Author: Kim du Toit

Just… No

Drive Time, Marketing / Advertising

Let’s say that many years ago your company stopped producing a popular car model in the line-up.  Now time has passed, and you want to reintroduce it, using the model’s old name in the hope of using its storied cachet to attract buyers.

Nothing wrong with that in principle, of course, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.  Here’s the right way:

The original 1969 Dodge Charger Hemi R/T, a roaring, powerful and dangerous muscle car pushing 375hp:

The relaunched 2010s Dodge Charger (SRT Hellcat), a still-more powerful, even-more dangerous roaring monster pushing a jillion (okay, 700+hp):

The styling may have changed,the engineering improved, but the essence of the beast remained the same.

Now let’s look at the (oh-so very) wrong way to relaunch a brand.  From Ford U.K.:

The original 1969 to mid-70s Ford Capri, a sporty, spirited and sexy little two-door number:

The 2025 proposed Ford Capri, a blocky, all-electric (!!!!) SUV (????):

…which retains absolutely nothing of the spirit of the original, and isn’t worthy of even carrying the name.

Someone From Marketing needs to get summoned into a windowless, soundproofed room for a four-hour ball-kicking.  (And yes, I’m quite aware that a woke model like this may well have emanated from a womb-bearer, or someone with pretensions thereto.  Or a committee — same thing, really.)

And no, I’m not taking bets that this abhorrent abortion of a vehicle is going to fail, abjectly and miserably.

So Much For Mickey

Corporate Wokism, Management

Here’s a tale of how to screw up a franchise, perhaps the greatest franchise of them all:

Back in 2021, the bottom began dropping out of Disney stock, which had been worth around $175 a share before Disney decided to hyper-politicize its movies and TV shows. Disney specifically targeted little kids for grooming with gay-themed propaganda aimed at sexualizing them and encouraging them to question their gender.

Additionally, Disney destroyed some of its most beloved and profitable Golden Geese franchises—Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, Willow, Indiana Jones, etc.—by turning them into left-wing propaganda videos obsessed with sexuality, race, and gender.

And the result?

In April the stock rallied to $123 per share, up from $91 per share at the beginning of the year. In Early May, Disney stock reached as high as $116. But all this year’s gains are now gone. Currently, the stock sits at just $90 per share.

It will probably sink still lower — perhaps as low as $70.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of wokist, child-grooming assholes.  No corporation is too big to fail, and I hope this one perishes utterly.

The Southern Africa Overview

Africa

Doc Russia sent me this essay and asked me whether I thought it accurate.  It is, 100%.  Read it for yourself.

Choice excerpt:

This didn’t have to be the way colonization ended in southern Africa. The evil of apartheid could have been done away without putting murderous thugs in charge. Rhodesia could have remained a democracy rather than becoming a brutal dictatorship known for its genocidal campaign against white farmers and a rival African ethnic group. South Africa could be a functional country rather than an anarcho-tyranny-ridden hellhole where thugs murder, rape, and steal from the Boers with impunity as the country’s infrastructure collapses and its economy follows Zimbabwe’s down the drain. But, thanks in no small part to US foreign policy, the worst-case scenario is exactly what happened. And now crosses symbolizing the murders of white farmers line the roads of South Africa by the thousands.

Ask me again why I left.  And why no Democrat should ever, ever have access to U.S. foreign policy.

3 Good Things

3 Inexplicable Things

…about Kamala Harris:

  1. As VP, she has transformed ol’ Dan Quayle into a Mensa-level genius
  2. She has more hair than FJBiden
  3. Her speeches make foreign-language interpreters wave the white flag.

And that’s all before we consider her other qualities.

# MadFellatioSkillz #WillieBrownKnows

Not THAT Disturbing

Government Thugs, Law and Order

Via Insty I see this interesting news:

Police departments throughout the United States have stopped sharing information with the FBI due a “disturbing loss of trust” in the Bureau, an alarming new whistleblower report has found.

The scathing report listed ten key findings that have dire national security and public safety implications:
1. Local law enforcement officers do not trust the FBI 
2. No more actionable, substantive information sharing with the FBI 
3. FBI National Academy graduates are troubled by bias 
4. Crisis of confidence in FBI-led task forces 
5. The FBI is isolated and unresponsive to local law enforcement 
6. Local law enforcement officers feel disrespected by FBI special agents 
7. Today’s tone-deaf FBI disregards the value of retired FBI special agents 
8. The new generation of sub-standard FBI special agents 
9. FBI management is too transitory and obsessed with self-promotion
10. The FBI’s cult of narcissism begins at the FBI Academy.

The headline to the piece calls this “disturbing”, but I consider it “unsurprising”.

Unlike the oh-so supercilious Fibbies, you see, local LEOs have to live with their communities, are answerable to them and can be kicked out of office at the polling booth.

If I were a local cop in, say, north Texas I’d tell Teh Fibs to take a fucking hike if they came snooping around.

Which is what erstwhile Collin County Sheriff Terry Box (PBUH) said at a press conference when asked how he felt about a federal civilian disarmament program:

“They’ll have to come through my deputies first.”

Note:   not “they would” (subjunctive), “they will” (declarative).

So why are we “disturbed” by the news above?