Utopia, you are standing in it!

A group of congressmen are (again) opposing raising the US debt ceiling, which (again) threatens to put the US government into default on a portion of the US debt. There is some uncertainty about the magnitude of the consequences of a US default, varying between very bad and globally catastrophic. Phrases like “taking hostage” and “political extortion” are thrown around too casually in the discourse when opportunities for politically leverage are taken advantage of, but in this case I think the scale of consequences makes it completely appropriate. A threat to force a US debt default through the mechanics of a mistake made when legislating bond issuance rules during World War I is an act of political extortion that holds the global economy hostage.

The obvious solution is to eliminate the debt ceiling, but we have failed to do so because of the same political incentives underpinning our problems today…

At the end of World War II, members of the film unit of the OSS — the Office of Strategic Services, precursor to the CIA — were put to work hunting down every scrap of film footage they could gather about Nazi Germany, the rise of the Third Reich, and the atrocities committed by officials who were to be put on trial at Nuremburg.

The officer that OSS film unit chief John Ford — yes THAT John Ford — assigned the job to was Budd Schulberg, son of pioneering screenwriter, film producer and studio executive B.P. Schulberg. Schulberg and his brother Stuart were sent to the ruins of Nazi Germany to find the filmed “proof” of who and what the Nazis were, film that would be used in court.

The idea, American prosecutor Judge Robert H. Jackson said, was “to convict” those charged “by using their very own words,”…

Follow the money and you’ll soon work out who’s who in the climate industrial complex zoo. At the end of every massive wind and solar subsidy rainbow, you’ll find a crony capitalist eager to cash in.

Built upon a series of self-serving fictions, the grand wind and solar scam has been designed to allow the few to profit outrageously at the expense of the many. And the only reason that people are not rioting in the streets at the result, is that they have absolutely no idea what’s going on. The MSM and those in on the rort make damn sure of it. Bait and switch, barefaced lies and good old-fashioned propaganda has been doing the trick for a generation, now.

Demonising reliable and affordable energy – and those who would have it, if they could – a group of cynical elites enjoy obscenely energy-hungry lifestyles; flying everywhere they want in…

Diffuse, intermittent and unreliable wind and solar are utterly pointless as power sources – because they can’t deliver power as and when we need it. However, as a source of insatiable demand for the Planet’s (purportedly) dwindling resources they blitz the field.

At the heart of every Electric Vehicle, solar panel and wind turbine there’s a bevy of rare minerals which are fast becoming rarer, thanks to our ‘inevitable transition’ to an all wind and sun powered future and the much-heralded (and overhyped) shift to all EV motoring.

Donn Dears documents just how un-green wind and solar truly are.

‘Clean’ Energy Dirtier Than Imagined
Power for USA
Donn Dears
4 February 2022

The effect of wind power on birds and bats is already well-publicized but is being swept under the rug.

This article will explain why using wind and PV solar for generating electricity will cause greater harm to the…

Wistful children playing in flowery fields beneath fleets of whirling wonders is how the wind industry sells itself. The reality ain’t so pretty.

Embedded in every 300 tonne juggernaut is a bevy of minerals and a mountain of energy used to create the feelgood fiction that the kiddies are safely frolicking beneath a truly useful power source.

The same goes for every solar panel.

The grand wind and solar ‘transition’ has been running for barely 20 years, but already landfills are filling up with spent and busted wind turbine blades, joining millions of worn out solar panels and their cocktail of forever toxic chemicals.

Don’t confuse STT, however, with the anti-mining crowd. We’re all for it. Provided there’s a net energy – and therefore economic – benefit to be had.

Modern civilisation depends upon an enormous range of minerals, which miners deliver up for a profit, paying royalties and taxes…

Mark Bauerlein explains the dichotomy in his Federalist article With Anti-Woke College Trustee Picks, DeSantis Chips Away At The Political Poison In Education.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Something remarkable happened in fifth-century Athens when Socrates set up shop, conversed freely on the things of this world, and followed the truth wherever it would lead. It also happened in 1609 when University of Padua professor Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope at the moon and found that the heavenly orb wasn’t as pure and smooth as everyone said. It happened in America as well when in 1940, the American Association of University Professors issued its “Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” which hailed “the free search for truth and its free exposition.”

However, no group has been less tolerant of dissent than the academic left, neither Christian fundamentalists nor corporate donors who like to see their…

Bill McKibben: King of the Climate Cult

Eco-zealots, like Bill McKibben reckon rural folk just can’t wait to get 240m high wind turbines whirling in their backyard; and that if they express any resistance to such a ‘golden opportunity’, it’s all down to the nefarious activities of ‘evil’ fossil fuel overlords and right wingers spreading “misinformation” about how wonderful it is to be surrounded by hundreds of giant 300 tonne monsters, grinding and thumping away all night long.

McKibben is not alone in his unhinged belief that ‘dark forces’ at work; the MSM is filled with plenty of co-travellers – cynical characters who couldn’t care less about hard-working rural communities – they call it ‘flyover country’; a class that treats America’s farmers with ridicule and contempt, at the best of times.

So, when rural communities began to push back in earnest against wind and solar power outfits ready to wreck…

From the Samizdata blogsite comes this nice set of reflections following the death of the renowned historian Paul Johnson.

Paul Johnson, one of the great figures of post-war British journalism, has died at the grand age of 94. He was the author of about 50 books, and I read several of them in my youth. Of all the books, the one that stands out for me is Modern Times. That was a one-volume study of the 20th century.

Johnson was unafraid to challenge stereotypes. He defended US Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Nixon from the reputational shade cast upon them and was unsparingly hard on the likes of F D Roosevelt and JFK. He slammed the United Nations, lauded the NATO alliance, and pointed out how so many “third world” countries went disastrously wrong in embracing Fabian socialist ideas after the Western empires ended. In that sense, he gave every…