Rebane's Ruminations

Scattershots – 18jul22 (updated 23jul22)

George Rebane

The Khashoggi murder continues to aspirate the pundits on both sides after Biden’s fistbump with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.  To me the whole affair is politically ridiculous and a diplomatic farce.  Khashoggi was not a US citizen, but a foreign national with a permit to live and work in America (among other countries).  While within US borders, our governments’ responsibility toward Khashoggi’s security is the same as it is for any US citizen and legal resident.  But our federal government has no responsibility for the security of ANY alien permitted to live and work in our country when they travel outside our boundaries, especially when they frequent one of their own legations in a third country.  To think otherwise would be a ludicrous contemplation.  So why then are we putting our important foreign relations on the line when this foreign national gets butchered by his own countrymen in a foreign land?  If some soft-headed pundit or politician thinks otherwise, why are we then so sanguine with the governments of Russia, China, North Korea, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, … who regularly murder their own citizens?  Why are all of them not also ‘pariah states’ denied handshakes when making diplomatic contacts?  And why is this consideration not brought up by all those sharp-witted journalists, pundits, and politicos?

Nevada County’s currently registered voters were made available to me by my bride who concerns herself with such things.  The CA SecState collects and publishes this data for all the state’s counties as of 23 May 2022 shown below. (more here).

What interested me was the prominent inclusion of the American Independent Party in the political party headings.  I’m ashamed to admit that I know next to nothing about the AIP, and had to do a quick read-up on the organization (here).  What I found was both surprising and refreshing.  With my longtime and growing frustration with the Republican Party, I discovered that the AIP’s tenets and platform were totally acceptable to me save, perhaps, their stance on marriage.  I share it with readers in hopes of soliciting a broader critique of that party’s statement of purpose and principles.  My only regret is that they seem to have gone dormant after the 2016 election as witnessed by their website.  But then, how do they maintain a self-declared, currently registered membership of 3,335 in the county?  My bride’s answer is that most of these people are really political independents who, when registering, were confused by that word appearing in the party’s name.

[21jul22 update]  Corrupt corporatism is ubiquitous in the land, and runs rampant in our automotive industry.  Reader Efox (@ 858am below) beat me to the report about Ford getting ready to cut thousands of white-collar jobs currently at work in its combustion engine division (here).  The reason?  Ford along with the other car makers are investing over $500B before 2026 to develop new e-vehicles.  Now why would all these capitalists go out on a limb and spend so much of their retained earnings to get ready for volume production of products for which there is no evidence of open-market demand?  Simple answer, they’re not going out on any limb.  Instead, they are colluding with federal central planner/controllers who have informed them of future federal mandates for us to purchase all the e-vehicles they can roll off the assembly lines.  You and I will soon be told to either buy an e-car, or walk.  Unabashed corporatist corruption on parade.

The Bitanic Presidency

George Rebane

The number of political icebergs that have gashed this presidency has gotten hard to track.  The only thing that is now obvious to all, especially to Democrats, is the irreparable amount of damage this president and his administration have brought on themselves.  But before we’re too hard on this incompetent Bumblebrain, we should also acknowledge that the “responsibility for the public failure of this government lies with the Democratic Party.”

The case for this is made clear, concise, and complete by nationally prominent WSJ deputy editor Daniel Henninger in his 14jul22 column ‘Joe Biden’s Sinking Presidency’.  The main factor corroborating the Oval Office disaster is that the lamestream media – e.g NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, CNN, … - are daily clutching their worry pearls in the public fora for what they now label Biden’s “lame duck presidency”.  Led by his own party, no one wants him to run in 2024, and more every day want him to resign early for ‘mental health reasons’ – the ‘mental’ part going unsaid yet understood by all.

As if to fully accept that assessment, the man continues to deny being responsible for any of the massive mess in which he and his have mired the country – he lives in la-la land and that is finally being recognized by progressives.  “RootsAction, a group aligned with Bernie Sanders, is planning a #DontRunJoe campaign.”

That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the Dems’ Plan B is Kamala Harris, a kackling black woman having served her purpose and since then shown demonstrably unqualified for any conceivable task required in public office, let alone producing the work products of the West Wing.  Her early ascendancy will cause major heartburn to Govs Newsom (CA) and Pritzker (IL) who are already circling the White House after having put paid to two of the most prominent shithole states in the Union.  They each are ready to do the same to our beloved Republic.

So, with 2 of 3 Dems wanting someone besides Biden for 2024, over 9 of 10 under 30-something explicitly saying they don’t want Bumblebrain to run, and 7 of 10 Americans telling everyone that the country is headed in the wrong direction, it’s hard to see how the Democratic leadership will allow ol’ Joe to even finish his present hitch let alone sign up for one more.  The Left has always had more than one way of ridding themselves of dogs that don’t hunt.

SCOTUS to Congress: Legislate!

Know how to let the blame slip upon another ... .  Gracian #149

George Rebane

The overwhelming share of congress critters don’t like to make laws that spell out what we citizens can/should do in conducting our lives and businesses.  They know that if they put down what they really mean, then a good fraction of us would get pissed off at them and let it be known at the next ballot box.  So members of both parties have figured out how to avoid this pesky aspect of law-making.  They know the ideological and bureaucratic tenor of the various departments and agencies that will implement the laws, and they write the laws in a namby-pamby language that leaves a lot of leeway for interpretation by the unelected and anonymous bureaucrats who also regularly get sub-rosa offline directions from the camouflaged politicians.  Sleazy politics and corrupt governance.

Given that our federal and state bureaucracies are staffed overwhelmingly by incompetent leftwingers, it is the Democrats who are the architects of the most cynical, ambiguous, and amorphous legislation, while the Republicans stand by grumbling with their thumbs up their … well, you know.  In the 1jul22 WSJ Kim Strassel writes (here) -

Conservative Republican legislators report that this cynicism has now reached new heights. They note that their Democratic counterparts routinely write legislation that is deliberately vague, so as to give the administrative state maximum flexibility to impose programs Congress won’t take responsibility for passing. This also ensures that the federal bureaucracy—which largely shares the left’s political ideology—can continue its work even under Republican presidencies and Congresses.

America’s informed readers have known this for years, but they (we) too have yet to raise hew and cry about the matter that impacts the behavior of the bums they (we) send to state houses and Washington.  Perhaps this oversight is due to our having become too comfortable and ignoring our duties required to maintain the republic.  But the evidence of electoral ignorance and neglect are visible all over the land.  So finally, we get a SCOTUS with a majority that recognizes the problem and has the backbone to correct it.

Scattershots – 1jul22 (updated 5jul22)

George Rebane

Legal lying that powers today’s lamestream.  The lamestream has been exposed for its lies, misinformation, fake news, and defamations in general.  As a result, its shrinking audiences are made up of the most dedicated and/or ignorant leftists in the land, augmented by some residual uninformed mid-roaders.  Their legal underpinnings to carry on with this atrocious so-called journalism is provided by today’s defamation, libel, and slander laws which have been purposely degraded by leftwing lawyers and politicians in order to continue delivering their substance-free narrative to the hoi polloi.  This may be coming to an end if Justices Thomas and Gorsuch have their way, and get SCOTUS to rule on a case that would finally mandate Congress to pass a strict and clear law which demarks ‘public figures’ and ‘private individuals’ as targets of purposed and publicized sleaze.  (more here)

Biden’s open border policy makes him guilty of killing thousands of illegal aliens as they attempt to gain entry and disappear into our hinterlands.  Open border invites hundreds of thousands of economic migrants to start their long journeys from all over the world to our southern border.  It is an easy argument to make that many more of these people die from divers causes and are killed en route than the alien deaths counted only on our side of the southern border.  Mexican President Obrador blames the US for the deaths because we don’t control our border.  Of course, he omits the fact that Mexico has facilitated the transit of these millions of migrants over the decades.  As a terminally corrupt and criminal country, Mexico’s economy does not generate the jobs needed to sustain employment at levels required by its formerly high birth rate.  (Things have gotten so bad that the country’s birth rate has plunged in recent years.)  So first and foremost, the hordes of illegal aliens entering the US still consist mostly of Mexicans.  Their government abets this exodus for obvious reasons – relieves population pressures on the economy and increases the inflow of foreign capital.  And our anti-American Bumblebrain has elevated this game of import vote buying to a whole new level with his and his shills' daily declarations that our border is "secure" and "closed" while millions pour in. (more here)

[4jul22  update]  ‘71% of Voters Don’t Want Biden in 2024’ according to the just out Harvard CAPS – Harris Poll.  Them that follow these things should get another view from all those reports of Biden doing well and Trump doing badly.  It seems the reasons Americans don’t like Bumblebrain are all over the map; nobody has anything good to say about him, including the Democratic leadership.  My own assessment is that history will judge him to be hands-down the worst president since the Gilded Age, and the best thing that has happened to Jimmy Carter’s legacy.  Trump isn’t even in the running in this competition – if they had a ‘Shoot from the Lip’ category, the Orange Man would be right in there.  (more here)

[5jul22 update]  Putin’s view of Russia’s geo-strategic position, its goals of resurgence, and the forces arrayed against it are revealed in a blockbuster Russian TV series that launched in 2014 and has run now for 3 seasons containing a total of 40 episodes (more here)  The documentary soap opera has won numerous awards in the Russian Federation, and was released to Amazon Prime in 2017.  Widely read columnist and academic Walter Russel Meade writes a revealing column (here) (here) in the 5jul22 WSJ making the case that the series provides an important insight into the mind of Putin and his enlarged aspiration for Russia.  Since its enormous popularity with the Russian TV viewership, Mead argues that it also explains away Putin’s continued popularity with the Russians and their stoic acceptance of the historical hardships Russians have had to suffer under many rulers who sought to ‘make Russia great again’.  ‘Ekaterina: The Rise of Catherine the Great’ is definitely on the Rebane family viewing list.  And Mead’s message sums to, “To grasp the Russian president’s worldview, just binge-watch ‘Catherine the Great.’”

Right v Left Reporting

George Rebane

The most recent SCOTUS rulings on abortion and gun rights got me thinking again how the Left and Right differ in the manner their outlets report the news, debate issues, and frame their commentaries.  As shown here for years, the asymmetry is pronounced since the Left has never had supporting arguments for their positions and policies that survive in the light of the record and reason.  It is easy to confirm this claim by just tuning in to, say, FN, and then to MSNBC, CNN, or any of the big three.

Roe v Wade RIP (updated 26jun22)

George Rebane

It warms the cockles of me heart to hear that SCOTUS has put the abortion issue back into the jurisdiction of the several states where it belongs. (more here)  The Constitution is very clear on this – if the issue is not specifically covered in the Constitution, then its resolution and/or application does NOT ‘revert’ to, but 'remains' with the states to dispose of as they individually will.  Constitutionally, abortion never was a federal affair.  My own take on abortion has been covered extensively in these pages, and is accessible from here.

[26jun22 update]  As the lamestream lies continue about the SCOTUS ruling, shown below is the real state of abortion laws across the country.  The ruling will now remove a 50-year-old unconstitutional law of the land which SCOTUS had no business legislating in the first place, and put it back into the hands of Americans living in the several states to elect representatives and/or vote on initiatives to determine the legal state of abortion where they live – democracy in action.

SCOTUS on gun rights

George Rebane

SCOTUS on a good day for gun rights that removes the 'proper cause' requirement many states require/allow CCW granting jurisdictions to impose.  The suit was brought against the state of New York.  Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, with Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissenting.

“The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,'” ... “The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need. The Second Amendment right to carry arms in public for self-defense is no different. New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.”

See also 'The Many Ways to Regulate Militias'.

Scattershots – 21jun22 (updated 25jun22)

George Rebane

Solar Tax – California, as regular as the sunrise, is again showing the world that it knows how to expand its unchallenged butt-stupid ways to govern possibly the most blessed land mass on God’s green earth.  Sacramento, led by our idiot governor, is contemplating levying a tax on homes that have installed solar panels.  These are housing units that use less electricity from the grid, and also pump back electricity into a grid that is already overloaded, poorly maintained & managed, and expensive to boot.  Instead of encouraging the installation of more environmentally friendly photovoltaics, the state wants to dun those who already have them, and provide more reasons why not to install more of these home power-generating systems.  Call your governor and tell him what you think of the Democrats’ latest brainchild.  (info here)

Right/Left Polarization is a Myth

George Rebane

This is proposition is presented by Verlan Lewis and Hyrum Lewis, professors at Harvard and BYU respectively, in their ‘The Myth of Ideological Polarization’.  They use a series of weak arguments and erroneous facts to conclude that “polarization is a myth” and the Left/Right labels are better thought of as names of tribes whose belief systems change over time.  The claimed changes are so radical that their tenets even switch sides over the years.

For example, one of their claims is that today’s Left supports free trade that used to be supported by the Right.  Given the Left’s desire to double-tax US corporations that do business overseas, this characterization is clearly wrong, as is their representation of the Right’s opposition to free trade.  The Right imposes tariffs on selected foreign goods only 1) when foreign governments subsidize certain products/industries to distort competitive markets, and 2) when certain such products/industries are critical to maintaining our sovereignty and national security.

The authors claim that the Right has turned ‘statist’, which formerly was a forte of the Left.  Well, statism still is the Left’s overarching prescription to solve the nation’s ills.  The Right cannot support any kind of statism through its constant initiatives to reduce taxes (i.e. government revenues) and regulations (i.e. the currency of government bureaucracies).  Without a blink or further justification, our scholars write, “Republicans favor lower taxes than they did in the 1960s, but so do Democrats.” (emphasis mine)  Mind boggling.

The Lewises even miss the claim about free speech that “the Democrats ‘moved left’ when it was once a defining value of ‘the left’.”  The Left was never a proponent of free speech, even during the anti-war years of the 1970s.  Anyone claiming membership of that ‘tribe’ who did not parrot the anti-war party line soon found themselves abandoned and shunned by their former comrades.  While the Left’s party line narratives have always been malleable – they regularly rewrite history to serve their ideological needs du jour – they have always demanded instant recommitment from their loyal constituents when, sometimes overnight, north turns into south and east turns into west.  And we see this happening daily in the lamestream with its asymmetrical coverage of events that favor the Left’s retention of power.

Finally, the good professors entirely miss the nature, role, and utility of the ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ labels.  They misunderstand these as single-dimensional attributes like temperature, instead of names of umbrellas under which are gathered the more or less stable collections of ideological tenets that continue to point their adherents toward their unchanging global government collectivism or open market capitalist sovereign nation-state futures.  These seminal reasons for our ideological polarization are completely missed by our scholars.

As if to underline all of the above, today’s (18jun22) Union features the sentiment of its editorial board in the op-ed section – ‘There’s always another election’ (not yet online).  Therein the editorial board exhorts Nevada County voters to participate in greater numbers and in all elections, primaries and the November main events.  They wonder what really sparks a big turnout and lament that some significant offices – e.g. sheriff and DA - really had but one contender, the incumbent.  Surprisingly what they totally miss is the issue of election integrity on motivating voter turnout.  Half the country is concerned about the confirmed reports of fraud and irregularities, and why many of these failed to gain traction in our judicial system.  Letting this sentiment fester unresolved does not invite the sometime voter to get educated, involved, and cast a vote. 

The thing that sticks out to readers paying attention is that only one of our polarized sides is concerned about voter integrity, and those are the Republicans.  The Democrats care only about voter access, seeking to maximize those qualified to vote that may include some who no longer can even fog a mirror.  The Republicans on the other hand demand that only franchised citizens should be able to cast ballots, and want procedures in place to vet these qualified voters.  To the Left, this all amounts to voter suppression and the diminishing of our democracy.

So the Union’s piece on voting that completely ignores election integrity and voter qualification confirms that the newspaper is another politically tinged outlet of the nation’s progressive wing and a solid member of the Left’s lamestream.  This assessment would be incomplete without acknowledging that the privately owned newspaper has every right to be a handmaiden of the county’s purple-to-blue transition as it caters to its leftward marketplace.  However, it would suit me more if The Union would admit to its ideological leanings and not attempt to represent itself as traveling close to the nation’s political center stripe.  After all, a media outlet identifying itself as tacking Left or Right would be a refreshing change and provide useful clarity to the many readers still in doubt.

Scattershots – 11jun22 (updated 12jun22)

George Rebane

The professionally produced prime-time J6 congressional kabuki has the obvious dual objectives to 1) divert the electorate from the incompetence and trumpeted disastrous policies of Bumblebrain’s administration (here), and in the process 2) pillory Trump as the Dems’ perennial punching bag.  The one-sided charade is celebrated by the lamestream’s idiot pundits, and the latter objective is even uncritically abetted by conservative outlets such as FN and the WSJ.  Therein my critique of the WSJ’s editorial policy centers on their dismissal of the 2020 election ‘fraud and irregularities’ allegations is based on nothing but citing a chain of opinions by certain judges, Trump administration officials, and Republican politicians – a chain of he-said, she-said reports.  A more persuasive indictment of Trump’s attributed Big Con of his supporters would be to also cite major attempts to support the ‘stolen election’ claims such as what happened in Wisconsin (here), as shown in the ‘2,000 Mules’ documentary (here and here), and Mollie Hemingway's Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections (2021).  Heads up journalism would have presented the existential evidence as to why these were dismissed by those investigating last November’s election.  Instead, they leave knowledgeable readers with obvious questions unanswered.

The collectivists of the Left don’t understand human nature – that has been the evidence cited over the last century by many political observers (including me in these pages).  They simply have no clue about how or what individual motivations contribute to sustainable social orders and organizations.  The only human response the Left has discovered is the elicitation of confessions under torture as demonstrated in the dungeons of Stalin, Mao, Castro, … .  This overall deficit has been uniformly absent in today's political commentaries by the Right, who dun the Left’s policies without giving the underlying reasons why they have never worked, and can never work.  Finally, we have an exception in the WSJ’s 11jun22 piece by Peggy Noonan – ‘The Boiling Over of America’.  Therein she covers a litany of fundamental and unredeemable deficits of the progressive’s mind.  Examples –

• They don’t listen to anybody. To stop them you have to fire them. They’re not like normal politicians who have some give, who tack this way and that. Progressive politicians have no doubt, no self-correcting mechanism.
• They are more loyal to theory than to people. If the people don’t like the theories the progressives impose, that’s too bad; the theory is pre-eminent.
• The progressive can’t understand why. (E.g. SF’s recalled progressive DA Boudin) tells reporters the voters are “in a bad mood” because of inflation and housing costs.
• A final characteristic of progressive politicians is that they tend to be high-IQ stupid people. They are bright and well-educated but can’t comprehend the implications of policy. They don’t understand that if an 18-year-old is repeatedly arrested for assaulting people on the street and repeatedly let go, his thought may not go in the direction of, “What a gracious and merciful society I live in, I will do more to live up to it.” It is more likely he will think, “I can assault anyone and get away with it. They are afraid of me.”

[Update]  Dead people are voting, no matter how vehemently it is denied in the lamestream and by their grassroots sheeple.  And our corrupt LE authorities and judicial system do nothing to get hundreds of thousands of the dead off the country’s voter rolls.  “The Public Interest Legal Foundation’s database of the country’s voter rolls found nearly 350,000 deceased registrants before the 2020 election. The inevitable question is always, well did any of them vote. Unfortunately, some always do.” (more here)

[12jun22 update] Re the J6 imbroglio and Pence's constitutional power over the proceedings to certify the vote. I am reposting this from a recent comment stream where I answered a liberal commenter about possible outcomes of the 6jan21 congressional certification of the electoral college votes.  “First, we presume that the congressional certification was never meant to be a pro-forma kabuki ritual. Were that not so, then all attendees could have been replaced by their cardboard cutouts, or they could have mailed it in. Second, given that the certification, by those gathered, was to be performed after due consideration of the submitted materials, then the designated process had to have the ability for more than one canned outcome. … Constitutional scholars are still debating what that decision space should look like - e.g. accept as submitted; reject submittal and return to states with instructions for resubmittal; table proceeding to give time for further study of any material contentions, inviting both sides to come and testify before resuming the certification process; and so on. You and yours, of course, were awaiting a kabuki performance; the other half of the country had concerns about the election.” 

Readers should note that this aspect of the J6 proceedings has never been discussed in the media, which presumes without pause that only one outcome is supported by the Constitution.  Is this an intellectual bridge too far, or does the media correctly assess the public’s inability to parse the unexamined requirement of the proceedings to end with certification, arrived at through several possible contingencies ranging from immediate acceptance of the electoral votes to going through various further procedures of vetting the votes before finally certifying them?  To the nation’s hoi polloi it is presented as immediate certification or our democracy comes crashing down.  President Trump was right insisting that VP Pence did not have to immediately certify the votes, but wrong in restricting the only alternative to summary rejection of the November 2020 election results - another nuance beyond the media and the public.

Who should vote? – Redux

George Rebane

In these pages we have circled this barn without resolution.  My own sentiments, and those of readers at the time, are available here.  The politically correct among us regularly encourage all should vote who can fog a mirror and are citizens.  Well, not exactly.  In recent years the anti-American woke and progressives have reduced that requirement to just the foggers, or even to those who just recently lost that ability.

Bryan Caplan did a landmark study on the electorate and voting – The Myth of the Rational Voter – in which he showed that in our history informed and rational voters were few and far in between.  But the saving grace during those times was that the ignorant voter cohort pretty much split themselves evenly on candidates and issues.  This left the small percentage of knowledgeable and reasoning voters to essentially determine the outcome by how they divided themselves on the margins.  See the top part of the figure below for an explanatory graphic.

All of this changed, beginning around 1920 with the advent of radio broadcasting – the birth of mass media which spread to phone banks, TV, internet, etc.  Now it was possible for those with monies to spend to get their messages out in proportion to their available funds.  And it turned out that this kind of campaigning worked wonders – the more you could blast out your candidate’s voice, the more assured you were of tilting the scale toward your side among the great unwashed.  The small number of knowledgeable and informed voters were overwhelmed, and thereby lost their ability to influence election outcomes.  See the bottom part of the figure.

This absence of rational voter influence has had an enormous impact on our country, delivering huge coastal urban areas and even entire states into perpetual social disasters and economic destitution.  We now have ignorant cohorts continuing to vote against their own best interests, who guarantee single-party monopolies of entrenched politicians in perpetuity.

Proof of this is provided by a coven of distressed states that includes New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, …, headed by its most prominent member, California.  The once golden state has been the posterchild of voter ignorance for the last fifty years.  Over this period the state’s voters initially ensconced a spate of well-meaning liberal politicians, and then later continued to refill their ranks with know-nothing socialists and charlatans.  Today we have sinecured a bevy of functional idiots and scoundrels whose only reliable political talent is using the public till to invite more double dummies (aka reliable constituents) to partake of our insane welfare programs, thereby insuring that California’s recovery remains evermore beyond the horizon. (more here)

So what should a well-meaning but poorly-read citizen do when an election rolls around.  My own recommendation is that such a citizen should excuse himself from that particular election, unless he has the ability to educate himself on the candidates and/or issues.  And unless you know what is at stake in the election, and how the various outcomes will affect you, your neighbors, the country, stay out of the voting booth but remain interested in the election results and prepare yourself for the next time.  If you are a citizen who loves his country, know that it is the voters who determine the state of the nation and its future.  So just because you have the right to vote, there is no law that requires you to cast an ignorant vote based on what you saw on TV the most, the loudest, or the most recent. (more here)

Today my counsel is considered elitist and even anti-American by those who want everyone to vote regardless of their preparation.  (See the exhortations in our local newspaper.)  They tell you that democracy is intrinsically strengthened by high voter turnouts.  History shows us that nothing could be further from the truth – democracies inevitably ended their lives by suicides through emotional plebiscites, referendums, and other summarily catastrophic ballot box ‘opportunities’.  So, get informed first, then vote.

Scattershots – 2jun22 (updated 5jun22)

George Rebane

Bumblebrain wins the prize, hands down, of being the most ignorant American president about guns – every facet of firearms and their uses is a mystery to him.  We see this from just his last week’s bevy of encounters with a microphone.  What puzzles me is why his handlers continue to let him make a fool of himself in public without providing him with even the basics of what guns are all about.  It’s as if they really do want to portray him even to the Left as the double dummy the Right has known him to be even before he ran for president.  What is in their interest to do that?

So now the hysteria to “do something about guns” has even infected Republican politicians.  Notice that no one is saying or talking about ‘do something about protecting our children’.  In the diatribes we hear, there is not even a connection made between the laundry list of new gun restrictions and how they would prevent school shootings.  None will ask how the next ‘do something about guns’ will reduce the chances for another school massacre; that is the farthest from any politician’s mind.  Now it’s all about the Left wanting to take the biggest possible step toward their perennial goal of eliminating private gun ownership, and the Right wanting to seem  caring while minimizing damage to the 2^nd   Amendment and not pissing off their tried and true constituents.  Both sides are calculating the impact of their respective kabuki dances on the November election, the children be damned.  More national insanity on parade.

[5jun22 update]  The 2^nd Amendment is our Founders’ legacy to enable Americans to successfully revolt when their government goes rogue.  This fundamental truth about the governance of our democratic republic was made clear this morning on FN’s Media Buzz by Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist.  IMHO this seminal aspect about gun rights is constantly overlooked by our conservative media (and, of course, denied by the lamestream) when reporting on ‘doing something about gun violence’.   And again, no one is talking about what any of these proposals will do or would have done to protect the children.  For the Dems it's all about ratcheting toward the final removal of the 2A using every calamitous opportunity and with every useless (re school massacres) notch to constructively further limit the ownership and use of firearms by the law-abiding public.  "A democracy, if you can keep it." - the real purpose of the 2A is keeping the basis of our constitutional republic; it should be part and parcel of every discussion and debate about reducing ‘gun violence’.  Rogue governments have ALWAYS been by far the greatest killers of their own citizens.

Nisenan Nostrums (updated 4jun22)

George Rebane

The 26may22 Union reported (here) that there is a new initiative being launched to have the Nisenan Indians reclaim some of the land that the US government screwed them out of more than a century ago.  The history and Nisenan claim is anything but simple, but this indigenous local tribe, now numbering less than 150, want their land on which to build a cultural center that will anchor a venue in which they can maintain their traditions and educate the rest of us about their heritage.  At least that’s what I understand of their claims.  

The parcel they want is called the Nisenan or Nevada City Rancheria, and consists of almost 80 acres located in the Cement Hill area north of town, next to the old Nevada City airport property.  The old hand-drawn map shown below is all they have on their heritage websites which don’t really define how the tribe is currently organized, if at all. (here, here, and here)

I have taken the old map which shows one section (640 acres or one square mile) of land on which two lower left 40-acre parcels are labeled “Indian Colony” on the old map, and drawn it on the map of the Nevada City area shown below.  To date there have been no claims made on any specific parcels.

We don’t yet know where all this is going, but given the progressive propensities of Nevada City residents, it’s not a long shot to anticipate some serious heat starting to be generated about returning land to the ‘rightful indigenous owners’ before any light is produced.  I wouldn’t be surprised if in the process we don’t have hundreds of would-be Nisenan emerging out of the woodwork to militate for some sort of government reparations ranging from land to cash payments.

The whole situation is not unique to Nevada County and has been and is being played out elsewhere in the country (note the mess in eastern Oklahoma).  Which all calls into question as to what current productive residents of a land owe to people who claim to be deprived relatives of long-lost primitive ancestors who presumably spent centuries on the land, and were able to develop some woven baskets and stacked stick residences as their contribution to advance their progeny.

Full disclosure - the Rebanes have more than a passing interest in this matter since we have lived on one of the so-called ‘rancheria’ parcels for the last twenty years.

[4jun22 update]  The Union’s editorial board (of which Jo Ann is a member) gave their very measured view on the Nisenan issue (here).  They back giving land to the surviving members of the tribe.  More than likely this would be a hunk from the western end of Nevada City’s ‘airport property’ that abuts the recorded ‘Indian Reservation’ (the rancheria) shown on the above map.  For federal recognition of the tribe, a part of the land must include at least a “sliver” of the rancheria which is now private property.  No one yet knows what constitutes a sliver.  The editorial board’s position concludes with – “But we can make a decision at this moment to support a project that is warranted. We can acknowledge the harm that was done, and work toward a better future, not just with a recognition at the start of a council meeting, but a federal recognition supported by real action from Nevada City and this county.”

“… to protect the children.” (addended with 9jun22 update)

George Rebane

That is the only slim thread of agreement that the Republicans and Democrats have for new legislation pursuant to the mass killing of students and teachers in Uvalde, Texas this week.  Yet the Dems’ solution continues to be to enact senseless gun legislation to stop senseless mass shootings.  Their entire initiative is based on appealing to the hoped for raw emotional response of their constituents to ‘do something’, or anything that can be used to advance the final objective of removing firearms from the country’s law-abiding civilian population.

The Dems’ entire argument is that since ‘guns kill people’, the “gun lobby” (aka NRA) wants more people killed through the unhindered sale of more guns.  For the Left there are no other considerations for the private ownership of guns, least of all the antiquated and misconstrued Second Amendment to defend against rogue government.  Every successive gun control measure is understood to be nothing more or less than a ratchet toward socialist autocracy’s final objective of an unarmed, compliant citizenry.

In a country with over 340 million variously un/registered firearms, there is no guarantee that a quietly deranged person with no previous criminal record or recorded history of mental instability will be stopped from a serendipitously inspired and spontaneously launched mass murder.  LE officials have told us for decades that no level of gun restrictions will bring an end to what happened in Uvalde.

What journalists and clear-thinking politicians don’t ask, during the inevitable gun control hysteria that follows every mass shooting, is ‘what is the evidence that this legislation would have stopped the previous mass murderers, or will stop them in the future?’  Posing this question will quickly reveal the real purpose for the newly proposed gun control measures.

The real solution – possibly unattainable – is what may be called a ‘cultural reset’.  The American culture of, say, fifty years ago prevented such mass murders occurring in a population equally populated with firearms – both semi-auto pistols and long guns.  Today, wholesale human life is cheapened and cheap.  With widespread and instant salacious news coverage, we continually hear of hundreds of people gunned down weekly without giving it much if any thought.  Unless the life belongs to family or close friends, the deaths don’t matter much irrespectively how they are snuffed out.

And our polarized society no longer supports community-wide solutions.  Remaining solutions have become very personalized – you pull up stakes and move to a safer place if you can, or you stay put, become insular, and hunker down while the killing continues around you.  That will continue in perpetuity as long as the state makes it so that only criminals have guns to use with impunity on an unarmed citizenry.  To various extents this has proven to be true both under so-called liberal democracies and police-state tyrannies.

A cultural reset, even if attempted, will take at least a generation to gain traction in our society.  In the meantime, IMHO we should recognize the ground truth that active killers with guns are stopped only by defenders with guns.  So, if we really have an interest to do something to protect the children, then we must always remember that when seconds count, LE is minutes (or more) away.  Actually, an hour away in Uvalde and similarly at previous shooting sites.  As far as the killer is concerned, LE has not arrived until he is assaulted with arms.  It doesn’t matter how quickly LE arrives on the scene, the clock starts when the killer perceives that his further intentions will now be curtailed.  For example, LE getting to the Uvalde school and dicking around for an hour before a Border Patrol agent confronted and shot the killer, means that LE effectively arrived an hour late.  So consider -

Policies that don’t work – place one security officer per school.  These have proven to be career-limited, marginally trained, timid people who either have no idea that killing is taking place in another part of the school, or who will not confront the killer until summoned LE people (‘back-up’) arrive to take control of the incident.

Policies that have a chance of working – Every teacher and certain staffers are trained and required to be concealed-carry armed when on duty.  This policy is then made public.  Israel has demonstrated the efficacy of such policy.  (more here)

[Addendum]  In ongoing discussions about solutions to such wanton and unpredictable massacres, it was brought out that there may be a significant share of teachers who will refuse to be trained and armed.  The point makes sense since so many teachers are liberals/progressives whose logic doesn’t always concur with reality – e.g. similar to those leftwingers who believe that declaring a building or facility a ‘gun-free zone’ will hinder instead of attract the manic mass murderer.  No matter, for whatever reasons, not all teachers can qualify or be relied upon to be armed and confront their students' would-be killer.

The alternative to concealed-carry teachers in the classroom is a cadre of volunteer CCW holders who would also receive the required additional training.  These would come from the students’ parents, grandparents, and (retired) friends or community volunteers.  I’d bet the farm that there would be more than enough volunteers to sit in the back of classrooms while instruction is going on.  Each school could have a ‘security coordinator’ volunteer to coordinate with the school’s administration, maintain the active roster, and manage the ‘duty calendar’ for the classroom security volunteers.  The marginal cost to the school district and community would be nil.

Given today’s mobile devices (laptops, pads, smart phones, …), the security volunteers can easily be productive on their own projects as they carry out their assigned watches.  I know from our family’s circle of friends and contacts, that almost everyone would volunteer who could pass the training requirements.  As an example, for years I was a member of the Banner Mountain firewatch team and pulled many a 4-6 hour morning and afternoon stints on the tower (until the tower was decommissioned).  It was a rewarding experience, as I’m sure it would also be to serve as a classroom security volunteer.

(For the record, America's CCW holders are the most reliable and law-abiding cohort of citizens when it comes to psychological stability, gun safety and proficiency, and criminality/gun violence.  Statistically, you are six times more likely to be assaulted by a rogue LE officer than a CCW permit holder.)

[28may22 update]  A commenter raised a valid question about the availability of sufficient volunteers to implement the above described classroom security approach.  I’ve taken a more detailed look at the numbers, and it appears to be doable.  These back-of-envelope calculations are available here -  Download Classroom Security Volunteers.  Readers thoughts are always welcome, especially as they point out any errors or weaknesses (not already covered in the comment stream below).

[4jun22 update]  Certify retired military personnel to serve as armed school security guards – so proposes Sen Lindsey Graham (R-SC).  Above I have made case for such a solution that can be implemented more rapidly than any ineffective anti-gun legislation.  (more here)

The Left, of course, is dead-set against such a practical solution, and surprisingly they are joined by some folks from the other side who also think it’s the dumbest thing they ever heard of.  Nevertheless, that kind of solution, using trained and certified volunteer security guards, is staring us in the face with no reasonable opposition save ‘schools should remain a gun-free zone’, or more simply, ‘it’s a stupid idea that will never work’.

[9jun22 update]  Well, things may be looking up with getting more defensive guns into schools and classrooms.  Reports are coming in that in certain red states teachers are volunteering to carry guns (here).  And we now hear that even in progressive New Jersey militant parents are convincing school districts to hire off-duty and retired LE officers to serve as added security in schools (here).  These people will be paid.  So that brings us a few steps closer to the volunteer security concept outlined here as the affordable solution to protect our children.

BTW, does everyone notice that the ‘do something’ new gun regs coming out of the House have nothing to do with protecting the children?  (They’re just a desperate Dem election issue since everything else they propose is a demonstrable disaster for the country.)  And no Republican has the balls to resist the new ‘do something’ hysteria by asking why existing gun regs – from past ‘do something’ hysterias - aren’t being enforced and/or have proven to be totally ineffective in reducing ‘gun violence’.

Scattershots – 20may22 (updated 22may22)

George Rebane

‘Biden’s Strange Help for Cuba’  To be charitable, Team Biden’s foreign policy continues in chaotic shambles.  Cuba, Russia’s prime ally in the western hemisphere, is economically and politically on its ass, and Biden is now going to help stabilize the country by relaxing travel restrictions, money transfers, and commercial financing from the US.  From the 20may22 WSJ, “The Administration says it wants to help the Cuban people. But like the Obama Administration, Team Biden fails to acknowledge that the cause of the island’s privation is the regime itself.”  This is the same for America today where Biden daily denies that the cause of our privations is his incompetent cum anti-American regime.

[21may22 update]  To those of us who continue to suffer the outrageous slings and arrows of woke progressives in our daily round of jousts, the words of Charles Mackay (1814-1889) are an ever-timely tonic.

[22may22 update] ‘Russia/Putin & the West’ is an extensive two-part pro-Russian harangue on today's geostrategic politics and the evolving world order by someone signing himself as ‘Sam Parker’.  The document is published on an extensive website called Behind The News Network, and it was composed just before the Ukrainian invasion which it anticipates.  The piece came across my desk from a correspondent questioning the authenticity of the essay, which in Part1 starts out as sober and neutral look at the modern history of Eurasian Russia cum USSR, and then (in Part2) morphs into a pro-Russian propaganda piece detailing the country’s military superiority over anything the US and NATO can muster to counter Russia’s just aims to militarily defend itself against the geo-strategic machinations of the sinister US-based ‘Rockefeller Empire’.  To me it comes across as a sophisticated outlet of anti-western fake news.  Judge for yourself.

The Great Replacement (update 21may22)

George Rebane

All socio-economic problems depend on their numbers, not understanding these replaces reasonable discussion with emoting.

The ‘great replacement conspiracy’ is the latest kerfuffle to rise to national prominence.  The Left is accusing the Right of fostering this theory of dark-skinned immigrants and illegal aliens being welcomed into America to outvote and outbreed the European-descended whites.  (more here, here, here, here)  History tells us that such replacement concerns first started in France long ago, and in the US ascendant Democrats have crowed for years, and continue to do so today, that the Republicans are being replaced as their party shrinks.  But no matter where it started, the point I want to develop is that in our innumerate nation, almost everyone today is ignorant of what replacement means and really is.  And the evil party is using this ignorance to continue to divide us.  So let’s clear up some cobwebs in order to correctly assess what all the fuss is about.

The general notion of replacement requires first and foremost the existence of a defined ‘container’, be it a region of square miles full of people, a jug that can hold fluids, or a bowl containing different colored marbles.  Given the container, we now have to consider two distinct cases.  Case1 in which the container has a not-to-exceed carrying capacity, and Case2 in which the container’s carrying capacity is not limited.

Case1.  Suppose we have a small bowl that can hold five marbles, and to start, it contains three Amarbles and two Bmarbles.  We all understand that if Bmarbles are reduced to one by adding one Amarble or one Cmarble, that Bmarbles are being replaced both in their absolute number and in their share of the bowl’s contents (going from 40% to 20%), now leaving the A, B, C marble count at 3, 1, 1 respectively.  No one should have a problem understanding this kind of replacement.

But is it possible for replacement to occur if a categorical population (e.g. Bmarbles) remains unchanged or even increases?  Well yes, this gives us Case2 where we suppose Amarbles increase by two to five, Cmarbles double to two, and Bmarbles remain unchanged at one.  Now the share of Bmarbles has dropped from 20% to 1/8 or 12.5%.  The Bmarble share has definitely been replaced by the greater shares of Amarbles and Cmarbles.

The more interesting Case2 scenario is when the number of all three kinds of marbles increases over time.  Let’s suppose that Amarbles increase at the rate of 4/year, Bmarbles at 1/year, and Cmarbles at 3/year.  If at the beginning of the year we had A, B, C marbles numbering 3, 1, 1 respectively, then at the end of the year they would number 7, 2, 4.  So focusing on Bmarbles, we see their number double, but their share drop from 20% to about 15%.  Again, Bmarbles had 5% of their share replaced by the population increase which was taken up by the shares of Amarbles and Cmarbles.  So it’s easy to see that replacement can take place in populations that also increase over time, but only at a rates lower than that of the other population cohorts.

Scattershots – 6may22 (updated 14may22)

George Rebane

The 2016 election integrity and voter fraud issue is far from dead.  Besides the many tomes presenting evidence that somehow didn’t reach the courts or were summarily dismissed by dismissive judges, there is a whole trove of (video and smartphone tracking) evidence of hundreds of paid ‘mules’ stuffing multiple ballots into ballot drop boxes in selected voting precincts across the nation (more here).  The whole thing is documented in a new film ‘2,000 Mules’ by documentary filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza.  It is now showing at a big screen near you, and you can also watch its online 7may22 premier for pay here on Youtube.  The lamestream has been hyper-silent about this movie, and you can bet the ranch that neither Bumblebrain, Ms Pelosi, nor SFB Schumer will watch it.

[13may22 update]  In ‘Imagine the Unimaginable’ Victor Davis Hanson succinctly lays out the dire straits in which our beloved republic finds itself.  As he makes clear and most RR readers know, all of our maladies are self-inflicted.  VDH ends his warning of the radical Left in America’s fundamental transformation – “When revolutionaries undermine the system, earn the antipathy of the people, and face looming disaster at the polls, it is then they prove most dangerous — as we shall see over the next few months.”

[14may22 update] ‘Abortion-Rights Marches Planned Across U.S. to Protest Possible Overturning of Roe v. Wade’  Here’s a photo of certifiable young idiots created by the evil party Democrats who continue to broadcast their latest Big Lie that federalizing abortion rights will outlaw abortions and end up “killing women”.  Even Scientific American (here) and the prestigious British medical journal Lancet (here) have decided to expand into American law and politics to proscribe the anticipated “blood on their hands” SCOTUS ruling that would allow the several states to make their own abortion laws.  This is more corroborating evidence that idiocy is independent of intellect.

Roe v Wade v Dodd (updated 6may22)

George Rebane

According to a leaked draft, SCOTUS appears prepared to rule on Mississippi’s Dodd v Jackson challenge to the longstanding and contentious 1973 Roe v Wade decision to legalize abortion as a constitutional right in all 50 states. (here and here) By various attempts to overturn RvW since then, many states have additionally ruled that RvW really only grants abortion rights during the first 30 or so weeks of pregnancy.

Now DvJ has reduced this down to the first 15 weeks. (more here) And this started the brouhaha that was appealed all the way up to SCOTUS, which, according to the draft, promises to reconsider the whole question of constitutionality and to reinstate federalism by again allowing the several states each to legislate their own abortion laws. 

The Left, generally against federalism, hates this and anybody and everybody who wants to restrict a ‘woman’s right’ to an abortion, up to and including a post-partum killing.  And for good measure, all progressives want the state to pay for such abortions on demand.

My own take on abortions is included in the 2012 post ‘Abortion and the Two Bodies Problem’.

[4may22 update]  There was a gathering of Nevada County’s ignorant and double dummies to protest the SCOTUS draft on Broad Street. (here)  It is hard to believe that any of these fellow citizens and neighbors, among whom we must live, know the contents of RvW, Mississippi’s DvJ, or the leaked draft.  The depths of their considerable deficits allow them to comfortably demonstrate for democracy while denying the ability of Americans in the several states the ability to vote for the abortion policy that they and their fellow residents support.  The facile way they continue to be manipulated by the nation’s leftwing elites recalls Lenin’s definition of ‘useful idiots’.

[6may22 update]  Another illustration of the intellectually brain-dead Left is their ongoing charge Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh broke their promise to the Senate that they would honor Roe after being confirmed.  There is no evidence whatsoever that they made any such commitments during their hearings, yet the Democrats and their lamestream have now adopted that as their latest Big Lie, adding it to their already historic collection that continues to grow at an increasing pace as the November election approaches.  Another one of their 'poetic truths'?

On the lighter side, the photo below was recaptioned by one of our regular readers.  He didn’t specify whether the new non-scalable fence is supposed to keep the Republicans in or out.

Scattershots – 1may22

George Rebane

‘Workers of the world, arise and celebrate the day that brings us together to again be thankful for the blessings of collectivism that unite us in a revolution to make socialism available to all peoples everywhere.’ - or something similar.  I just thought it would be appropriate to make up that piece of crap on May Day.

Inflation Tax.  Last year many of us already saw the salacious intents of the Biden administration in how they were systematically going about to ruin the nation.  Among the many disasters they were cooking up was inflation.  Well, it’s here now, and the piece I posted then (here) is definitely worth reviewing by those who are impacted by inflation and those who are planning to be so impacted.  I count myself among the latter, so it’s time to review the taxing aspects of inflation (here).  And for those who are spreadsheet challenged, I made a spreadsheet with the formulas from the ‘Inflation – up close and personal’ post. Download InflationInvesting2

Wealth tax:  The Build Back Bullshit agenda is still not dead and buried.  Team Bumblebrain has every intent on passing most of its provisions, especially those increasing our taxes.  The administration's entire team on economics are double dummies who couldn’t pass Econ 101.  They continue to tell the sheeple that we can tax ourselves out of an inflationary spiral.  Even Keynes, the lord of demand-siders, counseled against raising taxes in an inflation infested economy. (more here)

Election corruption right here in River City?  My bride and a commenter picked up on a thinly disguised campaign ad in the 30apr22 Union for Natalie Adona, our Soros'(?) foreign plant Assistant Registrar of Voters, who is running for the county’s Clerk Recorder – Registrar of Voters in the 7jun22 election.  The ad, pictured below, is made to look like a public service announcement from the Nevada County Clerk Recorder – Registrar of Voters office.  Notice the formal seal in the lower right corner.  Were it a bona-fide voter info notice from that office, then it would have been published under the aegis of our current holder of that office, Greg Diaz.  It does not speak well for The Union to have allowed this campaign ad to appear without some corrective editorial comment.

A Nation to Transcend Stupid?

George Rebane

The Atlantic usually contains ideas that are antithetical to the perspectives with which I interpret what happens in the world.  A longtime and dear friend, who leans a bit to my left, forwarded to me an essay with which he concurs “with 90% of the points made in this article (regardless of the source!)”  After reading it, I must admit to a similar concordance.  The piece – ‘WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID’ – by Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and NYU Professor of Ethical Leadership (here).

Dr Haidt is described variously as someone who “has attracted both support and criticism for his critique of the current state of universities and his interpretation of progressive values. He has been named one of the ‘top global thinkers’ by Foreign Policy magazine, and one of the ‘top world thinkers’ by Prospect magazine. He is among the most cited researchers in political and moral psychology, and is considered among the top 25 most influential living psychologists.”

In the cited essay, Haidt uses the Tower of Babel metaphor to interpret what has happened to America in the last two decades as “the fractured country we now inhabit.”  Like many of us, he sees that “something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”  Regular RR readers will recognize these longstanding themes in these pages.

The author goes on to outline “the rise of the modern Tower” in concert with the rise of the smartphone, the internet and its extremely influential social networks which now unite the various thoughts and ideas of several billion people.  For Haidt “the high point of techno-democratic optimism was arguably 2011, a year that began with the Arab Spring and ended with the Occupy movement. … For techno-democratic optimists, it seemed to be only the beginning of what humanity could do.”  Then things started going downhill as “humanity rebuilt the Tower of Babel.”

The problem, as dissected by Haidt, began as social media weakened “at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories.”  He then goes on to detail how the Left has dominated the various institutions, specifically the media and academe.  He abets this argument by citing James Madison in Federalist #10 on “the innate human proclivity toward ‘faction’, by which he meant our tendency to divide ourselves into teams or parties that are so inflamed with ‘mutual animosity’ that they are ‘much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good.’”  

But since then, thanks much to social media, the Tower has fallen and the factions no longer communicate.  The hows and whys of the fall are of some considerable interest to those of us who claim to pay attention.  He even details how closed groups of “jerks” dominate discussions and debates on the various blogs.  I won’t go on giving you clips of Haidt’s expansion of that very recent and ongoing history.  Suffice it to say that Haidt also agrees that we are at least two distinct countries – with appropriately differentiated cultures, languages, histories, values, … - sharing a common border.

What struck me as a significant shortcoming in Dr Haidt’s contemporary ontology is his apparent ignorance (neglect?) of some significant findings by sociologists that dovetail with teachings from the systems sciences.  He argues that ‘Democracy after Babel’ will require a ‘redesign of democracy’ that includes reforms in three categorical areas – “three goals that must be achieved if democracy is to remain viable in the post-Babel era. We must harden democratic institutions so that they can withstand chronic anger and mistrust, reform social media so that it becomes less socially corrosive, and better prepare the next generation for democratic citizenship in this new age.”

When expanding on these areas, it is not clear at all that Haidt’s recommendations do not require the enlargement of our already encompassing government(s).  How else would democratic institutions be “hardened”, social media “reformed”, and the “next generation prepared” for a more compliant and compatible “democratic citizenship”?  What Haidt misses is the underlying truth that for large complex systems to remain viable, they need to be decentralized – they need to be based on a structure of distributed control and knowledge.  In this universe, nature does not support large systems that are centrally comprehended and controlled.  On Earth, the evidence for this abounds when we open our eyes and understand what we see in the natural world.

The alternative approach to successful societies in the post-Babel era, missed by Haidt, is to abandon globalism and work to enlarge the community of sovereign nation-states to have members with much smaller and more culturally cohesive populations.  I have lost track, but somewhere in the archives of such sociological studies are solutions that identify ideal national populations to be in the five to ten million range, and comprise of jurisdictional units that are not larger than 50,000.  This kind of global structure of independent states and free peoples would promote specialization, trade, and the ready transfer of ‘best practices’, as one people sees how another people have a better solution for a common problem.

Leftwing Journalism (Addended)

George Rebane

Reading this morning’s (28apr22) Union, I was both startled and disappointed when I came to the paper’s weekly Hits & Misses column (here).  Publisher Don Rogers usually places his contributions at the bottom, and there we saw –

MISS (from Publisher Don Rogers): To the kind of free speech as uttered by bullies, liars, abusers, propagandists, trolls, rumor-mongers, gossips and other asses lurking in social media, including the new owner of Twitter.

Now, it’s been no secret for decades that there is a great asymmetry between the reportage from our neighbors on the Left and Right.  (The published literature on that could fill a library.)  We have covered this phenomenon going on 15 years now.  Recent leftwing journalistic atrocities include the multi-year unabashed and still ongoing reporting of the Great Russian Collusion for which there is not a shred of evidence.  In a similar vein, material events of national importance are thoroughly buried in what is now correctly known as the lamestream media.  An example of that is the Hunter Biden laptop scandal which revealed influence peddling that included payoffs to the “Big Guy” principal, now in the White House, whose influence was peddled.

Such evidence-free, evidence-hiding journalistic behavior is to be expected in the national press, but not so much from local outlets in markets where the writers and readers know each other.  This is why I was surprised to read Don’s pre-emptive swipe at Elon Musk.

Readers may recall that I consider Don Rogers a respected friend, among the many I have on the port side.  However, his published Miss is so out of character of the man I know on two counts.  First, Musk’s stated intentions to open up Twitter to uncensored free speech should be welcomed by all who support our First Amendment, especially those who supposedly deal in ‘Truth’ as journalists claim in their code of ethics.  And second, Musk has yet to do anything at Twitter that would justify anyone to categorize him on Roger’s list of misfit communicators.  So why launch such a pre-emptive editorial attack that looks so much like gratuitous pandering to the county's growing progressive faction?

In expressing all this consternation, I am reminded that The Union is a privately owned enterprise, and has wide latitude in what kind of news and editorial content it is free to publish.  I don’t think that the above Miss crossed any libel lines, but I do think that Don Rogers does step over the bounds of editorial prudence when he joins the ranks of the country’s leftwing lemming chorus, all howling their imagined portents of Elon Musk single-handedly about to bring American democracy to an end by opening up Twitter to free speech.

Addendum:  Leftwing journalism cannot survive as a co-equal in an open market of ideas.  In such an environment, collectivist thought withers away into a dry shell of an echo, infrequently encountered and never taken seriously by those open to the greater wash of ideas that inundate the public square.  This is to be corroborated by the establishment of a very visible crutch that will henceforth support the already limping lamestream.  The Biden administration will seek to ensconce a permanent Ministry of Truth (aka Disinformation Governance Board) to oversee and variously censor ideas, opinions, happenings, and facts that counter the neo-Marxist narrative of socialism that has become the dissonant chorus from the Left. (more here and here)  The leader of these quenchers of free speech will be Nina Jankowicz, a renown incompetent in all but partisan zealotry, which she has demonstrated throughout her career (more here).  This woman is the carefully chosen poster-child for fettered discourse in the land.

Doing Healthcare Right

George Rebane

There’s no doubt about it, we don’t do healthcare right.  As every leftwinger likes to point out, we pay more for healthcare per patient and per capita than any other developed country with liberal governance.  Their solution is to nationalize America’s healthcare industry – aka adopting a ‘single payer’ system.  Given our inability to do bureaucracies right, every proposal to nationalize winds up raising our cost of healthcare and hiding such increases under variously camouflaged wealth transfer, money printing, and federal borrowing programs.

None of the proposed solutions are sustainable in the sense that they are able to keep a constant level of healthcare services within a non-increasing total cost share of GDP.  As documented numerous times in these pages, this is nothing new.  Even the progressives’ poster-child countries for nationalized healthcare have not been able to fashion or operate sustainable healthcare systems – they’re all reducing services and/or eating up bigger shares of their GDP.  None of these systems can last forever, as they continue kicking the cost can down the road.

Our private, semi-subsidized healthcare system is still the best in the world for delivering clinical care, new medicines, technology advancements, and innovative medical procedures.  Where we screw up badly is how we handle all the back-office stuff confirming the levels of delivered care and arranging for their payment through multiple agencies and from multiple sources.  That bureaucracy is enormously costly and screwed up to a fare-thee-well.  And folding these legacy processes and procedures within today’s bureaucratic mindset into a nationalized structure promises to deliver chaos on steroids.

McKinsey & Company, through its Center for Healthcare Reform, has completed a massive study of our healthcare industry, and identified specific improvements through which we could save more than $250,000,000,000 annually.  They have published their findings in a 76-page report titled ‘Administrative Simplification: How to save a quarter-trillion dollars in US healthcare’.  This is probably the most important new finding to come along that can move the healthcare debate off dead center and save enormous amounts annually.  You don’t have to read the entire thing to get the important details of how and where these savings will be realized.  The report begins with a 6-page executive summary with graphics that gets you up to speed.  Read it so that you’ll know what you’re talking about the next time you decide to sound off about healthcare reform.  (H/T to correspondent)

 

Scattershots – 21apr22 (updated 24apr22)

George Rebane

Re Rise Gold’s opening of the Idaho-Maryland mine, Union columnist Terry McLaughlin writes an excellent summary of the cost/benefit factors in the newspapers 21apr22 edition.  I’ve been on the fence leaning toward opposition of the project.  Terry’s clear, complete, and concise column helped me resolve toward opposing the project.  It’s definitely worth a read (here).

2017 corporate tax cuts have now demonstrated that they paid for themselves.  Beyond they gave the economy a boost, raised real wages for middle class, and attracted more capital investment to increase the nation’s productive capacity.  As a collateral benefit, the rate reduction also greatly reduced the usual tax avoidance stratagems that always accompany high tax rates.  In short, the working of the Laffer Curve has again been demonstrated, as has been the error of all predictors – starting with the CBO - of massive government revenue losses.  Now, you’ll hear none of this from the lamestream media where all you’ll get is that the anti-American Biden wants to raise corporate rates to some progressive ‘fair share’ level.  This is guaranteed to take us back to slow and no growth, especially when combined with the rest of Democrats’ butt stupid economic nostrums. (more here and here)

[22apr22 update] ‘If I were the Devil’ broadcast on 5 April 1965 is one of Paul Harvey’s most memorable commentaries.  The legendary radio commentator (syndicated from 1951-2008) looks more than a half century into the future and nails it.  He spelled out then what we all have experienced as the signs of our time.  Definitely worth a listen today (here) as we contemplate our nation's downward spiral.  (H/T to correspondent)

[24apr22 update]  The recent Earth Day should be remembered for marking 52 years of utterly failed predictions by the climate hysterics.  Doesn’t that just frost your external plumbing?  (more here and H/T to reader)

'How America Became La La Land' describes Victor Davis Hanson in some detail.  I would really like to see some of our leftwing readers respond to ANY of the points that VDH makes.  If the past serves the present, that is not to be; for they are all blind or ensconced in Terminal Denial Land.

‘Poking the Bear’!?

George Rebane

It appears that under the leadership of our pusillanimous president the west has quietly buried MAD (mutually assured destruction).  Today we tremble in fear of the Butcher of Moscow every time he even hints that he has nuclear weapons which he might use if we don’t let his genocide in Ukraine continue unhindered.  So, what does he think we keep in all our land-based and seagoing silos, bagels?

For decades MAD, augmented by forceful US military interventions, held back the Soviet bear.  None of the communist dictators waved their nuclear warheads in our faces, because they knew we would just wave back with ours – both knew not to play a lose-lose game.  That didn’t mean that the communists didn’t try to surreptitiously stick nukes under our noses.  But when discovered, they always understood the meaning of MAD and pulled back. 

Both were satisfied to continue advancing their foreign policies by propaganda and the kind of brushfire wars that George Kennan outlined in his 1946 ‘Long Telegram’.  And in these, we didn’t just send in weapons and other military aid, we and our allies often put boots on the ground.  When necessary, we demonstrated our ability to kick the bear in the butt and not just poke him.  Under US leadership we did this until the USSR collapsed in spite of its decades long attempts to demonstrate the glories of communism and make it work.  Today no more.

Under the clearest moral imperative since Hitler’s 1939 blitzkrieg invasion of Poland, we balked and prevaricated in full knowledge of Putin’s intent to invade Ukraine (as now admitted by our CIA), and continue to do so in the face of the ongoing slaughter of the innocents.  We have yet to send in the heavy weapons that Ukraine needs to counter the Russian (Red) army’s fielded heavy weapons and their air/missile superiority.  Every time we even intimate that we will do so by calling Putin a war criminal, he rattles his nukes and Team Biden dives under their desks.

I would love to hear our leader strap on a pair of balls and respond to Putin’s threat of ‘uncertain consequences’ with a public guarantee of some uncertain consequences of our own should he continue to irritate the Eagle.  According to Rebane Doctrine, one such uncertain consequence would arise were we to promise to supply Ukraine with tactical nukes if Putin would ever pop one of his on Ukrainian territory.  The bottom line here is that we should exhume MAD, a mutually understood and implemented foreign policy strategy that for decades proved its war-limiting mettle, and as a reminder, bears that behave badly should always be poked.

Without MAD, none on Bumblebrain’s A-team has a clue on how to stop Putin from taking the next hunk of neighboring territory after he’s allowed to negotiate a ‘peace’ that further decimates Ukraine.  Why would he not?  As with all tyrants whose regime beggars its citizens, Putin must always have a foreign aggressor against which to rail, and explain to his people why they are in dire straits.

Ruminations – 15apr22 (updated 16apr22)

George Rebane

Twitter’s poison pill to dissuade Elon Musk from taking the company private and making it truly a universal platform for free speech.  Democrats and other socialists are mortified, with many of their media lackies quickly declaring that only with more “mediation” (aka censorship) of online speech can we sustain democracy.  Not long ago such a statement was palpably unbelievable; today not so.  Here is a link to find out more about the types of most commonly used poison pills.

RR’s characterization of the liberal mind is confirmed multiple times daily.  Here is one from this morning’s letters to the 15apr22 Union by a Ms/Mr/Xcritter Nory Fussell – The year 2021 ended with 745 billionaires, up from 614 in 2020. Many billionaires pay little or no taxes. We suffer the lie of backbreaking “inflation” while corporate profits skyrocket.  Progressives don’t cause this.  Wars continue to break out, the military budget continues to grow, and our chief export is weapons of war. This is not the work of Progressives but of soulless men, put mildly, suffering an acute anti-social personality disorder.  Infrastructure crumbles. You lose power, heat, and essential services. Look what you pay at the pump, while oil executives laugh and rake it in. The economic war against you is raging — it will only get worse.  Progressives, perhaps imperfectly, work toward health care, education, and basic human needs. The oligarch party (you know who they are!) rages flat-out lies about race, class, gender, even about a violent insurrection. They offer no solutions to your needs.  Apparently (unbelievably!), a fairly large percentage of you are moved more by fear, anger, victim-hood and divisiveness. In one generation, how did the USA lose so much?

[16apr22 update]  Our economists and other economic analysts are hyper-ventilating about 3.5M workers they claim will not re-enter the post-Covid job market.  They tell us this deficit – consisting mostly of lowly paid women with no college - will be permanent.  Rebane Doctrine advises them not to worry.  As we have repeatedly noted, systemic unemployment has been slowly growing for years, and will continue to do so as cheaper and more capable technology replaces more expensive and unreliable workers.  And even the short-term deficit will be easily handled by the influx of illegal aliens as they get settled into their new homes and look for work.  From my perch, our continuing problem will be to mollifying the growing horde of the chronically irrelevant and systemically unemployed from revolting to relevance. (cf rising crime rates and more here)

Giving until it hurts?  FN and The Blaze cite IRS records (here) showing that Bumblebrain and FLOTUS gave $17,400 or 2.8% of their 2021 income to charity.  Kamala and SHOTUS upped them a mite, and gave $22,100, but only 1.3% of their 2021 income to charity.  These laughable amounts are not all that laughable as records have shown for years that leftwingers don’t give much to private charities – their charity operates with OPM.  This has been much studied (here).  And as socialists they believe that government should be the sole provider of succor to its citizens.  Nevertheless, Americans continue to give through private charities amounts that are multiples of what the deficit-spending, vote-buying government dispenses.  For the record, as grateful entrepreneurs we, and many of our friends, are blessed to be able to give up to 40% of our earnings to worthy causes.  This tallies to several times the amounts that our progressive elites and leaders let escape from their tightly zipped wallets.