“It is month eight of the Golden Age of America, and President Peacemaker is preparing to let slip the dogs of war on Venezuela. The Navy has parked a variety of ships, including an amphibious landing group, outside Venezuelan territorial waters; the Americans blew up an apparent drug-running vessel as a prelude to whatever is coming next. … I hate to be seen carping, but this all has gotten rather silly, hasn’t it? I’m more or less a disappointed Madisonian; I understand that the system is designed so that each component tries to expand its own powers. Nevertheless, it is striking that the administration of Donald Trump, whose campaign rhetoric was built in large part around the criticism of irresponsible foreign interventions, has arrogated broader executive war powers than even the Bush administration in the heyday of the Global War on Terror.” (09/09/25)
“The progressive fear that the Abundance movement wants to take over the Democratic Party isn’t baseless at all — its adherents have plenty of influence in it now. The yes-in-my-backyard mindset is popular with younger elected Democrats in cities, who have been living with higher costs than their parents. … Every Democrat is going to run on affordability, and the abundance movement wants quick action when those Democrats win. To persuade them, they recruit like-minded electeds, mostly in cities, and advertise their successes when they break local resistance to housing reform or more energy infrastructure.” (09/08/25)
“Many medical experts are rightly alarmed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s ‘unscientific claims’ — from debunked vaccine-autism links to exaggerated warnings about food dyes and ADHD. Their outrage grew when he cut the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices from 17 members to seven, some sharing his views, and fired Centers for Disease Control Director Susan Monarez, prompting three top CDC officials to resign. Yet these same experts mostly stayed silent when the CDC, under pressure from teachers’ unions, kept children out of school for nearly two years — while Europe largely stayed open — or when public health authorities leaned on social-media platforms to censor medical voices that disagreed with them. Only now, with power shifted, do they sound the alarm about CDC politicization. The contrast is striking: Outrage seems to follow the politics of power rather than the principles of public health.” (09/08/25)
“‘Ruff! Ruff ruff ruff! Ruff ruff! Ruff ruff ruff! Growl!’ Translation: ‘I’m just a dog! I was framed! I had nothing to do with it! I oppose fraudulent voting on principle! Growl!’ The culprit is the dog’s owner, an Orange County, California woman, Laura Lee Yourex. In 2021, Yourex mailed in a ballot in the name of her dog — not Lucky or Fluffy but ‘Maya Jean Yourex,’ which cognomen the canine, no longer with us, is also on record as disavowing. We’ll call the dog MJ for short and leave your ex out of it. In 2021, the MJ ballot was accepted. When Laura Lee tried the same thing in 2022, the ballot was rejected. The 2021 election was state level. For state elections, California eschews the voter-verification requirements of federal elections.” (09/08/25)
“Washington is in chaos. USAID has been shut down; fourteen million people will likely die as a result. The military has been illegally deployed to American cities to stroke the president’s ego and assert his authoritarian rule. ICE is running wild, disappearing people off the street for exercising their First Amendment rights. A natural liberal reaction to these executive excesses is that we need more rules. We need more rules about how the military can be deployed. We need more rules about how civil servants can be fired. We need more rules about who can be deported. Ask yourself: did the rules work the first time? If the rule you followed brought you here, what use was the rule?” (09/08/25)
“Trump is claiming fake emergencies as a pretext to consolidate power of a kind enjoyed by 17th-century English monarchs — that is, the absolute power to act against statutory law. The federal takeover of D.C.’s police force is just one example of a practice Trump started during his first term in office but has turbocharged now. If Trump succeeds, he will become a kind of American king—something he has openly embraced.” (09/08/25)
Source: In These Times
by Thomas Birmingham & Rebecca Burns
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a New York City businessperson in possession of an obscene fortune will decamp to Florida if faced with incremental tax and regulatory increases. Or so claimed a chorus of plutocrats scorned by the upset victory of Zohran Mamdani in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary in June. The next night, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman took to social media to warn of a mass defection of his fellow financiers. A day later, real estate executive Danny Fishman declared himself already out. A Mamdani mayoralty ’would be the death penalty for the city’, as well as ’the best thing to happen to Miami and Palm Beach since Covid’, Fishman told the Wall Street Journal. Grocery store magnate John Catsimatidis, meanwhile, threatened to close his Manhattan-based supermarket chain, citing an inability to compete with city-owned stores — though Mamdani has proposed piloting just five.” (09/08/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mark Nayler
“Covid-19 might have passed, but the latest outbreak of titulitis is tearing through Spain. A term used to refer to politicians’ obsession with higher qualifications, titulitis has recently resulted in the resignation of three regional representatives of both the Conservative People’s Party (PP) and the Socialists. But this contagious virus — or variants of it — is not confined to Spain. Over the last decade or so, politicians in the US and elsewhere in Europe have tried to make themselves appear more impressive than they are — whether through vagueness, embellishment, or outright fabrication.” (09/08/25)
“For years now, I’ve been critical of the use of the word ‘woke’ as a mere pejorative to signify anything the reactionary right hates. Indeed, ‘woke’ has become what Ayn Rand once called an ‘anti-concept,’ a grab-bag package deal of disparate, contradictory elements cobbled together with no logical or contextual sense. It is ironic that those who have rejected the pronouncements of the ‘woke’ left have now become champions of their own form of cancel culture, imposed top down through the countless executive orders and intimidation tactics of Donald Trump. … When politicians get to decide ‘where woke goes to die,’ the death throes of liberty cannot be far behind.” (09/08/25)
“Psychiatry is the only specialty I know of that causes more harm than good; in fact, vastly more harm than good. This disaster can only survive because psychiatrists constantly lie to the public about what they can achieve with their drugs. Psychiatrists also routinely violate elementary human rights about informed consent and use forced treatment even though it is harmful. The title of my most recent psychiatry book summarises the issues: ‘Is psychiatry a crime against humanity?’ As you shall see, I am not exaggerating.” (09/08/25)
