Rebane's Ruminations

Scattershots – 20mar20 (22mar20)

George Rebane

'Most of us will get the Wuhan virus, a small fraction of us will die.  But we will continue business and commerce as usual with all the prudence we can each muster, because the death and destitution a depression will bring will be much worse for all of us.'  A hoped for statement from President Trump.

The lamestream is very quiet about the Covid19 goings on in Europe.  They are focusing all their reporting on Italy which really screwed the pooch on its handling of the virus, and is now the media’s unavoidable posterchild for all the comparisons with the US.  Even there they like to dun our feds (i.e. Trump) on stats like hospital beds per person, and testing (of uncertain effectiveness and reliability).  However, their unconnected dots involve national preparedness and the response effectiveness of nationalized healthcare – those don’t look so good, so nothing is said about that.  Moreover, similar problems are encountered in the rest of the EU countries starting with France, Germany, Spain, …, about which there seems to be a total blackout.  And for good reason.  Keeping Americans up to date on doings all over the continent would really put a big dent in our socialists’ long- and carefully-concocted narrative about the shortcomings of America under Team Trump.  More comprehensive reporting would reveal that President Trump has really done all the right things with what he inherited, and the Europeans are now playing catch-up, starting with the “racist” sealing of their borders.   But according to the Dems and their media lackeys, we are to pay no attention to what’s going on behind that curtain. (Here is a website that a young man up in Washington (more here) set up to fill in this shortfall of information.)

Trump and his team look and say like they’re trying to make this a ‘V-shaped’ recession.  (See also ‘Your money or …’)  If they succeed, they will come out smelling like a rose in November.  The other side of our political spectrum, the socialists, will be doing everything they can to make the recession be shaped like a ‘lazy L’, steep down and slow up (you know, like we had with Obama).  That will make the case for blaming the whole thing on the Trump administration so much easier.  They care not for lost jobs or businesses, the more misery the better.  Why?  It helps support their anti-capitalist narrative, and gives them a basis for policies to enlarge government, shrink the private sector, and gain firmer control of the lives and fortunes of those pesky liberty-loving Americans.  There will definitely be a mounting tension between the central planners and the free market capitalists as this pandemic matures.

[21mar20 update]  Urban lightweight versions of the heavier Bradley Fighting Vehicles on Manhattan streets (here).  These are actually armored personnel carriers, the modern version of the classic Mk113 APC that yours truly spent some uncomfortable hours in.  The government is making a very strong statement that it will not tolerate armed civil unrest during this crisis.  This show of force had only one message as these armored and armed urban fighting vehicles were moved to pre-arranged ready areas that are being set up in local sports stadiums and school football fields.  The inquisitive readers wants to know why this is not covered on the mainstream media, why only Twitter feeds.  Thoughts?

The thin veil of civilization starting to rip.  This Twitter video of looting at Walmart (here) is probably a harbinger of things to come.  No one will starve to death quietly when there’s food to be had in locations unguarded or easily overcome – write that down somewhere if it’s news to you.  Advent of desperate times, therefore, even if you’re ready unlimber your shootin’ arn, it’s better to get on with Alernative #2 sooner than later (here).

[22mar20 update] Sen Richard Burr (R-NC) should resign and be prosecuted for his 13feb20 cashing out of stocks, in violation of the Congressional Stock Act, after a closed-door (not confidential) meeting of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee, the results and reports of which immediately appeared on Twitter – i.e. the information received was public and not privileged, hence no violation of the Stock Act as also interpreted by other senators who sold stock.  Nevertheless, that is the position taken on Sen Burr by the media and many congressional colleagues.  Before running with the herd, I’d like to note from what we’ve been told that 1) no presented testimony foretold stock markets’ behavior, 2) the attendees and the online public had to connect the dots by themselves, 3) there is no law or ethical imperative requiring a legislator to broadcast his personal assessments (especially dire ones that can panic the public) or private transactions from the broadly available information he receives during the course of his congressional duties.  Burr is not a financial expert, but no doubt talked with his financial adviser about the spreading coronavirus.  Given the detailed timeline of who knew/said what and when, Burr’s post-committee statements echoed that of the administration which, in the throes of impeachment proceedings, ballyhooed published data on the economy.  So again, what is the case against Sen Burr?

'We will fight, the virus' is a timely, well-performed, and entertaining remake of the classic 'Sound of Silence' by Simon and Garfunkel.  Enjoy.

“Testing, testing, testing” – Really? (updated 23mar20)

George Rebane

Those words from Speaker Pelosi summarized her three most important aspects of the pandemic legislation now going through Congress.  But once more I believe that the lady misses the point here.  Testing will do demonstrably little to stop or even slow down the inevitable and incipient explosion of Covid19 infections in the land.  The emphasis of governments at all levels now should be to facilitate manufacture and distribution of life’s necessaries and healthcare equipment/supplies to treat the daily growing cohort of the infected requiring medical treatment.

A couple of useful definitions for discussing the pandemic – ‘asymptomatic’ means “showing no evidence of disease”, and ‘pre-symptomatic’ means having been infected but not yet showing symptoms.

The pandemic will stop only after 1) all have been infected (meaning it never stopped), or 2) it dies out since no more infections and the lucky infected have survived and are no longer infectious.  The best and fastest way to achieve the latter without inevitably overstressing our healthcare system is to self-quarantine and STAY AT HOME.  The head fed expert on infectious diseases, Dr Anthony Fauci, reinforced this prescription again today when he advised everyone to maximize the time they can “stay at home” (here).

A lot of bullcrap about how the virus is transmitted still pollutes the media channels.  Dr Michael Osterholm, director of University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, gives some extremely important and cogent advice about Covid19 transmission (here) the main takeaways from which are –

1. The virus survives for several days on surfaces, depending on the material and its environment.
2. The virus is readily transmitted via the aerosols (exhalations, sneezes, coughs, …) from infected people. And the scariest part is that in the air the virus can survive for a matter of hours.
3. Pre-symptomatic people can infect others. Just because you are asymptomatic does not guarantee that you are not pre-symptomatic.
4. Available masks do little to nothing to stop your breathing the viral aerosol.
5. No anti-Covid19 vaccine will be available in time to stop the coming national spike in infections.
6. The only way to stop the spread is maximum social distancing, i.e. self-quarantine yourself, stay at home.
7. Our medical infrastructure is woefully inadequate to cope with what is coming; the spike in infections will overwhelm it. We will wind up triaging like the Italians and others are doing now.

So getting back to testing, and how that affects each of us.  I’ve prepared a little flowchart that most people (most certainly the astute RR readers) can understand.  It shows clearly how your being tested for the virus is essentially immaterial as to what you should really do in any event.

In the meantime, our Democrats and lamestream media along with international news outlets like the leftwing Economist, continue to lambast President Trump.  They blame everything from starting the pandemic, through not having the country’s healthcare system prepared and waiting (no nation has achieved this even now), to securing America’s borders as evidence of his “mismanaging” this national emergency.  In the mean time all the EU countries are sealing their own borders and many have already shut down all walk-in businesses and imposed national quarantines.  Any idiot should know that one obvious way the infections will continue to increase is through infectious people uncontrollably crossing borders.  But apparently not.

And finally, I want to make the point that this pandemic may turn into a large-scale emergency for all of us (recall that’s an emergency when 911 calls are not answered).  But however it ends, we will have a national dialogue that will result in new policies calling for major changes in our preparedness for such future catastrophes which will surely pay us another visit.  A discussion of what these may be, I will reserve for a future commentary and comment stream.

[16mar20 update]  It’s worth continuing to pay attention to the Dems’ Big Lie programs.  Most noteworthy now is the continuing lie that we would have done a better job fighting the coronavirus had we already implemented a nationalized healthcare system like Bernie’s ‘Medicare for All’.  If anyone cares to look at how the countries with nationalized healthcare are doing in this pandemic, they would quickly be disabused of any such thing.

The other part of last night’s comedy debate was Bumblebrain’s ongoing claims that somehow he was in the crucial heart of policy making and implementation in the Obama administration.  Listening to him talk, ol’ Bumble was right in the middle of all that was happening.  If anyone cares to check the record, they quickly discover that the man was one watering short of a potted plant during the entire eight years.  VP Biden was trotted out to stand behind Obama during photo ops, dignitary dinners, and other ceremonial occasions, mostly to allay rumors of his early demise.  Oh yes, he was allowed to attend certain meetings as long as he kept his mouth shut.  So you know Bernie has to bite his tongue when, like last night, Bumblebrain claimed to be the “steady hand” that quashed the ebola epidemic and kept it from our shores.

Now, as with Trump’s bravado, I would not count as ‘lies’ these outlandish claims of accomplishment.  But it would be refreshing to hear a progressive see such a common thread that knits together all politicians.

And also, do you note that like socialists, they don’t want to call attention to China’s autocratic mismanagement of when the Wuhan virus epidemic started?  No mention is made of its genesis in China or Wuhan because such attributions would be “racist”.  The lamestream, of course, fell into line immediately.  For them and theirs, President Trump is a much more believable cause of all that’s bad about the Covid19 pandemic.

[17mar20 update]  Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital sent out a notice to their foundation members (of which Jo Ann and I are) regarding their new drive-through testing program.  They also direct you to the county's coronavirus information website is here.

 Drive-through Covid-19 testing now at SNMH

Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital will begin drive-through Covid-19 testing from 3:00-6:00 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday (3/17 & 3/18).

If you are symptomatic and meet criteria for testing, Nevada County residents should call their primary care doctor. If the doctor agrees that an individual needs to be tested, the doctor can fax an order to the hospital.

Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital will call the patient to set up an appointment drive-through time. Please do not attempt to go to the testing drive-through without a previously set-up appointment. 

[18mar20 update]  New epidemic model revealed.  It turns out that the epidemic spread model that’s currently most trusted and used by policy makers in various countries is from the epidemic modeling group at Imperial College. (here, here, and here)  Note the (lack of) emphasis put on testing as a policy tool to affect infection and mortality rates.

Common malaria drug prevents and fights Covid19.  That is claimed in a report announced on Anthony Watts website (here) that was authored in league with Stanford University School of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, among others, and published in several respected journals.  This, of course, would be the best news yet to salve the pandemic until a vaccine arrives.  In the meantime, Dr Rebane advises that you reconsider a gin and tonic as your afternoon preventative; after all, it is made with tonic water.  (H/T to reader)  The summary of the report follows –

Recent guidelines from South Korea and China report that chloroquine is an effective antiviral therapeutic treatment against Coronavirus Disease 2019.  Use of chloroquine (tablets) is showing favorable outcomes in humans infected with Coronavirus including faster time to recovery and shorter hospital stay.  US CDC research shows that chloroquine also has strong potential as a prophylactic (preventative) measure against coronavirus in the lab, while we wait for a vaccine to be developed.  Chloroquine is an inexpensive, globally available drug that has been in widespread human use since 1945 against malaria, autoimmune and various other conditions. 

[23mar20 update]  The reliability of Covid19 tests now reported should give most of us pause.  We are told that existing tests catch about 60% of people infected with the virus, and they test positive from 3% to 50% of those who are not infected.  So what’s the utility of giving a test to an asymptomatic walk-in American?  Well, the good Rev Bayes can help us out (more here).

[Trigger warning: some mild-mannered math ahead.]

The Long Road Back - Loss/Recovery

George Rebane

Given all the problems caused by the global Covid-19 pandemic, we now contemplate your investment portfolio in light of the markets' plunge over the last two weeks - in short, we'll now expand our horizons from the morbid to the macabre.

Bernie’s Big Lie – Socialist Sweden

George Rebane

Sen Bernie Sanders’ lies are too many to count, but one that he keeps repeating successfully to the nation’s light thinkers involves the myth of Scandinavian socialism.  This is the kind of socialism that Bernie wants to incorporate in the United States, and he continues to use Sweden as the posterchild of how socialism can be made to work successfully.  Either he is butt stupid or evil as he spreads the lies about Swedish socialism.  Let’s be kind and put Bernie with the butt stupid crowd, that includes the Dem candidates clown car and Team AOC, as they were characterized by Will Rogers’ “It ain’t what you know that worries me, it’s what you know that ain’t so.’

Sweden was a model and wealthy capitalist democracy before 1960, having gone through two world wars as a neutral selling their wares to the highest bidders.  Along with the other Nordics, Sweden then tried socialism to redistribute its remarkable wealth and earn votes for its leftwing politicians, and that failed miserably over the next two decades.  As a result, each pulled back toward marked capitalism after enjoying the tender mercies of socialism.  Sweden led the way after having doubled public spending from 31% to 60% in the 1960-80 interval.  And then the real problems started piling on which ended with unemployment surging and budget deficits of 11% of GDP in the late 80s (that’s like almost $3T annually in the US).  The country literally went broke as the wealthy, the producers and entrepreneurs jumped ship.  The pullback to sanity started in 1991 and has been going on ever since.  And that has been the best kept secret of our progressives and their lamestream lackeys (witness its effect on our local liberal commenters).

Swedish historian and author, Johan Norberg (also senior fellow at the Cato Institute) lays out the history of this wise retrenchment to sanity in his ‘Sweden’s Lessons for America’.  Norberg reports that -

Sooner or later, American socialists always return to Sweden and other Nordic countries. There’s a good reason for that. For some reason, the countries that socialists originally tout always end up with bread lines and labor camps. But there’s always Sweden: decent, well‐​functioning, nonthreatening, and with impeccable democratic credentials. … There is just one problem: Sweden is not socialist. … If Sanders and Ocasio‐​Cortez really want to turn America into Sweden, what would that look like? For the United States, it would mean, for example, more free trade and a more deregulated product market, no Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the abolition of occupational licensing and minimum wage laws. The United States would also have to abolish taxes on property, gifts, and inheritance. And even after the recent tax cut, America would still have to slightly reduce its corporate tax. Americans would need to reform Social Security from defined benefits to defined contributions and introduce private accounts. They would also need to adopt a comprehensive school voucher system where private schools get the same per‐​pupil funding as public ones.

Scattershots – 12feb20 (updated 14feb20)

George Rebane

New Dem candidates contest.  I’m considering starting a new contest after the 3mar20 Super-Tuesday to predict/pick the Democratic Party presidential nominee.  The line-up would consist of the 3mar20 surviving candidates and ‘Other’.  Each Friday the contestants, who can enter at any time until 10 July (the last Friday before the Dem convention scheduled for 13-16 July), divide up 100 quatloos among the line-up and post them as comments under the appropriate contest status posting.  I will then update and post a tally of the total bet by each contestant for each candidate, and a tally of the candidates’ totals to date.  The winner will be declared on 16 July 2020, and determined by a pari-mutuel algorithm wherein the correct picking contestants divide up the total quatloos bet on a pro-rata basis on how much each bet on the Democratic nominee for president.  The prescient contestant garnering the most quatloos wins.  In the interval we will see how the candidates and the contestants fare as the convention draws nigh. Thoughts?

National Conservatism held its second conference in Rome on 4 February 2020. (more here)  According to its leading lights, such as co-founder Christopher DeMuth, “National Conservatism is a movement of public figures, journalists, scholars, and students who understand that the past and future of conservatism are inextricably tied to the idea of the nation, to the principle of national independence, and to the revival of the unique national traditions that alone have the power to bind a people together and bring about their flourishing.”  Its antagonists are “hegemonic progressives” who “seek to quarantine religious observance, traditional culture, bourgeois social norms and the family itself.” (more here)  This conference launched a fearsome counter essay, ‘This Is How Reaganism and Thatcherism End’ by Anne Applebaum in the arch-Left chronicle The Atlantic which sees national conservatism as a project for ideological troglodytes who do not understand the current of history.  Her accusations are against named people and institutions who are allegedly ready to do wrongs, but have yet to do so – they are simply judged as being pre-guilty and treated accordingly by “enlightenment rational liberals”, humanity’s desiderata.  To such progressives, national conservatism is “the creation of a new, kleptocratic authoritarian right that chips away at the institutions preserving democracy.”  Sounds like there’s enough here to give the movement a more thorough look.

Michael Bloomberg is an ideological chameleon and a moral cretin.  His latest sin is his confession of ‘racism’ in how he wrongly reduced NYC’s crime rate with his ‘Stop, Question, and Frisk’ program which saved thousands of black and Hispanic lives during the tenure of that policy practiced on the streets by police.  Why racist?  Well, because 95+% of the violent criminals were minorities, and were therefore the successful targets of SQF.  That, along with black lives matter, makes no never mind.  It’s the optics and politics that matter in proper progressive policies.  And such ‘racism’ to the light-thinkers, those who perennially return Democrats to urban administrations, is unacceptable enough to warrant going back to former levels of mayhem and murder.  Realizing his political priorities, Bloomberg promised never to do that again.  Another successful blow for social justice. (more here and here)

[13feb20 update]  Snowflakes melting in the workplace.  As expected, the sheltered generation is starting to buckle their knees in the realworld after having been lavishly sheltered through childhood and school, learning that they were the entitled class destined for a government guaranteed, happy and fulfilling life in a land where merit is optional, and possibly discriminatory.  ‘Mental Health Requests Strain Employers’ (13feb WSJ) reports that “managers and younger employees are struggling to adapt as a generation of people with higher rates of reported mental illness enter the workforce.  Many of these new workers are coming to offices from colleges and high schools where they received accommodations, such as extra time to take tests or complete assignments—in some cases from elementary school onward. They are confronting a world of work that operates under different legal standards and less-flexible pressures and deadlines.  Symptoms related to mental illnesses covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act—such as severe anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder—can be ambiguous, unpredictable, highly individualized and often invisible. That makes accommodating these disabilities one of the more difficult areas for employers, according to employment attorneys and disability experts.”  And then there’s technology-driven systemic unemployment.  Oi geweh!

Message to our CIC - Mr President, listen to your AG Barr and do us all a favor - your tweets are accomplishing what the Dems could never do on their own.  So please, shut the fuck up!!!

[14feb20 update]  The blindered grassroots of the Left continue to demonstrate that they know not where their party is leading them and our country.  The distance from Sanders, AOC, Warren, … to communism is a stone’s throw, as all of them openly embrace and tout socialism.  Today Democratic Party nabobs and its national leadership all acknowledge and fear the party’s one leftward lurch too far – some already call some of their clown car candidates communists.  However, if these foothills are representative, then our local looney lefties have no clue about all this, and continue to firmly believe that identifying the Dems’ alarming road to communism is only a “red herring” floated by “rabid Trumpists” as part of their “the sky is falling” alarums as “fake news”.  Ample confirmation of such ignorance is available from our comment streams - e.g. in the 14feb20 Sandbox.  Perhaps these locals should inform Team Nancy that all is well with the clown car, so that she and hers will stop polluting the public airwaves with their daily warnings of imminent collapse in November.  Still makes you wonder from where these people get their news.

GDP and Earth’s Temperature (updated 9feb20)

George Rebane

Most well-read people look at Gross Domestic Product as the gold standard of our economy’s performance.  And all know that GDP growth will cure almost all the ills we still see in the economy.  But when we take a deeper look at how the GDP statistic is concocted, we discover that it’s really a rat’s nest of formulas and calculations and selective capture of dubiously reliable data, that then pops out a number which, more often than not, must be rejiggered in a couple of months to give a new and improved version of itself.

On Western Civilization

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 22 January 2020.]

Across the globe western civilization is under an historic and relentless assault.  Today most countries – developed and developing – have adopted and practice many fortuitous aspects of western civilization with attributes and social norms developed in the west.  Nevertheless, the world’s leftwing institutions, in their work toward universal collectivization, see the stubborn survival of western culture, along with its mores and values, as the main impediment to achieving one-world governance of a homogenized global population.

Today the unifying objectives for this globalization effort are summarized in the United Nation’s Agenda 2030 (formerly known as Agenda 21).  This coherent effort is strongly denied, and identified as a fake news conspiracy by the progressive press.  You can make up your own mind on this by reading the UN’s globalization objectives, and comparing them to the public policies adopted and proposed by the Left’s political parties in the West.

When we examine the contributions of western civilization to humanity, we are overwhelmed by how the adoption of its tenets and practices dramatically increased standards of living, survival rates, and the quality of life across the globe.  It was western culture that was key to the ending of slavery worldwide, increasing literacy rates and access to education, emancipating women, and eradicating starvation along with many of our dreaded diseases. (more here)

Harvard historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Niall Ferguson, identifies key contributions of western civilization that include the notion of competition, the scientific revolution, property rights, modern science-based medicine, consumer societies, and the win-win rewards of the work ethic.  These are sometimes referred to as western civilization’s “killer apps”. (more here and here)

Ferguson points out that these apps “are all interrelated to developments that occurred concurrently in the West. Property rights and the work ethic of the West rise directly from Christianity. They stem from a respect for the person and their property, a rejection of corruption (theft via bribes to those in power), and respect for the laborer. Christianity isn't as pro-business as Judaism, but the Christian West thrived after it gained respect for business and allowed reasonable interest on debt. That led to consumer society, reinforced by the work ethic.

The scientific revolution wasn't possible before Christianity reformed to become less fundamentalist, though the belief that God was rational and study was morally acceptable, was only possible in the Christian world. In the Islamic world, to question Allah is to risk being murdered for blasphemy, (which explains) why science stalled in the Muslim world once the religion became a majority faith in any area. In Chinese society, the belief that everything is part of a complex, inseparable whole prevented development of math-based scientific laws. Only Christian society, that both permitted science beyond mere observation and belief you COULD develop such rules without risking your safety, explains why the West alone had a scientific revolution. And that led directly to modern medicine.”

The value and success of these so-called killer apps became apparent wherever their European and American practitioners showed how they worked.  As a result, over the last century they were quickly adopted by people of all cultures who understood them.  And as Ferguson points out, “The rapid rise of Singapore, Japan and South Korea after adopting these "killer apps" of prosperity show you don't have to be Christian or of a Christian derived culture to benefit from them.”  But today, Ferguson points out, Western predominance is waning since the world ‘downloaded’ and now uses these killer apps, “while the West has literally lost faith in itself.”

As a struggling Christian, I remain undeniably a child, student, and defender of Western Civilization.  Long time listeners to these commentaries know I am also a conservetarian, and view the world through the lenses of one who has survived both the catastrophic events of Stalin’s communism and Hitler’s Nazism. (more here) To me, these collectivist ideologies and their practice are not merely intellectual theories about how to organize society.  To millions of us they were existential, we experienced them in their unmediated raw form.  These experiences shaped me, and today in these commentaries, they shape my words in defense of the West.

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.  Thank you for listening.

A Larger Context for Trump’s Next Mid-East Move

George Rebane

Thanks to President Trump, we are again at a crossroads which gives us an opportunity to define America’s stand in the Mid-East, and a related strategy for a new crisp and clear global foreign policy, one understood by all to achieve and maintain a power balance that promotes peace and prosperity to a satisficing level.  In the following I once more outline such a policy, this time in a structured format for easy reference in subsequent examinations.

1. Overarching fact and fundamental axiom – America has been the world’s White Hat Hegemon (WHH) since the end of WW2, and has almost single-handedly created and maintained a world order that has enormously benefited all levels of humanity across the globe.
2. Driving premise – Nevertheless, America has fulfilled its WHH role in a hesitatingly reactionary manner, never sure that its latest overseas foray is something that it should undertake or of which Americans understand and approve.
3. Consequently, we should openly accept and declare that America sees itself as the world’s WHH who will use our wealth and power to consistently serve the national interests of the US and its allies. This declared role has no stipulated end date; it will continue indefinitely until the world order changes into some yet unforeseen and more benign format.
4. America seeks a balance of local power in the Mid-East in which there is to be no single regional hegemon, a position now contested for by Turkey and Iran. We will most vehemently oppose the establishment of any kind of fundamental pan-Islamist political union among the region’s nation-states.  The first plank of such a policy is that we and our allies will not condone any radical Islamist body to acquire nuclear weapons.
5. We recognize that the maintenance of such a distributed world order of general peace and prosperity will require engaging in intermittent, relatively cheap (assuming we maintain primacy in combat technologies and force levels), and brief brushfire police actions (call them wars if you must). This will necessarily require the regular sacrifices by our military that will number a small fraction of the annual casualties we willingly suffer driving cars, imbibing addictive substances, and calmly accepting the annual toll of preventable medical mistakes. Nothing comes free, most certainly not life under a global government.
6. In the current mid-east situation, we will get into a tit-for-tat (TFT) exchange with Iran – we will react forcefully to every Iranian attack on American life and limb in the region and elsewhere in the world. And we will also react with mutual benefit when Iran so acts.
7. As the WHH we will consistently practice TFT when and wherever American lives are at stake.
8. TFT has been shown – both historically and game theoretically (cf. iterated prisoners’ dilemma) - to be the most effective strategy for driving and maintaining cooperation between two contentious parties. The three characteristics of TFT are 1) never defect first, 2) when the other defects, immediately counter with at least as much force as displayed by the defector, 3) forgive immediately when the other party ceases and desists.
9. When the lives of an ally’s nationals are involved, we will openly offer them ‘WHH services’ in that we will arm, transport, and surveil for them (i.e. provide logistical, sensor, communications, command & control, etc systems). However, the afflicted/attacked ally must commit to put its own ‘boots on the ground’ and in harm’s way – America will not risk its blood and treasure for an ally not willing to first risk its own blood and treasure in its national interests.  Message to allies - as long as you’re willing to lead and bleed, then, and in concert with our own national interests, we will support your fight and have your back.

For the above outlined policy I humbly solicit contributions and criticisms before incorporating a refined version into the body of Rebane Doctrine.

Scattershots – 2jan20 (updated 4jan20)

George Rebane

Google’s AI does breast cancer diagnoses.  “Google’s health research unit said it has developed an artificial-intelligence system that can match or outperform radiologists at detecting breast cancer, according to new research. But doctors still beat the machines in some cases. … The AI system outperformed the average radiologist in determining whether the women would develop breast cancer.”, as reported in the 2jan20 WSJ (here).  The AI’s performance stats are impressive, and then comes the insane part.  Due to bureaucratic and regulatory concerns which essentially make ‘perfect’ be the enemy of the ‘good’, the AI “isn’t yet ready for clinical use”.  The correct answer is that it is more than ready for clinical use, because there is no reasonable downside to its use in tandem with practicing radiologists.  Since the algo already outperforms humans, it can be introduced in phases with various practitioners all over the country while research continues toward the elusive perfect.  Here is another problem for which we should always look to government as being its probable first cause, and government’s stand-down as being the most obvious first approach to a solution.

Does “Japanification” loom in America’s future?  The answer may well be YES.  In addition to some bad fiscal and monetary policies over the last 30 years, it’s Japan’s aging demographics that have put a stifling curse on its economy.  We have some disturbing similarities – “Developed economies that are maturing that have demographic headwinds are going to face many of the same things Japan has been facing over decades. … Like Japan, the U.S. has an aging population and a concentration of industry among a small number of giant businesses. In 2019, U.S. interest rates fell sharply, sparking serious discussion in markets, perhaps for the first time, of whether long-term rates could fall to zero or even turn negative. That already has happened in Japan and in much of Europe.” (more here)  Yes, Europe with its heavily socialistic governments have even more concentration of their industries (c.f. corporatism) and are already suffering the early stages of Japanification.   Progressive governments’ hip-level response to such economic headwinds is to turn the screws on for more central planning and control with disastrous results as have occurred recently in Chile (see below).  Our Democratic leftists have that and more in store for us should they increase their control of the levers of power. 

Scattershots – 23dec19

George Rebane

The persecution of Christians, almost overwhelmingly by Muslim extremists in their lands, and leftwing secular humanists in more civilized regions, is picking up steam.  The latest of about which the lamestream is silent today goes on in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.  There the Fulani Muslims have taken up gun and machetes against entire villages of Christians.  These attacks take place all over the country and consist of the most horrendous acts of violence against innocent and unarmed civilians, leaving behind the dead and mutilated.  Lop amputations are again the favored way to leave survivors who can then relate the horrors of the ‘religion of peace’ to those yet to be visited.  The government’s military is in cahoots with the religious fanatics, showing up late, if ever, and then confiscating anything that looks like an implement with which the surviving villagers could defend themselves, citing the national law against civilians bearing arms, no matter how primitive or useful they are as a farming implement.  (more here)

Boeing’s grounded 737MAX may be the final instigation for the long-talked of conversion to take human pilots out of cockpits.  The modern commercial aircraft is so complex that it needs a lot of smart machinery to operate it.  And that requires a much more extensive training curriculum for today’s pilots than what they are used to, and of what many (most?) are capable of executing in the cockpit, especially during anomalous or emergency conditions.  We have demonstrated that large drone aircraft are capable of operating autonomously over wide areas and/or with ground-based pilots who primarily monitor flight.  The 737MAX will fly again, there is too much pressure to increase passenger air traffic, and too few airplane models and manufacturers to satisfy the demand. (more here)  But now the productive dialogue has begun between manufacturers, regulators, and airlines to plan for the inevitable advent of smart, autonomous, and much safer aircraft; especially when suborbital hypersonic aircraft are introduced with flight profiles that require orders of magnitude more complex decisions to be made and correctly executed in milliseconds.

‘American Liberty Depends on the Deep State’ argues noted historian Francis (“the end of history”) Fukuyama.  He ties his lamentably weak arguments to an unfortunately partisan definition which is more true than false.  Today’s ‘deep state’ is the ‘administrative state’ of yesteryear that is now composed of “unelected officials who are supposedly partisan Democrats ready to do anything to undermine the Trump presidency.”  In the sequel he ignores the overwhelming evidence that gives credence to such a definition.  He claims that all “modern democracies” like the US need deep state governance “because it is crucial to fighting corruption and upholding the rule of law”, ignoring the record of the wide incidence of corruption and criminality that hides in a byzantinely structured deep state.  Fukuyama lauds the supposed meritocracy of the deep state establishments of Britain, France, Germany, …, without any comparison of the relative benefits over the US that these countries have enjoyed.  The Pendleton Act of 1883 was supposed to make our civil service a meritocracy.  As we all know, it did not.  Our historian ends his apologetic for the deep state with a red herring, citing a scenario in which our president (hint Trump) refuses to leave office at the end of his term and orders the military to protect his stay.  Then it would be only through the good graces of the deep state that such a president would not be defended and would have to vacate his office.  Astounding!

More left-leaners than right-leaners now appear to make up the cohort of RR commenters.  This is apparent from just a simple count of the handles used by the progressives.  I have no idea how the total readership breaks down, but I suspect there are at least as many of the Left as of the Right.  It is certain that they follow the content of this website with great interest and attention, taking every opportunity to counter the slings and arrows we launch against their ideology cum religion.  As I have stated for years, their presence is more than welcome, else we would be an echo chamber as are almost all socio-political sites of the liberal persuasion.  A local leftwing weblog serves as an ample illustration of the effects of such censorship of opposing thought.  Well, that’s not the entire reason for its dearth of comment streams – it is also poorly edited, filled with bulletin board boring and narcoleptically numbing topics, and empty of any intellectual challenges to its occasional stasist and statist progressive mantras.  However, for completeness we do feature it in Our Links found in the left panel.

Stephen Miller, Trump administration senior adviser and a Jew, is an example of a target of leftwing attack as being anti-Semitic simply because he cited news reported on Breitbart.  These Democrat congresscritters want him fired. (more here)  They accuse him of "documented support for white nationalist and virulently anti-immigrant tropes (which) is wholly unacceptable and disqualifying for a government employee."  There is no evidence of either that they can present or that even exists.  Mr Miller is white and presumably a nationalist.  He is not anti-immigrant but simply against illegal entry into the United States.  So none of the accusing Democrat Jews can give a coherent definition of nationalism or show why embracing such a socio-political stance is somehow toxic to this country.  Neither can they defend porous borders that permit the illegal entry of hordes of foreigners with unknown diseases, crime records, skill levels, disjoint cultures, and doubtful allegiance to everything that America has stood for in the past (before our anti-American left has begun making its mark).

When Compassion Kills

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 18 December 2019.]

‘Tis the season of peace, joy, and giving, of both the complimentary and compassionate kind.  Every year during these weeks we are deluged with pleas to open our wallets for uncountable good causes.  ‘Twas ever thus.  But compassionate giving on an international scale has often been the precursor, if not the actual cause, of the subsequent death for tens of millions.  And as a nation that continues to give and has given lavishly in the past, this should give us Americans some pause as we reflect on the history of such gifts.

Recently published is one such history of a program of compassionate giving that turned out to give rise to the subsequent deaths of 20 to 30 million Soviet farmers in the 1930s.  The book is The Russian Job – the forgotten story of how America saved the Soviet Union from Ruin (2019) by award-winning historian Douglas Smith. (reviewed here)  In it Smith describes in devastating detail of how during 1921-23 the American Relief Administration under Herbert Hoover, working over a vast land area, saved 10 million Russians from certain starvation.

Underwriting China’s Bad Behavior

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 20 November 2019.]

While our country is embroiled in the fight to oust a duly elected president on yet to be established evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors before voters have a chance to weigh in on the matter next November, a much more realistic threat to our fortunes and future continues to grow without any effective defense in sight.  Few Americans know of communist China’s strategic designs that include the relegation of America into a second-rate power in developing and employing the technologies that provide for our national defense and overall quality of life.  However, the few people who do follow national affairs are aware of China’s doings regarding the proprietary intellectual property they have stolen from our defense and private sectors, and how they continue on that same course today more effectively than ever before.

The Senate permanent sub-committee on investigations just released an extensive bi-partisan assessment report in excess of 100 pages titled ‘Threats to the US Research Enterprise: China’s Talent Recruitment Plans’.  It details how the US has for years failed to counter China’s enterprises to recruit scientists, acquire research, and maintain an ongoing program that compromises the fruits of our taxpayer funded research and development programs conducted in our universities and by our private enterprises.  The investigation’s findings criticize numerous federal science-funding agencies including the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the Energy Department, and many more than can be listed in this short commentary.

The basic MO of the Chinese government is to operate euphemistically named “talent recruitment programs”, more than 200 of these hire both visiting Chinese nationals and American citizens, numbering over 7,000 that include Nobel laureates.  These scientists and engineers are contracted and paid to transmit the fruits of their US-based research to Chinese agencies that then disseminate the information to the Chinese military and industries which compete with US companies in international commerce.  These surreptitious technology transfers amount to plain old thievery for hire, and according to the Senate report, our failure to stop them “continues to undermine the integrity of the American research enterprise and endanger our national security.” (more here)

The main Chinese extortion of technology program is called the ‘Thousand Talents Plan’ under which researchers in America are bought and paid for the benefit of communist China, which has openly stated that it intends to be the world hegemon well before 2050, and along the way to become the global leader in science, technology, commerce, and military power.  The Thousand Talents Plan, almost all of it effectively funded by US taxpayers through its $150B annual support of federal STEM R&D appropriations, is well on its way of meeting China’s global strategic objective.

What should be even more galling to Americans is highlighted by Roger Robinson Jr, a think tank CEO and former senior director on President Reagan’s National Security Council.  In his recent article ‘Why and How the US Should Stop Financing China’s Bad Actors’, he details how the global capital markets, dominated by the United States, provide China with the direct financial support through trade and security markets that fuels their current rapid progress toward global primacy, as they violate almost every principle and value of western civilization.

Robinson states that “it is an empirical fact: the majority of American investors are unwittingly funding Chinese concentration camps, weapons systems for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and more. This is because the U.S. has no security-minded screening mechanism for our capital markets, which have roughly $35 trillion under management.”  And in the main, these investors include America’s pension funds for teachers and government employees, along with the billions of dollars from university endowments.  Investors whose talk preaches climate change and green investments, as their walk pours untold billions into the treasury of the world’s biggest tyranny and polluter.  And there’s much more to learn here than time allows, but I hope that some of this news will invite listeners to do their own research and act accordingly.

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.  Thank you for listening.

‘The Marginal Revolutionaries’

George Rebane

George Melloan, former deputy editor of WSJ’s editorial page and now syndicated columnist, has written an excellent review (here) in the 5oct19 WSJ of The Marginal Revolutionaries – How Austrian Economists Fought the War of Ideas (2019) by historian Janek Wasserman.  This is an extensively researched “group history of the Austrian School of Economics, from the coffeehouses of imperial Vienna to the modern-day Tea Party.”  From Melloan’s review, replete with lavish quotes from the book, it is clear that Wasserman’s work corroborates Der Führer (1944), Konrad Heiden’s first-hand history of the rise of Hitler, and the international and national brands of socialism during the first half of the 20^th century.

(I insert the following thoughts into the record because, as the astute reader has gleaned over the years, I am a student of the Austrian School which most closely represents my desiderata for economic order that is beneficial to a society.  This major segment of my belief system (credo) forms the foundation of my profound differences with and opposition to collectivism and its current resurgent socialist/communist forms in America and the EU.  Some of my previous commentaries on the above can be found here and here, expanded in their comment streams)

The Austrian School was founded by economists Carl Menger, Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek who met regularly in a little Vienna coffee house early in the 20^th century.  Their nascent revolution was marginal in the sense that during that same epoch that included the Great War (WW1) more formidable revolutionaries were also plotting and scheming in other Vienna coffee houses.  Communist regulars plotting the Marxist revolution were Nikolai Bukharin, Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin.  Excluded from international socialists to form national socialism were Hitler who met with a variously attended group of the disaffected jobless, and after the war with a rapidly growing cohort of disaffected jobless veterans.  The Nazis and communists fought pitched battles and murdered each other in the night until Hitler’s side won, and the communists went underground in the west while Lenin et al were building the USSR in Russia.  Both forms of socialism would come to kill millions of their own citizens for various reasons that ranged from race to redundancy.

Ruminations – 3oct19 (updated 6oct19)

George Rebane

Former Union publisher Jeff Ackerman writes (here) that Californians today pay and average of $4.02/gal for gasoline while the rest of the country averages at $2.64/gal.  And the escapee to Oregon goes on to point out that all of this is self-inflicted pain that the state’s voters are way past having enough between the ears to change course as Sacramento does its best to accelerate dumb laws/regulations and spread our epidemic across the country.

Gun confiscation was again disguised at the Giffords/March for Our Lives “gun safety forum” in Las Vegas. The Dems are having problems coming together on which or whether to back such confiscation schemes as mandatory buybacks.  Even Moms Demand Action have stopped short of buybacks, which leaves Beto (of AR15/AK47 fame) and the klatch of radical socialists more isolated than ever.  Many of us hope Beto will double down on his ‘Damn right, we’ll take your guns!’

No more masks for Hong Kong protesters.  An old British colonial law is to be invoked to threaten protesters with eventual arrest when they reveal their faces to government operated face recognition software that is being installed all over China today.  Here we are considering doing the same, starting with neighborhood watch cameras for recording night time crime (and anyone else who is on the street after dark).  Soon after, we’ll be fighting daytime crime and questioning people who are recorded being out of their own neighborhoods.  Isn’t technology wonderful?

[4oct19 update]  Volker’s House testimony and release of tweets are the first real disclosures that may seriously put Trump’s tit in a wringer in the ongoing impeachment saga.  Trump is by no means the first president to seek and get foreign aid against political opponents for some horse trading.  But back then it was no big deal and a known prerogative of office.  IMHO, if the sought aid concerns a material revelation about the character of a political opponent, then I don’t oppose such information gathering.  However, I do oppose purchasing fabricated ‘evidence’ of an opponent’s bad character from foreign sources.

[6oct19 update]  Harvard on capitalism (here) - whouda thought?

Agenda21 to SDGs to Agenda 2030

George Rebane

RR has covered the Agenda21 story extensively over the years primarily in its role as a template for leftwing objectives that their politicians’ public policies seek to fulfill.  (see 'Agenda 21' category) This non-binding UN initiative was formalized in 1992 and signed by over 100 nations.  The US (under Bush1) became a signatory.  A21’s objectives and means of achieving them on the level of local jurisdictions was and continues to be taught to government officials and properly politically oriented NGO staffs through a global network of ICLEIs.

ICLEI or the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives was launched under the aegis of A21.  The ICLEIs almost immediately began distancing themselves from the A21 relationship as the latter’s objectives started to be highlighted by various rightwing media outlets, politicians, and conservative blogs as harbingers of global autocracy.  The goals taken in toto were an antithesis for the retention of sovereign nation-states as the fundamental structure of world order.  A21 called for an authoritarian global government whose operational goals were actually to markedly lower human population, reduce its consumption of earth’s resources, and restrict people’s access to most of earth’s land area and natural resources.

This obviously made A21 and all references to it anathema to most Americans, and made connecting A21 to the Left’s globalist narrative a no-brainer.  Hence, the Left immediately launched a nationwide denial campaign, claiming that A21 was really some hare-brained Big Brother conspiracy cooked up by the Right.  Their proof of that was showing that none of their public policies which existentially abetted A21 objectives, actually called out A21 or mentioned A21 objectives in the laws and regulations they passed and their publicized desiderata for future legislation.  In short, A21 had to be banished from the public mind.  And so it was.

Today the objectives of A21 are all alive and well, but they have had to be repackaged by the UN under the new rubric of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and wrapped into its newly introduced Agenda 2030.  The clear hope is that within such new adornments, the public will be bamboozled a bit longer as the global Left continues to fashion and form ever more restrictive boundaries through SDG-supportive public policies, all of which need an ever larger state to administer and enforce them.  And, of course, all that will cost much more than we are used to paying now, hence the new levels of mandated tribute to Leviathan will be justified as fulfilling part of humanity’s overall moral imperative in its march into the globalist 21^st century as prescribed by Agenda 2030.  The beat goes on.  (more here, here, and elsewhere – google ‘Agenda 2030’)

The happier place, America or Europe? (updated 25sep19)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 18 September 2019.  An edited version was printed (here) in the 21sep19 edition of The Union.]

Our national Left has loudly included in their narrative to fundamentally transform America, that the Europeans are a much happier lot than we poor polarized and poverty-stricken wretches on this side of the Pond.  The citizens of the EU are described as a people happy with their subsidies and socialism, cared for from cradle to grave with extended vacations, shorter work weeks, job security, and lavish no-cost healthcare.  What’s not to like?

Actually, the Europeans have a lot of worries, and when you talk to them on a personal level, they are ready and willing to go through the long list.  We just returned from two weeks in Europe where we had a reunion with our German families, and then went on to visit and talk with people in Switzerland, France, more Germany, and Holland.  Here’s part of the laundry list that keeps Europeans up at night.

All EU countries are struggling with low to no economic growth, due mainly to over regulation and high taxes.  The future of indigenous Europe is hampered by devastating demographics which are characterized by a growing cohort of the ever more feeble and ailing elderly.  No country is close to delivering the 2.1 births per fertile woman required for mere stability of a population.  Germany is today at 1.2 which is equivalent to Russia’s alarming shrink rate.  The richer countries’ declining workforces are made up of an ever greater fraction of mid-easterners, Africans, and southeastern Europeans from poor countries such as Rumania and Bulgaria, who do jobs that northern Europeans refuse to do.

Demise of Capitalism?

George Rebane

The world’s population is stabilizing, if not starting to ‘stagnate’, and will soon start declining.  This argument and its impacts on humanity are presented in two newly published books – The Human Tide: How Populaton Shaped the Modern World (2019) by Paul Morland, and Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline (2019) by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson.  As a result, capitalism as we know it will disappear explains Zachart Karabell who reviews the books in the Sep/Oct issue of Foreign Affairs – ‘The Population Bust – Demographic Decline and the End of Capitalism as We Know It’.

The crux of that striking conclusion rests on the theory that capitalism remains viable only in an environment of eternal growth; once growth stops or reverses, then capitalism, as we know it, will collapse.  “If global population stops expanding and then contracts, capitalism - a system implicitly predicated on ever-burgeoning numbers of people - will likely not be able to thrive in its current form.”  But I have no idea where this ominous ‘predicate’ comes from.

Capitalism is fundamentally based on human nature organizing economies in an environment of open markets in which prices effectively communicate the supply and demand for goods and services.  Therefore, if demand slows down and then contracts, so long as open markets are allowed to operate, capitalists will adjust their enterprises accordingly.  The only aspect of such a contraction of available services and things for sale is its impact on the value of money. 

The value of any given supply of money depends on the amount of available goods and services it can command in transactions.  Its value, as reflected in open market discount (i.e. interest) rates will track the size of the economies in which it is used as the unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value.  For example, the value of a lot of fiat dollars will decline if there is less to buy or build with them.  But again, such values will adjust accordingly as central banks ply their wily ways of taking money out of and injecting it into economies.  Granted, if human perceptions about markets change rapidly, then there will be financial shocks as the value of monies held by governments and the public also changes rapidly – after all, we must always remember that fiat money by its very nature is strongly faith-based.

So here we are in the pre-Singularity years as birth rates all over the world are dropping and populations are aging (older folks don’t consume as much as younger ones).  Advances in healthcare and productivity promoted through capitalism are making poorer countries richer, and encourage the richer countries to maintain growth through immigration. The current world population of approximately 7.6B will probably not exceed 10B by mid-century before it starts pulling back.  And given the impact of accelerating technology on systemic unemployment and income inequality, global population pullback is not something to be feared, but to be managed through judicious wealth distribution so as to maintain civil societies that continue to provide an increasing quality of life.  And once the Singularity does occur, all bets are off, as most then alive scramble to become trans-humans (q.v.).  For an entertaining and stimulating treatment of such a plausible future, I recommend Childhood’s End (1953) by A.C Clarke.

Scattershots – 6aug19 (updated 11aug19)

George Rebane

The true costs of ‘renewable energy’ are both unaffordable and hidden. Those of us who can do arithmetic have known the unreported high costs of renewable wind and solar power for years, and how the climate calamity acolytes and the lamestream have suppressed reporting the costs of making the world work with renewable energy.  Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute writes a short, fact-filled piece on the matter in the 6aug19 WSJ (here).  He cites the work of the International Renewable Energy Institute based on the demand forecasts of the International Energy Agency.  The bottom line is that if you take into account the ‘cradle to grave’ costs and environmental impacts of spreading solar and wind power production worldwide, then humanity will have an existential disaster on its hands.  The amount of mining, transport, construction, and waste elimination required swamps all conceivable benefits from such ‘clean power’ which will turn out to be the dirtiest and most expensive that we can attempt to buy.  As an example, “building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of plastic.  And these materials will have to be mined, manufactured, and assembled in not so very nice places according to the Sydney-based Institute for a Sustainable Future.  None of this is known to our garden-variety progressives (some in these pages) who continue to mindlessly tout subsidized ‘clean energy’ and claim its unrealizable economic benefits.

‘1984’ has arrived on campuses.  “Bias response teams” are now an established institution on most college campuses, and the disease is spreading rapidly.  Christian Schneider reports (here) on “a chilling look inside colleges’ systems for reporting and policing offensive speech.”  The growing archive of such petty incidences of one student snitching on another, often unsuspecting, student is testimony to another of the progressive-promoted illiberal insanities in our society.  Reading the record of cited incidences is simply mind-boggling to most of us.  The accused offenders are then required to present themselves to the schools’ administrative “diversity” panels for examination of their violations.  As with sexual abuse allegations, there is no appeals process, and such allegations go on the students’ records which may later be used to impact careers and other life-opportunities in these looney tunes times.  For all this, go thank your local leftists who have enthusiastically made all this possible, and continue to do so with every ballot they mark.

[update]  Tonight on FN we saw an ugly leftwing mob assembled across the street from Majority Leader McConnell’s house with signs and flood lights screaming unspeakable epithets at the senator and people to “Stab him through the heart!” and “Cut his fucking throat!”.  How many lamestream outlets showed this?  How many rightwingers have gathered to put on a scene like that in front of Democrat politician’s house?  Biden and Booker both stated that they want to “beat up” President Trump; how many Republican politicians have ever come even close to such violent language against a Democrat President.  And none of these are isolated incidents carried out by some backwater communists, these are carried out regularly by mainstream leftists all across the country.  In progressive circles and in their lapdog lamestream media President Trump is regularly referred to as a “white supremacist”.  Where is the evidence for that?  I join with Victor Davis Hanson and most other conservative commentators in declaring that I have never met a rightwing white supremacist, nor do I know of anyone who has ever met such a person.  Yet the lunatic Left continues to accuse all of us daily of being white supremacists.  (check RR comment streams)  It is these insanely cynical asymmetries that confirm our having passed the tipping point and promoting the Great Divide.

[8aug19 update]  To further confirm the tsunami of censoring conservatives that is sweeping the country’s media, Twitter concluded that the video I reference above was too damaging to the progressive narrative about who actually are purveyors of hate and violence.  CNBC reports that “Twitter locked Mitch McConnell's campaign Twitter account, Team Mitch, for posting a video of a profanity-laden protest outside of McConnell's home in Louisville, Kentucky.”  (more here)  You literally cannot make this stuff up – politically motivated censorship is now a daily happening, most of it not visible.

[10aug19 update]  ‘Shaming’, even FN doesn’t understand the meaning of the word, and plays patsy to the Dem candidates’ attempt at that in their desperate attempts to intimidate President Trump.  These political sleazebags, now joined by Uncle Joe, are all claiming a direct causal relationship between Trump’s public speech and the El Paso and Dayton killings.  This is supposed to shame the president.  People who still care about the language know that a person accepts shame only when 1) he acknowledges the veracity of the allegations against him, AND 2) the society around him also embraces the same allegations.  Neither of those conditions exist for Trump re the massacres, nor the 100M+ Americans who are paying attention.  The desperate scumbags who seek to make such ludicrous claims stick don’t have a clue about this, and are mainly relying on the segment of their constituents who are innocent of current events and most other things that quality education delivers.

[11aug19 update]  Leftwing dumb is definitely a terminal mindset. Any kind of discussion with them is nigh impossible because they fail the basics of an IQ test that asks questions about whether this is like that, and if not, what is the difference.  Years of examples of such deficit thinking are archived in RR comment streams, and today we see it in the comments under Jo Ann’s recent Union piece (here) about the treatment LaMalfa received at the hands of the leftists when he visited here.  The Union leftwing commenters equate the crowd’s cries of ‘Lock her up!’ at Trump rallies with their own thuggish behavior of shouting down a congressman of the opposite party.  They haven’t a clue that one set of voices is in support of the speaker, and the other set of voices is meant to disrupt a speaker trying to respond to his audience.  To those pinheads these two situations are identical, and they consider their loutish behavior as Democrats to be a proper response to the Republican audience’s behavior at a Republican rally.  Is there someone with even garden variety smarts on the other side who can see a profound difference here?  Exit question: how often do you see Republicans do that when a Democrat comes to speak?  (I don't usually comment on Jo Ann's columns, but this time the number of butt-stupid responses was overwhelming.  H/T to GregG and ToddJ for their valiant attempts to explain the matter in that comment stream.)

Tariffs – who really pays

George Rebane

President Trump’s current tariff wars are definitely having a mixed impact on economies in the US and around the world.  His claim that ‘China is now paying us billions in tariffs’ is patently false.  But most people still think that tariffs on Chinese imports now consist of the imported goods plus a check for the tariff amount written by someone in China.  And that a 25% tariff on Chinese imports will increase their price for such goods by 25%.  Not so.

Tariffs on imported goods are paid for by the US registered importers to our Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency within 10 days of the goods landing in the US, which monies go into the Treasury's general fund of tax collections.  That, of course, increases the cost of doing business since the importer must now increase his, usually financed, operating capital by the amount of the tariff, thereby increasing both the direct cost of what he buys, and also adding the cost of financing the tariff amount. (more here)

To see how the tariff impacts us on the receiving end, consider the rule-of-thumb breakdown of end-user price.  For most things the ‘one-thirds rule’ applies – 1/3 to the manufacturer, 1/3 to distribution, 1/3 to the retailer (end-seller).  That means that the distributor (distribution channel) charges the end-seller twice its cost(s) for the item, and the end-seller then adds 50% of his cost to arrive at the price the end-user must pay.

So, let’s look at a pair of athletic shoes for which the consumer pays a pre-tariff $100.  The Chinese manufacturer sells these out the door for, say, $32.  The importer (distributor) must pay, say, a 25% tariff on the goods, or $8 to the CBP for a total cost of $40 for the shoes at the port of entry.  Now how much of that additional $8 cost he passes on to the retailer depends on what kind of a hit he’s willing to take on his profit margin.  Say, he’s willing to swallow half the increased cost, so he sells the shoes to the retailer for 2*($32 + 0.5*$8) = $72.  If the retailer now followed the one-third rule, then the price for the end-user consumer would be 1.5*$72 = $108, or an 8% price increase.  Being sensitive to the price-demand curve (you sell less of what costs more), the retailer may decide to swallow, say, 25% of his increased cost, or 0.25*($72 - $64) = $2.  This brings the consumer price of the athletic shoes to $106 or a 6% increase to the American end-user that was caused by imposition of a 25% tariff on such imports.

You can, of course, play this game with different numbers, for example starting with the Chinese manufacturer also discounting his out-the-door price of $32 to keep his shoe sales volume up.  Anyway, this should give us all an idea how and where tariff charges impact everyone in the process of getting imported stuff into the hands of end-users.  (Those wanting to play with these numbers can now see the effect on end prices by also considering the slightly more complex intermediate ‘end pricing’ of imported components ordered by US manufacturers making goods for US and foreign markets.)  And when all is said and done, everyone in the described chain will hold their breath to see how much the end-user will balk at paying the increased price and thereby lower the sales volume for the shoes, which effect will ripple up the chain impacting all kinds of decisions about what to pay, what to charge, and from where to buy.

In sum, the penalty that China (or any tariff assessed country) pays is that 1) they will sell less of the stuff to end users who have to pay a higher price, and/or 2) manufacturers and distributors on the receiving end will inevitably try to obtain the same stuff from countries that are not tariffed so as to regain their profit margins while lowering end user prices.  When, like China, you have entire industrial sectors geared to make goods for the single largest market in the world, tariffs on the receiving end do impose many forms monetary and financial penalties at the source end.  But make no mistake, the pain of tariffs is felt by all sides, and Trump needs to make that clear instead of spewing only the ‘China pays’ bullshit to the American electorate.  (Don’t mistake this screed as an assessment of the strategic wisdom cum effectiveness of today’s tariff trade wars; that is another discussion altogether.)

Anything to undermine America (updated 7jul19)

George Rebane

The Democrats and their lamestream media are now in high gear doing anything and everything they can to undermine this administration and weaken the US in the eyes of its adversaries.  The first and most important victims of the Left’s lies are their constituents relegated to the low end of the bell curve on smarts.  As evidence, they are so bamboozled by the sleazebags that only 17% of them believe that Trump’s tax cuts benefit them, when IRS data shows that almost everyone benefited from the tax cuts.

And to put a ribbon on it, only 47% of Americans believe that Trump’s policies pulled the economy out of its Obama doldrums of under 2% growth, making no never mind of the fact that when Trump took over the GDP growth rate jumped over 60% and has remained there.  The lamestream has made certain than none of these light thinkers ever hear of Obama’s famous prognostication, “To get the GDP to grow at 3% again will require a magic wand.”  Well, our current president most certainly has that magic wand, which today’s market underlined by finishing the highest June gain in over 80 years.  (For the non-investors, the summer months beginning with June are historically the doldrum months on the stock markets.)  In spite of all this, the Dems have convinced 53% of Americans that Trump is mishandling the economy.

On the foreign policy front, Trump has exposed longstanding and dramatic shortcomings in our agreements for trade, mutual defense with allies, nuclear proliferation by rogues, and border security.  For decades America’s position in each of these areas was being taken advantage of by nations who saw us as weak and without direction.  Trump has changed all that, and in every area he has gotten people off the dime and things moving.  Now the feckless Democrats are criticizing him and telling their know-nothings that Trump is not doing any good because he hasn’t solved all the decades-old problems in his first two years in office.  And none of them, not a single one, has anything better to offer than to stick our head back in the sand and let friend and foe steal us blind.

In the meantime, the Democrats have totally abandoned their former positions and goals, as they have wrapped themselves in socialism to tout Marx’s message to the masses of the western hemisphere, ‘Workers of the world unite.  You have nothing to lose but your chains!’  And where do you think that all of this uniting of the workers will take place as our formerly porous borders disappear completely?

[2jul19 update] This painting by Jon McNaughton titled 'National Emergency' says it all.  (H/T to reader)

[3jul19 update] A regular reader suggests that to better understand what the Democrats in Congress and our own leftwing socialist commenters share as worldviews and objectives to strive for can be found in the Jacobin Magazine.  Take a look at the real meaning of free speech as we celebrate an independence they are working to take away.

[7jul19 update]  Here’s another big lie pushed by one of our favorite communists, Umair Haque, who writes ‘The origins of America’s unique and spectacular cruelty’.  America is the one nation in the world that has THE preeminent culture of altruistic giving to those afflicted and less fortunate.  Yet this propagandist exercises his 1A right to constantly reel off lie after lie about America, Americans, and our role in the world’s community of nations.  The importance of his thought is that it is shared by almost all the Democrat presidential candidates who daily echo his words.

Soaking the Middle Class

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 12 June 2019.]

By this time we have all heard the nearly two dozen Democratic presidential candidates promise Americans so many free things we’ll get that most of us have lost track of all the goodies coming our way when one of the newly declared socialists replaces President Trump.  Let me just recount a partial list to get us all on the same page, because I’m going to talk about paying for all the free stuff.  We are promised Medicare for All, free college, forgiven student loans, national job guarantee, paid family medical leave, guaranteed national income, and, of course, all the things in the Green New Deal.  There is more to the list, but I think that these are enough to give the flavor of what we all are encouraged to expect after 2020.

What no one wants to talk about is how the coming workers’ paradise will be paid for.  The few candidates who dare to venture there give short answers that can be paraphrased as, ‘well, we’re gonna tax the bejeezus out of the corporations and the rich, and make them finally pay their fair share’.  And this usually brings out a sigh of relief from the light thinkers in the middle and lower income classes – ‘we’re gonna get all this free stuff and other people will be paying for it, where do I sign?’

Those requiring more meaty answers are assured that we will follow the European model, and everyone knows that they’ve cracked the code on how bigger governments are really the source of the people’s succor and largess.  However, that’s not the case when we look at their data from the EU and OECD countries.  There we quickly find that 1) they get a lot less than our Democratic candidates promise, and 2) the money to pay for it comes from the middle and lower classes, for the simple reason that the rich don’t have enough loot to foot the bill.  And there’s even a more sinister method by how the taxes eventually get raised on everyone.  The entire story with lots of numbers, charts, and graphs unfolds in the recent Heritage Foundation paper, ‘A Progressive Road Map for Soaking the Middle Class’ by Adam Michel.

Michel summarizes his research with – “Taxes on the rich cannot raise the necessary revenue to fund large European-style welfare states. If left on the current trajectory, U.S. government expenditures will require large tax increases on middle-class Americans. The current progressive agenda to further increase spending on health care, education, environmental policy, and income supports will require even higher taxes on a larger share of taxpayers. If America’s spending continues to look more and more like that of Europe, U.S. tax policy will also need to shift. In European countries, lower-income and middle-class taxpayers pay an average marginal wage tax rate of 49 percent on income above $37,000 a year, and an average value-added tax (VAT) of 20 percent. Those same U.S. taxpayers face a marginal wage tax of 32 percent and an average sales tax of 6 percent. The only sustainable way to avoid a high-tax American future is to reduce the growth rate of federal spending.”

For those still in terminal phases of denial, consider that our federal spending has been growing faster than the economy, tax revenues, inflation, Americans’ wages, and savings.  There is no alternative other than taxes have to be raised to European levels to pay for European size governments and spending.  And as Michel shows from EU and OECD data, that means tax bills will have to be raised to a minimum of three times for everyone – no one, rich, middle, or low earners will be spared.  Everyone will pay because at that level of proposed spending we will have run out of other people’s money.

The Democrats’ proposals will cost a conservative $50T over the next 10 years, more than doubling the current $4.4T annual federal budget which is already one-third funded by debt.  The tax implications are so horrendous that no one on the Left wants to talk about it as we witnessed in this week’s Democrat controlled House Committee on the Budget, which pointedly refused to consider any discussion of where the money would come from for all the things promised in just the Green New Deal.  My recommendation is that you get some answers to these questions before you vote in 2020.

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]  To put some meat on the above arguments.  Here are a couple of graphics illustrating the data from Adam Michel’s paper.  The first shows how much of each nation’s GDP is made up from the total tax burden its government imposes on its citizens.  The reason for America’s high ranking in most economic metrics that bear on people’s QoL should be clear.  There’s a reason why people from all over the world continue to risk life and limb to get into the United States, a reason that is totally, and I do mean TOTALLY, lost on our Left.  (Perhaps promoting policies to make us into a second rate country is the Democrats’ new stealth immigration policy that will then dramatically decrease the pressure on our borders.)

And here’s a compendium of more detailed albeit complex graphs placing the US relative to the EU and OECD countries.  It shows how tax revenues are spread over the spectrum of the countries' wage earners through the marginal rate burdens put on earnings.  It should dispel notions that all the socialist goodies currently in the EU, and promised in the US, are paid for by everyone, and not restricted to monies collected from the socially unjust rich and corporations.

The point to focus on in the above graphs is that the Democrat candidates want to put America right into the middle to upper end of the groups of blue dots representing the EU-OECD countries.  Check out the new tax rates that would apply to ALL our wage earners, and the resulting growth of government to absorb and redistribute the larger share of our nation's GDP (from the first figure, we are now only at the 27% of GDP level).  Does anyone really think that such a massive hit will not put brakes on our economy with the resulting impact on all our lives and motivation to take investment and entrepreneurial risks?  Look to Europe for the answers.

America’s politicians of all stripes know that Americans are overwhelmingly innumerate – they ‘don’t do numbers’.   Data such as presented above make no never mind to the overwhelming share of our citizens who, today more than ever, are focused on polarizing one-liners for their understanding of public policy proposals.  That is why the Democrats have no problem promising unattainable ‘free’ government benefits after they are elected to office.  The tools to make discriminating decisions on such matters were removed long ago from our public educational curricula.

‘Religious Freedom in Islam’

George Rebane

That’s the title of the new book by political science professor Daniel Philpott of Notre Dame.  It appears to be another anxious attempt at understanding and reconciling global Islam.  The book has an excellent review by Thomas Howard (history professor at Valparaiso University) in the 14may19 WSJ (here). Philpott divides the non-Islamic world into “Islamoskeptics”, holding that Islam is incompatible with religious freedom, and “Islamopluralists”, who accept the “religion of peace” teaching from the Mecca (v the Medina) Quran.

Philpott tries to give us the correct perspective on Muslim-majority countries by dividing them into three categories – “religiously free” (e.g. Lebanon, Kosovo), “secularly repressive” (e.g. Egypt, Turkey), and “religiously repressive” (e.g. Iran, Saudi Arabia).  Philpott agrees that the third confirms the West’s worst fears about Islam, but argues (as if it mattered) that the second kind is actually an import from the West, with its teaching that “the state must manage, control, and contain religion in order to make way for modern civilization.”

According to the author, the problem is that the secularly repressive countries spawn most of the Islamist terror that afflicts the world.  Somehow, here he overlooks the major (dominant?) contributions of Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia (homeland of almost all the 9/11 terrorists).  And the so-called peaceful and devout Muslims in the religiously free countries “have concluded that secularism (in its various guises) is to be eschewed as a Trojan horse sent by the West.”  In other words, the West as a whole remains the enemy of Islam, and not only Islamism (the terror spawning kind).

Nowhere does Philpott cover the much-feared and scripturally taught practice of taqiya (q.v., dissembling to promote Islam), or the caliphate as Islam’s endgame.  Most Islamoskeptics and all Islamophobes are sensitive to the global practice of terror killings by Islamists, and also their ongoing practice of green-on-green (and blue) killings, primarily in lands actively resisting Islamist factions such as ISIS, Taliban, Al Qaeda, Hamas, … .  Non-Muslims, especially westerners, have a hard time reconciling such ubiquitous and longstanding practice of the ‘murder of the innocents’ with any other belief system save those who follow Allah.

Nevertheless, Philpott’s essay concludes that our Constitution, and especially its First Amendment, provides a global template for protecting religious freedom rights (an unexamined goal of Islamic religionists) that will attract our Muslim brethren to exercise their “capacity to embrace a shift in thought.”  Again, here it is proper to insert from what-to-what, which apparently Philpott avoids in order to also avoid sounding, what, paternalistically neo-colonial?

I count myself definitely as an Islamoskeptic with periodic lapses into Islamophobia (fear of attempts to bring about a sharia-dominated caliphate).  My main concern is the absence of wholesale condemnation by the expatriate Islamic communities of individual acts of Islamist terror.  These Muslims, at best, only murmur a quiet, quick, and qualified disapproval, and when polled, turn in some very scary aggregate sentiments.  (e.g. results from Pew Research)  And the behavior of immigrant Muslims, in countries with insular communities abandoned by indigenous law enforcement agencies, speaks for itself, especially when considered in light of politically correct self-censorship by the media in reporting goings on and statistics that describe such cultural enclaves.

In the final analysis, our need to publish such apologetics in the west as Professor Philpott’s Religious Freedom in Islam (2019) speaks volumes about the real collision between the followers of the Prophet and the rest of us.  In many ways this work sounds like another careful walk whistling past the graveyard of the thousands who have been killed in the name of Allah.

Scattershots – 26apr19 (updated 27apr19)

George Rebane

The 17apr19 Scattershots got a bit too long with items that are hard to see below the page break, so let’s start another one.  BTW, I want to thank the thousands of RR readers and its group of stalwart commenters of all ideological hues.  We are now in our thirteenth year, and to date have amassed an archive of 3,006 posts underpinned by 140,681 comments in their comment streams.  Actually, the number of posts would be thousands more, save for my use of aggregating many of them under the dated ‘Ruminations’ and ‘Scattershots’ collections.  RR continues to be a uniquely open forum for the civil (albeit sometimes uncivil) discussion of all ideas that “alter and illuminate our times.”

Rebane’s rumblings are not the only attempts at deep thoughts about the goings on in our country and on our planet.  Significant contributions from our commenters on other issues and ideas decorate and lend weight to these comment streams, especially under the dated Sandboxes.  I call your attention to a recent exchange in the 23apr19 Sandbox between commenters Messrs Tozer (starting 848am) and ‘scenes’ (formerly ‘Scenes from the Coming Apocalypse’) that illustrates how illiberal has become free speech and discussion of new ideas in our progressive-run universities and colleges.

Democratic mayor Pete Buttigieg has entered the party’s race for its 2020 presidential candidate.  And, out of the gate, he’s basing the launch of his campaign on an audacious pack of lies about VP and former Indiana governor Mike Pence, with whom he had a most cordial and cooperative working relationship.  Governor Pence went out of his way to support and work with the unabashedly gay South Bend mayor.  But now “Mayor Pete picks a fight with a caricature of the vice president that he knows from experience is false.” (more here)  I bring this up re the continuing charges from our leftwing about Republicans being the only lying politicians in the land; none of them recognize the whopper-based careers of their own political leaders.  Why is it that the Right has no problem calling out the lies of Republican politicians (witness the numberless articles and features from the WSJ, National Review, Fox News, Heritage Foundation, …), but you never hear about the lying sumbiches and biches on the Left from their lamestream outlets?

How many mosques and Muslims have been attacked by self-declared Christians, or in the name of Christ?  Ask that reciprocal question about Muslims murdering Christians all around the world.  And dig deeper to ask how many of these Islamic terrorists have been recruited, trained, dedicated, and directed by Islamic institutions, organizations, and their clergy.  It is hard to make the case that there is any semblance of reciprocation in this ideo/theological conflict as our progressive brethren like to point out.  The two stacks of evidence simply do not compare.  So why does the Left continue to maintain this façade of lies?  (Full disclosure: this a is an unvarnished rhetorical question to which most Americans already know the answer.)

Western media glibly continue to report that North Korea is a “nuclear armed regime”, when it clearly is not.  I think for diplomatic and propaganda purposes we need to paint NK and its dear leader, the Ugly Fat Kid, as having the capability to wreak worldwide havoc.  This so that we can continue our attempts to keep him from acquiring/developing nuclear arms, and in the process support our agenda with China and now Russia.  It may be a bit technical to follow, but the UFK is nowhere near having nuclear ‘arms’ – i.e. operational weapons capable of delivering and exploding nuclear devices over distant enemy targets.  The simple fact is that the UFK has yet to test and demonstrate a launchable warhead that can be controlled with sufficient accuracy, and that also carries precisely-deployable, onboard penaids (penetration aids consisting of staged decoys used to spoof interceptor radars and IR sensors) that enable it to survive re-entry and reach the desired detonation point before being intercepted.   Before such a weapon enters their arsenal as an operational weapon system, NK will have to conduct multiple re-entry tests using otherwise fully functional, dummy warheads aimed at open-ocean ‘targets’.  Such tests will take time and be visible to all, and will be most carefully monitored by us and other nations concerned about the UFK’s sabre rattling.  (The Soviets and now Russians have monitored the re-entry of our ICBMs at mid-Pacific target atolls for decades.)  However, no such tests have been observed; ergo, NK is not yet a nuclear armed regime.

Avengers: The Endgame was touted by WSJ’s film critic Joe Morgenstern, who gave the movie a glowing review last Wednesday (24apr19), the day before its nationwide opening (here).  And apparently he was not the only one trumpeting hosannas for the flick.  Well, Jo Ann and I don’t go to the movies much, so we thought ‘what the hell, even though comic book heroes are not our favorite past time, the cultural experience sitting with a live audience should be worth it – so we went last night to the GV del Oro theater and wedged ourselves between an interesting menagerie of humanity that included a pair of motor-mouths behind us rattling their popcorn bags and bumping the backs of our seats, and next to a couple of twenty-something females who hauled in a four-year-old young man who had been taught no social skills about how to behave in polite company (perhaps because it didn’t turn out to be all that polite).  Anyway, the theater’s noise level during the movie was something to behold – when will they provide the audio over our own wireless, noise-cancelling headsets?

So now the 3+ hour movie.  It was the most banal attempt to combine some awkwardly composed serious dialogue with action scenes designed for the comprehension of six-year-olds that unsuccessfully attempted to explain the role of quantum-based time travel by the characters before they found themselves battling the vast array of minions in the service of a really bad guy who wanted to destroy the universe – we noticed that we’re now beyond simply destroying the earth, or our solar system, or even the galaxy – and then build a new one more to his liking.  Apparently he had the godlike powers to do it, although the movie was distinctly free of any accompanying spiritual content – you know, separation of church and Hollywood – that might at least have made a cameo appearance.  And so this utter waste of time dragged on for hours that seemed like much more than its claimed three, during which time all (who knows?) the Marvel heroes made their own appearances in addition to more cameos by some notable film worthies like Robert Redford and Benedict Cumberbatch.  And here we thought such people had enough money to avoid another turn at the world’s oldest profession.  Apparently not, since all across the country multiplexes bumped other films to use all their auditoriums for extra showings of Avengers, some going so far as to advertise 24/7 offerings so everyone could come and enjoy this heartwarming epic and culmination of the cinemagraphic arts.  Truth be told, if you paid attention, you could even catch odd snatches of acting, each lasting maybe ten, fifteen seconds.  And this morning we were told that this flick is breaking all box office records.  But overall, as a public service our advice is to save your money, unless you are determined to dip your own dipstick to check the level and character of today’s hoi polloi.

[27apr19 update]  Our indominable cartoonist Bob Crabb has hit another home run.  His latest offering below was filched from the pages of the 27apr19 Union.  Thanks Bob for making the already painful also memorable 😉

NZ Massacre – the Left’s new perfect storm

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

George Rebane

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

Scattershots – 11mar19 (updated 14mar19)

George Rebane

Looking for national conspiracies?  Now here is one that involves everyone from George Soros through the DoJ/FBI to the DNC/Hillary.  “A dark money group with links to several high-profile liberal activists contributed $2 million to The Democracy Integrity Project, an organization founded by a former Dianne Feinstein staffer that has contracted with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to investigate President Donald Trump.” (more here)  But no one gives a hoot after the FBI’s historical public exoneration of Hillary after confirming that she did indeed break several laws dealing with national security and destroying subpoenaed evidence.

The EU’s socialist-burdened, debt-ladened countries have had a hard time taking advantage of the global upswing in business, and appear to be heading for a slowdown if not recession.  With low growth rates and still high unemployment, the continent added another harbinger as investors are exiting stocks and bidding up government bonds.  The German bund last Friday was paying 0.04% or essentially no interest as a safe haven for cash.  This, of course, sets up a vicious circle in which left-leaning countries regulate and tax their businesses to low profits, which causes their shares to be sold off, which reduces business expansion and hiring, which bids up bonds thereby lowering government debt service costs, which provides governments essentially free money to borrow and dispense into programs that grow bureaucracies and launch more programs of socialist largess, which makes the business climate even worse, which … .  Our Democrats are taking notes on how to replicate such policies on this side of the pond.

[12mar19 update]  Finland’s government collapses over healthcare costs (here).  Other Nordics are not far behind as has been reported here for some time now.  None of these socialist programs nationalizing this or that are sustainable – it’s only a matter of time when other people’s money runs out.  H/T to a Sandbox commenter for finding an early report of it.  You can bet the ranch that the lamestream will hide this as long as it can, and proto-communists like Bernie and AOC will lie through their teeth about the news.  Their solution will, of course, be even higher taxes (aka wealth redistribution).  We all await our progressive pundits’ response for an enlivening conversation; sure hope they don’t send in their cricket corps.

NPR’s Morning Edition today featured a segment on what our 2050 world will look like after we have stopped emitting CO2 and global warming has been stopped in its tracks.  The reporter was almost delirious with joy reporting from the future and looking back on what it took to get to the brave new world where people live in ‘stack & pack’ housing, suburbia was no more, private electric vehicles cost a lot, were taxed a lot, and all roadways charged dynamic fees to keep you using public transportation. That future world was envisioned quite accurately by Orwell’s 1984, and even portrayed more honestly in Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago.  Big suburban houses will repurposed for multi-family living, and standard houses will be home to 4-5 people sharing kitchen and bathroom facilities.  (The Rebanes lived almost five years in such lodgings after WW2.  See ‘My Story’)  What the report conveniently omitted was what draconian measures it would take for government to herd people into such warrens and then keep them from revolting, and what would happen to the economy when taking risks was no longer rewarded, or even allowed by central planners and controllers.

[14mar19 update]  Second Amendment attack by Connecticut's Supreme Court in ruling that manufacturer of the Sandy Hook AR-15 can be sued. (more here) This is more than a gun control nose under the 2nd Amendment tent.  If this ruling is allowed to stand, then where will this kind of rogue litigations stop?  The implication is that the manufacturer of a tool legally made for legal use can be held accountable for its illegal uses.  What then of knife makers, or hatchet makers, or baseball bat makers, or rat poison makers, or rope makers, or even manufacturer of a car used by a terrorist or drunkard to kill people?  What then of the item's distributors and dealers?  You get the idea.  'The Left is evil' gets another confirming check mark.