Business And Money

Two Wings, One Bird: How We Traded a Republic for a Revenue Machine

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We like to pretend we live in a fierce two-party system. Red vs. blue. Left vs. right. Cable news gladiators screaming like it’s the Super Bowl of righteousness. But step back far enough and the illusion fades. What you actually see is one bird with two wings—and that bird doesn’t care about your values, your vote, or your virtue. It worships one thing: money.

Gold, God, and the Grift: How “Patriot” Pitchmen Sold Fear and Made Millions

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There’s a hard truth nobody likes to say out loud: this didn’t just happen because of a few shady coin dealers—it happened because trusted voices carried the water. When names like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Rudy Giuliani lent their platforms—directly or indirectly—to gold pitches, it wasn’t background noise. It was a credibility transfer. And when shows hosted by Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, and Mike Huckabee ran those same ads day after day, it didn’t just sell metal—it sold trust. That trust had value, and someone cashed it.

The Fragile Grid: Powered by Electricity, Dependent on Foreign Steel

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We all love electricity. Flip the switch, lights come on. Coffee maker fires up. Wi-Fi router blinks happily. Data centers hum. Teslas charge. Life is good. Modern civilization runs on electricity the way the human body runs on oxygen. The only time people think about the electrical grid is when it fails—and then suddenly everyone becomes an expert on transformers, substations, and utility companies. But here’s a fun little detail almost nobody knows: the entire grid quietly depends on a specialized material most Americans have never heard of.

Hormuz: 21 Miles of History Proving Geography Still Rules the Modern World

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The modern world likes to believe it has outgrown geography. Satellites circle the planet, data moves at the speed of light, and weapons can strike targets from continents away. Military theorists speak confidently about cyber war, artificial intelligence, and fifth-generation conflict conducted across digital networks and orbital platforms. Yet despite all this technological sophistication, the global economy still depends on an astonishingly simple fact of physical geography: about twenty-one miles of ocean between Iran and Oman control roughly a quarter of the world’s oil and enormous quantities of energy-related commodities such as petrochemical feedstocks and fertilizer inputs.

Welfare For the Well-To-Do

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On Boxing Day of 2023, I noted an article in The Wall Street Journal concerning investors souring on electric vehicle charging companies. In plug in electric vehicles are the wave of the future, why would investors not be moving into, rather than out of, such companies? Note that the original article was from December of …

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Atlas Rebooted: When the Department of War Decides Your Company Belongs to the State

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In Atlas Shrugged, the government doesn’t seize Rearden Metal with bayonets. It does something far more modern. It surrounds it with emergency language, regulatory edicts, patriotic necessity, and administrative suffocation until saying “no” becomes illegal in everything but name. The state never shouts, “We are stealing this.” It simply declares the product too important to be privately controlled.

Stolen Valor Wears Medals — Stolen Charity Wears a Flag and a Suit

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There’s stolen valor — the guy at the bar wearing medals he never earned, hoping nobody asks what unit he was in. Then there’s stolen charity — the polished executive in a tailored suit wearing patriotism like a lapel pin while cashing checks “for the troops.” One lies about serving. The other lies about serving those who served. Both are frauds. Only one gets invited to donor banquets.

While America Has a Nervous Breakdown, China Is Measuring the Curtains

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History has a sense of humor, and it’s rarely kind. As the United States barrels headlong into a Fourth Turning crisis—complete with generational rage, institutional distrust, ritualized protest, economic anxiety, and ideological self-harm—China isn’t protesting anything. It’s watching. Quietly. Patiently. With a spreadsheet.