They’ve Always Known He is A Racist …
Source: The Contrarian
by Jennifer Rubin
“They just never cared.” (02/09/26)
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/theyve-always-known-he-is-a-racist
War crimes prosecutors seek 45 years’ prison for Kosovo ex-president
Source: Reuters
“International war crimes prosecutors said on Monday Kosovo’s former president Hashim Thaci controlled ethnic Albanian guerrillas and should be convicted of war crimes and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Thaci and three other ex-Kosovo Liberation Army commanders are charged with persecution, murder, torture and forced disappearances of people during and shortly after the 1998-99 uprising that eventually brought independence for the Albanian majority region from Serbia. … Thaci, 57, who served as prime minister, foreign minister and president of independent Kosovo between 2008 and 2020, and his co-accused deny all the charges.” (02/09/26)
Spain: Sánchez’s Socialists suffer heavy loss in regional election
Source: Politico
“The Socialist Party of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez endured a major defeat on Sunday in an election in the Spanish region of Aragón, while the far right made substantial gains. The conservative People’s Party (PP), which governs the north-eastern region, came first with 34.3 percent support, but its 26 seats represented a loss of two and left it well short of a majority in the 67-seat chamber. With 99 percent of votes counted the Socialists secured 24.3 percent, good for 18 seats but representing a loss of five, equaling their worst-ever result in the region.” (02/09/26)
https://www.politico.eu/article/pedro-sanchez-socialists-suffer-defeat-aragon-regional-election/
The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, 02/09/26
Source: The Dispatch
“Don Robby Corleone | Interview: Robert P. George.” (02/09/26)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/remnant/don-robby-corleone-interview-robert-p-george/
The Reopening of the Conservative Mind?
Source: Law & Liberty
by Jeffrey Polet
“A tradition of intellectual conservatism can help the next generation reject hate and realize that ‘the object of life is Love.'” (02/09/26)
https://lawliberty.org/the-reopening-of-the-conservative-mind/
Iran’s Comprehensive Peace Proposal to the United States
Source: Common Dreams
by Jeffrey D Sachs & Sybil Fares
“History occasionally presents moments when the truth about a conflict is stated plainly enough that it becomes impossible to ignore. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s February 7 address in Doha, Qatar (transcript here) should prove to be such a moment. His important and constructive remarks responded to the US call for comprehensive negotiations, and he laid out a sound proposal for peace across the Middle East. Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for comprehensive negotiations: ‘If the Iranians want to meet, we’re ready.’ He proposed for talks to include the nuclear issue, Iran’s military capabilities, and its support for proxy groups around the region. On its surface, this sounds like a serious and constructive proposal. The Middle East’s security crises are interconnected, and diplomacy that isolates nuclear issues from broader regional dynamics is unlikely to endure.” (02/09/25)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/comprehensive-peace-plan-middle-east
CA: San Francisco Teachers Walk Out for the First Time Since 1979
Source: New York Times
“San Francisco teachers went on strike on Monday for the first time in nearly half a century, closing public schools for roughly 50,000 students in the city. The teachers walked out after their union, United Educators of San Francisco, could not reach an agreement on raises and health care costs despite nearly a year of negotiations with the San Francisco Unified School District. The union represents about 6,000 educators, counselors and nurses who work in more than 100 schools in the city. The strike has no set end date. The last teachers strike in San Francisco, in 1979, lasted for nearly seven weeks, making it one of the longest in state history.” (02/09/26)
Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 02/09/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“Netanyahu To Meet Trump To Push Iran War, GOP Works on $1.5 Trillion Military Budget, and More.” (02/09/26)
Marriage Markets
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“People talk a lot about inequality of income but there are other forms of inequality. In a society where most women get married and whom they marry largely determines the rest of their lives, inequality in the characteristics that men value in a wife, most obviously physical attractiveness, may be more important than inequality of wealth. An attractive woman has her choice of husbands, an ugly woman may be unable to get an offer from even one. In a society with bride price and dowry, the parents of an attractive woman can collect a sizable bride price while other parents, if they want to marry off their daughter, may have to provide a sizable dowry. Herodotus describes an economist’s solution to this particular form of inequality.” (02/09/26)
The best evidence against Trump’s tariffs? His own first term.
Source: Washington Post
by Phil Gramm and Donald J Boudreaux
“President Donald Trump regularly claims to have achieved unprecedented prosperity in his second term, which he attributes to his implementation of the highest tariffs since the Great Depression. But no matter what data points the president points to, his tariff policies appear to be holding back the very prosperity he claims to have achieved. How can one know this? Test the president’s claim with a comparison that’s as close as you get in the real world to a controlled experiment: Evaluate economic growth in the first year of his first term — which did not see the implementation of tariffs — against the same data in the first year of his second term, which did. This comparison works because all other economic policies in the two terms are virtually identical.” (02/09/26)