Rebane's Ruminations

Pissing Match Continues

George Rebane

Today marked another malignant milestone in the US/Ukraine relationship.  President Trump aborted his much-publicized meeting with President Zelensky, and told him to come back when he’s ready to make peace in the three-year Russo-Ukraine war.  The intended objective of the meeting was for both presidents to sign an agreement that would serve as the framework for a more detailed treaty between US and Ukraine spelling out how we would mine their rare earth minerals and share the profits therefrom.

The trouble started when Trump said again that he has a good relationship with Putin and believes that the thug would honor any subsequent peace agreement to end the war.  Trump also needlessly pointed out that Zelensky has no hand to play in these negotiations and will observe the proceedings like a potted plant.  In his turn Zelensky had the temerity to once more caution Trump that Putin has violated every agreement he has signed, many with Ukraine.

The bottom line that should be clear after all these decades in dealing with communists, Marxists, and dictators that none of them have or have ever had a ‘good relationship’ with ANYONE.  They have all ended with their naïve counterparties getting screwed in the end, which usually has arrived sooner than later.  For Trump to trumpet his ‘good relationship’ with Vladimir illustrates our president’s naivete in going into these negotiations with Russia, and gives rise to peals of laughter inside the Kremlin’s walls.  And Zelensky got shown the door today for just bringing up this cautionary piece of history that awkwardly shone a light on Trump’s kindergarten view of his good relations with Putin, Xi, and the ugly fat kid.

If all this geo-political stumbling turns out to be a brilliant opening round to a resolution that stops the fighting, gets us the minerals, and secures the peace (with the US threatening to use its club on anyone who messes with ongoing American investments and mine operations), then I will have egg on my face and gladly admit to my own naivete about how Trump executes the art of the deal.

In the interval, Rebane Doctrine calls for us to engineer a regime change in the Kremlin, preferably with Vladimir’s defenestration by one of his oligarchs with whom he has a ‘good relationship’.  Short of that we should light a candle in the National Cathedral for Trump’s hoped for epiphany.

President Elon Musk?!

George Rebane

The Democratic leadership has discovered the evils of political appointees who share a politician’s ideology and worldview.  Since they have no recollection of their own politicians ever having done such a dastardly thing, they consider Trump’s appointment of Musk as his DOGE czar a true “constitutional crisis”.  In response their leaders are gathering ragtags of followers on every street corner on which they can erect a mic and attract a camera with the call for all ignorant Americans to assemble in the streets with torches and pitchforks to … RESIST!

Their own lamestream media lackeys have dutifully fallen in line with their own loud echoes of ‘constitutional crisis’.  No one seems to have picked up on how ludicrous is this charge.  Even the conservative cable news guys have trouble connecting the dots on the howls of the likes of Mad Maxine and Sychophant Schumer trying to get a rise out of the country against Trump, who now enjoys record  approval ratings.  It seems that only a few late-night conservative comics point out the utter nonsense that the Democrats are purveying.

The obvious counter to silence the Dems on this charge that somehow Musk is taking over the presidency is to point out that politicians ALWAYS appoint people with whose views they are compatible to key positions on the staffs and in their administrations.  How the hell did Trump pick all those cabinet members?  Was it dumb luck that they all wound up claiming to fly in tight formation with the boss?  No one howled when the unelected Rubio, Hegseth, Bessent, … got Trump’s nod to sit in his cabinet and wield some serious unelected power.  But all of them, at all times, are careful to point out that they are executing the President’s policies and vision.  (In fact, Musk is designated and works as a Special Government Employee – more here.)

And so it is with his other appointments who don’t require congressional confirmation.  Musk is one of them, and he too is always careful to point out that he and his DOGE team are in the business of identifying government waste, fraud, mismanagement, redundancy, and incompetence – apparently all the things that Democrats promote and benefit from in the operation of our deep administrative state.  Musk tells everyone his job is to identify the problem, its scope, priority, supportive evidence, and possible fix; and then present that to the President.  It is the President who then determines what should be done next, not Musk.

The Democrats, whose actions are always an amalgam of stupidity and evil, continue to lie to their constituents, telling them that it is actually Musk who’s in charge and making the executable decisions.  And, of course, one of the qualifications for an American to be such a  constituent is to always believe the bilge that issues from their Schumers, Pelosis, Clintons, Bookers, Schiffs, … .

My disappointment with the media lies with the conservative side, especially Fox News.  They have yet to detail the hypocrisy and lies when reporting on latest progressive outrage from some street corner or talking heads on MSNBC or CNN or … .  They simply leave the argument hanging instead of clarifying the matter for their audience.

I want to end with the photo showing Trump sitting calmly at his Resolute Desk while Musk stands nearby with his 4-year-old son explaining some recent DOGE initiative to the press assembled in the Oval Office.  The Dems claim this to be a picture showing historical presidential weakness, and confirming that it is Musk who is really in charge.  To the rest of us it is a display of comfortable and confident power.  The President sitting at his desk quite sanguine about letting one of his lieutenants have a moment in the sun while his position in the administration’s leadership hierarchy is confirmed by the top gun, known by the world to always be in charge of all that he surveys – he need not flaunt anything in the manner of weaker leaders.

Thoughts on the air tragedies

George Rebane

Two air tragedies happened in our land just a couple of days apart.  Yesterday’s medevac Learjet carrying six people came down within a minute after take-off from a Philadelphia airport.  The fuel-ladened jet plummeted at a 45 degree angle into a neighborhood crowded with residences and commercial outlets.  So far the expert talking heads assign the cause to equipment failure, most likely one or both engines’ reverse thrusters unexpectedly self-deployed as the aircraft was accelerating at full thrust, not yet having sufficient airspeed and altitude for any possible corrective action by the pilot.

As a complex system, an aircraft operates at the marginal stability boundaries of its performance envelope just after take-off and on final approach before landing.  Almost all aircraft, from the heavies to light private airplanes, adopt a three-degree down angle during the last part of their final approach.  Depending on the geography and other restrictions surrounding the destination airport, this descent path may start as far as ten miles, or even further, from touchdown.  The American Airlines flight into Reagan International was on 'short final' and clearly on such a descent trajectory when it was struck by the Army Blackhawk helicopter.

The unresolved factor about the impact of the two aircraft was their altitude.  We are told that the helicopter was restricted to stay below 200ft AGL (above ground level) in that area which included the final approach part of Reagan’s traffic pattern into runway 33 for which the airliner was cleared to land, and under supposedly tight air traffic control.  The best available data so far indicates the AA flight was at about 300ft AGL when struck.  Conclusion – the Blackhawk was not maintaining altitude discipline in a congested flight traffic area.

My take on the whole thing about the collision is completely different.  I strongly believe that when the normal flight path on final to a runway requires the aircraft to descend through at least 1,000ft AGL, then the entire airspace below the aircraft to ground level ‘belongs’ to the landing aircraft, and EVERYONE should be required to stay clear of it including to at least 200 yards on either side of the runway centerline extended.  It is not unusual for aircraft to drift off the three-degree descent trajectory on final and quickly apply corrective control.  (Have experienced this myself to know that it’s not a problem when the air around you is yours.)  Such diversions may be due to momentary pilot inattention, engine/control surface problems, and most dangerously the undetected downdraft.  Over the years several accidents have happened on final due to each of these causes.  Most scary is the undetected downdraft which can slam the landing aircraft into the ground.  This has happened enough times over the years to strongly recommend/require that the above-described rule be adopted nationwide.  And many more landings have come so close to being slammed into the ground that such fortunate aircraft recovered and landed with the proverbial weeds in their undercarriage.

In congested airspace, as in the pattern region of Reagan International, allowing aircraft to legally fly within a hundred feet vertical separation on final, in my mind is criminal.  The landing aircraft on final and within seconds of touchdown should always know that the air from ground up and to either side belongs to him and is free of all other air traffic.

Elizabeth G. Fernandez, PhD

George Rebane

Our granddaughter Elizabeth received her PhD last Friday after seven years of research at the Department of Oncology of UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine.  She is one of the school’s research stars having developed a ground-breaking method for treating glioblastoma patients.  Glioblastoma is the most virulent and deadly form of brain cancer that took the life of Elizabeth’s cousin and our granddaughter Ellen at the age of fourteen after her clinically historic fight for survival.  Elizabeth dedicated her work to Ellen.

Elizabeth presented a summary of her research and defense of her dissertation to the gathered in one of the medical school’s amphitheaters, attended by her doctoral committee, research colleagues, medical students, and, of course, her family.  The hour-long presentation was followed by a Q&A session and then a reception at the school, with a big dinner later in the evening.  Her accolades delivered by the director of her research lab and the head of the school’s oncology department were impressive.  She now has a choice on whether to stay in academe, preferred by UCLA, or go into the commercial sector as an oncology researcher.

For those interested, I’ll describe a bit of her research.  The forbidding title of her dissertation and published work is ‘Integrating molecular and functional profiling to identify therapeutic vulnerabilities in glioblastoma’.  The easiest way to understand what Elizabeth has developed is a methodology for screening glioblastoma patients as to their receptivity to what promises to be a new standard of care procedure involving a unique cocktail of bio-chemicals (think of chemo) that will either destroy the glioblastoma cells or shrink the tumor into remission.  (The current standard of care for glioblastoma is virtually a death sentence within eighteen months from diagnosis.)

Elizabeth’s treatment destroys glioblastoma cells either by utilizing the body’s apoptosis process or invading the cell itself and destroying a couple of its components critical for its continuing survival.  Apoptosis is a type of programmed cell death that naturally goes on in our bodies, killing old or diseased cells, to make room for new cells and thereby maintain the body’s state of homeostasis (think balance).  Elizabeth’s research developed a method of intervention that initiates apoptosis against glioblastoma cells with a high likelihood of inducing the immune system to kill them.

The added and critical attribute of the method is that it is computable.  This means that the cost of its application to patients will be reduced as such therapeutic software becomes part of the dreaded disease’s standard of care.  Those of you with an entrepreneurial bent can foresee the manifest benefits of all this.

Congratulations to Elizabeth for the years of hard work and pulling it off!

Scattershots – 19jan25

George Rebane

Democrats’ demonstrators are paid shills.  There is no end to the evil that this political party practices and foists on the country.  There is actually a booming business for outfits like Crowds on Demand who hire low-lifes to masquerade as concerned citizens expressing their scripted First Amendment rights in the streets.  And the Democrats are their prime politically oriented market.  This is just one more confirmation that the party is historically and organically evil.  It all began in the ante-bellum years when the Democrats promoted and fought for slavery, then they became the sponsors of corrupt unions, then they promoted eugenics and the KKK, then they latched on to socialism cum communism, now they seek to control the country through ever bigger government, higher taxes, and stifling regulations.  The individual means nothing to them, only his class membership matters.  (more here)

Trump wants Greenland for enhancing national security and controlling America’s access to important minerals and ‘rare earths’.  This isn’t the first time America has had its eye on a closer relationship with the frozen Arctic island that historically belongs to Denmark.  Since WW2 we have had military bases there and continue to maintain a radar early warning base.  To me it makes a lot of sense for Greenland to become at least an American protectorate.  Given a properly negotiated agreement, I think the Danes and the Greenlanders would enjoy such a relationship for all the obvious security and economic reasons.  Puzzling over this I have a proposal for a treaty that would be a consistent addition to Rebane Doctrine.  The outcome of the negotiations would have America assume military and foreign policy control of Greenland, in addition to the economic control of its natural resources.  America would also commit to insuring the security of Denmark in perpetuity against all foreign aggression by a status of forces agreement that allows us to maintain air and naval bases on the Jutland peninsula.  This would provide a triple economic boon to both Greenland and Denmark.  The presence of American bases bolsters the host country’s economy, here the host country/territory would no longer have to spend monies on its military, only on in-country police and coast guard, and the hosts would share in the economic gains from the plethora of new mines on Greenland.  Local governments, control, and cultures would not be affected by the American presence.  What’s not to like?

The resurrection of yesteryear’s stars is now possible and will be demonstrated this year through Bollywood’s release of a feature length film that is completely AI generated by Intelliflicks Studios in India. I started describing this future to friends over fifty years ago when I first got into AI in defense work.  Now it has arrived as you can see from the movie’s trailer (here and here).  The making of movies will never be the same.  As the software and hardware becomes cheaper, we will all be able to compose stories, write the screenplays, and produce realistic films.  Selling them will still be a problem with a flooded marketplace.  I wonder who owns the intellectual property for John Wayne, Fred Astaire, Marilyn Monroe, … ?

On to the inauguration - hallelujah!

LA Inferno – Criminal Incompetence on Parade?

George Rebane

The Los Angeles area continues to burn after entire neighborhoods of the city are already heaps of ash and ruin.  What news has been concurrently emerging with videos of burning houses and hills, interviews with residents who lost everything, and endless ‘news conferences’ with obviously incompetent officials who have no useful information and are desperately trying to cover their collective asses.

Jo Ann and I are multi-decade veterans of SoCal wildfires with our valuables and heirlooms packed and ready to go every late summer and fall.  The last 25 years before moving to Nevada County we lived on Saddle Peak Rd in the Santa Monica Mountains on a high ridgeline in a house we built.  The latest information we have right now is that ‘our house’ is gone after dodging dozens of fires and surviving the big Malibu fire of 1993.  I have documented that experience here, here, and especially here.

So what is the takeaway so far from the SoCal fires.  Well, nothing much has changed for the better with the passing of the decades and the incompetently comprehensive governance exercised by the Democratic Party over these years.  But the last two days confirms again that things have gotten much worse as far as the recognition of the nature of the wildfire problem and preparations to prevent and fight such large scale conflagrations.

Some major screwups -

• Reduction of fire and police budgets in favor of succoring illegal aliens, criminals, insane environmentalists in favor of implementing woke DEI policies.
• Dumping about 75% of Sierra Nevada snow melt water into the Pacific Ocean in order to save the smelt – a very much unendangered species no one cares about.
• Eliminating water storage reservoirs by destroying dams and not constructing sufficient water tanks in the mountains to provide gravity fed water for fire fighting.
• Environmentalists opposing building additional reservoirs to collect water during wet years to have for the inevitable 7 to 10 year intervals between statewide droughts.
• Insurance companies abandoning California because they aren’t allowed to raise premiums commensurate with the cost of rebuilding in a state with stifling building regulations (again refer to the insane environmentalists and incompetent politicos).
• Allowing ignorant NIMBYs to oppose/restrict prescribed burns and fuel reduction programs.

Witness the results of elections that have stacked local governments and Sacramento with progressive politicians, and you explain away the above list of devastating deficits. (more here) The general mentality of California’s electorate is corroborated when we consider how the media continues to cover and report on such disasters.  Examples abound.

The most important thing residents, both evacuated and still in place, want to know is where is the fire, and which way is it moving.  Almost all reporters with mic-in-hand in the field do not know where they are and what is happening beyond their visible surroundings.  All they do is repeat the obvious and ask how some devastated resident feels about having lost his home.  Air coverage has provided no more information – one flaming and smoky mountain looks pretty mush like another one.  Although to credit where a little bit of it is due, in Fox’s current coverage they have shown road names superimposed on the large area aerial videos, but only very briefly before switching back to yet another close-up of a burning house.

The last thing they care to look at for hour after hour is close-up videos of flame engulfed houses, and still images of huge flame masses on unknown hillsides.  And the last thing they want to hear are news conferences by phalanxes of politicians, bureaucrats, and officials standing in turn to mouth the same platitudes of how terrible the disaster is, how much they are praying for everyone, how everyone is co-operating with everyone else, and how much the state and federal governments are providing us all that we need while there are way too few firefighters on the line with no water to come out of their hoses.

It is abundantly clear that our political leaders and local responding agencies have been totally incompetent in preparing and/or raising the alarm to current the obvious shortcomings listed above.  Perhaps the inevitable follow-on investigations will even find people who are criminally at fault and make them publicly accountable.

Drones over New Jersey

George Rebane

Kinda reminds you of the classic ‘Moon over Miami’, except hold the romantic part.  The ongoing sightings, now numbering in the hundreds, remain unexplained by our government.  That this has been going on for weeks is unheard of in our nation’s history, yet it is very revealing as to the new attitude that our rulers have for us.  These aircraft are not to be dismissed as something insignificant that we’ll get around to puzzling out some day soon.  All of them are of a size that can carry cameras and munitions – some of the larger ones can carry payloads weighing over 100 lbs, enough for a sizeable nuclear device in addition to some very destructive high explosive warheads.

What is the reason that we have not sent up armed gunships and/or other aircraft that can close with and follow these UAVs to determine their nature, source, and where they will eventually land.  The government mouthpieces dutifully lie to us, a much practiced skill, about not knowing anything about them as they promise to keep “investigating”.  Who among us believes that crap as these things continue to crisscross some of the most critical and densely used airspace in the country?

Why has not a single one of them been shot down yet?  That fact alone makes the whole affair smell to high heaven.  But the larger takeaway from all this is clear – it is the nature of governments in the large to be incompetent, ignorant, and demonstrably evil in the way they treat their citizens.  To their power centers and legions of bureaucrats we are no more than potted plants to be handled and/or dismissed in any way they please.  As always, the solution to this perennial problem of governance is to keep governments small and minimize the amount of money they can collect and spend.  Hopefully the brothers DOGE can push the peanut in that direction.

Scattershots – 21nov24

George Rebane

Granddaughter Elizabeth has finished her PhD in molecular biology, and after many years of cancer research is now Dr Elizabeth Fernandez and has her dissertation published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications – ‘Integrated molecular and functional characterization of the intrinsic apoptotic machinery identifies therapeutic vulnerabilities in glioma’ (whew!) – for which she was the lead of a formidable team of researchers.  She dedicated her doctoral research toward a cure for glioblastoma multiform, the deadliest brain cancer of which our granddaughter and her cousin Ellen died at the age of 14.  Congratulations Elizabeth!

Cal Currier, the 16-year-old son of a dear friend, sailed solo across the Atlantic from Massachusetts to Portugal in a 30ft boat.  He was amply feted for this record setting accomplishment, especially since earlier this year he first learned to sail for this life-changing adventure that took both courage and a lot technical skills about seamanship and all the different mechanical and electronics equipments on board.  His father spent the weekend with us and casually brought this up when we were updating each other on family doings.  Cal is one of four brothers, all outstanding young men in their own right. (more here)

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy describe how their much publicized DOGE program will work in the 21nov24 WSJ – ‘The DOGE Plan to Reform Government’.  This well written commentary succinctly and clearly summarizes the new Dept of Government Efficiency and is well worth the read to cut through all the noise that has surrounded the announcement of this major Trump administration goal’s means and methods. (more here)

Trump Wins!

George Rebane

Donald J. Trump

45th and 47th President of the United States of America

Yea verily, and Hallelujah!

Scattershots – 27sep24 (updated 29sep24)

George Rebane

The Air Force, and presumably the other services, are actively reducing the number of white males going into their respective officer corps.  All of it is part and parcel of implementing the in-service DEI programs in both training and operations that have been so destructive to morale and the resulting enlistment rates that have left our military woefully understaffed and short of qualified  personnel.  Much of this has come to light through documents obtained from the Air Force by the Daily Caller News Foundation. (more here)  These outline how the AF has “prioritized diversity and inclusion programs” since 2022 in its college ROTC programs seeking to minimize the number of white males who may wish to make military a career.  This is yet another of the multitude of anti-American policies that the evil Democratic Party has foisted upon our country.  (Full disclosure: I went through UCLA’s Army ROTC program, was honored as a Distinguished Military Graduate, and was commissioned as a 2/Lt upon graduation.)

‘The Shadow of a Shadow’ (here) by James Howard Kunstler is a short and on-the-mark assessment of the chaotic roiling of the Democratic Party as it attempts to govern and campaign in this election year.  From it we read, “In fact, the entire Democratic Party and its Deep State intel blob partners have melted down into a desperate mob of political criminals frantic to evade accounting for their acts. So then, setting the world on fire is all they have left, a fitting act of revenge for a faction thwarted in its mad drive to merely wreck the United States for the sake of “social justice” and “equity.” … The Democrats of 2024 made exactly the same mistake that their predecessors, the Jacobins, made in France back in 1794: they just couldn’t tell when they’d gone too far with their insults against the public interest and common decency. Their insults derived from the age-old human impulse to demolish society due to life being unfair, later codified in Marxian doctrine, and then made into a play-book by Saul Alinsky (with annotations by Antonio Gramsci, Richard Cloward, and Frances Fox Piven).” (H/T to reader)

[update] Rightwinger and pro-MAGA Laura Loomer is the invited speaker at the fund-raiser dinner for the Nevada County Republican Central Committee this weekend.  We have a peek into our Marxist future should the Democrats ever consolidate their power over our land.  This is in the form of four vituperative letters in the 27sep24 Union from local TDS-drenched woke progressives who loudly protest Ms Loomer’s visit to Nevada County and demand that the Republicans withdraw her invitation. (here, here, here, and here) Imagine that it has come this far where members of the Democratic Party have the temerity to think they can publicly vet the attendance at events and gatherings of another political party.  And these autocrat pinheads see nothing wrong with issuing such demands.  (One such pinhead even commented about Loomer’s visit on these pages.)  For balance, I have to commend Democrat Lynn Ely for her ‘Censorship is a problem nationally and locally’ column in the same edition of the paper.  She should re-examine her choice of political affiliations.

[29sep24 update]  Today’s overall candidate preference polls are pretty much meaningless when understood in light of the analysis presented here on switch probabilities.

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?