Permanent Daylight Savings Time in America? NFW!

It's hard to imagine a flaming liberal like me agreeing with the NY Post on anything. But here is a notable example. America’s already rejected permanent daylight saving time — for good reason

The US Senate [unanimously] just voted to make millions of kids go to school before sunrise for months at a time, via a bill to put the whole country on permanent daylight saving time. That problem is just one of many with the idea of eliminating the twice-a-year clock resets.

Indeed, we already tried it, back in the ’70s — and changed our minds.

Yes, tens of millions of Americans could get another hour of sleep one night of the year — but, as a result, they would have to go to work or school in the dark and cold for four months. Alternatively, other millions of Americans would lose 240 days of beautiful spring and summer evenings.

Those would be the effects of proposals nationally and in many states to install either permanent daylight time (keeping summer DST throughout winter) or permanent standard time (using winter’s standard time all year). While these options may seem enticing, both have major flaws.

This article sums up my feelings perfectly.

I love DST. Love that extra hour of summertime daylight in the evening.

Permanent DST? I say NFW! Send our children to wait for their morning school bus in the dark? We tried this before for a year in 1974 in the interest of saving energy and hated it. Why should it be different this time?

The New York Times also covered this story. I have quoted some of its paragraphs below.

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, rose on the Senate floor on Tuesday to speak in favor of his bill, called the Sunshine Protection Act, which would end the practice of turning clocks back one hour to standard time every November, making daylight saving time, which currently begins in March, last throughout the year.

“One has to ask themselves after a while: Why do we keep doing it?” Mr. Rubio said, adding, “The majority of the American people’s preference is just to stop the back-and-forth changing.”

When he moved for the bill to pass by unanimous consent, not a single senator objected. But some audibly celebrated.

“Yes!” exclaimed Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, who flashed a big smile and clenched both her fists in triumph as she presided over the chamber.

After reading this last paragraph, I immediately started screaming obscenities at my phone. (It didn't listen.) 

Why? Am I just a madman?

Sinema was MIA last fall when we had some momentous occasions in Congress and in our nation. Under the guise of the big lie that The Former Guy spread about him losing the 2020 presidential election due to "massive fraud", Republican controlled state legislatures across the country adopted revised voting laws that they hoped would make it more difficult for minority voters to vote.

This is bad enough. But much more scary is the installation of Republican partisans who could overturn an election result they don't like. This may affect the upcoming 2022 midterm election and possibly the 2024 presidential election where Trump has indicated a will to run again. Just wondering...if indeed Trump won both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections as many Republican voters believe, wouldn't he be running for a constitutionally illegal third term in 2024? Nobody seems to mention this.

Among many attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, Trump placed a phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffenspurger asking him to find 11,780 votes to flip a Georgia victory from Biden to Trump.

Raffenspurger is a Republican and likely voted for Trump. But in not wanting to betray the trust of Georgia citizens who elected him, he not only refused his request (order?), but also secretly recorded the phone call to document what happened. The recently passed Georgia election laws by Republicans would sideline Raffenspurger and a future request by Trump or somebody like him could find a Republican partisan willing to overturn the election results - legally!

When elections can be rigged at will, we no longer have a functioning democracy!

Back to Sinema, the only way to stop this nationalized vote tampering on the state level would have been to pass a federal voting rights package pushed by Democrats (which also required a way around the filibuster.) Sinema (along with Joe Manchin) refused to vote for this vital legislation to try and protect our democracy.

But this Arizona Senator on the issue of Permanent DST not only voted for the bill but applauded afterwards.  Perhaps someone should point out to her that Arizona (with the exception of Navajo Nation) has always opted out of DST on a year round basis! Arizona with its often extreme summer daytime summer heat understandably doesn't want to delay the cooling sundown by an hour.

So because of ignorance or just plain indifference, Sinema not only failed to support legislation to try and preserve our democracy, she voted for permanent DST, something most Arizona voters are clearly against. Who is she representing in Congress? This is a question whose answer has so far eluded us!