Monday evening reading - August 10, 2026
More goodies from the stack of stuff I read on a daily basis here on Substack.
When I get to between six and eight posts - well, more like ten to twelve (or more) these days - I think are worth sharing, you’ll get Monday evening reading. It won’t be every week, but likely more often than not. There’s nothing wrong with link love! Once again, I culled this down from the truckload of posts I get from over 100 Substacks to which I subscribe (and maybe you should too.)
Go ahead and read these pieces, then come back and see what I have to say.
Since I skipped two weeks, this will be a long one. Better get yourself a cold beverage of choice.
I’m going to start with obsession - no, not the cologne or my efforts at writing a good Substack, but this from Jack Sotallaro.
It seems both sides are obsessed with Trump. MAGA hangs on his every word, cheers his every thought and move, and loves him. He’s charismatic, so the treatment he gets from his people is expected.
What’s not expected is how he lives rent free in just about every non-MAGA head in the nation. They not only hate him, they find reasons to hate him when they don’t have one, and when they can’t find a reason they invent it. I had a conversation recently where the individual’s response to mentioning Joe Biden’s dementia was to then say Trump’s sliding downhill too. I’m bringing this up to demonstrate the invention of failings when they’re not apparent and probably not true. Try to discuss any shortcoming by a Democrat – the what-aboutism immediately goes from AAA to the Major League level.
There’s a part of me that will be glad when he’s gone so we can have some other topics of conversation. But I suspect I’ll never hear the end of it.
This may be sacrilege from Matt A Mayer and The Patriot Mind, but he ponders the idea of a divided government in Ohio. Hear him out.
For fifteen-and-a-half years, Republicans have ruled Ohio with supermajorities in the Ohio General Assembly and with Republican governors. Is your life measurably better because of their work (or lack of work)? Do you feel like the people who live in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, or South Carolina feel? Are you jealous of what they have? Are you proud of John Kasich and Mike DeWine? Have you seen an influx of people from other states coming here because Ohio is winning the “vote with your feet” competition?
Yes, my state income taxes have come down a little bit, but that decreases has been more than offset by the increase in local taxes, especially property taxes. Our educational system has gotten worse, not better for our K-12 population, so our kids are falling farther behind. Our jobs economy remains one of the systemically weakest in America, with a net increase of just 81,800 jobs since 2019 (#39 out of fifty). A right-to-work bill has never made it out of committee in decades, as neighbors Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, and even Michigan for a bit passed right-to-work. More than half our counties have lost jobs and population since 2000.
Yep, I’m one of those Ohio refugees who got tired of being laid off every four years when people around Toledo quit building or hired out-of-town architects. You would think with a GOP trifecta they’d be doing better but the state GOP always wanted the candidate they thought was “electable,” not the one who was conservative.
Fortunately, Ohio’s Democrat candidate for governor doesn’t seem to be a socialist, but anyone with a D is suspect these days. Just ask Bronwyn Sims.
The Democratic Socialists of America no longer hide what they want. Their own website and program state it plainly: replace capitalism with democratic socialism, place the largest corporations and essential industries under public ownership, abolish the Senate and Electoral College, subordinate the presidency and Supreme Court to Congress, abolish ICE, move toward abolishing police and prisons, end all military and economic aid to Israel while recognizing a Palestinian “right of return” and “right to resist,” and lift sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. These are not moderate reforms. They are a deliberate attempt to dismantle the constitutional and economic order that has made the United States the most prosperous and free large nation in history.
The funny thing is that DSA candidates are getting elected without a lot of campaign funding. In This Dimension explains one reason why regular old Democrats are now at a disadvantage.
DOGE showed everyone paying attention that just about every program initiated by the Dems as they controlled the federal government for over 40 years, from FDR, was nothing but a laundry. Ukraine is a laundry. Every “war” we demand to fight and refuse to win – every war since 1945 – is a laundry.
It was nice work if you could get it, but the gravy train screeched to a halt under Donald Trump. Fortunately for them, the DSA wins without a lot of money thanks to passionate volunteers. But if you ask JD Rucker, though, that DSA faction is among the biggest racists in America.
So here is the movement that lectures the rest of the country about privilege. A room that is 85 percent white, stocked with degreed professionals out-earning the neighbors they claim to represent, has nonetheless decided it knows precisely what is best for the working-class and minority communities it can barely persuade to join.
The DSA is not a coalition of the marginalized. It is a coalition of the well-off telling the marginalized what their interests are.
But where the DSA takes over, the money leaves. That’s the point of Jeffrey Minch and The Musings of the Big Red Car, in a recent piece detailing capital flight.
Nobody is turning off the lights at 9 West 57th Street. Nobody is loading the conference table into a moving van. Yet.
But don’t confuse the press release with reality.
When a company decides that most of its future hiring will occur 1,700 miles away, it has already told you everything you need to know.
Apollo’s mental picture of its future isn’t moving to Texas. It already has.
Despite that failure, it’s the white college-educated liberals who are driving the Democrat Party now, which means their former coalition of blacks and Hispanics is being pushed away from the table. That may be the precursor of a race war, if you believe Kelli from Rocking the suburbs.
Australia seems to be following the same disastrous path of the UK and Europe. Immigration is at an all-time high, while housing affordability is at an all-time low. Our politicians will try and tell us that the two are not connected, but how can that possibly be so?
They seem to be working in the opposite direction we are, as our tactics of self-deportation with additional ICE support are lowering the immigrant population.
But that’s not the only issue. Coming out from the shadows, Monica's Dark Corner relates a recent incident that has her worried about her husband of 54 years.
The driver got out of his vehicle, approached Mike from behind, and attacked him without warning as he continued his walk. He ripped the walking stick from Mike’s hands, the very thing that helps support him, and turned it into a weapon. Then he struck him over and over with such force and brutality that the walking stick shattered into five pieces. Five pieces. That image is burned into my mind. Every time I think about it, I feel physically sick. The violence was so extreme that something meant to provide stability, and support was reduced to splintered fragments. There was no argument, no confrontation, no apparent reason for what happened. This wasn’t a momentary lapse in judgment. It wasn’t self-defense. It wasn’t an accident. It was a series of conscious choices.
Let’s hope justice is served in this case. Perhaps she’ll have an update with better news.
Being from a certain region of the country, though, my thinking is that Monica’s surrounded by the good stock that Dan Hollaway talks about in his piece.
Here’s the claim I want to make, and I’ll make it strongly so we can test it together: the United States is, in a real and traceable sense, a Scottish invention. Not a British one. Not purely an English one. A Scottish one.
Let me be careful, because “country X invented country Y” is usually overheated nonsense. I don’t mean the Scots did it alone. The English political tradition is real and enormous—Magna Carta, the common law, the Glorious Revolution, John Locke. The Romans and the Greeks gave us immense gifts as well. What I mean is narrower and, I think, more interesting: that the specific intellectual machinery the Founders reached for when they had to actually design a country—the working theory of human nature, of commerce, of how order arises—was disproportionately Scottish. And that a second, entirely separate stream of Scottish people supplied the raw temperament of a huge swath of the American character. Two gifts, from one small nation, arriving at the same moment.
That was a fascinating read I wanted to share. There might be a little Scotch-Irish in my family on my mother’s side, but my dad’s side was good German and Polish stock.
Speaking of good stock, perhaps Justin Smith has some of that in his lineage. He certainly writes about freedom and his life like a Scot might.
When I was but a babe, I fell down in the holler. When I was a boy, I fell into someone’s arms. That is the beginning of most lives, if we are honest about it: first we fall, and then we reach for someone. We are born helpless into a world of dangers we cannot yet understand, and for a little while, someone else carries us through the darkness. Then we grow, and the world begins to teach us that love is not always permanent, that promises are not always kept, and that those who share our beds and our dreams may someday walk away.
I’m going to finish on a high note, as Jennifer Sey sings the praises of WNBA player Sophie Cunningham.
I, for one, love Sophie. The pointing. The three-pointers. The attack dog/protector. The hot girl SI Swimsuit model. Every last bit.
I mean watch this video from the Sophie Cunningham basketball camp. Every camper gets a pic and every one wants to do the point. And she does it.
I’d like to point out (see what I did there?) that women’s basketball has two big disadvantages with me: I’m not really a basketball fan and they play during baseball season. But in the terms of what Jennifer is passionate about, Cunningham is a winner.
All that should keep a good reader going and thinking for awhile. It’s a great way to start the week, right?
In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there now.
Thanks for the mention and kind words. Always appreciated. You showcase some real talent on these substacks. Proud to be one of them.
Thank you, Michael for mentioning my post "What Was Taken in Ten Minutes." I feel honored to have been noticed. Unfortunately, there is no good news about the attacker being found.