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  • Sandbox – 29mar19

    [Well, the Dems are looking to an approach to 'Medicare for All' designed by a couple of Univ of Mass economists that promises "You'd be able to keep your doctor with no premiums or copays, and overall spending would decline."  Now where have we heard all that before?  The many holes in this plan (here) also recommend its alternative use as a sieve.  gjr]

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  • Ruminations – 29mar19 (updated 2apr19)

    George Rebane

    For our approval poll watchers, Politico counsels a little prudence in that department and not put too much stock into those reports.  “If the election were held today, Mr Trump would likely ride to a second term in a huge landslide.” (emphasis mine)

    The Democrats’ agenda?  There ain’t none, as I’ve been pointing out to our leftwing readers.  This was echoed by Rep Cheri Bustos (D-IL), head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, earlier this week in a Democrat caucus where she admonished members that “voters have little idea what the Democratic policy agenda is; the party urgently needs to move beyond 2016.”  My advice is to pay her no attention.

    Some ‘obstruction’ crumbs is all that Mueller could leave the Trump haters.  Since he was not able to interview the president (who submitted written answers to questions), Mueller claimed that a robust exoneration could not be granted.  Instead, he left that task up to AG Barr, which, of course, was the right thing to do.

    (more…)

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  • Responding to the Staid and Fearful

    George Rebane

    RR readers who comment on these pages have a record of discussing and debating the most critical and germane questions that face our country and society in these times of fracturing polarity (albeit not always in the most churchillian manner).  I am a declared conservetarian (q.v.), and over the years of this weblog I have outlined in detail my credo, my semantics, and my prescriptions for the orderly evolution of America’s governance in this ‘last great century of Man’.  In a recent comment stream, a reader again contends these prescriptions, not on their existential merits, but on their provenance which for him is qualified only to the degree that the proposed be limited to that practiced in the past.  Here I offer a short counter to such constraints and criticism.

    The ability to see futures without exemplars from the past is admittedly and obviously a gift not shared by the many.  Most people, perhaps fortunately, can only see the future as reflections in their rearview mirrors – if it isn’t there to be seen, then there’s no such possibility of it yet to come.  Then there are those relatively few who live on the edge of the arts of the possible, and who traffic in ideas and enterprises that have neither been nor yet to be.  Both cohorts of Man serve needed functions which, when tempered, benefit and power the advancement of civilizations.

    The former of the staid cohort function as brakes, shock absorbers, and even anchors to dampen, absorb, and integrate the possibly chaotic and non-coherent novelties that those of the latter, living on the bleeding edge, can see, build, and seek to introduce into the established orders.  Fate, the gods, and my parents assigned me to the bleeding edge cohort, of which long ago I became a credentialed, accomplished, privileged, punished, and blessed member.

    So, when people of my ilk do their work, it is almost always in the untrammeled domains where few or none have trod, and where reward always lies behind a mountain of risk.  My life’s journey through this terrain is recorded by the scars on my back and the coins in my purse.

    So when I have outlined the desiderata of governance from a conservetarian perspective, it is not an exercise of just ‘cut and paste’ of the elsewhere and from the elsewhen.  Seeing something strange and new, the question of the staid always belies their fearful admonition to never go where we have not been.  I neither hail from nor have I lived in such lands.  As a native Estonian, I take pride in the innovations in education, technology, and governance that that little nation has always had the courage to adopt and practice.  As a naturalized American, I continually bless the memory of our Founders’ dedication, intellect, foresight, and courage to bring forth a land then unknown to Man.  All Americans are daily blessed by our Founders not being deterred or stayed in their enterprise by those who asked them for proof of existence and success for such a new country they gathered together to bring into the world.

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  • Our Road to Venezuela

    George Rebane

    [This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 27 March 2019.]

    Socialism used to be the third rail of American politics, no more.  A form of governance that requires and ever-larger government to handle the people’s everyday affairs was anathema after WW2, especially with the country having had its brief love affair with socialism during FDR’s depression years.  Ever since the Great Society’s programs began to get traction in the 1970s, the workings of socialism in America, if not its name, became more and more acceptable as our governments created more programs every year to solve this or that social problem, most of which its then previously entrenched programs had created.

    Every economic slowdown and recession since then has been an opportunity for liberals to introduce and launch more ‘people oriented’ programs, the first purpose of which was to buy votes to re-elect those politicians promising the new largess to be paid for with other people’s money.  Funding these required ever higher taxes and more borrowing.  And each one created more Americans who could not conceive of getting along without a regular government check.

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  • Kim Strassel on the Real Scandal (updated 27mar19)

    [“Americans deserve a full accounting of the missteps of Comey and the FBI.”  So argues WSJ’s Washington columnist Kimberley Strassel in the paper’s 25mar19 edition (here).  The real scandal has been a burr under my blanket for a very long time, and I was going to compose some pithy rhetoric on the injustice that has cloaked that entire sordid affair.  Then I read Strassel’s piece, and that lady puts it together better than I could, and most certainly in a more civil format.  So I’m doing a first for RR here, and filching the entire piece for your reading pleasure.  But lest you mistake my editorial retreat, I am pissed and will remain so until I see some semblance of an appropriately transparent and vigorous investigatorial draining of that swampy part of the Deep State.  gjr]

     

    Mueller Is Done, Now Probe the Real Scandal

    Kimberely A. Strassel

    Attorney General William Barr has reported to Congress that special counsel Robert Mueller has cleared President Trump and his campaign team of claims of conspiring with Russia during the 2016 election. This is more than an exoneration. It’s a searing indictment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as a reminder of the need to know the story behind the bureau’s corrosive investigation.

    Mr. Mueller’s report likely doesn’t put it that way, but it’s the logical conclusion of his no-collusion finding. The FBI unleashed its powers on a candidate for the office of the U.S. presidency, an astonishing first. It did so on the incredible grounds that the campaign had conspired to aid a foreign government. And it used the most aggressive tools in its arsenal—surveillance of U.S. citizens, secret subpoenas of phone records and documents, even human informants.

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  • Sandbox – 25mar19

    [OK boys and girls, now it’s time to talk about the massive mega-lies the Democrats and their lamestream media lackeys have been telling us for the last two years.  To begin, I have to confess to a large error, before Russiagate I thought that the journalistic profession was the demonstrated refuge of mostly ass-kissing ignorameouses, my opinion of the commentariat and the news media was pretty low.  I was totally off base, because it wasn’t anywhere near low enough.  They have demonstrated and continue to demonstrate themselves as a herd of evil snipes who have no regard for their lightly read audiences as they continue their crusade of lies and innuendo to bring down a legitimately elected administration, diverting the electorate’s attention from its achievements and urgent national needs – e.g. education, immigration, debt, … .   gjr]

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  • Ruminations – 23mar19 (updated 25mar19)

    George Rebane

    Thought I’d try something different on this cloudy and wet Saturday morning.  The Mueller report is in AG Barr’s hands, and from the early assessments it is a nothing burger for the TDS Dems.  If so, they are looking at it merely as a speed bump on the road to Trump’s impeachment, which we are assured will follow when the next tranche of “clear evidence” of some, any, wrongdoing will be dug up by the Left’s congressional witch hunts that have yet to get their second wind.  I’m going to hold back my sage assessment of the progress toward nailing the president before the 2020 election.

    That China’s going to eat our lunch seems like a much more relevant issue to dwell on.  So argues AI expert and prominent VC Kai-Fu Lee in his AI Super-Powers – China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (2019).  Lee, a Chinese national, has impressive credentials – Google’s speech recognition head, then chief of Google China, then major VC funding AI start-ups here and in China.  He goes into great detail outlining our two countries’ different approaches to AI/products development and marketing, and the mentality of the entrepreneurs involved.  The punchline is that China has caught up or soon will in all the major arenas of commercializing and researching AI.

    A careful read between the lines, makes me think that Lee really wrote this book for China’s communist leadership, complete with data-supported observations, comparative analysis, and critiques of both countries’ government support of their AI sectors.  He makes a case for state-controlled support of China’s AI, while carefully outlining the weaknesses of lawless competition and a command research environment that’s not all that conducive for creativity.  He ends the essay with a very hopeful vision of how AI-induced systemic unemployment may be alleviated (yes, Lee flies in tight formation with Rebane Doctrine on several important fronts).  The only big hole that I saw that he ignores the fact that half of our workforces have 2-digit IQs, and therefore cannot be ‘upskilled’ to fill future jobs.  Lee sees them providing the human touch and delivering “love” in human2human caregiving work.  No matter, for those interested in the last great century of Man, this is a worthy read.

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  • Sandbox – 20mar19

    [The Dems want to bump up SCOTUS membership so that they can also have a majority in that branch of government, and do away with the Electoral College to "make every vote count", and give the Hormonal Hordes with WIP brains the vote.  And if that's not enough, then do away with the 1A and 2A, and, aw hell, just do away with the Constitution while we're at it.  The fundamental transformation of America as promised.  gjr]

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  • NZ Massacre – the Left’s new perfect storm

    “Conservatism is corporatism in disguise.  I want no part of it. … The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China. … Conservatism is dead, thank God.”  Australian Brenton Tarrant, NZ shooter

    George Rebane

    The Christchurch massacre has been covered extensively and also received an initial go-through by RR commenters.  As always happens in the coverage of such massacres, they are characterized as ‘insane’, ‘the acts of a deranged person’, and ‘senseless killings’.  I have always thought that we’re missing something significant about these mass killings when we dismiss them as such.  Years ago, I gave my own take on these killers of the Islamic persuasion in ‘Of Ragheads and Racism’.  However, it should be clear that those sentiments are not restricted to terrorists of only one persuasion; there is a lot happening in this world which requires a wider and more detailed look.

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  • Scattershots – 18mar19 (updated 21mar19)

    George Rebane

    Sen Liz Warren wants to reduce the size of big techs.  As we know, big corporations get that way and survive by practicing the fine art of corporatism.  That means essentially working with politicians and bureaucrats to buy competitive advantage through laws, regs, taxation, etc (all the ways that govt mangles markets) in exchange for contributing their monies through various channels to assure re-election success.  If Warren were an honest woman, she would know that corporations automatically resize themselves once you pull out the mechanisms of govt support.  IBM and GE discovered that for themselves.  There is nothing magical about big centrally controlled bureaucracies in the private sector being more efficient than the same organizational structures in government – both ultimately reach an inefficient size.  Corporations must suffer the uncompromising feedback from competitive markets, while governments – with the power of the gun – are immune to productive feedback and can keep on screwing up forever.  (more here)

    TechTestJr 2019 was given on 5-6 March at the corporate campuses of AJA Video and Telestream (NC Tech Connection is also a corporate sponsor).  This year over 100 fifth through eighth graders took the STEM merit scholarship test which is sponsored and administered by the Sierra Economics and Science Foundation.  TTjr was launched eight years ago by Mr Mike McDaniel, and board member Mr David Pistone has been the director of TTjr for the last six years.  TechTest2019 for Nevada County juniors and seniors will be administered again this year on 30 March (9-1pm) in the NUHS Science Lecture Hall.  This is TT’s 13th year as the county’s premier merit scholarship test for students heading for STEM majors in college.  The annual test is preceded by two seminars of which I gave the last one this past Saturday morning at NUHS.  (I have written the test and given these seminars since the beginning, and am now in the process of turning over the writing and reins of this project to younger turks.)  NUHS math teacher Mr Kevin Baker is the TT Academic Coordinator who will administer the test. (more here)

    Union columnist George Boardman followed Clerk-Recorder and Registrar of Voters Greg Diaz off the rails with his 18mar19 column repeating the fake news with his “WHY DOES the Nevada County Tea Party want to discourage people from voting in the special election? Are they afraid the wrong Republican will win?”  This politically motivated error was covered in my last KVMR commentary, ‘Election Integrity – one more time’.  Mr Boardman’s insistence that he views our fables and follies “… from the center stripe” continues to bring a smile to those who can clearly see from which side of the road he continues to do his reporting.

    [20mar19 update] Brainless Beto in the White House? Now there’s a jarring thought argued by David Marcus in The Federalist (here) “Beto O’Rourke looks a lot more like recent Democrats who won the White House than any other candidates. Don’t underestimate him.”  And rubbing salt into such a wound, that lightweight promises to pick one of the Democrats’ female proto-communists as a running mate.  Can you imagine an O’Rourke/Warren or O’Rourke/Harris or … ticket?  Such a revoltin’ possibility most certainly will cramp the cockles of me heart.

    Reparations for blacks is on the Democrats’ marquee again.  All the usual collectivist congress critters are signing up for that proposal as a sure-fire way to insure the black vote in 2020.  Jason Riley asks “How can centuries-old oppression be to blame for problems that became sever only recently?” (here)  And no one dares mention the ‘reparations’ (e.g. Sec 8) that have been continually paid to blacks since the Great Society days, all to no avail as the Democrat mismanaged inner cities have become killing fields for drugs and crime, and home to millions of unmarried single moms trying to raise and educate their kids.  So we see once more how keeping them on the Democrats’ plantation works – they are always there, ready and willing, when their masters beckon with another manufactured social injustice.

    [21mar19 update]  Democrats continue leftward march. The party is now starting to show some cracks as the more saner members try to put on the brakes.  In these parts the local lefties have been totally unaware of this massive ideological lurch which shifted into high gear under Obama.  These pages are replete with our leftwing commenters’ arguments dunning the ‘ignorance’ of the conservative readers for not being aware that, according to their dim lights, the Dems have not moved, but it’s been the Repubs who are drifting right.  This same knowledge base is amply reflected here in their other fractured assessments of the country’s goings on.  Here’ a hot flash for our lefties, the Repubs are also worried that their more mushy members are beginning to kowtow to the Dems’ proto-communists. (more here)

    LeftwardDems

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