Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Antiwar.com
by Ted Snider

“Between the Trump-Putin meeting in Anchorage Alaska and the proposed Trump-Putin meeting in Budapest, the diplomatic track that the U.S. and Russia were on seemed to die. In October, Trump and Putin had a ‘very productive’ two hour phone call that led to a phone call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov that was to lay the groundwork for a meeting between Trump and Putin in Budapest. But, by the time Rubio had hung up the phone, the Budapest meeting was off. … But then hints emerged that restarting talks may not be impossible.” (11/24/25)

https://original.antiwar.com/ted_snider/2025/11/23/back-from-the-dead-resurrecting-the-ukraine-peace-plan

Source: CounterPunch
by Dean Baker

“The data nerds among us were happy to finally get their September jobs report fix, even though these data are somewhat stale now. However, we still learned a few things about the state of the economy. Before saying what we learned, it’s worth a few words on what we didn’t learn but people are saying anyway. First and foremost, this was not a strong report in any real-world sense of the term. To be clear, the 119,000 jobs reported for the month was stronger than most analysts had expected, including me. But this hardly implies robust job growth. We averaged 170,000 jobs a month in 2024, so now we’re supposed to be celebrating a report showing job growth that is 70 percent of last year’s average?” (11/24/25)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/11/24/the-economy-after-the-september-jobs-report/

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Christopher Mott

“In foreign policy discourse, the phrase ‘the national interest’ gets used with an almost ubiquitous frequency, which could lead one to assume it is a strongly defined and absolute term. Most debates, particularly around changing course in diplomatic strategy or advocating for or against some kind of economic or military intervention, invoke the phrase as justification for their recommended path forward. But what is the national interest, really?” (11/24/25)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/national-interests/

Source: The Bulwark
by Jill Lawrence

“The Trump administration’s lying-to-Congress case against former FBI director James Comey is a comedy of legal errors that could move offstage soon. But it has highlighted the plain fact that American life and America itself are now being shaped — in terrible, even tragic ways — by people who really did mislead and outright lie to Congress under oath. Let’s start at the top. Not just once but twice, Donald Trump put his hand on a Bible and swore to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ He’s been violating that oath, and lying nonstop in all conceivable venues, ever since. Right below Trump on the organizational chart is the problem wreaking daily havoc on the country: that so many of these havoc perpetrators were less than forthright when they were trying to get their jobs.” (11/24/25)

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-administration-of-liars

Source: Big Head Press
by Scott Bieser

Cartoon. (11/24/25)

https://www.quantumvibe.com/strip?page=2562