Top 3 For The Chop

Here’s the background to the question below:

Argentina just elected a new president, Javier Milei, and his first act upon being sworn in? He signed an executive order reducing their government departments from 21 down to NINE.

As Twitchy points out, we have only(!) fifteen FedGov departments (but innumerable sub-departments).

My question to my Readers:

You can eliminate three Cabinet-level federal government departments (to start off with) and all their sub-departments.  Which three would you eliminate first?

Mine:  Environment (an agency, not a department in the strictest sense of the word), Education (in toto) and Homeland Security (all their sub-departments to be reallocated to their original departments, e.g. Secret Service to Justice, Coast Guard to Defense, etc.).


I don’t know how it works in Argentina, but here in Murka, federal government departments exist at Cabinet level at the President’s pleasure — Richard Nixon, for instance, elevated the EPA’s chairman to Cabinet level by executive order — but departments can only truly be eliminated by Congress defunding them.  Nevertheless, play the game.

Point Of Principle

I see that the medical scaremongers and charlatans are now mumbling (soon to be shouting, no doubt) about how the latest ‘n greatest Covid variant is going to kill us all unless we do all that shit that didn’t work the last time.

I might as well get it off my chest now:

  • I will not wear a face mask, because they’ve been proven ineffective and hamper my breathing
  • I will not patronize any business (or government office) that mandates the use thereof
  • I will likewise not curtail my social or commercial activities under terms of any government-mandated lockdown
  • I will not get yet another vaccination of some unproven (and apparently also ineffective) drug against this new Covid, nor any other Covid strain for that matter
  • any attempt to coerce me into doing any of the above will meet with a hostile, perhaps (depending on the circumstances) even violent response from me.

Others may join me in this, or not — it is a matter of complete indifference to me, as this is a purely personal position.

Corollary: 

We know what you’re trying to do, and it’s not going to work.

Simplicity

This is not one of those rants that “the world’s getting too damn complicated” (although it is, in my opinion).  However, allow me to draw your attention to a couple of videos that illustrate my point, which is that simplicity does not mean “shoddy” or “primitive”, or anything like that.

Here’s the first video, about the wonderful Vespa scooter/moped and the men who created it.

Towards the end of the video, the narrator draws the very apt comparison between the Vespa and the Mini, which Jay Leno lovingly describes, in his inimitable manner.

And is there place in the modern world for simplicity, as Richard Hammond describes by the experience of driving the Mazda MX-5 Miata*?  Of course there is.


*Why, I wonder parenthetically, did Mazda go with such a long mouthful of a name for so simple a car?  “Miata” would have been fine;  “MX-5” likewise, even if less evocative, so why concatenate all those descriptive terms into a string that only boring motoring journos will use anyway?


Note too that I’m talking of simplicity of use, i.e. as experienced by the end user.  A bolt-action rifle is far simpler a piece of engineering than its semi- or full-auto counterpart, but even I — a die-hard boltie fan — will admit that an M1 Carbine is far easier to use than a Mauser K98k:  load it up, pull back the bolt, and it’s trigger time, compared to load, work bolt, pull trigger, work bolt, pull trigger etc.

Or, to wrench this thesis back on topic, it is undeniably simpler to drive a car with an automatic transmission than one which requires rowing through a manual gearbox, as long as one prefers steering over actual driving.  And if one is doing the daily morning commute to the office in stop-start traffic then yes, it’s a lot easier with an automatic.

Inside each of us, though, is a fundamental need not to have to tax our intellect or bodies to perform mundane tasks, although I think that choosing complexity over simplicity is a fundamental and personal matter of wanting to be in control of mechanical devices.  Nobody would be buying bolt-action rifles or cars with stick shifts otherwise, given the facility of the alternative.

Paradoxically too, as the world becomes more complicated and more complex, there is a persistent urge amongst people to “simplify” their lives, to cut back on both material possession and activities.  I think that’s a good thing, especially as one gets older.  When parents become empty-nesters, the hassle of maintaining a large house often turns into a desire to move to something more fitting [sic]  to the altered circumstances — not just for cost reasons, but once again, for a life of fewer complications.

Nothing wrong with that.  I’d never contemplate buying a Vespa, of course, because I don’t live in a built-up urban area and I don’t have a death wish.  And I already possess a little Fiat 500 with a stick shift, so if push came to shove I’d be perfectly happy to use that as my only means of transport (I “borrow” it from New Wife every chance I get).

But I’d still rather shoot a bolt-action rifle than a semi-auto (other than in times of errr urban unrest, when the old AK or SKS would obviously be preferable), and I’ve already expressed my preference for revolvers over pistols, recreationally speaking.

Just a simple soul, that’s me — but it’s a simplicity by choice rather than by governmental edict.

I told you all that so I could tell you this.

Allow me to introduce yet another rancid bitch (in the Hillary Clinton mold) who wants to tell us how to live our lives.

President Joe Biden’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Friday unveiled new fuel efficiency standards, which acting administrator Ann Carlson said will “reduce harmful emissions.” Carlson has long stressed the need to force Americans to live climate-friendly lives. As an environmental academic at UCLA, for example, Carlson published a 2007 piece titled, “Only by Requiring Lifestyle Changes,” which argued that people would not reduce their energy consumption “voluntarily.” As a result, Carlson wrote, the U.S. government must “induce behavioral change” by implementing policies that “make the bad behavior more expensive.”

In a similar 2009 blog post titled, “Save Us From Ourselves,” Carlson called on Americans to “use less electricity, take more public transportation, consume less, live more simply and so on” to fight climate change. Carlson argued that most people “could benefit from a simpler life” but will not “engage in dramatic behavioral change unless forced,” highlighting the need for government intervention. “Governments and markets need to take steps to make us pay for the full costs of the behaviors in which we engage … they need to limit our infrastructure choices to energy efficient ones,” the Biden administration official wrote. “In other words, we need to be saved from ourselves.”

My immediate thought is to have this foul watermelon bitch dragged from her “temporary” office and hanged from the nearest lamp post, but of course that’s never going to happen.

Alternatively, Congress could reduce the NHTSA’s budget by fining the agency per day the equivalent of her annual salary as long as she remains as the “caretaker” administrator — although that’s about as likely to happen as my first suggestion.

What, I ask, is the point of not confirming someone for a position when they can simply act as a “temporary” head of an agency and de facto determine policy and regulation in the absence of de jure?  Or did I miss something here?

Anyway, I’m so sick of all this “coercion” talk emanating from the mouthpieces of our beloved government.  Forced to wear masks, forced to stop using gasoline-powered engines, forced to quit using incandescent light bulbs, and forced to submit to any number of horrible and senseless rules and regulations that would make Gulliver in Lilliput look like a free man by comparison.

Most of all, I’m really fucking sick of being forced to pay taxes which fund the salaries of all these petty gauleiters.

All appearances to the contrary, I’m actually a very patient and tolerant man, but I have to tell you that my patience and tolerance are wearing very, very thin.

And I bet I’m not the only one.

Oh Dear

We’re always being told how bad Eeeevil Oil is for us, for the environment and of course for the pore likkel beasties in the fields.

First off, we have to stop using oil-powered vehicles and start using Duracell-powered cars and trucks (lol) instead.  Except that it turns out that electric cars are worse for the environment than gasoline-powered ones (see here for the !SCIENCE!).

So if Teslas and Priuses are doubleplusungood after all, then we need to start using “sustainable” eco-fuels like corn-based ethanol because sustainable.  (Even Formula 1 is moving towards using ethanol-only fuel in the next couple of years, the idiots.)

Sounds good, right?  Errrr, nazzo fast, Guido.  Add this little snippet to the “Solution Is Worse Than The Problem” category:

The US biofuel program is probably killing endangered species and harming the environment in a way that negates its benefits, but the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is largely ignoring those problems, a new federal lawsuit charges.

The suit alleges the EPA failed to consider impacts on endangered species, as is required by law, when it set new rules that will expand biofuel use nationwide during the next three years, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director with the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which brought the litigation.

Not that we need any further proof that the EPA is to the environment as cancer cells are to the human body, but I digress.

The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to set minimum levels of biofuel usage for the transportation sector. The new rule approved by the agency calls for about 15bn gallons (57bn liters) of conventional corn ethanol for each of the next three years, plus an increase from 5.9bn gallons to 7.3bn gallons of advanced biofuels during the same time period. 

About 40% of all corn grown in the US is used for ethanol production, and nearly half is used as animal feed.

While the fuels are designed to decarbonize the transportation sector, their production eliminates wetlands and prairie land that act as carbon sinks, Hartl noted. The EPA in 2018 estimated that up to 7m acres (2.8m hectares) of land had been converted to grow corn for ethanol fuel. 

Ethanol production also pollutes water. Regulations around pesticides and fertilizers used in corn grown for ethanol fuel are much looser, which means much higher levels of dangerous chemicals run into surface and groundwaters. The pollution probably plays a significant role in dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico after pesticides flow down the Mississippi River, Hartl said. 

Read the rest to see how the EPA is ducking and diving to avoid doing anything that might actually, you know, alleviate the problem.

One by one, every single alternative proposed by the Greens (and their lickspittles in academia and the media) is proving to be a complete fiasco:  wind- and solar power generation instead of nuclear, electric vehicles (EV) instead of internal combustion engines, and now biofuels instead of gasoline.

But Oh No! we have to preserve the Gaia Cult — even if it kills us (and Gaia).

Fucking bastards.

This, I Love

It’s not often I chortle just be reading a headline, but this one got me, oh yes it did:

And here’s the story:

Highway chiefs are hunting a phantom pothole filler after an enraged motorist poured concrete into a huge crater that closed the road for months. The work was carried out in Lostwithiel, Cornwall, as the mystery volunteer decided to patch up the road which has been shut since April.

But Cornwall Highways said the work was done ‘without consent’.

Colin Martin, Cornwall councillor for Lostwithiel and Lanreath, said: ‘The latest is that the road has been closed again and will remain closed until it is ‘properly’ repaired by Cormac, but they say this could be weeks away as all available teams have been diverted to filling smaller potholes on roads which are still open.

Here’s the pic of the vengeful road re-closing:

I’m just waiting for the metal screens to “disappear”… not that I would want anything like that to happen, of course.

I love it when officialdom gets a busted nose for their inefficiency.  And I love it more when they get upset about it.

Here’s the background to all this:

So now you know.

Ending Stupidity

and about time, too:

It appears the Biden Administration has ceded to increasing calls for an onerous COVID vaccine mandate to end for international air travelers, along with federal workers and contractors.

Stuff doesn’t seem to have worked, caused possibly thousands of unnecessary deaths all by itself, and was the basis for so much governmental overreach and, in some cases, outright thuggery.

Good riddance, and don’t bother doing it again, no matter how scary the poxes and plagues look.  We’re not going to be panicked, or bullied, next time.