A gunman opened fire at a Fourth of July parade in Monday in a Chicago suburb, killing at least five people and wounding several others.
The suspect remains at large, and police are reportedly patrolling the area.
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Buying a used car in the Midwest got a little more affordable in May over the previous month.
The good news is that year-over-year price increases in used vehicles in May dropped seven percentage points from the year-over-year April price increases, from April’s 23.9% to May’s 16.9%. The bad news is a used car and truck in May 2022 still cost 16.9% more than a comparable used vehicle cost in May 2021.
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U.S. Marine Carl Spurlin Dekel, who turned 100 years old on June 29, mourned the decline of America in a Fox 13 News interview, tearfully lamenting, “Our country’s going to hell!”
“People don’t realize what they have,” Dekel said. “They bitch about it. And, then, nowadays, I am so upset that the things we did, things we fought for, and the boys that died for it, it’s all going down the drain.”
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As those of us who are not leftist ingrates celebrate Independence Day, it is important to remember and thank our men and women of the armed services for the sacrifices they make to keep us safe. Yet, it is well to remember and thank another crucial group of uniformed individuals. who also sacrifice to keep us safe—America’s police officers.
Recently, I had the chance to visit with members of one of my home state’s police organizations. It has been a rough couple of years for them. While the radical chic of attacking the police and demanding they be defunded has somewhat abated, my friends reminded me that dangers wrought by this injurious policy have only managed to dent, not end, its advocacy.
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Robert E. Lee’s smashing victory against Major General Joseph Hooker’s Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville in May 1863 provided the Confederacy with three strategic options: shift resources from Virginia to Mississippi in order to revive Vicksburg, the Rebel redoubt on the Mississippi River; reinforce Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee, enabling him to reprise his 1862 invasion of Kentucky and maneuver the Union Army of the Cumberland under William Rosecrans out of its position in central Tennessee; or invade Pennsylvania.
But after Chancellorsville, it was probably too late to affect the outcome at Vicksburg, because the siege was already under way. (Vicksburg would fall on the Fourth of July.) And it didn’t make sense to detach forces from the Confederacy’s only successful field army, the Army of Northern Virginia, under its only successful general, Lee, and send them to other generals whose competence was questionable. In the end, Lee effectively made the case to Confederate president Jefferson Davis that the best use of limited Confederate resources was to invade Pennsylvania. As he had done in the fall of 1862, Lee intended to effect a strategic turning movement, draw the Yankees out of Virginia, and annihilate a Federal army on Union soil, forcing Lincoln to sue for peace.
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America is currently in the midst of a broader political realignment. The political Left, which once upon a time purported to stand for the forgotten “little guy” against the titans of Big Business, has in recent years decided that Big Business is actually an ally of convenience in its long Gramsci-an “march” through the institutions. Chris Rufo has perhaps demonstrated this trend better than anyone else.
And the political Right, whose once-instinctive neoliberal proclivities made it a convenient ally for Big Business, is currently rethinking its approach to political economy in general, as well as its specific relationship to culturally leftist multinational corporations. The most tangible recent expression of this rethinking has been Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crippling punishment of The Walt Disney Company for its coming out on behalf of sexually grooming innocent children in the Sunshine State.
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If you plan on holding a July 4 cookout this weekend, expect to pay a lot more than what you paid for last year’s meal.
According to the American Farm Bureau Federation marketbasket survey, the overall cost for the Independence Day cookout is up 17%, or about $10 from last year. Ongoing supply chain disruptions, inflation tied in part to increased government spending, and the war in Ukraine are being blamed for the price hikes.
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White House economic adviser Brian Deese on Thursday told CNN that high gas prices were a necessary inconvenience to preserve the “future of the liberal world order,” amid the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The average price of gas exceeded $5 per gallon for the first time in U.S. history in early June.
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Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz has introduced a bill to disarm the Internal Revenue Service.
Along with fellow Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Jeff Duncan (S.C.), and Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Gaetz is pushing the “Disarm the IRS Act,” which would prohibit the IRS from acquiring (by purchase or otherwise) any ammunition.
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The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its partners agreed to boost oil production on Thursday, backing a plan released earlier this month, ahead of President Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia in mid-July.
In their fifth meeting since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, which sent oil prices skyrocketing to above $100 a barrel for the first time in eight years, OPEC and a group of Russian-led non-OPEC members agreed to raise their collective production by 648,000 barrels a day.
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Cornell University recently admitted to removing both a bust of President Abraham Lincoln and a plaque of the Gettysburg Address from its library after a student anonymously complained about the display, presumably due to so-called “racism.”
Fox News reports that biology professor Randy Wayne gave a very brief statement on the matter, simply saying “someone complained, and it was gone.” Wayne said that he first noticed the missing display several weeks earlier and asked the librarians what had happened, to which he was told that the school had received some kind of complaint; the librarians refused to provide any specific details on the nature of the complaint.
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Israel is in consultations with Middle Eastern countries to install Israeli-made defense systems on their territory, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday.
Several countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have reportedly negotiated with Israel to obtain a network of sensors that will combat the potential missile threat from Iran, according to Breaking Defense. A shared communications network would theoretically allow participating states to alert others when incoming missiles trigger the sensors, Breaking Defense reported, citing Israeli officials.
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The Biden administration’s messaging on immigration has created “confusion” that human smugglers and traffickers have exploited, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.
Giammattei said smugglers know it’s easier to get people into the U.S. illegally under the Biden administration as a family, and that smugglers have used children, whether biological or not, in order to get their clients across the border. He mentioned the Biden administration’s effort to codify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which prevents migrants brought to the U.S. as children from being immediately deported, as exacerbating the problem.
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After this month’s historic special election win in South Texas, Republican strategists nationwide are asking themselves: how can we replicate now-Congresswoman Mayra Flores’s success in flipping an 84% Hispanic district to the GOP? Meantime, Democrats are burying their heads in the South Texas sand as Hispanic voters flee their party.
It’s not rocket science to appeal to Hispanic voters and persuade them to vote Republican. My firm’s work with the Hispanic Republican Coalition of Pennsylvania shows how to do it.
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Without sufficient support in Congress and state legislatures to pass sweeping green energy measures, environmentalists are now targeting the oil and gas industry through a financial movement that pressures companies to support liberal policies, according to critics.
“ESG promotes and implements policies through private businesses that could be adopted through a legislative process,” said Utah Treasurer Marlo Oaks. “The Green New Deal didn’t make it through Congress, so its proponents shifted the battlefield to the capital markets.”
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Many California parents are celebrating wins this week after a controversial school district superintendent was fired for making comments about Asian students and the state’s proposed equitable math program has been postponed from being implemented.
At the same time, a new framework for civics was launched nationally. Advocates are praising the education reform initiatives that have already begun in Florida and Louisiana.
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A hotline set up by Gov. Tim Walz’s administration to monitor compliance with his 2020 stay-at-home order generated thousands of reports from Minnesotans who snitched on their neighbors for things like playing basketball in a park, walking their dogs, and throwing small parties.
The hotline was launched in March 2020 and law enforcement continued to monitor it until November, well after the stay-at-home order ended. In October 2020, it was used to alert authorities to a church service that didn’t fit with the governor’s “legal requirements.” This type of complaint was not uncommon.
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