Trump can be ousted in 4 years but the left or the liberals are not doing themselves any favours by bemoaning all the time. You should respect democracy and carry on, the reason Trump won is because of the neglect and liberal bubble thinking everything was hunky dory. This is an opportunity to regroup and look at new solutions to the benefit of a wider populace than just the urban liberal sphere.

Until U2 kicked off their Joshua Tree 2017 Tour at Vancouver's BC Place stadium on May 12th, they honestly weren't sure they had a concept that would work. Here was a show built around an album that came out during the final years of the Ronald Reagan administration by a band that had spent their whole career refusing to cash in on their past. "It's so not us to throw ourselves a birthday party," says Bono. "We didn't know if we could pull off a tour that honors The Joshua Tree without it being nostalgic. That's an oxymoron."
But by the time Bono called into Rolling Stone three shows into the tour he had no doubt the group had a winning formula, one that took The Joshua Tree out of 1987 and firmly planted it in 2017. We spoke to the U2 frontman about how the band got to that place, and where he hopes they go from here.
Where are you calling from?I'm in sunny Los Angeles, which for an Irish fellow is always a bit of a thrill.
How were the first three shows for you?Oh, my goodness. ... I would say that we didn't know until Vancouver that the concept, or the script, would connect. That was a relief. Personally, I had some technical difficulties with my in-ear monitors. I was finding it hard to pitch. I've listened back and I did a pretty good job in pitch terms, but it was hard for me to enjoy the show since I had to concentrate so hard. So I was really relieved when I walked out and the rest of the band and everyone else was like, "Wow, that was great."
So I really enjoyed Seattle. I knew it wasn't just a concept. There was some connection with the audience, that's the difference. I just felt I had to give myself to this. It's all very well going back to where you started in terms of not using IMAG [screens]. That's the way we became the band that wrote The Joshua Tree. It's great to play like that, but it's hard for some people since they're used to IMAG. I just felt, "Can't we just concentrate on the music?" People weren't taking out their phones, which was amazing. I was just listening, so I really have to make the singing be the connective tissue, from my point of view. There's no images available, so it's like Shea Stadium; you're just these four dots at the start of the show. Then, presto, just add water and you become giants.
It's nice being ants for a few songs since you've just got to focus on the music since there's nowhere else to look. So I'm really enjoying that and also getting the crowd to be this choral response. That happened in Seattle. I was very grateful for that.
Tell me why you wanted to do this tour.At first, it was just to honor this album that meant so much to us. It wasn't any grand concept. It was, "Shouldn't we do something? What can we do that would be special?" Then we came up with some of the idea and the thing just ran away with itself and the more relevant we realized it was. I know from reading reviews and hearing from people we've done it without being nostalgic. It's like the album has just come out. Nobody is talking about it as an historical thing. People are talking about its relevance now.

When you were brainstorming the tour, what ways did you come up with to fight the nostalgia?The high-tech aspect, finding this high-def 8[K]; it's like a three-dimensional image. I can't believe the Joshua tree is not there. You can touch it. We wanted to be very, very high tech. Then we commissioned Anton [Corbijn] to do that. We felt, "Can we just, again, play the songs without [images of us on the] IMAG?" We were calling it "punk floyd" for a while. Then the punk in us felt, "No, no, we need to see the band at some point." We entered at "Bullet the Blue Sky," that was very exciting.
Then we got very excited about the third act, as we call it. The first act is songs that got us to The Joshua Tree. The third act was, "Can we go into the future and what would the future sound like and feel like?" Then somebody said, and it might have been me, the future is about women. I really believe that, so let's make it an ode to women. As you know, feminine spirit is crucial at times when the male hegemony is causing mayhem. After the Second World War, people like John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, whoever ... Marvin Gaye, say – that's a feminine spirit. The 1960s was a feminine spirit, and the 1960s was born in the rubble of the Second World War.
Great leaps forward of consciousness have a feminine spirit. Men start to look like [women], they grow their hair long. It's a funny thing, the Renaissance. ... Whenever you see the feminine spirit there's usually a jump in consciousness. In the One Campaign we're leading with, "Poverty is sexist." It's a campaign run by women. And I'm just watching, stepping back, to be the kind of town crier that I used to be. I'm still banging on drums, but I'm in the background. The singers are women. I'm amazed by it.
We had this idea as an ode to women. Then we got this idea of, "What if we got to know a woman, a girl, in a refugee camp?" The sort of women that aren't welcome, that President Trump doesn't want in America, in the country that brought us the great lines of Emma Lazarus at the foot of the Statue of Liberty. Let's meet one such immigrant who he wants to turn away from the shore. I commissioned french artist J.R. He didn't have much time to do it. Where are we going to find this girl?
He finds her in Zaatari in a camp in Jordan, which I visited with my daughter and [my wife] Ali a year ago. He finds this incredible spirit, Omaima. She talks about America as a dreamland. She closes her eyes and J.R. asks her in another segment of the film we don't broadcast, "What do you see when you think of America?" She goes, "Oh, it is a civilized country and they are a good people." It was just heartbreaking. We've put some of that in that show, just for a kick in the balls. Just when you think things are lighting up, we do the ode to women. The next thing you know this woman gives you a kick in the balls, but in the most velvet way. She says everything. Sometimes when we're playing it I have to turn away from the film. I can't sing when we're looking at it. It's very touching. She's so dignified and so authoritative. There's something of a future leader in her.

I spoke to the Edge for a second after the show. He told me the set list was changing a lot in the final days before the first show. What was moving around?Not the middle of it, since we can't move that around – the denouement at the end of it. I don't know if you think it's too long; I think in the shows you saw, it goes from "One" into "Miss Sarajevo" into "The Little Things Give You Away." Normally we wouldn't allow such a denouement. It's a long thing to do, but we felt because it's so musical that we could get away with it. That was moving around before we made the set list. I may still move it around. We're looking at that now.
You dropped "MLK" and brought in "Bad."Yeah, because "MLK" was using up some of the space that "Streets" occupies. It was nice and elegiac, and we don't need to be at that point. I still wonder if there's too many songs at the start for people on the floor that can't see us. I know it's great for people up high that can see us. [Note: The band has since cut "A Sort of Homecoming" and moved "Bad" to the third act.]
I imagine you're purposely playing the songs in the sequence they came out, right?That was intentional, yeah. We felt we've done Boy on [the 2015] Innocence and Experience [tour] and October. We did "Gloria." We did "October." Actually the theme of Innocence and Experience has a line from a song called "Rejoice" which is "I can't change the world, but I can change the world in me." I wrote that at 22. That's the spirit of Innocence. But the spirit of Experience is actually I can change the world, I can't change the world in me. That is the actual, dare I say it, dialectic of Innocence and Experience. And when we come back to that tour as the Experience and Innocence tour, that's the theme. I felt we've done that. That was just to say that October, we covered.
I'm very pleased with the opening act. There hasn't been any complaints with the lack of IMAG, which is very nice since it means people are listening.
The Joshua Tree portion of the show, did you ever think about not playing it completely in sequence?I was a bit worried about that. I thought the density could play a role in us getting bogged down in the second half, but I felt the new arrangement of "Red Hill Mining Town," which is just magic, gives it space and "Running to Stand Still" gives it space. We wouldn't have done it if it didn't work.

Prior to this tour, did you see Roger Waters play The Wall? Did you see Springsteen play The River? Have you gone to any of these album shows?I saw Roger Waters doing The Wall, missed Bruce, and mourned the missing of Patti Smith doing Horses, which was such a formative album for us. It's not an original idea. I saw Bowie do Low.
How did it feel to play "Exit" again?I had a lot of self-harm over the years playing that song. I was very glad not to play it for many years. I broke my shoulder. I got into some very dark places on the stage. I'd rather not step back into that song, but I found a way by thinking of where it came from and going back to the books I was reading at the time. I realized the real influence was probably Flannery O'Connor, so I developed this character called the Shadow Man and I'm managing to step into the shoes of the Shadow Man without any self-harm. It's quite a character. I'm actually using some lines from [the O'Connor book] Wise Blood. I also do "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe," which we grew up with in Europe, a totally racist thing. The bit from Wise Blood is, "Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going is never there. Where you are is no good unless you can get away from it." It's Southern Gothic, which is what I guess you'd call it.

In "New Year's Day" you sang the "Gold is the reason for the wars we wage" line for the first time. There weren't a lot of snippets of cover songs. You seem to be sticking to the album versions of the songs.I put "oil" in, actually. I said, "So we're told this is the golden age/But oil is the reason for the wars we wage." By the way, part of the fun of doing these shows is I'm changing the lyrics when I want to and I'm sticking to, as you point out, the arrangements on the albums. But I was in a band early on in the 1980s where the lyrics where not really the priority, strangely. It was, "What's the song about? What's the tune? What's the beat?" And you had people like Brian Eno who was, like, sort of anti the concept of the old-school lyric. He was saying, "Just look at these beautiful sonic paintings you're doing with your voice. Why do you need words? Just sing like that."
On Unforgettable Fire we left "Elvis Presley and America" like that, but some of the other songs were not finished, so "Bad" or whatever is not finished. Even "Where the Streets Have No Name" isn't finished, but why would you touch it? As a lyric it's a sketch. And so I'm really enjoying changing the odd lyric. "I first saw her face high on a desert plane." That's a beautiful change. In "New Year's Day" I sing, "It's true, it's true, the people break through." Little tiny little things that keep me close to the songs.
During "Bullet the Blue Sky" the fans were expecting a similar speech to the one you made at the Dreamforce show last year, but you didn't really go there.I think the peace film is the way to speak about Trump. I also think it's very, very important that people who voted for Donald Trump feel welcome at our show. I think they have been hoodwinked, but I understand and I would not dismiss the reasons why some people voted for him. I think people on the left really need to put their ear closer to the ground. I do this thing where I say, "The party of Lincoln, the party of Kennedy and those in between holding on, those letting go of the American Dream are welcome." This is the most important line: "We'll find common ground by reaching for higher ground."
I think that's important that people feel that. And then, because a lot of my friends, and maybe yours, after the election and Brexit there's this grieving, this melodramatic word, but the people feel like they are grieving. I was like, "What is it that people are grieving for?" I started to think it's their innocence. There's a loss of innocence. We're activists, but ever since I was born, and you're younger than me, the world was getting better every day. When you woke up, even if you did nothing, the world got better. Those of us who worked in the One Campaign we could point to people on AIDS drugs or people getting vaccinated, infant mortality rates coming down.
There were reasons to be optimistic. When I was in my twenties the Berlin Wall came down, Mandela gets free. You just think that this world is somehow just moving in the right direction, like almost it's evolution, the human spirit is evolving. It turns out that's not true. These things have to be brought into being. There are white papers going around the White House with 47 percent cuts to aid programs that keep babies alive, vaccinations. It's shocking, but it's real.
My thing in the middle of the show is to say, "OK, the dream, maybe it's time to wake up into it." Maybe the dream is telling us to wake up and Dr. King's dream is telling us to wake up. It's OK to realize it's going to be difficult, but we can do things. We are full of ingenuity. The world can be a much better place, but don't think it will be on its own. That's the thing.
To switch gears, are you still unable to play guitar?Yeah. I can play sitting down if the neck is pointing up in the air, and I can play with three fingers standing up. Dallas Schoo, Edge's guitar tech, is encouraging me to pick up slide guitar.
Do you miss playing it during the show? The band certainly doesn't miss it. They don't have much time for my guitar playing. I can play at home, but it just looks awkward. I don't think it's a necessity.
Can you talk a bit about the choice to end the show with a brand-new song?The only way we could do this tour was to play a new song. Times were right to do this tour. It was the right album and we did it, but in the end I couldn't go all the way without playing a new song. I wanted to start playing more new songs, is what I want.
What's the status of Songs of Experience?The band will tell you not to listen to me on those kind of matters since I thought it was done last year. But I think the pause has made it better. I will give them that. But if you left it to Edge he'd still be remixing it next year. But we have these songs. The problem is we have 15 songs and to get them down to 12. We don't like long players. The actual track listing is not set yet, but we have some proper, proper fuck-off songs. "Little Things That Give You Away" is one of them.
Steve Lillywhite was brought back to finish it off?We wanted to play live to really get it to cohere. Songs of Innocence, the songs are very special, I'm very proud of the songs, but if there's one thing I would criticize it for, it's the coherence in production. A friend of mine said to me, "Songs of Innocence? It doesn't sound innocent enough. It should have been more raw." So we didn't want to go in and make that mistake again, so we went in and played the songs again. Steve is the best guy for recording us in the studio with the band playing live, so that's what happened.
You're thinking early 2018 if you had to guess?I'd like it before then, but don't listen to me.
Then the plan is to do the Songs of Experience tour with the same staging?Yeah, the Experience and Innocence tour. It'll invert a lot of things, but it's got the same basics. We've got some incredible staging ideas, but it's basically the same language as the last tour.
Do you see any chance of an Achtung Baby tour in 2021?[Laughs] I haven't thought about it, but then again if you'd asked me five years ago about a Joshua Tree one I would have laughed at you. It would have to be called Zoo.Com.

"You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, and you're afraid somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well, baby, your already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bound in the West by Tulip, Texas, or in the East by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself."

Trump must be impeached. Here’s why.

 

Laurence H. Tribe is Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School.

The time has come for Congress to launch an impeachment investigation of President Trump for obstruction of justice.

The remedy of impeachment was designed to create a last-resort mechanism for preserving our constitutional system. It operates by removing executive-branch officials who have so abused power through what the framers called “high crimes and misdemeanors” that they cannot be trusted to continue in office.

 No American president has ever been removed for such abuses, although Andrew Johnson was impeached and came within a single vote of being convicted by the Senate and removed, and Richard Nixon resigned to avoid that fate.

Now the country is faced with a president whose conduct strongly suggests that he poses a danger to our system of government.
Ample reasons existed to worry about this president, and to ponder the extraordinary remedy of impeachment, even before he fired FBI Director James B. Comey and shockingly admitted on national television that the action was provoked by the FBI’s intensifying investigation into his campaign’s ties with Russia.
Even without getting to the bottom of what Trump dismissed as “this Russia thing,” impeachable offenses could theoretically have been charged from the outset of this presidency. One important example is Trump’s brazen defiance of the foreign emoluments clause, which is designed to prevent foreign powers from pressuring U.S. officials to stray from undivided loyalty to the United States. Political reality made impeachment and removal on that and other grounds seem premature.
No longer. To wait for the results of the multiple investigations underway is to risk tying our nation’s fate to the whims of an authoritarian leader.
Comey’s summary firing will not stop the inquiry, yet it represented an obvious effort to interfere with a probe involving national security matters vastly more serious than the “third-rate burglary” that Nixon tried to cover up in Watergate. The question of Russian interference in the presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign go to the heart of our system and ability to conduct free and fair elections.
Consider, too, how Trump embroiled Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, despite Sessions’s recusal from involvement in the Russia investigation, in preparing admittedly phony justifications for the firing on which Trump had already decided. Consider how Trump used the vice president and White House staff to propagate a set of blatant untruths — before giving an interview to NBC’s Lester Holt that exposed his true motivation.


Trump accompanied that confession with self-serving — and manifestly false — assertions about having been assured by Comey that Trump himself was not under investigation. By Trump’s own account, he asked Comey about his investigative status even as he was conducting the equivalent of a job interview in which Comey sought to retain his position as director.
Further reporting suggests that the encounter was even more sinister, with Trump insisting that Comey pledge “loyalty” to him in order to retain his job. Publicly saying he saw nothing wrong with demanding such loyalty, the president turned to Twitter with a none-too-subtle threat that Comey would regret any decision to disseminate his version of his conversations with Trump — something that Comey has every right, and indeed a civic duty, to do.
To say that this does not in itself rise to the level of “obstruction of justice” is to empty that concept of all meaning. Obstruction of justice was the first count in the articles of impeachment against Nixon and, years later, a count against Bill Clinton. In Clinton’s case, the ostensible obstruction consisted solely in lying under oath about a sordid sexual affair that may have sullied the Oval Office but involved no abuse of presidential power as such.
But in Nixon’s case, the list of actions that together were deemed to constitute impeachable obstruction reads like a forecast of what Trump would do decades later — making misleading statements to, or withholding material evidence from, federal investigators or other federal employees; trying to interfere with FBI or congressional investigations; trying to break through the FBI’s shield surrounding ongoing criminal investigations; dangling carrots in front of people who might otherwise pose trouble for one’s hold on power.
It will require serious commitment to constitutional principle, and courageous willingness to put devotion to the national interest above self-interest and party loyalty, for a Congress of the president’s own party to initiate an impeachment inquiry. It would be a terrible shame if only the mounting prospect of being voted out of office in November 2018 would sufficiently concentrate the minds of representatives and senators today.
But whether it is devotion to principle or hunger for political survival that puts the prospect of impeachment and removal on the table, the crucial thing is that the prospect now be taken seriously, that the machinery of removal be reactivated, and that the need to use it become the focus of political discourse going into 2018.

Sometimes
I can’t believe my existence
See myself on a distance
I can’t get back inside
Sometimes
The air is so anxious
All my tasks are so thankless
And all of my innocence has died
Sometimes
I wake at four in the morning
Where all the doubt is swarming
And it covers me in fear

Full of anger and grieving
So far away from believing
That any sun will reappear
Sometimes
The end is not dawning
It’s not coming
The end is here

U2's Vancouver setlist, 12/05

Today, U2 are kicking off the Joshua Tree 30th anniversary tour in Vancouver. They have rehearsed extensively in the city—check our news archive for May for information on what happened each day.
The band soundchecked today. They did not do complete songs, but portions of the following: Pride, One Tree Hill, Beautiful Day, Miss Sarajevo, Pride again, Where the Streets Have No Name, Exit, Beautiful Day again, Elevation, Ultra Violet, One, Red Hill Mining Town, and In God's Country. After the soundcheck ended, the gates were opened, but admission for General Admission ticketholders has been tremendously slow. Many fans were stuck outside the venue while support act Mumford & Sons played, with little to no communication from BC Place staff. There are even reports that the scanners crashed.
Today's setlist features many notable songs. Let's run through some facts about The Joshua Tree first. U2 have never before played an entire album live in sequence before. They have never even played all songs from one album at the same show - although every song from Boy was played live, no individual show had more than ten out of its eleven songs in the setlist (an example with ten is 15 May 1981). Although we are missing many Boy-era setlists, Shadows and Tall Trees vanished from U2's live repertoire before other songs entered it, so we are confident there are no missing setlists with all eleven Boy songs.
Red Hill Mining Town debuted live today. The Joshua Tree is now just the second album after Boy from which every song has been played live. This is the longest gap in U2 history from a song's release to its live debut: it is 30 years, 2 months, and 3 days since Red Hill Mining Town was released on The Joshua Tree on 9 March 1987. The previous record was a comparatively modest 12 years, 3 months, and 28 days for The Wanderer, just edging out its Zooropa album-mate The First Time on 12 years, 2 months, and 15 days. If you only count performances in front of a paying concert crowd, then The First Time is beaten by Scarlet, which was played once for a radio session in 1981 but never in front of a paying audience until 29 years, 1 month, and 13 days after the October album was released.
Speaking of Scarlet, it just lost the record for longest gap between performances. Trip Through Your Wires was performed for the first time since 20 December 1987, some 29 years, 4 months, and 22 days ago, beating Scarlet's record by exactly 2 months. Exit was performed for the first time since 14 October 1989 (its only performance since 1987); this gap of 27 years, 6 months, and 28 days, the third-longest gap between performances.
Other Joshua Tree songs returned after lengthy absences. Running to Stand Still has not been performed since 15 July 2005, 11 years, 9 months, and 27 days ago; One Tree Hill since 5 July 2011, 5 years, 10 months, and 7 days ago; and Mothers of the Disappeared since 15 September 2010, 6 years, 7 months, and 27 days ago. This is the first full band performance of Mothers since 20 December 1987, as subsequent performances have always been either just Bono and Edge, or all four members playing a stripped-down version with no bass (Adam on synths) and minimal drums. In God's Country was played once on the IE Tour with a fan on the b-stage, 22 May 2015, and three times acoustically in 2001, but this is its first pre-planned full band electric performance since 9 October 1989.
What about the non-Joshua Tree songs? A Sort of Homecoming is the biggest comeback, played for the first time since 16 October 2001, some 15 years, 5 months, and 26 days ago. It was only played twice in 2001, making this just the third performance since it fell out of the original Joshua Tree Tour's setlist after the 27 June 1987 gig. MLK was last played on 8 October 2010, 6 years, 7 months, and 4 days ago; Ultra Violet on 9 July 2011, 5 years, 10 months, and 3 days ago; and Miss Sarajevo on 30 July 2011, 5 years, 9 months, and 12 days ago - although Bono and Edge performed it on 15 October 2011.
And yes, there's something pretty big at the end of tonight's setlist: the debut of what Bono called "a song of experience", The Little Things That Give You Away. This is the first time U2 have performed an unreleased song live since North Star on 29 June 2011. It is the first time U2 have closed a concert with an unreleased song since Father Is an Elephant way back on 28 November 1980! This stat does not count the closing performance of Sunday Bloody Sunday on 4 December 1982, as its release on the War album had already been announced, or the glorified snippet of She's a Mystery to Me after One on 6 August 1997 as Roy Orbison had previously released his version of the song.
We have a few more interesting statistics, but we're going to hold onto them for reports of the next few shows rather than beating you over the head with any more right now. The full set for today was:

1. Sunday Bloody Sunday
2. New Year's Day
3. A Sort Of Homecoming
4. MLK
5. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
6. Where The Streets Have No Name
7. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
8. With Or Without You
9. Bullet The Blue Sky
10. Running To Stand Still
11. Red Hill Mining Town
12. In God's Country
13. Trip Through Your Wires
14. One Tree Hill
15. Exit / Eeny Meeny Miny Moe (snippet)
16. Mothers Of The Disappeared / El Pueblo Vencera (snippet)

encore(s):

17. Beautiful Day
18. Elevation
19. Ultra Violet (Light My Way)
20. One
21. Miss Sarajevo
22. The Little Things That Give You Away

Forgetting The person I love isn’t here anymore
Heaven or hell
Someplace no one can see
Memories of when I was three years old
Good memories from twenty-three years ago
I can’t remember them
But they’re not forgotten
Dirty things can still look beautiful
A familiar voice from the past, goes from me to someone else
I’m throwing these memories in the trash
Pouring gasoline and setting fire
Wearing black in mourning, until someone comes for me
Living just to die
That’s why I was born
If I was in the grave, I’d be happy

Here's Why The Toyota Supra's 2JZ Is Such A Legendary Engine

 

 “Two-jay-zee engine, no shit... This will decimate all,” Jesse said in the original Fast and Furious movie after criticizing the hideous junkyard-grade Toyota Supra that was just towed into the shop. In the hands of the right tuners, decimation is what the Supra was all about. Understanding why requires us to look at perhaps the most legendary tuner engine in history: the Toyota 2JZ-GTE.

 

We’re sticking with inline-sixes in this second installment of our new series “Engines You Should Know.” Except this time, instead of a naturally aspirated, high-displacement, all-aluminum American motor, we’re looking at a twin-turbocharged, iron-block, 3.0-liter overbuilt powerhouse from Japan.

What Was It?

The Toyota 2JZ-GTE came into this world in 1991 during the peak of the Japanese bubble era, when that country’s auto industry, high on cash and possibly other substances, was cranking out everything from wild mid-engined exotics to wild mid-engined microcars.

 It was a high point for the Japanese auto industry, and the 2JZ was a high-point for big, tough, iron-block straight sixes in passenger cars. There really hasn’t been much like it since. The market dropped out for these cars and the money dropped out for overbuilt engine projects in the ‘90s and hasn’t been filled, at least in Japan. Toyota only puts big straight sixes into trucks now, and its big rear-drive sedans have V6s. Now, tuners have gotten other engines in recent years to make as much power as 2JZs, but they’re more rare, more expensive and they have less aftermarket support. Any couple schmucks can drop a few thousand dollars to buy a 2JZ to cram into some old Nissan if they want to and make a high-horsepower car in their garage.

 The engine arrived just after Nissan decided to shove the monster twin-turbo RB26DETT into its GT-R. But unlike Nissan, Toyota didn’t debut its stalwart in a sports coupe; instead, the company first showed the 2JZ-GTE in the four-door Toyota Aristo 3.0V (which we in the states know as the Lexus GS) to homologate the sedan for the Japanese Grand Touring Car Championship. Still, the 2JZ-GTE really gained its fame in Toyota’s halo car, the Supra.


The 2JZ-GTE is the head of the JZ family of inline sixes that launched in 1990 with the 1JZ-GE, a naturally-aspirated 2.5-liter inline-six that Toyota slapped into a number of sedans, including the Chaser, Cresta, Crown and Mark II.
The 3.0-liter 2JZ-GE—a stroked version of the 1JZ-GE—came shortly thereafter, as did turbocharged and intercooled “GTE” variants of both engine generations. Those high performance GTE models received different aluminum cylinder heads with unique intake and exhaust manifolds, higher-flowing injectors, recessed pistons offering lower compression ratios (which allowed the engines to handle more boost), and oil squirters to keep the pistons cool.
Because of these differences, the GE models, which you can find all day in Lexus GS300s, are not as desirable in the tuning scene. But the 1JZ-GTE, whose crucial internals shared essentially the same design as the 2JZ-GTE’s, is still highly popular in the tuner community, even if the lower displacement means it doesn’t quite have the monster power potential.
The rest of the 2JZ-GTE’s engine code goes like this: “JZ” is just the engine family, “G” stands for performance-oriented dual overhead cam setup, “T” stands for turbocharged and “E” means its electronically fuel injected.
Thanks to a “gentleman’s agreement” between Japanese automakers at the time, the 2JZ-GTE was officially rated at 280 horsepower in its stock form in the Aristo and JDM Supra. That was a brazen lie. And in the U.S.-spec A80 Supra—which launched for 1993 with bigger injectors, stronger turbos and different cams—that number went up to 320 horsepower at 5,600 rpm.
Between the power, and the 315 pound-feet of torque at 4,000 rpm, the Supra instantly became a force to reckon with despite its prodigious weight (the engine itself weighed over 500 pounds). The car could do zero to 60 mph in under five seconds, according to contemporary tests, making it a very quick car in its day.
That was stock. Nobody kept the Supra stock. Way too much could be gained if you messed with it.

Tuner Potential

From the factory, the 2JZ-GTE is already a pretty special engine. It’s got dual overhead camshafts, four valves per cylinder, a distributor-less ignition system, liquid-cooled sequential turbos keeping the power band nice and broad, and a “square” (one to one) bore-to-stroke ratio that provided a great compromise between low-end grunt and high-end power. Start tuning it, though, and the engine goes from “special” to downright supernatural.
The reason why the 2JZ-GTE is so prolific in the tuning scene is because of its strength. Its iron block is tough as nails, its seven main bearings—despite only being held by two bolts each—are absolutely gargantuan and hold the crankshaft firmly, its forged 12-counterweight steel crankshaft can handle huge power and high engine speeds, the oil pump and water pump can take the heavy mods without failure, the fully-closed deck means the engine can withstand enormous cylinder pressures, forged connecting rods are stout, and the oil-cooled cast aluminum pistons can handle a beating as well.


This all means you shouldn’t worry about doubling the 2JZ-GTE’s horsepower via mods. In fact, most tuners consider the 2JZ-GTE’s bottom end as capable of withstanding up to 800 ponies. Yes, 800 horsepower on stock internals. And many tuners have cranked theirs into the four-figure range with some more work.

Power Without Limit

Getting there isn’t really that difficult, either. Though there are a couple big-bore and stroker kits out there, most high-horsepower 2JZ-GTEs get that grunt by way of changing out the intake and exhaust, swapping those sequential turbos out for an enormous single turbo (67mm is common), installing a bigger front-mount intercooler, and bolting on some bigger injectors and fuel lines.


It was an advanced engine in its day, and for 1998, it became even more so, as the Japanese version got variable valve timing. Sadly, the U.S. market got nothing, and ’98 was the final model year for the legendary 2JZ-GTE in the U.S.
But despite its short run here, the 2JZ-GTE remains a crown jewel in the tuner community, with Supras and 2JZ-swapped anything else continually winning drag races and whatever else they’re called to do.
Even 25 years after its debut, the 2JZ-GTE continues to decimate all.

This is our annual update on the satellites currently orbiting the Earth.
How many satellites are orbiting the Earth?
According to the Index of Objects Launched into Outer Space maintained by United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), there are currently 4 256 satellites currently orbiting the planet, an increase of 4.39% compared to this time last year.
221 satellites were launched in 2015, the second highest number in a single year, although it is below the record of 240 launched in 2014. 2016 may fall slightly short, as to date only 126 launches have occurred this year. The increase in satellites orbiting the Earth is less than the number launched last year, because satellites only have limited lifespans. The large communication satellites have expected lifetimes of 15 years and more, whereas the small satellites, such as CubeSat’s, may only have expected lifespans of 3 – 6 months.
How many of these orbiting satellites are working?
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) details which of those orbiting satellites are operational and it is not as many as you think! According to their June 2016 update, there are currently only 1 419 operational satellites – only about one third of the number in orbit. This means there is quite a lot of useless metal hurtling around the planet! This is why there is a lot of interest from companies looking at how they capture and reclaim space debris, with methods such as space nets, slingshots or solar sails proposed.
What are all these satellites doing?
According the UCS data the main purposes for the operational satellites are:

• Communications with 713 satellites
• Earth observation/science with 374 satellites
• Technology Demonstration/Development with 160 satellites
• Navigation & Global Position with 105 satellites; and
• Space Science with 67 satellites

It should be noted that some satellites do have multiple purposes. We will discuss the operational Earth observation satellites in more detail next week.
Who uses the satellite directly?
It’s interesting to note that there are four main types of users listed in the UCS database, although 17% of the satellites have multiple users we are concentrating on the main user:

• 94 satellites listed with civil users: These tend to be educational institutes, although there are other national organisations also included. 46% of these satellites have a purpose of technology development, whilst Earth/Space science and observation account for another 43%.
• 579 with commercial users: Commercial organisations and state organisations who want to sell the data they collect. 84% of these satellites focus on communications and global positioning services; of the remaining 12% are Earth observation satellites.
• 401 with Government users: Mainly national Space organisations, together with other national and international bodies. 40% of these are communications and global positioning satellites; another 38% focus on Earth observation. Of the remainder space science and technology development have 12% and 10% respectively.
• 345 with military users: Again communications, Earth observation and global positioning systems are the strong focus here with 89% of the satellites having one of these three purposes.

Which countries have launched satellites?
According to UNOOSA around 65 countries have launched satellites, although on the UCS database there are only 57 countries listed with operational satellites, again some satellites are listed with joint/multinational operators. The largest are:

• USA with 576 satellites
• China with 181 satellites
• Russia with 140 satellites

The UK is listed as having 41 satellites, plus we’re involved in an additional 36 satellites that the European Space Agency has.
Remember when you look up!
Next time you out at look up at the night sky, remember that there is over two million kilograms of metal circling the Earth between you and the stars!

stuntmen. clowns without makeup

To the only man that could steal your bitch, while dressed like your bitch. Rest In Peace, Purple One