And remember what Sgt. Hulka said: “this ain’t no glamour detail we’re on.”
In a recent comment, Bob Amundson promised to send me a picture of his new Urban Assault Vehicle, a la “Stripes.”
True to his word, he did, and here’s what he had to say about it:
I’ve been meaning to email you since you posted with a mention of the movie Stripes. Attached is a photo of a REAL EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle, which I own. The FMC Motorhome has an interesting lineage; FMC is the acronym for Food Machinery Corporation. FMC started in 1883, kept adding mechanized products, and eventually started producing amphibious vehicles for the military. During a lull in its military vehicle contracts as the Vietnam War ended, FMC turned its sights towards recreational vehicles; FMC coaches were manufactured from 1973-1976. The well-made and pricey coaches that sold for between $27,000 and $54,500 (about the same price as an average home of that era) were popular among upscale Motorhome buyers, including race car drivers Mario Andretti and Parnelli Jones; and entertainers Clint Eastwood, Carol Burnett, Pat Boone and James Brolin. But the most famous FMC owner was CBS reporter Charles Kuralt, host of the popular news feature On the Road With Charles Kuralt. By 1975, FMC had a contract to produce the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and in September 1976 converted all tooling in its factory to the manufacture of tanks. The final tally for the FMC was slightly more than 1,000 units; there is believed to be 7-800 units still out there.
Ours is a 1975 – it is built like a military vehicle, especially the 4 wheel independent suspension and 440 turbocharged MOPAR engine. This vehicle actually has a bullet hole in it – the story is that the vehicle was confiscated at the US-Canadian Border after a gun battle between Border Police and Drug Runners. It has a fiberglass body, so for it’s size, it is relatively light. I am going to make it into an Urban Assault Vehicle; “wrapping” the fiberglass body to mimic the Stripes UAV. Throw in a few machine guns, probably a rocket launcher. We will completely renovate the interior – state of the art, top of the line, small, efficient. Once that is done, wife Joan and I will take a trip. Maybe TV? Marketing will lead to renting the UAV – I just need to figure out how much I can charge!
The ”REAL” EM-50 UAV was a GMC Motorhome, and about 36,000 of those we made. I think my find is cooler, and I found it less than a mile from our RV Park. Another time I’ll tell you about the classic 1965 Airstream Travel Trailer I bought from the Park’s neighbor. It has a “GRIMM” story.
Heal soon!
So it’s almost ready to roll, and as I look around at you people, I’m thinking, “These are exactly the kind of go-getters I want working on my EM-50 project in Italy!”
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Way too many police officers lie way too often. Personally, I don’t trust police officers,, ever.
As I have said many times, video any encounter with a police officer.
Police officers in Colorado recently broke a 73 year old woman’s arm in an arrest. The lady suffers from dementia and Video shows she was CLEARLY confused when police arrested her. Of course they used ZERO discretion in arresting her.
When the officers returned to the station to watch the body cam video, they laughed about breaking her arm. That was caught on video.
Unbelievably, the officers are still being paid and are on administrative duty.
When I watch this video I think of several people that are in my family that are in this situation and I know how confused they would be if a police officer walked up to them and started asking questions. I have to be honest, if an officer arrested one of them and broke their arm like these evil scumbags did, they might get a personal visit One night from some people in my extended family.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/colorado-police-laughed-at-body-cam-of-violent-arrest-of-karen-garner-woman-with-dementia-video-shows
A civil rights investigation has been launched in this case.
The state and feds are looking at the police department.
The police originally were not looking into the situation because a “formal complaint” had not been filed.
Now they have multiple lawsuits on their hands.
Now there are a couple of questions I have to ask you, they’re a little personal:
Ok, not convicted and not flaming. There was a very special place for me – Naval Aviation Officers Candidate school. My time there is also a movie (An Officer and a Gentleman; still have a crush on Debra Winger).
Yes, she was pretty amazing…
The census results are in. The biggest winner was TX with a gain of 2 congressional districts. On the surface this is bad news for the good guys. But it’s also an opportunity. TX is so close to flipping blue. The biggest obstacle is voter suppression. It’s going to be interesting to see how far the evil red empire is willing to go to thwart pragmatic progress. With a blue TX there is virtually no chance of electing a Republican POTUS. Hope springs eternal.
I think the change to Presidential elections is going to be negligible. If we recalculated the 2020 election using the new number of electoral votes for each of the affected states, Joe Biden won have won only 3 fewer electoral votes, as losses of votes in California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, would have been offset by votes he would have gained in Colorado and Oregon.
There may be a slight change to the balance in the US House of Representatives, but every state is going to have the opportunity re-draw district lines, so I’m not sure how that will ultimately shake out. How about New York losing a house seat by 89 people? Wow.
“ One example of how it gets slightly tougher for Dems: it is no longer true that whoever wins three of PA/MI/AZ/WI/GA wins the presidency, as was true in 2020, provided other states vote as they did.
Now, Dems can’t win with three smaller states–MI/WI/AZ or GA/WI/AZ–alone.” – Nate Cohn, NY Times
Cook political report redistricting scorecard estimates Republicans will pick up 3.5 seats from reapportionment/redistricting alone. But, there’s quite a bit of uncertainty in some states
“Reapportionment bring huge changes in the Electoral College math: Biden wins 303 electoral votes, down from 306.
Even so, worth noting that the already significant relative Democratic disadvantage in the Electoral College still gets slightly worse”. – Nate Cohn, NY Times
“the evil red empire”
Didn’t Reagan say something about that?…
I shouldn’t miss this opportunity to remind everyone how utterly stupid the electoral college is. Power shifts in favor of the Republicans overnight even though not one damn thing has changed.
Um, the relative population of the states is what changed, right?