Utopia, you are standing in it!

After talking themselves up a couple of months ago the Democrats have had reality start catching up to them in the form of polling that now screens for likely voters rather than just registered voters, and is showing them in a lot of trouble.

A recent analysis of several polls by the US Lefty Luvvie fave, the NYT, showed that none of the issues that the Democrats care about are ones that the public cares about. This horrified the authors of the article, who expressed shock and surprise at this result, which is yet another unintended example of how useless they are as news media when living in such a bubble.

As usual the great American cartoonist, Michael Ramirez, captures it in one look.

The desperation induced by this mis-match of issues is also resulting in some behaviour that’s borderline illegal, as captured in Arizona.

After they spent money…

Every country in Europe that hitched its hopes to sunshine and breezes is now in a mad scramble to secure reliable power supplies, before winter starts to bite and demand soars.

Watching the debacle playing out across Europe, is a little like the old party game of musical chairs. Every time the music stops at least one player is bound to miss out, much to the amusement of the lucky contestants. Although, this time it’s when the wind stops and/or the sun sets that the unlucky player (or rather thousands of players) misses out.

Kathy Gyngell provides a rundown on a study by Alexander Stahel, a Swiss-based commodities expert, who reckons that situation Europeans have made for themselves is beyond critical and a catastrophe is looming and, when it hits, no one will be left laughing at the result.

The dark continent: How ‘green’ power insanity will black out Europe

Fred Laza writes at Financial Post Climate fantasies hit brick wall of U.S. politics.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The reality of the energy transition could be ugly for politicians

The Biden administration’s attempt to lower gasoline prices before the November mid-terms has been both amusing and disappointing. First the president attributed the run-up in oil and gas prices to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Then his government drained about a million barrels a day from the strategic oil reserve. After six months of that and with gasoline prices creeping up again, Mr. Biden went to Saudi Arabia to ask Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for his help in keeping oil prices from rising at least through to the mid-term elections.

The prince said no, which was totally predictable. It appears none of the foreign policy experts advising the president understands basic human relations, let…

Before the accession of King Charles III, the Unit published two reports related to the accession of the new King: one on the accession and coronation oaths, and another on the coronation ceremony. Today the Unit has published revised versions of these reports. In this post, co-author Robert Hazell outlines the reports’ conclusions and discusses how the coming coronation will be on a much smaller scale than the previous one, in a UK that is radically different from the Britain of 1953.

Five years ago Bob Morris and I conducted a study of the accession and coronation oaths. These are three religious oaths which the new monarch is required by law to take at or soon after his accession. King Charles has already taken one, the Scottish oath, at the inaugural meeting of his Privy Council. He swore to uphold the Presbyterian church in Scotland in the following…

THE Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister has been braying about the Government lifting “about 66,000 kids out of poverty in the past few years …” 

In its latest annual report the Ministry for Social Development takes pride in its focus on getting people jobs resulting in 226,836 clients moving off benefit into work in the last two years (“our highest recorded result”).

But social commentator LINDSAY MITCHELL points out that 415,266 benefits were granted in the past two years, when more benefits were granted than cancelled.  She writes: –  

• Our leaders need to join the right dots

The Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister says:

“We’ve lifted about 66,000 kids out of poverty in the past few years …”

What he neglects to add is they have also consigned about 37,000 more to life on a benefit bringing the total to over 209,000.

Matthew Hooton joins the chorus pointing out the government’s stupidity:

. . .If her positioning of the new taxes as a world first was designed to prop up her base, it underlined to everyone else the complete idiocy of her move. New Zealand dairy farmers have the lowest GHG emissions per unit of production of any in the world. The same is broadly true of sheep and beef farmers.

Their climate efficiency is such that a block of New Zealand butter sold in London has a smaller climate footprint than one produced in the UK. Every time a Chinese consumer buys New Zealand milk powder over an American, European or Australian equivalent, the climate is theoretically better off.

Yet, right now, government policies mean our dairy herd is declining while the US herd is growing. Every time there is one less cow in New Zealand and one more…

As we all now know there are “good” protests and “bad” protests. The recent Van Gogh protest was so “good” that it was actually enabled by the museum, who did nothing to stop these vandals.

The litmus test is whether the protest is against something that the TPTB support (bad) or in favour of (“good”), and while the former got lots of MSM support from the 1960’s to about the 2000’s, it’s notable that with the demise of the old, square, conservative world and its replacement by the Counter-Culture, the MSM continues to align with the latter and no longer afflicts the comfortable or speaks truth to power – and all those other Nineteen Eighty Four’ish slogans that were chanted by the Left.

The latest is seen in the picture opposite and naturally receives the high praise of none other than one…

The things some people will go to avoid watching the damned Yankees.

Stumbling across “Eight Men Out” last night brought back memories of the film, what it represented — a turn towards mainstream by indie film icon John Sayles — and how it came off in an era when “Bull Durham,” “Field of Dreams” and “The Natural” put America’s game on the screen as a backdrop for all manner of screen stories.

I remember thinking at the time that the play of the cast was about two thirds to three-quarters the speed of “real” big leaguers. It’s generally a mistake to assume athletes of the past were wholly inferior — conditioning standards notwithstanding — to their modern counterparts. But that seems to matter less, seeing it now.

Sayles found an excellent “Shoeless Joe” Jackson for this account of the 1919 World Series-fixed by gamblers crime that came to be called

“Climate Activism is a Religion” – Marian Tupy.  H/T Raymond.  Excerpted transcript below in italics with my bolds and added images.

“The planet is infected with us we’re all gonna die. Isn’t that all true and and correct?

It’s certainly not true and actually the history of the relationship between population growth and abundance of Natural Resources is much more complex than people realize. It’s very interesting to see how extreme environmentalism maps onto Christian theology. On the one hand you’ve got your Garden of Eden: that’s the world before industrialization. You have your Devils: fossil fuel CEOs and people like that. You have your Saints, Greta Thunberg. Your Priesthood is the IPCC scientists. And of course you even have indulgences like back in the days before Reformation. Where you are allowed to fly around the world on a private jet, so long as you give…