Rebane's Ruminations

Border Security’s True Colors (updated 20feb19)

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George Rebane

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

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

 

The American AI Initiative & herding cats

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 13 February 2019.]

The entire field of artificial or machine intelligence (AI) seems to be more misunderstood by the day, and not only on Main Street, but also in the highest levels of government.  President Trump recently signed an executive order to launch the American AI Initiative.  The purpose of this whatever it is, is to “focus federal government resources to develop AI” in order to “increase our prosperity, enhance our national and economic security, and improve quality of life for the American people.”

The Illuminated Great Divide (updated 13feb19)

George Rebane

Every now and then one of our progressive commenters takes the time to offer some thought-out remarks that shine a bright light on the hopeless nature of our country’s Great Divide.  The most recent came from a leftist reader who call himself Robert Cross.  Mr Cross often takes me to task in opposing every facet of my socio-political ideology that he claims to understand.

Under ‘Progressive Pilgrims’ Progress’ we engaged in a thread that he launched with the astute lament that I blamed most of the country’s problems on progressives and their socialistic policies.  I encouraged him to read my extensive apologetics supporting such an assertion and responded in part –

"But your main takeaway should be that the overwhelming share of societal problems are directly attributable to the various expressions of hubristic collectivism - and in the US today that happens to be virulent progressivism."

This motivated Mr Cross to ‘put pen to paper’ and deliver a speech that V. Lenin could easily have made in 1917 from the back of a truck to a crowd of Russians gathered on a blustery snow-covered Moscow street.

 

Redemption and the Virginia Three

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?  Mathew 7:3-5

George Rebane

“Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) said Wednesday that he dressed in blackface during college, adding yet another scandal to the tumult that now engulfs the entire executive branch of state government.  Herring, Gov. Ralph Northam and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax — the state’s three top Democrats — all face wrenching questions about past behavior that threaten their careers.” reports the Washington Post. (here)

I find it distressing that our public policy, mostly implemented by the progressive Left, does not give any politician or other public figure any slack on what they might or not have done in their dim dark distant past.  This is especially significant in the case of males whose brains, we are told, do not fully mature until their mid-twenties.  Most certainly they (we) still have great dynamism going on in our noodles at around the age of twenty.

But without even accounting for that, don’t we have even a little room for redemption, any notion of remission, and only focus on what may be seen as eternal retribution?  I don’t think any of the above mentioned Democrats, currently being pilloried and asked to mount their political tumbrils, should suffer such a fate.  And that any more than did Justice Kavanaugh and other Republicans before him.  Today all three Virginians are matured and different men than they were in those days of yore (when morals and manners were not yet perfected to today’s pristine standards).  They have performed their public duties admirably as far as anyone can tell, and are now at the prime of their ‘service lives’.  So why sacrifice them on the altar of political correctness, an altar on which daily are offered the professional lives of worthy people, almost all to serve political ends and not to provide any future margin of safety to the public at large from their ongoing ministrations?

Once this persecutorial plague is loosened, where will it stop?  How many public figures, or any of us for that matter, can survive the dredging of such ludicrous liabilities?  Were I king, we would look back only on the recent and relevant parts of a person’s career, and not claim that the divers path each of us took through our youth did then mangle our minds and morals forever.  People do change, and perhaps in this area of public life we should revisit the plaintive questions posed by those oft-quoted philosophers Hillary Clinton and Rodney King.

Scattershots – 9feb19 (updated)

George Rebane

‘How a tiny country bordering Russia became one of the most tech-savvy societies in the world’ reports CNBC on Estonia’s eternal love affair with technology.  As the world’s leading country in its integration of the internet into literally every facet of Estonian life, the implementation of such cooperation between public and private sectors underpins the Rebane Doctrine commentaries on collectivization.  The bottom line has always been that the smaller and more culturally coherent a cooperating cohort, the better can collectivization be implemented in such a society.  While Estonia’s experience and those of other Scandinavian countries sing a siren song to our progressives, what they always overlook are the stark differences between a large, inhomogeneous, and culturally diverse America, and the small, culturally homogeneous countries that dot the globe.  The only way we can even attempt to replicate the idylls of small country harmonies is to create a hierarchy of ever smaller and distributed jurisdictions (as envisioned by our Founders) in our land which then can enjoy the benefits that derive from common cultures.  Sadly, our Left has taken us beyond the tipping point toward big government socialism (centrally controlled cohesion by the gun) and the tyrannies that inevitably lie beyond. (H/T to correspondent)

The current spate of cold winter weather has me tending daylong fires in our big front room fireplace.  Many RR readers know my longtime interest in the care and feeding of wood fires (here is a more complete treatment).  Getting the fire going this morning reminded me of an aspect that I have not emphasized enough – the form of the fire that you should attempt to maintain for the longest time possible.  Most people think that a robustly flaming fire provides the most heat to those sitting in front of the fireplace or around a campfire – wrong.  Bright cheery flames primarily heat the air which then convects vertically upward.  It’s the radiant heat that flows out sideways (and all other directions) that provides the desired warmth from such fires, the rest goes up the chimney.  And that radiant heat comes mainly from the red-hot coals.  So, the ideal fire is one that has finally generated enough coals, both on the coal grate and the sides of still burning wood, to provide a large red radiating area toward you and the room you are sitting in.  At this phase of the fire you want to minimize the burning rate, keep the flames sparse and small, and let the developing coals glow and radiate.  When you finally do have to add another piece of wood or two, try to add it so that large horizontal fire pockets (q.v.) remain visible from which radiation can still escape.  (Using a keeper chain is ideal for structuring such vertically 'open front' fires backed by a yule log.)  Here’s picture I took this morning of the fire having achieved its ideal heating phase.

[update]  George Kennan’s 22feb46 ‘Long Telegram’ to SecState George Marshall is one of the most prescient and useful intra-government communications in US history.  In it Kennan lays out the coming world order and the proper role of the US as hegemon to contain the already obvious post-WW2 spread of communism.  Bottom line, in order to avoid fighting WW3, be prepared to be the white hat global sheriff by always deploying small contingents of troops in critical locations all over the world, and to fight small ‘brushfire wars’ as they become necessary.  And prepare to do that indefinitely – with allies if possible, alone if necessary - as the cost of doing business to prevent the world from falling into a new age of global tyranny.  And with that Kennan nailed the foundation of our foreign policy for the last 70+ years.  I had to post this as the topic of our ongoing foreign policy came up at a recent dinner with friends.  (The original archival copy is here, with a more readable version here.)

The Green New Deal (updated 8feb19)

A rose by any other name would smell … .  Wm Shakespeare

George Rebane

Well, the last bits of doubt about our Democratic Party have been swept away by the new House resolution describing a fundamental transformation of America (Barack Obama, call your office).  The Green New Deal, sponsored by AOC and Senator Ed Markey (whom we have met on these pages), is socialism writ large.  So large in fact that the reporter interviewing AOC on NPR this morning had a hard time keeping from audibly gulping as he asked the feather head details and sources of funding for the individual mandates of the GND.  She, of course, had no answers other than taxing the bejeezus out anybody and everybody in the land who could still create wealth after the proposed strictures derive their power from the barrel of a gun.

So what do these two socialists propose in their fundamental transformation?  You can read the resolution here, and some more expanded analysis here, here, and here; but let’s just lay out a few of them in short form for the sake of discussion.

• US carbon neutral in 10 years. “…this would mean a complete remake of American electric power, transportation and manufacturing.”
• Guaranteed government job for all. “… provide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one.”
• Government control of all medium and large corporations. “Employees would elect 40% of directors, who would be obliged to consider “benefits” beyond returns to the owners.”
• Vastly higher taxes. Top rates for death taxes, income tax, and payroll taxes would increase markedly.  Also proposed is the institution of a “wealth tax” on assets.
• Government take over of industries like healthcare, insurance, manufacture of certain products like pharmaceuticals, etc.

Now all this is based on the fundamental socialist tenet that tax rates do not affect economic behavior.  This belief by the Left is totally immune to historical data, including what France just had to rescind, and what has made NK, Cuba, Venezuela, … what they are today, and what caused the downfall of the USSR, and the massive shifts in the economies of China, Vietnam, … .

So there you have it.  Just keep your eye on the slated 40+ Democrats who sign up to sponsor this resolution – their true colors will wave proudly.  And also see how many more Democrats will be looking at their shoes while mumbling something about not belonging to the new socialist party of America.  Our Founders are spinning in their graves.

[8feb19 update]  It appears that Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may turn out to be the liberal loon for all seasons.  Both sides of the aisle seem to be happy dancing at the advent of this good looking 5-star ignoramus.  The Dems claim that her GND plan is just a negotiating “anchor” point stuck into the land of the ludicrous, a strategic starting point to get people dickering with each other about where we should really wind up.  Their hope is that any surviving putrid pot of progressive public policies will still be close enough to the GND anchor, and by comparison will look good to their light thinking constituents who will then support it as a ‘compromise’ with the Right.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are convinced that AOC (along with mini-minded Markey) have handed them the penultimate political prize for 2020.  WSJ’s national correspondent Kim Strassel details the blessings in her ‘The Socialist That Could’, and offers a succinct summary of “AOC, the secret Republican weapon for 2020.”

It’s a GOP dream, especially because the media presented her plan with a straight face—as a legitimate proposal from a legitimate leader in the Democratic Party. Republicans are thrilled to treat it that way in the march to 2020, as their set-piece example of what Democrats would do to the economy and average Americans if given control. The Green New Deal encapsulates everything Americans fear from government, all in one bonkers resolution.

And can you imagine the profusion of optics AOC has already provided and will provide during the next 18 months for Republican ads.  This woman has turned out to be a horn of political plenty for the Right that is scaring hell out of the Democrat leadership – “They should be scared. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is a freight train gaining speed by the day—and helping Republicans with every passing minute.”

Given all this political largesse, my concern now is for AOC’s safety.  The RNC should offer to share with the DNC some of the costs for added security for the congresswoman.  No conservative in the land wants anything to still her voice, or deter her from advocating the clear path she has set out for America.

Ruminations – 31jan19 (updated 1feb19)

George Rebane

Global warming conspiracy’s agenda is about destroying capitalism, so admits Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change.  At a Brussels news conference she said, “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.”  This revelation is not news to RR readers who have been repeatedly informed of this for over a decade.  (H/T to reader, more here)

Socialists have an endless list of bad habits, beliefs, and behaviors.  One of the worst on their list is about OPM – they never seem to get enough of it to spend, and they also don’t hold back telling other people how they should spend their own money.  Apropos to that, in the 29jan19 WSJ Jason Riley describes how “progressives are more interested in scapegoating the wealthy than they are in relieving poverty.”

‘Conflating Ideas Weakens Constitutional Principles’ (from RCP).  “The left’s conflation of conservatism with fascism and the right’s conflation of classical liberalism with progressive extremism combine to conceal the concrete political realities that inspired the rise of liberal democracy in the West. These conflations also suppress the multiple traditions that merged in forming the American constitutional order. And they obscure the compelling reasons for conserving this precious inheritance.”  (Trigger warning for some of our readers who have complained about big words, long sentences, and large paragraphs – this piece has them.)

American republicanism, as intended by our Founders, is dead, having succumbed over the years to poll preening politicians.  Moreover, the nation’s pundits and public demand that the pols be ever responsive to the latest polls.   And they are more than happy to comply so as to do ‘the will of the people’, and relieve themselves of having to make potentially contentious decisions about what to support and vote for – after all, getting reelected is job one.  So now we have government by randomly gyrating, soundbite propagandized, uninformed public opinion.  This is exactly the kind of chaotic direct democracy that our Constitution was written to shield us from with a republic of elected representatives.

[1feb19 update]  ‘Ownership as an endangered species’ by Rob Chrisman (1feb19 Union) is a good piece about the vicissitudes of private property in these days of leftward careening progressivism.  Mr Chrisman also writes an occasional blog – notallradishesarered.org – which saw its last of many excellent posts in June 2017.

Plan to Re-elect Trump

George Rebane

The Republicans have an opportunity to implement a surefire plan to get their candidate re-elected in 2020, given that the Dems will run everyone and their cousin who understands how to spend OPM (that’s Other People’s Money for you independents and mid-roaders).  And OPM is also the active ingredient of this ingenious plan.

• The RNC launches the ‘Fund a Socialist’ website that lists the current Dem presidential candidates, their website URLs, and the money they currently have in their election war chests.
• Trump supporters review the list on a regular basis, and, according to their lights, send a couple of the most egregiously leftwing radical and poorly funded candidates $5 each.
• Trump supporters repeat step #2 every month as the list inevitably prunes itself. This automatically strengthens the surviving radicals.

Say, a couple of million or so Trump supporters sign up for this plan and carry it out as long as the list still contains viable and voluble radicals, the loonier the better, or until the Democratic National Convention.  The total cost for each participant will be about $200 give or take, and it would be money no better spent.  That would shove about $400M plus into the shorts of second tier candidates seeking to out-left each other.  Sweet.

Such inflows of small contributions to those hopeful socialists will keep the maximum number of them energized and fighting for slots in the upcoming debates, running in primaries, hogging air time, and doing everything they can to disrupt the orderly machine of Democrat elites trying to field an electable candidate.  And all of these no-names coming out of the woodwork will be convinced by their millions of small donations that they really are riding the top of the new socialist tsunami sweeping the country.

Obvious priorities are Sen Bernie and Congresswoman AOC.  Republicans must make sure that these two never lack for funds to make their message heard across the land.  That’s important because some wiser heads in the DNC are already talking about running some more electable center-leftists against them in the primaries. ;-)

Journalism continues to falter

George Rebane

Journalism is a lost trade (art?), attested to by the justifiably low esteem journalists are held in by the reading public.  Jacob Gallagher attempts to make this point in his ‘Journalism Is Faltering but ‘Content’ Is Thriving’, and in the process makes a self-referential blooper.  His main thesis is that content - like editorials, movies, TV shows, commentaries, …, the stuff for which you access media - will survive in spite of the palpable deterioration of the journalistic wrappers in which they are delivered.  For proof, one need only to read a newspaper or listen to a news program (yes, even Fox News) to see the loose logic relating propositions and the liberties taken with language – today no one seems to know the structure of an unambiguously communicating grammar or the definition of the words used. 

(Even RR’s comment streams contain the lamentations of some readers who eschew the semantic compactness of what to them are ‘big words’, especially in previously unencountered sequences.  As reflected in the longitudinal studies on literacy available at the National Center for Educational Statistics, most of our fellow citizens would like to avoid complex concepts, instead demand simple thoughts in simple sentences, and not even too many of those strung together, thank you very much.)

And then Gallagher steps in it by claiming that “the concept of ‘content’ rose alongside social media, beginning with the launch of Facebook in 2004.”  Well no.  The man shows the deficit in his journalistic acumen, no doubt due to his inexperience and/or recently attempted education.  In fact, the notion of content was already mature at the birth of interactive multi-media products (remember PC controlled laser-disc players?) in the early 1980s, when we were developing content (the ‘payload’) ensconced in metadata along with new and delightful UIs (user interfaces or ‘wrappers’).  For broadcasts, the metric of Content Factor was also born, measuring the time fraction of content divided by the advertised duration or time slot length of the show.  (Today CFs for most entertainment programs on commercial TV are in the 0.55 to 0.75 range.)

The Real Issue That Divides Us (updated 27jan19)

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

Scattershots – 22jan19 (updated 24jan19)

George Rebane

The ignorant-to-evil needle has made a big jump toward evil in the last couple of days with the MAGA hat massacre in DC, and the shaming of Second Lady Mrs Pence.  The Catholic boys in the MAGA hats committed two sins for which the Liberal Lies machine went ballistic – they were Christians and obvious Trump supporters.  That was enough to fabricate a hateful story about their racism against American Indians and disseminate a carefully edited video to lamestream outlets who all joined in the howling for the boys’ scalps.  When the story was quickly discredited, the howlers just moved on to their next coverage of fake news.  The same thing happened with Mrs Pence who was pilloried for being provided Secret Service protection for her engagement as an arts teacher at a (gasp!) Christian grade school.  To the legions of progressive idiots that was evidence of violating the separation of church and state.  And the Left still thinks that the coming Great Divide is only a rightwing myth. 

Nevada County’s Love Walk on MLK day was strictly a one-sided affair.  For the attendees to such events, MLK’s civil rights legacy appears to have been a failure.  People attending are of a like mind that the country now is more racist than ever, and that extraordinary means need be brought to bear to restore Dr King’s dream, and this time we’ll get it right.  To boot, everyone not of this mindset is by definition a racist, and proof that today in America racism rules.  In a previous discussion of the ideological tilt of national holidays, it’s easy to see why MLK day is now firmly a leftwing holiday. (Imagine wearing your MAGA cap on the Love Walk.  To date we have not bothered to get our MAGA caps, but given what the socialist brown shirts have launched in the land, the time has come to get one and wear it.)

Wanna see quantitative economic projections on AOC’s 70% tax rate for the country? Take a look at the misery that such a confiscatory policy would heap on the middle class.  Yes, Virginia, the MIDDLE CLASS, because that’s where socialists have to go after they first cripple the economy with their tax on ‘the rich’.  The next inevitable tax, as government revenues sink, will be on the middle class, why?  Because that’s where the money is, and the poor snuffies voting for socialists haven’t a clue about their own doings in the voting booth.  And how will it be sold?  By turning up the volume on the “ravages of capitalism” narrative, of course.  (more here and here)

Racism and racist, terms progressives use constantly are among the terms no progressive wants to define.  Much to the consternation of our liberal readers, here on RR we are prone to pursue semantics, especially of the operational kind (meaning you can usefully apply them in the realworld).  Illustrating this are a couple of forays into this melee ‘Who is a Racist?’ and ‘Racialism Rising’, and, of course, see the RR Glossary.

[23jan19 update]  RR readers are aware of my longstanding thoughts on unionized public schools.  The recent LA teachers strike underlined all these concerns, and the main concern that union teachers don’t really give a care for the kids as again pointed out by Jason Riley (here) in the 23jan19 WSJ.  “When the United Auto Workers walk off the job, no one pretends the care about car buyers. … Yet striking public school teachers and their union representatives insist they are action behalf of the children.  We’re expected to believe the priorities of education workers are perfectly aligned with those of students.”  The blatant facts about school spending, students’ performance, and aggressive opposition to the spread of non-union, public charter schools tells a completely different story.  “Teachers unions are unions first, not reformers or student advocates.  Their real agenda – their only agenda – is to protect their members by any means possible.  No matter what those picket signs said, the unions weren’t helping students.  They were using them.”

[24jan19 update] “Senate Rejects Two Rival Spending Bills, Extending Shutdown” Can we now finally give up the notion that just because one party or the other has a majority in Congress (specifically the Senate), that it therefore ‘controls’ what that chamber does?  The Founders intended government’s ability to make laws to be a slow, deliberative, if not awkward process, and the Senate’s super-majority rule of 60 votes helps implement this intent.  So let’s pick up a bit on the simplistic arguments in these comment streams about which party ‘controlled’ Congress in what years so as to imply that they could have passed anything they wanted.  Sophomoric!

SecComm Wilbur Ross today picked up on my suggestion that the fed workers running out of cash should just go get a loan to tide them over.  And he was dunned for making such a practical suggestion.  The needy fed workers would not be borrowing more than their take-home pay since that is what they had planned to spend in the first place, and that amount is guaranteed to them after the shutdown ends.  That is about the best collateral, save US Treasuries, that you can give a lender who can even have you sign a paper agreeing that the govt submit the loan amount directly to the lender.  And the lenders can get extra PR brownie points by advertising that these are short-term no interest loans.  What’s not to like?  Yet it was only ol’ Wilbur who finally came up with that while the rest of Washington is just sitting around with their teeth in their mouth.  It’s almost as if both sides wanted the furloughed to go on a publicized fast.  Nah!

Border Security, Barriers, and Porosity (updated)

George Rebane

No nation-state can long maintain its culture and sovereignty without the ability and will to control its borders.

“Sounds like a lack of technology rather than the porosity of a wall”, replied a commenter who had just finished celebrating the capture of illegals who had tunneled under an old, shallow, and unmanned remote section of our southern border.  He and others like him gleefully pointed that out as evidence supporting the Left’s new narrative that border barriers (walls, fences, …) are “ineffective” and “don’t work”.  And then he posted the above statement which confused (i.e. “rather than”) barrier system design with a metric of its performance.  Such mistakes from the Left abound today in the media and these pages.  We can leave the question of how much these erroneous statements are forged through simple ignorance vs promoting the ‘hate Trump’ agenda.  There is little we can do to heal their TDS, however there is an outside chance that their ignorance can be alleviated (given that there is no stupidity – i.e. processing deficit – at play).

Motivated by the above general principle, border control is defined as the ability to determine the ingress and egress of people and goods across geographical boundaries which delineate the jurisdictional limits of a sovereign nation-state.  Border controls are implemented by many means, depending on the border geography, implemented border security systems, and the cost burden the nation is willing to bear to implement its border security policies which should include one or more publicly known border control performance metrics that are part of the nation’s overall border control (multi-attribute) utility function.  The most meaningful attribute is the border’s overall porosity metric.

Border porosity is a bidirectional measure of the rate of illegal crossings in either the egress or ingress directions across the national boundary.  Today we are overwhelmingly concerned with only the ingress of illegal aliens.  In practice, porosity will vary over a range of values along a long, complex border having varying physical and political attributes that come into play.  Here we have to be careful in how we apply the above definition of porosity.  Specifically, the ingress porosity metric does NOT include the accretion of illegal aliens through non-border means such as overstaying their visa permissions.  Aliens who entered legally under various immigration, tourist, and guest-worker policies, and then ‘went illegal’ are a concern for our internal alien tracking and policing systems.

So when we want to have a meaningful discussion of border security, we must start with at least the statement of an acceptable ‘mean porosity’ level that, if exceeded, alerts us to discover and fix the cause of having violated the policy threshold.  As RR readers may be aware, my own considered border porosity threshold is a quite generous annual entry of 15,000 illegal aliens who are not intercepted/captured at the border, and successfully meld into our population.  These illegals then become fugitives from our laws, and are to be brought back into our legal system by our internal alien tracking and policing systems.

Now regarding physical border barriers (in military jargon known as ‘fixed field fortifications’) – I will not waste readers’ time countering the ignorant and inane critics who suddenly maintain that such barriers are “ineffective” and “don’t work”.  (And to address the question of their ‘morality’ is for me beyond accessible levels of idiocy.)  The main purpose of such physical barriers has always been to reduce the boundary or border manning requirements wherever they are constructed.  As we are taught in the military, all unmanned fixed field fortifications can be penetrated by a determined enemy, and that goes for desperate migrants breaching unguarded segments of our southern border.  The question on what to build where depends strictly on how we must share the ‘hardware’ (walls, fences, surveillance/tracking/penetration detection systems, etc) costs with the costs of staffing our boots-on-the-ground Border Patrol, ICE, and other border interdiction units in order to maintain the acceptable porosity levels along the border.

The Left’s current narrative about whether we need walls, or slats, or fences, or whatever, and that Trump lied if he doesn’t really intend to build some ridiculously high concrete wall from the Pacific to the Gulf, is just unmitigated bullshit that diverts the national attention from border security.  This narrative panders to the nation’s Latinos, and seeks to increase the inflow of future Democrat voters who will join the ranks of those who already are working to bring America to its knees as one more compliant complement that genuflects to the brave new world of one global government.

(Now let’s see what President Trump has to say about this in his imminent speech at noon (PST) from the Oval Office.)

[update] President Trump’s short speech was full of compromises that traded multiple tranches of benefits to resident illegal aliens, including extending the DACA stays to three years, in return for the next $5.7B for border security which includes barrier systems.  He also invited the Dems to an accelerated bipartisan program to hammer out a new comprehensive immigration policy and implementing laws. (more here)  The Republican majority Senate will now draft and pass a bill that incorporates the President’s compromise proposal to terminated the partial shutdown and proceed on the road to immigration reform putatively desired by both sides.  It will be up to the Pelosi House to pass and work out with the Senate a compromise bill that the President will sign.  If Team Pelosi continues to tell the President to stuff it where the sun don’t shine, then that should remove the last shreds of doubt as to who has been stonewalling the shutdown from the gitgo.

Ruminations - 18jan19 (updated 21jan19)

Federal workers demonstrate because they don't have the money to buy food or pay the rent. Why haven't some of the nation's major lenders stepped forward to lend them money at low/no interest rates until they start getting a check again?  The money so lent would be at minimal risk since the borrowers have their government jobs and their back-pay checks as collateral of equal quality to US Treasury bonds.  Where are all these rightwing bankers who could lend Trump and the Republicans a political hand while reaping beaucoup PR rewards? ...  OK, then where are the leftwing lenders since the overwhelming share of government workers are Democrat voters?

[update]  RR contributor and blogger Russ Steele wrote and excellent Other Voices in the 18jan19 Union making the case for “upskilling” your workplace talents in the age of galloping AI.  In his ‘STEM for all’ he also pointed out what SESF has been doing in promoting and supporting STEM education in Nevada County.

Former Trump attorney Cohen’s most recent allegations about candidate Trump’s real estate dealings with Russia are making big headlines that have every Dem and all their cousins calling for more investigations, and definitely for the president’s impeachment.  But no one is lifting an eyebrow about what was just released about Bruce Ohr’s testimony last August that revealed a string of lies the FBI told Congress and on its FISA application to investigate Trump’s campaign.  And also that two of the liars have been key members of Mueller’s team continuing to investigate the president.  The magnitude of such misdirection of national attention is beyond astounding and does not portend well for our beloved republic.  (more here)

‘If Weed Is Medicine, So Is Budweiser’, so goes a convincing argument by Dr Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.  He points out that MJ “is a toxin, not a medicine” per se as its adherents claim for ailments ranging from hepatitis to Parkinson’s.  Citing studies, Bach tells us that “if weed is a pain reliever, so is Budweiser.”  His message of “Legalize marijuana, but don’t pretend it’s therapeutic” come with the bottom line that MJ “belongs in the same category as alcohol an tobacco – harmful products that adults can choose to enjoy”, and they need to be regulated as such.

"Trump's Shutdown" - Here's a quiz, how is this government shutdown significantly different from Obama's shutdown, and previous ones?  And here is the answer.

[20jan19 update]  Fiber in Nevada City.  Russ Steele sent me this which might be of interest to our locals concerned about the county's economic development.  "I am reading Susan Crawford's book Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution—and Why America Might Miss It. Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor at Harvard Law School.  There are ten references to Nevada City and John Paul's Fiber Network in her book recounting the struggle to bring fiber to Nevada City/Grass Valley.   More details on my blog:"  https://ruraleconomytechnology.com

[21jan19 update]  Gov Newsom’s early childhood education spending. Our new governor wants to spend “$2.4 billion in early childhood investments, including significant funding for health care, home visiting programs, early developmental screening, high-quality early learning and paid family leave.”  That’s all well and good with two significant caveats – 1) anyone know of any successful govt education program outside the military?  2) anyone know of any early childhood education programs that made a measurable difference by the time the child reached 3^rd grade?  But in a state that already has the largest number of poor, indigents, and welfare recipients in the Union, along with uncountable and uncounted unfunded liabilities, the governor’s budget proposal is sure to add another tranche of government employees and reliable Democrat voters.  (more here)

Swedish Rhapsody

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 16 January 2019.]

George Rebane

Today our socialist politicians feel that they have the wind at their back to fundamentally transform our country into the Socialist States of America.  And that may well be the case as poll after poll shows that for most Americans capitalism has fallen out of favor, or at best they are indifferent to its existence and role in supporting their quality of life.  The Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, are now the major voting block, having taken their positions in government and the private sector workforce.  Their attitudes reflect the education they received in our unionized public schools, and most are definitely in favor of socialism as the better way to organize society and our economy – over half prefer socialism to capitalism.

For most Americans, tilting leftward or already there, Scandinavia is their siren song of socialism.  And among those nations, Sweden is the posterchild and most frequent answer to, ‘Why can’t we be more like …?’  Sweden is held up to us by both progressive politicians and their handmaiden media as the paragon of how to correctly do government.

Scattershots – 11jan19 (updated 17jan19)

George Rebane

None of the rabid opposition to border security makes sense, and even less so with the passing months. We supposedly look at and experience the same world, yet obviously live in different universes. Physics may have an answer for that, but everyday logic in the conduct of human affairs does not, especially if we assume that both sides are working for a strong, independent, free, and prosperous America. Logic clicks back into place when we remove that assumption.

Israel’s wall costs $2M/mile. (more here)  That is a good stake in the ground to estimate the cost of our border security infrastructure which would not be a 2,000-mile concrete wall, but would instead consist of other barrier approaches and supportive detection and localization systems.  Posit $3M/mile for our southern border, and the cost would come to $6B.  And that includes all of the overhead.  Claiming that our border property owners will fight the increased border security is a red herring that does not jibe with what actual property owners are saying.  It is they who have suffered at the hands of illegal entrants whose criminal activities transiting their property has made living on the border dangerous.

Was sorry to see today’s (11jan19) Union column by publisher Don Rogers. His arguments against border security ignored all the marginal impacts on crime, culture, and costs of a porous border outlined in ‘The mangling of managed minds’.  It seems that being blind to that line of reasoning is a widespread malady among our Left, for it always appears to form the basis of their resulting fractured logic for opposing Trump’s border security policies, aka the same ones that the congressional Left supported not so long ago.

Bright fiber in Nevada County is a reported go, but details about the scope of the project are less than skimpy.  All that’s reported in The Union (here and here) is that 2,000 homes along Hwy 174 will be getting enhanced broadband in about a year.  But there is more than enough detail on the bureaucratics and the funding to roll your eyes.  However, people who don’t happen to live along 174 haven’t a clue as to how this project will advance the rest of the county toward 21^st century connectivity.  In short, after reading the reportage I again had to strap on my ‘Pardon me but you have me confused with someone who cares’ button.  Maybe more informed readers will provide the much needed information.

Ex-Muslims of North America is an organization of former American and Canadian Muslims united to spread word about ‘the religion of peace’ and support those who have left and are contemplating leaving Islam.  Their position on their former faith parallels that of RR.  Islam is still in its ‘Accept Allah or die!’ phase of maturing.  But unfortunately this is happening in a much more connected world laced with an abundance of very deadly technologies.  Just to be clear, all major religions have and/or are still going through such a violent and uncompromising phase.  Christianity most certainly had its ‘Accept Jesus or die!’ epoch in the centuries after Rome, starting coincidentally about when Islam was born on the Arabian peninsula. 

[12jan19 update]  Fact checking Trump.  Leftwing readers here have been taking President Trump to task for his ‘lies’, the overwhelming share of such are easily identified as political bluster of the kind that can be tallied for any politician on either side of the aisle.  There are however certain statements from a politician that are intended to elicit and/or support public support for government policy.  Such weighty claims are usually easy to fact-check either at the time of delivery or subsequently.  President Trump’s recent border security speech from the Oval Office contained a number of such statements.  Here is a fact-check summary of five of the most important ones from that speech.

Venice, CA now importing SF values. Beautiful seaside community of Venice in SoCal is rapidly becoming the next ‘sierra hotel’ city in the state, joining Anaheim and the long-enduring People's Republic of Santa Monica as newly risen exemplars of socialist governance.  The Hollywood Reporter has the details in its ‘LA's Battle for Venice Beach: Homeless Surge Puts Hollywood's Progressive Ideals to the Test’.  There “with swelling transient encampments abutting seven-figure homes, the beachside enclave has emerged as a flashpoint for the inequality shaping Los Angeles — and a real-world test case for the liberal ideology of the area’s showbiz residents.” (H/T to correspondent)

[13jan19 update]  Conjecture: NYC mayor Bill deBlasio is a communist, having passed to the left of all remaining progressive milestones. (more here)

[14jan19 update] Whether you like or regret (like me) many of our President's tweets and hipshot repartees, this is what many Americans believe is really the case.

[17jan19 update]  Border barriers (walls, fences, ...) "don't work and are ineffective" maintains the Democrat leadership and their nationwide constituents.  Border security officers with long years of experience maintain exactly the opposite.  I have not found any journalist with the wit or temerity to ask people like Pelosi, 'What evidence do you have about border barrier systems that overrides the testimony of our border security professionals and which supports you continued assertions that such border security infrastructure "doesn't work"?  (We'll address the "immorality" question another time.)  Asking the Democrats to produce such evidence would put this debate on the fast track to resolution, not only with regard to border security funding, but also the government shutdown.  RR readers know the disdain I have for the journalistic profession, I have found almost all journalists to be alarmingly ignorant hacks with little or no spine to seek out and report truth that is counter to their publishers' and/or editors' agendas.

The mangling of managed minds

George Rebane

People who are informed primarily through media soundbites have been shown to have very volatile opinions.  When a new and contrary tranche of soundbites comes along, such people more often than not change their minds and follow the new direction of the most recent compelling soundbite.  This is because soundbite driven opinions are reactionary and not reasoned.  That is simply because the individual takes no time or effort to develop any depth of understanding in what he currently believes.  Finicky and fleeting feelings drive decisions for such people.  Bryan Caplan, in his The Myth of the Rational Voter, was one of the first to publish the research confirming how voters make decisions about issues and candidates.

The bottom line acceptance of Caplan’s findings is corroborated by how politicians and our news media (specifically the lamestream) construct their messages for soundbite thinkers.  This morning’s analyses of President Trump’s Oval Office speech last night is chuck full of such messaging.

One frequently used ruse is to dismiss stated levels by surreptitiously sliding the argument over to rates, and also dismiss inconvenient rates by citing the more fortuitous change in the offending rate.  [For the technically versed, this well-known process is known as ‘climbing the derivative ladder’ until you find the one that serves your narrative.]  An example here is the President’s citing the high number of illegals currently coming over the border.  This the lamestream journalist brushes off by telling listeners that the rate of illegals entering was higher in the past.  For innumerates and soundbite thinkers, this is an effective way to dismiss concern over the continuing rate of illegal entrants.  Presented in this context, it never occurs to them that what’s happening now is still a huge and preventable problem that overwhelms our border security personnel.

Mending Wall (updated 12jan19)

Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

 

[12jan19 gjr update] From some of the comments below it appears that a word of clarification is required, not only about Frost’s poem but also walls, fences, and other things that demark and control access.  Such constructs are nothing more than the existential and visible attributes of contracts that define property rights within a society.  These transmit the unambiguous message that this side belongs to me, and the other side belongs to someone else; and I don’t want someone from the other side coming unbeknownst to me onto my property from where I have constructed my wall/fence or any other kind of barrier.  For access to my property at certain locations I have provided gates, the states of which I can control, and therefore control access to my property.

People who don’t share the value of such rights, and perhaps feel that these delineated things should be owned in common, or at least be shared unhindered, will oppose physical barriers that unambiguously define ownership and provide for non-owner access only at the pleasure of the owner.

Today such values are very much the topic of hot debate between ideologically estranged peoples and nations.  Conservatives and libertarians are very much proponents of property rights and such expression of these rights.  They believe that property (and any asset of value) that is owned by everyone is owned by no one, and treated as such.  (cf. Garrett Hardin's 'Tragedy of the Commons')  Everywhere that property is ‘owned by the people’, it is actually owned by their government which visibly deports itself as owner.  The definition of ownership is straightforward – you own something only to the extent that you can dispose of it as you will.  The thinking person immediately understands that ownership is not a simple ‘you own it, or you don’t’.  Instead, they know that ownership is very much nuanced, and that anything owned can also be taken insidiously and stage wise from the weaker by the stronger.  In the US we have seen such erosion of ownership occur with many things, including real property and firearms.  In an autocracy (which we are fast becoming) such subtle transfers of ownership are replaced by more direct and unambiguous methods.

(In understanding ownership, be careful not to confuse that notion with the responsibility for and/or accountability for the disposition of said property by its de juris owner or any third party.)

Mr Boardman’s Bamboozle or Boo-boo?

George Rebane

Intrepid leftwing columnist at The Union, George Boardman, is either trying to bamboozle the lightly-read reader, or was just a bit fast and loose on the keyboard in his 7jan19 submittal to the newspaper.  In his commentary ‘Don’t Expect Reality to Intrude on Trump’s Argument for a Border Wall’, Mr Boardman launches into a sonorous if not somnambulant recounting of the debate about how to secure our southern border.  He repeats the new shibboleths about whether it should really be a solid concrete wall or some other form of possible physical barrier “to cut-off the hordes of illegal immigrants poring(sic) across the border to take good-paying American jobs, commit numerous crimes, and turn our fair country into an outpost of lawlessness.”  Well, he almost got that list right – nobody is worried about our country becoming “an outpost of lawlessness”, just illegals committing the reported numerous crimes and costing a bundle to hunt and house them in our prisons.

But his main argument for ignoring the tens of thousands pouring across our southern border is that they don’t number as many as those who enter the US legally with visas and then overstay.  Boardman quotes the legal entrant overstays for 2016 at 628,799, while the illegal entrants in 2016 number only 170,000.  Countering this, the US Customs and Border Protection arm of the Dept of Homeland Security post the more realistic 553,378 who were apprehended in 2016 (more here).  The number escaping apprehension is unknown, but reasonable estimates place it in the same range as the apprehensions.  And with the advent of the recent mass migrations, this number has increased significantly based on 102,857 apprehensions last year (2018) reported during October and November – the annualized number for this comes to over 600,000.  Again, we don’t know all of those illegals who got through our overwhelmed border security personnel.  The illegals who overstayed their visas in 2017 number 702,000 according to the DHS.  And yes, about half of the illegal aliens in the country today entered legally and overstayed their visas.

From his version of such statistics Mr Boardman concludes with the simple red herring that “If you really want to stop illegal immigration, a wall is not the solution.”  Nobody has maintained that any southern border barrier will stop all illegal aliens from settling in America.  But can his readers see through this little bit of legerdemain?  Nor does our columnist tell us that those entering legally with visas and those crawling through border barriers comprise two distinct cohorts of illegals.  Our immigration and border security people were able to vet those to whom we issued visas.  We know that they weren’t the obvious drug runners, human traffickers, unaccompanied minors, wanted criminals, terrorists, … .  Those coming in across the southern border (sometimes multiple times) do not submit to such examination, and there are enough of them to be of concern to reasonable law-abiding Americans who are not racists, xenophobes, or even nationalists. (more here)

After having convinced his readers that our porous southern border is not a concern, he does a subtle shift to put a cherry on that argument by citing all the benefits to the American economy and workforce contributed by immigrants who make up more than one sixth of our workforce and almost three fourths of our tech workers, many of whom are entrepreneurs starting new companies that grow our economy and maintain our leadership in the world of innovation and commerce.  (I also belong to that cohort.)  Well yes, but all of these people came in legally and are not the under-educated poor illegal entrants from, well, you know, what our fearless leader correctly called "shithole countries".  That subtle semantical pirouette of naming all foreign-born in America as ‘immigrants’, regardless of their mode of entry and legal status, continues to support the bamboozle our Left is successfully dispensing in today’s media.  Everyone is an immigrant, and since we are a nation of immigrants, therefore we must let all immigrants enter and succor their needs.  To do otherwise is heartless and un-American, capice?  (more here and here)

But in the final analysis Mr Boardman is a loyal liberal just soldiering on, polishing the progressive narrative to make it more palatable to the residents of these hinterlands. (Just to be clear, I too am guilty of doing my part to purvey the conservetarian worldview, hopefully with better numbers and reasoning.)

PS. Just to pile on, in this scurrilous piece of journalism, Mr Boardman also throws in some red meat for the alt-Left: Because in its op-ed the WSJ deigned to propose a solution to the government shutdown negotiations, our columnist asks, "Who said the fake news media doesn't have any clout in this country?" (emphasis mine)

Pelosi’s “Immoral Wall” (updated 6jan19)

George Rebane

In The Myth of the Rational Voter Bryan Caplan documented a significant body of research which showed that in the US voters in the aggregate are what may be termed formally insane.  The general understanding of this phenomenon applies to populations all over the world, and its general characteristics were even known to the ancients.  Of course, our well-read Founders knew this, and that is why, in order to avoid the mistakes of the past, they wisely did not leave us a democracy.

The democratic republic they did construct and detailed in our Constitution is supposed to keep the hoi polloi’s mitts off the machinery of our federal and state governments.  They inserted a hopefully wiser and more circumspect layer of elected representatives between the mass of citizens and the levers of power.  The idea was that such electeds would be better read and would take a broader view of things that insured the country’s prudent progress.  Unspoken, save in their oaths of office, was the notion that all of these worthies would be pro-American – i.e. legislate so as to assure the republic’s prosperous and permanent future.

Our Founders had no idea of the world order in which America would find itself 250 years after declaring our independence.  Today two major ideologies, founded by Marx and Muhammad, are working to bring all the peoples of the world under one monolithic governing leviathan.  Each, in the interval, willing to work off the gains of the other in the firm belief that they will be the victor when the dust settles.  In the meantime, there will be a need for lots of dust, or ‘cracked eggs’, or whatever to bring the outdated global gaggle of sovereign nation-states to an end.

Marx’s collectivists today march to that brave new world mostly under the socialist banner, although swapping for the colors of communism (already/still solidly ensconced in the community of nations) is always possible were stronger medicine necessary to mind the masses.  Muhammad’s disciples, no matter their current schisms, see the global caliphate under sharia law as the culmination of Allah’s plan for his earthly creation.  Both can accept convenient amalgamations of the two on the road to their glorious destinations.

Dems Embrace Shutdown (updated)

George Rebane (updated)

Now in its second week, the partial (25%) shutdown of the federal government continues with the Democrats refusing to negotiate with President Trump.  The natural deal to be made is for the Dems to accept the $5B for border security (including all means and methods) and the Repubs to accept legalizing the residence of DACA aliens.

The Dems’ position is clear and repeated often – they will refuse Trump any legislative victories and will use their House majority in the attempt to bring down this administration through the launch of a thousand investigations into anything remotely connected with Donald Trump, either now or back then.  The logic behind it is clear.

Let the DACA aliens swing in the wind while the border remains porous and countless thousands continue streaming in.  Sooner or later the illegal alien share of America’s population will be so high (now above 30M by some estimates) that the only non-violent political solution will be granting amnesty to the lot, with border security still unresolved (see also A21).  All of these new residents with a paved path to citizenship will be Democrat voters whose numbers overwhelm the paltry hundreds of thousands in the current DACA cohort.  All that is required is a prudently pernicious patience on the part of the Left.

And during the interval, our lightly-read neighbors will constantly be fed the repeated lies that legal immigration is the same as illegal entry, and that ‘walls don’t work’.  NY’s Gov Cuomo is repeating that lie today on Ellis Island, and history shows that walls are and always have been very effective in preventing both ingress and egress where they have been erected and maintained.  The Dems are placing a smart bet that after three generations their educational systems have produced enough double dummies to swallow whatever is fed to them.

[update]  In ‘Our Exhausted American Mediocracy’ noted historian Victor Davis Hanson takes us through the notable sea change that accompanied and/or was revealed by Donald Trump’s election to the presidency.  It is a marvelous summary of a perspective attempted by many writers over the last two years.  VDH nails it, and includes illuminating sections addressing ‘Earned Hypocrisies?’ and ‘A Case Against Trump?’.  I bring this essay mainly to the attention of our liberal neighbors who seem to get these ideas only through RR – consider it a public service of purview broadening.  (H/T to reader)

More to the point of the contempt with which Democrat politicians hold their constituents, another oft told lie is told in response to every new atrocity committed by an illegal alien – most recently by Gustavo Arriaga murdering police officer Ronil Singh.  The Left glibly counters the violence committed by illegals by the bland claim that ‘immigrants commit fewer crimes than the native born’, which their voters have no capacity to parse as to what that claim means.  In ‘The Immorality of Illegal Immigration’ VDH points out that ‘statisticians argue that immigrants commit fewer crimes than the native born, but never quite calibrate illegal immigrants into the equation (in part because no one has any idea who, where, or how many they are, as estimates range from 11 to 20 million) or note that second-generation native-born children of immigrants have much higher violent-crime rates than do their immigrant parents, and in circular fashion add to the general pool of violent Americans who then are used to contrast immigrants as less violent.’, and then makes the case that “we should redefine the entire morality of multifaceted illegal immigration.”

Ruminations – 1jan19 (updated 5jan19)

George Rebane

First and foremost, Jo Ann and I wish all of our family, friends, and RR readers a healthy and productive 2019 – hopefully, ‘happy’ can also be fit in there somewhere 😉

As things stand now, US economic growth will continue at a brisk rate in 2019 with low unemployment, especially for the historically unemployed minorities.  This is major consternation for the anti-American Left as it prepares for the 2020 elections.  Look for progressive policies aggressively promoted to stop this growth.

In the growing assault on the Trump presidency, if the calls from leftwing media outlets like truthout.org and vox.com to take to the streets is answered by the tens of thousands of alt-Left, then there is a good chance for some serious violence.  As most recently being demonstrated by the Democrat leadership, the search for middle-ground is long past.  Now it’s simply a destruction derby going on at the federal level.  The Left has already won several of such derbies at the states level.

Several pollsters tell us that more than half of millennials believe that capitalism is bad and socialism should be given a chance.  Very few of them know the definition of either means of organizing the economy and society.

This may be the year where businesses big and small realize the constructive and disruptive power of AI-based business systems.  No longer do we see all the hopeful arguments that AI will create more jobs.  Instead we (techies) notice a lot of quasi-tutorial pieces (e.g. 'What Exactly Is Artificial Intelligence?') in the world’s leading news media.  Most of them are written by journalists who haven’t quite cracked the code themselves on the topic.  Therefore, some are quite humorous.

Both sides of the climate change war (yes, it’s now a war) claim that 2018 was not a bad year for their respective perspectives.  For the global warmists, the latest IPCC report was their capstone for the unassailable edifice of ‘scientific proof’ that ‘preventable man-made global warming’ is happening and can be stopped without bad economic impacts.  The skeptics saw the report as a final admission that there is still no supporting science behind the whole matter.

California will be the state to watch in 2019 as all the brakes to slow down the long-promised Leftward Leap toward socialism have now been removed.  Keep your eye on the stats for one-way rentals of U-Haul trailers heading east.

RR will be meticulously read and denigrated by our local lefties, both in the blogosphere and in the more established media - we apparently live in their heads.  My wish for 2019 is that our commenters should continue to minimize their ad hominems, and put a churchillian polish on those that must be posted.  Remember, the internet is forever, even if you are a sackhead.

[2jan19 update]  This is actually an addendum to my 650am in the 28dec18 sandbox.  American autocracy, if it comes, will arrive through the ballot box.  This was also anticipated by Jefferson in his ‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’  Numerous examples of the Left counting on such ignorance arrive daily – today’s is from Gov Cuomo of NY speaking on Ellis Island.  There he vilifies President Trump and his secure borders initiatives by reminding Americans that both Cuomo’s and Trump’s grandfathers were immigrants who came through Ellis Island.  And then with his loony leftwing logic argues that legal immigration by foreign supplicants to these shores is equivalent to aliens violating our laws by illegally crossing our border and demanding their ‘right’ to residency.  Cuomo and Democrat leaders really believe we Americans are stupid enough to swallow that argument.  If they are right, then Jefferson’s dictum will surely come to pass.

[5jan19 update]  The country’s progressives are giving high fives to the 70% marginal tax policy suggested by the newest proto-communist in Congress.  Congresswoman AOC is lauded as being spot on with her new tax policy on earned income.  Some leftwing worthies point out that in bygone days such high tax rates made the rich keep their money in investments and, therefore, that helped the economy and will do so again.  Their blindspot seems to be in what people do with all their excess disposable income.  The socialists seem to think that such people take that income in cash, and then stow it away under their mattresses – i.e. the money leaves the economy.  That, of course, is not the case at all.  The well-to-do spend that money in maintaining and expanding their expensive lifestyles, which means that it winds up in the revenues of merchants, manufacturers, and purveyors of recreational products/services.  The commerce and jobs that result from such spending constitute a tremendous boost to our entrepreneurial and innovative small and mid-size companies who are the nation’s leading employers.  None of this thinking is accessible to our collectivists and corporatists.

Scattershots – 27dec18 (updated 30dec18)

George Rebane

LIBERAL BILLIONAIRE APOLOGIZES FOR FUNDING RUSSIAN BOT ‘FALSE FLAG’  Those fun-loving Democrats just can’t leave well enough alone when the go to work getting out the vote.  In the 2016 national election Crooked Hillary and her DNC had to do some numbers ginning up dirt on the opposition, and even putting down the hammer on one of their own kind who didn’t get the hint that it wasn’t his turn (ever).  But most recently it was “billionaire Reid Hoffman (who) apologized Wednesday for funding an effort to dupe Alabama voters into believing Russian bots were fueling Republican Roy Moore’s failed senatorial bid.”  Yep, you really don’t want to get yourself into the cross-hairs of that bunch.

Truthout.org, the ultra-left (well, actually communist) opinion shaper and progressives’ moral voice, is now calling for acts of sabotage to bring down the Trump administration.  This week the summons went out to Democrat constituencies across the country (‘We Can’t Wait on a Savior to Remove Trump. We Must Resist En Masse’), followed by a specific call directed at government employees for “federal disobedience” and “noncooperation” (‘Federal Disobedience: Why We Must Support Federal Worker Noncooperation’).  It is literally impossible to make this up.  Today’s Left is no different from the Bosheviks of old; when the established (constitutional) order cannot be brought down by their ideas in the public forum, then it must be attacked by all other trans-rational means available.

Most longtime RR readers know that people of the Left get a very one-sided view of the world that is dispensed by their favorite ideological wordsmiths and talking heads.  They stick to their own kind when it comes to forming their picture of the world.  And because of this, our local leftwing contingent continually creates comic relief in these comment streams when they unknowingly show up with their blinders on and claim that RR has a solo hold on ideas that counter their carefully cultivated credos.  When other readers provide links and point out contrary references in my commentaries, that information is simply ignored by our lefties as if it didn’t exist – they just continue their critiques cased in the comfort that not only do these ideas have local provenance, but that they also have limited purview.  Hence, if they can be stamped out here in their cradle, the outside world will not be infected.  BTW, here’s a laundry list of fake news that our progressives swallowed hook, line, and sinker during the past year from their faithful fountains of facts.

That old-time religion in America is on the skids.  We have been pointing out for years how the media and our educational systems have been composing recessionals to Christianity as part of their assault on western culture and civilization.  Every time new stats are collected and composed, the story becomes bleaker for our Judeo-Christian heritage.  The evidence for that is most visible during the year-end holiday season when secular humanity makes its strongest assault on the faith of our fathers.  I was directed to a current compendium on this cultural transformation by Joel Kotkin (‘As the Old Faiths Collapse, the Greens, Social Justice Warriors, and Techno-Futurists Aim to Fill the Void’) by a reader and correspondent.  After giving us the dreary numbers of how our traditional religions are being forsaken by the young moderns, despite heroic efforts by churches and temples to inject socio-political ideology into their liturgies, Kotkin documents the parallel social phenomenon of the Left desperately cobbling together new faiths to serve new gods, so that they will not miss out on that ineffable something that they see gracing the lives of the remaining Christian and Jewish holdouts.  (Here is Truthout's report this.) The real interesting news here is about the outliers of secular humanists’ fabricated faiths.  These involve the new trans-humanist faith(s?), and those churches of god without god.  Kotkin concludes his essay with –

The loss here would not only be for the faithful but the entire society. Religious institutions rooted in the past also serve as ideal transmitters of traditional culture and identity; the new ones see themselves largely as warriors of the future, based on perceived social and scientific truths. Trans-humanists, for their part, seek to reduce reality to data, rejecting much of what makes us different not only from other animals, but machines. … Ultimately, the new religions, seeking to fill the void left behind by traditional faiths, offer little to families in search of moral instruction or guidance for how different kinds of people can get along. They have no answers for addressing the reality that almost all of us alive today, despite the scheming of the trans-humanists, eventually will die. A world without the old faiths may still be spiritually engaged, even hysterically so, but we may lose the lessons of community, sacrifice, discipline and faith that the old religions taught to bind our societies together.

[28dec18 update]  “Climate change has always been the cover story, not the real issue which (is) Agenda 21 Sustainability.” writes a reader and correspondent in this morning’s email.  This year’s IPCC special report SR-15 details the real agenda that was pursued at this year’s international climate change conference in Katowice, Poland. (more here)  The global warming bamboozle continues in full force, but the real objectives for arguably the greatest wholesale fraud ever attempted on the entire world’s population are now leaking out, and there to see for everyone who cares to pay attention.  Unfortunately, humans in the aggregate are not that bright.

‘China Reins In Its Tech Giants’ reports the 28dec18 WSJ.  “The closer scrutiny of tech companies comes as Mr. Xi seeks to restore the Communist Party's pre-eminence as a force in people’s lives and to establish that the Party—and not the private sector—is charting the course for China’s future.”  Communism, like our progressive sector, has always claimed to be society’s most reliable moral compass.  Therefore, kowtowing to the Party, China’s industries like ride-sharing Didi are now hiring thousands of “Communist Party members as role models for customer service.”  For our global competitive position, this is the best news coming out of the Middle Kingdom in years.  (Here our Dems will do their best to emulate China starting 3 January 2019.)

Nokidhungry.org maintains that childhood hunger is prevalent in over ten million American households.  And this goes on under governments that have uncountable programs for helping and feeding even mildly or totally unneedy families and individuals.  Congress just passed an $867B (dreadfully misnamed) ‘farm bill’, of which 85% or $737B goes for food stamps for the poor.  For the hungry households, this computes to over $73K for each household’s annual food budget.  Cut that in half and half again, and you’d still come up with over $18K per year for groceries.  What do each of these messages convey about the extent of children going hungry – ‘In America 1 in 6 kids is starving’, ‘- does not have enough to eat’, ‘- faces hunger’.?  (nokidhungry uses the last one in its ads).  But the real question is, what’s wrong with this picture?  (Extra credit:  What’s the political persuasion of the overwhelming share of bureaucrats who have been running the food stamps program for years?)

[30dec18 update]  I was graced by Union columnist George Boardman to appear in his tomorrow's (31dec18) offering.  He quoted from the addendum to my 3jan18 KVMR commentary - "I believe the present state of affairs in the world order are the result of the spontaneously coordinated efforts of fundamental Islam and western socialism’s striving to meet Agenda21 objectives."  I invite readers to reread the complete addendum.

‘Do We Need Our Country Anymore?’

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scattershots – 16dec18 (updated 20dec18)

"Distrust of experts is the cornerstone of science."  Richard Feynman

George Rebane

CA’s revenue model is a disaster as we bid adieu to Gov Moonbeam (he got the name in the 70s when he proposed the state start its own NASA).  70% of state revenues come from personal income taxes, and half of these (i.e. 35%) are paid by the top 1% of earners.  These monies come from feast-or-famine earnings, making state financial planning virtually impossible.  Dems believe in corporations bearing a heavy tax burden, and that CA has been awash with big corporations.  What’s wrong with this picture as the state’s know-nothing electorate keeps sending ever more functional idiots to Sacramento?  And what does the exiting Moonbeam say? - "CA's next governor is going to be on the edge of a cliff."

NPR told us in detail this morning that it is America’s responsibility to reduce wait-times for hordes of asylum seekers encamped on the other side of our southern border.  It doesn’t matter at what rates these thousands of hopeful migrants arrive there, the lamestream tells Americans that it is their government’s job to expand immigration handling facilities and staff so as to minimize inconvenience and discomfort to aliens who demand entry into our land.  The whole narrative is sold to our nebbishes as the need to stop the US from violating some kind of human rights if foreigners are not processed lickety-split at our border crossing points.  The not so hidden message being that if they have to wait, then it is their right to enter illegally, at which point we either let them disappear into our population, or register them and start taking care of them indefinitely.

[18dec18 update]  Single Payer fake news is revealed once more.  The socialists promoting socialized medicine all over the world have to convert the US to that government-run system, else it continues to give lie to all their efforts to run such programs in other countries.  Dr Scott Atlas, senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, writes ‘Single Payer’s Misleading Statistics’ in which he takes apart the fake news which the lamestream and its (also local) acolytes tout about how poorly the US is doing viz the other more enlightened countries with nationalized healthcare.  Well, for openers Dr Atlas shows that “mediocre US rankings in infant mortality and life expectancy have little to do with health care quality.”  He goes on to reveal the many kinds of apples-to-oranges comparisons that fake news purveyors have relied on for years to convince many Americans that since government has screwed up so many other things it has commandeered, our healthcare industry should also be put under its care and management.

Caltrans is the latest expert on climate change.  The 18dec18 Union reports (here),  “Caltrans has released two Climate Change Vulnerability Assessments as part of an effort to understand how and where climate change may impact the State Highway System, a news release states.  The assessments evaluate risks, including extreme temperatures, increased precipitation, storm surge, wildfire risk and sea level rise. … Extreme weather and its associated costs are expected to become more pronounced and more frequent in the future as a result of climate change. … Caltrans has developed an interactive mapping application for public use, which shows impacted locations and the climate model results. … The reports and the interactive mapping application can be accessed (here).”  Note physicist Richard Feynman's caution above.

‘DeBlasio Sees Too Many Asians’ – Yes indeed, NYC’s DeBlasio is another hard-left politician who supports socially destructive diversity through blatantly racist policies - once more proving that sacrificing racism on the altar of diversity is no sin.  The mayor argues that the merit-based admission process to the city’s eight elite high schools is unjust because Asians make up more than 70% of their student bodies, whites about 20%, and Latinos and African-Americans coming in around 5%.  Hizzoner displays his critical thinking and numeracy skills by pointing out that “only 10% of Black or Latino students get offers from the specialized high schools even though they account for nearly 70% of the city’s high school population.”  Well, no kidding.  As part of its contribution to national dumbth, NYC’s 3-8^th graders overall are less than 50% proficient in English and math, while for black students only one in three and one in four are proficient respectively in English and math.  And once more, the Left continues to do what it can in every sphere of public policy to promote America-last policies on the world stage.

[20dec18 update]  Pulling out of Syria.  This is a big step in the implementation of our Mideast policy.  I usually weigh in on such happenings, and here’s my two cents of Rebane Doctrine.  Unless we want to completely abandon the Mideast to let them settle their affairs with only Russian and Chinese meddling, I think Trump is making a mistake in pulling out the remaining 2K US troops from Syria.  This move will give ISIS a second wind to retrench as Turkey et al will attack our Kurdish allies in Syria – ISIS will stand aside and watch its enemies beat crap out of each other.  I am a longstanding proponent of Kurdistan, and see a strong Kurdish state made from contiguous pieces of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey as contributing mightily to Mideast stability, and acting as the bulwark against Iran’s establishing its strategic ‘arc to the Mediterranean’.  The new Kurdistan would stand smack dab in the way of that, and having their own nation would bring an end to the Turks’ decades long fight in their south-east with Kurdish militants.

The US staying in Syria to maintain the current power balance is a hell of a lot better politically and logistically than pulling out and then having to go back in for a number of reasons, all bad for US interests.  But if we decide to leave the Mideast altogether, then the Turks and Iran will probably wind up going to war over who will be the new regional hegemon.  We will lose the trust of the regional semi-allies – Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt – we still have left, all of whom will seek other accommodations with Iran, Turkey, Russia, and China.  And then we’ll have to go back in later to protect Israel, which will be totally on its own in the region.  Are we then going to abandon Israel to use its nuclear capability to defend itself, or will we have to go back in at multiples of the political, dollar, and human costs to keep our promise to the Jewish state?  President Trump hasn’t told us what his druthers are about our staying in the region, or pulling up stakes and letting radical Islam have a real go at dominating the entire Mideast.  All things considered, a bit by piece pullout is not the answer to any problem.