Rebane's Ruminations

Absentee vs Mail-in Voting

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 5 August 2020.]

There has been a lot of confusion about voting by mail in the media lately; mostly purposeful with the aim of promoting a political narrative.  I would bet a good hunk of the ranch that many KVMR listeners are unaware of some very important details on what has now come to be the latest national election dust-up.

To start, let’s distinguish between two very different kinds of voting by mail – the first is absentee voting and the second is called mail-in voting.  Absentee voting has been successfully practiced for decades, and there have been relatively few problems of voter fraud or ballot mishandling with this kind of voting by mail.  In absentee voting the voter requests a ballot from the local election officials by providing appropriate information about him- or herself in the application for an absentee ballot.  The election workers vet the applicant by checking the active voter roll for the applicant’s jurisdiction to confirm that such and such a person is registered, and in which party for primaries, with a matching signature, and does indeed live at the applicant’s address.  It’s all very simple and easy to obtain a ballot, mark it, and return it in an envelope that requires the US Postal Service to cancel and date it.  Efficient processes for doing all this have been in place for generations.

However, in the newly proposed mail-in process, each state automatically sends out an unsolicited ballot to everyone who is on the so-called active voter rolls, and many states even send out unrequested ballots to people listed on the inactive voter rolls.  In almost all states these voter rolls are abysmally out-of-date, incomplete, and contain thousands of duplicates and those having moved or deceased.  In mail-in voting there is no process to vet the voter for accuracy and currency of information.  Depending on local voting policies, ballots are mailed all over the state to be received by whoever currently lives at the address.  By law the USPS is not supposed to forward a mail-in ballot if the addressee no longer lives there.  But the USPS often ignores this and forwards it anyway.  Then the ballot goes to only God knows who.

Shifting from the Fourth to the Fifth

George Rebane

Let me get this straight, led by Rep Schiff, the Dems are taking the DHS to task for doing its job in developing and providing intelligence on today’s anti-American rioters, their enablers, and their propagandists.  WaPo, the arch-leftwing lamestream outlet, presents one of its totally misleading reports on what’s happening in the land, and how the DHS relieved Brian Murphy, the head of its Office of Intelligence & Analysis, for compiling intelligence on the country’s coordinating rioters and journalists who published reports on confidential DHS documents to subvert and interfere with its security operations.

All this is part and parcel of efforts by the leading lamestream outlets to support continuing civil strife by undermining and managing public opinion against federal officials working to restore order in cities where local authorities promote looting, burning, and general mayhem by taking their police off the streets under the guise of protecting the civil rights of “peaceful protesters”.  (Today’s crime stats speak for themselves.)  WaPo, instead, tells its readers that “DHS has been under mounting scrutiny from lawmakers and civil liberties groups over its use of federal law enforcement officers to quell protests in Portland and in light of President Trump’s threat to deploy federal personnel to other cities that he asserts are being overrun by violent criminals.” (more here)

What the demonic Dems and their propagandist media count on is the short memory or just plain ignorance of the general public in consuming these breathless reports of the DHS doing its mandated job.  For over four years the Democratic leadership fabricated bought-and-paid-for ‘evidence’ against President Trump, his staff, and election campaign in an administration wide effort that we now know was launched and coordinated from the Oval Office.  Readers of these pages know the litany of charges that were sequentially brought by Democrat controlled and colluding Justice Department officials (the AG and FBI Director) and House committees that launched an unending series of investigations, including one requiring a special prosecutor, and finally ending with a disgraceful trumped-up partisan impeachment.

All of these came to naught, failing to find a shred of evidence of criminality or wrongdoing.  And ALL these enterprises involved government acting in its most cynical manner, employing extra-constitutional methods to destroy an administration and reverse the 2016 election’s outcome.  And how did our mainstream media comport itself during these subterfuges and kabuki performances?  Over the years they behaved as obedient lackeys of the Democratic National Committee, publishing article after article that bent the truth ranging from partisan innuendo to blatant Big Lies (latest examples here).

Today the beat goes on unabated.  The barefaced propagandists continue their daily manufacture of ‘news’ that widens the ideological chasm in America, having already brought it to a state in which neighbors, who formerly understood and tolerated each other’s political leanings, can no longer stomach their proximity.  Our ability to meet at non-partisan social occasions is fast disappearing, as everyone, first and foremost, frames the other as a compatriot or someone working to undermine our country’s future.  And as has happened many times during the upheavals of the last century, the afflicted country’s Fourth Estate has always been complicit as it morphed into its Fifth Column.

Letters from the Revolution – 24jul20 (updated 26jul20)

George Rebane

No one’s interests, objectives, values, … will exactly match yours.  The best you can ever do is support those with whom you share the most in common.

Kudos to our local restaurants Old Town Café, Sergio’s, and Friar Tucks for remaining open and in business despite Gov Newsom’s unconstitutional diktats and the compliantly cringing Nevada County Environmental Health Department’s threats to close and fine them.  The poster on their doors says it all.

[update] ‘News Media Becomes Fluent in Newspeak’ observes Gerard Baker in the 20jul20 WSJ.  He cites Orwell’s “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength”, and writes, Part of George Orwell’s genius lay in his insight that manipulation of language was essential to the revolutionary project. If you can command popular compliance with a lexicon that reorders—or even inverts—the widely understood meaning of political terms, you can remake society as much as you can with any law, mandate or act of force. Thought is constrained by the limits of language, and so language becomes a vital tool for placing limits on thought.”  Baker apparently is not aware of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of which Orwell undoubtedly was.  S-W makes the strong claim that one can only think thoughts that can be expressed in the language(s) one knows.  The Left quickly became the leading practitioner of this facet of human cognition, and has applied it worldwide where it has come to control the institutions of education, news media, and entertainment.

[26jul20 update]  Democrat Big Lies just continue washing over the country.  The latest is from Dem big city mayors who tell their know-nothings that the president’s sending federal forces into their cities to enforce federal laws, which the mayors refuse to do, is unconstitutional.  As former AG Michael Mulkasey patiently made clear on FN, the truth is exactly the opposite.  The Constitution requires the president to send in federal LE forces wherever they are needed in the country in order to enforce federal laws – e.g. secure and defend federal property.  Another longstanding Dem whopper is the ongoing charge that Trump has mishandled the federal C19 response, which ‘mishandling’ no one seems to be able to define.  So, when Bumblebrain was asked on MSNBC what the correct response should be when he is president, he stuttered through his ‘six point plan’ containing items each one of which had already been initiated by President Trump and is already in operation.  The liberal interviewer was either too ignorant to call Biden on his purloined ‘plan’, or didn’t want to tell her audience that Bumblebrain had blown another one.

 

Scattershots – 22jul20

George Rebane

Our indigenous North American natives (aka Indians) may not have politically clean hands after all.  Now that it’s OK to go back in history to any desired time in order to dredge up the iniquities of our forefathers (and mothers), we have discovered that the most recent arrivals before the white man probably were not very nice to the people who were here before them.  “For most of the 20th Century, archaeologists were convinced that big-game hunters known as the Clovis people, identified by the fluted flint spear points they made, were the first Americans, arriving about 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. More recent finds from Oregon to Chile, though, showed that other groups had arrived 16,000 years ago or more.”  So is it not now time to start tearing down the history of our redskins, so we can proceed to a clean sweep of all the bad that preceded this fundamentally transformed age of purity in thought and deed? (more here and here)

More later.

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]

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)

Western academe’s sunset years

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 1 July 2020.]

The current insanity sweeping the western world that started with the George Floyd killing is now way past that outrage and moved on to much bigger objectives.  The event served as a trigger to launch the ready and waiting socialist and anti-capitalist factions to start their push toward a global collectivist world by first weakening or doing away with sovereign nation-states that have cultures built up over the centuries which today are the glue that unify their populations.  The socialist elites and their fielded militants in the streets have identified several critical weak points in the ties that bind nations.  One of them involves the flawed histories that each developed western nation has, which includes their role in colonizing the third world and fighting religious wars among themselves.

All of these pursuits are ample demonstrations that violate today’s standards of political correctness, social mores and values, treating all peoples and races equally and with appropriate respect for their indigenous cultures.  Western nations did little of that when they conquered and colonized the more backward civilizations of Africa, the Americas, and southern Asia.  All of that history is used by the global Left to indict today’s mostly white and European-derived countries of everything ranging from ‘cultural appropriation’ to genocide.

The west’s public educational systems have long been co-opted by progressive cadres injecting leftist principles at all levels of curriculum.  The generations of the so-educated are now primed as they doubt their own worth to humanity, and are ready to adopt a more virtuous course forward that demands fundamental changes in each nation’s basic and foundational institutions.  The ‘evidence’ for this ongoing stratagem overwhelms us daily every time we tune into mainstream media outlets.

Scattershots – 25jun20 (updated 27jun20)

"Black people are being murdered and brutalized by police with near impunity." ACLU manifesto

George Rebane

Big Lies.  The demonic Democrats are hands down the purveyors of significant and impactive big lies that are issued daily by their political leadership and their lamestream media.  (see above tagline)  When lies in the public forum are considered, the attributes of ‘significance’ and ‘impactive’ should be paramount in assessing their belonging in the Big Lie category.  Significance describes the ability of the lie to grasp the public’s attention, and impactive describes the lie’s ability to affect public behavior and/or attitudes, e.g. voting, demonstrating, rioting, polling responses, … .  Using these criteria for a Big Lie, the ones told by Trump are few and far in between (as opposed to the almost 20K counted by TDS sufferers).  However, those issuing under the various banners of the Left are literally a daily occurrence (e.g. yesterday’s whopper by Pelosi that Republicans are guilty of George Floyd’s death).

‘Time to examine the entire police culture’ proposes David Davidson-Methot in the 25jun20 Union.  He makes a quiet and compelling argument that bad apples in police departments come about in two ways.  First, through faulty screening processes and police union induced departmental omerta, we let innately bad people wear a badge.  But perhaps more importantly, the environment, defined by its leadership and culture, in which people work (the ‘barrel’) is often the wholesale producer of bad apples.  Mr Davidson-Methot cites ‘The Stanford Experiment’ conducted by Dr Philip Zimbardo that launched an entire field of behavioral research yielding results with impressive predictive power of how good apples turn into bad apples in bad barrels – e.g. the Abu-Ghraib prison scandal.  Bottom line here is that to fix real incidences of police brutality, don’t defund or abolish police departments, examine and fix departmental cultures and replace leaderships where necessary.  It’s an approach worthy of public debate as Congress continues in deadlock on the issue.  In the meantime, ‘No, Police Racism Isn’t an Epidemic’ as correctly argues Jason Riley in the 23jun20 WSJ.

No country had an effective and anticipatory pandemic response plan to combat the C19 virus.  So documents Holman Jenkins (here) in the 23jun20 WSJ, that summarizes evidence now gathered from all over the world.  I include this here as more examples of Democrat Big Lies claiming that President Trump uniquely mishandled America’s response and caused the avoidable loss of tens of thousands of lives.  That just ain’t so, no matter how often and intensely Team Pelosi and her lamestream trumpets repeat the lie, and thereby making it a Big Lie due to its clearly significant and impactive effect, as is evident in the polls of respondents many (most?) of whom know nothing of viral infections, epidemic spreading, transmission vectors, herd immunity, … , or simpler put, can’t reliably identify the Atlantic Ocean on a map.  And the demonic Dems count on it.

Republicans suppress votes is another Democrat Big Lie that flies in the face of data unreported in the lamestream.  This Big Lie forms an important barricade to keep the country’s African-Americans on the Democrat plantation.  Karl Rove’s ‘Botch the Vote, Then Cry Suppression’ in the 25jun20 WSJ details the vote tallies and jurisdictional political leaderships of the ‘suppressed areas’ claimed by Democrats and their platoons of black demogauges.  The bottom line is that, contrary to votes being suppressed, blacks voted in record numbers in the cited counties all run by Democrats for years.  What the Big Lie fails to tell people is that voting procedures and processes (many of them botched) are run locally at the county level, and their allegations of suppression occurred in Democrat led counties.  Instead, the Big Lie consumer is supposed to walk away with the belief that Republicans at both federal and local levels have successfully conspired to keep blacks from voting.

[update]  ... and the beat goes on.  " 'Today, it seems there is less of a bias against conservatives and rather a bias for conservatives.'  During the course of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on consumer protection and commerce, Chairwoman Rep. Janice Schakowsky (D-Ill.) actually claimed that Facebook and Twitter favor conservatives, despite mountains of evidence that conservatives are more likely to get banned, flagged, or 'fact checked' by the social media giants." (more here)

[27jun20 update]  Commenter ‘Robert Cross’ in his 236pm comment below (I had to dig it out of Typepad’s spam folder) does a marvelous job illustrating how we talk past each other.  He opens his screed with the claim that I’m “deflecting” the Left’s count of 20K Trump lies, when I directly address it and compare these to the Dems’ Big Lies, which comparison he neither acknowledges nor addresses.  And his piece de resistance is that my pointing out the difference between the types of Trump’s v the Dems’ lies is a prime cause of and my contribution to the country’s polarization.  He thus once again reinforces the Left’s looming march toward censorship and 1A abrogation, in that only one side’s interpretation should be heard in the public forum, and all other opinions are deplorably divisive and therefore should be either withheld or suppressed.

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.

Returning to Race-based College Admissions

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my resumed regular KVMR radio commentary broadcast on 3 June 2020.]

Former University of California regent Ward Connerly founded the American Civil Rights Institute in response to the corrupt racism that affirmative action introduced into state government contracting, public jobs hiring, and deciding who would be admitted to state schools.  Almost 25 years ago he launched Prop 209 which was the successful ballot initiative that made it illegal for California to consider race in performing any of those functions.

Being able to award contracts, jobs, and admissions on the basis of race was a big progressive vote getter for the state’s Democratic Party, and leftwing politicians have been chafing for all these years trying to figure out how to make racial patrimony legal again.

In the meantime, race-based admissions into the nation’s universities and colleges has become a much-publicized issue, especially after it was discovered that elite universities were leading the pack with racial quota systems in their admissions programs applied in the most corrupt and merit-free manner.  For these elitist administrations academic merit became a racist criterion when considering applicants for their freshman classes.  Since African-American and Hispanic students ranked way below the Asians and whites in academic achievement, it was clear that something had to be done to ‘level the playing field’ and bring social justice to bear.

The result was that race quotas were pushed to the top, and academic merit was demoted in the ranking of factors that would recommend admission.  The proponents of academics started pushing back when these admissions policies came to light.  However, nobody really cared how the white applicants were discriminated against.  What really hit a nerve on the race-based policies was the dirty deal dealt to Asian-American applicants.  This cohort of minority students always blew the tops off their high school grades, achievement tests, and any other criteria like extra-curricular activities and breadth of interests.  If the new progressive race-based admissions standards were fairly applied to all minorities, the Asian-American kids would have flooded the enrollment rolls.  What to do now?

Well, the answer to the progressive administrations was obvious, lay on another layer of corruption and eliminate any semblance of balance between minority and academic requirements.  If you were black or Latino, you went to the head of the line until the quota was filled, and that was that.  However, when the Asian-American community got wind of such obviously biased and unfair practices, they got active and involved.  The result was that these tilted playing field practices made national headlines with our polarized country predictably lined up on both sides of the issue.

Today, California’s Democrats see an opportunity to eliminate the last barriers to race-based admissions policies.  This week the State Assembly’s Appropriations Committee will vote to pass ACA5, the proposed constitutional amendment to overturn Prop209, and again legitimize race-based admissions.  The 81-year-old Ward Connerly has returned to work with a handful of very devoted Asian-American civic groups to stop ACA5, which most likely will be railroaded through the Senate during this pandemic season without a single public hearing.  It will then appear on the November ballot to let Californians again decide how they want to diminish and demote the state’s higher education systems.  The reinstatement of this corrupt practice will be sold to our electorate under the guise of affirmative action.  In opposition, Asian-Americans against ACA5 know that “If it passes, Asian-American students will be further scapegoated and penalized in college admissions.”  Those Californians who believe in a colorblind society when it comes to government preferences and perks should join to oppose ACA5 on the November ballot.

Should it pass, lawsuits are already being prepared to fight this discriminatory amendment.  And there’s a good chance the case will end up before the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs hope that the court would then rule as clearly and categorically as Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 2007 opinion: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” (more here)

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.

Scattershots – 26may20

George Rebane

What is the death rate of those infected with SARS-Cov-2 (here C19)?  Well, the more we try to find out, the more it gets curiouser and curiouser.  The latest attempt to explain the whole matter to us is put forth by Reason magazine in their ‘Do the Divergent Results of COVID-19 Antibody Studies Reflect Real Differences?’  Their quest for the answer was launched with the premise “The infection fatality rate (IFR) probably varies from one place to another.”  Well, no sh!+ Red Ryder, you’d think?  Then after a head-spinning discussion, about all the reader can walk away with is that IFR varies anywhere from 0.0005 to 0.013.  And IFR is strongly correlated with old age, especially those with preexisting comorbidities.  But then a little later, someone concludes that, no matter your age, it’s actually mainly your preexisting comorbidity that determines your probability of dying, and old age is just a prominent proxy for that since almost all old people have one kind of preexisting malady or other.  But what brought a smile to my face was their attempt to buttress the piece by injecting numbers.  All kinds of talk about test 'specifities' and disease 'prevalence', and the resulting 'positive predictive values' were bandied about which the reader is supposedly able to follow with their numbers.  But it turns out that none of it could be followed because nowhere do they bring up, let alone cite, the related test sensitivities without which their discussion is a meaningless jumble.  The point they try and fail to make is that which I presented in ‘Image of ignorance and/or incompetence’ along with its preceding tutorials on testing.  The bottom line here is that to understand how C19 relates to the mostly insane current response policies is almost impossible.  Since everything, like IFR, depends on so many different factors, to get even a glimmer, one has to have more than a smidgen of numeracy under their belt.  And if you’re going to publish something about it, you’d better be at least numerate.  Today none of that is a prerequisite before spouting volumes about the pandemic.

This PAN-DEM-IC looks like a DEM-PANIC when we consider how the Dems are doing everything they can to blame the whole shebang on President Trump – everything from the economy to the number of deaths attributed to the corona virus.  A reader sent an article from American Thinker (here) that details the whole thing, including why cooking the books on the body count has become a cynical political football.  November is coming and the Democrats are desperate to making something stick on Trump before they have to let Bumblebrain out of the basement.  No matter who the DNC picks for Biden’s VP, I bet they will demand that the presidential debate(s) will be presented in a tag-team format so that Bumblebrain will have someone with him on stage who can talk – otherwise it will be a bloodbath.

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.

Unsettling ‘Settled Science’

[This commentary was also published here in the 3jun20 edition of The Union.]

George Rebane

None are so certain about science as those outside looking in.

Today, the SARS-CoV-2 (or Covid-19 or simply C19) pandemic ‘science’ in the public square rapidly became a mish-mash of unreliable reports, contending medical views, and ideologically tailored fake news.  One thing you can always take to the bank – people claiming ‘settled science’ is the litmus test for identifying the charlatans, the ignorant, and the ignorant charlatans.  Historically all important scientific advances were met with an overwhelming chorus of opposition from the entrenched establishment.  Their consistent theme was citing how the new was not in accord with the old, or worse, that the new directly contradicted the long and dearly held beliefs.  In our highly polarized and politicized society, it is safe to say that all reports purporting a solid scientific foundation are at a minimum suspect.

The C19 virus has been uniformly mischaracterized in the popular press and politics.  As more and more evidence climbs out from under widespread media (broadcast and internet) censorship, it becomes clear that the national lockdown was and continues to be a horrible mistake of yet to be tallied cost in lives and livelihoods.  And that lockdown was imposed by governments citing ‘science’ when no such science existed to support the mandates to shutdown commerce and impose stay-at-home.  It now turns out that C19 is only a bit more virulent than our seasonal flus, and the cited data claiming otherwise is dreadfully flawed and misreported.

Many reasoned, reasonable, and experienced voices have sought to counsel holding back on the draconian measures our politicians have imposed on the country.  An example of one of the more recent ones is epidemiologist Dr Knut Wittkowski, former head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at The Rockefeller University’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science (here).  He points out that, far from being settled, the science around C19 is “bitterly contested”, as confirmed by anyone doing an internet search on the topic.  The bottom line that the expanding data on the pandemic now shows is that C19 is NOT significantly more dangerous than our usual infectious diseases (which don’t require forsaking freedoms and destroying economies), unless you have an age-related comorbidity.  And then you are in line to die anyway, either of an unfortunate C19 infection or something else.

Sadly, Americans don’t ‘do numbers’.  We are an overwhelmingly innumerate nation educated in dumbed-down public schools that have a decades-long record of abysmal and declining performance now imposed on the third generation of young people as documented by the National Center for Education Statistics of the Department of Education.  And when it comes to STEM-based knowledge, you can forget it.  As a population, we are at the mercy of the loudest demogauges that rise above the media cacophony, with no way to even reasonably assess alternative viewpoints and opinions.  We have found that the safe and sane way to handle the daily conflicts and conundrums is to adopt a simple set of beliefs, view everything through its lens, and comingle within a cohort of common, confirming, and comfortable minds.

Those who have spent their lives in and with science have an easier time and a natural inclination to say ‘it ain’t necessarily so’, and then use their skills to examine and evaluate alternative explanations.  But not everyone so blessed will voice such doubts if their job, livelihood, and/or reputation depends on swimming with the established school of thought that succors the correctly like-minded with grants, stipends, tenure, endowed chairs, published peer-approved papers, … .  And unfortunately, science is such a multi-variegated field that there is a lot of latitude in the words that can be chosen to support or remain circumspect about any scientific position.

Politicians like Governors Cuomo (NY) and Newsom (CA), and Mayors de Blasio (NYC) and Garcetti (LA) have been quick to tell their flocks that their lockdown and loosening mandates are based on science not politics.  And those carefully taught in their compliant constituencies have no available alternative than believe in the cited ‘science’ dispensed from on high.

At this point your columnist will usually offer a solution to get us out of today’s judiciously fabricated dilemma – ‘profits before people’ or ‘people before profits’.  Unfortunately, those of us having spent our lives in and with science can offer no science-based acceptable solution, because here it is all politics.  Today America’s answer to Keynes’ immortal question, ‘When I get new information, I change my mind.  What do you do?’, is a confidently calcified ‘Nothing.’

[Addendum]  People are now being told of herd immunity thresholds (HITs).  These are percentages of populations immune, at the crossing of which herd immunity kicks in and does the good things variously reputed to it – primarily starts tilting the number of currently infected curve downward.  M. Gomes et al have done a recent study of how individual variation in susceptibility and likelihood of exposure (actually exposure rate) to C19 would lower the herd immunity threshold (here).  It’s a technical paper with squigglies, but also fairly readable graphs, and therefore worth reading by the non-techie by just skipping over the obtuse parts and concentrating on what’s known, and what’s known to be unknown.

The takeaway is that at best today’s C19 HITs lie somewhere between 10% and 70% of target populations.  The authors also go into some detail on what is required to nail down a HIT, and doing it doesn’t look promising for any time soon.  The good news from the analysis is another corroboration that lockdowns do little to reduce morbidity or mortality.  Sooner or later the susceptibles have to come out, become the exposed, and get infected.  Depending on how many were hunkered down and now out-and-about, the next wave will be big or small.

So we come full circle on the argument presented here and elsewhere – do away with the lockdowns, and let people prudently go about their business knowing that there’s a bug out there that is likely to kill the elderly with comorbidities, against which there still is no vaccine, but for which the likelihood of your getting a debilitating infection starts out low and diminishes with every passing day as herd immunity increases.

Liberty’s Twilight - 13may20

George Rebane

Breonna Taylor was shot and killed in her Louisville, KY home when the police erroneously broke through her front door in the middle of the night seeking a narcotics suspect who was already in police custody.  Not knowing the invaders during the break-in, Ms Taylor’s boyfriend sought to defend themselves by shooting one of the assailants in the leg.  In the following melee the other police officers returned fire, pumping eight rounds into Ms Taylor and killing her.  Her boyfriend was arrested and charged with the attempted murder of a police officer.  The family is now suing the police department (more here).

Over the years we have lost count of this kind of mistaken killings of innocents by incompetent law enforcement agencies.  But that is not the real point here.  What’s germane is that our homes are no longer our castles.  We have no right to defend ourselves within the confines of our own four walls when LE executes one of its surprise assaults into our living quarters, our most inner sanctums.  These unnecessary attacks mimic criminal home invasions which now, according to the ever-growing leviathan, put the onus on the home owner to ascertain the identity of those breaking through his front door BEFORE he is allowed to start defending himself.  The assailant now has the de jure right to take the first shots at the victim.  And only after the assailant’s identity has been confirmed by the victim, can his defense begin.  Moreover, in some states it’s not even legal to ‘stand your ground’ in your own house if it is later determined that you could have retreated out of the back door or an open window.  The law has been stood on its head, and we sheeple must comply.

In a practical sense, there is never a need for LE to ambush someone with deadly force in a known residence.  The state always has the resources to surround the habitat and then make their presence known.  LE officers breaking and entering in the middle of the night is now an established tactic of state thuggery.  According to our Constitution and Rebane Doctrine, an American has every right to initiate the use of deadly force against any unidentified assailant who forcefully enters his home.  And an innocent man being accused of attempted murder of a police officer after such an incident is the beyond-cynical elimination of the last vestiges of justice that should be brought to bear after such a tragic incident.  Our quiet acceptance of these proceedings, just because it happened in distant Louisville, is testimony to how inured we all have become to the growth of our autocratic governments in these United States.

Where is the Covid Deaths Bump?

George Rebane

For the past week I’ve been poring over various data from different sources on Covid-19 deaths and death rates.  It’s been a frustrating enterprise due to definitions ranging from vague to insane, and numbers that just don’t tie.  The quest is important though, because we have been deluged for the past couple of months with what can now be called the metrics of mass madness.  The ongoing efforts to afflict major damage to our economy are all based on the allegation that a national lockdown will greatly reduce the number of people dying from the virus, and therefore the calls for opening up are nothing less than the voices of greed putting profits before people.

However, when we take a closer look at C19 deaths, the lockdown arguments and reasoning don’t add up.  What every histrionics laden report ignores and/or hides is the entire question of how many would have died anyway from their ‘underlying conditions’, or from the legion of other causes that kill almost 2.9 million Americans year in and year out.  In other words, at any given age, if you don’t die of this, then you’ll die of that anyway, C19 or no C19.

So, from all the blizzard of mostly irrelevant and bad data available to us, the objective to sustain lockdown arguments is to see if there is an abnormal bump in the current number of deaths due to the corona virus.  We must also keep in mind the hanky-panky that is going on with how C19 deaths have been and are being counted – in many health care systems/institutions patients dying of anything during this epidemic have been put down as succumbing to C19.  The National Center for Health Statistics assures us that the most reliable data are the “provisional death counts (that) deliver our most comprehensive picture of lives lost to COVID-19. These estimates are based on death certificates, which are the most reliable source of data and contain information not available anywhere else, including comorbid conditions, race and ethnicity, and place of death.”  (more here)

So here’s the drill.  The CDC tallies total C19 deaths from 1 Feb 2020 to 1 May 2020 at 37,308 out of a total of 719,438 US deaths for that three-month period (here).  The current ‘normal’ (pre-C19) annual death rate in 2019 for the US is 8.8 per thousand (here).  This says that out of a population of 328,000,000 we have a total of about 2,886,400 Americans die annually, or 722,000 during a three-month period (or 55,500 every week).  To emphasize again, this is the pre-C19 death rate for last year.  Not to put too sharp a point on it, this year’s total deaths, with C19 raging in that three-month period, don’t even come up to our norm for a three-month period.

The reasonable explanation is that the corona virus’s marginal contribution to America’s annual deaths count is literally so low as to be swallowed by the country’s natural mortality rate.  Highlighting (hyping?) C19 deaths due to the worldwide pandemic has made us all accept draconian personal lockdowns and the arguably insane shutdown of America’s commerce.  And it has been done without the presentation of any substantive information (i.e. data formatted to support decision making), only the daily death counts and emotional appeals to ‘save human lives’ from the ravages of a disease that is doing little or nothing extraordinary, save focus our fearful attention on it so that we will compliantly accept new layers of controls from federal and state governments pursuing more fundamental agendas while desperately seeking to convince us that they are ‘doing something’.  So today we have a population that does not understand the role, power, and development of herd immunity in stopping pandemics.  And most certainly, no one has asked to see the extraordinary bump in total deaths caused by C19 (aka SARS-CoV-2).  Is this how sheeple behave?

Ruminations – 3may20 (updated 5may20)

George Rebane

You can indeed have your own opinions AND your own facts – America proves it daily.

Know the denominator!!  The innumerates of the land are constantly bombarded with naked numerators about this stat and that stat.  And none of them make a peep that they know about what they are being told.  That the US has suffered more than 60K C19 deaths means nothing unless you know either the total number of infections or America’s population.  Naked numerators are NOT news unless you know what the denominator is and how that compares with others in the same class (e.g. international C19 death rates) in which the numerator belongs.  Dumbth rules.

Dr Fauci is quoted saying, “Opening too soon COULD cause a (C19) rebound.”  Well, no shit Red Ryder.  Reported by everyone from FN on down, this is a tautology of cosmic proportions; a real nothing-burger seen as ‘news’ only by the nation’s light thinkers.  Fauci had to say that because it's also his job to disperse palliative pabulum, true statements masquerading as epiphanies of expert opinion.  But it’s up to us Americans out here in television land to understand that we learned nothing new.  And woe be to them (and really to us all) if enough of our fellow citizens really thought they were enlightened by something actionable.

Asymptomatic C19 carriers are not contagious, shows a new German study, thereby debunking the Chinese claim to the contrary, and making moot more of the claims by the nation’s CCP-celebrating lockdown loonies.  (more here)  H/T to correspondent since the lamestream has a tendency to suppress such news.

Censorship rising.  The Left, supported by corporatist America, now determines which facts and opinions may be publicly expressed in the various media.  Even FN can no longer claim to “fair, balanced, and unafraid.”

‘I vas just following orders.’  Does anyone else notice how many of our police are becoming automatons, mindlessly carrying out their lockdown orders, no matter how insane?  This behavior is a harbinger of the police state the progressives intend to implement sooner than later when they tip the balance of power.  And as has happened in so many other countries, historically and especially during the last century, the government people with the guns will always act to first and foremost protect their own jobs and families’ security at the expense of yours.  The Left has a full pipeline of laws and regulations awaiting implementation to control every aspect of our lives and livelihoods.  But there are still LE voices in the wilderness that recognize and oppose the national insanity; here is one from the Sacramento Deputy Sheriffs Association. (H/T to reader)

Nevada County – ‘still a day late and a dollar short’.  As of 2may20, NC with 100K residents has a total of 41 C19 cases that include one death, two still active, and 38 recovered.  Our hospital is empty of C19 patients, and western county has had no new cases since 17 April.  Also, as of 2may20 Yuba and Sutter counties with a combined 175K residents have 50 recorded cases that include 36 recoveries and 3 deaths with the remaining 11 being active.  Yuba and Sutter have opened up their businesses with the advisory that commercial enterprises “use all appropriate health measures” in the public square.  As a remote rural county that doesn’t understand the nature of the current coronavirus epidemic and how it compares to a regular flu season which has never impacted the conduct of commerce, NC remains closed, fearful, and continues to shutter and threaten its businesses.  Talk about rank ignorance and political CYA.

[4may20 update]  Prof Alan Blinder, the very liberal Princeton economist, was interviewed in the 4may20 WSJ, a newspaper in which he regularly appears.  Asked about the Fed’s response to the C19 pandemic, he gave it high marks for immediately providing lavish liquidity to commerce (part of its monetary policy), but reminded us that the Fed cannot create jobs because that is the role of government’s fiscal policy (taxes, tariffs, fees, regs).  Of interest to me was that he never deigned to elaborate on the fiscal policy required to create jobs, avoiding this important detail for good reason.  To the leftist economists proper fiscal policy here means government creating winners and losers in the commercial sector by selectively issuing taxes, tariffs, fees, and regs.  That has never worked, and it’s always been the opposite of the government getting out of the way that has given rise to rapid economic growth (witness the most recent snail’s pace of growth stifled by Obama.)  But the Blinders of the world cannot make their case to a knowledgeable audience without inviting more public blowback on their cherished collectivist economics.  So the good professor left it to the reader to interpret which kind of fiscal policy would be needed today to rescue our economy.

Seventy-one years ago the refugee Rebanes from Europe arrived in the Port of New York aboard the troopship USS General Harry Taylor packed with a regiment-load of WW2 survivors.  We had spent the last ten days on the storm-tossed North Atlantic housed in huge sleeping bays like sardines in canvas sleeping bunks stacked 5 and 6 high. (more here)  And finally, on the morning of 4 May 1949 we landed in the world’s greatest country that promised all of us lucky ones life, liberty, and the ability to pursue happiness as each of us saw fit and were capable, … and did we ever!

[5may20 update]  Aerosols, droplets, speaking, singing, ..., and Covid-19.  Here is a very illuminating summary of how the virus can be transmitted and the effectiveness of masks.

Hunker Down Diary – 27apr20

George Rebane

Today is HD51 for the Rebanes.  As most people, we have been doing extensive Facetime with family and friends, and Zooming in for meetings.  We also meet surreptitiously for dinners with equally hunkered family and friends. The rest of the time is taken up with household chores and deskwork.  RR readers know what I’ve been noodling about.  Jo Ann has been busy with her Republican Women Federated, NC Republican Central Committee,  and Union editorial board work.  My labors on the boards of MIM and SESF have been minimal since the C19 lockdown.  And now that the weather guessers are predicting warm weather going forward as far as the eye can see, it’s time to get the farm going and the horseshoe court spiffed up for competition.

We are also participating in weekly online cocktail sessions with other couples.  These have turned out to be more fun than we anticipated, and all of us look forward to the next week’s happy hours.  So all in all, social life continues along newly created paths.  We always have a fire going during the evenings which are divided into TV nights and reading nights.  The TV fare is all prerecorded stuff of various series, new/commentary programs, movies, and documentaries.  (Years ago, we pretty much weaned ourselves off of live broadcasts, everything gets put on the DVR – we pace the presentations, they don’t pace us.  I suppose everyone now does that so it’s hard to see why advertisers still pay to advertise, unless some people still watch live TV.)

Today we had to make a trip into town for bags of soil and sand – soil for Jo Ann’s farm and sand for refurbishing my world-class horseshoe court.  She gets the best manmade soil you can buy which contains all the nummies that her veggies want, including 15% chickenshit.  Long ago we decided not to run the numbers on the actual cost of our vegetables – we’re not in competition with Safeway, but they are with us.  It has turned out to be a labor of love and the pure joy of eating loads of home-grown veggies.  We even enjoy the late night hunts for tomato worms with our UV flashlight.

But my big report of the day is that regardless of what our out-of-step governor dictates, the people of Nevada County are not staying at home.  Traffic on the roads and Brunswick Basin was somewhere between normal and heavy.  The nursery parking lot was so full with people coming and going that they had two clerks out there directing traffic.  Picking up sand at B&C was no different.  The entire shopping center’s parking lot was full of cars, and the store full of  people.  More than half the people were not wearing masks.  It is clear that it is the people who have ended the lockdown – rural Californians are not waiting for the word from Sacramento.  The only thing we are still waiting for is the county to get their jackboot off our necks and let the restaurants, bars, churches, and theaters open up for sit-down food, worship, and entertainment.

Sometime in the not too distant future I’d like to see some constitutional legal beagles from the Left argue the legality of the government’s peremptory shutdown and destruction of our economy and social life.  From my perch, this has not been the finest hour for enterprising and independent America.  And now the data is coming in from multiple sources overseas and within our borders that national lockdowns are wrongheaded and more dangerous, most certainly in the long run, than hunkering down.  (more here)

A Nation Risk Averse - Scared, Cowering, and Compliant

George Rebane

In the middle of the 20^th century we lived in a world filled with ‘unconquered’ infectious diseases that were both life threatening and life limiting.  Everything from measles to polio lurked in places unknown.  And, of course, we had the rates of mortality and morbidity to show for it.  Nevertheless, life went on in full recognition of the hidden dangers laying in wait.  None of us thought of shutting down the country and cowering in our homes until someone somewhere in authority would make the dangers go away.

The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic killed 50M worldwide and somewhere well above half million Americans died of the disease.  But life not only went on, it thrived in the years after WW1 with the country’s economy growing while people were still coming down with the virus and other maladies.  Little to no mention of the disease made the news nor required special government dispensations affecting the entire population.  The flu was there, it would stay for a while, and then it would go away – meanwhile try not to get sick.

The same happened later in the century when we weathered the ‘Asian flu’ in 1957 – over 110,000 deaths in the US and 1M worldwide.  And then there came the ‘Hong Kong flu’, another Asian flu in 1968 – 100,000 deaths in the US and 1.1M worldwide.  From the NIH we learn that “within the past one hundred years, four pandemics have resulted from the emergence of a novel influenza strain for which humans possessed little or no immunity: the H1N1 Spanish flu (1918), the H2N2 Asian flu (1957), the H3N2 Hong Kong flu (1968), and the H1N1 swine flu (2009).”  They summarize these pandemics in the following table.

And then there were others like the avian or ‘bird flu’ which killed 70,000 Americans; and even more - it’s all very confusing.  But the bottom line is that people didn’t lose jobs, companies didn’t go out of business, the fed and state governments didn’t go autocratic, no one panicked, life went on.

Local Launch of Left’s New Covid-19 Narrative

George Rebane

The country’s Democrats are in a wholesale, smelly-sweat panic about the upcoming election – in reality a progressives’ pandemic.  They have wound up with an unelectable presidential candidate-in-waiting.  No one knows this better about Bumblebrain Biden than the DNC and its congressional leadership.  What to do?

The obvious answer - now that all the other years-long forays against Trump have not only come up empty, but also left the party’s faithful with maximum egg-on-face as November approaches  - is to loosen their lamestream lackeys along with its local acolytes with a new narrative about the causus belli du jour, and how President Trump mishandled the country’s C19 response, thereby causing thousands of additional deaths.

What is the purpose of testing???

George Rebane

This may be the most definitive evidence that dumbth is the established order of the day in America.  Everyone has been screaming about testing, and continues that to this minute.  But no one has told us why test – what kind of metric is testing supposed to provide to public policy makers, and how will it be used to support those policies.  I would think that this would be something that we would be briefed on instead of hearing from one side that there are not enough tests, and the other citing the numbers of tests that have been administered and shipped.

The dumbest thing I hear from the daily briefings is that we have now given over 3 million infection tests – really!!?  BFD!  What the hell are you going to do with the results of 3 million infection tests, results obtained willy-nilly from all over the country over the last 5-6 weeks?  I don’t hear the Drs Fauci or Birx telling us jack about how the test results will be used.  And what should be even more amazing – but is not – is that our crack journalists, double dummies all, have never thought to even consider asking for the purpose of testing.

Some silly shit answer like, ‘well, it’ll tell the healthcare people if the tested person has C19’ – so what?!  If the sumbich already feels poorly with C19 symptoms, it isn’t the test that’s going to get him admitted into a clinic or hospital.  And if he isn’t symptomatic, then it’s pure happenstance that a serendipitous test of unknown reliability tests positive, and he’s then advised to get off the streets, and wait until his symptoms appear before he bothers anyone.

And then some other worthy will explain to the peanut gallery that we need testing to find out the extent of the pandemic and identify new C19 hot spots early.  Does anyone at NIH or CDC have a clue about the kind of testing program required – its extent, frequency, and duration – for that??  We hope that someone there passed a stats class somewhere in their career, but today they sure as hell don’t act like it. 

Infection testing needs to be conducted continuously on random samples drawn from critical target populations – remember, infection tests are snapshots the results of which can and do change overnight.  To be fair, Dr Fauci last night finally acknowledged that neither the US nor any other country has the ability to do the kind of infection testing for early identification of hot spots.  And don’t get me started again on factoring in test reliabilities into any kind of a non-existent organized testing program; no one has even made a peep about that. 

Immunity (antibody/antigen) testing gives time-dependent enduring results that tells us the extent of herd immunity that may already exist in a target population.  However, Dr Birx also finally admitted that today’s immunity test reliabilities are so bad that it’s futile to use them with any confidence to determine the recovered share of target populations.  When and if such tests become reliable, at that point if the recovered share is sufficiently high, then even ‘lives over profits’ policy makers can start staging back-to-work policies.  And if the recovered population grows too slowly, then that advises that the target population is hunkering down too hard, and we again need to loosen things up a mite to start making progress against C19.

But in the meantime, what in hell is going on out there with our political leaders and their teams of so-called ‘experts’??  Given what we can and cannot do in the testing field, the known attributes of C19, and the general dynamics of virulent epidemics, it’s past time to start a programmed loosening up of America’s commerce.

Scattershots – 15apr20 (updated 18apr20)

George Rebane

For a progressive the content value of delivered messages depend only on the correct credentials of the messenger. 

Autocracy rising.  Granted that all the federal and state hunker-down mandates have taken a big bite out of our civil liberties (here and here), we witness and read daily of people being stopped, harrassed, arrested, and even handcuffed for engaging in non-infectious activities like walking in the woods, surfing alone, riding a bike, driving a car, … .  Given their head to control and dictate, government workers are becoming more autocratic, hubristic, and commanding in their relations with regular citizens.  Don’t get me wrong, they were no paragons of helpful knowledge and assistance in the best of times, but now we get regular reports of everyone from law enforcement people to clerks behind counters beginning to act like the caricature authorities of tyrannies like the USSR, East Germany, Red China, Iran, Cuba, … .  In such behaviors these bureaucrats have predictably wrapped themselves in the mantle of inflexible machines executing pre-programmed and unwavering dicta from on high.  I recently ran into that on an call to our Rood Center on an administrative manner.  The response between now and then was markedly different.  And it’s all being helped by the legions of naïfs who continue to repeat the mantra, ‘It can’t happen here, cause we’re Mericans.’

“Bernie’s an American original”, embellished Barack Obama during his announced support for his former VP Joe Biden.  Calling Sanders a “man who has devoted his life to giving voice to working people’s hopes”, Obama kind of goes off the rails because the record of all of Sanders’ proposed policies would have reduced the number of jobs available to working people, grown government, and made those same working people de facto wards of the state.  An ‘American original’ indeed; Obama’s intellect has never embraced history (among other pursuits), so he doesn’t realize that Comrade Bernie is nothing but a clone of old school Moscow.

Junk Journalism on Parade (updated 4apr20)

George Rebane

Ignorant, cynical, agenda-driven (you pick) media scribes and talking heads are doing a real disservice to the American public.  Their latest is the reporting of misconstrued pandemic data in ways designed to make the US look like an incompetent laggard in the fight against the virus.  Playing to an innumerate audience, these ‘journalists’ are citing cherry picked raw numbers of everything from total cases, deaths, ventilators, tests, masks, you name it in a way that is totally meaningless.  No one in the audience has any way of understanding the significance of the reported numbers, and more so when these are compared to similar numbers from other countries.

Here’s an example of what I’m trying to convey.  The yellow journalists report the yellow data, and the required information (i.e. data formatted to support decisions) that allows the audience to make meaningful comparisons is in green.  There would be a lot less for the lamestream and progressives to hyperventilate about if comparable per capita rates were reported for morbidity, mortality, materiel shortages/supplies, etc.  From this morning’s Covid19 count we have -

And here is another major contribution of today’s fake news – ‘The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the US to Covid-19’ -  from the fallen NYT that blames the Trump administration for 1) the failures of long dysfunctional federal bureaucracies, 2) not anticipating a black swan, and 3) for not doing something (comprehensive widespread testing) that was impossible, unwarranted at the time, and would not have provided the called-out information.  Their main message, “Aggressive screening might have helped contain the coronavirus in the United States.  But technical flaws, regulatory hurdles, and lapse in leadership let it spread undetected for weeks.”  Six ‘journalists’ participated in this misleading hit job.  Such crap from progressive politicians with terminal TDS are understandable, like the one from Pelosi (here).  It remains clear why this vaunted 'gray lady' continues to be the darling of progressives.

Here’s how to look at aspects of different countries’ healthcare systems – this one from the OECD on what share of out-of-pocket household income people spend on prescription drugs.  Such a presentation allows a more accurate comparison of consumer costs experienced under different healthcare systems and provides a new perspective on the big ‘greedy’ pharma.

In my book there’s a difference between journalists, reporters, and simply media hacks.  Journalists used to hew to a code of ethics about research and reporting – today that practice ranges between rare and long gone.  Reporters are anybody off the street or from another department told to go out for a look-see and type up what they thought they ran into in time for a publishing deadline – these are the learn-while-you-earn types.  A bunch of those still exist.  But today it is the media hacks who fill the overwhelming number of print and broadcast slots.  These are people with good hair and teeth whose job is to shape the news into specified formats that promote the message of the outlet’s political and ideological masters.

[4apr20 update] H/T to reader.

Hunker Down Diary – 26mar20 (updated 27mar20)

George Rebane

When there’s a problem, government is guilty until proven innocent.

Today is HD19 for the Rebanes.  We started hunkering down on 8 March 2020, and finally risked it all this morning by showing up at our local Safeway at 7am, the advertised ‘old folks shopping time’.  Apparently the younger people had not gotten the word, and the store was full with a lot of couples like Jo Ann and me pushing two carts.  Most of us wore gloves, a few had on masks, and all of us social distanced as much as possible.  But what we saw was dismal; something you’d experience in a socialist second or third world country – ‘miles’ of empty shelves of the stuff that everyone really wanted to buy.  Still, we all filled our baskets with what there was and substituted a lot of PlanB items.

What surprised me was that today the younger generation of managers have no knowledge, let alone experience, of the buying patterns during times of emergency and need.  With all signs of the coming hunker down time apparent more than a month ago, no one, starting with FEMA, advised the supply system to put the pedal to the metal on obvious staples and sanitary items.  There was no anticipative ‘push’ in the pipeline.  Everything appeared to have continued on with the JIT (just in time) scheme that works so well during happy days.  The makers and distributers are making do with the JIT schema in spite of the enormous consumer ‘pull’ of empty shelves.

Ruminations – 17mar20 (updated 18mar20)

George Rebane

Swine flu H1N1 Apr09-Jan10.  57M Americans infected, 257K hospitalized, 11,690 died.  Does anyone remember any full court press on Obama by the media and the Repubs as today we witness dished out hourly by the Dems and their lamestream in their vilification of Trump?  (H/T to reader.)

Russia impacted the 2016 election.  Those lyrics of our leftwing loonies still rings out loud and clear across the land.  And since that chorus started, tens of millions have been spent in the attempt to find any evidence, all to no avail.  Admittedly, our Left is not all that good with the finer points of English as they continue to confuse ‘attempt’ and ‘impact’, or is it really one from their repertoire of Big Lies broadcast daily?  That's called trolling for the dummies.

Coronavirus info link for Nevada County – NC Health and Human Services.  The Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital has announced a new testing program; see 17mar20 update here.

[18mar20 update]  Epidemic model used by policy makers revealed, and also news of a stop-gap medicine to prevent and fight Covid19.  See the 18mar20 update to 'Testing, testing, ...' here.

Correlation of the nation's blue concentrations with the incidence of Covid19 was pointed out in a reader's correspondence.  Apparently no one in the media has yet to make the connection.  (more here)

Lots of people buying guns and ammo.  The Left should recognize that these are not the nation’s gun owners who have already laid in their stash of Second Amendment armaments.  It is the latest tranche of newbies who have had their ‘gun epiphanies’ by the tens (hundreds?) of thousands.  The feds confirm this through the surge in background checks, and the dealers confirm it by reporting that these desperate buyers will take any available gun with any kind of ammo that fits.  Those of us who have owned guns for years would never even consider doing that for more reasons that we simply don’t have to.

All the Dems grousing about Trump’s “failure to handle the pandemic” are simply full of horseshit (aka bull pucky).  No one dares to compare America’s response with the actual numbers of what the other Left-celebrated countries have done.  Grab any metric that you have available.  And the biggest farce is the so-implied massive testing that other countries have done.  The challenge is to discover what marginal benefit to prophylactic or prescriptive policies has their testing provided that shows America is somehow behind the response curve.  Nothing – but ‘testing’ is the only thing that the Dems have, with no better (or any) plans of their own, to try to get some traction against the Trump administration.

Ordering out from restaurants.  Lots of people are buying into this alternative as an easy way to get good food without risking Covid19 infection.  Not so advise the thinking medicos.  You have no guarantee of what kind of food was used to prepare in what manner by personnel in what kind of pre-symptomatic condition within kitchens of unknown sanitary state that are frequented by numerous people whose outside contacts are also totally unknown.  The infectious disease experts tell us to order out is still a crapshoot.