STILL NOT QUITE READY FOR PRIMETIME: Family ditches electric truck on drive from Winnipeg to Chicago after charging troubles.

Bala’s first stop was about 350 kilometres south of Winnipeg in Fargo, N.D. He paid $56 to charge his vehicle’s battery from 10 per cent up to 90 per cent.

The trouble started at his next stop in Albertville, Minn., where Bala said the only fast charger brought up a faulty connection message in his truck when he plugged in. He called the number on the charger for help but never got a response.

He headed to another charging station in nearby Elk River, Minn., but he said a charger there wouldn’t work either.

With only 15 kilometres remaining on his battery and no fast charger within that range, he decided to ditch his Lightning. Bala got it towed to a Ford dealership and the family rented a Toyota 4Runner to finish their trip to Chicago.

“That’s when we decided we don’t want any more distraction or any frustration,” Bala said.

Previously:

Larson makes a nice diesel EV charger. May look at bootlegging some of these into California in the next few years as the grid continues to fail. pic.twitter.com/fEGzTCLosS

— Dr. Platimus (@SWGaspar) August 26, 2022

VAMPIRE TECH: In Soviet California, Electric Vehicle Charges Grid.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (CHINA EDITION): Beijing Battles Deflation Amid Skyrocketing Debt Crisis.

Now, though, it’s becoming harder for Beijing to refute evidence of deflation. Both food and car prices have dropped in the past several months, with the latter largely due to intense discounting amid price wars in the auto industry. Real estate has taken a beating; across 100 Chinese cities, the prices of homes have dropped an average of 14 percent from their peak in August 2021, and rents have fallen around 5 percent. Exports have declined as has domestic demand for Chinese-made goods.

“The reality looks increasingly grim,” economist Eswar Prasad told Foreign Policy via email, suggesting that “the government’s approach of downplaying the risks of deflation and stalling growth could backfire and make it even harder to pull the economy out of its downward spiral.”

It’s some small comfort knowing that China’s ruling class might be almost as hapless and corrupt as our own.

TEAM PLAYER: Trump Says He Won’t Sign Pledge to Support GOP Nominee, Putting His Debate Attendance in Doubt.

JUST DO IT: DARPA Wants To Capture The Next Chinese Spy Balloon. “The program is being managed through DARPA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which sets aside about $150 million out of the agency’s $3.8 billion budget for nontraditional defense companies to submit programs.”

FIGHT THE POWER: Canceled donor’s estate can sue Middlebury College, judge rules.

MORAL CONSISTENCY? WHAT’S THAT? NBC News is reporting through Reuters that the Iraqi government has criminalized the word “homosexuality.” The report says that:

“Iraq’s official media regulator on Tuesday ordered all media and social media companies operating in the Arab state not to use the term “homosexuality” and instead to say “sexual deviance” […] The Iraqi Communications and Media Commission (CMC) document said that the use of the term “gender” was also banned.”

My research shows that the Jihad Squad hasn’t uttered a single word about it. Ilhan Omar (D-Mi.); Rashida Tlaib (D-Mi.); Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have consistently attacked Israel in specific and Jews in general. Tlaib and Bush recently tried to gin up a boycott of Israel’s President Herzog addressing a joint session, issuing a bellicose if not downright hateful press release saying:

“Bestowing President Herzog with the rare honor of a joint address to Congress while the Israeli apartheid government continues to enable and directly support racism and brutal settler attacks is a slap in the face to victims, survivors, and their loved ones—including the families of Americans murdered by this regime like Shireen Abu Akleh and Omar Assad.”

OK, fine. Legislators and their constituents have every right to advocate for their constituents’ views, even odious ones. But waitaminnit…

These same faux-Progressives claim to be “allies” in the LGBTQLMAO “struggle.” It’s easy to blast away at targets like Israel because it’s accepted in academia and Hollywood. But isn’t this the very same bunch who insist on DEI and focus heavily on gay rights?

Moreover, have a look at the endorsements for Ilham Omar of which she boasts. Those are some pretty interesting names. None surprising, but why are people and entities who ought to know better, like Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi — and get this — Stonewall DFL (who works to elect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and allied Democrats to public office in Minnesota) silent on the Iraqi criminalization of even using the word “homosexual.” And silent on the Jihad Squad’s silence. Nancy Pelosi, who owes a lot of her political power to the “allies” in Hollywood ought to be asked this.

But she won’t. Because this is what crybullies do. 

CHANGE: DeSantis Suspends ‘Soft-on-Crime’ Orlando-Area State Attorney Monique Worrell.

PUSHBACK WORKS: Kentucky Board of Nursing retracts ‘implicit bias’ training requirement after media coverage.

POWER, UNLIMITED POWER: For the Second Time, U.S. Scientists Have Achieved Fusion Ignition.

On December 5, 2022, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) achieved something truly remarkable. After firing 192 lasers at a small pellet filled with deuterium-tritium fuel, the resulting reaction essentially created a tiny star for a few nanoseconds. Crucially, the energy created by this reaction was more than the energy put into the reaction. In other words, science had finally achieved nuclear fusion ignition.

Until that point, humans had never been able to recreate the life-giving power generated in the center of our Sun on Earth. But for the first time, the clean energy promise of nuclear fusion—arguably the greatest energy source imaginable—suddenly seemed possible. Now, fast forward only eight months, and LLNL has achieved ignition again. But this time, they had even greater results.

LLNL spokesperson Paul Rhien spoke with The Financial Times on Sunday, and said that “in an experiment conducted on July 30, we repeated ignition at NIF. Analysis of those results is underway, but we can confirm the experiment produced a higher yield than the December test.”

Maybe the question now isn’t whether we’ll ever achieve usable fusion power but whether the powers that be would allow affordable, unlimited energy. That certainly hasn’t been the case with nuclear fission in recent decades.

LIGHTNING DEAL: MRTLLOA Windproof Inverted Reverse Umbrella with UV Protection. #CommissionEarned

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Hunter Biden Bank Records Are Predictably Sleazy. “One of the most stunning things about all of this is that Hunter Biden has no discernible skills related to business. I’m even skeptical that he is creating his own “art.” Despite not being able to do anything other than be a privileged party boy, people from all over the world are throwing cash at the mediocrity.”

AS IF THAT WASN’T FAUCI’S JOB DESCRIPTION:  Rand Paul asks DC US Attorney to probe Fauci for lying to Congress about US-funded COVID research in Wuhan.

AD ASTRA: Virgin Galactic to launch second commercial spaceflight with all-civilian crew.

The launch is scheduled for 11 AM ET today.

21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: Amazon removes books ‘generated by AI’ for sale under author’s name.

Five books for sale on Amazon were removed after author Jane Friedman complained that the titles were falsely listed as being written by her. The books, which Friedman believes were written by AI, were also listed on the Amazon-owned reviews site Goodreads.

“It feels like a violation, because it’s really low quality material with my name on it,” Friedman told the Guardian. The Ohio-based author has written several books about the publishing industry, and the fraudulent titles mimicked her real work. How to Write and Publish an eBook Quickly and Make Money and A Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting Compelling eBooks, Building a Thriving Author Platform, and Maximizing Profitability were two of the listed books. Friedman’s real books include The Business of Being a Writer and Publishing 101.

This is only the beginning.

STEVE SAILER: Broken Window of Opportunity.

This theory of broken windows was Wilson’s second big conceptual contribution to reducing crime. The first—incapacitation—has been forgotten because it’s embarrassing to remember just how inane liberal elites had gotten in their thinking about crime during the 1960s.

Because researchers couldn’t prove that prison reformed or deterred criminals, the conventional wisdom back then became: What was the point of sentencing crooks to prison at all? So, during the 1960s the number of people in prison declined even as crime grew.

But, as Wilson pointed out in the 1970s, somebody can’t be committing more street crimes if he’s in prison rather than out on the streets. At minimum, prison incapacitates criminals.

Granted, Wilson’s first big idea—that if Central Park muggers are in prison, then they can’t mug people in Central Park—doesn’t seem like a genius insight today. But it was, apparently, a blinding revelation in 1975.

It should be even less of a revelation the second time around, which has me convinced that this time going soft on crime is less about criminal justice reform (if it was ever really that in the ’60s and ’70s) and more about lefties working Lenin’s “the worse, the better” dictum.

THE AFGHANISTAN BETRAYAL HASN’T BEEN FORGOTTEN, EXCEPT BY THE MAINSTREAM PRESS: Gold Star Families From Kabul Terror Attack Blast Biden. Never Forget How He Abandoned Our Soldiers.

BECAUSE RACE IS ESSENTIAL TO THE NARRATIVE: I Have To Admit I Still Don’t Fully Understand Why You Can’t Change Your Race. “Race is a social construct with no basis in reality, but it’s also EXTREMELY important no one try to change theirs.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Colleges Spend Like There’s No Tomorrow. ‘These Places Are Just Devouring Money.’

The nation’s best-known public universities have been on an unfettered spending spree. Over the past two decades, they erected new skylines comprising snazzy academic buildings and dorms. They poured money into big-time sports programs and hired layers of administrators.

Then they passed the bill along to students.

The University of Kentucky upgraded its campus to the tune of $805,000 a day for more than a decade. Its freshmen, who come from one of America’s poorest states, paid an average $18,693 to attend in 2021-22.

Pennsylvania State University spent so much money that it now has a budget crisis—even though it’s among the most expensive public universities in the U.S.

The University of Oklahoma hit students with some of the biggest tuition increases, while spending millions on projects including acquiring and renovating a 32,000-square-foot Italian monastery for its study-abroad program.

The spending is inextricably tied to the nation’s $1.6 trillion federal student debt crisis. Colleges poured out money in part by raising tuition prices, leaving many students with few options but to take on more debt. That means student loans served as easy financing for university projects.

“Students do not have the resources right now to continue to foot the bill for all of the things that the university wants to do,” said Crispin South, a 2023 Oklahoma graduate. “You can’t just continue to raise revenue by turning to students.”

Laying off half the administrators would be a good start on the path to fiscal sanity.

2024: Ramaswamy First to Officially Qualify for GOP Debate After Signing Pledge to Support Eventual Nominee.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE (CONT’D): “The two were in a sexual relationship between December 2017 and September 2021, the student allegedly told police, after the two started messaging on the social media app Snapchat.”

WHO CHECKS THE FACTCHECKERS? For Washington Post’s Feared ‘Pinocchio’ Fact Checker, Forthrightness Dies in ‘Updates’ to Biden-Burisma Story.

For the second time in three years, the Washington Post has quietly “updated” one of the most consequential fact checks in the history of American politics – its October 2020 article undercutting reports that Hunter Biden arranged a dinner meeting between one of his foreign business clients and his father, who was then vice president of the United States.

The original article by the Washington Post’s chief fact checker, Glenn Kessler, was published the same day as the New York Post’s pre-election scoop revealing that Joe Biden had attended a 2015 dinner with a top executive of a Ukrainian energy firm, Burisma, which was paying his son $83,000 per month. Kessler’s fact-check involved interviews with a host of Biden aides who vehemently disputed the vice president’s attendance at the dinner and advanced the theory that the source of the information – a laptop Hunter had abandoned at a Delaware repair shop – was untrustworthy and possibly a Russian plant.

That conspiracy theory was quickly embraced by 51 former intelligence officials, who signed an open letter dismissing the New York Post’s scoop as having “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” This letter and the Washington Post fact check were used by the Biden campaign, other media outlets, and social media platforms to discredit the information contained on the laptop in the final days of the campaign. The article, Kessler would later boast, was “one of the most read articles in our 13-year history” of the fact-checking feature.

But Kessler’s fact check has not aged well.

Kessler’s updates aren’t much better, as you’ll see at the link.

#JOURNALISM: Stealth correction: Washington Post quietly ‘updates’ Hunter Biden laptop story after Devon Archer testimony.

“Democracy dies in darkness” isn’t a warning, but a goal.

DON SURBER: Just Say No to Battery Operated Cars.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Fifth Circuit’s Holds That People Who Use Marijuana Don’t Lose Second Amendment Rights (At Least When Sober).