Shut Up Iris

Now, I know that in the past I've been down on Ford, for not giving America their best products, GM for selling far too many pointless products and from all of that you may think that I don't buy American when comes to cars. You'd be wrong, asshole.

I love cars, and I've had tons of them. Here is a list of my cars, in order, that I can remember: Buick Somerset, Nissan Sentra GXE, Jaguar XJ6, Mazda 626, Porsche 944, Porsche 928, BMW 523i, BMW 635 CSI, BMW 735i,Jaguar XJS Classic Collection and Mercury Grand Marquis. The cars I had right now are the Jaguar XJS (v12 Coupe, for summer fun) and the Mercury Grand Marquis (work car/comfortable battering ram) I say had because I bought a new car, A 2008 Dodge Charger.

You can see that on my list are three American cars (the Nissan was built in Kentucky, and it sucked balls.) or four if you count that Mazda is owned by Ford. I've never shied away from American cars, I love them, when they make a good one which hardly ever happens. The Buick Somerset ran for 245,000 miles, the Nissan (as all Nissans do) sucked royally and the Mercury Grand Marquis was a giant living room on a soft, over comfortable suspension that rocked you gently to sleep as you plowed through an elementary school.

The Mercury Grand Marquis was starting to show it's fourteen years and as more and more parts fell off of it, I decided to buy a new car. That was six months ago, and that is when I began test driving new cars. I'll list the cars I test drove, that I can remember : Ford Taurus SHO, Ford Fusion, Buick Lucerne, BMW 325, BMW 535, Jaguar XF, Mazda 6i, Mazda 3, Chevrolet Impala and Dodge Charger. Mostly American Cars and here is what I learned:

The Ford Taurus SHO was far and away the best on that list, shocking. Of course is has a terrific new engine and the Ford Mondeo (see my earlier Ford post) AWD suspension. It also has everything. It is also HUGELY over priced for a four door sedan, as were the BMW's. The BMW's, sadly, were the same as every 80's and 90's BMW I have owned previously. They were superb handling with a quality interior but with regrettable styling, a huge price tag for no options and absolutely boring to drive. The Ford Fusion is garbage, my 94 Mercury Grand Marquis handled and accelerated better.

The Jaguar XF was beautiful, luxurious and balls to the wall fast, but started at $88,000.00. The Chevrolet Impala was bland and uninspired and my list quickly whittled to the Mazda 6 and 3 and the Dodge Charger.



The Mazda 3 was a laugh riot, it handled like an old Mini Cooper and was easy to grab by the scruff and throw around corners with wild abandon. Sadly it lacked room and comfort, which the Mazda 6i gladly stepped in to supply. Then something funny happened. I test drove my Dodge Charger, and fuck me, but Dodge has finally gotten back to making cars, apparently it only took bankruptcy and a collapsed auto market to convince them that it was time to build something that people could drive.



It was amazing to get into a car, made by a bankrupt company and all of the sudden discover they had made a gem. Honestly. First the Charger's styling is bold, but at the same time hearkens back to the old Chargers. No, not THAT one, good looking ones.



The new Charger is also rear wheel drive, you can get AWD, but rear wheel drive is what cars are mean to be. The Charger by far and away blew the Mazda 6i out of the water for handling, it also gives the Ford Taurus SHO and the BMW's a serious run for the money when it comes to performance and handling. The Charger also has all of the things you want in it, CD, ipod plug, power seats, some thing for bluetooth phones, uh, radio. It's comfortable with a capacious boot. It looks good drives good and is a bargain, I got mine for $10,000.00, that is like $28,000.00 less than the Taurus.



So there you have it, I come here not to bury Dodge, but to praise them, and to hope that their recent brush with bankruptcy and their bail out from FIAT will inspire a continued trend of frankly unexpected brilliance. The best thing is that the Chrysler 300 is practically the same car, so there TWO cars that Dodge/Chrysler did right.

Good job.

O.J. Simpson. The DNA said he was guilty but then his money, fame and the infamous 'Chewbacca Defense' got him off. That's what white America says anyhow, well that and some of black America and most of light brown and yellow America as well. Case closed.

Or was it?? Now according to the defense in the O.J. case the Los Angeles Police lost somewhere between ten millimeters and thirteen milliliters of the blood that O.J. gave in a sample to be tested against blood stains at Nicole Simpson's house, the crime scene. This was confirmed by the L.A. Crime Lab and further it was proved that only a few of the blood stains that 'proved' O.J. Simpson guilty were larger than half a milliliter, or 500 picoliters. That small of a sample was ample for a PCR DNA test and match, so say DNA experts in America. Keep that in mind as you read on.



Or is it?? Now, you may have heard about the Amanda Knox trial over in Italy, you know that country shaped like a boot that dangles out of Europe's groin. I'll recap, attractive girl A.)



Is brutally butchered by Some Italian black guy and/or Amanda Knox and her Italian douche bag boyfriend B.)



They rape, torture and murder her, allegedly. Now I have a few problems with this case and no it's not going to be a shrill guilty or not guilty diatribe. I wasn't there, I don't know who killed whom or why or who was in the bathroom with the mud-butt from a bad kebab (hint, it wasn't the Italian douche bag)I wasn't there, I have no opinion on who is actually guilty or not guilty. What I am concerned with is the American Reaction to the whole case.

Here in America, attractive , white teenage girl=incapable of committing a crime. Which is where Amanda Knox fits in.



So of course the Attorney General of Amanda's home state calls the trial and prosecution a sham and a mockery (a shamockery!) of justice, and her family calls 'DNA foul' and even Hillary Clinton is getting involved as poor Amanda Knox has been found guilty along with her alleged co-conspirators. Whatever, the jury has decided, I'm done with matter. However Amanda Knox's family and supporters aren't done with the matter.



Or are they?? No, they aren't. Here is their contention: the DNA evidence found on the apparent murder weapon that links the knife via blood DNA on the blade to Meredith Kerchner (the victim) and on the handle to Amanda Knox (the adorable defendant) is too small a sample to have yielded a DNA result. Oh and this knife was found at Italian douche bag boyfriends house. Case closed, too small a sample for DNA, right? WRONG!

How big was the sample you may ask? Well it was 500 picoliters. So we arrive at my point. 500 picoliters of blood is a large enough, reliable enough sample to charge a black man with murder, and would have been enough to convict if not for his money. YET it is total scandal that Italian police would use it as evidence against a white, moderately attractive piece of jail-bait like Amanda Knox.



For fucks sake America, can we at least try to be a little less hypocritical at least part of the time? If DNA is air tight enough to convict people over here in America then how about we let the Italian Police have the same credibility? Any one who says that evidence is a sham or isn't compelling enough needs to take a good hard look at the DNA evidence used here in the U.S. to send people to death row every single day.

Is Amanda Knox guilty? Fuck if I know, I wasn't there so the best that any of us can do is to let the Italian justice system do it's job and let a jury of her peers decide her fate. Which they did, and they said she is guilty and that is good enough for me.

I can't help to come back to this point, so I will state it again. The Soviet Union with two hundred and fifty thousand troops, troops I might add unburdened by having to win hearts and minds or build a democracy, could not subdue Afghanistan. So now President Obama thinks we can do it with another thirty to thirty two thousand G.I.'s.



For fucks sake Mister President. So our troop level in Afhcrapistan is going to balloon from sixty-eight thousand to about one-hundred thousand. Again, I hope you see what I'm getting at here. We are supposed to secure, hold, and win the hearts of minds of a country about the size of Texas with twelve million inhabitants with only about one-hundred thousand troops, maybe as many as one-hundred and fifty thousand if our allies send anyone, anyone at all. Which they won't, except for the UK which shares our enthusiasm for lost causes.

Now, I'm no big city Four Star General, but in reading COIN (counter insurgency) pamphlets, manuals and of course General Rupert Smith's 'Utility of Force' President Obama and his military advisor's are complete assholes.



Why would I say a thing like that? Well, because they are. General Stanley McChrystal, the man who we now want to 'win hearts and minds' headed a black OPs hit team that roamed AfPak looking for mullahs to kill, oh and he knows shit all about COIN operations, except for what General Petraeus tells him. So we have The Emperor and Darth Vader convincing President Obama that we need to send just enough troops to Afghanistan to get more American troops killed. Which, is well, not a winning strategy. It is a strategy to cover everyones asses and keep the war in Afghanistan going just long enough for Obama to tell Republicans and American voters that he is 'tough' on terrorism.

Of course we are still forgetting that Obama isn't bringing troops home from Iraq so he is basically going to have to deploy troops from Iraq to Afghanistan......goodbye Christmas leave! During the election campaign Obama sure made it sound like he'd end the war in Iraq and act more responsibly in Afghanistan, instead he's just doing what Bush did, and somehow he expects different results.

So, there is the 'Change you can believe in'. I believe it, I believed it before the election that change wouldn't come, and it hasn't and it's because President Obama is too chicken shit to see reality and do the right things for our troops and our nation.



Voted for Obama because you hated Bush did you?