DNC Speeches: 75%Trump & 1.5% Inflation, Billionaire Gets Whacked After Beating "Biggest Fraud Charge Ever," Iran's Election Tampering, Free Hot Dogs in Chicago for Abortions (The Five for 08/20/24)
Hey, welcome to The Five, a publication about the stories that matter.
One quick note before we dive in…a new podcast drops tomorrow at noon. If you missed last week’s episode with journalist Stephen Jimenez about the most high profile murder case of the 1990’s, click here.
Now, let’s get into the news.
[one]
Outgoing President Biden took the stage at the DNC last night (well, almost this morning, he went on at 11:30 pm eastern), and even CNN is fact checking him pretty hard.
BIDEN’S CLAIM ON BILLIONAIRES:
“We have a thousand billionaires in America. You know what the average tax rate they pay? 8.2%,” Biden said.
Facts First: Biden used this figure in a way that was misleading. As in previous remarks, including his State of the Union address in March, Biden didn’t explain that the figure is the product of an alternative calculation, from economists in his own administration, that factors in unrealized capital gains that are not treated as taxable income under federal law.
This is a particularly odd straw for the Dems to continue to grasp onto…because if we force billionaires to pay taxes on their stock portfolios, etc, the majority don’t have the cash to pay those taxes…which would result in a rapid stock selloff…which would tank the whole economy.
BIDEN’S CLAIMS ABOUT AMERICAN JOBS:
In his speech, Biden said, “We used to import products and export jobs. Now we export American products and create American jobs right here in America.”
Fact First: This claim is misleading. So far this year, the United States has imported more goods than it has exported, leading to a seasonally adjusted trade deficit of more than $567 billion, according to figures from the US Census Bureau.
The identity of those still missing emerged after an initial search of the 184-foot sailboat, named the Bayesian, was unsuccessful Monday. The British-flagged tourist vessel had 22 people aboard when it sank because of “a violent storm” off Sicily’s main city, Palermo, around 5 a.m. local time (11 p.m. ET) on Monday, the local coast guard said.
Fifteen people were rescued by a boat present in the immediate vicinity and then brought ashore by coast guard vessels, but six passengers, including American, British and Canadian citizens, remained missing, it said. They were believed to be trapped in the boat's hull, some 164 feet underwater, posing a challenge to divers who returned Tuesday to the site off Porticello, near Palermo.
I would buy the possibility that Lynch died of bad luck, fate or circumstance…if his co-defendant wasn’t hit by a car ON THE SAME WEEKEND.
Stephen Chamberlain, once Mike Lynch’s co-defendant in a US fraud trial, has died after being hit by a car while out running in Cambridgeshire, his lawyer has said.
Chamberlain, the former vice-president of finance at British software firm Autonomy, was hit on Saturday morning and had been placed on life support, Reuters reported.
On Monday Lynch was reported missing after a superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily during a violent storm. One man, understood to be the vessel’s chef, was confirmed dead and six others, including Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, remained unaccounted for on Monday evening
The fraud charges the pair just beat were related to the sale of Lynch’s company to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011.
The case centers around claims that Lynch inflated Autonomy's revenue and misrepresented its financial health to secure a $11.7 billion acquisition deal with HP. After the acquisition, HP wrote down $8.8 billion of Autonomy's value, accusing Lynch and his colleagues of fraudulent accounting practices to make the company appear more profitable than it was.
The Biden Administration is trying to put an Octogenarian survivor of Communist prison camp in prison for the rest of her life…for standing on a sidewalk.
A group of Christian pro-life activists, including an 89-year-old survivor of a communist prison camp in Eastern Europe, face over a decade in prison after they were convicted on Tuesday in a federal trial in Michigan.
A jury found Chester Gallagher, Heather Idoni, Joel Curry, Justin Phillips, Cal Zastrow, his daughter Eva Zastrow, and 89-year-old Eva Edl guilty of engaging in a conspiracy against rights and violations of the FACE Act. Edl was forced into a camp as a young child by Yugoslavian communist dictator Josip Broz Tito before fleeing to the United States.
The seven were prosecuted by the Biden administration, which has been using the conspiracy against rights charge, originally designed for the Klu Klux Klan, to go after pro-life activists. They face over 10 years in prison and hundreds of thousands in fines upon sentencing.
The charges stemmed from a peaceful demonstration, which the defendants called a “Rescue,” where the group sat and stood outside of the Northland Family Planning Clinic in Sterling Heights, Michigan, alongside a group of other pro-life activists. Edl and Idoni were convicted on an additional charge for a pro-life protest they attended at the Women’s Health Clinic in Saginaw, Michigan.
Biden shouted his way through a very odd speech last night that was heavy on accusing Trump of being a dictator…but is aligning with a former Communist dictator to put a woman back behind bars…for virtually no reason at all.
Thanks for reading Seth Tower Hurd's The Five ! This post is public so feel free to share it.
Planned Parenthood has placed reproductive rights front and center at this year’s convention in Chicago and is offering free vasectomies, medication abortions and emergency contraceptives to attendees through its mobile health bus.
The Planned Parenthood Great Rivers of St. Louis announced on X that its bus will be in Chicago on Monday and Tuesday to provide these services, directly challenging the shifting landscape of reproductive rights in the United States since the last Democratic convention, after the U.S. Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v Wade in 2022.
The post stated the bus would be there with Chicago Abortion Fund and The Wieners Circle. The Wieners Circle did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment.
We’re a long way from Bill Clinton’s policy of “abortions should be safe, legal…and rare.”
One of the common themes of stories around the last three elections is that partisan politics have become a (very poor) stand in for religion.
And apparently in the Temple of Democrats…abortion is now a sacrament.
Dems won big in 2022 on running on abortion, but one has to wonder if offering free fast food around such a serious issue might turn away some normie Joe and Jane voters.
It’s not my job to tell you what to do or think, but one thing to keep in mind with abortion is that Social Security runs of money in just nine years, which wouldn’t be the case if the 63 million aborted children aborted since 1973 would have been born, and were currently paying into Social Security taxes.
The second order of abortion is taking awhile to kick in, but may well be that you’re unable to retire due to the collapse of Social Security…so unless you’re aggressively investing for retirement, you might want to plan on spending your 70’s and 80’s as a Wal-Mart door greeter.
But hey, free hot dog.
[five]
Finally, Iran is in the business of messing with the 2024 election.
U.S. intelligence officials said Monday they were confident that Iran was responsible for the hack of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, casting the cyber intrusion as part of a brazen and broader effort by Tehran to interfere in American politics and potentially shape the outcome of the election.
he assessment from the FBI and other federal agencies was the first time the U.S. government has assigned blame for hacks that have raised anew the threat of foreign election interference and underscored how Iran, in addition to more sophisticated adversaries like Russia and China, remains a top concern. Besides breaching the Trump campaign, officials also believe that Iran tried to hack into the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris.
The hacking and similar activities, federal officials said, are meant to sow discord, exploit divisions within American society and possibly to influence the outcome of elections that Iran perceives to be “particularly consequential in terms of the impact they could have on its national security interests,” officials said.
