I'm a defense attorney. The problem with your Asimov defense is that it is wholly irrelevant and no judge is going to allow admission of evidence regarding UHC's profits or practices. It provides no legal justification for murder and only serves to mislead or inflame the jury and will be rightly excluded. That doesn't mean there will not be an an effort to do so in the press (and all the usual suspects are already attempting it) but it will not be given directly to the jury.
I recently got a jury summons in the mail. My objections, which I'll be HAPPY to inform the court of, are as follows:
1 - The system seems to think that justice is best pursued by putting people on the stand and asking them trick questions in the hope that they say something incriminating on the record.
2 - The system seems to think that justice has no business being emotionally satisfying, so it tries to remove any sense of that from the process.
3 - The system seems to hold that the defendant is the only one involved in the process who bears any personal responsibility for his actions - i.e. the police officers aren't personally responsible for choosing to arrest him, the jurors aren't personally responsible for choosing to convict him, the judge isn't personally responsible for choosing to sentence him, etc. Everybody in the courtroom's a robot with no free will, except the guy on trial.
4 - I assume that ALL prosecutors are at least partially motivated by careerism and the desire to win rather than to serve justice, so they're all at least willing to play dirty a little bit. Their political ambitions demand a high conviction rate, after all.
5 - I assume that juries convict people, not necessarily because of evidence, but because the jurors don't like the defendant's hairstyle, or the look on his face or the tone of his voice.
6 - I disagree with a fundamental assumption of the modern legal system - that when someone breaks the law, The State is the injured party, while the actual victim gets relegated to a secondary role.
#4 is very troubling in the DJT cases and the Jan 6 cases. Prosecutors should seek justice and not revenge against people they may dislike or disagree with (or in some of the Jan 6 cases tourists who were just walking around and went into the capitol because that is what tourists do).
I was on a jury years ago. All white jury. Black defendant who was a former NBA player. We found him guilty, and after the trial the defense lawyers came and spoke with the jury about how we thought about various things in the case and they told us the defendant could not take a plea because it would affect his chances of getting back into the NBA (essentially being guilty), so they took it to trial to see if he got lucky with a not guilty verdict.
The libertarian in me hates this but ive been to court a few times and everyone is usually guilty as hell and disrespectful. You got a guy who can throw you in jail for a year for a minir offense and you should have the courtesy to say “yes sir. No sir” i got complemented by the judge for speeding for just not being a jackass. This was easier to do when i was guilty than the case i got railroaded on
When I've had to go to court (three times in the past three years for reckless driving), I wear a freshly-cleaned charcoal grey suit, white shirt, blood-red tie, shined black shoes, fresh shave & haircut, even a gold tie clip. I stand there quietly and let my lawyer talk.
The last time, the judge knocked "83 in a 55" down to "62 in a 55," and the only words I spoke during my whole appearance were "Thank you, Your Honor" before I walked out.
this, 1,000 times over. if, when your time comes, you want a jury of your peers, take the seat when called.
I've twice served on juries - one for a trial that went 5 weeks before ending in mistrial - for exactly that reason. If I'm ever on trial, I want people like me in the box.
I even owned a Honda Civic for 6 years before my current string of Accords.
I’ve been chosen for jury duty three times. Twice, the case settled, and the one actual time I had to report, I didn’t get through voir dire.
My county draws a larger pool once per quarter, from which lucky contestants are chosen, and if you’re in that larger pool, you are mailed a notice, and may defer to a later quarter in the year if you choose.
Oh, I'll go to selection, and when asked I'll be honest with them - and go off on tangents about how the police use passive voice to dodge personal responsibility for shooting suspects, or how "speeding" is a Malum Prohibitum rather than a Malum In Se violation, or how we should bring dueling back for certain offenses or how I believe that every citizen has the right to use jury nullification if it's the proper thing to do.
About 12 years ago when I traveled for work every week I got a jury summons and blew it off multiple times until I got one that said if I didn’t show up at the county courthouse on X date a deputy sheriff would come find me and bring me there even though I was supposed to be at a meeting in St. Louis that week.
On day one a judge told the jury pool not to even try to get out of jury duty because he got called and he couldn’t get out of it. So I was resigned to my fate and on the second day got called to a DUI case.
They asked us all how many drinks we thought someone could have before he was impaired to drive and as soon as I answered two I knew I made a mistake, defense and prosecution had no objections to me being on the jury.
The following day they showed us an hour+ long video taken from the police car that clearly showed the defendant driving over the yellow line and almost hitting a raised median after he crossed an intersection which is when the deputy sheriff turned on his lights and stopped him. The rest of the video was of the field sobriety test and of the defendant in the back of the police car.
The defense made their whole case on the fact that the deputy did not administer the test properly and had a high priced “expert” to refute it but the prosecution agreed that it was done improperly after the expert’s first statement.
I didn’t recognize the defendant on the first day but on the second day I realized he was a bagger at the Publix that my wife shopped at. He clearly couldn’t afford a DUI but he was also being taken to the cleaners by his attorney and his high dollar expert which really pissed me off.
They let us take notes on little half legal pads and somehow I took six pages of notes including direct quotes from the defendant. After they took us into the jury room I started reading off quotes and when the bailiff came in a few minutes later he wanted to know if we had picked a foreman and everyone in the room pointed at me and said “him.”
So now I was a jury foreman and all I could think of was Martin Balsam in Twelve Angry Men. It was pretty obvious that we all thought he was guilty but I went ahead and had us do a secret ballot which confirmed it. Our next question was how long we should wait to let them know we had a unanimous verdict. We decided a half hour was good so we killed about twenty minutes before letting the bailiff know.
Then I got to stand up in open court and declare this poor guy guilty. After that I stayed away from Publix and only went to Kroger just so I wouldn’t have to run into the guy.
I can tell you that for ME, three's good. For Bob over there, he's gotta be 12 or 13 deep.
But .08 is two beers at a company outing or dinner with friends, so basically EVERYBODY's a potential felon these days. See why I don't like the system?
I'll be interested to hear if you get waived, I voiced similar issues with the system when I was called for federal duty during my wedding week, and filled out the waiver form. I was waived, but I'm not sure if it was because of the wedding or my truthful voicing of my opinions of the process as I see it unfold.
That was the second time I've been called, the first was during 4th of July week and we were sent home because of the holiday. I was just recently called for a 3rd time this past September and was sent home after they used our pool to fill a single alternate spot on a jury. Hopefully I'm done after 3 pulls before 40.
I suspect that when they read that list, which I attached to the questionnaire I returned, they won't want someone on ANY of their juries so disposed to such opinions.
However it turns out, I have acted honorably and with a clean conscience.
You're certainly right, but playing devil's advocate for a moment: if he is successfully charged with terrorism, then doesn't that charge REQUIRE that the government provide a sense of his "terrorist" motive, which opens it up for discussion? I'm no attorney but God knows I've hired a few. :)
Federal terrorism is not really my expertise, I'm more of a state level meth dealer gang murder kind of dude. The terrorism charge is kind of an overreach, this is just straight up 1st degree murder.
Doesn’t the recent trials of DJT prove that the judge will be a major factor in the trial? In Trump’s NYC trials (civil and state) as well as the (forever?) unresolved DC Jan6 case the judge’s were working with the prosecution to ensure guilty verdicts. Luigi needs to draw a friendly judge or he won’t have a chance. Even with a friendly judge there is no reasonable defense for what he did and any obvious judicial malfeasance will be ripe for review.
"So ordered. Also, even though it wasn't in your motion, I'm also going to rule that the defense shall not make any mention of the defendant's deployment to Iraq when the crime occurred. And since the defendant, Mr. van den Berg was a D1 basketball center, I'm also going to suppress the security camera footage which shows the perpetrator was under 5' tall and was wearing a shirt that read GUATEMALA."
I've long thought that a court's focusing on the specific actions that got somebody in trouble and led to their being referred to as "The Defendant" while declaring any actions on the part of the victim that led to his demise puts off-limits mitigating factors which might exonerate said defendant, and perhaps even lionize him.
It's easy to caricature the CEO of a healthcare insurer as the most poorly-written of movie villains, but their actions do cause a great deal of suffering among those whose only hope for lifesaving treatment is someone with deep pockets footing the bill.
None of the CEOs that outsourced tens of millions of industrial jobs to China in the past three generations was guilty of a specific criminal act in doing so, yet together they collapsed the greatest industrial economy in history in the name of greater profitability. Profits they did not share with their employees. Tell me with a straight face that wasn't criminal.
So at first glance the man who offs the CEO of United Mega Corporation because he lost his factory job at UMC's East Fuckington plant is a cold-blooded murderer, when we consider that UMC shuttered the biggest factory in eastern Kentucky, sent 10,000 blue-collar jobs to Shanghai, cratered the economy of three counties and permanently impoverished 25,000 square miles of rural America, his actions don't seem quite so worthy of condemnation.
Same argument could be said for offing one of the CEOs of the oil companies if someone who is down to their last nickel pulls up to the pump, only to see that the same product in the tanks as in the morning is now $0.70/gallon higher, if not more.
Never meant to imply that murder is not wrong. But, there are a lot of things that corporations get away with that should be illegal, and the execs should be held responsible.
Executing anyone is wrong, and Luigi needs to be tried on the evidence.
That said, I completely understand the sympathy for the guy. Much like Ice Age's fictional example, it's unknowable how many people have suffered, died or taken their own lives as a result of UHC's distaste for paying claims. More than one.
The thing that really bothers me is this. If Luigi had popped out of the shadows and knocked off the hotel parking valet, would anyone have heard about it? Would they have even looked beyond the immediate area for him?
My guess is no to both. Mr Luigi would be happily enjoying a national Quarter Pounder tour in anonymity.
That's not justification for murder, nor does it seem like a plausible element of defense. But is sure is a depressing commentary on where priorities lie.
Look at the jan 6 cases. Id bet every dollar i have the government is tracking us all illegally and completely ignoring the rules. “Some guy two states over said he looks like the guy” sure…
Kill your Senator if you feel that strongly about it. Average CEO is just operating in the legal space given to them. Actually, don't kill anybody, get involved, vote out the people you don't like. It is still possible.
I strangely agree. Not on the specifics of this case but weve been letting big corporations get away with murder, literal and figurative, with a slap on the wrist. What did you think was going to happen? Not sure why Luigi picked this guy but i get it conceptually.
I don't want to see anyone get his head blown off in the street, but I don't want to watch wannabe aristocrats run my country into the ground economically so they can make eight figures and walk away consequence-free either.
I agree with your points. Brian...but there's one thing you're overlooking. The system in NYC is as political and politically corrupt as any place you could name in the deep south during the worst parts of Jim Crow. The 14th amendment was passed in no small part as a weapon to use against corrupt sheriffs and judges who abused their position to deny people's civil rights.
Lady Justice is not blind. In NYC she might as well have a ball gag in her mouth and a leash around her neck because the jurists there are corrupt and unaccountable for it. One need look no further than the various trials of Trump to see how they operate. "Well, that was Donald Trump."
Yes. It is. It is the incoming president of the United States. A celebrity and billionaire who will wield real power. Just as we saw with Fanni Willis in the Young Thug trial, the corruption impacts everything.
Fun fact: the Volante version of the V8 in TLD was then Aston Martin boss Victor Gauntlett’s personal car. Hands down both my favourite Aston and Bond film - coincidentally it was the first one I saw in the cinema.
The movie was half great. The first half was fantastic, the second half was kinda meh. The pre title sequence was amongst the best. And as the biggest Aston fan you will ever meet, I was thrilled to see two Aston’s in the movie. Even with the silly,and impossible, winterization scene.
Didn't even read the article yet, but I know GR Auto Gallery when I see it.
I missed out on a fantastic lime green Fiat (or was it an Alfa?) Spider at a great price a while back when I was dipping my toes into the "drivable project car" pond. Man I wish I'd nabbed it!
Sometimes I wonder how those places stay in business. Yeah it’s a consignment shop, but it’s like they go out of their way to NOT present the cars well and/or provide much background regarding condition. That’s also ignoring how they regularly price good drivers like they’re concourse cars.
I went to Gateway in Dearborn to look at a Viper a few years ago. The Viper was decent enough, but I was a bit surprised by how good some of their other consignments weren’t vs. how they looked online.
That said, it’s a great low-pressure place to compare vintage muscle cars. There’s not many places can you do side by side comparisons between an early Mustang, a C3, and a Chevelle without being hounded.
If you want to see a lot of terrible but mostly cheap muscle car and other consignments check out Yono's Auto on Grand River in Farmington Hills. He has a big pipeline of old guys looking to get rid of all kinds of projects. I know the owner well.
For a long time there was "Country Classic Cars" which seemed to have the worst possible examples of cars that were admittedly ultra-thin on the ground.
I’ve driven by there countless times and never gave them a second look. When I was a kid, my dad used to take me to Showdown and Bob Peck. I believe the latter was also on Grand River. There was also a guy in Monroe that is now a trailer dealer.
It was ~30 years ago, but I remember these places having a lot of pedestrian muscle cars. Mustang coupes, 327 Impalas, etc.
There's a place near me that sells old BMWs. They've had a couple of E38s on their lot for at least FOUR YEARS. I checked their website. They only want $3,000 for one of them.
I'd buy that RIGHT NOW as a project car if I had a place to put it. But tell me: How obviously FUCKED is a 25-year-old 7-Series - selling for less than three large - that even the streetcorner pharmaceutical sales representatives are walking away from it?
Given how hard / impossible it is to keep an M62 powered car running at factory performance levels, it’s not unfair to see them as “potential future engine swap recipients.”
Great chassis, though—they all deserve this treatment imo
I used to drive past this place all the time and started paying attention to their specific inventory around 1995 or so, I know I can pick out at least a dozen cars that have been there since then. The Mazda MPV is a 1992 and has 36,000 miles on it but the paint is fried from sitting outside for 30+ years.
There was another car dealer/repair shop/junk yard farther north on State Rd. on the left side, Fisher’s Foreign Cars. The whole front lot was filled with decrepit MGs, Triumphs, Fiats and even a Mercedes or two. I remember reading that they lost their dealers license because they didn’t sell enough cars. Eventually the property was sold and they carted off all the old cars, probably to the crusher.
There’s a Gateway near me with cars in various conditions but the one thing they all have in common is that they want top dollar for all of them. Every time I go there I can’t get over the feeling that I can find a better car for less money somewhere else.
I've never shopped at GR in person but they do a pretty good job with the listings. A wide array of exterior and interior shots, plus underbody, and as good a description of the history and current condition as they can muster.
YMMV. I inquired about a Bronco that had obvious mods per the pictures but they were completely unable to provide info. I know that’s on the truck’s owner, but it didn’t change my perspective after the Gateway visit.
I was initially confused by the Mercury grill and Cougar front end, only to be amazed that it was a one year only Cougar Villager wagon. I was unaware of this model.
I kind of thought it was an aftermarket grill, like the aftermarket Ford Thunderbird Mark T. The Mark T was actually well done (for what it is) as they also added a new fiberglass hood to go with the added on Lincoln grill. I like it. https://forums.aaca.org/topic/364194-1970-ford-thunderbird-mark-t/
I bought a 1979 Alfa Romeo from GR a few years ago. It was mostly correctly represented. I would do business there again, although with more care on pre-purchase inspections.
It's currently estranged from it's motor, but I can't really blame GR for that. Alfas will do that from time to time.
I had the exact same thought. My wife lived in GR for 5 years and still spends several weeks there every summer. I've told her when I go along to visit (which I do from time to time), I want to take a field trip to visit GR Auto Gallery and a few other places of that ilk nearby.
if anyone thinks the canadian system is better they can put their money where their mouth is and snap a femur here and see how long it takes to get treatment
I get the fact that, in theory, everyone in Canada has access to healthcare, while not everyone in the US does. But, do we actually have access if we can’t get in to see a doctor? If we have to wait 4 months for an MRI? In the smaller provinces, it isn’t unusual to wait more than 4 years for a family doctor. I’ve experience with both systems, and the US one is just dramatically faster.
In the usa, if you are middle class or above, you will get the best healthcare in the world and it can possiblly save your life. It might bankrupt you, it might be infuriating but if there is a cure, you can probably get it. If you are lower class or below, you get state healthcare which sucks. It will still suck if they try and implement it for 300mm people.
which tells me that American life expectancy trails a basket of European countries by about 4 years.
What I really, really
REALLY
want to see is the life expectancy of German-Americans vs. German-Germans, and similar for Anglo-Americans and Anglo-Anglos, and so on. I have a very strong suspicion that the ENTIRE difference in outcome is due to The Our Most Sacred Diversity. African-Americans make up a tenth of the population and their lifespans are drastically lower. The same goes for Mexican-Americans.
This is one of those statistics that makes my correlation/causation nerves twitch.
It seems to me that judging by how many people who I'd think would know better do it that there is a crusade to obviate the use of "fewer" when "less" is incorrect.
" African-Americans make up a tenth of the population and their lifespans are drastically lower. The same goes for Mexican-Americans.
This is one of those statistics that makes my correlation/causation nerves twitch."
You'd also need statistics on rich Whites vs poor Whites, and rich Blacks vs poor Blacks, because (given historical fuckery vis-a-vis redlining and other practices) Black people are more likely to be poor, but some poor White dude in East Bumfuck, WV probably has the same life expectancy as the equivalently poor Black dude in the Chicago 'hood.
FWIW, I *have* seen an analysis (but can't find it now, probably years out of date anyway) that suggests our life expectancy would exceed Europe's if we could get our murder rate as low as theirs.
I once read "White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America," and I work in rural Appalachia, and between those, I've started looking at class as something that seems to explain a lot more things than I used to think it did...including a lot of things that might appear to break down along racial lines. At least *some* research backs that up:
"We found that a higher percentage of Black residents within a city did not correlate with more violent crime once other variables were taken into consideration....Instead, the primary drivers pertained to socioeconomic disadvantages"
"There’s a great deal of drug use, welfare fraud, and the like, but the overall crime rate throughout Appalachia is about two-thirds the national average, and the rate of violent crime is half the national average, according to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service."
Rural violent crime is everywhere lower than urban violent crime, including racially homogenous countries...so I don't think that Appalachia's lower crime rate implies "the opposite" of class being more important than race, it simply implies that there are factors besides class. Which, in something as multifactorial as crime, should be a surprise to no one.
(Including me BTW. I don't suggest that crime isn't multifactorial; I'm merely arguing that class is a *better* predictor than the color of your skin.)
Class is a bigger factor than race. Almost all the dysfunction among black people is the result of their having spent centuries absorbing the example of the dysfunctional Southern white poor, then bringing it with them when they moved to the cities.
Local anecdote. My roofer used to employ young white guys from my area, but he got tired of them not showing up or having to bail them out of jail repeatedly. Now his crew is all Mexican family men who show up and work hard.
Approximately if not exactly true, but misleading.
The FBI notes 17,116 firearm homicides in 2023. Subtracting the top 5 cities by numbers in 2023 only gets you down to 14,960. Population last year was 335 million, so the rate drops from 5.1 to 4.5 per 100k. Measurement between countries is tough, and the most convenient source of comparison numbers is a Wikipedia list that has numbers from various years depending on reporting (and has the US total homicide rate, which is higher, #65) but that appears to drop us from just behind Lichtenstein (#68) to just behind Cameroon (#72), FOUR whole spots, which isn't really impressive, especially when you consider that there are 190 countries on the list. Kinda mid-pack even with them gone (and especially considering that this is actually a list of total homicide rate, and I just ran a gun homicide rate but subtracted all murders, not just gun murders).
Glad not to live anywhere in South America though!
(I was going to originally link to a fact check I readily found on this but wanted to fact check the fact checkers, which took less time than I thought it was going to.)
A Scandinavian economist once stated to Milton Friedman: “In Scandinavia we have no poverty.” Milton Friedman replied, “That’s interesting, because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty either”.[1] (Of course, that's changing, predictably, as the Nordic countries' demographics change; a 2023 article in The Lancet titled "Sweden's economic inequality gap is widening and worrying.")
Regarding healthcare, on December 17, 2024, a widely-publicized announcement for a new hospital for Chicago's South Side stated that the difference in life expectancy between the North Side and South Side is currently 30 YEARS.[3]
(In the spirit of gallows humor: No wonder the Sox struggle with attendance!)
Chicago is up to 606 homicides this year, and the life expectancy difference between north and south can easily be seen on this homicide map. https://heyjackass.com/2024-homicide-map/
There are charts out there (Wikipedia) showing comparisons of Americans by race. Native Americans are by far the worst (male, female, doesn't matter). Black males are also doing poorly. Asians leading the way. I suppose that is why California has the best life expectancy of any state even with all the Mexicans and Guatemalans bringing the number back down.
If you have good health insurance this is the greatest country in the world for healthcare. Canadians and europoors received an inferior form of healthcare even compared to the upper middle class in a place such as India
I also understand that the USA counts ALL live births in their statistics, but the EU omits any newborns that expire within 48 (72?) hours. Personally, I think the heroic (and expensive) efforts in American NICU medicine are totally worth skewing the averages down a bit.
As intended, we have the best health care system for people with lots of money. The care everyone else gets is irrelevant.
As Jack points out, health care has to be rationed somehow. The insurance companies are a tool to achieve the intended outcome -the blame largely lies elsewhere.
Re Mangione, the part I find puzzling, from the limited amount I've read on the subject, is that his family has the resources to buy whatever health care he needed. Why did whatever roadblocks the insurance company put in place matter? They are there to ration health care resources so the Mangiones et al can get whatever they need, stat.
I try, within reasonable limits, to make sure my family is in the category of getting whatever they need as well. It is difficult; the resource shortage and allocation is real.
Same here. I kept my yap completely shut on those topics. And as with Thanksgiving, no dwelling on my recently-deceased mother (she wouldn’t have wanted that anyway). Just hella-good food! 😋😋
Jack, have you seen anything more recent from The Last Psychiatrist since 2014? His old blog was really good but I haven’t seen him resurface since he stopped updating it.
Bond cars…Lotus Esprit sub for the win. I still have the little Corgi one from when I was (much) younger. The Aston from The Living Daylights and the 2CV from For Your Eyes Only are tied for second.
the best putdown of aston martin was written by innes ireland describing his trip to the far side of europe in his brand new aston(db-3?). things broke every day and the factory flew a man out to him more than once. i was surprised the magazine published it. kinda
'a lovely trip up the alps except for the differential which had to be replaced; the trip down to torino required a new left front brake assembly' sort of story for the whole trip.
Car and Driver's reviews of the Aston Martin DB6 c. 1968 were almost as glowing as their contemporaneous review of the Opel Kadet wagon. They liked it so little that they made references to it in reviews of full-sized American cars that handled and went better than the DB6. IIRC, the Plymouth Fury wagon split the difference between the DB6 and DB6 Vantage in straight-line performance while outhandling them both when fitted with Konis and Police tires. I do believe that they mentioned the women of Manhattan knew exactly what an Aston Martin represented, but that could have been the James Bond effect by 1968.
I think David Samuels is brilliant and Tablet magazine possibly the best analysis of Jewish-Middle East-culture today. He also writes for County Highway, with Walter Kirn, and Unheard, the British mag.
I'm not sure how your view that the Obamas are only interested in financial bulking up isn't consistent with Samuels' conclusion. Someone has been running the Biden administration the past 4 years and it wasn't Joe.
The best example of Samuels' thesis wasn't even in the article. How, suddenly, the healthcare "crisis" appeared during the first term fully formed, with all the crisis trimmings as soon as that became the signature policy Barack-Barry needed to show he got something done. Approximately two weeks before the rollout of the health care takeover plan Americans were on the whole pretty happy with their health insurance. Hillary had a go at it herself during Bill's administration and it went nowhere. Obamacare "fixed" the "crisis" by quadrupling the cost of non-subsidized health insurance. I know, I was on the board of our 75 employee firm, with a family plan rising from $4-5000/year to $20,000/yr that we had to pay for the same coverage.
Obamacare cost me forty or fifty grand cash and 100 points on my credit score for YEARS. I could go on about how much I despise it. But I don't think it was "Obama" in anything but name.
Just a big giveaway to the insurance companies and all the middlemen in the healthcare racket. I honestly hate how people still call it health “insurance” when it’s no longer really insurance (a financial product) and now a middleman product wrapped up as “insurance”
In fairness they went nuts when it was called Obamacare. But if it wasn't Barack-Barry's whose was it? I know who made out under the ACA but they needed the Annointed One to push it through, and Barack-Barry needed a signature dish to his name. Plus all the fuss covered his insane Iran wrangling which he started with a series of four covert personal letters to the Ayatollah asking if the Mullah would pretty please negotiate with the nasty Americans of which he was President.
I’m the first to say that Barry is greedy and in it for the money, especially after watching his sudden rise in Chicago politics where the politicians are all greedy and in it for the money. However, he does retain some of his youthful Marxist upbringing and it sporadically appears here and there.
But thank God that the almighty dollar pummeled Obama’s Marxist visions into submission and his former zeal was replaced by him choosing which mansion to spend time in. As someone who wished he would just disappear and act like the footnote to history that he is, I’ll take that deal.
In the last election he greatly devalued the only thing he had left besides his dollars: his brand. It’s in tatters and it remains to be seen if it will ever again come close to its former value. He’s a pipsqueak looking for relevance, and I’m kind of enjoying it.
i just got my home and car insurance reduced by over half by shopping around and confronting my present insurer. turns out somebody from his office somehow "misrepresented" something to us a few years ago. this happens about every 10 years. longish story from a quartercentury ago: karen had a house policy with chubb. we were invited to a chubb cocktail party during the monterey historics by a friend of our who rated the invite due to owning the most expensive house in charleston and 2/3 of the mcdonalds in that particular carolina, plus several rare cars. a rep came to where we were sitting and asked if all was well. karen said no it wasn't. five minutes later the chubb rep handed her a little package from tiffany: sterling silver bowl. we dropped chubb anyway, and went to the carrier we had before we got to our current one.
I never signed up for O-care. I just paid the 'fine'. Yeah it sucked that I haven't been able to get health insurance since the law passed - but what sucked even more was all of the assholes telling me that I COULD get it.
I even made an insurance agent sit down once and calculate what it would cost.
In short, 20K a year premium with a 20K deductible. No copays, no prescription benefits. In short it was nothing more than a way to punish people who work hard and pay taxes.
I just laid out 14K for an operation for my spouse because they can't get insurance either (least I'm old enough to be on medicare) and at least if you pay cash, you get a discount.
I've had a similar thing during my recent years of underemployment: With a subsidy, the premiums have been an unaffordable portion of my meager income: adding the deductible and coinsurance would be a HUGE portion of said income, one which I ABSOLUTELY could not pay. And when my income rose ever so slightly, the subsidy clawbacks seemed to take every penny of my "extra" earnings, which were still minimal.
It basically amounts to a feudal system where the lower-middle class must pay a huge tribute to the medical class except, unlike the feudal system, the serfs receive nothing in return.
Sadly where I live there aren't enough doctors, so I don't have one / can't get one. I have a 'family practitioner' or what's really just a nurse with a fancy title.
It's one of the fallouts of the ADA: Doctors can't make that much money anymore (but it still costs a lot to become one and to be one) so less people are going into medicine. Even less into practice.
Maybe if we had a legal version of the ADA we'd get rid of all those pesky lawyers? ;-D
Good point, John! I don't have the health care issue here in the UK (it's free...partly because they don't have a charging mechanism even for those who should, in theory, pay), but I go out of my way to avoid car claims simply on account of the hassle factor. Insurance is a highly profitable business...for the insurers.
Yes. In my declining years I work in state government. The insurance coverage is, on paper, quite good. However, MDs are retiring faster than they are being replaced; right now neither my spouse nor myself have a primary care physician, and the wait time for a specialist can be long. Paying cash or being ready to jump into someone else's missed appointment can bypass some of the wait.
remember how the first year of term 1 the media mentioned he wasn't wearing his wedding ring and wristwatch--during ramadan? they were said to have been mildly damaged and were out for repair. they never mentioned anything similar the next 7 years, if anybody noticed anything.
My best man's uncle was heavily involved in the writing of the policy behind Obama Care and I can assure you he did not vote for the man in either election.
The #1 Bond car (Roger Moore posed with it but never drove on camera) is the Corvorado built by Les Dunham. #2 is the AMC Hornet from Man With The Golden Gun. Saw the stunt car at the Pierce Arrow museum in Buffalo this summer.
The only thing that could make the Aston from The Living Daylights (one of the top films from the entire series) any better would be if it were one of these instead:
I was joking with a friend recently that when I hit my massive trust fund (like Jack), I’d like to take Aston off Strulovich’s hands and reimagine the brand a bit.
Tremendous as it may be, it was worse than everything that came before it and after it, until very recently.
What direction would you like to reimagine it in, other than back? I rather like the brown DB11 my neighbor dds, year round, with sea sucker ski racks, but it seems like the end point for the design direction that was started with the DB7. I wouldn't kick the DB12 out of bed for eating crackers, but it is too busy.
So as to not give the wrong impression, a few doors down from the DB11 is a person who keeps a Miata based "Offroadster" with 31" tires under a loose blue tarp secured with yellow poly rope. In its own way the neighborhood is very diverse.
0-Buy out Stroll from the carmaker and the F1 team
1-Partner with Aramco (and perhaps Cosworth) on new, clean sheet combustion engines
2-Offer a (good) manual in EVERY car
3-Vantage would be a 2+2 911 competitor with a TT V8; it needs to be as good as a 911 and would be offered in regular, convertible, hot rod, and hot rod convertible guise
4-Vanquish would be a 2+2 812 / Dodici cilindri tier car with an NA V12; so, like the current Vanquish but would look better, offer an optional back seat, have an NA V12, and a manual
5-Develop a mid-engine car to compete with 296, Temerario, 750S, etc. tier; they had a concept years ago but killed it. Use the TT V8 from the Vantage and - again - manual
6-Put the V12 in the next DBX; and again … manual!
7-Bring back the Lagonda as a Rolls / Bentley competitor sedan
As bad as the Virage was (and I almost bought one in the end of 2019), it was still the last true Aston. Everything since has been a poorly engineered and shoddily built (by fine English craftsmen!), big dollar Corvette. If we start dropping the legal hammer on CEOs for ruining their companies, I would nominate Bez for ruining Aston.
I was going to snarkily suggest that when you decided to set that pile of money on fire that I would love to help.
But there is a lot of people in the world with a lot of money to spend on things. Maybe there are enough of them to support a gentleman's GT for the semi analog set.
I'm sorry, but no. doing that to a Miata should be a capital offense, even if the the safari / overlander trend weren't beyond tired.
besides, nothing can top the safari'd Smart ForTwo rolling around Alameda, California. I cannot for the life of me tell if the owner is being serious or ironic with it, which is to my mind what makes it so brilliant.
"doing that to a Miata should be a capital offense"
i dont ever intend to do this to a miata but i take solace in the fact that they made 400k na miatas so theyre not at all rare
this doesnt mean i like seeing them destroyed or molested but given how many others are out there that are used and abused by people who shouldnt be allowed near a socket set im quite alright with the offroad thing
Jack how could you leave the 1971 Mustang Mach I driven by Bond and Tiffany Case in Diamond are Forever!!!!! Long long long hood short deck and the last true muscle Mustang (big block) for a generation. We Baby Boomers are shocked shocked by the oversight….
Speculation I've read is that, since it was a real stunt, they could only perform it so many times. They took the best takes of what they had and tried to make it work. They had a stunt driver that destroyed several of their cars during filming of another part of the chase.
The Aston DB5 is simply THE Bond car. It fit in perfectly with Bonds playboy persona. It is as much responsible for the success of the franchise as Connery was. And for Aston Martin kinda/sorta being in business today. Speaking to folks who were in the Aston world at the time, the DB5 was seen as an attractive, but very conservative, GT car. It was not flashy or particularly noticeable. Perfect car for the discrete playboy spy.
'the DB5 was seen as an attractive, but very conservative, GT car. It was not flashy or particularly noticeable.'
I mean, you have contemporaneous sources who should always be taken seriously, but my God, the average European was driving something like a Fiat 500 or Mini or VW Type 1, an Aston DB5 would be more visible and obvious in that context than a Reveulto is in modern traffic.
It was not an E-Type, a 275 GTB, a Bizzarrini 5300 GT or even a Corvette Stingray. It was something more subtle and reserved than those . Nor did I say that he was trying to pass as a plumber or mechanic. It was a good choice for a discrete playboy spy. Particularly an English one.
Fair enough, I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of *any* big-bore car being non-noticeable in 1965. Now, in the USA you could have driven one to work every day and attracted zero notice, people would have thought you had a Barracuda!
You might disagree but I say Bentley Continental coupe. It's more expensive than a M-B coupe. Still doesn't draw much attention. I don't live in a ritzy area and a black Continental would get absolutely no eyes at all. It's looked the same for so long that it's not a new occurrence to spot one and the badge/lights look just like a Hyundai/Genesis.
If it were a new convertible in purple or orange like the press cars, that's a different story.
If you're hand waiving aspects of the necessity of economics based health care, I'll hand waive the obvious issues with finding impartial ombudsman, ideological capture of their guild or other such things.
When I got to the end of that section I was happily surprised to see such a reasonable way to improve the situation.
I don't believe that Obama is the head of the Democrat party. He just isn't smart enough to manage anything so unwieldly. If you read his "autobiography", Dreams From My Father, he is nothing more than an angry man with a victim mentality. He flunks out of Occidental College in California with a grade point of 0.0 (his words...not mine). But mysteriously appears at Columbia University, and then on to Harvard. He is not an ideologue, but rather, he is all about the Benjamins. For a couple who often chided people with wondering "how much was enough?", they have accumulated four or five homes/mansions at considerable cost. He wants to seem relevant but he would rather be seen playing golf at Congressional Country Club in suburban Maryland. For Barry, it's mission accomplished. He has access to anything and everything yet probably is as unhappy now as he was at the Punahou School in Honolulu. I agree that Michelle could have won the election in 2024 but by all accounts, hated her time in the White House, and much prefers the cover of Vogue to being covered by inept Secret Service agents hired under DEI requirements.
BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, has been a long time New York Times bestseller.
(I'M NOT TRYING TO SPREAD 'RACIST CONSPIRACY THEORIES'. But it's probably a good "live pro tip" here: "IF THERE'S SOMETHING YOU DON'T WANT PEOPLE TO THINK ABOUT YOU, DO NOT HIRE A PUBLICIST TO SAY THAT THING.")
In actuality, I would be better described as agnostic – and I'm definitely not excluding the possibility of an afterlife. I'm just not into believing in deities. Maybe I could be a Buddhist, if I had to choose something.
So, we might discuss it when we're reborn as housecats.
I am almost convinced that if we lead a good life, treat people with kindness and respect, always strive to do the right thing, and leave things generally better than we find them, we do, in fact, return in the next life as pampered housecats.
I also respect the atheists. But I always wondered why they never opened any hospitals. I guess they were satisfied going to hospitals opened by religious orders. Hmmmm…………
Where I live, I would wager that great majority of hospitals were opened by atheists.
In the US, I have no idea – you have significantly less atheists than we do, it seems to be quite unfashionable to be an atheist there (and was even more so in the past) and a lot of hospitals are probably "legacy" ones from times when not being a Christian was extremely unusual.
Atheists are not an organized (or unorganized) religion, so it makes no sense to call anything "atheist". In America, I wouldn't even be surprised by some hospitals being founded by atheists and still being called Saint-something, because that's what you guys do.
In here, almost no hospitals have religious names. Most are named either after places, or organizations, or people – typically some doctors who, quite often, are atheists.
I'm also quite sure there are some hospitals named after some atheists in the US.
I can't remember the exact words, but someone more eloquent than I once said "if you lead your life as if there is a god waiting to judge you in the afterlife only to find out there isn't, what have you lost in the effort?"
I don't think anyone needs to believe in Christ or a Judeo-Christian god to appreciate the lessons and guidelines laid down in Matthew, particularly the Sermon on the Mount. that's a pretty good guide to living even if you think the whole thing is a fantastic work of fiction.
my question would be that if you were to behave as though god was watching you and you adhered to both the ten commandments and the edicts in the bible
what exactly is preventing you from making the miniscule leap to actually being a christian
The presence of a god shaped hole in the human consciousness (because we have the capacity for forward thinking) does not of itself prove the existence of any of the gods we invent to fill the void. Correlation, causation etc etc.
A personal chat, obviously. I am nothing if not an egotist! Of course, the voices could be delusion... Meanwhile, I enjoy the language of the King James Bible and Book of Common Prayer, while taking the Christian tenet of "do as you would be done by" as my guide.
I believe in a God, specifically the Catholic God, largely because otherwise I don't think I could have any interest, hobby, or occupation other than getting to the bottom of what is NOT there.
Just now finished watching the Christmas Day edition of The Nightly News NBC and ABC. For those that don’t know, at the end of the show on Christmas Day the telecast runs a full length credits at the end with photos of everyone it takes to put on the show each day through out the year. The thing that jumps out at me is that 95 percent of all the staff appear to be under 30 and 95 percent appear to be white….. wait a minute is not the elite media propagandist for DEI???? They do not seem to be practicing what they promote….,
Yes, Lynn...Jack has posted before at how Ivy League classes are basically "Legacy Admits" and "DEI Admits." The "smart kids from Flyover Country," formerly referred to as the "Lifeguards of the Gene pool" (e.g., Dick Cavett, Yale 1958) are a vanishing breed. Jack has stated that they would actually compete with the Legacy Admits for positions of power.
I have spent a lifetime working in media (looks around nervously and ducks for cover) and my great frustration is that so much of it is white, coastal, and graduates of premier public or private universities. (Full disclosure: 2.5 of the three apply to me, although I did grow up in Iowa and Texas and attended college in the Lone Star State.) My current employer is taking active steps to address that and is making progress. I keep reminding the brass that diversity should include geography, age, and ideology, something I personally keep in mind when seeking / considering freelancers and job candidates, particularly for fellowships.
I'm not saying this in a bid to present myself as some kind of hallmark for change, only to let you know that some of us within the business are painfully aware of the very point you raise.
On the celestial cloud he shares with Harambe, Mr Meat Loaf congratulates you on your self-awareness... and notes that two AND A HALF out of three definitely ain't bad!
Chuck S thanks for the reply, my point was that the national media elites never miss an opportunity to attack white middle class and point out that we need to adhere to diversity but then you see all the people that work for the Nightly News and they almost monolithicly white and young. And you are correct about the lack of diversity, I graduated decades ago from UTx in Broadcast Communications and could not even get an interview with the Big Three even thought my partner and I had written, shot and edited a 30 minute documentary for PBS. She nor I ended up in broadcasting. Everyone seemed to be like you said, from the North East or the Left Coast. Congratulations on your making it in the business it’s a great field.
I'm a defense attorney. The problem with your Asimov defense is that it is wholly irrelevant and no judge is going to allow admission of evidence regarding UHC's profits or practices. It provides no legal justification for murder and only serves to mislead or inflame the jury and will be rightly excluded. That doesn't mean there will not be an an effort to do so in the press (and all the usual suspects are already attempting it) but it will not be given directly to the jury.
Brian is right. The jury nullification would take place at jury selection. Get a few Gen Z white girls on it and hope for a mistrial.
I recently got a jury summons in the mail. My objections, which I'll be HAPPY to inform the court of, are as follows:
1 - The system seems to think that justice is best pursued by putting people on the stand and asking them trick questions in the hope that they say something incriminating on the record.
2 - The system seems to think that justice has no business being emotionally satisfying, so it tries to remove any sense of that from the process.
3 - The system seems to hold that the defendant is the only one involved in the process who bears any personal responsibility for his actions - i.e. the police officers aren't personally responsible for choosing to arrest him, the jurors aren't personally responsible for choosing to convict him, the judge isn't personally responsible for choosing to sentence him, etc. Everybody in the courtroom's a robot with no free will, except the guy on trial.
4 - I assume that ALL prosecutors are at least partially motivated by careerism and the desire to win rather than to serve justice, so they're all at least willing to play dirty a little bit. Their political ambitions demand a high conviction rate, after all.
5 - I assume that juries convict people, not necessarily because of evidence, but because the jurors don't like the defendant's hairstyle, or the look on his face or the tone of his voice.
6 - I disagree with a fundamental assumption of the modern legal system - that when someone breaks the law, The State is the injured party, while the actual victim gets relegated to a secondary role.
#4 is very troubling in the DJT cases and the Jan 6 cases. Prosecutors should seek justice and not revenge against people they may dislike or disagree with (or in some of the Jan 6 cases tourists who were just walking around and went into the capitol because that is what tourists do).
I was on a jury years ago. All white jury. Black defendant who was a former NBA player. We found him guilty, and after the trial the defense lawyers came and spoke with the jury about how we thought about various things in the case and they told us the defendant could not take a plea because it would affect his chances of getting back into the NBA (essentially being guilty), so they took it to trial to see if he got lucky with a not guilty verdict.
Or maybe just do your civic duty
It's okay, I keep TRYING to get on juries here, so I'm happy to take his slots -- but I never even get as far as voir dire!
Or, since 99% of the laws on the books are either Unconstitutional or unjust, you'd have me help the county railroad some poor slob?
I have other things to do.
The libertarian in me hates this but ive been to court a few times and everyone is usually guilty as hell and disrespectful. You got a guy who can throw you in jail for a year for a minir offense and you should have the courtesy to say “yes sir. No sir” i got complemented by the judge for speeding for just not being a jackass. This was easier to do when i was guilty than the case i got railroaded on
When I've had to go to court (three times in the past three years for reckless driving), I wear a freshly-cleaned charcoal grey suit, white shirt, blood-red tie, shined black shoes, fresh shave & haircut, even a gold tie clip. I stand there quietly and let my lawyer talk.
The last time, the judge knocked "83 in a 55" down to "62 in a 55," and the only words I spoke during my whole appearance were "Thank you, Your Honor" before I walked out.
"easier to do when i was guilty than the case i got railroaded on"
Aye, there's the rub.
Everybody has other things to do.
I’m sure you enjoy the protections granted defendants, but you aren’t wiling to safeguard them when your number comes up. Sit down
this, 1,000 times over. if, when your time comes, you want a jury of your peers, take the seat when called.
I've twice served on juries - one for a trial that went 5 weeks before ending in mistrial - for exactly that reason. If I'm ever on trial, I want people like me in the box.
Look, unless the guy got caught making a dirty nuke or some kind of bioweapon, then I can't hear it or smell it and it's not my problem.
I even owned a Honda Civic for 6 years before my current string of Accords.
I’ve been chosen for jury duty three times. Twice, the case settled, and the one actual time I had to report, I didn’t get through voir dire.
My county draws a larger pool once per quarter, from which lucky contestants are chosen, and if you’re in that larger pool, you are mailed a notice, and may defer to a later quarter in the year if you choose.
Oh, I'll go to selection, and when asked I'll be honest with them - and go off on tangents about how the police use passive voice to dodge personal responsibility for shooting suspects, or how "speeding" is a Malum Prohibitum rather than a Malum In Se violation, or how we should bring dueling back for certain offenses or how I believe that every citizen has the right to use jury nullification if it's the proper thing to do.
About 12 years ago when I traveled for work every week I got a jury summons and blew it off multiple times until I got one that said if I didn’t show up at the county courthouse on X date a deputy sheriff would come find me and bring me there even though I was supposed to be at a meeting in St. Louis that week.
On day one a judge told the jury pool not to even try to get out of jury duty because he got called and he couldn’t get out of it. So I was resigned to my fate and on the second day got called to a DUI case.
They asked us all how many drinks we thought someone could have before he was impaired to drive and as soon as I answered two I knew I made a mistake, defense and prosecution had no objections to me being on the jury.
The following day they showed us an hour+ long video taken from the police car that clearly showed the defendant driving over the yellow line and almost hitting a raised median after he crossed an intersection which is when the deputy sheriff turned on his lights and stopped him. The rest of the video was of the field sobriety test and of the defendant in the back of the police car.
The defense made their whole case on the fact that the deputy did not administer the test properly and had a high priced “expert” to refute it but the prosecution agreed that it was done improperly after the expert’s first statement.
I didn’t recognize the defendant on the first day but on the second day I realized he was a bagger at the Publix that my wife shopped at. He clearly couldn’t afford a DUI but he was also being taken to the cleaners by his attorney and his high dollar expert which really pissed me off.
They let us take notes on little half legal pads and somehow I took six pages of notes including direct quotes from the defendant. After they took us into the jury room I started reading off quotes and when the bailiff came in a few minutes later he wanted to know if we had picked a foreman and everyone in the room pointed at me and said “him.”
So now I was a jury foreman and all I could think of was Martin Balsam in Twelve Angry Men. It was pretty obvious that we all thought he was guilty but I went ahead and had us do a secret ballot which confirmed it. Our next question was how long we should wait to let them know we had a unanimous verdict. We decided a half hour was good so we killed about twenty minutes before letting the bailiff know.
Then I got to stand up in open court and declare this poor guy guilty. After that I stayed away from Publix and only went to Kroger just so I wouldn’t have to run into the guy.
DUI depends on the person. The college roomates of a good friend of mine had to be into their SECOND CASE before they started feeling it.
This same friend once gave me very wise advice: "Value your low tolerance."
"how many drinks we thought someone could have before he was impaired to drive"
how do you even define what a drink is in this case
getting how drunk and how fast off what is very different for each person no
"Are we talking Buzzed, too hazy to get the car home or holding a tent revival right there in the bar?"
are we talking two highball glasses of everclear or two small cupfuls of bud light
there is a slight difference in alcohol by volume between the two
My real answer was three, I told them two but should have said one so I never would have gotten on the jury.
I can tell you that for ME, three's good. For Bob over there, he's gotta be 12 or 13 deep.
But .08 is two beers at a company outing or dinner with friends, so basically EVERYBODY's a potential felon these days. See why I don't like the system?
#3 and #6 are big deals to me.
As they are for me.
I'll be interested to hear if you get waived, I voiced similar issues with the system when I was called for federal duty during my wedding week, and filled out the waiver form. I was waived, but I'm not sure if it was because of the wedding or my truthful voicing of my opinions of the process as I see it unfold.
That was the second time I've been called, the first was during 4th of July week and we were sent home because of the holiday. I was just recently called for a 3rd time this past September and was sent home after they used our pool to fill a single alternate spot on a jury. Hopefully I'm done after 3 pulls before 40.
We shall see.
I suspect that when they read that list, which I attached to the questionnaire I returned, they won't want someone on ANY of their juries so disposed to such opinions.
However it turns out, I have acted honorably and with a clean conscience.
Brian we will forgive you for being an attorney as beside that one negative, you seem like a great ACFer. 😉😉
You're certainly right, but playing devil's advocate for a moment: if he is successfully charged with terrorism, then doesn't that charge REQUIRE that the government provide a sense of his "terrorist" motive, which opens it up for discussion? I'm no attorney but God knows I've hired a few. :)
Your logic makes perfect sense in a world where there's a level playing field in the justice system.
Federal terrorism is not really my expertise, I'm more of a state level meth dealer gang murder kind of dude. The terrorism charge is kind of an overreach, this is just straight up 1st degree murder.
Doesn’t the recent trials of DJT prove that the judge will be a major factor in the trial? In Trump’s NYC trials (civil and state) as well as the (forever?) unresolved DC Jan6 case the judge’s were working with the prosecution to ensure guilty verdicts. Luigi needs to draw a friendly judge or he won’t have a chance. Even with a friendly judge there is no reasonable defense for what he did and any obvious judicial malfeasance will be ripe for review.
Yes.
A bad judge will torpedo your case. Believe me, I know.
https://soundcloud.com/stevelehto/court-refused-to-let-man-argue-obvious-defense-at-trial
"Your Honor, we don't like that the defendant has an affirmative defense to our prosecution. We ask that you disallow it."
"So ordered. Also, even though it wasn't in your motion, I'm also going to rule that the defense shall not make any mention of the defendant's deployment to Iraq when the crime occurred. And since the defendant, Mr. van den Berg was a D1 basketball center, I'm also going to suppress the security camera footage which shows the perpetrator was under 5' tall and was wearing a shirt that read GUATEMALA."
I've long thought that a court's focusing on the specific actions that got somebody in trouble and led to their being referred to as "The Defendant" while declaring any actions on the part of the victim that led to his demise puts off-limits mitigating factors which might exonerate said defendant, and perhaps even lionize him.
It's easy to caricature the CEO of a healthcare insurer as the most poorly-written of movie villains, but their actions do cause a great deal of suffering among those whose only hope for lifesaving treatment is someone with deep pockets footing the bill.
None of the CEOs that outsourced tens of millions of industrial jobs to China in the past three generations was guilty of a specific criminal act in doing so, yet together they collapsed the greatest industrial economy in history in the name of greater profitability. Profits they did not share with their employees. Tell me with a straight face that wasn't criminal.
So at first glance the man who offs the CEO of United Mega Corporation because he lost his factory job at UMC's East Fuckington plant is a cold-blooded murderer, when we consider that UMC shuttered the biggest factory in eastern Kentucky, sent 10,000 blue-collar jobs to Shanghai, cratered the economy of three counties and permanently impoverished 25,000 square miles of rural America, his actions don't seem quite so worthy of condemnation.
Agreed. There is a big difference between what is “legal” and what is “moral”.
murder is wrong. did killing him fix anything?
Time will tell. A legal punishment doesn't fix anything, either, but it is meant to be a deterrent to future offenders.
Yes it is. But it might, in time.
Same argument could be said for offing one of the CEOs of the oil companies if someone who is down to their last nickel pulls up to the pump, only to see that the same product in the tanks as in the morning is now $0.70/gallon higher, if not more.
When most of the price of gas is taxes? Whose fault is THAT?
Never meant to imply that murder is not wrong. But, there are a lot of things that corporations get away with that should be illegal, and the execs should be held responsible.
Executing anyone is wrong, and Luigi needs to be tried on the evidence.
That said, I completely understand the sympathy for the guy. Much like Ice Age's fictional example, it's unknowable how many people have suffered, died or taken their own lives as a result of UHC's distaste for paying claims. More than one.
The thing that really bothers me is this. If Luigi had popped out of the shadows and knocked off the hotel parking valet, would anyone have heard about it? Would they have even looked beyond the immediate area for him?
My guess is no to both. Mr Luigi would be happily enjoying a national Quarter Pounder tour in anonymity.
That's not justification for murder, nor does it seem like a plausible element of defense. But is sure is a depressing commentary on where priorities lie.
And to be sure, I'm NOT saying he was right to drop the hammer on the guy.
But we should be having a national conversation on corporate activities that border on Dysfunctionally Antisocial.
Look at the jan 6 cases. Id bet every dollar i have the government is tracking us all illegally and completely ignoring the rules. “Some guy two states over said he looks like the guy” sure…
Kill your Senator if you feel that strongly about it. Average CEO is just operating in the legal space given to them. Actually, don't kill anybody, get involved, vote out the people you don't like. It is still possible.
I strangely agree. Not on the specifics of this case but weve been letting big corporations get away with murder, literal and figurative, with a slap on the wrist. What did you think was going to happen? Not sure why Luigi picked this guy but i get it conceptually.
I don't want to see anyone get his head blown off in the street, but I don't want to watch wannabe aristocrats run my country into the ground economically so they can make eight figures and walk away consequence-free either.
The media is essentially tainting the pool.
I agree with your points. Brian...but there's one thing you're overlooking. The system in NYC is as political and politically corrupt as any place you could name in the deep south during the worst parts of Jim Crow. The 14th amendment was passed in no small part as a weapon to use against corrupt sheriffs and judges who abused their position to deny people's civil rights.
Lady Justice is not blind. In NYC she might as well have a ball gag in her mouth and a leash around her neck because the jurists there are corrupt and unaccountable for it. One need look no further than the various trials of Trump to see how they operate. "Well, that was Donald Trump."
Yes. It is. It is the incoming president of the United States. A celebrity and billionaire who will wield real power. Just as we saw with Fanni Willis in the Young Thug trial, the corruption impacts everything.
Expect anything but justice from the NYC system.
Fun fact: the Volante version of the V8 in TLD was then Aston Martin boss Victor Gauntlett’s personal car. Hands down both my favourite Aston and Bond film - coincidentally it was the first one I saw in the cinema.
The movie was half great. The first half was fantastic, the second half was kinda meh. The pre title sequence was amongst the best. And as the biggest Aston fan you will ever meet, I was thrilled to see two Aston’s in the movie. Even with the silly,and impossible, winterization scene.
It might be my favorite Bond movie for a similar reason. It might be the best Bond movie if it had one fewer ending.
Didn't even read the article yet, but I know GR Auto Gallery when I see it.
I missed out on a fantastic lime green Fiat (or was it an Alfa?) Spider at a great price a while back when I was dipping my toes into the "drivable project car" pond. Man I wish I'd nabbed it!
Sometimes I wonder how those places stay in business. Yeah it’s a consignment shop, but it’s like they go out of their way to NOT present the cars well and/or provide much background regarding condition. That’s also ignoring how they regularly price good drivers like they’re concourse cars.
I went to Gateway in Dearborn to look at a Viper a few years ago. The Viper was decent enough, but I was a bit surprised by how good some of their other consignments weren’t vs. how they looked online.
That said, it’s a great low-pressure place to compare vintage muscle cars. There’s not many places can you do side by side comparisons between an early Mustang, a C3, and a Chevelle without being hounded.
If you want to see a lot of terrible but mostly cheap muscle car and other consignments check out Yono's Auto on Grand River in Farmington Hills. He has a big pipeline of old guys looking to get rid of all kinds of projects. I know the owner well.
For a long time there was "Country Classic Cars" which seemed to have the worst possible examples of cars that were admittedly ultra-thin on the ground.
I’ve driven by there countless times and never gave them a second look. When I was a kid, my dad used to take me to Showdown and Bob Peck. I believe the latter was also on Grand River. There was also a guy in Monroe that is now a trailer dealer.
It was ~30 years ago, but I remember these places having a lot of pedestrian muscle cars. Mustang coupes, 327 Impalas, etc.
There's a place near me that sells old BMWs. They've had a couple of E38s on their lot for at least FOUR YEARS. I checked their website. They only want $3,000 for one of them.
I'd buy that RIGHT NOW as a project car if I had a place to put it. But tell me: How obviously FUCKED is a 25-year-old 7-Series - selling for less than three large - that even the streetcorner pharmaceutical sales representatives are walking away from it?
Probably because some parts are completely unobtainium and unrepairable.
So so true!
https://www.meeknet.co.uk/e31/BMW_M60_M62_M62TU_Engine.htm
Given how hard / impossible it is to keep an M62 powered car running at factory performance levels, it’s not unfair to see them as “potential future engine swap recipients.”
Great chassis, though—they all deserve this treatment imo
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2003-bmw-m5-132/
I used to drive past this place all the time and started paying attention to their specific inventory around 1995 or so, I know I can pick out at least a dozen cars that have been there since then. The Mazda MPV is a 1992 and has 36,000 miles on it but the paint is fried from sitting outside for 30+ years.
https://opposite-lock.com/topic/39202/the-mystery-of-continental-sports-cars
No shit! I used to drive past there all the time! Bought my CBR at State 8 right down the road!
There was another car dealer/repair shop/junk yard farther north on State Rd. on the left side, Fisher’s Foreign Cars. The whole front lot was filled with decrepit MGs, Triumphs, Fiats and even a Mercedes or two. I remember reading that they lost their dealers license because they didn’t sell enough cars. Eventually the property was sold and they carted off all the old cars, probably to the crusher.
Was that the one that looked like a junkyard, with a couple of RX-7s rotting away quietly?
A couple MGs were still there as of last year.
That car is too old for drug dealer street cred. I think if it were a Bangle era car, it'd sell at that price.
There’s a Gateway near me with cars in various conditions but the one thing they all have in common is that they want top dollar for all of them. Every time I go there I can’t get over the feeling that I can find a better car for less money somewhere else.
Same feeling I had after visiting the local Gateway in north Phoenix for a cars and coffee some months back. Lots of unspectacular cars for sale.
I've never shopped at GR in person but they do a pretty good job with the listings. A wide array of exterior and interior shots, plus underbody, and as good a description of the history and current condition as they can muster.
YMMV. I inquired about a Bronco that had obvious mods per the pictures but they were completely unable to provide info. I know that’s on the truck’s owner, but it didn’t change my perspective after the Gateway visit.
Neither an Alfa nor a Fiat "project" could ever be "driveable," so great price or not, you were saved by a higher force.
"What's wrong with this car?"
"Nothing. They all do that."
I was initially confused by the Mercury grill and Cougar front end, only to be amazed that it was a one year only Cougar Villager wagon. I was unaware of this model.
Yeah, it's astounding, isn't it?
I kind of thought it was an aftermarket grill, like the aftermarket Ford Thunderbird Mark T. The Mark T was actually well done (for what it is) as they also added a new fiberglass hood to go with the added on Lincoln grill. I like it. https://forums.aaca.org/topic/364194-1970-ford-thunderbird-mark-t/
My God, that looks horrible!
How much more did someone have to gather in 1970 to get the real thing in the form of a Mark III? (Same basic car, same chassis, etc.!)
It may not look the best, but I love how back then people went out of their way to express their individuality in many ways.
American socialism and corporatism has turned us into a conformist culture, which I hate.
No. It’s not astounding. It’s absolutely a terrible ‘70s malaise mobile. And I’d really like to have it.
sometimes I think a 442 Vista Cruiser would be cool to have, but then I recall all of the "joys" of 70's era cars .........
now a '74 formula 400 'bird would be really cool, with a bunch of modern upgrades.
I am surprised that Tom K has not chimed in as the Cougar Wagon is in his shade of green…,
I’m also a fan of Ford’s Jade Green wagons with the green interiors.
I bought a 1979 Alfa Romeo from GR a few years ago. It was mostly correctly represented. I would do business there again, although with more care on pre-purchase inspections.
It's currently estranged from it's motor, but I can't really blame GR for that. Alfas will do that from time to time.
motor divorce lawyers are really expensive
I had the exact same thought. My wife lived in GR for 5 years and still spends several weeks there every summer. I've told her when I go along to visit (which I do from time to time), I want to take a field trip to visit GR Auto Gallery and a few other places of that ilk nearby.
The canard the the US has the “best healthcare” has been by now pretty well dispatched.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality-u-s-healthcare-system-compare-countries/#:~:text=Generally%2C%20the%20U.S.%20performs%20worse,medication%20or%20treatment%20errors)%2C%20and
We do have the most expensive care. The two are not equal.
It’s dramatically better than the Canadian one.
Eric don’t say that out loud as there are politicians on the left (Bernie Bros) that worship at the alter of the GREAT Canadian Health Care System…
It makes me cringe every time I hear it.
if anyone thinks the canadian system is better they can put their money where their mouth is and snap a femur here and see how long it takes to get treatment
if they survive
I am curious as to what your definition of “better” is.
It’s expensive and infuriating but they’re not suggesting you should off yourself because the specialists are all booked up
i read where 20% of some category of canadian deaths are assisted suicide
maid in canada is about 5% of total deaths so 20% for some smaller demographic isnt at all unbelievable
That's a statistic that I sincerely wish wasn't true, but sadly believe it.
I get the fact that, in theory, everyone in Canada has access to healthcare, while not everyone in the US does. But, do we actually have access if we can’t get in to see a doctor? If we have to wait 4 months for an MRI? In the smaller provinces, it isn’t unusual to wait more than 4 years for a family doctor. I’ve experience with both systems, and the US one is just dramatically faster.
In the usa, if you are middle class or above, you will get the best healthcare in the world and it can possiblly save your life. It might bankrupt you, it might be infuriating but if there is a cure, you can probably get it. If you are lower class or below, you get state healthcare which sucks. It will still suck if they try and implement it for 300mm people.
From that article, we have this:
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality-u-s-healthcare-system-compare-countries/#:~:text=Generally%2C%20the%20U.S.%20performs%20worse,medication%20or%20treatment%20errors)%2C%20and
which tells me that American life expectancy trails a basket of European countries by about 4 years.
What I really, really
REALLY
want to see is the life expectancy of German-Americans vs. German-Germans, and similar for Anglo-Americans and Anglo-Anglos, and so on. I have a very strong suspicion that the ENTIRE difference in outcome is due to The Our Most Sacred Diversity. African-Americans make up a tenth of the population and their lifespans are drastically lower. The same goes for Mexican-Americans.
This is one of those statistics that makes my correlation/causation nerves twitch.
We may trail those European countries in life expectancy by 4 years, but that means you have to spend those extra 4 years…………….in a European country.
I’ll take my 4 less years in Hooterville, NC, thank you very much!
Four *fewer* years, you ignorant hick!
To be fair, last week's New York Review Of Books made the same mistake.. twice.
That is how we say it in Hooterville.
And as a fake Southerner and refugee from Chicago, being labeled as an ignorant hick warmed my heart, so thanks! My favorite 2024 Christmas present!
I'm a fake hick myself, it's a badge of honor!
I'm hearing this in Kelsey Grammar's Angry Sideshow Bob Voice.
That is how I sound in my head, all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDLUfMM0z9I
It seems to me that judging by how many people who I'd think would know better do it that there is a crusade to obviate the use of "fewer" when "less" is incorrect.
I see it online every day.
We are progressing towards Newspeak; nuance in language is no longer welcome most places.
We are also fatter. I eat 3 ribeyes a week and drink too much whiskey. Not the doctors fault. If i made 40k pounds. i couldnt do that.
" African-Americans make up a tenth of the population and their lifespans are drastically lower. The same goes for Mexican-Americans.
This is one of those statistics that makes my correlation/causation nerves twitch."
You'd also need statistics on rich Whites vs poor Whites, and rich Blacks vs poor Blacks, because (given historical fuckery vis-a-vis redlining and other practices) Black people are more likely to be poor, but some poor White dude in East Bumfuck, WV probably has the same life expectancy as the equivalently poor Black dude in the Chicago 'hood.
FWIW, I *have* seen an analysis (but can't find it now, probably years out of date anyway) that suggests our life expectancy would exceed Europe's if we could get our murder rate as low as theirs.
saw somewhere that if you only look at the violent crime rates for whites you get an america thats technically safer than japan
If you factor in only whites and Asians, America's crime statistics look like Old Sweden.
Probably because of the lower poverty rate....
I once read "White Trash: The 400 Year Untold History of Class in America," and I work in rural Appalachia, and between those, I've started looking at class as something that seems to explain a lot more things than I used to think it did...including a lot of things that might appear to break down along racial lines. At least *some* research backs that up:
"We found that a higher percentage of Black residents within a city did not correlate with more violent crime once other variables were taken into consideration....Instead, the primary drivers pertained to socioeconomic disadvantages"
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rethinking-the-role-of-race-in-crime-and-police-violence/
Interesting...I've actually heard that opposite, for instance:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2013/12/white-ghetto-kevin-d-williamson/
"There’s a great deal of drug use, welfare fraud, and the like, but the overall crime rate throughout Appalachia is about two-thirds the national average, and the rate of violent crime is half the national average, according to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service."
Rural violent crime is everywhere lower than urban violent crime, including racially homogenous countries...so I don't think that Appalachia's lower crime rate implies "the opposite" of class being more important than race, it simply implies that there are factors besides class. Which, in something as multifactorial as crime, should be a surprise to no one.
(Including me BTW. I don't suggest that crime isn't multifactorial; I'm merely arguing that class is a *better* predictor than the color of your skin.)
Class is a bigger factor than race. Almost all the dysfunction among black people is the result of their having spent centuries absorbing the example of the dysfunctional Southern white poor, then bringing it with them when they moved to the cities.
so its still somehow the white mans fault in the end
that doesnt make sense
That is spot on.
Local anecdote. My roofer used to employ young white guys from my area, but he got tired of them not showing up or having to bail them out of jail repeatedly. Now his crew is all Mexican family men who show up and work hard.
I think Thomas Sowell said the same.
take away 5 cities and our murder/gun death puts us in about 90th place per capita
Approximately if not exactly true, but misleading.
The FBI notes 17,116 firearm homicides in 2023. Subtracting the top 5 cities by numbers in 2023 only gets you down to 14,960. Population last year was 335 million, so the rate drops from 5.1 to 4.5 per 100k. Measurement between countries is tough, and the most convenient source of comparison numbers is a Wikipedia list that has numbers from various years depending on reporting (and has the US total homicide rate, which is higher, #65) but that appears to drop us from just behind Lichtenstein (#68) to just behind Cameroon (#72), FOUR whole spots, which isn't really impressive, especially when you consider that there are 190 countries on the list. Kinda mid-pack even with them gone (and especially considering that this is actually a list of total homicide rate, and I just ran a gun homicide rate but subtracted all murders, not just gun murders).
Glad not to live anywhere in South America though!
(I was going to originally link to a fact check I readily found on this but wanted to fact check the fact checkers, which took less time than I thought it was going to.)
https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/nibrs-estimates
1711
https://www.rit.edu/liberalarts/sites/rit.edu.liberalarts/files/docs/2024-01_CPSI%20Working%20Paper_US%20City%20Homicide%20Stats.pdf
A Scandinavian economist once stated to Milton Friedman: “In Scandinavia we have no poverty.” Milton Friedman replied, “That’s interesting, because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty either”.[1] (Of course, that's changing, predictably, as the Nordic countries' demographics change; a 2023 article in The Lancet titled "Sweden's economic inequality gap is widening and worrying.")
Regarding healthcare, on December 17, 2024, a widely-publicized announcement for a new hospital for Chicago's South Side stated that the difference in life expectancy between the North Side and South Side is currently 30 YEARS.[3]
(In the spirit of gallows humor: No wonder the Sox struggle with attendance!)
[1] https://capx.co/scandinavian-unexceptionalism-2-culture-matters/
[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(23)00028-5/fulltext
[3] https://www.advocatehealth.com/news/advocate-health-care-to-make-1b-investment-on-chicagos-south-side
It really IS the baddest part of town!
Easier to say what parts are good.
Chicago is up to 606 homicides this year, and the life expectancy difference between north and south can easily be seen on this homicide map. https://heyjackass.com/2024-homicide-map/
WOAH: CHECK OUT THAT MERCH!
(possible "Made in the USA"?)
I know! I gotta get this coffee mug!
https://www.shopjackass.com/shop/coffee-mugs/6
Red = Keepin' It Real.
ABSOLUTELY AND GUN DEATHS TOO
"gun deaths" also, incorrectly, includes suicides and defensive gun usages
Like "at-risk youths," "teenagers," "juveniles," etc.
Translation: Young criminals.
if they were white their race would be in the headline
Two yutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd1CijCUj8w
Sir Morris Leyland beat me to the point I was making. And he came hard with the footnotes! Well done Sir.
He's great, isn't he?
There are charts out there (Wikipedia) showing comparisons of Americans by race. Native Americans are by far the worst (male, female, doesn't matter). Black males are also doing poorly. Asians leading the way. I suppose that is why California has the best life expectancy of any state even with all the Mexicans and Guatemalans bringing the number back down.
_E pluribus pluribus_
If you have good health insurance this is the greatest country in the world for healthcare. Canadians and europoors received an inferior form of healthcare even compared to the upper middle class in a place such as India
I also understand that the USA counts ALL live births in their statistics, but the EU omits any newborns that expire within 48 (72?) hours. Personally, I think the heroic (and expensive) efforts in American NICU medicine are totally worth skewing the averages down a bit.
Well I personally think that as well, because without those efforts I'd be alone in this world.
As intended, we have the best health care system for people with lots of money. The care everyone else gets is irrelevant.
As Jack points out, health care has to be rationed somehow. The insurance companies are a tool to achieve the intended outcome -the blame largely lies elsewhere.
Re Mangione, the part I find puzzling, from the limited amount I've read on the subject, is that his family has the resources to buy whatever health care he needed. Why did whatever roadblocks the insurance company put in place matter? They are there to ration health care resources so the Mangiones et al can get whatever they need, stat.
I try, within reasonable limits, to make sure my family is in the category of getting whatever they need as well. It is difficult; the resource shortage and allocation is real.
The simplest explanation I heard is that he was the wife's secret boyfriend and she put him up to it. (and told him where/when the victim would be.)
The fact that this is NOT what happened is what surprises me.
That was my first guess, too.
I’ve got nothing to add today aside from wanting to with a Merry Christmas to all of you here.
With so much shit popping off on an almost daily basis, I hope you all managed to shut all of that out and enjoy the holiday with your families.
I got my brother a Christmas card with a black Santa, so inside it I wished him a Merry DMXmas.
WHERE THE HOOD WHERE THE HOOD WHERE THE HOOD AT
Merry Christmas to all, and there was not a hint of current events mentioned or alluded to at the family celebration I went to.
Same here. I kept my yap completely shut on those topics. And as with Thanksgiving, no dwelling on my recently-deceased mother (she wouldn’t have wanted that anyway). Just hella-good food! 😋😋
Amen, and same to you.
Jack, have you seen anything more recent from The Last Psychiatrist since 2014? His old blog was really good but I haven’t seen him resurface since he stopped updating it.
No, but he had either a tribute or was pretending to be someone else here:
https://www.tumblr.com/hotelconcierge
He did write a book (available on Amazon) called "Sadly, Porn." It's dense and I don't think I fully grasped it on my first read.
Bond cars…Lotus Esprit sub for the win. I still have the little Corgi one from when I was (much) younger. The Aston from The Living Daylights and the 2CV from For Your Eyes Only are tied for second.
the best putdown of aston martin was written by innes ireland describing his trip to the far side of europe in his brand new aston(db-3?). things broke every day and the factory flew a man out to him more than once. i was surprised the magazine published it. kinda
'a lovely trip up the alps except for the differential which had to be replaced; the trip down to torino required a new left front brake assembly' sort of story for the whole trip.
Car and Driver's reviews of the Aston Martin DB6 c. 1968 were almost as glowing as their contemporaneous review of the Opel Kadet wagon. They liked it so little that they made references to it in reviews of full-sized American cars that handled and went better than the DB6. IIRC, the Plymouth Fury wagon split the difference between the DB6 and DB6 Vantage in straight-line performance while outhandling them both when fitted with Konis and Police tires. I do believe that they mentioned the women of Manhattan knew exactly what an Aston Martin represented, but that could have been the James Bond effect by 1968.
found it
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/vintage-reviews/vintage-car-driver-road-test-1955-plymouth-fury-the-first-c-d-boss-wagon/
I had one of those—promptly lost the little red missiles you could shoot out of the back! 😂😂
That was the larger one, right? I had the tiny one, maybe about 2” long. It didn’t have any fun features like shooting missiles.
I believe so.
I think David Samuels is brilliant and Tablet magazine possibly the best analysis of Jewish-Middle East-culture today. He also writes for County Highway, with Walter Kirn, and Unheard, the British mag.
I'm not sure how your view that the Obamas are only interested in financial bulking up isn't consistent with Samuels' conclusion. Someone has been running the Biden administration the past 4 years and it wasn't Joe.
The best example of Samuels' thesis wasn't even in the article. How, suddenly, the healthcare "crisis" appeared during the first term fully formed, with all the crisis trimmings as soon as that became the signature policy Barack-Barry needed to show he got something done. Approximately two weeks before the rollout of the health care takeover plan Americans were on the whole pretty happy with their health insurance. Hillary had a go at it herself during Bill's administration and it went nowhere. Obamacare "fixed" the "crisis" by quadrupling the cost of non-subsidized health insurance. I know, I was on the board of our 75 employee firm, with a family plan rising from $4-5000/year to $20,000/yr that we had to pay for the same coverage.
Obamacare cost me forty or fifty grand cash and 100 points on my credit score for YEARS. I could go on about how much I despise it. But I don't think it was "Obama" in anything but name.
Just a big giveaway to the insurance companies and all the middlemen in the healthcare racket. I honestly hate how people still call it health “insurance” when it’s no longer really insurance (a financial product) and now a middleman product wrapped up as “insurance”
In fairness they went nuts when it was called Obamacare. But if it wasn't Barack-Barry's whose was it? I know who made out under the ACA but they needed the Annointed One to push it through, and Barack-Barry needed a signature dish to his name. Plus all the fuss covered his insane Iran wrangling which he started with a series of four covert personal letters to the Ayatollah asking if the Mullah would pretty please negotiate with the nasty Americans of which he was President.
I’m the first to say that Barry is greedy and in it for the money, especially after watching his sudden rise in Chicago politics where the politicians are all greedy and in it for the money. However, he does retain some of his youthful Marxist upbringing and it sporadically appears here and there.
But thank God that the almighty dollar pummeled Obama’s Marxist visions into submission and his former zeal was replaced by him choosing which mansion to spend time in. As someone who wished he would just disappear and act like the footnote to history that he is, I’ll take that deal.
In the last election he greatly devalued the only thing he had left besides his dollars: his brand. It’s in tatters and it remains to be seen if it will ever again come close to its former value. He’s a pipsqueak looking for relevance, and I’m kind of enjoying it.
It was surprising to see how quickly he fell from grace. And how clueless he was as to what this election was about.
Today's radical is tomorrow's purge victim.
The definition of a “useful idiot!”
I felt the same but adding “gratifying” to surprising.
i just got my home and car insurance reduced by over half by shopping around and confronting my present insurer. turns out somebody from his office somehow "misrepresented" something to us a few years ago. this happens about every 10 years. longish story from a quartercentury ago: karen had a house policy with chubb. we were invited to a chubb cocktail party during the monterey historics by a friend of our who rated the invite due to owning the most expensive house in charleston and 2/3 of the mcdonalds in that particular carolina, plus several rare cars. a rep came to where we were sitting and asked if all was well. karen said no it wasn't. five minutes later the chubb rep handed her a little package from tiffany: sterling silver bowl. we dropped chubb anyway, and went to the carrier we had before we got to our current one.
I never signed up for O-care. I just paid the 'fine'. Yeah it sucked that I haven't been able to get health insurance since the law passed - but what sucked even more was all of the assholes telling me that I COULD get it.
I even made an insurance agent sit down once and calculate what it would cost.
In short, 20K a year premium with a 20K deductible. No copays, no prescription benefits. In short it was nothing more than a way to punish people who work hard and pay taxes.
I just laid out 14K for an operation for my spouse because they can't get insurance either (least I'm old enough to be on medicare) and at least if you pay cash, you get a discount.
I've had a similar thing during my recent years of underemployment: With a subsidy, the premiums have been an unaffordable portion of my meager income: adding the deductible and coinsurance would be a HUGE portion of said income, one which I ABSOLUTELY could not pay. And when my income rose ever so slightly, the subsidy clawbacks seemed to take every penny of my "extra" earnings, which were still minimal.
It basically amounts to a feudal system where the lower-middle class must pay a huge tribute to the medical class except, unlike the feudal system, the serfs receive nothing in return.
The bigger picture is this: Who cares if you have COVERAGE if you can't get CARE?
Thanks to the curlicues of health insurance, too many of us live in the 16th Century these days.
another reason why I pay cash. No one gets to ask questions or need to approve.
can't beat having 2 docs as personal friends. got a free housecall/diagnosis/prescription order last year!
Sadly where I live there aren't enough doctors, so I don't have one / can't get one. I have a 'family practitioner' or what's really just a nurse with a fancy title.
It's one of the fallouts of the ADA: Doctors can't make that much money anymore (but it still costs a lot to become one and to be one) so less people are going into medicine. Even less into practice.
Maybe if we had a legal version of the ADA we'd get rid of all those pesky lawyers? ;-D
Good point, John! I don't have the health care issue here in the UK (it's free...partly because they don't have a charging mechanism even for those who should, in theory, pay), but I go out of my way to avoid car claims simply on account of the hassle factor. Insurance is a highly profitable business...for the insurers.
Yes. In my declining years I work in state government. The insurance coverage is, on paper, quite good. However, MDs are retiring faster than they are being replaced; right now neither my spouse nor myself have a primary care physician, and the wait time for a specialist can be long. Paying cash or being ready to jump into someone else's missed appointment can bypass some of the wait.
remember how the first year of term 1 the media mentioned he wasn't wearing his wedding ring and wristwatch--during ramadan? they were said to have been mildly damaged and were out for repair. they never mentioned anything similar the next 7 years, if anybody noticed anything.
funny how a sitting president only has one watch apparently
You'll have to explain that to me.
My best man's uncle was heavily involved in the writing of the policy behind Obama Care and I can assure you he did not vote for the man in either election.
Absolutely tracks.
County Highway is well worth the price of admission.
The #1 Bond car (Roger Moore posed with it but never drove on camera) is the Corvorado built by Les Dunham. #2 is the AMC Hornet from Man With The Golden Gun. Saw the stunt car at the Pierce Arrow museum in Buffalo this summer.
Yeah right. Gimme that Esprit, even if it IS the sharp-edged prefacelift model.
I'm sorry, sir, I believe you meant to type
ESPECIALLY IF IT IS
I always liked the 89 SE myself. Had a Monogram 1/24 model of it when I was a kid.
This very one:
https://modelingmadness.com/scott/cars/previews/monogram/2789.htm
The only thing that could make the Aston from The Living Daylights (one of the top films from the entire series) any better would be if it were one of these instead:
https://kidston.com/motorcars/aston-martin-v8-vantage-zagato/
Nope.
Simply because it must have contributed to the existence of the Virage.
The Virage is also a tremendous vehicle!
I was joking with a friend recently that when I hit my massive trust fund (like Jack), I’d like to take Aston off Strulovich’s hands and reimagine the brand a bit.
Tremendous as it may be, it was worse than everything that came before it and after it, until very recently.
What direction would you like to reimagine it in, other than back? I rather like the brown DB11 my neighbor dds, year round, with sea sucker ski racks, but it seems like the end point for the design direction that was started with the DB7. I wouldn't kick the DB12 out of bed for eating crackers, but it is too busy.
So as to not give the wrong impression, a few doors down from the DB11 is a person who keeps a Miata based "Offroadster" with 31" tires under a loose blue tarp secured with yellow poly rope. In its own way the neighborhood is very diverse.
0-Buy out Stroll from the carmaker and the F1 team
1-Partner with Aramco (and perhaps Cosworth) on new, clean sheet combustion engines
2-Offer a (good) manual in EVERY car
3-Vantage would be a 2+2 911 competitor with a TT V8; it needs to be as good as a 911 and would be offered in regular, convertible, hot rod, and hot rod convertible guise
4-Vanquish would be a 2+2 812 / Dodici cilindri tier car with an NA V12; so, like the current Vanquish but would look better, offer an optional back seat, have an NA V12, and a manual
5-Develop a mid-engine car to compete with 296, Temerario, 750S, etc. tier; they had a concept years ago but killed it. Use the TT V8 from the Vantage and - again - manual
6-Put the V12 in the next DBX; and again … manual!
7-Bring back the Lagonda as a Rolls / Bentley competitor sedan
Ignore the EV dead end
Sherman for CEO!
I believe I read that Aston is ignoring EVs and will just pay whatever the fines are to keep producing ICE vehicles.
They have an ill-conceived partnership with Lucid.
As bad as the Virage was (and I almost bought one in the end of 2019), it was still the last true Aston. Everything since has been a poorly engineered and shoddily built (by fine English craftsmen!), big dollar Corvette. If we start dropping the legal hammer on CEOs for ruining their companies, I would nominate Bez for ruining Aston.
I was going to snarkily suggest that when you decided to set that pile of money on fire that I would love to help.
But there is a lot of people in the world with a lot of money to spend on things. Maybe there are enough of them to support a gentleman's GT for the semi analog set.
That is a world I would like to live in.
A plan only slightly less quixotic would be to make a bundle and ring up Gaydon and have them build me a one-off Zagato tribute.
One-77 chassis, V12, manual, body by Zagato, and an interior in which every surface imaginable was Bridge of Weir leather or burled walnut.
almost had a fiat-abarth-zagato morgan....for under $10k for the body. gotta tell the story in person
"Miata based "Offroadster" with 31" tires"
these are stupid and im thrilled they exist
https://pacomotorsports.com/offroadster/
I'm sorry, but no. doing that to a Miata should be a capital offense, even if the the safari / overlander trend weren't beyond tired.
besides, nothing can top the safari'd Smart ForTwo rolling around Alameda, California. I cannot for the life of me tell if the owner is being serious or ironic with it, which is to my mind what makes it so brilliant.
"doing that to a Miata should be a capital offense"
i dont ever intend to do this to a miata but i take solace in the fact that they made 400k na miatas so theyre not at all rare
this doesnt mean i like seeing them destroyed or molested but given how many others are out there that are used and abused by people who shouldnt be allowed near a socket set im quite alright with the offroad thing
the FAQs are a hoot. "Will it make me look cool?" etc.
I remember that car!
Jack how could you leave the 1971 Mustang Mach I driven by Bond and Tiffany Case in Diamond are Forever!!!!! Long long long hood short deck and the last true muscle Mustang (big block) for a generation. We Baby Boomers are shocked shocked by the oversight….
Maybe Jack just got confused when it went through the alley on two wheels and came out angled the other way.
How did they manage to screw that up? It would be like not remembering which of your hands you broke last night.
Speculation I've read is that, since it was a real stunt, they could only perform it so many times. They took the best takes of what they had and tried to make it work. They had a stunt driver that destroyed several of their cars during filming of another part of the chase.
The car exiting the alley was shot as a pick up scene later in a different location by a Assistant Director.
If you see a mad scientist in a minibus, just smile.
The Aston DB5 is simply THE Bond car. It fit in perfectly with Bonds playboy persona. It is as much responsible for the success of the franchise as Connery was. And for Aston Martin kinda/sorta being in business today. Speaking to folks who were in the Aston world at the time, the DB5 was seen as an attractive, but very conservative, GT car. It was not flashy or particularly noticeable. Perfect car for the discrete playboy spy.
'the DB5 was seen as an attractive, but very conservative, GT car. It was not flashy or particularly noticeable.'
I mean, you have contemporaneous sources who should always be taken seriously, but my God, the average European was driving something like a Fiat 500 or Mini or VW Type 1, an Aston DB5 would be more visible and obvious in that context than a Reveulto is in modern traffic.
It was not an E-Type, a 275 GTB, a Bizzarrini 5300 GT or even a Corvette Stingray. It was something more subtle and reserved than those . Nor did I say that he was trying to pass as a plumber or mechanic. It was a good choice for a discrete playboy spy. Particularly an English one.
Fair enough, I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of *any* big-bore car being non-noticeable in 1965. Now, in the USA you could have driven one to work every day and attracted zero notice, people would have thought you had a Barracuda!
I didn’t say it wasn’t noticeable. He was supposed to be a hard living playboy, and it fit in pretty well there.
Can you imagine arriving anywhere in a Bizzarrini in 1965? It would look like a UFO.
POINT TAKEN
We should ask Toly.
drove one for about a year around '73--the one with the odd assortment of chrome vents on the fenders. great mileage: very tall axle ratio
Maxwell Smart drove a Sunbeam Tiger.
What was the last upmarket DISCRETE personal luxury coupe?
Virage? Is a Mercedes S Class considered upmarket?
The CL / S Class coupe has been dead for a generation.
Is there something more upmarket than the above referenced car that is no less discrete?
you mean discreet? i can understand the applicability of both words here.
You might disagree but I say Bentley Continental coupe. It's more expensive than a M-B coupe. Still doesn't draw much attention. I don't live in a ritzy area and a black Continental would get absolutely no eyes at all. It's looked the same for so long that it's not a new occurrence to spot one and the badge/lights look just like a Hyundai/Genesis.
If it were a new convertible in purple or orange like the press cars, that's a different story.
If you're hand waiving aspects of the necessity of economics based health care, I'll hand waive the obvious issues with finding impartial ombudsman, ideological capture of their guild or other such things.
When I got to the end of that section I was happily surprised to see such a reasonable way to improve the situation.
But ideological capture, rent seeking, and political influence peddling IS the essence of any ombudsman position. Eventually.
It seems like a great idea in theory, but impossible to implement with flawed human beings.
I don't believe that Obama is the head of the Democrat party. He just isn't smart enough to manage anything so unwieldly. If you read his "autobiography", Dreams From My Father, he is nothing more than an angry man with a victim mentality. He flunks out of Occidental College in California with a grade point of 0.0 (his words...not mine). But mysteriously appears at Columbia University, and then on to Harvard. He is not an ideologue, but rather, he is all about the Benjamins. For a couple who often chided people with wondering "how much was enough?", they have accumulated four or five homes/mansions at considerable cost. He wants to seem relevant but he would rather be seen playing golf at Congressional Country Club in suburban Maryland. For Barry, it's mission accomplished. He has access to anything and everything yet probably is as unhappy now as he was at the Punahou School in Honolulu. I agree that Michelle could have won the election in 2024 but by all accounts, hated her time in the White House, and much prefers the cover of Vogue to being covered by inept Secret Service agents hired under DEI requirements.
"Daniel Simpson Day...has no grade point average. All classes incomplete."
"mysteriously appears at Columbia..."
Long before "D-E-I." there was "C-I-A."
One of those alphabet agencies paved the way for Barry.
His biography was a lot less auto. It was ghost written.
Rumor has it that Bill Ayres wrote it. But Barry put his name on it so posterity will log it in as an autobiography.
Was that the one where the dustjacket said that he was "born in Kenya?"
https://i.insider.com/4fb542c4eab8ea7d5b00000a
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/promotional-booklet/
Or another one, archived 2007-04-03, just before he announced his Presidential run:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070403190001/http://www.dystel.com/clientlist.html
BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, has been a long time New York Times bestseller.
(I'M NOT TRYING TO SPREAD 'RACIST CONSPIRACY THEORIES'. But it's probably a good "live pro tip" here: "IF THERE'S SOMETHING YOU DON'T WANT PEOPLE TO THINK ABOUT YOU, DO NOT HIRE A PUBLICIST TO SAY THAT THING.")
No atheists here? Well, in that case, Merry Christmas from a resident atheist, stuffing himself on potato salad by the Christmas tree.
Not believing in the imaginary friend above doesn't mean I can't enjoy the fun stuff, does it?
In actuality, I wouldn't be surprised if a full third of my subscribers didn't lean in that direction.
I respect your atheism and look forward to discussing it with you further...
in the afterlife :)
In actuality, I would be better described as agnostic – and I'm definitely not excluding the possibility of an afterlife. I'm just not into believing in deities. Maybe I could be a Buddhist, if I had to choose something.
So, we might discuss it when we're reborn as housecats.
I am almost convinced that if we lead a good life, treat people with kindness and respect, always strive to do the right thing, and leave things generally better than we find them, we do, in fact, return in the next life as pampered housecats.
Yes, that was exactly what I meant. I hope that I'll manage to live a life good enough to return as my housecat (or housecat of someone like me).
I also respect the atheists. But I always wondered why they never opened any hospitals. I guess they were satisfied going to hospitals opened by religious orders. Hmmmm…………
Where I live, I would wager that great majority of hospitals were opened by atheists.
In the US, I have no idea – you have significantly less atheists than we do, it seems to be quite unfashionable to be an atheist there (and was even more so in the past) and a lot of hospitals are probably "legacy" ones from times when not being a Christian was extremely unusual.
I know that the non religious opened hospitals, and in fact, most US hospitals that are run by religious orders are really religious in name only.
But I would love to see a hospital specifically named Atheist Regional Hospital, or something like that. That would make me laugh.
Atheists are not an organized (or unorganized) religion, so it makes no sense to call anything "atheist". In America, I wouldn't even be surprised by some hospitals being founded by atheists and still being called Saint-something, because that's what you guys do.
In here, almost no hospitals have religious names. Most are named either after places, or organizations, or people – typically some doctors who, quite often, are atheists.
I'm also quite sure there are some hospitals named after some atheists in the US.
shame on you jack! you won't be within shoutin' distance of one another!
I actually laughed aloud at this.
I can't remember the exact words, but someone more eloquent than I once said "if you lead your life as if there is a god waiting to judge you in the afterlife only to find out there isn't, what have you lost in the effort?"
I don't think anyone needs to believe in Christ or a Judeo-Christian god to appreciate the lessons and guidelines laid down in Matthew, particularly the Sermon on the Mount. that's a pretty good guide to living even if you think the whole thing is a fantastic work of fiction.
my question would be that if you were to behave as though god was watching you and you adhered to both the ten commandments and the edicts in the bible
what exactly is preventing you from making the miniscule leap to actually being a christian
Remember, this is the type of person you’re dealing with:
https://imgur.com/IxRK96K
oh yeah cringe fedoralords
"in this moment i am euphoric" type shit
The presence of a god shaped hole in the human consciousness (because we have the capacity for forward thinking) does not of itself prove the existence of any of the gods we invent to fill the void. Correlation, causation etc etc.
what to you would prove the existence of a god
A personal chat, obviously. I am nothing if not an egotist! Of course, the voices could be delusion... Meanwhile, I enjoy the language of the King James Bible and Book of Common Prayer, while taking the Christian tenet of "do as you would be done by" as my guide.
Agreed.
I believe in a God, specifically the Catholic God, largely because otherwise I don't think I could have any interest, hobby, or occupation other than getting to the bottom of what is NOT there.
Not at all. Merry Christmas!
Just now finished watching the Christmas Day edition of The Nightly News NBC and ABC. For those that don’t know, at the end of the show on Christmas Day the telecast runs a full length credits at the end with photos of everyone it takes to put on the show each day through out the year. The thing that jumps out at me is that 95 percent of all the staff appear to be under 30 and 95 percent appear to be white….. wait a minute is not the elite media propagandist for DEI???? They do not seem to be practicing what they promote….,
Legacy whiteys.
Yes, Lynn...Jack has posted before at how Ivy League classes are basically "Legacy Admits" and "DEI Admits." The "smart kids from Flyover Country," formerly referred to as the "Lifeguards of the Gene pool" (e.g., Dick Cavett, Yale 1958) are a vanishing breed. Jack has stated that they would actually compete with the Legacy Admits for positions of power.
Well maybe they hired these youngsters on the content of their character.
I have spent a lifetime working in media (looks around nervously and ducks for cover) and my great frustration is that so much of it is white, coastal, and graduates of premier public or private universities. (Full disclosure: 2.5 of the three apply to me, although I did grow up in Iowa and Texas and attended college in the Lone Star State.) My current employer is taking active steps to address that and is making progress. I keep reminding the brass that diversity should include geography, age, and ideology, something I personally keep in mind when seeking / considering freelancers and job candidates, particularly for fellowships.
I'm not saying this in a bid to present myself as some kind of hallmark for change, only to let you know that some of us within the business are painfully aware of the very point you raise.
On the celestial cloud he shares with Harambe, Mr Meat Loaf congratulates you on your self-awareness... and notes that two AND A HALF out of three definitely ain't bad!
Chuck S thanks for the reply, my point was that the national media elites never miss an opportunity to attack white middle class and point out that we need to adhere to diversity but then you see all the people that work for the Nightly News and they almost monolithicly white and young. And you are correct about the lack of diversity, I graduated decades ago from UTx in Broadcast Communications and could not even get an interview with the Big Three even thought my partner and I had written, shot and edited a 30 minute documentary for PBS. She nor I ended up in broadcasting. Everyone seemed to be like you said, from the North East or the Left Coast. Congratulations on your making it in the business it’s a great field.
When is a white person also a member of a protected class?
when hes jewish
the way you phrased it made me uncertain if you were teeing up for a joke