George Rebane

There are no more paladins living among us.  When some public atrocity is being committed, like someone or two having the crap kicked out of them on a sidewalk, or a Molotov cocktail thrown through a store window, or a brutal execution of someone sitting in a car, then all the gathered onlookers are concerned about is that they get a good video of the goings on, no matter how long the goings on are ongoing.  Concern for the immediate wellbeing of our fellow man, no matter how unjustly he is being treated, is no longer of any concern to anyone.  Where are the CCWs when we need them?  After all, they are issued specifically for use in case of incipient murder or mayhem.  But we can rejoice, the videos ultimately appear on various social media channels.  (Example @208pm on the last Sandbox)

[5jul21 update]  The XL Pipeline people are suing our federal government for $15B damages.  It is a proper suit since the Biden administration, in launching one of its earliest disasters for the country, abrogated its contract with the builder after it had most of the pipeline completed.  Bumblebrain’s compliance to his rabid anti-American Left terminated the country's energy independence, put the world’s oil prices back in the hands of OPEC et al, and resulted in the spiking of gasoline prices across the land as a major contributor to the resurgence of inflation.  The latter being a hit to the wallets of all Americans, hurting most the poor and the middle class.  The Dems only hope for 2022 is that most of our electorate will remain sufficiently numb between the ears so that they cannot ferret out the source of their pain.

The dismantling of Hong Kong by the CCP remains an unreported mystery to the global news machinery.  No one has yet to report that it is in Beijing’s interest to destroy HK as a leading global financial center in the shadow of which Shanghai, mainland’s own financial center, has been forced to compete.  HK has been the port of call for international monies seeking investments in the mainland, Taiwan, and all of south Asia.  This felicitous situation has buttressed Taiwan and highlighted the business efficiencies practiced in an economically free environment with that practiced under strict CCP control.  To Beijing, and its compliant allies in Singapore, HK has been an irritating sore that needed to be excised.  Today things are getting so bad that major US tech companies are threatening to leave the city to save their staffs from trumped-up criminal charges (more here).  But no one is connecting the dots on HK’s ultimate fate as becoming just another seaport to serve China’s southern Guangdong province and its industrial capital Guangzhou.

Our Sacramento stupidos have suddenly realized that the state’s ongoing rape of its power generating infrastructure will leave us short of electricity as we proceed into a hot summer.  The Epoch Times reports (here) the CA Energy Commission and its PUC have asked the CA Independent System Operator to contract for more energy in the coming months.  There is no guarantee that such energy supplies will be available from other states similarly afflicted.  In their letter they lied that the need arises in spite of “California using all available tools to increase electricity reliability this summer,”  In reality, they abandoned the available and reliable tools of safe nuclear and clean natural gas power plants for a poorly conceived, inadequate, and premature green energy strategy that will guarantee power shortfalls in California for years to come.  Our state’s political monopoly has literally shit in the old well before the new one was dug (from an old Estonian proverb).  In sum, the politically incorrect but reliable Plan A has been abandoned, and there is no Plan B.  (H/T to reader)

[8jul21 update] Worthless Degrees.  Here’s a common story from the 8jul21 WSJ.  “Recent film program graduates of Columbia University who took out federal student loans had a median debt of $181,000.  Yet two years after earning their master’s degrees, half of the borrowers were making less than $30,000 a year.  The Columbia program offers the most extreme example of how elite universities in recent years have awarded thousands of master’s degrees that don’t provide graduates enough early career earnings to begin paying down their federal student loans, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Education Department data.”  For the arithmetically curious $30K/yr = $15/hr – the intended national minimum wage.  In Nevada County today an apprentice electrician with no experience and without even a high school diploma can get a job for $15-18/hr.

Classroom video monitoring.  The teachers’ unions are dead set against any video recordings of classroom instruction and goings on.  They claim it violates the students’ rights to privacy.  There is no such right to privacy for students in a public school classroom.  For generations parents and other interested parties have always been welcome observers in America’s classrooms.  With today’s technology it would be an easy matter to put streaming/stored classroom videos online so that parents could log in to see what little Johnny/Sally was being taught and assigned as homework.  My wife Jo Ann was a regular fixture in our kids’ grade school classrooms.  But not today, and the reason is clear.  The crap that marginally competent teachers put out under today’s closely guarded cloud of pedagogy would at a minimum disappoint and, most likely, enrage parents.  And this is doubly so as Critical Race Theory has started tainting all manner of K-12 subjects in our unionized public schools.

[9jul21 update]  ‘CDC Recommends Schools Open Fully Immediately, Says Vaccinated Teachers And Students Don’t Need Masks’  This has been true for over six months.  It is the work of the evil party and Team Biden that has prevented our children from resuming their education, and school attendance which never needed to be interrupted last year.  All this has accomplished is to make more reliable Democrat voters, which, of course, was the purpose of the school shutdowns in the first place.