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  • Sandbox – 4nov25

    [First Sandbox on WordPress. It is remarkable that the conservative media ore giving a pass to the polls showing that 1 of 3 Dems consider political violence to be an acceptable expression of opposition to policies they don’t like. The lamestream is, of course, silent on the news. But were those number applicable to Repubs, they would be screaming their heads off. gjr]

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  • America’s Undeclared Wars

    George Rebane

    [This post was published in the 25nov25 issue of The Union in an edited version titled ‘The Untied States of America’s undeclared wars’. gjr]

    The United States has a history of presidentially initiated military actions conducted under executive authority without a formal declaration of war from Congress, as the Constitution vests such declaratory power in the legislative branch while granting the President command of the armed forces. These instances often rely on interpretations of inherent executive powers, United Nations resolutions, or congressional authorizations short of a declaration.

    In the early 1800s, the United States confronted the threat posed by the Barbary pirates—state-sponsored corsairs from North African polities such as Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and Morocco—who seized American merchant vessels and demanded tribute or ransom for their release. Prior to independence, American ships had benefited from British protection, but as a new nation, the U.S. initially resorted to paying annual tributes to avoid conflict, a practice that many Americans viewed as humiliating and inefficient.

    Under President Thomas Jefferson, who assumed office in 1801, the U.S. adopted a more assertive stance. When the Pasha of Tripoli demanded increased payments and declared war by symbolically chopping down the flagpole at the American consulate, Jefferson dispatched a naval squadron to the Mediterranean without explicit congressional approval, marking the onset of the First Barbary War (1801–1805). American forces, including notable actions by Lieutenant Stephen Decatur—who led a daring raid to burn the captured USS Philadelphia in Tripoli Harbor—engaged in blockades, bombardments, and ground operations, culminating in a treaty that ended tribute payments to Tripoli and secured the release of American prisoners. This conflict demonstrated the young nation’s ability to project military power overseas and fostered unity among its forces.

    Following the War of 1812, renewed Algerian aggression prompted the Second Barbary War in 1815. Commodore Decatur commanded a squadron that swiftly defeated Algerian naval forces, compelling the Dey of Algiers to sign a treaty abolishing tribute and piracy against U.S. ships. These responses not only curtailed the immediate threat but also established precedents for U.S. foreign policy, emphasizing military action over appeasement in addressing maritime terrorism.

    In 1904, during his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt confronted the kidnapping of Ion Perdicaris, a prominent American expatriate residing in Tangier, Morocco, along with his stepson, by the Berber chieftain Ahmed ben Mohammed el Raisuli, who led a group often described in historical accounts as Arab or Moroccan tribal forces. Raisuli, seeking political concessions and ransom from the Sultan of Morocco, held the hostages to leverage reforms and personal gains.

    Roosevelt, viewing the incident as a challenge to American prestige amid his re-election campaign, adopted a firm stance exemplifying his “big stick” diplomacy. He promptly dispatched seven warships and Marine contingents to Moroccan waters to exert pressure on the local authorities. Through Secretary of State John Hay, Roosevelt issued a concise ultimatum to the Moroccan government: “We want Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead,” which was communicated during the Republican National Convention to underscore U.S. resolve.  Perdicaris and his stepson were released unharmed on June 24, 1904, without direct U.S. military engagement.

    In this affair Roosevelt proceeded without congressional approval, prioritizing the demonstration of American power abroad.  This episode reinforced Roosevelt’s approach to foreign policy, emphasizing swift and assertive responses to threats against American interests

    All this along with many more military engagements and interventions over the next two centuries were done with only executive authority and without congressional pre-approvals or declarations of war.  Here are some historical examples of major interventions, this list is not exhaustive –

    Year(s)Action/LocationPresidentDescription
    1798–1800Quasi-War with FranceJohn AdamsNaval engagements against French privateers in response to attacks on American shipping; Congress authorized limited actions but issued no formal declaration.
    1812–1815War of 1812 (initial phases)James MadisonEarly military operations against British forces began prior to Congress’s declaration, including invasions of Canada; the full war was later declared.
    1846–1848Mexican-American War (onset)James K. PolkTroops were deployed into disputed territory, provoking conflict before Congress declared war; the President cited defensive necessities.
    1898–1902Philippine-American WarWilliam McKinley/Theodore RooseveltFollowing acquisition from Spain, U.S. forces suppressed Filipino independence efforts through occupation and combat, without a separate declaration.
    1914–1917Interventions in MexicoWoodrow WilsonNaval occupation of Veracruz and pursuit of revolutionaries across the border to protect U.S. interests amid civil unrest.
    1950–1953Korean WarHarry S. TrumanDeployment of forces under United Nations auspices to repel North Korean invasion of South Korea; no congressional declaration, though funding was approved.
    1964–1973Vietnam War (escalation)Lyndon B. Johnson/Richard NixonMajor troop commitments and bombing campaigns against North Vietnam and insurgents, based on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution rather than a declaration.
    1983Invasion of GrenadaRonald ReaganOperation Urgent Fury to rescue U.S. citizens and depose a Marxist regime following internal unrest.
    1989Invasion of PanamaGeorge H. W. BushOperation Just Cause to capture Manuel Noriega and restore democratic governance amid drug trafficking allegations.
    1990–1991Persian Gulf WarGeorge H. W. BushCoalition forces expelled Iraqi invaders from Kuwait; Congress passed an authorization for use of military force, but no formal declaration.
    2011Intervention in LibyaBarack ObamaAirstrikes and support for rebels against Muammar Gaddafi under United Nations mandate to protect civilians.

    These actions illustrate a pattern where presidents have interpreted their role as Commander-in-Chief to encompass responses to perceived threats, often with subsequent congressional acquiescence through funding or resolutions. The 1973 War Powers Resolution sought to limit such unilateral initiatives by requiring notification and potential withdrawal, though compliance has varied. President Trump’s recent and ongoing attacks on Venezuelan speed boats, transporting contraband drugs destined for the US that have already killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, should be interpreted in light of these historical precedents.

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  • California’s Tragedy of the Commons

    George Rebane

    [This commentary appeared in the op-ed pages of the 5nov25 Union here https://www.theunion.com/news/ideas-opinions-george-rebane-california-s-tragedy-of-the-commons/article_2e0ff575-d398-436c-bf93-87945880edce.html ]

    Garret Hardin published ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ in the December 1968 issue of Science, and introduced us to the reality of how a valuable but limited resource owned in common will be depleted or destroyed.  The core concept is that “each individual will benefit from using more of the resource, resulting in the cumulative effect of everyone acting this way will lead to the destruction or depletion of the resource for everyone.”  (For more, google ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ or download https://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles_pdf/tragedy_of_the_commons.pdf )

    Our Founders were aware of this effect when it came to governance – specifically, in the dangers of organizing a society as a democracy.  They realized that there would immediately rise a cohort of the dissatisfied or ‘have-nots’ who would vote to garner unearned wealth and benefits from the state and from their richer ‘haves’.  The Founders’ solution was to avoid an unstable democracy and instead bequeath us a constitutional federal republic.  Such governance would mediate volatile and often managed public wants with a layer of elected representatives who managed the state’s public assets, and also minimally yet mindfully the nation’s economy.  In short, it would eliminate as commons our publicly owned resources and the assets of our wealthier neighbors.  We have enjoyed the fruits of their wisdom for over two centuries, until things have recently begun to fray from the political edges of our republic.

    Unfortunately, democracy invites the less-read with a simple yet beguiling siren song which power hungry, greedy, and unscrupulous politicians have mastered. Their own particular commons is the voting public of modest means whose favors (i.e. votes) can be bought with government monies dispensed under prominently advertised and carefully tailored laws and regulations.  Such political leaders know for certain that once people get used to any kind of government largesse, they will not vote to deny themselves but only vote for those who will get them more from where that came from.

    California is the nation’s poster-child for operating such a government commons enjoying over thirty years under an effective one-party monopoly.  In doing so the state now leads the nation with a rogue gallery of statistics that strains its big-government competitors like New York, New Jersey, and Illinois.  California ranks worst or among the nation’s worst in its rates of unemployment, crime, illegal aliens, homelessness, K-12 scholastics, affordability, poverty, housing shortage, economic outlook, personal freedom, regulations, taxes, environmental pollution, fiscal stability, exodus rate, …, and, of course, 50th in the overall quality of life.  All of these are invisible to the dominant half of our electorate who year after year continue practice Einsteinian insanity in the voting booth.

    To demonstrate how effective these policies have been in the eyes of its practicing proponents, California’s governor is preparing for his 2028 presidential run promising to replicate California’s good fortune across the land.  And the tailwind for his enterprise of disastrous public policies is the state’s voters, those of our neighbors who demonstrably make up the nation’s least read and most ignorant collection of American citizens.

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  • Just Tolerating the Left is Not Enough

    AOC answers her critics: “If I’m so dumb, then how come it took me only three months to complete a puzzle that on its box was printed ‘4-6 years’?”

    George Rebane

    In these tense times, a faux normalcy cloaks the serious troubles afflicting our nation and the world. As I’ve long argued in these pages, the concurrence of geopolitical missteps, cognitive biases, and the quiet creep of collectivism demands more than passive tolerance of the Left—it requires active containment. Drawing from paradigms I’ve learned from minds far sharper than mine, I’ll unpack the folly of cozying up to autocrats cum tyrants, the psychology of beliefs, the dangers of unchecked socialism, and the Left’s mangling of science and political ideology. My aim is to revisit why merely tolerating the Left is a recipe for societal decay.

    We’re living in a moment where surface calm hides a storm of ideological threats that left unchecked will restructure our society.  With many others I’ve been sounding the alarm on this danger for years, not because I’m some oracle, but because I’ve paid attention to the lessons of history and human nature.

    Geopolitics: No “Good Relationships” with Tyrants

    Let’s start with the global stage. Trump’s claim of having “good relationships” with Putin and Xi is a pipe dream. You can’t pal around with leaders whose national strategies hinge on America’s decline—China and Russia chief among them. The best you get is a civil handshake, not a bromance. Autocracies only respect force; they see diplomacy as a stalling tactic until they hold the upper hand. Trump’s instinct for win-win deals, honed in the boardroom, doesn’t translate to communist regimes that view every negotiation as zero-sum. They’ll string you along until you’re weak or they’re desperate.

    Case in point: Ukraine. The fastest way to end Putin’s war is to arm Ukraine with long-range missiles—Tomahawks, specifically—and greenlight their use against deep Russian targets. That’s not warmongering; it’s the language of power that dictators understand. It would also put China on notice about Taiwan, delaying Xi’s expansionist dreams. Anything less is just kicking the can down the road, inviting more aggression. History shows appeasement only emboldens tyrants—think Munich 1938. Force, not flattery, brings them to the table.

    The Psychology of Belief: Facts Don’t Matter

    Shifting gears, let’s talk about why bad ideas persist. It’s easier to sell people on nonsense that fits their tribal beliefs than to persuade them with reasoned truths. (Plato learned this from Socrates 2,500 years ago.)  Humans crave group membership over rational thought—always have. That’s why the old saying about having your own opinions but not your own facts is bunk. Every day, the public square proves people can and do have their own facts, histories, and logics, cobbling together personal realities that defy evidence. Social media echo chambers and partisan media only amplify this.

    This cognitive quirk explains why collectivism—socialism, communism, you name it—keeps rearing its head. Its simplistic pitch of “diversity, equity, inclusion” through redistribution hooks the gullible, promising fairness while delivering shackles. If you just tolerate this ideology in a free-market capitalist society, it spreads like cancer. You can’t sit back and hope it fizzles out. It takes active containment—educating the young on the failures of collectivism, from the Soviet Union to Venezuela, and keeping the debate alive in public forums. Without that, the left’s feel-good slogans will continue eroding the foundations of liberty.

    The Rebane Doctrine: Fooling All, Always

    I’ve long held in what I call the Rebane Doctrine that not only can you fool some people all the time and all people some of the time, but you can also fool all people all the time. Look at the Bolsheviks or Nazis—entire nations bought into catastrophic lies about the promises of collectivism. Today’s “No Kings” rallies, with tens of millions railing against Trump as some wannabe dictator, are a case study. They ignore his administration’s unmatched transparency in policy and action. Agree or disagree with his methods, albeit somewhat haphazardly applied.  -The record speaks for itself: tax cuts, deregulation, peace through strength. Yet the left’s narrative paints him as a cartoon villain, and the sheeple lap it up, proving my doctrine’s grim truth.

    Misreading the Political Spectrum

    The left’s ignorance of political ideology is another sore spot. They embrace socialism and communism as harmless alternatives to capitalism, blind to their track record of misery. Worse, they mislabel fascism as right-wing to tar conservatives as evil. Let’s set the record straight: fascism is big-government collectivism, a leftist ideology. The Right, at its core, minimizes government’s role, if anything, trending toward anarchy in its extreme. The left’s spectrum runs from autocratic collectivism—socialism, communism, fascism—to totalitarianism. The right’s extreme is no government at all. Calling fascism “right-wing” is a deliberate distortion, and it’s why the left’s moral posturing falls apart under scrutiny – minimally practiced today.

    Science as Consensus: The Left’s Anti-Science Stance

    Finally, the Democrat Party’s approach to science is anything but scientific. Bypassing evidence, they treat consensus as truth.  Their obsession with catastrophic global warming is the poster child for this narrative. Science isn’t a popularity contest; it thrives on skepticism, testing, and falsification. Yet Democrats push policies based on apocalyptic models, not hard data, shouting down dissenters as heretics. This isn’t science—it’s propagandizing dogma dressed up in lab coats. Real scientific practice demands constant questioning, not blind allegiance to a majority vote.  (A prime example – the whole field of control and estimation theory falsifies the hubris of centrally controlled large governments embraced by collectivists.)

    The Path Forward: Containment, Not Tolerance

    So, what’s the answer? Just tolerating the Left won’t cut it.  As history warns, their ideas, left unchecked, metastasize into autocracy,. We need a multi-pronged defense: arm allies like Ukraine to deter global autocrats, educate our young on the virtues of free markets and the perils of collectivism, and keep the public square buzzing with debate to expose leftist fallacies. My geo-strategic model, built on lessons from smarter minds, has held up over the years. It’s not about silencing the Left but containing their influence before their redistributionist utopian policies beggar us all.

    The stakes are high. From geopolitical miscalculations to domestic ideological drift, the threats are real. We can’t afford to sit idly by, lulled by a false sense of normalcy. The Rebane Doctrine reminds us that mass delusion is always possible, and the left’s current trajectory—embracing collectivism while mangling science and history—is a clear and present danger. It’s time to act, not just tolerate. Let’s teach, debate, and deter, or risk losing the liberal and free-market capitalistic society we’ve built.

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  • Scattershots – 9oct25

    George Rebane

    The Turing test is dead, we are told.  There’s a reasonable basis for this assertion, because today’s AIs already convince humans, on a regular basis, that they are talking with another human.  So the new goal is AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) that is defined as AIs that are ‘smarter’ than all humans in every endeavor.  But no one yet knows how to measure ‘smarter’ (i.e. intelligence) for machines since we are still not sure of how to measure it for humans.  To me the whole enterprise of searching for the litmus test for measuring the intelligence of rapidly evolving AIs is moot.  For all we know, the Singularity has already been achieved, and we will only be able to confirm it in the rearview mirror.  Here’s an essay on current efforts to measure machine intelligence – https://spectrum.ieee.org/agi-benchmark .

    Peace in Gaza is celebrated by happy dancing in the streets of major Israeli cities.  Nothing has happened yet but President Trump is already getting his tux cleaned and pressed for the trip to Stockholm.  The line in the sand that Trump drew for all to see was that Hamas would return all the hostages, lay down their guns, and get the hell out of Gaza.  And this was to happen by 6pm GMT Sunday 5 October 2025.  We are now told that the hostage release will occur in the next few days and begin a long process of negotiating the remaining points of the president’s 20-point peace deal.  Given how Trump has handled (i.e. been bamboozled by) Putin over the last months, terminating with the embarrassment in Anchorage, I won’t hold my breath any time soon.  Putin was supposed to sit down with Zelinsky to end the Ukraine war, or we would slap ‘secondary sanctions’ on Russia and give Ukraine weaponry to include long-range missiles with the  blessing to use them against strategic targets, including cities, deep in Russia.  That was the line in the sand for the 15aug25 Alaska summit – so far, nothing.  Meanwhile Putin continues to bomb the crap out of Ukraine’s cities, fly drones and fighters over Europe’s NATO countries, while selling its oil and gas all over the world.

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  • Armed citizens when you need them?

    George Rebane

    The latest mass shooting in Grand Blanc, Michigan highlights the problems with our totally unarmed civilian population in the public square.  The incident left 5 people dead (including shooter) and eight hospitalized.  The crazed killer was a military veteran who drove his pick-up through the doors of the local LDS church into the sanctuary where hundreds of people were attending a church service.  There he got out and started shooting people randomly and then took the time to set fire to the building which ultimately was totally destroyed with the authorities expecting to find more bodies in the charred rubble.  Law enforcement took about ten minutes to get there and take down the gunman.

    What boggles my mind is that among the hundreds of worshippers, and Mormons no less, there was not a single person legally armed with a CCW who could have engaged the shooter, or diverted him and possibly taken him down, thereby saving lives and the church.  There was apparently more than enough time for such a response while police were on their way.

    Sadly, there was no such self-help available.  We have all been conditioned to be sanguine about personal safety from the criminals and crazies among us – the police will protect us.  But when the need demands seconds, law enforcement is minutes away.  Today’s perpetrators are totally confident that they will encounter no immediate armed resistance, especially if they decide to do their crime in a ‘gun free zone’ or a jurisdiction which enjoins an armed citizenry.

    The progressives and other light thinkers among us will immediately claim that legally vetted armed citizens constitute a public danger.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  When the last data was available, you were six times more likely to be murdered by a rogue LE officer than a citizen with a CCW.  Today the chance of your being murdered in any given year by a CCW carrier is less than one in ten million.  Pew Research Center documented a national gun murder rate of 4.5 per 100,000 people.  Therefore, being a victim of criminal homicide by a non-CCW person is 450 times higher. 

    CCW holders are by far the least dangerous armed people among us, and that includes your local police.  And the lives they save and acts of crime they prevent go unreported by our lamestream media because it doesn’t fit their narrative promoting a disarmed citizenry.  The cost-benefit of having a sufficient share of armed citizens among us to give criminals pause is a no-brainer.

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  • Scattershots – 26sep25

    George Rebane

    Liberals ignorant of decline in students’ performance.  This was highlighted by local liberals who dismissed my 10sep25 report of the government’s assessed and nationally reported decline in the academic skills of our public schools’ students as a “doctrinaire assessment of lowering test scores in our schools” (see NAEP and NCES reports).  He further considers the yearslong decline being currently highlighted as an “isolated set of scores … heavily salted (by) partisan spin.”  Even leftwing teachers are apparently totally unaware of the recorded impact that their unions have had on academic performance.  These unions continue to promote and defend the jobs of their underperforming members, and repeat claims that we are underfunding our schools – more money applied to the same ‘ol same ‘ol policies will fix the problem.  For reference consider that California spends $23,791 per pupil who rank 37th among states.  Urban areas like LA spend $26,900 per pupil.  And the US average is $16,526 per pupil.

    And closer to home the downtrend continues.  In data from CAASPP scores in the most recent reporting year (2024) Nevada County saw a decrease in students meeting or exceeding state standards for both English Language Arts (ELA) and Math, with 41.18% proficient in ELA and 26.73% in Math.  In our idyllic corner of the state, insulated from the social and educational morass of our urban centers, one would expect our students’ academic performance to rank high among California’s public schools.  But this is not so because the focus is not on providing high classroom performance with a proficient academic staff.  Consider that the Nevada Joint Union High School District’s college/career readiness indicator shows that only 33.3% of our students are prepared for what awaits them after graduation.

    Rightwing riots burning buildings and assaulting police to protest the assassination of Charlie Kirk again have not materialized.  As history shows, had this been the death of drug-addled criminals like George Floyd, or a number of other equally credentialed worthies, the city streets across the country would have been filled with progressive rioters burning buildings and demanding ‘justice’.  Instead, we witnessed Charlie’s widow Erika delivering an emotional speech in front of thousands (millions) forgiving his killer.  In the meantime, the lamestream liars are totally misrepresenting Kirk’s message as calls for racism and white supremacy.  And rightwing media are broadcasting interviews with politicians and other notables again repeating their usual pious pabulum for us to “come together” and “get along” because “we are all Americans” – shades of Rodney King.

    (Have yet to figure out how to add color to the bold type. The WP user interface was designed by rank amateurs.)

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  • Sandbox – 18sep25

    [We’ll start with a Sandbox and see how many commenters have discovered RR on WordPress. gjr]

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  • RR has arrived on WordPress

    George Rebane

    After some considerably hard work in transferring files and going through the process of developing a new blog, Rebane’s Ruminations has arrived on WordPress and is now ensconced there.  I welcome all of our longtime readers from TypePad to resume their participation in this new home, and learn how to navigate its pathways.  Regarding that, your host is still in the process of learning where all the buttons and levers are on this blog server, and how to get things going again in a new environment.  I am doing my best to replicate the functionality that we had on TypePad. Please be patient with my pilot errors which no doubt you will encounter.  Also, some of the page designs and cosmetics will be changing over time as I communicate my persnickety druthers to my web designer who will continue to do the ‘heavy lifting’ in getting RR bedded down.  Again, welcome.

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  • Typepad is shutting down

    George Rebane

    It seems that Typepad has been on its last legs for at least a couple of years.  They have shown very little competence and professionalism in how they have been operating their blog service.  I received an email from them yesterday announcing that their service would end on 30 September 2025.  With my son-in-law I’m doing all I can to preserve the 18 years of RR content and transfer it over to WordPress.  Regardless of how my future blogging turns out, I am grateful for the years that readers have continued to visit and comment on RR, and I thank you all for your participation and support of the open policy for expressing our opinions and observations that we have been able to enjoy.  As things progress, I will keep you apprised of what is happening.

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108 comments on Sandbox – 4nov25