Git ‘Er Done

Looks as though Britishland has just become closer to Texas.

UK Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch welcomed Texas ­Governor Greg Abbott in Westminster to sign the Statement of Mutual Cooperation, hailing it a “landmark.”

The pact will address regulatory barriers to trade between Britain and Texas, helping to boost investment and commerce between the two ­economies and making it easier for companies to do business.

I’ll believe it when I can get Wadworth 6X from my local booze store, there’s a Greggs in the mall up the road, and a chippie in Plano West’s Legacy Hall.

And when I’m Over There visiting the usual crowd of maniacs and drunkards (a.k.a. my dear Brit friends), I expect to find decent salsa and Tex-Mex.  (Okay, I won’t actually eat the stuff, I just want to see it there.  In the battle for my belly between chimichangas and sausage rolls, there can only be one outcome.)

Go to it, Britishlanders.  I will accept no excuses.

Boycott NYFC?

Oooh, I like this idea:

Some Trump-supporting truckers are refusing to transport loads to and from New York City after the former president was fined $355 million and had his ability to run businesses in the state suspended in Friday’s civil fraud verdict.

And what should qualify for Quote Of The Day:

“I’ll tell you what, you fuck around and find out! We’re tired of you motherfucking leftists fucking with Trump,” the trucker said. “Leave Trump alone with the bullshit… you know you ain’t got shit on Trump, so cut the bullshit.”

Works for me and, I suspect, for more than a few million voters.

In the meantime, if I may coin a phrase:  Let New York Sink.

Gauntlet, Throwing Down The

Wow… now this is interesting:

G O V E R N O R G R E G A B B O T T
January 24, 2024

The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the States. The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting States, including immigration laws on the books right now. President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them. The result is that he has smashed records for illegal immigration.

Despite having been put on notice in a series of letters — one of which I delivered to him by hand — President Biden has ignored Texas’s demand that he perform his constitutional duties.

* President Biden has violated his oath to faithfully execute immigration laws enacted by Congress. Instead of prosecuting immigrants for the federal crime of illegal entry, President Biden has sent his lawyers into federal courts to sue Texas for taking action to secure the border.

* President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants. The effect is to illegally allow their en masse parole into the United States.

* By wasting taxpayer dollars to tear open Texas’s border security infrastructure, President Biden has enticed illegal immigrants away from the 28 legal entry points along this State’s southern border– bridges where nobody drowns–and into the dangerous waters of the Rio Grande.

Under President Biden’s lawless border policies, more than 6 million illegal immigrants have crossed our southern border in just 3 years. That is more than the population of 33 different States in this country. This illegal refusal to protect the States has inflicted unprecedented harm on the People all across the United
States.

James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other visionaries who wrote the U.S. Constitution foresaw that States should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats like cartels smuggling millions of illegal immigrants across the border. That is why the Framers included both Article IV, sec. 4, which promises that the federal government “shall protect each [State] against invasion,” and Article I, sec 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges “the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.” Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387, 419 (2012) (Scalia, J., dissenting).

The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, sec. 4 has triggered Article I, sec. 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, sec. 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.

Greg Abbott
Governor of Texas

Hehehehe… he said “triggered”.

Gotta Be A Good Thing, Then

Whenever the Left goes all Hair On Fire, that generally means good things are happening.  Take this little bit of news, for example:

After it was announced Monday that local businessman and Sinclair Broadcasting Group executive Chairman David Smith had rescued The Sun with plans to revitalize it to a robust status, the left is apoplectic.

Why? Sinclair, the local news behemoth Smith runs, has been accused for years of tilting right. Based on the hissy fits pitched by the AP, the Baltimore Banner (an online site started after the Alden purchase), CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, it seems like journalists would rather the paper die all together than be run by someone who’s not a leftist.

Well, duh;  if the Left can’t control something, they try to destroy it (see:  Donald Trump).

And if, Lenin forbid, that change may tend towards conservatism, the screaming will ratchet up exponentially.

And so it happened in this case.

CNN reacted the way you’d expect. Oliver Darcy, their deranged liberal media hall monitor, whined in his media newsletter that it’s a “deal that has set off alarm bells” since Smith’s local stations around the country “has previously inserted right-wing editorial segments into its local news broadcasts.”

Writing on Threads and X, NPR media writer and former Sun reporter David Folkenflik huffed that Smith was dismissive of the Sun’s journalism and “deflected questions about his own political activities.”

He also seethed that Smith has been a major funder of GOP candidates; more recently he has funded far-right outfits like Project Veritas and Turning Point USA & financed local ballot initiatives.

Folkenflik made sure to take a swipe at Sinclair stations: “Sinclair…has pulled the news coverage and commentaries on those stations markedly to the right, ultimately becoming quite supportive of Trump.”

Oh noes… I see the End Of Democracy all over this one.  That, or the End Of Civilization As We Know It.

Who knows?  The Sun  may even turn out to be a decent newspaper.

Turning Tide?

Via Reader Mike L (thankee, squire), comes this little snippet that may just be the signal of something or other:

Hertz, which has made a big push into electric vehicles in recent years, has decided it’s time to cut back. The company will sell off a third of its electric fleet, totaling roughly 20,000 vehicles, and use the money they bring to purchase more gasoline powered vehicles.

Electric vehicles have been hurting Hertz’s financials, executives have said, because, despite costing less to maintain, they have higher damage-repair costs and, also, higher depreciation.

“[C]ollision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle,” Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said in a recent analyst call.

And EV price declines in the new car market have pushed down the resale value of Hertz’s used EV rental cars.

I lost count how many whammies are contained in the above, but it’s making parts of me tingle, and in a good way.   Okay, let me count the ways:

Higher damage-repair costs, higher depreciation and lower resale value.

Any one of those Bad Things would make me (as Hertz) want to cut back on the Duracells.  All together?  Short-Circuit City.

Ol’ Elon’s not gonna be happy, because if Hertz sneezes, the entire rental business gets diarrhea.

And common sense pokes its head above the parapet.