Free Republic

Left-wing Hollywood star Robert De Niro is back to publicly trash-talking former President Donald Trump. After a relatively brief absence from the spotlight following his disastrous New York press conference in May, Robert De Niro is hitting the campaign trail in service of Kamala Harris, appearing in a recent Italian-American themed “Paisans for Kamala” fundraiser on Sunday and in an interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace on Friday.

California residents are once again struggling to keep the lights on after as many as 50,000 people lost electricity in a heat wave this past weekend that caused the famed Hollywood Bowl to cancel a concert due to the power outage. The Hollywood Bowl was forced to cancel its Sept. 8 show due to a power outage. The venue posted on its website that the concert, headlined by Vance Joy, had been called off. The Reporter said that it was unclear what caused the outage, but KABC-7 blamed the heat: The heat was affecting electrical equipment as utilities scrambled to...

Hundreds of homes in the coastal Los Angeles suburb of Rancho Palos Verdes have lost power due to a slow landslide that has resulted in several houses being deemed unsafe for occupancy. NBC Los Angeles reported: Power was shut off to an additional 105 homes Monday night due to accelerating landslides in a Rancho Palos Verdes neighborhood. The latest round of shutoffs occurred at 7 p.m. Monday in the Seaview area of the Los Angeles County seaside community overlooking the Pacific. On Sunday, power was shut off in 140 homes in the Portuguese Bend area. Those residents also remain under...

The Bureau of Land Management has published details of a plan to make millions of acres of public lands across the western U.S. available for development of solar power. The Western Solar Plan, which revises guidelines from more than a decade ago, was published in the Federal Register on August 30, 2024. The BLM said the plan would make 31 million acres of public lands (that is 48,437 square miles!) available for potential solar energy development. The new proposal seeks to bring solar projects to 11 states. The plan would place development closer to existing or planned power transmission lines,...

EVANSTON, Ill. - Tens of thousands of people woke up without power Wednesday morning after late-night storms blew through the Chicago area, downing trees and causing damage. ComEd reports 23,332 people were experiencing outages as of 6 a.m. Wednesday. At 10 p.m. last night, more than 40,000 customers were without power. You can tap here to check out current outages. Wind gusts of up to 60 mph, scattered lightning and even hail came down in several rounds of storms across the area. Cook, DuPage and Lake counties were all under Severe Thunderstorm Warnings. Large trees were brought down in Evanston,...

One of my more memorable exchanges with a student came in a principles of economics class. Part of the assignment for that week was chapters from Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist. Ridley compared the living standards of an average worker today with those of The Sun King, Louis XIV, in 1700. Some of my more ahistorical students were incredulous at Ridley’s description of the grinding poverty of the average person just a few centuries ago. The King had an opulent lifestyle compared to others. Louis had an astonishing 498 workers preparing each of his meals. Yet his standard of living...

South Lebanon Water Establishment said that shutting down power plants will negatively affect their ability to pump sufficient quantities of water into the area. The Zahrani power plant, the last and only plant still providing electricity in Lebanon, reportedly shut down on Saturday, Sawt Beirut International reported on X, citing Lebanon's electric corporation, Électricité du Liban. The Jerusalem Post could not access Lebanon's Electric Corporation's website.

**SNIP** In sum, at the 11th hour of a two-year reelection effort, a cabal arbitrarily decided that Biden might well lose the Democrats the White House and the Congress. So they reversed course, now claiming his dementia was so acute as to destroy their November prospects. But, mysteriously, his decline was not severe enough to imperil the American people, whom Biden must continue to lead until January 20, 2025. Furthermore, the bosses’ replacement choice, Harris, had entered no primary. She never won a single delegate. Harris also never captured a single delegate in her first and only presidential run back...

Well, I'm just full of questions this week! This one should be pretty easy: Are there any brands of automotive aftermarket power steering pumps that FReepers have had good luck with? "Good luck" in this case means proper operation and no leaks for over 50k miles, preferably over 100k miles. Slight difficulties in installation, I can overcome, as I do most minor repair work on my cars myself. And I've studied vids and forums when it comes to instructions on bleeding the steering system hydraulics, things to watch out for during installation, and so on.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – At least two people were killed and three more injured after a Russian missile strike on infrastructure in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, said Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said Saturday. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials confirmed that the death toll following a Russian strike Friday on the city of Mykolaiv, had risen to four. A child was among the victims, said the city’s mayor, Oleksandr Sienkevych.

On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that he “can’t argue” with claims that President Joe Biden is sticking around despite everyone but him and First Lady Jill Biden knowing that he can’t win the 2024 election because Jill Biden wants to be able to hold on to power. After comedian Larry Wilmore stated that former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s speech at this week’s Republican National Convention was one where her head was saying the opposite of what her mouth was saying, particularly when she was urging people to vote for 2024 Republican presidential candidate former...

Big Tech consumes more than many countries.. Tech giants Google and Microsoft each consumed 24 TWh each of electricity during 2023, surpassing the consumption of more than 100 countries, new research has claimed. Analysis by Michael Thomas, shared on X, claims both Google and Microsoft consumed the same amount of energy as Azerbaijan, which has an estimated GDP of $78.7 billion. Google’s 2023 revenue stood at $307.4 billion, and Microsoft’s at $211.9 billion. The massive energy usage underscores the substantial environmental impact of these companies. But it also serves as a reminder of their sheer scale, and the positive impact...

More than a quarter million people in and around Houston remained without power as of Monday after Hurricane Beryl hit the city last week — a crisis that has sparked political pressure from both sides of the aisle and drawn new attention to Texas’s troubled grid. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is demanding answers from the state’s biggest power utility over what went wrong in the storm, which led to blackouts for nearly 3 million people across Southeast Texas for days. He has given CenterPoint until the end of the month to offer an explanation amid a broad lack of response...

USAID boss Samantha Power has some news for Americans. Another $100 million for terrorists. Today, Administrator Samantha Power announced that the United States, through USAID, will provide an additional $100 million in critical humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in dire need throughout Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Critical and dire need. So critical and so dire that we’ve been lied to and told that all the Islamic terrorists and their supporters have been starving to death for 8 months. And yet somehow it never actually seems to happen, Meanwhile, every Hamas terrorist leader is morbidly obese. Biden announced $100 million in...

Fair Oaks Ranch residents may want to brace themselves for a couple of sweaty evenings and place those backup batteries in their alarm clocks. CPS Energy is planning to cut power to some 1,300 homes in the Texas Hill Country town twice next week. The shutdowns will run from 11 p.m. until 5 a.m. Monday, July 15, and Wednesday, July 17. According to a somewhat vague statement from the San Antonio power supplier, the planned outage will accompany “scheduled maintenance improvements” in Fair Oaks Ranch which is slated to “improve the electric reliability in the area.” The planned outage is...

After five decades of inaction, the Food and Drug Administration revoked the authorization of brominated vegetable oil (BVO) in food on July 3, 2024. The additive bromine, used to stabilize fruit flavorings in beverages and sodas, has toxic effects and has already been banned in many places, including California, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. What was the agency’s excuse for its 50 years in limbo? The FDA insisted it was “waiting for more safety data.” Right. Consumer advocates called the FDA’s ban on brominated vegetable oil in food “a victory for public health.” Still, digging deeper, it is indisputable...

CenterPoint is a $19 billion, for-profit corporation granted a monopoly over a hundred years ago to manage and maintain the transmission and distribution of electricity across the Houston region. This regulated utility failed to deliver power to 85% of its customers during the height of a mild hurricane. In a perfect world, the Public Utility Commission would have ensured CenterPoint maintained a grid resilient enough to withstand a stronger storm. Instead, elected officials are asking the wrong questions about the emergency response. “I’ll tell you whether I’m satisfied or not when I have a full report of where their crews...

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has come under fire on social media over his response to Hurricane Beryl, which crashed into the southeastern United States on Monday as a Category 1 hurricane leaving six dead in Texas, and one in Louisiana, according to The Associated Press. The storm caused widespread damage across Texas with the Houston area, where millions of people lost power, particularly badly affected. As of Tuesday just under 1.7 million CenterPoint customers remained without power according to The Houston Chronicle. Abbott is currently on an economic development tour of Asia and was in South Korea on Monday when...

Tropical Storm Beryl is making a slow, ruinous passage out of Houston, where it is flooding highways and knocking out power lines. As of 3 p.m. local time Monday, as the eye of the storm moved over the western Houston suburbs, more than 2.7 million Texans were without power, according to tracking site PowerOutage.us. Much of the already flood-prone city has experienced 5 to 8 inches of rain, with some particularly unlucky neighborhoods experiencing more than 10, according to Harris County’s Flood Warning System. Homes in Houston’s lower-income northeast have flooded, one nonprofit told The Hill, as have many of...

A real-life Shakespearian drama is unfolding as the world watches First Lady Jill Biden and Hunter Biden desperately cling to power through President Joe Biden despite the doom his obvious declining mental capacity spells for the country. In an unbelievable move, the First Lady has made it perfectly clear that her husband will not be removed from the presidential campaign. In a Vogue Magazine cover released Monday, the magazine features her, not her husband, with the tagline: “We Will Determine Our Future.” The cover image is Jill in an all-white Ralph Lauren power suit dress, staring “stoically” at something out...