In The News Today and other things.

FACT CHECK: Who’s to blame for high grocery, energy, other costs?

Meat is available for patrons at Lowes Foods, 2025-1 Flower Dr, Winterville, N.C., on Tuesday morning, Aug. 20, 2024.Alan Wooten | The Center Square

(The Center Square) – With inflationary costs reaching a 40-year high under the Biden-Harris administration, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and others in their administration have repeatedly blamed businesses, livestock producers, grocery stores, oil and natural gas companies and others for high prices.

At the same time, a record number of businesses closed, declared bankruptcy and laid off hundreds of thousands of workers, citing high inflationary costs. In a recent report, nearly half of all small businesses said they won’t survive a second Harris term, higher costs and increased taxes, The Center Square reported.

Despite this, Harris says she plans to implement price controls, increase taxes on businesses and allow the 2017 tax cuts to expire, creating a $6 trillion chasm between her plan and former President Donald Trump’s, the Wall Street Journal reported.

As Americans struggled with increased grocery costs, including the high cost of meat, producers were faced with higher fuel, feed, grain and hay costs, driving up their operational costs that were passed onto consumers, according to multiple reports. In response, in 2021, the White House National Economic Council blamed high meat prices on “dominant corporations in uncompetitive markets taking advantage of their market power.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce disagrees, arguing that market concentration in the meat packing industry had been virtually unchanged for 25 years at the time. It then asked “if high prices are the result of corporate greed, why did these ‘greedy’ companies wait two decades to raise prices?” It clarified that increased meat prices were driven by supply and demand and overall inflation, largely created by increased federal spending and debt.

With costs increasing across the board, some companies adjusted by selling less product for more, referred to as shrinkflation, The Center Square first reported in 2022. However, Biden and Harris blamed companies for higher costs, reportedly in response to Democratic operatives advising them to do so, The​ Washington Post reported.

By 2023, the president again publicly blamed the U.S. oil and natural gas industry for gas prices reaching a seven-year high. This was after he took more than 200 actions against the U.S. oil and natural gas industry, U.S. House Democrats introduced a bill that would have added a 50% per barrel tax, and the U.S. Treasury Department proposed a $110 billion tax hike on the industry, The Center Square reported…..

Changing Face of Europe: Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson

Welcome to Season 10 of Full Measure. I’m Sharyl Attkisson. We begin today with illegal immigration and the border crisis — top issues in yet another presidential election.

And you may not have heard much about it, but there’s a parallel calamity drama driving politics in Europe where they’re also been struggling with a tide of illegal immigration. As they try to dial it back, it’s already changed the face of Europe.

The War Between Elon Musk & Brazil’s Most Powerful Man – “Alexandre de Moraes”

In this video, Patrick Bet-David explains why Brazil is banning Elon Musk’s X platform and why the most powerful man in Brazil has a strong dislike for him. Find out more in this eye-opening video!

How to avoid election related scams

With the US election campaigns at full throttle, scammers have taken a renewed interest in the ways this can be used to defraud people, often using the same tactics legitimate campaigns leverage for support (emails, text messages, phone calls, and social media pleas).

The lure that we have seen the most involves asking people to donate to a campaign. Whether that comes in by mail, text, phone call, or on social media, that money isn’t going to any of the candidates.

If those scam campaigns aren’t directly after your money, they might well be phishing for personal information.

These phishers also use fake surveys pretending to be a volunteer for one of the political parties and will ask you for personal information directly or get on your nerves by engaging in discussions about controversial subjects.

Another method besides surveys are voter registration scams where the scammer poses as an election official and asks you to update your voter registration, or tell you that you can register to vote over the phone. Reminder, here is how you can securely register to vote…..

IDF, Shin Bet foil imminent terror attack from the West Bank

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), the IDF,  and the Israel Police arrested a group of Palestinians from the Hebron area who were about to commit a terror attack, the agencies said in a joint statement.

The three men from the village of Bani Na’im near Hebron were planning an attack “within the immediate time frame,” according to the Shin Bet.


One of them was arrested on Route 6 at noon on Monday in a swift operation by Shin Bet and the Israel Police; the suspect was handed over to the Shin Bet for investigation.

Following the investigation by the Shin Bet, two more squad members were arrested at their home.

Following a search, weapons were discovered in their possession.

All three were transferred to the Shin Bet for further investigation.

International manhunt for suspect who poured hot liquid on baby in Australia

The incident occurred on Aug. 27 around midday at Hanlon Park in Queensland, in the northeastern region of the country, according to a Monday statement from the Queensland Police Service.

The suspect, described by police as a 33-year-old foreign national, “has since left the county and Queensland Police are working with national and international partner agencies to progress this investigation further,” police said.

The suspect was identified by the Morningside Child Protection Investigation Unit, police said.

On the day of the alleged crime, a group of people were approached by a man, unknown to them, who poured hot liquid on the baby boy before running away.

The infant was taken to hospital with serious, but non-life threatening injuries, police have said. The child has since been released from the hospital…

IDF briefs CENTCOM on war-plans; MI6 Chief says Iran will try to attack Israel TV7 Israel News 09.09

1) The IDF confronts separate threats and hostilities – as Iran and its regional proxies remain vocally determined to destroy the state of Israel.

2) Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant asserts Jerusalem’s unyielding resolve to eliminate all of Hamas’ leadership.

3) CIA Director William Burns stresses ongoing efforts to reach an outline for a hostage release deal.

Hemingway: Harris’s Challenge Is She’s Running Against Herself, Her Administration, And Trump

“She [Kamala Harris] has to run against everything she’s ever said or done as an elected official. She’s also got to run against her current administration. She is the incumbent, and that effort that has definitely been made to bamboozle the American public into thinking she’s not the incumbent has clearly failed, probably because the American people are not stupid. And she also has to run against Donald Trump.”

The Biden-Harris World Is Afire

Somehow the United States ended up this summer with no engaged president and an absent vice president who avoids the missing president and is frantically repudiating everything she co-owned the last three years.

The world was already confused over how President Joe Biden was apparently declared by unnamed Democratic insiders and donors unfit and unable to continue as their presidential candidate—as if he were a dethroned Third-World usurper.

It further wondered how those who staged his removal had no problem allowing him, in his debilitated state, to continue as America’s commander-in-chief until January 20, 2025. They demonstrated their priorities that focus on retaining power, not the welfare of the nation or the will of over 14 million Biden primary voters.

Vice President Kamala Harris, until Biden’s forced abdication, was judged by these same backroom fixers as too incompetent to ever be commander-in-chief and thus for three years a good reason why Biden apparently was not forced out earlier.

Now nominal Vice President Harris is on the campaign trail nonstop, while Biden has taken the most vacation time off and worked the shortest workweek in presidential memory.

The world again wonders who is in charge, what they believe, who is a friend, and who is an enemy. Harris is busy trying to get elected on three premises: disowning her prior co-ownership of what was mostly a disastrous Biden term and certainly no recommendation for reelection; reinventing her affluent radical past and present as moderate and working-class; and keeping absolutely silent about any detailed agenda or policy plan for governance as president…..

Bill Gates Laments First Amendment Strength on “Misinformation,” Advocates For Digital ID

Microsoft Founder Bill Gates has voiced concerns about the intersection between technology and speech, particularly criticizing the limitations he perceives the First Amendment’s free speech protections impose on combating online “misinformation.”

Gates erroneously cited the example that shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is an exception to free speech protections, a misrepresentation that has been clarified legally over time to be more nuanced in its application.

The technology magnate is grappling with what he believes to be the threats of misinformation and the technological phenomena of deepfakes.

In his discussions, particularly highlighted in an upcoming Netflix series and through dialogue with Stanford experts, Gates advocates for digital IDs to verify online identities to help curb this “misinformation.”…