(FREE) PAINE IN THE MORNING: What you need to know this Monday – August 22, 2022

Here’s what you need to know today, Monday – August 22, 2022.

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Lockdown-Effects Could Now Be Killing More People Than COVID; Report – A new report based on official figures from the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) asserts that the effects of lockdown may now be killing more people than COVID-19.

The stats show that non-COVID excess deaths continue to outstrip COVID deaths, with 1,000 people dying each week from conditions other than the virus. – READ MORE

Gaslighting Americans at the Gas Pump – As if we need any more proof Biden & Co. think Americans are stupid, on Friday, White House staffers sent the media an Orwellian-level gaslighting email entitled, “ICYMI: America Just Got A $100-A-Month Raise.’” Weird, right? I seem to have missed that “raise.”

Included in the email was a link to a insidious CNN article of the same headline that gushed about how great lower gas prices are — all due, of course, to Joe Biden’s historical and miraculous leadership. The “next time you stop at a gas station, think of it as a $100-a-month tax cut. Or a maybe $100-a-month raise,” the article began. Seriously? Yes, seriously. CNN goes on to puff that “half of the gas stations in the nation are charging less than” the national average and “28% of the 130,000 gas stations tracked by OPIS are now charging less than $3.50 a gallon.” Wowza, it’s almost like that’s how averages work! – READ MORE

U.S. Petroleum Reserves Hit Lowest Level In Decades Ahead Of Winter Months – Strategic Petroleum Reserve levels have reached their lowest levels in four decades as autumn and winter weather conditions approach, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.

President Joe Biden has responded to rising gas prices by releasing one million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves — a stock of emergency crude oil created to “reduce the impact of disruptions in supplies of petroleum products.” Though reserves in January 2021 were as high as 638 million barrels, reserves have fallen to 461 million barrels as of August 2022 — a level not seen since March 1985. – READ MORE

Federal Judge Rules Biden’s Oil and Gas Order Broke the Law, Issues Permanent Injunction in States That Sued – A federal judge on Thursday issued a permanent injunction that will allow new oil and gas leases on federal lands.

The ruling by Judge Terry Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana came one day after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had kicked back to Doughty an injunction he issued last year to accomplish the same goal, according to The Hill. – READ MORE

Brace For Even Higher Beef Prices As Texas Cattle Industry Faces Historic Drought Crisis – Ranchers across Texas continue to panic sell cattle herds as the worst megadrought in 1,200 years makes it too expensive to sustain operations.

“We’ll keep selling cows till it rains,” Texas High Plains rancher Jim Ferguson told Amarillo station KAMR, which collaborated with The Hill on the expanding cattle crisis in the state. – READ MORE

Report: Wealthy Celebrity Elites Including Reese Witherspoon, Jay-Z Benefited from PPP Loans; Most Have Been Forgiven – Wealthy celebrities including Reese Witherspoon, Khloe Kardashian, Jay-Z, and the rock bands Pearl Jam and Green Day have benefited from government-issued Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans handed out at the height of the coronavirus pandemic — nearly all of which have been forgiven by Uncle Sam, according to a new report from the Daily Mail.

The result is that taxpayers will end up footing the bill for the millions of dollars that businesses associated with the celebrities don’t have to repay. – READ MORE

What’s John Kerry Hiding? Memo Shows Biden’s Climate Office Is Keeping ‘Elements We Can’t Put On Paper’ Out Of Emails – What does President Joe Biden’s special climate envoy office led by John Kerry really do as he flies around the globe in gas-guzzling jets?

The world may never know the answer, because a new report suggests that the office’s staffers keep certain items out of emails, opting instead to call their boss when certain details arise. – READ MORE

Hey Neat, Spend $1,000 On Green Energy And The Feds Will Give You A $300 Tax Credit To Reduce Inflation. Thanks, Biden! –  Great news kemosabes, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, you can soon start saving hundreds via tax credits — you just have to start shelling out thousands of dollars on green energy appliances to reap the benefits.

Earlier this week, CNN needled President Joe Biden’s energy secretary Jennifer Granholm on how exactly the Inflation Reduction Act would help American consumers, considering that several studies show it could barely impact prices. Granholm promised that the law would “immediately” have an impact if Americans simply put in a little elbow grease and spent some of their hard-earned money to fight climate change. – READ MORE

Take a Look Inside a Cricket Farm…Which Is Where Your Food Will Come From Soon – It’s astonishing how, by the time we normal folk first hear of a new Globalist Socialist initiative, it turns out there’s already a significant amount of infrastructure in place. Take eating bugs, for example. Did you know that there are currently sizable cricket farms in many parts of the world, including Canada and the United States? Or that cricket flour is already used in some foods?

For example, Entomo Farms in Canada currently produces a weekly harvest of 50 million crickets, which it mills into 9,000 pounds of “protein.” The owners plan to triple production within a year. Some of the “cricket flour” goes into pet foods, while some is added to foods made for human consumption. And some of the insects are used intact as seasoned snack foods. The cricket producer already sells its products under the brand name Actually Foods. – READ MORE

Biden’s Afghanistan Withdrawal Left Over $7 Billion In Military Equipment for Taliban to Seize: Official Report – It has been one year since the beginning of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the full impact of it is still being calculated. In a new report from the inspector general, it has been revealed that the U.S. government left behind more than $7 billion worth of military equipment.

The report, which covers the period from April 1, 2022, through June 30, 2022, was released on Tuesday. It outlined some of what was left behind as U.S. troops left the region and the Taliban quickly took over. – READ MORE

As US Announces New $800M Ukraine Arms Package, Here’s The Total List Since War’s Start – In a Thursday CNN interview Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk described a stalemated battlefield situation with Russia, while also urging more Western arms to be urgently sent. “The war is in a situation where the Russians cannot move anywhere further because of the weapons the West provided us. We managed now to make them stop,” Zagorodnyuk said.

“But unfortunately at the same time we don’t have enough weapons for a proper, serious, fully-fledged counter-offensive,” he added. Yet a battlefield stalemate is where things can get dangerous fast, as is the case with the ongoing standoff at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. As we detailed earlier President Putin has warned his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in a Friday phone call that Ukraine forces’ “systematic shelling” risks a “large-scale catastrophe” at the Zaporizhzhia plant, based on his words in the Kremlin call readout. – READ MORE

‘Bad conduct’: Former FBI agent pleads guilty to destroying evidence relevant to trial – On August 17, Former FBI Special Agent Robert Cessario signed a plea agreement, admitting to having paid a business to permanently erase data from his hard drive so that forensic examiners could not analyze its contents. The data he had wiped was considered relevant to former state Sen. Jon Woods’ corruption trial (R-Ark.). Woods was convicted of mail and wire fraud in 2018, having received kickbacks for directing funds to Ecclesia College in Springdale.

Cessario admitted in the plea deal that he had erased the contents of the hard drive knowing that the court had ordered the computer be submitted to an FBI forensics examiner in Little Rock. His stated intention was to make “the contents of the computer’s hard unavailable for forensic examination.” – READ MORE

FBI Misled Judge in Obtaining Warrant To Seize Hundreds of Safe Deposit Boxes –The FBI told a federal magistrate judge that it intended to open hundreds of safe deposit boxes seized during a March 2021 raid in order to inventory the items inside—but new evidence shows that federal agents were plotting all along to use the operation as an opportunity to forfeit cash and other valuables.

Federal agents failed to disclose those plans to the federal magistrate judge who issued the warrant for the high-profile raid of U.S. Private Vaults, a private business in Beverly Hills, California, that had been the subject of an FBI investigation since at least 2019. When the raid took place, the FBI also seems to have ignored limitations imposed by the warrant, including an explicit prohibition against using the safe deposit boxes as the basis for further criminal investigations. – READ MORE