"LIL' JOHN" BUTTERA -- DEAD AT 68

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"LOS ANGELES (AP)—“Lil’ John” Buttera, an innovative creator of hot rods, dragsters and Indy cars who was praised as much for his artistic designs as his engineering, has died. He was 68."

FoMoCo hot rodders who grew up in the '70s and '80s remember Buttera as one of the legends and innovators of the resurgence in street rodding and the emergence of "billet" parts. His small block Ford-powered Center Door Model T wowed millions of Hot Rod readers in the early '70s. His hand-built billet creations in the late 1970s and early 1980s set the standards that inspire high-end pro shops even today.

Buttera was an artist with machine tools. Speedzzter recalls that Buttera once told a magazine writer that making parts out of a chunk of aluminum billet is just cutting away everything that doesn't look right.

Buttera brought a racers sense of lightness and efficiency to his creations. He was a leader in the "smooth" movement which included his friend Boyd Coddington and, of course, ex-Coddington designer Chip Foose, as well as many others.

Buttera lived to see "billet" trim become both a mass market item in street rodding and development of a huge "billet-proof" retro backlash. When Buttera started, "billet" represented high art and creativity. But now it's often seen as "credit card/catalog rodding" by its detractors.

Buttera and his artistry, of course, transcended the "billet" controversy.

While the "greatest generation" of post-war hot rod pioneers are passing at an increasing rate, the deaths this month of Boyd Coddington and now "Lil' John" hopefully really bring home how fragile and brief our lives are.

May God bless the Buttera family. And thanks "Lil John" for inspiring millions of hot rodders and racers across the globe.

FERRARO IS PARTLY RIGHT ABOUT OBAMA

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Geraldine Ferraro, former New York Congresswoman and 1984 Democratic nominee for Vice President has roiled the politically-correct waters of the 2008 personality pageant also known as the Democratic Presidential Primary.

As has been reported across the mainstream media, Ferraro said last Friday (March 7, 2008):

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Of course, both Barack “middle-name-rhymes-with-McCain” Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have fueled the media fixation on Ferraro’s observation. HRC grabbed the mic to disavow Ferraro’s jab, claiming:

"I do not agree with that . . . It's regrettable that any of our supporters - on both sides, because we both have this experience - say things that kind of veer off into the personal."

Naturally HRC’s politically-correct rebuke guarantees that Ferarro’s remarks are reprised over and over in the media as “background.”

Barack “Who’s-Sayin-his-middle-name” Obama has also pumped up the controversy for all it’s worth in high-profile television appearances.

The chief prophet of Obama-mania is always quick to point out how TOUGH it is for a young telegenic and articulate liberal-of-Color to navigate the shoals of the Chicago Democratic machine and to parlay his sudden appearance on the National scene into an identity politics-driven run at the White House. And then Obama dove-tails his poor-pitiful-Barack sob story into his stump speech riff about the evils of the old-timey politics of race, sex and partisanship.

So was Ferraro right?

Partly.

Now Ferraro ought to be considered an expert on identity politics, given that fact that the only reason we’ve ever heard of her is that Walter Mondale needed a huge gamble to have even a prayer of upsetting Ronald Reagan in 1984 and picked an obscure female member of Congress as his running mate.

In other words, had Ferraro been a man, she “would not have been in [that] position. [She] happen[ed] to be very lucky to be who [she was].” But thankfully, the country did not get “caught up in the concept."

But Obama-mania cannot be solely attributed to the fact that “the candidate” is a media-friendly Mulatto.

While Ferraro correctly observed that much of the fuel behind the ballistic rise of Young Barack is the complex interface of liberal white guilt and the assertion of African-American voting power in the Democratic party, she failed to account for the generational dimension.

Obama’s fluffy gibberish is calculated to position him as a new generation of politician, notwithstanding that he’s arguably just as much of a baby boomer as HRC. Thus, every time Young Barack mouths something about “old” or “change,” he’s sending a powerful metamessage that plays into the angst and covetousness of the younger-than-baby-boom generation.

In a Nation that is fixated on both staying young and the myth of the underdog, Obama’s rhetorical seed has thus far fallen on fertile soil.

Of course, none of this is particularly new. Breezy appeals for youth-driven “revolution” have been frequent in American political history. Scores of pundits have analyzed to death the comparisons between John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Obama. Notwithstanding the arguable differences in experience and gravatas Obama, like JFK, apparently has the “street cred” to pull off the appeal to restless youth voters.

The fact that Obama’s behind-the-empty-speeches radicalism has attracted strong support from the limousine/private jet liberals and intellectually-vacuous Hollywood celebrities further “blows up” Obama’s appeal to the impatient MTV Generation.

The same shallow illiterati who absorb “slasher” video games, Lila Tequila, and hyper-politically-incorrect “gangsta rap” as the currency and pinnacle of American culture undoubtedly see Obama as SOMETHING DIFFERENT from the stodgy old fogie politicians of their parents’ generation – who fight all the time like some trailer park trash in divorce court, spend millions and billions on incomprehensible wars that trash the Planet, jibber-jabber incessantly about sleep-inducing arcana “like” 401Ks, accelerated depreciation and Wall Street, but just cannot ever seem to do anything about the IMPORTANT stuff, “like” making a decade of partying in college free.

Obama’s incredible “liteness” of being and his young, “Kool,” waif-like, non-Caucasian look are tailor-made to appeal to the inexperience and untested idealism of youth.

Ferraro is obviously right in her observation that if Barack “Rhymes-with-Hugh’s-stain” Obama were, say whitebread Billy Olsen, he’d likely still be some well-spoken but obscure Chicago lawyer. If you throw a cat at an American Bar Association convention, you’d hit a hundred young lawyers who could “talk the talk” as well as Obama.

[Of course, throwing anything in a room with more than its share of "ambulance-chasing" trial lawyers is an invitation to get sued . . . .]

QUICK! Name one thing significant that Obama’s accomplished in his aphoristic political career . . .

Unless you’re a hard-core political junkie or an Obama operative schooled for this question, your mind is blank. As are the minds of the overwhelming majority of Obama’s worshipers, voters and fanatics when pressed to identify any real “change” that their hero has marshaled through the legislative system.

Amazingly, Ferarro is surprised at the backlash against her.

She should know better.

Race, not Social Security is the real “third rail” of American Politics.

While candidates such as Obama and even old Bill Clinton can tap it for “juice” to power the electorate, if you touch it in the wrong way, you get zapped. And it’s clear that telling the truth about it in the modern, politically-correct, identity-driven, Affirmative Action world of the Democratic party is a quick ticket to becoming a pariah.

IS IT TIME FOR THE "NASCAR NATION" TO STOP COMPLAINING?

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Yesterday, Yahoo Sports blogger Jay Busbee picked up Speedzzter's "The Day NASCAR Died" entry on the "From the Marbles" blog.

The resulting explosion of blog traffic was much greater than from Speedzzter's political fare or posts about Ford Motor Company issues.

Thanks Jay and "From the Marbles."

Of course, the well-placed NASCAR paid propagandists are trying to pacify the natives of the so-called "NASCAR NATION," claiming that all's well or even better than ever.

For example, Turner's Joe Menzer, over at the NASCAR-restricted NASCAR.com website sings the praises of Toyota's sudden dominance in an attack piece clearly aimed at Jack Roush and Roush-Fenway Racing:

But to all those who say that this long-predicted and much-feared emergence of Toyota means the end to all that is sacred and good about NASCAR, it's time to say this: Grow up.

Menzer's screed (which could have been drafted either by Brian France's public relations rep or Toyota's TRD) is entitled "To deal with Toyota, stop complaining, go compete."

Of course, Menzer claims that Toyota's [not so] "long way to the top" is simply the product of good, old-fashioned 'Merican hard work.

But Menzer ignores virtually all of the legitimate criticisms about how the Brian France regime has stage-managed and bootstrapped Toyota's NASCAR trajectory. Because Jack Roush has been the most vocal critic among the elite and insular club of Sprint Cup owners, Roush is, unfairly, Menzer's villain.

However, Menzer's myopic "all is wonderful" view of the Toyota Cup . . . oops . . . Sprint Cup and the bush-league Nationwide and Craftsman Truck Series ignores that the status quo in NASCAR is wholly unsatisfactory to millions of "fully grown up" consumers who used to be in the stands or watching on TV.

Moreover, The obvious problem with the "go compete" canard is that unless one is willing to spend 100+ million dollars to snag a "factory deal" field a huge superteam (and then be prepared for NASCAR to give away, restrict or outlaw any non-production technology you might spend millions and millions to develop) there is "no competing" with Toyota's buy-out of NASCAR.

NASCAR didn't make Toyota build and sell to the general public what they wanted to race.

Instead NASCAR let Toyota (and Dodge) crib the best from Ford and GM's 40+ year investment in NASCAR as a baseline. And NASCAR gave Toyota (and Dodge) essentially the same aerodynamics with the hideous COT. Thus we have a freakish "common-template" non-production rear-wheel-drive pushrod/carbureted V8-powered "Toyota Camry" funnycars dominating in laps led, if not yet wins.

And Toyota's capture of Joe Gibbs Racing is disloyal, "checkbook racing" at its most shameful (not that Speedzzter would be complaining if Gibbs moved to Ford . . . .)

You could likely put all of the production-based parts on the NASCAR "Toyota Camry" in a large suitcase and still have plenty of room for a case of whatever Brian France must have been drinking when he concocted this disaster plan.

And all of the overpaid NASCAR shills are pushing this mess as some sort of Second Coming for the sport of "stock car" racing.

So should the "NASCAR NATION" just "grow up?" Just give up and go along with the path the France Family has dictated for us to follow?

No sale!

Sorry, but NASCAR's "gimme" to Toyota is another huge step down the road to the extinction of OEM production-car-based AMERICAN stock car racing.

At least there are still V8 Supercars racing in the Land of OZ, so there's a little something left for us old-fashioned "Walter Mitty" OEM production stock car fans to identify with.

And that indicates how disappointed and disgruntled NASCAR fans could "go compete:" By watching more relevant racing elsewhere. Or spending their time and money engaged in other motorsports activities. Such "starving of the Brian France Beast" is the sort of competition that would get NASCAR's attention.

Hopefully, some dangerous fans with paving equipment and other promoters that NASCAR has left behind will someday develop a production-based alternative to the Brian France COT circus -- an alternative which returns to real, OEM production "stock car racing" (with suitable safety systems added, of course)

Now that would be a real way to "go compete."

. . . An alternative which does not require 100-person teams or a million dollars per race to compete. An alternative that equalizes the "playing field" with production parts sold in the showroom, and not fabricated in the secret labs of superteams. . . .


Yahoo Sports NASCAR blog's Daily Dose column by Bob Margolis, asserted a different defense of the 2008 NASCAR season. He claims that the season in which NASCAR DIED has "shown all the signs of . . . being a classic year . . . ."

Margolis then gives ten reasons why and threw down a dare for NASCAR critics to proffer ten reasons why not. (Possibly Bob was standing down wind from where Goodyear was burning all of those "junk" tires that didn't get the Tony-Stewart-Stamp-of-Approval at Atlanta).

Several NASCAR traditionalists have responded. Of course "Truth With Speedzzter" is more than happy to pick up the gauntlet of a challenge . . . .

2008 is shaping up to be a dismal year for "NASCOT" because:

1. Too much "single file" riding instead of racing.

2. Too many "fans disguised as empty seats."

3. No "renewal" of the Southern 500 (again).

4. Too many "cookie cutter" 1.5 mile ovals on the schedule.

5. More overhyped Indy 500 winners riding around laps down at the back than at the Indy 500.

6. Tony's [Stewart's] brain and razor aren't working (Maybe ol' Smoke could stuff that Old Spice towel into his mouth).

7. The Wood Brothers keep missing the show. ]

8. Impending sell-out of Petty Enterprises.

9. Toyota dominance in an ugly "common-template," freakish "NASCAR" which has nothing to do with anything sold anywhere, in any showroom, to anybody, anywhere.

(not that any consumer would pay for something that looks like Bob-the-Builder mocked it up out of cardboard, plopped on a "tuner wing" and "splitter" from the Pep Boys, and slathered it with fake-looking "brand identification" decals).

10. No competitive single car teams.

11. Yates Racing #28 (Travis Kvapil) struggling on the pick-up-sponsor-of-the-week program.

12. "Rowdy" Busch is a wreck waiting to happen on nearly every lap.

13. The "24 hours of California."

14. Backmarker Dale Jarrett still hasn't retired.

15. Dale Jr.-- New team, new number, new driving suit . . . and same old losing streak.

16. Mark "Viagra" Martin -- still stroking around, but in a Chevy.

17. Jeff Gordon -- still hated as a gutless turncoat by Ford Racing fans, but still running better than he should be.

18. Still too much of shameless Toyota pitchmen the Waltrip Brothers on television.

19. Fox Gopher cam.

20. New Hampshire is still a boring death trap with two dates (thanks oldcorps116).

Bonus: BRIAN FRANCE . . . .

How's that list, Bob?

THE VEEPSTAKES: THERE IS AN OBVIOUS LOSER

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Uberpundit Fred Barnes, of Fox News and Weekly Standard fame has plunged head-first into the Mitt Romney for Vice President campaign.

Barnes, apparently writing directly from the talking points paid for by Willard Mitt Romney (a/k/a the Gucci Chameleon, "Mitt-the-Flip," Bishop Mitt, the Vain Bain Capitalist, "Flipper Mitty," "Slick Willard" and that "guy who made hundreds of millions by outsourcing your job to China"), claims that Romney is the "obvious winner" as McCain's choice for Number Two.

R-i-g-h-t.

And New York Governor Elliot "Mess" Spitzer is a committed monogamist who'd never pay a floozie $5,000-an-hour for some nookie . . . .

Barnes' "analysis" (e.g. Romney commercial) ranks about as credible as Bill Clinton's infamous claim that he "didn't inhale."

Fred appears to be inhaling something (perhaps the sweet smell of beau-coup Greenbacks from Mitt's unlimited bankroll . . . or maybe the same stuff that Professor Benny Shanon was apparently on when he claimed Moses hopped-up on psychedelics at Mount Sinai)



[Of course Fred is probably just parroting the News Corporation company line as a dutiful employee]

Selecting Mitt Romney as vice president is a sure-fire way to torpedo John McCain's chances in November.

Just punch the "Mitt Romney" link below on this website for more about Romney's Mormon Tabernacle-sized list of political defects.

But here's the "Executive Summary" for those otherwise occupied at the "19th hole."

"Pit-Bull-Mitt" is a flip-flopping political novice who used his huge personal fortune to attack fellow Republicans.

"Bishop Mitt" overwhelmingly alienates at least 1/3 of the GOP base.

"Mitt-the-Flip" lost in many of the Red States where the GOP must win. (Romney didn't win any place that McCain was uncompetitive so he adds virtually no regional balance to the ticket.

"Slick Willard" stands for almost nothing solid (he's grossly flip-flopped on nearly every issue important to social conservatives).

The Vain Bain Capitalist also is the perfectly-coifed poster child for almost every negative stereotype the electorate holds about the GOP.

If Five hundred million dollars worth of free media from Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and a host of other GOP "attack radio" stars couldn't sell "Mitty" to the GOP base (who were primed and ready for SOMEONE to rescue the GOP in 2008), why does Fred Barnes believe that Romney would sell any better among the more moderate (and more skeptical) general electorate?

Mitt as Veep would be a disaster (and a guarantee that this card-carrying Republican wouldn't even put a McCain-Romney sticker on the old Powered-By-Ford SpeedWagon . . .)

Central to the Romney-ian argument for the "superiority" of Slick Willard as Veep is the claim that he's been anointed by Karl Rove and George W. Bush.

Rove, of course, has been an in-the-tank Romney-ian for months. And , given the obvious fact that Rove and Bush have lead the GOP nearly to the abyss (including with sterling picks such as Donald Rumsfeld and Bush's gross negligence in not using the veto pen to stop profligate spending while the GOP still had control of Congress), it's hardly a ringing endorsement of their collective wisdom in selecting personnel or sensing the direction of the political waters.

But Rove and Bush pushing the Gucci Chameleon is certainly a fact that will make for a nice Democrat attack ad in the fall.

Mitt Romney is only the "obvious" winner of the Veepstakes if the GOP has a death wish in November.

THE DAY NASCAR DIED

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March 9, 2008 . . . a date that will live in motorsports infamy.

March 9, 2008, is the date when Brian France’s plot to destroy American “stock car” racing and hand the cold, dead carcass over to the Japanese began to bear rotten fruit in the highest echelons of the sport.

March 9, 2008, is the day when the ersatz, “common-template” funnycar, powered by a never-production, never-sold-to-the-general public, purpose-engineered and built pushrod “Toyota” V8, garnered the first Sprint Cup win for the burgeoning, billions-of-Yen Toyota take-over of NASCAR.

Plenty of fans “dressed as empty seats” witnessed Kyle Busch -- possibly 2008's most unpopular non-Southerner to slide through a “common-template” window opening– and his traitorous teammate, scruffy Tony Stewart, wheel their hideous, Joe Gibbs “Toyota Camry [sic]” common-template funnycars to the top two spots at the Atlanta Motor Speedway in the 2008 Kobalt Tools 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race.

Now it’s official.

There’s simply no reason for a red-blooded American who appreciates the storied traditions of Southern-style stock car racing to ever watch or attend a WWE -on-wheels NASCAR show ever again.

NASCAR has “jumped the shark” . . . and the shark is now a fine plate of overpriced sushi being served up in an air-conditioned luxury box to some golf-shirt wearing corporate hacks from Tokyo.

They might as well change the meaning of the NASCAR acronym to the Nippon Association of Schizoid Car Auto Racing.

Brian France -- who is quite possibly the best living argument for a 100% inheritance tax in America (perhaps second only to William Clay Ford, Jr.).-- has been trying for years to give NASCAR over to Toyota.

First, the moronic Brian France let Toyota make up a “clean sheet” pushrod NASCAR racing engine, learning from the best Ford Motor Company and others had taken years to develop.

Then the vapid Brian France allowed Toyota to become the dominant make in the Craftsman Truck Series, ruining whatever limited appeal that bogus “funnytruck” series ever had.

Then Brian-the-Buffoon countenanced Toyota’s concocting of a rear-wheel-drive, pushrod V8 powered “Toyota Camry” (that’s wholly unlike anything the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, Ltd. and its successors ever sold to any consumer, anywhere, at any time, ever.)

Brian France, the latest patriarch of the dictatorial France family and the one who has killed or assisted in the killing many venerable Southern traditions, such as racing at the North Carolina Motor Speedway and on Labor Day in Darlington, South Carolina, at the Southern 500, as well as pushing full-throttle on the non-stock, “common-template” aesthetic abortion known as the “Car of Tomorrow,” apparently sees allowing huge superteams funded by millions and billions of dollars from Japan as the ultimate in progress for the formerly, all-American sport of “stock car” racing.

And the France family’s iron-handed monopoly on racing facilities that could theoretically support the birth of a new TRUE STOCK CAR series (i.e. racing of cars that the general public can actually purchase, just like when NASCAR began “strictly stock” competition 60 years ago), likely means that Brian France’s gift of the last major American motorsports series over to the Japanese will go mostly unabated.

(Note that already, due to Tony George’s idiotic Indy Racing League power grab, Indy/Champ Car racing is now exclusively powered by Honda).

The warning signs of the Toyota take-over have been gathering all season.

Toyota has dominated the lackluster warm-up days in the bush-league Nationwide Cup and the aforementioned Craftsman Truck mess. And “Shrub” Busch has been recklessly flinging around his horrendously ugly “common-template” “Toyota Camry [sic]” Sprint Cup funnycar like a crazed PCP addict.

(Of course, wild recklessness, along with a fair amount of fan hatred, is what many believe cost “Shrub” his ride with the Hendrick Chevrolet superteam)

And NASCAR tipped everyone to its growing fondness for all things Japanese when it heavily penalized the Roush-Fenway Ford team for a loose oil tank cover after Carl Edward’s win last week in Las Vegas, handing the season points lead over to a Toyota team for the first time ever.

Whether or not NASCAR gave Toyota and Gibbs “the Call” on March 9 will undoubtedly be the subject of debate for years. But from Speedzzter’s perspective, NASCAR has already given Toyota so many “calls” to bootstrap them to this point, that one more probably wasn’t necessary.

Of course, for traditionalists, the irony of Toyota’s “first big win” is that it was at Atlanta. Atlanta was the site of perhaps the greatest race in NASCAR history (and no, Dale Earnhardt didn’t win it).

The 1992 Hooters 500 probably was the pinnacle of the “modern era” of NASCAR, and likely for the foreseeable future.

In that storied race, owner-driver Alan Kulwicki took the NASCAR Winston Cup championship with his non-common-template Ford “Underbird” Thunderbird (which still featured a number of production-based body panels, an engine derived from parts Ford had at one time sold regular Joes in production cars, and had its drive wheels on the same end as the production Thunderbirds of the day).

Kulwicki battled Ford heros Bill Elliott (driving for Junior Johnson) and Davey Allison (driving for Holman-Moody alumnus Robert Yates) for the championship that day.

Also that day, the hated FoMoCo turncoat Jeff Gordon infamously started his first “Cup” race in a Hendrick Chevrolet and The King, Richard Pettydrove his last.

Petty, incidentally, drove Fords as a protest during the 1969 season and strongly lobbied hard for this boring, common-template mess decades later)

Kulwicki was the last owner-driver to win the championship.

Kulwicki was the last driver to win the championship who was not a member of a huge, factory-backed superteam.

And Kulwicki was the last driver to win a championship in a car that was not based (loosely) on a prosaic front-wheel-drive model converted to pushrod V8 power and rear-wheel-drive.

Of course, the old-fashioned, brutal oval layout that began in 1960 as Atlanta International Speedway and on which Kulwicki won the 1992 Winston Cup has now been turned into another bloated, boring, cookie-cutter “tri-oval.” (According to the Speedway’s website, “When the 1.5-mile track, then called Atlanta International Raceway, finally made its debut on July 31, 1960, it became the seventh superspeedway,a paved facility of one mile or more, to play host to a Cup race. Only three of the original seven; Darlington Raceway, Daytona International Speedway and Lowe's (then Charlotte) Motor Speedway are still in operation.”)

The little-guy owner/driver teams are all gone as well.

And there’s probably not one OEM production part left in the repugnant common-template funnycars that Brian France claims are the “cars of tomorrow” today.

And now, in the daze of huge corporate dominance, massive superteams with obscene budgets, sagging attendance and flat television ratings, Brian France’s little gift to Toyota is the final insult to true stock car-loving traditionalists.

Also ironic is that Toyota's racing arm is known as Toyota Racing Development or TRD -- which is exactly what a Toyota winning a NASCAR race is: A TRD.

Perhaps the old fans who are watching the weeds grow at North Wilksboro and Rockingham and recalling the Old NASCAR are seeing a better show these days. At least they have their memories . . . .

The NASCAR we knew is dead. Absolutely dead.