Hey,

As you know, I’ve pondered the issues, the war on smoke or fossil fuels for a while. I’ve studied the movement in our colleges to basically over-throw the government. Then last week I started to consider history. Hell, Greg Wrightstone from the CO2 Coalition just wrote a story about witches of the 1600s and the connection to this current mess. Maybe I’ll run a portion of it in the news.

Remember, after WWII the communism threat. Then the War in Vietnam. How about the Civil War. We’ve been through a bunch, and once more we are testing our freedom resolve. Then depending on your location in the country and heritage, you might take a different slant on any issue.

I’m originally from California and my father came from England as a small child after WWI. My mother was born in Kansas City, MO and migrated to California as a young adult, a serious child of the depression.

So, what’s it all mean? It means hope and resolve to me. My folks took a gamble on a better life, struggled and fought for it, moved half-way across the country and started over, fought in WWII and survived.

My generation partied and raised hell, but I was fortunate enough to be confronted with the fight for freedom and the processes. It made me more aware and attuned to the shit going on behind the party. It’s like sometimes you party, but sometimes you fight. Right now, we’re fighting.

Let’s hit the news:

The Bikernet Weekly News is sponsored in part by companies who also dig Freedom including: Cycle Source Magazine, the MRF, Iron Trader News, ChopperTown, BorntoRide.com and the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum.





NEWS FROM THE TOWN OF LOWBROW--Forget burns, they're no fun.

Do you have a hot ankle, calf, or knee?

Well, with Lowbrow's cast aluminum heat shields, they are a thing of the past.

Our innovative, cast aluminum mounts are coped perfectly for 1-3/4" exhausts. They also work great with 2" (minor filing of mounts necessary) and 1-1/2" exhausts as well.

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CHECK 'EM OUT







HOT BIKE MAGAZINE REPORT--Rev up Your Style Game with the Hottest Custom Bikes of 2023

Get Your Hands on the Latest Hot Bike Vol. 3 2023 Magazine
Attention custom bike junkies! The wait is over. The latest edition of Hot Bike Vol. 3 2023 is finally here and ready to be delivered to your doorstep.

Featuring garage builder Kyle Ray Rice's new FXR Chop on the cover, we've also got the latest from the industry's finest, including Ken's Factory, Nightfall Customs, Biltwell and more.

You'll also get an exclusive look at the metal shaping basics from one of the best in the game, Cristian Sosa, and some not-to-be-missed tech tips from the one and only Danny "Motorwitch" Wilson.

Don't wait, check ‘em out today and stay ahead of the game!





BIKERNET STAFFER COMMENT-- Lost comment

https://www.bikernet.com/pages/Meet_Governor_Michelle_Grisham_of_New_Mexico.aspx

"Since the dawn of civilization, no one ever needed any academic or any skills, talent, decency, personality, aptitude or any such factor to be in elected political office. It was always a popularity contest and in modern times, a social-media influencer can be President! Maybe an AI chatbot may win next time around."

--Wayfarer
Under a rock at Pillar Peak





SHOP BIKE OF THE WEEK-- Phil’s Speed Shop, Orange Califa.





I just finished this custom. I would like to get it featured, but I know magazines are struggling.

(714)771-6727

--Fast Phil









LATEST TOOL FROM JIMS MACHINE-- Milwaukee-Eight Shifter Shaft Bushing Remover and Installer

In 2017, Harley-Davidson launched the Milwaukee-Eight powertrain. Included in this powertrain upgrade, the inner primary shifter shaft bushing was redesigned to a thin wall bushing.

Although this is a design improvement, over time, this bushing will wear causing free play in the shifter shaft. Ultimately, the shaft, lever and pedal vibrate when in use causing a rattle noise and loose shifter.

The shifter shaft bushing cannot be pressed through to remove it requiring this JIMS specialty tool. This new JIMS tool, JIMS Part No.5512, is designed to remove the old bushing with a unique knurled driver and receiver cup.

A new installation driver is included in the kit to correctly install a new shifter shaft bushing to the proper depth.

Once complete, the shift lever will function like new again.

Removing this bushing without a proper tool is challenging due to the bushings thin wall design which could result in costly damage to the inner primary. Removing the bushing with this new tool makes the replacement process easy and quick.

This tool is a must for any mechanic servicing aging Harley-Davidson® touring models. MSRP for the shifter shaft bushing remover and installer is $121.00. For more information, please contact us at (805) 482-6913, email us at sales@jimsusa.com, or visit www.jimsusa.com.







Cruising is coming back to California after city ordinances had banned the practice for decades.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 436 into law on Ocrober 13, and it will go into effect starting January 1, 2024. The bipartisan bill, one of about 100 that were recently signed into law by the governor, amends Section 21100 of the Vehicle Code to remove the section that allows the banning of cruising, and it also repeals Section 24008 of the Vehicle Code that targets lowered vehicles in particular. The relevant portion of the bill, which also addressed other aspects of vehicle code, reads as follows:

This bill would remove the authorization for a local authority to adopt rules and regulations by ordinance or regulation regarding cruising.

Many of the anti-cruising ordinances passed in California were seen as discriminatory, specifically targeting lowriders. Cruising is typically a community event, and plenty of clubs will be taking advantage of the new changes to the vehicle code to get out and show off the custom cars and trucks they’re rightfully so proud of.

Plenty of those car clubs won’t have to wait until January 1, 2024, when the law goes into effect, as some cities have been working on removing cruising bans for years. Cruising had been banned in Salinas, Monterey County’s largest city, since 1992. That ban was lifted earlier this year, 31 years to the day after the ban was implemented, as the legislation was still making its way through California’s congress. Visit Alvarado Street in Monterey during Car Week and you can get a pretty good idea of what cruising looks like on the Central Coast. You can find lowriders, muscle cars, and custom pickups making a few passes in a loop of downtown, stealing some of the limelight from the exotics that invade town each year.

Cruising has been a big part of car culture for decades in cities and regions all across California, including Salinas, Los Angeles, and the Central Valley, which was immortalized in George Lucas’ American Graffiti, set in Modesto. We’re looking forward to 2024, when we can see more of these rolling sculptures hitting the road, and we’re sure that dozens of car clubs across the state are eager to put their best work on display.

This bill would repeal that prohibition.
Brandan Gillogly
Hagerty

"AH, but the Governor is also trying to ban old cars." --Bandit





THE HALLOWEEN CONSENSUS--European witch hunts of the 15th to 17th centuries targeted witches that were thought to be responsible for epidemics and crop failures related to declining temperatures of the Little Ice Age.

A belief that evil humans were negatively affecting the climate and weather patterns was the “consensus” opinion of that time. How eerily similar is that notion to the current oft-repeated mantra that Man’s actions are controlling the climate and leading to catastrophic consequences?

The first extensive European witch hunts coincided with plunging temperatures as the continent transitioned away from the beneficial warmth of the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1250 AD). Increasing cold that began in the 13th century ushered in nearly five centuries of advancing mountain glaciers and prolonged periods of rainy or cool weather. This time of naturally-driven climate change was accompanied by crop failure, hunger, rising prices, epidemics and mass depopulation.



Large systematic witch hunts began in the 1430s and were advanced later in the century by an Alsatian Dominican friar and papal Inquisitor named Heinrich Kramer. At Kramer’s urging, Pope Innocence VIII issued an encyclical enshrining the persecution and eradication of weather-changing witches through this papal edict. The worst of the Inquisition’s abuses and later systemic witch hunts were, in part, empowered by this decree.

This initial period of cooler temperatures and failing crops continued through the first couple of decades of the 16th century, when a slight warming was accompanied by improvements in harvests. Clearly, the pogrom against the weather-changing witches had been successful!

Unfortunately for the people of the Late Middle Ages, the forty years or so of slight warming gave ground to a more severe bout of cooling.

The summer of 1560 brought a return of coldness and wetness that led to severe decline in harvest, crop failure and increases in infant mortality and epidemics.

Bear in mind that this was an agrarian subsistence culture, nearly totally dependent on the yearly harvest to survive. One bad harvest could be tolerated, but back-to-back failures would cause horrific consequences and, indeed, they did.



Of course, the people’s misfortunes were attributed to weather-changing witches who had triggered the death-dealing weather, most often in the form of cold, rain, frost and devastating hailstorms. Horrific atrocities were alleged of the witches, including Franconian witches who “confessed” to flying through the air to spread an ointment made of children’s fat in order to cause a killing frost.

Across the continent of Europe, from the 15th to the 17th centuries there were likely many tens of thousands of supposed witches burnt at the stake, many of these old women living without husbands on the margins of society.

The worst of the witch hunts occurred during the bitter cold from 1560 to about 1680. The frenzy of killing culminated in the killing of 63 witches in the German territory of Wiesensteig in the year 1563 alone. Across Europe, though, the numbers of witches continued to increase and peaked at more than 500 per year in the mid-1600s. Most were burned at the stake; others were hung.

The end of the witch hunts and killings tie closely to the beginning of our current warming trend at the close of the 17th century. That warming trend started more than 300 years ago and continues in fits and starts to this day.

Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist and the Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition in Arlington Virginia. He is bestselling author of Inconvenient Facts: The Science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know.






Celebrate 10 Years of the Mama Tried Motorcycle Show!



The Rave/Eagles Ballroom - Milwaukee, WI

Here for the racing?!



FLAT OUT FRIDAY February 23, 2024

Indoor flat track racing returns to the Fiserv Forum. Heart pounding action awaits when hundreds of racers descend upon Milwaukee this winter. Come in from the cold and cheer on our favorite sport, flat track! Tickets on sale NOW.













On the 1st of March 2023, the European Commission published the long-awaited proposal for a Fourth Driving License Directive (4DLD). It did not differ too much from the previous one. Some main changes were the introduction of a digital driving license, a probation period of at least two years for novice drivers, and a zero-tolerance rule on drink-driving. Allowing young people to take their test and commence accompanied driving of cars and lorries from the age of 17, adapting driver training and testing to better prepare drivers for the presence of vulnerable users on the road, and a more targeted assessment of medical fitness.

Perhaps more important for us is what was not in the proposal: nothing about trailers behind motorcycles which from the point of view from the European Commission is still illegal, nothing about riding a small motorcycle with a B license and additional training, nothing about abolition of a useless stepped accession to the A license.

We communicated our support for the proposed 4DLD and our disappointment about the missing elements to the European Commission and to the European Parliament Committee for Tourism and Transport (TRAN)…

The rapporteur and shadow-rapporteurs must now streamline all 793 amendments in just a few and bring them together in ‘compromise amendments’ on which first TRAN and later the plenary parliament can vote. The voting in TRAN is scheduled on 7 December 2023. Separate from the European Parliament, the EU member states are discussing the Commission proposal too in the Council. They will later vote upon the proposal from the Parliament and come with their own amendments.

Written by Dolf Willigers
FEMA



"Read the full report on the FEMA website." --Bandit








--Sam Burns
Collector of Collectors
Bikernet.com™






Just like Ford’s "Edsel" model in the 1950s, Trump administration economist Steve Moore cautioned that electric vehicles (EVs) may be the auto market's "next big flop."

"Henry Ford's son was named Edsel, and this was going to be the great car, all of the executives said, 'This is the car everybody's going to want to buy.' Ford made 500,000 of these new sedan cars, but guess what?" Moore said on "Varney & Co." Monday. "Nobody bothered to ask consumers whether they wanted the car."

"And of course, the Edsel was one of the great flops of all time," the economist continued. "I'm here to tell you, if these trends continue, we're going to see the EV market become the next big flop because car buyers don't want them."

Moore’s comments come as the EV push at Ford and General Motors hit a speed bump that’s cutting into the automakers’ profits and causing them to reevaluate their electric plans amid a price war and supply chain challenges.

--Steve Moore
FOX NEWS



GAVIN NEWSOM HAMMERED FOR SHOWING OFF $160K CHINESE E.V. DURING CHINA TRIP: ‘SLAP IN THE FACE’

Ford noted in its earnings report released last week that its EV unit posted a quarterly loss before interest and taxes (EBIT) of $1.33 billion – an acceleration after a loss of $1.08 billion in the prior quarter. It added that it’s cutting production of its Mustang Mach-E while scaling back about $12 billion in planned investments in the EV segment, including delaying its second battery plant in Kentucky.