Aggregator

The average basket of 21 essential school supplies costs $173.45, a 7.7% increase from last year.

But if their batting order gets it together in time for October, Cam Schlittler showed again in Sunday’s 2-1, 10-inning loss to Atlanta that he looks to be up to the task of shutting down a postseason-worthy lineup.

Arizona, California Score Separate Court Wins Over Election Rules

Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,

Election officials in Arizona and California won separate court victories Friday in disputes over voting rules, with a federal appeals court upholding key provisions of an Arizona voter-registration law and a California judge temporarily blocking a local election overhaul.

Arizona Voter Registration Law

In Arizona, an 11-judge en banc panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit unanimously ruled that voting rights organizations lacked standing to challenge two provisions that dictate how counties should maintain their voter rolls.

The Arizona law, enacted in 2022 as Senate Bill 1260, requires county recorders to cancel a voter’s registration after receiving confirmation from another county that the person has moved and registered there. Another provision makes it a felony to knowingly provide a “mechanism for voting” to someone registered in another state.

The Arizona Alliance for Retired Americans, Voto Latino, and Priorities USA sued the Arizona attorney general, secretary of state, and the state’s 15 county recorders in 2022, arguing that portions of the law violated federal voting law and constitutional protections.

The groups argued, among other things, that the cancellation provision could improperly remove eligible voters from the rolls and that the felony provision was vague enough to expose organizations conducting voter registration and education activities to prosecution.

A federal district court initially issued a preliminary injunction blocking the cancellation and felony provisions. A three-judge Ninth Circuit panel later reversed that order, finding that the organizations lacked standing to challenge the cancellation provision and were unlikely to prevail in their challenge to the felony provision.

The plaintiffs successfully sought review by the full court, but Friday’s en banc ruling reached the same conclusion.

The groups argued that they were forced to spend extra time and resources educating voters about the law and helping them cancel prior registrations. The court, however, concluded that this did not count as a concrete injury needed to prove standing.

“Because the organizations have not clearly shown that the cancellation provision affects or interferes with their voter-registration and voter-education efforts, they have not established an injury-in-fact,” U.S. Circuit Judge Anthony D. Johnstone wrote for the court.

The court also rejected the organizations’ request to block the felony provision pending the litigation.

“Although the stand-alone phrase ‘mechanism for voting’ arguably encompasses voter registration and education, the full text and statutory context of the Felony Provision show that it likely does not criminalize those activities,” Johnstone wrote.

California Court Blocks County Measure

Also on Friday, a California judge temporarily blocked Shasta County from implementing a voter-approved measure that would dramatically change how elections are conducted in the Northern California county.

Measure B, approved by about 56 percent of voters in June, would require government-issued photo identification for voter registration and in-person voting, restrict vote-by-mail and early voting, require ballots to be counted by hand, and establish a county voter-registration system separate from California’s statewide system.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber sued to block the measure, arguing that Shasta County’s status as a charter county does not mean it can adopt its own election rules conflicting with those of the state.

State officials had sought an expedited ruling, since election preparations were already underway for November and the county’s 116,000 registered voters needed certainty about how they would cast their ballots.

On Friday, Shasta County Superior Court Judge Benjamin Hanna sided with the state in granting the preliminary injunction, meaning the county will conduct the Nov. 3 general election under existing California election laws while the lawsuit proceeds.

A Shasta County official confirmed that the measure’s provisions would not be implemented unless the court issues another order.

“Following a preliminary injunction by the Shasta County Superior Court regarding a proposed amendment to the Shasta County Charter titled, Measure B, Voter ID, Hand-Counted Ballots, and Absentee Voting Limits Initiative, the election and voting policies described in Measure B will not be implemented for the November 3, 2026, General Election, unless further order of the court,” the county said in a statement.

Bonta welcomed the decision, saying it would provide clarity for voters ahead of the election.

“Today’s ruling prevents Measure B from taking effect while our litigation proceeds, providing certainty that the November election will be conducted under California’s established election laws,” he said. “We will continue fighting to permanently strike down the measure.”

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/09/2026 - 21:00

“It’s so sad, so sad.  We are in California, the best state in the United States, right?”

Jones played "Cooter" on the series "Dukes of Hazzard" and also represented the state of Georgia during two terms in Congress

Jones played "Cooter" on the series "Dukes of Hazzard" and also represented the state of Georgia during two terms in Congress

The fraudsters told their mark they couldn't collect a lottery jackpot because of their immigration status, cops said.

An X-ray performed by veterinary staff revealed the rare snake's devoured a large opossum before its capture.

"Today we are clearly not performing at our potential," Wendy's CEO admitted in a statement.

Welcome to the tumultuous world of LIV Golf, where the actual golf is mere background music (along with the ambient tunes playing through the speakers all over the course during play) amid all of the off-course drama.

Your Tax Dollars At Work: 20 Port Authority Workers, 17 Cops, Make Over $400,000

Apparently, one of the best ways to make $400,000 a year in the New York area is to work for the Port Authority, according to the NY Post.

Twenty Port Authority employees, including 17 cops, cleared $400,000 in total compensation last year as the agency's payroll sailed past $1.2 billion. And much of the magic came from everyone's favorite government money fountain: overtime.

According to payroll data obtained by the Empire Center for Public Policy, 323 employees collected at least $100,000 in overtime alone. Of those, 189 were Port Authority cops. Eight top earners managed to rack up more than $200,000 each in OT. Police Lt. Nicholas Federico won the unofficial jackpot. His $180,691 base salary came with another $215,717 in overtime, helping push his total compensation, including benefits, to $466,775.

Detective sergeants Dewan Maharaj and Robert Zafonte Jr. weren't exactly eating ramen either. Both finished around $448,600, with Maharaj collecting nearly $148,000 in overtime and Zafonte adding about $139,000. The NY Post writes that the overtime crown belonged to chief maintenance supervisor Reginald Bowers, who piled up $231,916 in OT and finished with $421,041 in total compensation.

Chart: New York Post

And this wasn't just a few employees discovering the cheat code.

Of the Port Authority's 8,356 workers, 5,711 received overtime last year. That's 68% of the workforce. Altogether, overtime cost the agency $196 million, representing about 16% of its entire payroll.

Port Authority police accounted for $85 million of that OT bill. The agency's 1,968 cops averaged $184,949 in pay, while 68 of its 100 highest-paid employees worked in the Police Department.

Perhaps the funniest comparison is at the top. Richard Cotton, who was actually running the Port Authority before retiring in January, earned $327,918. Ninety-four people working underneath him made more.

The Empire Center says taxpayers may get the privilege of paying for all of this more than once.

“Taxpayers are getting fleeced twice,” President Zilvinas Silenas said, arguing that taxpayers first fund the salaries and overtime and can later get stuck with pension costs influenced by those earnings. He also warned that rising payroll expenses could eventually show up in higher tolls and fees.

Which would be particularly charming considering those are already going up. The Port Authority raised bridge and tunnel tolls 3% in January while eliminating some off-peak E-ZPass discounts. PATH fares have also increased, with more hikes scheduled in the coming years.

The agency says the compensation reflects the enormous security demands involved in protecting airports, bridges, tunnels, rail systems and other critical infrastructure.

“Keeping the people we serve safe is non-negotiable and our highest priority,” spokesman Seth Stein said, noting that many Port Authority facilities remain potential terrorism targets. The agency also pointed out that it has added hundreds of police officers in recent years and said average police overtime actually declined 9% between 2024 and 2025.

So yes, overtime is apparently improving. It just happens to be improving at a place where hundreds of employees are still making six figures in overtime and 20 workers are clearing $400,000. Progress.

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/09/2026 - 20:25

Stop us if you've heard this before: Craig Kimbrel is back in the Major Leagues.

The actress debuted her baby bump in April, one day after People reported she was pregnant and due in the fall.

The actress debuted her baby bump in April, one day after People reported she was pregnant and due in the fall.

Billy Amick has already made a name for himself. 

Scott Wiener's hypocrisy and flip-flopping stance does not bode well for his political future.

No Hikes For You

By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

Much of the country is facing extreme heat and humidity this weekend. It makes it difficult to read and get ready for the week, let alone write something for this week, so we will keep this one short and focus on charts.

The markets started and ended the week with a bang. We continue to keep a close eye on the stocks and sectors most affected by Situational UnAwareness (last weekend’s T-Report). The Nasdaq 100 had an insanely strong Tuesday, gave up some gains Wednesday and Thursday, only to claw back those gains on Friday, primarily after the weak employment report hit the tape (Houston We Have a Data Problem). At what point will we spend the money to totally revamp how we collect and process data? “Surveys” seem incredibly “old school” when so much real-time information is available. We will see if the worst is behind us on the AI spend story.

• We continue to like buying the bonds being issued to fund data centers and AI. We’ve been writing about this with increasing frequency. It was almost amazing to see Alphabet do such a massive bond deal on a Thursday in August. The size of the order book is indicative of how prepared the market is to absorb the expected supply, which is why I think the surprise will be for a rapid move tighter than ongoing weakness (all we need is one company to discuss potentially slowing their spend given all the hurdles we have been writing about for the past few weeks).

We touched on a lot of these issues on Bloomberg TV on Thursday, in case you prefer to watch/listen, rather than read (our segment starts at the 1 hour 43 minute mark).

No Hikes For You

According to the Bloomberg WIRP function, the market went from pricing in a full hike in September, as recently as July 24th, and is now back below a 50% chance (which I think is still too high).

• JOLTS was mixed. The employment component of ISM Services was below 50. ADP was better than NFP but left a lot to be desired (44k jobs). It is reasonable for the Fed to question the strength of the job market.
• Inflation. Let’s examine Truflation a bit more closely.

We include “frozen” which is the time series as originally published with no attempt to revise it as more information is available. The “unfrozen” version is effectively a “revised” time series.

The pink line is 2.49%, because 2.49% rounds down to 2% if we are using only whole numbers (that may seem like “cheating” but I think Warsh, in particular, thinks more “in the vicinity” of 2% rather than 2.0%).

The beauty of this data is that it makes sense to me. Just a quick glance at this data seems to “jive” with what we’ve been experiencing (and notice it is all below 2.49%).

In this chart we explore the difference between Truflation and CPI.

Truflation was much higher for 2021 and 2022 than CPI. Honestly, that seems correct! While the barbaric way in which shelter is calculated for CPI played a big part, it is not entirely to blame. Now CPI is higher than Truflation. Why? Because maybe it is just catching up? Imagine if the Fed was focused on Truflation rather than CPI in 2021 and 2022. Would they have hiked sooner? Would they have continued with QE as long as they did? We will never know, but treating CPI as a “gold” standard and dismissing metrics like Truflation seems nonsensical to me.

This is also why I’d argue that we have an “affordability” issue more than an “inflation” issue. The problem isn’t so much in today’s price moves, it is that the price moves we were hit with back in 2021 and 2022 were not properly reflected in the data! (Yes, this is a hill I’m prepared to defend). Not saying Truflation is perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it is pretty easy to see a policy path that is very different than the one we’ve taken if they looked at more types of data.

I’ve always thought the Fed liked core PCE as their favorite metric, because it was almost always below 2%! It was “convenient” that their “preferred” metric was never above 2%. Literally, from 2008 to 2020 it was almost never above 2%. Maybe I’m being a bit too cynical, but I think the Fed liked to point to this measure because it gave them the flexibility to be more dovish, rather than because it was so much more useful, relevant, and accurate than other bits of inflation data we get.

If you can agree that other data might tell a good story and that this pedestal that Core PCE has been set upon doesn’t make sense, then maybe we should be cutting? It isn’t like Truflation Core is “always” below PCE (which is why we put in the nice green oval), but it is certainly much lower now! And the rate of decline (inflation) actually makes more sense to me than the PCE numbers. The large price shocks are behind us in the real world, but unfortunately they are still appearing in the data world the “old Fed” looked at. I am pretty sure I still have a HP-12C lying around (anyone on Wall Street from the last century knows how ubiquitous they were on trading desks), but I cannot remember the last time I thought about using it!

Warsh was basically put in charge to cut. He will deal with the hand he has been dealt (the renewed conflict in Iran isn’t helping), but his bias is to cut, not hike.

While it is unclear where we stand in Iran at the moment, it seems like we are on the verge of getting some sort of agreement between Oman and Iran to re-open the Strait in some capacity. It seems as though they are negotiating something that will be agreed to by the U.S.? It all seems a bit weird, and goes against the military successes, but it seems to be headed in that direction. If the Strait is opened AND the US encourages Iranian oil sales (like we did at the start of the MOU) then Warsh’s job of steering the Fed to a cut gets a lot easier (and the hawks may have to change their tune rapidly).

Bottom Line

The long end of the yield curve is likely to remain under some pressure as the global supply of sovereign and corporate debt continues to soar.

The front end will start pricing out fewer hikes. Probably far too early to price in cuts, but the hiking story is crowded, and I think wrong. It will require more people to break years of tradition and base decisions on the same set of data, regardless of being aware of the inherent flaws in the data!

Credit spreads should do well, though I like the AI/Data Center plays even more on an all-in yield basis than just spread. It is cheap and positioning has corrected itself to where the move to tighter spreads/lower yields seems to be the more likely path.

With chatter of investors looking to put money into the hands of the fund manager that ran Situational Awareness, those sectors could do well. I’m neutral there, as I think there is another round of AI “doubt” creeping into the narrative which will hurt valuations (while supporting the credit side of the story).

On the rest of the equity markets, I’m biased towards ProSec globally. Across the globe, energy, electricity production, smelting, processing, and refining will do well. I’m both surprised and happy that Australia committed to its first new refinery in 60 years! Each country (or region) will need to prioritize their efforts, but we see this happening.

• Look for the government wallet to be used to direct these developments and projects. Not just by direct involvement in projects (which will happen) but also by putting conditions on what the government will buy, to the extent that it makes projects economical, where they otherwise wouldn’t be. Low cost is taking a back seat to National Security – globally!
• The ProSec Hierarchy will vary across the globe. Some regions will need to focus on food and water. Others (Europe) will need to focus on military production. (I’d create an Airbus for Drones if I were Europe). Chips, AI, and compute will need to be prioritized. (I’m increasingly concerned that there is a danger of Cheap China Compute hitting us far sooner and harder than we’d previously thought!).
  • The President “kicked the hornet’s nest” on global supply chains. The intention was clearly to grow U.S. exports. That can happen, but increasingly, there is a “domestic” intent globally, providing a real opportunity in other markets that embrace that mantra!

With weather forecasts sounding right up Adrian Cronauer’s alley, it seems like a good time to conclude with the most useful advice I can give - Stay Cool My Friends!

Tyler Durden Sun, 08/09/2026 - 19:50

A 19-year-old man was stabbed multiple times near the Dominican Day Parade route in Midtown on Sunday, police said. 

The weapon -- described as the “Holy Grail of firearms’’ —  was allegedly swiped during a SWAT-style raid by masked officers at repair man Juan Pablo Ruppel’s home in rural Buenos Aires province in 2016.

The rock sitting atop the world's tallest mountain is loaded with ancient sea creature fossils — which some are now claiming proves the Bible story of the floods and Noah's Ark were real events.