Butt-hurt automotive journalist is butt hurt

Every now and then I cruise on by over at Jalopnik, to see what the auto journalism crowd thinks about, well, most things transport.  I've even linked a few things here.  It's generally a palate cleanser from the political civil war raging pretty much everywhere you look.

But lo!  What to my wondering eyes does appear:

Since the Kennedy Administration, the light-blue and white jet carrying the president has been more than just transportation for American leadership. It has been a symbol of what that leadership was meant to represent. An internationally-minded, forward-thinking ethos steeped in Modernism and Internationalism. Now, though, the White House is more America First than American Century and Air Force One is getting a new look to match.

An Air Force procurement publication revealed yesterday as part of the Department of Defense’s 2021 budget has confirmed what we had been fearing for months. The next plane to serve as Air Force One, which the Department of Defense hopes to have in service by 2024, will have a new livery supposedly designed by President Trump himself to look “more American.” The new paint will mean the Air Force is doing away with the classic Modernist scheme we’ve known for decades. And frankly, I think the new one looks awful.

It seems that Donald Trump is the Worst President Ever® because he is painting the new Air Force One differently than Marilyn Monroe's boyfriend.  Oooooooh kaaaaaaay.

Because gear heads love them some Modernist Art Theory with their rides.  Give me Modernist Art Theory, or give me death!

Filed under WTF because, well, you know.  The post there is way longer than you'd imagine, and is actually worth a view for the complete "WTF" experience.  Stuff like this:

The idea was to use the avant-garde as a way to demonstrate what American freedoms and values could offer on the world stage. A really excellent book called Cold War Modernists by historian Greg Barnhisel lays out the whole story: The State Department was working with world-famous Modernist architects to bring impressive, occasionally even challenging design to capital cities around the world. These embassies would hold reading rooms filled with books that critics adored as the best America had on offer but some Congressmen (Joe McCarthy among them) wanted to ban. The State Department brought modern dancer Martha Graham and jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong on tour to demonstrate that American tastes were as sophisticated as any, and they even surreptitiously published high-brow magazines for European audiences, asserting the legitimacy of American voices in left-leaning intellectual circles to tilt Western Europe away from the Iron Curtain. If America was going to face off against a comprehensive ideology like communism, it needed its own philosophical and aesthetic ethos to rally the West behind. It found one in Modernism.

All this sound and fury over an airplane.

Jalopnik - come for the Big Block V8s and get the avant-guard Modernist theory aimed at effete European intellectuals.  Riiiiiight.

Is this a Global Crisis?

Then maybe we should consult with a child activist on what to do.

Or maybe not ...

Cool Halloween costume, bro

LOL

Get offa my lawn

Stolen from George, who has all the cool stuff.

A conversation with Snippi Longstockings

LOLOLOLOL

Hahaha! pic.twitter.com/ORaCR5rqbW

— Rep. Steven Smith 🇺🇸 (@RepStevenSmith) October 12, 2019

And I love the tip of the Slouch Hat to Johnny Cash.  Good on ya, Cobber!

Hat tip: Chris Lynch.

It's no longer the "Al Gore Effect"

Now it's the "Swedish Brat Effect" ...

The previous coldest day this early in Autumn here in Boulder was 34 degrees on October 8, 1985.
We are currently 8 degrees below the previous record at 26F, which is 43 degrees below normal for the date.@GretaThunberg arrives in a few hours to lecture us about global warming

— Tony Heller (@Tony__Heller) October 10, 2019

Hat tip: Don Surber

Looks like the Swedish Brat's 15 minutes of fame have passed

Mess with the bull ...

Get the horns.  From ten years ago, a post that says you really, really do not want to mess with a building full of veterans.

Valley Falls, NY: Bad place to burn a flag

The local VFW didn't like this fellow burning their flag.

The young man was given three choices: get turned over to the police, go one-on-one in a fight with a seasoned war veteran, or be duct-taped to a flagpole for six hours with a sign around his neck identifying his alleged crime: flag burning.

The young man in question seemingly was turned down at the bar, because he didn't have an ID. Angry, he cut down the Post's flag and set fire to it.

Then he found out the meaning of "a building full of Veterans".

Now before someone starts singing about the young man's First Amendment rights, let me point out two things:

1. He stole their property and destroyed it. They caught him, and gave him the choice of going to jail for theft.

2. As Trace Adkins puts it in his song Fightin' Words, Son, the First Amendment protects you from the Government. Not from me.



Hat tip: From My Position ... On The Way.

In ten years the Ruling Class has learned precisely nothing

Well, they've learned to lose a lot in the era of Trump.  But the way they talk about people "beneath" them entering the corridors of power hasn't changed at all.  The focus on style rather than substance is quite striking in this post from ten years ago on Sarah Palin vs. the Ruling Class.  Just substitute the words "Donald Trump" for "Sarah Palin" and it's really astonishing how it describes what we still see today.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Punked

I apologize in advance, because this is going to be a rant. Actually two rants, about two related punks. If this isn't your thing, skip down the page. Otherwise, get the popcorn - these guys have put me in A Mood.

Punk #1 is Ted Diadiun of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Full disclosure: I was a paperboy for them, back a million years ago. Still doesn't keep me from recognizing an arrogant punk when I see one. King Kaufman lays out the situation, where Diadiun goes after Jeff Jarvis:

But why, representative of us readers, is it kind of unfortunate that Schultz gave Jarvis a lot of ink? Back to Diadiun: 
"... which I thought was kind of unfortunate because Connie's column is read by 25- or 30,000 people a month, which has to be many times more than this guy gets on his blog, and she gave him more publicity through that column than he would get on his own anytime."
Thirty thousand readers a month "has to be many times" what Jarvis gets on his blog? Wait, that sounds like one of those unsourced, unreported assumptions you might get from ... from ... A BLOGGER! Diadiun actually started to say "is," but than corrected himself and phrased it "has to be." That was an admission, however subconscious, that he didn't have any idea what he was talking about. He was guessing to make his point. 

So point one is that Mr. Diadiun has no idea what he's talking about. Point two is that he doesn't let this stop him from shooting off his piehole. But that's not the worst of it.

25,000 hits a month simply isn't very impressive, especially when you consider that those hits run off the branding established by the army of writers, editors, ad salesmen, and yes, paperboys that have built that paper. Kaufman compares that to Jeff Jarvis' traffic, which is several times greater without any branding other than Jarvis. Jarvis - all by himself - kicks the Plain Dealer's butt.

But that's not why Mr. Diadiun is a punk. He's about beat by my traffic. Dude, if a nowheresville blog like Borepatch is in the same ballpark as your paper, with all the branding and marketing of the paper's machine, you're a punk. A little humility would be in order.

Consider yourself punked. Your 15 minutes of fame will include the creation of a new category here - punks.

The second rant is like the first. Steve Chapman gives us the secret of Sarah Palin's staying power:

But it's really not hard to see why Palin inspires such devotion. And I do mean "see." She has one obvious thing going for her that [Harriett] Miers didn't: She's a babe, and she doesn't try to hide it.

Well, now. Let's look at what Mrs. Palin has done that might attract admiration, shall we?

• Took on a famously corrupt political machine, and beat them at their own game.
• Balanced family and a high-powered job.
• Governed pragmatically, not ideologically.
• Handled the most vicious public attacks that I've seen in 40 years of watching politics, with remarkable grace.
• Didn't let herself get pulled into the Washington-Intellectual/Chattering-Class bubble world, but remained refreshingly normal.

Any of that appear in Chapman's article? Hello? Buehler?

Nope - she's babalicious:

Wayne: Cassandra. She's a fox. In French she would be called "la renarde" and she would be hunted with only her cunning to protect her.

Garth: She's a babe.

Wayne: She's a robo-babe. In Latin she would be called "babia majora".

Garth: If she were a president she would be Baberaham Lincoln. 

Schwiiinnnnggg!!

Sheesh. What is present in Chapman's article? Let's run down the checklist, shall we?

• Blaming her for John McCain's miserable campaign? Check. ("For all her alleged star power, she did nothing to improve the GOP ticket's fortunes on Election Day.") 
• Not part of the intellectual elite class? Check. ("She showed no gift for articulating conservative themes, beyond ridiculing liberals as overeducated, big-city elitists")
• Mystification at why the rubes like her? Check ("When people remain ardent fans of Palin no matter how badly she performs, it's reasonable to wonder what they are thinking. But thinking has nothing to do with it.")

There's no nice way to say this: Chapman is an overeducated, big-city elitist. He recognizes someone who's not of his class, and will ignore all accomplishments, exagerate all failures, and descend into Middle School (SCHWIIIINNNGGG!!!) "humor", all to protect his class.

Dude, if you're so danged smart, explain why so many people think Mrs. Palin is pretty interesting. Go ahead, dazzle me.

[crickets]

Chapman, you've been punked. And your attempt at Middle School humor? It's been done better. Way better.

So much for thinking about subscribing to Reason.

The Queen Of The World's dream job

Over coffee, the Queen Of The World spoke:

I want to be a pro football player because you can tell all your fans that they're stupid racists and end up with a big contract from a sporting goods company while singlehandedly destroying the NFL.

I want to be an actress because I could tell my fans what to think and that they're stupid if they don't think the way that I do.

I want to be a bartender because  you can have the biggest mouth and smallest brain in the country and still become a congressman and demand a big pay raise after 4 months on the job. [Note: she's disqualified from this because she has an IQ that can fog a mirror and also because she is sweetness personified]

I want to be a weatherman because you can be wrong every day for 30 years and still have a job.

I'm actually glad about the weatherman being wrong - yesterday's forecast said it was all going to be thunderstorms all day and now it looks like it will be a sunny boat day again.

Slouching towards civil war

The left is out of control, and getting worse:

HAYWOOD COUNTY, Tenn. — A Haywood County woman is accused of using a stun gun on a McDonald's manager and trying to drag him out of the restaurant's drive-thru window.

...

"She grabs me by my hair, pulls me out of the window," Jacob Jordan said. "That's when she has the taser, trying to go for my throat, punching me in my face, punching me in my eyes. Just beating me."

Cell phone video shows the assault Jordan experienced while working at the McDonald's in Brownsville.

Jordan, an overnight manager, said two customers were upset about how long it took to fill their order. Jordan said they wouldn't stop blowing their car horn.

...

He said Glidwell hit him with her credit card and used a stun gun, leaving a nasty looking mark on his neck.

"At first we thought it was just scratch marks from her fingers until you look at the video, and you can clearly see her trying to jam the taser into my throat," Jordan said.

He said the whole time, she was threatening to kill him.

"Saying that because I voted for Trump I deserved this," Jordan said. "I wasn't even old enough to vote when he ran."

It's time for the Democrats to admit that they lost the last election and get on with a peaceful transfer of power.  They keep telling us that they're nicer than we are, but nice people don't hang out with violent thugs like this.  If they aren't willing to condemn these attacks from the left, why should they expect the rest of us to condemn similar attacks from the right?

However this plays out, there will not be a double standard that privileges their side.  One set of rules for everyone.  I'd prefer those rules to be "no violence", but I keep waiting for the Democrats to condemn things like this, or the antifa attack and beating of a gay conservative reporter, or a Bernie Bro shooting up the GOP caucus baseball team.  I'm kind of getting tired of waiting.

Tagged Democrats suck because, well, you know.

Discussing politics with the Kids These Days

pic.twitter.com/Z4MUN60nSk

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) June 30, 2019

Why I let my NRA membership lapse

Yeah, Insty and Uncle both linked to his post on the NRA's troubles, but it's a really good one.  His invoking of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy is spot on, and you should read the whole thing.

What I would add is that it's rare that you see the Iron Law expressed in, well, graft as blatantly as Wayne LaPierre and Company have done.  Millions and millions of our dollars have gone to enrich the inner circle, not to advance the Second Amendment.

It was 2014 when I let my membership lapse, because the only thing I heard from the NRA was Wayne asking for money.  Where were they on rolling back restrictive gun control laws?  A lot of the time they were out front on new restrictions - remember Wayne LaPierre muttering about "Mental Health restrictions" a long time before the new hotness that is "Red Flag" laws started getting passed?  I do, and believe that the post I just linked was the first time I invited him to die screaming in a crotch fire.

So the only thing that I'd add to Lawrence's excellent post is that we really won't miss the NRA when its gone.  Yes, it's sad that Wayne drove it into the ground, yes, it's a crying shame what they did to a once great organization.  But here we are.  Sic transit Gloria Mundi.

Google went all out with their D-Day 75th Anniversary doodle today

Allrightee, then.  By their works shall ye know them, and all that.

The Day Of Days

It was awful.  This scene was famously more intense than that from The Longest Day, thirty-six years before.



The VA estimates that around 350 World War II vets pass on to the Final Muster each day.  There are three surviving Medal of Honor recipients from that war:

1. Charles H. Coolidge who held Hill 623 in France.  He had the distinction of being personally shot at by a tank main gun five times during those four days.
2. Frank Currey, a BAR rifleman.  At the Battle of the Bulge he used the BAR as well as a bazooka and anti-tank grenades to disable four German tanks and rescue five of his fellow troops.  He was also awarded three Purple Hearts during the war.
3. Herschel Williams, a Marine at Iwo Jima.  When the tanks got stalled in front of a series of pill boxes, Williams went forward alone with his flame thrower.  He fought off a Japanese bayonet attack with his flame thrower in hand to hand combat.  Ooh rah.

I encourage you to click through and read about each of these men whose post war careers were every bit as interesting as their time on the front lines.  Williams' TV appearance is particularly interesting.

A common theme that you hear from the vets who were at that Day Of Days was that they cannot stop remembering their buddies who didn't make it back.  This was perhaps said most movingly by the late (Silver Star Distinguished Service Cross winner) Maj. Dick Winters, who parachuted into Normandy on that night:

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened. 

- Billy Graham

UPDATE 6 JUNE 2019 11:35: Thanks to Aesop for pointing out that Maj. Winters was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, not the Silver Star. Several Silver (and Bronze) Stars were awarded in that Brecourt Manor to men under Winters' command, but he got the DSC.

Flying with jerks

We've all be on a flight with That Guy - the one who's obnoxious, belligerent, and possibly drunk or high.

This was beautiful.

It's from a few years back but I just ran across it.  Like I said, it's beautiful what happened to That Guy.

Slouching towards Civil War 2.0

It's long been said that Republicans think that Democrats are stupid, while Democrats think that Republicans are evil.  So what happens when you combine stupid with evil?

Act the first: The Stupid, it burns!

Dugas works as a retail security manager, so he went back into the mall to look at surveillance footage of the parking lot. 

At 12:40 p.m., a car parked next to his SUV. Four women got out. Two of them peered into his vehicle — where there was a red "Make America Great Again" hat on the console.

The women went into a store, reappeared seven minutes later and got into their car. But a minute later, the driver and front passenger got out again.

There's a special type of stupid in slashing someone's tire because they have a MAGA hat on their dashboard.  It's a double dose of stupid when it's in a place where there's pretty ubiquitous surveillance. Nick Dugas worked for Mall security and so he had access to the camera footage, but any customer who was victim of a crime would have had Mall Security's full cooperation.  The perp was going to get caught, and caught easily.  Over a MAGA hat and a hair trigger temper.

Like I said, stupid.  But there's more.

Act the second: Evil is as evil does.

Dugas saw this kid sleeping on his belly and the 6-foot-6 man bent down to help him. He fed him, gained his confidence, and learned the truth. 

Bland wrote, "The boy began to talk. His mom took off when he was 2. He lived with his dad. But he had run away a week ago. He told him why. 

"Dugas listened in silence. He had grown up in Portland, Oregon, with attentive parents and a big sister in a nice house. They had taken family vacations and camped every summer. While he might not have had everything he wanted, he had everything he needed.
"Sitting at the table, the boy had inched up his shirt to show Dugas his back. There were lash marks, 63 of them, where he had been hit with a broken car antenna." 

Dugas took the kid in. This required filing paperwork, getting cleared by the state as a foster parent, and getting permission from the father to take the kid in. Dugas and eventually adopted him. Last June was his first Father's Day as a father.

That was the man who was seen as so evil (for having a MAGA hat) that someone slashed his tire.

This is the sort of story that makes me wonder if this Republic can survive.  Democrats have seen Republicans as evil for a long time, but now they're acting stupidly.  Violently and stupidly.  And that is perhaps causing Republicans - who have long seen Democrats as stupid - to now see them as evil as well.

The middle ground of shared "we're all in this together" that has been a core of political life in this Republic as long as I can remember is fraying.  Once those bonds snap, it will get very ugly.  Plausibly you could make the argument that we're already in a shooting war, although I don't think that I'd go that far.

Not yet.  But going into next year's election campaign we can expect things to get worse, not better.

But it doesn't matter whether you're a good citizen or a good neighbor.  Not if you have a MAGA hat on your dashboard.  This will not end well.

Fred Eaglesmith - Johnny Cash

In the last ten years here I've posted over 400 country music songs.  Over the last couple of years it's gotten harder to come up with songs that I haven't posted.  So I went off looking for lists, and stumbled across Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time.  Reading through it was surreal.  Taylor Swift?  Eric Church?  Kacey Musgraves?  What the hell?

Fortunately I'm not (by any means) the only one who wondered where the Adult Supervision was:

It becomes apparent rather quickly that the list is more about political correctness and spreading the interest over a wide age group so as to ensnare as many people as possible. For instance, let's face it, there hasn't been a country song since the '80s that should be in the Top 25. For the most part, country music is old people's music -- no matter what Blake Shelton or Eric Church say. New country, bro-country, hick-hop, it's all just pop crap with a twang, and comes fully equipped with less depth than a wading pool.

But this led me to Fred Eaglesmith.  A Canadian farm boy, he caught a freight train to western Canada (no joke) and founded a band called the Smoking Losers.  I mean, what's not to like there?  More importantly, this sounds like a fellow who has a bit more exposure to country music than the children who write for Rolling Stone.



Johnny Cash (Songwriter: Fred Eaglesmith?)

Well you sure do like Johnny Cash now
Now that they've put him in the ground
You hang his poster on your ceiling
His songs give you a real good feeling
You sure do like Johnny Cash now 

Where were you in 1989?
When it looked like Johnny was on the decline
His career was fading
And his shows weren't selling
You were listening to heavy metal
Well you sure do like Johnny Cash now
You sure do like Johnny Cash now 

Now that they've put him in the ground
The radio station plays him all the time
Too bad you hardly played him when he was alive
But you sure do like Johnny Cash now
Yeah you sure do like Johnny Cash now 

And you sure did like when he sang the Nine Inch Nails
When he looked like he was dying in that video
You liked that did ya?
He was givin' them the finger
Too bad about all that religion
But you sure do like Johnny Cash now
But you sure do like Johnny Cash now
But you sure do like Johnny Cash now

I actually liked Johnny's cover of "Hurt" but it's not the only song of his I ever bought (or posted).  The point of this song is a good one - maybe the idiots at Rolling Stone should take a listen.

I'll drive an electric car when the police drive them

A lot of people resist the idea of "smart gun" technology that the Police won't use, you should be suspicious of electric cars (coming soon in a Green New Deal near you!) if the Police don't drive them:

RIVERSIDE — A probationer who led Riverside police officers on a dangerous, high-speed pursuit in a luxury electric sports car was arrested after the plug-in car’s batteries died Sunday night, Feb. 17. The pursuit, which wound its way from Riverside’s Eastside neighborhood into Orange County, ended in a felony stop on the 91 Freeway.

The owner had an app on his phone that let him track the car's location in real time.  He relayed this info to the Police, who kept the thief on the run until the car's battery died.  Of course, the bad guy looks pretty much like what you'd expect:

Now it's great that the thief was caught but the point is that a lot of folks want to mandate the use of electric vehicles without really giving much thought for what people need or want.  If these cars are such a great idea, why aren't Police cruisers battery powered?

Top Gun 2: Does the Military hate Hollywood?

om Cruise?  There's a sequel to Top Gun in the works, with a lot of the original cast back (Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer) and even featuring Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone" song.  Filming is under way right now.

But there's a lot of scuttlebutt that Cruise has pissed off the rank and file:

Tom Cruise is filming Top Gun 2 on the mighty USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), a US Nimitz class super carrier. The crew has been ordered to not look at Tom Cruise or to talk to the arrogant Scientology OT. Tom Cruise will make a fortune from Top Gun 2 pretending to be a US Navy officer and yet he shows no respect to for the men and women who serve aboard the Theodore Roosevelt.

Tom Cruise has the same arrogant behavior going on in Scientology: No one is allowed to look at him or talk to him unless he grants permission.

Scuttlebutt from the crew of the “TR” has made its way onto social media — and special thanks to my colleague Intergalactic Walrus for making today’s article possible due to his timely commenting at the Underground Bunker.

Now it's probably good to be skeptical of the site since it's strongly anti-Scientology.  However, Cruise has a history of disrespect for the military:

Famed actor Tom Cruise recently said that his job is comparable to being deployed to Afghanistan, according to court documents obtained by TMZ.

 I know people at NAS Lemoore, and will ask what they hear - filming will be there later this month.