“When the shutdown ended, Arizona Democratic Representative Adelita Grijalva was finally sworn in, 50 days after she was elected. She promptly signed the discharge petition to release the full Epstein files, getting it past 218 signatures and forcing a vote in the House. Democrats were jubilant in the expectation that this would finally expose Trump and bring us to a point where Republicans are perhaps forced to remove him from office — or at least forced to reckon with his moral deficiencies. The problem is, even assuming the best case for Democrats (and the worst for Trump), and even though every House Republican but one hopped on the ‘release the files’ bandwagon, neither of these things are likely to ever happen.” (11/19/25)
“[A] bipartisan Senate coalition led by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tim Sheehy (R-MT) managed to add the commonsense notion that the military should be allowed to repair the equipment it buys, building off a mandate instituted by the secretary of the Army. Needing someone to fly in every time a tank or aircraft carrier breaks wastes time and money, and serves as a second bite at the apple for lucrative military contractors. But because Congress is often just a pass-through for corporate America, the contractors’ lobbyists are blitzing Capitol Hill to secure their position as the military’s high-priced mechanics.” (11/20/25)
“Most discourse on AI is low-quality. Most discourse on consciousness is super-abysmal-double-low quality. Multiply these — or maybe raise one to the exponent of the other, or something — and you get the quality of discourse on AI consciousness. It’s not great. … But a rare bright spot has appeared: a seminal paper published earlier this month in Trends In Cognitive Science, Identifying Indicators Of Consciousness In AI Systems.” (11/19/25)
“I recently wrote about the significant gender tolerance gap. That naturally raises another question: are there controllable factors that actually help make people better or worse on this front? One obvious candidate is political involvement. Maybe political participation broadens people’s exposure to clashing viewpoints and forces them to wrestle with ideas they’d otherwise ignore. Maybe it teaches civic virtues like freedom of expression. Or maybe it simply funnels them into ideological echo chambers where bad habits grow and tempers get sharp. Turns out both stories might be true — just not for the same genders …” (11/19/25)
Source: International Guild of Professional Anarchists
“Politicians don’t stand up and shout, ‘Give me liberty or give me death,’ anymore. Their version is closer to: ‘Give me your fear and I’ll rent your freedom back to you, one crisis at a time.’ That’s the real slogan of modern governance, and Fearmongering 101 is the core course every aspiring ruler passes with honors. The curriculum is simple: invent or exaggerate a crisis, declare yourself the only solution, demand more power, money, and obedience, then repeat the process until the public is too anxious and exhausted to notice the chains tightening. This isn’t a conspiracy theory; it’s standard operating procedure.” (11/19/25)
“Where do you stand on the penny issue? Are you pro-penny, anti-penny, or do you not care one way or the other? Did you even know there was a ‘penny issue?’ On Nov. 12, the U.S. Mint stopped issuing pennies; it minted its final one-cent coin. Maybe. Some people are upset by this development; others think it’s long past due. The problem with pennies is two-fold: due to the devaluation of the dollar (‘inflation’), each penny costs over three cents to make and distribute. In addition, the rampant creation of inflated U.S. dollars by the Federal Reserve — which I consider the largest counterfeiting operation in world history — has made them useless. Other than psychologically, I suppose.” (11/19/25)
“Property ownership is the cornerstone of a free society. It reflects the natural right of individuals to control what they create, earn, or voluntarily exchange with others. From that right flows responsibility, independence, and the ability to build a legacy. Yet today, homeowners must pay the government every year simply to keep what they already own. Property taxes are not a reasonable price for local services — they are an outdated, overly coercive, and economically destructive way to fund government.” (11/19/25)
“With SNAP funding in the news, we’re seeing a revival of a familiar complaint against big business. The reason millions of Americans need public benefits like SNAP, critics say, is that their employers don’t pay them enough. … this complaint is morally confused. To see why, let’s start with a simple point: an employer is a buyer of labor. So when critics say that big corporations should raise their employees’ wages to the point where they don’t need public assistance, what they’re really saying is that corporations should pay more for what they buy. But we shouldn’t assume that merely buying something from someone obligates you to pay them so much that they never need public assistance, rather than simply paying them the mutually agreeable price.” (11/19/25)
Source: CounterPunch
by John W Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“Pay-to-play schemes. Protection rackets. Extortion. Corruption. Self-enrichment. Graft. Grift. Brutality. Roaming bands of thugs smashing car windows and terrorizing communities. Immunity for criminal behavior coupled with prosecutions of whistleblowers. This is how a crime syndicate operates — not a constitutional republic. What we are witnessing today is the steady transformation of the federal government — especially the executive branch — into a criminalized system of power in which justice is weaponized, law is selectively enforced, and crime becomes a form of political currency.” (11/19/25)
“In a referendum on Sunday, voters in Ecuador – where some 70% of global cocaine flows – soundly rejected the idea of foreign bases in the country to help fight the drug trade. And in the last three months, as the United States military has built up forces near Venezuela and conducted lethal strikes against alleged drug-carrying boats – dubbed by the White House as ‘narco-terrorists’ – cries have grown louder that such attacks might violate international law. Meanwhile, amid this forceful approach, one country in the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic, has received a largely unnoticed accolade for an alternative tactic to dealing with crime – whether it is petty theft or international drug runners coming to its shores.” (11/18/25)
