George Rebane

Is it Offensive to Illegal Aliens to Refer to Them as 'Illegal Alien'? (here)  I certainly hope so.  But I'm afraid that doing so will not deter more of them from becoming illegal aliens, nor convince those already here illegally to go back.  Nevertheless, it is another concern that is rising to top of our idiot Left's panoply of concerns about America.

[2dec21 update]  Been pig hunting.  Got back yesterday after a few days in the coastal range near Ladoga on a couple of big cattle ranches with the ranch manager and prominent hunting guide Mike Gardner.  I was with my grandson (in-law) who runs a local electrical contracting business.  We saw some pretty impressive country traveling in Mike’s ‘ranch truck’ and his quads.  We almost had a sanitary problem experiencing for the first time the unbelievable steep terrains both vehicles were capable of navigating.  No luck during the first evening’s and next morning’s hunts.  Then we tried a mid-day hunt.  Grandson got his pig in the standard way with a good scoped shot stalking in medium density vegetation.  He spooked the remaining herd and, as planned, drove them in my direction up the next hill where I was waiting with Mike.  The herd of about eight pigs decided to run up my hill along a fence line that would only give me about a 30ft window and slim chance to nail a pig going about 25mph and covering the space in less than a second.  I was standing about 50ft away with my scope set at a wide 4X as the first pig banzaied out of the brush and immediately disappeared behind the next brush wall.  Having seen how little time that took, I was ready for the second pig a couple of seconds later and calibrated my lead on him.  A second or so later the third pig burst out and I was ready – led him properly and put a round through her a foot before her momentum carried her out of my shooting window where she collapsed and quickly died, bleeding copiously from entry and exit wounds and mouth.  Mike said that in 20 years of guiding hunters he had never seen such a well-placed, off-hand shot at a pig that close and hauling ass at full speed.  Grandson later made my day saying, “Papa, you've still got it!”  (I did a little calculation that determined the pigs’ angular rate from my position was about 42 deg/sec; I had less than a second to nail Miss Piggy.)  We collected our pigs and went back to the ranch house to field-dress them and enjoy a well-earned evening of libations, campfire, and BBQd tri-tip dinner.  Got home yesterday after dropping off the carcasses at the butcher in Oroville.  Fun time and good eating to come of some of the most expensive pork available in these parts – it will pencil out at about $45/lb.

[3dec21 update]  The march of the deluded continues unabated on The Union’s op-ed pages.  Today’s lead commentary is from a Keith Rhodes.  He argues that K-12 ‘Students need (a) balanced, complete history’, elements of which come right out of CRT, which he maintains is taught only in select courses at the college level.  The evidence from uncounted sources that CRT is well established in the K-12 curricula across the nation.  This is either totally unknown to the (lamestream limited) Mr Rhodes, or is terminally denied.  The Union’s management stated that it will addend editorial corrections to contributed columns with obvious errors.  But it has become clear over the last few months that these ‘corrections’ consist primarily of the newspaper’s editorial (ideological?) stance, and have been applied selectively to conservative commentaries.  Mr Rhodes exhortations to teach our kids divisive anti-American history are so far off base that he does not even acknowledge the decades of enduring damage to public school students perpetrated by unionized leftwing teachers and administrators.  He concludes his sermon with – We have become a polarized society for many reasons, but what was once just the day-to-day march to improve science, medicine and history, to name but a few, has become a contest of rights and freedoms that isn’t necessarily controversial. It’s simply progress.  As we bog ourselves down in the minutia of these arguments, our competitors in Russia, China and Europe march forward, surpassing us militarily, educationally and culturally. We are slowing our progress and we are threatening not only our democracy, but our future.  Students, and all Americans, deserve to know the truth and be taught a balanced and complete history of our nation. That includes the good, the bad and the ugly.

[7dec21 update]  Ever notice that the self-declared ‘centrists’, ‘independents’, 'non-partisans', etc are overwhelmingly leftwingers who need that extra little bit of subterfuge to bamboozle the innocents they seek to influence?  I was reminded of this again reading this morning’s Union columnist George Boardman’s ‘Observations from the Center Stripe’ which is usually a continuation of his leftwing perspectives on a potpourri of items similar to RR’s Scattershots.  Commentators of the Right never have a problem declaring themselves as conservatives or libertarians, or need to disguise their ideological bent.  But those of the Left know that their medicine will not go down easily unless it is misrepresented in something more palatable.  My own posterchild for this practice is a dear friend of many years whose list to port is beyond obvious and who seeks to deny this through his membership in the equally left-leaning organization calling itself ‘No Labels’.

[9dec21 update] Sudetenland redux. “President Joe Biden’s administration reportedly plans to push the Ukrainian government to appease Russian President Vladimir Putin by ceding territory” reports the Associated Press.  The profundity of ignorance displayed by this administration knows no bounds.  Perhaps the new history taught in schools today does not mention how surrendering Sudetenland to Hitler in 1938 helped save the world from WW2.

Climate models’ unreliability finally admitted.  This truth has been a yearslong ongoing RR campaign debunking the climate change hysteria in which the world is embroiled.  There is literally no scientific basis for believing the 50-100 year predictions of the current spate of mutually incoherent climate change, or the more formally known general circulation models.  The 9dec21 WSJ reports, “Earlier this year, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the first time used data on past climate behavior to gauge the reliability of climate models for policy makers.” (emphasis added)  The science on climate change, and especially on preventable manmade global warming, ranges between thin and non-existent.  And the gulf between science and knee-jerk climate public policies is still beyond measure.  The bamboozle of the centuries continues unabated.  (more here)

Controlling language to control the masses.  We are reminded of this by the first commenter here below.  However, not understanding or properly using language may have an equally destructive impact on the public mind.  Case in point is the ongoing confusion between the use of ‘data’ and ‘information’ which in almost all people’s minds are erroneously the same.  This includes journalists, lawyers, and even most techies.  Today’s WSJ contains an entire section on the “Information Explosion” which turns out to be nothing more than articles on today’s still important data explosion.  The critical difference is that data are facts and beliefs about the real world.  On the other hand, information is data formatted/processed to support decision making.  It is clear that from one dataset more than one set of information may be generated.  Making information from data is usually hard and requires many different skillsets, most of which are difficult to master.  It is the information generating enterprises which deliver real value to society, and also where the real money-making opportunities beckon.