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  • Sandbox – 17oct20

    [I’ve been writing about the contrary Covid counsels coming from science, with each political side finding plenty to support their respective positions on correct response policies.  Isn’t it a bitch now that the Europeans, held up by our Left as the paragons practicing proper pandemic public policies, are now also suffering the resurgence of Covid cases no matter how much they lockdown or not, distance or not, wear masks or not?  Brings out a chuckle or two when I note how the lamestream is trying to hide all this from their double dummies.  gjr]

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  • ‘I want Trump to die’ addended

    George Rebane

    [Apologies for the late posting of this promised follow-on commentary.]

    Thoughtful comments from readers expanded the scope of my 4oct20 ‘I want Trump to die’ commentary to encompass social behaviors that may or not be acceptable and/or legal under our current form of governance.  And this includes a wide variety of people’s aspirations for regicide and its modern versions that include the leaders of more representative and therefore more liberal governments.  More specifically, comments from progressive readers such as Steven Frisch who strongly asserts, “I have stated here on many occasions that I do not believe that political violence is justified in American society. I have also stated on many occasions that I believe that some of the rhetoric used on this page, and the tacit acceptance of the threat of, or insinuation of, political violence is philosophically un-American and un-patriotic.”

    As a conservetarian, I take great issue with such a belief while acknowledging that it is held by most, but not all, liberals and progressives in America.  The new neo-Marxist wing of the Democratic Party has no such inhibitions against political violence.  In fact, in the written manifestos on their websites, neo-Marxist organizations such as BLM, proudly declare their support of, and even the necessity for such violence to topple corrupt and unjust political orders.  They back this up with their actions in the streets and voluminous statements to the press justifying politically motivated riots.

    In these pages over the years I have often argued that in a liberal and free country, the citizens’ right and ability to violently oppose their government should always be recognized, celebrated, maintained, and not be insidiously abridged by government.  Although and without contradiction, if such a purposely violent cohort does arise, the non-violent citizens opposing that cohort have every right to petition and support their government in opposing such violence with all the force provided it by established laws.  In short, a free people are free only to the extent that they retain their ability to successfully resist their government in order to be able to fundamentally transform it through reform or revolution.

    We understand these truths from the historical fact that America was born through political violence, and that the subsequent exercise of political violence has served to preserve the Union many times since.  To now declare that political violence has suddenly become “un-American and un-patriotic” as a basic right of a free people, provided for in our Constitution, is both preposterous and ignorant of the fundamental principles and means of our country’s founding and maintenance.

    Here I once more expand on the rationale for these beliefs in ‘Versions of Fundamental Transformations’ which you can download here -  Download VersFundTransforms.  Long time readers are aware of the bases for these beliefs from the collected tenets of my credo and related commentaries over the years – see also the Bastiat Triangle, a Conservetarian Credo, and the Rebane Doctrine category of this blog.

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  • Corporatist Censorship in Full Bloom

    "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."  Vladimir Ilich Lenin

    George Rebane

    There is no longer any reason to deny the death throes of the First Amendment.  The country’s Left, working hand-in-glove with its media, public education, and corporatist lackies, has won the Newspeak and censorship wars.  This morning we heard from FN and Politico that President Trump’s Twitter account has been “suspended”. (here)  Why?  Well, our chief executive dared to point out the burgeoning Hunter Biden email scandal that the New York Post uncovered and dared to publish.  (more here)  Of course, the NYP had its social accounts quickly taken down as the lamestream media pitched in to try and kill the story.

    These are just the latest in a rapidly growing trend of social media companies censoring any and all content that goes counter to the Left’s narrative of the country’s ills which require its prescribed fundamental transformation of America.  The alarums, now being raised here and there by opposing voices, point to this avalanche of avaricious one-sided virtue signalers.  However, these voices are getting little or no traction in the public square.  The careful media consumer already has seen FN, that formerly stalwart bulwark of 'fair, balanced, and unafraid' news, begin its quiet ‘go along to get along’ with the loud voices of the Left.

    Nevertheless, some worthies are not giving up without a fight.  Evidence that FN is not yet fully committed to the devil’s den, it has posted ‘Ex-Facebook honcho Tim Kendall says Big Tech is a “threat to democracy”, calls for social media reform’. (H/T to reader)  Therein Kendall makes the point that big tech is engaged in a “global assault on democracy”.  He has produced ‘The Social Dilemma’, a film streaming on Netflix, in which he and other epiphanied high tech execs give their versions of the deluge of fake news, misinformation, and behavior modifying stimuli that pour out of the web pages of today’s social media giants.

    “There are studies that show false information or fake news spreads six times faster online than accurate information. The attention-based business model of social media companies perpetuates outlandish, extreme, and controversial content that tends to receive more clicks and views. Content laced with misleading information that undermines faith in elections and other institutions vital to democracy is particularly dangerous for our society. In the near term, everyone should tune out the noise online and vote with confidence, whether by mail or in-person, and participate in this crucial democratic process.”

    Before the metastasis of this communications cancer, we already witnessed corporatists willingly sell socialists the rope with which America's capitalists will be hanged.  Today this enterprise has expanded to corporatists vying with each other to hand that rope gratis to our country’s comrades.  

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  • The Durham Disgrace

    George Rebane

    According to our DoJ, in the spring of 2019 attorney John Durham was tasked with “exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,”  His mandate included determination of whether “intelligence collection activities by the U.S. government related to the Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign were lawful and appropriate.”

    He has been at the task for over 18 months, and has produced little (one insignificant guilty plea) and reported diddly-squat on his progress.  Bottom line, no one outside his boss AG Bill Barr knows what progress he has made, or what Durham is currently pursuing.  The only reports about the investigation we hear are admonishments that there is “concern that the investigative team is being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done.” (more here)

    Well, hell yes!  The prime purpose of the investigation is to maximally inform the American electorate BEFORE the election about which low-lifes did what to whom with all the visibly criminal things that went on in Obama’s DoJ, FBI, et al to foment the ongoing attacks on Trump’s campaign and presidency.  There are smoking guns all over the place, and Durham was supposed see if there was enough to tie a bow of criminality on the whole affair.  For that he has had the widest latitude in how and where he can poke his nose.

    And now we hear that he will not issue a report before the election, why?  Because it might affect the election.  Again – well, hell yes! If there is evidence there that would impact the election in the minds of reasonable voters, then we should be made aware of it in a timely manner.  There is NO dictum from anyone, including Barr, that Durham’s probe has to be all done with a nice stack of bound final reports coming from the printer before we know what he found out or didn’t find.  He can always publish an interim report, and let us know what he has discovered to date, AND then continue with his investigation as long a AG Barr lets him.

    And as I’ve recommended before, if he has stuff that’s culpatory and that can’t be released, he should just say that, and then escrow his time-stamped evidence and investigative intents with an appropriate court or the DoJ.  But leaving the country in the dark as we head for the most impactive election of our lifetime, an election that already stinks to high heaven, should not be accepted by anyone in Congress or the administration concerned about the timely discovery of truth.  Holding in secret today evidence that would inform and advise the electorate is an historical crock of crap, and we all appear to have been made docile enough to accept it without a peep.

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  • Unreasonable Partisan Fears

    “We have nothing to fear but those who live in fear.” – BH, RR reader and contributor

    George Rebane

    [This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 13 October 2020.]

    Our Left has been telling Republicans for years that Democrats are the party of intellectuals and the highly educated.  Republicans are viewed by the Left as mostly Bible-thumpin’and gun totin’ knuckle-draggers, categorized simply as those ‘irredeemable deplorables’ on our political landscape.  Among the many deficits allegedly shared by those on the Right is their disdain for science, which the Democratic Party claims is the guiding star for their public policies and gives imprimatur to the pronouncements of their elites.

    The strongest substance for that belief is the oft-cited ratio of white college graduates who claim party affiliation.  The Atlantic sits solidly on the throne of leftwing wisdom and light, from whence it advises us that ‘America Is Divided by Education’, and asserts that “the gulf between the party identification of white voters with college degrees and those without is growing rapidly. Trump is widening it.”  Actually, there is no evidence for that, and the National Center for Educational Statistics has shown a growing fraction of those of all races and ethnicities who obtain bachelor’s or higher degrees (here).

    What really is more than puzzling is the lack of published numbers on party totals of those who have a 4-year college degree or higher.  It is well known that Democrats enjoy higher percentages of black and Hispanic members, but we don’t know how many of these with college degrees make up or contribute to each party’s cohort of the well-educated (more here ) .  The best we can tell from Pew Research is that “about a third (34%) of those with a college degree or more education identify as Democrats, compared with 24% who identify as Republicans.”  Note that this doesn’t answer what fraction of Democrats v Republicans have a college degree or more.  (more  here and here)

    So, let’s attempt to leapfrog this gap in our knowledge and find out how the parties react to the most up-to-date science regarding Covid-19.  The World Health Organization has recently concluded that lockdowns as a pandemic response don’t work, and instead do great damage to the poorest segments of the world’s population.  This conclusion was amplified by last week’s publication of the Greater Barrington Declaration drafted by health scientists from Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford, and co-signed by thousands of professionals from all walks.  Its authors cite extensive clinical evidence to confirm the WHO conclusion, and strongly recommend that all nations immediately stand down from their ineffective and insane lockdown policies.  Even more strongly, they conclude that the additional deaths and morbidities, on top of the economic disasters caused by such policies, actually constitute “crimes against humanity” of the kind last litigated in Nuremberg in 1946.  (more here and here)

    For reasons we don’t have time for here, the leftwing news outlets have covered none of this.  And apparently the country’s declared Democrats don’t look much beyond what they are told on MSNBC, CNN, et al.  So, when Gallup assembled a recent panel for a survey on how men and women of both parties view and respond to Covid-19, they discovered and published some interesting results which reflect on the educational levels as characterized by Democrats.  (see Addendum)

    Gallup asked the panel questions about ‘concern over catching the virus’, ‘concern about exposure at work’, ‘avoiding going to public places’, and so on.  They concluded by asking who would be ‘ready to return to normal activities right now’.  Overwhelmingly, the results indicated that Democrats were significantly more fearful of the pandemic than Republicans, and women of both parties were more hesitant than men to interpret the science news that went counter to that released within the Democrat narrative about proper responses that recommend ongoing lockdowns, widespread social distancing, and perpetual wearing of masks.  Given the widely published mortality statistics, the presented results do not bode well for the party that claims to be more educated and attuned to the findings and contentions of science.

    These conclusions explain why people in liberal states like California continue to be both docile and sanguine about their states’ ongoing draconian Covid-19 response policies – policies no longer supported by scientific consensus or internationally reputable scientists and clinicians.  It is clear that America’s public policy responses to this pandemic have been completely co-opted to serve greater political agendas in this election year.

    My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with additional data and relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

    [Addendum]  Here is the table of compiled results by Gallup showing how respondents felt about loosening up on Covid-19 response policy protocols.

    C19responsesGallup

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  • The Union Decimates its Other Voices

    George Rebane

    A new editorial policy has descended on The Union.  Since former editor Brian Hamilton left, several columnists, including regular Other Voices columnists Terry McLaughlin and Manny Montes, have had their submitted columns edited to the point of being shredded.  Specifically, the newspaper’s new line editors not only have removed entire sections of pieces that contain major points, but also have decimated submissions by eliminating critical citations included to substantiate important arguments made by authors.

    Most recently Ms McLaughlin’s 7oct20 column ‘Trump’s tax cuts and deregulation’ had its print edition abbreviated, and the online version was restored only after the author’s complaint to the new acting editor Alan Riquelmy.  Mr Montes’ 10oct20 column had an entire section cut out of the print edition that contained the main thrust of his piece.  The supposed 750-word allowance for Other Voices columns was reduced to 440 words.  Given Mr Riquelmy’s response to Ms McLaughlin, we may presume (hope?) that he has also responded promptly to Mr Montes’ concerns.

    As a former Union columnist and now a some-time Other Voices contributor, I add this concern to those that I have noted here over the years.  The previously already left-leaning newspaper has recently taken some noticeable steps toward presenting itself as an unabashed outlet of all things progressive.  Its nods toward conservative views have become more disproportionate.

    Readers may recall that back in 2015 my bride Jo Ann (before becoming a member of its editorial board) did an extensive survey, lasting several months, of the Union’s op-ed page contents that quantified a definite liberal bias, and reported the results to its management.  The Union acknowledged this through an ‘Editorial Page Challenge’ inviting readers to corroborate the findings.  Only Jo Ann and one other (liberal) reader responded to the challenge with their results that covered the contents of January 2016 (more here) As expected, both surveys gave opposite results.  Jo Ann’s results were 40 conservative, 56 liberal, 46 neutral.  This showed a 40% liberal bias in that month’s op-ed page contents.  The liberal lady’s results were 34 liberal, 40 conservative, 71 neutral – a 17.6% conservative bias.  No doubt according to her lights a good portion of her neutrals were seen as liberal by Jo Ann.

    But that was then and this is now.  The beat toward the Left has continued, and I’m willing to bet a pretty penny that what we see in our beloved Union is now overwhelmingly left-leaning.  But please don’t interpret this as my having a hissy fit about what appears in the newspaper.  There are no complaints against the motivations of their management and staff – they are good people and our neighbors.  And we must never forget that the newspaper is a private enterprise and news outlet, one which its owners and editors can tilt in any ideological direction they desire.  No blame, no shame there as long as we all understand which way its winds are blowing and filling the sails of Nevada County voters.

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  • Ruminations – 11oct20 (updated 13oct20)

    George Rebane

    Sen Chris Coons (D-DE) invented the newest Democrat Big Lie when he claimed today that the Republicans are the ones “packing the court” with their nomination of Judge Barrett to fill RBG’s seat and bring SCOTUS back to its 150-year level of nine justices.  But his real slam is against the Democrat constituencies who he thinks are dense enough to believe him.

    Leading leftwing lights go off the rails on Judge Amy Coney Barrett.  Bill Maher declared nationally that “she’s a fucking nut” and a Catholic who “speaks in tongues”.  Democrat commentator Keith Olbermann advises all that she “should be prosecuted” and “removed from our society”.  Given Judge Barrett’s vitae and reputation, these men most clearly expose the evil heart of the Democratic Party and its dim assessment of the American electorate.

    “America is sleepwalking into soft totalitarianism.”  So argue several survivors from post-war communist East Europe.  A revealing interview (here) with author and commentator Rod Dreher gives basis for that argument (and substantiates those found in these pages).  “In the Orwellian, Soviet, Stalinist society, the state-controlled people by inflicting pain and terror on them. But in the soft totalitarianism that I see coming here, the state will control people—and not only states, but even more importantly, corporations and institutions like universities will control people by manipulating their access to the economy and to status and to all the markers of middle-class life.”  And this is only the first step, which in California is in aggressive advance (here).

    [update] WHO now opposes lockdowns.  The World Health Organization has come out against lockdowns as a C19 response policy, stating that these are "a terrible, ghastly, global catastrophe".  I draw you kind attention to the 11oct20 update to 'Crimes Against Humanity'.

    [13oct20 update]  Biden doesn’t know, has forgotten, or has yet to be told what his policies would be on everything from packing the court to regulatory reform.  All candidates in our history have made it a point to inform voters of their governance desiderata which they consider their strong points.  Not so with Bumblebrain, whose forte has been reeling off Big Lies, well documented in these pages since he became the Dems’ nominee.

    Another shot in the shorts of our communally held sensibilities.  From the party of low-lifes we have the latest contribution.  Sen Mazie Hirono (D-HI) asked Judge Amy Coney Barrett if she has ever sexually assaulted someone (here).  They truly are a party of evil scumbags.

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  • Sandbox – 10oct20

    [Businesses and taxpayers are leaving California, the census stats tell the tale that almost all CA leftwingers deny, especially the really dense local ones.  Recent notable departures are conservative commentators Joe Rogan (moved to Texas) and Ben Shapiro, who is taking his small business with 70 employees to Nashville – he tells his story here.  Even the very liberal Bill Maher when interviewing Rep Schiff takes him to task for the California exodus (more here), and cites a litany of butt stupid Democrat policies (more recent ones here) starting with high taxes and regs, and going all the way down to crap and needles on sidewalks populated by the tents of the untouchable indigents.  Schiff can only manage a lame, ‘I see no reason why progressives and businesses cannot coexist, we should work on that.’  Well no s#!t Red Ryder.  And our local lights of the Left continue denying the whole thing.  gjr]

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  • ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ (updated 11oct20)

    “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”, Richard Feynman

    George Rebane

    Almost everything you’ve heard about Covid-19 (here also C19) from politicians, the media, and publicized scientists and clinicians is wrong.  Here at RR, early on I started looking at the pandemic with a gimlet eye.  I did this as a science professional and a longtime student of how politics and scientification have been illicitly cohabiting for decades, to the point that today it’s difficult to tell which is the john and which is whore.  The C19 pandemic has brought it all together, and now invites serious review of the disease, its hysterical public response policies, and the real prophylaxis and collateral damage that has resulted from the variously implemented policies.

    For the better part of this year we have been subjected to pronouncements delivered from on high about C19's sacrosanct ‘science’, and the irrevocable wisdom of ‘following the science’.  All this as if science was a singular, unitary, and all-illuminating oracle speaking to us from Olympus in a clear and unambiguous voice.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and over the months more and more serious and credible people are beginning to find their voice and speak out against such specious beliefs.  For openers, I suggest that readers begin with ‘What the pandemic has taught us about science’ by Matt Ridley, MP in the House of Lords, that appears in the 9oct20 WSJ.

    The levels of clinical, scientific, and political fraud launched at global populations is of historical proportions.  It may be argued that never before have so many billions of humans been so thoroughly bamboozled by their political leaders, abetted by a willing media citing grant-sucking scientists, go-along healthcare professionals, and profit-motivated pharma.  This has reached levels which have invited a German-based investigative committee headed by Dr Reiner Fuellmich to launch a multi-national class action suit, making the case that such cynically enforced policies have caused enough death and destruction worldwide to amount to a ‘crime against humanity’, a charge last litigated in Nuremberg in 1946. (H/T to reader)

    Fuellmich gives an extensive presentation of cited data and information about the advent of C19, its history, and reactions to this corona virus.  In it he presents data and information (prepared for the lawsuit) about the characteristics and progress of the disease that I venture few of us know.  The video of the presentation takes a better part of an hour, but the educational takeaway is well worth it for those concerned about our governments’ reactions, and the continuing diktats of its truly insane response policies.

    One of the strong points Fuellmich brings out is the testing scam based on the widely used PCR-based diagnostic test that produces essentially worthless results as it is applied here and abroad.  For a broader look at how our FDA views the C19 tests and testing landscape, you can visit their website here.

    Finally, of the hundreds of clinicians, scientists, and public health professionals who have looked askance at the governments’ dealings with the C19 pandemic, three internationally prominent scientists in the field gathered last weekend in Great Barrington, Massachusetts to draft a declaration and give interviews (here) on the planet’s misguided responses to the virus.  Drs Martin Kuldorff, Sumetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya, professors respectively at Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford Universities, came together to put their appeal to sanity out in the public with their ‘Great Barrington Declaration’ which I reproduce in its entirety below.

    (more…)

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  • Debate Derby – 8oct20

    George Rebane

    The Pence/Harris debate was at least an exercise in civility.  We finally got to compare what the socialists want for America, and what wants they’re not willing to admit to Americans.  We compared this with the capitalists’ plan for the next four years.  What a difference.  Harris spent most of her time lying (she got to speak 4 more minutes than Pence).  Her major lie kept focusing on Trump’s handling of the C19 pandemic, which according to the Dems’ Big Lie has been a preventable unmitigated disaster to which they would have responded almost identically as has President Trump.  Well, truth be told, their copycat version leaves out a couple things that this administration accomplished.

    What’s interesting to me is that no one points out the comparative C19 stats between the US and other advanced, but much smaller countries.  The US is a huge country composed of diverse cohorts of free people who are about as easy to control as herding cats.  We are undoubtedly the most mobile folks on the planet, continually darting across our big land this way and that.  Somebody gets sick with an infectious disease, it won’t be long until others have the same malady in many different parts of the country.  Our R0 transmission rate is necessarily higher, and there is nothing that either party could do to reduce it other than tell lies.

    And those lies are simply all that the Dems have to wave in the faces of voters this election season.  This is not to say that they have mistaken the intellectual acuity of our electorate.  But I will say that the ‘mishandling C19’ ruse has successfully camouflaged their true aim to make America into a world-class socialist autocracy.  With the Democrats' taxing and regulatory burdens on us increasing by the year, we are witnessing up close and personal the truth of Jefferson’s ‘a nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’

    To sum up last night’s VP debate, I think everyone out of the Left’s hard core camp saw Harris as the slimly and snarky scumbag that she is – the evening did not bode well for her.  But is it enough to move the needle, even though one of them may well be our president before the next four years are up?  That is hard to tell.  Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist has more here.

    President Trump has responded to next week’s second presidential debate being conducted virtually.  His opening salvo is that he won’t participate under those conditions.  There appears to be no reason for changing the second debate to an online version since “people infected with Covid-19 can stop isolating 10 days after the onset of symptoms, as long as they haven’t had a fever in 24 hours and their other symptoms are improving, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.”  And the WH reports that the president is symptom-free and has already started developing C19 resistant antibodies, all of which strongly indicate that not only will he not be contagious at a town hall debate, but that he will also be immune to further infection.

    I’m not sure what kinds of thinking has gone into the decision not to participate.  It seems to me that in the virtual debate Bumblebrain will have all kinds of opportunity to give the long-winded answers that usually reveal his mental acuity and perhaps even his party’s embrace of BLM and Antifa’s neo-Marxism.  My recommendation would be for Trump to not miss an opportunity to go mano a mano with Biden. (more here)

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