“An alleged gangbanger in this country illegally [sic] was shot and wounded by ICE [gangbangers] in The Bronx on Thursday. And by the way New York politicians immediately reacted (with press conferences and outraged tweets the length of ‘War and Peace’) one would think ICE had made swiss cheese of a sweet grandma as she handed out Werther’s Originals to the neighborhood children. All the usual suspects reflexively grabbed a microphone and called to ‘abolish ICE’ in the name of Oscar Belgal, who reportedly used his car to smash through a vehicle barricade before accelerating toward ICE [gangbangers]. Belgal’s 5-year-old son was in the car and was unharmed, no thanks to his pathetic excuse of a father. Still, an outraged Mayor Mamdani stood alongside AG Tish James and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams declaring war on ICE.” (10/09/26)
“The U.S. ends its military campaign in Baghdad after 23 years of fighting. The campaign cost 4,418 US troops their lives and will end up costing nearly $3 trillion through 2050.” (10/09/’26)
“As the midterm elections approach, it’s safe to say that things don’t look great for Donald Trump’s Republican Congressional majority. He has responded by the usual threats and bluster, but also by promising to send voters money. Now, it should be said that politicians make promises all the time – to voters in general or to more specific constituents. This is part of the process. But sending out quick payments to voters right before an election, and promising a big payday if voters deliver his party a victory, are highly unusual moves.” (10/09/26)
[W]hy exactly is it so bad that screens have destroyed so many people’s ability to focus and read since 1980, and even more dramatically since 2007? What do we lose if people no longer read like it’s the 1770s? Quite a bit, [James] Marriott contends. One significant concern for him is the damage to politics that he blames on the decline of reading: ‘Perhaps the most worrying victim of the Great Simplification is our public discourse. It seems that our distracted and trivial culture increasingly struggles to sustain a rational debate on almost any issue.’ In other words, reading trains our brains to engage with ideas in earnest and to use our attention spans to listen to elaborate arguments and process them afterwards. But those who do not have these skills are unable to engage with serious arguments in the public sphere.” (10/09/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by Whitney Curry Wimbish
“Thousands of people are preparing to protect the midterm elections and mobilize immediately if President Trump interferes with the results. They are drawing lessons from the American civil rights era and from fights against authoritarianism worldwide, attending political education classes, and reassessing exactly how much they will risk, personally, to stand between a government takeover and the will of the voters. ‘There’s a deeper, broader, bolder set of efforts afoot to prepare people for much more existential scenarios that could come our way that would call into question the pillars of our democracy itself for what it’s for and who it’s for,’ said Jackson Potter, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union. ‘People are zeroing in.’ He’s organizing with May Day Strong, which this month hosted more than 750 ‘solidarity school’ training sessions nationwide.” (10/09/26)
Source: The American Conservative
by Philip Pilkington
“Treasury bonds are not just any old asset. For one, they are the debt of the U.S. government. If they become uninvestable, the capacity for Washington to live beyond its means through debt issuance is open to question. Treasuries are also the benchmark asset for the entire global dollar system that has allowed the U.S. to run enormous deficits for decades. If this asset starts ‘trading like a meme stock’ and generating awful returns, foreigners will opt for something else. … The Trump administration has become fixated on the Strait of Hormuz, seeing it as a decisive battlefield on which the U.S. can win the war. But the Strait is merely a means to an end. For Iran, that end is to slowly demolish the American economy and financial system until the pressure becomes too much and the U.S. backs off.” (10/09/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Caleb S Fuller & Scott Burns
“Trump’s ‘Economic D-Day’ against Iran bears an uncanny resemblance to his ‘Liberation Day’ strategy for America. Both rely on the same basic mechanism: restricting trade. Yet Trump assures us they will produce opposite results. For Americans, trade restrictions will bring economic revival; for Iran, they will bring economic ruin. You don’t need a PhD in economics — or any degree at all — to spot the contradiction. The renowned American economist Henry George — a middle school dropout who taught himself economics — exposed the paradox of protectionism in 1886: ‘What protection teaches us is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.'” (10/08/26)
“No doubt, the military must be vigilant in protecting personnel and equipment from threats, especially those assessed as significant and imminent. Yet who imagined that the Pentagon would believe itself unable to protect aircraft based in the UK from Iran? What if America was battling Russia—would the administration also withdraw its bombers from the UK? Withdraw all planes from all Europe? Empty its bases in Asia and the Middle East as well? … The president, as well as other leading policymakers in Washington, should treat the threat to America’s overextended military as an opportunity. Time is long past for retrenchment, winding down a global presence that no longer serves serious, let alone vital, American interests.” (10/08/26)
“With great fanfare, President Donald Trump announced last week that ‘the largest steel plant ever built in the United States’ would be coming to Lee County, Iowa, adding that Mesabi Metallics’[s] $15 billion investment in a pivotal midterm swing state proved his ‘powerful 50% tariffs’ were working. He’s right: The announcement is a tangible result of American steel policy — but, contrary to what the president said, that’s not a good thing. Start with the project’s real price tag. Thanks to tariffs and other trade restrictions, US steel prices are among the highest in the world …. Because steel-consuming industries greatly outnumber steelmakers in the US, studies have repeatedly shown that steel tariffs, whether imposed by Trump in 2018 or George W. Bush in 2002, caused a net reduction in US manufacturing output and employment — effects that, in the latter case, persisted for years after the levies were lifted.” (10/08/26)
“In one of his latest examples of executive overreach, President Trump cancelled $810 million in congressionally authorized spending, yet again undermining Congress’s power of the purse. From funding freezes to illegal wars, Trump has repeatedly tried to seize Congress’s constitutional powers throughout this term. The Government Accountability Office pushed back on the recent cancellation. And there are finally signs that Congress is starting to get fed up. Lawmakers from both parties are reportedly discussing how to adjust future spending bills to make sure this doesn’t happen again. But Congress must go much further in clawing its power back. Lawmakers must learn from congressional history and reassert their authority to check executive abuse, particularly on the power of the purse and war-making.” (10/08/26)
