Iran was behind the recent hack of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, US intelligence officials have confirmed.
The FBI and other federal agencies said in a joint statement that Iran had chosen to interfere in the US election “to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions”.
The Trump campaign pointed the finger at Iran on 10 August for hacking its internal messages. Iranian officials denied it.
Sources familiar with the investigation told the BBC’s US partner, CBS News, that they suspect Iranian hackers also targeted the campaign of Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris.
Notice how the story is written… we confirm that Iran hacked Trump, but to give the appearance that Iran hates Harris just as much, we get unnamed “sources familiar with the investigation” saying that they “suspect” that Iran “targeted” Harris too. There is no evidence or named sources to back it up, but the FBI and media have to run cover for Harris.
There’s some bad news ahead for the nation’s car owners, with a new report forecasting that auto insurance — one of the biggest drivers of inflation this year — will continue to rise in 2024. In fact, residents of three states could see their coverage rates spike by 50% in 2024.
That’s according to a new report from Insurify, a company that provides data about auto insurance rates. The typical U.S. insurance policy will jump 22% this year to an average annual premium of $2,469 by year-end, the report found. That comes after drivers saw their policies jump 24% in 2023, it noted.
The three states where insurance rates could jump by more than 50% this year are California, Minnesota and Missouri, the Insurify report found. Drivers in those states could see their rates rise by 54%, 61% and 55%, respectively.
[…]
First, the costs paid by insurance providers to repair vehicles after an accident, such as for labor and parts, have increased more than 40%, and insurers are passing those increases onto drivers. Secondly, because lawyers are more often involved in handling accident claims than in prior years, settlements are increasing, which also boosts insurance costs.
WASHINGTON — A mad scramble is underway to introduce Vice President Kamala Harris to Americans who know little about her, with both campaigns vying to leave a vivid impression that sinks in before voters start casting ballots this fall.
In the 11-week sprint to the election, Harris’ campaign is pouring tens of millions of dollars into an ad blitz meant to humanize a candidate whom the electorate may know only as the understudy to Joe Biden.
She is the former AG of one of our largest states. She is a former U.S. Senator. And she is the sitting Vice President. The American people know who Kamala Harris is.
The real problem is that the American people know who Kamala Harris is. Get it? So the effort here is really to introduce a different, electable version of Kamala who isn’t a dim-witted, mean, condescending Communist. It’s a con.
‘Basically, we’re going to drill, baby drill, get the energy prices down, almost immediately, we’re going to close the border and get the bad ones out,’ the Republican began. ‘And we’re gonna let a lot of people come in.’
There is almost universal support for welcoming more legal immigrants into our nation. We are, as they say, a nation of immigrants, after all. But we need to keep out the crooks and the communists. And we need to lean heavily toward people with valuable skills that will benefit our nation and allow them to support themselves. That allows for a reasonable number of true refugees too.
The campaign’s proposals include a “first-ever” tax credit for builders of homes sold to first-time buyers, as well as up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance for “eligible” first time buyers, a move that her campaign estimated could reach four million households over four years.
So…. welfare for “eligible” (a.k.a. “people from whom the politicians want to buy support”) home buyers. Much like government spending in education, healthcare, etc., the effect will be for the price of every home to go up by $25k. Meanwhile, it will drive prices further up by increasing demand.
She has also called for capping the monthly price of diabetes-drug insulin at $35 for everyone
Price controls from the government never work. Never. Ever. In the history of economies. What happens is that the incentive to create whatever the product is is removed, so people stop making the product. Why make a product that you can’t make money on? Then the government has to step in to become the means of production too. Then you have… communism. All of this must, of course, be enforced with the violent power of government.
, finding ways to cancel medical debt,
Just like with student loans, there is no such thing as “canceling debt.” The government does not have the power to make debt disappear. The government does have the power to pay that debt or force a private enterprise to write off the debt, but in both cases, all that is doing is transferring the debt from one person to another person. It is the forced transfer of wealth. Again… communism.
and giving families a $6,000 tax credit the year they have a new child.
They made fun of JD Vance for suggesting an increase to the child tax credit, but here we are. Even as it is, the child tax credit is a form of welfare by shifting the expense of government to people without children. We can debate whether or not it is good for the general welfare for the general public to subsidize families in this way, but it is what it is.
She is supporting a federal law banning firms from charging excessive prices on groceries and urged action on a bill in Congress that would bar property owners from using services that “coordinate” rents.
More price controls enforced by the violent power of government. If we want rampant shortages of food and housing with a collapse of the dollar, by all means… let’s go this route /sarcasm.
There is a very clear contrast on the ballot this year. It’s not Liberal vs. Conservative. It’s Communist vs. Populist. I’m not a fan of either, but one is a proven path to tyranny and ruin.
US officials are assessing how the incursion might reshape the political and military dynamics of the war, as well as the implications for Washington’s long-shifting stance on how Ukraine can use American-supplied arms.
The stunning raid, catching both Russian and apparently Western leaders by surprise, highlights one of the riskiest dilemmas for the Western-backed defence of Ukraine: President Biden has consistently tried to empower Kyiv to push back Russia’s invasion without risking an American escalation with Moscow. As President Putin has always tried to portray the conflict as a war between Russia and the West, Mr Biden has sought to put clear limits on US policy to deflate that narrative and prevent a conflagration.
But Ukraine’s Kursk assault – the largest incursion into Russia by a foreign military since World War Two, according to military analysts – has raised a series of urgent questions for the White House. Does it rapidly expand the boundaries of Washington’s set limits for how Ukraine can use American and Nato weapons systems? Does it risk crossing Russia’s red lines over Western involvement in the war? If not, has President Zelensky showed Washington he can call Mr Putin’s bluff?
I know that I break ranks with many of my conservative brethren on this war, but I do not think that is in our national interest to prop up Zelensky’s dictatorial regime in opposition to Putin’s. Yes, I get that Ukraine is bleeding out Russia’s military capacity. Yes, I understand that a Russian victory would make it slightly easier for Putin to invade a NATO country, thus pulling the U.S. into a hot war. That risk is, however, minimal.
But I also understand that Russia occupying a hostile Ukranian population would keep Putin bloodied and distracted for years. And Ukraine was a corrupt oligarchy before Russia invaded it. It was only marginally better than Russia in the first place.
Also, by leaning into this war so hard supporting Ukraine, we have pushed Russia and China closer together. We have also incented Putin to attempt to launch proxy wars to attack our interests in other regions. And while the war may be bleeding Russia’s military, it is having the same impact on the American military readiness and economy.
So what do we do now? The veneer of Ukraine fighting a defensive war to push Russia out of their national territory has been shorn off. Now Ukraine is an active belligerent that is occupying Russia’s national territory. Should we really be supporting one side over the other in a regional war? Or should we be focused on arming and fortifying our NATO allies that border Russia and Ukraine? Given the absence of leadership in America, what is our national policy here?
A New Zealand charity that works with low-income people says it unknowingly distributed candies containing potentially lethal levels of methamphetamine.
[…]
Ben Birks Ang, a spokesperson for the NZ Drug Foundation, told the AP that each candy had a street value of 1,000 New Zealand dollars ($608), suggesting the donation was not intentional. Authorities said it was possibly a smuggling attempt that had gone wrong.
DOHA, Qatar (AP) — A top Hamas official said the Palestinian militant group is losing faith in the United States’ ability to mediate a cease-fire in Gaza ahead of a new round of talks scheduled for this week amid mounting pressure to bring an end to the 10-month-old war with Israel.
Harris, the U.S. vice president, plans to lay out some details of her economic plan in a speech in North Carolina on Friday that will touch on lowering costs and “price gouging,” a sign of how important consumer prices are to voters in the Nov. 5 election.
Until last year, Janet Albrecht could afford to eat roast beef sandwiches or tuna salad for lunch. But the widowed 78-year-old now has to skimp on her meals because her Social Security benefits haven’t kept up with the rising costs for food, housing and health care in recent years.
“Recent years” = “during the Biden/Harris administration.”
A retired graphic designer, Albrecht estimates she’s paying $100 more a month at the supermarket than she was before inflation started skyrocketing in 2021. Her landlord increased the monthly rent by a total of $65 over the past two years, her utility bills are larger and some of the seven medications she takes daily after suffering a heart attack have gotten more expensive. She hasn’t had a haircut in more than a year, though she doesn’t like to wear her hair so long.
MADISON, Wis . (AP) — An employee of the Democratic National Committee filed a complaint Wednesday seeking to remove the Green Party’s presidential candidate from the ballot in Wisconsin, arguing that the party is ineligible.
It’s the latest move by the DNC to block third-party candidates from the ballot. Democrats are also seeking to stop independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in several states.
The Green Party’s appearance on the presidential ballot could make a difference in swing state Wisconsin, where four of the past six presidential elections have been decided by between 5,700 votes and about 23,000 votes. Jill Stein is expected to officially become the Green Party’s presidential nominee at its national convention, which begins Thursday.
by Owen | 1909, 14 Aug 2424 | Politics | 0 Comments
But wait… I thought she WASN’T in charge of the border. Which is it?
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden, watching tens of thousands of migrants from Central America reach the U.S.-Mexico border just a few months into his administration, tapped his second-in-command to help address the influx — a decision that has exposed Vice President Kamala Harris to one of her biggest political liabilities.
In grappling with migration, Harris proceeded cautiously. She focused her time and prestige on boosting private investment in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, the so-called Northern Triangle; her goal was to help create jobs to bolster economies and dissuade migrants from making the perilous journey to the United States.
(The Center Square) – Democratic lawmakers and left-leaning organizations are celebrating voters’ rejection of two ballot proposals that would have empowered the legislature to have a say in certain spending decision.
But others are warning a Republican governor could change Democrats’ minds in the future.
[…]
The two referendums would have required the governor to include the state’s legislature in spending decisions regarding certain federal funding, which supporters argued would enhance fiscal responsibility. Opponents claimed the amendments were simply a Republican power grab.
This is frustrating because this is such a clear cut decision about good government. No single person should ever be able to spend billions of tax dollars at their sole discretion. It has been this way in Wisconsin forever, but it wasn’t a lot of money until Covid dumped tens of billions of dollars into the state’s lap. If you voted “no” for these amendments, then you don’t really believe in things like checks and balances or separation of powers.
Also, the referenda were necessarily written in a confusing, legalistic manner. This left people a bit confused if they didn’t read up ahead of time.
The liberals poured an inordinate amount of money into this election to encourage people to vote “no.” Why? Always. Follow. The. Money. Remember that the problem with the status quo is that the governor can spend that money wherever he or she wants. Evers has been pouring that money into favored groups in favored areas. The people receiving that money have a vested interest in keeping the gravy train flowing. Therefore, people and groups came out of the woodwork to get people to vote to keep Evers’ hand on the money spigot.
Milwaukee is heading on the same trend. Milwaukee County turnout was 32% (remember statewide was 26%) and voted 7 to 3 against the referenda. That’s another 105,000 “no” votes.
Meanwhile, Waukesha County didn’t do bad with turnout of 37% with a high-profile DA race on the ballot. But Waukesha is not nearly as Conservative as Dane and Milwaukee are Liberal. The referenda only received 53% “yes” votes in Waukesha County.
The demographics are such that Dane and Milwaukee Counties are uber-blue and are turning out disproportionately compared to the rest of the state. The WOW Counties are increasingly purple. This means that the liberals have an embedded electoral advantage being able to focus almost all of their effort into two counties while conservatives have to drive turnout in the other seventy.
One thing is certain… when we have a Republican governor again, I will encourage that governor to spend 100% of any federal money in Republican communities and with conservative causes. Fair is fair. If we are not going to have good government, at least we can attempt to make it equal in terms of distribution.
When asked how he and Trump would accomplish their stated goal of mass deporting as many as 20 million immigrants – a proposal experts previously told ABC News would be a “nightmare” — Vance said they would take a “sequential approach.”
“I mean do you go knock on doors and ask people for their papers? What do you do,” Karl asked.
“You start with what’s achievable,” Vance said. “I think that if you deport a lot of violent criminals and frankly if you make it harder to hire illegal labor, which undercuts the wages of American workers, I think you go a lot of the way to solving the illegal immigration problem.”
“I think it’s interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let’s start with 1 million. That’s where Kamala Harris has failed. And then we can go from there,” Vance said.
This is where most American are. No, we don’t want our government proactively knocking on doors searching for illegals. What we do want is to deport them when they are found and make it less comfortable for them to be here. Increase penalties and enforcement against employers who employ illegals. Deport criminals when they are arrested and identified as illegal – even if they just get a parking ticket. Make it difficult for illegals to get benefits from taxpayers like welfare, housing assistance, or education.
If we do these things; if we make it an unpleasant experience for illegal immigrants to live in a country they illegally entered; if we do this while making the border more difficult to enter; then many of the illegals will self-deport. This is how other countries do it. We can be a compassionate, welcoming country to legal immigrants while still maintaining our national integrity and trying to manage the expense of our welfare state.
The Trump campaign is having a substantive, nuanced discussion on hard issues like abortion, illegal immigration, and race relations while the Harris campaign is treating the People like toddlers.
At Saturday’s rally at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Vice President Harris said: “When I am president, we will continue our fight for working families of America, including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers,” she said.
Yes, she copied Trump.
Yes, she was the tie breaking vote to pass the bill that increased enforcement on the collection of taxes on tips.
Yes, she is only doing this to neutralize a policy that was proving to be popular.
But can we step back for a moment and talk about what a terrible policy this is? It was terrible when Trump proposed it. It’s terrible now. One of the oppressive aspects of our federal government is the complex tax code. This is why we have a gigantic IRS that is chasing people all the time. This is why ordinary citizens live in fear of the IRS even when they do everything correctly. The tax code is so Byzantine that it is easy for good, honest people to make a mistake and face severe consequences. It is through this complex tax code that the federal government wields power over us.
Our tax code got this way over time because of exactly this kind of crap – politicians picking winners and losers. Why should tips be tax exempt? It’s income, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t other forms of income be exempt? Rental income? Income from a second job? Income from Gig economy jobs?
The answer is not to continue to have politicians pick their favorites and show their largesse through the tax code. The answer is a flat tax – or no tax at all. Republicans should be pushing to simplify the tax code – not continue to make it an instrument of political favor.
A Massachusetts Salon owner feels ‘violated’ after the United States Secret Service broke into her business during a nearby fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Footage from a Ring security camera shows an agent approaching the front door of the business in Berkshire, Massachusetts last week before coming back to tape over the video camera.
Alicia Powers, the salon owner, said after the camera was covered, agents broke into the building by picking the lock and then allowing multiple people to use the bathroom inside over a two-hour period.
We have a right to our private property and that right is strongly protected in several places in the U.S. Constitution. Without a warrant or probable cause, these agents broke into a private business to use for their own purposes. The purpose is immaterial. The Secret Service had no more right to enter that building without permission than any thug on the street. If a rando had broken in, they would be prosecuted and put in jail. The same thing should happen to the agents. They don’t get to say, “ope, our bad” and move on. I wouldn’t be able to do that. They should be held to the same or higher standard.
The whole thing speaks to a culture at the Secret Service that disregards the rights of citizens and does not hold itself accountable. It speaks to a culture of an agency that considers itself above the law. They are behaving as a modern Praetorian Guard instead of as a law enforcement and protection agency in a Constitutional Republic.
It seems that all of our federal agencies have become rotten to the core.
Mr Bailey is part of a new travel trend, known as “raw-dogging”, where passengers spend long hours mid-air just staring straight ahead.
The longer you do it, the tougher you have apparently proven yourself to be.
“Just raw-dogged it, 15 hour flight to Melbourne,” boasts Australian music producer Torren Foot on TikTok, blinking hard as if to stay awake.
“No music, no movies, just flight map.”
[…]
“They’re idiots,” says Dr Gill Jenkins, a GP who also works as a medical escort in air ambulance work. “A digital detox might do you some good, but all the rest of it is against medical advice,” she says.
Our weak economy has been propped up by government spending fueled by borrowing. That gravy train is threatening to slow down as the interest to pay that debt balloons. We are headed for a very bad time. None of what we are arguing about now will matter when the national debt crushes the economy. Neither Kamala nor Trump seem to give a dang. Frankly, why would they? The American people don’t seem to give a dang either.
The broad market index dropped 1.84% to end at 5,346.56. The Nasdaq Composite lost 2.43% to close at 16,776.16, bringing the decline for the tech-heavy index from its recent all-time high to more than 10%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 610.71 points, or 1.51%, to finish at 39,737.26. At its session low, the 30-stock index was down 989 points.
Stocks sank after July job growth in the U.S. slowed more than expected, while the unemployment rate rose to the highest since October 2021. Nonfarm payrolls grew by just 114,000 last month, the Labor Department reported, a slowing from 179,000 jobs added in June and below the 185,000 expected by economists polled by Dow Jones. The unemployment rate increased to 4.3%.
The 10-year Treasury yield fell to its lowest since December as investors flooded into bonds for safety on the fear the Federal Reserve made a mistake this week by keeping interest rates at current levels.
Wisconsin’s partisan primary election is Aug. 13, and voters will see two referendum questions on their ballots asking to give the state Legislature more power over distributing federal funding, an effort sparked by clashes over Gov. Tony Evers’ power to distribute billions of dollars in coronavirus relief money.
[…]
Question 1: “Delegation of appropriation power. Shall section 35 (1) of article IV of the constitution be created to provide that the legislature may not delegate its sole power to determine how moneys shall be appropriated?”
Question 2: “Allocation of federal moneys. Shall section 35 (2) of article IV of the constitution be created to prohibit the governor from allocating any federal moneys the governor accepts on behalf of the state without the approval of the legislature by joint resolution or as provided by legislative rule?”
In a sane world, this would be a no-brainer. I don’t care if the Governor is a Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal, man, woman, Jew or Gentile, no single person should have complete and arbitrary authority to spend billions and billions of tax dollars. It is the antithesis of good government and a recipe for corruption and grift.
