Rebane's Ruminations

The Mueller Report – some early takes (updated 20apr19)

George Rebane

The long-awaited report from special counsel Robert Mueller has turned out to be a disappointment on all counts to all sides.  The following summarize my initial take on it.

1. From a legal perspective, the report is an iconic nothing-burger. A 400-page embarrassment that documents the failure to conclude anything definite about the commissioned purpose for the drawn-out investigation.  It is a collection of legal pabulum as a CYA disguise for spending tens of millions over two years to no avail.
2. From the gitgo the Mueller investigation was an obviously composed effort to nail the president and derail his administration. The composition of the investigative team and its flailing, off-the-mark, subsequent indictments gave evidence that it really was a desperate witch hunt which had to fire off a few legal pyrotechnics now and then to keep the effort looking credible to the light thinkers.
3. From a political perspective, the report is a success. Since there was no credible prosecutorial evidence for either ‘collusion’ or ‘obstruction’, the investigation’s redoubt terminus was always to deliver a product that would dissemble its conclusions so as to invite and enable follow-on probes which the Democrats took every opportunity to specify during the 22-month fiasco.  Team Muller got its marching orders early and often from the Left and its lamestream.
4. President Trump and his administration have been isolated, perhaps, like no other administration in our history. The Dems could never accept the election results, and the Repubs have carried on a feckless relationship with a president who obviously was not their first choice from their retinue of available candidates.  And Trump’s incurable foot-in-mouth disease did not endear him to anyone in the Washington political establishment.  Mueller’s investigation was drawn out for the obvious collateral damage it was inflicting by hobbling and diverting Team Trump from governing.
5. Mueller’s work has also served 1) to firmly entrench the public’s longstanding opinion of the dodgy legal profession and our convoluted and corrupt justice system in which it operates, and 2) to highlight and further widen our country’s ideological divide. The report’s dearth of evidence and painfully wordsmithed syntax made sure that it would change no minds already secure in their beliefs about Trump’s guilt or innocence.  All sides can now put their own particular spin on it, and never look back.

WSJ Washington columnist Kim Strassel adds more meat to these points in her ‘Mueller’s Report Speaks Volumes’.

[20apr19 update]  Upon reflection on Volume 2 of the report dealing with obstruction, it strikes me as more than utter bullshit that would be below the standards of any other profession other than those populated mostly by sleazebag lawyers.  I add point #6.

6. “… while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” A little thought immediately causes one to ask, ‘is there ANY investigation that cannot have such a codicil appended to its conclusion, should the investigator desire to leave a cloud over the individual investigated without the finding of any illegality or indictable criminality??’ To conclude with such an unnecessary assertion is an act of desperation which confirms that the investigation was carried out with an agenda unfulfilled.  Such a dangling innuendo strongly implies that guilt could yet be uncovered with more effort, and forces the so accused into having to prove his own innocence – not exactly the way our system of jurisprudence was intended to operate.  (That is one of the many reasons I assess our judicial system to be invitingly corrupt.)

In Mueller’s case he was not able to indict someone for not obstructing an unobstructed investigation that terminated without finding any evidence of an indictable crime.  About that the Dems are pissed to the gills, and will now do everything to correct the situation.  Go figger.

Ruminations – 13apr2019 (updated 16apr19)

George Rebane

AG Barr will finally seek to hold the FBI accountable for their Obama era corruptions.  This has the Democrats screeching bloody murder for what they know will be revealed on the road to the 2020 elections.  WSJ’s Kim Strassel lays it all out – ‘Barr Brings Accountability’.

California’s critical 4^th grade academic rankings are in the toilet – 47^th in math, 46^th in reading, 46^th in science.  Assemblyman Kevin Kiley was punished in the California Assembly for making public the latest progressive follies in screwing the state’s school kids.  The bottom line is that progressives are lunatics when it comes to governance as they demonstrate total ignorance of how humans work – their needs and behaviors.  The only policies they propose, promote, and pass are those designed to enlarge government and give the Left ever more power over our lives.  (more here)

Reconquista Revisited

George Rebane

Last night on FN, Tucker Carlson interviewed Juan Hernandez, a Mexican government official currently serving as the Guanajuato Secretary of Migration, on Mexico’s policy of permitting central American trans-migration through their country to the US border.  The official pointedly avoided addressing the harm that Mexico’s official behavior does to the United States.  (more here) The part of the interview that was most revealing concerned Reconquista – the return of lands that Mexico lost to the United States in 1848.  In the 20^th century Mexico and pro-Mexican politicians in this country have openly declared that the lands will be returned bloodlessly by immigration and out-breeding our European descended whites.  In recent decades they have added cross-border migration of illegal aliens to their plan to enlarge and spread insular and non-assimilating latino communities in the US.  (Google also Mexifornia and other writings by Victor Davis Hanson.)

Tucker Carlson reminded Mr Hernandez of some of his past statements on the matter.

“We are betting Mexican-Americans will think ‘Mexico first,’ even unto the seventh generation.”

“Mexican immigrants to the United States are going to keep one foot in Mexico. They are not going to assimilate in the sense of not being Mexican.”

“We recognize the Mexican population is 100 million in Mexico and 23 million who live in the United States. We are a united nation.”

RR has covered Reconquista in these pages for over a decade, presenting concordant views by other commentators, academics, and politicians expressed through print and the media.  The Left, especially its local light-readers, have vehemently denied that any of this is happening.  Their main argument has been that there is nothing to worry about because all Mexicans – no matter how arrived – will quickly assimilate into ordinary Americans holding the same loyal sentiments with the rest of us.  The visible evidence does not support that argument.  The overwhelming share of American latinos vote with and for the anti-American leftwing, promoting policies and initiatives to diminish the sovereignty of the US.  Today’s initiatives focus on keeping borders porous, amnesty to all illegals, and voting rights for all US residents.

Given the ongoing flow of supporting evidence and the vigorous denials by our Left, it is not unreasonable to conclude that for all intents and purposes, Reconquista has been the national policy of Mexican governments since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed on 2 February 1848.  However, never until the globalist tilt of the anti-American Left in recent decades have the Mexicans had a strong ally working in their behalf in the United States.

Two Americas - A National Emergency on Steroids (Addended)

George Rebane

A couple of mornings ago NPR’s Morning Edition reported that the illegal entrant rate across our southern border has exceeded over a million per year, and that the border security and illegal alien handling facilities are overwhelmed.  Overwhelmed, the Border Patrol has now abrogated the role of the US Customs and Border Protection agency in turning the illegals loose into our society with minimal or no ability to track their identity, origin, or intentions.  All we know is that they will quickly disperse and emerge in ‘sanctuary’ communities where all manner of public doles to succor them await.

The national border crisis is daily attested by the reports from the border and testimony from homeland security and border control officials past and present.  Recently they were joined by several Obama era higher-ups including former Homeland Security head Jeh Johnson who testified that there is indeed a border crisis in progress.

In the face of this, the country’s anti-American political faction continues to celebrate, promote, and sustain this deluge of indigents, the human trafficked, criminals, diseased, and economic opportunists that are now pouring across our southern border.  They also communicate their welcoming message in the “shithole countries” of Central America, well-funded messages that induce desperate people and dubious opportunists to undertake the long and dangerous journey north through Mexico.  Our progressives don’t care for the migrants’ welfare or risk involved during the journey.  Their only objective is to maximize the number of illegals who successfully penetrate our border, who then become political fodder within a byzantine and broken immigration system.  Ultimately their presence and large numbers will serve anti-American ends one way or another.

Astoundingly, there are even many pro-American light thinkers who cannot understand the necessity for and cost-effectiveness of an improved and extended physical barrier to span critical sections of the border.  They swallow the argument of the anti-Americans that what we really need is to greatly expand and improve the welcoming facilities to house, feed, care for, and relocate the arriving hordes.  All such responses will do everything to increase the flow and nothing to stem it.  It is the analog of calling for more bailing buckets instead of patching the hole in a sinking boat.  There is no public awareness or discussion of the longer-term impact that these indigents and their now accelerating arrival rates will have on our institutions, economy, and citizens.  The existential goal of the anti-Americans is to simply keep the ingress rate high and increasing.  No one has asked, ‘How and when will this massive migration of illegal aliens stop?’

NZ Massacre – the Left’s new perfect storm

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

George Rebane

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

Great Divide – it’s a’comin’

George Rebane

The Democrats have re-outed themselves as the resurrection of the Socialist Party of America, now with detailed near-term policy objectives to make the country into a socialist state over the next two decades.  To achieve this, their plan calls for the certain election of a proto-socialist President in 2020, with a supportive Congress to follow directly.  The only thing standing in the way is the re-election of Donald J Trump, and this possibility has driven the Democrats and their media lackeys into a state of political hysteria not witnessed in the history of our republic.

The Democrats are justifiably convinced that the only way to get one of their own into the White House is to prevent President Trump from completing his first term in office, and to do it in such a way as to deny the country any additional beneficial policies like those he fostered during the last two years.  In the process, perhaps the biggest lie from the Democrats circles around their constant narrative that Main Street and the poor have not benefited at all from Trump’s policies, and only the ‘rich’ have enjoyed this president. 

The Left knows that Americans are very focused on the President’s walk and not his talk.  The other countless lies from the Left maintain that no one likes the man, Americans don’t like what he’s done, and they don’t like what he will do going forward.  Were that really the case, then leftwing politicians such Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Elijah Cummings, Adam Schiff, and Mad Max Waters would not have to continue making fools of themselves every day in front of the cameras; believing their own words, they could just lay low, continue to introduce socialist legislation, and watch The Donald self-destruct.  But that clearly is not the case, and they are all sanitarily scared that the electorate will sense the truth if they tone down their investigative histrionics – no, no, no, the Cavalcade of Diversions must go on.  (BTW, one of RR’s favorite historians and observers of the nation’s churn is coming out (5mar19) with A Case for Trump, his new book that confirms and expands the points made above.)

In the meantime, more and more people today see the fiscal and social havoc that the progressives have created across the country, especially in states like New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and poster-child California.  Victor Davis Hanson addresses our home state in his 27feb19 ‘California’s Rendezvous With Reality’ that pretty much destroys the la-la land lies with which the state’s progressives are trying to paint over each of the new social, environmental, regulatory, and fiscal cracks that continue to widen.

In concert with this national charade, even some of the more observant on the Left are beginning to understand that our ship of state is no longer holding a steady course into the future.  Even progressive thinkers are beginning to consider new political configurations for the United States.  These governing structures range from new breakaway states, through “mega-regions” based on coherent economies (here), to political units hearkening back to the historical city-states of Europe (here).

However, as we continue to shout past each other in the manner much documented in these commentaries and comment streams, the Great Divide debates are starting to embrace a new and more ominous timbre.  Two WaPo reporters have noticed that pundits from both sides today see the country at loggerheads that have not been witnessed since 1860, the eve of our previous ‘civil war’.  When considering the prospect of a shooting war, a recent poll found that “more than 40 percent of Democrats described such a conflict as "likely," compared with about 25 percent of Republicans.”  Even our venerable VDH has voiced his portents, asking, "How, when, and why has the United States now arrived at the brink of a veritable civil war?" (more here)

(H/T to readers and correspondents who share my concerns.)

Border Security’s True Colors (updated 20feb19)

George Rebane

For some years I have been pointing out to readers that America’s Left has a totally different outlook on the function of US borders, especially the one with Mexico.  I don’t claim to be flying solo in this interpretation, since several nationally prominent commentators of the Right have expressed their similar views and continue to do so today.  The bottom line on this observation, with loads of supporting citations, is that our Left sees the southern border as the perfect political tool for their work in the fundamental transformation of America into the peerage of socialist states preparing for the globalist future.

This objective could not have been more clear than what was reported by host Scott Simon on NPR’s Weekend Edition this morning.  The program regularly presents segments promoting progressive causes and viewpoints.  Today their daily anti-Trump dump featured an interview with Gil Kerlikowske, US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner under President Obama.  The entire message was of a piece in which Mr Kerlikowske strongly maintained that Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at our southern border is a gratuitous political stunt to get money to build “his wall” because in reality there is no emergency at our Mexican border. (more here)

Kerlikowske then went on to outline some stats stating that the real emergency existed in 2000 when more than 1.2M crossed the southern border, and today only 400K are coming across annually, thereby making such yearly ingress of illegals most certainly not an emergency but more like business as usual.  He also pointed out that most of our drugs come in surreptitiously through legal ports of entry, and therefore we shouldn’t concern ourselves with the lesser amount of drugs coming in across fences and rivers.

The only problem he saw with today’s border operations is that there are not enough immigration judges to hear all the illegal aliens’ pleas to become permanent US residents.  During the entire course of the interview – one like so many others with leftists – there was not even a hint of hundreds of thousands of illegal border crossings being evidence of a border security problem.  The Left’s only existential and acknowledged problem is that these illegal entrants couldn’t be processed fast enough to get their permits to stay here.  In the de juris case then, these people can now be formally designated as ‘illegal immigrants’ because by allowing them (inviting them?) to readily cross our border, the US government has entered into the required, albeit de facto, two-party agreement with them as acknowledged immigrants.

So think about it.  The Democrats have stepped out with a clear pronouncement that today it should be our accepted policy that 400K unvetted illegal aliens should be able to easily cross our border and enter our broken immigration system which has been purposely maintained only to build and buttress the Dems' voting pool, and, more importantly, increase its immediate representation in Congress.

Few people understand the real reason the Dems oppose an accurate census of US citizens as required by the Constitution.  We have adopted the custom of allocating seats in the House of Representatives on the basis of a state’s share of the country’s residents, NOT its citizens – although being a citizen is still a requirement for voting, but the Dems are working hard to also remove that ‘barrier to democracy’.  So grab an envelope and do the numbers.  It’s not hard to see that with concentrations of illegals in big population ‘sanctuary’ states, the number of representatives for already leftist states like California will increase.  And these seats will be filled by leftwingers, voted in by an ever-DECREASING share of franchised Democrat voters from each congressional district.  But no one understands this, the confusion abetted by the lamestream’s narrative that requiring a statement of US citizenship on the census questionnaire will unfairly inhibit the minority vote.

And these, dear readers, are the true colors of the Democrat Party in the early 21^st century, ever more visibly on display with each passing day.

[20feb19 update]  Great Divide reflections: >85% conservatives and Republicans believe there is a national emergency at the border; >65% of liberals and Democrats believe there is no border emergency.  The Right is astounded at this disparity and wonders how a nation with such a polarized outlook on such fundamental matters can continue, let alone function.  On the other hand, with no such concerns the Left believes the Right is just ignorant and evil, and needs to be brought to heel by whatever means it takes.

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

George Rebane

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

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

 

The Real Issue That Divides Us (updated 27jan19)

George Rebane

Conservetarians believe in global diversity and national cohesion; progressives believe in global conformity and national diversity.  The former resists global autocracy, the latter sustains global autocracy.

Nationally prominent commentator and executive WSJ editor Gerald Seib recently wrote ‘The Wall Marks a Deep Cultural Divide’ (in the 21jan19 WSJ) a piece describing attributes which divide America that focused on “character differences”.  In his piece Seib said, “One question asked whether immigration adds to the character and strength of America by increasing its diversity and bringing in new talent, or detracts from American character by putting burdens on government services and creating language barriers”, and then cited the disparate responses of the Trump and resist-Trump supporters.

While I agreed with Seib’s subsequent analysis, I felt that he did not reach deep enough to a more basic, revelatory, and explanatory level (in the sense of being able to reliably predict derivative attitudes and behaviors).

I emailed Mr Seib a brief explanation of my critique: Mr Seib - Our divide goes much deeper than can be discovered with pabulum questions about “American character”.  If these surveys were structured and administered so as to discover what kind of future world order Americans would like to see the US being a part of (i.e. Westphalian sovereign nation-states vs a peerage of jurisdictional fiefs of a global government), then the answers would be more revealing (and reliably predictive) as to the respondents’ attitudes about border security, immigration policy, cultural diversity, paths to citizenship of illegal aliens, etc, since all these are dependent on how people value culturally cohesive (vs fragmented) nations, and whether/how such a community of nations should continue to organize the world’s peoples.

‘Do We Need Our Country Anymore?’

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  And in this holiday season Jo Ann and I wish you and our entire KVMR family a healthy and productive new year.  Thank you for listening. 

Globalists and Nationalists, oh my!

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 12 December 2018.]

Have you considered where you stand on the many issues that not only divide us Americans, but also people everywhere, that is everywhere they can freely speak their minds?  Have you really thought it through well enough to sit down and make a list of the issues that concern you, and also your reasoned or even unreasoned, attitude about each such issue?  Most people will have to answer a truthful NO, and admit that they primarily respond to such questions, as they come up, with an unexamined yet readily available emotion.

Today we are becoming more polarized as each day goes by without anyone being able to identify a meaningful patch of common ground on which we can meet and talk.  The old adage of ‘don’t talk politics or religion’, when hoping to remain civil in polite company, has now become a social mandate in the carefully groomed public round.  When at church or at some other club or association meeting, everyone carefully minds their mouths, and holds on patiently until they can leave and get back to more reliably like-minded folks.

While there are many things we all can disagree on – today immigration, climate change, abortion, culture, assimilation, terrorism, … remain high on the list – how we come down on each of them can usually be traced to our overall picture of the kind of world we want our kids and grandkids to inherit.  And for those fortunate enough to be well-read, that almost inevitably brings us to one of two kinds of worlds, which ultimately identify each of us as being in the nationalist or globalist camps.  Moreover, the roads to such diametrically opposite worlds contain all the just-mentioned hurdles about which we, again, are of opposite minds.

Scattershots – 15nov18 (updated 17nov18)

George Rebane

A leftwing Union columnist most recently summarized the huge ideological chasm between the two polarized camps of Americans (see 15nov18 letters).  Writing in response to the Kavanaugh confirmation, the writer unabashedly blurted out a core progressive tenet that was in full display at the congressional hearings – “It is just as bad to assume innocence as it is to assume guilt.”  This violates the very basis of western jurisprudence, and has long been the norm for dictators as they attempt a forged judicial system under their rule.  Nowhere in recent memory have I seen such a stark reminder of how different we are, and how different will be our society were the Left to gain absolute control.

Defense spending and a strong American military has never been in the Left’s desiderata for all the obvious reasons.  Our military has suffered mightily under leftwing administrations, most recently under President Obama.  Today the Democrats continue their anti-military chorus, while they continue to entice their gimme constituencies with promises of more and mightier entitlements, most recently led by their efforts to implant a comprehensive socialized healthcare (“single payer”) program that has yet to demonstrate its sustainability in any land it has been implemented.  Their intended source of insufficient funds for such welfare projects is from our defense budget.  However, our military today has been so weakened that the non-partisan United States Institute for Peace has issued a landmark report ‘Providing for the Common Defense’ (download it here), which goes chapter and verse into the details of what we have let lapse along with the effects it has and will have on world order.  This state of affairs is an ongoing legacy of the Left, a gift that keeps taking.

[16nov18 update]  And then these little tidbits caught my eye this morning.

Khasshoggi’s killers to get the death penalty – well, not all of them, just the poor snuffies tasked to do the dirty work.  Imagine being a highly trained field agent for your country ordered to do a delicate little assassination of some ‘enemy of the state’ in a foreign land.  You go do the job that’s then discovered through no fault of yours, and you get tried and executed while the big kahuna(s) are untouched.  How will that affect your fellow agents as they contemplate their next mission to do the state’s dirty work?  (Work that into the definition of ‘patriotism’.)  But as ever, rank hath its privileges – some people just rank too high to fail, especially those whose enemy is our enemy, and who buy billions of dollars’ worth of guns and grenades from us.

“Hire sight unseen” is the MO of employers seeking to fill critical jobs in sales and STEM.  In this hot economy, the competition for even tentatively qualified labor is so high that all you need is to submit your creatively wordsmithed resume and pass a 25-minute phone interview (some with a robo-interviewer), and your offer letter appears in your inbox. (more here)  Of course, I assume that if you really bomb on your first day on the job, you’ll be let go equally fast.  I began my career as an aerospace draftsman in exactly the same way.  My phone interview with a job shop lasted less than five minutes during which I was told the address and contact person of my new employer.  Those draftsmen who didn’t make it were out on the street after the morning coffee break.

Woke progressives continue to mangle the language.  The latest casualty to politically correct newspeak is the use of ‘body’.  Humans, people, and persons are now reduced to bodies – e.g. “Bodies that migrate across borders undergo tremendous change.” in the NYT.  The use of ‘body’ joins many other words whose meaning has been folded in with a lot of other meanings, making for ever more murkier communications.  Matthew Hennessey’s piece ‘How to Read ‘Body’ Language’ goes into more detail.  (And in the below comment stream you can see my exchange with a commenter over some silly semantics.)

Migrant caravans made up of almost all military-aged males.  Has anyone else noticed the pictures and videos of the various proto-illegal alien caravans approaching our border through Mexico?  Count the women and children.  And who is paying for all the food, shelter, transportation, and organization to get these thousands of Latinos to their designated destinations?

[17nov18 update]  Ramirez again summarizes it in a manner that is clear, concise, and complete.  (H/T to reader)

Scattershots – 7oct18 (updated 10oct18)

George Rebane

Great Divide pieces are beginning to appear all over the place as a result of what the Left revealed of itself during the Kavanaugh confirmation conflagration.  This alienating trend is some years in development and was picked up early in these pages (much to the denial and denigration of the local know-nothings).  Today we see articles about the socio-political chasm in the country appearing in places like USA Today and WaPo, neither bastions of conservative thought.  The more important aspect of these reports is that they now lament the absence of any plausible common ground on which national healing may begin, and that for the simple reason that there is none if you want to rule out such commonalities as both sides still agreeing to drive on the right side of the road. (more here)

This ‘Quote of the Day’ by columnist Burt Prelutsky from the LA Times was sent to me by a correspondent.  Talk about nailing it.  "Frankly, I don't know what it is about California, but we seem to have a strange urge to elect really obnoxious women to high office. I'm not bragging, you understand, but no other state, including Maine, even comes close. When it comes to sending left-wing dingbats to Washington, we're Number One. There's no getting around the fact that the last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Maxine Waters, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on 'Macbeth'. The five of them are like jackasses who happen to possess the gift of blab. You don't know if you should condemn them for their stupidity or simply marvel at their ability to form words."

[9oct18 update]  Hallelujah!  California's fiscal condition ranks 42 in the nation.  And here all of you thought the Dems had driven us to the bottom of the barrel.  Looks like there's still room to go, and CA's gimme voters are just the ones to elect the team that will get us there (see also previous entry).  The Mercatus Center of George Mason University gives the particulars here.

[10oct18 update]  Some of us should have no public voice according to an alt-Left commenter in The Union known to us all.  For years my newspaper columns and radio commentaries have been on the local Left’s prohibition list; now since Jo Ann is on the newspaper’s editorial board and one of its regular columnists, she has joined me in the Left’s planned proscription when their power becomes comprehensive.  The comment under her recent column, ‘Oh yes, I believed’, reads, “I'm sad this ran in the town that we now call our home. It's changing, though, which I guess is what leads to stuff like this.”  We note that such attacks have never been on the substance of what was offered, but always the meta-complaint that such alternative viewpoints are still permitted by a community that has not yet completed its mandated transition to a politically correct and uniform mindset.  These are the same people who will then march us to their re-education camps and ‘psychiatric hospitals’ (or worse), as they have done so many times all over the world.

What the Kavanaugh Confirmation has Really Confirmed (updated 7oct18)

George Rebane

By the slimmest margin, this morning the Senate voted cloture – to restrict remaining debate on the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh before the vote to confirm scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.  Odds are that by this time tomorrow Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed as the newest Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Here and elsewhere the road to the confirmation vote has led us through some of the smelliest sewers of our federal government while unambiguously revealing the journalistic corruption of our vaunted Fourth Estate.  For all intents and purposes, what in these pages I have labeled the ‘lamestream media’, the overwhelming membership of that estate has today successfully morphed into the Ministry of Information (aka propaganda arm) of the Democratic Party.

It is turning out that the real collusion in this confirmation drama occurred in the Democrats’ management of the hearing’s witnesses.  The most recent FBI investigation revealed that there was a concerted, coordinated, albeit unsuccessful effort to get Dr Ford to perjure herself on her (lack of) recollection of the facts related to her allegations against Judge Kavanaugh.  The larger dimensions of this sordid side of the sewer has yet to play itself out – stay tuned.

An evening with Victor Davis Hanson (updated 10oct18)

George Rebane

Last Saturday evening we loaded some friends in the car and headed for the Grand Sheraton in Sacramento to attend a fundraiser for Congressman Tom McClintock.  We’ve known Tom for years and continue to support him in our neighboring congressional district.  The evening featured a talk and Q&A with Victor Davis Hanson.  Professor Hanson is “an American classicist, military historian, columnist, and farmer. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for National Review, The Washington Times and other media outlets.”  He is also an award-winning, endowed senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

I have been a student of VDH for many years, and along with our friends, we were not going to pass up this opportunity to hear him in person.  Well, the lavishly catered evening turned out even better than expected.  We got there early and ran into the congressman in the hall, and after greetings and conversation who should walk up but Prof Hanson.  Tom greeted him warmly, graciously introduced me, and then left the two of us to chat.  We had a wonderful one-on-one for almost thirty minutes as we and the gathering crowd waited for the ballroom doors to be opened.

McClintock called the event to order, gave one of the best introductions that I have heard from a politician at his own fundraiser – a concise but warm welcome, proper summary of his guest's vitae, and mercifully short thank-yous to the event’s sponsors.  The good professor took to the podium and delivered a 30-45 minute talk that framed today’s national politics from an historical perspective, and then detailed the events and political tactics that have so split the country into factions that share few social objectives and no longer effectively communicate with each other.  After that, he took questions for about an equal period of time.  No one felt rushed, and there was plenty of time to delve deeper into the issues - a wonderfully cordial and informative evening.

It was no surprise to me from our private conversation and his invited talk, that the good professor’s historical interpretations and political observations flew in fairly tight formation with the Rebane Doctrine tenets published in these pages.  (In other words, we are both “alt-right” birds of a feather according to the local lefties who disparage yet track every word in these pages.)  I’ll conclude this report with a selection of Dr Hanson’s observations and talking points.

1. Obama’s administration was the most scandalized administration in recent memory.
2. Judge Kavanaugh’s rebuttal of Judiciary Committee Dems was on the mark, and of better ‘temperament’ than shown by Justice Ginsburg viz the Trump election.
3. The right of the accused to be presumed innocent until proven guilty has been thrown out by the Dems and the media with the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.
4. CA is now an Orwellian state in which the middle-class has the nation’s highest tax rate, 20% of Californians live in (official) poverty, with one-third of the nation’s poverty stricken taking up residence in CA.
5. “Those who rule in California are never subject to their own ideology.” (e.g. Pelosi, Feinstein, Newsom, …)  “They can afford to be liberal at someone else’s expense.”
6. “Fences work and have always worked.” Examples – Israel today, Great Wall of China, Maginot Line, Zuckerberg’s private residence, … .  (Fences are militarily known as fixed field fortifications, they are cost-effective and work only to the extent that they are also manned.  They are NOT a ‘build and forget’ part of any defensive infrastructure.)
7. CA has the best natural water resources, and has had the best waterworks in the world, which began deteriorating and proving insufficient for California’s growth in 1983 when further expansion was halted.
8. President Trump has “restored the idea of deterrence” and put in place the best foreign policy and team in recent memory.
9. The US is becoming, or has already become a tribal nation.
10. The new “Socialist Democratic Party” has replaced the former Democratic Party.
11. There no longer exists any visible ‘common ground’ in the national debate between the global socialists and nationalistic capitalists – i.e. the Great Divide is already forming.
12. There is a very slim chance that our electorate will see the light in time to pull the nation out of its death spiral into global socialism.

[10oct18 update]  VDH has summarized the Kavanaugh confirmation affair that also gives lie to the charge that President Trump somehow dissed Dr Ford in his speech recounting the distressed lady's dreadfully fractured testimony to the Judiciary Committee.  His piece - 'One Ford Narrative Too Many' - examines the entire episode from a larger perspective and is worth a read.

Mine eyes have seen the gory … (updated 21sep18)

‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’  Thomas Jefferson

George Rebane

Mr Seeman, my sixth-grade teacher at Ben Davis Elementary School in Indianapolis, motivated his class to take an interest in the 1952 election pitting Eisenhower against Stevenson for president.  He did this by promising to vote for the candidate that received the best presentation from his roomful of charges – there were about 33 of us.  It was September and time enough to form up a couple of committees to start researching and preparing the presentation.  The Rebanes weren’t even citizens then, but my mom and dad had always been keen followers of the political scene since Estonia.

So, all of us went home to consult our parents as to which candidate was the best one to vote for and why.  Since Estonia, where my father the electrician ran a small electrical contracting business and both sets of grandparents were farmers (mom’s dad even ran the local flour mill), my forebears had been entrepreneurial, self-reliant, hardworking individualists – in short, they were capitalists.  The upshot was that I got a snootful of pro-Eisenhower propaganda from both parents and was told to start reading the op-ed pages of the Indianapolis News, which was the newspaper I delivered six evenings a week on my paper route.  They pointed out that I too was an entrepreneur businessman, since I bought the newspapers from the News every week, and had to market and sell them in my territory at a profit or not, with no recourse if I couldn’t collect enough from some low-life customers who endlessly delayed payment or simply stiffed the kid.

Quo Vadis Democrats? (updated 31aug18)

George Rebane

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

Today’s Employment and Entrepreneurship

George Rebane

So here’s the drill.  In our risibly insane land we have the following three factors in some kind of convoluted and crazy collision when it comes to work and making workplaces.

In today’s economy unfilled jobs abound by the millions.  Construction jobs not requiring a college education are near the top of the list, and would be an ideal place for young people to get into the workplace and even make an excellent career of it.  But our young have been rejecting these opportunities at ever greater rates.  Laura Kusisto tells us that “Disinterest in construction work is contributing to a labor shortage that has meant fewer homes built and rising prices—possibly for years to come” in her 31jul18 piece ‘Young People Don’t Want Construction Jobs. That’s a Problem for the Housing Market’.   The numbers tell the story – “nationally, the share of young construction workers declined nearly 30% from 2005 through 2016”.

Then we have progressives in urban areas doing all they can to raise minimum wages in their cynical campaign to keep their constituents on the plantation.  It has been known for over half-century that raising minimum wages destroys exactly the jobs that allow the young and poor to enter the workforce and/or start climbing out of poverty.  But today where in the Trump economy the unemployment rates for minorities are at historical lows, liberal politicians are even invoking the Constitution to provide the fundamental argument for raising minimum wages.  Jason Riley of the Manhattan Institute explains the matter in his ‘Does the Constitution Mandate Minimum Wage Hikes?’, as he describes “a misguided court ruling (that) ignores the history of labor laws intended to keep blacks from working.”

And finally, we have to consider the best part of our overall immigration problem.  Professor Edward Lazear of Stanford looks at what kind of immigrants benefit America the most and serve our country’s national interests.  The answer, he presents with numbers to match, are the young and educated who are standing in line for legal immigration into the US.  These are the people who overwhelmingly will fill valuable jobs to keep America competitive, and these are the same future Americans who will start the businesses and enterprises to keep the country prosperous and generate jobs for us natives who are not so prone to undertake the risks of entrepreneurship.  In his ‘Send Us Your Young, Your Educated’ Lazear argues that “there is an excess supply of potential immigrants.  The US should be smart about whom it chooses.”

But half of our country is either too cynical or lacks understanding of why America should continue to grow and prosper as the world’s font of capitalism and free enterprise.  Their progressive narrative calls first and foremost for admitting immigrants who will become reliable leftwing voters and dilute extant American culture on the way to something economically and socially more like the country from which they chose to flee.  And the last thing these same socialists wish to promote are public policies that shrink the plantation by enabling more people, especially minorities, to lead lives that don’t depend on regular checks from the government.

Scattershots – 6jul18 (updated 8jul18)

A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves. - Bertrand De Jouvenel

George Rebane

Liberal logic juries.  Reviewing some of the ‘Russian interference’ comment streams to confirm the kind of logic our leftwing readers accept and present as evidence that Russia did indeed throw the 2016 election to assure Trump’s victory, it occurs to me that many, probably most, of our empaneled juries across the country enjoy a majority of liberals.  Their thought processes and ability to think critically are not lost on lawyers.  We already have long years of evidence that our judicial system suffers from significant corruption by legal professionals implementing jurisprudence to solicit erroneous verdicts by playing games with both process and evidence.  Now I wonder how much of the justice system mess is contributed by juries whose ability to reason and understand evidence is similar to what we often witness in these pages.

Left/Right civility side-by-side in the 5jul18 Union op-ed page.  Take a look at the Other Voices ‘Vote Blue in November’ by a Ms Betsy Wobus who simply exudes raw hatred of President Trump as a reason to vote Democrat, and then compare that to the neighboring column ‘A Threat to One Person’s Free Speech is a Threat to All’ by Ms Terry McLaughlin.  One contains only baseless vituperation, and the other a reasoned presentation of government’s ideology-based impact on First Amendment rights.  A more vivid example of the people on either side of our widening political gulf would be hard to find.

For all the fans of Single Payer (Socialized) Medicine, we have the latest report – ‘Reform the NHS before it kills again’ - about the UK’s much-vaunted National Health Service.  Researcher and author Rupert Darwall runs through a toe-curling litany of recent evidence and ongoing investigations of how the NHS has for years conducted a quiet policy of euthanasia on its patients.  As we have pointed out here, and Mr Darwall reinforces – for government-run health services, especially the de facto monopolistic kind like the NHS, patients are a cost to be minimized.  The obverse is true for private (for-profit) health care services for whom patients are the revenue source to be kept alive, cared for, and cured so that more patients will select the services of such enterprises.  (To confirm such a difference here in the US, revisit the evidence about the healthcare that our VA provides veterans.)

Our country’s multiple identity-based cultures are diverging (becoming more “heterogeneous”). Researchers Klaus Desmet and Romain Wacziarg at the non-profit National Bureau of Economic Research have completed “a systematic quantitative study of cultural convergence and divergence in the United States over time” to “assess whether cultural values have grown more or less heterogeneous”.  Among a lot of other things, in their jun2018 paper ‘Cultural Divide’ they conclude that the cultures of 11 distinct groups, into which they divided the American population, became more homogeneous from 1972 to the late 1990s, and then reversed and started becoming more heterogeneous thereafter.  In short, our various identity group cultures have now been diverging for the last 20 years or so.  This, of course, does help explain why we are having more difficulty in communicating and accepting each other’s public policy solutions.  Whoulda thought?

Earth during last half of June 2018.  This YouTube video was sent to me by Russ Steele, RR reader and fellow blogger (here) who closely follows and compares the global warming hysteria to what is actually happening but missing in the lamestream media reports.

[7jul18 update]  ‘If America Is Divided, So Is Europe’, so argues Tunku Varadarajan in a revealing WSJ essay.  Their divisions are similar to ours, with their Left also working feverishly to bury western civilization by any and all means in order to create the chaotic change, as necessary, from which a new global collective may arise to the carefully managed, compliant, and approving cries of their great unwashed, amply augmented by hordes of Islamic and sub-Saharan migrants.

[8jul18 update]  Agenda21 alive and well and advancing.  A reader sent me this update on the implementation and progress of A21 that was posted on Anthony Watts’ ubiquitous blog – ‘Whatever happened to Agenda 21 and Climate Change Policy?’  There Dr Tim Ball writes -

It’s alive and well in your backyard. The entire policy of using anthropogenic global warming as a false front to implement global governance and impose how we will all live is working with remarkable success. The plan was set out by Maurice Strong as Agenda 21 in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It is succeeding beyond his wildest dreams because the people he arranged to implement it are unaccountable to anyone.

In ‘History’s Bad Ideas are an Inspiration for Progressives’ Victor Davis Hanson describes “the new illiberal ethos” that we witness in our daily round and on these pages.  In there he details the Left’s hubristic asymmetry in public life and our nation’s affairs.  VDH even explains why “supposed liberals keep revisiting discredited illiberal practices from the nation’s past.”

Scattershots – 29may18 (updated)

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ruminations – 27feb18 (updated 3mar18)

‘Remember, the government cannot give anything to anyone that they have not first taken away from someone else.’ Anonymous

George Rebane

The Democratic Party’s sharp move to the left during the last ten years is now visible to all save only the most politically myopic among us.  Daily dunnings of fellow Democrats (especially in California) for not being sufficiently progressive or socialistic are now common.  The dismal dumbth of Millennials has given impetus to the Left’s elites to strike now before life’s experiences start creating doubts in those numbed minds.  This ideological migration has caused the so-called middle to also move leftward. (more here)

California has already started implementing the Great Divide as our vanguard proto-socialist 'nation' that today exercises its newfound sovereignty by choosing which federal laws to follow.  According to the one-party legislature in Sacramento, there are more initiatives on the way to maintain the state’s headlong rush into collectivism.  It is has been clear for years that in Sacramento, the interests of Republicans and conservatives in general have not been represented, and today are being actively rolled back as fast as the state's bureaucracies can act.

Echoing RR, William McGurn in the 27feb18 WSJ writes in ‘Our Childish Gun Debate’ – “… the public debate about how Congress ought to respond to this latest mass shooting is guided by two broad principles. Dubious on their own, they are even more witless when combined. The first is the idea that the most important thing is to 'do something'. The second is that we ought to look to high-schoolers for the answer.”

Hillary and Barack are fawning acolytes of Saul Alinsky, the communist who is finally recognized as the father of America’s political schism that has now morphed into the country writhing with tectonic tenets like the Great Divide.

On the tenth anniversary of W.F. Buckley’s death (27 February 2008), we remember that he “wanted American institutions to affirm capitalism on the grounds that it created more wealth and higher civilization than any alternative. He wanted them to acknowledge that not all cultures were equal and that the Judeo-Christian creed was superior because it recognized that man was created in the image of God. That premise, he held, was the source of all liberty, justice and law.” (more here)

[update]  Snowstorm of the century or not is expected to start tomorrow night.  The meleagris manning our weather guessing agencies are all over the map.  As opposed to forecasting 2-4 ft of snow at 3,000 ft, we have others guessing that it will be only rain and slush.  I guess diversity has struck the meteorological industry, today you can select the forecast most commensurate with your needs.  I’m worried about how all this diversity will affect people’s decisions to attend Friday night’s MIM Amaral Center concert at the fairgrounds featuring the Sacramento Philharmonic (more here).

Speaking of weather predictions that feature probabilities from 0% to 100%, all of them effectively insane (in the technical sense) and changing daily, RR is willing to hold a seminar for the more mindful meleagris currently engaged in such futile pursuits - they know not what they know not.  During the seminar we will cover the correct way to analyze and report probabilistic events yet to emerge from complex stochastic processes.  As a sidebar and to inject some levity into an otherwise technically intense presentation, we will also discuss the hubristic aspects of general circulation models as used to predict water levels and temperatures a century from now.

Festung Academe - governors are planning to fortify their states’ schools with barbed wire, metal detector entry points, steel doors, bullet-proof glass, and armed sworn LE officers, but all of these worthies are against any trained teachers and staff with CCWs.  That is supposed to send a wrong message to kids who will also be encouraged to show up in Kevlar vests and helmets.  Even Florida governor and Republican Rick Scott has had a generous draught of that Kool-Aid.

The nation’s critical thinkers have concluded that the NRA was responsible for Parkland and all the other school shootings.  In the next phase of the nation’s schism companies will declare themselves either conservative or liberal by their silence or vociferous opposition to and severing ties with the NRA.  It seems that the fault really lies with all of us millions of NRA members who need an extra layer of public punishment, such as Delta’s decision to discontinue giving NRA members discounted fares they also give to many other affinity groups and organization members.  I’m not sure that these businesses want to jump into politics with both feet.

[1mar18 update]  Gag orders.  Are there any legal mavens around here who could explain to us the origin of gag orders and their legal basis for suppressing the First Amendment rights of people who have not been convicted of anything, and whose subsequent speech would not affect national security.  I can't find any support for gag orders in the US Constitution; where is it hiding?

[3mar18 update]  How do we evaluate the wisdom of California’s public opinion polls on new public policies given that almost 40% of the state’s residents depend on a government check to maintain their quality of life?  I throw this out as another point of discussion in light of the last such enquiry (above) to our RR readership having gone over like a turd in the punchbowl.  I guess circling familiar barns is a lot more fun.

Deep State’s Rogue Roots (3feb18 update)

George Rebane

In a republic the only government oversight the people have is through their elected representatives, and that is necessarily political.

The 2feb18 release of the Nunes memo underscores a serious concern that has arisen among most Americans since the Obama era national elections, and now heightened by the suspicious goings on during and after the 2016 presidential campaign and election.  Major federal agencies such as the IRS, EPA, VA, NLRB, CFPB, FBI, and DoJ have all been exposed as behaving in the interest of its bureaucrat managers, and against the interests of Americans whom they were established to serve.  It is not necessary to go through the litany of the specific corruptions both revealed, alleged, and buried.  Anyone can resurrect them by just typing in the agency’s initials along with ‘corruption’ to get a laundry list of historical and current malfeasances.

The barely visible and totally invisible machinations of the federal departments we now label as happening in the ‘Deep State’.  And most Americans understand from the news and government reports that the Deep State may best be viewed as the secretive and mostly hidden fourth branch of government that is nowhere called for in our founding documents, but, putatively under the President, is supposed to implement the laws, regulations, executive orders, and rulings handed down from the three constitutional federal government arms.  Of the three, Congress has the additional job of oversight, to make sure that these bureaus, departments, and agencies are acting according to the intent and prescriptions of their enabling legislation.

One can argue that the Deep State has always been with us, because it comes alive naturally when growing organizations spawn departments whose continued existence, growth, and influence does not depend on the quality of service they provide their designated clients.  But its existence becomes toxic when it comes to be used as a tool for meting out rewards and punishments to satisfy the needs of their sponsors.  In government these sponsors are its politically controlled branches and sub-branches – e.g. Congress and its various committees.

Before the days of radically polarized political parties, oversight of the Deep State had a chance of working because its operating units had a more unified direction, and operating according to its rule book was the safest route for Deep State managers – both parties wanted more or less of the same future for the country.  Such a common vision has now been eroding for the last fifty years, and today our political factions have publicly declared their diametrically opposite futures for America.  As political scientists and historians have concluded, today the two major parties are really in mortal combat, each seeking advantage to completely destroy their opponent.

With this mindset, the party in power naturally resorts to weaponizing the Deep State against the party out of power.  In this enterprise the Left has had a distinct and demonstrated advantage, since its goal is to establish a national collective based on central planning and control by the elites, which fosters the sustenance and growth of government as embodied in the components of its Deep State.  In short, the Deep State is already staffed and operating with the mindset that fosters one party’s objectives and modus operandi.

It is then not a large step from the installation of people such as Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, John Koskinen,  … under whom the likes of ‘career managers’ like James Comey, Lois Lerner, Bruce Ohr, and Andrew McCabe were inspired to initiate and carry out actions that were definitely in the agenda-driven and often intentionally illegal service of their political betters.

When the inevitable scandals do emerge and there is opportunity to shed light and hold accountable those responsible, then it is always the political beneficiaries of the Deep State who leap to the defense and seek to seal the shutters.  They use scurrilous exhortations against the truth seekers, such as transforming the investigation of the rotten managements into unwarranted attacks against the department’s “thousands of hardworking men and women”, when there is no intent or evidence of the investigation or its reporting to impugn their labors.  Such responses are nothing short of political lies intended to pluck the heartstrings of the ignorant and unread.  This kind of lie is often accompanied by more direct and easily detectable lies.  In the Nunes memo case, some opponents of its release told the nation that the memo’s contents would reveal highly secret sources and methods which would compromise our nation’s security.  As is now evident even for the fourth-grade level reader, the memo contains no such revelations.

The fundamental arguments for the release of sanitized reports of investigations into the corrupt activities of the Deep State all rest on the necessary prerequisite, that if we as a people are to govern ourselves, in the manner of The Great Experiment bequeathed by our Founders, then we must see things for ourselves to the maximum extent possible.  And for the part that prudent maintenance of national security - and only national security - requires, then there we must trust the reports and decisions of our elected representatives since we are not a democracy with oversight by the national committee of the whole.

My representatives argued persuasively for the release of this memo to shed light on some of the most recent perversions of the Deep State, and I am grateful that they had the courage to follow through and give us the appropriate information.  I only trust that this is not the only burst of sanitizing sunshine that we see during the coming months, because clearly there is more, much more.

[3feb18 update]  A better example of Deep State’s rogue roots than Hillary’s corrupt international escapades is hard to find.  And even there we must limit our attention to only one of her many – space and time don’t allow a full discussion that is better suited for a large volume or perhaps an anthology.  Here I want us to focus on her uranium dealings with Russia as a real example of collusion corrosive to our nation.  Investigative journalist Anne Williamson has assembled this story – ‘Beyond Imagination: Uranium One’ - in the Jan2018 issue of Chronicles.  I suggest reading it to get a better perspective on our Deep State’s international tentacles, and what yet could and should come out from both Mueller’s investigative wanderings, and in subsequent House Intelligence Committee memos.

‘Truth Decay’ (updated 23jan18)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 17 January 2018.  A slightly edited version of the broadcast commentary appears here in the 20jan18 Union.]

We are now such a tragically polarized nation that almost all of us believe we are being misled through the various media.  We believe that disinformation and ‘fake news’ make up the major fare we are exposed to, and its source is, of course, from the other side.  Observing this growing socio-political crisis over the recent years, the well-respected and non-partisan Rand Corporation has launched a research program to discover the nature, extent, causes, and possible solutions to what it calls ‘Truth Decay’.  They recently published a report, actually a 326-page book, that describes the problem along with an outline for future research.

The Rand authors, Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael Rich, start by giving a working definition of Truth Decay.  Its four dominant trends are –

1. increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data;

2. a blurring of the line between opinion and fact;

3. the increasing relative volume, and resulting influence, of opinion and personal experience over fact;

4. declining trust in formerly respected sources of factual information.

Our idiots write

[The letters from two local progressive worthies appeared in the 24nov17 Union.  They are published here as a part of the public service component of RR.  My commentaries on the liberal mind pale when compared to the real things.  You really can’t make this stuff up.  gjr]

Trump-Republican gun culture and gun violence

When will the 300 million Americans take a stand against these few hundred GOP House and Senate politicians who continue to block any meaningful gun control?

How many more children, students, family and friends have to die at the hands of guns?

A few hundred Republican politicians are holding the American population hostage to a NRA mandate. Are you going to take action only after your sons and daughters and loved ones lay buried six feet under the ground?

Ban weapons of war from our streets and throw the Republican politicians out of office in 2018.

Ron Lowe, Nevada City

 

Multiculturism is a beautiful thing

It's quite clear to me that those pressing for "non-sanctuary" status for Nevada County live in a bubble narrated by Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and other right-wing extremists.

I suggest that they broaden their horizons.

I know some of these folks and I know that they have no firsthand knowledge of the ambitions of immigrants. Said immigrants are keenly interested in participating fully in the American experience. Their biggest obstacles are bigoted attitudes regarding brown skins and foreign accents.

Multiculturalism is a beautiful thing. Get a passport and learn a little something for yourself.

The only agenda I see here is fear everything non-white, stoked by inexperience, ignorance, and bigotry.

Jon Peck, Grass Valley

 

Democratic Socialists of America (updated 14nov17)

Lord, give me coffee to change things I can change, wine to accept the things I cannot change, and bourbon to forget about the whole mess.

George Rebane

DSA candidates running openly as socialists under the Democrat banner now have 35 seats in the country’s state legislatures.  “Tuesday's election night gains for the group were fairly substantial. The Democratic Socialists picked up a historic 15 seats across the country, adding to the 20 members they already have in office.” (more here)  Make no mistake about the staging of their socialist ideology as nothing but communism resurgent.  The DSA got an enormous boost from socialist Bernie’s candidacy and the fact that he was screwed by the DNC – DSA’s membership surged sixfold over the last few years and it is the fastest growing political organization in the country, primarily abetted by the know-nothing Millennials who now poll around 50% saying they’d rather live under communism than capitalism.

This is part of the extreme or alt-left direction the Democrats have taken under Obama’s reign while telling all their Alinsky lie that it was everyone else that moved to the right while they stood still.  Their and the Democrats’ successes (e.g. Virginia and New Jersey) now have openly declared the true nature of the long-sought fundamental transformation.  The Republicans are abetting the whole movement by not being able to execute the promised legislative program that got them elected.  Formerly right-leaning news outfits like Fox are daily slanting their reports toward the Left’s interpretation of events and history.  For example, in recounting the murderous communist century (more here), they include the term ‘Red Scare’ without qualification describing the 1950s, allowing the history-innocent viewer to continue believing that such a post-WW2 fear of communism’s expansion was an unfounded hysteria against just another method of governance.  The times they are a’changin’, and a good part of that impetus is powered by Republican impotence.

Given California's unabashed embrace of socialism, how long will it be until the state's Democrats hoist their true colors?

[14nov17 update]  The contention by two of our community’s leading progressive intellectuals is that California has gone socialist because the “right wing has pushed their agenda so far off the scale that any socialist bullshit solution looks good in comparison.”  (Presuming, of course, that America’s leftwing has maintained its more reasonable proximity to the center.)  This conclusion in Mr Crabb’s 947am comment below is detailed in Mr Frisch’s 749am, which itemizes the sins of the state’s Republicans.  To wit (item numbers inserted) –

Republican are increasingly irrelevant in California politics because they embraced a political philosophy, largely driven by the national party, that is completely out of step with California residents and voters.

1. They demonized Hispanics when they were the rising demographic in the state and lost their support.
2. They demonized homosexuals when no one below the age of 40 gives a shit if someone is gay.
3. They attack women’s rights to health care when the vast majority of Californians support abortion.
4. They claim climate change is a hoax when the vast majority of Californians see it every day.
5. They stand up for guns when people are crying out to stop the mass killing; they are whores to the NRA.
6. In short, a political party cannot reject the majority of the people and expect to get a majority of the vote.

The above assertions are based on a worldview – which illustrates the two irreconcilable universes in which we live -  and lacks evidence to back up the individual assertions.

1. “demonized Hispanics” – now there is hyperbole for the pre-educated consumption. The only thing that remotely relates here is the Republicans’ support of secure borders and cessation of welfare programs targeting illegal aliens which makes California an inviting destination from their own dysfunctional and corrupt countries.  Republicans have long endorsed guest worker programs that have proven a win-win for alien Hispanics.
2. “demonized homosexuals” – Republicans sought to retain the label ‘marriage’ as identifying the traditional union between one man and one woman. There is no desire or attempt to deny them the legal and functional benefits provided by marriage.  However, Republicans, in general, do oppose public schools teaching that homosexual unions are normative in the affairs of Man; they have never been and are not now.  But that sentiment does not mean that Republicans seek to proscribe, let alone “demonize”, such unions, only that they should be openly recognized as one of several special kinds of socially acceptable relationships that humans have with one another.  (The Left has no problem endorsing Islam, globally and in America, which does not share such beliefs.)
3. Republicans “attack women’s rights to healthcare”, now really. That kind of patronizing pabulum is really a sad commentary on the demonstrated acumen of the Left’s constituency.  First, there is no “right” by women or any other class of people to be provided free healthcare.  Second, Republicans simply don’t want the government to get into the abortion business, since ‘women’s healthcare’ is the accepted dog whistle for the poor and prophylactically challenged to understand what party will give them a free pass from unintended parenthood.
4. Regarding climate change, the “vast majority of Californians see” what they have been propagandized to see by the media and leftwing public schools. There is no science behind their beliefs; most certainly no accessible science, since the issue has been presented to them as a non-falsifiable religion.
5. Yes, Republicans stand up for Second Amendment rights, and continue to pose the question never dealt with in the lamestream and by the local leftwing luminaries. Why pass new and more restrictive gun laws since there is no evidence that the present gun laws don’t work, because these have yet to be either enforced or shown relevant to preventing the “mass killings” which are the claimed objective for constructively denying private ownership of guns in America?  Enforce current laws and show how they are ineffective before seeking more laws that will be subsequently ignored by everyone (law enforcement and criminals) save the law-abiding.
6. Given the above, this statement should read, ‘a political party, successfully portrayed to reject the majority of wealth-recipient people, can expect to be rejected by these same people in the voting booth (for they know from whence comest their largesse).'

But in the final analysis, all of the above is nothing but a carefully crafted and executed smokescreen by the socialists as part of America’s fundamental transformation that calls for calving individual coastal states from the traditionally constitutional parts of the country through their own well-versed and historical means of fomenting class warfare, demonizing the ‘rich’ and redistributing wealth from the taxpayers to the permanently and growing aggrieved classes who willingly vote for politicians and programs promising free money.  It was ever thus.

As an example of a corollary concept, which the Democrat collectivists seek to convince the lightly read, we have their fundamental ideological tenet that tax rates do not affect economic behavior of the wealth producers – i.e. taxpaying workers, entrepreneurs, and businesses.  Giving lie to the Democrats’ contention “that marginal tax rates don’t matter to investment and growth” are the “IRS data (which) show an accelerating flight from high-tax states.”  More detailed data of such state-to-state income transfers is given in ‘The Great Progressive Tax Escape’ which highlights the huge dollar amounts now leaving ‘tax-the-rich’ states for more suitable fiscal climes.  This type of migration hurts most the middle classes of the afflicted states, since it is they, the left behind, whose taxes must subsequently be increased to make up the revenue losses.  Again, this bamboozle is one of the Left’s most successfully smoke-screened secrets.   

Once more, I want to show appreciation for the fervently argued positions of the Left in these pages.  RR welcomes such contention of ideas so as to give readers the opportunity to see for themselves how wide differences in public policies that result from their respective ideological antecedents.  The winners and losers in these debates are determined by the individual readers, who in the end must choose for themselves and their families in what kind of country they wish to live.