Tom Toles for April 01, 2020

Dismantling his predecessor’s regulations has already enhanced one global crisis and AGW can only make things worse. Manufacturing retrograde vehicles that no one outside of the US will want, does not seem like a sound business plan, does it?

Manufacturers know that the ease in regs could be very brief.

Why waste a good opportunity to move the ball in the direction your sponsors want.

A bit off topic, here: Our family didn’t have many books around the house. For those, we had the local library. But we did have some magazines. I liked to read my father’s collection of “Popular Mechanics” and “Popular Science.” They had easy to understand articles and drawn illustrations. (Newspapers and magazine still used a lot of art illustration instead of photos.)

“Popular Science” had the monthly feature “The Model Garage.” The main character was Gus Wilson, a skilled and intuitive auto mechanic. In every issue of “PS” he appeared in a short story in which various characters had puzzling mechanical problems he dealt with. By the end of each story, Gus had solved the problem. And along the way, he also solved personal problems the other characters had. Each story was a human drama on two levels. An illustration of Gus and his customers headed each story. Usually it showed one or both of them scratching their heads in frustration.

The point: It’s hard to imagine Donald Trump diagnosing and fixing car problems, let alone getting dirty (ethically dirty, sure). If there were a series of stories about him conducting his business, that series might be titled “The Trump Twaddle Garage.” Each episode, he would screw up a job and then lie to the customers to overcharge them — just as he does now in a much larger venue. Gus Wilson embraced new technologies and enjoyed the challenge of them. Donald Trump seems to fear and loathe them, either because he doesn’t understand or because he can make a big business points by ignoring or sabotaging them.

The website Gus-stories.org provides scans of the original “Popular Science” Gus Wilson stories from 1925 to the late 1960s. I enjoy reading them again. And elsewhere on the Internet there are scans of many of the PS magazine covers. Clicking through them, it’s like seeing old friends, unchanged after all these years.

Trump tactics. All of his grandstanding and outrageous accusations hold the attention of the media and make the headlines, while the Wealthy Elite/Republicans push their agenda: more de-regulation!

With the muzzling of the EPA squeezed into the “stimulus’ bill” Trump is making sure that if Covid-19 doesn’t get you then the poisoned air and water will. No American life is safe as long as the “Best for the Economy” party is in power.

Tiny is doing his best to protect America because wind generators really do cause cancer – especially near golf resorts.

Those with respiratory conditions will breathe a lot easier in those “inexpensive” new vehicles, eh, Anthro?

May the jack slip.

Interestingly, it’s not the auto industry that’s putting pressure on the administration to " ease" emission standards, but the oil and gas industry! The auto industry has already accommodated the new standards and it’s going to be “expensive” for them to re-retool, again.

The oil & gas industry, on the other hand, looses billions for every incremental increase in gas mileage American automobiles gain.

Mini-Tom in the corner says “Only goes backwards now”, which of course tells us what gear to use for American government: R for reverse, D for drive.

Thanks for not neglecting this important story. No matter what the Oaf of Office does, the American people are hurt.

Mr. T secretly converted a number of cars to run on coal. Gotta keep those coal miners employed and their lungs full of coal dust.

[off-topic, but, I think, very important to read, especially considering the source]

Conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg: "On Sunday, President Trump, absent any hard evidence [note from Godfreydaniel: absent the tiniest shred of evidence!] suggested that large numbers of masks were being stolen from New York hospitals, citing an unnamed facility he said had seen a huge surge in mask usage. “How do you go from 10 to 20 [thousand masks being used], to 300,000?” Trump said. And he didn’t stop there. “Where are the masks going — are they going out the back door?” Trump posited. “Somebody should probably look into that, because I just don’t see from a practical standpoint how that’s possible.” Perhaps — just perhaps — the increased volume of masks being used is correlated with the emergence of a runaway, highly contagious pandemic? I wonder if Joseph Stalin ever said during the Battle of Stalingrad: “This doesn’t make sense. Normally they only want 20,000 boxes of ammunition. All of sudden they want 300,000? Someone must be stealing the bullets.” [note from Godfreydaniel: interesting that the example of a Soviet dictator pops up when ridiculing the puppet of a Russian dictator…..] Is it possible there is some mask pilfering by staff? Sure. But why is the president hypothesizing about this off the top of his head? Why not use his position as the most powerful man in America to have “somebody” look into the situation before he blurts out an accusation without facts to back it up?This is just one example of why I hate these daily news briefings. I hate them with a kind of loathing I have not experienced before. Sure, I resent having to watch them, but that’s not a new sensation. I see it as a professional obligation, like watching the State of the Union address (which I also despise). So, it’s not the due-diligence part that vexes me. It’s the experience of feeling like we’re all supposed to pretend the president is up to this challenge.

The column continues: And when I say we, I do mean we. In crises, it’s normal to rally around the president and give him the benefit of the doubt. After the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush’s approval rating hit 90 percent for a moment. It’s not that everyone suddenly agreed with, or even liked, Bush, but they were willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt during a moment of peril. For the past three years, as a conservative who just can’t board the Trump Train, I’ve been urged by people, including friends, to put my personal feelings aside and support the president. Such demands to become a cheerleader were easy to dismiss during a time of peace and prosperity as mere exhortations for partisan loyalty.But this is a different time, and it’s a real dilemma. Do you go along, even at the margins, with the fiction that Trump is up to this challenge? Or do you shine a light on his inadequacy?I think the answer depends largely on what lane you’re in. Governors and public-health officials, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, need the support of the president to do their jobs. If that means swallowing hard and praising the president when it’s not warranted, that’s a small price to pay, at least during a crisis.

And finally, skipping ahead a bit: “It’s even worse that we have to put up with a president who answers questions off the cuff without regard for facts or concern for how what he is saying might be misinterpreted. Add in his incessant dedication to petty grievances, partisan puffery, and chest-beating braggadocio, along with all of the obligatory obsequiousness he requires of officials who know far more than he does. Together, these things create an affirmative need to call out the nonsense, because the nonsense isn’t just annoying; it’s dangerous. […] Trump is enjoying a small bump in his approval ratings, though nothing like what George W. Bush or other presidents got during other rally-around-the-president moments. This meager improvement is partly explainable by partisanship. But it has more to do, I think, with the fact that the president is incapable of doing what other presidents do in such moments: earn the benefit of the doubt by rising to the occasion.”

When trump gets up to these antics, I start looking for what kind of devious action he’s planning to do with the smokescreen.

The greedy crooked lying Trump termites are destroying all the protective rules and regulations the USA has. Its almost as if they were trying to destroy this country. The EPA has given corporations permit to pollute all they like during the crises. Republicans are down right evil.

Toles must have seen this coming: Just turned on today’s rally – sorry, briefing, and I got the SecDef talking about a drug interdiction action. Guess Donnie was so tired of winning that he needed a new shiny object

He’s making it so all the cars, and the entire country, only have one gear, R.

Sung to the tune of “Mighty Mouse”.. ‘Here he comes to wreck the day, that means that Mighty Moron is on his waaay…’. This orange Dotard never met an EPA mandate he did not want to reverse.