Friday, August 30, 2024

August 30, 2024

Good morning,

Welcome to the news for independent thinkers

Leading the News . . .

Harris defends her many flip-flops, saying "values have not changed" . . . Vice President Kamala Harris defended flip-flopping on key policies such as energy in a preview clip of her first sit-down interview with the media since ascending the Democratic presidential ticket. "Generally speaking, how should voters look at some of the changes that you've made?" CNN host Dana Bash. Harris responded that her "values have not changed" throughout her political career. "I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed. You mentioned the Green New Deal. I have always believed, and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter to which we should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time," Harris responded. Fox News

It's a bad idea to treat voters like they are stupid. Most will understand that she's trying to obscure changes made for political expediency under the umbrella of "values." Also, um, "Deadlines around time?" What are the other types of deadlines?

Top 5 moments from Kamala Harris' first interview as Dem nominee: 'I will not ban fracking'

Politics

Harris claims she 'made clear' her position on fracking in 2020 – transcript shows another story . . . "I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020 that I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking," Harris said. Before Harris dropped her bid for president in 2019 and joined President Biden's ticket, she said in a CNN town hall "there's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking" on her first day in office. Harris was asked about fracking during her 2020 vice presidential debate against then-Vice President Mike Pence, but did not reveal her position on fracking, instead saying Biden would not ban fracking. Fox News

Walz refuses to own up to campaign lies, blames bad grammar

No, that's not a joke. That happened.

Harris falsely claims she and Biden had to save the economy from Trump. . . The economy had crashed, in large part because of the mismanagement by Donald Trump of that crisis. When we came in, our highest priority was to rescue America," Harris said in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash that aired on Thursday night. But the American economy was rapidly recovering from the pandemic and lockdowns before Kamala Harris and Joe Biden took office. In the third quarter of 2020, the economy grew at an annual pace of 34.8 percent. Breitbart

Harris has nothing particular in mind for Day One . . . Vice President Kamala Harris, in her first media interview since taking over the top of the Democratic ticket roughly 40 days ago, said she had "a number of things" in mind for day one priorities should she take the Oval Office but didn't divulge much in the way of specifics. Dhe did say she believes Americans are ready to "turn the page" on former President Donald Trump. "First and foremost, one of my highest priorities is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class," Harris said. Fox News

Britanny Mahomes doesn't "give a f$&k" what people say about her amid Trump support backlash

Trump alarms pro-lifers by waffling on Florida's pro-choice Amendment 4 . . . Former President Donald Trump dismayed pro-life advocates with his comments on Florida's Amendment 4, but his campaign said he has yet to decide how he will vote on the sweeping abortion-rights ballot measure. Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt jumped in Thursday after Mr. Trump told NBC News that he thought Florida's heartbeat law, which bars most abortions after six weeks' gestation, was "too short." "President Trump has not yet said how he will vote on the ballot initiative in Florida, he simply reiterated that he believes six weeks is too short," Ms. Leavitt told media outlets. Washington Times

Trump promises to expand IVF access: 'We want more babies'

New poll gives Harris minuscule lead over Trump . . . Harris had 48% support to Trump's 47% in a head-to-head test of the two candidates, and she led by 2 points, 47% to 45%, on a ballot that included independent and third-party candidates, according to the poll, which was conducted after Democrats concluded their televised national convention. The leads in both matchups fell within the survey's margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. Wall Street Journal

This is actually very good news for Trump. If all Harris can manage after the hoopla of her joining the race and the Democratic convention is a one percent lead, she has a big problem. This is especially true since the polls tend to understate Trump's support, and he can also lose the popular vote while still easily winning the Electoral College.

Inside the tension in Harris' "Frankenstein" team . . . The good vibes of Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign mask tensions among competing factions, as Harris loyalists and Obama alumni are grafted onto what had been President Biden's campaign. Why it matters: New people are remaking the campaign on the fly. The result is a large and at times unwieldy team, with internal worries about cohesiveness when inevitable stumbles arise. Axios

Harris has never been able to run an organization.

Harris Arab outreach director said Zionists "controling" American politics . . . Kamala Harris's newly appointed head of Arab-American outreach once accused Zionists of "controlling" American politics, echoing an anti-Semitic trope that suggests Jews nefariously manipulate global affairs. "The Zionists have a strong voice in American politics," said Brenda Abdelall, an Egyptian-American lawyer and former Department of Homeland Security official. "I would say they're controlling a lot of it." Washington Free Beacon

Culture

New York hate crimes skyrocket, with Jews targeted in majority of incidents . . . Hate crimes have skyrocketed in New York over the past five years, according to a new report by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, which revealed nearly half of the incidents reported last year targeted Jewish people. DiNapoli said there were 1,089 reported hate crime instances in 2023 — a 69% increase over pre-pandemic levels in 2019 and the highest number since the state began collecting the data as required by New York's 2000 Hates Crimes Act. Just the News

Vermont urges everyone to replace 'son' and 'daughter' with 'gender-neutral' terms in schools . . . The Vermont Department of Health is advising educators and families to forego the terms "son" and "daughter" when speaking to students. In a Facebook post on Wednesday, the department suggested using what they referred to as "inclusive language for families" in the new school year. The department advised using the terms "child" or "kid" instead of saying "daughter" or "son," suggesting they are more "gender-neutral" words. Fox News

Sweet Briar College bans transgender women from admission . . . A small Virginia women's liberal-arts college will only admit biological women, the school announced this week. Sweet Briar College said that "women" must be interpreted in accord with the intent of its founding documents, which understood women in biological terms, not according to current gender-identity ideas. Washington Times

National Security

Pentagon withholding docs on whether DEI hiring improves national security . . . The U.S. Department of Defense is under scrutiny for refusing to release records about exactly how spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion helps with national security. The Center to Advance Security in America in May filed with the Defense Department a Freedom of Information Act Request, the legal pathway to obtain government documents. The FOIA sought to find out what Pentagon officials estimate is the real impact on national security of DEI spending, for which Congress approved $86.5 million in fiscal year 2023. Daily Signal

Money

Shake Shack shuttering six California locations after $20 fast food minimum wage . . . Shake Shack announced the pending closure of nine locations nationwide, six of which are in California, writing, "These Shacks are not projected to provide acceptable returns in the foreseeable future," in a SEC filing. While Shake Shack did not respond to requests for comment regarding the impact of California's $20 per hour fast food minimum wage that took effect earlier this year, high commercial rents combined now with even higher labor costs have driven other fast food chains, including Rubio's and Blaze Pizza to shutter stores. Just the News

The laws of economics don't care about anyone's social agenda.

Ford walks back 'woke' DEI policies, joining growing list of US companies . . . Ford Motor Company is backing away from some of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, becoming the latest American firm to pump the brakes on "woke" policies this year and joining the likes of John Deere, Lowe's and Tractor Supply. Ford CEO Jim Farley laid out a series of bullet points, telling the Ford workforce that the company does not utilize quotas in hiring, and saying that it prioritizes its resources for business purposes "versus publicly commenting on the many polarizing issues of the day." Fox Business

For more Americans, one job is not enough . . . Rising costs and big changes in postpandemic labor are pushing people to look for extra work. Sam Lalevee was scraping by in his job at a call center in Raleigh, N.C., when his rent jumped to $1,000 a month from $800. So he got a second job doing light and sound at a comedy club. Lalevee works at home from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for his regular job. Then several nights a week, he will toss a Trader Joe's frozen dinner in the microwave, put on his all-black outfit and then walk about a mile to his second job from 6 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. He works most weekends. Wall Street Journal

You should also know

Cell phone bans on the rise in school districts as mental health concerns grow . . . Recently, districts in different states have been implementing restrictions and bans on cell phones in schools in order to tackle the mental health crisis rising among teenagers and young adults. According to the National Institute of Health, almost 20% of individuals in the age range of three to 17 have a mental, emotional, developmental or behavioral disorder. Suicide rates among high school students have increased 40% in the decade before 2019. Just the News

Guilty Pleasures

Murder suspect falls through the ceiling, gets arrested . . . Authorities got a lucky break when the murder suspect they'd been pursuing for months fell, so to speak, into their laps — through the ceiling of the building where he'd been hiding. The U.S. Marshals Service said agents captured 20-year-old Deario Wilkerson on Monday, months after a warrant for his arrest — on charges of first-degree murder and reckless endangerment — was issued in connection with a fatal shooting in Memphis, Tenn. NPR

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