Wheels Across the Pond 2025 car show

by philg

In honor of D-Day (June 6, 1944), a few photos from Wheels Across the Pond 2025 car show, an annual event in Jupiter, Florida that showcases British and European cars (April 19 this year). It’s free for spectators and only $45 per car for show vehicle owners so it is unclear how the event survives financially.

Our show began in the $10 premium parking lot with a rare Talbo. These were apparently made in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, one town to the south, beginning in the mid-1990s. One sold in 2023 on BaT for $230,000 (2023 dollars, remember!). The BaT description: “Designed to resemble a Figoni et Falaschi-bodied 1930s Talbot-Lago T150C SS, the car features fiberglass bodywork finished in burgundy over a tubular steel chassis, and power comes from a 5.0-liter Ford V8 paired with an AOD four-speed automatic transmission. … TLC Carrossiers Incorporated was founded by former Pratt & Whitney engineer George Balaschak in 1990 to create a car inspired by the 1938 Talbot-Lago T150C SS that utilized modern running gear.” (Pratt has a big operation, complete with its own airport (private 7000′ runway), just west of Jupiter/PBG.)

A local art car was parked right near the entrance:

(The biggest art on display here is keeping an older Jaguar running!)

A guy whose dad was the original purchaser of a 1967 Morgan exhibited the family heirloom ($4,092 in what we are informed is our inflation-free society; about 75,000 Bidies today for a replica) and let us touch the wood that supports the body:

The English struggled to make decent cars before they were enriched by migrants. Examples:

Now that the UK is fully enriched, the Aston Martin DBX (not based on a Volkswagen like most of the high-dollar European SUVs) is available. It might be worth the $288,000 price if they could just make the interior a little more orange:

Since we don’t care about pedestrian safety anymore (if we did, we would impose a 50% tax on SUVs and pickups not purchased by people with honest jobs), why can’t we get this look for the nose of our Honda minivan?

Here’s a display that attributes the 1950s decline of the British luxury car industry to the British “victory” in WWII:

Turning now to the country that the British purportedly defeated, we find a great example of speaker-listener disconnect (“pragmatic failure” for the academics)… “I’ll pick you up in my BMW and we can go out for lunch” (a 13 horsepower 1957 BMW Isetta 300):

For scale, next to a baby stroller:

What Germany was able to build before it became an Islamic (as measured by hours spent on religious activities) nation (1961 Mercedes 190SL; current value about $150,000):

A Fiat Topolino and perhaps the only surviving Marot-Gardon (the owner drives it around his Palm Beach County (Lake Worth Beach) neighborhood):

Elizabeth Warren was at the event, but I didn’t get a chance to ask if I could join her on a taxpayer-funded trip to visit Kilmar Abrego Garcia:

Also in the motorcycle section, a 20 lb. bicycle from 1900, no carbon fiber required and the roads back then weren’t as smooth as they are now:

Who agrees with me that the 20-year-old Ferrari 360 is more attractive than their latest and greatest?

(They seem to be available used for about $100,000. It was $153,500 in 2000, which translates to roughly $285,000 in today’s mini-dollars (i.e., it wasn’t a great investment if held from new). Our neighbor who owns a couple of Ferraris says that maintenance on the 360 is astronomically expensive due to the need to drop the engine in order to replace a timing belt that has a 3-year life. “Ferrari realized that the reputation for excessive maintenance costs was killing sales so they made the F430 a lot cheaper and easier to service,” he said. Used F430s are perhaps 10-20% more expensive than the 360.)

Let’s close with some Deplorability, a MAGA sticker on a Superformance replica and a “Black Labs Matter” explanation on an old Land Rover:

There were a ton of recent McLarens at the event, but I don’t want to include any here because they’re as common as dirt parked in the strip malls of South Florida. Also, according to a friend who owns a Ferrari and an Aston Martin (24 cylinders total!), McLarens are horribly unreliable and expensive to maintain, e.g., due to broken axles. I’m also leaving out the Triumphs and MGs because the Mazda Miata is so much better.

Full post, including comments

Losing my bet on why Elon Musk would leave government

by philg

In mid-January, a colleague and I disagreed on when and why Elon Musk would leave the U.S. government. He said that Donald Trump would get into a fight with Elon and fire him. I said that Elon Musk would quit after he realized that it was impossible to cut federal spending because the enemy is mostly us (i.e., Americans who want the world’s largest welfare state, as a percentage of GDP (we were #2 behind France before the coronapanic enhancements)). We made a friendly bet that I would win if Elon hadn’t been fired by the end of February 2025.

Isn’t it my colleague/friend who lost the bet? Elon was still in Washington, D.C. at the end of February. That’s true, of course, but the fight between the two guys has become so personal that I think it is also fair to say that my friend was correct and I am the loser of the bet.

Which of these two is correct? Neither Elon Musk nor Donald Trump (nor anyone else) has a crystal ball and, therefore, neither one can be proven correct or incorrect. They have different assumptions about future GDP growth, apparently. I am a pessimist so I agree with Elon Musk. Given that the U.S. has turned itself into a shelter for tens of millions of humans from the world’s least successful societies (latest example: Mohamed Sabry Soliman plus his wife and five children; previous example: “Maryland father” Kilmar Abrego Garcia) I don’t see how we are going to have significant per capita GDP growth (even immigrants who earned as much as native-born Americans wouldn’t solve our fiscal problems; see “immigrants age too” in Aporia). But Trump the Optimist could turn out to be right, e.g., if the AI boom turns out to be real.

Although I agree with Elon on the likely deficit trajectory, I disagree with him on what is at stake. Congress isn’t locked into any particular tax or spending policy. If the GDP growth forecast by Donald Trump does not materialize, Congress and President AOC can work together to raise taxes, e.g., a 20 percent federal value-added tax plus a $1/mile fee to travel on interstate highways. Congress and President AOC could eliminate the current unlimited charitable deduction, which is enabling Bill Gates to deprive the U.S. Treasury of at least $40 billion in capital gains taxes as he sends all of his accumulated wealth to deserving Africans (DW). Congress could even, in some alternate universe, cut spending! Congress could say, for example, that no more than 10 percent of Americans can be on welfare (means-tested housing, Medicaid, SNAP/EBT, or Obamaphone) at any one time. The safety net would then be for unusual situations, not for the average American. (Of course, this is a fantasy!)

Related:

  • “The Medicaid program is the largest single source of health care coverage in the United States, covering nearly half of all children, over 40% of births” (source); i.e., nearly half of Americans are born via welfare and continue on welfare (imagine a circus with a “safety net” into which roughly half the performers fall)
  • If All Lives Have Equal Value, why does Bill Gates support shutting down the U.S. economy? (before sending hundreds of $billions taken from US/EU consumers to Africa, Gates contributing to harming Africans via trade reductions for coronapanic)
Full post, including comments

New York Times offers a new immigrant-rich history of jet engines

by philg

“The U.S. Deported This Chinese Scientist, in a Decision That Changed World History” (New York Times, May 30, 2025):

In 1950, though it didn’t know it yet, the American government held one of the keys to winning the Cold War: Qian Xuesen, a brilliant Chinese rocket scientist who had already transformed the fields of aerospace and weaponry. In the halls of the California Institute of Technology and M.I.T., he had helped solve the riddle of jet propulsion and developed America’s first guided ballistic missiles.

The immigrant invented the jet engine, then? The Wikipedia history of the jet engine credits various English and European engineers, notably Frank Whittle, with most of the “riddle-solving” work done more than 20 years prior to 1950.

I wonder how many more years it will be before all textbooks relate a history of science and technology in which all innovations are from migrants, the 2SLGBTQQIA+, women, and Engineers of Color.

Below, Qian Xuesen’s Gloster Meteor.

Full post, including comments

Why Jew-hatred is so popular at elite universities

by philg

Young Americans hoping to stay elite or join the elites, e.g., via attending an elite university, are forced into behaviors that would have seemed completely unnatural back in the 1970s. A 1970s public school was a cruel bully-filled environment compared to today’s placid “kindness is everything” schools. Teenagers were expected to be solipsistic and certainly not expected to pretend to be committed do-gooders. Today, by contrast, the teenager who hopes to gain admittance to a decent college must feign passion for a social justice cause, helping the “underserved”, etc. Nobody seems to notice that teenagers have enough of their own problems to focus on and that folks who genuinely want to invest time and money in charity tend to be old.

If the Americans who fought World War II were the “Greatest Generation” then surely today’s college students are the “Kindest Generation” and those who attend the most elite schools are the kindest of the kindest. How to explain, then, the enthusiasm for Israel-haterd/Jew-hatred among the kindest of the kind? Here’s a theory from a friend in the Boston area (she’s a 60ish Clinton/Obama Democrat who questions the full Biden/Harris religion):

My theory is that they’re force-fed so much “kindness” that they’re desperate to be mean to someone — and, in reason #100 for antisemitism over the centuries, campus ideology and TikTok gave them the excuse…

I think that she’s on to something. Ivy League (“Queers for Palestine League”) schools demand thousands of young humans every year who are as kind as the kindest Buddhist philosopher. The U.S. doesn’t contain a sufficient size population of ultra-kind 18-year-olds. Therefore, the people admitted to elite schools are mostly those who’ve been great liars and pretenders regarding their kindness levels. They need to take their masks off occasionally (so to speak; of course, the same folks have been very diligent indeed about wearing their COVID-19 masks; #FollowTheScience). They can’t hold an on-campus demonstration to decry crimes committed by undocumented migrants or by Black Americans. They can’t rally against Muslims being reluctant to celebrate the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community. What is left? The only acceptable outlets for rage (Two Minutes Hate) are (1) anti-Trump/anti-Republican gatherings, and (2) anti-Israel/anti-Jew gatherings (sometimes layered with a “we don’t hate Jews, only Zionists” gloss).

The idea has now trickled down to some non-elite schools…

Related:

Full post, including comments

Why isn’t Mohamed Sabry Soliman called “Colorado father”?

by philg

Kilmar Abrego Garcia is “Maryland father” according to our esteemed journalists. From the Journal of Popular Studies, for example:

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration due to an “administrative error,” is “alive and secure” in prison, U.S. officials shared.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman is referred to as “Egyptian man”. As the father of five, wouldn’t it be fair to say that Mr. Soliman earned the “Colorado father” sobriquet? From New York, for example:

When authorities arrived on the scene, they arrested Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian man from El Paso County

(“Mohamed of El Paso” would also have worked as a moniker?)

NBC:

The wife and five children of an Egyptian man accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at people in Boulder demonstrating for the release of Israeli hostages

I still can’t figure out why we needed to have these seven Egyptians (Mohamed, his wife, and their five children) as neighbors while we did not necessarily need the other 115 million Egyptians. What is our selection process? Plainly, since we haven’t eliminated our asylum offer, we want to run a shelter for stray Egyptians, but we accept only some of the strays. We accepted Mohamed Sabry Soliman and his six family members because he supports the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Egyptian government seeks to suppress? Or was there some other rationale?

Loosely related… what one enthusiast was able to learn about Mohamed Sabry Soliman via careful examination of his online profile:

Full post, including comments

Whites who fled to Latinx-free New Hampshire demand due process for the Latinx

by philg

Continuing our coverage of National Immigrant Heritage Month for those who celebrate…

Below is a friend who used to live in a 93% white part of Maskachusetts. He fled to a 95% white region of New Hampshire, a U.S. state that is perfect for those who wish to avoid encountering our Latinx brothers, sisters, and binary resisters. Wokipedia says that Keene, NH is enriched by only 1.6% Latinx. His Facebook post:

Spotted at the rally for democracy in Keene NH today. Note my hat showing support for Artificial Intelligence in our schools.

It’s a mystery to me that people who’ve chosen to live a Latinx-free lifestyle are this passionate about ensuring that other parts of the U.S. receive maximum enrichment. As part of my effort to be defriended by 100 percent of Facebook users, of course I asked “Nobody could persuade a Black or Latinx person to join the rally?” Response 1: “My wife tells me that I should just let it go and not engage with people who may not be well-informed, so I hereby disengage.” Response 2 (from one of his friends, with an unknown gender ID but a conventionally male Jewish name): “No pearls to swine!”

Here’s an all-white crowd featured by the BBC…

a little farther down in the article:

Here’s a video from Portland, Maine. Even after importing half of Somalia, the righteous Mainers apparently couldn’t find a single Black person to join their (mostly unmasked) mass gathering:

Another “sea of whiteness” video:

Full post, including comments

How was the immigration of Mohamed Sabry Soliman supposed to benefit Americans?

by philg

Egyptian enricher Mohamed Sabry Soliman recently attacked some Jews in Boulder, Colorado who were out of step with the Free Palestine portion of the Progressive dogma.

Colorado Public Radio (1% taxpayer funded and also at risk of extinction if taxpayer funds are cut off):

Federal agents said Mohamed Sabry Soliman told police after his arrest in a Boulder firebombing that he planned his attack for a year, would do it again if he could and “wished they all were dead.”

According to a federal criminal complaint filed Monday morning, Soliman, 45, threw two lit Molotov cocktails at the gathering near the Boulder courthouse, yelling “Free Palestine!”

Soliman was born in Egypt and applied for U.S. asylum in September 2022, after arriving on a tourist visa according to federal authorities. He previously spent 17 years in Kuwait before moving to Colorado Springs three years ago, according to the state arrest paperwork.

According to Assistant Secretary Dept. of Homeland Security Tricia Mclaughlin, Soliman entered the country in August 2022 on a B2 tourism visa in California that expired in February 2023. He filed for asylum in September 2022.

Question for today: If Mohamed Sabry Soliman had committed no crimes of any kind how would his presence in the United States have made native-born Americans better off? What was the best case scenario and, therefore, the rationale for our policy? (Or maybe the answer is that we have intentionally set up an immigration policy to make ourselves worse off?)

Separately, the asylum claim is kind of interesting. Some U.S. bureaucrats apparently believed Mohamed Sabry Soliman’s assertion that Egypt was too dangerous for a human to inhabit. At the same time, the country that is too dangerous for humans to inhabit now has roughly 4X as many humans as it did in 1960.

Related:

Full post, including comments

What would it cost to deport undocumented migrants with due process?

by philg

Happy National Immigrant Heritage Month to those who celebrate.

My lawyer friends are generally in favor of anything that leads to more fees for lawyers. They all support gay marriage, for example, because no attorney can collect $1000/hr to handle a gay divorce unless there has first been a gay marriage (see “I Got Gay Married. I Got Gay Divorced. I Regret Both.” (NYT) for how attorneys mined out the life savings of two women, something that wouldn’t previously have been possible).

Recently, the more deplorable of these lawyers have been saying “I want all undocumented migrants deported, but only with due process.” By “due process” they mean the kind of full-scale trial that we would normally hold for someone accused of a crime (in most cases, though, neither the government nor the defendant can afford to go to trial so the result is plea bargaining). Democrat lawyers agree. They want a trial for each migrant, but with the outcome being that the precious migrant can stay in the U.S. forever.

Let’s see how much work would be generated for attorneys if we subscribed to this plan.

There won’t be any plea bargaining because there is no possibility of compromise in the binary decision of citizenship/expulsion. Every case will, therefore, go to trial. Every case will involve complicated facts, typically requiring travel to a foreign country to investigate, e.g., what was happening circa 2010 with the pupusa stand that purportedly resulted in Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia being targeted for death by Salvadoran gangs (CNN). So let’s assume 1,000 hours of attorney time for the prosecution and the same 1,000 hours for the defense all the way through trial. The additional lawyers who must be paid include the judges and their clerks (another 300 hours per case, perhaps). The costs of running the courthouse, the admin staff, the security guards, and the court reporters will be folded into an hourly fee, as will the costs of running the prosecution and defense law firms. Let’s assume $300 per attorney-hour as the full cost including all of these admin and support expenses. Each undocumented migrant who goes through the due process that my attorney friends envision will thus consume 2300*$300 = $690,000 in fees. That’s a lot less than the cost of handling a federal criminal court charge (I learned in 2013 that it would cost $1.5 million in 2013 dollars for a proper defense; adjusted for Bidenflation that would be $2.5 million? Then the prosecution would spent money and also the court itself, so perhaps $4 million total?) so it seems like this is the smallest conceivable number.

How many undocumented migrants are there in the U.S. today? For about 30 years we’ve been hearing “11 million”. Yale found 22 million in 2016:

Given the open border of the Biden-Harris years, therefore, there should be at least 30 million (undocumented migrant) candidates for due process. Multiplying out 30 million times $690,000 results in a total cost to U.S. taxpayers of $20 trillion. For reference, the current national debt is about $37 trillion (source), though that understates our indebtedness because it doesn’t count state and local pension obligations, forecast future Medicare and Social Security costs, etc. The current annual US GDP is about $28 trillion.

Full post, including comments

Why do the French celebrate by burning cars?

by philg

“Paris Erupts in Celebrations, Riots After PSG Wins Champions League” (WSJ):

Nationwide, two people died and more than 190 were injured, according to a provisional tally from the French interior ministry. More than 260 cars were burned and more than 500 people were detained.

Sporadic riots aren’t uncommon in France after major sports events, or even on New Year’s Eve. Officials for a time published a yearly tally of how many cars were burned during New Year’s riots, until they decided that the public numbers were encouraging more burnings.

Even in the mostly-peaceful BLM protests here in the U.S. I don’t think that 260 cars were burned (though maybe our tireless investigative journalists couldn’t be troubled to tally up the destruction?). Why are the French so passionate about torching cars?

From the New York Post:

Full post, including comments

Pride Prosecco at Target

by philg

Way back in March of this year (i.e., not during Pride) we were driving from Coral Gables to Jupiter in a Biblical Florida rainstorm. It began to feel unsafe and we’d seen a few accidents so I pulled off the highway in Deerfield Beach to check radar, maybe switch drivers, and possibly simply wait out the rain. I spotted a Target and we decided to make that our rest stop. As we stretched our legs by strolling around the store, our 11-year-old old grabbed a Stella Rosa “Love Series” rainbow-flagged Prosecco bottle and said, “Hey, Dad, for you!”

(One offer rejected by the kids: watching the Disney live-action Snow White movie. In other words, they preferred to die on I-95 than to watch Rachel Zegler.)

I managed to find it on the Target web site later that evening:

Happy Pride, then, to all who celebrate!

Question for Tesla owners: How well does full self-driving work in rain that is heavy enough to force Interstate drivers to slow down to about 40 mph?

Full post, including comments