Exactly so

/

this is the woman who is designing your future

Real estate activity has slowed to almost nothing as the August doldrum descends, so why not talk of politics, which hasn’t paused since 2015? EV cars, for instance.

The EV Scam: A Likely Reason for So Epic a Folly

After several paragraphs detailing some of the (many) defects of battery cars, Canadian David Solway gets tp the heart of the matter

The obvious question has to do with the reason governments have invested so heavily and at such expense in forcing so radical and risky a policy as the complete transformation of the auto sector and the introduction of EVs known to be unreliable, dangerous, and inefficient. After all, the automotive industry is a key element in national prosperity. According to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the standard vehicle manufacturing automotive ecosystem “drives $1 trillion into the U.S. economy each year—nearly 5 percent of GDP— and creates 9.6 million jobs coast to coast and $105 billion in exports. Every direct job in vehicle manufacturing supports 10.5 additional American jobs. More than $220 billion in federal and state revenue is generated annually by the manufacturing, sale, and maintenance of automobiles in the U.S.” 

Why tinker with the golden goose, the cash cow, or any other theriomorphic image one might wish to use? Why sell one’s birthright for a mess of pottage, which is what the EV industry actually is? Todd Lewis, a commenter on my previous article on PJ Media, put it succinctly. “It is a way for governments to advance totalitarian control of the populace, wreck the economy, and disempower the middle class.” His thesis is backed up in Joel Kotkin’s masterpiece "The Coming of Neo-Feudalism." Kotkin chronicles how the once-numerous and thriving middle class is relentlessly being phased out of existence by a power elite intent on re-medievalizing society while advancing their own social, political, and economic supremacy. Like the serf who lacked freedom of movement and was bound to the lord’s estate, the enfiefed EV owner for various reasons is tethered to a sort of manorial orbit. 

The fact is that EV obsession has nothing to do with “saving the earth,” replacing fossil energy with presumably “clean” alternatives, or reducing across-the-board costs involving transportation and maintenance — all of which reasons are contra-indicated by the facts. They are delusions, mere fetishes, or outright lies that a modicum of sober research would render null and void. The real issue has to do with the ongoing battle between a market economy and a command economy, between a business-oriented system and a centripetal Marxist political organization, and between an individualistic political economy and oligarchic socialism. 

The EV project is a major strategy in a political program that envisages replacing not simply fossil fuel propulsion with electrical power, which is neither feasible nor even conceivable, but swapping a free market economy, in which the law of supply and demand determines output and prices, for a centralized government authority that dictates production, prices, and distribution. Top-down control supersedes private enterprise. 

In a command economy, the managerial class and state officials control the means of production, set prices, determine production goals, and limit or prohibit competition — as opposed to private individuals and joint-stock companies freely transacting business for personal profit or in the interest of stockholders, their decisions based on consumer demand. 

You buy the car you want to drive, not the car the central planners have forced you to drive. You live the life you want to live within the structure of an ordered society governed by the ballot — that is, the unperverted ballot — not the life pre-determined for you by the administrative state. For, as Aristotle writes in Book I of Politics, “that man who would be a citizen in a republic would very often not be one in an oligarchy.”

….

EVs see to it that your power source is limited, your time and expense prohibitively exploited, your safety insecure, and your automotive range severely curtailed. It should be obvious that if your freedom is restricted in one dimension, you can be sure it will be limited in others. 

Valor isn't the only thing these people will steal: our constitutional freedoms are on their “to-grab list” as well

/

Mind you, as avowed socialists, they also intend to steal our purses, but that’s just part of the game.

UPDATE: Seth Dillon makes an excellent point

So there I was in the rice paddies, standing shoulder-to shoulder with Dick Blumenthal and Hillary, gooks firing rockets and auto-rifles at us, when ....

/

stolen valor

Hell, even CNN — CNN! — can’t let this fraud go unchecked.

‘No Evidence’: CNN Reporter Delivers Devastating Fact-Check On Walz’s Claims About Military Service

“No evidence” meaning, in CNN speak, “the guy’s a flat-out liar”.

Well, this is fine

/

empty

Harris Releases a Video of a 'Phone Call' With Tim Walz That Is So Bad, People Thought It Was Parody

This is one of those instances where transcribing the video is pointless. I could type out what is said, but anyone who can't hit play isn't going to see what makes it so incredible. The cackling? It's there. The weird tone that Harris often falls into as if she's addressing a child? It's there. The dead giveaway that she's reading a script about halfway through the video? That's there too. Walz's performance isn't much better, with him sitting on a porch in a camouflage hat, clearly way too hard to signal he's "working class."

Maybe it's Trump who should retreat into the basement, and just run ads using Kampalla's and Tim's own statements

/

Kamala Harris Wants a Reparations Commission Like California's, Which Called To Decriminalize Public Urination

The reparations bill supported by Vice President Kamala Harris would set up an independent commission similar to the one in California that called for sweeping changes to the criminal code in addition to monetary payouts to black Americans.

The Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act, which was reintroduced in April 2019 and cosponsored by then-senator Harris, would create a 13-member commission to "study and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, its subsequent de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans." The commission would then offer their recommendations for "remedies" to Congress.

Current laws that "continue to disproportionately and negatively affect African-Americans as a group, and those that perpetuate the lingering effects, materially and psycho-social," could be on the chopping block as well, the bill reads. That provision is left vague. Specifics, the bill states, would be hashed out by individuals from "civil society and reparations organizations that have historically championed the cause of reparatory justice."

Although the bill does not specify which federal laws could be slashed, a reparations task force in California may offer some clues. That task force concluded last year that longtime black residents were entitled to $1.2 million each, as well as recommended sweeping changes to the criminal code.

Among the changes recommended were decriminalizing public urination and letting those arrested for public indecency sue the state for damages. Fathers who are delinquent on their child support would see their debt wiped, and police would no longer be allowed to pull over cars with expired registration, tinted windows, or broken tail lights.

Police and probation officers should also be barred from public school property, the committee said. Those same schools, however, would be required to teach high school students about reparations and the "opportunity gap between African American students and their peers," the task force wrote.

Support for the reparations bill is consistent with other far-left positions that Harris staked out that year. Her failed 2020 presidential campaign's criminal justice reform plan called for the end of cash bail as well as "an end [to] mandatory minimums."

Harris also applauded cities that slashed their police budgets and called for voting rights to be restored to convicted murderers and rapists. Steps such as those, Harris said in 2019, are part of her vision to "fundamentally transform how we approach public safety."

…

Harris's support for reparations goes beyond attaching her name to a bill in 2019. During her first presidential run, which started that year, Harris said, "I think there has to be some form of reparations."

"We could discuss what that is, but look, we're looking at more than 200 years of slavery," she continued. "We're looking at almost 100 years of Jim Crow."

Harris in a March 2019 interview with NPR offered a somewhat different take from the congressional proposal she went on to cosponsor. Rather than explicitly endorse monetary compensation or repealing any federal laws, Harris said, "I think reparations—yeah. I think that the word, the term 'reparations,' it means different things to different people."

Uh huh.

A former Republican who voted for Biden in 2020 loves, just loves Kampallawalla's VP pick

/

Charles Djou and FELLOW TDS SUFFERER, Adam kinzinger

I served with Tim Walz as a Republican in the House. He'll be a good vice president

“I’m excited Vice President Kamala Harris has selected Tim as her running mate.”

America needs a gracious and kind individual who talks as a friendly neighbor, understands your community like a local high school football coach, knows the commitment of military service as a veteran and advocates policies for all Americans -- not just for Republicans or Democrats. 

Charles Djou, (R-Hawaii) served in Congress for six months in 2010 after a special election to fill out the term of departed Congressman, lost in that year’s general election, and failed to regain his seat in 2012 and 2014.

Perhaps Mr. Djou holds a grudge against his former party for not sufficiently supporting him during those three failed elections — who knows? Regardless, his good friend Walz declaiming on the meaning of neighborliness:

It's Walsh, and the lawyers at Powerline, Minnesotans all, have long known him and long despised him

/

Here’s a sample:

Posted on July 26, 2024 by John Hinderaker in 2024 Election, Minnesota, Tim Walz

Tim Walz for Veep? Take Him, Please!

I am not sure why Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has wound up on some observers’ short lists as a candidate for vice president. He doesn’t seem to bring any obvious advantages to the Democrats’ ticket. But just in case, my colleagues John Phelan, an economist, and Bill Walsh, our Communications Director, had an op-ed in yesterday’s Star-Tribune: What America Needs to Know About Tim Walz of Minnesota.

During his first term as governor, Walz faced two major challenges: The riots following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and COVID-19. He fumbled both.

As the Twin Cities burned for three days in May 2020, Walz froze, terrified of upsetting his party’s activist base which sympathized with the rioters, for whom Kamala Harris raised money. Walz hesitated to commit the National Guard – whom he dismissed as “19-year-old cooks” – but when they finally were deployed, the violence ceased immediately.   

This concern for criminals over law abiding citizens has contributed to Minnesota becoming a high-crime state for the first time in recent history, with part one crimes, such as murder, aggravated assault, and rape, now above the national average. Indeed, Minnesota’s crime rates began climbing in 2018, when Walz took office and two years before George Floyd’s death. In 2024, violent crime in Minneapolis remains 29% above 2019.

Walz’s administration has caused Minnesota to become, for the first time in our history, a high-crime state:

While Minnesota’s uptick in crime began before the George Floyd incident, Walz’s incompetence during the rioting that followed certainly made things worse:

In response to the second challenge, COVID-19, in defiance of the science, Walz shut down schools, churches and businesses and instituted draconian mask mandates and shelter in place orders. This was driven by a computer model cooked up by a couple of graduate students over a weekend and which was such a failure it was quietly abandoned. Walz spent $7 million on a morgue to hold all the forecast bodies. This, too, was quietly sold without ever housing a single body. Walz’s failed nursing home policies resulted in over 5,000 deaths from COVID, one of the highest percentages in the country. And the man who likes to talk tough on cable news, telling Republicans to “mind your own damn business,” created a phone line for people to snitch on their neighbors who violated COVID regulations.

For all this government activity in response to COVID-19, Walz still managed to oversee the largest COVID fraud scheme in the country, with $250 million stolen. Millions more have been wasted in other fraud schemes throughout his time in office, but no one has been fired or held accountable. 

Walz’s tax and spend policies have hurt Minnesota’s economy. For the first time ever, Minnesota’s per capita GDP is now below the national average:

Walz has overseen a massive explosion in spending on K-12 education, while the actual achievement of Minnesota students has declined sharply. This is because under the current far-left regime, schools are training kids to be left-wing activists rather then teaching them to read and write:

More money, worse results. It is a classic liberal failure–or it would be, if you assume these people actually care about education as opposed to lining their own pockets. At the same time that our schools are failing, the Minnesota Department of Education oversaw the biggest single covid fraud in the country, somewhere between $250 million and $500 million in the Feeding Our Future scandal.

The acid test for any state is whether people are moving in or moving out. Minnesota, like California, New York and Illinois, is a state that people are fleeing. The only income range in which Minnesota attracts residents from other states, on a net basis, is 0 to $25,000: