That's what I thought...

 "Pro-Palestinian" protesters of Israel apparently changed "Heil Hitler" and gave the Nazi salute in the Olympics.  OK, I guess they're telling us who they actually are in the same way their compatriots in Hamas did on October 7, but I'd have thought that Nazis might prefer to, you know, keep that quiet.

That noted, it does not appear that the "Heil Hitler" spectators were ejected.  And if an endorsement of one of history's worst genocides doesn't serve to justify ejection, I don't know what does.  I'm very sure that if some clowns decided to wear their bedsheets to a game here in the U.S., they'd be shown the door, so I'm not quite sure why endorsement of far worse atrocities than anything the KKK ever did would get a free pass.

Put differently, if you want Islamic radicals to join the civilized world, you need to subject them to the rules of the civilized world.  That starts with walking them right out when they start chanting Nazi slogans.

I'm sure soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan will be duly impressed

Apparently, a couple of the reasons for not having an officer on top of the building from where Trump was shot  are that it was "too dangerous" to have him on a sloped roof (as roofers scratch their heads, doing that for a living), and then when that was laughed out of the public forum as ludicrous, apparently whistleblowers claimed that someone was up there, but came down because it was too hot.

The temperature in Butler, PA maxed out at 83F.  I'm pretty sure that our soldiers who served in Iraq, where the mercury routinely hits above 110F, will be playing a song of compassion for the poor guy on the world's smallest violin.  Granted, a white roof will reflect heat, but dealing with uncomfortable heat is part of the job, and small town police officers deal with much higher temperatures while providing security around the beer tent at every county fair in the lower 48.

So either the culture of the Secret Service has significantly changed from "will take a bullet for the President" to "don't make me sweat for the President", or they're still lying, and actually were working to endanger a former President.  I'm guessing a little bit of both, because people who will still take a bullet for that role probably aren't going to back down on the truth.  

It's a scary time for our country. 

Brilliance from the Windy City

According to Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, culpability for horrendous murder rates in Chicago lies with.....President Nixon, who of course died about 30 years ago in 1994.  Although I suppose some of Nixon's policies might have something to do with crime rates today, I'd dare suggest that governmental actions of the past 50 years, starting with Chicago's longtime discrimination against gun rights and continuing to poor policing, might have a bit more to do with it.

Perhaps even more amusingly, Johnson extols the record of Lyndon Johnson, who during his first 20 years as a lawmaker (1937-1957) opposed every civil rights bill brought to his attention, enacted the "Great Society" laws that to this day are the bane of poor people of all races, and who of course got the country deeply into the Vietnam War, prematurely ending the lives of about 7000 black soldiers and maiming tens of thousands more.

Nixon, on the other hand, was a staunch supporter of civil rights throughout his career.  One might wonder whether certain portions of the progressive left are in fact trying to injure those they claim to be trying to help.

Charge your electric car? Maybe not.

            A new study indicates that an average of 20% of electric vehicle chargers will be non-operational at any given time.  Now as someone who's worked in electronics reliability for the past 25 years or so, I've got a few thoughts on this.  First of all, as you might guess, a 20% offline rate means that necessary margin is not built into the product.  It is analogous to the failure rate of race cars, really, and is something you would never accept for your Camry or Golf Sportwagen (my car).  This is especially bad when one realizes that a charger is not exactly a complicated piece of equipment; it's a heavy duty DC power supply with a meter, a microprocessor, a screen, and a few buttons.  The meter on your home, combined with the transformer on the pole or in the green box nearby, serves much the same function, just with alternating current.

So what is going on with electric car chargers?  Really, the same thing that I noticed 12 years back with CFL lightbulbs (rest in the toxic waste dump), that because getting the product out there was so politically important and urgent, they didn't do the correct reliability engineering or testing.  Then combine that with the fact that they're often in the worst possible setting, like a garage without ventilation, or worse yet in the sun with no active cooling for the transformer and power supply.  I'm guessing the inner components may be getting hot enough to "leave skin behind" if you were unlucky enough to touch them, and suffice it to say this kills electronics reliability.  The old engineer's adage was that 5C increase in temperature halved the life of any device, and we're talking probably five to ten times that amount.

In other words, electric car chargers are a lot like older Ferraris, looking very sleek and fashionable, but really bound to spend a lot more time at the repair shop than actually doing their job.  It's yet another reason to get government out of the business of deciding what we drive.