Tire Tyranny

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If you’ve gone to get new tires recently, you may have already dealt with the latest outcropping of technocratic busybodyism: The scanning of your car’s electronic ear tag, its Vehicle Identification Number or VIN.

The VIN is a bar code – literally – just like the one on the packages of stuff you buy at the supermarket or anywhere else that’s corporate. The VIN specifically identifies your car – including every last detail about it, such as the engine/transmission it came with, the color it was painted and the tires it came equipped with from the factory.

And now it is being used to identify you.

This time, not by Uncle.

By private companies, following Uncle’s example.

To track you, control you – and even dun you.

Here’s how:

You visit the tire shop to buy a new set. Used to be that you’d either tell the guy behind the counter which tires you wanted or discuss options with him. Then you’d buy them and he’d install them. Now the guy behind the counter will scan your car’s VIN – which is tied to the DMV – and first find out all kinds of things about you and your car.

Then he will tell you which tires you’re allowed to buy.

Yes, really.

If your car originally came equipped with tires that carried a V speed rating – the “V” indicating rated for sustained travel at speeds up to 149 MPH – but you’ve decided you’d like to buy less aggressive (and less expensive) tires with an H rating – the “H” indicating rated safe for sustained travel at sustained speeds up to 130 MPH – the Tire Nazi will not allow it.

Or perhaps you’d like to go up a size – or down – for whatever reason of your own. After all, it is your car – and you’re buying the tires.

In neither case is any of this necessarily “unsafe” – although that will be the claim.

In the case of speed ratings, they are based on sustained speeds.  It is an important distinction. Thus, a V rated tire can safely handle sustained speeds up to 149 MPH. But it is not dangerous to briefly exceed 149 MPH. The tire isn’t going to shred – unless you operate at sustained speeds in excess of the rated maximum.

Question: How often do you travel at the sustained speeds for which your tire is rated? How about in excess of the rated speed?

For how long?

In the United States, the fastest allowable highway speed is 85 MPH – in a few rural parts of Texas. In most of the rest of the country, 70-75 is the maximum allowed and while driving faster is common, driving appreciably faster than 90 more than briefly isn’t.

A Q-rated tire (safe operation at sustained speeds up to 100 MPH) or R (106 MPH) pretty much covers that – and a tire with an S (112 MPH) or T (118 MPH) rating more than covers it, with a margin to spare.

In the United States, high-speed tires with ratings of “H” (130 MPH, sustained) or higher are functional overkill unless you actually do drive at sustained speeds at or near their rated maximums. If not, then you can save money by purchasing less aggressive tires – which also usually last longer and ride a bit softer – without compromising the safety of your vehicle.

Except for the VIN Thing.

The tire guy knows and will screech saaaaaaaaaaaaaafety but in actuality it’s about selling you the more expensive tires. He’ll also fall back on the Liability Excuse; if he sells you an H rated tire but your car came with V rated tires and you drive at sustained speeds in excess of the H rated tire’s capabilities but at speeds your car is theoretically capable of reaching and you wreck – well, you might sue.

Which you might – if you’re that sort of person. But first the tire would actually have to fail and for that to happen, you’d have to operate at sustained speeds in excess of the rated capacity to deal with them.

Good luck with that – even assuming you had the desire to try.

If there is a place in the USSA that isn’t a race track where one can operate at sustained speeds in excess of even 100 MPH (let alone 130) I would love to know where.

But it’s not just about tires and up-selling you expensive ones. The VIN ties into the government database at the DMV and via this conduit, the tire shop now has access to the information about your car – and so, about you – that the DMV has.  They know the miles you drive each year, when you last got the car inspected for “safety” and smog checked. They know where you live and – probably – what other cars you own, too.

They may even be aware of your ticket rap sheet as well.

They certainly know the car’s maintenance history – assuming you had work done somewhere that has a computer and that information was entered into the computer. All the better to track – and up-sell – you.

Eventually – inevitably – this will morph into something else. You will be required to have a certain service performed – because the computer says so. And it’s not “safe” to wait.

Wait and see.

Especially once cars are linked to external computer monitor mommies. Teslas already are. These cars receive “updates” via the link. In fact, Tesla – the company – controls your car.

One of the excuses tendered for all of this monitoring and busybodyism is that modern cars are complex and integrated wholes. This is perfectly true. When a shop orders a part, it needs to know exactly which part. It has to be precisely specific to the car being worked on. If not, something might not work properly.

It is not as it was in the past, when parts were more generic and mostly what mattered was whether a given part would physically bolt up. If it did, it would usually work. Now it must also be compatible with the computer and the coding unique to your particular car’s combination of components, options and equipment. There are also numerous running changes made during a car model’s life cycle and keeping track of these is almost impossible.

The VIN is thus like a DNA sample – it contains detailed data about . . . everything.

Which isn’t the problem.

The problem is who controls access to that information. If it’s no longer you – if you are compelled to provide it to others – if they can access without you even being aware – then is the car really yours?

In a way, these VIN “draws” are not unlike the blood draws now being performed against people’s will by armed government workers.

The difference – if it amounts to much – is that for now, it is still your right to refuse and take your business elsewhere. But where elsewhere?

When they’re all doing the same thing?

Corporations can be – and are becoming – just as creepily coercive as Uncle, having learned at his knee. Viz: Banks that not only demand you show them your ID but insist you hand it over to so that the clerk can write down numbers and other such, before they will allow you to withdraw money from your account. Drug stores that require you to submit to a degrading interrogation process that presumes you’re a meth dealer before they will permit you to purchase cough syrup.

And now, tire tyranny too.

Your VIN, please.

. . .



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  1. little gaffers tape will cure the scanning

    I saw a story where a auto repair shop scanned in a VIN and their computer told them the owner had a warrant and , the shop called the cops and stalled the customer till they arrived and arrested him.

    one way to help is to register your vehicle as being owned by a New Mexico LLC.
    if done properly, it is impossible to trace the actual owner since New Mexico doesnt require the actual owners name. and the vehicle can be registered in any state.

    I also do not live at the address thats on my DL.

    howtobeinvisible.com shows you how

    • That sucks and blows, one thing that concerns me now is the potential for abuse that”sure-fire never wrong ” DNA bullshit, nothing is perfect, not even that mess.It would be so easy to frame somebody with the techniques they use to determine if someone was at the ( what if the only DNA they could find at a crime scene was hair from the DA or Judge ?) bet they would throw that out in a minute.

  2. I do 80-90 daily in my Houston commute as everyone else is (contra flow commute). This is either on Michelin Defenders 275 in a light truck or Cooper Discoverer 265 in an import suv. Even passed people doing 90mph with cops nearby and wasn’t stopped, traffic was just flowing.

  3. I need the proper size tires for my ’68 F250 CS. I’m using regular 16″ 8-lug rims from a ’90s F250 instead of the original 16.5’s it had on it when I got it and the last set of tires I bought are 265/70R16 111T. These seem a little too wide and tall to me and always have. They won’t take 65 psi either, I think they are rated for about 42psi.

    The current load ratings are a little mysterious to me, too. I was told that a 120S was approximately the same rating as Load Range E, or 10 ply in the old bias ply tires used in the ’60s. Would a 114 or 115T rating be equivalent to the old type 8 ply rating, and what modern radial size would work out to about a 29.5″ height like the original tires?

    Reason I’m asking is I am going to order my tires online and get them mounted by a local shop since the big box stores won’t even tell me the info I’m asking about here. They just want to sell me another set of 265/70’s which I didn’t like when I bought the last set.

  4. This is how deluded people are:

    On a local forum, someone started a thread entitled “What Are You Grateful For?”

    Some of the answers, so far:

    “That I live in this amazing country”
    “President Trump”
    “The USA”…..

    Far from any hope of people on the whole ever waking up, as time goes on, society at-large just keeps going further and further into darkness…. 🙁

  5. seems like I remember reading a story about some guy that took his car into a tire shop and when they scanned his cars VIN it showed he had an outstanding warrant and they called the cops, who arrived long before his vehicle was ready.

  6. Why not stop by Eric’s on the way. Love to make this a more grounded and less virtual experience for us all.

    When passing through the Western Lone Star Republic:

    If you’re ever on I-10 heading east-south-east from El Paso stop by. We’ve got free wifi. Working on other amenities. We’re still clearing the thorns, got some more rain, so mind your tires if you’re coming soon.

    Exit 140 Van Horn, TX I-10
    810 E Broadway, Van Horn, TX 79855
    Store #256
    Tel: (432) 283-2881
    Fax: (432) 283-2883
    Truck Parking : 36
    DEF Lanes : 5
    $2.459 UNLEADED
    $2.709 MIDGRADE
    $2.959 PREMIUM
    $2.759 DEF
    $2.829 DIESEL B20

    Local Lowes’ Amenities
    Private Showers
    Truck Parking
    Bulk DEF
    RFID Pump Start
    Truck Tire Care
    Commercial Truck Oil Chang
    Light Mechanical
    Bulk Propane

  7. The conversations on EP Autos tend run miles off track but, occasionally arrive at similar destinations.
    If one was to say “Chocolate is brown”, someone else would say “No, there is also white chocolate”, which would cause others to chime in and declare white chocolate is not really chocolate.
    Then the battle is on.
    It becomes an exercise in frustration. A verbal wrestling match and usually a stalemate… at best.
    The positive to all this is the majority of the responders are critical thinkers.
    The negative is they also tend to be critical of everyone else.
    Unfortunately, we are losing numbers in relation to the human pabulum that is the standard gurgitation from most colleges and universities.
    This regurgitated crowd continues to slop and slither forth with I-phone(s) clutched by the only remaining bony protrusions they have remaining. They whine, gurgle, emit odious fumes and expect everything to come to them. After all they “deserve it”.
    They likely will never experience the exhilaration of power shifting a four speed or the head turning sound of a loping-cam engine.
    Those of us who have actually changed a tire, oil/filter or any number of common maintenance things are getting fewer by the day.
    Meanwhile, down the back roads we go, arguing about what to save, what to store, what will have value, and who will want or accept what we have, in exchange for what we will need.
    Where do we go and what do we do?
    Take two kinds of squirrels, one saves acorns and the other that saves hickory nuts. One lives in a tree and the other in the ground. Both have risks as the tree could be harvested (banksters) or burned (war). The ground could be plowed (banksters) or flooded.
    Risk is present whatever you do.
    The key is calculation of risk and in assigning assets to manage and escape from worst case scenarios.
    Some acorns, some hickory nuts, some high (rocky) ground and some things that currently have low immediate strategic value are always in order…Not just to survive but, to prevail.
    Being a low value target for any and all or, having the appearance thereof should be quite high on priority lists.
    A few years ago a friend of mine purchased a full container of 7.62×39 ammo. He only had one AK-type rifle which, peaked my interest.
    His explanation was he had never seen any ammo so cheap and figured the price would go up. He was right beyond his wildest expectations. He sold half of it a year ago for about eight times what he paid and still had more than he would ever use.
    The point to be understood is the items that seem very common, plentiful and will always be cheap, may not always be so.
    Perhaps that which is right in front of us should not be casually dismissed or taken for granted.
    Salt is cheap and so are many long term storable food items and toilet tissue. Got any extra?
    How much would some “doogie” medicine be worth if you were really sick?
    Some animal meds are better than what you currently get at the pharmacy…And without a prescription.
    How many cases of car oil do you have? Got any extra anti-freeze? Spark plugs?
    I’m known, in my family as a bit of a “Junker”. I keep things. Not everything but, surely more than the average guy and definitely more than the mush brained millennial crowd…they wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.
    I’ve always felt that if I can’t put my hands on it, it ain’t mine.
    FRNs are monopoly money, as are stocks and bonds. All are gambling chips and so is anything to which, you don’t have immediate and direct access.
    The FED and Wall Street are giant casinos. And remember the house always wins.
    Sure gold, silver and platinum certainly have intrinsic value however, so do brass, nickel, lead, copper and fulminated mercury. And in the right combination they can make the difference in whether you have water, food and shelter.

    • I totally agree that the best course is to make sure one doesn’t look like a high value target. I can remember going down to Tijuana when I was young and always went down there looking like I found my clothes in a dumpster. I first started stockpiling things like salt, motor oil, toilet paper, etc. a few years ago when I moved to a location where the Costco was over an hour away. For years I used to look at my bank statement and the two biggest expenditures were always gas and food. Not only were they big dollars, but lots of trips to the gas station and the grocery store; growing my own food took care of that. The other big reason was because after sampling what the local farmer’s market had as well as seeing how quick and easy it was to get my food and split, the big box grocery outlets leave something to be desired. Spinach at the store tastes like paper, and tomatoes are just red balls of water. When the farmer’s market doesn’t have what I want, the stores became a problem so now when I’m running low from my garden then I hit the farmer’s market which is right down the road. I found a cheap fixer, and fixed up the interior while leaving the exterior looking a bit shabby. Thieves won’t give it a second look.

      • My cheap fixer is on wheels and too old to be considered late model. If things go south, I don’t have to bunker. I can relocate (as I’m about to for the winter) with a turn of the key. Food is everywhere, if you can recognize it.

        • Is your setup something you can generalize and write up as an article here?

          I don’t think Eric would be again having a backup bugout vehicle as tricked out and Mad Max Scenario tested as yours probably is.

          Mad Max: Fury Road is the fourth film of George Miller’s Road Warrior/Mad Max franchise co-written and directed by Miller.




  8. Stability is subject to definition. My definition of stability hasn’t been reached in my life of 63 years, because inflation of the Federal Reserve Note has been continual since 1913, aside from transient deflation.

    • When I speak of stability, I mean societal and political stability. We are at a time of the upheaval of nations; the collapse of economies; the destruction of traditional culture, etc. = no stability.

      The Great Depression was WAYyyyy stable compared to today, because society was still stable enough, and culture secure enough, that things would recover, one way or another, no matter what, because people en-masse were still capable; and the institutions of society were still largely independent of government. (But that depression was sure used as a fulcrum to wrest those institutions from the private sector to government)

      • So true Nunzio! People will talk about how back in the day kids used to bring their guns to school and go hunt for dinner on their way home almost as if this were a possibility today. However, I was over visiting some neighbors yesterday and their tv was on and I was there for a while and noticed that they had one program after another on living out in the woods off grid. Everything from building a home to renovating an existing home to kindling fire from rubbing sticks together etc.
        At first I would have thought there would have been lots of commercials from Home Depot, or Lowe’s, but then I noticed that a lot of the content of these shows didn’t really rely on fresh cut store bought lumber or chemicals to remove paint etc. They weren’t using much from these places at all.
        More and more people are waking up to the fact that they can’t rely on government to supply their needs anymore; this is a good thing, and typical of what happens during economic collapse. I live out in the sticks, but when I go into town, more and more people have gardens, and are raising chickens etc. People are getting healthy by walking, riding a bike, eating right etc. Sometimes they just don’t have the resources to afford a car anymore, but they’re learning to go without and gaining the health benefits as an added benefit; either way it’s a win/win

        • I dunno, Teo. Might depend on one’s interpretation of what they see. A lot of my farmer neighbors talk the talk….but yet they could run fast enough to register their cows with Uncle, before it even became mandatory.

          Yes, they know they can’t rely on gov’t- so they do it themselves- but their long-game is usually just to “fix” government…by voting for a new liar.

          Remember the Tea Party? “Medicare for Americans only” – Translation: “We like socialism, as long as we get ours”.

          And they keep on sending their kids to the government schools. And even though home-schooling has become more popular today, most of those kids end up in colleges, and ultimately working for a gov’t entity or corp.

          It’s kinda like during the Great Depression: People did for themselves and took care of their own when they had to…but as soon as the tap was turned back on, they couldn’t drink of the nectar-of-the-gov’s fast enough. They were happy to partake of all the new programs; sign up for the war; get the GI benefits, send their kids to the central school which replaced the small local school; etc. and thus began the march to what we have today.

          And when you start seeing any legit theme or trend becoming fodder for the media, you KNOW that the agenda is to lead anyone who might be serious about independence, back to the fold of gov’t sheep.

          • Just the fact that they are watching TV- that they have that Hollywood zionist crap piped into their home, pretty much proves what I say….

            • Where was it mentioned what the source of the television signal was? An increasing number of television programs aren’t piped in from anywhere but the DVD player under them.
              You have the same fixation with Zionists, which I call Zionitis.
              All the true Zionists in the world wouldn’t fill a small synagogue.

              • LOL, Bill! Just the Baptist Zionists alone could fill a decent-sized country. There are more non-Jewish Zionists in the world than Jewish ones….far more. Most of them can be found in “Christian” churches.

                  • a)Someone who believes that Jews have a right to reclaim Israel; even though they were kicked out of there 2000 years ago, and even though 80% of the people who are Jews today have no ethnic/historical relation to the Jews who formerly inhabited that land.

                    b)Someone who believes in Jewish supiority/pre-emminence- such as many Xtians, who believe that although everyone else must believe in Christ to be saved, that God somehow has a plan B for Jews who reject Him.

                    c)One who believes in and or works toward the goal of Jewish world domination.

                    • The more convoluted the definition, the larger the number of people who plausibly fit it.
                      This reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode entitled “The Shelter.”

                    • Bill, ever think that there might just be a reason why the Jews have been expelled from/banned from 150 different countries over the last 2000 years?

                      They always seek to gain control of the currency. They seek to control the military for their own purposes- financial and otherwise (How much of what the US military does is for Israel?)

                      In more modern times, they gain control of publishing and the media; They authored and promoted communism and it’s various off-shoots….

                      And you think that this is analogous to paranoid people hiding in a basement because the electricity goes out?

                    • Bill, could you even IMAGINE running for office, and saying that you weren’t going to use our military to “defend Israel”, or that you weren’t going to give aid to and support Israel?!

                      Case closed! Most Americans are Zionists.

                      Go into any mainstream fundamentalist church and say that you don’t support Is-ra-hell! See wah hoppins.
                      (You’d be better off blaspheming Jesus…that they’d probably tolerate…but not criticizing Israel!(

                      I love it when these churches collect money for Isreal- Just what the Jews need…more money! Maybe they can kill more sand-niggers and bulldoze their houses and steal their land.

                      Two things no politician is brave enough to do: Touch Social Security or criticize Israel.

                    • To me being a Christian means I picked Jesus to be my teacher about God. If anyone is going to believe in God then it is pretty important who you pick to be your teacher. My ministry takes me to baptist churches where they seem to worship the Bible (Constantine) and not Jesus. They don’t use their minds at all and do support Israel in a crazed fashion. Jesus actually was against the Jews, hell they killed him. I look at the bible stories as a good way to guess at what Jesus actually taught in his day. Mainly “use your mind and don’t believe what anyone else says God wants other than me. And I say God wants peace and love.”

                    • It’s funny how people will readily present what Christianity means to them while completely ignoring the definition provided by the founder of those who actually followed him. Even more ironic is the fact that his prerequisites are also described literally, and yet the world is full of people who will never go along with his definition. For all intents and purposes, there are so few Christians around, you’re more likely to hit the lottery than to actually run into one.

                    • I once worked with a self-described “Holy Roller”….Church of God”. One day Israel came up and he said “they” are the chosen. I asked him to clarify and he repeated they were the chosen ones via God.

                      So, what does it make you, their servants? He didn’t even take offense to that, just to the fact I didn’t consider Jews to be the chosen anything. I couldn’t make this up. I just thought about it all day.

                      After that if he mentioned religion and getting saved or some such I’d just remind him it didn’t make a shit since he wasn’t a chosen one.

                    • Awww, 8, now don’t be confusing ’em with logic! 😀 LOL!!!!!

                      Yeah, so if the Jews are still “the chosen people” then why don’t the people who believe that become Jews?

                      And if there’s another way to salvation, other than through Jesus Christ, then the Jesus whom they procalim must be a liar, because He said that He is the only way.

                      And since the Jews don’t believe in Jesus, and they no longer even offer animal sacrifices (not that it would matter if they did), just how are they saved?

                      This is how you know the Bible is not from human sources: Every other religion actually believes the things which their holy books say. There amy be some slight differences- usually over some historical or cultural event, but they all pretty much agree as to what their scriptures say and believe it.

                      Only when we come to Christianity do we find adherents who profess the Bible as the source of their beliefs, but who pick it apart, and pick and choose which snippets they want to use, and which they want to ignore, or which they want to use some silly formula to explain away and justify contradictions which their beliefs create.

                    • Nunzio, I did ask him why he didn’t convert. He laughed at me condescendingly and said it didn’t work that way. No shit? I knew he was Mexican and probably the first in the family to not be a Catholic but why not convert? He wouldn’t elaborate and I didn’t give a shit.

                      He brought it up one day when everybody was sitting around in the office and my back was to him. He started in on his beliefs attempting to make everyone believe it and I said “Screw the bible, it’s just a book somebody wrote and rewrote a million times”.

                      Later a couple people said he nearly assaulted me. No eyes in the back of my head so I didn’t know. But after I was told I simply said I wished he had in a way. He would have had one demonstration the devil was among us and stomped his ass so he could praise Jesus and ask for forgiveness for me. I’m normally the type who can’t even be stirred to rise to the bait but I can have my trigger tripped.

                      BTW, we NEVER had another bad word between us and you’d have thought we were best friends.

                    • People like that make me mad too, 8. Even more so, because they are an embarrassment- trying to convert others, when their own beliefs are full of contradictions and absurdities and nonsense.

                      Even a flaky teenage atheist with half a brain could make a monkey out of such, and their “preaching of the Gospel” becomes a freak-show which blasphemes the real item.

                    • Well-said, Teo!

                      Guess that’s why Jesus said “Why call ye Me ‘Lord, Lord” but not the things I say?”. “If ye continue in My doctrine, then are ye My disciples”.

                    • Johnny, Jesus IS the Word of God; He is a part of the God-head. He is not a mere teacher- He is the revealer of God; the only mediator between God and man- OT & NT- and He is our Savior. If we don’t believe those things which He and his Word said about Himself, then we are making Him a liar… like the Moslems, who claim to believe in him, but don’t believe the things He said.

          • We register the brand with the local cattlemans association in texas. Two of the heifers that floated onto my property in the harvey flood lived, and the only way I could find the owner was thanks to the private cattlemans assn.

            • That’s cool Johnny! And a good idear!

              I was talking about the…I forget the acronym….program under GWB’s admin wherein they were setting up to register ALL livestock (even chickens!) with federal Uncle, for the purpose of taxing them for their “carbon emissions” and “tracking them to the very farm they came from” in case someone croaks from Mad Cow Disease (Hmmmm…what ever happened to that?) from all of the Uncle-mandated drugs pumped into ol’ Flossy.

              Neighbior across the street was outraged at the prospect! Was one of the first to sign-up though, as they offered a perk of a few extry dollars on that years farm welfare for those who “voluntarily complied”.

            • Sorry I missed the “brand” part. Not only does the SW Cattle Assoc. keep the brand but I’ve always registered with the county so no one could imitate my brand.

          • What you’re saying intuitively makes sense Nunzio, I just haven’t figured out why. I don’t see the angle in showing people how to become self sufficient, or independent. Although, I suspect there are a lot of people that just don’t find any of it appealing in the first place, so the government doesn’t have to concern themselves with any of them, just those who think that way. Perhaps it’s a way to flush them out into the open?

            • I think too, Teo, oftentimes what they do when they tackle popular subjects, is to create a lot of disinformation- like when they make a movie “based on a real story” but many of the facts and details are greatly perverted. People watch the movie, and think what they see is true, and never realize that what they may thus carry with them for the next 20 years is a completely perverted fairy-tale and not reality.

              How many people believe that you must wait 24 hours before reporting a person missing? They saw it on TV; they believe it.

              When it comes to do-it-yourself shows, too, they tend to make things look unrealistically easy. You see Bob Vila hammering a nail, and 20 seconds later the framework for 2000 sq. ft. deck is complete! (I remember that show from the 80’s- is that guy still alive?)- In reality, it takes you 4 hours just to unload the lumber…

              People try it with the attitude “Oh! Look how easy!”. They do it…it takes more than 22 minutes, and doesn’t look so good. They give up. (This is an appropriate subject, since I just demolished my mother’s porch yesterday- it was all rotted- and am building a new one…)

              ANOTHER thing too- and this is subtle, until you realize it: These shows teach OTHERS how to recognize memebrs of a given movement/community! We all know how to recognize drug dealers or survivalists or neo-nazis or Scientologists etc. because we’ve seen them portrayed on TV; we’ve heard the lingo they use; seen how they dress; etc.

              When they choose to villify members of any group- such as by portraying one as a kook or mass-murderer in movies; by ALWAYS portraying them as nuts in movies, etc. the majority who watch those movies BELIEVE that such people in real life are as the ones portrayed by the Jews in the movies….

              Look at the hostility towards Christians that exists today. Is it coincidence that, starting a couple of decades ago, movies often portrayed fundamentalist Christians as kooks/hypocrites/weirdos/bad guys?

              Conversely, look how most people today absolutely LOVE queers and knee-grows. Why? Because for several decades now, they have been often portrayed as heroes/good-guys in the movies.

              TV is total mind-control. Whenever something becomes a topic in the media; when they seem to take up your cause….WATCH OUT! Nothing good will come of it…unless of course it’s something which fits their big-government agenda….

              Put living off the grid on TV? Watch the number of people who call social services to report that the neighbor’s kids are “being abused” because “those crazy people ain’t hooked up to the eeee-lecktric or the mew-nicipull sewer system” increases exponentially, because now all of the busy-bodies will know what’s going on when they see solar panels and a veggie garden.

              • You’re right Nunzio, these programs run the gambit from the nutjobs living off the land to the Buildings that are all probably built to code, yet code enforcement is never seen. The owners come out to see their newly renovated home; they’re the one’s doing the inspection. While over at the neighbors yesterday, this team was building this off grid home, and they didn’t quite get the foundation square, and had to remove the subfloor and do some kicking and nudging before putting it back down, then one of the guys inadvertently shot is nailer a few inches from his wrist. Fortunately it went right through. When I do stuff like that they always have to be removed by a doctor, or the nailer was just sitting in some dog shit etc..

          • Once again, Nunzio you’ve hit the nail on the proverbial head. Israel, right or wrong, the sheeple will stand by them even when their own God has turned his back on them. Funny how they never notice how God gets all over Israel for backsliding, fornicating, etc. and tells them they can go pound sand for a few hundred years, but we’re all supposed to stick by them no matter what they do wrong. Why? So we can be blessed with complete insanity?

            • What kills me, Teo, is that the Jews are the sworn enemies of the Christ we worship- they refer to Him as “the bastard son of Mary”- and yet some who call themselves Xtians fawn all over these people?

              And those are the same ones who proclaim in their churches how the NT somehow nullifies the OT, yet when it comes to the Jews, they quote some conditional promises from the OT, which applied to someone who live 3500 years ago, and they apply it to the [largely non]Jews today- and ignore the NT which they profess, which is all about God rejecting the Jews and kicking them out of the Holy Land for their rebelliousness and rejection of the Messiah; and how He instead has granted the gentiles favor and the blessings of Israel….which some of these gentiles are turning right around and trying to give back to the Jews….

              As usual…the masses are insane.

              And this is why there will never be peace in the Mid-east….the Jews and all the naions/UN which support them, are seeking to put them back in their land, which God ejected them from, and said they would not return until they repent and accept the Messiah.

              • You know Nunzio, the thing that people don’t seem to notice is that the New Testament, particularly the gospel narratives have anti-Semitism baked right into them. The old saying among Jews being chosen by God is “Next time, choose someone else”. They’ve been kicked around by just about everyone for the last few thousand years. It’s a wonder there are any left at all. How anyone can miss the fuses that are so easily lit in the gospels is beyond me, e.g. “Let his blood be upon us and our children”. etc.
                When you’re getting kicked around as badly as they are, you’d want nothing to do with Christians either. One of my girlfriend’s grandparents were in concentration camps. I met her grandmother shortly before she died; an impressive woman. Her daughter and son in law never went to synagogue and did whatever they could to blend in with a predominantly Christian community. My girlfriend would say that she grew up ecumenically confused. People laugh about self loathing Jews, but it’s really not that funny. The Christ most Christians worship says that salvation is of the Jews. Paul points out that through the blindness that God Himself sent to Israel, salvation has been spread to the rest of the world, and yet, all of Christendom has no real sense of gratitude, much less any sense of the tragic loss and insufferable pain that are so plainly presented coming from Christ, Paul, Peter, John, et al.
                As I’ve pointed out before, it’s become glaringly obvious that there are no more Christians. Have you ever heard anyone suggest the Rapture already occurred? Sometimes it looks that way to me. How can there be a Rapture when there are no Christians left to rapture?

                Very few take Paul’s warning that just as they’ve been blinded by their own disobedience, so too will those who fancy they’ve been grafted in if they choose to spout their nonsense celebrating their own disobedience.

                • Didn’t at least some of those Jews have it coming in a way?

                  They lived as a parasite upper caste at the common German’s expense.

                  Even the compliant German worker drone has his limits.

                  The whole fiat currency world was raining down undeserved shit on the struggling German empire, and arguably, many Jews were complicit facilitators in that oppression.

                  Israeli’s are absolutely insane, and don’t seem to have learned any lessons from the Holocaust.

                  I am as big of a fan of Jewish art and creativity as anyone.

                  But I can’t deny the existence of a double standard when it comes to Israel.

                  Unlimited race and creed mixing for USA thee. Complete homogeneity and stability for Israeli me.

                  Anti-semitism in the case of Arab semites and Hebrew semites is often richly deserved.

                  They are often times unspeakable assholes to innocent unsophisticated working men and women who don’t deserved to be yoked to pull their infinite social justice oxen carts.

                  Especially when its so hypocritical and one sided.

                  When will there be diversity for Israel?

                • For some reason, Teo, your comment reminds me of an exchange between Archie Bunker and someone who mistakenly thought he was Jewsih:

                  Guy:”….I guess it’s not easy being Jewish”.

                  Archie: “I guess that’s why most people ain’t.”

                  Seriously though, “the rapture” is a modern invention. We shall be changed in the “twinkling of an eye”, “at the LAST TRUMP” -That last trump[et] is the return of Christ.

                  • Nunzio, I’m not disputing your interpretation of the texts, just pointing out a glaring problem, i.e. no bride to return for. At least not any of these people who are claiming to be. They have to be either dead, or quite simply working behind the scenes to such an extent that they aren’t identifiable. Coincidently, this is what Jesus points out as a core teaching for his followers.

                    • Teo, “Many are called, but FEW are chosen”. I think we’re both seeing that. “Few there be that be saved”.

      • Bankers are a non-issue. They’re another tyranny people engage in by choice. First rule of freedom is avoid debt. If you avoid debt, a banker is powerless over you. And if people would stop voting for governments, the bankers would have no power over anything.

        • How does one avoid engaging in trade using FRNs when the majority of Americans believe that currency is money and don’t know the difference?
          A Federal Reserve Note is an instrument of debt, as the note denotes. If you trade with dollars, which is what FRNs are denominated in, you are trading in debt.

          • Bill says: “How does one avoid engaging in trade using FRNs when the majority of Americans believe that currency is money and don’t know the difference?”

            Exactly! And therein lies the problem for which I don’t have the answers- nor do I believe does anyone else. The whole world is on fiat currency- it’s not as if we are just in a lone empire or city-state while the rest of the world is made up of sovereign states which still trade in real money.

            Like I’ve said, we are in unchartered territory- a unique place in history which has no precedents in the past nor script to follow.

            So I really don’t worry about it. I’m more concerned with preserving my freedom, which includes trying to preserve my access to land which sustains me, and also my mobility- as some places will be better than others….but one thing is certain: The US is going to be the hotbed- and when she falls, she is going to fall good.

            Various gurus and authors who claim to have the answers, and who almost all seem to be on the precious metals bandwagon, should be dismissed out of hand. Their naiveté is astounding. They cite what happened when some small third-world county’s economy collapsed; and extrapolate that into the model of what will happen when the big boys go down, or most of the world at once. It’s utterly ridiculous.

            I’m not so much worried about preserving what little wealth have, as I am in avoiding the fire. I think that the more people emphasize preserving their wealth, the more that desire will keep them in the line of fire.

            Ha! I just made myself think of Ezekiel 7:19: “They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of the Lord”.

            • A common myth states that Minuit purchased Manhattan for $24 worth of trinkets;

              However, a letter written by Dutch merchant Peter Schaghen to directors of the Dutch East India Company stated that Manhattan was purchased “for the value of 60 guilders,” an amount worth around $1,050 in 2015 dollars.

              Minuit also founded the Delaware colony in the early 1600s.

              Peter Minuit was a Walloon from Wesel.

            • One doesn’t need currency or money to engage in trade. The currency here is ideas. I leant my neighbor a latter, he lets me use his lawnmower. An economic collapse is not the great and terrible Day of the Lord. However being ready for that day is far more important than the day the dollar reaches its intrinsic value. At least you’re aware of the intrinsic value of metals as well.

              Discounting the experience of others isn’t preferable to one’s own ignorance. It’s like assuming that since one isn’t plugged directly into the grid themselves that they are somehow independent of the grid when they are relying upon it every day. The grid fills our gas tanks, charges the batteries on our computers, connects us to the internet, supplies us with our food, and water etc. Eventually we’ll run out of wax for our candles, and books or magazines to wipe our asses. Manual well pumps start out at around $1k and have parts that will eventually wear out. Solar panels might outlast me, but I’ll run out of something, and eventually life won’t be worth living. Now that I think about it, I think I’ve got a bottle of scotch stashed somewhere as well.

              • I think an economic collapse would be one of the best things that could happen to humanity at this point. I mean a REAL collapse. Government would lose a lot of it’s power; the useless eaters who cause most of the problems would starve; and people would be forced to get back to real life; dealing with their neighbors; doing for themselves; getting a grip on reality.

                This is one of the reasons why, when I moved from NYC, I sought out a relatively “poor” rural area. People here still do for themselves (at least in the country); not many useless eaters around; small government, ’cause it’s hard to confiscate too much wealth when the average person makes $22K a year….

                By contrast, back on Lawn Guyland, where everyone’s rich: People are at each other’s throats constantly. People are away from home 12 hours a day working and can’t even mow their own lawns- gotta earn a lot of money when you’re property taxes are $15K a year and your hosepayment is $4K a month… Crime is rampant…but no rebels, because everyone’s so busy in their servitude, they “need” all of the government services for which they pay those high taxes (It nev er occurs to them that such could be had on the free market for a fraction of the cost, and of better quality; or that they could do it themselves if they didn’t have to work so hard to pay all the taxes…)

                Those people will be in crisis when the collapse comes; they won’t know what to do. My neighbors here will be just fine.

                • That is what will eventually happen, probably when the federal government defaults on the interest payment on the debt because they are illiquid.
                  Not only will the government go down, but anyone whose net worth is tied to debt will.
                  If it isn’t paid for and held completely off of paper instruments, it will become someone else’s property, and subject to neo-bounty hunters who will be coming to collect it, for a percentage, or legal ownership in salvage.

            • The simple fact is that 70% of purchases are made by Americans using plastic, for which no currency is required.
              Bill Bonner, whose firm, Agora Financial, has been in operation for over 30 years and has never missed a major prediction, has a video that explains the danger of an economy based on nothing more than computer entries, at atmcrisis.com

        • Eric having acres of farmland is probably in the best SHTF situation. If tomorrow all financial instruments are outlawed and declared without value.

          He will still have his land, livestock, and implements to sustain him. Weapons and the ability to barricade to keep away the golden horde.

          He will still have to pay any tax authorities. I doubt they will accept eggs as good payment, so he will still need to deal with the system to some degree.

          He would be without power. Except for generators and fuel he can trade for. Maybe without water. It’s water where they really have people.

          The greenest thing would be for millions of private owned power and water sources. The centralization tends to make it more indifferent to the earth because it is publicly controlled by shapeshifting transient strongmen masters.

          • Hi Tor,

            I have 100 gallons of propane and a generator that can run on that or gas; I can run essential electric on that for several months, if need be. I have a well, so got my own water. Plan to dig a 1/2 acre pond for fish.

            But the most important thing, perhaps, is my network of local friends – all similarly provisioned, equipped and like-minded…

              • Hi Bill,

                I have a spare generator, yes. Lots of parts.

                And I plan to get rain barrels, which will serve as a back-up.

                Water is no worry. Heat is no worry. Even food is no worry.

                My main worry is the Golden Horde, aka the Free Shit Army…

                • Eric,
                  What kind of water filtration and purification do you have to apply to your water? You’d be better off not to drink any rainwater unless it is filtered and purified, given the garbage that Dane Wigington has confirmed they are spraying in the atmosphere.
                  I have equipment that can take any kind of water to pure and clean, and it will be used to provide same to large numbers of people as barter if it becomes a concern to them.

                  • Hi Bill,

                    From the well, it’s not necessary. I agree re rainwater but doubt i’ll ever need to fall back on that. If the grid goes down permanently and there is no longer ready access to fuel, we’re all Doomed anyhow. I don’t imagine myself living like Mad Max – nor want to!

                    • How did we live long enough to invent the grid if is essential for survival?
                      What incident have you been without for 15 years? Pavilion, WY is in the mountains, and many there are being made very ill by water they’ve been drinking for only a few years, by fracking chemicals that the EPA considers GRAS.

                    • Hi Bill,

                      No fracking anywhere near me. I’m literally on the ridge of the Blue Ridge (my place is 2 miles from the Parkway). No issues to worry about regarding wells – other than the pump dying or there permanently being no electricity. Temporary outages are no problem. I have back-up power for weeks, if not several months. If the system goes down for years, we’re all done. I have no illusions about living a post apocalyptic life nor want to.

                      If we’re reduced to another Dark Age, I will await the end with my books, some good scotch and equanimity…

                    • Eric, you have the best filtration system you could ever want. My well water is filtered through limestone. I had it tested, it’s clean, but not exactly the best tasting. Water filtered through mountain rock is about as good as it gets.

                    • Hi Bill,

                      Running a house off the grid and running a vehicle off the grid are apples and oranges. I am not disparaging your way of life; merely stating that I prefer to live in a house, on land I own (effectively) rather than live in a vehicle, as you do. There are pros – and cons – to each. We choose what seems best to us.

                      I like having woods and fields that are mine – again, effectively. I understand that I am also tied to the land – and have to come up with the “rent” (property taxes) each year. But because I do not have to pay rent to a lender, or a mortgage payment, I am able to get by on relatively little. And because I have land – and my own sources of fuel (wood) and water and food, I can live fairly independently.

                      Again, I am not arguing that my way of life is better than yours; merely that it suits me better.

                    • I’d much rather drink water which has been filtered through the soil, than that which comes from essentially the same place, but has had dangerous chemicals added….for “saaaaafety” [of course, ya know] by local Uncle.

                      Taking bad water and adding chemicals doesn’t make it safe.

                      Funny how all of local Uncle’s wells just happen to be “safe”, while all of ours are dangerous cesspools of cancer-causing nukular waste…or so they would have us think.

            • Hey Eric, are you planning on running your well water from your generator? The reason I ask is because I just had Irma blow by my place and with the power out, it’s a pain to keep turning that thing on and off. A great way to skip that is to get those 300 gallon totes that the local dairies toss when they’re done with them. They usually have soap to clean out their plumbing and they’re food grade. Usually someone has already picked them up and is selling them on cl. I picked up a simple 12 water pump at Northern tool that pumps around 4 gallons a minute which is plenty for the shower, toilet, washing machine, etc. I can pump over 600 gallons on one fully charged battery.

            • All are important. But absolutely your phyle, those of like mind and deed, is the most important of all like you said.

              The Phyle might be the nearest thing to John Galt’s hidden valley that exists in the real world.

              The people in your Phyle and entities it deals with are best described as financial freedom fighters.

              I’m part of an emerging phyle known as Goats Gulch.

              It is no longer enough to be a productive member of your assigned and designated community. These have become unavoidable obligations, not voluntary public endeavors. You need to belong to a phyle.

              Those who move to Goats Gulch are unwilling to live under a corrupt statist system of finance controlled by a few to impoverish the many.

              Goats Gulch is one location being formed as a way to help further a movement, long in progress, by individuals worldwide, to rid themselves of government controlled fiat money in favor of assets of real value void of manipulation.

              It is the hope of Goats Gulch that it can help create a community of owner operators who can get off the merry go round of the global financial system and prosper from in a new voluntary free-market system which will take its place.

              The world is changing. The nation-state system is in disarray and upheaval. Socialism is failing as it must.

              Rather than go back to tribalism. We choose to go forward to new communities of members freely associating according to their taste.

              In “phyles” such as Goats Gulch to use the Greek word for clans.

              But not clans in the old sense, not clans bound by kinship or place of birth, but elective clans. Gulch Goats choose the company they want to keep, and the type of economy they want to participate in.

              Goats Gulch is a new vision of an emerging world, it is different from any other.

              Not quite the same as Ayn Rand’s vision, though she and her Atlas figures who carried an ungrateful world on their shoulders would surely have liked it.

              Not only is it incredibly beautiful here in West Texas, but most of the value lies in the great like minded community.
              The nation states as they exist today are a brief abberation, the world will again soon trend more towards likeminded people actively choosing to live in areas (call them countries if you wish) with other similar like minded people.


              Some say a few years later and most of them will be dead from starvation or murder but, hey, at least they got to do what they wanted with other like minded people as opposed to forcing the rest of us to follow their insane socialist communist ideas under threat of being jailed or enduring financial destruction.

              Whether the gulch will be a utopia or a dystopia remains to be seen. At least it will be a new topia, one not yet tried anywhere in real life rather than merely online.

              • “Phyle is an ancient Greek term for clan or tribe.”
                Ayn Rand’s Atlas figures didn’t carry anything on shoulders that had shrugged.
                West Texas was my second choice, and my first choice beat it to constitutional permitless carry, as well as having a higher number of guns per capita and not a single illegal alien. How many BLMs can there be where there are less than .1% of blacks?
                Having spent significant time all over Texas, the like mindedness here is much higher in a more native population. We don’t get ice storms like Dallas and Lubbock.

                • I think you’re in the Gulch’s second choice. Northern Colorado and all of Wyoming were strongly considered.

                  Too much rigmarole involved in buying land as well as when you as the “owner” want to improve and use YOUR OWN GOT DAM LAND.

                  • Colorado is the most ICLEI infested western state east of California.
                    I won’t be interested in buying land until the bubble has been eradicated. After I find a good used 6×10 trailer, I won’t even need a storage unit anymore. I have places where I can park for as long as I want pretty much anywhere I’d care to stay. I’m a very good tenant because I improve things while I’m there. A happy landlord is more important than any bureaucrat.

                    • Hate all that agenda 21 foderol.

                      If Maes had won gov of Colorado, the whole state might have seceded from all that lunacy as he promised(LOL).

                      ICLEI – Capacity Center, formerly the International Training Centre, is the training and conference service unit of ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability.

                      Bonn is also home to ICLEI World Secretariat, Capacity Center and Climate Center, and the host of Resilient Cities 2011 and 2012.



                      Ecomobility indicates a new approach to mobility that highlights the importance of public and non-motorized transport and promotes an integrated use of all modes in a city.
                      Environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive, ecological mobile transport choices have low to no emission compared to the personal automobiles powered by fossil fuels.

                      It supports the use of light electric vehicles, provided that the source of the electricity is from renewable energy sources.

                      ICLEI has a dedicated agenda to promote ecomobility in cities titled the EcoMobile City (Sustainable Urban Transport) Agenda. Under this agenda ICLEI executes the following 3 key projects:
                      EcoMobility Alliance
                      EcoMobility World Festival
                      World Congress

                      World Festival, is a month long experiment taken up by challenging and visionary city leaders to display an automobile free lifestyle in a neighborhood of a city.

                      Citizens in this neighborhood will show the world that a normal life can be lead without depending on personal automobiles.

                      Citizens will embrace the improved walking, cycling and public transport facilities and use light electric vehicles, to replace the otherwise motorized trips in the neighborhood.

                      In addition to the projects above, ICLEI’s EcoMobile City (Sustainable Urban Transport) Agenda also works on the following areas:
                      Urban transport performance measurement in cities
                      EcoLogistics: is a dedicated initiative of the EcoMobile City (Sustainable Urban Transport) Agenda to support cities to shared experience on urban freight
                      Health and mobility: the agenda also works with cities to highlight the effects of automobile dependence on public health in the forms of sedentary lifestyles, poor air quality and childhood obesity

                      Road safety: Urban mobility is the primary reason for loss of life and permanent disability in many developing cities. Through its work in ecomobility, ICLEI support is cities to prioritise non-motorized transport and public transport and design better and safer cities.

          • In any area where the locals are educated and aware of the scams they have been living under, the authorities are more likely to be running for their lives than trying to collect taxes. Restoration of allodial title will be high on the list of revolutionary activities.

            • Hopefully something better than EULIS to take one globalist example. (European Land Information Service)

              Country details

              Size: 41,527 km2

              Population: 16,797,920 (02-09-2013)

              Registration coverage

              Percentage of area registered: 100%

              Number of properties/titles registered: 9,453,232

              Registry details
              Registry name: Kadaster

              Size of organisation:

              Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency is the national organisation for land registry, cadastre and mapping. Staff numbers are around 1800.

              Searches available:

              Subscribed users can search for a property through EULIS by owner, address, post code, land registry code, map of the Netherlands, place map. Non-subscribed users can search information through EULIS by address or postal code. (Only Y/N answer)

              Information available:

              General real property information containing: Parcel identifier, size, address, description, type of ownership, owners involved and their addresses and partner relationships, reference to the register unit identifier(s). This is the actual information in the database, open to public access immediately after updating.

              Extract from Kadaster This product contains the same content as the general real property information. This is the authenticated information guaranteed by the Kadaster for a moment in time, three to five working days earlier.

              General mortgage information containing: Parcel identifier, size, type of ownership, mortgagee(s), mortgagor(s) and their addresses, amount of the mortgage, charges, seizures, reference to the register unit identifier(s). This is the actual information in the database, open to public access immediately after updating.

              Extract from mortgage This product contains the same content as the general mortgage information. This is the authenticated information guaranteed by the Kadaster for a moment in time, three to five working days earlier.

              Subscribed users:

              Approx 20,000
              The Netherlands is one of the eight original participants involved in creating EULIS since 2001.

              Since March 2011 the EULIS-EEIG is created. The seat of this EEIG is in the Netherlands.

              Kadaster: high degree of legal certainty
              By collecting details about registered properties in the Netherlands, recording them in public registers and in cadastral maps and then making this information available to society, Kadaster provides clarity about who a certain registered property belongs to and what its characteristics are. Registered properties are immoveable properties or real estate (such as houses, apartments and other buildings and structures that are durably fixed to the ground) and moveable properties (such as ships and aircraft). Kadaster implements a wide range of activities in order to fulfil its mission and vision.

              Our mission
              Kadaster promotes legal certainty in transactions involving registered properties. In this context, legal certainty means clarity about who a certain moveable or immoveable property belongs to and what its characteristics are. We also optimise the basic geometric files and promote an optimum supply of information on these subjects to society as a whole. Our activities represent a broad interpretation of this mission.

              Our vision
              As a professional, market-oriented organisation, Kadaster intends to continue developing as a central organization for real estate and geometrical geographical information with a pioneering role in this market. We are also setting out to increase the accessibility and availability of our information and guarantee its quality for our professional and private clients. Working together with other organisations in the real estate market and the geo-information sector is important to achieving these objectives. We are basing our strategy for the next few years on a number of objectives. One of those objectives is to pay more and closer attention to the wishes of our clients and to offer them integrated real-estate, property and geo-information. Information and communication technology are making it increasingly easier to link real estate databases. For our clients, this means that we are better positioned to meet their specific wishes and requirements. We also want to offer our clients a choice of distribution channels. An example of how this can be done is to make our information and products available online via the Internet for both private citizens and companies.

              Public registers
              When buying or selling registered properties you are legally obliged to register the accompanying notarial deeds in the cadastral system. This system ensures that the source of our details and – accordingly – the information are kept up-to-date at all times. Kadaster keeps registers by law. These registers consist (among other things) of notarial deeds relating to the registered properties. In most cases, these are deeds of conveyance (when transferring property from the buyer to the vendor) and mortgage deeds. The public registers contain details that indicate the rights that are related to the registered properties (legal status).

              Cadastral register
              The most important details from the deeds referred to above that relate to immoveable property are incorporated in the cadastral register. The section in which and the number under which the deed is listed in the public registers enables the user to look up the original deed in the public registers, or to have this done. The cadastral register also functions as an index for the public registers. It provides a clear overview for each parcel of, for example, the rights related to a parcel, who the owner is and the purchase price. In the event of a dispute arising between the public registers and the cadastral register, the public registers take precedence for establishing the legal status of registered properties. Because most civil-law notaries, estate agents and other parties involved are directly affiliated with the cadastral system, the registered information is virtually directly available. This is of great importance when we consider that in excess of one million real estate transactions take place every year.

              Legal certainty for ships
              One of the cadastral registers is the ‘maritime register’. This register is used to list mainly larger ships, such as tankers and merchant ships. These days, the registration of leisure vessels and houseboats is also commonplace. The advantages of ship registration is that you can only obtain a mortgage on your vessel if you have registered it with Kadaster. Moreover, registration is the only proof that you are the rightful owner. When registering the vessel, Kadaster places a hallmark on your vessel. This hallmark (a brand) cannot be removed without damaging the vessel. If the vessel is stolen, it is easier for the police to return a registered ship to its owner. You can also register a vessel while it is being built. If the shipyard goes bankrupt, a registered vessel is not included in the bankruptcy.

              Legal certainty for aircraft
              Kadaster also registers aircraft (mainly aeroplanes). An aircraft is registered at Kadaster by making a written application to have it listed in the register in Rotterdam. You are then able to finance an aircraft with a mortgage or enter into a rental agreement on it (with a possible purchase option). There are a number of additional conditions for registration: the aircraft must be listed in the nationality register of the Civil Aviation Authority in Hoofddorp; it must not be registered in a treaty register; the maximum starting weight is at least 1000 kg; the owner declares that the aircraft can ‘to the best of his knowledge’ be registered and this declaration must receive the written approval of the district court in Amsterdam.

              What do the buyer and vendor need to know?
              When buying or selling a house or a piece of land, the vendor and the buyer naturally need to know the precise details of what they are dealing with: where the parcel’s boundaries are situated, the size of the parcel, whether there is a lease, servitude, or whether it is subject to mortgages or attachments, and so on. This information, which provides legal certainty, can be obtained on the basis of details from Kadaster. You can also establish the parcel’s history at Kadaster.

              It is not uncommon for the boundaries of a parcel to change when it is sold. This is because in about a quarter of all transfers of land, only part of a parcel is sold. In that case, the Land Register has to measure new boundaries. To do this, the buyer and the vendor indicate the new boundaries. Kadaster records the measurements and incorporates them in the cadastral map. The cadastral map then shows the correct situation as laid down in the public register.

              Restrictions in public law
              At Kadaster, the description of a parcel does not end with the co-ordinates and the owner. There is more information that can be called up from the cadastral register, such as information about restrictions in public law. There could, for example, be a protected monument on the parcel. These restrictions in public law are of particular importance when buying and selling. Not only does the new owner have to know about this information before he buys the parcel: these aspects can also be significant to the parcel’s value.

            • Bill, I know of no such places or people. In real life, people fall for the scams; they send their kids off to fight in their wars; they support the troops; they fly the flag.

              They ARE the people who staff the local gov’t offices and pig departments and kiddy conformity camps. If the system goes down, the first thing they will do is work to set it back up or build a new one.

              Those of us who know better are a rare and scattered breed.

            • Nunzo, I’ve always seen the technical as child’s play. The problem isn’t having a stop perform as intended, but to have a market move so fast it misses the stop. That’s why I never short. I’ve seen that happen too many times, and I can’t move fast enough to set the shares at a level that will be grabbed up in time. You can’t just toss it all out there, and have it all grabbed up, and watching it crash while you throw out a few at a time is a death of a thousand cuts.

              The problem always resides in those who can’t follow their own rules. Yeah it hurts when it dips down and triggers a stop before skyrocketing to the top without you, but not as much as holding on all the way to the bottom. You can literally just throw it all over the place and just see what sticks. Pick up what doesn’t roll it up and toss it again. The key is finding your own comfort zone and when you do, stay with it no matter what.

  9. Nunzio,
    My emergency money is in FRNs, which will most likely get used to put a new drive train in the current van before FRNs become worthless. If not, I’ll convert them to whatever during the period allotted for that. I have 24 times as much in gold and silver as I do in FRNs. Given the brittleness of the economy, it wouldn’t be wise, IMO, to convert the FRNs into PMs.

  10. Eric, I completely agree. The most important thing being, WHO has control of the information. I do note that every time I take my vehicle in for routine service, the first thing that the technician (not the mechanic; I don’t see them anymore) does is scan the ear tag inside the door. I didn’t realize that this gave them universal access to my personal details beyond their own record-keeping system. Scary!

  11. Ah, the limited speeds, my Dakota V-6 topped out at 102( drag limited I think) the V-8s are limited to 106 mph.All the Nissan 4 cyl PUs I had were somewhere in the neighborhood of 96 mph, except for the 86.5 ( didn’t even have power steering, with the NAPS-Z I had Her up to 105 mph and it was still climbing, that little truck sure ran nice.As a rule, I don’t do that sort of thing now, I am allergic to paying traffic fines.
    Ah, the “Jersey barriers” road workers best friend, during my tenure we ran the gamut from sawhorses, metal striped barrels, plastic barrels( more plastic barriers with wider reflective stripes) then jersey barriers at a couple of tons apiece have a tendency to stay put, we went through various permutations of these things, Male and Female, “T-Lock”( a real pain in the ass to move) etc. Now We have heavy plastic barriers you can fill with water.One thing you can be sureof the state (VA, ESPECIALLY) will obsolete what you have in a few years and you will have to spend a bunch of money complying( they keep changing the specs on the portable traffic control signs too.)
    Back to the Jersey barriers if you can get some of them for next to nothing, they are handy for a lot of things, you can make Bins for loose granular material, set buildings on them, use them along creek channels to control erosion, etc.
    I am just about out of the “Highway Madhouse ” work now and it won’t be a bit too soon, give Highway workers a break, it’s scary working along the road with distracted people zooming along at Highway speeds. There is a method to the Highway Engineers madness.

      • Fungibility is the ability to replace or be replaced by another identical item; mutually interchangeable. Unless two separate pieces of land are identical in every physical and legal manner, they are not able to replace or be replaced by another identical item. Land and money are about as unidentical as things can get. One is defined by a legal description, the other can exist as a ledger entry in a computerized database.

    • Ideally, the best asset for storing wealth, is one that is not only easily convertible, but which is not subject to taxation (or on which the taxation is avoidable) nor registration. Bad thing about land, in a tyrannical system such as ours, is that as the value increases, so do the property taxes- and usually exponentially.

      And then the taxes you’re subject to when ya sell it/convert it….

      Ditto older cars…

      And on many things, ya never know what the market is going to do….

      Gold used to be the standard….but i do believe gold is in a bubble these days (despite that many say just the opposite)- and in a time of crisis, gold will do you no good- although it will hold it’s value in the long term….

      It also depends on what one is trying to accomplish. Preserve one’s wealth in the long-term, or be in a good position in a major societal crisis. I know during the Great depression, cash was king. My friend’s grandmother was buying up houses in the early 30’s in prime locales for 10 cents on the dollar or less.

      I think that those with cash when the economy collapses [in the first world- does not apply to others] will be in a giood position….trouble is, depending on when the economy collapses, your cash may lose a good deal of it’s value beforehand.

      All I know though, is when times get bad, people sell and it becomes a buyer’s market. The prices of assets go down. I like land for the lifestyle and freedom[relative] it can convey….but it’s days as an investment may be getting shaky. You can’t hide it; they can take it from you by decree, or through taxation, etc.

            • Concentrate Bill. Given that an oz. of gold is worth one dollar, you can then exchange an oz. of gold for one dollar. They are of equal value. If the value of that same oz. of gold DOUBLES to two dollars you now have twice as much air in your tubeless tire. When it gets to fifty dollars you’re going to have a bubble, not a normally filled tubeless tire.

              The problem is that it isn’t always clear if the value of the gold is going up or if the value of the dollar is going down. Does it take fifty inflated dollars to buy one oz. of gold or does it take fifty strong dollars to buy one very valuable oz. of gold? Simply looking at the price of gold doesn’t really tell you much of anything Bill. You need to look at the currency exchange. You need to see what that dollar is worth compared to what it was worth when it was at $1900.00 you need to see what that same oz. of gold is trading for on the other exchanges as well. It’s like filling that tire with air one day and then a few days later you fill it with nitrogen. All gasses don’t expand at the same rate, and if the dollar is expanding at a significantly lower rate then it is a much more stable currency just like the nitrogen inflated tires, but when that tire starts to expand with that nitrogen you’re doing some serious driving and heating them up as much as you would be with regular air, but with the faster expanding gasses like air the expansion is faster and more dangerous whereas this is still a bubble, it’s just not as dramatic because it’s more stable. l

              • The value of gold hasn’t changed since it was discovered. The price of it is what changes. The face value of a one ounce gold Silver Eagle is $50, fixed so it is legal tender. The price is driven by the value of the currency used to purchase it, and the dollar has fallen in value since the Fed issued it in 1913. Eventually it will be worth what the million Deutsche Mark was at the end of the Weimar Republic, which was less than the wood that would provide the same BTUs when burned, so it was instead. There are photographs of women throwing bundles of million Deutsche Mark notes into stoves and oven for space heating online.

                • Bill, “The price is driven by the value of the currency used to purchase it,” Yep, and the value of currencies fluctuates. You can buy gold in other currencies besides dollars Bill, and a much more stable currency doesn’t need a wildly high price to be considered a bubble. Contrary to popular opinion, we already have runaway inflation. The only difference between the US and the Weimar Republic is the velocity of the money in circulation.

                    • Everything else is in the bubble bill. The dollar is inflated, real estate is inflated, stocks, etc. are all inflated. It’s a bubble bill. Gold doesn’t have to reach $1900 for there to be a bubble, just look at the charts now compared to the last crash in 08. That was a bubble bill, and we’re right back there again, and when it pops, it will be a popped bubble bill. Sorry to pop your bubble bill.

                  • And, the ongoing ponzi scheme which requires more and more bodies in the game. This is why we practically force high birth rate foreigners to come to the country.

                    • How does an ongoing financial crime and fraud create a need for more bodies in the game? We don’t anyone to come. They are given incentives to come. Where did you learn economics?

                • My fathers “Uncle Willy” took his 6million dollar paycheck, saw a saddle for 6 million dollars, and immediately bought it. He didn’t own a horse, but knew, that tomorrow, the saddle would still be a saddle. When it comes to currency – what matters is, that tomorrow, a lump of gold will still be a lump of gold.

                  • “How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes”
                    By Peter Schiff
                    buy it on amazon. It will make you a genius like me.
                    as far as your Expert Economic Intelligence, What is your net worth?

                    • Schiff couldn’t teach economics at any university with a BS in accounting. You should check your genius credential for forgery.

                    • Right you are, Bill! He couldn’t teach economics at any university….because he is not a delusional Keynesian sycophant who peddles propaganda.

                    • I’m not sure what that has to do with it, but about $150K, most of which is in current value gold and silver bullion.

                    • I started with 0 and have about 30 times that. I have 150K in firearms and vehicles alone. And I think that proves who is better at economics.

                    • Channeling the Captain in Cool Hand Luke..

                      “Some men you just can’t reach. What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.
                      So you get a guy living in a van down by the river, rather than live with anyone who disagrees with him, which is the way he wants it, well, he gets it.

                      I wouldn’t like it any more than the rest of you men.

                      I was that way until I was thrown out of my parents house a week before I turned 16.

                      They took back my house key, and gave me a big rig ring that had all the rental property keys on it and said this is where you live now.

                      I think I lasted 2 weeks on my own before I used my fake ID to start hanging out in bars until I could find a different woman to live with to replace my sisters and my Mom.

                      Sure was nice living in an apartment with luxuries with some woman with her own opinions and biases.

                      Than it had been sleeping on the floor with nothing but a few couch cushions taken from home and moved from vacant apartment to vacant apartment as my bedroom.

                      But I guess that’s me.

                      I’ve permanently compromised my principles to live in a human fashion since my teenage years. I’m no Robinson Crusoe.

                      To each his own.

                • c,mon bill, pay attention. Look at what you just posted again:
                  “an economic bubble is “(a) market phenomenon characterized by surges in asset prices to levels significantly above the FUNDAMENTAL value of that asset.”
                  Did you see that bill? The FUNDAMENTAL value is NOT the BUBBLE VALUE By your logic, gold has no fundamental value at all; it just fluctuates. .

                  Since gold has already been valued at $1900 per ounce, any pricing point under that would be impossible, by NASDAQ’s definition, to be in a bubble.

                  • The value of gold doesn’t change. The value of the currency that it is denominated in does.
                    “In finance, intrinsic value refers to the value of a company, stock, currency or product determined through fundamental analysis without reference to its market value. It is also frequently called fundamental value.” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_value_(finance)

                    • And yet you’re still looking at it in terms of the value of the currency it’s denominated in which has no intrinsic value Nineteen hundred pieces of paper are no different than five hundred or a thousand pieces of those same pieces of paper. To say it used to be at 1900, therefore that is the fundamental value makes no sense whatsoever. To say it can’t be in a bubble unless it surpasses that mark is equally nonsensical.

                    • T’is true that the value of gold doesn’t change over the long-term- at least in the past, when most of the world used real money- but we are in unprecedented territory today, since most of the world- and all of the major economies, work on fiat junk currencies, and people and institutions are using things like gold as hedges against inflation.

                      And since people no longer trade in gold- I mean, you can’t bring gold down to Walmart or the gas station, or to the guy selling the used Buick (in most cases), it must therefore be converted into currency to be of use.

                      I once heard someone say, refering to literally just hours before the market crash of ;29, that “Every clerk and paperboy was buying stocks; and when the market is guided by such fickle people, it will inevitably crash”.

                      We are at a similar point with gold today. Every yutz and their brother is buying some. When the “big one” comes, these people will all be running to dispose of that gold. If you can weather the storm and can hang on for the long-term, it will recover at some point- but in the short-term, it’ll be as worthless as a stock certificate on 10/30/1929.

                    • You hit the nail on the head, Teo! They value it in terms of it’s price in currency.

                      That is the problem, because we live in a world where everyone is accustomed to trading in currency, if we trade in gold, those with whom we trade will always see it in terms of how much currency it is worth- so in the short-term, in a crisis scenario, there is really no advantage in gold, as it’s price will just fluctuate according to the value of the currency which people trade in.

                    • Morning, Nunzio!

                      A reader has been trying to get me into Bitcoin; he even sent me some. But I do not grok it. I love the idea – a way around Uncle (around the private banking cartel that is the power behind Uncle). But in practice? What can I buy with Bitcoin? Can I use it to pay my bills? If it isn’t convertible into money, then is it money?

                      I set up an account and everything, but just don’t see the point of it.

                    • Get outside your present circle and you’ll find practically nobody owns any silver or gold outside jewelry.

                      Many of those people sold out below spot at cash-for-gold places some time ago.

                    • Eric, I don’t see the point to Bitcoin, myself, either.

                      Yes, an alternative to Uncle’s system is great, and what we all want- but unfortunately, Bitcoin is also a fiat currency with no intrinsic value, whose value -just like Uncle’s funny-money- is based solely on the confidence of it’s users.

                      And the fact is, unless you’re trading physical FRN’s to some guy in an alley for it (or bartering other things of value, in-person) there’s still a financial trail; a connection- just like anything else you pay for, when you convert to or fro FRN’s.

                      As you’ve seen from my other posts, I’m not “on the gold train” exactly, but I’d sure rather buy something like gold, which has intrinsic value, rather than Bitcoin, which is just a private model of Uncle’s scheme. [I say to the Bitcoin advocates]Why imitate what is bad? Why not just fix the inherent problem of no intrinsic value, by trading in things which have intrinsic value?

                      I guess too, I’m more concerned about living in a manner that I can sustain directly, with my own two hands and/or from the earth, than I am with accumulating money- real or otherwise. The whole idea of specializing in one thing, in which you earn money to buy everything else you need to live ,is bogus. That premise is what led to our enslavement. People used to produce most of what they needed to live. They bartered witn enighbors for convenience and variety; and anything above that, was gravy.

                      Today, for the vast majority, the gravy has become the meat.

                  • I can’t understand why people argue over what is convertible?!? During the last crisis I actually saw retailers sell gas for a dime. However, the dime had to have some silver content. Not the crap the fed peddles. You do realize the baseless metal crap issued as coins are issued by the fed right?

                    Why argue over whether gold or silver is convertible or for that matter in a bubble? It does not solve the issue of what to do when the system in the united States collapses.

                    What all prior civilizations realized, gold was hard to fake as was silver. you either had gold or silver or you didn’t. This is the reason, they at the time, became a common trade item called money. Platinum may replace gold at some time but platinum is not easily divisible.

                    All tyrants debase their currency. They do this to further what ever agenda is on their plate. The current agenda is fascism but only by brand. It is much like buying a car or a motorcycle.

                    Brands of cars and motorcycles are mostly homogeneous these days. Every major brand of car looks the same. Every major brand of motorcycle looks the same. To make a point of it, it is almost impossible to find a bike with the exhaust for each cylinder on opposing sides of the bike. There is no option to get symmetrical exhaust. All current bike makers do this with two exceptions, Triumph and Honda.

                    Honda has the cb1100ex, a $12,200 dollar bike. The Triumph? Well it starts at 10K.

                    This is completely above the average persons income stream. Besides, if I’m spending that kind of money for transportation, I am buying something else.

                    So why did I take this tangent? To point out the united States replaced Mussolini and Hitler’s brand of fascism with the uS brand. The united States government is fascist in nature. They control every aspect of what a person does and still claims they have ownership.

                    Ownership without control is nothing.

                    • Sure, metals are convertible- but at what price in a crisis? They will be valued according to the debased currency- so yeah, pay $1300 for a gold eagle today…..and trade it for 10 gallons of gas when TSHTF.

                    • Hi Nunzio (and Bill) –

                      Assuming the Golden Horde doesn’t spread across the land and simply take everything, I think owning land (and a home) is the best bet. If one owns ones’ home/land – no debt – it doesn’t take a lot of money to survive. Even factoring in the taxes. You have shelter and – to a great extent – physical security – covered. If you have enough land – and it doesn’t require a Ponderosa-sized spread – you can cut your own wood for heat and grow vegetables and raise animals. You will probably have a well – so your own water, too.

                      This is what I’ve done.

                      I have no 401k, no “investment” in stocks or anything else. But I own my place and live below my means.

                      I figure that’s enough short of something like a repeat of Russia, 1917…and in that case all bets are off, gold included.

                    • If crisis is so bad that an ozt of gold buys only 10 gallons of gasoline that would likely mean it is so bad that gasoline is not for sale for FRNs.

                      It’s also not what gold is worth in the crisis but what it buys on the other side when things stabilize.

                    • I agree completely, Eric.

                      That is why, it had long been my goal to get some land. Not a fancy house on a small plot- but some LAND- acres- and a shelter.

                      The one time in his life that Marx told the truth, was when he said in the opening of Das Kapital: “All wealth comes from the land” (And then spent the rest of the book/his life devising ways to keep people from having access to said land!).

                      I wanted land, which can support me- as opposed to a “job”, in which I must trade my labor to make a profit for someone else, and in-turn receive little value for my valuable time.

                      But coming from NY, I learned one thing: Never get comfortable and always have a plan, because they can (and probably will)take that land from you at some point, or render it unusable.

                      Like where I grew up in NY- where property taxes are now over $10K a year just for an average house on a 40’x100′ lot; and where you can’t have have animals, or do anything usefull with your land, other than let it look nice (Don’t let your grass get over 6″ or you get a fine, and eventually a lien..)

                      And I’d like to think that if …errr…when such happens where I now am, that at least I could sell, and get good money from inflated values, with which to go elsewhere (like to another country)- but from what I’ve seen, both in NY and other places, the way it works is that the taxes go up first, and the restrictions come in, making you realize it’s time to sell- but such a scenario has the effect of depressing the local market; and plus a lot of other people also want out, which further depresses the local market- so you endure for a few years, and everntually sell, and essentially get squat.

                      It’s not until a decade or so later, that things recover (usually after the politicians have bought up all of the best land, and then changed the zoning to suddenly make it valuable) that the prices start to rise.

                      I’ve witnessed this personally- both where I grew up, and in other places where I have lived.

                      Uncles; family friends; etc. when was young, sold out because the taxes got too high; it was getting too expensive to live; too restrictive. They got “the old price”. A few years after they were gone, their places were worth a fortune.

                      I look at my land as freedom and sustenance for the present….a necessity- but for the future, it affords us no more security than it would have in pre-Bolshevik Russia, or pre-Hitler Germany, or China, etc. The state has become too powerful; we are weak. As George Costanza said on Seinfeld “I have no hand!”.

                    • Actually, all of the coinage of the US has always been issued by the Mint, since the Fed is NOT a government agency.
                      If you want to talk about what to do when the system collapses, why don’t you start the conversation by telling us what you are planning on doing. I have already detailed my preparations, which is all most people can do, is prepare.
                      If gold can’t be faked, I guess you haven’t heard about the tungsten COMEX bars that someone sold to the Bank of China.
                      America’s fascism is based on intelligence agencies, whereas Germany’s and Italy’s was based on military agencies. If you want to know as much about American fascism as Kevin Shipp can tell you in an hour, watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=XHbrOg092GA

                    • Brent said:

                      exactly. That is what I have been saying. If you can weather the crisis, the gold is the best- maybe only way to preserve one’s wealth.

                      But as I also said, we are in uncharted territory today. We’re not just talking about a local or regional thing- but for the first time in history, a world-wide crisis. How long will it be before things get back to normal- if they ever even truly do?

                      We are looking at a major reset- on a world-wide level. It took a good 15 years to start recovering from the Great Depression- and that was just a local thing, when gov’t was relatively small, and things relative. Imagine on a world-wide scale, when there is no “outside” involvement. How long did it take society to recover after the fall of Rome? (If one could even call such “recovery”-)

                • Bill, silver hit $120/oz. in 1980- that was 37 years ago. Since then, it once got up to $50 briefly.

                  As a former commodities trader, I can tell you that artificial prices- such as those seen in bubbles, are to be IGNORED. If you don’t ignore them, they will always skew technical analysis and give you faulty data.

                    • Nope. There was a time when in periods of relative stability they could be predicted by past actions and trends- that is what technical analysis is all about- i.e. doing just that by looking at patterns on prices plotted on a chart.

                      There was a time in the recent past, -up into the ’90s- where that was still possible. I have a friend who made a lot of money in the 70’s and 80’s doing just that.

                      That was when it was low-tech. You’d get your data from the charts published every day in the Investor’s Business Daily. The real pros frequented “bucket shops”, where you could pay to sit in front of a telex and see live data.

                      Then personal computers started gaining popularity in the late 90’s, and all you needed was a PC and a data feed, and you could play with live data from the comfort of your own home for a few hunnert bucks a month.

                      Every yutz having access to live data then, made the markets a lot more volatile (In addition to volatility caused by actual fundamentals -i.e. real-world conditions).

                      It was then that my friend, who was finding that the old strategies were no longer working, brought me in, to try and figure it out. He taught me what he knew and hoped I could improve upon it. Set me up with some money…and I could hold my own in the late 90’s- but nothing spectacular. He wanted to buy a seat on the NYFE and have me trade it.

                      I told him to bail- The markets had become way too volatile, and were getting worse- plus our trading styles and goals were incompatible- he was a gambler who was looking for that big score; I’m the conservative who will take a quick point or two and get out.

                      So we ceased trading- but he was still tinkering with it.

                      In early 2000 I stopped at my friend’s house, and he was watching the S&P 500. This is a guy who goes short 90% of the time. He tells me to take a look at the screen, and says “Looks like a good BUY here, no?”. I said: “A buy?! No! Looks like a good short here! Looks like the market’s at a top”. He does nothing. I leave and go about my business.

                      Turns out, that day was the beginning of the dot-com crash! The market was at THE top… It just went straight down that day…and kept on going!

                      That was the last time I ever looked at the market. I went out with a bang. I knew it was a good short…I didn’t know it was the beginning of the crash. If I and or my friend had gone short….what a great ride it would have been!

                      But at least I get to say that I called the top of the dot-com crash!

                  • Nunzio, technology has gotten to the point where the distance between your computer and the exchange is a major factor. Fractions of milliseconds make all the difference and contribute to even more insane fluctuations in volatility. Technical analysis is really just about lookin at where it’s at now. There is no predictive power whatsoever. It’s just about looking at the reality. Only a fool would look at it as a means of where it might go. Set your stops correctly and play the odds; that’s it. As long as you’ve got more winners than losers, you really can’t go wrong. Unless of course it falls so fast their computers can’t take your transactions.

                    • Partly true, Teo. Technical analysis is all about using the data to predict where it will go, within various time frames.

                      Yes, that access to live data from the market, and near-instant trades has caused a great deal of the volatility- and one of the problems is: That volatility makes the use of stops often counterproductive. i.e. if you’re stops are close enough to do any good, they will get taken out, and you will lose, even if you ultimately called the trade correctly. If your stops are too far…you risk so much as to might as well not even have them.

                      That is one way the market changed c. late 90’s- You put in a stop- even if you’re the only one there, it WILL get hit- even if it means just one little spike on the radar for a nano-second to do it- and you’re out.

                      That is what I told my friend “If you want to play, today, you can’t use stops; and it’s far too risky NOT to use stops”.

                      But you are absolutely correct about more picking more winners than losers. You only need to tip the scales slightly- say 53% winners, and you could do well, as long as you use proper money management. And that is what my friend won’t listen to. He gambles. If you gamble, you could be on the winning side 80% of the time, and still not make any money.

                      Same thing, whether talking about financial markets or a casino…money management is paramount. Knowing the odds and when to get in and out.

                      I’d stay in a trade on average for minutes. Seconds, if it was moving fast. Snag one or two points on the S&P. I was good at that.

                      My friend, by contrast, having been a position (long-term) trader, always wanted to “let it ride”- He’d stay in too long. He might be up ten points…I’d be screaming at him to get out, but he’d want to hold on and see where it goes. It would fluctuate…he’d lose 5 or the 10 pts….was he gonna get them back and pick up a few more, or was it going south? It would often go south…in a hurry, and by the time he’d move, he lost his 10 pts and 4 more- going from a $2500 winning position to a $1000 loser. If he’d put in stops…he’d fare no better. If it was a winning trade, his stop would get taken out before it went his way. If he followed a winning position closely with a stop, it would turn around and volatility would increase, and it would blow right through the stop by several points before they’d get him out of the position (And then it would turn around!).

                      Best way to make money in commodities/stocks? Be the broker! That way you get paid, win, lose or draw. The Jews figured that out long ago. My friend often says that- yet he continued to give them his money…..

                      It was interesting. Glad I got to mess with it, and with someone else’s money- but I’d rather do legitimate work, or trade in real physical goods over which I have control.

        • Just imagine.

          The elites could Easily tank the perception of gold, the evil conflict metal.

          Overnight, all ads could favor platinum. Or silver. It has few industrial uses.

          Get SJWs to avoid it like fur.

          Churches, charities, jewelry more valuable than silver is excessive. Stop flaunting gold priilge today.

          Pelts were money once, what happened?

          Uncles can issue worldwide fatwas.

          Anything is possible.

        • Something does not have to be at an all-time high to be in a bubble. Silver was in a bubble a few years ago at c. $50/oz, yet that was less than half of what it was in 1980. Real estate in some places is in a bubble again, even though it’s not as high as it was in ’07/08.

          As Teo points out, denominating value in dollars (any fiat currency) can be misleading.

        • Compared to pretty much everything. It’s WAY out of proportion to other precious metals, such as silver. The main indicator, to me, is that everyone and their brother is buying it these days. That’s making the price artificially high, and means that when people want to liquidate en-mass, the price is going to seriously tumble. (Or more accurately: The value/purchasing power is going to tumble- as there will be a glut of it)

          • That must explain why Goldsman Sachs recently bought 50 million ounces of it, but that was because they recognize that the horizon of below true value supply is about to crumble. The spot price of gold and silver has been artificially depressed for as long as I’ve been buying it, but the manipulators will lose their control when the Fed’s curtain comes down. Speculators aren’t predicting that the price will be going lower, outside of Harry Dent.

              • That is when the trimetallic philosophy comes in.
                When deflation occurs, my cash will be king, and the feds won’t be stupid enough to try to confiscate anything in a county with 14 registered guns per capita. Even when FDR tried to confiscate gold, he only got about 25% of what was held by Americans, which came from ignorants who were cowed by his propaganda and fake patriotism. I didn’t count hard assets in my calculations because I don’t value them in dollars, rather in opportunity cost.

                  • Gold and silver are money, not hard assets. Peter Schiff doesn’t hold a candle to true austrian economists like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Joseph Schumpeter, which were probably not among his intellectual mentors as they were among mine.

                    • They are money for certain entities, less than 1000 who are left worldwide.

                      Not $ for us mundanes since gold and silver certificates and the coining window were discontinued.

                      Hard Assets are investments with intrinsic value such as oil, natural gas, gold, silver, farmland, natural colored diamonds and commercial real estate.

                      Typically hard assets are an excellent fiat inflation hedge.


                • Maybe FDR only stole 35% (I have no idea if that figure is true), but even if that’s true, of what benefit was the gold to it’s rightful owners anymore, since you couldn’t sell it or trade it or take it to a foreign land without ending up in the klink? It was only of value to those who lived long enough to be able to use it again- in the meantime, you die of old age or starve….being a millionaire on paper….

                  • Illicit drug traders do pretty well with property when they can’t “sell it or trade it or take it to a foreign land without ending up in the klink”. What happens when the petrodollar isn’t accepted by the majority of the planet’s economies anymore? Our military has been ravaging the middle east and africa because they want to establish currencies based on worthless gold.

                    • The laughable concept of illicit drugs being derived from illicit plants and minerals is absurd.

                      The very fact that such a European-esque Middle Ages Catholic tyranny is even countenanced here is proof positive the ideal of American independence is dead in the vast mainstream American consciousness.

                    • Bill, I’m not advocating FRN’s- It’s good to have some on-hand, especially when things collapse- but as I said before, saving them in bulk in the long-term is a losing proposition.

                      I’m with the hard asset crowd.

            • Which will FURTHER artificially inflate the price, Bill. Goldman-Suhks…pfffft. Where’re Lehman Bros; Enron; & Madoff Assocs, etc.? Here today…gone tomorrow, because they do foolish things.

              Gold was and is the thing to preserve wealth long-term- i.e. if you have enough time and wealth to weather immediate years/decades. On the other hand, if you think we’re on the precipice of a major societal change, from which things will never return to the status quo, and are looking to survive and/or take advantage of the opportunities which will present themselves, it is my belief that gold is going to be pretty worthless. In societal upheaval, precious metals are the last things that anyone wants, and the first thing that everyone’s trying to dump.

              Conventional wisdom is for conventional times- but what is coming is unchartered territory/game-changing things. Just as real-estate was once always the rock-solid “guaranteed to appreciate and never depreciate” vehicle…but suddenly isn;t anymore.

              • You haven’t cited a single goldbug.
                Since you don’t seem to understand even Peter Schiff, one has to wonder if you got your economics education from Dr. Suess. Have you ever heard of supply and demand? Do you understand what that means with respect to non perishable commodities?

                • Dr Theodore Geisel, a wise rhyming Jew, is actually an excellent source of economics, for both me and you.

                  As a small child, I remember quite clearly, a book that my mother read and loved dearly.

                  The Lorax, by Seuss, a doctor of rhymes, provided us both with some great pre-sleep times.

                  The idea of scarcity is not that complex and is shown in great detail throughout Lorax’s text.

                  There are lots of trees when the Once-ler first shows, the number is set though, they can’t be regrown.

                  It takes too much time, over 20 long years, until a tree of this type regrows, and reappears.

                  Because they are scarce, there just aren’t enough, for the Once-ler to make these thneeds, oh how tough.

                  Unlimited wants shot down by no trees, it’s scarcity’s best, leaving no room for thneeds.

                  Sadly it takes one tree for one thneed; the opportunity cost is quite high, yes indeed.

                  In order to make a whole bunch of these thneeds, the Once-ler must cut down a whole bunch of trees.

                  At first things are great, the factory grows, economies of scale appear within prose.

                  With size and his family moving in quickly, a good situation becomes very sticky.

                  With a super-ax hacker, a complex machine, the forest soon comes to a desolate scene.

                  This hacker, advanced, can cut down more trees, all of the Trufflas that the rich Once-ler sees.

                  With this expansion and technology growth, the thneeds produce quickly and cost drops, I’d say both.

                  Because of location, monopoly shows, and the thneeds are sold everywhere as the factory grows.

                  From the great state of Texas to lone Timbuktu, thneeds were wanted world-wide; this monopoly true.

                  With oh so much power, the Once-ler can be, the king of the thneeds, just what everyone needs.

              • Hey Nunz, regarding fiat…

                Until moving to Houston, I’ve lived in and owned commercial real estate which isn’t fiat.

                Eric’s farmland isn’t fiat.

                Surburbs and HOA McMansions are usually fiat zombie bubbles. You might own a 10 million doll-hair home, but you’re still just a rich nigger is all, subject to the whims of Uncle in a way non fiat property owners never are.

                Who knows when Uncle Vader’ll alter the deal on his Federal Reserve Doll-hairs. You niggers better pray he doesn’t alter the deal further

                The founders were merchants, business owners, commercial plantation owners, and human labor capital owners, not fiat guys. Fiat guys are just a lighter skinned kind of nigger.

                Not full human beings who control their own destiny. And who are above mere jungle primates who own nothing but soon to spoil bananas, and transient shiny trinket huts of aluminum and balsa wood.

                • I agree, Tor-ski.

                  Back on Lawn Guyland (Where I never owned nuttin’) the RE bubble ‘sploded in ’08- wasn’t uncommon for a house to lose 40% of it’s value- and that’s a lot when you’re talking houses that START at $400K, with the average at the time probably being around $750K.

                  Meanwhile, my acreage here in Bumblephuk went steadily up since I bought it in ’01. It’s at least tripled in value; and probably quadrupled if one ain’t in a hurry to sell.

                  Then there’s the prospect that people may realize when things are are on the brink, and start fleeing the cities before it gets to crisis point, while they can still sell their ghetto-boxes for decent money; and they’ll be vying to pay top dollar for good rural land.

                  Or things could just go to Hell overnight, and like in the Depression, three quarters of the farmers and hobby-farmers could go bust, and rural land might become cheap as dirt…

                  Hard to say. It really depends on timing and the actual scenario.

                  One thing’s for certain though: Regardless of potential future value, you’re better off having land, if you want to (or plan to) live on it.

                  Like Eric, my place is paid for, and I can live on fumes; and literally live off the land….and that is by far the best form of wealth.

                    • Then you are paying rent to the government for the privilege to occupy that which you have been deceived into believing that you own. The rent is called property tax as part of the deception.

                    • Hi Bill,

                      Certainly; but as a practical matter, because I don’t owe the bank or any lender anything – and the property taxes here are slight – I have a very low cost of living and am able to live on acreage that’s effectively mine to do with as I like (no zoning laws in my area). Note that I do not have to pay the insurance mafia, at least – as you do. Since I own my place, I can say no to home insurance. This saves me a sum approximately equivalent to what I am forced to pay in real estate taxes. So in a very real sense, it’s a draw – as far as your van vs. my house, as far as what we each are obliged to pay the government.

                      Yes, I understand that the government can seize my land at its pleasure. Just as the government can seize your vehicle. We’re all vulnerable to that.

                      But – again – they aren’t actually doing that… yet. And nay never do it. In the meanwhile, you have effective ownership of your vehicle and I have effective ownership of my land…

                    • Bill, you pay rent to the government too, on your van, every year in the form of taxes and registration fees; and they compel you to buy insurance too.

                      There’s no escaping the police while living within it’s midst. The only way to escape is to leave.

      • Taking a look at this one webpage on their website tells me I should disqualify TireRack as anyone a freedom of production and wealth man would ever deal with.

        6 workers that would be right at home at EPA are pictured. Goatee Millenial, Ditzy Blonde Millenial, Ball Busting Bespectacled Dike Millenial, Goatee Millenial, Token Black Millenial, Pasty Brunette Millenial.

        They don’t look like they ever been outside of a social justice classroom in their lives.

        A face to face llantas place would never have such poseurs. At most one millennial senora who was there to watch the roomful of kids and knew a bit of english to read shit the customers bring. Nothing but proud men with dust grease and grime embedded into all layers of skin at a llantas shop. Maybe lower IQ than average Americans, but still 100% human.

        No bullshit about FMVSS and DOT overlords has ever entered their minds, much less been uttered from their lips. Viva Los Juan Galts and Hecho Reardens.

        An Ayn Rand Villain couldn’t have said any of this more Clearly Cloverlitically:

        Federal law requires tire manufacturers to provide standardized information permanently branded on the sidewalls with the tire’s basic characteristics, capacities and construction, as well as its U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Tire Identification Number.

        Current regulations require that Tire Identification Numbers begin with the letters “DOT,” followed by eight to thirteen characters (see 12-character example in photo below) that can be used to identify the manufacturing location, tire size and manufacturer’s specifications, along with the week and year the tire was manufactured.

        So while DOT Tire Identification Numbers are commonly but erroneously referred to as the tire’s serial number, unlike the serial numbers used on most other consumer goods that identify one specific item, Tire Identification Numbers actually identify production batches.

        Regulations require the entire DOT Tire Identification Number to be branded on one sidewall while only the letters “DOT” and the first digits of the Tire Identification Number must be branded onto the opposite sidewall. It is possible to see a Tire Identification Number that appears incomplete, yet simply requires looking at the tire’s other sidewall to find the complete Tire Identification Number.


        Without conducting the tests and certifying these tires meet U.S. requirements, these tires are not allowed to be branded “DOT” and cannot be legally driven in the United States.

        Mounting Orientation of Tire Identification Numbers (TIN)


        Their expertise is in complying with and helping to enforce regulations. TireRack is not a place that employs Tire Guys.

    • Bill, you seem to have this habit of making a lot of assumptions. I’m not assuming that the increase in price is necessarily an increase in value, and when the government tinkers with the economy not everything increases in price or value evenly; read VonMises, Hayek, Hazlitt, etc. Prices, and values don’t even fluctuate evenly in the same areas sometimes. My utility bill has seen a negligible increase over the last five years, my property taxes are the same story, but the price of my dump of a home has more than doubled. I basically paid for the air conditioning unit and got the rest of the place for free. If a hurricane blows my house a way I still have what I paid for, and A/C units haven’t gone up that much in the last few years either.

      So how about looking at what I actually posted Bill, I pointed out that when I walked into a couple of places I saw some white trash, and for this you have to ask if I think anyone who shops in these places is white trash? Yeah Bill, that’s it. Looks like you’ve got some sort of chip on your shoulder. On some level there’s a little bit of white trash in all of us, some people just get testy when they feel like their being put down. It really doesn’t bother me if someone thinks of me as white trash, or that I may someday be white trash. I’m not trying to keep up with the Joneses, never really gave two shits about it. I spent years living on the street, and don’t regret a bit of it. I’ve also lived in some pretty nice homes and eventually discovered that I wasn’t really into filling these places with stuff and didn’t really like the way everything in a brand new home outgasses almost constantly. That’s just me, but then again, there’s something to be said for the simple life, and one doesn’t have to be a meth head, or on SSI to live the simple life, but living the simple life can also be associated or perhaps misconstrued to being labeled “white trash” so be it. No sweat off my brow. So how about working on some reading comprehension skills, eh bill? Nowhere was I defining people who shop in Dollar General as a characteristic of white trash. It’s just simply where I’ve seen them in numbers great enough to notice them. Here’s the actual definition Bill, “NOUN
      poor white people, especially those living in the southern US.” By most outward appearances, and that definition, I fit that label already and couldn’t care less who wants to label me as white trash right now. I live in some snowbirds place; their winter place that they couldn’t afford after the recession so their loss is my gain. It’s a dump. My next door neighbor did the same thing. He refers to it as camping out. For a while the septic system was clogged up and in the meantime I fashioned a quick outhouse. That’s how white trash think. After putting in the new drain field I kept the outhouse just in case there were any complications and I might need it again. I’m looking at some property out in the boonies now, and I’m gonna take my outhouse with me. I’m about as south as you can get living in southern Florida, and when you’re living in and among white trash perhaps it just becomes a part of you. Maybe that’s why some people are so afraid of moving to an area where white trash can be found. It’s a lifestyle that I don’t think is necessarily anything to be afraid of at all. Having a load of shit to take care of doesn’t appeal to me anymore so I’m definitely a better fit for the label of white trash than upper middle class; labels don’t really bother me. They don’t really mean much to me anymore. I didn’t worry about money when I was living on the street, and I lived on the street for over a dozen years. Why would I worry now when I’ve got money? I learned to be frugal and it’s something that has stuck with me all these years even when there’s no need to be.

      Do you honestly think I’m going to give two shits when the dollar reaches its intrinsic value??? I couldn’t care less. When hurricane Irma blew through here all of my neighbors were gone. Down the street the white trash were still around in the government approved evacuation sites. It was quiet and peaceful here, and prompted me to further investigate a place farther out in the sticks, a place where white trash would look like a step up in the world for those who judge a person or the neighborhood by their net worth. So how about taking a powder, eh Bill? Try not to get yer panties up in a bunch just because of a simple observation.

      • Hey Bill, never heard of a “Jersey barrier”, but I get the picture; some sort of blockade, K-rail type thing to keep people from getting in. Probably not something I’m going to really be all that concerned with as I already live out in the sticks, and looking for a place even farther out. There’s a farmer’s market right down the street when I can’t get it from my garden, and frankly, the only thing I can think of from the big cities that I might be interested in is an hour in a float tank, but even that’s something I’m working on building for myself. So while the civil war is in full swing, I’ll be relaxing in my float tank out in the sticks. That’s actually plan b; plan a is to just sail down to the Caribbean.

          • Hey Bill, yep. In the construction industry they call it ‘K rail”. I’ve been working on plan a and b for a while, but ran into a problem with my sailboat. I’m waiting on parts now. I’m also looking for something a bit more comfortable. I started thinking a while back that there’s no reason why I can’t be more comfortable while I’m cruising around the Caribbean so even my plan a now has its own plan b. I’ve got the sailboat for sale as well to see what I can get for it. Plan b is in place right where I’m at right now. I’m already out in the sticks and Irma was a nice test to see how well prepared I am. The batteries worked fine so I had plenty of indoor hot and cold running water to pump my water tanks. I always keep my fridge stuffed full of ice whenever I have room, and the heads up gave me time to fill it up with more. The generator works great to refreeze the water. I could have probably lasted a month or more so while that’s probably not going to cut it in the long run, I’m still working on it, it’s not a major problem. What I’ve got set up so far, I can take with me to my next location and just set it up there. It’s really something I’ve been planning on doing anyways regardless of whether there’s an economic collapse or some social meltdown. What are you going to do, if anything?

            • Teo,
              Several years ago I picked up a former friend in Crowley, LA and took him to eastern Florida to look for a sailboat. I was the capital, he was the labor. The plan was to find a boat that we could go to sea in, where he would teach me how to sail same. If I could and wanted to, I’d keep the boat and carry on. If not, he’d buy the boat and sail away after dropping me back on land. We found a nice 25ft with new sails for about the cost of the sails, and made an appointment for a test sail the next day. Then my former friend called home, where his justifiably pissed off wife told him to get his butt home if he wanted to stay married. Seems he is/was a serial abandoner. The next day, we took a 3-hour cruise (without Ginger or Maryann) on a 69 foot schooner, where I found that my sealegs were just fine.
              I have been living in a van since 1984. I’ve spent a lot of time playing snowbird and getting to know several fulltime RVers. They have all told me the same story about the absence of a service that could take care of their day to day living commitments without their involvement. The closest anyone seems to come is mail forwarding, but these folks don’t want to get mail. They want someone to open their mail, pay their bills, and contact them by email or phone only as necessary. If I can find an affordable building to live and run a business in, I’m going to buy it and do both.
              If a 576 square foot commercially zoned but residually “shed” type building I’ve found for $30K works out, I’ll be moving to a town of about 1300 population at the base of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming. Since it is the county seat, and everything is in walking distance from the building in question, all of my needs will be met in a situation where all of my customer’s needs and wants can be as well. I’d also do some small scale fullfillment too small for outfits like Amazon, with much faster turnaround capabilities.

                • You must love wherever you are more to pay so much more for so little security from all of the threats that you talk about. Given my commercial intents for my home, there is no better place to live than in a commercial zone within walking distance of everything I need to live and work comfortably. I doubt that the same building could cost under 6 figures there.

      • Teo,
        Your style of writing doesn’t allow for anything beyond assumption.
        I don’t wear panties, and if you do, yours are the ones in a bunch.
        I hope you never have to write clear concise descriptions of anything, because you haven’t demonstrated any ability to understand the process, let alone accomplish it.

    • Hey, Bill never even heard of Lisinopril, but my story is much the same. My cardiologist had me on a regiment of close to a dozen pills twice a day, and after a few years with a changed diet and lifestyle he had to take me off the high blood pressure pills and a few other ones. Then I discovered that a few of the pills I was taking were actually making my heart weaker through robbing my body of magnesium which is essential for a healthy heart. When I went sugar free, my cardiologist informed me that I no longer had congestive heart failure. He was dumbfounded; probably still is.

    • What threats are you talking about Bill? Irma? I’m in the woods, it was just some wind and a bunch of downed limbs and branches. I keep everything trimmed so there’s really no danger. And as for six figures for commercial space, perhaps in Miami or St. Pete, but where I’m at commercial space is dirt cheap. You could build a brand new place probably double that size for that price. That’s what people are doing right now. The strip malls are all pretty much empty. Residential housing is a similar story. I just looked at a 1400 sq.ft. 3bd/2ba on two acres; the asking price was $8k Unlike a lot of places around here about six or seven years ago, this place still had an in tact well, AC, as well as wiring and plumbing.

      • How far would you have to go to hunt and fish? I can walk to both.
        There has never been a hurricane in Wyoming, where winds are common enough to provide all the electricity for any small wind generator I want to put up on commercial property without static from the neighbors. How many traffic jams would you have to endure to get to the largest city in your state? I wouldn’t encounter a single one. How much snow did you get last year? Average snowfall is 4.1 inches in January, the snowiest month. The highest average temperature in July, the hottest month is 89.8, the lowest is 1.7 in January. The post office, built in 1919, is on the National Register of Historic Places. No BLM here: “The racial makeup of the town was 96.77% White, 0.08% African American, 1.05% Native American, 0.24% Asian, 0.97% from other races, and 0.89% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.26% of the population.”
        Yeah, you’re right, why would anyone want to live in such a dive?

        • Well, bill, I can hunt right out my bedroom window quite easily. The deer are plentiful. There’s a spring fed pond no more than 50 yards from my property line, and the river is a little over a mile if I walk it. I’m on the western side of the state so hurricanes really aren’t an issue. The last one came right by my place, probably no more than thirty miles from the eye. Again, just some wind. That was probably THE worst case scenario. The chance of snow is pretty close to nil here, although it can get a little chilly at night in the winter, but not enough to where I’d ever have to fire up a generator to stay alive, or even stay warm. I really have no reason to go to the largest cities in Florida, but I may have to go down to St. Pete to get some rigging redone which isn’t a problem if I time it right. I don’t know what the racial make up is here, don’t care. I’m not a racist. I like the sun, and the gulf breezes keep the temps in the sub tropical range which is pretty damn near Paradise. Solar is way cheaper than wind, and the equipment lasts longer, not as many moving parts to break. Solar is way more simple to install, and nobody notices it. I’m not against wind generators, but I also know how annoying they can be rattling and shaking etc. You get used to them after a while, but then when the wind dies down, the quiet wakes you up. lol. Been there, done that. you can have it. You can have your 500 sq.ft. dream box in town for $30k too. I’ve had a few of those as well, and it doesn’t really matter where it is at that price. I see Wyoming license plates down here in the winter bill, and there’s no getting around why they’re down here. Wyoming in the winter is COLD. It gets a little chilly down here too, but you can pick out the people from Wyoming in a heartbeat because they’re the only ones walking around in shorts and tank tops first thing in the morning.

          • The brick over steel frame building faces north providing copious mounting space on the rear for solar hot water and space heating, and out of sight satellite antennas. Being a block and a half from the post office, sending and receiving mail and parcels will be a dream. Wyoming is not the coldest place in the US in the winter by a long shot, and the humidity is always among the lowest, making the cold less penetrating. The fact that most people believe that Wyoming is an icebox is fine, it keeps out the whiny types, leaving us more venison. The reason why the prices are cheap down there is because the market is shrinking. Stick built houses this size are several times as old (1975) and three or more times as high. Of course, steel-framed buildings have a tendency to fall straight down when hit by airliners, but there are no international airports nearby. The building faces out onto a 4 lane state highway with plenty of marketing opportunity and parking.
            The former sheriff of this county regularly ran off federales before Printz v US.

      • I see the same stuff Nunzio. Here’s one I saw a few weeks ago. It’s some guy on youtube talking about how the power plants across the country have these cooling systems that pump all this water vapor into the atmosphere. Then he shows satellite footage of a few of these power plants pumping all of these clouds out and the clouds drifting across the country. I’ve seen this happen myself. Some of these power plants pump out an astounding amount of smoke; at least it looks like smoke, but evidently it’s just water vapor. Anyways, after watching this guy’s videos which are all pretty well done. I’m watching some television clips of a meteorologist as he’s tracking hurricane Irma across Cuba and southern Florida. Lo and Behold these same cloud bursts show up as hurricane Irma gets close to land. These cloud bursts are on land and they’re perfectly circular. There’s like four or five of them all at once right behind this meteorologist, and I’m thinking that this is a fantastic way to get a video going viral, and while I haven’t seen the guy put this online yet, I’m sure he will soon if he hasn’t already. So the guy thinks the government is doing this all intentionally, and while I’m not really there yet, I do think it’s amazing how all of this water vapor comes spewing out of these power plants and is way more than enough to see from a satellite, and probably way more effective than any other method of cloud seeding out there. It’s quite obvious that it’s coming from power plants the way they will all start spewing it out all at once. I think the site on youtube is something like “weatherwar1” or something like that. The videos are a bit over the top, but the production value is good and there are a few minutes that make it worth the time it takes to watch them. I think a lot of these guys have a great imagination, and it’s really kind of entertaining to watch them as they expound these theories of theirs. I can just see some guy sitting in his car one day on the freeway creeping along and suddenly he gets this idea that K rail piled up on the freeway is going to be used to surround Atlanta creating an instant fema camp.

        • Yeah, Teo- sometimes it’s hard to know where to draw the line on stuff. Like the powerplants- is it just some sort of pollution-control (probably) or some diabolical plot? Or is it pollution control, which, intentionally or unintentionally causes more pollution/creates more hazards than if it were just left alone?

          Then there’s disinformation put out by the gov’t, masquerading as alternative news, to over-hype everything and thus make people conclude that all conspiracy theories are bunk….and then there are just lone nuts who get an idea in their head, or who believe the disinfo, etc. and then make a video…

          Our government is obviously engaged in many diabolical acts- some overt and some covert, but the covert stuff is usually indeed covert, and not discovered by obscure author or some guy with a “Metalica” T-shirt who makes a video.

          I think much of it is just distraction. Really, if people would stop worrying so much about what may or may not be going on in some other part of the country or world, and worry more about what is happening in their own town, where they could actually have an impact and resist the most present tyranny, we’d all be a lot better off.

          Then there are the obvious things, like the grids of vapor being sprayed in the sky, which I used to see many days above my own property (But not so much lately)- and the which no one can find out what they are or what their purpose is; and which the gov’t won’t even acknowledge as existing…. Now you know something is going on there, and it can’t be good.

          • Nunzio, no, it’s not pollution control. It’s just cooling fans. It’s nothing but condensation, and when they start pumping all this water vapor into the sky, when the conditions are right it forms these HUGE clouds. Contrary to some, it’s far superior to cloud seeding. There are a bunch of people saying that they were doing cloud seeding prior and during Harvey, but all you really see are these perfectly round cloud bursts erupting over land as these cooling systems pumped all this water up into Harvey only to have it all come right back down and flood the place. Again, I don’t think it was intentional, and I don’t know how anyone would prove it, but I do think it’s something that people should look at and perhaps suggest that when hurricanes are on their way, pumping water vapor into them may not be the greatest idea.

  12. It’s very difficult to find good mom-and-pop tire shops these days. The corporate chains put most mom-and-pop tire shops out of business in my area, especially when Wal-Mart came to town. I wish I could move…..

    • Hi Handler,

      I live in a rural area where such (the mom & pops) still exist, but they are dying breed… like the country store…

      A got-damned Dollar General sprouted up the road from me earlier this year…

      • I have fond memories of our local country store. They sold just about everything you could imagine. If you needed a ribeye and the latest Jenna Jameson porn flick, they had it. The original owner was smart enough to sell. They ended up having to stop selling fuel because their pumps were not in compliance. The pumps that were in compliance were way too expensive for the little guy, of course. They’re still in business only because Dollar General doesn’t sell beer….yet.

        Dollar General recently built a massive third store to cater to the latest Section 8 dwellers nearby. It’s like a miniature Wal-Mart.

        • Handler, Walmart is like white-trash Tiffany’s compared to these dollar stores.

          I wish “Li’l Rocket Man” really could nuke us. The landscape needs to be cleared of all of this filth.

          Same here where I live. Little town closest to where I live, had a gas station/restaurant which sold some handy hardware/farm supplies…just those li’l handy items, from loose nails; fence staples; oil; hose clamps…to powdered calf milk replacer…. It could be a life-saver, and keep ya from having to drive to the real town 17 miles away. They recently sold out to some Dot-heads. Now it’s just a gas station/crappy convenience store/beer store (since our county just recently went wet). It and a restaurant, and the stoopit Post Office which is open 4 hours a day, are about the only things remaining in the little town of c.300 people. A few miles outside of town on the highway, they opened a Dollar General. Makes me sick every time I pass that DG. Now there’s nowhere to even buy a nail…. but if you want the latest in welfare-chic apparel….

          A piece of fresh fruit or head of lettuce can’t be had….but if Doritos and cigarettes are your thing….

          • “Li’l Rocket Man” really could nuke us, once or twice, but he isn’t as stupid or crazy as our media or Trump makes him out to be. He wants to remain nuclear for the actual and political deterrent that it provides.
            It is really stupid or crazy to complain about the deficiencies of where you live if you are unwilling or unable to rectify them yourself. If it weren’t for the fact that most of the farms that I pass on the way into town every day grow cash crops instead of food, all of the food required by the population of the county could be grown on them. When they have to grow their own food instead of getting it from the grocery store, if there is any in it, they will change over. The Walmart supercenter 22 miles away will continue to do well as long as it remains open, but the long range forecasts include a lot of road-closing weather, and if the trucks can’t get through… No one here has to get to the Walmart, the Linton’s Big R has almost everything we need, and we have 2 grocers in town. I don’t need to go anywhere the school buses don’t, so the local roads will be clear.

      • Guess I’m a lucky one. Have a “local” tire shop about 50 miles from my rural home.
        It might amaze most to know they beat the Big-box prices by at least 15%…
        And they sell so many tires you have to get an appointment in advance.
        No vehicle scans, no time for that, no forcing into prescribed tires but, no checks or credit cards either…sorry.
        They buy tires by tire train car load, warehousing the most popular sizes.
        If I was to live anywhere near a place where they wanted to scan my vehicle numbers, I would buy another set of wheels and take them in separately.
        Advise the dealer to put them on or I would go elsewhere.

          • You should review local businesses in addition to cars.

            Take your gear and interview them on location.

            Do them free upfront with something for you on the backend. Or for barter.

            Could you make this site a pdf or printable daily, weekly or monthly periodical.

            You should get even more beyond being a blog, you’re multifaceted and could hold meetup events etc.

            • Hi Tor,

              Those are interesting ideas; problem is it’s just me – and there’s only one of me. I am maxed out just doing what I already do, which includes running the site as well as ginning up the material for the site, responding to people’s comments and questions, doing radio, etc.

              I wish I were a better businessman. The site has the traffic to support staff; or at least, to enable me to have a single staffer to help with things. But I’m not there yet, especially post divorce.

              That takes a chunk, as many of you out there who’ve been through it already know…

              • My divorce didn’t cost anything because she was in Colorado with a lawyer that she claimed to hire to help her with a deed in lieu of foreclosure and a no-fault divorce, with didn’t require anything but following the steps in one of three books in her family’s bookstore, and I was non-respondent in Texas. Not a penny was exchanged. I haven’t had a girlfriend since, having learned that they are all misprogrammed before they get to us, and many of us are as well.

                  • Eric, I know you have to pay the bills….but try and take it easy and enjoy your new-found freedom/solitude, by taking some time to just relax and do nothing….”just be”; look at the clouds; look at the grass; go for a walk….

                    Few men these days have the luxury of being able to do what they want in peace and quiet; without nagging and complaining and conflict.

                    I never realized until quite recently, how much many other men envied me, just for being able to do what I want, and for not living in quiet desperation, like they do.

                    Enjoy it, buddy! It keeps one young!

                    I guess it takes some getting used to, when you’re used to having someone there- but when you think about it, living for yourself, as a self-contained entity, is the pinnacle of Libertarianism!

                    Some tyrannies are forced upon us; some we volunteer for. You’re totally free from the voluntary kind now….

                    • All of our tyrannies are a matter of our choices. If we want to avoid most of them, we have to stop building our own cages in our own minds. I chose many decades ago to never be trapped by a job, regardless of the pay or perks. The result has been a lower income than I could have had. That has lead me to the discovery that it is much easier to lower ones cost of living than to increase one income. With the continual inflation of a debt-based economy, if one doesn’t continuously lower ones cost of living, ones standard of living will inevitably decrease faster than income will fall. The time has passed when we can expect a better standard of living than our parents had. If one choses to live in a van, one will probably spend more time enjoying the river, or going south for the winter and north for the summer. There is no more peaceful sleep than that fallen into listening to the whitewater.

                    • Ditto here, Bill. One of the greatest blessings in my life was that I figured that out at an early age, before I could get mired in debt and servitude.

                      Life can be so simple; so free; so beautiful. There’s so much to see and enjoy.

                      Most people today spend the best years of their lives locked away in some stinking cubicle, and living in places where they essentially have nothing but a place to sleep and some toys.

            • NOoooo! Bad idea, Tor. Well, it might be good “for business”, if one cares only about that, and doesn’t mind having a site which only only appeals to “the average consumer” type/general public- but really, nothing ruins a site faster and more completely for those who come for intellectual content, than does “consumerism”.

              I’ve seen so many sites become utterly unusable because they went from the intellectual/virtual side, to the utilitarian/real-world-participation side.

              And really, how many really “good” businesses are there in any area? By publicizing any practices that the truly good ones do, it would probably end up getting them shut-down for “not being in compliance”.

              And then ya’d run into things like the bidness owners maybe not wanting to be associated with a site that publicizes the crimes of the cops….so then even the thought of that might end up affecting content…

              In short, it’s almost impossible to do that without becoming a sell-out – unless you know that the bidness owners are like-minded Libertarian/Anarchist types who are in philosophical agreement – of which there might be a handful in the entire country, because it’s hard enough to even find a non business-owner who is a Lib/An.

              Hey, please… just recently I got some sort of spam email claiming to be from this site, hawking Amsoil. That felt kinda creepy.

      • Unfortunately, there isn’t an ideal place to live. It’s very difficult trying to find a nice place that isn’t located in a high-tax state. Most of the rural communities in the South have the same issues as the one I currently live in. You have some that are growing into suburbs via annexation. The ones that do stay rural are usually inhabited by white trash welfarites and meth heads.

        • Hi Handler,

          The place where I live – Floyd County, Va. – is okay. Still rural; still relatively affordable but not populated by meth addicts and white trash, though there are some of those. But, the place is changing because Yankees (in mind as well as birth) are moving in. I see the signs. The only upside is I bought in when land was cheap and own my place – so when the time comes to flee because of Yankees, I can and will financially sodomize the one who buys my place and use the proceeds to relocate operations in much more rural place… on much more land than I have now!

          • Eric,
            It may not be dominated by meth addicts and white trash, but it is populated by them, if they are there.
            I suspect that the likelihood of selling your land, aside from to a government which will give you as little as possible, is very low and getting lower by the day.
            T’was me, it would get listed with a competent property manager and be a financial teat forevermore.

            • Bill, I must be missing something here, but the last time I checked real estate was continuing to increase in value again, and has been for a while. I still see people selling their places and getting good prices for them. My place has more than doubled in value in just a few years. The neighborhood I live in is free of meth heads, but there are a few pot heads and a few people collecting ssi. I only know about the ssi people from what some of the other neighbors who have lived here longer told me. There are some trailer parks around town that probably house a fair amount of white trash, but out of sight out of mind. The few times I’ve stepped into the nearby Dollar General or the Sav-A-Lot stores reveal that there is in fact a plentiful supply of white trash living in and around here, but I really don’t notice them otherwise. However, I am looking to pick up some property farther out in the sticks and tow a 5th wheel or travel trailer out and do some “glamping”. The idea to eventually live there full time, and have the option to hook up and split if I find something better somewhere else.

              • Teo,
                Increasing in price is not increasing in value, with the value of the dollar dropping faster than anything else. How much of what else you have bought has increased in price during the same time? Do you consider anyone who has to buy in small quantity at a dollar store instead of in large lots at a warehouse store to be white trash? If so, you will become white trash someday, by your own definition.

                • Yes. When it comes to valuing things you have to ask “compared to what”. Valuing compared to dollars is insane, but most stupid people do that. This is why every trader with any intelligence at all runs volatilities and correlations to value assets and injects interest rates.

            • Hi Bill,

              They are around, but keep to themselves. Crime is low – probably because everyone is armed to the eyebrows but also because the “shoot, shovel and shut up” policy is understood and practiced…

              • Hi Eric,
                You’d have fewer meth heads if the schools would stop putting their students on pharmaceutical methamphetamine, known as Ritalin. Dr. Carl Hart has been spreading the truth.

                  • Eric,
                    That is just one reason why I am glad to be childless. Unfortunately there is a growing percentage of adults who are just as willing to become registered legal junkies on whatever kind of pharmaceuticals the doctor will give them, and most doctors will happily write a prescription on the basis of anecdotal self-diagnosis by the patient rather than argue about it. I am proud to say that I have given up the only scheduled prescription I have been on as an adult, Lisinopril, because I cured the hypertension with nutrition.

                    • Hi Bill,

                      I often regret it. Not having had children. I like kids and for whatever reason, they seem to like me. I suppose because I am a middle-aged kid myself.

                      I am still open to the possibility. But of course, that entails finding a woman who isn’t nose-ringed and tattoed like a Polynesian tikki statue…

              • When I was in high school we had a prowler in the garage. We called the sheriff, and they came out and caught the guy. We told them that we had a shotgun, and after they had the guy in custody they came in to talk, and told us that if we ever shot someone outside the house to make sure and drag the body back into the house.

                Seven or eight years ago a couple guys invaded a home with guns, the homeowner was able to get ahold of one of these guns and maimed one, killed the other. They had to hold the trial in another county, but the homeowner, even though he was acquitted had to go through a long drawn out trial and fork out his hard earned cash for an attorney. “Shoot, shovel, and shut up” is probably going to become a lot more prevalent as this nonsense continues.

                • Teo,
                  When I was longhaulling in the early 90s, I noticed that there were increasing numbers of jersey barriers being stockpiled alongside the interstate just outside its intersection with loops outside of large cities. They are still there. They are kept there to be deployed to close the interstates for through traffic and route it onto the loops. Atlanta has already banned through truck traffic. After the barriers are out on the roads, the cities will become concentration camps. Anyone who can’t walk out will become trash of whatever color they are. The cities have been filling up as the economy has been declining. They are unlikely to lose population before the civil war begins.

                  • It’s just storage between construction projects or before one starts or after one just finished. I’ve seen the barrier stock piles appear and disappear.

                    I’ve even found them stored out where they would have no purpose whatsoever.

                    I’ve noticed no pattern other than that of construction projects where they get used.

                    • I have driven past the same piles several times over a period of years, and there is no justification for the storage of construction equipment like that for that period of time, other than for the reason I cited. That impression has been shared with many other drivers and confirmed by one ex-DHS contractor.

                    • I’ve been following the alternative news/conspiracies/etc for 30 years now. I think there is a LOT of propaganda and disinformation out there, just as much as there is in the mainstream media.

                      Article I read today started off sanely enough, and then devolved into how 300,000 people just disappeared after Katrina, after being in the FEMA camps.

                      Really?! 300,000 people, and yet all these years and I’ve never heard of one friend or relative saying that someone vanished.

                      There has to be some sinister plot to every little thing- even road barrier storage.

                      The REAL diabolical things aren’t quite so obvious. But there’s so much fake alternative news, it keeps people distracted; and even worse: It makes them question if ANYTHING is wrong; and give-up, after repeated warnings of the sky is falling.

                      The sky will fall…but it’s happening gradually, and won’t be quite so obvious as be in plain sight on the side of a highway.

                    • Yeah there’s a lot of bad stuff out there and at least some of it is intentionally made to hide the real in plain site. That is make it so nobody pays attention.

                      As to the barriers I’ve seen them sit for years too and then one day they’re gone.

                      Those things are probably more expensive to haul around than they are to make. So lots of reason to store them instead of hauling them for miles and miles.

                      If the government wanted to block the road they would use men and the barriers or explosives not portable barriers left unattended. All it takes is a guy in a pickup truck and a tow strap to get them out of the way.

                    • These things sit around seemingly willy-nilly except they wait for future projects the rest of us no nothing about. I watched several places with the things stacked like cordwood. After a year or two or 5 they’re being hauled to another location.

                      This was especially true when I-20 was rebuilt for 40 miles or more just west of Mineral Wells and those were used in place for years. It takes a long time to pour that much concrete.

                      Others were stacked near Colorado City and then they were hauled to Big Spring where a bypass was built that took a couple years.

                      A single truck hauls one of these so it’s a big expense to move them very far.

            • Bill, where I came from- Long Island- where there is a heroin epidemic, and half the population are on drugs of one sort or another, and crime is rampant, people pay some of the highest prices in the country for real estate and property taxes…as if they are living in some kind of paradise. Meanwhile, the infrastructure there is crumbling; the tyranny is the worst in the entire country; etc.

              Land value has little to do with quality of life when you live in a country full of psychopaths. In-fact, it seems that people pay the most to live in the very worst areas.

              Eric is a prime location for the pensioned Yankees who have the sense to leave/can no longer afford to stay in Yankee-land, and who are smart enough to avoid the places which have already been ruined by the huge influx of their kind; like NC and SC. but who still don’t want to be too far off the beaten path. (Which is why I moved far from the beaten path when I fled Yankee-land).

              Eric’s county is ripe as a potential new place for Yanks to disover and ruin…and once a few of ’em start coming, the prices will skyrocket- and a few meth-heads and white-trash types won’t even be noticed, because their numbers are so small compared to where these Yanks are from; and even the inflated prices will semm dirt cheap to someone who sold there ancient dilapidated shack on a 20’x50′ lot in a burgeoning ghetto, for $750K. and who are used to having much worse than white-trash rummaging through their back yard every night.

              The more northern 2/3rds of VA. is largely there already….southwest VA. is ripe to be the next hot-spot!

                • Bill, the goobermint will never be illiquid- they just keep printing it up. WE’RE the ones who will be illiquid, because our currency will be worthless.

                    • Hi Bill,

                      I have always believed – thought – it’s smart to own tangible things of value that are fungible, such as land. I have never owned stock or kept assets in paper… just strikes me as a terrible idea…

              • Hi Nunzio,

                I think about this a lot, for the obvious reason… I live here… . I had hoped – and still hope – that I am far enough off the beaten path to dodge the Yankee Tide. But if not, I still win. If those SOBs influx, real estate values will skyrocket. A place like mine could end up being worth a fortune. In Northern Virginia, my place would be considered an estate – and the land alone worth at least half a million. So if they come, I cash out. I pocket the money and effing vamoose to a place even more rural, where I will have the means to buy serious acreage and a decent place to put on it, too.

          • Ditto where I am in KY. Eric.

            There’s white trash and meth-heads in the towns….but not too bad, as such tend to gravitate to larger towns, of which we don’t have any in this county- and out here in the country, as long as you stay away from the few places that were divvied-up into small parcels (an acre or two) for trailer trash; and stick to the areas where there are farms and/or people who own larger acreages, it’s a different world.

            Proof positive that private property is the best remedy for all ills!

        • I live on 60 acres of riverfront property 30 minutes from downtown Houston. There are meth labs just across the river. On this side of the river there are multi million dollar multi acre finest homes you can buy interspersed with double wides.
          The meth heads KNOW, if they come across the river, they never come back.

          • If they are in sight, and within a mile, they wouldn’t be around any longer than it would take a sniper to pick them off, here. Texans are becoming rich weenies.

        • Everyone’s ideal is different. Mine changes with season. I can move with the turn of an ignition switch, which is where I’m headed for the next year or so.

    • I guess I am lucky, we have two smallish tire store chains in the area (NW Indiana outside Chicago).

      One is getting a little too corporate, but keep their stores looking nice, so I imagine they will be the last ones standing. The other small chain is old school (it actually has more locations)but often gets in trouble with the towns they are in (remember they are old school). Their shops are far from pretty, looking like the shops of old (dirty,needing paint, unpaved lots, no landscaping etc).

      They get the wrath of the upscalers (those who think our very middle class town is upscale ha ha, its far from upscale). They ran my towns location out, leaving a vacant property (during the worst of the recession, good jobs idiots) hoping to replace it with a Starbucks…….. Starbucks did buy the property, just as it went into its financial problems, so they never built a store and sold the property. So now we have a strip mall there with a smoke shop, a tanning booth place and other equally worthless minimum wage job places. So we replaced probably five decent paying non pretty jobs with crap (the new building won’t win any design awards).

  13. This doesn’t seem new. They have been putting VINs on the majority of auto paperwork for a LONG time.

    And I can’t even imagine installing tires on my cars in any size other than what the car’s electronics, gearing, etc are optimized for.

    And maybe it’s just me, but I also can’t imagine installing tires for a “lower” speed rating than my car was designed to take. 😉

  14. http://www.CumminsRepower.com, this link will take you to the Cummins site, got an old Willys or Studebaker, Chevy, Ford pickup?This here is a sweet fuel-sipping diesel with basically all the goodies to drop it in included, you can get the adapters to hook it to about anything , its a 2.8 4 cylinder with around 260 lb-ft of torque stock( bet you can get a lot better numbers pretty easily.) They are selling 500 of these engines Friday( first come, first serve, don’t worry they are like Doritos they will make more) they are also taking suggestions for another repower engine to vend, tell em what you want Guys ! I am so freakin glad somebody in the aftermarket is starting to pay attention.
    Nunzio , I have vowed to never hurt another Human being if I can help it( and what I really dont want to do is hurt somebodys feeling) of course there is a limit .
    Green monster is some good pipe dope and Harvey makes some good blue looking crap( sealed the Asian fittings first go around(never been able to do that with tape.0

  15. Very right you meatballs ! Hey you, out there in the cold Will be lonely, will be old Can you feel me? Hey you, there in the corridor With aching feet and a fading smile Can you feel me? Hey you, do not help them, delete the light Does not fight without translate?

  16. Wow, this is news to me. VIN scanning by tire dealers? Where in the U.S. is it happening I wonder. I am not aware of anything like that here in WY.

    • The tire dealers in Wyoming would probably tell them to go away before they’d try to find customers who would tolerate such tyranny. With Caifornication coming from the north and the south, it is a matter of time before we have to deal with it WY.

  17. One could, Teo- but only iffin ya live in a state with no inspection. Quite frankly though, a lot of those older engines and trannies were actually as reliable- if not more reliable than the more modern ones, as long as one maintained ’em. It was usually the nacillary stuff that broke- like the ignition system.

    You won’t find any modern engines that can come close to something like the old Ford 300 ci inline 6. Those suckers could do 400K miles with no major repairs. Pretty much all of the modern engines are either all aluminum- or have aluminum heads…which means that unless you’re very lucky and/or do everything just right from the day it’s new…you’re gonna go through a few head gaskets/heads, etc. even if she makes it to several hundred K’s.

    And then, one has to wonder: Without all of the computer crap- the monitoring and controlling, whether the newer engines indeed would do as well as they even now do. The older engines were built to tolerate less strict temperature control and fuel mixture, etc. I suspect that a modern injun, under those same conditions wouldn’t fare as well.

    • Nunzio, that’s just the point. The old cars needed to be maintained while these newer cars are way more forgiving. I suspect the computer crap does allow for more forgiveness for those who are less meticulous with their scheduled oil changes, etc. But then I don’t really know. I’ll have to wait until I find someone who actually works on them. I beat the crap out of my last Korean car and that thing took everything I gave it without a peep. The scheduled timing chain and gears was 60k miles, but I put double that on it before having it done. i asked the guy to save the old parts and tell me what he thought. He said I probably could have gone another 100k. I’ve got a friend with a late model Mustang and as nice as it looks, when she starts driving it you’d swear she had a bag of nuts and bolts just bouncing around in the door panels. It squeaks and creaks like it’s haunted. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I know a few people who had over 400k on their Korean jobs over 20 years ago. You just can’t beat a deal like that, especially when you’re buying it used for a few hundred dollars, and they still get great gas mileage.

      I forget the guy’s name, but he was a consultant, and appeared before the big three American automakers. He held up examples of their pistons and rods, then he showed them examples from Toyota, Honda, Nissan and a few others. The difference was striking. Theirs were bulky, crude and heavy while the foreign examples were light, trim, and polished. They looked like art, and they were stronger. He pointed out a few other rather glaring problems, and they’re response? They told him to go pound sand. A few years later they were all in DC crying for a hand out of tax payer money to keep them afloat.

      I put over 200k miles on my last Korean car and that thing felt like it was barely broken in. I never had a problem with it. I took it in because the rear view mirror was buzzing at 2,500 rpm’s, and the car was washed and dried when I came to pick it up. They had recalls on stuff that wasn’t even really an issue. They just noticed a possible problem that could occur and decided to deal with it before anything might happen. Who ever heard of anything like that from an automobile manufacturer? It didn’t cost anything, and once again my filthy car was picked up clean and dry.

      I like the old school American styling, but if I can’t put a reliable and forgiving foreign engine, drivetrain etc. into it, I’d sooner just stick that classic styling into a hole and flush my shit into it than waste my time chingering my fingers every few months trying to keep it alive.

      • Teo, the trouble is, those little foreign motors ain’t big enough for classic American cars.

        Dunno about the neglected maintenance. People aren’t changing their oil as often these days, because the manufacturers say you can go 7500 or 10,000 miles….but the engines are sludging up just like any engine would- only the newer engines are LESS tolerant of sludge than the old ones.

        I used to rebuild engines back in the 90’s. I didn’t see the dramatic difference between the foreign and American engine parts- the difference I did see was that the foreign stuff was often made a lot lighter, while the American stuff was heavier and thicker. They all made their share of good, mediocre and terrible engines.

        You’d see the same failures over and over again in the same engines. Mitsubishi 2.6? Guides for the absurdly long timing chain would shed metal which would end up in the pan clogging the oil pump.

        Old v-8 American engines? Usually just sludge and or abuse.

        You’d see bigger differences in quality between the brands- depending on how expensive they were and who they were aimed at, rather than where they were from- Cadillac being an exception of course, as they’ve been making nothing but crap for over 30 years now.

        Now they say the newer engines can go 100K miles without changing the spark plugs, etc. But ya know what? If ya wait that long, when you do go to change them, a few might be seized in the head.

        And the car might go 100K miles without a tune-up…but may need a head gasket or intake gasket way sooner. Or how about some of those engines where the waterpump is so buried that it’s a major expense and ya have to disassemble half the engine to do it?

        Your Korean car going 200K- without a major repair? Entirely possible, as don’t foregt, those cars are very light. And yes, as far as anything made in the last 20 years, excepting trucks- the Asian stuff is usually far better than the American. The American companies have pretty much abandoned all of the good old engines. They don’t want to make an engine that last for 400K miles- or that might last for 650K miles with a few modern upgrades in metallurgy.

        • Full synthetic oil produces far less sludge than mineral, and you only need to maintain a good filter change schedule instead of an oil change one.

        • What do you mean little foreign motors? My Korean sports car has a 3.8 liter V6, and they’re starting to offer it with a V 8 now. Years ago I had a Datsun Z and there was so much room you could practically sit with your legs dangling in the engine compartment. If you had your choice, which would you choose, the roomy engine compartment, or the crowded one so tight you can’t fit your fingers in to squeeze the radiator cap off?

          The timing chain on my Toyota is buried so if I decide to get it replaced it’s practically assumed that they will replace the water pump while they have all the crap removed. If the water pump goes out, I’ll definitely replace the timing chain. That’s not a big deal really. I’m looking to get something else right now, and hopefully sell this before anything breaks on it, but it’s got 330k miles already and no one has ever replaced the timing chain or the water pump. That’s impressive to me. I’ve replaced water pumps on a few of my gm vehicles. It’s almost assumed that I’m going to replace a water or fuel pump on them. The bottom line is that when I buy an American car I spend way more time working on it than the foreign jobs. I put way more miles on the foreign cars and motorcycles than the American ones too.

          • I don’t even buy vehicles with jam-packed engine compartments…..

            Yeah, but those Jap/Korean V-6’s and V-8’s don’t do 400K miles….or even 250K, like their 4 cyl.s will. I’ve never seen a high-mileage Jap/Korean V-6 or V-8. I mean, they might not be bad….but they’re nothing special, either.

            I don’t really know of anything outstanding being made now-a-days. There’s some decent…some really bad (from all continents), but they all seem to have their problems and disadvantages. And considering what one has to pay for ’em, and what they come wrapped in these days, I’m not impressed.

            It was way different when you could buy the base model El Cheapo pick-up and get a motor that would do 400K miles without the actual engine being touched.

            Apples and oranges my friend.

          • Ah! Yes…the old balancing/anti-vibration shafts! I had forgotten about that!!! But now that ya mention it, I can picture the little gears on the end of ’em! (And that LONG timing chain….and the little plunger that’d keep tension on it. Failing to adjust that plunger would allow the chain to get sloppy and slap the chain guides; which in-turn would cause shards of metal to fall off and down into the oil pan…)

            I think they came out with a kit to eliminate the silent shafts and/or later iterations of the engine didn’t have the shafts…but the shafts weren’t the problem- if proper tension was maintained, they were actually pretty good engines. Problem was, virtually no one bothered to check/adjust tension as part of regular maintenance (There was a little access cover on the timing case that could be easily removed- it was no big deal- could be done in 5 minutes, tops.)

  18. How could any tire guy make a case for requiring a speed rating higher than the speedometer in the vehicle can indicate? Wouldn’t that be aiding and abetting reckless driving?

  19. I basically had to bring in some rims to Walmart get some M&S tires mounted for my conversion van.

    The factory spec for the van was 225/75R15, but the conversion package that came with 235/75R15 and the Wally world techs wouldn’t put them on the van despite my pleadings.

    So I brought in the rims with old tires on them(which were 235’s) on a different day and they mounted and balanced them without a peep. It was a super pain in the ass however and a good thing I had extra rims for snow tires….

    • I bought a set of 31-10.50-15 tires at Wal-Mart, only to have them refuse to mount them on my white spoke wheels on my ’79 F150, even though it was a factory option that year. Their “book” claimed otherwise. This was in 2011, no VIN number check. Got them mounted elsewhere.

  20. I swear Kit Cars are going to go through the roof! I’ll bet I can buy all the pieces necessary off the shelf to build a 1947 Willys jeep with a modern engine and transmission. This will be the only way to get a car that doesn’t have seat beepers, and seat belt beepers, and tire ratings etc… Is there a company out there that sells you the instructions and bill of materials to make your own car?

    • A similar thing has happened in the airplane industry- basically, regulations and liability/lawsuits has made it so that an inexpensive airplane is impossible.

      So as a response, to get a new one you have to build it from a kit yourself, or buy an old plane. It’s the only way manufacturers today can viably make inexpensive/low level planes.(in the US anyway)

      • Speaking of da lawwwww…

        It’s Illegal to Warm Up Your Car in These States

        You definitely don’t want to be caught idling in Washington, D.C.

        By Cory Stieg DEC 19, 2016 goodhousekeeping. com

        Ahh, ’tis the season of nightmare-ish polar vortexes sweeping the nation right and left. The only thing worse than having to go outside in this type of weather is having to enter a freezing cold car. You might be tempted to turn on your vehicle and let it get nice and cozy before you hop in, but this is actually illegal in many states, according to Men’s Health.

        It doesn’t even matter how long your car is running, most states consider idling an automatic misdemeanor. Even cars that have an automatic start feature are against the law in some states, according to Lifewire. (Hey, don’t kill the messenger.)

        The penalties vary from state to state. In Washington D.C., for example, you can get fined $5,000 if your car is sitting around for just three minutes. Other states are more lenient, like Pennsylvania, where the law states you can idle for 20 minutes when the temperature is below 40º.

        You can check your own state’s laws on the EPA’s website, but here are the states that don’t allow you to let your car idle (it’s most of them):
        (31 states listed)

        This isn’t just lawmakers’ way of messing with you, by the way. It’s actually meant to help the environment! Another weird overlooked law in many states: You have to scrape all the ice and snow off your car, otherwise you’ll get fined for distracted driving. So, when you trek outside to deal with the latest blizzard after math, remember that you’re helping your fellow drivers and the planet! It might just warm your heart enough to make your car defrost.

  21. I went looking for tires a while back and the cheapest tires I could find made me want to puke. I went online and found some company out in southern California that sent me four tires mounted and balanced on a set of really nice looking rims for about the same price.

    The car is rated for some fast tires, but what I’m wondering is if I could just take the old set of rims and tires and mount them on a car that isn’t rated for sustained high speeds to get the cheaper tires. No doubt it’s probably already illegal.

  22. Don’t know if this happens in the USA.
    “There is a database of every vehicle in the UK whenever tyres are fitted at the factory or at any garage or fitting shop, the tyre manufacturers code is entered against that vehicle registration. This is used in crime investigations. From a cast of a tyre at a crime scene, the police can identify the manufacturer and size of the tyre and from that get a list of all vehicles fitted with that type. They can estimate the age or usage of the tyre and narrow the search further. MOTs or roadworthy certificates, indicate the miles driven between certificates and the investigators can narrow a tyre cast from a crime scene to perhaps 1000 vehicles or less. Combine this with the camera surveillance of the number plates on the nearby roads and you can get a single possibility for the crime without ever getting out of the chair or off your bum.”

    Excerpt From: PJ Lang. “Saddam’s Sister.” Smashwords

    • We don’t have that here….YET, PJ- but will soon- as it seems, whatever starts across the pond, makes it’s way here after a few years.

  23. I am surprised how good some of the Asian tires are, one thing Chinese make that doesn’t work as well are the galvanized pipe fittings . you have to use a lot of teflon tape or very good pipe dope to keep them from leaking.Seemed like the stuff from the American steel mills fit together better.
    This is changing now, when I looked at the older castings ,it always seemed the American made castings were a lot neater and just looked better.

    • Definitely do not use Chinese or Asian pipe or fittings for anything that matters such as natural gas piping. These are definitely of lower quality casting, galvanization, and threading.
      At a foundry the gas company regulator diaphram let go one night and has to be replaced. After the gas company replaced the regulator they would not turn the gas on until the foundry gas plumbing tested 100% tight at the delivered 10 PSI system pressure. It took a long time to figure it out, but in the end I had to scrap all the Chinese and Malaysian and Indonesian pipe fittings bought from plumbing suppliers. The only way to stop the leaks was to install US made pipe fittings and I had to get them from the gas company! The plumbing wholesalers could not get US made fittings.
      As for Teflon tape and sealant, that is a given. The Asian plumbing couldn’t hold 10 PSI natural gas with any type of sealant although I admit there is one type I did not try – it hardens to something that looks like glass when it sets up and good luck ever unscrewing that fitting ever again.

  24. I was really surprised a couple years back when my part supplier online ordering started using the license plate number to identify the car

    • Hi Outlaw,

      Yup. The net tightens… it’s startling. And it only took about 15 years (since nahnleven, the new Holy Day) for the country to go from generally decent to this insufferable police state we live in today.

      • Yes, it’s all unmistakenly malevolent. It doesn’t have to be, but it is sinister in a glaringly obvious way.

        Here’s the theory itself, which could be done in a non-dehumanizing way, but in the new world order, today being the 16th year A.N. (anno nein-elf) never is.

        In a computerized relational database, you can’t have any tuples. You need a unique key.

        Eric Peters doesn’t work, there’s lots of Erics, and Peters, and even plenty of Eric Peters. So first name and surname won’t work. Year make model color won’t work. None of those are unique.

        There’s always a government solution to a problem. Why not license numbers including state of issue. VIN numbers. Drivers License + state of issue numbers. Telephone numbers, email addresses, IP numbers, fingerprints, retinal scans, facial scans, dental records, DNA swabs. Those are all unique.

        It all reeks of concentrate camp biologic. Each of us a yellow star made out of our own skins. Piles of teeth and bones photographed and catalogued for the great concentration summer camp we all grow up attending.

        In database relational modeling and implementation, a unique key – a superkey—that is, in the relational model of database organization, a set of attributes of a relation variable for which it holds that in all relations assigned to that variable, there are no two distinct tuples (rows) that have the same values for the attributes in this set.

        Sounds simple enough. Once you have that backbone. Kind of like DNA, you can have all the other attributes that aren’t always unique. Britain and India just got theirs. Every nations doing it, coordinated by NGOs and UN committees and enforced by warlords and local chieftans. Just like in the movie Things To Come.

        This life here is limited.
        War – always going on and never-ending.
        Flags. Marching.

        Oh, I adore the chief.
        I’ve always adored him since he
        took control in the pestilence days…
        when everyone else lost heart.
        He rules. He’s firm.

        Everyone, every woman
        finds him strong and attractive.
        I can’t complain.
        I have everything that is to be had here.
        And yet…

        This is a small, limited world we live in.
        You bring in the breath
        of something greater.

        When I saw you swooping down
        out of the air –
        when I saw you marching
        into the town hall-
        I felt, “This man lives in a greater world”.

        You spoke of the Mediterranean and the East,
        of your camps and factories.
        I’ve read about the Mediterranean
        and Egypt and Greece and India.
        Oh, I can read – a lot of those old books.
        I’m not like
        most of the younger people here.

        I learned a lot before education stopped
        and schools closed down.
        I want to see that world –
        skies, snowy mountains,
        blue seas, sunshine, palms.

        If I had my way, you could fly to all that
        in a couple of hours.

        If you were free…
        and if I was free.


        • Hi Outlaw,

          It’s more viable to swap components – including engines – in pre-OBD II cars. With the current stuff, forget about it. It may be feasible, but whether it’s worth the effort and expense is another matter. Also, the smog legality issues are huge, for those who live in areas where such apply.

          • Yeah, you need a computer geek to iron out some of that stuff with “newer” cars. Only problem, few to no geeks like working with old computer stuff, and most hate working on software code in cars. Most find even current car software backwards, poorly done or old (which it often is, due to auto development cycles). They also dislike that little of it is open source since the automakers guard their code religiously. So they have to reverse engineer it in some cases.

            That’s why computer tuning of cars never seems to really catch on. There is some, but the automakers and feds make it very difficult (and in some cases its illegal, so you can’t just go down to autozone and buy) to the point of people don’t do it.

            Up until computers, people were alway able to customize their cars completely. Not so with computer code and computer control of everything.

  25. You don’t have to worry about rotating your mattress if instead you sleep with an Asian lady on tatami.

    But spend of 1/3 of your life sleeping in a way thats ordinary. Why not do the extra. Why not live the extra-ordinary?

    Asian girl sleeping on tatami japanese style

    Doesn’t that look like a healthier more ergonomically stable way to slumber?

  26. Don’t rotate tires

    Rotate your tires if there is an uneven amount of weight. Like in a passenger car you drive alone where the engine is in the front, and the back tires usually don’t have much weight to carry. Or just plan on buying tires two at a time, which isn’t the end of the world certainly.

    What Happens if I Don’t Rotate

    Also don’t worry about flipping your mattresses. Better yet don’t have western furniture that makes you weak and old before your time. Sleep and sit on tatami floor mats. Sitting on your ass in the chair form is the worst thing possible, don’t do it anymore than necessary, like when driving.

    If not for all the coddling, humans could grow up 6 times stronger like the Chimps do. Don’t fall for the homo sapien comfort con. The more spartan you can live, the better your strength health and robustness and antifragility will be.

    Modernity leads to misery.

    • Have to agree with that, I have found out comfort now, pain later.I am amazed at how little strength a lot of people have in their tiny little hands( I want to shout “bear down”) I do not shake older folks(about my age) hands now, they claim I hurt their hands, if I get a hold of a real chimp , I bear down the best I can and never change expression, had a Guy that used to be very regular in the Gym try to crush my banana shuckers, He actually turned purple and I didn’t have a clue as to what was wrong( at least that was my expression ).
      A word to the wise , just extend your hand to an older person and let them bear down, with a powerful Guy, jam your hand as far as you can into theirs(it takes the leverage away) and if you get your fingers turned white, just smile, you can pop em back in shape later .( there are some Human apes out there)

      • Hate shaking germy hands anyway, and I avoid situations except at a Dr’s office some docs shake hands. Churches, civic clubs need to discourage it. Pat on shoulder is best. Mom and pop tire stores let you choose tires, but most now are franchises.

      • HAhaha! Kevin! I picturing shaking some oldster’s hand, and hearing *scrunnnnch*- all of his arthritic bones crushing….

        Please… When I was a kid, I slapped the back of a middle-aged female family friend (slapped as in “it’s GOOD to see ya!”)….and she has never been the same since. : (

        I used to know this little Jew…. Very nice guy (amazingly)…but I DREADED shaking hands with him. WORST wimpiest handshake EVER! I mean, ANY woman even puts this guy to shame. The guy’s hand would just go completely limp. And he was straight! Married and everything.

    • Amen brother, preach it. Reminds me of that line in Repo Man where Miller says, “I don’t drive. The more you drive, the less intelligent you are”. At first I thought it was just silly, but those words are beginning to seem prophetic to me.

      • You can always spot the malnourished by their rolls of fat. They don’t get the nutrients they need from the garbage they eat…so they’re perpetually hungry/craving, and no amount of eating helps, because there’s little if any nutritional value in what they eat. Plus, they get constipated from lack of fiber.

        • Nuncio,
          According to Dr. William Wong, constipation is a sign of a magnesium deficiency, and I’ve found that to be true. Most malnourished get plenty of calories from carbohydrates, which, contrary to nutripropaganda, is the major cause of obesity that isn’t due to excitotoxin overload.

          • Depends what kinda carbs. The “complex carbs” like in real whole grain products and bananas and suff are good for ya and don’t make ya fat. The refined carbs that most ‘Mercans eat so much of….are largely empty calories- not much different than sugar.

            But yeah, this villifying of carbs is nuts. If what they say were true, all Eye-talians would be fat, as we eat lots of carbs (My grandpa used to eat pasta every day…and was slim!)- then too, maybe genetics has something to do with it- but of course, the egg-heads don’t take things like that into account. In there eyes, a human is a human is a human, no different from any other human, and no different from a white rat or guinea pig.

            • The late Dr. Nicholas Gonzales was only the most recent practicing researcher to confirm that there is no average human diet. We range from sympathetic to para-sympathetic dominance, and where your metabolism falls determines which of the food groups are good or bad for each person.
              Using his protocol, he saved about 70% of the state 3 and 4 pancreatic cancer patients that came to him, many of which had been sent away by other doctors as terminal.

              • And that’s another thing! Metabolism!

                I come from a family of long livers. We probably live long because we have very slow metabolisms. We all tend to eat very lightly too. (The two relatives who didn’t eat so lightly, died at a very young age- c. 76 and 77)- If we ate like the typical ‘Mercan, we’d be fat as houses!

                I think the official recommended USDA crapola says that I can eat like 2700 calories a day. LOL! If I ate 2700 calories a day, I’d be dead already! I can’t even fathom eating that much!

                • The metabolisms of long isolated cultures tend to settle into a specific range between parasympathetic dominant and sympathetic dominant, as a result of lifelong adaptation to the predominate diet in the region.
                  Vilhjalmur Stefansson discovered that his ancestral diet was quite similar to that of the Eskimos that he spent time studying. Shortly after he began those studies, the dietary norms of Europe and North America started infiltrating into the area, and before long, the Eskimos were dying of the same diseases that Europeans and Americans were.

          • I found out the hard way that magnesium deficiency is a major factor in heart disease, then to add insult to injury the heart medication I was taking as prescribed by my cardiologist was robbing my body of magnesium. A great way to keep me on their pills. I started supplementing and a few other tweaks and my heart condition is no more.

        • Yep, Nunzio, years ago that was me. I couldn’t look at a toilet without plugging it up. The only one’s that could handle my loads were those industrial Standards and Kohlers in public bathrooms with the oversized plumbing. If the toilet didn’t have enough suction to blow out a match it wasn’t going down.

          • Teo, that was the ONE good thing about living in NYC- The pressurized terlits in the apartment buildings were so powerful, you could literally flush a dead body!

            30 years ago, I went to visit my aunt, who lived in a private house in Queens, which didn’t have a pressurized terlit……and I clogged it! My mother STILL gets on me to this day for that! (She was just mentioning it the other day. I tell her -and it’s the truth- they’re lucky I didn’t overflow it!)

            I was pretty much guaranteed to overflow any non-pressurized terlits back then.

            • I can beat that one nunzio, I knew how to shut the water lines to the toilets before I was ten years old. By the time I was ten I was already standing with the plunger at the ready when I flushed, and could plunge it while the water level was rising, and have it unplugged before it made it to the rim of the bowl, or shut it off before it overflowed.
              We went to visit some friends of the family down in Pasadena when I was about 8. We stayed over night and I wasn’t going to make it for the trip home so I dropped my load, but hadn’t learned to pinch and flush by then, and I didn’t have a plunger. I was in the upstairs bathroom and could hear my parents calling me from the car. I flushed and ran. Just as I was getting into the car, we could hear their daughter yelling out from an upstairs window, “The toilet is overflowing”. My mother wasn’t a big fan of these people, and started to laugh. She knew what happened immediately. She closed the door and said, “Okay, he’s in, let’s go”. I used to get so constipated from lack of magnesium that it would sometimes sound like I was dropping rocks into the bowl.
              There are three main techniques to plunge a bowl. 1. the full plunge, repeat. If that doesn’t work, then there’s the rapid fire half plunge which almost always works. If there’s a lot of water in the bowl then there’s 3. the full plunge followed by lifting to get more water down to plunge; more water pressure equals more pressure pushing the clog farther down the pipe.
              Living out in the country with an outhouse has it’s advantages for the fiber challenged.

              • Hilarious, Teo!!

                But you were a rank amateur, my friend!

                Plungers were USELESS against me! It would be a hard job with a big industrial toilet snake.

                In the apartment I lived in before moving to the sticks, there was this maintenance guy who was a real bastard. Some old drunken mick who was always nasty, even to the nice old ladies.

                When I’d pinch off a good loaf (actually, more like the whole bakery), if it was before this guy’s shift, if my terlit got clogged, I’d just wait till it was his shift, before calling it in.

                Oh, man! He’d come up and have to work that snake for an eternity. Half the time, he’d get the dry heaves. I’d have to go into the other room and stifle my laughter.

                One time, the bastard was hunkered over the nearly full bowl on his knees (I think he was preparing to puke), and I was SOoooo tempted to put my hand on the back of his head and push his face into the mud! Only thing that stopped me, was that I figured the aftermath would make too much of a mess…and they’d probably consider it assault….

                I was clogging up that bowl a few times a week. Once, I left it overnight….it was practically making ME puke. Oh, man, I loved tormenting that bastard…and there was nothing he could do about it!

                Most people didn’t give a shit about him, but I gave many shits for him! : D

    • T’is true, Tor! I slept on the floor for 8 years. I’ve never had a back problem. I LIKE sleeping on the floor. Only reason I got a bed when I moved to the sticks and got a 3 bedroom place, is ’cause it’s nice not having to put out your bedding every night and pick it up every morning. Now if I were to return to the floor, one of my dogs (the 104 lb. one) and 2 cats would be lonely in the bed without me.

      Seems like the only people know who have back problems and heart problems, are the ones who work/have worked in offices all of their lives…sitting on their butts all day- never the construction workers or farmers, etc.

    • Guess it depends how many jack stands ya have, and how many lug nuts ya have to fool with…

      I recently took the wheels off my Excursion; threw ’em in the back of my pick-up…drove to a friend’s shop to have the tires from the EX and the PU swapped…then came home and put the wheels back on the Exc. Killed an entire day! (I really do need to get one’a them rechargeable electric impact wrenches!)

          • True, Johnny! But the manual way gets time-consuming when ya have 2 eight-lug vehicles…. That’s 64 lug nuts.

            I’ve been pricing new rechargeable tools…. dayum… If it were the older lo-tech stuff, I might not mind…’cause they’d last forever, and ya just change the brushes every decade or so…but with all this brushless crap…one mosfet or tiny capacitor goes…and ya throw it away.

            I’ve been needing to replace my ancient Crapsman rechargeables for ages now, so naturally, I’d want to get something that’s gonna be compatible with all the other tools I’d buy. But when ya need a bunch of new stuff….even Ryobi seems like caviar. I think I’ll just be making do with what I have….and doing things the old-fashioned way.

              • Some of ’em do- but the failure of one part often causes other parts to fail also- and by the time ya get all the parts…might as well just buy a new one.

                And if you’re like me, and not an electronics whiz, and have nothing but a multimeter to play with….

                • Even if they don’t just plug in, there’d be, at most, a half dozen wires to move. It wouldn’t require any test gear to replace the module, and I’d be surprised if they offer individual components or a schematic. I used to do component level diagnostics on two-way radios and broadcast transmitters, and most of the former have gone to modules with a troubleshooting tree a literate monkey could follow. The future is fault tolerant, self diagnostic, and disposability. The totally solid-state broadcast transmitters have go-no go LEDs on each board, and accept cores on the replacements, like alternators and starters on cars.

            • Stick to the old fashioned ways Nunzio. It’s like a guy told me one day while we were walking out of the ocean. I had a tri fin cutter, and he was carrying a long board. We got to talking and he pointed out that “surfing without a leash requires more soul”

              • You’re right, Teo. It’s not like I’m a professional builder or mechanic. Sometimes I just see guys using the fancy tools and say “Man, I could do some of the things I do in a fifth of the time if I had that”- but ya pay a high price for that speed- and when you ain’t making money doing it, what does it matter if it takes an hour or a day?

                ‘Specially that I’ll likely be out of here before too long- God willing. Can’t take everything; and in a year or two, what’ll that $1200 worth of tools and batteries be worth? Next to nothing.

                Bear in mind that I’ve been saying that I’m gonna get new tools and an impact wrench for about 6 years now. I almost got serious about it a few years ago when I built my 22’x25’ garage…till I saw the prices, and how everything was plastic, and looked like it came from the set of Star Trek.

                Meanwhile, my old Milwaukee drill from the 50’s- rescued from a scrap pile and leaking oil for the last 25 years, is still happily turning…

  27. Thanks for this article, this nonsense bit me recently too.

    I race one of my cars – so I go through a lot of tires. I used to use about two sets of front tires, and four sets of rears every month – that’s 20+ fronts, 40+ rears in a year! So, all the tire shops knew me, since I did such good business. My car’s OEM-spec tires are no longer made, or inappropriate for track use, so I go with “close enough” Hoosiers, Yokohama or Toyo track-only tires. The major tire shops like America’s Tire or Wheel Works have started to refuse selling them to me because their lawyers know better. The local guy who knows me is clearly pained that he can’t sell me those tires anymore, but his job is on the line. One loophole that I found is to bring in a set of wheels, tell them I want so-and-so tire, and don’t tell them what car it is, just that it’s not for street use, which works sometimes. I’ve done what others have said, and found a good local independent shop which will install anything for me.

    Worst comes to worst, a Hunter 9000 tire balancer and tire mounting machine are pretty cheap second hand.

    Now, don’t get me started on the f-ing stupid TPMS systems in some cars – I’m looking at you Subaru, Toyota and Honda. You rotate your tires, you need to reprogram the ECU to accept the new tire locations.

    • WHO rotates the tyres? I’ve never fund any advantage, and so simply adopt the same policy on that one I do with “healthscare” inshoorants……. both policies seem to work just fine.

      • Ditto, Tionico. Maybe at some time in the past when cars had sloppier steering and didn’t hold alignment too good, rotating tires might have had some advantage…but during my lifetime, I’ve never seen the need to do it.

        It’s a lot of trouble if you do it yourself;(Unless ya have a lift!) and if ya pay for it, the time and cost doesn’t make sense, even if there were some small extension of tire life.

        On a modern (i.e. made in the last 50 years) vehicle, if your tires wear unevenly, get an alignment. Leave the tires be.

        • differnt style of tyre front and rear… besides I HATE having to spring for all four at the same time. Id rather the faster wearing ones gt replaced, nd give me a bit of a breather before I have to get the oher pair replaced.

          • Now, now… Just get ya one’a them fancy hi-tech all-wheel-drive vehicles, where ya have to replace all 4 tires at once…ya can’t just replace one. Now THAT would be fun!

      • Not sure what the Ho Zays are doing with my llantas, but its working great so far. I’d guess no rotato seen yore.

        Never get the rental insurance. Also don’t lather rinse repeat. Or ever read a pop up warning message in any computer operating system. Ignore all package directions. Never use a map. Don’t ask for receipts find the places without them, they’re the best.

        Never looked at menu in my life, they always have close enough to what I want, most normal pubs and restaurants have the same basic grub.

        Don’t ask people their legal names, where they live or are from, what they do for a living, their age, none of the usual superficial BS.

        If some cashier says paper plastic bottle can or tap bamboozle them by saying yes please, or you decide. Be alternatively courteous, but never conventional or expected in anything. Get right to the marrow of marrow with people if you can, there’s so much worthless fake stuff.

        Nearly all Americans are autistic, blathering on and on about things that are meaningless and painfully repetitive and monotoned. Be the exception always.

        • I WISH I could still find places that don’t give receipts. I’d much rather spend my money with somebody who isn’t an involuntary tax collector for Uncle. Trouble is, by not giving receipts, they pretty much were advertising the fact that they didn’t pay Uncle’s extortion….so Uncle got after them. If they had been smart, they would have given receipts, and nobody would have been any the wiser that they weren’t paying Uncle. In a nation of amoral statists, never advertise the fact that you’re not playing by the rules which the morons voted for; and which THEY thus have to play by…because they will hate you for not subjecting yourself to that which they have subjected themselves to.

          • I have yet to fail to receive a receipt from any merchant who gave me a discount for not demanding a receipt. That being the case, I’ll always take a receipt to add to the stack I’d dump on the IRS auditors desk, since it is the quickest way to a negotiated settlement, because they don’t want to have to work that stack.

            • Give em hell B. I always file paper form myself. They hate ink and paper.

              Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes Bends
              She got a lot of pretty, pretty thugs she calls freedom’s friends

              How they patrol diners and donutyards, sweet summer sweat
              Some heroes remember, some heroes to forget

              So I called up the Capitalist, “Please bring me my wine”
              He said, “We haven’t had that anarcho spirit here since 1969”

              And still Bastiat remnants are calling from far away
              Wake me up in the middle of the night
              Love to hear them say

              Welcome to the Heimat Cloverfornia
              Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)
              Such a lovely face

              They living it up at the Hotel Cloverfornia
              What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)
              Bring your alibis

              • I haven’t filed since 1992. It took them until 2010 to notice that I hadn’t filed for 2004&5, and then until last year when I got on SS to garnish. I was only getting 85% of my $952 until the nice taxpayer assistance lady declared the $8500+ uncollectible, which cut off the garnishment. Unless my income increases enough to pay on it, it cancels in 2020. Until then, the fines and interest continue to accrue, giving me no reason to work much unless it is cash.

                • Why pay indeed. File w/o payment is easy. Then call to make pmt plan.

                  The maximum ben if you retire at full retirement age in 2017, would be $2,687.

                  Retire at age 62 in 2017, your maximum ben would be $2,153.

                  If you retire at age 70 in 2017, your max benefit would be $3,538.

                  The max allowable ben is only payable to those who had the max taxable earnings for at least 35 working years.

                  • Don’t ever file! Once you business with those crooks, it’s all over. You’re a slave for the rest of your life.

                    I’ll die before I’d give those bastards so much as my name…let alone tell them anything about my finances!

                    • Sehr richtig du

                      Hey du, dort draußen in der Kälte Wirst einsam, wirst alt Kannst du mich fühlen?

                      Hey du, dort in dem Gang Mit schmerzenden Füßen und einem verblassenden Lächeln Kannst du mich fühlen?

                      Hey du, hilf ihnen nicht, das Licht zu löschen Gibt nicht kampflos auf

                • I worked for the IRS. They know everything. The guy that gives you cash deducts it – bam they know. They save up infractions till they total a big chunk of change then send you the letter. And they don’t care how long ago it was. They send the letter for stuff you forgot to file from 20 years ago. Once it all adds up.

      • I rotate tires. My race car runs a lot of camber, I rotate them side to side to double the life I get out of them. My other cars are either front heavy or rear heavy and use those respective tires quite a bit faster. If I don’t rotate, I have much older rubber on the slower wearing axle.

        It’s no big deal, I do it myself, and it lets me get more $$ out of the tires before I have to replace them due to age cracking or whatnot.

        • That’s a textbook example of a perfect reason TO rotate your tires….lots of camber= uneven wear. Only, if you’re using different tires in the rear, then it don’t work….

        • Opp, I’m a firm believer in moving tires. Don’t change the front and rear on a FWD and you’ll have the same old tires on the back you had on the fronts a couple pair back. I’ve also had cars that the rears wore so fast from lots of power and my heavy foot you needed to switch them no and then to change all four at the same time.

          On pickups it depended on what sort of work I did. Pulling a trailer and running down dirt/rock roads wore the whee out of the rears and not switching them meant new ones on the rear and old front tires, a situation I don’t personally like.

          To be honest, I can’t remember any I didn’t switch on a truck except for having two wheel drive and much larger wheels and tires on the rear.

          Of course I always drove GM’s that wore tires much more evenly than Ford’s and up until the last couple decades I’d have never considered a Dodge. Since Toyota and Nissan have no counterpart to the heavy duty Big 3 pickups I’ll continue to pay more to drive a GM. Another point of GM is they have always been much more balanced front to rear with lighter engines and heavier beds allowing them to perform 4WD better than their competitors. It’s a big deal and used to be a really big deal with 1/2 T 4WD pickups, esp. regular cabs. My neighbor drives a 2017 Chevy short bed crew cab 4WD 3/4T gas pickup and is on really rough, loose aggregate roads and lease roads that require a lot of 4WD. He eats up rears like crazy so replacing just those is not a big deal for him. He uses 4 WD so much that 2 weeks after the pickup was bought it had the windshield scratched from the wipers moving so much mud every day. It was a wet period at the time and that truck could have been mistaken for brown. It was almost a shock to see it clean and White.

      • I agree Tionico. Rotating tires really doesn’t make much sense in a work pick-up truck. I have an F350 4X4. I had tire failure a bit over a year ago as I was towing a 30′ pull behind travel trailer north from 100 degree Texas heat, and the truck itself had a 500 pound motorcycle on the bed plus probably another 500 pounds of me and my other belongings. I had to replace all four 10 ply tires. The manufacturer of the tires recommended easy driving for the first couple of hundred miles for the tires to break in. I am very mechanically inclined, so I fully understood that my drive tires were under a massive amount of torque right off of the bat for another 500 miles. I made it to my destination!
        A year later, my steer tires have considerably less tread left than the drive tires due to carrying the weight of the 7.3 diesel engine along with the transfer case. The steer tires have not had to endure the very strong pulling force that the rear ones had, so I question the wisdom of doing a tire rotation at this point because my over half worn steer tires might well fail. I think that I would be better off replacing tires one axle at a time. There would be a little bit of binding when I put the truck into 4 wheel drive, but I only need to do that 1 – 6 times per year.

  28. “I expect human driving to become illegal in the next 25–35 years in developed countries,” insisted Rice University’s Moshe Vardi in the course of plugging self-driving cars during a 2016 Reddit question-and-answer session. Tesla CEO Elon Musk sounded a similar note at a 2015 developers’ conference, saying, “You can’t have a person driving a two-ton death machine.” It’s an interesting perspective from a man who runs a company that manufactures such devices.


  29. My car has a top speed of around 110. It came on VR, I run HR….by all means play that game with me. The belt construction is better on my HR, the temp and traction ratings are equal or better.

      • Yeah, people are pissed at so much taking of the knee at the anthem. There’s vids of dudes burning season tickets everywhere. I finally sold my Panthers season tickets and seat license for a nice chunk of change not that long ago.

        Had that thing for years and years, but figured with Cam Newton and the hype, there’d never be a better time to finally unload them.

        All the other shit, people bend over and accept. But millionaire dindus not clutching their pearls and weeping before the holy spangled linen, that’s a bridge too far.

        Wait til 2018 season when the immigrant ladyboy players start taking their knees in front of the tight ends and behind the wide receivers. Bread games and circle jirkuses at their finest.

        • Hi Tor,

          I don’t snuggle the flag or regard the anthem to it as some sort of holy hymn that one must reverence.That said, I think this business is about race, not “patriotism.” Trump is appealing to the people who are sick of belligerent (as they regard them) blacks while the blacks are making a statement against them.

          No one I know if in the media except Fred Reed is willing to take this on.

          • I don’t think it would be about race or anything if they would stand. It’s in the NFL rule book, too. I think it’s political, although admittedly it’s predominantly people of color sitting their asses down. I hope this crap shuts the NFL down. What are the lazy masses of morons going to do then? Maybe they will have to find another way to amuse themselves. Could be good for our hobby? Gee, I must be in a happy mood today.

          • This anthem crap is one of those things where WE (as usual) are not represented, and no matter who we may be talking to (except among ourselves) we are perceived as “one of them” [The opposing side of the person to whom we may be talking].

            So where does someone like myself fit in? I don’t salute no[sic] flag; don’t sing/grovel before any anthem…but I’m certainly also as far removed from some illiterate leftist coon who makes 24 million bucks a year for chasing a ball, as one can be.

            But then, I’d never waste my time by watching said people chase said ball.

            Plus, the NFL be raciss! I mean, 70% of NFL players are black. Now according to liberals: If women are under-represented in some business or make less money than men, it’s because of “sexism”; and if blacks are under-represented in any bidness or sport, etc. it be because of “racism”, so I guess if whites are under-represented in the NFL and NBA, to be consistent with librul logic, it can only because of racism!

            • Do you really think that the rich white guys that pay those coons millions of dollars to play football would if they could get white guys who played it better? Professional sports is one case where competence is well compensated.

              • Bill, I was being facetious. Of course, what you say is the case. I was just exemplifying liberal :logic” (as if there were such a thing). I mean, hey, they use that mentality on us…why not be consistent then when the tables are reversed?

  30. Another thing the tire fascists are in cahoots with the Omniscient Ones is in the planned obsolescence of tries resulting in blowouts on tires with as low as 3K miles on them. I’ve had 3 blowouts and one tread separation on tires with low miles because they are being chemically engineered to biodegrade by 5 to 6 years of age. One set was some expensive Goodrich ATRs that were only on the vehicle 3 years but were already 2 years old when I bought them That’s when I learned to check the date codes. These were the 3K set that at just past the road hazard warranty developed large cracks in the grooves. This truck sits in a garage and gets driven only occasionally. On my last visit to the tire shop they had a prominent placard stating the following: “manufacturers are putting chemicals in new tires that make them more pliable. At 5 to 6 years these chemicals begin to break down and make the rubber brittle, Therefore it is now recommended that all tires be replaced at 6 years regardless of the remaining tread depth” It’s one thing to chemically engineer things like plastic bags to biodegrade rapidly but tires? They’ve solved the landfill issue by recycling the rubber in a variety of ways. This is just plain and simple fascism at it’s finest. Pass a law that gives the corporate sector the ability hang the Sword of Damocles over the consumers head and sure enough they will play along bleating it’s not their fault all the way to the bank.

    • The landfill problem with tires is entirely their shape. Once cut up they are no more of a problem than anything else. Of course there are many ways to recycle tires like you say. Ever since the firestone debacle there’s been all sorts of crazy going on with tires. I probably can’t even get the tires on my one car transferred to the set factory alloys I restored.

    • 7 years is my rule. You can use a tire-shine product that has UV protectors in it to extend the life. But like many things – it’s a set of trade-offs. More traction means stickier tires, means shorter life. I prioritize traction (and being able to stay on the road in curves) over long life.

      • That’s why I hate Michelins, Chiph- they’re hard as all get-out. They may be about the longest lasting tire…but who cares iffin it means ending up in a ditch or into a tree?!

        • I have Michelins on the SUV and wish I’d gone with another brand (there was a sale at Costco). They’re far far better than the Chinese tires the previous owner slapped on there, but I liked the Goodyear TripleTred I had on a previous car better. Excellent wet pavement grip.

          • I wish that Uniroyal hadn’t discontinued their Liberators. I’ve still got 2 of them on the second van that they’ve been on for 8 years, of the 7 I originally bought at Walmart. The spare is a pretty much shot one. I wore them out more by pulling the van with a non-horizontal towbar when I doing driveaway than by normal driving.

    • Back when I was quite young and had to make a dollar last, I would habitually drive on tires until they popped. After a few blowouts, I became accustomed to a tell tale wobble that would occur within a few miles of the inevitable blowout. This was accompanied by this thought: “Are we having an earthquake?” Whenever that thought would pop into my head I would instinctively grab hold of the wheel and get ready for the blowout.

      This wasn’t a technique I employed on my motorcycles though. As soon as the radials started throwing sparks I’d replace them.

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  32. This likely started because someone somewhere exceeded the speed of the tire rating and crashed. Then a lawsuit with a big payout for him or his heirs. It’s always about transferring responsibility these days.

    What I don’t like is that places are now refusing to service tires based on mfg date code. Which means perfectly fine tires are treated like they’ve been exposed to the elements and degraded because ‘safety’. Which really means consumption. A visual check can tell if a tire has degraded to a point where it will be dangerous. But we can’t have that any longer.

  33. On the way down here to visit me last year, my friend blew a tire on his pick’up. Stops at a Walmart to get a new one, but instead of the stock 265/16’s the truck came with, he has 285’s. Walmart wouldn’t sell him a 285! They WOULD have happily sold him the 265….meaning that he’d be driving with three 285’s and ONE 265…. Yeah, let us know how THAt would work out, Walmart, when you pull it on someone who doesn’t know any better!

    Bet you can buy whatever size tire you want in N. Korea, China or Laos…but in America where we fight for freedom (and Australia, Canada, the EU…) we’re not quite so free.

    • Yes Nunzio across the whole western world, the control sickos are coming out in full force. Here in Australia our government copies the US, but we got the rest of the world beat when it comes to scameras. The most wide open country has the most oppressive speed limits, except for government vehicles, who can go as fast as they like without repercussions. And I wonder why we would even fight NK, as their government is freer than our governments in the west.

      • It’s sad, To5- from the time I was a kid, I used to idolize Australia- always pictured myself moving there, to some little homestead in the Outback. The more so when America started turning loony. Then I saw the same thing happening Down Under….and now it looks like you guys are even a step or two ahead of us in Tyranny. What a damn shame.

    • Nunzio, that’s what you get for even considering Walmart. I bought a set of tires at Sam’s Club for the car. Every one either blew or slung a belt so bad the tire looked lopsided and drove that way.

      I was doing 85 around a curve marked 50 which doesn’t hold water with me, probably a good idea with a load of water on a big rig. That tire slung the belt so badly the car snapped around faster than I’ve ever had one do under any condition. I slid along a fenceline/turnrow that was tall enough to keep me out of the fence. I immediately stuck the shifter into neutral when it turned backward, got down to about 30 and whipped the wheel hard left and back up on the road going the way I had been and was really pissed off. I’d already had 3 new tires on the car so I chalked it up to being my fault since why wouldn’t the 4th tire be bad?

      I put new Pirelli’s from a real tire dealer on and no problems. I told a guy who owned a tire store in a small town but did a huge amount of business about it. He said that’s typical from Sam’s or Walmart. They buy seconds that aren’t any different looking from the best tires and pass DOT ratings but still, they’re seconds. I have no problem believing this since I had a set of tires from Sam’s once on the pickup that would shed a belt or blow out but mainly shed a belt. The shed belt can be just as deadly as a blowout. I don’t buy from those sources now.

      I almost bought a franchise store from a big dealer who just wanted to get rid of his store in west Tx. since his others were on the coast. I went over his books. I said You’re only making 10% from these tires and that’s before paying bills or salaries. Yep, he said, there’s very little markup in tires, you have to make money on volume. I was amazed, even worse than selling alcohol.

      As far as refusing to sell you a tire, I’ve never had it happen….but I won’t buy tires from Walmart either.

      • No, 8- that happened to my friend…. not me. I’d NEVER let Walmart near any vehicle of mine. I warn people about them. “Don’t buy tires there; don’t get your oil changed there; and WHAT EVER YOU DO, don’t let them even open the hood of your car!”.

        They hire teenagers and incompetents to work there. No real mechanic ever would. Their staff’s actions are dictated by scripted company policy….not the reality of your vehicle’s condition.

        Walmart is to your car what McDonald’s is to your body! In fact, I’d sooner have Ronald McDonald tinker with my vehicle!

        My friend is a cheapskate (despite being worth millions)- which I guess is why he’s always blowing tires. He used to buy the cheaper lighter-load-range tires, instead of “E’s”….for his pick-up with which he sometimes be towing 20K lbs. I FINALLY convinced him to buy the proper laod range tires….after enough blow-outs, he finally listened. And the irony? The guy had made his money in trucking!!! Having bought his first truck right out of high-school when other kids were buying cars.

        The guy might be a bit of a maniac:

        • Oooh that sounds fun. Maybe grimace can waddle out and pop my hood while I’m waiting in the drivethru lane for my daily grease fix.

          The Hamburgler can offer 99 cent colon cleanses for the whole family too.

          You deserve a break today. Get genuine 10W-burger-30-McSlurry McHappy Oil in all your Mcdonaldsland vehicles today.

          • Get a free Crappy Seal with every order!

            It’s environmentally-friendly too! (The environmental part is when they re-use your old oil to fry the fries. The friendly part is when the Hamburglar’s brother- Turdburglar, boinks ya up the gazoo!)

            • Damn Nunzio, you had to remind me of one of my fav commenters, Turd Burglestein. I hope he’s alive and doing well. He’s certainly not had an easy time of it.

              • We used to follow each other on twatter, but his account got suspended for being too hilarious. And maybe also lots of pictures of turds in toilets he posted in a mocking social media kind of way.

                “Look guys” Just took a crap at the Sheraton on 3rd Ave. 4 out of 5 stars. #turdtoyourmother. Only he was way funnier than that, but you get the idea.

                You can never know for sure he’s shitting you, but I always assumed he’s mocking those faceschnooks and instagramholes who take pictures of the their latest meals and mundane stuff every single day like its the most important event of everybody’s year.

                He even trolled the postal service lots of times.

    • Hey Nunzio, It’s just one more reason to leave or disconnect from one more thing the government regulates. Is there anything the government doesn’t regulate anymore?

  34. I’ve yet to run across a tire store refusing to sell me a tire. I’ve had a few experiences where they told me a particular tire would work out badly – such as having different sized tires front and rear when the vehicle had AWD, since that would be hard on the differential – and I agreed with their logic and picked something less problematic.

      • At some point the tire manufacturers will probably mandate that all dealers do it. They are starting with the low hanging fruit, the big box stores, where they don’t really have to worry about customer service.

        We will see if the little dealers fight it or not. They may not be able too, the tire companies may just decide to only sell with the big guys at that point.

        Unfortunately most big manufacturers would rather get rid of all those little pesky old timer dealers. They rather sell their stuff themselves or only deal with a handful of big retailers. Unfortunately for customers neither of them are good at providing decent let alone good service. Big companies today just can’t seem to do it, they are so hellbent on the bottom line and good service only seems to cost money to the bean counters.

        I wouldn’t be surprised if the tire manufacturers are being pressured by government and greenie groups to ID individual tires too. Will they be able to scan the individual tire to see who bought them new, when they are found old and abandoned in some empty lot in some old inner city hood? It be easy to then send a fine for dumping to whoever bought them new (they wouldn’t care that you probably didn’t do it).

  35. Every time I try to buy Seafoam or PB Blaster at Walmart in the self-serve register, the damned machine stops the transaction and summons an “associate,” who sidles up dejectedly and instead of actually verifying that I’m not some crackhead teenager or meth felon, simply punches in their access code to allow the register to complete the transaction.

    Look, just because some people are abusing their rights doesn’t mean I should have to put up with being presumed a Net Loss For Society (NLFS – feel free to use the term, Eric).

    I’m not huffing that shit. Who does stuff like that?

    • I’ve bought both in a lot of places and have never seen that. It must be a state or local thing. I would think starting fluid or disc brake cleaner or carb/choke cleaner would be better for huffing but then again, I simply can’t imagine huffing. What ever happened to using gasoline? 50 years ago that’s the only thing I recall anyone huffing.

      I was going on a long day trip and took a guy who worked for/with me depending. He wanted me to stop at the grocery store. He comes back with a sack full of whipped cream in a can. If you hold the can upright the propellant comes out without the whipped cream….little did I know since I’ve never used the canned stuff for anything including eating. He proceeded to get blasted on nitrous oxide.

      • Here’s Turd on disqus shitting on the NFL 4 days ago. His avatar pic is a shit in a toilet of course.

        active on Twitchy
        Weasel Zippers
        The Gateway Pundit
        MOTUS A.D.
        Breitbart News Network

        Turd Burglestein • 15 days ago
        What kind of dirty laundry does the deep state have on Sessions? There has to be something they have on him because all he does is screw Trump’s agenda and the good people who voted for his agenda and then rolls over like a good doggie and waits for his tummy rub from soros, meuller, and the other corrupt democrats.

        This guy needs to be fired…and should have been fired months ago when he first rolled over by recusing himself and letting this stupid russian conspiracy get a foothold.

        Turd Burglestein • a month ago
        Except those aren’t nazi swastikas. To be a nazi swastika, it has to be rotated 45 degrees. These leftists are real dumb fucks aren’t they.

        • Sessions obviously received his law degree from the back of a comic book along with the Sea Monkeys and X-Ray glasses.
          Sessions respect for the Bill of Rights is nil. Advocating more civil asset forfeiture, persecuting states that legalize marijuana, letting more heroes off the hook when they go bad, in fact Sessions doesn’t believe you have any right to complain about hero misconduct.
          As for the howler monkey in the White House, he is now entirely controlled by the deep state and israel. His latest deep state drool at the U.N. concerning “rogue nations” reeks of utter b.s.

      • I saw some kids do the same thing IN the store. They would all grab a can and begin to spin it like Pete Townsend would strum his guitar. After about half a dozen quick spins, they’d all start inhaling the propellant from the can, and then just collapse on the ground as their eyes rolled up into their heads. smh.

  36. I can’t say I’ve ever had this happen. Then again, I mail order tires and parts and either install myself or have in independent shop do it.

  37. Just don’t go to the “big boys” of tires. The little independent shops aren’t going to waste their profits on this garbage. One of my local shops has mounted slicks on a car I drove in with the only question being if I wanted the white letters inside or outside.

    The big chains and their database can kiss my ass….the little guy usually beats their price anyway, and has better service to boot.

    • I always go to a Llantas shop. I point to the problem or hand it to them. They just put on a new fucking tire, the price is always posted behind the register. As soon as they’re done, I pay them and leave.

      Money talks. Service means shut up and and perform.

      • When I lived in San Diego, we’d always take our cars to the Llantas shop downtown. The service was great, the prices better than anywhere in three counties, but the best reason of all was watching the quite attractive Hispanic seniorita with long hot pink fingernails operate the tire machine. Sometimes she would even have these pure white pants that never had a stain or mark anywhere. I don’t know how she did it. She never had a scratch, or tire stain anywhere. Her nails were always spotless and perfect.

    • I just put on a set Friday. No such option.

      Three of them say “MOUNT THIS SIDE OUT” and the other says “MOUNT THIS SIDE IN.”

      All black.

      • Those asymetrical tires are only meant to turn one direction and the tread is different for each side of the car if they’re like ones I had. You put one tread type to the outside on each side and never switched sides with them.

        Switching sides with radials in a no-no anyway. I was about to leave the yard in a KW with a belly dump and noticed I needed a new steering tire badly. I hadn’t been driving that truck or it would have been changed already. The boss tells the guys to take the one off the passenger side and put it on the driver’s side and put the new tire on the passenger side. I object and told him you didn’t switch sides with radials. He said they did it all the time….so they did it. I couldn’t get that off my mind and tried to never use that tractor.

        I asked a tire dealer if he switched sides. He said We won’t switch sides, period. If you want to get that done you’ll have to go elsewhere. Well, I don’t want that done…..ever.

        • So Eight,

          How do I bring this to the installer’s attention without making him fell like the idiot he is?

          I’ve only put 500 miles on them. Did they take a set yet?

          • Tua, it’s up to you. I have schooled more tire people than I can count. If they have a lick of sense they’re grateful for the lesson. If they don’t they can KMA. He fucked up. He can eat it.

            Lot of upstart tire shops this last round in the patch. I’ve taught a lot of them about mounting and dismounting tires. Some guys trying to get the wheels off an Erie style trailer I had at the time. The hubs are on the axle and the rims slide over them. Easy to get them off unless you try to move one side and then the other like they were doing. I showed them to slide the wheels off one at a time holding opposite sides and they come right off. Pulling one side and then the other I could still be there waiting. I have stuff to do and don’t have time for incompetence.

    • Got a new set for one end of the Accord from wally world(no choice , looking at steel) never had a belt shift on the Nankings or other Chinese made tires , noticed a shift on the Douglases almost immediately.I buy from Hillbilly shops, these Guys do a good job(one Guy doesnt even have a card reader) Maybe we will have tire allotment in the future to control the environmental problems from discarded tires(sic) just kidding, you never know .

      • I think the Gooks are making the best tires these days. I replaced the old BFG All-Terrains on my PU with a set of Hankook DynaPro ATs…..Wow! 25% cheaper than the BFG’s (at the time) and they’re the best tires I’ve ever had.

        Thing is: Korean tires used to be cheap. Now that it’s become apparent to many people that their quality is tops….they’ve gotten expensive…..

        • I got a set of DynaPro ATs on a used truck I bought. Worst set of tires I’ve ever had. Break free really easy on wet pavement and on ice/snow it’s like having a set of roller skates on the vehicle. Replaced them asap.

          • Hmmmm….that’s weird. And yours are the AT’s (AT-M actually)- not the MT’s or the HT’s? Are they a reasonable size (i.e. not greatly oversized) and proper load range for the vehicle? (I have mine on my 8K lb. Excursion now…they’re load range E- I’m sure if I put the cheaper fewer-ply version on the same vehicle, they would handle like crap due to sidewall flex….just for example…)

              • Huh…. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like these tires… 20-inchers…maybe they’re lower profile than older-style 18’s? I notice that a lot of vehicles which now come stock with low-profile [compared to what normal tires used to be] seem to have very different ride and handling characteristics. Only thing I can think of. Or maybe they’re not making the tires as good as they used to?

        • Douglas Tire = Goodyear…
          I’ve been through a lot of tires over the years but the only ‘junk’ tires I ever had were Generals I picked up at Sam’s Club. Had a persistent sidewall bulge and wouln’t stay balanced. Had them replaced under warranty 3 times then went out and bought some Dunlops instead.
          Had good luck in the past with goodyear/douglas but IMHO the goodyears are overrated/overpriced. Last time I looked you could get the douglas tire for around 1/2 the price of a comparable goodyear.
          Lately I’ve been running cooper/mastercraft and kumho on the street and american racer at the track. Those kumhos wear like iron, would buy another set if they had the size I want…

    • It should be. I’ve purchased tires by size at mail order at places like Tire Rack and had a local garage mount and balance them. (In fact they can be shipped direct to the installer if desired.)

      If you don’t want your VIN scanned just take the rims off the car and use another vehicle to drop them off to have the new tires installed. (Though of course that might be a problem for city folk who might have only one car and no place to work on it.)

    • I do the same thing as others have said – I buy tires at Tire Rack online, have them shipped to an installer and they charge around $30 to put the tire on the wheel. I haven’t tried getting “unapproved” tires installed so I can’t speak to that. If I bought tires that weren’t “approved” for my car and the business wouldn’t put them on my car only due to some government regulation, I would lose it.

      • Hi Krista,

        I am grateful the Orange Barchetta is largely immune from all of this. As in the song, it reminds me that a better world – and a better time – once existed.

        • Eric, I think that THAT is 98% of the allure of classic cars: They are a physical connection to the memories of the past when the world was a saner place- and not just like a typewriter or coffee grinder that sits on the shelf and you look at it and maybe use it a few times for a few seconds- but instead, a classic car is something which still has value in the sense that it can still do what it was designed to do, and in a way that is superior to new ones; and you can get inside of it, and go places, and really be enveloped in the time period which it represents- like a time machine…..until the teenager with the Honda civic with the fart-can muffler pulls up next to you…or the 45 year-old white woman blasting the [c]rap “music”….

          • I was talking to a mechanic a while back who pointed out that in the last ten or twenty years automobile manufacturers are making more reliable cars, but adding a lot of technological gizmos that break down right around the time the warranty runs out. What I wish I would have asked them is whether or not one could buy an old classic, and install a much newer and more reliable engine sans computer technological frustration inducing crap and get perhaps the best of both worlds?