Demand for the Ford F-150 Lightning pickup must be so abysmal that the legacy automaker is reportedly planning to shutter the production line for the EV truck in the coming weeks through the end of the year. This should be no surprise to readers, given that the Tesla Cybertruck has become America's best-selling electric pickup.
"Ford Motor Co. plans to stop building its F-150 Lightning from mid-November through the end of the year amid lower-than-expected demand for the electric pickup,"Automotive News' Michael Martinez reported on Thursday morning.
At the start of October, John Lawler, Ford's vice chair and CFO, told reporters in a conference call, "We're seeing a tremendous amount of competition," adding, "In fact, S&P Global … said that there are about 143 EVs in the pipeline right now for North America — and most of those are two-row and three-row SUVs."
Ford scrapped plans to roll out an all-electric three-row SUV in August. This year has been doom and gloom for legacy automakers (from the US to Europe) as they aggressively scale back on EV investments.
The reality is that the Biden-Harris administration, lawmakers, and Wall Street, all wearing climate crisis blinders, stoked the most massive green energy bubble that collapsed. In doing so, legacy automakers who poured billions of dollars into EVs, severely misjudged consumer demand - and now paying the consequences:
Shares of autonomous truck maker Aurora tumbled in New York this morning after management revealed during an earnings call on Wednseday that the commercial launch of its driverless trucks would be delayed by four months.
Aurora CEO Chris Urmson told investors on its third-quarter earnings call that safety improvements have been made before the commercial launch.
Urmson said some of the remaining obstacles are "primarily in the areas of some elements of surface street driving and some elements of construction that we see on the freeway." He added, "We want to have extremely high confidence in the system as we as we go forward."
"We feel good about our progress and are confident in our ability to close the Safety Case for driverless operations on our launch lane. With additional visibility on the time needed to complete the aforementioned remaining validation, we now expect to launch commercially in April 2025. While this is modestly later than we had intended, this timing remains within the margin of error we have anticipated and conveyed throughout 2024," Urmson told investors.
The fourth-month delay was disappointing to Wall Street analysts (list courtesy of Bloomberg):
A US House committee will refer former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to the Department of Justice for making “criminally false statements” about a state audit that undercounted nursing home deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Post has learned.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is accusing Cuomo of falsely saying that he was not involved in prompting, drafting or reviewing the July 6, 2020, report, which low-balled the state’s total nursing home COVID death count by 46%, according to a draft of the criminal referral to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
In a tit-for-tat legal exchange, Cuomo filed his own criminal referral against the subcommittee on Wednesday, alleging that it was acting “in violation of the principles of federalism.”
An unhinged Florida man horrifically pummeled a deaf and nonverbal passenger while he was sleeping until the cabin was spattered with blood on a cross-country United Airlines flight this week.
The brutal beatdown happened about two hours into United Airlines Flight 2247 from San Francisco to Washington Dulles on Monday.
It started when Everett Chad Nelson, 44, got up to use the bathroom, according to a criminal complaint.
While returning to his seat, Nelson stopped at seat 12F and “without notice, began physically attacking a sleeping male passenger by punching him repeatedly in the face and head until blood was drawn,” the complaint states.
Most People I know on the Left Think Trump Supporters are "Garbage"
A quick note
One of the first things I ever said on Twitter when I was pulling away from the Left was that my side treated Trump supporters like “human garbage.” That’s one of the main reasons I left. You can search for that phrase and my name and see it come up a lot. I felt that way four years ago, and nothing since has changed my mind.
I was disgusted to be a part of it, especially after I got to know the world of Trump and MAGA. There I was, on the side with ALL of the power - all of the culture, all of the institutions, all of the corporations and we were treating the other side like they didn’t belong, that they were not worthy of sharing our pure and perfect utopia.
It wasn’t just that we all disagreed on issues. They turned it into something else: they were “racists” and bigots and “white supremacists” and “fascists.” This goes on to this day. Most of them are, as we speak, terrified that if Trump doesn’t lose he won’t accept the results, or that his “cult members” will storm the Capitol, etc.
And even if Biden didn’t mean it (he did, they all do) we’ve just lived through years and years of the media taking one word or sentence Trump said out of context and turning it into a national crisis. The media won’t fact-check themselves. They run with it because their readers demand it. For once, the narrative slipped away from them.
They did not have to go so far. They didn’t have to go to HITLER FASCISM BIGOT RACIST.
President Joe Biden bizarrely bit three babies as he greeted children at his final Halloween party at the White House.
Biden - infamous for his playful interaction with children at public events - also feigned fright at the creepy costumes of his young visitors alongside his wife Jill who was dressed in a full-body panda suit.
The 81-year-old president was pictured biting the leg of a baby dressed as a turkey, chomping the toe of a child in an ice cream cone costume and nibbling at a third baby wearing a blue dress.
The shooting suspect — 22-year-old Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi — is a Mauritanian national who was released into the United States after being captured in Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector in March 2023, the cable network said, citing four law enforcement sources.
Fox News noted that the Department of Homeland Security views illegal immigrants from Mauritania — a majority Muslim country in northwest Africa — as "special interest aliens" over security concerns and that they're supposed to receive additional DHS vetting.
Swiss suicide pod’s debut turns darker: Doctor raises murder suspicion over victim’s neck injuries
The Swiss company's president has been in police custody for five weeks following the incident.
The death of a 64-year-old woman is under criminal investigation as Swiss prosecutors determine whether or not the death was an intentional homicide despite being first thought to be assisted suicide.
The American mother of two, who has not been named, was initially thought to have died inside a capsule called the Sarco in Merishausen, Switzerland, in late September.
Now, a Swiss prosecutor is alleging the woman may have been strangled in an "intentional homicide." A forensic doctor also testified that the woman had, among other things, severe neck injuries.
WASHINGTON — The FBI warned major US tech companies ahead of The Post’s first reports on Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020 that Russian agents were preparing a strikingly similar document dump — and once the scoop materialized, Facebook executives discussed calibrating censorship decisions to please what they assumed would be an incoming Biden-Harris administration, a congressional investigation found.
The new details — contained in an interim report by the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the weaponization of government — are emerging as former President Donald Trump leads in polls ahead of the Nov. 5 election and as his allies urge a house-cleaning at the FBI and possible new regulations or antitrust actions to punish and restrain platforms like Facebook.
Internal Facebook communications, including a chat log, show that employees quickly discounted The Post’s reporting because it was the “[e]xact content expected for hack and leak.”
“Right on schedule,” another Facebook employee concurred.
Fact Check: Kamala Harris Claims Trump ‘Sent an Armed Mob’ to U.S. Capitol
CLAIM: Vice President Kamala Harris claimed that former President Donald Trump “sent an armed mob” to the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
VERDICT: False.
While speaking from the Ellipse in Washington, DC, on Tuesday night, Harris delivered her closing statements. In her closing statement, Harris claimed that Trump had “sent an armed mob” to the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, though the riot had started even before Trump finished speaking.
“We know who Donald Trump is,” Harris told the crowd. “He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election. An election that he knew he lost.
Harris’s comments come as other Democrats, such as President Joe Biden have also claimed that Trump “encouraged” protesters to go to the Capitol.
As Breitbart News’s Bradley Jaye has previously reported, Trump has previously “countered that not only did he authorize additional security after protesters entered the Capitol but in fact had requested and approved National Guard troops in advance”:
Trump countered that not only did he authorize additional security after protestors entered the Capitol but in fact had requested and approved National Guard troops in advance — information which was omitted by Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s anti-Trump J6 Committee.
“I was all set to bring in the National Guard,” Trump said, bashing the committee for only releasing information strategically to damage Trump. “They heard that, they say them coming, and they left immediately.”
Breitbart News’s Joel Pollak has previously reported that former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) ended up walking back a claim that Trump “incited” the riot on January 6.
Pollak noted that “the question of incitement” was key to Democrats’ argument against Trump during his second impeachment trial, adding that Trump’s defense team, at the time, pointed out that the riot had already started prior to Trump finishing his speech:
The question of incitement was central to Democrats’ argument against Trump in his second impeachment trial. Trump’s defense team noted that the riot had begun before Trump finished speaking, and that he explicitly told supporters: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Byron York, chief political correspondent with the Washington Examiner, wrote in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal in October 2021, that of roughly “670 people” who had been charged in the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, there were “82” who were facing “weapons-related charges”:
For each charge, prosecutors have specified the weapon the defendant is accused of using. Here is a representative list of those weapons: A helmet. A baton. A crutch. A walking stick. Handgun. Pepper spray. Flagpole. Knife. Baseball bat. Crowd control barrier. Police shield. Hockey stick. Axe. Metal sign. Desk drawer.
Obviously, guns are the most serious concern. Of the 670, five suspects — Christopher Michael Alberts, Lonnie Leroy Coffman, Mark Sami Ibrahim, Cleveland Grover Meredith Jr. and Guy Wesley Reffitt — are charged with possessing firearms. But none are charged with using them during the riot.
York continued:
The big picture: Only a small percentage of the people at the “armed insurrection” were armed with anything. And just five of them — less than 1% of those charged — have been charged with possessing firearms, which are the traditional weapon of choice for modern armed insurrectionists. One of them didn’t even arrive until after it was all over. And none fired the weapons. And that is the problem with the “armed insurrection” talking point.
York added in his article that while what occurred on January 6 was a “riot” and “there was fighting” and “property damage,” the Department of Justice prosecutions did “not make the case that” it had been an “armed insurrection.”
In a post on X, Trump also called for protesters to “remain peaceful” and for “no violence.”
“I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful,” Trump wrote. “No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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