Rebane's Ruminations

‘I want Trump to die’ addended

George Rebane

[Apologies for the late posting of this promised follow-on commentary.]

Thoughtful comments from readers expanded the scope of my 4oct20 ‘I want Trump to die’ commentary to encompass social behaviors that may or not be acceptable and/or legal under our current form of governance.  And this includes a wide variety of people’s aspirations for regicide and its modern versions that include the leaders of more representative and therefore more liberal governments.  More specifically, comments from progressive readers such as Steven Frisch who strongly asserts, “I have stated here on many occasions that I do not believe that political violence is justified in American society. I have also stated on many occasions that I believe that some of the rhetoric used on this page, and the tacit acceptance of the threat of, or insinuation of, political violence is philosophically un-American and un-patriotic.”

As a conservetarian, I take great issue with such a belief while acknowledging that it is held by most, but not all, liberals and progressives in America.  The new neo-Marxist wing of the Democratic Party has no such inhibitions against political violence.  In fact, in the written manifestos on their websites, neo-Marxist organizations such as BLM, proudly declare their support of, and even the necessity for such violence to topple corrupt and unjust political orders.  They back this up with their actions in the streets and voluminous statements to the press justifying politically motivated riots.

In these pages over the years I have often argued that in a liberal and free country, the citizens’ right and ability to violently oppose their government should always be recognized, celebrated, maintained, and not be insidiously abridged by government.  Although and without contradiction, if such a purposely violent cohort does arise, the non-violent citizens opposing that cohort have every right to petition and support their government in opposing such violence with all the force provided it by established laws.  In short, a free people are free only to the extent that they retain their ability to successfully resist their government in order to be able to fundamentally transform it through reform or revolution.

We understand these truths from the historical fact that America was born through political violence, and that the subsequent exercise of political violence has served to preserve the Union many times since.  To now declare that political violence has suddenly become “un-American and un-patriotic” as a basic right of a free people, provided for in our Constitution, is both preposterous and ignorant of the fundamental principles and means of our country’s founding and maintenance.

Here I once more expand on the rationale for these beliefs in ‘Versions of Fundamental Transformations’ which you can download here -  Download VersFundTransforms.  Long time readers are aware of the bases for these beliefs from the collected tenets of my credo and related commentaries over the years – see also the Bastiat Triangle, a Conservetarian Credo, and the Rebane Doctrine category of this blog.

Unreasonable Partisan Fears

"We have nothing to fear but those who live in fear." – BH, RR reader and contributor

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 13 October 2020.]

Our Left has been telling Republicans for years that Democrats are the party of intellectuals and the highly educated.  Republicans are viewed by the Left as mostly Bible-thumpin’and gun totin’ knuckle-draggers, categorized simply as those ‘irredeemable deplorables’ on our political landscape.  Among the many deficits allegedly shared by those on the Right is their disdain for science, which the Democratic Party claims is the guiding star for their public policies and gives imprimatur to the pronouncements of their elites.

The strongest substance for that belief is the oft-cited ratio of white college graduates who claim party affiliation.  The Atlantic sits solidly on the throne of leftwing wisdom and light, from whence it advises us that ‘America Is Divided by Education’, and asserts that “the gulf between the party identification of white voters with college degrees and those without is growing rapidly. Trump is widening it.”  Actually, there is no evidence for that, and the National Center for Educational Statistics has shown a growing fraction of those of all races and ethnicities who obtain bachelor’s or higher degrees (here).

What really is more than puzzling is the lack of published numbers on party totals of those who have a 4-year college degree or higher.  It is well known that Democrats enjoy higher percentages of black and Hispanic members, but we don’t know how many of these with college degrees make up or contribute to each party’s cohort of the well-educated (more here ) .  The best we can tell from Pew Research is that “about a third (34%) of those with a college degree or more education identify as Democrats, compared with 24% who identify as Republicans.”  Note that this doesn’t answer what fraction of Democrats v Republicans have a college degree or more.  (more  here and here)

So, let’s attempt to leapfrog this gap in our knowledge and find out how the parties react to the most up-to-date science regarding Covid-19.  The World Health Organization has recently concluded that lockdowns as a pandemic response don’t work, and instead do great damage to the poorest segments of the world’s population.  This conclusion was amplified by last week’s publication of the Greater Barrington Declaration drafted by health scientists from Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford, and co-signed by thousands of professionals from all walks.  Its authors cite extensive clinical evidence to confirm the WHO conclusion, and strongly recommend that all nations immediately stand down from their ineffective and insane lockdown policies.  Even more strongly, they conclude that the additional deaths and morbidities, on top of the economic disasters caused by such policies, actually constitute “crimes against humanity” of the kind last litigated in Nuremberg in 1946.  (more here and here)

For reasons we don’t have time for here, the leftwing news outlets have covered none of this.  And apparently the country’s declared Democrats don’t look much beyond what they are told on MSNBC, CNN, et al.  So, when Gallup assembled a recent panel for a survey on how men and women of both parties view and respond to Covid-19, they discovered and published some interesting results which reflect on the educational levels as characterized by Democrats.  (see Addendum)

Gallup asked the panel questions about ‘concern over catching the virus’, ‘concern about exposure at work’, ‘avoiding going to public places’, and so on.  They concluded by asking who would be ‘ready to return to normal activities right now’.  Overwhelmingly, the results indicated that Democrats were significantly more fearful of the pandemic than Republicans, and women of both parties were more hesitant than men to interpret the science news that went counter to that released within the Democrat narrative about proper responses that recommend ongoing lockdowns, widespread social distancing, and perpetual wearing of masks.  Given the widely published mortality statistics, the presented results do not bode well for the party that claims to be more educated and attuned to the findings and contentions of science.

These conclusions explain why people in liberal states like California continue to be both docile and sanguine about their states’ ongoing draconian Covid-19 response policies - policies no longer supported by scientific consensus or internationally reputable scientists and clinicians.  It is clear that America’s public policy responses to this pandemic have been completely co-opted to serve greater political agendas in this election year.

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 additional data and relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum]  Here is the table of compiled results by Gallup showing how respondents felt about loosening up on Covid-19 response policy protocols.

Ruminations – 11oct20 (updated 13oct20)

George Rebane

Sen Chris Coons (D-DE) invented the newest Democrat Big Lie when he claimed today that the Republicans are the ones “packing the court” with their nomination of Judge Barrett to fill RBG’s seat and bring SCOTUS back to its 150-year level of nine justices.  But his real slam is against the Democrat constituencies who he thinks are dense enough to believe him.

Leading leftwing lights go off the rails on Judge Amy Coney Barrett.  Bill Maher declared nationally that “she’s a fucking nut” and a Catholic who “speaks in tongues”.  Democrat commentator Keith Olbermann advises all that she “should be prosecuted” and “removed from our society”.  Given Judge Barrett’s vitae and reputation, these men most clearly expose the evil heart of the Democratic Party and its dim assessment of the American electorate.

“America is sleepwalking into soft totalitarianism.”  So argue several survivors from post-war communist East Europe.  A revealing interview (here) with author and commentator Rod Dreher gives basis for that argument (and substantiates those found in these pages).  “In the Orwellian, Soviet, Stalinist society, the state-controlled people by inflicting pain and terror on them. But in the soft totalitarianism that I see coming here, the state will control people—and not only states, but even more importantly, corporations and institutions like universities will control people by manipulating their access to the economy and to status and to all the markers of middle-class life.”  And this is only the first step, which in California is in aggressive advance (here).

[update] WHO now opposes lockdowns.  The World Health Organization has come out against lockdowns as a C19 response policy, stating that these are "a terrible, ghastly, global catastrophe".  I draw you kind attention to the 11oct20 update to 'Crimes Against Humanity'.

[13oct20 update]  Biden doesn’t know, has forgotten, or has yet to be told what his policies would be on everything from packing the court to regulatory reform.  All candidates in our history have made it a point to inform voters of their governance desiderata which they consider their strong points.  Not so with Bumblebrain, whose forte has been reeling off Big Lies, well documented in these pages since he became the Dems’ nominee.

Another shot in the shorts of our communally held sensibilities.  From the party of low-lifes we have the latest contribution.  Sen Mazie Hirono (D-HI) asked Judge Amy Coney Barrett if she has ever sexually assaulted someone (here).  They truly are a party of evil scumbags.

Scattershots – 6oct20 (updated 9oct20)

George Rebane

Trump’s C19 infection and hospital visit is now providing the Democrats and their lamestream lackeys their latest ration of rage.  Everyone of them with access to a mic or website is lambasting the president on why and how his encounter with the virus came about and was then dealt with.  In their eyes it was all wrong and laden with conspiracies.  Everything from when was the last negative test recorded, to super-spreading WH events, to how sick did the president really get, to the Walter Reed physicians are lying or at least prevaricating about his current condition, to … , and even that he took his mask off too soon when he stood on the WH balcony after returning home.  If we didn’t have so many double dummies registered to vote, the whole exercise by the Left would be patently silly, but unfortunately that is not the case.

Fake drivers licenses from China as reported (here) by FN – “In the first six months of 2020, Customs and Border Protection officers seized nearly 20,000 counterfeit U.S. driver’s licenses at Chicago’s O’Hare airport alone, according to a report.  The 19,888 licenses and other fake documents were included in 1,513 overseas shipments, mostly from China and Hong Kong, CBP said, according to FOX 5 in New York City. Others were from South Korea and Britain.  Ralph Piccirilli, CBP’s acting area port director in Chicago, called the counterfeits (made mostly for people in their twenties) ‘very realistic.’”  The add-on to this report is that the names on the licenses are phony, and yet all are registered to vote as Democrats.  For some odd reason, this news is not reported on MSNBC or CNN.  [7oct20 - According to a number of news and fact-checking outlets, the names are indeed phony, but there is no substantiating evidence that those phony names are registered to vote.]

'Polling Phollies' was a piece I posted on 4 September 2016 in the throes of the last election season.  It bears reading again in light of the feverish debate we are once more engaged in our Sandboxes.  From this commentary you can download a paper I wrote to clarify the error bounds on poll results.  The overlap of these error bounds are especially relevant when the polls return two-candidate results near the midpoint or 50-50 ratios.  For those who can understand the material, it should really take a lot of steam out of the results constantly reported and debated in the current comment streams.  But I think those comments may satisfy a different purpose than enlightening their readers.

[7oct20 update]  ‘Schools Tackle Racism’  Evanston, IL racist school superintendent Devon Horton is giving a dose of “equity for Black and brown students, for special education students, for our LGBTQ students”, by letting them have first dibs on limited classroom seating.  The rest can attend online.  He’s doing this because “a disproportionate number of Black and Latino students are struggling in school and it is that struggle—not their race—which will get them priority.”  Such an assessment, on its face, is both racist and false.  In Evanston schools these minority students have received the same educational advantages as everyone else.  They are doing poorly only because they are NOT “struggling” as so many minority students struggling to learn have successfully demonstrated across the country.  Horton’s racist claim is that these students need special dispensation because they have a learning deficit apparently due to their skin color or sexual preference (special education kids are a different story).  Upon closer examination, it is again culture that determines kids’ - minority or otherwise - attitude toward education and learning, racist school policies will not. (more here and here)

What is a nation?  Samuel Stone of the Charlemagne Institute takes a good cut at an answer (here) that more than less ties with what I have proposed in Rebane Doctrine.  Stone starts by correctly positing that ‘nation’ is one of the words that today has lost its meaning; not that people can’t point and say ‘that’s a nation’, but because they can’t give it a literal definition.  One of the main determinants that a nation must have is a defined territory with secured borders within which its state (i.e. government) is sovereign.  He then goes on to cite our Founders and their political philosophers about the shared traits of a people which comprise, occupy, and own the nation – traits like a common history, values, beliefs, traditions, language, … .  And under it all is a foundation of justice as “the end of government” (Federalist 51).  However, that view of justice must be held in common by the citizens of a nation; multiple or polarized views of justice in a land cannot hold it together.  In our scripture (Mark 3:25, et al) Jesus said it best, “If a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand.”

[9oct20 update]  Today’s Nevada County’s Covid count is reported by the crack journalists at The Union.  From its front page we learn that there have been 20,735 recorded cases of the infection this year, with 18 cases currently active.  Two of these remain hospitalized, with the C19 body count that now stands at eight.  These numbers are mainly worthless, save the number who have died.  Presumably, the dead were correctly diagnosed and counted.  But given the real nature of the disease, and its wholesale misrepresentation that has led to an historical international panic, the recorded and currently active cases are totally unreliable, therefore meaningless.  The number hospitalized speaks only to the misunderstanding by local health officials about susceptibility to and the virality of this latest form of a corona virus, and their consequential draconian measures against our local businesses.  Bottom line, there is even less there to worry about C19 than meets the eye.  More on this later.

Empaneling 2016/2020 SCOTUS Justices Explained

George Rebane

Democrats are going through a nationwide hissy-fit about President Trump’s announced nomination today of the replacement for the late Justice Ginsberg.  Their anguished screams ring hollow as they attempt to ascend Mount Morality to denounce the Republicans’ election-year nomination and confirmation of a new justice to fill the ranks of SCOTUS, and thereby avoid an irresolute court that must inevitably adjudicate the results of the most momentous election of our lifetime.

The charge against Republicans is hypocrisy – In 2016 Majority Leader McConnell denied an election year hearing for President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, yet now in 2020 he is proceeding apace to rush through President Trump’s (presumed) nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett.  But giving the matter a smidgen of thought (not a widely shared ability) quickly reveals the practical and coherent reasoning behind these seemingly disparate actions.

First and foremost, let’s start with the acknowledgement that what was done in 2016 and being done now is legal and constitutional, and, thanks to former Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid, procedurally correct.   Second, the appointment of SCOTUS justices is a political act intended to bias the court’s future rulings that will promote the ideologically motivated stratagems of the party in power.  Appeals to alternative reasoning on the matter are intended for the ideologically ignorant or sclerotic.

To understand the Republicans’ reasoning then and now, we have to review the divergent governance goals of the Left and Right.  Democrats seek to fundamentally transform America into a weakened socialist state with a crippled sovereignty that is no longer a global hegemon and prepared to accede to a one-world order.  Democrats view people, not as individuals with diverse needs, wants, and aspirations, but as members of various controlled and compliant classes, the societal roles of which will be mandated and managed by a cadre of the governing elite.  In short, Democrats are now avowedly Marxists, and all of their proposals and programs are readily predictable within this ideological framework.  And continuing on this tack, the Left remains anti-science, now with their ‘woke science’ programs they again return to the practice of science (cf. eugenics and Lysenko) that must first and foremost support the party’s political predicates du jour.

The Republicans, on the other hand, reject any notion of a one-size-fits-all global government, and believe that a peaceful communion of more or less culturally coherent, independent, and sovereign nation-states, will provide for a world order that benefits all humankind in the widest sense.  In this social framework, individuals are seen as discrete agents maximally free to pursue their own dreams as they work in co-operative commercial environments to satisfy their daily needs.  Government is seen as a minimalist social enterprise that only undertakes tasks and performs functions for the common good that are ill-suited for businesses competing in minimally regulated capitalistic economies.

Returning now to 2016, we see a federal government viz SCOTUS divided along party lines with a Republican Senate and a Democratic Executive.  With the prospect of a Democrat victory likely, McConnell makes the politically astute decision to reject Obama’s nominee, with the off-chance hope that Trump will win and then have the opportunity to nominate a suitable candidate more likely to support Republicans’ goals.  It is clear to all who can reason, that should Hillary win, then she and the Democrats could subsequently exercise their option to nominate, and the people’s will would be served.  In short, there was no intrinsic harm to either party in delaying Merrick Garland’s hearing in the outgoing Congress.

Now in 2020 the federal government viz SCOTUS is structured differently with a Republican Senate and also a Republican Executive.  Moreover, a month before the election, the current odds of a Trump victory do not look good.  We add that Trump’s election was based on his promise to shift the country’s court system toward the right, and correctly interpret his retention of the political prerogative to continue implementing that shift as long as he is in office.  In sum, getting Judge Barrett empaneled may be Trump’s last hurrah, one that he and the Republican Party dare not pass up, given the country’s rush toward a socialist autocracy.  The Republicans see a conservative SCOTUS as perhaps the remaining redoubt from which to impede our anti-American Left that has promised its minions a new socialist dawn.

And to think that all this was made possible by Dirty Harry.

[Update] Heritage gives a short summary of SCOTUS FAQs here.

Scattershots – 25sep20 (updated 26sep20)

George Rebane

SCOTUS term limits are now proposed by Democrats.  A bill limiting justices to 18-year terms is to be introduced in the House (here).  The Constitution only specifies that there will be a SCOTUS, and then gives Congress the permission to organize it and set up lower courts.  Why Democrats are suddenly considering reducing the life terms of justices is an interesting speculation.  Is that their alternative to packing the court after President Trump’s third nominee is sworn in?  How will that legislation read – will the sitting justices be grandfathered with their life terms?  If not, how will they be unseated?  The whole process looks like it will be another dust-up between the parties.  It will have no chance of passage until the Dems sweep both houses, and maybe even require their taking the WH.  All such moves are intended to remove the checks and balances built in by our Founders to establish and maintain a democratic republic, and not let it lapse into a pure democracy which is so appealing to the nation's double dummies.  However, the Democrats’ plan for an American autocracy requires that we first become a democracy with an ignorant and malleable electorate.  Then the rest will be easy.

Obamacare popularity drops 5% since 2018.  In the ten years of its existence, the unaffordable Affordable Care Act has managed to eke out only 8.3 million subscribers out of a population of 330 million Americans. (here) There is no more robust statistic that communicates the ‘popularity’ of this unfortunate program of nationalized healthcare that continues to be mismanaged by governments at all levels.  Yet, hearing the Big Lie Democrats talk, you’d think that if Obamacare were replaced by some other safety net program, then the entire country would be on their own, putting on band-aids to treat cancer in the kitchen.  Nothing could be further from the truth; our healthcare system is still the envy of the world which receives a steady stream of medical migrants coming to get treatments unavailable to them at any cost in their nationalized healthcare countries.

[26sep20 update]  Politics causes dementia is a plausible proposition, especially in the ranks of collectivist politicians.  California qualifies as Exhibit A.  Here we have a governor, one who can easily be replaced by a 2x4 with a face painted on it, mandating no more fossil-fueled cars sold in the state after 2035.  In the interval we are supposed to be transitioning to EVs for which no provision is being made for expanded charging stations, let alone expanding the now shrinking power grid as the natural gas and nuclear generating stations are taken off line.  California's sky high electric rates now will soar to heights only seen in third world countries.  Our one-party Democrat politicians are busy actively exploring new frontiers of idiocy.  This is known to all middle-class taxpayers, many of whom are packing their U-Hauls as they join the Great Exodus to greener pastures, and all while our socialists – legislators to locals - are welcoming more welfare recipients and illegal aliens with attractive unfunded programs to succor their every need.  To Democrats reliable voting constituencies are worth every penny they can extract from you.

Evil – a timely reflection

Do not scorn an evil though small, for it never comes singly, but in battalions, as does joy; good fortune and bad concentrate where they are already thick.  Gracian #254

George Rebane

History records that when Christian knights subdued Jerusalem during the Crusades, they slaughtered most, if not all, of the then resident Muslim population, including women and children.  And we are all witness to the killings of thousands of innocents in the 9/11 attacks by devout Islamist fanatics.  Neither the perpetrators, planners, nor their supporting populations considered these acts as anything other than carrying out the will of God; most certainly neither side considered the massacres to be evil acts.

Yet in the eyes of the targeted populations, these and many more such acts were the very embodiment of unspeakable evil.  And the belief systems that spawned them to be wellsprings of irredeemable evil, that were nevertheless confirmed in their respective canons and credible visions wherein God directed and gave imprimatur to the mass killings.

Countless other such historical narratives can be presented to abet the conclusion that evil is almost entirely in the eyes of the targeted recipients and sympathetic observers.  In a broader sense, we may conclude that evil is really culture dependent and/or culture specific.

Today we see more examples of such relativistic expressions and interpretations of evil.  They continue to be a global phenomenon and an historical constant.  Consulting dictionaries gives us lame meanings that should not inflame any sensibilities, but nevertheless cannot help but corroborate the above interpretation.

From Dictionary.com - Evil (adjective) 1. morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked: evil deeds; an evil life.  2. harmful; injurious: evil laws.

From the Random House Dictionary of the English Language – Evil (adj) 1. Morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked.  Evil deeds, and evil life.  2. Harmful; injurious.  Evil laws. … 4. Due to actual or imputed bad conduct or character.  An evil reputation.

From the Oxford English Dictionary – Evil (adj)  A. Antithesis of good in all its principal senses.  1. Morally depraved, bad, wicked, vicious.  2. Doing or tending to do harm, hurtful, mischievous, prejudicial.

All the definitions appeal to the violation of morals which are overwhelmingly determined by culture (e.g. cultural mores), and therefore relativistic, in the eye of the beholder, etc.

When we bring this understanding to today’s polarized America, we run head on into the political attribution of evil by our Left.  Democrats are now on a growing public record of defining Trump and all those who support him and his policies as being evil.  That is their core, and to date, only argument as to why the president should not only be denied a second term, but also be prosecuted for crimes claimed and yet to be claimed.  In sum, he is fundamentally evil, and a good person opposes evil with no further argument or evidence needed – the constant chorus of its attribution should be more than enough to indict, convict, and punish.

In the eyes of the Left, we who oppose BLM, Antifa, et al - the new radical organs of the Left and the Democrat Party - are of necessity painted with the same broad brush.  We too are of the deplorably irredeemable cohort of evil people in the land already blemished by indelible racism, prejudice, white privilege, and social injustice to the very marrow of our bones.

This sentiment is not reciprocated per se by the Republican Party.  The country’s political representatives of the Right today are a timid bunch, that has pretty much lost its way and will to fight in the ongoing chaos.  As an institution it doesn’t know whose ass to kick or kiss, a deficit not shared by its audacious and blustering fearless leader who can still be taunted off-message in a heartbeat by any unsubstantiated charge or even a randomly tossed ad hominem.

I, on the other hand, have no such inhibitions, as RR readers with functioning memories will attest.  (e.g. search ‘The Liberal Mind’ category with ‘evil’)  Along with a number of conservative commentators, I long ago concluded that the Democratic Party, as embodied by its leadership, is an evil and anti-American institution.  And I readily acknowledge that my perspective on evil is not some assessment from Mt Olympus, but one that also succumbs to all the culturally adorned attributes outlined above.  Of course, I don’t value all cultures equally, and consider my own to be the custodian of more goodness and light by far than most others on the planet.  I am among those who do not necessarily want to impose their own culture on others, but I will willingly fight to maintain the right to practice it with other like-minded people.

So from that standpoint, the question arises about America's socialist leadership.  Are these Democrats intrinsically evil in that they recognize the harm their public policies will do to America and its people, as they continue to pursue them for their own political and personal benefit?  Or are they true believers, and therefore as tragically ignorant as their grass roots constituents – all those who oppose meritocracy, free enterprise, open markets, minimally regulated capitalism, smaller government, ownership of private property, lower taxes, and abundant liberty to pursue happiness?

In the final analysis we can ask what difference does it make in how we respond to those who seek to diminish our freedoms, fortunes, and futures.  Whether they deprive us individually while they devastate the country with intentions good or ill, either will produce the same end state.  Socialism in America will not stop with the mild-mannered versions in the EU that have been anchored by capitalist America.  When America succumbs to socialism, with no other great nation to anchor us, our nation will inevitably slide into tyranny.  The governance promised by Democrats will be indifferent to their kind of evil - either will equally will herd us into a draconian land in which all will suffer.

Scattershots – 14sep20 (updated 15sep20)

'It's not what you know that worries me, it's what you know that ain't so.'  Variously attributed.

George Rebane

Fake news from National Propaganda Radio.  This morning’s news blithely reported that preparing for his visit to Sacramento today, “President Trump claimed that California’s fires are the result of poor forest management, but numerous studies have shown that they are caused by climate change.” (emphasis mine)  The use of ‘claim’ makes the president’s provably true statement sound tendentious.  And sliding in the connective ‘but’ to denote contradiction with the truth, as “shown” by implied science, completes another hit job on Trump by the socialist media.  These are the real impactive Big Lies that continuously rain on our electorate.

[update] H/T to RR commenter who dug up the well-hidden news that the leftwing eco-nazis have been fighting prudent forest management for years (more here).  Now the lamestream’s silence on this and their continuing to trumpet Trum-caused climate change as the reason for this wildfire season is just evil, and intended evil at that.

Revisionist and radical historian Howard Zinn has a direct connection to today’s riots and street protests.  The man wrote an abysmally fake history of America that was immediately embraced by our anti-American Left and ensconced into our K-12 at various levels, in addition to becoming the ground truth of our past in what used to be our institutions of higher learning.  It was he and his academic and political cohorts who have now imbued the minds of half our younger generation in hate for their country, and left the other half confused as to what really describes our past and cultural inheritance.  What we see in the streets confirms that it’s easy to hate the hateful. (more here)

Democrats claim to be better educated than Republicans.  Were that really the case, then why do Democrats and their lamestream lackies continually stream ‘news’ and commentaries that are so anti-scientific, illogical, counter-historical, and just factually incorrect (e.g. tax rates don’t impact economic behavior) to the extent that any mildly educated person would reject them on their face?  The most plausible answer is twofold.  First, Democrats count on their critical contingent of abysmally educated ‘minorities’ (now majorities in many regions) to ignore the details of their messaging, and just consume the summarizing punchlines.  The other even more stark explanation is that their college educated constituents matriculated in majors and courses of study that long ago abandoned scholarship for collectivist ideological indoctrination – in short, these people are dumber coming out than going into such institutions (e.g. see the above Zinn entry).

Politicizing the development and release of C19 vaccines is the new evil that Democrats have spread across the land.  Their claim is that President Trump’s wise and timely policy of rapid and extensive funding of these vaccines through his ‘Warp Speed’ program will somehow yield products that are both ineffective and dangerous.  Democrat luminaries such Kamala Harris, our would-be next president in waiting, have loudly announced that they will not trust any vaccine that is released prior to election day, and recommend that others do the same.  This on its face is a blatant and dangerous Big Lie misrepresentation of the FDA regulated process by which these and other vaccines are developed and released to the public.  Its acceptance by the nation’s light thinkers will inevitably cause additional suffering and death.  President Trump has no impact on the vaccines’ development and release process.  Nor do the vaccines now in development and testing magically acquire benign and useful properties suitable for public consumption once the 3nov20 date is passed.  This is the kind of evil which TDS has spawned for the last four years, and the kind of evil that has always come so naturally to the Left in their ascent to and retention of power.  (see also above entry)

[15sep20 update]  ‘Judge Rules Pennsylvania Governor’s Shutdown Orders Unconstitutional’ reports the Epoch Times.  Hopefully this will be the removal of the key log in the nation’s logjam of shutdowns.  Given the Dems’ hard work in keeping the pre-election economy hobbled, this news will be stifled by the lamestream and protested by the progressives who will cite all kinds of dangers to public health and safety that would follow from this ruling.

Leftwing columnist George Boardman in The Union again brings a smile to our lips with his latest interpretation of the how and why of the nationwide riots (here).  His worldview is simple – Trump started the riots with his racist monologues, and the cities’ mayors didn’t/couldn’t do anything to stop them since Trump kept egging them on as the weeks passed.  Reading Boardman’s account of the summer replicates those found in the pages of outlets such as HuffPost, DailyKos, and truthout.com.  In his favor, he does acknowledge Biden's Bind on whether to condemn the rioters or not – either tactic can get his tit in a wringer with one leftwing faction or the other.

Climate change link to wildfires – there is no evidence of such.  The Democrats keep promoting their latest Big Lie to Americans, telling one and all that the west’s wildfires are due directly to 1) preventable man-made global warming, 2) could have been prevented had we started going green four years ago (Obama got a pass), and 3) will be greatly reduced if California goes through with its draconian climate change policies.  The Democratic Party is still our anti-science party, their protestations notwithstanding.  As far back as their assessment of the primitive nature of blacks and promotion of eugenics, through their active destruction of STEM education, to now ignoring the conclusions of NOAA and the IPCC (more here), the Democrats have been our political party of the intellectually stunted and ideologically blindered.  Both agencies have unequivocally stated that “It is premature to conclude that human activities – and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming – have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.” (NOAA), and cite “the lack of evidence to support claims of increasing frequency or intensity of hurricanes, floods, drought or tornadoes on climate timescales is also supported by the most recent assessments of the IPCC and the broader peer reviewed literature on which the IPCC is based.” (IPCC conclusion reported to Congress).  Yet Gov Newsom, along with other national Dems, continues the drumbeat amplified by their lamestream lackies.  And the nation’s snuffies have no choice but to genuflect and cry, ‘Aahh beliieeeeve!’

Democrats’ Great Divide or Revolution?

George Rebane

According to Democrat luminaries like Hillary Clinton and Georgetown law professor Rosa Brooks, a peaceful transition of power in January 2021 will occur only if Biden wins in a popular and Electoral College landslide.  Every other election outcome will result in blood in the streets, a deep nation shattering constitutional crisis, and even the Pacific seaboard states seceding from the Union.  The lamestream media is locked and loaded to call out the rioters, and President Trump will call out the military. 

That’s all according to some serious thought put into “wargaming” various election outcome scenarios as reported in the Washington Post (here and here).  We recall the Democrats' predictions about Trump not accepting the results of the 2016 election, that instead turned into a four-year rejection of that election’s results by Democrats, the party that has since mobilized every political, news media, entertainment, and radical leftwing group into a coordinated program to permanently render the country.

With all the pieces in place for November, Democrats have prepared to reject any outcome save a Biden tsunami.  And they make no bones in threatening the American electorate at every opportunity about what they will do if the people again don’t vote correctly – short version, there will be an historical hell to pay that may easily turn into America’s first civil war.  (The last one was for southern independence.)  November will seal a Marxist future or bring coast-to-coast madness.

The Democrat/Left ideology is now firmly in place, approved by its radical controlling wing of their organized and funded militant BLM and Antifa factions.  The intellectual basis for their anti-Americanism is all wrapped up and focused on the thesis of critical race theory (CRT).  The Democrats don’t front this ideology, but have allowed it to grow uncontested in the country’s educational and corporatist institutions.  David Harsanyi of the National Review makes the case and expands on it.  (more here)

If you want to go to a documented source, then familiarize yourself with “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction”, which says African Americans aren’t only subjugated through hate and terror, but also kept down through supposedly white cultural mechanisms of individualism, objectivity, neutrality, meritocracy, and color blindness.

“Critical race theory’s foundational precept is the centrality and permanence in society of racism against blacks, rejecting the idea of significant racial progress.”  This is an important precept which keeps the looting and burning going in our cities.  Nothing of note has happened since the civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965.

A central Big Lie of their revisionist history, now taught in our unionized K-12 schools is that “In critical race theory, racism is not a local variant of the ancient practices of caste or slavery, but something new in the world that was born with European imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and rationalism.”

Hence all modes of western civilization must be rejected on their face, since it is all just various forms of white privilege in action to promote racial injustice against the blacks.  And in its most insidious and racially unjust expression we have the principle of meritocracy, which is nothing but a camouflaged practice of subjugating people of color.  Determining the achievement and further promise of merit through testing is proof of systemic racial prejudice in practice.  “It’s a pseudo-science,” Stovall (black law professor, CRT intellectual) said. “Standardized testing is an extension of eugenics.”

Finally, and this is important in order to grasp what is really the goal of their brave new world.  “The key to understanding critical race theory is grasping the difference between equity, the social justice goal of developing policy to produce equal outcomes, as opposed to equality, the scorned liberal ideal of equal rules and procedures.”  (emphasis mine)

Scattershots – 4sep20 (updated 9sep20)

The most important goal of the leftist project is to use the twin 2020 tragedies to alter the very storyline of America. – Mike Gonzales

George Rebane

The Great Divide draws nigh.  One of our astute readers highlighted ‘The Revolution is Upon Us’ by Mike Gonzales in the comment stream of the last Sandbox.  It is in an important essay that correctly highlights much of what is going on in America today as we approach the most contentious and possibly disastrous presidential election in our country’s history.  Read it.

Bumblebrain’s Big Lies continue with his latest claim in Kenosha that it has been President Trump who has divided the country.  In the meantime, more clear-minded commentators from both the Left and Right recognize that it has been America's Left, dragging the Democrat Party with it, that started the quick march to Marxism.  If anything, this leftward lurch has also attracted some spineless Republicans to lean to port in the attempt to keep their elected jobs.  The Republican Party's platform has remained unchanged over the last years, which cannot be said for Team Pelosi et al.

Trump on voting twice.  The president’s words and meaning have been mangled beyond recognition by the lamestream and our desperate Democrats.  (more here and here)

Here are the president’s exact words to Jon Evans of North Carolina’s WECT:  “Well they'll go out and they'll vote, and they're going to have to go and check their vote by going to the poll and voting that way, because if it tabulates, then they won't be able to do that. So, let them send it in and let them go vote, and if the system is as good as they say it is, obviously they won't be able to vote. If it isn't tabulated, they'll be able to vote so that's the way it is. And that's what they should do.”  He repeated a similar message last night in Pennsylvania.

School shutdowns are butt stupid.  Using persuasive, cogent, and technically correct arguments more suitable for polite company, Drs J. Battacharya and M. Kulldorff of Stanford and Harvard Universities respectively,  inform us in ‘The Case Against Covid Tests for the Young and Healthy’ that – “There is little purpose in using tests to check asymptomatic children to see if it is safe for them to come to school. When children are infected, most are asymptomatic, and the mortality risk is lower than for the flu. While adult-to-adult and adult-to-child transmission is common, child-to-adult transmission isn’t. Children thus pose minimal risk to their teachers. If a child has a cough, a runny nose or other respiratory symptoms, he should stay home. You don’t need a test for that. … Sweden was the only major Western country that kept schools open for kids 15 and younger throughout the pandemic, with no masks or mass testing. How did it turn out? Zero Covid-19 deaths among 1.8 million children attending day care or school. Teachers didn’t have an excess infection risk compared with the average of other professions.”  I want to emphasize that I’m using ‘butt stupid’ as opposed to ‘ignorant’ to describe public policies keeping kids from attending school – ignorance can be corrected by supplying the ignorant with relevant data and information; stupidity refers to the cognitive inability to process, which is a deficit much more resistant to remediation.  Unfortunately, it is the latter that afflicts government bureaucracies far and wide.

[6sep20 update]  We are no longer sufficient unto ourselves.  Foreign worker visas have been hampered by C19 strictures and other prohibitions intended to give a helping hand to the non-existent American worker.  Worker shortages have cropped up everywhere, led by the lack of qualified and willing talent in sectors such as technology, hospitality, recreation, and agriculture. (more here and here)  Equally troubling is the prohibition on academic visas for grad school students studying and researching STEM fields.  Since these resident workers earn and spend the bucks here in this consumer dominated economy, it is not clear where the additional consumer spending will come from to make up for the dear departed or never arrived.  More and more of our fellow Americans continue to get college degrees that require skill sets for which no one is willing to spend their own money to hire – of course, government spending OPM is the ever-present employer of last resort for those know-nothings, for which then the country suffers.  This reliance on legal and illegal foreigners cannot end well for us.

‘America Hit by Roughly 550 Violent Demonstrations in Three Months’  A bit of news totally alien to consumers of lamestream media.  National Propaganda Radio wakes up the country every morning with reports of “protests” against “racial injustice” in our cities, never mentioning the real openly declared aims of the BLM and Antifa rioters, amply funded, supplied, and transported as required to keep the heat on in the cities with incompetent, compliant, and abetting Democratic administrations.  And then, led by Team Pelosi and their lamestream lackeys, the word goes out again that the whole thing is fomented by our divisive President Trump.  And for millions of light readers across this land, this kind of reportage sustains their ground truth about what’s really going on.

China is weaponizing water.  China is the source of major Asian rivers that flow into over ten other Asian countries.  On its rivers China has built over 87,000 dams, and continues to build ever more of these critical infrastructures that create huge reservoirs for in-country irrigation, transportation, and exerting strategic influence on its neighbors.  China can and has created droughts and floods that cause major impacts on the lives and economies of downstream countries.  If you don’t play ball according to China’s rules, your lands may be flooded or crackling dry. (more here) Now China also has dam problems, witness the structural cracks developing in its Three Gorges Dam and others (more here).  Also, dams are very vulnerable to attack during wartime, and many experts predict that in this century the major cause of wars will be over access to fresh water.

[9sep20 update]  Left always wants to silence the Right, but not vice versa.  Why?  This litmus test for a leftwinger is reliable because the Left never ever has any new ideas, but can only offer slogans for old collectivist policies that have never worked here or elsewhere.  So in the battle of ideas their best tactic is to take a pass and call off the contest.  Instead of ideas, they substitute the Big Lie and a stream Alinsky Alternatives.  Locally this tactic was again evident in calls to silence both RR and Jo Ann who sits on The Union's editorial board.  And the Big Lie gambit is constantly available in its various forms in our local left-listing newspaper, today having a particularly vicious cornucopia of anti-Trump copy.

The Democrats continue to work a brilliant tactic to promote Biden, they keep Trump talking about Trump.  Biden is a singularly unaccomplished, corrupt, and feckless politician with a 50-year record of absolutely no accomplishments that he can be allowed to burnish in public.  And he doesn’t even dare read off the list of policies his Marxist handlers have planned for us.  So to divert and suppress the Republicans’ strong suit of accomplishments and planned policies, the Dems have made the campaign about personalities, and ego-brimming Trump is more than happy to comply.  Our president still doesn’t understand that not many people like him personally, and that his only hope is informing voters of his record of accomplishments and plans for a prosperous and sovereign America.  Were he to make the campaign about what he’s done and plans to do, ol’ Bumblebrain would show up at that gunfight with an empty holster.

Revolution Diary – 29aug20

George Rebane

How do you talk math with someone who believes 2+2=5?

As I scan the morning papers and posts, some inevitable thoughts, idle and maybe not so idle, bubble to the surface.

The above tag line is apropos to the total breakdown in America’s public discourse, and I do mean total.  This week ‘Thousands Flood National Mall to Protest Racial Injustice’ screams a headline with photos showing the usual crowd with t-shirts and signs assembling at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of MLK’s ‘I have a dream’ speech.  None of them know that they are blessed to live in the world’s most racially just country.  And the overwhelming share of them, those not of cynical purpose, suffer from ignorance on steroids.  Along with world-class racial justice in our land, every metric that may have pointed to racial injustice has been trending in the right way over the last decades.  What remains of evidence for residual racial injustice has been fomented and perpetuated for decades under Democrat administrations who have established and administered the plantations of reliable voters in inner cities. (more here)

None of the know-nothings can describe what in their minds racial justice would look like in America.  Their only insane conclusion, embedded by their corrupt thought leaders like Sharpton, is that President Trump is the underlying cause of racial injustice and must be tossed from office this November.  Then with Biden there will be happy dancing in the streets while bullets continue to fly, and the thousands of black lives that don’t matter will continue to drop like flies.  Since they have no clue about or desire to improve black lives, you can bet the ranch that socialist planners are now busy coming up with the next round of rightwing scapegoats to blame for black under-achievement that the Democrats in charge can again sidestep.

Taking the 50Kft view, it’s hard to tell where is the boundary between ignorance and stupid.  How many of them and theirs are intellectually irredeemable?  What dialogues or training remain in the realms of the possible or even the plausible?  It would not surprise me if tomorrow’s socialist planners will lament the premature rejection of eugenics (introduced and touted by America’s socialists), as they contemplate the latest uses of technology for creating Marx’s ‘perfect man’ to inherit the Earth.

A parallel stream of contemplation comes closer to home when we consider the sorry state and direction of California.  In ‘California Needs Ideas’, Holman Jenkins reminds us of the utter idiocy that forms the foundation of our Democrats' obsession with what they believe to be preventable manmade global warming.  “No climate policy is available that would operate on a time scale relevant to California’s hellish wildfire challenge, except throwing enough opaque particles into the atmosphere to cool the Earth. … Anything that greens might favor, such as subsidizing green energy or taxing fossil fuels out of existence, is irrelevant. The effect would only manifest itself imperceptibly over many decades. To boot, it would require the participation of the world’s major economies, including China’s and India’s, which leaders answerable to California’s voters are in no position to deliver. … I make these points to underline an absurdity. California politicians spend much of their time obsessing about a climate change problem they can’t fix. Their state accounts for less than 0.1% of global emissions. There’s nothing they can do.”  In Sacramento stupid is forever, and the saddest part is that stupid is contagious in California – look around you.

Continuing this line of thought brings us to this morning’s editorial in our beloved (29aug20) Union.  Their Saturday editorial reflects the aggregate thought of the newspaper’s editorial board – full disclosure, Jo Ann is a member.  Today they ask us to ‘Imagine if everyone voted’.  The piece begins by recounting the adoption of the 19^th Amendment and the (silly?) reasons people argued against women becoming franchised to vote.  Well and good, but then they launch into a bit of perspective and philosophy to “give us a chance to reflect on where we’ve been, and remember what it took to get where we are.”  Immediately they trip over the much-disproven but still politically correct shibboleth – “The past is a chapter already written and set in stone.”  Nothing could be further from the truth today, if ever.  The past has always and many times over been rewritten by the victors.  Such wild revisionism continues to this day, and there is no sign that the practice will ever let up.  Today’s curriculum about our past is in a froth of wordsmithing that seeks to capture the most woke interpretation of our history to inculcate the current generation of young people. (more here) 

The Union’s collected wisdom concludes with a heavy dose of hopeful fog.  “Imagine what our country would look like if everyone who could vote did, and exercised that right regularly.  Just imagine.”  Before our fevered imaginations can take wing, we do need a bit of clarity here.  Who are the “everyone who could vote”?  Are they all American citizens, or just registered American citizens, or just all legal adult residents of America, or all adult residents of America, or also our nascent middle school students, or …, who?  Our imaginations would be directed in very different directions were we to know who were the intended who.  Given the strong leftwing tilt of The Union, people of my ilk would not err much if such imagining began with some considerable trepidation.

Ruminations – 27aug20 (updated 29aug20)

George Rebane

Not only can you have your own opinions, but today you can also have your own facts, history, science, logic, and language.  Rebane Doctrine

Orwellian Inclusivity.  Only a progressive works to achieve inclusivity by first rooting out all wrong-thinkers.  (See all the ongoing firings of leftist academics and journalists for even putting a lexicographic toe over the line in the narrowing narrative of the ongoing revolution.)

The lamestream is still providing scant, if any coverage, of the destructive and murderous riots in our cities, instead characterizing them as peaceful protests by “frustrated” young people.  This has the effect of making their audiences sound somewhere between silly and foolishly naïve when they enter into conversations about current events.

Kansas Mask Graphic is latest Big Lie that illustrates how Dems present their ‘science’ with methods already perfected in fashioning their climate change narrative.  “The state’s health secretary fudged the data to make the governor’s mask mandate look successful.”  (more here)

‘A Batscat Challenge’ reminder.  Back on 9 August  2020 I once more countered our leftwingers’ deficient debating attempts, making the case, and concluding with So here’s a thesis to debate – ‘It is proposed that dedicated Democrats, following in the footsteps of their political leaders and notable academics, are in various forms intellectually disabled or delinquent (aka batshit crazy).’  No one should hold their breath that this challenge will be answered.

VP Pence's commencement speech cancelled. (here)  More of the same applications of 'inclusivity' by Wisconsin Lutheran College, a timid private college folding to the demands of its woke student body contingent.

‘Majority of Americans Report Self-Censoring Their Political Views’ reports a Cato national poll -  “self‐​censorship is on the rise in the United States. Nearly two-thirds—62%—of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.”  The beat toward radical-Left autocracy goes on.

[28aug20 update]

Erratum??  A reader took issue with a statement in my 5aug20 KVMR commentary on voting by mail.  Specifically, it involves whether/how the USPS timestamps postage-paid bulk mail.  I have addressed this (here) with more links to references that extensively report on and discuss the historical tsunami of ballots the USPS will attempt to handle in a timely manner this fall.

Gov Nuisance has spoken.  We now know the updated C19 rules for gatherings and businesses that give us our new 'Blueprint for a Safer Economy' - something we've all been waiting for since only Sacramento knows all that stuff.  H/T to the reader who dug out and sent this very informative site that covers all California counties.  Reade 'em and weep.

[29aug20 update]  Another view (here) on voting by mail is provided by Sen Chuck Grassley (R-IA).  It appears that the USPS is not in a cash crunch as hyper-ventilated in yet another Big Lie by Team Pelosi, and at least Iowa (along with Florida) is ready to handle November's mail-in ballots.  (H/T to reader)

 

Scattershots – 24aug20 (updated 26aug20)

George Rebane

Only Trump can defeat Trump.

Our liberal readers really don’t understand what real ‘fake news’ is, and they throw that notion around as they do with terms like ‘racist’, which they also don’t understand.  Since they are a class-oriented people, liberals don’t look at the message, only the class membership of the messenger.  If it’s of the wrong type, they immediately disregard what the messenger brings, and vice-versa.  As demonstrated here for years, the NYT and WaPo are prime purveyors of fake news to the nation’s light readers, as always cited by the falsity of their messages.  Here is another example of fake news they manufactured regarding the Russian collusion imbroglio.  Read Daily Caller’s ‘Russian Oligarch’s Ties To Manafort, Steele Posed Intel Risks, Senate Report Says’, and note what critical parts of the Senate’s report these newspapers left out, altering the message to support their ongoing progressive narrative – all of it invisible to their blindered true believers.

Bumblebrain bumbles again – “If the scientists say shut it down, I’ll shut it down.  I go with science.”  The manchild has no clue how science or the government works.  His concept of science is what mommy tells an 8-year-old about science.  There is only one science and the good scientist tells us what it is.  Young children are not exposed to the wide diversity of scientific interpretations of literally every phenomenon – science is simply what mommy says it is.  The executive listens to scientists of all hues and then decides – it’s not easy and that’s why they get paid the big bucks.  And shutting down the country’s social and commercial activities – the President has no constitutional authority to do that under our federal system; all he can do is jawbone the states.  And after 40 years in the Senate, Biden is still such a naïf, and getting more addled by the day, that he knows none of this.

[25aug20 update]  America will suffer its greatest assault on religious institutions after a Biden victory according to the policy platform laid out by the Democrats.  The Big Lie that’s supposed to make us somnolent on the matter is bead-carrying Biden’s touted devotion to Catholicism.  As Bill McGurn points out here, nothing could be further from truth.  The Dems have never liked religion and its non-profit agencies and enterprises as a competitor that provide succoring services which always outshine similar government efforts in performance and cost.  Their solution, always practiced by socialists, is to constrain and reduce religious liberties.  The current approach by Team Biden and Democrats will be up the ante on licensing requirements and tax exemptions for non-profit, religious agencies offering everything from foster child care to parochial education.  According to their platform, these strictures will “reject” the “broad religious exemptions” that “allow businesses, medical providers, social service agencies and others to discriminate.” In other words, religious liberty.

‘The US Admits Too Few Refugees’ argues Reid Ribble, former Republican congress critter from Wisconsin.  His makes the point that “America should open its doors to those fleeing communism and religious persecution”, and goes on to cite our country’s core values in welcoming the oppressed as the basis for increasing our allotment of such refugees back to the almost 100K/yr level.  (more here)  I wish that he would have included some other criteria than just political or religious persecution to qualify the literally millions of so-oppressed people worldwide for US entry.  My own druthers would be the addition of some aspect of merit, say, academic, artistic, trade skill, STEM qualified, … .  But setting up a more comprehensive set of criteria becomes highly political as each side tries to size up who will wind up with more voters.

[26aug20 update]  The first-rate, marquee-quality Democrat Big Lies are now coming in way too fast to count.  Today’s highlighter was delivered by Kamala Harris who pointed out that the insignificant Ebola and H1N1 deaths during the Obama/Biden administration demonstrated what proper pandemic leadership could deliver.  The sleazebag slut didn’t blink an eye in omitting to tell her debilitated devotees that Ebola’s transmission was restricted to exchange of bodily fluids, and that the H1N1 mortality rate was extremely low.  Added to that, the medical experts in charge of managing both diseases today freely admit that it was NOTHING that they did that choked the outbreaks, but only a couple of extremely lucky turns of events.  Yet that broad continues to spread the Big Lie that it was the Obama/Biden administration’s astute policies that scotched the spread of the diseases, and contrasts it with Trump’s equivalent task that he has mishandled.  Covid-19 is a couple leagues above the easy money maladies of Ebola and H1N1, but that no lamestream consumer will ever know.  (BTW, H1N1 is still among us with its insignificant death rate.)

As a Lucky Strike Extra, the Dems have not been able to describe what else they would have done or promise to do in controlling C19, other than plagiarizing what Trump has already done and is doing.  Compared to the present administration, their prescriptions contribute a nothing burger.  Notice the leftwing crickets’ replies to these.

Another Big Lie we pick up today is the Dems’ screams that the First Lady and SecState Pompeo violated the Hatch Act with their respective speeches yesterday.  To begin, the Hatch Act gives wide latitude and exemptions to the Executive Branch, and the WH South Lawn and Rose Garden are specifically omitted from the parts of the executive mansion in which it is inappropriate to conduct partisan events.  And, of course, Team Biden provided no evidence to counter Pompeo carefully circumventing using State Department offices for his privately arranged and funded canned speech from Israel.  But all that don’t make no never mind to the Dems.  All they hope to do from now until November is to continue diverting attention from their ‘Party Without A Platform’.

Biden finally had to say he “won’t stand for violence in the streets” during his leftwing constituents' peaceful demonstrations across the land (actually, he referred only to Kenosha, but I’ll give him the rest of the country’s rioting cities which he has yet to acknowledge).  So my question to him is, ‘OK Bumblebrain, what would it look like to the rest of us when you won’t stand for the violence?’

Biden’s Big Lies - 22aug20 edition

George Rebane

Bumblebrain read little that's new off his teleprompter last Thursday night.  The only policy statement he made was what he’d do to end the C19 epidemic in the US.  His Big Lie was the enumeration of everything that Trump has already done or has under way, save for a federal mandate to impose wearing of masks countrywide.  And the tragedy of the matter is that we have manufactured so many millions of double dummies with our public education system so that most of them out there in television land believe that Bumblebrain actually has some new initiatives that will work.  Now that’s another Big Lie.

Also, did you notice that Bumblebrain, along with his lamestream lackies, never once during the Dem convention brought up the California power blackouts that their Green New Deal policies will impose on the rest of the country once they’re elected and control Congress.  That is a Big Lie that must not be made public, not even telling the country in their news programs that California is suffering blackouts because the Dems’ green policies have eliminated the state’s ability to provide base load capacity when the demand is high, and the wind and sun no longer cooperate.

Biden’s biggest bamboozle is not telling the country what he stands for, and instead letting Kasich give one message while Bernie gives the one that’s 180 out.  RINO Kasich’s message attempted to tell everyone that ol’ Joe isn’t that far left after all, he’s just a moderate with good character traits.  While Comrade Bernie declared total victory on national television telling all that Bumblebrain has signed up for the Full Marxist Monty spelled out in the Green New Deal.  (And notice the complete silence on both the lamestream and during convention about the riots, lootings, burnings, murders, … going on across the country under Democrat leaders.  There’s a real whopper of a Big Lie.)

Finally, we see that Russia and the EU are betting that Biden will win in November.  They are doing nothing to support America in its correct policy to impose UN authorized ‘snap back’ sanctions that were originally contained in the JCPA (the infamous Obama nuclear deal).  The mullahs have violated almost every provision in the horribly drafted agreement that still gives the UN Security Council ample grounds to stop Iran from acquiring and reselling advanced weapon systems and military gear.  But money talks.  Angela and her cronies, along with Vladimir, have some serious bucks at stake here in their sales of guns and grenades to the ragheads.  Iran remains the biggest state sponsor of international terrorism, and our allies don’t give a crap (Vladimir’s position is understood).  This again says that Biden continues clueless on foreign policy, and President Trump is the only one with the courage to call the shots and sanctions on the international stage.

Now these are the real Big Lies told Americans by our country’s anti-American political party.  And no one, not even the local leftwing lackies, will dare address any of these issues for the simple reason that they have no leg to stand on.  On these issues crickets continue as the only working alternative during these election year debates.

RL Crabb misses by a mile

"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

George Rebane

Our county’s celebrated and beloved political cartoonist and prominent leftwing thought leader, RL ‘Bob’ Crabb, got a twofer in the 15aug20 Union (on the editorial board of which he sits along with the wife of my life).  In addition to his regular weekend cartoon (here), he wrote a major piece titled ‘Whose town is it anyway?’  Bob is a longtime resident of Nevada County and his words go a long way to shaping our community’s understanding of the county’s rich and historic past.  Do not dismiss them lightly.

In today’s column Bob takes on the task of comparing the happenings and attitudes of half a century ago with what is going on in the county today, and what went down on the streets of Nevada City a few days ago.  We then witnessed a protest march of BLM supporters – locals and from sources unknown - sporting a variety of signs emblazoned with what have become common leftwing anti-American sentiments seen for weeks in the country’s cities that host violent riots and demonstrations by contingents of Antifa and BLM cadre and supporters.  In our town, these marching protesters were met by a handful of counter-demonstrators who did not take kindly to having their community being designated as the next target of the Left’s declared foment of revolution.

The counter-demonstrators did not act wisely with their emotional response, during which they tore up some protester signs and pushed back individual protesters.  All in all, the ‘violence’ we saw on Broad Street compared favorably with what is the everyday norm for commuters on the workday subway platforms of New York and Tokyo.  And it didn’t even qualify for comparison with what has been happening nightly in the downtowns of Portland, Seattle, Chicago, New York, … .  But Nevada City is now a hard-left town, and their own were being manhandled in the streets.  This clearly called for a good dose of social justice administered under the prominent flutter of virtue signalling flags.

So the town’s police launched what is undoubtedly their first “complete investigation”, and from the perusal of numerous videos of the dust-up, perpetrating suspects were identified, with the first already arrested and booked into the county jail – more arrests are promised.  The county’s Left continues in the lather of righteous outrage, as witnessed by the number of contributed editorials that surround Bob’s contribution on the newspaper’s op-ed page.  And it is with this background that we dive into Mr Crabb’s literary contribution.

Bob opens with a fine memory lane jaunt recounting the days of yesteryear when the aftermath of the social unrest and riots of 1968 gave rise from the cities to an exodus of hippies, free-thinkers, counter-culturalists, and other various misfits.  They lifted their eyes toward the hills from whence cometh their salvation, dotted with communities which promised the freedom to let them do their own thing, unmolested by those pesky norms of established tradition and nosey cops.  A goodly cohort arrived in Nevada County, and Bob details their somewhat rough reception by the locals while crediting their arrival with all kinds of good things that befell our community in the subsequent years after the dust had settled.

So far so good.  But then our pencil-pushing philosopher attempts to cross one historical bridge too far with his vivid recounting and unfolding attempt to dovetail the ‘then’ with the ‘now’.  He claims that the decades-separated episodes are really birds of a feather, and a reprise of what our community had once before successfully handled, digested, and integrated.  Then he concludes his considerable comparison and counsel with the lament, “So it is disappointing to see history repeat itself on these same streets.”

Not even close – there is nothing here that represents history repeating itself.  Fifty years ago the hippy migrations were strictly a resocialization of urban misfits into kinder climes.  There was neither a national movement underlying it, nor did it include a concerted and much-advertised goal of fomenting a revolution to fundamentally transform America, a revolution which has now successfully co-opted the nation’s established leftwing political party and jerked its leaders into compliant mouthpieces for the movements’ socio-political ideology.

Today’s proto-communist protestors have no desire to quietly integrate into our communities as profit-seeking merchants, service providers, and professionals; or even as workers for capitalist companies competing in minimally regulated open markets.  Today’s rioters and protesters are neo-Marxists, whose limited and jaundiced view of history sees America as a terminally evil country in a world in which socialism has suffered many faulty starts, corrupt capitalist conspiracies, and mistakes by the various leaders of leftwing movements.  All of these are seen as correctible, and will be corrected this time around as we once more unite and march to the strains of the Internationale.  

Ruminations – 11aug20 (updated 13aug20)

George Rebane

Countering imported BLM demonstrators.  Given that BLM has shown its true colors as a political ‘black lives don’t matter’ movement created to transform the country into a socialist state, and demonstrating their violent methods in other towns and cities, I suppose it’s not surprising that people in Nevada County are turning out to defend home and hearth from imported 'protesters', no matter how many like-minded local leftists join them.

‘Mayhem Continues, Protest Narrative Crumbles’  The lamestream media has done it damnest to foist the Big Lie that the country’s riots, burnings, shootings, lootings, … are just “peaceful protests” of people seeking “social justice” in the wake of George Floyd’s death.  None of them admit to the existential evidence generated nightly across the land, and none of them admit to the greater political purpose of a socialist revolution to which the various factions of rioters readily admit and publish.  And this selective blindness is dutifully aped by our local leftwing loonies as demonstrated in these pages and elsewhere.  (more here)

‘Fighting Back Against the Woke Corporation’  The country’s mega-corporatists are doing their best to sell rope to our socialist cum communist revolutionaries in Congress and the streets.  Today their size is such that “Corporate power can enforce cultural conformity—through marketing, through lobbying, through firing.”  Is this not the perfect time for some unwoke, say retailer like Walmart, to make the big move against the market dominance of Amazon?  Just advertise that you are not woke and that you are a capitalist corporation which makes its profits by putting the interests of its customers (not the list of “stakeholders”) first.  For millions of us it will then quickly become the go-to place for online shopping as it builds up its SKU inventory. (more here)

[Update]  The NC BOS defeated the most recent version of the draconian covid ‘urgency ordinance’ at the end of a very lengthy meeting late this afternoon.  The best the proponents could do was to reduce – yes, reduce – the fines for violating the mask, gathering, and dining-in provisions to $500, $2,500, and $5,000 for the first three offenses.  The heroes of the session were Supervisors Ed Scofield and Susan Hoek with their no votes.  If covid ever becomes an ‘urgent matter’ in Nevada County, the BOS can always revisit such an ordinance.  In the interval, let’s respect the common sense of our residents who are well aware of the pandemic’s dangers.

[12aug20 update]  'Black' is a categorical political identity.  Kamala is advertised by the lamestream as being ‘black’.  Her ancestry is way more complex than that, and returns us to the question of how much Negroid blood qualifies one as black or African-American. (more here) In legal terms she’s classified as black if that’s how she wants it.  But what fraction of Negroid ancestry should our society demand before accepting such a politically beneficial de juris racial classification?  (more here) We answered that question for Elizabeth Warren’s Indian ancestry.  Today the answer is ‘whatever works’.

AP News suckers our local Union again.  AP (All Propaganda) is an unabashedly leftwing fake news outfit that still manages to bamboozle the news editors of most of the country’s newspapers.  The latest piece – ‘Virus surge make the United States weak link in global economic recovery’ - that appears in the 12aug20 Union is utter editorial bullshit passed off as news copy.  At best it should appear on the newspapers’ op-ed pages.  But the fact that it passes off as news goes a long way to explain why today’s Americans have such a low opinion of journalists and journalism.  Did any of them ever take a critical thinking course in journalism school?  (The article on Union’s page A6 could not be found on the AP site, nor on the Union’s website.  It looks like a piece of fluff propaganda passed down to small town newspapers that need to fill some real estate in their print editions, and are not that alert or savvy about what qualifies as real news.  You can read it if you look in the print edition on their website – try here.)

[13aug20 update]  President Trump is finally putting some balance into his C19 ‘science team’ with the invitation to a couple of physician scientists who are part of the cohort of thousands of such professionals that has a markedly different take on what our proper response policies should be for this highly politicized pandemic.  Perhaps there now will be some meaningful backroom discussions between Fauci et al and the newcomers.  (more here and here.  H/T to reader.)

A Batscat Challenge

George Rebane

Led by local leftwing intellectual legend Mr Steven Frisch, the readers and yours truly have been labeled “batshit crazy” in comment streams here and leftwing blogs elsewhere for doubting or debating the science behind major public issues like preventable manmade global warming, Covid-19 response policies, and even the effect of taxes on economic behavior.  While making these hubristic accusations, they totally ignore the actual batshit crazy policies and proposals constantly issuing from the country’s putrid progressive pundits and politicians highlighted by such intellectual compositions such as the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, Common Core curriculum, the BLM and Antifa manifestos, America’s new revisionist history a la Zinn and the 1619 Project, and … the list goes on indefinitely.

Today the Left has elevated their batshit crazy propositions onto steroid levels with their claims that STEM studies are really expressions of white supremacy and racist.  More and more leftwing academicians are hoisting their true intellectual colors with such statements as from Brooklyn College Professor of Math Education Laurie Rubel who claims that math is an expression of “white supremacist patriarchy” and, joined by other pinhead peers, to insist that “math should be reevaluated because it was primarily developed by white men.” (more here)

Instead of hiding behind their beloved and well-practiced Alinsky Angle with which the socialists loudly accuse their political opposites of doing exactly what they have done and continue to do, I challenge these socialist sages to step up and publicly defend their ideas with similar dedication and depth that we of the conservetarian leanings here employ in our apologetics.  After many years in these pages, we are still looking for something besides baseless ad hominems from their side.  Where is their defense of, say, the Green New Deal, or the joys of socialism, or that ‘2+2=4’ is racist, or … .  (also see comment stream of the last Sandbox and at Bob Crabb's)

So here’s a thesis to debate – ‘It is proposed that dedicated Democrats, following in the footsteps of their political leaders and notable academics, are in various forms intellectually disabled or delinquent (aka batshit crazy).’  No one should hold their breath that this challenge will be answered.

The communists try again … (updated 17jul20)

George Rebane

From The Patriarch, David Nasaw’s mega-biography of the life and times of Joseph P. Kennedy, we read –

The Depression, as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., noted in the first volume of his The Age of Roosevelt, offered “radicalism its long awaited chance.”  The unemployed, underemployed, dispossessed, and hungry were not sitting idly by waiting for prosperity to return.  Many were too numbed, too crushed, to protest, but a small and vocal minority were not.  The Socialist and Communist parties more than doubled their tiny memberships and exploded in visibility.  Communist Party organizers were actively operating in city neighborhoods from Harlem to Detroit, in the coal fields of Pennsylvania an Kentucky, and the River Rouge plant in Dearborn, among tenants and sharecroppers in the South and migrant workers in California, and outside and inside closed and closing mills and factories in the Northeast.  Their argument was simple: capitalism had failed and needed to be replaced.

In the 1930s FDR’s big government nostrums kept the country in a depression so deep and enduring that it took the greatest war in history to bring us out of it (aided through Truman’s fortuitous rejection of the post-war return to FDR’s alphabet soup agencies) and reject communism.  What is it going to take this time in today's Democrat-promoted recession as their socialists/communists again marshal their forces in the streets and in the ballot boxes?

[17jul20 update]

This Young Collectivist’s Column is NOT a Caricature

George Rebane

Recent NUHS graduate Michael Sekerak is working hard to reshape our society and community.  He wrote the cri de Coeur ‘Time to elevate those marginalized in our community’ which The Union published in its 8jul20 edition.  What is remarkable about Mr Sekerak’s column is that it so exemplifies the education, indoctrination, and mentality of the youth that our long-politicized and polarized public education system produces.  His column and the way he expresses his deeply felt sentiments would be considered a tongue-in-cheek caricature of current collectivist expression were I or another conservetarian to compose such, and then claim that its prescriptions correctly represent the pap that passes for progressive thought.  Our liberal readers would take me to task for composing such an obviously naïve collection of leftwing talking points, insisting that this would be yet one more ‘racist perspective’ from the Right (what else?), and that their real nostrums for us come from higher, socially just, and more sophisticated sources.

In any event, I present the entirety of Mr Sekerak’s composition below so that our readers can appreciate the product of our public schools.  As matter of fact, Nevada County would be one of the least likely locales in which to find individuals who have been marginalized by our community.  But that, of course, is not the proper woke attitude or outlook – America’s persecuted, denied, and aggrieved are everywhere marbled into our racist and white privileged communities, even unto these remote foothills now filling with liberal nest-soilers from the cities yearning to breathe free.

From the following copy, the casual reader will note that Mr Sekerak’s heartfelt desiderata, when even partially implemented, will further reduce our schools’ academic content and increase its level of dysfunction as an educational institution.  His accusation of our schools’ deficit of woke, and call for additional Newspeak instruction, and claims of “never given the opportunity” to “discuss systemic issues” is, of course, both ignorant and specious in today’s America.  Enjoy.

In light of the recent protests, we must make long-lasting and direct changes that critically challenge how we frame our community and our place in the nation’s history.

The letter below calls upon our local county public high schools to address problems concerning the diversity and cultural acceptance in our education system. We need more than a transient reaction from our schools. Through this petition, we provide a direct means for our local leaders to stand with black, indigenous, people of color (POC), lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQIA+) individuals, and all other marginalized peoples in the Nevada County community and across the country.

We urge Nevada Joint Union High School District to implement policy changes to become intentionally anti-racist and inclusive of the many diverse communities who make up our past, present, and future in all aspects of this county’s educational infrastructure. In your June 9 statement, you made a commitment to “ensure equitable outcomes for all students.” This can be achieved through a number of direct actions:

(1) Redefine the district’s mission, values, and student conduct codes to directly reflect anti-racist and inclusive positions.

(2) Expand the body of anti-racism, racial justice, cultural diversity, and inclusivity literature assigned in the social sciences and humanities curricula.

(3) Create identity-based affinity groups (Black Student Union, Asian Student Alliance, Queer and Questioning Groups, etc.) as a brave space for students to explore their identities.

(4) Re-evaluate the hiring process of administrators, faculty, and staff.

(5) Increase training on implicit bias, equity, inclusion, and restorative justice systems.

(6) Invite diverse speakers and take students on field trips that directly address matters of racial justice, inclusivity, and white privilege in the NJUHSD student body.

If you support this proposal, please sign the petition.  It is time we work together to elevate the voices of our marginalized community It is time we work to educate ourselves and our future generations to stand up against injustices. In order for this to happen we must first address the gaps in our local education system. How can you discuss systemic issues if you are never given the vocabulary to do so? How can you discuss systemic issues if you are never given the opportunity to do so?

Our education system should have provided us with the tools we needed to critically challenge the systems we have in place. And it did not.

Michael Sekerak graduated from Nevada Union High School, Class of 2013.

Scattershots – 5jul20 (updated 6jul20)

George Rebane

Division is caused by Trump’s speeches is now the steady narrative from the national propaganda outlets.  Specifically, it’s the speeches in which he mentions the protests cum riots that result in death and destruction that have now emerged as the daily visible signs that divide our country.  Were they not of evil intent, then one would have to ascribe to them ignorance of how primitive causality works.

‘Settled science’ is the fools’ errand on which the Dems have sent the country’s light thinkers.  Evidence abounds from countless sources that even the basics of ‘standard of care’ for C19 is an item of lively debate among health workers.  This was detailed in the 1jul20 WSJ in the report ‘Months Into Coronavirus Pandemic ICU Doctors are Split on Best Treatment’.  In these parts I wrote a Union piece in the attempt to enlighten the local leftwing loonies about settled science (here), and was lambasted by the know-nothings as therefore being against science.

“Invest in Black America” is another movement inviting more monies be spent on enterprises for racist reasons.  Their rallying organization is on gatheringforjustice.org.  Originally founded by Harry Belafonte aggrieved by hearing of an unruly black girl being taken out of a classroom by police, and now operating with renewed purpose on the streets across America.  Today the organization demands that both public and private funding be funneled into black holes (double entendre intended) with an equal likelihood of getting any return or benefitting African-American communities.  That for the simple reason that billions have already been spent for no visible benefit (according to their own assessments), and there has been no change in the recipient communities to support any reasonable expectation that this time it will be different.  It was then a recalcitrant culture which prevented progress, a culture which has now grown even more hostile to self-reliance, enterprise, and capitalism.

America’s dumbth – in these pages a perennial paean to our dysfunctional education system – is now being reported on by so many authors, analysts, and observers of the national scene.  One of the most recent pieces appeared in the NYT (gasp!) book review reporting on a just published book by Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.  From there we read, “If only Americans knew more about the world.  It’s a common refrain among many foreign policy intellectuals, and Richard Haass joins the chorus in The World: A Brief Introduction. Young Americans suffer from poor educations, he contends, while older people find it hard to keep up with profound changes that have unfolded since the Cold War order crumbled three decades ago. The consequences of ignorance, Haass warns, are serious: American disengagement from the wider world and poor decision-making at a moment of mounting global dysfunction.”  Our country’s wholesale ignorance is so pervasive that it can be seen in daily interviews with the rioters who have no clue about the basics of Americana, deficits also corroborated by our local leftwing loonies who frequent here and our community’s media.  The latter have no concept of the intellectual state of our nation, let alone their own abysmal deficit as can be seen by their desperate denials of this state of affairs, and baseless accusations of people (e.g. me) who attempt to enlighten them.  Again, is it evil or simply profound ignorance?

[6jul20 update]  First black Fed president Raphael Bostic writes that “systemic racism is a yoke that drags on the American economy.”  In his recent paper Dr Bostic states that the pandemic “has coincided with a rethink inside the Fed of how it should evaluate the impacts of its policy decisions on those at the margins instead of focusing on broad aggregates”.   His Fed colleagues agree with this shift of priorities, perhaps because of the central bank’s poor overall record of dealing with the country’s economic aggregates and now with the Left ascendant, it would be an excellent time to instead give minding the margins a try.  There’s gotta be a prudent policy pony in there somewhere.  (more here)

President Trump’s Mr Rushmore speech was judged by most (not burdened by TDS) to be his best since inauguration.  However, and in lockstep, the hate Trump chorus immediately broke out with the same song – “At Mt. Rushmore, Trump uses Fourth of July celebration to stoke a culture war.”, LA Times;  “Trump Uses Mount Rushmore Speech to Deliver Divisive Culture War Message.”, NYT;  “Trump pushes racial division, flouts virus rules at Rushmore”, AP;  “At Mount Rushmore, Trump exploits social divisions, warns of ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ in dark speech ahead of Independence Day.”,  WaPo.  A less hate-filled reading would reveal that the speech contained an accurate assessment of the state of the nation, and nothing divisive nor racist, save that today’s thought police consider any mention of the riots and turmoil in the streets to be prima facie evidence of divisive racism.  It is people like me, and those who counsel the inevitable Great Divide as an alternative to tyranny, who may be accused of being judiciously divisive.  (more here)

Reflections on Racism – no time to decide (updated)

George Rebane

A barren desert is now the middle ground separating Americans from their woke and fundamentally transformed brethren.

Racism has been an enduring theme on RR for years – e.g. back in 2010, through the years, and a more recent commentary in 2019.  With readers we have dissected it 20 ways from Sunday.  Even liberals have joined in.  Unfortunately, their contributions have been limited to calling the rest of us ‘racists’ without being able to even define the word.  From Lewis Carroll we read once again –

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

I recently visited Bob Crabb’s site to pay homage to his excellent cartoon (here) and return the favor of his visits to RR.  What caught my eye was Bob’s brief but meaningful commentary posted below his cartoon –

We are reaching the tipping point, and I don’t mean just tipping old confederate statues. Our competing ideologies have retreated to the far ends of the spectrum where any kind of compromise is seen as treachery. … Can cooler heads prevail? I’d like to think so, but when the extremes are obsessed with winning it all, it seems unlikely. … As I have said here before, it’s too bad that we are bent on destroying such a nice country.

Bob now perceives the tipping point that in my Great Divide screeds I claim we passed long ago.  But what I took to task was his claim that both “extremes are obsessed with winning it all”, which on its face is not true.  I then entered into a dialogue with some liberal worthies that turned out to be predictably unproductive, save that it illustrated the barren desert of our middle ground.  As I’ve mentioned before, and with no apologies to the late Sen Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both sides can and do have their own distinct and widely varying opinions, facts, histories, morals, ethics, systems of logic, and desiderata for the future.

Scattershots – 19jun20

“Capital trickles away from dictatorial states that fail to defend private individuals and their property.  Instead, if flows into states upholding the rule of law and private property.”  Yuval Noah Hariri

George Rebane

Sweden’s death committees have been working overtime.  Under their nationalized healthcare hordes of seniors diagnosed with C19 have been automatically consigned to “palliative care” – aka pump ‘em full of morphine until they die.  This little revelation comes out in conjunction with a heartfelt success story of a son who fought for his father’s life in the clutches of a calculating state (more here).  In our discussion of the ‘value of human life’ our leftwingers are in terminal denial that it is they and theirs who have always devalued human life, consigning lives to abortion (including post-partum), mental hospitals, eugenics experiments, gas chambers, and boxcars to faraway final solutions.  This is what we have to look forward if/when Democrats sweep the field.

Thomas Sowell writes ‘Charter Schools’ Enemies Block Black Success’ in which he outlines the outright evil wrought by leftwing politicians in denying blacks sure-fire ways to escape the carefully constructed leftwing plantations in America’s urban ghettos.  Charter schools have been enormously successful in closing the black-white academic gaps, and not because they “skim the cream” of the students as another one of the Democrats’ Big Lies that really impact the nation.  Admission to these schools in poor areas is by lottery, so Lady Luck draws a cross section of applicants who come from ALL segments of the black and brown communities.  NYC spends more than $20K (including federal monies paid by you) per student annually to deliver one of the nation’s worst educational products.  And union-funded lickspittle politicians are doing all they can to keep minority children under incompetent, uncaring teachers, crammed into classrooms in schools suffering from years of deferred maintenance under Democrat administrations.  And these idiots still claim the moral highground!

“The U.S. made outrage a form of social currency. Now we’re in the hyperinflationary phase.”. so argues Joseph Sternberg in his ‘A Wheelbarrow Full of Outrage’.  Sternberg correctly equates today’s ever-increasing demands of wokeness for more and more outrage, “outrage (that) has rapidly become so devalued that ordinary members of society can no longer leverage it for that most important good of all: social peace. A conspicuous feature of the recent protests in the U.S. is that no policy reform, no corporate initiative, no individual action is enough. Employers no longer know what form of progressive activism constitutes the “right” level of compensation for their idealistic employees. Commentators and academics no longer know which contributions to important public debates—which expenditures of their professional expertise and social capital—will be deemed acceptable.”  In this piece Sternberg also gives an operational definition of ‘wokeness’ which is a “type of performative progressive outrage used to boost one’s capital in the political marketplace.”

Corporations are not treating their employees fairly, so maintains the US senator from Ohio.  This leftist’s epiphany is that “The pandemic has laid bare how corporations treat employees not as essential to their success but as a cost to be minimized. One grocery store worker in Ohio told me recently, ‘I don’t feel essential. I feel expendable.’”  It’s heartwarming to see Sen Sherrod Brown glean an understanding that corporations have always viewed labor as a cost to be minimized.  Had not the Henry Fords of America realized and put this into practice, not very many people could afford cars, or vacuum cleaners, or toasters, or movies, or supermarkets, or … .  And yes Virginia, when you are working for someone else, you are exchanging the value of your labor for your wages.  And competition in America’s labor markets should always make workers feel expendable (as our product/services markets make their employers feel expendable).  That’s why you work more diligently, learn a more valuable skill, start a business, and in general not become incompetent in what you do, as we see demonstrated daily by public employees. (more here)

Springtime for our Great Divide

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 17 June 2020.]

Where were you and what did you do in the spring of 2020?  The world has changed much during the last three months.  When we look back, we will remember this spring as the historical milestone when Americans finally realized that they are no longer one reconcilable people.  Where next we go from here is uncertain and up for grabs.  The only certainty we have going forward is the coming Great Divide.

Our country has been subjected to a perfect trifecta of national crises, all layered onto an ongoing campaign to discredit and destroy the duly elected president of our democratic republic.  Along with the rest of the world, we were blindsided by a viral pandemic which no one understood and for which no one had prepared.  America, along with most other developed countries, initiated a lockdown mandating that people not travel, stay home, and not work.  In consumer driven economies like ours, this caused economic collapse.  And while we were sequestered, hearing reports of Covid-19 deaths, and wondering how we would pay our rent and bills, we witnessed three separate killings of black persons by incompetent, inept, and poorly trained police.  And all of this during the most contentious presidential election year in living memory.

Antifa Rising (updated 9jun20)

George Rebane

Motivated by the ongoing George Floyd protests cum riots, I renewed my interest in finding out more about Antifa – is it an organization or merely a movement of loosely coupled cells operating all over the country?  The discussions in our comment streams seem to divide along ideological lines – those leaning right see it as a formidable organization that rises to the occasion whenever there’s a political contention in the public forum; those leaning left characterize it as nothing more than a movement of some loosely formed groups of protesters against the country’s capitalist order.  In recent days I’ve received some informative emails from readers containing links to reports and commentaries that cover the waterfront on Antifa.  Here I’ll share a couple of them which I found more salient to my puzzling on the matter.

First some definitions:  A movement is a social cohort sharing an affinity to a set of beliefs and an overarching objective.  They usually express themselves in conjunction with other social gatherings, observances, and/or ad hoc events which may spontaneously/serendipitously arise.  A movement need not be organized around an enduring social structure.  An organization is a social order that has an enduring and labeled identity which is structured to achieve an objective summarized in a published mission statement, the accomplishment of which is through some known intermediate goals.  Organizations have a leadership hierarchy (e.g. board, executive management, operating managers, staff, …), a headquarters, established means of funding operations, membership, and a current agenda.  As they grow and gather steam, movements inevitably become organized in order to continue progress toward their overarching objective. 

The following numbered points summarize my current take on Antifa –

1. The origins of Antifa can be traced to the post-Bolshevik movements to spread the communist revolution into western Europe during the 1920s, specifically to counter the fascist (national socialist) movements that started in Italy with the rise of Mussolini after he was expelled from the Italian Communist Party.
2. Antifa members held a loosely defined and contradictory political ideology that welcomed both anarchists and Marxist/Leninist communists. The anarchists wanted to do away with all government immediately, and the communists wanted big governments to control all aspects of society.  But we recall that the Marx’s stated ultimate objective was a social order in which the perfected communist Man would live in social harmony without further need for government.  So in that sense Antifa could attract both anarchists and communists to work together toward an ultimate common goal, the timing of which they could quibble over after the established ‘fascist social orders’ were overthrown.
3. Antifa divides people into anti-fascists, fascists, and those who are ideologically innocent/naïve. Fascism is never given a precise operational definition, but is simply defined as being anything and everything that opposes the Antifa objectives and methods.
4. The acknowledged and taught MO to achieve Antifa objectives is through violence that is justified because Antifa members consider all opposition to their creed to also be expressions of violence.
5. The Antifa movement never became a stable organization in Europe or in its spread to the US. It arose here and there to oppose fascism in pre-WW2 Europe and was ruthlessly put down by the Nazis.
6. Antifa has made itself known through protest demonstrations of opportunity over the last decades by joining the ranks of non-violent protesters and then turning the protests into violent riots by instigating assaults on police, arson, looting, and generally creating opportunistic mayhem. Their intent is to project the image that the entire protesting cohort in the streets share their objectives and violent means of achieving them.
7. No overarching Antifa organization has been identified in the US. However, there are several Antifa cells that have names and aggressively operate in various cities and regions of our country.  Today they are very active during the ongoing George Floyd protests, successfully having turned most of them into destructive riots.
8. Antifa’s published leaflets and online proclamations declare its fundamental opposition to property, established legal order, capitalism, individual rights and freedom, religion, and constitutional government. The underlying objective of all their activities is the ultimate destruction of the United States of America, their greatest worldwide evil against which all means and methods are justified.
9. “Antifa activists communicate and recruit mostly through social media, using Facebook as their principal forum for organizing protests.” Antifa cells receive money for recruiting and operations through a number of listed leftwing, pro-socialist organizations funded by prominent hard-left personages (e.g. George Soros and various entertainers).
10. The main source of new Antifa members is from the constituents of the Democratic Party. The Dems and their lamestream media provide the political support for Antifa, mischaracterizing them as ‘protesters’, never calling them rioters, and minimizing reports of their violence and destruction.  And when all else fails, Antifa is portrayed as being in the streets to justifiably oppose ‘rightwing anarchists’ and ‘white nationalists’ who are the real fascists and instigators of the riots.
11. The Democratic Party sees Antifa as a cohort of useful idiots that today function to keep alive the more visible and virulent forms of anti-Trump sentiments without having to expose themselves as militantly in the streets seeking to bring about their advertised “fundamental transformation” of America. More importantly, Antifa’s message to the minorities reinforces the Democrats’ decades-long narrative that our Hispanics and African-Americans continue as perpetual victims of corporate America and racist whites.
12. There is a lot written about Antifa. From my readings, the two most informative that I found are ‘Project Veritas: Antifa Operates Like a Business’ and ‘A Communist & Anarchist Movement That Explicitly Endorses Violence’.

[8jun20 update]  The Antifa Manual.  Over the last week I’ve received several emails with what is purported to be the manual for Antifa members that outlines its ideology and the modus operandi of its street operations.  At first I hesitated to post it for several reasons that made me doubt its authenticity, primarily the variations in the writing style and a very naïve composition/structure.  It looks like it was meant to communicate the evils of Antifa to people unfamiliar with the movement.  In any event, whatever its provenance, someone went to some trouble to make the document look like the real deal.  You can download it and make up your own mind.  Download Antifa-Manual

[9jun20 update]  Noted WSJ columnist Bill McGurn joins many nationwide observers of how the peaceful protests have been co-opted by violent thugs, most of whom pledge their allegiance to the many Antifa cells that supply rioters to the various George Floyd demonstration venues.  In his ‘Mayhem is the Message’, McGurn writes – “If justice for George Floyd is the goal, many cannot fathom how it makes any sense to trash already-vulnerable neighborhoods, kill other African-American men in the process, and destroy black-owned stores that, as former President Barack Obama just pointed out, may never come back. But it makes perfect sense if the goal is to indict America as fatally compromised by racism since birth. And if the mayhem provokes authorities such as Mr. Trump into further inflaming the situation, so much the better.”

And then there’s CNN’s Chris Cuomo, the idiot brother of New York’s governor, who pours gasoline on the fire with his, “Please, show me where it says protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.”  The dufus totally misses that ‘polite and peaceful’ is how the lamestream, led by his employer, has been characterizing the riots.  Today’s perversity of the Left includes the observation by Scott Walker of the Capital Research Center that “Radical mobs on campuses call speech they don’t like ‘violence,’ ” while “Radical mobs in the streets call their violence ‘speech.’ Either way, instead of highlighting the difference between peaceful protesters and rioters, they want to erase it.”  The reasonable voices from the black community are always few and hard to hear over those screeching victimhood, but three intellectual giants stand out – Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Shelby Steele.  African-Americans would fare far better following their counsel, instead of divisive demogauges like Sharpton and Jackson.

Some flavors of mindlessness (updated 25may20)

George Rebane

In the mindless department, we start with a letter from a Skip Pollard in the 22may20 Union that takes to task the 6may20 column by Terry McLaughlin where she substantiates the thesis -  

“No one could have predicted with certainty a viral pandemic arising in 2020, and no human being could have been entirely prepared in the moment to make the perfect decisions that would best preserve life and livelihoods.” – and substantiates it with a timeline of C19 pronouncements and assessments made by various agents worldwide.  That assessment didn’t sit well with the TDS crowd who still proclaim to their followers that Trump’s "mismanagement of the pandemic" has caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths.  But here is the example of the “omission” cited by Pollard to make his case that McLaughlin “cherry picked” the C19 timeline –

April 23: President Trump says, “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs.”

Now what in hell does that perfectly good observation and question asked by the president have to do with the timeline of policy pronouncements on the pandemic’s progress assembled by McLaughlin; logically it can’t even be shoehorned into a timeline of similar events.  But to TDS sufferers like Skip Pollard, this liberal logic makes all the sense in the world.  The mentality of such people is literally unfathomable to the unafflicted, and explains a forte why communication with them is futile.  Perhaps one of our liberal readers can help Mr Pollard by citing a substantive omission from Ms McLaughlin’s column.

Long before I warned you of Dr Fauci, President Eisenhower did.  In the same farewell speech in which he called for vigilance of the doings of the country’s “military-industrial complex”, Ike also warned us that scientists dependent on government contracts and grants might cripple scientific breakthroughs. Specifically, he said “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”  And all this because “the prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.”  Yes, if you follow the money, then scientific consensus becomes the order of the day, and those innumerates innocent of science will not be the wiser, as they continue their habituated genuflections before anything proclaimed as ‘scientific’.  In Ike’s words, “partly because of the huge costs involved (in scientific research), a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”  So, today Dr Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is one of the “scientific-technological elites” that Eisenhower warned against. (more here)

Others have echoed and expanded on this new secular religion of science.  Author Tom Bethell in his Politically Incorrect Guide to Science tells us -

Government funding has… promoted the idea that a theory can be regarded as true if it enjoys enough support. … Consensus discourages dissent, however. It is the enemy of science, just as it is the triumph of politics. A theory accepted by 99 percent of scientists may be wrong. Committees at the National Institutes of Health that decide which projects shall be funded are inevitably run by scientists who are at peace with the dominant theory."

Here we note that 99% of scientists accepted ALL theories that were subsequently toppled by new discoveries during the age when science was still “an open platform”.  A fundamental truth that you can bank today is that “when any single source of funding dominates, science will almost certainly become the handmaiden of politics.”  And we have seen that happen countless times during the last half century, most recently in the politically stifled science that promotes preventable man-made global warming.

As one of today’s ‘scientific-technological elites’, Dr Fauci’s words are to be taken as unquestioned gospel about the recent coronavirus disease and the nation’s response to the pandemic.  We do so at our peril. 

[update]  ‘America is Reopening for Summer and Tensions are High’ in the 22may20 WSJ reports that “Tensions are intensifying between those celebrating the end of shutdowns and those fearful of the virus’s re-emergence, between those driven by economic desperation and those eager to resume a semblance of normalcy. As restrictions eventually fall in large cities including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, those dichotomies are likely to become more acute.”  What I find puzzling is the report of tensions between those wanting the lockdowns to remain and those who don’t.  What’s the big deal?  Anyone is free to quarantine themselves to their hearts content.  And if the rest of your neighbors risk themselves and contribute to economic recovery, then those who remain hunkered down will receive even more and better services from those who don’t.  Everyone gets to exercise their own risk tolerance, and the only ones with noses out of joint are them that demands a ‘one size fits all’ America.

[25may20 update] As we pointed out almost two months ago, the C19 quarantines would soon cause more corollary mortality and morbidity than any reasonable estimate of health benefits (including number of deaths) from the pandemic.  Now we are beginning to see reports coming in telling of people dying at home from chronic and topical (including psychological) maladies that would have been addressed through normal visits and access to the medical industry.  One recent article reports ‘California doctors say they’ve seen more deaths from suicide than coronavirus since lockdowns’ (H/T to reader).  Add these to the butt-stupid policies like Gov Cuomo’s sentence of almost certain death to those New Yorkers he condemned to be transferred to 24/7 care facilities, and then round out what our dreadfully incompetent governments have inflicted on us in their power panic to appear to ‘do something’ that looks to most like we’re fighting the virus.  In the final analysis the fault of it all belongs on us mal-educated citizens who shrink from every politically identified risk, and demand that government immediately leaps in to keep us safe, no matter the cost in dollars or liberties.  With the passing years, fewer of us remain who still understand that growth of government power is a one-way ratchet toward revolution.  For the rest, the state is ever the benevolent Big Brother.