Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Here are the basics. There are 59 national parks operated by the National Park Service. 17 are owned both on the surface and subsurface by the Feds with 42 having split ownership with private subsurface ownership of mineral rights. 12 parks currently have oil/natural gas drilling already occurring on them, or more than one fourth of the 42 split rights parks.
The National Park Service has been ordered to review the rules as to what is necessary to drill for oil and gas within a park, or in certain circumstances next to a park, if the subterranean horizontal section includes NPS administered park lands.
There’s a lot of confusion about what exactly has changed. Right now it’s only a rule review.
In 1751, Lord Chesterfield decided that the time had come for England to switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. In a letter to his son, he explained how he got this done:
I consulted the best lawyers and the most skillful astronomers, and we cooked up a bill for that purpose. But then my difficulty began: I was to bring in this bill, which was necessarily composed of law jargon and astronomical calculations, to both which I am an utter stranger. However, it was absolutely necessary to make the House of Lords think that I knew something of the matter; and also to make them believe that they knew something of it themselves, which they do not. For my own part, I could just as soon have talked Celtic or Sclavonian to them as astronomy, and they would have understood me full as well: so I resolved to do better than speak to the purpose, and to please instead of informing them. I gave them, therefore, only an historical account of calendars, from the Egyptian down to the Gregorian, amusing them now and then with little episodes; but I was particularly attentive to the choice of my words, to the harmony and roundness of my periods, to my elocution, to my action. This succeeded, and ever will succeed; they thought I informed, because I pleased them; and many of them said that I had made the whole very clear to them; when, God knows, I had not even attempted it. Lord Macclesfield, who had the greatest share in forming the bill, and who is one of the greatest mathematicians and astronomers in Europe, spoke afterward with infinite knowledge, and all the clearness that so intricate a matter would admit of: but as his words, his periods, and his utterance, were not near so good as mine, the preference was most unanimously, though most unjustly, given to me.
Then it hit me. The new American myth, carefully constructed by the SJWs and their ilk, is that farmers are stupid. Mechanics are dumb. Plumbers only ply their trade because they are too stupid to take gender studies courses. And since they are all idiots, of course their children must be idiots too. Indeed, they are all far too stupid to be permitted a say in how their own lives are run.
May 4th 1942 was the beginning of the Battle of Coral Sea. The world’s first naval engagement where surface forces of both sides never saw one another.
The engagement happened as a Japanese invasion force covered by headed towards Port Moresby covered by two large Imperial Japanese Combined Fleet aircraft carriers, Zuikaku and Shokaku, and the light carrier Shoho.
USS Lexington photo dated October 1941, months before she was sunk by a gasoline vapor explosion caused by poor/inexperienced US Navy damage control after an Imperial Japanese Navy carrier strike during the Battle of Coral Sea — NARA Photo # 80-G-416362
American code breaking tipped off the US Fleet in time to dispatch the two fleet carriers USS Lexington and USS Yorktown under Admiral Fletcher to counter the invasion.
In the course of the 4 – 8 May battle the Japanese lost the light carrier Shoho, and over 100 carrier planes with 66 highly skilled and irreplaceable air crews lost in aerial combat.
The American fleet lost the carrier Lexington with the carrier Yorktown being heavily damaged plus the sinking of the fleet oiler USS Neosho.
The Battle of Coral Sea was a tactical victory for the Imperial Japanese fleet…but a strategic win for the Allies as the invasion of Port Moresby was checked.
However, the tactical victory the Japanese won at Coral Sea would echo in the Guadalcanal campaign months later. In 1942-43 the USS Neosho was a hugely important strategic logistical asset whose loss would later play a large part in Adm Fletcher’s controversial decision to withdraw carrier coverage early during the invasion of Guadalcanal, and contributed heavily to the Imperial Japanese victory at the First Battle of Savo Island.
For those looking for a really good article on this battle, see Peter Dunn’s “Oz At War” website article at this link —
BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA
FOUGHT OFF THE FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND COAST,
4 – 8 MAY 1942
It is the most complete article you will find on the web showing the entire Battle of Coral Sea, including the air units participating and losing planes from Australia and New Guinea based RAAF and USAAF squadrons, Ultra intelligence reports, damage reports, maps and appendixes listing the names, planes (with serial numbers!) and ships lost in the 4 – 8 May 1942 battle.
