Prius Rage
I am not covering the Obama meeting with Republicans. I only cover actual news.
Yesterday had me in Yuma, Arizona. Today is Pima County, which contains Tucson. I am speaking to the Pima GOP ladies at lunch. I am in a rental car, and I can assure you, it is not a Prius.
As Priuses break down and cause carnage, congressional hearings are being held. In a vacuum, this would be fine. However, let’s be honest. Toyota has for so long been a far superior firm to Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. I wonder if those companies will ever be called on the carpet. Given that Barack Obama own them, don’t bet on it. These hearings are a thinly veiled protectionism.
Having said that, I am not losing sleep over Toyota. If every Prius spontaneously combusted, the world would be a better place.
I admit it. I have Prius rage.
Every time I see a Prius, I want to pull the owner out of the car and give them a savage beating. I refrain from doing this because given that Priuses are driven by liberals, the chances of a minority driver would be sky high. Then it would be a hate crime.
The judge would never believe me that I did not pummel a guy because of his skin color, that it was really his car that provoked me.
Priuses are wrong on every level, and the world will be better when they are eradicated.
Let’s start with the aesthetics. The Prius is a hideously ugly car. Owners can make all the excuses they want, but they sound no different from people with ugly dogs, cats, or children. The car is ugly. It looks disgusting.
If that were the end of it, I would deal. It isn’t, so I won’t.
As the comedy South Park put it, Priuses are bad for the environment. They lead to an overdose of smug.
Not smog…smug. Prius drivers love letting everybody else know how morally superior they are. The car even has a chair position to make sure their noses are tilted high enough in the air for us all to bow down to.
These environmental phonies have no idea (or do know and don’t care) that the car does nothing for the environment. The battery alone leaves a bigger carbon footprint than anything else out there in a normal car.
What is it about hybrid owners that turns them into insufferable bores?
Why can’t hybrid drivers shut up and drive?
Even conservative Republicans get tough to listen to when they drive hybrids.
I love Sean Hannity. Yet he keeps mentioning his Escalade. Republican hybrid drivers are not braggarts. They are grovelers. It is their way of saying “please like me. I am not an evil Republican. I am a good person.”
Screw that. I say burn forests and build shopping malls.
(Whether I believe this is not the point. The issue is I refuse to say politically correct things. Either you like me or you don’t, but I am not going to kiss your politically correct @nus to win your worthless approval.)
Conservatives driving hybrids need to realize they will be hated no matter what. Stop talking about the hybrid. The left will never respect you under any circumstances.
Some will wonder why I have such hostility toward Prius drivers. Why can’t we all just live and let live?
Because they will never stop interfering with my life.
Here is the real crux of the issue.
If you want to be politically on the left, fine. Just get the ever loving blood hades out of the left lane.
I can’t stand it when I miss a light because the Prius in front of me is driving slow because they are busy taking time to smell the roses up their @nus.
Driving in the right lane does not make one politically conservative.
Yet instead of pulling to the right, they log up the left lane, with traffic congestion blending in with their own toxic self-satisfaction.
This is bad enough. Yet what really chaps my hide worse than Mistress Evil on a Saturday night is that Prius drivers get to use the diamond carpool lane. Why the hell should they get that privilege? Why should they get to their destination early while I am mired in traffic?
The carpool lane is for two or more drivers. It is not for government social engineering to play favorites. The reason why Prius drivers think they are better than everybody else is because the government tells them they are.
People driving ugly cars that hurt the environment and are now mechanically unsafe should not be given equal treatment, much less preferential treatment.
When I have the right to get from point A to point B without these obnoxious gasbags interfering with my right to move faster than an ice cream truck, then I will relent.
Let every Prius blow up until all the hope and change bumper stickers are off the road. May they blow up without the owners inside so that I am not accused of lacking compassion.
eric
February 25th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
I’m watching the healthcare summit right now and I gotta tell you, it’s a heckuva lot more newsworthy than whether Priuses are ugly or difficult to fix.
JMJ
February 25th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
First, to all the thousands of people who come to this blog, let me
introduce myself minimally. I am a US born Jew. (This is my race guys
and I frankly am proud of it). I was not raised a Catholic, as my Catholic
friends say, I didn’t need to be raised. It’s in the genes..and so
are folks who get PHDs.
That said, for a long time, I have contributed to Zionist causes..
like making sure a small, M.E. country, the only non-dictatorship
in that area, thrives and survives. I do so in many ways..(but thats for
later).
I believe the US, and the Western world are in WW4, the war against
Islamic-fascism ( see book WW4 by Norman Podhoretz).
To that extent, I idle George Bush and Dick Cheney.
I tell people that if we didn’t fight in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan,
we would be fighting them right here, in the good old US of A
maybe in Beverly Hills, or Tarzana or Pacific Palisades or Westwood.
I have been looked at sorrowfully for my views. I mean, “You a Jew votes
Republican?” “I guess not all Jews are the same”.
Those of my dentists and docs who happen to have Jewish surnames
all hate Bush and Cheney. I wonder how they would fare
if the terrorists invaded their clinics and hospitals? Would they
be selected for beheading?
In Afghanistan, if the Taliban capture a fellow Muslim who sells
opium for a living, they are sometimes beheaded. Get it,
the sales go to the Taliban, yet they are moral about it. Wowow.
I will not, and have never owned a foreign car
Mr. Obama gave 80b to GM…to bail them out, cause they
didn’t sell sufficient cars. Hey guys, Japan Germany, etc.,
fought US and killed 350,000 Americans. They destroyed entire
countries 70 years ago. They murdererd 70m people, and millions
more were wounded and displaced. Entire countries were raped by them.
Had they won WW2, they had plans to administer Russia and the USA.
They sought to expand the German race by doubling their population
moving them to the vast lands in Russia, the Ukraine and beyond.
Tens of millions of Slavs were to be gassed, shot, and just plain starved.
I can just imagine what was in store for our minorities (but not the Irish
Americans)? Jews, forget it.
I am encouraging everyone to see, “Inglorious Bastards”, one of the
finest fantasy films ever made. I am told that few Jews liked the movie..
it’s just too gruesome (nerdy US GI Jews scalp captured German
prisoners). I won’t tell the end of the story here. Go see it.
For once in my lifetime, rather than seeing “musslemen”, I see
Jewish warriors..getting revenge on the Krauts. I mean, such chutspah.
Back at the LA Times, there is an article by an op-ed who has a daily
colume. I mean this guy is something. He is left of Karl Marx. He
wrote a article last Wednesday, about the unequal taxation and earnings
of LA County residents, which have lowered over the years.
Per his article, the rich are getting richer, and the poor remaining the same
or falling behind. 400 families have seen an increase in their earnings.
from over 200m to over 400m year. He deplores the uneven tax structure (he wants much higher taxes on the so-called wealthy).
You know, not everyone can be a professional, or own a successful
business, or be a corporate executive, a real estate magnate or
a sports figure ( Koby). Not everyone can make six figures.
People working for McDonalds or Wendys’ or Burger King
or Carls Jr, or 7 Eleven, don’t. There are far more of them
than the few millionaires.
What he didn’t say was that the so-called rich or well heeled lost
over 15 trillion since the sub-prime crisis. 401Ks were reduced..
and stocks have still to regain all their paper losses.
Are the poor crying for them I wonder?
LA County has a high proportion of minorities..I love them all.
But let’s face it, it takes generations to own movie production studios.
This county, like all of NY City, attracts imigrants..it’s the nature
of feeling you belong. Let me add non-minorities to this..they
have suffered along with everyone else. No discrimination there folks.
He should have done his research on people who have MOVED
OUT of the County and State these past 10 years. What is their
average income? How are they DOING?
As far as the tax, he claims they are paying a smaller portion of their
earnings to the taxing authorities. Did he incude the decreased
value of their homes in this study? Maybe their investments
lost money, thus affecting their taxes?
And what about those taxes? The rich pay about 40% to the federal
government, not including state taxes, property taxes, and the hidden
taxes (on gasoline, phone service, etc.). They also pay social security
at about 7.5% on 110,000 earnings. They do NOT get the earned income
credit, paid to workers with lower earnings (who have or don’t have
children).
But I have a suggestion for him..hows about a cap on earnings
of news reporters..let’s say a maxium of 50,000..with the rest going
to charity. I would also place a cap on liberal doctors and liberal
dentists.
February 25th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Dan expresses perfectly why people conservatives are conservatives: they are misinformed.
“I tell people that if we didn’t fight in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan,
we would be fighting them right here, in the good old US of A
maybe in Beverly Hills, or Tarzana or Pacific Palisades or Westwood.”
That is utterly ludicrous. You have be either insane or terribly misinformed to believe such a thing. The terrorists that attacked us on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, and Lebanon. Not a single terrorist has ever attacked America was Iraqi or Afhgani, and no Iraqi or Afghani terrorist has ever attacked an American who wasn’t on their soil. There has never been a serious threat to America from any of the three countries mentioned by Dan, and in fact America has never really faced an existential threat since the Civil War. The serious threats we have faced since then have been from Europe, Eurasia, and the Far East. We have NEVER faced a serious threat from the Middle East. Anyone who thinks otherwise is stupid, insane, or seriously misinformed.
“I will not, and have never owned a foreign car.”
This shows an astounding level of ignorance. I worked for several years in the auto industry. I worked for a German company. We made parts for American, German, French, Japanese and Korean cars. Many of the parts we made for American cars were shipped to American production lines in Mexico and Canada. Most of our workers were immigrants - actualy, probably 95% of them. Their documentation was dubious at best.
The average car consists of parts made from around 4000-5000 manufacturers - from all over the world. Whether that car is “American” or “foreign” has almost no bearing on whether it was actually mostly made in this country or not. So, if you sincerely believe you have “never owned a foreign car” you are either stupid, insane, or seriously misinformed.
And the most misinformed part of Dan’s screed involved the rich. Never mind the misinformed Randian undertone that somehow being “rich” is the same as bring productive or sucessful. That’s just typical libertarian clap-trap. Idolartion of the wealthy. But when you look at the real numbers, the wealthy pay less of their income in taxes than does the middle and working classes. Remember, we living a complex, interconnected economy. There’s a lot more to taxes than just income taxes. There’s payroll taxes, which the wealthy pay proportionally very little of. There’s property taxes, state and municiple income taxes, sales taxes, tariffs, and fees. There’s corporate taxes, which we consumers actually pay. All these various taxes combined go to pay for various things. Some pay in together into some thing, some are dedicated, etc. The FACT is that the rich are getting richer, and the poor and middle classes have been essentially stuck in a rut for thirty years now - particularly over the past decade. Anyone who says otherwise is either stupid, insane, or seriously misinformed.
JMJ