“I have consistently expressed my frustration with the different ways that Democrats are talking about the shutdown in public, compared with what they’re asking for in private. In public, this is just a fight about a looming health care cliff, using the leverage of needing Democratic votes (at least under current Senate rules) to pass government funding to demand that Republicans avert a crisis of millions of people losing their insurance coverage or seeing the price of it double. In private, this is a fight about extreme executive power and autocracy, with Democrats demanding that any government funding they pass must actually be spent, not withheld or rescinded. A No Kings Budget, in other words. That private conversation is becoming somewhat more public.” (10/06/25)
“Bad Bunny is the latest entertainer to endure a conservative backlash in the United States. This past weekend the 2026 Superbowl headliner mocked MAGA critics while hosting ‘Saturday Night Live.’ Meanwhile, last month, ABC temporarily suspended late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel after political pressure. … Unfortunately, popular entertainers have been prime targets for U.S. government officials who didn’t like their views before.” (10/06/25)
Source: The American Conservative
by James P Pinkerton
“‘Tennessee River’ = Tennessee Valley Authority, the giant public operation, established in 1933 during the New Deal, stretching across Tennessee and parts of six adjoining states. History buffs also know that TVA’s status as a government-run entity has been sacrosanct. After all, in 1964, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater mused about selling off TVA, and he was clobbered in the November election, losing 44 states, including the Volunteer State. So with apologies to Edgar Allan Poe, it has seemed that the idea of privatizing TVA would forever be met with a dark and stark nevermore. Yet … a century ago, in the cheery days before the 1929 Crash and the subsequent Depression, the idea of private development was ripe.” (10/06/25)
“‘Invasions on the rights of the people.’ That phrase isn’t hyperbole; it’s straight out of the Declaration of Independence. Say ‘invasion,’ and people picture foreign armies crossing a border. To the Founders, a far more dangerous invasion came from within. They used that same word for what happens when government violates your liberty and seizes power it was never given. To them, that wasn’t a mere policy debate. It was the most dangerous ‘invasion’ we face.” (10/05/25)
“I think I am going to form a hip-hop group with some of my retired officer friends that we will call the Phat Generalzzz – dibs on being the human beatbox! That is, of course, a ridiculous idea, but you know how it differs from the nonsense the Dems keep trying to sell us? The difference is that I don’t mean it. I am not actually going to form a hip-hop group with some of my retired officer friends that we will call the Phat Generalzzz, though if I did, I would call dibs on being the human beatbox. But the Dems are serious about the ridiculous stuff they say and seek to put in effect as policy …” (10/06/25)
“Democrats are demanding a reversal of Medicaid cuts that Donald Trump and the Republicans enacted over the summer — and a renewal of a temporary boost to Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire in December. Trump and the Republicans are not inclined to take either step. And to get the public on their side, they’ve been arguing the real Democratic agenda is different — that, as Vice President JD Vance posted on X Thursday, ‘Democrats shut down the government to give health care money to illegal [sic] aliens.’ The problem for Republicans is that most of the Democratic demands have nothing to do with immigration, while the portion that does deals almost entirely with people here lawfully [sic]. As critics have called out the lie, Vance and his allies have retreated to a narrower argument about one tiny item on the list of cuts Democrats would reverse.” (10/05/25)
“Thus far, [Kristi] Noem’s biggest reform is that travelers no longer need remove their shoes at TSA checkpoints. This is progress, but not quite the equivalent of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. What about other TSA vexations such as the pointless prying patdowns that do nothing for security? It takes less than a minute to find busloads of women bitterly complaining on X/Twitter about heavy-handed TSA screeners grabbing their vaginas (‘I swear it’s not a bomb!’) or breasts. But screeners have legal immunity almost no matter how brazenly they abuse travelers. If a woman pushes a TSA screener’s hands away from her breasts, she can placed on the TSA ’95 list’ of potentially troublesome travelers. The agency’s official watchlist defines troublemaker to include someone who merely ‘loiters’ near a TSA checkpoint or demonstrates any ‘concerning behavior.'” (10/05/25)
“The nature of [Ezra] Klein’s quote (above) is an admonishment …. to people who are opposed to this authoritarian supremacist movement, for not being willing enough in his view to live with authoritarian supremacists. This is the grain of sand at the center of the pearl of my ire, because ‘we are going to have to live here with each other’ is the exact premise that Republicans do not agree with any of us about, and while Klein in his remarks pays lip service to some of the recent proofs of this clear fact, his analysis of what to do about it he excises this reality entirely. … In the Klein world, moral clarity about abuse is polarizing, and polarization, not abuse, is the problem to solve.” (10/05/25)
Source: In These Times
by Sarah Lazare & Lindsay Koshgarian
“If the immigration enforcement apparatus of the United States were its own national military, it would be the 13th most heavily funded in the world. This puts it higher than the national militaries of Poland, Italy, Australia, Canada, Turkey and Spain — and just below Israel. That bloated force is due to a massive funding increase in President Donald Trump’s budget bill that went into effect October 1, and it comes as Chicagoland faces an escalation of violence from ICE and other federal agencies. Agents are tear gassing and beating protesters, raiding and ransacking communities across the area, and detaining people at homeless shelters and hospitals. They are roaming the city and surrounding suburbs in masks, sometimes in plain clothes and unmarked cars, and other times — especially near protests — in armored vehicles, wearing the militarized, camouflage uniforms that are the hallmark of soldiers.” (10/05/25)
“The decline of vocation did not happen overnight. It was gradual, almost imperceptible at first, like a slow leak in the hull of a ship. Administrators multiplied until they outnumbered physicians. Insurance companies dictated what treatments were permissible, not based on medical judgment but on actuarial tables. Pharmaceutical firms turned research into marketing, blurring the line between scientific discovery and sales strategy. Hospitals transformed into corporations with CEOs, branding departments, and profit margins to defend. The physician’s desk became a computer terminal, and the patient was no longer a soul in need of healing but a data point to be coded and billed. Even the language betrayed the transformation: patients became ‘units of care,’ outcomes became ‘deliverables,’ and clinical judgment was rebranded as ‘adherence to protocol.’ This hollowing out of medicine’s soul reached its most devastating climax during Covid.” (10/05/25)
