A Tuesday Roundup with an Action Item!

Yesterday’s post on tariffs was pretty intense, so I thought I’d share some lighter reading today.

That photo above is of a 1959 Edsel. You may or may not remember, but the Edsel was named for Edsel Ford, only child of Henry and Clara Ford. It was intended as an additional nameplate for the Ford conglomerate. It is synonymous with “failure” as it was, at the time, the worst automotive disaster of all time. Released with great fanfare, Ford hoped to sell 200,000 Edsels a year when it hit the market in 1958, but managed just 63,000. Sales plunged in 1959 and the brand was dumped in 1960: easy come, easy go.

And under the heading of car disasters, let’s not forget the exploding Ford Pinto. This article has more information than you’d ever want to know about the car, but the bottom line is that in Lee Iacocca’s rush to production, they put the gas tank near the rear axle, so even in minor rear end collisions, the Pinto would burst into flames. As an aside, when I was buying my very first car, I looked at a Ford Pinto, and back then, everything was an option. I’ve never forgotten that a $128 option on the Pinto was a back seat (yes you read that correctly), which was a lot on a car with a base price slightly under $2,000.

Well boys and girls, the crown for worst automotive disaster is now held by none other than Elmo Muskrat. At the Tesla shareholders’ meeting in 2023, Elmo said they’d sell between 250,000 and 500,000 cybertrucks in 2024, off 1 million people on the waiting list. Source. So did Elmo sell more cybertrucks than the 63,000 Edsels sold in 1958?

NO

Elmo sold 38,965 units. Source. And that was BEFORE he became the destructor of the US government. Cybertrucks can only be sold in the US, Canada and Mexico because there are all sorts of problems selling them elsewhere. Like in the EU and Britain, which don’t allow “cars” that are as fat and heavy as the Cybertruck (you’d need a truck driver license) AND it doesn’t meet safety concerns. And that’s before the safety recalls.

There’s a rumor that you can’t get domestic car insurance on a cybertruck. It appears that you CAN get it insured, however, some insurance companies won’t insure cars that cost over $100,000 (and most cybertrucks do), plus, they may require a truck-driver license. So it’s iffy. Then again, if you’ll pay more than A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR A VEHICLE, you likely have more money than brains, and you’ll spend what it costs to insure it.

Here’s why I bring this up. Elmo built the Texas “Gigafactory” for, predominantly, cybertrucks, with capacity for 250,000 units a year. Blown money given the absolute disdain for these monstrosities.

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Jam

I heard the head of Smucker’s on the television saying that tariffs were GOOD because now they’d be able to sell Smucker’s jam in Europe, and they could take on Bonne Maman.

I like jam. I think a lot of people do. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a Bonne Maman consumer. I eschew Smucker’s for the same reason that it’s restricted in Europe, independent of tariffs. It’s the ingredient “high fructose corn syrup”. Info on its restrictions here.

Let’s compare ingredients in strawberry preserves:

Bonne Maman: Strawberries, Sugar, Brown Cane Sugar, Concentrated Lemon Juice, Fruit Pectin. Source.

Smucker’s: Strawberries, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Sugar, Fruit Pectin, Citric Acid. Source.

Think about it, which would you rather slather on your toast?

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Saw this, and it expresses my thoughts:

But here’s the thing: Books conclude, movies end, and you can always turn off the record player when you can’t stand the screaming anymore.

Things are dark now, but we are notching incremental wins, and we are starting to see elected Rethuglicans get it through their thick skulls and addled brains that the threat to their continued re-election comes NOT from a primary challenge from the right, but from the Democratic candidates they will face in November of 2026.

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Completely Under the Radar, and You Will NOT Believe This

You may have heard that a group called the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) has filed suit in Florida to get the tariffs invalidated. If you haven’t heard, here is all the information you’ll ever want.

So yeah, great, wonderful — another court case that the fascist regime will likely lose.

That’s not under the radar, it made the news.

If you go to the NCLA site, you can read about what they’re doing, who their advisors are, all sorts of stuff.

Here’s what you won’t find there, and you have to actually dig around to find out: the organization was founded by, and funded by, Charles Koch and Leonard Leo. And I really couldn’t make that up. I find this utterly unbelievable, although it is incontrovertibly true.

Today’s Action Item

People email me about stuff. All sorts of stuff. Recently, I received a request to sign on to a petition. Here’s the background:

The petition asks that servicemen and women refuse to obey unlawful orders. I signed, and I hope that you will, too, and that you’ll share it. Link here.

If you have something you’d like as an Action Item, please let me know. There are so many things that go on in silos, and we need to get as many people involved in as many actions as possible.

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A Personal Request

If you like my stuff, I humbly ask that you restack it. I’m trying to understand some “internal Substack things” that I really don’t follow, but it would help my research out a lot if you’d click the restack button at the bottom of the screen. Today and every day until I can get some things figured out. Thanks in advance.