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The rumble of motorcycles is slowly fading away as the last of the bikers depart central New Hampshire as the 100th Laconia Motorcycle Week winds to a close. While the weather wasn’t fully cooperative – showers and thunderstorms on and off all week – there was enough sunshine to provide the visiting bikers with good weather to enjoy their time here. I haven’t heard any estimates about how many bikers actually made it up this way, but some were expecting to see 500,000 bikers since it was the 100th annual rally.
The couple renting the AirBnB behind The Gulch departed yesterday, heading back to northern New Jersey. At least they trailered their motorcycles which meant they didn’t have to ride back home through the pouring rain.
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By way of Skip at GraniteGrok comes this, something I missed last week. He pretty much nailed this particular topic, “this” being Target (and other retailers) ignoring simple economics and common sense by pissing off their customer base at the behest of a very small percentage of the population, then that small percentage complaining about the inevitable backlash and the retailer deciding staying in business is more important than LGBTQWERTY ‘Pride’.
I’m sorry – am I missing something here? If the consumers that are paying for items no longer wish to purchase them, shouldn’t a store react in its own self-interest AND in protecting the interests of its stockholders? And why SHOULDN’T Target now allow itself to be “Bud Lighted” for a limited sexualized ideology?It seems the petitioning groups have no problem with destroying businesses who won’t voluntarily fall on their economic swords in support of a cause that incorporates a small percentage of the population, a part of that small percentage aiming at grooming children to become their sexual playthings. It seems they assume they can bully companies into working against their best interests and those of their stockholders and force them to commit economic suicide.
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Seriously – you want them to “go down with their [economic] ship” simply to make you feel good about yourself? Are you that selfish? Through thick and thin, eh? Sounds like [clothes designer Erik] Carnell is looking to run a grift by using the old “all or nothing” logic to influence the tactic of guilt (“completely distance yourself….convenient”).
The Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, GLSEN, Family Equality, National LGBTQ Task Force, and approximately 200 other LGBT-allied groups signed a joint statement on Monday laying out a list of demands for Target.Hmmm, is a demand list from groups that represent a tiny fraction of Target’s consumer base going to be valued over the billions of market capitalization already lost by conservative consumers voting with their dollars? WHO has the ability to do more damage to Target?
Some corporations went stupid and kowtowed to that small percentage of their customer base and saw their sales and valuation plummet. Gillette was one of the first and it still hasn’t recovered from its going stupid. Target is just the latest victim. We’ve certainly seen Disney imploding on a lot of fronts, having gone ‘woke’ across the board and seeing their customer base abandoning them. What did Disney think would happen?
The shakeout is going to be interesting.
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Illegal gun sales are now illegal?
Who knew, right?
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The Watermelon Environmentalists keep pushing the EV narrative as if they will fix all of our climate problems even though they know the narrative is a lie. Even the Chinese, who make more EVs than anyone else on the planet, are finding they aren’t the success they thought they would be, but not for the reason you might think.
The CCP was apparently determined to claim that they are making more EV’s than Tesla. But in order to get the EV subsidies, companies are producing vast numbers of cars no one wants to buy. It seems these cars are registered, falsely listed as “sold” and driven 30 miles to a graveyard to presumably rot, or spontaneously combust, whichever comes first. After thirteen years of one particular subsidy, supposedly only worth 3-6% of the best selling car, the government has paid out nearly $15 billion, which seems like it would buy quite a few fields of Neta V EVs.EVs aren’t all that popular here either, at least not as compared to ICE vehicles. It doesn’t help that they are also a lot more expensive than equivalent ICE vehicles, are generally heavier than ICE vehicles, don’t have the range of ICE vehicles, take a lot longer to ‘refuel’ than ICE vehicles, and one of the biggest issues, are far less ‘green’ than ICE vehicles. Of course since none of those points fit the narrative, they are devoutly ignored, minimized, or lied about.
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Who knows what the real price of an EV is in China?
The long running subsidy ended in January, causing a decline in sales, which was supposedly only 1.4% down, but was somehow so bad (whatever the real number was) that several cities leapt to offer their own subsidies of about US$1,452 per car, and now the government has decided to extend the “EV Tax incentives”.
Not surprisingly, given the waste, inefficiency, and purposeless grind, something bad is happening in the Chinese economy — all car sales (petrol and EV’s) are down nearly 20%.
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And that’s the abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the rumble of thousands of motorcycles is fading away, millions of biker dollars are filling the coffers of businesses, and Monday is coming around...again.