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NOT Really

Elections, Politics

Things like this make me want to weep — or, alternatively, start setting about me with Ye Olde Clue Batte™.

Saith the normally-rational Steve Kruiser at PJMedia:

No, Really — There’s a Silver Lining If Dems Steamroll the Midterms

Let’s say that the Democrats get their wish and get their blue wave. Hey, never underestimate that power of the combination of voter stupidity and the Magic Mail-In Ballot Machine.

Sure, everything will probably hit the cosmic toilet with the Democrats in control of Congress, but that’s actually the silver lining. 

A huge Dem victory next month could very well be a boost for the Republicans’ chances in the 2028 presidential election. The Democrats are running purely on hatred for Trump. Yeah, they’ll blah, blah, blah a bit about healthcare, but the Trump hate is really all they’re selling. 

Giving them the keys to the majority will lead to an impeachment frenzy, a lot of grandstanding, and precious little in the way of anything that looks like leadership. A couple of years of that — along with the resurrection of the J6 dead horse — will remind voters who abandoned the Dems in droves in 2024 of just why they did that. 

The problem with the above line of thinking is that it ignores the basic tenet of today’s political environment:

You never, ever, hand the keys of power to Democrats.

Let me list just a few of the reasons:

A Democrat-controlled Senate means that Trump will never be allowed to nominate conservative judges to the various benches.  We have already seen how many of the current Administration’s initiatives have been blocked by the scumbag Obama- and Biden-appointed judges.  Long-term, that dooms any chance of any Republican president’s attempts to reverse the tide of global Communism and its attendant horrors (open borders, Swamp Government, rule by bureaucrats, etc.).

I don’t share Kruiser’s belief that a Democrat-controlled House will only result in a flood of silly impeachments.  The problem with that alone is that there would be no decent legislation coming from a House of Commies and a Socialist Senate:  it would be all

  • even higher deficit government spending
  • higher taxes
  • Green (forget about more drilling, refining and nuclear power)
  • LGBTOSTFU
  • criminal-loving
  • gun-hating
  • vote-rigging
  • open-borders
  • new-and-improved USAID policy
  • weaker military capability
  • foreign policy that would be friendly to, among others, Iran, Communist China — fuck knows what they’d do about Russia and similar pustules — and the loathsome EU
  • other Marxist-driven bullshit (that I can’t be bothered to enumerate, but you get the idea:  just think of Obama policies on steroids)

…that would set the country back years, and make us more like Europe and the UK — i.e. totalitarian socialist. The only immediate recourse to the above through 2028 would be the Presidential veto and Executive Orders, but the problem with both of these, especially EOs, is that they can all be overturned by the next Socialist asshole in the Oval Office or stymied by Socialist judges.

The main problem with all this, as we’ve seen since 2015, is that most of an incoming Republican Administration’s time is taken up with undoing all the mischief that Democrats have previously inflicted on the country, before beginning to implement an agenda which would actually improve our situation.

Here’s the simple point:  there must never be another Blue Wave, no matter how attractive the “long term” prospects (which I don’t share) might appear to be.

And the only way we can ensure that this never happens is to create our own Red Wave:  not in far-off 2028, but now, right now, next week.

This is no time to engage in foolish blue-sky thinking [sic] of the Kruiser kind.  There are no silver linings and no happy times to come in the future.  There is only now, and the unfinished business of righting our national ship of state.

And we’d be incredibly stupid not to recognize that fact.

Speed Bump #2,231

Grammar Nazism

I hate it when nouns are turned into verbs (i.e. “verbing”).

I hate it just as much when verbs are turned into nouns.  In the above case, the correct expression would be:

“Netflix Set to Lay Off Hundreds of Employees…”.

Said employees would therefore be victims of a layoff.

Reminder

SHTF

Dan Bongino says that Americans should prepare for emergencies:

‘Have yourself an emergency radio, have yourself some batteries, get yourself some emergency food, get yourself a rain collection and water filtration, some filtration tablets,’ he said on Monday.  ‘Get your stuff today. Please. Do it for your family,’ Bongino added.

None of this should come as any surprise to Readers of this website — not only have I advocated for this many times in the past, I’m pretty sure that most of us have been doing this since at least Y2K (a.k.a. the scare that wasn’t).

Of course, this is just prudence and not panic;  the only people who will panic are those idiots who have made no precautionary preparations and will show up at the Super Dome clutching a Pepsi Big Gulp (#Katrina) as their sole sustenance.

Don’t believe for one moment that the Gummint is going to step up and look after you, because like all Gummint activity, such assistance will arrive late and be inadequate (if it arrives at all).

Here’s my brief 90-day checklist (add as necessary for your own situation):

  • water and filtration tools
  • food
  • guns (and ammo)
  • first-aid kit (including any prescription medications, plus vitamins and iodine tablets)
  • cash
  • sanitary supplies (soap, handwipes, disinfectant, toilet paper and paper towels etc.)
  • batteries / power inverter
  • portable generator*
  • flashlights (lots of)
  • survival tools (axe, saw, shovel and your toolbox)
  • cooking equipment (stoves, fire making, gas grills etc.)
  • large trash bags, duct tape and nitrile gloves
  • rain gear / cold weather gear, as appropriate
  • at least a half-tank of gasoline in all your cars;  3/4 or full is better.

Details on all the above can be found here and here (some repetition).

*I still don’t have one of these, and I should.  But the good ones (e.g. this model) are spendy, so I might have to raffle a gun or two to buy one.  Watch this space…

Almost Like Driving

Drive Time

Longtime Readers will know of my dislike of things that automate the way we operate machinery, whether semi-auto instead of bolt-action rifles, auto-wind over manually-wound watches, and automatic over stick shift gearboxes in cars.

Note that I’m not saying there’s much wrong with the above automated operations, but just stating a personal preference:  I like the feeling of working a rifle’s bolt action, winding a watch and driving a manual transmission.  I know that this preference puts me at odds with, well, most of the adult population of the world, but I’ve never cared much for other people’s preferences anyway.  And yes, I prefer the female body shape of Kelly Brook over that of (say) any slender supermodel, and I’m in the distinct minority there, too.

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the manual operation thing.

One of the trends in car buying these days seems to be a growing preference among collectors for cars that are… less complicated than the typical offering offered by manufacturers like Ferrari.  It seems that there’s a trend towards buying older, second-hand models that are less complicated simply because the newest models don’t offer a simpler option.  (To give just one such example:  as little as a couple of years ago, you were able to buy a low-mileage 1997 Porsche 911/993 Carrera with a stick shift for less than $100,000.  Today?  $160,000.  And this is also true of models like the Ferrari 550 Maranello manual, preferred according its pricing over the F1-transmissioned variant of the same model.)

So now you have an automatic transmission, for example, as the sole option for driving a new car, and hybrid engines (gasoline-driven engines plus battery-powered motors) are the sole propulsion choice.

I know, I know:  modern automatic transmissions change gears far more quickly than anyone could do with a stick shift, so they’re more efficient.  This assumes, of course, that efficient gear changing is the sine qua non of pleasurable driving, and that the loss of control thereby is of no consequence.  Well, quick gear changes are great if you’re racing on a track, and automatic transmissions are preferable to stick shifts if you’re driving in heavy, stop-start traffic during the morning commute.  I’m not going to argue that point, because the truth is self-evident.

Anyway, Porsche once decreed (with typical Teutonic arrogance) that they would do away with manual transmissions altogether for their new 911 models — if you wanted to drive a stick shift, they sniffed, you could drive the much-inferior 718 (Boxster and Cayenne) instead.  And then they were astonished when sales of the 718 outstripped the 911, despite the cheaper 718’s inferior engines and inefficient manual shift operation.

Speaking of arrogance:  Ferrari noted the above trend, so they decided to offer a manual transmission in their latest model, the 12Cilindri (Twelve Cylinders*), as the “Manuale”.  In typical Ferrari fashion, they’re only going to make a few (1,499) of this model, to drive up the price and desirability thereof among Ferrari groupies and the Stupid Rich [considerable overlap].

But did anyone think that they’d put an actual manual gearbox into the 12?  Silly rabbits:  they’ve overlaid a “drive by wire” operation onto their standard automatic transmission — in other words, making it a transparent SIM gearbox that feels like you’re rowing through the gears, but aren’t, really.  And only for the first six gears, withal.  After that, the auto gearbox takes over (at more than 196 mph).  (196 mph?  WTF?)

And needless to say, the fake manual gearbox isn’t cheap:  the Manuale costs over $200,000 more than the regular 12Cilindri’s $600,000+.

So how does the Manuale drive?  Let’s have Jason Cammisa tell us.  (Like most of Jason’s videos, it’s excellent and well worth the viewing.)

And by the way, the 12Cilindri is pretty good-looking and produces (an unusable) 800+ horsepower, so it’s not all bad.  And it’s not a Duracell-hybridized engine either.

Still, under “Corporate Greed and Cynicism” in the dictionary you’ll find the Ferrari 12Cilindri Manuale.

Vai via.

*Ferrari went with the alphanumeric 12Cilindri, because Dodici Cilindri (“doh-deechi chilindree”) is almost unpronounceable to non-Italian speakers, especially Americans — their primary market — and Ferrari couldn’t trademark it either because it’s a generic term.