Category: Leftward ho!

The decline and fall of a once-great nation

Boeing: the long, slow death of a legend

Posted on      by     

The Woke mind-virus, as Elon Musk hath so aptly dubbed it, claims another formerly-distiguished victim.

Boeing Employees Humiliated That SpaceX Will Rescue the Astronauts Stranded by Starliner
“We hate SpaceX. We talk s**t about them all the time, and now they’re bailing us out.”

Over the weekend, NASA finally made the decision to return Boeing’s plagued Starliner without a crew on board. That means stranded NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will now have to wait for a SpaceX Crew Dragon to return them from the International Space Station in February, stretching an eight-day journey into an eight-month one.

In other words, the aerospace giant’s first crewed test flight has been a disaster, with technical issues afflicting Starliner’s propulsion system proving insurmountable and putting the company in the position to be “rescued” by its biggest competitor in space tech.

Unsurprisingly, NASA’s decision to return the capsule with no crew on board has been a major blow to morale. As the New York Post reports, Boeing employees were left “humiliated” following the announcement.

Worse yet, it’s not just Starliner’s messy test flight — Boeing has been dealing with numerous crises, from passenger jets falling apart mid-flight to reports of major mismanagement.

“We have had so many embarrassments lately, we’re under a microscope,” one Boeing worker told the NY Post, speaking under condition of anonymity. “This just made it, like, 100 times worse.”

“We hate SpaceX,” he added. “We talk shit about them all the time, and now they’re bailing us out.”

Fran deftly puts paid to that whiny-ass horseshit.

Oh, you hate SpaceX, do you? You should be overpoweringly glad that SpaceX doesn’t hate you. If Elon Musk were similarly minded toward you, he’d leave your astronauts in space until you could retrieve them. How do you think that would look to the flying public, on top of all your other recent disasters?

Uglier’n the proverbial mud fence, I’d bet, if the rest of the flying public thinks anything like the tiny fraction of it sitting at this h’yar desk o’ mine does. Gee, wonder what these weepy, wimpy Boeing diversity-hires might look like, just out of pure idle curiosity?

Oh. Exactly like one would expect them to look, then. As Bob Bishop pithily puts it: Houston, we have a problem.

We do at that. But hey, at least OUT! cupcakes such as the two above-depicted Stunning, Brave HEROES!!!© feel “seen” and “heard.” That’s what really matters, right? Especially when it’s manned space flight, meeting the myriad challenges of exploring the Final Frontier, and the rigors of cutting-edge science and engineering with actual human lives on the line we’re talking about.

Four or five more years of this and the intentionally enfeebled Boeing Company will exist only in memory—just another proud American icon brought low by Wokester dweebs ’n’ feebs, their relentless PC ethos, and the Long March Through The Institutions. Then, for Gus, Casady, and their noxious ilk, it’ll be onwards and upwards to the next target slated for destruction.

Seriously, who gives a tinker’s damn about space nowadays? What did space exploration ever do for anybody? Any chest-thumping American Supremacist with a selfish hankering to burn tons and tons of (fossil!) rocket fuel so’s they can go fiddle-futzing around out in the Vasty Black Nowhere can always hitch a ride with the Rooskies, the (dot-not-feather) Indians, our bosom chums the ChiComs, or some other space-faring nation-state.

Hell’s bell’s, I never liked Tang anyway; the stuff tastes like warmed-over doo-doo with a fistful of used litterbox sand stirred in.

Another American icon bites the big Woke one

Posted on      by     

Gonna be a lot of serious re-thinking going on in American bikerdom thanks to this revoltin’ development.

Woke Harley-Davidson CEO Compares Himself to the Taliban
A Harley-Davidson rider can be almost anyone, from an actual Hell’s Angel to your kids’ orthodontist. While the company has had its ups and downs, the bikes have long been an American icon for riders with “a passion for the motorcycle lifestyle, valuing freedom, adventure, and camaraderie,” according to marketing experts Keegan-Edwards.

There’s an image that goes along with the iconic bikes, and although I hardly need to tell you what it is, I will.

That image is: “Islamic terrorist.”

Wait…wut?

In a video just made infamous on Wednesday by Robby Starbuck, Harley-Davidson president, CEO, and Chairman Jochen Zeitz says he became the “Taliban” when he became a board member and says his job is to “take on capitalism and redefine it.”

“It’s important that we create new leadership,” Zeitz said, “that we get others to join a new thinking of a more sustainable business, of a better business that is more equitable in every respect. Socially, environmentally, and financially.”

(For what it’s worth, German-born Zeitz came to Harley from luxury goods company Kering, where he chaired the Sustainability Committee.) 

Customers have noticed Harley’s descent into wokeism since Zeitz came on board in 2020, but comparing his role to the Taliban must count as a new low.

Indeed so. I never thought I’d see the day, and fervently hoped never to. Actually, it never occurred to me that such a thing was even possible. But sad as it is, deeply as it pains me to have to say it, I can only agree with this guy’s assessment.


Pathetic. Dismaying. Maddening. Sickening. Infuriating. William Harley, Arthur and Walter Davidson, the great Jay Springsteen, Chocolate George, Billy “Chains” Flamont, and Sonny Barger are all rolling in their graves like a Shovelhead stroker crank assembly at 6k revs. In their eternal disquiet, they shan’t want for old-school-biker company.

I pray to Almighty God that the Wokester wreckers and despoilers will someday be made to pay for their vile predation, their iniquitous disrespect, their illimitable arrogance, and their callow gormlessness. In at least one way, the usurpers and besmirchers of the proud Harley-Davidson legacy almost certainly will pay ere the end, as Stephen goes on to explain.

David “Iowahawk” Burge, a man who knows more about American car culture than almost anyone else you’re likely to meet, just called it the “Possibly single most hilarious corporate self-immolation of all time.”

It is. And yet I’ve reached the point where I’m not sure I can laugh over the destruction of yet another American icon.

Your typical Harley buyer is going to become like your typical Bud Light buyer: increasingly scarce, driven away by a brand whose management despises them and their values.

I’m forced to conclude that when Zeitz says he’s going to change Harley-Davidson “in a sustainable way,” he means he thinks he can milk the company for several years before the loss of market value and brand cachet forces the board to kick his can to the curb.

It’d be nice to think so, perhaps, but I very much doubt that’s how the story will end. Far more likely, I think, that the Motor Company succumbs finally to the Wokester mind virus, goes out of business, and is forever lost except in the fond reminiscences of people like me.

H-D has very nearly gone under a good few times over its well over a century of sometimes precarious existence. How Kafka-esque it is, then, that after having somehow managed to stay afloat through so many trials and tribulations—WW2; Korea; Vietnam; the late-60s/early-70s calculated flooding of the US motorcycle market by cheap imports from Japan’s Big Four (Hon-duh, Kawasucki, Sudookey, Yammahammablamma); the ginned-up fuel “crisis” of the mid/late 70s; the rise of Safety Naziism in the 80s; the slow strangulation of individual liberty, independent-mindedness, and the quintessentially American spirit of rowdiness, defiance, and devil-may-care ebullience; the crippling effects of economic mismanagement, FederalGovCo meddling, and general malfeasance under D卐M☭CRAT regimes—it should be PC/Woke/Leftardism that ends up killing Harley off once and for all.

Update! Just remembered: for anyone interested in further perambulations from li’l ol’ moi on the Motor Company’s serially abusive, exploitative, and/or contemptuous relationship with its most loyal customers, check it, yo:

I love Harleys. I hate Harley-Davidson. That seems to be the consensus among old-school biker types these days, and they just might have themselves a point, too.

The Motor Company has always had its problems keeping its hardcore fan base happy. It seems to have a special talent for stepping on its own crank and pissing off (or on) the very people who did the most to make it the institution it is today. Ever since I’ve been riding H-D’s (since ‘82), I’ve heard complaint after complaint, and seen the Powers That Be at H-D making the sort of bonehead moves, again and again, that regularly generate those complaints like some sort of whacked-out fuckup factory.

What the hell could they have been thinking when they decided to sue independent bike shops that used “hog” or some variation thereof in their shop name? I’m sure most of you remember that one. It ain’t as if Harley thought that “hog” business up themselves, after all. But they sure were willing enough to glom onto the idea—and then have their slickee-boy lawyers claim it as their very own private property.

That’s the opening ‘graphs from one of my Leatherballs columns—the very first of ‘em, in fact—for the now-defunct Outlaw Biker rag, the rest of which column can be read here. Last time I checked, which I admit has been a minute, the Compleat Leatherballs Archives are exclusively available here at Ye Aulde CF Blogge and absolutely noplace else, seeing as how the OB site went the way of the diplodocus some years back.

I confess to being right proud of the work I produced under the Leatherballs nom de villein, every ounce as much as I am of my twenty-plus years of award-winning, justly (in)famous creative genius at this palatial websty, so I think it only meet and just that the LB catalog should at last find its Forever Home rat cheer at CF. Do check ‘em out if you haven’t yet; even if

  1. You’ve never slung a leg over a leaky, squeaky, shaky, flaky ol’ Gnarley-D in your life
  2. Have not even a tiny, inoffensive, easily-concealable tattoo
  3. Don’t own any H-D dealership T shirts, engineer boots, chain-wallets, or black leather jackets
  4. Don’t drink beer, chase loose women, participate enthusiastically in barroom brawls, and/or have never spent so much as a minute behind bars

…and ain’t about to subject yourself to any of those things at this late stage of the game, I think you’ll find the Leatherballs experience a highly enjoyable ride anyhoo.

Updated update! Just a few more thoughts on the topic I seem to have wandered off to: namely, the Harley-Davidson Motor Company’s perennially-contentious relationship with its core customer base.

For starters, it must be noted that, until the advent of what we hardcores, ironbutts, and/or scooter trash dubbed the RUBbies (ie, Rich Urban Bikers, mimicking the once-ubiquitous “Yuppie” (Young Urban Professional) moniker), long-haired, bearded, burly Hog jockeys were usually welcomed at licensed H-D dealerships with open arms. Most of the folks who owned, managed, wrenched, manned the parts counter or paint shop, or what have you were dedicated, serious riders themselves; as such, they didn’t have a problem with biker trash, even patchholders, habituating their dealerships, whether buying parts or apparel, checking out the new Harleys on the showroom floor, or just hanging out with other bikers to socialize and shoot the breeze.

Growing up on Jap dirt bikes as a child, then graduating to the street with a Kawasaki LTD 550, I had always been intimidated, sometimes even a little bit afraid, of those big, bad, smelly, dangerous Harley outlaw-biker types. And the one constant throughout my entire life has been this bizarre attraction to put myself right in the middle of any situation, company, or environment I was scared of. It was like a compulsion, really. That being the case, being a-skeered of them biker ruffians and all, what else could I do but start spending my Saturday afternoons at the long-gone H-D of CLT shop on S Tryon Street?

To my astonishment and lasting delight, those big, gruff-talking outlaws were without exception some of the friendliest, warmest, most big-hearted people I ever have met. They took this 19 year old, wet-behind-ears shavetail in like a long-lost brother or son, encouraging my interest, offering to help work on or wash my Kawasaki, telling road stories, just generally making the newb feel welcome and entirely at home.

About two years or so of hanging around and establishing my rightful place among Harley enthusiasts, I bought my first Harley: a 1983 Sportster XLH (for nonitiates, an XL prefix=Sportster; FX=Super Glide, Wide Glide, Disc Glide, Lowrider, etc; FL=full-on Hog of fame and legend). It marked the beginning of my lifelong love affair with the smaller, leaner, more nimble sibling to the Big Twins. And incredibly enough, I continued to find the bikers I was meeting more and more of to be unfailingly friendly, outgoing, and quite mellow. In fact, several of the friends I made back then remain close, dear friends to this very day; I just missed a call from one of them, my brother Dean, due to my being in the can taking a whiz. I’ll call him back tomorrow, no worries.

In sum, then, the antagonistic attitude, the officiousness and contempt, wasn’t something I ever encountered at dealerships, independent shops, or bars catering to those scary biker thugs. Except one: an H-D dealership in upstate Virginia, only a mile or thereabouts from I-81 near the West By God Virginia line. The name of the ‘burgh whence this asshole enclave got its name I won’t mention here; the account of that misadventure is recounted in full here. But yeah, trust me on this: assholes, every man in that sorry excuse for a Harley shop was a pluperfect asshole.

Years later, I was told by folks from the area who would know whereof they spoke that I didn’t catch the dealership assholes on an off day; according to these people, the staff of this dealership was renowned for being snotty, obnoxious, and unhelpful. I was informed that, should I ever find myself in similar straits in that locality in future, there was a really cool independent H-D shop not far away on the other side of the I-81 overpass, a small, honest establishment which had nary an asshole, prick, or douchenozzle on the payroll.

I’ve had neither dealings with nor friends at the Motor Company itself, in any of its manufacturing facilities, warehouses, or administrative offices, at any level. What I DO have, though, is several friends who operate or did operate independent Harley shops here in CLT, in ATL, in North Myrtle Beach SC, and in Brooklyn—hell, as I’ve mentioned lots of times here, I spent more than a few years working in a CLT shop owned and operated by my close friend Goose. And those shop-owners and employees have given me a real earful about HDMC’s vicious, adversarial approach towards them.

As I related in the last-linked Leatherballs essay above, their relationships with the H-D knobs consisted entirely of threats, lawsuits, and legal, written, and verbal harassment. I never will forget the day Goose spent a good fifteen-twenty minutes enduring a barely-coherent harangue demanding that Goose posthaste and forthwith remove H-D’s fabled bar & shield artwork from our sign or face consequences most dire. Goose just sat there holding the phone out from his ear snickering quietly to himself until he’d gotten tired of it, whereupon he cut in to calmly and collectedly inform the frothing ass-clown that, y’know, thanks for your concern and all, but the fact of the matter is our shop doesn’t even HAVE a sign, never has had, much less any bar-and-shield logo painted, etched, engraved, or embossed thereon.

Goose slammed the receiver down onto its cradle, and we both proceeded to laugh ourselves sick at the ludicrous H-D dweeb, after which interlude we put the shop Rottweiler in his crate, locked the doors, and walked up the hill to the diner to grab lunch, still laughing all the way HA HA HA HA!

Out of, what, four (five?) proprietors of two-or-three-man independent shops in the CLT area I know well (lemmesee now; threre’s Dean-O, Smiley, Ben, Max, Eyeball, and Country Earl, so six), every one of them called us over the next few days to warn us of the impending telephonic onslaught from H-D’s rep in the York, PA Sporty assembly plant, informing us they’d had the exact same hostile long-distance interaction that exact same week as we two incarcerees of dear old McElhattan’s Machine & Rod had enjoyed, probably with that exact same besuited H-D numbskull, all concluding the exact same way: a thunderous hangup, a moment’s stupefaction over what the blue-black blazing hell THAT was supposed to be, followed by prolonged paroxysms of rib-cracking hilarity. For months afterward all any of us had to say to put the others on the floor rolling, kicking, and crying for mercy, was to launch into his best Goose impersonation: “But…but…but sir, our shop doesn’t even HAVE a sign! Not ANY!!!”

Remember, now, these independent businesses were the very people who had kept Harley going through the nightmare days of the AMF (Annoying Manufacturing Flaw) regency extending from 1969 to 1985, during which Harley’s manufacturing and assembly plants were auto-afflicted by a whopping 50% factory defect rate—which, translated from the book-keeperese, means every other Harley-Davidson motorcycle built and shipped to dealerships was a fucked-up piece of utter, hopeless shite. Your pardon, please: a fucked-up piece of utter, hopeless, EXPENSIVE shite.

Notwithstanding the unpleasant realities, the diehards hung in there with Harley-D, put up with the wallet-exsanguinating cost of parts and labor to get the overpriced lemone Harley had saddled them with running again, whereupon it would break down for the fifty-hundredth time that summer, be re-loaded into the pickup, and go back to the shop for yet another extended stay while the riding-season days ticked agonizingly by. As this soap opera continues, the payment to H-D Motor Credit continues to come due the first of each and every month.

I’m glad I wasn’t a Harley owner back then. If I had been, the urge to just throw up my hands and say fuck it, call the credit agency to please please pretty please come haul this overpriced, chrome-bedecked boat anchor off for repossession, thus freeing me to go buy the rice-grinding Honda I wish I’da bought in the first muhhfuggin’ place would’ve been crushing, totally overpowering.

“Ride With Pride”? Yeh, sure; pride is kinda hard to maintain when you spend more time pushing than riding, unfortunately. “I’d rather push my Harley than ride Jap crap”? In the AMF era, that oath would be put to the sorest of tests. “Better a sister in a whorehouse than a brother on a Honda?” Better ask your sister how she feels about it before you make a firm commitment to anything, bub.

Hey, I got a million of ‘em, ladies and germs. Be sure to try the chicken cacciatore, it’s so delicious it’d make your sweet old mammina weep from pure joy. I’ll be here all week folks, do come back for tomorrow night’s show. Of all the classic bumper sticker lines about Harleys, though, my personal favorite was, is, and forever shall remain: “H-D actually stands for Hound Dog, because they both love riding around in the back of pickup trucks and they both leave puddles where they ain’t supposed to.”

Cracked

Posted on      by     

Sorry, not seeing the issue here. Or anything at all out of the ordinary, for that matter.

Meet the Little-Known Activist Group That Has Tens of Thousands of Doctors Registering Patients To Vote
From psychiatric hospitals to the NICU, clinical settings have become political battlegrounds.

Many patients at the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, an 89-bed facility affiliated with Pennsylvania State University, suffer from schizophrenia, substance abuse, depression, or bipolar disorder. They cannot complete the “activities of daily living,” the hospital’s inpatient clinic states. Some are “suicidal, aggressive, or dangerous to themselves or others.”

During their stay, which is often involuntary, patients participate in group counseling, learn strategies for stress management, have their medication adjusted, and interact with therapy animals.

They can also partake in a less orthodox therapeutic activity: registering to vote.

Located in a swing state that could decide the 2024 election, the hospital asks psychiatric inpatients, regardless of diagnosis, if they would be interested in “voter registration tools” that let them check their nearest polling station and register to vote online. Patients can also request a mail-in ballot with “assistance” from hospital staff, according to a pair of papers about the project, which began in 2020.

Since then, the hospital has continued registering patients—even those who are not near discharge and have not yet been stabilized—on the grounds that voting, as the institute puts it, is a “therapeutic tool” that “helps empower patients and makes them feel good.”

“Voting is an important part of the recovery process,” Julie Graziane, a geriatric psychiatrist who leads the hospital’s civic engagement efforts, said in a press release. Neither she nor Ruth Moore, the hospital’s head of community engagement, responded to requests for comment.

I repeat: what’s the big deal? Since when is it any big surprise that D卐M☭CRATs are barking-at-the-moon lunatics, pray tell? Candidates; Party officials and staffers; officeholders at every level; interns; Enemedia yap-dogs; canvassers; voters—it’s a case of like calling to like, seems to me, they’re all bugfuck nuts.

(Via Ace)

Hemi requiem

Posted on      by     

Our blog-bud Eric Peters mourns the auto-destruction of a once-noble Detroit marque.

The End for Dodge?
Dodge is looking a little green around the gills all-of-a-sudden. Not just Dodge, either. Parent company Stellantis just posted “worse-than-expected” stats for the first half of this year.

“The company’s performance in the first half of 2024 fell short of our expectations,” CEO Carlos Tavares said in a statement that doesn’t quite convey the extent of just how far those expectations fell short. Stellantis’ operating income fell by 40 percent over the past six months – and “free cash flow” stands at “negative $400 million euros.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, this jibes with what is no longer available this year in all-but-one Dodge model (the Durango, which is a lingering last-call remnant) and no longer offered in Jeep and Ram truck models that used to offer it.

That being a V8 and specifically, the Hemi V8 that came to define the brands that no longer offer it.

Not that there is anything wrong, per se, with the new inline six that has replaced the V8 in the models that used to offer it. As Dodge and Ram and Jeep (Chrysler’s down to one model, a minivan, that never offered a V8) have said, the new inline six makes more power and is more efficient.

And that’s true.

The point is it’s not a V8 – and that’s a problem for brands that built their brands around V8s. Dodge especially. It’s analogous to what happened to VW when it stopped selling Beetles with air-cooled flat four engines; VW became more like all the other brands. That makes it harder to retain – and attract – buyers who wanted what those other brands didn’t offer but VW did.

This brings up a general problem besetting the entire industry, which is beginning to face real consequences for putting compliance rather than customers first. It was one thing for the latter to overlook or put up with being obliged – assuming they wanted a new vehicle – to accept seat belts and even air bags, which followed as inevitably as AIDs follows HIV. But what began as minor annoyances – and relatively trivial cost increases – has metastasized into a kind of cancer that is killing interest in buying new vehicles, not just those made by Stellantis.

As of last year – 2023 – the total number of vehicles sold in the United States had declined by 2 million, down to 15.5 million annually from the peak of 17.5 million in 2016. The figure is arguably more ominously suggestive than at first glance, too – because the population has increased by at least 10 million since 2016. If adjusted for that, the actual decline is probably closer to 3 million.

Some of that can be attributed to “the pandemic,” but that’s now more than two years in the rearview. What’s happened over the past two or three years is that a tipping point has been reached – and passed. The costs of compliance have driven the average price paid for a new vehicle to nearly $50,000 – and that was as of last year. It is likely to surge past that, this year.

As CF Lifers know—as Eric himself knows—only too well, Amerika v2.0’s power-drunk central goobermint considers this surfeit of trouble, misfortune, and woe a feature, not a bug. The carelessly-concealed bottom line here is that our FederalGovCo lords and masters don’t want Serf Class knaves driving any kind of car whatsoever—not even those feeble, useless, coal-powered Yuppie Puppie play-purties they’ve ordered everyone into, they don’t. Want/need to go someplace well outside easy walking distance from home, you cavil piteously? Work; grocery/hardware/pet supply/Big Box store; Happy Hour to chillax a while with friends (sorry, my bad, Happy Hour’s been outlawed); the kids’ Little League game; hospital/emergency room/Doc In A Box/pharmacy/dentist’s office; the gym; Gramma’s house, perhaps? Spit on your ass and slide, peasant.

Y’see, there’s a damned good reason why personal automobiles (and Harleys, natch) have long been hailed as “the great American freedom machine”—because that is exactly what they are. Unfortunately, individual freedom of movement—a/k/a the freedom to travel as, when, and where one pleases unmonitored and unmolested, empowering one:

  • To schlep the fam off to the beach, mountains, or lake for vaycay
  • To attend a movie, play, or concert
  • To visit a restaurant for dinner out
  • To grab a carton of milk, loaf of bread, pack of skid-paper, and/or bag of cat litter
  • To just joyride aimlessly way out in the sticks, windows down and radio crankin’, on a pleasant early-April afternoon unburdened by twelve (12) pounds worth of signed, dated, and notarized Official Authorization Application forms neatly filled out in quintuplicate by hand (black ink ONLY, mind; use of non-black inks or pencil will result in applicant’s immediate arrest on charges of Felonious Non-Compliance, Aggravated Meandering, and/or Unlawful Insurrection, among others). Completed forms must be duly submitted and registered with the Proper Authorities no fewer than eight (8) weeks in advance of intended date of departure; sloppily penned, smudged, and/or misspelled submissions will be rejected and shipped to a local facility for recycling. Applicant may submit a new form for review and evaluation after the required six (6) month cooling-off period has passed. A lawful maximum of three (3) submissions over no fewer than ten (10) years is permitted for each applicant

—is something They™ simply cannot, will not, abide.

You think I’m only kidding about this? Hyperbolizing, exaggerating for effect? Overstating the case to make a more general point? Would that it were so, my friends. Of all the rights and liberties They hate—which is, y’know, ALL of ‘em, actually—individual freedom of movement is probably the one They hate more ferociously than any other. It gnaws at Their vitals like a horde of termites on a floor joist: keeps Them awake nights, disrupts Their digestion, leaves Them feeling all achey, listless, and out of sorts.

So Stellantis finally bites the big one after decades of struggling to comply with arbitrary, unattainable FederalGovCo standards for auto emissions, fuel economy, and passenger safety? Big fuckin’ whoop. That makes it one down, three to go for Detroit’s once-mighty Big Four, then. For A) grabby, preachifying ProPols; B) scuttling bureauweasel lickspittles; C) innumerable Überstadt Enforcement Komissariat doorkickers humping a full combat-patrol loadout, including det-cord, flash-bangs and fraggers, select-fire battle rifle plus four (4) 30-round backup mags, Level IV body armor, and helmet-mounted NODs; D) climate “science” “experts” purchased wholesale by FederalGovCo out of Ivy League credential mills; and E) miscellaneous dreadlocked, damp-drawered Eco-tard cultists whose dorm rooms (and persons) exude an emetic miasma of patchouli, cat urine, spilt beer, unwashed asscrack, high-octane sinsemilla, and rancid bong-water—seriously now, what’s not to like?

Moar desecration, stat!

Posted on      by     

One sees yet another story like this and asks oneself: Is there really NOTHING they will leave alone without trying to befoul, besmirch, distort, and/or destroy it? And the answer comes back: No. No, there most certainly is NOT.

‘The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power’ Season 2 Will Feature Sauron And Galadriel Romance And Also Seemingly Features An LGBTQ Character
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 will continue its assault on J.R.R. Tolkien and his work with actor Charlie Vickers and showrunner Patrick McKay confirming that it will feature a romance between Galadriel and Sauron. McKay also seemingly confirmed the show features LGBTQ+ characters as well.

To be clear, Galadriel never had any kind of romantic relationship with Sauron in J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium given she was married to Celeborn. In The Silmarillion, Tolkien wrote, “A queen she was of the woodland Elves, the wife of Celeborn of Doriath, yet she herself was of the Noldor and remembered the Day before days in Valinor, and she was the mightiest and fairest of all the Elves that remained in Middle-earth.”

Furthermore, he made it clear that Galadriel was Sauron’s “chief adversary and obstacle” during the Second Age in Eregion. He wrote in Unfinished Tales, “In Eregion Sauron posed as an emissary of the Valar, sent by them to Middle-earth (“thus anticipating the Istari”) or ordered by them to remain there to give aid to the Elves. He perceived at once that Galadriel would be his chief adversary and obstacle, and he endeavoured therefore to placate her, bearing her scorn with outward patience and courtesy.”

This is anathema to Tolkien who made it clear that The Lord of the Rings was a “fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision” in Letter 142 to Father Robert Murray SJ.

The Catholic church is very clear on homosexuality. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

Commenter Gaheris gets what’s going on here.

No, you have never seen yourself in Tolkien’s writings.
They were never there. Ever.
You inserted yourselves, like you do with everything.
You are obsessed with self, with your groins, and expect everyone
else to be obsessed as well.
Sickening Narcissists.

This whole show, from the showrunners, writers, directors
and the cast are poison. Utter poison.

Indeed they are; they seem to consider it great fun, sticking their fingers in the eyes of people they know will never retaliate in the smallest fashion. T’was ever thus, and ever shall remain.

Via Ace, who hilariously retitles the show We Wuz Rangz. Inexplicably, he omits the obligatory “N Sheeitz,” gots no idea why.

Wanna know why the Moslems are winning?

Posted on      by     

This. This right here is why.


Or, in a nutshell.


That about covers it, I think.

And so it goes

Posted on      by     

First off, before we get to clearing yet another too-long-open browser tab, I just can’t resist running this highly apposite meme.

Gee, thanks so much, Jaux! Why, whatever would we do without you looking out for us poor Serf Class schlubs, anyway? And what do we have to do so’s we can find out quicker?

Okay, speaking of oddly-behaving gas tanks…

Would you buy a car with a shrinking fuel tank?
HAVING the technical knowledge of an amoeba, I’m not in any position to list the huge number of problems linked to electric vehicles (EVs) such as their eye-watering cost and their road- and car park-wrecking weight. There’s also their rare but potentially fatal tendency to turn into 2,000 degrees infernos due to a chain reaction known as ‘thermal runaway’. But I thought I’d ruminate for a moment on the differences between the power sources of EVs compared with petrol/diesel vehicles: an EV battery vs a petrol/diesel fuel tank.

With an EV battery:

  • the maximum range seems to be somewhere between 150 and 250 miles;
  • you’re advised to charge it only up to 80 per cent; the battery degrades every time you charge it, thus reducing the range;
  • when the battery needs replacing (supposedly after eight to ten years but probably earlier), you’ll need to spend over £10,000 on a new one, so you might as well scrap your EV;
  • even a minor accident or bumping into a kerb may mean you have to buy a new £10,000 battery as it’s impossible to know whether the potentially explosive battery has been damaged;
  • owing to the high replacement cost of EV batteries, insuring EVs tends to be much more expensive than a petrol/diesel car;
  • many public chargers don’t work because thieves find it profitable to cut the cables to sell the copper.

With a petrol or diesel vehicle:

  • the fuel tank gives about three times the range of an EV;
  • you can fill the tank to 100 per cent of its capacity;
  • the tank remains the same size and gives the same range however many times you fill it;
  • even if you keep the vehicle for ten to 15 years, you’ll probably never need to buy a new fuel tank;
  • small accidents or bumps are unlikely to do any damage to your fuel tank;
  • thieves are unlikely to cut the fuel hoses in petrol stations to sell off the rubber.

Yet our rulers plan to force us all to buy expensive but largely useless EVs supposedly to save the planet from supposed (but non-existent) catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.

Permit me to refer you to Mike’s Iron Law #149 and its accompanying Corollary A—what the hey, #213 also while you’re over there, it relates—if you wish to understand why this bizarre, seemingly nonsensical state of affairs progressed from over-the-top, non sequitur-ish tomfoolery to Amerika v2.0’s contemporary reality. Then see Mike’s Iron Law #873 for a broad, non-specific hint as to how it might be properly dealt with.

Halp is ON THE WAY!

Posted on      by     

Per your “Commander” “in” “Chief,” Pedaux Jaux Bribem.

Biden Makes Gun Control a Focus of His Campaign
As if we ever doubted how this might play out, President Biden’s reelection campaign has moved his gun control agenda front and center of his campaign after unveiling a new advertisement last Saturday, highlighting his administration’s efforts to combat gun violence. The ad came just one day after the Supreme Court struck down a Trump-era prohibition on bump stocks.

In the 30-second spot, shared with The Hill, Biden blames former President Trump for the conservative-leaning court’s decision to overturn the ban. The Biden administration had defended the regulation, initially implemented by the Trump administration following the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting.

“When Trump was president—children gunned down in classrooms, innocent people killed in church and massacred at a concert. Still, Trump did nothing,” Biden says in the ad, accusing the former president of often siding with the NRA. The ad also emphasizes Biden’s actions, including expanding background checks and establishing the Office of Gun Violence Prevention late last year.

God DAMN that Trump, out there wantonly slaughtering schoolchildren, “trans” “people,” Neegrows, Dindus, and Gibmedats—the heartless, inhuman monster. Not to worry though, Too Aulde Jaux is gonna put a stop to it, and be damned if he’s gonna let piffling irrelevancies like the US Constitution stand in his way.

“You and your family deserve to be safe and I’m going to fight like hell to see to it that you are,” Biden asserts in the advertisement. The campaign further notes that murder rates have declined under Biden’s administration, citing a 20 percent drop in over 200 cities across the U.S., based on an April analysis from the criminal justice consulting firm AH Analytics. Though those numbers are questionable, but if they are accurate, then it also possibly counters their arguments that “more guns equals more crime” as in that same time frame Biden is claiming to have made our country safer, gun sales continue on a healthy pace and more states have enacted permitless carry (also known as constitutional carry) in their states. Twenty-nine states now allow their citizens to legally carry firearms without a permit.

“If you care about the gun violence crisis in this country, there is only one candidate in this race with a proven record of successfully taking on the gun lobby and only one candidate who will ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” said Biden communications director Michael Tyler in a statement to The Hill.

WHEW, what a relief. Do you feel safer already? I know I surely do.

*spit*

Toxic fruit of the Communist tree

Posted on      by     

Never bite an apple the serpent offers you, no matter how delicious he claims it is.

Lenin everlasting
On the totalitarian’s continued relevance.

Later in this issue, Gary Saul Morson writes about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s masterwork The Gulag Archipelago. Much of that book is devoted to the details of the dehumanizing brutality of the Stalinist regime: its terrifying sadism and staggering assault on basic human dignity. The Stalinist horror show, in which terror was perfected in the forge of deliberately arbitrary deployment, had its roots in the brief but brutal reign of Vladimir Lenin. This year marks the centenary of Lenin’s death. In January 1924, the consummate communist, having blighted as many lives as he could in his two years of rule, finally shuffled off his mortal coil, aged fifty-three. “That was young,” you may say. But we reply, “Not nearly young enough.”

It is worth pausing to remember the hideous legacy of that ice-cold totalitarian. What we have in mind is not so much Lenin’s butcher’s bill as his more general modus operandi. Estimates of the number of people Lenin had tortured, maimed, and murdered vary, but are always well into the millions. But what may be just as creepy is his model of government.

We were reminded of this when, late last year, Miguel Cardona, President Biden’s secretary of education, gave a talk to explain education-department priorities. Promoting a kinder, friendlier department, he said, “I think it was President Reagan [who] said, ‘We’re from the government. We’re here to help.’”

We suppose that was intended to be reassuring. What Reagan actually said, however, as was pointed out about ten thousand times on social media, was the opposite. “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”

Lenin would have known exactly what Reagan meant. The difference is that Reagan’s observation was meant as a warning, an admonition about the dangers of overweening bureaucracy. Lenin, by contrast, regarded the terrifying side of unlimited government as a feature, not a bug. He liked the terror. It has always been thus with budding totalitarians. While Maximilien de Robespierre was a piker by comparison with Lenin, he nonetheless sang from the same chorus sheet, doing his best to disfigure France in the brief time allotted him. An ardent student of that supreme political narcissist Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robespierre was always going on about “virtue,” though he conflated the emotion of virtue with what a Marxist might call “really existing” virtue. Above all, Robespierre knew that achieving the utopia of his dreams would not be easy or painless, which is why he spoke frankly about virtue and its “emanation,” terror.

At the center of the totalitarian impulse is the belief that ultimately freedom belongs only to the state, that the individual should not be treated as a free actor but rather, as Lenin put it, “ ‘a cog and a screw’ of one single great Social-Democratic mechanism.” Of course, few canny bureaucrats quote Lenin today, his association with tyranny having knocked him out of the great game of political PR.

But is he completely gone? One of the most depressing recent spectacles has been the rehabilitation of people and movements that, just a few years back, seemed safely consigned to the underworld. But watching Eloi-like college students praising Hamas, chanting genocidal formulae such as “From the river to the sea,” even excusing the incontinent maunderings of Osama bin Laden, makes us wonder whether any enormity is sufficiently grave to overcome the moral anesthesia of the entitled class. Someone once described the on-again, off-again socialist Philip Rahv as a “born-again Leninist”—their number, it turns out, is legion.

Which is why we predict an effort, perhaps sotto voce at first, to rehabilitate Lenin. After all, he articulated exactly the desire of everyone, from the creepy Doyen of Davos, Klaus Schwab, on down, who tells you that he’s from the global government and he’s here to help. What socialism implies above all, said Lenin, is “keeping account of everything.” Could the covid police, the bureaucrats pushing a cashless society to gain complete control over your spending, or the climate-change fanatics who want to limit your travel and impound your gas stove have put it any better?

Mebbe so, mebbe not, but it’s a lead-pipe cinch they’ll try to put it differently, the better to disguise their true totalitarian ambitions.

There isn’t really any need to speculate on whether the Goosesteppin’ Left might attempt to “rehabilitate Lenin” someday, as the author frets, because they already did it. Pulled the hocus-pocus off quite handily too, with astonishing ease—so much so that they’ve managed to drag us to the very brink of Civil War II with it. Lenin may have departed this vale of tears a century ago in the strictly physical sense, but his monstrous spirit lives on in Amerika v2.0. Truth is, he’s running things from beyond the grave right here, right now.

As the old saw warns, those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it. ADDENDUM: Those who don’t trouble themselves to learn history in the first damned place will never even know they’re repeating it, and probably wouldn’t care anyway. Unlike the dozens of failed efforts across the globe in half-assed loser-nations, they solemnly guarantee that True Communism is gonna WORK, this time for SURE, and will be implemented fully, correctly, and competently, to the enormous benefit of all. And if you don’t believe it, just ask ‘em, they’ll tell ya—at excruciating length, repeatedly, until the droning Commie mantra makes you want to retch.

In what might be the most eye-tearing example of irony ever, these asstards somehow missed completely the fact that Adolf Hitler, the abominable right-wing (!!!) dictator, said pretty much the exact same thing upon coming to power: to wit, that his Thousand Year Reich would teach the stupid Russians—who, being stupid Russians and all, had stupidly wrecked the reputation of a superlative German intellectual, one Karl NMI Marx, with their wretched, stupid-Russian rendition of the Great Man’s Sooperdoopergenius© theories—how Marxism ought really to be done, leaving the stupid Russians behind to choke on a thick, swirling cloud of History’s Own Dust, a defeat for the stupid Russians accomplished courtesy of universally-acclaimed Aryan racial superiority.

Herr Hitler, of course, wasn’t at all “right-wing,” never was (nor was he Aryan*). That specious notion just another successful Leftard rewrite of history—a deception, shorn of the most threadbare scrim of truth to cover it up. Der Feuhrer hated Christianity, capitalism, and Slavs above all else except possibly (((DemPeskyJOOOOOZ!!))), and said so explicitly times beyond number, in both his speeches and his writings. The Nazi Party’s name is an acronym for “National SOCIALIST German Workers’ Party,” after all, and was by no means intended to be taken as either a sly misdirection or some kind of in-joke at the time. It means what it says and says what it means—period, full stop, end of fucking story.

Anyhoo, “rehabilitate Lenin”? No way, man; Our Fellow Americans of the Loyal Opposition are way too honest and above-board to ever even think of trying to pull such a lowdown dirty trick. Right? RIGHT? RIIIGHT?!?

Yeah, you just keep right on telling yourself that. If you do so long enough, eventually the headache from having reality smack you upside the noggin over and over trying to wake your dumb ass up will just go away. As a mantra of a somewhat different type than the puke-inducing Commie one mentioned earlier, it’s a more effective painkiller than a fistful of Ibuprofen. Maybe Demerol, even, or so I’ve heard.

* Aryan, in Nazi Germany, was a nebulous, ever-shifting categorization, a perversion of a field of study whose definitional criteria, from its origins and continuing over many years, were centered not on race, but language. A further irony involves the concept of “race” itself, which, through continual re-definition and politically-useful modification, eventually became every bit as flexible, malleable, and impossible to nail down as “Aryan” was, both terms reduced to little more than meaningless absurdities by the close of the war, of use only to historical archivists, mid-level bureaucrats “just following orders,” and sundry other sub-species of paper-shuffling rumpswabs.

For instance, according to Hitler the French had their own separate racial category—as he said, close to the German “race” but not quite their peers, respectable but still inferior to the Germans. The Italians, southern Eyeties in particular, he felt were the second “sickest” race in Europe (the quasi-human Hungarian knuckledraggers occupied the Number One slot on Hitler’s “Inferior” race card), informing his Axis co-swine Mussolini in 1934 that all the Mediterranean “races” had been “tainted with Negro blood.”

As every student of history well knows, Adolf Hitler was a truly sick, twisted whackjob, crazy as a shithouse rat. His mental condition steadily deteriorated throughout the course of the war, getting worse in sync with Germany’s gradual collapse until he was observably delusional by the time of its defeat: hysterically barking out orders for the re-positioning and re-deployment of phantasmagorical divisions, Luftwaffe squadrons, and naval flotillas which had long since surrendered, been transported en masse to Allied POW facilities, or otherwise obliterated—orders that shocked his more-rational subordinates (most if not all of whom were fully cognizant of the bleak reality outside their Supreme Commanders cramped, noisome bunker HQ) into a state of horror, fright, and indecisive stupefaction.

Hitler’s obssessive fixation on “race” distinctions—distinctions based not on genetic science (at that time in its infancy and scantily understood) but on the vagaries of nationality alone—is just one more piece of evidence confirming his deeply-disturbed mind.

The Donald Trump of Julius Caesars

Posted on      by     

As promised/threatened earlier: the fall of the Republic, then and now.

Observations During The Late Republic
For the first time in a long time, I have turned back to Roman history. It has been something like 2 decades since I read anything to do with Rome. But, recently, as part of my fitness and general “be strong, not fat” program (on which I shall write more, as well), I am listening to Mike Duncan’s “The History of Rome” podcast. Ironically, I reached Julius Caesar in the last stages of the First Triumvirate just as the Donald Trump “hush money” trial got really interesting.

In the late Roman Republic, Patricians, wealthy Plebians, and successful Generals were often prosecuted for crimes (real and imaginary) after they left office and no longer were protected by the office they held. They were prosecuted by their political enemies, as a general rule of thumb, in order to gain power, prevent the individual from gaining further power, and so forth.

One of the key reasons that Julius Caesar broke Roman law and led his Army across the Rubicon River and into Italy was that he knew that his political enemies were going to prosecute him for crimes they believed he had committed while Consul. Once his 10 year term of Pro-Consul of Cis-Alpine Gaul was complete, they would bring charges against him and then have him exiled or executed. He attempted to negotiate with the Senate for amnesty from prosecution in return for relinquishing command of his Legions, but the Senate refused and ordered him to relinquish command and return to Rome alone.

When Julius Caesar refused, he knew (and said) that the die was cast, meaning that he would have to fight a civil war now. And he led his legions into Italy, which ultimately ended the Republic.

If you think this isn’t what we see happening right now in America, you don’t understand that history and how it is repeating itself.

I think it safe to say that, in Amerika v2.0, there are a great many historical parallels that aren’t understood—or even known, for that matter—by a great many people. And should you try to explain it to them, they’ll either

  • Stuff their fingers into their ears and ignore you completely
  • Accuse you of the Hate Crime of Mansplaining, call the cops, and demand you be arrested, which the cops will assuredly do
  • Physically assault you for your intolerable defense of the hated Patriarchy
  • Call you a damned liar
  • Run away to the nearest officially-licensed Safe Space, having been Triggered by your Violent© act of oppression, bigotry, and Literal Genocide

Those, among other unpleasant possibilities.

Inter-cross-simu-posting

Posted on      by     

Good ol’ Meestah Luce has kindly dropped a comment over at last night’s Eyrie offering that I think is high-octane enough to merit a main-page mention here at Ye Aulde CF Muthashippe.

The US has a “double government”, one which is elected and runs a “clown car”, and a permanent – and actual – government which has existed since 1937 (see https://mises.org/mises-daily/revolution-was ) and whose ambit and powers have been codified into law since the Great Coup of 1947, the year of the establishment of the US National Security State and the final overthrow of Constitutional rule – the appearances remain so as not to upset the general public (those who aren’t in the Club) but the substance has been hollowed out and replaced by an entirely alien structure – see https://sites.tufts.edu/fletcheradmissions/files/2014/01/National-Security-and-Double-Government-by-Glennon.pdf and the following videos from 10 years ago – rest assured, nothing has changed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKsItbj49K0 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYS647HTgks

What we have with Trump vs The Democrats is a big drama, where the population of the US can divide themselves into two more or less equal-sized “sides”, and get into a big fight with each other, maybe a war with lots of dead and wounded – the National Security State has played that drama in a lot of countries overseas, and now it’s coming home. It’s known as “divide and conquer” and it’s a very successful strategy and has been since Julius Caesar. The DNC *and* the RNC are equally tools of the underlying structure, the Permanent Government – and it’s the Permanent Government and its policies and utter unconstitutionality and its longstanding disrespect for the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence, and the principles set forth therein, should be the true target of any rebellion. The Permanent Government is the tyrant “pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to subject [the American people] to arbitrary power…”

Words which should be kept in mind, here:

He continues in like vein from there, including a quotation from one of Jefferson’s early drafts of the Declaration, and it’s good, heady stuff indeed. Trust me when I say that you really want to click over and read the whole thing. Coinkydinkly enough, the above mention of Julius Caesar reminds me that I have an open browser tab also referencing him just sitting around waiting for me to get around to it. I’ll get on that straightaway, whilst y’all are preoccupied with hh’s comment.

The cars of Teh Future

Posted on      by     

And they always will be.

Buttigieg defends Biden’s EV strategy after question on how only 8 federal charging stations have been built
Buttigieg says Biden focused on making sure EV revolution is American-led

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg defended the Biden administration’s push to build half a million electric vehicle (EV) charging stations along U.S. highways by 2030 after being questioned about how just eight have been built since President Biden signed the legislation two years ago.

Buttigieg appeared Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” where he tried to ease doubts about reaching Biden’s goal of 500,000 chargers by the end of the decade when asked why it wasn’t happening more quickly.

“Now, in order to do a charger, it’s more than just plugging a small device into the ground,” the secretary said. “There’s utility work, and this is also really a new category of federal investment. But we’ve been working with each of the 50 states.”

“Seven or eight, though?” host Margaret Brennan said with a laugh.

“Again, by 2030, 500,000 chargers,” Buttigieg said. “And the very first handful of chargers are now already being physically built.”

See? Fret not, folks, Comrade Mr Secretary Buttplug is ON THE CASE!!! Assuming he’ll have any time, whilst also getting pregnant, giving birth, and breast chest-feeding “his” children, to deal with such trifling inanities as this charger grift, of course. Meanwhile, a commenter over at Insty’s joint notes a leeeetle problem.

My back-of-the-envelope math also indicates that building seven stations every two years will get us to Biden’s goal of 500,000 no later than the year 144,881 AD. Assuming we’re still using AD by then. 2030 doesn’t seem that far away now, does it?

Oof. Also, ouch. Hey, math is haaaaard. Who knew? Really, though, the underlying issue is going unmentioned.

Buttigieg said “the EV revolution will happen with or without us” and that Biden is focused on making sure the EV revolution is led by America, not by a competitor like China.

He said the charging stations are just one factor that will help Americans transition from gas-powered cars to electric; the other is lowering the cost of EVs for the consumer.

Bold mine, and horseshit of the purest ray serene. The “EV revolution” will assuredly NOT be “led by America,” contra whatever falsehoods the flailing, floundering Buttplug pukes forth. Fact is, this misleading Peter-puffery is a useful indicator of precisely where, how, and why we’ve gone so wrong: unlike previous world-altering, genuinely revolutionary* shifts organically driven from the bottom up thanks entirely to entrepreneurial creativity, ingenuity, and ambition (think Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, Edison’s incandescent light bulb, the internal-combustion engine, powered flight, among others), the hard-luck huckster Buttplug’s “EV revolution” is 100% Astroturf, forced on us Serf Class simps from the top down, whether we will or we nil—led by the government, not America.

Sorry, but this is not no way no how something to be celebrated, at least for any Real American not hungrily sucking at the drooping Überstadt teat. Such as, for example, Comrade Buttplug. On the bright side, though, maybe FederalGovCo will explain that mind-boggling “7 every 2 years=500k in 6” computation when the junta issues its next Five Year Plan. That ought to be a hoot.

*Hate to have to bust any bubbles here, but the very idea of a government-led “revolution” is a non sequitur, by definition an impossibility; sorry, but revolutions just don’t work that way. Call me pedantic, call me a language-Nazi, but revolutions aren’t done BY governments, they’re done TO them.

Open mouth, insert foot update! Jesus, it’s like the boob just can’t help himself.

In a surprising move, Secretary of State Pete Buttigieg didn’t blame an alleged increase in extreme turbulence impacting air travel on racism. During an interview on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” the embattled cabinet member instead chose to blame the problem on climate change.

“The effects of climate change are already upon us in terms of our transportation,” he said. “We’ve seen that in the form of everything from heat waves that shouldn’t statistically even be possible threatening to melt the cables of transit systems in the Pacific Northwest to hurricane seasons becoming more and more extreme.”

A recent study found hurricanes and typhoons are actually decreasing, but okay, Pete.

It’s always the same old song with these people over and over and over again, the song only has one note, and nary a one of ‘em can carry a tune in a slop bucket. Yet they will NOT stop singing the stupid thing, even as the audience stomps out with their hands clapped tightly over their ears. More tiresome than one of those interminable, multi-band “Louie Louie” marathons they used to do now and then as radio-station promos, that’s what it is.

MOAR EV follies update! A joke, and not a very funny one: Electric…FIRE ENGINES?!?

Jeez Louise.

New Mexico Democratic Governor Michelle Grisham was recently excited to announce that the state’s Environment Department was awarding a nearly half-million dollar grant to Bernalillo County to partially finance the purchase of a new “all-electric” fire truck for their fire department. It was only a “partial” reimbursement because the projected cost to the county to replace its 1991 diesel fire engine with a Pierce Volterra battery electric fire engine was more than $1.8 million. The local fire chief was quoted as proudly saying, “There’s no cancer coming out of the tailpipe” of the new truck. So that’s a win for all concerned, right?

Not so fast there, chief. You have to read quite a ways down into the announcement to learn the uncomfortable truth about this purchase. The supposedly “all-electric” fire engine has a diesel engine in it. The pumps that actually deliver the water to put out fires run off of the diesel engine and the truck itself can run off of diesel when the battery inevitably runs out. So the entire description of “all-electric” is a farce.

What aspect of the “EV revolution” ISN’T a farce?

So why would these fire trucks still have diesel engines?

Elementary, Watson: because electric motors and batteries simply aren’t adequate to the kind of heavy-duty task required of pumper trucks, shitlib fantasies about Skittle-pooping unicorns notwithstanding.

They’re supposed to be eliminating fossil fuels to save us all from climate change, aren’t they? The answer should be fairly obvious. These are emergency response vehicles. If your neighbor’s EV can’t make it out of the driveway one morning because they couldn’t find a charging station or there was a blackout, they might miss a day of work. If the fire truck can’t do its job, buildings will burn down and people may die. It’s simply not worth the risk.

The water pumps on the fire trucks are massive. They have to be to move that much water so quickly over a sustained period of time. Also, the engine that powers the vehicle is far larger than the ones in most consumer vehicles, on par with the ones in big rigs. If there is a significantly large fire taking place, the pumps may be running for hours on end. EV batteries simply are not up to the job. If a conventional fire truck begins running low on diesel, a refueling truck can be brought over to fill up the tank in a few minutes. You can’t accelerate the battery recharging process.

Bad enough, sure, but is that all, you ask? Not hardly, I reply.

Here is another fun fact about these trucks, as pointed out by Larry Behrens, Communications Director for Power The Future. Those “all-electric” fire trucks cost 40 to 50 percent more than conventional, diesel models. The one that Bernalillo County purchased cost $1.8 million. That’s roughly $600,000 more than standard diesel truck costs and that bill was saddled on the taxpayers of the county as well as the entire state thanks to the Governor’s “generous” grant. (It’s funny how these politicians are always able to be so generous with your money, isn’t it?)

Wait, so you’re telling me you feel that Saving Mother Gaia from A) trace atmospheric gases essential for plant life; B) gas stoves, furnaces, and water heaters, and C) efficient, reliable, affordable modes of transportation for everyday Americans isn’t worth paying any price, going to any lengths imaginable? To quote Saint Greta of Thunberg: HOW DARE YOU!!! Oh, and speaking of that glowering, insufferably self-righteous nitwit, get a load of this:

Doom Goblin Greta? Bless my soul, how I do love it! Expect to see that one regularly from here on out, gang. I’ve been sitting on this mad-genius Tweet for a couple weeks now, just waiting for the right time to use it, and finally, it has come.

STILL think you’re voting your way out of this?

Posted on      by     

Because, y’know, you ain’t.

BREAKING: Somehow, Fulton County Democrats Choose Fani Willis Again

“Somehow,” no less. Note my bold in this next bit, please.

With all the information that has come to light during Fani Willis’ tenure as district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., it would be understandable to think that voters in the county would be ready for a change. Yet somehow, Democrats in Fulton County have overwhelmingly voted to send her to the general election this November.

Willis defeated her challenger, attorney and writer Christian Wise Smith, to the tune of 89.4% to 10.6%. WSB Radio reports that the Associated Press called the race within a half hour of polls closing.

Any questions? There shouldn’t be, I think the above speaks for itself quite loudly enough.

Naturally, emboldened by their clear overwhelming-majority status, under-qualified and over-incompetent persecutor Mr Darius “Sweetdick” Honeycum had the unmitigated gall to show up at his illicit lover’s victory bash, where, according to Ms Easysnizz herself, “we be gone pawty ’n’ git dronk ’n’ sheeitz. Where dat vokka be at ’n’ sheeitz, yo?“


The last stra…uhh, word.

Willis was so sure of herself and her ability to avoid accountability that she refused to debate Smith. So Smith appeared at an Atlanta Press Club debate and debated the empty podium behind which Willis was supposed to stand.

Willis will face off against Courtney Kramer, who ran unopposed in the GOP primary, in November. In other news, McAfee, the judge presiding over the Trump case, also won his election handily.

Now go ahead, tell yourself alllll about how “scared of us” these filthy scum are. If THAT doesn’t make you feel better, why, I simply don’t know what might.

*spit*

Update! Found a pic of your typical Fulton County voter celebrating the resounding Willis/Honeycum win.

Fo’ shizzle, mah nizzle!

Updated update! I should probably aver that yes, I know this is the D卐M☭CRAT primary we’re talking about here, not the general “election” itself. Do remember though, that, in Fulton County as in every other major urban area in the country, the D卐M☭CRAT primary is where the real action is; the GOPe primary counts for precisely Jack, and Shit, a total irrelevancy.

The grind

Posted on      by     

Analysis: perfectly, inarguably, one hundred percent TRUE.

Brainwashing campus activists starts long before college
Americans shocked at the aggressive protests on our most elite campuses often imagine these kids have become brainwashed while away at school.

That indoctrination certainly does take place. Yet the process for most starts far earlier, often in the K-12 years — or even before.

What we’re seeing on our campuses is the culmination of many years of leftist activists pushing kids to the forefront to spread their propaganda.

And it’s not remotely just board books like “A is for Activist” that introduce toddlers to the idea of protest before they even set foot in school.

Teachers push their agenda; whether climate change, gun control or the war in Gaza, they’re focused far less on teaching children how to think than what to think.

The goal is to turn kids into activists, and the sooner the better.

After all, children can be valuable for shutting down debate.

Their youth implies innocence and seems to confer moral authority: How could anyone argue with an innocent child?

Ah yes, but one of these things (youthful innocence) is NOT like the other (moral authority). There is simply no equivalency there, in fact very little relation between the two at all, if any. Quite the opposite, I’d say: if one is present, the other in fact CANNOT be, by definition. It’s by way of being a categorical error—of the sub-type known amongst logicians as an informal fallacy*—a mistake which has unfortunately become commonplace thanks in part to the peculiarly American worship of youth and vigor at the expense of the peculiarly Oriental respect for the wisdom of age and experience.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: there is simply no fixing this without first unfucking the government schools. All our troubles and woe begin there; that rat-bastard Gramsci was truly a fucking diabolical genius, damn his eyes. My own kid has attended those institutions of indoctrination from Grade One, something I’m allowed no say in whatever. Thankfully, my daughter’s native intelligence and/or comprehension are off-the-charts extraordinary; her teachers so far have all been great, rewarding her smarts and eagerness to learn by going well out of their way to nurture and encourage those qualities every chance they get. Even so, I’ve been diligent right along in cautioning her that even the best of them doesn’t know everydamnedthing, and that she must therefore never assume that Teacher is always right, nor take every word she/he says as the Gospel truth.

This is not a young ‘un who has to be dragged kicking and screaming to do her homework, especially if it’s reading. I’ve told her repeatedly to think of her mind not as a sponge, passively soaking up everything thrown at it without discrimination or reflection, but rather as a sieve, sifting the totality to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Instilling and maintaining a healthy skepticism both inside the classroom and out, without lapsing into cynicism, generalized distrust, and despair is a tightrope all attentive parents must walk. So far it’s worked out well, for which felicitous result I consider myself very lucky indeed.

*I took quite a few classes as a college student in logic, philosophy, and rhetoric, for no reason other than that I found the subjects intriguing, so much so that I still have a cpl-three of my logic textbooks to this very day and have had cause to re-consult them plenty of times over lo, these many years; in fact, my poor old Logic 101 text is every bit as battered and dog-eared as any of my cherished military sci-fi paperbacks—its spine broken in several places, its binding loose and flappy, its fabric covers frayed, its yellowed pages liberally spattered with food, beverage, and greasy-fingerprint stains. Like a beat-up old La-Z-Boy recliner, she’s ugly as homemade sin now, but I do love her so anyway

Police story

Posted on      by     

The great Ken Layne tells it as only he can, a personal reminiscence that provides a bracing look back at the kind of old-time cop we all used to respect, trust implicitly, and admire—a noble breed which has become all too rare in Amerika v2.0, alas. They used to be the norm rather than the exception in America That Was, but tragically for us all, America That Was is no more.

Ripley
Ripley was a Riverbank cop for a good long while until he went to work for the Sheriff’s Department around 1985 or so. He was one of those old skool small town cops, Officer Friendly if you will. Him being called out for something did not mean automatic arrests of everybody involved would be made “to let the courts sort it out”.

He was one of those cops that actually took the time to listen to both sides of a dispute, would pull over to help a motorist make minor repairs rather than just calling a tow truck, and would even give you a ride home instead of automatically arresting you if you had a little too much to drink provided you weren’t so fucked up you were driving on the sidewalk and giving whiney-ass sober citizens a reason to complain. On top of all that, he had a great sense of humor.

That’s not to say he took shit off of anybody. He treated people the way they treated him. 

Real Pancho was drinking at Sanchez’s Cantina one night and shooting the shit with Tony, the owner. Things got a little spirited between a couple of the customers, and the shit spilled out into the street. Rip was either called or was just driving by and stopped to break it up. After he got everything settled and turned to walk back to his patrol car, one of the drunks slapped at the back of his head. Rip spun around and dropped him with a hard right. Real Pancho told us later, “That motherfucker went from Andy Taylor to Buford Pusser in 1.5 seconds flat, homie.”

A bunch of us were sitting around drinking beer one Friday evening and his name came up, then everybody started throwing out theories on why he was so damned lenient, everything from compassion and understanding to being a local boy to whatever. George burped and said, “Y’all are overthinking this. Rip just hates paperwork with a passion, is all. He’d rather drive around in his patrol car than sitting in the station filling out arrest reports.”

Rip had a soft spot for anybody that worked out at the ammo plant, having worked there himself during the Vietnam war before enlisting in the Marines to go kill commies. As a matter of fact, on my very first day at work, the line boss I was working for told me to keep my work badge in my wallet with my driver’s license and if Officer Ripley pulled me over, hand him both and I’d probably get off with just a warning.

He wasn’t lying, either. A couple weeks after I started there, I rolled through a stop sign at about 10 mph and was pulled over by Rip, the first time I had ever laid eyes on him. As I was digging my license out of my wallet, he saw my work badge and forgot all about my traffic infraction. We spent the next 15-20 minutes talking about the plant and the mutual friends and acquaintances we had.

That’s not to say he didn’t write us tickets if we pushed it. We got a couple warnings but if we continued to misbehave, we got a ticket with him bitching about it so much we almost felt bad for putting him on the spot. “Now here I am trying to do my damnedest to be a decent human being by not holding y’all to the literal letter of the law, but do you appreciate my kindness and good will? Oh nooooo, you test my patience time and time again. I gave you a warning for speeding, then not a week later I see you blasting through town endangering law-abiding citizens and Mexicans. I’m gonna introduce you to my Maglight if you keep this shit up. Sign here.” It was hard to hold a straight face while he was ranting.

He was welcome out at my place and showed up quite a few times with his wife Jeri and sons. They fit in well anyway with about half my friends knowing him their entire lives. He wasn’t Rip the cop when he was there, he was just Rip the local guy. He left his job at work.

People smoking weed wasn’t an issue because he was usually gone by dusk along with others that brought their kids, and back then we didn’t smoke dope around kids. I doubt anybody would’ve put him on the spot by firing up a doobie anyway even if there were no kids around.

His youngest son pulled a trigger on a real gun for the first time out at my place, and him and his boys came out fairly regularly to hunt pheasant or dove when the seasons were open.

Rip’s story is a long ‘un, and also one of the best damned reads you’re ever going to see. It pains me no end to see my daughter’s terror and dread at every interaction I’ve had with po-lice in her presence—there’s been a fair few, none of them at all adversarial and/or confrontational, all of them relaxed, casual, even cordial.

True story: once, when we were pulled over for some piffling infraction or other (a busted taillight bulb, I believe it was), the poor kid actually burst into tears as I was talking with the cop—gasping for breath, shoulders heaving, great sobs racking her little body. The cop was horrified, and tried his dead-level best to calm her down, speaking directly to her in soothing Daddy-voice tones to assure her she didn’t need to be afraid, that he’d never dream of harming a beautiful little girl like her in any way, that his job was to help people like us, not to hurt them. Finally, he gave the effort up as a lost cause, apologized profusely to me, and we all went our separate ways. I felt sooo bad for the poor guy, I really did; it was perfectly obvious to me that he was a loving parent himself, the thought of any child actually being terrified of him just absolutely wrecked the man.

A few days later, I went so far as to go to the Belmont PD HQ and ask to see Officer Whateverhisnamewas (I had caught his name from his shield and jotted it down afterwards so’s I wouldn’t forget), whereupon the SGT on front-desk duty that day brought him out and I offered my thanks for his going so far above and beyond the call etc to be such a sweet, caring guy with my distraught daughter. He blushed to his roots at that, saying t’was nothing, he meant what he said about helping people like us being part of his job, the part he himself found most satisfying of all.

I then told him I honestly had no earthly inkling as to where her reflexive fear of cops might’ve come from, that I was working diligently to teach her otherwise. In my considered opinion, the blame for Madeleine’s mystifying breakdown couldn’t fairly be laid at his doorstep, I said, reassuring him that I bore him no ill will whatsoever over the episode.

After that, we chit-chatted idly about this, that, and the other for a few more minutes—turns out he was a drawling, born-and-bred scion of good ol’ Gaston County like I was, a natural kinship which gave us plenty to discuss—then shook hands warmly and again went our separate ways with a smile on our faces, a skip in our steps, and a song in our hearts.

I have this longtime habit, see, of going out of my way to talk to cops I cross paths with in my daily round, having had many friends, neighbors, and family members who served on one force or another since I was but a wee bairn. I’ve tried to instill in her from early on the idea that cops are not too terribly different from the rest of us workaday schlubs: some of them fine folks, some of them obnoxious pricks, but in the main just regular people who have a difficult job to do, about like anybody else is/does.

I want Madeleine not to shy from the police quaking with fright as if they were the Loch Ness Monster, Nosferatu, or the Wolfman with a badge and a gun, but to treat them just as she would anyone else, taking them as they come, reserving judgment unless and until they give cause to dislike and shun them as toxic assholes. In my extensive experience with them, act as if cops are actually, y’know, human beings and they’ll usually respond positively, granting you the same small courtesy in return.

This is just another of many thorny parental dilemmas every caring Mom and Dad worthy of the name must carefully consider, then choose the course of action that seems best for their child based on the information at hand, which is usually incomplete. As such, it greatly disturbs me to think that—what with today’s militarized police kitted out as soldiers in full combat gear including Level IV body armor, automatic battle rifles, and even tanks (!!!), faces concealed robot-like behind Next Generation Integrated Head Protection System helmets, NOD goggles, and opaque face shields, champing at the bit to engage their Enemy (to wit, US) and vanquish him utterly—by urging my kid not to fear, distrust, or abhor cops I might be doing her a serious disservice at best, possibly putting her in real danger at worst.

As I’ve said so many times, when we passively allowed marauding Lefty wreckers to take our country from us, many fine things were lost in the suicidal shuffle that were very much worth holding onto. Compassionate, dedicated cops of Ripley’s stripe who deem personal integrity, selflessness, and strict attentiveness to duty to be sacrosanct would definitely be one of those things. LESSON TO BE LEARNED: In the next iteration (if any) of the Former USA, after the grassroots uprising I call the Coming Unpleasantness© has concluded and the dust has settled, perhaps We The People will be more willing—better prepared mentally, physically, and materially—to fight, truly fight, to keep them.

Yes, that of necessity means violence, bloodshed, and war, and what of it? Real Americans realize that our freedom, our heritage, our traditions, our very society itself are all worth paying any price to maintain them. The simpering, pusillanimous wretches who preemptively foreswear violent action in defense of our unique American birthright have in effect surrendered already, mewling shamefully in favor of lawsuits, Congressional investigations, higher court decisions, and “elections” as if there was any credible hope in all that endless, proven-futile meat-beatery. So to hell with them then, sayeth I.

CF Archives

Categories

Comments policy

NOTE: In order to comment, you must be registered and approved as a CF user. Since so many user-registrations are attempted by spam-bots for their own nefarious purposes, YOUR REGISTRATION MAY BE ERRONEOUSLY DENIED.

If you are in fact a legit hooman bean desirous of registering yourself a CF user name so as to be able to comment only to find yourself caught up as collateral damage in one of my irregularly (un)scheduled sweeps for hinky registration attempts, please shoot me a kite at the email addy over in the right sidebar and let me know so’s I can get ya fixed up manually.

ALSO NOTE: You MUST use a valid, legit email address in order to successfully register, the new anti-spam software I installed last night requires it. My thanks to Barry for all his help sorting this mess out last night.

Comments appear entirely at the whim of the guy who pays the bills for this site and may be deleted, ridiculed, maliciously edited for purposes of mockery, or otherwise pissed over as he in his capricious fancy sees fit. The CF comments section is pretty free-form and rough and tumble; tolerance level for rowdiness and misbehavior is fairly high here, but is NOT without limit.

Management is under no obligation whatever to allow the comments section to be taken over and ruined by trolls, Leftists, and/or other oxygen thieves, and will take any measures deemed necessary to prevent such. Conduct yourself with the merest modicum of decorum, courtesy, and respect and you'll be fine. Pick pointless squabbles with other commenters, fling provocative personal insults, issue threats, or annoy the host (me) and...you won't.

Should you find yourself sanctioned after running afoul of the CF comments policy as stated and feel you have been wronged, please download and complete the Butthurt Report form below in quadruplicate; retain one copy for your personal records and send the others to the email address posted in the right sidebar.

Please refrain from whining, sniveling, and/or bursting into tears and waving your chubby fists around in frustrated rage, lest you suffer an aneurysm or stroke unnecessarily. Your completed form will be reviewed and your complaint addressed whenever management feels like getting around to it. Thank you.

CF Glossary

ProPol: Professional Politician

Vichy GOPe: Putative "Republicans" who talk a great game but never can seem to find a hill they consider worth dying on; Quislings, Petains, Benedicts, backstabbers, fake phony frauds

Fake Phony Fraud(s), S'faccim: two excellent descriptors coined by the late great WABC host Bob Grant which are interchangeable, both meaning as they do pretty much the same thing

Mordor On The Potomac: Washington, DC

The Enemy: shitlibs, Progtards, Leftards, Swamp critters, et al ad nauseum

Burn, Loot, Murder: what the misleading acronym BLM really stands for

pAntiFa: an alternative spelling of "fascist scum"

"Mike Hendrix is, without a doubt, the greatest one-legged blogger in the world." ‐Henry Chinaski

Subscribe to CF!

Support options

Shameless begging

If you enjoy the site, please consider donating:

Correspondence

Email addy: mike-at-this-url dot etc

All e-mails assumed to be legitimate fodder for publication, scorn, ridicule, or other public mockery unless specified as private by the sender

Allied territory

Alternatives to shitlib social media: A few people worth following on Gab:

Fuck you

Kill one for mommy today! Click to embiggen

Notable Quotes

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
—Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution

Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums

FREEDOM!!!

"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
—Daniel Webster

“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
—Charles Bukowski

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
—Ezra Pound

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
—Frank Zappa

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
—John Adams

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
—Bertrand de Jouvenel

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
—GK Chesterton

"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
—Donald Sensing

"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
—Etienne de la Boiete

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
—Skeptic

"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
—David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar

"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
—John Adams

"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
—Frederick Douglass

"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
—Joseph Goebbels

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
—Ronald Reagan

"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
—NC Reed, from Parno's Peril

"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
—Bill Whittle

Best of the best

Finest hosting service

Image swiped from The Last Refuge

2016 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards

RSS feed

RSS - entries - Entries
RSS - entries - Comments

Boycott the New York Times -- Read the Real News at Larwyn's Linx

Copyright © 2026