12/19 -- Palestine: Israeli regime keeps up Gaza bombardment during latest ceasefire feint; Longshoremen and Trump are in the same anti-automation boat
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Thomas L. Knapp
Dec 19, 2024, 6:24:13 AM (6 days ago) Dec 19
to Freedom News Daily
Freedom News Daily, 12/19/24
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Produced by the staff of Rational Review News Digest
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Today's Freedom News:
1) Palestine: Israeli regime keeps up Gaza bombardment during latest ceasefire feint
2) Disgraced president-elect, allies seek extension of Shutdown Theater’s winter run
3) Dow plummets 1,100 points after Fed scales back plans for interest rate cuts
4) Secret House Committee Vote Paves Way for Release of Gaetz Ethics Report
5) SCOTUS agrees to hear last gasp TikTok ban challenge
6) Iran: Key regime services shut as rial plunges amid energy crisis, regional tension
7) Japan: Space One suffers second Kairos rocket failure
8) IN: Regime’s attempt to kill prisoner in secret thwarted
9) Mexico: Explosion kills two soldiers in suspected cartel booby trap
10) France: Court upholds corruption conviction of former President Nicolas Sarkozy
11) Democrats brace to bail out Johnson on stopgap spending package
12) Vanuatu: Earthquake’s known death toll reaches 14
13) Starbucks workers’ union repping over 10k baristas authorizes potential US strike
14) Nissan and Honda reportedly pursuing merger amid “hard new realities”
15) Nigeria: Man promised pardon after 10 years on death row for stealing hens
16) US regime releases Guantanamo Bay abductee to Kenya
17) Disgraced president-elect announces Walker as pick for Bahamas ambassador
18) Russia: Regime detains Uzbek suspect in killing of chemical weapons general
19) Not quite the “Girl from Ipanema,” a fur seal’s rare appearance on Rio’s famous beach turns heads
20) Judge allows testing of George Floyd tissue samples as officer seeks new trial on civil rights conviction
Today's Freedom Commentary:
21) Longshoremen and Trump are in the same anti-automation boat
22) Washington’s Long Flirtation with Syria’s Extreme Islamists
23) The Establishment’s “Principles” Are Fake
24) The Economy Doesn’t Care Who Is President
25) Preference Falsification and Cascade
26) The Difference That Matters Most Isn’t Between Left and Right
27) Responding to Reich, Part 7: Is Taxing the Rich Really “Socialism?”
28) Whose prices rise with tariffs?
29) Trump And Israel Can’t Wait To Start Bombing Iran
30) A Rich Kid Taking It All the Way
31) What Dems Have Is a Rudderless Ship
32) In Bolivia, Central Planning Comes Home to Roost
33) Corporate Titans Bend the Knee to Trump
34) Trump’s Pragmatic Preferences Must Work
35) Bobos in the Meritocracy
36) Notes on Drafting a Manifesto
37) The Pitfall of Reason: Against First Principles
38) IMF Offers a Glimpse at the Perils of Central Bank Digital Currencies
39) Precogs in the Machine
40) Justin Trudeau is in no shape to face Trump
41) Biden Is Right to Take Credit for Enabling Assad’s Fall, But Is That a Good Thing?
42) Drone Hysteria, Alien Cultists, and the One-Armed Prophet of Cosmic Enlightenment
43) Homeschoolers and Microschoolers Describe the Benefits of Alternative Education
44) How Bad Will It Get? Some Possible Mitigating Factors
45) Don’t blame insurers’ greed; government made a mess of our health care
46) The insanity of modern “public schools” and their students
47) Government-Granted Patent Monopolies Lead to Corruption #47,284
48) Immigration as a solution to healthcare workforce shortages
49) Time Running Out to Cancel Student Debt for Aging Borrowers
50) Argentina Is Responding to Shock Therapy
Today's Freedom Podcast and Video:
51) Reason Interview: Penny Lane
52) The Vital Center, episode 75
53) The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, 12/18/24
54) The Learning Curve, 12/18/24
55) The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent, 12/18/24
56) Free Talk Cast, episode 24
57) The Corbett Report, episode 470
58) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 12/18/24
59) Nonzero, 12/17/24
60) Politics Politics Politics, 12/17/24
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_____ Today's Freedom News _____
1) Palestine: Israeli regime keeps up Gaza bombardment during latest ceasefire feint
Source: Reuters
“U.S. and Arab mediators are working round-the-clock to hammer out a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, sources close to the talks said, while in the Gaza Strip medics said Israeli strikes had killed 13 Palestinians on Thursday. The mediators, at talks in Egypt and Qatar, seek to forge a deal to pause the 14-month-old war in the Hamas-ruled enclave that would include a release of hostages seized from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, along with Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Mediators had managed to narrow some gaps on previous sticking points but differences remained, the sources said. In Gaza, medics said at least 13 Palestinians were killed overnight in separate Israeli airstrikes, including on two houses in Gaza City and a central camp.” (12/19/24)
https://archive.is/tPY83
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2) Disgraced president-elect, allies seek extension of Shutdown Theater’s winter run
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“With only days to spare until funds run out, President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have pressured Republicans in the United States to ditch a short-term spending bill designed to avert a government shutdown [sic]. The United States Congress faces a Friday deadline to pass a budget for the 2025 fiscal year, or else face the shuttering of nonessential government functions. But on Wednesday, a volley of statements and social media posts from Trump and his incoming administration threw a bipartisan deal into chaos, increasing the likelihood of a shutdown.” [editor’s note: Good on them. If a function is “non-essential,” why is the government doing it in the first place? And are there really any “essential” functions? – TLK] (12/19/24)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/19/facing-government-shutdown-trump-and-republican-allies-scuttle-budget-bill
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3) Dow plummets 1,100 points after Fed scales back plans for interest rate cuts
Source: ABC News
“The stock market plunged on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve scaled back its expectations for interest rate cuts next year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 1,100 points, or 2.5%, the largest drop for the index since August. The dip marked the 10th consecutive day of losses for the Dow, its longest losing streak since 1974. The S&P 500 fell nearly 3%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq plummeted about 3.5%. … Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank may proceed at a slower pace with future rate cuts, partly because it has now substantially lowered interest rates.” (12/18/24)
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/dow-plummets-1100-points-after-fed-scales-back/story?id=116923071
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4) Secret House Committee Vote Paves Way for Release of Gaetz Ethics Report
Source: The Daily Beast
“The House Ethics Committee secretly voted to release its report into former Rep. Matt Gaetz‘s conduct before the end of the year, according to a report. The report’s findings are expected to be made public following the House’s final votes this year and as lawmakers take off from D.C. for the holidays, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN. The release would culminate a three-year probe into allegations of child sex trafficking involving a 17-year-old girl, illicit drug use and other improprieties against Gaetz, the man Donald Trump had initially tapped to be his attorney general — the top law-enforcement official in the U.S. before he pulled out last month of the running. … The 42-year-old, who denied all of the allegations against him, blasted the potential release of the report.” (12/18/24)
https://archive.is/Nrg4g
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5) SCOTUS agrees to hear last gasp TikTok ban challenge
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear last-ditch legal arguments from TikTok as to why it should not be banned or sold in the US. The US government is taking action against the app because of what it says are its links to the Chinese state — links which TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have denied. The Supreme Court justices did not act on a request by TikTok for an emergency injunction against the law, but will instead allow TikTok and ByteDance to make their case on 10 January — nine days before the ban is due to take effect.” (12/18/24)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4xw9lx02xo
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6) Iran: Key regime services shut as rial plunges amid energy crisis, regional tension
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Tens of millions of people across Iran are facing major disruptions as authorities shut down services in the face of an exacerbating energy and currency crisis amid historic regional tensions. This week, government offices, schools, banks and businesses in major provinces and in the capital Tehran have been largely closed due to worsening fuel and power shortages as temperatures dropped to subzero levels. Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi said on Wednesday that 13 power plants are out of commission due to a lack of fuel. ‘If the fuel is provided, there will be no problem in providing the electricity, as power plants have undergone necessary repairs and are ready for winter. The petroleum ministry is following up on providing fuel,’ he told reporters after a cabinet meeting.” (12/18/24)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/18/iran-key-services-shut-as-rial-plunges-amid-energy-crisis-regional
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7) Japan: Space One suffers second Kairos rocket failure
Source: United Press International
“The Japanese company Space One failed for a second time Wednesday to launch its Kairos rocket when it went out of control about two minutes into the flight. The rocket’s first-stage nozzle malfunctioned about 80 seconds into the flight at 11:00 a.m. Wednesday local time from Space Port Kii in Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture, and automatically self-destructed during the launch that had already been postponed twice by weather conditions. Space One is attempting to be the first private company in Japan to put satellites into orbit and the company’s president, Masakzu Toyoda, made a press conference apology to the company’s clients for ‘being unable to’ reach that goal.” (12/18/24)
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2024/12/18/Japan-SPaceOne-second-Kairos-rocket-failure/5201734529410/
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8) IN: Regime’s attempt to kill prisoner in secret thwarted
Source: Time
“From public hangings in the town square to lethal injections witnessed by journalists, executions historically have mostly been carried out with at least some public scrutiny. Indiana was expected to again diverge from that tradition Wednesday, until state prison officials granted Joseph Corcoran’s request to include a reporter among those witnessing his early-morning execution. The state had said no independent witnesses would be present due to Indiana laws shielding information about the death penalty. But the editor of the Indiana Capital Chronicle posted on X after the early Wednesday execution that Corcoran put one of the outlet’s reporters on his own list of permitted witnesses and she was allowed to observe.” (12/18/24)
https://time.com/7202974/indiana-execution-secrecy-joseph-corcoran-transparency-concerns/
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9) Mexico: Explosion kills two soldiers in suspected cartel booby trap
Source: CBS News
“An improvised land mine apparently planted by a drug cartel killed two Mexican soldiers and wounded five others, Mexico’s defense secretary said Tuesday. Before the blast, the soldiers had discovered the dismembered bodies of three people, officials said. Gen. Ricardo Trevilla acknowledged that the army had already suffered six deaths from such improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, between 2018 and 2024. But he didn’t specify whether those six had been killed by bombs dropped from drones, or by buried roadside bombs, both of which have been used by gangs in Mexico. Trevilla said that devices like the one that exploded Monday were ‘very rustic,’ and officials in the past have described them as similar to buried pipe bombs.” (12/18/24)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/explosion-kills-soldiers-booby-trap-drug-cartel-mexico/
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10) France: Court upholds corruption conviction of former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Source: ABC News
“France’s highest court has upheld an appeal court decision which had found former President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of corruption and influence peddling while he was the country’s head of state. Sarkozy, 69, faces a year in prison, but is expected to ask to be detained at home with an electronic bracelet — as is the case for any sentence of two years or less. He was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling by both a Paris court in 2021 and an appeals court in 2023 for trying to bribe a magistrate in exchange for information about a legal case in which he was implicated. … Sarkozy, who was France’s president from 2007 to 2012, retired from public life in 2017 though still plays an influential role in French conservative politics.” (12/18/24)
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/frances-highest-court-upholds-sentencing-former-president-nicolas-116900612
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11) Democrats brace to bail out Johnson on stopgap spending package
Source: Politico
“House Democrats are once again likely to bail out Speaker Mike Johnson on a stopgap spending bill, as conservatives largely vow to oppose it on the floor. ‘I expect we’re going to pass the CR,’ said Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. … Democratic lawmakers emerged from a closed-door leadership meeting Wednesday without taking a formal position on whether to support or oppose the stopgap bill, and they’re unlikely to whip on it. But Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday were touting the wins for their side in the legislation, including $100 billion in disaster aid, childcare funding and health care provisions. … Dozens of Republicans are expected to oppose the legislation when it comes to a vote this week, and conservatives are signaling they would even block it in the Rules Committees, which determines what legislation makes it to the floor.” (12/18/24)
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/12/18/congress/dems-prepare-for-spending-bailout-00195096
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12) Vanuatu: Earthquake’s known death toll reaches 14
Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]
“People remained trapped in a collapsed building in Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila on Wednesday a day after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck the Pacific nation, killing 14 people including two Chinese nationals. … As aftershocks continued to rattle the island nation of 330,000 people, footage posted on social media showed vehicles crushed under the debris, boulders strewn across a highway and landslides near Port Vila’s international shipping terminal. National broadcaster VBTC showed people queuing for fuel and essentials as power, water and communications were disrupted.” (12/18/24)
https://archive.is/1MdeM
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13) Starbucks workers’ union repping over 10k baristas authorizes potential US strike
Source: New York Post
“The workers’ union representing more than 10,000 Starbucks baristas said it has authorized a potential strike, ahead of this year’s final round of bargaining talks with the coffee giant on Tuesday. Workers United, which has a bargaining delegation that represents workers at 525 Starbucks stores in the United States, said the coffee giant has yet to bring a comprehensive economic package to the table, while hundreds of legal disputes over unfair labor practices remain unsettled. The union, which has been urging Starbucks to increase wages and staffing at its stores as well as implement better schedules, said it had not yet decided when to go on strike.” (12/18/24)
https://nypost.com/2024/12/18/lifestyle/starbucks-workers-union-repping-over-10k-baristas-authorizes-potential-us-strike/
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14) Nissan and Honda reportedly pursuing merger amid “hard new realities”
Source: Axios
“Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan are reportedly in talks about a merger in a deal that would combine two household names. Nissan is urgently cutting costs, while both companies are struggling to compete on electric vehicles and in the bruising Chinese automotive market. Honda and Nissan are weighing a deal in which they would both be placed into a holding company, Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported. The two companies would be ‘joining their resources to better compete against Tesla and Chinese electric vehicle makers in a rapidly changing automobile industry,’ according to Nikkei.” (12/17/24)
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/18/nissan-honda-merger-talks
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15) Nigeria: Man promised pardon after 10 years on death row for stealing hens
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“A Nigerian man who has spent 10 years on death row for stealing some hens and eggs has been promised a pardon by the governor of the south-western Osun state. Segun Olowookere was 17 years old in 2010 when he was arrested along with his accomplice, Morakinyo Sunday. They were said to have attacked the home of a police officer and another person with an old-fashioned wooden gun and a sword but only got away with the poultry. In 2014, Justice Jide Falola of the Osun State High Court sentenced the two to death by hanging after finding them guilty of forcefully breaking into the police officer’s house and stealing his belongings. There was an outcry across Nigeria at the time as many felt the sentence was too harsh. … In a statement on Tuesday, governor Ademola Adeleke directed that Olowookere should be pardoned as it was important to protect the sanctity of life.” (12/18/24)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgm92r74yd0o
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16) US regime releases Guantanamo Bay abductee to Kenya
Source: United Press International
“The Pentagon announced Tuesday that Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu has been released from Guantanamo Bay, reducing the number of detainees at the controversial Cuban prison to 29. Bajabu, 51, was released to the government of Kenya, the Pentagon said in a statement, ending the man’s nearly two-decade detention at the U.S. facility. Though never charged with a crime, Bajabu was accused of being a facilitator for an al-Qaida group in East Africa.” (12/17/24)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2024/12/18/Guantanamo-Bay-detainee-released/8831734494492/
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17) Disgraced president-elect announces Walker as pick for Bahamas ambassador
Source: Fox News
“President-elect Donald Trump has a new game plan for Herschel Walker, his longtime friend, ally and former football star. Three years after Trump handpicked Walker to run for the Senate in his home state of Georgia in a crucial, combative, expensive and high-profile Senate race, the president-elect is now selecting his friend to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the Caribbean nation of the Bahamas. … Walker is a former professional and college football star running back who won a Heisman Trophy and helped propel the University of Georgia to a national championship. His friendship with the former and future president goes back to his days playing for the Trump-owned New Jersey Generals USFL football team in the 1980s. Walker also was a major Trump supporter and surrogate in the 2020 presidential election.” (12/18/24)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new-mission-longtime-trump-ally-friend-herschel-walker
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18) Russia: Regime detains Uzbek suspect in killing of chemical weapons general
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“Russia has detained a suspect in the killing of the head of the army’s chemical weapons division, investigators said Wednesday, a day after the general and his aide were killed in a brazen blast in Moscow claimed by Ukraine. Igor Kirillov and his assistant were killed when an explosive device attached to a scooter went off Tuesday morning outside an apartment building in southeastern Moscow. … ‘An Uzbek citizen, born in 1995, was arrested on suspicion of having committed the attack,’ the Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes in Russia, said in a statement. The detained suspect said he had been ‘recruited by Ukrainian special forces,’ it added. The handcuffed man was shown in video footage confessing to the attack, with several cuts on his face.” (12/18/24)
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20241218-russia-detains-uzbek-suspect-in-killing-of-chemical-weapons-general
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19) Not quite the “Girl from Ipanema,” a fur seal’s rare appearance on Rio’s famous beach turns heads
Source: SFGate
“Short, and dark, and young, and tired, the seal on Ipanema was basking … The fur seal on Rio de Janeiro’s iconic beach was turning heads of locals and tourists alike Wednesday morning — though not for the same reasons as the famous ‘Girl from Ipanema.’ The animal is often spotted along Brazil’s coastline during winter and spring, but rarely is it seen this time of year, a few days before the start of the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, said Suelen Santiago, a biologist who works at the company that monitors the beach. ‘This year we’re having atypical situations,’ she said. Cordoned off by tape and flags, the young male seal became the main attraction on one of the world’s most famous beaches.” (12/18/24)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/not-quite-the-girl-from-ipanema-a-fur-seal-s-19988236.php
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20) Judge allows testing of George Floyd tissue samples as officer seeks new trial on civil rights conviction
Source: CBC News [Canadian state media]
“A judge has granted permission to Derek Chauvin’s lawyers to have tissue samples from George Floyd’s body examined. It’s part of the former Minneapolis police officer’s efforts to challenge his federal conviction of violating Floyd’s civil rights after he was also convicted in Floyd’s 2020 killing. U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson granted the order Monday, agreeing to let the defence examine Floyd’s heart tissue and fluid samples. This will be done to test a theory that Floyd died of a heart condition aggravated by a rare tumour, not — as prosecutors contend — from asphyxiation caused by the white officer pressing his knee on the [b]lack man’s neck for nine-and-a-half minutes in May 2020.” (12/17/24)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/testing-george-floyd-tissue-new-trial-1.7413221
_____ Today's Freedom Commentary _____
21) Longshoremen and Trump are in the same anti-automation boat
Source: Washington Post
by George F Will
“When Harold Daggett, the horny-handed son of toil who for more than 10 years has been president of the International Longshoreman’s Association, grips with his callused hands the steering wheel of his Bentley (the least expensive of these British-made beauties costs north of $200,000), he knows that the president of the United States will be riding shotgun. Donald Trump, ever transactional, has rewarded Daggett for the ILA’s neutrality (in 2020 it endorsed Joe Biden) in the 2024 presidential campaign. A brief October strike shut 36 East and Gulf coast ports that Doggett’s union controls — the first Maine-to-Texas strike in 47 years. Longshoremen won a tentative 61.5 percent pay increase over six years. … Daggett, however, threatens another strike on Jan. 15 unless any additional automation — e.g., automated cranes loading and unloading containers — is banned.” (12/18/24)
https://archive.is/HcjTQ
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22) Washington’s Long Flirtation with Syria’s Extreme Islamists
Source: Antiwar.com
by Ted Galen Carpenter
“For more than four decades, the Assad family – which is Alawite – remained in power because of the loyalty of its Alawite bloc and its loose alliance with Christians, Druze, and other smaller ethnic groups. What erupted in 2011 quickly became a largely Sunni Arab bid backed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia to overthrow Assad’s ‘coalition of religious minorities’ government. Assad’s ouster may well open the door to tyranny and persecution of minorities by a new Sunni-dominated regime. Nevertheless, some U.S. officials and opinion leaders, especially during Barack Obama’s administration, openly advocated cooperation with Al Qaeda and its allies.” (12/18/24)
https://original.antiwar.com/ted_galen_carpenter/2024/12/17/washingtons-long-flirtation-with-syrias-extreme-islamists/
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23) The Establishment’s “Principles” Are Fake
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe
“In the years leading up to the 2024 presidential election, the Democrats and establishment Republicans who wanted to see Joe Biden, and later Kamala Harris, remain in office went all in on one overarching narrative above all: that Donald Trump represented an existential threat to American democracy. Biden’s team and their allies in politics and media repeated this claim day after day, essentially trying to convince millions of Americans that elections would literally stop happening in this country if Trump won. … Now, President Biden — and, really, all the people around him who are actually running things — are in their so-called lame-duck period. And what are they doing as they wait to hand power over to the next administration? They’re doing whatever they can to make it harder for Trump’s team to implement the very policies voters just sent them to the White House to carry out.” (12/18/24)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/establishments-principles-are-fake
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24) The Economy Doesn’t Care Who Is President
Source: The Dispatch
by Jonah Goldberg
“One of Donald Trump’s closing campaign arguments was that he would deliver a new ‘golden age’ for America. This week, he announced that this Trump-powered golden age has already begun. That’s fitting insofar as Trump has rapidly eclipsed the current president, Joe Biden, in setting expectations and even an agenda for America at home and abroad. It feels as if the clock on the second Trump administration has already started. So has the usual fight over who should get the credit — or blame — for the economy the next president inherits. This happens to some extent with every new president, regardless of party and not just on the subject of the economy. … Trump has reason to jump the gun on taking credit for the economy now: It’s doing amazingly well.” (12/18/24)
https://thedispatch.com/article/the-economy-doesnt-care-who-is-president/
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25) Preference Falsification and Cascade
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Jeffrey A Tucker
“Tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen posted the following: ‘We are living through the most dramatic preference cascade of my life. Every day I am hearing the most amazing things.’ What an unusual phrase, I thought, so I looked it up. It comes from a book written 30 years ago: Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification, by Duke University economist Timur Kuran. I downloaded and read it. It’s brilliant. It seems to explain everything. Maybe it explains too much. Regardless, Kuran has given us a language to describe a remarkable feature of our times.” (12/18/24)
https://brownstone.org/articles/preference-falsification-and-cascade/
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26) The Difference That Matters Most Isn’t Between Left and Right
Source: The Nation
by Jeet Heer
“But between candidates who are defenders of the system and those who are anti-system. Democrats lost because they allowed Trump to be the only voice of antiestablishment rage.” (12/18/24)
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/anti-system-trump-populism/
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27) Responding to Reich, Part 7: Is Taxing the Rich Really “Socialism?”
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Patrick Carroll
“‘Here’s a lie you’ll hear on conservative talk radio: ‘Taxing the rich is socialism.’ Bunk!’ So begins Robert Reich’s ‘debunking’ of Myth #7, aptly titled ‘Taxing the rich is socialism.’ ‘Far from being a socialist country, the United States provides corporate welfare for the rich, while subjecting everyone else to the harshest form of capitalism in the world.’ Oddly enough, that’s basically the end of the debunking right there. Reich goes on to list a number of grievances, but never really gets around to explaining how he defines socialism or why taxing the rich doesn’t fall in that category. We’ve learned that corporate welfare for the rich is incompatible with his definition of socialism, and that’s about it.” (12/18/24)
https://fee.org/articles/responding-to-reich-part-7-is-taxing-the-rich-really-socialism/
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28) Whose prices rise with tariffs?
Source: EconLog
by Jon Murphy
“Economic theory predicts that, except in certain edge cases, tariffs will raise the domestic price of imported goods and services in a country. The way economists present the effects of tariffs to students is generally through a simple supply and demand model …. One of the logical results of this model is that the tariff burden will be shared between buyers and producers, with their respective shares determined by how sensitive each party is to a change in price. Consequently, if the consumer does not pay all of the tariff, some portion of it will be borne by foreign producers, resulting in a possible net welfare gain if the producer surplus gain plus the government tariff revenue gain from foreign producers is greater than the welfare loss of consumers. There are a lot of practical problems with this so-called ‘optimal tariff’ model, and consequently many economists reject its usefulness for policy purposes.” (12/18/24)
https://www.econlib.org/whose-prices-rise-with-tariffs/
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29) Trump And Israel Can’t Wait To Start Bombing Iran
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Both Israel and the incoming Trump administration are reportedly eager to start bombing Iran ASAP now that Assad’s out of the way. Israeli media reports that the IDF now sees airstrikes on Iran as much easier to execute now that its pilots don’t have to worry about Syrian air defenses along the way, while The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump team is weighing its options for airstrikes on Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon (which there’s no evidence Iran is currently trying to do). A new article from The Washington Post titled ‘Syria’s collapse and Israeli attacks leave Iran exposed’ reports that ‘Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled a desire to capitalize on gains against Hamas and Hezbollah and take on Tehran more aggressively under a new U.S. administration.'” (12/18/24)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/12/18/trump-and-israel-cant-wait-to-start-bombing-iran/
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30) A Rich Kid Taking It All the Way
Source: Liberal Currents
by Jason Briggeman
“Trump and his hangers-on create anew the organization of social affairs they’ve known since youth.” (12/18/24)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/a-rich-kid-taking-it-all-the-way/
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31) What Dems Have Is a Rudderless Ship
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“Democrats have a plan to take on Donald Trump in 2025; just ask them. But you’d have to ask all of them, because they all have a different plan. John Fetterman thinks Democrats should give Trump a pardon on his ‘bullshit’ hush-money case, and support his executive branch nominees, even the controversial ones. Jim Clyburn also favors a Trump pardon, but to create ‘a clean slate’ for the future. Many Democrats, from Adam Schiff to Ro Khanna to Bernie Sanders, are citing points of possible agreement with Trump and shadow vice president Elon Musk. Some are doing this ‘to look reasonable’, others perhaps to move some discrete items forward where Trump has made a rhetorical overture, others perhaps to set up an attack later if the common ground fails to emerge.” (12/18/24)
https://prospect.org/politics/2024-12-18-democrats-rudderless-ship/
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32) In Bolivia, Central Planning Comes Home to Roost
Source: The Daily Economy
by Adrian Mier Arce & Nikolai G Wenzel
“Andean Socialism, once touted as the way forward for Latin America, and an alternative to ‘neoliberal’ policies and markets, has collapsed once again. Bolivia is going through a severe economic crisis, marked by a currency shortage, rising inflation (7.94 percent annually as of October 2024), and increasing shortages of essential goods, particularly fuel. Bolivia’s economic difficulties are not new. They can be traced back to policies implemented decades ago that led the country to become overly reliant on its natural resources, particularly oil and gas exports. Indeed, energy policy in Bolivia has historically been used as a fiscal policy or political lever.” (12/18/24)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/in-bolivia-central-planning-comes-home-to-roost/
-----
33) Corporate Titans Bend the Knee to Trump
Source: Common Dreams
by Thom Hartmann
“The 1986 American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as … ‘A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.’ We’re about to be there. The power of government to both reward and punish is awesome. No other entity can legally take money away from citizens at gunpoint and hand it to others it favors. No other entity has the power to deprive people of their freedom and even their lives. No other entity can use both of those powers to regulate how business must be conducted. Any company so willing to engage with such tainted government leadership should alarm us all. When Disney, a $248 billion dollar company, decided to give a $15 million donation to Donald Trump’s presidential library slush fund, they didn’t do so because they were worried about losing a defamation lawsuit.” (12/18/24)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-corporate-fascism
-----
34) Trump’s Pragmatic Preferences Must Work
Source: The American Conservative
by W James Antle III
“President-elect Donald Trump is in some ways the least ideological leader of the Republican Party since Richard Nixon. His are populist and nationalist instincts fused with a moderate business Republican’s background and a political coalition that includes Reaganites and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This created tension with Republican congressional leaders in 2017. Eight years later, those leaders are more respectful of Trump’s skill and political impact. But they are not yet fully bought into Trump’s revision of Republican dogmas from the past 40 years or his cleaner break from the party’s brand the last time its presidential nominee won the popular vote 20 years ago. If Trump is going to deviate from the Paul Ryan Roadmap, abandon the Bush doctrine, and chart his own course on tariffs, one thing is clear: His plans had better work.” (12/18/24)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trumps-pragmatic-preferences-must-work/
-----
35) Bobos in the Meritocracy
Source: Law & Liberty
by Geoffrey M Vaughan
“David Brooks, with his clear eye, is one of those writers with a knack for capturing a cultural moment in print. BoBos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2001) was a standout achievement for the year it appeared, describing the culturally dominant new man that arose in the decade after the project to produce homo Sovieticus was abandoned: the bourgeois bohemian, a peculiar creation of the last decade of the twentieth century. Bobos, as he called them, combined the hitherto incompatible identities of ‘square’ and ‘hippie.’ To paraphrase Milton Friedman, they earn like accountants and eat like organic sheep farmers. That same year, 2001, he published in The Atlantic an article on what he called ‘The Organization Kid.’ … Now, a generation later, Brooks has returned to these same cultural precincts and is horrified.” (12/18/24)
https://lawliberty.org/bobos-in-the-meritocracy/
-----
36) Notes on Drafting a Manifesto
Source: CounterPunch
by Jerry Long
“Maybe someday, I’ll run amok. … since I’ve been issuing print, radio and TV manifestos for decades my motives would be immediately fathomable to law enforcement. It would require a single man-hour for a Chief of Detectives to conclude that, like Luigi Mangione, I possessed ‘some ill will toward corporate America.’ Regarding anyone else’s public proclamations, I have no writing advice to offer apart from this … the key point about drafting a manifesto is to draft it. No one knows the precise moment when the edge will be above you. And the last thing any of us should want is to attempt a rampage and end up shot 347 times by the Panzer division of a city’s finest, only to leave behind a meandering rationale open to interpretation from your jerk neighbor across the street and bug-eyed Cable News criminologist Casey Jordan.” (12/18/24)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/18/notes-on-drafting-a-manifesto/
-----
37) The Pitfall of Reason: Against First Principles
Source: Students For Liberty
by Eloy Vera
“Living in populist times, libertarians might feel vindicated in their criticism of those who imagine themselves as guardians of all higher wisdom and moral purpose, elites who must steer society against the worst instincts of the baser people. Some even cave to the populist temptation of glorifying the masses in their simplicity of mind, their rusticness of spirit, their no-nonsense deference to de-intellectualized traditions. Condescension and romanticism blend into this view of the plebeian man as naturally irreflexive and prone to lose himself in the collectivist flow, a whip for the guilt-ridden intellectual to self-flagellate with. Many libertarians fit this type of the solitary erudite striving to understand through analytical reason what he can’t embrace through sheer sentiment.” (12/18/24)
https://studentsforliberty.org/blog/the-pitfall-of-reason-against-first-principles/
-----
38) IMF Offers a Glimpse at the Perils of Central Bank Digital Currencies
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille
“With Bitcoin climbing over $100,000, both investors and government officials are taking a closer look at digital money. The problem is that there’s a huge difference between an independent currency designed to resist surveillance and control, and one crafted by a central bank to enable exactly that. A new handbook from the International Monetary Fund embraces the potential of cryptocurrency while highlighting the dangers inherent in state dominance of the means of storing and exchanging value. … The IMF and the central banks it serves see cryptocurrency as the wave of the future and want in on the action. But central banks are government entities, and what officials want is not necessarily what is desired by people needing reliable means of making and receiving payments. Putting it bluntly, government officials generally regard those they nominally serve as subjects to be monitored and controlled.” (12/18/24)
https://reason.com/2024/12/18/imf-offers-a-glimpse-at-the-perils-of-central-bank-digital-currencies/
-----
39) Precogs in the Machine
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“Whether ‘predictive policing’ is good or bad depends on what it means. If it means using crime patterns to determine which neighborhoods should get more police patrols, that’s reasonable enough. But what if it means assuming that certain individuals may commit a crime if left to themselves? And then ‘preventatively’ harassing them? The Institute for Justice has just won an important victory against predictive policing as practiced by the sheriff’s office of Pasco County, Florida.” (12/18/24)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2024/12/18/precogs-in-the-machine/
-----
40) Justin Trudeau is in no shape to face Trump
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Andrew Latham
“The Trudeau government faces a perfect storm of political and economic upheaval following Chrystia Freeland’s abrupt resignation and mounting anxieties over the prospect of Donald Trump’s return to power. With Trudeau’s popularity at record lows and calls for his resignation mounting, Canada’s leadership crisis could not come at a worse time. Freeland’s departure, opposition gains, and the specter of renewed U.S. protectionism and pressure on NATO spending threaten to leave Canada unprepared to defend its national interests in a volatile international environment. Freeland’s resignation has sent shockwaves through Ottawa and underscored growing disarray within the Liberal government.” (12/18/24)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/justin-trudeau-resign/
-----
41) Biden Is Right to Take Credit for Enabling Assad’s Fall, But Is That a Good Thing?
Source: Foreign Policy In Focus
by Edward Hunt
“Officials in the Biden administration are taking credit for creating conditions in Syria that enabled opposition forces to overthrow the Syrian government. Now that opposition forces have ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, administration officials are insisting that longstanding U.S. policies, including actions taken by the Biden administration against Assad’s supporters, made the overthrow of the Syrian government possible. Administration officials deny that they aided Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the U.S.-designated terrorist organization that led the drive to overthrow Assad, but they insist that they facilitated the opposition’s victory, citing years of U.S. efforts to empower the opposition and weaken the Syrian government. Just as U.S. officials have claimed, the United States played a central role in creating the conditions that led to Assad’s ouster.” (12/18/24)
https://fpif.org/u-s-officials-take-credit-for-regime-change-in-syria/
-----
42) Drone Hysteria, Alien Cultists, and the One-Armed Prophet of Cosmic Enlightenment
Source: The Bulwark
by Martyn Wendell Jones
“Unmanned drones have been swarming New Jersey; patriotic defenders of the homeland have been zapping them with laser pointers to scramble the hostile visitors’ plans. It turns out many of the alleged drones are normal planes whose pilots have been getting their retinas fried by this ad-hoc home defense, but their accounts of frustration and potential injury are doing little to calm the drone hysteria. The intuition about a deeper, hidden reality is too strong. … Intuitions like this are something of a hobbyhorse of mine. I have always been fascinated by extreme, idiosyncratic, or otherwise discomfiting forms of spirituality.” (12/18/24)
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/drone-hysteria-alien-cultists-and-prophet-cosmic-enlightenment
-----
43) Homeschoolers and Microschoolers Describe the Benefits of Alternative Education
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Nasiyah Isra-Ul
“I’m a homeschool graduate, so I grew up knowing that unconventional education provided me unparalleled flexibility, freedom, and personalized learning that just wasn’t possible in public education. Yet I’ve never seen homeschooling and other alternative educational methods receive so much positive attention until recently. Still, many are questioning whether or not these unconventional models will prove effective over time and whether the output from these alternative learning environments will equate to more success for learners. … To get a student’s perspective on this topic, I interviewed three homeschoolers who either attend or have graduated from a homeschool program or other non-traditional learning environment.” (12/17/24)
https://fee.org/articles/homeschoolers-and-microschoolers-describe-the-benefits-of-alternative-education/
-----
44) How Bad Will It Get? Some Possible Mitigating Factors
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Kevin Carson
“Since the nightmare on election night many, myself included, have been catastrophizing the possible scenarios beginning on January 20. We’re all aware of the awful threats from Trump and his agenda: Mass deportation. Attacks on reproductive freedom at the federal level. The use of the military under the Insurrection Act to suppress public protests. The resurrection of Schedule F to pack the most important administrative offices with obedient party hacks. Moral support, at least, for state- and local-level movements like ‘Moms for Liberty,’ anti-trans and anti-LGBT policies. Likely informal alliances with paramilitary street thugs …. Most or all of these threats are plausible — at least attempts at them — with varying degrees of likelihood and intensity. But there are also countervailing or mitigating tendencies which may offset or impede the authoritarianism of the Trump administration.” (12/17/24)
https://c4ss.org/content/60012
-----
45) Don’t blame insurers’ greed; government made a mess of our health care
Source: New York Post
by Betsy McCaughey
“Everyone’s blaming health insurance company greed for soaring costs, rising claims denials and daunting roadblocks to care. That’s naïve. Follow the money to find the real culprits: lying politicians. In 2013, before Affordable Care Act regulations kicked in, insurers denied roughly 1.5% of claims, according to the American Medical Association. But under ACA rules, denials increased tenfold. Now nearly 15% of claims are denied, reports Premier, an insurance consultant firm. Some insurers deny a third or more of claims, according to Kaiser Family Foundation research. Insurers are also increasingly demanding pre-authorizations for a wide range of treatments and medications, tying your doctor’s hands and in some cases dangerously delaying care. Your doctor has to call the insurer before beginning treatment or ordering a medication — and seldom is the person on the other end of the phone a specialist in the disease or treatment in question.” (12/17/24)
https://nypost.com/2024/12/17/opinion/betsy-mccaughey-dont-blame-insurers-greed-government-made-a-mess-of-our-health-care/
-----
46) The insanity of modern “public schools” and their students
Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton
“Robert Heinlein’s stories including a ‘future history’ often referred to ‘The Crazy Years’ when societies around the world became totally dysfunctional – madness became the norm. Several of us here at TPOL have decided that Heinlein never truly understood just how insane people and institutions here in the States could become. The latest example comes from Loudon County, Virginia. There, the school district has taken action to deal with a truly heinous event: a history teacher passed around a cotton bole to the students, and some students made stupid cracks and other students were distressed – not just offended, but disturbed and distressed by being exposed to cotton. Raw cotton, of course. Otherwise, we would bet that every one of those offended students would have to go ahead and get naked.” (12/17/24)
https://thepriceofliberty.org/2024/12/17/the-insanity-of-modern-public-schools-and-their-students/
-----
47) Government-Granted Patent Monopolies Lead to Corruption #47,284
Source: Beat The Press
by Dean Baker
“The New York Times ran an important investigative piece on how the opioid manufacturers gave kickbacks to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to push their drugs, even in cases where they knew they could lead to addiction by patients. … This is an important piece, but it leaves a key factor out of the discussion. The reason why opioids were so profitable to the drug companies was that the government gave them patent monopolies that allowed them to sell opioids at prices far above the free market price. If these drugs were sold in a free market, like paper plates or ballpoint pens, there would have been little incentive for the drug companies to pay large kickbacks to push product. In fact, if drugs were sold in a free market, PBMs almost certainly would not exist.” (12/17/24)
https://cepr.net/government-granted-patent-monopolies-lead-to-corruption-47284/
-----
48) Immigration as a solution to healthcare workforce shortages
Source: Niskanen Center
by Cassandra Zimmer
“The U.S. healthcare system faces a profound workforce crisis that threatens the availability and quality of care nationwide. A combination of factors — including demographic shifts, burnout, training bottlenecks, low wages for support roles, and uneven workforce distribution — has exacerbated shortages across the care spectrum. … Structural reforms are crucial for strengthening the domestic healthcare workforce, but these efforts will take years to yield results. In the meantime, immediate interventions are needed to address current shortages, with immigration presenting a compelling solution. Immigrants already play a critical role in the U.S. healthcare sector, accounting for 18% of the workforce, including a significant share of physicians, nurses, and home health aides. Despite this, restrictive U.S. immigration policies severely limit the entry and integration of foreign healthcare professionals, leaving critical gaps unaddressed.” (12/17/24)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/immigration-as-a-solution-to-healthcare-workforce-shortages
-----
49) Time Running Out to Cancel Student Debt for Aging Borrowers
Source: In These Times
by Lily Greenberg Call
“gA roup of student loan borrowers aged 50 and up traveled from around the country to Washington, D.C., on December 11, setting up rocking chairs outside the Department of Education. Dressed in ponchos and beanies to protect against the frigid rain, they passed out cross-stitch kits and signs reading ’Knit-In for Debt Cancellation,’ sharing their personal debt stories amidst chants of ‘Biden, don’t forget, cancel student debt.’ These protesters are all members of the Debt Collective, the first union of debtors in the country, and they came to Washington with a message for President Joe Biden: Cancel student debt for borrowers over 50 years old before Donald Trump takes office in January.” [editor’s note: If their debt is so crippling, how did they afford that travel? – TLK] (12/16/24)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/debt-collective-cancel-student-loans
-----
50) Argentina Is Responding to Shock Therapy
Source: Persuasion
by Quico Toro
“He comes across like a madman, but Javier Milei is fast becoming the man of the moment.” (12/17/24)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/argentina-is-responding-to-shock
_____ Today's Freedom Podcast and Video _____
51) Reason Interview: Penny Lane
Source: Reason
“Why I Gave a Kidney to a Total Stranger.” (12/18/24)
https://reason.com/podcast/2024/12/18/penny-lane-why-i-gave-a-kidney-to-a-total-stranger/
-----
52) The Vital Center, episode 75
Source: Niskanen Center
“Race, class, education, and the 2024 election, with Steve Bumbaugh.” (12/18/24)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/race-class-education-and-the-2024-election-with-steve-bumbaugh
-----
53) The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, 12/18/24
Source: The Dispatch
“The Case for Competition.” (12/18/24)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/remnant/the-case-for-competition/
-----
54) The Learning Curve, 12/18/24
Source: Pioneer Institute
“UK’s John Suchet, OBE, on Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker, & Ballets.” (12/18/24)
https://pioneerinstitute.org/featured/uks-john-suchet-obe-on-tchaikovsky-the-nutcracker-ballets/
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55) The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent, 12/18/24
Source: The New Republic
“With Donald and Lara Trump both telegraphing new details about Trump’s plans for retribution, Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall suggests a way for the targets of vengeance to band together and fight back.” (12/18/24)
https://newrepublic.com/article/189506/lara-trump-drops-unnerving-hint-trumps-coming-2025-revenge-tour
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56) Free Talk Cast, episode 24
Source: Free Talk Live
“Aria and Nikki talk about toxic relationships, toxic family members, drawing boundaries, and ending relationships.” (12/18/24)
https://soundcloud.com/freetalklive/free-talk-cast-024-making-toxic-ghosts
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57) The Corbett Report, episode 470
Source: The Corbett Report
“Pokemon Go(v) … Another Conspiracy Confirmed!” (12/18/24)
https://corbettreport.com/pokemon-gov/
-----
58) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 12/18/24
Source: Antiwar.com
“Katz: Israel To Occupy Gaza Indefinitely, Ukraine Kills Russian General in Moscow Bombing, and More.” (12/18/24)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg441ZHdi_M
-----
59) Nonzero, 12/17/24
Source: Bloggingheads.tv
“Three Decades of Bad Foreign Policy | Robert Wright & Scott Horton.” (12/17/24)
https://bloggingheads.tv/videos/68225
-----
60) Politics Politics Politics, 12/17/24
Source: Politics Politics Politics
“Is Kamala Harris a Favorite for 2028? (with Bill Scher).” (12/17/24)
https://www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/p/is-kamala-harris-a-favorite-for-2028
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Today's Freedom News:
1) Palestine: Israeli regime keeps up Gaza bombardment during latest ceasefire feint
2) Disgraced president-elect, allies seek extension of Shutdown Theater’s winter run
3) Dow plummets 1,100 points after Fed scales back plans for interest rate cuts
4) Secret House Committee Vote Paves Way for Release of Gaetz Ethics Report
5) SCOTUS agrees to hear last gasp TikTok ban challenge
6) Iran: Key regime services shut as rial plunges amid energy crisis, regional tension
7) Japan: Space One suffers second Kairos rocket failure
8) IN: Regime’s attempt to kill prisoner in secret thwarted
9) Mexico: Explosion kills two soldiers in suspected cartel booby trap
10) France: Court upholds corruption conviction of former President Nicolas Sarkozy
11) Democrats brace to bail out Johnson on stopgap spending package
12) Vanuatu: Earthquake’s known death toll reaches 14
13) Starbucks workers’ union repping over 10k baristas authorizes potential US strike
14) Nissan and Honda reportedly pursuing merger amid “hard new realities”
15) Nigeria: Man promised pardon after 10 years on death row for stealing hens
16) US regime releases Guantanamo Bay abductee to Kenya
17) Disgraced president-elect announces Walker as pick for Bahamas ambassador
18) Russia: Regime detains Uzbek suspect in killing of chemical weapons general
19) Not quite the “Girl from Ipanema,” a fur seal’s rare appearance on Rio’s famous beach turns heads
20) Judge allows testing of George Floyd tissue samples as officer seeks new trial on civil rights conviction
Today's Freedom Commentary:
21) Longshoremen and Trump are in the same anti-automation boat
22) Washington’s Long Flirtation with Syria’s Extreme Islamists
23) The Establishment’s “Principles” Are Fake
24) The Economy Doesn’t Care Who Is President
25) Preference Falsification and Cascade
26) The Difference That Matters Most Isn’t Between Left and Right
27) Responding to Reich, Part 7: Is Taxing the Rich Really “Socialism?”
28) Whose prices rise with tariffs?
29) Trump And Israel Can’t Wait To Start Bombing Iran
30) A Rich Kid Taking It All the Way
31) What Dems Have Is a Rudderless Ship
32) In Bolivia, Central Planning Comes Home to Roost
33) Corporate Titans Bend the Knee to Trump
34) Trump’s Pragmatic Preferences Must Work
35) Bobos in the Meritocracy
36) Notes on Drafting a Manifesto
37) The Pitfall of Reason: Against First Principles
38) IMF Offers a Glimpse at the Perils of Central Bank Digital Currencies
39) Precogs in the Machine
40) Justin Trudeau is in no shape to face Trump
41) Biden Is Right to Take Credit for Enabling Assad’s Fall, But Is That a Good Thing?
42) Drone Hysteria, Alien Cultists, and the One-Armed Prophet of Cosmic Enlightenment
43) Homeschoolers and Microschoolers Describe the Benefits of Alternative Education
44) How Bad Will It Get? Some Possible Mitigating Factors
45) Don’t blame insurers’ greed; government made a mess of our health care
46) The insanity of modern “public schools” and their students
47) Government-Granted Patent Monopolies Lead to Corruption #47,284
48) Immigration as a solution to healthcare workforce shortages
49) Time Running Out to Cancel Student Debt for Aging Borrowers
50) Argentina Is Responding to Shock Therapy
Today's Freedom Podcast and Video:
51) Reason Interview: Penny Lane
52) The Vital Center, episode 75
53) The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, 12/18/24
54) The Learning Curve, 12/18/24
55) The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent, 12/18/24
56) Free Talk Cast, episode 24
57) The Corbett Report, episode 470
58) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 12/18/24
59) Nonzero, 12/17/24
60) Politics Politics Politics, 12/17/24
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_____ Today's Freedom News _____
1) Palestine: Israeli regime keeps up Gaza bombardment during latest ceasefire feint
Source: Reuters
“U.S. and Arab mediators are working round-the-clock to hammer out a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, sources close to the talks said, while in the Gaza Strip medics said Israeli strikes had killed 13 Palestinians on Thursday. The mediators, at talks in Egypt and Qatar, seek to forge a deal to pause the 14-month-old war in the Hamas-ruled enclave that would include a release of hostages seized from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, along with Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Mediators had managed to narrow some gaps on previous sticking points but differences remained, the sources said. In Gaza, medics said at least 13 Palestinians were killed overnight in separate Israeli airstrikes, including on two houses in Gaza City and a central camp.” (12/19/24)
https://archive.is/tPY83
-----
2) Disgraced president-elect, allies seek extension of Shutdown Theater’s winter run
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“With only days to spare until funds run out, President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have pressured Republicans in the United States to ditch a short-term spending bill designed to avert a government shutdown [sic]. The United States Congress faces a Friday deadline to pass a budget for the 2025 fiscal year, or else face the shuttering of nonessential government functions. But on Wednesday, a volley of statements and social media posts from Trump and his incoming administration threw a bipartisan deal into chaos, increasing the likelihood of a shutdown.” [editor’s note: Good on them. If a function is “non-essential,” why is the government doing it in the first place? And are there really any “essential” functions? – TLK] (12/19/24)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/19/facing-government-shutdown-trump-and-republican-allies-scuttle-budget-bill
-----
3) Dow plummets 1,100 points after Fed scales back plans for interest rate cuts
Source: ABC News
“The stock market plunged on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve scaled back its expectations for interest rate cuts next year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about 1,100 points, or 2.5%, the largest drop for the index since August. The dip marked the 10th consecutive day of losses for the Dow, its longest losing streak since 1974. The S&P 500 fell nearly 3%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq plummeted about 3.5%. … Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank may proceed at a slower pace with future rate cuts, partly because it has now substantially lowered interest rates.” (12/18/24)
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/dow-plummets-1100-points-after-fed-scales-back/story?id=116923071
-----
4) Secret House Committee Vote Paves Way for Release of Gaetz Ethics Report
Source: The Daily Beast
“The House Ethics Committee secretly voted to release its report into former Rep. Matt Gaetz‘s conduct before the end of the year, according to a report. The report’s findings are expected to be made public following the House’s final votes this year and as lawmakers take off from D.C. for the holidays, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN. The release would culminate a three-year probe into allegations of child sex trafficking involving a 17-year-old girl, illicit drug use and other improprieties against Gaetz, the man Donald Trump had initially tapped to be his attorney general — the top law-enforcement official in the U.S. before he pulled out last month of the running. … The 42-year-old, who denied all of the allegations against him, blasted the potential release of the report.” (12/18/24)
https://archive.is/Nrg4g
-----
5) SCOTUS agrees to hear last gasp TikTok ban challenge
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear last-ditch legal arguments from TikTok as to why it should not be banned or sold in the US. The US government is taking action against the app because of what it says are its links to the Chinese state — links which TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have denied. The Supreme Court justices did not act on a request by TikTok for an emergency injunction against the law, but will instead allow TikTok and ByteDance to make their case on 10 January — nine days before the ban is due to take effect.” (12/18/24)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4xw9lx02xo
-----
6) Iran: Key regime services shut as rial plunges amid energy crisis, regional tension
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Tens of millions of people across Iran are facing major disruptions as authorities shut down services in the face of an exacerbating energy and currency crisis amid historic regional tensions. This week, government offices, schools, banks and businesses in major provinces and in the capital Tehran have been largely closed due to worsening fuel and power shortages as temperatures dropped to subzero levels. Energy Minister Abbas Aliabadi said on Wednesday that 13 power plants are out of commission due to a lack of fuel. ‘If the fuel is provided, there will be no problem in providing the electricity, as power plants have undergone necessary repairs and are ready for winter. The petroleum ministry is following up on providing fuel,’ he told reporters after a cabinet meeting.” (12/18/24)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/18/iran-key-services-shut-as-rial-plunges-amid-energy-crisis-regional
-----
7) Japan: Space One suffers second Kairos rocket failure
Source: United Press International
“The Japanese company Space One failed for a second time Wednesday to launch its Kairos rocket when it went out of control about two minutes into the flight. The rocket’s first-stage nozzle malfunctioned about 80 seconds into the flight at 11:00 a.m. Wednesday local time from Space Port Kii in Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture, and automatically self-destructed during the launch that had already been postponed twice by weather conditions. Space One is attempting to be the first private company in Japan to put satellites into orbit and the company’s president, Masakzu Toyoda, made a press conference apology to the company’s clients for ‘being unable to’ reach that goal.” (12/18/24)
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2024/12/18/Japan-SPaceOne-second-Kairos-rocket-failure/5201734529410/
-----
8) IN: Regime’s attempt to kill prisoner in secret thwarted
Source: Time
“From public hangings in the town square to lethal injections witnessed by journalists, executions historically have mostly been carried out with at least some public scrutiny. Indiana was expected to again diverge from that tradition Wednesday, until state prison officials granted Joseph Corcoran’s request to include a reporter among those witnessing his early-morning execution. The state had said no independent witnesses would be present due to Indiana laws shielding information about the death penalty. But the editor of the Indiana Capital Chronicle posted on X after the early Wednesday execution that Corcoran put one of the outlet’s reporters on his own list of permitted witnesses and she was allowed to observe.” (12/18/24)
https://time.com/7202974/indiana-execution-secrecy-joseph-corcoran-transparency-concerns/
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9) Mexico: Explosion kills two soldiers in suspected cartel booby trap
Source: CBS News
“An improvised land mine apparently planted by a drug cartel killed two Mexican soldiers and wounded five others, Mexico’s defense secretary said Tuesday. Before the blast, the soldiers had discovered the dismembered bodies of three people, officials said. Gen. Ricardo Trevilla acknowledged that the army had already suffered six deaths from such improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, between 2018 and 2024. But he didn’t specify whether those six had been killed by bombs dropped from drones, or by buried roadside bombs, both of which have been used by gangs in Mexico. Trevilla said that devices like the one that exploded Monday were ‘very rustic,’ and officials in the past have described them as similar to buried pipe bombs.” (12/18/24)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/explosion-kills-soldiers-booby-trap-drug-cartel-mexico/
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10) France: Court upholds corruption conviction of former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Source: ABC News
“France’s highest court has upheld an appeal court decision which had found former President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of corruption and influence peddling while he was the country’s head of state. Sarkozy, 69, faces a year in prison, but is expected to ask to be detained at home with an electronic bracelet — as is the case for any sentence of two years or less. He was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling by both a Paris court in 2021 and an appeals court in 2023 for trying to bribe a magistrate in exchange for information about a legal case in which he was implicated. … Sarkozy, who was France’s president from 2007 to 2012, retired from public life in 2017 though still plays an influential role in French conservative politics.” (12/18/24)
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/frances-highest-court-upholds-sentencing-former-president-nicolas-116900612
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11) Democrats brace to bail out Johnson on stopgap spending package
Source: Politico
“House Democrats are once again likely to bail out Speaker Mike Johnson on a stopgap spending bill, as conservatives largely vow to oppose it on the floor. ‘I expect we’re going to pass the CR,’ said Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. … Democratic lawmakers emerged from a closed-door leadership meeting Wednesday without taking a formal position on whether to support or oppose the stopgap bill, and they’re unlikely to whip on it. But Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday were touting the wins for their side in the legislation, including $100 billion in disaster aid, childcare funding and health care provisions. … Dozens of Republicans are expected to oppose the legislation when it comes to a vote this week, and conservatives are signaling they would even block it in the Rules Committees, which determines what legislation makes it to the floor.” (12/18/24)
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/12/18/congress/dems-prepare-for-spending-bailout-00195096
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12) Vanuatu: Earthquake’s known death toll reaches 14
Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]
“People remained trapped in a collapsed building in Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila on Wednesday a day after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck the Pacific nation, killing 14 people including two Chinese nationals. … As aftershocks continued to rattle the island nation of 330,000 people, footage posted on social media showed vehicles crushed under the debris, boulders strewn across a highway and landslides near Port Vila’s international shipping terminal. National broadcaster VBTC showed people queuing for fuel and essentials as power, water and communications were disrupted.” (12/18/24)
https://archive.is/1MdeM
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13) Starbucks workers’ union repping over 10k baristas authorizes potential US strike
Source: New York Post
“The workers’ union representing more than 10,000 Starbucks baristas said it has authorized a potential strike, ahead of this year’s final round of bargaining talks with the coffee giant on Tuesday. Workers United, which has a bargaining delegation that represents workers at 525 Starbucks stores in the United States, said the coffee giant has yet to bring a comprehensive economic package to the table, while hundreds of legal disputes over unfair labor practices remain unsettled. The union, which has been urging Starbucks to increase wages and staffing at its stores as well as implement better schedules, said it had not yet decided when to go on strike.” (12/18/24)
https://nypost.com/2024/12/18/lifestyle/starbucks-workers-union-repping-over-10k-baristas-authorizes-potential-us-strike/
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14) Nissan and Honda reportedly pursuing merger amid “hard new realities”
Source: Axios
“Japanese automakers Honda and Nissan are reportedly in talks about a merger in a deal that would combine two household names. Nissan is urgently cutting costs, while both companies are struggling to compete on electric vehicles and in the bruising Chinese automotive market. Honda and Nissan are weighing a deal in which they would both be placed into a holding company, Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported. The two companies would be ‘joining their resources to better compete against Tesla and Chinese electric vehicle makers in a rapidly changing automobile industry,’ according to Nikkei.” (12/17/24)
https://www.axios.com/2024/12/18/nissan-honda-merger-talks
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15) Nigeria: Man promised pardon after 10 years on death row for stealing hens
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“A Nigerian man who has spent 10 years on death row for stealing some hens and eggs has been promised a pardon by the governor of the south-western Osun state. Segun Olowookere was 17 years old in 2010 when he was arrested along with his accomplice, Morakinyo Sunday. They were said to have attacked the home of a police officer and another person with an old-fashioned wooden gun and a sword but only got away with the poultry. In 2014, Justice Jide Falola of the Osun State High Court sentenced the two to death by hanging after finding them guilty of forcefully breaking into the police officer’s house and stealing his belongings. There was an outcry across Nigeria at the time as many felt the sentence was too harsh. … In a statement on Tuesday, governor Ademola Adeleke directed that Olowookere should be pardoned as it was important to protect the sanctity of life.” (12/18/24)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgm92r74yd0o
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16) US regime releases Guantanamo Bay abductee to Kenya
Source: United Press International
“The Pentagon announced Tuesday that Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu has been released from Guantanamo Bay, reducing the number of detainees at the controversial Cuban prison to 29. Bajabu, 51, was released to the government of Kenya, the Pentagon said in a statement, ending the man’s nearly two-decade detention at the U.S. facility. Though never charged with a crime, Bajabu was accused of being a facilitator for an al-Qaida group in East Africa.” (12/17/24)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2024/12/18/Guantanamo-Bay-detainee-released/8831734494492/
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17) Disgraced president-elect announces Walker as pick for Bahamas ambassador
Source: Fox News
“President-elect Donald Trump has a new game plan for Herschel Walker, his longtime friend, ally and former football star. Three years after Trump handpicked Walker to run for the Senate in his home state of Georgia in a crucial, combative, expensive and high-profile Senate race, the president-elect is now selecting his friend to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the Caribbean nation of the Bahamas. … Walker is a former professional and college football star running back who won a Heisman Trophy and helped propel the University of Georgia to a national championship. His friendship with the former and future president goes back to his days playing for the Trump-owned New Jersey Generals USFL football team in the 1980s. Walker also was a major Trump supporter and surrogate in the 2020 presidential election.” (12/18/24)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new-mission-longtime-trump-ally-friend-herschel-walker
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18) Russia: Regime detains Uzbek suspect in killing of chemical weapons general
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“Russia has detained a suspect in the killing of the head of the army’s chemical weapons division, investigators said Wednesday, a day after the general and his aide were killed in a brazen blast in Moscow claimed by Ukraine. Igor Kirillov and his assistant were killed when an explosive device attached to a scooter went off Tuesday morning outside an apartment building in southeastern Moscow. … ‘An Uzbek citizen, born in 1995, was arrested on suspicion of having committed the attack,’ the Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes in Russia, said in a statement. The detained suspect said he had been ‘recruited by Ukrainian special forces,’ it added. The handcuffed man was shown in video footage confessing to the attack, with several cuts on his face.” (12/18/24)
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20241218-russia-detains-uzbek-suspect-in-killing-of-chemical-weapons-general
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19) Not quite the “Girl from Ipanema,” a fur seal’s rare appearance on Rio’s famous beach turns heads
Source: SFGate
“Short, and dark, and young, and tired, the seal on Ipanema was basking … The fur seal on Rio de Janeiro’s iconic beach was turning heads of locals and tourists alike Wednesday morning — though not for the same reasons as the famous ‘Girl from Ipanema.’ The animal is often spotted along Brazil’s coastline during winter and spring, but rarely is it seen this time of year, a few days before the start of the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, said Suelen Santiago, a biologist who works at the company that monitors the beach. ‘This year we’re having atypical situations,’ she said. Cordoned off by tape and flags, the young male seal became the main attraction on one of the world’s most famous beaches.” (12/18/24)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/not-quite-the-girl-from-ipanema-a-fur-seal-s-19988236.php
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20) Judge allows testing of George Floyd tissue samples as officer seeks new trial on civil rights conviction
Source: CBC News [Canadian state media]
“A judge has granted permission to Derek Chauvin’s lawyers to have tissue samples from George Floyd’s body examined. It’s part of the former Minneapolis police officer’s efforts to challenge his federal conviction of violating Floyd’s civil rights after he was also convicted in Floyd’s 2020 killing. U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson granted the order Monday, agreeing to let the defence examine Floyd’s heart tissue and fluid samples. This will be done to test a theory that Floyd died of a heart condition aggravated by a rare tumour, not — as prosecutors contend — from asphyxiation caused by the white officer pressing his knee on the [b]lack man’s neck for nine-and-a-half minutes in May 2020.” (12/17/24)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/testing-george-floyd-tissue-new-trial-1.7413221
_____ Today's Freedom Commentary _____
21) Longshoremen and Trump are in the same anti-automation boat
Source: Washington Post
by George F Will
“When Harold Daggett, the horny-handed son of toil who for more than 10 years has been president of the International Longshoreman’s Association, grips with his callused hands the steering wheel of his Bentley (the least expensive of these British-made beauties costs north of $200,000), he knows that the president of the United States will be riding shotgun. Donald Trump, ever transactional, has rewarded Daggett for the ILA’s neutrality (in 2020 it endorsed Joe Biden) in the 2024 presidential campaign. A brief October strike shut 36 East and Gulf coast ports that Doggett’s union controls — the first Maine-to-Texas strike in 47 years. Longshoremen won a tentative 61.5 percent pay increase over six years. … Daggett, however, threatens another strike on Jan. 15 unless any additional automation — e.g., automated cranes loading and unloading containers — is banned.” (12/18/24)
https://archive.is/HcjTQ
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22) Washington’s Long Flirtation with Syria’s Extreme Islamists
Source: Antiwar.com
by Ted Galen Carpenter
“For more than four decades, the Assad family – which is Alawite – remained in power because of the loyalty of its Alawite bloc and its loose alliance with Christians, Druze, and other smaller ethnic groups. What erupted in 2011 quickly became a largely Sunni Arab bid backed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia to overthrow Assad’s ‘coalition of religious minorities’ government. Assad’s ouster may well open the door to tyranny and persecution of minorities by a new Sunni-dominated regime. Nevertheless, some U.S. officials and opinion leaders, especially during Barack Obama’s administration, openly advocated cooperation with Al Qaeda and its allies.” (12/18/24)
https://original.antiwar.com/ted_galen_carpenter/2024/12/17/washingtons-long-flirtation-with-syrias-extreme-islamists/
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23) The Establishment’s “Principles” Are Fake
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe
“In the years leading up to the 2024 presidential election, the Democrats and establishment Republicans who wanted to see Joe Biden, and later Kamala Harris, remain in office went all in on one overarching narrative above all: that Donald Trump represented an existential threat to American democracy. Biden’s team and their allies in politics and media repeated this claim day after day, essentially trying to convince millions of Americans that elections would literally stop happening in this country if Trump won. … Now, President Biden — and, really, all the people around him who are actually running things — are in their so-called lame-duck period. And what are they doing as they wait to hand power over to the next administration? They’re doing whatever they can to make it harder for Trump’s team to implement the very policies voters just sent them to the White House to carry out.” (12/18/24)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/establishments-principles-are-fake
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24) The Economy Doesn’t Care Who Is President
Source: The Dispatch
by Jonah Goldberg
“One of Donald Trump’s closing campaign arguments was that he would deliver a new ‘golden age’ for America. This week, he announced that this Trump-powered golden age has already begun. That’s fitting insofar as Trump has rapidly eclipsed the current president, Joe Biden, in setting expectations and even an agenda for America at home and abroad. It feels as if the clock on the second Trump administration has already started. So has the usual fight over who should get the credit — or blame — for the economy the next president inherits. This happens to some extent with every new president, regardless of party and not just on the subject of the economy. … Trump has reason to jump the gun on taking credit for the economy now: It’s doing amazingly well.” (12/18/24)
https://thedispatch.com/article/the-economy-doesnt-care-who-is-president/
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25) Preference Falsification and Cascade
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Jeffrey A Tucker
“Tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen posted the following: ‘We are living through the most dramatic preference cascade of my life. Every day I am hearing the most amazing things.’ What an unusual phrase, I thought, so I looked it up. It comes from a book written 30 years ago: Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification, by Duke University economist Timur Kuran. I downloaded and read it. It’s brilliant. It seems to explain everything. Maybe it explains too much. Regardless, Kuran has given us a language to describe a remarkable feature of our times.” (12/18/24)
https://brownstone.org/articles/preference-falsification-and-cascade/
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26) The Difference That Matters Most Isn’t Between Left and Right
Source: The Nation
by Jeet Heer
“But between candidates who are defenders of the system and those who are anti-system. Democrats lost because they allowed Trump to be the only voice of antiestablishment rage.” (12/18/24)
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/anti-system-trump-populism/
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27) Responding to Reich, Part 7: Is Taxing the Rich Really “Socialism?”
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Patrick Carroll
“‘Here’s a lie you’ll hear on conservative talk radio: ‘Taxing the rich is socialism.’ Bunk!’ So begins Robert Reich’s ‘debunking’ of Myth #7, aptly titled ‘Taxing the rich is socialism.’ ‘Far from being a socialist country, the United States provides corporate welfare for the rich, while subjecting everyone else to the harshest form of capitalism in the world.’ Oddly enough, that’s basically the end of the debunking right there. Reich goes on to list a number of grievances, but never really gets around to explaining how he defines socialism or why taxing the rich doesn’t fall in that category. We’ve learned that corporate welfare for the rich is incompatible with his definition of socialism, and that’s about it.” (12/18/24)
https://fee.org/articles/responding-to-reich-part-7-is-taxing-the-rich-really-socialism/
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28) Whose prices rise with tariffs?
Source: EconLog
by Jon Murphy
“Economic theory predicts that, except in certain edge cases, tariffs will raise the domestic price of imported goods and services in a country. The way economists present the effects of tariffs to students is generally through a simple supply and demand model …. One of the logical results of this model is that the tariff burden will be shared between buyers and producers, with their respective shares determined by how sensitive each party is to a change in price. Consequently, if the consumer does not pay all of the tariff, some portion of it will be borne by foreign producers, resulting in a possible net welfare gain if the producer surplus gain plus the government tariff revenue gain from foreign producers is greater than the welfare loss of consumers. There are a lot of practical problems with this so-called ‘optimal tariff’ model, and consequently many economists reject its usefulness for policy purposes.” (12/18/24)
https://www.econlib.org/whose-prices-rise-with-tariffs/
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29) Trump And Israel Can’t Wait To Start Bombing Iran
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Both Israel and the incoming Trump administration are reportedly eager to start bombing Iran ASAP now that Assad’s out of the way. Israeli media reports that the IDF now sees airstrikes on Iran as much easier to execute now that its pilots don’t have to worry about Syrian air defenses along the way, while The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump team is weighing its options for airstrikes on Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon (which there’s no evidence Iran is currently trying to do). A new article from The Washington Post titled ‘Syria’s collapse and Israeli attacks leave Iran exposed’ reports that ‘Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled a desire to capitalize on gains against Hamas and Hezbollah and take on Tehran more aggressively under a new U.S. administration.'” (12/18/24)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/12/18/trump-and-israel-cant-wait-to-start-bombing-iran/
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30) A Rich Kid Taking It All the Way
Source: Liberal Currents
by Jason Briggeman
“Trump and his hangers-on create anew the organization of social affairs they’ve known since youth.” (12/18/24)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/a-rich-kid-taking-it-all-the-way/
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31) What Dems Have Is a Rudderless Ship
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“Democrats have a plan to take on Donald Trump in 2025; just ask them. But you’d have to ask all of them, because they all have a different plan. John Fetterman thinks Democrats should give Trump a pardon on his ‘bullshit’ hush-money case, and support his executive branch nominees, even the controversial ones. Jim Clyburn also favors a Trump pardon, but to create ‘a clean slate’ for the future. Many Democrats, from Adam Schiff to Ro Khanna to Bernie Sanders, are citing points of possible agreement with Trump and shadow vice president Elon Musk. Some are doing this ‘to look reasonable’, others perhaps to move some discrete items forward where Trump has made a rhetorical overture, others perhaps to set up an attack later if the common ground fails to emerge.” (12/18/24)
https://prospect.org/politics/2024-12-18-democrats-rudderless-ship/
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32) In Bolivia, Central Planning Comes Home to Roost
Source: The Daily Economy
by Adrian Mier Arce & Nikolai G Wenzel
“Andean Socialism, once touted as the way forward for Latin America, and an alternative to ‘neoliberal’ policies and markets, has collapsed once again. Bolivia is going through a severe economic crisis, marked by a currency shortage, rising inflation (7.94 percent annually as of October 2024), and increasing shortages of essential goods, particularly fuel. Bolivia’s economic difficulties are not new. They can be traced back to policies implemented decades ago that led the country to become overly reliant on its natural resources, particularly oil and gas exports. Indeed, energy policy in Bolivia has historically been used as a fiscal policy or political lever.” (12/18/24)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/in-bolivia-central-planning-comes-home-to-roost/
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33) Corporate Titans Bend the Knee to Trump
Source: Common Dreams
by Thom Hartmann
“The 1986 American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as … ‘A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.’ We’re about to be there. The power of government to both reward and punish is awesome. No other entity can legally take money away from citizens at gunpoint and hand it to others it favors. No other entity has the power to deprive people of their freedom and even their lives. No other entity can use both of those powers to regulate how business must be conducted. Any company so willing to engage with such tainted government leadership should alarm us all. When Disney, a $248 billion dollar company, decided to give a $15 million donation to Donald Trump’s presidential library slush fund, they didn’t do so because they were worried about losing a defamation lawsuit.” (12/18/24)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-corporate-fascism
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34) Trump’s Pragmatic Preferences Must Work
Source: The American Conservative
by W James Antle III
“President-elect Donald Trump is in some ways the least ideological leader of the Republican Party since Richard Nixon. His are populist and nationalist instincts fused with a moderate business Republican’s background and a political coalition that includes Reaganites and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This created tension with Republican congressional leaders in 2017. Eight years later, those leaders are more respectful of Trump’s skill and political impact. But they are not yet fully bought into Trump’s revision of Republican dogmas from the past 40 years or his cleaner break from the party’s brand the last time its presidential nominee won the popular vote 20 years ago. If Trump is going to deviate from the Paul Ryan Roadmap, abandon the Bush doctrine, and chart his own course on tariffs, one thing is clear: His plans had better work.” (12/18/24)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/trumps-pragmatic-preferences-must-work/
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35) Bobos in the Meritocracy
Source: Law & Liberty
by Geoffrey M Vaughan
“David Brooks, with his clear eye, is one of those writers with a knack for capturing a cultural moment in print. BoBos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2001) was a standout achievement for the year it appeared, describing the culturally dominant new man that arose in the decade after the project to produce homo Sovieticus was abandoned: the bourgeois bohemian, a peculiar creation of the last decade of the twentieth century. Bobos, as he called them, combined the hitherto incompatible identities of ‘square’ and ‘hippie.’ To paraphrase Milton Friedman, they earn like accountants and eat like organic sheep farmers. That same year, 2001, he published in The Atlantic an article on what he called ‘The Organization Kid.’ … Now, a generation later, Brooks has returned to these same cultural precincts and is horrified.” (12/18/24)
https://lawliberty.org/bobos-in-the-meritocracy/
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36) Notes on Drafting a Manifesto
Source: CounterPunch
by Jerry Long
“Maybe someday, I’ll run amok. … since I’ve been issuing print, radio and TV manifestos for decades my motives would be immediately fathomable to law enforcement. It would require a single man-hour for a Chief of Detectives to conclude that, like Luigi Mangione, I possessed ‘some ill will toward corporate America.’ Regarding anyone else’s public proclamations, I have no writing advice to offer apart from this … the key point about drafting a manifesto is to draft it. No one knows the precise moment when the edge will be above you. And the last thing any of us should want is to attempt a rampage and end up shot 347 times by the Panzer division of a city’s finest, only to leave behind a meandering rationale open to interpretation from your jerk neighbor across the street and bug-eyed Cable News criminologist Casey Jordan.” (12/18/24)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/18/notes-on-drafting-a-manifesto/
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37) The Pitfall of Reason: Against First Principles
Source: Students For Liberty
by Eloy Vera
“Living in populist times, libertarians might feel vindicated in their criticism of those who imagine themselves as guardians of all higher wisdom and moral purpose, elites who must steer society against the worst instincts of the baser people. Some even cave to the populist temptation of glorifying the masses in their simplicity of mind, their rusticness of spirit, their no-nonsense deference to de-intellectualized traditions. Condescension and romanticism blend into this view of the plebeian man as naturally irreflexive and prone to lose himself in the collectivist flow, a whip for the guilt-ridden intellectual to self-flagellate with. Many libertarians fit this type of the solitary erudite striving to understand through analytical reason what he can’t embrace through sheer sentiment.” (12/18/24)
https://studentsforliberty.org/blog/the-pitfall-of-reason-against-first-principles/
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38) IMF Offers a Glimpse at the Perils of Central Bank Digital Currencies
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille
“With Bitcoin climbing over $100,000, both investors and government officials are taking a closer look at digital money. The problem is that there’s a huge difference between an independent currency designed to resist surveillance and control, and one crafted by a central bank to enable exactly that. A new handbook from the International Monetary Fund embraces the potential of cryptocurrency while highlighting the dangers inherent in state dominance of the means of storing and exchanging value. … The IMF and the central banks it serves see cryptocurrency as the wave of the future and want in on the action. But central banks are government entities, and what officials want is not necessarily what is desired by people needing reliable means of making and receiving payments. Putting it bluntly, government officials generally regard those they nominally serve as subjects to be monitored and controlled.” (12/18/24)
https://reason.com/2024/12/18/imf-offers-a-glimpse-at-the-perils-of-central-bank-digital-currencies/
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39) Precogs in the Machine
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“Whether ‘predictive policing’ is good or bad depends on what it means. If it means using crime patterns to determine which neighborhoods should get more police patrols, that’s reasonable enough. But what if it means assuming that certain individuals may commit a crime if left to themselves? And then ‘preventatively’ harassing them? The Institute for Justice has just won an important victory against predictive policing as practiced by the sheriff’s office of Pasco County, Florida.” (12/18/24)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2024/12/18/precogs-in-the-machine/
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40) Justin Trudeau is in no shape to face Trump
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Andrew Latham
“The Trudeau government faces a perfect storm of political and economic upheaval following Chrystia Freeland’s abrupt resignation and mounting anxieties over the prospect of Donald Trump’s return to power. With Trudeau’s popularity at record lows and calls for his resignation mounting, Canada’s leadership crisis could not come at a worse time. Freeland’s departure, opposition gains, and the specter of renewed U.S. protectionism and pressure on NATO spending threaten to leave Canada unprepared to defend its national interests in a volatile international environment. Freeland’s resignation has sent shockwaves through Ottawa and underscored growing disarray within the Liberal government.” (12/18/24)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/justin-trudeau-resign/
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41) Biden Is Right to Take Credit for Enabling Assad’s Fall, But Is That a Good Thing?
Source: Foreign Policy In Focus
by Edward Hunt
“Officials in the Biden administration are taking credit for creating conditions in Syria that enabled opposition forces to overthrow the Syrian government. Now that opposition forces have ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, administration officials are insisting that longstanding U.S. policies, including actions taken by the Biden administration against Assad’s supporters, made the overthrow of the Syrian government possible. Administration officials deny that they aided Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the U.S.-designated terrorist organization that led the drive to overthrow Assad, but they insist that they facilitated the opposition’s victory, citing years of U.S. efforts to empower the opposition and weaken the Syrian government. Just as U.S. officials have claimed, the United States played a central role in creating the conditions that led to Assad’s ouster.” (12/18/24)
https://fpif.org/u-s-officials-take-credit-for-regime-change-in-syria/
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42) Drone Hysteria, Alien Cultists, and the One-Armed Prophet of Cosmic Enlightenment
Source: The Bulwark
by Martyn Wendell Jones
“Unmanned drones have been swarming New Jersey; patriotic defenders of the homeland have been zapping them with laser pointers to scramble the hostile visitors’ plans. It turns out many of the alleged drones are normal planes whose pilots have been getting their retinas fried by this ad-hoc home defense, but their accounts of frustration and potential injury are doing little to calm the drone hysteria. The intuition about a deeper, hidden reality is too strong. … Intuitions like this are something of a hobbyhorse of mine. I have always been fascinated by extreme, idiosyncratic, or otherwise discomfiting forms of spirituality.” (12/18/24)
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/drone-hysteria-alien-cultists-and-prophet-cosmic-enlightenment
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43) Homeschoolers and Microschoolers Describe the Benefits of Alternative Education
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Nasiyah Isra-Ul
“I’m a homeschool graduate, so I grew up knowing that unconventional education provided me unparalleled flexibility, freedom, and personalized learning that just wasn’t possible in public education. Yet I’ve never seen homeschooling and other alternative educational methods receive so much positive attention until recently. Still, many are questioning whether or not these unconventional models will prove effective over time and whether the output from these alternative learning environments will equate to more success for learners. … To get a student’s perspective on this topic, I interviewed three homeschoolers who either attend or have graduated from a homeschool program or other non-traditional learning environment.” (12/17/24)
https://fee.org/articles/homeschoolers-and-microschoolers-describe-the-benefits-of-alternative-education/
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44) How Bad Will It Get? Some Possible Mitigating Factors
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Kevin Carson
“Since the nightmare on election night many, myself included, have been catastrophizing the possible scenarios beginning on January 20. We’re all aware of the awful threats from Trump and his agenda: Mass deportation. Attacks on reproductive freedom at the federal level. The use of the military under the Insurrection Act to suppress public protests. The resurrection of Schedule F to pack the most important administrative offices with obedient party hacks. Moral support, at least, for state- and local-level movements like ‘Moms for Liberty,’ anti-trans and anti-LGBT policies. Likely informal alliances with paramilitary street thugs …. Most or all of these threats are plausible — at least attempts at them — with varying degrees of likelihood and intensity. But there are also countervailing or mitigating tendencies which may offset or impede the authoritarianism of the Trump administration.” (12/17/24)
https://c4ss.org/content/60012
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45) Don’t blame insurers’ greed; government made a mess of our health care
Source: New York Post
by Betsy McCaughey
“Everyone’s blaming health insurance company greed for soaring costs, rising claims denials and daunting roadblocks to care. That’s naïve. Follow the money to find the real culprits: lying politicians. In 2013, before Affordable Care Act regulations kicked in, insurers denied roughly 1.5% of claims, according to the American Medical Association. But under ACA rules, denials increased tenfold. Now nearly 15% of claims are denied, reports Premier, an insurance consultant firm. Some insurers deny a third or more of claims, according to Kaiser Family Foundation research. Insurers are also increasingly demanding pre-authorizations for a wide range of treatments and medications, tying your doctor’s hands and in some cases dangerously delaying care. Your doctor has to call the insurer before beginning treatment or ordering a medication — and seldom is the person on the other end of the phone a specialist in the disease or treatment in question.” (12/17/24)
https://nypost.com/2024/12/17/opinion/betsy-mccaughey-dont-blame-insurers-greed-government-made-a-mess-of-our-health-care/
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46) The insanity of modern “public schools” and their students
Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton
“Robert Heinlein’s stories including a ‘future history’ often referred to ‘The Crazy Years’ when societies around the world became totally dysfunctional – madness became the norm. Several of us here at TPOL have decided that Heinlein never truly understood just how insane people and institutions here in the States could become. The latest example comes from Loudon County, Virginia. There, the school district has taken action to deal with a truly heinous event: a history teacher passed around a cotton bole to the students, and some students made stupid cracks and other students were distressed – not just offended, but disturbed and distressed by being exposed to cotton. Raw cotton, of course. Otherwise, we would bet that every one of those offended students would have to go ahead and get naked.” (12/17/24)
https://thepriceofliberty.org/2024/12/17/the-insanity-of-modern-public-schools-and-their-students/
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47) Government-Granted Patent Monopolies Lead to Corruption #47,284
Source: Beat The Press
by Dean Baker
“The New York Times ran an important investigative piece on how the opioid manufacturers gave kickbacks to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to push their drugs, even in cases where they knew they could lead to addiction by patients. … This is an important piece, but it leaves a key factor out of the discussion. The reason why opioids were so profitable to the drug companies was that the government gave them patent monopolies that allowed them to sell opioids at prices far above the free market price. If these drugs were sold in a free market, like paper plates or ballpoint pens, there would have been little incentive for the drug companies to pay large kickbacks to push product. In fact, if drugs were sold in a free market, PBMs almost certainly would not exist.” (12/17/24)
https://cepr.net/government-granted-patent-monopolies-lead-to-corruption-47284/
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48) Immigration as a solution to healthcare workforce shortages
Source: Niskanen Center
by Cassandra Zimmer
“The U.S. healthcare system faces a profound workforce crisis that threatens the availability and quality of care nationwide. A combination of factors — including demographic shifts, burnout, training bottlenecks, low wages for support roles, and uneven workforce distribution — has exacerbated shortages across the care spectrum. … Structural reforms are crucial for strengthening the domestic healthcare workforce, but these efforts will take years to yield results. In the meantime, immediate interventions are needed to address current shortages, with immigration presenting a compelling solution. Immigrants already play a critical role in the U.S. healthcare sector, accounting for 18% of the workforce, including a significant share of physicians, nurses, and home health aides. Despite this, restrictive U.S. immigration policies severely limit the entry and integration of foreign healthcare professionals, leaving critical gaps unaddressed.” (12/17/24)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/immigration-as-a-solution-to-healthcare-workforce-shortages
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49) Time Running Out to Cancel Student Debt for Aging Borrowers
Source: In These Times
by Lily Greenberg Call
“gA roup of student loan borrowers aged 50 and up traveled from around the country to Washington, D.C., on December 11, setting up rocking chairs outside the Department of Education. Dressed in ponchos and beanies to protect against the frigid rain, they passed out cross-stitch kits and signs reading ’Knit-In for Debt Cancellation,’ sharing their personal debt stories amidst chants of ‘Biden, don’t forget, cancel student debt.’ These protesters are all members of the Debt Collective, the first union of debtors in the country, and they came to Washington with a message for President Joe Biden: Cancel student debt for borrowers over 50 years old before Donald Trump takes office in January.” [editor’s note: If their debt is so crippling, how did they afford that travel? – TLK] (12/16/24)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/debt-collective-cancel-student-loans
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50) Argentina Is Responding to Shock Therapy
Source: Persuasion
by Quico Toro
“He comes across like a madman, but Javier Milei is fast becoming the man of the moment.” (12/17/24)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/argentina-is-responding-to-shock
_____ Today's Freedom Podcast and Video _____
51) Reason Interview: Penny Lane
Source: Reason
“Why I Gave a Kidney to a Total Stranger.” (12/18/24)
https://reason.com/podcast/2024/12/18/penny-lane-why-i-gave-a-kidney-to-a-total-stranger/
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52) The Vital Center, episode 75
Source: Niskanen Center
“Race, class, education, and the 2024 election, with Steve Bumbaugh.” (12/18/24)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/race-class-education-and-the-2024-election-with-steve-bumbaugh
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53) The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, 12/18/24
Source: The Dispatch
“The Case for Competition.” (12/18/24)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/remnant/the-case-for-competition/
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54) The Learning Curve, 12/18/24
Source: Pioneer Institute
“UK’s John Suchet, OBE, on Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker, & Ballets.” (12/18/24)
https://pioneerinstitute.org/featured/uks-john-suchet-obe-on-tchaikovsky-the-nutcracker-ballets/
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55) The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent, 12/18/24
Source: The New Republic
“With Donald and Lara Trump both telegraphing new details about Trump’s plans for retribution, Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall suggests a way for the targets of vengeance to band together and fight back.” (12/18/24)
https://newrepublic.com/article/189506/lara-trump-drops-unnerving-hint-trumps-coming-2025-revenge-tour
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56) Free Talk Cast, episode 24
Source: Free Talk Live
“Aria and Nikki talk about toxic relationships, toxic family members, drawing boundaries, and ending relationships.” (12/18/24)
https://soundcloud.com/freetalklive/free-talk-cast-024-making-toxic-ghosts
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57) The Corbett Report, episode 470
Source: The Corbett Report
“Pokemon Go(v) … Another Conspiracy Confirmed!” (12/18/24)
https://corbettreport.com/pokemon-gov/
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58) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 12/18/24
Source: Antiwar.com
“Katz: Israel To Occupy Gaza Indefinitely, Ukraine Kills Russian General in Moscow Bombing, and More.” (12/18/24)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg441ZHdi_M
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59) Nonzero, 12/17/24
Source: Bloggingheads.tv
“Three Decades of Bad Foreign Policy | Robert Wright & Scott Horton.” (12/17/24)
https://bloggingheads.tv/videos/68225
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60) Politics Politics Politics, 12/17/24
Source: Politics Politics Politics
“Is Kamala Harris a Favorite for 2028? (with Bill Scher).” (12/17/24)
https://www.politicspoliticspolitics.com/p/is-kamala-harris-a-favorite-for-2028
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