Author: Kim du Toit

By Any Other Name

Good Stuff, Trumpism

So your community was trashed by a storm, and you’re about to get all sorts of relief from the .dotfedgov.

However, because you’re a bunch of woke raacists and sexxists, your announcement concerning said relief contains the following little nugget:

“Within the Small Business Support Program, the City will prioritize assistance for Minority and Women Owned Businesses (MWBE) within the scoring criteria outlined within the policies and procedures.”

In the bad old days (say, the Obama/Biden Years), this would have got nods of approval from the issuing power.

But we no longer live in those dark times, so:

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner has decisively rejected Asheville, North Carolina’s outrageous $225 million disaster relief request.

HUD Secretary Turner condemned the city’s initial draft action plan for prioritizing assistance based on race and gender identity rather than need. “This draft action plan that the city of Asheville presented at first has elements of DEI, and that is not acceptable to HUD.
“It’s not acceptable to the President, according to his executive order to get rid of all DEI. We’re working with the city of Asheville.”

Yeah… and?

“They have been very responsive to make sure that their upcoming draft action plan is in compliance with HUD and how we give funds out according to HUD’s principles.”

HUD’s new (and proper) principles, and not the old DEI-spattered ones, that is.

MOAR like this, please.

By Any Other Name, Part Deux

Eco-Crap, Hippie Filth, Terrorism

Let’s assume that your name was Mahmood El Snaipah, and you wanted to bring attention to the Holy Cause Of Islam by orchestrating attacks on critical energy facilities by targeting an oil pipeline in South Dakota and an electrical substation in North Dakota.

Can you spell T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-M, children?  Of course you can.

Then there’s this asshole:

Cameron Smith, a 50-year-old Canadian national, used a high-powered rifle, to inflict significant damage to both a transformer and pipeline equipment, resulting in widespread disruption of electrical services and interrupting pipeline operations.  

But he’s not a Muzzie terrorist;  he’s an eco-terrorist, you see:

Smith told the court his actions were driven by frustration after years of trying to raise awareness of climate change through lawful means.

… so his behavior must be excused?

Not bloody likely:

Smith has been sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for orchestrating attacks on critical energy facilities in the United States.

Now we come to the boo-hoo part:

He said he chose remote locations to avoid harming people, and he argued for a lesser sentence, citing his autism and Crohn’s disease.

“This is tantamount to a life sentence, and I don’t think that’s right,” Smith said. He expressed doubt he would receive adequate medical care while incarcerated.

And the takeaway quote:

“I won’t survive this,” Smith said.

I hope you shit yourself to death.  Painfully.  Over the next twenty-odd years.

Weather Vain

Lies and Untruths, Science!, Trumpism

Here’s a consequence of being entrusted to collect critical data, then using that data to peddle a false narrative:

The US government’s weather agency has been dismantled by the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) after it was accused of peddling “misinformation”.

Hundreds of weather forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were fired last week as part of Donald Trump’s plans to slash the federal workforce.

In total, at least 800 civil servants are thought to have lost their jobs, including meteorologists, radar specialists and crews of hurricane hunters, who fly aircraft into storms to help forecasters, according to CBS.

Of course, out come the apocalyptic doomsayers:

The job cuts have triggered protests at the agency’s headquarters in Maryland, with some scientists and lawmakers warning that removing staff involved in predicting natural disasters will “endanger American lives going forward”.

No, they won’t — at least, no more than they ever did before.  There are several other avenues of getting such warnings — from private enterprise — and not from some Gummint malignancy.

But here’s the critical part, from someone who’s been doing the hard work of tracking this nonsense for a decade and a half:

Prof Roger Pielke, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on the politicization of science, said that the agency is “reaping the whirlwind” for “cutting corners on science”.

“By not upholding the highest standards of scientific integrity, we’ve opened the door to politicians meddling,” he said.

According to experts, studies and former NOAA officials, the chart proves little about the effects of climate change, and instead shows that disasters are becoming more expensive because Americans choose to build in hazard-prone areas.

“The problem is you can’t use economic data to say anything about climate change,” said Prof Pielke.

Quite right.  Collecting data to forewarn of disaster, then using that data incorrectly and unethically to further a boutique (and flawed) worldview — that would be Global Warming Climate Cooling Change©, of course — deserves censure of the second-highest order.  (“First-order” censure would be imprisonment and so on.)

So of course this little clique of taxpayer-funded climate alarmists deserves to be shut up and disbanded.

MOAR DOGE like this, please.

BFD

Marketing / Advertising, Retailing

The above title does not stand for “Big Fucking Deal”, although given the average tenor of this website, you may be forgiven for thinking so.

In the grocery retailing business, BFD stands for “Best Food Day”;  that day of the week when grocery stores launch their weekly price discounts on selected items.

The actual day varies from chain to chain, or from one area to another.  Back when I was in the business, one chain’s BFD was on Thursdays, when they dropped their weekly flyer (called a “roto” because of the printing process);  their competitor’s might be on a Friday to capitalize on the weekend’s expected sales uptick, and yet another competitor — whose typical shopper might trend towards an elder demographic — might have their BFD the day after Social Security payments were made… and so on.

Nowadays, I think the BFD concept might have disappeared to a greater or lesser degree because of changes in shopping habits by customers, whether online, delivery, at-store pickup and Internet deals.

I’ve certainly noticed this at Kroger — where I do perhaps 90% of my shopping — because not only have they de-emphasized the roto (the price deals aren’t as aggressive as they once were), there also seems to be a large number of Internet-delivered promotions that you have to visit their website to activate.  And of course, there are the “loyalty card-only” deals which are their way of tracking customer shopping habits (I think;  I haven’t seen much in the way of targeted deals the way I used to deliver them — a topic for another time).

In case anyone’s interested about the other 10% of my grocery shopping, it’s split between Market Street (a Texas chain, owned by Albertson’s) and Wal-Mart, both only for very specific items (e.g. Market Street’s French baguettes and rolls, which are superb and rival the baguettes I tasted in Paris).

Side note:  when I still lived in Plano, I shopped a lot at Central Market (H.E.B.’s upscale outlet), but they saw fit to discontinue several of my favorite products which they carried exclusively — e.g. Old Forest Salami and Jambon de Paris  sliced ham — so there’s no need to go there anymore.  And in any event, their prices were stratospheric before, but since Bidenflation have become frankly unreachable to One Of Fixed Income Like Me.  Also, their South Plano store is now too far from my place to justify the long trip, so there ya go.

By the way, I see that eggs are now selling for $3.99/dozen at Kroger — by “eggs” I mean eggs that we peasants generally eat and not the boutique premium stuff hatched in coops run by virgins and laid by hens sprinkled with holy water.  Limit 2 packs per customer, but not enforced if you buy two packs, take your groceries out to the car and then go back into the store and buy another two, etc.  (Once again, I used to enforce limits by putting a stop on the loyalty card daily quantities.)  Although I cannot see who would need more than two dozen eggs per day unless you have four teenage sons and/or are running a commercial home bakery as a sideline.

I forgot where I was going with this post, but I assure you there was a point to all of it — I just can’t remember what it was.  If I do remember (doubtful), I’ll follow up some other time.

Good Morgan

Drive Time

No, that’s not a silly translation of the German greeting, but a “new” Morgan model:

Yeah, it’ll cost you over a $125k, but it is hand-built, after all.

And yet I don’t know… all those smoothed contours make it look like an airbrushed A.I. creation, somehow.

Here’s an older model, just for comparison:

Am I the only one who thinks this?

Southern Women

Men & Women

I have mentioned before (here and here, for example) of my fondness for flirting with women, so Longtime Readers will be familiar with my attitude thereto.

Most younger women — younger than, say, fifty — are a total dead loss because they’ve been brainwashed by Teh Feministicals into believing that flirting = rape, that all men are sex maniacs/deviants, that there’s no such thing as “innocent flirting”, that a compliment about a woman’s clothing is the same thing as grabbing her boobs, and so on ad nauseam.

I have to say that in my experience, the same is not always true when it comes to Southern women, i.e. those raised in the conservative South, who seem not only to appreciate the subtle art of flirting, but who are themselves skilled practitioners of the art, bless them.

Two anecdotes should suffice.

As y’all may remember, I did the Uber-driver thing for about a year or so some time back, and because I worked the 3am-9am shift, so to speak, a large proportion of my business involved ferrying people to the Dallas-area airports.

On one such occasion, I was called to a hotel situated near Southern Methodist University (SMU), and when I got there my customer proved to be a very attractive Southern lady of about 50 with a velvety-soft Alabama accent.

“Ah need to get to th’ ayr-pawt,” she breathed softly, the sentence taking no longer than ten seconds to complete.

Because Dallas has two airports — Love Field and DFW — but SMU is just down the road from the former, I asked:  “Love?”

Without a second’s hesitation came the drawled response, “Why shuah… are yew offerin’?”

I blushed like a schoolboy, and said, “Oh man… Southern women.  Nobody can flirt like you,” and the response was a soft, delighted chuckle.

The second story happened a long time ago.

When I first arrived here, I’d got my work permit, but it turned out that the job with The Great Big Research Company could only begin about six months or so later, because Budget.  Well, one can easily starve to death in that time period, and so I took a part-time job with another research company in Las Colinas (in the Dallas area).

Among my workmates were two young women of about my age.  One was named Susan, who came from Ohio, and the other was Sherri, from East Texas.  I got on famously with both of them, but let me hasten to add that my intercourse with them was strictly social.  Then I lost touch with both when I moved up to Chicago for the GBRC job.

Several years later, I was at a conference in, I think Houston, when I bumped into both women again.  (The research world is a fairly small one.)  Unfortunately, I was preoccupied with something when I heard “Kim?” from behind me, and when I turned around I saw them standing there.

Because of the passage of the years, I couldn’t remember either of them at all, so I must have had a quizzical look on my face.  “Susan and Sherri? From Las Colinas?” one prompted.

“Oh of course, I stuttered.  Then Evil Kim came out to play.  “Forgive me, but I didn’t recognize you ladies with your clothes on.”  (When I’m embarrassed, I often do that kind of thing.)

Susan From Ohio looked shocked, even angry.  Sherri From East Texas just looked amused.

“Has it been that long?”

Southern women.  How I love them.