Good Monday!
1. Totalitarianism watch. Idling one’s car for longer than three minutes, or more than one minute while adjacent to a school, is illegal in New York City. There have been anti-idling laws since 1972, but they were previously examples of the law being used to encourage conduct rather than enforce it. Now, with socialist Bill de Blasio at the city’s helm, the laws are being enforced with a vengeance.
The city is offering bounties to citizens who report their neighbors, for example. “If you witness a vehicle idling illegally, you can potentially receive a reward for your enforcement efforts through our Citizens Air Complaint Program” says a city website.
Nice.
The theory is that forcing people into not idling their car will mitigate climate change, just like forcing people to ride bicycles and to stop having children when the Left gains sufficient power and the Green New Deal is within reach. Cars idling for no reason is a pet peeve of mine, particularly when they idle in a parking space with cars waiting while the driver checks his or her messages on a cell phone. There are, however, good reasons for idling. I have idled while recharging a dead battery for example. I have idled in sub-freezing weather to keep the car warm while my wife, who had a cold, ran into a 7-11 to buy some cough medicine. The blunt boot of the law does not belong in this matter, like many matters that today’s progressives and socialists want to turn into government edicts.
Oh—the PR geniuses in de Blasio-land decided that the ideal spokesperson for the anti-idling campaign is washed up rocker Billy Idol.
2. So much for the “Legally married teacher who shows a picture of her soon-to-be -spouse that the community objects to” Principle… Stacy Bailey, a Texas art teacher, was placed on administrative leave after talking about “her future wife” in class and showing a photo of her and her then-fiancee dressed as characters from the movie “Finding Nemo.” Bailey sued, and reached a $100,000 settlement with the Mansfield Independent School District last week. The district near Fort Worth agreed to remove the eight-month leave from her record and offer mandatory training on LGBTQ issues to human resources and counseling staff in its schools.
And how could a school district be so bone-headed as to suspend a teacher under those circumstances? My third grade teacher–Where have you gone, Miss Julalian?, your students turn their lonely eyes to you, woo woo woo—told us all about her impending wedding, photos included. I guess the district thought Bailey’s plans were icky rather than romantic.
Morons. Morons teaching our children.
3. “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” Coronavirus Division. Here is the President’s rambling statement about Democrats politicizing the latest rogue virus threat:
Now the Democrats are politicizing the Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs, you say, “How’s President Trump doing?” They go, “Oh, not good, not good.” They have no clue; they don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. They can’t count their votes!
One of my people came up to me and said, “Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over. They’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.”
But you know, we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We have 15 people in this massive country, and because of the fact that we won early, we won early, we could’ve had a lot more than that. We’re doing great. Our country is doing so great. We are so unified. We are so unified.
Here is how various mainstream news sources reported it:
CNBC: Trump says the coronavirus is Democrats’ new ‘hoax’
Politico: Trump rallies his base to treat coronavirus as a ‘hoax’
ABC via AP: Trump lashes out at Dems, calls coronavirus their new ‘hoax’
CNBC: Trump calls outbreak a ‘hoax,’ South Korea has record jump in cases
Politico: Biden blasts Trump for calling coronavirus a ‘hoax’
The Hill: Democrat gets in heated exchange with Pompeo at hearing: ‘Do you believe coronavirus is a hoax?’
MSNBC: Michael Moore: Trump calling coronavirus a ‘hoax’ is ‘dangerous’
Fake news. Yet this is the interpretation I saw over and over again on Facebook, posted by people who allegedly graduated from the sixth grade. This one is so blatant that even some of the usual suspects in spreading false narratives about the President began flagging it. When Mike Bloomberg was asked on “Face the Nation” by CBS’ Scott Pelley about his position on the Coronavirus emergency, Bloomberg said, “I find it incomprehensible that the President would do something as inane as calling it a hoax.” Pelley, to his credit, corrected him, saying, “He said the Democrats making so much of it is a Democratic hoax, not that the virus was a hoax.”
Bloomberg ignored him and persisted in misrepresenting what Trump said.
After Politico claimed that the President “tried to cast the global outbreak of the coronavirus as a liberal conspiracy,” Facebook rated the piece as containing false information, saying “The primary claims in the information are factually inaccurate,” in a warning attached to the article…
Ethics Alarms 
My poor transmission! I drive a manual. In NYC temperatures, do you know what it is like to try to shift a manual? Gear oil needs to warm up first before the gears get lubricated. I can’t say that I am surprised that a Democrat would do something so draconian, then offer bounties to the public to turn in their neighbors. This is right from the Communist playbook. “And when we come to take you, your neighbors will look away. They always look away.”
First they came for [X]. But I did not speak out, because I was not an [X].
This way totalitarianism comes — creeping on little cat feet.
3. This is the Big Lie writ large, but the Democrats have been using this tactic for years, if not decades. They are now so invested in it that it is the go-to tactic.
Now the media are using their platform not just to enable the Big Lie, but to create one whenever they think the Democrats could exploit it.
This isn’t just bias or cheerleading, it’s a de facto in-kind campaign contribution. And even if that weren’t illegal, it is ethically reprehensible to deliberately mislead Americans for more clicks.
It is time to use the force of law against those who make these illegal campaign contributions.
I agree, but it won’t happen. The institutional politicians have each other’s back.
Regarding idling vehicles, is there an exemption for all government workers, or just police officers?
-Jut
Oooh! Police officers, like the ones who idled in their squad car for easily an hour in the parking lot across from my house in December!
Yes, those. I think we have an anti-idling ordinance in our city, but police are exempted.
-Jut
The original idea behind those laws was to conserve gas, if I recall correctly.
Why do we need laws to force people to conserve?
Why not let people choose whether or not to conserve?
Well, as with national efforts to combat climate change, fractals of the relevant universe accomplish nothing except symbolically.
Idling laws in NYC have more to do with emmissions and air quality than climate change.
I don’t see how anyone can say that given the claims that climate change is the #1 existential threat to life on Earth. The Green New Deal would ban cars, which are bad because of their CO2 emissions. Obviously efforts to minimize the emissions from cars are now considered especially urgent because of climate change. Hence the sudden promotion. Coincidentally, the same day the various articales came out on the NYC idling law, Polar Bear International wrote,”Encourage Change in Your Community: Don’t stop with yourself, find ways to encourage change in your community. PBI offers a series of toolkits to help animal lovers bring Earth-friendly action plans, like no idling and pro biking programs, to their communities.”
Yes, no idling in NYC will save the polar bears…
The law in question was enacted in 1972, back when smog was a major, unignorable problem in big cities.
Yes, but that’s no why it is suddenly a big deal again.
Well, China is the world’s biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. What does Mayor Bloomberg plan to do about that? If we don’t stop them, there is nothing we can do about it.
Actually, many law enforcement agencies have policies that limit idling, primarily to save fuel. My former agency instituted such a policy in 2008 when gas hit $4.00 retail. Officers were expected to idle vehicles no longer than ten minutes without a ten-minute break, unless it was over 90 degrees or under 20 degrees, or if emergency lights were activated. K-9 units were exempt: gotta keep that doggie warm, or cool as the case may be. We knew that compliance was not universal but it saved us from busting our annual gasoline budget.
It was just 2 years ago when I posited to some prominent people about how we go about “regulating” (for lack of a better term) journalists in a way that restored some amount of trust and accountability into the profession. By “regulating”, I wasn’t talking about the creation of government regulation or oversight, but some type of legitimized internal fact checking process that would address that top complaints of each piece and maybe give an overall rating to authors, publishers… like a reliability score. I was laughed at, called a communist, and said to be anti-free speech.
They then went on and harped on FB until they forced FB to fact-check their articles and rate their content and character.
I guess all roads lead to the same place, just as long as you don’t call a rose by it’s name.
But notice that FB only uses reliably left-wing fact-checkers.
So they weren’t responding to the essence of the complaint. What they did is the equivalent of virtue-signalling, allowing them to claim “fairness” without actually being fair. Had the been more diverse in their fact-checking selections, those who motivated them to change would still be complaining ever more loudly.
So this is little more than a cynical ploy all along, and straight out of “Rules for Radicals.”
I think that’s right, Glenn.
Yeah, but it’s a first step. After a year of this, they’ll realize they can put a numerical value and trend lines on everything they’ve done and it’ll evolve. When it does that, the hard data will speak for itself and all the virtue signalling will add up. Either that, or it goes belly-up.
3. “ ‘Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!’ Coronavirus Division.”
Fact-Check: Obama Waited Until ‘MILLIONS‘ Infected And 1000 Dead In U.S. Before Declaring H1N1 Emergency
And what did President Obama do after waiting 6 months? He told people to wash their hands!
Compare that with President Trump’s response, and the Lefty media’s portrayal of that response.
NYT’s Gail Collins: Let’s Call It The Trumpvirus
Yeah, this is about as surprising as the sun coming up this morning. The Left and their media mouthpieces have decided that the gloves are off, and that Trump is an existential threat to them and their way of life. There are no more rules, it’s them or Trump.
Donald Trump. What can’t he do?
”Donald Trump. What can’t he do?”
The sky’s the limit; after today’s market close, he’ll have Obama reassuming credit for the robust economy…
That’s a pretty good example of the Principles of Progressive Goebbelism.
Since the truth doesn’t progress progressives narratives, progressives seem to see no value in the truth. Progressives and the anti-Trump resistance movement have proven themselves to be morally bankrupt political hacks. I wish we’d hear more true Liberals calling these hacks out for their morally bankrupt tactics but what we hear instead is a deafening ends justifies the means silence.
Jack wrote, “The theory is that forcing people into not idling their car will mitigate climate change…”
FYI: Actually that doesn’t align with what the program is trying to fix.
Dammit, I didn’t close the block tag properly after the quote. ARRGH!!!
Just a general remark regarding writing text with html tags.
You wrote,
This is a common issue.
Most webdevelopers use the following order when writing text with html tags.
They write the openings tag followed directly by the corresponding closing tag.
And then they move the cursor between the two tags and start typing (or pasting) the text that needs to be between the two tags.
This way of writing is less error prone.
I keep templates in my drafts folder.
Or you can get a text editor that automatically closes HTML tags and highlights syntax. Like, say, Sublime Text. 🙂
Zanshin
Yup I know all about that. I’ve been an HTML coder since the early 1990’s and my software automatically fills in the end tag after I type </ so things don't get screwed up, I simply put the close tag for italics in there instead (which I use a lot for quotes); it was a brain fart not ignorance.
I don’t understand. If I’ve gotten a jump start and shut down the car, it doesn’t start. I drive it as long as I have time y=to, then let it idle. It’s never failed.
Jack wrote, “I drive it as long as I have time to”
That is actually what did the charging. Heck you can sit there for 5 minutes with the rpms up to somewhere between 1000-1500 and you’ll likely get enough battery charging that it’ll restart. Once they get up to the point where they are putting out more current than the system is being used they charge batteries pretty quickly. Most cars idle somewhere between 450-700 rpms which is usually below the charging threshold.
It also depends on the current battery charge, whatever smarts are built in the cars electrical system, etc.
In any case, when recharging while idling the safe bet is to rev your engine to 1,500 for a while.
I guess I should have included all the rhetoric and other commentary about the sudden interest in idling. It’s pretty clear that climate change is the impetus.
Sorry, I didn’t understand there was more rhetoric involved.
Why would you? This is the downside of the short form posts in the Warm-Ups.
Morons. Morons teaching our children.
Hi Jack. My son attends a Mansfield high school – and while I believe there are some morons teaching our children, I have also encountered many dedicated, committed, and fairly intelligent teachers — even in Mansfield. I’m fairly certain you meant that the administrators who suspended the teacher are morons – egged on by overly sensitive (and possibly moronic) parents.
I would add that as a conservative Christian, I don’t necessarily agree that elementary school-aged classrooms are the age to bring up gay marriage, but I also know when a ship has sailed.
If they were really concerned about idling overheating the Planet, would they spend so much time (and municipal fund$) establishing Immediate Cross crosswalks where people need only press a button?
This stops any number of vehicles, causing them to idle, because the all important schedule of the pedestrian, or the BIKIE, requires they need to proceed unimpeded.
FTR, I just continue the old-fashioned way, waiting til traffic clears (which it always does) and allows safe passage.
Here is a rather outlandish quote I found on another forum.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/systems-of-morality-winning-by-any-means-necessary.825699/
Chicago is a clear counterexample.
The whole comment is bigotry and facile reasoning. “Fairness” is a complex and debatable concept, as is justice. That conservatives don’t believe in the Left’s view of these and other concepts doesn’t mean they don’t believe in the concepts.
Yeah, that’s exactly right. The Left has claimed for themselves the absolute right to define what is “just” and what is “fair,” and by doing so are acting neither justly nor fairly.
It is a pathetic pean to political correctness in disguise.
Or paen, or whatever. Bleh.
Jack wrote, “The theory is that forcing people into not idling their car will mitigate climate change…”
If people are really pushing these laws like the anti-idling law because they think it will help fix climate change refer them to things like this…
Because it isn’t about climate change, but adopting a system of government that denies all but the elite the right to do anything, and restricts freedom of action for the rest of us to the point of making us all joyless proles.
Saul Alinsky would be proud of the climate change alarmists.