The Morning Report 4/17/24

Good morning, kids. A couple of under-the-radar stories that despite on the surface could be taken as good news items nevertheless underscore the ideologically-driven incompetence and lust for absolute power of the anti-American Democrat-Left that don’t necessarily fill me with strength and confidence.

First, yet another story that tells us that the push for EVs is crashing and burning hotter than a Chi-Com lithium battery factory:

Tesla, the most iconic of EV manufacturers, seemed to be avoiding this skid. Unfortunately, the realities of being a niche market with every increasing costs associated with production have caught up with the firm headed by billionaire Elon Musk.

Tesla ill lay off more than 10% of its global workforce, according to a memo sent to employees by CEO Elon Musk. The company’s shares closed down more than 5% on Monday. “As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important to look at every aspect of the company for cost reductions and increasing productivity,” Musk said in the memo obtained by CNBC. “As part of this effort, we have done a thorough review of the organization and made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount by more than 10% globally,” the memo said. 

. . . Furthermore, EV sales continue to decline and other car companies are beginning to make alternative production plans as a result. Until there is a charging infrastructure network that can accommodate the entire American public, an electric grid that can handle capacity, enough natural resources to build models at a moderate price, and technology that doesn’t ignite when it gets wet or won’t start when it gets too cold, this may be the beginning of the end of the road for EV-mania.

Well, except for in the minds of lunatic eco-activists who are pushing their insane “Net Zero 2050” agenda. If we could power cars with their hot air and smugness, then we would be able to run our vehicles forever.

As we discussed with friend and friend of the blog Bob Zimmerman a couple of podcasts ago, we are actually fans of Elon Musk, mostly because SpaceX is a giant thumb in the eye of a the Junta’s drive to wipe out independent, free market entrepreneurialism as well as for X/Twitter being perhaps the last large bastion of free speech open to conservative voices of opposition. 

As for Tesla, well, EVs are nothing more than souped-up golf carts; status symbols that at present are just not capable of supplanting gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. That assessment is the sane, rational one. And yet, the Junta and the enviro-Marxists persist. Hint: they do so for anything but altruistic reasons.

Hold that for a while as we examine another category entirely, the entertainment industry. The collapse of the movie industry as a whole, with Disney being the prime example, as a result of backlash from ticket buyers and content subscribers against “woke” agitprop strangling golden-egg-laying gooses from the Marvel universe to Star Wars to James Bond and everything in between, should be seen as a lesson to the Bob Igers and Kathleen Kennedys of this world. Should be.

Before answering that question, here’s another little bit of schadenfreude to have with your “covfefe”:

Left-wing billionaire Jeff Skoll’s woke film studio Participant is reportedly shutting down operations and eliminating most of its staff — the latest victim of Hollywood’s sharp downturn that has seen a bloodbath of layoffs and budget cuts.

Participant, founded in 2004, often financed projects with social justice and globalist themes, including former Vice President Al Gore’s climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth and its sequel. Other titles include the Obama’s Netflix documentary American Factory and the Ruth Bader Ginsburg doc RBG. . . 

. . . Hollywood’s tectonic shift to streaming entertainment has wreaked havoc with the specialty movie model that depends heavily on theatrical distribution to generate word-of-mouth business and awards-season buzz. Specialty titles that would once have received a theatrical release now almost all end up on streaming platforms in lieu of cinemas.

Participant also experienced a number of high-profile box office flops — including the environmentally themed Dark Waters, starring Mark Ruffalo, and the Matt Damon thriller Stillwater. . . Hollywood studios have been hit hard in the past year, enacting deep budget cuts amid a perfect storm of economic chaos that includes Americans continuing to cancel their cable TV subscriptions, the steep downturn in TV advertising, and streaming losses in the billions of dollars.

For sure, the rise of alternate personal venues from computers to smart phones to streaming services put intense pressure on traditional movie theaters. The COVID lockdowns, rising costs and then skyrocketing costs since the installation of Joey-Sponge Brain-Shits Pants, plus the rejection of the majority of normal Americans of ham-fisted “woke” propaganda is the death knell. Or at least should be. Here to, they still persist.

The question is, why? Why continue to waste billions of dollars producing films and shows or EVs no one wants to see and no one wants to drive? Why take the far and away #1 selling beer in the nation and kill it as well as taint all the other labels of the corporation that brews it?

Elon Musk and Tesla aside, since he is essentially an enemy of the State, the reason is because ideology now trumps sanity. Plus the fact that the corruption that has all but destroyed the American system of government and the Constitution, has crept into the so-called private sector mostly via at least three generations of academic brainwashing.

Considering brainwashed Marxist automatons and power-mad venal tyrants control virtually all of the instrumentalities of government that, because of their lack of ethics, morals, aforementioned lust for power and in-your-face hatred of this nation, people, history and culture as founded, and now their willingness to use it to crush is like insects as can plainly be seen with Donald Trump’s show trials among many other things, nothing can force them to slam on the brakes instead of flooring the gas pedal, or potentiometer?, before driving the car into the Grand Canyon. 

Even if woke studios go broke, even if EVs are no longer to be made, that does not mean ipso facto that non-woke if not pro-American Judeo-Christian-affirming or plan old normal stories will be made or that a return to the sanity of gasoline powered vehicles is guaranteed. 

Quite the opposite. It makes no difference. The bottom line is total control of the citizenry by an all-powerful State. How? By seizing control of “the means of production” and prohibiting alternatives. Any voice that challenges accepted State policy or woke worldviews will be silenced. Total control is the goal. Whether you refuse to purchase an EV because you don’t like it, or because you can’t even afford one and the strangulation of the internal combustion engine leaves no alternatives, and essentially stranded in place, the end result is the same. 

Total control by the State. 

Soon the government might shut down your car. [So-called quote-unquote “president”] Joe Biden’s new infrastructure gives bureaucrats that power.  

You probably didn’t hear about that because when media covered it, few mentioned the requirement that by 2026, every American car must “monitor” the driver, determine if he is impaired and, if so, “limit vehicle operation.”

. . . The kill switch is just one of several ways the government proposes to control how we drive. California lawmakers want new cars to have a speed governor that prevents you from going more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit.  

That would reduce speeding. But not being able to speed is dangerous, too, says Fix. If “something’s coming at you, you have to make an adjustment.” New cars will have a special button on the dash. If you suddenly need to speed and manage to find the button when trying to drive out of some bad situation, and it lets you speed for 15 seconds. 

For all these new safety devices to work, cars need to spy on drivers. Before I researched this, I didn’t realize that they already do. The Mozilla Foundation reports that car makers “Collect things like your age, gender, ethnicity, driver’s license number, your purchase history and tendencies.” Nissan and Kia “collect information about your sex life.”

How? Cars aim video cameras at passengers. Other devices listen to conversations and intercept text messages. Then, says Mozilla, 76% of the car companies “sell your data.”

. . . Finally, Biden’s infrastructure bill also includes a pilot program to tax you based on how far we drive. 

 “A mileage charge seems fair,” I say to Fix. “You pay for your damage to the road.” “Correct,” she replies. “But when you start allowing them to do this, they could say, ‘We don’t want you to buy a firearm.’ … ‘We don’t want you to go to that destination. So we’re not going to let you start your car.’ It’s about control.”

I push back. “They’re not controlling me.”

“They can,” she replies. “Wait until you get a bill for your carbon footprint. ‘You’re at your maximum for carbon credits. We’re not going to let you drive today! Take the train. Take the electric bus.'”

“This is paranoia,” I suggest.

“Maybe,” says Fix. “But so far, everything that I’ve said about these things, each step keeps coming through.”

“Control” was supposed to be a Janet Jackson song, not a how-to-do-it manual. 

Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson, the alleged sane alternative to Luntz cabana boy Kevin McCarthy and your GOP, Grifting Oleaginous Parasites, just rammed through an extension and probably expansion of FISA. The law aimed at “foreign” terrorists and spies.

Well, since the government we have is the furthest thing from America as founded, those of us who still identify as American-Americans are in point of fact foreigners now. And terrorists. And insurrectionists.

ABOVE THE FOLD, BREAKING, NOTEWORTHY

IRAN ATTACKS ISRAEL

ISRAEL GAZA/HAMAS FRONT

WE-ALL-SLAM-FOR-I-SLAM 

OFFICIAL DEMOCRAT PARTY/LEFTIST-ENDORSED ANTI-SEMITISM, ANTI-CHRISTIANITY

“BIDEN BORDER BLOODBATH,” AMNESTY, IMMIGRATION, BORDER SECURITY

  • “Notice anything missing?” wrote [Rep Scott] Perry. Speaker Johnson “failed to incorporate any border security into any of the FOUR of the bills he’s going to ram down our throats this week. On more than half a dozen occasions in the last six months, he promised the American People this wouldn’t happen,” Perry added. House Dissatisfaction with Johnson Explodes over Foreign Aid ‘Insanity’ that Neglects Southern Border
  • “[Hillary] Scholten’s work as an immigration attorney appeared to reflect her beliefs laid out in the 2011 journal article when, beginning in 2018, she fought to stop the deportation of an Iraqi woman who was charged with molesting a 12-year-old girl, according to court documents first reported on by The Midwesterner.” Dem Congresswoman Called Deportation “Cruel and Unusual Punishment,” Fought Against Removal of Refugee Charged With Molesting Child
  • GOP lawmakers are concerned that Democrats, who have long called the impeachment inquiry a “political stunt,” will try to cut short the process before a vote on whether to convict or acquit Mayorkas. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has so far not said whether there will be an effort to table or dismiss the impeachment charges. House Sends Articles Of Impeachment Against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas To Senate
  • “It probably did not occur to any of the ‘adults in charge’ that, at some point, all of those immigrants would actually expect them to put their money where the rhetoric is. That is, of course, part of a larger problem. On some level, these administrators, bureaucrats, and wonks knew that someone was going to have to pay for all of these immigrants, one way or another. With that in mind, their plan is to put our money, jobs, homes, and lives where their rhetoric is.” (Machine gun nests and claymore minds would do the trick. Preferably on the Rio Grande and not the Hudson – jjs) Around 1,300 Migrants Mass at NYC City Hall, Demand Green Cards
  • “This is no minor shoplifting operation. These men targeted specific products in large quantities and followed a patterned method for removing those items from the store without payment,” Suffolk County, Massachusetts, District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in a statement after the arrest of Josue Amperez-Perez. “This is the type of retail larceny that can drive stores out of communities and harm residents by removing convenient shopping options for them.” (Cut off their sticky fingers – jjs) Feds Arrest Migrant Shoplifting Gang After Five Years in New England
  • “Deporting illegal immigrants and reducing the number of foreigners in this country is a good neighbor policy. It is the kind of moderate centrist solution that should be the basis of bipartisan reach-across-the-aisle politics that we can all agree on. (I read that as bi-partisan reach-around – jjs) Mass Deportations Would Lower Housing Prices

SHAMPEACHMENT 1.0, 2016 CLINTON/OBAMA COUP, CONGRESSIONAL PERSECUTION, SPYGATE, DEEP STATE, MUELLER DECEPTION

CIVIL WAR 2.0: J-6 FBI FALSE FLAG “RIOT” & AFTERMATH, LEFTIST PERSECUTIONS, DEMOCRAT PUTSCH, AMERICAN DISSOLUTION 

FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES, CENSORSHIP, FAKE NEWS, MEDIA, BIG BROTHER TECH

RED-GREENS, CLIMATE CHANGE HOAX, DEMOCRAT-LEFT WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS, JUNK SCIENCE, LYSENKOISM

CRIME & PUNISHMENT, NON-DOSTOYEVSKY

EDUCATION, AND WHAT PASSES FOR IT

ABORTION

THE 2020 AND 2022ELECTION HEISTS & AFTERMATH

DEMOCRAT/LEFTIST AND RINO SCANDALS, MESHUGAS, CHUTZPOCRISY 

POLITICS 

THE UKRAINIAN “FRONT”

  • “American voters are reluctant to provide additional aid to Ukraine,” said Scott Rasmussen, president of RMG Research, INC, who conducted the poll. “Our latest polling indicates that Americans in key swing states believe that securing our own southern border should be a higher priority than funding Ukraine.” Swing-State Voters Sour on Endless Ukraine Funding
  • “The U.S. risks being caught off-guard if it expects the ’90s to last forever.” What Russia Sanctions Failure Says About the Future
  • “While the attack was quickly claimed by the Islamic State – Khorasan Province, who took responsibility through its Amaq News Agency, the truth is that the evidence that is currently available to us points in one direction, and one direction only: toward Ukraine. From the moment the very first details of the attack began to leak out, it became more and more obvious that this wasn’t any run of the mill Islamist terror attack.” Ukraine is still the prime suspect in the Crocus terror attack

FOREIGN AFFAIRS, INTERNATIONAL

DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, THE COURTS, WASTE/FRAUD/ABUSE

HEALTH AND HEALTH CARE

  • John Dale Dunn, M.D.: “Our medical schools have embraced Marxist DEI and intersectionality theories, which will be a rolling disaster for American medical care.” Karl Marx Conquers American Medicine

ACTUAL SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY 

FEMINAZISM, TRANSGENDER PSYCHOSIS, HOMOSEXUALIZATION, WAR ON MASCULINITY/NORMALCY

CULTURE WARS, NATIONAL SUICIDE

HITHER & YON 

  • “Whitey Herzog devoted his lifetime to the game he loved, excelling as a leader on and off the field,” Jane Forbes Clark, chair of the Hall of Fame’s board of directors, said in a statement. “Whitey always brought the best out of every player he managed with a forthright style that won him respect throughout the game.” (RIP to my Mets’ big 80s nemesis, the White Rat – jjs) Whitey Herzog, Hall of Fame Manager who Led St. Louis Cardinals to 3 Pennants, Dies at 92
  • “Erskine’s baseball career was remembered with the Brooklyn Dodgers’ storied “Boys of Summer,” of the 1950s.  He played his entire Major League Baseball career with the Dodgers from 1948 to 1959, helping the team secure five National League pennants and their memorable 1955 World Series victory.” (RIP – jjs) Legendary Dodgers Pitcher Carl Erskine Dead At 97

NOTE: The opinions expressed in the links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.

TIP JAR : Your support helps keep the lights on and is truly appreciated. Note: We are on Stripe, not PayPal.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *