“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know that just ain't so.” Mark Twain, et al
George Rebane
Leftwing columnist Darrell Berkheimer makes his occasional foray into substantive socio-political subjects and blows it again. In his ‘Will Violence or a Funeral End Incendiary Talk’ (4aug18 Union), the man demonstrates his limited abilities in spades. He blames today’s politically polarized incendiaries as being solely fomented by President Trump, and executed by rightwingers. His evidence? He can only cite the reception of CNN’s extremely virulent leftwing journalist Acosta at a Trump rally who was greeted with shouts of ‘CNN sucks!’, and then some crazy individual (political affiliation unknown) with a bat smashing a TV station’s car. And there ends his research into the country’s political incendiaries. He is totally blind to the literally hundreds of incitements from the political left and leftwing public confrontations that by charitable estimates are practiced around 50:1 by Democrat politicians, journalists, and leftwing street mobs. Nowhere are mentioned such Congress critters as Maxine Waters and Lizzy Warren, and NYT editor Sarah Jeong. Nowhere does he see the Left’s countless demonstrations and thuggery performed in office buildings, at neighborhood residences, in stores, on blocked streets, college campuses, classrooms and auditoriums, … . It’s only the Right that is the progenitor and practitioner of hate speech and violent confrontations. But then, we have never expected anything more from Mr Berkheimer.
The cost in lives and cash of natural and political disasters has declined markedly under the post-war world order led and maintained by America. The Left would have us believe that all has been going the other way, and they have published reams of fake factual lies to make their case. The real fact of the matter has been studied and documented by more sober analysts like the late Swedish statistician Hans Rosling, of the Gapminder Foundation documented in his Factfulness (2018). It turns out that death rates and property losses have plummeted as the world has grown more populous, densely packed, and with enormously more stuff at risk since WW2. This reality does not fit well into the anti-capitalist progressive narrative, so it has been both suppressed and redecorated into an ongoing political and journalistic barrage to convince the light thinkers and otherwise engaged of exactly the opposite. It’s easier to argue for more central planning, control, taxes, and regulations if you can make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse. (more here)
[6aug18 update] As many have known for some years, the alternative energy source biofuel mandates have not lived up to their hype. The EPA recently released its ‘Biofuels and the Environment: The Second Triennial Report to Congress’. (access here) It turns out that all the extra thousands of acres of corn and soybeans planted to make the ethanol based fuels are “wreaking havoc on the atmosphere and soil” (more here). So what was initially sold as another feel good alternative to fossil fuels has just had its list of dirty laundry extended by none other than the agency that has been champion of cleaning up the environment. This is nothing new, the problems with biofuels have been known and reported for years – here’s a 2008 piece from none other than The Washington Post. But somehow the Left’s narrative on the negative effects of biofuels hasn’t been affected by these longstanding findings. It seems that environmental quality is really not that high on the progressives’ agenda. I wonder what their real objective is.
[7aug18 update] US land use is an important piece of knowledge for the noggins of those of us debating public policies in these pages. A reader sent me this link (here) to a Bloomberg news piece that has a whole lot of land use information presented in an interesting graphical format. Be sure to puzzle on it for the upcoming quiz.
Hilary Hodge is returning to politics after losing in a close race to Supervisor Dan Miller in the June primary. (more here) She will next try to get on the Grass Valley City Council, and she’ll be bringing all her qualifications, enthusiasm, and outside support to her next attempt to enter the local political game. As most people who recall her Union autobiographical columns know, the lady is woefully short on private sector economics and work experience. She would greatly bolster her resume and ability to serve the public were she able to show that someone took money out of his own pocket to pay her for demonstrating some productive skills in the job market. But as most of us have come to know, politicians don’t have to have experience in the private sector before regulating and legislating for it.
[8aug18 update] The Left (including some locals) claim that the real accomplishment at the 9jun16 Trump Tower meeting with the Russian lawyer was an agreement for the Russians to release Hillary’s emails that were sent and received on her private email server. However, those emails began to be released prior to 2016 to all, including Wikileaks, by our State Dept, not the Russians. Wikileaks collected these emails and made them available in a searchable online archive with the included statement – On March 16, 2016 WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for over 30 thousand emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton's private email server while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547 pages of documents span from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014. 7,570 of the documents were sent by Hillary Clinton. The emails were made available in the form of thousands of PDFs by the US State Department as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. More PDFs were made available on February 29, 2016, and a set of additional 995 emails was imported up to February 2, 2018.
So it seems that to plan the release of the purported (not confirmed by our intelligence) Russia-hacked Hillary emails after their release had already commenced is a moot argument designed for people not versed in the use of calendars. (more here)
However, our intelligence people state that Russia did hack the DNC email server, and purloined over 100,000 emails with much embarrassing information about the internal operations of the Democratic Party and by Democrat bigwigs. (more here) These were first released to DCLeaks in June 2016 and then later in July 2016 to Wikileaks. None have claimed that any of these emails were doctored or contained false information. And no one has tied the Trump campaign to the acquisition and/or release of these emails to the public at large. All we have is a daily stream of allegations through and by the lamestream that somehow Donald Trump was behind the whole thing since Hillary lost. And today Mueller stands ready to indict the entire White House in a week or two – as Eliza assured us, 'Just you wait 'Enri 'Iggins, just you wait!' And waiting we still are.
rebanesruminations.com 
Leave a comment