Author Archives: lawofmarkets

Others like Craig Kelly needed even more than ever

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Yesterday I put up a post on Craig Kelly standing up for sense in the face of the climate change idiocies we are forced to endure. I titled the post, More like Craig Kelly needed. I am coming back to it only because it has been brought up again somewhere else.

I hadn’t seen Craig Kelly’s original interview on ITV but Gerard Henderson had: Interview more about ‘look-at-me’ Piers Morgan than Craig Kelly. First the bad news, which I had not known:

Early on, Morgan put this question: “Do you accept the planet is heating up at a dangerous level — yes or no?” To which Kelly replied “yes”.

It’s almost certainly untrue, but during the times in which we live, that is the only answer a politician, other than Donald Trump, is permitted to give. There was then more. The gullible self-harming fools who watch Morning Television on ITV in the UK are not part of Craig’s constituency. So what followed next only matters here in Oz:

Within minutes, [the pommy weather girl] Tobin entered the discussion by accusing Kelly of burying his “head in the sand”. She added: “You’re not a climate sceptic, you’re a climate denier.” This, despite the fact that Kelly had accepted Morgan’s proposition that the planet is heating at a dangerous level.

This would suggest that Tobin was more interested in stating her case than listening to what Kelly had to say.

Of course they’re not interested in listening – we’re talking about the ABC and their like-minded cohorts. They are just part of the liars-squad who for reasons already well-known, are the actual deniers, the ones who deny there is no problem.

Although Henderson thinks there is nothing to be gained by putting the case that global warming “science” is almost entirely fraud, there is, in fact, a great deal to be gained. Someone in a position to actually be interviewed needs to say these things in public or they will never be said where others can hear. Good for Craig Kelly and tough luck for Britain if that is the level of their understanding about climate change.

Of course Uri Geller can bend spoons with the power of his mind, you bloody morons.

More like Craig Kelly needed

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There is then the Turnbull wing of the Coalition which seems to cover around half the party. Which brings us to this in the Oz today: Bushfires: Scott Morrison courts states for fire inquiry. What exactly was the “trainwreck”here?

Amid international media criticism of Australia’s emissions policies, Mr Morrison also warned his MPs off interviews with overseas media outlets — a reference to Liberal back­bencher Craig Kelly’s trainwreck British TV interview in which he was attacked as a climate change denier.

This is the trainwreck:

Mr Kelly traded barbs with Laura Tobin and co-host Piers Morgan on the Good Morning Britain television program on Monday where he was accused of being a “climate denier” by the hosts over his views on the effect of global warming on Australia’s bushfire crisis.

Mr Kelly accused Tobin of being an “ignorant Pommy weather girl” in the now-deleted post and said that he “might have to send her some of the published peer-reviewed scientific papers on Australia’s weather.”

She sounds like just another standard-issue cookie-cutter climate alarmist. They are everywhere with nothing to show for it other than a failure to deal with actual environmental problems that have made the bushfires this year so devastating. She would be absolutely impervious to any peer-reviewed scientific papers or indeed, any evidence at all. Happily blighting the lives of billions across the planet because of some conjectures about the future trends in the weather. We need more Craig Kellys around to put the acid on to see if we can prevent a collapse of our economies while the cost of energy goes through the roof.

There are many fronts in the wars to defend Western Civilisation from its enemies

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The political leaders in China, North Korea and Iran can oppress their people to their heart’s content. It is a tragedy, and one wishes it were otherwise, but no one’s going to go to war to save them. But if the leaders of these regimes want to impose their way of life on us by force, then that’s different.

I do not wish to live in a theocracy, whether religious or socialist. What I do hope and wish for is that American power will continue to protect the rest of us – along with our own active support and participation – from the kinds of tyranny that runs rampant across the world. Donald Trump gets it.

As discussed here: DONALD TRUMP POLITICS ROGER KIMBALL US POLITICS Eliminating Qasem Soleimani was Donald Trump’s Middle East farewell letter. I will just quote the opening.

In July 55 BC, in the midst of his campaigns to civilize Gaul, Julius Caesar was troubled by the Germans. They would cross the Rhine, wreak havoc, and then disappear back across the mighty river, whose depth and swift currents made the Germans regard it as an impregnable barrier.

To teach them that it wasn’t, Caesar had his engineers construct a bridge across the Rhine. As Caesar recounts in Book IV of his commentaries on the Gallic War, they did this in an astonishing 10 days. Caesar and his troops crossed over, stayed for a few days in German territory, ‘burned all their villages and other buildings, and cut down the grain in their fields’. They then crossed back over and destroyed the bridge.

The point, which was not lost on the Germans, was that the Romans could go anywhere they wanted, whenever they wanted, and there was nothing the Germans could do about it.

Western Civilisation has enemies, some within and some without. Thankfully it also has its defenders. There are many political fools around but at the moment, our side is ahead, even if it’s only slightly.

NOW ADDING THIS FROM INSTAPUNDIT: FOUND HERE

Susan Hennessey is Executive Editor of the Lawfare Blog, a Brookings Senior Fellow, and a CNN National Security Legal Analyst and former Intelligence Community lawyer. She’s also, as you can see, a dishonest idiot. These are the “experts” Trump is supposed to have deferred to. Disgraceful, and a pretty good explanation of why our foreign policy has been a dumpster fire for the last three decades.

Related: The Suicide of Expertise.

Plus:

Yet the more we learn — about the deliberations preceding the strike, about the chain of events leading to it, about the prior and subsequent moves by CENTCOM to harden the American position in the region — the more it seems that the President acted with deliberate aforethought, that he does in fact have a plan, and therefore likely is capable of envisioning and handling what happens next. That much is only fair, whether or not one agrees with the decision as such.

What nearly the entire DC / academia / journo natsec/forpol commentariat actually means by its critique, though, is that they weren’t included in any of this. Ben Rhodes took the time to rally them together, get their talking points aligned, illuminate a pathway to social and professional advancement: that’s their preferred template for Iran-related policymaking.

Donald Trump’s template for Iran-related policymaking is the smoking wreckage of a terror mastermind’s vehicle. The courtiers see it, and want to know what’s in it for them.

Americans see it, and they know.

What the foreign policy apparatchiks fear isn’t that Trump might fail — they pray for that. What they fear is that he is likely to succeed.

UPDATE:

Well, I’m doing my part on the mockery front. Feel free to join me.

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The level of traitorous stupidity is breathtaking.

The Battle of Warsaw 1920

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From The war that saved Europe from Communism, from a hundred years ago. Here’s the conclusion from a book written by the English ambassador to Poland at the time the battle took place.

Had the Poles “failed to arrest the triumphant advance of the Soviet Army at the Battle of Warsaw, not only would Christianity have experienced a dangerous reverse, but the very existence of western civilisation would have been imperilled.”

Just as the Battle of Tours “saved our ancestors from the Yoke of the Koran”, he concluded, had the Poles “failed to arrest the triumphant advance of the Soviet Army at the Battle of Warsaw, not only would Christianity have experienced a dangerous reverse, but the very existence of western civilisation would have been imperilled.”

Just as the Battle of Tours “saved our ancestors from the Yoke of the Koran”, he concluded, so the Battle of Warsaw saved Western Euro
had the Poles “failed to arrest the triumphant advance of the Soviet Army at the Battle of Warsaw, not only would Christianity have experienced a dangerous reverse, but the very existence of western civilisation would have been imperilled.”

Just as the Battle of Tours “saved our ancestors from the Yoke of the Koran”, he concluded, so the Battle of Warsaw saved Western Europe from “a far more subversive danger – the fanatical tyranny of the Soviet.”

Here’s the movie with subtitles:

Not to mention the Battle of Vienna, 1683.

Noble and self-sacrificing for the common good of humanity

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An update on We are the most virtuous country in the world. I have now been informed of the following:

Multiple Facebook posts shared thousands of times contain a list of purported active and under construction coal-fired power plants in several countries around the world. The figures in the list are out of date; the numbers in the misleading Facebook posts were taken from a 2015 report; the current figure for active and under construction coal-fired power plants in the selected countries is less than half the total count listed in the misleading posts.

I never trusted Facebook anyway. The revised figures nevertheless don’t change the point, that it would be insane for Australia to do anything to ruin its standard of living in some kind of noble sacrificial decision to rid itself of coal-fired power stations as part of some non-existent global effort. It’s good to have more accurate data, but the conclusion remains. And even on the new list Australia is the only country not building any others at the present time, although we are apparently considering adding two others.

The Global Coal Plant Tracker provides summary statistics for the number of coal-fired power plants per country here, as well as by region here.

As of July 2019, the Global Coal Plant Tracker shows:

  • Within the 28 European Union countries, there are 268 coal-fired power plants in operation, with 7 in construction and 8 in pre-construction.
  • Turkey has 29 plants in operation, with 2 in construction and 31 in preconstruction.
  • South Africa has 19 plants in operation, with 2 in construction and 5 in preconstruction.
  • India has 291 plants in operation, with 33 in construction and 41 in preconstruction.
  • Philippines has 21 plants in operation, with 8 in construction and 19 in preconstruction.
  • South Korea has 24 plants in operation, with 3 in construction and 1 in preconstruction.
  • Japan has 83 plants in operation, with 15 in construction and 5 in preconstruction.
  • China has 1032 plants in operation, with 126 in construction and 76 in preconstruction.
  • Australia has 20 plants in operation, with 0 in construction and 2 in preconstruction.

Excluding Australia, the countries listed have 1767 operational coal-fired power plants and a further 196 under construction, for a total of 1963.

A list of the 20 coal-fired power plants in operation in Australia can also be found on the Australian Clean Energy Regulator’s website here, which was published on March 25.

Australia houses 1.1% of the world’s coal-driven power stations. It’s insane anyway, but let’s not lead the pack over the edge of the cliff.

International confidence in the American president

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Confidence in Trump remains low internationally

I would take a sceptical attitude as reasonable except these parts of the Anglosphere and the former members of the nation states that once comprised Western Civilisation are filled with people who are saturated in ignorance and lacking in common sense. They are impervious to the dangers they were led into by Obama and the left in general, and are fearful of the actions taken by Donald Trump. This  in fact goes beyond mere ignorance into a kind of cultish stupidity that makes no sense on any level.

The ABC, and the media overall, are filled with people whose only stock in trade are their opinions. They support mass murderers who would snuff out their lives without hesitation, and snuff out their culture as well if they could.

If not Donald Trump, who do they think would do better? Hillary? Bernie? Calling them clueless is too good for them.

Here by the way is the source of the chart. And here is the president’s address this morning on Iran.

We are the most virtuous country in the world

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Or something ….

cid:A754B895-0790-4FE0-B33C-B80DBCE7A996

 

TO CONTINUE: I can see it. I’m sorry if it doesn’t come up on some screens. I wasn’t suggesting we should all learn to code.

The heading is “World Wide Coal Plants”.

The next seven lines mention how many coal-powered plants there are in different countries and how many they intend to build. The second last states, “China has 2363 plants building 1171 more – total 3534”.

The final line of the chart says, “Australia is planning to shut down its remaining 6 plants in order to SAVE the World”.

Perhaps I should have said “We are oh so self-sacrificing” rather than virtuous, or something.

Magic Pudding Monetary Theory (MMT)

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The most important element in understanding how an economy works is to begin from its resource base, its existing infrastructure, its labour force and its entrepreneurs. Then mix in the laws and regulations, along with the personal beliefs of the population about the market economy. If you get just the right combination of all of that, you will get rising prosperity.

Also needed is a system of credit creation and a mechanism for supplying a medium of exchange, but that comes last of all. You have to get the real side of the economy in place and they you can worry about ensuring that the supply of money grows more or less in sync with the number of transactions taking place.

So into this comes Modern Monetary Theory, the realm of cranks of such a spectacular level of ignorance that it is quite astonishing to see these people in action. Warren Buffett Hates It. AOC Is for It. A Beginner’s Guide to Modern Monetary Theory.

This state of confusion isn’t good because Modern Monetary Theory, once confined to blogs and a handful of colleges including the University of Missouri at Kansas City, suddenly matters. In the U.S., the left wing of the Democratic Party is citing MMT to make the case for massive federal government spending on a Green New Deal to wean the U.S. off fossil fuels and fund Medicare for All. It’s virtually certain that MMT will be dragged into the debates of the 2020 presidential race. So the time is right for a semi-deep dive into Modern Monetary Theory—what it is, where it comes from, its pros and its cons.

Are we immune from all this? You better hope so. From the AFR today: Bernie Sanders’ senior adviser has a message for Morrison.

The 2020 US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ senior economic adviser, Stephanie Kelton, is urging the Morrison government to ditch its surplus, spend money on climate change and prepare for central bank obsolescence.

Touring Australia as the University of Adelaide’s Geoff Harcourt Visiting Professor, Professor Kelton told The Australian Financial Review people had become less concerned about deficits and that the government should rev up spending through the use of the controversial Modern Monetary Theory.

Bernie Sanders’ economic adviser Stephanie Kelton says the Morrison government should ditch its surplus and spend money on climate change. Bloomberg

“The number that gets churned out of the budget at the end of the fiscal year, is essentially, unimportant,” Professor Kelton said, “Every deficit is good for someone.”

“There’s untapped potential in the Australian economy in the form of idle capacity, especially labour, that the government can afford to run its fiscal policy more ambitiously to make more judicious use of the available resources.

“I would argue that there’s clear evidence that you’re not doing that here in Australia.”

MMT really stands for Magic Pudding Monetary Theory. They are just thieves who will rob you by inflating faster than the rest of us can keep up with their spending. And because they are the government, they will get to spend it first.

My thanks to Spartacus for forwarding these articles.