Can Commander Cody's hotrod Lincoln outrun those Chinese EVs?

The Lincoln label has been an iconic American luxury car brand for over 100 years. In the early days they fought for pride of place against the likes of Packard, Duesenberg, and Pierce-Arrow.  In the post-war boom they and Cadillac ruled the luxe roost in the American market, at least until German manufacture rose from the ashes of WWII.

When I was a gas-pump boy at John's Supertest in my teens,  the Lincoln Mk III was the ride of choice for quite a few of the more affluent folks. Harold Knight owned a local lumber yard and pulled in once a week in his burgundy coupe with the black vinyl roof. One day he got to yacking with somebody in the store and I asked him to please move his car. He apologizes and gives me "if you wouldn't mind kid, could you pull it ahead... keys in it." That moment was the highlight of my tenure at John's Supertest!

I greatly admired the last generation of Lincoln land yachts culminating in the garish excesses of the late '70s. Remember the 1979 Town Coupe? A family of four could live comfortably in one of those while simultaneously solving the commute-to-work challenge!

I've been partial to Toyotas and Suubs most of my adult life, but there's a reason Lincoln has been on my radar of late. It's about a) towing cap, and b) depreciation. In the event the Farm Manager actually follows through on her threats to retire at 65, we might like to spend some time towing a boat or a camper. No firm plans and no fresh ideas, but it seems to be the kinda shit people do if they don't die first.  And frankly, I'm looking forward to it! 

Truth is, the tow cap on my Toyota is more a toy cap. There are certainly Toyotas with outstanding towing capacity. A Sequoia will tow any boat or camper I'd ever own. So would a Lincoln Navigator. Both run well over $100k, but here's the thing; the Lincoln depreciates 60% over five years; the Toyota depreciates  37%.  In other words, in terms of affordable tow vehicles, a used Lincoln is far more affordable than the Toyota.

Which brings us back to Commander Cody.  Since I'll never need four tons of towing capacity, I was looking at the lighter stuff. The Lincoln Nautilus caught my eye. It's got double the tow capacity of my Rav4.  It'll easily handle a little teardrop camper or a small boat. And it also has the extra-special distinction of being built right here in Ontario, at Ford's Oakville plant!

Or at least it used to be. I used to pride myself on thinking I was kinda on top of what goes on in this world, but I had absolutely no idea that as of the '24 model year, every Lincoln Nautilus sold anywhere in the world is manufactured entirely in China. 

Yup, one of the very few surviving American car brands... made in China.

New study reveals penguin farts cause climate change

Imagine my shock when I happened across this headline at Euronews; Antarctic penguins emit up to 7 million tonnes per year of methane.  Oh. My. God!!! And here we've been blaming ourselves for this disaster ever since Silent Spring came out! And it's been those gosh-darned penguins all along!

Well, this news is a real gamechanger! If it's been the penguins all along, that means all that crazy stuff like the energy transition and EVs was just the hoax Donald Trump claimed! 

Kinda hard to believe,  really. I mean, the little devils look so cute and cuddly, you'd never guess they're destroying our habitat with all that methane. Cute and cuddly they may well be, but each and every one of them is farting 7 tonnes of methane into the air we breathe. Hell, I doubt I'm putting out those volumes even since I went to the beans & cabbage diet on account of the gluten thing. And there's only one of me.

But truly, it is so refreshing when science can expose long-accepted verities as false with more science!

What would Moses do?

There's a story on view at the Jpost about Bibi putting pressure on his White House puppet to cough up a few more endorsements of The Greatest Leader Since Moses before Israelis go to the polls two days hence. Gives you a clear sense of how off-the-rails the Israeli polity has gone. It's gotta be a vanishingly small club of world leaders who imagine a Mafia Don endorsement at this moment in time would boost their fortunes!

And all too obviously, Trump is increasingly reluctant to provide such endorsements. Netanyahu's plunge into genocidal mayhem post-7.10  hasn't been as popular in America as Donald's AIPAC handlers had assumed, and he's got his own election storm-clouds gathering. Americans can't get honest news out of Israel from Western media, but al Jazeera and other non-Western platforms have been live-streaming Israel's industrial-scale mass-murder of women  and children for three years now, and to their credit, most Americans don't approve. 

The fact such an endorsement matters to Bibi speaks volumes. In the mind of The Greatest Leader Since Moses, a Trump endorsement would, even at this late hour, potentially move the needle enough to keep him in power and out of jail.

Ironically, it could potentially do the opposite for Trump!

As for what Moses would do, that's a distraction. It could be argued Bibi is not only greatest since, but GREATEST of ALL TIME! And here's why Moses 2.0 beats the pants off the original iteration. PM Netanyahu has devoted his entire career to fulfilling God's command, issued thousands of years ago, to kill all of Israel's enemies, and their children, and their dogs, and their sheep... there's more, but you probably see the drift. Moses 1.0 on the other hand was pretty loosey-goosey with God's commands even during his own lifetime, let alone thousands of years up the road.

There ya go Donnie; I figure it would please the Lord most if you cranked out a barrage of Truths over the next coupla days endorsing the war criminal, thereby ensuring the political end of you both!

Elon Musk explains never-ending Ukraine War boondoggle

Apparently the think tank here at Falling Downs is not alone in noticing the eternal feedback loop that has taken hold in Zelly's prosecution of his "defence" of Ukraine. For years now we've gone again and again through the near-defeat of the aggressor, and but for the lack of just a few crucial weapons and a few even more crucial tens or hundreds of billions of euros or USDs, we can finally free the Russian people from the evil dictator Bad Vlad, but also restore freedom and sovereignty to Ukraine!

Elon took note of this phenomenon in a post on X yesterday, in which he took the critique to the next level. According to him, this cycle keeps repeating because the folks approving ever more billions, and giving away NATO's armory, personally benefit from this absolute waste of taxpayer dollars. Of course they do! Not many pols in the liberal democracies are willing to risk donations from the war profiteers by calling out this massive criminal waste of euros, USDs, and Ukrainian lives.

Thanks for that insight, Elon! Let's take it to the logical next level. For the ruling junta in Kyiv, Russia's "unprovoked, illegal, full-scale invasion" is the gift that keeps on giving! How else do you imagine the Kyiv Bentley dealership clawed its way to the top of the European Bentley sales charts... from dead last just five years ago!

Carney invites Russia, Iran, and North Korea to join coalition of like-minded nations to overthrow Trump regime

In a stunning reversal of policy, the Canadian PM has offered yesterday's enemies a seat at the table as he builds a coalition to restore the freedoms and human rights of the American people. Clearly Trump has become a deranged madman obsessed with restoring the former glory of a once-serious power. 

He has cowed allies and enemies alike into submission. Everybody except Canada, which is why it's up to the Globalist Banksters favorite banker to set things right, and clearly, time is of the essence. After starting and losing two wars at once, Trump has become so delusional that he's more convinced by the day he actually won them. He is flooding the streets of American cities with armed thugs who are hunting down Trump opponents. He is murdering his own people!

We have rarely seen such a clear-cut case for the application of R2P, the Responsibility to Protect doctrine Canada was instrumental in getting through the UN. The leadership burden therefore falls to us.

We haven't been called to do much punching-above-our-weight since the golden age of Big Steve, but Canada stands ready. Leadership is what we do.  We're ready to take back our rightful role at the top o' the democratic order!

Former ambassador to Russia briefs CBC on grim human rights situation under Putin

 It's grim alright. Former ambassador Sarah Taylor painted a bleak picture... not for herself, but for the 140 million Russians who don't have the freedom to escape Bad Vlad's dystopian shithole.

Sarah shared some profound insights that brought into focus the scale of Putin's relentless disinformation war. It is truly mind-boggling! For example, for over fifty years the communist dictator Nikita Khrushchev had a completely bogus rep as a reformer, when in reality he was one of the worst they ever had till Putin came along. All that hogwash about Nikita K freeing millions of political prisoners from the Siberian Gulag? Lies lies lies!!!

But the lying didn't really take off till Putin seized the Kremlin  via an obviously fraudulent "democratic" election featuring, literally, some two dozen alleged political parties! Ya, as if! And the disinformation war against the West went completely bonkers after Alexei Navalny returned from his all-expenses-paid education at Yale and began asking questions about where Bad Vlad had squirreled away the billions, nay, tens of billions... double nay nay, HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS Putin has pilfered from his longsuffering people.

At great risk to her personal safety, Taylor made the courageous decision, along with the ambassadors from France, UK, Germany, and USA, to attend Navalny's funeral. There, her heart was almost broken by the sight of "many" thousands of Muscovites who defied Putin with their presence. Although CBC didn't use the phrase "tens of thousands" in their reporting at the time, she ventured that in her estimation it might very well have been possible!

Her interview with Matt Galloway was a real eye-opener, and another job well done by our public broadcaster. Bravo Matt and Sarah!

Meanwhile our PM was over in Ankara to sign trade and defence deals with like-minded NATO ally  Turkiye. It's a lot like Canada, except for a couple of minor things... for example, while they've got twice our overall population, they've got 10x the prison population! And there is an argument to be made our erstwhile NATO ally holds more political prisoners than Russia! The Sultan's human rights bona fides may be a little over-ripe, but any port will do in this storm of authoritarian terror launched by Putin and his minions in Tehran and North Korea!

But for the Grace of God...

The Grace of God. We don't put much stock in the Grace of God in the modern era.

Got a call last night from my old pal Kipling. But for the Grace of God, Kipling woulda been a gonner twenty times over long before now. And he knows it. That's the thing about old guys who are shocked and confused when they suddenly find themselves grappling with the fact they actually made it to old age! 

That truly is a WTF moment. I went into a Service Ontario office yesterday and came out a half hour later with a VIP handicapped parking permit. WTF? How did that happen? First place I went to try it out was Shoppers Drug Mart, and wouldn't you know, all the handicapped spots were taken!

That's obviously something to get pissy about if you're looking for a handicapped parking space, but since I'm new to gimp-world, I'll just hang back and reserve judgement. But for the Grace of God, I may have very well dropped dead in some random parking lot long before I snagged that VIP parking permit!