In the face of hardship

 36% of the starting lineup:

L’Jarius Sneed CB - injured, didn’t return.
Kadarius Toney WR - injured, didn’t return.
Juju Smith-Schuster WR - injured, didn’t return.
Mecole Hardman RB - injured, did not start.
Willie Gay LB injured - didn’t return.
Justin Watson S - injured, did not start.
Patrick Mahomes QB - injured, played through
Travis Kelce TE - injured, played through

They led most of the game and won in the last minute anyway.

How Did I Miss This?

Given the known link between corporations and government, it should not have been possible for me to write about two events and not notice the connection between them. Not sure just how serious I am about the connection, but for what it's worth...

Friday before last I wrote about San Diego & Electric giving us notification that our heating bill would increase in January due to a massive increase in the cost of natural gas. Sure enough, we got a notice that our bill, which was $247 in December, would be between $560 and $600 for January. Wow.

Then last Friday I wrote about the city of San Diego planning to mandate that all residential properties within the city would be required to convert from gas appliances to electric ones in the very near future. 

I failed to notice that SDG&E is preparing the way for city government, making us willing for the city to do something to us that we would not otherwise stand for. Isn't it nice that the city is going to help us save all that money?

Oh wait, it's going to cost me $30,000 to make the conversion. So, based on saving about $1500 per year by using electricity instead of gas (since San Diego also has the most expensive electric power in the nation), I will have to live to the age of 101 in order to recoup my investment. Odds are heavily against that.

Not to mention that I would have to spend those years cooking on an electric range, which would be somewhat like living in the Southwest corner of Hell.

Insanity Reigns

Even assuming that all claims made about climate change are valid, San Diego is leading the way as to engaging in insane responses to solving the problem.

The city Council has decided that our gas stoves, water heaters and furnaces are a contributor to climate change to a degree that warrants the citizens of this city spending $18 Billion to reduce (not eliminate) the issue. That’s $18,000,000,000.00.

The council has already passed an ordinance that all new construction commercial and residential, single family and multi-family,  must be built without natural gas hookups, effective immediately.

Since we are currently straining the limit of our existing power system, and are frequently directed to use appliances only at “off peak hours,” it is unclear where we are going to get the electric power to replace the gas appliances that will not be installed in all of this new construction. Probably by having the power company run backup generating stations which are powered by… Wait for it. Natural gas.

Not to mention the tens of thousands of electric cars that are mandated by new state laws at the same time.

The City Council is also intending to pass a directive that all existing buildings, commercial and residential, multi-family and single family, must be retro fitted to eliminated the use of natural gas. They have estimated the cost, which will be borne by the owners, to be $30,000 per unit, so this plan is proving to be highly unpopular. The groundswell of unpopularity is not deterring them in the least.

Since there are, by the Council’s estimate, 60,000 buildings in the city of 1.4 million people, that comes to a conversion cost of $18 Billion, or about $13,850 per San Diego resident.

And that is to reduce, not eliminate, an unknown amount of carbon emissions, (no one even claims that such emissions have never been measured) by an unknown degree, since we are not going to quit heating our houses and water, and cooking our dinners. We’ll be heating and cooking using electricity, which is generated in large part by… Wait for it. Fossil fuels.

And they are in a hurry. They plan to mandate that the conversion be 50% completed by 2030, just seven years from now, and that it be 90% complete by 2035. They seem to be realistic enough to acknowledge that it will never achieve perfection, as they have set no date for 100% completion.

We elected these people. The question is, why?

Just So You Know

 Yes, I will use my AR-15 to defend my gas stove.  😠 😃

Rational Narrative

We received notice from San Diego Gas & Electric this week that our heating costs will “more than double” in January over what we experienced in December. This is due, they told us, to price increases in natural gas, which is in turn caused by extremely cold weather being experienced throughout the United States this winter.

SDG&E does not produce any natural gas, but purchases it on the open market from campaniles which do produce it and, in some cases, from pipeline companies.

Notice that SDG&E did not attribute any of this cost increase to inflation. This is because the government has controlled inflation and because, in any case, the government has declared that natural gas and all other forms of energy are exempt from inflation.

(Okay, I was engaging in snark there. Of course inflation is far from being controlled and prices for energy increase at the same time that prices for everything else do. The government, however, does not include energy prices when calculating inflation because they are “too volatile.” What, government computers cannot keep up with the pace at which energy prices change? They must use very old computers. Maybe beads on strings.)

Nor, we are told, is the price increase due to availability issues caused by shipping American natural gas to Europe to replace Russian natural gas which we cut off by means of sanctions. (And, of course, by blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines.)

Sending our allies in Europe into the dark ages because we don’t like Russia seems counterproductive to me, but at least we are making a lot of money out of the deal by selling gas to Europe at high prices to replace the low priced Russian gas that we won’t allow them to buy.

Why Europe doesn’t just tell us to pound sand and continue buying Russian gas is unclear. Maybe they are afraid we’ll “impound” (steal) their money the same way we “impounded” (stole) Russia’s money.

So with inflation and shortages due to export ruled out, we are left with an unusually cold winter as the reason for price increases. That cold winter, we are told, is caused by “climate change” along with warmer oceans and melting of the polar ice caps.

If you are having a hard time reconciling colder winters with warmer oceans and melting ice caps, you are not alone. You are insisting on what’s known as a “rational narrative,” which means you are definitely not a Democrat.