VIDEO: Scotty Kilmer calls out Stellantis' crappy cars

Agent 6 thinks Scotty Kilmer does the best vlog in America on cars and all the stuff that car guys love. He's been a mechanic for 56 years and talks about cars straight from the shoulder, without doing infomercials for any particular product or service. 

A couple of days ago, prompted by Stellantis' announcement that it's ending the Jeep and Ram lines, and firing 1000s of workers, Mr Kilmer threw a ton of shade on Jeep and Ram and the whole Stellantis line. 

Here's Scotty's rant, answering such questions as: Is Jeep reliable? Are Jeeps good cars? Is Ram worth it? Should I buy a Jeep? Are Jeeps worth the money? He also has something to say about the Harris-Biden runaway inflation and Stellantis' plan to move more jobs to Canada. 

 

Agent 6, who sent us the link to this video, sez: "Scotty is quite the raconteur! There is a recall/bulletin about parking electric Jeeps in a garage. DON’T! Don’t understand why there should be so many battery fires, and engineers not recognizing the potential for fire during the design process. All battery items seem to have the potential to burst into flames….from EV bikes, laptops, cellphones, and vehicles!"

Walt was a big Chrysler fan back in the hippy-dippy `60s. I owned cars with badges like Plymouth, Dodge, and Valiant, most of them with hyuge V8 engines. Where are those fine cars now? Not in my garage, that's for sure.

In conclusion, and by way of a trip down Memory Lane, here's a clipping from a brochure for the `62 Imperial line. Note the prices.

"They don't make `em like that any more!" was never truer. Sic transit gloria mundi. [Geddit? Ed.]

UPDATED: The Cackler pledges to lower prices of groceries

Further reading (17/8/24): "Kamala Proposes $6K Aborted Baby Tax Credit". Babylon Bee (where else?) 17/8/24.

Signs of the inflationary times

So, farewell, then, to penny postage. The humble one-cent stamp, along with 2s, 3s, 4s and other practically worthless values have been quietly discontinued ["cancelled"? Geddit? Ed.] by Canada Post.

A hundred years ago, a one-cent stamp, with the likeness of George V, the Sailor King, was all you needed to send a postcard a mari usque ad mare -- from Squamish BC, let's say, to Dildo NL.

Today, that would cost you, for just one stamp, C$1.15 (84 cents in real money)... plus sales tax! Can you, dear American reader, imagine having to pay tax on postage stamps? If you're foolish enough to move to Canuckistan when Donald Trump is re-elected, that's what you'll have to do to help pay for Trudeau's refugee-friendly welfare state.

That $1.15, by the way, covers the postage -- still just one cent -- plus $1.14 for storage!

A hundred years ago, you could have paid for your one-cent stamp with a copper -- well, copper-coloured -- one cent coin, affectionately known as a penny. The pennies of that time were roughly the size of a modern US penny, but to numismatists they are known as "small cents", being about half the size of the "large cents" -- roughly the same as a British half-penny -- which had preceded them.

Alas, you can no longer find a Canadian penny to pay for a one-cent stamp. As Walt reported in "Canada doesn't make cents any more" (WWW 20/12/12), one-cent coins were declared surplus to requirements in 2012, since they would no longer purchase a single thing, not even a single stamp, which would have cost, including the sales tax, 1.15 cents.

I tell you this sad tale, Canadian readers, to remind you how, under a succession of Liberal (and sometimes Cuckservative) governments, your beaverbucks have become "progressively" (geddit?) devalued. 

Dear American readers, you need not be so smug because (you might say) you still have one-cent stamps and your precious pennies, not to mention dollar bills, which Canada doesn't have either. The fires of Bidenflation are raging like California [Isn't that where Hock Ptui is from? Ed.] wildfires. Time to put them out with the hose of common cents. Geddit?!

UPDATED: "Dark times ahead!" warns Canadian Conservative MP

"Welcome to the future of Canada!" So said Michelle Rempel Garner, the Conservative Member of the Canadian Parliament for Calgary Nose Hill (AB). 

In what she herself called a "Cassandra speech" to the House of Commons on December 6th, Ms Rempel Garner warned against the debt crisis caused by unrestrained government spending, and the eneregy crisis caused by the continued importation of oil from hostile foreign powers. (Hello, Saudi Arabia, to name just one!) 

We've heard those arguments before, and the honourable member is right in what she says. But the shocker -- something I'd barely heard of and hadn't considered -- is the threat posed by failure to regulate the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Machines -- computers -- which can think for themselves and speak for themselves are being built right now! 

In her address, Ms Rempel Garner reads a speech which was written by a computer, using software which is freely available (she tells you where to find it) with no more human input than a few words about the topic and position to be taken. Pretty soon, she warns, people will no longer have to think for themselves, and will become mere cyphers, even more useless than predicted by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley in their dystopian novels.

 

Agent 6, who sent us the link to this video (thank you, 6!) calls the speech "very moving [and] passionate... talking of bleak times ahead thanks to Trudeau and Bill C-32.  Haven’t heard many speeches in Parliament like this one during the last seven years."

Bill C-32 is titled "An Act to implement certain provisions of the fall economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 3, 2022 and certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on April 7, 2022". Sounds like pretty dull stuff, but the importance of Ms Rempel Garner's point -- that legislators are failing in their duty to protect Canadians from a very bleak future -- cannot be overemphasized.

Note to American readers: Canada has the misfortune to be ruled by Blackie McBlackface and his gang of venal and incompetent cronies and sycophants. Americans are no better off. For "Canada" and "Blackie McBlackface", please subsitute "The USA" and "Joe Brandon", and try to tell me the same warnings don't apply to you... in spades!

UPDATE ADDED 10/12/22 - Click here for more information about ChatGPT, the scary AI text generator to which Ms Rempel Gardner refers.

Wisdom for today from legal decisions of the Dirty Thirties

Americans and Canadians are going through hard times. The slowdown of business and other activity caused by the Wuhan flu pandemic sent our economies into a tailspin, from which we have not yet recovered, no matter what President Brandon and Prime Minister McBlackface tell you. Not only have we not recovered, but we are teetering on the brink of recession. 

More people are working than was the case two years ago, but more people are not working, too. Some folks, having discovered that our liberal governments will pay them not to work, have simply dropped out of the work force. Thus the same liberal governments are now telling us we need to import hundreds of thousands of third-world migrants to meet "staffing challenges".

Bidenflation has pushed prices up to the point where a lot "working poor" can barely afford to drive to work. The federal governments of both countries desperately need more revenue to cover the deficits they incur by shovelling money out to the special interest groups they rely on to keep them in power. But they are afraid to raise taxes, so the liberal cry today is "Make the rich pay their share...and more!"

And there is civil unrest, notably in Canada where Mr Socks invoked the Emergencies Act (aka Police State Act, aka Son of War Measures Act) to quash last winter's Freedom Convoy by, among other draconian measures, freezing dissenters' bank accounts without notice! That'll teach them to cling to their "unacceptable views"!

The United States went through a similar bad patch during the Great Recession of the 1930s. The Presidents of those days were mile aheads of both Demented Joe and the Emperor of Canuckistan in arrogating to their governments unprecedented powers of taxation and repression of dissent. 

Walt wonders if M Trudeau's handlers studied President Herbert Hoover's response to the 1932 march on Washington of the Bonus Army -- 1000s of war veterans demanding the bonuses which they had been promised at the end of WWI, which had never been paid. This is how it went down.

On 28 July 1932, Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the "Bonus Expeditionary Force" removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shot at the protestors. Two veterans were wounded and later died. President Herbert Hoover then ordered the U.S. Army to clear the marchers' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded a contingent of infantry and cavalry, supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.

Such heavy-handed tactics became the norm under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who used whatever means he could to force Americans -- particularly rich Americans and their businesses, large and small -- to submit to his New Deal. Those who dissented had the G-men sicced on them. After all, Roosevelt declaimed, this is an emergency!

One business which FDR's Treasury Dept. tried to coerce was a firm owned by three Jewish brothers who butchered chickens. They balked at Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act, which allowed the President to regulate certain industries by distributing authority to develop codes of conduct among business groups and boards in those industries -- i.e.to control private businesses. The Schecters fought the feds all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in their favour. (A.L.A. Schecter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935)) 

In an opinion authored by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the unanimous Court exercised a check on the Legislative and Executive branches of government, declaring the Act and actions of the President an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority. 

SCOTUS ruled that the President cannot be allowed to have unbridled control to make whatever laws he believes to be necessary to achieve a certain goal. Justice Hughes wrote: "Extraordinary conditions may call for extraordinary remedies. But the argument necessarily stops short of an attempt to justify action which lies outside the sphere of constitutional authority. Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional powers." 

Here's another piece of wisdom from a famous judge, which may give some comfort to President Trump as he fights to avoid a too-public audit of his tax returns. In Helvering v. Gregory, 293 U.S. 465 (1935).69 F.2d 809 (2d Cir. 1934), Judge Billings Learned Hand, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, ruled that: "Anyone may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.... To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant."

The emphasis is mine. For some 65 years, beginning with the Court of Chief Justice Earl Warren too long (1953-1969), the Supreme Court was dominated by judicial activists intent on rewriting the laws of the USA, including the Constitution itself, to bring about "social justice" and equality of result, as opposed to the equality of opportunity which was the aim of the founding fathers. That is still the mindset of the Supreme Court of Canada.

However, the times they are a-changin'. Ordinary people, real people on both sides of the World's Longest Open Border are waking up to the fact that the liberal democratic state of Roosevelt-Johnson-Clinton-Biden and King-Pearson-Trudeau (Senior and Junior) is not their friend, but their enemy. Walt says: be like the Schecter brothers -- fight back! You can fight and beat city hall!

Memo to the ruling elites: "It's the economy, stupid!"

The liberal elites seem to be getting nervous, trying to figure out what they can do to avert the imminent reception. Adam Pankratz, a lecturer at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business, wrote an excellent statement of the blindingly obvious, for Canada's National Post. Here are two key paragraph of "Economic reality is about to bulldoze the progressive agenda". Thanks to Agent 6 for  the link. 

For years now, governments across the western world have found reasons to turn towards tribal politics. Be it relentless condemnation of western history as uniquely evil, genuflection to those who shut down railroads and tear down statues or prostration before the idol of identity politics, it has been a one-way capitulation to any grievance Twitter could muster. Reality is about to force a change from identity driven wedges and fanciful green economic policy dreams back to serious matters like money and jobs. The inflation tidal wave, coupled with a slowing economy is making our citizens poorer. A backlash against Canadian Liberals and American Democrats, along with governing elites in Europe is coming and will be a first-class example of "it's the economy, stupid," in action.... 

Morgan Stanley recently warned oil could reach $380 a barrel if the worse case scenario of Russian crude coming off the market were to occur. This would be cataclysmic for all economies and participants therein, but, as always, the worst pain will be reserved for those who can least afford it. This is the great irony of current policy in Canada, Europe and America: by refusing to look reality in the eye, politicians are going to seriously harm those they purport to help while also sinking their own progressive agendas.

The "governing elites in Europe" must certainly include Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, about whom I wrote yesterday. The next sound you hear will be that of  his government falling. Lifetime pct .978.

Biden-Harris in office: the first four months

Sleepy Joe Biden, the man who the lickspittle media claim is the fairly elected President of the US of A, has been in office for four months. "In office" doesn't necessarily mean "in charge". Whoever's pulling Mr Biteme's strings has done a lot to "reset" America. If you're a Democrat, socialist or anywhere on the left end of the spectrum, you would say things are going well. We on the other side of the aisle beg to differ. Herewith a quick look at the Biden-Harris record, so far. 

Unnecessary stimulus The Democrats pushed through legislation for a relief package of close to $2,000,000,000,000 ($2 trillion). That newly minted money stimulated the economy, provided additional aid to the millions of unemployed workers and bailed out some cities and states that were damaged financially by Covid, and the damage done by the Antifa/BLM rioters and looters.

Was that stimulus needed? When President Trump was forced out of office, the American economy was in the middle of a V-shaped recovery from the deep but short-lived recession of the spring of 2020. In Q3 of 2020, GDP grew at an annualized rate of 33%. The growth rate was 4% in Q4, and 6.4% in the Q1 of 2021, when Mr Biteme assumed office.

The relief package will prove to be inflationary. The deficit for fiscal 2021 is projected to rise to at least $3.5 trillion, increasing the public debt (meaning money that you, your children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren etc will have to reply) to more than $30 trillion. When the feds remove that much capital from the market, there will eventually be a capital shortage, i.e. not be enough capital available to business for expansion. That will lead to more inflation.

Since January, the rate of inflation has risen to 6%. You may have noticed that last time you gassed up. Another consequence will be "stagflation" -- the slowing or stopping of growth -- which the US of A has not experienced in four decades!

The Biden-Harris tax plan will only make things worse. Democrats always want to "tax the rich", which to them means not the elites who can employ elaborate tax avoidance schemes, but folks like you and me who work hard and hope there will be a few pennies left after Uncle Sam takes his increasingly large cut. The Democrats want to raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, which will cause savvy businesses to move to more friendly jurisdictions, including Canada.

They also want to raise the capital gains tax rate from 23.8% to more than 40%. But wait (as Vince Offer used to say), there's more. They propose to raise the top tax bracket from 37% to 39.6%. All of these Robin-Hoodian tax grabs will reduce capital formation making the capital shortage worse.

Vaccination

When he was sworn in, Sleepy Joe promised to get the anti-Covid vaccines approved during the Trump administration into the arms of at least 100 million Americans within his first 100 days. Thanks to the success of Operation Warp Speed, initiated by President Trump and spear-headed by Vice-President Pence, that goal was met and exceeded.

On the other hand [in the other arm? Ed.], thanks to the flip-flop messaging of Dr Fauci and the administration, antivax resistance has increased to the point where slowpoke [geddit? Ed.] Canada has more people per 1000 who have received at least one dose of vaccine. That's why the World's Longest Undefended Border (TM) remains closed in spite of pressure by Sen. Chuckie "Cheese" Schumer and others to let Americans resume shopping in Canada again.

Illegal immigration

At the instigation of the SJWs who control him, Mr Biteme reversed President Trump's immigration policies, allowing hundreds of thousands of immigrants to escape alleged persecution in their home countries. He professes his belief that America is a country founded on and still rife with "systemic racism". How admitting hordes of aliens who don't speak English and don't share the majority culture will help this is a question for which Sleepy Joe has no answer.

The Trump administration built (or at least started) a wall along America's southern border, and instituted policies to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants from south of the border and the shithole countries of Africa and the Middle East. The Biden administration stopped building the wall (in spite of court orders to finish the job) and reversed the President Trump's policies. The result is a massive illegal immigration problem, which Vice-President Harris refuses to acknowledge or even investigate by, say, visiting the infested counties along the southern border.

Climate change and the environment

Mr Biden makes the requisite obeisance to the importance of reversing climate change [like King Canute? Ed.] and protecting the environment. That's why he stopped any drilling for fossil fuels on publicly owned land, and, as one of his first acts, cancelled the Keystone pipeline expansion approved by President Trump. Then, all of a sudden, there's no gas, or limited quantities of expensive gas, in large areas of the southeastern states.

They say (of course) that's all the fault of foreign hackers who caused the shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline, which has now been fixed. But that incident underscores America's need for energy security, which is not going to come from wind/solar power. The US need to maintain good relations with a friendly source or petroleum products like, say, Canada.

That brings us back to the Keystone pipeline, and another pipeline -- Enbridge Line 5 -- which runs from western Canada through upper Michigan into eastern Canada. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer (Democrat) has ordered Line 5 closed down because, after nearly 70 years in operation, it might suddenly spring a leak into the Straits of Mackinac. Canada has asked President Biteme to intervene with a bit of common sense. Sleepy Joe's response? "Justin Trudeau? Who's that?"

Foreign policy

President Trump's foreign policy was "peace through strength". President Biteme thinks he knows better. He prefers the "turn the other cheek" policies of the Prez. It was President Trump's sanctions which crippled Iran, leaving them with little money to finance Islamic terrorism. Creepy Joe has chosen not to enforce the sanctions, so, right after the fake election of 2020, Iran began selling oil again.

President Trump had negotiated five peace agreements in the Middle East. Now, just four months into the Biden presidency, Hamas and Hezbollah have resumed their terrorist activites in the Holy Land, to the point of a nearly full-scale war. A White House spokesthingy said on Tuesday that Israel has a legitimate right to defend itself from Hamas rocket attacks but applied pressure on Israel over the treatment of Palestinians, saying Jerusalem "must be a place of co-existence."

Apparently the goal is to "rebalance" US policy, after President Trump sided with Israeli on all fronts. Another "success" trumpeted by the controlled media is President Biteme's promise to get American military forces out of Afghanistan by 9/11. Such "turn the other cheek" responses to the aggressions of our enemies can only embolden others, such as Russia, China and North Korea. Is the world a safer, more peaceful place now that the Democrats have taken on the task of promoting peaceful co-existence? Hardly. 

In summary... 

To his supporters and the liberal elites, Mr Biden is doing a great job. It may be that his administration has improved the perception of social justice and equity. But the price Americans are paying for massive illegal immigration, high inflation, higher taxes and a less safe world, is far too high.

Those of us not wearing rose-coloured glasses see problems (read: incipient disaster) in every area. Things can only get worse. Lifetime pct .979. 

Adapted from an op-ed piece by Michael Busler in BizPac Review, 21/5/21.

Zimbabwe's $100 trillion dollar dog

As I've mentioned before, I lived and worked in Zimbabwe some years ago, in the years when it had only gone half-way down the toilet. I remember well the day in 1997 when the former President-for-Life -- how sweet to be able to say that! -- announced that he would give all his "war veterans" generous pensions for life. That was one promise he kept. The printing presses started rolling, and the value of the Zimbabwe dollar (aka "Zimkwacha") in real money fell by 50% overnight. And it kept falling too. Inflation became hyperinflation, and the number of zeros on the banknotes grew and grew. Zimbabwe set a record for the largest denomination banknote ever printed. Here it is.

The day after the new super-high-denomination notes appeared, Ndlovu ran into Moyo on the main street of Bulawayo. Noticing that Moyo was carrying a dog, he asked him, "Where are you going that you're carrying your dog?"
"I'm taking him to the market," Moyo replied. "I hear there's a $100 trillion note now, and I aim to sell him for that much. Surely with $100 trillion I could buy something more than a loaf of bread."
The next day, Moyo and Ndlovu met again at the local beer hall. "Did you succeed in selling your dog for $100 trillion?", asked Ndlovu.
"Not exactly," said Moyo, "but I was able to trade him for two cats worth $50 trillion each!"

Lost in translation

Agence France Presse reports a Freudian slip of the tongue by France's glamorous former justice minister Rachida Dati. Apparently Mlle [Mme? Ed.] Dati had something else on her mind while speaking on the subject of foreign investment funds.

"When I see some of them [the funds] looking for returns of 20 or 25 percent, at a time when fellatio is almost non-existent...," she said during an interview on Radio Europe 1.

She was speaking in French, of course. The French word she used is "fellation," which shares some syllables with "inflation", which is the same in French as in English. Cela peut arriver de parler trop vite.

Mme [Mlle? Ed.] Dati was dropped from the French government last year after her penchant for designer dresses and appearing on the covers of celebrity magazines prompted criticism that a senior minister should not engage in such frivolity.