Important Takeaways:
- The US Embassy in Beirut is calling on Americans to leave Lebanon as soon as possible as the war between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies.
- “US citizens in Lebanon are strongly encouraged to depart now,” the embassy said in a notice to citizens on Monday. “US citizens who choose not to depart at this time should prepare contingency plans should the situation deteriorate further.”
- Just 1,100 of the estimated 86,000 Americans who live in Lebanon have fled the nation so far, with the US setting aside thousands of seats on flights out of Lebanon since Sept. 27, according to the State Department.
- The embassy, however, warned that the flights “will not continue indefinitely,” urging all Americans in Lebanon to make a decision sooner rather than later.
- Embassy officials stressed that any plans for those who choose not to leave “should not rely on the US government for assisted departure or evacuations.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Nearly 3 million Americans have cast early ballots either in person or by mail with under four weeks to go until Election Day, an election tracking site shows.
- Of that figure, nearly 504,000 people had voted early in person, and more than 2.37 million had voted by mail, the tracking site found.
- About 47.5 million mail-in ballots have been requested so far. In comparison, more than 92 million mail-in ballots were requested through the 2020 election, according to the university.
- In the states reporting how people voted by party, 56.3 percent of people who had returned early ballots were Democrats, representing about 732,378 people.
- Another 27.4 percent were Republican, representing 356,797 voters, and 16.2 percent, or 210,980, were independent or members of a third party, according to the website.
- Early in-person voting has been underway in some states for several weeks now. It begins next week in four more swing states: Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Nevada.
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Important Takeaways:
- The U.S. economy has remained remarkably strong even amid persistent inflation and high interest rates.
- And yet, 59% of Americans falsely believe that the U.S. is currently in a recession, according to a recent survey of 2,000 adults by Affirm in June.
- Citing higher costs and difficulty making ends meet, most respondents said they think a recession started roughly 15 months ago, in March 2023, and could last until July 2025, Affirm found.
- Still, regardless of the country’s economic standing, many Americans are struggling in the face of sky-high prices for everyday items, and most have exhausted their savings and are now leaning on credit cards to make ends meet.
- Economists have wrestled with the growing disconnect between how the economy is doing and how people feel about their financial standing.
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Important Takeaways:
- Even Americans earning more than six figures are worried about their finances
- A growing number of Americans making six-figure salaries are worried about paying their monthly bills, according to a new survey published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
- The survey shows that more than 30% of respondents earning between $100,000 and $149,999 are concerned about making ends meet within the next six months. That marks a sharp increase from one year ago, when 21.3% of individuals in that income bracket expressed concern about making ends meet.
- At the same time, about 32.5% of individuals earning more than $150,000 are worried about being able to pay their bills, which also marks an increase from the 21.7% figure reported one year ago.
- Interestingly, those more affluent Americans are actually more worried about their finances than many individuals who are earning less money. About 29.8% of individuals making between $40,000 and $69,999 said they are concerned, up from 23.9% last year.
- The typical U.S. household needed to pay $227 more a month in March to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation. Americans are paying on average $784 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,069 more compared with three years ago.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Pentagon is moving U.S. military assets closer to Israel and Lebanon to be ready to evacuate Americans as fighting between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies
- U.S. officials are increasingly concerned Israel is going to carry out airstrikes and a possible ground offensive in Lebanon in the coming weeks.
- Israel wants to move Hezbollah farther away from the border and is pushing for a diplomatic solution, but if that does not work the Israel Defense Forces are ready to use force, an Israeli official said.
- The goal is to return quiet to northern Israel so that 60,000 Israelis who have left in the past eight months because of Hezbollah rocket fire can go home, the official said.
- The State Department estimated in 2022 that 86,000 Americans live in Lebanon. In 2006, the U.S. evacuated 15,000 people from the country during Israel’s war with Hezbollah.
- In a statement, Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said restoring calm along the Israel-Lebanon border “remains a top priority for the United States and must be of the utmost importance for both Lebanon and Israel. We continue to work toward a diplomatic resolution that would allow Israeli and Lebanese citizens to safely return to their homes and live in peace and security.”
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Important Takeaways:
- More than a quarter of Americans have resorted to skipping meals to avoid paying inflated grocery store prices, according to a new survey.
- According to a study by Qualtrics on behalf of Intuit Credit Karma, 80% of Americans say they have felt a “notable increase” in grocery costs in recent years. More than a quarter of respondents said the increased cost has led them to occasionally skip meals, while about one-third said they spend more than 60% of their monthly income on mandatory expenses such as food, utilities and rent.
- “Food insecurity is a major issue in this country as millions of Americans don’t have enough food to eat or don’t have access to healthy food,” Courtney Alev, a consumer financial advocate at Credit Karma, said in a statement.
- Of the Americans surveyed in the Credit Karma poll, 44% reported feeling financially unstable. This feeling is strongest among households making less than $50,000.
- The rising cost of living is also a likely factor in the increasing number of Americans taking on debt (55%).
- A large majority of consumers (80%) said they felt the most notable increases in expenses were for groceries, followed by gasoline, utilities, housing and dining out.
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Important Takeaways:
- Americans Dismayed over Waning Influence of Religion in Public Life
- According to the survey, 57 percent of Americans believe religion plays a positive role in public life, while only 19 percent have a negative view of the role of religion.
- Overall, “there are widespread signs of unease with religion’s trajectory in American life,” Pew reveals, and this dissatisfaction “is not just among religious Americans.”
- A remarkable 80 percent of U.S. adults currently believe the influence of religion in American life is dwindling, Pew finds, and over 60 percent of these think this is a bad thing.
- Leftists like Hollywood producer Rob Reiner have proclaimed a dangerous rise in “Christian nationalism” and one Politico reporter recently suggested that those who share Thomas Jefferson’s belief that human rights come from God rather than government are all “Christian nationalists,” presumably plotting a theocratic coup d’état.
- Commenting on the report, Catholic League president Bill Donohue said that Americans’ concern for the decline in religion in public life likely has to do with the fact that “the inculcation of religious values has a stabilizing effect on individuals, and hence on society.”
- Character building, which is essential to citizenship, “is facilitated by religion,” Donohue added. “Unfortunately, American society has become more unstable and character building has become more difficult.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The typical American household must spend an additional $11,434 annually just to maintain the same standard of living they enjoyed in January of 2021, right before inflation soared to 40-year highs, according to a recent analysis of government data.
- Such figures underscore the financial squeeze many families continue to face even as the rate of U.S. inflation recedes and the economy by many measures remains strong, with the jobless rate at a two-decade low. The analysis, from Republican members of the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee, taps government data such as the Consumer Price Index and Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine the impact of inflation state by state.
- Even so, many Americans say they aren’t feeling those gains, and this fall more people reported struggling financially than they did prior to the pandemic, according to CBS News polling. Inflation is the main reason Americans express pessimism about economy despite its bright points, which also include stronger wage gains in recent years.
- The Biden administration called the analysis “flawed.”
- Around the U.S., the state with the highest additional expenditures to afford the same standard of living compared with 2021 is Colorado, where a household must spend an extra $15,000 per year, the JEC analysis found. Residents in Arkansas, meanwhile, have to spend the least to maintain their standard of living, at about $8,500 on an annual basis.
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Important Takeaways:
- Just over half of Americans over the age of 65 are earning under $30,000 a year, and it shows how stark the retirement crisis is
- There’s a retirement crisis looming for many Americans — and some are already living on scant incomes. Retirement becoming a luxury for Americans hoping to get a reprieve in their later years is something a handful of lawmakers are hoping to change.
- The report cited the National Retirement Risk Index which found that around half of households “will not be able to maintain their pre-retirement living standard,” and 56% of low-income households — and 45% of those who are middle-income — were “at risk” of not maintaining those pre-retirement standards at age 65.
- Even more glaringly, 73% of those in the bottom group of wealth holders were similarly at risk, compared to 28% of those in the highest wealth group.
- And, for some, the retirement crisis is already here. Just over half of Americans over the age of 65 are living on incomes of $30,000 or less a year, according to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. The largest share — just under 23% — have incomes between $10,000 and $19,999.
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Important Takeaways:
- Subtle Change in Ukraine Blame Means Deadly Trouble for Americans
- A very subtle change in the words coming out of the Russian Foreign Ministry signals the FINAL step before the annihilation of the United States. We have now reached the final step . . .
- The wording used by the Russian Foreign Ministry was very subtle, but its implications are anything but. See if you can pick-up the subtle change in this excerpt from RT:
- The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs who were killed last week when the Russian Il-76 military aircraft transporting them was shot down by Kiev’s troops, Moscow’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, has said.
- On Thursday, Russia’s Investigative Committee released a report stating that the cargo plane was destroyed using two US-made MIM-104A missiles fired by a Patriot air-defense system. The Il-76 came down in Russia’s Belgorod Region last Wednesday. All of those on board – 65 Ukrainian POWs, three Russian troops, and six crew members – were killed.
- Russian investigators stated that Ukrainian troops fired the missiles from a staging area in Kharkov Region, not far from the village of Liptsy, some 10km from the Russian border. They based their conclusion on 116 missile fragments found at the crash site bearing inscriptions in English.
- Responding to the report, Zakharova said in a Telegram post that US citizens “need to know where their money is going,” arguing that President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans “complicit in a bloody tragedy.”
- Did you catch it? Did you pick up the subtle change in the language they used? It’s right there in front of you!
- Here, let me focus it for you:
- “The US and its citizens are complicit in the deaths of the Ukrainian POWs . . .”
- Then again, in a later paragraph:
- ” . . .arguing that President Joe Biden and his administration have made Americans “complicit in a bloody tragedy.” “”
- Remember, this nation celebrates Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address wherein he posited that we have “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
- Ergo, when the US Government does something, it does it in OUR name. You and me.
- The Russians have now made clear who it is they hold responsible for what the US Government is doing: YOU and ME.
- Why should Russia sit back and allow us to supply arms to Ukraine, which are now clearly being used to kill Russians?
- Why shouldn’t Russia tell the United States (again) to stop supplying weapons that are killing Russians and then add, or Russia will start hitting the United States?
- Why shouldn’t Russia make it direct? Blunt?
- Well . . . . turns out, they just began making it blunt. At the top of this Op-Ed, they have now begun blaming “American citizens.” You and me.
- Where is this leading?
- What is the difference between “Killing” and “murder?”
- Murder is the unlawful killing of an innocent. But “Killing” is allowable if it is “justified.”
- For instance, if a guy is aiming a gun at you, and you do something which kills him, that is “self defense” and not murder, even though the guy is now dead.
- The Russian Foreign Ministry has now begun laying the historical groundwork to justify exactly that.
- By changing their statements to lay blame upon “the American people” they are building a record to justify killing . . .
- Wise-up folks.
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