“Economics creates the conditions — insecurity, a sense of decline, distrust of elites. But immigration (framed as cultural threat, not just economic competition) is what converts that grievance into a right-wing populist vote. The slogan “It’s the economy, stupid” famously explained Bill Clinton’s 1992 win. For right-wing populism, researchers are now saying almost the opposite: it’s the culture, not just the economy.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/lonecandle/p/explaining-the-rise-of-trump-and?r=1o36hf&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
There’s not good enough reason to believe Hillary Clinton had anything to do with Epstein’s crimes to force her to come to Congress. Melania Trump had more connections with Epstein than she did. And obviously, Donald Trump had a lot of connections with him! This is an abuse of power by the Republicans in Congress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6IH_kF0HZU
“Beginning in 2017, the city began enforcing a requirement that new apartments of 20 units or more include “affordable” housing units, which are rented at money-losing, below-market rates to lower-income tenants.
The results were predictable. Developers shrank the size of projects to avoid having to comply with the costly mandates. Overall, permitting fell.
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It’s certainly true that “funding” inclusionary zoning to offset developers’ losses helps to mitigate the negative impact the policy has on new supply. It would also go a long way toward making inclusionary zoning constitutional. (Critics periodically argue in lawsuits that unfunded inclusionary zoning is an unconstitutional, uncompensated taking.)
Even so, there are still many problems with “funded” inclusionary zoning that make it an inferior policy to simply having no inclusionary zoning at all.
For starters, funded inclusionary zoning does not remove a regressive tax on housing. The tax, in the form of the mandated affordable units, is still in effect. It is just offset by a countervailing subsidy intended to prevent housing production from falling.
Funded inclusionary zoning thus still has a suppressive effect on overall housing supply that must be mitigated with government subsidies/tax breaks.
Instead of spending tax dollars on schools, police, or lowering tax rates, city hall must spend that money just to keep housing production flat. The tradeoff of funded inclusionary zoning then is no new housing and fewer public services (or higher taxes).
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That YIMBY worldview would therefore seem to suggest that housing subsidy dollars should be spent expanding supply even more, not zeroing out the effects of supply-killing affordable housing mandates.
If a city has a housing shortage, boosting housing production, and not tinkering with the mix of incomes in new buildings, would seem to be the priority.”
https://reason.com/2026/02/24/the-flaws-of-funded-inclusionary-zoning/
“an attorney and former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) instructor, Ryan Schwank, testified before Congress that the agency’s new training program is “deficient, defective, and broken,” leading to constitutional violations and unlawful arrests. “Deficient training,” Schwank added, “can and will get people killed.””
https://reason.com/2026/02/24/ice-whistleblower-says-training-is-deficient-defective-and-broken/
“Commercial real estate firm CBRE reported in an October 2024 research brief that single-family rental inventory had declined by 1.7 million units since 2016. Investors who own more than 100 homes are also responsible for some 3 or 4 percent of single-family home purchases each year.
The vast majority of homes are owned, bought, and sold by either individual owner-occupiers or small mom-and-pop investors who own fewer than 10 homes.
This is the windmill that Trump and lawmakers of both parties are tilting at.
And even though large investors are not major purchasers of single-family homes, they do provide benefits that would be lost if federal regulation excluded them from the single-family rental market.
A 2022 study by Neroli Austin of the University of Michigan found that institutional investment in real estate increases neighborhood diversity by opening up more affordable rental housing options. That study did find that these investors were raising home prices overall.
Banning institutional investors from the single-family market would reduce the accessibility they provide to renters who can’t qualify for mortgages.”
https://reason.com/2026/02/24/trump-demands-congress-ban-large-investors-owning-homes-heres-why-thats-a-bad-idea/
Europe was the second-fiddle Christian land until Muslims conquered the heart of Christianity. The Crusades were a delayed response to these invasions as well as continued invasions of lands controlled by Christians.
Muslims from where Algeria is now, raided and enslaved Europeans for hundreds of years. Algeria demands reparations for French colonialism, but hypocritically ignores 300 years of Algerians raiding and enslaving Europeans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld668oa9b_w
“Human soldiers can disobey unconstitutional orders, but “with fully autonomous weapons, we don’t necessarily have those protections,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Ross Douthat in a recent interview. Amodei also worried that AI could help the government track protesters and political opponents and “make a mockery of the Fourth Amendment.”
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While not explicitly expressing a desire to use AI for those purposes, the Pentagon has insisted that Anthropic setting any limits on the military’s use will not do. It wants Anthropic to grant the government the right to employ its products for “all lawful use,” according to CNN.
…
This refusal hasn’t gone over well with the Trump administration. Hegseth has reportedly demanded that Anthropic remove its restrictions on certain military uses or else face consequences.
These consequences could include the Defense Department ending its business relationship with Anthropic as soon as Friday—which, OK, fine.
While not reassuring that the government won’t respect these limits around robot death machines and mass spying, it’s sadly not surprising. Ending its relationship with Anthropic’s contract in response would be a disappointing but not outrageous or beyond bounds.
What pushes this above and beyond normal government villainy are the other potential consequences that Hegseth has been floating, including using the Defense Production Act to compel compliance or declaring Anthropic a “supply chain risk”—possibly both. An anonymous senior official reportedly told Axios that severing ties with Anthropic would be “an enormous pain in the ass” for which Anthropic would have to “pay a price.”
Declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk would mean anyone who wants to work with the U.S. military in any capacity must sever ties with the AI company.
“Activating this power would cost Anthropic a lot of business—potentially quite a lot—and give investors huge skepticism about whether the company is worth funding for the next round of scaling,” writes Dean Ball, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation. “Capital was a major constraint anyway, but this makes it much harder. This option could be existential for Anthropic.”
Declaring an entity a supply chain risk is usually a move reserved for risky dealings with foreign companies. Deploying this designation against a U.S. company just because its leaders have some morals and some backbone is highly undemocratic—the sort of move one would traditionally expect from the Chinese Communist Party, not a U.S. administration.
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But it gets worse. Hegseth is also threatening to “invoke the Defense Production Act to force the company to tailor its model to the military’s needs” and remove all safeguards, per Axios.
So, here we have an AI company trying to act ethically and prevent government abuse of this technology and the government threatening to seize the company’s property and do with it whatever the Pentagon wants. If that’s allowed, it means no limits on what abuses the government can force private companies to participate in.”
https://reason.com/2026/02/25/pentagon-to-anthropic-if-you-wont-let-us-use-your-ai-for-mass-surveillance-or-autonomous-weapons-expect-punishment/?itm_source=parsely-api
“Tariffs don’t conjure consumer demand out of thin air. Americans were buying plenty of washing machines, clothing, and steel before the tariffs. What changes is where some things are made. Production shifts from foreign manufacturers with efficiency or cost advantages to more expensive domestic manufacturers. American producers stand to gain, except when they must pay tariffs to import the materials they need (as is often the case).
But everyone who buys the product pays more. The extra $100 a family spends on a washing machine won’t instead be spent at the restaurant next door, the repair shop, or the shoe store. Real wages—what your paycheck actually buys—fall when the prices of most things rise.
…
When Americans buy less from China, it’s true, some of our overseas business competitors lose revenue. But what about the American households losing access to cheaper goods? Or the American producers losing access to cheaper materials and ingredients that make them more competitive?
Both countries take a hit. Serious analysts who favor targeted tariffs for strategic reasons generally acknowledge this tradeoff and argue that the benefits justify the costs. What they don’t claim is that such costs don’t exist.
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Even when firms do absorb some of the hit, the money doesn’t disappear. These companies instead hire fewer people, pay lower wages, invest less or, in industries where profit margins are already thin, hike future prices. The burden just takes a different route to your wallet.”
https://reason.com/2026/02/26/the-4-economic-myths-powering-trumps-new-tariff-push/
China is quickly catching up to the US in submarine power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqUobxwLvgM
All the fancy artillery, ships, drones, missiles, special operation forces, doctors, and engineers have an important role to play, but the only military role that can take and hold ground in such a way that will lead to winning a large war, are the infantry grunts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Flf3o8Elmas