I will say this: Four years ago, a woman got shot in the head for banging on a window. So driving a Honda Pilot right at an ICE officer (which is far more obvious in the lesser-seen front video) probably qualifies as well.
Also, no one seems willing to discuss why she was parked across the roadway like that. My guess: she was part of some dipshit crew who was "FREEZING ICE OUT" or some other virtue-signaling stupidity.
I think the public problem with ICE is they are perceived as a typical police unit and will follow their typical authoritative discretion; even if there are some Wyatt Earps out there.
No sane minded individual is going to pull that stunt with the US military in their fatigues. Like “nah bro that’s the fucking ARMY. They will shoot you in the face”.
I had a much longer response typed out, but you put my thoughts much more succinctly.
You see on local subreddits where people call for a QRF when they spot ICE. Under the guise of “legal observers” and counterprotesting, these people interfere with enforcement operations. Something was bound to happen eventually. Some lunatics were people hoping it would.
People think that they can operate without consequences just because they’re on “le right side of history.” Life does not work that way.
All of this led to a dead woman and an orphaned child. It’s very sad all the way around.
The people she “stood up for” will do nothing to take care of said orphaned child or even participate in a GoFundMe just the same. It’s contrived behavior pushed by leftist fanaticism that gets stupid white women killed. This form of resistance isn’t heroic; it’s annoying and distracting at best. Getting martyred for such an idiotic reason shouldn’t even count.
I don’t agree with the direct interference with ICE actions, but citizens have a right to peacefully protest, which includes yelling whatever they want at ICE.
But ICE need to stop with the full SWAT team show of force gear and attitude and hiding behind masks before this blows up into something much worse.
It's possible and indeed necessary to have a nuanced discussion on this, but:
Which came first, the deployed-military-in-a-hostile-village vibe, or the efforts by Pepsi, Target, NBC, and CNN to make sure that every ICE official feels like a deployed soldier in a hostile village? They're now calling Renee Good an "observer". Which is a nice way of saying she was trying to hinder law enforcement operations. What are they supposed to do? Put Sean Connery in a 1925 NYC police uniform and have him go ask her to move her car?
I'm gonna reply to myself because I'm angry about something.
For the last nine years, the media in this country has been training people to resist legitimate police intervention. Every vagrant vandal thinks he's Emmett Till and every woman who gets caught stealing from the Macy's thinks she is Rosa Parks. Hundreds of thousands of videos show people again and again that they should resist or try to escape even basic police requests or commands. And the people who do it often get lionized after the fact by politicians and media personnel.
You can see the results of that 9-year-training-program in real life now. Three times a week I see a video of someone whose reaction to a traffic stop is to GET OUT OF THE CAR AND THREATEN THE OFFICER. Or they keep the window rolled up and won't speak to the officer. Or they drive away.
Now you have people who are deliberately sabotaging federal law enforcement -- and I will suggest, until proven wrong, that this dead woman was doing just that with her creatively placed Pilot. We are creating an environment where every traffic stop is the potential prelude to mayhem and enforcing the agreed-upon immigration law in Middle America gets you treated like you're a Marine in Afghanistan.
Well, guess what? The Marines in Afghanistan trigger-fingered a LOT of people because they were regularly presented with ambiguous or evil intent.
There are ten thousand jerkoffs sitting in Manhattan and Trousdale Estates right now who are complicit in this training, who fiscally and positionally benefit from it, and whose blood will NEVER be spilled as a result.
I don't know why this woman decided to try to drive away from three armed ICE agents. But I bet it had something to do with the fact that she has been absolutely carpet-bombed with media telling her that ICE is not legitimate, that they are killers, and that they are the enemy. And she didn't even have the sense to be passive and meek in the face of the enemy. She decided she had a good chance of evading three fully armed men at 36 inch range. BECAUSE SHE HAS SEEN 100 VIDEOS OF PEOPLE DOING JUST THAT.
But its quite clear that that ICE has the attitude that they can do whatever they want, and that one has to completely obey them no matter what, and they can use force to stop someone if they don’t like their behavior. And that attitude is a problem and its going to lead to bigger problems.
And no, I don’t hate cops in general, and give them great respect.
If you don't know what happened before or led up to it, the most likely explanation is that they were trying to effect an arrest.
If you don't like that ICE can arrest people then you have at least a century and a quarter's worth of USSC precedent to undo because the Supremes have given agencies charged with border security and national security almost a blank check.
If you are within a hundred miles of the border, ICE and USBP can stop you without probable cause and search your vehicle and you. That's law and the courts have given it the thumbs up with some arguing that even a 300 mile limit would be reasonable in some circumstances.
Mention the war on drugs or "national security" and the courts can't bend over fast enough to lick the jack boots of the feds. Right now every letter you just typed on your machine to make that post went through multiple warrantless collections to be stored in perpetuity and accessed whenever a government agent or "contractor" wants in flagrant violation of the 4th amendment, but the courts gave that the thumbs up (and refuse to take any meaningful sanction of those who abused access to those databases because politics) because OR THE TERRORISTS WIN!!!
If somebody wants to argue ICE and USBP (not that people recognize the difference) can't enforce federal immigration law, awesome. I'll agree with you right after you also hold that the rest of the armed wings of the federal bureaucracy can't enforce gun laws, tax laws, environmental regulations, or even theft of the mail with any level of force.
It's interesting you mention their "attitude" when I've heard not a single word on any public channel from the guys making the arrests. So opinions on their "attitude" are coming from polemicists, pundits, propagandists and politicians. All of which are to be distrusted.
If you think what you saw here was abusive, trust me that it doesn't even make the list of bad acts by feds that were CLEARLY illegal whereas this was most likely a perfectly lawful arrest (ICE authority is valid everywhere in the US and her territories, and in some foreign nations as well) where resistance and interference resulted in a justifiable UOF.
In other words, if somebody wasn't complaining about the jack boots long before now I find it difficult to take them seriously when they discuss these matters now after a well coordinated public campaign to delegitimize this specific part of federal law enforcement.
As for me, I don't trust cops in general. More accurately I don't trust the system they operate in because I know how easily justice is perverted. Invariably the real injustices get no press while the legit acts are often assailed as such on the basis of the people who have megaphones not liking the outcome and that based mostly on political shit.
And there we're right back to the number of people who celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk. To quote Dirty Harry, they're fine with killing as long as the right people get killed.
No, I don’t agree with ICE and BP having any jurisdiction over US citizens within our borders. And yes I live within the BP checkpoints. And its just wrong.
The ICE attitude was obvious from body language in the video.
Yes, the “security state” has gotten way too powerful.
Police can only give orders when they are within their authority to do so. It is pretty common for them to give directives that they don't have the power to do. If you watch the Civil Rights Lawyer channel on youtube you will see plenty of examples of that happening.
When it comes to arrest the problem is that whether the arrest is lawful is something that is determined in court, not on the side of the road. And the courts expect you, even if you believe the arrest is unlawful, to comply with the officer and make your case in court. Because as bad as some police can be about understanding the limits of their powers, Joe and Jane Public can be a hell of a lot worse in understanding the limitations of their rights.
When dealing with something like an ICE arrest, they are granted BROAD powers by the law and by the courts to enforce immigration laws. Trouble is the public isn't used to it because every president we've had in my lifetime has been a fucking pussy who refused to do meaningful enforcement of immigration law.
Well, the public is sick of that. And all this is being done to try and generate public discomfort with what's happening. It's some ANTIFA level psyop work to try and make the general public who wants an end to open borders relent. That's why this was political within minutes of it happening, because the activists are hoping this is their next George Floyd moment. The problem is that they had their first George Floyd moment and the public is no longer going to respond that way.
The odds that ICE was acting unlawfully are extremely slim on this one. Local public officials talking like they have some say in immigration enforcement need to remember that it was president Obama who put the nail in that coffin when the Supreme Court sided with him on the question.
All these "no kings!" types angry at these uses of federal powers will not for a second acknowledge they cheerled the expansion of those powers under their guys. Now they don't like that somebody else can use those powers and they'll go right back to supporting it as soon as it's somebody they voted for going after who they perceive to be their political foes.
I have been pulled over a lot. Dome light on, windows open, hands on the wheel, have license ready way before theyre at the window or slowly comply after. Ive gotten a lot of warnings. Be polite, dont be stupid. There have been a few awful shootings in the last ten years but there have also been a lot of people battling in the streets. The cops will win, younwill die
It became popular, in the wake of the terrible disrespect vets returning from Vietnam endured, for "men of a certain age" (*cough) to move well beyond "gratefulness for the service" of vets and cops and into full-blown worship of both.
Cops have a job that's 98% gravy, and 2% things no normal person would want to do for any amount of money. The problem is, that a plurality (I won't say "most", but it is) cops have soaked up the worship, drank the free coffee (they feel is their birthright), and fully bought into the "thin blue line" narrative. They see the 2% of their job that normal people don't want to do as their entire rep. They swagger, they give every kid the stink-eye, and treat every traffic stop like they're bringing down the Sinola Cartel.
You see 'em every place in the world, and they all look exactly the same -- only the uniform changes. Mirrored aviators (or worse yet, Oakley wraparounds). Juiced biceps toned "just so" by countless hours in the gym. Hand on their weapon. Perma-scowl. "OUTA' THE F***IN' CAR!!", etc. Rather than looking for a way to deescalate a situation, they're looking for a reason for a confrontation. They're 50%+ ex-vets who sorely miss the action they saw on a daily basis in their theater of operation overseas. It's "us" vs "them" -- every day, every traffic stop, every donut purchase. The only people they relax around are the bad-boys they try to fit in with. Pastor Ted on his way to prison visitation gets the $150 ticket for 10 over on the interstate. The pole dancer driving drunk on the wrong side of the road gets a ride home and Officer Friendly's phone number.
... and everything is stacked on their side: "qualified immunity" has transformed cops from being "keepers of the peace" and into Rambo-lite "I AM THE LAW" tea-pot despots. I'm not minimizing the danger of every single traffic stop they make in 2026 -- but in point of fact, 99.99% of what a traffic cop does at a traffic stop is revenue collection at best and sand in the gears of progress by any normal accounting. Traffic cops don't keep order on the highways, they are an obstacle and intrusion government has erected between me and where I am trying to go, and sane citizenry will use every means at their disposal (Waze, V1, etc.) to thwart the effort. If they were not executing a useless despotic nuisance, they wouldn't be stopping random (and it is entirely random) vehicles and getting into altercations with angry sociopaths.
... and about those sociopaths...
While middle-aged white guys secretly wish they could boss people around like a cop, middle-aged white women are hell-bent to "overthrow the patriarchy" and "resist" any man telling them anything at all. When an immovable object meets with unstoppable force, there are going to be fireworks. The perceived gender power-dynamic has shifted heavily towards women in the last 40 years -- women are used to getting all of the benefits of feminism and all the deference of chivalry. In short, they have had their cake and ate it with gusto, until the average chunky girl-boss thinks it's her God-given right to "put ALL men in their place".
This does not end well, as we witnessed yesterday.
When societal power meets ACTUAL power, there results a confrontation that ends badly. The chick who never followed an order given by a man in her life meets an ICE agent who thinks he's still in the sandbox. She ends up dead, he ends up bumping up on SOCIETAL POWER that may as well just crush him now -- because his marriage (assuming he has one) is over, his job is over, and his life in 2026 America is over.
We created this. Law enforcement created a situation whereby the only contact any person ever has with an officer is when he's up in their grill about some random artificially low speed limit or parking violation or having a campfire that's too big. C19 ruined it for many, many people who watched cops break up church services and outdoor concerts and shut down family restaurants. People were trained to think, "you know what? I'm not following your stupid rules anymore". They trained me, and I am predisposed to play the game by the rules.
Cities made themselves "sanctuaries" for illegal immigrants. When the politicians who make the rules don't follow them, why should a city which has grown accustomed to a cheap, cash only, off-books labor pool forfeit their slaves just because "The Donald" and the middle-aged bimbo running DHS are sending bandanna-wearing jackboots into their back yards.
"RESIST!! STICK IT TO THE ORANGE MAN BAD!!!" And now we have a dead woman as a result.
... and here we are. Perhaps some day we'll let a bit of air out of the balloon, but as long as the takeaway from all of this is men of a certain age talking about a better way to conceal carry, and talking about how we're going to plug our neighbors for pulling carrots from our gardens in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse, we're not going to make any progress.
All the "prepping" in the world is not moving us back towards sanity and civility. Things with LEO and the citizenry are broken almost beyond my comprehension, let alone recognition. There's plenty of blame on both sides.
It's time for everybody to draw a breath and think about what we want the world to look like, and move towards making it so.
It was pretty strong sauce, and perhaps a bit of hyperbole -- but the essence of it is the reality of policing in 2026. Cops don't need military surplus armament. They don't need extra weapons training or endless advice on what constitutes a "clean kill". They need to know how to deescalate a situation, while still asserting their will. Somehow Great Briton was able to police their society with guys armed with nothing more than a nightstick into the modern age.
Cops need to be firm, fair, and physically strong. This may mean less women and less ex-marines. If society has structured itself so that a 16 year old kid has the discipline to play HS football -- to control his violence within the rules of the game, while forcefully asserting his physical strength and will on his opponent to affect the outcome of a "silly game" (and I LOVE FB), it's not too much to ask adult male cops in this country to stop turning every confrontation into a no-holds-barred cage match.
The identity concealment ("for the protection of the officers") only adds to the "black ops" vibe ICE is throwing off everywhere they go. Hear me when I say it -- what they are doing is a lawful, legal, righteous execution of existing law, and it is right and proper that they are doing it.
But if they're riding in troop carriers, carrying automatic weapons, and wearing tactical gear and fatigues -- they're not throwing off "law enforcement" vibes anymore. They're projecting that they're a banana republic paramilitary army. Black bagging guys and stuffing them on a plane bound for a prison in El Salvador doesn't do anything to change that perception.
I'm not sure what the answer is here, but this ain't it.
Clearly this guy wasn't much of a football player. A little sidestep and all would be good...
All joking aside, this situation sucks overall because this lady was clearly being stupid, but to me the ICE agent wasn't all that level headed either. Now, there are orphans. I respect people who protest as they have strong beliefs, but I think today things have gotten so out of hand. We have so many paid actors and instigators, misleading media, foreign agents, etc... All of it designed to screw over the nation.
"While middle-aged white guys secretly wish they could boss people around like a cop, middle-aged white women are hell-bent to "overthrow the patriarchy" and "resist" any man telling them anything at all. When an immovable object meets with unstoppable force, there are going to be fireworks. The perceived gender power-dynamic has shifted heavily towards women in the last 40 years -- women are used to getting all of the benefits of feminism and all the deference of chivalry. In short, they have had their cake and ate it with gusto, until the average chunky girl-boss thinks it's her God-given right to "put ALL men in their place".
This does not end well, as we witnessed yesterday."
30? The education I received in a "Blue Ribbon School" in the 60s and 70s was as close to useless as anything I can imagine. Schools have been broken for at least 50 years.
We've always educated to the lowest common denominator, and left bright kids bored and restless. K-6 moves at such a glacial pace that any kid above "box-o-rox" intelligence could do it in 3 years tops. It does not take 3+ years to teach a kid to multiply and divide, but without those 3 years, we wouldn't be able to tell him that "Heather has Two Mommies", and that's just fine, etc.
You are referring to the Justine Damond shooting in SW Mpls in 2017 by the Somali Mpls police officer for the window-banging offense? These are very different situations.
I'll touch it. So just as a heads up, I am not the world's foremost expert in use of force but I am far more expert than the vast majority of people you will meet or can cite unless you know Massad Ayoob or someone of that caliber. (Ha! I make joke!)
...and I actually know Mas and have taken his legal classes, FWIW.
The principles that cover use of force...any force, including lethal...come from two main USSC cases. Tennessee v. Garner and Graham v. Connor. Boil the cases down and you come to the doctrines of necessity and objective reasonableness.
At FLETC and pretty much every police academy in the country use of lethal force is taught as AOI, AOIJ, or AOIJP.
1. Ability
2. Opportunity
3. Intent
The numbering is important.
That is the baseline for everybody. In determining whether or not a UOF is justified the consideration.
1. Does this person have the ability to kill or cause grave injury? This is most often a weapon, but can also be bare hands, disparity of force, etc. Picture a 5'2" female weighing about 115 pounds vs a roughly 6 foot tall dude weighing over 250 pounds. (pay attention to these details, they will be important later) He can kill her with bare hands easily. But most often it's a weapon.
Note that a vehicle is a damned effective weapon.
2. Does this person have the opportunity to use that ability? Most often this is about proximity, but other factors can come into play. A guy 40 feet away from you with a machete is an immediate lethal threat. But if we erect a 20 foot razorwire fence between you and him, he's no longer able to close distance and apply that contact weapon without dealing with the obstacle. No fence, opportunity is there. Fence, opportunity no longer there.
3. Are this person's actions *reasonably* perceived as preparatory to causing harm? A uniformed police officer approaching you on a traffic stop has the ability to kill you or cause grave injury, and he certainly has the opportunity to bring that ability to bear. But because he is a uniformed police officer performing his expected duties and because it is highly unusual for a uniformed police officer to try and carjack you or just blow your brains out on the side of the road, it would be unreasonable to believe the officer pulling you over is an action preparatory to causing harm.
Intent is not mind reading, it is believing actions. If someone demands money and produces a gun or a knife from their waistband or pocket, they have manifested the intent to commit a violent felony. If you tell someone to leave your property and they bend over and grab a brick or a big rock or similar and start to advance on you, they have manifested the intent to use said weapon on you. If you have words with somebody and they reach into their lifted Jeep and produce a baseball bat after having said they intend to fuck you up, the retrieval of that bat is manifesting the intention to use it on you. Etc.
As I said earlier, that's the baseline that pretty much all police agencies in the country teach.
There are a couple more, the J and the P...jeopardy and preclusion. These are only taught in some agencies, but they're good ideas for pretty much everybody all the time.
4. Jeopardy (Or, as I like to put it, immediate jeopardy)
5. Preclusion
4. Assuming AOI are there, is this an act that is happening right now? In other words, if you don't act now within the next couple of seconds will the other guy be able to successfully prosecute a violent felony that places you in immediate danger of death or grave injury?
This is simple, too. Let's revisit Jeep guy. If dude tells you he is going to go to his Jeep, grab a bat, and then bash your brains out with it and starts heading to his Jeep you are not yet dealing with immediate jeopardy. He could be going back to his Jeep to retrieve a baseball bat that you can see from across the parking lot. Or he could be going to his Jeep to leave. You don't know yet.
(Nor should you stick around to find out!)
So you are not yet in immediate jeopardy. Once he retrieves the bat and begins to close distance on you....
5. At this very moment, do you have a **SAFE** alternative to the use of lethal force? Can you take any reasonable action that would avoid the need to press the trigger? In our Jeep example getting in your car and leaving would be a good idea...but as you try dude smashes through your window with the bat and is now trying to hit you with it.
He has the ability to kill you or cause grave injury.
He has the opportunity to use it on you.
He has clearly manifested his intent to kill you or cause serious injury by words and actions.
He is actively prosecuting the attack against you.
You are trapped in a metal box with no way to escape.
Now would be a good time to press the trigger.
So let's apply this test to the vehicle incident with ICE where multiple video angles are available yet the one most people have seen shows the least detail. Here's one that is more useful:
As the action happens an arrest is in progress. If you interfere with a lawful arrest you are yourself subject to arrest. Which means if that was happening ICE agents are well within their rights to arrest you. Meaning they can order you out of the car and/or stop your escape. You can see two ICE agents, one trying to open the door and the other in front of the vehicle.
You can see the ICE officer at the hood of the vehicle. You can see the wheels spin and lurch as significant throttle is applied. You can see the officer drawing his pistol and moving and being struck in the process. He fires as he's sort of being rolled down the driver's side fender.
Ability? Check. Vehicles can be used as lethal weapons.
Opportunity? Check. He's right there and the wheels are aimed right at him.
Intent? Any officer with even a modicum of training can recount seeing videos in training of officers being killed or seriously injured by identical actions in other scenarios. Intent can be reasonably argued.
Jeopardy? Check. It was going down that second.
Preclusion? Trickier.
Is an officer who tries to use his own body to stop the movement of a vehicle within his powers to do so in effecting an arrest? It's done all the time. It's not smart, but it's done all the time and it's been ruled as justified in literally thousands of other cases where very similar events happened. If I was going to attack something on this shooting I'd attack that, meaning state that the officer didn't have to put himself there in the first place even though the situation developed and went down quickly.
There is a bullet hole through the windshield which demonstrates quite clearly the first shot came from the driver's corner of the vehicle. Meaning at the time the officer was in front of an accelerating vehicle being piloted by someone he was trying to lawfully arrest.
I can tell you straight up this case gets kicked to federal court if the locals try to prosecute and a federal grand jury will no bill if one is even convened. There are tactical decisions one can criticize but mistakes are not the same thing as malice.
If you read Graham V. Connor you will see the Supremes themselves saying an officer doesn't have to be right, only reasonable given what they know in the moment.
I emailed with Mas once, back in the Nineties, but all my in-person interactions were with Chuck Taylor, Dale Fricke, and the infamous Ignatius Piazza.
If you want something people are afraid to touch, let's contrast this UOF by a federal agent with another UOF by a federal agent: The shooting of Ashley Babbit.
Apply the same test. Remember that size disparity I mentioned in Part A? Well the 5'2 115 pound female is Babbit's numbers. The 200+ pound six footer? That's the guy that shot her.
Unlike the woman driving this SUV, Babbit had no weapon. Not concealed, not visible. She had bare hands and was up against an individual significantly larger and stronger than her.
Where I can articulate a reasonable case for justification on the ICE UOF based solely on what we see, I can't do the same based on shooting her.
Take immediate jeopardy as just one example. Just a few steps behind her there were two Capitol Police tac team officers armed with body armor and fully automatic weapons. Tough to argue she was an immediate lethal threat that the larger, stronger, trained federal agent with backup literally steps away had no other choice but to shoot.
In training that shooting is used as an example of a bad shooting by some UOF experts.
Yet if you go on social media you will see people who cheerleaded her shooting calling this murder. Because objective reasonableness means nothing. It's purely political.
The informed and principled person will look for objective reasonableness. The political authoritarian will judge based on the outcome and whether or not it was their team on the pointy end.
If you read carefully I never said it did. I said if you apply the same objective standards as they are taught at FLETC (Federal Law Enforcement Training Center) that the shooting of Babbit doesn't hold up nearly as well. Yet a lot of people who are really upset about this killing will turn right around and tell you that the Babbit killing was a moral good because it's about tribal politics rather than objective standards.
I'm the guy arguing for objective standards over tribal politics.
We’re only 7 days in, but I’ll nominate this as post of the year.
Thank you for the contribution.
RE: Preclusion. I’ve seen 3-4 videos of the situation. Was there another officer out of frame that could’ve been hit had the driver not been neutralized?
If so, is it safe to assume that one can be justified in their actions if so? Or does preclusion pertain to the person using force defending eliminating threats to themselves?
Not sure about another officer's proximity to the vehicle. But the officer who fired at the very least his first shot from the front driver's corner of the vehicle made a decision I can easily defend using the standards he was taught and tested on before they gave him a badge and arrest powers.
Further, look into the local PD's UOF cases and I guarantee you that within the last 10 years you will find at least a couple of dozen similar instances of their officers or state officers firing shots in very similar situations and the shootings being ruled as justified uses of force.
In general the best way to understand this is shots cannot be fired on "what if". You're not justified to use lethal force in most instances (totality of the circumstances is always a consideration) because of what you *think* the other guy *might do* a few seconds from now.
You are justified to use lethal force based on what the other guy *is doing right now*.
The exception would be something like a police officer who stops an identified suspect in a triple homicide (still armed) that's heading for a middle school. That would be a justified shooting based on "what if" but it's a "what if" that's based on a whole lot of "already has done".
Fair enough. My mandatory LE education* starts at basic criminal investigation and ends at digital forensics. This kind of knowledge is both foreign and fascinating to me.
*I’m not in LE, but took classes as part of my studies. Some were mandatory, others electives.
Here's what you don't seem to understand: Police officers effecting an arrest do not have to let someone they are trying to arrest leave the scene. When they say you are under arrest and begin to effect physical force, you are no longer free to do as you please. That's been court precedent for decades and officers physically blocking escape is common place.
If she was just yelling at them she wouldn't have been arrested. You can see other people just yelling at them from the street and a reasonable distance...without their vehicle inserted into the scene.
When police set up a boundary to effect an arrest you don't have the ability to trapse through it freely on foot or in a vehicle. If you try to use the vehicle to block the movement of the police vehicles you're smack dab in the middle of obstruction charges and that makes arrest lawful and valid.
If you then try to flee arrest, you can be stopped with reasonable force.
If in the process of trying to flee you place the life of a police officer trying to effect said arrest in immediate jeopardy, they can use lethal force to defend themselves.
That's the law. It the same law as it was 40 years ago.
ICE doesn’t (shouldn’t) have any power to arrest US citizens.
We don’t know the details of what happened before. Was she really in the way of anything? Did she drive at someone (before a person placed themselves in front of her path)? We don’t know.
Agree it was very likely stupid that she was there.
There was a time when an agent of the state killing a civilian was cause for uproar, and rightly so. now it seems we automatically believe whatever the agency in question tells us, blame the victim, and move on.
I am a massive fan of skepticism of any use of lethal force by armed agents of the state. I will tell you straight up that there are a good number of them every year that should be investigated and dealt with far more skeptically than they are.
But in this case where we have video of what happened that shows all the elements I discussed it's going to be quite difficult to argue that the officer's actions were not reasonable and necessary in the instant he fired his weapon.
If folks want to argue ICE shouldn't be taking the actions they are taking, I will welcome them by my fire once they also agree that the BATFE, the FBI, the IRS, the EPA, the DEA, the Secret Service, the Department of Education, and the fucking Post Office Inspectors shouldn't be taking the actions they are taking. Somebody who a couple short years ago was saying that people who merely protested at January 6th should be hunted down like dogs have *ZERO* standing to complain about ICE enforcement actions.
Certain citizens have long been held to be more equal than others in this regard. The Bonus Army marchers, Vicki Weaver, Ashli Babbitt, the children of Waco: all trash who deserved what they got. Kent State kids, George Floyd: saints. The question becomes: why?
Don't forget oak trees. They can out rank people, so long as they are on a racetrack.
Kidding aside, I found out about the Minneapolis ICE story in the most random way possible. I stumbled across WBE's substack (Worst Boyfriend Ever) - via a comment Jack posted about young men abusing ED drugs due to anxiety. (Old post from months ago.)
Every so often I check WBE's sub (it's a trainwreck) - and the guy launched a meme coin.
That then brought me to the Meme Coin site "Pump Fun" - and WTF - this shit is just a straight up gambling Ponzi scheme.
Trending on that site, less than an hour after it happened, a bunch of "Justice For Renee Good" coins.
People looking to make her into a meme for profit. This world makes me sad.
in '51 we kids were taken thru the kansas city police station, where we were told 'if an officer tells you to stop and you run away, we have the right to shoot you.' we already knew as much, in 1951.
My thoughts after reading everyone else's (so far, as of 9am est on 1/8/26): Tim is correct with every point he made. As always, his input is gladly appreciated and insightful. The events were legally justifiable and objectively defensible in a court based on the framework he presented
Personally, I could give a fuck less, and I'm gonna let my feelings take the reigns on this one. They should've let her drive away. The agent who stood in front of that Honda (and apparently has done so before) knew he would be in a position where he could legally use deadly force. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he used that knowledge to his advantage to shoot (in his mind) some annoying lib bitch. I don't think she's the one who wanted to kill someone. I think the hyped-up on-social-media-effect Jack mentioned was gone by that point, and she was scared and trying to just get out of there. Even if there is legal precedent and common practice that supports an officer standing in front of someone's vehicle, that's fucking stupid at best and a tactic to intentionally justify deadly force at pessimistic -which is the position I'm taking on this one. To the being stupid point, what happens when you shoot a driver and their foot stays on the accelerator and runs your dumb ass down anyway? Just an all around bad idea for everyone. This was absolutely avoidable and senseless, and that is my FINAL position.
Call me a soft ass lib or evil leftist or a moron who wants to be overrun with browns or whatever else you guys want; I don't care because I know I'm not any of those things.
I don't think that woman deserved to die for just trying to impede police operations and help criminals -- which is what they are now admitting she was doing. I think they should have pulled her out of the car by her hair and broken her arm, at the maximum. But it's worth noting that these ICE guys aren't local cops. They're literally the military, because border patrol is one of the few things the military is allowed to do in the founding documents of this country.
If you try a use of force with American soldiers, you will get a disproportionate response.
Maybe what we need to have blaring on TikTok 24/7, instead of "RESIST ICE", is "Think twice before you try to stop soldiers carrying fully-automatic rifles."
I honestly don't care that she was impeding them because I care more about the actual US military killing our own citizens. The only reason we can say she was using force against ICE was because that guy put himself in a position to receive it.
I do hope everybody will be more cautious with everyone else going forward, but unfortunately that isn't what I actually foresee.
While there is such a thing as officer induced jeopardy, you would first have to establish that the officer intentionally put himself up front as a barrier to even begin to make that claim. We don't have evidence to back that, yet.
It's just as likely he was heading around to the driver's door to try and effect the arrest.
Then it becomes a pretty simple question of at what point do you permit police officers to approach a vehicle to make an arrest? And think real careful about that because the bulk of police arrests at all levels happen within immediate vicinity of vehicles.
The lady was, in fact, in reverse when he got out of his vehicle (most of the videos are trimmed but in most you can still see the vehicle he exited from off to the right of the screen. So coming around the back wasn't a good option either.
Unless you hold that the officer was in the wrong to approach the vehicle *at all* in the attempt to make an arrest it's really dicey to say he caused the problem...keeping in mind she literally put her vehicle in the way of the lead vehicle of their convoy to stop them...by his approach unless he actually articulates his placement was deliberate and intended to be a body stop.
I'm betting he won't be articulating that.
And for the record, ICE isn't the US military. They are sworn federal agents with arrest powers.
They aren't using any unusual or undue tactics as multiple officers in multiple vehicles attempting arrest is in extremely common use across the nation whenever there is a perceived risk of violence or **especially when there is a risk from crowds interfering***
So if you don't like ICE showing up in numbers with multiple vehicles, maybe having groups of people organize to interfere with their function is a pretty bad idea.
If that happened, Wyatt, then the next time ICE tries to arrest criminals -- hell, the next time some sheriff decides to arrest MS-13 members -- it's gonna be a Black Hawk Down situation where the "community" comes out in force to prevent the arrest.
I don’t follow Tim Pool but he had the best analysis I’ve seen so far of the slo-mo video. He brought up something that all the amateur forensic video experts haven’t: the sounds the officer heard.
The officer in front does not unholster his weapon until after the driver shifts into drive and accelerates (sound). The officer reacted so quickly because he obviously heard the engine rev and instantly needed to defend himself from the accelerating vehicle. The only reason he had time to get off a shot when he heard the engine rev and sensed the forward motion of the SUV is because the vehicle’s front wheels slipped on the ice on the pavement. The video clearly shows the wheel slip. If the pavement had been dry the wheels would have instantly hooked up and the officer would have been injured or killed.
Two obvious things the officer did not know: that the SUV’s front wheels were on an ice patch that would cause the wheels to momentarily spin, and which direction the vehicle’s front wheels were pointed. The officer reacted to the sound of acceleration (engine revs) and the valid assumption that the vehicle was going to hit him.
To everyone who says that the officer should have jumped out of the way, I have one question: which way should the officer have jumped if he didn’t know which direction the front wheels were pointed in?
Jack's point here deserves some amplification and clarification.
She was not killed because she was impeding lawful police enforcement activity. She was killed because in the process of doing that, whether out of malice or carelessness, she presented at least one officer with the immediate threat of death or serious bodily harm. Whether through malice or carelessness, she escalated to the use of lethal force.
Any time you ask armed agents of the state to go and enforce the law, it would behoove everyone to stop and consider the root of the word "enforce". It is *force*. This means that you are green lighting laying hands on people. Striking them. Slamming them. Injuring them. All the way up to killing them if it becomes necessary due to their resistance.
In the Virginia legislature in 2020 some legislators proposed using the national guard to confiscate "assault weapons" from their fellow citizens not caring a tinker's cuss what that would actually mean because ostensibly the people who would be killed would have all been the wrong sort of people and the wrong sort deserves to be executed if they don't go along with the program, right?
I can't tell you how many people I've seen saying that prison should be torturous and they say that based on the heinous nature of many of the people housed there. But they don't understand that letting federal prisons become a giant running sore on the 8th amendment means that when the opportunity to imprison political opponents and their supporters comes, it will apply to them. Lots of people who just trespassed were subjected to conditions that shame Abu Ghraib crimes.
Nobody thinks it's their ox getting gored when they propose this shit. They think it's about sides without realizing that the government's capacity for goonery is rated E for errrebody who doesn't have the scratch to pay off the right people.
Tribal takes on events like what happened in Minnesota are just playing the game the way the people who profit no matter what want it played. We should all be resolute in denying them our essence.
I agree with basically this entire comment, but I'm not being tribal about it. At least not intentionally, and I understand you probably weren't directly accusing me of that anyway. I've read the reactions and thoughts and theories from both sides and my comments are from my own brain after piecing it all together.
If they really are the US military, then there should be far more concern that the military is being used on US citizens and deployed within the country with no oversight. They are arresting, shooting, and killing on the presidents orders. I don't know how that doesn't raise alarm bells. Justification about the immigration crisis is not enough for such a drastic action that can set such a big precedent
"Justification about the immigration crisis is not enough for such a drastic action that can set such a big precedent"
In a functioning country, illegal immigrants would be detained by local police and handed over to ICE in proper and documented fashion. But since we have governors and mayors who live to suck the proverbial dicks of Purdue and ADM and ConAgra, keeping labor dirt cheap and dangerous, the federal government has to step in and protect citizens from the cheap laborers. It is a despicable situation and a lot more people will die before Trump surrenders and we open the borders back up for $3/hour farming.
so illegal immigration that lowers labor prices is grounds to justify executive branch use of military force on US soil against citizens? it'll be a real shame if/when the pendulum swings and some other group becomes a radical left military force. Part of the reason why the discourse on this substack is good is because of rational and multifaceted thought. as bad as illegal immigration is/uniparty politics is, starting a precedent for military level intervention on US soil against US citizens should never be justified
This is how you loose elections when the swing voters in the middle get the feeling they don’t want to live in a police state where their fellow “white” citizens can get gunned down by trigger happy agents in ski masks.
Same as no one cares about gun control when it’s a bunch of gang bangers killing each other, but shoot whitey at random in the mall and we suddenly desperately need gun controls
For all the good Trump may be doing in vz, it’s all overshadowed by this.
And this shooting is the inevitable result of a gung ho ice with a hostile populace and frankly a lack of professionalism.
The 40% of voters in the middle are gonna punish republicans.
The only one who comes out happy is that retard Tim Walz
The lady shouldn't have put herself in the situation or acted the way she did and the officer should have utilized more restraint. Do either of them deserve to be lionized / demonized? No. They are both imperfect people in a bad situation and making imperfect decisions. Now multiple lives are ruined. It's all tragic and stupid which seems to be the theme of news lately.
In the words of our Defense Secretary (who I can't believe I'm quoting because I think he is a performative cuck) "eff around and find out." Lots of good info has been shared here, but for me at the end of the day root cause is the only reason for a result.
In my mind the root cause here is that we abandoned enforcement of our legal immigration process, (OpEd: as a means of creating a political rift, to distract us as a society from the fact that the middle 50% population of this country is being outright robbed of their ability to live a comfortable life) and this woman is now going to be a martyr or an example of swift justice depending on your view of our current world forever or at least until the next (in)volunteer steps up to replace her memory.
I'll say this: I saw a woman who wanted to identify with and participate in the kinds of protests that were lionized in her formative years but didn't want to accept the consequences of her actions. The people sitting in the front of busses, at the whites-only lunch counters, drinking from the wrong fountains, etc...those people accepted their consequences and THAT is what fostered support for their cause.
These new protesters want to play the music but they don't want to dance, to FA without FO. Once this woman realized there would be *gasp* REPERCUSSIONS FOR IMPEDING LAW ENFORCEMENT AND RESISTING ARREST she tried to peace out. Unfortunately for her and her family, that peace is permanent.
I can say a lot about the general attitude of law enforcement as well, they aren't guiltless here either. But (I hate to say it) I think this shoot was justified based on the totality of the circumstances. I wish LE had shown more restraint and exercised more de-escalation skills, but frankly they had a hysterical woman driving a 5000 pound vehicle erratically and not following instructions.
I am friends with a woman who protects at abortion clinics. She's been arrested numerous times, and was sitting in federal prison when Trump was elected. He pardoned her as one of his first actions in office. Now she's protesting the heavy handed ICE activities, primarily because legitimate asylum seekers (in this case primarily Iranian Christians in her personal circles) are being threatened with deportation. And you know what she's not doing? Resisting arrest and fighting law enforcement. I have 100% confidence that she won't end up dead behind the wheel of a car because she tried to escape the consequences of her actions, because she's a freaking adult who has counted the cost of doing what is right.
What's wild is a typical e-bike can get 70 plus miles on a charge... Sure a motorcyle is heavier and goes somewhat faster but you'd think they'd figure out how to get more range out of the things.
39mi range almost makes sense if you're doing a short out and back from the trailhead but I literally couldn't commute to work and back on a single charge.
Charger Six pack? If the DOHC twin-turbo straight six with direct injection was made by Toyota (ok Toyota a decade ago not the Toyota making the V6TT today) I could be led to believe the engine was not a long-term liability risk. Someone needs to come up with a 392 swap kit.
If it is the book I think it is, I bought a copy when it originally came out in the late 90s but ended up losing it when I lent it to someone and they never returned it. I bought another copy exactly 10 years ago for $45--such a deal!--looking forward to this discussion.
I can't remember who wrote the manual for my '86 GTI, but it was useless quite often. You would be vexed on, say, how to take the dash apart, and all the manual would say is Step 1: Remove dash
That's why I've secured the official Factory Service Manual for my cars. The Haynes manual on my '01 Taurus was okay, but the diagrams are way more complete in the factory manuals, with a smaller number of "WAIT: HOW DID THEY CASUALLY REMOVE THESE INSCRUTABLE PIECES OF PLASTIC THAT I ASSUME ARE BLOCKING MY ACCESS TO THE BOLT REFERENCED IN STEP 7???"
My experience (as a strictly amateur mechanic) is that there is nearly always a point at which I wonder why they didn't just say "take the engine out first."
I'm excited to see what the book is. I thought I was paying attention in the 1990s, but apparently not because that Accord photo gives me no idea what the book will be.
Speaking of Jaguar and Lexus, after eleven RWD winters in a pair of SC 400s I may finally bow to sanity. Looking at a Jaguar X-Type 3.0 AWD to traverse the Toronto tundra. I dismissed these when new, but their Ford underpinnings are now a positive. However, all my previous experience with Jaguars has ended in tears.
All in, with the new tarrifs and other wackiness US Customs inflicted on him last minute, he bought a 25 year old mini van with 36,000 kilometers on it, and put 75 profile all terrain tires on it, for about $6,500 USD. All it needs is some suspension de squeaking. Runs like a top. But you're taking a big risk in committing to the thing based on a handful of low quality pictures.
ive thought about getting an identical early jdm miata in red then driving it around to my buddies to check out then hiding it at home while i drive my regular one and then gaslight them into thinking ive only ever had the one lhd miata
The engineering student neighbor kid dailies an NB Miata with an LSD on cheap winters and loves it.
I had a few chats with his parents that an NB + LSD + proper tires + competent driver, in my opinion, is far better than an idiot in a modern CUV on bald all seasons, but they're still questioning my judgement for encouraging him to buy an engine-less E36 shell helping push it into their garage.
I drove a '94 Miata in Minneapolis year round for 10 years with no snow tires (because I'm stubborn and cheap). I was sideways half the time in the winter and loved every minute of it. Yee-haw!
Agreed. My favorite winter daily's to date have been a Mustang and a rwd 300S on winter tires. Deeper snow getting out of my sub was never an issue with a bit of momentum. Hell, I used to park the 300S in snow drifts for a laugh and it would bite and dig itself out. I will take the balance and control any day over my half ton 4x4 truck.
Thank you! I have been writing on the subway everyday trying to beat this one into shape, it’s rather long, novella length. Looking forward to sharing with everyone.
Update on dead one-year old Toyota battery. Dealer tried telling me driving the car once a week (200 miles) was not enough and I should have it on a trickle charger. I called BS, got new battery and told not to darken their door ever again.
I’ve had this happen with two Jeeps. If the car doesn’t have a parasitic drain the dealer should replace it under warranty (if it is under the bumper to bumper).
Ironically, just a couple of weeks ago I saw a real work truck with a real work trailer behind it, pulled over by a cop on the central N-S road in my town. (Though to be fair, I can only assume that it was for some other infraction than speeding, because you'd have to be a true moron to drive a trailer at more than a couple over on that twisty two-lane.)
"[A] building that has been irresponsibly named after a compulsive womanizer and congenital liar with ties to organized crime and an insanely haphazard policy of military interventionism south of our border..." is a very good harpooning of JFK; but you left a couple of things out!
JFK was addicted to painkillers and amphetamines. And, his health was in a decline. Ages ago, I took note of an academic paper (but I did not read the paper itself) wherein a specialist doctor stated that, in his expert opinion, JFK might not have lived through a second term, his medical conditions were closing in that rapidly.
BTW2: JFK's Wedding Present (I joke) to his wife Jacqueline was an incurable drug-resistant Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD). Which likely led to the death of pre-born Patrick in utero.
BTW3: JFK was not an intellectual, and at best a middlebrow, culturally speaking. He had to be told what instrument Pablo Casals played. Upon learning that his staff had booked him for a meet-and-greet with a Soviet Ballet Company, he spluttered, "I don't want to shake hands with any 'fairies.'" Meaning, all male ballet dancers must be gay.
When Rudolph Nureyev danced on the Ed Sullivan Show, my mom took one look at his rather prominent codpiece and said, "That's disgusting." My father turned to her and said, "What do you want him to do, cut it off?"
One response could have been, "No, just put some ice on it!"
Of course, JFK was no prince, but LBJ was even worse.
I think that Roger Stone is telling the truth when he claims that (rightly or wrongly) Richard Nixon believed that LBJ had directed JFK's murder.
That Nixon believed any one thing does not make it true. But, obviously, both US political parties face an all-consuming Crisis of Legitimacy.
Hey, Donnie Baby! I thought you we going to release EVERYTHING about JFK's murder. Hunh?
BTW, et a-propos de rien: Aristotle Onassis, in the last months of his life, confessed to an old girlfriend that he had paid for Robert Kennedy's death.
RFK had had a sexual entanglement with Jackie Kennedy, post Dealey Plaza.
RFK obviously thought that that conferred some special status upon him, because when it got back to him that Onassis wanted to marry Jackie, RFK said that the would happen only over RFK's dead body.
That got back to Onassis, who quietly murmured, "Works for me!"
LEGAL NOTICE:
It was in the reign of George II that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now; and do not the Sunday papers and the courts of law supply us every week with more novel and interesting slander?
My man, everybody who was even remotely aware of what was going on in DC knew that LBJ was heavily involved if not the chief architect of JFK's murder. Johnson always lusted for more power but he knew he couldn't ever win the office straight up.
As for Trump releasing everything, it should be abundantly clear at this point Trump is unwilling to do any serious battle with the sort of people who insist on keeping the intelligence "community's" secrets buried. Might have something to do with the rather peculiar security lapses that resulted in a head tilt causing a bullet to hit his ear instead of his eye socket.
I'm not so sure about the narrative that RFK made romantic moves on Jackie.
Johnson certainly tried a time or two, though. Which is exactly what you'd expect when dealing with a genuine sociopath.
JFK had many flaws. His penchant for banging anything that would stand still long enough was legendary and ultimately what got him killed. J Edgar sent a couple of goons into his room right before the convention to "warn" him about "adverse intelligence", namely to tell him that Hoover knew who he was banging but with Hoover it would all stay hush hush. The other part of that deal was Lyndon as VP.
Lyndon was more of a horndog than JFK and indeed it was Lyndon's right hand man Bobby Baker who was running a brothel that catered to Washington's powerful and elite...with, I'm sure, the full knowledge of LBJ's neighbor. J. Edgar.
Kennedy's faults as a man being plentiful. as president he stopped the madness of the deep state who was baying for preemptive nuclear strikes against the Soviets. He actually wanted to bring the already deeply out of control "military industrial complex" Ike warned us about to heel.
After seeing what they wanted to do and how easily they lied and set up traps you'd have thought he would be suspicious of his deeply corrupt VP (that everybody hated) insisting he come to Dallas and drive around in a convertible on a route that was changed last minute. Alas he wasn't and history happened as it did.
JFK was no saint. But he at least tried to do the right thing in the big office sometimes. And his instincts weren't all elitist garbage, a byproduct of being on the outside of the elitist circles early on even as he was among them.
This reefer man agrees with the author’s assessment of what a “HeavyDuty” truck is, my f-150 is light duty, not commercial grade in any sense of the word, the shop trucks in our fleet, are 3/4 ton pickups, we have had all three makes, we plowed snow with them, but they didn’t see real commercial duty like our class 8 fleet does. Over the last thirty years I have watched the motoring press degrade from genuinely talented writers to people who couldn’t write an original thought, and pass it off as though they wrote it.
On a different line of thought, most people buying 3/4 and one ton trucks don’t need anything more than a half ton pickup truck, today’s half ton trucks can boast a payload capacity of 2500 lbs and have tow ratings over ten thousand pounds, I remember 1978 ford f-250’s that at best were 1500# payload and six thousand pounds of tow…
But campers and snow mobile trailers have gotten significantly heavier over the years, if you tow a lot and often, you probably need at least that light duty 3/4 ton Ram….
Careful, lol, we got into this a while back and everyone with an F150 or 1500 came out to defend how much their truck tows and it has no problem pulling their trailer/RV or whatever. No one wants to admit their built Ford tough V6 F150 is for commuting, even though about 95% of them are only for commuting.
I have a 2015 max tow, I think something like 11,300 tow, 1729 payload, and tow 8500# travel trailer, if I were going to leave the state, I would upgrade to a ¾ ton, but sadly you are right, 80% of the mileage is to and from work, and for my use case, the ¾ ton didn’t work, now that I am retired, maybe I could justify it.
The beautiful thing about the inline-4 turbo Silverado as opposed to the EcoBoost F-150 is that you don't need to admit you use it for commuting and image enhancement; the engine choice does that for you.
Fun story that I only now remembered: I remain in a Taurus SHO group on FB despite getting out of mine a few years back, and someone posted about buying a 4-cyl Silverado and got dragged pretty hard. Talking about towing capacity when showing a picture of his truck that included his whole garage and driveway, but no trailer, came off as particularly defensive....
I've used my mom's leased TurboRados to tow my old E36 on an open trailer on multiple occasions, and most recently towed an M38 Jeep home for a buddy. The jeep was lighter than my bmw but is literally a square sticking up over the truck's cab. Of course, neither load is particularly challenging, but I've never been wanting for more power and the fuel economy was considerably better than the Hemi Ram I once had towing a similar load. Still would rather own an out of warranty Hemi than a 2.7T out of warranty though.
I will say our 2010 Ford F-350 V8 (regular cab with utility box) at Penske Truck Leasing did not have the power to move an empty 26' International box truck with the parking brake on. It left some really nice rubber on the polished concrete floor, though!
It didn't have trouble keeping the plow on the front all winter, nor pulling the occasional empty class 8 semi + trailer across the parking lot.
What's strange to me, having looked up exactly which engine that F-350 had, is that I now daily drive a V8 vehicle with a 7500 lb GVWR that has 100 more HP and 80 more lb*ft than that ancient Triton. At the time, I couldn't believe how powerful that F-350 felt. And the fuel economy! We averaged about 8.5 mpg around town, per the gauge display. Makes my premium-gassed 13.5 mpg feel like a SENTRA FOUR BANGER to a LEXUS LF-A V10 you Nissan-hating jerk, Baruth!
Why the V10 hate? To be fair, they can't pass a gas station without stopping in for a fill up, but they regularly go 500,000 miles or more in hotel shuttle duty. One of my company trucks is a 2010 F350 with the V10, 246,000 miles and it just keeps going and going. Literally the only engine related work done on it is oil and fluid changes, filters and replacing a stuck evap valve. I have ten spark plugs sitting in the shop, one day we will get around to changing those, more out of "the current plugs have some insane six figure mileage on them, should probably change them just because" than the fact that its showing any signs of needing them.
While what you said about Kurono may be true, I still can’t believe how beautiful that 2024 Anniversary Reiwa looks. Looking forward to the book reveal.
Who spent $80k on an old Toyota? What Patek are we talking about. And unless one or two of you all have serious access, likely none of us are getting these at list at an AD.
I turned down Nautiluses at twelve grand all day when I was in the dope game.
I *do* have a bit of a relationship with an AD now, but it's the kind of relationship where my wife has to buy three Perpetual Calendars before I can have a Nautilus at retail.
"Hemi or no Hemi, these Chargers are going to sell."
I'll disagree with our host here.
In 2018 I bought a new Kia Stinger GT for under $40k. Plenty of hype in those early days showed tuning them to 450+rwhp for not much effort and then out-dragging muscle cars and Euro cars.
However, I did not do that. I sold the Kia in 2022 and bought a $60K Charger 392 Widebody that dynos out around 430rwhp. As we've seen with EVs "it is very quick" doesn't always mean enough. And now the Stinger no longer exists at all.
Maybe there is an untapped population that wants a Dodge Charger to be a Nissan Skyline, but I have doubts.
As a knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, cousin-marrying, hairy chested toxic cisgender male from Flyover, USA, I concur. People in the sticks buy Chargers and Challengers. They don't buy them to boast about a straight 6, turbo or not. They buy them for that righteous and God-fearing hemi-that-isn't-a-hemi "HEMI" mill.
Exactly, objective speed is only part of the issue.
Styling and sound/rumble/vibes are all key components for a muscle car if they weren’t then a Tesla could cover the bases given its acceleration. In fact objectively an ev charger is really quick
The Stinger was great on paper but I never met anyone who loved theirs. And the optics of owning a Kia are different, not saying better or worse, than the optics of owning a Charger.
I could see swapping my 300C for a two-door Six Pack at some point. I'd rather have a 392 but I'm not gonna kid myself that it will be as fast as the Hurricane.
You can get the Ford with a manual transmission, and it would be a better track car for sure... but for Main Street on Saturday night, I think it has to be the Charger every time.
I dont think ive been more underwhelmed with a car than the mustang. Granted, i havent given it sufficient highway time to be stupid in it. Looks great, sounds great
You can say worse. It's okay. I drove one of the 3.8 V6 "GT2" or whatever top trim awd stinger it was. Miles ahead of the godawful 4 cylinder ones, but $60(!) Fn k. With the existence of Genesis, it never had a prayer.
I thought my base GT was acceptable at 2018 pricing but it wasn't fun or rowdy enough to be a performance/muscle car replacement and it also wasn't quiet or fancy enough to be a premium car.
Someone online called it a RWD Grand Prix GTP once and I thought that was pretty accurate.
Maybe not as fast, but potentially a lot more long lived. I'm not sure Stellantis can make a reliable boosted V6 with lots of horses that won't blow its own brains out after 70,000 miles.
I'm hoping that the intended purpose of the Hurricane -- trucks -- will have incentivized Stellantis to make it durable, although God knows that wasn't the case with the GM L87
A lot of those problems seem to be being traced back to the garbage 8 and 16 weight oils being put in all those motors.
But, yeah, they aren't doing durable anymore....
GM's favorite pastime is figuring out how to shave a nickel out of the cost of a $85,000 truck. For all the (somewhat deserved) hate piled onto Stellantis, they don't seem to be obsessed with wringing the last penny out of every vehicle. So there is at least hope its a durable engine.
I'm not so sure about that. There's a lot of theories on the interwebs from people who don't know much about how lubrication works who blame that, but Toyota said it was debris left over from manufacturing and that they had it whipped...and yet it continues.
GM's answer was heavier weight oil, but that seems to be a pretty transparent attempt to just get the engines past the warranty period where I'm certain they will tell you to go fornicate yourself.
Lake Speed Jr. on Youtube has done a series of videos on the oil weight issue that are quite good and explain a lot of the nuance involved in oil weight recommendation.
In general what I'm hearing from friends who turn wrenches is that across the board the forced induction stuff is an order of magnitude more sensitive to maintenance going out into a population that the manufacturers are doing their best to convince that they are nearly maintenance free.
"The manufactuer says 10,000 mile oil changes!"
Yeah. Do you see the two asterisks beside that? Did you reference what that means? Did you know that your habit of operating the engine for 10 minutes before shutting it off for extended periods multiple times a day or your gravel road in the country qualify as severe service for the motor and thus require oil changes at half that interval?
"But I use synthetic oil!"
No, you use a "synthetic blend" because only a small handful of boutique makers actually use a group IV base stock.
*blank stare*
"It has lifetime fluid in the transmission!"
That means "as long as the warranty lasts" and not a millisecond more, and for the same reasons YOU don't have lifetime fluid inside you.
If you're a used car buyer...and I see myself being one for some time to come...make and model will have some relevance but good data on how the vehicle is maintained is even more valuable than before.
As soon as I saw the Hilton story a few days back I knew Hilton Corporate would drop them. That happened almost as soon as it hit the internet, lol. Someone at Hilton didn’t even ask permission from the C Suite (just guessing, I don’t really know), they just cancelled that licensing agreement as fast as they could.
Has anyone heard the names of the owners of the former Hilton family brand hotel in Minneapolis? Megyn Kelly read them off and couldn’t pronounce them, which, if you have been to a hotel lately, shouldn’t surprise anyone.
There are government rates but it would be interesting if a contract had been executed for a room block. Probably not, but if there was a contract Trump may own that hotel shortly.
I have a fair bit of inside knowledge on how these hotels work, as my ex-girlfriend has been working in the hotel industry for years, mainly for Hilton corporate, and also for private owners of Hilton-branded hotels.
Hilton is very, very, very protective of their brand name and image. They run an extremely tight ship, there are multiple ways that a hotel can quickly lose its Hilton association, many of which are related to building upkeep and maintenance, but also hotel staff. Staff at your Hilton hotel are shitty to the customers and don't do their jobs? There will quickly be a Hilton rep standing in the lobby telling the general manager to get their shit together, NOW, or else.
Rooms not kept up to standard? A few warnings will be given, and if a remod plan isn't presented by the given deadline, you are going to be calling LaQuinta asking if they have any available franchises.
Bottom line, Hilton doesn't fuck around. And yes, they have a metric fuck-ton of federal room contracts with various agencies. So if some Hilton hotel owner wants to try and be cute, well, we saw what happens. That Minneapolis Hilton owner is probably on the phone right now with Marriott, IHG or Wyndam trying to secure another franchise. Though there is a decent chance those three will tell the guy to pound sand, they aren't going to want the bad press either. It may end up being the country's fanciest Motel 6.
Four hours in and no mention of the incident in MN this afternoon? Y’all are slacking.
I think everyone's afraid to touch it.
I will say this: Four years ago, a woman got shot in the head for banging on a window. So driving a Honda Pilot right at an ICE officer (which is far more obvious in the lesser-seen front video) probably qualifies as well.
Also, no one seems willing to discuss why she was parked across the roadway like that. My guess: she was part of some dipshit crew who was "FREEZING ICE OUT" or some other virtue-signaling stupidity.
I think the public problem with ICE is they are perceived as a typical police unit and will follow their typical authoritative discretion; even if there are some Wyatt Earps out there.
No sane minded individual is going to pull that stunt with the US military in their fatigues. Like “nah bro that’s the fucking ARMY. They will shoot you in the face”.
Except they basically are. Hence incidents.
I had a much longer response typed out, but you put my thoughts much more succinctly.
You see on local subreddits where people call for a QRF when they spot ICE. Under the guise of “legal observers” and counterprotesting, these people interfere with enforcement operations. Something was bound to happen eventually. Some lunatics were people hoping it would.
People think that they can operate without consequences just because they’re on “le right side of history.” Life does not work that way.
All of this led to a dead woman and an orphaned child. It’s very sad all the way around.
The people she “stood up for” will do nothing to take care of said orphaned child or even participate in a GoFundMe just the same. It’s contrived behavior pushed by leftist fanaticism that gets stupid white women killed. This form of resistance isn’t heroic; it’s annoying and distracting at best. Getting martyred for such an idiotic reason shouldn’t even count.
Furthermore, it's not resistance if you're on the same side as
Pepsi
Target
The Fortune 500
The media
Every university
Every school
Every nonprofit
Every multinational
200 other countries in the world
80% of the elected officials in this country
95% of the unelected ones
At that point, you're just speaking power to truth, and dying because you're a moron.
Do you want attribution when I quote this? It is the sort of insight that could change minds, if there were any functioning minds involved.
Agreed that its a very tragic and sad ending.
I don’t agree with the direct interference with ICE actions, but citizens have a right to peacefully protest, which includes yelling whatever they want at ICE.
But ICE need to stop with the full SWAT team show of force gear and attitude and hiding behind masks before this blows up into something much worse.
I think we’re already past that point unfortunately.
THIS
It's possible and indeed necessary to have a nuanced discussion on this, but:
Which came first, the deployed-military-in-a-hostile-village vibe, or the efforts by Pepsi, Target, NBC, and CNN to make sure that every ICE official feels like a deployed soldier in a hostile village? They're now calling Renee Good an "observer". Which is a nice way of saying she was trying to hinder law enforcement operations. What are they supposed to do? Put Sean Connery in a 1925 NYC police uniform and have him go ask her to move her car?
I'm gonna reply to myself because I'm angry about something.
For the last nine years, the media in this country has been training people to resist legitimate police intervention. Every vagrant vandal thinks he's Emmett Till and every woman who gets caught stealing from the Macy's thinks she is Rosa Parks. Hundreds of thousands of videos show people again and again that they should resist or try to escape even basic police requests or commands. And the people who do it often get lionized after the fact by politicians and media personnel.
You can see the results of that 9-year-training-program in real life now. Three times a week I see a video of someone whose reaction to a traffic stop is to GET OUT OF THE CAR AND THREATEN THE OFFICER. Or they keep the window rolled up and won't speak to the officer. Or they drive away.
Now you have people who are deliberately sabotaging federal law enforcement -- and I will suggest, until proven wrong, that this dead woman was doing just that with her creatively placed Pilot. We are creating an environment where every traffic stop is the potential prelude to mayhem and enforcing the agreed-upon immigration law in Middle America gets you treated like you're a Marine in Afghanistan.
Well, guess what? The Marines in Afghanistan trigger-fingered a LOT of people because they were regularly presented with ambiguous or evil intent.
There are ten thousand jerkoffs sitting in Manhattan and Trousdale Estates right now who are complicit in this training, who fiscally and positionally benefit from it, and whose blood will NEVER be spilled as a result.
I don't know why this woman decided to try to drive away from three armed ICE agents. But I bet it had something to do with the fact that she has been absolutely carpet-bombed with media telling her that ICE is not legitimate, that they are killers, and that they are the enemy. And she didn't even have the sense to be passive and meek in the face of the enemy. She decided she had a good chance of evading three fully armed men at 36 inch range. BECAUSE SHE HAS SEEN 100 VIDEOS OF PEOPLE DOING JUST THAT.
Now she is dead.
Agree with some of what you wrote.
I watched the video of the incident.
Don’t know what happened before or led up to it.
But its quite clear that that ICE has the attitude that they can do whatever they want, and that one has to completely obey them no matter what, and they can use force to stop someone if they don’t like their behavior. And that attitude is a problem and its going to lead to bigger problems.
And no, I don’t hate cops in general, and give them great respect.
If you don't know what happened before or led up to it, the most likely explanation is that they were trying to effect an arrest.
If you don't like that ICE can arrest people then you have at least a century and a quarter's worth of USSC precedent to undo because the Supremes have given agencies charged with border security and national security almost a blank check.
If you are within a hundred miles of the border, ICE and USBP can stop you without probable cause and search your vehicle and you. That's law and the courts have given it the thumbs up with some arguing that even a 300 mile limit would be reasonable in some circumstances.
Mention the war on drugs or "national security" and the courts can't bend over fast enough to lick the jack boots of the feds. Right now every letter you just typed on your machine to make that post went through multiple warrantless collections to be stored in perpetuity and accessed whenever a government agent or "contractor" wants in flagrant violation of the 4th amendment, but the courts gave that the thumbs up (and refuse to take any meaningful sanction of those who abused access to those databases because politics) because OR THE TERRORISTS WIN!!!
If somebody wants to argue ICE and USBP (not that people recognize the difference) can't enforce federal immigration law, awesome. I'll agree with you right after you also hold that the rest of the armed wings of the federal bureaucracy can't enforce gun laws, tax laws, environmental regulations, or even theft of the mail with any level of force.
It's interesting you mention their "attitude" when I've heard not a single word on any public channel from the guys making the arrests. So opinions on their "attitude" are coming from polemicists, pundits, propagandists and politicians. All of which are to be distrusted.
If you think what you saw here was abusive, trust me that it doesn't even make the list of bad acts by feds that were CLEARLY illegal whereas this was most likely a perfectly lawful arrest (ICE authority is valid everywhere in the US and her territories, and in some foreign nations as well) where resistance and interference resulted in a justifiable UOF.
In other words, if somebody wasn't complaining about the jack boots long before now I find it difficult to take them seriously when they discuss these matters now after a well coordinated public campaign to delegitimize this specific part of federal law enforcement.
As for me, I don't trust cops in general. More accurately I don't trust the system they operate in because I know how easily justice is perverted. Invariably the real injustices get no press while the legit acts are often assailed as such on the basis of the people who have megaphones not liking the outcome and that based mostly on political shit.
And there we're right back to the number of people who celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk. To quote Dirty Harry, they're fine with killing as long as the right people get killed.
No, I don’t agree with ICE and BP having any jurisdiction over US citizens within our borders. And yes I live within the BP checkpoints. And its just wrong.
The ICE attitude was obvious from body language in the video.
Yes, the “security state” has gotten way too powerful.
And no, I did not celebrate Mr Kirk’s killing.
Thank you for this outstanding and well stated response!
When did the public at large buy into the idea that following orders given by a LEO were optional?
Police can only give orders when they are within their authority to do so. It is pretty common for them to give directives that they don't have the power to do. If you watch the Civil Rights Lawyer channel on youtube you will see plenty of examples of that happening.
When it comes to arrest the problem is that whether the arrest is lawful is something that is determined in court, not on the side of the road. And the courts expect you, even if you believe the arrest is unlawful, to comply with the officer and make your case in court. Because as bad as some police can be about understanding the limits of their powers, Joe and Jane Public can be a hell of a lot worse in understanding the limitations of their rights.
When dealing with something like an ICE arrest, they are granted BROAD powers by the law and by the courts to enforce immigration laws. Trouble is the public isn't used to it because every president we've had in my lifetime has been a fucking pussy who refused to do meaningful enforcement of immigration law.
Well, the public is sick of that. And all this is being done to try and generate public discomfort with what's happening. It's some ANTIFA level psyop work to try and make the general public who wants an end to open borders relent. That's why this was political within minutes of it happening, because the activists are hoping this is their next George Floyd moment. The problem is that they had their first George Floyd moment and the public is no longer going to respond that way.
The odds that ICE was acting unlawfully are extremely slim on this one. Local public officials talking like they have some say in immigration enforcement need to remember that it was president Obama who put the nail in that coffin when the Supreme Court sided with him on the question.
All these "no kings!" types angry at these uses of federal powers will not for a second acknowledge they cheerled the expansion of those powers under their guys. Now they don't like that somebody else can use those powers and they'll go right back to supporting it as soon as it's somebody they voted for going after who they perceive to be their political foes.
That's why nobody gives a fuck what they think.
I have been pulled over a lot. Dome light on, windows open, hands on the wheel, have license ready way before theyre at the window or slowly comply after. Ive gotten a lot of warnings. Be polite, dont be stupid. There have been a few awful shootings in the last ten years but there have also been a lot of people battling in the streets. The cops will win, younwill die
You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride
stupidest thing I overheard this morning: "they murdered that woman why didn't they just taze her, worse than China...."
Yes, we are absolutely worse than a country that just disappears thousands of its citizens a year.
These people are lucky to be in a nation where we actively cater to morons.
Also, just how do you taze someone in a car with closed windows?
im thinking we make the tazer barbs a foot long and use a .460 weatherby blank to fire them
that ought to penetrate a car
Where to begin...
It became popular, in the wake of the terrible disrespect vets returning from Vietnam endured, for "men of a certain age" (*cough) to move well beyond "gratefulness for the service" of vets and cops and into full-blown worship of both.
Cops have a job that's 98% gravy, and 2% things no normal person would want to do for any amount of money. The problem is, that a plurality (I won't say "most", but it is) cops have soaked up the worship, drank the free coffee (they feel is their birthright), and fully bought into the "thin blue line" narrative. They see the 2% of their job that normal people don't want to do as their entire rep. They swagger, they give every kid the stink-eye, and treat every traffic stop like they're bringing down the Sinola Cartel.
You see 'em every place in the world, and they all look exactly the same -- only the uniform changes. Mirrored aviators (or worse yet, Oakley wraparounds). Juiced biceps toned "just so" by countless hours in the gym. Hand on their weapon. Perma-scowl. "OUTA' THE F***IN' CAR!!", etc. Rather than looking for a way to deescalate a situation, they're looking for a reason for a confrontation. They're 50%+ ex-vets who sorely miss the action they saw on a daily basis in their theater of operation overseas. It's "us" vs "them" -- every day, every traffic stop, every donut purchase. The only people they relax around are the bad-boys they try to fit in with. Pastor Ted on his way to prison visitation gets the $150 ticket for 10 over on the interstate. The pole dancer driving drunk on the wrong side of the road gets a ride home and Officer Friendly's phone number.
... and everything is stacked on their side: "qualified immunity" has transformed cops from being "keepers of the peace" and into Rambo-lite "I AM THE LAW" tea-pot despots. I'm not minimizing the danger of every single traffic stop they make in 2026 -- but in point of fact, 99.99% of what a traffic cop does at a traffic stop is revenue collection at best and sand in the gears of progress by any normal accounting. Traffic cops don't keep order on the highways, they are an obstacle and intrusion government has erected between me and where I am trying to go, and sane citizenry will use every means at their disposal (Waze, V1, etc.) to thwart the effort. If they were not executing a useless despotic nuisance, they wouldn't be stopping random (and it is entirely random) vehicles and getting into altercations with angry sociopaths.
... and about those sociopaths...
While middle-aged white guys secretly wish they could boss people around like a cop, middle-aged white women are hell-bent to "overthrow the patriarchy" and "resist" any man telling them anything at all. When an immovable object meets with unstoppable force, there are going to be fireworks. The perceived gender power-dynamic has shifted heavily towards women in the last 40 years -- women are used to getting all of the benefits of feminism and all the deference of chivalry. In short, they have had their cake and ate it with gusto, until the average chunky girl-boss thinks it's her God-given right to "put ALL men in their place".
This does not end well, as we witnessed yesterday.
When societal power meets ACTUAL power, there results a confrontation that ends badly. The chick who never followed an order given by a man in her life meets an ICE agent who thinks he's still in the sandbox. She ends up dead, he ends up bumping up on SOCIETAL POWER that may as well just crush him now -- because his marriage (assuming he has one) is over, his job is over, and his life in 2026 America is over.
We created this. Law enforcement created a situation whereby the only contact any person ever has with an officer is when he's up in their grill about some random artificially low speed limit or parking violation or having a campfire that's too big. C19 ruined it for many, many people who watched cops break up church services and outdoor concerts and shut down family restaurants. People were trained to think, "you know what? I'm not following your stupid rules anymore". They trained me, and I am predisposed to play the game by the rules.
Cities made themselves "sanctuaries" for illegal immigrants. When the politicians who make the rules don't follow them, why should a city which has grown accustomed to a cheap, cash only, off-books labor pool forfeit their slaves just because "The Donald" and the middle-aged bimbo running DHS are sending bandanna-wearing jackboots into their back yards.
"RESIST!! STICK IT TO THE ORANGE MAN BAD!!!" And now we have a dead woman as a result.
... and here we are. Perhaps some day we'll let a bit of air out of the balloon, but as long as the takeaway from all of this is men of a certain age talking about a better way to conceal carry, and talking about how we're going to plug our neighbors for pulling carrots from our gardens in the event of a Zombie Apocalypse, we're not going to make any progress.
All the "prepping" in the world is not moving us back towards sanity and civility. Things with LEO and the citizenry are broken almost beyond my comprehension, let alone recognition. There's plenty of blame on both sides.
It's time for everybody to draw a breath and think about what we want the world to look like, and move towards making it so.
Thoughtful comment, thanks Stan
I wish none of what you've written was correct.
Nobody wishes none of it were true more than me.
It was pretty strong sauce, and perhaps a bit of hyperbole -- but the essence of it is the reality of policing in 2026. Cops don't need military surplus armament. They don't need extra weapons training or endless advice on what constitutes a "clean kill". They need to know how to deescalate a situation, while still asserting their will. Somehow Great Briton was able to police their society with guys armed with nothing more than a nightstick into the modern age.
Cops need to be firm, fair, and physically strong. This may mean less women and less ex-marines. If society has structured itself so that a 16 year old kid has the discipline to play HS football -- to control his violence within the rules of the game, while forcefully asserting his physical strength and will on his opponent to affect the outcome of a "silly game" (and I LOVE FB), it's not too much to ask adult male cops in this country to stop turning every confrontation into a no-holds-barred cage match.
The identity concealment ("for the protection of the officers") only adds to the "black ops" vibe ICE is throwing off everywhere they go. Hear me when I say it -- what they are doing is a lawful, legal, righteous execution of existing law, and it is right and proper that they are doing it.
But if they're riding in troop carriers, carrying automatic weapons, and wearing tactical gear and fatigues -- they're not throwing off "law enforcement" vibes anymore. They're projecting that they're a banana republic paramilitary army. Black bagging guys and stuffing them on a plane bound for a prison in El Salvador doesn't do anything to change that perception.
I'm not sure what the answer is here, but this ain't it.
As ever, agreed.
Should you ever find yourself near Baltimore, drop me a line. Would love to buy you a beer.
Will do.
The same goes for ANY ACFer -- should you ever (by some weird fluke) find yourself in or around Peoria, IL, I've got a beer with your name on it.
Clearly this guy wasn't much of a football player. A little sidestep and all would be good...
All joking aside, this situation sucks overall because this lady was clearly being stupid, but to me the ICE agent wasn't all that level headed either. Now, there are orphans. I respect people who protest as they have strong beliefs, but I think today things have gotten so out of hand. We have so many paid actors and instigators, misleading media, foreign agents, etc... All of it designed to screw over the nation.
My favorite explanation I’ve read of the dead woman’s behavior:
As a 37 white liberal woman, she has never been told “no” in her entire life.
That simple fact is what got her to that exact moment on that street.
100%. As I said above,
"While middle-aged white guys secretly wish they could boss people around like a cop, middle-aged white women are hell-bent to "overthrow the patriarchy" and "resist" any man telling them anything at all. When an immovable object meets with unstoppable force, there are going to be fireworks. The perceived gender power-dynamic has shifted heavily towards women in the last 40 years -- women are used to getting all of the benefits of feminism and all the deference of chivalry. In short, they have had their cake and ate it with gusto, until the average chunky girl-boss thinks it's her God-given right to "put ALL men in their place".
This does not end well, as we witnessed yesterday."
The most off putting thing for me was the bystander who said “you did a murder!”
Baby talk from a stunted mind.
"YOU DID A RACISM. YOU DID AN IMPERIALISM."
turned his head into a heckin canoearino
We are seeing the results of 30 plus years of the gutting of our school system
30? The education I received in a "Blue Ribbon School" in the 60s and 70s was as close to useless as anything I can imagine. Schools have been broken for at least 50 years.
We've always educated to the lowest common denominator, and left bright kids bored and restless. K-6 moves at such a glacial pace that any kid above "box-o-rox" intelligence could do it in 3 years tops. It does not take 3+ years to teach a kid to multiply and divide, but without those 3 years, we wouldn't be able to tell him that "Heather has Two Mommies", and that's just fine, etc.
Was he big mad?
You are referring to the Justine Damond shooting in SW Mpls in 2017 by the Somali Mpls police officer for the window-banging offense? These are very different situations.
Part A:
I'll touch it. So just as a heads up, I am not the world's foremost expert in use of force but I am far more expert than the vast majority of people you will meet or can cite unless you know Massad Ayoob or someone of that caliber. (Ha! I make joke!)
...and I actually know Mas and have taken his legal classes, FWIW.
The principles that cover use of force...any force, including lethal...come from two main USSC cases. Tennessee v. Garner and Graham v. Connor. Boil the cases down and you come to the doctrines of necessity and objective reasonableness.
At FLETC and pretty much every police academy in the country use of lethal force is taught as AOI, AOIJ, or AOIJP.
1. Ability
2. Opportunity
3. Intent
The numbering is important.
That is the baseline for everybody. In determining whether or not a UOF is justified the consideration.
1. Does this person have the ability to kill or cause grave injury? This is most often a weapon, but can also be bare hands, disparity of force, etc. Picture a 5'2" female weighing about 115 pounds vs a roughly 6 foot tall dude weighing over 250 pounds. (pay attention to these details, they will be important later) He can kill her with bare hands easily. But most often it's a weapon.
Note that a vehicle is a damned effective weapon.
2. Does this person have the opportunity to use that ability? Most often this is about proximity, but other factors can come into play. A guy 40 feet away from you with a machete is an immediate lethal threat. But if we erect a 20 foot razorwire fence between you and him, he's no longer able to close distance and apply that contact weapon without dealing with the obstacle. No fence, opportunity is there. Fence, opportunity no longer there.
3. Are this person's actions *reasonably* perceived as preparatory to causing harm? A uniformed police officer approaching you on a traffic stop has the ability to kill you or cause grave injury, and he certainly has the opportunity to bring that ability to bear. But because he is a uniformed police officer performing his expected duties and because it is highly unusual for a uniformed police officer to try and carjack you or just blow your brains out on the side of the road, it would be unreasonable to believe the officer pulling you over is an action preparatory to causing harm.
Intent is not mind reading, it is believing actions. If someone demands money and produces a gun or a knife from their waistband or pocket, they have manifested the intent to commit a violent felony. If you tell someone to leave your property and they bend over and grab a brick or a big rock or similar and start to advance on you, they have manifested the intent to use said weapon on you. If you have words with somebody and they reach into their lifted Jeep and produce a baseball bat after having said they intend to fuck you up, the retrieval of that bat is manifesting the intention to use it on you. Etc.
As I said earlier, that's the baseline that pretty much all police agencies in the country teach.
Part B:
There are a couple more, the J and the P...jeopardy and preclusion. These are only taught in some agencies, but they're good ideas for pretty much everybody all the time.
4. Jeopardy (Or, as I like to put it, immediate jeopardy)
5. Preclusion
4. Assuming AOI are there, is this an act that is happening right now? In other words, if you don't act now within the next couple of seconds will the other guy be able to successfully prosecute a violent felony that places you in immediate danger of death or grave injury?
This is simple, too. Let's revisit Jeep guy. If dude tells you he is going to go to his Jeep, grab a bat, and then bash your brains out with it and starts heading to his Jeep you are not yet dealing with immediate jeopardy. He could be going back to his Jeep to retrieve a baseball bat that you can see from across the parking lot. Or he could be going to his Jeep to leave. You don't know yet.
(Nor should you stick around to find out!)
So you are not yet in immediate jeopardy. Once he retrieves the bat and begins to close distance on you....
5. At this very moment, do you have a **SAFE** alternative to the use of lethal force? Can you take any reasonable action that would avoid the need to press the trigger? In our Jeep example getting in your car and leaving would be a good idea...but as you try dude smashes through your window with the bat and is now trying to hit you with it.
He has the ability to kill you or cause grave injury.
He has the opportunity to use it on you.
He has clearly manifested his intent to kill you or cause serious injury by words and actions.
He is actively prosecuting the attack against you.
You are trapped in a metal box with no way to escape.
Now would be a good time to press the trigger.
So let's apply this test to the vehicle incident with ICE where multiple video angles are available yet the one most people have seen shows the least detail. Here's one that is more useful:
https://x.com/bstinman/status/2008977976080388216
As the action happens an arrest is in progress. If you interfere with a lawful arrest you are yourself subject to arrest. Which means if that was happening ICE agents are well within their rights to arrest you. Meaning they can order you out of the car and/or stop your escape. You can see two ICE agents, one trying to open the door and the other in front of the vehicle.
You can see the ICE officer at the hood of the vehicle. You can see the wheels spin and lurch as significant throttle is applied. You can see the officer drawing his pistol and moving and being struck in the process. He fires as he's sort of being rolled down the driver's side fender.
Ability? Check. Vehicles can be used as lethal weapons.
Opportunity? Check. He's right there and the wheels are aimed right at him.
Intent? Any officer with even a modicum of training can recount seeing videos in training of officers being killed or seriously injured by identical actions in other scenarios. Intent can be reasonably argued.
Jeopardy? Check. It was going down that second.
Preclusion? Trickier.
Is an officer who tries to use his own body to stop the movement of a vehicle within his powers to do so in effecting an arrest? It's done all the time. It's not smart, but it's done all the time and it's been ruled as justified in literally thousands of other cases where very similar events happened. If I was going to attack something on this shooting I'd attack that, meaning state that the officer didn't have to put himself there in the first place even though the situation developed and went down quickly.
There is a bullet hole through the windshield which demonstrates quite clearly the first shot came from the driver's corner of the vehicle. Meaning at the time the officer was in front of an accelerating vehicle being piloted by someone he was trying to lawfully arrest.
I can tell you straight up this case gets kicked to federal court if the locals try to prosecute and a federal grand jury will no bill if one is even convened. There are tactical decisions one can criticize but mistakes are not the same thing as malice.
If you read Graham V. Connor you will see the Supremes themselves saying an officer doesn't have to be right, only reasonable given what they know in the moment.
Thank you for this!
I emailed with Mas once, back in the Nineties, but all my in-person interactions were with Chuck Taylor, Dale Fricke, and the infamous Ignatius Piazza.
Part C:
If you want something people are afraid to touch, let's contrast this UOF by a federal agent with another UOF by a federal agent: The shooting of Ashley Babbit.
Apply the same test. Remember that size disparity I mentioned in Part A? Well the 5'2 115 pound female is Babbit's numbers. The 200+ pound six footer? That's the guy that shot her.
Unlike the woman driving this SUV, Babbit had no weapon. Not concealed, not visible. She had bare hands and was up against an individual significantly larger and stronger than her.
Where I can articulate a reasonable case for justification on the ICE UOF based solely on what we see, I can't do the same based on shooting her.
Take immediate jeopardy as just one example. Just a few steps behind her there were two Capitol Police tac team officers armed with body armor and fully automatic weapons. Tough to argue she was an immediate lethal threat that the larger, stronger, trained federal agent with backup literally steps away had no other choice but to shoot.
In training that shooting is used as an example of a bad shooting by some UOF experts.
Yet if you go on social media you will see people who cheerleaded her shooting calling this murder. Because objective reasonableness means nothing. It's purely political.
The informed and principled person will look for objective reasonableness. The political authoritarian will judge based on the outcome and whether or not it was their team on the pointy end.
Except that case doesn’t justify today’s shooting.
If you read carefully I never said it did. I said if you apply the same objective standards as they are taught at FLETC (Federal Law Enforcement Training Center) that the shooting of Babbit doesn't hold up nearly as well. Yet a lot of people who are really upset about this killing will turn right around and tell you that the Babbit killing was a moral good because it's about tribal politics rather than objective standards.
I'm the guy arguing for objective standards over tribal politics.
We’re only 7 days in, but I’ll nominate this as post of the year.
Thank you for the contribution.
RE: Preclusion. I’ve seen 3-4 videos of the situation. Was there another officer out of frame that could’ve been hit had the driver not been neutralized?
If so, is it safe to assume that one can be justified in their actions if so? Or does preclusion pertain to the person using force defending eliminating threats to themselves?
Not sure about another officer's proximity to the vehicle. But the officer who fired at the very least his first shot from the front driver's corner of the vehicle made a decision I can easily defend using the standards he was taught and tested on before they gave him a badge and arrest powers.
Further, look into the local PD's UOF cases and I guarantee you that within the last 10 years you will find at least a couple of dozen similar instances of their officers or state officers firing shots in very similar situations and the shootings being ruled as justified uses of force.
In general the best way to understand this is shots cannot be fired on "what if". You're not justified to use lethal force in most instances (totality of the circumstances is always a consideration) because of what you *think* the other guy *might do* a few seconds from now.
You are justified to use lethal force based on what the other guy *is doing right now*.
The exception would be something like a police officer who stops an identified suspect in a triple homicide (still armed) that's heading for a middle school. That would be a justified shooting based on "what if" but it's a "what if" that's based on a whole lot of "already has done".
...if that makes sense.
Fair enough. My mandatory LE education* starts at basic criminal investigation and ends at digital forensics. This kind of knowledge is both foreign and fascinating to me.
*I’m not in LE, but took classes as part of my studies. Some were mandatory, others electives.
Disagree. The person who fired put himself into that position.
It appears they made no attempt to just let her leave the scene.
Now granted we don’t know what was going on beforehand. But if it was just her yelling at them, well sorry that’s her right to do so.
Here's what you don't seem to understand: Police officers effecting an arrest do not have to let someone they are trying to arrest leave the scene. When they say you are under arrest and begin to effect physical force, you are no longer free to do as you please. That's been court precedent for decades and officers physically blocking escape is common place.
If she was just yelling at them she wouldn't have been arrested. You can see other people just yelling at them from the street and a reasonable distance...without their vehicle inserted into the scene.
When police set up a boundary to effect an arrest you don't have the ability to trapse through it freely on foot or in a vehicle. If you try to use the vehicle to block the movement of the police vehicles you're smack dab in the middle of obstruction charges and that makes arrest lawful and valid.
If you then try to flee arrest, you can be stopped with reasonable force.
If in the process of trying to flee you place the life of a police officer trying to effect said arrest in immediate jeopardy, they can use lethal force to defend themselves.
That's the law. It the same law as it was 40 years ago.
ICE doesn’t (shouldn’t) have any power to arrest US citizens.
We don’t know the details of what happened before. Was she really in the way of anything? Did she drive at someone (before a person placed themselves in front of her path)? We don’t know.
Agree it was very likely stupid that she was there.
There was a time when an agent of the state killing a civilian was cause for uproar, and rightly so. now it seems we automatically believe whatever the agency in question tells us, blame the victim, and move on.
I am a massive fan of skepticism of any use of lethal force by armed agents of the state. I will tell you straight up that there are a good number of them every year that should be investigated and dealt with far more skeptically than they are.
But in this case where we have video of what happened that shows all the elements I discussed it's going to be quite difficult to argue that the officer's actions were not reasonable and necessary in the instant he fired his weapon.
If folks want to argue ICE shouldn't be taking the actions they are taking, I will welcome them by my fire once they also agree that the BATFE, the FBI, the IRS, the EPA, the DEA, the Secret Service, the Department of Education, and the fucking Post Office Inspectors shouldn't be taking the actions they are taking. Somebody who a couple short years ago was saying that people who merely protested at January 6th should be hunted down like dogs have *ZERO* standing to complain about ICE enforcement actions.
Yep people fail to see the hypocracy of their views.
There is also a lot of picking and choosing from the constitution as it suits
Certain citizens have long been held to be more equal than others in this regard. The Bonus Army marchers, Vicki Weaver, Ashli Babbitt, the children of Waco: all trash who deserved what they got. Kent State kids, George Floyd: saints. The question becomes: why?
“Our violence is free speech. Your free speech is violence.”
"It's only hypocrisy when the other side does it. When we do it, we're simply giving as good as we got."
honestly, at this point my attitude is about a hairsbreadth from fuck everyone and let it all burn.
Welcome to the party pal.
Welcome to the dark side. We have cookies.
Don't forget oak trees. They can out rank people, so long as they are on a racetrack.
Kidding aside, I found out about the Minneapolis ICE story in the most random way possible. I stumbled across WBE's substack (Worst Boyfriend Ever) - via a comment Jack posted about young men abusing ED drugs due to anxiety. (Old post from months ago.)
Every so often I check WBE's sub (it's a trainwreck) - and the guy launched a meme coin.
That then brought me to the Meme Coin site "Pump Fun" - and WTF - this shit is just a straight up gambling Ponzi scheme.
Trending on that site, less than an hour after it happened, a bunch of "Justice For Renee Good" coins.
People looking to make her into a meme for profit. This world makes me sad.
in '51 we kids were taken thru the kansas city police station, where we were told 'if an officer tells you to stop and you run away, we have the right to shoot you.' we already knew as much, in 1951.
More information as the situation evolves:
The officer who fired shots here has previously been hit by a vehicle and dragged in very similar circumstances.
Well maybe just maybe he should learn to not stand in front of cars.
My thoughts after reading everyone else's (so far, as of 9am est on 1/8/26): Tim is correct with every point he made. As always, his input is gladly appreciated and insightful. The events were legally justifiable and objectively defensible in a court based on the framework he presented
Personally, I could give a fuck less, and I'm gonna let my feelings take the reigns on this one. They should've let her drive away. The agent who stood in front of that Honda (and apparently has done so before) knew he would be in a position where he could legally use deadly force. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he used that knowledge to his advantage to shoot (in his mind) some annoying lib bitch. I don't think she's the one who wanted to kill someone. I think the hyped-up on-social-media-effect Jack mentioned was gone by that point, and she was scared and trying to just get out of there. Even if there is legal precedent and common practice that supports an officer standing in front of someone's vehicle, that's fucking stupid at best and a tactic to intentionally justify deadly force at pessimistic -which is the position I'm taking on this one. To the being stupid point, what happens when you shoot a driver and their foot stays on the accelerator and runs your dumb ass down anyway? Just an all around bad idea for everyone. This was absolutely avoidable and senseless, and that is my FINAL position.
Call me a soft ass lib or evil leftist or a moron who wants to be overrun with browns or whatever else you guys want; I don't care because I know I'm not any of those things.
I don't think that woman deserved to die for just trying to impede police operations and help criminals -- which is what they are now admitting she was doing. I think they should have pulled her out of the car by her hair and broken her arm, at the maximum. But it's worth noting that these ICE guys aren't local cops. They're literally the military, because border patrol is one of the few things the military is allowed to do in the founding documents of this country.
If you try a use of force with American soldiers, you will get a disproportionate response.
Maybe what we need to have blaring on TikTok 24/7, instead of "RESIST ICE", is "Think twice before you try to stop soldiers carrying fully-automatic rifles."
I honestly don't care that she was impeding them because I care more about the actual US military killing our own citizens. The only reason we can say she was using force against ICE was because that guy put himself in a position to receive it.
I do hope everybody will be more cautious with everyone else going forward, but unfortunately that isn't what I actually foresee.
While there is such a thing as officer induced jeopardy, you would first have to establish that the officer intentionally put himself up front as a barrier to even begin to make that claim. We don't have evidence to back that, yet.
It's just as likely he was heading around to the driver's door to try and effect the arrest.
Then it becomes a pretty simple question of at what point do you permit police officers to approach a vehicle to make an arrest? And think real careful about that because the bulk of police arrests at all levels happen within immediate vicinity of vehicles.
The lady was, in fact, in reverse when he got out of his vehicle (most of the videos are trimmed but in most you can still see the vehicle he exited from off to the right of the screen. So coming around the back wasn't a good option either.
Unless you hold that the officer was in the wrong to approach the vehicle *at all* in the attempt to make an arrest it's really dicey to say he caused the problem...keeping in mind she literally put her vehicle in the way of the lead vehicle of their convoy to stop them...by his approach unless he actually articulates his placement was deliberate and intended to be a body stop.
I'm betting he won't be articulating that.
And for the record, ICE isn't the US military. They are sworn federal agents with arrest powers.
They aren't using any unusual or undue tactics as multiple officers in multiple vehicles attempting arrest is in extremely common use across the nation whenever there is a perceived risk of violence or **especially when there is a risk from crowds interfering***
So if you don't like ICE showing up in numbers with multiple vehicles, maybe having groups of people organize to interfere with their function is a pretty bad idea.
I propose ICE should have let her leave and attempted to effect the arrest later. If they meant they end up not arresting her so be it.
If that happened, Wyatt, then the next time ICE tries to arrest criminals -- hell, the next time some sheriff decides to arrest MS-13 members -- it's gonna be a Black Hawk Down situation where the "community" comes out in force to prevent the arrest.
And that ends the rule of law, right there.
I don’t follow Tim Pool but he had the best analysis I’ve seen so far of the slo-mo video. He brought up something that all the amateur forensic video experts haven’t: the sounds the officer heard.
The officer in front does not unholster his weapon until after the driver shifts into drive and accelerates (sound). The officer reacted so quickly because he obviously heard the engine rev and instantly needed to defend himself from the accelerating vehicle. The only reason he had time to get off a shot when he heard the engine rev and sensed the forward motion of the SUV is because the vehicle’s front wheels slipped on the ice on the pavement. The video clearly shows the wheel slip. If the pavement had been dry the wheels would have instantly hooked up and the officer would have been injured or killed.
Two obvious things the officer did not know: that the SUV’s front wheels were on an ice patch that would cause the wheels to momentarily spin, and which direction the vehicle’s front wheels were pointed. The officer reacted to the sound of acceleration (engine revs) and the valid assumption that the vehicle was going to hit him.
To everyone who says that the officer should have jumped out of the way, I have one question: which way should the officer have jumped if he didn’t know which direction the front wheels were pointed in?
Jack's point here deserves some amplification and clarification.
She was not killed because she was impeding lawful police enforcement activity. She was killed because in the process of doing that, whether out of malice or carelessness, she presented at least one officer with the immediate threat of death or serious bodily harm. Whether through malice or carelessness, she escalated to the use of lethal force.
Any time you ask armed agents of the state to go and enforce the law, it would behoove everyone to stop and consider the root of the word "enforce". It is *force*. This means that you are green lighting laying hands on people. Striking them. Slamming them. Injuring them. All the way up to killing them if it becomes necessary due to their resistance.
In the Virginia legislature in 2020 some legislators proposed using the national guard to confiscate "assault weapons" from their fellow citizens not caring a tinker's cuss what that would actually mean because ostensibly the people who would be killed would have all been the wrong sort of people and the wrong sort deserves to be executed if they don't go along with the program, right?
I can't tell you how many people I've seen saying that prison should be torturous and they say that based on the heinous nature of many of the people housed there. But they don't understand that letting federal prisons become a giant running sore on the 8th amendment means that when the opportunity to imprison political opponents and their supporters comes, it will apply to them. Lots of people who just trespassed were subjected to conditions that shame Abu Ghraib crimes.
Nobody thinks it's their ox getting gored when they propose this shit. They think it's about sides without realizing that the government's capacity for goonery is rated E for errrebody who doesn't have the scratch to pay off the right people.
Tribal takes on events like what happened in Minnesota are just playing the game the way the people who profit no matter what want it played. We should all be resolute in denying them our essence.
I agree with basically this entire comment, but I'm not being tribal about it. At least not intentionally, and I understand you probably weren't directly accusing me of that anyway. I've read the reactions and thoughts and theories from both sides and my comments are from my own brain after piecing it all together.
No, if I want to accuse somebody there's little doubt in anyone's mind about it. I'm rather direct.
Great post
Thank you
Get Chris Rock's bit on 'how to not get your ass kicked by the police' trending again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8
If they really are the US military, then there should be far more concern that the military is being used on US citizens and deployed within the country with no oversight. They are arresting, shooting, and killing on the presidents orders. I don't know how that doesn't raise alarm bells. Justification about the immigration crisis is not enough for such a drastic action that can set such a big precedent
"Justification about the immigration crisis is not enough for such a drastic action that can set such a big precedent"
In a functioning country, illegal immigrants would be detained by local police and handed over to ICE in proper and documented fashion. But since we have governors and mayors who live to suck the proverbial dicks of Purdue and ADM and ConAgra, keeping labor dirt cheap and dangerous, the federal government has to step in and protect citizens from the cheap laborers. It is a despicable situation and a lot more people will die before Trump surrenders and we open the borders back up for $3/hour farming.
so illegal immigration that lowers labor prices is grounds to justify executive branch use of military force on US soil against citizens? it'll be a real shame if/when the pendulum swings and some other group becomes a radical left military force. Part of the reason why the discourse on this substack is good is because of rational and multifaceted thought. as bad as illegal immigration is/uniparty politics is, starting a precedent for military level intervention on US soil against US citizens should never be justified
Im a long way from a lib and agree with you100%.
This is how you loose elections when the swing voters in the middle get the feeling they don’t want to live in a police state where their fellow “white” citizens can get gunned down by trigger happy agents in ski masks.
Same as no one cares about gun control when it’s a bunch of gang bangers killing each other, but shoot whitey at random in the mall and we suddenly desperately need gun controls
For all the good Trump may be doing in vz, it’s all overshadowed by this.
And this shooting is the inevitable result of a gung ho ice with a hostile populace and frankly a lack of professionalism.
The 40% of voters in the middle are gonna punish republicans.
The only one who comes out happy is that retard Tim Walz
The Somali corruption is now but a footnote
The lady shouldn't have put herself in the situation or acted the way she did and the officer should have utilized more restraint. Do either of them deserve to be lionized / demonized? No. They are both imperfect people in a bad situation and making imperfect decisions. Now multiple lives are ruined. It's all tragic and stupid which seems to be the theme of news lately.
In the words of our Defense Secretary (who I can't believe I'm quoting because I think he is a performative cuck) "eff around and find out." Lots of good info has been shared here, but for me at the end of the day root cause is the only reason for a result.
In my mind the root cause here is that we abandoned enforcement of our legal immigration process, (OpEd: as a means of creating a political rift, to distract us as a society from the fact that the middle 50% population of this country is being outright robbed of their ability to live a comfortable life) and this woman is now going to be a martyr or an example of swift justice depending on your view of our current world forever or at least until the next (in)volunteer steps up to replace her memory.
Well said on all counts.
I'll say this: I saw a woman who wanted to identify with and participate in the kinds of protests that were lionized in her formative years but didn't want to accept the consequences of her actions. The people sitting in the front of busses, at the whites-only lunch counters, drinking from the wrong fountains, etc...those people accepted their consequences and THAT is what fostered support for their cause.
These new protesters want to play the music but they don't want to dance, to FA without FO. Once this woman realized there would be *gasp* REPERCUSSIONS FOR IMPEDING LAW ENFORCEMENT AND RESISTING ARREST she tried to peace out. Unfortunately for her and her family, that peace is permanent.
I can say a lot about the general attitude of law enforcement as well, they aren't guiltless here either. But (I hate to say it) I think this shoot was justified based on the totality of the circumstances. I wish LE had shown more restraint and exercised more de-escalation skills, but frankly they had a hysterical woman driving a 5000 pound vehicle erratically and not following instructions.
I am friends with a woman who protects at abortion clinics. She's been arrested numerous times, and was sitting in federal prison when Trump was elected. He pardoned her as one of his first actions in office. Now she's protesting the heavy handed ICE activities, primarily because legitimate asylum seekers (in this case primarily Iranian Christians in her personal circles) are being threatened with deportation. And you know what she's not doing? Resisting arrest and fighting law enforcement. I have 100% confidence that she won't end up dead behind the wheel of a car because she tried to escape the consequences of her actions, because she's a freaking adult who has counted the cost of doing what is right.
39 miles for eight grand. That's nearly as bad as a Chinese whitebox "made in america" e-bike with a 360lb ballast on it.
At least you can still pedal the e-bike.
RAD
Yes, but not far and not fast, they are very heavy.
Are you talking about the FATTEST vice president in all the LAND
What's wild is a typical e-bike can get 70 plus miles on a charge... Sure a motorcyle is heavier and goes somewhat faster but you'd think they'd figure out how to get more range out of the things.
39 miles range? GTFOOH!! What idiot thought that would sell? I’ll be riding my road bicycle farther than that later this week.
39mi range almost makes sense if you're doing a short out and back from the trailhead but I literally couldn't commute to work and back on a single charge.
except when its 45F outside that range probably drops to 23 miles. Ugh.
at that point you may as well ride a battery powered suitcase. At least that is luggable
At least when the battery is depleted it can't ignite. Or can it?
only if you pay for the $5k "non self destruct" option.
Comrade, you will ride to work and enjoy the walk back.
Da, the health benefits of our glorious EV future just as our leaders intended!
In Soviet Union, EV motorcycle rides you!
It’s got wheels so you can push it!
And when your Tesla has no power, the donkeys can pull it!
Charger Six pack? If the DOHC twin-turbo straight six with direct injection was made by Toyota (ok Toyota a decade ago not the Toyota making the V6TT today) I could be led to believe the engine was not a long-term liability risk. Someone needs to come up with a 392 swap kit.
Yeah: Stellantis.
Even better than a twin-turbo Stellantis for $55K is a twin-turbo Stellantis for $55K with a voided warranty.
If it is the book I think it is, I bought a copy when it originally came out in the late 90s but ended up losing it when I lent it to someone and they never returned it. I bought another copy exactly 10 years ago for $45--such a deal!--looking forward to this discussion.
The 1995 Honda Accord Haynes Manual? I never owned the car, so I had no reason to buy the book.
I can't remember who wrote the manual for my '86 GTI, but it was useless quite often. You would be vexed on, say, how to take the dash apart, and all the manual would say is Step 1: Remove dash
That's why I've secured the official Factory Service Manual for my cars. The Haynes manual on my '01 Taurus was okay, but the diagrams are way more complete in the factory manuals, with a smaller number of "WAIT: HOW DID THEY CASUALLY REMOVE THESE INSCRUTABLE PIECES OF PLASTIC THAT I ASSUME ARE BLOCKING MY ACCESS TO THE BOLT REFERENCED IN STEP 7???"
My experience (as a strictly amateur mechanic) is that there is nearly always a point at which I wonder why they didn't just say "take the engine out first."
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
There are no car servicing tips or techniques in the book I’m thinking of.
The greatest lie the devil ever told is "Installation is reverse of removal".
I'm excited to see what the book is. I thought I was paying attention in the 1990s, but apparently not because that Accord photo gives me no idea what the book will be.
Speaking of Jaguar and Lexus, after eleven RWD winters in a pair of SC 400s I may finally bow to sanity. Looking at a Jaguar X-Type 3.0 AWD to traverse the Toronto tundra. I dismissed these when new, but their Ford underpinnings are now a positive. However, all my previous experience with Jaguars has ended in tears.
The good news: its a Ford contour
The bad news: it will still end in tears
What about a lifted Nissan GT-R?
If that's too exotic, my friend imported a '00 Nissan Elgrand 4WD to be his snow/adventure rig. https://www.beforward.jp/stocklist/make=3/model=390/drive_type=4wheel%20drive/view_cnt=25/page=1/from_stocklist=1/kmode=and/
It uses its own chassis, but has the Nissan Pathfinder's 4WD drivetrain. It's even got this sick watts linkage under it!
holy shit that website is too good
i can get a suzuki carry shipped to vancouver for 2600cad
its too affordable
All in, with the new tarrifs and other wackiness US Customs inflicted on him last minute, he bought a 25 year old mini van with 36,000 kilometers on it, and put 75 profile all terrain tires on it, for about $6,500 USD. All it needs is some suspension de squeaking. Runs like a top. But you're taking a big risk in committing to the thing based on a handful of low quality pictures.
That website is dangerous, I need to somehow rig a breathalyzer to my computers and iPad so I don’t accidentally buy something after I’ve had a few.
The Japanese really did keep most of the good stuff for themselves.
payback for the nukes i guess
Where does that leave our payback for Pearl Harbor?
a few thousand feet over hiroshima and nagasaki
The deals they post on their IG story are nuts
imagine impulse buying a car from japan
ive thought about getting an identical early jdm miata in red then driving it around to my buddies to check out then hiding it at home while i drive my regular one and then gaslight them into thinking ive only ever had the one lhd miata
"imagine impulse buying a car from japan" I've come close hahah
And that sort of gaslighting is hilarious and you should do it
Here’s the Miata I want. It’s only 8 feet long. https://www.carbonmiata.com/shop/the-mini-miata-project-2527?category=354#attr=6665,6677
My subdivision has private roads so I could have some fun with this.
this makes me okay with electric miatas if its this one
If you can read Japanese you can look at all the sweet JDM machines they sell there used on kakaku.com at ridiculous prices.
i dont see an option to ship it somewhere or is it just for buying within japan itself
It's just buying from within Japan. It's a good site for daydreaming.
A Civic Si with the standard LSD and winter tires is an extremely competent winter weather daily.
this is what i tell people when they ask if a miata can handle the winter
not entirely sure why people think its incapable of doing so
The engineering student neighbor kid dailies an NB Miata with an LSD on cheap winters and loves it.
I had a few chats with his parents that an NB + LSD + proper tires + competent driver, in my opinion, is far better than an idiot in a modern CUV on bald all seasons, but they're still questioning my judgement for encouraging him to buy an engine-less E36 shell helping push it into their garage.
youre a great neighbor for doing that
miatas are great in the winter (ive done it for nearly a decade) and an e36 project car is catnip for an engineering student
I drove a '94 Miata in Minneapolis year round for 10 years with no snow tires (because I'm stubborn and cheap). I was sideways half the time in the winter and loved every minute of it. Yee-haw!
As long as you don't high center it, yeah. Still, it's hard for even 185 snows to dig in and take a bite under only 2200#.
i had 175s on my car but never enough snow to justify it lol
its been too warm (not that im complaining)
Agreed. My favorite winter daily's to date have been a Mustang and a rwd 300S on winter tires. Deeper snow getting out of my sub was never an issue with a bit of momentum. Hell, I used to park the 300S in snow drifts for a laugh and it would bite and dig itself out. I will take the balance and control any day over my half ton 4x4 truck.
“…I may finally bow to sanity. Looking at a Jaguar X-Type…”
I have a lot of respect for someone who thinks a 20 something year old Jaguar is a nod to sanity. Hats off to you, and god speed
The rest of my fleet is from the last century, 59-99.
Does that mean a Bill and Myra era Cadillac is out of the question? A crusty old DeVille could be the inspiration for another chapter in their saga.
Oh I have Cadillacs but try to keep them out of the salt. A new Bill story in the works, Eldorados, murder and Hollywood. Set in 1989 and 1966.
If there was an sanity in the entertainment business, your stories would be a movie or series.
Thank you! I have been writing on the subway everyday trying to beat this one into shape, it’s rather long, novella length. Looking forward to sharing with everyone.
what have you got from 59?
Cadillac series 62 convertible
HELL YEAH
its so peak
You are the living proof of my ACF edict: All the best cars have already been made.
In fairness, it's a 20+ something year old Ford Contour with leather.
Update on dead one-year old Toyota battery. Dealer tried telling me driving the car once a week (200 miles) was not enough and I should have it on a trickle charger. I called BS, got new battery and told not to darken their door ever again.
I’ve had this happen with two Jeeps. If the car doesn’t have a parasitic drain the dealer should replace it under warranty (if it is under the bumper to bumper).
That’s why I refuse to read Yahoo Autos
https://autos.yahoo.com/fastest-thing-americas-freeways-full-151223453.html
It's still true!
Ironically, just a couple of weeks ago I saw a real work truck with a real work trailer behind it, pulled over by a cop on the central N-S road in my town. (Though to be fair, I can only assume that it was for some other infraction than speeding, because you'd have to be a true moron to drive a trailer at more than a couple over on that twisty two-lane.)
>The American Skyline starts to roar
YOU TAKE THAT BACK. ಠ_ಠ
╰(°▽°)╯ Fuck yes. ASCII art!
(ಠ_ಠ)>⌐■-■
(⌐■-■)
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) My Lenny.
No.
Stop this.
I'm serious.
Definitely don't do any more.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Dear god the dorks are out in force tonight
¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
Dear Jack:
"[A] building that has been irresponsibly named after a compulsive womanizer and congenital liar with ties to organized crime and an insanely haphazard policy of military interventionism south of our border..." is a very good harpooning of JFK; but you left a couple of things out!
JFK was addicted to painkillers and amphetamines. And, his health was in a decline. Ages ago, I took note of an academic paper (but I did not read the paper itself) wherein a specialist doctor stated that, in his expert opinion, JFK might not have lived through a second term, his medical conditions were closing in that rapidly.
BTW2: JFK's Wedding Present (I joke) to his wife Jacqueline was an incurable drug-resistant Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD). Which likely led to the death of pre-born Patrick in utero.
BTW3: JFK was not an intellectual, and at best a middlebrow, culturally speaking. He had to be told what instrument Pablo Casals played. Upon learning that his staff had booked him for a meet-and-greet with a Soviet Ballet Company, he spluttered, "I don't want to shake hands with any 'fairies.'" Meaning, all male ballet dancers must be gay.
So, I say, Kill Hitler, not Save JFK.
sj
When Rudolph Nureyev danced on the Ed Sullivan Show, my mom took one look at his rather prominent codpiece and said, "That's disgusting." My father turned to her and said, "What do you want him to do, cut it off?"
One response could have been, "No, just put some ice on it!"
Of course, JFK was no prince, but LBJ was even worse.
I think that Roger Stone is telling the truth when he claims that (rightly or wrongly) Richard Nixon believed that LBJ had directed JFK's murder.
That Nixon believed any one thing does not make it true. But, obviously, both US political parties face an all-consuming Crisis of Legitimacy.
Hey, Donnie Baby! I thought you we going to release EVERYTHING about JFK's murder. Hunh?
BTW, et a-propos de rien: Aristotle Onassis, in the last months of his life, confessed to an old girlfriend that he had paid for Robert Kennedy's death.
RFK had had a sexual entanglement with Jackie Kennedy, post Dealey Plaza.
RFK obviously thought that that conferred some special status upon him, because when it got back to him that Onassis wanted to marry Jackie, RFK said that the would happen only over RFK's dead body.
That got back to Onassis, who quietly murmured, "Works for me!"
LEGAL NOTICE:
It was in the reign of George II that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now; and do not the Sunday papers and the courts of law supply us every week with more novel and interesting slander?
Thank you, Mr. Thackeray!
My man, everybody who was even remotely aware of what was going on in DC knew that LBJ was heavily involved if not the chief architect of JFK's murder. Johnson always lusted for more power but he knew he couldn't ever win the office straight up.
As for Trump releasing everything, it should be abundantly clear at this point Trump is unwilling to do any serious battle with the sort of people who insist on keeping the intelligence "community's" secrets buried. Might have something to do with the rather peculiar security lapses that resulted in a head tilt causing a bullet to hit his ear instead of his eye socket.
I'm not so sure about the narrative that RFK made romantic moves on Jackie.
Johnson certainly tried a time or two, though. Which is exactly what you'd expect when dealing with a genuine sociopath.
Theyll kill him
JFK had many flaws. His penchant for banging anything that would stand still long enough was legendary and ultimately what got him killed. J Edgar sent a couple of goons into his room right before the convention to "warn" him about "adverse intelligence", namely to tell him that Hoover knew who he was banging but with Hoover it would all stay hush hush. The other part of that deal was Lyndon as VP.
Lyndon was more of a horndog than JFK and indeed it was Lyndon's right hand man Bobby Baker who was running a brothel that catered to Washington's powerful and elite...with, I'm sure, the full knowledge of LBJ's neighbor. J. Edgar.
Kennedy's faults as a man being plentiful. as president he stopped the madness of the deep state who was baying for preemptive nuclear strikes against the Soviets. He actually wanted to bring the already deeply out of control "military industrial complex" Ike warned us about to heel.
After seeing what they wanted to do and how easily they lied and set up traps you'd have thought he would be suspicious of his deeply corrupt VP (that everybody hated) insisting he come to Dallas and drive around in a convertible on a route that was changed last minute. Alas he wasn't and history happened as it did.
JFK was no saint. But he at least tried to do the right thing in the big office sometimes. And his instincts weren't all elitist garbage, a byproduct of being on the outside of the elitist circles early on even as he was among them.
he was gonna get usv outta vietnam
This reefer man agrees with the author’s assessment of what a “HeavyDuty” truck is, my f-150 is light duty, not commercial grade in any sense of the word, the shop trucks in our fleet, are 3/4 ton pickups, we have had all three makes, we plowed snow with them, but they didn’t see real commercial duty like our class 8 fleet does. Over the last thirty years I have watched the motoring press degrade from genuinely talented writers to people who couldn’t write an original thought, and pass it off as though they wrote it.
On a different line of thought, most people buying 3/4 and one ton trucks don’t need anything more than a half ton pickup truck, today’s half ton trucks can boast a payload capacity of 2500 lbs and have tow ratings over ten thousand pounds, I remember 1978 ford f-250’s that at best were 1500# payload and six thousand pounds of tow…
But campers and snow mobile trailers have gotten significantly heavier over the years, if you tow a lot and often, you probably need at least that light duty 3/4 ton Ram….
Careful, lol, we got into this a while back and everyone with an F150 or 1500 came out to defend how much their truck tows and it has no problem pulling their trailer/RV or whatever. No one wants to admit their built Ford tough V6 F150 is for commuting, even though about 95% of them are only for commuting.
I have a 2015 max tow, I think something like 11,300 tow, 1729 payload, and tow 8500# travel trailer, if I were going to leave the state, I would upgrade to a ¾ ton, but sadly you are right, 80% of the mileage is to and from work, and for my use case, the ¾ ton didn’t work, now that I am retired, maybe I could justify it.
The beautiful thing about the inline-4 turbo Silverado as opposed to the EcoBoost F-150 is that you don't need to admit you use it for commuting and image enhancement; the engine choice does that for you.
Savage.
Apparently the only thing harder to sell than the 4 cylinder Silverado is the Silverado EV. Anecdotal from the dealer where I bought my Corvette.
Fun story that I only now remembered: I remain in a Taurus SHO group on FB despite getting out of mine a few years back, and someone posted about buying a 4-cyl Silverado and got dragged pretty hard. Talking about towing capacity when showing a picture of his truck that included his whole garage and driveway, but no trailer, came off as particularly defensive....
I've used my mom's leased TurboRados to tow my old E36 on an open trailer on multiple occasions, and most recently towed an M38 Jeep home for a buddy. The jeep was lighter than my bmw but is literally a square sticking up over the truck's cab. Of course, neither load is particularly challenging, but I've never been wanting for more power and the fuel economy was considerably better than the Hemi Ram I once had towing a similar load. Still would rather own an out of warranty Hemi than a 2.7T out of warranty though.
😂🤣🤣
I will say our 2010 Ford F-350 V8 (regular cab with utility box) at Penske Truck Leasing did not have the power to move an empty 26' International box truck with the parking brake on. It left some really nice rubber on the polished concrete floor, though!
It didn't have trouble keeping the plow on the front all winter, nor pulling the occasional empty class 8 semi + trailer across the parking lot.
What's strange to me, having looked up exactly which engine that F-350 had, is that I now daily drive a V8 vehicle with a 7500 lb GVWR that has 100 more HP and 80 more lb*ft than that ancient Triton. At the time, I couldn't believe how powerful that F-350 felt. And the fuel economy! We averaged about 8.5 mpg around town, per the gauge display. Makes my premium-gassed 13.5 mpg feel like a SENTRA FOUR BANGER to a LEXUS LF-A V10 you Nissan-hating jerk, Baruth!
5.4, or 6.8?
The 5.4L V8. The only V10 I'd seen at the time was one of our mechanic's late 90s/early 00s F-250, with prominent V10 badging. He hated it.
The only people who hated the Triton V10 were the people who owned them and the people who fixed them.
That being said, it was a bitch move not to put it in the Town Car.
This kind of reminds me of the Ford super chief concept vehicle that used the v10.
Why the V10 hate? To be fair, they can't pass a gas station without stopping in for a fill up, but they regularly go 500,000 miles or more in hotel shuttle duty. One of my company trucks is a 2010 F350 with the V10, 246,000 miles and it just keeps going and going. Literally the only engine related work done on it is oil and fluid changes, filters and replacing a stuck evap valve. I have ten spark plugs sitting in the shop, one day we will get around to changing those, more out of "the current plugs have some insane six figure mileage on them, should probably change them just because" than the fact that its showing any signs of needing them.
While what you said about Kurono may be true, I still can’t believe how beautiful that 2024 Anniversary Reiwa looks. Looking forward to the book reveal.
“Idiot Spends Patek Philippe Money On Old Toyota" is my favorite show.
Who spent $80k on an old Toyota? What Patek are we talking about. And unless one or two of you all have serious access, likely none of us are getting these at list at an AD.
I turned down Nautiluses at twelve grand all day when I was in the dope game.
I *do* have a bit of a relationship with an AD now, but it's the kind of relationship where my wife has to buy three Perpetual Calendars before I can have a Nautilus at retail.
Yes, that was the money shift of self deprecation. Sensational.
As the man who's producing "Moron spends Mint Green Rolex Datejust 41 money on an old Dakota," I anxiously await every episode!
" In the spring of 1990,...Twenty-five years later..."
Doesn't 1,990 + 25 = 2015?
Oh, that's DEPRESSING
That's okay, I've started having issues retrieving proper nouns. I can remember a song or book title, but not the author.
"Hemi or no Hemi, these Chargers are going to sell."
I'll disagree with our host here.
In 2018 I bought a new Kia Stinger GT for under $40k. Plenty of hype in those early days showed tuning them to 450+rwhp for not much effort and then out-dragging muscle cars and Euro cars.
However, I did not do that. I sold the Kia in 2022 and bought a $60K Charger 392 Widebody that dynos out around 430rwhp. As we've seen with EVs "it is very quick" doesn't always mean enough. And now the Stinger no longer exists at all.
Maybe there is an untapped population that wants a Dodge Charger to be a Nissan Skyline, but I have doubts.
As a knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, cousin-marrying, hairy chested toxic cisgender male from Flyover, USA, I concur. People in the sticks buy Chargers and Challengers. They don't buy them to boast about a straight 6, turbo or not. They buy them for that righteous and God-fearing hemi-that-isn't-a-hemi "HEMI" mill.
Love me a 6.2. 6.4's even better.
Exactly, objective speed is only part of the issue.
Styling and sound/rumble/vibes are all key components for a muscle car if they weren’t then a Tesla could cover the bases given its acceleration. In fact objectively an ev charger is really quick
The Stinger was great on paper but I never met anyone who loved theirs. And the optics of owning a Kia are different, not saying better or worse, than the optics of owning a Charger.
I could see swapping my 300C for a two-door Six Pack at some point. I'd rather have a 392 but I'm not gonna kid myself that it will be as fast as the Hurricane.
"The Stinger was great on paper but I never met anyone who loved theirs."
I'd agree. However, I expect I'd feel the same about the Six Pack. To answer your question in the post, I'd buy the Ford.
You can get the Ford with a manual transmission, and it would be a better track car for sure... but for Main Street on Saturday night, I think it has to be the Charger every time.
I don't think the prior gen Challenger can be beat for that scenario.
As a cruiser I think that's where the Hurricane's aural difference is going to cut the deepest.
It won't rumble correctly, but a little BOV noise goes a long way. The culture knows and respects that sound from the diesel side of things.
No BOV; backsurge and flutter sound WAY COOLER
I dont think ive been more underwhelmed with a car than the mustang. Granted, i havent given it sufficient highway time to be stupid in it. Looks great, sounds great
You can say worse. It's okay. I drove one of the 3.8 V6 "GT2" or whatever top trim awd stinger it was. Miles ahead of the godawful 4 cylinder ones, but $60(!) Fn k. With the existence of Genesis, it never had a prayer.
I think the problem was that
* the Stinger had a piece of shit interior to go with the Lexus price tag;
* the Genesis G70 looks like My First Genny and it wouldn't be respectable on the streets if it had a six-liter V-12.
Yep. Interior is straight out of a 20k Kia. The 4 banger open diff cars were embarrassing.
I thought my base GT was acceptable at 2018 pricing but it wasn't fun or rowdy enough to be a performance/muscle car replacement and it also wasn't quiet or fancy enough to be a premium car.
Someone online called it a RWD Grand Prix GTP once and I thought that was pretty accurate.
The problem was it was a Kia.
Maybe not as fast, but potentially a lot more long lived. I'm not sure Stellantis can make a reliable boosted V6 with lots of horses that won't blow its own brains out after 70,000 miles.
I'm hoping that the intended purpose of the Hurricane -- trucks -- will have incentivized Stellantis to make it durable, although God knows that wasn't the case with the GM L87
Given that new Tundras are still spinning bearings I'm not sure anyone knows how to do durable anymore.
A lot of those problems seem to be being traced back to the garbage 8 and 16 weight oils being put in all those motors.
But, yeah, they aren't doing durable anymore....
GM's favorite pastime is figuring out how to shave a nickel out of the cost of a $85,000 truck. For all the (somewhat deserved) hate piled onto Stellantis, they don't seem to be obsessed with wringing the last penny out of every vehicle. So there is at least hope its a durable engine.
I'm not so sure about that. There's a lot of theories on the interwebs from people who don't know much about how lubrication works who blame that, but Toyota said it was debris left over from manufacturing and that they had it whipped...and yet it continues.
GM's answer was heavier weight oil, but that seems to be a pretty transparent attempt to just get the engines past the warranty period where I'm certain they will tell you to go fornicate yourself.
Lake Speed Jr. on Youtube has done a series of videos on the oil weight issue that are quite good and explain a lot of the nuance involved in oil weight recommendation.
In general what I'm hearing from friends who turn wrenches is that across the board the forced induction stuff is an order of magnitude more sensitive to maintenance going out into a population that the manufacturers are doing their best to convince that they are nearly maintenance free.
"The manufactuer says 10,000 mile oil changes!"
Yeah. Do you see the two asterisks beside that? Did you reference what that means? Did you know that your habit of operating the engine for 10 minutes before shutting it off for extended periods multiple times a day or your gravel road in the country qualify as severe service for the motor and thus require oil changes at half that interval?
"But I use synthetic oil!"
No, you use a "synthetic blend" because only a small handful of boutique makers actually use a group IV base stock.
*blank stare*
"It has lifetime fluid in the transmission!"
That means "as long as the warranty lasts" and not a millisecond more, and for the same reasons YOU don't have lifetime fluid inside you.
If you're a used car buyer...and I see myself being one for some time to come...make and model will have some relevance but good data on how the vehicle is maintained is even more valuable than before.
Oh they are. Take it from a guy who works for a supplier with friends at other suppliers and at STLA directly hahah
As soon as I saw the Hilton story a few days back I knew Hilton Corporate would drop them. That happened almost as soon as it hit the internet, lol. Someone at Hilton didn’t even ask permission from the C Suite (just guessing, I don’t really know), they just cancelled that licensing agreement as fast as they could.
Has anyone heard the names of the owners of the former Hilton family brand hotel in Minneapolis? Megyn Kelly read them off and couldn’t pronounce them, which, if you have been to a hotel lately, shouldn’t surprise anyone.
I’m also guessing that the Federal government has some sort of contract with Hilton?
There are government rates but it would be interesting if a contract had been executed for a room block. Probably not, but if there was a contract Trump may own that hotel shortly.
I have a fair bit of inside knowledge on how these hotels work, as my ex-girlfriend has been working in the hotel industry for years, mainly for Hilton corporate, and also for private owners of Hilton-branded hotels.
Hilton is very, very, very protective of their brand name and image. They run an extremely tight ship, there are multiple ways that a hotel can quickly lose its Hilton association, many of which are related to building upkeep and maintenance, but also hotel staff. Staff at your Hilton hotel are shitty to the customers and don't do their jobs? There will quickly be a Hilton rep standing in the lobby telling the general manager to get their shit together, NOW, or else.
Rooms not kept up to standard? A few warnings will be given, and if a remod plan isn't presented by the given deadline, you are going to be calling LaQuinta asking if they have any available franchises.
Bottom line, Hilton doesn't fuck around. And yes, they have a metric fuck-ton of federal room contracts with various agencies. So if some Hilton hotel owner wants to try and be cute, well, we saw what happens. That Minneapolis Hilton owner is probably on the phone right now with Marriott, IHG or Wyndam trying to secure another franchise. Though there is a decent chance those three will tell the guy to pound sand, they aren't going to want the bad press either. It may end up being the country's fanciest Motel 6.
Neal