KEEP IN MIND THAT 36 STATES ARE NOW VOTE BY MAIL: 2020 Election: One-in-Five Mail-In Voters Participated in ‘at Least One Form of Election Fraud’.

No other country in the world allows this insanity. There’s a reason.

One day. Purple fingers. Register at least a month before. Proof of eligibility to vote required. (No, I would not be offended at being asked for citizenship papers. I know I have an accent.)

Meet the accounts banned from tweeting even after Alex Jones's reinstatement

Christopher Hutton

December 11, 04:26 PM December 11, 04:26 PM Video Embed

Elon Musk may have unbanned Infowars host Alex Jones on X, the social media platform previously called Twitter, but there are several alt-right or other controversial profiles that remain banned.

Musk posted a poll over the weekend asking if he should unban Jones. More than 70% of respondents said he should, leading to the Tesla CEO reinstating the conspiracy theorist back to the platform. He later said in a Twitter Spaces with Jones, Jack Posobiec, and several others that the company would ideally never ban anyone unless the person was involved in something illegal.

SHADOW OF DOUBT: ARE TRUMP CANDIDATES CHANGING THEIR ELECTION DENIAL TUNE HEADING INTO 2024?

Here's a list of accounts that have not been unbanned on X.

David Duke: The former leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a vocal racist was banned in 2020 for spreading hateful content online.

Martin Shkreli: The former pharmaceutical executive was convicted of fraud and has served time in prison. Shkreli was permanently suspended from the website in 2017 and attempted to get the account reinstated. He was forced to restart with a new account.

Stefan Molyneux: Alt-right philosopher Stefan Molyneux was banned for owning and operating several fake accounts.

Jacob Wohl: Jacob Wohl, a conservative who regularly attempted to spread false information about various politicians, has also not been returned to the platform. Wohl was permanently suspended in 2019 for creating fake accounts and committing multiple violations of the social media outlet's rules.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Nick Fuentes: The young streamer and white supremacist was reinstated on the website in January 2023 but was suspended less than a day afterward for unknown reasons. Fuentes is known for promoting antisemitism and Holocaust denialism.

Jones has been facing legal problems after he was sued several times by families who were affected by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The families offered to settle with him in November for $85 million over 10 years to resolve the threat of bankruptcy, but Jones's lawyers called the offer unrealistic.

© 2023 Washington Examiner

European Union negotiators clinched a deal Friday on the world's first comprehensive artificial intelligence rules, paving the way for legal oversight of AI technology that has promised to transform everyday life and spurred warnings of existential dangers to humanity.

Your next new car will be old when you buy it

Jack Baruth

December 08, 02:16 AM December 08, 06:36 AM

Perhaps you’ve heard that electric vehicle sales aren’t as high as the automakers and the government expected them to be. You might have also heard that EV inventories are out of control, with the average dealer sitting on over a hundred days’ worth of battery-powered stock, while many new internal combustion engine, or ICE, vehicles are impossible to get at any price. Fewer than 1 in 10 cars sold this year will be exclusively electric. This is despite lower prices at Tesla and a disturbing amount of taxpayer-funded EV subsidies.

There are many theories in the auto industry and its media to explain this slacking of EV demand, ranging from the merely fanciful to the outright deranged. But the simplest explanation is likely the best. Namely, there’s a limited number of customers for cars that cost more while offering less, and most of those customers already bought one.

FORD TO SCALE BACK PLANNED $3.5 BILLION ELECTRIC VEHICLE BATTERY PLANT IN MICHIGAN

A significant improvement in the abilities of electric cars, or a significant decrease in their price, could go a long way towards addressing this situation. Unfortunately, there’s no feasible technological path to better performance, at least not in the next 10 years or so, since the current crop of electric cars maximizes the physical limits of the best existing battery technology and stuffs as many pounds of these batteries as possible into each car, increasing range but compromising handling and creating an unsustainable need for mining of battery minerals. And what could possibly be done about the cost when the government is already subsidizing manufacturers, throwing up to $7,500 of your money at every possible buyer with a pulse, and, nonetheless, Ford is set to lose $4.5 billion in 2023 selling EVs at the current price?

It seems obvious, therefore, that the next car most of us buy won’t be electric after all. The same probably goes for the one after that, which is good news for those of us whose idea of a perfect vacation doesn’t include sitting at charging stations for a couple of hours every day. Less obvious and less good, but no less true, is the following: The next couple of new cars most of us buy won’t really be new.

Don’t get me wrong. That showroom-fresh Honda, Ford, or BMW you buy in 2030 or afterward won’t have any miles on it, and it won’t have empty ketchup packets under the seats. But it will feel curiously … familiar, as though it’s basically a car from 2023 or even earlier, only with a bit of window dressing on it. That’s because that’s what it’s going to be. The development of “real” cars in this country has all but come to a standstill. My contacts at the Big Three automakers from my work as a car magazine reporter confirm that not only are all future ICE vehicle programs going on the back burner as of about two years ago but also that future layoffs will come almost exclusively from those programs. If you want to keep your job, you’d better be working on EVs.

Earlier this year, Renault CEO Luca de Meo stated, "Nobody is, you know, from scratch developing a new combustion engine in Europe. ... All the money is going to electric or hydrogen technology." Some readers may imagine any improvements to the good old gasoline engine have already been made, but that’s not true. Giving up on development work on the good old gasoline engine will cost us. The internal combustion engine, particularly when paired with a Toyota-style Synergy Drive hybrid system, has significantly improved its efficiency in just the last few years, with more gains possible if someone would just put in the effort. There’s more to be done in gasoline direct injection, combustion efficiency, and hybrid economy. Yet that work isn’t being done.

Somewhat ironically, one possible pathway to an efficient ICE future is about to debut in the form of a massive 5,000-pound pickup truck. The new Ramcharger from Stellantis has a conventional V-6, but it’s not connected to the wheels. Instead, it turns a generator, which charges a battery, which then turns the wheels via electric motors. This “series hybrid” approach allows the gas engine to run at maximum possible efficiency, much like the diesels in a modern locomotive, and it’s likely to set new standards for the modern truck economy. But there’s a catch: The “Pentastar” engine that’s doing the work in this application was developed 15 years ago, and for an entirely different set of tasks. Could series hybrids be even more efficient with an engine designed from scratch around that purpose? You betcha, and not by a small amount. But it’s not going to happen.

Don’t blame the manufacturers. They’re just now recovering from COVID-related production problems, only to find themselves facing a combination of a sagging middle-class economy and interest rates that significantly affect car payments. But the government mandates to develop and build a full line of EVs continue, most recently with a dubiously legal requirement from the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency that new car lines, on average, reach 58 miles per gallon within the decade. That $4.5 billion Ford lost chasing electric dreams? It had to come from somewhere, and the somewhere in question is ICE development and engineering.

In the next few years, the fallout will be obvious. If you want a new Chevy Camaro or Dodge Challenger, you’ll need to act fast because they’re both being discontinued with no replacement. For most vehicle lines, however, we will simply see a lack of new-generation products. It will be like the years immediately after World War II, where none of the automakers managed to introduce a genuinely new car because they’d spent the past half-decade building B-24 Liberators and Jeeps and whatnot. You’ll still be able to walk into a showroom and get a car. It just won’t differ from the car you could have gotten last year or the year before. ICE cars will be harder to get because the automakers are also decimating their production capacity in favor of new plants and lines that are EV only. Let’s hope you won’t need some sort of rationing coupon to place your order.

Expect the automakers to play along with the governmental EV fantasies until they are obviously, provably, impossible. States and the federal government are making few if any plans to generate the increased power supply they are mandating drivers will demand from the grid, much less to permit battery mineral mining on U.S. land or the sea floor. Reality, in the form of battery shortages or brownouts, will hit us like the proverbial hammer to the forehead, at which point the voters will revolt and everyone will be allowed to make a hurried switch back to ramping up production on decade-old ICE designs. This will have yet another unpleasant side effect: Chinese plants, unencumbered by labor and environmental oversight, will be able to get ICE capacity on line far faster than their Western counterparts. So your new 2032 or 2035 car won’t just be eerily similar to the one you had in 2022 but will also likely be made in China.

As tragedies go, this moronic EV development and production boondoggle isn’t exactly equal to the Dust Bowl migrations or the Great Depression. It is, however, almost certain to put a few more dents in our national character. Affordable personal transportation has been a part of the American dream since the Model T. That dream has been taken away from many people in the past few years and will be taken away from many more in the years to come. So, chances are that the worst part of buying decade-old designs out of showrooms in the future won’t be your disappointment at the performance or your resignation at the cost. It will be dealing with your odd, nagging, almost Soviet gratitude at being able to buy a car at all.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Jack Baruth was born in Brooklyn, New York, and lives in Ohio. He is a pro-am race car driver and a former columnist for Road and Track and Hagerty magazines who writes the Avoidable Contact Forever newsletter.

© 2023 Washington Examiner

Smith wrote that it was "of imperative public importance" that the high court take up the question so that the trial can move forward as planned.

Why haven’t UAW leaders stood up to Biden’s EV mandates that could cost 400,000 jobs?

Diana Furchtgott-Roth

November 27, 01:51 PM November 27, 01:51 PM

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain has been bragging about the contract he secured with auto companies and took credit for it in a U.S. Senate committee hearing this month.

GM’s workers ratified the contract in November with 45% of the workforce voting against it. Some Ford and Stellantis workers in Kentucky and Ohio have also rejected the contract, citing concerns with pensions and health care benefits. They might also be concerned about losing their jobs to Chinese electric vehicle makers.

Fain said in his statement in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions: “We won things in this contract that our industry hasn’t seen in 15 years or more. We won victories that will instantly—overnight—change the lives of thousands of families across this country. Over time, it will transform communities, adding thousands of jobs and massively boosting the purchasing power of working-class families.”

Although the contracts will be ratified if a majority of union members vote for them, these “victories” are not universally apparent to auto workers. I was a witness at the same hearing and testified that the UAW contract negotiations were a missed opportunity for the union to take a stand against President Joe Biden’s push to end sales of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.

Through regulations promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation, Biden wants to replace the cars that people want to buy with electric vehicles—even though EVs are only 6% of vehicle sales now, are considerably more expensive, and can’t handle the same distances as their combustible-engine counterparts.

EV production will require 400,000 fewer auto workers in the long run than making gasoline-powered engines, according to Ford Motor Co. President Jim Farley, because EVs have fewer parts and many of these are made in China.

The Biden administration’s electric vehicle mandate puts the economy at the mercy of government dictates in a planned economy that will destroy the livelihoods of unionized autoworkers, nonunionized workers, and small businesses alike without making car companies more competitive or solving climate change challenges. This will put our and our children’s future at the mercy of China.

If the UAW were truly helping its members and American families, it would have pushed for Detroit auto companies to continue to make the internal combustion engines and hybrids that Americans want to buy, rather than going all electric in 2035.

What would help all American working families is getting rid of the Biden EV mandate—which Biden did unilaterally and Congress did not pass. Instead, the UAW talks on its website about a “just transition” to electric vehicles.

This is even more surprising because last April, Fain attacked the push for electrification at one car company, saying, “Stellantis’ push to cut thousands of jobs while raking in billions in profits is disgusting. This is a slap in the face to our members, their families, their communities, and the American people who saved this company 15 years ago. Even now, politicians and taxpayers are bankrolling the electric vehicle transition, and this is the thanks the working class gets. Shame on Stellantis.”

It’s not “justice” to make cars that are so expensive that most Americans can’t afford to buy them. The electric version of the Ford F-150 pickup truck costs $26,000 more than the gasoline version. So, pushing costly electrification reduces overall safety, because Americans postpone purchasing newer, safer, cars and instead keep their older ones.

EVs can’t compare with their gas counterparts. An electric pickup truck loses battery range when it’s cold or when it has to tow another vehicle; and it takes an hour to recharge—and that’s if the “fast” charger works and no one is ahead in line. Plus, going electric offshores American jobs to China, including to slave labor factories in Xinjiang, because the Chinese make 80% of the world’s batteries.

The EV plan is poison for auto workers, small businesses such as plumbers and electricians, and auto repair shops and farmers who rely on gasoline-powered engines for pickup trucks and equipment.

Ford is losing almost $60,000 per EV sold, and unsold EVs are piling up on dealers’ lots. GM and Ford announced they are cutting back on projections of EV sales and lowering production targets for the cars and batteries and postponing over $15 billion in EV investment.

There will also be layoffs in auto parts companies, and among local mechanics who repair gasoline-powered cars.

Additionally, the public needs to understand that despite the rhetoric, electric vehicles are not emissions free. Increased electricity demand plus using less abundant and less reliable renewable energy sources such as wind and solar place additional stress on the electrical grid, as California has found out from rolling blackouts.

Electricity to charge EVs is made with natural gas and coal, because wind and solar powers only a small share of America’s electricity. And this makes no difference regarding climate change—even if America used no fossil fuels at all starting now, temperatures would be only two-tenths of one degree Celsius cooler by 2100.

Union leaders act in their own interests, as can be seen by the simple focus on UAW member pay at the cost of future employment, the interests of members of other unions, small businesses, farmers, and families. While auto workers were on strike pay of $500 a week, union leaders were still collecting salaries, in some cases, over a quarter of a million dollars a year.

Government dictates and planning for the Soviet economy ruined the Soviet economy and will do the same for the American economy. The UAW had such a single-minded focus on getting more money for their members today that they forgot to even think about jobs tomorrow or how they would affect farmers, families, and other workers and unions. Some auto workers know that. That’s why some are voting against this deal.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

This article originally appeared in the Daily Signal and is reprinted with kind permission from the Heritage Foundation.

© 2023 Washington Examiner

Cruise control: GM-funded startup struggles with autonomous driving in San Francisco

Christopher Hutton

November 25, 06:00 AM November 25, 06:00 AM Video Embed

The troubled rollout of robotaxis in San Francisco illustrates the struggles facing efforts to replace human drivers with software.

Cruise, a robotaxi startup funded by General Motors that began operating commercially in San Francisco in 2022, has encountered several regulatory barriers while expanding its services to the public. A series of high-profile crashes and software-related safety failures have led to leadership resigning and a nationwide recall of its vehicles. Now, it has been forced to review its software and account for the aspects of driving that artificial intelligence cannot handle in a human-filled street.

TALKING TURKEY: THANKSGIVING TRAVELERS SET TO CLOG SKIES AND ROADS IN HISTORICALLY BUSY TRAVEL SEASON

Cruise's engineers believed it was "ready for scale," Susan Shaheen, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Washington Examiner. It's unclear if they could "see the limitations or challenges that they might be facing at scale in the real world," Shaheen said.

Cruise began expanding its fleet in August after the California Public Utilities Commission authorized it to offer taxi services to anyone in San Francisco. This update to Cruise's business model allowed everyday users to request a driverless vehicle to transport them where they desired and was viewed as a mass experiment to see if driverless cars could flourish in the city's streets.

But problems quickly arose. At least nine crashes involving Cruise vehicles were reported to the California Department of Motor Vehicles. These included incidents where Cruise vehicles drove over pedestrians, inhibited emergency responders, or limited traffic for hours.

The incidents forced the California Department of Motor Vehicles to suspend the company's permits and the CPUC to reevaluate whether the software was safe. The robotaxi company quickly responded by recalling 950 vehicles across the United States while it reviewed its software. Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt also resigned on Sunday, leaving the company in the hands of Mo Elshenawy, Cruise's executive vice president of engineering. The startup is now in the process of finding ways to win back public trust.

Cruise has "paused operations while we take time to engage third-party experts and strengthen public trust," the company said in a statement emailed to the Washington Examiner. "The results of our ongoing reviews will inform additional next steps as we work to build a better Cruise centered around safety, transparency, and trust."

One of the main selling points of robotaxis is removing the "human factor" that leads to vehicular injuries. Drivers no longer have to worry about how their tiredness or distractions may cause them to slip up and collide with another vehicle. But Cruise's struggles show how far the startup has to go before it can ensure safe travel.

"The point of self-driving cars is not to eliminate accidents, but to reduce the number of accidents," Vahid Behzadan, a data and computer science professor at the University of New Haven, told the Washington Examiner.

While AI can rely on maps or road signs to stay on track, Behzadan said, it cannot always sufficiently account for quickly changing scenarios like speeding cars or emergency vehicles. This slow response may put the vehicles at risk and cause injury to their passengers. The companies will have to create guardrails to account for these situations.

While controlled tests can offer substantial data for creating guardrails, Shaheen argued, they cannot account for all of the possible chaos that may arise on the road.

Cruise is not the only one having problems with human collisions. The Google-funded robotaxi startup Waymo was involved in more crashes between Jan. 1, 2022, and August 2023 than Cruise, but resulted in fewer injuries. The two companies offered robotaxi services to a limited audience during that period.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

These struggles are likely not the end for Cruise, however. General Motors has several significant investments in self-driving cars and is intent on revamping its software to make it safer. Whether those changes will win over the public remains to be seen.

The events around Cruise are also a chance for state regulators to evaluate if they have sufficient guidelines for the growing number of self-driving cars."What you see is the regulators coming in and saying, 'Hey, technology's getting out in front of the policymakers. How do we recalibrate this relationship?'" Shaheen said. "And I think that's a lot of what we're seeing."

© 2023 Washington Examiner

Yo, sign me up to never in my life, ever, live in Los Angeles, because if this is what Thanksgiving traffic looks like I'd rather live in a cave out in Montana.

Like many Americans who pay at least some level of attention to the news out of Washington, I watched some of the footage of the January 6th riot which the congressional committee that led the inquiry intentionally omitted. If you haven't, check this out:

South Korea's military warned North Korea not to go ahead with its planned spy satellite launch, suggesting Monday that Seoul could suspend an inter-Korean agreement to reduce tensions and resume front-line aerial surveillance in response.

A long-standing lawsuit over the reliability and security of Georgia’s elections system will go to trial in January.

The case was filed by voters who want hand-marked paper ballots to replace the existing system of machines sold to the state by Dominion Voting Systems, although as noted by the Associated Press, it began three years before the allegations over Dominion’s machines that became part of the contentious aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

On Nov. 10, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg issued a ruling rejecting the state’s position that no trial was necessary. The ruling called for the state and its critics to try to resolve their differences without a trial.

“The Court cannot wave a magic wand in this case to address the varied challenges to our democracy and election system in recent years, including those presented in this case,” she wrote.

“But reasonable, timely discussion and compromise in this case, coupled with prompt, informed legislative action, might certainly make a difference that benefits the parties and the public,” she wrote.

But that seems unlikely.

“The court’s order makes it clear that Georgia’s status quo is far too risky, and that these concerning issues merit a trial. We look forward to prevailing at trial as we demonstrate why touchscreen BMDs (ballot-marking devices) cannot be used safely,” said Marilyn Marks, executive director for the Coalition for Good Governance, one plaintiff suing the state, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

David Cross, an attorney for some plaintiffs, said the court ruling noted “a long story of incompetence, conflicting claims, and misinformation.”

Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs seemed disinclined for a chat.

“We don’t negotiate with election deniers,” Fuchs said. “If they have an idea that wouldn’t take Georgia back to the days of hanging chads and stuffed ballot boxes, they should offer it.”

Amid the 135 pages of her ruling, Totenberg pushed back against labeling the plaintiffs.

“The Court notes that the record evidence does not suggest that the Plaintiffs are conspiracy theorists of any variety. Indeed, some of the nation’s leading cybersecurity experts and computer scientists have provided testimony and affidavits on behalf of Plaintiffs’ case in the long course of this litigation,” she wrote.

One report was filed by Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan.

His report, produced in 2021, said Georgia’s system “suffers from critical vulnerabilities that can be exploited to subvert all of its security mechanisms,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Halderman said anyone with physical access to a voting machine had the capability to alter votes on the machine, and that someone who accessed the election management system could do more than change one machine.

According to the Associated Press, the state has said it will not install a software update that could address the issues raised by Halderman.

Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer in the Secretary of State’s office has mocked Halderman’s conclusions as “hypothetical scenarios that can’t work.”

But those pushing for change say just going to trial shows there is a problem.

“We look forward to presenting our full evidence at trial and obtaining critical relief for Georgia voters,” Cross said. “But we hope this decision will be a much-needed wakeup call for the Secretary and SEB, and finally spur them to work with us on a negotiated resolution that secures the right to vote in Georgia.”

---

 

The post Georgia Judge Allows Challenge to Dominion Voting Machines to Continue appeared first on The Western Journal.

Washington, D.C., is attempting to help wary residents from being victims of car thefts and carjackings with dashcams and airtags.

HMM: Commercial Flights Are Experiencing ‘Unthinkable’ GPS Attacks and Nobody Knows What to Do.

The drones fly boxes containing food orders to their destinations and gently lower the boxes to the ground with a cable for customers to pick up.

SpaceX's uncrewed spacecraft Starship, developed to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, was presumed to have failed in space minutes after lifting off on Saturday during its second test, after its first attempt ended in an explosion.

While the Pentagon remains focused on hardening the grid to stave off potential electromagnetic pulse attacks capable of completely knocking the country's electronics offline, a similar threat could come from a natural occurrence.

Xi Jinping is in San Francisco this week, and five deep-pocketed US business moguls reportedly spent $40,000 each to dine at the same table as the Chinese president. Following an afternoon of talks with President Biden on topics reportedly including climate change, counter-narcotics and artificial intelligence on Wednesday, Xi headed to dinner at the Hyatt...

"He just gave me bad vibes," explained Mary Alice, 25.

A group of thieves ransacked an Amazon delivery van as the helpless driver looked on stunned during the brazen daylight robbery in Atlanta in the latest string of attacks on delivery trucks.