“In a graphic posted to Truth Social on November 8, Donald Trump lists himself next to Franklin Delano Roosevelt as one of two ‘great presidents,’ because FDR’s ‘New Deal’ introduced the 30-year home mortgage and Trump, apparently, wants to ‘go large’ on the idea. Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte confirmed on X that ‘we are indeed working on The 50 year Mortgage — a complete game changer.’ The Trump/Pulte proposal brings up two questions: First, is a 50-year mortgage a good idea? Second, why on earth does the federal government set mortgage terms?” (11/13/25)
“While the country’s attention was drawn to the federal government shutdown, President Donald Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which purports to designate the ideology of antifa as a ‘domestic terrorist organization’ and directs federal law enforcement to disrupt its gatherings and those of its supporters. The gist of NSPM-7 appears to be the president’s view that the United States suffers from an enemy within our borders, an enemy that consists of Americans who hate Christianity, capitalism, and Americanism, and it is somehow the duty of the federal government to disrupt the free speech of these haters because their speech has a tendency to violence. Here is the backstory.” (11/13/25)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Rindala Alajaji
“Remember when you thought age verification laws couldn’t get any worse? Well, lawmakers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and beyond are about to blow you away. It’s unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy and bypass these invasive laws. Their solution? Entirely ban the use of VPNs. … This is actually happening. And it’s going to be a disaster for everyone.” (11/13/25)
“Instead of trusting the market and discerning customers, states and cities are considering policies that could end up hurting both restaurants and diners. In New York state, Democratic lawmakers in Albany have pushed their own dynamic pricing bans for food, and Vermont legislators have sought to prohibit businesses from using electronic shelf labels or dynamic pricing. The way these bills are drafted largely exempts longtime restaurant industry traditions such as happy hour but it raises the question: Is it necessarily more problematic if a restaurant utilizes real-time, demand-based dynamic pricing versus more traditional forms of dynamic pricing?” (11/13/25)
“The past year has shown that the concept of ‘abundance’ has legs. A bestselling book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. An expanding shelf of other well-received volumes on similar themes. Policy organizations with abundance in their name. The simultaneous emergence of a more right-coded ‘progress’ movement that identifies many of the same problems and offers similar solutions. … OK, so abundance has legs — but what kind of creature are they attached to? And where are those legs capable of taking us? What are the appropriate contours of the concept — we want an abundance of what, exactly? And what’s the social vision behind this desire for more — we want abundance for what?” (11/13/25)
“In September 2010, I’d been dating my future wife for a while and had successfully turned her from a dog person into a cat person. OK, I don’t know that I so much ‘turned’ her as I exposed her to cats and made her realize how cool they are. Living in apartments at the time helped as well, since dogs weren’t an option. For her birthday that year, I bought her a kitten from the Baltimore animal shelter. We named him Ringo because we’re Beatles fans and it suited him. I also call him ‘Buddy,’ as in ‘Little Buddy,’ because he spent a lot of time with me and my cats in Baltimore, adapting to his new family, and would follow me around, weaving in and out of my feet, before we’d settled on a name. To me, he is ‘LB’ from that time. I’m typing this downstairs as Ringo is upstairs dying.” (11/13/25)
Source: The Peaceful Revolutionist
by David S D’Amato
“The twenty-first century has witnessed global land theft on an unprecedented scale, particularly in the years directly following the historic events of 2008. Overlapping crises of the financial, food, water, and energy systems, among others, led to a frantic global land rush that took hundreds of millions of hectares of arable land from some of the poorest people in the world. The pattern of global landholdings is extremely concentrated. A paper published in 2021 noted that ‘[t]he largest 1% of farms in the world (those larger than 50 ha) operate more than 70% of the world’s farmland,’ a situation that poses a looming threat to global food security. Today, while approximately 84 percent of the world’s individual farms are smaller than two hectares, these amount to little more than one-tenth of the total land dedicated to farming.” (11/13/25)
“It’s easy to get dispirited by America’s political death spiral given that the MAGA faithful remain devoted to their leader no matter what new evidence emerges. They accuse critics — even those making calm, policy-oriented critiques — of suffering from a medical condition (Trump Derangement Syndrome). I’m more inclined to believe adherence to Trump’s grievance-based movement is a condition. Like with all viruses, there are signs this one might someday break. For evidence, I offer none other than U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican from Georgia. Until recently, most pundits have viewed MTG as the epitome of what’s gone wrong with the modern GOP, where there are ‘no enemies on the right’ and conspiracy theories are as relevant as rationally based ones” (11/13/25)
“The November 4 election results are a reality check for the Trump administration. Democrats didn’t just run up the score in deep-blue enclaves. With power prices soaring, they flipped two Georgia utility-regulator seats in rare statewide victories. In New York City, more than half of voters told exit pollsters that their top worry is the cost of living. Seven in 10 Americans say their grocery bills have gone up this past year. Six in 10 say their utility costs have increased. So, yes, the affordability issues that dominated the 2024 election remain central. But President Donald Trump insists there’s no problem.” (11/13/25)
“Two weeks after Tucker Carlson’s scandalous interview with white supremacist, Jew-hating, misogynist ‘influencer’ Nick Fuentes, the MAGA right is still grappling with the fallout — particularly after the Heritage Foundation’s (of Project 2025 fame) president, Kevin Roberts, defended Carlson and took a swipe at Carlson’s ‘globalist’ critics. Meanwhile, some conservatives seem to be waking up to the fact that large segments of the right now normalize Fuentes-style hate.” (11/13/25)
