In today's episode of "Help, Help, I'm Being Oppressed", this might be the stupidest freaking thing you ever saw. Just when I think their childish and self-destructive ways can't get any worse, the conservative clowns top themselves. Via Hunter Walker at Business Insider:
Pickup trucks customized to spew black smoke into the air are quickly becoming the newest weapon in the culture wars.
"Coal Rollers" are diesel trucks modified with chimneys and equipment that can force extra fuel into the engine causing dark black smoke to pour out of the chimney stacks. These modifications are not new, but as Slate's Dave Weigel pointed out on Thursday, "rolling coal" has begun to take on a political dimension with pickup drivers increasingly viewing their smokestacks as a form of protest against environmentalists and Obama administration emissions regulations.
Last month, Vocativ noted many coal rollers focus their fumes on "nature nuffies," or people who drive hybrids, and "rice burners," or Japanese-made cars.
"The feeling around here is that everyone who drives a small car is a liberal," a roller named Ryan told Vocativ. "I rolled coal on a Prius once just because they were tailing me."
These sends several messages, chief among them: 1) you're stupid and 2) your children's asthmatic lungs thank you, you morons. "What? I never knew diesel smoke could make my kid stop breathing! Well, golly!"
Dave Weigel at Slate:
Despite the very public, check-this-out nature of coal rolling, the practitioners I talked to were sometimes reluctant to appear in the media.One big reason: The EPA was cracking down on devices that allowed truck drivers to remove diesel particulate filters. Coal rollers spoke in worried tones about Edge, the Utah company that took a $500,000 hit for selling more than 9,000 of the units, which allowed drivers to improve their mileage at the cost of tons of new particulate emissions.
“I talked to a guy today who was almost crying about it,” one seller told me. “He said, I only get 10-12 miles to a gallon now. Before the filter, I was getting 20 mpg, and a whole lot more horsepower.”
Rolling coal is different and totally legal process from removing the filter. And yet it has everything to do with the EPA. It has everything to do with Obama. It has everything to do with the tax credits that go to hybrids and electric cars.
“I run into a lot of people that really don’t like Obama at all,” said one seller of stack kits from Wisconsin. “If he’s into the environment, if he’s into this or that, we’re not. I hear a lot of that. To get a single stack on my truck—that’s my way of giving them the finger. You want clean air and a tiny carbon footprint? Well, screw you.”
Well, good for you! Just don't ask for any FEMA money when your house is flattened, mmkay?
