George Rebane

The Left wants nothing measured the public reporting of which it cannot control, or that goes against their established narrative.

Our intrepid progressive pundit and Union columnist George Boardman is all exercised in his ‘Double dipping at the public trough, in the spotlight, and just the facts’ published in the newspaper’s 24jun19 edition.  There he leaps off the rails to rail those double dipping Dahles, while totally missing the definition of double dipping as it pertains to government payees.  Megan Dahle plans to run for her husband Brian Dahle’s recently vacated California Assembly seat since winning his seat in the state’s Senate.  If Mrs Dahle wins, she will become the elected representative from her district, doing the work of an assemblyman, and on her own merits and efforts earning that position’s pay.  That having a second member of the family also performing an independent job in government is in no way double dipping, save it serve a distinctly progressive political narrative.  Apparently Mr Boardman misses that significant nuance that spouses of elected politicians are also individuals with a duplicate set of rights to independently seek employment and recompense as they see fit.  Ah, the bespoke blinders of the Left.  (On the same op-ed page see also Manny Montes’ commentary that helps explain Mr Boardman’s values.)

In the 24jun19 update to my ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ commentary, I posited the following observation about cultures.

Peace and prosperity were generally maintained as long as such a governed society’s culture was allowed to evolve without obvious interdictions by government.  It is easy to see why this approach to organizing societies worked as long as the dominant culture was sufficiently cohesive.  A little reflection reveals that culture is able to inculcate and control the most complex sets of human behaviors, and allow their natural expressions in new environments/situations without having to write down a single law or regulation.  Behaviors (acceptable and unacceptable) are learned in the family and in the village square, and ‘enforced’ by the culture’s collective – i.e. everyone.

In searching for exceptions to the above, the Talmud of the Jewish diaspora occurred to me.  The Talmud is an extensive collection (or collections if you consider separately its Babylonian and Jerusalem parts) of Jewish civil and ceremonial law along with its ethnic legends.  It comprises quite a collection of volumes that painstakingly detail a comprehensive body of behaviors and processes permitted and proscribed to practicing Jews everywhere.  And ‘everywhere’ here is the key idea.  After the Romans destroyed their Jerusalem temple in 70AD, the Jews were driven from their traditional homelands, and found themselves spread all over Europe and northern Africa.

While always seeking to stick together wherever they found themselves, they were necessarily separated and for centuries mostly out of touch with other Jewish communities.  So how to retain, practice, and promulgate the culture that defined them and their very Jewishness when so dispersed?  The answer was through the formalization of their culture in written form, which, as I have often argued, requires many volumes to record, study, and teach.  The Talmud is thus the exception that highlights and supports my dissertations on the function and efficiency of cultures in prescribing normative behaviors within coherent populations.

[25jun19 update]  The lamestream outlets are exorcising President Trump for his new sanctions against individuals in the Iranian leadership.  Specifically, vindictive opprobrium is dished out at Trump’s sanctioning Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister and leading negotiator who has been our main point of contact in the sub-rosa diplomatic efforts between the two countries.  Their common wisdom is that now we have lost someone with whom we have been able to communicate.  What these pinheads and pundits miss is that the president has to include Zarif in the sanctions if he is to remain as our point of future contact.  Omitting Zarif’s obviously needed inclusion would have made him suspect among the raghead mullahs, and cost him his job or worse.

[26jun19 update] "Remarkably, a recent study cited in The Atlantic (gasp!) found that “the most politically intolerant Americans” tend be white, highly educated urban progressives. … Long ago, religious zealots embraced feudal ideals, but increasingly it’s the ultra-secular progressives who reprise the role of Medieval Inquisitors."  Whoulda thought?  (H/T to reader)

[27jun19 update] Photo journalism at its worst as far as providing information to impact public policy – that is conveyed by the photo of the drowned father and his toddler daughter floating face down at the water’s edge (here).  This emotional picture drives all reason and logic from viewers’ uncritical minds; whatever narrative you want to connect with that image will now be taken as God’s truth about illegal border crossings, immigration, President Trump’s border security policies, … .  No one will consider factors such as the abnormally low death rate that is connected with illegal border crossings per se – illegal aliens die before getting to the border, and a few die after successfully entering the US, but given the circumstances, the death rate is mercifully low.  How do we know?  Had there been any previous border crossing deaths, crack photo journalists would have had such pictures posted and published in every imaginable outlet all over the globe.  Fortunately, that is not the case.  I do note that the father did a very foolish and deadly thing by stuffing his daughter into his t-shirt, thus guaranteeing the toddler’s death should he not be able to stay afloat with that ungainly load in the roiling waters.  In any event, now we are guaranteed another spate of public policies based on emotion and the absence of reason.

Democrats continue to dramatically disrespect and discount the intellect of their base and those voters they desire to attract.  A particularly specious attractant their presidential candidates are using is their promise to forgive student debt.  They are betting that their supporters will be like the now-infamous video clip of an Obama voter who believed that all the promised goodies she received would be paid for out “the President’s stash”.  OPM continues to be the salve Democrat elites will use to fix everything that ails us if you just give them your vote.  Michael Solon in the 27jun19 WSJ adds to the obvious when he writes – Debt forgiveness punishes those who did the right thing, made sacrifices, and acted wisely and frugally, as well as those who simply didn’t have the opportunity to go to college. Isn’t this the sort of private gain at public expense that people on the left claim to abhor? … Such forgiveness would also eliminate a quality-control device that drives students to ensure their investment can be monetized to cover their costs. A student who borrows must make sure his future earnings will be enough to pay off the loans. If that incentive disappears, with free debt or free college, the graduate and the nation would suffer economically.  (Also see my ‘Student Loan Scam Solution’)