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Sort of. The protest was organized by smugglers and tea merchants who were being undercut by the East India Tea Company, who were granted a reprieve from tea taxes under the Tea Act in order to help move a glut of product. The tea party was essentially a bunch of criminals and businessmen destroying a competitor's product under the sorta-BS guise of "taxation without representation," even though the average colonist would have been better off buying the discounted tea that they either refused entrance into the colonies or, in the case of Boston, threw into the harbor. (And yeah, I did just have to look all of that up on Wikipedia, all I remember from school is that the tea party wasn't really about taxes at all and that it involved a bunch of angry smugglers). Not that any of this has anything to do with the price of tea in China or people smashing up a Starbucks, but whatever.

OK, but the tea party protests were massive. They created an entirely new political party. They affected mid-term elections in 2010. They elected candidates under the banner of "tea party Republicans." It could be argued that they, on multiple occasions, were responsible for shutting down the government in protest. I'm not going to play the game of "which side is more protesty," just think about how you're labeling the opposition and ask yourself if that's a fair assessment were the sides reversed.

Do you remember the tea party protests all over the country? Or "tea baggers" as they called themselves before they realized that that was a bad idea. You're dismissing any right-wing protester as a "nut job" but not extending the same courtesy to left-wing protesters.

Honest question -- are you able to put yourself into a liberal's shoes and realize that what's currently happening on the left (obstructionism, fear, attacking every crack in the Trump administration no matter how petty) is exactly how they've viewed conservative behavior for the past 8 years?

Which is good, because nothing needs to come of it. This isn't a story in its own right, it's a bald partisan attempt to bait Republicans into revealing their own hypocrisy. I mean, maybe people will reflect on their own views of recent of events, and realize that their principled stances on email security and government transparency weren't principled stances at all, but blind partisanship and tribalism, and they'll actively work to change their biases and be better people. Just kidding, people are going to micro-analyze this, point out all the ways Pence's situation was different from Clinton's, and claim that those differences are where their real principled stance lies. U-S-A. U-S-A. Actually, I'm still just kidding. People are going to wait until their pundit of choice micro-analyzes the situation and tells them what their real principled stance is.

You really can't make this shit up. Another senior official caught using a private email address for state business. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I order tires when I have money and then take the wheels down to my mechanic at my leisure to have them mounted. I'm not sure what I get out of using a TR certified installer -- a small discount? I used the service once and I found it to be a pain. My tires showed up at this NTB and then I felt like I had to drop everything and go get my tires mounted, and when I got there they tried to upsell me on a bunch of crap. For non-performance tires I just drop my car off at my local Firestone and have them call me back when something black and round is mounted.

Everyone: "This country is too politically divided." Everyone, 5 minutes later: "I'll tell you the problem with <insert placeholder for 50% of the population here>" Be part of the solution. If you find yourself about to make a comment about "liberals" or "conservatives" as a giant group, just stop.

Kellyanne "Alternative Facts" Conway

New oval office furniture? http://img.4plebs.org/boards/tv/image/1385/94/1385948633872.png

You may have seen this but in my opinion it's a great starting point: http://jerz.setonhill.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Otero-Chart.jpg You'll notice CNN is down in "sensational clickbait" territory, and with good reason. It was never partisan because it wanted to be the channel in your dentist's waiting room, but it was never in depth and spent waaaaay too much airtime on the "if it bleeds it leads" concept. I'd add to the bottom left politico, daily kos, salon, huff po, and any other garbage leftist rags. My primary news source is NPR, and I think anything in the middle there is pretty good. Long time Fox viewers will undoubtedly balk at that circle as comprising the "lamestream media" but that's, IMHO, the result of a decade-long disinformation campaign against their competitors. The important thing, and this is true even of Fox News, is to separate the journalism from the garbage. Fox journalists are good, they have integrity, and they report the facts. Fox pundits are asshats. Fox TV has done a masterful job of blurring the line so rubes don't even know that they're being manipulated. FoxNews.com is fairly good as long as you avoid anything labeled OPINION or featuring a talking head. MSNBC is garbage, they've copied the Fox TV playbook of crafting a narrative and blurring journalism with punditry. NYT runs a lot of editorials that liberals breathlessly share because the NYT is so trusted, but their investigative journalism is fair and top notch.

I'm sure Fox News used gov't supplied data to rake Obama over the coals for his expenses. Everyone trusts gov't data when its politically convenient. Like Geeto, I don't give a shit what Trump's travel costs or how much time he takes off. Presidential expenses aren't much in the grand scheme of things, and I don't want my president sweating over nickels and dimes when they have a goddamn administration to run. On the other hand, I watch enough Fox News to know that the conservative media was never hesitant to use Obama's vacation time, or his golfing, or the cost of his Hawaiian vacation as fuel for recreational outrage. And Trump himself has literally dozens of tweets complaining about the exact same shit he's doing. And even then, I don't care about the hypocrisy coming from Trump or Fox News, because I'm completely jaded to it by this point. But that doesn't mean it should go un-pointed-out. I don't know you, or any of the other posters, well enough to know if you're the type who would watch those silly segments on Fox about Obama playing golf and have some reflexive reaction like, "Typical dipshit Obama." If you are that type of person, then just as a matter of personal reflection, ask yourself why you're so quick to get annoyed at Obama doing thing X and not annoyed at Trump for also doing thing X. Ask yourself if you actually have a principled position on thing X, or if you're just succumbing to human weakness for confirmation bias. And if so, work on not doing that and encouraging others not to as well.

Ah, well, meh. Maybe they shouldn't allow open face helmets with no eye protection then, but everyone does.

Helmets should be mandatory, but I'm kind of meh on the sleeves thing. I guess long sleeves/pants are supposed to be like a budget fire suit? But the protection from fire suits is measured in seconds, and those seconds are important to give the driver a chance to kill the engine, pull the suppression system handle, unbuckle a harness, pull the steering wheel, drop a window net, and egress over a door bar. In a street car, you just have to unbuckle and flop out of a giant door. A long sleeve cotton shirt ain't really gonna matter.

I'm not going to defend Mr. No-Helmet, but just as a general observation, there's very little an instructor can do once things actually start to go south. The real defense is forcing good habits from lap 1, so that things won't go south. Eyes up, brake straight, turn in late, reiterated constantly and especially at the first sign of an early apex. A close 4th would be "don't lift mid-corner, and dear god please don't hit the brakes mid-corner." The big hurdle is that our brains scream, "We'll never make this corner, I need to start turning now!" and then, "We'll never make this corner at this speed, I need to slow down now!" I've found that spending the first several laps constantly calling every single braking point, turn-in point, apex, and track-out point goes a long way in resetting what's "normal" to the brain, much faster and safer than letting new students sort it out on their own. So yeah, a big part of that is "Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, now turn, gas gas gas go go go." Per the Jalopnik comments from people who have been there, I'm stunned that they actually do have brake pedals for the instructor. Like Tinman said, the last thing you want to do it almost any "oh shit" situation is hit the brakes. I'm not even sure how I'd use it. Now a power knob, I would kill for one of those. I've only been instructing for a couple of years now and have generally had very good experiences, but these sorts of "driving adventure" things scare me, mostly for the people they attract. I've had exactly 1 student who didn't seem to have any interest in learning car control or racecraft -- young kid in a brand new C7 who just wanted to see how fast it could go. Suffice it to say, he did not get the experience he expected. I just can't see myself wanting to jump into a supercar with some guy who wants a vacation memory.

I'm confused, because mine is a 2013 model, and 2013 was the first year they were produced, and my EV range is as-advertised... what time travelling shenanigans have allowed your friend to predict my future EV range? You mean this one? Doesn't apply since I have the glass roof. Also, ??? I give this post 2 thumbs down for accuracy, but +5 vigor for giving me something to do during a slow day.

I work from home so I don't really drive much, for the first time since I've been married we don't really have his/hers, we just have the nice car and the shit hauler. Oh, I also have the Miata, and there's an E36 sitting in my driveway, so it's not like it's all bad for me. 110V for now, since the EV range is so short there's not much benefit to 220V. I'll probably get that anyway when I rebuild my garage in the next year or two just to future proof it, though.

Seems to be boring family car season on CR. Some of you may have seen my Mazda5 ad for a hot minute, here's the car that replaced it: http://i.imgur.com/A1o5XXfh.jpg 2013 Ford C-Max Energi. I loved the Mazda5, but my wife never warmed up to driving a manual which relegated her to our increasingly sketchy Sedona for her daily commute now that she's back in the workforce. I was looking for an efficient runabout for her, with my own requirements being that it have nice seats. I'm pushing 40 and my frequent trips to Dayton/DC are hell on my back in most cars. High up on my list of potentials was the new Mazda3, but after a quick test drive it became clear that the seats weren't that great and the back seat was insufficient for 3 kids. We also drove a Prius and I was unimpressed with the interior for the price. Lastly, and based solely on a google search for "best factory incentives Dec 2016" or something, I decided to look at a 2016 C-Max Energi. Clearly we liked it, although I ended up buying a used one. More on that later Let's start with the cons. It's a hybrid that gets an EPA rating of 40/36. This after a lawsuit forced them to stop listing the Fusion Hybrid mileage numbers for this ridiculous brick of a car. A Prius it is not, especially on the highway. It's also not much of a hatchback -- since the regular C-Max was never intended to be a hybrid, it has a bulge in the trunk floor for the battery pack. The Energi, with it's much bigger 5.8 kWh battery pack is even more ridiculous. Trunk space isn't great. I'll be honest, the mileage and the storage issue are going to be dealbreakers for a lot of people. Other cons, like the raucous engine noise, the pithy CVT, and the sometimes harsh transition between electric/gas power are just things I think you need to deal with on a car like this. The big pro is the price. This car is a sales dud. I was quoted $27k by Ricart for a 2016 top-of-the-line SEL with a pretty good option package, based on something like $9k in Ford incentives off the $37k sticker price. On top of that, there's a $4k federal tax credit. This is a lot of car for around $24k, and it sure was tempting. Ultimately, though, those same incentives/credits affect the used market as well, and there are a lot of cars coming off 3 year leases right now. I found this one at a no-haggle dealership listed at $13.9k with 28,000 miles on it, and it had the top of the line option package. Power heated leather seats, 9 speaker stereo, remote start, panoramic glass roof, auto-dimming rear view mirror, heated side mirrors, self-parking, voice controls, etc. It's a deal. The other things we liked about it were the big rear seat and the gas mileage, because 40mpg ain't nothing to sneeze at. Oh yeah, and if you plug it in for 7 hours you can do 20 miles* on good ol' Ohio fracking power. Not too shabby. *Today was actually the first time ever that it told me I might actually get 20 miles. Range is affected by temperature, speed, and whether or not you're willing to drive around without the heat on like my wife. Some days it's only offered us 7 all-electric miles, but then we've only owned it for 4 weeks and it's been winter the whole time.

Mazda5! When you say 3 in the back seat, does that involve car seats?

Thanks man, dude put a deposit down and is flying out from DC. Maybe I should have priced it higher I'll let you know if it falls through.

Purchase pending...

EcoBee has remote temp sensors, which is nice. It's just not as pretty as the Nest. I've been super happy with my Hue setup, it's got very broad support and I like being able to change scenes with the Tap. Downside is that Scene support via the Echo never really solidified. LIFX bulbs are all the rage for people who don't want to deal with a hub. I have a TP-LINK outlet and it plays nice with my Echo. Only thing I'm really wanting for is a good IR blaster, I don't want to pay for the Harmony Hub so I built a little one out of an ESP8266 chip (found directions online) but it's just too clunky to use with the Echo. There's a lot of stuff that's still clunky with the Echo, to be honest.

Picture: http://i.imgur.com/UJV8CgZh.jpg Full ad: http://columbus.craigslist.org/cto/5963434502.html

Added angry brows

http://i.imgur.com/cjGrom0h.jpg