Source: Liberal Currents
by Guillaume AW Attia
“When the Middle East journalist Omid Memariam was arrested by the Iranian government, his interrogators intentionally chose not to wear masks in order to convey both the legitimacy of the government and the propriety of the interrogation. ‘Once a mask is involved,’ Memariam explains, ‘people understand it as a sign of weakness, that the government has something to hide.’ With the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, it is hard to see how the government can convince large portions of the American public that they do not have something to hide. This raises a core issue at the heart of the mask discussion: the erosion of certain basic and long-standing moral and legal norms in America.” (03/09/26)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/call-you-this-liberty/
Source: Common Dreams
by Rob Okun
“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)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/white-house-war-meme-video
Source: San Diego Union-Tribune
“Travelers complained of long waits Sunday — lasting hours in some cases — at security checkpoints at airports in Houston and New Orleans, which officials blamed on a government shutdown of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.” [editor’s note: There’s an easy fix for that — “standing in a line to get groped has been suspended until further notice, just go to your gate and board your flight” – TLK] (03/09/26)
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/03/09/dhs-shutdown-airport-security/
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“Foreign Interventionism.” (03/09/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ttM7CpuOg
Source: Foreign Policy
by Julian E Zelizer
“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.”
https://archive.is/px7s0
Source: The Daily Economy
by Donald J Boudreaux
“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)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/reflections-on-four-decades-of-teaching-econ-101/
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)
https://www.bluegrassinstitute.org/continuing-ky-tax-reform-efforts/
Source: SFGate
“Meta’s AI glasses were a breakout hit of 2025, with more than 7 million pairs sold. But the Bay Area tech giant now faces disconcerting allegations about the footage recorded by the devices’ cameras. The company pitches its glasses, with their small cameras that have raised some privacy concerns, as safe: ‘Designed for privacy, controlled by you’. In late February, the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, or SvD, published an investigation that said Kenyan subcontractors end up seeing deeply personal footage from the glasses — including bank cards, people changing and people having sex. A new federal lawsuit filed in San Francisco on Wednesday points to the article and accuses Meta of false advertising, fraud and breach of contract. ‘Consumers purchased these Glasses believing Meta’s privacy assurances,’ the complaint says. ‘They did not, and could not reasonably, understand that their bedrooms, bathrooms, families, bodies, and more would be exposed to strangers around the world.'” (03/08/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/meta-ai-glasses-lawsuit-21960004.php
Source: Politico
“Trump’s oil foil.” (03/09/26)
https://traffic.megaphone.fm/POLL4952360433.mp3
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
by Ron Paul
“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)
http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/will-the-dollar-be-a-casualty-of-the-iran-war
