Source: CBS News
“Under pressure from the U.S. and other allies to flood the Gaza Strip with humanitarian aid, Israel insists it’s doing everything it can, and it blames the United Nations for the starvation of thousands of Palestinians in the war-torn enclave. In a Wednesday morning social media post, the Israeli government said it had ‘scaled up our capabilities’ and it included a video clip showing hundreds of white containers that it said were loaded with aid and waiting for collection inside Gaza. ‘This is what the content of 700 aid trucks looks like. It is waiting on the Gazan side of Kerem Shalom to be picked up by UN agencies,’ COGAT, the Israeli government agency that handles affairs in the Palestinian territories, said in the post. ‘All the UN did was make up excuses. Aid needs to be collected and delivered. The UN needs to do its job.'” (04/17/24)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-starvation-un-unicef-humanitarian-aid-distribution/
Source: American Institute for Economic Research
by Donald J Boudreaux
“It’s understandable to think that, if the enlistees in America’s military come disproportionately from lower-income groups, the all-volunteer nature of the military results in lower-income individuals bearing a disproportionate share of the burden of providing America’s military services. It’s understandable, too, to suppose that conscription would spread this burden more equally across income groups. But economics reveals that this way of thinking is mistaken. The most equitable and just sharing of the burden of America’s military is assured by its all-volunteer nature, and that conscription would be inequitable and unjust.” (04/17/24)
https://www.aier.org/article/the-justice-of-an-all-volunteer-military/
Source: CoinDesk
“Bitcoin (BTC) has become more dominant in the crypto market thanks to impending halving and broader market risk aversion, despite the price correction. The largest cryptocurrency by market value was trading below $61,400 during Asian trading hours on Thursday, according to CoinDesk Indices data, as the sell-off in risk assets, fueled by difficult macroeconomic conditions, rages. The CoinDesk 20, a measure of the world’s most liquid digital assets, is down 3.3%, trading at 2,125.” (04/18/24)
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/04/18/bitcoin-dominance-increases-as-halving-nears-and-btc-price-lingers-near-61k/
Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“To tell people that their non-religious beliefs are just a religion is an insult. Why is it an insult? There isn’t any nice way to answer, so I’ll be blunt. It is an insult because the way that people form religious beliefs is so intellectually irresponsible that their conclusions are almost guaranteed to be false. People: * accept their religious beliefs with little or no evidence * accept religious beliefs that are contrary to the evidence * accept religious beliefs without studying competing views * are certain about religious beliefs that are dubious at best, and *accept their religious beliefs not because they are intellectually compelling, but because they are emotionally comforting. Forming non-religious beliefs in a religious way is irrational because forming any beliefs in a religious way is irrational.” (04/17/24)
https://www.betonit.ai/p/why-religious-beliefs-are-irrational
Source: Fox News
“Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office rejected an effort by state Democrats to circumvent a key election deadline to allow President Biden on state ballots this week, according to documents obtained by Fox News Digital. The documents show correspondence from Yost’s office and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, as well as attorney Donald McTigue, who is representing Democrats on the matter. LaRose, a Republican, had notified state Democrats earlier this month that the Democratic National Convention would not occur until more than a week after Ohio’s Aug. 7 deadline for certifying presidential candidates. LaRose warned that either the Ohio assembly would have to vote to change the law, or Democrats would have to move up their plans for certifying Biden and Vice President Harris.” (04/17/24)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ohio-ag-shuts-down-democrat-proposal-skirt-election-deadline-get-biden-ballots
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“The drug war, as most everyone knows has been going on a long time — decades! It’s just your standard government program. It keeps going and going no matter how much failure, death, and destruction it produces. … there have been drug warriors who have exclaimed, ‘If we would just really crack down in the war on drugs, we could win it.’ (They say the same thing in the war on immigrants, which has been going on at least as long as the war on drugs.) But the fact is that the drug warriors have been cracking down in the drug war the entire time. … there is only one solution to the drug war — end it.” (04/17/24)
https://www.fff.org/2024/04/17/how-about-just-cracking-down-to-win-the-drug-war/
Source: Reuters
“The U.S. House of Representatives will have its long-awaited vote on aid for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific as soon as Saturday, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson said on Wednesday, more than two months after a similar package passed the Senate. The House Appropriations Committee unveiled legislation providing more than $95 billion in security assistance, including $60.84 billion to address the conflict in Ukraine and assist regional partners as they handle Russia’s invasion, of which $23.2 billion would be used to replenish U.S. weapons, stocks and facilities. The Israel bill totals $26.38 billion, for Israel and funds to cover the cost of U.S. military operations in response to recent attacks. The Indo-Pacific measure totals $8.12 billion.” (04/17/24)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-house-ukraine-israel-aid-bills-be-filed-wednesday-speaker-says-2024-04-17/
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Jeffrey A Tucker
“To notice and comply with the Overton window is not the same as merely favoring incremental change over dramatic reform. There is not and should never be an issue with marginal change. That’s not what is at stake. To be aware of the Overton window, and fit within it, means to curate your own advocacy. You should do so in a way that is designed to comply with a structure of opinion that is pre-existing as a kind of template we are all given. It means to craft a strategy specifically designed to game the system, which is said to operate according to acceptable and unacceptable opinionizing.” (04/17/24)
https://brownstone.org/articles/is-the-overton-window-real-imagined-or-constructed/
Source: The Federalist
by David Harsanyi
“If a belligerent state launched 186 explosive drones, 36 cruise missiles, and 110 surface-to-surface missiles from three fronts against civilian targets within the United States, would Joe Biden call it a ‘win?’ Would the president tell us that the best thing we can do now is show ‘restraint?’ What if that same terror state’s proxy armies had recently helped murder, rape, and kidnap more than 1,000 American men, women, and children? What if this terror state were trying to obtain nuclear weapons so it could continue to agitate without any consequences? This is what Joe Biden and the Barack Obama acolytes, Iranian dupes, and Israel antagonists he’s surrounded himself with demand of Jewish State.” (04/17/24)
https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/16/the-world-is-paying-a-deadly-price-for-barack-obamas-foreign-policy-legacy/
Source: CNN
“Uri Berliner, a National Public Radio senior editor who wrote a scathing online essay accusing the public radio network of harboring a liberal bias, said Wednesday he had resigned from the outlet. ‘I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years,’ Berliner wrote in a resignation letter to NPR chief executive Katherine Maher, which he posted to his X account. An NPR spokesperson declined to comment. Berliner’s resignation came after he was suspended for five days without pay over his 3,500-word piece in the anti-establishment publication The Free Press. In the essay, Berliner claimed NPR had failed to properly cover allegations Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the runup to the 2016 election, the controversial Covid-19 lab-leak theory and New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop.” (04/17/24)
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/17/media/npr-editor-resigns/index.html
