Free Republic

If you charge your own electric vehicle at home the price per mile is a couple cents a mile (12 cents per kWh / 3 or 4 miles per kWh). But if you rent a car and are forced to use public chargers your cost will be about 10 cents a mile at 30 cents a kWh. You can run a gas car for 10 cents a mile and have a lot easier time refueling.

Hertz pushes EVgo for non-Tesla. The nearest to me is 40 miles away and costs 30 cents a minute for 50 kW. If you actually get 50kW, that's 36 cents per kWh at the very least, and you have to find a charger that's not taken and works.

That's good too. I use VPN for privacy if the wifi is unencrypted and the anti-censorship comes along with that.

I was blocked from FR from Appleby’s WIFI in Madison, WI once.

Then use a VPN. Don't expect the government to solve a problem that you can easily solve yourself because they will "solve" it their way.

Yes, People here at FR would go nuts if their ISP said, “We will charge you an extra fee if you want to visit FR

We heard this same nonsense in 2010 when Obama tried to shove this crap through and 2015 when he succeeded. Then it was repealed in 2017. Of course the same alarmists pushing their scare stories were a little more quiet because they would just look stupid immediastely. And they did look stupid because nothing happened.

Besides, without net neutrality, Internet service providers might block FreeRepublic. So, yes, we do need net neutrality.

FR doesn't appear to be blocked since you are posting on it. So you are asking the government for a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Keep in mind that the government at the very least doesn't care if FR is blocked. More likely they want it blocked.

Heard the same arguments back when Obama tried to shove this through (2010) and shoved it through (2015) that Big Internet will block FR. Didn't happen, won't happen. My main argument against it back then was that it would turn the internet into Flixnet. The basic problem then was lack of bandwidth, so providers throttled Netflix in favor of their own streaming. But mostly they throttled Netflix because it was chewing up bandwidth.

Nowadays bandwidth isn't a big problem so you could argument providers would throttle so they can make money with their own services. Would they throttle to censor FR? No, censorship is much more sophisticated than that nowadays.

freerepublic.com: Domain created 9/23/1996, Reputation score 32

cnn.com Domain created 9/22/1993, Reputation score 42

democraticunderground.com: Domain created 12/5/2000, Reputation score 32

The censors would like to shut down DU just as much as FR.

It's mostly rats defending it now: https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-wyden-warren-reed-waters-file-amicus-brief-defending-constitutionality-of-corporate-transparency-act/ The link gives a few well-spun notions about how it passed and basically saying I am a f-ing money laundering shell company.

It eventually was stuck into a must-pass defense bill, but ere's an 2019 vote on it: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/116-2019/h577 showing Cheney YEA and Crenshaw prior to his conversion actually voting NAY, Stefanik the fraud voted YEA, etc. Doesn't look like the Senate ever voted on it, just let it slide through in the defense bill.

We were forced to enter our personal data into an unconstitutional warrantless spying database. Exemptions are a who's who of political donors who donated to the politicians of both parties to get their exemption.

Exemption No. Exemption Short Title
1 Securities reporting issuer
2 Governmental authority
3 Bank
4 Credit union
5 Depository institution holding company
6 Money services business
7 Broker or dealer in securities
8 Securities exchange or clearing agency
9 Other Exchange Act registered entity
10 Investment company or investment adviser
11 Venture capital fund adviser
12 Insurance company
13 State-licensed insurance producer
14 Commodity Exchange Act registered entity
15 Accounting firm
16 Public utility
17 Financial market utility
18 Pooled investment vehicle
19 Tax-exempt entity
20 Entity assisting a tax-exempt entity
21 Large operating company
22 Subsidiary of certain exempt entities
23 Inactive entity

The lawyer sent a form letter saying this applied to everyone on the board. I was beyond pissed. I read the regulations myself and decided it only applied to me. Not a hero by a long shot, just really pissed. Even identical large corporations, about 25 times larger than ours by income are exempt. The exact same corporation, exempted because they donated to buy an exemption. I entered my info and nobody else's

Those big donors can't money launder because they are what, too large? But we can launder money even though it would literally be a few hundred dollars and that would get caught by our mandatory audits. So now my info is in a warrantless search database. F every single one of those bastards, both parties.

Yeah, I thought water vapor was supposed to be worse than CO2.

Whatever water vaoir we add through hydrogen combustion, fossil combusttion, etc is trivial compared to global evaporation. All the water vapor that is lost in rainfall is quickly replaced naturally. Our contribution is negigible.

So yes, while water vapor is a much more important greenhouse gas, there's nothing we can do to increase it. In contrast the rise from 280 to 420 ppm of CO2 is mostly manmade.

True, NATO is not Russia. But that's not the point. NATO was a defensive organization until Clinton and then it turned offensive, some coincidence, some corruption and some wag-the-dog. Russia quite properly saw that as a threat and responded with non-war. They did it like NATO with political machinations and finesse but last year they escalated to all out war. The big picture is that Russia will always inevitably resort to war when non-war approaches fail. You point to the war and their war crimes like that was their first option.

In NATO's case the non-war approaches almost always work. Ukraine is a good example of taking over through non-war. Lots of corruption enriching our oligarchs instead of the Russian and Russian-allied oligarchs. Worked out great for the Bidens and many others.

The result of "defeating" Russia in Ukraine is easy to predict. Russia will come back in 20 or 30 or 40 years and take it back. The way to avoid that is a negotiated settlement.

As you see Russia is NOT a defensive organism.

NATO used to be a defensive organization. That changed when they bombed Serbia. Before that they had already taken sides in the Balkans as a "peacekeeper". They decided to "keep the peace" by allowing ethnic purges.

NATO has stolen NOTHING from Russia.

NATO has stolen from Russians by allowing the Baltics to "deRussianize", e.g. ban teaching Russian in schools under NATO protection. The Baltic states would say they are deSovietizing and they were the victims in the past. That's all true, but that doesn't justify reverse ethnic cleansing. Peaceful ethnic cleansing is still ethnic cleansing, and in Ukraine the ethnic cleansing wasn't peaceful before Russia attacked.

WWII made America the richest nation in the entire history of planet earth!

WWIII won't have that same effect. The crux of the issue is how to contain Russian without them waiting a few decades and coming back stronger than ever. We lack a long term plan.

My home came with a Kirkland fridge, circa 1999. I got worried when it got unreliable, I thought maybe too cheap. Sometimes it cooled, sometimes it didn't. I would jigger the thermostat setting to get it to kick on and cool. Finally I looked online and saw a website that sold a replacement thermostat and had a video showing how to replace it.

My fridge had food in it so I had to replace it quickly. Watched the video at least a dozen times and took apart as much as possible without removing the thermostat or leaving the door open too long. Finally the time came when I took the old thermostate out and installed the new one. About 20 minutes.

That was March, still going strong. My AC unit outside, washer and dryer are similar vintage. I am going to try not to replace anything with anything new.

I was thinking of Jan 6th and the insane effort to impeach Trump. Seemed very strange, first because Trump didn’t do anything wrong, and second, because Trump would be gone in 2 weeks anyway. So why?

The answer is in the papers by "legal scholars" to apply the 14th amendment to throw Trump off the ballot. Here's an example:

And in particular, it disqualifies former President Donald Trump, and potentially many others, because of their participation in the attempted over- throw of the 2020 presidential election. https://akhilamar.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/The-Sweep-and-Force-of-Section-Three.pdf

Here's why they say Trump is covered under section 3 even though he has not been convicted of anything:

The Senate’s vote to convict Trump of this charge, while falling short of the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution’s impeachment process, constituted a substantial majority (57 to 43) of the Senate endorsing the House’s charge and characterization. Majorities of both houses of Congress thus determined—at least twice—that January 6th was an insurrection; and in the impeachment proceedings majorities of both houses determined that Trump was responsible for having incited that insurrection

That's it. They are basing their "conviction" of Trump of insurrection by a partisan vote (plus a few R squibs). That was the plan all along as noted back then by many observers.

From the New York Times:

By Mike McIntire
April 5, 2016

For Donald J. Trump, it is a long-held legal strategy, if not a point of pride, to avoid knuckling under to plaintiffs in court.

“I don’t settle lawsuits — very rare — because once you settle lawsuits, everybody sues you,” he said recently.

But Mr. Trump made an exception when buyers of units in Trump SoHo, a 46-story luxury condominium-hotel in Lower Manhattan, asserted that they had been defrauded by inflated claims made by Mr. Trump, his children and others of brisk sales in the struggling project. He and his co-defendants settled the case in November 2011, agreeing to refund 90 percent of $3.16 million in deposits, while admitting no wrongdoing.

The backdrop to that unusual denouement was a gathering legal storm that threatened to cast a harsh light on how he did business.

Tearing down candidates is pretty easy.

With each mutation it becomes less dangerous.

Part of the reason they never admit that is because it makes it painfully obvious that most early variants were engineered in a lab.

A member of U.S Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg’s security detail takes a bike off an SUV, April 1, 2021. Mr. Buttigieg then used the bike to travel a short distance to a Cabinet meeting

Yeah, it's headed back out to sea. There's no support in any model for it to turn west or north or slow down. It's not going to be a very fast mover so some locations could get a dumping, but the rivers should be ok.

I am in Wilmington, NC. Does anyone have any information on whether or not to evacuate? I can’t find out anything online.

No. The storm might make cat 3 by the time it hits FL but will weaken over land. It won't be a hurricane by the time it gets to NC although the NWS will say it still is based on cherry picked winds. Your winds will be 40-50 sustained, maybe gusts to 70. Some trees might fall on power lines so be prepared for that.

Just checked Wilmington NWS and they are downgrading all the threats (e.g. tornado, surge) but keeping the flood threat. But they keep saying this: it's not Florence, It's not going to stall.

The problem is years like 2020 and many others where they put out every fire by 10am (that's official policy in Alberta, less rigid in other provinces). That lets the fuel build up and lead to bad years. This is common scientific knowledge since the 1970's. But in 2020 they had ess than 0.1% burned area despite having a goal of 0.1% fire (which is way too low).

Globally fire (burned area) is decreasing thanks in part to better use of fire.

There was way more than enough documented fraud to throw the election to Biden in Georgia and AZ. E.g. people who moved out of state before voting. Not sure about WI but the same day registrations are suspect there.

I think Trump has a great case to make in GA although I'm sure the lawyers will look at legal technicalities first. But between out-of-state voters and lack of signature checking there were 10's of thousands of potentially fradulent votes there.

"Post Editorial Board" aka Murdoch. The guy who helped Biden steal the last election is pontificating

The NY Post covered the laptop when the other major media repeated the fake news Russian disinformation line. Once Trump lost the Post threw him overboard with any hopes of getting to the bottom of the fraud. There was ample fraud but there was not enough to flip enough states.