The False Promises of Environmentalism ... "With or Without Us"

"Mayor Pete" Buttyjudge (born 1982): "Look, I come from South Bend, Indiana. That's the home of UAW Local 5 and UAW Local 9. And I saw how the past generation of union auto jobs helped build the middle class and helped build communities like the one that I grew up in. And I also saw what happened when those factories closed. What the UAW is trying to do, right now, is to make sure that this next chapter of the auto industry .. which, let's be very clear, these cars are going electric with or without us."

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Troy Hailey / Ilíon (born 1957): I *also* am from South Bend, Indiana. And I have seen 25 years more of history than Pete Buttigieg has; moreover, I didn't start "at the top", as Pete Buttigieg did, but from very near the bottom. I have *seen* what he and his ilk have done to South Bend, and to America.

According to some stats I found, South Bend's population peaked in 1960, at 132,445, and was 103,353 as of 2021 -- keeping in mind that the city, like most US cities, has been chasing tax-payers -- madly annexing as much land as possible -- since the 1960s "urban renewal" craze.

In case Gentle Reader is unaware, South Bend, Indiana, is where these wonderful Studebaker cars used to spawn until the mid-1960s. I *recall* the devastation to the city when Studebaker closed its plants in South Bend in 1963 -- laid off vast swaths of its workforce -- relocating the corporation to Canada, and then totally ceased production in 1966. I *recall* driving past miles of the corpses of empty, shuttered factories well past 1980.

And I *recall* that it was the UAW honchos, in conspiracy with New Deal hold-outs deep within the bowls of the federal bureaucracy, carrying out FDR's New Deal socialist objective to consolidate all auto manufacturing into Detroit, who put Studebaker out of business.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that the US is nowhere near to generating enough electricity to charge the batteries of over 290 million battery-powered vehicles.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that even if the US were anywhere near to generating enough electricity to charge the batteries of over 290 million battery-powered vehicles, the power-grid could not sustain such a load.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that a road trip of more than about 200 miles is out of the question with a battery-powered vehicle.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that getting snow-bound in a battery-powered vehicle will likely leave you dead.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that "renewable energy" schemes are nothing more than vehicles to hoover money from your pocket and into the pockets of rich politically-connected persons.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that "green energy" cannot meet our current energy needs, much less adding the charging of the batteries of over 290 million battery-powered vehicles.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that there are only two options to *meaningfully* increase electrical production in the US: build more a lot more coal-fueled and/or natural gas-fueled power plants OR build a few nuclear power plants.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that the Democrats and other leftists and their "environmentalist" friends adamantly oppose both options, and that they *especially* oppose and demonize the only option which has the capacity to reduce their Great Boogey-Man of "carbon emissions".

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that the strip-mining that would be necessary to mine enough "rare earths" to build the batteries of over 290 million battery-powered vehicles would make the toxic environments of the late USSR or of today's Communist China look like a pleasant suburban park.

-- If you have been at all paying attention, you *know* that *nothing* the Democrats and their leftist puppet-masters advocate is ever aimed at the good of you or of your nation, but *always* has the goal of enslaving you in socialism, with them as your owners.

EDIT: Amusing to me, the Studebaker corporation started out as a buggy-whip manufacturer in Mansfield, Ohio, where I have lived since 1982.

@28:10 Pete Buttigieg asserting that we *must* accept being forced into battery-operated cars -- https://youtu.be/l-skV89tmFQ?t=1689

This, Too, is Socialized Medicine

 Do listen to Neil Oliver discussing what few facts are publicly known about the British NHS "doctors" forcing a British girl to "accept" death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goQD0HE9UfY

EDIT --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x6-VC-WJA0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuX6cXJg3p8

How can people see this sort of casual and contemptuous evil and then accuse God of being an immoral monster for "sending people to Hell" (as people incorrectly phrase it)?

EDIT (2023/11/10) --

Michael Knowles discussing a current case of the British NHS and courts refusing to allow a sick child to leave Britain for live-saving medical treatment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z98SKhS6kso

This is Socialized Medicine

 Headline: Ontario woman asked to donate husband’s organs after he was denied transplant for being unvaccinated 

35-year-old Garnet Harper died after hospitals refused to perform a life-saving kidney transplant on him because he did not take the experimental COVID-19 shots.

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Monday, July 31, 2023 --

SUDBURY, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) — Canadian health officials asked an Ontario woman to donate organs of her husband who died after being denied an organ transplant because he did not receive the COVID-19 shots.

In May, Trillium Gift of Life Network (TGLN), the Ontario organ donation agency, called Meghan Harper to harvest her husband Garnet’s organs as he lay dying because the hospital refused to provide organ transplants to unvaccinated Canadians.  

“They call you while you’re sitting next to your dying loved one and they ask you if they can have his organs,” Megan told independent journalist Monique Leal. 

Healthcare professionals contact TGLN if they believe a dying patient would be a suitable donation candidate. As Garnet spent his last moments on earth, Meghan was advised by nurses to expect a call from TGLN.   

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So, the very "healthcare professionals" who would not provide this man the vital organ transplant (*) necessary to keep him alive *also* volunteered his name as a potential "donor" to the ghouls who run the chop-shops which strip-mine sometimes-still-living "corpses" of their vital organs.

(*) My views on the morality of vital organ transplants are given in older posts.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ontario-woman-asked-to-donate-husbands-organs-after-he-was-denied-transplant-for-being-unvaccinated/

The Nexus of Language and Politics -- 'Gender'

I'm posting this mostly as an example of most people's proud ignorance and dedication to sticking with a lie by which they were hoodwinked even in the face of proof that it is a lie.  As the saying attributed to Mark Twain has it: "It is easier to fool a man than it is to convince him that he has been fooled."

If you were to Google "first use of gender to mean sex", at the very top of the page, it says --
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In 1955, the controversial and innovative sexologist John Money first used the term “gender” in a way that we all now take for granted: to describe a human characteristic. ...
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And, despite that, almost everyone will assert that the word 'gender' means 'sex' and has always meant 'sex' and some of them even assert that 'gender' has a centuries-old history of meaning 'sex'.

Now, if you want to know *why* people think that 'gender' means 'sex', even though before 1955 'gender' was strictly a term of linguistics (and the word had almost no relevance to the English language), it goes like this --

By the 1950s at the latest, people had started to mis-use the word 'sex' as a euphemism for a certain foul four-letter word. Thus, it became embarrassing to say 'sex' in polite company.

By the way, the "prudish" Victorians were not at all embarrassed to say 'sex' in polite company ... because they were not mis-using it as a euphemism for that certain word, of which they were as well aware as you and I.

I doubt that the Victorians would easily have understood the joke --
Nurse: Sex?
Patient: Yes, please!

After 1955, the MSM -- which has been leftist, and full of sexual perverts, for a very long time -- began to popularize the newly coined 'gender' as a replacement for 'sex'. Before 1963 (I know that because I have a dictionary printed in that year), 'gender' was commonly being used in place of 'sex'.

But, 'gender' does not mean 'sex', and 'sex' does not mean '****'.

'Gender' is a word invented by a sexually perverted leftist as a means to create confusion in society about sex and human sexuality. That it has taken nearly 65 years for the plan to unfold to the current stage does not change the truth of the matter.

If you wish to be free of leftism, then free your mind of leftist language and of leftist lies.

EDIT (2024/02/05):

Oddly enough, once people started using 'gender' in place of 'sex', because they were using 'sex' in place of '****', they started using '****' as an intensifier in every ****ing sentence.

Getting the Message

 A man is telling a friend about his day.

My daughter came home from college today and said 'Dad, cancel my allowance immediately, spend my college fund, change my bedroom into that gym you've always wanted, burn all of my clothes, take my TV, my laptop and all of my jewelry. Sell my car, change the locks to the front door and throw me out. Then visit your lawyer to remove me from your will and find a way to legally disown me."

The friend says; "Wow, she really said that to you?"

The man replies; "Well, her exact words were 'Dad, I've decided to change my major and get a gender studies degree'. But, I got the message."

An 'Epidemic' of 'Gun Violence'

 Concerning the Democratic Party's perennial excuse to disarm law-abiding citizens --

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Quoting from the link below:

“The worst 1% of counties (the worst 31 counties) have 21% of the population and 42% of the murders. The worst 2% of counties (62 counties) contain 31% of the population and 56% of the murders. The worst 5% of counties contain 47% of the population and account for 73% of murders. But even within those counties, the murders are very heavily concentrated in small areas,” he [John Lott] wrote of the 2020 numbers.

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Those "worst counties" are almost invariably counties with large cities which are populated by Democratic Party voters and run by Democratic Party bureaucrats and politicians, and frequently with draconian "gun control" laws.

If it were not for just a handful of Democratic-run cities. the US would have one of the lowest "Gun Violence" rates in the world ... despite being far and away the most heavily armed society history has ever known.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/murders-up-in-urban-areas-not-gun-friendly-counties

Usury and The One True Bureaucracy

@17:46 in the video linked below: M.Knowles has mis-stated what usury is -- apparently the mis-statement is intentional.

@18:17 in the video linked below: T.Aquinas (in the quote) is outright wrong about what what lending money at interest is.

@18:55 in the video linked below: M.Knowles: "So that's [Aquinas' argument] a little bit confusing ..."

Aquinas' argument against lending money at interest is "a little bit confusing" because Aquinas is tying himself into a logical pretzel to attempt to defend and justify a specific immoral and self-serving practice of The One True Bureaucracy of his day.

To lend money at interest is not "to sell what does not exist", it is to sell the use of that money for a specific time and at a specific cost. The use of money certainly does exist, and it exists apart from the money itself. The use of a sum of money is a wholly different thing from the use of a measure of wine or wheat -- the using of a measure of wine or wheat *just is* the consumption of it; but the use of a sum of money does not consume nor destroy the money.

There is a world of difference between the judicious lending of money at interest for some specific and defined purpose with a reasonable expectation of success and the modern orgy of debt-fueled consumerism.

Also, the real reason that The One True Bureaucracy created canon law outlawing "usury" was so that wealthy organs of that same One True Bureaucracy could further enrich themselves by usurious lending practices which would make a mafia don blush, all the while pretending that it wasn't usury.

This is how the "It's Not Really Usury" scam worked -- Petty Aristocrat A believes it will benefit his soul to go on Crusade. He doesn't have enough money to outfit himself and his retainers as needs be. He goes to The One True Bureaucracy (Division: Wealthy Organ B) to borrow the necessary monies. Wealthy Organ B lends him the money -- on condition of a mortgage (i.e. "death-grip") on his estate; that is, all income from the estate is to be turned over to Wealthy Organ B until the debt is repaid by income derived by other means, and if the debt is not repaid in some time period, the estate is forfeit to Wealthy Organ B.

I leave to Gentle Reader's imagination the contemplation of the fate of the widow and children of Petty Aristocrat A should he die of any cause while on Crusade.

Now, while actual usury is indeed bad and is indeed sinful and should indeed be prohibited by law, The One True Bureaucracy are not the people to be defining "usury" for anyone.

In the OT Law, God does not forbid the lending of money, and (contrary to the doctrines of The One True Bureaucracy) he does not forbid the lending of money at interest. What God does forbid is the enslavement of one's fellow Israelites (which, in Christianity, is universalized to all human beings) by means of debt. In almost every instance in the OT which is translated as a prohibition on 'usury', that prohibition is linked with the rationale for the prohibition -- that you not enslave you fellow Israelite by means of the debt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fgd8jBo1Sg

"I was looking back to see ..."

Recently, I was reminded of a ditty my father sometimes half-sang when I was a young child, by which I mean as far back as can remember. I especially recall always being amused both by the structure of the lyrics and by the story they told.  

This is how I recall it (which is not exactly as the Internet has the lyrics) --

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[Oh] I was looking back to see if [she was] looking back to see

If I was looking back to see if [she was] looking back at me;

[She was] cute as [she] could be [there] looking back at me
And it was [very] plain to see that I'd enjoy [her] company.

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I had always assumed, I guess, that this was a ditty from his youth, perhaps in the manner of a folk song.  It never occurred to me that it might have been a commercially recorded song.  Recall, I was a child ... and anything Daddy did was amazing and unique.

Anyway, I googled the first line.  As best I could at first make out from the results, it was recorded by Buck Owens in 1972.  What!  I turned 15 in 1972, and I recalled it from much earlier in my life than that, nor would the lyrics have seemed so witty if first encountered at that age.

But, then, I happened to click a link which implied that it was recorded at least as early as 1954. Another site said it was *popularized* by Buck Owens in 1955. That makes more sense in the "story of my life".  My father was single and about 27 in 1954, 28 in 1955.

EDIT: When my father would sing his little ditties. he'd "keep time" by lightly clapping. He had terrible timing.