“Those with long memories will recall the campaign to have a Financial Transactions Tax. Something we were vehemently opposed to no doubt because we’re neoliberals or something. The idea was to have a miserly — say, 0.1%, or 0.05%, that sort of amount — tax on every financial transaction. The claim was that this would not affect ‘real’ trade and would only reduce the amount of speculative froth in the marketplace. Which would, according to the proposers, be good. Because, well, speculative froth and all that. Just capitalists playing with money, see? Except speculative froth does have a point …” (05/31/26)
“Many of the those pushing for war over the last few decades were politicians, news editors and pundits thousands of miles from the battlefield. These ‘hawks’ continued their lives of luxury and safety within their bubbles of entitlement while young American troops became the disposable pawns to be moved about the surface of a macabre board game. … as President Trump seeks to find a lasting solution to end the war with Iran, their harsh voices can be heard screeching out their disapproval. Just the very thought of an extended ceasefire is enough to trigger some of the hawks. When is enough enough for the Iran war hawks? Naturally, they will say when Iran is no longer a threat to the U.S. or Israel. But what does ‘no longer a threat’ really mean? And what does the now ubiquitous phrase ‘finish the job’ really mean with respect to Iran?” (05/30/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Another AI atrocity propaganda project about Iran has been unleashed, this time in the form of a movie titled ‘Dreams of Violets’ at the Tribeca film festival. … The film’s trailer depicts sympathetic protagonists being brutally victimized by Iranian authorities, and concludes with the image of fighter jets soaring overhead while an English-captioned Persian voiceover says ‘If Iran gets liberated, celebrate for me. Enjoy it for us!'” (05/29/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance
“There is one main problem with President Trump’s call to nationalize elections: the Constitution, which decentralizes the election process with a minor role for Congress. Article I, Section 4, of the Constitution states that ‘the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.’ There is no provision for the president to have anything to do with elections through executive action. … Another problem with President Trump’s call to nationalize elections is that it is based on something that is largely imaginary.” (05/29/26)
“In a healthy democracy, we have a say in how our daily lives are run, how our neighbors are treated, and how our tax dollars are spent. Right now, the majority of Americans are dissatisfied with how the country is being run, and where it is going. In a healthy democracy, we would be able to demand the change of direction we need with our votes. Yet our democracy [sic] is not healthy. This fundamental right – for every vote to count and be counted – is being taken away from us as we speak. That is why it is our duty to rise up and restore the health of our democracy, while we still can.” (05/31/26)
“Under old ‘pre-Trump’ rules, [Graham] Platner’s campaign would have withered instantly after revelations that he once had a Totenkopf SS tattoo, previously identified himself as a communist, said Black people were poor tippers, and wrote that white people ‘actually are’ as racist and stupid as Trump thinks they are. Instead, after all this surfaced, Platner actually rose in the polls. … Maybe Maine Dems have concluded that moral purity tests are politically suicidal after years of watching heterodox figures like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk drift away from the party. … Or maybe Maine Democrats have absorbed the same lesson Republicans adopted in 2016: Once voters stop treating scandal as disqualifying, policing your own side for off-the-field behavior starts to look like unilateral disarmament.” (05/29/26)
“The French Revolution remains one of the pivotal events that still shape historical thinking and writing and is commonly seen as one of the watersheds of modernity. For Edmund Burke, it meant that “the glory of Europe [was] extinguished forever”; for Hegel, the climax of world revolutions; for Tocqueville, the triumph of centralization; for Marx and Marxists, the victory of the bourgeoisie over the feudal class. Marxism dominated history writing for much of the twentieth century until the French historian François Furet in 1978 presented a radical interpretation that shifted focus to the ideas of the revolution. But Furet had been anticipated by one of the great English historians and liberals, Lord Acton.” (05/29/26)
“It does not matter whether you live in a trailer park or a brick ranch house or something more grand and getting grander, it is all the same: Tornado bait is tornado bait. When the Trump administration announced that it was staging a UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House, I knew what I was seeing. It is as familiar to me as the taste of canned Ranch Style Beans on cornbread …. I know my people. My people know what they like. And they will have what they like even if it harelips the pope — especially if it harelips the pope. It took 250 years, but you got here. All the way down here. From Greatest Generation to White Trash Nation in the space of one lifetime.” (05/29/26)
“As a long-time death penalty abolitionist, I’ve often compared the death penalty in America to a train with no brakes: Once the machinery starts moving, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to stop. But the real problem is that the train should never have been built. Today, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Arkansas are experimenting with nitrogen gas executions, a method officials claim is more humane. But from noose to needle to nitrogen, our constant search for a more acceptable way to kill is a story of failure, not moral progress. There’s no acceptable way to practice a form of state killing that, for Black Americans especially, has long been intertwined with terror. History should make us skeptical whenever governments begin searching for new technologies to make killing appear more acceptable.” (05/31/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Jorge Besada
“One of the reasons why we fall for the erroneous idea that patents are good for society is because we greatly overestimate the importance of the specific individual or company making a discovery while being unaware of how the market process — via its various mechanisms like prices, the profit motive, and economic competition — plays a key role in innovation.” (05/29/26)
