The Bible Doesn’t Prohibit Abortion
Source: Exiled Policy
by Jason Pye
“A religious undecided voter questioned James Talarico on abortion.” (10/16/26)
https://exiledpolicy.substack.com/p/the-bible-doesnt-prohibit-abortion
Category: Opinion
Dostoevsky and the Mangione Mind
Source: Law & Liberty
by Jon Miltimore
“An intelligent, attractive former student commits a ghastly murder, reasoning that he is doing society a favor by ridding the world of a greedy capitalist. He is eventually taken into custody by authorities, jailed, and tried. This scenario does not describe Luigi Mangione, the affluent 28-year-old who recently admitted to killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in 2024 in an apparent message to the health-insurance industry. The tale is far older: it describes Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s nineteenth-century masterpiece Crime and Punishment.” (10/16/26)
A Perfect Economic Storm
Source: The American Prospect
by Robert Kuttner
“On Wednesday, the Consumer Price Index for September came in hotter than expected. Inflation was up at an annual rate of 3.7 percent. Gasoline prices rose 34 percent over the past year, and home heating oil is up a staggering 74 percent. Combined with other factors, this news spooked the stock market. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell by 2.7 percent. Then on Thursday, the Producer Price Index (PPI) report clocked a wholesale price rise of 1.3 percent just in September, an increase of 6.3 percent over the past year, and the largest 12-month increase since December 2022. The other factors signaling deep trouble include a bond market that keeps bidding up rates on long-term Treasury securities, now the highest since 2002, reflecting expectations of more inflation, and increasing interest costs throughout the economy. This in turn adds to consumer and small-business pain and increases borrowing costs for the heavily leveraged tech sector.” (10/16/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/10/16/perfect-economic-storm-trump-inflation/
The Third Rail Is Dead
Source: Independent Institute
by Alex Tokarev & Kristin Tokarev
“Everyone knows the math is getting worse. Americans are living longer. Birth rates are falling. Fewer workers are supporting more retirees. The Social Security trustees project the program’s trust funds will be depleted in the early 2030s, leaving payroll taxes insufficient to pay all scheduled benefits unless Congress acts. Yet every election brings the same warning: Don’t touch my Social Security! That’s why President Donald Trump’s reported interest in Australia’s retirement system matters. Not because Australia has discovered the silver bullet for that fiscal monster. Because someone in Washington is finally asking whether a retirement system designed during the Great Depression is still the best America can do in the 21st century.” (10/16/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/10/16/the-third-rail-is-dead/
More Wealth Creators Needed
Source: Free Association
by Sheldon Richman
“So, what good are the rich? Sumner had the good common sense to understand what so many do not understand today: ‘The great gains of a great capitalist in a modern state must be put under the head of wages of superintendence. Any one who believes that any great enterprise of an industrial character can be started without labor must have little experience of life.'” (10/16/26)
https://sheldonrichman.substack.com/p/tgif-more-wealth-creators-needed
Six Meta Problems That Should Be Issues in the Election, But Are Not
Source: Coyote Blog
by Warren Meyer
“I have not blogged for a while but recently I have allowed all the election advertising to get under my skin. The solution sets being discussed — to the extent any solutions are discussed rather than just promoting fear of the other team –are so divorced from any sensible analysis of cause and effect that it is almost intolerable to even listen. For this article, I have taken real things people have expressed concern about in this election cycle and I have proposed six meta issues that are closer to the true causes of people’s concerns. Of course, none of this is being discussed by anyone on either side in this election.” (10/16/26)
The Depth of Digger
Source: Law & Liberty
by Emina Melonic
“Tom Cruise may possibly be the biggest movie star in the world. His career has been a constant stream of blockbusters spanning more than four decades. Cruise has historically made excellent decisions in picking his projects, but his newest film, Digger (2026), is certainly a departure from anything we’ve seen Tom Cruise do on the silver screen. But that’s not all—Digger is a departure from cinema as we have known it, at least in the years since Covid broke out. The headlines mostly dismiss the film as a box office flop. The film critics are not helping the matter either. They don’t like it, at all. Yet in the last few days after its opening, the chatter among the people in real life and social media has been quite positive.” (10/16/26)
Why Can Nothing Be Built in Britain?
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mani Basharzad
“A public company in the UK was building a high-speed railway when it suddenly faced a regulation that few could have predicted: a £100 million ($132 million) bat tunnel. The railway passed through Sheephouse Wood, an area inhabited by rare Bechstein’s bats. To comply with environmental regulations that protect the bats from colliding with high-speed trains, the company had to build a roughly one-kilometer covered structure alongside the railway. This structure has since become widely known in the UK as the ‘bat tunnel.’ If you think this is just one case, let me tell you about the fish disco.” (10/16/26)
https://fee.org/articles/why-can-nothing-be-built-in-britain/
There’s a Reason Black Voters in Detroit Don’t Like Abdul
Source: Town Hall
by Derek Hunter
“I don’t know where you grew up, but I grew up six blocks north of the Detroit border and one block south of 8 Mile Road, ‘on the bad side’. It wasn’t bad when I was a kid, or at least not as bad, and as I got older, I spent more time in the city. I went to college downtown at Wayne State and lived for a time in the Cass Corridor, back when that was not a place you wanted to be (it’s quite different now). I saw firsthand why there is distrust and dislike between black Detroiters and Arabs in the city, and I’m kind of surprised no one has talked about it in regard to why Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is doing so horribly with black voters.” (10/17/26)
I’ve Rediscovered Why I Became a Doctor
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Joseph Varon
“I have been a doctor for over 40 years. I have cared for patients in their most critical moments, seen families face unexpected diagnoses, and made split-second decisions in intensive care where every second counted. I have witnessed both remarkable recoveries and painful losses. I have taught new doctors, published research, and worked on treatments to help people I might never meet. All this time, I thought I knew what it meant to be a physician. When Covid began, something shifted in me. It didn’t happen all at once or because of one argument with an administrator or a policy. It was a slow realization that grew as I kept caring for sick people.” (10/16/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/ive-rediscovered-why-i-became-a-doctor/