“On Tuesday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker gave an extraordinary press conference. Together with the mayor of Chicago and the president of the Cook County board of commissioners, the governor announced that President Donald Trump is hatching plans for what can only be described as the prospective invasion of his sovereign state. And not just by federal troops, but by units of the Texas National Guard. … It is not politics as usual when a state’s elected chief executive, charged with protecting his people, takes to the airwaves to warn that another state’s troops may soon be used as an instrument of occupation on his soil.” (09/05/25)
“Trump is the toddler in the backseat of the Family Truckster who, when told not to touch his brother, holds an index finger an angstrom away from his sibling’s forehead while bleating, ‘I’m not touching you!’ All of us — and Trump’s apologists most of all — know exactly what Trump is doing: He is seeing what he can get away with. He believes that his supporters and sycophants will accept virtually any degree of misbehavior from him — that they will celebrate it — and that our institutions are not equipped to deal with a president who cynically abuses power in this way. And he is right on both counts.” (09/05/25)
“Maybe we do need a Civil War 2.0 – with guns. Our politics has become so partisan and so nasty, using guns to settle our national political differences may soon end up being the only solution. It’s bad enough no one agrees with what the other side is saying anymore. But now when one side says something spectacularly horrible or ‘subtly’ wishes harm on their opponent (and I’m thinking specifically about the prancing governor of Minnesota), no one on their side has the common decency to criticize them for it. Tim Walz made a goofy loser of himself last fall as Kamala Harris’s VP pick. And on Labor Day, he showed why he’s still the reigning buffoon of the Democratic Party.” (09/06/25)
“Recently, international media has highlighted the mass famine in Gaza. Yet, there have been effectively three waves of famine in Gaza since spring 2024. First weaponized 18 years ago in the Strip, these hunger games could have been preempted several times. Why weren’t they?” (09/05/25)
“[I]n the roaring ’60s, it was popular among the ruling establishments of underdeveloped countries, supported by the Western intelligentsia, to impose large tariffs on foreign manufactured goods in order to help domestic manufacturing. Only when, a few decades later, it was realized that such an industrial policy was a fool’s errand, were the poor people of underdeveloped countries able to jump on the bandwagon of free trade and to escape dire poverty. A basic economic reason why ‘unfairly traded steel’ or the underlying ideal of mercantilist and industrial policy is a fool’s errand is that it presupposes a central economic planner possessing what he does not and cannot possess, that is, the information of time, place, costs, and preferences that is carried by prices determined by supply and demand on free markets.” (09/05/25)
“For students uninterested in winning debates by the merits of their ideas, a popular tactic has been shouting down speakers — known as the ‘heckler’s veto’ — to prevent others from hearing. Some students have also physically blocked others from reaching speakers, and in extreme cases even used violence against speakers, though these are seemingly rarer. … Until recently, these vices primarily belonged to Democratic students, with a staggering 79% of students who identify as strong Democrats agreeing that shouting down a speaker is at least rarely acceptable. Republicans have finally, perhaps belatedly, arrived at the party, with over half of strong Republicans now saying it’s acceptable to shout down a speaker. And, in 2025, strong Republicans passed strong Democrats in support for using violence to shout down a speaker.” (09/05/25)
“After providing his red-carpeted welcome to Vladimir Putin in Alaska last month to discuss ending the Ukraine war, President Donald Trump oddly and approvingly quoted the Russian leader’s advice for the United States. The American Nobel Peace Prize-seeker didn’t seem too concerned about the fairness of any potential deal to carve up Ukraine at Russia’s behest. But Trump was fixated on the supposed lack of fairness of U.S. elections, even though he won two of them (and claims to have won three). In an interview with Fox News, Trump echoed Putin’s words: ‘He said: ‘Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting. … It’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.’ … Given that Russia stepped up its Ukraine attacks shortly after Trump boarded Air Force One, he might have realized that Putin might not be an honest broker — let alone a font of electoral wisdom.” (09/05/25)
“This column is a plea to our readers to help get responses from groups whose duties and rhetoric should cause them to become much more active in countering the fascistic, dictatorial actions of Tyrant Trump. All these groups have diminished themselves and their real potential to generate strong direct democratic pressures and arouse the citizenry. We can guess the answer as to why these groups are so meek, but what is needed is for these groups to answer for themselves: 1) Why aren’t the Democrats in Congress, just a few votes from a majority, much more aggressive vis-à-vis the controlling Republicans and President Donald Trump? Voters are vociferously demanding this at town meetings.” (09/06/25)
“It’s not the market; not the technology; not the Congress; not the courts; not the investment money; not the environment; not the lobbyists. There is, in fact, no consistent or coherent rationale — and everyone knows it. It’s because one man didn’t like one view and couldn’t get over it. That’s arbitrary power distilled like a fine Scottish whiskey. When Trump lost his battle with Salmond and the turbines were built (a whole documentary was made about the foofaraw), the psychic toll was just too much. In one of his own [golf] courses, Trump was compelled to see proof that he did not control everything, that he was a loser in a political battle, that other interests mattered other than his. The malignant narcissist is unable to let it go.” (09/05/25)
