About Last Week: Kamala’s Groovy…

A quick thought experiment:  Dan Quayle was a – rightly or wrongly – a widely mocked vice president, dismissed as a lightweight.

Kamala Harris is – rightly – mocked for her garbledeegook speaking style, her nastiness to her staff, and her being a policy lightweight who tends to make things worse when she’s around.

But, according to the Los Angeles Times, Harris has finally, for the umpteenth time, overcome her inherent shortcomings and has now found her “groove.”

Here’s the question – would the Times have ever ever used the word “groove” in reference to Quayle having a good day or two?

The answer is no and the Times used the word groove because Harris is a black woman.  In other words, the Times is racist.

To be honest, the Sunday Mark Barabak column which appeared under the groovy headline did not use the word groove – it referenced her finding her “footing.”  

Just as it would have if it were about Quayle.

That’s not to say the column is a work of honest truth – it proudly notes she uses the word PROUD in a way that makes people proud (? got me – read the column here: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-02-04/kamala-harris-presidential-reelection-campaign-biden-abortion .)  It also notes that her position as “cheerleader, prosecutor, and pugilist” fits her well and is part of the veep’s Great Reset Reset Reset Reset (to paraphrase.)

And what’s really funny, when you search for the story the little header that appears is “After a Rocky Start, Kamala Harris Finds Her (wait for it….) Footing.”

Well, at least the internet’s not racist…wow, that’s probably really not true.

Speaking of not true, a judge last week decided that it was not true, or allowable at least, that Californians have to pass a background check every time they buy a bullet for their gun.

Judge Roger Benitez was pretty clear in his ruling:

“California’s new ammunition background check law misfires and the Second Amendment rights of California citizens have been gravely injured,” said Benitez “How many of the 58,087 needed ammunition to defend themselves against an impending criminal threat and how many were simply preparing for a sporting event, we will never know. What is known is that in almost all cases, the 322 individuals that are rejected each day are being denied permission to freely exercise their Second Amendment right — a right which our Founders instructed shall not be infringed.”

All of that is true, especially the bit about being able to defend oneself because guns and bullets pretty much have to go together and, anyway, bullets themselves are not really dangerous.

It is a rare situation indeed in which a person says to a home invader “hey, now, stand really still and let me press this bullet into your head.”

It is even rarer, one assumes, when the home invader agrees.

Speaking of rare, a new poll claims that it is rare that people are moving out of California for political reasons.

According to a California Elections and Policy Poll – conducted for CalState Long Beach, Cal Poly Pomona, and USC released Thursday, that only 28% of the people who have thought about leaving the state have done so for political reasons.

The question is a bit amorphous as “political reasons” is a pretty big catch-all, ranging from finally having had enough of the Sacramento Blob to some local council member being an irritant. It also includes the direct impacts of policies, ranging from people who think the homelessness problem doesn’t get enough money to people being tired of having to fearfully walkpool with their fellow employees to their carpool van in the downtown garage.

63% of Californians have thought about moving out. Of that group, the poll states, 40% are doing so because of the cost of living and 28% because of the political climate.

The poll includes a related question as well:

Are you planning to move out of state in the next year due to the political

climate of California?

70% I am not planning to move

14% I am planning to move/already moving due to the political climate of

California

7% I am planning to move to another state or already moving, but it is not

because of the political climate of California

10% Don’t know

In its introductory notes, the poll, using those figures, states that “Few California voters are leaving the state due to California’s political climate.”

Hmm.

Imagine you’re sitting at a seven person poker table – the poll shows that at least one of those people wants to leave California due to its politics (yes, the specific reason could be anything but I’m pretttty sure where that person lives on the political circle/line/graph/x and y axis.)

The poll emphasizes the lowness of the figure in toto, but do you really think a poker game in another state would have at least one of its players thinking about moving for political reasons?

Nope – that is not at all happening and that should be the proper takeaway from the poll.

Speaking of taking away, drivers who may be thinking about selling their EV may see a rather large amount of their re-sale money taken away.

With a new EV, the gnawing sense of not being able to feed your car to make it go more is a very big problem. Used? The problem is magnified.

As Sterling Archer from the wonderful Archer  spy show, once said: “There is not enough liquor and therapy in the world to undo that.”

Archer was not talking about the worries associated with owning a used EV – (it was a very funny, observation about a very off-color situation, feel free to check out the “Bumble Bee” clip on You Tube just below the one linked above) – but he could have been.

Used EVs will lose more of their value than a used regucar because the battery system not only has a “you can drive 200 miles” limit, but also has a “I’ll work for a few years before I have to be replaced” limit.

Would you buy a used car for $21,000 (that’s what Hertz is selling Teslas for now) that would need a new engine in a whenever but soon? Probably not.

And the issue is not just about individual re-sales – other rental firms and big leasers and such are worried they’ll get stuck, too

“When a car loses 1% of its worth, I make 1% less profit,” said Christian Dahlheim, who heads VW’s financial services arm. The issues with secondhand EVs, he said, have the potential to destroy billions of euros in earnings for the broader industry –

And of course, there this: “China offers a cautionary tale. Lucrative subsidies turned the country into an EV giant, but also produced weed-infested graveyards of abandoned battery-powered vehicles.”

So California’s EV mandate may be good for some people – people that own vast tracts of currently worthless land in the middle of the Mojave.

I mean the airplanes are already so…

Thanks for reading the Globe!