Author: Papa Giorgio

Trump Mic-Drops Reporter in Howell Michigan

Published by Papa Giorgio

THE NEW YORK POST has an excellent piece on this issue, of which a large excerpt lies below:

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The Harris campaign — along with media allies — has made an extraordinary claim, implying Donald Trump’s Tuesday visit to discuss crime and safety in Howell, Mich., is motivated by racism.

And Howell residents are mystified.

[….]

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign thinks Trump’s Tuesday event at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, a city of 10,000 near Michigan’s major population centers, is a sign of solidarity with these young men.

“The racists and white supremacists who marched in Trump’s name last month in Howell have all watched him praise Hitler, defend neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, and tell far-right extremists to ‘stand back and stand by,” said Kamala Harris’ Michigan spokeswoman Alyssa Bradley.

“Trump’s actions have encouraged them, and Michiganders can expect more of the same when he comes to town.”

A Washington Post article boosted this narrative: “Howell has long been associated with the Ku Klux Klan because of the rallies Michigan-based Grand Dragon Robert Miles held on a nearby farm in the 1970s and 1980s.”

And Reuters headlined a piece “Trump to campaign in Michigan town with historic links to white extremism.”

Anonymous user Carlstak extensively edited Howell’s Wikipedia page Aug. 17 to emphasize claims of racism after the announcement of Trump’s event. 

The user, for example, changed the line “For many decades, Howell had the reputation of being associated with the Ku Klux Klan,” to say “For many decades, Howell has had” that reputation.

Livingston County Sheriff Michael Murphy, who is hosting Trump, rejects any insinuation that a culture of racism attracted the Trump campaign.

“I’ll call 100% bullsh-t on that,” Sheriff Murphy told The Post.

“Frankly, I get a little bit fired up when people bring that up,” he said, “We did have the Grand Dragon that lived here in Livingston County. But we somehow as a result of that got labeled with ‘racist, unwelcoming community,’ which truly couldn’t be further from the truth.”

[….]

Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, said, “Did the media write this same story when Joe Biden visited Howell in 2021, or when Kamala Harris visits cities where racist protests and marches have occurred in the past? No, of course not.”

Trump’s Michigan spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita emailed The Post a list of cities where Kamala Harris has campaigned that have seen racist incidents in the past, including Eau Claire, Wis., Pittsfield, Mass., Philadelphia and Atlanta.

“You should ask the Harris team why she believes all residents of Howell, Michigan, are racists and if that also applies to the cities she has visited with their own divisive histories,” said LaCivita.

The Harris campaign did not reply to a request for comment. 

Trump Mic Drops Reporter’s “White Supremacist” Question

RED STATE notes the backfire aspect of Kamala’s campaign strategy here:

  • … this latest moment of fake outrage could backfire on the Harris campaign by alienating voters in these areas. It certainly comes off as an elitist dismissal of their communities, does it not? Are we to ignore people living in certain parts of the country because evil things occurred where they live? This isn’t exactly the best way to attract people to one’s cause.

HOWELL, Mich. (FOX 2) – About a dozen white supremacists made their mark on Howell with a disruptive demonstration last weekend that reignited the city’s checkered past.

“I saw a few men, teenagers maybe, all covered in black – kind of like ninjas. That was my first thought,” said Howell resident Shannon Harvey.

[….]

Harvey lives a block away from the courthouse where the men were, and could hear them.

“I can sum it up in two words. Their messaging was white power,” Harvey said. “I was very surprised to hear the type of language that they were using downtown. It’s something that you don’t hear here often.”

The men moved from the courthouse, to the library. Eventually, the demonstration was dismantled and they went home. 

“Howell Police were able to make contact with several of the demonstrators confirming that all those contacted came from outside of our community, as far away as Saginaw and Macomb Counties,” Ellis stated. 

The reason these men chose Howell is believed to be because of Robert Miles, a prominent KKK leader who held cross burnings and rallies nearby in the 1960s. ….

Great Barrier Reef Has Record Reef Coverage | Dr Peter Ridd

Published by Papa Giorgio

Dr Peter Ridd has been researching the Great Barrier Reef since 1984, has invented a range of advanced scientific instrumentation, and written over 100 scientific publications. He has lectured geophysical fluid dynamics, meteorology and oceanography since the 1990s.

THE AUSTRALIAN has more:

The Australian Institute of Marine Science officially has confirmed what we’ve known for a few weeks: this will be another bumper year for Great Barrier Reef coral cover.

AIMS states that two of the three major Great Barrier Reef regions have set new records for coral cover, and the cover in the third has equalled the existing record. When you add up the regional results to get the coral cover for the entire reef – something AIMS inexplicably stopped doing in 2016 – the Great Barrier Reef has more coral in each of the past three years than in any of the preceding 35 years.

This is despite the supposedly catastrophic bleaching in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and this year killing huge amounts of coral.

What is even more remarkable is that the types of coral that have flourished – plate and staghorn coral – are the most susceptible to bleaching. But of course AIMS is still arguing these records do not mean the reef is healthy.

[….]

One therefore has to ask: what does the reef have to do to get the tick of approval? Australia has just won a record number of medals at the Olympics, which everyone seems to think is good. Why is the Great Barrier Reef always close to death no matter how many medals it wins?

The record coral coverage on the Great Barrier Reef across the past three years is not mentioned in the latest Scientific Consensus Statement, just released by CSIRO. Instead it focuses on claims the reef is badly affected by farmers and that climate change is a great threat. The summary of the statement (alone about 100 pages) acknowledges traditional owners, vilifies farmers and claims that freshwater ecosystems miraculously have become an integral part of the Great Barrier Reef. But somehow it could not find room to mention the reef has record coverage of coral. …

The Great Barrier Reef had more coral in the last 3 years, than in the last 35 years.

Biden/Harris & Harris/Walz Monetary Policy Cause Inflation and Shortages

Published by Papa Giorgio

…First, the greedflation story ignores business competition. How could so many firms suddenly command higher profit margins? Corporate concentration didn’t dramatically increase during the pandemic. Firms didn’t magically gain more market power or suddenly become greedier. To believe in greedflation, we’d therefore have to think that businesses across many sectors colluded by using their pricing power to raise prices by limiting their output. But in most industries the urge to undercut rivals and grab market share would undermine this coordination. Moreover, real output actually grew strongly in 2021 and 2022, while inflation surged, thus contradicting the idea that collusive efforts to withhold output was what drove rising prices.

Second, the greedflation tale overlooks consumers. How could customers suddenly afford higher prices across many industries? If businesses in some sectors with price-insensitive customers jacked up prices to puff their profits, those consumers would have less money to spend elsewhere, reducing demand and prices for other goods. This would leave overall inflation largely unchanged. To get a situation in which all prices are rising—a macroeconomic inflation—therefore requires more overall spending, perhaps indicating that there was more money available to spend to begin with.

This points us to the real story: Far from profits driving inflation, inflation and temporarily higher profits were both being driven by a third factor: excessive macroeconomic stimulus.

(CATO | See also CITY JOURNAL)

Supply chains were broken by GOVERNMENT REGULATION AND RULES during covid. It just “didn’t happen” by accident or natural causes. Supply chains were cut by enforcement. As above… long haul video!

  • NEWSBUSTERS: “Brooks Surprised ‘Responsible’ Harris Would Endorse Soviet-Like Price Controls”

JOHN STOSSEL on Greed and Inflation

Inflation is sharply up. Now it’s 7%. What went wrong?

STEVE FORBES for PRAGER U ~ Inflation

Look for the source of a society’s collapse, and you’ll usually find the i-word (inflation) at its core. So what exactly is inflation? How does it work? Why is it so dangerous? And how does it affect your everyday life? Steve Forbes breaks it down.

“GREEDFLATION”

The entire article from REASON is this:

The Misuse of Data Behind the ‘Greedflation’ Narrative
There’s no evidence that greed is causing inflation.

The chairman of the WAYS & MEANS Committee has a wonderful [7-2022] fact check page refuting the Democrats “Greedflation” position. I have been warning of this inflationary cliff for many years in my posts on Quantitative Easing.

Likewise, this is a decent article on the topic of disproving a large portion of the “Greedflation” charge:

As the US economy continues to grapple with persistently high inflation, President Biden has repeatedly blamed “corporate greed” as the primary culprit.

The administration has accused companies of engaging in “greedflation” and “shrinkflation” – raising prices and reducing product sizes to maximize profits at the expense of consumers.

However, a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco challenges this narrative, providing a more nuanced and evidence-based understanding of the factors driving the current inflationary pressures.

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s research shows that while there has been an increase in markups (the difference between a product’s selling price and its production cost) in select industries like motor vehicles, the overall markup rate has remained largely in line with previous economic recoveries. Contrary to Biden’s claims, the data suggests that fluctuations in corporate markups have not been a driving force behind the ups and downs of inflation during the post-pandemic recovery.

The report attributes the current inflationary pressures to other factors, such as the massive government stimulus spending and the Federal Reserve’s low-interest-rate policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. These measures boosted consumer demand at a time when the economy was experiencing supply chain disruptions and shortages, leading to a sharp rise in prices across various sectors.

While corporate profits did spike during the economic recovery, the Fed’s analysis indicates that this is not unusual compared to previous recoveries, such as the Great Recession. The increase in profits is largely attributable to pandemic-era subsidies and lower business taxes, rather than a deliberate effort to exploit consumers through “greedflation.” ….

(More at TAMPA FREE PRESS)

The CAROLINA JOURNAL has a wonderful article as well.

Price inflation is never caused by greed. It’s always caused by a growing money supply. The money supply has grown big-time since 2020, and now we pay a lot more for food and housing. [RPT: actually, the money supply has been growing since Obama]

A new report claims “resounding evidence” shows that high corporate profits are a main driver of ongoing inflation, and companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop.

The report, compiled by the progressive Groundwork Collaborative think tank, found corporate profits accounted for about 53% of inflation during last year’s second and third quarters. Profits drove just 11% of price growth in the 40 years prior to the pandemic, according to the report.

Is this true? Unraveling this mysterious relationship between corporate profit and inflation is easy once we clearly define what profit and inflation are. This allegation that corporate profits accounted for 53 percent of inflation is a result of using wrong definitions and reasoning by mainstream economics researchers.

First, let us see what inflation is. As Henry Hazlitt explained in his article “Inflation in One Page,” inflation is “an increase in the quantity of money and credit. Its chief consequence is soaring prices. Therefore inflation—if we misuse the term to mean the rising prices themselves—is caused solely by printing more money. For this the government’s monetary policies are entirely responsible.”

Faulty reasoning by mainstream economists occurs because of their faulty way of mistaking the price rise effect of inflation as inflation itself. They are putting the cart before the horse. Rising prices is only one of the chief effects of inflation, not inflation itself.

Another mistake that mainstream economists make is that they use the long disproved Marxist “production cost/labor theory of value” to explain the rise in the prices of consumer goods, as is the case with this research done by the Groundwork Collaborative think tank. Production cost (corporate profit) doesn’t determine the prices of consumer goods. The subjective value of the consumer determines those prices. In this article I do not have the space to discuss this very important subjective value theory. I advise my readers to study the literature of the Austrian School of economics.

They also mistake individual commodity price fluctuation for inflation. In a market economy, prices of various commodities are always changing. Such price fluctuation doesn’t reflect the mythical general price level that mainstream economists use to measure inflation.

Also, if corporate profits explain the rise in prices of consumer goods—what mainstream economists call inflation—then what explains the rise in the prices of producer goods? The same corporate profits? We need to remember here that inflation not only increases the prices of consumer goods but also producer goods. When the supply of money rises due to the Fed’s easy money policies of creating dollars out of thin air, it dilutes the purchasing power (value) of all existing dollars in the economy. And because dollars are legal tender money (a common medium of exchange), they will buy less of both consumer and producer goods (i.e., looking from the goods side it will look as if their prices have gone up). Actually, the dollar is losing its value and so buying less of everything against which it is being used in market exchange. …..

(More at MISES.ORG)

Few people have had as profound an impact on modern economics as economist Milton Friedman. His Nobel Prize-winning ideas on free enterprise resonated throughout the world and continue to do so. Johan Norberg, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, tells Friedman’s fascinating story.

With the recent passing of Walter Williams, I watched a video of him [Thomas Sowell’s tribute] that reminded me of a video of Milton Friedman on the Donahue Show. So I wanted to combine them for affect.

EV FIRE WARNING!! Solution: Ban EVs In Covered Garages

Published by Papa Giorgio

A terrifying incident occurred in Korea on August 1, 2024, as an electric vehicle exploded in an underground parking garage, injuring multiple people and damaging over 140 cars. Watch the security footage revealing how quickly the fire spread and learn about the critical safety measures that failed. Discover the truth about lithium-ion battery hazards and what can be done to prevent future tragedies.

Starting out this post is a long excerpt from ACE OF SPADES…. a site I recommend highly, BTW. In it we see how a country is realizing the risk of allowing Electric Vehicles (EVs) into parking structures. In this case, not because of the weight, but fire hazard:

While electric vehicle sales may not amount to more than a single-digit market share, the numbers on the road are now significant enough that there is a growing conversation over whether EVs should be allowed in parking structures. Part of that discussion is about how the owners of buildings that contain parking structures can protect and insure against an unknown number of potential bombs that may be parked there at any given time.

This awful story from South Korea is likely to be repeated with growing frequency, and it is fueling the discussions I just referenced.

“South Korea holds emergency meeting as EV fires stir consumer fear” [Reuters – 8/12/2024]

South Korean officials met on Monday to discuss electric vehicle safety and whether to require car firms to disclose battery brands amid growing consumer concern after an EV blaze in an underground garage extensively damaged an apartment block.

It doesn’t matter what brand of battery is in the EV, what matters is that it’s a lithium ion EV battery, which by nature is prone to runaway thermal fires.

The fire on Aug. 1, which appeared to start spontaneously in a Mercedes-Benz EV parked below a residential building, took eight hours to put out, destroying or damaging about 140 cars and forcing some residents to move to shelters.

I have previously joked about requiring a prominent warning label on the hood of EVs, cautioning about the fire hazard EVs pose to their drivers and to those nearby. Maybe it’s time to stop joking.

Images published in media of dozens of charred cars with only their metal frames remaining in the parking lot fire have fuelled consumer fears about EVs, likely exacerbated because so many people in South Korea live in apartments, often with parking lots below.

An Automotive News piece a few days ago titled “Lithium ion battery fire regulation could help heal industrywide black eye” acknowledges that consumers are becoming scared of lithium batteries, therefore help is needed from the federal bureaucracy to issue regulatory decrees that will somehow make lithium batteries safe. The piece also notes that in 2023, in New York City alone, there were 268 fires started by lithium ion batteries on various transportation devices, resulting in 18 deaths and 150 injuries. Of course, the federal government can no more mandate that lithium ion batteries stop combusting than it can mandate that straw be spun into gold.

Instead, I’d recommend that the government simply ban EVs from being allowed in any parking garages or covered structures. (And yes, that is somewhat counter to my anti-regulation ethos, but remember, Team EV tried to use the power of government to take away my gasoline-powered car, so I have every right to retaliate with the same powerful weapon.)

Here is a short video of the electric Mercedes exploding. Please note that it goes from barely smoking to a fiery explosion in just 21 seconds.

This Fortune piece dated 8/07/2024 reports that ”Several office buildings [in South Korea] have now banned EVs from entering and parking, according to notices on social media.” That’s wise.

Last month I inquired in one of my pieces about how insurance companies are dealing with the growing menace of EV fires, especially regarding all the collateral damage they can cause when they spontaneously combust. I received an email response from a gentleman named Bill Schneider who has a depth of experience at integrated facilities management, including the insurance aspect. I received this prophetic email from Mr. Schneider just four days before the Korean EV disaster.

Consider a potential BEV [“Battery Electric Vehicle”] fire in either scenario:

1. “3 plus 1” mixed-use building, where the parking deck is on the bottom floor, and that floor is below ground (so there is no way to easily remove BEVs from anything else combustible), and there are residential apartments and commercial shops/offices above the deck…or…

2. Multi-story parking deck at, say, a major airport (think one of the parking decks at DFW) where a cluster of BEVs are parked together and a fire breaks out.

Guess what? Parking deck suppression systems are nothing more than sprinklers with water in them – water that is hopelessly inefficient to quench a burning lithium battery.

Plus, with [internal combustion vehicles] gasoline is at least dispersed when sprinklers are activated – but BEV batteries are buried deep inside the vehicle chassis, meaning that when sprinklers activate, they cannot get water to the source of the fire.

Imagine the inferno if a cluster of 30 BEVs were parked next to each other in the center of the Terminal A parking deck, on the fourth or fifth floor, right in the middle of the structure. Or on the bottom floor, near a wall.

I presented this scenario to the SME [Small/Medium Enterprise] – and the industry has NO. ANSWER. This isn’t the FLS [Fire/Life Safety] industry’s fault – rather, it’s based on the constraints of fighting BEV fires, where the battery burns far hotter, and all three elements of the Fire Triangle are present in the battery (and remain present, not being able to be dispersed), and the batteries are buried so deep inside the vehicle chassis that suppression liquids cannot reach the source of the fire.

Fire marshals who become aware of the risk? They simply forbid BEVs from being parked inside a structure. Because that’s all they can do.

Fire Marshalls are empowered to limit the number of people who may enter a building for fire safety reasons. They should also be able to limit the number of EVs that may park in a building’s garage. I’d recommend the maximum number of EVs allowed in a parking garage be limited to zero. ….

(READ ALL OF THE POST)

An EV phobia appears to be spreading across South Korea following a mysterious explosion of an electric car.

Sky News host James Morrow, Rita Panahi and Rowan Dean discuss residents in greater Seoul moving to ban electric vehicles from underground parking lots after a parked Mercedes-Benz sedan recently caught fire.

“This is actually a real nightmare situation. This is in the car park underneath an apartment block. These things are impossible to put out,” Mr Morrow said.

“This fire torched at least 40 other cars and damaged a whole bunch more, a bunch of people in the building were taken for smoke inhalation and other injuries. Thankfully, nobody was even worse injured with this.”

AN OLDER POST

EV Car FIRE HAZARDS

Electric vehicles are on the rise across the country, and while that’s a step forward for the environment, firefighters are raising safety concerns. They say electric vehicle fires pose a number of risks, not only to the community, but also to firefighters themselves.

The truth about EVs and fire risk in our cities | Auto Expert John Cadogan

SPONTANIOUS COMBUSTION!

Ford shut down production of the popular electric truck for five weeks following a fire in Dearborn in February. When the fire was out, all that was left was soot and damaged paint. Fire departments nationwide are in training as they learn how to put out fires for electric vehicles. But an EV fire is a dramatically different and far more dangerous problem for them.

ACE OF SPADES lights this topic up! I add media:

A Mercedes-Benz EQE Sedan caught fire and burned to a crisp inside a Florida homeowner’s garage last week, severely damaging the building.

The 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQE 350+ Sedan was in the garage when it caught fire on July 19. According to Jennifer Ruotolo, the EV was a loaner from Mercedes-Benz while her own car was getting serviced. She told News4Jax that the luxury electric sedan wasn’t even charging when it burst into flames – she doesn’t own a home charging unit.

“It was parked in the garage, about 22 hours and then it caught fire. I was at work. About 8:30 and my husband heard a hiss and a pop, and he went into the garage full of smoke. It engulfed in flames and exploded,” the Nocatee, Florida resident said…..

(INSIDE EVs)

A battery fire has destroyed both of Speed ONE Racing’s electric Lancia Delta World Rallycross cars, Carscoops reports. The two Lancia Delta Evo-e race cars were reportedly in the paddock at Lydden Hill Race Circuit in the UK on Friday morning when a fire originating in one of the cars’ battery packs spread and consumed the team’s road tent, taking both cars with it. The fire shut down the World Rallycross Championship event while race authorities attempted to ascertain the cause of the fire. [….] “The fire began just before 08:45, with fire crews working hard to bring it under control and extinguish it as swiftly as possible. Regrettably, the entire Special ONE Racing area was burnt down, including both of their RX1e cars. …

(AUTO BLOG)

[….]

Undamaged EVs are alread terrifying enough (there is no way would I ever allow one to be parked in my garage) but if an EV was in a wreck or otherwise damaged, where the heck do you store it knowing that it could erupt in flames at any time. If I were a wrecker driver I would not want to ever tow a damaged EV.

Back to Nikola, you may recall that I put it at the top of my “EV Manufacturer Dead Pool,” predicting it would be the next to go out of business, following Lordstown Motors’ bankruptcy.

Well, Nikola is getting closer. It just suspended all sales of battery powered trucks and recalled all those on the road.

“Nikola Recalls All Battery-Electric Trucks, Halts Sales After Fire Probe” [Reuters – 8/14/2023]

Nikola said on Friday it was recalling all the battery-powered electric trucks that it has delivered to date and is suspending sales after an investigation into recent fires found a coolant leak inside a battery pack as the cause.

[….]

I have an obligation to acknowledge when I get things wrong. As noted above, I predicted that Nikola would be the next EV manufacturer to go bankrupt. I got it wrong, it was actually a Biden-touted electric bus maker that was next in line.

Proterra, Electric-Bus Maker Touted by President Biden, Goes Bankrupt [WSJ – 8/08/2023]

Proterra, an electric bus maker that has been lauded by President Biden for its U.S. manufacturing operations, has become at least the third electric-vehicle business to file for bankruptcy in roughly the past year.

[h/t to Mr. CBD for bringing this one to my attention. I think Proterra was his entry in my EV Dead Pool.]

[….]

GM has been plagued by exploding EVs, so they are now trying to figure out why.

Popular Science - GM - When Battery Fires Happen.JPG

I know! I know! [Buck waves hand furiously in the air.] I know the answer to this one!!

It’s when lithium-ion batteries are used as a power source for a vehicle rather than using a gasoline powered engine.

You’re welcome, GM.

[….]

I believe that others on the blog have already covered this next story, and I am not going to joke about it, because this awful EV conflagration took a man’s life.

“Burning Car Carrier Towed to Temporary Location off Dutch Coast” [Reuters – 7/31/2023]

A burning car carrier off the Dutch coast has been towed to a new location away from shipping lanes as part of an operation to salvage the ship, the Dutch public works and water management ministry and local media said on Monday.The freighter, which was travelling from Germany to Egypt when the blaze broke out on July 26…

Ship charter company “K” Line said on Friday there were 3,783 vehicles on board the ship – including 498 battery electric vehicles, significantly more than the 25 initially reported.

EV lithium-ion batteries burn with twice the energy of a normal fire, and maritime officials and insurers say the industry has not kept up with the risks.

Shipping companies and insurance companies have a day of reckoning coming regarding EVs. They are under pressure from the eco-left to embrace electric vehicles, but EVs are explosively dangerous, they are almost impossible to extinguish when they catch fire, and they are so fragile that the slightest damage to an EV will require it to be totaled.

  • WFAA reports that in the early hours of Friday morning in Plano, Texas, a Tesla vehicle unexpectedly caught fire, raising fresh concerns about the safety of electric vehicle batteries. According to the car’s owner, the incident occurred shortly after midnight in the residential area of the 2700 block of Sacred Path Road. The owner reported hearing a hissing noise from the vehicle’s battery, which had been installed just the day before. Upon checking the car, they discovered flames shooting out from the battery. (BREITBART)

TOXIC FIRES

A car catches fire every two minutes in the United States, and firefighters are well-versed in how to respond. But they face new hazards and challenges when that fire is in an electric vehicle or EV. Nearly 2 million EVs are already on the road and many believe they’re the future of driving. Though EV fires aren’t necessarily more common than standard car fires, they require a different approach from first responders (more from LOCAL 12)

Here an EV bus takes minute to fully engulf, luckily it was next to a steel and glass building and not a wood structure.

Can you imagine these fires with the amount of battery cells long-hauler trucks have?

ANOTHER PAST POST

Battery Storage Fire Flares Up For Sixth Day

From the time of the above interview, firefighters are planning on camping out there for a month!

This from HOT AIR:

… As of this past Tuesday, CalFire was still pouring water on and into the building while coming to the realization that “water” around lithium-ion batteries was a double-edged sword. Like Ramius tells Ryan in Red October, “Most things in here don’t react too well to bullets.” In the batteries’ case, they don’t react well to water.

…Pascua said things began to reignite Friday night.

“You have to put water on it to keep the fire confined, but that water damages the batteries also allowing them to arc starting another fire. We’re just trying to keep the public safe and keep the fire contained to the building,” he said.

The chain reaction can happen when a lithium-ion battery creates heat faster than it can dissipate. That rapid increase of temperature can then turn to fire.

But water’s all they’ve got, and, as of yesterday, they were well into multiple millions of gallons flowing without having put the fire to bed.

One fire. In a perpetual drought state.

…The fire has already consumed 5 million gallons of water, and firefighters estimate it will take an additional 7-10 days to control, using a total of 15-20 million gallons. LETHAL amounts of Hydrogen Cyanide were present in the air for 3 hours after the fire began…

All that and, as of this morning, still en fuego. ….

Heather Mac: “Walz Dithered While Minneapolis Burned”

Published by Papa Giorgio

Armstrong and Getty read from the Wall Street Journal article, “Walz Dithered While Minneapolis Burned,” by Heather Mac Donald on Tim Walz. I added some examples as well. See also:

Dan Goldman Clueless About Trump Debates

Published by Papa Giorgio

This was a good 20-minute-+ video. Worth the watch. While Larry O’Connor concentrates on the “Goldman” thing, the more important aspect I think is in the latter half of the video. I also would have worded the description different, but so be it:

  • Democrat Dan Goldman got a bit hysterical on Fox News with Bret Baier when the anchor decided to correct the record on Goldman’s false narrative surrounding debates between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Tim Walz Is Everything They Accuse Trump Of

Published by Papa Giorgio

The video of the police pepper balling people on their porch… on their own property under the edicts of Tim Walz is found at REDDIT, and at Paul A. Szypula’s Twi-X,

LEGAL INSURRECTION also has a connecting story:

Lisa Hanson once owned a wine and coffee bistro south of Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has a simple warning for Americans regarding presumptive Democratic VP candidate Gov. Tim Walz: “You do not want tyranny at this level.”

Hanson faced 90 days in jail because she re-opened her Interchange Wine & Coffee Bistro business during Walz’s draconian COVID regulations.

The business owner, who has eight children and eighteen grandchildren, witnessed Walz ruling with his iron fist. He shut down supposed non-essential businesses like “bars, restaurants, gyms, dance studios, and hair salons.”

Walz allowed liquor stores and strip clubs to remain open.

Hanson had enough. She told Fox News:

“He shut down a lot of the mom-and-pop shops, those folks that were just trying to make a living and provide a great product and a great service,” Hanson told Fox News Digital. “In contrast, he allowed big box stores, etc. to stay open. Really incredible, an incredible use of tyranny against the people.”

Hanson eventually decided to re-open her business and defied Walz’s renewed shutdown order for bars and restaurants six times between December 2020 and January 2021.

She was convicted in December 2021 on misdemeanor charges and received the maximum sentence of 90 days and a $1,000 fine. Hanson ended up serving two-thirds of her sentence, 60 days.. …

(MORE)

The Ever Changing Kamala: Two Rumble Uploads Of Mine

Published by Papa Giorgio

Kamala Harris Panders for Votes using an idea pushed by REPUBLICAN Ron Paul years ago and since June 9th (2024) by Donald J. Trump. Now, like magic, Kamala [since Saturday the 10th of August, 2024] is saying the same. I finish with a February 2023 video.

NO NEW TAXES – LOL

RIGHT SCOOP slams Kamala as the KHAMELEON she is:

Flip flopper Kamala Harris has just been exposed after she stole Trump’s promise to prevent tips from being taxed by the IRS.

As we reported, Harris told a crowd on Friday that she wanted to “raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.”

But now, as Breitbart reports, Vice President Kamala Harris actually cast the tie vote in the Senate to allow the IRS to ensure that tips are being taxed in order to grab as much tax revenue as possible:

On August 7, 2022, Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act that provided $80 billion in additional funding to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which then got to work cracking down on the service industry’s reporting of tips so that they could be taxed.

“Two years ago today, I proudly cast the tie-breaking vote to pass our Inflation Reduction Act,” Harris’s Facebook account reminded the public on Wednesday, sharing a video of the vice president voting to pass the legislation.

[….]

This is just another example of Kama Kameleon doing one thing and then saying the opposite just to get elected.

JUST THE NEWS has this story that fits well in here.

…. “[I]t’s quite a transformation when you think about all of the different positions that she’s flip-flopping on right now, whether it is a mandatory gun confiscation program, whether it’s Medicare for all, whether it’s now she does want to be the border czar, and has some ideas on how to stop the invasion that she has unleashed,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said on the “Just the News, No Noise” television program.

“I think the key question you’ve got to ask: ‘is she now saying that the Harris Biden administration has been wrong on all of these key issues over the last four years, or is she saying that there’s an election coming up and we need to go pander to the voters?’” he went on.

[….]

“No tax on tips”

Trump announced his “no tax on tips” plan during a campaign rally in Las Vegas in June. The move appeared to resonate with service industry workers and Harris ultimately endorsed the same idea in August.

“It is my promise to everyone here that, when I am president, we will continue our fight for working families of America, including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers,”” Harris said at a rally at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

“How long will it be before Kamala Harris comes out with another TRUMP policy [?]” Trump responded. “Everyone is waiting to see what idea, or policy of mine, she will copy next.”

Harris’s adoption of the policy signals more than mere imitation. Rather, it stands in direct contrast to the Biden administration’s ongoing efforts to boost compliance with tip reporting for taxation purposes. Harris cast the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, which explicitly taxed workers’ tips.

The Department of the Treasury in 2023 introduced the Service Industry Tip Compliance Agreement (SITCA) program in order to “take advantage of advancements in point-of-sale, time and attendance systems, and electronic payment settlement methods to improve tip reporting compliance.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday indicated that Biden “supports eliminating taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers” and would sign legislation to that effect, according to the Daily Mail. ….

Republican Senator and Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance was on ABC’s “This Week” with cohost Jonathan Karl. (See NewsBusters “Orwellian: Media Try to Purge the Record that Kamala Harris Is Joe Biden’s Border Czar“

Purging the Czar

NEW YORK POST notes:

Kameleon: “She would not ban fracking,” Harris’ campaign told Politico. “Trump’s false claims about fracking bans are an obvious attempt to distract from his own plans.”

The truth: Donald Trump’s claims were not false. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Harris said repeatedly she wanted to ban the gas and oil extraction method, which has become an economic lifeblood of Pennsylvania and other states.

“There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” she said during a CNN discussion.

Kameleon: “Harris’ campaign also confirmed … that the vice president no longer supports a single-payer health care system,” wrote CNN.

The truth: That’s quite the 180 from the candidate in 2020 who was asked if you would be able to keep the health insurance you have under a Harris presidency.

“Let’s eliminate all of that,” she said. “Let’s move on.”

Kameleon: “We know that our immigration system is broken, and we know what it takes to fix it,” Harris said in Las Vegas this past weekend.

The truth: Harris has never wanted to fix it before, she wanted to throw the whole thing out. She favored getting rid of ICE, and even said that crossing the border illegally was no crime. “We’re not going to treat people who are undocumented who cross the border as criminals,” she said.

It’s not even fair to call this one a flip-flop, it’s a straight-up lie. Harris’ one clarification on what was “broken” was that we needed an “earned pathway to citizenship” — which will reward the people who came here illegally.

Kameleon: As far back as 2020, Harris’ press secretary brazenly claimed, “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris do not support defunding the police, and it is a lie to suggest otherwise.”

The truth: Except she absolutely did. In the summer of 2020, Harris said that “we have to take a look at these budgets,” suggesting police were overfunded. She “applauded” Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, for defunding the LAPD.

Kameleon: Last week, a Harris spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that Harris “no longer supports a federal job guarantee, an idea championed by some on the Left and Green New Deal proponents.”

The truth: She not only backed the Green New Deal, she wanted to break the Senate to get it passed. “I am prepared to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal,” she once said.

Kameleon: Harris has claimed now she stands shoulder to shoulder with Israel.

The truth: Except when she refuses to attend the prime minister’s address to Congress. Or she criticizes how Israel has responded to Hamas’ terror attacks.

Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East peace negotiator, told the Wall Street Journal: “There is the inner Kamala, of a different generation than Biden whose empathy and sensibilities run deeper than the president’s when it comes to Palestinian suffering. Then there is the outer Kamala, the moderate pro-Israel Democrat who for political reasons when it comes to Israel needs to color between the lines.”

“Mr Bean” Defends Free Speech (plus: David Barton)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Another Voice Rises In The Name Of Free Speech
Rowan ‘Mr Bean’ Atkinson

Here is the bit he was talking about in the above video:

Rowan Atkinson: Racist Constable (Policeman)
ot The Nine O’Clock News Election Special S03E02

On a similar note, JUST THE NEWS has this story about a police commissioner in the U.K. wanting to extradite Americans for “hate speech”

U.K. police chief Mark Rowley suggested he is willing to arrest U.S. citizen Elon Musk because Musk highlighted extreme violence and riots by Muslim gangs in England.

The British Met Police Commissioner pledged that “whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you,” The Daily Wire reported.

Rowley made his controversial comments during U.K. protests and riots “in response to the killing of three young girls during a mass-stabbing attack that left several more injured.”

When asked about “high profile figures” like Elon Musk who were allegedly “whipping up the hatred,” Rowley responded that “being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law.” …..

See more here:

Here are two grabs from TWIX:

With these excellent responses – I took liberty with the “flag surrounded “X”, the original “X” – or – “Tweet”… Twi-X is linked in it:

LINKED

The First Amendment: American Masterclass with Historian David Barton
Louder With Crowder

Historian David Barton sets the record straight and answers some of the most frequently asked questions about the First Amendment.