Archive for 2024

December 12, 2024

DECLINE IS A CHOICE:

Full text:

Sweden Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Ebba Busch stated today that “she’s furious with Germany” for dismantling its nuclear power plants, causing a spike in energy prices in Sweden.

Southern Sweden has record-high energy prices today due to having send electricity to Germany via undersea power cables today.

Cold weather coupled with no wind has driven up the demand in Germany from other sources than wind. EU regulations force Sweden to send that electricity to Germany, driving up prices in southern Sweden today to be nearly 200 times higher than they are in northern Sweden.

A 10-minute shower in southern Sweden costs around USD 5 during today’s price spike.

Ebba Busch added that Germany’s decision to dismantle its nuclear power plants has also other detrimental effects for Europe:

“I’m furious with the Germans. They have made a decision for their country, which they have the right to make; it’s their right to decide. But it has had very serious consequences, also for the EU’s competitiveness because we see that German competitiveness has dropped significantly.”

She said that Germany’s actions have also reduced its ability to help Ukraine.

– “After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they still chose to dismantle their nuclear power plants… I respect that people can have different opinions about nuclear power plants, but we could have kept it. They are important because they are baseload power plants.

Having access to such baseload power plants would have increased the transmission capacity from Germany to other electricity price areas in Europe, driving down prices for all of us.”

Sweden — and the rest of Europe — need to understand that Germany is no longer a reliable partner.

Build more nukes.

Posted at 1:47 pm by Stephen Green on Dec 12th, 2024

BIDENFLATION:

I’ve been arguing for a while now that there’s still plenty of inflation baked in, thanks to Biden’s big spending bills — especially (and ironically) the Inflation Reduction Act.

More: IRA, Meet DOGE.

It’s no secret that the IRA was designed to achieve an “energy transition”—after passage, it was proudly hailed as the Green New Deal. According to the Biden administration, the law is “the single largest investment in climate and energy in American history.” True: in inflation-adjusted terms, it will cost more than it did to prosecute World War II.

It’s hard to overstate the inflationary impact of such a staggering scale of government spending, not to mention the massive opportunities for waste and fraud. And, in no small irony, the IRA promotes and subsidizes technologies and programs that will make energy more expensive, which will also fuel inflation. For evidence that such efforts radically raise energy costs, look across the Atlantic, to Germany and the United Kingdom, both further down the “transition” path the IRA envisions. High-cost energy in both countries has caused consumers to suffer and businesses to flee, with Germany in particular undergoing de-industrialization.

The DOGE boys have their work cut out for them, particularly since, as the article notes, IRA money “goes to all 50 states, with ‘red’ states being the biggest beneficiaries of the government gusher.”

Biden screwed us pretty good.

Posted at 1:32 pm by Stephen Green on Dec 12th, 2024

SHOCKER:

Posted at 1:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Dec 12th, 2024

JOSH HAWLEY CONFRONTS WITNESS POINT-BLANK TO EXPLAIN HOW FLOODING JOB MARKET WITH ILLEGAL MIGRANTS HELPS AMERICANS:

Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley confronted American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday about how flooding the job market with illegal immigrants benefits Americans.

* * * * * * * *

“So just if you’re wondering America, here’s the Democrats’ plan,” Hawley continued. “Take the 13 million plus illegals who are here taking jobs from Americans, taking wages down, taking healthcare benefits, and bring them here legally so they can continue to drive down wages, flood the labor force, and suppress all of the above.”

“Senator Hawley, they can’t flood the labor force if they’re already part of the labor force which is an economic issue today,” Melnick replied, leading the senator to exclaim that they are currently flooding the labor force.

Hawley and Melnick then sparred on how working class wages have been impacted due to illegal immigrants joining the workforce, with the attorney stating that wages have been on the rise due to illegal immigrants’ labor.

“Oh really they’ve gone up over the past 15 years? They’re up? Yeah, they’re down. Way down. What world do you live in? … Let me just end with this. The American people had a good look at your economic record and then voted against it,” Hawley said.

Crises by design:

● Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”

● Incoming Trump Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller in 2021: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”

● “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”

● Tom Cotton’s 2021 Response to Kamala Harris’ Border Failures Should Be the Default for All Republicans: “‘You know, Laura, Kamala Harris didn’t have to go all the way to Guatemala and Mexico to find the root causes of this border crisis because they’re not there,’ Cotton told Fox News host Laura Ingraham [in June of 2021]. ‘The root causes are in the White House.’ He further explained that it ‘happened on January 20th when Joe Biden took office, and he essentially opened our borders, reversing very effective policies that had our borders under control.’”

And on their way out the door, Team Biden are doing everything they can to sabotage the incoming president’s efforts to secure the border: Biden Races To Sell Off Border Wall Parts Before Trump Takes Office.

 

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 12th, 2024

DOGE SHOULD ELIMINATE THE AIR FORCE. IT’S USELESS. They had one job–keep the bad guys out of our airspace. Unknown “car-sized” drones are flying all over NJ and NY and they do nothing. How is this not a bigger story?

Posted at 1:20 pm by Robert Shibley on Dec 12th, 2024

DAVID REABOI: The Van Jones Rule.

In January 1998, when the internet was in its early days, Matt Drudge had made his reputation as an adversary—and competitor—of the mainstream media by publishing a giant newsworthy scoop about President Bill Clinton that Beltway reporters and editors had spiked merely for partisan reasons. Drudge’s story suddenly flashed on newspapers and television screens across America and the world: The sitting president’s affair with a young White House intern consumed headlines for the next year and a half. Even as the leftwing mainstream media tried to protect a Democratic president, making the scandal disappear was impossible. It was a morality tale, a detective story, and a courtroom drama, and it ended, finally, in a cliffhanger of an impeachment vote that nearly brought Clinton down.

A decade later, in early 2009, recently inaugurated President Barack Obama had appointed little-known leftwing radical activist Van Jones as his “Green Jobs Czar.” Even as most Republican politicians feared opposing the new president and exposing themselves to accusations of racism, the reaction from the conservative press was swift and impassioned. On his nightly Fox News show, Glenn Beck railed against Jones’s appointment, pointing to a disqualifying 9/11 conspiracy petition he’d signed several years before. It began to look like a feeding frenzy, as the mainstream media began reporting on the growing backlash on the Right.

And then Obama blinked. Under pressure from other cable news and talk radio voices on the Right, the White House felt the heat from the hostile media coverage and hastily withdrew Jones’s name. Obama instinctively did what nearly every politician had done before: When heat came down on one of his people, he looked to stop the bleeding and move on by cutting him loose.

Almost immediately, though, the White House realized that it had made a tactical mistake by caving—or even reacting—to its critics in conservative media. The people fuming about Van Jones in rightwing media, it had realized, were already sworn enemies. Tossing one of its own to the wolves wouldn’t halt or slow down the enemy’s advance; it would do the opposite and encourage more. From then on, not only would the Obama administration refuse to bend to pressure on appointments, nominations, or criticism from adversarial media, it treated right-leaning media itself—and, by extension, its audience of millions—as illegitimate.

Even as the White House clung to the “Van Jones Rule” and refused to give the Right an inch, conservative media remained potent. While Drudge had put the media on notice as gatekeepers of information, he was less a reporter than an editor; together with his then-unknown sidekick, Andrew Breitbart, The Drudge Report took the raw materials provided by the traditional media and presented the news in a provocative way by collating links to existing reporting—and, crucially, re-contextualizing it based on catching essential details buried deep in the middle paragraphs. And, as websites proliferated, the internet allowed everyone with a blog to become an instant media critic, fact-checking, debunking, and commenting on the media’s daily reporting.

* * * * * * * *

Though it’s often been pronounced dead or debilitated, the leftwing Corporate Media remains the most powerful political and cultural force in America, capable of steamrolling the Right and quickly moving public opinion into spasms of hysteria, fear, self-righteousness, or near-ubiquitous virtue signaling. Its ability to create and solidify narratives across the population was in evidence throughout the presidency of Donald Trump.

Perhaps nothing in modern American history caused a greater erosion of social cohesion than the years-long false narrative about the elected president being an agent of a foreign enemy power. “Russiagate” was an epic tale, with a cast of hundreds or even thousands of players; it was a bona fide information campaign, unfolding and rising with daily intensity, like the most potent scripted drama.

From the start, the Left and its media allies were in control.

Read the whole thing, which is an excerpt from the new book edited by Michael Walsh: Against the Corporate Media: Forty-two Ways the Press Hates You, which I reviewed in late October.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 12th, 2024

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS ENJOYING A SPA DAY:

Disgusting? Sure. Surprising? Not so much.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A good question.

Posted at 12:28 pm by Stephen Green on Dec 12th, 2024

DONALD TRUMP OPENS NY STOCK EXCHANGE AS TIME MAGAZINE NAMES HIM PERSON OF THE YEAR:

Trump has been featured on the magazine cover four other times this year:

  • April 30, 2024: “If He Wins” – This cover focused on an exclusive interview where Trump laid out his second-term agenda.

Trump beat out a shortlist that included Vice President Kamala Harris, his newfound billionaire political ally Elon Musk, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Catherine, Princess of Wales, better known as Kate Middleton. Notably, Musk had previously earned this title in 2021. Last year, the title was given to popstar Tayor Swift, while Joe Biden and Kamala Harris jointly shared the award in 2020.

Ahead of his anticipated appearance at the NY Stock Exchange in Manhattan, the president posted an article on Truth Social acknowledging the news of his award.

Exit quotes:

Trump is the first American president since Ronald Reagan in 1985 to ring the Stock Exchange’s opening bell.

As Glenn wrote in the New York Post yesterday, it’s Morning in America again.

Posted at 12:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 12th, 2024

MARK JUDGE: The Coming Conservative Media Collapse.

The liberal media is in freefall. Ratings are cratering at MSNBC and CNN. The Washington Post is losing hundreds of millions of dollars and laying off staff. The Los Angeles Times has gotten so desperate that it’s hiring conservative columnists.

Considering all of that, you might be surprised to hear that conservative media is also in trouble. But the fact is, Americans are sick and tired of politics—all politics.

I dunno, I suddenly find it more interesting. But then, I’m not typical. Then again, neither is Mark.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Dec 12th, 2024

WELL, GOOD: Data Show There’s No ‘Epidemic Of Violence’ Against Trans People. “Looking at each of 29 such reported cases in 2024, the three most common categories are domestic violence (6), altercations (6), and accidents (4). Of all cases, four did not have sufficient information reported by authorities to make a determination on what kind of violence occurred. The deaths also included a suicide, the highly publicized death of Dagny (Nex) Benedict, a victim of a mass shooting, and a random act of violence.”

Whatever you do, don’t upset progressives with statistics and facts.

Posted at 11:43 am by Stephen Green on Dec 12th, 2024

CONSERVING CONSERVATISM MOST CONSERVATIVELY BY SEXUALIZING A COLD-BLOODED MURDERER:

From the replies: “If they are comfortable sharing this kind of thing in public, what the hell kind of nefarious shit goes on behind closed doors.”

You probably don’t want to know.

From Mussolini to Che to Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, there’s nothing new about leftists getting turned on by murderers — they just didn’t use to call themselves conservatives.

Posted at 10:41 am by Stephen Green on Dec 12th, 2024
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