Following thousands of pager explosions yesterday,  killing 12 and injuring more than 3,000, a second wave of deadly device explosions, including two-way radios and solar systems, have killed at least 3 and injured more than 300 across Lebanon today.  

The Feds dropped the interest rate by half a point. This will make Harris fare better, but it does not address the core problem. It will also make China and Wall Street happy. This is BS. The economy isn’t strong. Every sector is a bubble: stocks, housing, autos, pensions, etc. Food and energy prices are […] The post Feds Cut Interest Rates 50bps As Debt Rises appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

The Teamsters announced that they would not endorse anyone for President two days after the union’s leaders met with Vice President Kamala Harris and months after meeting with President Donald Trump. “Neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big […] The post Teamsters Won’t Endorse a President: 60% of Members Support DJT appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

“Yellowstone“ actor Cole Hauser shared his thoughts on the final episodes of the popular drama, saying it’s “different” from prior seasons. Season 5 is scheduled to be released in November. Hauser, who plays Rip Wheeler on the show, talked with Fox News Digital after wrapping up filming. “God, I just literally finished it 10 days ago, and I’ve been thinking about what the season means,” the 49-year-old actor said. “The last seven years of doing this show, and [showrunner Taylor Sheridan] is just such an amazing writer, and he’s just done a great job again of trying to wrap this thing up.” He added, “Not into a perfect bow, it never really is with ‘Yellowstone,’ but it’s some really dramatic stuff and it’s heartfelt. It’s different than past seasons, certainly, but in a good way. So, I’m excited for the audience in the ‘Yellowstone’ world to check it out and, hopefully, they love it. That’s all you can hope for.” The big change for Season 5 is that Dutton family patriarch John Dutton, Rip’s boss and the father of his love interest Beth, is not part of the storyline. The role was played by Kevin Costner for all the previous seasons of “Yellowstone.” Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here! Hauser said he enjoyed working with Costner, telling Fox News, “In my opinion, he’s one of those guys that comes to work and he’s always laid the wood. You know what I mean? He’s somebody that everybody looks up to or has looked up to. I’ve enjoyed every bit of working with him.” Costner left to work on his passion project, the film series “Horizon” that so far has had lackluster results at the box office. “I wanted to work more than once a year and it was important that I made room for ‘Yellowstone’ and made room for ‘Horizon,’ but people ran through deadlines. They were busy; they had a lot to do,” the actor explained during an interview on “CBS Mornings” in June. He said he’d return to “Yellowstone” if “the story is going the right way.” Despite the series coming to an end, there are rumors that a new iteration of “Yellowstone” will continue. Hauser said he’d be on board if that happened. “I can’t comment right now, but I mean, listen, in a perfect world, I think it would be amazing to see this thing go on, but there’s a lot of different people involved in that decision,” he told the outlet. “I’m a hired gun. I ain’t a producer, I ain’t the studio head, just a hired gun. But I hope so. I hope it really happens because it would be fun.”

Author J.K. Rowling laid out the mental health risks associated with the rhetoric coming from proponents of radical gender ideology, arguing that it was more likely to contribute to an increase in mental health problems than to help address them. Rowling began by sharing an example of the rhetoric to which she was referring: “Are you complaining about people who feel they’d rather die than live bound by the expectations of masculinity and presenting as a barbarian caveman? Would YOU like to be seen as a man? Would YOU like to let go of your femininity? No? It might make you feel like dying, yes?” The “Harry Potter” author cut straight to the heart of the matter, saying that such rhetoric was guaranteed to compound the problems of those suffering from gender dysphoria by fostering an unhealthy dependence on outside affirmation. “An infallible recipe for poor mental health and lifelong unhappiness is believing that unless the entire world validates your self-perception, it hates you,” Rowling began. “If you move through life telling yourself that unless you can force other people to play along you’ll ‘be ‘erased,’ if the slightest hint that another person doesn’t see you the way you’ve labelled yourself feels like an attack on your very existence, your life will be spent in a state of miserable insecurity and fragility.” “Would I like to ‘let go’ of my femininity? Willingly; femininity is the set of stereotypes imposed on women by men. Would it ‘make me feel like dying’? Of course it wouldn’t,” Rowling continued. She concluded by pointing out how such statements fed the oft-repeated lie that trans-identifying young people were more likely to take their own lives if their identity was not accommodated — up to and including risky and irreversible hormones and medical procedures — by those around them. “Vulnerable young people are being harmed by your kind of hyperbolic language, which promotes the lie about the inevitability of suicide among the gender-questioning unless they’re given often irreversible medical interventions,” she said. “Rhetoric like this flies in the face of everything we know about mitigating suicide risk among those with mental health issues and it’s particularly gruesome when done by self-congratulatory people on Twitter whose banner picture is ‘be kind.'”

“The View” host Sunny Hostin lashed out at Brittany Mahomes — wife of Kansas City Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes — suggesting that because she once “liked” a Trump post on Instagram, she didn’t really understand the implications of her own interracial marriage. Hostin made the comments during Wednesday’s broadcast of the ABC midday talk show, where despite acknowledging that no one else on the panel had planned to bring the Mahomes’ marriage into the discussion, she plowed ahead with it anyway. WATCH: Staunchly racist Sunny Hostin attacks Brittany Mahomes as “problematic,” suggesting she does not respect her interracial marriage nor her biracial kids, because she reportedly once liked a pro-Trump Instagram post. pic.twitter.com/P2zfTZklvo — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 18, 2024 Hostin began by saying that it had given her hope to see an uptick in voter registrations after pop star Taylor Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate Governor Tim Walz (D-MN), saying that she wanted to see “the Swift effect” help to drive more people away from supporting former President Donald Trump. She then segued to Mahomes, adding, “To your initial point, I know you said we weren’t going to talk about it, but I was. It just seems to me that since she is in an interracial marriage, she should have known that to support a racist is problematic.” “Her children are biracial, and her family is one of the families that in the 70s could not have lived in any of Donald Trump’s buildings,” Hostin continued, suggesting that either Mahomes was ignorant or she hadn’t yet had the “problematic” nature of her position explained to her. “So it just seems to me that maybe she’s just not that politically savvy or maybe she’s just not read in…” Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here! By claiming that it was “problematic” for Mahomes to like a Trump post — the post in question simply listing a number of his 2024 policy priorities — Hostin appeared to assume that her politics must necessarily be in opposition to her husband’s. However, Patrick Mahomes has repeatedly stated his desire to stay out of politics altogether. “I think I’ve always said I don’t want my place and my platform to be used to endorse a candidate or do whatever either way,” he said, according to a Newsweek report. “I think my place is to inform people to get registered to vote, is to inform people to do their own research and then make their best decision for them and their family.” “Whenever I’m hanging out with whoever, I’m not thinking about their political views. I’m thinking about the people and how they treat other people,” he added.

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 50 basis points on Wednesday in the final meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) before the November election. The cut was larger than most economists predicted and larger than the usual 25 basis point increment by which the FOMC typically moves. The rate cut is the first for the Federal Reserve in over four years since after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The cut reflected FOMC board members’ concern over recent Labor Department data that showed the labor market in a much weaker state than previously thought. Inflation remains higher than the Fed’s 2% target rate — the consumer price index rose 0.2 points in August to 2.5%. Officials cited the Fed’s dual mandate to fight inflation while encouraging full employment to justify its decision to cut rates, however. “This recalibration of our policy stance will help maintain the strength of the economy and the labor market and will continue to enable further progress on inflation as we begin the process of moving towards a more neutral stance,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said at a Wednesday press conference, according to the Financial Times. Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here! The rate cut comes after a Labor Department review of employment statistics revealed potentially the largest downward revision of jobs estimates in over 15 years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month that job growth throughout the 12 months ending in March would be revised downward by 818,000 jobs, roughly equivalent to 0.5% of total U.S. jobs. The potential revision suggests that monthly jobs numbers reported in the year leading up to the annual review have been seriously inflated, painting a much healthier picture of the economy. The size of the interest rate cut suggests that the FOMC was surprised at the size of the correction of Labor Department data revealed last month. The next Fed meeting is scheduled for November 6-7, the days immediately after the presidential election.

Senate Democrats on Tuesday doubled down on a program that has lost at least 85,000 “unaccompanied alien children,” proposing to move children to the sponsors even more quickly, and with even less oversight. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and other Democrats introduced the “Children’s Safe Welcome Act of 2024,” which would require that within seven days of receiving an application from an adult who wants to “sponsor” a child who crosses the border without parents, the Department of Health and Human Services must make its decision about whether to release the child to that person. Agency whistleblowers say that timeline does not give enough time for any reasonable background check, and results in children being sent to live with labor and sex traffickers and gang members. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Tuesday said the emphasis on sending migrants to live with “sponsors” as quickly as possible has led to the “systematic abuse and disappearance of migrant children” and retaliation against employees who tried to block “children from going to men who sexualized them, MS-13 gang affiliated sponsors, and also sponsors who were mass-applying for kids.” Democrats became obsessed with avoiding the temporary holding facilities, which were common under Barack Obama, at all costs after calling them “cages” under Trump. The bill would make it very difficult for the government to say no to releasing a child to an adult who wants him or her, saying that the burden of proof falls on the government to establish, “by clear and convincing evidence,” that “placement with the prospective sponsor is likely to result in serious emotional or physical damage to the child.” Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here! That proof would be hard to come by because the government would be barred from gathering information from prospective sponsors in a manner not subject to fraud. Fingerprint-based checks may only (and even then, not must) be requested “if a public records check of the sponsor reveals safety concerns” — a situation that is unlikely to occur because sponsors for whom fingerprints would show negative information could simply use a fake name. The agency otherwise simply relies on pictures of foreign IDs texted to government workers through WhatsApp. The bill says that the government must get rid of any process that slows down the release of children — processes that whistleblowers say are designed to prevent them from going to traffickers and abusers. “The Director shall eliminate any administrative hindrance identified as a systemic barrier to release,” the bill says. A criminal background is not a reason to deny custody of a minor to a “sponsor” unless the conviction is for child trafficking or otherwise has a “direct and immediate impact” on the safety of the child, language that is not defined and which, again, HHS will have every incentive to define narrowly because moving kids quickly to any sponsor is the priority. Although the program was advertised to Americans as “reuniting” children with family members, the Democrat bill is explicit that children often have no relationship whatsoever to the sponsor, and requires it to stay that way, saying “a prospective sponsor may not be denied sponsorship solely due to … absence of a pre-existing relationship with the unaccompanied noncitizen child concerned.” The bill also ties HHS’ hands by entirely shutting down group homes where children can be held for longer if a sponsor is not quickly identifiable. Although such group homes have also been sites of abuse of children, having them as not even an option means that HHS will be highly disincentivized to ask any questions about sponsors that might turn up an answer they don’t want to hear. HHS never meets the sponsors in person before turning the children over to them. Whistleblowers have said it is an open secret that many of them are brazenly lying, and that staff are taught not to ask questions. In one instance, a man pretended to be a particular woman, speaking in a falsetto voice, and government agents simply accepted “her” identity. Then they put the children in the custody of a transportation contractor, who takes them to the sponsor. The only follow-up that HHS does after that is a single call 30 days later. The New York Times reported in 2021 that one-third of the time, the sponsors couldn’t or wouldn’t assure the government of the child’s safe presence at the home at that time. That amounted to 85,000 missing children — a number which, if the rate held, could now be 166,000, as approximately 500,000 unaccompanied alien children have entered the country in recent years. The government has a list of the sponsors who are almost always illegal immigrants themselves, and who have lost children, but instead of facing the repercussions that a parent who lost their American child would, the government fiercely protects the sponsors. It says local authorities are responsible for assuring the safety of children after they are dropped off with sponsors, but refuses to give local authorities lists of the kids — so they don’t know they even exist, and cannot provide child protective services. The Democrat bill prevents HHS from doing more oversight to ensure the safety of children, saying, “The Director may not uniformly require post-release services to be in place before releasing an unaccompanied noncitizen child to a sponsor,” and, “If HHS becomes aware that a child is in danger, it may not take the child back, but may (not must) notify local authorities.” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said American children would never be treated with such little diligence, and “we should protect these vulnerable children from harm as if they were our own.” Grassley objected to the Democrat bill Tuesday, saying, “I can’t imagine having every decision critical to my survival turned over to a complete stranger who the government hasn’t even fully vetted, but child safety wasn’t even this administration’s priority.” “Three months into their term, the Biden-Harris administration tore up an information-sharing agreement” and “they replaced it with a watered-down agreement that deleted provisions that required sponsors to be vetted and run through certain law enforcement checks before being granted custody of a child.” “I’m not sure if the Biden-Harris administration ever stopped to wonder how a local law enforcement agency looks after a child when the federal government won’t even give them a photograph of an endangered child,” he continued. Grassley said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra once lectured employees on a conference call for taking too long vetting sponsors, saying, “This is not the way you do an assembly line.” One employee said, “We only get sued if we keep kids in care of the government too long. We don’t get sued by traffickers,” he said. Critics say the loophole that shields people from being turned away at the border if they show up without parents has induced the separation of intact families and led to children being made astonishingly vulnerable to exploitation. The Democratic platform adopted at Kamala Harris’ 2024 convention says the loophole on unaccompanied minors must remain intact. Related: How Guatemalan Traffickers Exploit Biden’s ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ Program

In a shocking display of crime, an elderly couple from Illinois fell victim to a robbery shortly after their incredible $130,000 win at a local casino. Police reports detail how the couple, in their 70s, was followed home by the assailants and violently robbed of their winnings after an exciting evening at the Rivers Casino in Des Plaines, Illinois, on September 16, 2024. The crime, which has left the local community in shock, involved two individuals who stalked the couple as they left the casino, tracking them back to their home in Hoffman Estates. Authorities believe that the thieves were keeping a close eye on the couple from inside the casino, specifically targeting them after they had secured their winnings. Once the couple arrived home, the suspects ambushed them in their driveway, violently assaulting them before making off with the cash. WATCH: A Florida couple was followed and ambushed outside their home after winning a $3,000 jackpot at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Tampa. pic.twitter.com/1aetYIsrHG — Sabrina Smolders (@SabrinaSmolders) August 15, 2024 According to the police report, the couple had cashed out their winnings after a thrilling evening on the casino floor, making their way out with hopes of celebrating their newfound fortune. However, their joy was short-lived as the criminals, who had clearly been waiting for the right moment, struck as soon as the couple reached home. The thieves forcibly took the couple’s winnings, leaving them shaken and injured. Officers with the Hoffman Estates Police Department confirmed that the couple sustained non-life-threatening injuries but were understandably traumatized by the incident. Detectives are now working to review surveillance footage from both the casino and the surrounding areas near the couple’s residence, hoping to gather crucial evidence to identify and apprehend the suspects. CRIME FOOTAGE: Man gets brutally robbed at a casino after winning it big. Where is the security? pic.twitter.com/hscFcTvPid — Police Shootings (@PoliceSho0tings) August 13, 2024 This robbery has drawn considerable attention, both due to the amount of money involved and the brazenness of the crime. Security experts have raised concerns about the vulnerabilities of casino patrons, particularly the elderly, who may be seen as easy targets by criminals lurking inside or near gambling establishments. "Unfortunately, this is a common tactic used by thieves," said one security consultant. "Casinos are high-stakes environments, and criminals will often watch for big winners, especially older patrons, and follow them home to rob them." The Rivers Casino, where the couple won their jackpot, issued a statement following the robbery, expressing concern over the safety of their patrons and their commitment to cooperating with law enforcement during the investigation. "The safety of our guests is our highest priority, and we are fully cooperating with local law enforcement as they investigate this unfortunate incident. We are taking steps to ensure that our patrons feel secure when they visit our casino," the statement read. This crime is part of a larger trend of criminals targeting vulnerable individuals leaving casinos across the country. In recent years, several similar incidents have been reported, sparking debates about whether additional security measures, such as armed escorts or enhanced parking lot surveillance, should be provided to patrons who win large sums of money. While some casinos offer escorts for patrons, these services are often not widely advertised or used, leaving many winners unprotected. Hoffman Estates Police are urging anyone with information about the robbery to come forward. Meanwhile, local authorities are advising casino-goers to exercise caution when leaving such establishments, particularly after securing large sums of money. "People need to be aware of their surroundings, especially after winning big at a casino. Criminals are looking for easy targets, and unfortunately, this couple became one," said a local law enforcement official. The post Elderly Illinois Couple Robbed After Winning $130,000 at Casino appeared first on The Conservative Brief.