Rebane's Ruminations

Border Security, Barriers, and Porosity (updated)

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swedish Rhapsody

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

George Rebane

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

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

Scattershots – 27dec18 (updated 30dec18)

George Rebane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CA Exodus Denied

George Rebane

The exodus of the producers and the productive from California has been a recurring theme on RR ever since the Democrats assumed total control, turned the state into the nation’s home for welfare recipients, started raising taxes and fees as if there were no tomorrow, and opened its gates to illegal aliens.  Essentially, the Democratic super-majority has turned the state into a sanctuary from sanity.  Among the reams of data presented to buttress the exodus argument, a reader sent me the graphic below that highlights just one aspect of nationwide migrations – and these are NET migrations – from/to our country’s prominent metropolitan areas (more here).

This shows that from LA alone we have a net outflow of 46,720 people per year.  And do you think these are the gimmes who think they’ll get more sanctuary protections and better government bennies from some other state?

Globalists and Nationalists, oh my!

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 12 December 2018.]

Have you considered where you stand on the many issues that not only divide us Americans, but also people everywhere, that is everywhere they can freely speak their minds?  Have you really thought it through well enough to sit down and make a list of the issues that concern you, and also your reasoned or even unreasoned, attitude about each such issue?  Most people will have to answer a truthful NO, and admit that they primarily respond to such questions, as they come up, with an unexamined yet readily available emotion.

Today we are becoming more polarized as each day goes by without anyone being able to identify a meaningful patch of common ground on which we can meet and talk.  The old adage of ‘don’t talk politics or religion’, when hoping to remain civil in polite company, has now become a social mandate in the carefully groomed public round.  When at church or at some other club or association meeting, everyone carefully minds their mouths, and holds on patiently until they can leave and get back to more reliably like-minded folks.

While there are many things we all can disagree on – today immigration, climate change, abortion, culture, assimilation, terrorism, … remain high on the list – how we come down on each of them can usually be traced to our overall picture of the kind of world we want our kids and grandkids to inherit.  And for those fortunate enough to be well-read, that almost inevitably brings us to one of two kinds of worlds, which ultimately identify each of us as being in the nationalist or globalist camps.  Moreover, the roads to such diametrically opposite worlds contain all the just-mentioned hurdles about which we, again, are of opposite minds.

Scattershots – 10dec18 (updated 13dec18)

George Rebane

Laffer lives, tax rates do affect people’s behavior.  French president Macron and his government have discovered that over the last couple of weeks, and are now retreating from the attempt to wean their country from fossil fuels by boosting the price of such fuels for French consumers and workers.  The monetary losses already suffered in the country’s economy, and therefore tax revenues (France already has one of the world’s highest aggregate tax rates) have yet to be totaled, but the sum could easily be in the billions of dollars.  The bottom line is that no one any longer believes that their government’s tax increases will have any positive impact on global warming.  None of this is a lesson to or understood by America’s Left.

Schumer was for border security before he became a champion of open borders.  It’s hard to believe that Senator Chuck had such sentiments about illegal aliens, and told us all that “illegal immigration is wrong, plain and simple.”  Today only a shrinking share of courageous Republicans can say the words which so forcefully came from the mouth of one of Democrats’ leading forked tongues in 2009.  You can see the senator’s Georgetown Law School two-minute summary of the topic here.  How come every voter in the US has not seen this little video?

Our local lefties are happy dancing in the streets celebrating Nevada County’s role in California’s recent Blue Wave, and ascribing all kinds of community bennies to the advent of coastal progressives moving into these foothills.  What’s astounding about that celebration is the celebrants’ claim that our county is therefore taking part in all the good things cultural and economic in which California is supposed to already lead the country.  None of these people are aware of the real stats on California’s decline culturally, commercially, and into criminality.  The exodus of middle-class workers, retirees, and businesses continues unabated, and unreported by the lamestream.  Kinda reminds one of the progress reports that always adorned the pages of Pravda in the old days of the USSR, and to a great extent still do under Putin.

George Boardman again lambasts LaMalfa (here).  Our favorite Union columnist and stalwart apologist for the Left on these pages singles out our congressman for his rice farm subsidies that the recent (dreadfully misnamed) ‘farm bill’ promises to continue.  The cleverly crafted conclusion that Mr Boardman bestows on his readers is that Doug LaMalfa somehow stands out as the leading leech of farm subsidies which are distributed far and wide across the land.  Moreover, our columnist again implies that it would be a simple matter for LaMalfa to decline his subsidies were he only made of stiffer stuff.  (I leave it to the reader to decide how much of this is fake news viz opinionated commentary, as also found on these pages.  For the record, RR has been and remains opposed to farm subsidies and corporatism.)  But nowhere does Boardman profit his audience by telling them that 85% of the farm bill is the carefully camouflaged food stamp welfare bill – that would mangle the carefully crafted message.  In fact, there are over 40M Americans on food stamps, more than the 37M population of Canada.

‘History Ended in 1945’, so argues James Dobbins, former assistant SecState who now holds the Distinguished Chair in Diplomacy at the RAND Corporation.  He maintains that “undoing the postwar order could produce global depressions and frequent wars.”  This has been a general theme of Rebane Doctrine, and has been debated here for years.  I found the following excerpt as a particularly strong endorsement for continuing capitalism, the Westphalian world order, and America as a global hegemon.

Yet in a larger sense, the “end of history” came in 1945. Since then there have been no wars between major powers and few between smaller states. The business cycle has been moderated if not eliminated. The subsequent seven decades saw almost continuous economic growth, lifting nearly half the world’s population into the middle class.

These accomplishments are based on two basic, widely accepted norms of international behavior: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s territory, and thou shall open thy markets to all equally. The norms were buttressed by numerous postwar institutions—the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, now the World Trade Organization. Equally important, the norms were backed by U.S. military and economic power and the attractiveness of the American political and economic model.

Trump’s NDA payoffs.  Quite often Non-Disclosure Agreements are part of quid pro quo contracts.  Why is Trump singled out for such a contract that involved alleged events before he became a candidate, and the effect of which on the election is debatable and yet to be demonstrated?  Didn’t Hillary also pay staff (possibly with government or campaign funds) to scrub servers of contents which definitely would have had an impact on her electability including potential criminality?  No one has made a peep about that.

[13dec18 update]  Apple to build $1B, 15K job facility in TX - “ choosing Austin as its marquee job-creation locale” - among other locations across the country.  Progressives (especially the looney local lefties) need to strap on yet another set of blinders in order to continue denying the Great California Exodus that is moving producers and the productive out of state. (more here)

Coming Apart and the Beltway Bubble (updated 4dec18)

George Rebane

SecDef Mattis was interviewed yesterday by FN’s Bret Baier at the Reagan National Defense Forum.  This is an annual get together of the country’s important people to talk about, well, national defense.  I’m a fan of Gen Mattis (even though he is a gyrene) and think he’s done a good job at the DoD.  But when the interview turned to how poorly Americans get along with each other today, and the Right/Left polarization, Mattis’ response left me slack-jawed.  I had to rewind the DVR and listen to his quote a couple more times to be sure I heard it right.

The general’s response was a version of Rodney King’s ‘Why can’t we just all get along?’  He didn’t think that there lay any real barriers for the country reuniting into a functional form again because, after all, we are still all Americans, and as a country “we probably don’t have big differences about where we want to go ultimately.”  What??!!

Scattershots – 27nov18 (updated 28nov18)

George Rebane

Climate Hysteria Continues.  Along with many other analysts, Steve Koonin in the 26nov18 WSJ reports (here) that “Headlines warned of economic doom after the U.S. government released its fourth National Climate Assessment last week. Yet a close reading of the report shows that the overall economic impact of human-caused climate change is expected to be quite small.”  The report has more holes in it than swiss cheese, but it is the latest blast to continue political pressure on the ignorant and poorly read to start ‘doing something’ to materially hobble the US economy in order to ‘prevent a climate catastrophe’.  None of it holds water, and as Koonin points out, a closer reading debunks its main alarums.  Here assemble government agencies that in their best days cannot reliably predict next week’s weather or next quarter’s GDP, all pretending to tell us what the world will be like 75 years from now.  The report’s survival in the public forum does not reflect well on our collective intelligence.

Presumption of innocence is one of the seminal starting points of any adjudication of guilt in enlightened western societies, and has been so for a couple of centuries now.  Not so according to a Mr Pete Williams as he pits his logic against the recent Kavanaugh hearings.  His letter in the 26nov18 Union (here) argues “the presumption of innocence applies in criminal cases, not civil law suits or administrative matters such as applications for security clearances, job interviews, or hearings to gather information on prospective appointees, like Kavanaugh. The theory behind the presumption of innocence applying only to criminal cases is that it is better that a guilty person escape conviction than for an innocent prison(sic) to be sent to prison. The Supreme Court hearings are not a criminal proceeding — and thus the presumption of innocence was not applicable to the Kavanaugh hearings.”  This terminally progressive gentleman reveals what will be the demeanor of their star chamber courts when the socialists cum communists finally achieve their primacy in the halls of our government (e.g. Stalin’s purge trials of the 1930s).  What the gentleman totally misses is the significant nuance that the receipt of a security clearance or similar benefice (e.g. corporate job) is not a constitutional right, it is a privilege to be properly granted by the government charged with the nation’s security.  Its refusal does not destroy the applicant.  However, in cases – administrative, civil, congressional, etc – where a nominee’s reputation, ability to continue his career, and to care for his family is put on the line, all western civilized cultures have tacitly accepted the premise that the burden to prove condemning accusations rests on the accuser, and not their defense on the gratuitously accused.  This distinction is totally lost on our Left, hence RR and other voices consider these lopsided sentiments to be a danger to the very foundations of our way of life – but apparently not of theirs.

[28nov18 update] As the last echoes of the election die down, we should always be reminded of the words of Josif Vissarionovich Stalin - "It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

Ruminations – 23nov18 (updated 26nov18)

George Rebane

Don Rogers, ex-hotshot firefighter and now publisher of The Union, writes a good piece (here) in today’s newspaper in which he instructs readers about believing hasty predictions about 'new normals' of cold, hot, wet, and dry in California’s weather patterns.  He confirms what we have been preaching for years on these pages about wildfires (recently here).  Mr Rogers’ piece concludes with, “In any case, the path forward includes no small amount of smoke. The fires will burn, but we do have some choice about when. Our best firefighting, perhaps paradoxically, includes setting the forest alight. Basically burn now, when the weather's right, before we burn up later.” (also see 24nov18 update below)

For us history buffs, preeminent living war historian Max Hastings has produced another masterpiece – Vietnam, an epic tragedy, 1945-1975 (2018) - which may become the definitive history of that decades-long conflict.  I strongly recommend his entire oeuvre, and highlight two must reads – Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945 (2005) and Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-1945 (2007) – that document the last years of WW2 in Europe and in the Pacific.  (Longtime readers know that I claim intimate knowledge of the contents of the former.)

‘A $15 Minimum Wage Goes National’ - Nancy Pelosi wants to boost the wage floor far higher than the historical average.  So writes Michael Saltsman in the 23nov18 WSJ.  What progressives and their communist brethren never seem to understand is that such wage controls – especially large ones like this $15/hr would be – always harm the workers and consumers, i.e. the economy.  If the central planners really want to shove more money into workers’ shorts, then why not raise the minimum wage to $100/hr or even $500/hr – then everyone would be happy dancing in the street (for about five minutes).  None of these leftists learn from history of how such merit-removing policies mangle markets – the prices of everything would increase accordingly – without providing any longer term benefits to anyone save the politicians who count on the votes of the ignorant.

[24nov18 update]  This RL Crabb graphic was filched from today’s copy of The Union where Bob is their duty political cartoonist.  I particularly enjoyed this edition of Bob’s work where he sticks his creative big toe into more artistic waters.  My hope is that perhaps he can ease off a bit from his (not so) ‘middle of the road’ observations of our politics, and offer us a richer sampling of his more philosophical and contemplative renditions.

The tragic Camp and Woolsey Canyon wildfires have made news and also a lot of fake news in the last couple of weeks.  A more measured view (here) of these disasters is available from Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, which in part reads -

An enormous debate has developed over the cause of both fires.  Outgoing California Governor Jerry Brown has loudly proclaimed that climate change deniers are “definitely contributing” to the onslaught of new fires. But the best evidence says otherwise. Global temperature increase has been nil over the last 20 or so years, notwithstanding the increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Similarly, the repeated claims that we have had more unstable global climate patterns within that period is likewise false. According to Professor David B. South of Auburn University, “data suggest that extremely large megafires were four-times more common before 1940” than today, even though CO2 levels were lower.

[26nov18 update]  Migrants now rushing our southern border.  Remember just a week or so ago these thousands of people were walking toward us over a thousand miles away.  It was supposed to take them weeks to walk to the border.  Then suddenly all kinds of transportation and logistical support appeared for the marchers.  Hard to keep arguing that all this was a spontaneous exodus from their home countries.  Now who provided the money for all this, and who is providing the political welcome into America?  This question is actually a freebie, since Ocasio-Cortez, the Dems' new ignoramus in Congress, is today publicly comparing this mass attempt to illegally enter the US to the Jewish Holocaust survivors' illegal entry into Palestine after WW2.

GM exits sedans, and plans to lay off about 18K workers in the US.  Decades ago the Rebanes could not figure out why any family would want to buy a sedan as opposed to a van or SUV or the station wagon of yore.  Sedans were such inefficiently designed vehicles, especially for a growing family.  Finally the entire country is getting the message as sedan sales are "sliding" industry wide in favor of pickups and SUVs.  For years now our stable has housed a van, SUV, and a pickup.  Hopefully, government mandated electric vehicle production will not prevent the return of those jobs as the car companies start producing more of the vehicles which the market actually demands.

Monday with The Union

George Rebane

Jo Ann and I very much enjoy reading The Union – our town’s newspaper.  (This pleasure preceded her joining the paper’s editorial board.)  I am particularly entertained by George Boardman’s columns, and the regularly occasioned other voices from locals with academic credentials like Dr Milan Vodicka.  Dr Vodicka is a longtime Nevada County resident and a naturalized citizen immigrant like me.  We have met him before in these pages - e.g. here, where I noted that “the good Dr Vodicka is an ‘Independent Education Management Professional’ with an academic pedigree from the California Institute of Integral Studies that prides itself with academic departments such as ‘Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion’, ‘Integral and Transpersonal Psychology’, and ‘Drama Therapy’.”

In today’s (19nov18) Union, Dr Vodicka illustrates his academic prowess to readers by misunderstanding the difference between the communist controlled economy of his native Czechoslovakia and the US economy we are now enjoying.  There he likens the centrally planned economy of his youth, that based all progress on the tons of steel produced while totally ignoring the people’s needs for consumer goods, with that of America’s which is based on defining our economic boom in terms of providing the wherewithal for record consumer consumption.  He considers both to be short-sighted ‘single attribute’ measures that fall equally short of other attributes that should be the proper measure of an economy.

His measure of an economy (seatbelts please) must center on how well it concerns itself with ecological and environmental affairs, instead of crass indicators like consumer satisfaction, financial growth, and a nation’s quality of life.  In Vodicka’s perspective – “Measuring the ‘boomness’ of the economic performance just by money is like wandering in the world being blind.”

The focus of this liberal academic’s (may I use that label?) environmental interest is, of course, scientifically indisputable ‘climate change’, aka preventable manmade global warming.  There he lectures us on the characteristics of “scientific fact” – “1. measurability, 2. verifiability, and 3. repeatability” - without noticing that the propositions which support ‘climate change’ can lay claim to none of these. (more here)

A correspondent sent me one of the countless debunkings of public policies put in place to limit human emissions of that dreaded CO2.  This was recently put out by Prof Rutherford Plimer, much published geologist and professor emeritus of earth sciences at the Universities of Melbourne and Adelaide.  Plimer points out again what the lamestream bends over backwards to hide facts about the natural emissions of CO2 by the ongoing eruptions of earth’s over 200 active volcanoes.  For example, just four days of the recent Icelandic eruptions “negated every single effort” all humans have made over the past five years to reduce CO2 emissions on our planet.  More convincing to discerning minds is the fact that Mt Pinatubo’s 1991 eruption, that lasted for about a year, “spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth.”

Dr Vodicka apparently knows nothing of such ongoing natural processes that overwhelm human intents and activities, and he most certainly does not have the academic credentials to understand or dispute such obvious realities, which should at least invite some open-minded skepticism about our current politically faith-based writhings to combat global warming.

Turning now to our favorite local liberal commentator and RR commenter George Boardman, we learn from his column (here) that he has missed the news of the Central American migrants’ arrival at the border in Tijuana.  And it also seems that he’s unaware of the bus and truck transportation that is now available to the thousands whom he characterizes as being “weeks from the border”.  Again, it’s best not to know stuff that will upset the Left’s carefully crafted and continuously fed narrative.

Scattershots – 15nov18 (updated 17nov18)

George Rebane

A leftwing Union columnist most recently summarized the huge ideological chasm between the two polarized camps of Americans (see 15nov18 letters).  Writing in response to the Kavanaugh confirmation, the writer unabashedly blurted out a core progressive tenet that was in full display at the congressional hearings – “It is just as bad to assume innocence as it is to assume guilt.”  This violates the very basis of western jurisprudence, and has long been the norm for dictators as they attempt a forged judicial system under their rule.  Nowhere in recent memory have I seen such a stark reminder of how different we are, and how different will be our society were the Left to gain absolute control.

Defense spending and a strong American military has never been in the Left’s desiderata for all the obvious reasons.  Our military has suffered mightily under leftwing administrations, most recently under President Obama.  Today the Democrats continue their anti-military chorus, while they continue to entice their gimme constituencies with promises of more and mightier entitlements, most recently led by their efforts to implant a comprehensive socialized healthcare (“single payer”) program that has yet to demonstrate its sustainability in any land it has been implemented.  Their intended source of insufficient funds for such welfare projects is from our defense budget.  However, our military today has been so weakened that the non-partisan United States Institute for Peace has issued a landmark report ‘Providing for the Common Defense’ (download it here), which goes chapter and verse into the details of what we have let lapse along with the effects it has and will have on world order.  This state of affairs is an ongoing legacy of the Left, a gift that keeps taking.

[16nov18 update]  And then these little tidbits caught my eye this morning.

Khasshoggi’s killers to get the death penalty – well, not all of them, just the poor snuffies tasked to do the dirty work.  Imagine being a highly trained field agent for your country ordered to do a delicate little assassination of some ‘enemy of the state’ in a foreign land.  You go do the job that’s then discovered through no fault of yours, and you get tried and executed while the big kahuna(s) are untouched.  How will that affect your fellow agents as they contemplate their next mission to do the state’s dirty work?  (Work that into the definition of ‘patriotism’.)  But as ever, rank hath its privileges – some people just rank too high to fail, especially those whose enemy is our enemy, and who buy billions of dollars’ worth of guns and grenades from us.

“Hire sight unseen” is the MO of employers seeking to fill critical jobs in sales and STEM.  In this hot economy, the competition for even tentatively qualified labor is so high that all you need is to submit your creatively wordsmithed resume and pass a 25-minute phone interview (some with a robo-interviewer), and your offer letter appears in your inbox. (more here)  Of course, I assume that if you really bomb on your first day on the job, you’ll be let go equally fast.  I began my career as an aerospace draftsman in exactly the same way.  My phone interview with a job shop lasted less than five minutes during which I was told the address and contact person of my new employer.  Those draftsmen who didn’t make it were out on the street after the morning coffee break.

Woke progressives continue to mangle the language.  The latest casualty to politically correct newspeak is the use of ‘body’.  Humans, people, and persons are now reduced to bodies – e.g. “Bodies that migrate across borders undergo tremendous change.” in the NYT.  The use of ‘body’ joins many other words whose meaning has been folded in with a lot of other meanings, making for ever more murkier communications.  Matthew Hennessey’s piece ‘How to Read ‘Body’ Language’ goes into more detail.  (And in the below comment stream you can see my exchange with a commenter over some silly semantics.)

Migrant caravans made up of almost all military-aged males.  Has anyone else noticed the pictures and videos of the various proto-illegal alien caravans approaching our border through Mexico?  Count the women and children.  And who is paying for all the food, shelter, transportation, and organization to get these thousands of Latinos to their designated destinations?

[17nov18 update]  Ramirez again summarizes it in a manner that is clear, concise, and complete.  (H/T to reader)

Nationalism cum Patriotism

'Nationalism unites; tribalism divides.'

George Rebane

The concept and notion of nationalism is now thoroughly misunderstood and misconstrued across western countries.  The gist of the conversation or debate over nationalism is that it has been incorporated into the Left’s trans-national narrative as something that today portends giving rise to the more sinister angels of our collective nature.  To be more precise, leftwing politicians here and in Europe have unleashed the message that nationalism implies ‘white nationalism’ which implies ‘ethnic exclusion’ which represents the strong form of ‘racism’.  The lamestream media's daily outpouring makes all this very explicit, and it is swallowed hook, line, and sinker by the leftwing grassroots.  An example of this reveals itself in recent comment streams found in these pages.

French president Macron did no one a favor by lecturing Trump that “nationalism is counter to patriotism” while defining his understanding of neither term (more here).  Such simple and unexamined semantic conquests continue to be the modus operandi of how language is co-opted into politically correct newspeak.  In more measured moments each of us can look up the pre-progressive definition of nationalism to find it means –

"Nationalism is a political, social, and economic system characterized by the promotion of the interests of a particular nation, especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining sovereignty (self-governance) over the homeland." (Wikipedia)

Nationalism is “a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.” (Merriam-Webster)

Nationalism, “the strong belief that the interests of a particular nation-state are of primary importance. Also, the belief that a people who share a common language, history, and culture should constitute an independent nation, free of foreign domination.” (dictionary.com)

From these, and other such definitions, we see a common thread in an operational sense.  Nationalism is simply the ideological tenet that describes a nationalist as one who puts the interests of his own nation first when contending, comparing, or competing with other nations.  As such, there is nothing pejorative about any of these semantic variants.  And anyone of any color, religion, ethnicity, etc can join with others similarly distinguishable as a fellow nationalist to promote the sovereignty of a given nation-state.  (Sen Marco Rubio also expands on this here.)

Patriotism is nothing more or less that the expression of national pride within “the ideology of love and devotion to a homeland, and a sense of alliance with other citizens who share the same values.” (Wikipedia)  In other words patriotism is the display, exercise, and/or implementation of nationalism - i.e. patriotism is the practice and maintenance of nationalism.

Things get dicier when we start adding modifiers to create ‘white nationalism’ and ‘black nationalism’.  A white nationalist is not simply a nationalist of the Caucasian variety.  No, no, no.  The progressive definition of white nationalist has overt racial overtones such as white supremacy AND white separatism (two semantically orthogonal notions).  Today being called a white nationalist clearly assigns you to the deplorably racist neo-Nazi camp without any chance of redemption or opportunity to explain yourself using more precise language.

A black nationalist is not so encumbered, and enjoys a very asymmetrical definition.  “Black nationalism is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism in the United States which seeks to promote, develop and maintain a black national identity for people of black ancestry.” (Wikipedia)  Nation of Islam and Black Power are functional expressions of such black nationalism.  Any such reciprocal notions of promoting, developing, or maintaining a white national identity for people of white ancestry is strictly forbidden.  Moreover, evincing any efforts in those directions will get you placed on several lists of suspect and bad people that are maintained by our law enforcement and intelligence agencies.  And should such leanings be known in your workplace, you likely will soon be unemployed.

For the record, there is no evidence that nationalist Republicans, Libertarians, conservetarians, conservatives, or Tea Party members embrace additional attributes of nationalism than those included in the above definitions.  However, this conclusion does not fit the narrative of the Left, ranging from so-called moderate Democrats to their most fringe socialist cum communist cadres.  The America of the non-Left is, has always been, and will remain an evil nation-state.  And of this, our children must continue to be carefully taught in union dominated public schools and academe.

Scattershots – 18oct18 (updated 20oct18)

George Rebane

All eligible should vote?!  In today’s (18oct18) Union ‘Hits & Misses’ we note the following – “HIT (from Editorial Board member Susan Rogers): To the massive turnout at the Miners Foundry for Indivisible Women of Nevada County's Get Out the Vote event. Even if you personally don't agree with the agenda of the group, any patriotic citizen should not have a problem with the concept of urging all eligible voters to vote.”  (emphasis mine)  Actually, many of us are not sanguine with that concept, so far as it involves voters ignorant of the issues on which they are asked to vote.  To do your country and community a favor, please don’t vote on matters you don’t understand.  As many have argued before, and we reinforce here, JUST being able to fog a mirror does not necessarily recommend your vote.  More on this important (nay, critical) notion is available from Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter (2007), whose arguments are more valid today than ever, and are expanded here, here, and here.

Fascism – what it is and isn’t (addended)

George Rebane

Since the Democratic Party’s great Leftward Lurch, it is now publicly and unabashedly America’s new socialist party, notwithstanding start-up wannabes like the newly formed Progressive Party USA.  The Left’s problem today is how they must carefully wend their way through a potential political minefield in how they describe their brand of collectivism – i.e. socialism - in a way that doesn’t blow up the narrative they have been carefully nurturing since the days of FDR.

As we witness in these pages and from the years-long national dialogue, the Left has always maintained that while they embrace the socialism of a Marxist-Leninist provenance, the extreme Right, in its turn, embraces the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini.  And therefore, to all good modern leftwingers, fascism is not now and never has been a form of socialism – fascism is instead the form of totalitarianism that comprises the hidden agenda of the Right and is the other bookend of their simplistic political spectrum.  This is both factually and historically false as we’ll cover in a moment.  But given the difficulties our Left has had in selling socialism to Americans, they have always desperately needed an ideological bogeyman or monster that they could erect and portray to the lightly read, and against which they could favorably compare the nostrums and shibboleths celebrating their brave new world.  Enter ‘fascism’, the avowed enemy and monstrous ideology that we fought and vanquished in WW2, and, according to the Left, the rebirth of which once more threatens the world if the Right comes to power and has its way with us.  (And hence the current rationale for the Left’s sanctioned “incivility” in the streets until they regain power.)

So, for at least the last 75 years, the Left’s narrative has drawn its substance and raison d’etre from characterizing itself as the defender of the common man against what they invent for public consumption as the rapacious Right of the greedy capitalists.  These are the people whose only aim is to exploit and then enslave the masses under an autocratic cum totalitarian governance that forcefully exploits them as the labor engines to create wealth, which is then shunted into the coffers of the … (wait for it), the ‘fascist elites’.  Unfortunately for the Left, history has shown all this occurring only after collectivists have come to power.

America’s Right has continued to characterize itself as promoting the ideology of individual enterprise, free markets, private property, liberty, distributed governance through minimalist governments/jurisdictions, and an originalist (‘textualist’) interpretation of the Constitution (see Addendum).  This interpretation embraces inevitable change through constitutional ways and means prescribed and practiced throughout our history.  In short, an ideology that is a total antithesis of the collectivists’ worship of society organized under and administered through the strata of (altruistic) central planners and controllers within an expansive and ever-expanding government.  Today the Left marches toward globalization under banners emblazoned with ‘democracy’, and the full and selectively suppressed knowledge that, practiced in the large, democracy quickly consumes itself as it morphs into one of the particularly egregious forms of totalitarianism.

Subtle Whims of Change – A Socialist Trifecta

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 10 October 2018.]

Things have become very strange and different since Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.  Of the many outrages the Left has proclaimed since November 2016, the most recent one comes on the heels of the Kavanaugh confirmation from none other than the current titular head of the Democratic Party.  The nightly videos of leftwing mobs in the streets stopping traffic, assaulting pedestrians, harassing customers in places of business, and screaming epithets at people they think do not share their interpretation of recent events has now become the norm.  Hillary herself calmly explained the situation to an interviewer yesterday, telling us that today it is impossible to be civil with people who oppose her desired direction for America.  Therefore, the incivility we witness on the streets and in the media from the Left is totally justified.  Moreover, according to her, civility can only return when the Democrats retake control of Congress.

To support this objective and control the national conversation, progressive corporatists are now planning ways of censoring speech on the internet – to bring about what they call “good censorship”.  The dilemma that companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube see is a tension between the American tradition of our being “an unmediated marketplace for ideas” which “prioritizes free speech for democracy, not civility”, and the European tradition wherein government ensures “well-ordered spaces for safety and civility” that “favor dignity over liberty and civility over freedom.”  The corporatists favor our migration toward the European model and claim that “all tech (aka social media) platforms are now moving toward the European tradition.”

In this chilling grand scheme of things for elitist planning and control, Google sees its new role as “the guarantor of civility” describing its new functions as the editor and publisher of allowed content.  All this has come to light in a leaked document from Google that structured a recent conversation between major corporation executives.  In response, Google still claims to be a “neutral platform”, and that the document does not describe new directions and policies, but is merely a product of some “internal research”.  (more here and here)

To complement such content censorship comes California’s latest attempt to control commerce on the internet through a new set of regulations signed by Governor Jerry Brown.  Under the confusing label of ‘net neutrality’, the intent is to make the internet into a utility under government political control to determine who can transmit how much data, for what purposes, and at what price.  The intent is to take market demand out of the equation for data-intensive services provided to the consumer.  To be sure, this progressive initiative violates not only constitutional norms but also all kinds of established interstate commerce laws, which is why the Department of Justice has now brought suit to have California continue to comply with federal law and regulations.  (more here)

Working hand-in-glove with the corporatists is the movement of Millennials – those partially and under-educated 20- and 30- somethings – who are shifting markedly leftward into the Bernie Sanders and hard-socialist wings of the Democratic Party and the new Progressive Party USA that has recently calved from the Democrats.  Many of these Millennials, even those who work on Wall Street, no longer understand the necessary foundations of capitalism and what makes a market economy work.  According to polls, one of their prime concerns is the general notion of economic inequality that such free-wheeling markets produce as they also raise the living standards of our poorest, and cause the opposite, with even more inequality, where such markets are proscribed by governments and corruption. (more here)

These Millennials somehow miss the socialists’ policy prescriptions that have always promised to create a new world, based on government induced altruistic behavior, where risk and reward no longer go hand-in-hand.  A world without inequalities where people will still labor to provide today’s goods and services, with little regard to how much they earn or what profits they will be allowed to keep.  Today more and more of our Millennials are striving to bring about a new socially just America that will be planned and controlled from on high by well-meaning elites.  And in this happy world no one will be heard to complain, because such communications will be automatically censored for the good of us all.

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

Mine eyes have seen the gory … (updated 21sep18)

‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’  Thomas Jefferson

George Rebane

Mr Seeman, my sixth-grade teacher at Ben Davis Elementary School in Indianapolis, motivated his class to take an interest in the 1952 election pitting Eisenhower against Stevenson for president.  He did this by promising to vote for the candidate that received the best presentation from his roomful of charges – there were about 33 of us.  It was September and time enough to form up a couple of committees to start researching and preparing the presentation.  The Rebanes weren’t even citizens then, but my mom and dad had always been keen followers of the political scene since Estonia.

So, all of us went home to consult our parents as to which candidate was the best one to vote for and why.  Since Estonia, where my father the electrician ran a small electrical contracting business and both sets of grandparents were farmers (mom’s dad even ran the local flour mill), my forebears had been entrepreneurial, self-reliant, hardworking individualists – in short, they were capitalists.  The upshot was that I got a snootful of pro-Eisenhower propaganda from both parents and was told to start reading the op-ed pages of the Indianapolis News, which was the newspaper I delivered six evenings a week on my paper route.  They pointed out that I too was an entrepreneur businessman, since I bought the newspapers from the News every week, and had to market and sell them in my territory at a profit or not, with no recourse if I couldn’t collect enough from some low-life customers who endlessly delayed payment or simply stiffed the kid.

Progressive Perspectives – 17sep18

George Rebane

George Boardman, our favorite Union columnist, writes in the 17sep18 edition (here) of the newspaper and shares another important worldview held by the country’s progressives.  He starts with an expected dunning of our Republican congressmen Doug LaMalfa and Tom McClintock who refused to attend a candidate’s forum held by the League of Women Voters.  For years now the LWV has morphed itself from an assiduously non-partisan voter information organization into an active arm of the country’s progressive movement under Democratic Party leadership.  Such ‘candidates’ forums’ have turned out to be nothing but leftwing propaganda events showcasing hit jobs on their opposition candidates and issues.  Why attend such an event on purpose?

What Mr Boardman misreports is that Congressman LaMalfa “boycotts” Nevada County.  That simply is not true given his considerable attendance record supporting Republican sponsored events at which all county residents are welcomed to attend, hear his report, and question their representative.

But the real worldview, that comes out in the column, is how progressives view taxation as a zero-sum game.  It’s hard to tell whether or not they are really naïve enough to believe that if one government jurisdiction (say, the county) levies taxes of a given amount/rate, then another government jurisdiction (say, the state) will somehow be inhibited from also getting their pound of flesh from the taxpayer.  He makes that point viz the history of Prop13, claiming that since that proposition limited the local jurisdictions’ ability to arbitrarily continue raising property taxes, it then fell to the state to take up the taxation slack.  Mr Boardman’s point being that had Prop13 not placed such inhibitions on local taxation, then the state would have demurred and diminished its rapacity for continuing to raise taxes.  It would be interesting to discover how many of our left-leaning citizens join Mr Boardman in his embrace of such a charming fable.

Another progressive perspective, contributed by a Mr William Larsen, is the more familiar one advocating open borders and a ‘y’all come, regardless …’ immigration policy.  In his 17sep18 Union column Mr Larsen interprets this century-plus message on the Statue of Liberty as our mandated perennial and correct policy toward all who have let their homelands become what in today’s vernacular would qualify as 'shithole countries'.  Anything else, he informs us, would be considered an utterly racist national response that favors the white skins of Europe over the black and brown skins from the south.  The deeper understanding of this perspective is that America is immune to becoming a shithole country no matter how many people we permit/invite in from countries that have already suffered that fate at their hands and the hands of their fellow citizens and cultural cohorts.

Mr Larsen also shares with us an unfortunate incident he suffered when returning from a local political demonstration with a sign he displayed.  Apparently some aggrieved worthy on the right thought he was an illegal alien, one of those who today unabashedly join such left-sponsored demonstrations, and told him to “Take your sign and go home!”  Understandably Mr Larsen, who is a veteran, was a bit miffed and replied, “I am home.  I am a veteran.”  But then, awash in guilt and self-opprobrium, he goes on a soul-searching pilgrimage, “reflecting on that short interchange, I couldn't help noticing how I had ranked myself as having some special status because I'm a vet. My comment made it seem that being a veteran gives one an enhanced claim to call this country "home," and I was embarrassed at my arrogant assumption of privilege.”  Here Mr Larsen communicates the clear message that America should be home to its veterans, those who have manned the ramparts of their homeland, and equally home to the illegal alien who by hook or by crook has managed get across our border and into some privileged sanctuary status among us.

Scattershots – 10sep18 (updated 11sep18)

George Rebane

What’s wrong with this picture?

The Left likes to make lying a pastime unique to Republican politicians, especially President Trump.  None of them probably noticed that literally all of the Dems’ leading lights on the Judiciary Committee told whoppers when they grilled Judge Kavanaugh in their vain attempts to pry something loose that wasn’t there.  One of them claimed Kavanaugh’s nomination should be thrown out because he was nominated by a president who is an “unindicted co-conspirator”, which Trump is not.  And another one claimed to be the modern-day self-sacrificing Spartacus for releasing committee documents against committee rules, documents that the committee released to him the previous day.  But the lying demagogue just had to have his grandstand for the cameras.  (It turned out that the document in question to show Kavanaugh’s racism was a nothing-burger that indicated exactly the opposite.)  The other Democrats on the panel all did their best to bamboozle their constituents when it came their turn, and given the nature of their constituents, some were undoubtedly successful.

NPR’s daily dump on Trump featured author Bob Woodward talking about his new book.  The interview revealed either how little Woodward knows about executive decision making, and/or the severity of his TDS.  Those familiar with how an executive uses staff for solving problems knows that asking the right questions (formulating the problem) and generating good alternative solutions are the most difficult parts of the process.  Woodward and the mainstream are now citing how a staffer surreptitiously took a supposedly disastrous letter off the president’s desk before he could sign it.  The truth of the matter is that the letter (to South Korea on trade), clearly marked as a draft/WIP,  was one of several alternatives for the president’s review.  Then Woodward takes the president to task for asking ‘why do we have NATO troops in Europe?’ and the same question for South Korea.  Trump is represented here as a double dummy for ‘not knowing the answer’, and SecDef Mattis’s proper answer is characterized as making things clear to an ignoramous.  The real ignoramous is Woodward and Team Lamestream, who have no idea that asking ‘zero base questions’, especially when concerning long unquestioned totems, is a fundamental task of an experienced executive in the process of taking critical decisions.

The Coddling of the American Mind describes the cognitive fragility and brittleness of today’s young.  The just-released book written by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt - two lifelong Democrat academics - raises yet another alarm about how the progressives have managed to screw up an entire generation plus of Americans with massive deficits in being able to “understand nuances” of arguments, and being totally intolerant and fearful of any idea, concept, or notion that questions or goes counter to their carefully taught intellectual and socio-political underpinnings.  This, of course, is massively denied by the country’s Left as witnessed even in these pages.  Neither author is able to suggest a ready remedy to bring these millions of mind-mangled minions back into the realworld.

California proves itself once more “100% certifiable” as a government of grifters sustained by an electorate of malleable idiots.  Our progressive Democrats now mandate that the state get 50% of its electricity from renewables by 2030, and 100% by 2045.  The impact of all this will be utility bills through the roof that will devastate the unsubsidized poor and drive more wage earning taxpayers to other states.  Only the coastal elites will not notice the economic devastation.  Today Californians already pay the highest rates for electricity which have increased more than 25% since 2013.  Given the natural gas-powered back-up plants required, the heavily subsidized wind and solar alternative will not even make a noticeable nick in reducing CO2.  (more here)

[11sep18 update]  Global alarmists claims refuted by another score of credentialed experts in their individual fields.  The details can be accessed on Russ Steele's blog here.  His report concludes with "The well-documented invalidation of the 'three lines of evidence' upon which EPA attributes global warming to human-caused CO2 emissions breaks the causal link between such emissions and global warming."  Worth checking out as we continue doing battle with the politically motivated True Believers in consensus science.

This year's 9/11 memorial will again be held at the gravesite of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Grass Valley this morning.  The Nevada County Republican Women Federated maintain the ambassador's grave, and regularly observe various anniversaries there throughout the calendar year.

‘Choose capitalism’

George Rebane

So argues Manny Montes in an excellent piece in the 6sep18 Union (here).  Mr Montes, who lives in Auburn, is a kindred spirit we have cited before in these pages.  He begins by reminding us how the lamestream media misleads and purposely spreads discontent (‘enemy of the people’?) by continuing to imply that the ‘rich’ don’t get taxed enough and therefore don’t pay their ‘fair share’.  Citations of concurring Democrat congress critters abound; even some who militate to taxing 70% of the first million you earn, and make the point “… if you can’t get by on $300,000 in a country where so many …”.  Never mind that of the federal tax burden "the top 1 percent shoulders 40 percent, the top 10 percent, 71 percent, and the top 20 percent, 87 percent."

He points out the fundamental reality of how socialism is like a cancer that is “inextricably dependent on the producers for their viability”, and “like a cancer, feeding on healthy cells, the progressive socialist must inescapably feed … off the producers of wealth. … Their animal kingdom counterpart is the leech.”  And in its inevitable end, as we have repeatedly seen, socialism is a “cancer (that) essentially commits suicide, feeding on its host until the host has no more to give.”

Montes also cites one of our favorite leftist pundits of plunder, Saul Alinsky, who in Rules for Radicals instructs his acolytes ‘How to Create a Socialist State’, wherein Rule #2 states “Increase the poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.”  This “morally repugnant” dictum has been followed to the letter by Democrats who long ago launched the nation’s greatest multi-decadal social bamboozle called the ‘Great Society’, whose policies and programs went on to destroy minority families and create poverty wholesale in our cities under their decades of seemingly misguided administrations, abetted by Washington, that actually hewed to chapter and verse of Alinsky’s teachings.  (Of course, those read in history know that Alinsky was himself a student of Lenin, and, in turn, the ideological mentor of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.  The Left continues its lame attempt to pass off Alinsky as just “the father of community organizing”, which he was not, since the Bolsheviks perfected that art of pernicious public persuasion a century ago.)

Mr Montes reminds the reader in his takeaway on capitalism, that as a counter to collectivism, “there is only one economic system which provides the greatest opportunity for all to achieve self-reliance, and that is capitalism. The flip side of the capitalism coin is individual rights. This is the moral basis of capitalism. The right of individuals to live as they see fit with respect for the rights of others to live as they see fit.”  And as we often conclude such sentiments on RR, the reader is again invited to revisit and meditate on Bastiat’s triangle of rights.

Ruminations – 4sep2018 (updated 7sep18)

George Rebane

Rapidly decreasing sperm counts in western males.  The trend is now over 40 old and presumably contributed to by some ‘endocrine disruptor’ chemicals in the plastics we use. (here)  Now that is a real shot in the shorts because low sperm counts are also harbingers of all kinds of other maladies in men as reported at a recent conference in Sweden.  The Singularity cannot arrive too soon. (here)

The Senate hearings to empanel Judge Kavanaugh are once more illustrating the trademark thuggery of the Left when they cannot have their way through established civil procedures.  Police this morning have arrested over 20 people who attempted to disrupt the hearings when Dem members of the Judiciary Committee failed with their own attempted disruption to again demand tens of thousands of irrelevant and supernumerary documents which will not impact their publicly declared opposition to Kavanaugh one whit.  Astute readers will remember how the Left went nationally ballistic in 2016 when candidate Trump hinted that he might protest election irregularities for which some DNC instigated rumors were already coming to light.  Instead, they have demonstrated for the last two years what real political disruption looks like in the wake of a legal and duly conducted election won by someone they don’t like.  More later.

Disingenuous Dems.  Given what the reading public already knows about Judge Kavanaugh, does anyone really think that the Dems on the Judiciary Committee really believe what they are saying about the nominee, especially that his confirmation to SCOTUS will destroy America as we have known it???  If enough Americans believe that tripe, then this may finally be the real litmus test giving fair warning that we should immediately form an active federal commission to start working toward a peaceful Great Divide.  If not, then can we not assume that these Dems are simply evil in what they are trying to purvey to their least read and intellectually innocent constituents?

OK, time for some giggles on this auspicious day.  A guy goes into a bar in New York where all the bartenders are robots.  The guy sits down at the bar and the robot asks, “What will you have?”.  The guy replies “Whiskey.”  The robot brings back his drink and asks, “What’s your IQ?”  The guy says, “168”.  The robot talks about physics, space exploration, and medical technology.

After the guy leaves, he pauses at the street corner and thinks about what he just encountered.  And the more he thinks about it the more curious he gets, so he decides to back.  Another robot asks, “What’s your drink?”  The guy answers, “Whiskey.”  The robot returns with his drink and asks, “What’s your IQ?”  This time the man replies, “100.”  The robot talks about NASCAR, Budweiser, LSU football, and All-star wrestling.  The man finishes his drink, leaves, but is so interested in this ‘experiment’ that he decides he’ll try again.

He enters the bar and, as usual, a third robot asks him what he wants to drink.  The man replies, “Whiskey.”  The robot brings the drink and asks, “What’s your IQ?”  This time the man answers, “50.”  The robot leans in real close and slowly asks, “So, are you people still unhappy that Hillary lost?”

[5sep18 update]  Social justice as it is.  (H/T to correspondent)

NYT RIP.  With its publishing an anonymous editorial of extremely scurrilous content today (here), the Gray Lady has hammered the last nail - from the inside - into its coffin as ‘the nation’s newspaper’.  Henceforth we can anticipate its resurrection as The Nation’s Tabloid.

[7sep18 update]  Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) gave good account of the Dems’ behavior in the Kavanaugh hearings, and it further illustrates how the media are shortchanging an already shortchanged electorate.  Sen Cory Booker (D-NJ) is the Judiciary Committee’s poster child of a grandstanding demogauge spewing BS.  Ms Robin Diel does an excellent job summarizing the Senator Cruz’s remarks in the 7sep18 Union (here).

Quo Vadis Democrats? (updated 31aug18)

George Rebane

It turns out that my ongoing assessments of our Great Divide have been in error – the gulf between America’s Left and Right is significantly wider than what I have been reporting.  This latest epiphany came to me as I was perusing ‘Another Day of Conflicting Realities’, Bob Crabb’s latest post and comment stream in which he takes me to task for my posting “left/right polarization will make a quantum leap to a much higher level in the next twelve months, exceeding by far anything we have witnessed to date” (here), and then goes on to verify this assertion.

Ruminations – 25aug18 (updated 31aug18)

George Rebane

That Lady Justice today only wears a patch over one eye is apparent to at least half the country.  Mueller’s ongoing investigation, along with the FBI et al investigations that preceded it, gives clear and compelling evidence to the bloom of corruption that has compromised our justice system over the last decade.  Kim Strassel’s ‘When Justice is Partial’ in the 24aug18 WSJ compiles a short and bitter summary of what has gone down.  And here is the strong letter to follow by Canadian Conrad Black.

Luxury Communism, the Siren Song

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 22 August 2018.]

Among an alarming fraction of today’s younger generation, capitalism has become a dirty word, and communism has lost all of its historical barnacles.  Along with socialism, today communism is viewed by our millennials as a more socially just system, a version of which should replace capitalism as our society’s organizing principle for wealth generation and commerce.  Millennials, also known as Gen Y, are the generation born between the early 80s and the late 90s.  Today they number about 80M in the US, and academically they have tested and demonstrate themselves as not our brightest generation.  (more here)

When they assemble to support politicians like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, and Alexandra Ortega-Cortez, they frequently become an unruly and violent mob to express their anger through assaulting university speakers they don’t like to smashing shiny store windows representing the capitalistic wealth of our nation. (more here)

Today there is rising the idea of a ‘fully automated luxury communism’ or FALC that paints a future of humanity living lives of leisure in harmony with communally-owned advanced technology that does all the work and produces all the wealth that is equitably shared by the people.  In that world, no longer is anyone stressed striving to labor in order to own property that makes possible the good life.  Today, organizations such a Plan C are expanding young memberships, inviting these to work for a world “centered on the commons” in which people will ‘naturally’ behave unnaturally as altruists.

Spokespersons such as Aaron Bastani of Novara Media teach listeners that “there is a tendency in capitalism to automate labor, to turn things previously done by humans into automated functions, … in recognition of that, then the only utopian demand can be for the full automation of everything and common ownership of that which is automated.”  Bastani sees FALC achieving something closer to that — “a society with collective control over its own high-tech, work-reducing gadgets. He believes what little work will be necessary in the future, such as optimizing 3D-printers and agricultural robots, will be organized much the way editors currently manage Wikipedia — in a decentralized, non-hierarchical fashion.”  Students of history recognize this as the achievement of the Marxist/Leninist communist ideal in which all humanity lives in unregulated harmony after the then superfluous state has withered away.

But what none of these pied pipers talk about to their eager young audiences is the nature of the path required to get us from here to there.  After listening to the animated exhortations of over-zealous speakers, these audiences, innocent of history, leave such emotional rallies to gather in the streets to proclaim the advent of their new world.  But what none of them realize nor are prepared for is the draconian aftermath that must now come when the exhilaration and excitement of street demonstrations end.  Then must begin the real fight, or as Bastani says, “if you want this, what you need to do is seize the means of production. We need to get automation and make it subordinate to human needs, not the profit motive. It’s about seizing the bakery rather than stealing the bread.”

Then will begin the long civil war required to take what’s not yours and kill those who resist such takings.  The road through the way station of socialism to communism has never been an easy one.  Revolutions such as occurred in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and many other lands, all took long, slogging years of civil war that spread wholesale misery across the land and took lives of millions, and then in the aftermath of devastated economies and terrorized societies, destroyed the lives of uncounted more millions for decades to come.  And in the end, for some reason not taught in our schools, the halcyon days that Marx and Lenin promised never came to pass in lands and among peoples who abandoned the fundamental rights to personal property, individual security, and shared liberty.

This is the real battle for the hearts and minds of Americans in which we are now engaged.

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

‘Does Diversity Really Unite Us?’

George Rebane

The short answer to that important question is NO.  We have studied the arguments of scholars and thinkers on this for the life of RR and longer, and have found nothing to persuade us to abandon the blatantly obvious and common sense answer in the negative.   Unity is based on fundamental principles of cohesion – first and foremost, all peoples feel the greatest comfort, security, support from, and support for other people who in the aggregate share their beliefs and worldview.  The desire and willingness for such sharing has been the basis for assimilation and of America’s strength as an enduring idea, while other countries have sought to endure through maintaining their core ethnicity, no matter what form of governance they happen to fall under in the passage of time.  This belief is a fundamental tenet of what in these pages is filed under Rebane Doctrine.

I claim no originality here, but freely admit to being a student of my betters in such matters.  Most recently (11apr18) the distinguished political scientist and professor emeritus Edward J. Erler delivered a lecture on the titled subject to a national leadership seminar sponsored by Hillsdale College.  The transcript is also published in the July/August 2018 issue of the college’s widely read Imprimis.  From there I will excerpt some seminal points of Prof Erler’s talk.

… Progressive liberalism no longer views self-preservation as a rational goal of the nation-state. Rather, it insists that self-preservation and national security must be subordinate to openness and diversity. America’s immigration policies, we are told, should demonstrate our commitment to diversity because an important part of the American character is openness, and our commitment to diversity is an affirmation of “who we are as Americans.” If this carries a risk to our security, it is a small price to pay. Indeed, the willing assumption of risk adds authenticity to our commitment.

… Our progressive politicians and opinion leaders proclaim their commitment to diversity almost daily, chanting the same refrain: “Diversity is our strength.” 

… This should not be surprising. Greater diversity means inevitably that we have less in common, and the more we encourage diversity the less we honor the common good. Any honest and clear-sighted observer should be able to see that diversity is a solvent that dissolves the unity and cohesiveness of a nation—and we should not be deceived into believing that its proponents do not understand the full impact of their advocacy! (emphasis mine)

… The American people can, of course consent to allow others to join the compact that created the American nation, but they have the sovereign right to specify the terms and conditions for granting entry and qualifications for citizenship.

… Immigration policies should serve the interests of the American people and of the nation—they should not be viewed as acts of charity to the world. Putting America first is a rational goal. It is the essence of sovereignty. And the sovereign nation-state is the only home of citizenship—as it is the only home of constitutional government.

Ruminations – 17aug18 (updated 19aug18)

George Rebane

Obama’s PPD-20 has hamstrung America’s ability to defend and counter cyberattacks against us.  President Trump is recalling that Presidential Policy Directive to “ to push decision-making authority down the chain of command, could empower military officials to launch more frequent and more aggressive cyberattacks against adversaries like Russia and Iran.”  (more here)

2017 saw 72,287 opioid overdose deaths in the US.  That’s like a jumbo jet crashing every weekday, and it beggars stats on all other human-induced deaths like attributed to ‘gun violence’ and motor vehicle accidents.  America’s murder capital Chicago apparently leads the way here also with progressive policies stifling its LE agencies’ abilities to intervene.  Blacks account for more than 50% of opioid deaths, and, of course, gun deaths on Chicago’s streets.  Progressives care not a whit (actually spelled with an 's') for black lives; for them all such deaths are useful when recognized, and not to be wasted in blaming the whole thing on conservatives.

Arrest of ISIS terrorist and multiple re-entrant Omar Ameen in Sacramento confirms again that our immigrant vetting process is totally broken.  The feds admit that vetting a refugee depends on the story they tell, and not on any required 3^rd party documentation, which either does not exist or will not be provided if the refugee thinks it will be pejorative.  Counter to lamestream claims, President Trump has been correct in his assessment of this.

Russian online influence on America’s thinking about issues and candidates has turned out to be less than insignificant according to recent analysis of foreign placed ads and social media accounts, so reports Bruce Levey of the Institute for Justice (here).  He also points out what we've known for years, that we and other nations place such ads in each other’s jurisdictions whenever it suits our interests to attempt to influence other countries’ decisions.  Bottom line, Russia's influence in our 2016 election was bupkus.

Dumbest cartoon in a coon’s age was published in the 17aug18 Union.  Have no idea how this got by the newspaper’s editorial policy.  Nothing against the paper publishing anti-Trump stuff, but this contribution is simply butt stupid, and doesn’t reflect well on how The Union thinks of its readership.

[More]  Our intelligence institutions (including the retirees) are now totally political.  The letter signed by former intelligence heads claiming that Trump limited Brennan’s speech by revoking his clearance is both false and butt stupid or worse, evil since it is designed to bamboozle the tens of millions of light-thinking Americans.  As President Trump observed, Brennan’s voice will now be louder than ever.  Let’s see how long these newly minted politicians will keep up that spiel.

[18aug18 update]  In ‘The Press Abets a Coverup’ (18aug18 WSJ) Holman Jenkins contributes an incisive and revealing recounting of our intel community’s shenanigans designed to oppose Trump, but that plausibly gave him the necessary push over the top in 2016.

[19aug18 update]  Kudos to columnist (19aug18 Union) George Boardman for outing Mike Dent, director of the county's Department of Child Support, Collection and Housing.  Mr Dent is a prime exemplar of the double dummies ensconced in government.  He is seeking bids to build and operate a homeless shelter for the winter, but doesn't have a clue how much it costs to run such a shelter through the cold months - hence, no bids to build one.  It really irks me and many others that our tax monies have to be diluted to pay the salaries and retirement benefits for the likes of the mentally dented Dents out there.