Rebane's Ruminations

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January 2026
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  • Scattershots – 9feb24 (updated 17feb24)

    George Rebane

    KJP, Biden’s excuse for a press secretary, defended the president’s dementia – attested to in the recent special prosecutor Robert Hur report about his mishandling classified documents – by reading from a desperately compiled list of Republicans who have misspoken in the past.  That tack further illustrates how intellectually challenged are most members of Team Biden by confusing the constant stream of forgetfulness, mistakes, and malaprops that come out of our sitting president’s mouth with the one-offs that most mentally healthy people make now and then.  One can also counter this argument by pointing out that it isn’t ignorance about Joe’s condition at all, but intimate knowledge of the man’s incapability of handling spontaneous communications in the public forum.  Therefore, his exposure to such ‘opportunities’ must be minimized at all times during this election year.  Half the country’s consumers of lamestream media are also clueless about this aspect of the man they voted for.

    Another vast area of ignorance cum imbecility is shared by leftwing Californians who have no idea about the sources of the state’s tax revenues.  Over the years RR has contained numerous reports of the outlandish fraction of such revenues paid by ‘the rich’.  (e.g. 1% of top earning taxpayers pay 42% of our taxes while the bottom 70% pay just 11%.)  And most recently a column by Thea Hood in the 12jan24 Union (here) detailed the percentages as reported by various state agencies.  She was immediately attacked by local socialists who would have none of it, claiming that such numbers are nothing but rightwing propaganda, proving again that not only can you have your own opinions, but also your own convenient facts.  And some call this the information age?

    “Sam Altman Seeks Trillions of Dollars to Reshape Business of Chips and AI.  OpenAI chief pursues investors including the U.A.E. for a project possibly requiring up to $7 trillion.” (more here)  All of this is due to the massive processing and storage requirements needed for training large language models (LLMs), today’s epitomy of machine intelligence that has the potential to surpass humans in every conceivable task and will create markets for microchips and energy that cannot be supplied by today’s industry and infrastructure.  Altman is attempting to prepare for those days, and wants most of the new chip plants to be built in the US.  But I predict that our anti-American socialists will do all that they can to throw sand in those gears like they are already doing in Arizona to slow progress on the new big chip factory being built there.  For global collectivists America cannot remain the world's hegemon.

    [11feb24 update] Review time.  A conspiracy is usually defined as “an unlawful, harmful, or evil plan formulated in secret by two or more persons.”  In actuality the conspiracy need not have a dark side, but could also be something benevolent that is planned in secret by two or more persons.  And labeling something as a ‘conspiracy theory’ does not necessarily mean that it is false.

    Maintaining our open southern border has been planned and perpetrated as an anti-American conspiracy by the Left.  Inviting millions of illegal aliens to irretrievably spread themselves across our land is in fact unlawful, harmful, and evil to the extent that it foments the destruction of our culture and political structure, to replace it by a governance that promotes globalism through the destruction of the United States into a powerless second-world socialist country.  The lamestream media deny this conspiracy; and even Fox News is afraid to explain it to their audiences, leaving that to individual commentators who are then labeled ‘far right’ and ‘radical’.  This goes on as the Biden administration has no better explanation for their unconstitutional conspiracy other than repeatedly parroting the blatant lie that “the border is secure.”

    [14feb24 update]  A couple of climate scumbags were arrested in the National Archives for throwing pink powder on the protected display of the US Constitution.  These people confirm daily the many ways they hate America.  Do not be fooled that the climate activists among us are loyal Americans.  The evidence against that notion abounds.  (more here)

    [17feb24 update]  FCC bans AI-voiced robocalls in wake of ‘Biden’ calls to NH residents.  Well, it’s started.  Scammers have begun using the new AI-voicing technology to convince consumers, voters, et al of thins being true that really aren’t.  And the voice over their telephones sounds very convincing.  It will be interesting to see how the FCC and the states’ attorney generals are able to enforce such censorship.  When this technology is combined with already existing video synthesizing real people saying wrong things, then the media consumers are really flummoxed because the scam messages will be marbled in with the authentic video and audio segments, and no one will be able to tell the difference.  News outlets will have a new challenge in vetting such media and convincing their audiences of the authenticity of what they broadcast. (more here)

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  • Border Bill Smoke and Mirrors

    George Rebane

    The ongoing debate in the Swamp about how to fix the border comes down to two competing bills – HR2 and the Senate's ‘bipartisan’ travesty being foisted on the unknowing.  The only true border security bill is HR2 as illustrated in the graphic comparison below provided by the Heritage Foundation.

    BorderBills_2024

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  • Sandbox – 6feb24

    [We must never forget that Biden inherited the most secure border in our history, which he opened up to 11,000,000 illegal aliens that have poured in during the 3 years of his administration.  In the interval he has continued to declare the border “secure”, but now declares the border crisis to be Trump’s fault.  Talk about being the nation’s mega-liar who has successfully bamboozled the intellectually challenged half of the nation’s population.  gjr]

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  • Iran still gets a pass

    George Rebane

    Our cowardly president gives us more reasons daily to loath him and fear his administration.  Among his ongoing tsunami of lies is the blatant whopper that he has done all he can to secure our borders, confident that his ignorant constituents know nothing about how President Trump implemented his border policy with illegal entry rates that were more than an order of magnitude lower than what Bumblebrain has foisted on the country during his watch.  Now he is fearful of starting a war with Iran after that country has been at war with us for years, and has been freely attacking our ships, bases, and killing our troops.

    As noted previously in these pages, Rebane Doctrine has called for the destruction of Iran's infrastructure that generates terror supporting revenues in violation of established but unenforced sanctions, and lets it now direct attacks on American bases, naval forces, and international shipping.  The idiot does not understand that in warfare it only takes one to tango.

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  • Sandbox – 27jan24

    [Law professor Turley of George Washington University makes the case that in the Texas vs Feds border tussle, Biden has the upper hand over Gov Abbot.  And it’s got nothing to do with justice, executive responsibility, or what the Constitution requires.  It’s all about how our corrupt courts will adjudicate the matter in favor of the administration (more here and here).  gjr]

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  • Scattershots – 25jan24 (updated 4feb24)

    George Rebane

    Evidence of the impassable gulf between the minds of dedicated collectivists (leftists, progressives, Marxists, wokes, …) and forms or reasoning/logic that work.  From that tribe a local worthy (Richard Howell here) contends that California’s offering free health care to illegal aliens does not impact their decisions to make our state their new home.  His understanding of human nature is that offering more benefit for some behavior does NOT encourage more of such behavior (Pavlov and Skinner call your office).  This fundamental chasm of ignorance is shared by members of our one-party state legislature who continue to make the public policies that power the Great California Exodus.

    “I am SOMEBODY and I deserve full equality” reads one of the signs held by some of California's universities’ hunger-striking students here illegally.  The Daily Californian describes the participating students’ hope “that the strike will encourage the university to accept a proposal allowing for the hiring of undocumented students. Currently, undocumented students cannot hold any campus job, including research and teaching assistant positions.”  Apparently the plethora of benefits they already receive for being ‘somebody’ able to fog a mirror in California are not sufficient.  Nowhere in this discussion is mentioned the current availability of such jobs for students here legally.  (more here)

    [31jan24 update]  The Pentagon prepares its cadres to fight domestic “rightwing terrorism” as one of its high hard operational objectives.  No one knows from what basis the DOD has adopted the suppression of domestic terrorism of any hue as one of its operational mandates.  Here is the latest on its internal efforts to spread the word and alert its cadres to imminent danger.  From their announcement of the meeting we read, “They (… the 2015 mass murder at a historic Black church in Charleston and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol) are the latest flashpoints in a process that has been unfolding for decades, in which vast conspiracy theories and radical ideologies such as white supremacism, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, and hostility to government converge into a deadly threat to democracy. … This talk, derived from the speakers’ new book, God, Guns, and Sedition (Columbia Univ. Press) discusses the rise of far-right terrorism in the United States, the impact of U.S. domestic terrorism on our foreign policy and our allies, and policy recommendations to counter far-right terrorism.”

    [4feb24 update]  Illegals can vote in Arizona, “even though it’s a felony under federal law for an alien to register and vote”.  And then receiving a voter registration card, the illegal alien can use that as a bona fide identity to apply for and qualify for all kinds of additional government goodies.  Anti-American Democrats are, of course, all for it as another of their reliable vote buying gimmicks.  (more here)

    Gavin Newsom, the Brylcreem Kid, let slip again how incredibly ignorant he is about almost everything to do with what’s happening in California, and how Democrat policies continue to damage California and its wealth producing citizens.  He was shopping in retail store while it was being openly robbed by a gang of thieves.  When they left, he excoriated the store’s staff for not doing anything to stop them.  His diatribe made it clear that he had no idea that today such thievery is perfectly legal in California, and the store’s employees are legally liable if they do anything to impede the thugs or the robbery in progress.  Police no longer respond to nor do the district attorneys prosecute such obvious criminality.  In response, stores are now moving out of (mostly poor) neighborhoods where such behavior has become the norm.  Another Democratic gift that keeps on giving as our culture spirals into the mud. (more here)

                                                       

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  • A Worthy Extension of Federalism

    George Rebane

    We see that SCOTUS has given the feds permission to remove some razor wire barricades from federal land on the Mexican border.  This permission enables the anti-American Biden administration to enable more illegals to easily enter the United States.  No consideration was given to national security in the ruling which included two so-called conservative justices. (more here)

    Most of us know that the US Constitution primarily limits the powers of the federal government to those specifically delineated in the document.  Powers absent are reserved for the states and its more local jurisdictions.  The federal government is mandated by law to carry out and implement certain specified powers, among the leading is to provide for and maintain national security.  This definitely includes securing the nation’s borders so that only lawful transit is both authorized and made possible.

    Unfortunately, the Constitution is silent when it comes to the enforcement and execution of its provisions and derived laws when the federal government cannot or will not carry out its obligations.  According to Rebane Doctrine, in such cases the natural and rational solution is to expand federalism by authorizing the states to fulfill such obligations and implement the functions of the absent federal government.  A corollary to such a ruling would be to then prohibit the federal government from interfering with the states as they fulfill the constitutional obligations abandoned by the feds.

    This new protocol could be implemented by a SCOTUS ruling in response to, say, a suit brought by any state harmed by the feds’ delinquent behavior.  The ruling would then set an enduring precedent like other such SCOTUS rulings.  Of course, if it were deemed sufficiently important, then the ruling could be promoted into a constitutional amendment.  According to my lights, recognizing this clarifying extension has become necessary as our country becomes more fractionated with large numbers of states in frequent disagreement with a federal government that often acts unconstitutionally.

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  • AI in the Medium and Message

    George Rebane

    Argentina’s president Javier Milei delivered an important speech at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.  In it he described the history of Argentina’s tragic descent from being one of the world’s leading developed countries, enjoying the fruits of free market capitalism, to a nation today with a destitute and chaotic economy after it began reorganizing itself under various forms of collectivism centered on socialism.  The speech is an excellent and well-delivered warning to that annual conclave of true-believer globalists.  You can view it here in its entirety – I recommend it.

    But perhaps the equally or even more important aspect of the speech was the mode of its delivery.  You see, Milei delivered the speech in Spanish to a live audience who wore ear pieces to get a realtime English translation by a human translator. Yet in the above video of the speech Milei delivered it in perfectly accented English in his own voice.  The video was generated offline by an LLM AI that correctly coded his voice and modified the video image to perfectly synchronize his lips to express the English delivery.  (Here is the follow-up to illustrate the human-translated version of the video.)

    The astute reader will instantly understand that this speaker could have been made to deliver any kind of speech desired at that WEF venue.  Such translations will soon become realtime in the sense that the actual speaker speaking in language L3 delivering message M7 will be seen and heard on monitors and/or live broadcasts to speak in language L12 delivering message M5.  For the latter we will need the source file to contain metadata on facial expressions and, perhaps, gestures etc – all in the realm of today’s offline large language AI models.

    For good or ill, in these pre-Singularity years this is what we now have to look forward to from here on.  And this election season will no doubt provide us with examples of both.

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  • Ruminations – 17jan24 (updated 21jan24)

    George Rebane

    Threats to democracy?  While the Marxist left continues to trumpet that the elected Trump will be a “threat to democracy” (no evidence of that from his previous administration), the Biden and Newsom administrations are the existential and accomplished threats to democracy as witnessed through the overflowing record of their ‘accomplishments’ to reduce freedoms on all fronts, increase confiscatory tributes on all Americans, trash any notion of national security through our mega-porous southern border, and invite an already growing list of international conflicts through our daily demonstrated national weakness.  Our Left cannot wait to hand over the country to the tender ministrations of the global elites.

    Speaking of the mega-influx of illegal aliens, sociologists and political scientists have long demonstrated through the historical record that it takes an influx of only 5% of a foreign cultural element to destabilize the culture and governance of a host country.  The Democrats have reached this threshold through their planned “undocumented immigration” policy by allowing the uncontrolled release of more than twelve million aliens to join the already resident millions of the disaffected counter-cultured who are beholden to the unabashed purchase of their votes through leftwing wealth redistribution programs.

    [21jan24 update]  “Iran and Pakistan are both nuclear capable.”  So reported Fox News the other day in covering their recent exchange of missiles.  Now if that were really true, would you not think that this would make banner headlines worldwide, and Israel would be delivering bunker busters to appropriate sites in that terror-sponsoring Islamic republic?  Don’t know how that piece of bull pucky got past their editors.

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  • Sandbox – 16jan24

    [Trump's Iowa win makes it clear that from here on out only his lip will sink his ship.  gjr]

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25 comments on Scattershots – 9feb24 (updated 17feb24)