Utopia, you are standing in it!

In my previous post I wrote about the mistakes made by Arthur Burns after Nixon appointed him Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Here are the critical missteps of Burns’s unfortunate tenure.

1 Upon becoming chairman in January 1970, with inflation running at over 5% despite a modest tightening by his predecessor in 1969, Burns further tightened monetary policy, causing a downturn and a recession lasting the whole of 1970. The recession was politically damaging to Nixon, leading to sizable Republican losses in the November midterm elections, and causing Nixon to panic about losing his re-election bid in 1972. In his agitation, Nixon then began badgering Burns to loosen monetary policy.

2 Yielding to Nixon’s demands for an easing of monetary policy, Burns eased monetary policy sufficiently to allow a modest recovery to get under way in 1971. But the recovery was too tepid to suit Nixon. Fearing the inflationary…

Aeromagazine has a superb article that deals with twelve such arguments that are commonly heard.

While the whole thing is worth your time to read I wanted to extract two in particular.

First up is the classic one about shoutingfire!in a crowded theatre;

Answer: Anyone who says “you can’t shoutfire!in a crowded theatre” is showing that they don’t know much about the principles of free speech, or free speech law—or history.

This old canard, afavourite referenceof censorship apologists, needs to be retired. It’s repeatedly and inappropriately used to justify speech limitations. People have been using this cliché as if it had some legal meaning, while First Amendment lawyers roll their eyes and point out that it is, in fact, as Alan Dershowitz puts it, “a caricature of logical argumentation.”Ken White has already penned a brilliant and thorough takedown of this misconception. Please…

Charles II (May 29, 1630 – February 6, 1685) was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651, and King of Scotland, England and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685.

Charles II was the eldest surviving child of Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland and Henrietta Maria de Bourbon France, daughter of King Henri IV of France and Navarre and Marie de Medici.

After Charles I’s execution at Whitehall on January 30, 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War, the Parliament of Scotland proclaimed Charles II king on February 5, 1649. But England entered the period known as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth, and the country was a de facto republic led by Oliver Cromwell.

Cromwell defeated Charles II at the Battle of Worcester on September 3, 1651, and Charles fled to mainland Europe. Cromwell became virtual dictator of…

Wind and solar are an all or nothing kind of prospect; when the Sun’s at its zenith and the wind’s blowing just right, wind and solar generators actually start to look like ‘industries’. But, a spell of calm weather and/or sunset soon buries that notion. Power delivered when it’s not needed is worthless, as are part-time power generators who simply cannot deliver power when it is needed.

The three big renewable energy fanatics in Europe, Germany UK and France have had plenty of time to prove the purported merits of wind and solar.

Charles Rotter takes a look at the (miserable) scorecard, to date.

Weather Dependent Renewable power performance in Europe DE UK FR: 2020
Watts Up With That
Charles Rotter for edmhdotme
7 May 2021

In 2020, Weather Dependent Renewables (Wind and Solar Power) made up 58% of all power generation installations in the three Nations: Germany (DE), the…

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Director: David Lean

★★★★★

David Lean has made a lot of great movies including Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, A Passageto India, Great Expectations, and others. However The Bridge on the River Kwai stands alone as a uniquely slow-paced exploration into the nature of courage, honor, and duty. It won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director (David Lean), and Best Actor (Alec Guinness).

Set against the backdrop of World War II in 1943, the story is based on the French novel “The Bridge over the River Kwai” by Peter Boulle. It was developed by two Hollywood blacklisted writers exiled in England at the time (Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson). It was the era of extreme communist paranoia in Washington and Hollywood was purged of all potential “threats.” Thus neither writer appears in the credits for the…

Michael Shellenberger writes at Forbes Why Biden’s Climate Agenda Is Falling Apart.  He suggests that there are multiple forces opposing it,  not only political but also laws of physics. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The Gathering Storm

Since taking office in January, President Joe Biden and Democrats have projected confidence that they will be able to pass climate infrastructure and budget legislation to expand renewables.

But in recent weeks, that confidence has rapidly faded. “I don’t think the votes are there in a reconciliation bill for the climate infrastructure-type issues,” an insider told the Washington Post.

Senate Democrats are not likely going to be able to use this year’s budget resolution to put together what is known as a reconciliation package. “Senior Democrats privately don’t believe they can finish work on a second reconciliation package,” noted a political reporter, “using the 2021 budget resolution by the end…

As David Starkey writes, “For much of the eighteenth century, the monarchy veered between deep unpopularity and a national joke” (420). The new “Georgian” age lacked the conquests of the Plantagenets, the wild religious extremism of the Tudors and the Stuarts, and all the industriousness and sophistication of the Victorians. It was an age of liberty, new ideas, Georgian-style architecture (in contrast to the ornate French style) and the rise of the novel. The power of the monarchy was in decline but under the careful administration of a clutch of “cabinet” ministers, Britain became a more liberal and cosmopolitan empire. The last gasp of the Stuarts had ended with the death of Queen Anne (followed by her husband William of Orange), and in order to avoid the threat of a despotic Catholic monarch (per the Act of Succession) the crown skipped numerous blood relatives and was handed down to the…