Clover Taxonomy IV

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Keeping track of Clovers is almost a full-time job. Like whack-a-mole, they just keep popping up! Here are the latest specimens, submitted for your delectation:Clover bug 1

* The Cop-Bedazzled Clover – 

He’s the one who will slam on his brakes and slow to 20 below the speed limit if there’s a cop up ahead – even if he’s on the other side of a divided highway – writing someone else a ticket. Because to a Clover a cop is a figure that inspires awe on the order of remote Pacific islander cargo-culters venerating their straw totems of airplanes and control towers. That cop might leap into his car – and come after me! So frets the Clover. But of course, Clover never “speeds.” Still, better to be safe than sorry. For Clover, safety is paramount. And what could be safer than slowing to 20 below the limit?

No, better yet – making all the traffic behind you slow to 20 under the speed limit. Clover slow 2

* The stops-before-he-turns Clover –

You’re driving behind someone who will shortly reveal his Cloveritic tendencies – by signaling a turn, then slowing . . . coasting, really – often for 100 yards or more – until he finally, agonizingly comes to a near-stop in the middle of the road before beginning his turn. He most typically will do this when turning off  the main road onto his driveway.

He’s home – so why the hurry?

* Mailbox Clover –

This guy is often the same guy who executes the stop-turn maneuver. He finds it convenient to stop his car in the middle of the road, so he can get out to get his mail. It saves him a few steps, you see. Sometimes, though, Clover has trouble. Because the mailbox is on the wrong side of the road relative to the driver’s side of the car. Easily fixed. Just swing the Clovermobile around to the other side! Hey, no one’s coming – and if they are, they should have been paying attention, or slowed down.

* Concrete barrier Clover –Clover concrete

One of the things Clover has trouble with is spatial relationships. It’s why he can’t (or won’t) pass a bicyclist without crossing over the double yellow and hanging half his car in the opposite lane of traffic. It’s also why he has issues with the concrete barriers often put up at construction sites (to prevent Clover from inadvertently running over the construction workers). Clover must have at least six feet of air gap between his car and the barrier to his left. So he crabs over the double yellow – or he takes up two lanes of space, such that no one behind him can pass. Obstructing other drivers is of course the apotheosis of all Cloveritic conduct, so for him it’s a double whammy.

* School Zone Clover – clover 3

On Sundays. In summer. Even when the yellow lights aren’t flashing. Even when it’s clear school is not in session. Even though it’s legal to drive the normal speed when school is not in session – Clover will drive as if it were in session. He’ll both-foot the brake pedal and – being a Clover – drop his speed not merely to the 25 MPH limit in force during school hours. But to 20 – or even less. And, he’ll anticipate the school zone – sometimes slowing to walking speed well before actually getting within an astronomical unit of the actual school – and leaving a similar margin as he leaves the orbit of the school grounds.

After all, the children.

* Drive-thru Clover –

The reason there are drive-throughs is to save time. But this concept is unbeknownst to Clover – or, he is actively hostile to it. Because Clover is in no hurry, neither should others be in a hurry. Thus, Clover will not be ready to order until he actually gets to the speaker box – even if he’s been in line for 5 minutes and had a super-sized menu staring him in the face the entire time. Or, if at a bank drive-through, he’ll only begin doing his check-signing and deposit slip filling out once he’s actually at the window. He will invariably have multiple, complex transactions to complete.clover drive through And many questions to ask the teller.

This subset of Clover is also frequently encountered at grocery stores – at the express checkout – with 37 items instead of the posted maximum of 20. With lots of out-of-date coupons to haggle with the clerk over. Then to pay by check – only beginning to write out the check after the groceries have been scanned, bagged and placed back in the cart.

What’s your hurry, after all?

For Clover Taxonomy III and II see here and here.

Throw it in the Woods?

384 COMMENTS

  1. I guess there were more after all.

    The drive-thru clover drove me nuts when I worked in fast food. Oh, it’s 8PM and the cashier who is off at 9PM has two hours of dishes to get done – perfect time to squad up with two friends and go through the DT at a restaurant none of us have ever been to! And then maybe ask for separate tickets!

    The only time I ever had a drawer count off by enough to get a talking-to was probably because of one of these people. Originally wanted four separate tickets in the drive-through, then decided she wanted to recombine them when she got to the window, then when a manager decided that would be more trouble than it was worth, wanted to pay for them all off the same $50 bill (another annoyance since $50 and $100 bills required getting a manager to verify their legitimacy).

    Other irritations included being in the middle of a phone conversation when they got to the window (and then saying it was all my fault when they paid for the wrong order), making plain old huge orders, not thinking about what they want until they get to the window, trying to change anything but the most recently-rung item (required a manager because something something theft), and ordering milkshakes or ice cream (not really a problem during “slow” periods but a very easy way to cause a failure cascade of unacceptably-high service times during any other period).

  2. Clover,
    One of my favorites is the driver who invades the left lane at 61 mph on Long Island. The PSL is 55. I am fast approaching their vehicle as there is nobody on the road, and they are technically speeding, but think they’re the sole arbiter of how fast is fast enough. I maintain a sage following distance, as cars zoom by in the middle lane, leaving me no room to get around their self-righteous asses.

    I will readily admit fault, but my favorite maneuver is, once gaining access to the middle lane is passing the left lane bandits car with as little room as is humanly possible without hitting them. I do this alone, and without my kids in the car, but it gives me some form of satisfaction. After 20 minutes of having you screw me over, putting the fear of God into you makes my day.NEVER hit anyone, but I bet I soiled some Depends adult undergarments. Wrong, but oh so satisfying.

    • Hey Ken,

      The other day I was stuck in a Clover Conga. I’m the fourth car in line behind the Clover, a minivan with handicrapped plates. Directly in front of me is a big truck. We got to a straight stretch and – just as I was preparing to gun it and pass all three of them (double yellow or not), the truck ahead of me does exactly the same thing. He roars past the Clover (and the car immediately behind Clover, whose driver showed no initiative at all) and I follow. The Clover spazzed out – began flashing his lights and honking his horn. I could see him flailing his arms in my rearview as I flew by.

      Now that’s how to start a morning right!

  3. How about the Double-Parking Clovers? No, not drivers who stop for a few minutes so their elderly grandmothers can avoid a long walk, but the kind who thoughtlessly pick the worst possible spot, impeding or endangering everyone else on the road; the dumb assholes who, if they had just double-parked two feet ahead or behind, would have caused no problem, but are too stupid, self-centered and self-absorbed to give a damn about anyone else.

    • “but are too stupid, self-centered and self-absorbed to give a damn about anyone else.”

      Those are the defining characteristics of the type. The same people were the wannabe hall monitors in grade school. They were the ones who policed the margins of the little social cliques and snitched on anyone they could to school authorities.

    • “who thoughtlessly pick the worst possible spot”

      Ha. I was in a steak place picking up an order to go. I walked out to where my car was parked in the special ‘to go’ parking space and found a car idling right behind mine, so I was trapped.

      I waited two minutes. I noticed the empty parking slots at the far end of the parking lot and then looked back at the car.

      There was a teenager in the 16 year old range in the passenger seat. I don’t recall if the teenager told me she could drive, or wouldn’t drive, but I wound up walking back into the steak place and easily found the obnoxious woman who drove the car and asked her to go move her car so I could leave.

      She acted pissed at me for asking her to move! She wanted to wait fifteen or twenty minutes more for her order. I was kind of stunned how thoughtless she was. I flat out had to tell her firmly, “No. Go move your car.”

      She even gave me the stink eye as she moved her car while acting all pissy, as if, how dare I.

      Anyway, it used to be I’d get occasionally irked while driving in traffic without really knowing why, just chalking it up to bad drivers/heavy traffic.
      Now, after reading this Clover Taxonomy series I know EXACTLY WHY and what irks me in traffic. It’s made everything seem a little less stressing.
      I’ve even gotten to the point where when I see the shit happening I just say to myself, “Oh, another one of those.” and move on.

      • That’s just how a lot of people are these days.
        Usually they get moving with a bit of trying to get out with their car there. When they think it’s going to get hit they are more motivated to move their car.

        If the car was idling I might have been tempted to get in and move it out of the way myself… or put it in neutral and push it aside.

      • Downshift, this reminds me of a deceased friend who got home one New Year’s eve and found the neighbors having a party. He didn’t care about the party but people had parked so he couldn’t get in his driveway. He’d been drinking a little himself, just enough to exasperate him for not being able to park his 3/4 T 4WD Chevy with lockers front and read. Yep, he did, he locked it into low range, got behind one car and pushed a whole string out of the way, and yes, it caused a shit storm but his pickup was back in the driveway.

  4. I’m actually a little disappointed that you didn’t include the clover I described in the comments in Taxonomy 3.

    “Slows down to pass” – particularly bad because you don’t know they are clovers at first.

    Picture it – a sunny interstate, clear weather, moderate traffic going about 85 mph. Up ahead in the right lane (where they belong) are some slow moving semis, going about 55. So everyone starts shifting to the left lane to pass them, continuing at 80 to 85.

    Then you discover the guy in front of you is a clover. He was doing the same 85, and he moves to the left lane to pass. And then he slows down to 60 during the time he is passing the semis.

    Traffic is bunching up behind him, brakes are being slammed to avoid hitting him or others he slowed down. Sometimes the brakes are applied too late, and sometimes the pileups are dreadful. And since the pileups are behind him he doesn’t notice or even think about it until he gets home and reads about them in the paper. He sees “5 car pileup on the interstate I was just on? Thankfully I was driving carefully so wasn’t involved.”

    And when he’s done passing the semi and people start passing him, he speeds back up to 85 with everyone else as if nothing ever happened.

      • I think they’re actually afraid of the big rigs. Either that or as much as they may want to pass they’re afraid of going too much faster than the guy next to them – unable to read a speedometer they believe that the best speed is to blend in with those around them.

        • ayn, fear is a huge part of their lives. As a student of sociology and an observer of such for half a decade, I have observed countless behaviors that can only be described, basically, as “confused”. I HAVE know people like this who thought because of their ignorance, they were doing something really out there, that no one could touch them and jacking with people was their way of getting back. That personality, one of many clover personalities, can easily be stopped in a one to one, as in face to face encounter. Say you work with one(unfortunately)and they began to think you’re such a nice guy they can screw you over, not do the work they’re supposed to do and then you’ll have to do it. I give them, maybe two-three days of this and then bring it to a head. Are you having home problems, etc. You don’t have to ask, just engage and the truth will out. When you realize they think they have the world by the balls simply because of ignorant hubris, they’ll tip their hands. You can handle this many ways. As a guy who has always been had a problem with getting screwed over, I have no problem of getting in a person’s face no matter how big they are or think they are. Once you give them the ultimatum, jack with me again and you will or might live to regret it, they fold. I despise using this method but have had to working for a large US company. Do I worry about getting a mudhole stomped in my ass? No, BTDT. Do they, almost without exception. LIke I say, it’s repugnant to me. There are rarely any other kind although you may be dealing with someone with decently good intentions but simply confused but that’s rarely the norm. Most of these people can be intimidated by most anyone. Unfortunately, that’s what it sometimes take. It wouldn’t work on eric or Ed or Boothe or these type of people but you wouldn’t have to deal with that with those types of people. I could write a book on this, probably should but am too lazy and then everybody would want to know my “credentials”. Screw it, just deal with them however you can. You will figure out a way, and generally, very quickly. They are not good with extemporaneous thinking.

        • Yes, you’re right. And they’ll do it until you have had your fill and just get on them until you’re about a foot away. They’re not THAT stupid and they’ll go on. It almost always ends up being at least two or maybe countless people against the one clover. I turn on my brights and let them know I WILL run over them and there have been times I would have. Mile after mile after mile after mile, you will reach the point where you just can’t take it. And they realize you have reached the end of the line. They’ll finally speed up and go around that truck and then when you go by, give you a really dirty look, sometimes make a point(and I love these fools)of picking up a pen and paper and start writing. Hell man, if you can drive and write, how did we get to this point? This is something a woman can do also. And they’ll give a woman the same dirty look they will give a man. The thing with clovers, it’s always a bluff. I’d love to get one in a poker game, beat them holding nothing every hand.

  5. Yet another thread destroyed by trolls. This seems to happen to every thread that ‘s linked into LRC or any other higher traffic site.

    Don’t Feed The Trolls.

    It’s like feeding bears in a national forest campsite. They stay around because they’re getting what they want, but they tear things up and make a huge mess looking for more of what they want. They keep pushing and finally become dangerous.

    They’ll finally make the place they frequent uninhabitable for anyone else.

    • Ed, I’d like to comment on another thing to make us less free and destroy our income and the nation’s economy, the new internet tax. No one has mentioned it but I’ve been PO’d since the fools passed it. I fear it will have huge repercussions.

      • physical stores are being destroyed by internet retailers in part because of the parasite class’s taxes. Thus what’s the “solution”? Shared misery of course!

        It never crosses the minds of the good sheeple that perhaps the problem is having these destructive taxes in the first place. To them the problem is that there is away to avoid paying the highest possible rate.

        • And: They (the taxers) can’t even trot out the usual cliches about the stores in their localities costing “services” such as fire/police (etc.).

          They just want your money – and they’re gonna take it. Now git up against that thar tree.

          • congress recently voted themselves a pay raise. Now I’d never accuse them of being able to plan ahead but this is one sweet tax for someone. Who gets the money? A huge amount I might add till half the sellers just give up, but still a huge amount. So they somehow funnel it someway to their favorite lobbying group and get their whole families nice jobs? Follow the money.

          • It’s not about services any longer. It’s about ‘fairness’ and ‘level playing field’.

            One interference begets another. The government tilted the playing field then they have to interfere again because their tilted playing field doesn’t work the way they want…. which will lead to more interferences….

            Just stop the damn sales/use tax and watch local stores thirve.

        • “Mind” and “Sheeple”, two words that don’t belong within 20,000 leagues of each other, let alone the same sentence.
          Time to cull the heard. Long since PAST time…

          • It is very dangerous to call for population reduction for that is what those with power want and practice.

            Especially when one considers whom the first to go would likely be.

          • re: BrentP:
            You are correct, it IS dangerous – if we wait until “They” are ready.
            OTOH, if we are proactive, we can at least limit the damage by making it too hazardous for the erstwhile Eugenecists (the ones who SHOULD be pruned, BTW) to stick their heads up.
            And to be blunt: I’m talking about pruning off whole branches of the genetic tree at once.
            I’ve been a good Catholic for about 40 years and it’s gotten me to a comfortable dead-end. Feels like a wasted life.
            Give me some adventure and some blood. And chlorine in the shallow end of the gene pool, to help future generations.

            Imagine a world with no Rothschilds or Rockefellers, for instance. No Bushes, or even Shrubs…
            You get the idea.

            And make no mistake, it’s PLANNED already – just as we’re hearing now about the old plans that were made in the 70s … for scenarios we are now facing.

            As long as we are civil and tolerant and accept the erosion of our country, we’re sheep. Sheep and cattle are meant for slaughter; they do not sit down to Filet Mignon dinners in 5-star restaurants.

            Wolves DO NOT feel sorry for the sheep. That includes our “blue cossacks” as well as out Mayors, governors, bankers, et al. And these people didn’t get to where they are by being kind and Christian, either.

            Their OODA loop is already defined, we need to f*ck it up all the way for the next 50 years. Best ways are traumatizing them and harming them with the very police state they wish to inflict upon us. And then up the ante: Drones to film them; drones to burn them; police to break into their hotel rooms, or homes if possible; harm the families, make them fear the daylight, make them fear the dark, make them afraid to meet in public or private. Drones the size of quarters are already reality; Affix stingers and let’s deal with the problems.

            I’m headed to hell already. Choices made, actions completed. What’s a million deaths instead of a handful? A statistic. Eternity IS.

            No reason to go quietly. It IS a big deal, though, and up to each of us to decide how far we’ll go, what costs are bearable. I have no family, I have no children, I have nothing to tie me down, should I go feral. Others are not so fortunate. I generally disagree with their priorities, but I do understand those priorities.
            I just figure, if S is going to HTF, it’s going to happen either when I can control things still – or when “my” children (theirs, actually) would be forced to make the hard choices anyway, possibly with far less experience and ability. I include people like my father – a literal rocket sceintist – in that group, the Ostriches. Everything will be fine, the government will never attempt a takeover… Will never be permitted to achieve a police state.
            I’ll just stop flying so they don’t massage my prostate.

            Good men have done nothing. Now they are incapable of doing anything. Soon it will be WORSE, and “their” plans will eb closer to fruition. (And it doesn’t need to be “a conspiracy” as per conspiracy theory; only a few people, here and there, seeing trends and exploiting them. A few “true believers” who think by denying regular folks guns, no criminal will be able to get guns. And for eternity, though criminals will STILL HAVE GUNS, it will be because they were stolen from “legal gun owners,” thus proving that legal gun ownership is enabling gun crime. Etc, rinse and repeat with surveillance, GMOs, online spying on us, sales taxes, income tax, welfare, etc. You need from 1 to 5 actors to completely f*ck up an entire system. NOT exactly rocket science. Create an event, blame a patsy or two for what you did, push for more funding “to prevent it ever happening again.” Expand your empire, tie up any loose ends, and don’t step on the toes of the guy in the next department who is doing similar, only his objective is to get Food Additive X into the food. He has DECIDED (Via a few thousand dollars) that it is safe, and then tasks his agency with conducting test that confirm that “hypothesis.” He needs funding to do so, then he needs new scientists who see his Vision, maybe… Or, the original ones just need a paycheck, and don’t care WHAT the results are – as more than one crime lab has documented, sending innocents to prison, or falsifying lab results, etc.)

            Conspiracy Loons used to be somethign to laugh at – about 10 years ago. MKUltra was a joke; Templars and Lizard-Aliens and all, and I’d wager we ALL laughed -sometimes rightly so.
            But if a top investor in a financial firm is about to take a bath, does anyone doubt that their fund manager will sell off the troubled asset WITHOUT waiting? (A la Martha Stewart, who from the little I know was a sham case to keep the Proles in line. That’s US.)

            I ain’t laughin’ no more.

            There’s a reason, BTW, that the generations are more divided now than before: you “old bulls” can learn us a thing or two. 😉
            Besides just how to be patient and shoot straight. You LIVED the history. You know the events, so “they” can’t lie to us as easily…

            Safe from me, anyway. Got lots of others that I need to eliminate, limited means, limited time on this earth, and no shortage of hatred – I was fed a Disneyworld storyline for life. It ain’t all sunshine and unicorns fartin’ rainbows; OK. But to find out I was not only sold a bill of goods on the world, but was in fact mis-instructed – INTENTIONALLY so – by my family?
            The same family who disowned me for getting this far in my life? For being – as my father is, a “cafeteria Catholic,” and that’s nothing to do with my “headed to Hell” bit?
            Yeah, I’ll be warm for a few millenia. Women, finances, religion, education, promotion at work – told all the good little “Beta” strategies, not to fight, roll over, show your throat…

            Now I’d rather die biting THEIR throat. ENOUGH. No more.
            And I am not alone – there’s at LEAST a generation that feels this way, maybe two or three. Across the classes, across the miles, around the world, been sold a bill of goods. No wonder “they” want us disarmed.

          • Jean, no good can come of adopting that sort of thinking. Those who practice eugenics would like nothing more than to there to be a perception of being justified in their actions due to others adopt simply having a different opinion of who should be culled.

          • Ed, no fair- the corporate firewall blocks youtube. 😛 (We just moved, os no remote to a home proxy yet. Need to set that up… I’ll pull it from my phone, maybe.)

            Brent, while you are correct ideologically, I can’t see any wisdom in staynig on our current course; and allowing things to continue is insane, as the numbers just aren’t there.
            Most people PREFER the lie. Think Don Quixote: People wanted the illusion, not the reality. The intentions were good – but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

            I’m all ears for alternatives, provided it’s not trying to wake up the masses. Most of them are in the Matrix, and want to stay there. their fragile minds would break to think in any non-prescribed way. (Think Idiocracy: “Gatorade has what plants NEED!” Explaining to people that plants don’t like salt went nowhere; but the protagonist convinced the people he could talk to the plants… THAT, they believed. If only that were our problem! THEN, we COULD educate the masses. There is NO CURE for willfull ignorance, you can lead the horse to water but can’t make him put on swimming trunks. 😉 So… Alternatives, since people want the easy way, and no investment? I’m OBVIOUSLY not fit for leadership, if I’m willing to scramble so many eggs to make the omellette… Even if it IS right out of Il Principae… )

            I’d LOVE it if there were some way to elect our way out of the mess, but there are too many people who want the freebies, and don’t care how it’s paid for. They think the got a refund after April 15th, ya know? Instead of realizing they just got SOME of THEIR money back.

            Brent, there’s a saying attributed to Gandhi, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” HOWEVER: If you are the one collecting the eyes… YOU retain vision. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, yes? (Or, a lunatic crying in the desert, like John the Baptist. I’d wager we’re there…)

          • Jean, it’s a question of principle. If you accept their principle you are now arguing degree.

            You accept the principle of the stronger culling the weaker. How can you object now to their culling of you?

            To accept the game is to live by its rules and outcome.

          • BrentP, A guy asks a woman “Would you have sex with me for $1M?”, “Sure she says”. “How about $20 he says?” “What do you think I am?” she says. “We established that, I’m just haggling now”, he replied.

          • Brent,
            I accept that cost, which means I don’t make the grade.
            My eyes are weak, after all.

            The problem right now is the weak, though force of numbers, have BECOME “strong.”
            Not ACTUALLY strong, of course – just vocal and venal enough to try to limit anyone who dares do more than the herd allows. Anyone who would be a wolf (or sheepdog, depending on analogy.)

            So yes: Live by the sword, die by the sword. But enforce Darwin’s law along the way.
            Forgive the segue: There’s a soing, Defender, by Manowar – link to lyrics: http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/manowar/thehellofsteelbestofmanowar.html#5

            The point of the song is about defending the weak, caring for those unable to care for themselves. Noblesse oblige.
            What our modern world forgets is, you cannot show such generosity of wealth, spirit, without HAVING power and the ability to DECIDE to be generous, or not. Is this person deserving?

            We have a bunch of rabid rabbits trying to devour our society. They’re chewing off our hands and fingers – and demanding we grow more for them to eat! That they have the RIGHT to eat our flesh!

            No, not true. Not willing to let their envy, hatred, and sheer numbers proclaim them “strong” nor victorious. I’d rather cull them and take my chances.
            And I’m past the point of comprehending why anyone would follow the existing paradigm – it’s suicide by degrees. Death of a million cuts. Controlling our food, water, air, ability to work, what we can eat, what we can read, what we can talk about, where we can go, when we can go, how much we can earn, how much we need to pay for that privilege, what we can eat, who we can associate with, how we can feed, clothe, educate, immunize our children..
            You get (and already know) the point. The masses are trying to take MY money, MY power, MY LIFE, ultimately. And even though we all die, I should have the right to decide the sort of life I lead, and the death I face.
            They have aggressed against me: they have ALREADY shown the sword. So, let them die by the sword.

            Ugly, but reasonable, to me, and yes, it has the noted cost, but hey – no one gets out of life alive, and maybe I can make it better in the long run.
            Can’t get much worse – naked force is already in play, as per Boston – where I am – just recently.

          • Eightsouth,
            Heard that one. Difference is when you find a woman who doesn’t want money… (Does such a thing exist? But I’ll rant too long.)
            I forget who said it – but we had a Republic – “If you can keep it!” (Franklin). Our system of government is only good for a moral people, it can govern no other.
            We are not. (moral)
            However: unless someone does something, it will only get worse.
            We cannot repeal the franchise: never be able to get “the People” to vote themselves LESS from the public trough.
            We cannot reign in government: they will never willingly give up their power and wealth and prestige and control.

            What sane recourse is there, when our petitions (redress of grievances) are ignored; when the lowest common denominator is the highest level of achievement; when the stated PLANS are to destroy us, and the vast majority let it go?

            Throw them in the woods… As mulch. collaterol damage is regrettable, but inevitable, and either we or they will be that damage.

          • Idiot me got off topic.
            The difference is, I don’t WANT control over others. I’m not looking to replace TPTB with ME and My cronies.
            I just want to have a good time in my short time on this planet, and by most reckonings, I’m about halfway through time and WAY AHEAD on expenditures – not completely through my own fault, I had some help. Everything the right thing to do at the time, ya know?

            Those who wish to replace what we have with THEIR system are the same creture as we have now.
            I want to remove the system, salt the earth, and let people go back to their lives. they’ll likely rebuild almost the identical thing, but it’ll take a while, and I can probably GTFO in the mean time. Find someplace I can live as I want, and no long inflict myself on others, nor have them inflicted on me.
            Maybe a few hot girls in the area… 😀
            Pleasant weather, preferrably ocean access, easy living. Might even learn to eat fish, just to avoid much need for money or farming… Need to have SOME cattle in the area, though. I like steak too much to give it up, even if I’m eating swordfish or shark (and those being deep water fish… :-P)

            Just need to shake things up in productive ways. (There are none, but let me keep my delusions that humanity might at some point get smarter.)

          • Jean, it’s called a mid-life crisis by some, just wising up by others. If we all only had that 18 year old body and the mind we have now, wow, dangerous. If it ever gets easier I haven’t gained enough knowledge to know it. As far as eugenics goes, I was just listening to one person we wouldn’t have, Lucinda Williams, a spina bifida sufferer. So many of us have limiting factors, mental or physical but it doesn’t keep us from being productive. Like my lupus, it creates some challenges you’d just as soon not have but that’s the roll of the dice. It’s been a pretty decent ride and I can accept it’s about to be over. Who knows, maybe it will be like my LSD out of body experiences permanently, not a bad thing at all.

          • Again, if you accept their principles, you are just a different point on their scale.

            Arguments of degree don’t work for me. Arguing degree is how things got as they are today. People accepted the principles of the ruling class but at what seemed like a beign degree. Over time the argument of degree has pushed things further down the road.

            Arguing degree cannot be contained. The lines are no longer firm. You already accepted X, X+1 isn’t all that different. It’s very difficult to argue degree. Degree is just opinion on a shared principle.

    • Ed, another thing. (1)Who is/was Cooter Brown? (2)Why did he get to set the bar? (3)Why did he set it so high? I think besting him would probably result in my demise now….but not quickly enough.

      • ” (1)Who is/was Cooter Brown? (2)Why did he get to set the bar? (3)Why did he set it so high?”

        Don’t get me to lyin’. If you find out, let me know 😉

        • Ed, I forgot. Well, I did get two stories on Wikipedia. I had heard them before. I used DDGo with it’s 1000+ search engines and that was the only real hit. It seems though like no matter where you go, there are plenty of Cooter Brown bars, mugs, this, that and everything else. I shoulda guessed it.

  6. Boothe, great move on calling their bluff. I did that to a huge company I won’t name. All my coworkers were so CS they envied what I did but still wanted to see me get my comeuppance simply because they didn’t have the guts to do it, sure you know the type. I went in one day and this brownnoser comes over and says, Damn, you broke their back. I had no idea what he was talking about so I asked. He said they caved and backed off their ultimatum. I just told them to think about how a jury in the county I lived in might look at it. hhmmmm

    • meth, I freaking again. I started the day with eric speaking of Brave New World and then later speaking to my wife about Captain Spaulding. So now I get your response to Boothe “If people could sue Monsatan’s CEO directly for his malfeasance…or Pfizer, or Merck, or…you can only imagine how quickly they’d be in church on the front row holding that hymnal fast.” and then I get this email immediately afterward from an old buddy “You take “1984”, “Brave New World” and “Animal Farm” and and mash them together and you have where we are now.” This is too wild. There is no connection between this forum and what this guy wrote except everybody has gotten their fill of being slaves.

      • Eight, the truth has a resonance to it that those who are ready to accept it cannot ignore (i.e. those of us that are tuned to the same “spiritual” frequency). I, as you may have surmised, believe in a Supreme Being of which we are all a part. So it comes as no surprise to me when Methylamine and I post here with the same thought within minutes of each other. Or someone completely unaware of this group (or Lew Rockwell, et al) walks to me up with the libertarian / anarcho-capitalist topic of the day. I don’t believe we ended up here with Eric and Dom by chance. Each kind shall seek its own. Red birds don’t nest with blue birds. This is the nature of reality. Trying to go against that which is orderlay and right in the universe is what leads us into the kind of friggin mess this country is in right now.

        • Boothe, I couldn’t agree more with a gun to my head and that would be with much less sincerity. It’s difficult to believe there isn’t some synchronicity to our ability to relate in many ways including metaphysical even if I’m stumped to find a term to describe it. I have gotten emails for the last two days that are eerily of the same subjects I have discussed here. How do you explain eric and I speaking of Brave New World, and then having a local conversation about Animal Farm and Captain Spaulding, with me only initiating the one having to do with Brave New World yesterday and then me getting an e from an old friend mentioning both of those subjects as well as 1984, something that was spoken of several times yesterday? And then Larry sending the e about trying in court and executing the entire cabal by throwing them from a cliff. And now Lucinda is just making me think of all that thrown away. I never considered I’d find more like minded people and it’s all to the good. eric hit a good lick here. My hat’s off to him….and everyone else here. Am I Too Blue? not at all Lucinda, not at all. peace b

          • Sounds like god must be a “libertarian” too huh? Or it’s karma for you guys being so positive about others’ faults.

            • Greg,

              Libertarians believe everyone has a right to believe in whatever they wish to – so long as they’re not imposing those beliefs on others by force.

          • “Libertarianism” or any other political philosophy be damned, “we” are all our own separate people. If you wish to agree or disagree with anyone, that is your own choice. As far as taking insults personally, maybe you should look deep into yourself and the insult and figure out why it bothers you, then use that knowledge to fight back.

            As for religion, even if there was a god I’m not wasting my time worshiping it. A reality where children are constantly raped, locked in sex dungeons until they’re “too old and ugly” then let loose and, in the public’s mind, are just “some mentally ill drug addict that needs to be forced into rehab and/or jail” while not addressing the real issue (rapists, psychopaths, the “true” mentally ill)….yeah, no fucking thank you. If there is a god it’s dead, and if it isn’t I would love to kill it myself for allowing all this bullshit to happen.

            Reality is insane. So much so that people blow their brains out when they take that step back and think for themselves.

          • I’ve been on both extremes of the God question.

            Ironically, seeing the evil that’s stalked this world through an historical lens–plans that have remained similar for thousands of years, and the current cycle of that plan which is over 300 years old.

            Seeing that plan unfold with such precision, over fifteen generations, kept carefully by the same dozen or so families.

            Watching as it accelerated over the last 100 years–still over several generations of the same families.

            No human plan succeeds over generations. I’m vastly different than even my grandfather whom I knew directly for 25 years.

            And the plan is antithetical to human nature, even to the usual slovenly, lying, thieving type of human nature we see in the dissipated, dissolute beasts.

            So the irony is, I’ve come back to spiritual belief in the face of this cryptic evil that works behind the surface of human affairs.

            Because there must be a counterpart; the universe hates monopoles.

            Some recent discoveries in science have pushed me back to a more spiritual view, too…topic for later.

          • Methyl, I do agree that multi-generational plans usually don’t get pulled off, but these folks condition their own children and have enough of them such that for the ones it doesn’t stick to they others where it does.

            Still it is quite remarkable that it has gone down as it has.

          • BrentP, here’s my take. The Black Plague(and I learned this last year from some very involved research involving DNA published by the Discovery Channel)changed a large amount of human’s DNA to be able to survive some fairly mean stuff. Then agriculture came into its own. After the earth came out of a mini-ice age back then, mankind reached a level of sophistication if you will that allowed families to not be wiped out by conflict or diseases and we have had no major earth changes. Since that time, say around 1450a.d. or so, things have rocked along fairly decently and there were some powerful families who managed to transfer wealth and therefore health and longevity to their offspring and it has continued to get better for everyone since that time. These things have led to wealth and power being passed on to the current generations. There are very influential and powerful families in the US that have ruled the masses for over 200 years. Barring the earth flushing the commode or whatever it might do in a global way, this trend will most like continue and armed rebellion for everyone may be the only way to purge these people. I don’t mean just this country.

          • @Jacob
            “As for religion, even if there was a god I’m not wasting my time worshiping it.”

            As you said you have the right and freedom to do that. But I’m wondering if the world didn’t have bipolar opposites in everything would we be still be free?. Good/bad, positive/negative charge. North/South pole, opposite directions relative to coordinate zero, etc, Seems to me that the beauty of this world is that the bipolar opposites allow people to decide on free choice what vector or direction they choose. It also seems that the cause and effect that most people reap what they sow because of their own poor attitude and poor choices. Either that or in bad choices their parents made. If I can say that stupid people really never do learn to stop putting their hand on the flame despite the causal pain and burning of flesh. Why all the social butterfies in the world alway try to build a nice nest of lies to insulate them from the realities of the physical or real truths of the universe? When they reap what they sow from those lies they blame an ugly universe instead of their own ugly soul? They defy the laws only by expropriating the definace at the expense of someone else. In this world we have free choice to embrace creativity or its opposite deconstruction. Or stupidity or intelligence and I see no fault to a larger intelligence that is partaking in larger creation for creating such a world. Nor do I fault my own losses on such an greater intelligence. For example, I lost a lot of money in the stock market due to swine and theives. But I had nobody to blame but myself in the end because I trusted my hard earned money with these types of dishonest people.

            Also I get so sick of people assuming that a child or society in general is born faultless. This just simply is beyond B.S. They are a creation of their parents as well of as their society. If the parents or nations they reside are rickety cheating liars, the kid and residents will pay for the sins of that stupidity. Sure bad crap happens to good people, the point is to try to learn morals and intelligence and instill maximum creation which comes from embracing truths to overcome these obstacles. Use the universal laws of truth (which from the ancients they called of creator God) to set a man free and embrace maxium creation in himself.

            Further suppose that the world was truly easy, which could only happen if we weren’t invovled in a a causal relationship with it and suppose that world flourished without our existence or inputs, would we indeed we be anything but immaterial ghosts in such a world? And how substantial would our own needs to create be in such a place if everything was done so nicely without our help? And so it also seems absurd to me that people would blame a significant and larger intelligence that had to create opposites to give people the free will to choose for themselves but also blame such a creation for requiring they too create in its image in order to enhance such a world.

            And beyond all of this isn’t it a bit absurd not too see some larger intelligence in the universe, when the rocks and grains of sand themselves have intelligence to physically communicate through causal and effect with themselves over vast distances light years away. You know I imagine when I learned calculus my mind expanded in a way I never could have imagined growing up as a child. For once the world seemed insanely brilliant. And to stuff that in a box and say that all this is just random and without primary cause is basically a lie beyond all lies. I suppose you don’t have to love the world or it as a creation, but to me its still insanely beautifuly and amazing. The world is quite fair in my opinion, the physical laws of the universe are very intelligent, always consistent, and they are very fair even if we don’t understand our own place in that greater sense of truth.

            Also from a metaphysical standpoint I’ve made it my statement before on here that indeed mathematics is of the spiritual plane. I won’t go into again lest I literally bore others who already read those comments, but just know that the mathematical functions of machine like a calculator (general mathematics) cannot be destroyed. Its physical representation (body) in calculator form can be bashed and broken, but knowledge of general math cannot be broken. We are all functional relationships of what is a very complex state machine. Both our states (information) and our functional relationship to those is existent despite our own body here. Our hairs are counted in the largest set of subsets (call that God?), our functional relationship mapped in mathematical terms. You can deny all this if you want and the beauty of it all is that its free choice given to you by living in this wonderful world. You can believe anything you want in this beautiful world but if those assumptions are lies you still have to pay the causal price. You’ll have to pay the price for those around you that lie and cheat as far as you don’t decouple from them or try to enhance them with also embracing truth. Truly if others do better by making greate choices and judgements we all do better. It really is a spiritual context in our best interest to try to love our neigbors. To try to break them from illogical infinite loops of stupidity, but we also have a right to try to defend ourselves from the inequities of stupidity of others.

            I hope you have a nice day as you are obviously are very intelligent. I hope you find these word interesting and I don’t expect you to react at all or embrace them. These are my own free will of what has generated maxium return for me so take or leave them.

            HR

          • @Hot Rod:

            Fascinating take on it.

            And it resonates strongly with things I’ve observed, too. My rejection of religion itself, I realized lately, was a rejection of the hypocrisy, hatefulness, Statism, and general malfeasance of mainline churches…and most of their attendees.

            But the question still loomed; yeah, the churches and most mainstream religion are despicable…but what about the underlying precept?

            And what about the things I learned in biochemistry–I mean, truly miraculous stuff. Enzymes that work at a quantum level, so efficiently we still don’t understand their thermodynamics. Lactate dehydrogenase–a common, run-of-the-mill enzyme that brakes down lactic acid. But at a molecular level, it looks like a nanomachine; a cube, with different subunits catalyzing different steps, handing off the intermediates to the next part where it’s processed.

            Plants’ chloroplasts use a kind of quantum computation to optimally route light rays for maximum efficiency.

            And the universe as a whole; the “anthropic principle” that we live in a Goldilocks world where all the physical constants are just right. Sure, in a multiverse there’s bound to be one like it, goes the argument against.

            But still–the more I learn, the more amazing the whole place becomes…and the more I’m convinced something at the very least set it in motion.

            From a programmer’s perspective, it’s just as you say–a fantastically complex interaction of many small state machines. The best-written computer programs start with incredibly simple subunits, each highly deterministic and easily understood in its individual function; but the whole, as it runs, bifurcates again and again until the totality of its function becomes impossible to follow in its entirety.

            Yeah, I think there’s something more. And I no longer think we’re simply smart monkeys; if for no other reason than thinking that reduces us to animals, and makes possible our predation by psychopaths.

    • Schools should use vacuum tubes like banks do only a larger size with neighborhood access so children need only walk as far as the next block, be packed into a special insert just like you’d put your money in. No fuss, no muss, kids are at school in just a minute to be counted and stacked, just like your money. Reverse process when school is over. Save’s time, gas, needless danger for your child, a win-win situation.

      • Birthing center to home. Home till ready for school. Electronic media to show children what the world looks like or at least did. School graduation to place of employment. Last day on the job to retirement homes. Retirement home straight to grave when you die. Racking my brain. What book was it that was fairly much like that? No one went outside. Only “aborigines” gave live birth. Gee, I’m blanking here.

        • I think it’s Brave New World.

          Babies were “decanted” – and people lived in a state of adult infantilism until they reached “galloping senility” and were sent off to be cremated.

          • eric, thanks, that’s it. I probably read it 20+ years before you. Great book. I see more a Soylent Green in our future though. I’m actually worried now about the conspiracy to shut off the food and med supplies. They’re coming after us old “dis-satisfied’s” first. I can’t run through the pasture and participate in a firefight any longer as I once could. Those things never make it into the news since it makes them(LEO)look bad to have their asses handed to them. Need to start working on my rabbit hole.

            • I’m trying to stay in shape for the eventuality! I’m shooting for my pre-marriage weight of about 195. I was 217. Last time I got on the scale I was down to 206.

          • Right on Eric! I went “primal” last year when the leech diagnosed me with high blood pressure wanted to put me on meds. Blood pressure’s back down and I’ve dropped from 210 back down to 190 since last December! The quack said “this isn’t possible, but I can’t argue with the numbers.” I take the stairs out on the boiler all the time now (elevators are taboo). I made a fifty foot vertical ladder climb the other day and was barely breathing hard at the top. I figure that’s not too bad for 53, ’cause last year I’d have nearly stroked out. So,not only will I be in good shape if worse comes to worst and the Schumer Hits The Fan, but dropping twenty pounds noticeably improved the performance of my bike too! 😉

          • @Boothe–

            I think this has come up on EPAutos before…

            …but a big Amen, primal is the way to go!

            I don’t know if ya’ll read the article on fats, and how we’ve been deluded for forty years of medical orthodoxy, but it’s well worthwhile:
            Enjoy Saturated Fats, They’re Good for You!

            That’s an excellent summary. Basically, we’ve been lied to by the medical establishment for forty years; they’ve been dead wrong on the “lipid hypothesis”.

            My undergrad major was biochemistry, so when I started reading about Atkin’s, Sugar Busters, Primal, and others it suddenly made sense.

            It hit me like a ton of bricks: sugars react with proteins, particularly components of collagen. And drawing on some immunology, it’s really easy to see that those sugars tacked onto proteins present a foreign antigenic signal to your immune system.

            In short–blood sugar sticks to proteins in your vessels, and your immune system attacks them. Voila, inflammation and vascular damage.

            I’m down to nearly my college weight and I’ve never felt better. Abundant energy, low sleep requirement. Better endurance and quicker recovery.

            High-carb is Purina Slave Chow.

            I think the Romans were onto something–feeding the populace panem, keeps’em fat and stupid.

  7. I’m pretty sure this site has nothing to do with liberty, but is actually only about hate, name calling, and following laws only y’all find “acceptable.”

    • As long as you’re “pretty sure” that is good enough for me. Thanks for taking the time to share such a thought inspiring post!

    • Well, Greg, we do hate affronts to liberty – which would include laws that criminalize actions that have no victims, such as those that punish people for “speeding” or making a right/left turn when it’s perfectly safe to do so … but a sign says you’re supposed to just sit there like an ass because the light is red.

      Do you have any specific criticisms?

        • About 2.3 kids and several adults of varying levels of wisdom and writing ability.

          On a more serious note, does it matter? As long as I find this site and the writers that post here to be interesting and thought provoking, I do not care how many people contribute. I appreciate everyone’s thoughtful contribution.

          I do not agree with everything that is posted here. That is OK. Live and let live. If you do not infringe on my rights I will give you the same courtesy.

      • Ed, and then he retorts to me about Tx. as if I said nothing else. As if I didn’t say the speed limit on I-10 was 85 and may be 90 now since all speed limits in this state were raised 5 mph last year. I do know if you’re not doing at least 85 when you get on in Junction or Houston, you’re likely to cause a horrible wreck. Who, among the thousands of vehicles going that speed is going to think some twink doing 70 is going to jump in right in front of 3 lanes of traffic doing that speed? What an idiot. He only backs up his crap by referring to Tx. Well, clover, the speed limits in Texas are high enough that fools need to stay off the road if they can’t do the speed limit at the least. Maybe you live in a state where the limits are 55mph. Good, you have a better chance of not causing a great many deaths than 20mph above that. What is it you don’t understand or don’t want to acknowledge about blending in at the same speed of the traffic? No, you won’t answer that. You’ll just again say something about drivers in Texas wanting to kill people. Sure, that’s all we have to do, try to kill everyone on the road. Why, didn’t you know, we consider ourselves the ultimate power and wish to reduce the population one badass wreck at a time. No, we don’t have families or care about one another, we only want to run over people who are idiots. It’s the only reason I drive.

    • ” and following laws only y’all find “acceptable.” ”

      Well, that’s a incoherent piece of writing. If I had to guess at what you’re struggling to say, maybe it would be something like this:
      ‘and following only the laws that y’all find “acceptable”.’

      Is that what you meant? If you intend to address the adults here, you have to do so with properly constructed sentences.

      Feel free to make judgmental observations if you like, but please try to do so in a coherent fashion, so we’ll all know when we’ve been told off. OK?

            • Greg,

              Liberty means – chiefly – adhering to the non-aggression principle. That means, leaving people at liberty to live their lives as they (not others) see fit and never using force against other people except in self defense. If someone harms you or damages your property, then they should be held accountable. Otherwise, leave them alone – and expect the same in return.

              That, my friend, is liberty. Do you disagree?

              Laws that punish or attempt to control people for any reason except to hold them accountable for actual harm caused by them as individuals are illegitimate – evil, even. To call them out as such – to “call them names,” to deride and mock them – is as pro-liberty as it gets.

              What is your issue, exactly?

          • In reference to Ed’s so-called grammatical corrections, it has nothing to do with my speaking better English. The rules he writes, are more restricted to formal writing, rather than the informal situation of this forum. However, quite typically, I have found, both in everyday speech, as well as in forum usage, most people who pick apart grammar usually do so because their minds are small and they are incapable of adding anything of real substance to the discussion, and behave in similar fashion when they are in error in a wide variety of scenarios.

            • Greg,

              Rather than banter about grammar and the etiquette of mocking Clover, how about addressing an issue of substance? I’m eager to discuss such concepts as the proper (if any) role of organized violence (that is, government), whether the collective has any legitimate rights – and so on.

              Please, let’s move on.

          • “most people who pick apart grammar usually do so because their minds are small and they are incapable of adding anything of real substance to the discussion, ”

            Actually, Greggy poo, I resorted to that as a way of gently trying to lure you into dropping the pissant attitude you brought in here.

            Since that offended your delicate sensibilities, I’ll just tell you what I really think. I think you’re a self impressed little dimwit whose self regard is totally unjustified.

            Who the fuck are you to come into a thread and accuse everyone posting there of being hateful name callers? Until you contribute something to the discussion, you’d do better to refrain from claiming that any other person has nothing to contribute.

            If you have something to say to me, then address me directly instead of making comments about me in your responses to other participants.

          • In reference to more of the slandering within Ed’s delightful rhetoric, I think my initial observation has been proven. My observation was based simply upon seeing this site was on lewRockwell, which educates people on money and the state of police, then I click upon here, and see this site, and those who mostly reply, is based upon hate-mongering. Replace clover, with Jews or niggers, and it is all mere hate rhetoric. When you all reach perfection, then by all means point out others’ flaws.

            • Greg,

              Do you object to Der Fuhrer’s Face? Remember that one?

              http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA6HHgJC5BE

              Be honest.

              I love it, myself. It is enjoyable to mock evil. And though Clover is not Hitler, the difference is only one of degree, not kind. Clover, like Hitler, is a violent control freak who literally chomps at the bit to dictate to others how they shall live their lives. He is a collectivist – someone who believes implicitly in the idea that the individual must submit to the judgments – the dictates – of the mass, as expressed by the ballot box or via some duly elected leader.

              All such roads eventually lead to millions caged – and often enough, millions killed.

              Pardon me if I decline to be polite to the people – large and small – who are responsible for that.

          • “n reference to more of the slandering within Ed’s delightful rhetoric, I think my initial observation has been proven. ”

            I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but you’ve proven yourself to be a troll. I feed the trolls as little as possible. What I do feed your kind is ridicule and insult.

          • Calling people names has nothing to do with liberty, nor will it help them to change their ways, nor does it do anything to create an environment where someone who would be on the fence about liberty would want to participate. As well as this Ed guy picking apart grammar create an atmosphere of liberty. What is that? Sounds pretty grammatically fascist to me. But it seems like “the many writers” here are pretty set in their ways to see the err of their ways.
            I would enjoy seeing you guys confronting others in a social situation rather than calling people clovers over a computer.

            • Greg,

              I understand your disapproval – and agree that mocking Clover (et al) may turn off some people. But I’m a blunt guy – and I call ’em as I see ’em. That goes for in person, too.

              Ask anyone who knows me!

              The broader point, though, is that I am not a violent person – while Clover is.

              Yet you are concerned about my name-calling… but not his urge to do actual violence to other people in order to force them to conform to his way of living, or to compel them to “help” fund it. His reflexive advocacy of force and coercion… his incapacity to leave other people alone. His urge to punish and control.

              I find that fascinating.

            • Greg,

              You’re new here; you may not have any idea how many years we’ve been trying to reach Clover with reason and civility. It doesn’t work. He’s beyond reason – contemptuous of it. Go back and read through some of his exemplars; dozens are available over at Clovercam.com

          • Ok thanks, ill check it out, in the meantime, did y’all give up on trying to educate and instead found making fun more productive.

            • Greg,

              There is a lot of stuff on this site – you’ve jumped into a few of our back-and-forths with a persistent troll (Clover). We often just lock him out – in order to keep the conversation both civil and intelligent.

          • “trying to reach Clover with reason and civility.”

            No doubt.

            Hey, Greg, try it out and then see what you think. I know I felt differently after I tried. [I wonder if clover ever read those links on D.U.I.? I never did get a response on that.]

            It seems that clover is a bona-fied Sociopath exactly as described on the link of this page:
            http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/137486.html

            Also, I don’t see anything wrong with calling someone on their bad grammer. Sometimes I wish I was good enough at it to avoid making mistakes. I suppose calling someone out on it is a way to encourage being better, kind of like telling someone, “Hey, you moron, don’t you know not to touch the electrical wires on those poles!?”

            My 2 Cents in passing.

          • “As well as this Ed guy picking apart grammar create an atmosphere of liberty. What is that? Sounds pretty grammatically fascist to me.”

            Actually, I was being easy on you. Your first post here expressed contempt for everyone here. How does that further liberty, or make anyone change his mind, etc, and so on as you’re now saying?

            You initiated the assault. Too bad you didn’t appreciate my response, which was nothing more than some mild kidding.

            FWIW, I’m not here to teach you anything. I’m not here to persuade anyone or to change anyone’s thinking. Anybody straddling a fence can enjoy the ride or fall off, as he sees fit.

            You seem to want to make the people who post here do so in the way you would like to see it done. Good luck with that. Start your own blog and set guidelines for posting if that’s what you like.

            If teaching people is what you like to do, then do it, but you can’t expect anyone else to do things the way you want them done.

          • Greg what I want to know, in general, is why libertarians must be perfectly civil and polite yet those of the mainstream get a pass. People call me all sorts of vile names, insult me all sorts of ways but if I so much as become annoyed then I’m in the wrong.

            What I really think goes on is there a very strong bias for the status quo and thus ridicule of them is forbidden yet ridicule of those presenting something different is not only acceptable but encouraged.

          • BrentP how is ridiculing anyone presenting anything different. Ridicule all you want, I was just making an observation. But I am speaking from what I have learned, which would be that these so-called clovers are following laws, laws so they don’t get in trouble. So ridiculing them would be going after the easy targets. That seems more status quo. Why not ridicule and demean those that make the laws those mindlessly follow? Those people would appear to be the real nd only legitimate “clovers.”

            • Greg,

              But Clover doesn’t follow the law, either! He obstructs traffic, he does not yield; he stops on merge lanes. All illegal. All unsafe. But they’re ok – in Clover’s view – because he does these things. Clover only gets upset when someone else does something that he, personally, dislikes – such as driving faster than the arbitrary speed limit. This is why Clovers are so exasperating. It’s not so much that we disagree with them. It’s that they’re hypocritical, illogical and unreasonable. You literally cannot have a coherent discussion with them. They’re defective.

    • Um, who are you again and how long have you been posting here?

      Read back through the archives, especially the non-automotive articles.

      Have a look at the erudite philosophizing, strategizing, and argument in thousands of comment postings. People like Eric, Boothe, PM Lawrence, mithrandir, BrentP…and others I’m neglecting to mention have put forth profound, amusing, galling, and generally superlative ideas.

      It’s a community of like-minded people; like-minded not in every particular, but united in striving for liberty.

      If we stumble across a clover post, we’ll usually try to correct their thinking in a gentle way.

      But once there’s blood in the water, who can blame me for taking a bite?

      • “Um, who are you again and how long have you been posting here?”

        Meth, he’s that same old face in the same old place, a garden variety troll. Don’t feed the trolls. They’re here to disrupt, and have nothing else to add.

    • Heh. Nice one. The cop shoulda booked the speed-limit-no-matter-what clover. He could have got ’round the idiot any time, but preferred to make an example instead. Hope it changed clover’s mind all the same, making one less narcissistic fool holding us up – but I doubt it as clovers rarely learn as witnessed on these pages.

      The sad thing about this, is the fine for such a heinous “crime” is minimal and not worth the donut muncher’s time haulin’ his fat violent arse outta the car to do a writeup.

      He likely wants to “speed” (read: do as he wants) to either creep up on others going slower than him, because he can’t physically check as many cars as he’s forced to by the quota from his boss if he travels the limit, or just flouts the rules anyway because of the badge and the supposed “authority” ordained by nobody but the cowering clovers enabling tyrannical gubberment.

      Fuck help him if next time he’s just 5 over the apparently magical number on a stick and spins into a pole for no particular reason, apart from possibly overloaded car due to arse and donuts. Although the constant battering us sheeple receive from their relentless and utterly dishonest “anti-speed” campaigns would bolster their position if he admitted to “speeeeeding” (From 2 & 1/2 Men: Saaave the chiiildrenn..), he won’t admit to it. Coward – FAT coward.

      Note that if a sheeple did the exact same thing to another driver and then swerve his car across 3 lanes without switching on the “amber flashing insurance policy” he’d be pinned to the tar with possibly several shots of tazering for good measure. Ughh..

      For clover: I only call him violent and fat because it’s highly likely that description fits him like a glove, not because I have a fetish 😉 /rant

      • Yeah, sorta wondered is he’d bless us with more entitlement insight. I used to work with a lot of vets and god help me, those that could have been but didn’t because “they had kids”, no reason in my book if you’re gung ho. The intelligent ones, definitely the minority, knew they’d been screwed while the rest thought they were entitled. One tried to tell me AR bullets tumbled out of the gun. I tried to explain to him about bullet dynamics and how each bullet type, style, weight, etc. combined with the rate of twist, length of barrel and the minimum/maximum barrel diameter all contributed to the performance and how no bullet that tumbled could be predicted to even be visible in it’s POI, hence not using lightweight, high speed rounds in brush. I should have saved my breath.

      • Hey Eric,

        Nice article BTW like usual. Again I know its sign of getting older but I’m thinking about keeping the old trucks running forever as they will hopefully be grandfathered by some of these newer requisites?

        The question becomes that with hybrid cars if the gearing would even be needed since both have a generator and motor set. I know how Eric loves them hybrids but it does seem that he generator-motor set would make for a infinite adjusted electrical mechanical transmission.

        As far as hicks is concerned it wouldn’t be all that bad of policy for you and Dom to stoke up the mood in here once a while by allowing a hicks through? I’m just a naturally suspicious person so forgive me friends for even questioning it. I realize the world is mostly stupid so it makes sense they find a reasonable site to try backwards logic with but sometimes comadre that comes with slamming stupid is irresistable. Sure is convenient though their timing and posts to raise the ire of liberty a notch (smile).

        Keep up the good works guys.

        Best Regards,
        Hot Rod

        • Hot Rod, I like the idea of keeping old trucks running but read a couple days ago the EPA is trying to force the oil companies and auto manfct. to accept 15% ethanol fuel. Car companies say NO, oil companies say No but the greedy ethanol farmer bunch is pushing it and the EPA is too. My wife’s car, a Cutlass, says in the book Do Not use ethanol fuel blends in excess of 5%. Use of these fuels above that WILL cause engine and fuel system damage. I’ve been through it already. Got some fuel from a pump with no light during a sandstorm one night. The next day I started leaving a trail of as and watched the gauge drop as it left. I barely made it 8 miles in town. The alcohol ruined the plastic part of the fuel filter. I caught a plastic bottle of it and it looked like water but after a couple minutes it was milky, degrading the plastic that quickly. It didn’t even smell like gasoline. Everybody in the shop came running asking what the smell was. I told them and they all said they’d never smelled anything like it. I was more than mildly pissed.

  8. >i>“Letting someone in” is something a clover considers to be courteous but actually it is being rude, because it interrupts flow of traffic.

    Yep, it’s a war out there for space and anyone you let in is an insult to your manhood as you rush to your minimum wage job.

    And, on the same thread, all the Ken Block wannabes rant against the fail-to-signal clovers. The reason they don’t signal is that signalling just causes drivers like you to speed up to prevent that most horrendous of crimes: driving in front of anyone.

    Eric, sorry, you’re wrong on the school zone clovers. At least in my jurisdiction where I once got a 10kmh over in a school zone on a Saturday.

    (Of course, I’m another of those old fossils in a metalflake red Mustang GT, Porsche Cayenne S Titanium and a few other semi-fast vehicles!)

    • Is anyone here a Ken Block wannabee? His car seems something only a Hmong Gangbanger could love, IMHO. What is the appeal of subcompact sports cars? Why not go really small, like motorcycle small?

      Whoever likes this probably also likes going to Sturgis in a limited edition Wild Hogs leather jacket with an authenticated signature of Tim Allen. To each his own.

      Ken Block – D.C. Shoes – Ultimate Urban Playground

      The video says: “An Epic Use of An Iconic City?” More like Epic Douche-speak of Clovers corporate shills whose every possessio is covered in fruity neon colors and logos; who somehow suck every last bit of fun out of what should be fun-to-watch high-performance driving.

        • No joke eric, looks like fun fun fun. There used to be an off-road cross country class that had 600 hp but it was dropped because of so many deaths in the last couple years of it. I suspect these cars are back in that range of power. Suspensions, steering and tires now days are so much better as are roll cages that the deaths are fewer. I actually love this sort of racing. I’d give my left one to drive that car. Just put a bag of good painkiller on timed delivery on me since my back would scream as well as a few other places and I’d be good till it was over and then whisked right onto a stretcher and hauled away to a nice cool room where I could re-live it in my delirium.

    • Try being the person further back who gets penalized for your generosity in reordering the rules of right of way. Then there’s the build up over time during so called ‘rush hour’. Where those penalized don’t even see the flow disruptions that tipped the road into congestion in the first place.

      • BrentP, I read a study financed by TxDOT a few years back that showed anyone slowing down in high traffic areas could still be slowing traffic down 10 hours later. I’ve witnessed such with San Antonio being the worst about it I’ve ever encountered. When I began trucking I soon found out to plan my entire life around rush hours and avoid them like the black plague. A few million people in a big city, Friday afternoon and everybody is headed out of town and you’re in a big rig maxxed out on weight, what a nightmare. That distance you leave in stop and go on the freeway is grabbed immediately by fools in cars who jump into it when everybody hits their brakes. It ain’t worth it. Just find a good bar where you can relax and wait it out. You won’t be behind since you won’t have to stop somewhere and try to get rid of your headache and rethink the whole process anyway.

  9. The rubber-neck clover. He/she always stops at the scene of an accident, or any other disaster, to scope out what’s going on. He/she watches the news for any reported accidents or house fires or whatever misery is befalling someone else and rushes over to get in the way of police, firefighters,or paramedics. These clover rubber-neckers tie up traffic, get in the way of emergency response, mindless of the fact that they are in the way. But, then, clovers are always in the way. They, like all elitist, suffer from such a large ego that no matter what they do, or don’t do, it is the right thing and the only thing to do. I am right the rest of humanity is effed up!

  10. Reading this website, nothing but a bunch of spoiled brat kids here crying because they can’t drive like damn fools all the time. I am sick of you self entitled youngster generations who expect everything NOW, think you’re a bunch of kings who rule the road and can do whatever you damn well please. Clover

    Well kids, I say its time for a little hide-tannin’ with the hickory switch, as we say. All cars will immediately be fitted with a GPS that will limit the cars speed to whatever the speed limit is on the road. If its 35, then your system won’t let you drive any faster than 35, period. If 35 picks up to 45, the GPS will register that, and your little red wagons can now go 45. But no faster. Clover

    You can wail and cry and scream and curse, but us “clovers” are out there and we’re not going anywhere. And doesnt that just complicate your problem. You can’t bully us. We’re retired, we have less to do all day, not like Mr. Yuppie guy working 9 to 5. You hate us clovers so much now, you ain’t seen anything yet. You say we ruin your morning? We will ruin your whole damn week! And just what the hell does clover mean anyway, why pick that? Dumb. Makes no sense. Just like all the bratty rants here.

    • “Reading this website, nothing but a bunch of spoiled brat kids here crying because they can’t drive like damn fools all the time. ”

      Then don’t read it. If it upsets you to see that there are people who think differently and want different things, you’re better off at another blog. Try the Art of Manliness blog. It’s loaded with old guys who wish things were still the way they were back then.

    • “nothing but a bunch of spoiled brat kids here crying ”

      followed by,

      ” I am sick of you self entitled ”

      followed by,

      ” You say we ruin your morning? We will ruin your whole damn week!”

      Sounds like someone is a bit ‘self entitled’.

      Apparently this old-fart is irony deficient. Hypocrisy, the defining trait of a clover.

    • “Dumb. Makes no sense.”

      Named in honour of clover. Clover’s posts tend to be dumb and make little sense.

      I guess you think that people should STFU and not comment on anything they think is not right with the world.

      Define what you consider “… drive like damn fools all the time.“.

      I tend to think that many people prefer to drive at a speed that is considered comfortable and safe by their standards.

      I would be careful of what I wish to happen. An efficient government can deliver all sorts of evils (or goods, but this is not typical) to the public at large.

    • What’s the matter Ol’ Hickory? Your Depends causing you a little irritation? Got a little diaper rash do you? Bring that hickory switch on and we’ll give you a free prostate check with it. A “clover” (named for the original archetype that trolls this site) is someone just like you! How’d you describe yourself above? “Dumb. Makes no sense.” Yep. That would be you and the original clover.

      Oh and thanks for fessing up that as a retiree you have nothing to do and plenty of time to do it in. So instead of finding something productive to do like mentoring young folks or volunteer work, you come here and berate us? Wow. Don’t forget that it’s those of us still working that are paying your idle way.

      How about we trade: Before you get to put speed limiters on cars, we first get to keep the socialist security / medicare / prescription drug witholding taxes we get socked with every paycheck. If you were properly prepared financially for your retirement then that wouldn’t be problem for you, now would it? But if you’re counting on “the government” to take care of your sorry ass, then that merely means you feel entitled to have the rest of us to pay your way. So let’s cut off the government dole and see how fast you have to find a job again and commute. When you’re behind some tax fed moron that doesn’t need to plug up traffic, just wants to, your tune will change.

      And by the way, so long as it doesn’t hurt you or any one else, we CAN do as we damn well please. And that just chaps your ass doesn’t it? We may actually reach old age someday, but we won’t have to worry about social security because everything that was stolen from us will be gone. So enjoy the stolen fruits of our labor, because they won’t be there for us. And when I’m that age, I’ll make every effort not to be an ignorant, self righteous asshole like you appear to be.

      • Don’t you preach to me. I’ve been paying into social security ever since I was a teenager and collected a paycheck. For 50 years. Thats 50 damn years. That’s about as many pimples on your butt. And now they keep raising the age at which I can get my damn money back. Maybe. And while I was getting my ass shot off in the jungles of vietnam, your maggot puke parents were burning draft cards, doing acid and spitting on the flag. A good chunk of MY youth was spent trying to stay alive, not driving like a maniac while whinning about old people driving. And dont accuse me not doing anything productive. You don’t know shit from apple butter you little snot and don’t forget it!!Clover

        • Ohh. Angry man is angry.

          “And now they keep raising the age at which I can get my damn money back” – Why do you let them, angry man?

          “And while I was getting my ass shot off in the jungles of vietnam” – And who’s fault would that be?

          “your maggot puke parents were burning draft cards, doing acid and spitting on the flag.” – You know this to be true how? maybe someone should point out that “You don’t know shit from apple butter you little snot and don’t forget it!!”

          I think we found Clovers senile Grandpa.

        • Jeez Old Hick, I was laughing my ass off reading your first post. I thought you were writing some great sarcasm but I see you are really one stupid fuck. Well, bud, I’ve been paying in for 50 years too, been driving for more than 50 years also and I can’t relate to your bullshit at all. Hell, me and desert rat probably have 110 years of driving combined. I used to put a million miles on a truck in 6-7 years and have never had a wreck in one, not one single wreck. I guess I’ve been lucky but I was working and when I’m on the road just in the car or pick up, I drive and don’t dick around. People make their fucking living driving, just the way it is. 55mph damned near broke me as it did millions of other truckers. You waste way too much of your time just trying to avoid bullshit fines for non-existent crimes. How anyone could reach your age and be so clueless is a mystery to me. I’d bet you’re not more than a couple years older than me, and no, I had studied Vietnam for 3 years before I was CALLED and I told them to fuck off for all intents and purposes and am proud of it. I never killed anybody for a dipshit like LBJ, a man who was known by everyone on the hill as Bullshit and was called that to his face by older members of the congress. He was just an incompetent, ass-licker who wanted money more than anything but lusted after power to get it. A goddamn east Texas hick without a lick of ability…except ass-licking. You can kiss my rusty old ass. Whipper snappers indeed.

          • Too funny!

            “I was laughing my ass off reading your first post. I thought you were writing some great sarcasm but I see you are really one stupid fuck.”

        • Don’t you preach to me. I’ve been paying into social security ever since I was a teenager and collected a paycheck. For 50 years. Thats 50 damn years

          Newsflash for ya, Pops: every last dime you paid into your sacred Socialist Security Fund went right back out of it and into the pocket of some other sponge. There ain’t no magic “trust fund” into which all of those nickels and dimes taken out of your paycheck were dropped, collecting dust or interest waiting for you to draw them out again when you reached Geritol age. That’s a myth that foolish, naive, brainwashed, oh-so-trusting people of your generation swallowed like mother’s milk. A myth LONG EXPLODED, but one that would have forced you and everybody else out there who didn’t think it was your responsibility to save for your own old age to face up to something called “reality.” I know it sucks, but not as badly as waking up one morning to find out that that Socialist Security gravy train has run dry.

          So, Hickory, I hope you have kids you can sponge off of at some point. Sumpin’ tells me that you haven’t saved dime one toward your own retirement, meaning that when Socialist Security implodes and/or becomes funded with currency so worthless that you might as well wipe your ass with it (see “Deutschmark”+”Weimar Republic”+1923), you’re gonna be in a universe of hurt. I hope you’ve got a camping tent and some canned food stashed away. You’re gonna need them.

          And while I was getting my ass shot off in the jungles of vietnam, your maggot puke parents were burning draft cards, doing acid and spitting on the flag. A good chunk of MY youth was spent trying to stay alive…

          ***YAAAAWWWWWWWWNNNN*** Is THAT all you’ve got? As for the “staying alive” part, I’m already wondering how you’ve managed to even get out of bed every morning without sustaining a fatal injury. Maybe Some Higher Power is looking out for you after all. As the old saying goes “God keeps watch over drunks, fools, children, and American rednecks.”

          Peace.

          • Old Hickory Shit is probably relying on his toe-jam, bully-button jam, ear wax, and the rot under his fingernails for sustenance…. along with the crumbs in his beard and varying types of butt-cheese…

            • Ol’ Hickory is almost an archetypical Boomer. That is, an entitlement-minded control freak absolutely frothing with rage and the urge to control others rather than live (and let live).

              I’ve encountered many of his sort at Tea Party events, god help me.

              No. God help us!

        • Well, OH, unfortunately it’s not your money. It’s other people’s money. Your money – what was taken from you during those 50 years – was immediately given away to others. And now, others are being forced to “give” to you. It’s intergenerational parasitism. I’m very sorry you were robbed/defrauded. But it does not entitle you to rob/defraud others. Right? Or do you believe, if you’re mugged by a street thug, that entitles you to mug the next guy who comes along to make up for your loss?

          Vietnam: You were dragooned? Or did you volunteer to be a paid killer for the state?

          PS: “Driving like a maniac” means what, exactly? Driving faster than you like? Faster than an arbitrary number on a sign?

          Please, let’s hear your explanation.

        • “You don’t know shit”

          I know it, Hickory. Shit, I wouldn’t blame you if you just left here and never came back. Hell, that’s exactly what you should do. God damn right. That’ll show’em.

          • Mr. Chairman, under the order of Robert’s Rules, Ed has moved to let Hickory leave. I second that motion. Mr. Chairman, could you please call for a vote? And by the way Hick, I can tell you right now the only really good acid was the shit the govt. made and once it was gone things were never the same. That was some righteous stuff. Wish you had some so you could learn to respect your fellow man.

          • “I second that motion”

            Motion amended to unanimous consent. Those in objection?

            Without objection, so ordered.

            On to new business.

        • “driving like a maniac while whinning ”

          I KNOW IT, Hick. I hate it when they go to whinning. Sound like a bunch of horses, don’t they? You ought to just stomp off and never speak to them again.

          • Ed, Mr. Chairman, what is the next order of business? As the sentinel I have no one else at the door to introduce. Mr. Secretary, what is the next item on the agenda? If none, then let’s proceed. Mr. Chairman, would you call to order and dismiss this meeting? Since old Hick was jacking off in the corner to make the girls giggle while the rest of us were learning so we didn’t have to do the bidding of LBJ, what say we let him off with a warning. Hell, he was just doing his Patriotic Duty. Hey hey LBJ, how many kids have you killed today? He don’t know. Who’s counting? 58,000+ not including everyone we left behind when we pulled out with people hanging off the helicopters. The main thing was, very few bureaucrats lost their lives and that’s really what it’s all about isn’t it?

        • You’re angry and bitter because deep down inside, you KNOW you deluded yourself.

          If you’d dug even half an inch deep into the comforting unicorn kisses and rainbow wishes lies your government told you, you’d have known Socialist Security was a Ponzi scheme. It’s so obvious that Ponzi schemes should be called Social Security Schemes.

          But you didn’t, and you won’t, because then you’d have to actually THINK.

          And you’re not very good at that. Because you’ve never let yourself practice it.

          No, it was all bobby-socks and pretty American lies.

          “It’ll never happen here”–epitaph on America’s grave.

          • Right on Methyl. Bobby socks, Apple Pie, a Chevy in every driveway…the American dream. We’re waking Ol’ Shittery Stick up from it. He’s got a bad hangover and doesn’t want to know that we’re all headed into a DHS FedGov police state nightmare that he helped lay the foundation for. Many in his generation had a dream alright; that they could party hearty and then live off of everyone else when the party’s over. Well Ol’ Shittery, your bar tab is coming due and it ain’t gonna be pretty.

          • Ol Hick, along with meth and Boothe’s replay made me think of Al Pacino saying “you want the truth? You can’t handle the truth”. Bobby Sox he he he he….remember them well, preferably balled up on the back seat floorboard. Just tell me to shut up. I’m not like Ol Hick.

          • @Eightsouthman:

            Mmmmm…balled up socks. Cotton panties and fog on the windows.

            Man high school could be fun.

            But I sure am glad I’m not as stupid as I was then!

            For that matter–you were saying you’ve met people half your age who are wiser…I know what you mean. It keeps me humble thinking how dumb I’ll think I was ten years from now!

            There’s a new young guy working at my current gig; all of 25 years old, a 7-year-old daughter and wise far beyond his years. He’s as or more awake than we on this board; they guy’s just a pleasure to talk to. The best part? You’d never expect it; he’s a plump rolly-polly short little Venezualan guy with an accent, but smarter than a tack.

          • Me2, sorry about that. It was Jack…which reminds me of The Departed. Jack was great in that. You really are getting some mileage out of him. I kinda miss him too, sorta like that hemorrhoid you had a long time that went away.

          • meth, There you go. Never judge a book by its cover. I’m sure if I live another 10 years I’ll look back and think What the hell was I thinking? You were speaking of going to the range the other day with your AR. You should have gone to a turkey shoot in the 70’s with one. Now that was a hoot. An ex-friend I was told(he married a woman I had been dating and thought for some reason we shouldn’t be friends any longer), never figured that out since we were just fucking buddies, neither one of us serious and both seeing other people. Anyway one of my friends overheard him telling his boy “No way he can hit that turkey’s head” right before I nailed it. I turned and handed him my gun because he’d asked to see it before my shot. I just smiled and told him to shoot a turkey. I noticed the first thing he did was try to move the safety lever to the back position. That’s it Stevie, always looking for what I might do wrong you hypocrite.

          • @eightsouthman–

            Holy crap–same thing happened to me. My room-mate and friend of five years up and decided my girlfriend was actually his…and he didn’t want to be friends anymore, either.

            Ah well. I blame her too; good riddance, her dad was a nutjob and she wasn’t far off.

            Headshot on a turkey? Fine shootin’ Tex!

          • meth, it wasn’t a thing to me. We were just friends and never had any idea of anything else. When they started going together they had my blessings. Turned out years later she’d have me and my wife over but her husband was still a dick and wouldn’t associate with us. Of course he was pursuing politics that didn’t last long since he was as friendly as a rattler. He changed a lot all of a sudden, couldn’t hang with a guy like me, get a bad rep. Of course his wife could. His brother was a good friend and he couldn’t figure it.

          • meth, all my life we had live turkey shoots up to about ’83-’84 and I guess PETA stopped them. 100 yds, freestyle. I had friends with .243’s like me and we’d load into the old Impala with coolers of beer, rifles, shotguns, AR’s and HK ’91’s and go wow the locals. We’d hit every one of them around. After it got late and they had more turkeys than they knew what to do with, they’d always let us shoot until we were tired and we’d have a couple big coolers full of cleaned turkeys. Those were fun days for us, not so much for the turkeys I guess.

          • meth, guess I should explain. You’d always be limited to two turkeys. No limit on shots bought though, sorta like at the bar ha ha. You could shoot skeet against a bunch of other people and win one that way or shoot .22 targets. None of us had .22 target guns but I had a couple AR’s and an HK that the locals would always be intimated by. Ignorance, the .06’s we had and (everybody else had too) but rarely shot were much more powerful. It’s just a looks thing. Once you had two you had to wait till everybody else didn’t want to shoot any longer and then buy as many shots as you wanted till the turkeys were gone. You only got to see their heads but if you drew blood at all, it was considered a kill. I knew a guy who’d take his BP .58 cal. Kentucky rifle and hit the berm in front of them and gravel would draw blood. Another friend who was a great shotgun shot took a 3″ Rem. 1100 magnum and make the guys with the expensive skeet guns look silly. We’d pull up and get out and everybody would start talking. Some would start bitching. We were always in high spirits. I couldn’t hit a turkey in the head at 100 yds with a Bofors now. Oh, I Might could but would have to be mighty fired up to do so. Freestyle rifle shooting has become a lost art almost. I’ll say one thing for shooting like that, you had to be on and crapping out was embarrassing so practice and a tack driver gun were a great help. I used a Parker Hale Presentation Model with a 26″ pencil barrel and a 40mm 3/9 Leopold gold ring scope. I let other people shoot it with my reloads I loaded specifically for that gun, had about 15/1000’s clearance between the bullet and the grooves of the barrel.

        • No Ol’ Shittery Stick, my dad was in small arms and ordnance in WWII and very “conservative.” I’m a Jimmy Cah-ta era vet (my unit went on the Iran rescue mission) and I’ve been working since I was 16 (when I graduated from highschool a year ahead of my class). At 54 I’m hardly a little snot. I know considerably more than “shit from apple butter” which leads me to identify you as a heap of the bovine variety of the former. And if you were so damned stupid you allowed yourself to be fed into the Southeast Asian meat grinder, that’s your own damned fault. What’s a shame is that natural selection missed its mark while you were over there; stupidity should be culled from the herd.

          As far a paying into the system for 50 plus years, that’s no different than getting mugged every year. It doesn’t give you the right to mug the next person that comes along and take their money. Your friggen money is gone Ol’ Shittery Stick. You’re collecting our money. You bitch about the Ponzi scheme con men raising the age, not where you can get your money back, but it’s really the age when you can take ours.

          We probably won’t even have the opportunity to collect socialist security and if we do, the currency will be so heavily inflated as to be totally worthless. Your generation was asleep at the switch while our real money (or what was left of it, silver) was stolen en masse by the bankers and replaced with paper. Your generation helped put us in this mess you ignorant old ass. Go do something useful or stay the hell out of our way while we try to clean up your mess.

          • Hey Boothe, my pops was in small arms ordnance too. He was an armorer in the USMC for 30 years and his last duty station was Quantico. I’m only 36 years old which pretty much means I don’t know “shit from apple butter” just yet. Even so though, I’ve always known I wasn’t ever going to join the service. You think Hickory is a real person? If so, he must be a high functioning retard like clover Mark I.

          • Boothe, we can’t all be perfect. Some people are simply always “right”. Ol’ Hick is one of them, will never admit he could be wrong about ANYTHING. dom, I was on a break and doing some reflecting. My barn got all twisted in 2000 from a tornado like we almost got day before yesterday. I dug 3 1/2′ holes, put in pipe with a plate on top everywhere for piers, turned out I probably should have used 12″ H beam with a plate both ends and a hole 5′ deep. Well, I thought to myself, I was just 36 at the time I built it, still young, dumb and full of cum, Mr. Happy all too often dictating my direction so to speak. And then I came back and read your post. But at 36 I was younger and dumber than you no doubt and I’m not being facetious. I can admit it. But then again, life is a “live and learn” proposition. How could I have known a tornado would pull the uprights hard enough to break the slab and move the piers. I could build one just like it today without that experience and never realize how I could improve the design. It’s not uncommon for me to come across people half my age with better judgement and much better educated.

          • Boothe, you got it. In the last 3 months the Fed has “created” and “injected” in this order, another $85B, $95B and $100B into our “economy”. Doesn’t sound very economical and is another nail in the coffin. I’ll wait to see how much is injected next month but I’d bet in the next 12 months it will be well over a trillion dollars. Not even an amount a person can comprehend….unless a fair chunk if going right into one of your offshore accounts.

          • @dom–

            LOL “High function retard”

            God I hope Hickory comes back. I haven’t felt my invective rise like that since that anti-gun clover retard was on a while back.

          • Yeah Eightsouthman, the key is to learn from our mistakes…and not repeat them. Sometimes my wife will tell me that when I build something or put something together that my methods are overkill. Maybe so. But I’ve had enough past experience to have a pretty good idea what will work and hold up in physical reality and what won’t. And like most male members of Home Sapiens, I was considerably more knowledgeable and intelligent at 16 than I was at 36. Now at 54 I realize how little I really do know and how insignificant I am in the overall scheme of things. What I can’t abide is an arrogant ass that has lived long enough that he ought to know better than to mind other people’s business, like Ol’ Shittery.

            As Eric has pointed out many times, what amounts to a safe speed for me to operate a motorcycle at may be considerably higher or lower than the next guy. As long as the next guy isn’t harming me, which includes impeding me, no problem. But when he refuses to look in the rearview mirror and see what’s coming up from behind him, whether in life or on the road, I have no sympathy for him. If I’m hauling a load or driving slowly for any reason and look back to see a line of fellow motorists (or even a couple), I pull over and let them pass. I don’t have a wet dream about speed limiters.

            I don’t claim to have all the answers either. I can only tell you what has workded (or hasn’t) for me. But YMMV since we are all individuals and should be treated as such. But I do know this; liberty, the free exchange of ideas, live and let live or the NAP if you prefer and the free market all work for the benefit of the invidual. Are these things perfect? No, because humans are involved. But they beat the kind of totalitarian control like speed limiters and security cameras in every bathroom that Ol’ Shittery gets a woody over (with the help of a little blue pill of course).

            There’s another thing I’ve learned too. We are here to learn…and be productive…until we are no longer able. So never intend to retire or become “bone idle” which is a better description. Instead of bitching because some of us dare to (safely) drive faster than Ol’ Shittery thinks we should, he should be doing something that benefits his fellow man. We are only as good as we are for the day. What we’ve done in the past is history. If you think you’re too old or unable to contribute, take a look a Prof. Stephen Hawking, then get back to me.

          • Boothe, I’m sure you’re aware of nobody wanting to hear your ruminations without a moniker in front of your name. It’s one reason I enjoy this forum so much. Smart people who know there is someone smarter everywhere and don’t feel the need to be better than the next guy. Yes, I tend to build everything overkill and my wife too will look at something I have built and I’ll be deep in thought about it and she’ll ask “do you think it’s stout enough?” and like I say, I’m deep in thought about it and won’t even detect the sarcasm and just say “Well, I would really liked to have used some heavier stuff on that part” and she’ll make some noise and then I’ll realize. My cousin who designs airplanes gets a kick out of my “designs” since everything on a plane has to be as light as possible. One pound over the lifetime of a plane can cost huge amounts of fuel. Some of what I build is designed for moving and some isn’t. About 20 years ago I built some working pens for cattle. I decided I wouldn’t be the one standing there watching cattle disappear who went over the top so the bottom of my top rail made out of 2 3/8″ upset tubing was 6.5′ off the ground. Everybody would kid me, What are you holding in, giraffe’s, etc.? The first time we worked cattle a 900 lb. heifer, crazy as a loon, just nearly got over that rail and my neighbor who had a 6′ tall top rail said “Wish I had used that extra 8 1/2″ you did”. Hell, that was one reason I did it. I think it was that heifer and another one that went over his top rail. No substitute sometimes for experience. I built a crowding chute on a circular concept so that a solid steel gate swinging from the center ran beside a solid plate in a circular fashion with a spring loaded bar with a follower that drug along the plate on the outside would only let that gate go one way and not make noise to freak them out. The first time I used it I kept pushing and pushing, getting them tight enough I could just get on top of them and they couldn’t get away except the old wise one’s who had learned to fall down but those were rare and about to be someone else’s cattle too. I stopped to see how tight they were and a couple grown cows were on top of several others. I backed it off and smiled, a small victory. One of the best things, it was safe for me. No matter how many thousands of pounds of crazy cows were pushing on it, it didn’t budge in my direction. I hit a good lick now and again. My wife worked cattle by herself on crutches in those pens. I couldn’t believe it. She said she didn’t know when I’d be home which was true. Think I got in about 2 am that day, typical day for me.

          • Dom, that’s really wild. My dad was a gunsmith in business for himself for many years and taught me a lot. He was the ultimate autodidact and decided to become an archaeologist. And he did so successfully, not only with no college degree, but he grew up in the depression and never went to a day of school in his life. After a disgusting go ’round with the bureaucracy at W&M he set up his own private foundation. Not bad for a man with no “formal education.”

            This is why I have so little patience with people that whine that they can’t do this or do that or worse, they’re “disabled” when they aren’t. An EBT recipient that’s 160 lbs. overweight riding the smart-cart down the cookie aisle at WalMart ain’t disabled in my book. She be fat, lazy and idle.

            As far as the service goes, I thought about joining, but I went in the Air Force instead. Ha! I had enough friends and acquaintances that has been leathernecks and related their experiences to me that I didn’t even look at the Marine recruiter as I passed his doorway. I mainly joined Uncle Sam’s Airplane Club because (a) at 17 I wanted out of the house, and (B) various members of my family encouraged me to do so. Unfortunately, I’d been taught to think critically and question everything while I was quite young. That gave me a particulary cynical outlook on what I saw going on in the military. They screwed my head up pretty good in basic training, but they never managed to take that away from me. Being able to discern the truth and point it out to my superiors was a career limiting characteristic to say the least.

            As far as Ol’ Shittery Stick being a real person, who knows. Maybe. I’ve seen some dyed in the wool USA flag waving “I’ve paid my dues, now you owe me!” assholes like him that are still in their 20’s and 30’s. Remember mind control works very well on 20% of the population. So if the ministry of propaganda is doing its job, 1 in 5 of our friends and neighbors believe the official party line to be the gospel truth. It’s sad to say the least. But a high functioning retard? Even they can often be reasoned with and shown the truth. If Ol’ Shittery is a real person, he’s intentionally delusional and you won’t get his head out of the dark smelly orifice it’s buried in with crowbar and chain hoist.

          • I thought of the old man & Clover when I read this bit:

            “That’s the comment of a human turning into a machine. A machine that spits out “reasonable” observations….

            This is all about operant conditioning, and the goal is to make a free and independent human into a socialized mechanism.

            What’s called New Age Philosophy, this part of it, was created intentionally, as an op, to generate passive acceptance masquerading as higher consciousness. Socialization. An underpinning for the succeeding wave of political correctness.” …

            http://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/the-toy-gun-arrests-use-actors/

            When I ask people why they don’t home-school their children they all say (like parrots) “socialization” now I have a better grasp of what they mean by that. Sick and twisted, a.k.a. what it means to be a Pod Person.

          • ” You think Hickory is a real person”

            Real person, yeah, but not the person he’s trying to pretend to be. He’s no old coot. I’m an old coot, and I doubt he’s my age or older.

            I think he’s the same asshole who pretended to be a German one day and a Canadian the next, back during the winter.

            Remember that asshole? he wrote in this fake broken English in one post, then started writing in clear English later on.

            Check it out: nobody I know of who was in combat in Vietnam refers to the experience as “getting my ass shot off in the jungles of Vietnam”.

            Hick thinks he’s slick, but he’s just scummy.

          • “Fake” internet posters are an amazing thing.

            Here’s hoping I live to see the day (if it comes) of the downfall of the outrageous police state, and get to read the exposed files of how the government trains these people.

            Some might just be people in some confusing state of their “wake up” process, but I doubt it. Especially a place like this where your first comments have to be “approved” unlike public forums like youtube where all you need is an already active account to post all the dumb bullshit you want.

            Some come off real aggressive with their “facts” and opinions from the start, while others are slower at first… once pushed and prodded by real people with real knowledge, real emotion, and real curiosity, “they” all end up exposing themselves by repeating the same garbage as if they actually believe it.

            I don’t think they actually believe any of it, “they” are just playing the role they were trained to do, and probably laugh their asses off when they successfully create infighting or just overall disturbance to the conversation that was attempting to take place by actual real people.

            Same subject I suppose, but this shit reminds me bullshit television shows where they “expose” how certain gangs operate or were “infiltrated by brave government workers posing as equals”. To those actually there, yeah that snitch may have been around to hear this or that, but the story they’re telling in front of the camera is almost complete bullshit. The only thing not bullshit is their presence at certain times (whether it be “yeah I was on that forum when this was said” or “yeah I was there when that went down”…) what they fail to come clean about (amongst many other things) is that they were insignificant. Their presence doesn’t/didn’t mean shit, it could have been anyone who simply wanted to be there, but as long as the zombie public that thinks “being amongst those bad people” is a victory in and of itself, the snitch gets to rattle off their version of the story and program the zombies with whatever bullshit they want. “We” are the bad people for not trusting the government, “they” are somewhere bragging about how they were able to slip into “our” conversations…and if the person “they” are talking to still gives a shit, now “they” can say how those conversations went down without any actual thought process from the person (zombie) they’re talking to.

            I doubt too many people here listen to rap music, but it’s no wonder the past decade-ish of mainstream rap (in lock step with the mainstream of everything else) has severely steered away from the “187 on an undercover cop” and “snitches get stitches” mottos. Now it’s nothing but “doing unsustainable drugs is really cool” and “holy shit, a black man named Barack is president, we should all strive to be powerful government employees…and it starts with doing what the government tells you!” Even Snoop Dogg came out recently in favor of strict gun control…you know, the Snoop Dogg who is made famous by his claims to be a gang member and murderer?

            Holy shit we’re so fucking screwed and I can’t help but laugh, and type about it…

          • Jacob “Even Snoop Dogg came out recently in favor of strict gun control…you know, the Snoop Dogg who is made famous by his claims to be a gang member and murderer?” Say bro, where you been? Didn’t you know Snoop Dogg became a Rastafarian last year? Sho nuff, done got him sum “religion”. Now he be Snoop Lion, Rasta’s didn’t like Dogg, dogg be bad. I decided not to tel my pit bull….but I will if Snoop Dogg shows up. I tried to contact the author of the article but it was MSM. See, I want to convert too but they left no forwarding address, no phone number, no email, nuttin. If anyone knows who I can contact, Please let me know. Reckon you have to send a pic? All the Rasta’s meetin me at the airport, I walk up, they keep lookin to see a brother. Can’t see no bro. Then I light up a big spliff and try to give it to them but they’re lookin for a bro. Get outta our face man, you old honkey fool with no hair, we lookin for our bro. Ever seen an old bald white man with the Ratas?

          • Haha fuck yea man. Biggest misconception the mainstream tries to show is that weed is for “brown” people. Makes me think of the scene in American History X where Edward Norton’s character says “weed is for niggers”. Weed is for farmers who know how to have a good time, and in America I’m sure the bomb shit finds its way to the rappers so they can make kiss ass songs about it, but the real bomb is being cultivated and smoked by the good ol boys. Where’s the rap song about meeting up with hardcore farmers who shoot trespassers, feed them to their pigs while taking bong hits? If those songs are out their, they’re buried deep underneath the bullshit.

    • This has to be an intentional troll post.

      If you clovers went the speed limit it would be an improvement!

      Thanks for the demonstration of the control freak selfish lazy minded american that’s ruined the idea of freedom and naturally cooperative society.

    • That’s it. I’m cutting you off; I’m increasing my dependents on my 1040EZ form.

      There goes your Socialist Security Check fuck-nut.

      By the way, how does it make you feel knowing you’re living on stolen goods?

      Just as a side note: yesterday morning on my way to the gun range, I hit 145. Average over twelve miles? 104. You’re not quick enough for me, see; I’m younger and have better reflexes.

      By the way Boomer, good job fucking up the country on your watch. All those cute little laws you passed? Yeah, that sound of the country collapsing around you–YOU caused that.

      Good work.

      Go drink some fluoride water, take some statins, have a flu shot. I’m tired of paying for your lazy apathetic ass.

  11. How about the flatlander Clover – the one that accelerates to 90 in the limited passing zones on two-lane roads, only to slow down radically to around 35 when the come to a corner. Or the ones that refuse to use the rare third lane, which has a sign posted stating: Slower traffic must use turnout.”

    Then the asshole will abruptly jam on his or her brakes and use some unsafe turnout to FINALLY let the huge stream of traffic pass.

  12. Dunno @ the “cop bedazzled” clover, the cop on the other side of the road could zap you w/radar and either come after you or radio his buddy a mile down the road. So I let off the gas when I see him on the other side of the road. That is in part because….

    I am honestly amazed that cops come out of absolutely f@#&’ng nowhere and pull people over! I’d like to think I’m an aware driver, but every time (for the last few times) I’ve seen cops pull people over, I absolutely do not know where they came from!

  13. I love this site. I’ve have been meaning to comment on the boulder in the middle of the river clover (BITMOTRC; bit-mo-tric). I live 25+ miles south of DC, where I95 downsizes to three lanes. Inevitably, there will be some turd doing 50-55 in the middle lane, (the limit is 65), causing most to pass him, either left or right lane, whichever is available. I suppose for NVA this is minor league, since we are after all the heavyweight champs of worm-like driving, but WTF, you see DUMP TRUCKS passing you on the right and…nothing, just la-dee-da down the middle of the damn road.

    One more thought, is anyone noticing increased dumping by the roadside? I commute through southern Fairfax Co., some pretty nice neighborhoods, and not lacking for cops, yet it seems like there is a full black trash bag every 100-150 yards on the shoulder. Just wondering if that is going on elsewhere.

  14. Step 1: Remove all regulatory signs and markings from government roads
    Step 2: Repeal all laws having to do with the use of roads
    Step 3: Sell the roads to the highest bidders
    Step 4: Repeat steps 1, 2 and 3 with schools

  15. I am a Clover. I drive the speed limit. I am not in a hurry. If you are in a hurry, that is your problem, not mine. If you want to get there sooner, leave earlier.

    • Isaac,

      I don’t have any issue with your driving whatever speed you’re comfortable driving – provided you don’t expect others to drive that speed. If you stay right and yield to faster-moving traffic, then you are not a Clover (and I will remove the green badge from your original post).

      • I make every effort to NOT impede faster drivers. I have no problem with speeders. In most cases, posted speed limits are well under what they could…and should…be. Speed does NOT kill; speed inappropriate for the conditions kills.

        • Well-said, Isaac – I have removed the Clover!

          You’re absolutely right about speed limits – they are virtually meaningless as far as conveying information about the maximum reasonable speed for a given road – because (among other reasons) driver skill and vehicle capabilities vary tremendously. The myopic 85-year-old in his ’87 Buick Century might be pushing it – himself, especially – at 45 in a posted 55. But an excellent driver in a modern sport sedan could safely/reasonably operate at 70 (or faster) on that same road with less likelihood of an “accident” occurring. Yet the system imposes a one-size-fits all, dumbed-down and very arbitrary “limit” on everyone – and punishes people whose driving cannot be faulted, except that they were operating at a velocity higher than the aforesand one-size-fits all, dumbed-down and very arbitrary “limit.”

          It’s both unfair – and stupid.

          And more and more, it’s almost entirely about revenue – about grabbing as much money as possible from motorists on the shabbiest of pretexts.

          I don’t believe there ought to be any speed limits – as statutes, at any rate. I have no problem with posting signs for informational purposes (in particular, so that people unfamiliar with a given road will be aware that up ahead are some curves and that slowing to say 45 might be prudent).

          But I’m opposed to ticketing – that is, stopping people at gunpoint and issuing them onerous fines – merely because they drove “x” speed. As such, that amounts to a victimless crime – which means, a non-crime.

          People only deserve punishment – to be held accountable for what they do – when they’ve actually done something that causes harm. Not “might.” Not “could.” But did cause harm.

          If I lose control of my car because of excessive speed or any other factor within my control – then by all means, hold me responsible for whatever damage I cause. But enough already with punishing people for “speeding” – and all the other BS.

  16. I don’t care how you drive, as long as you get out of my way.

    Of course I’m drunk, what do ya think I am, a stunt driver.

    If ya don’t like the way I drive then get off the sidewalk.

    • Exactly charlie. Don’t bitch about being hit with a beer bottle if you’re going to stand beside that road sign. When I was a teen we were driving and drinking, just the regular thing. This long armed buddy of mine slung a quart bottle from the drivers window at this big road sign. It hit, thunk, so we turned around and went back. It looked like the plywood had been hole-sawed and the bottle lined up with a square and level. Most perfect thing I ever saw. We tried to find a camera but by the next day when we did, the hiway dept. had removed it. Dammit!!

  17. Heh. Here I am, pushing eighty years old, and still bitching about “mobile impediments”. Even the young types seem to be afraid of corners–but they’re pure burning hell on the straights.

    Absent oncoming traffic, I will ooch over when passing bicyclists; I treat all of them as being wobbly ten-year-olds.

    The doofi who swing left before turning right? We used to call those “hay-wagon turns”. BTDT, seventy years ago with a real hay-wagon. Not necessary, today. 🙂

    Oh, well. “Life begins at 180.” Trouble is, Dudley Do-right gets all excited about it.

    • Desertrat, seems like people who rode all their life with a sorry driver ended up driving that way. You could put them in a class and go on the road and teach them how to drive, how to stop for a stop sign, look both ways and then take off, do all the right things but turn them loose and it’s right back to the way grand dad drove. I knew an entire family who made “hay-wagon” turns cause grandpa did it, dad did it and the kids did it. Back when the dinosaurs roamed and I took my DL, you did in the Hiway patrol car with the trooper as passenger telling you what turns to make, etc. I got to this notorious intersection with a church on one side and a lumberyard on the other. There would be cars parked double deep on both sides and there was constantly someone having a fender bender there. I get to the stop sign and then let off the brake(but I was watching behind me)and oozed out to where I could sorta see both ways beyond all the cars and then eased on across. That was my demerit on the test, the only one. He said I shouldn’t stop twice. I’d agree on a normal intersection but I’d been seeing wrecks there my whole life. He didn’t know it but I’d been driving 2 years anyway and turning 14 was just a formality. It meant I could start driving trucks for my uncles too even though I drove them around town. I think most of the bad driving is never having had someone teach you how to drive properly BEFORE you got to driver’s ed. It was too late by then. No problem knocking off the kids who had been taught to drive really early in life and those who hadn’t.

  18. The Clover State, aka Rhode Island. WARNING! Watch what you’re doing and never ride a motorcycle in Rhode Island, where the right of way is actually granted to those with no right of way. Example: you’re tooling down a four-lane road at 45 MPH, the posted limit and the Rhode Island Clover is pulling out of one of the four Dunkin’ Donuts at an intersection. They stop at the edge of the road, look at you coming fifty feet away, then slowly waddle out not only into your lane, but drift across to the left lane blocking your access to avoid slamming into them.

    To make matters worse, other Rhode Island Clovers will be in the right lane and slow to a stop if necessary to grant the other the right of way. Of course you think they are turning with the No Signal Clover Maneuver, so you slow down and move to the left lane to pass them only to be cut off by the original clover, without the right of way, drifting into your lane at 15 MPH.

    The good news is that Rhode Island is so small you can drive across the state in 45 min diagonally the long way on a interstate and avoid the local clovers, but if you happen to get on a local road or one of them escapes the state and travels to your state be ready for a close up sighting of the Great Rhode Island Clover.

          • It is the name of the gun “accessory” required by law by these morons: you can see immediately if the gun is loaded.

            Hilarity ensued…
            But not nearly enough dead liberals/progressives…

          • Well, although I do not post every day here, I think most of you know that this Rhode Island raised current Masshole is no Clover!

          • I don’t mind the Massholes (NH here) as they are at least predictable. Weird Masshole habit? They will preferentially pass on the right even when there is ample opportunity to do so on the left.

            Rhode Island, however… There is no telling what they will pull.

            I tend to point out Clover behavior while driving, especially the intentionally hindering type, and my gf always thought I was being paranoid. Then a RI Clover showed her otherwise.

            I was overtaking a car in the left middle lane on 95N, so I checked my mirrors and blind spot and signaled my lane change. Clover, in an old pickup, didn’t like that and tried to accelerate to prevent my lane change. He failed. Enraged, her proceeded to tailgate me, followed by racing up ahead on the right before cutting back in 4 cars ahead.

            Long story short, as the traffic between us moved right, her began stomping on his brakes and then veering across lanes to prevent me from passing him.

            Eventually I got my opening and left him behind, with the puff of black exhaust from his tailpipe showing his desperation to catch me.

            The gf was shocked at his display and since has begun to notice the things I’ve so often pointed out.

      • “Do not for get their close relatives the Massholes.”

        Or their cousins, the Dela-where-the-fuck-are-wes.

        Dumbest, but most self-impressed know it alls you’ll ever encounter.

    • Hi Steve,

      That used to be true – but in my experience, at least, it seems to changing. Perhaps because those brands are increasingly not Olde Farte Cars (especially Cadillac).

      Around here’s, it’s PT Cruisers and any minivan with gimp tags.

      • I was running roofing crews in ’07 in Coleman Texas, a repository for those who can’t or won’t or both. Streets clogged with people in electric wheelchairs and are blind but the drivers are even worse. After I’d nearly run over 50 or so I saw a definite trend, the new Caddy driving clover that would get you killed were driving Camry’s. Come on a white Camry, get ready to dodge.

  19. All true. But, in Pennsylvania, the school zone speed limit is a ridiculously low 15 mph!!! I could run faster than that! Some school zones are a couple of hundred yards long, too. And there are almost NEVER ANY STINKIN’ KIDS visible where I live (suburbs), since 99% of them get door-to-door school bus rides–on my dime (I don’t have kids)!

  20. Simply amazing that most here seem to be ignorant of one basic Fact- YOU don’t own the bloody roads you on which you drive. Hence, your vented spleen(s) over ‘clovers’ (young/old/good/bad/indifferent) who violate your sacred need for speed and ‘waste’ your precious Time come across as nothing more than the immature ravings of spoiled children. Get used to the idea-Clover

    1) YOU do not own the roads.

    2) Other folks following the rules established by the Owners of the roads have no obligation to get out of your way so that you may violate the rules established by the Owners.Clover

    3) YOUR time has ZERO value to the rest of us. Hey, ya want us old farts to stay off the commons aka public roads during your morning commuter- offer us a fair price to wait for donuts till 9a.m., k. Thats the approach an adult lover of Liberty might take as opposed to the displays by bratty children so common here.Clover

    • 1) Really? Who does own them?

      2) True (if you answered 1 honestly)

      3) “YOUR time has ZERO value to the rest of us. “Inconsideration worthy of a Clover, as evidenced by ” offer us a fair price to wait for donuts till 9a.m”. Clearly you think we should value YOUR time but have no consideration for ours.

    • I know I don’t own the roads, but apparently you and your ilk feel that you do. But here’s a clue neither do you. The roads are not private and you don’t own them. You come off as one of those people who not only doesn’t care about the people behind his car’s B-pillar but enjoys delaying them. Someone who hinders others instead of putting in effort to make things go smoothly.

      It’s not like you and your ilk follow the written rules. Clovers follow what I call for this site, the clover law. It’s this made up version of the vehicle code and backasswards courtesy that’s passed down by word of mouth.

      I encounter it frequently. For instance, this morning I was stuck behind a clover who first held up traffic to let in a wrong lane trucker. Trucker was in the lane to go straight but decided he wanted to turn. So clover in the SUV holds up the entire queue for this trucker. Bonus… two lane road for the next three miles. But that’s not enough, we round the corner and there’s a driveway. What does this clover do? Lets in another driver… and then that’s not enough… he lets in a landscaping truck. It’s classic american charity and courtesy. Help person A at the expense of persons B,C,D,E,F….

      Consequence? Waiting another red signal. The first truck is long gone now… as is the driver of the car he let in. But it’s a landscaping truck so now we get to crawl for the next few miles and catch more red signals. All because the clover law runs contrary to the written law.

      I could make more examples… like stop signs. Or bicycling. I’ve had your ilk run me off the road because their idea of the rules was bicyclists don’t get to use the road or have to do this or that. They were enraged and were going to enforce the law as they saw it. I follow the written law but clovers rarely follow the written law. They don’t even know what the written law is. They’ve never even read it.

      As to 3), well exactly. You have no real respect for your fellow man. It’s all about you. Everyone else just has to go with your opinion of how things should be. Thanks for confirming that. It’s all about your comfort and everyone else accommodating you instead of efficient travel per the written rules of interaction.

      The written vehicle code in most US states is not unlike that in Germany. Yet Germans actually follow it. IME clover drivers just did not exist there. That’s all I want, people to follow the written law and basic courtesy for those behind them for efficient traffic flow.

      • Yes, there is nothing more discourteous then this arrogant courtesy that clovers practice. The most courteous thing a driver can do is follow the rules. “Letting someone in” is something a clover considers to be courteous but actually it is being rude, because it interrupts flow of traffic. It is discourteous to EVERYONE else, but Clover derives an actual sense of power by disturbing everyone elses driving in order to “help” someone.

        • Charlie,

          You got me thinking…

          “Clover derives an actual sense of power by disturbing everyone elses driving in order to “help” someone. ”

          It’s of a piece with Clover’s desire to “help” others …. with someone else’s money. With him getting the satisfaction of exerting control over others.

    • Alrighty then, Mikefromwichita. It doesn’t surprise me that you’re a denizen of the “Free Soil” state. Your predecessors arriving in Kansas for the “free” land, were some of the original forward contingents of the FSA. Some things never change. I presume that since you identify with the “oldster roadster” set that you are collecting socialist security payments. If you are, then you are receiving stolen property, taken from the rest of us under duress. Sorry bud, but what you paid in to the SS Ponzi scheme “back in the day” is long gone and spent for other things, so it ain’t your money your living on now. That means your “commons” are being paid for by my productive contemporaries and me. Even if you buy gas and pay the road tax, you’re most likely using other people’s money to do so. So unless and until you can keep your fricken hands off my paycheck, you’d best shut your pie hole about the commons.

      The problem with folks like you is that on the one hand you want this nation to be a “democracy”, which would mean that all of us own the roads equally. We should therefore share and share alike, taking into consideration the time and the feelings of the people around us (especially when they are on their way to work to keep idle folks like you well fattened on the dole). But when it suits you, you refer to some ethereal “Owners” of the roads that make the rules, by which we may safely infer that you refer to your sacred “government.” Government from the courthouse to the Whitehouse is, has been and forever shall be corrupt. That’s a fact. Why? Because it is inhabited by people; and people are all too often an imperfect, selfish, greedy, lazy, vengeful and power lusting lot. Worse yet, positions of authority tend to attract the worst of the worst, since they can often operate lawlessly from a position of authority with utter impunity. People like you just “toe the line”, accept the status quo and go along to get along because it’s easier than calling an Ace and Ace. All the while you want to lecture those of us that yet retain a spark of the rebellious, individualistic and innovative spirit that made this a once great nation. You and your ilk make me want to puke.

      Your problem is you’ve managed to comfortably survive this long, so you think you have all the answers to what’s right in life. Everyone should follow your lead. There’s only two ways to do things: Mikefromwichita’s way and the wrong way. Correct? So frankly Mikefromwichita, you’ve given me one more reason to blow past vehicles with Kansas plates from now on: maybe you’ll be the pissed off clover watching my tail light disappear in front of you. Oh and don’t forget your insulin after you have that next donut. We don’t want to have to pick up the tab for an ER visit along with the rest of your medical bills. Have a nice FSA day you (presumably) inconsiderate free loader.

    • ” YOU don’t own the bloody roads you on which you drive.”

      Well, you don’t own this blog. Don’t be surprised if the blog owner exercises his right to ban you and nuke your rude post.

    • I can smell the prune juice and Depends from here…..
      But let’s just hit a few more points here:

      1) You CLOVERS don’t own the roads either.

      2) You CLOVERS are not Auxilleries of the police, no matter what you think.

      3) It isn’t about a “need for speed”, as you so derisively put it. It’s about getting from Point A to Point B without being intentionally (or unintentionally) hampered, delayed or thwarted by a self-styled clovish “enforcer” of “the law”, simply because the clover says: “I don’t think they should be allowed to do that”.

      4) The problem isn’t slower, older, or cautious drivers. The problem are drivers who think it’s their God-given right and duty as a citizen to try and force “them dang speeders” to travel at a speed the clover deems as “safe”.

      5) Cloverism is a disease……..not only of the mind, but of the heart and soul. It is a cancer, a deep, infectious rot that needs to be cut out and tossed away forever. If I had a device that could direct a narrow, concentrated beam of electromagnetic energy up to a range of, say, 100 yards, I would spend my days gleefully zapping clovermobiles, frying their electrical systems to wipe them from the roads.

      6) Mikefromwichita, the fact that you make the typical cloverish declaration that “your time has zero value to the rest of us” shows every non-clover here what a sanctimonious, self-absorbed, narcissistic, dentu-creme wearing, self-loathing clover-prick you really are.

      In closing……far too many times I have been burned by clovers like you. Far too many times I have let the clover in, let the clover go first, given the clover a break. But no more. It’s Game-On, clover. Time to punch your ticket.

    • Obviously a Communist Brit transplanted here. I don’t know what to tell them. Everybody in Texas is armed to the teeth. We didn’t just roll over as the heirs of a feudal system and palaver at the feet of our “governor”. At least native clovers are courteous, something I can’t say for most of the alien crowd except for Indians, very nice people who understand. Common sense…whaaaaa?

    • “Simply amazing that most here seem to be ignorant of one basic Fact- YOU don’t own the bloody roads you on which you drive.”

      Mikefromwichita, I don’t expect a more untrue statement from anyone else here. In essence, roads were created in fee simple and we can’t be charged to use them, or park on them.

      This began with the enforcement of the Magna Carta (England) in 1215, allowing non-servants free right to use public roads to travel.

      These days, our multitudes of taxes from many sources pay to build and maintain them. EVERYONE is a shareholder in every road, unless it is on private land.

      Good luck with your argument 😉

  21. Where are the CLOVERS!!!??? I never see them here any more, i.e. I don’t see the clover icon.
    Come back Clovers and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Give us drama!

  22. I experienced the checkout line Clover. it was after the workday when many folks will zip into the store to grab something quick to make for dinner. I didn’t have a whole lot of stuff, but it was enough to fill about 3/4 of the belt. There was this chick in front who had just finished being rung up and she hands the clerk a stack of about 150 $1.00 coupons. Clerk calls the manager, they all haggle on whether or not the coupons can be accepted, with the final decision that they can be accepted.

    As the line behind me starts to grow longer, the clerk starts to ring the coupons and immediately they are being rejected. Back comes the manager to try and fix the problem. By this time, I’m livid. it’s been over ten minutes, I line-locked so I can’ pack up my cart to go to another line. I look at the manager and ask “What about the rest of us?” Nothing.

    So I said fuck it and left whispering “You stupid inconsiderate twit” in the clueless dumbass Clover’s ear.

    • In my part of the world is “no habla English” and they go to the ten item or less and have a full cart. The clerks never have the ability to tell them to go to another check-out, a management decision since they don’t want to lose that wild ass looking Texas credit card I pay for.

  23. The poetic justice clover (story in Norwegian, Google translate works well enough to give you a good idea):

    http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Anmelder-UP-for-politivold-7195753.html#.UYyR5LVHJ8F

    A clover sees a black Mercedes driving fast and changing lanes “erratically.” Clover pursues black Mercedes, proceeds to take photographs of the offensive vehicle and phones the police to report the driver. Black Mercedes realizes it is being followed and slows to a crawl. Clover then stops the car, upon which the car lights up its hidden blue flashers in the grill, revealing it to be an undercover police car. Clover is taken off guard. The police approach the car and clover tells them he has photographs of them. The police beat him in the face and steal his phone. Clover naturally reports the incident to the police. The police put the officers under investigation and charge clover with numerous traffic violations committed during his pursuit.

  24. The ones that bother me the most are the refuses-to-use-his-turn-signal Clover. I hate it when I’m cruising along and all of a sudden the douche in front of me slams on is breaks, without any warning, and makes a turn into a lot. these guys piss me off the most because if I don’t react quickly enough and hit them, I would be the one that gets stuck with the ticket because of the way the idiotic traffic laws are written.

  25. My favorite is the clover who drives in the middle of the road when it’s icy out. They don’t want to put one tire near the shoulder so they drive with one tire on the yellow line or even slightly in your lane. It’s usually some jackwad in a truck big enough to hold three cars. Now here I am having to drive on the shoulder to avoid them. One lane is apparently not big enough for their over-sized manly man truck that they need because they are afraid of going in the ditch. How they would end up in the ditch when they are afraid of getting within ten feet of it is beyond me but somehow they do because I see them in the ditch fairly often. Once in a while I stop and show them how the four wheel drive works and save them the cost of a wrecker.

    • Agree, Brad!

      This is entirely anecdotal – but some of the bar-none worst Clovers in my area are the ones inside brand-new or nearly new high-end SUVS. The more expensive – the worse the Clover. It’s an axiom.

      • When I was a teen in the 1960s, my friends and I agreed with the axiom that many Cadillac driver’s reality was, “As a matter of fact, I do own the road.”

      • Yep same around here. It’s not the guys in big older trucks that you have to look out for. It’s the new SUV owners. Totally clueless for the most part.

        • It is a tragedy on the order of the Hindenburg that trucks and 4x4s (now called “SUVs”) have been dumbed-down/made idiot-proof… for the sake of idiots who have no business driving a truck or a 4×4.

          Mandatory threes on the tree and no power steering steering and manual-lock hubs would fix it, though.

      • eric, I live in SUV country. And it’s for a good reason. It’s the SUV’s that can stand the heat, a/c wise and otherwise. It’s the SUV’s that can haul lots of weight, a must if you’re going to haul groceries from 60 or more miles away. They do serve a purpose. Unfortunately, most people who drive them don’t realize their sorry handling abilities. I’m terrified of young women with kids in SUV’s or a more common vehicle, the crewcab, 3/4 ton, 4 WD pickup(always a short bed, a useless SOB…and that’s how you can tell the people who have need of one and the ones who don’t….a long bed is a must to someone getting a job done). These people are doing everything but driving including texting and screaming at kids. But they’re no worse than the clovers who do some really stupid stuff at stop signs, intersections where you’re trying to turn off a 4 lane road across an access road or simply trying to maneuver through a crowded intersection with an on ramp or off ramp. Texas doesn’t have a lock on stupid but we’re trying. Actually, the POS fools on the hill are trying. The only thing I can get from the state is a jail cell but an illegal alien can get everything they need plus a vehicle they don’t know how to drive never having had one before going on the dole. And then the geriatric crowd is simply amazing. I’m not speaking of people older than I, often younger, but finger up ass and heads in the meds. They’ll sit there and wait it out with you, trying to get you to go in a situation where they have the right of way and so does everyone else going in their direction but they want to send you out there because they’re not sure if they want to turn or go straight and they’d just rather you go on and leave them to clog the road. The thing they don’t seem to understand is if you accept their invitation, there are other drivers who have no idea you’ve just been granted a path across theirs when the signs say just the opposite. It’s maddening, so much so that on week-ends I NEVER get on the road unless I have to. And now we have the 82nd Airborne crowd in the sheriff and police cars who don’t car who they get to beat to death, just so long as they get to beat someone to death. Don’t jack with these guys unless you’re willing to simply take the chance of killing them and forgetting it ever happened. Things are not getting better. Another big reason is crowding. The more you crowd any animal, the more aggressive it becomes. I realize I’m really lucky I don’t have to negotiate BIG cities regularly. The more people you have in one place, the less feeling there is of being at one with your neighbor. It translates directly to driving.

  26. Re: concrete barrier clover. Sometimes Cloverlike behaviour is mandated by law. For example, where I live it is the law that there must be a minimum of three feet between you and a bicyclist when passing. Sounds great, but there are some places where this is essentially impossible due to people being parked on both sides of a relatively narrow street. So you have three choices, none of which are good (or totally legal): pass the guy and hope he doesn’t get your license plate number and report you; pass with a three-foot space between by crossing the line to do so; or, worst, simply slow down and ride behind the bicycle until he either moves over or decides to turn onto another street.

    Keep in mind that Clovers ride bicycles, too, and some get a cheap woody out of making the drivers of cars uncomfortable. I have passed Clovers on bicycles with plenty of room to spare, only to have them turn in and narrow the gap at the last minute with a smirk on their faces.

    This is not to defend Cloverific behaviour, just to explain a special case of it. Doesn’t mean we have to like it, though.

    • If you can’t get a three foot separation you shouldn’t be passing a bicyclist. Long before this law became popular it was still the rule of the day. Getting closer than that is really being an ass. Motorists don’t normally don’t pass each other tighter than that at speed. It can, depending on what motor vehicle is, destabilizing to the bicyclist as well.

      If you’re on a narrow residential street with parked cars on both sides prudent driving means not going faster than about 15mph, or bicycle speeds, anyway. What amuses me is that a driver will accept the same speed if they are stuck behind a driver but if it’s a bicyclist they become enraged.

  27. Never have passed a cop when I was speeding. Some just get pissed cause you decided to use the “extra” they’d allow but didn’t appreciate getting passed when they were doing the speed limit. If you’re doing that job, I can understand that. I was cruising in my red bomb one day not long before dark doing about 130 and topped this steep little hill only to meet a B&W doing about that same speed. We only had time for the briefest glimpse and that was the end of it. He couldn’t have caught me anyway and didn’t want to try. Obviously if your pushing a huge Plymouth Fury that fast you have some important business, like getting back to the house before the old lady gets mad and catches on you have a girlfriend. I’ve seen that too many times, even knew a guy with a Texas state trooper badge he found beside his bed where his sister in law and a local trooper were often found.

    • Living in NE Illinois means it’s not uncommon to have a cop doing a 120mph to suddenly appear behind you. On rare occasion they appear on my ass between mirror checks. That is not even in visual range a few seconds earlier…. and it’s not like I’m poking along either. I don’t know what crown vic tops out at but they had to be doing that. Never been pulled over by a cop like that.

      Few weeks ago I am just puttering along just over the 55mph in the rightmost lane of I-294 trying to get the radio in the ’12 to play music off the USB stick. Next thing I know there’s a cop on my ass. But looking any typical clover puttering along he passes and goes to bother someone else, then someone else after that… and so on. I then pass the cop and he pulls over the guy he was messing with at that moment. (yes, have it on video, just not all that exciting)

      • Over the course of the past two months, I have purposefully – stealthily – clocked two cops running in excess of 20 over (statutory “reckless” driving in my state) for miles. They were just trundling along – as I do. As many people do. Only they do so with impunity – and hypocrisy. Because they without doubt ticket people like me (who aren’t members of their special fraternity) for doing exactly as they do. Knowing it’s not unsafe.”

        Just because they can.

        Assholes.

        And what really galls me – aside from the blatant hypocrisy/unfairness of it – is that I have almost certainly got more “training” (and possess greater skill behind the wheel) than they do.

        Just as countless millions of mundanes are betters shots – and handle their weapons more responsibly – than America’s Swinest.

  28. “The Cop-Bedazzled Clover”

    I’m proud to be the opposite of this.

    I once passed a State Trooper in IL going about 75 in a posted 55, the cop was doing 70. We were the only two on the road (like 1:00a.m.). He pulled me over, and one of the first things he said was “What, 70 isn’t fast enough for you?” I told him that I didn’t understand what he was getting at and he replied “I was doing 70 and you passed me, so I know you were going faster, that takes balls. We’re trying to save lives out here.” I quickly pointed out that the speed limit clearly wasn’t about “saving lives” at the posted number, which was evident by his actions, driving at 70 and all. He let me go without a speeding ticket.

  29. The Cop-Bedazzled Clover –

    I loved these guys. Anytime they see a cop they do that. Idiots. By the time you spot a cop visually, he’s got you nailed if you’re guilty. Here’s a tip. Roll on by and if he pulls out and puts on the lights, you’re toast, regardless of whether or not you slowed down. So don’t slow down and if he doesn’t pull out….PROFIT!

    • Where the Cop-Bedazzled Clover is concerned, what I wanna know is this : why the heck are they SCARED of cops? After all, aren’t those hero cops their BEST FRIENDS? Even if the almost impossible happens –the cop on the other side of the highway ticketing another motorist suddenly spots Clover doing one MPH over the limit, drops his ticketing pad, jumps into his cruiser, does a U-ey, rockets down opposite lane of highway, pulls Clover over, and writes him a big, fat ticket–, wouldn’t Clover have to admit that he DESERVES that ticket? After all, the law is the law. Clover wouldn’t be pulled over if he wasn’t doing anything wrong, so if the cop saw fit to pull Clover over, then Clover was OBVIOUSLY doing something wrong. And since Clover knows that cops are NEVER wrong, then Clover has no reason to fear his porcine pal in the first place.

      SO tell me again, why does the Cop-Bedazzled Clover exist?

      • I think the problem is you are trying to use logic to diagnose the illogical.

        FWIW, I think the reason is;

        Fluoride, government education and the MSM. The three biggest threats to critical thinking and intelligence today.

        • “Fluoride, government education and the MSM. The three biggest threats to critical thinking and intelligence today.”

          I agree and would like to add a fourth: lack of positive male role models. I suppose that goes hand in hand with the MSM, who show feministic, pill popping douchebags as the “successful” man all men should apparently strive to be.

      • ” why the heck are they SCARED of cops? After all, aren’t those hero cops their BEST FRIENDS?”

        I think that they only pretend to regard cops as heroes, or their BFFs. When they see one while driving the truth pops out, like the dick of the fake nun walking by a whorehouse…remember that joke? 😉

  30. I don’t think the way to ID a clover is safety or impeding others. I think the way to ‘know a clover’ is to understand that they are the people who show reverence for authority. Be it the police officer or the boss… they are the ones that can’t, and won’t, question any edict that comes from their betters.

    The inconvenience visited on all of us is the result of them brown nosing to their rulers by attempting to be the perfect little soldier.

    • Clovers come in all different species and types. The most prevalent type of clover is the idiot tapping on his brakes for no reason or the moron blocking the left lane. They drive cars of all different types, although Houston, Texas Clovers can be found driving Corollas, Camrys or some other model of Toyota. I would say that 80 percent of problem drivers are wheeling around in those conveyances. They are found puttering slowly in the left lane, oblivious to the world around them and think that 65 mph is breaking the sound barrier. Since you can’t ascertain their politics when driving, you have to see them in action. It is very likely that they do revere authority in all its forms. They probably think that TSA gropedowns and scans are okay and think that people ought to get the death penalty for running a red light.

      • I ran into a brake tapper a couple of days ago. Man, Clovers who tap are a royal pain in the ass! I wasn’t sure if she intended to turn, probably without using a turn signal. She also kept varying her speed between 55 and 62. As soon as she hit 62 she would drop back down again to 55. Nothing annoys me more than that, nothing. Due to the nature of the highway I had to follow the bitch for a good ten miles before I turned off. As I did I saw her drift over the double yellow line. I think she was probably drunk and kept hitting the brakes to keep her speed down.

        • My dad’s neighbor, a good friend, took us on a trip with his family one day, about 250 miles. My parents and I and my sister were ready to hitchhike the first time we stopped. He drove along pushing the gas pedal almost to the floor and then back all the way off, moving his foot constantly. Never saw anything like it before or since. Maddening is as close as I can come, parents agreed.

  31. Hey guys, I don’t know if you have mentioned this particular moron. I’ve read all your articles and didn’t see it mentioned. The scared of the merge lane clover. When you are exiting the interstate and say you are turning right to merge into traffic and you have a full lane with quite some distance to merge in to the left. This clover loves to stop at the very front of the lane and sit there waiting for a clearing to get into traffic, which by god seems to be an eternity. I generally try to pull around them when they haven’t entirely blockade me in. Funny enough, once you do that, often times you’ll seem them proceed to monkey your maneuver.

  32. DAMN, Eric, you’re in fine form today! The most beautifully descriptive list of Cloverism you’ve created yet! My sides are still aching (yes, I know, they irritate the living shit out of me too, but why not have a well-deserved laugh at their expense?).

    As far as new Clover subspecies go, how about the “Customer Service/Help Desk Clover.” Now granted, customer service/help desk work is thankless under the best of conditions and people who do it do put up with a lot of unjustified abuse. HOWEVER, I think we have all encountered the CSHD Clover who clearly reads from a prepared script without paying a millisecond’s worth of attention to the input the customer is giving them – even when “the script” is irrelevant to the problem being presented. This is especially maddening when calling an IT Help Desk. Now I get it that there are certain pro forma procedures that need to be followed, but ferchrisesakes LISTEN TO MY PROBLEM FIRST before you launch into your script.

    But no. “The Script” is “The Bible” and has to be followed to the letter, the customer’s actual question or problem be damned.

    On at least fifty percent of those occasions when I have no choice but to call the dreaded “Customer Service” or “Help Desk” number, I get a CSHD Clover. I usually just hand up in frustration within two minutes of making the call.

  33. The School Zone Clovers are trying to make school zones 24-7 in Illinois. This is of course very enabling to the ‘safety zone’ speed cameras. Present Illinois law isn’t technology friendly because school zones are only on ‘school days when children are present’. Hard to make that 26mph in a 30mph zone with a 20mph school zone ticket at 1am under the present rules.

    • BrentP – There is an answer to the speed camera problem: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/40/4086.asp It seems as though the driving public isn’t happy with these infernal contraptions anywhere in the worldl. As you can see at the end of the article, in Poland you can be fined for holding up a sign warning of a speed camera ahead. But rest assured, it’s not for revenue, the camera is there for our saaaafety. Yeah. Right.

      • The idea of the flaming tire around the gatso always seemed humorous to me. I doubt people here in the county of cook will be so rebellious or creative. At first these things will only be in Chicago proper. When I have to enter chicago I’ll just drive 15mph everywhere to be safe you know! 🙂

      • That’s comedy gold right there. It appears non-compliance is alive and well. Gasoline soaked tires must burn really good and hot.

      • Yeah Tor, they burn like a blow-torch and last quite a while. We would go sledding down a particularly steep and curvy hill on a back road at night when I was a kid. The older boys (driving age) would bring various old tires and set them on fire at the top, the middle and bottom of the hill. It gave us enough light to keep us out of the ravine on the side, got rid of the old tires and provided a place to warm up. Nowadays the EPA would probably send a SWAT team…

      • Another good fix is small cans of spray foam insulation. You know, the ones for sealing cracks in the home.

        Find camera, locate any 1/4″ or larger opening, empty can into camera. As it expands and cures, all kinds of good things happen inside the enclosure.

    • That was done in Oregon several years ago. School zones are now enforced 24/7/365 (366 in leap years). The state should change its name to “Cloverland.”

      • Same state that limits you to “double nickels” ALL THE FUCKING LENGTH of 122 miles of US 95 in Malheur County…with but the little hamlet of Jordan Valley with its own speed trap. I avoid it as much as possible.

  34. The prime specimen in my collection is the “Panic Stop for a Curve Clover”. You may have encountered this one. He’s rolling along at his usual 5 mph under the limit cruising speed when he suddenly encounters a curve in the road ahead.

    Something rattling around in the vast open space of his brainbox initiates a panic inducing alarm sequence and he slams on his brakes in order to avoid certain death.

    It’s as though he screams, “OHMIGOD OMIGOD IT’S A CATASTROPHIC CUUUURVE….WE’RE ALL DOOMED!!!”

    Naturally, the only danger realted to the curve is the danger created by his panic stop for reasons discernible to any other driver.

    • There’s a curve on a little used state road that is a nice gradual curve that you can see from a distance and you can see ahead. 35 years or so ago me and my friends used to see how fast we could take it and still stay in our lanes and on all four wheels. I could easily take it at 100 mph in my ’75 Formula 400 Firebird (not that you should, but at 19 years of age it seemed like the thing to do. I haven’t been down that road for several years, but was on it a couple weeks back following someone who took the curve at 35 mph and rode their brake the entire time (the posted speed limit is 55 mph, just like the rest of the highway).

          • Yup!

            With the low axle ratios those mid-late ’70s ‘Birds typically came with (2:41 or so) and that big, high torque 400 (or if you were really lucky, 455) they were very long-legged.

            Mine has been upgraded some. But, alas, what was quick (and fast) when I did the build of the 455 some 15 years ago now is only so-so.

            My car is a mid-high 13 second car. Nothing special anymore….

    • Ed, Ed, OMG, OMG, I found it, just got it in the mail(e), an inflatable 12 foot outdoor movie screen for $146 at Retrevo. Now all you need is a projector, a willing partner and a station wagon. You can pick the weather, time, all the crucial elements for a station wagon moment. As for the movie, I recommend something between The Sound of Music…and The Devil’s Rejects.

        • Ed, we be choppin in high cotton now. Hang on, there’s a van load of 16 year old girls outside chanting my name. I gotta go let em down easy…..again. Maybe I should start smoothing my eyebrows with a comb instead of my tongue.

  35. Don’t forget the Shaneequa playing with herself in the mirror and almost driving off the road clover. Yea baby you are Beyonce look at your fine self in the mirror. I just witnessed this a few minutes ago and the stop-to-make-a-turn clover. I also like the I can’t turn unless the road is completely clear clover. I like them like a kick in the teeth.

    • “Shaneequa playing with herself in the mirror and almost driving off the road clover. ”

      Driving to Atlanta a few months ago, one of that subspecies of clover nearly killed me and those around me on I85. She was in the middle lane and I was coming up to pass her in the left lane, when she just suddenly drifted all the way across the left lane and into the emergency lane and back to the left lane.

      She had BOTH HANDS raised to her hair and her eyes glued to the vanity mirror on her visor. I shit you not. She didn’t respond at all when I hit the horn to let her know she was about to crash. She had a toddler in the rear seat, too.

      All this took place at 70+mph in moderately heavy traffic…. But she sho’nuff looked fine, I gotta say.

      • Hmm… Evil me says you should have passed, pulled into her lane, gently slowed and then nailed the brakes to avoid the cute little squirrel that ran out in front of you.

        Good me says, screw it, I’m with Evil on this one.

        • No way. This was at 70+ mph on a busy interstate. I made a quick downshift to 4th and took the space in the middle lane that she had drifted out of.

          I wasn’t feeling suicidal, or homicidal either for that matter.

          • Sorry, left off the JK tag, thought it obvious.

            However, hypothetically it may have saved someone down the road from being killed by that idiot if her radiator was caved in by your bumper. Having an eye-liner pencil or mascara brush, removed from her eye may have taught her to pay attention to the road in the future too.

            Again, not (seriously) advocating intentionally causing a crash but since it seems likely that she causes near misses like you describe regularly, the sooner she has to be extracted from the twisted wreckage of her mobile beauty salon, the better for all the responsible drivers.

          • “Sorry, left off the JK tag, thought it obvious.”

            Yeah, it was, but I’m kinda dense. 😉 That would have been perfect for a 15 mph situation in dense morning traffic, fer shure.

            A girlfriend of mine, back in the 80s, stuck a mascara brush in her eye while driving to work one morning. When she told me about it, I had to bite a hole in my lip to keep from saying anything that woulda made her feel worse about it.

            Sometimes a man just has to hush up, y’know? I assume that she learned a valuable lesson….. yeah, that’s the ticket.

          • That must be where things went wrong with my third. She ran into the back of a truck putting on makeup. All she could do was blame the guy she ran into for ‘stopping too quickly’, putting on makeup while driving was not the issue. I had not realized just how stupid and self-centered she was until that point. From then on I could not help myself from pointing out every inconsiderate and idiotic thing she did. Apparently pointing out these things is completely unacceptable in a relationship. Who knew?

          • re: Me2:
            They’re ALL that selfish and self-centered.
            LOTS of material in the Manosphere, check it out: Shutting up is no longer an option, politically speaking, it’s shutting up and minding our own business that made us the USSA / Amerikastan.

            This is OUR country. Built by MEN. Not juveniles with a goddess complex.

            From what I read, you’ve been through the wringer twice. Slow learner, sir?

          • Twice?

            Third was some time ago. A few more since then.

            Seems that with any relationship it takes a while for the thin veneer of civility and consideration to peel but inevitably it does and the true personality of the other becomes apparent. Once the ‘me-first, fuck everyone else, how dare you point out “X” no matter how wrong it was’ has been seen, it can not be unseen. I always try to explain this but by that point reason and logic are ignored, so I say “thanks for the fun, good bye!”.

          • re: Me2:
            Thought you’d been married twice and were on teh third; I guess my reading comprehesnion for today is complete “fail.” 😛
            Ah, well.

            And yes – the problem is when you have multiple life-changing problems in a short period of time, and only AFTER the damage is done, do you have the veneer of civility peel off.

            Mine seems to have BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder.) If she were a dog, I’d take her to the vet and put her down… But both our names are on all the big things: The house we own (that I paid/am paying for), the car, the leases, etc. And my funds went to the legal fees for her custody battle, and keeping us alive when I lost my job and she wasn’t working (and had to go beg my parents for money to keep the heat on in winter – talk about emasculating; OTOH, she busted her @$$ at a seasonal minimum-wage position to keep food on the table, so I can’t speak TOO ill of her – we’re almost back to black ink now after 5 years… And let’s just say, I earn WELL above the median. Plus I had a great credit limit, great rating, and savings and investments. All gone within two years of getting involved with her, but by then, we had the house… And almost lost it, which overall, would probably have been better… But I digress so I will STFU. 😉 )

          • “Police brutality against someone that has done nothing wrong and acted correctly is so rare it should not even be mentioned.”

            Liar. Imbecile.

        • A few years ago in Jacksonville Florida a doctor got mad at a woman for cutting him off and pulled in front of her and slammed on his brakes. She panicked went into the ditch and was killed. Unfortunately it was dark and other drivers saw his brake lights flash on as he pulled in front of her and the local clovers convicted him of manslaughter or something like that. What did Eric say about clovers that love police?

          • Well Charlie I would have put the guy in jail also. You got that right that a clover would. Charlie tell me what the world would be like if you retaliated every time a driver drove to slow, turned in front of you, or just looked at you funny? All road rage drivers should be in jail. That includes the person that cuts you off on purpose because he is mad at you! You should not get the death penalty as the doctor was willing to do because he felt another driver did not drive correctly! If there are major problems where you drive the answer is more police enforcement. At least they are trained not to run you off the road with rage!
            A couple of hundred years ago we got rid of vigilante justice and put trained people out there instead. I guess you want to return back to a couple hundred years ago where people got hanged if they cut someone else off!Clover

          • Bored, so let’s play with Clover.

            “Well Charlie I would have put the guy in jail also. You got that right that a clover would.” – I would have to take context into account (see below) but yes, it sounds like he was out of line and deserved sanction. Dear god, I think I agreed with Clover.

            “Charlie tell me what the world would be like if you retaliated every time a driver drove to slow, turned in front of you, or just looked at you funny?” – Can’t answer for Charlie but um, the situation was a little more severe, as in crossing lanes while oblivious and doing makeup/hair by the above anecdote.

            “All road rage drivers should be in jail.” – Who defines road rage? You? Honk and go to jail? Seems your definition of road rage would call for that, no? Bit silly huh?

            “That includes the person that cuts you off on purpose because he is mad at you!” – Well, that seems uncharacteristically reasonable. Are you the real clover or are there now two shifts? 🙂

            “You should not get the death penalty as the doctor was willing to do because he felt another driver did not drive correctly!” – Um, what? Doctor was wrong but I doubt he intentionally killed her. Again, if you would engage your comprehension skills, the anecdote above conveys that the woman panicked. There is not enough information to say whether panicking was justified or she was an incompetent driver who would have gone in the ditch if a seagull flew in front of her.

            “If there are major problems where you drive the answer is more police enforcement.” – Yeah, forget better drivers and personal responsibility, more parasite praetorian, that’s the ticket.

            “At least they are trained not to run you off the road with rage!” – You must be fucking kidding. That is precisely how cops behave. Often killing an innocent bystander or two in the process.

            “A couple of hundred years ago we got rid of vigilante justice and put trained people out there instead.” – Again, are you fucking kidding? Resist a cop in any, and I mean any even non violent way, and you risk ‘death for insolence’.

            “I guess you want to return back to a couple hundred years ago where people got hanged if they cut someone else off!” – LOL. Yeah, there were lots of hangings for fender benders and horse collisions in 1813.

          • Nice Me2. I do disagree with you on a few things though. You say that if you do something wrong to a cop and you get his rage? That is pretty much road rage type actions against the police from what you are saying! If you are stopped by the police and you start fighting with them I do not blame the police, I blame the person that started the fighting! There are rules to follow when you are stopped by the police. If you feel like ignoring those rules then you get whatever comes your way. The police do not need someone fighting with them for doing their job and it is against the law also. Clover

            Road rage is a voluntary action against another driver that often significantly increase danger to them. That is what the doctor did. When you take a quick aggressive action against another driver that driver does whatever is a natural reaction to what you did to them. They are not given a half hour to determine what is the best reaction to your road rage.Clover

            Yes in many states it is illegal to honk your horn unless under an emergency where the driver feels like the warning will help others prevent an accident. The use of a horn for road rage needs to be stopped because all it does is promote more road rage. That is why there are laws against its use along with not disturbing others. If you are on the interstate and someone in front of you makes you mad and you use your horn it could cause the driver beside you to have an accident. Brent had a road rage issue recently and he stood on his horn because the driver in front of him was not accelerating fast enough for him. The driver reacted by hitting the brakes. Brent almost hit him. Yes an action like what Brent did deserves jail time.

          • Clover, you are as dense as lead.

            “You say that if you do something wrong to a cop and you get his rage?” – I said no such thing you idiot.

            “That is pretty much road rage type actions against the police from what you are saying!” – What? Do you even have comprehension skills or do you just do what the little voices tell you.

            “The police do not need someone fighting with them for doing their job and it is against the law also.” – So resisting an officer is never acceptable? Even if he is acting outside the law? Actually, the US SC has ruled resistance is legal against and illegal order from an officer. Not that you bother with ‘actual’ laws as you seem to prefer to make them up as you go. Otherwise you might actually be able to cite the ‘laws’ you keep claiming back your stupidity.

            You remind me of those Bozo inflatables from my youth. Fun to smack around but not much for rebuttal, seeing how you both seem to have a head full of air and nothing else.

            For you Clover;

            “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
            -Martin Luther King, Jr.

            So you guys met, huh?

          • Go pull in front of a cop doing 45mph while you’re doing 5mph. Then tell the cop he is road raging for how slow you’re accelerating. See how that works out.

          • Me2, I did not say it was against the law to resist police if they are breaking the laws and endangering you. There have been dozens of videos of police brutality as you say on the internet though and they all involve the person being stopped to act against all rules. Police brutality against someone that has done nothing wrong and acted correctly is so rare it should not even be mentioned. you can bring up all the what if happenings you like but I deal with facts that happen not what you say might happen.Clover

            Now to deal with Brent. Brent if someone pulls in front of a cop 400 feet in front of him and he only drives 5 mph the cop might stop the guy but only to find out what the problem is. No ticket would be issued. No road rage like what you do.

            So Brent you say it is OK to drive illegally and endanger others if they are driving 5 mph in front of you? Where is that law? The incident that you just had the driver was driving 5 mph when you reached him because some idiot unlawful driver was standing on his horn so the driver hit his brakes!

          • Yeah right, clover. People that go off on the cops, like the soccer mom in NY that was hitting, biting and screaming at the officer…no wait. She was only guilty of getting out of her car. That was when NY’s swinest went off on her. As she attempted to get back in her vehicle, which we may safely assume was what she thought pig-boy wanted her to do, he dragged her back out by the arm. That’s assault, on the person of that woman. Then he tazed her for…passively standing there. When the tazer didn’t work the first time he worked to do it again and make it stick, in front of her small children. At no time was the officer’s safety in jeopardy. Don’t take my word for it, here it is:

            The fact is, we the people wouldn’t have to submit and obey if this were the “free country” morons like you claim it is. In a free country the onus would be on the cop to prove she’d actually done someone harm, not some administrative violation. You have no concept of Liberty or even the basic protections afforded us by the Bill of Rights, do you? I’ve told you and Gil before, if you like this kind of behavior and a locked down society, move to North Korea. You’ll feel right at home and we’ll be glad you did.

          • Boothe, the one that shows it in a fashion you won’t soon forget is the Ca. hiway patrol pulling a young woman over. She sits there and he starts to scream. I’d have been terrified too. He was a huge SOB as was the next one pulling up to give him “backup”. This very small woman gets out and is clearly totally freaked. You can’t understand this guy he’s screaming so loud. He jerks her out and she’s maybe 105 lbs. and pregnant, obviously so. She’s not responding fast enough, man, he just got through doing a bunch of crack and he’s pissed. He throws her down, with the help of the other officer as if he needed help. Then he gets on top of her smashing her into the pavement and still screaming at her, cuffs her. Long story short, after being beaten to crap, no action was taken against the officers. Seems like they were fearing for their lives. She looked mean too, standing there shaking and being freaked out. Don’t mess with Ca.

          • Clover, you need to be sued for slander. You repeatedly and intentionally lie time and time again.

            You need to go pull out in front of a cop like the driver of that white car did to me. I’ve already shown you videos of how to properly enter traffic. These drivers don’t let others get close to them. They drive to not cause others difficulties. You insist upon causing others difficulties. So, go do it to cops. Eventually you’ll see what road rage really looks like.

          • Booth, it is my belief the world we live in today is much the result of the monopolistic industrialists desire to create their idea of a socially engineered utopia.

            They tried it with their employees but people resented, rejected, and undermined at every turn. Then the same things were restarted through government. By force. The result of making people prisoners and using force is that the natural order civility is gone.

          • I agree BrentP. We’s all on da’ plantation now, br’er rabbit. Back in the 90’s at a power plant that shall remain nameless, management told us that (a) they reserved the right to search our vehicles on company property for any reason they deemed appropriate and (b) possession of weapons would get you terminated.

            Those of us that carried, stopped parking in their lot and parked out on the side of the state road. Now they had a real conundrum, because (a) parking there was perfectly legal and (b) they had no authority to search and neither did the police. Showing us to power of corporate America, they “persuaded” VDOT to post the road “No Parking” well outside of walking distance.

            Being the hardheaded individualist that I am, I wrote to upper management questioning this violation of our Creator endowed right to self defense. I explained that a handgun is merely a tool to keep one safe, not unlike a seatbelt or fire extinguisher. And furthermore that one could misuse either of the latter items as a lethal weapon if they were so inclined. So since they, management, clearly intended to deprive us of the most effective means of self defense available at the time, they must implicitly be assuming full responsibility for our safety enroute to and from work. After all, if one of us were broken down or forced off the road and were killed or maimed, the liability would fall on the company. And I was informing my family and telling my coworkers to notify their family members and attorneys that this was the case, so they could sue should the worst happen.

            Within two weeks a letter came down from corporate that anyone that wanted to carry could go to the plant manager and get a permission slip. I suspect that was about how long it took corporate legal to figure out they were in between a rock and a hard place. Big corp along with big gov needs to go the way of the dodo bird.

          • Oh, Bravo Boothe!

            Man that was a master-stroke; some judu to redirect the energies of statism back against itself. I wish I thought of that kind of move more often; my typical response is “Fuck you I’m leaving”.

            I suppose it’s somewhat effective in that it deprives them of my modest talent. But your response just kicked ass.

            I suspect that was about how long it took corporate legal to figure out they were in between a rock and a hard place. Big corp along with big gov needs to go the way of the dodo bird.

            Indeed, they’re the same creature. Big Corps are made possible by the monopoly-granting power of government, which in turn is beholden to the Big Corps. Enter the revolving door; and voila–corporatocracy/oligarchy.

            I love business and businessmen–ethical ones, that is. And the only way to keep’em ethical is to make’em liable. Corporate “personhood” is a shame, and a recent legalistic adventure. Get rid of it. Get rid of the “corporate veil”.

            If people could sue Monsatan’s CEO directly for his malfeasance…or Pfizer, or Merck, or…you can only imagine how quickly they’d be in church on the front row holding that hymnal fast.

            As always, another State-created problem.

    • HonkeyK, my wife and I found a most irritating clover on the trip to the doc, actually coming back Monday. Old Lumina with JESUS that had been black faded and degraded to old Lumina white…sorta. Two curly heads just visible, that sorta goldish, tan hair instead of the once fashionable Blue Hair. Pan handler on the island, everybody waiting to go the only way you could go, left. Light go green, everybody guns including her but she goes 20′ and slams on the brakes nearly collecting us. 4 wheel discs are wonder but hell on a guy with a broken leg. I started blaspheming right away, Jesus or no. The guy finally realized what they were doing after she rolled down the window, after she stopped naturally. He jogs a few steps, her hands come out cupped together, he puts his hands under hers and she finally lets slip her and her good Jesus sisters coins into his hands. Then she just punches and realizes the light is red, slams on the brakes with the front of the car beyond the edge of the cross street and we all get to wait for another long cycle. Even the old lady gave her the evil eye as we passed her. Of course she was oblivious….certainly.

  36. Your’re right Eric. Clovers are as ubiquitous and varied as beatles. Out here we have the Wagon Driver Clover (I’ve seen them in Virginia too). They drive normal sized vehicles but turn like they’re driving a team of mules or a semi-truck. They swing halfway into the left lane as they approach their destination decribing a wide arc as they turn right. This is to ensure that you can’t swing out around them in the left lane as they execute a slow motion turn.

    We also have at least one Empty School Bus Clover. She drives down the middle of two lane country roads, barely ceding 1/3 of the road to oncoming traffic. It’s all I can do to pass this moron on a motorcycle, much less my Miata. She typically runs 10 under with no kids on the bus, first thing in the morning, while those of us that (unwillingly, in my case) pay her salary stack up behind her. I’m sure she feels saaaafer that way.

    And finally, we have a few Octagenarian Commuter Inhibiting Clovers that must get down to Daylight Donuts on the square at a brisk 20 MPH in a 35 zone. Those of us on our way to provide “their” socialist security “entitlement” ar forced to molder in their wake. Why these people feel obliged jam up traffic just to spike their blood sugar at 0700 every morning is beyond me. These Clovers give me good reason to ride a bike as often as possible. By the time they realize I was behind them I’m already disappearing in front of them. I’m really thinking strongly about putting an LS1 in the Miata…

    • Why do the retired get up early in the morning and get out on the road? If could have full control over my day with no obligations that is the last thing I would do. But then again I am not a control freak. I swear they must do it because they want to troll people. Just get out there in morning commute traffic to be an annoyance to people. Like our resident troll clover must do. Just drives with the intent of angering people. There’s simply no sane reason for someone to be in morning commute traffic if they don’t have to be.

      • “Why do the retired get up early in the morning and get out on the road?”

        Maybe those who do that are a subset of the employee type. They loved the regimented life of a wage slave, getting out to go to work and coming home by the same route every day for however many years they toiled for their corporation or bureaucracy. They just can’t give it up just because they’ve been shed by their benefactor.

        I was never a “good employee”. When I tried to work for someone else, I chafed under any restriction, questioned the mission, derided the method and generally hated to do something that wasn’t my idea in the first place. Bosses were a source of comedy to me, and coworkers despised my cavalier attitude toward their beloved bosses. I quit trying to be an employee, and started working on my own, for myself, answerable only to my customers and my own conscience.

        The early morning retiree traffic obstructors might just be the type who misses the daily grind so much that they go out and pretend it’s still happening for them. They are more to be pitied than scolded, but scolding is SO much more satisfying, ain’t it? 😉

        • It’s the older generation who always got up early and went to bed fairly early. They still remember not having electricity growing up. They get out to get to What-A-Burger for free coffee.

          • Even if I were a morning person I would not go out into the morning commute traffic. I always have enough things to do not to go out until the traffic died down.

            I avoid going out during the afternoon commute as well. Oh and retired people still shopping at the busiest times? Why? If I can shop on early tuesday afternoon I do… it’s freakin’ dead. So much better without hoards of people around.

          • Now, now Brent.

            It sounds like you are expecting rational, logical thinking and behavior from Clovers.

            That’s like expecting truth from the government.

      • It’s along the same lines as the clover who looks outside, sees 8 inches of newly-fallen snow, and thinks to themselves: “Oooo!! I *must* drive my 1983 Crown Victoria with its bald tires and rear-wheel drive to the mall!”

        Wintry roads attract clovers just as lamps attract moths.

      • BrentP, excellent points. They fail to mention the men who strengthen us all. The initial creators of value. The stubborn sexist white males of America. The arrogant racist yellow males of Asia. The bitter-violent-christ-clinger brown males of North & South Latin America.

        Because they Governments and their succubi are deceitful crooks, they don’t want you to give any thought to the strength of mind and effort it takes to create advanced technological goods.

        They don’t want you notice that much of women’s, third-worlders, and gays’ liberation is accomplished through the societal impoverishment of first-world productive men’s incarceration.

        Upper body strength is often something you get from a lifetime of hard work, usually commencing at a very young age. Work that involves the creation of valuable goods, not merely the acquisition and protection of goods created by someone else.

        The United National Overlord East Coast West Coast UK Euro Metro Sexual Statists are weakening and endangering us all.

  37. How about the “no idea how to use an on ramp” clover? The clover who waits until he’s on the freeway to start to get up to highway speed? Closely associated is the “close your eyes and go” clover who ignores the yield sign on the on ramp and expects you to let him in (then gives you a dirty look when you don’t)?

    People are so used to having to get out of the way of people entering the highway when I exercise my engine on the on-ramp (the only time I get to actually use the 8 sec 0-60 speed) other drivers don’t know what to do.

    • That’s the most infuriating thing to me. I’m behind them screaming, “LIKE A ZIPPER! MERGE LIKE A F**KING ZIPPER!!”

      Living in the Pacific Northwest, I would have to say my newest encounter is the No-Honk Clover: no matter how long the Clover in front of them sits at a green light, texting or blowing themselves or whatever they’re doing that’s keeping them from hitting the gas), even if they sit there through the ENTIRE cycle, the No-Honk Clover just sits there. I’m five cars back. Green-Light-F**k-Up Clover won’t hear me if I honk. I know this, because I am honking, and the only thing that happens is the moron in front of me will move a couple inches forward, like “hey, I did all I could.”

      That’s one thing I miss about New York; the light turns green, people are honking. You could be halfway through the intersection, dude behind you will still honk.

      • I’ve had the no-honk clover get angry at me. Someone’s got to do it. They’ll just passively sit there all day. It’s like they have no spine left. They are the sheep who won’t revolt against eating mutton at this point.

        Over on clovercam our resident troll, Clover, considers horn use to be ‘road rage’.

        • Yes Brent your use of the horn is road rage. A 1/10th second use of the horn for a wake-up signal is not road rage. Your normal 3 to 5 second use of the horn is road rage a definite sign of road rage. Clover

          I have to laugh at you saying you do not use road rage. Showing someone they are wrong even when they are not by endanging others on purpose to scare the hell out of them is road rage. You call it a good thing!

          • “I’m a Clover, won’t move over,
            I’m a Clover, of high degree,
            And when I’m driving,
            I’m always trying,
            To make folks drive as slow as me!”

          • Hey clover…….

            ***HHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!***

          • “Showing someone they are wrong even when they are not by endanging others on purpose to scare the hell out of them is road rage.”

            OK the first thing wrong with this is you can’t say he was showing them they were wrong then claim they were not wrong. You have to claim they were wrong or not and then address the actions taken thereafter.

            Second thing is you claim that he endangered others yet offer nothing but your conjecture as to establish the endangerment. If you want to claim his acts in response endangered others you have to show a few things:

            1) That his action was not a direct result of the act taken by the other driver.

            2) That in taking such action he put others at undue risk for a purpose most people would consider unreasonable.

            Failing one or both of those points and your claim falls apart. On the first point there is a legal argument called Chain of Causation. It basically means that the person that kicks off the first event assumes responsibility for all reasonable, or reasonably expected, acts which occur as a result.

            On the second point you have to establish that the majority of people faced with the same event would not react in the same manner as Brent. In determining chain of causation we only stop one chain and start a new one when it is determined that most people would not have continued on if placed in the same scenario. Failing that the endangerment which resulted firmly falls with the person who started the chain (the offending driver).

          • Clover, your malaprops are just scrumptious:

            “I have to laugh at you saying you do not use road rage.”

            Only a product of government schools could mutilate the language like that.

          • OK matt, I will give you the details. A car is entering the roadway 400 feet in front of Brent. He did not accelerate fast enough for Brent so Brent keeps on accelerating towards the car in front of him and when he gets within 100 feet of the car he stands on the horn for multiple seconds. The car driver in front does not know what is going on so he hits his Brakes and Brent almost hit him. Tell me if Brent is driving in a state where horns are illegal to use except in an emergency situation, why was Brent using his horn? Brent saw a possible problem well ahead and did not even take his foot off the accelerator until he was within 60 feet of the car in front of him. Brent was using his road rage on another driver because it makes his day fulfilled. That is what I call road rage and a driver that should not be driving. It really does not matter what the car did in front of Brent. There is no reason for endangering others just to satisfy your road rage need.Clover

          • Clover,

            BrentP was not accelerating. He maintained the same speed. It appeared to be about 30-35mph. I do not know the PSL of the road in this clip. I do not think the PSL is relevant, since the vehicle entering the roadway should try to do so in a manner that does not negatively affect other drivers.

            You need your vision checked. It was closer to about 200 feet at most.

            How would you prefer someone to warn another of a possibly dangerous situation? (smoke signals, semaphore, sign language) Remember that time counts.

            Your trolling is vacuous, inane, and boring.

          • CloverMith, as you know I am a skier. Skiing rules are exactly like driving rules. The person from behind is required to adjust his speed or position to make it safer for everyone. When the car started crossing the road Brent was a good 400 feet back. You can determine that from the road and markings and time. I say that Brent was doing well over 35 mph and more like 50 mph but it really does not matter other than the fact that if Brent was only traveling 30 mph there should have been zero chance of an emergency situation. Even at 50 mph someone with more than 7 seconds should be able to eliminate any chance of an emergency situation. Not Brent though. He thinks he should be able to get on the road, step on the gas and close your eyes and make others look out for him. That is not the rules but those are Brent’s rules. Illinois laws state that a driver is supposed to adjust his speed to merging traffic and not just close your eyes and step on the gas.Clover

          • Clover, your skiing analogy is flawed. No lanes.

            “The person from behind is required to adjust his speed or position to make it safer for everyone.”

            Or put another way, as long as I can enter your lane ahead of you forcing you to brake, I have the right to obstruct you.

            Actually, when merging, it is you who is ‘changing lanes’ and therefore it is you who is responsible for safely entering the flowing traffic. It’s why they put those big triangles with ‘Yield’ written on them. You do have the ability to understand the word yield, right?

          • Clover…..

            “A car is entering the roadway 400 feet in front of Brent. He did not accelerate fast enough..”

            Exactly my point. Would it kill you clovers to perform an acceptable level of acceleration when you merge?? When traffic is running 70-75 and you decide to merge at 45, that makes you a hazard to the highway.

            But…if you actually *did* merge at the same speed as traffic, then you wouldn’t *be* a clover. So it’s all moot. You suck.

          • Wow…are people really this stupid?

            My optimism must be fusion-powered because it still lives in the face of plutonium clover cretinism.

            Just. Wow. I’m speechless; it’s illiterate, illogical, and wholly irredeemable.

            The Elites have done their job well; make’em dumb so it’s easy to hate’em.

            • Beging with poor genetic endowment/low IQ; feed it plenty of HFC and fluoride and TeeVee… send it out for 12 years of government school “socialization” (i.e., conceptual capacity stunting) and – viola! – Clover.

              There are tens of millions of them out there.

          • Tor, look how that nonsense is spun… the stronger male is for ‘self interest’ but the weaker man is for ‘others interest’.

            Both are for self interest. People who cannot create, produce, etc want the resources of those who can. Those who can want to keep what they make. So who is morally wrong? It isn’t the person who merely wishes to keep what he produces, it’s the person who seeks to live off the productive work of others.

        • The other day I’m waiting to turn and this chick has the right of way, no signal to go straight and the light turns green. She’s looking down, digging around, probably texting and keeps doing so. I started out and then decided she might nail me when she finally realizes what’s going on so I just sat there and looked at her. Right before the red, she looked up, saw me looking at her as the light’s beginning to get pink, gave me this really nasty look and the finger and made a left turn as the light turned red. I was just looking at her, got the finger and a dirty look and everybody else got screwed. Ok, I admit it, I shouldn’t have been holding her head down like that….and will never do it again…although I’d have a hard time recognizing her since I was kind of taken aback at the ferocity she displayed. But no doubt, somehow it was MY FAULT and she knew it.

          • Lately I have been getting cheap thrills out of brazenly ignoring red lights at left turn signals (when there is no traffic anywhere in the vicinity). I make sure there’s no cross traffic – and just go. This renders Clovers behind me apoplectic with fury. They flash their lights and honk their horns… but remain sitting at the stupid light, like the good obedient (mindless) Clovers they are. I almost piss myself laughing as I drive on my merry way.

        • If you are talking about merging on an interstate at 70 to 75 mph then it is you that is wrong. You should not be driving 70 to 75 mph in a merge lane anyway! You wonder why people have problems merging? In many states it is not just the person that is entering a highway that is responsible for a safe merge, it is also the responsibility of the person that is camping out in the right merge lane also. That is the law. The person that is on the interstate has 10 times the visibility of the person coming from an on ramp. With all that visibility why would you make it so that you are in the blind spot or next to a merging car? In most states you are responsible for not making merging more difficult but that is the opposite that most of you do! Of course you are most likely breaking the law.Clover

          • Clover,

            More rules of the road according to you.

            Please enlighten me and show me where in the law it decrees the appropriate speed on a acceleration lane.

            I think it would be nice if a traveler in the right lane moved over (assuming it was safe to do). This is only a courtesy and not something mandated by traffic statute.

            Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the driver merging on the highway to safely merge.

            Michigan statute indicates: Merging motorists “shall” yield the right-of-way to existing traffic and adjust their speed accordingly. Failure to do so can constitute a civil infraction.

            (If your state is different, it would be helpful to cite the appropriate traffic statute)

            Your trolling is vacuous, inane, and boring.

          • A Clover wrote;

            “That is the law.” – Cite “the law” you are referencing or forever be known as the lying Clover. Oh, wait……Hmmm. Ummm. Please cite the law?

            “The person that is on the interstate has 10 times the visibility of the person coming from an on ramp.” – Dr. Freud muses, “seems he is rationalizing his assertion, subtlety revealing his uncertainty about the reference to this ‘law’.”

            “With all that visibility why would you make it so that you are in the blind spot or next to a merging car?” – Um, dumbfuck, do you ever turn your head before merging? Maybe make yourself aware of the other vehicles around you and maybe match the speed of the rest of traffic before merging?

            Here is a simple analogy for you simple brain;

            If you jump into a river, do you expect the river to adjust to your speed?

            “In most states you are responsible for not making merging more difficult but that is the opposite that most of you do!” – Cite “the law” you are referencing or forever be …….

            Pointless. Kind of like Clover.

          • Clover,

            When merging, you should increase your speed to that of the traffic with which you are trying to merge. If the traffic is running 70, then yes, you should increase your speed to match that. This is the essence of a smooth, safe merge.

            What you advocate – merging at a speed lower (in your case, considerably lower) than the speed of traffic such that traffic is forced to slow to accommodate you is manifestly unsafe.

          • Yet more clover law. Assbackwards congestion and collision causing clover law.

            Try your trick on the autobahn why don’t you?

            Clover, you make proper merging sound like it’s super human… then again to you, some one as lazy as you, perhaps it is.

          • Hey Clover, were you getting on to I70 west yesterday afternoon at Colorado exit 94? If so, you just about ran into me.

            Guy passing me (in the left/passing lane), you pulling onto the highway. Should be a no brainer, right? Except that you chose to ignore the big yield sign posted at the on-ramp and charged ahead at less than traveling speed. As I watched, you cut me off, forcing me to slam on my brakes (remember, I’m in the right lane already on the highway), and nearly causing a 3 car accident.

            And FYI, the rules for skiing have NOTHING at all to do with the rules for driving. Get that out of your head right now! For one thing the in-control skier has about 30% of the control an in-control driver has (and conversely, an out of control driver can do 100X more damage than an out of control skier.

            http://www.ricesigns.com/real_pictures/yield_sign_R1-2_large.jpg

          • Mithrandir, here is what you want from the Illinois rules of the road under traffic signs.
            “Merging Lanes
            This sign tells you that two lanes of traffic going the same direc-
            tion will soon merge into one lane. Be ready to either change
            lanes or allow other traffic to merge into your lane. Merge signs
            appear on expressways just before expressway ramps. The driv-
            er on the expressway slows down to let the driver on the ramp
            merge.”

          • Once again, clover, because I don’t think you understood it the first time (should I type S-L-O-W-E-R-?):

            Would it kill you clovers to perform an acceptable level of acceleration when you merge??

            Eh??

          • Clover,

            The Illinois Rules of the Road (A link would have been more convenient) is not what the officer will use to give someone a piece of paying paper. Illinois and other states will use statutes of law.

            The book provided for Driver’s Education is just an interpretation of the law. (It might be an accurate interpretation or it might not be accurate) The Driver’s manual is not what one will be cited for violating.

            Do you have actual law from Illinois?

            (If your state is different, it would be helpful to cite the appropriate traffic statute)

            Illinois Vehicle Code is here if you care to cite a statute.

            You will need to do better if you wish to strengthen your position.

          • Mith, Illinois law is very poorly written for merging.

            (625 ILCS 5/11-905) (from Ch. 95 1/2, par. 11-905)
            Sec. 11-905. Merging traffic. Not withstanding the right of way provision in Sec. 11-901 of this Act, at an intersection where traffic lanes are provided for merging traffic the driver of each vehicle on the converging roadways is required to adjust his vehicular speed and lateral position so as to avoid a collision with another vehicle.
            (Source: P.A. 81-860.)

            Clover, one should be going faster than the prevailing speed of traffic to merge on to a limited access highway. The brakes are far more powerful than the engine and the distance to find and time a gap is limited. Going slower than the prevailing speed means forcing other drivers to take evasive action. Going the same speed has limited gaps in traffic available if any. With a higher speed more gaps in traffic are smoothly achievable. The brakes can be used to adjust to another gap if the first one intended closes. The goal is to merge without causing any disturbance to other drivers.

            Not that you can grasp that. It’s too much work for you so you just make others avoid hitting you.

            C=D: In other driving forums the resident clover population would say that it causes wear and tear to the car to accelerate. Which is complete BS of course.

          • mith, I and everyone else concerned with other people’s safety are with you. It is your responsibility to match speed with the traffic even if it’s going between 85 and 90 mph. Every study of speed I ever read said one thing, no matter how fast traffic was going, the least dangerous course is to match the speed of everyone else. Pull into traffic somewhere like Junction Texas where everybody is going at least 85 or more at 70 and you have just created a dangerous situation for everyone and when you see there’s a Pete in the outside land and another in the inside lane, you may be the soon to be dead clover.

          • mith, I’ve been meaning to say this for a day now but Tx. and some other states have signs beside their hiways that say “Slower vehicles keep right”. They don’t say it’s a suggestion, it’s reiterating the law they feel is important enough to post it. Then there are roadways in many states that have minimum speed limits. It doesn’t take a genius to figure this one out. I’ve seen people pulled over for not doing the minimum speed and you know everyone behind them is cheering.

          • Eightsouthman,

            Even with a sign stating: Keep Right Pass Left , some people still cannot take a hint. There was a story about some lady receiving a ticket for staying in the left lane w/out passing. She was flummoxed. “I was driving 2 miles below the PSL.” to paraphrase. I think a link was posted somewhere on this site.

            There are many inconsiderate SOBs driving on the road.

          • If Clover had bothered to do some research, he probably would cite this;

            (625 ILCS 5/11-905) (from Ch. 95 1/2, par. 11-905)
            Sec. 11-905. Merging traffic. Not withstanding the right of way provision in Sec. 11-901 of this Act, at an intersection where traffic lanes are provided for merging traffic the driver of each vehicle on the converging roadways is required to adjust his vehicular speed and lateral position so as to avoid a collision with another vehicle.
            (Source: P.A. 81-860.)

            Of course he obviously would have ignored this;

            (d) If a driver is involved in a collision at an intersection or interferes with the movement of other vehicles after driving past a yield right-of-way sign, such collision or interference shall be deemed prima facie evidence of the driver’s failure to yield right-of-way.
            (Source: P.A. 76-1739.)

            Clover, you are a feeble minded liar.

          • Sorry mithrandir if you need more explicit information about merging. Here are the laws in Illinois that you want if you ever decide to follow any laws!

            Here is the laws for merging and the use of signs explaining that even the driver on the interstate has laws requiring good driving and not the thrill like many of you have preventing merging traffic! Clover
            Merging Lanes
            This sign tells you that two lanes of traffic going the same direction will soon merge into one lane. Be ready to either change lanes or allow other traffic to merge into your lane. Merge signs appear on expressways just before expressway ramps. The driver on the expressway slows down to let the driver on the ramp merge.
            (625 ILCS 5/11-305) (from Ch. 95 1/2, par. 11-305)
            Sec. 11-305. Obedience to and required traffic-control devices. (a) The driver of any vehicle shall obey the instructions of any official traffic-control device applicable thereto placed or held in accordance with the provisions of this Act, unless otherwise directed by a police officer, subject to the exceptions granted the driver of an authorized emergency vehicle in this Act.

          • clover, amazing, flat amazing. No amount of safe driving matters, just the way YOU want to drive, safety be damned. I know you’re not a Texan, you wouldn’t still be alive. Damn sure not a Dallas or Houston resident. That kind of traffic will eventually get even you and not just the people behind you run over. I wish every clover could be out on a runway when planes are coming in, sorta like being in front of a big rig, it ain’t gonna stop, try as you may, pedal to the floor, maximum air pressure to the brakes but it ain’t gonna stop. Then the people behind you who are run over and the poor trucker are in a world of shit while you pull out at some slow speed and creat ANOTHER accident. But you are right, always in your mind, you are correct. What an ass!!!!

          • Sorry Eightsouthman but I have seen the opposite. What the laws states is that the driver on the interstate can not use road rage in making sure he cuts another driver off from merging. I have seen videos of this. Are you saying that is a good thing? Both drivers have responsibilities when merging. Your one sided view leads road rage drivers getting their satisfaction of making a merge very difficult if not impossible and getting joy out of it! I have seen this by one of the posters on this site. He gets joy of cutting anyone off from what they want to do. Now you are saying Texas drivers are different. Do they take joy in hurting other drivers?who cares as long as the bill is paid?Clover

          • Clover,

            Regarding statute (625 ILCS 5/11-305) (from Ch. 95 1/2, par. 11-305) : At least you have a statute cited. This is a start.

            If I understand the statute, (paraphrasing) one needs to follow the directions of the traffic signs unless directed otherwise by an appropriate official.

            I suppose this would include all traffic signs including “Keep Right Pass Left” or the equivalent if it exists in Illinois.

            The quote cited from the rules of the road is not relevant. One will not be be cited for violating the DMV manual. One will be cited for violating specific traffic statutes.

            Looking at the statute as written from 625 ILCS 5/Ch. 11 Art. IX I agree with Brent.

            Mith, Illinois law is very poorly written for merging.

            I am happy that I do not drive often in Illinois. The wording is awkward and ambiguous to me. I much prefer the plainer wording of the statute from Michigan.

            Sorry Clover that you were not able to present more explicit information about merging. I would have appreciated the illumination on this topic.

          • I am sorry mithrandir that you are so dense! What part of it do you not understand? There are merge signs on Illinois expressways for the expressway driver. He is to do what he can to allow a safe merge of merging traffic by moving over to a middle lane or adjusting his speed. He is not to block a merge like some of your friends like to do! The statute that backs up this sign says you are required to follow traffic control signs! Now tell me what part of that do you not understand? You yourself said that it is nice when traffic moves to a middle lane when possible. I agree with that and have said that. Illinois goes one step farther than that in saying that you are required to improve merging safety! Now I know you disagree with safety but that is an Illinois law! If a driver is ahead of you and is trying to merge you need to move over or adjust your speed to make sure you are not tailgating or riding in his blind spot when he tries to move over! Clover

            My guess is Illinois made it this way because they had far too many road rage aggressive drivers trying to block drivers from merging or just plain too lazy to move over.

          • Clover,
            go merge in front of a semi truck. You do 15mph when the trucker is doing 65mph. Just slide over 10 feet in front of him.

            Better yet, do it to a cop.

            But you never test your beliefs with your skin on the line.

          • Mithrandir, you think Michigan is more correct than Illinois? They have the same rules as Illinois on this!

            This is from the Michigan rules of the road! They have the same signs as Illinois and the same rules to follow for those signs!
            “Merge signs are placed near freeway entrances to alert you to traffic entering the freeway. Always watch for vehicles
            merging onto the freeway. Adjusting your speed or moving safely into another lane will allow drivers to enter the freeway smoothly and safely. “Clover

          • clover, you stupid shit. I won’t respond to you again when you misquote me. A trucker, or anyone else, need not be in a rage over anything to run over you and the people you impede when you pull into traffic at a reduced speed. I’m sure you know this, you’re simply a statist dick and don’t want to acknowledge logic. What do you not get about “I can’t slow that fast”? Just like Forrest’s mama said, Stupid is as stupid does.

          • OK Brent. You are saying I should merge at 15 mph and see what happens? Brent there are minimum speeds on all interstates. I know, you do not know what laws or rules are! Go take some drivers training classes or get the hell off the road!Clover

          • See mith, he’s quoting “rules” and you never broke a rule to keep something bad from happening did you? Me neither. If ‘the rules’ said No Step, I didn’t move to keep someone from falling to their death, just the way a clover wouldn’t. I”m sick of this stupid shit, think I’ll go jack off. yeah, it’s messy but only for me. At least I won’t leave it for someone else to clean up.

          • Clover, stop making stuff up.
            Do you project your own BS on everything? That’s why you see rage and violence in everything. That’s you.

            If you’re the one entering the limited access highway you do not have right of way. End of story.

          • Clover, your ilk merges at speeds below the minimum frequently.

            So what the hell let’s roll with the minimum. Go merge at 45mph 15ft in front of an Illinois state trooper doing 120mph.

          • Clover,

            I do not know why the law on merging in Illinois was written in its current manner.

            I stated that I prefer the law to be written in a plainer and more understandable manner. Is there a problem with laws being easier to understand?

            I still think the Illinois traffic statutes are poorly written.

            If the law is poorly written, I can not hold you responsible for not being more explicit.

            He is not to block a merge like some of your friends like to do!

            Who stated that cars were purposely blocking traffic from safely merging onto the highway?

            Based on the way the Illinois statute is worded, this would also require merging cars not to force their way in to highway traffic. The merging vehicles also have a responsibility to not block other vehicles and/or merge unsafely in to the highway traffic flow.

            There does need to be some give and take. In general, I think this requires more effort from the one merging onto the highway than one currently one the highway.
            (It makes more sense to me.)

            The law as currently written could possibly lead to some ambiguity or misunderstanding on driver responsibilities on the highway.

            If the law was better written in a clearer manner (to remove this ambiguity) I think it would be better.

            Now I know you disagree with safety but that is an Illinois law! If a driver is ahead of you and is trying to merge you need to move over or adjust your speed to make sure you are not tailgating or riding in his blind spot when he tries to move over!

            I never stated that I disagree with safety. In fact you have often wished violence on others through your many posts.

            The statute does not read the way you are stating or suggesting.

            This is part of the problem with the wording of the Illinois statute. It is not plain enough.

            If the law makers intended for the such a situation they could have stated as part of the statute:

            If a driver is ahead of you and is trying to merge onto the highway other vehicles need to move over to another lane or adjust your speed accordingly to make sure you do not hinder the merge.

            This would have been clearer and all drivers would know their driving responsibilities.

          • Clover,

            Mithrandir, you think Michigan is more correct than Illinois? They have the same rules as Illinois on this!

            Based on what I read I disagree with your assessment. I do not consider both statutes to be written in the same clear language.

            I think it is easier to understand and follow. I do not think correct is the right word to use.

            Please cite your sources. (A link would be great if available. Out of thin air is unacceptable.)

            Since we are discussing statutes, it would be appropriate to cite traffic statutes from the appropriate state. The DMV driving manual is not a good enough source in this case.

            Eightsouthman,

            I’m sure you know this, you’re simply a statist dick and don’t want to acknowledge logic.

            It is probably a limp one with ed. I would not be surprised if I heard it getting in the way of other things as well.

            See mith, he’s quoting “rules” and you never broke a rule to keep something bad from happening did you? Me neither.

            The rules came down from the mountain written on stone tablets. They are always right for all situations. Reality does not matter.

          • Geez clover..

            “You should not be driving 70 to 75 mph in a merge lane anyway!”

            You stupid GIMP! What the hell do you think those long freeway onramps are for anyway, pushing prams? They’re for picking up speed and usually (in Australia anyway) have the freeway speed limit sign at the top of the ramp. Common sense ain’t your cup of tea is it? God help your passengers if you ever get a pilot’s licence, which is very likely FAR outside your capabilities.

            I’ll pray for your current passengers’ safety though, if you haven’t already alienated the lot of ’em.

            “If a driver is ahead of you and is trying to merge you need to move over or adjust your speed to make sure you are not tailgating or riding in his blind spot when he tries to move over!”

            ..when he tries to move over!

            Shit. Guess who’s on his gubberment-prescribed meds mandated by Statute?

            That’s a classic clover move – merge slower than everyone else and EXPECT everyone to take evasive action – just for you. There’s the problem right there – with you ADVOCATING such absurdly moronic behaviour.

            How is it that at every turn you TRY to be in the way of everyone and expect the entire planet to stop for you, then complain bitterly that some “maniac” nearly bashed into you because he didn’t hit the brakes and swerve because you “had the amber flashing insurance policy on”, which to you means looking carefully and merging safely is no longer an option, let alone necessary. Will you ever get it? Not on your life, apparently.

            Clearly, you’re so narcissistic you expect everyone else to cater for your presence. Obviously you have nightmares if some of us slip by you while you’re busy holding up someone else.

            Who the fuck died and made you Judge Dredd?

            Fortunately, most of your type come to sticky, painful ends as per Darwin Awards”:

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Awards

            Hopefully, you’ll do this in your own personal space and spare the innocent.

          • Mithrandi it really does not matter if you do not like how the laws and rules are written! The facts are the facts in that you are supposed to allow drivers that are merging a safe and smooth merge. If you do not do that you are breaking Illinois and Michigan laws. Clover

            Tell me, why do you care about laws anyway? You pick and choose which ones you want to follow. Tailgating, speeding, weaving through traffic and it goes on and on for laws you choose to ignore. Go ahead and choose merge laws to break also because poor law breaking drivers will be poor drivers and you fit the bill!

            • Clover –

              First, you yourself routinely flout (or justify flouting) “the law” when it does not comport with your personal desires. For example, your defense of people who will not yield to faster moving traffic. It’s “the law” to yield.

              But you ignore that law.

              Second, “the law” isn’t always right. God, how many times must this simple point be elaborated? Proper merging technique is to increase your speed to match that of the traffic you wish to merge with. Then, merge. That’s the way it’s done, Clover – irrespective of “the law.”

          • Shit clover, how is it you think yourself righteous and within “the law” ambling into a merge as slow as a wet week, obstructing traffic and creating dangerous merge conditions because you think it’s up to the rest of the planet to be able to avoid the carnage you so desperately seek?

            I hope the next guy that puts his engine through your back seat is an angry, tazer-toting cop called Officer Mc.Nevin Seriously:

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMf4HSpsAD4

          • eric, you’re trying to reason with an unreasonable person. He took my comments and then said Texans want to hurt other people. What an ass. 85mph speed limit, 3 lanes bumper to bumper going that speed and he says they just want to run over people. You do have a choice. You can drive that speed or create a wreck that might easily kill a dozen people and injure 3 times that many. But he’s right….and always will be. Facts? facts be damned.

          • (d) If a driver is involved in a collision at an intersection or interferes with the movement of other vehicles after driving past a yield right-of-way sign (that would be you merging from the on-ramp Clover), such collision or interference shall be deemed prima facie evidence of the driver’s (again you Clover) failure to yield right-of-way.
            (Source: P.A. 76-1739.)

          • First I also say that the driver on the on ramp needs to get up to speed. I do! Second if you have a group of cars within 2 seconds of each other driving in the right lane and thus not allowing another car in safely then according to Illinois and Michigan laws you are breaking the law! The fact that all drivers have a responsibility for safe driving is beyond your mental comprehension! You also do not have a clue what the right of way is. The right of way does not mean a driver can get on the road and drive the speed limit or 20 mph more and set his cruise control and put his feet up on the dash! Having another car enter the highway and you needing to take your foot off the gas does not mean the merging driver violated right of way laws! The merging driver would violate the right of way laws if he had to stop because no one of you chose to let him in and then he pulled in front of a driver on the interstate from a stop 60 feet or closer in front of another driver.Clover

          • Clover,

            Mithrandi it really does not matter if you do not like how the laws and rules are written!

            What point are you trying to say? Should one just be quiet and accept all laws blindly and silently. If that was the case, some people would still count as 3/5ths of a human for census purposes. Some people would not have the right to vote. (just 2 of many examples of laws that changed over time.)

            It is possible to get some laws changed. Sometimes something might be legal even though it is not moral.

            If you could legally rob from your neighbor, would you choose to rob from your neighbor?

            If you do not do that you are breaking Illinois and Michigan laws.

            I’ll cross that bridge at the appropriate time. If one breaks the law (any law), then one should be willing to pay any consequences of their actions.

            I still think the Michigan statute on merging is better written than the Illinois statute on merging.

            Tell me, why do you care about laws anyway?

            Unfortunately, in addition to bad statutes, there are many vague and/or poorly written statutes. This enables people to use the law as a club to plunder and/or harm their neighbor.

            You state that you would like people to be safe. I can agree with you in wanting people not to be harmed by others.

            I would like people to retain individual freedom over their lives, provided they are not harming others.

            Your trolling is vacuous, inane, and boring.

          • EDITOR’S NOTE:

            Just as Mr. Scott used to warn about his engines not being able to take it anymore, so also with regard to Clover’s authoritarian eructations. Time for a break.

          • Clover,

            Your reading comprehension is abominable. If I was one of your teachers and/or parents I would be disappointed in your actions on these forums.

            You missed your calling as a fiction writer.

            Your trolling is vacuous, inane, and boring.
            —————————————

            Mithrandir like you said you want to follow your individual freedoms. I have no clue why you want to hurt others but have fun with your individual freedoms!

            No. I did not say.

            If you are going to quote me you should quote the entire statement and not fabricate some bastardization of what I wrote.

            I would like people to retain individual freedom over their lives, provided they are not harming others.

            Based on your writings you do not appear to have much if any common sense.

            Tell us why you want to block others from merging?

            I never stated this. Your fabrications are inane, vacuous, and convoluted.

            …why put the responsibility to the driver that is merging …

            The merging driver wants to get where the highway driver is.

            I also stated that place more responsibility on the one merging on to the highway.

          • Clover,

            Your reading comprehension is abominable. If I was one of your teachers and/or parents I would be disappointed in your actions on these forums.

            You missed your calling as a fiction writer.

            Your trolling is vacuous, inane, and boring.
            —————————————

            Mithrandir like you said you want to follow your individual freedoms. I have no clue why you want to hurt others but have fun with your individual freedoms!

            No. I did not say.

            If you are going to quote me you should quote the entire statement and not fabricate some bastardization of what I wrote.

            I would like people to retain individual freedom over their lives, provided they are not harming others.

            Based on your writings you do not appear to have much if any common sense.

            Tell us why you want to block others from merging?

            I never stated this. Your fabrications are inane, vacuous, and convoluted.

            …why put the responsibility to the driver that is merging …

            The merging driver wants to get where the highway driver is.

            I also stated that place more responsibility on the one merging on to the highway.

          • Mithrandir the person on the interstate can either make it impossible for a driver to merge or make it easier and safer. Tell us what one of your friends who are road rage drivers would do?Clover

            That is why we ended up needing a law.

          • Clover my friend,

            I would not try to guess what kind of stupidity you would attempt during your (frequent) road rage fits.

            Tell us what one of your friends who are road rage drivers would do?

          • CloverSorry mithrandir I am not the road rage driver here. There are dozens here that are far better than I am. Now guys like Brent is towards the top of the list. He cuts merging drivers off and is dang proud of it! He says it is others that need to look out for him no matter what laws he breaks.

          • Clover,

            That dog don’t hunt around here.

            You regularly resort to attacking the character of others instead of defending your position. This seems to imply that your position is not defensible or you are unable/unwilling to engage in any meaningful dialog.

            Your trolling is inane, vacuous, slanderous, and boring.

            Sorry mithrandir I am not the road rage driver here. There are dozens here that are far better than I am. Now guys like Brent is towards the top of the list. He cuts merging drivers off and is dang proud of it! He says it is others that need to look out for him no matter what laws he breaks.

          • Clovermithrandir you already should no my position. No road road rage driving allowed, no tailgating, no weaving through traffic, no doing your best to stop someone from merging, no horn honking, no flying by someone on the right, no cutting someone off from behind with when you are breaking many laws yourself to do it. No drunk driving or driving under the influence. You know mithrandir, pretty much everything you are fighting for and approve of!

          • Clover,

            You should know when to use no.

            It would really help your position if you wrote in a more legible and clear manner. White space is your friend. Your English teacher would be disappointed in run on sentence.

            mithrandir you already should no my position.

            No road road rage driving allowed,

            You mean like this or this?

            no weaving through traffic,

            You mean like this or is this more your style?

            no horn honking,

            This is no good. Is this ok?

            no flying by someone on the right,

            I agree with you here. Planes do not belong on the highway, they belong on the runway or in the sky.

            no cutting someone off from behind with when you are breaking many laws yourself to do it.

            Impossible to cut someone off from behind.

            No drunk driving or driving under the influence.

            If someone is driving poorly, they should not be driving. The reason for their poor driving should not matter.

          • Mithrandir the first “no” was correct. It was used to emphasis the following “no”s found in the rest of the comment. Clover

            You say that poor drivers should not be driving? Do you believe guys like Brent should be driving? I guess your idea of poor driving and mine is far different. Anyone that consistently gets within a few feet or inches of a car on the interstate or a side road when not stopped is some of the worst driving I have ever seen. It never happens to me. Why is that Mithrandir? I never have the need to use my horn. Why is it others consistently need to when it is only to be used in emergency situations? Is it because they are poor drivers themselves? Should we get those drivers off the road?

          • CloverMithrandir you did not answer my questions. What is poor driving to you? Is it driving 3 mph too slow or is it the guy that uses road rage by anyone’s definition?

            Mithrandir tell us when the demonstration of road rage is OK?
            When is tailgating OK to do?
            When is horn honking OK to do?
            When is blocking someone from merging OK to do?
            When is speeding from behind, seeing someone trying to turn or switch lanes and speed up and stand on the horn and block them by moving your front bumper into their lane next to them!

          • Clovermithrandir I asked you questions. Were they too difficult for you? If you do not want to answer you come out with your tolling statements. If you do not want to answer questions then I would say that you are the troll!

            • No, Clover – you posted more non sequiturs and grammatically garbled nonsense. Nothing more. You’re incapable of having a logical discussion. You merely emote and assert.

          • Clover,

            So sayeth the troll.

            Your trolling is boring, inane, and vacuous.

            Troll, troll, troll your boat, gently down the stream.

          • Clover,

            The Illinois law does say that traveling traffic must adjust their speed or lateral position for merging traffic. However, the part you conveniently ignore ALSO says that the merging traffic must do the same (EACH DRIVER, don’t ya know?). That means… Wait for it (and you will, because you are a Clover)… Speed the hell up to the flow of traffic or obey the yield sign. The responsibility of the traveling driver is also dependent on you doing your part. YOU have a responsibility to accommodate the existing traffic by not impeding their travel or forcing them to take evasive action to avoid you.

          • Freak you agree with me!
            “The Illinois law does say that traveling traffic must adjust their speed or lateral position for merging traffic.”Clover

            I have said that all along that safe driving is to be done by all!

            Your friends that say that cars on the interstate can do whatever the hell they feel like and it is the merging driver that must suffer the consequences. They get joy out of that even though they are wrong!

      • When the light changes to green:

        I have been honked at by those behind me and I have honked at those in front of me.

        It is not personal. People need to pay attention to their driving.

      • “LIKE A ZIPPER! MERGE LIKE A F**KING ZIPPER!!”

        Come on now. You know the average Clover is likely baffled by the complexity of operating a zipper and would demand that it be changed to Velcro so they did not have to exercise any skill to operate.

    • There are 2 clovers that I despise who don’t know how to use an on or off ramp.

      The one, usually a very elderly driver, suddenly comes to a complete, dead stop at the end of an on ramp and waits for traffic to clear to their satisfaction before pulling onto the interstate. Nearly rear ended one of these last week. I was on the on ramp, accelerating to merge into traffic, looked left to check traffic, looked back in front of me and the SOB was stopped dead in front of me, about 30 yards away, with me doing about 70. I was able to quickly pass him on the right and safely merged onto traffic.

      The other type is the person who slows down as they approach each exit and usually pull into the left lane doing less than the speed limit in order to be a ‘nice guy’ and make it easier for people to merge onto the interstate. They don’t understand that we have the right of way and if you half way know what you are doing you can merge onto the highway without their pseudo-courtesy.

      • Right on Paul. Correclty approaching a limited access highway is called alternate merge and I’ve even seen it work in the clogged arteries of New York and Massachusetts. There, the folks expect you to flow into traffic (clover would probably consider it forcing your way in) and nobody gets their panties in a wad. They just do it. Stop at the end of the ramp around Brookly and expect the fine folks there to wave to you…with one finger…honk and holler something about “sunny beaches.”

        Oh and the guys that I worked with on one job site on Jamaica Bay came to work at 4:00 in the morning and left around 1:00 PM to avoid the rush hour parking lot the Van Wyck turns into. Pretty smart if you ask me. I saw them do the same thing out in Phoenix. But traffic or no traffic, you didn’t want to be working out in the desert there on the summer late afternoons.

      • I stopped being nice…..giving others the benefit of the doubt, letting them in front of me, only to have them turning out to be frikkin’ clovers, going 5 or 10 mph under the speed limit on a 2-lane highway, where you can’t pass for miles and miles and miles, only to have the clover SPEED UP in a passing zone.

        So, I quit being nice. Been burned too many times. Here’s my rule: If it appears that you must be over-accomodating to let someone in, then it’s a pretty good bet that the rube is a clover. So, show them no mercy. Never give the clover a break. After all, they never give *us* a break. It’s only fair.

        • Maybe it is better to start carrying a 50 caliber gun and shoot them rather than let them in. If you want more road rage driving then go to Russia or where ever. I am old enough to remember when there was common courtesy and help the other guy out. Did Libertarianism get rid of that? Is Libertarians all about yourself and the only joy in life is hurting others? I still want to know what those couple of seconds of savings is doing to help your life? Are you making good used of those extra couple of seconds you get from hurting others? It is not the clovers that you are often mad at but the true rage comes when you meet one of your own. When you have two road rage drivers meet then guns are not enough.Clover

          • “Maybe it is better to start carrying a 50 caliber gun and shoot them rather than let them in.”

            More stupid cloverish hyperbole.

            It’s very simple, clover….. MERGE AT THE SAME SPEED AS THE REST OF US ARE DRIVING, *NOT* THE SPEED AT WHICH YOU *THINK* EVERYONE ELSE SHOULD BE GOING.

          • You say merge at the same speed as other drivers? Well, stop driving 20 mph over the speed limit in the right lane and move over like you are supposed to!Clover

          • Pretty simple clover, if you can’t for the life of you merge at the same speed as those on the freeway without causing a fekking pileup, either adjust your speed accordingly to pass through a gap into another lane or pick another road to travel on.

            Plan your move ahead of time. I see too many idiots get to the end of the ramp – and THEN look to plan a move. It’s usually far too late by then, so they stop and screw it for everyone else. Adjust your speed and keep moving.

            Most of us will try to move into another lane for merging traffic if possible, because we don’t want to get slowed down by you in your Corolla, since you don’t make the rules solely by attempting to merge.

            For once in your life, hit the loud pedal and enjoy the practicality of NOT bringing everything to a standstill in a pile of blood, metal and frustration.

            Something you may not consider, is that controlling a personal conveyance at speed with everyone else around you attempting to do the same whilst eating bowls of breakfast cereal, texting, needlessly looking at and yapping to a fellow passenger, taking a swipe at the kids in the back seat or admiring yourself in the mirror is not the easiest of tasks. Be kind to them though, because they’re all YOUR friends.

    • YES! This is big pet-peeve of mine. I am going faster than the traffic on the freeway by the time I hit the end of the ramp, making merging much easier.

    • Eric G, let me tell you about these idiots. I’m back there finally getting out of Houston onto I 10 or 45, and grossing over 80,000 lbs. so I know I need to get up to speed to blend into traffic since nobody but nobody is going to help me in Houston traffic, a county I could exclude on insurance, one single county in Texas that would get me more than 50% off my insurance rates. I’m wailing on the loud pedal, hitting one gear after the next so I can blend in SAFELY on one of those long on ramps and all of a sudden everybody in front of me slams on their brakes, not because they’re idiots and are trying to get run over by me but because this idiot has gotten to the end of the ramp and has STOPPED. Flat friggin stopped in traffic going 80mph. You can’t imagine how many times my heart has gone into my throat and I could only see the carnage about to take place because of that one fool. I have gone into the barditch, thank you very much idiots, a great place for a heavy hauler, wailing on the air horn, yes, it was a goddamn emergency. Meanwhile, clover is up there clueless and then pulls into the traffic flow….slowly and two hours later there’s still a big clog there because that stop made miles of people in one lane have to nearly stop and for all intents and purposes, stopping wouldn’t be any different. I’m reminded of San Antonio where the hispanic factor is heavy into play. It’s been documented that 4 hours after a deer was hit and knocked off into the barditch there that traffic was still impeded from fools slowing down. A dead deer in the barditch. Does it get any more stupid than that? That’s another place I hate to drive. Funny thing. If you ever go to Mexico, people drive like bats out of hell and do it right. Failure to do so will get you killed there pronto.

      • I sympathize. I only drive a mid-size car, and I used to be a dick toward truckers (since some of them drive dangerously), but one day about twenty years ago I realized that I did something similar to what you’ve described–and I knew I was in the wrong. From that point on, I’ve been very conscious of the problems tractor-trailer drivers face, and I adjust my driving to help them out when I can. And I enjoy getting a wave of appreciation when one of you understands that I’m doing it intentionally. Man-man cooperation or something… you know what I mean.

        • Maybe I should start a service teaching people how to interact with big rigs. We could drive a few hundred miles with a CB. When you got done, you’d have made countless friends and knowledge that would last you a lifetime…and be much more comfortable, safe and feeling much better about the whole thing. I’ve been driving along and get into a bunch of trucks and drive professionally and had the truckers say “Goddamn, give that boy a big rig and a stick to stir”. I’ve driven front door many times for truckers since I had an Escort and couldn’t be caught(the old days). Drive the same route and become known to everyone and you’re never broken down by yourself.

      • Once my cousin was caught in a traffic jam on the GSP for over 10 miles. Was there an accident that caused the delays? No. The delays were caused by one lady’s car stalling on the side of the road (safely out of the travel lanes). Since she had nowhere to go, she decided it would be a good time to catch some rays.

        Care to guess what resulted from her decision? Yep, a bunch of idiots deciding to slow down to catch a look at her sunbathing.

        My cousin was fuming when he discovered the cause of the traffic snafu.

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