Source: Washington Post
by George F Will
“From the French word ‘petite,’ meaning ‘small,’ comes the English word ‘petty,’ which describes the Trump administration. This is greatness as restored by the midgets of MAGA …. In 1966, Alabama’s Democratic Gov. George Wallace said: ‘Hell, we got too much dignity in government now, what we need is some meanness.’ Problem solved.” (03/05/25)
Source: Fox News
Dr. Kevin Roberts & Ryan Walker
“On Tuesday night during his joint address to Congress, President Donald Trump reminded the American people that ‘the American Dream is unstoppable’ and that ‘our country is on the verge of a comeback the likes of which the world has never witnessed and perhaps will never see again.’ Congress spent the evening celebrating President Trump’s wins, but the American people will only continue to enjoy them if Congress does its job and passes a clean continuing resolution by March 14. Doing so will keep the government open, allowing the Trump administration to continue its excellent work and ensuring that America’s comeback does not come to a screeching halt. The stakes couldn’t be higher.” [editor’s note: The stakes are extremely low — “continue to tax, borrow, and spend like crazy” vs. “that, but pretend to shut it down” – TLK] (03/05/25)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/heres-what-congress-no-1-priority-should-after-trumps-speech
Source: CNBC
“The European Central Bank is expected to cut interest rates for the second time this year at its Thursday meeting, but disagreement among policymakers may be set to increase amid tariff uncertainty and a potential ramp-up in regional defense spending. Markets had on Wednesday fully priced in a quarter-point rate cut for the March meeting, taking the ECB’s key rate to 2.5% — down from its peak of 4% in the middle of last year. A further reduction to 2% by the end of the year was also priced in. … the central bank now appears within touching distance of the hotly-debated ‘neutral rate’ at which policy is neither stimulating nor restricting the economy, when rates would be expected to be kept on hold. Policymakers disagree on exactly where this level is, and whether rates might need to be brought even lower than that level in response to factors such as low growth.” (03/05/25)
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Trump Destroys Free Speech for Israel.” (03/05/25)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/kyle/coi-766-trump-destroys-free-speech-for-israel/
Source: Law & Liberty
by Mike Gonzalez
“For many of us, it was a nightmare to watch a small minority of the population — which has been imperfectly but serviceably labeled ‘woke’ — bully, harass, torment, and cancel those who expressed any dissent, all in the pursuit of a barely hidden political project, and many Americans of goodwill supinely submit and enter into a hypnotic state. But the regime of these latter-day woke Jacobins may now be coming to a screeching halt. History has not been fully written yet, to be sure, but it looks like America is breaking out of the collective spell.” (03/05/25)
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Madsen Pirie
“The first [Industrial Revolution] is reckoned to be the application of controlled power to production. The big leap came as water and then steam replaced men, horses and oxen as sources of energy. … The Second Industrial Revolution is reckoned to include the development of railroad and telegraph networks, allowing faster movement of people and the rapid spread of ideas, as well as electricity, which allowed factories to develop the modern production line. The Third one has been the recent shift to an economy centered on information technology …. Some claim that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is happening today. It combines Artificial Intelligence with a huge shift in the speed at which existing industries are impacted upon in a large number of sectors.” (03/05/25)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/50meisye3biu7jeqi8vhv6zpukmz77
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“Some of my friends believe that there is some dark backstory to Donald Trump worthy of a 1970s political thriller: some kompromat, some financial leverage, something. That could be the case, but I would not be surprised that when the history of our time is written — if the history of our time is permitted to be written — what we will learn is that Trump did Moscow’s bidding because he prefers the politics of Putin to those of, say, Dwight Eisenhower, while sycophants such as J.D. Vance and Ted Cruz did Moscow’s bidding on behalf of Trump because they preferred being on the inside to being on the outside. … You don’t have to be an actual literal idiot to be a useful idiot in the Cold War sense, though it helps. You just have to choose to side with the Kremlin.” (03/05/25)
https://thedispatch.com/article/ukraine-war-putin-kgb-walesa-poland/
Source: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
by Jim Naureckas
“In The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow note that the Western notion of freedom derives from the Roman legal tradition, in which freedom was conceived as ‘the power of the male household head in ancient Rome, who could do whatever he liked with his chattels and possessions, including his children and slaves.’ Because of this, ‘freedom was always defined (at least potentially) as something exercised to the cost of others.’ You have to understand this notion of freedom (that to be free, you have to make someone else less free) to make sense of the idea that Donald Trump is a champion of ‘free speech.’ This is, unfortunately, not a fringe idea.” (03/05/25)
https://fair.org/home/trumps-protest-threat-reflects-belief-that-free-speech-belongs-to-some/
Source: Engadget
“US federal judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has denied Elon Musk’s request for an injunction that would have immediately stopped OpenAI’s conversion into a for-profit entity. Musk filed for an injunction late last year after suing OpenAI and Microsoft and accusing them of telling investors not to fund rival AI companies, such as his own xAI. … While the judge has rejected Musk’s request, she is fast-tracking his lawsuit and will hold an expedited trial later this year on the basis of public interest and on his claim that OpenAI’s transformation has a ‘potential for harm if a conversion contrary to law occurred.'” (03/05/25)
Source: Semafor
“New York Times editor Joe Kahn, podcaster Megyn Kelly and more on the collapse of trust.” (03/05/25)
https://www.semafor.com/article/03/05/2025/mixed-signals-joe-kahn-megyn-kelly-collapse-of-trust