Utopia, you are standing in it!

It’s difficult to really pin down who these people are. I can’t call them Left, because there are many on the left who oppose them. They are however, strongly attached to the current insane direction of travel. Maybe they are Revolutionaries, who have seen the opportunity to re-imagine society, and are frantic to prevent any reversion back to normality. How else to explain Clint Smith, self described former “Senior Policy and Communications Strategist” to Jacinda Ardern?

I had to highlight Psycho Milt’s tweet, as he is extremely succinct and tireless combating the fool and others like him.

Let’s expand on what Clint was referring to, when he said, “We tried sunlight on fascists a century ago. That led to gas chambers and 60 million dead.” Oh, he is attacking National. What a surprise.

What did National say? I was almost … almost pleasantly surprised…

Lord Protector

On the death of King Edward IV on April 9, 1483, his 12-year-old son, Edward V, succeeded him. Richard was named Lord Protector of the Realm and at Baron Hastings’ urging, Richard assumed his role and left his base in Yorkshire for London. This was in response to the Woodvilles’ attempt to monopolise power, Richard quickly moved to take control of the young king

On April 29, as previously agreed, Richard and his cousin, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, met Queen Elizabeth’s (Elizabeth Woodville) brother, Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, at Northampton. At the queen’s request, Earl Rivers was escorting the young King Edward V to London with an armed escort of 2,000 men, while Richard and Buckingham’s joint escort was 600 men.

King Edward V had been sent further south to Stony Stratford. Richard had Earl Rivers, his nephew Richard Grey and his associate, Thomas Vaughan, arrested…

The Left is not quite at that point yet, but between the likes of Trad Lefties such as Chris Trotter and “Bomber” Bradbury slamming the whole thing as failing because…

… rather than debating the material well being of citizens, we are lost in middle class identity politics virtue signalling…

… and the enormous failures of Left-wing parties around the world to improve that “material well being”, I’d say the Woke are on the verge of getting crucified by their supposed allies.

Which is entirely fair since this toxic Black Hole of an ideology will otherwise crucify the Left.

But the real tell that Peak Woke is here is that many on the Left who were extolling this term just a few years ago are now running away from it as far and as fast as possible, all while trying to pull the standard “It’s just RWNJ Scare Mongering”

…. age 18-29 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. That’s more than DOUBLE the percentage (27.3%) of conservative white women in the same age bracket.

Not self-diagnosed, like people do on Instagram, but actually diagnosed by a medical professional as having a mental health disorder.

Complete with a chart (you should always have a chart)

It explains a lot, from the recent explosion of Trans, to the worshipful, uncritical support of Jacinda Ardern by this group of woman in New Zealand, to what I wrote about the other day in The Sabbath and The Experience Machine:

Could it be that the modern world — the Western world, and every world dominated by modernity (e.g., Japan, South Korea) — has become disenchanted, feels itself dissolving in Chaos, and is choosing to die by not reproducing? It’s commonly observed that primitive tribes often do not survive contact with…

There are some policy fights that focus on technical disagreements (for instance, how much do deadweight losses increase when tax rates go up?) and other policy fights that involve moral disagreements (for instance, should drugs be legalized when that may lead some people to harm themselves?).

Other policy fights, however, involve dishonesty.

Poverty hucksters might be the most irritating example. These are the people who push an utterly dishonest definition of poverty, which I first wrote about back in 2010. But this article from 2019 has the best summary.

…folks on the left have decided to use an artificial and misleading definition of poverty. One that depends on the distribution of income rather than any specific measure of poverty. Which is insanely dishonest. It means that everyone’s income could double and the supposed rate of poverty would stay the same. Or a country could execute all the rich people

Henry IV (c. April 1367 – March 20, 1413), also known as Henry Bolingbroke, was King of England from 1399 to 1413. His grandfather King Edward III had claimed the French throne as a grandson of Philippe IV of France, and Henry continued this claim. He was the first English ruler since the Norman Conquest, over three hundred years prior, whose mother tongue was English rather than French.

Early Life

Henry was born at Bolingbroke Castle, in Lincolnshire, to John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster. His epithet “Bolingbroke” was derived from his birthplace. Gaunt was the third son of King Edward III. Blanche was the daughter of the wealthy royal politician and nobleman Henry of Grosmont, Duke of Lancaster.

Henry of Grosmont was the only son of Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster (c. 1281–1345); who in turn was the younger brother and heir of Thomas, 2nd Earl of Lancaster…

Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was sixteen years older than Emperor Friedrich III. Therefore, Bismarck did not expect he would live to see Emperor Wilhelm II ascend to the throne and thus had no strategy to deal with him. All of that changed with the early death of Emperor Friedrich III in June 1888?and the accession of his son Emperor Wilhelm II.

Conflicts between Wilhelm II and Bismarck soon poisoned their relationship. Their final split occurred after Bismarck tried to implement far-reaching anti-socialist laws in early 1890. The Kartell majority in the Reichstag, including the Conservative Party and the National Liberal Party, was willing to make most of the laws permanent.

However, it was split about the law granting the police the power to expel socialist agitators from their homes, a power that had been used excessively at times against political opponents. The National Liberals refused to make this law permanent…

Note: This is a revised version of an older post (originally 15 Jan. this year). The electoral system changes changes (with some modifications) have now been passed. Rather than make a new planting I am just re-upping this older one, as the comment thread has continued to grow with useful information. I particularly recommend a new comment by Thomas D for good detail. In addition, see the post by Verfassungblog for background and Twitter thread by Heinz Brandenburg which has both background and excellent detail on the final version. (The Verfassungblog post refers to an earlier version of the draft; in the finally passed version the 3-districts alternative threshold is indeed being abolished.) The law is sure to be challenged before the Constitutional Court, and some or all if it may fail the constitutional test. As Thomas notes, the law could be a mortal threat to the CSU as…

Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron invoked Article 49:3 of the constitution, under which a bill proposed by the premier is considered passed unless the National Assembly majority votes no confidence in the premier and cabinet. The bill in question is a package of pension reforms, which have provoked widespread street protests and strikes. In the first no-confidence motion since Macron invoked the 49:3 procedure, the government has narrowly survived. The motion attained 278 votes, where 287 were needed. This motion was brought by a group of centrist deputies. Another has been put forward by the National Rally and is even less likely to pass.

The current government is a minority cabinet, due to the underwhelming performance Macron’s legislative allies had in the assembly election of 2022–relatively weak, that is, in comparison to a typical honeymoon election (one held shortly after the election or reelection of a president).

A new memoir by former Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan praises the newspaper’s Watergate reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, for having “lit the kindling” that set off investigations that brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency.

Sullivan

Such praise is misplaced. Exaggerated. A way to sidestep the tenacious media-driven myth that Woodward and Bernstein brought down Nixon while insisting their reporting had significant effects nonetheless.

The Woodward-Bernstein agenda-setting effect in Watergate was weak at best. The influence of their reporting, if it much existed at all, was shared influence.

After all, Woodward and Bernstein had plenty of company in reporting on the emerging scandal in the summer and fall of 1972. They very much were not alone in directing attention to suspected misdeeds of Nixon, his top aides, and officials of his reelection campaign.

While Woodward and Bernstein did some commendable reporting during those early days — such as…

One of the many reasons that the Democrat Party is in trouble in the USA is not just the short-term effects of inflation and a looming recession, but a longer term one where their grip is slipping on their traditional voting groups of Working Class Whites, Hispanics and even (to a much smaller degree) American Blacks.

By contrast, university educated Whites, who used to majority vote for the GOP, are now a very important part of the Democrats: probably too important since they’re the primary group that has swallowed whole the insanity of Identity Politics and now it’s even more diseased cousin, Woke ideology, both of which are playing a role in driving away the groups mentioned in the first paragraph.

Working class Whites are increasingly a lost cause for the Democrats, Hispanics are slipping fast, and Blacks may be next, especially when you’ve got Black Republicans increasingly pop up…

While the other day we had the three year anniversary of the start of Covid Lockdown insanity in America, there’s also a twenty year anniversary of another huge event – the start of the Invasion of Iraq.

Some might argue that it is even bigger in terms of global impact than Covid-19, and it certainly seemed huge at the time, but in hindsight I don’t think it can compare, whether in terms of deaths, restrictions on our civil liberties or the global aftermath.

Okay, I have to admit – once again – that I supported it.

I don’t suppose there’s much purpose in digging up the layers of reasoning now, but all I can say is that, while I thought it was a waste of time to try and build Afghanistan into a liberal democracy, I figured Iraq was worth a shot and might steer the rest of the…

Back in 2012, I wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal to highlight the success of Switzerland’s spending cap (also known as the “debt brake”).

Swiss voters voted for this spending cap in 2001 and ever since it took effect in 2003, government spending has increased by an average of 2.2 percent annually, only about half as fast as it was growing in the decades before the cap was imposed.

To show the ongoing success of the debt brake, here’s a map comparing changes in the burden of spending in Switzerland and its four major neighbors (France, Germany, Italy, and Austria). As you can see, IMF data reveals that Switzerland has been more responsible.

I even calculated changes in national spending burdens since the start of the pandemic.

You can see that all governments used the virus as an excuse for more spending, but the fiscal damage was…

Norwegian hydro-electric site
Norway wants to limit the use of its own plentiful fossil fuels, so the Scotland link is a dead duck. One in the eye for ‘net zero’ obsessives.
– – –
Norway’s government on Thursday rejected plans for an undersea electricity cable with Scotland amid a debate on the Scandinavian country’s energy independence and whether it should be exporting electricity, says The Local (Norway).

The Norwegian oil and energy ministry said it was saying ‘no’ to the NorthConnect project because the country needed to meet its own energy needs at competitive rates.

“It is important for the government to ensure that we have a power system that can at all times fulfill the basic needs of power supply,” Oil and Energy Minister Terje Aasland said in a statement.

“We need this hydro power and do not want to open it up for more exports,” he said.