Weekly Roundup: Fools Rush In Edition

Would Donald Trump have "run towards the gunfire" during that Florida school shooting? Maybe not if there were bald eagles involved. Here at Riverside Green, I think the official position on running into schools during gunfire is entirely dependent on whether or not our kids are in the school. If my son is in the school, I'm going in. If it's just David Hogg in there, feeding lines to his fellow student activists, I'm gonna pull a Broward County and work on my Candy Crush high score.

Meanwhile, look at what's happening to the social-media startup Vero. It's closing in on 3 million users, including your humble author, despite the fact that the Narrative has mobilized against it. We're hearing all about how its CEO supposedly mistreated workers overseas --- but has anybody ever taken any time to look through Facebook's overseas operations? What about the fact that Apple's "partner" in China has to string suicide nets around their production facility? The useful idiots at TIME are concern trolling about Vero hiring Russian programmers. Because Russians are bad, you know. They elected Trump. (They did not elect Mondale, even when they were asked to.) Has anybody ever looked through the demographic composition of Google's programmers, including their best people?

I think a lot of my progressive friends were more than happy to hand over control of the converged media and Democratic Party to a small group of wealthy bankers, financiers, and tech people, because they correctly surmised that they would get their agenda advanced more quickly than they would otherwise. Look at how quickly same-sex marriage went from political poison to the law of the land. You can't do that until you control both the horizontal and the vertical. Eventually, however, the bill comes due. Vero is outside the so-called Cathedral. So they're getting the full-court press from all sides, courtesy of a bought-and-paid-for mass media. Thirty years ago, it would have killed Vero where they stood. Two years ago, it almost got us President Side O' Beef. Now? Three million people, most of them younger than yours truly, have decided to ignore the headlines. The last bullet in the media gun will be to call Vero "racist", but that is the political equivalent of colistin. In 2014 it could kill anything. Now there's resistance.

Enough seriousness, let's talk about cars.

Brother Bark was singing Bye, bye, Miss American Pie at TTAC.

Speaking of TTAC --- After some discussion with site leadership, I'm dropping from three articles a week to one so the site can focus on its new writing talent and its new direction in the post-Derek era. I can't lie --- it makes me genuinely sad. With that said, it's probably for the best. TTAC is not what it was when Robert founded it, or when I rescued it from oblivion four and a half years ago. The only constant nowadays is change. With that said, I'm going to work hard to bring one great article every week to my remaining readers over there. This week's entry: offering advice to a man caught between two Buicks.

At R&T, I tackled the science behind triple-digit minivans and other freeway oddities.

Thanks, as always, for reading. Stay tuned, because this month I'll be debuting two new print outlets for my work that have nothing to do with automobiles. Something something when a door closes a window opens --- right?