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  • Ruminations – 17feb17 (updated 20feb17)

    George Rebane

    ‘We are not a democracy’ is again patiently explained by Ms Cindy Hren in today’s Union.  Numerous times in history has the Left led the least-read into social cesspools as they followed banners screaming ‘Democracy Now!’  They know not for what they wish.

    Climate change hysteria abating?  Am I not monitoring the correct news channels?  Because it seems that the voices of preventable manmade global warming are becoming shriller as they are crowded onto the back benches of public concerns.  There appears to be a growing tide of comprehensible information today that illuminates the doubtful, deficient, and doctored climate data, highlights the missing or mangled climate science touted by self-made ‘scientists’, and finally exposes the malformed, misused, and politically manipulated models predicting our certain doom unless the objectives of Agenda21 are adopted quickly and globally.

    It continues to amaze me that johnnie-come-latelies like Hawking and Musk are credited by the media as being some kind of AI visionaries when they are nothing of the kind.  However, their recent epiphanies, added to their celebrity status, are helping to awaken our politicians to something of which we professionals have been warning them for over 20 years.  Bottom line – let them promote and bask in their ‘new insights’; we will all benefit if we address systemic unemployment sooner than later.

    President Trump’s new US policy of getting our Arab ‘allies’ to police their own rogue nations and fanatical ragheads is a refreshing change.  And he understands that we should help them militarily only when our national interests are directly threatened – e.g. attempting to blockade the Strait of Hormuz or again attacking Israel.  Our relationship with Russia should be conducted strictly on a Skinnerian behaviorist (q.v.) basis to operationally condition their actions on the world stage.  Today Russia has no idea of how it could benefit by normalizing its domestic policies within its current borders so as to invite foreign investment to develop its natural resources, harness its considerable intellectual capital, and hold Islam at bay.  Russia’s deteriorating demographics demand alliances with similar cultures to oppose real enemies along its entire southern border from Vladivostok to (now) Sevastopol.  A weak and collapsing/fragmenting Russia serves no American interests.  Our new president seems to understand that.

    [Update] The Left’s fake news factory was in full swing today since their nationwide general strike of immigrants was an unqualified bust.  Their union schools are hyperventilating that “we have to protect our families and our children” from the ongoing massive ICE “sweeps and round-ups” of ‘immigrant families’.  The leftwing schools are handing out propaganda leaflets and instructions to children on what they should do when the nasty ICE people show up at their door.  ICE denies that any of these Gestapo tactics are being used, especially against illegal aliens who have no criminal records.  ICE reports that this month they have arrested 680 criminal aliens.  This is not unusual since during Obama’s administration they arrested 2,900 in September 2011, 3,100 in April 2012, and 2,059 in March 2015 without the lamestream raising a peep.  Today we are led to believe that anti-illegal alien pogroms are sweeping the land with screaming parents and children being separated and hauled away to deportation detention camps.

    [18feb17 update]  Voice of America has laryngitis.  VoA is one of many government sponsored organs and institutions that have quietly been subverted by our leftwing Deep State.  The international broadcaster was formed to disseminate American values, republican governance, and capitalist enterprise to populations government by leftwing autocracies and theocracies – in short, it was our ideological trumpet to the world.  But in the intervening years it has now become an "irrelevant" music station on the putative theory that it was MTV that 'brought down the Wall'.  Robert Riley, former VoA director who now directs the Westminster Institute, gives us the background of how the rot is quietly spreading. (here) 

    The Orville Dam fiasco demonstrates again that if there is a problem, then government is guilty until proven innocent.  It appears that the regulators and state poobahs in charge of dams maintenance have been their old selves – imperialistic, full of hubris, and unbelievably ignorant.  Now our Democrat betters will still not build additional reservoirs to store water in the wet years, and are having trouble using the state's 'rainy day fund' ($8B) to finance fixing our infrastructure.  Moonbeam is hoping that Trump will get the folks in Ohio to pay for it.

    [20sep17 update]  Our own Reinette Senum has started her own blog – The Foghorn Express – and it's about time.  On it she promises to feature "STORIES, HYPOTHESIS & POSSIBILITIES BEYOND THE FOG".  I sincerely hope that she will offer more than one hypothesis, or if not, it will be a real humdinger to keep us occupied for some time.  It will be interesting to see how my friend Reinette will manage her commenters according to the standards that she has set.  In any event, Welcome Reinette!, the Left does need a courageous if not coherent outlet to expand on their ideas for local living that will accept a variety of responses ranging from the thoughtful to, yes, even the 'craven'.  RR is proud to add you to Our Links.

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  • Sandbox – 16feb17

    [Many apologies for having closed the 12feb17 sandbox without opening a new one – I really did mean to do that instantly, but somehow it fell through the crack with all the other debates going on below my subsequent posts.  Mea culpa.  That said, all I ask is that if there's a recent topical post on a given subject/issue, then please enter your relevant comments into its comment stream.  Much grass.  gjr]

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  • Are we ready for an economic liftoff?

    George Rebane

    EconFreedom2017Are we ever!  Heritage just released its 2017 Index of Economic Freedom (more here) for the nations of the stuck in the middle of a muddle of countries that can’t seem to get their act together.  (Top ten shown)  For us it is doubly troubling because however our burgeoning socialist population has been taught to think otherwise, Calvin Coolidge’s abbreviated dictum – ‘The business of America is business’ – must be observed today more than ever.  (H/T to reader for the heads up)

    Instead, the US economy has been purposely kept in the doldrums during the Obama regime, not because we didn’t know how to kick it back into gear, but only to serve a globalist ideology (cf Agenda21) which calls for the US to be reduced to economic and military peerage with other second world countries.  Woefully short on successes in his domestic and foreign policies, Barack Obama nailed his economic and military goals for the country.

    President Trump has his work cut out to rebuild the shambles he inherited.  The biggest problem that the US has to solve is how to reconfigure our economy so that the 70-90 million (and growing) systemically unemployed will remain as a socially stable cohort of Americans who can be supported by the rest of us.  Hint for the lightly read:  The last thing we need now is to import unskilled people from cultures that have declared their hatred for America.

    Also troubling is that our strong suit, technology development by entrepreneurial start-ups, is being discounted by other competing countries whose students have a different attitude about studying STEM subjects.  Germany is beginning to wake up and its government is finally promoting such start-ups.  For example, today Berlin’s commercial real estate rentals are hard to get and in great demand by start-up companies in a manner similar to the south-of-Market-St high tech boom that San Francisco has enjoyed.  We are already feeling the impact of these overseas young people with fire in their bellies.  (more here)

    Nevertheless, America is ready for a big change.  The investment world led the anticipatory fervor by putting its money in play during the 2016 election year.  One very visible indicator of this is that the market capitalization of the SP500 companies increased by a phenomenal 25% in one year, from $16T to $20T.  That’s how you spell ‘anybody but Obama’.

    All this is more supportive evidence that the socialists, led by their money mavens like the internationalist Soros, cannot afford to have President Trump and the Republicans succeed during the next four years.  America clearly voted for a radical change in November, and were that kind of success to happen, it would give the most obvious lie to everything that our socialists have been preaching for the last eight years, and also all that they have been rioting against and ‘disrupting’ since the votes were cast.

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  • Mexico’s Interference in US Intensifies (updated)

    George Rebane

    There is a big difference between yearning to be free and yearning to be more regulated; freedom and regulations sit on opposite ends of a seesaw.

    The one-sided assault on Trump and the Republicans continues to build.  Among the many assymetries are the claims the Russians materially influenced the election in favor of Trump, and how dastardly is such interference in another nation’s affairs.  However our Lefties raise nary an eyebrow with the years-long interference by Mexico in our internal affairs.  This enterprise is now picking up to a fever pitch with the Mexican government filing suit in our courts against the administration, with their 2018 presidential candidate on a US tour denigrating our president, and with thinly disguised and wealthy Mexican funded, pro-Reconquista organizations MALDEF and La Raza doing everything they can to roil the Hispanics – legals and illegals – living here.  (samples here and here)

    [update]  Here's more perspective on our idiotic immigration and illegal aliens policy from Ann Coulter who reminds of what happened in days gone by which has been conveniently forgotten by the Left.

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  • Ruminations – 13feb17 (updated 14feb17)

    George Rebane

    Americans have always been told to keep their powder dry; well, the Democrats want you to let government take over that job.

    Systemic unemployment, in conjunction with the Singularity a much discussed issue on these pages over the years, is now beginning to draw the attention of more and more analysts, commentators, and media outlets.  A reader and correspondent picked up this piece from PJ Media that acknowledges (here) that the disappearing jobs (even for the middle class) will not be replaced by new jobs to re-employ the growing cohort of the permanently redundant.

    [update]  Mr George Boardman, our intrepid columnist in The Union, today echoes (here) the liberal line that longtime school choice advocate and now SecEd Betsy DeVos is “unqualified” for her new job; so unqualified in fact that progressive punks physically denied her access to a school she was scheduled to visit.  But the real question for Mr Boardman is ‘If DeVos is an unqualified SecEd, what did all her qualified predecessors accomplish for America’s public education during the preceding decades?’  Take your time.

    [14feb17 update]  A passing note on retired Gen Flynn’s resignation.  He did the right thing to resign.  And he did the right thing to talk to his Russian contacts as a member of the duly elected incoming president’s team – such a conversation was neither a first in our history nor a violation of the Logan Act.  And he was unbelievably foolish to lie to VP Pence about the affair; it was for that that he had to go.

    LiberalConfusion

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  • Sandbox – 12feb17

    [The Oroville dam will be our biggest news for some days/weeks to come.  Will anyone take stock of the agencies that are supposed to be in charge of dam maintenance and reservoir management?  And how will the Left's resistance to the building of more reservoirs on the Sierra rivers to permit better management of water during dry years, and reduce stress on existing dams during wet years like the one we're having?  gjr]

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  • The Assault on Our Polity Intensifies

    George Rebane

    The Alt-Left appears now to have fully commandeered the operations and direction of the Democrat Party (here).  As reported in ‘Where Now Democrats?’ where their how-to manual, based on outright lies about the Tea Party, is their new playbook being exercised across the land.  The recent shoutdowns of Congessmen McClintock (CA) and Chaffetz (UT) are just two of the more nationally reported incidents.  The more local ones are just too numerous to report.

    Of the latter, I understand that the Nevada County Republican Women Federated is suddenly getting numerous calls for reservations for their next monthly luncheon on 21 February.  These callers state that their intent to attend that luncheon is just “to find out what your organization is all about”.  That this interest coincides with the scheduled speakers, who are the local area coordinators for Congressmen LaMalfa and McClintock, seems to be more than a coincidence.  We shall see if they follow their handbook and “agree beforehand … on a simple message focused on a current or upcoming issue (and) coordinate with each other to chant this message during any public remarks that your MoC makes.”

    But these are just minor leaguers of the Left.  The big guns that are already gearing up to do the real damage are the embedded rogue federal bureaucrats (here) on one end, and the Big Kahuna former-prez Obama on the other end (here).  After the election Obama promised to unite his followers under the network of leftist nonprofits led by ‘Organizing for Action’ so that “we can start cooking up all kinds of great stuff.”  The self-declared anti-Trump federal bureaucrats will be part of the disruptive Fifth Column that Obama is organizing and directing with his hand on the OFA tiller.

    Again, I have never seen this kind of political perfidy being carried out by any domestic opposition against a duly elected sitting president.  They are following the now classical teachings of Lenin through Saul Alinsky in how to subvert a government when their desperate means are no longer supported by voters.  Their patriotism is the equivalent of the deeply held religious fervor of the Islamic terrorists.  Both believe they are benefitting mankind in what to the rest of us is a dastardly enterprise.

    Bottom line – we have yet to see anything from the Democrats that in the past would have been characterized as the ‘loyal opposition’.  These people are freely admitting that they have relinquished the traditional road to return via the ballot box.

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  • Where Now Democrats? (updated 10feb17)

    George Rebane

    [This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 8 February 2017.]

    A lot has happened on both sides of the aisle in the last couple of weeks.  President Trump is off to a determined if not bumpy start to deliver on his campaign promises, and the Democrats …?  Well, they’re off to an even bumpier start which raises the real question – where are they going?  No one seems to know.  Their only objective is to don the ‘Party of No’ mantle and protest everything until the cows come home.  As a political party, don’t you have to do a bit more than that to have a hope in the 2018 elections; don’t you have to tell the voters what objectives you want to achieve other than throw sand in the gears of the Trump administration?

    Right off the top the Democrats have no top, no next generation leaders with ideas that make sense to a country which their old and existing leaders have managed to put into what feels like permanent doldrums cranking along with a screwed up foreign policy, and with even worse domestic policies.  They don’t seem to remember why they lost the last election, starting with the presidency and plunging wholesale into the states and counties.  It is clear that people wanted something different, something that might have a chance of working besides a rehash of the same ol’ same ol’ by the same old crew.

    (more…)

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  • The Democrats are blocking the way to make education great

    [Mr Norm Sauer, a retired attorney who lives in Nevada City, is a member of The Union Editorial Board and  a contributor to these pages.  This submitted piece also appears in the 8feb17 issue of the newspaper (here) and has garnered its expected vituperation from the usual suspects.]

    Norm Sauer

    A topsy-turvy upheaval characterized the start of Donald Trump’s presidency. Everything is in flux not seen since 1932 when Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated and distanced himself from Herbert Hoover. Mainstream Democrats and even Republicans are either infuriated or vexed over the outsider Trump.

    Giving President Trump his due, his inaugural speech recognized ‘the forgotten man,’ and reminded us that “… a nation exists to serve its citizens … When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice …”

    The media collusion with the Clinton campaign was endemic in the WikiLeaks email disclosures. The complicity destroyed any idea that establishment journalists are disinterested and principled. The press has turned from eight years of obsequiousness to frenzied hostility toward the White House: Senate filibusters are no longer subversive, but vital, and if Trump follows Obama’s example of presidential fiats, he will be considered seditious.

    Meanwhile, Democrats remain concerned that Obama’s legacy has destroyed the party. How can they continue to advocate identity politics but capture the irredeemable deplorables that cost them the Rust Belt states? Civil war exists between the party leaders, but it seems lessons have not been learned, nor are Democrats getting the message.

    Take, for example, the hearing vetting Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education.

    DeVos, a billionaire from Michigan, has endeavored as a dedicated philanthropist for 30 years to fulfill the goal that all parents, and primarily low-income parents, have the opportunity to choose the best educational setting for their children so that all children have the opportunity to fulfill their God-given potential. She is a natural champion for the voucher-based policies Trump has promoted to help poor families afford to send their children to private schools.

    My watching her being vetted in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee was instructive of political divide. While each Republican senator focused on the best interests of America’s children, the Democrat senators expressed no such concern.

    In an effort to appease teachers union bosses, the Democrats were tripping all over themselves to smear DeVos, each attack more bizarre than the next. An example is Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who questioned whether DeVos had ever run a bank: “Do you have any direct experience running a bank? Have you ever managed or overseen a trillion-dollar loan program?”

    DeVos politely answered no, and pointed out that neither of President Obama’s Education Secretaries, Arne Duncan and John King, had ever run massive banks either.

    Now, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) promises for himself and all Senate Democrats not to vote for DeVos based on an over-the-top claim that she would “single-handedly decimate our public education system if she were confirmed.”

    In discussing the state of public education in America, U. S. News & World Report offered a bleak and candid assessment: “In urban school districts across the country,” an education reporter wrote in 2015, “student performance is flat, poor, and minority students are experiencing staggering inequalities, and the picture is especially troubling for black students.”

    Is this the status quo Schumer and the Democrats want to protect? Why do they stand in front of the doors of failing schools to keep minority and other children in? Sadly, Democrats know where their bread is buttered, and as long as teachers’ union bosses keep doling out cash to Democrats, they will continue to treat America’s students as second-class citizens.

    President Trump and DeVos represent a new way of thinking. It is time to stop playing politics with our nation’s children, especially minorities and those of low income.

    Consider that many sectors in our economy are moving away from old business models and trending toward more personalization, service, and flexibility. People who pick up an iPhone, summon an Uber, or order concert tickets online don’t understand why they can’t choose from a menu of school options. As technology has become ubiquitous, we have been trained to expect more choices and more options.

    This trend toward individualism and choices has collided with the traditional district public education system and the powerful teachers unions that fund the Democrat Party. The education choice movement should consider vouchers, tax credits, education savings accounts, home schooling, charter schools, and private schools.

    We should all work together for reform that does something big and bold to help our nation’s greatest treasure — the next generation. Let us all work together to make an American education great again.

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  • Sandbox – 6feb17

    [Mr George Boardman, our beloved compatriot debater and member of The Union's considerable cadre of leftwing columnists, has again declared his true colors in today's 'Who's behind Calexit?' Therein he presents a pernicious conspiracy theory, blaming the whole movement on those dastardly conservatives.  "It appears to me that Calexit is being funded and supported by shadowy forces that are less interested in ridding California of its tormentors than makings the rest of the U.S. permanently red. That’s why Breitbart News and Infowars haven’t exposed this threat to the American Way of Life."  Calexit a threat to the American Way of Life??!!  Aside from that little bit of humor, my real question for our readers is what possible "Observations for(sic) the center stripe" can Mr Boardman hope to offer?  Perhaps he can expand on both claims.  gjr]

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32 comments on Ruminations – 17feb17 (updated 20feb17)