“Whatever debilitating brain parasite burrowed into the gray matter of American politics over the last decade-plus has resulted in some astonishing transformations. One of the biggest has been the reshaping of the once nominally pro-capitalist Republican party into a populist party hostile to free markets. Under President Donald Trump, the GOP increasingly favors the whims of the president and his cronies over the results of voluntary interactions among millions of buyers, producers, and sellers. Most recently, we see this in the form of Trump’s announced intentions to ban some real estate investors from purchasing single-family homes and his proposed cap on credit card interest rates. … as many points of disagreement spark fiery clashes, economics isn’t really a point of contention between the dominant factions of the two main parties. Trump’s Republicans agree with the ‘opposition’ progressive Democrats that the government should be running the economy.” (01/14/26)
“Trying to solve crime with authoritarian government, more laws, and stricter enforcement is like trying to keep someone healthy by stuffing them in a coffin and burying them alive. Yet, this is the first move politicians make when they see a problem. Turning to government and its laws is a sign your society has failed, and the unfortunate fact is that this only causes more crime in the long run. As the Chinese philosopher Laozi pointed out over 2,000 years ago, ‘The more numerous the laws, the more thieves and robbers there will be.’ … Whoever said it, it’s true. It has always been true, and it remains so today. Only, can we finally admit it’s not ‘corruption,’ but government working exactly as designed?” (01/14/26)
“The home of the Chicago-style hot dog does not have a single food cart licensed to sell hot dogs on city sidewalks, according to a Chicago Policy Center analysis of city data. It sounds unbelievable. But it’s true. This de facto ban speaks to a political structure and culture that still prioritizes who you know, rather than how well you serve customers. For decades, Chicago did not allow food carts of any kind. Brick-and-mortar restaurant interests lobbied city bureaucrats to keep street vendors from legally operating. Meanwhile, vendors were still out selling sliced fruit, tamales and other street food illicitly across the city. … After community pressure, the city created a new license for food carts in 2015. … But nearly a decade later, there are just 14 licensed food carts of any kind in Chicago. Compare that with New York, home to 7,000 licensed food cart vendors.” (01/14/26)
“I don’t know that I’m 100 percent ready to agree with Leighton Woodhouse that ‘the hysterical pussy hats were right,’ but I am very much convinced that the anti-federalists were, and that that fact ultimately is more consequential. One of the arguments put forward to excuse or minimize the aggression — and the brutality — of ICE’s campaign in Minneapolis is that federal agents cannot rely on the cooperation of state and local authorities …. So (goes this argument) rather than ask the local police to intervene when, e.g., protesters partly block a street or otherwise inconvenience federal agents, ICE agents really have no choice but to take aggressive action on their own, and that such action is justified by its necessity. Like so much of what one hears from apologists for Donald Trump and his administration, this is a fundamentally un-American point of view, one that misunderstands the nature of our constitutional order.” (01/14/26)
“[T]he United States, long the world’s leading industrial power, has become dependent on the goodwill of a strategic rival for materials central to its economy and its defense. That dependence did not arise because rare earth minerals are scarce. They are not. Nor did it arise because China alone possesses the technical capacity to mine or refine them. It arose from a long chain of economic and political decisions — made largely in free societies — that concentrated production in a country willing to accept costs others would not. Understanding how that happened is essential to understanding why China’s apparent monopoly is far less ‘coercive,’ and far less durable, than it looks.” (01/14/26)
“There’s a deeper, darker truth lurking beneath the Somali-dominated [sic], multi-billion-dollar Minnesota welfare fraud schemes that have commanded the attention of federal authorities and stoked nationwide outrage. And it may explain in part why for weeks, Democrats and regime media have been gaslighting the country, casting critics as bigots, and shooting the messengers who sent the long-neglected story viral — and why, now, state and local leaders are trying to turn Minneapolis into a powder keg. These dodges and diversions distract from the fact that the fraud is a feature of what we might call The Blue Model of government. Fueled by the welfare state and increasingly open borders [sic], it is at core about political patronage, profiteering, and plunder. Democrats’ survival depends upon a political-business model of vote-buying via legal and illicit wealth redistribution. Suppressing the Minnesota story is critical.” (01/14/25)
“The dispute between Sen. Mark Kelly and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is being told as a simple morality play. On one side, the claim that Kelly crossed a line and deserves punishment. On the other, the insistence that Kelly is a hero beyond reproach and that the administration’s response is villainy. Both frames are comforting. Both are wrong. What matters most here is not who appeared righteous or reckless in the moment, but what happens when legality is left unresolved. In this case, junior service members are being placed in the position of exercising legal and moral judgment without meaningful authority, clarity or institutional backing. Those who make decisions remain insulated from consequence; those who execute them carry the risk.” (01/14/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“President Trump and the U.S. national-security establishment (i.e., the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA) are ramping up the U.S. war machine for another military attack on a sovereign and independent nation — this time, Iran. Their rationale? They say that they just want to help the Iranian protestors who are being killed by the Iranian dictatorship and its own national-security establishment. Don’t make me laugh. Come on! Why not the same brutal honesty about Iran as we have seen with Venezuela? At least Trump, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA are not justifying their extra-judicial killings on the high seas and their military kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro by claiming to be helping the Venezuelan people.” (01/14/26)
Source: Caitlyn Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlyn Johnstone
“You’ve seen this all before. They run the same script over and over again. You know all the beats. The formula never changes. ‘Oh no, the people in the targeted nation are being oppressed! They need freedom and democracy!’ ‘Hey, I bet we could use our powerful military to help them get the freedom and democracy! Wouldn’t that be swell?’ ‘Oh gosh, there are some people who don’t think we should use our powerful military to help the people in the targeted nation get freedom and democracy! They must have some sinister, suspicious loyalty to the Evil Regime which rules the targeted nation!’ ‘Look, I get that sometimes in the past we have used our powerful military in ways that were mean and unhelpful, but you need to understand that the Evil Regime is also very, very bad.'” (01/15/25)
“It’s not a crime to be young and dumb in America. It’s not even a career-ending offense to be young and dumb in journalism. As ludicrous as [Nick] Shirley’s current output is, he’s plainly got a certain aptitude for video reporting. In a different world — one set up to restrain his worst and dumbest instincts rather than to reward them — a guy like him could turn out to be a solid reporter. … Guys like Nick Shirley aren’t trying to join a publication, they’re picking up a camera and trying to go viral on their own. They have no safety net, no sounding board, no mentorship, no way to grow beyond what they’re doing this minute. All they have is the zero-sum game of the algorithm: Get noticed or die. … That’s what the ecosystem rewards, so we’re going to get more and more of it.” (01/14/26)
