Kirk Waln
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Bizarre weather like the East Coast of the US is experiencing are exactly what climate scientists tell us to expect from global climate change. Yeah, weird weather has always been with us but now we get a steady diet of it – the oddity becomes the norm. Enjoy. ‘Course you can always claim it’s fake like the Donald does. . . but reality bites.
But the headlines read: “2 Million Britons Demand Second Referendum”. The implication being that these folks are among the 17.5 million that voted to leave the EU. MAYBE there’s some evidence for that but it seems far more likely that it’s typical MSM spin. Something like 16 million voted remain so what an absolute shock that 12% want a second chance!
For China “The only way to solve it is for the state to allow the market to hold more and more sway over the economy.” Hmm. . . one has to wonder what version of Mr. Market they’re talking about.
American TV parades a seemingly endless series of variously qualified “experts” on Islam, most of whom will say something scary like this lady’s story and a few will say the opposite. The truth is almost certainly something completely different than either extreme presented and is probably not validly expressed as a percentage of Muslims since they’re about as homogeneous as Christians . . . but it’s our misfortune that the average American (in the newsroom and living room) typically has a hard time addressing any subject in other than black and white. Along those lines, the almost total lack of any nuance to his rhetoric seems to be Trump’s big appeal and the fact that he isn’t beholden to the Party leadership is the source of that leadership’s angst. While I admit to feeling a certain amount of schadenfreude for the Republicans predicament, the fact that ANY of the current crop of Republican candidates are simply slightly more nuanced versions of Trump is altogether frightening.
HI Rapier – perhaps wind energy is not uniformly subsidized but in California the recent big boom in industrial scale wind generation capacity IS subsidized – In a sort of typical hidden fashion. Hidden in the sense that much, if not most, of this new “industrial scale” wind capacity is on public land where the players (with few exceptions NOT regulated utilities) pay pennies for the conversion of undeveloped public land to private wind farms. Absent said land use subsidies the economics of these large wind developments is significantly less attractive.
It’s always interesting to see the effort the mass media makes in connecting “green energy” with “leftist” and looting of the public coffers. It’s convenient for blaming purposes that many leftists DO support “Green energy” because it appears to represent an alternative to coal and petroleum. But in the US at least “green energy” is largely co-opted by big business interests who derive most of the benefit from government subsidy programs – programs for which big businesses lobby ardently. But the media spin machine connects “leftist” with subsidy and screams socialism and the evils of “big government”. Well yes, it’s socialism, just never you mind that it’s the big business corporate welfare sort with “big government” simply doing what wholly-owned subsidiaries do.
