Curt's Newsletter, April 2006

Miscellaneous Ravings

Quote:

Hope for the best, expect the worst. Life is a play. We're unrehearsed.”
—Mel Brooks

Discouragement

The war is starting its 4th year, as every news outlet has told us ad nauseum. I’m getting discouraged, not at the way the war has been going. It’s going in the right direction. Lots and lots of bad guys are getting a chance at their 72 virgins, and very few Americans are dying.

Iraq is a lot closer to democracy than it was before, and the surrounding Islamo-Fascist gumments are shaken up. Khaddaffi has already thrown in the towel. Iran and Syria are trying desperately to take out the budding democracy in Iraq and install an Islamo-fascist dictatorship. This is the reason, of course, for the terrorism in Iraq, despite what they may tell you on TV. In an area where there was no democracy, now there is one, fragile and fledgling it might be. Democracy is contagious. There will be more if we don’t let the bad guys win. Israel has stood alone as the only democracy in the area for too long. It’s simple, really. Either we foster democracies there, or the Ilsamic radicals, such as the ones who rule Iran, will rule there. And their goal is an Islamo-fascist West.

We can defeat the terrorists. It’s just a matter of time and national will. And it’s absolutely mandatory for our long-term survival.

The trouble is we can’t defeat the terrorists, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times, The Houston Chronicle, most college professors, Hollyweird loonies, and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

They threw the last war. When we left Vietnam the South Vietnamese Army was well prepared and stopped 2 full-fledged invasions from the north. Congress decided that would not do and cut off their funding for the South Vietnamese army and invited the North Vietnamese Army to please come back. They did. Millions of people died, and now all of Vietnam is a Communist hellhole. The liberal media didn’t mention the mass murders, the re-education camps, and the wholesale murder of indigenous people of the area. They were too happy congratulating themselves for defeating “American Imperialism.”

And now The LA Times prints an article on how we’ve been able to electronically defeat IEDs. Unfortunately they gave so much detail that within a few days Terrorist websites had new instructions for making IEDs that were immune to electronic jamming. And Americans died for it.

The New York Times, of course, printed details of a classified terrorist surveillance program, and terrorists changed the way they communicated. And Americans died for it. They had something like 55 front-page articles on Abu Ghraib prison, and Americans died for it. The terrorists’ rights are being watched over by several groups, and they’re in no danger of being treated as they should. Yet our rights are only being protected by a small group of uniformed men and women who are living in conditions that sometimes make Guantanamo look like Club Med.

The loonies in Congress will lose the war just to make President Bush look bad and to gain power.

The loonies want our troops home. How come they don’t want our troops home from Kosovo? Oh, yes, that was Mr. Clinton’s war – ten years ago.

Where are the demonstrators? The troops are still there. Occasionally they die there.

Most of the professors who so violently hate America and spew anti-American rhetoric became professors because during the Vietnam War we had student deferments. They stayed in school, not taking real courses such as medicine or law or engineering or economics, but in the easiest college to stay in, the college of education. And they’re doing such a good job of educating our youth now. Where do we rank in education? Behind Elbonia and above Carjackistan?

One only has to watch any episode of Jaywalking on the Tonight Show to know that we’re raising a generation of airheads, and those are the smart ones. There are good people in education, lots of them, but they can’t get through the wall of loonies to get it straightened out.

Then there is Hollyweird. Several Hollyweird loonies, most with junior high educations, continually disparage the president’s intelligence. Hmm, he scored 1200 on the SAT when it still meant something, and he has a masters from Harvard Business. And Barbra Streisand, of misspelled blog fame, went where to college? (She didn’t.)

Loonies are harassing funerals of American heroes.

Other loonies are threatening and harassing wounded American heroes at Walter Reed and other American hospitals.

How long will it be before the treatment of a returning vet is as bad as it was when I came back? What’s that? We didn’t have loonies harassing our loved ones at our funerals, just us and our families, so maybe it’s already that bad.

As I say, I’m discouraged. The land of the free and the home of the brave is under siege by the cowardly, the loony, and the haters of American freedom and democracy.

Roy and Eileen Clark pick up their CLK500 Cabriolet at the Mercedes-Benz European Delivery Center

Roy and Eileen Clark pick up their CLK500 Cabriolet at the Mercedes-Benz Factory Delivery Center at Sindelfingen. It was built to their specifications, and they saved a lot of money and had an unforgettable vacation as well.

Phone Call

Judy from the Mercedes-Benz Club America national HQ called. I did an article for them published in the March/April edition of The Star on European Delivery (reprinted on my website). I mentioned a 7% discount on selected models. They received a call from a dealer complaining that they had promised this discount, that he didn’t know how to get it, and if there was one, it was supposed to be a secret.

So Judy called me. “Where did you get the discount?” With 2 mouse clicks I had it on the screen at MBUSA.com. It’s no secret. This DEALER didn’t know about it or wanted to keep it secret from his customers, I’m not sure which. In either case, he’s not serving his customers.

Yeah, to be precise they didn’t call it a discount. They called it 7% savings. (Okay. I know. Discount and Mercedes-Benz are not supposed to be used together. If MBUSA wanted us to discount cars, they would have given us more mark-up; such as we used to have.)

But, in reality, it’s closer to 8 or 9%. There’s a 7% discount off the US MSRP AND no destination charge is included. That’s currently $775. So with a $70,000 car, you’d save 8%. With a $35,000 car, you’d save 9%.
If you buy it from me, you get the discounts, excuse me, “savings” you should.

Teachers

So a hot, 25 year old blonde teacher has traumatized her 14 year-old male student by having sex with him. This is terrible. I predict that the child will be so scarred from this encounter that he will spend much of his adult life attempting to have sex with hot, 25 year old blondes…
Paris Hilton in her Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren

Paris Hilton

Proof that lucky genes and the proper selection of parents can get you what you want in life; Paris Hilton has a Mercedes SLR-McLaren. She might not have talent, discretion, morals, or good taste in clothing or sexual partners, but at least she knows a car when she sees it. Now all of us who would love to have one but didn’t choose our parents as well, didn’t have our sex life recorded and put all over the internet, didn’t get a TV show for being an idiot on screen, didn’t get endorsements and perfume deals and such worth millions can go have another Margarita and curse quietly.

Macho Vehicles

The new R-Class is clearly the finest vehicle produced for carrying 6 people in the lap of luxury, with its big, comfortable, easily accessible rear seat with adjustable backrest angles, 32.4” of leg room, a/c and cup holders, the 2 middle Captain’s Chairs with 36.2” of leg room, 15.3 cu. ft. of luggage space with all of the seats up, a spectacular ride, and the option of the claustrophobia-reducing Panorama roof, etc., etc.

People who see that often buy it. Others, with stated needs that this vehicle would fill better than everything else on the market, walk right past it. “It looks like a minivan,” says one woman. Another says, “It’s a station wagon. My mother drove a station wagon.”

Apparently it just doesn't look macho enough.

Thus there are a lot of orders for the GL450. It holds 7, but with less leg room than the 6 in the R, but it’s taller and decidedly macho. Women seem to love it. They also love the outgoing G500. Women bought several of the last of the Grand Edition G500s. The G-Wagen is probably the most macho vehicle ever conceived that doesn’t have a gun turret. I couldn’t figure it out. Then it hit me:

Women get macho cars/trucks for the same reason they go for macho men. Security. Just as they expect the macho man to protect them, they expect the macho vehicle to protect them. The R350 is certainly as safe as the GL450, but the GL is more intimidating and taller. The “Command” driving position is very popular among women. They’re surrounded by intimidating vehicles, eighteen-wheelers, garbage trucks, big pickups and SUVs. They feel threatened.

New York women discovered on September 11, 2001 that the metrosexuals who were into their feelings, wore perfectly matched clothing, had perfect manicures, and made great conversation weren’t worth a damn when the sky started falling. But there were a bunch of macho men who ran into burning towers to rescue them. Thus they now look for men who can protect them, and if they want to spend the fall hunting Bambi or Sundays watching a bunch of gorillas try to capture and move a funny shaped ball, then it’s okay because they feel safe with them.

They know if the boogieman comes for them, their man is going to rip his head off and mount it on the wall. That might be extreme, but it’s a lot more useful than cowering in the corner. A lot of women drivers have figured out that the latest XK is beautiful, and a Miata is cute, but when the rain is at 6” an hour or some evildoer is aiming to run them off the road preparatory to kidnap-rape-murder, some big, strong vehicle that can climb a 30% slope, go over a 6” curb, and withstand a T-bone by a Kenworth is probably the vehicle to have in a pinch.

Macho men can rejoice (by, no doubt, having a politically incorrect beer and watching a movie with guns, explosions, and nipples.) Then they can go outside and wash/wax the wife’s new GL450, ML350, or G500.