The startling goodness of people

Weld County Deputy Samuel K. Brownlee, a law enforcement officer in Colorado, had his life cut short on duty by a carjacker on November 23rd of 2010. He was disarmed in a physical confrontation, shot three times and killed by the suspect. He left behind a wife and children. One son was named Tanner Brownlee, who was 15 when his father was slain.

His father’s actual patrol vehicle, the one he specifically drove, subsequently came up for auction in 2015.

The son wanted to purchase the car in order to keep the memory of his father alive as long as possible.

Then something brilliant occurred.

This is called humanity.

This is called the goodness of people.

What a stellar display. One man paid $60,000 for a car worth $12,500 with 147,000 miles on the odometer, and then turned the keys over to the son, Tanner Brownlee, of the fallen officer.

That man was Steve Wells, a rancher, who’d made money from oil drilling on his property yet knew hard times as he was adopted himself.

“It never crossed my mind not to,” Wells said. “I wanted to hand the keys to that young man.”

Wells is a man who embodies America. A man who instills hope. Because he himself had no real father but was not aborted.

When Wells learned of the special auction of the fallen deputy’s retired patrol car, he knew he found a perfect opportunity to give back in a big way.

“Here was a man who lost his life as a deputy sheriff for the people of Weld County,” Wells said. “His son wanted something to remember his dad by and the fact that that young man could sit behind the wheel of that car and look through the windshield that his dad did was extremely important to me. It was just something I felt I had to do.”

It was time, he thought, to pay it forward.

“When the auction was over and I walked up and I handed him those keys. That is a lifetime moment. It was for him and it was for me,” Wells said. “That was a moment that, for me, meant everything.”

People insist we’re not an exceptional nation.

BZ

 

BZ’s Berserk Bobcat Saloon, Tuesday, April 18th, 2017

My thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to broadcast in their studio and over their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as appear on the Sack Heads Radio Show™ each Wednesday evening.

Tuesday night at the Saloon we discussed:

  • A tad bit of humor from President Ronald Wilson Reagan;
  • Ken McClenton is the Exservative Conservative — or is he?
  • Fresno State U: white chicks dabble with Islamic burkas;
  • “Wearing a hijab can be very liberating,” says ignorant GOWP bint;
  • “Allahu Akhbar” says black Fresno racist killer of 4, gangbanger & rapper;
  • Hillary Clinton confirms this has “nothing to do with Islam;”
  • “You Gone Need Me Before I Need You” = Racist Killer Rap;
  • Chicago’s devastating, murderous Easter weekend;
  • Cleveland’s Easter killer was a Muslim who visited the Islamic Center of Cleveland;
  • Jersey Joe, the Reaver of Common Sense, gives us a sense of his history and life;
  • Tucker Carlson vs gun control advocate; gets “shot down” by Carlson;
  • Sheriff David Clarke proffers solutions to Chicago’s problem;
  • Does Sweden “get it” yet?
  • Nigel Farage on Sweden;
  • Are we going to war?

Listen to “BZ’s Berserk Bobcat Saloon, Tuesday, April 18th, 2017” on Spreaker.

Please join me, the Bloviating Zeppelin (on Twitter @BZep and on Gab.ai @BZep), every Tuesday and Thursday night on the SHR Media Network from 11 PM to 1 AM Eastern and 8 PM to 10 PM Pacific, at the Berserk Bobcat Saloon — where the speech is free but the drinks are not.

Stay tuned this Thursday for The Aftermath, when I present The Official Attorney of the Berserk Bobcat Saloon™ (otherwise known as TOABBS), the White Mamba (one each), who will be consersalating with me about sanctuary cities and various legal issues the Trump administration now faces.

As ever, thank you so kindly for listening, commenting, and interacting in the chat room or listening via podcast. Thanks again to Mary Brockman, who manages to keep the chat room engaged and growing!

Want to listen to all the Berserk Bobcat Saloon archives in podcast? Go here.

BZ

 

US: going to war?

Is the United States going to war?

Probably not.

On the other hand, I cannot afford to be so readily dismissive or assumptive because, having been on the planet and a legal citizen of this nation in his seventh decade, I’ve not seen my country placed in such a dire and perilous predicament before from a prior president, Mr Obama, save that of James Earl Carter. Twin sons of different mothers.

Except that one at least possessed a modicum of service, obligation, sacrifice and discipline having served in the military. The one who gave away the Panama Canal and asked for criminal Marielitos to swamp Florida. Luckily we got over that. The Marielito part. Not at all the Panama Canal part. Which China is now attempting to completely control.

Let me reveal a very serious portion of the problem by way of video.

The most recent news. From alJazeera.com:

Kim Jong-un oversees display of N Korea military force

New long-range ballistic missiles on show during massive parade celebrating country’s founder as US armada approaches.

North Korea on Saturday displayed what appeared to be new long-range and submarine-based missiles at a massive military parade celebrating the 105th birth anniversary of the nation’s founding president, Kim Il-sung.

The parade, attended by leader Kim Jong-un, saw thousands of soldiers marching through the capital, Pyongyang.

Ah, the glorious and buttery goodness of a little, pudgy, four-eyed, psychotic, ass-slapped, cornholing, murdering dictator whose country can’t produce even one pane of glass without bubbles or ripples, much less adequately feed its people.

Weapons analysts said they believed some of the missiles on display were new types of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), enclosed in canister launchers mounted on the back of trucks.

Choe Ryong Hae – widely seen by analysts as North Korea’s second most important official – said US President Donald Trump was guilty of “creating a war situation” by dispatching US forces to the region.

“We will respond to an all-out war with an all-out war and a nuclear war with our style of a nuclear attack,” said Choe.

Then there was the global ridicule of Kim Jong Un by his own people when, on his most proud day, the missile he attempted to launch simply blew up. Bummer, dude. Some believe that, like Russia in the 60s, some of the Pudge’s missiles may have been nothing more than but mock-ups.

From the SouthChinaMorningPost.com:

North Korean missile explodes in test launch day after Kim Jong-un showcases new ballistic arsenal

Hostilities in the region surge US President Donald Trump sends aircraft carrier-led strike group to the Korean peninsula

A fresh North Korean missile test failed when it exploded after launch Sunday, the US military said, a day after Pyongyang publicly showcased its ballistic arsenal at a giant military parade.

The failure, which is likely to be seen as something of an embarrassment for the regime, came amid soaring tensions in the region over the North’s nuclear weapons ambitions.

Stop. This is too good to pass up. How many — literally —  heads of North Korean military officials and scientists were conveniently lopped off because the Pudgy One was exposed to global embarrassment? Anyone? Bueller?

“Hey, at least I know how to take the binocular caps off.”

Unlike some personnel.

“The missile blew up almost immediately,” the US Defence Department said of the early morning launch which was also monitored by the South Korean military.

Neither was able to determine immediately what kind of missile was being tested.

It came a day after North Korea displayed nearly 60 missiles – including what is suspected to be a new intercontinental ballistic missile – at a parade to mark the 105th birthday of its founder Kim Il-sung.

The parade was held in front of the cameras of invited world media, who were still in Pyongyang when Sunday’s test failure was detected.

Oddly enough, following that, Kim Jong Un was primarily absent and primarily quiet. But was there more? Perhaps so. From the Sun.UK.com:

MISSION KIMPOSSIBLE

North Korea’s embarrassing missile launch failure may have been caused by US cyber attack as Donald Trump warns his military may ‘have no choice’ to strike the rogue nation

by Nick Parker

US agents may have infected the hi-tech electronics in Kim Jong-un’s rocket as Korean scientists fear tyrant’s wrath

NORTH Korea’s latest nuclear test missile exploded five seconds after launch yesterday because of an American cyber attack, experts believe.

They say US agents may have infected the hi-tech electronics in tyrant Kim Jong-un’s rocket with an undetectable virus that caused a massive malfunction.

Kim Jong Un has not yet acknowledged the missile’s explosion following his glorious parade. Instead he has doubled down on psychotic. From the BBC.com:

North Korea ‘will test missiles weekly’, senior official tells BBC

North Korea will continue to test missiles, a senior official has told the BBC in Pyongyang, despite international condemnation and growing military tensions with the US.

“We’ll be conducting more missile tests on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis,” Vice-Foreign Minister Han Song-ryol told the BBC’s John Sudworth.

He said that an “all-out war” would result if the US took military action.

Earlier, US Vice-President Mike Pence warned North Korea not to test the US.

He said his country’s “era of strategic patience” with North Korea was over. Mr Pence arrived in Seoul on Sunday hours after Pyongyang carried out a failed missile launch.

The USS Carl Vinson carrier group is already in the area; by April 25th the USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Nimitz carrier groups will likewise be in place in the Sea of Japan.

Tensions are high.

How did we get here?

We got here because of William Jefferson Clinton who, in 1994, made a “deal” with North Korea under then-dictator Kim Jong Il that, in exchange for $4 billion dollars, they would begin to dismantle their nuclear weapons development program. Here’s a shocker: they kept the cash and reneged on the deal. Didn’t see that one coming.

We got here because George W. Bush took North Korea off the “state sponsors of terrorism” list. Daft. Incomprehensible.

We got here because of Barack Hussein Obama and his “strategic patience.”

We got here because the planet observed how Obama decided to “deal” with Iran.

Russia, China, North Korea, they were all watching quite raptly.

Via the Federalist.com:

Ben Rhodes Reveals How Obama Duped America Into The Dangerous Iran Deal

by David Reaboi

President Obama—with the help of an equally arrogant 38-year-old national security fabulist, Ben Rhodes—remade the Middle East to empower America’s most hated enemy.

There are few things in the world less popular in the United States than the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Under these conditions, Obama—with the help of an equally arrogant 38-year-old national security fabulist, Ben Rhodes (with whom he’s said to “mind-meld”)—succeeded in remaking the Middle East to empower America’s most hated enemy, the only United Nations member state committed to the annihilation of another state: the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran.

But wait; it gets better.

As Rhodes explained to his bemused interviewer, David Samuels, in a New York Times Magazine profile this weekend, it was first necessary to lie to a corrupted and inexperienced American media about all sorts of things, beginning with the nature and intentions of the enemy Iranian regime. Subsequent lies were caked on, as the White House took advantage of a dangerous mix of journalists’ ignorance, their ideological and partisan commitment to the administration, and, finally, their career aspirations.

And better still.

Rhodes said, “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns… They literally know nothing.” Thus they will believe what he tells them. He also tells friendly non-governmental organizations and think tanks what he is telling the journalists. Those outlets produce “experts” whose expert opinion is just what Rhodes wants it to be. These ignorant young journalists thus have quotes that look like independent confirmation of the White House’s lies.

Remember, after all, new journalistas are educated at the feet of some of our proudest university intolerant Leftists under closed-circuit systems refusing to acknowledge the real world. Any given college campus today has absolutely nothing to do with the real world. The closer you get to any university campus, the greater the noise of the vacuum of brains from students. A mighty sucking sound.

Vice President Mike Pence, on tour this weekend in South Korea, straightened the Ship of State with regard to North Korea. The Obama Doctrine of “strategic patience” is now officially over.

Why won’t we go to war?

It would appear from many accounts that President Trump’s meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping on April 6th went quite well, despite the fact that Trump excused himself during dinner in order to approve a veritable metal hail of Tomahawk cruise missiles be rained down upon a base in Syria. President Trump sat back down with Jinping and had a fine dessert.

Originally scheduled for a series of three 15-minute private meetings between the two, these meetings extended to 2 to 3 hours. President Trump, with that action during a state dinner, sent three messages simultaneously to three serious nations: China, Russia and North Korea. Perhaps Iran and the Middle East as well.

  • I am not unlike Michael Corleone as I dine with you;
  • I have no problem with making geopolitical statements;
  • I am not Barack Hussein Obama.

Out of this meeting, for the first time in roughly 20 years, China has responded with regard to North Korea.

China has sent coal shipments back to North Korea. Instead, China decided to acquire coal shipments from the United States of America.

China has sent a flotilla of North Korean freighters loaded with coking coal back to their home ports, according to an exclusive Reuters report. Meanwhile, China has placed massive orders for the steel-making commodity from U.S. producers.

Hear any of that from the American Media Maggots? Of course you haven’t.

All you’ve heard is that President Trump can’t fix a thing.

Multiply geometrically. Mix to taste. Serve chilled. Rinse. Repeat.

BZ

 

Chicago’s great news: blacks are still shooting blacks

And Rahm Emanuel gets paid no matter who gets killed.

Skin in the game? Nah.

So does Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, et al.

Skin in the game? Nah.

From the ChicagoTribune.com:

29 people shot in less than 18 hours in Chicago

by Elyssa Cherney

In the pouring rain, the 23-year-old man pulled a fur-lined hood over his head and stood on the porch of his younger brother’s home in the Douglas Park neighborhood early Sunday, watching police investigate the city’s first homicide of the weekend.

The man said he heard people arguing and throwing bottles at each other about 2:30 a.m. before the shots rang out. He said he went to check on what was happening three doors down but then stopped, retreated back.

“When I noticed the commotion, I headed the other direction,” he said, as he was getting ready to go to work as a truck driver. “There’s a reason for the rain. Only God knew this was going to happen.”

The fatal shooting of Tywan Anderson, 23, in the 1300 block of South Fairfield Avenue, half a block north of Mount Sinai Hospital, marked the only fatality among 29 people who were shot from Saturday to Sunday morning, officials said. Of the people shot, three were teenagers — ages 14, 15 and 17.

Woo-hoo. In the city with the strictest gun laws in the nation. How well they work. Wait. I have a great idea. Let’s make them even more constrictive. That will solve everything.

Even left-leaning TheAtlantic.com admits Chicago has a serious problem.

The problem is real: 762 people were murdered in Chicago last year, a stunning 58 percent jump in homicides from 2015. So large was the sharp, sudden increase in homicides in one of America’s largest cities that it tangibly raised the entire nation’s homicide rate higher for 2016. But nobody really knows why it’s happening.

Is that true? No one knows why it’s happening?

Even the data on one of the most obvious possible causes—a sudden shift in policing tactics—offers little clarity. Street stops had been in steady decline since early 2014, when they peaked at 80,000 stops per month. By October 2015, they reached 60,000 per month and then plummeted sharply to 10,000 stops by December 2015. At first glance, that would seem to correlate with the sudden surge of in 2016.

What are the reasons? Because, after all, even Time magazine admits violent crime is on the rise in major US cities all through the United States.

Breitbart writes, on the Easter violence in Chicago:

Despite the low death rate, the number of wounded for the holiday weekend has far exceeded that of the last three years.

While the focus has often been misplaced on the police in the Windy City, those killed in confrontations with cops is relatively low. For instance, in 2016, only four of the city’s 717 shooting deaths were at the hands of police. Thus far this year, there have been no police-involved shootings.

[We also know the US DOJ is keeping Americans in the dark about Obama’s release of over 1,700 convicts in the last days of his presidency.]

Why is this problem not solved?

Because it is impolitically correct to focus policing and discipline on one segment or area of a given city. Stop and frisk worked.

Nothing is working now.

Black lives matter?

Don’t make me laugh.

BZ

 

The great unknown car chase scene

Stunt driver Bill Hickman (R) with actor Paul Genge (as Ice Pick Mike). Director Peter Yates left the very real, frightened reactions of actor Genge in the film as they occurred.

We’ve all seen the chase scene in Steve McQueen’s 1968 film “Bullitt.”

There’s no denying it set the gold standard for movie chase sequences.

Oddly enough, I happened to meet Bill Hickman (solo stunt driver for the black Dodge Charger) in the early 80s just before he passed away in 1986. Hickman told me he had a great time in the film, wiped out a very expensive Arriflex film camera because he held his oversteer correction too long, and that it took four weeks to shoot the 10-minute chase scene. He also told me that the first left turn Steve McQueen took, at the beginning of the chase, was filmed in real traffic. That was a civilian taxi driver he turned behind to begin the pursuit; explaining his anger. Hickman confirmed there were three cars each: three Mustangs and three Chargers. All for backup. Question for attentive readers: in the movie, overall, how many hubcaps did the Charger lose on screen? Answer below.

Truly astounding what those stunt drivers, Bill Hickman, Bud Ekins, Carey Loftin and Loren James could accomplish in real time with, truly, ancient and heavy vehicles possessing poor handling, poor stopping capabilities yet with large power plants.

Bill Hickman, tragically enough, came upon the scene, a few minutes later, of James Dean’s fatal Porsche 550 crash on Highway 46 in 1955. Dean died in Hickman’s arms.

As an aside — what would happen if you attempted to re-create the classic Bullitt chase scene in, say, 2013? Pay attention people. Look for details.

We’ve also seen the great pursuit sequences in “The Seven-Ups.”

And of course there is the car chase scene from Ronin. Did we ever find out what was in the suitcase?

What about Ronin’s chase scene, Part II?

But have you ever seen or heard of the pursuit sequence from the movie “Strange Shadows In An Empty Room,” starring Stuart Whitman, John Saxon and Martin Landau?

The movie, financed and released in Italy, was shot in Montreal and Ottawa.

Remember, for crap American cars at the time, particularly a clunky Buick sedan, and in consideration of the fact that CGI simply didn’t exist, there appeared a cadre of actual stunt performers who had to make it all look realistic. They put their lives on the line for what we now recognize as hunks of junk.

That was back when people in movies had to actually possess talent.

BZ

P.S.

Question: Why have CGI movies absolutely exploded in the past 20 years?

Answer:    Because directors find it much, much more convenient to review dailies and movie work when they exist as digital clips, seen in the comfort of their own homes or offices. The millions and millions of dollars spent on CGI exist for visual impact but also for the convenience of the directors involved, in terms of their review.

Hubcaps? 7.