“Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2008 and must be a smart fellow. He wrote on Substack August 11, ‘The U.S. Healthcare System is Already Mostly Socialized, and there’s nothing radical about wanting to end insurance company parasitism’. Krugman explained that taxpayers currently pay two-thirds of US healthcare costs. It’s not just the costs of Medicare, Medicaid, the Indian Health Service, the VA, and the Affordable Care Act premium subsidies, but also employers deduct their contribution for their employees’ private insurance as a tax-deductible expense, while the employees owe no income tax on the value of employers’ contribution. Maybe that’s a bit wonky, but the point is simple – when we give tax breaks that subsidize heath insurance for employees, then the rest of us taxpayers have to make up the difference.” (08/20/26)
“Other Fox New hosts and contributors who ended up in the Trump administration include Sean Duffy, Jeanine Pirro, John Bolton, Larry Kudlow, Mike Walz, Dan Bongino, Sebastian Gorka, Mike Huckabee…There are more, but you get the idea. A preponderance of war enthusiasts, some for Iraq, others for Ukraine, all for Iran. O’Reilly supported all three wars. And since he was the biggest Fox star for sixteen years, one must assume he looms large in Trump’s consciousness. That makes his pathogenic influence especially menacing.” (08/20/26)
“The attack on pregnancy resource centers has been years in the making. The governor in 2024 launched a ‘first-in-the-nation public education campaign’ to protect residents from the ‘dangers of anti-abortion centers.’ The effort, aided by the Reproductive Equity Now Foundation and backed by $1 million in taxpayer funding, appeared on social media, billboards and public transportation with its message. The state says pregnancy resource centers ‘can put your health at risk’ and ‘mislead you about your options.’ In the government’s telling, the groups lure abortion-seeking women in and trick them into not terminating their pregnancies.” (08/20/26)
“As a result of Trump’s loss at the hands of Iran, the American empire has been dealt a severe dent to its armor. The image of American bases scattered across the Middle East – once a symbol of military dominance – has been quite literally shattered. Trump can no longer rely on previously held assumptions about American power in order to get his way. Thus, he must lower himself rhetorically to the level of a brutal warlord.” (08/20/26)
“On June 26, the week France recorded its hottest day on record (a record broken the following day), Fox News hosted Bjørn Lomborg, the Danish political scientist and climate contrarian known for his opposition to conventional policy prescriptions, who chided Europeans for their slow adoption of AC. ‘We’ve had this technology for more than a century,’ Lomborg said, ‘and Europe doesn’t want to use it mostly because they want to feel virtuous,’ adding that European Union energy taxes increase the cost of running AC. … In an unbelievable feat of journalism, across the political spectrum, the U.S. media frenzy missed the simple, glaringly obvious explanation: Europe is less air-conditioned because it didn’t used to be this hot.” (08/20/26)
“The idea of harm reduction begins with a realistic premise: people sometimes continue risky behavior despite prohibition, stigma, or advice to stop. Harm reduction policies attempt the opposite of a prohibition or abstinence approach. Harm reduction policies are based on the belief that lives can be saved by helping people move from more dangerous choices to less dangerous ones. Fentanyl test strips, vaping, and even ordinary automobile driving all demonstrate the promise of this approach and its limits. Harm reduction works best when the relative risks are clear, people can act on the information or substitute offered, and the intervention complements rather than replaces prevention and treatment. The lives saved, and the other harms prevented, extend both to those who’ve undertaken the risky behaviors and to nonparticipant bystanders.” (08/19/26)
“The situation in Iran is going to hurt Republicans in the fall. Not because the majority of the American people want Iran to get a nuclear weapon or because Democrats in the media are lying about things, but it’s going to hurt Republicans because it is a major distraction from the things average voters care about. President Donald Trump either doesn’t see that or does not care. Let me start by saying I firmly believe the world would be a better place without the Islamic Republic of Iran in it. They have been killing Americans and innocent civilians around the world for half a century, so wiping them out is something I fully support. The problem is we don’t have the will to actually do that. We have the ability and the technology, but the will matters more than anything else, and it just isn’t there.” (08/20/26)
“Earlier this year, Donald Trump made some additions to the White House Palm Room: two photos of himself with autocratic leaders; one alongside Xi Jinping, the other with Vladimir Putin. The picture of the president with Putin, a memento from the Russian dictator’s 2025 Alaska visit, was placed above a photograph of Trump’s own granddaughter. Trump has since taken down the picture of his grandkid, but Putin is still there. Trump’s admiration for foreign authoritarians is shared by Hasan Piker, the influential political streamer who’s staged frequent interventions in Democratic primaries. Piker has interviewed numerous successful primary candidates on his stream, including Darializa Avila Chevalier, Chris Rabb, and Abdul El-Sayed. He praises Mao Zedong as one of the greats and dresses like him too. Piker even has a Chinese flag positioned prominently in the background of many of his streams.” (08/19/26)
“It is well-known that liberalism accommodates differences of opinion and world view. Unlike other political arrangements, liberalism does not require uniformity of thought, or that individuals and factions see eye-to-eye. What liberalism does require, says Krista Lawlor, is that civilians retain an interest in being reasonable. Reasonableness may not be enough to ‘cure sectarianism or secure our liberal democracy,’ she explains, but liberal democracy stands little chance without it.” (08/18/26)
“The release of the Fauci diaries has filled in some missing pieces. They help elucidate how the years of hell unfolded in Fauci’s own mind. Working with military intelligence and pharmaceutical companies, Fauci and his colleagues eventually hatched an audacious plan to delay natural immunity for a full ten months as they awaited both the November election and the viable release of the injectable product called a vaccine – all in the hope that it would be given credit for fixing the problem they created in the first place. This scheme, however, was Fauci’s personal Plan B. Plan A is revealed in the diaries. It was to bury the existence and spread of the virus in question within a broader fabric of a bad flu season.” (08/19/26)
