Zorro
Zorro's JournalAmerica passed the EV 'tipping point' -- but many buyers still want gas
Once EVs cross 5 percent of new sales, they generally take over. U.S. hesitation could hinder that.There is a theoretical, magic tipping point for adoption of electric vehicles. Once somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of new car sales are all-electric, some researchers say, huge numbers of drivers will follow. They predict then electric cars sales will soar — to 25 percent, 50 percent, and eventually to close to 80 percent of new sales. Early adopters who love shiny new technologies will be replaced by mainstream consumers just looking for a good deal.
Last year, the United States finally passed that elusive mark — 5 percent of all new cars sold in the fourth quarter were fully electric. And earlier this year, all-electric vehicles made up about 7 percent of new car sales.
But even as the nation’s EV market appears to be teetering on the edge of an electric takeover, a hesitant American public — and a still-subpar charging infrastructure — could still hold the country back. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll shows the current limits of U.S. enthusiasm for the new vehicles, with nearly half of adults (46 percent) saying they prefer to own a gas-powered car or truck. That compares to 19 percent who want a full-electric vehicle, 13 percent who want a plug-in hybrid and 22 percent who want a traditional hybrid vehicle.
Most technologies follow what is known as an “S-curve” for adoption: microwaves, smartphones, even gas-powered cars. First, the new technology reaches only a small segment of the population — new adopters and tech geeks. Then, engineers fix bugs, society builds infrastructure for the new technology, and suddenly adoption skyrockets. Usage can rapidly climb from just 5 to 10 percent of the population to up to 80 percent, where it often plateaus.
This has already happened in some countries with EVs. In Norway, for example, fully electric vehicles made up only about 5 percent of sales in 2013. By 2018, they had climbed to 30 percent. Today, more than 80 percent of cars sold in Norway are fully electric.
https://wapo.st/3RqUO9D
Some Businesses Make 'Woke Free' a Selling Point
A number of companies — from clothing to pet care — are trying to appeal to customers who think corporate America is pushing a liberal agenda.Jonathan Isaac is a forward for the National Basketball Association’s Orlando Magic, but he is perhaps better known as someone who chose not to protest police brutality against Black Americans during a summer of widespread activism involving racial injustice.
Mr. Isaac, who is Black, turned that singular moment in July 2020 — when he decided not to join many other N.B.A. players in kneeling during the national anthem as the league restarted in a Covid “bubble” setting in Orlando, Fla. — into a platform as a conservative political activist. In 2022, he spoke at a rally of Christian nationalists and anti-vaccine Americans and wrote a book about why he did not join the protest. This year, he started Unitus, an apparel company centered on “faith, family and freedom.”
“I wanted my values to be represented in the marketplace, especially when it came to sports and leisure wear,” Mr. Isaac said in an interview.
Most companies used to do everything they could to avoid political controversies and, by extension, risk alienating potential customers. No longer. Seemingly everything in the United States is political now, including where you shop for socks and leggings.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/business/companies-conservative.html?unlocked_article_code=GUsTdvL3WSpYJxU8iR0l0-C78ijsdH4E1_BmRhDsoGtFsPoFcf6JNGFJ6KDHIZPQeNqOO7Jc7q_QVwe4SoowWsv21vQM2I1KKhpi2wzWumc-DeFezWyxLaDwn56EiThvbaV9BZGudfQsnGeo6zXeO6GDP0l4tsWzB4uyZsp65ZNWzCzsQ_UNc4TRc1F4fvHmZCyaUOSl152s1uFsd4yK-gbceG5Qt1GRjR1tE-a5tFHy55ewm2HV8HePsKKsO2mqQKsPwbPqlnWJyBQwVk3PsVC-dalVbNGuLMr5DJ5gDcTTXOxp0lo-zs0fwbFODR_-51DDPASc7StH0UnJdGUzN0k&smid=url-share
Hunter Biden sues IRS over disclosures
Source: Washington Post
The lawsuit over IRS agent interviews with Congress and the press comes as a special counsel weighs charging him with tax crimes
President Biden’s son Hunter Biden filed a lawsuit Monday against the Internal Revenue Service, charging that when agents who were investigating him told Congress and news reporters about their concerns that the case was not being managed properly, they violated his privacy rights as a taxpayer.
The lawsuit comes amid criminal charges and escalating legal battles surrounding the younger Biden, a failed plea deal and a nearly five-year investigation into his finances, taxes and a gun purchase.
Biden’s lawsuit says that while he has “all the same responsibilities as any other American citizen,” he also “has no fewer or lesser rights than any other American citizen, and no government agency or government agent has free reign to violate his rights simply because of who he is.”
Biden charges in the lawsuit that when two IRS agents went to Congress and news organizations complaining of alleged mishandling of the investigation by Justice Department officials, they disclosed information about the investigation, and about Biden’s taxes, that the law aims to keep secret.
Read more: https://wapo.st/3Zj2wVr
New College of Florida President Corcoran downplays federal civil rights investigation
New College of Florida Interim President Richard Corcoran publicly addressed the federal civil rights investigation into the college for the first time at a political forum in Tampa on Friday.
At a Tampa Tiger Bay Club lunch, Corcoran brushed off the U.S. Department of Education's disability civil rights investigation into the college, saying the issues outlined in the federal complaint predate the college's new leadership. Two discrimination complaints were filed to the DOE last month, with the department sending Corcoran a letter last week informing him of an investigation from one of them for alleged disability discrimination regarding the school's website, according to an agency spokesperson.
Corcoran downplayed the investigation, calling it a "quote-unquote investigation, not an investigation," despite the DOE's letter to Corcoran saying it was "opening this disability discrimination allegation for investigation."
A separate complaint filed to the DOE two days earlier outlined an alleged ongoing trend of discrimination against "protected groups" such as LGBTQ+ students, and the creation of a hostile environment toward those students. The agency has not responded to inquiries about whether it is investigating that complaint, and Corcoran did not mention it.
https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/education/2023/09/15/new-college-of-florida-interim-president-richard-corcoran-dismisses-doe-civil-rights-investigation/70853618007/
Many Florida homeowners face double-digit increase for property insurance by end of year
The state’s Citizens Property Insurance Corp. has revised proposed rate increases, with many homeowners likely to see double-digit hikes starting late this year.
Citizens last week sent a proposal to the state Office of Insurance Regulation that would lead to an average 11.5 percent increase for homeowners with the most-common type of policies, known as “multi-peril” policies, according to information slated to be presented to the Citizens Board of Governors on Sept. 27.
When other types of personal-lines residential policies are factored in, such as wind-only and mobile-home policies, the average increase would be 12.3 percent. Various types of commercial policies, including condominium association policies, are expected to see an average increase of 10.2 percent.
Citizens made revisions after the Office of Insurance Regulation last month took issue with parts of an earlier rate proposal and ordered some reductions. The revisions were aimed at addressing regulators’ objections, though Citizens had not received a final sign-off as of Friday morning, Citizens spokesman Michael Peltier said.
https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/state/2023/09/16/citizens-insurance-revised-florida-rates-increase/70866219007/
Good to know DeSantis and the Republican legislature are on top of this...
Bashing covid boosters, DeSantis contrasts with Trump and worries experts
DeSantis’s posture against the shots is at odds with the advice of leading public health officials and experts and shows how he has sought to make his position a 2024 campaign issueLate in 2021, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dodged a question about whether he got a booster shot to protect against covid-19.
“So, I’ve done whatever I did … the normal shot, and that at the end of the day is people’s individual decisions about what they want to do,” DeSantis said on the same day former president Donald Trump got booed for saying he received a booster.
Now a candidate for president who is regularly critical of the vaccines, DeSantis this week took a sharper stance in response to a new booster shot recommended by federal health officials.
“I will not stand by and let the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] and CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] use healthy Floridians as guinea pigs for new booster shots that have not been proven to be safe or effective,” said the governor in a written statement released after his surgeon general urged people under 65 not to get the booster. He reiterated that position the next day on the talk show of Iowa-based commentator Steve Deace, saying federal health authorities have been “corrupted by ideology.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/16/desantis-booster-shots-covid-trump/
I know who has been "corrupted by ideology", and it's not the CDC.
Is Joe Biden Indicting Hunter To Distract From Joe And Hunter's Real Crimes? Let's Ask Stupid People
We made the joke in the chatcave yesterday as the breaking news came out that Hunter Biden had been indicted on some dumb gun charge. (One wonders what happened to SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.)
“Joe Biden Imprisons Hunter Biden To Distract From Hunter Biden’s Laptop.” That was our dumb joke.
We have said many times lately that it’s hard to write comedy in today’s world of free-range, cage-free MAGA piglets, because they’re just stupider than anybody who has ever lived on planet Earth. No matter what mean joke you make about them, they will do something dumber than the joke you made, and now your joke is no longer a joke. It’s simply part of the historical record.
We should have known that one of the most brain-damaged reads on this would come from the unfortunate disaster that happened when Donald Trump’s most mangled sperm escaped his balls and found a human egg. That it would come from that boy whose father does not love him like Joe Biden loves his son. Whose father thinks he is as abjectly stupid as we think he is.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/is-joe-biden-indicting-hunter-to
From bad to much worse for Ron DeSantis
Three new polls this week cement the picture of an imploded candidacyThe 2024 Republican presidential primary campaign is increasingly looking like a coronation — in no small part thanks to the implosion of Donald Trump’s would-be usurper, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
New polling this week lays bare just how poorly things have gone for the governor. While DeSantis arguably remains the biggest of the minor hurdles Trump needs to clear, his electoral case has effectively collapsed alongside his poll numbers.
Two national polls from Fox News and Quinnipiac University show Trump expanding his lead over second-place DeSantis to 47 and 50 points, respectively.
Those are Trump’s largest margins to date in high-quality national polling of the race. And thus his lead in the FiveThirtyEight polling average has expanded to a whopping 41 points. Seven months ago, before DeSantis announced his campaign, he had crawled to within just two points of Trump.
https://wapo.st/45Qzi2t
DeSantis Bets Backing Gov't Shutdown Will Get His 2024 Bid Off Life Support
As a 2024 candidate who used the first half of his second term as governor of Florida to pass far-right messaging bills that would ultimately boost his 2024 bid, Ron DeSantis likes the chaos he’s seeing in Congress right now. And he wants to hijack the far-right House Republicans’ hijacking for his own purposes.
A Freedom Caucus founding member, DeSantis reportedly spoke with three current members of the caucus who are threatening a government shutdown on Wednesday. The call lasted about 30 minutes and he told Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX), Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Bob Good (R-VA) by phone, “I got your back. Keep fighting,” Politico reported.
DeSantis reportedly sees a campaign trail advantage in aligning himself with the far-right House Republicans’ charade as they buck party leadership and risk a shutdown, betting that voters back home will be moved by their “anti-woke” headlines and “spending cuts!” sound bites at the polls in 2024. It’s a strategy not dissimilar to DeSantis’ own pre-presidential announcement strategy when he got his Republican-dominated state legislature to pass a bunch of dangerous anti-woke/anti-LGBTQ bills into law in hopes of appealing to the furthest-right members of Donald Trump’s base.
DeSantis has been building toward this kind of messaging shift for a bit. In recent weeks he’s railed against the “D.C. establishment” and criticized both Democrats and Republicans for overspending. The alignment with those making House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) life hell is just the latest move in the direction of austerity virtue-signaling.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/desantis-bets-backing-govt-shutdown-will-get-his-2024-bid-off-life-support
Neo-Nazis Gloat as Florida Becomes a Magnet for Hate
Neo-Nazis have been ecstatic in the wake of their headline-grabbing action outside Orlando earlier this month. White nationalists with handles like “Dietrich,” “Red Pill,” and “Scotty Big Balls” greeted each other with shouts of “Hail victory!” on a Sept. 10 Telegram livestream. Echoing the sentiments of many participants, “Combat Carl” told listeners it was “probably the best weekend of my life.”
The march represented a merger of two neo-Nazi hate groups with different styles — the hard-edged BloodTribe, aka Blutstamm, whose Maine-based leader Christopher Pohlhaus has a runic face tattoo goes and goes by the name “Hammer”; and the Goyim Defense League, a meme-savvy group whose antisemitism is steeped in layers of irony, led by Jon Minadeo II, who calls himself “Handsome Truth.” This was the largest, but only the latest, of a series of high-profile neo-Nazi actions in Florida.
More than 50 members of both groups joined together on Sept. 2 — wearing red shirts and dark shorts, with most covering their faces with black masks. Some toted massive swastika flags, and their hate march culminated with a demonstration on a freeway overpass in Altamonte Springs, where the neo-Nazis performed stiff-armed Hitler salutes and shouted antisemitic threats like, “Jews get the rope!”
Many of these haters were not Florida natives. As detailed on the livestream, they’d traveled from as far Canada and California, spending thousands of dollars on flights and hotels to participate in this show of intimidation in the Sunshine State. And this joint mobilization was augmented, on the same day, by a third neo-Nazi group that rallied just a few miles away, outside DisneyWorld. Members of the Order of the Black Sun staked out an entrance to “the most magical place on Earth,” holding placards reading: “Have you thanked Hitler today?”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/neo-nazis-gloat-florida-becomes-140000174.html
Welcome to the Sunshine Hate.
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHometown: America's Finest City
Current location: District 48
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 15,754
