Archive for February, 2016
22 Feb 2016

Trump Wins Plurality in South Carolina

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confederacy-dunces-february

22 Feb 2016

Triumph TR2

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MarcelloTR3
Your typical Triumph sports car driver with his typical date.

Back in the early 1970s, I had a classic 1959 Triumph TR3A. It was a very cool car, and though I have owned faster and more sophisticated cars since, I’ve never owned any I enjoyed more.

Old Cars Weekly, this week, did a tribute to my old car’s immediate predecessor, the TR2, built from 1953 to 1955.

Sir John Black, who headed Triumph, decided he needed a sports car. He tried and failed to buy Morgan, so he created his own sports car and exhibited it at the 1952 London Motor Show. This car — known as the 20TS — generated interest, though it was gawky, underpowered and had a weak suspension. The next year’s TR2 roadster was different — it was a real sports car designed by Walter Belgrove with a sunken “small-mouth” grille, cut-down doors and a 2.0-liter, 90-hp version of the Vanguard engine that was good for 100 mph.

TR meant “Triumph” and the company’s advertising department promised “more performance per dollar than any other car in the world.” Triumph claimed 0-to-50-mph acceleration in 7.5 seconds. “You’re as young as you feel at the wheel of a T.R.2,” the early ads said. “The car that let’s you drive, and doesn’t drive you!”

First-TR-2

The Triumph TR2 roadster carried an East Coast Port-of-Entry price of $2,448 and weighed just 1,960 lbs. Its 1991-cc pushrod engine featured three main bearings, solid valve lifters, an 8.5:1 compression ratio and twin S.U. carburetors. The Vanguard four-speed gearbox was linked to a 3.7:1 rear axle.

The TR2 could go from 0-to-60 mph in 11.9 to 13.7 seconds and flash through the standing-start quarter-mile in 19.6 seconds at 70 mph. Fitted with an optional overdrive and a belly pan (or “undershield” in British terminology); one Triumph hit 124.095 mph on the world-famous Jabbeke Highway in Belgium.

Read the whole thing.

TR-2

22 Feb 2016

Underneath the Malarkey, Trumpism Is Mostly Nativism

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TrumpSupporters2

Kevin Williamson is justifiably annoyed that stupidity and vulgarity is coming out on top in the early GOP primaries.

One lesson… is that the broad Republican electorate is not actually very conservative. For all of the pleasure that these so-called conservatives derive from denouncing socialism on the Euro-weenie model, they turn out to have much more in common with Marine Le Pen than they do with Ronald Reagan, of free-enterprise and amnesty infamy: They like their welfare state just fine, thank you, but they’ll wet themselves in terror if they see a Marlboro billboard in Spanish.

What’s more illuminating, though, is how many of the so-called conservatives in the entertainment wing of the movement — the contrepreneurs — turned out to be mob-rule enthusiasts simply looking for a sufficiently large and stupid mob. Donald Trump is Bill Clinton without the experience in office, and indeed is a considerable financial patron of the Clinton enterprise. He has been on the wrong side of practically every important issue — life, the Second Amendment, national security — and managed to go nearly 70 years, most of which was spent in public life, without uttering a notable sentence about what has become his signature issue: immigration, about which his policies range from the nonsensical to the never-gonna-happen.

For the contrepreneurs and their followers, it’s an exercise in wishful thinking: If not for the illegals, employment and wages would go up, taxes would go down, spending would go down, budgets would be balanced, schools wouldn’t be terrible, etc. Chickens not laying? Cow gone dry? Somewhere, somehow, somebody called Perez is to blame. How do you know? Because some third-rate doggie-vitamin salesman on the radio says so.

When the God of the Old Testament was especially annoyed with His people, he threatened to take away their statesmen: “I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.” We Americans don’t have princes, and we don’t need anybody to rule over us. But we do need capable public administrators, including capable presidents.

Read the whole thing.

22 Feb 2016

Jeb Pulls Out

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OneChildLeft

21 Feb 2016

The Church of Trump

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PopeTrump

21 Feb 2016

Stapler v. Ripley

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Get away from her, you bitch!

AlienStapler

21 Feb 2016

Robert Reich’s Ted Cruz Ad

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If you were thinking of supporting Trump, just watch this and see what an ultra-liberal democrat has to say.

21 Feb 2016

Some Revolution

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Tweet114

20 Feb 2016

Bring Back Dueling!

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Duel1

David Harsanyi proposes a much-needed solution to the incivility and low personal integrity of our current politicians.

Right now, the leading candidate in the GOP race is celebrated by his fans for his vulgarity and eagerness to attack the dignity of others. People confuse this incivility — and he’s not alone — as a statement against political correctness. It isn’t. That would entail using ideological or cultural rhetoric that others have deemed morally unacceptable. Not calling a rival candidate a “pussy.”

Yet, the more personal and boorish his invective gets, the more Trump fans are awestricken. The belief that tough-guy Trump is a “fighter” propels his candidacy, even though pampered scions of wealth rarely have to fight for anything. And his success will only produce others who’ll ape this strategy.

I think we can all agree dueling would be a much-needed corrective.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying violence is the answer. I’m saying violence is an answer.

Read the whole thing.

Just picture Sarah Palin calling out Hillary.

19 Feb 2016

Obama Not Attending Scalia’s Funeral

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ObamaMandelaFuneral
Barack Obama takes selfies and laughs it up with blonde Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt at Nelson Mandela’s funeral.

Considering his behavior at the funeral of Nelson Mandela, a man Obama had previously described as his “personal hero,” it may best that he stays away.

19 Feb 2016

Editing Trump

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TrumpEdit

The New Yorker’s Andrew Boynton has a go at trying to edit Donald Trump’s response to Pope Francis into something more closely resembling conventional English syntax.

19 Feb 2016

Winslow Homer: Fly Fishing Saranac Lake

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WinslowHomer

From Tyler Cowen via Frank A. Dobbs.

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