Rebane's Ruminations

Sandbox – 1jan23

[Well, Happy 2023 everyone and we might as well start the new year off with a fresh sandbox.  In the 19dec22 Sandbox Mr scenes offered an intriguing suggestion (830am) in an attempt to eliminate the detritus of TDS and things gratuitously Trump from continually contaminating practically every other topic with yet another boring lap around the Trump barn.  He suggested that RR add a Trump category and restrict posting of Trump-centric comments to that category.  I envision it being structured like the Sandbox with dated, and perhaps even topical, labels so that the comment streams don’t become too long.  I need to noodle on this and invite readers’ ideas about how it would work.  gjr]

‘Democracy Dies in California’

“To impose a new burden on fast-food restaurants, the state plans to ignore the constitution’s right of voters to review laws.”

George Rebane

California suffers a continuous stream of social, economic, and political disasters.  All of these are formulated, brought to bear, and implemented by the state’s virulently anti-American Democratic Party.  Most of the public policy tragedies arrive unknown and unannounced to the state’s shrinking share of maker residents.  The takers don’t care since they know that all the wealth transfer programs, no matter how scurrilous, all go to buy and pay for their votes.

The latest of these promises an historic change in how California’s referenda will now be treated.  Slated to go into effect tomorrow (1jan23) – “The law creates a state council to dictate wages, working conditions and benefits, among other things, for fast-food workers who aren’t unionized. The law is intended to coerce fast-food franchises to surrender to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).” (here)

What’s different is that this law was passed late in the legislative session to deny Californians any reasonable review of the matter.  However, an astute watchdog organization, Save Local Restaurants, has gathered over a million signatures on a petition opposing the referendum and filed it with the state.  According to California’s constitution “a law is required to be put on hold once a referendum petition with enough signatures is filed.”

The constitution is very specific about this 1911 amendment which reserves “to the people the power to pass judgment upon the acts of the legislature, and to prevent objectionable measures from taking effect.” Once a referendum is filed, “no such act or section or part of such act shall go into effect until and unless approved by a majority of the qualified electors voting thereon.”

The state is ignoring its constitution, and has stated it will “temporarily” implement the law until the signatures are verified, a task that will be completed sometime in October 2023.  At that time the law will either be withdrawn or made permanent.  Such an unconstitutional, temporarily-in-effect provision has never been attempted before.

If allowed to stand, this legislative tactic – passing bills late in the legislative calendar in order to limit their opponents’ ability to stop them from taking effect - will become yet another tool and precedent for our monopoly political party to continue its destruction of California.  Sleazebags on parade.

The only remaining hope on this is an order by a state judge prohibiting enforcement of the law until a hearing is held in two weeks.  Else “businesses would have to temporarily comply even though the laws may be later suspended once signatures are verified and eventually overturned by voters.”  So it is no surprise that we continue to witness large numbers of our businesses and people vote with their feet by leaving California.

Peeking Into Progressive Minds

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scattershots – 26dec22 (update 29dec22)

George Rebane

Christmas 2022.  Jo Ann and I were again blessed to be in the bosom of our family on Christmas eve and Christmas day.  The whole affair took place at daughter Teine and Dave’s house (head of our Southern Tribe) in Alta Sierra.  Teine organized and put on dinner on the eve, Christmas brunch, and big Christmas dinner.  In attendance were also granddaughter Fiona (with child) with hubby Shawn and their daughter Maybelle, grandson Sean and wife Bella (with child) who arrived late on Christmas eve, driving in one day from snowbound Denver where they live (as part of our Eastern Tribe) along with granddaughter Claire, hubby, and four more great-grandchildren.  Throw into that mix two male dogs and a Maine Coon cat, and you get a rough idea of all the goings on in the house and yard.  Our Northern Tribe, headed by daughter Sini and hubby Roland, was snowbound in their Seattle area home along with their timely assembled kids Elizabeth, Lucas, and Catherine with hubby.  Needless to say, a lot of inter-tribal texting and sending of pics went on the whole time.

‘Into each life some …’  The regular reader will have noticed a drop-off in the frequency of RR posts.  As reported before, Jo Ann and I came down with Covid during Thanksgiving week.  And that malady has lingered with us, mostly me, over the last month.  I had some health issues (inevitable in your 80s) start earlier in the year which Covid compounded.  So anyway, we’re getting tested for this and that, and dragging a mite in the process.  Hope to be back online sooner than later.

[28dec22 update]  Our beloved Union is in the hands of junior varsity journalistic philistines.  Their new managing editor Elias Funez showed his hand in today’s edition by writing a very long, self-adulatory op-ed (here) that leaves no doubt the man either failed Introduction to Composition 1A, or never even gave it a try.

Given my extensive history covering wildfires over my now 17 years of newspaper reporting, It didn’t take me long for me to connect the dots between my penchant for producing breaking news coverage, live video, and print photography.

And I was finding out that not just her, but many many others as well. My live feeds had now have become a resource where folks were exchanging information in real time, and with many other members of the community.

There’s much more to lament about this man’s talents in running a newspaper.  I also recommend RR readers take a look at the newspaper’s completely revised website (here).  This monstrosity is basically broken – e.g. it will not accept former account holders, and does not even feature the paper’s Opinion (op-ed) section.  It appears to now start focusing on syndicated writers with a distinct leftward lean.  More about this later.

[29dec22 update]  ‘ICE Admits It Has ‘No Records’ For Hundreds Of Thousands Of Illegal Immigrants Released With Electronic Monitors’  The evidence of government incompetence and criminal fraud pours in daily.  The Biden administration has assured their various departments and agencies fomenting and promoting the illegal alien invasion that they will not be touched by the formerly ‘long arm of the law’.  Future favors accrue to the bureaucrats enabling the now bulging pipeline of future Democrat voters. (more here)

Christmas - 2022

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

George Rebane

[This Christmas message first appeared here in 2019 and was repeated last year.  It still bears repeating.]

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

Sandbox – 19dec22

[A continuing miss to Fox and other conservative outlets for not bringing up and highlighting daily ‘the border is secure’ lies of the anti-American Biden administration and presidency.  No president in our history has purposely or otherwise done so much damage to our republic as has this functional idiot in the White House.  gjr]

Enduring Impact of Imported Cultures

George Rebane

As we anticipate the horrendous impact of abandoning Title 42 for managing the current tsunami of illegal aliens crossing our southern border, George Mason University economics professor Garett Jones comes out with The Culture Transplant (2022), a major essay on the enduring impact of cultures brought in by America’s immigrants.  In the book review (here) we read –

… cultural traits can persist for generations after migrants arrive in a new country. Newcomers don’t simply assimilate to their new homes; as the book’s subtitle puts it, they “make the economies they move to a lot like the ones they left.” It’s a thesis that is at once highly provocative and a restatement of common sense: Poorly chosen immigrants can undermine a country’s success; cultures don’t disappear when people move from place to place.

A point long made in these pages, the presentation of this research underlines the damage, not only possible, but to be anticipated from the hordes of millions of illegals that have been released with no effective controls into all corners of our land.  More ominously –

… even after four generations in the U.S., immigrants continue to hold attitudes toward trust that are significantly influenced by their home countries. On a host of other matters, such as family, abortion and the role of government, fourth-generation immigrants on average converge only about 60% of the way to the national norm. “Overall,” Mr. Jones contends, “that low level of conformity is a bad sign, unless you think most immigrants come from countries with better political attitudes than Americans currently have.”

The bottom line is that immigrants from bad and backward countries don’t leave their cultures behind.  They continue to embrace and practice them here, especially when they gather in ethnically homogenous enclaves.  The resulting disunity impedes the falsely touted assimilation, and gives lie to the progressives’ chant that ‘Our diversity is our strength.’  In this shibboleth Jones writes “you’re hearing the cultural equivalent of second marriages: a triumph of hope over experience.”  As demonstrated over the centuries, first and foremost, people like to live with their own kind, no matter where they locate.

In this work Prof Jones has introduced a migration-adjusted SAT (state, agriculture, technology) score which usefully predicts the assimilation attributes of our immigrant ethnicities – e.g. predicts more than 60% of modern day income differences between the groups as derived from their countries of origin.  It turns out that the technology component of SAT is the most impactive.  Correlating with their home countries -

Technology also seems to be the best long-run predictor of government quality. So the main story seems to be about technological development persisting over time, and of people bringing their technological capabilities to new places. 

Continuing to allow uncontrolled entry of millions of illegals portends a cultural and existential disaster for America – “These concerns are immediate and tangible, not preoccupied with the effect of immigration generations from now. To address some of the more compelling worries, we might start placing greater emphasis on skills, perhaps implementing a points system, as Australia, Canada and the U.K. do, to grade potential immigrants.”

But first and foremost, to implement any of these factors into an immigration policy that sustains America, we have to secure our borders.  This is also understood by our neo-Marxist and anti-American elites who will fight tooth and nail to maintain our borders in their current dysfunctional state that promotes, nay invites, the uncontrolled invasion by millions of illegals who will implant their own counter-cultures in this fair land.

Ruminations – 8dec22 (updated 15dec22)

George Rebane

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

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

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

Sandbox – 5dec22

[Much appreciation for the concern shown by commenters to our pace of Covid recovery.  We have discovered for ourselves that all the stories about how it drains you of energy, and the time it takes to get back to normal are true in spades.  We felt the symptoms and tested positive on 21 November and got over the low point three days later.  But since then it’s been a real drag – every chore that requires moving your butt drains you.  Yesterday morning we did a big grocery shopping which laid us low.  Afternoon nappy-poos are a must.  This morning I tried a turn on the treadmill at half speed; could only last 15 minutes.  But we do sense that day by day we’re getting better; if we could only pick up the pace a little.  gjr]

Twitter blackout

George Rebane

Last week Elon Musk released a tranche of Twitter internal communications to conservative blogger Matt Taibbi.  Since then, more has been released through Taibbi.  These missives between top and middle management at Twitter during the summer and fall of 2020 are damning evidence of how the Democrat Party, government agencies, and corporatist entities worked hand-in-glove to deflect the election toward Biden by censoring and discrediting the Hunter Biden laptop evidence of high-level corruption and government influence peddling.

As RR and its regular Ruminators have long-cited and argued, this case of carefully constructed and directed lies was most certainly the biggest ‘irregularity’ from which the 2020 election suffered, and still gives cause for many of us to consider that President Trump would have been re-elected had the laptop imbroglio received the timely national coverage it deserved.  Many legal minds and national commentators opine that the significance of how the Biden laptop was censored and propagandized makes Watergate look like a walk in the park.  I strongly agree.

Here we have two distinct issues at work – laptop evidence of Biden family corruption, and corporatist cooperation with political opposition to influence the outcome of a national election.  These working together gives a perfect example where 2+2=5, and why the DNC and Democratic leadership pulled all stops to bury the evidence before voters could hear of it.  The details of the story, especially as it involves collusion of the FBI (weekly meetings with Twitter) and a cadre of former intelligence officials, make for movie material reading (more here).  And, of course, the case is not closed yet if congressional Republicans will grow a pair and open a wide-ranging investigation in January.  Stay tuned.

Finally, what this illustrates once more is another example of how Americans live in two distinct and separate worlds.  Those light readers who consume mainly lamestream media will not have even heard enough to give this matter a second thought.  More observant leftwingers continue to consume the lies that there is no there there; most certainly not of government censorship since Twitter is a private company.  Of course, Twitter’s close coordination with the Biden WH and FBI, as the evidence now shows, is never mentioned in the leftwing outlets’ reports.  Through corporatism the government has been overwhelmingly involved in First Amendment censorship.

For a coda, put this coverage and the polarization it maintains in the context of finding common ground, of coming together again, or of the oft-repeated notion that there are more things that unite us than separate us.  No there aren’t.  (More here)

Scattershots – 1dec22

George Rebane

China’s nationwide Covid lockdowns.  Does anyone have any reasonable explanation for this supremely stupid policy that will NOT avoid the inevitable nationwide pandemic, destroys the nation’s economy, and gives rise to riots that increase popular opposition to the CCP and its governments?  All pandemics will end through herd immunity – natural or vaccine mediated.  There are no effective Covid vaccines, and none on the horizon.  When the lockdowns are inevitably lifted, the disease will rage just like it has everywhere else.

More black mayors celebrated.  As Jason Riley points out here in the 30nov22 WSJ, the worst thing that can happen to a city or community is to elect a black mayor.  America’s decades old record of such unfortunate election outcomes clearly demonstrates a strong correlation of economic downturn and soaring crime rates when leftwing black community governance is ensconced.  And yet they keep doing it, while bitching about everything from police brutality, horrible public education, to racist allocation of state and federal largesse to the local weal.  The motto of our black communities has long been ‘vote the same, then expect change’.

The League of Women Voters is a partisan Democrat shill.  Looking at the political affiliation of its members over the last decades demonstrates its firm position in America’s progressive politics.  Things in the LWV started turning left in the 1970s when Jo Ann was on the board of the Ventura County LWV.  Having early lost credibility as unbiased sponsor of national presidential debates, the organization pulled in its horns to focus on non-partisan bamboozles delivered at the local levels.  And today, Ms Fran Cole, head of the Nevada County LWV, attempts a ludicrous counter argument in the 30nov22 Union – ‘Let’s set the record straight; the League of Women Voters is a political non-partisan organization’.  In it she goes on to twist the record into a pretzel, following the well-established Alinsky model in the Democrats’ communication kit.  For openers she argues that today’s overwhelmingly leftwing LWV members can set aside their political proclivities and provide unbiased reporting on issues and conduct similarly neutral candidate forums.  The latter is contradicted by legions of Republican candidates in recent years who have refused to take part in such one-sided kabukis.  The former is something unknown in the field of psychology, and not accepted as unbiased by any broad-based audience (starting with the leftwingers themselves).

Sandbox – 30nov22

[All the evidence for impeaching that lying SOS Alejandro Mayorkas applies doubly against Bumblebrain.  It was he who directed his DHS to open the border, let in millions of illegals, including criminals and terrorists of every stripe, fentanyl that has killed hundreds of thousands, and devastated our border cities.  Typically, the Republicans will be blowing it again if they ignore the main event and focus on the low grade ore instead.  Better yet, impeach them both - Mayorkas for following an unconstitutional and illegal order from the President to keep the border open while lying to the American people.  gjr]

Two blind mice

George Rebane

Celebrating political monopolies.  Leftwing thought leaders, syndicated Thomas Elias and local George Boardman, write with glee how California’s Democrat Party cancer continues to grow.  Having already metastasized the state, it is now starting to pick off the remnant low population rural counties in the northern part, leading with our Nevada County. (Their columns in the 29nov22 Union, not online yet.)

The social and economic devastation is totally invisible to these mavens, as these were to the Stalin celebretorians in Pravda of the 1930s and 1940s.  As with all autocrats, it’s the party über alles, no matter what trail of destruction it leaves behind.  They see nothing wrong with the exodus of the skilled and productive.  The exodus of small businesses for greener pastures.  The ever-increasing taxes and regulations to conduct and corral our lives.  Nothing wrong with the state’s top 1% earners paying nearly 50% of the state’s general fund revenues.  And many of these 150,000 out of 40M are now leaving or have already left, thereby causing huge ($25B) and promising bigger state budget deficits.

But what the Left’s cricket chorus hides is how decades of one-party control has made California the nation’s posterchild of every government folly and foible that places us in the bottom of the federalized barrel of states along almost every metric that is important to the country’s makers.  However, the country’s takers see an entirely different California.  They welcome its teeming cities filled with the homeless, littered with needles and feces, and rife with crime rates that are anything but equitable.

To be fair Thomas Elias does make a couple of good points about the state’s Republicans basically sitting on their collective butts celebrating a micro gain here and there, but none of it amounts to a hill of beans in being a relevant opposition party in the state.  Elias doesn’t have much advice for that achievement save give up on some core Republican planks like opposing abortion.

Bottom line though is that neither columnist gives a hint of lament about the detritus all around us as evidence of what the Democrat Party has accomplished during its tenure in Sacramento.  

Thanksgiving 2022

George Rebane

In spite of it all dear readers and RR regulars, we still have so much to be thankful for.  Jo Ann and I wish all of you a happy Thanksgiving, and may you be blessed to share it with those you love.

Ruminations - 15nov22 (updated 22nov22)

George Rebane

How a communist thinks and talks.  Listen to CBS anchor Tony Dokoupil come up with a new plan (here) how rich guys like Bezos should dispose of their money - give the extra back to the government where it will be spent "democratically".  Well, actually it's not a new plan.  Marx and Lenin thought of it first, and starting with Stalin communist countries have been implementing it ever since.  Their method was even more efficient, the state didn't pay you enough for anything to be left over; they took their democratic share right off the top before you even got the left overs.  You can bet the ranch that is exactly what our woke progressives would ultimately implement here.

[17nov22 update]  California is anticipating a $25B budget deficit, due to revenue shortfalls from a diminishing population of our top wealthiest quintile, who, along with their businesses, have been leaving the state in droves.  All in an environment of complete denial by the Left's monopoly party in Sacramento, and their legions of bought-and-paid-for gimmes that populate California’s hustings.  But not to worry, that market for acquiring dependent votes continues in full swing, including the promise of no service cutbacks for our growing cohort of illegal aliens.

“Political Gridlock is Poised to Return” in Washington.  Hallelujah!  Given the damage done by Congress in recent decades, a good helping of gridlock is just what the country needs now.

[22nov22 update]  Well, it took a while for us to join the billions of infected, but Jo Ann and I tested positive for Covid today.  We returned from visiting our Northern Tribe in the Seattle area on Sunday, and both of us felt a little queasy with a persistent cough when we got home.  And yesterday morning Jo Ann was really symptomatic, with my joining her in the evening.  We started our own federally countermanded curative regimen, and amazingly both of us already feel that we have passed the low point.  Then again, maybe this bug has multiple minima, we shall see.  Anyway -

The time has come, the feds all say,

to talk of many things;

Of salves and pills, and even a potion,

that relief from Covid brings.

But make no motion to include any notion

of some bygone promotion

that to IVT and HCQ still clings.

The Kennan/Byrnes Foreign Policy Conundrum

George Rebane

I recently finished reading a most fascinating and informative account of the international geo-strategic process of decision making by the Allies during WW2.  The work titled Speaking Frankly (1947) by James F. Byrnes (here), diplomat, jurist, and politician extraordinaire, was a command performance and hit the top of the charts when it was published in October 1947.  (In these pages we first met Byrnes in ‘America’s Foreign Policy’)

Byrnes concludes his ‘diplomatic chronology’ of the war with new challenges for making and keeping the peace after hostilities ended in 1945.  The problem was the USSR.  Dealing with them had been difficult during the war since they were ousted from the Axis powers by Hitler’s double-cross in 1941, after which they quickly became the second (some say ‘first’) front of the Allies against the Nazi war machine.

Byrnes concludes his considerable tome with the Book IV chapters ‘Building a People’s Foreign Policy’, ‘Control of Atomic Energy’, ‘What Are the Russians After?’, ‘Where Do We Go from Here?’.  It is the last two chapters that concern us.

But before we consider these, let’s turn to George F. Kennan (here), accomplished and enigmatic diplomat with some outrageous social views.   More importantly, he was our Russia expert, fluent in Russian, who during the war in 1944 was made ‘deputy chief of mission’ in Moscow under ambassador Averill Harriman.  During this service Kennan developed a detailed and highly accurate understanding of the USSR, Stalin, and the international communist movement.  He was the vociferous critic of America’s foreign policy who launched his post-war career with the now famous ‘Long Telegram’ (1946) which he sent to President Truman through his then SecState boss James Byrnes.

So here comes the conundrum.  Byrnes, who experienced the long, detailed, and frustrating negotiations with the Russians firsthand during and after the war, concluded that Soviet leaders were a bunch of totalitarian lying sonsabitches who could not be trusted to carry out the provisions of any treaty that they finally deigned to sign.  Time and again he watched the Soviets undermine duly elected/established post-war, east European governments, and bring them under communist regimes in preparation for ultimate membership in the USSR’s expanding coterie of soviet republics and compliant client states when the Iron Curtain finally dropped in the spring of 1948.

Yet Byrnes kept trying to wring out of the Soviets the remaining and still missing peace treaties with major governments like Germany and Italy, which were now occupied countries under martial law administered within the framework of the existing armistices that each signed after the guns were silenced.  Truth be told, an overarching reason for Byrnes continuing to treat the USSR honorably was to employ and promote the functions of the then nascent United Nations, the institution in which many in the free world had faith in becoming the successful international peacekeeper.

Sandbox - 10nov22

[People who debate whether the glass if half empty or half full miss the point.  The glass is refillable.  A verity cherished by the Right and missed by the Left.  gjr]

Election 2022 – America’s Voters Tested (updated 15nov22)

George Rebane

So, election day 2022 is finally here.  It arrived with a months-long preamble of leftwing lies about the current state of the country and the portents for its future were we to deviate from the sorry road that got us to where we are under this administration.  The question now is how many of us believed the crap spewing from the White House, Congress, and their lamestream lackies.  And yes, it is the most momentous election since I started paying attention in my pre-teen years.  Communists of all stripes used to be pariahs in the American political menagerie.  Not anymore.  Now communism is being taught in our schools as one of the more beneficial ways to organize society after we rid ourselves of the capitalist democratic republic that we have had foisted on us.

The fault is not with our politicians, it lies upon those of us who put them in positions of power.  “A republic, if you can keep it.”

[9nov22 update]  The much-vaunted Red Wave has now turned out to be recognized nationally at best as the Red Ripple – and that appellation is still hopeful since neither the House nor Senate results are yet in.  Our Nevada County went predictably Democratic – RR has acknowledged for years that the county is blue, not quite as badly as California, but close enough for government work.  So what happened yesterday and its weeks-long preamble of early voting was a disaster for our republic.  My takeaways can be enumerated as follows –

1. The irretrievable decline of our constitutional republic is confirmed. The fraction of our electorate that is terminally ignorant of collectivist governance, economics and capitalism, the beneficial role of entrepreneurship and financial risk, elements of science, American history and history in general, AND the basic skills of literacy and numeracy has now breached the 50% level. (cf National Center for Educational Statistics)
2. The effectiveness of our progressive educational institutions working in tandem with our compliantly propagandized Fourth Estate is beyond question when it comes to the kind of learning and related behavioral changes that are still possible for our adult population to again support capitalism and American constitutionalism. There is no feasible road back from collectivism and collectivist dogma for a major share of the American electorate whose post-reasonable belief systems have become immune to evidence.
3. The Republican party is not an effective alternative to the Democrats, and continues to shrink its political efforts to champion the nation’s Right, which currently has no viable alternative through which to seek ideological resurgence.
4. The fork in the road of our national future lead to autocracy cum tyranny or the Great Divide. The peaceful resolution would be a negotiated Great Divide, the several forms of which have been discussed in these pages.  What stands in the way is that the Right wants to separate from the Left, but the Left wants to prevent separation and favors controlling a subdued, subservient, and shrinking Right.  This is made clear daily by their political leaders and media talking heads.
5. The above asymmetries to governance and social order are uniform across the land and visible daily even in our little rural county. In today’s Union, its op-ed pages featured a skewed admonishment of the newspaper’s political orientation which has faithfully represented the county’s invasion by coastal liberals who have soiled their former homes.  The paper does print rightwing authors whose sparse offerings are regularly decried for being allowed in print in a community with a majority leftwing population.  Such illustrative responses to inhibit free speech and opposing views are innately foreign to people of the Right.
6. No matter what the final counts will indicate, this election has proven to be a disaster for Republicans. Never since FDR’s atrocious New Deal policies have we witnessed a more incompetent, corrupt, and corrupting administration with ample evidence of its doings becoming increasingly available over the months.  The hopeful sentiment was that this much government corruption, imbecility, and anti-Americanism will surely make an impact on leftwing constituencies.  The results didn’t pan out and gives proof to the indelible mentality of the main street Left.  (The polls have been worthless, no good ways of random sampling remain in this age of screened telecommunications.)
7. The only glimmer that has come out so far is some visible migration of Hispanics and blacks away from the devastating inflation and crime that the Biden administration has brought about over the last two years. But even that was not enough keep the wave from turning into at best a ripple.

Coda: Apparently I’m not alone in the assessment of the American electorate.  Stephen Kruiser of PJ Media writes, ‘We're Done–American Voters Are Idiots’.

[15nov22 update] 'Tragically Trump' is Victor Davis Hanson's major essay on the election, the role of Trump, and the Republican Party's future that heavily depends on what Trump will do now.  I don't believe he will go quietly into the dark night of political has-beens.  H/T to commenters who also picked up on VDH's commentary.

America’s Foreign Policy

George Rebane

Our foreign policy is on the rocks, and has not been so badly mishandled since JFK’s screw-up brought on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.  Our globally recognized incompetence in that national endeavor has brought us to the brink of WW3 with not only one, but two marginally stable enemies (I discount North Korea and Iran).  Russia and Red China are each exhibiting their opportunistic ire in the face of the weak leader now in the White House, one who has visibly weakened and demoralized our military and promises to continue down that path by withdrawing funding for critical technology upgrades and new combat systems procurements required to bring our defense establishment back up to par with our longstanding national security requirements.

A nation’s foreign policy begins at its border.  And our president has been purposely and impeachably delinquent with his policies starting at our southern border which he has kept invitingly open to millions of illegal aliens pouring in at a steady stream – over five million during the last two years.  This lawless stream has contributed to unmanageable crime, thousands of drug deaths, and an ongoing cultural shock to communities.  Upon closer examination, Joe Biden has done nothing to fulfill the oath he took in January 2021.  His only accomplishment in keeping half the nation in deep ignorance is his daily stream of historically preposterous lies about the state of the world, the nation, and his political opponents.  With a willing and compliant media, and a dumbed-down electorate, almost anything can be passed off as an acceptable and palliative version of reality.

We Americans permit this dangerous assault on national security and our way of life by a continuing, if not deepening, ignorance about the world and our role in it.  As mentioned, our media and educational institutions have been partners in keeping Americans in the dark about global happenings and how to relate these to our foreign policy.

This social deficit was first recognized by James F. Byrnes (1882-1972), politician (congressman, senator, governor), jurist (Supreme Court justice), and diplomat (Secretary of State) extraordinaire.  He was the ‘President’s Hand’ under Roosevelt and Truman, and critical architect of wartime and postwar policies, including peace treaties with Germany et al and Imperial Japan, and agreements to keep the USSR and international communism at bay.  He was America’s principal advisor or principal negotiator at international conferences and head-of-state meetings from 1939 to 1947.  Having taught himself shorthand in law school, he became the inveterate note taker at every meeting he attended.  No one could cite erroneous memories from previous meetings when Byrnes was involved, since he could read them chapter and verse of direct quotes of who said what when.

After the war Byrnes’ accomplishments became known and his fame spread.  There was a national outcry for him to write the definitive record of the war’s diplomatic back story and how the major decisions were made, decisions from whether/when to drop the atomic bomb to how the post-war world should be partitioned.  He acceded to this and published a detailed and fascinating history titled Speaking Frankly (1947), which instantly made it to the top of the charts along with being highlighted by the then enormously popular Book-of-the-Month Club.  For WW2 history buffs like me, reading it was an expansion of my own knowledge and a thrilling page-turning reveal of the highly classified and secret goings-on that guided where and when the battles occurred.  Along with the inevitable barnacles that collect with such a career, he was among the several under-appreciated giants that determined the course of the war and subsequent international relations.

On the subject of foreign policy Byrnes promoted openness and public participation as prerequisites to peace and avoiding unnecessary wars.  He wrote –

I continue to think that, if we are to have a lasting peace, it must be a people’s peace.  The people can exert their full influence in the conduct of foreign affairs only if they know more about them.

The basic democratic right, the right of the people to know, must be applied increasingly to the conduct of foreign affairs.  If that right is essential – as I believe it is - to the functioning of democracy here at home, it is at least equally necessary to apply it in the field of foreign affairs where the need for knowledge and understanding is so much greater.  To carry this policy into action involves a break with the diplomatic habits of the past.  Such habits are not easily broken.  Time, effort, and a constant demand by the public to know what is happening will be needed.

People cannot act intelligently if, in all matters of importance affecting our relations with other governments, they are kept in the dark.

Let there be light – and lots of it!

America’s Ingrained Indelible Ignorance

George Rebane

Union columnist Terry McLaughlin penned an important column in today’s (3nov22) newspaper titled ‘Perceptions and reality’.  In there she cited studies from academe and data from government agencies about the large deficits in what our adult population, which includes the electorate, knows about our country and what beliefs they actually use on which to base their decisions.  The information derived from academic surveys paints a picture of a population that has almost no knowledge about the important parameters that define the country they live in.  McLaughlin does an excellent job in summarizing the skewed view our neighbors have about America.

For example, Americans’ average belief in share of adults who belong to unions is 36 % to the actual value of 4%.  They believe that about 26% of American household incomes exceed $500,000 when the real share is about 1%.  They also think that about 41% of Americans are black when the reality is approximately 14%.  The numbers are 39% for Hispanics instead of 17% according to the census.  We believe that 30% of us are homosexual when again the real number is 3%; that 21% are transgender which in reality is 0.6%.

It's not hard to attribute the reason we have such a grossly misinformed citizenry.  Almost all of them have been educated by barrel-bottom teachers in unionized public schools which promote the country’s leftwing narrative, and that recently have started incorporating various neo-Marxist ‘critical’ curricula based on the teachings of the Frankfurt School (more here).  All of these educational institutions, even at the university level, are teaching the country to believe that there is a new norm in place that is markedly different from what the older folks were taught and grew up with.  And all of this is reinforced daily by the preponderant leftwing (aka lamestream) media.  When we look at its emphasized news items, ads and commercials, and entertainment program contents, we see such skewed population shares being foisted on the consuming audiences with brains in neutral.

And to put a bow on this state of our nation, McLaughlin cites "research (that) seems to indicate that shining a light on public misperceptions and providing accurate data may have little or no impact on changing the firmly held positions and opinions of Americans on almost any topic."

The lament of those who are not so encumbered is what will this existential plurality take into the voting booth next Tuesday.  Looking at the condition of our country, and especially California, we know how they have mis-marked their ballots in the past.  Given the hysterical level of daily lies from the Left – the economy is sound, crime is low, borders are secure, Republicans will destroy democracy, wind and sun will replace fossil fuels, higher taxes and more regulations are good, … - does not promise anything better from the upcoming mid-term election.  But then again, I may be wrong.  Even a pecking blind chicken will eventually find a seed.

Ruminations – 29oct22 (update 4nov22)

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

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

Sandbox – 25oct22

[Has any reader witnessed an administration that in two years has managed to be so incompetent, corrupt, and spewing so many material lies per day?  Every commentator of conservative and libertarian persuasion has now written several articles listing in detail the Biden administrations atrocious handling of the economy, energy, crime, border, public education, drugs, foreign policy, … .  Can anyone mention ONE THING that they have gotten right?  And to cover it all up before 8 November, they and their lamestream are telling their dumber-than-doorknob constituents that everything is just hunky-dory, the country has never been better.  And to put a ribbon on it, half of America believes that horseshit.  gjr]

The Durham Disaster (edited)

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

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

Scattershots – 12oct22 (updated 16oct22)

California is a warning to the nation.  Kevin Kiley

George Rebane

Unhinged leftwinger op-ed in the 12oct22 Union. (here) In this community the ideological sentiments (aka blinders) of Ms Cheryl Cook are well known.  In today’s column she corroborates her reputation as a woke progressive who strives for a world repulsive to anyone to the right of Joe Manchin.  She highlights her ignorance from the gitgo with “At River Valley High School in Yuba City recently, it was three shirtless Black students who suffered humiliation during a videotaped mock slave auction. They were lined up against a wall with objects hanging from their bowed heads while they were yelled at and assigned monetary values by a few Varsity football team members.  That’s humiliation! That’s embarassment!(sic) Yes, sir! Right there in Yuba City, California. With a capital C, that rhymes with C, that stands for Cruel.  Ever wonder how the pain of unresolved history is inherited by our own children?”  Anyone with a minimum room temp IQ knows that this was an historical enactment willingly participated in by the black students wanting to graphically act out the unsavory and tragic aspects of US history.  From there Ms Cook’s screed goes down hill winding up with the assertion that MAGA Americans are Nazis equivalent to those of pre-WW2 fascists who brought Hitler to power.  And, of course, you know who is the MAGA-Hitler.

Democrats continue their reputation as the anti-science party while loudly claiming the Alinsky alternative.  The Steamboat Institute had a hell of time putting together debates on college campuses on the resolution: “Climate science compels us to make large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”  Dr Steve Koonin, MIT theoretical physicist and prominent author (Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters), has agreed participate in all three scheduled debates to argue the negative.  When this became known to the leftwing ‘scientists’ proclaiming climate hysteria, they went ballistic.  Ms Jennifer Schubert-Akin, CEO of the Steamboat Institute, informs us (here) that “Some of the responses we received from well-known climate scientists and academics stated that we are “wildly irresponsible” for giving Mr. Koonin a platform, that there is “no room for debate on these issues,” and my favorite, from a well-known climatologist who is on Reuters’s “Hot List” of the world’s top climate scientists: “I don’t debate climate science. It’s a poor way to get at the truth.”  To socialists, the way to truth, goodness, and light is take Marxist maxims as ex cathedra.

Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change.  For those truly interested (and concerned?) about climate change, here is a look at it from an apolitical perspective and one that really relies on all that science has to offer on the subject.   “The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, or NIPCC, as its name suggests, is an international panel of scientists and scholars who came together to understand the causes and consequences of climate change. NIPCC has no formal attachment to or sponsorship from any government or governmental agency. It is wholly independent of political pressures and influences and therefore is not predisposed to produce politically motivated conclusions or policy recommendations.”

[15oct22 update]  ‘How EVs Can Power the Grid’  Well, they can’t really do that today, but governments are keenly interested in using the increasing number of EV batteries as a distributed storage cache for electricity.  These EVs will have bidirectional inverters that let you plug in and charge your EV or, when the utility decides, then to drain your battery for the greater good of the grid users.  Utrecht in Holland is leading the way in studying this possibility with the city’s EV charging stations.  Implementing this V2G capability will give someone else the ultimate control of your EV - whether you can drive it or not, when and how far.  No grousing allowed; it’s for the common good you see.  (more here and here)

[16oct22 update] ‘The Biden Admin Has Been A Chaotic Disaster. But Will It Matter?’ That is my perennial question; are there enough Americans informed and smart enough to make it count in the voting booth?  The affirming evidence is hard to find. Jared Whitley of the Daily Caller writes, “The first two years (God help us, it’s just been two years) of the Biden Administration have been an irrefutable disaster. Biden has wiped out $9 trillion in wealth from the stock market. The rate of inflation is 8.2%, four times what it was under former President  Donald Trump. The cost of energy is up almost 33%, whereas Trump sold oil to the Middle East. … After a 25-year trend of decreasing violent crime across the country, hopelessly blue cities have seen a spike, with murder rates up 44% since 2019! … The president is himself a barely coherent, maladroit zombie. Whereas the corporate media roasted George W. Bush for saying nucular instead of nuclear, today they blissfully ignore the gaffes of a man who was gaffe prone even before he was senile.’ (more here)

Thus spake VDH

Civilization is fragile. It hinges on ensuring the stuff of life.

 To be able to eat, to move about, to have shelter, to be free from state or tribal coercion, to be secure abroad and safe at home—only that allows cultures to be freed from the daily drudgery of mere survival.

 Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture.

 So, the great achievement of Western civilization—consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit—was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often unforgiving nature.

 But so often the resulting leisure and affluence instead deluded arrogant Western societies into thinking that modern man no longer needed to worry about the fruits of civilization he took to be his elemental birthright.

 As a result, the once-prosperous Greek city-state, Roman Empire, Renaissance republics, and European democracies of the 1930s imploded—as civilization went headlong in reverse.

 We in the modern Western world are now facing just such a crisis.

 We talk grandly about the globalized Great Reset. We blindly accept the faddish Green New Deal. We virtue signal about defunding the police. We merely shrug at open borders. And we brag about banning fertilizers and pesticides, outlawing the internal combustion engine, and discounting Armageddon in the nuclear age—as if on autopilot we have already reached utopia.

 But meanwhile, Westerners are systematically destroying the very elements of our civilization that permitted such fantasies in the first place.

 Take fuel. Europeans arrogantly lectured the world that they no longer need traditional fuels. So they shut down nuclear power plants. They stopped drilling for oil and gas. And they banned coal.

 What followed was a dystopian nightmare. Europeans will burn dirty wood this winter as their civilization reverts from postmodern abundance to premodern survival.

 The Biden administration ossified oil fields. It canceled new federal oil and gas leases. It stopped pipeline construction and hectored investors to shun fossil fuels.

 When scarcity naturally followed, fuel prices soared.

 The middle class has now mortgaged its upward mobility to ensure that they might afford gasoline, heating oil, and skyrocketing electricity.

 The duty of the Pentagon is to keep America safe by deterring enemies, reassuring allies, and winning over neutrals.

 It’s not to hector soldiers based on their race. It’s not to indoctrinate recruits in the woke agenda. It’s not to become a partisan political force.

 The result of those suicidal Pentagon detours is the fiasco in Afghanistan, the aggression of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the new bellicosity of China, and the loud threats of rogue regimes such as Iran.

 At home, the Biden administration inexplicably destroyed the southern border, as if civilized nations of the past never needed such boundaries.

 Utter chaos followed. Three million migrants have poured into the United States. While some cross over clandestinely, others clear border stations without an adequate audit, and largely without skills, high school diplomas, or capital.

 The streets of our cities are anarchical—and by intent.

 Defunding the police, emptying the jails, and destroying the criminal justice system unleashed a wave of criminals. It’s now open season on the weak and innocent.

 America is racing backward into the 19th-century Wild West. Predators maim, kill, and rob with impunity. Felons correctly conclude that bankrupt postmodern “critical legal theory” will ensure them exemption from punishment.

 Few Americans know anything about agriculture, except to expect limitless supplies of inexpensive, safe, and nutritious food at their beck and call.

 But that entitlement for 330 million hungry mouths requires massive water projects and new dams and reservoirs. Farmers rely on steady supplies of fertilizer, fuels, and chemicals. Take away that support—as green nihilists are attempting—and millions will soon go hungry, as they have since the dawn of civilization.

 Perhaps nearly a million homeless now live on the streets of America. Our major cities have turned medieval with their open sewers, garbage-strewn sidewalks, and violent vagrants.

 So, we are in a great experiment in which regressive progressivism discounts all the institutions and the methodologies of the past that have guaranteed a safe, affluent, well-fed, and sheltered America.

 Instead, we arrogantly are reverting to a new feudalism as the wealthy elite—terrified of what they have wrought—selfishly retreat to their private keeps.

 But the rest who suffer the consequences of elite flirtations with nihilism can’t even afford food, shelter, and fuel. And they now feel unsafe, both as individuals and as Americans.

 As we suffer self-inflicted mass looting, random street violence, hyperinflation, a nonexistent border, unaffordable fuel, and a collapsing military, Americans will come to appreciate just how thin is the veneer of their civilization.

 When stripped away, we’re relearning that what lies just beneath is utterly terrifying.

 Victor Davis Hanson