“Sometimes, it seems, a writer’s style and sensibility can seep into the public consciousness so thoroughly that it washes away all particular facts about the works themselves. Ernest Hemingway is perhaps the paradigm case. Everyone agrees that he is gruff and terse and manly and emotionless; his main interests are bullfighting and big-game hunting and deep-sea fishing and overusing the word ‘and’. Most importantly, the things that tend to preoccupy other great novelists — interpersonal relationships, the delicate gradations of human thought and feeling — tend not to get much of a look in. It is for this reason that readers who open up The Sun Also Rises, which celebrates its centenary today, might be in for a surprise.” (10/21/26)
“The Trump administration’s campaign to compel hundreds of billions of dollars of new military appropriations out of Congress, citing new materiel needs downstream of its unsanctioned Iran War, has been stalled in the Senate for months. But one unexpected winner has emerged from the congressional stalemate over defense spending: an obscure investment office in the Pentagon known as the Economic Defense Unit (EDU). Earlier this year, Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg stood up the EDU and appointed George Kollitides, a one-time executive at Feinberg’s former private equity firm, Cerberus Capital Management, who recently was the subject of a ProPublica investigation for his role in steering a $350 million Department of Defense contract to a consulting firm where he was a partner until just weeks ago.” (10/22/26)
“The budget deficit for FY 2026 was just shy of $2 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). That’s a 12 percent increase over FY 2025. Some will undoubtedly attribute the budget deficit’s size to the refunds the Trump administration had to issue after the Supreme Court struck down its illegal tariff regime. That’s partly true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story about the deficit and the growing budgetary woes the federal government is experiencing.” (10/21/26)
“Toward the end of the summer, I bought a new dishwasher after agonizing over a big-ticket purchase. … The same day my dishwasher was installed, my family went out to eat, and when the bill arrived, I found the comparison almost laughable: our meal plus the tip was approaching half the price of the dishwasher. How silly I had been to put off buying an appliance that would undoubtedly make my life easier and last for thousands of wash cycles — unlike the dinner that we enjoyed and consumed in under an hour. In retrospect, there was no need to agonize over the appliance purchase. I could manage the expense by forgoing a few nights of eating out. But that realization also highlighted a familiar consumer behavior: we often scrutinize large, infrequent purchases while accepting smaller, convenient expenses with little deliberation.” (10/21/26)
“Most people value obedience more than I do. To me, doing the right thing is what matters. I was more concerned with raising children who would grow into people who respected the rights of others than with raising compliant drones who obeyed every command. If I made a dumb rule, I wanted them to point it out, even when it was annoying or inconvenient. Show me how I’m wrong or convince me with a better argument. When I was wrong, which did happen, I usually admitted it. If I didn’t, I was wrong again. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for raising a child who follows bad orders. I wouldn’t want to raise a human who will harm others and say they are just doing their job. That’s repulsive and the height of evil.” (10/21/26)
“Rubio’s speech was not without some good points. If nothing else, as the Journal notes, he ostensibly treated Europe as an ally and partner rather than a target for scolding like Vance. He said some nice words about the West’s tradition of liberty and representative government. And, amid MAGA world’s aggressive contempt for anything that smacks of intellectualism, there is something refreshing about a speech that name-checks Aristotle, Plutarch, Copernicus, Newton, and Michelangelo. Unfortunately, Rubio’s tribute to the Greek, Western, and American spirit is also a conceptual salad in which Socrates, the 300 Spartans who resisted a mighty Persian army unto death at Thermopylae, and the mythical Achilles who chose glory over long life are mashed up into the model hero willing to die for ‘a cause worthy of his loyalty.'” (10/21/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“Bitcoin is unlikely to replace the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. A global reserve asset is not just the hardest money available. Central banks and trading nations hold reserve assets to settle international trade, stabilize currencies, and service massive debts. Sound money protects individual wealth. Reserve currency provides systemic liquidity. Those are two very different jobs. … Bitcoin has no sovereign issuer, no fiscal authority, and no lender of last resort. For Bitcoin holders, these are its primary strengths. For state treasuries, these features represent structural liabilities. Central banks prioritize counterparty control and crisis management. The absence of a central authority makes state adoption difficult, not attractive.” (10/21/26)
“Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s October surprise was supposed to make voters question Democrat Amy Acton’s character. Instead, yesterday, a leak of his attack ad featuring her estranged mother blew up in his face. By Tuesday evening, after the ad had been roundly condemned—including by other Ohio Republicans—Ramaswamy’s response was to announce he would spend $4 million promoting the ad. … This is not the first time Ramaswamy has had a problem involving a campaign ad and a child abuser. I reported just a week ago that Ramaswamy’s property-tax ad featured Vernon Edwards, a registered sex offender who pleaded guilty to two counts of gross sexual imposition involving his niece, who was younger than 13.” (10/21/26)
“I shouldn’t get so angry. It isn’t healthy. Last week, New York state summoned me to jury duty. I went, of course. It’s the law, and my duty. A jury may protect the innocent from government abuse. Ordinary citizens, not officials, decide if you are guilty. But doing our patriotic duty shouldn’t mean surrendering hours of our lives to bureaucratic indifference. Serving justice is important. Sitting around doing nothing isn’t.” (10/21/26)
