November 09, 2021

The Progressive Neo-Racist Cancer Has Completely Destroyed The AMA

November 09, 2021/ Francis Menton

It seems that no American institution is immune to the phenomenon.
You have some organization out there that for all you know is just a regular and sensible group of professionals. You don’t pay much attention to what they are up to because, after all, you have your own life to lead.
Then one day, for whatever reason, you have occasion to take a look at their latest utterances. And immediately it hits you — Holy Shit!, the Body Snatchers have gotten them too. The people involved seem by their physical appearance to be nearly unchanged, but they have developed a glassy-eyed stare, and out of their mouths come nothing but mindless catchphrases about “systemic racism,” “oppression,” “marginalized peoples,” and “white privilege.”
I ran across the November 3 piece by Christine Rosen in Commentary titled “Critical Race Theory Is Coming for Your Doctor.” Rosen’s article dissects a new document just out (October 28) from the AMA, with the title “Advancing Health Equity: A Guide To Language, Narrative, and Concepts.”
A fair summary of “Advancing Health Equity” would be that if you just stumbled across it at random, you would be sure that it is a parody.

November 06, 2021

Pandemic Disruptions Give Reasons for Optimism

November 06, 2021/ Jane Menton

No one wants to live through a pandemic.
But for those who don’t have a choice, there is a silver lining: pandemics have historically brought about periods of social disruption that have had positive outcomes for the following generations.
There are reasons to be optimistic that we will experience some of that today.

November 03, 2021

November 03, 2021/ Francis Menton

Do you remember the “peak oil” scare? That was the claim, heard everywhere in the early 2000s, that nearly all the world’s discoverable oil had already been found, and we would shortly enter a time of inexorably declining production and rapidly escalating prices. This 2018 article in Forbes by Michael Lynch traces the “modern” version of the “peak oil” scare to a 1997 piece in the Oil & Gas Journal by a guy named Colin Campbell. Campbell argued that oil reserves were “rapidly depleting,” that there was “comparatively little left to find,” and that “the world's economic and political stability, which relies on an abundant supply of cheap oil, is in serious jeopardy.”
Oil production isn’t at a peak, and never was. But here’s something closely related that really is at or near a peak from which rapid decline should be expected: Oil-Hysteria. Oil-Hysteria is the delirium that holds that the production and use of oil (and for that matter other fossil fuels) for the benefit and happiness of humanity are grave sins and are destroying the planet.
And thus today, after reviewing the evidence, the Manhattan Contrarian has announced the arrival of “Peak Oil-Hysteria.” It is here. Not 2050. Not 2030. Now.

October 31, 2021

October 31, 2021/ Francis Menton

There is a very reasonable argument to be made that the climate-related Conferences of Parties (COPs) that occur annually under UN auspices are terrible things. They cost (i.e., waste) enormous resources, and they have the potential to do great damage to the world economy and the well-being of the people.
Fair enough. But on balance, my view is that it’s a good thing we have them.
I can think of no other comparable activities that put on such dramatic and widely-viewed display the immeasurable foolishness and hubris of our political overlords.

October 28, 2021

October 28, 2021/ Francis Menton

“The climate is changing, and we are the cause.” That is a statement that is so often-repeated and affirmed that it goes way beyond mere conventional wisdom. Probably, you encounter some version or another of that statement multiple times per week; maybe dozens of times. Everybody knows that it is true!
And to express disagreement with that statement, probably more so than with any other element of current progressive orthodoxy, is a sure way to get yourself labeled a “science denier,” fired from an academic job, or even banished from the internet.
The UN IPCC’s recent Sixth Assessment Report on the climate is chock full of one version after another of the iconic statement, in each instance of course emphasizing that the human-caused climate changes are deleterious and even catastrophic.

Over and over, it’s that we have “high confidence” that human influence is the cause, or that events would have been “extremely unlikely” without human influence.
But how, really, do we know that? What is the proof?

October 25, 2021

October 25, 2021/ Francis Menton

This makes three posts in a row on the subject of a “progressive craziness of the day.” But then, there’s enough progressive craziness to have such a post every day; or, really, multiple. There is an endless supply.
As a reader of this blog, you may rarely pay much attention to what comes out of the Securities & Exchange Commission. If you should ever look, it probably all seems like a lot of inside baseball mumbo jumbo. On the other hand, if you are a senior executive or board member at a public company, or maybe a corporate lawyer at one of the big law firms, you must pay close attention to everything the SEC does. The Commission wields oodles of arbitrary and unaccountable power. When the SEC says “jump,” corporate America responds, “how high?”
Needless to say, the SEC is one of those government places filled with seemingly “smart” people with no practical sense or knowledge about how the world actually works. But they think that with their brilliance they can bring about perfection and utopia in the world with just a few more regulations and micromanagement of the little people.
Then — as has happened in the past few months — the real world intervenes, and shows what dopes these people are.