The New low (I.) Q. Republicans and Ted Cruz

Cheimoon

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Someone in Toyota’s PR department is going to get fired today.
Does that have to do with the location of Toyota factories by any chance? I think they have a major one in Kentucky for example.

Yes, I have a Toyota, if that wasn't clear yet. :D
 

WI_Red

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Does that have to do with the location of Toyota factories by any chance? I think they have a major one in Kentucky for example.

Yes, I have a Toyota, if that wasn't clear yet. :D
I sure does. I think another Twitter thread I saw listed the major plants and included were ones in KY and IN. We had some massive car plants in AL as well, including Toyota.

Edit: We have 2, but my wife is looking to replace her Corolla and after reading about this she has crossed a new corolla off the list.
 

Cheimoon

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I sure does. I think another Twitter thread I saw listed the major plants and included were ones in KY and IN. We had some massive car plants in AL as well, including Toyota.

Edit: We have 2, but my wife is looking to replace her Corolla and after reading about this she has crossed a new corolla off the list.
It sucks, cause after we had gone through our list of conditions, I think our remaining options were Toyota, Honda, and Hyunday, and then really only a Toyota Camry Hybrid worked for us given the cost of the equivalent Hondas. But I assume our next car (in 5-10 years, hopefully) will be full-electric, with a completely different set of choices.

I feel lazy and entitled saying this, but it's much nicer to be an ethically aware consumer if there are actually ethically acceptable choices that meet our requirements...
 

nimic

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I feel lazy and entitled saying this, but it's much nicer to be an ethically aware consumer if there are actually ethically acceptable choices that meet our requirements...
It's pretty easy in Norway, at least if you live in or around an urban area. The government has set a goal that by 2025 no new fossil fuel cars will be sold in Norway. And that's a centre-right government which is very likely going to be replaced by the centre-left this fall. Already a majority of new cars are electric or hybrid. Here are the top 10 new cars sold in May of this year, for example:

1. Toyota Rav4 (hybrid)
2. Volvo XC40 (mostly electric, some hybrid)
3. Volkswagen ID.4 (electric)
4. Tesla Model 3 (electric)
5. Audi e-tron (electric)
6. Mercedes-Benz EQC (electric)
7. Polestar 2 (electric)
8. Nissan Leaf (electric)
9. Peugeot 2008 (mostly electric)
10. Volvo XC60 (electric/hybrid)

I'm honestly just sad they stopped making the e-Golf, but apparently Norway accounted for most of the sales. At least they replaced it with the ID.3, which might be my next car after my current 2005 Golf.
 

Cheimoon

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It's pretty easy in Norway, at least if you live in or around an urban area. The government has set a goal that by 2025 no new fossil fuel cars will be sold in Norway. And that's a centre-right government which is very likely going to be replaced by the centre-left this fall. Already a majority of new cars are electric or hybrid. Here are the top 10 new cars sold in May of this year, for example:

1. Toyota Rav4 (hybrid)
2. Volvo XC40 (mostly electric, some hybrid)
3. Volkswagen ID.4 (electric)
4. Tesla Model 3 (electric)
5. Audi e-tron (electric)
6. Mercedes-Benz EQC (electric)
7. Polestar 2 (electric)
8. Nissan Leaf (electric)
9. Peugeot 2008 (mostly electric)
10. Volvo XC60 (electric/hybrid)
Yeah, electric is going to be totally common, available, and affordable when we need a new car, and it will open up a lot of new options. :) Although there are very few European cars available here, so from that list, probably only the Tesla and Nissan would be options for us. Not the Toyota, because we don't want an SUV (unnecessarily big, so uses more energy than needed), and not a full-out luxury car like a Mercedes,or Audi cause we're not going to pay for that. Funnily, Toyota to my knowledge doesn't actually have electric cars yet. I think they have some in development now, but may have anticipated a market for hydrogen cars - although I think I read that that's already happening in Japan actually.

Anyway, all that to say that, I'll have alternatives in case Toyota has really joined the dark side. It's hard to say who's wrong or right though. If those states turn Democratic all of a sudden (haha!), Toyota will suddenly be considered to be sponsoring a democratic resurgence in the US mid-west. And the US car industry in general isn't really a shining light of progressive thinking (absolutely not, rather), so I guess I'll just have to hope some of the Japanese and Korean brands are well-behaved and produce durable cars.
 

nimic

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The US car industry in general isn't really a shining light of progressive thinking (absolutely not, rather), so I guess I'll just have to hope some of the Japanese and Korean brands are well-behaved and produce durable cars.
Funnily, #11 on that list would have been American, with the Ford Mustang Mach-E. Apparently it's Ford's first (fully) electric car, which honestly speaks to what you were saying, when many other companies are years into their experimentation with electric cars.
 

Cheimoon

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Funnily, #11 on that list would have been American, with the Ford Mustang Mach-E. Apparently it's Ford's first (fully) electric car, which honestly speaks to what you were saying, when many other companies are years into their experimentation with electric cars.
Yeah, they've been postponing taking electric cars seriously as long as they could, counting on Americans to not care, because policy is weak, gas is cheap, and distances are long. (Or so goes the myth; cause in practice, I am sure the majority of Americans also make relatively short commute and other local trips 99% of the time, which any electric car could easily cover.) Even now that Ford is going into it for real, I think they simply bought VW's ID3 underlay for most of their regular cars, to try and catch up. They're also building an electric F150 though, which is North America's most-sold pick-up truck, and in general they're all developing and releasing electric cars now.
 

WI_Red

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With how even electric cars has become a politically divisive subject here I can see us being one of the last countries to significantly shift. If you look at the congress members represented in the donations list I bet it would be a who's who of climate change deniers.
 

WI_Red

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Is there even anything real in that FDA comment?
Depends on how you define “approved”. All 3 vaccines have EUA approval but not standard approval. Standard approval takes years to wind its way through bureaucracy.
 

Cheimoon

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Depends on how you define “approved”. All 3 vaccines have EUA approval but not standard approval. Standard approval takes years to wind its way through bureaucracy.
Oh, temp approval like in Canada and the UK? So a total stretch like the brown-shirts comment; no surprises there.
 

WI_Red

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Oh, temp approval like in Canada and the UK? So a total stretch like the brown-shirts comment; no surprises there.
Yep. The delta variant will be making its way down to Georgia soon and her constituents may not like the results. I would bet her county is one of the least vaccinated in the country.
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actually I checked. Her district has the highest infection rate and lowest vaccination rate in the state. Shocking!

as an aside, this is a fantastic site from a data visualization perspective.

https://geographicinsights.iq.harvard.edu/vaccineuscongress
 

Cheimoon

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Yep. The delta variant will be making its way down to Georgia soon and her constituents may not like the results. I would bet her county is one of the least vaccinated in the country.
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actually I checked. Her district has the highest infection rate and lowest vaccination rate in the state. Shocking!

as an aside, this is a fantastic site from a data visualization perspective.

https://geographicinsights.iq.harvard.edu/vaccineuscongress
The politicization of health and medicine is such an incredible thing. Healthcare I can get. I mean, I deeply disagree (the data do all point in one direction: the benefits of universal healthcare), but at least there is an economic principle involved to some extent. But health and medicine...?!
 

WI_Red

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hands down the best thing I have ever seen on twitter

You can see MTG's will to live exit her body at 11s

 
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Dr. Dwayne

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Please tell me y’all have seen this “FreedomPhone” shit that the Candace Owens of the world are talking about :lol:

$500 for a $120 rebranded Chinese phone that doesn’t actually do anything the Conservative shills say it does.

Damn if that isn’t poetic.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...phone-has-a-breathtaking-amount-of-red-flags/
First I've seen it.

The MAGA crowd will love it. It's almost funny how much they get taken for by the grifters they worship.
 

WI_Red

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First I've seen it.

The MAGA crowd will love it. It's almost funny how much they get taken for by the grifters they worship.
and the best part is that it likely has a backdoor for the CCP to scrape data.

also hilarious is that eternal dumbass Candace Owens sent a tweet saying her whole family had switched to these amazing phones. Only problem is that the tweet has a "sent from my iPhone" stamp on it.
 

Dr. Dwayne

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and the best part is that it likely has a backdoor for the CCP to scrape data.

also hilarious is that eternal dumbass Candace Owens sent a tweet saying her whole family had switched to these amazing phones. Only problem is that the tweet has a "sent from my iPhone" stamp on it.
:lol:
 

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and the best part is that it likely has a backdoor for the CCP to scrape data.

also hilarious is that eternal dumbass Candace Owens sent a tweet saying her whole family had switched to these amazing phones. Only problem is that the tweet has a "sent from my iPhone" stamp on it.
:lol:
 

Sky1981

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It sucks, cause after we had gone through our list of conditions, I think our remaining options were Toyota, Honda, and Hyunday, and then really only a Toyota Camry Hybrid worked for us given the cost of the equivalent Hondas. But I assume our next car (in 5-10 years, hopefully) will be full-electric, with a completely different set of choices.

I feel lazy and entitled saying this, but it's much nicer to be an ethically aware consumer if there are actually ethically acceptable choices that meet our requirements...
To be fair. Japan wasnt given much of a choice.

The world is a playground for us president. A few that dare to defy them seldom ends well
 

nimic

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"Nobody elected Mark [Zuckerberg] or Jack [Dorsey] to be the arbiters of truth in America," declares a man over a chorus of triumphant horns. "Yet they still thought it was OK to ban a sitting president from their platforms. If they censor the president, they'll censor anyone. Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg censored MLK or Abraham Lincoln. The course of history would have been altered forever!"
Great choice, comparing being banned from Facebook with two people who were assassinated.

Also, I'm pretty sure the media censored MLK on a daily basis.
 

RedTiger

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Please tell me y’all have seen this “FreedomPhone” shit that the Candace Owens of the world are talking about :lol:

$500 for a $120 rebranded Chinese phone that doesn’t actually do anything the Conservative shills say it does.

Damn if that isn’t poetic.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...phone-has-a-breathtaking-amount-of-red-flags/
I said this @2cents last year but I'm serious, these people are there for the taking. They are GIVING their money away. Is it really morally bad if I want to grift them out of their delusional rightwing money?