Utopia, you are standing in it!

Want to know what a 50% RET does to grid stability and power prices, then look no further than South Australia.

Despite some desperate wind industry propaganda efforts suggesting that South Australians are currently enjoying 1970s power prices, Australia’s renewable energy capital still pays the world’s highest power prices – thanks to its ludicrous 50% Renewable Energy Target.

SA’s 50% RET was the product of an unhinged state Labor government. At the last Federal election, Bill Shorten campaigned on a policy of delivering the South Australian ‘experience’ to every other state in the Commonwealth, with a 50% RET to be enforced nationwide.

The promise has long been that if we roll-out millions more solar panels and thousands more of these things – coupled up with mythical mega-batteries – power prices must surely plummet. They haven’t (see above); and there’s much worse to come.

Where Bill Shorten failed in his bid…

It’s almost predictable: When controversy flares about contemporary practices of American journalists, commentators not infrequently reach back to Watergate for reassurance about how effective and admirable high-minded reporting can be.

Nixon, 1974: Quits, leaves D.C.

The Watergate parable is ever-available if not especially precise. It’s more mythical than accurate, as a commentary the other day in the Boston Herald suggested.

The commentary’s author addressed the recent, overwrought controversy about a front-page headline in the New York Times that many of its readers, and staffers, thought was too generous to President Donald Trump.

“Trump Urges Unity vs. Racism,” declared the headline, which survived only the Times’ first print edition of August 6. The newspaper’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, later termed it “a f*cking mess” that editors quickly reworked.

What interests Media Myth Alert is not so much the agitation about the Times’ headline as the Herald’s hero-treatment of…

h/t AB

Earlier this month we documented the BBC Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme’s one-sided presentation of the Gaza Strip in an item concerning a new film about that location.

Gaza propaganda on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’

The August 19^th edition of the BBC World Service radio programme ‘World Update’ devoted over nine of its fifty-three minutes of airtime to a similar exercise.

“And a new documentary shows everyday life for those living in Gaza.”

Presenter Rebecca Kesby introduced the item (from 43:38 here) using some bizarre linkage that included an unsupported assertion. [emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added]

Kesby: “Now, the Palestinian territories have been in the news over the past few days, partly because Israel denied permission for two US Congresswomen to visit them following pressure from President Trump. Israel did then allow Democrat Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib permission to make…

We are not alone in our annoyance with the Media and the folks producing the news the Media write about. There’s a lot of disagreement. But then the problem is not those who disagree, it is simply the fact that we are all human, and basically hard to get along with. Unfortunately that isn’t really fixable. We have trouble getting along with our own family, let alone a bunch of strangers who are saying and doing things that we disagree with completely.

•Harry Reid, former Democrat Senate Majority Leader says that the Democrats are heading down the wrong path by pushing “medicare for all” and the decriminalization of illegal border crossings.

•James Piereson, writing in City Journal says “Economic indicators point to continued, moderate growth, despite the prognostications of the pundit class. and the volume of these forecasts is driven by partisan hopes that and economic downturn presents the best…

There is much hype around Indian economy and how high its growth has been all these years. There are some others who manage it without much hype.

Mr Benjamin E Diokno, Governor of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (their central bank) in this speech highlights how Philippines economy has been growing for 20 years:

Let me begin with our growth story thus far in the Philippines. Our economy has experienced uninterrupted growth for over 20 years since 1999 despite challenges such as the 2004 fiscal crisis and the 2007 global financial crisis-that is 81 consecutive quarters of continuous growth, with annual growth averaging 6.4 percent in the past five years (2014-2018).

Growth in recent years has become more broad-based.

On the demand side,  private consumption remained robust in the first quarter of 2019, as in the previous quarters through the years. This is further supported by rising contribution from investments from 2010…