I have been informed that for Father’s Day this year, I am allowed to choose what breakfast to be served. My choices are English, or American:
I know: First World Problems.
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Chick Cars
When Fiat announced its re-entry into the U.S. market with the teeny revamped 500 model a few years back, their ad campaign was unashamedly aimed at the female car buyer, the theme being: “The Italians Are Coming!” It was a brilliant piece of positioning, because the small car / indifferent performance / cute factor was never going to attract too many heterosexual or non-metrosexual men. And it wasn’t the first time Fiat had gone down that road, so to speak:
…which led to this:
VW, of course, had used the same positioning with their relaunch of the revamped (and awful) Bug — less overtly, but with the standard accessory of that cutesy little single-stem flower holder on the dashboard, the target market was quite obvious.
Marketing aside, however, quite a few cars have always appeared to me to be perfect “ladies’ cars”, as much for their petite-ness as for anything else. Here’s the Lancia Fulvia of the late 1960s:
Even the Mercedes 230 SL of the same era was, I think, positioned in the same niche:
Both had engines that were respectable enough — for sure, neither was underpowered — but the cars were definitely not hot rods, by any stretch of the imagination. My mother always dreamed of having a “pagoda top” (never happened, sadly — she had to suffer with an Austin Healey 3000 instead), and even New Wife, on seeing a beautifully-restored 230 SL poodling around Plano, was impressed enough to comment.
The difference between the two eras, by the way, is that in the so-called “pre-feminist” era of the early 1960s, neither the Fulvia nor the 230 SL were ever overtly marketed at women. Whether it was because, in those days, men made the car purchase decisions on behalf of their wives or daughters, or whether the car manufacturers’ marketing departments didn’t want to risk alienating potential male customers by positioning those models as “chick cars”, I have no idea.
Of course, the modern take on positioning your car in the female market reached its apogee when Subaru made their cars the choice of lesbians. (Think about that if you’re considering a new Outback or Forester.) And while the Mazda Miata became the fashion statement for West Coast homosexual men, it was never marketed as such. (For those who want to find cars to avoid because they’re associated with lesbians and homos, this tongue-in-cheek [sic] list will spell them out for you.)
I don’t have a problem with cars best driven by women. I think a woman looks better in a Lancia Fulvia than in a Pontiac TransAm or Camaro, by the way. But then again I’m a sucker for classy, feminine women, so take that anyway you want. No prizes for guessing which one of these I think is more appealing:
As Mr. Free Market says: I’m just too old-fashioned to live.
By the way, lest you think I was having a go at metrosexuals and the Fiat 500 in my earlier comment, note this British ad:
Uh huh.
Oh, and by the way, if we’re talking about then and now, here’s an old take on Fiat’s open-top:
…and their new one, by way of Gucci:
I should point out that the older Fiat 500 was originally marketed as a family car. The modern one? Not quite so much.
Damn Good Question
Over at American Thinker, a good point has been raised:
Where are all the guns and ammo purchased under Obama?
During the last two years of the Obama administration, some unusual purchases were made. Large quantities of ammunition were purchased, as were firearms, mostly for somewhat obscure agencies or agencies with no real need for such weaponry. Estimates are that over 1 billion rounds of ammunition were ordered, which resulted in making ammunition scarce for the normal civilian market.
And the catalog of who got all these guns is really interesting:
- The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service spent $4.77 million purchasing shotguns, 7.62mm caliber rifles, night-vision goggles, propane cannons, liquid explosives, pyro supplies, buckshot, LP gas cannons, drones, remote-control helicopters, thermal cameras, military waterproof thermal infrared scopes and more.
- The Small Business Administration [!] loaded up their arsenals with Glock pistols.
- The Fish [and Wildlife] folks spent approximately $410,000 on their Glocks and rifles and modified their Glocks with silencers.
- The Department of Health and Human Services was outfitted with sophisticated weaponry normally carried by Special Forces, stored at an undisclosed location.
Others include: - Department of Energy: approximately $50,000 worth of M-16 fully automatic rifles
- General Services Administration: approximately $16,000 in shotguns and Glocks
- Bureau of Reclamations: approximately $697,000 for firearms and ammunition
- EPA: almost $70,000 for ammunition
- Smithsonian [!]: approximately $42,500 for ammunition
- Social Security: approximately $61,000 for ammunition
- $426,268 on hollow-point bullets, including orders from the Forest Service, National Park Service, Office of Inspector General, Bureau of Fiscal Service, as well as Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The latter three, sure, but the Forest Service, National Park Service, and Inspector General’s Office?
- Bureau of Engraving and printing: approximately $100,000 on firearms
- U.S. Mint: almost $180,000 for ammunition
- Bureau of Fiscal Services [!]: approximately $672,000 on ammunition and firearms
- Department of Agriculture: $1.1 million for weapons and ammunition
Read the whole thing, because one of his conclusions is more scary than your imaginations can conjure up.
Caption Competition #131
Your suggestions in Comments.
More Chinkvirus Casualties
Under First World Problems, add this situation to the list:
GREGGS fans say they’re “heartbroken” as the bakery chain has reopened today but with a limited menu that doesn’t include favourites such as corned beef bakes. Others can’t believe Belgian buns are off the menu, as are regional delicacies including stotties.
For those just coming into this here corner of the Intarwebz (i.e. my back porch), some explanation of a personal nature may be necessary.
Greggs is the premier fast-food chain in Britishland (much bigger than McDonalds), and my home away from home. Every time I fly into Heathrow, I jump on the train to London (unless Mr. Free Market has sent Baillie the chauffeur to pick me up), and get off at Earl’s Court. Literally across the street from the station entrance is a Greggs, and I sit there, suitcases and all, and enjoy a sausage roll and cup of tea. Only then do I feel strong enough to go to the hotel or whatever.
This applies when I’ve had a morning arrival, of course; evening flights will find me doing the same, only at The Blackbird, a block down, where the sausage roll and tea are replaced by fish & chips and a pint of Fuller’s London Pride, respectively.
Getting back to the original topic: I see that the “reduced” menu mercifully includes my favorites, the aforementioned sausage rolls, and my other, the steak bake pie. So I’m alright, Jack.
That said, I quite understand the frustration that others may feel to find their favorites MIA from the menu. Were that to happen to me, well… I don’t want to say I’d go full jihad on Greggs with bombs etc.; but there could well be murders.
The Hydra Problem
After the French Revolution, the majority Jacobin party created the ironically-named Committee of Public Safety (the first soviet) and through that body instituted the Reign of Terror, the goal of which was to stamp out all vestiges of Royalist and religious (in those days, “right-wing”) support and causes.
(An aside: for those who aren’t familiar with the period, the political terms “Left” and “Right” are derived from the French Legislative Assembly, in which the Jacobins and their allies sat on the left side of the chamber, and the Royalist- and Church supporters on the right.)
Over time, the Committee of Public Safety (note how the Left appropriated the word “safety” to their own purposes; sic semper tyrannis ) came to be dominated by Maxim Robespierre (who was not a working class revolutionary, but a middle-class lawyer — some things just never change). As the CPS became more and more extreme, and the guillotine was extended not just to the hapless King and Queen and sundry nobility, but to anyone considered to be a “counter-revolutionary”, the spiral of violence spread outward further and further, until literally anyone could be arrested and tried for “treason”. Needless to say, the Reign of Terror was often used to “purge” opposition within the country (and within the Party), and it lasted for about a year.
Then Robespierre overplayed his hand, and stated that he had discovered a list of “counter-revolutionaries” — whom he refused to name — whereupon the other members of the CPS clubbed together in what became known as the Thermidorean Revolution, and had Robespierre guillotined.
And just like that, the Reign of Terror ended.
I read The Great Awokening (via Insty, thankee Squire), and one rather gloomy paragraph stood out (emphasis mine):
The other day, I saw a tweet from a group of armed Texans ensuring the Alamo was protected. A great many Rightists praised them, and while I agree that it was a good thing, I disagree that this means anything in the long run. Eventually Texas will go Leftist. In a decade. Two, maybe. I don’t have a good handle on any kind of timeline, but it will. And then the Antifas will burn it down. Do you think activists have forgotten that Texas was a slave-owning society that took land from Mexico? That’s how they’re going to see it.
You might save the Alamo today. You won’t tomorrow. They will come, one day.
The modern-day Jacobins, or “Wokists”, practice a philosophy composed of nihilism, aggrievement and terror (in its modern sense: the fear of being “canceled”, or losing one’s job, or actual physical attack by a mob).
All the BLM / Antifa / Marxist slogans and such are just packaging of their true purpose which, as any student of history knows well, is to rule over others.
Of greater concern to us, as conservatives, is that so far there has been no single figure emerging as the leader of Wokism — not even a modern-day “Committee of Public Safety”. Instead, we are faced with a decentralized command system of cadres who are probably not even fully aware of other such cadres, but who are all more or less united behind the principles of Wokism, such as they are.
There is no Robespierre, the removal of whom might put an end to this Reign of Terror. As is so often the case, there is no magic silver bullet [sic] solution to the problem. The Woke-Left has it easy, because they have a single figure they can attack: Donald Trump; we have no such target, because Wokism is diffused among the academia, the media, the entertainment industry, corporations — and most especially, the technocracy of mega-entities like Google and Apple which control the Internet.
There are only two ways that we, as conservatives and Constitutionalists, can resist this feral and malignant movement: one is to keep resisting, just as the group protecting the Alamo did, and as others are doing all over the country, by gathering in groups to protect property and livelihoods in our own neighborhoods. It takes a lot of effort, and is fraught with danger in that one day, as certainly as the sun rises in the east, the bullets will start to fly. I only hope that they start it, and not we. (This is why the Wokists are so anti-Second Amendment, of course: they want a monopoly on violence, but are prevented from going full Jacobin because the outcome would not be decided by the state cannons of 13 Vendémiaire, but by the modern-day militiamen of Red America.)
Another path of resistance is to keep voting conservatives — in the true sense of the word, people who wish to preserve our Republic and its Constitution — like Trump into power. This has to be done not just at the national level, although that helps a great deal; it has to be done at all levels: municipality, county, and state. (The effectiveness of popular revolt as characterized by “Second Amendment sanctuary” jurisdictions is proof of the need for voting local conservatives into office.) Note that the Wokists are actively trying to overcome this by ballot-box stuffing means like mail-in voting, which is why we have to fight tooth and nail against such wickedness.
As has become quite obvious over the past few weeks, this is not a battle which will be won in the cities, : this is a neighborhood battle. The cities are lost, and our only hope is that they will collapse and burn, both figuratively and literally.
Absent the two ways above, we can only hope that Wokeism will turn on itself and self-destruct — which may happen, but remember that the Reign of Terror lasted for over a year and frankly, I’m not that patient. Nor am I content to hope that this will actually happen sooner rather than later, and that a Chief-Commissar Wokist may emerge to make himself a target.
All it takes is resolution, participation in the electoral process, and a willingness to be part of the citizen militia — our citizen militia, and not the Wokists of BLM, Pantifa and the Democrat Party. In this respect, we are in a far better position than the anti-Jacobins of Revolutionary France, but the forces aligned against us are also in a better position than their murderous counterparts in the late 18th century.