"Absstthhalutely"
Posted on 07/10/2013 9:16:06 AM PDT by mojito
The Michael Hastings Car Crash: No Skids Marks, A Flying Engine And “Boston Brakes”
In cases such as the highly suspicious and tragic car crash/explosion that killed celebrated investigative journalist Michael Hastings, I try to reserve commentary for a little bit to let facts emerge following the initial speculative flurry. Particularly when it involves a journalist with whom I am only slightly familiar. I think we can all agree at this point that based on what has come forward in the past several weeks it is more than likely Mr. Hastings was murdered.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
Well, you’ve posted it just now, so yes, we will all read that here!
Oh. Then you can read it but don’t believe it - it’s all a conspiracy.
"Absstthhalutely"
Well, I believe that you wrote that post. Beyond that, I don’t have any clue as to your source or your personal qualifications so that I can judge whether what you wrote is true or not.
(1) Michael Hastings was a journalist best known for getting Stanley McChrystal fired. He got McChrystal fired by revealing that McChrystal and his staff were critical of the Obama adminstration's handling of the war in Afghanistan.
So Hastings, as a journalist, was carrying water for the Obama administration and gave them the political cover they needed to get rid of a troublesome general.
Why this would make him a hero to any conservative is puzzling.
(2) Michael Hastings was one of the hundreds of journalists who were justly critical of the Obama administrations spying on journalists and who wrote opinion pieces expressing their displeasure.
(3) Michael Hastings supposedly told friends that he suspected the FBI was investigating him. Wikileaks also announced that Hastings had been in contact with them. There has not been a whole lot of verifiable information on these points.
(4) Michael Hastings crashed his car at 4:25am on a Tuesday morning. While there are many allegations, what we do know is that the vehicle hit a palm tree at high speed and burst into flames, and that the engine skidded about 50 or 60 yards down the street after the impact.
Despite heated claims to the contrary, Mercedes are not magic and they do indeed burst into flames from time to time.
(5) The LAPD is currently conducting an investigation of the accident, and they have not invited bloggers to collaborate in their investigation with them. Which I would imagine is a standard policy for most law enforcement agencies.
So we have a case of a journalist involved in an early morning car crash. A journalist who agreed with 99% of his colleagues on the issue of government surveillance of journalists.
There is still no plausible, checkable reason why Hastings would be singled out for an assassination, nor is there any obvious sign that this was any different from a car crash in which a sleepy driver loses control.
I look forward to learning more about the case.
And that seems logical given the time and circumstances. But there's one thing about the incident that troubles me. Images shown right after the crash displayed what appeared to be a shiny new totally intact gas tank behind the car.
If a gasoline explosion killed the driver and burned the car, why is the gas tank intact? I don't know enough about that particular car to judge. Maybe it has two gas tanks and only one blew up. But the worst fire damage appears to be concentrated just behind the driver's seat, ahead of where the tank is lying, and the right rear of the car.
Will we ever know what happened about this and other important things in American life? Each morning when I check the news I feel as if I'm traveling a bit further daily into Never-Never Land.
Correction,
it IS a Banana Republic but with reserve currency status.
Once that is gone then it`ll be a violent thugish left-wing gestapo type of Banana Republic.
There hasn’t been a toxicology report released, perhaps because the body was so badly burned that getting a tissue reading is difficult.
Here’s a blogger who has some interesting pictures and questions...
http://whitenoise.gizmodo.com/now-im-convinced-that-michael-hastings-car-was-bombed-632980340
All I see is something shiny and possibly metallic, which could describe many, many objects.
I don't see how it is identifiable as a gas tank, especially when so many tanks do not have a shiny, metallic finish.
As I said, I’m not an automobile expert. But one of the images shows an object that looks to me very much like a gas tank. Of course I could be wrong. I have that image on a flash drive but don’t know how to upload it to this thread.
In other words, he begins with the assumption that it must have been a bomb and then proceeds to explain how to combat arguments against it being a bomb.
So we have four schools of conspiratorial thought now: (a) it was a bomb, (b) it was a "drive by wire" remote crash, (c) he was drugged and the toxicology report is being withheld for this reason, (d) It was done remotely and a "thermite device" was used to burn the car to cover up evidence.
It's a little exhausting.
All of these angles have the same structure: it had to be foul play, there is no chance it could possibly have been an accident, so we need to figure out how to jimmy the facts to fit the foregone conclusion.
(4) Michael Hastings crashed his car at 4:25am on a Tuesday morning. While there are many allegations, what we do know is that the vehicle hit a palm tree at high speed and burst into flames, and that the engine skidded about 50 or 60 yards down the street after the impact.*****
My understanding is that the engine and tranny were located about 150 to 200 ft away from the crash site. The funny thing is that they were located along the path the car had taken before impact. Meaning separation from the chassis had to occur prior to impact with the tree. Also photos appear to indicate the car didn’t crash into the palm tree but came to rest against the palm tree.
Laws of physics would dictate the engine assembly could not have separated as a result of impact with the tree given the engine’s location. If so, it would have continued on in the direction of travel at the point of impact which was away from the street and beyond (not before) the point of impact.
I’m certainly no fan of Rolling Stone and I know very little about Hastings, but the crash scene bears little resemblence to a simple head on collision.
That's an assumption. It did not "have to" occur prior to impact. It could have occurred upon impact and those components could have ricocheted off the tree (or a kerb or any other deflector) back along the path.
Also photos appear to indicate the car didn’t crash into the palm tree but came to rest against the palm tree.
A still photo taken after the fact, by its very nature, cannot demonstrate that to be the case.
Laws of physics would dictate the engine assembly could not have separated as a result of impact with the tree given the engine’s location.
Which laws are those, now, specifically?
If so, it would have continued on in the direction of travel at the point of impact
Unless it hit something, like a sturdy tree, in which case it would not have.
the crash scene bears little resemblence to a simple head on collision
The photos do not show that it was a head-on, 90 degree angle collision.
I don't think anyone is claiming that this was a "simple head on" collision.
The simple laws of mechanics, motion and kinetic energy. For the car to have impacted a stationary object and then have an assembly as massive as the drivetrain to reverse direction and end up 150-200ft behind the car is impossible.
The entire drivetrain would have had to reverse direction through the firewall and passenger compartment and then have the energy to travel the 150-200 ft against the direction of travel. Still photos do indicate the type of front end collision necessary to even approach that type of event and generate that level of kinetic energy simply did not occur.
Well, here’s a little different take on such a happening:
Are you stupid?
The story that the engine ended up behind the vehicle instead of launched ahead of it came from a dumba** reporterette from San Diego Channel 6 who got it wrong:
Fowl play required him to play chicken with the palm tree.
I was just basically looking at the fact that the car had frontal impact with the tree.
The driveshaft clean break, motor mounts break, and then the engine and transmission flying off to the right at a 45 degree angle and land 180 feet away just sounds like a bit of a stretch.
I did find an accident account online where a Shelby lost its engine, but the supercharged 5.4 liter engine seemed to have ripped the front suspension off the car. The driver in that case, however, was accelerating and hit an embankment and, according to the story...
“Utilizing Ford’s newest ejection technology, the front end of the car separated from the rest of the Shelby. The Acura RSX trailing behind then collided with the supercharged powerplant and punted it down the road.”
I don’t know if Mercedes uses any kind of “ejection” technology in the model car Mr. Hastings was driving. I’ve never heard of an engine flying out of a car when there is frontal impact.
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