I read about this when it happened last month, and thought "drug dealer fight"; now that the cops have released the perps' names, and further details, it still looks that way to me.

/

6 Florida Men Charged with Conspiracy, Carjacking Offenses in Connecticut

Following a violent carjacking and kidnapping in Danbury that many people in Connecticut were following, six Florida residents have been charged by federal criminal complaint with multiple offenses:

  • ANGEL BORRERO, aka “Chi Chi,” 23, of Miami, Florida

  • JOSUE ALBERTO ROMERO, aka “Sway,” 26, of Miami, Florida

  • REYNALDO DIAZ, aka “Rey,” 20, of Belle Clade, Florida

  • ANTHONY PENA, aka “Tony,” 23, of Miami Gardens, Florida

  • MICHAEL RIVAS, 18, of Miami, Florida

  • RICARDO ESTRADA, aka “Ricky,” 21, of Miami, Florida

The six defendants have detained since they were arrested on related state charges on August 25, 2024.

As alleged in court documents and statements made in court, in the late afternoon of August 25, 2024, Danbury Police received multiple 911 calls from witnesses who observed several males assaulting another male and forcing him into a white work van.  Responding officers encountered the van on Clapboard Ridge Road, near the intersection of East Gate Road, and attempted to stop it.

The van accelerated at a high-rate of speed and crashed approximately one mile away on Cowperthwaite Street.

Four men dressed in black, later identified as Borrero, Romero, Pena, and Diaz, exited the van and fled on foot.  Officers arrived at the location of the disabled van and located a male and female victim, both bound with duct tape, in the back of the van.

The male victim had significant injuries to his face and arm.  Both victims were transported to the hospital for further evaluation. The victims reported that the Lamborghini Urus they were operating was rear-ended by a Honda Civic on Damia Drive in Danbury, and a white work van cut in front of their vehicle.  The victims were then forcibly removed from their vehicle, dragged into the van, and bound with duct tape.  When the male victim began to resist, he was punched in the face and hit with a baseball bat.  The victims were repeatedly told that they would be killed.

Borrero, Romero, Pena, and Diaz were apprehended in various locations within a quarter-mile radius from where the van crashed.  Rivas and Estrada, and the Honda Civic, were located at a short-term rental home in Roxbury.

The victims’ Lamborghini was found abandoned in the woods off the roadway on East King Street.  It is alleged that Borrero organized, paid for, and booked flights for the six defendants to travel from Florida to commit this criminal activity.

You don’t need to import six hitmen from Florida and stash them “in a short-term rental” just to carjack a Lamborghini — plenty of “yuts” in Waterbury or the Bronx would do it just for the fun of it all.

Only a million and a half bucks, yet comes with "full-sized stainless steel appliances"! Such a deal.

/

and the ridgeline slopes south, for easy drainage

I suppose that’s a compelling detail for a NYC refugee fleeing a 500’ studio apartment equipped with a mini-fridge and a hotplate, but ordinary people expect a working kitchen at this price range.

In any event, those New York buyers having failed to appear, 28 Sound Beach Avenue has cut its price today from $1.595 million to $1.525. Besides those appliances, this one’s proximity to transportation should prove the icing on the cake.

A gourmet kitchen sure to be a chef’s delight

I can't wait until every truck, every car on our highways is battery operated; what could possibly go wrong?

/

This story, appropriately enough, comes from HOTAIR.com

It Took HOW MUCH Water to Put Out a Tesla Battery Fire?

This is a story that actually took place nearly a month ago, but a detailed investigation by the NTSB has brought fresh attention to it. In the early morning hours of August 19th, an unnamed, long-haul big rig driver was traveling along I-80 northeast of San Franciso …. Shortly after three in the morning, the driver failed to navigate a curve in the highway and went off the road, crashing into some trees down a short slope. Thankfully, the driver escaped with only minor injuries.

The crash was only the beginning of the driver's problems, however. He wasn't driving a standard big rig. He was at the wheel of a new Tesla Semi, an electric vehicle with one of the largest EV batteries on the market. Shortly after striking the tree, the truck's battery basically exploded, starting a fire that would consume everything around. Firefighters were dispatched to the scene to battle the blaze including a helicopter and a couple of firetrucks. The fire raged for 15 hours reaching temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The helicopter was forced to drop flame-retardant foam on it, finally extinguishing the flames well into the next evening. The NTSB estimates that firefighters dumped in excess of 50,000 gallons of water on the truck's battery. (KRQE)

….

Do you remember when all of those EVs were catching fire in Florida after Hurricane Ian? People who owned EVs were being cautioned by safety officials to not park their cars in their garages or near their homes. This was a coastal area of Florida. Hurricanes happen. It's just a fact of life. But just in case the hurricane wasn't bad enough, people were being instructed to park their EVs out on the streets, preferably not under a tree. They knew that the batteries would start exploding, but nobody suggested that perhaps the technology behind these vehicles really wasn't ready for prime time. This is simply insanity, but nobody wants to talk about it because they have sold their souls to the "new green agenda." Congratulations, America. Stock up on marshmallows because you'll probably have plenty of fires to roast them over.

Coming your way — unless you live in Woketown.

/

"Welcome to the vineyard! Here's a sandwich and a latte: Enjoy! the ferry back to the mainland leaves in 15 minutes."

'It'll upend the community': PA town roiled by talk of migrant housing in Civil War-era orphanage building

Scotland, PA, just outside of Gettysburg, currently has a population of 1,300 — the proposal would bring 1,000 “newcomers” to join them.

Reported as pending 7 days after being listed, I think we can assume this one is going for above-ask

/

5,356 sq.ft

500 Valley Road, Cos Cob, was priced at $3.295; we’ll have to wait until it closes to learn the final price.

The owners paid $940,000 for an existing 1969 house on this property in 2021, razed it, and built new. A perfectly sound decision, given the rapid rise in land values, but I still shake my head, a little, to see 1960s-1970s houses turn obsolete so quickly. It’s understandable: a lot of these houses sold in the $100,000-$150,000 range back then, and their size and quality of build reflected the economics of a builder’s budget for that price range. Things change.

2,545 sq.ft

This ought to be interesting: even Blumenthal is "appalled"

/

"Ooooh!"

If the Democrats are worked up, it’s gotta be bad.

Senators from both parties said Thursday that they were “appalled” by the security failures that led to the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump July 13 and want more information from the Department of Homeland Security ahead of an expected report on the near-tragedy.

Members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee met with acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe for a closed-door briefing about the shooting in Butler, Pa. that killed Trump rally-goer Corey Comperatore and wounded the 45th president and two others.

“I think the American people will be shocked, astonished and appalled by what we will report to them about the failures of the Secret Service in this assassination attempt of a former president,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who chairs the panel’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

This is actually not a bad thing — in fact, it's a good insurance policy against a Harris win

/

Where the Koch Network Is Putting Their Money—Anywhere But Trump

When some of the biggest donors to conservative causes made explicit their electoral opposition to a second Trump term way back in February of 2023, it came as something of a shock to the Republican orbit. After all, the powerful network organized under the auspices of billionaire industrialist Charles Koch had officially remained neutral in Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, a sign of how uncomfortable his allies were with a candidate whose positions were so far afoul from their own on so many issues.

But by the time the network gathered at the start of 2023, their position on Trump was not really a point of discussion. The deadly Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, was finally a step too far. The chief of the network’s main political arm, Americans For Prosperity, told her patrons that they were ready to back an alternative Republican who showed promise of winning. The group ultimately plowed more than $32 million into former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and another $10 million in broader anti-Trump efforts before throwing in the towel. The hopes of reclaiming the party from this gatecrasher were dashed and they had to live with Trump as their standard bearer.

It’s been six months since Haley ended her bid, and just over six weeks since Biden followed suit. Vice President Kamala Harris has scrambled the electoral map, and might look like more of a threat than Biden on some key Koch issues. So where does that lead Koch World and their deep pockets? 

Not far from where they’ve been all along—doing their best to help Republicans not named Trump. Despite some pleas from Trump apologists who still pony up cash to the organizations operating under the Koch umbrella, the leadership remains unbending in their decision to stay out of the presidential race altogether.

Instead, Koch-linked strategists say their main goal is to be a check against unified Democratic control of Washington. To them, a progressive sweep of D.C. is the biggest threat this fall, and to that end, staff and volunteers have already knocked on more than five million doors to help their Senate prospects, especially those in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Montana.

At the House level, the Koch network—and those who take their cues from it—are focused on about two dozen races, many of them in deep-blue states like California and New York, where voters have shown a willingness to split their tickets. There are currently 17 Republicans from districts Biden won in 2020 and five Democrats from districts where Trump won. With Republicans holding a razor-thin majority, these races are likely to see some of the highest spending in some of the most expensive media markets. 

The country can probably survive a Que Mala presidency if Republicans control the House and the Senate and — a big if * — the Republicans actually act as a bloc, and stymie her judicial appointments, Democrat inspired laws and regulations, and, in general, leave her to wallow alone in the White House, dreaming of school buses and coconuts.

Money’s fungible, and if Koch and his fellow billionaires want to spend theirs on the lower races (so to speak), I say go for it — that’s more money freed up to reelect Trump.

* From Instapundit:

MARK STEYN: The Uniparty Turns Literal.

How’s it going over on the Republican side? Well, former president George W Bush has announced he won’t be endorsing anyone in this election. On the other hand, over two hundred Bush, McCain and Romney staffers have declared they’re voting for Kamala. I’m not sure I’ve heard of any of them, but, as you know, the McCain and Romney campaigns remain bywords for hugely successful political operations, so no doubt many of those hundreds of staffers helped craft what are widely acknowledged to be two of the most impressive concession speeches in American history.

* * * * * * * *

I thought Cheney was an homme sérieux. But, in the end, he wasn’t. The Bush years have to be accounted a terrible failure, in which the leadership of the then dominant superpower was unable to grasp the simplest of truths — not least about the need for strategic clarity. Under Cheney, America launched wars with no war aims, in which it deluded itself that “smart bombs” counted for more than will. Meanwhile, on the home front, the rate of Muslim immigration to America doubled …because it was more important to show the world how nice we are than to consider the cultural consequences of demographic transformation. So the west spent twenty years fighting over the most barren and worthless sod on the planet, while surrendering Malmö and Marseille, Rotterdam and Nottingham, and Lewiston-Auburn, Maine. This is what happens when you have a political class almost entirely disconnected from the rhythms of real life in real countries.

So Trump has performed a great service in driving the likes of Cheney to vote Kamala. The feeble charade of TweedleDem vs TweedleRep is designed to obscure the central fact of end-stage western “democracy” — that, on anything that really matters, nothing can be permitted to change. Thus, having Dick Cheney and Ilhan Omar formally on the same team is very helpful. Trump has driven the “respectable” political class to make the Uniparty literal, and its consolidation has freed up space for an actual second party.