News Roundup


...in those halcyon days before the Safety Nazis took over.

Let’s kick off with some Crime News:


...in which we play “guess the race of the bad guy”.


...nothing to do with all the rampant theft and looting, of course, it’s just pure racism in action.  Bonus:  guess in whose electoral district this is happening?


...good grief, why didn’t we think of that before? I bet his law prof is so proud of him.


...can somebody ‘splain to me why we shouldn’t inflict some cruel and unusual punishment on his murderous ass… oh yeah, that Constitution thing.  Damn.

And in the Great Cultural Assimilation Project:


...I’d show some sympathy, but it’s NYFC.


...on the bright side, they might have done this to a Texan.
#ThanksTexGovAbbott


...sheesh, where do they think they are:  Minneapolis?


...”racists” being just about every Irishman not in government.

In Medical News:


And also:


...and when you’ve lost Stephen Fry, you’ve pretty much lost the war.

And now, some Supernatural Sex News:


...just kidding:  they really are fucking crazy [sic].  Pity the poor ghosts.  And speaking of the insane:


...I’m just amazed that people are crazy enough to give money to FJB at all.  On the other hand, it’s his last chance to have some cash lying around when his ass leaves the White House.

In this Friday’s (link-free) 

      

And in Sorta-ShowBiz News:


...frankly, I’ve seen curvier ironing-boards.  But hey, judge for yourself:

…”stunning”?  STUNNING?

Now here’s stunning:


...take it away, chica:

And on that truly stunning note, we end the news roundup.

Good News / Bad News

Good news for us wot loves those internal combustion engines in our cars, bad news for EVs and their watermelon supporters:

Rivian Lays Off 10% Of Workforce As Lucid Production Underwhelms

EV startup stocks Rivian (RIVN) and Lucid (LCID) sank Thursday after both companies reported fourth-quarter earnings and revenue late Wednesday, and announced they are not ramping up production in 2024.

Rivian reported Wednesday a loss of $1.36 per share in Q4 with sales doubling to $1.31 billion. Wall Street expected a loss of $1.35 and revenue totaling $1.28 billion. Looking to 2024, Rivian said it expects production of 57,000 vehicles, remaining flat compared with 2023.

The company also announced that it predicts vehicle deliveries in Q1 2024 to be about 10%-15% lower than in Q4 2023 and that it is laying off 10% of its salaried workers.

Along with Rivian, Lucid reported Wednesday a Q4 loss of 29 cents per share with revenue falling 39% to $157 million. Analysts predicted a loss of 30 cents and sales hitting $180 million. Lucid produced 8,428 vehicles in 2023 and delivered 6,001.

For 2024, the company forecasts producing 9,000 vehicles, well below Wall Street’s expectations of more than 14,000.

Yeah, nobody wants to buy them now (even at subsidy-lowered prices), and still fewer will buy them when said subsidies disappear and the costs of these boutique vehicles assume a trajectory opposite to Rivian/Lucid’s share prices.

And the children will laugh and play, in the playgrounds to which they were driven in their mommies’ gasoline-powered SUVs:

And the oil rigs will pump again, their oil being carried along the completed XL pipeline, filling up cars will no longer require a letter of credit from the banks, natural gas will flow into people’s houses in greater amounts and at lowered prices, windmills and solar panel farms will rust away and fall over, and nuclear power generators will become a feature of every town in the land.

And the watermelon socialists who supported the whole Global Warming Climate Cooling Change© pack of lies will dangle limply from lamp poles in many streets, those that did escape the Air Pinochet helicopter flights, said choppers fueled with the cheaper avgas and therefore able to fly many missions…

Hey, a man can dream, can’t he?  So mote it be.

Interesting Purchase

Well now, lookee here:

Today, Walmart and VIZIO announced they have entered into an agreement for Walmart to acquire VIZIO for $11.50 per share in cash, equating to a fully diluted equity value of approximately $2.3 billion.

Why would Walmart buy a TV manufacturer?  As RedState’s Brad Slager notes (with my emphasis):

Walmart currently stands as the largest retailer for Vizio products, but this buyout has less to do with the retail side of things. The store chain is eyeing its expansion opportunity through Vizio’s smart TV platform. The intention is for Walmart to step up and become more of a direct competitor with Roku, Amazon, and YouTube in the direct-marketing arena, intending to leverage Vizio’s OS through its built-in television apps.

Hey, the more the merrier (paraphrasing Milton Friedman, talking about free-market capitalism).

Just as long as Walmart doesn’t pee in the soup and prevent Vizio owners from choosing between the various vendors like Roku et al. by locking them out of Vizio sets.  That would be a Bad Thing.

I can’t see why they’d do that,because this would just mean that consumers just wouldn’t buy Vizio TVs — I certainly wouldn’t under those circumstances — but as we often see, giant corporations are as prone to fucking up as any other business.

Cancerous Society

My French is slipping… what’s their word for “expulsion”, again?

49% of French Muslims want Catholics to convert to Islam, and that 36% percent want churches to be transformed into mosques.

France is a country where more than 70% of prison inmates are Muslim.

There are also more than two hundred rapes every day in France, most perpetrated by Muslim men who entered France illegally.

7% of illegal immigrants ordered to leave France are ever actually deported.

25% of French Muslims said that the word “France” is a word they reject.

If  a quarter of French Muslims reject the entire concept of “France”, wouldn’t it be prudent for the host body to reject them?  Or, to put it more bluntly, at what point, one wonders, do the French say “Assez!”  and start mass deportations?

At the least, I’d suggest improving amending French law to include castration as a penalty for rape, but no doubt the French, famously permissive when it comes to l’amour, would have a problem with that.

Oh yeah, the French for “expulsion” is expulsion.  I knew that.