll probably get it from a now-dominant Democrat electorate, most of whom don’t pay very much or any taxes.  To them it will all be OPM from the greedy rich.

Edelman Intelligence conducted a recent poll which revealed that “53% of California residents are considering leaving the Golden State because of the high cost of living.” A higher share (62%) of “respondents said they believed the best days of California were in the past.” (more here and here)  This in the face of a continuing barrage of leftwing lies telling us that the state is in fine fettle with all the right-thinking people happy dancing in the streets.  As also witnessed on these pages, the progressives maintain that only the narrow-minded, ignorant conservatives are disgruntled because the Republican party has become irrelevant in Sacramento and major metropolitan areas.  People voting with their feet tell a different story.

Trump and the Ugly Fat Kid will meet again, this time in Vietnam, to continue talking about North Korea’s 'denuclearization', a concept yet to be defined by the parties.  And you can bet the ranch that their current definitions are not even close.  Here’s my take on Trump’s plan forward.  He knows the UFK cannot give up his nuclear program for the simple reason that he and his family will then be killed by the high level echelon of generals that surrounds him (because they and their families will also live only so long as the regime survives, otherwise they too will be dead meat).  So Trump will be satisfied to continue these talks, claiming progress as long as NK doesn’t resume missile flights and underground testing.  When he leaves office and a more weaker-looking Democrat (a la Obama) takes over, the UFK will immediately resume testing and threatening that will bring the world to the brink again, and also solidify his grip on his regime.  At that point Trump and the Repubs will point out that it was their clever foreign policy that kept the world safe, and now look what’s happening with the naïve Dem leadership in power.  This will be known as Trump’s Grand Ropadope to avoid war on the Korean peninsula for which no one seems to have a stomach.

[26feb19 update]  Henderson’s population surges past Reno’s as Californians arrive in droves to escape taxes, fees, regulations, and prices (especially for living units).  The numbers are truly amazing as again reported in ‘As California Loses People, a Las Vegas Suburb Grows’.  California’s small net population growth is made possible by an equally massive influx of immigrants and illegal aliens, and a high birthrate contributed by resident minorities.  Progressives are the only political segment of California’s population that is totally sanguine if not celebratory about this demographic dynamic.  The rest of us chickens continue wondering how long the state can carry on with an ever smaller cohort of highly taxed wealth generators.

None dare call it treason

George Rebane

‘Microsoft workers’ letter demands company drop Army HoloLens contract’.  Microsoft “workers” (not employees) are the latest of progressives working at high tech companies to protest doing work for the DoD in defense of America.  Other companies like Google have already turned down defense work in which they could make a significant contribution to national security.  (H/T to reader)

This marks the latest twist in the country’s downward spiral from global exceptionalism and hegemony.  The 75-year Pax Americana is rapidly coming to an end as other bad actors in the world see how our younger generations, especially those with STEM and related skillsets, have been ideologically fashioned in over two generations of leftwing schools and academe.  Lenin’s words, “Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world.”, have never sounded truer as they ring across the land.  And we have given him two generations, and are now beginning to reap the fundamentally transforming whirlwind.

Employees who make such demands actually evoke two important notions about our 21^st century social order.  First, that such people mean to withhold strategically valuable skills from contributing to the defense of the order that made possible their education, jobs, and general well-being.  And because such skills are not easily attained by the population at large, these people have a special responsibility to their fellow citizens who work in supportive industries and non-tech fields providing their support for the sustenance of America, and thereby deservedly enjoying their globally-preeminent quality of life.  And finally, these STEM workers contribute materially to creating the wealth that enables us to care for our poor and indigent at levels that are the envy of the world.

The second aspect to notice about such a presumptuous protest letter from a company’s employees is that they actually believe in the collectivist (socialist/communist) principle that workers at a private company have the intrinsic right to specify and “demand” what work the company will and will not do.   In a country founded on the principles of free markets, capitalism, entrepreneurship, and individual liberties, telling someone else what they may or may not do legally with their property is an abhorrent concept and a blatantly deplorable behavior.  Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died to keep our land from coming under such mob rule.

If a private sector employee does not like the work his employer legally undertakes, he has the alternatives to resign, to respectfully request that management changes policy, or suck it up and continue trading his labor for wages in a professional manner.  His employer does not operate a charity, a psychobabble support group, or an enterprise to satisfy someone’s concept of ‘common good’.  An employee’s job is sustained only to the extent that it contributes to the enterprise being able to attract and serve a sufficient customer base in a highly competitive marketplace.

These lessons have been absent from our schools for over a half century.

Idiots (Evil?) on Parade (updated 18feb19)

George Rebane

I claimed that the photo of all the congressional critters who support the Green New Deal will become iconic to both the Left and the Right, of course, for diametrically opposite reasons.  I'm not sure that all of the pictured 40 are demonstrably stupid, such as AOC; no doubt many of them intend to use the GND to fundamentally transform America.  These people I consider somewhere between cynical and just plain evil.  I'll post better images of GND supporters as they become available - these really deserve to be in RR's archive.

[18feb19 update] And the GND supporters in Congress just keep coming.  Besides the major Dem presidential candidates, the count is now up to 64 in House and 9 in the Senate.

 

Ruminations - 14feb19 (updated 19feb19)

The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity; the main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery - W. Churchill

George Rebane

‘Amazon Cancels HQ2 Plans in NYC’ – Now here’s a good dose of social justice for the residents of NYC delivered by local socialist politicians who couldn’t stomach the tax incentives the city promised Amazon for bringing in thousands of high-paying jobs.  Some call that cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Mueller’s investigation is wrapping up??? All kinds of rumors are flying around from the imminent termination of the investigation, that most of his lawyers have already been reassigned or left, there will be no final report (at least not one released to the public), to God knows what.  Has any reader found anything that looks like it's definitive and/or reliable out there on the web?

[15feb19 update]  The depth of AOC’s stupidity is yet to be fathomed.  CBS reports that the congresswoman actually believes that NYC has saved $3B, money which it now has and can spend on more teachers, fixing subways, etc, etc, instead of ‘giving away’ to Amazon.  Unbelievable!!  And what can we say about the voters who elected her? – they are at least as stupid as she.  And what can we say about the Dem congressional critters that support her? – they range somewhere between butt stupid and cynical/evil.  And what about all those across the land who are fans of AOC; talk about national dumbth.

[18feb19 update] Taqiya in America appears alive and well.  Our newly-minted Muslim in the House has successfully bamboozled herself out of a little anti-Semitic slip up, and immediately gone on to declare her true colors by agreeing to raise money for an Islamic organization with an iffy relationship to western culture and terrorist organizations.  Daily Caller reports, “Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar is scheduled to raise money in March with the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) only a week after she used an anti-Semitic trope to claim Israel has paid for GOP support.”

'Autopsy of a Dead Coup' by Victor Davis Hanson is an excellent summary of our Left's draconian three-year effort to put an end first to candidate Trump, and then to President Trump.  The VDH piece was brought to us by a regular commenter in the last Sandbox's comment stream.  I did not want the link to it to languish there, so I'm making it more prominent here.  As expected, one of our regular liberal readers had no problem assessing the events of that sordid trail of treachery as nothing more than some solid, concerned citizens "exercising their Constitutional duty in evaluating Trumps mental fitness."  (No really, that's what the Left believes has been happening.)

[19feb19 update]  'Hate crimes' list reported by the liberal lamestream media just during the two years of the Trump administration.  When a progressive hates a duly elected President, then let nothing stand in the way of getting him out of office or delegitimizing his administration.

The American AI Initiative & herding cats

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 13 February 2019.]

The entire field of artificial or machine intelligence (AI) seems to be more misunderstood by the day, and not only on Main Street, but also in the highest levels of government.  President Trump recently signed an executive order to launch the American AI Initiative.  The purpose of this whatever it is, is to “focus federal government resources to develop AI” in order to “increase our prosperity, enhance our national and economic security, and improve quality of life for the American people.”

Progressive Pilgrims’ Progress

George Rebane

My pal, fellow blogger, and comrade-in-arms for community connectivity and STEM education, Russ Steele wrote the following in the 11feb19 Union (here).

As a proponent of rural broadband, I often read recently published books and articles on broadband technologies.  I am currently reading Susan Crawford's book, "Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution — and Why America Might Miss It." I was surprised by the depiction of Nevada City and Grass Valley as failed communities in their quest for broadband fiber networks with quotes like these:

"Laissez-faire is not working for rural America, particularly in areas like Nevada City/Grass Valley where the local authorities are uninterested in intervening to ensure that their people have communications capacity."  "… one of the key reasons that both Greensboro and Grass Valley/Nevada City are making such slow progress toward any flavor of publicly oriented fiber is that there is no prominent public leader willing to stand behind it."

This is only two, there are more damaging quotes.  After reading this book, it is highly unlikely Nevada City would be on anyone's list as a great place to live and work.  Now that Race Communications will be building out the fiber network which Crawford used to illustrate a failed project, local authorities need to promote a more positive image. More at https://ruraleconomytechnology.com.

It’s not only that no “prominent public leader” in Nevada County has ever gone to bat for community broadband, instead it’s been exactly the opposite ever since progressives have become the dominant voice in this foothills community.  They have brought their (San Francisco) values with them, and that includes a disdain for business and entrepreneurship, and a profound ignorance of science and technology (e.g. their stance on cell towers, vaccination, consensus science, …).  So, for politicians hereabouts to get re/elected, they need to cater to the sentiments of the local liberals, more and more of whom lack any critical thinking skills, and that means to adopt ‘duck and cover’ when it comes to stepping up to promote any kind of growth that depends on the acquisition of modern broadband.

Our proregressives have now elevated to a nationally prominent level their opposition to growth – we are a modern luddite posterchild.  But hey, that don’t make no never mind since we do have the ERC and various economic development meetings now and then to keep our spirits up.

Redemption and the Virginia Three

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?  Mathew 7:3-5

George Rebane

“Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) said Wednesday that he dressed in blackface during college, adding yet another scandal to the tumult that now engulfs the entire executive branch of state government.  Herring, Gov. Ralph Northam and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax — the state’s three top Democrats — all face wrenching questions about past behavior that threaten their careers.” reports the Washington Post. (here)

I find it distressing that our public policy, mostly implemented by the progressive Left, does not give any politician or other public figure any slack on what they might or not have done in their dim dark distant past.  This is especially significant in the case of males whose brains, we are told, do not fully mature until their mid-twenties.  Most certainly they (we) still have great dynamism going on in our noodles at around the age of twenty.

But without even accounting for that, don’t we have even a little room for redemption, any notion of remission, and only focus on what may be seen as eternal retribution?  I don’t think any of the above mentioned Democrats, currently being pilloried and asked to mount their political tumbrils, should suffer such a fate.  And that any more than did Justice Kavanaugh and other Republicans before him.  Today all three Virginians are matured and different men than they were in those days of yore (when morals and manners were not yet perfected to today’s pristine standards).  They have performed their public duties admirably as far as anyone can tell, and are now at the prime of their ‘service lives’.  So why sacrifice them on the altar of political correctness, an altar on which daily are offered the professional lives of worthy people, almost all to serve political ends and not to provide any future margin of safety to the public at large from their ongoing ministrations?

Once this persecutorial plague is loosened, where will it stop?  How many public figures, or any of us for that matter, can survive the dredging of such ludicrous liabilities?  Were I king, we would look back only on the recent and relevant parts of a person’s career, and not claim that the divers path each of us took through our youth did then mangle our minds and morals forever.  People do change, and perhaps in this area of public life we should revisit the plaintive questions posed by those oft-quoted philosophers Hillary Clinton and Rodney King.

The Green New Deal (updated 8feb19)

A rose by any other name would smell … .  Wm Shakespeare

George Rebane

Well, the last bits of doubt about our Democratic Party have been swept away by the new House resolution describing a fundamental transformation of America (Barack Obama, call your office).  The Green New Deal, sponsored by AOC and Senator Ed Markey (whom we have met on these pages), is socialism writ large.  So large in fact that the reporter interviewing AOC on NPR this morning had a hard time keeping from audibly gulping as he asked the feather head details and sources of funding for the individual mandates of the GND.  She, of course, had no answers other than taxing the bejeezus out anybody and everybody in the land who could still create wealth after the proposed strictures derive their power from the barrel of a gun.

So what do these two socialists propose in their fundamental transformation?  You can read the resolution here, and some more expanded analysis here, here, and here; but let’s just lay out a few of them in short form for the sake of discussion.

• US carbon neutral in 10 years. “…this would mean a complete remake of American electric power, transportation and manufacturing.”
• Guaranteed government job for all. “… provide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one.”
• Government control of all medium and large corporations. “Employees would elect 40% of directors, who would be obliged to consider “benefits” beyond returns to the owners.”
• Vastly higher taxes. Top rates for death taxes, income tax, and payroll taxes would increase markedly.  Also proposed is the institution of a “wealth tax” on assets.
• Government take over of industries like healthcare, insurance, manufacture of certain products like pharmaceuticals, etc.

Now all this is based on the fundamental socialist tenet that tax rates do not affect economic behavior.  This belief by the Left is totally immune to historical data, including what France just had to rescind, and what has made NK, Cuba, Venezuela, … what they are today, and what caused the downfall of the USSR, and the massive shifts in the economies of China, Vietnam, … .

So there you have it.  Just keep your eye on the slated 40+ Democrats who sign up to sponsor this resolution – their true colors will wave proudly.  And also see how many more Democrats will be looking at their shoes while mumbling something about not belonging to the new socialist party of America.  Our Founders are spinning in their graves.

[8feb19 update]  It appears that Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may turn out to be the liberal loon for all seasons.  Both sides of the aisle seem to be happy dancing at the advent of this good looking 5-star ignoramus.  The Dems claim that her GND plan is just a negotiating “anchor” point stuck into the land of the ludicrous, a strategic starting point to get people dickering with each other about where we should really wind up.  Their hope is that any surviving putrid pot of progressive public policies will still be close enough to the GND anchor, and by comparison will look good to their light thinking constituents who will then support it as a ‘compromise’ with the Right.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are convinced that AOC (along with mini-minded Markey) have handed them the penultimate political prize for 2020.  WSJ’s national correspondent Kim Strassel details the blessings in her ‘The Socialist That Could’, and offers a succinct summary of “AOC, the secret Republican weapon for 2020.”

It’s a GOP dream, especially because the media presented her plan with a straight face—as a legitimate proposal from a legitimate leader in the Democratic Party. Republicans are thrilled to treat it that way in the march to 2020, as their set-piece example of what Democrats would do to the economy and average Americans if given control. The Green New Deal encapsulates everything Americans fear from government, all in one bonkers resolution.

And can you imagine the profusion of optics AOC has already provided and will provide during the next 18 months for Republican ads.  This woman has turned out to be a horn of political plenty for the Right that is scaring hell out of the Democrat leadership – “They should be scared. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is a freight train gaining speed by the day—and helping Republicans with every passing minute.”

Given all this political largesse, my concern now is for AOC’s safety.  The RNC should offer to share with the DNC some of the costs for added security for the congresswoman.  No conservative in the land wants anything to still her voice, or deter her from advocating the clear path she has set out for America.

Ruminations – 31jan19 (updated 1feb19)

George Rebane

Global warming conspiracy’s agenda is about destroying capitalism, so admits Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change.  At a Brussels news conference she said, “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”  This revelation is not news to RR readers who have been repeatedly informed of this for over a decade.  (H/T to reader, more here)

Socialists have an endless list of bad habits, beliefs, and behaviors.  One of the worst on their list is about OPM – they never seem to get enough of it to spend, and they also don’t hold back telling other people how they should spend their own money.  Apropos to that, in the 29jan19 WSJ Jason Riley describes how “progressives are more interested in scapegoating the wealthy than they are in relieving poverty.”

‘Conflating Ideas Weakens Constitutional Principles’ (from RCP).  “The left’s conflation of conservatism with fascism and the right’s conflation of classical liberalism with progressive extremism combine to conceal the concrete political realities that inspired the rise of liberal democracy in the West. These conflations also suppress the multiple traditions that merged in forming the American constitutional order. And they obscure the compelling reasons for conserving this precious inheritance.”  (Trigger warning for some of our readers who have complained about big words, long sentences, and large paragraphs – this piece has them.)

American republicanism, as intended by our Founders, is dead, having succumbed over the years to poll preening politicians.  Moreover, the nation’s pundits and public demand that the pols be ever responsive to the latest polls.   And they are more than happy to comply so as to do ‘the will of the people’, and relieve themselves of having to make potentially contentious decisions about what to support and vote for – after all, getting reelected is job one.  So now we have government by randomly gyrating, soundbite propagandized, uninformed public opinion.  This is exactly the kind of chaotic direct democracy that our Constitution was written to shield us from with a republic of elected representatives.

[1feb19 update]  ‘Ownership as an endangered species’ by Rob Chrisman (1feb19 Union) is a good piece about the vicissitudes of private property in these days of leftward careening progressivism.  Mr Chrisman also writes an occasional blog – notallradishesarered.org – which saw its last of many excellent posts in June 2017.

Plan to Re-elect Trump

George Rebane

The Republicans have an opportunity to implement a surefire plan to get their candidate re-elected in 2020, given that the Dems will run everyone and their cousin who understands how to spend OPM (that’s Other People’s Money for you independents and mid-roaders).  And OPM is also the active ingredient of this ingenious plan.

• The RNC launches the ‘Fund a Socialist’ website that lists the current Dem presidential candidates, their website URLs, and the money they currently have in their election war chests.
• Trump supporters review the list on a regular basis, and, according to their lights, send a couple of the most egregiously leftwing radical and poorly funded candidates $5 each.
• Trump supporters repeat step #2 every month as the list inevitably prunes itself. This automatically strengthens the surviving radicals.

Say, a couple of million or so Trump supporters sign up for this plan and carry it out as long as the list still contains viable and voluble radicals, the loonier the better, or until the Democratic National Convention.  The total cost for each participant will be about $200 give or take, and it would be money no better spent.  That would shove about $400M plus into the shorts of second tier candidates seeking to out-left each other.  Sweet.

Such inflows of small contributions to those hopeful socialists will keep the maximum number of them energized and fighting for slots in the upcoming debates, running in primaries, hogging air time, and doing everything they can to disrupt the orderly machine of Democrat elites trying to field an electable candidate.  And all of these no-names coming out of the woodwork will be convinced by their millions of small donations that they really are riding the top of the new socialist tsunami sweeping the country.

Obvious priorities are Sen Bernie and Congresswoman AOC.  Republicans must make sure that these two never lack for funds to make their message heard across the land.  That’s important because some wiser heads in the DNC are already talking about running some more electable center-leftists against them in the primaries. ;-)

Scattershots – 22jan19 (updated 24jan19)

George Rebane

The ignorant-to-evil needle has made a big jump toward evil in the last couple of days with the MAGA hat massacre in DC, and the shaming of Second Lady Mrs Pence.  The Catholic boys in the MAGA hats committed two sins for which the Liberal Lies machine went ballistic – they were Christians and obvious Trump supporters.  That was enough to fabricate a hateful story about their racism against American Indians and disseminate a carefully edited video to lamestream outlets who all joined in the howling for the boys’ scalps.  When the story was quickly discredited, the howlers just moved on to their next coverage of fake news.  The same thing happened with Mrs Pence who was pilloried for being provided Secret Service protection for her engagement as an arts teacher at a (gasp!) Christian grade school.  To the legions of progressive idiots that was evidence of violating the separation of church and state.  And the Left still thinks that the coming Great Divide is only a rightwing myth. 

Nevada County’s Love Walk on MLK day was strictly a one-sided affair.  For the attendees to such events, MLK’s civil rights legacy appears to have been a failure.  People attending are of a like mind that the country now is more racist than ever, and that extraordinary means need be brought to bear to restore Dr King’s dream, and this time we’ll get it right.  To boot, everyone not of this mindset is by definition a racist, and proof that today in America racism rules.  In a previous discussion of the ideological tilt of national holidays, it’s easy to see why MLK day is now firmly a leftwing holiday. (Imagine wearing your MAGA cap on the Love Walk.  To date we have not bothered to get our MAGA caps, but given what the socialist brown shirts have launched in the land, the time has come to get one and wear it.)

Wanna see quantitative economic projections on AOC’s 70% tax rate for the country? Take a look at the misery that such a confiscatory policy would heap on the middle class.  Yes, Virginia, the MIDDLE CLASS, because that’s where socialists have to go after they first cripple the economy with their tax on ‘the rich’.  The next inevitable tax, as government revenues sink, will be on the middle class, why?  Because that’s where the money is, and the poor snuffies voting for socialists haven’t a clue about their own doings in the voting booth.  And how will it be sold?  By turning up the volume on the “ravages of capitalism” narrative, of course.  (more here and here)

Racism and racist, terms progressives use constantly are among the terms no progressive wants to define.  Much to the consternation of our liberal readers, here on RR we are prone to pursue semantics, especially of the operational kind (meaning you can usefully apply them in the realworld).  Illustrating this are a couple of forays into this melee ‘Who is a Racist?’ and ‘Racialism Rising’, and, of course, see the RR Glossary.

[23jan19 update]  RR readers are aware of my longstanding thoughts on unionized public schools.  The recent LA teachers strike underlined all these concerns, and the main concern that union teachers don’t really give a care for the kids as again pointed out by Jason Riley (here) in the 23jan19 WSJ.  “When the United Auto Workers walk off the job, no one pretends the care about car buyers. … Yet striking public school teachers and their union representatives insist they are action behalf of the children.  We’re expected to believe the priorities of education workers are perfectly aligned with those of students.”  The blatant facts about school spending, students’ performance, and aggressive opposition to the spread of non-union, public charter schools tells a completely different story.  “Teachers unions are unions first, not reformers or student advocates.  Their real agenda – their only agenda – is to protect their members by any means possible.  No matter what those picket signs said, the unions weren’t helping students.  They were using them.”

[24jan19 update] “Senate Rejects Two Rival Spending Bills, Extending Shutdown” Can we now finally give up the notion that just because one party or the other has a majority in Congress (specifically the Senate), that it therefore ‘controls’ what that chamber does?  The Founders intended government’s ability to make laws to be a slow, deliberative, if not awkward process, and the Senate’s super-majority rule of 60 votes helps implement this intent.  So let’s pick up a bit on the simplistic arguments in these comment streams about which party ‘controlled’ Congress in what years so as to imply that they could have passed anything they wanted.  Sophomoric!

SecComm Wilbur Ross today picked up on my suggestion that the fed workers running out of cash should just go get a loan to tide them over.  And he was dunned for making such a practical suggestion.  The needy fed workers would not be borrowing more than their take-home pay since that is what they had planned to spend in the first place, and that amount is guaranteed to them after the shutdown ends.  That is about the best collateral, save US Treasuries, that you can give a lender who can even have you sign a paper agreeing that the govt submit the loan amount directly to the lender.  And the lenders can get extra PR brownie points by advertising that these are short-term no interest loans.  What’s not to like?  Yet it was only ol’ Wilbur who finally came up with that while the rest of Washington is just sitting around with their teeth in their mouth.  It’s almost as if both sides wanted the furloughed to go on a publicized fast.  Nah!

Ruminations - 18jan19 (updated 21jan19)

Federal workers demonstrate because they don't have the money to buy food or pay the rent. Why haven't some of the nation's major lenders stepped forward to lend them money at low/no interest rates until they start getting a check again?  The money so lent would be at minimal risk since the borrowers have their government jobs and their back-pay checks as collateral of equal quality to US Treasury bonds.  Where are all these rightwing bankers who could lend Trump and the Republicans a political hand while reaping beaucoup PR rewards? ...  OK, then where are the leftwing lenders since the overwhelming share of government workers are Democrat voters?

[update]  RR contributor and blogger Russ Steele wrote and excellent Other Voices in the 18jan19 Union making the case for “upskilling” your workplace talents in the age of galloping AI.  In his ‘STEM for all’ he also pointed out what SESF has been doing in promoting and supporting STEM education in Nevada County.

Former Trump attorney Cohen’s most recent allegations about candidate Trump’s real estate dealings with Russia are making big headlines that have every Dem and all their cousins calling for more investigations, and definitely for the president’s impeachment.  But no one is lifting an eyebrow about what was just released about Bruce Ohr’s testimony last August that revealed a string of lies the FBI told Congress and on its FISA application to investigate Trump’s campaign.  And also that two of the liars have been key members of Mueller’s team continuing to investigate the president.  The magnitude of such misdirection of national attention is beyond astounding and does not portend well for our beloved republic.  (more here)

‘If Weed Is Medicine, So Is Budweiser’, so goes a convincing argument by Dr Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.  He points out that MJ “is a toxin, not a medicine” per se as its adherents claim for ailments ranging from hepatitis to Parkinson’s.  Citing studies, Bach tells us that “if weed is a pain reliever, so is Budweiser.”  His message of “Legalize marijuana, but don’t pretend it’s therapeutic” come with the bottom line that MJ “belongs in the same category as alcohol an tobacco – harmful products that adults can choose to enjoy”, and they need to be regulated as such.

"Trump's Shutdown" - Here's a quiz, how is this government shutdown significantly different from Obama's shutdown, and previous ones?  And here is the answer.

[20jan19 update]  Fiber in Nevada City.  Russ Steele sent me this which might be of interest to our locals concerned about the county's economic development.  "I am reading Susan Crawford's book Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It. Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor at Harvard Law School.  There are ten references to Nevada City and John Paul's Fiber Network in her book recounting the struggle to bring fiber to Nevada City/Grass Valley.   More details on my blog:"  https://ruraleconomytechnology.com

[21jan19 update]  Gov Newsom’s early childhood education spending. Our new governor wants to spend “$2.4 billion in early childhood investments, including significant funding for health care, home visiting programs, early developmental screening, high-quality early learning and paid family leave.”  That’s all well and good with two significant caveats – 1) anyone know of any successful govt education program outside the military?  2) anyone know of any early childhood education programs that made a measurable difference by the time the child reached 3^rd grade?  But in a state that already has the largest number of poor, indigents, and welfare recipients in the Union, along with uncountable and uncounted unfunded liabilities, the governor’s budget proposal is sure to add another tranche of government employees and reliable Democrat voters.  (more here)

Scattershots – 11jan19 (updated 17jan19)

George Rebane

None of the rabid opposition to border security makes sense, and even less so with the passing months. We supposedly look at and experience the same world, yet obviously live in different universes. Physics may have an answer for that, but everyday logic in the conduct of human affairs does not, especially if we assume that both sides are working for a strong, independent, free, and prosperous America. Logic clicks back into place when we remove that assumption.

Israel’s wall costs $2M/mile. (more here)  That is a good stake in the ground to estimate the cost of our border security infrastructure which would not be a 2,000-mile concrete wall, but would instead consist of other barrier approaches and supportive detection and localization systems.  Posit $3M/mile for our southern border, and the cost would come to $6B.  And that includes all of the overhead.  Claiming that our border property owners will fight the increased border security is a red herring that does not jibe with what actual property owners are saying.  It is they who have suffered at the hands of illegal entrants whose criminal activities transiting their property has made living on the border dangerous.

Was sorry to see today’s (11jan19) Union column by publisher Don Rogers. His arguments against border security ignored all the marginal impacts on crime, culture, and costs of a porous border outlined in ‘The mangling of managed minds’.  It seems that being blind to that line of reasoning is a widespread malady among our Left, for it always appears to form the basis of their resulting fractured logic for opposing Trump’s border security policies, aka the same ones that the congressional Left supported not so long ago.

Bright fiber in Nevada County is a reported go, but details about the scope of the project are less than skimpy.  All that’s reported in The Union (here and here) is that 2,000 homes along Hwy 174 will be getting enhanced broadband in about a year.  But there is more than enough detail on the bureaucratics and the funding to roll your eyes.  However, people who don’t happen to live along 174 haven’t a clue as to how this project will advance the rest of the county toward 21^st century connectivity.  In short, after reading the reportage I again had to strap on my ‘Pardon me but you have me confused with someone who cares’ button.  Maybe more informed readers will provide the much needed information.

Ex-Muslims of North America is an organization of former American and Canadian Muslims united to spread word about ‘the religion of peace’ and support those who have left and are contemplating leaving Islam.  Their position on their former faith parallels that of RR.  Islam is still in its ‘Accept Allah or die!’ phase of maturing.  But unfortunately this is happening in a much more connected world laced with an abundance of very deadly technologies.  Just to be clear, all major religions have and/or are still going through such a violent and uncompromising phase.  Christianity most certainly had its ‘Accept Jesus or die!’ epoch in the centuries after Rome, starting coincidentally about when Islam was born on the Arabian peninsula. 

[12jan19 update]  Fact checking Trump.  Leftwing readers here have been taking President Trump to task for his ‘lies’, the overwhelming share of such are easily identified as political bluster of the kind that can be tallied for any politician on either side of the aisle.  There are however certain statements from a politician that are intended to elicit and/or support public support for government policy.  Such weighty claims are usually easy to fact-check either at the time of delivery or subsequently.  President Trump’s recent border security speech from the Oval Office contained a number of such statements.  Here is a fact-check summary of five of the most important ones from that speech.

Venice, CA now importing SF values. Beautiful seaside community of Venice in SoCal is rapidly becoming the next ‘sierra hotel’ city in the state, joining Anaheim and the long-enduring People's Republic of Santa Monica as newly risen exemplars of socialist governance.  The Hollywood Reporter has the details in its ‘LA's Battle for Venice Beach: Homeless Surge Puts Hollywood's Progressive Ideals to the Test’.  There “with swelling transient encampments abutting seven-figure homes, the beachside enclave has emerged as a flashpoint for the inequality shaping Los Angeles — and a real-world test case for the liberal ideology of the area’s showbiz residents.” (H/T to correspondent)

[13jan19 update]  Conjecture: NYC mayor Bill deBlasio is a communist, having passed to the left of all remaining progressive milestones. (more here)

[14jan19 update] Whether you like or regret (like me) many of our President's tweets and hipshot repartees, this is what many Americans believe is really the case.

[17jan19 update]  Border barriers (walls, fences, ...) "don't work and are ineffective" maintains the Democrat leadership and their nationwide constituents.  Border security officers with long years of experience maintain exactly the opposite.  I have not found any journalist with the wit or temerity to ask people like Pelosi, 'What evidence do you have about border barrier systems that overrides the testimony of our border security professionals and which supports you continued assertions that such border security infrastructure "doesn't work"?  (We'll address the "immorality" question another time.)  Asking the Democrats to produce such evidence would put this debate on the fast track to resolution, not only with regard to border security funding, but also the government shutdown.  RR readers know the disdain I have for the journalistic profession, I have found almost all journalists to be alarmingly ignorant hacks with little or no spine to seek out and report truth that is counter to their publishers' and/or editors' agendas.

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.)

Mr Boardman’s Bamboozle or Boo-boo?

George Rebane

Intrepid leftwing columnist at The Union, George Boardman, is either trying to bamboozle the lightly-read reader, or was just a bit fast and loose on the keyboard in his 7jan19 submittal to the newspaper.  In his commentary ‘Don’t Expect Reality to Intrude on Trump’s Argument for a Border Wall’, Mr Boardman launches into a sonorous if not somnambulant recounting of the debate about how to secure our southern border.  He repeats the new shibboleths about whether it should really be a solid concrete wall or some other form of possible physical barrier “to cut-off the hordes of illegal immigrants poring(sic) across the border to take good-paying American jobs, commit numerous crimes, and turn our fair country into an outpost of lawlessness.”  Well, he almost got that list right – nobody is worried about our country becoming “an outpost of lawlessness”, just illegals committing the reported numerous crimes and costing a bundle to hunt and house them in our prisons.

But his main argument for ignoring the tens of thousands pouring across our southern border is that they don’t number as many as those who enter the US legally with visas and then overstay.  Boardman quotes the legal entrant overstays for 2016 at 628,799, while the illegal entrants in 2016 number only 170,000.  Countering this, the US Customs and Border Protection arm of the Dept of Homeland Security post the more realistic 553,378 who were apprehended in 2016 (more here).  The number escaping apprehension is unknown, but reasonable estimates place it in the same range as the apprehensions.  And with the advent of the recent mass migrations, this number has increased significantly based on 102,857 apprehensions last year (2018) reported during October and November – the annualized number for this comes to over 600,000.  Again, we don’t know all of those illegals who got through our overwhelmed border security personnel.  The illegals who overstayed their visas in 2017 number 702,000 according to the DHS.  And yes, about half of the illegal aliens in the country today entered legally and overstayed their visas.

From his version of such statistics Mr Boardman concludes with the simple red herring that “If you really want to stop illegal immigration, a wall is not the solution.”  Nobody has maintained that any southern border barrier will stop all illegal aliens from settling in America.  But can his readers see through this little bit of legerdemain?  Nor does our columnist tell us that those entering legally with visas and those crawling through border barriers comprise two distinct cohorts of illegals.  Our immigration and border security people were able to vet those to whom we issued visas.  We know that they weren’t the obvious drug runners, human traffickers, unaccompanied minors, wanted criminals, terrorists, … .  Those coming in across the southern border (sometimes multiple times) do not submit to such examination, and there are enough of them to be of concern to reasonable law-abiding Americans who are not racists, xenophobes, or even nationalists. (more here)

After having convinced his readers that our porous southern border is not a concern, he does a subtle shift to put a cherry on that argument by citing all the benefits to the American economy and workforce contributed by immigrants who make up more than one sixth of our workforce and almost three fourths of our tech workers, many of whom are entrepreneurs starting new companies that grow our economy and maintain our leadership in the world of innovation and commerce.  (I also belong to that cohort.)  Well yes, but all of these people came in legally and are not the under-educated poor illegal entrants from, well, you know, what our fearless leader correctly called "shithole countries".  That subtle semantical pirouette of naming all foreign-born in America as ‘immigrants’, regardless of their mode of entry and legal status, continues to support the bamboozle our Left is successfully dispensing in today’s media.  Everyone is an immigrant, and since we are a nation of immigrants, therefore we must let all immigrants enter and succor their needs.  To do otherwise is heartless and un-American, capice?  (more here and here)

But in the final analysis Mr Boardman is a loyal liberal just soldiering on, polishing the progressive narrative to make it more palatable to the residents of these hinterlands. (Just to be clear, I too am guilty of doing my part to purvey the conservetarian worldview, hopefully with better numbers and reasoning.)

PS. Just to pile on, in this scurrilous piece of journalism, Mr Boardman also throws in some red meat for the alt-Left: Because in its op-ed the WSJ deigned to propose a solution to the government shutdown negotiations, our columnist asks, "Who said the fake news media doesn't have any clout in this country?" (emphasis mine)

Pelosi’s “Immoral Wall” (updated 6jan19)

George Rebane

In The Myth of the Rational Voter Bryan Caplan documented a significant body of research which showed that in the US voters in the aggregate are what may be termed formally insane.  The general understanding of this phenomenon applies to populations all over the world, and its general characteristics were even known to the ancients.  Of course, our well-read Founders knew this, and that is why, in order to avoid the mistakes of the past, they wisely did not leave us a democracy.

The democratic republic they did construct and detailed in our Constitution is supposed to keep the hoi polloi’s mitts off the machinery of our federal and state governments.  They inserted a hopefully wiser and more circumspect layer of elected representatives between the mass of citizens and the levers of power.  The idea was that such electeds would be better read and would take a broader view of things that insured the country’s prudent progress.  Unspoken, save in their oaths of office, was the notion that all of these worthies would be pro-American – i.e. legislate so as to assure the republic’s prosperous and permanent future.

Our Founders had no idea of the world order in which America would find itself 250 years after declaring our independence.  Today two major ideologies, founded by Marx and Muhammad, are working to bring all the peoples of the world under one monolithic governing leviathan.  Each, in the interval, willing to work off the gains of the other in the firm belief that they will be the victor when the dust settles.  In the meantime, there will be a need for lots of dust, or ‘cracked eggs’, or whatever to bring the outdated global gaggle of sovereign nation-states to an end.

Marx’s collectivists today march to that brave new world mostly under the socialist banner, although swapping for the colors of communism (already/still solidly ensconced in the community of nations) is always possible were stronger medicine necessary to mind the masses.  Muhammad’s disciples, no matter their current schisms, see the global caliphate under sharia law as the culmination of Allah’s plan for his earthly creation.  Both can accept convenient amalgamations of the two on the road to their glorious destinations.

Ruminations – 1jan19 (updated 5jan19)

George Rebane

First and foremost, Jo Ann and I wish all of our family, friends, and RR readers a healthy and productive 2019 – hopefully, ‘happy’ can also be fit in there somewhere 😉

As things stand now, US economic growth will continue at a brisk rate in 2019 with low unemployment, especially for the historically unemployed minorities.  This is major consternation for the anti-American Left as it prepares for the 2020 elections.  Look for progressive policies aggressively promoted to stop this growth.

In the growing assault on the Trump presidency, if the calls from leftwing media outlets like truthout.org and vox.com to take to the streets is answered by the tens of thousands of alt-Left, then there is a good chance for some serious violence.  As most recently being demonstrated by the Democrat leadership, the search for middle-ground is long past.  Now it’s simply a destruction derby going on at the federal level.  The Left has already won several of such derbies at the states level.

Several pollsters tell us that more than half of millennials believe that capitalism is bad and socialism should be given a chance.  Very few of them know the definition of either means of organizing the economy and society.

This may be the year where businesses big and small realize the constructive and disruptive power of AI-based business systems.  No longer do we see all the hopeful arguments that AI will create more jobs.  Instead we (techies) notice a lot of quasi-tutorial pieces (e.g. 'What Exactly Is Artificial Intelligence?') in the world’s leading news media.  Most of them are written by journalists who haven’t quite cracked the code themselves on the topic.  Therefore, some are quite humorous.

Both sides of the climate change war (yes, it’s now a war) claim that 2018 was not a bad year for their respective perspectives.  For the global warmists, the latest IPCC report was their capstone for the unassailable edifice of ‘scientific proof’ that ‘preventable man-made global warming’ is happening and can be stopped without bad economic impacts.  The skeptics saw the report as a final admission that there is still no supporting science behind the whole matter.

California will be the state to watch in 2019 as all the brakes to slow down the long-promised Leftward Leap toward socialism have now been removed.  Keep your eye on the stats for one-way rentals of U-Haul trailers heading east.

RR will be meticulously read and denigrated by our local lefties, both in the blogosphere and in the more established media - we apparently live in their heads.  My wish for 2019 is that our commenters should continue to minimize their ad hominems, and put a churchillian polish on those that must be posted.  Remember, the internet is forever, even if you are a sackhead.

[2jan19 update]  This is actually an addendum to my 650am in the 28dec18 sandbox.  American autocracy, if it comes, will arrive through the ballot box.  This was also anticipated by Jefferson in his ‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’  Numerous examples of the Left counting on such ignorance arrive daily – today’s is from Gov Cuomo of NY speaking on Ellis Island.  There he vilifies President Trump and his secure borders initiatives by reminding Americans that both Cuomo’s and Trump’s grandfathers were immigrants who came through Ellis Island.  And then with his loony leftwing logic argues that legal immigration by foreign supplicants to these shores is equivalent to aliens violating our laws by illegally crossing our border and demanding their ‘right’ to residency.  Cuomo and Democrat leaders really believe we Americans are stupid enough to swallow that argument.  If they are right, then Jefferson’s dictum will surely come to pass.

[5jan19 update]  The country’s progressives are giving high fives to the 70% marginal tax policy suggested by the newest proto-communist in Congress.  Congresswoman AOC is lauded as being spot on with her new tax policy on earned income.  Some leftwing worthies point out that in bygone days such high tax rates made the rich keep their money in investments and, therefore, that helped the economy and will do so again.  Their blindspot seems to be in what people do with all their excess disposable income.  The socialists seem to think that such people take that income in cash, and then stow it away under their mattresses – i.e. the money leaves the economy.  That, of course, is not the case at all.  The well-to-do spend that money in maintaining and expanding their expensive lifestyles, which means that it winds up in the revenues of merchants, manufacturers, and purveyors of recreational products/services.  The commerce and jobs that result from such spending constitute a tremendous boost to our entrepreneurial and innovative small and mid-size companies who are the nation’s leading employers.  None of this thinking is accessible to our collectivists and corporatists.