Hey, everyone …
THANK YOU to subscribing contributors WSS3, MM, and ES, and to long-time supporters RB and SZ! Their contributions yesterday, totaling $170, bring our annual fundraiser total (as of 5am) to $925.50!
That gets us to 1/3 of our goal (once we’ve raised $2,751.50, supporter GL will “match funds” to make it $5,503) … and once we reach that goal, I’ll stop hectoring you about money completely for the rest of the year, and almost completely until next October. So:
We don’t do FIREHOSE FRIDAYS very often these days, in part because we now include extra web-only content, above and beyond our 60-item email digest, EVERY day, but it’s worth turning on the water every once in a while both to call attention to how much content we’re collecting for you and to drag you over to the web edition where you might …
… and today we’ve got more than 100 news stories, opinion pieces, and audio video links lined up for you at the web site.
Since the firehose is already on at both the content and fundraising ends, let’s keep it on over the weekend — our “mini-goal” is to hit the $1,500 mark by 5am on Monday. I’ve already given you that URL in big letters twice above.
Have a happy, healthy, and prosperous weekend!
Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review News Digest / Freedom News Daily
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“Israeli [squatter] militants have attacked European diplomats, a French mayor and the archbishop of Cambrai in Taybeh, in the occupied West Bank, injuring three people and damaging a car, in the latest violent attempt to prevent Palestinians from harvesting olives on their own land. Bernard Baudoux, mayor of Aulnoye-Aymeries, was wearing his red, white and blue sash of office and attempting to enter a vehicle with diplomatic plates when he was assaulted and knocked to the ground on Saturday. … [Squatters] first attacked a group working on the lower slopes of hills near Taybeh. As well as stealing olives, they kicked, abused and assaulted a Palestinian woman in her 70s and beat a man so badly he needed six stitches for a head injury. Then they approached the diplomats and Badoux, who was in Taybeh for the launch of a twinning agreement with his town in northern France.” (10/17/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/17/israeli-settlers-attack-european-diplomats-in-west-bank
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“President Trump’s choice of rejecting ‘America First’ is reaping a whirlwind of consequences.” (10/16/26)
https://x.com/RonPaul/status/2111124917714370893
Source: Coyote Blog
by Warren Meyer
“I have not blogged for a while but recently I have allowed all the election advertising to get under my skin. The solution sets being discussed — to the extent any solutions are discussed rather than just promoting fear of the other team –are so divorced from any sensible analysis of cause and effect that it is almost intolerable to even listen. For this article, I have taken real things people have expressed concern about in this election cycle and I have proposed six meta issues that are closer to the true causes of people’s concerns. Of course, none of this is being discussed by anyone on either side in this election.” (10/16/26)
https://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2026/10/six-meta-problems-that-should-be-issues-in-the-election-but-are-not.html
Source: Law & Liberty
by Emina Melonic
“Tom Cruise may possibly be the biggest movie star in the world. His career has been a constant stream of blockbusters spanning more than four decades. Cruise has historically made excellent decisions in picking his projects, but his newest film, Digger (2026), is certainly a departure from anything we’ve seen Tom Cruise do on the silver screen. But that’s not all—Digger is a departure from cinema as we have known it, at least in the years since Covid broke out. The headlines mostly dismiss the film as a box office flop. The film critics are not helping the matter either. They don’t like it, at all. Yet in the last few days after its opening, the chatter among the people in real life and social media has been quite positive.” (10/16/26)
https://lawliberty.org/the-depth-of-digger/
Source: United Press International
“A judge dismissed child sex abuse charges against actor Timothy Busfield on Friday because, he said, prosecutors ‘failed to act in a fair and impartial manner.’ Busfield, 69, was indicted by a grand jury in New Mexico in February on four counts of criminal sexual contact of a child on the set of the Fox television series The Cleaning Lady. Busfield, who acted in and directed the show from 2022 to 2024, was indicted after accusations of groping twin boys who worked as child actors on the show. … He denied all charges, and said the boys’ parents were seeking ‘revenge’ after the child actors were not invited back for the show’s final season, Variety reported.” (10/16/26)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2026/10/16/timothy-busfield-sex-abuse-dismissed/1351792189200/
Source: Freakonomics
“Is This What a ‘Good Billionaire’ Looks Like?” (10/16/26)
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-this-what-a-good-billionaire-looks-like/
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mani Basharzad
“A public company in the UK was building a high-speed railway when it suddenly faced a regulation that few could have predicted: a £100 million ($132 million) bat tunnel. The railway passed through Sheephouse Wood, an area inhabited by rare Bechstein’s bats. To comply with environmental regulations that protect the bats from colliding with high-speed trains, the company had to build a roughly one-kilometer covered structure alongside the railway. This structure has since become widely known in the UK as the ‘bat tunnel.’ If you think this is just one case, let me tell you about the fish disco.” (10/16/26)
https://fee.org/articles/why-can-nothing-be-built-in-britain/
Source: Town Hall
by Derek Hunter
“I don’t know where you grew up, but I grew up six blocks north of the Detroit border and one block south of 8 Mile Road, ‘on the bad side’. It wasn’t bad when I was a kid, or at least not as bad, and as I got older, I spent more time in the city. I went to college downtown at Wayne State and lived for a time in the Cass Corridor, back when that was not a place you wanted to be (it’s quite different now). I saw firsthand why there is distrust and dislike between black Detroiters and Arabs in the city, and I’m kind of surprised no one has talked about it in regard to why Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is doing so horribly with black voters.” (10/17/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2026/10/18/theres-a-reason-black-voters-in-detroit-dont-like-abdul-n2684862
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“A nursery owner and five members of her staff have been jailed after they were found to have poisoned more than 200 children with lead-tainted food. Li Huifang, who operated the Heshi Peixin Kindergarten in Tianshui, in the Gansu province, was sentenced to life in prison for producing and selling toxic and harmful food, according to Chinese state media. In July 2025, 247 pupils and staff at the nursery were found to have abnormally high blood lead levels after children began falling ill. A report into the incident found that chefs at Heshi Peixin had used inedible paint to ‘enhance the look’ of its meals to attract more students – despite the paint being being clearly marked as such. In addition to the sentence, the Lanzhou Intermediate People’s Court also ordered the confiscation of 500,000 yuan (£56,200; $74,700) of Li’s personal assets, state broadcaster CCTV reported.” (10/17/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqe9lx54g7x9o
Source: The New Republic
“Fox News Just Nuked Trump With His Most Disastrous Poll Yet.” (10/16/26)
https://newrepublic.com/article/216718/fox-news-just-nuked-trump-disastrous-poll-yet
