West Coast, Messed Coast™: You're Driving an Un-Woke 'Killing Machine'

Welcome to the West Coast, Messed Coast™ report, where this week we discover that many of us are driving "killing machines," and another Democrat has left the crazy party because of gas stoves. Don't be confused by the crazy; by the time this week's update is over you will understand all.

Killing machines

All along the West Coast, Messed Coast™ blue mayors and activist planners, who have been treated to fact-finding trips to Copenhagen, have adopted radical traffic policies that basically boil down to this basic tenet: bikes good, cars bad, trucks really bad.

Over decades, their we-hate-cars views evolved into a pitch to get down to zero fatalities inside of a given area, necessitating fewer cars. This program goes by different names, but "Vision Zero" is a popular one.

Those programs exist all along the West Coast, Messed Coast™. It's why these politicos demand that taxpayers spend more on bike lanes than filling potholes. The skyrocketing numbers of cars needing new front-end alignments in San Diego's Pacific Beach, for example, is trending up.

The professional planner class changed the language of the planners' we-hate-cars programs to turn those opposed to their freedom-sucking, megalomaniacal, socialist plans into people who are OK with death.

But this week, we got an update on the planners' nomenclature. We are now driving "killing machines."

The Economist concluded in its latest edition that big cars and trucks beat small cars and trucks every time and that instead of making small cars safer, we should wonder why "big American cars are killing machines," as they said in the subject line of my weekly email.

America has a killer-car problem. Its roads are nearly twice as dangerous as the rich-world average. It doesn’t have to be that way https://t.co/lpSdpz6YSV pic.twitter.com/DUqUxq6F6t
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) September 5, 2024

The magazine culled through data from millions of car wrecks to conclude that the laws of physics are real.

[The] analysis shows that, although bigger cars protect their occupants, for every life that the heaviest 1% of SUVs and trucks save in a crash more than a dozen are lost in smaller vehicles.

Nowhere in the story does it conclude that the left should reconsider CAFE standards to make smaller cars heavier and safer. Indeed, here was the takeaway:

[T]he odds that carmakers curb their heaviest, most dangerous vehicles are slim. American car-buyers value safety, but mainly for themselves, not society as a whole.

You don't say? Equity is at stake, you killer.

Tortilla politics

This year, three California state legislative Democrats, all female and all minorities, made a public stand against their political party's radical ideas. The latest one occurred this week when retired lawmaker Gloria Romero, the former California Senate majority leader, tossed her Democrat creds and joined the Republican Party to "make America great again."

"It is terrifying to see how language has been modified so that, as a feminist and a former professor … I would be condemned for saying that I can define a woman and distinguish between biological sex and gender identity," Romero said at a Sacramento news conference.

She lampooned the Democrats's Green New Deal policies by taking a shot at California's efforts to outlaw gas stoves. As a Latina, "we can't cook tortillas on an electric range."

Latinos are flocking to the Republican Party. They've had enough of the Democrats' extremism - especially on 'climate.'

As @GloriaJRomero said today: "we can't cook our tortillas on an electric range!" pic.twitter.com/q1VCQbX7PM
— steve hilton (@SteveHiltonx) September 5, 2024

Romero's not the only one talking about how radical California Democrats have become. Last June, the West Coast, Messed Coast™ report highlighted State Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), who said "wasn't going to stand by and let her own party go easy on people who buy children for sex because they don't want to put more black and brown men in prison."

State Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil announced she was switching parties in late August because she was sick of the Democrats hug-a-thug crime policies.

Welcome to sanity, ladies.

San Fran mayor learns city is lawless hellhole

San Francisco Mayor London Breed only now just discovered her city is a lawless dystopia when 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall was shot in the chest in broad daylight in Union Square.

This afternoon, there was an attempted robbery in Union Square involving San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall and he was shot.

SFPD was on scene immediately and an arrest of the shooter was made.

My thoughts are with Ricky and his family at this time.

We will…
— London Breed (@LondonBreed) September 1, 2024

Breed also announced that she was going to the hospital to see if she could scrub in to surgery to make sure the Niner's star rookie survived her city.

Fox News reports that the teen who pulled the trigger in the apparent robbery attempt is very, very sorry for jacking up the player, nearly killing him, and possibly ruining his football career. As it is, Pearsall is out for at least four weeks.

The shooter, who came to the city to steal other peoples' stuff, was armed with a semi-automatic pistol but is, his attorney claimed, "a remorseful... young boy."

"A probation officer recommended the teen stay in custody and be transferred to his home county of San Joaquin, where he has another matter pending," reports WINY Radio (emphasis added).

Not only do sports agents need to check taxes liabilities in Democrat cities to protect clients' assets, but now they have to check the crime stats to see how long their clients may live.

Fallen icons

Dan Walters writes a devastating column on how far Gavin Newsom's star has fallen in his own state after his disastrous dalliance in national politics.

[A]s he returns to gubernatorial duties and reality, Newsom is finding that his status in California has also taken a beating.
A poll the Public Policy Institute of California took in June found that 62% of adults believe the state is headed in the wrong direction and only 44% approve of Newsom’s performance as governor.

Call ended

When my oldest princess was in high school, there came a day when I said in the car on the way home, "Hey, can I borrow your phone?" I drove to our bank, put her phone in our safe deposit box, and there it stayed for days.

Instead of using the phone for safety reasons, she spent her days sending endless text messages to friends during school hours.

That was years ago. Now, West Coast, Messed Coast™ schools are coming up with phone rules because, it turns out, phones are distracting.

After Santa Barbara schools led the way, requiring students to turn off their phones and put them away in a "cell phone hotel" in front of the class, California is following suit with cell phone plans.

Washington has received "guidance" from the state schools chief to come up with plans for cell phone use, and it's as woke as you could imagine.

Superintendent Chris Reykdal suggests that any plans cellphone must include "equity" considerations, even though the superintendent acknowledges nearly all students have access to cell phones. He wants students to have "equitable access to technology" and therefore all students should have to use the crappy laptops the schools provide, "to ensure all students can participate" instead of using their own cell phones.

Oregon's governor, the unfortunately-named authoritarian Tina Kotek, wants to devise a top-down, statewide program... for equity's sake.

Liberalism is a mind virus.