Splendid Isolation

Chewsday Challenge

July 21, 2026 Kim du Toit Drive Time

I’ll let Reader GT3Ted set the scene for this challenge:

Hypothetically speaking, if someone were to wake up tomorrow having somehow won the current Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot, there would suddenly be a very interesting problem to solve.

After taxes, there might still be something in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars sitting around, and leaving that much cash idle seems almost irresponsible. Naturally, the search would begin for additional places to park the money.

- You already bought a 10,000 acre cattle ranch in Montana
- 25 sections of Corn and Wheat land in Kansas and Nebraska
- A Smaller 9,000 sq ft place in Telluride (Aspen is sooo last Year)

But you are still missing a good car collection.

Not to worry, Next month is Monterey Car week and Sotheby’s is selling some of the World’s best Car Collections (including multiple Pebble Beach Best of Show Winners).

The challenge: pick any three cars out of the offerings. You can give as reasons any criteria you wish (longtime dream, a gift for a very good buddy / your heir, investment, whatever).

For the terminally picky and querulous, remember that your bank account can easily handle both the cost of purchase plus any maintenance charges — it’s a rounding error, in both cases — so go ahead and indulge yourself. Still on that topic: assume that you’re already bought yourself your dream SUV / pickup / Toyota for an everyday driver; these three would be pure indulgence.

That said (and Ted will agree with me here), the reason that I picked three cars and not one is that any any given time, at least one and quite possibly two of the cars will be in the shop for repairs, so three is a prudent number.

My three choices are below the fold, listed in no particular order because I drool over all of them equally:

Constitutional Lesson

July 20, 2026 Kim du Toit Rights, Sports

All those English people who came over here and swooned about the United States — the freedom, the politeness, the hospitality, Buc-ees (and did I mention the freedom?) had a somewhat rude awakening after their team got beaten by the Argies in the semi-finals.

Seems as though some things are not easily forgotten, among them being the Margaret Thatcher-era beating dished out to the Argies when the latter tried to invade the Falkland Islands (a.k.a. the Malvinas).

So after beating England at their own game last week, the Argie football team had a little celebration in their dressing room, waving a banner which said “Malvinas are Argentina” (or something like that).

Well, the response was an outburst of “How dare they?” from the UKgov:

“It prompted a fierce response in London as Business Secretary Peter Kyle demanded a FIFA investigation into the matter before (then-BritPM) Sir Keir Starmer publicly backed those calls.”
A FIFA spokesman said: “As is standard procedure, FIFA’s independent Disciplinary Committee is currently assessing the match reports and considering the relevant circumstances before deciding on potential further steps based on the FIFA Disciplinary Code.'”

Yeah, well fuck FIFA, their disciplinary code and the UKgov.

You see, this particular World Cup match was played in the United States of America, where we have a First Amendment — basically guaranteeing the right of the Argies to be as rude and disrespectful as they want. (I should point out that the Brits still mock the Krauts for having lost the last pair of World Wars, so their peevishness is somewhat ironic.)

So here’s the lesson for the Brits: freedom of speech sometimes means putting up with stuff that you find offensive. I know that BritLaw seems to have overridden that simple precept recently — where people can get arrested just for posting naughty things on Teh Intarwebz — but there ya go. Deal with it.

As for FIFA: your little disciplinary code doesn’t supersede our laws, so if you don’t want stuff like this to happen during your precious tournaments, feel free to hold your future World Cups in countries that don’t have a First Amendment.

Good luck in North Korea.

Footnote: The Argies lost the final to Spain (0-1), in the most boring football match ever played.

Getting It Right

July 20, 2026 Kim du Toit Good Stuff, Immigration, Muzzies

Still more to learn from the Danes:

Denmark will ban burkas in schools and universities as part of a plan to tackle what it calls ‘parallel societies’.

The garment worn by some Muslim women is already banned in public places in the Scandinavian country, but the move would now expand the order into classrooms across Denmark.

In Denmark, the term ‘parallel societies’ refers to residential areas where more than half of inhabitants are from an immigrant background.

The ban on full-face coverings was introduced in Denmark in 2018, with those found to break the rule forced to pay a £1,300 fine.

And the best part:

Denmark has some of the toughest migration laws in Europe, which were introduced after its Left-leaning government, which came into power in 2019, promised to curb migration to ‘protect Danishness’.

The underlying sentiment: fit in or fuck off — or to be more precise, fit in or we’ll make you fuck off.

Gotta say, I’m not disagreeing with the Danes here.

I know, I know: we wouldn’t do this to Orthodox Jews or the Amish, who create their own “parallel societies”.

The difference is that, unlike the Muslims, neither the Orthos or the Amish are interested in eventually forcing the rest of their host country to become like them.