“Iran as we once knew it has essentially been reduced to the world’s largest open-air burn unit, and yet no one but Donald Trump seems to be foolish enough to believe that America is actually winning this war. Iran may be devastated beyond belief, but someone is still fighting like hell from the smoldering ruins and the imperial machine tasked with swiftly containing this undead menace before the American people can smell a quagmire is beginning to show signs of desperation as they lose control of the narrative. You can see it written all over Donald Trump’s leather face as he attempts to make sense of the havoc in real time, declaring victory over and over again before announcing another escalation of violence, bragging about negotiations that Iran denies having any interest in as thousands of American troops are positioned in the region for an invasion.” (03/29/26)
“Despite all the current polling and the constant comments of the professional analyst class, the Democrats have the biggest problems going into the 2026 election. People know they have unpopular values. Their big government socialist models of taxing, spending and bureaucracy don’t work. The Democrats’ key institutions have long histories of performance failure. And the dominance of the hard left in the Democratic Party forces Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries into painfully tone-deaf positions. It all represents a huge burden, weakening the likelihood of a major Democratic victory this fall. Consider some of the burdens the Democrats will be carrying as they campaign this summer and fall.” (03/30/26)
Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Galen Carpenter
“Since the end of World War II, the United States has built an ever-expanding global network of military allies. The term ‘ally’ may legitimately apply to Britain, France, Japan, Germany, and a few of Washington’s other security partners, but most of the so-called allies are merely small U.S. security dependents. They constitute potential burdens and dangerous geopolitical snares for the United States while providing few if any strategic benefits. An especially worrisome aspect of these relationships is that such clients spend considerable effort trying to manipulate, even pervert, U.S. policy to support their parochial objectives. That dynamic creates the danger of small clients gaining undue influence over Washington’s behavior. A security client tail thus may succeed in wagging the U.S. dog.” (03/29/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Deborah Palma
“In the mid-19th century, the town of Peoria, Illinois, originally established as a French outpost in the 18th century, underwent a period of rapid expansion. Although not a newly founded settlement, its transformation during this period reflects a broader pattern seen across the American frontier. Within a few decades, it evolved into a regional agricultural and commercial hub. This was not the result of luck or central planning. The decisive factor was clear, recognized, and transferable property titles. Farmers knew that the land they cultivated belonged to them. Merchants felt secure investing in warehouses, mills, and river transportation. Families built homes with the expectation that their children would inherit the fruits of that effort. Where property was clearly defined, the future made sense.” (03/29/26)
“Economist John Maynard Keynes once remarked, ‘Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.’ The wry commentary eventually curdled into ironic prophecy, as Keynes became one of those defunct economists. His prescription for countercyclical stimulus mutated into a belief that government spending was a kind of perpetual motion machine: Since spending creates jobs and jobs create spending, you could fuel an increasingly virtuous cycle with ever-expanding outlays. This garble led to unnecessary stimulus during post-pandemic recovery and then some unnecessary inflation. Alas, this is common in public policy fights. Expert debates grounded in the conditions of a particular time get filed down to sound bites in media reports. Years later, half-remembered versions inspire policies that are at best inappropriate to the current moment and, at worst, counterproductive.” (03/29/26)
“Donald Trump, it seems, has managed to outdo his first term’s mismanagement of COVID-19 with an economic crisis of extraordinary scope and scale, entirely of his making. In a recent interview, International Energy Agency (IEA) Chief Fatih Birol asserted the present energy crisis was already on track to be ‘worse than the 1970s.’ How bad is that exactly? The answer, unfortunately, is that this has the potential to be the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression” (03/29/26)
“The overriding fact about the American economy in the past four decades, and even more so in the past four years and the past four quarters, is the massive upward redistribution of wealth and income. Therefore, the opposition to wealth taxes and income tax surcharges on the very rich that’s held by some prominent Democrats (particularly the governors of the two states that are home to the most billionaires) is intellectually and empirically (not to mention politically) indefensible. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul are either oblivious to this massive change to our economy or complicit in it. These are not mutually exclusive alternatives. The K-shaping of our economy, in which the rich have both steadily and now suddenly amassed a far greater share of the nation’s income and wealth, while the working poor struggle, should be plain for all to see.” (03/30/26)
“No one living in Britain can be compensated for that past existence of slavery or the slave trade. This assertion depends upon a previous assertion, obviously. But, as is often so fun, we can take someone’s assertion and take it to be true and then see where that leads us. So, one assertion out there is that it was slavery — or the slave trade perhaps — which made Britain rich. … So, anyone living in a society made rich by slavery is themselves a beneficiary of slavery. For they’re gaining the high wages that come from living in a rich place. … It is wholly impossible to compensate, with money, someone for having made them rich.” (03/29/26)
“I was jarred at how the administration openly gloated and shamelessly lied about the use of lethal force by DHS against people who posed no threat. It only got worse after the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The lies the administration told after those killings aren’t the lies you tell to cover something up. They’re the lies you tell when you want to project to the country that you can get away with anything. The lies themselves are their own display of authoritarianism. The government is telling us, ‘You know we’re lying. We know that you know we’re lying. And there isn’t a goddamn thing you can do about it.’ They lie about everything. When they’re caught in a lie, they lie again. They lie when the facts aren’t on their side, but also when they are. And they never, ever admit that they lied.” (03/28/26)
