- Dog bites man: Idiot pols introduce bill to ban employers from checking applicants’ credit reports
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“As the US labor market comes under pressure, two senior figures in Washington are pushing to end a practice that prevents large swaths of US workers from obtaining jobs. A bill reintroduced today by Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts, and Steve Cohen, the representative from Tennessee, bans employers from using credit checks to vet potential hires. Denying jobs based on a candidate’s financial history ‘makes no sense,’ the prominent Democrats argue. It also disproportionately affects minorities.” [editor’s note: Suppose I run a business that hires financial advisors or people in positions where embezzlement is a problem. Think maybe applicants’ financial histories might be relevant? – TLK] (09/15/25)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/15/elizabeth-warren-credit-reports-employment
- Nepal: PM appoints three new ministers as interim regime prepares to hold elections
Source: ABC News
“Nepal’s prime minister on Monday selected three new ministers to join her interim administration, which is tasked with holding fresh elections in March after violent street protests last week led to the collapse of the previous government. Sushila Karki, the Himalayan country’s first female prime minster, appointed Kalman Gurung as energy minister, Rameshore Khanal as finance minister and Om Prakash Aryal as home minister. … Last week’s massive demonstrations — called the protest of Gen Z — ended with at least 72 people killed and hundreds wounded. The army stepped in to impose a curfew and finally agreed to make Karki the head of an interim government that will hold elections in six months.” (09/15/25)
- Tesla shares gain as Elon Musk reveals rare $1 billion stock buy in sign of confidence in EV maker
Source: CNBC
“Tesla shares jumped after CEO Elon Musk disclosed Monday his first purchase of the stock in the open market since February 2020. Musk bought 2.57 million shares at various prices Friday which tallies up to about $1 billion, a significant insider acquisition that traders took as a vote of confidence from the outspoken CEO. Tesla shares were higher by 8% in premarket trading Monday morning. They closed Friday slightly lower for 2025 despite a recent rally, with the stock up more than 25% over the last 3 months.” (09/15/25)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/15/tesla-shares-gain-after-elon-musk-discloses-purchase.html
- India: Regime forces kill top Maoist commander who had US$113,000 bounty on his head
Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]
“Indian security forces killed a top Maoist commander and two other rebels in a gun battle on Monday, officials said, as the government intensifies efforts to crush the decades-long conflict. India is waging an all-out offensive against the last remaining traces of the Naxalite rebellion, named after the village in the foothills of the Himalayas where the Maoist-inspired guerrilla movement began nearly six decades ago. … Three ‘top Naxal commanders’ were killed in the fight, the CRPF said, including Sahdev Soren, who was part of the central committee of the Maoist organisation. Authorities had issued a bounty of around US$113,000 for his capture.” (09/15/25)
- Trump Vows New Fake “National Emergency” in DC Over ICE Gang Dispute
Source: US News & World Report
“U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he would call a national emergency and federalize Washington, D.C. after Mayor Muriel Bowser said its police would not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. At issue is the provision of information on individuals living in, or entering, the United States illegally [sic]. Trump’s threat adds to a move critics have seen as federal overreach, with more than 2,000 troops patrolling the city. … Trump blamed ‘Radical Left Democrats’ for pressuring Bowser to inform the government about the non-cooperation with ICE, adding that if the police halted cooperation with ICE, ‘Crime would come roaring back.'” (09/15/25)
- The Scouring of the American Middle Class
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Artis Shepherd“The war of words between President Donald Trump and Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has been revealed as largely histrionic. Like their predecessors — Richard Nixon and Arthur Burns — over 50 years ago, Trump and Powell have been acting out a performative charade regarding when and to what extent artificially low interest rates should go even lower in the midst of persistent inflation. The supposed sparring between Trump and Powell merely guarantees the result both want — more easy money.” (09/15/25)
- Markets and Marshals: How the Old West Used Private Enforcement to Deliver Justice
Source: The Daily Economy
by Connor Crase“While bounties and private detectives may seem like relics of the past, they offer valuable insights into how markets fill in the gaps when the government fails.” (09/15/25)
- In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, colleges must not burden speaking events
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by staff“Last week, an assassin silenced speech on a college campus. A family lost a father and a husband. As we have said without equivocation, political violence is never an acceptable response to free speech. Appropriately, we can expect colleges and universities to place even greater emphasis on safety and security ahead of outside speakers arriving on campus moving forward. They have a moral and legal obligation to redouble their efforts to protect free speech as well as their campus community. However, administrators must not pass those security costs along to speakers or use security concerns as pretext to cancel a speaker’s appearance. Rewarding threats of violence by taxing speech or silencing speakers will only invite more threats and more violence.” (09/15/25)
- Our New Age of American Terror
Source: Persuasion
by Ethan Dodd“In 1894, the French intellectual Émile Henry nursed two beers in a Parisian café as the orchestra played to a room of wealthy patrons. After paying his bill and getting up to leave, Henry removed a bomb from his overcoat pocket, lit the fuse with his cigar, and threw the bomb into the café, toward the orchestra, leaving five widows and ten orphans. ‘This was the first modern terrorist act,’ wrote the late historian John Merriman in his book The Dynamite Club. ‘It was the day that ordinary people became the targets of terrorists.’ Today, such terror has become frighteningly normal in America.” (09/15/25)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/we-are-living-in-eddingtons-world
- Germany Versus X
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob“The question is freedom of speech. Many German officials are opposed. Twitter‑X, or X, is in favor.
As Reclaim the Net summarizes the case, ‘German prosecutors are testing whether the reach of their censorship laws can outstrip the guardrails of international treaties.’ These prosecutors have been going after three X managers for alleged ‘obstruction of justice.’ This obstruction consisted of refusing to immediately give prosecutors data on users who utter government-disapproved speech.” (09/15/25) - Lords of the Flies
Source: The Honest Courtesan
by Maggie McNeill“White supremacists are now trying to create panic among other bigots by claiming that the ‘white’ race (by which they mean fair-skinned Caucasians) is vanishing. Actually, what’s happening is that, since the most-developed countries are largely inhabited by Europeans and their descendants, their birth rates are most subject to the birth rate decrease which is typical of highly-developed societies, and thus the number of ‘whites’ is slowly decreasing in relation to other genetic groups who inhabit portions of the globe where the birth rate is not decreasing as quickly. But the mathematical, biological, historical, and sociological ignorance in which this manufactured hysteria is rooted isn’t as bad as its philosophical imbecility.” (09/15/25)
- The WTO Exists for Times Like These; Why Not Use It?
Source: Cato Institute
by James Bacchus“Of all the erratic tariffs imposed by President Trump, few have been so vindictive as those meted out to Brazil, which from 1 August has been subject to 50% effective tariffs. And as Brazil subsequently took its case against the US to the World Trade Organization, the question is not whether it will win or lose (it will almost certainly win), but rather: Why have dozens of other countries suffering enormously from arbitrary and illegal US tariffs not joined in the Brazilian case or brought their own cases in the WTO against the US?” (09/15/25)
https://www.cato.org/commentary/wto-exists-times-these-why-not-use-it
- Do we need a treaty on neutrality?
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Naman Karl-Thomas Habtom“In an era of widespread use of economic sanctions, dual-use technology exports, and hybrid warfare, the boundary between peacetime and wartime has become increasingly blurry. Yet understandings of neutrality remain stuck in the time of trench warfare. An updated conception of neutrality, codified through an international treaty, is necessary for global security. Neutrality in the 21st century is often whatever a country wants it to be.” (09/15/25)
- The Warmonger Rebrand
Source: Liberal Currents
by Joseph Stieb“On September 5, President Trump issued an executive order rebranding the Department of Defense as the ‘Department of War.’ The order boasted that the U.S. military is ‘the strongest and most lethal fighting force in the world’ and that this department ‘should have a name that reflects its unmatched power and readiness to protect national interests.’ He bizarrely ranted that since Congress consolidated the War Department and the Department of the Navy as the DoD in 1949 that the United States ‘never fought to win’ in the interceding wars. Oddly, Trump’s renaming has attracted support from many analysts and politicians who want a more restrained, less militarized foreign policy. They include both Buchananite nationalist conservatives, leftist commentators, and some mainstream outlets.” (09/15/25)
- To Protect Ukraine, Keep It out of NATO
Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Snider“The war in Ukraine is heading to its inevitable conclusion. It may still take many months, but Russia will win the war on the battlefield, and Ukraine will be without some of its territory and without NATO membership. In such a situation, Kiev has every incentive to make a deal rather than wait for crushing defeat. There is no doubt that Ukraine will require reliable security guarantees …. While Kiev would like its security guarantee to come in the form of NATO membership, the most important guarantee of its future security is the opposite: a credible commitment from Kiev and from NATO that Ukraine will remain neutral and never join the Western alliance.” [editor’s note: Snider seems to think that if he just keeps proclaiming Russian “victory” is inevitable, it will magically come true. And there is not and never was any chance Ukraine would be allowed to join NATO – TLK] (09/15/25)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/to-protect-ukraine-keep-it-out-of-nato/
- The Marshall Plan for the Mind
Source: Law & Liberty
by Henry T Edmonson III“How much did the CIA book program contribute to the fall of the Soviet Union?” (09/15/25)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the-marshall-plan-for-the-mind/
- Quantum Vibe, 09/15/25
Source: Big Head Press
by Scott BieserCartoon. (09/15/25)
- How the Trump tariffs boomerang to hurt US winemakers
Source: Washington Post
by Kevin D Williamson“Owning a vineyard in Napa Valley sounds fancy, but the wine business is, in reality, pretty gritty: It is a low-margin agricultural and food-processing business that is, on top of everything else, highly regulated. Now the Trump administration is threatening to make things a good deal worse by throwing a hand grenade into the U.S. wine industry’s supply chains and distribution networks in the form of tariffs that are meant, in theory, to protect domestic producers from overseas competition. Unfortunately, the wine industry doesn’t work the way Washington seems to think it does.” (09/14/25)
- Why Did Feds Ignore Epstein’s Financial Crime Wave?
Source: JimBovard.com
by James Bovard“JPMorgan helped Jeffrey Epstein commit thousands of federal banking-law violations, per a bombshell New York Times report. Federal regulators perpetually ignored endless red flags of Epstein’s multimillion-dollar child-sex-trafficking operations. Federal money-laundering law requires banks to file a report for each cash transaction exceeding $10,000. Epstein was pulling out $800,000 in cash each year, ‘much of which was used to procure girls and young women,’ the Times details. Shortly after Epstein’s death in a New York prison cell, in late 2019, JPMorgan ‘filed a report with federal regulators that retroactively flagged as suspicious some 4,700 Epstein transactions — totaling more than $1.1 billion.’ … Ironically, during Epstein’s financial crime spree, the Internal Revenue Service was wreaking havoc on hapless small businesses for violating the same law.” (09/14/25)
https://jimbovard.com/blog/2025/09/14/feds-ignored-epstein-crime-wave/
- Corrupt “Democracy” Makes Fascism Inevitable
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid“[E]ven though Donald Trump has become an unprecedented threat who needs to be stopped, his mainstream ‘resistance’ funded by neocon Never Trumpers and the neoliberal DNC need to be thrown out with him for making his reign of terror possible by being only marginally less despotic than Orange-Man-Bad while daring to call their proto-fascistic shell game woke. This has happened before. In fact, this is precisely how the original Hitler ended up in power.” (09/14/25)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2025/09/corrupt-democracy-makes-fascism.html
- Is the Lack of “Friction” in Our Virtual World Leading to Liberalism’s Decline?
Source: The UnPopulist
by JL Wall“Our rapid-fire communication technologies may be overwhelming our capacity to deliberate and empathize, two new books suggest.” (09/14/25)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/is-the-lack-of-friction-in-our-virtual
- Quillette Narrated, 09/15/25
Source: Quillette
“Pride and Prejudice.” (09/15/25)
https://quillette.com/2025/09/14/pride-and-prejudice-politics-activism-feminism-blm/
- The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent, 09/15/25
Source: The New Republic
“Trump’s Threats Darken on Fox News as MAGA Fury over Kirk Goes Nuclear.” (09/15/25)
https://newrepublic.com/article/200429/trump-threats-darken-fox-news-maga-fury-kirk-goes-nuclear
- EconTalk, 09/15/25
Source: EconTalk
“How Did America Build the Arsenal of Democracy? (with Brian Potter).” (09/15/25)
https://www.econtalk.org/how-did-america-build-the-arsenal-of-democracy-with-brian-potter/
- How to Fix It with John Avlon, 09/14/25
Source: The Bulwark
“Can Libertarians & Centrists Save Democracy?” (09/14/25)
- Free Talk Live, 09/14/25
Source: Free Talk Live
“Discussing all kinds of different cults :: Slavery, an opportunity? :: Martyrs are for taking away freedom :: Keene court case fighting cop corruption :: $58 million increase in government protection spending :: Is the US the best country on earth? :: Right wing cancel culture :: Rawdogging life :: Live by the sword? :: What is hatred? :: Is Trump just bringing us manufacturing jobs? :: Possible plans the US has for kicking the can down the road :: Peaceful separation is the only solution :: Lithium depletion caused Charlie Kirk shooting? :: DeFlock.me :: 2025-09-14 Hosts: Bonnie, Angelo, Riley.” (09/14/25)