“A decade into his capture of our political attention spans, there is no longer anything new that can be said about Donald Trump in a big-picture way about his nature as a person or his larger meaning as a political phenomenon. His audacity, so bold at first, and so lubricated in his second go-round, can no longer shock or surprise; his crudeness, so initially colorful, just fades into the dark background of his actions; his bottomless sea of toddlerish willfulness and grievance, so curious and compelling in 2015–16, becomes as notable as water to a fish. We all swim in Trump now, surrounded by his turbulent, turbid murk, descending to fathomless depths, his surface marking the end of what we can know. Near the end of the first full year of his second administration, Donald Trump has demonstrated his core authoritarianism so completely and consistently that his personal character and comportment peculiarities lose significance.” (01/12/26)
“‘Say her name!’ From Portland to Philadelphia, the mantra is being used by politicians to fuel anger over the shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. While many of us have noted that the shooting appears to fall within Supreme Court guidelines for the justified use of lethal force, there is an effort to make Good the personification of a so-called ‘resistance movement.’ Across the country, Democrats are holding ‘I am Spartacus’ moments, resembling a low-budget casting call for B-grade actors — chest-pounding calls for everything from defunding ICE to the arrest of law enforcement officers.” [editor’s note: Okay, I will … Ashley Babbitt – SAT] [additional editor’s note: As video in both cases establishes, Babbitt made the poor choice of engaging in violent criminality, while Good became a murder victim while fleeing violent criminals – TLK] (01/13/25)
“Trump loves to compare himself to the 19th-century populist president Andrew Jackson, who began the brutal ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from their land. But his presidency more resembles that of William McKinley at the turn of the 20th century. McKinley, like Trump, favored high tariffs as a means to protect certain businesses. Also, in the closing years of that century, McKinley initially was reluctant to go to war with Spain over Spanish repression of an off-and-on again (since the mid-1800s) rebellion in its Cuban colony that did not threaten U.S. security. (This is similar to Trump’s desire to avoid ‘forever wars’ — uch as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya – during his first term.) … Yet after the decisive U.S. victory over Spain in the Caribbean and the Pacific, McKinley willingly reveled in grabbing Spanish colonies as imperial booty.” (01/12/26)
“Amid the darkness of a communications blackout, Iranians are fighting for their freedom and the totalitarian theocracy under which they have lived since 1979 seems more threatened than ever before.” (01/12/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mitchell Palmer
“According to Ernest Hemingway, there are two ways to go bankrupt: ‘Gradually, then suddenly.’ It’s a lesson the UK would do well to remember. Rather than fixing our frayed social contract, successive governments have merely tinkered with the public finances, doing just enough to keep the ship afloat. This deck-chair rearranging cannot continue forever.” (01/12/26)
“Thousands of nurses are hitting the picket lines in what will be the largest nurses strike in the history of New York City. The New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) on Monday announced that nearly 15,000 nurses at Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside and West, Montefiore, and NewYork-Presbyterian are going on strike after ’greedy hospital management at these wealthy private hospitals have given frontline nurses no other choice.’ The NYSNA posted a long list of sticking points on contract negotiations, including ‘“safe staffing for our patients, protections from workplace violence, and healthcare for frontline nurses.’ NYSNA president Nancy Hagans said that any patients in need of care at these hospitals should enter them, emphasizing that ‘going into the hospital to get the care you need is not crossing our strike line.'” (01/12/25)
“States don’t need to wait for Congress. In Kentucky, Rep. Vanessa Grossl (R‑Georgetown) introduced legislation that would immediately let residents access Obama’s 2014 relief by removing barriers to Obamacare-exempt plans available in US territories.” (01/12/26)
“Accounts differ, but sometime between late November and the middle of December 1774, a terribly sick man was carried off a ship in colonial Philadelphia. Riddled with typhus, the middle-aged Brit was too weak to walk after his long voyage from London. …. If the British had any idea of who this Thomas Pain would become — he wouldn’t add the ‘e’ until later — they may never have let him set sail to the New World to begin with. In little more than a year, this impoverished 37-year-old, who had known only heartache and failure in Britain, would find his voice as a successful editor and journalist in America’s largest city. And with his newfound purpose and confidence, he would write one of the great world-changing pieces of political propaganda ever published and help birth a free and independent United States of America.” (01/12/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance
“Although it may have been true at one time that libertarians and conservatives were ‘uneasy cousins,’ such has not been the case for many years. Still, conservatives have no problem with using libertarian rhetoric to portray themselves as advocates of the Constitution, private property, the free market, individual liberty, federalism, limited government, and a free society when they only selectively believe these things.” (01/12/26)
“I was taught to understand American history as the history of political institutions, how ideas of individual liberty, free speech, separation of powers, and rule of law were manifested and contested. At a time when such institutions and ideas are powerless, endangered or defunct, we might find more clarity — and power — by understanding American history as a narrative of extra-constitutional political violence. If, as Judge Andrew Napolitano says, we now live under ‘a lawless presidency,’ it’s not the first time.” (01/12/26)
