Michael Hastings, C2C Guest, Dead at 33 From Car Crash

[Mind Flayer Monk]

Michael Hastings was on with John B. in February this year. He was the guy that ended every clause with "you know." It was painful radio.
He was the Rolling Stone reporter that did the interview with General McChrystal (before McChrystal was relieved of duty).
He died at age 33 in a car crash in the center of Los Angeles.
The car accident was at 4:25am this morning. I am unsure if he died there or later at the hospital from injuries.


http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-michael-hastings-dies-car-crash-20130618,0,7611310.story

[Eddie Coyle]

 
             Let me guess how Wells responds to this to accident: I'm thinking Silkwood. Clearly targeted by..."them"...for being on his program.

[SR-71]

Is he the second guest to be on with John "be full of crap" Wells that has died?

[Gd5150]

Even in death the whiners here have no respect. Pathetic. There's more to life than a radio show you supposedly don't listen to. Try living.

[Eddie Coyle]

Even in death the whiners here have no respect. Pathetic. There's more to life than a radio show you supposedly don't listen to. Try living.

It's tragic that your sorry bitch ass still shows up here to whine about us. 

[Meanandnasty]

Even in death the whiners here have no respect. Pathetic. There's more to life than a radio show you supposedly don't listen to. Try living.

You seem to like to hang with us.  Get a life, get a job and quit whining about the whiners.  Miserable. 

[sherpa high]

Article says he crashed into a tree and the car burst into flames...he was burned beyond recognition. R.I.P.

[MV/Liberace!]

Even in death the whiners here have no respect. Pathetic. There's more to life than a radio show you supposedly don't listen to. Try living.

don't troll the forum if you don't want your account banned.  if you don't like the general mood of the place or you find our predispositions annoying, then move along.  what you can't do is hang around here serving as resident buzz-kill.

[Unquenchable Angst]

I read an article that refuted that the car had hit a tree but had burst into flames.Another article seemed to intimate that the guy was 'taken out'.

[SR-71]

Geogre's bff alex jones, the goverment took him out. I guess the goverment uses the trees special forces to take people out, just like the way they took out sonny bono. I think that alex jones is a nut job.

[Mind Flayer Monk]

Journalism is a dangerous career. Best to use your 2nd amendment rights.


http://www.cpj.org/killed/americas/usa/

[UnscreenedCaller]

I lost a relative like that: driving too fast on a couple of beers, couldn't take a turn, car hits a tree and burns. Even smart people can do stupid things.

[onan]

Even smart people can do stupid things.

Best quote of the week.

[Sardondi]

...what you can't do is hang around here serving as resident buzz-kill.

Yeah, that's my job.

BTW, a witness to the Hastings wreck says that Hastings was going so fast that when he passed the witness, it shook his vehicle, feeling like a semi-truck had passed him, and http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/hastings-crash-witness-113514329.html Apparently Hastings went airborne after hitting a bump as he crossed an intersection a couple of blocks down the street from the witness. Speaking on behalf of those who have driven like little idiots, going airborne tends to reduce one's steering ability to less-than-optimal. Braking ability also tends to be reduced once you start flying rather than driving.

[nooryisawesome]

Yeah, that's my job.

BTW, a witness to the Hastings wreck says that Hastings was going so fast that when he passed the witness, it shook his vehicle, feeling like a semi-truck had passed him, and http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/hastings-crash-witness-113514329.html Apparently Hastings went airborne after hitting a bump as he crossed an intersection a couple of blocks down the street from the witness. Speaking on behalf of those who have driven like little idiots, going airborne tends to reduce one's steering ability to less-than-optimal. Braking ability also tends to be reduced once you start flying rather than driving.

Bulldog jones said last night witnesses said the car blew up before impact with tree.

[Sardondi]

Bulldog jones said last night witnesses said the car blew up before impact with tree.

"Bulldog Jones" -  Heh. Yep, I'm gonna listen to Jones, and ignore the facts that showed that Michael Hastings' life for the past several years was one long suicide attempt.

To say Hastings was troubled is an understatement. He was famously still seriously screwed up over the death of his GF in 2007 (yet in 2011 he married Condi Rice's speech writer. Huh?). He had serous problems with drugs and alcohol. He was famous for driving like an absolute maniac, to the point people wondered whether he had a death wish. Doh!

There was evidence Hastings was having a mental breakdown or a relapse of his drug abuse problem, because a few hours before he died he left a panicked email with friends about being investigated by the FBI (this is typical paranoid behavior in a breakdown). And there was no evidence whatsoever of his car "exploding before it hit the tree". 10-to-1 Bulldog Jones gave no source for that tidbit of info. Just a "someone saw" that can't be checked out.

I'd believe what Vladimir Putin says about the security of Russian suitcase nukes before I'd believe what Alex Jones has to say about whether or not it's raining. And man, that's painful to say.

[Juan]

Aren't we all being investigated by the FBI?  Surely we are.  They wouldn't let agencies like the NSA out investigate them.

As for Hastings, the "theory" I hear now is that he was driving a new car with one of the new computers in it.  The computers allow "them" to remotely take over control of the car.  The Toyotas with the sticking fuel pedal were actually equipped with these computers and the "sticking pedal" was a real world test of the computer.  Hastings' car was taken over, driven at a high rate of speed, and intentionally crashed into the tree.  Hastings himself always drove like a grandmother.

[Sardondi]

...Hastings himself always drove like a grandmother.

Huh?

[MTB]

That's entirely possible.My grandma drove like a bat out of hell.

[Sardondi]

That's entirely possible.My grandma drove like a bat out of hell.

Heh. Now that you mention it, mine did too. She was born in the 19th-century and learned to drive as an adult. She never did get that gas/brake coordination thing, and had trouble judging distance from behind the wheel all her life. It was a family joke about having to go and pull Grandma's car out of the ditch again where she had put it when she short-turned her Galaxy 500 into it...again.

And when we saw her behind the wheel of that bulldozer of the highway, which had all the nimble handling, turning and stopping characteristics of an aircraft carrier, as she came over the hill headed for my grandfather's general store where we kids worked in the summers, we all dove for cover behind something big and strong. Because she would come roaring into the store parking lot still doing about 40mph, intent on coming to a stop in about 100 feet in what was always a massive choking cloud of burning oil and dissolved rubber. She'd plop that huge-ass car right slap in front of the front door where she blocked not only other cars from driving through but even made it awkward for people coming in and out.

My long-suffering grandfather would never breathe a word of criticism or complaint about how my grandmother "drove like Lucky Teter" (whose death-defying "Hell Drivers" were an exciting attraction at the state fair) as my parents and aunts and uncles would say. But Grandpa acted as if he never saw a thing out of the ordinary. And my grandmother, an otherwise prim and saintly Southern gentle lady and lifelong 8th-grade teacher said, would say that parking her car where she liked in the store parking lot was the only perk she got as the owner's wife, and she was gonna make use of it. And, boy, did she ever. I've missed Miss Anne every day of the 20 years she's been gone, but she was a terror behind the wheel of a car.

Well, that's another thread jacked.

[Juan]

One of my grandmothers never drove over 15 mph.  The other never drove under 70.

[HorrorRetro]

One of my grandmothers never drove over 15 mph.  The other never drove under 70.

My grandma never drove at all.  My grandpa was a wanna-be Formula 1 driver.  We'd head out on the coastal two-lane highway or drive up toward Mt. McKinley, and he'd drive like a bat out of hell.  He knew I shared in his love of driving, and when I was about 10, he came and picked me up in a Triumph TR7.  That was fun.     When I was a kid I had a '62 Chevy pickup with a 454.  I think he was secretly proud that I won every race I was in. 

[Sardondi]

...When I was a kid I had a '62 Chevy pickup with a 454.  I think he was secretly proud that I won every race I was in.

Ho-leeee crap! I can just imagine that front-heavy power-monster fishtailing down the asphalt. Man, what a beast!

Were muscle cars/engines really more powerful/faster then, or is it just our bad memories? I know there's no question that today's vehicles are much more efficient, and have much better numbers on the friction pad; that tires are much better. But I also know that catalytic converters are responsible for tremendous bleed off of power; that computers act as governors, and are designed and engineered in such a way that no mere backyard mechanic can take a modern engine and tinker with it to give it tremendously increased power like someone could in 1972. I know from personal experience my grandparents' (my grandparents now) 1972 Buick LeSabre with a standard 350 ci engine would do 140 mph and still beg for me to put the pedal all the way down. It was a scary beast. (I totaled it of course.)

[HorrorRetro]

  Ho-leeee crap! I can just imagine that front-heavy power-monster fishtailing down the asphalt. Man, what a beast!

Were muscle cars/engines really more powerful/faster then, or is it just our bad memories? I know there's no question that today's vehicles are much more efficient, and have much better numbers on the friction pad; that tires are much better. But I also know that catalytic converters are responsible for tremendous bleed off of power; that computers act as governors, and are designed and engineered in such a way that no mere backyard mechanic can take a modern engine and tinker with it to give it tremendously increased power like someone could in 1972. I know from personal experience my grandparents' (my grandparents now) 1972 Buick LeSabre with a standard 350 ci engine would do 140 mph and still beg for me to put the pedal all the way down. It was a scary beast. (I totaled it of course.)

Those were fun times.  My first auto was a '78 Chevy Scottsdale step-side with a 350.  That was fun, but the 454 was a lot more fun.     I can only imagine what it would cost now to go for a Friday night cruise.   

[West of the Rockies]

don't troll the forum if you don't want your account banned.  if you don't like the general mood of the place or you find our predispositions annoying, then move along.  what you can't do is hang around here serving as resident buzz-kill.

Just out of curiosity, MV, do you have to ban folks on a regular basis?  I know probably that all of us from time to time contribute something that is juvenile, wrong, stupid, mildly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.  If I get my fee-fee's hurt, I usually disappear for a day or so.  I have zero interest in getting into an internet pissing match with a stranger. 

Obvious trolls (such as Gd5150) I guess are part of the cyber landscape now.  (Maybe I should just say cyberscape, like blogosphere and Twitterati.)

[BobGrau]

...I know probably that all of us from time to time contribute something that is juvenile, wrong, stupid, mildly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc....

Shit, I thought that was the whole point of this place.

[Sardondi]

It's almost like you can sense the intent of a real troll. You can tell they really want to get in the middle of the room and then pull their big boy pants down so that everybody can see their wonderful treasure.

[Sardondi]

And in Dog-Bites-Man News, Hastings had meth and pot in his blood. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/autopsy/michael-hastings-autopsy-867904

His family was trying to get him into drug rehab at time of fiery crash. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-michael-hastings-meth-coroner-20130820,0,5038230.story

[aldousburbank]

Well then, the dude definitely deserved to get droned.

[Sardondi]

Well then, the dude definitely deserved to get droned.

Yeah, because that is definitely what happened.