Ford CEO Admits Driving Electric Vehicle Long Distance Was A ‘Reality Check’

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Ford CEO Admits Driving Electric Vehicle Long Distance Was A ‘Reality Check’

(Headline USA) Ford CEO Jim Farley admitted this week that the electric vehicles being forced on the market by the Biden administration have serious downsides that have not yet been addressed.

Farley said he recently took Ford’s electric pickup truck on a cross-country road trip, and called the long drive a “reality check.”

“Charging has been pretty challenging,” Farley said Twitter. “It was a really good reality check of the challenges of what our customers go through and the importance of fast charging and what we’re going to have to do to improve the charging experience.”

Farley said he visited one popular charging station on Interstate 5 in California, where there are more than 40 available ports. It took 40 minutes to deliver a 40% charge on the truck, Farley said.

Charging has been a frequent complaint among electric vehicle owners, especially those who don’t own Teslas, which have better, faster charging equipment. 

Earlier this month, one man who bought a Ford electric truck for around $85,000 slammed the vehicle as “the biggest scam of modern times” and detailed his frustrating experience.

Dalbir Bala, who lives in Canada, said he bought the vehicle to be a “responsible citizen,” but said it ended up draining him of money.

After buying the vehicle, he had to install two chargers, one at home and one at work, for $10,000. To accommodate the home charger, Bala had to upgrade his home’s electric panel for $6,000.

He then tried to take the truck on a road trip to Chicago, but discovered that fast charging stations cost more than gas for the same mileage. In Fargo, North Dakota, for example, it cost him $56 and took two hours to charge the vehicle from 10% to 90%.

The next two times Bala had to stop for a charge, the charging stations would not work.

“This sheer helplessness was mind-boggling,” Bala said. “My kids and wife were really worried and stressed at this point.” 

Ultimately, Bala was forced to abandon the vehicle at a nearby Ford dealership and rent a regular gasoline-powered truck to complete the trip.

“It was in [the] shop for 6 months. I can’t take it to my lake cabin. I cannot take it for off–grid camping. I cannot take for even a road trip,” Bala said. “I can only drive in city— biggest scam of modern times.”

Racist New York Times Wants Blacks to Leave Town, Move South

Corine Gatti
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Racist New York Times Wants Blacks to Leave Town, Move South

(Corine Gatti, Headline USA) New York Times columnist Charles Blow suggested that black Americans should leave Northern cities and move to the South in order to become a voting majority and gain more political power in a recent audio essay. 

Although Blow framed it as a ploy for advancing black political power, some saw in it a racist subtext to rid the Big Apple of its minority population, fresh off the heels of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s recent declarations that it had reached its critical mass of illegal immigrants.

Other critics might see what amounts to a back-door effort by the leftist Blow to push the controversial “Great Replacement,” even as the Left has fervently denied any such intentions in the Biden administration’s open-borders policies.

The theory posits that left-wing globalists are using migrants—or, in Blow’s example, non-white voters in general—to advance a radical Marxist agenda that is antithetical to American values but could cause U.S. democracy itself to implode inward once the majority of voters supports its dissolution.

New York City may be a prime example as the migrant crisis has reached its breaking point, with up to 300 newly arrived illegals sleeping on the sidewalk outside the processing center in midtown Manhattan, the New York Post reported.

Adams explained recently that the city has run out of room in its emergency shelters, having received nearly 100,000 immigrants since last year.

The influx of illegals has, at times, created tensions with the city’s own residents in need, who have crucial social-service resources transferred to address the immigration crisis even as inflation continues to devastate many in the inner city.

Last fall in New York City, black Americans were removed from their shelter to be replaced by illegal aliens. “I have no idea why we are being displaced for them,” one woman said. “Why we are being moved and shuffled around?”

In his essay, Blow argued to black readers that there was no way to truly have power in the country if they do not also have access to state power.

But in reality, they are being pushed out of the Empire State by soft-on-crime policies, taxes and the lack of affordable housing under liberal rule.

“And there is right now no state in the country where black people are a majority and not one where they are projected to be a majority. And that powerlessness is something that I detest,” Blow said.

But apparently telling people where they should move does empower them.

It could be many blacks and many other people are being forced out of democratic-run cities like New York due to outrageous taxes, rents, and the ability and to live in peace in the crime-infested city. The black population in the city has decreased by 9% in the last two decades, only one in five residents are non-Hispanic Black, compared to one in four in 2000, the Times reported in an earlier piece. 

The leftist politicians in New York City claimed to have the best intentions and yet, the existing African American residents are ignored, dismissed and told to leave their homes — a blatant racist message to empower the elite.

Instead of addressing the socioeconomic issues plaguing the black community, the Leftists suggested they simply move to conservative states, as elitist Blow suggested in his essay. Dressing the Great Reset as empowerment is another liberal lie and dirty secret that would reduce the black population in the city.

The Great Reset poses a major threat to capitalism and individual rights. It may not have gained widespread attention yet, but it is as dangerous as the collapse of the Soviet Union. It seems, a few key facts are just not fit to print when they don’t fit the liberal narrative at the Times.

Aides on Eggshells as Biden Obsesses over Negative Coverage of Hunter Scandals

Jacob Bruns
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Aides on Eggshells as Biden Obsesses over Negative Coverage of Hunter Scandals

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) According to sources inside the White House, President Joe Biden has become increasingly obsessed with his son Hunter’s ongoing scandals, and the president is refusing to talk about it with aides, Red State reported.

CNN’s John Avlon dropped the bombshell in a TV appearance on Thursday.

“There’s deep reluctance, as this reporting shows, to raise this with President Biden because he has stuck by his sole surviving son—and he will,” Avlon noted.

“And in private also, I’ve heard reports that he’s very obsessed with the negative coverage of Hunter. He’s concerned about it, it’s an irritant.”

According to Avlon, though the president’s predicament is “understandable,” it comes with other negative consequences.

The topic, which Biden will eventually have to address in public, is “not one that allies around him want to raise because it will derail a conversation,” Avlon continued.

The refusal to engage in conversations regarding the ongoing trial could have serious consequences on the campaign trail, where the ageing president will have to try to prove himself.

“Hunter Biden is not a topic of discussion in campaign meetings,” a senior aide told CNN. “It’s just not addressed.”

Of course, the difficulty for the president is not merely the scandal with his son. The findings in the ongoing trial could implicate the president as well, and further tarnish his already foundering political legacy.

Testimony from Hunter Biden’s former best friend, Devon Archer, for example, revealed that the younger Biden would routinely loop his father—then vice president—into business phone calls with his foreign business partners

In any case, it appears that Hunter will continue to run into difficulties in court, especially in the wake of his recently collapsed plea bargain attempt.

Things have gotten so bad for Hunter that even his lawyer jumped ship.

Bill Would Require Federal Agencies to Buy American Flags Made in U.S.

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Bill Would Require Federal Agencies to Buy American Flags Made in U.S.

(Brett Rowland, The Center Square) A bipartisan bill that would require the U.S. government to buy American flags that are made in the U.S. would have little effect on federal spending, according to a new report.

The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency that produces hundreds of cost estimates for proposed legislation each year, reported the cost of implementing the All-American Flag Act would be “insignificant.”

“Using information from the General Services Administration and flag vendors, CBO expects that many vendors already meet the bill’s requirements,” according to the agency’s analysis. “CBO estimates that the costs of implementing S. 1973 would be insignificant.”

The measure, Senate Bill 1973, would require that all U.S. flags acquired by the federal government be manufactured in the United States from materials grown, produced, or manufactured domestically.

U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Susan Collins, R-Maine, Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., introduced the bill in June.

“American flags should be made in America, period,” Brown said in a statement when he introduced the bill. “Today, half of the materials that our women and men in uniform fight under can be made in China.”

Brown first introduced the legislation in 2011.

Many U.S. flags are made in China.

Missouri AG: Wall Between Social Media, Gov’t Will Come from Lawsuit

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Missouri AG: Wall Between Social Media, Gov’t Will Come from Lawsuit

(Joe Mueller, The Center Square) Missouri’s lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s administration is showing how the federal government is influencing social media companies to violate the constitutional right to free speech held by a platform’s users, according to Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey.

“COVID was the Trojan horse that got the enemy behind the gate,” Bailey said in an interview with the Center Square.

“But we have every reason to believe that the censorship enterprise has grown so rapidly that the federal government had to develop a new bureaucratic apparatus to manage the censorship,” he added. “And it spread to topics beyond COVID.”

Bailey is awaiting a ruling by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on a preliminary injunction by the U.S. District Court prohibiting the Biden administration from communicating with social media companies concerning content it believes to be misinformation. Missouri v. Biden was filed by former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, now a U.S. senator.

Numerous organizations filed briefs in favor or against the injunction with the appellate court. The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a neutral brief and stated the lower court failed to address key areas.

“The preliminary injunction is internally inconsistent with exceptions that seem to swallow many of its prohibitions,” the brief states.

“It does not provide adequate guidance to either the government or to anyone else seeking to hold the government to its proscriptions,” it continues. “This Court must independently review the record and make the searching distinctions that the district court did not.”

David Greene, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and author of its 43-page brief, said the district court judge failed to evaluate the scope of the prohibition.

“We’re in the position we’re in now because the trial court didn’t treat this as a hard issue,” Greene said in an interview with the Center Square. “I don’t think the nuance was appreciated and they didn’t do the hard work to really distinguish between what was appropriate and inappropriate government conduct.”

Bailey said the lawsuit could alter the marketplace of the social media companies.

“I think we’ve got to build a wall of separation between tech and state,” Bailey said. “That’s the very purpose of this lawsuit. The wall of separation is needed now more than ever as we move into an election cycle.”

Bailey also said Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is being misinterpreted by the courts and, consequently, shielding social media companies from open-market conditions that might force them to deal with an unconstitutional demand by the federal government or other entities.

“But look, it doesn’t matter because at the end of the day, the founding fathers understood the timeless principle codified in the First Amendment right to free speech,” Bailey said.

“It didn’t matter that in the 1700s it was pamphlets, in the 1920s it was radio, in the 1950s it was television and in the 1990s it was the internet. Now it’s big tech—social media,” he continued. “No one would tolerate it if we were talking on our cell phones and the Department of Justice muted us when we started saying things that they didn’t like.”

Average Long-Term U.S. Mortgage Rate at Highest Level in More Than 20 Years

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Average Long-Term U.S. Mortgage Rate at Highest Level in More Than 20 Years

(Headline USA) The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate climbed this week to its highest level in more than 20 years, grim news for would-be homebuyers already challenged by a housing market that remains competitive due to a dearth of homes for sale.

Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average rate on the benchmark 30-year home loan rose to 7.09% from 6.96% last week. A year ago, the rate averaged 5.13%.

It’s the fourth consecutive weekly increase for the average rate and the highest since early April 2002, when it averaged 7.13%. The last time the average rate was above 7% was last November, when it stood at 7.08%.

High rates can add hundreds of dollars a month in costs for borrowers, limiting how much they can afford in a market already unaffordable to many Americans.

“With prices even higher than they were a year ago in many markets, crossing the 7% mortgage rate threshold again could be what sets in motion a major contraction in the housing market this fall,” said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist for Bright MLS.

The latest increase in rates follows a sharp uptick in the 10-year Treasury yield, which has been above 4% this month and climbing. The yield, which lenders use to price rates on mortgages and other loans, touched its highest level since October on Thursday morning, and it’s close to where it was in 2007.

The yield has been rising as bond traders react to more reports showing the U.S. economy remains remarkably resilient, which could keep upward pressure on inflation, giving the Federal Reserve reason to keep interest rates higher for longer.

High inflation drove the Federal Reserve to raise its benchmark interest rate 11 times since March 2022, lifting the fed funds rate to the highest level in 22 years.

Economists continued to gaslight on the causes, suggesting that inflation caused by the Biden administration’s profligate spending, which has spurred the rising interest rates from the Fed, was somehow a good thing.

“The economy continues to do better than expected and the 10-year Treasury yield has moved up, causing mortgage rates to climb,” said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “Demand has been impacted by affordability headwinds, but low inventory remains the root cause of stalling home sales.”

Mortgage rates don’t necessarily mirror the Fed’s rate increases, but tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. Investors’ expectations for future inflation, global demand for U.S. Treasurys and what the Fed does with interest rates can influence rates on home loans.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage remains more than double what it was two years ago, when it was just 2.86%. Those ultra-low rates spurred a wave of home sales and refinancing.

The sharply higher rates now are contributing to a dearth of available homes, as homeowners who locked in those lower borrowing costs two years ago are now reluctant to sell and jump into a higher rate on a new property.

The lack of housing supply is also a big reason home sales are down 23% through the first half of this year.

The average rate on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with those refinancing their homes, rose to 6.46% from 6.34% last week. A year ago, it averaged 4.55%, Freddie Mac said.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

SCOOP: Judge Finds Patriot Front Prosecutor Acted in ‘Bad Faith,’ Tosses Case

Ken Silva
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SCOOP: Judge Finds Patriot Front Prosecutor Acted in ‘Bad Faith,’ Tosses Case

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) An Idaho judge dismissed on Friday the state’s case against a Patriot Front member accused of conspiring to riot at an LGBT demonstration last year, finding that a prosecutor acted in “bad faith” by failing to provide the defendant with possibly exculpatory evidence.

Judge Destry Randles’s order stems from the incident in June 2022, when 31 members of the right-wing nationalist group were arrested after someone reported seeing people loading into a U-Haul van like “a little army” at a hotel parking lot in Coeur d’Alene.

Five of the Patriot Front defendants were convicted of misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to riot last month, while the group’s leader, Thomas Rousseau, is set to stand trial on Sept. 22.

But the Patriot Front’s Richard Jessop is now in the clear after Judge Randle dismissed the conspiracy charge against him Friday.

“The Court concludes dismissal is the only way this Court can instill some sense of justice back into this matter. There is no confidence the State has even yet complied with its discovery obligations,” Judge Randles said in her scathing order, which was directed towards Coeur d’Alene’s deputy city attorney, Ryan Hunter.

“The State has engaged in bad faith in its dilatory disclosures, non-disclosures, failure to comply with Court Orders, failure to appear in Court when required, all the while insisting it has provided everything to Defense Counsel and is prepared for trial.”

According to Judge Randles’s order, the prosecution didn’t inform Jessop what he was criminally charged with for 102 days after his initial arrest.

Then, the prosecution engaged in what Judge Randles described as a “14-month-long drip of discovery,” including the “dumping” of 3.5 terabytes of data on the defendant seven months after he was charged.

Prosecutor Hunter continued to ignore his discovery obligations, even after a judge ordered him to comply, Randles said.

Hunter, for his part, apparently tried to blame the FBI, telling the judge that the bureau possessed much of the evidence. But the judge rejected this excuse.

“This Court disagrees with the prosecutor’s assertion that the FBI’s possession of the phones prevented that information from being imputed to the State. The phones were turned over to the FBI, not seized by the FBI, these devices were seized by the Coeur d’Alene Police Department,” the judge said.

“Mr. Hunter told the Court that the FBI was not involved in the initial investigation. The Court has no information about how the FBI became involved, and the only information the Court has is that Detective Welch turned the phones over to the FBI while a warrant was being drafted,” the judge said, suggesting that the state was “partnering with a federal agency and playing a shell game with that evidence.”

“It should be noted that during the Motion to Suppress testimony, there was a statement that the FBI was present at the Command Center,” Randles added.

Randles further said that she considered a lesser sanction against the prosecution: simply disallowing the evidence that the prosecution failed to provide in a timely matter. But this route would unduly delay a trial for a misdemeanor crime that should have already been settled, she said.

It’s not yet clear how Jessop’s case will affect other Patriot Front members.

At least one member, Spencer Simpson, filed his own motion to dismiss earlier this month, making similar arguments to Jessop, according to the Idaho Tribune.

Spencer’s trial is set to begin at the end of this month, but he had a pre-trial motion hearing Friday—the same day Randles filed her order for dismissal in Jessop’s case. Spencer’s attorney, John Redal, didn’t immediately respond to an email inquiry seeking information about the outcome of Friday’s hearing.

Jessop was represented by Chris Schwartz of Schwartz Law.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

REPORT: Hunter Was Living in White House When Cocaine Was Found

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REPORT: Hunter Was Living in White House When Cocaine Was Found

(Headline USA) Hunter Biden was living in the White House, unbeknownst to most staffers, right before his sweetheart plea deal collapsed—and at the same time cocaine was found in the West Wing, according to the Washington Post.

Hunter started his stay in the Executive Mansion on June 21, one day after his lawyers reached the plea agreement with U.S. attorney David Weiss, and ended up staying for two weeks. His stay overlapped with a White House state dinner honoring India’s prime minister, which the first son attended. 

His stay also overlapped with the discovery of cocaine just steps from the Situation Room. The Secret Service launched an investigation into how the cocaine ended up in the White House, but claimed it was not able to find a culprit.

“There was no surveillance video footage found that provided investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify who may have deposited the found substance in this area,” the Secret Service said in a statement. “Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered.”

The day after news broke about the cocaine, Hunter, with his wife and son in tow, left the White House.

White House aides told the Post they were not aware Hunter was staying in the mansion for that long because the embattled first son has become a taboo subject in the administration.

“Hands off my family,” was the president’s message to aides concerning their advice about how to handle the Hunter Biden scandal, they said.

“The President and First Lady love their son, support him, and are proud of him overcoming addiction and continuing to rebuild his life,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.

Washington Post Refers to Joe Biden as ‘Former President’

Ken Silva
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Washington Post Refers to Joe Biden as ‘Former President’

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Typos, grammatical errors and other mistake are a regular occurrence in print media, but it’s not every day when Washington DC’s supposed newspaper of record can’t correctly identify the sitting U.S. president.

That’s what happened Thursday, when the Washington Post referred to Joe Biden as the “former president” in an article about the Justice Department’s now-defunct plea deal with Hunter Biden.

“Federal prosecutors and Hunter Biden’s attorneys entered a courtroom late last month hoping a judge would approve the plea deal they’d struck, even though they had already publicly disagreed about a key element: what immunity it offered the former president’s son from potential additional criminal charges,” the article said.

The Post has corrected its error, but the original article can be found here.

A gaffe like the Post’s might be dismissed as a sloppy, but innocuous, mistake.

But in this case, the Jeff Bezos-owned publication had three authors writing the story, along with an untold number of proofreaders, fact checkers and other senior editors reviewing it before publication. Moreover, the mistake was made in the first sentence of the story.

Some Post readers viewed the mistake, focusing blaming two of the authors—Devin Barrett and Matt Viser—of being biased against Biden.

in any event, the article in question did suggest that some Biden’s DOJ would like to see him become the “former” president. Unnamed sources told the Post that “IRS and FBI investigators have been frustrated” with the Hunter Biden investigation, believing it should have been investigated and prosecuted more aggressively.

“The people familiar with the matter said at this point that probe appears unlikely to result in separate criminal charges, though the work is not finished and that view could change,” the Post reported.

“FBI officials are aggressively pursuing the investigation, these people said.”

House Republicans are also looking to examine the details of the negotiations between the DOJ and the president’s son. Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, James Comer, R-Ky., and Jason Smith, R-Mo., announced on July 31 that they’re opening an investigation into the matter.

“The Department’s unusual plea and pretrial diversion agreements with Mr. Biden raise serious concerns—especially when combined with recent whistleblower allegations—that the Department has provided preferential treatment toward Mr. Biden in the course of its investigation and proposed resolution of his alleged criminal conduct,” they said in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Garland responded by giving “special counsel” status to the prosecutor overseeing the Hunter Biden investigation, U.S. Attorney David Weiss. Critics said Garland’s move was designed to prevent Weiss from testifying to Congress.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Minnesota Art Museum Offers ‘Family Friendly Demon Summoning Session’

Molly Bruns
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Minnesota Art Museum Offers ‘Family Friendly Demon Summoning Session’

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) A publicly funded nonprofit in Minneapolis, Minnesota, hosted a demon summoning ritual called “Lilit the Empathic Demon,” billed as a “family friendly” event.

The Walker Art Center, which hosts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, described the event as a “collective and playful demon summoning session” employing “ancient Babylonian techniques,” and ending with “a somatic movement meditation designed to help you befriend your shadows.”

Another performance on “how to trap a demon” came before the event, according to the Post Millennial.

This event taught children how to craft a clay jar in order to trap demons in order to “get to know them.”

The artist hosting the course, Tamar Ettun, previously crafted an entire exhibit on “How to Trap a Demon.”

One of the featured works included a phone number and instructions encouraging patrons to “summon” Lilit via text.

The exhibit attempted simulated ancient traditions from “Sumerian, Akkadian, and Judaic mythology,” showing Lilit in several different forms.

Ettun also rejected “historical gender binarism,” as many demons do.

Her art consists of freakish depictions of Lilit—also known as Lilith—and other demons, all of which look like a kindergartner’s drawings of the monsters in their nightmares.

An article posted to the center’s website explained that Ettun initially came into contact with Lilit “when she was at a residency, spending her days and nights in a haunted firehouse-turned-museum making knots and having just found out she was pregnant.”

In ancient Jewish writings, Lilit attacked pregnant women, kidnapped newborn babies and tempted men to concupiscence.

The Walker Art Center has a government-granted endowment of millions of dollars, with reported net assets of $243 million in 2011.

Despite the Left’s insistence on the separation between church and state, the church of Satan has been making great strides with government funding.

New York City recently erected a peculiar statue of a woman with demonic horns meant to honor deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her staunchly pro-abortion views.

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