“A week into Trump’s illegal war against Iran, the White House released a 42-second video on X, featuring movie scenes spliced with real military footage of strikes in Iran, promising ‘justice, the American way’. Rather than sober statements about national security or the grim human realities of war, the March 5 video resembled a movie trailer. The clips stitched together real footage of missile strikes with pop-culture heroes: Russell Crowe in Gladiator, Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, Keanu Reeves’ relentless assassin in the John Wick films. Even SpongeBob SquarePants made an appearance. The video was immediately mocked for reflecting the militaristic fantasies of teenage boys (see Hegseth, Pete), more than that of the US starting a war. The editing followed a familiar formula: a heroic movie quote, a dramatic cut to real explosions, then a video-game style victory sound. War, apparently, has become content.” (03/09/26)
“Any time a U.S. president deploys U.S. forces overseas, it is worth revisiting one of the most influential books about the U.S. war in Vietnam: The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam. The book serves as an enduring reminder of the mistakes presidents and their advisors have made when sending the U.S. military into harm’s way, always with the promise of acting in the nation’s best interests.”
“My ECON 101 course is taught as if it’s the only economic course my students will ever take. Unlike many professors, I do not teach Principles of Microeconomics to prepare my students for Intermediate Microeconomics, which is the next course up in the curriculum. Some such preparation occurs, I’m pleased to report, but that’s all incidental. My chief goal is to inject my students with the rudiments of the economic way of thinking in order to inoculate them against the most virulent fallacies that are likely to try to infect their minds as they go through life.” (03/09/26)
Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Sai C Martha & Rea S Hederman Jr.
“Kentucky has established itself as a national leader in pro-growth tax reform after landmark legislation in 2018 replaced a complex graduated income tax with a flat rate and broadened the sales tax base. These structural improvements have propelled the Commonwealth’s business tax climate ranking from 37th to 18th and built a historic Budget Reserve Trust Fund. To sustain this competitive momentum and address unprecedented workforce mobility, The Buckeye Institute used its dynamic scoring model—STELA—to model the economic effects of the next two phases of tax reform: a scheduled reduction to a 3.5 percent individual income tax rate in 2026, and a hypothetical reduction to three percent in 2027.” (03/09/26)
“The costs of this war will put added pressure on the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low and increase its purchase of Treasury bonds in order to monetize the federal debt. The pressure on the Fed will also increase as other countries reduce their purchase of US debt. These reductions will be motivated by concerns over the economic instability caused by the US government’s out of control spending and by resentment over the US government’s hyper-interventionist foreign policy. These factors could also accelerate the increasing rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. A loss of the reserve currency status will cause a dollar crisis, leading to an economic crash worse than the Great Depression.” (03/09/26)
“When Americans initially hear the facts about the Emirates, most are incredulous. How can anywhere be 88% foreign-born yet remain a country? Isn’t ‘guest worker’ just a euphemism for ‘slave?’ But once you see the UAE with your own eyes, it’s hard not to scoff at these naive complaints. The UAE is totally a country, and no one buys plane tickets to become a slave. After Americans spend time in the UAE, their most sensible remaining critique is simply: ‘This immigration system works fine over in the Middle East. Maybe better than fine. But the American people would never tolerate the extreme inequality.’ … But are Americans really such egalitarian pearl clutchers?” (03/09/26)
“Within hours of American munitions striking Iranian soil, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted a statement that the Western press largely treated as a diplomatic footnote, but it was a signal that what happens in the skies over Tehran has a direct impact on the ground in Ukraine. President Zelenskyy explicitly endorsed the strikes, called Iran ‘Putin’s accomplice’, noted that his country has absorbed over 57,000 Iranian-supplied drone attacks, and took aim at Moscow: ‘Whenever there is American resolve, global criminals weaken. This understanding must also come to the Russians.’ Zelenskyy’s framing of the war in Iran through the lens of Ukraine’s war is not incidental. Whatever Washington’s stated objectives, the president, who has lived through the Ukraine conflict since the 2022 invasion, understands that Iran has been an active accomplice in Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the United States has now acted against that accomplice.” (03/09/26)
“While we won’t know what’s in the files until their release, it’s possible to speculate a bit about the likely content based on the many past government disclosures on the subject. But the bigger mystery may be whether any released material could ever satisfy the public’s insatiable curiosity about the possibility of discovering or contacting lifeforms from beyond Earth.” (03/09/26)
“On the surface, everything between Vietnam and the United States looked better than it ever had. In September 2023, President Joe Biden and General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, elevating relations to their highest diplomatic tier. American officials toasted prosperity. Vietnamese leaders smiled for cameras. The messaging suggested a new chapter in a relationship once defined by napalm and body counts. Then, in early February 2026, a very different story emerged from behind the curtain.” (03/09/26)
