November 28, 2020

Which To Celebrate, Pilgrims Or Native Americans?

November 28, 2020/ Francis Menton

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Plymouth Colony by the Pilgrims in 1620. Plymouth was the first English settlement to establish itself successfully in the New World.
You might think that the four-century mark of that event would be cause for big commemorations. Instead, there has been barely a peep.
Today, the trendy thing is to feel nothing but guilt and shame for the expansion of European civilization, particularly the English version, into North America. . . .

November 26, 2020

Something To Be Thankful For: No Stimulus!

November 26, 2020/ Francis Menton

It’s Thanksgiving, and therefore it’s appropriate to find something to be thankful for.
This crazy year 2020 makes that task much more difficult than usual. Coronavirus? No thanks. Joe Biden as incoming President? No thanks.
But here’s something that we all ought to be able to agree that we are enormously thankful for: the failure of the Congress to pass the latest $3+ trillion round of Covid-19 “stimulus.”

It was way back on May 15 that the so-called “Heroes Act,” got passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 208 to 199. . . .

November 23, 2020

November 23, 2020/ Francis Menton

While Joe Biden issues calls for “unity” in the aftermath of the election, the effort to silence conservative and Republican voices proceeds apace.
We have just had a bitter election season, and I would very much like to support and join calls for unity and reconciliation.
The problem is that the actions of the people who supported Biden undermine progress toward those goals, and make achieving them well nigh impossible.
Where are the Democrats who denounce these actions? For that matter, where is Biden’s own denunciation of these actions?

November 19, 2020

November 19, 2020/ Francis Menton

What I call the “climate scam” is the proposition that human use of fossil fuels will shortly bring about a catastrophic increase in atmospheric temperatures, and that this crisis can easily be averted by governments in a few rich countries, with about 10% of the world’s population, imposing crippling coercive restrictions and cost increases on fossil fuel use while also massively subsidizing alternative “renewable” energy sources.
I have long thought that this scam could not go on too much longer.
But then, you have to consider what we are up against. . . .

November 17, 2020

November 17, 2020/ Francis Menton

If you were lucky enough to attend America’s premier academic institution, Harvard University, you would receive most days, as I do, the Harvard Gazette.
The Gazette generally cloaks its pieces in the mantle of “news”; but really its principal function is to find ways for us Harvard people to congratulate ourselves on how brilliant we are, while at the same time heaping scorn and derision on the the ignorant deplorables who are always getting in the way of our plans to perfect the world.
You only need to read a few of these things before you start to realize that what might seem like the very “smartest” people — the ones with the fanciest degrees and the fanciest professorships at the fanciest universities — are actually painfully stupid.

November 14, 2020

November 14, 2020/ Francis Menton

Just a couple of months ago I had a post titled “The Biden Energy Plan Is A Joke.” Key excerpt: “In any rational world, a candidate proposing the energy plan that Joe Biden has proposed for the United States would be laughed out of the race for President on that ground alone.”
Yet there was Joe in his “victory” speech a few days ago making this ridiculous claim: “America has called upon us to . . . [fight] the battle to save our planet by getting climate under control.”
Really? In truth, there’s only one thing we can say for certain about Biden’s plans for energy, which is that they will have no effect whatsoever on the earth’s climate, at least none that can be measured. . . .