Woman Shocked She Can't Get A Business Loan After Borrowing $500,000 To Learn Acupuncture​

The most fundamental shift we will see over the next few decades is a shift back to individual liberty married to personal responsibility. I know, I know, it can't be done, but it will be. 

Dirty Tesla: "15 Pounds" Of Dirt Trapped In Model 3 Continues To Reveal Stunning Design Flaw

How long before these body panels begin to rot out?

And what other problems await? Oh!

Meanwhile, my $6,500 Yamaha XSR 900, used, with 950 miles, continues to over-deliver. I did pay to have the ECU flashed which fixed several minor annoyances and opened the bike to its full 165 mph top speed. Other than that, the Farkles I've added have been mostly for my convenience (bar risers, Givi rack, Barkbuster handguards, Double Take mirrors to replace the horrible aftermarket bar end mirrors, Corbin Gunfighter, and lady seat, FJR1300 footpegs, radiator screen, JW Speaker Adaptive LED headlight. 

Plus, I could buy 9 Yamaha XSR 900s at a price above for the price of one new Tesla 3 today, eight with all the added Farkles. 

Whatever the cost difference between gas and electricity, I will never catch the cost of a Tesla, and the Tesla driver will never catch the pure exhilaration of driving a 116 hp, 425 lb motorcycle. The only car which can do that is the Ariel Atom (it comes close but does not quite match the bike hp/weight/balance), not a Tesla. The Atom does this because the driver is in the elements just like the motorcycle rider. What the Atom cannot do is carve a turn since it cannot lean and carve. This lean/carve is what is so exhilarating when skiing, waterskiing, and motorcycle riding. There is an incurable separation with the world when one drives inside of the steel, rubber, and glass box that is the automobile. That does not exist on a motorcycle or in a car like the Atom. Ultimately, only the bike can carve a turn, and there is absolutely nothing like locking in a line around a fast corner and feeling the bike carve the line while you accelerate into the turn exit. This is magnified if you are good enough to get a tiny rear end wiggle as you reach the end of the rear tire traction. Beyond this lies the world of the Rossi, and demons, deadly demons!

The bike I bought is in the video below. 

Photos from the UnRally 2019 in the Alvord Desert, Oregon. If you haven't been to the Alford, or the Steen's Mountains which you can see in the background, you have not been beyond nowhere. Go. Now. Really.

UnRally 2019 Photos, Alvord Desert Or.

Forbes Demands a Manhattan Project to Discover a Magic Climate Energy Solution

We should probably push for Thorium projects and only allow other nations to use Thorium power as an energy generation source, but the Greens are agin it so ...

Which is it Greenies, is climate alarmism the end of the world, or not, it if is we need nukes, if not ... never mind!

Instapundit » Blog Archive » NANCY ROMMELMANN IN TABLET: Portlandization: It Can Happen to a Place Near You. When the crazies too…

"NANCY ROMMELMANN IN TABLET: Portlandization: It Can Happen to a Place Near You. When the crazies took over the city I loved, I knew it was time to get out:

“We’ve heard this resolution is mostly symbolic, we’ve heard this resolution will solve nothing,” Wheeler said, making what he was proposing sound not very sweeping at all, a show of earnestness on the part of the government to keep its people safe, and who could argue with that? And if the details of the resolution were not in place, maybe that was OK, you could craft it as you went, could apply it as needed to anything you deemed hateful, a prospect that seemed to alarm only a few people in the room, who may have sensed the resolution could be used on a whim, or as revenge, or to limit personal freedoms.

“Who is going to determine who these [hate] groups are?” one member of the public asked.

Mayor Wheeler responded, “This last testimony does not reflect anything in the resolution.” The resolution passed unanimously.

This invitation to shut up for the greater good might seem quaint, compared with the liberties being sacrificed elsewhere daily, the publishers who pulp books based on fictional characters not displaying subjective standards of cultural verisimilitude, The New York Times ceasing to run political cartoons lest someone take offense, the designer Carolina Herrera being called out for designing a gown with a floral pattern inspired by indigenous weavings. I get we live in an overheated environment where words and food and flowers can get you burned, and have myself been burned in Portland. Still, a city can develop a cast, a tenor, and when that tenor becomes law, you might have reservations about where the place is heading, might sense people taking undue pleasure in stoking their suspicions, might not think the environment one you want to spend any more of your life around. Did I mention I am moving back to New York?

At the end of June a colleague of mine, Andy Ngo, was beaten by a group of left-wing activists at a rally here. I say “left-wing activists” because they were said to have shown up in reaction to a protest staged by groups the city considers alt-right. At this point people in Portland march to aggress the “other” side, to goad others into fistfights, to use milkshakes as weapons, the latter a trend bizarrely receiving celebration, the former evergreen, violence seen by people on all sides as somehow necessary to the times.

The attack on Andy, who spent the night in the hospital, was instantly politicized. Michelle Malkin started a GoFundMe that in 17 hours raised more than $91,000. Laura Ingraham misinterpreted a tweet enough to make it seem a fact that the milkshake thrown on Andy contained cement. Those seen as progressive insinuated that Andy had provoked people into hitting him; that he was asking for it; some variation of pulling a Jussie Smollett. A friend who posted photos of one of Andy’s alleged attackers online messaged me that people were telling her to “call Laura Loomer. … I personally want to pack up my kids and dogs and leave my house for a week. I have a bad feeling about all this.”

Me too. Nothing comes out of the blue, and if you don’t think Portlandization can happen to a place near you, you have not been paying attention."

We moved out of Portland more than 20 years ago; it was clear the crazies had taken over, and the place was devolving into feral at a high rate of speed. That was then, this is now, and the city is a human sewer, filled with feral zombies druggies, mentally ill, and progressives still hanging on to the dream of the perfect progressive Utopia, which they do not equate with the reality of Portlandia am Sewer.

The city "leaders" want to add a new driving tax, to toll all of the cities roads in an attempt to reduce congestion, and solve the global warming fraud. But the fraud will self solve if you just stop paying any attention to the fraudsters, and ignore it. The congestion was created by the state and local governments demands that all urban areas be ringed with an Urban Growth Boundary and a near-total shift shunting road monies to transit, especially light rail, streetcar, tram, and other astronomically expensive and useless public transit modes. 

While the governments were structuring traffic gridlock, they were also engineering a social disaster by enacting policy after policy which drove out the reasonable and rational and attracted the feral, the dilettantes, and unproductive. The result is the city is full-on 85% progressive, with huge armies of "homeless" drug addicts and mentally ill committing unconscionable crimes both petty and violent at an incredible clip. Worse yet, the city has become the home base for the Democratic Parties replacement for the violent and militant KKK, Antifa. 

The politicians here have always been more venal than the average with a huge percentage of our local politicians having trouble with pedophilia, and other sexual crimes. How quaint. 

Antifa knows that the police will do nothing to stop their violent ways. The police will not even seriously investigate the violence, nor will the District Attorney prosecute. 

The videos you see of LA or San Francisco are copied verbatim here in Portland. 

Sad, the area, the region, the state, the Pacific Northwest are incredibly beautiful, but they have been ruined by the horrible people who call this area home.

Instapundit

My life is a weird amalgam of Seinfeld and According to Jim. I end up the fly on the wall perplexed by the dramedy. 

"SEINFELD’S 

30TH ANNIVERSARY: How It Revolutionized the Sitcom Genre.

If the show centered on characters, its chief subject was mores, or etiquette. Etiquette is a Sierra Nevada of comedy gold, and nobody else had staked much of a claim on it. Should a note making reference to the arrival of a baby employ an exclamation point? What is the minimum distance someone should maintain while engaging in conversation? Is it okay to sleep with the cleaning lady at work? Should you spare a square for your desperate neighbor in the adjoining bathroom stall? Can you re-gift a present? Seinfeldian misunderstandings are grounded in reality, not the contrived dumb-guy misconstructions of Friends’ Joey Tribbiani.

In an exchange related almost verbatim in episode ten of season five, one Seinfeld writer asked a Chinese postman if he knew where a nearby Chinese restaurant was, and the postman took this as a racial inference. But the writer didn’t think Chinese people knew where all the Chinese restaurants are, he thought letter-carriers knew. Such is the fractious nature of this city and its inexhaustible pool of umbrage. Seinfeldcaptured it beautifully, in the Talmudic spirit of tearing a situation apart from every angle, with such concision that it popularized lots of neologisms and phrases for its various embarrassments and predicaments. Close-talker! Double-dipper! Shrinkage!

Of course, Seinfeld was made in an era when left-leaning Democrats laughed at political correctness, and even warned of its dangers. Today, they embrace it fully to devour each other: ‘C’MON MAN’: Biden Criticized Over Use Of ‘Gendered’ Phrase.
​
Earlier: ‘Seinfeld:’ The Ultimate ‘Show About Nothing’ at 30."

"Tell Me We Haven't Blown It": Peter Fonda Reflects on 'Easy Rider' and Its Unanswered Question

... sadly the fools who did not, continue to propel the Boomer disaster in 2019. Sigh!

About that ex-British ambassador to the U.S.

Nicely put, sir. 

Let's You and Her Fight

Just like that!