When Our Side Doesn’t Get It

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A decent metric of the extent to which the agenda of the Left has been accepted by the Right is a recent article in The Washington Times – where I once worked as an editorial writer and columnist in the Before Time.

It is a news article published the other day about the GOP-majority (just barely) House attempting to legislatively block the force-feeding (pate de foi gras goose-style) of battery-powered devices on a market that doesn’t want them by using regulations to force the automakers to build nothing else (more or less) by 2032 but beginning a lot sooner than that. The regulations demand compliance with gas mileage standards (set to rise to just shy of 50 MPG for the 2026 model year and going up from there) that cannot be complied with – thereby outlawing cars that aren’t battery powered devices without actually outlawing them.

It works similarly to the way exorbitant “licensing” fees are applied to the purchase of select-fire capable rifles. They are not technically illegal (well, at the federal level) to possess but in order to legally possess on, you must pay the federal government a sum of money that makes the buying of such a rifle untenable for most people. It’s a de facto outlawing of select-fire rifles without actually outlawing them.

Back to the Times piece.

It details the 221-197 vote in favor of something insipidly styled the CARS Act. It seems every proposed law must have an insipid acronym – for marketing purposes, probably. Because it is increasingly difficult to have an intelligent discussion about a proposed law in declinum et fallum America.

Anyhow, the proposed law – which will never be passed because Leftists control the Senate and a Brezhnev-style barely-in-control of his bladder geriatric Leftist occupies the presidency – is at least a public step in the right direction in that it is a repudiation of the federal regulatory apparat’s now-obvious plan to render car ownership impossible for most people by shoving electric vehicles onto the “market” that most people can’t afford to buy.

The Times piece quotes GOP Rep. Tim Walberg, who said the federal regulatory apparat has “display(ed) breathtaking overreach” and that its impositions will render car ownership “unaffordable, unattainable and unrealistic for American consumers.”

All of which is obviously true when an “entry level” battery-powered device such as the 2024 Fiat 500e stickers for $34,000 to start and the typical battery-powered device sells for just shy of $50,000. Not counting the inevitably exorbitant cost of insuring a battery-powered device, which is much more vulnerable to catastrophically expensive damage (as from spontaneous combustion) as well as much more expensive to repair and replace than a car that isn’t a device. There is also the cost of upgrading the home to accommodate the device. In order for the device to be even plausibly usable on a regular basis – as opposed to collecting dust waiting for days to recharge.

The Times piece does not mention these facts. Instead, it affirms the Left’s falsehoods – without (so it seems) any awareness that it is whistling past its own graveyard. For instance, this:

The Environmental Protection Agency is weighing new tailpipe emissions rules . . .” 

Italics added.

Well, for openers, the EPA isn’t “weighing” anything. It is understood the EPA – the regulatory apparat of the car-hating Left (at least insofar as your owning a car goes) – has decided it will impose new regulations that have no more to do with “emissions” than the drugs pushed on people by the FDA were vaccines.

Yes, gasses are produced by the engines in cars that are not battery powered devices. But almost none (less than 3 percent, to be precise) are pollutants – i.e., compounds that foul the air. The gas at issue are carbon dioxide, which is not a pollutant because it does not foul the air and for that reason was never previously characterized as an “emission.” Until the Leftist Barry Obama altered the definition – much the same as the operational definition of “pandemic” was altered to encompass an event that was not a mass die-off event.

And for the same fundamental reason. That being manipulation.

When people hear or read about “emissions” and how the government is “acting” to reduce them, they are led to believe this will reduce pollution. They are reluctant to voice opposition to whatever is demanded in the name of doing so – because they don’t want to be regarded as despoilers of the”environment.” Much the same as most people are reluctant to criticize “affirmative action” – that is, policies that advantage certain races on the basis of race – because they don’t want to be called “racists” by those who advocate for the latter.

The Times writer accepts (by using) the etymology of the Left – and thereby affirms the narrative of the Left.

It gets worse as it goes on.

Toward the end of the piece, there’s this:

Still, blue states are forging ahead with bans of their own against gas-guzzlers.

Italics added.

They are “forging ahead” (as if nobly fighting in a glorious struggle against an implacable foe ) with laws that will ban “gas guzzlers” – meaning any car that uses gas. Including cars like the 55 MPG Toyota Prius (my review is here) which is doomed to be de facto outlawed via the apparat’s regs that will require 60-plus MPG before 2032.

All of it premised on the effronterous notion that people are being pushed to buy the “gas guzzlers” they clearly want – rather than being pushed into battery powered devices they do not want.

The Times piece blithely uses the smear words of the Left to describe cars that aren’t devices, thereby giving aid and comfort to the Left that is pushing battery-powered devices in order to push most Americans out of cars.

It’s an example of just how deep the rot goes – and that it’s time for a fresh start.

. . .

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55 COMMENTS

  1. Eric,

    Not sure if you’re following the mess that some are noticing with the financing of electric cars. Here, we have something called PCP financing, essentially a mix of leasing with an option to buy, whereby you finance a car for 2-4 years, with a balloon payment at the end. So during the initial period you get fixed (relatively low) payments, and after that you pay the balloon (being easier than the whole car) and keep the car, or alternatively return the car and walk away like a lease. Now these contracts are priced so that the value of the car is usually more than the balloon payment at the end of contract so in most cases people pay it and keep or trade in the car. This was always the case and assumes there is a strong second hand market for the cars, which there always is. Or was, till the electric cars came in….

    Now suddenly financing companies are realising they are sitting on a ton of of expiring PCP financing agreement, where the resale value for the car is MUCH less than the balloon payment, meaning they will soon be having a bunch of (potentially explosive) cars on there hands with no chance of selling them for what they paid!

    Which can mean a couple things the way I see it – 1) ideally, the electric car scam falls apart, because financing electric cars will become a LOT more expensive as financiers will not want the risk and customers wont want to pay what they actually cost
    or 2) the gov will get involved, bailing companies out with all that “green” scam money going around, and at the same time push more and more people into lease contracts where ofcourse you never own anything and are yet somehow happy…..

    lets see where this one goes…

  2. In 15 days, the Winter Solstice will arrive, the first day of winter!

    It will be summer in the Southern Hemisphere.

    Antarctica has an ice sheet that is 12,000 feet thick. Going to have to have a lot of heat to melt Antarctica’s Ice Sheet. It might happen, you just never know, you know, hey.

    Antarctica melts, the sea levels will be over 70 higher. Isostatic rebound will be a result of the melt. You’ll have to move somewhere else. Obama should know better.

    Let Antarctica melt, you will have nothing and you won’t be that happy. 5.5 million square miles of continent, 2 miles thick, do the math. It is a rather large volume in cubic miles.

    There is nothing new under the sun.

    If Antarctica had forest and grass biomes, there would be a need for more carbon dioxide, thank your lucky stars nearly nothing in the plant kingdom grows there.

    The Penguins are breathing in oxygen, it is just there. So some carbon dioxide is being emitted by those evil Penguins at the Antarctic Ocean’s water’s edge.

    A small population of humans are there too polluting the place with carbon emissions down there.

    Lots of problems and no solutions.

  3. quote “But almost none (less than 3 percent, to be precise) are pollutants”

    Not even 3%. Man made CO2 (from all sources) is 3% of 3% of 0.1%

    https://shiftfrequency.com/man-made-co2-3-of-3-of-0-1/

    Trace Gases – 0.1%

    Total Carbon Dioxide (CO2) – 3-4% of trace gases / 0.03 or 0.04% of overall atmosphere

    And man only makes 3% of that.

    Thus man made CO2 is 3% of 3% of 0.1%

    So let’s throw our entire way of life away, junk our economy, over a tiny sliver of a trace gas THAT DOES NOT WARM THE ATMOSPHERE even though a ton of charlatans and uniformed teenagers are handcuffing themselves in protest of an imaginary existential threat.

    CO2 is not a pollutant, without it we can not exist, and 99% of earth’s history CO2 has been many times higher than it is today.

    If you wrap your mind around this, this climate change crap is as big of delusion as millenialism, the belief some gawd is comin’ down from the heavens to punish us for our sins. No Virginia, no god gives a shit about us, and no god gives a shit what kind of cars we drive.

    • And something else no one talks about, CO2 caused climate change is not just a political ruse, it is a red herring, a distraction from real pollution – which we should care about – but the owners – the big industries like war for profit want us distracted while they cause wars and bomb the shit out of the planet.

      Notice how absolutely no one talks about how war is a huge polluter. Or making bombs is a huge polluter. Or how driving 100 ton tanks rips the shit out of the environment. Klaus and the gang want to limit you to 4 flights per lifetime. Yeah, so they can fly their military bomber jets 4 times a day and bomb the shit out of some poor undefended villagers who dare to oppose the godly chosen ones.

      • Some enterprising environmental science phd candidates should take on the task of a dissertation about the environmental damage caused by the MIC. I suppose that could be academic suicide though. Maybe the Mises Institute could promote this somehow.

        • I fully agree. And all this war causes poverty – which is also bad for the environment – when I have traveled the poor nations are shitholes while wealthy nations the rich live in a pristine setting. In the current insane, immoral, illegal war, over a million people have no place to shit because the USA funded the Israeli war machine to blow the shit of their houses – and all the household chemicals are now out of their containers seeping into the soil, etc.

          Ukraine war is smack dab in the agriculture belt, all those weapons have now permanently polluted the ground water and soil. In Gaza, who is going to clean up the mess? And we did this to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Damascus, Beirut, Libya. Turned them all into shitholes – and you paid for it!

          Satanyahu/Biden/Blinken/Nuland/Yellen are not human in IMO. They are some sort of evil reptilian specie, because no human being treats others like that. The US Senate voted this week to stay in Syria. We are illegally occupying Syria, the Syrian government has told us to get the hell out, but we stay, because they are all owned by the Zionists. Amerika is ZOG, Zionist Occupied Government.

      • Perfect example of “EPA for thee but not for me” is Rocky Flats plant, where they made the plutonium triggers for warheads. One of the most contaminated buildings on Earth due to plutonium pixie dust getting into the ventilation system.

        Even worse might be the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a chemical weapons production facility that contaminated wells for miles, along with the Platte River. Today some of the land is home of Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, and a wildlife refuge. I wonder if the deer know they’re being poisoned?

        These sites aren’t out in some uninhabited desert, they’re in the Denver Metro area. The contamination from RM Arsenal killed farm crops. Today they look like wilderness but with chain link fences topped with barbed wire and security gates.

        Oh but it was worth it, right?

        • War destroys us as much as them. Very few people are for these wars, except the ones branded by the media hype. If the tax man came to your door demanding money for each new war, how many people would be for it, if they had to pay cash on the spot?

          If we had a just world, all those who voted for the war should have their assets seized to pay the victims. Biden should have all his wealth taken away and the money sent to the people he injured.

          • List of wars where America was invaded by ground troops:

            1) War of 1812.
            2) Mexican–American War.
            3) Pancho Villa Expedition.

            Not counting Pearl Harbor because it is generally accepted today that was pretty much anticipated and allowed to happen.

            If there were troops on the beaches and paratroopers in the sky you’d bet Americans would pretty quickly grab one of their 600 million firearms and set up defenses. No need for the tax man. We know our territory better, we have the supply lines, and if the idiots get out of the way and let us fight I’m certain we’ll make quick work of any invaders.

      • Ok I’ll bite.

        I’ve flown way more than 4 times already. It sucks but sometimes it’s the only practical way to get where I’m going. So I’ve used up my quota already.

        But

        I’ll agree never to set foot on an airplane again, for any reason, under the following condition: That rule has to apply equally to everyone. Including the USAF pilots, and the President, and Klaus, and Macron, and Bill Gates, and Trudeau, and Darth Soros, and that Tedros guy at the WHO, and Elon Musk, and everyone else. Furthermore they have to release Epstein’s complete client list.

        If not, well then the deal’s off. Guess it must not be all that important to them, after all.

      • Yes. Climate change is a new religion and Al Gore is the Pope, and CO2 emissions the new fornication. Only 4 flights per person per year to save the planet says John Kerry as he jet sets weekly from one luxury resort to the next.

        Headline – UN climate summit menu full of gourmet meats as it tells Americans to give up beef to fight climate change

        “The United Nations told Americans to stop eating meat in order to mitigate climate change, then they served gourmet meats at their climate summit in Dubai.

        The UN’s COP28 climate summit features an online portal showing all the luxe food items available at the summit, from specialty wagyu burgers to barbecue, African street meats, Philly cheesesteaks, and so much more. Meanwhile, Americans are told to eat less meat overall and the World Economic Forum suggests we eat bugs.”

        Eats ze bugs peons, vee are your new gods, climate sinners!

  4. OT

    Question: If the Israelis are going to fight, why doesn’t Israel bomb the Burj Dubai and get some real war action going.

    If you stand with Israel, supporters should demand expanded war footings, the Burj Dubai is a legitimate target. Bomb the places where those Hamas billionaires hang out.

    Quit picking on the Gazans when you can bomb the Burj Dubai. Go for it, make it a twofer and bomb Tehran.

    See what happens after that.

  5. [ When people hear or read about “emissions” and how the government is “acting” to reduce them, they are led to believe this will reduce pollution.]

    IMO your giving those people a pass. That they’re so dumb they have no idea CO2 is a natural occurring gas of our atmosphere or Nitrogen for that matter.

    I don’t believe they’re that dumb… they’re just lazy, selfish and don’t GAF. They send their kids to the depraved schools where they learn about transgenderism and all the other sick stuff but cannot do math, read or write when they ‘graduate’ just to get rid of them so they can have their careers at Walmart or some other Chinese distributor.
    The schools extract backbones and any dreams they may have and replace with follow the rules and obey authority. At some point they see the BS and join the mobocracy as can be viewed in any of our large left leaning cities that have run off tax paying citizens and are too broke to have an effective police force.

  6. I wonder if the fear caused by huge population growth in the last century is a driving force behind limiting everything. When my dad was born there were only 2 billion, now earth has over 8 billion, that is a huge increase in one lifetime.

    In my leftist town (of BLM, masks, and Bernie Sanders bumper stickers) I’ve seen this one for a very long time displayed on those elderly hippie cars:

    LIVE SIMPLY SO OTHERS MAY SIMPLY LIVE

    The car of choice here is the Prius, the Honda Fit, and now the Tesla. These cars reflect perfectly their liberal attitudes, and there is also a sizeable population of Evangelicals who believe we are in “end times”, Rapture any day, the war in Israel a sign post gawd is comin’ back to take the righteous while the evil people have to live through the Apocalypse.

    Both of these groups are in fear of the future, and these fears are being played out in politics as limiters – we must limit ourrselves to avoid catastrophe whether real or not. The joke is – the perceived solution – in an era of total media deception – is the real catastrophe. We are in an ice age while believing some spin about oceans boiling.

    The current interglacial, the Holocene, is nearly past tense, temperatures peaked 8-9,000 years ago, and the data shows steady cooling since that “optimum”. Furthermore, this interglacial was not that warm, it had lower peak temps than many of the recent one.

    https://i1.wp.com/www.volcanocafe.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/VostokTemp0-420000-BP.gif?resize=700%2C336

    • Thanks for that note of cheer, Yukon. It feels colder every year, though.

      Even in the warmest two summers ever “22 and 23”, you could almost stare directly at the sun and it wouldn’t burn your eyes like in the past. I sat out in the sun for extended periods that would have burned me to a crisp 10 years ago.

      Something is going on. I’m honestly not sure I want to know what.

      • Don’t know about staring at the sun, but you’re correct about something been up. Every year in winter, even in my working years Ii made it a point of sitting out in the sun, shirtless for 5-6 hours a week. I could usually stay pretty tan most of the year. Last week after sitting out everyday, soaking up the low winter sun, nothing changed. Not even a slight sunburn. Every day except two were clear, the days that held little solar energy the sky looked like dirty clam chowder. I know bringing up chemtrails and Gates of Hells effort to blot out the sun makes me a certifiable loon but what are we too believe the official narrative or our lying eyes?

    • There’s a distinct lack of imagination in the world today. One sees it in the massive amount of consolidation in commerce, governments’ efforts to preserve physical resources and attempts at commandeering thought. And the lack of optimism from pretty much everyone. Few will dare to imagine a world of plenty.

  7. How do we get the politicians’ attention? It would seem that they are deaf to the demands of the people they are supposed to represent.
    It is important to remember that this government will use any and all means against you. That being said, it is necessary to obey all laws and to renounce all violence. Violence is what the government counts on in order to demonize its political “enemies”. Do not fall into the “trap”.
    The “mainstream media” is owned “lock, stock, and barrel” by the government. Not only that, social media platforms are also “agents of the government”–totally unconstitutional.
    Let’s not forget “infiltration” by government agents. Every organization must guard against infiltration by government types. “Entrapment” is a favorite tactic of government types and has been used to prosecute those who follow the government criminals’ “suggestions” and “help” from their government criminal “handlers”.
    “Work stoppages” or “work slowdowns” on a massive scale can be an effective tool in which to get an unresponsive government’s attention.
    Europeans have been using work stoppages for decades in order to get their governments’ attention. Of course, European countries are much smaller both in land area and in population which makes it easier for “work stoppages (general strikes) to work.
    Here in the USA with much more land mass and a stratified population, such tactics are more difficult to implement and are less effective.
    A work stoppage that paralyzes a large part of the economy will get the government’s attention as “tax revenues” will drop off.
    A lesser but still effective tactic is one that has been used by labor unions—a reduction in productivity by “working to contract”. This tactic has employees doing the minimum amount of work, just enough to keep the employer from being able to fire employees for “non-performance”. Refusing to work beyond the normal work hours or being unavailable for “overtime” is but another “working to contract” tactic.
    Let’s get the ball rolling…

    • I’m not sure about that. When the media gaslights you daily, the old rules do not apply. They demonize us on a daily basis. It’s time to give them reason

  8. I just hate this leftist Orwellian wordsmithing. “Forging ahead with laws….. that will ban gas guzzlers”. Gas guzzlers??! That is a term that was coined in the 1970s when cars averaged 12 mpg. What new car on the market these days even remotely qualifies as a “gas guzzler”? If you try to have a conversation with an otherwise intelligent person who has a leftist ideology about CAFE standards, or drivers being remotely monitored by the insurance companies and fined or subject to rate increases via the cars that can detect violations such as speeding in real time, you will find yourself in the midst of a word and idea salad so damn quickly it will make your head spin. I talked to someone the other day who began the conversation by describing how disgusted they were with the idea of remote monitoring of driving, who then in the next sentence whiplashed into how many lives would potentially be saved from car crashes caused by speeding, then veered back to complaining about the relative expenses of repairing new cars because of all the “excessive electronics”. When it’s all said and done, leftists LOVE the bullying and controlling, feel even when they themselves are subjected to it that somehow (however bizarre this sounds) that they themselves are a part of being the controllers themselves. Simply because they like the mere idea of controlling others. This mindset results in some of the most convoluted, ass backwards twisted critical thinking you will ever encounter. I truly feel some days we are living in a real life version of Orwell’s 1984.

  9. With what the globalist/ technocratic elite is pushing worldwide (Net Zero, vaccine passports, digital ID, trans _____, etc), I can’t help but wonder if the Modern Left has bought into their agenda themselves or if they’ve just become useful idiots for the elite. Or perhaps they think of themselves as GOD like the globalist/ technocratic elite do, and wish to use government to FORCE their religion on everyone else who wants no part of their religion, which in itself would seem to go against their endless bleating for years for “Separation of church & state”.

  10. Eric,

    Actually, the GOP controlled House could put a stop the EPA’s overreach. How? By DEFUNDING them! They could say, “All right, if y’all insist on engaging in harmful, regulatory overreach, then we’ll deprive you of the resources needed to do so! What do y’all think of that?” Like the CARS Act an all other bills, they must pass both houses of Congress then get signed by POTUS. The same goes for spending bills; they must be passed by both houses and signed by POTUS too. Why not use this against the leftists? Why not simply defund the EPA and any other agency or department engaging in regulatory overreach? Sure, the leftist controlled Senate wouldn’t like it, but what could they DO about it? If the GOP were really serious about pushing back, then they’d use the power of the purse to do so.

    Ah, but that would require the one thing the GOP doesn’t have: GUTS! It would take guts to defund any agency, especially the vaunted and esteemed EPA. Why, the pundits on CNN and at the Washington (Com)Post would call them names! They wouldn’t get praise from these media mouthpieces that hate them. They would no longer be invited to the swanky and fashionable cocktail parties in DC-oh, the horror! Never mind the fact that the alphabet news networks and legacy newspapers no longer have viewers and readers in any number; never mind the fact that they’re irrelevant. No, the GOP squishes, the RINOs, care about what CNN, the Washington (Com)Post say about them, because all their Swamp friends watch and read these organs. So yeah, the GOP controlled House COULD use the power of the purse to exert leverage on the EPA, but they don’t have the guts to do it! Unfortunately, the CARS Act is just more virtue signaling to their base; it’s just a show vote, much like the Obamacare repeal votes were prior to Trump taking office…

    • Well-said, Mark –

      It goes to show that GOP is all about the show. Pretend-play that it opposes “government over-reach” – to get the Boobs to support the GOP. Which they continue to do, notwithstanding the GOP doesn’t support them.

    • You’re right. This GOP is full of traitors and cowards. Not one has the guts to sponsor a bill to defund. Not one. Not Thomas Massie, Not Gosar, Not any one of them.

      The EPA is a large agency, but its budget is a drop in the bucket compared to the military and the “entitlement” programs that all of us are entitled to and pay for year after year after year.

      That said, there needs to be one loud voice that when leftists put up pictures of cities choking on smog or some dead animal that says “I don’t give a fuck and you’re a tree hugging idiot” while telling greta Thundberg that we are going to in fact steal your dreams, you pampered bitch

      Resistance can be contagious.

        • Since you are in Alabama, go ahead. I’m probably going with the Orange man in the national . I have voted third party from 1992 to 2008. I skipped 2012 since all of the candidates sucked, third party and otherwise. In 16 and 20, I voted Trump because his ideology concerning trade was closest to mine. I couldn’t stand him otherwise.

          I would hope that we get what would be close to a right wing dictatorship as much as we have a left wing one over the last 50 years.

          It’s time for a major course correction.

          Ah, I’m not making sense. My favorite candidate ever was Pat Buchannan. He was the only one who would have had the guts to scale all of this shit back. Trump stole that movement that began at teh end of the REagan “revolution.”

    • Exactly. Republicans would rather be on the losing team as long as they are part of the inner circle. They are driven by the desire for the power, the money, the prestige, the idea of being one of the elite, all of that.

  11. To the left, everything is an extinction level threat. Their opposition to anything is due to the threat of death. Not the “threat” of having to use a mens room if you have a penis, no, they’re going to die if you don’t play along with their psychosis. Not the “threat” of having someone (not them personally, they’re using contraception or not engaged in procreative sex) having to become a parent if they don’t pull out, that would just kill the leftist with the professionally printed sign. So it’s kind of hard to take them seriously when they can’t even come up with a coherent argument against fossil fuels. It all sounds like screaming on the playground.

    So people who would likely benefit from a little warmer winters and not notice a little hotter summers go against their own best interest and protest “big oil” all the while not knowing that they owe their existence to oil and cheap energy. Their great grandparents wouldn’t have had children that survived without abundant coal heat and steam power, so their grandparents never would have been born or lived to reproductive age, meaning their parents wouldn’t have existed. Thanks to fossil fuels!

    So ~250 years have gone by and all the sudden this stuff is dangerous. We’ll have that “hockey stick” any day now! In ten years… Oh, another ten years… well, imagine what would happen if we didn’t take that little bit of action we took! Just look at all the solar panels and windmills! NO NUKES! NO NUKES!

    Someone needs to dope-slap these dumbasses.

    • The Dutch farmers did the same. I think ours should do it too. WTF are the Feds going to do, jail them? If they do, then GOOD LUCK finding something to eat! As the bumper sticker says, “No farmers, no food”…

      • Why do you think that we have been importing a ton of fruits and vegetables in this country for going on two decades now?

        These assholes have their safety valve. The only thing that the large transnational farms which make up the majority of the farming in this country make is soybeans, corn and wheat for our trisket crackers and flour tortillas.

        Maybe we still have cows here, but they have likely been injected with Mrna shots and whatnot.

        Our farmers and theirs are not the same. Ours rely on subsidies and ethanol to keep going.

        • Swamprat,

          You can get fruits from independent, American growers, at least in season. Their fruits are much better than the store bought fruits too. You order from them, and they ship direct to your house. There’s Pittman & Davis in TX, and Hale Growers in FL. They both grow their fruits here in the US. I doubt that they’re the only ones, but they’re the ones I know of.

  12. ‘The Times piece blithely uses the smear words of the Left.’ — eric

    Indeed. It’s part of the Kultursmog, a term coined by columnist Robert Tyrrell during the Clinton administration to describe the insidious diffusion of Leftist tropes into common discourse, back when the lapdog press was gushing over Hillary’s ‘pretty in pink’ press conference.

    You can see the Kultursmog polluting language, as the CDC now refers to pregnant women as ‘pregnant people,’ despite the medical fact that no one with xy chromosomes can conceive and carry a fetus. How would Mandy Cohen like it if we insisted that the medical terms monoparous and multiparous be replaced by the popular locution milf? (Actually I expect this to happen soon.)

    Demographically, the Lügenpresse does not look like America: over 90 percent of its scribblers identify as Democrats. One small ethnic group is heavily over-represented in its ranks, and even more so at the top. Nothing against (for instance) Koreans, but if they dominated the management of the largest media groups, wouldn’t we feel something was askew?

    Amendment I protected freedom of speech when ‘the press’ consisted solely of individual entrepreneurs, a constellation that resembled today’s independent commentators. But the corporate Mainstream Media, collaborating with Big Gov to suppress ‘misinformation’ — i.e., anything that contradicts their worldview — is a wholly different animal.

    The Lügenpresse is our misfortune.

    • Hi Jim,

      Yup. I was a witness to much of that. The ’90s set the stage for the show we’re seeing today. “Conservatives” were too stupid (per Sam Francis) to understand what was afoot. Naturally, the Times fired Sam. As well as Joe Sobran. Both brilliant men and superb writers. As compared with the not-even-mediocre pabulum eructed by the Times today.

      Then, too.

      The paper whored its Commentary pages out to RINOs and neocons – some of whom didn’t even eruct the pabulum underneath their bylines. Some of whom were just paid shills, putting their bylines on pabulum paid for by various . . . interests.

      I know it because I saw it – behind the curtain.

      • I remember Joe Sobran from way back. He had a segment called Spectrum on WCBS News Radio 88 in New York. I’m sure it was played on other CBS stations, but I remember that one.

  13. Curious how we got along fine without the EPA until Nixon created it. Sort of like the Department of Education until Carter created it, and education has been on a downhill track ever since. Don’t let the House get away with it. They could end it, by not funding it. Or at least cutting back its funding by half or more, and it no longer had such power. Of course they won’t, because there’s money in it, for them.

      • I might get some flak here, but I would say that the existence of the EPA was justified at one point. If you were around in the sixties and seventies, you’ll remember that pollution was an actual problem. Most metro areas had visible smog. Acid rain would literally eat the paint on your car. Lots of rivers and waterways were cesspools of sewage and chemicals. Cars belched out blue smoke, smokestacks black smoke, and the stench of burning fuel was just about everywhere. America really was a dirty place, and there was nothing wrong with a coordinated effort to clean it up. The problem is that the EPA was actually pretty good at their job in the early days. By the early nineties or so, the smokestacks had scrubbers (or they were moved to China), sewage and water treatment plants had cleaned up most of the water, a bunch of superfund sites were cleaned up, and auto emissions had been reduced to almost nothing. For the most part, problem solved. Unfortunately, congress and the bureaucrats never say “mission accomplished” and then defund and abolish a government program. No, they must perpetually grow and expand their sphere of influence and power. Thus, they need to invent new problems that need to be “solved”. And that’s where we are now. We all know that CO2 is not a pollutant, but the EPA has to justify its existence. We should expect many more benign substances will be classified as pollutants in the future, because as long as the U.S. government exists, the EPA’s mission will forever mutate and never end.

        • Hi Floriduh,

          People of well-meant intentions will agree on this point you raise. The problem is that the Left is never well-meant and this was always meant to be the beginning of the end – for the car. The Left has always hated cars; or, rather, the fact that we own them. The “emissions” excuse was just that – even though there was some truth to it.

          One way to have stymied the Left would have been to set down cost-benefit requirements. Once 90-plus percent of the genuinely harmful emissions had been controlled, it ought to have been mission accomplished. But then, that would run contrary to the point; that being there’s no “end to doin’ right,” as the red legs Union officer explained in The Outlaw Josey Wales.

          • Eric –

            I go even further. I would trade 50 years of “clean air” and “clean water” (which isn’t clean at all) for the freedom we lost.

          • I think you hit the nail on the head there. The left basically manipulates the average persons good intentions to employ a long game strategy to get what they really want, incrementally.

        • Nope.

          The air was better in 1950 than it was in 1940. It was better in 1960 than it was in 1950. And it was better in 1970 than 1960. The passage of the environmental laws had no affect on the rate of improvement.

          Oh. And the snow used to be black in Poland until the commies were kicked out.

          • Right on Horst. Agree 100 percent. By 1970, pound for pound, cars were becoming more efficient and less “polluting” than they were prior. During the implementation of the Clean Air Act, by 1974, fuel efficiency had dropped by a couple of mpg.

            I believe that we would have much better vehicle choice in terms of “pollution”, “gas mileage”, performance and even saaafety if the EPA and the NHTSA did not exist today.

            I am kind of bitter that I only saw the tail end of the unrgulated automotive era as a small child. I dream of it’s return.

        • So true Floriduh,
          If anything on earth has eternal life it’s a government agency. The worst example is NATO, which reached its expiration date in 1991 with the end of the Soviet Union. Rather than have a celebration of “mission accomplished” and disband like the Warsaw Pact it was meant to counter it continues to expand. Keeeeeev is the most recent abomination of the need to keep the money flowing to the MIC.

        • You know, I have thought about the exaxt thing, but I have come to an opposite conclusion. I would have rather put up with all of the pollution we had in the 1970s than face the leviathin that threatens our very existence at this point. The clean air and water hasn’t been worth it. The loss in manufacturing jobs has put millions out of work, on drugs and in debt. Despite having an apparently cleaner environment, is it really?

          Because of the banning of the older weed killers and insecticides, we have atrozine, glyphosate and GMO crap in our aqufers and waterways. We have endocrine disrupting plastics in our supermarkets and in our waterways as well. Our rivers are filled with birth control and pharmaceuticals that do the same. Is there any guess as to why so many people are identifying as LGBTQ and have a generally unhealthy appearance and demeanor these days?

          The entire population, just about is sick as a great dane and life expectancies are actually dropping.

          Our fuel used to be leaded gas. They blamed it for crime and whatnot. Ok fine. Banning leaded gas caused us to use more gasoline and energy to get the same BTU out of a gallon of gas and propel a car down the freeway. Pump octane used to be 91. In the 1970s it dropped to 87 and in the 2000’s as we got ethanol, it dropped further. It only stayed 87 because they added ethanol to bump the number back up. Our national oil consumption rose from about 11 million barrels a day to over 20 in 30 years.

          We are not better off.

          I would trade the last 60 years or so for what we had then. I would gladly trade my fuel injection and all of the pollution bullshit for a quieter life where they didn’t bother you at every turn. The freedom we lost is worth a little brown air.

          and highway safety… I don’t give a fuck about that either except to ensure my own survival, I would be driving a car with thick sway bars, a tight suspension. a very quiet interior, precise steering and decent binders. Such was available in the 1960s european cars. Americans didn’t make that except in very rare circumstances. Ralph Nader is an incessant asshole busybody who set out to destroy the Automobile out of the gate. Read the first sentence of Unsafe at Any Speed and you understand the motivation. Did “good” come from it? Maybe. Was it worth it? No. Look at what our vehicles have become. They can keep that shit too.

          So, no, the EPA is garbage. I would like to see it disappear into a vapor cloud.

        • Floriduh,
          The problem did not require another immortal FedGov bureaucracy. Only a bit of StateGov responsibility. I was around in the 60s, when the city powdered the poor neighborhoods with DDT at least once per year. My family being poor, I got my dose. And the world is still being poisoned chemically. I wonder how much DuPont, Dow, and Bayer/Monsanto etc. are spending to promote the global warming hysteria to distract from their sins.

      • LOL. No. I remember watching the Price is Right as a very young kid, seeing Vegas given away like a cracker jack prize.

        Since I have access to it, I watch the contestants on ScrewTube. The girls were hot, the people weren’t built like a bathtub. People were happy.

        Given the food supply and the Average American’s gullibility, I am surprised the bodies aren’t being piled up like cord wood today.

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