Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“One of the things that fascinates me about Americans living today is the willingness of many of them to treat immigrants like horse dung. I just don’t get it. No, I’m not saying that they treat people like that directly. I’m saying that they support and even get excited about how the U.S. government treats immigrants like horse dung. … Many Americans are outright giddy over what is happening. They think it’s fantastic that people who have never been convicted of a crime are being subjected to this type of horrific mistreatment.” (04/08/25)
“The Democrats face a real dilemma that may cripple their ability to be competitive in upcoming elections. Real cracks are forming within the party’s coalition. The Democratic base and left wing were furious at Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer when he dared to allow the recent continuing resolution to go through to avoid a government shutdown. Mr. Schumer is in what I would consider the survivalist wing. The survivalists accept that hard-left policies and past performance failures have put the Democrats in a vulnerable position. The survivalist wing understands that the party’s 29% national favorability represents a real danger (it is almost comparable to the Republican collapse after Watergate in the 1970s). As California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently said, ‘The Democratic brand is toxic.'” (04/07/25)
“In the bad old days of corrupt party machines — think Tammany Hall and the like — voter bribery was rampant. It took a variety of forms — most famously patronage, handing out public-service jobs controlled by the party bosses. But sometimes it was as simple and direct as literally handing people cash for showing up at the polls and casting a ballot. … Today, voter bribery is a crime. It’s illegal to pay people for their participation in an election, plain and simple. Despite this, Elon Musk has been flagrantly bribing voters, both in last year’s presidential election and most recently in the high-profile election for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.” (04/08/25)
“The European Union’s censors are outraged that Elon Musk’s social media platform, Twitter‑X, flouts their demands to gag users. So they’re gearing up to fine X more than a billion dollars. The EU will also be demanding ‘product changes.’ … All this is rationalized by a new EU law to compel social media platforms to police users. One would be hard put to find a clearer case of governmental censorship-by-delegation. It’s not even taking place behind closed doors, as was the case regarding the U.S. Government and Twitter before Mr. Musk bought the platform. These European censors brag about it.” (04/08/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“The Israeli military has changed its story about why its forces killed 15 medical workers and then buried them and their vehicles to hide the evidence. After their initial claim that the medical vehicles were approaching ‘suspiciously’ without their emergency lights on was disproven by video evidence, they are now calling the whole thing a big mistake. Sure, who among us has not accidentally massacred 15 medical workers and buried them and their vehicles in a shallow grave from time to time? We’re only human, mistakes happen. Asked by the press about Israel’s latest war crime scandal, White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes blamed the whole thing on Hamas, saying, ‘Hamas uses ambulances and more broadly human shields for terrorism. President Trump understands the impossible situation this tactic creates for Israel and holds Hamas entirely responsible.'” (04/08/25)
“U.S. President Donald Trump has long been of two minds about the dollar. He has said he wants it weaker to make American products cheaper in global markets, but he has also said he wants it strong so it remains the world’s dominant reserve currency. … Trump is getting the weakness he wants. The dollar has fallen 5 percent against other major currencies since his inauguration in January. But the strength he promised is nowhere to be seen. Last year, one of Trump’s key advisors, Stephen Miran, imagined a so-called Mar-a-Lago Accord in which the United States would essentially require its trading partners to help bring down the dollar’s value. That would have been, the theory goes, engineering a devaluation from a position of strength. Instead, the dollar is falling because of perceptions of American weakness.” (04/08/25)
“From childhood, I think I had some eerie sense of just how bad it could get in America. After all, in junior high and high school, I was riveted by this country’s Civil War. Among all my toy soldiers — cowboys and Indians, British marching troops in red jackets, and plastic Army-green World War II soldiers (from my father’s war) — and those Landmark Books on American history that I piled up on my floor to create hills and valleys where I could play out the cowboy and Indian ambushes and battles I had seen at local movie theaters, my favorites were always the blue and grey lead soldiers of the Union and Confederacy, including Commanding General Ulysses S. Grant on a horse.” (04/08/25)
Source: The Daily Economy
by David Hebert & Marcus M Witcher
“For all the prosperity that expanded trade had brought the US, the Reagan campaign did demand that ‘free trade must be fair trade.’ Much like today’s administration, they condemned other nations that were imposing ‘barriers to our exports and unfairly [subsidizing] their own industries.’ Similarly, the Reagan campaign insisted that they would ‘work to prevent such unfair trade practices.’ Unlike the current administration, however, they insisted that the answer was entrepreneurship, lower taxes, and deregulation, not protectionism.” (04/08/25)
“The chief of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Exterminator-in-Chief Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, jumped on his plane and jetted from one International Criminal Court denier (authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán of Hungary) to another in Washington, D.C.: U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump is the second U.S. president to give Netanyahu the green light for the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Biden was guilty of 17 months of complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza, while Trump is 2.5 months and counting. Trump and Netanyahu are two peas in a nasty pod. No doubt, Trump issued his sudden invitation to Netanyahu to visit him in Washington as a morale booster to the war criminal facing International Criminal Court arrest warrants abroad and court proceedings on corruption charges when he returns to Israel.” (04/08/25)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“The current direction of U.S. trade policy marks a dramatic departure from over two centuries of debate, experimentation, and eventual liberalization. As shown in the chart below, U.S. average tariff rates were historically high throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, peaking during periods like the Tariff of Abominations (1828), the Morrill Tariff (1861), and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff (1930). Since the mid-twentieth century, however, trade liberalization has steadily brought these rates down. Does anyone actually believe that the lives of Americans since World War II have been in some sort of material decline due to increasing global trade? All the evidence says the exact opposite.” (04/08/25)
