Surprise: EVs Are More Expensive To Fuel Than Gas Powered

At the end of the day, if you want to get an EV, get one. That’s your choice. I wouldn’t mind one, except it would be a pain to charge as I do not have a garage. I’m 100% against Government forcing citizens into them. Government is supposed to listen to We The People, not dictate to us

Electric vehicles more expensive to fuel than gas-powered cars at end of 2022: consulting firm

st greta carFor the first time in more than a year, owners of traditional gas-powered cars saved more money at the pump than those driving their electric counterparts, according to a consulting firm.

As inflated gas prices came down at the end of last years, the fuel cost for most Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles was comparatively cheaper in the final quarter of 2022 than charging an electric vehicle (EV), analysts with the Anderson Economic Group (AEG) said.

The cost to drive 100 miles in a gas-powered car dropped by more than $2 in October, November and December 2022. And with electricity prices rising last year, mid-priced ICE cars became more economical than EV cars for the first time in 18 months, the firm said.

AEG’s cost analysis looked at the underlying cost of energy for gas, diesel and electricity, as well as road taxes and fees, added costs to operate pump or EV charger and the cost to drive to a fueling station. The costs were calculated for vehicles driving 12,000 miles per year.

So, really, what you have is costs being relatively close. Of course, right now, both types are expensive, with gas going way up again. It’s around $3.49 in the Raleigh area (I remember when people freaked when it hit that price the first time. The Powers That Be are trying to get us used to it to force us into EVs). But, electricity costs are also going up, thanks to government policies which are killing off reliable, affordable energy like coal and natural gas, shuttering nuclear, and replacing with unreliable, expensive solar and wind. Well, when the extreme-enviros allow those projects to be built/go online.

The analysis found that in Q4 2022, a typical mid-priced gas car driver paid about $11.29 to fuel their vehicle for 100 miles of driving. That was about 31 cents cheaper than what a mid-priced electric car driver paid charging their vehicle at home, and more than $3 less than what comparable EV drivers pay when they charge their vehicles at a fuel station.

Most people will not be able to charge at home, as they have no garage. They live in apartments. If Government wants to make this happen, they are going to have to open up electricity generation.

Read: Surprise: EVs Are More Expensive To Fuel Than Gas Powered »

Utah Ends Gender Surgeries And Hormone Therapies For Minors

Obviously, this is making the supporters of the gender confused Outraged

Utah Bans Hormone Therapy And Gender Surgeries For Minors

Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill Saturday that will ban gender affirming treatment and surgery for minors identifying as transgender in the state.

The bill, dubbed SB0016, was sponsored by Republican state Sen. Michael Kennedy in December who argued that current gender-affirming procedures “lack sufficient research” calling the nationwide push to enter this version of healthcare “radical and dangerous,” KUER reported.

SB0016 will prohibit health care providers from administering “a hormonal transgender treatment to new patients who were not diagnosed with gender dysphoria before a certain date,” it will prohibit doctors from “performing sex characteristic surgical procedures on a minor for the purpose of effectuating a sex change,”and it requires the Utah Department of Health and Human Services to “conduct a systematic review of the medical evidence regarding hormonal transgender treatments and provide recommendations to the Legislature.”

People cannot drink a beer legally until 21. They cannot purchase a handgun (or even possess one) if under 18. You cannot sign a legally binding document if under 18. Why should children, even with parental consent, be allowed to make major life changing choices? And, really, anyone making these choices should have to undergo serious discussions to make sure this is what they really, really want, and are not doing it as a fad.

The bill was hotly contested within the Utah Legislature, most notably by Republican Sen. Daniel Thatcher who argued that the legislation would ban potentially life-saving care from transgender youth, citing an American Academy of Pediatrics study on transgender suicide rates, KUER reported.

Basically, Thatcher is a moonbat Democrat. Having genitals chopped off and hormones pumped into growing children is not life saving. It’s purely elective. Let them become adults, having pretended to be the opposite sex for a few years, to see if they really want this or realize peer pressure is not what it’s cracked up to be.

I linked this from Diogenes’ Middle Finger on Sunday, let’s look a bit

Demanding Tolerance of the Abnormal

One of the left’s primary goals has always been to convince us that we are not normal if we do not affirm its ideology, a well established tactic among totalitarians. People who believe in normal things are under attack in America. We are assaulted on a near continuous basis by leftists who practice and promote behavior that is clearly abnormal. Frighteningly, some of this behavior is not merely abnormal, it’s evil. (snip)

Grown men dressed as women and performing provocatively before preschoolers, people pretending to be a sex they are not is not normal. Promoting obesity is not normal, it’s dangerous.  Taking money from people and giving it to other people, otherwise known as wealth redistribution, is not normal. It produces mediocrity. Letting criminal suspects out of jail with no restrictions or repercussions is not normal, degrades and endangers society. Boys playing sports against girls is not normal and never should be.  The left actively promotes demands things that simply fly in the face nature itself.

Letting children have gender “changing” medical procedures with lifelong consequences is not normal. A paper calls the condition “rapid onset gender dysphoria”, and says it is “socially contagious.” Like eating Tide Pods, wearing pegged jeans, and playing with fidget spinners. But, way, way more dangerous.

Read: Utah Ends Gender Surgeries And Hormone Therapies For Minors »

If All You See…

…is a horrible fossil fueled vehicle, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is A View From The Beach, with a post on Obama refusing to allow the National Archives to search for secrets.

It’s American flag week. I finished Genocide Of Man, moved on to and finished Tango Down, close to finishing Survive For Now.

Read: If All You See… »

Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

Patriotic Pinup

Happy Sunday! Another fine day in the Once And Future Nation Of America. The Sun is shining, the ducks are quacking (good grief, they are loud), and the NJ Devils go into the All-Star break tied for 3rd best in the entire league. This pinup is by Fiona Stephenson, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. The Feral Irishman has questions on 2024 RNC
  2. Sultan Knish has thoughts on survival and sensibility in Israel
  3. Pacific Pundit covers the NY Rangers refusing to wear the pride jerseys during warmups
  4. Outside the Beltway discusses a general saying the U.S. will be at war with China by 2025
  5. Newsbusters notes the North Dakota House voting to criminalize drag shows for kids
  6. Moonbattery highlights liberals working to erase women
  7. Legal Insurrection covers Twitter execs knowing the Russian misinformation was mule fritters
  8. Jihad Watch wonders if the Washington Post can cover Israel fairly
  9. IOTW Report notes that life expectancy is falling due to fentanyl
  10. Geller Report discusses Meta welcoming Ukraine’s Nazi Azov back on platform
  11. Gates Of Vienna covers the “cultural enrichment” going on with refugees in the Pomeranian region of Europe
  12. Flag And Cross notes that it’s not just your gas stove their coming for
  13. Diogenes’ Middle Finger discusses demanding tolerance of the abnormal
  14. Cold Fury covers mandatory miscegenation
  15. And last, but, not least, Climate Depot discusses the Great Food Reset

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page (nope, that’s gone, the newest Apache killed access, and the program hasn’t been upgraded since 2014). While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your Pinups for Vets calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me. I’ve also mostly alphabetized them, makes it easier scrolling the feedreader

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list. And do you have a favorite blog you can recommend be added to the feedreader?

Two great sites for getting news links are Liberty Daily and Whatafinger.

Read: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup »

Surprise: Drug Overdose Deaths Way Higher In Seattle Than COVID Deaths

Remember this?

Washington’s 2-year experiment under new drug possession law

The legislative “fix” to Washington state’s drug possession laws takes effect once Governor Jay Inslee signs it. That new law makes simple drug possession a misdemeanor, and funds development of a statewide framework for treatment and recovery.

and

No charges for personal drug possession: Seattle’s bold gamble to bring ‘peace’ after the war on drugs

Late last year, prosecutors in King County, which encompasses Seattle, and neighboring Snohomish County became the first in the nation to stop charging people for possessing small amounts of drugs — heroin, meth and crack included — in virtually all cases.

Seattle also decriminalized all psychadelics, and, being a sanctuary city, they refuse to go after illegal aliens and all the drug running they do. Plus, the whole defund the police movement has caused police officers to take a more hands off approach. So, here’s what you end with

In Seattle, the ‘shadow epidemic’ has passed COVID

COVID-19 isn’t done with Seattle and King County. But after a three-year run, it’s not the top emerging health scourge anymore. The coronavirus has been officially displaced.

Drug overdoses are now killing more people than COVID.

It started to happen last summer, in August, when more than 25 people died from drugs in a week, mostly from ingesting fentanyl, county records show. In the fall, drugs firmly dethroned COVID, when 339 people died during the quarter — nearly four per day, 70% more than were dying from COVID.

As of Friday, 100 people have already died in 2023 from drug overdoses countywide. Forty-three have died of COVID.

Drugs now are overwhelming the system, in some of the same ways that we all worked to prevent by wearing masks and socially distancing during coronavirus waves.

“A key indication of just how bad things are at the end of 2022 and likely to get worse [in] 2023, the medical examiner’s office is now struggling with the issue of storing bodies because the fentanyl-related death toll continues to climb,” Public Health Director Dr. Faisal Khan, a medical epidemiologist, said at a health board meeting this month.

Great job, hyper-leftist city of Seattle. Not too mention Democrats like Joe Biden, who has left the border wide open for serious drugs, including fentanyl, to stream in. Will this be coming to other Democratic Party run cities across the nation?

Read: Surprise: Drug Overdose Deaths Way Higher In Seattle Than COVID Deaths »

Warmists Super Upset Over Whiteness Of Vermont Climate Council

Why are they so upset? The majority of the climate (cult) movement is made up of bored, white, 1st World Elites (and peasants who think they are elites). Like this one

Uber-rich white 1st World woman who took a fossil fueled trip from her huge McMansion to California to appear on the Kelly Clarkson Show

Frustrations over racial equity simmer on the Vermont Climate Council

On Jan. 9, the Vermont Climate Council convened via Zoom for its first meeting of the new year. On the agenda: discuss the group’s annual report, due to the Legislature every year on Jan. 15.

But before even an hour had elapsed, the discussion had spiraled into a series of tense exchanges and accusations that white council members have ignored and tokenized BIPOC — Black, Indigenous and people of color — members, underscoring simmering frustrations over the council’s inclusion and direction.

Judy Dow, an Indigenous educator and nonprofit director, told members at the meeting that her inclusion on a council subcommittee “feels totally like I was only there as a token.”

“You can’t only say you hear us,” Dow said. “You have to listen to our voices. This is getting out of hand with this committee.”

The Vermont Climate Council was born from Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act, which lawmakers passed in 2020. That law requires the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by set amounts at certain benchmarks over the next 30 years, with an ultimate goal of being 80% below the state’s 1990 emissions levels by 2050.

The council, a 23-person body made up of state officials and representatives from nonprofits, municipalities and other stakeholder groups, was assigned the unenviable task of figuring out how best to do that.

What did they expect? The state is 94% white, 1.5% black, and just .4% Native American. And most “BIPOC” have real things to worry about, not this scam.

Read: Warmists Super Upset Over Whiteness Of Vermont Climate Council »

If All You See…

…is an inland sea from climate doom, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The First Street Journal, with a post on Philly’s mother of the year.

Read: If All You See… »

Democrats Send Strongly Worded Letter To Biden Over “Restrictive” Asylum Policies

Many of these Democrats complained about border states and Colorado sending illegal aliens/asylum seekers to deep blue sanctuary cities

77 Democrats send a letter to Biden criticizing his border and immigration policies

A group of 77 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Wednesday criticizing his administration’s policies restricting asylum access for migrants crossing the southern border.

The letter, signed by New Jersey Sens. Bob Menendez and Cory Booker, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and 74 others, said the new policies announced Jan. 5 to open more legal options for migrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba while also eliminating pathways for those nationalities to claim asylum at the border are “disappointing.”

While 30,000 migrants from those four countries will be eligible to apply for humanitarian parole protections from their home countries, Mexico has also agreed to take back 30,000 migrants per month from those same countries as the Biden administration expands the Trump-era Covid protections known as Title 42.

At a press conference Thursday, Menendez said, “We recognize that the United States is experiencing a difficult migration challenge at the southern border. But as elected officials, we are duty-bound to propose legal solutions, one that protects asylum-seekers while also securing the safe removal of migrants who have no legal claim to stay in the United States.”

AOC called the shipping of illegals as a crime against humanity, right after the states started shipping them to NYC, and was livid at NYC Mayor Adams for having tent cities in her district. Menendez and Booker, and many others were also Outraged. See, they’re good with illegals being shipped all over the country after streaming to the border to claim asylum, just not to their own areas.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has also said the administration is preparing to propose a new federal rulemaking that would allow his department to deny the right to claim asylum at the southern border for migrants who do not first seek asylum in a country they pass through.

Well, it’s a start, but, they should be required to apply for asylum outside the U.S. and remain outside the U.S. till that process is complete.

“Instead of issuing a new asylum transit ban and expanding Title 42,” the Democratic lawmakers said in the letter to Biden, “we encourage your administration to stand by your commitment to restore and protect the rights of asylum seekers and refugees.” The letter noted that asylum is an international right that should not be restricted.

When will these Democrats take asylum seekers into their own homes during the hearing process? And continue hosting them after they blow off their hearings/are denied.

Read: Democrats Send Strongly Worded Letter To Biden Over “Restrictive” Asylum Policies »

Brandon Admin Blocks Another Mine Necessary To Make EVs And Green Energy Projects

Hey, remember when Democrats passed the wrongly named Inflation Reduction Act, with all its climate doom bits and bots, some of which yammered about manufacturing components in America? Things like batteries, requiring American mined materials in order to qualify for tax rebates? And all the solar panels and wind turbines? And how I and other Skeptics said that both Biden and enviroweenies would look to shut down any attempted mining?

Biden admin issues 20-year mining ban as it turns to foreign supply chain amid green energy push

Electric vehicleThe Biden administration on Thursday announced that it would complete a 20-year withdrawal of 225,504 acres in a northern Minnesota forest area that is home to some of the largest domestic critical mineral reserves.

The action announced by the Department of the Interior (DOI) effectively prohibits mining activity from taking place in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Duluth, Minnesota, and surrounding area for the next two decades. The agency said it took the action in an effort to protect the local environment and watershed, which environmentalists worried would be contaminated by mining activity.

“The Department of the Interior takes seriously our obligations to steward public lands and waters on behalf of all Americans. Protecting a place like Boundary Waters is key to supporting the health of the watershed and its surrounding wildlife, upholding our Tribal trust and treaty responsibilities, and boosting the local recreation economy,” DOI Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.

It is rather interesting that all these climate cultists keep admitting that the environment gets damaged in order to produce EVs, eh? It’s also a hell of a thing that the federal government can keep clamping down on things that happen on state property. Or what should be state property.

Last year, the DOI canceled two mineral leases held by the firm Twin Metals Minnesota, which had been located in the Superior National Forest located outside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. As a result of that decision and the action Thursday, domestic mining companies will effectively be banned from operating in the region for the foreseeable future and the forest’s vast critical mineral resources will be left untapped.

However, Twin Metals’ mining project contained about 88% of the nation’s cobalt reserves in addition to vast copper, nickel and platinum-group elements. Such critical minerals are vital for various green energy technologies like electric vehicle batteries, battery storage facilities, solar panels and wind turbines, which the Biden administration has aggressively pushed.

It might take a Republican president to make this happen. Again, I’m not against EVs, solar panels, wind turbines, etc, I’m against citizens being forced into them along with replacing affordable, dependable “dirty” energy with unreliable, expensive “green” energy.

The State Department recently signed an agreement that opens the door to financing mining projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which mined more than 70% of the global supply of cobalt in 2021 and is home to 3.5 million metric tons of cobalt reserves. But independent investigations conducted in recent years have found that cobalt mines in the DRC employ child laborers.

The Biden admin’s cool with environmental damage (and child labor, some of it forced) in 3rd world shitholes like DRC.

“It’s difficult to square the announcement of this significant land withdrawal with the Biden administration’s stated goals on electrification, the energy transition and supply chain security,” said National Mining Association President and CEO Rich Nolan in a statement. “At a time when demand for minerals such as copper, nickel and cobalt are skyrocketing for use in electric vehicles and solar and wind infrastructure, the administration is withdrawing hundreds of thousands of acres of land that could provide U.S. manufacturers with plentiful sources of these same minerals.”

Yeah, well, I told you this would happen. Not that it was all that difficult to predict.

Read: Brandon Admin Blocks Another Mine Necessary To Make EVs And Green Energy Projects »

U.S. Intel Chief Gives Pessimistic View Of Ukraine War

She probably got a good talking to from the White House after this

U.S. intel chief warns of ‘devastating’ impact of Russian missile attacks

Joe Biden Ice Cream AfghanistanPresident Biden’s chief intelligence adviser raised fresh concerns Thursday night that Russian missile attacks are having a “devastating” impact on the Ukrainian economy, noting that the war has already reduced the country’s gross domestic product by nearly one-third.

Wait, if the war is as damaging as we’ve been told, how is their GDP only down one-third? Why does the U.S. taxpayer need to be dumping tens of billions every couple months into Ukraine?

Speaking during a question-and-answer session at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said U.S. officials so far “do not see any reduction in the resolve of the Ukrainians to fight this war.”

But at the same time, Haines seemed to offer a more sobering view of the conflict than most Biden administration officials have shared to date. She said the “brutal” missile attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure are taking a far bigger toll than has been publicly understood.

Haines touted the administration’s declassification of intelligence last year that revealed Russia’s intentions to invade Ukraine during a period when European allies were skeptical that President Vladimir Putin would actually go through with it. And she said the U.S. has continued to provide important tactical battlefield intelligence to the Ukrainian military.

Well, with Trump in the White House Putin wasn’t making moves. Biden comes in and shows his weakness, especially with his disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, and Putin is emboldened.

But she also described the war as having devolved into a “grinding conflict” where the movements are in “hundreds of meters.” The frontlines, she noted, have mostly remained “relatively static” even while the Russians press an offensive in the eastern Donbas region in which they have made “very incremental progress.”

So, essentially, the Biden position that Ukraine is slowly winning is a load of mule fritters. It looks like Putin is trying to grind it out and not destroy everything in the country they’re looking to take over. Putin knows that the West will only back Ukraine for so long before the citizens tire of funding this.

Read: U.S. Intel Chief Gives Pessimistic View Of Ukraine War »

Pirate's Cove