Month: September 2024

Former President Donald Trump said on Friday that he would vote no on a Florida amendment that would guarantee the right to abortion before viability – which is typically around 24 weeks of pregnancy, and potentially up until birth.

According to Trump, a six-week ban is too short, and a low allowing a nine-month abortion is too radical. The amendment, the “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion,” will be on the ballot in November, and seeks to overturn the state’s six-week abortion ban and bar future legislation limiting access to abortion.

During a Thursday interview with NBC News, Trump was asked how he’d vote on the measure – replying that the current six-week ban is ‘too short.”

After the MSM went nuts over his answer, his campaign clarified his stance.

“He simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short,” said national press secretary Karoline Keavitt in a statement.

Elaborating further on Fox News Friday, Trump said that he would vote against the measure “because it’s radical.”

“And when you talk about radical … doing an abortion in the ninth month is unacceptable to anybody,” he said. “There’s something in between, but the six [weeks] is too short, it’s just too short a period, and the nine months is unacceptable.

“But for that reason, for the radicalization on the Democrat side, we’re voting no,” Trump continued.

As the Epoch Times notes further, the proposed amendment states that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

The amendment would not “change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”

Trump also declined to commit to vetoing a federal abortion ban if elected, saying that states are handling it effectively.

“Well, what’s happening is you’re never going to have to do it because it’s being done by the states,” Trump said. “The states are voting, and the people are now getting a chance to vote, and this is the way everybody wanted it.”

On Thursday, Trump took credit for the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that returned power to make abortion laws to the states, having appointed three of the five justices who voted for it.

“If you go back 10 years, 15 years, all they wanted to do is they wanted it back in the states,” he said. “They didn’t want it to be in the federal government. I was able to do that.”

Reproductive issues, including IVF and abortion, have been a key issue of both party’s platforms during this election cycle.

Trump has promised to offer free in vitro fertilization (IVF) to women in the United States, with details to be announced in the next couple of weeks.

He said Thursday that his administration plans to fund or require insurance companies to cover IVF, making it more accessible to Americans. While the plan’s specifics, including coverage for same-sex couples, are still under consideration, Trump emphasized his support for IVF, citing its benefits for families.

“We’re doing this because we just think it’s great,” he said Thursday. “And we need great children, beautiful children, in our country. We actually need them.”

The issue gained attention after Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled that embryos are legally children, leading to a temporary halt in IVF services in the state.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The IRS has made little progress in complying with a Treasury Department directive that asked the agency not to target people earning less than $400,000 a year with higher audit rates, according to a recent report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

In August 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) granted the IRS almost $80 billion in funding for a 10-year period, an amount that was eventually reduced to $57.8 billion. Out of this, $24 billion is set aside for enforcement activities. The same month, the Treasury secretary issued a directive to the IRS commissioner asking the tax agency not to use the additional IRA funding to boost audits on small businesses or households making less than $400,000 a year.

The Aug. 26 TIGTA report found that the IRS has made only “limited progress” in developing a methodology to comply with the Treasury directive, citing “planning and implementation challenges.”

To comply with the 2022 Treasury directive, the IRS must first establish a historical “base year” audit rate for taxpayers with incomes less than $400,000 with which to compare future compliance.

Both the IRS and the Treasury have selected tax year (TY) 2018 as the base year. However, as of May 2024, the two agencies “have not finalized the methodology to calculate the TY 2018 audit coverage rate for tax returns with TPI [total positive income] under $400,000,” the report notes.

The primary reason that the 2018 audit rate has not been calculated is that both the IRS and the Treasury have been exploring alternatives to the current methodologies for such calculations, the report notes.

The IRS already calculates audit rates based on income categories every year. For instance, for TY 2018, the audit rate for TPI between $200,000 and $500,000 was 0.3 percent.

Officials from the IRS told the TIGTA that the agency is not considering this standard approach for determining audit rates to meet the 2022 directive because it wants the flexibility to audit taxpayers who may purposefully underreport their TPI below $400,000 given that the agency intends to boost audit rates above this level.

Not an ‘Urgent Matter’

In addition, the IRS does not view the issue as an “urgent matter” since the agency believes it has enough time to develop the methodology, the report states.

The 2022 directive will look at audit rates beginning with tax year 2023, which will only be examined in fiscal year [FY] 2025, beginning in October this year.

“The IRS believes it has more time to work with the Treasury Department to finalize the audit coverage rate,” the report states. “However, given the complexity of developing the methodology and that FY 2025 is only a few months away, we believe the IRS needs to expedite the finalization of its plan to comply with the Treasury Secretary’s Directive.

“The IRS was unable to provide TIGTA with a timetable or milestone dates to ensure that it is progressing toward completion. The absence of timetables and milestones increases the risk that the methodology may not be developed in time to ensure compliance with the 2022 Treasury Directive.”

After a draft of the report was submitted to the IRS, the tax agency’s deputy commissioner, Douglas W. O’Donnell, said the IRS remains committed to administering the tax code in line with the Treasury directive.

This commitment is “reflected in the enforcement efforts” undertaken by the agency since the IRA was implemented in 2022, the deputy commissioner said. For instance, the IRS has taken steps to “shift more tax compliance attention to high-income earners, partnerships, large corporations, and abusive promoters,” he stated.

Auditing Below-$400,000 Earnings

In the IRS’s response to the draft TIGTA report, O’Donnell said that the agency “will not increase audit rates relative to historical levels for small businesses and households making under $400,000 per year.” Jonathan Curry, a media relations officer from the IRS, confirmed this stance in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

In September last year, the agency said it was shifting attention to “wealthy from working-class taxpayers.”

However, during an October 2023 hearing at Capitol Hill, IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel hinted that audits could rise for this demographic.

During the hearing, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) asked the commissioner whether he was “guaranteeing” that he would “not increase the number of audits of people making less than $400,000 a year.”

Werfel indicated in his reply that while this was his “marching order” to the tax agency, the IRS may not be able to fulfill its promise.

“If we fall short of that, I will be held accountable for it,” he said.

In a November post, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) criticized the “ambiguous” stance on the matter. Crapo claimed that the $400,000 level is applicable to total positive income, which includes all incomes earned during a year without accounting for losses.

“This could impact many taxpayers who in reality make far less than $400,000. How would this affect an Idaho small-business owner whose gross sales generate more than $400,000, but after expenses and losses, takes home much less?” he asked.

“The directive also appears to include a marriage penalty, as the $400,000 threshold applies to a single individual, while couples must share it.”

This issue was mentioned in the recent TIGTA report. Couples who make $400,000 in combined income are seen as exceeding the $400,000 threshold for higher audit rates, even though they may each make less than this amount.

“When asked if this would be unfair to those married taxpayers, the IRS stated that the 2022 Treasury Directive made no distinction between married filing jointly and single households, so neither will the IRS,” the report states.

“Further, the IRS mentioned that it would be best to keep the threshold at $400,000 regardless of filing status to make it easier for the IRS to monitor progress moving forward.”

Authored by Ben Bartree via Armageddon Prose,

Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, promoting his very patriotic book “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States,” recently penned an op-ed and appeared on MSNBC to float the idea that we need to toss out the United States Constitution — arguably the most eloquent and functional if imperfect governing document ever written, which every Western nation has modeled their own on — and replace it with something a little more Democratic™.

Here the psychopathic cross-eyed nerd — who would be the first to go in the kind of French Revolution-style chaos he’s fomenting, like Piggy in Lord of the Flies — explains.

Via Los Angeles Times (emphasis added):

“No matter the outcome of the November elections, it is urgent that there be a widespread recognition that American democracy is in danger and that reforms are essential. No form of government lasts forever, and it would be foolhardy to believe that the United States cannot fall prey to the forces that have ended democracies in many other countries.

Although the causes are complex, many of today’s problems can be traced back to choices made in drafting the Constitution, choices that are increasingly haunting us. After 200 years, it is time to begin thinking of drafting a new Constitution to create a more effective, more democratic government.

Signs abound that American democracy is in serious trouble. Confidence in the institutions of American government is at an all-time low. The Pew Research Center has been tracking public trust in government since 1958. It has gone from a high-water mark of 77% in 1964 to our contemporary 20%.* A poll in September 2023 indicated that only 4% of U.S. adults said the American political system worked “extremely or very well.” A recent Gallup poll had only 16% of Americans expressing approval for how Congress is performing its job.

Especially individuals in their 20s and 30s are losing faith in democracy. A Brookings Institution study found that 29% of “young Americans say that democracy is not always preferable to other political forms.””

First of all, “democracy” is a broad term that means different things in different contexts. When it’s used generally, it just means rule by the people, and in that sense is the antithesis of authoritarianism of various stripes.

But when it’s used as a specific governing model, direct democracy, of “pure democracy,” is a euphemism for mob rule. This is not what the Founders intended, because anyone who has read Lord of the Flies understands enough about human nature to foresee the outcome.

Second, the reason no one trusts the government is because it’s run by crooked totalitarian bastards — not because of academic concerns over the nuances of the Constitution.

But they’d rather not talk about any of that on MSNBC or any corporate state media, because they are functionally the state.

Continuing:

“There is an alternative to a spate of separate amendments: starting fresh by passing a new Constitution. It does not take much reflection to see the absurdity of using a document written for a small, poor and relatively inconsequential nation in the late 18th century to govern a large country of immense wealth in the technological world of the 21st century.

It may seem strange and frightening to suggest thinking of a new Constitution at a time of great partisan division. But that existed in 1787; in many of the states, the Constitution was just barely ratified.”

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

Follow his stuff via Substack. Also, keep tabs via Twitter.

For hip Armageddon Prose t-shirts, hats, etc., peruse the merch store.

Two Georgia election workers who won a $146 million defamation judgement against Rudy Giuliani have asked a federal judge to grant them control over the former NYC Mayor’s assets.

In a Friday filing in the Southern District of New York, mother and daughter Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss asked for control of Giuliani’s Florida condo, New York apartment, and various other assets – including his Mercedes SL500 and numerous watches.

“Now that Mr. Giuliani’s bankruptcy case has been dismissed, Plaintiffs are finally in a position to receive a measure of compensation by enforcing their judgment,” reads the filing.

“In this motion, Plaintiffs seek two remedies to which they are entitled under New York law: an order requiring Mr. Giuliani to turn over personal property in his possession in satisfaction of the judgment, and an order appointing Plaintiffs as receivers with the power to take possession of, and sell, both real and personal property that Mr. Giuliani does not turn over.”

In addition to the above, the mother-daughter pair are demanding sports memorabilia (a signed Yankee Stadium picture, Joe DiMaggio shirt, and Reggie Jackson’s picture), three Yankee World Series Rings, and another diamond ring. In total, the two women are looking to collect around $10 million in assets – a fraction of what a Washington jury awarded him.

As the Epoch Times notes further, Giuliani accused the women of mishandling ballots after a video clip surfaced of them pulling ballots out of large containers from under the tables after observers had gone. An investigation by the Georgia Elections Board cleared Freeman and Moss of wrongdoing, but mother and daughter said the damage had been done.

Prior Legal Battles

Giuliani spokesperson Ted Goodman criticized the filing as a step “designed to harass and intimidate the mayor” while he’s appealing the “objectively unreasonable” judgment.

“This lawsuit has always been designed to censor and bully the mayor and to deter others from exercising their right to speak up and to speak out,” Goodman said. He contends that “the justice system has been weaponized” against Giuliani “and so many others for strictly partisan political purposes.”

The initial verdict was for $148 million but lowered slightly in a subsequent judgment by a judge in Washington. Judge Beryl A. Howell rejected his attempt to dismiss the judgment.

Shortly after the verdict, Giuliani filed for bankruptcy. Troubled by Giuliani’s repeated “uncooperative conduct,” U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane decided in July to dismiss the case. Lane labeled Giuliani a “recalcitrant debtor” and said he had thumbed his nose at the bankruptcy process while seeking to shield himself from the defamation judgment and other debts.

According to the filing, Giuliani disclosed that his New York apartment was valued at $5.6 million, while his Florida condo was valued at $3.5 million. The former Trump adviser also testified that the Trump 2020 campaign and Republican National Committee owed him “about $2 million.”

The Aug. 30 filing repeatedly noted Giuliani’s refusal to cooperate with court orders.

In his most recent financial filings, Giuliani said he had about $94,000 cash in hand at the end of May, while his company, Giuliani Communications, had about $237,000 in the bank. A main source of income for the 80-year-old former mayor has been a retirement account with a balance of just over $1 million in May, down from nearly $2.5 million in 2022.

A New York court disbarred Giuliani in July over his statements about the 2020 election.

The Associated Press and Catherine Yang contributed to this report.

Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,

Topline: Between 2013 and 2022, 15 nonprofits each received over $1 billion from the federal government for foreign, nonmilitary projects, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service.

Key facts: Six thousand non-governmental organizations, or NGOS, received grants and contracts from the U.S. Agency for International Development, but 20% of the money went to just 10 groups. Four of them are for-profit enterprises.

Almost $7 billion went to two particularly unworthy organizations.

Non-profit research group RTI International accepted $2.3 billion for humanitarian projects around the world, even though past reports have warned of issues with RTI’s spending.

Various audits from 2006 to 2014 claimed that RTI invented “fictional beneficiaries” to make an anti-malaria campaign seem more effective than it really was. They also sent computers to a Nicaraguan school that didn’t have electricity and billed the federal government for teacher salaries in Senegal that had already been paid, according to the audits.

Catholic Relief Services was the top recipient of federal money — $4.6 billion — singlehandedly accounting for more than half of the funds sent to faith-based organizations.

Six of their former board members were named by a Pennsylvania grand jury in 2019 for allowing sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Catholic Relief Services was also found guilty in 2022 of discriminating against a gay employee.

The federal government also sent $50 billion in foreign aid to groups whose names are redacted from public databases, according to the report. In total, Congress gave $66 billion in foreign assistance in FY2023.

Background: A significant portion of USAID’s funds go toward the Middle East, amounting to almost $21 billion from 2021 to 2023, according to OpenTheBooks.

That included $1.4 billion in cash transfers to Jordan, more than any other foreign nation received. The Congressional Research Service quantified over $5 billion in budget assistance to Jordan from 2013 to 2022; no other country received more than $2 billion.

OpenTheBooks also identified some odd initiatives funded in the Middle East. The U.S. spent $3.3 million on “women entrepreneurship development” in Gaza and $339,000 to convince Saudi Arabians to stop keeping cheetahs as pets.

Summary: It’s vital for the U.S. to help its allies, but spending should be limited to legitimate entities with proven records of being good stewards of taxpayer money.

 The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

Authored by Mark Gilman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Lackluster consumer confidence is negatively affecting discount retailers such as Dollar General and Big Lots. Dollar General’s shares dropped 32 percent on Aug. 29 after the company admitted in its earnings report that lower-income customers are still struggling, while Big Lots’s fortunes are in a tailspin.

Middle-scale retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, which made a significant comeback in 2024, saw its stock drop 15 percent this week, while drugstore chain Rite Aid has emptied up to 500 stores amid its bankruptcy filing.

National Retail Federation (NRF) chief economist Jack Kleinhenz wrote in its August monthly review that while the U.S. economy appears healthy, consumers are skeptical. “While the overall economy continued to display remarkable strength in the first half of 2024, consumer confidence remains weak,” he said.

That sentiment was bolstered by the latest University of Michigan’s monthly survey in July, which fell for the fourth month in a row. Dr. Joanne Hsu, who authored the report, wrote: “Sentiment has lifted 33 percent above the June 2022 historical low, but it remains guarded as high prices continue to drag down attitudes, particularly for those with lower incomes.”

In Dollar General’s case, the discount store reported it expects fiscal 2024 same-store sales to be up 1.0–1.6 percent, lower than its prior outlook for a 2.0–2.7 percent increase, with earnings per share for the year expected to be in the range of just $5.50–6.20. That prediction was below its original forecast of $6.80–7.55 per share. Dollar General’s core consumer base comprises households earning less than $35,000 annually, contributing to 60 percent of overall sales.

On the company’s post-earnings call, Dollar General CEO Todd Vasos said, “While middle and higher-income households are seeking value as well, they don’t claim to feel the same level of pressure as low-income households, as customers have felt more pressure on their spending.” He added that what he is seeing in the numbers “would indicate that this is a cash-strapped consumer, even more than we saw in the first quarter.”

Meanwhile, another discount retailer, Big Lots, is struggling in this economy. In its June filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Big Lots reported that 244 of its 1,392 stores are underperforming and planned to close 35 to 40 of them. Its net sales ended in May this year dropped 10 percent year over year ($415 million), to a little over $1 billion. The company also announced it owed another $72.2 million in debt, accounting for a total of $573.8 million.

In a press release, Big Lots President and CEO Bruce Thorn wrote: “While we made substantial progress on improving our business operations in the first quarter, we missed our sales goals due largely to a continued pullback in consumer spending by our core customers, particularly in high-ticket discretionary items. We remain focused on managing through the current economic cycle by controlling the controllables.  As we move forward, we’re taking aggressive actions to drive positive comp sales growth in the latter part of the year and into 2025 and to maintain year-over-year gross margin rate improvements, all driven by progress on our five key actions.”  The company’s second-quarter results will be announced on Sept. 6.

Neil Saunders, the managing director of GlobalData Retail, told Modern Retail, “It doesn’t look as if they are going to be able to stop the bleeding anytime soon. The financials are going in the wrong direction. This is a business that has suffered sales declines for a reasonable period of time, and what you come to expect is that, as you go forward, those declines start to moderate a bit and then you start to go back into growth, but Big Lots shows no signs of that happening.”

Comeback darling Abercrombie & Fitch saw its stock rise 21 percent in the second quarter this year, but immediately drop 15 percent after CEO Fran Horowitz used the word “uncertain” in his earnings analysis. “We delivered a strong first half of the year, and we are increasing our full-year outlook. Although we continue to operate in an increasingly uncertain environment, we remain steadfast in executing our global playbook and maintaining discipline over inventory and expenses,” he said.

In the University of Michigan report, Dr. Hsu said one of the worries consumers now have is stagnant wage growth. “While consumers exhibited confidence that inflation will continue to soften, many expressed concerns about the effect of high prices and weakening incomes on their personal finances, she wrote.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, the three-month average for payroll gains slowed to 177,000 in June, down from 267,000 in March. As of June 30, the bureau reported the number of job openings was unchanged at 8.2 million, but compared negatively by nearly one million (941,000) compared to June 2023. Hiring also fell from 5.7 million jobs in May this year to 5.3 million in June.

But she added that even though inflation has slowed, higher prices continue to make an impact on consumer sentiment. “Over the past two years, our surveys clearly reveal that consumers distinguish between their experiences with high price levels and their views of overall inflation rates,” she writes. “On one hand, they recognize that inflation has softened substantially and expect that trend to continue. On the other hand, slowing inflation does not generally lead to reductions in overall price levels; the persistence of high prices continues to exert pain on household budgets.”

Another retail casualty this year has been the sudden bankruptcy of Rite Aid, leaving hundreds of stores empty in states such as Michigan and Ohio after closing up to 500 stores nationally. In its filing, the company said it expected its losses would increase significantly in the past quarter, following a loss of $750 million between March 2022 and March 2023 and another $307 million in the second quarter this year. The last quarterly report filed by Rite Aid was in June, when they had only $135.5 million of cash to work with, combined with $3.3 billion in long-term debt.

According to the NRF monthly review, though overall consumer spending is still inching upward, it’s going to non-retail areas of the economy. “Overall consumer spending continues to be dominated by travel, entertainment and “experiences,” the NRF wrote in its report.

The eldest brother of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz threw his sibling under the bus in a series of Friday night Facebook posts, saying he isn’t “the type of character” Americans would want in high office, and cryptically referring to “stories [he] could tell” that would hammer home the point.

Sixty-seven-year-old Jeff Walz also declared he has major political differences with his brother, who’s been the governor of Minnesota since 2019 following a dozen years in the US House of Representatives. “I’m 100% opposed to all his ideology,” wrote Jeff Walz, the New York Post was first to report on Saturday.

Before the Post exclusive, conservative podcaster Laura Loomer publicized a March 2023 Facebook post in which Jeff Walz expressed his disgust over Donald Trump being indicted in Manhattan over his handling of hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. “We’ve just become a third world banana republic,” he wrote. 

Unless and until Jeff Walz gets specific about where he differs with Kamala Harris’ running mate, we can only speculate. There’s lots of hard-left nuttiness and tyranny on Tim’s record, including: 

• Putting tampons in boys’ school bathrooms
• Keeping the National Guard in the sidelines while Minneapolis burned during the 2020 George Floyd riots
• Seizing emergency powers during the Covid-19 pandemic and going all-out with business closures, mask mandates and declaring church worship “non-essential” 
• Funding free college for illegal immigrants
• Declaring Minnesota a “trans refuge”

Policy differences with relatives are one thing, but the Harris-Walz campaign is probably particularly anxious about Jeff Walz’s strong suggestion that his brother is morally flawed, and that he has an inventory of anecdotes that underscore that accusation: “The stories I could tell. Not the type of character you want making decisions about your future.”

From the sound of it, Jeff Walz might just tell some of those stories under a big spotlight: When another Facebook user encouraged Walz to “get on stage with President Trump and endorse him,” Jeff Walz replied, “I’ve thought long and hard about doing something like that! I’m torn between that and just keeping my family out of it.”

Even before Jeff Walz’s mini-rant, there were already character clouds swirling over the would-be vice president’s head. For example, while making a case for gutting the Second Amendment’s safeguarding of the individual human right of armed self-defense, Tim Walz falsely told an audience that he’d carried a weapon in war:  

“We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war” – Tim Walz

What’s more disturbing about what Tim Walz says here?

1. Gov. Walz never went to war yet clearly said he did
2. Gov Walz is a far left gun grabber#TamponTimmy #TimWalz… pic.twitter.com/P7gK6l5qbt

— Mrgunsngear (@Mrgunsngear) August 6, 2024

Jeff Walz said he hasn’t talked to his famous brother in eight years. So far, the reason for their apparent estrangement isn’t in the public domain, and the elder Walz declined to be interviewed by the Post. He lives in the Florida panhandle town of Freeport with this wife. The two previously owned a musical instrument and gear story in Inverness, in the west-central part of the state. 

While they’re split now, the Post notes that the brothers are united in having criminal rap sheets. Tim Walz was famously arrested for drunk driving, while Jeff Walz engaged in petty thievery while he was himself in a position of public trust:  

While he was an assistant principal at Crystal River Middle School, Jeff Walz allegedly stole a bicycle tube, handlebar grips and a three-way outlet adapter totaling $13 from an Inverness Walmart, according to the Tampa Bay Times and a letter of reprimand from Florida’s Education Practices Commission. — New York Post

Sounds like there’s some great genes in that Walz family tree. Should we expect CNN and the New York Times to roll with the familial anti-endorsement story? 

Tim Walz’s brother speaking out against him is incredibly relevant and telling. How do I know? Because the press told me Trump’s niece mouthing off was the most relevant thing ever.

Sorry, I didn’t make the rules.

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) August 31, 2024

There’s outrage, frustration, and sadness in Israel as the bodes of six hostages who were kidnapped on October 7 have been recovered by Israel’s military (IDF) in Gaza.

The overnight operation took place in the southern city of Rafah, the IDF said Sunday. The deceased have been identified as Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Ori Danino, 25, Alex Lubnov, 32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Almog Sarusi, 27. Hersh Goldberg-Polin was an Israeli-American.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari described that the deceased hostages were “brutally murdered” shortly before IDF troops arrived to the location. He said this may have happed in as little as one to two days before the army got there.

It was part of another daring tunnel operation. “According to an initial assessment… they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short while before we reached them. They were abducted alive on the morning of October 7 by the Hamas terror group,” Hagari told a press briefing.

“Their bodies were found during the fighting in Rafah, in a tunnel, about a kilometer away from the tunnel from which we rescued Farhan al-Qadi a few days ago,” he said.

Farhan’s rescue was a rare bright spot in otherwise grim news concerning the over one hundred hostages believed still in Hamas captivity: 

His captors moved him from tunnel to tunnel, never staying in one place very long. Then on Tuesday, hearing Israeli soldiers approaching, Al-Qadi’s guards suddenly fled, leaving him alone in a tunnel and frightened the troops might mistake him for a militant. 

“Don’t shoot! I’m Farhan,” he called out. Answering back through a megaphone, the soldiers held their fire and satisfied themselves they weren’t walking into an ambush.

Hagari said of this newest recovery of the six bodes, “Since Farhan was found, troops were given an emphasis on operating carefully even more than usual, because of the understanding that additional hostages may be in the area.” He added: “We did not have information on the exact location of the hostages.”

The hostages were found 20 meter underground by Saturday afternoon, and were extracted from the tunnel overnight and later positively identified back in Israel. Hagari further indicated they did not die as a result of a firefight with Hamas in the tunnel.

President Joe Biden expressed that he is “devastated and outraged” over the killings, particularly dual Israeli-US citizen Goldberg-Polin. “I have worked tirelessly to bring their beloved Hersh safely to them and am heartbroken by the news of his death,” Biden said.

“It is as tragic as it is reprehensible. Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes. And we will keep working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages,” he said.

It was only on August 20 that six prior deceased hostages had been recovered, bringing the number of dead captives to 12 returned by Israel’s military in under two weeks. Victims’ families are outraged at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is widely accused of prioritizing the military operation to eradicate Hamas over reaching a deal. Protests are only likely to grow in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

But Netanyahu on Sunday asserted in the midst of growing criticism against his government: “Whoever murders hostages – does not want a deal,” he said.

Authored by Rob Smith via RealClearMarkets,

Last Friday, Kamala Harris opened her mouth and almost magically raised the price of housing and food at  grocery stores. She’s on record stating that high gas prices are the result of retail price gouging, and that patents should be yanked from medical industry providers.

What many don’t comprehend is that businesses react immediately when politicians suggest interfering with the normal operations of the free market.  Look around you.  Every building, every business, every house, every car and so on is a result of private enterprise. More specifically, all these things are the result of capital organically flowing to where it can be most productive. The supply of capital fuels all growth. Policies that favor capital formation create lower prices and more innovation. There would be no government without its access to the wealth generated from private enterprise, as there would be nothing to tax and no purchasers to buy federal bonds.

I’m no Warren Buffett. I’m just a lowly history major. I don’t have an economics PhD, but unlike those breathing the Ivory Tower air, I’ve had real world experiences in all the industries Kamala wants to tinker with. I’ve built subdivisions and houses. I’ve been a specialty food supplier to grocery stores. I’ve owned a chain of restaurants. I’ve owned gas stations, and I’ve been involved in securing intellectual property rights within the medical industry.   I can tell you firsthand that as soon as a business owner hears “commie nonsense,” he pulls “the throttle back.” Capital formation slows.  Often his business is devalued as soon as there is a political threat that will rob it of profitability. With such uncertainty and less capital at his disposal, the economy is deprived of productive investment.   

Giving $25,000 to first time homeowners is just going to cause higher home prices. Assuredly, it will come with so many rules and regulations as to tie the housing industry in knots. Price controls on food create scarcity and ultimately bread riots and civil unrest, perhaps starvation and another Holodomor. There could not be a dumber or more dangerous policy proposal in our Republic’s history. Gas stations. When I dropped my prices to out compete my competition, every other operator withing 30 miles matched my price. When an operator loses $.25/gallon due to competition, state and federal governments still make $.50/gallon in taxes. It is an incredibly competitive business. Patents are property, yanking them away from businesses is Leninist confiscation of property, and of course a sure-fire way to destroy all innovation.

Those of us who have created and produced in the private sector absolutely loathe with red hot fury government apparatchiks and their simple minded, demagogic economic proposals.  I’m sympathetic to the business owner. All those 100-hour work weeks, sweat and investment destroyed over night by “know nothing nutjobs.”  “Kamunism” is akin to a North Korean style command and control economy. It is the perfect recipe for utter misery and societal collapse. Just ask any history major!

Robert C. Smith is Managing Partner of Chartwell Capital Advisors, a senior fellow at the Parkview Institute, and likes to opine on the Rob Is Right Podcast and Webpage.

Every year since 2010, August 29 has been observed as the International Day against Nuclear Tests.

In its resolution establishing the day, the United Nations General Assembly stressed that “every effort should be made to end nuclear testing, in order to avoid its devastating and harmful effects on the lives and health of people and on the environment,” adding that ending nuclear testing is “one of the principal means of achieving the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons.”

Despite this, nuclear weapons are still stationed on several military bases across Europe. According to data from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN Deutschland), around 180 U.S. B61 nuclear bombs are currently stationed in Europe – including up to 20 at the Büchel air base in the Eifel.

You will find more infographics at Statista

The U.S. also has nuclear weapons on bases in the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Turkey, while France and the UK also have their own nuclear arsenals.

France has 290 nuclear warheads – including both intercontinental submarine missiles and air-to-surface missiles – stationed on three bases. The UK’s arsenal, on the other hand, consists only of submarine missiles, all stationed at the Faslane base in Scotland.