“Some advocates of the strict separation between church and state have suggested that for a practice to be constitutional, there must be a long history and tradition of states engaging in that specific act. For instance, in several of the recent cases involving posting copies of the Ten Commandments in public schools, a few advocates and judges thought it significant that the states could not demonstrate that there is a long and unbroken tradition of posting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. A chief problem with this argument is that the Supreme Court has never said that there must be longstanding and widespread history of governments engaging in specific practices in order for them to be permissible.” (10/13/26)
“Sure, I’m frustrated. After years of litigation, deep audits, and some extreme dedication by the vaccine-injured, we now are in possession of a 1,048-page book that details ghastly and widespread injury from shots people were forced to get. Many died. Many have lifelong suffering. Many have seen their lives, finances, and families shattered. These are not statistics on a preprint server awaiting the arduous process of slogging through anonymous peer-reviewers. This is not another model that conjures up possible scenarios. This is not some dry dashboard with probabilities and possibilities. These are the life stories of real people as reported to the CDC through its own vaccine-safety monitoring system called V-safe.” (10/13/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by W James Antle III
“Republicans could be looking at a major wipeout in the midterm elections. Their tiny House majority was always going to be difficult to maintain, but the Senate should not be in play at all. Yet it surely is, with Democrats leading in nearly all the toss-up races, including in the reddest states, and competitive in at least a dozen of the contests that will determine which party controls the upper chamber. The Iran war is a big reason this has come to pass. … there is a potential for a midterm election more like 2006. Twenty years ago, as Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter pointed out earlier this year, we had an unpopular president waging an unpopular war while Republican congressional incumbents were beset by assorted scandals.” (10/13/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“There’s a viral video clip showing a group of wild boars getting caught in a corral trap. When the gate snaps shut the poor animals run around in a panic, searching in vain for an exit. According to the caption that’s been going around, the trapper waited patiently for five days for the entire sounder to get comfortable enough to take the bait and enter the trap all at once. The gate didn’t close until the final pig walked into the enclosure. And, yeah. That’s pretty much where we’re at right now. We’ve been standing around munching on our bait, enjoying our bread and our circuses, blissfully unaware of the trapper who is patiently waiting for the perfect moment to slam the gate shut on us all: ‘Man, AI sure is great.'” (10/13/26)
“After [US defense secretary Pete] Hegseth announced plans to livestream [Nidal] Hasan’s Dec. 3 execution by firing squad, retired Admiral James Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander, condemned the spectacle. ‘It is not who we are as a military or a nation,’ he said. Stavridis is right about who we should be. The moral character of the condemned does not determine the moral obligations of the state. Executing a paralyzed prisoner before a public audience demonstrates nothing about American strength. It transforms state violence into grotesque entertainment. But I fear the admiral is wrong about who we are.” (10/13/26)
“Contrary to the mainstream framework, Murray N. Rothbard held that valuations do not exist apart of the things to be valued. Whenever an individual is confronted with a good, he assesses it in accordance with it expected benefits to his life and well-being. These benefits are likely to vary given changes in individual’s circumstances. From this, it follows that an unchanged scale of preferences does not comply with the reality. Obviously, human beings do change their minds, so it is not surprising that the [behavioral economics] practitioners have ‘discovered’ that human beings’ behavior systematically deviates from the one depicted by the mainstream economics. … Since in the BE framework reason is not the key driver of individuals’ choices; individuals’ evaluations of goods are arbitrary i.e. not connected to the facts of reality.” (10/13/26)
“The Forbes 400 may only own 4 percent of U.S. wealth; but the New York Times found that 300 billionaires accounted for 19 percent of all reported federal campaign contributions in the 2024 election. And these are only reported, cash donations. Include other forms of influence — exemplified by Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and his conversion of the former public square into a site that elevates extreme right-wing propaganda — and it’s obvious that the malign political influence of a handful of the ultra-rich is much bigger than even those stunningly large donations suggest. Now the Times reports that Musk is giving even more money in an attempt to help Republicans stave off midterm disaster than he gave in 2024 …” (10/13/26)
“Just after midnight on New Year’s Day 2024, a man and his two children stood near the harbor in the Danish town of Gråsten, watching fireworks over the water a short walk from the house where the children had been living. … masked men rushed the family and knocked the father, then forty-nine, to the ground. The same witness described one child being loaded into a car while the other fought back, held by two men who carried it by the limbs. … They were carried more than eight hundred kilometers south to a farm in Baden-Württemberg and held in a mobile home until their mother arrived to collect them …. The men she is accused of hiring were not ordinary criminals. The prosecution’s case and the testimony of the operatives themselves describe an operation brokered by the former head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service and carried out by veterans of Israel’s.” (10/13/26)
“Australia tried to end smoking with punitive taxes. Instead, it created a lucrative trade for smugglers and a wave of violent attacks on retailers.” (10/13/26)
“Since the 2016 Russiagate fiasco, it has become standard practice among Western elites, especially in Europe, to blame every unwelcome election result — and above all every ‘populist’ rebuke to their rule — on Russian ‘disinformation’ and ‘interference’. The campaign has escalated dramatically since 2022. We are told that Russia has for years been running a vast influence operation aimed at manipulating helpless voters. Yet the evidence that this operation has reached, let alone swayed, any meaningful number of them is scant to say the least.” (10/12/26)
