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  • Of Ragheads and Regressives

    George Rebane

    Mr Mike Thornton, former KVMR news director and current volunteer correspondent for the station, often reads and comments on these pages.  By all counts, Mike holds a firm and far left view of the world and its inhabitants.  He takes exception to being identified by any of the standard collectivist labels like ‘liberal’, ‘progressive’, ‘leftwinger’, and feels they are either too revealing or cast him in a pejorative light.  As a counter to that, Mike started referring to all other RR readers across the aisle from him as “regressives”, to which he clearly means to attach a pejorative connotation.

    Since ‘regressive’ is not a common reference to people of a conservative mien (nor a noun in the English language), I took him to task on the use of the concocted label and deleted his comments that carried gratuitous uses of ‘regressive’.  I have also asked him to share with us his unique definition of ‘regressive’ in the sense he means it in these pages (and elsewhere?).  As a template, I invited him to expand on his definition as I have done for  my use of ‘raghead’ – a definition which apparently eludes him and others of his ideology.  Nevertheless, in the comment stream to ‘AtPac Lawsuit – still seeking closure’ Mike has graced us with the following bagatelle on the label.  I consider that this piece sheds light on an important perception which is doubtlessly shared by many across the land, and therefore needs a more prominent place on these pages.  In his own words.

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  • AtPac Lawsuit – still seeking closure

    George Rebane

    Last week’s release of Clerk-Recorder Greg Diaz’s deposition in the AtPac lawsuit case (please see ‘AtPac Lawsuit – the Greg Diaz Deposition’ and its comment stream) was at the same time corroborating and revealing.  But in reading the deposition, I did find several surprises.  Let me say right away that I found Mr Diaz’s resume troubling back in 2008 when I supported Barry Pruett in that November’s election.  With the overwhelming support of our Board of Supervisors and the Rood Center establishment, Mr Diaz won in a walk.

    So here’s my take on our Clerk-Recorder from the written deposition and attendant video sequences.  My remarks are unequivocally biased by my almost half-century in technology development and experience as an executive in high tech enterprises.

    To start, I found Mr Diaz’s knowledge about the basic aspects of the systems that support his elected profession to be astoundingly shallow.  This was abetted by the fact that he had spent part of his career as a software salesman.  What added to this perception was that he demonstrated little interest to further educate himself about the fundamentals of the tools whose use he supervised daily.

    His apparent awareness of the goings on in Nevada County administration that impacted his job were minimal, and stated without any hint of contrition.  The man seemed to be expert at minimizing the scope of his responsibilities at every turn.

    From the provided description of how the Clerk-Recorder’s department was run, we find that he lacked the basic personnel management skills that would have allowed him to enforce the rules and staff discipline that always seemed to be to the county’s detriment and out of his grasp.  For example, the need for making notes and laying a useful paper trail of communications, that any manager would instinctively do, was apparently completely beyond his ken.  Instead we were treated to a stream of risible recollections and Monday-morning assessments that such procedures were either beyond his interest or unnecessary.

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  • Agenda 21 and the “Pod People”

    George Rebane

    Jo Ann and I have attended many local workgroups and meetings where the pod people were in obvious attendance.  These meetings presented ideas and plans for environmental harmony, smart growth, green jobs, local sustainability, and so on.  A recent one we attended involved sincere people who promoted the establishment of many small farms in Nevada County on which returning veterans and other dedicated souls would work to locally produce the food we eat while earning a ‘just living wage’ in the process.  The room was well populated with some of the most sincere pod people that we have seen in these parts.

    Pod people?  You’ll have to read the excellent piece – ‘The many tentacles of Agenda 21’ – by Judi Caler in the 3sep11 Union to get the full definition.  But if you’re old enough to remember ‘The Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, you’re well on your way to understanding.

    GlobalGovernance 

    RR readers are familiar with Agenda 21 and its American cousin ‘The American Dream Movement’ (here).  Agenda 21 is the UN’s comprehensive program to establish global governance in some TBD form whose common denominator is that the UN will evolve into the earth’s governing unit.

    Ms Caler’s piece is a well-written summary of how this agenda is overtly, and yet covertly, being implemented by thousands of feel-good consensus preliminaries promoted at local levels.  The article concludes with an invitation to become more informed about Agenda 21, and, hopefully, lend your weight behind initiatives to counter it and continue supporting the future of America as a constitutional sovereign nation-state, given us by the Founders and handed down to us by our forebears through the sacrifice of their blood, sweat, and tears.

    Recently a new organization formed in Nevada County to fight the monster that is Agenda 21: Reclaiming Our American Rights (ROAR!). If you would like to learn more about Agenda 21 and/or how you can help stop it locally, please contact unagenda21@hotmail.com or 530-559-0828.

    A good summary of Agenda 21 can be found at http://www.makingofahome.blogspot.com/2011/06/fascist-stealth-of-agenda-21.html .

    Agenda21_USA 

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  • When free speech goes …

    George Rebane

    [This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 2 September 2011.  Podcast here.]

    Please accept my apologies for the extended respite you have enjoyed over the last weeks from hearing the outrageous thoughts of KVMR’s lonesome conservetarian commentator.  August got unexpectedly busy with all kinds of matters involving travel and grandkids.  So let me try to make up for it here and now with some thoughts on God’s hand and free speech.

    On Rebane’s Ruminations a regular reader, who also happens to be Nevada County’s beloved cartoonist of Village Idiot fame, pointed out that Michelle Bachmann had joined the hand of God to the hurricane Irene.  The point being that here we saw exposed a possible primitive superstition in a candidate who wants to be President of the United States.  And the imparted conclusion being, what modern civilized American would ever accept someone as the nation’s leader, someone who thinks God can and does mess with weather.

    Let me quickly qualify that this is not a secular humanist observation held only by locals, but is a longstanding assessment of the national left.  ‘We can’t have those bible-thumpers anywhere near the Oval Office.’

    The inconvenient truth here is that God messing in the affairs of this universe and Man is a robust and fundamental tenet in all the world’s religions.  And this includes the belief systems of over 200M Americans who claim residence in the Judeo-Christian, Islamic, and Native American faiths.  Modern history overflows with national leaders publicly beseeching the Lord to intervene in their personal and their country’s behalf when faced with portents of manmade and natural disasters.  In recent times we didn’t sacrifice virgins; but then again, if that would have helped … I don’t know.

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  • More Signs of the Times – 2sep2011

    George Rebane

    As Barack Obama prepares his next economic fix speech, cartoonist Ramirez succinctly explains the shrinking president.  H/T to RR reader.

    Ramirez_Aug2011

    And from another RR reader, a sign of the times seen in Madison, Alabama.

    Alabama_2011sign

     

    And finally, Wal-Mart understands the American voter, perhaps, the best of anybody (see below).  The world’s largest merchandizer deals with them daily and knows their mind.  Such consumers arguably comprise a large segment of the independents and those ‘dependents’ making do on government transfer payments.  They barely read, are the totally innumerate product of our government school systems, and are dependable clay in the hands of political muckrakers.  California abounds with them, and Sacramento has long reflected their considered opinion of good governance.

    These people form a reliable and growing voting block for progressive candidates of either party who can communicate their promises in an appropriately simple format.  And they are the same voters which the so-called ‘moderate Republicans’ must attract if the party is to have any future in what we used to know as the Golden State (see also ‘Republicans Need a New Strategy’)

    Walmart_signage

    Exit question:  What kind of platform must California’s Republicans draft that 1) maintains its advertized ideological principles, and 2) attracts the vote of someone living on a government check for whom 15 must be translated as the fingers on three hands?

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  • ‘The Geopolitics of the United States’

    George Rebane

    Under that title STRATFOR has published a comprehensive two-part essay on how the country got here, and what portents it now faces.  For readers who frequent these pages, this essay is a must read.  It is tightly written, comprehensive, and sports the STRATFOR hallmark for clarity.

    An important takeaway from its reading is that countries are destined to do what they do according to the geo-strategic hand that they have been dealt.  In the case of America, we have become what we are through a confluence of specific factors that are led geography and only seconded by social policy.  The overarching conclusion is that, in the large, our domestic development and foreign ‘interactions’ are a product of much greater forces than just which political party has controlled what branches of government during which years – at least until recently.

    My only nit with the work was a little historical blip in which it claimed that Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet circumnavigating the globe (1907-09) led to the ‘opening up of Japan’.  It was actually Commodore Perry’s squadron of Black Ships pulling into what is today Tokyo harbor in 1854 that ended the 250-year isolationist reign of the shogunate and restored the Meiji emperor.  Japan thereafter went through a period of modernization on steroids that, in a scant 50 years, yanked it from its sclerotic middle ages into the 20th century as a modern country.  Its prowess was demonstrated in the Russo-Japanese War which Japan won when its fleet defeated the Russian navy in an epic sea battle fought in 1905.  (BTW, my grandfather fought in that war as conscript from czarist Estonia who was transported to Vladivostok on the trans-Siberian railroad – but I digress.)

    So I urge you to take the time and read this important offering from STRATFOR.  Its understanding should inform and liven – as if that were necessary – the discussions in these comment streams.  Enjoy.

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  • AtPac Lawsuit – the Greg Diaz Deposition (updated 5sep2011)

    George Rebane

    Regular RR readers are familiar with the lawsuit filed by local software company AtPac naming as defendants Nevada County, NC Clerk-Recorder Greg Diaz, and Aptitude Solutions, a Florida software company.  For months the community has been asking the county’s Board of Supervisors to reveal the whys and wherefores of what led to the lawsuit that was settled out of court earlier this summer at a TBD cost that has to date exceeded $2.5M.

    A key piece of peeling back the layers of the Rood Center onion is the long-awaited deposition given last May by Mr Diaz.  This deposition has now become available, and is accessible to RR readers here Download Diaz, Gregory ATPAC v. Aptitude.  The deposition, along with the attendant video of Mr Diaz being deposed, is even more revealing as to how business was (is?) being conducted by our county government.  I and others will have more to say about this after digesting the document.

    Readers wishing to review some of the background may want to read ‘County Dodges AtPac Bullet, but …’ and its predecessors.  These can be found by searching RR (upper left panel) with the keyword 'AtPac'.

    [1sep2011 update]  Barry Pruett's occasional blog Inside Nevada County Politics makes available (here) some of the Greg Diaz videos mentioned above.

    [5sep2011 update]  As promised, my thoughts after reading the Diaz deposition are found here.

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  • California Insanities #41,657 – Baby sitting bill (addended)

    George Rebane

    If it weren’t really happening, no one would believe it.  Well, actually a progressive would readily believe and promote it since they’re doing it now.  According to our Senator Doug LaMalfa, the idiots in Sacramento are pushing through a law (AB889) that would essentially do away with another job category in California, and further restrict liberty in a state that is already at the bottom of the US individual liberties pile.  The good senator reports –

    Under AB 889, household “employers” (aka “parents”) who hire a babysitter on a Friday night will be legally obligated to pay at least minimum wage to any sitter over the age of 18 (unless it is a family member), provide a substitute caregiver every two hours to cover rest and meal breaks, in addition to workers’ compensation coverage, overtime pay, and a meticulously calculated timecard/paycheck. Failure to abide by any of these provisions may result in a legal cause of action against the employer including cumulative penalties, attorneys’ fees, legal costs and expenses associated with hiring expert witnesses, an unprecedented measure of legal recourse provided no other class of workers – from agricultural laborers to garment manufacturers. (On the bright side, language requiring an hour of paid vacation time for every 30 hours worked was amended out of the bill in the Senate.)

    [Addendum]  Lest the real point of AB889 is lost, let me add that this new law will criminalize a large family of economic behaviors that have benefitted households since time immemorial.  The law will apply to all household help where a paid non-family member provides personal services to another person.  Babysitting is just the tip of this insane iceberg.

    The major impact will be on families that have care-needy members who are ill, disabled, aged, and/or demented.  No longer will tens of thousands of such families be able to afford to have a trusted person come in for a few hours to help or relieve a family care-giver.  The entire employment situation will now have to be treated as if one was running a business with all the attendant worker dispensations, benefits, and payroll overheads added on.

    IMHO this bill is simply evil for what devastation it will wreak in the lives of people already burdened by the natural infirmities that will visit all of us.  And here we come to another example of the extreme stupidity that lies at the heart of any socialistic nanny state.

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  • Islamophobia – a rational response? (updated 1sep2011)

                            Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.  R. Clay Reynolds

    George Rebane

    As these pages long attest, for me the answer to the title question is a resounding YES.  And our western governments aid and abet that as being the reasonable response.  The progressive tsunami of proscribing anyone who evinces fear of Islam ranges from Mayor Bloomberg banning any and all inclusion of religion in the upcoming commemoration of 9/11 at Ground Zero, to Canadian police giving Muslims a pass on physically assaulting non-Muslims in public.  (Read this piece in the 2aug11 Toronto Sun by David Menzies)

    Hijab A more compelling and terrible look into the mind of Islam is the tragic story of a young Palestinian woman who lived in Gaza.  She was severely burned in a propane cooking accident about a year ago.  Requiring more treatment than available in Gaza, she and her care givers pleaded with Israeli officials at the border checkpoint to be allowed to seek help at a nearby Israeli hospital.  She was given a compassionate pass, proceeded to the hospital where she received treatment for her burns, and after recuperating she was released to return home.

    A year later, she arrives with three small children at the same checkpoint in hijab (nearby picture), looking obviously pregnant, and requesting to revisit the hospital to be checked for how her healing has progressed.  The Israeli border guards sensed that something didn’t add up, and took her into custody.  She was placed into a now standard interrogation/isolation compound nearby and asked to disrobe.  Thereupon and in great distress, she confessed that she was a suicide bomber with a mission to go into the same crowded ward where she received her treatment, and then, surrounded by medical personnel and patients, she would detonate herself.

    The Israeli video here shows the last moments of her interrogation and her detonating the twenty pounds of high explosive she had strapped to her belly.  It is a devastating record of a dedicated and determined servant of Allah willing to kill without mercy the very people who showed her kindness and compassion, and all for the sole purpose that they were the most proximal infidels that in her zeal she could reach.  That consideration overarched everything else in her life.

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  • Ruminations – 28aug2011 (updated)

    George Rebane

    Irene, our second politicized hurricane, has failed to deliver on its pre-show publicity.  With the President rushing back to the White House situation room (shades of 'Dr Strangelove') to direct the national response to the advertised Armageddon Minus One, meanwhile the damn thing up and turns into a big rainstorm.  So there he sits wearing his 'FEMA One' jacket, pondering how many votes can still be salvaged before it all settles into just another tropical depression.

    In California the redistricting effort has turned into a fraudulent fiasco that now promises to give Democrats the super-majority they need to totally ignore Republicans in their eminently and imminently successful drive to turn our already federalized state into a vast wasteland of coastal welfare ghettos, parched agricultural valleys, and fleeing businesses.  Assemblyman Dan Logue reports that this year’s corporate exit rate is five times last year’s.   In the rear view mirror the tipping point is receding fast as CARB drives us forward in search of the promised green jobs, which, it turns out, are rarer than the delta smelt.

    The Digital Divide (remember the Clinton era) has been sighted again from the hallowed halls of UC Berkeley.  A recent study from their (where else?) sociology department laments that the Internet does not correctly represent the sentiments of all Americans since 25% of us have never been online.  Dr Jen Schradie, the study’s author, concludes, “What this means is that relying on the Internet for either a pulse of opinion or data is inaccurate at best and unjust at worst.” (emphasis mine)  Can anyone catch an early whiff of yet another federal program to impose one more layer of social justice across the land?

    [update]  I knew it; Russ Steele could not stay away from the political side of things.  Too much will happen in our county between now and November 2012 for him to sit idly by and only comment on RR and other local blogs.  So he just informed us that 'Is It 2012 in Nevada County Yet?' has launched.  It would be an unkind cut to muse that, dressed in new duds, NCMW has just been exhumed and given at least one more year of life.  So I won't do it.

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