Greetings, West Coast, Messed Coast™ readers, and what a fun-filled spectacle we have for you this week. That conflagration over there is not a flare-up from an oil well, a nuke plant melting down, or even a Molotov cocktail-wielding Antifa terrorist (more on that below)—it’s yet another lithium battery fire!
Now that electric cars will be mandated in the Golden State, there’s growing acknowledgment that, well, yes, the e-car batteries do have certain, er, issues and not just environmental ones, either. After all, there’s a reason you can’t pack one in the belly of a plane.
In a Substack post, environmentalist, author, and former California gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger did the math on lithium battery deaths versus nuclear power. You can guess where this one’s going.
“Nobody has ever died of nuclear power in the United States, nobody will die from the radiation from the Fukushima accident in 2011, and only roughly 200 people will have their lives shortened by the fire and radiation from the Chernobyl fire,” he writes. Furthermore, he asserts that lithium batteries—you know the ones in the Left’s favorite cars—are more dangerous than nuclear power, the Left’s perennially least favorite power source.
Recent accidents involving lithium batteries don’t lie, he argues.
“Last Saturday, a fire started by a lithium battery in an electric scooter killed an 8-year-old girl in New York City. In New York City alone, lithium battery fires in 2021 killed 3 and injured 57, while in the first half of 2022, they killed 5 people and injured 73.” And he says that the “Tesla battery facility in Moss Landing in Monterey County, California emitted so much toxic smoke that the Fire and Sheriff Departments issued a shelter-in-place order, asking people to close windows and vents, and closed several roads.”
Californians, and most Americans, have never shaken their irrational fear of nuclear power since Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and Michael Douglas starred in a nuke plant meltdown movie in 1979. Recently, however, even the governor’s office has had a frisson of common sense about the issue, choosing to keep the state’s last operating nuclear power plant on the grid. Of course, it would have been a bad look to close it since he’d just announced brownouts and mandates for more grid-sucking electric cars by 2035.
‘Lord’ Newsom
The West Coast, Messed Coast’s™ dictator Gavin Newsom is busy garnering attention for his planned presidential run when Joe Biden announces he won’t run. He’s erecting troll billboards touting California’s insatiable desire to kill unborn babies. As PJ Media’s Matt Margolis reports, Newsom has placed these billboards in states where strong GOP governors reside. So, surprise, Governor Shutdown’s move is more political schtick than a “principled” stand. Worse, in a sick bastardization of Christianity, the nihilist quotes scripture in support of abortion on one of the billboards.
@GovStitt this will be going up in your state. pic.twitter.com/snPcTIZaPv
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 15, 2022
The billboard notes Jesus’s “greatest commandment” to “love your neighbor as yourself,” presumably to mean that saving babies isn’t very nice to the women having them. The billboards are going up in Indiana, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Texas. You’ll recognize some of those states as being in the Bible Belt.
Good to know that the man who wants to be president shares with his Aunt Nancy Pelosi a fundamental unseriousness regarding the beliefs and motivations of millions of believers as well as a willingness to use faith as a weapon.
Related: West Coast, Messed Coast™ Report – Gavin Newsom Is a Trojan Horse-Riding Bad Dad – Edition
Equity Alert
People who live in West Coast, Messed Coast™ cities have watched their neighborhoods get torched, blown up, and become open-air flop houses for fentanyl and meth-addicted wards of the state. They’re sick of it. Portland defunded the cops, forced-out ones who weren’t COVID-woke enough, and disregarded the need for securing the peace.
But because Portland isn’t interested in keeping the peace, bad guys are running downtown Antifastan. And Ted Wheeler, Mayor of Antifastan, can give you a first-hand account.
The hapless Wheeler attempted a triumphal announcement this week about shoring up safety and police patrols in the so-called Entertainment District in the NW section of town.
And then things fell apart when Antifa showed up.
#Antifa & far-left militants tried to crash the @tedwheeler press conference announcing more officers would be put on patrol in a dangerous area. Antifa want the police abolished. They were forced outside a Portland pub but continued screaming. pic.twitter.com/IWH2gPp0ep
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) September 20, 2022
Following his announcement in the heart of Summer of Love territory, reporters covering the announcement were “locked in for half an hour… as protesters chanted ‘F**k you, Ted Wheeler!’ outside. Eventually, three squad cars pulled up, allowing Wheeler and his entourage to escape through a back door,” according to Willamette Week.
So, things haven’t changed.
As we’ve previously reported in the West Coast, Messed Coast™ report, the venerable Benson Hotel is considering legal action against the city after losing a huge monthly contract because of how dangerous the downtown area is. I’ve reported that the bashed and looted Louis Vuitton store has refused to pay some of its city and county taxes for 2020, the Summer of Love.
At least one Antifa guy was busted and prosecuted by the feds for his 2020 Summer of Love antics.
A Seattle area man who concocted a dozen Molotov cocktails that were to be used to blow up a police union building has admitted in federal court that the bombs were his. After being caught, he was rolled up by the cops and then released by a judge. Equity, you know.
Recommended: The FBI Hired Trump ‘Pee Tape’ Liar as an ‘Informant’ to HIDE Him From Us
He’ll be sentenced in December.
I know what you’re thinking and no, he hasn’t been held in a gulag awaiting his court date.
Police Defunding and ‘Victimless’ Crimes
Going soft on criminals during police defunding and COVID was sold as a way to get less violent criminals out while keeping the bad guys in. Somewhere along the line, the guy with the keys was apparently doing whip-its and let out a bunch of murderers. How else to explain that there are 47 fewer citizens of the Summer of Love city this year?
This is Seattle's 47th homicide this year. Last year was 43.
In 2020, we broke a 25 year high homicide rate with 53 in 2020.
Blame Democrat policies and defunding for this. https://t.co/l8pDhff2aM
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) September 23, 2022
Seattle’s fiscal year ends December 31. We could be looking at another record year for murders.
Heckuva job.
And there’s your West Coast, Messed Coast™ report for this week.
Prepare to vote.
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