“We now face a defining question of not whether this conflict is difficult but whether the West has the discipline to see it through to the right outcome. That is the backdrop to this weekend’s negotiations in Islamabad, where Pakistan is hosting U.S.-Iran talks amid a fragile ceasefire and continued tension around the Strait of Hormuz. The talks will reveal whether Tehran is prepared to retreat from confrontation or is merely maneuvering for time. One thing President Trump should do immediately is announce that we, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will be working together to build pipelines at warp speed that will bypass the Strait of Hormuz. Incisive energy and technology expert Mark P. Mills pushes this idea in an article that can be found at city-journal.org, noting that such pipelines could be built in a matter of months.” (04/11/26)
“Paul Fischer’s The Last Kings of Hollywood reads as a tragedy rather than a triumph. The title of this epochal tale is a bit misleading; Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg (as documented in plentiful detail by the author) all respected, fought, and bent to Hollywood. This is a story that follows shoguns and warlords allying, betraying, and battling against one another. Each carrying away ever more impressive victories at the box office, building their fiefdoms, yet at the height of their powers, they nevertheless had to yield to the chrysanthemum thrones of Paramount, Universal, Warner Bros., and Fox. Left is one winner, or winning tactic: money power.” (04/10/26)
“Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are trying to sell the war with Iran as a show of American might. Sure, the bombing conducted by the United States and Israel set Iran back substantially, taking out a number of top officials. That’s only one element of the war. Overall, the war has been a foreign policy blunder that combined strategic overreach, economic self-sabotage, and rhetorical escalation into a single, costly episode. It may well leave the United States with fewer options, higher prices at home, and an adversary that, in some ways, looks more entrenched than before. This war didn’t begin the way the White House now frames it. It wasn’t an unavoidable response to an imminent threat that left policymakers with no choice.” (04/10/26)
“On July 15, 1979, Jimmy Carter delivered an address to the American people from the Oval Office. Formally known as ‘A Crisis of Confidence,’ the address has since been memorialized as ‘the malaise speech,’ and held up as a prime example of Carter’s morally rigid and politically inept presidency — one of the great last gasps of the miserable 1970s. Oil shortages, turbulence in the Middle East, and the lingering shadows of Watergate and the Vietnam War left Americans, in Carter’s view, morally and civically adrift. And, in what most analysts have considered a failure of a presidential speech, he told them so.” (04/10/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has accused Spain of an ‘anti-Israel obsession’ for its criticisms of the US-Israeli war on Iran and its refusal to allow its airspace to be used in the onslaught, a perceived slight to which Israel has responded by banning Madrid from participation in a coordination center for the oversight of the so-called ‘ceasefire’ in the Gaza Strip. We’ve been hearing this ‘obsession’ talking point from Israel and its apologists a lot lately. … The other day right-wing pundit Meghan Murphy had a strange conversation with Tablet Magazine editor Jacob Siegel about our society’s ‘recent insane obsession with Israel,’ speaking as though everyone just randomly began fixating on this genocidal apartheid state out of nowhere a short while ago, for no valid reason.” (04/12/26)
“Why, asks the MacIver Institute, ‘is the government lobbying the government?’ MacIver calls itself Wisconsin’s ‘free-market voice.’ It is a privately funded outfit that makes the case for less government in the Badger State. It has to earn its funds from donors who can, at any moment, stop donating money. One of the things the MacIver Institute found itself up against are other think-tanks and apparently donor-funded organizations advocating for more government in the state, for more programs, bigger programs, and more taxes to feed all the great new stuff. And it turns out that several of these advocacy organizations are themselves funded by government!” (04/10/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Caleb S Fuller & Scott Burns
“The president can escape the economic trench warfare he started in April 2025. But first, he’ll have to remember a decades-old lesson from the greatest deal he ever struck.” (04/10/26)
“Yet another reason that Donald Trump’s and Joe Biden’s presidencies cannot be examined without wincing concerns a constitutional provision that is obscure until it is abused, which it now often is. The presidential ‘power to grant reprieves and pardons’ has become yet another source of political brutishness fueling voters’ cynicism.” (04/10/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen & Whitney Curry Wimbish
“It was the first Rental Ripoff hearing and people were pissed. Set up by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and attended by leaders of his administration and 150 city workers across multiple departments, the hearings gave tenants a chance to describe conditions their landlords refuse to fix: rats, mold, dangerous constructio — along with a spate of unnecessary and hidden fees. They had three minutes each to share their experiences. But they also got to do something unexpected: set policy priorities for one of the largest cities in the world. Arrayed around the room were posterboards, which not only asked tenants what problems they faced but sought their input on policy proposals brainstormed by staff, like fining landlords who don’t make repairs, making it easier to form tenant unions, or enabling the city to take over buildings when there are serial violations.” (04/10/26)
