There's an allegation running around that Tesla vehicles deliberately overstate mileage driven by an enormous amount -- as much as 30%.

If true this is yet more evidence of the utter insanity of not demanding -- and enforcing by whatever means are necessary -- that laws be actually enforced evenly and against all no matter who it might be.

Federal Statute in the form of 49 USC Chapter 327 governs this and is uniform throughout the United States. There is also a regulation regarding the allowable deviation ("error") in said odometers, which is reasonable because tire size can differ somewhat and (particularly mechanically) ratios may not be exact -- the standard, set by SAE, allows a 4% error although this is actually not codified anywhere I can find in either statute or the CFRs.  Thus anything less is going to be considered reasonable and allowable error -- five to seven times that much is not.

Some small degree of error is expected over time; a new tire, for example, typically has 11/32" of tread and at 2/32" its legally worn out (to the bars) although I almost-always replace them at about double that as handling, especially when wet, gets squirrely around there. So there's roughly 1/2" of diameter difference between "new" and "worn out"; a typical "car" tire might have a diameter of ~32" so there's a roughly 1-1/2% difference in the odometer reading between "new" and "fully worn out" tires of that size.  However, either mechanical coupling or an optical encoder as is typically used in modern vehicles is extremely repeatable.

A car rental company was, a number of years ago (20ish) was convicted of fraud for putting one-size smaller tires on their fleet resulting in overstatement of mileage driven by about 4%.  They got hammered for doing that so I would presume an intentional error wildly greater than this could be serious trouble.

Designing and selling vehicles that intentionally overstate miles driven would be a wild-eyed intentional act.

I find it difficult to believe that Tesla and Musk would have put millions of vehicles onto the road with inaccurate odometers, all biased one way (which means its not a mistake) on purpose and all of which will screw a lessor as they will be charged for miles not actually driven, also screw customers on warranty coverage as mileage is part of the limitation on warranties and at the same time produce an overstatement of driving range on a charge.

I will note that the maximum civil penalty for odometer fraud is $1 million, which is peanuts in any large corporation's pocketbook.  However, that same statute provides for felony criminal penalties and that would not be the limit of it either because fraud is not limited in that fashion and anyone who got screwed on a lease (mileage overage charges), had a warranty repair denied due to mileage that was somewhat over the limit and anyone living in a locale that charges EV owners a mileage-based tax (because they do not pay fuel taxes since they buy no fuel) all have claims and all of them would potentially be subject to treble damages as actually designing to this standard isn't an "accident" or "optional"; it is in fact required to sell cars in the United States.  I would bet that any "standard" arbitration clause would be tossed instantly by a court on a fraud allegation -- that should be able to toss it because if the contract was entered into under fraudulent pretense then it never occurred and the clause is invalid.  This will be interesting if someone litigates that and Tesla tries to have it tossed back into arbitration.

In addition this makes any such vehicle where the seller has reason to know the mileage is not actual must check the "mileage not actual" box on the title when the car is sold.  This would be very likely to have severe impacts on the market value of such a vehicle -- it sure does for any other car!

Again I find it difficult to believe that Tesla would have done this -- but there are in fact reports of it being an issue going back several years.  I'd be happy to clock anyone who has one near me (NE Tennessee); I've got my Mazda which reads the trip meter in tenths and I also have a GPS, of course, which can record trip distance in my phone.

How about a nice test across oh, say, 10 miles up the highway, we measure from actual mile markers on the road and then we pull off and compare notes, take photos of each other's odometers and trip meters (if its only in one of them rather than both) and present the evidence?

I can go pace out such a run that ends in a Rest Area right near here -- which makes the "pull off the road" part easy, and the start then would be from a freeway entry ramp, allowing easy zeroing and recording of the starting mileage.  Further, I can pace it with at least two (and maybe four or five!) different vehicles prior to the public and imaged test, all with vehicles that read to the closest tenth, so qualifying it as repeatable will be easy.

Let's test this and put the question to bed quite publicly; if the allegation is false then what's circulating around is bullshit, but if its true then it needs extremely wide exposure and Tesla must be forced to both fix it and compensate everyone who got fucked.

I'm done with --iggers of all descriptions.

No, the first letter is not singular; there are "niggers", "wiggers", "higgers", "aiggers", "jiggers" and more.  You can figure out what the first letters mean in each case but the issue is the same: A claim of special rights, not equal rights, and further, the capacity to violate other people's rights without consequence.

CNN — 
A Black-led running group is suing the organizers of the Boston Marathon as well as the city of Newton, Massachusetts, and the Newton police chief over alleged racial discrimination that took place in a cheer zone at last year’s race.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday by the all-women running group TrailblazHers, just days before the 2024 marathon, alleges the organizers, the city, and police violated the plaintiffs’ Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law.

Bullshit.

Read this:

TrailblazHers had organized a specific “cheer zone” in Newton at Mile 21 and had invited other running groups led by people of color to join, says the complaint. Over a hundred spectators, “mostly people of color,” were gathered there.

So you organized a racist and sexist group by its very name.  Fine -- you have the right to do that -- but don't be pissed off if someone else does it for some other group.  That's not the problem as that's called "free association" and you know it -- the problem is this:

Shortly after the incident last year, Newton police said in a statement: “After being notified by the B.A.A. (Boston Athletic Association) three times about spectators traversing the rope barrier and impeding runners, the Newton Police Department responded respectfully and repeatedly requesting that spectators stay behind the rope and not encroach onto the course,” according to CNN affiliate WFXT. “When spectators continued to cross the rope, NPD with additional officers calmly used bicycles for a short period to demarcate the course and keep both the runners and spectators safe.”

In other words these -iggers claim the right to interfere in the race by entering the course and they refused to remain behind the line demarcating the spectator areas and the course itself when cautioned and asked to do so like any civilized person would if they accidentally incurred into the course and didn't realize they had done so.

These people demanded the right to be uncivilized jackasses with more rights than the runners who paid an entry fee to race so fuck them sideways.

I'm a runner -- but not good enough to qualify for Boston.  Nonetheless I've participated in a number of very large races with corral starts and others where they're not but should be (here's looking at you, Turkey Trot in downtown Knoxville!)  Incursions into the course are serious; runners are often quite-focused on the task at hand and disrupting someone in a competitive event who has no desire to be a part of whatever you're doing is an assault that in fact can bring actual even if not-monetarily-significant harm and could reasonably cause a collision and physical injury.

That Boston Athletic Association has stomped on that intentional and knowing misbehavior is laudable.  It is my view that anyone suing over any such action should be personally destroyed -- outed, named, fired, ostracized and everyone associated with them treated to the same including being fired and blackballed and such should extend to their entire immediate family as well.

Everyone wants to claim to be some sort of special snowflake based on some sort of affiliation -- in this case, skin color.  Fuck you; you're not a special snowflake and organizing a bunch of people under such and then acting in concert makes you a fucking mob.  Cheering en-masse is welcome; hell, if even one person cheers me on (or even were they to jeer at me!) during a tough race its a part of the bargain that I have no quarrel with -- but entering the course is out-of-bounds, period and you're an uncouth bunch of apes if you think you have a right to do that and then, when rebuffed, think you have cause to sue over it.

Newton Police Chief John Carmichael addressed the lawsuit in a Friday Facebook post, saying, “I stand by my decisions that day, and more importantly, I stand by our officers who acted appropriately, respectfully and as expected.”

Yep.

Were I BAA I'd cancel the race, publish the names of the plaintiffs and their attorneys telling the public they have a problem with it take it up with those persons individually and make clear in a public statement that we're not folding to a bunch of extortionists and we never will, we're tired of this bullshit being paraded throughout society, we intend to and will make an example of these douchebags personally and that the race is herewith canceled in perpetuity until and unless the plaintiffs disgorge all of our fees and costs, including legal, refund the entry fees of every runner for the canceled race, publicly admit there was no racial bias and that their conduct merited the actions taken because they were assholes, they impeded the course and are apologizing, all in writing, and accept a criminal Trespass for each person there so if they enter the course again they can be thrown in jail for said trespass.  Oh, by the way, we're countersuing and those are our terms to settle it and what we will take all the way to trial if you refuse.

Those would be my terms.

No, not acceptable?

Tough shit and go fuck yourselves.

Screams the headlines in various media: "Oh nos, H5N1 is 50% fatal in humans, but there's nothing to fear as so far there are only two  human cases -- but we have detected it in cows and cats, so here it comes."

Ok folks, a few facts.

First, avian influenza is really nasty if you're a chicken.  It is especially nasty if you're a chicken confined into a small space for maximum egg-laying capacity and one of the other birds in there is sick.  The reason they kill all the birds in such a circumstance in a given facility when that happens is that a huge percentage of them will die anyway and waiting for it to burn out and leave however many survivors means you can't replace the dead ones with more live ones (they'll simply get it and many of them will die too) and your egg production goes to shit, obviously.  Thus the fastest way through the problem is to cull them all and replace and the modest lifetime of a laying hen (and even less by a lot for a meat chicken) means the conferred immunity in the survivors is almost-entirely worthless.

However, this is typically not really a threat to anything else because the immune system in a bird is very different than the immune system in a mammal such as a cow, dog, cat, pig -- or human.  Thus while you can detect virus in any of them in their nose as we saw with Covid using a PCR test does not tell you that the virus is live and reproducing at a level sufficient to cause disease; you would have to culture for that and that both takes time and is expensive, so "detection" via such a test is bullshit.  By definition for something to be diseased it must have some disorder or symptom of metabolic disruption; mere detection of viral fragments does not tell you anything at all.  Indeed even detecting virus in something like raw cow's milk tells you nothing about whether the cow is diseased or you would be if you drank it.  We have viruses (and  bacteria) all through and around us all the time without producing disease; a single gram of feces contains billions of bacteria and viruses in a healthy animal, including humans.  It is only when your body's immune system becomes overwhelmed to the point of physical impact on your bodily systems that you, or any other entity, are in fact diseased.

Second, if the virus is 50% fatal in humans then why is it that despite huge numbers of people working around birds and other animals allegedly "infected" the single documented human symptomatic case resulted in conjunctivitis -- that is, red around the eyes for a bit?  A virus that is 50% fatal and airborne in a chicken coop or dairy barn should have infected and killed half the people working there and obviously that has not and is not happening.  One dude got..... pink eye from being infected.  Whoopie-deal, he was uncomfortable for a bit, now has immunity, and is fine.

That is, given what we know about avian influenza it is in fact almost impossible for non-birds to actually get symptomatically ill from it, say much less be killed by it.  Further, getting it and having a few non-serious symptoms confers immunity at least in part so what's the problem?

You do remember all the PCR hysteria from the last four years, yes?  You also do remember that if you crank up the PCR cycle count high enough you will detect said fragments in huge numbers of things that are not in fact ill and never will get ill because what you're detecting is what they picked up in the environment and not something that is actively replicating in their nasal passages with any sort of efficiency.  Only the latter can produce disease or be transmitted to anyone else.

Further, the facts are that avian influenza is neither new or uncommon.  It happens all the time; its a respiratory virus and its natural reservoir is, as the name implies, birds.  There are a lot of birds and as a result there will always be avian influenza; like all viruses if an infection manages to get to another victim before the first one either shakes it or dies, it continues onward.  With somewhere between fifty and hundreds of billions of birds on the planet  (somewhere between a half-dozen and fifty per human; yeah, we're that uncertain how many there are) there is zero possibility of us ever getting rid of this sort of virus and as with all other respiratory viruses it reassorts itself among hosts all the time when it happens to get into a bird that has some other viral infection at the same time.  That's how viruses mutate, absent human tampering.

This is where the next important fact comes from: Zoonosis is statistically so far down the probability curve with avian influenza it has to be rated as roughly as likely as an asteroid killing us all next week because otherwise, with this wild imbalance in the population of the two types of animal we would have been, through the ages, relentlessly assaulted by these zoonotic viruses and, since modern medicine is quite new we'd all have been dead before we were born.

Now let's contrast with swine, which we know have a decent immune congruence with humans (thus experiments to use them for organ sources, insulin and similar) and a history of zoonosis.  H1N1 in particular, we are pretty sure, got to humans via that path -- that was the 1918 version of flu that whacked a huge number of people and it has come around several times since, including in late 2019 and early 2020, and I personally got it by the way -- it is damn nasty but I'm not dead, am I?  Why didn't it kill a huge number of people in late 2019?  Because influenza, in humans, usually doesn't directly kill -- it is the secondary bacterial infections that do, and we now have antibiotics we didn't have in 1918 -- thus those infections can be managed where before you either fought it off on your own or you died.  There are perhaps 800 million swine in the world or about ten humans per pig as compared with somewhere between five and fifty birds per human.

In other words if the zoonotic risk was even one hundredth that of swine we'd all have all been repeatedly screwed by this and we're not -- the reason is simply that the immune system of a bird and its biome environment are different enough that zoonosis is so far down the list of risks that its safely ignored.

But enter the people in our nation and elsewhere funded by our government who like to play with genetics -- particularly viral genetics.  You'd think they learned something from screwing around with coronaviruses, but you'd be wrong.

Nobody has been arrested for what happened with Covid despite the clear evidence that it was known what they were doing and the congruence between Wuhan's original strain in the "wild" and a technology transfer in the months prior back into the US, which is documented, is genetically an almost exact match.  We also know that multiple people, including many in government agencies, directly lied as to what happened surrounding and immediately preceding Covid showing up.  While we can't exactly arrest people in China we sure can do so here and we can destroy the institutions that were involved in this, which directly and indirectly led to more US deaths than every war we've been involved in since WWII along with promulgating a dangerous countermeasure that we now know had material evidence of its harm deliberately concealed during the original trials.

We've done none of that and that is all of our responsibility because if the government won't arrest people when their actions lead to a biological agent's release into the environment, whether directly or otherwise, then who's responsibility is it to do so?  The fucking tooth fairy?

Worse, every single one of our Congresspeople and the entire Executive currently in power never mind Trump's administration which was in power when that started and was in power when the proposal was submitted to DARPA and turned down, thus it WAS KNOWN when he was in office, have done nothing to stomp on this crap even on a forward basis, say much less appropriately prosecuting those involved in what happened the last time.

Again, I will note that there is no evidence that avian influenza has or can naturally cross into humans and you had better drill that into your damned head because it is fact and that fact is why you are here and alive right here, right now.  Anyone who claims otherwise is a lying sack of crap and is likely trying to cover up their own criminal acts or complicity and even conspiracy with someone else's actions.

Therefore if it happens and there is such an epidemic human intervention is, well beyond reasonable doubt responsible and the United States Congress, each and every member, along with every member of federal and state Executive departments including but not limited to so-called "law enforcement" that have refused to arrest anyone for any of the bullshit over the last four years and in fact both funded and directly enabled it will have been directly responsible and must be held PERSONALLY responsible and liable for said outbreak and all harm that comes.

These people know damned well what they're playing with because it went wrong the last time and there is a statistically ZERO probability, much less than with a coronavirus, that such an event if it does happen this time, was of natural origin.

Those in positions of authority have the power to put a final and absolute stop to this crap right here, right now and forevermore and if they don't and the statistically impossible "natural thing" occurs this time there is ZERO question that it was man-engineered and released through either negligence or intent.

NO MORE GODDAMNED EXCUSES.

Israel "stopped the Iranian attack" so it is claimed.

Except the US has taken credit for a huge number of the intercepts, including the ballistic missiles.

You do realize how this works, right?

The domestic establishment, including the politicians and every firm that makes the elements of war, their employees and family members, are always legitimate military targets.  That means Lockheed-Martin, BAE Systems, etc. etc. etc.

Oh, I know you claim not and Geneva this and Laws of War that.

You're full of shit and if you are sleeping well at night and in that position you're stupid and may be dead stupid.

Realize something right now: America has been privileged for both the World Wars and, until fairly recently, most of the modern stuff too.  We're not privileged because we're smart -- we are privileged because there is a huge fucking ocean between us and others, and we've yet to piss off the people that actually border us enough for them to be on the other side.

That's gone now because we no longer police our borders and as a result there are likely tens of thousands of sympathizers or outright belligerents in our nation right now, all over the place, and we not only don't know who they are we don't where they are either.

We interned Japanese Americans in WWII for this reason.  We did not know if or how many of them were interested in killing the families of government officials or the families and persons making material for the war.  We had no fucking idea and no way to know with certainty so fuck that shit into the camp you go.

"Oh that was so terrible!"

Yes it was: Welcome to what actual War IS, jackass.

Want to go back further?  Let's!  You all had US History, right?  You know, the Revolution?  1776 and all?  Yeah, that.

What happened at Concord and Lexington Green?  There was shooting.  The British retreated.  The Laws of War at the time called for armies to face each other and battle it out like gentlemen.  What did the Colonists do?

They hid in the woods and sniped at the British who were retreating, which was a wild-eyed violation of the expected behavior of combating military forces at the time.  Its also a big part of why America exists.

How about Iraq?  Did the "insurgents" face down our tanks and planes in a straight-up fight?  Oh fuck no.  They planted improvised explosives where they thought we might go and triggered them under unarmored vehicles, blowing up our dudes.  Was that "unfair"?  Who the fuck cares -- it's a goddamned war you idiot!

"Rosie The Riveter" was part of why we won WWII.  Without planes, bombs, tanks, guns, ammunition and similar you lose.  Going after the civilians who make such things and the government officials who fund them and operate the various government machinery that makes it all work, you know, people like who run FedWire so you can get paid (aka all of The Federal Reserve and FDIC employees!), all the major bank employees, executives and their families and similar are all legitimate target in a war because all of them make it possible to prosecute said war.

Yeah, that.

"Oh they'd never...."  Uh huh, sure they wouldn't.

What tiny percentage of the several million so-called "migrants" have to be interested in that eventuality and willing to do that sort of thing before you decide that it was really fucking stupid and is likely to be dead stupid?

Would you like to fix the stupid now or after your spouse is raped, murdered and your children are chopped into little pieces -- since we refuse to keep our fingers out of other people's pies -- and conflicts?

That's what I thought.

PS: Most personal and business insurance, including homeowners, vehicles and similar, explicitly excludes Acts of War and Terrorism.  If those people we, including you, let into our nation burn your house and that is deemed related to the various wars and such we are involved in around the world you are not insured for that loss.

You've probably seen that Biden is about to have a final rule be published on the so-called "gun show loophole."

It isn't actually a loophole, and the rule does nothing to impact actual private-party sales of firearms which are legal under certain circumstances.

What it does do is stomp -- hard -- on people claiming to be private sellers who are actually in the business of buying and selling guns but have not registered to do so.

Let's me stipulate up front that I'm a staunch 2nd Amendment Supporter as written.  But I'm also a strict Constitutionalist and the Constitution clearly gives the Federal Government the right to regulate interstate commerce, and these situations quite-clearly are that.

So from a Constitutional point of view I have no quarrel with it.

What we do know is that criminals don't tend to go buy their firearms at a gun store.  They often engage someone who is foolish enough to trust them to make the purchase for them (which is seriously illegal and will get you a nice stay in the slammer if caught, and if the gun is used in a crime and recovered you will get caught), they steal them (obviously someone who intends to stick up a liquor store or otherwise commit a crime isn't squeamish about stealing things) or they purchase them "under the table" from someone who doesn't care about any of the above.  Most true private sellers of lawfully-owned firearms do care because while you generally can't be thrown in prison for selling someone a gun privately that you have no reason to suspect is prohibited or will do an illegal thing with it you still get to defend against the prosecution and related costs which is very likely to occur.  Who among us wants to pay a lawyer $10,000 because you sold someone an old $200 shotgun?

Someone who is running a "back door" business, on the other hand, knows they're breaking the law already and can be jailed for it.  They thus likely don't much care about what the buyer intends to do -- or who they are.  It's just basic logic when you get down to it and the prevalence of this issue has been the subject of some study -- such as here.

Let's separate this out from the tactics of agencies, because I know there will be people who want to go there.  Ruby Ridge, Waco and more (including recently) make clear that these folks don't give a crap about this thing called "Due Process"; they want "their man" and dead is just fine with them, along with anyone who happens to be there at the time -- including in more than one case sleeping children who obviously had nothing to do with the original issue.  This has to be stopped and our government won't do it, so if you want my view of it that comes back to what I've repeatedly said: Only when the cops FEAR the outcome of such will it change, and that means that any sort of "no-knock" raid has to result in the target of same adopting a "shoot them in the face instantly for as many of them as you can get" response because from the clear history over the last several decades you're dead the moment it begins and they have no intention of arresting you or allowing due process and any sort of trial, and the government has never thrown these jackasses in prison for doing it either, so the only wat to deter that crap for the NEXT GUY is to make sure as many of them go to Hell with you as you can and make sure their families cannot hold an open-casket funeral too so they are forced to wake up in a cold sweat at night thinking about whether being dead and their children having to deal with the back of their head being blown off is worth their big-ball hero-combat style bullshit -- which has ZERO legal defense.  Janet Reno should have been executed for that shit at Waco, never mind the Ruby Ridge in which Weaver, who survived it, got $3 million for the unlawful conduct of the agents.

What unlawful conduct?  Well, for one the warrant was fraudulent in that part of the justification was a claim that Weaver had fired on a police helicopter.  That was later proved to be a lie in that both the pilot and agents on the ground knew there had been no shots fired.  This sort of outrageously fraudulent and in fact felonious conduct by the government was never punished with prison sentences as is absolutely required when one commits perjury.  If you think this sort of falsehood has been stopped why would any government agent or agency cut that crap out when there is never criminal sanction laid on those who engage in it?

The facts are that except for active hostage situations or where someone is already shooting at others there is absolutely zero reason for these sorts of raids unless we are willing to permit law enforcement to execute people on a summary basis, and if we ARE then the same rules should apply for everyone else with them as the targets.  Even in the case of a so-called "drug investigation" where the concern is that the suspect might flush the evidence (that's hard to do with guns, obviously) its stupid because everyone leaves wherever they are to go do routine things from time to time and arresting someone when they do leave to go to work, the grocery store or wherever is both easy and preserves said evidence.

Nonetheless this specific change, which likely does comport both with Statute and clearly is Constitutional -- provided there actually are goods moving across state lines -- is not one I have a material issue with so long as we allow the Federal Government to regulate such commerce in the first place.

Now if you want to have that debate then let's have at it.  From my point of view the old Sears Catalog approach is the right one, and yes, when I was a boy you could literally order guns from the "Big Book" that came around at Thanksgiving for Christmastime as that was perfectly legal until the 1968 GCA.  But so long as that 1968 law stands and it was passed by Congress, and Congress clearly can regulate interstate commerce per the Constitution, there you are.