Elon Musk Is Latest To Realize The Democrats Are They Party Of Insanity

What’s the old saying about a Conservative being a liberal who got smacked by liberal policies?

Elon Musk is just the latest American to realize how badly Democratic policies are faring

Sky-high inflation, surging gas prices and constant chaos from the Biden administration seem to have disillusioned some everyday Democrats.

Let’s call it the summer of their discontent: Are the optics of progressive policies just bad or are people finally seeing the fatal flaws in liberal ideas? I’d argue both.

Elon Musk announced last week on Twitter that he was no longer a Democrat.

“In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party,” the billionaire wrote. “But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican…”

Musk could be a classic case of a liberal mugged by reality, or it could be a publicity stunt. But given his penchant for free speech and the free market, he might be finally realizing he’s actually more of a classical liberal, a political ideology that advocates for the free market, intact civil liberties, limited government, and economic and political freedom.

You don’t hear that term very often, except typically from those with political science degrees or have really studied. Most of the MAGA are really classical liberals, what is best described as Lockian theory from John Locke. Pretty much “the government that governs least governs best.” If it doesn’t hurt you why do you care, and certainly not care to have the government Do Something. It’s right smack in the middle of the political spectrum.

It’s about time Musk realized that while the average Tesla owner is a fifty-something, childless resident of California, the progressive ideas that have entrenched the Golden State aren’t actually good for the economy — or America overall. Freedom is America’s most important idea to protect and exhibit. While Republicans don’t do it perfectly, they at least embrace that principle first.

True that.

These feuds demonstrate that while liberal ideas look good on paper, they hurt average Americans, economically and socially. At the same time, conservative ideas look great on paper, but they can be hard to implement, especially when competing with huge spending.

Real ones aren’t. It’s basically “government, leave us alone.” Have you ever seen the episode of Futurama when Bender is floating in space and talks to God/The Universe/whomever? The part about taking a light touch, like a safe cracker

That’s what government should do. A light touch.

In the end, whether your hope was in the Biden administration, now wilting as quickly as your potted plant on the porch in the Texas summer heat, or you really liked Crenshaw and now think he might be a fake Republican, remember: Politics can’t be your religion and people, especially politicians, can’t be your gods.

No, they shouldn’t. They shouldn’t be celebrities, “rock stars”, etc. They should be public servants.

Read: Elon Musk Is Latest To Realize The Democrats Are They Party Of Insanity »

Biden Seems Happy With High Energy Prices

Of course he does. It’d be easy to argue that the cost of energy spikes, especially fuel, are just from irresponsible and lazy policies. Most likely, it is intentional

Of course, he’s not worried about it, as you the taxpayer pick up the tab for his constant fossil fueled travel

(NY Post) Out of touch as ever, President Biden celebrated record-high gas prices Monday, gushing that the pump pain was part of “an incredible transition” of the US economy away from fossil fuels.

“[When] it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over,” Biden said during a press conference in Japan following his meeting with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

The president then insisted that his administration’s actions, rather than increasing the price of gas, had actually been able to “keep it from getting worse — and it’s bad.”

So, of course, Let’s Go Brandon’s supporters are going to come out with pieces in support

Is the spike in gas prices good for America?

The average price of gasoline at the pump in the U.S. last week was $4.58 a gallon. It will doubtless spike up to $5.00 before too long as it is already above $6 in California.

U.S. gas prices are cheap compared to Europe. If you fancy traveling to London for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the price is $5.79; if you love Paris in the springtime, it’s $5.54; and if you want to see the pope, Rome is $5.96. Some countries you might like to visit are even higher. (snip)

There is a political problem with high gas prices. They are a hardship on working Americans as prices rise overall in an inflated economy. Gasoline costs may amount to $5,000 a year for a heavily taxed family.

But in the long run, an inflated price for gasoline is, I would argue, good for the environment. It may encourage people to take carpools to work, to bicycle and walk more. This will improve health and welfare.

The price spike may further spur the development of battery-driven cars. Both Ford and General Motors have said they will be manufacturing all-electric fleets by 2030. I never thought I would live to see the day.

So, it’s part of the plan to force Americans into unaffordable EVs? They’re intentionally skyrocketing fuel costs, which increase the costs of everything? Food, goods, you name it?

Diesel Fuel Costs Soaring — Up 75% from Last Year

The cost of diesel fuel — used by farmers and truckers to supply Americans with the products they need — has increased 75 percent over the past year.

The national average for diesel fuel is $5.61 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association’s (AAA) May 16 report.

Do you know what gets delivered by diesel trucks? Food. If truckers/companies are paying more for fuel, they pass that on. Team Biden is intentionally causing pain to Americans.

Read: Biden Seems Happy With High Energy Prices »

Rep. Gohmert Wants Congress To Strip All The Extra Stuff From Anti-China Bill

This is the bill that Pelosi might possibly push by July 4th, which, really, is not meant to pass. It’s meant to force the GOP to vote against it, so the Democrats can use it as a cudgel to bash the GOP as not wanting to help the U.S.A.

Exclusive: Louie Gohmert, Conservatives Urge Congress to Strip Amnesty, Wokeness, Climate from Weak Anti-China Bill

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and other conservatives urged Republican and Democrat leadership on Monday to strip provisions from an anti-China bill that would grant amnesty, promote woke values, and boost climate change regulations, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.

Reps. Gohmert, Greg Steube (R-FL), Doug LaMalfa (R-CA), and Doug Lamborn (R-CO) sent the letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), as the House and Senate are in conference hashing out the differences between the House-passed America COMPETES Act and the Senate-passed United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) Act.

The two bills, which were supported by many Republicans and Democrats, are aimed at increasing American competitiveness with China, especially in the areas of high-tech manufacturing, such as semiconductors, and artificial intelligence (AI). However, conservatives have derided the bill as a threat to national security and believe it would, ironically, “harm innovation.”

Congress seems virtually unable to simply put a targeted bill on the table, especially when it’s the Democrats in charge. Why do we need

  1. Any additional funding to the United Nations (UN)
  2. Any immigration provision that provides amnesty, allows for refugee resettlement, or otherwise increases the number of green cards for foreigners in the United States
  3. Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity (SOGI) language
  4. Language that would advance climate change goals
  5. Provisions without proper oversight

in it? These are unrelated. They’re wishlist material, that, if the Dems really want them, put them in a standalone bill. Democrats do not want it to pass. It’s a tool for the mid-terms, a way to demonize the GOP (without mentioning that the Democrats have been sitting on this for a while, and the time for the chips legislation was back in late 2020/early 2021) and deflect from the horrible record of Biden and the Dems.

Read: Rep. Gohmert Wants Congress To Strip All The Extra Stuff From Anti-China Bill »

If All You See…

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

The blog of the day is Victory Girls Blog, with a post on Belarus getting nuclear weapons from Putin.

Read: If All You See… »

HSBC Exec Suspended For Telling The Truth On Climate Crisis (scam)

Well, I’d love to go with the Wall Street Journal piece

A Financier Tells Some Climate-Change Truths
And for doing so, Stuart Kirk was suspended by HSBC.

HSBC executive Stuart Kirk gave a presentation at an investor conference last week, taking banking regulators to task for overbaking the financial risk of climate change. What was he thinking? As punishment for his heresy, the British bank has sent him to re-education camp.

But, the rest is behind a paywall. So

(NY Post) British banking giant HSBC has suspended a top executive who argued during a recent public presentation that the financial risks of climate change were overblown and exaggerated by central bank officials and other policymakers.

The suspended employee, Stuart Kirk, is global head of responsible investment at HSBC’s asset management division. He made the remarks during a presentation titled, “Why investors need not worry about climate risk.”

Kirk stated his view that warnings about climate change have “become so hyberbolic that no one really knows how to get anyone’s attention at all.”

“I wouldn’t normally mind that. Twenty-five years in the finance industry, there’s always some nutjob telling me about the end of the world,” Kirk said. “I’ve dealt with gold bugs my entire financial career, the roof’s going to cave down, Y2K. Does anyone remember Y2K, anyone old enough? The lifts didn’t stop.” (snip)

But sources familiar with the presentation’s planning told the outlet that its “theme and content” were “agreed internally” before the event took place.

It’s dangerous to tell the truth these days, if it goes against the Approved Doctrine.

Kirk had acknowledged that his stance that climate chance was not an existential financial risk would be taken as “heresy” among policymakers.

His speech began with a slide declaring that “unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are ALWAYS wrong.” The slide included commentary from the Bank of England, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and others who have warned that climate change poses a major risk to global economies.

Heresy!

Read: HSBC Exec Suspended For Telling The Truth On Climate Crisis (scam) »

Guy Who Worked His Butt Off To Divide Americans Worried He Can’t Bring Us Together

Pretty much everything Let’s Go Brandon has done has divide Americans. Quick, think of something he’s done to bring us together. No?

NYT’s Friedman: Biden worried he can’t ‘reunite America’

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote on Monday that he walked away from a recent lunch meeting at the White House with the sense that President Biden fears he will not be able to unite the country, one of his signature promises from his presidential campaign.

After clarifying the meeting with Biden, which took place last Monday, was “off the record,” Friedman said he “left our lunch with a full stomach but a heavy heart.”

“Biden didn’t say it in so many words, but he didn’t have to. I could hear it between the lines: He’s worried that while he has reunited the West, he may not be able to reunite America,” Friedman wrote.

Reunited the West? By what, pushing Putin to invade Ukraine with his horrible Afghanistan withdrawal, pandering to Iran, showing weakness, and triple dog daring Putin, which got EU nations to pull together?

“It’s clearly his priority, above any Build Back Better provision. And he knows that’s why he was elected — a majority of Americans worried that the country was coming apart at the seams and that this old war horse called Biden, with his bipartisan instincts, was the best person to knit us back together,” Friedman wrote.

His priority? What has he done to achieve it? One of my priorities is to lose some weight. Sure, I get to the gym 4-5 times a week, but, just not getting below 190 (would like to get to 170). But, at least I think about it. Biden doesn’t do anything.

Public polling shows a growing number of Americans are losing faith in major institutions like government, media and elections. Biden’s poll numbers and approval ratings have meanwhile sank to record lows in recent months, as his administration works to beat back ongoing waves of the coronavirus pandemic, record rates of inflation hurting the economy and a bloody conflict in Ukraine raising concerns about global war.

Almost no legislation he pushes or policy he advocates is anything other than far left. He won’t change. He won’t try and be bipartisan.

Read: Guy Who Worked His Butt Off To Divide Americans Worried He Can’t Bring Us Together »

Your Fault: Hotcoldwetdry Will Mess Up Your Sleep

Despite how this is being positioned, the study is apparently saying this will happen In The Future, hence, you need to give up your freedom and money to Government to solve this

Climate change is leading to loss of sleep worldwide: study

Rising temperatures driven by climate change are negatively impacting human sleep patterns around the globe, a new study has found.

If temperatures continue to surge, the effects could slash between 50 and 58 hours of sleep per person each year by the end of the century, according to the study, published on Friday in One Earth. The impacts will be substantially larger for residents of lower-income countries, as well as older adults and women, the authors determined.

“Our results indicate that sleep — an essential restorative process integral for human health and productivity — may be degraded by warmer temperatures,” first author Kelton Minor, of the University of Copenhagen, said in a statement.

“In order to make informed climate policy decisions moving forward, we need to better account for the full spectrum of plausible future climate impacts extending from today’s societal greenhouse gas emissions choices,” Minor added.

Can we call this advocacy science?

To conduct their study, the researchers used anonymized global data collected from sleep-tracking wristbands.

The data included 7 million nightly sleep records from more than 47,000 adults across 68 countries — on all continents aside from Antarctica, according to the study. Measures from these types of wristbands, the authors explained, had previously been shown to align with other independent measures of wakefulness and sleep.

On very warm nights — those with temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius, or 86 degrees Fahrenheit — sleep amounts dropped an average of more than 14 minutes, the researchers observed. They also found that the likelihood of getting less than seven hours of sleep rises alongside temperature increases.

Turn on the AC. Where is it averaging 86F at night, even in summer? Oh, sure, there are some in the more extreme places that get close, like Phoenix, which isn’t surprising, that can get close during the heart of the summer. Probably some African countries, maybe out in the middle of the Australian desert. There aren’t many places where it will stay above 86 at night normally. You might get a heat wave, which has always happened on Earth. But, see, the facts do not matter, the Climanarrative does

There are a lot of articles on this when you dig deeper, because the talking point went out. I had been about to do the story on the HSBC exec, maybe tomorrow. It is rather serendipitous that the bottom right talks about climate doomism.

Read: Your Fault: Hotcoldwetdry Will Mess Up Your Sleep »

If All You See…

…is the world turning to desert from too much carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is This ain’t Hell…, with a post on release the monkeypox.

Read: If All You See… »

NY Times Seems Upset So Many Republicans Believe 2020 Was Stolen

The same NY Times has still failed to cover the news that Hillary Clinton personally authorized the lies about him for the 2016 election, which led to years of investigations, a loss of trust in the FBI, losing the 2018 midterms, and a huge chunk of Democrats believing the 2016 election was stolen. The Times itself had numerous opinion pieces, and opinion pieces disguised as straight news, taking this opinion. But, now (available at Yahoo News if Times’ paywall gets you)

Trump’s Lies About 2020 Election Take Root in Statehouses

At least 357 sitting Republican legislators in closely contested battleground states have used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a review of legislative votes, records and official statements by The New York Times.

The tally accounts for 44% of the Republican legislators in the nine states where the presidential race was most narrowly decided. In each of those states, the election was conducted without any evidence of widespread fraud, leaving election officials from both parties in agreement on Joe Biden’s victory.

The Times’ analysis exposes how deeply rooted lies and misinformation about former President Donald Trump’s defeat have become in state legislatures, which play an integral role in U.S. democracy. In some, the false view that the election was stolen — either by fraud or as a result of pandemic-related changes to the process — is now widely accepted as fact among Republican lawmakers, turning statehouses into hotbeds of conspiratorial thinking and specious legal theories.

How dare they believe this! It’s not like there lots of weird events that happened on election day and for the days after. Things like stopped counting, counting in secret, blocking anyone from seeing what they were doing, that all sorts of ballots suddenly showed up, going mostly for Biden, etc and so on. That there were tons of irregularities with the drop boxes, first of which was that they were mostly not allowed by law.

These fictions about rigged elections and widespread fraud have provided the foundation for new laws that make it harder to vote and easier to insert partisanship in the vote count. In three states, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, state lawmakers successfully pushed for investigations that sowed doubt about the results and tested the boundaries of their oversight.

And yet the Times’ analysis also shows that these efforts have encountered significant resistance from key Republican figures, as well as Democrats. In most states, the lawmakers who challenged the 2020 results do not yet have the numbers, or the support of governors, secretaries of state or legislative leaders, to achieve their most audacious aims.

Does the Times remember its own role in the 2016 election aftermath, pushing the narrative that Trump stole it thanks to Putin? How about the narrative that still resides in Democrat heads that Bush stole 2000? The Times did its best to avoid the reality, that Supreme Court ruled based on Florida law. Oh, and that Bush stole 2004, via Ohio this time.

How about the decades long Democrat belief that Bush let and/or made 9/11 happen? Polls show that around 47% of Democrats believe that Bush either let 9/11 happen or made it happen. That it was an inside job. The Times didn’t do much to knock the 9/11 Trutherism down. Nor the whole narrative of their favorite Dem Stacy Abrams having the Georgia election stolen from her. Or, how about the special elections in Georgia for Senate. So, pardon me if I’m not too concerned about Republicans who see the problems with the 2020 election. And you know Democrats will caterwaul if a Republican wins the White House in 2024.

Read: NY Times Seems Upset So Many Republicans Believe 2020 Was Stolen »

There’s A Third Way To Run Economies To Solve ‘Climate Change’ Or Something

Usually, when you pin a Warmist down they’re happy to demonize capitalism and say it should be replaced, but, rarely tell you what they want to replace it with. But, there’s apparently a third way

Capitalism and Climate Change: A Centrist Pragmatism Capable of Solving the Climate Crisis

The conventional debate around the root causes and solutions to the worsening climate crisis follows a classic left-right divide. On one hand, the left-leaning camp holds that capitalism and its unregulated rise over the decades are fully responsible for the unchecked greed that got us here and that in order to save our planet, capitalism must be completely undone and replaced. On the other hand, the right-leaning camp believes that market forces alone can create the right incentives and mobilise the necessary resources to achieve rapid and deep cuts to global carbon emissions. Further along the spectrum still, a more radically conservative approach believes that we can continue business as usual and that the market will correct course as it has done in the past.

Both camps suffer from a multitude of shortcomings, including short-termism and selfish dogmatism. If we were to adopt the socialist course of action to dissolve capitalism and rebuild a new economic system from scratch focused on the climate, there wouldn’t be any time left to actually put in place measures to drastically curtail global warming. Similarly, business leaders need to recognise that government and corporations can and must work together to create the necessary incentives and markets to protect our planet from climate disaster, and acknowledge that a business-as-usual scenario risks taking us over the edge of the cliff. The stark reality is that global warming doesn’t abide by traditional political lines and any combination of mitigating factors will not fall neatly into any ideological bucket.

Government and business working together? Is that the 3rd way?

Although the worst effects of climate change will manifest themselves on civil society in the form of catastrophic habitat destruction and mass migration, the root cause of the crisis is a practical one and not ideological. We simply have to take urgent action to radically cut our carbon emissions and transition completely to a low carbon economy built on renewable sources of energy and production. This essay, therefore, calls for a more pragmatic ‘third way’ to how we tackle the climate crisis, one that rejects traditional left-right ideologies. Akin to the third way political stance that became popular in the late 1990s amongst world leaders such as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton that attempted to reconcile centre-left social policy with centre-right economic policy, today’s climate woes call for a centrist pragmatism that combines the best use cases of government intervention and the innovative might of market forces.

So, basically, massive government intervention in the market? What’s that called per Political Theory 101? Socialism. But, if you add in forcing citizens to act a certain way, we’re now over in the Authoritarian Model. Also known as Progressivism. Nice Fascism.

Even as we shift to more renewable sources of energy, new technologies might not be enough to compete with the dominance of fossil fuels. State intervention will play a crucial role in subsidising nascent new environmentally sustainable technologies that will be economically unviable at first, but at scale will make the difference in removing tens of billions of tons of emissions from the atmosphere this century. Similarly, governments around the world have been attempting to impose a carbon tax, a price that emitters will have to pay for every ton of carbon equivalent they release into the atmosphere, forcing businesses and consumers to switch to new technologies that are less carbon-intensive. These kinds of policies will be instrumental in driving large scale shifts to less carbon-intensive activities and can only be implemented by a large and effective public sector.

This third way sure looks like the Warmist’s first way. Surprise. Just repackaging the same old same old.

Read: There’s A Third Way To Run Economies To Solve ‘Climate Change’ Or Something »

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