“Businesses have an unsung superpower. They aren’t just awesome at producing and marketing goods and services. They are also awesome at coping with government stupidity …. Thanks to competition, consumers ultimately pay the price of wasteful government policies. This is Econ 1: As long as prices remain free, government stupidity reduces supply and raises prices, allowing businesses to remain profitable despite their hostile economic environment. Crucially, however, the process of complying with sheer idiocy is itself competitive!” (05/19/26)
“‘Some men,’ an old saying has it, ‘are sent to Washington because their hometowns want them somewhere else.’ Although Melbourne Beach, Florida isn’t US Representative Randy Fine’s hometown — he was born in Arizona, raised in Kentucky, and subsequently managed to wear out his welcome in Massachusetts, Nevada, and Michigan before landing there — I have to think the remark explains his career in the state legislature and now Congress. … Sample recent tweet: ‘You CANNOT serve two masters. My bill makes it simple: Only Americans. Full allegiance to the United States and the United States alone. No more dual loyalty in Congress.’ Unfortunately for the PR angle, Fine spends a great deal of time and effort publicly demonstrating his own loyalty — not to the US, and not to his constituents, but to a foreign power.” (05/19/26)
“Caffeine is the most widely used legal psychoactive drug in the world. Nearly two-thirds of American adults get their daily doses from coffee, according to a 2025 National Coffee Association poll, and they seem to be getting more than a jolt of energy. A study published by JAMA in February tracked the brain health of 130,000 people for more than 40 years. It found that moderate daily consumption of coffee was associated with a reduced risk of dementia and slower cognitive decline. … A roundup of studies compiled by the National Center for Health Research (NCHR), a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., details the manifold other health benefits of drinking coffee. … Coffee drinkers have enjoyed the beverage’s benefits for centuries and will do so for years to come. After all, Starfleet Capt. Kathryn Janeway in the 24th century declared coffee ‘the finest organic suspension ever devised.'” (for publication 06/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Let’s face it: It doesn’t really matter whether Democrats or Republicans are in charge. The big spending and the big debt will continue to grow, whether it’s on welfare, warfare, regulation, or control. There are always projects, programs, wars, conflicts, regulations, and controls on which to spend money. As we have seen, both Republicans and Democrats always find ways to spend and borrow ever-increasing amounts of money. … But the fact is that neither Republicans nor Democrats are the root cause of America’s fiscal woes. Instead, the root cause is a systemic one — the welfare-warfare state, regulated-managed economy system, and national-security state system that have come to characterize our nation.” (05/19/26)
“The nuclear power industry is currently promoting designs for small modular reactors, or SMRs, that will supposedly be cheaper, safer, and faster to build than older nuclear power plants. Bill Gates and Amazon are investing in the technology. Moreover, some environmentalists, including Mark Lynas and Bill McKibben, support SMRs in the hope that they can lower carbon emissions. And, according to polls, far more Americans now approve of the development of nuclear energy than was the case just a decade or two ago.” (05/19/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mark Nayler
“Spain was the second-largest beneficiary of the EU’s Next Generation funding scheme (NGEU), rolled out in 2021 to help member states recover from pandemic-era lockdowns. Its total allocation was €163 billion ($190 billion, after Italy, which received €194 billion, or about $226 billion), enabling Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez to unveil a record-breaking budget for 2022, boosted with the first €26 billion ($30 billion) from this historic program. Yet from the beginning, Spain’s deployment of NGEU money, access to which depends on hitting investment targets set by Brussels (most of them designed to further the EU’s green agenda), has been surrounded by controversy. The latest scandal over Madrid’s alleged misuse of these funds has highlighted one of the most contentious issues in the bloc—namely, the viability of mutual debt schemes.” (05/19/26)
“A 15-year-old opened his laptop to work on a coding project he’d been building for months. His school had assigned tools like Anthropic’s artificial intelligence model Claude to help write code, debug errors and teach concepts instructors hadn’t covered. Yet when the site loaded, he found his project history, saved conversations and every thread of work gone — replaced by a suspension notice. ‘Our team found signals that your account was used by a child,’ Anthropic explained in an email. ‘This breaks our rules, so we paused your access to Claude.’ … I’m 17. In less than a year, a number on a calendar will determine I’m old enough to access the tools that define my field. Nothing about my capabilities will change on my birthday; only my legal classification will.” (05/19/26)
“Cory Booker, Senator from New Jersey and child of two wealthy executives at IBM, knows struggle – he’s seen every episode of ‘Dear White People.’ The struggle is real … especially in the first two seasons. Or so it has been explained to him, as he’s led a charmed life, which would be impossible if the United States of America were half the racist hell hole he pretends it is to advance his political career. It amuses me to no end when white liberals act like they are the saviors of black people, and it’s even more amusing when black politicians who grew up just as much, if not more, ‘privileged’ than the white people they whine about don the racial hero cape. Cory Booker has wanted for nothing, except maybe hair and a non-grating personality, but he knows ‘struggle’ because, well, his skin color.” (05/19/26)
“The so-called ‘Election Integrity Network’ has released its ‘Model Election Laws Handbook.’ The problem with the handbook isn’t that every proposal in it is unreasonable. Many of the proposals, of course, absurd, but they tend to hide behind reasonable rhetoric …. the handbook repeatedly treats ordinary features of election administration as evidence that the system itself lacks legitimacy. I’ve seen a quote floating around online that states, ‘Everything’s a conspiracy if you don’t understand how anything works.’ The basis of the handbook is that administrative imperfections stop being problems to manage and increasingly become proof that elections can’t be trusted unless the system becomes more restrictive, more adversarial, and more procedurally rigid.” (05/19/26)
“Ever since North Korea suffered through the death of its first leader in 1994, a loss magnified by an economic collapse and a devastating famine, outside observers have likened the country to an airplane experiencing a serious malfunction. The major question they posed: in the end, would North Korea experience a soft landing or a catastrophic crash? Perhaps a reformer would come along — say, a North Korean version of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev — who could right the airship of state and guide it toward the runway of reunification with South Korea. More direly, the North Korean regime could collapse all of a sudden, like the Communist governments in Eastern Europe in 1989. Those were relatively peaceful affairs, but North Korea’s worst-case scenarios might involve violent power struggles, the return of famine, and a free-for-all scramble for the country’s loose nukes.” (05/19/26)
