Ford Motor F-150 Lightning EV pick-em-up-truck sales are a JOKE, and the mainstream media propaganda stories don't tell you that, if they cover the story at all

  Ford sold 7,162 units of the Lightning in Q3 2024, up from the 3,503 units in Q3 of last year. ... Year-to-date, Ford sold 22,807 F-150 Lightning EVs. ... 

[22,807 units lol. Ford sold nearly 751,000 F-series pick up trucks in 2023, so that's like 3% of the 2023 total]

Overall, Ford’s all-electric vehicle sales in the third quarter of this year amounted to 23,509 units, up 12.2% from last year’s 20,962 vehicles. Year-to-date, Ford sold 67,689 EVs, up 45% compared to last year’s 46,671 units. ...

Ford sold 432,429 combustion-powered vehicles in the third quarter, down 2.8% year-over-year, and 1,340,139 units year-to-date, down 1.8% year-over-year.

Reported here. 

That means year-to-date total EV sales are just 5.05% of total combustion-powered vehicle sales year to date.

People aren't buying these dogs.

None of these stories mention these facts.

CBS: Ford to pause production of F-150 Lightning electric pickup trucks

CNBC: Ford to halt production of electric F-150 Lightning next month until January

MarketWatch: Ford to Pause Production of F-150 Lightning EV Pickup Trucks

Reuters, to it's credit actually reported some actual numbers: Ford to halt production of F-150 Lightning EV pickup trucks for six weeks :

Ford said this month its Ford-brand U.S. EV sales are up 45% this year and sales of F-150 Lightning more than doubled to 7,100 in the three months ending Sept. 30 - thought [sic] they still represent just 3.6% of all F-Series pickup sales.     

If Ford is smart it will abandon this boondoggle which is going to cost it $5 billion plus in 2024 and even more going forward and just stick with hybrids and hope Donald Trump fixes this mess.

Something funny going on here: Reuters says 63% of blacks plan to support Harris according to NAACP survey, The Hill says 51% of blacks would vote for her today based on the same survey

 

Both stories published Friday the 13th.

 One in four US Black men under 50 support Trump for president, NAACP poll finds

Most Black voters, 63%, plan to support Harris, compared with 13% for Trump, according to the new NAACP survey, which interviewed 1,000 registered Black voters across the U.S. from Aug. 6 to Aug. 12. 

 

Black voters, buoyed by Harris, more excited to vote in 2024 than in 2008: [NAACP] Poll

 

Fifty-one percent of Black voters said they would cast their ballots for Harris if the election were held today. Only 27 percent said the same of former President Trump. 

 

 

 

 

New Zealand under Christopher Luxon will reverse a ban on oil and gas exploration, push the pricing of agricultural emissions back five years, and encourage more mining

 The agricultural sector including fishing contributes 5% to the economy, and accounts for about 80% of total exports. The farmers who helped Luxon's government come to power had said the environmental policies that the coalition government are reversing would have made dairy and meat too costly to produce. ... 

Climate Minister Simon Watts said the government expects to meet the 2030 target but admitted more work was needed to meet the 2035 target. "The Government is committed to meeting our climate change targets, but the way in which we do this will be different to former New Zealand Governments," he said. "This Government is using a least-cost approach to meet our climate targets. We will not shut down sectors that are boosting our economy and exports." ...

Other sectors the government is targeting are energy and mineral resources. It has said it would allow oil and gas exploration again, which former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern banned in 2018, in a bid to reduce imports of coal, boost fuel exports and keep energy prices for the public and small businesses low.

Reuters

Delegates to the Democratic Convention in Chicago can't speak freely in the Democrat Party for fear of being removed by the gang leaders

 

 The fix was in already on Sunday after Biden withdrew and endorsed Kamala Harris. 

All 50 state chairs of the party quickly asserted their endorsement of Harris, according to Reuters.

But the blessed GRAUNIAD found out the truth: Delegates who aren't down for the Harris Cause fear having their delegate status revoked by those state chairs.

It's a gang, not democracy.

Delegates are, by and large, local volunteers expected to spend thousands of dollars to fly to Chicago and attend the convention. It’s often viewed as a reward for activism and dedication, but it’s typically a far less consequential role than it might be next month.

One delegate who isn’t yet old enough to drink expressed his mounting anxiety about how things are unfolding and how little has been predictable.

“I’m a young, young person,” said the delegate, who requested anonymity because he feared being replaced by his state chair. “This is my first convention … And this is scary. It’s super anxiety-inducing, and crazy, and so much.”

More. 

Democracy dies in darkness.

CrowdStrike's George Kurtz has in common the forgotten McAfee glitch which took down computers in 2010, the controversial DNC hack investigation of 2016, and now Friday's global IT glitch

 Other security companies have had similar episodes in the past. McAfee's buggy antivirus update in 2010 stalled hundreds of thousands of computers.

Reported here.

“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” George Kurtz, CEO of CrowdStrike, said in a post on the social platform X. “Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted.”

Quoted here.

April 30, 2016:  CrowdStrike was contacted by the DNC outside counsel to discuss a suspected breach.  This was CrowdStrike’s first involvement in this matter. (p6)

More.

 

Macron loses nearly 100 seats in the French National Assembly and Drudge calls it a win lol, Le Pen gains many seats despite Macron deal with left to pull hundreds of candidates

 MACRON GAMBLE PAYS OFF

Macron has gone from 350 seats in 2017 to 251 in 2022 to a projected 160 now.

Macron calling this snap election in France when he didn't have to was just as dumb as Sunak calling one in the UK. Sunak had to resign as the left clearly won, but Macron will wish he had to resign as he faces three years of a hung parliament divided by left, middle, and right, each with 140-200 seats and no clear winner.

289 seats are needed for an absolute majority.

Le Pen's party increased its presence in the assembly from 88 seats to 140 to 160, depending on who you read tonight. Her influence is steadily growing while Macron's is withering.

The plot to sabotage Le Pen was hatched immediately in the wake of her party's stunning performance in the first round on Jun 30.

Everyone's pretending to be shocked by today's results because they don't want to admit what just happened.

Macron sold out to the left.

 

 

Supreme Court rules Obama can't be prosecuted for executing American citizens by drone while he was president, Democrats shaken, dismayed, hopeless

 

 Supreme Court rules ex-presidents have broad immunity, dimming chance of a pre-election Trump trial

 US Supreme Court rules Trump has immunity for official, not private acts

 

Germany's Alternative für Deutschland is against EU bailouts of Greece and Italy and against EU membership for Ukraine

 

In discussing the party's policy platform, Weidel said AfD's future allies in the European Parliament should oppose the disbursal of taxpayer money to the "debt states" of Europe - a reference to countries such as Italy and Greece - and the idea that Ukraine belongs to the European Union, after it opened membership talks this week.

Reported here.

LOL, Supremes overturn obstruction charge against Jan 6er who was in the Capitol for a whole four minutes, count 'em

It was 6-3, with Barrett defecting to the liberals and Jackson defecting to the conservatives.

Fischer was accused by prosecutors of charging at police guarding a Capitol entrance. Fischer, at the time a member of the North Cornwall Township police in Pennsylvania, got inside the building and pressed up against an officer's riot shield as police officers attempted to clear rioters, according to prosecutors. He remained in the Capitol for four minutes before police pushed him out, they said. ... Federal prosecutors estimate that about 250 of the roughly 1,400 people charged in the Capitol attack could be impacted by the ruling. ... about 50 Jan. 6 defendants were convicted and sentenced on the obstruction charge with no other felony. Of those, about half are currently serving a sentence of incarceration, less than 2% of all charged cases. [Right, like that makes it OK, Reuters?]

More.

Supremes overturn 1984 "Chevron deference" to federal agencies, forcing Congress to either give teeth to regulatory ambiguities and so pay the political consequences they otherwise avoided, or defer to judges deciding for them from now on

 

 My guess is they'll tend more to let the judges decide, because Congress is, in fact, timid, lazy, phony, tiny, and small.

It's complicated, but it's a good thing because it restores accountability to the political sphere. No one elects the agencies. But that will cut both ways, seeing how politicized the judiciary has become.

It's also a BFD. The New York Times is in a panic over it.

An attorney for the commercial fishermen said Chevron deference "incentivizes a dynamic where Congress does far less than the Framers (of the U.S. Constitution) anticipated, and the executive branch is left to do far more by deciding controversial issues via regulatory fiat."

 

More.

Those Libertarian Party ideals like "live and let live" really have come a long way

 One Libertarian Party member shouted: 'Donald Trump should have taken a bullet!'

Reuters: Trump was undeterred in front of Libertarians

 Undeterred, Trump poked fun at the crowd, saying if they did not back him, they would continue to garner just a tiny portion of voter support in national elections.

More.

Scouting America for new victims

 

Boy Scouts victims begin receiving settlement payouts as appeals continue

Reuters, September 19, 2023

The Boy Scouts of America’s $2.46 billion settlement trust has begun sending payments to men who were abused as children by troop leaders, under a bankruptcy settlement still facing appeals from a minority group of abuse survivors.

The initial payments are being sent to 7,000 claimants who chose a "quick pay" option under the Boy Scouts of America's bankruptcy plan, with the first 70 claimants paid on Tuesday. Those claimants will receive $3,500 without going through the lengthier evaluation process that awaits 75,000 others who filed claims.

 

Barack Obama, austere religious scholar, has nothing to do with the current outbreak of anti-semitism at Columbia University

 

 “mostly, my years at Columbia were an intense period of study . . . I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn’t socialize that much. I was like a monk.”

 

Drudge lies, fans flames of WWIII based on one guy's opinion: Protests were in Iran only, Israel retaliated in Damascus late Monday after being attacked in Eilat early Monday

                                                                                      WW3 FEARS SOAR

  PROTESTS ERUPT ACROSS MIDDLE EAST  

 

Jerome "Arthur Burns" Powell ignites gold fever

The London PM gold fix soared 437% between 1970 and 1978 using average prices.

Gold is up about 60% since Powell became Fed Chair in February 2018. Gold has risen from about $1333 to $2142 on an average basis.

Gold hits fifth record high in March on Fed rate-cut view :

Gold prices on Thursday hit record highs for the fifth time this month after the U.S. Federal Reserve signaled it would press ahead with three rate cuts in 2024 despite elevated inflation.

Spot gold was up 1.1% at $2,209.65 per ounce at after hitting an all-time high of $2,222.39 earlier in the session. U.S. gold futures soared 2.4% to $2,212.40. ...

Despite recent high inflation readings, Fed chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. central bank is still likely to reduce interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point by the end of 2024, but that it also depends on further economic data. ...

Lower interest rates decrease the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion . . ..

 

Guttmacher: Over 1 million abortions in 2023, 60% by pill

From the story:

 [The 2022 Supreme Court decision] led to a growing reliance on a two-pill regimen to terminate pregnancies, with U.S. abortions administered by pill increasing 10% since 2020, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights advocacy group.

The Institute's report is published every three years and based on data collected from U.S. abortion providers.

The survey found over 1 million total abortions were provided through the U.S. healthcare system in 2023, the first time that number exceeded a million since 2012. ...

The survey likely undercounted the number of abortions in the U.S. since it did not account for terminations obtained outside the formal U.S. healthcare system, such as those done with pills mailed from abroad.

Antifa's anarchist dream comes to Haiti: Bullet ridden bodies in the streets of the safe part of town

Haiti violence: Residents see no end to crisis as capital city reels from gang warfare

12 hours ago

By Will Grant, BBC News, Cap-Haitien, Haiti

Reuters

 

Violence has engulfed the streets of Port-au-Prince

"Port-au-Prince is in panic mode," a friend in the Haitian capital texted me.

Residents of Petionville, a wealthier area of of the city, are shaken after their most violent day so far in the country's spiralling security crisis.

More than a dozen bullet-ridden bodies lay in the street - the victims of the latest gang rampage.

As well as the early morning killing spree, the home of a judge was also attacked - a clear message to the country's elites vying for power.

All this in what is supposedly the safe part of town.

Unicef's executive director, Catherine Russell, has called the situation in Haiti "horrific" and likened the lawlessness to the post-apocalyptic film, Mad Max.

Certainly the latest violence in Port-au-Prince is a reminder, if any were needed, that Haiti remains closer to anarchy than stability.

In that malaise, the UN has also estimated, because of the closure of so many hospitals in the capital, some 3,000 pregnant women were at risk of having to give birth with no maternity care.

More here.

 

Remember the $13 billion poured into Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake?

 

Money is no match against guns, which are strictly prohibited in Haiti, so the vast number of law-abiding people there are completely defenseless against the gangs.

Trumps hit with big fines, but Judge Engoron backed down and didn't dissolve Trump World as promised, Trump certain to appeal

It’s a major reversal after Engoron effectively stripped Trump of his ability to continue as a real estate mogul in New York, recommending at the time that independent receivers begin managing the “dissolution of the canceled LLCs.”

Story. 

The big fines are meant to cover up this fact. The judge knows he went out on a limb on this case and is likely to be overturned.

The novelty of the judgment against Trump will be front and center on appeal to a five-judge panel because there were no victims of Trump's exaggerations:

On appeal to a five-judge panel of the New York Appellate Division - a mid-level state appeals court - Trump's lawyers are expected to reiterate arguments they made to no avail during the trial. They told the judge that lenders at Deutsche Bank were finance experts who were obligated to do their own due diligence and were savvy enough to know that Trump was probably exaggerating his property values. ...

A former Trump banker at Deutsche Bank, David Williams, testified in November that conducting due diligence on information clients provided was standard practice. In one instance, the bank adjusted Trump's net worth down to $2.6 billion from the $4.9 billion he reported, Williams said, adding that such a revision was "not unusual or atypical." ...

Severe penalties in a novel case like this one could potentially be met with skepticism on appeal, legal experts said. They could also prompt appellate judges to consider whether the attorney general overstepped her authority, according to Germain.

"I think the judges are going to have to look carefully at what the powers of the attorney general are here," Germain said. "Are they so broad that any lie can put you out of business, even if nobody believed it?"

More.

 

NATO chief concedes Trump has a point lol

 Stoltenberg knows damn well he might have to deal with Trump again if he's elected in November, and isn't about to alienate him now. After the election and Trump loses? Yeah, maybe then, but not now.

Reported here:

NATO chief concedes 'valid point' of spending criticism as allies up defense budgets

---

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg

Susana Vera | Reuters

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg conceded to criticism that some members have been underfinancing the coalition’s defense budget, saying he expects a record 18 allies to meet their military spending goal this year.

His comments come on the footsteps of the controversial remarks of former U.S. president and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, who said he would not protect NATO nations from Russian hostilities if they fall behind on their membership payments.

Trump’s statements kindled widespread ire from the international community, including from fellow Republicans, drawing Stoltenberg to earlier this week accuse that such a suggestion “undermines all our security.”

“The criticism that you hear is not primarily about NATO, it’s about NATO allies not spending enough on NATO. And that’s a valid point,” Stoltenberg said during a press briefing on Wednesday, in response to a question on whether Trump’s comments aligned with the broader views of Republican officials that the NATO chief has engaged.

“It’s a point and a message that has been conveyed by successive U.S. administrations that European allies and Canada have to spend more, because we haven’t seen fair burden sharing in the alliance,” Stoltenberg added. “The good news is that this is exactly what NATO allies are now doing.”