“For more than a century, the Republican and Democratic parties have used ballot access laws and debate exclusion criteria to rig elections, making it as difficult and expensive as possible for ‘third party’ and independent candidates to even appear on ballots. Then when Republicans and Democrats lose, or look like they may lose, the whining begins. ‘Why, the nerve! How dare anyone but us seek political office? Those other guys can’t win — we’ve busted our butts to make sure of that! But here they come, ‘stealing’ our votes and ‘spoiling’ the rightful outcomes! There oughta be a law! Oh, wait, there is … why isn’t it working?'” (10/02/26)
“A big reason for the rules of war is to prevent a country that’s losing a conflict from unleashing a last-resort wave of attacks on innocent civilians. After its 4 1/2-year war in Ukraine, Russia appears to fit that description, adding one more justification for the 1949 Geneva Conventions – to which Moscow is legally bound. Civilian casualties in Ukraine were up 37% in the first half of 2026 from the same period last year. And, increasingly, the slaughter is in major cities, away from the most contested territory. ‘I … see the nature of this war changing,’ said Alexander De Croo, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, during a visit to the country last month. ‘Civilian infrastructure is being attacked deliberately and relentlessly, day and night,’ he added. ‘Buses. Trains. Bookshops. Supermarkets. The ordinary places where ordinary people live their lives.’ In addition, Russia’s gloves-off tactics appear to come from orders on high.” (10/02/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Caleb S Fuller & Scott Burns
“Trade isn’t complicated. People around the world work to produce things for one another — and protectionism makes that cooperation harder.” (10/02/26)
“Like Germany’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), America’s center-left Democrat Party faces a challenge from its extreme flank. Unlike the CDU, which has abandoned its past strategy and adopted one of confrontation, the Democrat Party is sticking with its strategy of co-option (not fusion) with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). But will the Democrat Party’s strategy prove any more successful in staving off its possible extinction than the CDU’s? Presently, the Democrat Party has a ringside seat at the continuing struggle between the GOP establishment and President Trump and his MAGA movement, which constitutes a halting attempt at fusion. This occurs when the party establishment and its insurgents, be they internal or external, join together to defeat a common enemy or promote a common position.” (10/03/26)
“A lesson from the 20th century is that intellectuals sometimes choose to serve monsters. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao all found thinkers willing to sing their praise even as they murdered millions. On the spectrum of evil and death, Donald Trump, a crass, ignorant would-be authoritarian, is not in their league. And yet already, under Trump’s rule, people have died—and already lives are being ruined by the tens of thousands. As all this happens, crankish right-wing intellectuals have been drawn to Trump’s scepter as moths to a flame. A case in point, not exactly a household name but not entirely unimportant, is Chad Pecknold.” (10/02/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“They botched another execution in Tennessee. They stuck the prisoner full of seven different syringes, but she didn’t die. She just experienced extreme suffering, minute after excruciating minute, before eventually losing consciousness. Her name is Christa Pike. As of this writing, she is still alive. Pike committed a horrific violent crime as a young woman after a life of nightmarish abuse. She was physically and sexually abused by her mother’s live-in boyfriend, was raped by a neighbor when she was eleven, and attempted suicide at the age of twelve. And now she is on a respirator in a hospital as doctors fight to save her life, presumably so that the state of Tennessee can try to kill her again. It’s all so absurd. People are so cruel to each other.” (10/03/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“How often were Americans told that if Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, they would be able to rein in federal spending and even balance the budget. Well, Republicans now control both houses of Congress and the presidency. They could balance the budget today. Have they done so since they took control after the 2024 elections? Nope. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office projected a $1.9 trillion federal deficit for fiscal year 2026. Same old, same old. American right-wingers and left-wingers like to emphasize their differences, but those differences aren’t fundamental in nature. Their fight is over control of the welfare-warfare state.” (10/02/26)
“Donald Trump championed international religious freedom in his first term, turning a long-standing bipartisan cause into a foreign-policy priority. His administration gave the Office of International Religious Freedom a higher position within the State Department’s bureaucracy, stressed religious freedom in its 2017 National Security Strategy and appointed officials focused on religious freedom at the National Security Council and United States Agency for International Development. Trump’s second term has been dramatically different. Trump has failed to issue statutorily required annual reports, inflicted DOGE-style cuts on religious freedom advocacy groups and demoted the religious freedom office within the State Department’s hierarchy. … Some religious freedom advocates have called the Trump administration’s new approach ‘a betrayal.’ But the challenges faced by international religious freedom extend far beyond the current White House.” (10/02/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“I believe that global warming is probably real, probably anthropogenic, may well impose net costs. This raises an obvious question: What, if anything, should we do about it? If I were dictator of the world and wished to maximize economic efficiency, the answer would be fairly obvious. Impose a tax on activities that create greenhouse gases designed to reflect the marginal cost they create. That is the standard economic solution, due to Pigou, for problems of negative externalities. Since the tax brings in additional revenue, combine it with a corresponding reduction in whatever taxes currently have the largest adverse effects. I do not, in fact, support carbon taxes. The reason is that I do not believe that, if imposed, they would fit the pattern described above.” (10/02/26)
“Since Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas sympathizers have insisted that we must understand the massacre in its historical context — that it did not happen in a vacuum. This much is true. To understand this context, we need to look back at a chapter of history that predates the state of Israel by two decades. That chapter is 1929. On Aug. 24, 1929, more than 3000 Muslim men armed with swords, axes and machetes marched through the ancient Jewish quarter of Hebron, then part of British Mandate Palestine. That Sabbath morning, they slaughtered 67 Jewish men, women and children, and wounded dozens more. Children watched as their parents were butchered by their neighbors. Rabbis and yeshiva students were castrated. Infants were murdered in their mothers’ arms. Young women were raped. Those who survived endured horrific cruelty, with fingers and limbs severed and eyes gouged.” (10/03/26)
