Category: Opinion

Source: The Realist Review
by James W Carden

“From Galbraith and Moynihan to … whatever this is.” (08/28/25)

https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/the-decline-of-american-statesmanship

Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman

“Nations in which central banks lose their independence sooner or later suffer high inflation, especially when they are taken over by autocrats who buy into crackpot economic doctrines. And Trump, who has been demanding large rate cuts because, he claims, the economy is running hot — which almost every economist would say is a reason to raise rates, not cut them — certainly fits that pattern. Yet although there have been small tremors in the bond and currency markets, there have been no significant upheavals in financial markets that reflect the severity of the situation we are in. Throughout this episode, the stock market has remained fairly flat and bond yields haven’t spiked. Why not? Do financial markets doubt that Trump will get his way? Or do they reject mainstream economics and the clear examples of countries like Turkey and Argentina?” (08/28/25)

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-arent-markets-freaking-out

Source: The Daily Beast
by David Rothkopf

“There is an old Soviet joke that I hear repeated so often these days that I suspect many people just think it came fresh off from some late-night comedy monologue In the joke, a man walks by a newspaper stand every day. Each day, he buys a copy of the newspaper — in the original telling, Pravda. He scans the front page and then tosses the paper into the trash. After this has gone on for a while, the newsstand guy asks, ‘You always look at just the front of the newspaper but never inside. What’s up with that?’ ‘I’m looking for an obituary,’ replies the man. ‘An obituary? But all those are in the back of the paper …’ ‘No,’ says the man, ‘The one I’m looking for will be on page one.’ The joke is popular these days because it resonates with an uncomfortable element in our current national conversation.” (08/28/25)

https://archive.is/3LV5L

Source: Fox News
by Hugh Hewitt

“The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, as amended, provides that ‘Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or an Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, or the Space Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.’ No one has ever been prosecuted under the act, and it has rarely been the subject of comment by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan, but decidedly liberal law and policy center, noted that the law has ‘ignominious origins’ in the collapse of Reconstruction.” (08/28/25)

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/morning-glory-president-trump-posse-comitatus-act

Source: The Dispatch
by John McCormack

“Why does the American muscle car seem to be dying off? What, if anything, is America losing as it fades away? I set out to answer these questions after The Dispatch’s editors encouraged us writers to expand our horizons beyond the typical political fare (see Mike Warren on Tiki culture, for example). I decided that if I couldn’t own a muscle car, at least I could write about it. And that’s how I ended up in Pontiac, Michigan, earlier this month inhaling the smoke of burning rubber and talking to muscle-car enthusiasts.” (08/28/25)

https://thedispatch.com/article/dodge-challenger-muscle-cars/

Source: Washington Post
by David Ignatius

“Ukraine and its European supporters want a peace deal, perhaps freezing the current front line, so long as Kyiv gets “security guarantees” for the future. But Russia demands that the West first address ‘root causes’ of the war, which amounts to its own version of a security guarantee. President Donald Trump has tried to find an exit. But his attempts to mediate the conflict by ingratiating himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin have so far been a flop. He’s now considering walking away from negotiations, which would be a severe personal failure for him and a disaster for Ukraine and Europe. Meanwhile, the bloodbath continues. Let’s think about ways out of this deadlock, building on the core question of guaranteeing security. It’s bizarre to talk about security as a future issue when both sides urgently need it now.” (08/28/25)

https://archive.is/UV5iX

Source: CounterPunch
by Ross MacKay

“Public media should provide a corrective to corporate distortions; yet Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC, has repeatedly failed in this duty. By refusing to deliver accurate, comprehensive, and contextually rich reporting on Israel’s assault, it has denied Canadians the information they need to act on conscience and to pressure their government to help end the savagery. In effect, the CBC has made Canadians complicit in genocide.” (08/28/25)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/28/gaza-and-the-cbc-the-public-broadcaster-betrays-its-mandate/

Source: Reason
by Fiona Harrigan

“As President Donald Trump’s tariffs make life less affordable and predictable for Americans, they’re also threatening to make it less creative. American craft stores are struggling to keep up with ever-changing trade policies, which are making the foreign-made products they stock more expensive and difficult to access. Many foreign craft supply companies are now unable to ship to American consumers at all. … From aluminum knitting needles to printed garment fabric to bottles of oil paint, American crafters work with many materials that are produced abroad. That has left them particularly vulnerable to Trump’s trade war.” (08/28/25)

https://reason.com/2025/08/28/tariffs-will-simply-put-us-all-out-of-business-trumps-trade-war-is-crushing-american-crafters/

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Anatol Lieven

“If you wanted to create a classic recipe for political crisis, you could well choose a mixture of a stagnant economy, a huge and growing public debt, a perceived need radically to increase military spending, an immigration crisis, a deeply unpopular president, a government without a majority in parliament, and growing radical parties on the right and left. In other words, France today. And France’s crisis is only one part of the growing crisis of Western Europe as a whole, with serious implications for the future of transatlantic relations.” (08/28/25)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/uk-nigel-firage/

Source: Antiwar.com
by Ted Snider

“U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly stressed the need for both Russia and Ukraine to make difficult but reasonable compromises if progress is to be made toward peace. He has expressed hope that Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘will be good’ and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will ‘show flexibility as well.’ But Trump has shown no such sign of flexibility or compromise when it comes to his conflicts with Iran and Venezuela. Rather than engage in give and take and nuanced steps towards compromise, Trump has thrust maximalist demands on his interlocuters that are backed by military threats.” (08/28/25)

https://original.antiwar.com/ted_snider/2025/08/27/no-compromise-on-iran-and-venezuela/