In The Tank, episode 514
Source: Heartland Institute
“Government Shutdown Standoff: What’s Really at Stake?” (10/03/25)
Shutdowns as Political Theater
Source: Law & Liberty
by David Hebert & Paul Mueller
“The question isn’t whether Congress will eventually cobble together a deal; it always does. The real question is, why does this keep happening?” (10/03/25)
IL: After being “boxed in” by citizen militia, gang members attempt to murder armed woman in Chicago
Source: New York Post
“U.S. Border Patrol agents shot an armed woman in Chicago Saturday after an angry mob tried to attack the law enforcement officers. The group of agents were conducting their routine patrol near 39th Place and South Kedzie Avenue in the city’s South Side ‘when they were attacked and rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars,’ the Department of Homeland Security said. ‘The officers exited their trapped vehicle, when a suspect tried to run them over, forcing the officers to fire defensively,’ according to DHS, which called the incident ‘an evolving situation’ and noted FBI agents were currently on the scene. The suspect, who is a U.S. citizen, was armed with a semi-automatic weapon, department spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said.” (10/04/25)
Trump Administration Says It Wants to Fight Racial Discrimination in College Admissions — Then Things Got Weird
Source: Cato Institute
by Andrew Gillen
“The Trump administration is certainly doing lots of new things, including in higher education. But collecting data to fight discrimination isn’t one of them — we’ve been doing that for decades.” (10/03/25)
Italy: Big Crowds, Clashes With Police on Fourth Day of Pro-Palestinian Protests
Source: US News & World Report
“Hundreds of thousands of people marched through central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists. People with banners and flags, chanting ‘Free Palestine’ and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organisers said attracted more than 1 million people, while police put the figure at around 250,000. … Towards the end of the march, around 200 people broke away and clashed with officers in riot gear near the St. Mary Major basilica, police said. Officers responded with tear gas and water cannons. In later incidents, protesters set fire to a couple of cars and several rubbish bins, and hurled firecrackers at officers, police said, adding they detained 12 suspects and took down the names of 262 people.” (10/04/25)
Mean Age Daydream, 10/03/25
Source: Lions of Liberty
“Saudi Arabia’s Glowing Orb Eats Electronic Arts.” (10/03/25)
https://www.lionsofliberty.com/episodes/madd-saudi-arabias-glowing-orb-eats-electronic-arts
GDP as ideological scam, part 2
Source: The Peaceful Revolutionist
by David S D’Amato
“If you are struggling at this point to understand why GDP is so important to the substantive conversation about what we want our political-economy to look like, I think it is this: our ruling class has made GDP much less a technical standard than a strict prescriptive standard, under which liberty and the legitimacy of our institutions, etc., are now judged. This is a crucial philosophical distinction. Several years back, during a friendly exchange with a friend who today works at the Cato Institute, I asked whether he could conceive of a legitimately free market, under any definition he preferred, that did not culminate in growth as measured under the GDP ideology. His reply was blunt and reveals much about the way we think politically today: ‘Then what would be the point?'” (10/03/25)
https://dsdamato.substack.com/p/gdp-as-ideological-scam-part-2
Trump plan may end Gaza war, but pain of massacre that sparked it will live on
Source: New York Post
by staff
“Hamas’[s] signaling Friday that it will accept the peace plan President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rolled out last week has raised hopes for an end, once and for all, to the ugly war the terrorist group sparked two years ago Tuesday. And that, indeed, it will lead to a permanent peace not just in Gaza but across the Middle East: an end to the nearly 80-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict. Yet even if it does, Jewish pain from the horrific Oct. 7 massacre that ignited the war, and from the antisemitism it unleashed, will long endure.” (10/04/25)
Czech Republic: Billionaire populist Andrej Babis’s party wins parliamentary election
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“Billionaire businessman Andrej Babis has won parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic, although his populist ANO party fell short of an overall majority. ANO received just under 35% of the vote, earning them 80 seats in the 200-seat lower house – up from 72 seats four years ago, according to preliminary results. Babis – who served as prime minister from 2017 to 2021 – is expected to be invited to lead talks on forming a new coalition. ‘This is a historic success,’ Andrej Babis announced to cheering supporters at the ANO headquarters in the suburbs of Prague. He’d entered the building holding aloft a Bluetooth speaker blasting a remix of the 1981 hit ‘Sarà perché ti amo’ by the Italian pop trio Ricchi e Poveri. The same song resounded across the stage as he accepted the applause. Some colleagues – including the former finance minister Alena Schillerova – danced along to the beat.” (10/04/25)
Strategy over Optics: Trump’s Most Favored Nation Status on Drug Prices
Source: Brownstone Institute
by James Lyons-Weiler
“On September 30, 2025, the image of Albert Bourla standing in the White House beside President Donald J. Trump stunned large segments of the public. The moment instantly became a lightning rod, drawing condemnation and confusion from those who remembered the unresolved — and in many cases, still unaccounted for — devastations of the Covid-19 response. My inbox, and those of others who have worked to expose the record, flooded with a single question, usually framed in rage or betrayal: What the F*? This piece is not an apology, nor an attempt to launder history. We must hold multiple truths at once. What happened in 2020 and 2021 was a global institutional collapse, and many of the facts still buried beneath academic soft-pedaling or regulatory capture are not only real — they are documented.” (10/03/25)