“Should it take four years to earn a bachelor’s degree? No. If you can earn a bachelor’s degree at Oxford or Cambridge Universities in three years, why not at Harvard, Florida State, or the University of Oklahoma? Is the three-year degree being promoted by some in Virginia and Ohio, therefore, a good thing? No, because it appears to aim to achieve this goal by reducing the academic work required by about 25 percent, to about halfway between what an associate degree and a traditional bachelor’s degree require.” (07/21/26)
“In recent years, conservative pundits have compiled an unbroken record of attacking the American entertainment industry’s biggest stars and then finding themselves on the wrong side of public opinion. … It was perhaps predictable, then, that right-wingers would fulminate over Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey before any of them had seen it. … Then the movie came out. Suddenly, conservatives had to contend not only the fact that it brought in more revenue in one weekend ($264 billion) than it cost to make ($250 million), but that, as Ben Shapiro conceded after watching it in IMAX, ‘it’s really, really, really good.’ In moments like this, when ideologues are mugged by reality, a period of adjustment ensues as political allies attempt to get their story straight. We are in that sort of moment now.” (07/22/26)
“I’ve often used the term ‘social panic’ to describe the unmarked-graves claims that swept through Canada in 2021. For reasons described below, the term feels inadequate. But I can’t think of any word or phrase that better captures the spasm of manic self-denigration that unfolded following the purported discovery of 215 dead children (some ‘believed to be as young as three years old,’ gullible reporters told us) on the grounds of a former Indigenous residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. … It would take months, or even years in many cases, before mainstream media outlets began admitting—tacitly or otherwise—that they’d been duped by Casimir’s fake news (as the Globe & Mail newspaper finally did last month). Despite the passage of five years since the original announcement, many public figures, including former prime minister Justin Trudeau, have never come clean on the issue.” (07/21/26)
“The stench arising from the proposed purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount isn’t just the concentration of market power by the merged studios nor the likely takeover of CNN by President Trump’s fanboys. It’s also the fact that the purchase is funded by investments from the sovereign wealth funds of three foreign nations, none of which are in any way, shape, or form democracies: Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar. … the purchase of Warner Bros. by foreign nations has not been investigated by the governmental body that customarily handles such matters: the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) …. But the most glaring absence from these duties isn’t CFIUS’s. It’s that of the far-right Republican elected officials who’ve sought to generate and mobilize anti-Muslim bigotry by campaigning against the completely nonexistent threat of Sharia law infiltrating and overtaking American jurisprudence.” (07/21/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by Daniel Sánchez-Piñol
“Every catastrophic wildfire cocktail requires the same dangerous mix: an ignition source, abundant fuel, and people or property in harm’s way. California has long had the perfect blend of these ingredients. Since the devastating Los Angeles wildfires of 2025, the state has taken steps to dilute this dangerous mix, but it remains far too potent. To understand why, consider the 2025 Eaton Fire, the second most destructive wildfire in California history.” (07/22/26)
Source: The American Conservative
by Charles Benoit
“Earlier this month, Bloomberg published a brutal autopsy of industrial policy gone wrong. The article documented how, beginning in 2020, the U.S. government provided $850 million to six American companies to bolster domestic manufacturing of nitrile gloves, a critical component of the medical supply chain. Six years later, not one of those companies is making gloves. … The company that received the most funding, Blue Star NBR out of Wytheville, Virginia, was supposed to use that money to build the first American plant in a generation capable of making nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR)—the raw material every nitrile glove is made of. It never produced a single batch. Its CEO said he is a month from selling the plant for parts, most of which will go to manufacturers based in China. To put it bluntly: American taxpayers built a synthetic rubber plant, and China may now cart it off in crates.” (07/21/26)
“Tariff supporters try to sell their desired tax increases on American consumers as ‘retaliation’ against other regimes for ‘unfair’ treatment of goods made by American workers and exported by American companies. Odd form of retaliation, that — ‘you’re hurting YOUR people … fine, we’ll hurt OUR people — that’ll show YOU!’ And for for the most part, those other regimes aren’t the manufacturers of or buyers of those exports/imports, any more than the US regime is the manufacturer or buyer of whatever the company you work for happens to export or the imported goods you choose to buy. So no, tariffs aren’t ‘retaliation’ for ‘unfairness.’ What are they, then? They’re a way of protecting politicians’ domestic business cronies from competition, at the expense of domestic consumers.” (07/21/26)
“Materially, Americans are far better off than they were during the Cold War. But even thinkers who acknowledge this truism often fondly reminisce about the long-lost Golden Age of American optimism that supposedly spanned the second half of the 20th century. This reminiscing always puzzles me, because I vividly remember the second half of the second half of the 20th century. Except for a brief window of roughly 1988-1991, my first-hand experience is that America’s national mood has been relentlessly bad. While I’ve known plenty of American optimists, and count myself among them, ‘American optimism’ is a will-o’-the-wisp. It appears so fleetingly that you have to wonder if it was ever there at all.” (07/21/26)
“If prices carry such reliable knowledge, why do governments override them so routinely — and why does it so often take a catastrophe to stop them? The answer is the least romantic and most dependable part of political economy. A market transmits a price almost instantly. Politics transmits it slowly and through heavy distortion. Mancur Olson explained its core: the beneficiaries of an intervention are usually concentrated, organized, and loud, while those who pay for it are dispersed, unorganized, and often not yet harmed.” (07/21/26)
“Over the weekend the Pentagon announced that four more US soldiers have been killed in President Trump’s war on Iran. That brings the total to 17, but many believe the real number of dead US servicemembers is much higher than that. The Pentagon has claimed it has no obligation to reveal how many military personnel have been injured, which suggests that number may be much higher than we are hearing. Many of these injuries will be horrific and life-altering. … If the President really wants to honor our military, he will declare an end to this pointless war, bring all of our troops home from the region, and announce that the destroyed US bases will not be rebuilt. It is time to end the American empire and come home.” (07/21/26)
