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Buddy’s Soap Box
8.5% inflation!
A patriotic Texas howdy from Buddy,
Last week the subject if this column was a summary of the woke world’s skein of daffy ideas. This week we revisit that subject with our focus narrowed to the question of fossil fuels versus the sustainable, most notably wind and solar. Paul Gleiser’s guest column, “Ignorant, Dumb or Dishonest?” wonders how best to understand and somehow explain the woke left’s thinking on the subject. Read Paul’s column, then decide where you come down on the question.
But having read Paul’s column, and having observed what passes for thought and reason on the left, I can tell you that I come down on the side of “ignorant and dumb.” I’m not talking about the politicians and sundry elites. They are clear eyed. They see in the Greening of America an opportunity to line their pockets. On the other hand, the rank-and-file woksters really do believe the planet needs saving and that they can do it.
It is their policies combined with too much money being printed that have given the United States of America an inflation rate of 8.5% with worse almost certain yet to come.
GUEST COLUMNS
Ignorant, Dumb or Dishonest?
by Paul Gleiser · Published April 7, 2022 · Updated April 8, 2022
High gasoline prices are and will always be a huge political problem for the party in power. Just ask Jimmy Carter.
Here in 2022, as it was in 1979, high gas prices are bedeviling the Democratic Party and the Biden administration is in full damage control mode. Toward that purpose, they sent Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg out last Friday to explain things to us.
The secretary was trying to sell the idea that we are all just going have to get used to high prices at the pump until one glorious day in the sweet by & by when the sun rises on a “clean energy” America. While peddling that vision, he dropped this gem.
Until we achieve a form of energy independence that is based on clean energy created here at home, American citizens will still be vulnerable to wild price hikes like we’re seeing right now…”
In another appearance, Mayor Pete offered us this: Last month we announced a $5 billion investment to build out a nationwide electric vehicle charging network so that people from rural to suburban to urban communities can all benefit from the gas savings of driving an EV.”
Whenever I hear pontification about “clean energy” from an elite leftist I can’t help asking; Does this person really believe what he is saying? Is he really this uniformed, or worse, this stupid? Or is he just being deliberately dishonest in pursuit of a political aim?
It’s one of those and I can’t say for certain which is worse.
Let’s take these in order, starting with American “clean energy independence.” No such thing is in the offing. If you thought being dependent on the Middle East for oil was bad, just wait.
Lithium and cobalt are two rare earth materials that are essential for making electric vehicle batteries. China dominates the mining and refining of both. The Congo is the source of most cobalt and China has bought up most of the Congolese cobalt mines.
Libs like Buttigieg want the electricity for those electric vehicles to come from wind and solar power. Never mind that more than 90 percent of solar panels in the U.S. are imported – from China. The same for more than 80 percent of key wind turbine components. We are effectively selling out our economic future to a totalitarian regime that hates us.
If I know these things you’d think Mayor Pete knows them, too. Yet he prattles on – unmolested by the legacy media – about American clean energy independence.
As to all the money people are going to save on gas by driving electric vehicles, there’s this. Even at $5.00 a gallon, it will take a long time to bank the extra $30 thousand that the cheapest Tesla costs compared to a Toyota Corolla. “Go buy an electric car,” is the 21st century woke-liberal equivalent to “Let them eat cake.”
It’s one of three things with elite libs. They’re embarrassingly ignorant. They’re not very bright. Or they know better and just don’t care.
You pick.
Buddy’s post regarding the above
Insanity is always difficult to understand, and more and more, that is what we are getting from the left. Their gender junk, open border nonsense, and fantasy that massive deficit spending is not the cause of inflation, is just the tip of their iceberg of utter nonsense.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, in saying, “Until we achieve a form of energy independence that is based on clean energy created here at home, American citizens will still be vulnerable to wild price hikes like we’re seeing right now…” thinks on a par with our new Supreme Supreme Court justice, who cannot define what a woman is.
The wild price hikes Buttigieg describes were not happening under Pres. Trump, when the country enjoyed energy independence. The Biden administration’s unrelenting war on fossil fuels better explains the current state of affairs.
At the beginning of the Obama administration, Buttigieg’s predecessor said gasoline prices needed to go to $10 a gallon. Even George W. Bush said Americans were addicted to oil.
The idiots of the left want to switch to their pie-in-the sky solution when it is not ready. Wind and solar? A great concept. When and if affordable technology arrives making wind and solar competitive with oil, we, all of us whatever our political perspective, would welcome it, but then we would have a new problem, the real problem, accelerating population growth, as that is what would follow the advent of abundant and affordable energy.
But for now, we had best stick with the old tried-and-true fossil fuels, else we find ourselves back to living in holes in the side of hills, and eating our meat raw, assuming we can get our hands on any.