Rebane's Ruminations

Ruminations – 18jul19 (updated 19jul19)

George Rebane

Gold-backed dollar or not?  Interesting debate now going on over how to set the value of the dollar which is fiat money but still the world’s leading reserve currency.  Gold is pooh-poohed by governments and pundits as just an “alternative asset class” which serves many as a “speculative store of value”.  Interesting to note is that it is the governments who hoard massive amounts of gold and use it to clear inter-nation trade accounts.  Hmm?

Counting Trump’s ‘lies’ has become another favorite pastime for leftwingers.  Books have been written on the subject.  On closer inspection, such counts include all the bravados and projections and predictions and promises that politicians over the ages and of all hues have generously poured into their constituents’ ears.  Today’s under-educated TDS sufferers know nothing of this, and feel proud that they are plowing new ground in such endeavors.

AOC for all seasons and reasons.  Seldom has a politician come along who gives so much pleasure to both sides campaigning in a highly polarized political landscape.  Today both Repubs and Dems hope that AOC and her brood will continue spewing loud and clear their anti-American assessments and prescriptions for a fundamentally transformed US.  Karl Rove calls her “the gift that keeps on giving.”

[19jul19 update] 'Impeachment Phonies' in the 19jul19 WSJ - "So much for high crimes and misdemeanors. Faced with a resolution to impeach President Trump on Wednesday, House Democrats blinked. That was the smart move politically, but what does it say about the courage of their conviction that Mr. Trump is a clear and present danger to the country and Constitution?"

Dropout Derby Update - 9jul19 (updated)

George Rebane

OK, Swalwell bailed yesterday 8jul19, and today that in/out/in again Tom Steyer threw his hat into the Dems' candidate carousel ring.  Tom Steyer will be #26 in the Dropout Derby, and those who wish can resubmit their dropout lists by inserting Steyer's number into their existing list with no other changes in their ordering.  These will be accepted before the next Dem comes to his senses and hits the silk.  And I'll do this update only once on the scoring and then lock down this competition with 26 declared candidates, 25 remaining as of today.  Additional hopefuls will be ignored.  The fun has already begun.

[update]  Mr Tozer submitted his updated dropout list.  You'll notice that he put Steyer in exactly the same place that I did (we did not consult).  The figure below shows the current dropout lists.  Those with zeros at the end have not updated and are invited to do so.  The 'CumScore' row lists the cumulative score to date as the dropout continue.  (You'll note that I'm bringing up the rear.) Recall that each dropout's score is equal to ((26-1) - miss distance)/(26-1).  Miss distance is the absolute value of (dropout list entry - actual dropout location).  If you nailed it - miss distance is zero - then your score for that dropout is equal to 1.0 .  If you would have put Swalwell (#20) in position 26, you would get a zero score added to your cumulative score.  Of course, no one did that, and as the dropouts proceed it will be more difficult to get low scores, but perfect scores will always be possible.

Anything to undermine America (updated 7jul19)

George Rebane

The Democrats and their lamestream media are now in high gear doing anything and everything they can to undermine this administration and weaken the US in the eyes of its adversaries.  The first and most important victims of the Left’s lies are their constituents relegated to the low end of the bell curve on smarts.  As evidence, they are so bamboozled by the sleazebags that only 17% of them believe that Trump’s tax cuts benefit them, when IRS data shows that almost everyone benefited from the tax cuts.

And to put a ribbon on it, only 47% of Americans believe that Trump’s policies pulled the economy out of its Obama doldrums of under 2% growth, making no never mind of the fact that when Trump took over the GDP growth rate jumped over 60% and has remained there.  The lamestream has made certain than none of these light thinkers ever hear of Obama’s famous prognostication, “To get the GDP to grow at 3% again will require a magic wand.”  Well, our current president most certainly has that magic wand, which today’s market underlined by finishing the highest June gain in over 80 years.  (For the non-investors, the summer months beginning with June are historically the doldrum months on the stock markets.)  In spite of all this, the Dems have convinced 53% of Americans that Trump is mishandling the economy.

On the foreign policy front, Trump has exposed longstanding and dramatic shortcomings in our agreements for trade, mutual defense with allies, nuclear proliferation by rogues, and border security.  For decades America’s position in each of these areas was being taken advantage of by nations who saw us as weak and without direction.  Trump has changed all that, and in every area he has gotten people off the dime and things moving.  Now the feckless Democrats are criticizing him and telling their know-nothings that Trump is not doing any good because he hasn’t solved all the decades-old problems in his first two years in office.  And none of them, not a single one, has anything better to offer than to stick our head back in the sand and let friend and foe steal us blind.

In the meantime, the Democrats have totally abandoned their former positions and goals, as they have wrapped themselves in socialism to tout Marx’s message to the masses of the western hemisphere, ‘Workers of the world unite.  You have nothing to lose but your chains!’  And where do you think that all of this uniting of the workers will take place as our formerly porous borders disappear completely?

[2jul19 update] This painting by Jon McNaughton titled 'National Emergency' says it all.  (H/T to reader)

[3jul19 update] A regular reader suggests that to better understand what the Democrats in Congress and our own leftwing socialist commenters share as worldviews and objectives to strive for can be found in the Jacobin Magazine.  Take a look at the real meaning of free speech as we celebrate an independence they are working to take away.

[7jul19 update]  Here’s another big lie pushed by one of our favorite communists, Umair Haque, who writes ‘The origins of America’s unique and spectacular cruelty’.  America is the one nation in the world that has THE preeminent culture of altruistic giving to those afflicted and less fortunate.  Yet this propagandist exercises his 1A right to constantly reel off lie after lie about America, Americans, and our role in the world’s community of nations.  The importance of his thought is that it is shared by almost all the Democrat presidential candidates who daily echo his words.

Ruminations - 1jul19 (updated 2jul19)

George Rebane

George Boardman writes ‘Trump wants to turn the 4^th of July into a political rally’ in the 1jul19 Union.  Students of American history know that patriotic holidays, especially the 4^th of July, have been used by politicians – incumbents and wannabes – to meld their message within a patriotic mantle.  It is the recently educated who have no knowledge of our country’s past, and today are using everything to excoriate Trump.  I could have sworn Mr Boardman to be old enough to know better.

Kamala Harris owes her career to being a privileged mulatto – Jamaican father, Indian mother – which in today’s racial labeling allows her to call herself a black - “I am black and I am proud of it.”  She has played the black card for advancement all her life, and now she is beating her fellow Democrat presidential candidates over the head with it.  And it might even get her the nomination, unless one of her opponents has the courage to tell voters that her claims of having risen through racial discrimination is just politically motivated bull crap.

Bullet buying background checks start today in California.  This new law will have no impact on criminals and their use of firearms to commit crimes.  But it will further constructively restrict the Second Amendment rights of the state’s law-abiding citizens.  And after all, the constructive confiscation of guns is the objective of all socialists, especially those still in denial.  The objective has always been to restrict guns to government and criminals, and out of the hands of citizens who might one day choose to revolt as autocracy evolves into tyranny.

[2jul19 update] Under Obama, porous borders admit a dull roar of illegals who are incarcerated with children in separate quarters.  Millions are subsequently deported under our immigration laws, Republicans promote border security infrastructure, but do not criticize the stark detention quarters.  Under Trump, Democrats issue international invitations to disgruntled foreigners to enter the US illegally with promises of amnesty and citizenship.  Millions respond, creating a security and humanitarian crisis at the border.  The Democrats refuse to fund either border barriers to slow the flow or increased detention facilities to house the illegals as required by law.  Instead, they attack the president and Republicans for “separating families” as our law requires, and having created the crisis by not allowing free access through our border, sufficient welcoming succor at our border, and the unvetted and unconditional release into America’s interior.

The 2020 campaign – capitalism vs socialism (updated 3jul19)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 26 June 2019.]

Today’s dramatic tack to the left by the Democratic Party and its legion of presidential candidates has brought capitalism vs socialism to center-stage in the public forum.  The Democrat candidates share a common vision for their fundamentally transformed America, but each of them has fashioned their own particular path to their promised land.  By this I mean that each has outlined a particular sequence of wealth transfer and confiscation policies designed to solidify support from their leftwing core and attract the maximum of mid-road and undeclared voters to the collectivist cause.

Their message is simple and effective – ‘we’ll give you a lot more free stuff, and tax the bejeezus out of the evil and greedy rich to pay for it all’.  After half century of controlling public education in America, we now have at least two generations of voters who know absolutely nothing about capitalism, and little or nothing about socialism.  What the Millennials and the lightly read have been taught is that socialism works – look at how we describe Europe.  Today capitalism for these Americans is akin to a dirty word that refers to a broken social order which allows the rapacious rich to rape the middle-class and the poor who have no opportunities to advance.  America’s history has been taught as a three century long dystopian trail of tears that has spread its misery worldwide.

Scattershots – 24jun19 (updated 27jun19)

George Rebane

The Left wants nothing measured the public reporting of which it cannot control, or that goes against their established narrative.

Our intrepid progressive pundit and Union columnist George Boardman is all exercised in his ‘Double dipping at the public trough, in the spotlight, and just the facts’ published in the newspaper’s 24jun19 edition.  There he leaps off the rails to rail those double dipping Dahles, while totally missing the definition of double dipping as it pertains to government payees.  Megan Dahle plans to run for her husband Brian Dahle’s recently vacated California Assembly seat since winning his seat in the state’s Senate.  If Mrs Dahle wins, she will become the elected representative from her district, doing the work of an assemblyman, and on her own merits and efforts earning that position’s pay.  That having a second member of the family also performing an independent job in government is in no way double dipping, save it serve a distinctly progressive political narrative.  Apparently Mr Boardman misses that significant nuance that spouses of elected politicians are also individuals with a duplicate set of rights to independently seek employment and recompense as they see fit.  Ah, the bespoke blinders of the Left.  (On the same op-ed page see also Manny Montes’ commentary that helps explain Mr Boardman’s values.)

In the 24jun19 update to my ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ commentary, I posited the following observation about cultures.

Peace and prosperity were generally maintained as long as such a governed society’s culture was allowed to evolve without obvious interdictions by government.  It is easy to see why this approach to organizing societies worked as long as the dominant culture was sufficiently cohesive.  A little reflection reveals that culture is able to inculcate and control the most complex sets of human behaviors, and allow their natural expressions in new environments/situations without having to write down a single law or regulation.  Behaviors (acceptable and unacceptable) are learned in the family and in the village square, and ‘enforced’ by the culture’s collective – i.e. everyone.

In searching for exceptions to the above, the Talmud of the Jewish diaspora occurred to me.  The Talmud is an extensive collection (or collections if you consider separately its Babylonian and Jerusalem parts) of Jewish civil and ceremonial law along with its ethnic legends.  It comprises quite a collection of volumes that painstakingly detail a comprehensive body of behaviors and processes permitted and proscribed to practicing Jews everywhere.  And ‘everywhere’ here is the key idea.  After the Romans destroyed their Jerusalem temple in 70AD, the Jews were driven from their traditional homelands, and found themselves spread all over Europe and northern Africa.

While always seeking to stick together wherever they found themselves, they were necessarily separated and for centuries mostly out of touch with other Jewish communities.  So how to retain, practice, and promulgate the culture that defined them and their very Jewishness when so dispersed?  The answer was through the formalization of their culture in written form, which, as I have often argued, requires many volumes to record, study, and teach.  The Talmud is thus the exception that highlights and supports my dissertations on the function and efficiency of cultures in prescribing normative behaviors within coherent populations.

[25jun19 update]  The lamestream outlets are exorcising President Trump for his new sanctions against individuals in the Iranian leadership.  Specifically, vindictive opprobrium is dished out at Trump’s sanctioning Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister and leading negotiator who has been our main point of contact in the sub-rosa diplomatic efforts between the two countries.  Their common wisdom is that now we have lost someone with whom we have been able to communicate.  What these pinheads and pundits miss is that the president has to include Zarif in the sanctions if he is to remain as our point of future contact.  Omitting Zarif’s obviously needed inclusion would have made him suspect among the raghead mullahs, and cost him his job or worse.

[26jun19 update] "Remarkably, a recent study cited in The Atlantic (gasp!) found that “the most politically intolerant Americans” tend be white, highly educated urban progressives. ... Long ago, religious zealots embraced feudal ideals, but increasingly it’s the ultra-secular progressives who reprise the role of Medieval Inquisitors."  Whoulda thought?  (H/T to reader)

[27jun19 update] Photo journalism at its worst as far as providing information to impact public policy - that is conveyed by the photo of the drowned father and his toddler daughter floating face down at the water’s edge (here).  This emotional picture drives all reason and logic from viewers’ uncritical minds; whatever narrative you want to connect with that image will now be taken as God’s truth about illegal border crossings, immigration, President Trump’s border security policies, … .  No one will consider factors such as the abnormally low death rate that is connected with illegal border crossings per se – illegal aliens die before getting to the border, and a few die after successfully entering the US, but given the circumstances, the death rate is mercifully low.  How do we know?  Had there been any previous border crossing deaths, crack photo journalists would have had such pictures posted and published in every imaginable outlet all over the globe.  Fortunately, that is not the case.  I do note that the father did a very foolish and deadly thing by stuffing his daughter into his t-shirt, thus guaranteeing the toddler’s death should he not be able to stay afloat with that ungainly load in the roiling waters.  In any event, now we are guaranteed another spate of public policies based on emotion and the absence of reason.

Democrats continue to dramatically disrespect and discount the intellect of their base and those voters they desire to attract.  A particularly specious attractant their presidential candidates are using is their promise to forgive student debt.  They are betting that their supporters will be like the now-infamous video clip of an Obama voter who believed that all the promised goodies she received would be paid for out “the President’s stash”.  OPM continues to be the salve Democrat elites will use to fix everything that ails us if you just give them your vote.  Michael Solon in the 27jun19 WSJ adds to the obvious when he writes - Debt forgiveness punishes those who did the right thing, made sacrifices, and acted wisely and frugally, as well as those who simply didn’t have the opportunity to go to college. Isn’t this the sort of private gain at public expense that people on the left claim to abhor? … Such forgiveness would also eliminate a quality-control device that drives students to ensure their investment can be monetized to cover their costs. A student who borrows must make sure his future earnings will be enough to pay off the loans. If that incentive disappears, with free debt or free college, the graduate and the nation would suffer economically.  (Also see my ‘Student Loan Scam Solution’)

Dropout Derby Updated 23 June 2019

George Rebane

I don’t know how much of this piling on of Democratic presidential candidates will go on, but that 23-member gaggle just got two more wannabes to join the race.  Talk about a snow ball’s chance in hell IMHO.  Nevertheless, I am adding #24 Mike Gravel and #25 Joe Sestak, with indicated ID numbers to the list of 23 candidates shown in my original 5jun19 Dropout Derby post (here).  I’m not sure that either of them will do much as candidates at this late date – the debates start on 26 June – but I’ll continue to accept new and updated lists until the first dropout bites the dust.  Please submit them in the vertical list format as you did before.  Thanks.

Rich Ulery – CA escapee writes

[Rich Ulery was a longtime resident of Nevada County.  As a professional realtor Rich found time to give generously to the community through various leadership positions he held in civic organizations.  He also served as the chairman of the NC Republican Central Committee.  Rich and his bride are among the great exodus from California, having pulled up stakes and moving to Arizona last year.  I post Rich’s email as received by permission.  gjr]

Hi George,

I read that Nevada County supervisors just approved the 2019-20 budget of $258 million. While I understand the difficulty of comparing two different county budgets in two different states, I do find it interesting that Pima County, Arizona is wrestling with the approval of its $1.4 billion budget. Pima County has slightly more than 10 times the population of Nevada County, meaning that it costs Nevada County taxpayers almost 2X what it costs Pima County taxpayers to operate the county government. 

Certainly, the impact of Federal and State mandates and differing demographics will pollute this comparison. There are also cost of living considerations, although I will assure you that Nevada County COL is not double Pima County -- not even close. I will also assure you that Pima County has negligible unfunded pension liabilities. I suspect Nevada County is still hovering close to $200 million.

I'm not sure what conclusions, if any, to draw from this, but I found it at least intriguing.

Rich Ulery

 

When will the bull run end?

George Rebane

We are now in the longest bull run in the history of America’s security markets. The nearby figure filched from the 15jun19 WSJ provides some perspective.

The question on everyone’s lips is when will this bull run end. As readers know, I’m a semi-retired successful entrepreneur and capitalist who has managed his own securities portfolio for decades, has recently focused on financial engineering, and still enjoys inventing and coming up with new squigglies in that field. One of my recent contributions has been the extension of Gott’s theory that probabilistically treats the future termination of minimally known processes. This extension was described here in – ‘…, and this too shall pass’ - on 10 November 2014.

Well, it turns out that stock market bull runs are exactly the kinds of minimally known processes that succumb to the expanded R-G theory – all we reliably know about the bull market is its current age. So we can now ask more interesting questions such as, ‘What is the probability that the bull market will end in any future quarter (three-month period) starting now?’

The answer to that question is shown below for the next couple of years.  The blue dots/line indicate the diminishing probabilities that the bull will end in the quarter starting then, and the red dots/line indicate the growing probability that the bull will end sometime between now and the date shown.  (click on figure to enlarge)

Should there be more astute investors reading this, a natural extension of the above question is ‘How can we update such a probability when later we get some new information that bears on the markets?’ The good news is that this question can also be answered by using a form of the Bayes formula in which the then computed R-G probability serves as the ‘Bayesian prior’ from which to calculate the new (posterior) probability of the process about which we now know more than its age. The Bayes formula (described here) should be used thereafter as more pieces of relevant information are obtained. Fun stuff if you’re a bettin’ man (or woman).

Soaking the Middle Class

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 12 June 2019.]

By this time we have all heard the nearly two dozen Democratic presidential candidates promise Americans so many free things we’ll get that most of us have lost track of all the goodies coming our way when one of the newly declared socialists replaces President Trump.  Let me just recount a partial list to get us all on the same page, because I’m going to talk about paying for all the free stuff.  We are promised Medicare for All, free college, forgiven student loans, national job guarantee, paid family medical leave, guaranteed national income, and, of course, all the things in the Green New Deal.  There is more to the list, but I think that these are enough to give the flavor of what we all are encouraged to expect after 2020.

What no one wants to talk about is how the coming workers’ paradise will be paid for.  The few candidates who dare to venture there give short answers that can be paraphrased as, ‘well, we’re gonna tax the bejeezus out of the corporations and the rich, and make them finally pay their fair share’.  And this usually brings out a sigh of relief from the light thinkers in the middle and lower income classes – ‘we’re gonna get all this free stuff and other people will be paying for it, where do I sign?’

Those requiring more meaty answers are assured that we will follow the European model, and everyone knows that they’ve cracked the code on how bigger governments are really the source of the people’s succor and largess.  However, that’s not the case when we look at their data from the EU and OECD countries.  There we quickly find that 1) they get a lot less than our Democratic candidates promise, and 2) the money to pay for it comes from the middle and lower classes, for the simple reason that the rich don’t have enough loot to foot the bill.  And there’s even a more sinister method by how the taxes eventually get raised on everyone.  The entire story with lots of numbers, charts, and graphs unfolds in the recent Heritage Foundation paper, ‘A Progressive Road Map for Soaking the Middle Class’ by Adam Michel.

Michel summarizes his research with – “Taxes on the rich cannot raise the necessary revenue to fund large European-style welfare states. If left on the current trajectory, U.S. government expenditures will require large tax increases on middle-class Americans. The current progressive agenda to further increase spending on health care, education, environmental policy, and income supports will require even higher taxes on a larger share of taxpayers. If America’s spending continues to look more and more like that of Europe, U.S. tax policy will also need to shift. In European countries, lower-income and middle-class taxpayers pay an average marginal wage tax rate of 49 percent on income above $37,000 a year, and an average value-added tax (VAT) of 20 percent. Those same U.S. taxpayers face a marginal wage tax of 32 percent and an average sales tax of 6 percent. The only sustainable way to avoid a high-tax American future is to reduce the growth rate of federal spending.”

For those still in terminal phases of denial, consider that our federal spending has been growing faster than the economy, tax revenues, inflation, Americans’ wages, and savings.  There is no alternative other than taxes have to be raised to European levels to pay for European size governments and spending.  And as Michel shows from EU and OECD data, that means tax bills will have to be raised to a minimum of three times for everyone – no one, rich, middle, or low earners will be spared.  Everyone will pay because at that level of proposed spending we will have run out of other people’s money.

The Democrats’ proposals will cost a conservative $50T over the next 10 years, more than doubling the current $4.4T annual federal budget which is already one-third funded by debt.  The tax implications are so horrendous that no one on the Left wants to talk about it as we witnessed in this week’s Democrat controlled House Committee on the Budget, which pointedly refused to consider any discussion of where the money would come from for all the things promised in just the Green New Deal.  My recommendation is that you get some answers to these questions before you vote in 2020.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended 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.

[Addendum]  To put some meat on the above arguments.  Here are a couple of graphics illustrating the data from Adam Michel’s paper.  The first shows how much of each nation’s GDP is made up from the total tax burden its government imposes on its citizens.  The reason for America’s high ranking in most economic metrics that bear on people’s QoL should be clear.  There’s a reason why people from all over the world continue to risk life and limb to get into the United States, a reason that is totally, and I do mean TOTALLY, lost on our Left.  (Perhaps promoting policies to make us into a second rate country is the Democrats’ new stealth immigration policy that will then dramatically decrease the pressure on our borders.)

And here’s a compendium of more detailed albeit complex graphs placing the US relative to the EU and OECD countries.  It shows how tax revenues are spread over the spectrum of the countries' wage earners through the marginal rate burdens put on earnings.  It should dispel notions that all the socialist goodies currently in the EU, and promised in the US, are paid for by everyone, and not restricted to monies collected from the socially unjust rich and corporations.

The point to focus on in the above graphs is that the Democrat candidates want to put America right into the middle to upper end of the groups of blue dots representing the EU-OECD countries.  Check out the new tax rates that would apply to ALL our wage earners, and the resulting growth of government to absorb and redistribute the larger share of our nation's GDP (from the first figure, we are now only at the 27% of GDP level).  Does anyone really think that such a massive hit will not put brakes on our economy with the resulting impact on all our lives and motivation to take investment and entrepreneurial risks?  Look to Europe for the answers.

America’s politicians of all stripes know that Americans are overwhelmingly innumerate – they ‘don’t do numbers’.   Data such as presented above make no never mind to the overwhelming share of our citizens who, today more than ever, are focused on polarizing one-liners for their understanding of public policy proposals.  That is why the Democrats have no problem promising unattainable ‘free’ government benefits after they are elected to office.  The tools to make discriminating decisions on such matters were removed long ago from our public educational curricula.

Is Nevada County’s Broadband Leadership AWOL?

Russ Steele

How embarrassing to have a nationally known industry observers conclude that political leadership in your community is an allusive mirage when it comes to building out critical broadband infrastructure.  And, then publishing the details in a well-received book. 

First, these leaders do not seem to grasp the economics of having robust broadband (BB). They do not consider high-speed Internet as one of the essential infrastructure utilities such as water, power, sewer, and transportation. Broadband has gone from nice to have to must-have status. Local leaders still think broadband is nice to have-not critical economic infrastructure. 

Yes, Nevada County’s Supervisors and City Council Members supported Spiral at the CPUC meetings, but only after a significant bit of cajoling by local BB entrepreneur John Paul and some encouragement from SEDCorp's Brent Smith.  As reported here previously, Susan Crawford, an independent observer, did not find much evidence of strong community leadership:

"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."

Scattershots – 8jun19 (updated 11jun19)

George Rebane

California’s homeless population continues to grow; it now exceeds 130,000 and is heavily concentrated in metropolitan areas like LA, the Bay, and Sacramento with smaller scale infections even reaching rural counties like our own.  According to the feds, CA is now also #1 home for those without a home, and growing.  And the big surprise by our leftwing politicians and bureaucrats is that they can’t figure out why these numbers are going up given all the public monies that have and are being spent on welcoming benefits to CA’s indigents.  WSJ’s Alejandro Lazo describes the current situation in ‘Homelessness Grows in California Despite New Government Spending’.  The answer to this apparent conundrum is beyond simple – the homeless of the country are infinitely smarter than the double dummies who make up our electeds and bureaucrats in Sacramento.  If you’re homeless, or illegal, or on welfare, or a criminal, or …, why not head for the Idiots Paradise that sanctifies, succors, and salutes every kind of person whose vote can be bought with monies taken from the state’s well-to-do and remaining middle-class wage earners?

The Dems are pulling in the big bucks from the country’s corporatists. Companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, … are giving tens of millions to progressive candidates in hopes that they won’t get hurt too badly in Washington's growing anti-trust sentiment that threatens to break up the big guys.  The Left’s complaint is that open markets are not working, capitalism is broken, and Big Brother needs to step in to make things right.  The denied truth is that government hasn’t promoted open markets for at least 30 years.  So, there is no reason to pass more legislation to enlarge govt watchdog bureaus and staffs to mangle more markets, just step back from accepting corporatist payola, and enforce existing laws against monopolies and oligopolies.  But doing that would dry up the inflow of funds into corrupt pockets.  As an example, today Sens Warren and Sanders have each received more than $30M from Google’s parent Alphabet.  The interesting part is that the ill-read younger employees of the behemoths are contributing much of the money that will be used to buy the rope to hang them after socialism sweeps Silicon Valley. (more here and here)

Unclear about working out their futures are both our Millennials and the Europeans.  Fundamentally, both are afflicted by the same mental rot.  See comment stream below and the graphic sent to me by a reader in response to the above scattershot.  A picture is worth a thousand ... (and all that).

[10jun19 update]  Politicians of all stripes like to tell us what “the American people” like, reject, demand, deserve, think, ignore, want, … .  However, those of us who have paid attention over the years know that the more certain a politician is assuring us about the sentiments of the American people, the more sure we can be that he’s spewing BS on thin ice.  Author Joe Epstein agrees – “There’s no shortage, I realize, of ways of detecting falsity in contemporary politicians, but I’ve come upon one that I find most helpful. The more politicians use the phrase “the American people,” I believe, the less they are to be trusted.” (more here)

The double dummies in Sacramento are now planning on spending billions to provide “complete healthcare” to the state’s illegal aliens according to the AP (here).  California seeks to retain its position as the nation’s idiot state, emplacing more policies to attract the indigent, the under-educated, the welfare recipient, the illegal alien, the criminal, …, and then wonders why it needs higher taxes and more regulations which convince middle-class workers and their employers to leave the state.  It will cost $3.4B to provide such healthcare coverage to include the 1.8M illegals now in California.  How many more will arrive as a result is anybody’s guess, but not anticipated by our state’s legislative super-majority.  Here’s a sample of the thinking behind this legislation – “The state Senate wants to cover adults ages 19 to 25, plus seniors 65 and older. That bill’s sponsor, Sen. Maria Elana Durazo, scoffed at cost concerns, noting the state has a projected $21.5 billion budget surplus.”  So we’re again spending projected surpluses which have a horrible record of not arriving, while ignoring all the collateral costs that this invited ingress will incur as an ever larger share of California’s population is made up of professional gimmes.  (And here is more about soaking the middle class and taxing the rich.)  But we all know how they will vote, don't we?

Women of color remain victims in America, so maintains “ZORA”, a new “publication that centers on and celebrates the hopes, dreams, aspirations, and experiences of women of color”.  Zora is one of many newly minted online outlets promoted by Medium, itself a menagerie of Marxist missives from Millennials who regularly exhibit there the horrific educational deficits they have suffered in unionized government schools, bequeathed us by the Great Society.  Their raison d’etre is to “challenge the stereotypes and outdated tropes associated with women of color” through offerings that provide a “multi-textured, multilayered, multifaceted take on life as a woman of color.”  I provide these links to readers as yet one more witness to the broad spectrum of inputs from which I and other well-read RR readers benefit.  As such, reciprocity is recommended to our leftwing brethren in order to elevate their discourse in these pages.

[11jun19 update]  Another more succinct perspective on socialism.

Trans Athletes Debate – The BBC will air a documentary at the end of this month to explore the trans athlete issue which now impacts primarily women’s sports competitions.  The documentary – ‘Trans Athletes: A Fair Playing Field?’ - will feature Martina Navratilova on the BBC One channel.  For those new to this issue, the problem is that natural female athletes who have spent their careers training to be champions in their sports are now left in the dust by trans-female athletes.  These competitions are inherently unfair to the women, and illustrate the undeniable fact that men and women are different, even after having their plumbing altered.  We don’t hear much about trans-male athletes competing in individual male sporting events, mainly because they don’t have chance to shine.  But to make progressive political hay, we do have examples of trans-males insisting on being on the men’s football teams where their inherent physical handicaps can be camouflaged in team play.  Nevertheless, their coaches and teammates know that the trans-males don’t carry their weight in such competitions.  My own opinion is that once you become a trans anything, that you forfeit your right to compete in your chosen gender sporting events.  If we get enough transgender athletes, then perhaps they can start their own sports leagues and individual competition events to maintain level playing fields.

Dropout Derby (updated 7jun19)

George Rebane

By last count there were 23 Democrat declared candidates running to become the next POTUS, with two more standing in the wings making up their minds.  And here they are –

Now it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that all but a handful will make it through the debates and primaries, and to the convention floor.  One by one, most of them will start dropping out of the race for one reason or another.  And it occurred to me that trying to noodle the order of such casualties over the coming months would be much like filling in the March Madness basketball championship playoff brackets.  Only here it would be even simpler, and involve just making a list from the first to drop out all the way to the last one surviving as the 2020 Democrat candidate.

Student Loan Scam Solution

George Rebane

Most well-read Americans know about the student loan scam that has been going on for at least a couple of decades.  This is where colleges and university administrations lobby for ever more generous and easy to get student loans, and then increase their tuitions and fees to continue the financial burden on the students, so that they can circle the ‘student loan barn’ one more time.  Everyone, save the students, know what these administrators have been doing, but no one seems to care until we get into a crisis such as the one we have now.

Today, the unpaid student debt stands at over $1.5T, and there is little chance that the lion’s share of it will be repaid.  Why?  Because many (most?) of the former students didn’t get the education required to get and hold a job that pays enough to pay off the loan and also make ends meet for the other necessaries of living.  And that because many of them left school before getting a degree, and more of them got ‘pretend feel-good’ (PFG) degrees.  The latter were concocted by college administrations to cynically take advantage of the nation’s politically correctness plague and attract hordes of the unqualified for dealing with and benefitting from real academic fields that teach skill sets valuable to employers not spending other people’s monies.

With the often-laughable curricula underlying such PFG degrees, droves of otherwise unqualified students were admitted to colleges and universities across the land.  Most all of them took out student loans for which fogging a mirror was the main qualification.  The college kahunas promptly raised tuitions and fees, and the money poured in to hire all kinds of people to administer the ‘…ility’ and ‘…ivity’ programs and projects – racial diversity, gender equality, ethnic inclusivity, historical sensitivity, … .

But recently the news about college graduates with PFG degrees has gotten out, and employers are not hiring them for what they supposedly learned in school – ‘Would you like fries with that?’ wound up for many as Plan B.  So during the last six years we have seen college enrollments drop (here), and it’s not clear whether the administrators, who now outnumber the institutions’ academics, will offer more or fewer PFG courses of study to attract the declining cohort of those planning to continue their education after high school.

No matter what the future admittance policies will be, student loans – most offered by government (i.e. you and me) - are here to stay.  So here’s the Rebane Doctrine solution to the student loan crisis – simply put, require the admitting universities and colleges to guarantee their students’ loans.  This will have at least two salutary effects.  It will again raise admission standards to levels more in line with the intellectual demands of real academia, and it will serve to prune the course catalogue of gratuitous PFG degree programs (and also tune up their other academic offerings for success in the jobs markets).  Universities will then have a vested interest in admitting qualified students and then teaching them skillsets valued by society.  Simply pass legislation that requires schools receiving federal funding of any kind to co-sign their students’ loan agreements.  A corollary benefit will be the reduction of administrative staffing levels, especially those dealing with all the ‘… ilities’ and ‘…ivities’ programs and attitudes that have so changed the face of our schools of higher education.

Ruminations – 31may19 (updated 5jun19)

George Rebane

 “The American people, right now, do not support (impeachment) because they do not know the story. They don’t know the facts.” Congressman Nadler (D-NY).  So WTF has been holding up the facts for the last two years????  If you got ‘em, let us see them - now!

Tariffs on all Mexican goods is not my favorite idea to get Mexico to stop and not encourage the transit of central American migrants across their country.  Nothing else has worked to date, and Einstein’s dictum demands we try something new.  So, for all you worthies out there with better ideas, let’s have them.

[1jun19 update]  The RL Crabb cartoon below was filched from the 1jun19 Union.  Here Bob cleverly captures the obvious in our local state senate special election.  The unfortunate part illustrated is California’s so-called “Jungle Primary” law that lands the top two vote-getters from the primary in the final election.  In highly lopsided jurisdictions this means that the top two may be from the same party, therefore denying a voice to the minority to express their desire for other policies or even make known their numbers.  This is what happens when legislative pinheads give little thought to ‘Democracy über alles’.

[2jun19 update] As long argued here, our two ideological poles interpret about every aspect of the realworld from significantly different or even disjoint perspectives.  Three Columbia Law School mavens acknowledge and examine this phenomenon in ‘Republicans and Democrats Are Describing Two Different Constitutions’ published in the current edition of The Atlantic.  The closer we all look at our belief systems (aka ontologies), the wider the chasm between us appears.

Climate Change Cacophony – Russ Steele points us to ‘The Stunning Statistical Fraud Behind The Global Warming Scare’.  And in conjunction I again ask readers to consider this chain of chances (probabilities) before mindlessly promoting public policies – each successive chance is conditioned on the previous ones being true.  So, what’s the chance that climate varies over time, that a long-term warming trend continues, that current warming is overwhelmingly manmade, that the warming trend is catastrophic, that the warming trend can be halted by some means, that we know how to halt warming, that we can afford to halt warming without destroying the economies that provide the wealth to terminate global warming???  Now multiply all those probabilities together to assess your support of climate hysteria.

[5jun19 update]  HOT FLASH!  Speaker Pelosi again confirms (the RR assertion) that the Dems’ constituency is overwhelmingly challenged in the intellectual acumen department.  She made great effort yesterday to 1) acknowledge that the Left’s voters do not grasp the meaning of ‘impeachment’, thinking that once impeached then you’re out.  And 2) explained in detail that impeachment is like indictment, and that a guilty verdict from a trial in the Senate is needed to oust an impeached official.  Of course, she had to negotiate these semantic hurdles while carefully omitting mention of the illustrative example of Sweet Willie being impeached yet remaining in office.  Now methinks she’s worried that her voters are equally clueless about what ‘indictment’ means.

Neither Biden nor Warren know the difference between an objective and a plan to achieve the objective.  Both have now disclosed their “plans” to solve their climate change catastrophe which consist overwhelmingly of just throwing more money at ‘global warming R&D’ and praying fervently (to the extent permitted in the liberal liturgy) that something good will come out of that before the world ends.  Oh yeah, each also intends to pass some more laws and regs to make sure that the economy will not be able to afford achieving the R&D objectives.

Nevada County, the Black Hole of Broadband (updated 9jun19)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 29 May 2019.  A slightly edited version of this piece was published in The Union's 1jun19 print edition and also online here.]

Broadband connectivity to the internet is fundamental to the economic growth of every community in America.  And it is doubly critical for the economic development, if not survival, of small rural communities off the beaten path like Nevada County.  However, that truth has yet to be embraced by our local governments.  In fact, there are many of us who adamantly oppose the availability of broadband in these foothills for the simple reason that they are opposed to everything that promotes growth in our county, be it in housing, new or expanding businesses, or anything that invites more working families to locate here.

Ruminations – 26may19 (updated 28may19)

George Rebane

Returned from a week at Hat Creek, CA with RV couples – we proudly call ourselves ‘Road Warriors’ – where the weather alternated between idyllic and intense thunderstorms not uncommon during this time of year.  A lightning strike on the RV park’s wifi antenna had us all experience yesteryear.  And we were again reminded of a part of California that is very unlike the part populated by gimmes who see the state as open territory for any and all who believe that the age of America’s exceptionalism is deservedly ending.  (Photo of entrance to Burney cemetary.)

In ‘The Tales of Parson Comey’ WSJ’s Bill McGurn recounts the lies and prevarications of the former FBI director that have now come to light as he rides the media circuit promoting his recent auto-hagiography.  The man has also revealed his ability “to see into other men’s souls”, and while demonstrating that “he knows his congregation”, as “he feeds it from Mt Self-Righteous, with a mix of Democratic talking points, proclamations about the wickedness of anyone with a different point of view, and the occasional lofty quotation from Reinhold Niebuhr.”

New York’s striking union members just got a leg up from the state’s anti-capitalist government.  After Gov Andrew Cuomo signs the new bill from the state’s legislature, strikers will get full unemployment benefits just one week after walking off the job.  This should put the state’s already strong and rapacious unions on par with management when threatening job actions.  Heads up readers know that New York is one in a covey of proto-socialist states which spew wealth creators and middle-class workers to friendlier and ‘greener’ climes.  Other members of this clatch include New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, and, of course, our California.

Alexander Rossi, is in 2nd place (at lap 113/200) in today’s Indy 500 as this is posted.  The Nevada County native won the race in 2016, and placed well in the succeeding years.  As most racing fans know, the 500 is actually a two-phased race with the first part putting great emphasis on pole position and closed-field running; the second phase becomes more tactical in the planning and coordination of pit stops between the driver and pit crew.  [Update]  Well shucks, our own Alex Rossi came in 2nd after a most thrilling finish to the 500-mile classic.  Head to head Rossi and Pagenaud traded places for the lead during the last ten laps with the Frenchman in the lead by 0.2 second when the 200th lap was completed.  Great driving by a real field of pros with no casualties save some pretty smashed up race cars.  Congratulations to all.

Union publisher Don Rogers’ in ‘A crisis in journalism’ does his best to hearken us back to an age when “the journalist’s core role for society (was) to intelligently question convention, find any rotten wood in the good ship, (and) bring truth to light.”  And today the field is filled with political professionals, partisans, and pundits who work on “the other side of a line dividing the passionate from something cooler, more practical, with the ability to sift for empirical evidence out of all the chaff, and to recognize opinions for what they are”.  In my readings of history and my many years on this planet, I have yet to witness journalism in the mainstream of its practice as not just another form of paid promotion and partisanship for established points of view and agendas.  In short, Mr Rogers is wistfully wishing for a time that never was, as today the profession has abandoned even the remaining vestiges of its ‘standards’, long used as the profession’s camouflage of claimed prudence and propriety.

[27may19 update]  The opioid ‘crisis’ included over 25,000 overdose deaths in 2016 from the prescribed drug.  Opioid overdose deaths have been known since before 1999 when the overdose death rate began to soar from consuming the legally prescribed pain killer.  Now local governments and healthcare organizations are suing the pharmas that legally manufacture and legally sell the drug, to physicians who legally prescribe it.  I’m puzzled as to why such suits have standing.  The state could have outlawed opioids decades ago if it felt that the drug could not be safely consumed by the public.  One could also ask why the car companies are not being sued for the 30K+ annual deaths from car accidents.  Did they not also legally manufacture a deadly machine, sold legally to the public who then also suffered from its unintended uses?

Economist Dr James P Smith exhibits his knowledge of history in the 27may19 Union (here),claiming that the rift between Congress and the Executive began with the Russian-influenced election of President Trump.  Before that, everything in Washington was going along swimmingly; now the country must “take heed”.

[28may19 update]  Another neighbor abandons California.  We were surprised last week to learn that one of our recently acquired neighbors, a couple who bought acreage and spent almost five years building their estate, fighting their way through all our regulatory complexities to thwart development, have now had enough.  They are headed for a new start in New Mexico – Godspeed.

“Wage Gap Commissars” are proposed by Sen Kamala Harris, based on demonstrably false data that she uses to describe the difference between aggregate pay rates of men and women.  Her proposed legislation for America would require all businesses with more than 100 employees to demonstrate to a new bureaucracy that their pay scale is gender neutral.  Such companies number more than 100,000 and employ over 80 million workers.  Her new facet of socialism would insert government as the final arbiter of what employers can and should pay their employees.  This is an evil piece of legislation to join the many others that this Democrat and her cohorts running for president have proposed to hobble America should any of them succeed to office. (more here, here, and here)

Scattershots – 18may19

George Rebane

Freedom and equality have never been bedfellows – naturally enabled inequality in all dimensions is the litmus test for a free society.

‘The Myth of Wage Stagnation’ is explained by Phil Gramm and John Early.  Dr Gramm is an economist and the former chair of the Senate Banking Committee. Dr John Early is the former assistant commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Convincing the country’s lightly read that middle class wages have stagnated for decades is the Democrats’ sine qua non Big Lie, along with ongoing fake news reports, required to beat President Trump in 2020.  The basis of their argument reduces to, ‘Do you believe your lying eyes or what we’re telling you?’  After supplying the reader with a snootfull of relevant economic data, Gramm and Early conclude with – “The suggestion that America hasn’t gotten a raise in 46 years doesn’t pass the laugh test. Poor measurements of compensation are more than misleading; they also cause many voters and policy makers to favor redistribution that would depress growth and compensation. Nothing is more critical to promoting sound policy than measuring economic outcomes accurately. A nation is only as good as its facts.” (more here)

Speaking of facts, our educational systems are supposed to teach us both facts about the world and how to deal with them to create wealth and benefit society.  Two men who have outdone themselves to hinder America in these pursuits are David Coleman and the late Howard Zinn.  Coleman is the maven behind the disastrous Common Core curriculum (extensively covered in these pages) that has put the latest dent into our public education system, and the man who is also the architect of taking down the merit-based SAT by appending to it a proprietary and secret “adversity score” to aid colleges in returning to sub-rosa, race-based admission policies. (more here).  Zinn is the author of the notorious revisionist and widely-used The People’s History of the United States (1980) that has mangled the historical view of two generations of our country’s high school and college students.  Historian Wilfred McClay has now written a counterpoint text, Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.  While not “some saccharine whitewash of American history”, the tome does correct the country’s past from Zinn’s version as “a comic-book melodrama in which ‘the people’ are constantly being abused by ‘the rulers.’”, that explains today’s younger generation’s love affair with socialism. (more here)

Power from magnets may provide us a more hopeful future if the ‘Earth Engine’ prototypes of industrial engineer Dennis Danzick pan out.  He claims to have cracked the long-hidden code of how to suck net energy out of magnetic fields, and has demonstrated the process as something that could soon be commercialized.  No one, including Danzick, has yet to explain the physics of this contraption, and a couple of prominent physicists have poo-poohed the whole thing as yet the promotion of the latest perpetual motion machine.  You can see a live stream of the ‘Crystal’ version of the engine working at the facilities of Inductance Energy located in Scottsdale, AZ.  (more here and here)

Alabama Abortion Law

George Rebane

OK, here’s the drill.  The Left opposes the recent Alabama law that is being replicated in its essential elements by a growing number of heartland states.  The crux of the opposition is preserving the mental health of the mother, not her physiological health or other factors about which most on both sides agree.  (And as a corollary, saving society from the maturing of a rejected child.)  She simply doesn’t think it would be all that satisfying, for a number of reasons, to raise the little darling – besides, at best it was probably a ‘Oops!’ to begin with.  So, with the partial information she has during her pregnancy while baby is growing inside her, she should have the right to decide that it should be killed.

And make no mistake, that is the fundamental argument of the pro-abortion proponents who use the ‘mother’s health’ and ‘mother’s right to choose’ smokescreen.  So OK, let’s go with that.  While the baby is pre-partum, the mother knows little or nothing about the potential of that baby to bring her happiness and grow up to lead a productive life that contributes to society.  The pro-abortionists are militating for her right to make the life or death choice in ignorance.  Any reasonable person would agree that her choice would be more informed and, in short, better for all if she made it knowing more about the child.

So why not increase her legal prerogatives to preserve her QoL and mental health in general, by allowing her to make the decision based on more complete information about the little tyke.  Let’s give all women the option of terminating the development (life) of their child after they have seen how the little darlins are really turning out.  Why not extend the pro-choice period they demand to include, say, the first couple or three post-partum years of the kid’s life?  The mother would have a hell of a lot more information about how her offspring is going to turn out, and the kind of kink it will put in her lifestyle if she kept the kid.  After all, it’s all about empowering women and extending the mother’s right to choose so she can make a more informed decision.  And the final solution for the rejected kid will be the same, we kill it - now as then, we can make it so the kid will never know what hit him.

In the end, if it’s all legal, no one will make a fuss, and in fact, no one will even have to know if one day mom is no longer pushing a perambulator around the shopping mall.  If anyone asks, she just tells them that she exercised her woman’s right to choose, just as if she had decided early on to get rid of the bump in her belly.  Everyone will understand that a law extending womens’ rights in this fashion makes all the sense in the world, since it gives them a greater latitude to decide with much more information than just blindly condemning to death a child whom she has yet to meet and get to know.  So, let’s get with the program.

Trump’s Immigration Policy

George Rebane

Our current immigration policy, such as it is, hails and invites illegal entry from distant lands, favors meritless chain migration without end, and offers entry to only one of eight immigrants who have skillsets that would make them productive members of our workforce.  Additionally, its proponents seek every opportunity to provide amnesty and a fast path to citizenship for the 11M to 20M illegal aliens already in the land.

Trump’s proposal is for more than half of our new immigrants to possess skillsets that are scarce and needed, reduce chain migration to a third of the total, and require all legal immigrants to have some knowledge of English and be able to pass an elemental civics test about the US and its forms of governance. (more here)  It is moot on the resident illegals, knowing that this aspect will be resolved through extensive negotiations with the Democrats who look forward to these millions enlarging its constituent voter base.

But all progressives, led by Pelosi and Schumer, have immediately attacked the Trump plan as obviously being against the strategic interests of the Democrats in their massive lurch to the left.  Their main argument, a la Madame Speaker, is that America has never enforced merit-based immigration, and that the generations of the 19^th and early 20^th century immigrants, who contributed so much to America’s greatness, would never have been allowed in had Trump’s policy been in place then.  This claim is false from a number of perspectives, and again exemplifies the low intellectual esteem that Democrat leaders hold their core supporters, and by extension, the country’s undecides – Team Pelosi considers them all as slogan-swallowing, double dummies.

To make matters worse, the Dems’ arguments are even too difficult for some Republicans (including the vaunted Judge Napolitano) to counter.  The truth of the matter is that when those millions from Europe and Asia arrived in generations past, they ALL possessed skills that allowed them to immediately enter our workforce as its newest productive members.  Taken within the context of predominant workforce skillsets of those times, all the arriving immigrants had the ability to start jobs that they already knew how to do, or for which their skill extensions were easily acquired.  (BTW, Mollie Hemingway, senior editor of The Federalist, was the only one who grokked that historical factor on an FN panel – track her career, she is one astute female.)  In our age of specialization, advanced technology, and automation, such jobs for the under-educated from third world countries are much harder to find, thereby putting those English-absent immigrants at a great disadvantage and make them prey for criminals and other low-lifes ready to take advantage of them and make their advent a net cost to our society.

The other factor of which Team Pelosi is ignorant or willing to dissemble is the merit-based immigration policies we have had in place since WW2.  For example, refugees from war ravaged Europe were let in only on the basis of satisfying three major criteria – having US-needed skills, being sufficiently healthy, and having a political record with no taint of communist or fascist support.  These requirements were relaxed in the post-Vietnam era when immigration policy began to support party-specific voter agendas.  As cited above, workforce merit factors in for only one out of eight legal immigrants, and, of course, zero for those most welcomed above all who are adept at climbing dilapidated fences and fording rivers.

So Trump’s totally pro-American immigration policy proposal has little chance of becoming law under the current federal government's make-up, but contributes yet one more litmus test to distinguish between the pro- and anti-American factions in our land.

Ruminations - 10may19 (updated 13may19)

George Rebane

Global warming warmongers like to ‘prove’ their calamitous climate change prognostications by citing the increasing dollar costs and casualties caused by natural disasters such as winds, floods, and fires.  They count on their claims being consumed without question by constituents not able to discover that such statistics are due to greater numbers of buildings and people populating danger-prone areas.  The record of parameters that measure the physical intensity and frequency of such disasters don’t support the lamestream publicized histrionics.  ‘Growth Fuels Size of Catastrophes’ in the 10may19 WSJ attempts to educate the educable.

No Democrat with a 3-digit IQ wants to actually impeach Trump for the simple reason that their case for it is laughable, and then they would lose an anti-Trump election issue that still has legs with certain deficit-laden constituencies.  Speaker Pelosi and Rep Nadler are doing their best to keep blowing hot air into their “constitutional crisis” balloon which continues to float beautifully through lamestream outlets like CNN and MSNBC.

‘Let’s Apply the Moore Protocol to Congress’ suggests R.G. Walker of St Petersburg (here).  That protocol was established by a liberal court in Fairfax County, VA through ordering the release of the sealed divorce records of Stephen Moore and his former wife, despite strong objections from both parties.  This kind of “dumpster diving” was fomented by the lamestream with such intensity that the VA court finally succumbed to the extra-legal sleaze in order to publicize ‘evidence’ that finally caused Moore to withdraw his nomination to the Fed’s Board.  Mr Walker suggests that if this kind of ethical detour is warranted for Fed candidates, it should also be uniformly applied to members of Congress who have much more power to do harm, the propensity for which presumably arises out of previously hidden character shortcomings that the American public has the right to know.  He recommends that they all should have their sealed records unsealed with the merciful option, not offered Moore, to retain their “previously established privacy to any who resign their congressional posts immediately, say, by sundown.”

Our designated reader gave me a heads up that our FUE has once more mounted the pulpit and issued another ex-cathedra missive, this time delivering a sage reflection and admonition under the 10may19 Union’s Hits & Misses column in reference to Jo Ann’s contribution (here).  She is a continuing member on the newspaper’s editorial board, who drew the FUE’s ire for not including my MIM board membership in her praise for MIM’s recent grand opera Carmen presentation.  (For the record, and to pre-empt another breathless revelation, I am also the Vice President of MIM, and we are long-time In Concert Sierra donors, attendees, and appreciative promoters.)  But what we always find remarkable is the boundless hubris with which our self-adorned “veteran editor and award-winning journalist” issues his absolutes about our “podunk community” and its podunkier inhabitants whom he has graced with his presence, that is today regrettably so far removed from a more compatible cosmopolitan and civil environment.  The man is truly a gift that keeps on giving.

[13may19 update]  After my 9may19 visit to our local pot shop (here), I now read that bio-engineering companies may start making MJ’s active ingredients, THC and CBD, in processing plants without having to grow those smelly weeds.  In the MIT Technology Review, Antonio Regalado tells us of the Dutch bio-tech company Amyris that has designs of producing those ingredients in bulk to become readily available ingredients for “large scale use” in all kinds of consumables.  Of course, there still is some “cognitive dissonance” involved in all this since “biotech is supposed to be about helping people, and cannabis, like alcohol, doesn’t always do that. It can be used for pain relief, but there’s also a link to psychosis.” (more here)

Scattershots – 6may19 (updated 9may19)

It is the ultimate fantasy that we can live our lives, or at any rate live them in peace and contentment with each other, without ever having to share a common reality. - James Bowman

George Rebane

An example of fake news.  Apple News is a very comprehensive news website for Mac, iPad, and iPhone users, one that allows you to customize with your interests, and then augments the format with your viewing history – in short, it snoops in your user sessions.  Recently it included a piece from the National Geographic reporting on the military marine mammal programs of Russia and US (here).  I was a bit astounded that almost everything they reported on the US program was either false or grossly misleading.  Full disclosure – I and my company spent years supporting the US Navy’s marine mammal (and other animal) R&D programs as their analytical support team doing the heavy lifting in the math, data analysis, and systems design work.

The 6may19 Union’s op-ed has two pieces from our favorite leftwing columnists, Dr Milan Vodicka (search RR) and, of course, Mr George Boardman.  Dr Vodicka delivered one of his trademark muddled sermons on the joys of socialism (not posted yet).  There he attempted to augment Bertand Russell’s three factors motivating human behavior with a fractured taxonomy that makes absolutely no sense to the careful reader, and then went on to celebrate the free nationalized healthcare systems found in EU countries.  In the latter, he drinks the kool-aid by the gallon, and evinces no understanding of the realities that obtain.  Mr Boardman presents a good critique of the Republican California Senate candidates Assemblymen Dahle and Kiley, and then blows a tire describing the Democrat Audrey Denny attempting unseat Congressman LaMalfa (here).  Without so much as a smidgen of qualification or sourcing, he tells the reader that the Green New Deal is “a sweeping national plan to zero-out emissions and provide clean energy and infrastructure jobs to millions.”  Apparently, our columnist continues to have trouble distinguishing between objectives and plans, and reports the GND as actually being a plan.  Regardless, objectives or plans, It has a snowball’s chance in hell of accomplishing anything touted.

[7may19 update]  Spying v. Surveillance.  I don’t know why this is so difficult for the media talking heads to resolve (those on FN, not the lamestream whose agenda is known).  A nation’s law enforcement agency does surveillance (on an individual, group, organization) when the target of such intelligence gathering involves a domestic issue/parties that does NOT involve the presumed culpability of a foreign government.  That same agency conducts a spying operation when it seeks to gather intelligence on a matter that does involve a foreign government.  To infiltrate a domestic gang, you send in an 'undercover agent'; to surveil or infiltrate foreign government operations, you employ/send in 'spies'. That is the way we have successfully defined spying v. surveillance for generations.  Since Obama’s FBI et al were convinced from the gitgo that Team Trump was in cahoots with Russia, their surreptitious intelligence gathering efforts were clearly spying.

[8may19 update]  Upcoming tariffs increase on Chinese goods this Friday (10may19) is supposed to be in retaliation for the Chinese reneging on parts of the two countries’ established trade agreements and/or the progress made in the current negotiations.  And there’s a big debate on whether President Trump is doing the right thing with this retaliation.  The debate would be moot if the administration just published the details of China’s renege.  I don’t know why the big secret in not putting it out for all to see and judge for themselves as to the relative magnitudes of the offense vs the response.  Everyone involved in such negotiations around the world already knows what has gone down; the only ones ignorant who will be affected by it all are the people of China and America.  I can understand the communists keeping their people in the dark (it’s their nature), but I can’t see why our government also keeps us in the dark.

AG Barr will be held in contempt of a Democrat House, and that is again denigrating the intelligence of their own constituents – why?  Simply because they can.  They know that in the aggregate, Democrat voters have little or no idea how our government works or what the laws are, and they overwhelmingly consume media outlets that cynically keep them in the dark.  The rest of us know that AG Barr is under no legal imperative to release any of the Mueller report to anyone, or to even reveal its main contents/conclusions – why?  Because the special prosecutor came up with nothing with which to prosecute anyone.  (He diddled away the people’s money on a self-serving sideshow nailing individuals on process crimes, people who had nothing to do with his commissioned charter, and then wrote the best anti-Trump political blueprint that he could.)  Now scumbag Nadler is going to up it a notch and hold Barr in contempt for not releasing information that is against the law for him to release - please reread this.  And none of it has anything to do with Congress’ oversight function for legislative purposes.  Moreover, the whole thing is a total bag of bullcrap that Democrats are dealing out to their know-nothings as part and parcel of the Big Lie – i.e. anything it will take to defeat Trump in 2020.

[9may19 update] Well boys and girls, your humble host has now visited a genuine, legal pot shop.  A good friend (known to you all) with whom I often take lunch, took me on a tour of the Elevation 2477 cannabis dispensary in Nevada City.  The experience was quite remarkable.  We entered into an immaculate reception area at the end of which sat a uniformed security officer behind (bulletproof?) glass.  The room contained a nice couch and an abstract painting presumably abstracting some visions customers may enjoy after imbibing of the establishment’s offerings.  We were invited to the window to place our driver’s licenses against the glass to be scanned, and I being a newbie, was instructed to fill in a store “membership application”, studying the store’s rules, and then putting my John Hancock declaring that I understood everything.  My friend was already a member, so my joining up allowed us both to be ushered into the inner sanctum housing the stash.

The store itself was immaculately laid out with neat glass-cased counters displaying all the desiderata in various forms and at various concentrations of THC and CBD.  For the cognoscenti, this was no doubt a very inviting display as evinced by the palaver carried on between other customers and clerks, all of whom were very knowledgeable of both their products and the applicable legalese.  After getting some answers to my questions, my friend made a very modest purchase of probably their most benign SKU, and we made our way to the exit.  Then I noticed that the store’s walls each had a magnificent abstract painting cum mural on it, replicating their foyer and no doubt reinforcing visually the promises made by the cleverly named substances and concoctions.  As we left the premises, it occurred to me that I am now marked for life.

Scattershots – 26apr19 (updated 27apr19)

George Rebane

The 17apr19 Scattershots got a bit too long with items that are hard to see below the page break, so let’s start another one.  BTW, I want to thank the thousands of RR readers and its group of stalwart commenters of all ideological hues.  We are now in our thirteenth year, and to date have amassed an archive of 3,006 posts underpinned by 140,681 comments in their comment streams.  Actually, the number of posts would be thousands more, save for my use of aggregating many of them under the dated ‘Ruminations’ and ‘Scattershots’ collections.  RR continues to be a uniquely open forum for the civil (albeit sometimes uncivil) discussion of all ideas that “alter and illuminate our times.”

Rebane’s rumblings are not the only attempts at deep thoughts about the goings on in our country and on our planet.  Significant contributions from our commenters on other issues and ideas decorate and lend weight to these comment streams, especially under the dated Sandboxes.  I call your attention to a recent exchange in the 23apr19 Sandbox between commenters Messrs Tozer (starting 848am) and ‘scenes’ (formerly ‘Scenes from the Coming Apocalypse’) that illustrates how illiberal has become free speech and discussion of new ideas in our progressive-run universities and colleges.

Democratic mayor Pete Buttigieg has entered the party’s race for its 2020 presidential candidate.  And, out of the gate, he’s basing the launch of his campaign on an audacious pack of lies about VP and former Indiana governor Mike Pence, with whom he had a most cordial and cooperative working relationship.  Governor Pence went out of his way to support and work with the unabashedly gay South Bend mayor.  But now “Mayor Pete picks a fight with a caricature of the vice president that he knows from experience is false.” (more here)  I bring this up re the continuing charges from our leftwing about Republicans being the only lying politicians in the land; none of them recognize the whopper-based careers of their own political leaders.  Why is it that the Right has no problem calling out the lies of Republican politicians (witness the numberless articles and features from the WSJ, National Review, Fox News, Heritage Foundation, …), but you never hear about the lying sumbiches and biches on the Left from their lamestream outlets?

How many mosques and Muslims have been attacked by self-declared Christians, or in the name of Christ?  Ask that reciprocal question about Muslims murdering Christians all around the world.  And dig deeper to ask how many of these Islamic terrorists have been recruited, trained, dedicated, and directed by Islamic institutions, organizations, and their clergy.  It is hard to make the case that there is any semblance of reciprocation in this ideo/theological conflict as our progressive brethren like to point out.  The two stacks of evidence simply do not compare.  So why does the Left continue to maintain this façade of lies?  (Full disclosure: this a is an unvarnished rhetorical question to which most Americans already know the answer.)

Western media glibly continue to report that North Korea is a “nuclear armed regime”, when it clearly is not.  I think for diplomatic and propaganda purposes we need to paint NK and its dear leader, the Ugly Fat Kid, as having the capability to wreak worldwide havoc.  This so that we can continue our attempts to keep him from acquiring/developing nuclear arms, and in the process support our agenda with China and now Russia.  It may be a bit technical to follow, but the UFK is nowhere near having nuclear ‘arms’ – i.e. operational weapons capable of delivering and exploding nuclear devices over distant enemy targets.  The simple fact is that the UFK has yet to test and demonstrate a launchable warhead that can be controlled with sufficient accuracy, and that also carries precisely-deployable, onboard penaids (penetration aids consisting of staged decoys used to spoof interceptor radars and IR sensors) that enable it to survive re-entry and reach the desired detonation point before being intercepted.   Before such a weapon enters their arsenal as an operational weapon system, NK will have to conduct multiple re-entry tests using otherwise fully functional, dummy warheads aimed at open-ocean ‘targets’.  Such tests will take time and be visible to all, and will be most carefully monitored by us and other nations concerned about the UFK’s sabre rattling.  (The Soviets and now Russians have monitored the re-entry of our ICBMs at mid-Pacific target atolls for decades.)  However, no such tests have been observed; ergo, NK is not yet a nuclear armed regime.

Avengers: The Endgame was touted by WSJ’s film critic Joe Morgenstern, who gave the movie a glowing review last Wednesday (24apr19), the day before its nationwide opening (here).  And apparently he was not the only one trumpeting hosannas for the flick.  Well, Jo Ann and I don’t go to the movies much, so we thought ‘what the hell, even though comic book heroes are not our favorite past time, the cultural experience sitting with a live audience should be worth it – so we went last night to the GV del Oro theater and wedged ourselves between an interesting menagerie of humanity that included a pair of motor-mouths behind us rattling their popcorn bags and bumping the backs of our seats, and next to a couple of twenty-something females who hauled in a four-year-old young man who had been taught no social skills about how to behave in polite company (perhaps because it didn’t turn out to be all that polite).  Anyway, the theater’s noise level during the movie was something to behold – when will they provide the audio over our own wireless, noise-cancelling headsets?

So now the 3+ hour movie.  It was the most banal attempt to combine some awkwardly composed serious dialogue with action scenes designed for the comprehension of six-year-olds that unsuccessfully attempted to explain the role of quantum-based time travel by the characters before they found themselves battling the vast array of minions in the service of a really bad guy who wanted to destroy the universe – we noticed that we’re now beyond simply destroying the earth, or our solar system, or even the galaxy – and then build a new one more to his liking.  Apparently he had the godlike powers to do it, although the movie was distinctly free of any accompanying spiritual content – you know, separation of church and Hollywood – that might at least have made a cameo appearance.  And so this utter waste of time dragged on for hours that seemed like much more than its claimed three, during which time all (who knows?) the Marvel heroes made their own appearances in addition to more cameos by some notable film worthies like Robert Redford and Benedict Cumberbatch.  And here we thought such people had enough money to avoid another turn at the world’s oldest profession.  Apparently not, since all across the country multiplexes bumped other films to use all their auditoriums for extra showings of Avengers, some going so far as to advertise 24/7 offerings so everyone could come and enjoy this heartwarming epic and culmination of the cinemagraphic arts.  Truth be told, if you paid attention, you could even catch odd snatches of acting, each lasting maybe ten, fifteen seconds.  And this morning we were told that this flick is breaking all box office records.  But overall, as a public service our advice is to save your money, unless you are determined to dip your own dipstick to check the level and character of today’s hoi polloi.

[27apr19 update]  Our indominable cartoonist Bob Crabb has hit another home run.  His latest offering below was filched from the pages of the 27apr19 Union.  Thanks Bob for making the already painful also memorable 😉

Post-citizenship America (updated 28apr19)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 24 April 2019.  A slightly edited version also appears in the 27apr19 issue of The Union.]

Perhaps no recent issue of national contention illustrates the differences of how our two polarized sides see the future direction of America than does the debate about whether the 2020 census should include the citizenship question.  The original intent of the census had to do with redistricting and reapportionment.  That intent was carried out with our census from 1820 to 1950 by counting American citizens, which then determined membership in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College for the several states.  In the 20^th century an accurate citizen count provided by the census was also used to determine the allocation of federal dollars back to the states under various programs that Congress legislated.

Scattershots – 24apr19 (updated 25apr19)

George Rebane

We’ve all seen countless thrillers from Hollywood in which the plot line has a department or agency of Big Government that has gone rogue, and threatens to bring down the country or even the world.  And against great odds our hero/heroine manages to overcome them and triumph.  These movies are made by leftwingers who obviously cannot connect the dots, why?  Because they are inadvertently creating propaganda denying the very things they believe in and promote – namely, very large, powerful, and ethical governments.  The conflict between a moral and principled small guy against the uncaring and corrupt leviathan is a rightwing narrative.  How come these mavens of public communications seem to miss the obvious, and show up at events raising funds for ever bigger government programs and government roles in our lives?  Any answers out there?  (Maybe they know their grass roots constituents who buy the tickets aren't smart enough to catch on.)

Democrat presidential hopefuls are lining up to participate in Fox News townhalls.  They do this while they denigrate that network for being the embodiment of journalistic corruption and fakery.  Of course, we know why they are waiting their turn to be in front of FN audiences – because that’s where the viewers are that they must reach if they are to have a chance.  By all published numbers, FN and FB essentially rule the roost of broadcast TV, garnering not only the conservatives, but more importantly, attracting the middle-road viewers who know the kind of pabulum that is served up by Teams Maddow, Matthews, and Cooper.  But the DNC still will not trust Fox to host a debate between their presidential hopefuls.  Those events cannot afford to have questions asked by anyone outside of the reliably tethered lamestream.

[25apr19 update]  Union columnist Terry McLaughlin lists the litany of new taxes that the state’s Democrats are proposing in her 25apr19 ‘Who will fill California’s coffers without the 1 percent?’.  One of the more egregious taxes that is guaranteed to shift the ongoing exodus into high gear is the 40% death tax on the so-called minds of our progressive legislators.  Apparently they, along with the voters who sent them to Sacramento, don’t know that almost half of CA’s income taxes are paid by the 1%, and that 40% of the state’s residents don’t pay any income tax at all.  We are here talking about absolute stupidity, not to be confused with ignorance.  The latter can be corrected by education, the former cannot since it is cooked into your DNA.

Apropos the above, journalism, like the teaching profession, no longer (if ever) attracts the brightest bulbs on the tree.  All the media are still aspirating about the Mueller report contents viz Russia “attacking” our voting process.  Depending on their political leanings, each outlet emphasizes by implication (i.e. choice wordsmithing) whether these attacks had any influence on capturing the votes, securing the vote data, counting the votes, and/or tallying and reporting the results.  Of course, there is no evidence that Russia’s attacks had any influence whatsoever on the election, and Mueller said so.  But in their palaver, the dimwit talking heads (including on FN) don’t discriminate between ‘attack’ and ‘influence’ – one being the attempt, the other the achievement.  Dumbth now prevails.

Saint Thomas of Friedman, working the Lord’s vineyards at the NYT, has had another epiphany – border walls work.  Given the rabid objections to improving border security that he and his flock have made over the years, this revelation gives evidence that divine intervention is real and continues to work even in post-biblical times.  Now the task remains in how to turn their massive titanic of a narrative on this issue so that 1) it doesn’t acknowledge the prescient wisdom of our president, and 2) delivers this new missive to the alt-Left core and its national tendrils in a manner that communicates the saint’s primacy and the president’s silence on the matter.  It’s a challenging task, but not one beyond the kind they have handily managed before.

Welcome Lonesome Joe Biden into the Democrat presidential cauldron.  Absent any policy ideas that distance him from the looney left-fringe of the party, he will be fighting for the “soul” of America and, with that political cudgel, promises to beat Trump.  He is counting on the part of the electorate not concerned with public policies, but only focusing on the good feelies Joe will emit.  And make no mistake, Joe can do that better than any in the rest of the herd.  If they try to hold age against him (76), they will also have to take on Bernie (77) and Lizzy(69), two powerful mouths that have staked out strong positions in the pack.

The Dems will spend from here to eternity (or Trump’s loss in 2020) doing their best to hassle President Trump.  They know their platform has no chance at all in any government in which they don’t hold all of Congress and the Executive.  My free advice to Trump is to immediately set up a Counter-Strike Agency staffed by about 30 lawyers and analysts experienced in the ways of Washington politics.  CSA’s job is to relieve Trump’s regular WH administrative staff and cabinet departments from dealing with the crap coming from the House Dems.  These people have no other charter than doing deep research on the Dem leadership, generating counters to ongoing attacks, and presenting the president with alternative attacks that he can launch.

The Ugly Fat Kid is meeting with Vladimir in Vladivostok. Interesting that it took so long for this meeting to take place.  But the reason for it is the same as for all the other meetings – the UFK doesn’t want to have his brains blown out by someone from his circle of generals.  So here’s how it should go.  Vladimir: So what can I do for you?  UFK: I’m between a rock and a hard place, I need for you to tell everyone that Russia will guarantee the survival of my regime.  Vladimir: OK, so what do I get?  UFK: Anything you want that doesn’t piss off Xi too much.  Vladimir: Let me think about it and lay it out for Donald.  UFK: Do it.  Vladimir:  OK Don, now that you know what came down with the UFK, what do you think that I should do?  Don: That’s a no-brainer Vlad - guarantee his f*c%ing regime.  Tell him you’ll rain nukes down on my head if I do anything to kick his ass out of there.  We both want the bastard gone and the Korean peninsula under a strong government that is independent of Xi, who we know has eyes on your east Siberian resources.  We’ll do the rest from here with the guys in Seoul.  And we both know that you’re a lying sumbich and I’m a lying sumbich, so the UFK has no recourse when he starts screaming at you to fire the nukes, as you give him a shit-eating grin.  Capice?