“In June 2022, the price of gasoline topped $5 a gallon and stayed around $4 a gallon through October, on the eve of the midterms. It is currently about $4.30. The inflation rate in 2022 hit a 40-year high of 9.1 percent, and would average 5.1 percent over Joe Biden’s four-year tenure. The 2026 inflation rate is estimated to be about 3.5 percent and, over the first two years of the second Trump administration, will likely average around 3 percent. GDP for the third quarter of 2026 is higher than it was in the same quarter of 2022. The poverty rate is now lower and the annual family income higher than in November 2022. Yet we are told that gas prices and inflation are at record levels and will doom the Republicans, even though similar economic data did not harm Democrats all that much in the 2022 midterms.” (11/02/26)
“While a unified Democratic government has tended to see the fastest growth in government spending since World War II, government grows faster overall under Republican presidents than Democratic ones. And the only real decreases in the size of government spending happened during those six years where there were Democratic presidents and Republican majorities in Congress, first with the post-war build-down under Harry Truman (1947-48), and next after modest cut-backs from the bloated spending of the financial and COVID crises under Barack Obama (2009-10) and Donald Trump (2020), respectively.” (11/02/26)
“I’ve gotten nearly 2,000 campaign fundraising texts that were meant for someone else. I tried to find out why—and uncovered a labyrinth of politicians, data brokers, and shady tactics.” (11/02/26)
“Courts have already ruled against two avenues President Donald Trump used to impose his tariff regime. That hasn’t stopped his efforts to attempt to deploy obscure or outdated trade law provisions to justify new import levies. His latest tool is the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, the notorious legislation that gravely exacerbated the Great Depression. … Even if Section 338 is still operative, Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods violate its requirements.” (11/02/26)
“Agnes was who I was on the inside before the abuse, before being me became just too painful to consciously bare, and she has haunted me throughout my life, with terrifying flashbacks and a deep sense of guilt over some confusing notion that I had left something or someone behind. For a long time, I didn’t know what she was. I would get repeated waking visions of a little girl in pigtails and a black velvet party dress smashing all the stained-glass windows in my church. I took to calling her the little girl with the hammer, but it was only when I gave her the name Agnes and decided to listen to what she had to say that she began talking back to me …” (11/01/26)
“Should criminals be allowed the softening joys of favourite foods and longed for staples? The overcooked roast, the undercooked dumpling? And, for Australians, a foodstuff (hardly a food) so reprehensible it would draw disapproval from any respectable panel from UNESCO? Last month, Andre McKenchnie, a convicted murderer detained at Victoria’s Barwon Prison, attempted to test the judicial waters that not being allowed to consume the famous yeast spread of Vegemite was a denial of human rights under the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act, specifically the right to ‘enjoy his culture’ as an Australian.” (11/02/26)
“Her full name is Regina Inez Hinojosa, but almost nobody in Texas calls her that. From the people she met on the streets during the final stretch of her campaign to her own staff, Hinojosa is simply ‘Gina’. Her hope, and that of the Democratic Party, is that her nickname will soon become ‘Governor Gina’, as volunteers and supporters chanted while welcoming her to Fort Bend County ahead of a canvassing event this weekend. A civil rights lawyer by training and a former Austin school board president, Hinojosa challenged incumbent Greg Abbott for Texas governor with a message that goes beyond the usual Democratic arguments about Republican extremism. Unlike many of her predecessors, she has explicitly focused her campaign on reining in corporate welfare, while supporting public education and expanding the safety net for middle-class families.” (11/02/26)
“I’d like to say ‘don’t panic,’ and that’s exactly what I will say — not because I’m convinced nothing bizarre is about to happen, but because ‘prepping’ is always good advice anyway. These news cycle indicators may or may not be predictive in the near term, but laying in some shelf-stable food and bottled water can’t hurt and will stand you in good stead for even the smaller ‘disasters’ that have always been part of life (blizzards, hurricanes, etc.). IS something big coming? I haven’t the faintest. I don’t move in circles of power where I’d pick up that kind of thing before you. That said, we live in a time of multiple escalating crises.” (11/01/26)
“How involved should lovers of liberty (minarchists and especially anarchists) be involved in issues of government? Closely tied to that question, how involved should christians and libertarians be in issues that relate to human (‘civil’) government? Should they vote in elections, write government representatives, support candidates, and speak out about political issues relating to liberty, morality, responsibility, family, and freedom (not just but especially religious freedom)? For christians, what about the separation of church and state? For libertarians in general, what about separation of school and state?” (10/31/26)
