There is only one reason I would ever run for President.
My platform would literally have a single plank in it.
This is my whole speech:
“My fellow Americans, I swear to abolish the worst practice the United States has adopted during the modern era—the one responsible for at least a 6% increase in traffic accidents and workplace accidents, an 8% increase in strokes, and a 24% increase in heart attacks. The practice that annually and negatively impacts the mental health of all our students and their test scores.
If elected, I promise to end Daylight Saving Time immediately!”
Yeah. I hate Daylight Saving Time that much.
I hate getting up in the dark. I hate walking the dogs in the dark. I hate taking spider webs—sometimes with the spiders STILL IN THEM—in the face while walking in the dark.
Getting up at 5 AM is not unreasonable. It might be a little early, but most of the year, it’s around sunrise (unless you live in Greenland or Antarctica).
During DST, getting up at 5 AM is like getting up at FOUR FUCKING AM. That is not reasonable. No other diurnal mammal gets up that early. Even the chipper AF squirrels are still sleeping, okay?
Getting up at 4 AM messes with your circadian rhythm. Screwing with your circadian rhythm leads to depression, obesity, and diabetes.
After Presidents Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted DST during their respective wars, most states recoiled and said, “Fuck you very much, NO.” They happily went back to sleeping until 5 AM with the squirrels.
It wasn’t until President Nixon (the most corrupt, anti-science President until Donald Trump) that our national nightmare returned to plague us (unless you lived in Arizona, Hawaii, or Indiana). Initially, a permanent DST was enacted, with supporters touting savings on energy spending.
Then Americans started taking spider webs to the face, crashing cars, and feeling miserable. They also bought MORE gas. DST was quickly limited to spring and summer months.
Earlier this year, another anti-science Republican attempted to make us permanently miserable. Senator Marco Rubio introduced the so-called “Sunshine Conservation Act,” which sounds like it would be a progressive piece of legislation promoting solar farms, but haha, no, of course not. It was a bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent, even though more Americans prefer year-round Standard Time.
Not that Rubio ever cared about what his constituents wanted or the truth.
The bill failed.
Hopefully Marco Rubio’s re-election bid fails next year as well, because the man plans on running for President again one day. Like his senatorial platform, Rubio’s presidential platform will be anti-mask, anti-environment, anti-gun control, forced-birth, and, in case you didn’t already see him as a monster…
He’ll promise to make Daylight Savings Time permanent.
Please donate to his opponent, Val Demmings.
Oh no! I love daylight savings. In my area not only is it light at 5 a.m. but it’s also light at 9 p.m. during the best part of summer. I think we should abolish winter with it’s long dark hours. Starting tomorrow it will be dark at 4:30 pm here. Counting down the days until March! 🙂
Oh, summer mornings are plenty light–around the solstice. But not around the equinoxes. Every March when we change to DST, my dogs refuse to get out of bed because they know it’s really 4 AM and that’s just too early.
I agree COMPLETELY and have posted my own anti-DST blogs in the past. The Sunshine Protection Act would be a fine idea if it promoted permanent Standard time. Either way, it’s a pain in the ass to change our clocks twice a year.
You’d think that a party that tries to define itself as pro-business would hate the lost production time. On the other hand, now that the GOP has decided to become the pro-death party, it makes sense.
Over here we very much would like to just move to Atlantic time permanently because we are at the eastern extreme of Eastern time, so the winter brings lovely moments like THE SUN GOING DOWN AT FOUR IN THE FUCKING AFTERNOON.
But I am definitely Team End the Tine Change. I no longer want to spring forward or fall backward. I just want to know that my cat isn’t going to be extra cranky due to not getting fed at the right time, the time her tummy says, “feed me,” and not an arbitrary construction foisted on us by a delusional, paranoid, alcoholic racist.
I’m okay with the sun going down early. I just want it to come up early also.
When the eager-beaver dogs refuse to get out of bed for a morning walk, you know DST is ludicrous.
Yes! You have my vote! I am also a 5 a.m. riser…just leave the damn time alone and stop messing with my and my dogs bodies clock!
Standard Time Forever!!!
WA and also OR and CA and 15 other states voted for year-round daylight savings time, but the US gov’t. has to agree. I hate the early sunsets (4:40 in Seattle tomorrow), but still, I think we should go natural and stick with standard all year long. No one likes the back-and-forth. (71% of Americans don’t want to keep moving the clock in spring and fall, though they are divided on whether they prefer standard or daylight saving time.)
I was seriously ticked at my state for agreeing to go along with that stupid Sunshine law.
Having moved to a country with year-end standard time, I can attest that not having a time change twice a year makes life much more pleasant. I do miss long summer evenings (Cape Town gets them anyway, as it’s further south, but in Joburg the sun sets no later than 7pm) and the insanely early summer sunrises do make sleeping in impossible. (South Africa only has one time zone and should probably have at least two but that’s a debate for another day.) But all in all, I’ll take those inconveniences over the challenges you’ve described above.
And even though I don’t live in the U.S. anymore, I STILL hate the time change because yesterday it put the U.S. an extra hour behind SA (7 hours behind for the east coast, rather than a much more manageable and easy-to-calculate 6 hours). I find it so much harder to schedule family calls every year when this happens. I guess for this selfish reason I would rather the U.S. be on DST all the time, haha.
Oops, “year-end” should be “year-round” (obvi).
That is the other shitty thing about changing time–having to recalculate when you can call the rest of the world. In our case, it’s usually Hawaii, but when I worked in international sales, it was a pain in the neck!
Summers in New Hampshire the sun does rise really, really early. You need blackout curtains.
Yeah, we got dark curtains for our bedroom and I’m really glad we did.
Spain also does the daylight savings! I don’t like the winter timing because it gets dark so early, but if we didn’t change, then dawn would be at 9 am…
Once I also took a spiderweb to the face, but it was at night, in a park in Suzhou… My hand brushed the spider and it felt HUGE. I still shiver if I think about it!
Yes. I still remember the orb weaver I took in the face, too. You never forget!
Hear, hear! Madame President you can count on my support. Your platform is perfection, says a very tired woman who despises DST.
Thank you, thank you! Now that the midwest is behind me, we can’t possibly lose.
Totally agree with this, loathe all the hour change rubbish (here in the UK, we call it “BRITISH” Summer time – the arrogance! I was in my late 20s before I discovered lots of countries do it) It was nastily foggy here in the UK too this morning.. Really love your blog btw, reading blogs is one way of staying sane in the horror of a damp and chilly winter
Rubbish! Yes, the perfect word for it.
Oh, thank you. Very kind of you to leave a nice compliment–helps me cope with the dry as a desiccant pack weather here. And the fires and smoke.
That’s nice to read
Can you please run for president so that I can vote for you and we can end the unholy tradition of daylight savings time? I also HATE it and it really screwed up my sleep for weeks. I think I’m just barely adjusting.
I loved that WAPO article you shared as well. Really? Reinstating daylight savings time for energy purposes??? WTF. It probably uses more energy since there’s so much damn darkness in the morning.
Sorry for the late response! Better late than never? haha
Being late due to sleep deprivation is utterly understandable.
Daylight Saving Time has no redeeming features. It is a loathsome scourge.