Ranger from the North

John Hinderaker on EVs:

Where will the electricity come from? There is no sane answer to that question, especially since the only plausible solution—an enormous amount of nuclear power—is off the table. And of course, greatly expanding the electrical grid to accommodate EVs, mining the lithium necessary for batteries that vastly exceed anything that now exists, and developing an infrastructure of charging stations adequate to service hundreds of millions of EVs—these are practical matters to which little intelligent thought has been given.

# posted by Ranger @ 5:52 PM 0 comments

John Hinderaker:

It is fitting that the current crisis began when the wind stopped blowing in the North Sea, leading to a spike in demand for natural gas. But the problem is inherent: wind turbines and solar panels cannot fuel the world. The delusion that they can do so has led most European countries (France is a notable exception) to fail to provide adequate dispatchable sources of power: nuclear, hydroelectric, coal and natural gas. It remains to be seen whether the Europeans will correct this fundamental policy error before it is too late.

Also, from Mr. Hinderaker:

This is not some kind of “green” growing pains. This is the inevitable and permanent consequence of depending on inherently unreliable, and intrinsically expensive, energy sources. Other than, perhaps, Critical Race Theory, “renewable” energy is the West’s worst self-inflicted wound. But many voters won’t realize this until the lights start to go out.

# posted by Ranger @ 9:51 PM 0 comments

John Hinderaker:

One obvious question is, if the government can just print money and thereby create wealth, why do we have taxes at all? To be consistent, the Democrats should advocate abolishing the federal personal and corporate income taxes, as well as the federal estate tax.

Of course, Modern Monetary Theory is not modern at all. It has been tried by desperate governments for several centuries, and arguably back to ancient times. Just ask residents of the Weimar Republic, Argentina, Zimbabwe and Venezuela, to name only a few of the most famous instances, how Modern Monetary Theory worked out for them.

# posted by Ranger @ 9:13 PM 0 comments

Jazz Shaw:

When it’s a group of mostly white people showing up to protest vaccine mandates, it’s easy enough for the liberal mainstream media to lump them all in together as disgruntled, southern Trump supporters who refuse to “follow the science” and are endangering everyone else. But now the New York chapter of BLM is applying the same rule to the vaccination mandates that they do to everything else with most of the media happily singing along with their choir. If anything ever impacts people of color disproportionately, they claim that the “thing” in question is racist no matter what the underlying cause of the disparity may be. That’s what they’re doing here.

# posted by Ranger @ 10:01 PM 0 comments

Mark Steyn:

Then they rushed the hijackers. Mrs. Jefferson kept the line open. A few minutes later, the plane crashed, not at Camp David or the White House, but in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Jeremy Glick knew that he would never see his three-month old daughter again, Todd Beamer that he would never know the baby his wife was expecting in January. But both men understood that they could play their part in preserving a world for their children to grow up in. By being willing to sacrifice themselves, the citizen-soldiers of Flight 93 saved thousands, perhaps including even the Vice-President and other senior officials. With the benefit of hindsight, Flight 93 is the decisive event of September 11th. As Jim Bennett of UPI wrote, "The Era of Osama lasted about an hour and half or so, from the time the first plane hit the tower to the moment the General Militia of Flight 93 reported for duty."

# posted by Ranger @ 8:38 PM 0 comments