“For more than twenty years now, American leaders from both parties have talked about turning over a new leaf in the Middle East. One president pushed hard for democracy promotion, another tried diplomatic outreach, and someone else swore we’d finally end the ‘forever wars.’ Yet every time a crisis hits, Washington’s first move is rarely sitting down to hammer out a political deal. Instead, it reaches for sanctions, sends in more troops, ramps up deterrence, and leans on the threat – or actual use – of force. This pattern raises a tough question. If the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq didn’t create stable governments, if years of pressure haven’t really changed Iran’s behavior, and if coercion keeps delivering only mixed results, why does the U.S. keep relying on the same old toolbox?” (06/22/26)
“Not so long ago, the Republicans who ran elections in one of the nation’s most important battlegrounds—Maricopa County, Arizona—largely got along. There were egos and quibbles, sure. But in the face of unyielding attacks on elections led by President Trump, the recorder and board of supervisors—which together split election duties—resolved conflicts without blowing up a delicate system built on trust and cooperation. Today’s recorder and board, a mostly new cast chosen by voters in 2024, are different. They’re locked in an all-out war over the machinery, money, and operations that make the democratic process possible. Both sides agree that the standoff threatens their ability to carry out November’s midterm elections free of complications for the county’s 2.6 million voters, more than half the state’s total.” (06/22/26)
“It’s difficult to say this without bragging, but I have faxed. This year. The earliest fax machines used telegraph lines; fax machines are (still!) transmitters of information over space, but also over time. Jules Verne, predicting 1960 from 1863, imagined fax machines all over Paris. Journalists, doctors and governments still demand to be faxed from time to time, as I found out. I have now done it twice since the heyday of faxing. The first time was last year, and it went okay after 45 or so minutes of squinting and with the help of two other office professionals. … The second came in the year of our Lord twenty-twenty-six. This time, I knew exactly what to do and could do it alone. But I didn’t. I walked over to some desks near mine. ‘Interns,’ I said, ‘want to watch me send a fax?'” (06/22/26)
“That subhead of mine is certainly repetitive of me (me, me), but how can you not be repetitive in the distinctly repeated world of Donald J. Trump (Trumped, Trumped)? I mean, twice already and who really knows what’s to come? Here’s the question nobody seems to be asking right now, though: What country will Donald Trump attack next? Yes, at the moment, he’s still wildly wound up in his Iran war/truce/peace/or you name it (tomorrow). Yesterday, it was, of course, Venezuela, and next week it might be Cuba or Greenland, or who on (or off) this planet knows where? … who knows what I’ve forgotten or what to expect in this increasingly bizarre world of ours from the president who swore repeatedly in his third election campaign that he would never, never, never go to… yes, of course, war?” (06/22/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith
“Trust: allow someone to have, use, or look after (someone or something of importance or value) with confidence: I’d trust you with my life. Most people don’t trust politicians, yet they dominate our lives. How did this arrangement come about? Trust is a critical consideration in every relationship. Do people mean what they say? Do they deliver on their promises? If enough people didn’t trust Amazon it would have folded long ago. Friends would cease being friends if they proved untrustworthy. We don’t trust politicians but we are stuck with them, at least for now.” (06/22/26)
“n the run-up to SpaceX’s historic initial public offering on June 12, commentators worried about who would get hurt. Their top concern was for everyday retirement savers …. But these are speculative victims, losers only if SpaceX stock plummets. There’s another group, however, that has definitely suffered real harm on the road to Musk’s becoming a trillionaire: Americans in the nation’s most rural communities. For decades, they have lived without the high-speed broadband service that the rest of us take for granted. This ‘digital divide’ was set to close thanks to a federal program created by President Joe Biden’s administration. But at Musk’s urging, Donald Trump’s administration sabotaged the effort, changing the rules to funnel money toward Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet subsidiary, while diverting billions of dollars from higher-quality competitors.” [editor’s note: So far as I can tell, Starlink is head and shoulders above other rural competitors, on both cost and quality. I have to suspect Lowman’s real problem with Starlink is that it doesn’t use tax money to subsidize digging ditches – TLK] (06/22/26)
“In recent weeks, the misnamed US Department of Justice has indicted twenty-three activists on serious charges related to their organizing against institutional complicity in the US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians and the kidnapping of US residents by militarized federal immigration enforcers. The indictments are connected to two different cases, one in Michigan and the other in Minnesota. From my vantage point, it seems fairly clear that the indictments are, among other things, designed to deflect the media and the public attention away from the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by the government and those institutions behind the prosecutions. In fact, these indictments are purposefully political and part of a broader repression against US residents and organizations opposed to the ultra-right government of Donald Trump.” (06/22/26)
“A former federal inspector general has been sniping at President Donald Trump’s approach to rooting out government fraud — but his complaints sound less like a serious defense of oversight and more like a bitter kiss-off from a spurned ex-bureaucrat. ‘The watchdogs have crossed a dangerous line,’ Mark Greenblatt intoned in the Daily Beast. They’ve become lapdogs: ‘MAGA lapdogs,’ as his headline put it. He’s furious that my inspector general colleagues and I are joining the wide-ranging effort, led by Vice President JD Vance, to crack down on the fraud that’s looting our national treasury. Greenblatt’s argument rests on a flawed premise: He claims that supporting such a mission somehow prevents an inspector general from conducting independent oversight. That’s nonsense.” (06/22/26)
