Douthat’s response to the Jesuit heretics fifth column academics is amazingly hot. Highly recommended. By the end, he’s pretty much straight channeling DGeneration X:

Tesla is a ridiculous company.

Consumer Reports gave the Model S the highest rating it’s ever given an automobile. Because Tesla is such a hype monster that even CR can’t resist them. Then last week, suddenly, CR downgrades Tesla to “worse than expected” because–surprise!–the cars have reliability issues. Who could possibly have guessed that a tiny company making several thousand cars a year wouldn’t have the resources for rigorous reliability testing?

What makes Tesla really ridiculous? It’s market valuation is currently $27B. That’s exactly half of GM’s market cap. Half! You know how many cars GM sold last year? 9.9M. You know how many Tesla sold? 31,665. Let’s write out those numbers:

GM: 9,900,000 vehicles sold

Tesla: 31,665 vehicles sold

GM market cap = 2 x Tesla market cap

Actually, it’s a good thing Tesla didn’t sell too many units because they still lose $4,000 on every car.

Bob Lutz is still on the case, God love him. His appraisal is even more devastating.

Just a reminder: Your tax dollars subsidize the sale of every single Tesla so that the rich envirobros only have to spend $100k, and not $107k, on their electric luxury sports cars.

Update: Here’s an example of why the cult of Tesla is so insufferable:

Bob Lutz has an eternity of experience in the car industry and I have none so, of course, I could be wrong. But after about 20 years (a good chunk of those years in Japan) of covering products/technologies that have failed and succeeded, my gut feeling is pretty refined.  (And no one should discount the cult phenomenon. See “The Cult of Tesla Motors.”)

That’s Brooke Crothers at Forbes.com. Want to know how data-free this guy is? Later in his piece he muses on how sales are going for both Tesla and the Chevy Volt in Los Angeles and on the Main Line outside of Philadelphia. Where does his sales data come from? His eyeballs:

I just hope that General Motors does a better job of marketing the Volt in some of the under-performing areas like suburban Philadelphia’s Main Line.  The Model S is becoming an increasingly common site on the Main Line — which wasn’t the case a year ago. If the much (much) more expensive Model S can build a market on the Main Line, there’s no reason the Volt can’t too. But that is in fact the case: it’s a shock to come from Los Angeles where there’s a very healthy population of Volts to essentially zero population on the Main Line. I would be more worried about the Volt than Tesla if I were Bob Lutz.

Just for giggles: As of April 2015, GM had sold 70,000 Volts lifetime. Best guess how many vehicles there are in Los Angeles? 5.8 million. That’s healthy? ayfk?

Sonny Bunch is just amazing. A national treasure. I mean, the level of troll game here is so strong that there’s just nothing more to be said.

If you’ve ever found yourself wishing for a Kindle version of your favorite pieces on nerd culture from The Weekly Standard, then do I have an ebook for you . . .

The Weekly Standard and the Nerds: Superheroes, Jedi Knights, Hobbits, and more

By now, pretty much everyone accepts that the Empire is good and the Jedi are bad. And the case for destroying Alderaan is at least as solid as the case for dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No one denies this. (Except for Galley Friend J.S.)

But are you ready to have your mind blown?

Jar-Jar Binks was probably a Sith lord.

I find this essay almost entirely persuasive. It’s genius.

That’s pretty much my take-away from last night’s debate in Boulder, Colorado. Also, the real field is down to six candidates. So it’s later than you think.

I thought Trump had a good night last night, and said so. Then this happened:

Thank you, Jonathan. Greatly appreciated! https://t.co/eW0qDCax8P

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2015

Yuge.

But the best thing ever might be Sonny Bunch’s piece on the destruction of Alderaan. Pure genius.

Over at the Federalist I have a piece (a listicle?) explaining how awful the Jedi are. If you weren’t onboard the Imperial bandwagon before, you will be.

And at the risk of spoiling things, I’m at work on a blockbuster final piece of the pro-Empire tryptic. It won’t be ready until late December, but it’s going to blow your mind. Everything. Will. Change.

Fine. I’m two-fists in. Let’s do this thing.

Galley Friend B.D. has figured out why:

So it’s early yet. But I’m not exaggerating when I say: it’s possible J.J. Abrams finally made Jonathan V. Last’s Star Wars movie. The Empire is back, baby, and it’s going to show these hippies who’s boss.

As the kids say on the internet: This.