Rebane's Ruminations

Dark Days Diary – 18jan21 (updated 20jan21)

“Leftists in this country claim that their violence is speech and our speech is violence.” – Daniel Horowitz

George Rebane

The Democrats and their corporatist allies are prepared to remove the First Amendment, launch a surge of prosecutions for what we have always considered free speech, and then have their lamestream assert that the First Amendment is still in force while jailing those who claim otherwise.  This will be but the first step on the path to abrogate our Constitution in its entirety.  When this comes to pass, anyone and everyone who resists this phase of fundamentally transforming America will be labeled a seditious insurrectionist, and treated accordingly.

It appears now that the federal government deems everyone suspect of insurrection who attended the Washington pro-Trump rally.  Those who actually entered the Capitol, the people’s house, stand accused of insurrection.  The vandals who led the mob into the building while destroying and stealing property, and violating private spaces, deserve to be treated like the criminals they are.  However, there is no evidence that those few hundred(?) who also walked through then opened doors had any intention other than telling Congress that they were opposed to the ongoing certification of electoral votes which they firmly believed were tallied from an election abundantly laced with irregularities and fraud, the evidence of which was summarily rejected by the courts without examining the underlying substance.

Now the nationwide manhunt is on for all those who walked in and milled around the Capitol on 6 January 2021.  True to Orwellian, Stalinist, and Stasi standards, fellow citizens are encouraged to report to the FBI anyone they know or think was there (DC, Mall, Capitol?) on that fateful day.  History shows what kind of countries such massive snitch programs have created.  And there is only one political party that wants to create a government with encompassing tentacles to effectively pursue such programs of persecution. (more here)

Federal elections integrity is promoted by congressional Republicans with their introduction of their Save Democracy Act that “aims to close loopholes that prevent secure and fair general elections by strengthening voter registration verifications, narrowing rules for when and how mail-in ballots can be accepted, and mandating observers from each party is allowed to be present during polling and vote counting.”  Pew Research reports that only 5% of Trump voters and 64% of Biden voters thought the election was properly administered.  That’s a heap of folks who had less favorable opinions of how everything went down last November, and more than enough reason to do something positive to restore faith in the integrity of our elections.  Now let's see how far the Democrats permit this and other such measures to proceed.  (more here)

C19 vaccines continue to sit on shelves as most states have trouble getting the doses distributed to their inoculation sites.  Given the months of advance warning everyone received about when the vaccines would be available, most states sat on their butts instead of putting in place the needed procedures to get their residents vaccinated in a timely manner.  As we continue to note here, if there is any kind of problem in the land, look first to government as the source or cause of it, and you won’t have to look much further.  It turns out again that Texas leads and California lags – the correlation of performance with which party is in charge is striking, wonder why?  “Texas, with a population of some 29 million, has distributed just over 2 million doses and administered just under 1.2 million, as of Jan. 15, the CDC said. California, with 39.5 million people, has distributed over 3.5 million doses and administered just under 1.1 million.” (more here)

[19jan21 update]  Since it became clear that Trump’s appeals failed to overturn Biden win, the share of Americans who think the country is headed in the wrong direction jumped markedly.  Today, according to the recent USA Today/Suffolk University poll (here), two out of three Americans agree with that assessment.  In December 49% answered ‘wrong track’, which assessment increased to 65% this month, with 84% Republicans and 52% Democrats concurring.  Of course, both sides feel that their right tracks head in the opposite directions.  Yet another measure of the size of the gulf that separates us.

‘Will Covid-19 shake up capitalism?’ is a popular question today that is covered by James Macintosh of the London WSJ (here).  He cites the current move leftward toward socialism that is making many people rethink capitalism, especially during the mish-mash of dubious responses that governments have initiated to fight the pandemic.  As examples of crises that have resulted in major changes to political economics, Macintosh points to the Great Depression and FDR’s misguided responses that still echo through the decades.  Then there was WW2’s aftermath which created the British welfare state that almost bankrupted the country.  The runaway inflation of the 1970s led to some beneficial changes with the advent of Thatcherism and Reaganomics.  Now there returns the great itch to undo Trump’s gains and once more pauper the country.  The argument by the leftists is that ‘look, under Trump’s capitalism 17 million people lost their jobs, and 10 million are still out of work’.  None of them are smart enough to figure out that it was the governments’ lockdown responses to C19 that caused the hit to the economy, not capitalism (see below).

‘It Took a Strong America to Survive 2020’ (here) is Walter Russell Mead’s more sober and accurate look at the political and economic roads we traveled last year.  Contrary to the Left’s histrionics, our political system has NOT been threatened and our economy survived the pandemic remarkably well, and is now recovering at a rapid rate.  However, this is not the narrative that is now being fashioned into the next Big Lie by the lamestream media which will paint Biden as the nation’s savior who arrived just in the nick o’ time.  If you thought the media had reached its low point during the last four years, you ain’t seen nothing yet – seatbelts please.

[20jan21 update]

Unclear on Partisan Politics

George Rebane

The above cartoon by our tried and true progressive cartoonist Bob Crabb was filched from the pages of The Union’s 16jan21 edition.  It provides an opportune lesson that illustrates our polarization and the sorry condition of jurisdictions that practice monopoly politics.  (I do like the Burma-Shave signs.)

Collectivists like Bob sincerely want to “find a cure for” partisan politics.  They totally miss that partisanship is the only political order that provides the necessary and critical feedback loops which yield balanced governance.  Without effective and ongoing partisanship we get runaway one-party rule of the type that in recent years has put a heap of hurt on a number of states and urban jurisdictions led, of course, by California.

While our Democrats, along with other international globalists, work ardently for an overarching, all-powerful world government, almost all other people, who are able to give the problem some thought, oppose such a sure path to a stable and lasting tyranny.  As conservetarian, I would never want a political monopoly of free-market capitalism in my country to dominate so as to eliminate effective feedback from collectivist ideologues.

Progressives, hewing to the teachings of the immortal Marx, have no concept of the function of such balance in the ongoing back-and-forth of governance, and even less knowledge of how to achieve and maintain that needed tension.  For them, all goodness and light comes from but a single fount of truth enabled by one-party rule.  No broadly beneficial and productive social order has ever been achieved without robust feedbacks that check government excesses which easily arise from human weaknesses.

Government, by its very nature has always lacked these critical feedback mechanisms, and as a result is the most inefficient way to organize people to get almost anything done right.  (Most recent example, the states’ inability to efficiently distribute and administer C19 vaccines, again led by California.)  Nevertheless, every society needs individuals to contribute some time, treasure, and talent to collective enterprises, such as national security and shared infrastructures, that would be inefficient undertakings for private enterprise.

But here the modus operandi should always be guided by the minimalist principle of having the smallest possible government, but no smaller.  And to achieve that is where the collectivists and capitalists must meet on a sufficiently par basis of partisan politics to arrive at a workable social order, one that provides hope and equal opportunity for all to pursue their dreams, rewards merit and industry, does not abandon those unable, and all of it no matter how inevitably and unequally we are suited for the pursuit.

As history illuminates and we demonstrate daily, all other mono-partisan approaches to organize society lead toward tyranny or anarchy.

Scattershots – 15jan21 (16jan21)

George Rebane

The Capitol assault reports are getting curiouser and curiouser.  Instead of quickly blaming Trump supporters for the mob action while labeling them ‘seditious insurrectionists’, and then quickly calling the case closed, we keep having reports coming out documenting feds who now admit that they knew in advance that Trump haters were planning to enter the Capitol and visit violence in the midst of Trump supporters who would follow them in.  Here is one such report that has yet to be censored.  Readers should contribute their own pros/cons to such reports.

Also, the entire timing and preparations for the assault viz Trump’s speech is turning into a mendacious muddle.  Law enforcement agencies report that the assault began significantly before Trump’s alleged call to march to the Capitol.  And also that stores of assault equipments like crowbars, etc had already been stored in convenient locations for the perpetrators of violent entry into the building.  We need to be reminded again of the House article that gave rise to the half-day snap impeachment.  From my perch it sure looks like a historical political hit job has just gone down with pre-orchestrated rallying cries coming from both sides of the aisle.  What the hell is going on?  Is this Deep State on parade, while the rest of us are threatened with re-education camps?

California’s C19 vaccine distribution system is, predictably, one of the worst in the land.  Last night FN reported on the relative amounts of received vaccines distributed by the states.  California was next to the lowest with only 26% of its vaccines having been administered.  With each passing day our political monopoly in Sacramento finds more ways to screw up and make life worse for every taxpayer within its borders.  All of this is invisible to our local leftwing lackies.

Big business is making a sharp left turn, as we have noted in these pages.  This is now being picked up (here) by national columnists like WSJ’s Kim Strassel who notes, “Corporate America took a big step this week, moving from captives of wokeness to active accomplices. The legal and political consequences may prove profound.”  One political consequence that will fit the Dem socialists to a tee is that already corporatist big businesses will become protected extensions of the state, taking their operations marching orders from relevant (and possible new) cabinet departments, bureaus, and agencies.  This is the established route from Hitler through Xi Jinping to America’s radical left now going through birthing pains as it spreads its tentacles over the land.  None dare call it capitalism.

Last night on FN’s Bret Baier program we noticed something very shocking to us.  The program’s balanced panel of commenters has recently ensconced Harold Ford Jr (former congress critter from Tennessee) as its reasonable liberal voice.  The panelists currently join the program online from their homes.  Ford broadcasts from his elegant living room from which the man accidentally and momentarily revealed his deeply held values.  He pulled back his video camera so that it showed the room’s center-piece fireplace, and over the mantle on the wall, centered over the fireplace hung a large (Andy Warhol) portrait painting of a smiling Mao Zedong.  The prominent place in a former congressman’s home afforded this killer of over 100,000,000 of his own people made our jaws go slack.  This camera shot was quickly corrected as it became his turn to speak again.  Nuff said.

Grand opening coming soon.

And then there's more suppressed news 'Media Mostly Silent As BLM Activists Clash With Capitol Police'.

[16jan21 update]  Today The Union saw fit to publish my censored 6jan21 KVMR commentary.  (more here)

The Left's cry of "Insurrection!!" continues as they have filled Washington with about two divisions of National Guard troops to counter the predicted assaults by armed citizens.  There will be no such assaults, any more than the mob in the Capitol was the launch of an insurrection.  As I've pointed out, those clowns didn't anticipate any success in getting into the building which was made possible by the mysterious melting away of the Capitol police.  A planned insurrection has a few attendant requirements to make such a label credible.  The most important would be to have a replacement government-in-waiting ready to assume the critical functions that communicates success to the tuned-in masses.  The people milling in the halls of the Capitol couldn't even organize a Sunday school picnic if their lives depended on it.

‘What Just Happened?’

[Union columnist Terry McLaughlin asks that pointed question (here) on the 14jan21 edition’s op-ed page.  She goes on to provide and excellent background summary that lets the reader answer her question.  It turns out that we Americans have been given an education over the past year to accept a much more expressive way of protesting everything from public policies to individuals and institutions – in short, we have been carefully taught that riot and mayhem is now de rigueur for expressing collective dissatisfaction.  Ms McLaughlin’s piece provides us with the syllabus for that course.  It is posted below with her permission.  gjr]

Terry McLaughlin

There is no excuse for the violence that took place on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol. What we witnessed is morally reprehensible and I am ashamed and horrified that it occurred.

Americans deserve to know who was responsible, and those persons who perpetrated vandalism or violence should be brought to justice.

It cannot be denied that both the political far right and far left are home to their own share of Antifa-like anarchists, and the chaos at the Capitol has refuted any perception that the left owns a monopoly on widespread political violence. While we can never excuse or defend this behavior, we can make an honest effort to identify the environment in which it happened.

These events resulted from a multitude of causes: concerns and distrust in the integrity of our elections, pent up frustrations of citizens stripped of their livelihoods and freedoms during the pandemic, and yes, the rhetoric of the president of the United States.

But not the least of these causes is the justification, defense, and even apathy of the media and many of our elected political leaders regarding the violence committed across America throughout 2020, including attacks on federal courthouses, burning of police stations, and the establishment of “autonomous zones” in Portland and Seattle. The message was loud and clear: If you are dissatisfied with a political or social issue, violence is an acceptable answer.

Dark Days Diary – 13jan21 (updated 15jan21)

George Rebane

‘America was born of dissent. It shall perish when dissent is forbidden.’  I used this anonymous aphorism as a tagline for a recent post, and upon reflection, it rings more true with each passing day.  Today loud voices are heard mostly from the Left, but also some from the Right, exhorting us to set our beliefs aside and be compliantly silent.  The underlying principle that is being hoisted like a banner in the public square is ‘politics has no place for violence.’

That is also the title of a piece by Rep Steve Scalise (R-LA) in the 13jan21 WSJ (here).  Unfortunately, the congressman could not be more wrong, both historically and existentially.  Going back to the days of historian Thucydides of ancient Greece, violence has always been one of the extremes and frequently practiced bookends of politics.  The other extreme of political behavior is silent compliance, the rigidly enforced favorite of tyrants.  To get a deeper understanding of this, I recommend to you Graham Allison’s Destined for War: Can America and China escape Thucydides’s Trap (2017).  (Kissinger’s plaudit of the book included, “Thucydides’ Trap identifies the cardinal challenge to world order.”)

Allison and other historians have long made it clear that almost every military action, including partisan uprisings, were spawned for political reasons.  Nevertheless, most of us believe that a social order succumbing to either of these extremes represents a failure of practicing prudent politics.  An oft-accepted definition of politics is ‘the art of the possible’, which is still valid with its noted bookends withstanding.

In this light, I maintain that current arguments, exhortations, and platitudes from our national leaders do nothing to calm the angry sea that today defines social order.  None of these politicians can point to a common ground where we may meet to forge a mutually acceptable future.  What each offers in place of such a political meeting is simply another version of ‘my way or the highway’.  And the diagnosis is appropriate to those of us minor ideologues making our voices heard on the grassroots hustings.  For me as a conservetarian, the Left offers little to nothing that would give rise to a world in which I would want my progeny to live.  And collectivists feel equally strong about their ideals.

Political peace has been achieved in the past mostly by both (all) sides stumbling into a de facto compromise that is to no one’s complete liking, and one that motivates everyone to continue working for their political goals with plausible hope in their hearts.  And that is the important point.  The discovered compromise must be such that neither side loses hope of still being able to push the policy peanuts in their desired direction.  When that hope vanishes or is quashed, then one of the political bookends is all that remains, and the one chosen depends on the people’s means, culture, and their historical narrative.

Today President Trump was impeached again by the House, this time being accused of “encouraging a mob to storm Congress as part of an effort to overturn Joe Biden’s election win."  For millions of us across the land this most certainly was the most scurrilous political act we have witnessed during our lifetime.  There is no need to rehash all the ethical, constitutional, and simply principled criteria that were violated in performing probably the most vindictive act by Congress in its long history.  There was no opportunity, nor desire by the Democrats, to permit a reasoned defense by the opposition; it was simply a hastily assembled and railroaded political lynching.  What it underlined for all who pay attention is that this abortion on the floor of the House did nothing but cement in place an implacable division between polarized Americans that continues to grow in its scope and girth.

And we learned more about the stout political underpinnings of the ten so-called Republicans who decided to pile on to this judicial charade.  All the while more Republicans quake in their boots as the Dems and their lamestream continue to broadcast accusations of ‘acts of sedition’ and ‘insurrection’, none of which was intended or took place.  What did take place, as the record shows, is the President’s exhortation for his supporters to go to the Capitol and protest the scheduled proceedings to certify the electoral votes.  There is nothing illegal about a call for such action by citizens who do feel aggrieved that the November election was fraught with irregularities and fraud.  But today our liberties retreated another step as last Wednesday’s speech by the president was deemed both illegal and impeachable.  Besides cementing our breach, this second impeachment has now put a serious rip into the fabric of what once were the normative affairs of governance.

[15jan21 update] 'Assault on the Capitol Has Let Loose the Electronic Octopus' argues Victor Davis Hanson in a convincing piece apropos to these dark days.  And reader posts a link with a DoJ official declaring there is "no direct evidence" of plot to kill, kidnap lawmakers in Capitol assault (here).

Control of Corporatist Oligopolies

“America was born of dissent. It shall perish when dissent is forbidden.”  Anon.

George Rebane

Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, … arguably reside somewhere between monopoly and oligopoly in the capitalist spectrum.  It is very hard for a corporation that controls a dominating segment of a major market to become such a beast in a truly competitive environment, and then to maintain its standing without active help from the government gun in suppressing would-be competitors.  Such relationships between putatively private sector companies and the government is called corporatism.  And such participating corporatists are a malevolent disease of capitalism made possible by one of its systemic vulnerabilities.  The creation of corporatism is only possible with the abetting aid of a corrupt government, one that seeks large amounts of private funding to extend its political power over a citizenry having tendencies for non-compliance with the establishment’s diktats.

According to Rebane Doctrine and the basic tenets of conservetarianism, such corporatist oligopolies invite regulation to prevent them from becoming weaponized by one controlling political faction in a democracy.  (For more on this important happening, see LikeWar:The Weaponization of Social Media)  The threshold criterion here is the corporatist’s domination of a broadly embedded and established public function or service for which there exist no viable alternative providers in the marketplace.  When a corporatist achieves that status (call it a critical public good corporation, CPGC), then it’s time to put in place non-partisan regulations to either defang or dismember it.

At this point the lightly-read liberal will leap into this discussion with charges of ‘hypocrisy’ or ‘double standards’.  As I’ve recounted countless times, this response is borne of either purposive political snark, or more likely from the simplified worldview that most leftwingers are burdened with as they seek to make sense of complex societies – it must be either ‘this’ or ‘that’ with no perception of nuance or a middle-ground.

In the present case of gratuitous imposition of censorship and/or cutting off public communications completely, the corporatists are outing themselves as 1) the strong partisans they are, and 2) taking advantage of the current political environment to also quash competing companies, and all of it done as virtue signaling to support the public good.  The government’s sponsors of such corporatism and corporatists will, of course, support and sustain such private sector initiatives as the actions of good and caring corporate citizens.

The solution that would prohibit such preemptive partisan actions is to have in place a law that 1) prescribes criteria to identify such critical oligops or monopolists as CPGCs, and 2) restricts how CPGCs may conduct the critical public services and/or functions they provide.  In short, the profuse and protected profits they derive, when so designated, come at a price of regulatory controls that are supervised by an appropriate department – say, Commerce – of the federal government.  None of this violates the strong conservetarian principle of a minimalist government being among the social desiderata for a democratic republic that creates and distributes wealth within a capitalist context.

Under such a regulatory order it would be easy for a corporation to sufficiently divest or segment its operations to escape its CPGC designation.  The main objective of such an approach is to prevent what is happening today with private sector providers making political decisions as to who may or not continue using the communication services that the same corporatists have conduced people to accept, integrate, and make critical parts of their daily lives.

As a parting consideration, think about the disruption to your life were your phone company to gratuitously cut your ability to make and receive telephone calls.  That situation existed for decades when AT&T was the overwhelmingly dominant telephone service provider, and for that reason it was a strongly regulated oligopoly until advancing technology made possible a competitive environment that could best be served by a break up of Ma Bell into Baby Bells, and the entry of new service providers.  We all have benefitted from this paradigm, and now need to expand it into the world of CPGCs on the internet.

Dark Days Diary – 9jan21 (updated 12jan21)

No days unalert; … alertness when most necessary, is always missing, and not to give the matter a thought is to be slated for destruction.  Gracian #264

George Rebane

Over the years to this day we have seen that our leftwing neighbors don’t have much truck with concepts like nuance or shades of gray.  Their more simple worldview resides comfortably in the corners of the extreme – for them the needle is always pegged: yes/no, black/white, racist/woke, 0/1, socialist/capitalist, … .  (Bang-bang policy in control theory)  This embrace of simplicity goes back to the Bolshevik revolution and continued all throughout the 5-year civil war that followed.

During that terrible strife, communist partisans would stop trains of ‘White Russians’ fleeing the already consolidated Red areas.  They would have the passengers dismount to line up next to the tracks and show their palms.  Those whose hands were found to be soft and/or uncalloused were executed on the spot as bourgeoisie enemies of the people.  There was no middle road to be examined, nor any propensity to do so.  Terror was the name of the game, and to make their omelet, some necessary eggs had to be cracked.

From my perch on 6 January 2021

George Rebane

A socialist imposes unequal opportunity, promises equal outcomes, and delivers uniform misery.  A capitalist imposes equal opportunity, enables individual initiative, and delivers unequal outcomes that provide the best possible prosperity to all.

Today President Trump’s talk sunk the walk of the thousands of conservative DC protesters.  This dreadful character defect of his has done incalculable damage to his work while in office, to his legacy after he leaves office, and his political future by how he transfers power to his successor.

The message to Congress and the American electorate on this day should be evidence centric and NOT election outcome centric.  Assembling thousands on the Mall and Capitol grounds to shout and wave signs reading ‘Biden stole the election’ and ‘Trump won by a landslide’ helps get the real message and purpose of the demonstration to no one.  And it amply feeds the waiting propaganda factories of the lamestream.  There was not a single sign I saw that demanded the examination and adjudication of the mountains of evidence that substantiate election irregularities and voter fraud.  That should have been the obvious and clearly displayed reason for the anger and frustration of those assembled, and their demands for redress of grievances.

Instead, on the day Congress was to actually certify the Electoral College vote count, the peaceful protest became a mob that stormed the Capitol to display their most base sentiments as they destroyed property and disgraced legislative chambers and legislators’ offices by posing for the cameras like a bunch of ignorant rock apes which indeed they were.  (I would still like to see the authorities confirm the conservative bona fides of the idiots who rampaged through the Capitol.)

The subsequent videos and tweets by the President did nothing to quiet the emotions of his loyal supporters.  If anything, these communicated a back-handed imprimatur to continue running amok.  IMHO, today’s presidential performance tremendously increased the likelihood that the Republicans will splinter, and that DJT’s hopes for a White House reprise are dashed.  It should not surprise anyone to see VP Mike Pence emerge from this imbroglio as the courageous Horatius at the bridge to lead what is left of the Republicans.  The comparative lassitude of the McCarthys, Cruzes, Cottons, and Jordans gives strong evidence that their best days are behind them.  And it will be interesting to see if the former majority leader McConnell will be allowed his last hurrah to marshal the Senate’s de facto minority in a rear guard action against the socialist onslaught of Pelosi and Schumer.

For those of us who continue to believe that society will best be served by a governance that promotes individual enterprise, open markets, capitalism, equal opportunity, and freedom, it definitely has not been a good day.

An Appeal to Restore Election Integrity (updated 16jan21)

George Rebane

[This was to be the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary censored on 6 January 2021.]

[Update.  I was informed this afternoon that my “commentary got cut tonight by station management.”  Management is now “establishing criteria for commentaries”, and there were elements in my piece with which the station took issue.  I am saddened that the pall of leftwing censorship across the land has now reached our little corner of the Sierra foothills.  Ratcheting autocracy on parade.  gjr]

[16jan21 update.  I am happy to report that The Union saw fit to publish this commentary in its 16jan21 hardcopy and online editions (here).  Update continued below.  gjr]

Today our country is again unhappy with how our national election was carried out.  Here we are not talking about voters unhappy that their candidate did not win, which happens with about half the voters in every election.  Instead, we concern ourselves with the very large number of voters on both sides of the contest who are dissatisfied with various parts of the voting process, and believe with all the cited and documented irregularities of the November election, that something serious is amiss with how we have come to elect our political leaders in the 21^st century.

Evidence - Why not look at the evidence? (updated 7jan21)

George Rebane

Why not indeed?  The existential evidence abounds of election fraud and irregularities having happened.  It exists just for the looking in forms of

1. witnessed and sworn affidavits of polling place and vote counting wrongdoings;
2. witnessed and video records of after-hours arrivals of thousands of unmailed ballots in unmarked vehicles;
3. mass arrivals of ballots supporting Biden that fail simple statistical tests that attest to their numerical authenticity;
4. demonstrated ease with which voting machine counts could be manipulated;
5. recorded denials of access to vote processing observers;
6. obvious gross numerical discrepancies between registered voters and votes cast;

Uncounted complaints of these infractions and irregularities have been filed across the land, and all have been rejected by our already dubious judicial system, not for lack of evidence, but on procedural grounds.  And these procedural grounds smell to high heaven that include the scurrilous use of ‘lack of standing’ of the plaintiff.  The legal notion of standing has no basis in constitutional law, and was only concocted in the 1920s to reduce an overly burdened case load on the courts as a means of avoiding/reducing adjudications.

What no court has done is to examine the evidence in open court and find any of it lacking in form, substance, and/or credibility.  In fact, the opposite findings have been issued to the effect that the unexamined evidence, even if verified, would not have materially changed the election’s outcome.  That is both false and a lie on the face of the vote counts presented in the reams of existing evidence.  And whether or not the evidence would change the election’s outcome is immaterial as a point of law.  What is important is to examine and conclude on the verity of the irregularities in the November election, and then prepare feasible remedies so that these will not be repeated in future elections.

All of this should be done in order to restore bipartisan confidence in our elections, especially the last one that saw copious amounts of dubious votes arrive in the dark of night to be surreptitiously counted in favor of the Democratic candidate.  So now on 6 January 2021, Congress will meet to go through what has been a pro forma certification of the electoral college votes.  However, this time dozens of Republican congress critters will rise to object to the electoral college counts.

Given the behavior of the courts, many Republican MOCs maintain with Sen Josh Hawley (R-MO) that “At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections, but Congress has so far failed to act.”  Today’s count is fluid, but upwards of 140 MOCs now say they are willing to join in the rejection of electoral college votes, and demand that the collected evidence of fraud see the light of day.

Meanwhile leftwing propaganda organs like the LA Times maintain that “there is no evidence of voter fraud and the integrity of the election has been repeatedly affirmed at the state level, in the courts and in Washington.”  Joining in accepting the current election results, no matter how marred, are members of the Republican congressional leadership led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But given the highly polarized state of the nation and the countless controversies surrounding this election, the simple question remains, ‘Why not look at the evidence?’

Here and here are two recent, extensively referenced reports by John Lott and Peter Navarro that present in detail the case to be made for the existence, scope, and authenticity of the current body of election fraud evidence.  How would you judge an appeals process that dismisses even considering the examination of evidence only on the basis of the plaintiffs not having said the appropriate ‘Mother may I?’ at some point in bringing it to the attention of the courts?

[7jan21 update] More light on the matter from the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society is presented in 'Set In Stone? - A Historical, Constitutional, and Legal examination of Electoral College Deadlines and their implications for the 2020 Presidential Election'  Download Electoral_College_Deadlines_White_Paper.

Scattershots – 27dec20 (updated 30dec20)

Suspension of judgment is always the part of wisdom in a listener, and the remission of faith to authority the part of wisdom in a speaker.  Gracian #154

George Rebane

Identity politics is a totalitarian enterprise, as called out by Paul Gigot, op-ed editor-in-chief of the WSJ.  About Gigot's defense of Joseph Epstein’s commentary on Jill Biden’s doctorate – ‘The Biden Team Strikes Back’ – Roger Kimball of The New Criterion writes,

The governing strategy of identity politics is not to encourage free expression but to shutter it. In essence, it is a totalitarian enterprise, deploying the shibboleths of race, gender, and radical egalitarianism to enforce a stultifying conformity. It is heartening to see Gigot affirming that, at one of our nation’s most important newspapers, “these pages aren’t going to stop publishing provocative essays merely because they offend the new administration or the political censors in the media and academe.” If, as we suspect, the preview we just witnessed was a sort of sighting shot, it suggests that Gigot is going to have his hands full dealing with ever more intolerant efforts to “turn the page” and enforce ghastly new modes of “healing” and “unity.”  (and more here)

[29dec20 update] Speaking of ‘doctors in the house’ (here), we are now not surprised to hear that the pandemic is causing most leading universities to ‘pause’ their 2021 admissions to PhD programs.  “More than 140 humanities and social sciences programs at top schools have suspended admitting students for fall 2021.”  And also we’re not surprised to hear that STEM PhD programs are not affected by these cutbacks.  During disasters, society in the large acts pretty much as humans do in the small when it comes to deciding who gets to stay in the lifeboat – utility rules. (more here)

Trust government ‘science’ when spouted by agenda-driven politicians?  The short answer is ‘No’, the long answer is NFW!  One of our astute readers draws our attention to “Joe Biden's decision to hold over Dr. Anthony Fauci in his administration as his chief medical advisor as a symbol of his commitment to ‘trust science’ is coming under new scrutiny following Fauci's recent admission that he altered public scientific estimates based on opinion polls.” (more here)  The most vulnerable double dummies are those who believe science speaks with one infallible voice.  We witness their blather nightly on the lamestream.  And the Democrats (including their local lackies) still claim that theirs is the ‘party of science’.  Please note the above entry on PhDs when recalling their braggadocio about all the Left’s college graduates.

Biden’s education programs promise to be on steroids in their announced path to destroy the last vestiges of the nation’s public education.  From here on all curricula in union-dominated government schools will be focused through the lens of critical race theory.  It is now in the open that progressives have no desire to produce students with market-valued skill sets and the ability to think critically,  The overt K-12 objective from here on is to produce a generation of dumb and woke kids, indoctrinated to believe that meritocracy, personal responsibility, diligence, achievement, industry, intelligence, … are all characteristic traits of white supremacists and racists, and therefore to be eschewed in the coming socially just world of newly-minted, anti-capitalist socialism.

Anyone notice how silent the EU has been about China’s global policy of stealing commercially and militarily critical IP from any and all?  The most plausible answer to that silence has been that EU countries neither develop nor protect much homegrown IP, but license it from IP producers like the US.  Countries like Germany and the Netherlands incorporate licensed IP into their higher-quality manufactured products, and have been more than willing to meet aggressive thieves like China in the marketplace.  In the past they haven’t cared much about China and others stealing IP as long as they can market their stuff to the pilferers.  Now things are changing as China’s ability to manufacture quality products grows along with its domestic consumption for same.  The EU is coming around to America’s assessment of China (thank you President Trump), and they are becoming wary of China’s global commercial and political ambitions being carried out on a very tilted playing field.  (more here)

[30dec20 update]  ‘California may be losing its business mojo’ was the 29dec20 Union’s lead editorial.  In there Dan Walters of CalMatters presents a thoughtful summary of what has happened to our formerly golden state.  The exodus is now at such a fever pitch that only the most dedicated progressives in epiphany-free Sacramento are still blind to it (of course all their local lackeys have no hope of comprehending this ongoing disaster).  Nevertheless, they outnumber all the more saner ones.  In recent weeks tech giants like Tesla, HP, and Oracle have headed for greener pastures (Texas of course).  Why stay in a state encrusting with regulation- and tax-numbing socialism when your post-Covid workers can work from anywhere?  There’s less benefit in Silicon Valley than meets the eye.

71% of America’s military age youth cannot qualify to serve.  That’s the latest from the DoD.  The reasons for this horrible statistic is that since the military became an all-volunteer enterprise, their standards were raised.  The major disqualifiers for our young people are intellect, drugs, and bad health.  Modern warfare uses a lot of high-tech combat systems that require more than a two-digit IQ to operate, with druggies and overweight people not measuring up. 

Christmas - 2020

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.  Matthew 1:23

George Rebane

Last year I wrote - Another tumultuous year is ending with celebrations for peace and joy.  The Rebanes count themselves among the diminishing number of American Christians who still wish their family and friends, and RR readers of all persuasions a season of remembrance and reflection on what has been bestowed on this third planet, circling a modest star, making its way with billions of similar stars in a galaxy that populates this universe with uncounted trillions of other such galaxies.  Christmas still reminds many of us that we are among the blessed in our seeming insignificance.

2020 has given new meaning to ‘tumultuous year’ which now ends with a foreboding not seen during my lifetime.  So, more sincerely than ever, Jo Ann and I wish everyone a season of remembrance and reflection of what we once were and how we may regain the blessed parts of our country's past.

‘The Sovietization of California’

George Rebane

We have covered this dreadful progress to autocracy for years from a number of perspectives.  In my lifetime California has descended from its Olympian perch as the planet’s jeweled jurisdiction, to one that today competes with second and third world countries in governance, infrastructure maintenance, husbanding its natural resources, extracting tribute from its citizens, and daily ratcheting down more of their freedoms.

Longtime California resident and national columnist Dennis Prager in Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal gives a summation (here) of how the Left has tattered the once golden state.  Prager describes California as “a state where corruption reigns (one of the leading Democrats of the last half-century told me years ago that politicians in California are window dressing; the real power in California is wielded by unions) and where, for nine months, normal life has been shut down, schools have been closed, and small businesses.”

As a celebrated national leader in everything from technology to ideology, the state has worked hard to fundamentally transform America into its own declining state of collectivism.  As one of its leading bamboozles, California has convinced the nation’s light thinkers that the Left follows the science, when demonstrably “the left’s claim to ‘follow the science’ is a lie. The left does not follow science; it follows scientists it agrees with and dismisses all other scientists as ‘anti-science’.”  And then doubles down with the bigger lie that science speaks unambiguously with a single voice, which for some mystical reason only those of the Left are able to hear and understand.

Given our state’s lead, “there is no question that America is becoming, if it hasn’t already become, two countries: one that values liberty, from small businesses being allowed to operate to people being allowed to say what they believe, and one that has contempt for liberty, from eating in restaurants to free speech.”  And more differences between us are legion.  De facto, the Great Divide is already here, and, as observed in these pages, awaits only its de juris resolution.

Contending and Correcting Elections

"Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord."  Isaiah 1:18

George Rebane

There’s an ‘open letter to the President’ going around the email circuit beseeching him to invoke the Insurrection Act, activate National Guard and the military to seize ballots and vote computers across the nation, publish all the secret evidence of alleged voting fraud, and essentially proceed toward a redo of the national election under newly prescribed and strict supervision.  The letter was written by two lawyers – Stewart Rhodes and Kellye SoRelle.

Regardless of what we think about the legitimacy of the November election, at this stage of the game I don’t think that carrying out the open letter’s prescriptions is a good idea.  If tried, it will not occur peacefully, and will most certainly give rise to massive civil disturbances that could lead to a civil war.  The problem is that the US has a 250-year history of elections – admittedly some more contended than others – that have in the end been accepted by our citizens with relatively minimal turbulence (e.g. ‘Battle of Athens’).  Because of this, our country has not put in place mechanisms to peacefully contend and correct both statewide and national elections.

Now I believe there’s an 80% chance that nationwide incidents of election fraud, ranging from petty to massive, occurred.  And I also believe that there’s a 50% chance that such fraud, as supported by presented and rejected evidence, would overturn significant election results (e.g. the presidency) if allowed its day in court and found to be true.  But today, we are where we are, and there remain only a few low probability opportunities to change the overwhelmingly accepted election outcomes using in-place processes and procedures.  The enduring problem we shoulder going forward is that, given the polls, there is a significant fraction of Americans who no longer have faith in the manner our elections are conducted (I am one of them.)  So, what to do?

My recommendation is that we join in a bipartisan effort to put in place a comprehensive and transparent set of processes and procedures under which future national (and perhaps also statewide) elections may be contended and corrected in an orderly and peaceful manner.  This would be launched and supervised by a congressional commission with a staffed working group of people with appropriate legal and information systems expertise to devise, develop, and test the resulting federal System for Contending and Correcting Elections (SCCE).

The bipartisan SCCE would prescribe the required legal underpinnings for its field operations, and recommend to Congress any additional supporting legislation needed.  Its working group would publish the how/when/who functions that define such things as SCCE election monitoring mechanisms, election scheduling, means of voting, vetting of franchised voters, accepting and processing reported irregularities, ballot chains of custody, isolating voting machines, standards of identifying and adjudicating fraud, procedures for holding re-elections, and so on.

In the latter case when a re-election is warranted, the SCCE's procedures for the uninterrupted continuance of government in the interval would already be laid out, specifying which elected and appointed officials remain with what duties and powers.  It is not yet clear whether all this can be accomplished through legislation, or will the Constitution need to be amended to handle such interregnum matters.

In any case, this approach of commissioning a SCCE during the relative political quietude between elections would serve our country much better than today’s calls for tanks in the intersections and attack helicopters flying overhead.  And in the worst case, the attempt to launch such an initiative would be very revealing of which organs of the Deep State, which private sector institutions, which corporatists, and which political parties rise to oppose such approaches to restore public confidence in the elections which sustain our democratic republic.

These are my preliminary thoughts on the matter, and I'm sure readers have their own ideas to offer on what, if any, preparations need be made to avoid the now existential travails we continue to suffer from the elections of 2016 and 2020.

The fat lady has sung, off key (Addended and updated)

George Rebane

[This is the addended, edited, and updated transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 16 December 2020.]

Last Monday the Electoral College elected Joe Biden to be the 46^th president of the United States.  The election was heavily contested for two distinct reasons, but to no avail.  Let me be clear from the start, I am a conservetarian and therefore not happy with the election’s outcome – also for two distinct reasons to which we’ll get directly.

This election is unique in our country’s history for a few significant reasons.  One of them being in the number of people who decided to get off their duffs and vote.  Another, and perhaps more important, is that this election was fraught with an enormous number of irregularities - procedural, legal, and criminally fraudulent.  Each of these categories contained enough incidents, not only to give credibility as to their witnessed occurrences, but also of the types that should have led to annulment or at least a redo of the cited precincts’ work to correctly qualify and count the ballots.  An alarming number of states violated their own laws, constitutions, and the US Constitution in the manner they conducted their elections prior to and in the aftermath of November 3^rd.  These violations are a matter of record, and they overwhelmingly favored one candidate over the other – always the same candidate.

Then we come to the criminally fraudulent incidents.  These again were reported by witnesses putting themselves at substantial risk of committing felonies, as they filed affidavits that attested to what they saw and heard.  And again, such sworn affidavits, which are accepted as evidence in all courts, numbered in the tens (hundreds?) across the land and described incidents of ballots handling that could have plausibly affected the election’s outcome had they been allowed to be corroborated by the authorities.

Covid Related – 11dec20

George Rebane

With major ongoing national issues, I’m starting what would appear to be bespoke issue-dedicated sandboxes.  Let’s see how well/long this works out.

A reader sent me a link that supports arguments I and others here have made as to why the US has its reported Covid case and mortality numbers.  The Left has effectively screamed all summer long and into the fall that these were due to President Trump’s mishandling of the nation’s C19 response program.  Well, they were wrong on multiple accounts, but with the lamestream’s help, this continuously broadcast message convinced enough people to give us the currently reported and contested election results.

The actual reason for the difficulty in reducing our numbers to that of smaller, more culturally cohesive countries is that we are a large polyglot nation, now highly polarized, and of many cultures, ethnicities, and political persuasions.  Belgium, a much smaller nation of 11M, but otherwise similarly afflicted also demonstrates even higher C19 rates (more here and H/T to reader).  And it doesn’t look like this level of America’s ignorance will be surmounted any time soon – especially now that K-12 schools are starting to embrace ‘critical race theory’ big time.

Voter Fraud 6.0 ... until the fat lady sings (updated)

George Rebane

I asked this question of BarryP - "BarryP 549pm - don't the states have an argument for being aggrieved by the federally unconstitutional and/or purposive violation of state election laws that may/will foster an outcome of that state's election which on the federal level then illegally weighs against the legitimate voters of the aggrieved state? That is plenty of evidence for 'suffering harm' that supports the plaintiff state's standing with SCOTUS. What am I missing here?"  Barry said the answer was a long one and wanted to know where to post it.  My question is seminal, so I'm asking Barry to email me his answer, and I'll post right here for all to read.

Everyone else, please continue your election fraud relevant comment threads from 'Voter Fraud 5.0' hereunder.

[Worth repeating the 10dec20 update to Voter Fraud 5.0] Now here’s a shot in the shorts of all those on the Left telling the nation a slew of Big Lies about the integrity of the Dominion (Vote Editing) Software.  ‘Election Supervisor Shows on Video How Dominion Software Allows Changing, Adding Votes’.  This should renew some interest in the courts now chewing on election fraud suits.  The evidence tsunami is of historical proportions.  I know of no legal battle fought in my lifetime in which the plaintiffs have had such a profusion of evidence.

[update] Barry Pruett emailed me the following in answer to my question above.

Signs of Our Time – 9dec20 (updated 10dec20)

George Rebane

This will be a category of highly opinionated observations from an octogenarian who has been privileged to witness (often unwillingly) more of the human travail than that to which most have been subjected.

Innovator extraordinaire Elon Musk is moving his Tesla et al out of Silicon Valley and California to (wait for it) Texas.  That will not come as a surprise to those freedom-loving capitalists and conservetarians who have paid attention to the accelerating autocracy bound downward slide of the once golden state that was the envy of the world.  And to the Democrat-dimmed of our state (and nation), this ongoing exodus has been totally invisible or worse – it has been denied, thereby rejecting the need for any policy corrections.

On the road to progressivist autocracy, YouTube has announced new censorship rules.  The latest batch has them removing all content that gives any hint that the recent election contained any fraud.  To these supreme hubristicates, the dispensing of news that covers the massive amount of submitted evidence and legal battles affirming fraud are considered not suitable for processing by the nation’s main street minds.  YouTube will relieve us of the burden and just focus on delivering all the pravda we really need.  We anxiously await their next installment. (more here)

‘Stakeholder capitalism’ is the label for destroying the best approach to generating and allocating wealth.  All the world’s major corporatists, as they assembled at Davos, are on board with ‘The Big Reset’ which is “a vague and open-ended mandate for corporations to do good in the world. Yet beneath the lofty rhetoric, stakeholder capitalism is mostly a front for irresponsible corporatism. It is an attempt to siphon off cash flow from productive uses to advance the mission of ‘global governance’ and create corporate and government sinecures for cronies along the way. … Stakeholder capitalism is used as a way to obfuscate what counts as success in business. By focusing less on profits and more on vague social values, ‘enlightened’ executives will find it easier to avoid accountability even as they squander business resources. While trying to make business about ‘social justice’ is always concerning, the contemporary conjunction of stakeholder theory and woke capitalism makes for an especially dangerous and accountability-thwarting combination.” (more here)

Team Biden will take full credit for correctly dealing with the C19 pandemic.  Not adding anything to the Trump administration’s accomplishments, the Democrats will just subsume all of it, with their lamestream telling us repeatedly that it was really they who put together and now deliver what Trump had done.  High school history books will memorialize the accomplishments that followed after President Biden rescued the country from the tragedy of the Trump years.  In gratitude we will be made happy to pay more taxes, welcome new layers of socially just regulations, and take comfort in no longer having to exercise such a wide spectrum of risky liberties.  What’s not to like?

[10dec20 update]  The manufacture of America’s double dummies in its schools – public and private – has ascended to a new level of intensity.  The Woke Revolution is now descending into the nation’s middle and high schools with the widespread adoption of curricula based on ‘critical race theory’ (q.v.) and specific subjects like history adopting the anti-American propaganda version as publicized by Project 1619.   The “tip of the iceberg” of this new aspect of our socialist revolution is described in ‘The Woke Managerial Revolution Goes to School’.  The question is, as always, ‘where are the parents?’

Covid-19 – A lifesaver from China? (updated 9dec20)

George Rebane

Yes, C19 has made us and the world’s other countries do terrible things to our economies, but being an extraordinary killer it ain’t.  As I explained in ‘Mismanaging Covid-19 …’, all that the virus has done is substituted its own grim reaper for the usual ones that work on the various age groups with their usual comorbidities.  Of course, the older people who are already scheduled to die of some malady they are now fighting, or soon will be fighting, are vulnerable to death from some cause.  Then along comes C19 and pre-empts the other causes, but in the process does not add to the nation’s mortality counts.

Well, that’s not exactly true.  Actually, C19 is decreasing the death rate of the nation when we examine CDC published data on deaths in America over the years. (more here)  Check the plot below.

The 2020 death count was extrapolated from 2,033,736 total deaths by 24 September 2020.  The daily average to that date of 7,588 deaths times 365 days gives this year’s total of 2,769,620.  (Say, that our end of year spike is higher than the computed average, and the mortality curve just keeps following the set trend.  Then the point made here still holds regarding the overall mortality impact of C19.)

So why are deaths going down in 2020, the year of our historic pandemic, during which people are running around screaming insane warnings, locking everything down, keeping immune kids from being educated, and destroying millions of small businesses?  Easy answer – gross ignorance and evil political agendas.

Some other factors are contributing to lowering the death rate include the decrease in people seeking medical aid from healthcare professionals as they hunker down and try to protect themselves from C19 infections.  According to government figures (as reported here many times) medical mistakes kill over 250,000 Americans year-in year-out.  It’s one of our leading causes of death, so if you stay out of hospitals and clinics, and don’t let them get their hands on you, there’s a better chance that they won’t getcha.  And more people will keep living at the end of the year.

The bottom line of my screed is that we have been fed wagon loads of bullshit about this pandemic, its morbidity and mortality, its virulence, effective therapeutics, public response policies, etc during the past year.  And all we’ve managed to do is cripple our economy, ruin countless lives, and abandon our freedoms to power hungry politicians, for what?  To save lives?  Not really.  Now what are you going to do about it?

[8dec20 update] It appears that CDC does publish various versions of data on the same topics.  I received an appreciated email from a reader who makes this point clear with CDC data that supports (calls out?) my above comment about the trendline being maintained even with an appropriate population-relative increase in the 2020 deathcount.

[9dec20 update]  The Democrats' idiots delight continues in Sacramento in coming up with insane and insaner response policies to the pandemic.  Now even some members of the Lockdown Luminaries are beginning to evince doubt in both their policies and the tortured 'logic' that has given rise to them over the past months.  Here's 'I'm Not Sure We Know What We're Doing,' Says a Newly Skeptical California Lockdown Advocate that indicates against all hope that there is a ray of sanity that might be leaking into the deep dark depths of Gavin's mind.

Scattershots – 3dec20 (updated 8dec20)

George Rebane

SCOTUS finally ruled against Gov Cuomo on the religious freedom case.  The 26nov20 NYT reported, “The Supreme Court late Wednesday night barred restrictions on religious services in New York that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had imposed to combat the coronavirus. … The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal members in dissent. The order was the first in which the court’s newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, played a decisive role.” (more here)  Justice Barrett was the crucial vote for the 5-4 majority, with Chief Justice Roberts (the court’s new ‘swing vote’) going limp again and voting with the liberals.  Justice Gorsuch wrote the excellent majority ruling (here) wherein he states, “It is time — past time — to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques,”

‘This is why Yuja Wang is Wonder Woman’.  Ms Wang is unquestionably one of the greatest piano virtuosi to come along in many a year.  Take a listen to a five minute sampling of what this woman can do with a piano – truly a celebration and vindication of western culture and how it has contributed to the shaping of global cultures.

‘Big Companies Urge Biden, Congress to Address Climate Change’ - Amazon, Citigroup, Ford and others support a U.S. return to the Paris accords from which Trump withdrew.  Well, whouda thought?  (more here)  With the advent of the Biden administration we are going to see a return of corporatism on steroids.  Cash rich corporatists have always been lobbyists and supporters for all kinds of new regulations and fees that can be levied on their respective industries and business sectors.  We recall that a corporatist is a big corporation that can no longer effectively compete in free markets without some kind of government support.  Increasing costs for their smaller competitors and raising the barriers to entry for newcomers is always best achieved by established corporatists who can pay off legislators and regulators to do their assigned duties – all for the benefit of the consumer, of course.  These are the naïfs who ultimately will get it in the shorts, and pay for the whole thing.  (In case we have some new readers here, please recall that corporations pay no taxes or fees; they just pass those costs on to their customers.  But that’s a whole ‘nother story.) 

[4dec20 update]  Cutting the unemployment bonus again proved that the Left doesn’t do economics.  Writing unemployed low-wage workers checks with an added $600 bonus was supposed give the economy a boost and lower unemployment according to progressive economists like the socialist sage Paul Krugman.  Wrong again.  Workers got paid more for not working and the economy didn’t go anywhere.  When President Trump had to compromise eliminating the bonus to just lowering it to $300, then, lo and behold, unemployment plummeted and the economic growth set decades-long records.  As the song says, ‘When will they ever learn?’

Marc Andreessen, web browser pioneer and venture capitalist, years ago claimed that ‘software will eat the world’ (here).  AI has now achieved the ability to automatically generate code for some very structured applications, and soon will become smart enough to write programs from only verbal instructions, thereby promising to make legions of programmers redundant.  Some interpret this coming state of affairs with the claim that “Software Ate the World, and Soon It Will Write Itself”, going on to conclude that “developers are in short supply, but their products may acquire the capacity to replace them.”  Well no, that’s not quite true.  Most non-techies still believe that ‘line programmers’ create the wondrous systems that dazzle and deliver us.  But learning to code in a programming language, and learning to conceive and design a system to do what has never been done are two different skill sets – the first any smart high schooler can accomplish, the second takes a bit more education in one of any number of specific fields.  Bottom line, software is no more ‘eating the world’ than did movable type in days of yore – you still had to have something more to become an acknowledged wordsmith than what was needed to learn how to smith the words into print.  In the same way today, it will take more from fewer to come up with novel things the software must do, than the larger number who can learn how to make the software do it.  It’s the latter who should soon tremble.

Ever hear of ‘emotional support animals’?  Well, they’re a couple of steps beyond ‘service dogs’ in what they apparently provide to their owners.  And there’s more to be said about the portents of such critters, the humans they emotionally support, and the crumbling culture that now puts up with such nonsense.  This morning we awoke to news of a passenger bringing his peacock into the passenger compartment of an airliner.  Now those of you who know peacocks can readily conceive of the pandemonium that such an aggressive animal with non-existent toilet discipline will create attempting to come down the aisle and be confined to the middle seat.  Today’s laws do not allow anyone to question the legitimate and beneficial purpose that such arbitrarily selected support animals satisfy for those emotionally short-changed.  On that flight the pilot was astute enough not to take off with a cabin catastrophe in the making, but we were not told how the gathered authorities adjudicated the affair.  From my semanticist’s perch, it is clear that our language has not evolved at a sufficient pace to provide adequate adjectives to describe the depths of insanity that today’s progressive ideology is inflicting on our society.

[5dec20 update]  Check out the report on the anti-viral Ivermectin in 'Mismanaging Covid-19 ...'.

[6dec20 update]  Andrew Cuomo – talk about scumbag politicians lying to the public.  This political hack is one of the few in the nation to whom hundreds of Covid deaths can be directly attributed – recall his tragically misguided care facility diktat.  Now he tells the country that Trump’s Operation Warp Speed had nothing to do with the early development, testing, and approval of C19 vaccines; the big pharmas would have developed it anyway since they’re only interested in profits.  He believes his audience to be appropriately ignorant of what Warp Speed did to pave the path and lower the financial risk to the pharmas for them to put a very expensive full court press on their vaccine developments.  We know from decades of data how long it would have taken doing the same ol’ same ol’.  But that don’t make no never mind to another Democrat Big Liar telling people another Big Lie.

"Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out", David Horowitz here aligning with Rebane Doctrine.

[8dec20 update]  Cringing capitalists and the great Cocoa Collusions.  The cocoa growers of Ghana and Ivory Coast (61% of world supply) decided to collude and raise the price of cocoa by almost 20%, claiming to alleviate worker poverty.  Naturally candy producers like Hershey and Mars don’t want to pay more for their prime ingredient, so they are working together trying to find ways to pay less for cocoa (what a concept!).  In this crazy world of progressive pandemics, virtue signaling has become a de rigueur for both corporatists and cringing capitalists.  Both Hershey and Mars are denying that they are trying to circumvent the ‘virtuous’ price increase, when instead they should counter with the free and open markets’ correct argument.  They should tell the cocoa growers that producers also have an obligation to keep prices low for their customers whose financial welfare is no less important than that of the cocoa workers.  Virtue signaling has become a particularly contagious and corrosive form of cringing for capitalists in the face of socialism’s global advance.  (more here)

A new approach to ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’  In the 8dec20 Union, Mr Rob Cairns attempts to heal our divide by suggesting that, instead of attacking, we sit down with our opposites to have a “real conversation” with “them”.  The conversation would launch with questions like ‘What’s important to you?’, ‘What are your concerns?’, ‘What are your fears?’, ‘What are your hopes?’, ‘What are your priorities?’.  A laudable approach indeed, but one having little chance of success when considered in light of the now drastically different belief systems that today propel our polarization.  RR has spent years revealing and dissecting our contending beliefs, and the record is here for all to see.  When a leftist finally deigns to reveal his belief(s) and/or solutions to social problems, to rightists they range from the odious to patently unworkable.  What such questions serve to divert from is an exploration of the meta-world views (i.e. ontologies) of the two discussants.  Without understanding each other’s basic views of how ‘their world’ functions, the rest of the conversation quickly becomes moot since the participants cannot help but talk past each other.  And the real problem, encountered in the attempt to explore ontologies, is that perhaps only a small share of people are capable of such productive pursuits.  Alas.

Today's joke from Rush Limbaugh illustrates the above ontological differences.  A capitalist sitting at a bar is sandwiched between Bernie Sanders and AOC while watching the news.  They see a tense video of a man ready to jump from a tall building.  The capitalist says, 'I have $10 that says he jumps.'  Begrudgingly Sanders and AOC take him up on the bet.  The man jumps to his death, and the capitalist collects his winnings.  Then a moment later he says, 'I can't take your money, because I saw this report earlier on the news.'  AOC responds with, 'That's OK, so did we, but we didn't think he'd do it again.'

Voter Fraud 5.0 … until the fat lady sings (updated 10dec20)

George Rebane

This will most likely be the last edition of ‘Voter Fraud’.  In a correspondence with a reader I asked if he was aware of any site that served as a clearing house for the hundreds of voter fraud reports, affidavits, and suits filed from all over the country – in short, where can we go to see all the publicly declared and gathered evidence alleging voter fraud.  He got back to me with this excellent compendium that lists them all and updates the list daily.  The site is called https://hereistheevidence.com/ - enjoy.

[5dec20 update]  Not set in stone.  A lot of the stuff our Left and its lamestream put out about the post-election and its scheduled milestones is simply not true.  Here is a piece that explains the matter and links to the related constitutional research document prepared by the Election Integrity Project.

And this editorial - 'With Our Election System Under Assault, Americans Need to Speak Up' - in the Epoch Times pretty well sums up a lot of the country's feelings about the very polarized debate about election fraud.

[6dec20 update]  More evidence on the astronomically low probability of obtaining the claimed and/or certified Trump/Biden election results.  Anyone who claims to be technically astute in probabilistics will immediately call to question what the so-called ‘non-polling metrics’ indicate about the likelihood of fraud in the election’s aftermath.  Patrick Basham of the Democracy Institute did an extensive interview with Mark Levin of FN (here) where he pointed out the anomalies in these metrics which have historically been 100% reliable in identifying the winner of presidential elections.

Suddenly, this time everything went haywire as ALL the metrics pointed to a Trump win, but were nullified with the afterhours arrival of truckloads of mail-in ballots which statistically stunk to high heaven.  For example, what do you think of boxes of uncreased mail-in ballots (i.e. NOT mailed) each of whose vote counts came up repeatedly and exactly Biden 50.5% and Trump 49.5%?  And other such goings on were apparent in many vote count sessions across the key battleground states.

Basham explained that there are "a dozen or more of these metrics ... [that] have a 100% accuracy rate in terms of predicting the winner of the presidential election. … Those metrics, include party registration trends, how the candidates did in their respective presidential primaries, the number of individual donations, [and] how much enthusiasm each candidate generated in the opinion polls. … In 2016, they all indicated strongly that Donald Trump would win against most of the public polling.  That was again the case in 2020.  So, if we are to accept that Biden won against the trend of all these non-polling metrics, it not only means that one of these metrics was inaccurate, for the first time ever, it means that each one of these metrics was wrong for the first time and at the same time as all of the others." (emphasis mine)

Were such infinitesimally low probabilities to obtain in any other endeavor, every reasonable person familiar with the issues would say that there definitely has occurred a massive anomaly.  It is the consideration of such “deeply puzzling” evidence, when added to all the other affidavits submitted under penalty of perjury, that persuades me that this was an historically fraudulent election the (most likely criminal) vagaries of which need to be investigated and brought to light.  (more here)

Did China effectively buy Dominion Voting Systems one month before the election?  The fraud smoke about this election is sure getting thicker by the day.  Not only do the Chinese dominate the board of Dominion’s holding company, but “in a previous voter fraud lawsuit filed by Sidney Powell, a former military intelligence official claims in an affidavit that Chinese operatives had access to Dominion Voting Systems in several key states.” (more here) 

[10dec20 update] Now here’s a shot in the shorts of all those on the Left telling the nation a slew of Big Lies about the integrity of the Dominion (Vote Editing) Software.  ‘Election Supervisor Shows on Video How Dominion Software Allows Changing, Adding Votes’.  This should renew some interest in the courts now chewing on election fraud suits.  The evidence tsunami is of historical proportions.  I know of no legal battle fought in my lifetime in which the plaintiffs have had such a profusion of evidence.

Mismanaging Covid-19 News and Response Policies (updated 10dec20)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 2 December 2020.]

The nation’s response to the Covid pandemic has been an episode of our history quite unlike anything that any of us have experienced before.  Those who pay attention know that most of what has been proposed, done, and reported has been wrong, either because the science was incomplete and politicized, and/or the news we received was purposed to serve a political agenda and not report what was really happening.  And all of it continues to this very day.  Americans remain misinformed and confused about literally every aspect of the Covid pandemic.

Today the news breathlessly reports on the new surge of infections telling us how many recently infected joined the total number of US Covid cases, which we are told are now north of 14 million.  To add emphasis to the dire situation, we are further told that this is the largest number of Covid cases of any country in the world.  On top of that, America’s Covid death toll is the world’s highest.  The message is clear, the Trump administration has mismanaged the country’s response to the pandemic, and it could have been otherwise.

Begrudgingly we are told that vaccines are coming, but there is no effective way to distribute them and properly prioritize who should be the first to be vaccinated.  Our schools are to remain shut because we don’t want to endanger our children or their teachers.  Lockdowns on small businesses are prescribed all over the land for reasons no one can provide – the mantra ‘follow the science’ should ring hollow in people’s ears for there is no definitive science that provides such backing.

Returning to the number of reported Covid cases – it actually represents an erroneous estimate of the cumulative number of people infected by the virus during this year.  The average person takes this to be the number of people still ill and suffering, especially since that number is reported in conjunction with the latest mortality count.  All of these millions remain in danger of losing their lives.  The better-read person knows that most of the infected are asymptomatic and therefore unknown to the counters.  And of the symptomatic, the disease runs its normal course in two to four weeks during which you either overwhelmingly recover or rarely die.  Furthermore, of the few who are symptomatic, a small fraction of those require hospitalization.

What is not reported are the rates which put into perspective that we are a large and mobile nation of at least 330 million people.  So what we need to hear is not the large gee-whiz numbers, but instead the rates of infection, hospitalization, morbidity, mortality, recoveries, etc per hundred thousand or per a million.  Comparing America’s raw numbers with those of smaller countries like Canada, Denmark, or Germany has sent the wrong, but perhaps desired, message to people deciding who to vote for during this election year.

We should remember that reaching herd immunity – naturally or vaccine aided - is how every infectious epidemic peters out and ends.  Politically incorrect scientists have been telling us for months that the real number of Covid cases is enormously higher than those recorded by the healthcare establishment.  It turns out, as reported in the prestigious journal Nature, that the real number of cases should include what is called sero-prevalence.  The sero-prevalence survey of a population reveals the vastly larger number that have been exposed, and available antibody testing data show that this number is over 50 times higher than those symptomatic and recorded clinically.  This finding is so critical that the World Health Organization has now a program to establish sero-prevalence rates worldwide.

These important findings, based on already available data, indicate that the Covid mortality rates, instead of being in the reported 3% range, may actually be an order of magnitude lower in 0.2-0.3% range.  This makes the Covid fatality rate closer to the flu season that we encounter annually.  Recognition of this fact alone should impact response policies and eliminate business lockdowns, stay-at-home quarantines, and shuttered schools.  There are many more important aspects of this pandemic that have been politicized beyond recognition.  While there is not enough time in this short commentary for me to list them all, I strongly recommend listeners to look deeper into the reporting on the progress of the Covid pandemic, and not base their understanding solely on what they hear on the mainstream media’s daily six o’clock news.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum]  According to John Hopkins University, the proportion of US deaths in the various age categories has not been visibly impacted by the C19 pandemic.  “Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.” (more here)

As I have attempted to explain, this result is not surprising since older people are already ‘scheduled’ to die from any number of causes in their sunset years.  Substituting C19 as a cause for one of the other causes doesn’t move the needle much on the total count.

And here are some citations to expand on the sero-prevalence points made in the broadcast commentary.  The interview with Dr Bhattacharya also presents data on the comparative death rates with other recent viral infections and the experience with our annual flu season. (here and here)

[5dec20 update]  We have heard almost nothing of anti-viral Ivermectin in connection to C19.  Teams of reputable medical and healthcare groups have studied the prophylactic and treatment performance of Ivermectin, and have published extensively on it. (more here)  But none of it has been picked up by the CDC, NIH, Trump administration, and of course, the lamestream.  The clinical evidence appears overwhelming that this medicine is effective in both preventing and treating the Covid virus.  Additionally, it seems to also be effective in treating some of the bad aftereffects that afflict some people who have recovered from the virus.  I add Ivermectin to the chamber of horrors from which politicians and nationally prominent medicos pull out their politicized and vacillating ‘science’ to recommend public response policies that vary all over the map and calendar.  Some coven of clinicians somewhere has decided that Ivermectin shall not see the light of day, even so that it could be countered were there any basis for such opposition.  And here is one outspoken scientist giving a summary of the drug in lay language.

[10dec20 update]  YouTube censored the above link to the summary video on Ivermectin.  A reader pointed to this Vimeo link that still gives access to information on the socialist proscribed anti-viral.  More signs of our time.

We do remember … (updated 30nov20)

George Rebane

This list of memories was sent by a correspondent.  I think it makes a strong point.  After four years of a continuous national effort to destroy a legitimately elected presidency, if the Dems think they have an equivalent list then Biden is blowing bubbles out of his butt with all his cynical kumbaya talk.  The email follows.

Here is my issue with the whole, let us all be a “United States” again, message from Joe Biden and the Democrats.  For the last 4+ years, the Democrats have gone and scorched the earth. You have salted the fields and now you want to grow crops.  The problem is we have memories longer than a hamster’s.

1. We remember the women’s march the day after inauguration. We remember Democrats not going to the Inauguration.
2. We remember the 4 years of attacks and impeachments
3. We remember “not our president” and the “Resistance…”
4. We remember Maxie Walters telling followers to harass us in restaurants.
5. We remember the Presidents spokesperson being kicked out a restaurant.
6. We remember Trump supporters being physically attacked.
7. We remember Trump supporters getting Doxed, and fired from jobs.
8. We remember riots, and looting
9. We remember “a comedian” holding up the President’s severed head
10. We remember a play in Central park paid with public funding, showing the killing of President Trump
11. We remember Robert de Niro yelling “F*** Trump” at the Tony’s and getting a standing ovation.
12. We remember Nancy Pelosi tearing up the State of the Union Address.
13. We remember the total in the tank move on the mainstream media
14. We remember the non-stop and live fact checking on our President and his supporters.
15. We remember non-stop in your face lies and open cover-ups from the media.
16. We remember the President and his staff being spied on.
17. We remember a Republican congressman shot on a ballfield.
18. We remember every so-called comedy show turn into nothing but Trump hate fest.
19. We remember 95% negative coverage in the news.
20. We remember the state governors asking and getting everything they ask for and then blaming Trump for their problems.
21. We remember Operation Warp Speed and then Kamala Harris saying she wouldn’t support it if it had anything to do with Trump.
22. We remember a Trump top aid verbally assaulted in two DC restaurants.
23. We remember people banging on the Supreme Court doors.
24. We remember the treatment to Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
25. We remember Nancy Pelosi not fighting for stimulus so she couldn’t give Trump credit.
26. We remember that we were called every name in the book for supporting President Trump.
27. We remember that Hollywood said they would leave after Trump was elected but they stayed.

This list is endless, but you get the idea.

[30nov20 update]  Again a helpful reminder to the reader new to these pages, and perhaps to comment streams in which people of the Left and Right contend.  Note that no leftwinger will ever acknowledge the above list of their ongoing efforts to destroy a presidency; they are always the only victims in the country’s political battles, all others are evil.  This microcosm reflects the nature of the national debate.  We again note the results of the Media Research Center poll, one of several that showed how the lying lamestream media was material in defeating Trump by highlighting what material facts were withheld from the public in their reporting. (here and here).

In the Wake of the Lying Leftwing Lamestream

George Rebane

The country continues to suffer under the devious reporting of the lamestream media.  The progressive propaganda outlets regularly output two important types of lies (here) in their published content.  The first type is not reporting certain information critical for readers' decision making, the second type is outright false/fake news, in other words making statements that are blatantly false.  As readers have been advised for years in these pages, our Fourth Estate is dead but not buried.  It continues to live and thrive in a zombie-like existence, first impeding, then devouring the nation’s ability to think critically.  Two examples follow.

The lamestream elected Biden.  This conclusion is supported by more than several years of witnessing anti-Trump lies in every dominant leftwing news and entertainment media outlet – most of the them have been detailed and debated in these pages.  But a post-election poll provides, perhaps, the clearest evidence of that. (here)  About 17% of Biden voters – an outcome changing percentage - would not have voted for him had they known a number of salient facts about him and his record as a politician – all of these facts were prominently absent from the lamestream’s content during Biden’s candidacy and purposely subverted after he received the DNC’s imprimatur.  RR’s liberal commenters have provided reams of additional evidence of that as they regularly accuse me (and other better-read commenters) of making up stuff that is already known nationally, but not through the ‘information’ channels they regularly consume.

Then there’s withholding critical information on various proven effective Covid-19 (C19) therapeutics, this because a more successful approach at early intervention could have markedly changed the course of the disease for the better.  Specifically, I’m talking about the suppression of fluvoxamine, ivermectin, and hydroxychloroquine as safe, proven drugs for early intervention. (here)  Instead, the Democrat politicians and their lamestream lackeys made clear on the daily national news that such drugs were risky and not to be trusted.  The latter on the basis that the Trump administration was an early promoter of these medicines.  Because of that the nation’s healthcare clinicians took the legally less risky route and eliminated wholesale prescription of these medicines to early-stage patients.  Instead, all this supported the continuation of command/control unproven dicta of lockdowns, social distancing, and masks.  Even herd immunity was denied and Operation Warp Speed denigrated as being ineffective in combatting C19.  Because of that criminally misguided messaging, thousands of additional people died who could have been helped by vigorous intervention with these proven medicines.  But the progressive narrative was saved, and worth every life sacrificed in its service.

Voter Fraud 4.0 … until the fat lady sings (updated 26nov20)

George Rebane

Well, the fat lady is in the wings, we can hear her warming up.  She will most likely be applauded onto the stage when Sidney Powell’s last hurrah is thrown out of court.  I still can’t believe why this successful and prominent lawyer got herself into such an embarrassing and career-ending pickle.  It occurred to me that there may be one way that she can salvage her reputation and ability to continue making money as a lawyer, and that all hinges on Adam Schiff.  After lying for years about having incontrovertible evidence of Trump’s Russia collusion, all of which turned out to be a blatant nothingburger, that sumbich continues his career unabated, and is still genuflected to by Democrats as one of their most illustrious intellectual lights.  Sidney should schedule some time with Adam to see how that was done.

Meanwhile, Team Trump forges ahead under the leadership of Coach Giuliani who is obviously stressed out a bit when called to perform under the klieg lights.  I have no idea what they expect to get out of SCOTUS, assuming they stick to their strategy of wending their way through the intermediate appellate process.  My question remains – how will this pursuit of 2020 voter fraud beneficially inform our upcoming 2022 and 2024 national elections?

Finally, who among our local leftwingers will receive invitations to attend one of Biden’s balls?

[26nov20 update]  Attorney Sidney Powell’s ‘Krakens’ were released into (onto?) the courts of Georgia and Michigan.  Her website was immediately blocked by Twitter as false and unsuitable content to the delicate sensibilities of its readers.  We on RR have no such weaklings frequenting these pages, our readers are made of sterner stuff so that I can readily link to Powell’s websites (here and here) from which (and here) you can download both the Georgia Kraken (104 pages) and the Michigan Kraken (75 pages).