Geeto67

I wonder if the non SRT cars that got the same engine got the same treatment: I know I am probably going to get shit for this but I actually like the SRT-4 Caliber more than the Neon. It is a way more practical car. It was slotted as a competitor to the GTI and Mazdaspeed3 but it made more HP than either (285hp) . Also the ugly turtle looks (as my daughter likes to call it) make it a pretty good sleeper. As a not boring kid hauler it's not bad...despite the punishment of having to sit in a 2009 and earlier dodge interior.

I cannot confirm that, but....if you were a Plus customer before June 1st 2017, photobucket has delayed photobucketing your pics until december 31st 2018. Plus used to be something like $30 a year so that would work out to roughly $3 per month, but the same thing now is $6 a month and doesn't include 3rd party hosting. http://blog.photobucket.com/please-review-latest-changes-photobucket/

I meant to ask you about that, Is that each and every car? is it done on a dyno or is there a group of people at Chryco whose whole job is to run an SRT car around a track. what's involved? I think they have sold like 35K SRT grand Cherokees so that's a lot of cars to test.

no doubt. This article from last year is kind of interesting too: http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/news/a29006/dodge-viper-13-track-records-multiple-runs/

I can't remember where I heard it but I think Chevrolet spent something like $1.2 million when it sent the z/28 to the ring to post a time. That is just the logistics cost of getting the car and parts there, getting the people there, setting up the car, and making the car run for it's number. It wasn't even setting a "record time" it was just testing the car and posting a time for comparison with the field. It could be a bogus number but it doesn't seem all that unbelievable when you think about the rig and tires and spares, and data collection a big operation like GM would travel with.

any time you have amateurs delving into a realm of motorsports where typically it's mfgs only is a good thing. Too many motorsports are closed off now to those not associated with multi-billion dollar operations. Sure it's a paltry record, but it's something to root for - it's one thing when a huge company can go out and spend megabucks in a pissing match to one up another company, it's another when a bunch of guys put the mfg's claims to the test and try to replicate it on an amateur's budget. If they pull this off it will mean more than dodge's original record, it will prove that dodge built a product with which anybody can replicate results.

Depends on the job you are asking it to do. In this case you could probably get similar weight reduction if you didn't care about the parts: fitting together well, having a high level of cosmetic finish, being durable enough for street use, having any kind of longevity. I don't even know if you need carbon fiber for that, you could probably get away with good old fashioned fiberglass mat. Carbon fiber's main benefit is strength, you can use 4 layers where glass would require 6, and it will hold up better. There are many ways to get the similar benefits - since power to weight is a ratio, increasing power has the same effect as decreasing weight. Being more efficient with getting that power to the ground is harder to track in quantity other than 1/4 mile ET, but every setup is different and what works on the street doesn't always work on the strip. The unintended benefits are harder to replicate - lighter means less wear on parts, more power usually means more wear. I don't think structural carbon fiber is up to the point where it can replace something as cheap as steel or aluminum. I think evern strut tower bracing is more expensive than it's pressed metal counterpart. That doesn't mean it won't get there, but for now, structural carbon is still very expensive.

watched the segment this morning, 600lbs is a lot of weight to drop in just body panels. I am particularly impressed with how good the fit is on some of these panels. Anybody who has ever played with any of the old fiberglass panels knows how hard it is to get good fitting and good looking composite stuff.

Your comments stand on their own man. Pointing out the obvious is not making a decision on anything. And Decider is not a word. The word you are looking for is "Authority". "Decision maker" would have also been acceptable.

Def "tough love" but I realized something else while I was reading your comment. Higher education, Sometimes in undergraduate but almost always in the post graduate level, has very small tolerance for any notion that can't be defended with hard sources. If you are going to make an argument or state your opinion you have to be ready to explain how you got to the conclusion and address the critical opposition. When you defend your PhD you have to defend your choices and sources that led to your conclusion as well as defend from the critics of your sources. It has no patience if you are unable to do so and it has no interest in how much your ego is tied to your opinion and it does this in a very public way. In Law School the Socratic Method of answering questions adds a broader audience and teaches in part through humiliation. Most people who haven't gone through this aren't equipped to handle this or separate the argument from themselves. They also don't understand that if you put your opinion out therein conversation with someone who has been through this teaching method you better have the knowledge to back it up and or say "i don't know" without feeling superior or inferior. Thus the gap widens between those with formal educational training and those who do not . I can understand how being faced with this people can feel stupid of insulted, but I, like many, don't know how to address it. How do you explain to the group that advocates for holding people responsible for their actions that you are holding them responsible for their statements and they are not taking responsibility by blaming intellectuals for their own lack of knowledge and feelings of embarrassment? How do you further explain to them that people like Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, and Donald Trump are there to exploit this feeling by reinforcing their ignorance?

Ignorant isn't an insult it's a statement of fact. If you don't know something you are ignorant of it, plain and simple. You lack the knowledge to continue to have these conversations and you don't want to do the leg work to get the knowledge. Instead of just saying "I don't know" or asking real questions, you make up these things or you pull some canned "conservative rhetoric" or you put forth laughably biased argumentative questions, and then claim you are impartial which insults both of our intelligence. I am not talking about what's wrong with liberals and what's wrong with conservatives, I'm talking about whats wrong with you. You are ignoring evidence, you are ignoring knowledge, you are not taking responsibility for your own intelligence. This isn't a matter of "respecting viewpoints" this is about your inability to defend your prove your viewpoint is based on anything other than lies you have been fed, assumptions, and internal logical gymnastics. There are very intelligent conservatives out there, but Rush Limbaugh is not one, Alex Jones is not one, and You are not one. You have bought a bill of defective goods in their rhetoric and you don't question it, you have no desire to question your own belief. Not all conservatives, not the Republican part, the very specific person that is you. you want intelligent conservatives to read/listen to? here: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/yes-dan-mitchell-there-are-conservatives-worth-following-on-twitter/262259/ I have given you a literal reading list (a few posts back) of credible sources to help you understand the concepts you talk about but don't fully understand and the best you can muster is "you are being mean to me because I don't respect your opinion". Yes, I don't respect YOUR opinion - it's a patchwork of lies you bought into, assumptions you make, evidence you ignore, and your disdain for your liberal friend's half baked opinions. If you had to defend it as a PHD thesis, you'd fail. You want me to respect your opinion - put together one that isn't just your "feelings" on something. Spend some time reading political and economic theory and draw your own conclusions. I believe that my above paragraphs makes it clear I do not. I'm not out here calling all members of a particular ideology stupid, or saying things like "the problems with liberals are..." that's you. There is plenty of misinformation in both viewpoints and you keep churning conservative misinformation as fact. We could talk about liberal misinformation but usually you just say " think this is bullshit" and then I agree with you "like that bit about how your bernie bros feel") and then we don't discuss it. How are you so "good" at spotting liberal misinformation and so very very bad at spotting conservative misinformation? should be a simple question for you to answer.... Trump won because he is the better marketer. When it comes to the president, the majority of americans across both sides don't really know the roles and responsibility of the president let alone how politics work or even what is in their own self interest. You know why people in certain fields in higher education trend toward liberal viewpoints? it isn't this specter of liberal hiring bias conservatives like to chase around the mulberry bush - it's because they are not stupid. They read the studies, the evidence, the theories, and then they draw their own conclusions from that. I'm not talking about undergrad students - I'm talking professors and grad students.

If your life is simple, then taxes are simple for you. The code is complex because people's lives are complex. They want exemptions for child care, they want exemptions for student loans, They want exemptions for moving expenses, they want different treatment because they own a home. On the other side, politicians want to incentivize behavior economically so they offer tax breaks for going to school, they offer tax deductions for mortgages, they offer deductions for charitable donations. You keep looking at the code as this isolated thing on an island but really it is at the heart of how the political processes and incentivizes. This is not true. One of the major ways the 1% of this country dodge taxes is by playing with the definition of income. A simpler tax code isn't going to solve that because it would require a really complex definition of income and that goes against it being a simpler tax code. Another way they avoid it is by playing with when the tax is collected (usually at the sale of an asset) which again a simpler tax code won't stop. I struggle at all to see how a "simpler tax code" would prevent tax dodging - remember our original tax code started simple and then evolved to be complex partially through trying to stop tax dodges, making is simpler would actually be giving those whom have been working on defeating the system a huge advantage. Do we need everyone to pay into the system? Or is it possible that having someone pay into a system where it hurts them financially does not provide a benefit to either society or the government? You can get into such small amounts of tax collected that it would cost the government more to collect and process it than they made collecting it - who benefits from that? Also, and I'll get into this in my next point, there are some positive social benefits that not taxing the poor partially purchases like a reduction in the crime rate. Seriously, why does everyone have to pay into the system? because you think it's fair? that's not a good answer because those living at the poverty line or below are most effected and that isn't fair. First of all you are getting very close to saying the disabled shouldn't get assistance, which I don't think you intend to do. Let's just assume you are talking about able bodied work eligible individuals. But here is the thing: There are not enough opportunities to go around. I know it's fun to think of America as the land of opportunity and maybe there are an infinite number of opportunities on the whole (and maybe not) but that doesn't mean that every opportunity is available to every person. A jb at Mcdonalds across town is useless to an employee who can't get there if the bus doesn't go there. It's not about believing in people. It's about believing that there is an opportunity for every single individual out there that he or she can find and take. That's just not true. Post high school Education is a lengthy discussion that doesn't add much to this conversation at the moment. no, not everyone needs a college degree, but some jobs require more than a college degree (doctors, lawyers, etc...). Each town that is different. Maybe in a smaller town there are a surplus of union jobs, but there are plenty of unions in more densely populated areas where there are more members than jobs to go around. I have several friends in the Electricians Union in NY for whom the waitlist for an apprenticeship was two years, and there are many union electricians that have multiple years without a single eligible job. What do you do if the union opportunity isn't available to you? This is the hill you've chosen to die on? that everyone who is poor doesn't want to work? really? you constantly disappoint me. Lots of people want to work and can't get work. Or they are working but have maxed out their skill set and can't get above the poverty line and there is no more advancement. To say all poor people don't want to work is single handily the dumbest thing you have written here. Why don't you go down to the home depot and tell the guys standing out there in the parking lot looking for a job that they really don't want to work. They aren't all illegals you know....sometimes they are just guys who want to work under the table. What I believe doesn't matter when you look at it from an economic standpoint. It's pure economic efficiency to have those whose standard of living is affected the least to pay more into the system and those who can't afford it to pay less. And remember they are paying for roads, schools, etc...all the government services, not just benefits. Poverty is a trap but it isn't because of the reason you think (just to be clear that reason is because you think the poor are lazy and getting free money). This is a whole different discussion that involves the prison system post civil war, the civil rights movement and discrimination in hiring, and literally 200 years of American history as well as current technological advancement that makes workers obsolete in the work force. None of this is new. To just assume all poor people are poor because they get benefits and don't want to work? that's just you being lazy (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/why-the-poor-dont-work-according-to-the-poor/279900/) By the way, this is part of why conversation with you is maddening....you look at everything that talks about social welfare as suspicious, but you don't even bat an eye at the lie (and it is a lie that has been proven again and again to be false) that the poor don't work because they don't want to work or are lazy. I mean think about that for a second - why doesn't it sound crazy to you for someone to say the poor are poor because they are lazy? why aren't you questioning that very particular bit of nonsense that has almost no evidence of truth. Really, it is because you want to believe it. You have no interest in the actual state of the world, you just want reinforcement of your opinions, you have tied your political position to your ego and you are unwilling to let go of it. It makes you feel better about your life to think you are nor poor because you work hard.

I'm not going to pretend like there aren't stupid people in this world in gerneral, but I'm guessing most of the people you are interacting with are in their 20's? Yeah kids in their 20's generally don't know much, or maybe a better way to say it is they are still learning and much like yourself they have more confidence than knowledge. Remember a few posts ago where we were talking about how as income goes up each successive dollar contributes slightly less to improving your standard of living? The name for that in economics is called "the marginal utility of money". If you take 10% of the income from a person living on $10k a year it may deprive them of something essential like food or housing, and we are just talking about $100. For a person who makes $100k a year, $10k in taxes would be felt but not enough to deprive them of something essential, and there is certainly a lot of room in their budget to pay more if they needed to without significantly affecting their quality of life. Now look at someone who makes $1million a year, $100k out of their yearly salary isn't generally going to affect their quality of life at all. So the glib 20 something answer you are looking for is the rich pay more in taxes because they are the ones who can most afford it without affecting their quality of life. If you look at our tax code we have a modified flat tax of sorts - at the top bracket it doesn't matter if you make $5 million or $50 million, your income gets taxed at the same rate. Now I hear you saying (ok no I don't but humor me) "but everyone is different, what if paying taxes would impact the person making $1m a year's quality of life because of their life circumstances?" Well that is why we have deductions. If the person making $1m has 10 children to support then he gets a break from paying a portion of his taxes that other $1m owners who don't have kids don't get. The point about our tax code is that it is an expirement in trying to maximize economic efficiencies to individual circumstances. If your life is simple your taxes are simple, if your life is complex, your taxes will be complex.

and how do you physically do this in practice? This is built on the notion that everyone who is poor is lazy. That is just not true, no matter how much you want to believe it. Lazy and level of wealth are not mutually exclusive. Not a true statement either. But beside the point - has nothing to do with the actual implementation. What does the physical implementation of these concepts look like other than just cutting off public funding? Pay for it how? How are they not paying now that they should be? how is that dollar amount collected? You do understand that the majority of people receiving public assistance are employed and are often hard working, right? what more equity do you need?

but I am just so excited to talk to people!!!!!! I dunno, I subscribe to the xerox theory, the more you pair it down the less fidelity it retains. Plus I genuinely like to write. Like really like it. don't care that much for the others' reading it part (LOL).

what's the point of answering questions you don't have enough knowledge to understand the answer to? yes, and? Presidential debates are a toe dip in to the political position of any one candidate. They are about as deep as a saucer of milk and about twice as wide. I don't dislike you either (p.s. you have a sweet ass ). Don't confuse a difference of opinion with being smug. There are many times where the confidence of your opinion (such as your question asking earlier) conveys the same. But beyond that the truly maddening part is in discussing this stuff your knowledge runs out and you just start making stuff up or just completely incredulous about it. Remember a while back when I said that "poor people pay more for everything" and how little you believed it? well part of that is based on the economic practice of measuring the relative dollar value in terms of a quantity of something. You can see this in practice at supermarkets where the price tag has the price for the unit and then in smaller print it tells you the monetary value per weight (usually in ounces). When you expand this technique to the greater world (as many economists do) you start to see things like the dollar value of 1 sq/ft of housing (how the real estate market measures value), the dollar value of 1 mile of transportation, etc....and when you look at it from a per unit perspective - maybe someone poorer than you is paying overall less rent than you are, but in terms of 1sq foot of his apartment vs 1 sq/ft of yours, your sq/ft has more intrinsic value (also you probably have more of them which is why your overall rent is higher). Remember how not open minded you were to this practice which is literally how every industry does it's accounting? how can I expect to have a conversation about the flat tax, where the value per unit of cost of living is essential, with someone who is not only ignorant of the concept but unwilling to understand it? In terms of the flat tax, there are countries that have implemented highly modified versions of it (a pure flat income tax exists only in theory) to some degree of success (most of the eastern bloc including russia), but not without bringing about different problems. It doesn't mean it will work for the US because of a variety of factors, and that is assuming we can agree on things like public benefits being excluded as income, or capital gains being included, and the value of charging a different rate for capital gains.

ok, how do you implement this? how do you plan to "hold people accountable"?

don't waste your time with this joke... ...before that question could even be answered he would have to define income, define whether he wants the theoretical drawbacks with the general theory of a flat tax or whether he want's why it won't work in America, whether he considers a "modified" flat tax the same as the theoretical flat tax or not, and a variety of other items. He is expecting a simple answer because he thinks this is a new proposal and not something that has been examined and debated for 100s of years. He also doesn't understand the difference between the face value of a dollar and the relative purchasing power of a dollar in the American economy or the progressively increasing spending power of a dollar vs the diminishing returns to quality of life as volume increases, all of which are crucial to this discussion. Seriously, very learned men have written thousands of pages on a subject he thinks he is clever for summarizing in one sentence and expects a brief answer. It would be cute if it wasn't both ignorant and smug.

City can go narrower, not broader, off of state rules. This means the city can generally restrict further from what the state allows (make something illegal if the state says it is legal) if it has an overwhelming public interest, but it can't make something legal if the state says it is illegal. So probably no.

If you think those are "Simple Questions" with simple one sentence answers then you are dumber than I give you credit for.

You have no literal idea what I think is logical or not - you talk in absolute statements like it's all this or all that and nothing else. It seems to be more important to you to take morally superior pot shots than to actually know the things you support or discuss actual political theory. You hold a simple view of government because it is all you are capable of understanding. You advocate free market yet you haven't the first fucking clue where it comes from or what it actually says or even the multitude of theories behind how it works. Up until this post I am convinced you didn't know Socialist Free Market were three words used consecutively in the same sentence let alone an entire field of economic theory/philosophy. Your entire experience with government is limited to a couple of years you spent in the military (thank you for your service BTW) and nothing else, except maybe the DMV line and the gigantic pain in the ass it is to get any kind of veterans benefits. It's a pretty small world view on something that is larger than all of us and has been around, evolving, for 100s of years. You have a paranoid conspiracy theorist level distrust of any news media that isn't fed to you through facebook, and you can't seem to name any news source you read outside of FB. And while there is a ton of information about the basics of government, the constitution, US history, etc...you literally consume none of it. I would say that maybe some part of you should kinda feel ashamed of this but really this makes you probably on par with the average conservative who has bought a "macho" image of conservatism without any real understand of what that means, how it would implement, what the real issues or, or if it is even a good idea. You think you are impartial because you occasionally take pot shots at the republican party because they aren't you particular brand of crazy. All is not lost Mr. Stowers, you can overcome your ignorance to your own political position through knowledge. Here is your summer reading list, feel free to continue to ignore it at your own peril: Erwin Chemerinsky, Constitutional Law: Principles and Policies Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations Jeremey Bentham, A short review of the Declaration Jeremey Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation Jeremey Bentham, Defense of Usury Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously Ronald Dworkin, Freedom's Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution Ronald Dworkin, Is Democracy Possible Here?: Principles for a New Political Debate John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money There are more....so many more that can be added here, but this just about covers pretty much all of the nonsense "libertarian" catch phrases you seem to mutter without regard to actual context. You talk about lowest common denominator, well these are all books that I am pretty certain the majority of people working in the legislature, all of whom are smarter than you in the areas of legislation and government, have read and adopted in part or whole. They frequently appear on high school and college level political science reading lists.

you have to go try what works for you, which may mean going down to an RV/camper dealer and just try getting in and out of a bunch of different ones to see what feels right. As a tall person I look at a teardrop as a place to sleep, dress, haul luggage, and that's it - but my much shorter wife and child do not. I forgot to mention, my upholstery friend, before she lived in a trailer, swore by vintage travco motorhomes. Smaller than modern ones, and powered by Chrysler 440's, they were unkillable and parts to fix one could be found anywhere. It's almost guaranteed you'll have to redo any one you see but I think the most expensive one I have ever seen was like $8K. Speaking of "Vintage", something you don't see anymore is the "camper van". Smaller and easier to live with than an RV, but bigger than a trailer. Plus you can pull a trailer with it so you can drag the golf kart along. I haven't seen a new one since the 1990's but something like this isn't bad: https://huntington.craigslist.org/cto/6207326966.html https://akroncanton.craigslist.org/cto/6196743973.html

I have no truck with any of that. I don't think the "Size" of the deal has changed, you just don't consume the type of media that is still talking about it. There are at least two items devoted to something related to this on every major new's outlet's website (to be fair I only checked NYT, WaPo, WSJ, and my google news feed, so maybe fox and breitbart aren't talking about it). Nobody is locking anybody up here for the same reason nobody locked Hillary up. There isn't a case. The current ugliness of the left mirroring the past ugliness of the right doesn't really change anything about the situation. It's counter productive. No one side is better or worse than the others when it comes to this kind of behavior, so to pick a side in it is kinda futile. There are a lot of people throwing the word treason around right now regarding Trump, and they are just as ignorant as the people who were the Clinton treasonous during the election (BTW, it's stupid because treason in almost all cases requires the country to be at war). If there is one thing we can learn from all of this, it is that our government really doesn't have any control system to hold the executive office accountable for actions that clearly violate policy. There are a lot of laws, regs, and policies that forbid activities but don't have any enforcement teeth. And that isn't going to change when the group that has the power to make that change is also the same that would be most affected by it. Again moral relativism. It's one thing to say everything sucks, it's another to say everything sucks but your team sucks more. If you pick a side, any argument that you make that the whole things sucks is immediately undermined because either it's all bad or it isn't. You seem to like saying it's all bullshit, but the liberal side is more bullshit. Well Shit is shit - whether it's soupy or has corn chunks in it isn't really impactful to the discussion beyond that. Not sure why this is here. I don't validate anything in my life through politics - it's a hobby. I enjoy it because there is a lot of philosophy and theory that gets put into practice. As far as getting ahead I went from a stoner teenager painting storefront signs to an attorney working for a major multinational corporation in a department that works with government agencies and regulation, and along the way I have done some pretty cool things. I think I'm all set on the life advice about getting ahead, thanks.

I throw my opinion around as opinion. When it's fact I usually identify it. Don't confuse that you don't agree with what I say with how I say it, esp when I often try to match the tone of some of the more conservative members here. Is it that that I don't write like some snarky faggoty liberal what's throwing you? This place has a real double standard when it comes to political viewpoints. no shit nothing is certain. It's all odds. We know the odds, we guess the outcomes. Some people throw extreme amounts of money at care, some don't and just pull the plug. At current we have freedom of choice in the matter, but it is often a choice wrought with emotion. It is also a choice that, to steal a line from Adam Smith, carries the invisible hand of unintended social benefits of individual self-interested actions. What you are suggesting is to limit that choice as a method of curbing a cost issue. I simply don't agree that position yields an optimal result, and would rather look at other factors. I'm not ruling it out - but I think it is a bit insensitive to people on top of being less than optimal. I agree in looking at all reasons. Where you and I disagree is that removing people's choice from the equation is the optimal solution. I agree it will have an effect, I just think there is a better way.

It's your message, I read it, I interpreted it, if you think I got it wrong it's on you to explain it. Unless you don't want to take personal responsibility for your statements. It's not on the reader to read into your statements only the way you intended. The world is a diverse place with diverse thinkers, you can't expect them all to think like you.