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November 2026
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  • ‘The Sovietization of California’

    George Rebane

    We have covered this dreadful progress to autocracy for years from a number of perspectives.  In my lifetime California has descended from its Olympian perch as the planet’s jeweled jurisdiction, to one that today competes with second and third world countries in governance, infrastructure maintenance, husbanding its natural resources, extracting tribute from its citizens, and daily ratcheting down more of their freedoms.

    Longtime California resident and national columnist Dennis Prager in Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal gives a summation (here) of how the Left has tattered the once golden state.  Prager describes California as “a state where corruption reigns (one of the leading Democrats of the last half-century told me years ago that politicians in California are window dressing; the real power in California is wielded by unions) and where, for nine months, normal life has been shut down, schools have been closed, and small businesses.”

    As a celebrated national leader in everything from technology to ideology, the state has worked hard to fundamentally transform America into its own declining state of collectivism.  As one of its leading bamboozles, California has convinced the nation’s light thinkers that the Left follows the science, when demonstrably “the left’s claim to ‘follow the science’ is a lie. The left does not follow science; it follows scientists it agrees with and dismisses all other scientists as ‘anti-science’.”  And then doubles down with the bigger lie that science speaks unambiguously with a single voice, which for some mystical reason only those of the Left are able to hear and understand.

    Given our state’s lead, “there is no question that America is becoming, if it hasn’t already become, two countries: one that values liberty, from small businesses being allowed to operate to people being allowed to say what they believe, and one that has contempt for liberty, from eating in restaurants to free speech.”  And more differences between us are legion.  De facto, the Great Divide is already here, and, as observed in these pages, awaits only its de juris resolution.

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  • Contending and Correcting Elections

    "Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord."  Isaiah 1:18

    George Rebane

    There’s an ‘open letter to the President’ going around the email circuit beseeching him to invoke the Insurrection Act, activate National Guard and the military to seize ballots and vote computers across the nation, publish all the secret evidence of alleged voting fraud, and essentially proceed toward a redo of the national election under newly prescribed and strict supervision.  The letter was written by two lawyers – Stewart Rhodes and Kellye SoRelle.

    Regardless of what we think about the legitimacy of the November election, at this stage of the game I don’t think that carrying out the open letter’s prescriptions is a good idea.  If tried, it will not occur peacefully, and will most certainly give rise to massive civil disturbances that could lead to a civil war.  The problem is that the US has a 250-year history of elections – admittedly some more contended than others – that have in the end been accepted by our citizens with relatively minimal turbulence (e.g. ‘Battle of Athens’).  Because of this, our country has not put in place mechanisms to peacefully contend and correct both statewide and national elections.

    Now I believe there’s an 80% chance that nationwide incidents of election fraud, ranging from petty to massive, occurred.  And I also believe that there’s a 50% chance that such fraud, as supported by presented and rejected evidence, would overturn significant election results (e.g. the presidency) if allowed its day in court and found to be true.  But today, we are where we are, and there remain only a few low probability opportunities to change the overwhelmingly accepted election outcomes using in-place processes and procedures.  The enduring problem we shoulder going forward is that, given the polls, there is a significant fraction of Americans who no longer have faith in the manner our elections are conducted (I am one of them.)  So, what to do?

    My recommendation is that we join in a bipartisan effort to put in place a comprehensive and transparent set of processes and procedures under which future national (and perhaps also statewide) elections may be contended and corrected in an orderly and peaceful manner.  This would be launched and supervised by a congressional commission with a staffed working group of people with appropriate legal and information systems expertise to devise, develop, and test the resulting federal System for Contending and Correcting Elections (SCCE).

    The bipartisan SCCE would prescribe the required legal underpinnings for its field operations, and recommend to Congress any additional supporting legislation needed.  Its working group would publish the how/when/who functions that define such things as SCCE election monitoring mechanisms, election scheduling, means of voting, vetting of franchised voters, accepting and processing reported irregularities, ballot chains of custody, isolating voting machines, standards of identifying and adjudicating fraud, procedures for holding re-elections, and so on.

    In the latter case when a re-election is warranted, the SCCE's procedures for the uninterrupted continuance of government in the interval would already be laid out, specifying which elected and appointed officials remain with what duties and powers.  It is not yet clear whether all this can be accomplished through legislation, or will the Constitution need to be amended to handle such interregnum matters.

    In any case, this approach of commissioning a SCCE during the relative political quietude between elections would serve our country much better than today’s calls for tanks in the intersections and attack helicopters flying overhead.  And in the worst case, the attempt to launch such an initiative would be very revealing of which organs of the Deep State, which private sector institutions, which corporatists, and which political parties rise to oppose such approaches to restore public confidence in the elections which sustain our democratic republic.

    These are my preliminary thoughts on the matter, and I'm sure readers have their own ideas to offer on what, if any, preparations need be made to avoid the now existential travails we continue to suffer from the elections of 2016 and 2020.

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  • Scattershots – 18dec20 (updated 22dec20)

    George Rebane

    The recall of Gov Gavin Newsom is making good progress, and petition signatures may be collected until 10 March 2021.  Here is the link to get your signature on a petition to recall this hubristic progressive idiot before he does more damage to our state.

    Cato’s annual Human Freedom Index just published; it rates each country’s freedom along twelve dimensions.  The top ten countries in order of rank were – New Zealand, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Estonia, and Germany and Sweden (tied in 9th place).  The United States and United Kingdom tied in 17th place.  And it appears that, given the Democrats’ headlong progressive plunge toward socialism, our freedoms will be more limited as Team Biden builds back leviathan and its stifling laws, regulations, and taxes. (more here)

    [19dec20 update] California finally has a draconian plan to chase away the rich, and then keep stalking them.  Now going through the state Assembly is “a proposed wealth tax (that) would apply for a decade to anyone who spends 60 days in the state in a single year.” (more here)  I have prophesized this future for us for some years now.  The state has been so badly mismanaged by collectivist Democrats for decades that it now needs to go after the already-taxed assets of its residents, starting with the wealthy, and then as always, working the damage down to the middle classes.  “Assembly Bill 2088 proposes calculating the wealth tax based on current world-wide net worth each Dec. 31. For part-year and temporary residents, the tax would be proportionate based on their number of days in California. The annual tax would be on current net worth and therefore would include wealth earned, inherited or obtained through gifts or estates long before and long after leaving the state.”  The ongoing exodus of our producers will now sky rocket, to be replaced by the new battalions of Biden's border bandidos.  These are topics worthy of discussing with our progressive readers who will not touch them with a ten-footer.

    Expanding on the theme that Democrats are butt stupid and evil, we should note some stats over the last couple of years as reported by the WSJ –

    • 660 companies have left California,
    • 765 companies’ facilities have been moved out of California,
    • Over 200,000 Californians have emigrated to Texas, more to other destinations,
    • Welfare recipients and illegals continue to arrive in droves to keep the population stable.

    And all because we have a political monopoly of double dummies who have no idea how humans behave (‘Tax rates don’t affect economic behavior’) and how to manage a productive economy.  All they know is that to stay in political power they need ever more ignorant voters buttressed by illegal aliens on the way to citizenship and the ballot box (not necessarily in that order), and tax the bejeezus out of those who have money and can still earn.

    [22dec20 update]  Corporatists are racing to implement racist policies, and pledging big bucks to assure the new woke administration and their lamestream mouthpieces that they indeed are virtuous to a tee.  But it’s hard to tell where all those millions and billions will be spent to the advertised goal of "racial equity" in lending to and locating in black communities.  And no one is sure that the promised amounts aren’t just coming back to other businesses not owned by blacks.  But the puffing and parading under banners of social justice in the media is worth twice price paid to PR outfits to promote the newly progressivist participants.  BTW, haven't we tried all this at least a couple of times before? (more here)

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  • Sandbox – 18dec20

    [So now the C19 vaccines are arriving in backwoods counties like ours.  Does anyone know of a list or policy that prioritizes who should get the vaccine and when (and where)?  The news about its distribution stops with vague references to healthcare workers and old folks in care facilities being somewhere near the top of the list.  gjr]

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  • The fat lady has sung, off key (Addended and updated)

    George Rebane

    [This is the addended, edited, and updated transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 16 December 2020.]

    Last Monday the Electoral College elected Joe Biden to be the 46th president of the United States.  The election was heavily contested for two distinct reasons, but to no avail.  Let me be clear from the start, I am a conservetarian and therefore not happy with the election’s outcome – also for two distinct reasons to which we’ll get directly.

    This election is unique in our country’s history for a few significant reasons.  One of them being in the number of people who decided to get off their duffs and vote.  Another, and perhaps more important, is that this election was fraught with an enormous number of irregularities – procedural, legal, and criminally fraudulent.  Each of these categories contained enough incidents, not only to give credibility as to their witnessed occurrences, but also of the types that should have led to annulment or at least a redo of the cited precincts’ work to correctly qualify and count the ballots.  An alarming number of states violated their own laws, constitutions, and the US Constitution in the manner they conducted their elections prior to and in the aftermath of November 3rd.  These violations are a matter of record, and they overwhelmingly favored one candidate over the other – always the same candidate.

    Then we come to the criminally fraudulent incidents.  These again were reported by witnesses putting themselves at substantial risk of committing felonies, as they filed affidavits that attested to what they saw and heard.  And again, such sworn affidavits, which are accepted as evidence in all courts, numbered in the tens (hundreds?) across the land and described incidents of ballots handling that could have plausibly affected the election’s outcome had they been allowed to be corroborated by the authorities.

    (more…)

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  • Is there a Dr/doctor in the house? (Addended 18dec20)

    George Rebane

    Joseph Epstein’s column in 11dec20 WSJ (here) about Jill Biden’s doctorate started a national row that has even penetrated our country’s hinterlands and backwoods.  The FLOTUS-elect likes to be called “Dr Biden”, and the compliant media has, well, complied to the extent that Dr Biden has become an ever-present, in-your-face item in today’s news.  Most people (including Epstein) debating the use of that honorific in a salutation are innocent of the genesis of ‘doctor’ and ‘Dr’, so maybe a little background would help.

    (more…)

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  • Covid Related – 11dec20

    George Rebane

    With major ongoing national issues, I’m starting what would appear to be bespoke issue-dedicated sandboxes.  Let’s see how well/long this works out.

    A reader sent me a link that supports arguments I and others here have made as to why the US has its reported Covid case and mortality numbers.  The Left has effectively screamed all summer long and into the fall that these were due to President Trump’s mishandling of the nation’s C19 response program.  Well, they were wrong on multiple accounts, but with the lamestream’s help, this continuously broadcast message convinced enough people to give us the currently reported and contested election results.

    The actual reason for the difficulty in reducing our numbers to that of smaller, more culturally cohesive countries is that we are a large polyglot nation, now highly polarized, and of many cultures, ethnicities, and political persuasions.  Belgium, a much smaller nation of 11M, but otherwise similarly afflicted also demonstrates even higher C19 rates (more here and H/T to reader).  And it doesn’t look like this level of America’s ignorance will be surmounted any time soon – especially now that K-12 schools are starting to embrace ‘critical race theory’ big time.

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  • Voter Fraud 6.0 … until the fat lady sings (updated)

    George Rebane

    I asked this question of BarryP – "BarryP 549pm – don't the states have an argument for being aggrieved by the federally unconstitutional and/or purposive violation of state election laws that may/will foster an outcome of that state's election which on the federal level then illegally weighs against the legitimate voters of the aggrieved state? That is plenty of evidence for 'suffering harm' that supports the plaintiff state's standing with SCOTUS. What am I missing here?"  Barry said the answer was a long one and wanted to know where to post it.  My question is seminal, so I'm asking Barry to email me his answer, and I'll post right here for all to read.

    Everyone else, please continue your election fraud relevant comment threads from 'Voter Fraud 5.0' hereunder.

    [Worth repeating the 10dec20 update to Voter Fraud 5.0] Now here’s a shot in the shorts of all those on the Left telling the nation a slew of Big Lies about the integrity of the Dominion (Vote Editing) Software.  ‘Election Supervisor Shows on Video How Dominion Software Allows Changing, Adding Votes’.  This should renew some interest in the courts now chewing on election fraud suits.  The evidence tsunami is of historical proportions.  I know of no legal battle fought in my lifetime in which the plaintiffs have had such a profusion of evidence.

    [update] Barry Pruett emailed me the following in answer to my question above.

    (more…)

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  • Sandbox – 11dec20

    [My internet has been mostly off all week long, and ATT doesn't know where the fault is.  But they've finally isolated it to somewhere up here on Hind Tit Rd.  Patience please.  gjr]

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  • Sandbox – 10dec20

    [Victor Davis Hanson (here) agrees with Rebane Doctrine that Biden will take credit for any and all Trump accomplishments re the nation’s economy, foreign relations (e.g. China and the Mideast), Covid response, … that he does not wind up destroying, specifically to “allow unchecked immigration. Freeze construction of, or even tear down, the border wall. Lift tariffs on China. Let NATO members pay as little as they like. Ban or cut back on fracking. Rejoin the Iran nuclear deal. Rejoin the Paris climate agreement. Polarize Israel and its new Arab allies. Fast-track the Green New Deal. Raise taxes sky-high. Let the Rust Belt rust. Allow Big Tech to do as it pleases.”  gjr]

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2 comments on ‘The Sovietization of California’