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  • Scattershots – 11oct21 (updated 12oct21)

    George Rebane

    The disaster at our southern border is described and discussed by former US Customs and Border Protection commissioner Mark Morgan in the August 2021 Imprimis (here).  Morgan served under Presidents Obama and Trump.  In chapter and verse he puts lie to the unbelievable claims that “our borders are secure” delivered daily by Bumblebrain and one of his incompetent henchmen SecDHS Alejandro Mayorkas, and dutifully echoed by the lamestream until recently.  Then even they could not peddle the national tragedy that Team Biden has created and maintains.  Their objective, as always, is to transform America into a compliant second-rate autocracy ready to accept global governance.

    [12oct21 update] ‘Why Are So Many People Still Dying from COVID?’ asks a physician on American Thinker.  More people are dying of the virus this year than at the same time last year, and most in America are now vaccinated.  So what gives?  The short answer is that no one really knows.  With all the hanky-panky with the stats aside, it is clear “regardless of which factors are causing the uptick in COVID deaths, something clearly is not working, whether masks, distancing, vaccines, or other measures. Instead of doubling down on what appears not to be working, where is the thoughtful questioning and analysis by the medical establishment, public health agencies, and the media?”  And here’s the punchline – “Just look at therapeutics. Japan and India introduced ivermectin as an early outpatient treatment option and their COVID cases promptly plummeted. Members of Congress and their staffs have reportedly been taking hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for COVID while trashing the drugs publicly as dangerous or horse paste.”  (H/T to reader)

    Who in hell pays for their porta-potties, tents, blankets, food, medicines, encampments, transportation (bus and boat rides)??  There is a well-funded pipeline of these wannabe illegal aliens cued up from Chile through central America and then Mexico.  Some agencies and individuals with a deep hatred of America are making this colossal conduit of economic refugees possible and coordinating with the Biden administration to keep the southern border open while everyone through the lamestream is feeding bullshit to American citizens dumb enough to swallow it hook, line, and sinker.  Watching the news is becoming a nauseating experience.

    Jen Psaki explains away all the Biden f#ck-ups as nothing but part and parcel of the administration “incentivizing fundamental change to the American economy.”  Has anyone told them that they’ve already achieved such fundamental change by turning our economy from increasing workforce participation, keeping inflation in check, destroying energy independence, flooding the country with unvetted illegals, and attempting to pass a socially destructive spending program that will cripple the economy for the next generation of Americans (at least)??

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  • Sandbox – 8oct21

    {The Hill reports (here) the Dems are getting real worried that Trump will run in 2024.  One of our readers has specialized in telling all who will listen that Trump's candidacy would be a blessing for our Left.  He should provide his fellow ideologues a great deal of comfort if he would share his reasoning with them.  gjr]

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  • WHO: Economic Development Trumps Climate Change

    George Rebane

    In his regular WSJ column on climate change issues, Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus and Stanford's Hoover Institution shines a light on the little reported aspects of the World Health Organization’s analysis of factors affecting the health of the world’s poor in the coming decades. (here) The bottom line, hidden by the Left and its lamestream media, is that more lives will be saved (by millions) through continuing the current course of global economic development, than will be saved by adopting the stringent climate change policies as prescribed by the Paris climate agreement and at next month’s Glasgow Climate Conference.  All such policies are based on utility functions which overwhelmingly favor policies that are ‘deemed’ to reduce global warming over other factors, primarily the effects of economic development on the QoL and health of the world’s poor.

    The lives saved annually in 2050 by implementing existing and anticipated global warming accords is projected at 85,000.  However, over a spread of economic growth scenarios impacted by policies seeking to reduce preventable manmade global warming, the annual deaths range from 300,000 to 2,000,000 from malnutrition among the world’s poor.  If saving lives, especially among the poor, ever becomes important in these politicized and dubiously scientific considerations, then sanity advises avoiding draconian approaches such as contemplated in the Green New Deal and the additional socialist diktats on our lives and livelihoods planned by the Biden administration and amplified by established radicals such as are ensconced in Sacramento and Albany.  Per today’s dominant media and government narratives, these conclusions remain invisible to the general public.

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  • Ruminations – 6oct21 (updated 9oct21)

    George Rebane

    The autocratic state advances. ‘Government secretly orders Google to track anyone searching certain names, addresses, and phone numbers’.  The Deep State on the march under a very supportive administration.

    ‘Domestic Terrorists’ is the DoJ’s new designation for parents and citizens attending local school board meetings to protest teaching Critical Race Theory, gender-bending, and revisionist history to young students.  The FBI, acting more like the STASI every day, will be investigating and arresting Americans who still believe that the state does not own their children.

    ‘The Woke Left’s Primitive Economics’ are described by Paul Rubin in the 6oct21 WSJ.  When examined, it becomes clear that liberal thought in its acute embodiment ‘wokeness’ requires the adherent to first become butt stupid in most things about how the realworld works.  These pages have chronicled this phenomenon for over a decade.

    [updates] Ivermectin manufacturer Merck dunned that drug for C19 therapeutics and is now promoting a new therapeutic that it is pre-marketing and will soon introduce (more here).  By its own admission it will be about half as effective as IVM (which costs about $3 a course).  But you can bet the farm that the new pill will be many times more profitable.  (H/T to reader)

    Braindead journalists on Fox News and Republican politicians in Congress have yet to ask germane questions of the Democrat elites who are siccing the FBI on American parents on the pretense that they are ‘domestic terrorists’, parents who openly and legitimately protest the local schools’ curricula during public school board meetings.  The critical unasked question is ‘Show ONE example of evidence of “intimidation”, “public threat”, “violent action”, “threat of violent action” toward elected school boards on which you base your case for federal law enforcement intervention against the publicly protesting parents whose children are being subjected to unmitigated socialist propaganda during class periods in which they should be learning the basic skills ultimately required of an educated and informed electorate?’  The Dems’ attempt to answer that question should expose them as the pariahs that they are.

    [7oct21 update]  Women in clodhoppers and combat boots.  In these days of topsy-turvy sexes and genders, women’s fashions have adopted a distinctly counter-culture currency.  And nowhere more violently than in their new footwear rage – gone are Melania’s elegant pumps, and in are shoes and boots with multi-inch platforms and styles with trench warfare uppers and soles with treads more commonly found on military Humvees.  My great-aunt Tante Alvi, a recognized fashion expert during the pre-war era in Europe, enunciated the de rigueur of women’s footwear – ‘Ladies do not appear in public sans heels’ (with the usual exceptions of course).  My sainted mother and my beloved sweetie-pie were/are strict adherents.  And fortunately, especially for us men, that dictum held until the current societal disintegration began.

    Terry McLaughlin's column on the Hyde Amendment in the 7oct21 Union (here) will be an eye-opener for most readers concerned about the federal funding of abortions.  Attempting to end run its inclusion this year is yet another about-faces which the Dems are doing as they reconfigure their party in its Great Leap Leftward as called for by their growing socialist faction.  McLaughlin's succinct and clear description of the goings on is worth a read.

    [9oct21 update]  The leftwing Quinnipiac Poll respected by all leftwingers came out with a typical report of Bumblebrain’s numbers diving for the mud.

    • Overall opinion of administration: Approve 38%, Disapprove 53%
    • On ‘Immigration’: Approve 25%, Disapprove 67%
    • On Foreign Policy: Approve 34%, Disapprove 58%
    • On Economy: Approve 39%, Disapprove 55%
    • Overall assessment on running the country: Incompetent 55%

    Note that our drive-by liberal poll commenters remain totally silent on the nationally recognized and reported disaster of the Biden administration.  I don’t follow polls per se, but I’m told these numbers are historic.

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  • Sandbox – 3oct21

    [“Falling Unemployment Adds to Worries About the U.S. Labor Market.  A lower rate could signal that many people are staying out of the workforce, which could add to employers’ hiring difficulties.”  This is among the flood of maladies that Bumblebrain’s socialist policies and promises now causing suffering and hurt in the land.  Has anybody yet found a SINGLE THING that he and the Dems have done right?  gjr]

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  • A Leftwing Journalist Admonishes

    George Rebane

    Darrell Berkheimer is one of our more thoughtful, though still terminally misguided, local columnists whose current crusade to “curb misinformation” and “halt the spreading of lies” is at its apex with The Union publishing his 24sep21 and 2oct21 back-to-back columns.  His main thrust is to find a solution to the government allowing “mass media to continue the spread of misinformation, lies, untruths and false conspiracy theories that create dangerous divisiveness and threaten individual citizens.”  To his favor, he does want such state enforced prohibitions while still protecting freedom of speech.

    In his 24sep21 piece he attacks conservative media and quickly demonstrates that he knows not of which he speaks, especially when it come to C19 therapeutics.  But his naivete reaches new heights with his assertion that there is a government-discernible and “distinct difference between opinion and factual truth.”  Hence, we need to implore “our lawmakers (who) are long overdue to draft such limiting and protective legislation.”  And to help this process along, we grassroots citizens can “ask our attorney friends to recommend some suggestions and proposals”, which we may then communicate to our representatives.

    The entire cast of his two columns reeks of the righteousness of the Left, and leaves no doubt that it is the conservative media that must be reined in.  He, of course, stands aside and above such crass practices of ‘fake news’ and yellow journalism.  Before one examines his recent record, it’s instructive to read – ‘Hunter Biden’s Emails Were Suppressed for a Reason’ – a well-summarized and pithy letter from Mr Dan Pisenti of Mill Valley, CA in the 2oct21 WSJ.

    “Vindication Over Hunter’s Emails” (Review & Outlook, Sept. 25) rightly criticizes the press and prominent former officials for labeling Hunter Biden’s emails as Russian disinformation. But the victim—President Trump—is again disregarded. The Hunter story was neutralized to prevent Mr. Trump from winning re-election. Fair reporting of the graft and low behavior on full display in Hunter’s laptop could have kept Mr. Trump in office.

    The media speaks often of “the Big Lie” about the election result, but Mr. Trump faced a buffet of lies spanning his entire presidency. Dirty tricks kept him embroiled in a Russian hoax for two years and left the stink on him even when Robert Mueller could provide no evidence. Congress tied Mr. Trump up in impeachment trials. The press manufactured phony scandals about him and his family. And then key states relaxed controls on ballots. Acknowledging the onslaught that Mr. Trump faced could help the press understand why he might question an election result.

    Through his own condemnations and silences, Mr Berkheimer was one of our local co-conspirators during the ongoing epoch of journalistic lows.  Today he continues to wear his TDS mantle to comfort him as he looks down from the chilly and revealing heights of Mt Olympus.

    In his latest offering Berkheimer concludes “The importance of repressing misinformation cannot be overstated — because it is tearing apart the fabric of our American society. It’s at the root of our mounting divisiveness. It is our biggest crisis.”  In consuming such heartfelt proposals to expand the reach of government to evermore precisely and consummately control our speech and thought, it is important to always note from which side such ‘solutions’ originate, and who then accuse their opposites of fomenting tyrannical government.

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  • ‘Most wildfires started by people’

    George Rebane

    In a recent exchange with Union publisher Don Rogers I lamented that since most wildfires are started by people, there was not enough coverage or interest in the attribution of such great disasters in our state.  Wildfires were implicitly treated in the press as if they were some kind of natural phenomena, acts of God if you will.  Don agreed, and we began to see more stories in our newspaper covering details of how our regional wildfires were started by suspected arsonists or identified careless (stupid?) humans ranging from campers to homeless indigents in the woods.

    As part of this exchange I wrote a letter to The Union which was finally published today (1oct21) with an interesting editorial insert at its conclusion in the print edition – the online version is here.  My letter reads –

    The genesis of our wildfires. Here’s a topic everyone is afraid of discussing. Almost all of our wildfires are man-made — they are started by indigents, crazies, and people with a political agenda. The fires started by accidents and natural causes are well-known, few and far in between. However, our politicians, liberal activists, and media of all hues treat Western wildfires as if they were “acts of God,” and therefore their genesis need not be questioned, let alone examined, any further.

    Given the number of annual wildfires, notice how rare is there any subsequent mention of arson investigations or what these may have discovered. It seems that the “vulnerable underprivileged” have a natural right to start fires and then be left alone.

    And it is not a stretch to imagine the damage anti-American terrorists can do in a free country by simply setting wildfires with easily fabricated, time-delayed pyrotechnic devices. But from what the public sees, our authorities neither suspect nor pursue such errant behavior — the fires just magically flare up and cause totally acceptable devastation.

    … and followed by this editorial coda.

    Editor’s note: Studies of wildfire causes show a range of 85% to 95% are a result of human activity, with 20% to 25% of those deliberately set.

    I may be accused of some hyperbole to make the point of how easy it is for bad people to set devastating fires in our wildlands that destroy, kill, and deplete scarce resources.  But to me the editor’s note is a bit too dismissive, if not inaccurate, of not only the history of fire starters but also the portent of purposely caused destruction meant to impact both the mode and quality of life in the less populated regions of our country.  My main thesis is that wildfire arson is still both under-reported and therefore under-acknowledged by the public and even law enforcement.

    Here are two documents that speak to this assertion.  The first is a study – Wildland Arson: A Research Assessment – by the US Forest Service that concludes – “Wildland arson makes up the majority of fire starts in some parts of the United States and is the second leading cause of fires on Eastern United States Federal forests. … Beginning with initial studies by Donoghue and Main (1985) through studies by the authors reported here, it seems clear that law enforcement deployment and other efforts to apprehend and incarcerate arsonists work to reduce wildland arson in the long run in high-arson locations in the United States.”

    Another report from FEMA’s US Fire Administration (here) recounts various aspects of arson wildfires including arsonists’ motives and the significant but relatively few court cases that result from the apprehension of suspected arsonists.

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  • Scattershots – 28sep21 (updated 30sep21)

    George Rebane

    In the aggregate and hands down, California continues to have the most ignorant cohort of voters in the Union.  Rebane Doctrine

    This tenet of Rebane Doctrine has stood the test of time and today continues to express itself at every opportunity.  No one can point to any other state that has been done in so thoroughly by its voting residents (citizens?) over the years as has the once Golden State.  To make any kind of reasonable comparison, you also have to consider the tremendous heights from which our state has fallen.  When I was a young’un California had achieved the pinnacle in about every attribute that civilized humans attach to a desirable place in which to put down roots, raise their families, and build productive communities for their progeny.  And then came the socialist takers, generation after generation they have infected every institution that served as the pillars of this fair land.  Now they virulently infect every nook and cranny to guarantee that any possible road back has already been scorched beyond hope; and these same from here and other similarly afflicted states are looking to infest the remaining regions of the heartland yet to be touched by their destructive and rapacious policies and world views,

    The above outpouring was again prompted by a couple of op-ed columns and a letter in today’s 28sep21 Union.  One by a regular contributor claiming technical credentials who nevertheless cannot parse not being against wearing masks, while also being against mandates to require wearing them.  For him, this and a number of other concepts are simply a cognitive bridge too far.  Then we have another contribution by an indefatigable lady liberal who continues to genuflect to science at a distance from which it is unrecognizable to her.  An example will suffice – “Our forests are burning because we are in the throes of a catastrophic warming of the globe caused by the increase in carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.”  To such perceptions she adds “extreme weather events” as another unsupportable calamity caused by preventable manmade global warming in which her faith is unwavering.

    [29sep21 update]  It’s always a source of bittersweet humor to hear how socialists and proto-socialists wrestle with economic matters.  In fact, it would be 'Comedy Central' if their policies did not muck up the country's economy.  The latest farcical attempts come from PressSec Jen Psaki who assures us that it’s “unfair and absurd” to think that corporations would pass on increased tax expenses to their customers.  This woman has to be among the dumbest on Team Biden, or among the evil in hoping that her audience is equally ignorant to know that all corporate taxes are paid by customers.  And then we have political scientist William Galston of the Brookings Institute who writes a regular WSJ column on economics.  In today’s paper he assures us that “you don’t need a doctorate in economics to understand that when rising demand meets too little supply, the result is inflation.”  Wrong.  To students of economics, the words of Uncle Milton taught us that inflation is strictly a monetary phenomenon, i.e. when there is too much (government printed/borrowed) money chasing too few goods.  A doctorate in economics would have informed our leftwing political scientist that what he described is just the normal dynamism of a capitalistic market explained by the intersection of the demand and supply curves, as most of us learned in Econ 101.

    [30sep21 update]  Bread and circuses galore.  Just read about the $300M+ A Round funding for Trading Card Fanatics, Inc, valuing the company at over $10B (see today’s WSJ).  These people are to become the online marketplace and clearing house for all sports trading cards, and a lot of smart money is betting on their success (this is no longer a kids’ activity).  My little fevered brain got all discombobulated about another piece of evidence that our nation’s electorate cum body politic is really more interested in the various ‘bread and circuses’ they are offered to while away time not spent in more productive undertakings.  A friend recently educated me on the growth of sports betting, which is another bird of a feather to such massive diversions now made available to a population that daily understands less about the fundamental transformations going on in Washington and their state houses.  They no longer ‘do politics’, which is a deadly portent for our republic.  And with technology driven systemic unemployment now on the rise, the ratio of takers to makers is already at a dangerous level. 

    “Doctors and pharmacies are rapidly signing up patients for Covid-19 booster shots, many with requiring proof of eligibility under standards that federal official set last week.”  These people get spiffed by the big pharmas selling the boosters to the government.  And all this is going on as pharmacists are refusing to fill legitimate prescriptions for other demonstrated but less profitable C19 therapeutics like Ivermectin.  More rampant national insanity, again demonstrating that it is easy to put a dollar value on human lives.

    Bumblebrain’s nominee for Comptroller of the Currency (i.e. our economy) is a devout and declared communist.  Cornell law professor Dr Saure Omarova has published “radical ideas (that) might make even Bernie Sanders blush.”  A 1989 graduate of Moscow State University, she is truly one of Lenin’s lasses who unabashedly and favorably compares USSR’s economy and economics to that of the US and the West.  Even SecTreas Yellen, under whom Omarova would work, is not happy with the president’s latest nomination.  It is hard to witness day after day how this Oval Office idiot can do nothing right.  (more here and here)

    Green energy insanity is rampant across the land.  The lamestream’s reports gush with news of green energy taking over all of electricity generation and even transportation and much of manufacturing by 2040.  The reality is markedly different as calculated by the International Energy Agency and reported (here) by noted environmental economist Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Convention.  Green electricity is extremely expensive (ask Europeans and Californians) and requires massive back-up generation from fossil fuels.  The attempted road to green electricity guarantees only that 1) our energy bills will skyrocket, 2) third world power blackouts will become the norm, and 3) the whole effort will have no discernible impact whatsoever on climate change which the true believers and central planners propagandize as preventable manmade global warming.

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  • Sandbox – 23sep21

    [My how time flies when you're having fun.  Apologies for letting the last Sandbox get a little too ripe.  At our house we were busy with our last eagle on final, guiding it in for a secure touchdown.  gjr] 

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  • Your Covid Factsheet (updated 24sep21)

    George Rebane

    The Swiss Policy Institute is a sober outfit that has helped compile a list of established facts about C19 and its pandemic (here).  Most of what you’ve read and heard about the disease is mired in politicized BS.  You have read a lot of the good stuff on RR posted by our readers and me.  But The Guardian has also published a compelling “crib sheet” of referenced facts and graphics which summarize what is known about Covid-SARS-2 (here)  Definitely worth a read so that you can be immunized against what comes out the lamestream and various government agencies and state houses.  (H/T to reader)

    [24sep21 update]  NIH Publishes Study – Ivermectin works.  NIH has published on its website (here) an article in the July-August issue of the American Journal of Therapeutics that concluded that “large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin.”

    And the American Journal of Therapeutics concludes (here) –

    Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally.

    "Given the evidence of efficacy, safety, low cost, and current death rates, ivermectin is likely to have an impact on health and economic outcomes of the pandemic across many countries. Ivermectin is not a new and experimental drug with an unknown safety profile. It is a WHO “Essential Medicine” already used in several different indications, in colossal cumulative volumes. Corticosteroids have become an accepted standard of care in COVID-19, based on a single RCT of dexamethasone.1 If a single RCT is sufficient for the adoption of dexamethasone, then a fortiori the evidence of 2 dozen RCTs supports the adoption of ivermectin.

    Ivermectin is likely to be an equitable, acceptable, and feasible global intervention against COVID-19. Health professionals should strongly consider its use, in both treatment and prophylaxis."

    You heard it here first and often, and that through all the bullshit that the evil Democrats and their lamestream media tried to cover up with the resulting loss of hundreds of thousands of lives for which no one is responsible nor accountable – your government at work in peace and war.

    [and more]  Led by Bumblebrain and the CDC, the government is still convincing those who don’t know any better that science speaks with a single voice, and that they are “following the science.”  The 24sep21 WSJ reports “Behind Booster Authorization Were Disagreements on Evidence, Broad Access" … The extra Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine doses are rolling out to certain fully vaccinated adults, after disputes inside the U.S. government and with its scientific adviser.”

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6 comments on Scattershots – 11oct21 (updated 12oct21)