Sun: Ab-Butt Finds a Way to Kill Migrants

Psst: Want a Cheap Car? I Hasn't Even Been Driven by a Little Old Lady From Pasadena to Church Each Sunday.

As EV sales slow, some drivers could buy one for as little as $10,000 this year

There are plenty of reasons not to buy an electric vehicle in 2024: Auto loan rates are high. Despite a recent wave of discounting, many EVs remain pricier than gas-burning cars. And an incomplete network of sometimes glitchy chargers has stoked drivers’ “range anxiety” about running out of juice.

But while the all-electric market is slowing, sales are forecast to keep rising. Cox Automotive expects EVs to comprise 10% of the United States’ vehicle market by the end of the year, up from 7.6% last year — when domestic sales hit a record 1.2 million — and 5.9% in 2022. And first-time EV adopters are still powering the expansion, with LexisNexis Risk Solutions telling NBC News that 3 in 4 new EVs are driven by people switching from a combustion-engine vehicle.

Here’s what to know if you’re considering buying this year.

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"The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena)" was a folk archetype in Southern California in the mid-20th century. Part of this lore was that many an elderly man who died in Pasadena would leave his widow with a powerful car that she rarely, if ever, drove, such as an old Buick Roadmaster, or a vintage 1950s Cadillac, Ford, Packard, Studebaker, DeSoto, or La Salle. According to the story, used car salesmen would tell prospective buyers that the previous owner of a vehicle was "a little old lady from Pasadena who only drove it to church on Sundays," thus suggesting the car had little wear

Is the Media Helping Elect Previous Guy?

Is Economic Pessimism the Media’s Fault?

Americans say the economy is worse than it is. According to a new study, so does newspaper coverage.

Journalists have long gravitated toward calling out problems rather than highlighting feel-good stories. Exposing wrongdoing and injustice is, after all, part of the job description. (More cynical readers will point out that audiences have long rewarded the press for doomerism.) But according to new research from the Brookings Institution, when it comes to economic news, this proclivity for negativity has lately gotten even more pronounced. For the study, the economists Ben Harris and Aaron Sojourner compared an index of the “sentiment” of economic coverage in a set of mainstream newspapers with what is actually happening in the economy. They found that, from 1988 to 2016, changes in the two tracked closely together: The sentiment of economic stories tended to become more positive when measures such as inflation, employment, and the stock market were looking good, and more negative when they were looking bad.

At the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidency, however, the relationship began to break down; coverage became more negative than the economic fundamentals would predict. After Joe Biden took office, the gulf widened even more. In an email, Harris and Sojourner told me that they found that from 2017 to 2023, the media’s “negativity gap” was nearly five times larger than it was during the previous three decades.

This shift may help explain why the American public has been so down on an economy that by most measures is incredibly healthy. Some of that clearly stems from the fact that prices remain well above their pre-pandemic levels, even as the rate of inflation has gotten back under control. But a purely economic analysis can’t fully explain the disconnect. For one, many Americans appear misinformed about what’s actually happening in the economy. In a recent survey, six in 10 respondents said they felt that the U.S. economy was in a recession (it isn’t); in another, 90 percent said that prices have risen faster than wages this year (they haven’t). People’s feelings about the national economy also appear disconnected from their own experience of it. Americans are currently spending as if the economy is booming, and twice as many say that their local economy is on the right track compared with those who say the same about the national economy.

Maybe He Can Call Mike Lindell as an Expert

We all know Trump stole the documents that contain the nation’s top military secrets, intelligence, and nuclear plans. Aileen Canon, U.S. district judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, has been loyal to Trump, running interference against the United States of America by slow-walking the trial for Trump’s comeuppance since she was randomly assigned the case in June.

Late Friday evening, Jack Smith filed a Notification of Expert Witnesses. The list contained the names of six FBI experts who will testify in proceedings against Trump.

The filing is the latest push-pull in Smith's battle to keep some information secret while also forcing Trump's lawyers to cooperate in the ongoing Florida case against the former president in his indictment on charges that he illegally transferred White House classified documents to Mar-a-Lago.

The document, filed before Judge Aileen Cannon in the West Palm Beach Division of the U.S. Southern District Court of Florida, lists top FBI experts in forensics, and computer and cell phone analysis who may be called to provide public testimony against Trump, and his two co-defendants, body man Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira.

The filing notes that the information provided is a "complete statement" of the expert witnesses' "qualifications, opinions and anticipated testimony," as required by law. In exchange, the government now expects required "reciprocal" Information from the defense, which "typically" involves an initial summary within 14 days of the request, the filing notes.

Or He Could Call "Sammy the Bull"

Former President Donald Trump thanked Salvatore “Sammy The Bull” Gravano over social media for an interview in which the notorious former Mafia underboss seemingly vouched for Trump’s moral character.

Gravano never managed to rope Trump into his illegal schemes. He said in an undated interview Trump posted to his platform Truth Social.

As a 1980s real estate mogul, Trump surrounded himself with former FBI officers for security, according to the ex-mobster.

“I tried a couple times to press him, and make arrangements where I could work with him. I did that with other big contractors. I had the power of the unions. I could do all kinds of little things, but I couldn’t get to him. He wouldn’t bite,” Gravano said in the clip.

A headline over the clip read: “THIS IS WHY WASHINGTON HATES HIM.”

“Thank you to Sammy the Bull,” Trump wrote Friday, after a week of dealing with his myriad legal problems in the run-up to Iowa’s Republican caucuses.

Referencing his New York lawsuits, Trump added: “I hope Judges Engoron & Kaplan see this. We need fairness, strength and honesty in our New York Courts. We don’t have it now!”

Maybe It's Because Bill is a Prick

Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly was a rather staunch supporter of Florida’s book ban laws enacted by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). That is until two of his own books were temporarily removed from the Escambia County School District — pending further investigation.

“It’s absurd. Preposterous,” the disgraced conservative pundit told Newsweek on Friday, adding that he’ll “find out exactly who made the decisions … [and] put their pictures on television and on my website … and I’m going to ask them for a detailed explanation of why they did that.”

His “Killing Jesus: A History” and “Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency” were reportedly among 1,600 titles pulled to adhere to Florida’s HB 1069 bill. Enacted in July, it purportedly aims to restrict sexual content from being taught in schools.