America's Mr. Obama insists that various forms of "renewable" energy are the wave of the future and worth spending countless billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize.  He is precisely wrong.  An example emerged on my side of the Pond here in Britain the other day. 

My train was diverted by engineering works near Doncaster. We trundled past some shiny new freight wagons decorated with a slogan: "Drax - powering tomorrow: carrying sustainable biomass for cost-effective renewable power." Serendipitously, I was at that moment reading a report by Dr. David McKay, chief scientist at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change on the burning of wood in Yorkshire power stations such as Drax. And I was feeling vindicated.

Believe it or not, Drax imports a million kilotons of wood from Canada and the US a year to burn in its power station in place of coal, producing twice-as-expensive electricity requiring government subsidies.  And it plans to increase its imported subsidized wood to seven million kilotons a year by 2016.

When I wrote how ludicrous this is in the London Times,  there was a howl of protest on the letters page from Drax's chief executive.  Now, Dr. MacKay's report vindicates me.  The entire rationale for burning wood rather than coal is that it allegedly produces fewer CO2 emissions.  Yet the report shows that, if the wood comes from whole trees, as much of it does, the result is an increase in emissions compared with coal. And that's allowing for the regrowth of forests.

Nonetheless, the renewable-energy bandwagon careens onward, costing ever more money and doing real environmental harm, while producing trivial quantities of energy and risking blackouts next winter.  This applies to every form of renewable energy.  Here's the scorecard in Britain.

It is always an intensely interesting and educational experience on any visit to China.  Now that I'm out, I can talk about it, as everything you do online is monitored - just like in the US (except that you can use an anonymizer like Cryptohippie which is blocked in China).

On Saturday, March 01, there was an astonishing terrorist attack at the railway station of Kunming, capital of Yunnan province.  Six men and two women, wearing masks and all black uniforms of some kind, bearing long knives - no other weapons, just knives - stabbed 29 people to death and wounded well over one hundred.

I was not far away at the time, and flew through the Kunming airport the next day.
***
What's so totally ridiculous about this two-bit KGB thug Putin seizing Crimea and playing the Russian bear is how our very own President Pussy hasn't the cojones to kick him in his vulnerabilities.
***
My friend John Bolton nailed it yesterday (3/06) in his speech at CPAC:  "Our biggest national security crisis is Barack Obama."

John could not possibly be more spot on.  Yet Zero is not only the Number One threat to America's national security.  He is the Number One threat to America's economy, to America's freedom, to America's culture, and to America's future.

So let's see where Zero and his DemFascist minions may have screwed up this week.

[Note:  Written the day after North Korea exploded its "device," an Update with new information is now appended at the end.]

The public face of Bush Administration officials regarding North Korea's nuclear test is a mask of utter seriousness, or "grave concern."  Behind the mask, folks are laughing their heads off.  Meanwhile, the world's dumbest nuclear scientists - namely, those in North Korea - are terrified of what Baby Kim will do to them when he finds out the truth.

Essentially, we have a replay of the total fiasco of Baby Kim's headline-garnering missile test launch last July.

North Korea's claim to have successfully conducted a test explosion of a nuclear bomb on Monday (October 8) has resulted in even more public hysteria that its missile tests, and even more private laughter.  The test shows the entire plutonium stockpile of North Korea is worthless:  It's not "weapons grade" so bombs cannot be made ot it.  Here's why.

It is certain that a Russian made anti-aircraft missile fired by Russian armed, trained, and commanded Ukrainian "separatists" shot down Malaysia Air flight MH-17 last week killing all 298 passengers and crew aboard.

Yet even if this was a conscious act perpetrated by the Russian government under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, we already know what is going to happen to Putin in particular and Russia in general. Nothing.

Despite widespread disgust at Russia's involvement in this act of terrorism the odds are that Putin simply toughs it out and moves on. 

The Kremlin's standard strategy will work once again:  1) obfuscate and confuse the truth by spreading several made-up disinformation stories; 2) delay or block any attempt to find out what happened; 3) depend on European (and now American) cowardice in confronting the Kremlin; 4) double down in the face of criticism.

Putin realized from the earliest moments that his thugs in eastern Ukraine, if not his army, were behind this operation. The last wreckage from MH-17 had hardly stopped bouncing when Russian media was reporting two different stories. These were for the consumption of its domestic audience and of subscribers to Ron Paul's newsletters.

Last week, President Obama said that "income inequality" is the major problem that his administration would focus on for the remainder of his term. He proposed increasing the minimum wage as a way to solve this issue.

The president's statement is a perfect example of how politicians misdiagnose problems and then offer solutions that make matters worse.

The real problem is the lack of economic growth, which reduces economic opportunity, particularly for the least skilled. Increasing the minimum wage helps those who actually receive an increase in their wage, but it makes it worse for all of those who lose a job or can't get one because the minimum wage is far above the market clearing rate.

As can be seen in this table, most minimum-wage workers are young people who quickly obtain higher wages as their work skills improve.