Friday, August 16, 2024 BY CROOKED MEDIA

- Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), who said he makes tacos with “pretty much ground beef and cheese.”

Kamala Harris rolled out plans to help Americans afford groceries, housing, medication, childcare and more — taking direct aim at one of the administration’s biggest political liabilities: post-pandemic inflation.

Vice President Kamala Harris declared herself ready to pick a fight with American grocery store owners on Friday, endorsing a federal ban on price-gouging in her first big policy speech of the campaign at a rally in North Carolina. An anti-gouging rule enjoys support from progressives and polls well with swing voters. The approach crystallizes a Democratic goal to target “greedflation,” the idea that corporations leaned heavily into the inflationary trends (which began with logistical bottlenecks during the pandemic) in order to raise prices more than they really had to, while blaming market conditions. Yet this particular idea also has its detractors. Some critics argue it’s too hard to disentangle market forces of supply-and-demand from corporate malfeasance — and that stopping price gouging really amounts to command-economy style price controls.

But Harris’ war-on-sticker-shock goes well beyond the grocery aisle. She’s also focused on housing. Harris proposed a “first-ever” tax credit for builders constructing homes for first-time buyers, along with down payment assistance of up to $25,000 for those eligible — a benefit that could help 4 million households.

She also rolled out plans to reduce childcare and medical costs. She laid out broad tax cuts for middle class Americans along with a $6,000 tax credit for families per child for the first year of their lives, while also bringing back the Biden administration’s $3,000-$3,600 child tax credit that expired back in 2021. She called for a cap on insulin prices at $35, and pledged to explore ways to cancel medical debt.

Harris’ proposals came in broad strokes that lacked fine details. And yet the contrast with disgraced former President Trump couldn’t be clearer.

Trump gave what he billed as a “press conference” on Thursday supposedly aimed at addressing inflation. Instead, he rambled and lied semi-coherently for 80 minutes on a range of subjects, while standing next to two tables piled with grocery items, including uncooked meat in the August heat. Trump apparently wanted to connect with average voters concerned about inflation. But he chose to hold his event at his own golf club in Bedminster, which reportedly costs a third-of-a-million dollars to join.

Trump has always pitched himself as a savvy businessman who gets economics. But anyone watching the two campaigns this week could see why voters trust Harris more on the economy.

U.S. officials expressed cautious optimism over the latest round of Gaza ceasefire and hostage negotiations, which concluded Friday after two days of talks in Qatar. Negotiators plan to meet again next week in Egypt, where they hope to finalize an agreement to stop the fighting, according to the Associated Press.

“We are closer than we’ve ever been” to an agreement, President Joe Biden said Friday, although he stopped short of saying a deal was imminent. “We may have something,” he said. In a statement released later, Biden warned regional powers not to ratchet up tensions. “With the comprehensive ceasefire and hostage release deal now in sight, no one in the region should take actions to undermine this process,” Biden said.

Preparations are underway for a “new implementation cell” in Cairo, a U.S. official told The Associated Press. The cell aims to “focus on the agreement’s logistics, including releasing hostages, providing humanitarian aid for Gaza and monitoring that the terms of the deal are met,” the AP reported. Of course, hopes for a ceasefire have run high before in this 10-month conflict, only to be dashed.

We have some big shows coming up! Lovett or Leave It is BACK in the Windy City August 23rd at the Vic Theater for a post-DNC show! Join me, author Josh Noel and comedians Marcella Arguello, Lizz Winstead, and Kamala Harris impersonator-to-the-stars Allison Reese. Only a few tickets left for that show! Next - Pod Save America is headed to Phoenix to swing-state into action on September 7th. And finally, we're excited to announce that Lovett or Leave It will be doing a special show in LA at the Bourbon Room, a first-time venue for us, on September 12th with special guest, JANE FONDA! more to be announced! We’re 80 days out from the election so it’s time to buckle down and get serious, but not too serious. Come say hi! Head to crooked.com/events now.

The United States is experiencing its most significant summer COVID surge in at least two years. Is this the unintended consequence of everyone having a Brat summer? Difficult to say.

Organizers of the Democratic National Convention, which will kick off next week, are bracing for tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters to flood the streets of Chicago to push the Biden and prospective Harris administrations to halt military aid to Israel and show support for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Kamala Harris’ campaign is taking its fight to Donald Trump’s metaphorical front yard with an advertising blitz on Fox News this week. The nation’s conservative White boomers don’t know what they have in store.

Meanwhile, House Republicans are reportedly worried about Democrats’ big influx of fundraising cash. “We need to kick it into high gear," one GOP lawmaker told Axios.

Yet another poll confirmed that Americans like Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) more than they like Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH). Walz clocked an approval rating of 39 percent, compared to Vance’s 32 percent, in a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll. Man, JD Vance has to look at polls showing that a plurality of Americans think he is a creep every single day and frankly? That kinda rules.

A New York Grand Jury served Democratic NYC Mayor Eric Adams, City Hall and Adams’s 2021 campaign with three subpoenas in July as part of a broad federal corruption investigation, four unnamed sources told the New York Times. Is this what Adams meant by “bringing swagger back” to the Mayor’s office?

Former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is trying to get his latest election-meddling case moved from Arizona state court to a federal court. He tried this same move in another case in Georgia once before — and it went nowhere.

Donald Trump raked in $300,000 in royalty payments for his tacky “Trump-endorsed” Bible (still can’t believe this is real, we live in the dumbest-possible time, etc) according to the disgraced former president’s latest financial disclosure. A signed version of the Bible sells online for $1,000, which is precisely the pricetag Jesus would have wanted.

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Two years in, union leaders agree: the labor provisions in President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act are working.

A giant panda Ying Yang gave birth to two twins, one male and one female, at the Ocean Park amusement park in Hong Kong, China on Thursday. She is the oldest giant panda on record to give birth, one day before her 19th birthday.

Disgraced Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) ditched his plan to run as an independent in the New Jersey senate race, following his conviction on bribery charges. Sometimes you gotta know when to hold em’ and know when to give back your foreign government bribery gold bars.

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