Rebane's Ruminations

Scattershots – 25aug24 (updated 28aug24)

George Rebane

62 since ’62.  We’re happy to report that today my sweetie-pie and I celebrate having been married since 25 August 1962.  We were both then undergrads (seniors) at UCLA.  Now it’s two children, six grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren later after a long and wonderful road with some inevitable miles unpaved.  Gott sei Dank.

Lies, more lies, and blatant lies.  Among other things, these campaigns will be remembered by all as having issue debates with little basis in reality.  The Repubs are still not weaned of their bombast and bravura when describing their own accomplishments, and the Dems are simply over the top.  Not a single one of their characterization of Trump’s and their own administrations comes anywhere near being factual when compared to the historical record published by the several federal agencies.  Voters who care are left to dig out their own takes on reality and the possible promised futures.  To this degree was it ever thus?  Not in my lifetime. (We await the debates.)

[28aug24 update]  Funny business in the polls.  Rasmussen reports (here) that the nation’s pollsters are exposing their leftward tilt by holding back recent polling data that shows Kamala’s convention bounce waning.  Their leftward lurch is such that “people are holding data or not releasing polls to leave Harris-favorable polling alive in the aggregate.  Why put a new poll out if you like the results you got last time?" 

Level 2 AGI is nigh

[Roland Fernandez has worked for Microsoft Research for over 25 years where he is a senior researcher on the company’s advanced AI projects.  I am indebted to him for keeping me up to date on Artificial General Intelligence developments that are now accelerating us on the road to the Singularity.  I asked him to summarize the latest advance toward AGI that was recently announced to the research community.  He also happens to be my son-in-law and kindly submitted the following. gjr]

Roland Fernandez

OpenAI, the company that has produced ChatGPT, GPT 3, and GPT-4 (here), has defined 5 levels to track their progress towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI):

Level 1:  Chatbots, AI with conversational language

Level 2:  Reasoners, human-level problem solving

Level 3:  Agents, trusted systems that can initiate actions

Level 4:  Innovators, AI that can aid in invention

Level 5:  Organizations. AI that can do the work of an organization

These levels were presented in a July 9 2024 all-hands meeting (more here), where company leaders told employees that ChatGPT (based on GPT 4o) was currently at level 1, but they believed they were nearing level 2, with new model developments.

Level 2 can be defined as an AI that can reliably utilize planning and reasoning in solving multiple-step problems.  This could include skills such as performing autonomous research on the web, on behalf of the user, or working out the answers to tricky math or science questions.   The enabling technology behind this new capability is code-named Strawberry (previously leaked as “Q*”).  The company has previously stated that they consider such a reasoning skill to be critical to reaching AGI. (more here)

An X user called “@iruletheworldmo” has been flooding the AI community on X with rumors of a “Strawberry” model being released on Aug-15-2024, presumably from OpenAI.  The user has amassed 30,000 followers over the last 10 days, an unheard of achievement.

Assassin’s Bullet Grazes Former President Trump

George Rebane

‘Political violence has no place in America’ was professed by tens of media mavens and history-light politicians immediately after Republican candidate Donald Trump almost bought the farm in Butler, Pennsylvania this afternoon.  Bumblebrain even went on the air to state that such an act was “unprecedented” and “totally unacceptable” in American history.  Au contraire.

Trump survived the event and was defiant with his fist in the air as he was rushed off the podium and into his waiting SUV.  Two rally visitors were not so lucky – one was killed in the ensuing exchange of fire between the assassin and the Secret Service, and another attendee was wounded and is in serious condition.  The assassin was brought down quickly by pre-positioned counter-sniper fire.

But to be clear about the historical precedents – violence is a long and well-established practice on the country’s political scene.  The number of successful assassinations over the centuries are many, and the number of thwarted attempts are countless.  This is not unusual in relatively free countries where people have access to firearms and other weapons, and is a price we pay for having the Second Amendment.  In tightly controlled autocracies where people are kept unarmed, assassinations still occur at a good clip, but it is the tyrant and his thugs who do the killing of undesirable political opponents, uncooperative journalists, and recalcitrant intellectuals.

Tonight most of America is thankful that President Trump escaped with his life.  Many of us have had trepidations over the last years about his open campaigning style which has continued to invite such attempts on his life, attempts that are nigh well impossible to guard against.  (In this incident the ‘secured boundary’ from beyond which the assassin fired was less than 200 yards from the podium.)  We will learn more about all this in the coming days.  But I venture to say that Trump’s chances for returning to the Oval Office increased significantly tonight.  Thank God he’s OK, and long may he wave.

Happy Independence Day - 2024

George Rebane

'Nuff said.

The 27jun24 Presidential Debate

George Rebane

Tonight on CNN we had a trainwreck unsuccessfully disguised as a presidential debate.  The Democrats will never allow Joe Biden to debate Donald Trump again.  And on the off chance that they will, Trump will refuse to participate on humanitarian grounds.  In the interval, Kamala Harris please call your office, there are some people there who want to talk to you. (more here)

America's Dystopia has Dawned

Dystopia has dawned – Trump convicted on all counts.  The greatest American travesty has happened in my lifetime.  I have seen my country slide from its heights of glory to the now confirmed beginning of its dark age from which recovery to its former self is unlikely.  With evil and corruption now firmly ensconced in our government, it is doubtful that my children will ever again witness America in its full promise as the shining city on a hill. (more here and here)

Lamestream Media’s New ‘Unprecedented’ Low

George Rebane

Catherine Herridge, the nationally acclaimed and respected investigative reporter formerly with Fox News, was fired by her current employer CBS News who also seized her confidential files (more here and here).  This move is unprecedented in the journalistic industry for all the obvious reasons.  The dismissal and seizure of materials is pursuant to her current investigation of the Hunter laptop scandal, and it has the Oval Office fingerprints all over it.  Formerly a respected national news organization, CBS has now become another lamestream corporatist hack with plummeting ratings.  But it does know on which side its bread is buttered.  In the interval, The Daily Mail reports (here) that CBS claims it has returned the stuff it seized upon her dismissal and denies firing her because of her current work.

As expected, the other lamestream outlets (e.g. MSNBC) remain silent on the matter.  Even outlets like Fox, for some mysterious reason is silent and forfeits its “…, and still unafraid” tagline.  One thing unreported but certain is that all heads-up journalists will remove their remaining confidential source files from their corporate workplaces.  The CBS action will now have a chilling effect not only on what topics and issues journalists will cover, but also on the willingness of important news sources to come forward with the assurance that their identities will be kept confidential by reporters they formerly trusted.  And all this promises to add another layer of implicit censorship on honest and impartial reporting to an industry already in disrepute.

Ruminations – 8dec23 (updated 18dec23)

George Rebane

Idiots on parade. ‘Court allows New York to ban guns in sensitive places’ (here)  None of these idiots understand that 1) mass shooters don’t care a crock about such prohibitions, 2) such prohibitions have never reduced the frequency of mass shootings, and 3) mass shooters take comfort in knowing where law abiding citizens must go unarmed.  Shouldn’t there be an IQ test or something similar for judges to pass before being allowed to sit on the bench?

New cohorts of ragheads are waiting in the wings for word from Iran to replace Hamas if Israel is ever successful in wiping out those low-life thugs.  We have to remember that it’s the entire Palestinian population that teaches its children to kill Jews and install terrorist organizations for their governance.  So what’s Plan B?

[10dec23 update]  The use of ‘some’.  Out of a cohort of a hundred people, a colleague reports that “some of them were wearing green sweaters.”  What does that communicate to you in terms of the range of the number of people wearing green sweaters – i.e. what is your max and min range for ‘some’?  After you determine your range, take a look at this link to see how the use of 'some' compares to your own sense of its meaning.

[17dec23 update]  A post-Singularity landscape is offered in this video that is sufficiently detailed to evoke interesting discussion.  The link was sent to me by a friend and RR reader who sometimes comments on these pages.  He asked for my thoughts, which I offered, and now I ask those interested for their assessment of the prognostications offered in the video (here).

[18dec23 update]  Donors From The Richest Zip Codes In America Are Throwing Their Support Behind Biden.  More proof that having money doesn’t make you smart, and that corporatism is now an indelible part of the state – companies that pay-to-play could not survive without the backing of the government gun to suppress their competition.

‘Why leftists align with Islam’ (addended 1nov23)

[Hat tip to a longtime reader who emailed me the article below.  The piece by Brandon Smith was originally published in Bob Livingston Alerts.  I post it in its entirety as received (with emphases in the original) because the views and perspectives expressed fly in tight formation with Rebane Doctrine as posted here in RR over the last years.  The piece is also timely due to the pro-Palestinian demonstration scheduled today at 4pm in Nevada City.  gjr]

Brandon Smith

In my recent article on the suspicious nature of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict I noted that, just as with Ukraine, the establishment is seeking to lure Americans into supporting one side or the other despite the fact that neither side is really worth fighting for. It is a classic destabilization and globalization strategy reminiscent of WWI. Whenever Americans begin to rally around their own culture, their own security and seek to solve their own problems, suddenly another foreign conflict arises which for some reason requires us to intervene.

For many readers, it might not seem like much, but after nearly a decade of woke infiltration and far-left efforts to deconstruct the U.S., there has been a backlash that is now threatening to suffocate the woke movement. BLM is on a steep decline, SJW-infested universities are suffering from dwindling enrollment and lack of legitimacy, woke Hollywood is burning and their profits are collapsing, the trans agenda is finally being obstructed and multiple states are blocking their efforts to target and groom children, and focus has been returning to the dangers of Democrat open-border policies with a majority of Americans now demanding something be done.

On Higher Expressions of American Values

George Rebane

On this annual time of celebrating the birth of our land of the free and home of the brave a friend sent me a thoughtful essay making the case that today this has become a time of the year for somber reflection.  The reasoning was sound as the author pointed out the schisms that today separate us.  On the opposite side of the argument we have the usual stories, primarily from the Left, that attempt to convince all of our American unity as long as we are unified in accepting their programs to make America into a second-class socialist state.

In past observances of July 4^th we have noted that the two sides seek markedly different futures for America – one side decrying the nation’s past and publicly denying its patriotic destination, while the other side spells it out and celebrates the historic road that, with some miles unpaved, we have traveled.  Yet, more than ever today, half the country does not know where we have been, what we have done, nor does it share a common vision of our future.

In preparation for the 2019 holiday, the anti-American Left decried President Trump’s celebration of our Independence Day in our capital with an extraordinary patriotic display of our military and fireworks to remember.  They told the country that this was “politicizing the Fourth”.  It’s hard to tell whether their ignorance or cynicism was showing its true colors.  The Fourth has ALWAYS been a political holiday ever since its political birth in 1776 Philadelphia.  Throughout our history every politician and political faction/party has made their presence known on the Fourth, and the more so for politicians who were then in office.

However, on 4 July 2019 the major broadcast networks refused to carry ‘Salute to America’ from the National Mall for the simple reason that, under the administration of President Trump, it was to celebrate and highlight our country’s role as the world’s white hat hegemon that has maintained an historic Pax Americana during which enormous progress has been made in eradicating disease, hunger, and lifting hundreds of millions from the grip of grinding poverty

Today we continue to see leftwing activists – e.g. Donn K. Harris in the 1jul23 Union (here) - at all levels argue that our national debate need not be harbinger to war.  In his counter to a 10jun23 piece by Ms Thea Hood (here) making the case that our Great Divide is preparing the country for war,  Mr Harris states that the ongoing national debate is just Americans continuing to express their differences, and such debates are never a prelude to war.  His arguments embrace all the hubris and surety of progressive thought, making clear that his notions of such as ‘fair debate’, ‘excess passion’, ‘hyperbole’, and ‘unwarranted sarcasm’ prevail.  I suppose that Mr Harris never considered the failure of debates that led to our Revolutionary War and the War Between the States (aka Civil War).

As long as we cannot identify a common ground on which to sort out our fundamental differences, those that take us to opposite forms of governance, we continue our debate in the darkening shadow of war.  In the meantime, let’s take every opportunity to make celebration of our nation’s birth remind us of what once was possible in this fair land, and may again become so.

For lack of a pinger …

George Rebane

The submersible Titan is now most certainly lost with five dead tourists aboard.  The search for Titan has been going on since contact with it was lost within two hours into the mission to visit the wreckage of the sunken Titanic resting at a depth of approximately 12,000 feet. (more here)

As an engineer with some experience in working with submersible systems ranging from nuclear submarines to remotely operated underwater vehicles, I’ve been struggling to figure out how such a tourist cum research vessel could have been designed to get lost in such a way that it could not be found with the latest underwater technology brought to bear.

All the submersible systems of any value on which I worked were always deployed, at a minimum, with a pinger to enable it to be quickly located should the need arise.  A pinger is an electrically powered transducer that emits a loud acoustic signal when activated, one that can be heard tens of miles away.  The simplest pinger can be turned on from inside the submersible by just pushing a button.  More sophisticated pingers, most certainly warranted for vehicles like the Titan, would entail programmable transponders which can listen to a coded interrogation from, say, a support vessel, and reply with a number of responses that report the condition and location of the submersible.  Such pingers can also be programmed to start broadcasting automatically when any one of a number of problems/contingencies is sensed.

In the scheme and cost of underwater operations pingers are cheap insurance.  Even when working with marine mammals on various recovery and attack systems, we always had a pinger on the target vehicle that we wished to recover or determine its location.  These were also standard components strapped on to various test missiles, mines, and other gear to be recovered later.

So it now boggles this technical brainbone to hear days of reports on the Titan recovery effort that lament the loss of the vehicle, designed by a first-rate engineering team, that supposedly passed its man-safe qualifications before submerging with a live crew.  The entire scenario is made even more amateurish by reports of potentially manmade pounding sounds being heard by the transducer field deployed by the rescuers, and still no one has offered the obvious observation about onboard pingers or the lack thereof.  If they didn’t think of it before hearing the possible sounds from Titan, then by now someone should have said, ‘Oh shit, we forgot the pingers!’ or at least reported the presence of dysfunctional onboard pingers when the pounding started.

Having now discovered a debris field potentially from Titan, some may offer that the vehicle suffered a massive and sudden decompression during its descent, thereby not allowing time for a pinger to be manually activated.  But we already covered how that contingency would have been overcome with a programmed pinger.  The sound of silence on the missing pingers deepens the mystery.

Welcome to the new ‘CNN Lite’

George Rebane

Fair, balanced, and scared shitless?

Unbeknownst to Tucker Carlson, last Friday he broadcast his last show, a  program that has become an iconic fixture in the homes of the largest fraction of America’s cable news audiences.  Readers of these pages have known for the last several years of my assessment that Fox News was losing its edge as the leading media voice against the anti-American Left that is daily championed by the Democratic Party through its boot-licking broadcast and online outlets.

Tonight Bret Baier’s flagship ‘Special Report’ took the Scared Shitless Trophy by not acknowledging the major news item of the day, let alone daring to even repeat the sparse announcement of the event that was released by Fox Corporation about the “parting of their ways.”

Everyone tonight is asking how did Fox come to that decision to fire Carlson.  It’s known that Rupert Murdoch is a tough old bastard who makes business decisions based on dollars and cents.  So people on other smaller and independent networks like Megyn Kelly on Newsmax are favoring reasons based on future profitability that requires moving FN toward the center of the political spectrum.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are standing by to see how Tucker, who can write his own ticket, will now land on his feet in a new sandbox more to his liking.  When he finally does land, you can expect a seismic shift of cable audiences.  The risky part is that he will then have to deliver even more of his gloves-off impactive commentary than in the past.  His new copy will have to shoulder not only the ongoing leftwing and government travesties, but also the added burden of real and represented slings and arrows that this transition made him suffer.

Scattershots – 17mar23 (updated 26mar23)

George Rebane

David Stockman writes a comprehensive and worthy critique of the current banking crisis and it portents regardless of the bullshit that the government is trying to bake into its ‘solution’ – well worth the read here.  (H/T to reader.)

[26mar23 update]  TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chewgave the lamest excuse to a congressional committee this week about how the company handles data collected from US citizens.  He told the outraged panel that “I have seen no evidence that the CCP has sought or received such US data.”  However, none of the congress critters nor the media mavens were smart enough to point out that such advanced evidence need not be forthcoming from the CCP.  They can get TikTok data within the hour by simply demanding its transmission, or else people will disappear. 

Scattershots – 5mar23 (updated 8mar23)

George Rebane

Here on Hind Tit Road our power went out on 27 March for the second time and has been out since.  I scheduled an immediate delivery with Amerigas when it first went out on 21 March and was promised delivery during the next two days – nothing.  Numerous calls to their call center allowed me to talk to a bunch of east Asians who had been taught carefully to lie to their customers – all the way up from the supervisors to their ‘Dispute Resolution Center’, and all of them were expert at bullshitting their customers.  The entire company appears to be fashioned on ignoring customer fulfillment needs, and responds only to internal convenience.  Finally, yesterday as heavy snow again began falling, a marginally competent Amerigas driver shows up with our propane delivery.  He goes on to make difficult the simple job of pulling up next to the tanks and filling them.  But now we have several more 24/7 days of running our faithful 24KW Generac.  Time order more tomorrow, and install another 500gal capacity when the snows stop.

Meanwhile, PG&E makes spam calls to their customers claiming to inform on latest estimates of power restoration while saying nothing of the sort – we have been totally in the dark, figuratively and literally, as to when a semblance of normalcy will return.  Rumor has it may be tomorrow.  This what passes for meritorious and competent service in today’s big corporation America.

[6mar23 update]  Central control of everything by teams of experts.  The Pacific Legal Foundation has released the documentary video ‘Trust Us’ that takes America through the history of bureaucratic control during the administrations Teddy Roosevelt all the way to the present day.  It makes clear that FDR did nothing to shorten the Great Depression – he lengthened it and made it more severe – and that LBJ’s Great Society spawned a scourge that is still with us and has worsened all of our lives.

There is nothing in this telling that will be understandable to today’s progressives, especially of the woke-bent.  These people are terminally ignorant willing believers, ready to hand their fates, fortunes, and futures to the administrative state run by faceless technicians claiming expertise of which they have none.  But then again, there’s the off chance that watching the video …

[8mar23 update]  Power finally came back on today at 1530.  It went out at 2350 on 23 February, and the Generac has been running 24/7 ever since, consuming 2-2.5gal/hr from a 500 gal tank that was topped with 186 gal refill in the interval.  Turns out the break came from one of our old oaks falling across the power line on our neighbor’s property on the other side of the fence that separates us – of course it took out a section of the fence.  Several other trees also came down in our forest.  Time to buck them and stack them by the splitter ready for another season or two of firewood.  It ain’t cheap.

Scattershots – 5feb23 (updated 12feb23)

George Rebane

Chinese spy balloon.  One of the more intriguing and scary test purposes for the balloon could easily have been to see how easy it would be to float EMP nuclear devices over the American mainland.  The published altitude range for effective EMP explosions is about 60K-80Kft.  Such considerations make it even more important to immediately shoot down these incursions as soon as they enter US air space into payload recoverable territory.  I suppose then if an EMP device or test package was found, it could be considered an act of war.  But in such a contingency things would immediately get very complicated with the introduction of a lot of other factors.  The news about today’s underwater recovery results are guaranteed to be lies and propaganda; we should not tell the Chicoms what we found or didn’t.

[7feb23 update]  Microsoft to integrate ChatGPT into Bing in today’s announcement (here).  ChatGPT is the ‘complete natural language’ response system that represents the latest quantum leap in advanced deep learning systems and has already demonstrated how the new generation of smart machines will converse with users on a rapidly expanding base of human knowledge.  My son-in-law who does advanced AI research at Microsoft Research tells me to “stay tuned, this could be history in the making.”

[12feb23 update]  From post-SOTUS media reports, Democrats finally admit that Republicans have a totally opposite direction they want to take the country, and that neither side believes in each other’s facts.  Given such terminal incongruity, what could then be the purpose of pursuing common goals for returning to or going forward to seek an unhappy state of America’s reunification.  Isn’t it past time to start negotiating a peaceful Great Divide?

Peeking Into Progressive Minds

George Rebane

As most RR readers know, the Rebanes have been in local leftwing crosshairs for some years now.  Jo Ann’s prominence in Republican circles - Nevada County Republican Central Committee, President of Nevada County Republican Women Federated, ... - and her long hitch on the Union’s editorial board have reserved for her a regular ration of opprobrium from our Left.  In today’s (29dec22) Union she garner’s the paper’s Hits & Misses column headline – ‘Miss to Rebane’s comment on immigrants’.  Thereunder reader Richard Howell writes, “To Mrs. Rebane’s comment (12/23) ‘… five million illegals and hundreds of thousands of known got-a-ways(sic) invade our country?’  Actually, 5+ million were intercepted trying to cross illegally into the U.S.  Perhaps next week she can write a ‘Hit’ comment for our border patrol under President Biden.”

Can’t rightly tell whether the man is terminally bamboozled by the lamestream’s misreporting our border crisis, and thinks that the 5+ million were denied entry, or that when illegals are intercepted by the border patrol on our side, they then have broken no laws and it’s OK for them to be turned loose and stay here.  And wanting a hit for Biden is beyond ludicrous – the president who has created the most porous border in the country’s history, and is personally responsible for tens of thousands of migrant and America’s drug overdose deaths that continue to mount daily.

Also right below was the following letter from a George Roberts to the editor labeled ‘Misguided immigrant comments’.

I just finished reading Joanne Rebaine’s (sic) hits and misses holiday rant (12/24) about the asylum seekers.  She must have special glasses to have spotted specific “sex traffickers, fentanyl dealers and terrorists.”  Sort of like Trump’s “rapists and murderers.”  I don’t have those special holiday glasses.  All I saw were some poor, cold, hungry, scared but hopeful human beings.  I think the Christian bible would call them the most vulnerable and precious of god’s children.  “Feliz Navidad” to Ms. Rebaine.(sic)

It is clear that Mr Roberts belongs to the country's tens of millions of news nebbishes who don’t have a clue about what’s really going on at our southern border and its follow-on impact across the entire land.  The lamestream media has so effectively papered over the ongoing tragedy that it’s coverage and communication to a large population, one with purportedly free speech rights, will be studied for years by anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists as one of history’s most effective campaigns of large scale propagandized fake news.  The Third Reich’s Göbbels and the entire Soviet ‘truth’ nomenklatura were not able to convince even a smidgen of their populations to their versions of ‘truth’ (Pravda).

The dimensions of Roberts’ ignorance are immeasurable.  He hasn’t an inkling that the overwhelming share of illegal aliens from all over the world come not as asylum seekers, but only economic opportunists (including criminal) who take advantage of Biden’s abandonment of America’s national security.

But dear reader, we must remember that the final and perhaps greatest tragedy and threat to our  republic is that the country is swarming with mind-mangled people like Richard Howell and George Roberts.

Ruminations – 8dec22 (updated 15dec22)

George Rebane

Trump in 2024?  Hard to see how the man can get nominated by the Repubs, no matter how hard he might try.  His latest mis-pronouncements on the Constitution and having his business found criminally guilty of fraud provides a tipping point for the lamestream to finally castigate him cause, and the Republicans to unite in his finally being too tainted to touch.  None of this says that Trump won’t run as a splinter party candidate.  For a prayer that he won’t, we should all light a candle.

Christmas consideration.  Jo Ann and I put up our porch Christmas lights yesterday.  Today we got this tongue-in-cheek from a fellow bourbon drinking neighbor. “I don’t mean to be a grinch however....to those of you who are placing Christmas lights/decorations in your yards, would you please avoid anything that has Red or Blue flashing lights together? Every time I come around the corner, I think it's the cops and I have a panic attack. I have to brake hard, toss my glass of Jack Daniel's out the window, fasten my seat belt, throw my phone on the floor, turn my radio down, and push the gun under the seat. All while trying to drive. It's just too much drama, even for Christmas. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.”

[15dec22 update]  Here is a short on-the-mark commentary of VDH on FTX's scumbag Sam Bankman-Fried and Elon Musk, the hero of Tesla, SpaceX, and now Twitter.

Ruminations – 29oct22 (update 4nov22)

George Rebane

Left fears the ‘start of political violence’ with the Pelosi assault.  As commenters from the 25oct22 Sandbox observe, why have such fears suddenly come up now, and none such during the summer of city riots and Justice Kavanaugh assaults?  Judging from his lodgings, the nutjob’s political orientation was leftwing.  And given Nancy’s horrible anti-American policies that hurt all of us, ‘Where’s Nancy?’ is politically an equal opportunity query. Is there anyone on the left with balls enough to explain the matter to the rest of us?  Don’t hold your breath.

How come cancer of or inside the pericardium, the sack that surrounds the heart, is so rare?  This question keeps recurring to me.  Maybe a reader knows the answer.

“What are election crimes?”  Well, it appears that the FBI has come up with an answer (here), the remaining mystery is how it intends to seek out and capture the ‘criminals’.

[1nov22 update]  Conspiracies exist.  They have always existed, and always will.  How then can we examine, debate, and expose harmful conspiracies in the public forum if our citizenry is brainwashed into believing that theorizing about the existence of any conspiracy or surreptitious activity is on its face an extremist, ignorant, and/or socially harmful endeavor?

[4nov22 update]  Bumblebrain is to meet with China’s Xi in a “summit” during the G20 conference this month. (more here)  What possible motivation would we (i.e. the administration and Democrats) have in allowing that level of incompetence to take part in a one-on-one meeting with perhaps the shrewdest tyrant on earth?  Is Biden going to wear ear buds so his handlers could at least attempt to mediate what comes out of his mouth?

The Durham Disaster (edited)

George Rebane

Igor Danchenko walked in a jury opinion that made special prosecutor John Durham’s ‘strike two’ as he concludes his three-year investigation into the Russia collusion hoax.  Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman was Durham’s first failure at the bar of justice.  The evidence against both sleazebags was overwhelming to most who understood the magnitude of the hoax from its start, now more than six years ago.

But for reasons that still boggle my mind, our legal system is now so convoluted and corrupt that main street reason and logic cannot even comprehend its processes and products.  The convoluted part has always been there since biblical times for all legal systems - i.e. the lawyers' full employment act.  It’s today’s corruption add-on that is most disturbing.

Durham’s last chance at bat is his vaunted report that is forthcoming.  Of course, there’s no guarantee that Biden’s law firm, aka the DoJ, will ever let it see the light of day.  In that event, I suppose that is why God invented leakers.  The much-awaited report is supposed to be a summa indictment of the now thoroughly corrupt FBI.  Can you imagine that they offered ex-Brit spy Christopher Steele one million dollars if he could come up with what would pass for evidence in corroborating the fictions Danchenko generated and passed off as another Clinton hireling involved in what was mischaracterized as opposition research.  When you weave the contents of the infamous ‘Steele dossier’ out of whole cloth, that is at best creative writing and not research. (more here) 

And, of course, Hillary continues on her perch on top of Mt Olympus, totally shielded by the lamestream and the federal justice system from any splatter as all this hits the fan.  No one knows when Durham will wrap up his disastrous exercise to count coup on any part of the neo-Marxist machine that is powering the country’s turn away from constitutional republicanism.  No one should bet a dime against the FBI coming out of this as a rehabilitated institution - aka smelling like a rose.  Meanwhile, the sheeple remain quietly bedded down, and the Republicans are doing their best cricket imitations.

[correction]  An astute reader caught my error in ascribing Danchenko, instead of Steele, as the intended recipient of FBI's desperate $1M payoff.  Many thanks.

Scattershots – 8sep22 (updated 14sep22)

George Rebane

Accuse them of your own sins.  That longstanding advice to our Left comes from both Lenin and Alinsky.  Today no one knows that the Democrats were the first election deniers, seeking to overturn the 2004 election in favor of John Kerry by not certifying Ohio’s electoral votes on the House floor on 6 January 2005.  Fortunately, the 31 Democrats’ votes were not enough to carry the day and Bush2 remained our president.  One of those election deniers was James Clyburn (D-SC) whose last-minute endorsement of Biden flipped his faltering campaign just before the election.  Imagine what would have happened had the corrupt FBI also not helped mangle the 2020 election by keeping Hunter’s laptop under the rug.  (more here)

Economists are becoming more dismal than ever.  (Don’t even call it ‘the dismal science’, there is nothing scientific about that field of pseudo-sorcery.  Be especially wary when an economist argues with equations.)  The latest example comes from the “leadership” of the American Economic Association that announced the mandates for attendees at their January 2023 New Orleans conference.  All must have been vaccinated with one additional booster shot, and wear a mask that at least as good as the N-95.  Nowhere else at the hotel venue, in the city, or overwhelmingly in most of the country, are people still subjected to such unscientific protocols.  It’s hard to think of another ‘discipline’ in which its demonstrated error-prone practitioners are still accepted and continue to be cited. (more here)

One of Jo Ann’s ‘Hits & Misses’ in today’s Union was censored.  She has been one of the longest-serving members of the paper’s editorial board, and under previous publishers has never had any of her submissions rejected, even the occasional ones critical of the publication.  She submitted the following Miss regarding the recent treatment of RL Crabb’s cartoons, which have recently been printed in hard-to-read, washed out, black and white while other cartoons continue in their full color formats - Miss to The Union which demoted favorite, local political cartoonist RL Crabb’s offerings to a faded black and white format.  That’s no way to treat such talent. Please bring back his witty, vibrant political cartoons in color.  The times they are a-changin’.

Addendum - Please allow me to expand the reasonable basis on which one may conclude that Bob Crabb’s work has been discriminated against.  In an email exchange The Union’s leadership claims that they have no control over which pages the printer decides to print in black & white, to them it is a random process.  Now allow for a moment that we consider the last two months or nine weeks during which The Union has published 45 op-ed cartoons.  Bob submits two per week, and the rest are selected from a potpourri of syndicated cartoonists.  That means that Bob submitted 18 cartoons, all of which appeared in faded black and white.  While I don’t recollect any b/w syndicated printings, but to be generous, assume that one in ten of the 27, or between two and three of the syndicated ones also appeared in black and white.

With this understanding in hand, we know that the probability was 0.1 that the first Crabb cartoon happened to be black and white.  The probability that his second one was similarly b/w is 0.1 x 0.1 = 0.01.  In the same manner, the third b/w cartoon appeared with probability 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1 = 0.001, or a chance of one in a thousand.  Continuing this calculation for all 18 of Bob’s cartoons yields the mind boggling miniscule probability of 10^(-18) = 0.000,000,000,000,000,001 or one billionth of a billionth that such a run of b/w cartoons would have occurred from the claimed random process – talk about highly improbable.  It is clear that any reasonable person with a smidgen of understanding of the above would reject the The Union’s characterization of the process along with the claim of no bias against RL Crabb’s work.

As a coda to the above argument, I want to remind readers that RR has always supported the rights of private sector enterprises to manage their own relationships and conduct their business affairs as they see fit – subject as always to a minimum set of regulations and laws that prevent parties from doing gratuitous harm to each other.  In this case The Union and RL Crabb are both private sector parties, and are free to negotiate any mutually acceptable working relationship, including one that contains discriminatory provisions.  At the same time others, including the customers and consumers of products and services provided by a business, are always free to criticize the business for any reason or no reason at all.  In sum, I oppose the kinds of discrimination against RL Crabb and Jo Ann Rebane described above, and I do it without impugning The Union’s right to so discriminate.  The discriminating reader(sic) will understand that an instance of discrimination and the right to discriminate are independent notions/issues.

[11sep22 update]  Seattle has cracked the homeless problem.  They plan to spend $66.5M to build a “homeless megaplex” that will house 500 homeless to be maintained by 400 staffers costing in excess of $22M/yr to keep open, and the indigents and crazies from killing themselves and each other. (more here)  Fantastic!  That comes to costing more than $50K/yr for getting one homeless off the streets.  So let’s apply the Seattle solution to the national problem consisting today of about 575,000 homeless.  That will cost the country’s taxpayers about $76B to kick off the program and over $25B/yr to keep the nation’s streets clean of derelicts, needles, and feces.  Not sure who all are going to pay for the Seattle project.  I suspect they’re going to pass the hat to the rest of America to solve their problem in the Puget Sound area.  And, of course, if this template is applied nationwide, then we all pay.  But think of the extra benefit from such a public ‘investment’; it will require the training and hiring of about 460,000 low skilled (pre-homeless?) workers to take care of the 575,000 homeless, an almost one-for-one ratio of government keeper per bum.  Bum?  That was a popular label in less enlightened years that described “a person who avoids work and sponges on others; loafer, idler, tramp, hobo, or derelict.”  Bring on the megaplexes, one in every neighborhood.

 [14sep22 update]  Nevada County’s sales tax will be increased by 0.5% if a majority of voters approve Measure V in November.  The anticipated $12M annual take will go into the county’s general fund to be spent as the supervisors determine.  However, the tax is being sold under the guise that “the money would go toward fire prevention and mitigation efforts.”  A local judge ruled that the voters would not be confused by this double labeling of the new tax.  According to the unfathomable legal logic used in our corrupt legal system, the judge stated that “… this court is satisfied that should Measure V be adopted, the public would have been adequately informed that it was adopting a general tax.” (more here)  Experience advises otherwise – all will focus on the wildfire aspect and few will discern that it is really a general tax increase which depends on the promise of politicians to be spent as advertised.  Would it be correctly represented to the voters as a specific use tax, then it would require a 2/3 super-majority approval to pass it.  IMHO the tax passage requirements should be reversed – 2/3 to approve a general fund tax, and simple majority to approve a specific purpose tax.  Better yet, 2/3 to approve all tax increases.  Thoughts?

National Conservatives are a relatively new branch of the GOP and have some nuanced yet important differences with those who view themselves more as ‘Reagan conservatives’.  I find some tenets of their ideology attractive, and easily accepted by the conservetarian in me.  Since we’ll be talking more about national conservatives and national conservatism, I recommend that interested readers get acquainted with this version of conservatism.  (more here)

Democrats’ Rubicon?

"As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault; we do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise."  Joe Biden

George Rebane

Last night President Biden delivered an historically horrendous milestone speech at our republic.  It was positioned by Democrats as an official federal government stance and interpretation of the political state of our union.  In it he revealed the utter fear the country’s Left has of our citizens who oppose what the Democrats have been doing during their control of the Executive and Legislative branches of our federal government.

Bumblebrain’s carefully fashioned speech tread in the exact footsteps of Lenin with his Bolsheviks, and Hitler with his Nazis after gaining a tenuous grip of their countries’ governments.  Both tyrants lashed out against their political opponents, characterizing them with all the sins they themselves had and were committing, and identifying factions of their citizens as homegrown enemies of the people bent on policies to enslave the land.  Last night I and people like me were identified as “semi-fascists” and “enemies of democracy” deserving of all the opprobrium that a properly constituted state can lavish on us in preparation for more draconian measures reserved for enemies of the state.

With 300 carefully chosen disciples and Orwellian visual backdrops in place, the speech was a clear ‘us and them’ declaration intended as a rallying cry for all who have been convinced by the lamestream that former president Trump is Satan incarnate, and the cadres of “MAGA Republicans” are a cult of his irredeemable disciples who should be forcefully constrained if their re-education does not work.  Most certainly none of them should henceforth be tolerated in public life or let alone public office.  (more here and here)

FBI raids Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Residence

George Rebane

Tonight the FBI raided former President Trump’s Florida residence unannounced.  This is an historical  and unprecedented action which has horrible portents for our republic.  I’ll have more to say about this, and so will RR readers who need a place to record their sentiments as this story develops over the next days.  If there is no smoking gun produced by the DoJ in this case, then we have definitely transitioned into a political thugocracy.

Ruminations – 6jul22 (updated 12jul22)

“Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.” David Horowitz re harassment of Justice Kavanaugh at DC restaurant.

George Rebane

Illinois Gov Pritzker typified the profound ignorance that most (all?) leftwing politicians have about guns, ‘gun violence’, and the effect of existing gun regulations.  In signing a law banning the sale and possession ‘ghost guns’ (AR-15 style untraceable componentized semi-automatic rifles) he made this audacious claim that was not rebutted by any of the media; to wit, “… even our revolutionaries did not use assault rifles, they used muskets.”  The idiot governor has no idea that muskets were the assault guns of the 18^th century.

[7jul22 update]  Over 550 colleges have hired for-profit education vendors for delivering their online programs under the schools’ names.  The students seldom know that their courses are delivered by employees of companies like 2U instead of the universities’ academics.  It’s an attractive fire-and-forget source of revenues for the schools that get 20% of online ‘bootcamp’ tuitions and 40% of semester course tuitions from the vendors.  Bootcamps go for upwards of $10K, and semester courses for more than $60K.  Modern school daze. (more here)

The Victims of Communism Museum in Washington opened last month.  It “unsparingly illuminates the most murderous ideology of modern times.”  The museum was funded by donors and the governments of Hungary, Poland, Estonia, and Latvia.  Communist regimes have killed well over 100 million of their own citizens, and today 1.5 billion people still live under communism.  Unfortunately, more countries, including our own, today seek to increase their governments’ role in “abolishing private property and controlling the means of production and distribution of goods and services.”  “Under the pretense of classless, egalitarian society, Communist regimes rely on force, use brutality, and repress speech, religion, assembly, and all rights and freedoms.”  (more here)

[8jul22 update]  The Democrats are desperately trying to divert the country’s attention from the ongoing foreign policy mess, the open border crisis, exploding crime rates, soaring inflation, shelves empty of critical goods, historically high gasoline prices, ongoing Covid muddle, fetid cities filled with vagrant encampments, dysfunctional public schools, pending recession, and announced policies guaranteed make each of these social catastrophes worse.  The only diversions they have left now is to blanket the country with lies about J6, SCOTUS, and “the best economy in our history”.

Abortion is a latent right, even though it isn’t in the Constitution, so argue all pro-abortionists and progressives.  A favorite supportive citation is Madison’s inclusion of the 9^th Amendment in which he wanted to make sure that unenumerated rights would henceforth not be excluded.  The big problem this argument launched is who decides what the next unenumerated right is, and how many of these are there waiting to be ‘discovered’ and codified by the politicians who happen to then have control the government gun.  We now have a culture in which new rights are immaculately conceived daily out of thin air, rights that inevitably reduce freedoms for the rest of us.

[9jul22 update]  The dollar will be destroyed to pay off or at least allow the Treasury to keep borrowing to service the $23T+ national debt held by the public ($30T+ total).  This has been covered many times over the years in these pages (e.g. here and here).  Now the Mises Institute is also putting out papers that warn us of this (here).  Destruction will occur through sky-high inflation which allows the debt to be serviced in ever cheaper nominal dollars.  As I see it, the real news here is that we Americans are simply too stupid to be concerned, let alone do anything about it at the ballot box.  Witness the comment stream below.

Poetry more relevant today than ever to illuminate the upcoming mid-term election.

[11jul22 update]  Repeal the 2^nd Amendment is the latest brainchild of communist filmmaker Michael Moore (here), who proposes adoption of a 28^th Amendment that would explicitly do that, and make civilian ownership and use of firearms a joke that would please only those Americans born with serfdom in their veins, aka Democrat voters.

[12jul22 update]  So how to interpret the Trump/Biden polls for 2024.  Depending on the poll and its qnaire, it’s hard to really tell what the legitimate backing is for either man’s 2024 candidacy. (more here)  I estimate that half of the right and leftwingers are contras – the rightwingers wanting Biden to run, and the leftwingers wanting Trump to run on the theory that either man would be the loser in any feasible match-up.  Me?  I definitely want Biden to run again, and Trump to leave the field and lose his 'the 2020 election was stolen', no matter the merits of the argument.  So now you know how people like me would respond to pollsters, but that doesn’t help knowing that the, say, pro-Trump respondents would also include a hefty share of the man’s political devotees.

‘Bumblebrain bows out before 2022 election’ predicts Athena Thorne of PJ Media while crowing that she is the first to make this prediction (here).  Sorry to burst the bubble of this Jenny-come-lately, but RR readers had already had this discussion more than a year ago and even entered into a monied bet in July 2021 on exactly when we would get a new president (here)

Happy Independence Day 2022!

George Rebane

Think of all the things that have happened in and to our beloved Republic during the last twelve months since we last celebrated our country’s birthday.  In this interval the country has again grown more apart than it has been since our 19^th century’s ante-bellum days.  The two sides seek markedly different futures for America – one side decrying the nation’s past and publicly denying their desired destination, while the other side spells it out and celebrates the historic road that, with some miles unpaved, we have traveled.  But even with our life-threatening wounds, we all should celebrate that we still live in a land which allows both sides access to sufficient public podia from which to make their case for America’s best future.  (A couple of years ago this was our 4^th of July outlook.)

 

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.