As my Readers all know, I’m not a fan of electric cars, especially the mini-ecowagons like the Prius.
But what if your neck-snapping torque monster electric engine resides not in an ugly box or the industrial Tesla design, but in something more to an old car lover’s heart?
Ex-Bandmate Knob supplies the answer, sending me this review. Go ahead, make your day for a little over a quarter of an hour. Just ignore the silly pajama pants.
All I can say is that it has me thinking…
Over the past weekend I watched Trumbo, the story of the Marxist screenwriter blacklisted by Hollywood during the Red Scare back in the 1950s. To say that I watched it with a jaundiced eye would be a very big understatement, because I suspected (just from the trailer) that the movie would just be one big blowjob for both Dalton Trumbo and his merry little band of Commiesymps who infested Hollywood back then.
And it was. Needless to say, the movie made villains of the conservatives who opposed the Marxist infiltration: people like John Wayne and Hedda Hopper in particular, Wayne because Wayne, and Hopper because she had a son serving in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. Of course Wayne was made out to be a bully and Hopper a vindictive bitch — and the Senators and Congressmen who haled the Commies in front of the Senate and House Un-American Committee (HUAC) were depicted as ideological purists who saw Communists behind every bush — even though, in the case of Hollywood, there were Commies behind every bush at the time.
Of course, much was made of the fact that being a Communist wasn’t actually illegal (then, and now), and Trumbo made a great show of this being a First Amendment issue — which it was — and how these Commies all wanted to improve America, but of course there were evil right-wingers like Wayne, Joe McCarthy and HUAC harassing them at every turn.
The execution of the traitors Julius and Ethel Rosenberg got a little puff piece in the movie, which didn’t — couldn’t — actually say they weren’t not guilty of treason espionage, so it was brushed over with the throwaway that it was the first execution for esionage in peace time, as though peace time should give espionage a pass. And if that wasn’t enough, the Rosenberg children were paraded around as sympathy magnets — as they still are — because Communists have no problem using children to serve their own purposes.
Anyway, it all ended well because a few courageous moviemakers flouted the blacklist and finally posted Trumbo’s name in the screenwriting credits for Exodus and Spartacus.
Which brings me to my main point. I think we can all agree that blacklists are iniquitous — essentially, blacklists mandate the suppression of people’s livelihoods just for holding unpopular opinions or beliefs. It’s a good thing that Trumbo never wrote the word “nigger”, “queer” or “lesbo” in any of his screenplays, or else his work would be on another blacklist, this time drawn up by the humorless and wokey censors that are everywhere prevalent in show business, academia, government and corporations. (That these sensitive, censorious souls are proud to call themselves Communists — I’m sorry, democratic socialists or anti-fascists — is an occasion for mirth, irony and satire, but of course ideologues, Marxists most of all, are characterized by a singular lack of a sense of humor.)
So here we are, in a full circle: people are denied consideration for employment for their political beliefs; employers get rid of people with contrary political beliefs; and institutions are being forced to implement policies that parrot the “party line” or The Narrative (take your pick).
But here’s the essential difference between the 1950s-era blacklist and that of the 2010s. When people fought back against Communism encroachment into the American polity and culture, it wasn’t because they were “fascists” or “right-wingers”; it was because the truths of life under Communism were everywhere to be seen: gulags and the KGB in the Soviet Union, poverty, murder and corruption in socialist Third World countries, and rampant misery in all — all — the countries behind the Iron Curtain. There was a very good reason to prevent Communism from taking hold here.
Now? There are no examples of actual “fascism” in America, and to any Black person from the 1880s through the 1950s, the wokeist accusations of modern-day “systemic racism” would cause loud laughter and a shaking of the head. The only ills that modern-day Communism would seek to cure are largely imaginary, a product of a mindset that demands “safe spaces”, “freedom from hate” and “Black(-only) Lives Matter”.
One thing that does interest me, purely as an intellectual exercise: would the late Dalton Trumbo agree with what’s going on with the modern-day blacklist? If he didn’t — assuming he could see the parallels between his predicament in the 1950s with “wrongthinkers” of today — I would hope that he’d employ the same passionate arguments and his legendary scorn against today’s blacklist as he did for his own.
If, however, Trumbo didn’t come out against today’s blacklist and even supported its aims, then I would suggest that his blacklisting in the 1950s was fully justified.
From sunny Seffrica comes this lovely story.
Executive summary: three choirboys run into a church waving guns and try to appropriate the entire congregation’s cash. Only problem: the church in question is located in a deeply conservative part of the country, and one of the congregants is an ex-cop. Result: two choirboys dead, one possibly wounded.
You may now applaud.
And from the comments to the article comes this priceless observation:
Note the upvote : downvote ratio.
Before you read Teh Headlines below, here’s a little pick-me-up.
…looks like that “assimilation” thing is working well for the Krauts.
…somebody explain to me why punishment for a crime like this shouldn’t include flaying before execution.
…this is me, wearing Sarah Hoyt’s shocked face.
…man, I didn’t know that Trump has 60 million campaign workers.
…and I’ll believe that poll, as long as “Do you think Blacks are racist?” was one of the questions.
…joins Mandela, far too late, in that great Murdering Bastards Club In The Sky.
…who? Oh yeah, the guy who’s going to lose an election by a larger margin than George McGovern.
…let’s start more modestly by canceling stupid.
…wrong as always, Rather, you lying Commie cocksucker.
…the only thing newsworthy about this one is that it wasn’t Nicholas Cage.
…I know, I know: this item no good without pitchurs:
Not quite zero, but close.
Here’s an example of “studies” that just set my hair on fire:
The LEAST reliable used cars revealed
Warrantywise has published data from its Reliability Index for older cars
A minimum of 100 examples of each car is needed to provide a reliability score
…but here’s where the turd hits the punchbowl:
It measures reliability based on the volume and cost of repairs to vehicles
Including cost of repairs means that.. wait for it… cars like Bentley and Audi are going to fall to the bottom of the list, regardless.
Here’s the scenario:
But in terms of actual (instead of cost-weighted) reliability, your Dacia was in the shop ten times, compared to the Audi’s twice.
I’m not saying that’s what happened in the study (I don’t have access to the raw data), but that’s the problem when you add irrelevant factors to an equation.
The real problem lies with the title. If Warrantywise had called their study “Total Cost Of Post-Warranty Ownership”, it would have given the output a better foundation.
Or if they were going to stick with reliability, they should have ignored cost and instead stressed weighting factors of “frequency of breakdown” and “magnitude of failure” (brake lights fail, no big deal; transmission dies, much more serious). That, at least, would have given prospective buyers a clue.
All that said, I’d still get one of these (with only 12,000 miles usage)
…over a poxy Mitsubishi anything.
(See what I did there? About the same thing as Warrantywise did. It’s called “bias”.)
Anyway: if you can afford to buy it, you should be able to afford to maintain it.
And can ignore silly studies.
As the Left ramps up its little reindeer games, expect more of this kind of thing:
“As we’re walking down passing Fourth Street, a blue car just come swerving out into the middle of the street almost runs over a bunch of protesters and everybody around starts like smacking the car trying to get him to slow down,” the witness said. “He pulls down his window and he fires three shots into the guy. From point-blank. No words no nothing. And then rolls up his window and zooms off.”
I’m not saying this is a good thing — despite my Yosemite Sam online persona, I dread having to shoot someone again — but at some point, the “kill everybody” switch is going to be thrown by ordinary people, especially when these rioting thugs start blocking roads, stopping cars and trying to assault the drivers and passengers.
Used to be that peaceful protests were confined (by the police) to sidewalks, with lots of chanting, signs and so on. Peaceful stuff. But that police action seems to have gone by the board — whether by negligence or design I can’t say — and inevitably, as police presence diminishes, the thugs will become bolder and more violent as they get the impression that “We own the streets!”
So I blame city management for this — muzzling police has long been a hallmark of Leftist government — and if the winds have been sown, both rioters and their government backers can expect whirlwinds; which will invite rioters to start carrying guns to these “peaceful protests”, and off we go on the hurricane of violence.
Which, by the way, is exactly what the Leftist nomenklatura wants to happen.