Latest Posts

Wrong Priorities

Gummint, Two-Minute Hate

Well, isn’t that special:

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted on Wednesday that “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.” One reason for that is that under Biden-Harris, FEMA spent $650 million this fiscal year providing services and housing to illegal aliens. And $364 million the year before that.

If you thought the Federal Emergency Management Agency was just in the business of providing relief to Americans of all creeds and colors when disaster strikes, let’s just say that the Biden-Harris administration has broadened the agency’s portfolio to include non-emergency aid to folks who aren’t even supposed to be here.

And:

Imagine blowing your family’s rainy day money on a down payment for a car you can’t properly afford. You tell yourself you’ll put the money back before the next rainy day crisis comes along. But before you do, a hailstorm takes out your roof.

That’s how the government spends your money because when the hailstorm hits and there’s not enough money for the insurance deductible, they aren’t the ones who have to suffer.

In any other circumstances, there’d be some kind of consequence (e.g. hanging) for mis-allocation of government funds that end up endangering the lives of citizens, but these are the times we live in.

Read the linked article to get the full flavor of the bastardy.

Update On Big Auto’s Duracell Drive

Corporate Fuckery, Corporate Wokism, Drive Time

Following on from yesterday’s post on VW, Mercedes and Stellantis (the bastards), there’s this:

Car makers slash EV prices, suspend production and extend petrol model availability as electric demand wanes

The global downturn in sales of EVs has been triggered by a cocktail of diverging policies on green incentives, range and charge anxiety among drivers and the fact prices haven’t come down as much as experts had forecast.

As such, 2024 has been awash with a wave of U-turns by legacy car firms in response to a lower-than-expected appetite for electric vehicles.

‘Appetite for EVs among consumers is quickly diminishing. There are many factors contributing to this, including the lack of clarity around incentives, high prices and concerns around the low residual value of EVs.’

Yeah, not to mention the paucity of charging points when your Duracell phuts out, the cost of replacing said Duracell when it becomes as worn out as Madonna’s box at a P Diddy White Party, and those pesky spontaneous combustion episodes — to name but some “consumer concerns”.

Looks like corporate obeisance to the great Global Cooling Climate Warming Change© is losing its luster, especially when that pesky cold hard cash is involved.  (Also see:  Germany restarting coal-fired electricity generating plants.)

This is especially rich:

‘The new pricing structure on Corsa Electric and Astra Electric is the latest in a number of measures we have taken to democratise access to electric vehicles.’\

“Democratize access”, my aching African-American white ass.  That’s just a fancy term for “getting rid of unwanted stock”.

But when it comes to weaselly corporate-speak, it’s hard to top this:

Volvo Cars chief executive Jim Rowan said: ‘We are resolute in our belief that our future is electric. An electric car provides a superior driving experience [nazzo fast, Guido] and increases possibilities for using advanced technologies that improve the overall customer experience [like having their every move tracked and sent to insurance companies and ad agencies].

‘However, it is clear that the transition to electrification will not be linear [ya think?], and customers and markets are moving at different speeds of adoption [or not moving at all, see above].

‘We are pragmatic and flexible [except of course when we try to coerce people into buying our Duracell cars by eliminating the ICE option completely], while retaining an industry-leading position on electrification and sustainability.’ [and I hope you’re the first to go out of business, Mr. Leader]

Wait… what’s this I’m experiencing?

Oh, and one more thing, speaking of Duracell cars:

…not that any of my Readers would be affected, of course, being Sensible Chaps.

Big Auto, Big Brother

Drive Time, Surveillance Society, Technology, Two-Minute Hate

Yesterday, I talked about wanting to own a pre-digital car — i.e. one that doesn’t fucking spy on your every move.

I often wonder what car or cars I’d get to replace the Tiguan, and what’s interesting is that I’m having precisely the same feelings that I have with guns and watches: nothing of recent manufacture at all — especially given that they’re all without exception loaded with electronic gizmos I don’t care for, or else gizmos that spy on you and/or could possibly be used to control your driving. In fact, the more I think about it, I’d probably have to go back to pre-1970s cars — fully resto-modded of course — to find a car that has not a single computer chip in its driving operation.

Here’s a business opportunity, because this is America.  (I don’t have the technical skills or capital to follow through on this but I’ll just throw it out there.)  Is it possible to turn your car into a mobile Faraday cage?  And would it be possible to turn the feature on and off?

I know, car companies and / or the godless insurance industry would probably use their lawyers and lobbyists to outlaw this, just as law enforcement tried to prevent speed-radar scanners, but it’s worth a shot.  With a switchable cage, the insurance companies couldn’t exactly deny you coverage or raise your rates if all the data showed was you doing trips to the supermarket once a week.

It’s time for us to fight back against this nonsense, and to borrow an expression:  rage against the machine — the machine, in this case, being Big Brother cars, the cunts who make them and sell your data, the even-bigger cunts who strip-mine your personal data, and and the last category of cunts who use your personal data against you.)

I feel a mega-rant coming on, but instead I’ll just go to the range.

And just to make you feel better, if my car was spying on me it could report said destination to… well, anyone who might be interested in such data.  Makes you think, dunnit?

…And Speaking Of Big Auto

Business, Drive Time, Management

From the fools who bet on EVs as being the Next Big Thing:  Volkswagen and Mercedes.

Yeah… screw you and your little Duracell cars, screw you for buying into the Big Manufactured Panic stemming from the Global Warming Climate Cooling Change© hucksters, and screw you for trying to force us into buying your shitty fad products by cutting back production of regular internal combustion-engined cars and trucks.

And while we’re on high-level fools in Big Auto, ladies and gentlemen, I give you:  Stellantis.  This is what you get, and deservedly so when you let finance people run an engineering business.  Let me count the ways:

  • Misreading your core customers
  • Forcing inferior and low-demand products onto the market
  • Reducing product offerings when your competition offers choice (and having those remaining products be simply me-too choices, which you’re always going to lose especially when your products are less reliable and more costly)
  • Making long-term decisions based on doomsday (and fallacious) predictions
  • Sacrificing long-term growth for short-term profits (see below)
  • Ignoring basic marketing principles, e.g. when faced with growing reserve stock levels, increasing prices rather than cutting them.

Stellantis has broken each and every one of those oh-so basic rules, and the people who will pay the price are their employees, who are going to be laid off as their workplaces end up being shuttered.  Now, of course, they’re scrambling… in the face of being sued by shareholders.

Sadly, the people who have made all these disastrous business decisions will be fine thanks to generous severance packages and bonuses.  (Tavares’s compensation last year was worth $40 million, for example.)

instead of facing the proper consequences of public flogging followed by hanging.

Which Way Did You Vote, Again?

Disaster, Politics

Which is probably the best way to view this inexcusable behavior in the storm-struck western Carolinas:

I should also say, when I flew here on Sunday, they actually stopped us from going in, the sheriff’s department. And it was because of a bunch of politics that they were claiming was the Speaker of the House of North Carolina that was preventing us from even going in and trying to kick us out, which I have clarified today with North Carolina politicians that reached out to me — good on them — and they were like, “That’s complete bullshit. Speaker of the House has nothing. He wants you guys there.”

But this is the kind of political BS that is happening here right now. Like, everyone’s trying to be in charge without taking any type of action. Nobody wants to coordinate with anybody. Everybody wants to pretend like they’re being a hero while these people are literally fucking dying in the mountains. And these people, like I’m saying, these people are on limited medication. They’re running out of oxygen, and there’s no one going to get them.

And:

Howard pointed out that some of his colleagues are funding their rescue missions out of their own pockets. At the same time, Air Force helicopters are grounded and personnel aren’t working because they’re awaiting Title 10 orders that aren’t coming from above.

“There’s military helicopters all over here sitting on the ground, and they can’t do nothing,” he vented. “Even my JSOC boys in Fayetteville, they can’t get orders if they’re not here. It is just the most disgusting thing, and they’re killing these people. And I don’t know why they’re doing it.”

Howard said that he doesn’t “know what kind of conspiracy” is behind this bureaucratic nightmare. In my more cynical moments, I can’t help but wonder if Gov. Roy Cooper (D-N.C.) and the Biden-Harris administration are willing to let Republican voters in a reliably red part of the state fend for themselves — and die. I don’t want to believe that, but it’s hard to shake that gut feeling.”

I know, I know:  it’s usually easier to ascribe bad outcomes to inefficiency than to a malevolent conspiracy.  But I just can’t shake off the memorable words of former SecState James Baker III, “Fuck ’em.  They’re not gonna vote for us, anyway.”