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  • Ignorance Mongering on 2nd Amendment Rights

    George Rebane

    The Union reports on the efforts of Amanda and Nick Wilcox of Penn Valley.  This couple is working for the passage of AB962, the assembly bill seeking to add further constraints to the sale of handgun ammunition.  In a recent RR post I wrote –

    Our Founders understood that governments operate on the edge of evil.  Therefore they wrote into our Constitution the provisions by which our new government would always remain responsive to its citizens, not by the goodwill of honorable and incorruptible politicians, but by the direct means of armed revolt when our leaders finally step over that edge.  The existence of this desperate but necessary redress has not escaped the elites who are forever dedicated to constraining our behavior to fit into their template of a politically correct Homo Perfectus.

    Last year a similar bill AB2062 was defeated, and AB962 is this year’s indefatigable follow-on.

    What makes the newspaper’s report a bit sad is the ignorance of this good-hearted couple in their belief that AB962 is only a limited, single-purposed prescription to stop gun use for criminal activities, and by people who are already proscribed from using firearms. They, along with their equally simple compatriots, think that passing another liberty limiting law, on top of those already not being enforced, will this time improve things.  I choose to believe the pair is not practicing perfidy – as are the leftwing politicians in Congress – in their seemingly innocent and grief motivated support of incremental gun control.

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  • Again, “Do Nothing … Sooner!”

    George Rebane

    LvonMises I have cited this advice from Ludwig von Mises since the federal bailouts and stimulus packages started gaining traction.  The last post on this was in January, and it generated a reasoned debate between two RR readers.  The real objectives of the TARP and ARRA money bags was to increase the size/role of government across our land, and paying off union votes by keeping the auto companies from filing for bankruptcy at the proper time.  But Team Obama may have made a mistake by being too specific when selling their spending and printing plans.  They showed us something against which we can measure performance – a big no-no for a politician.

    From the graphic below (augmented from powerlineblog.com, and a H/T to Russ Steele for the alert on this.), it appears that we’re now spending the prescribed trillions, and producing even higher unemployment than the President’s mavens predicted.  True to form, no one in the politburo knows how to centrally manage this economy.  And behold, Sec Treasury Geithner finally admitted on PBS Charlie Rose yesterday that the Fed had a major role in building the credit bubble during the last six years.  Given all the almost free money, the banks and consumers seemed to have acted more reasonably than they have been accused.

    Didn’t someone say, ‘When you’re already in a hole, stop digging!’?  Call your electeds. 

    Unemployment

     

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  • Singularity Signposts – 11may2009 ‘Physical Intelligence’

    George Rebane

    Brain Physical Intelligence (PI) is the latest AI paradigm added to the efforts to develop machines smarter than humans.  A few days ago DARPA (Defense Projects Research Agency), the people who brought you the Internet and other spooky things you shouldn’t know about, posted a notice announcing informational workshops as a preamble to issuing RFPs (Request for Proposal) for PI research and developments.  A more accessible description of PI is given in this Wired post.

    You can look at PI as the latest addition to modeling human brain function using the formalisms of mathematics and physics – i.e. these are physical processes described by sets of equations which describe how the brain senses, processes, decides, issues orders, and so on.  Maybe PI will even explain and implement how it (some matter and energy) becomes conscious with a sense of self and ability to synthesize aspirations of what it wants to do or become.  PI will join such approaches as hierarchical temporal memory to build complex substrates that may become intelligent.

    Again, dear Reader, don’t think about any of these steady and accelerating steps toward Singularity as efforts where humans presume to ‘program’ a computer to be smart like a human.  ‘Smart like a human’ is most likely beyond human programming capacity – for you techies, it’s something to do with self-reference and Gödel’s Theorem (or in this case Gödel’s Constraint).  Instead, the more promising approach is to fashion physical brains as very complex and adaptive systems that then can learn like we did as babies and children – but, of course, learn much more rapidly.

    So DARPA is going to sponsor this work under its national security charter, which may or not be a bit scary.  People like me, who spent a good part of their lives designing and building spooky systems for the government, are always on the lookout for the dark side of success in such areas.  The more light that shines on this work in the coming years, the better.  And it may all happen very fast, we will never know.

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  • Ruminations – 10may2009

    George Rebane

    VictoryDay 
     
    Few picked up “We are sure that any aggression against our citizens (italics added) will be given a worthy reply,” President Dmitry Medvedev said in a speech in Red Square side-by-side with powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.  In this ‘Victory Day’ celebration reminiscent of the old days of Cold War Communism, Russia is again threatening its neighbors – the countries that it invaded and annexed during the expansion of the USSR.  Russia today threatens to invade you, not for violating its territorial interests, but for aggressing “against our citizens” of which there are millions (of ethnic Russians) left in the neighboring countries.  (They were too smart to go back to Russia when the USSR collapsed.)  We recall Russia did exactly that when its “citizens” in Georgia were judged by Moscow to be in peril.  Most ethnic Russians in the neighboring countries take their orders from Moscow while holding dual passports and citizenship giving Mother Russia a free hand to play whenever it wants.  (On the lighter side, check out the dude in the big blue flat-hat comparing medals.)
      
    With recent California tax increases, the Laffer Curve inevitably raised its head again to confound the liberal statists.  Higher tax rates and taxes have yielded less revenue to the state.  Aaron Klein gives the details at aaronklein.com.

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  • America on the Fast Track (updated)

    George Rebane

    Obama&Sam

    I am astonished at the growing pace of federal diktaats – they are now gushing out of Washington daily.  And ‘We the Sheeple’ raise neither hew nor cry.

    California is on its collective butt fiscally and sinking deeper.  Its government is looking high and low for ways to bring its spending deficits under control.  Schwarzenegger has included some wage cuts for state health workers in the effort, but didn’t know that he was goring a federal holy cow.  The 8may09 LA Times reported –

    Reporting from Sacramento — The Obama administration is threatening to rescind billions of dollars in federal stimulus money if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers do not restore wage cuts to unionized home healthcare workers approved in February as part of the budget. (more here) 

    So get this, because these votes had been bought fair and square last November, it doesn’t matter what the Constitution (10th Amendment) says.  Obama will dictate California’s internal affairs simply because he can.  At least his supporters can say that he’s living up to his promise to go through with the payoff for those votes, no matter who or what law he has to trample in the process.

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  • Ruminations – 8may2009

    George Rebane

    Clowns HR1207 is a widely supported bill to put in place a law that finally after 96 years will seek an audit of the deep dark ongoings at our Federal Reserve.  Here’s an open letter that appeared in the 7may09 Washington Times.  And you wanna see some real first rate blather at a Congressional hearing, then look at this video of the Inspector General Coleman of the Federal Reserve making it obvious for all to see that its function is pure cover-up.  The question I have is – why would ANYONE in the House of Representatives not want to co-sponsor HR1207?  Ask your electeds.  H/T to RR reader MM.

    National Preparedness Month this September takes on special meaning now that the WHO is predicting that H1N1 (swine) flu will infect at least two billion people worldwide and may return with a vengeance before it’s over – that’s almost one out of every three on the planet.  Here’s a good government site worth surfing to keep you informed and get preparedness advice for all kinds of big emergencies.  But they did leave out how to keep your guns and grenades supply stocked and at the ready 😉

    GM, on the ropes and breathing hard, is attempting to sell some cars on the free market, competing against competitors not in the same straits.  The media reports that GM is throwing a sales party for 500 large customers (fleet buyers, various government agencies, big distributorships, etc) at a posh Arizona resort.  The sheeple are supposed to be hyperventilating at this report because GM has been taking bailout money.  And well they might, because critical thought went home a long time ago.  What seems to escape the thinkers out there is that GM’s customers don’t care if it has problems, they want to see business as usual from a company that wants to project an image of regained health and perseverance.  The feds, of course, don’t understand this, and are excoriating GM management while still requiring that they sell more cars.  And that’s where we’re headed when the Politburo starts running our companies and industries.

    Let’s see, BofA was a healthy bank and not in trouble when it was forced to take TARP money, with government guarantees take over Countrywide, and then with a gun to its head, “buy” Merrill Lynch.  As a result of some recent dodgy ‘stress tests’ the feds are now acting as if BofA has been a poorly run company while they refuse to accept the payback of its TARP funds so they can stay in control.  More Politburo shenanigans.

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  • Grow Government, Grow!

    George Rebane

    BigGovt Unbelievable, but believe it.  The following report from WashingtonTechnology.com is reprinted here in its entirety.  Our liberal friends continue to scoff at us “rightwing extremists” when we point out that government is already the employer of last resort and intends by every means, overt and covert, to increase its role as such.  Here is another stepping stone (with emphasis added) on that path not heard on MSM.  Contact your electeds.  (Hat tip to RR readers MKC and GWI for forwarding this.)
    ======

    Senate bill would suspend competitive sourcing

    Alice Lipowicz , May 04, 2009

    Federal agencies would be required to review their service contracts and to bring some types of previously contracted work in-house under new legislation authored by Sen. Barbara Mikulski.

    Mikulski (D-Md.) introduced on April 29 the Clean-Up Act, also known as the Correction of Longstanding Errors in Agencies Unsustainable Procurements Act, or S. 924. The bill would indefinitely suspend the Bush administration’s competitive-sourcing competitions under Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76 and would make permanent changes to those rules.

    The legislation builds on several provisions restricting competitive sourcing that were inserted into the recent fiscal 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act, which put a hold on the A-76 privatization process.

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  • Ruminations – 6may2009

    George Rebane

    BigKindle Amazon to save newspapers with its new large-screen Kindle, so reports the 05may09 NYT.

    Now the recession-ravaged newspaper and magazine industries are hoping for their own knight in shining digital armor, in the form of portable reading devices with big screens.

    And just in the nick of time, judging by the looks of things.  But not so fast, see below.

    Brownouts on the Internet.  Some experts say that by next year or so we should start experiencing the WorldWide Wait for real as the Internet’s backbone pipes start getting clogged with too much traffic.  Right now we don’t care how many YouTube videos we watch or how many 12MB attachments we send to our friends and colleagues – the marginal cost of such behavior is zero.  But it won’t be for long; more here.

    Economic Armageddon by 2012?  Those of you girding your loins for what our government is cooking up are probably noticing a whole bunch of reports that confirm your worst fears.  Well, here’s another one (3:43 min YouTube video) by master financial prognosticator Gerald Celente.

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  • Ruminations – 5may2009

    George Rebane

    I am not alone.  Being a commentator with a definite conservative-libertarian bias and some hard miles under my belt, it sometimes gets a bit lonely when I read about the widely celebrated happenings in Washington.  And as a student of history I am more than dismayed at what I see in the universe that today surrounds us.  The popular universe of our times is now getting very crowded, and mine seems to be getting emptier.  So when I run into a serious scholar who shares my views and gives them an eloquent voice, I am heartened that I have company.  Dr. David Kaiser, academic and historian, is such a voice and he has written us all a letter (Download 'History Unfolding').  Two RR readers sent me the heads up on this disturbing yet clear observation of what is going on in our country.

    Jeff Pelline, County Supervisor?  Russ Steele on NC Media Watch has a commentary (here) that may explain away the often hard to understand behavior of our ex-editor.  This man has spent the last several years attempting to be our community’s guide to and standard of correct thought.  He has seen himself at the center as our unbiased golden mean.  And during this interval he has assiduously patrolled the local conservative blogs to highlight, chastise, and correct any deviation from a ‘balanced and fair’ outlook.  To this day he untiringly carries out these duties, sharing with all a perspective that has descended on his shoulders from above.  Russ reports the rumor that “the former Union Editor is considering running for office on a Fair to Everyone Platform.  A platform driven by his desire to become the ultimate leader of a community racked by conflicting points of view.”

    And now he tells us that he is also writing a book, which seems to fit into the accepted preparatory sequence for public office.  His pro forma protestations aside, we look forward to exciting times ahead.  

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  • Sixty Years Ago Today – 4 May 1949

    George Rebane

    USS Gen Harry Taylor  

    At first light on 4 May 1949 the USS General Harry Taylor (above) had already slipped through the Verrazano Narrows by the time my father and I joined the other men and boys on the deck of the troopship.  We all wanted to see the Statue of Liberty and the lights of New York that still defined its skyline in the hour before sunrise.  Today we would finally set foot in our new chosen homeland after spending more than four eventful and uncertain years as refugees in the displaced persons camps of post-war Germany.

    The port side-rails of the ship were packed as the big troop transport slowly made its way toward the waiting berth at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Soon it would be joined by two tugs to help nudge us gently into the dock.  But that was still a good hour away and now everyone was looking at the biggest harbor, city, and everything else that they had ever seen.  I remember the conversations were all carried in quiet awe of the passing scenery and anxious anticipation of the momentous events awaiting each family on this most mutually auspicious of days.

    The Statue of Liberty was at first hard to make out from the lights of New Jersey.  Everyone, of course, wanted to catch a glimpse because they knew this moment would be remembered forever.  Finally, I saw it for sure when she came abeam of us across the harbor in the west.  In the dim light it looked majestic and exactly like in the pictures I had seen on posters and pamphlets that were handed out to refugees in the camps.  Now her torch seemed very bright.  For me, seeing the monument meant that my mother, father, and I would no longer have to crowd into small single rooms that had been home since Christmas of 1945.  On that May morning we didn’t know that that promise would be delayed for almost a year, but that’s another story. 

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