Not ready for prime time.

So all these folks pushing for electric cars: You know, Coal powered cars.

I actually took the time to look at electric cars: Not the expensive Teslas, but the Leafs and the Bolts and the Mitsubishi IMiEV (I tried to get some specs on the Fords, but their web pages either won’t load or go to an error page…I finally gave up, so I can’t comment on them).

I thought , Hey, much (90+%) of the time we go less than a hundred miles in a day, total, so why not check them out? Might save us a bit of cash, fuel wise, and we’d still have the other car for those longer trips……And the truck to carry anything heavy, long or large.

Ultimately, it comes to this: One can get a small (very small) car for about $30,000 after incentives….government rebates, power company rebates, etc. About $10K off the actual price. One with not a whole lot of features…(the features are available, but at a higher cost…like $5-$7 K more). Less room than most cars, even less cargo capacity. Performance that is not bad, but not great. Of course, the Bolt has a backup camera washer jet that is kinda cool, but not enough to offset the other negatives….

Charge time is more than overnight for most cars from full to empty; at least 6 hours for a half full battery, which only gives you about 100 miles range, tops.

So one gets a smaller car, with less performance, long refuel times, at a cost that is about 25% higher than an equivalent (or even nicer) gasoline fueled car….And a gas or diesel car can be refueled to full 250+ mile range in 10 minutes or so…

And in addition to that inconvenience, one must drive the car for about 45,000 miles to make up the difference in cost….yep, 45,000 miles to break even cost wise. And that isn’t figuring any resale value (which seems to be much less for full electric cars). And that isn’t counting the cost of the home charger and installation, either, nor the cost of the actual electricity to charge the car.

So:

More money, less car, less range, less convenience, for no monetary savings for at least 4 years for the average person (12K miles per year)…Not counting depreciation and resale losses.

Why should we buy these cars the “green” folks want us to? Less (much less), for more money?

And they are still coal powered cars! Somehow their CO2 savings calculations never take that into account. most of your electrical power still comes from burning a hydrocarbon of some kind….

Thinking out loud here:

Now, up front, I gotta say that I know, and have known, a lot of cops who were and/or are good people, decent police officers and good examples of what a cop should be. This is not directed towards them nor those who are like them…..although, they do allow the bad ones to wear the same uniforms, so I can’t tell them apart…….And in most incidents, I have been inclined to give cops the benefit of the doubt when it comes to second guessing their actions….

But……

What would happen, if each time a cop shot an innocent……and got away with it…..I’m not meaning where there is any way to give the cop the benefit of the doubt, but like the last two incidences I posted where a cop shot a man for doing nothing….where the cops were so concerned about their safety that they couldn’t use a reasonable set of tactics to secure the person ….

What if….?

What if people of the family of the person slain by the cops were to exact revenge?….Say my brother is shot in a similar incident…… Say he was the dude on the porch in the last SWATting incident….and say the cop(s) get clean away with it in a hearing because they claim it was a “furtive movement” or  “appeared to reach for the waist” or somesuch….
And then, say, I were to resolve the issue by revenging my brother’s death (Not saying I would, and not suggesting that people should either) …from up close on the street, or from 600 or more yards away. (I have the skills for either method of revenge, and enough ways to probably prevent incarceration, should it come to that….as do many of my acquaintances).
If enough of us started doing that: taking cops who killed innocents from the gene pool entirely or at least out of circulation…………would the cops start thinking twice if they got got put in prison by the courts or if the rest of us started taking them out? (In the olden days, apparently,  one could hire such work out, if one knew the right people….) Would the cops begin spending a few moments deciding to actually do their jobs rather than shoot first so that all cops get to “go home safe” at night? (even though being a cop isn’t in the top 20 of dangerous professions, BTW….and “Going Home Safe” isn’t a part of their job description)You really should read the article at that link. Or would these folks who took the job as a cop because they thought it would be easy and would give them power over their fellow citizens find another profession?

Seriously: how do we ENcourage good behavior and DIScourage the referenced bad behavior…..
Wwhat happened to cops I knew when I was growing up that weren’t so pants pissing afraid of everyone that they just shot people instead of, you know, doing their jobs?? Why aren’t those “GOOD” cops doing something to get these deadly dangerous cops out of their departments?

If cops get to shoot people because they are afraid of them, next time a cop makes an intimidating or threatening movement near me, do I get to shoot him or her preemptively?

But it’s a DRY cold…

-10 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale tonight. (For you folks whose countries have never put a man on the moon or sent an interstellar probe beyond Saturn, that is -23 C)

Which is pretty much plain old “fucking cold” no matter what you measure it in. Kelvins or Rankines or Delisles or whatever.
Even Harold the outdoor cat wants to come in when it gets that cold. He’s ensconced happily in the barn right now in a warm box out of the wind.

Gotta feel sorry for the deer and the other denizens of the forest when it gets that cold. Plus real wind for even more chill tonight

Don’t wanna confuse WEATHER with CLIMATE (I’ve seen it colder here in winter, and much warmer too), but I wants me some Glowball Warming right now

Pretty much don’t need a trial here, do we?

That guy who the cops shot in Wichita? You know, the one who got “SWATTED”?

HERE is the video.

Notice how far away the cops were from the suspect. If (and it was, at that point, an IF) the dude had had a handgun in his waistband, he wasn’t much of threat to cops that far away and behind the cover of vehicles. I dislike second guessing cops, but here, it is obvious. I’ll call it a really bad shoot. No matter what the circumstances leading up to it, this was a bad thing.

Notice how clearly lit the scene was. (yes, that was sarcasm)

Notice the “movement”.

I can, now that I have the video, call it murder.

Remember, these folks are “professionals”…..”Trained to handle firearms”. (Yes, that was also sarcasm)….“The only ones that should be allowed to have guns” and all that.

I am beginning now to see why so many cops were against the mandatory BodyCams.

Hows that Multiculturalism and immigration working out there for ya?

Sweden Government police say “women should not go out after dark, never go out alone, or should use taxis”.

Seems that since all those Middle Eastern “children” (male) immigrants are kinda changing the society in Sweden….

And the police, of course, say Women have to change their ways rather than the immigrants. Because MultiCulturalism.

Were I living there, I’d start buying rope and looking for sturdy lampposts for some political attention…..And I’d be making a list of each government official, elected or not, who approved the invasion of my country. And, of course, investing in rope suppliers.

Forgive my ignorance, but…

Can’t the Phone Companies do something about the increasing use of spoofed phone numbers? Especially in “SWAT”ting cases like the one I wrote about 2 posts below this?

I mean, it is bad enough that they allow “Suzy from Credit Card Services” to spoof their telephone number…no one gets hurt, only annoyed. But “SWAT”ting and other crimes like this should lead to jail time. Murder charges if someone killed…There should be penalties for this behavior.

But people have been injured and killed by cops that thought they were arriving on the scene of a murder, or a hostage situation (which doesn’t excuse the injuries or shootings, IMO, but does lead to some leniency due to the situation). The telephone lines used, be they land lines or cell lines, have specific connections that should not be untrackable. The Phone Companies SHOULD be able to fix this.

Why don’t they?

Perhaps the NSA needs to step in and tell us who is responsible….

(I’d bet I could put together a lynch mob for the telemarketers though….if I cared to….)

Right to a speedy trial???

Or is the Justice Department simply hoping that we, as a country, will forget? That we aren’t watching?

Awan Brothers trial date, delayed twice, now simply GONE from calendar…..

Were I a suspicious person, and an untrusting soul, I’d have to wonder if, having had access to MANY senators sensetive emails due to their control of the Email servers….DO they have enough dirt on some of those Senators to be able to blackmail their way out of a trial????

We all know that that would never happen, right? All those DNC and RNC folks are as clean as the driven snow and all that…..right?