Welcome back to the Scuttlebutt.
Pour a drink, you’re gonna need one.
Holy shit.
I considered doing a piece on the whole SCOTUS hypocrisy-fest, and decided that that terrain was just too crowded… seems everyone has done pieces on how BOTH sides have appointed and shot down judicial appointments based on whether the same party controls the Senate and the Whitehouse. It’s a fine old tradition that goes back to Jefferson and Adams for Gods’ sake. So doing yet another piece on that and finding another way to say the same thing is just tiring, and I’ve already had an exhausting day.
Then I considered doing a piece on the chicanery that is going on in Seattle, the fact that they’ve lost over 125 street-level retailers, including a lot of really big names, and the flight from the downtown core continues, even as the city council doubles down on the whole “fund the rioters-fuck the cops” piece…
I was all set to do that when I saw what has to be the stupidest fucking thing I will read all week. California has been the land of fruit loop governors for decades, admittedly. I mean it’s quite possible that the last semi-sane governor that place had was R. Reagan, but Jesus Christ on a crutch, this guy takes the cake!
The dumbass pictured above, one Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an Executive Order today that will end the sale of Gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035!!!
Now we’re going to ignore for a second (and just a second, because I see the lawsuits lining up already…) the fact that a governor doesn’t get to “just do this shit” via executive order.
Let’s just look at the practicality of this and the Law of Unintended Consequences as it affects this moonbat. Yeah, Yeah Gavin, we hear you, “OH MY GODS! WE ARE HAVING A BAD FIRE SEASON! It MUST be because of globul werming! WE MUST DO SOMETHING to stop it… I know, we’ll ban any new car that pollutes the air!”
OK, first off, idiot, the fires are caused more by you and your ilk’s incredibly bad forest management practices, and compounded by a vast number of people that wanted to get out of the shitshow you call a city, but didn’t know, or want to know how to live WITH nature. Everything west of the rocky mountains is a fire-based ecology shitbird! The entire ecosystem is built around having fires sweep through the underbrush every 5-15 years, and having the diseased and dead trees, the underbrush, and the underburden (dead leaves, needles, rotted wood, etc…) burned to make soil.
You and your tree-hugging friends have, for the past forty-plus years had this “nothing shall burn if we can help it” policy. Further, you’ve outlawed most of the timber harvests, INCLUDING something called “salvage harvests” which is where the timbermen are allowed to go in and take out the sick and the dead trees, of which you have an abundance because we have imported things like the Chinese bark beetle to munch on the trees with no known predator. No, we didn’t import it on purpose, but it happened just the same.
Drought played a role as well, and other things, but the end result is you had a shit ton of standing deadwood. Wow, what a surprise, it burns.
Oh, and by the way, this little fire season has put more carbon in the air, by a factor of 10, than all the automobiles in your state for the last 50 years, ace.
Now above and beyond that, while you won’t have to deal with it (you’ll be out of office or dead by the time the bill for this comes due, you fool) you’re about to give your state a real taste of “the law of unintended consequences” or Mr. Kipling put it, “the gods of the copybook headings” are about to pay your ass a visit.
They just aren’t making enough electric cars, they aren’t making any electric trucks, and absolutely forget long haul rigs that will meet your rules… Not “diesel-electric” or “Hybrid” but ZERO EMISSION ONLY!
Dude those are few on the ground, expensive as hell, and require the use of LOTS and LOTS of rare earth metals. If you think cars are polluting, you really need to take a look at the R/E mines. Oh but that is over in China, so that doesn’t matter…
(yes, he really is that dumb)
Dude, exporting the pollution problem won’t solve it, even if China continues to mine the stuff and trade with us… IE if we aren’t in a real shooting war with them within five years. We have R/E in the US, but it’s virtually impossible to mine the stuff because the EPA shits not a brick but an entire edifice at the very thought.
So, since they’re rare and expensive, the market will find it’s way around your ass. What you just did was ensure that every other states clunkers are going to be imported to your state as used cars, so that people that can’t afford the luxury of your Pie in the sky plan, will instead be buying old clunkers… Because they have to have a vehicle. Outside the cities (and even in most of them) Public Transportation is an iffy proposition even for normal people… For tradesmen, ranchers, and anyone who lives outside the city proper, it’s nonexistent.
These clunkers are going to put MORE emissions into the air, not less.
Now bright boy says that “zero-emission vehicles will “almost certainly” be cheaper than gasoline-powered cars by the time the newly announced regulations go into effect.” Uh huh, pull the other one, it’s got bells. This “rainbow stew” plan reminds me of Fusion power, which we’ve been 15 years from, for…Oh, my entire working life. This is like the cartoon that floats around the Navy periodically, where there’s a guy standing in front of a chart of the overhaul plan, where there’s all this chaos then the words “and then a miracle happens”, and “undocking on time”. Miracles don’t happen because you need one, any more than they happen because that compulsive gambler “is DUE for a win”.
He’s figuring that “We will use our market power to push zero-emission vehicle innovation and drive down costs for everyone,” per a tweet he sent out on Wednesday. Isn’t it funny that “the market will provide” when he wants rainbows and unicorn farts, but he ignores the fact that some bright boy is going to figure out that he can make a killing by buying used cars cheep and bringing them to where those are the only things that the poor and lower middle class can afford?
I doubt this law will exist when the implementation time comes, but if it does, and I’m still alive, I may just buy me a car hauler.
Stay safe, the stupid is viral and far more likely to kill you than COVID folks.
Until next time I remain,
Yours in service.
William Lehman.
Enough said. Great summation.