That's actually going on even in this country. The outsourcing trend started when the airlines contracted out their maintenance to anti-union states like OK (Tulsa is a big hub for this). Pretty soon, labor-intensive maintenance had left the US entirely for places like El Salvador and China. I'm pretty sure that Delta does most of their "D checks" (where the plane is pretty much disassembled) in El Salvador.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_maintenance_checks#Offshore_Maintenance_Facilities

IIRC, there were a couple additional issues with the Pinto. There was a problem with the filler tube that connected to the fuel tank (I think it was welded to the body or something), and this could cause a rupture and subsequent conflagration. The fuel tank was much too close to the bumper, and there wasn't enough of a buffer zone around it; there were lots of structural items nearby that could cause punctures. Ford actually had the option to license a self-sealing "fuel bladder", a design that came from the aviation industry, but the bean counters nixed that. The doors tended to bind and jam in a collision, trapping occupants in a burning vehicle. And finally, '70s-era Ford was really making some lousy cars, especially small ones. The Pinto is yet another case of "the hard way is the easiest to learn". (I think there was an episode of Engineering Disasters that covered the Pinto fiasco in great detail).

The diagram you posted below shows what a defective design it really was. It's almost as if they shoehorned in the fuel tank wherever they could, like it was an afterthought.

Oh, yeah, back before YouTube or even the commercial internet, there were various crazy political groups that would send their videos to cable-access stations around the country. You would sometimes see their stuff played on late-night cable TV. I vaguely remember one that had to do with old rail yards being converted into FEMA detention camps or something. There was even an X-Files episode or two that riffed off of this stuff...it had quite an impact on '90s culture. The "FEMA camp" nonsense was even featured on Jesse Ventura's ridiculous TV show.

Finally...an example of "jury nullification" for the left. Every other time I've heard that term, it's always been from a MAGA chud. Too bad the incident (and court case) happened in the UK, though, not here.

So many cultural minefields to cross...anyone remember the George HW Bush incident with the grocery scanner? That was blamed in part for his loss to Clinton.

It's also nice to see that years after Roger Ailes toppled down the stairs to his demise, his successor(s) at Fox "News" still have the fetish for newsreaders from the Blonde Fembot Factory.

After the raids in 2006, the company needed to replenish its work force fast. Swift executives set up a war room where they posted maps on the walls and circled target cities for recruitment. The company’s H.R. team advertised on the radio and in local newspapers. They bought space on billboards. They sent representatives to job fairs and set up a recruitment station at unemployment offices. But few workers would bite. Finally, Swift started offering free bus service to Cactus from Amarillo. Somali refugees began to apply, and in 2007, after JBS acquired Swift, it stepped up the hiring of refugees to maintain production.

It's surprising that this story actually reveals one of the key problems of industrial agriculture, the vertical integration and monopolization which has grown exponentially since the '80s--particularly through M&As and finance capital buyouts. The working conditions in these plants are often beyond description, and the article only obliquely mentions the latest work hazard: Covid. A family member lived in Sioux Falls, SD during the worst of the pandemic years, and they told me of the panic that spread through the community as workers at the Smithfield plant there got sick and died. It turns out that Covid spreads best in cold, damp conditions, which makes meat processing plants uniquely dangerous. Then there was the spectacle of Donald Trump insisting that the plants stay open during the worst of the pandemic, which resulted in huge spread of Covid outside of the confines of the plants and the predictable deaths of workers from the virus.

What a joke of an article. These "think" tank morons just phone it in, every damn time. FEE has to be among the very worst, with seemingly no standards for what kind of garbage gets posted on their site. I recall that another FEE "writer" was featured on a Chapo episode some time ago, and their prose read exactly like this Jon Miltimore idiot. I wish I could remember more details--but I do know that the individual in question was a college dropout who had basically bounced around from marginal job to marginal job and somehow ended up at FEE. That seems to be how they find these people--I'm guessing that the pay is lousy and they prey on not-too-bright recent college grads or dropouts who have run out of options. I also noticed that Miltimore is affiliated with "Intellectual Takeout", which is a really lame project run out of the Center for the American Experiment, a regional right-wing "think" tank in MN. "Takeout" exists basically to provide prefabbed term papers with right-wing themes which lazy students can copy in order to "pwn" their supposedly Marxist professors. However, colleges now use sophisticated anti-cheating software, and this is a really great way to get blackballed from higher ed by being expelled for plagiarism.

The MRA/PUA/incel Vice President, endorsed by Roosh V, ladies and gentlemen.

As I recall, a couple of people from the Pentagon or other military agency wargamed a full-on (likely worst-case) Civil War 2.0, and the upshot was that "[tactical nukes] were used early and often". The outcome would be grim, to say the least.

She is being primaried by the same Uncle Ruckus as last time (Don Samuels). He's funded by right-wing "think" tanks and ideologues while he slaves like a stevedore in an attempt to hide those connections. It's kind of hard to do so, however, when everyone remembers Samuels' abortive attempts to voucherize the Minneapolis public schools (he also recommended "blowing up" the North High campus). So Omar is probably just flexing her "moderate, reasonable" chops to get some of that sweet DNC money. The PMC/lanyard types are always complaining about Omar being too "radical", so it's probably playing safe on her part to do this (especially because Samuels came close to beating her last time).

Fascism that's so comfy...