HALF-FULL REPORT 10/10/25

Published October 10, 2025 | By Mike Ryan

Rebuilding Order

Gold passed $4,000/ troy ounce this week for the first time ever. Interest rates are a civilization’s moral barometer. When currency is debased, rates rise along with the price of gold.

Some say interest is a measure of time, but I disagree. It is a measure of lost faith and trust.

The USSR fell this way: pretense replaced work, lies replaced integrity, and malfunction devoured the system from within. Left-wing ideology repeats this globally, feeding on disorder, rewarding pretense, punishing reality. Chaos becomes currency; decay becomes power.

Today’s Gaza ceasefire flips the script: law, oversight, and structure compress entropy into order. Civilization is asserting itself, turning chaos into measured stability.

In Washington, Democrats weaponize disorder through the continuing shutdown, frozen paychecks, and media-fed wedges. President Trump is a builder and he learned his trade by dealing with the most radical trade unions and political rent seekers in the New York government.

He is calling the left’s bluff by calling their tactic of taking financial hostages and wrecking operations by throwing their annual tantrum the hokum of a weak hand.

Truth, discipline, and unity are the weapons the president is using to dismantle the lefties. Every over reaction to manufactured disorder feeds entropy; every calm, principled response restores it.

Globally, truth is reclaiming the field. The Nobel Peace Prize for exposing Venezuela’s rigged votes compresses deception into accountability. Immigration enforcement restores housing, jobs, and economic stability.

Japan’s new prime minister, it’s “Iron Lady,” as well as Giorgia Meloni, and Trump’s own team are compressing disorder, rebuilding confidence, and asserting sovereignty.

The world is at a turning point. Chaos has gone too far. Citizens and leaders are driving out the agents of disorder and malfunction. Systems are being repaired, truth is being rewarded, and order is winning.

Civilization is reclaiming its energy, fixing disorder, and restoring the foundations of society. A page has turned in history. This week is just shouting at us that things are getting better.

Order is returning. The future belongs to those who defend it.

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Israel-Hamas Ceasefire

The first phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is now in effect. The guns went silent at noon local time, or 0900 GMT, after a final round of hard bargaining in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh.

The negotiations, mediated by Qatar, Egypt, the United States, and Turkey, culminated in an agreement grounded in President Donald Trump’s new 20-point peace framework announced last week.

Both Israel and Hamas have formally accepted its core terms.

Israel’s cabinet ratified the deal late on October 9, setting the ceasefire clock in motion. Within hours, the exchange of hostages and prisoners began as an early test of good faith under the plan designed to stabilize the region without surrendering Israeli security or American leverage.

In short: phase one is live, the framework is holding, and for the first time in years, the Middle East is breathing between volleys. Whether it lasts depends on discipline, verification, and the political will to keep both allies and adversaries aligned under pressure.

The ceasefire marks a decisive break from the cycle of fragile truces and propaganda victories that have defined every prior conflict in Gaza. Unlike the unwritten Egyptian-brokered deals of 2014 and 2021 that were agreements based on promises and press releases, this one is built on structure, verification, and American leverage.

It is the first ceasefire in the modern era codified under a written framework, the Trump 20-Point Plan, which brings Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, and the United States as backers into an enforceable system. Every term is measurable. Every step has consequences.

At its core, this agreement converts diplomacy from the realm of rhetoric into the realm of contract, something that career diplomats almost always oppose.

Israel’s withdrawal is partial and conditional, not total. Its forces are repositioning to an “agreed line” inside Gaza, maintaining forward operating zones and rapid-response corridors that prevent Hamas from treating the ceasefire as a rearming window.

For the first time, Israel retains tactical proximity without forfeiting international legitimacy. Hamas, by contrast, is boxed in and its compliance is monitored by satellites, aid logistics, and financial triggers that can freeze reconstruction if violations occur.

The most emotionally charged element is the hostage and prisoner exchange whichhas been stripped of the theatrics that once turned it into a media circus. Instead of one-off swaps designed for television, the process now unfolds in calibrated stages.

Hamas must prove life and deliver hostages in increments, while Israel releases Palestinian prisoners in parallel, all under direct international supervision. Roughly two thousand detainees are scheduled for release, including women and minors, but every name is tied to verified compliance.

It’s a subtle but powerful shift: what once symbolized political weakness has been turned into a tool of enforcement.

Humanitarian aid, too, has been redefined. In past ceasefires, the flow of reconstruction materials became an underground resupply chain for Hamas. This time, the aid routes run through Egyptian and U.S. inspection choke points, with oversight to ensure materials are used for civilian rebuilding, not weapons.

In effect, Gaza is being economically ventilated under controlled conditions with enough oxygen to sustain life, not enough to reignite the fire.

Perhaps the most strategically ambitious feature of Trump’s plan is what comes after the guns go quiet. For the first time, a ceasefire framework explicitly envisions a post-Hamas transition in Gaza to an administrative handoff managed by Arab League partners leading to eventual local elections. That provision alone transforms the deal from a truce into a road map.

It implies that Hamas is not an equal party in perpetuity, but a temporary obstacle being managed out of existence.

The political theater has also shifted. In previous rounds, Hamas emerged from the rubble claiming “victory through survival,” while Israel was left explaining its restraint. Not this time. Trump pre-framed the entire operation under the banner of “Peace through Strength, Justice through Security,” recasting the ceasefire as a triumph of controlled force rather than concession.

The narrative has moved from reactive defense to proactive statecraft, which is a distinctly Trumpian posture that brings regional actors back into Washington’s orbit.

In sum, this 2025 ceasefire is a systems reboot for Middle Eastern diplomacy. It binds Hamas to measurable behavior, preserves Israel’s deterrent, and reasserts American command of the peace process. It replaces moral ambiguity with structure, chaos with accountability, and empty declarations with enforceable terms. It is peace under discipline, the only kind that lasts.

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Federal Government Shutdown

The partial federal shutdown has entered its tenth day, and Washington is still locked in trench warfare.

The shutdown began at 12:01 a.m. on October 1 after fiscal year 2026 appropriations stalled in a deadlock between two incompatible visions of government.

Republicans offered a clean, short-term continuing resolution to keep the lights on until November 21, but without new Democratic add-ons like healthcare tax credit extensions or climate carve outs. Democrats refused, demanding either those additions or a longer, unrestricted funding bill.

Seven Senate votes later, nothing has moved. The latest roll calls were 54–45 and 55–45, so reopening failed again on October 9. The Senate has adjourned until Tuesday, October 14, and House Republicans have left Washington entirely, meaning the impasse will stretch at least another four days.

The shutdown’s second phase is now underway: economic attrition. This morning, OMB Director Russ Vought confirmed that federal reductions in force, or RIFs, have begun. Nonessential personnel across multiple agencies are being laid off outright.

The White House frames it as fiscal discipline and a necessary cleanup of bureaucratic bloat. Democrats, predictably, are calling it tyranny and “retaliation by pink slip.” But make no mistake: this is leverage. Every layoff increases pressure on the Democratic leadership to negotiate under financial strain rather than political theater.

Pay disruptions are starting to hit home. Civilian federal workers received reduced paychecks today, covering the September 21 to October 4 pay period with three of those days under shutdown conditions. Military service members face the first full missed payday on October 15 unless Congress acts.

President Trump has promised they’ll receive back pay once the standoff ends, but House Speaker Mike Johnson has rejected a standalone bill to fund troop pay separately. Meanwhile, some conservatives are quietly floating the idea of denying back pay to furloughed civilian workers, arguing that if an agency can idle its staff for weeks without visible loss, it probably didn’t need them in the first place.

Transportation and tourism are showing the first visible cracks. The FAA is short-staffed, leading to roughly 6,000 delayed flights this week.

Air traffic controllers and pilots are warning of compounding stress reminiscent of the 2019 shutdown. National parks remain technically open, but maintenance and safety crews are thin, leaving states to pick up the tab for essential services.

Iowa, among others, has begun fronting funds for food programs like WIC and SNAP to avoid public backlash. Economists estimate that each week of shutdown trims national GDP by 0.1 to 0.2 percent. It is a manageable cost for now, but unsustainable by November.

The broader picture is a bifurcated federal state: essential functions as Social Security, Medicare, border security, military operations continue, but operate under strain. Nonessential services have gone dark: IRS refunds are frozen, FDA drug approvals paused, and the Smithsonian closed its doors on October 6. Even the September jobs report has been delayed, leaving financial markets to operate in an information vacuum.

Public opinion, however, is not following the usual script. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll conducted October 1–2 shows 65 percent of Americans blaming Democrats for refusing a clean continuing resolution. The battlefield is psychological now with each side betting the other will blink first under economic or media pressure.

The real flash point is President Trump’s use of rescission powers and the authority to cancel previously approved spending. Democrats fear he’ll use it to claw back Obama-era and Biden-era appropriations, effectively rewriting the budget retroactively. That’s why they’re holding the line.

House Republicans, sensing the leverage shift, plan to reconvene briefly on October 10, then adjourn again, forcing Democrats to explain to voters why their shutdown continues while the GOP returns to work.

No one serious expects a quick resolution. The most credible forecasts push this standoff into late October, maybe longer if the White House decides to press the advantage. What we’re witnessing is a controlled demolition of Washington’s old spending habits. Trump is testing how far executive authority can go in starving bureaucracy without collapsing essential functions.

What survives this shutdown will define the next phase of the federal order and who really governs the republic when the paychecks stop.

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Democratic Strategy for 2026 Midterms

You don’t dismiss your opponent’s moves as folly, you analyze them coldly, line by line, and see the architecture of intent behind the chaos.

What we’re looking at now is not random noise from the Democratic side.

It is a coordinated psychological operation designed to fracture Trump’s coalition before the 2026 midterms. They’ve framed it as a “sophisticated influence campaign,” but it’s old-school political warfare dressed up in data science and polling jargon. The entire effort runs on fear, fragmentation, and fatigue.

The first axis of attack targets Trump’s blue-collar base through inflation anxiety. Democrats are pushing the narrative that Trump’s trade and tariff policies threaten household budgets, hoping to erode the “promises made, promises kept” credibility that defines his economic program.

At the same time, they’re fighting to block ICE deportations to dissolve the sense of law, order, and fairness that unites the blue-collar MAGA voter. The idea is to cultivate helplessness: if the government won’t protect borders or jobs, then no promise can be trusted.

The second tactic is demoralization through an information war aimed at the public psyche. They’re shutting down the government and reframing ordinary events as crises to make the country feel ungovernable under Republican influence. Polling is weaponized to create the illusion of panic and collapse. Even routine state issues like California’s Proposition 50 redistricting are cast as existential threats to “democracy.” The purpose is to exhaust. A population living under constant psychological strain is easier to herd.

The third move strikes deeper: the Democrats intend to fracture the spiritual unity of the MAGA movement. Their operators are already amplifying antisemitic and anti-Catholic sentiment online, trying to drive wedges between faith communities that otherwise stand shoulder-to-shoulder against cultural decay.

The goal is to turn social conservatives against economic conservatives, using religion as the fault line. Inside Democrat strategy circles, they’re convinced that if they can isolate Evangelicals from Catholics, the MAGA coalition collapses.

Trump’s overt support for Israel has become their chosen lever. By reframing it as “Israeli capture” of U.S. policy, they hope to turn parts of the base against itself. But this move cuts both ways. The proposed peace deal between Israel and Hamas threatens to demolish that narrative entirely. If Trump pulls it off, one entire leg of the Democratic 2026 playbook shatters overnight.

To see the intellectual poverty of their approach, look at their latest media stumble. The press recently tried to spin photos of the Pope blessing ice from an artificial glacier project into accusations of “pagan sorcery.” In reality, the event was nothing unusual.

It was just the Pope’s routine Wednesday blessing at the Vatican, where thousands bring ordinary items, from hammers to baby shoes, to be consecrated. It’s an ancient expression of faith, not a séance. But the Democrats, led by consultants who couldn’t tell a catechism from a comic book, mistook sacramental symbolism for superstition.

This is where their ignorance becomes a strategic liability. They think they can weaponize theological differences they don’t even understand. They imagine they can restart a “Thirty Years’ War” inside the American Right by turning Evangelicals against Catholics. What they miss is that both traditions, while distinct, are anchored in a shared moral realism: the belief that truth exists, and that man must orient his life toward it.

Consider a simple example that every Christian can relate to: the blessing of a car.

For Catholics, the priest blesses the car, setting it apart for holy use. The object itself becomes ordered toward God’s purposes. This is a teleological act grounded in Thomistic metaphysics. Grace works through form, and blessing realigns the object with its proper final purpose: safety, service, and the good according to God’s plan.

For Evangelicals, the blessing takes another shape. They thank God for the provision itself. The act is not about reorienting the object, but about expressing gratitude for God’s dynamic favor in real time. The power lies in relationship, not ontology. One sanctifies the thing; the other sanctifies the moment.

Both views express a living faith. Both are rooted in centuries of theology. The Catholic in Aristotelian teleology, the Evangelical in Hebraic dynamism. And both point to the same truth: God is active, and His order extends into every corner of human life.

The Democrats, in their hubris, believe they’ve discovered some hidden vulnerability in these doctrinal nuances. In truth, they’re stumbling blind through a world they don’t comprehend. They’re trying to manipulate believers with a theological playbook written by atheists. That is delusion.

So yes, call them what they are: the Dunning-Kruger Party. They’ve mistaken their ignorance of faith, virtue, and history for insight into the human soul. But they’re dealing with a movement built on moral conviction, not media illusion.

We should never underestimate the enemy and yet we recognize when the leftist misunderstands the terrain. And in this war of spirit and perception, misunderstanding the terrain is fatal.

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Nobel Peace Prize

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to María Corina Machado, a prominent Venezuelan opposition leader and political activist, as officially announced on October 10, 2025, by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

The committee’s citation noted Machado’s recognition stems from her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela” and her commitment to achieving a “just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

The committee specifically commended her efforts in uniting the opposition against Nicolás Maduro’s regime, highlighting her resistance to the militarization of society during a time marked by attempts to undermine democratic structures. Machado is acclaimed for embodying hope for a democratic future in Venezuela amid what the committee described as “growing darkness.”

Even though President Trump received numerous high-powered nominations, the Oslo Committee did not allow his name to be entered. Orange man bad, don’t ya know?

Machado was supported and endorsed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio for her work identifying massive and systemic voter fraud in Venezuelan elections. She is an engineer by training with graduate work in finance. She is the head of the opposition party, Vente Venezuela.

Venezuela uses Smartmatic voting machines that utilize a touch screen interface. She identified voting machine fraud so extensive in 2024 that González, the candidate that actually won with 80% of the vote still “lost” to Nicolás Maduro.

This is all interesting because suggesting that voting machine results can be manipulated will put a subject in prison in the UK and will likely initiate the opening of an FBI file on a citizen in the USA.

Trump drew attention to the Nobel Peace Prize for a reason that was unclear at the time. But awarding the prize for identifying and documenting a stolen presidential election via modern electronic voting machines is very interesting, indeed.

These times, they are a-changing.

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ICE, ICE, Baby

As of October 10, roughly 500 National Guard troops remain deployed in the greater Chicago area, a force activated on October 7 under U.S. Northern Command.

The contingent includes 300 from Illinois and 200 from Texas, stationed at an Army Reserve center in Elwood, about an hour southwest of downtown.

Their mission is straightforward: protect ICE agents and federal property during enforcement operations amid rising unrest. Troops have also maintained a presence near the ICE detention center in Broadview, where earlier confrontations on October 3–4 led to multiple arrests.

ICE raids intensified across Chicago in early October, particularly in working-class areas like Little Village. On October 8, a federal judge ruled that ICE violated a 2022 consent decree by conducting warrantless arrests. Tensions flared on October 4 when Border Patrol agents shot a woman during a standoff.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson responded by filing a joint lawsuit on October 6 to halt what they called an “unconstitutional federal invasion.” On October 9, U.S. District Judge April Perry issued a temporary restraining order blocking additional National Guard deployments in the city until October 23.

Her ruling questioned DHS claims of violence from what officials had described as “mostly peaceful” Antifa protests. President Trump, in turn, suggested that both Pritzker and Johnson could face jail time for allegedly encouraging resistance to federal law enforcement.

Meanwhile, in Portland, up to 400 Texas National Guard troops were placed on standby for similar federal protection missions, though none have yet entered the city. The ICE facility in South Portland remains under security by local police and federal agents, maintaining a one-block perimeter.

Protests that began in June have since dwindled to small, sporadic gatherings after months of tear gas and direct clashes. Trump’s public comment that the Federal Government knows that George Soros is the primary conduit for foreign government finances into Antifa, now designated as a terrorist organization, immediately led to the withdraw of Antifa hostiles.

DHS maintains that credible threats against its agents persist, noting the reappearance of known Antifa organizers such as Alissa Azar.

Oregon’s state leadership has pushed back hard. On October 4, Attorney General Dan Rayfield filed multiple legal challenges, prompting Trump-appointed Judge Karin Immergut to issue temporary restraining orders against federal deployments.

Immergut cited “exaggerated claims of violence” and repeated the now-familiar phrase that Antifa protests were “mostly peaceful.” The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on October 9–10 and maintained the deployment freeze until at least October 19. Twenty-four Democratic-led states, including California, have filed amicus briefs in support of Oregon’s position.

If the courts continue to restrict federal action, the administration may invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807. It is a rarely used law allowing the president to deploy military forces within the United States to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion.

Historically, the act has been invoked sparingly, most notably during the Civil Rights era to enforce desegregation orders. Its origins trace back to early federal efforts to balance state sovereignty with national authority. It was that tension that, left unresolved, once drove the nation toward civil war.

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It’s A Girl

Sanae Takaichi now stands at the edge of history, poised to become Japan’s first female prime minister after winning the Liberal Democratic Party leadership race on October 4.

She succeeds Shigeru Ishiba, who resigned after a year mired in scandal and economic stagnation.

Born in 1961 in Mie Prefecture, Takaichi built her career from the ground up, first as a journalist and local official, then entering Japan’s Diet in 2005 under the mentorship of the late Shinzo Abe.

Over two decades, she’s held major cabinet posts, including economic security minister from 2022 to 2024 and internal affairs minister before that.

Her sharp intellect and uncompromising style earned her the nickname “Japan’s Iron Lady,” a title she wears without apology.

Her ascent, however, hit turbulence today when Komeito, the junior coalition partner, pulled a slick move inspired by French politics by resigning the government. This could force Takaichi to govern as a minority or call a snap election that might unravel her premiership before it begins.

Her ideology fits within a new global pattern: fiscally pragmatic nationalists who pair populist energy with state-led renewal. Like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, she defends sovereignty and tradition while strengthening alliances to hedge against global disorder.

She blends cultural conservatism with active government intervention to reinforce national cohesion. And while her Keynesian spending diverges from Argentina’s Javier Milei’s libertarian austerity, both channel working-class frustration against what they describe as “global elites”, meaning the globalist financiers of London, New York, and Davos.

The world is changing fast and this is a great time to be alive.

Mike Ryan is a chemical engineering consultant to heavy industry.