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  • Sandbox – 31jan26

    [As a self-proclaimed journalist fired TV anchor Don Lemon is a lemon.  His claims of doing in-your-face journalism, contributing to the disruption of an in-progress church service, is on video and totally contradicts his claim to any membership in a profession that is already circling the drain.  gjr]

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  • Greenland’s Realities

    {This commentary was published in the 28jan26 edition of The Union. gjr]

    George Rebane

    The 57,000 residents of Greenland live and work in a toy jurisdiction with a miniscule economy, the private sector of which is based overwhelmingly on fishing and seafood exports accounting for approximately 37% of their $3.3B GDP.  The lion’s share (67%) of their GDP is dominated by government which employs 43% of the workforce.  Their economy is heavily subsidized by Denmark (currently about $1.2B annually) through regular block grants, “extra investments”, along with funding its defense, courts, healthcare, police, and infrastructure.

    In spite of their perpetual dependence on outside resources, the Greenlanders maintain a strong sense of independence and sovereignty.  Their hope is to develop a mining industry which will make them financially independent.  Achieving this will require a massive amount of foreign investment which both the US and China are eager to underwrite.  But this is not forthcoming under the current world order.

    Since WW2 the US has always seen Greenland as part of its outer defense perimeter.  And therein lies the rub given our relations with Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.  The island’s strategic location under the path of potential incoming ICBMs, control of Arctic commerce, and its ability to supply the west with strategically important minerals makes America’s control of Greenland a matter of international security.  We don’t want our enemies to have anything to do with Greenland and its surrounding waters.

    Toward this objective, it should be an easy matter to have the US assume the defense of the island by expanding its existing military bases and commercial presence.  Along with that we should be welcomed by both the Greenlanders and Danes with the grant of certain mining and processing rights under a profit-sharing agreement.  This would create a stable jurisdictional environment which would attract investment, and significantly expand Greenland’s economy to the point where it could reasonably achieve its desired independence from Denmark.  Under such an agreement the US would retain control of defense and extraction of natural resources in perpetuum without having to annex Greenland.  The nature of Greenland’s sovereignty would be defined by a long-term treaty much as what we have had with Panama in our control of its strategically important Canal Zone.

    The matter of Greenland’s sovereignty is somewhat moot when we consider its practical implications.  We recall that sovereignty means a state has the ultimate, independent authority to govern itself, control its territory, make laws, and manage internal affairs without external interference.  Sovereignty comes in two flavors – intrinsic and derived.  An intrinsically sovereign state has the power to secure its territory against foreign invasion or interference in its international relations with allies.  Intrinsically sovereign states are usually hegemons, at least in their regional affairs.

    States with derived sovereignty are enabled through their relations or alliances with a sufficiently powerful intrinsically sovereign state.  In this sense we see that all post-war European countries have enjoyed derived sovereignty through their membership in the community of western democratic nations under the umbrella of American hegemony.  Were it not for America’s might, the USSR would have brought all of Europe under its rule.  Today this world order has continued to contain Russia after the Soviet Union’s collapse.

    Within such a framework, Greenland and Denmark should consider their options for continued national sovereignty.  It is through the grace of America’s enlightened self-interest that they have remained free and bountiful.  And to serve our mutual interests they should do all they can to continue currying our favor as a benevolent friend and ally that has no desire to impact their respective cultures, but only to bring security and wealth to a region that has lain fallow for too long.

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  • Father forgive them for they know not …

    George Rebane

    Yesterday (20jan26) the socialists of Nevada County assembled a small group of Democrats and high school students for a demonstration against ICE’s efforts across the country to arrest and deport people, especially criminals, in the country illegally.  To our proto-communists these federal agents are “fascists” carrying out unconstitutional law enforcement.

    Now I think it’s a safe bet that not one of these worthies carrying signs and shouting slogans knows the definition or history of fascism.  They are the obedient useful idiots in the ongoing effort by the Left to destroy America.  You can read their local thought leaders’ daily outpouring in The Union to get an idea of what is happening across the country.  These efforts are part and parcel of a widespread organized movement that is well documented in the just published ‘The Invisible Coup – How American elites and foreign powers use immigration as a Weapon’ (2026) by Peter Schweitzer.

    Schweitzer writes – “Every day, ICE is arresting hundreds of illegal immigrants with a criminal record. They didn’t just come here. They were sent here.  Our debates about immigration revolve around what happens with immigrants once they arrive. We need to start talking about who is sending them and why. For decades, establishment elites sold us the story of immigration as a compassionate renewal of the American Dream within a harmonious melting pot.  But beneath that narrative lies a different reality: Mass migration has morphed into the most powerful political weapon ever aimed at the United States—one engineered by elites at home and aided by adversaries abroad.”

    This movement is among the many about which our ‘anti-fascist’ leftwing neighbors have no clue. Among these matters of their profound ignorance is the terrible state of California – at or near the bottom of every social metric.  Instead, we hear their daily testimonies of how great things are in California, that it should be the posterchild for the nation’s transformation. They know nothing of the ongoing California exodus which has seen hundreds of wealth creating businesses and tens of thousands of productive middle class workers head for greener and freer pastures.  Today’s most recent news is that Wells Fargo, an historical California company, is relocating to Florida.  In the meanwhile we learn from a new Gallup poll that 66% or 2 of 3 Democrats “view socialism positively”.

    These people have for some time now been uneducable.  They were taught in leftwing schools by leftist teachers the ideology of Marxism.  And they maintain this worldview through blindered consumption of progressivist media.  This beat goes on right here in ‘River City’ as we are told that about 200 Nevada Union high school students decided to take the day off from classes and join the demonstrators.  (more here)  Now where did they learn about the ‘fascism’ of the Trump administration?

    Meanwhile the Republicans, smug in the knowledge of the country’s yearlong progress, continue preaching to their choir on conservative media in the misplaced hope that such insular communications will sway the electorate.

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  • Democrats Ascendant

    George Rebane

    Republicans are totally missing the dominant sentiments in the country regarding economics, foreign policy, healthcare, and illegal aliens.  Major conservative news and commentary outlets like Fox and Newsmax continue to tout the historic achievements of the Trump administration while paying no mind to what the people believe on Main Street.  These mavens act as if there is no Democrats’ domination of the mainstream (lamestream) media who faithfully broadcast their daily dose of outrageous lies.  The Republican sermons to their choir utterly fail to connect with the demonstrably irrational and ill-informed common voter as witnessed by every new polling result.

    As a glaring example totally missed in the hustings is that Democrats never substantiate or back their policy proposals to demonstrate how they may be or have been successful in the past.  To back their proposals and public policies the Republicans always give examples of how free market capitalism, meritocracy, and individual freedoms have given rise to societies with the highest qualities of life and inviting nation-states.  The Democrats never provide evidence that their collectivist proposals and policies based on higher taxes, more regulations, larger government control of economies, fewer freedoms, … have given rise to and/or sustained societies that have created wealth and high QoL for their citizens.  They just state their proposals and follow-up with baseless claims that these will create some form of workers’ paradise and happy dancing in the streets without citing examples of such successes.

    Here’s a short summary of the what the Republicans are missing about the public’s attitudes on the country’s economics.  Key findings from recent (late 2025 – Jan 2026) polls –

    • Pessimism Reigns: A majority of Americans (around 47-48%) describe current economic conditions as “poor” or “not so good,” with even more (around 68%) feeling the economy is worsening.
    • Inflation & Costs: The economy and inflation are top concerns, with rising prices for essentials and healthcare being major worries, especially for lower-income groups.
    • Recession Belief: A majority (52% in one poll) believed the U.S. was in a recession, though this number had slightly decreased from earlier in 2022.
    • Worsening Outlook for 2026: Predictions for 2026 are considerably more negative than for 2025, with pessimism extending to employment, taxes, and prosperity.
    • Job Market Concerns: While unemployment rates fluctuated, expectations for future job finding deteriorated, and concerns about job security increased.
    • Political Discontent: Economic dissatisfaction is reflected in low approval ratings for leadership, with record-low economic approval for President Trump in late 2025. 

    In summary, the overall sentiment points to widespread economic anxiety, driven by persistent high costs and uncertainty about the future, despite significant official data showing an economy recovering from the Biden years.

    President Trump’s bravura and braggadocio don’t work with Americans and are simply grist for the Democrats’ TDS propaganda mill.  And they don’t have to work too hard to make the president look bad.  Examples are Greenland, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Canada, and Mexico.

    In each of these areas we either already have successes or easily obtainable successes.  We can ‘control Greenland’ without sabre rattling because we already have established and expandable bases there and can set up new ones under existing agreements.  We can start mining the island without much ado about the whole affair as long as we set up some equitable way to share the profits with Greenlanders (and Denmark?).  Nobody is going to kick us out of Greenland, however, we can readily eliminate ongoing Russian and Chinese initiatives.  And all this can be done very quietly without waking up strong feelings about sovereignty.

    Trump’s ‘red lines’ are turning into an embarrassment because he is not honoring them.  By now the rump Maduro regime should have made visible overtures to the US in establishing a fast track to scheduled elections resulting in a new government with agreed on segments (e.g. the military) of the old regime operating under new management.  Iran has massacred thousands of its people in the streets and continues as you read this.  Trump should already have started whumping them by destroying their key defense facilities with stand-off weapons from Diego Garcia bases while additional forces are deploying to the mid-east to continue the campaign.  Instead we have the now lame line repeated that Trump is really really gonna get nasty if they continue to shoot and hang the demonstrators – meanwhile, nothing.

    It’s way past time when Zelensky should have been regularly launching deep-penetration missiles and drones against key Russian military, energy, and transportation infrastructure.  Again, Trump allows Putin to mock America by continuing to bomb the crap out of Ukraine’s cities and killing civilians.  Not good for The Donald and the free world.

    I could go on, but you get the idea.

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  • Scattershots – 4jan26 (updated 8jan26)

    George Rebane

    • Dems always back policies that harm America – an established thesis evidenced again by their reaction to Trump’s law enforcement action in Venezuela.  Notice that Dems are always on the side of criminals, drug dealers, illegal entrants and open borders, anti-entrepreneurial laws and regulations, no limits on size of government, dysfunctional diplomacy projecting weakness, and a mangled educational system.
    • The anti-American Dems, now trumpeting their TDS claims that the president’s Venezuela action was unconstitutional, are counting on their constituents’ ignorance of the long history of presidential actions (here) without congressional approval as enabled under Article 2 of the Constitution.  And in such assessments of their loyal voting block they are no doubt right on the mark.
    • The movement to halt AGI development is organized and led by MIT physics professor Max Tegmark (here).  Their message, supported by some noted technology heavyweights, echoes the longstanding RR Singularity posts – AGI will destroy human jobs on a wholesale scale, and change the foundations of our civilization in ways we have yet to understand.  The problem with such reasoned arguments is that they ignore the AGI development race with China.  China wants to dominate the AI field, and in doing so become the world’s hegemon.
    • [7jan26 update] Never the twain shall meet.  Readers alerted me to Paul Eagle’s piece (here) in the 7jan26 Union decrying my 30dec25 commentary ‘Self-immolation derby’.  Therein, in lockstep with all other socialists and progressives, he cites Biden’s disasters as salutary benefits to the country.  And he pronounces Trump’s historic accomplishments as nothing but failures and detriments.  This again illustrates that there is absolutely no common ground between Democrats and Republicans – we live in different universes.  And every day the evidence grows for no possible rapprochement.  The endgame for this Great Divide does not bode well.
    • [8jan26 update]  Congressman Doug LaMalfa’s passing came as a shock to Jo Ann and me.  We were privileged to be friends with Doug who had lunch at our house and shared my preference for good Kentucky bourbon.  A farmer himself, he was a conservative and a true servant of northern California’s people and their interests in preserving our rural and agricultural way of life.  As the state struggles with its yearslong profoundly incompetent governance, Doug was one of the remaining Republican bulwarks, both in Sacramento and Washington,, to promote sane legislation in the attempt to redirect our once golden state onto a more sane path.  We will miss you Doug, RIP.

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  • Sandbox – 4jan26

    [‘Why Johnny can’t read’ is has been the subject of countless commentaries and books on the massive deficit in our public education system.  The reasons given all have merit in as far as they go, but they leave out an extremely important aspect of our national illiteracy, namely, that it is multigenerational.  We live in the midst of tens of millions of fellow Americans who remain hamstrung in their ability understand the written word which strongly impacts and correlates with their ability to think critically.  As recent evidence I call your attention to the election to public offices of socialists Mamdani et al.  gjr]

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  • Venezuela on path to freedom and prosperity

    George Rebane

    This morning the US carried out a law enforcement raid in Caracas to capture and extract Nicolas Maduro and wife, and transport them to stand trial in New York where they were indicted for narco-terrorism in 2020.  In the dead of night the operation came off without a hitch as a precisely integrated operation involving America’s military, intelligence services, and law enforcement.

    As one of the world’s most notorious thugs, Maduro transformed an entire nation into a dictatorship that marshalled its drug cartels to produce and transport illegal drugs to the US over the last years that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.  Along with that operation Maduro made the lives of Venezuelans so miserable that the country lost a quarter of its population as over 8 million of its citizens fled to other parts of the world including the US.  At the same time Maduro supplied nationalized oil from its vast reserves to other thugocracies around the world including Cuba and China.  Along with drug exports it was an operation worth billions that enriched the country’s criminals and helped stabilize tottering enemies of the US like Cuba, Colombia, and Nicaragua in the western hemisphere.

    Othe columnists are weighing in similarly.  Christopher Nixon Cox writes, “For over a decade, the Maduro regime was not a government; it was a transnational cartel with a seat at the United Nations. It flooded our streets with narcotics, weaponized mass migration to fracture our borders, and opened the gates of the Americas to our worst enemies.”

    America finally got a president with the balls to say ‘no more’, and in one well-coordinated operation lasting about a month and concluding last night, brought down the whole criminal regime to enable Venezuelans to begin rebuilding their country.  And President Trump appears wise enough to ensure that Venezuela’s successor government will be a good neighbor in the Americas and a friend of the United States.

    So now we have available one more litmus test to identify anti-Americans and evil doers.  Take note of which organizations and nations condemn Trump and the US for carrying out the arrest of the dictator Maduro and the suppression of Venezuela’s drug cartels.  These are the opposing entities which directly profit from the type and extent of damage that a vibrant drug trade and consumption which is a blight on America.  That such an activity weakens our country and serves as an obvious national security threat should not be a matter of debate for the pro-Americans who have been paying attention.

    But within our borders the patently evil Democratic Party satisfies all the criteria for opposing an educated, prosperous, and strong United States.  Their large, loyal, and less-read voting blocks regenerate themselves in the nation’s Democrat managed urban ghettos.  Maintaining destitution in those wards over recent decades has directly benefited all elements of our Left, ranging from the media and academics to the politicians and labor unions that overwhelmingly depend on memberships made up of those who are not competitive in the labor markets.

    The Democratic Party, with strongholds in single-party states like California, Illinois, and New York, has been in the forefront of promoting and implementing policies that create and foment dissatisfaction with everything that promotes meritocracy, individual liberties, free market capitalism, and minimal government interference in the private sector.  These people have been the champions for a brave new world in which America relinquishes its sovereignty, culture and role as hegemon to become a compliant member of a new global world order.

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  • Putin’s Ongoing Bamboozle

    George Rebane

    After President Trump’s telecon with Putin the other day, he announced with great satisfaction that not only did Putin want the war to end, but that Russia was willing to help Ukraine rebuild from country’s devastation caused by Russia’s incessant missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure.  What astounds many of us is that evidently the White House led by the president still does not understand Putin’s personal situation and the state of Russia.

    Putin is a KGB trained ex-communist thug.  He has built an historic world-class thugocracy in which the corrupt oligarch and military elite capture the lion’s share of what wealth Russia’s economy still generates (mostly through its sale of its vast mined natural resources).  Putin’s political and personal survival has two distinct dimensions.  One requires that he keeps the Russian people mollified with their stark economic environment and state-controlled civil liberties.  And the other that provides assurances of stability to the upper echelons of industry-controlling oligarchs and the military.  Both cohorts, neither of which trust the other, are mega-scale grifters who want to maintain their sources and caches of wealth.

    Russia’s citizenry are told daily that the west – e.g. through NATO – is constantly threatening Russia’s sovereignty and territory.  This is the same line that communists have used for decades to explain away the people’s misery through the need to allocate the nation’s resources to ‘defense’.  Hence they need today’s ‘military action’ against the ‘fascist regime in the Ukraine’.

    The oligarchs continue to sign on to Putin’s stratagems so long as it doesn’t topple their apple carts.  And they know that provoking wholesale war with the west, led by the US, will bring to an end their ability to drain Russia’s economy and live high on the hog.  So Putin must walk a very narrow line between rioting in the streets or accidentally falling out of a window if he mismanages the war which must continue at an acceptable level to a successful end.  And success here is defined at a minimum as accession of conquered Ukrainian territory and the castration of Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russia’s future territorial ambitions.

    But the real bottom line is that Putin cannot tolerate a cessation of hostilities that results in Ukraine rebuilding its infrastructure and economy, and turning into a prosperous west European nation with real security guarantees that mirror NATO’s Article Five provisions.  Such an outcome will be an intolerable burr under Putin’s (and Russia’s) blanket, giving obvious lie to all the years of propaganda fed to the Russian people.  At best, Putin will seek to have Ukraine turn into a Russian satrapy like Belarus, toothless and compliant to Moscow.

    All of the above is blatantly obvious to students of history and those who study the ins and outs of current affairs on the international scene.  President Trump’s media and congressional allies have a hard time today for not calling him out for his highly visible naivete.  And I’m sad to say that there is no evidence that Trump has any close friends of stature who could in private advise him of his gross misrepresentation (whitewashing?) of Putin’s character, political ambitions, and precarious leadership of a corrupt world power.

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  • Christmas – 2025

    Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. – Matthew 1:23

    George Rebane

    Nativity

    Another year of healing and growth for our family with the arrival of two more great-grandkiddies.  Thankfully, we are again celebrating Christ’s birth with our local family.  Jo Ann and I wish all of our readers an equally joyous Christmas (or holidays of choice), followed by a healthy and prosperous new year.

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  • Self-immolation Derby

    George Rebane

    The competition has become fierce between the Democratic leadership and President Trump.  Both are doing their best to estrange themselves from the country’s voters.  The bottom line, according to my lights, is that the president is winning this contest in the number of people he leaves disappointed, dismayed, and simply pissed in the wake of his daily pronouncements.  But let’s start with the Democrats before returning to our fearless leader.

    The Democratic National Committee recently completed a post-mortem study of how and why they lost the 2024 election.  They interviewed over 300 party strategists and heavyweights from whom to assemble their conclusion.  Everyone, especially the Democrat workers in the vineyards, was looking forward to the DNC’s release of the results which would guide preparations for the 2026 primaries.  Instead we got the announcement that the DNC will not reveal what they learned from their closed-door discussions.  Massive disappointments all around.

    Listening to the rightwing media, all one could hear was puzzlement from their reporters and sage commentators as to why the report would not be published.  I found it hard to believe that these keen observers of our political landscape could not draw the obvious conclusion about the DNC’s reticence.  The Democrat mavens did not conclude that their 2024 campaigns were poorly run, or underfunded, or misdirected to wrong voter blocks.  Any of those tactical mis-machinations would have been readily disseminated to their rank-and-file election workers.

    However, what their mavens did discover and the DNC would never admit was that enough of the wrong message had leaked out to sufficiently tip the balance in the Republicans’ favor.  What the Democrat insiders are not yet prepared to admit is that they are neo-Marxists and proto-communists with the objective to ‘fundamentally transform’ America into a socialist-and-beyond state.  With what they have learned, from the much publicized yet isolated recent victories of their socialist candidates, is that it is not yet the time to start selling the collectivist utopia (‘this time we’ll do it right’), let alone revealing it to be their prime political objective for the United States.

    Now back to our fearless leader.  From the evidence it is easy to acknowledge that Donald Trump has accomplished more for the country in, yes, ten months than any president before him.  His economic, social, and foreign policies have borne unexpected fruits.  These governance ‘victories’ would speak for themselves if only the administration’s focus would continue to highlight them with citations of the ample evidence readily available from the government’s own sources and the reports/accolades from foreign leaders.

    But that is not to be.  Our president’s character and temperament drives him to continually snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  His mouth does it all – 24/7.  Over the years someone must surely have told him that he is not naturally a loved or lovable character.  We surmise that long ago he learned being brash and braggadocio is the best way to portray and project his strength.  No doubt in the private sector, such as urban real estate deal making, such modus operandi have proved to be an asset, but unfortunately not so in politics and the public sector.

    So, as we head into the 2026 primaries President Trump continues daily to supply the Democrats and their media mouthpieces all the ammo needed to cover up their deeply disappointing record of governance and their ongoing void in public policy proposals that would attract the thinking voter.  For the light thinkers and those who don’t pay attention the polls continue to confirm that proclaiming their TDS symptoms is sufficient to prevail in the political arena.

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