Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jonathan Small
“Voter concerns about affordability have been a major theme in political races, and understandably so. However, what is often unsaid is that many government policies are to blame for continued high prices. A panel of experts recently made that painfully clear to Oklahoma state lawmakers.” (11/02/26)
https://fee.org/articles/government-to-blame-for-higher-prices/
Source: The American Conservative
by Peter Van Buren
“People have become hysterical, and this hysteria clouds their judgment even as it fills their wallets. Politics today can sound like a thriller novel in which institutions collapse spectacularly on page one to set the story in motion. Every headline not supporting your own beliefs becomes evidence ‘democracy is dying.’ It is a helluva lead-in to the midterms. So are they right? Is it 1930s Germany out there? No.” (11/02/26)
Source: Law & Liberty
by Tyler Syck
“Madison was a clear and hard-boiled proponent of a diverse, plural society.” (11/02/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Jack Hunter
“Solid red South Carolina hasn’t elected a Democratic senator this century. But in the race between Republican. Darline Graham and her Democratic challenger, it’s now a draw. The New York Times called the race a toss-up on Wednesday, with Graham, the sister of the late Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Democrat Annie Andrews both receiving 48% in their latest poll. Fox News made the same call on Thursday. Democratic Senate candidates in the state don’t tie Republicans. But against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s war and escalating energy and food prices, all bets appear to be off.” (11/02/26)
Source: American Greatness
by Victor Davis Hanson
“In June 2022, the price of gasoline topped $5 a gallon and stayed around $4 a gallon through October, on the eve of the midterms. It is currently about $4.30. The inflation rate in 2022 hit a 40-year high of 9.1 percent, and would average 5.1 percent over Joe Biden’s four-year tenure. The 2026 inflation rate is estimated to be about 3.5 percent and, over the first two years of the second Trump administration, will likely average around 3 percent. GDP for the third quarter of 2026 is higher than it was in the same quarter of 2022. The poverty rate is now lower and the annual family income higher than in November 2022. Yet we are told that gas prices and inflation are at record levels and will doom the Republicans, even though similar economic data did not harm Democrats all that much in the 2022 midterms.” (11/02/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/11/02/midterm-election-incoherences-misadventures-and-paradoxes/
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Thomas Eddlem
“While a unified Democratic government has tended to see the fastest growth in government spending since World War II, government grows faster overall under Republican presidents than Democratic ones. And the only real decreases in the size of government spending happened during those six years where there were Democratic presidents and Republican majorities in Congress, first with the post-war build-down under Harry Truman (1947-48), and next after modest cut-backs from the bloated spending of the financial and COVID crises under Barack Obama (2009-10) and Donald Trump (2020), respectively.” (11/02/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/republicans-are-as-socialist-as-democrats
Source: Wired
by Dhruv Mehrotra
“I’ve gotten nearly 2,000 campaign fundraising texts that were meant for someone else. I tried to find out why—and uncovered a labyrinth of politicians, data brokers, and shady tactics.” (11/02/26)
Source: The Dispatch
by Ilya Somin
“Courts have already ruled against two avenues President Donald Trump used to impose his tariff regime. That hasn’t stopped his efforts to attempt to deploy obscure or outdated trade law provisions to justify new import levies. His latest tool is the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, the notorious legislation that gravely exacerbated the Great Depression. … Even if Section 338 is still operative, Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods violate its requirements.” (11/02/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/trump-canada-tariffs-section-338-lawsuit/
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid
“Agnes was who I was on the inside before the abuse, before being me became just too painful to consciously bare, and she has haunted me throughout my life, with terrifying flashbacks and a deep sense of guilt over some confusing notion that I had left something or someone behind. For a long time, I didn’t know what she was. I would get repeated waking visions of a little girl in pigtails and a black velvet party dress smashing all the stained-glass windows in my church. I took to calling her the little girl with the hammer, but it was only when I gave her the name Agnes and decided to listen to what she had to say that she began talking back to me …” (11/01/26)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/11/my-life-in-skull-of-ghosts-confessions.html
Source: CounterPunch
by Binoy Kampmark
“Should criminals be allowed the softening joys of favourite foods and longed for staples? The overcooked roast, the undercooked dumpling? And, for Australians, a foodstuff (hardly a food) so reprehensible it would draw disapproval from any respectable panel from UNESCO? Last month, Andre McKenchnie, a convicted murderer detained at Victoria’s Barwon Prison, attempted to test the judicial waters that not being allowed to consume the famous yeast spread of Vegemite was a denial of human rights under the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act, specifically the right to ‘enjoy his culture’ as an Australian.” (11/02/26)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/11/02/prison-gastronomy-vegemite-as-a-cultural-right/