Word is that things are a little rough down in Cuba right now. In my post of February 23, I reported that Cuba had become the first nation in the world to achieve the climate activists’ Holy Grail of “Net Zero” carbon emissions. I had looked around for news of the big celebration of Cuba’s achievement, but I couldn’t find any mention of it. If I had understood things correctly — and I think I had — Net Zero was supposed to deliver abundant and much cheaper electricity from the free wind and sun, lowering everybody’s energy costs, creating jobs, and saving the planet in the process. And yet, in a February 20 piece, the New York Times had revealed that the process of achieving Net Zero had somehow brought Cuba “to its knees.” Are we missing something here?

And then two days ago, March 16, the BBC (and many other sources) reported that the entire island of Cuba had been plunged into a blackout. Apparently there has since been some partial restoration of power, but much or even most of the island remains in darkness, without much prospect of relief any time soon.

Of all groups that ought to be celebrating, at the top of the list would be the Democratic Socialists of America. They have been among the most forceful advocates for the rapid if not immediate elimination of fossil fuels from the energy system. Prominent members of the DSA include the Bronx/Queens it-girl Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York’s new Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, although apparently not formally a member of DSA, has both supported and been supported by the group.

So I went to the DSA website to find information about their celebration of Cuba’s achievement. It’s not there. Instead, I find this:

The Trump administration has escalated the decades-long embargo on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil, choking its energy grid, and accelerating a humanitarian crisis. . . .

OK, that’s one take, but frankly it’s rather lame. Yes, the U.S. has boycotted Cuba for decades, not just under Trump, but during both Republican and Democratic presidencies. But the U.S. is just one country out of nearly 200 in the world, constituting around 25% of the world economy. That leaves the other 190+ countries and 75% of the world economy that is not boycotting Cuba. Europe is not boycotting Cuba. China is not boycotting Cuba. Brazil and Mexico are not boycotting Cuba. Canada is not boycotting Cuba.

And according to the DSA, Cuba has a superior economic system to the U.S., an economic system that the DSA would like to implement here. In particular, the fossil-fuel-free energy system recently implemented in Cuba has been exactly what the DSA has long been advocating for the U.S.

Here is a post from NPR in 2019 reporting on Congresspeople’s AOC’s and Edward Markey’s release of their proposal for the Green New Deal. A few excerpts:

In very broad strokes, the Green New Deal legislation laid out by Ocasio-Cortez and Markey sets goals for some drastic measures to cut carbon emissions across the economy, from electricity generation to transportation to agriculture. In the process, it aims to create jobs and boost the economy. . . . Among the most prominent, the deal calls for “meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.” The ultimate goal is to stop using fossil fuels entirely. . . .

In short, the Green New Deal proposal described exactly what Cuba has just done — “stop using fossil fuels entirely.” According to AOC and Markey, this would “create jobs and boost the economy.” Is there some reason that that is not occurring in Cuba?

The New York Sun has a piece from March 15 with the headline beginning “American Socialists To Join New Cuba Aid Flotilla . . .” (likely behind paywall). Excerpt:

The Democratic Socialists of America announced that 20 DSA members will join an international group of humanitarians, the so-called Nuestra América Convoy, which says it is delivering critical aid to Cuba amid an economic and energy crisis caused by America’s blockade of fuel, flights, and other essential supplies. . . . It has issued an open letter signed by celebrities like Jane Fonda, Mark Ruffalo, and Susan Sarandon, calling for the administration to “treat Cuba with equality and respect” and “let Cuba live.” . . . With 89 percent of Cubans reportedly living in poverty, the Communist regime has a chokehold on food and energy distribution.

What I’m not getting is why Cuba is in need of some kind of humanitarian aid. According to the DSA, Cuba has an economic system superior to ours, and which we should emulate. It has the ability to trade freely with countries representing 75% of the world economy in essentially all commodities other than oil which, as DSA has told us, is not needed and should be eliminated ASAP. If the Cubans are short of electricity at the moment, they have the complete ability to obtain wind turbines and solar panels from China to their hearts’ content. Won’t that solve the problem?

I guess it’s admirable of the DSA to stand up for their comrades in Cuba. But shouldn’t they have at least a little curiosity as to why Cuba can’t make carbon free electricity — let alone anything else in its economy — work? It’s hard to believe that morons at this level get elected to office in the U.S., but there you have it.

Trump not losing voters over Iran war: Karl Rove

by Ashleigh Fields – 03/19/26 12:25 PM ET

Republican strategist Karl Rove on Wednesday argued President Trump will not lose any voters over the war against Iran. 

“Much of the criticism of Operation Epic Fury comes from the likes of the Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, the Israel-obsessed podcasters Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, and the conspiracist Candace Owens. Do voters who identify themselves as MAGA Republicans share their opinions? Do they feel betrayed by the president?” Rove wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal.

“The answer is an unequivocal no, according to a survey from the Vandenberg Coalition, a nonpartisan group committed to the idea that ‘the national security, prosperity, and freedom of the United States require a strong and proud foreign policy,’” he added.

Figures from the survey show 84 percent of all respondents approved of U.S. strikes destroying Iran’s missile arsenal and production sites, degrading Iran’s terrorist proxy networks and preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The survey was facilitated by the GOP polling firm TargetPoint March 3-5 among 1,232 self-described Trump voters.

More than half of MAGA conservatives, traditional conservatives and moderate Republicans included in the survey said the U.S. strikes eliminating Iran’s leaders were making the country more safe. Meanwhile, about 1 in 4 of total respondents, including libertarian-leaning Trump voters, said it has had no impact or made the country less safe.

“The president bears some responsibility for the betrayal that some far-right media figures feel. He promised time and again to end wars, not start them. Long before running, Mr. Trump torched then-President Barack Obama for even considering military action against Iran,” Rove wrote in the Wednesday op-ed.

“But a bigger part of the president’s appeal has been his determination to make the U.S. military the greatest force for good on the planet and to project American strength,” he added, noting that broader support for the war among the public is low and can get lower.

Letter Concerning Toleration by John Locke was originally published in 1689. Its initial publication was in Latin, though it was immediately translated into other languages. In this “letter” addressed to an anonymous “Honored Sir” (actually Locke’s close friend Philip von Limborch, who published it without Locke’s knowledge) Locke argues for a new understanding of the relationship between religion and government. One of the founders of Empiricism, Locke develops a philosophy that is contrary to the one expressed by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, primarily because it supports toleration for various Christian denominations. Locke’s work appeared amidst a fear that Catholicism might be taking over England, and responds to the problem of religion and government by proposing toleration as the answer. Unlike Hobbes, who saw uniformity of religion as the key to a well-functioning civil society, Locke argues that more religious groups actually prevent civil unrest. Locke argues that civil unrest results from confrontations caused by any magistrate’s attempt to prevent different religions from being practiced, rather than tolerating their proliferation. Locke’s primary goal is to “distinguish exactly the business of civil government from that of religion.” He makes use of extensive argument from analogy to accomplish his goal, and relies on several key points. The thing that he wants to persuade the reader of is that government is instituted to promote external interests, relating to life, liberty, and the general welfare, while the church exists to promote internal interests, i.e., salvation. The two serve separate functions, and so, must be considered to be separate institutions. (Summary from Wikipedia)

A leaked phone call between an Israeli intelligence operative and a senior Iranian police commander is offering a rare—and striking—glimpse into growing cracks in Iran’s security apparatus as the U.S.-Israel campaign continues.

In the call, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, a Mossad agent warns the commander that he is “on our blacklist” and urges him to stand aside in the event of a popular uprising against the regime.

“We know everything about you,” the agent says in Farsi. “If you will not stand with your people, your destiny will be as your leader.”

The response is startling.

“Brother, I swear on the Koran, I’m not your enemy,” the commander replies. “I’m a dead man already. Just please come help us.”

The exchange is part of a broader Israeli effort to pressure Iranian security officials—threatening both them and their families—while encouraging defections as strikes continue to degrade the regime’s military and internal control systems.

Since the war began on Feb. 28, Israeli and U.S. forces have launched thousands of strikes across Iran. Israel has focused heavily on targeting leadership and internal security networks, including the Revolutionary Guard and Basij militia, while the U.S. has concentrated on military infrastructure.

The strategy appears designed not just to weaken Iran’s capabilities, but to trigger internal collapse.

Recent reporting suggests the campaign may be having an effect. Iranian security forces, increasingly exposed and under pressure, are reportedly abandoning traditional bases, sleeping in cars or mosques, and operating under constant fear of targeted strikes.

At the same time, Israel has escalated psychological operations. In recent days, Mossad-linked messaging has warned civilians to avoid Basij positions—calling them “potential targets”—and signaled that a broader confrontation could be imminent.

“Your final battle will begin soon,” one message read. “We are with you.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)

The Israeli killing of Ali Larijani marks another blow to the Islamic Republic’s capacity for coordination, weakening an already fragmented system and raising the risk of miscalculation under pressure.

Iran confirmed on Tuesday that Larijani—Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and one of the regime’s central security coordinators— was killed in a morning strike on Tehran.

The strike inevitably recalls the killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020: another precise removal of a figure who linked diplomacy, intelligence and military power.

Soleimani’s death did more than eliminate a commander. It weakened the regime’s ability to calibrate risk. Radical in purpose, cautious in execution, he pushed proxies forward without inviting existential retaliation.

His absence left a gap no successor fully filled. Coordination frayed, misjudgments mounted and responses grew less predictable. The network endured, but its timing became erratic and its restraint thinner.

Larijani’s role must be understood against that backdrop.

According to a source cited by Christiane Amanpour, Larijani had, as recently as September 2025, been viewed in some Western and Israeli assessments as a potentially acceptable transitional figure before becoming a target by early February 2026.

The account attributes the shift to his role in pressing for domestic crackdowns, adopting a more confrontational posture toward the United States and Israel and assuming a central role in shaping IRGC military operations.

The claims remain unverified but highlight how Larijani straddled internal consolidation and external escalation at a moment of acute pressure.

His career began during the Iran-Iraq War, where he rose within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to brigadier general, later serving as Speaker of Parliament (2008–2020), where he advanced a hard-line agenda aligned with the consolidation of power in the Office of the Supreme Leader.

In the years that followed, he moved from battlefield to bureaucracy, helping consolidate the regime’s coercive and ideological infrastructure.

As head of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (1994–2004), Larijani oversaw more than a media organization. The state broadcaster worked closely with the intelligence services and the IRGC, shaping narratives that reinforced loyalty and narrowed the space for dissent.

The 1996 Hoviyyat (Identity) series publicly branded intellectuals and professionals as traitors, airing coerced confessions and drawing sharp limits around permissible thought. At the same time, official memory of the Iran-Iraq War was recast into doctrine: martyrdom elevated, endurance framed as victory.

Over time, this messaging helped consolidate a narrower but more disciplined base embedded across Basij and IRGC networks. Its purpose was not persuasion but enforcement: to secure the regime against a broader, often unwilling society.

That framework endured. It underpinned repression during the 2009 Green Movement, resurfaced during the Woman, Life, Freedom protests in 2022 and shaped the violence of January 2026.

Beyond Iran, the same logic informed Hezbollah’s campaign in Syria, Hamas operations culminating in October 7 and the IRGC’s maritime doctrine of asymmetric pressure.

Despite tensions within the political elite, Larijani remained firmly inside the core leadership. Loyal and disciplined, he embodied continuity across institutions.

Following the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the February 28 strike that opened the current phase of war, Larijani’s experience and connections positioned him as a potential stabilizing figure.

His 2025 reappointment as Iran’s security chief reinforced that role. From there he coordinated nuclear policy, crisis management and relations among the regime’s core institutions.

Larijani’s removal would introduce immediate disruption: friction in command and pressure for retaliation. The deeper consequence may be fragmentation.

The Islamic Republic now operates less as a unified state than as a dispersed system under sustained pressure from Israel and the United States. Authority increasingly runs through provincial clerical networks, IRGC commanders and Basij structures. Resources are mobilized locally, repression enforced locally and survival managed locally.

Larijani belonged to the shrinking circle still capable of linking these fragments to a central command. His loss risks accelerating the incoherence the system is already struggling to contain.

Soleimani’s precedent is instructive: decapitation weakens coordination and invites miscalculation, even as the structure endures.

Missile infrastructure remains dispersed across hardened and subterranean sites. Fast naval craft and unmanned vessels continue to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Proxy militias operate through channels designed to outlast leadership losses.

What appears as resilience may instead reflect dispersal without coordination — a system that survives but no longer acts as one.

Larijani’s killing tests not only the state’s durability but its capacity to function as a coherent force under sustained pressure. The war may not bring immediate collapse. But without figures such as Soleimani and Larijani, adaptation may hasten, rather than forestall, its demise.

This has been pretty entertaining today. I’ve been catching a bunch of Nick’s videos in between stories, and holy smokes – what he’s finding doing his trademark wander around and knock on doors is, well, classic Shirley.

That sweet face and so innocent, pre-pubescent teenage boy’s voice, ‘If I open a hospice, can I get a brand new Maybach, too?’

The kid is a treasure.

This is where it all starts. He’s at what looks like an old, rundown two-story motor inn. The kind you might remember from trips as a kid, where you drove through some sort of an arch into a courtyard sort of parking lot, and all the rooms faced inward.

The problem is that there are no guests, and, astonishingly enough, all the hotel rooms seem to be hospice businesses. There’s, like, thirty of them in this one motor lodge.

There are also very many nice, shiny new cars.

WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

How peculiar.

If you’ll remember, back at the end of January, Dr. Oz was loudly rebuked and condemned as a racist for going to a four-block area of Van Nuys, California, where he found forty-two hospices that had soaked taxpayers for some $16M already.

WHAT WERE THE ODDS?

It turns out that Shirley is the latest to discover the booming dying people business in California. A week ago, even CBS News decided that rather than call someone racist for looking, it was time they went looking themselves.

What they found blew some corporate minds.

CBS News

@CBSNews

CALIFORNIA HOSPICE FRAUD: There’s a stretch in Los Angeles with 500 registered hospice companies within just three miles of each other. And 89 in a single building. But when we visited, we found empty offices, piled-up mail, and phone lines dead.

WHAT WERE THE ODDS?

This fellow was awfully cranky. And to be honest, were a loved one of mine in hospice, not exactly the comforting presence I envisage, you know?

He could at least take a bath or something.

And let me tell you – the fraud numbers we’re talking about in greasy Gavin Newsom’s California should make every American sick to their stomach.

Being the thorough sort of fellow Shirley is, he decided to find a business partner and go into the hospice business himself.

Of course, he wanted to do it correctly, and for that one needs advice from experts.

So he and Derrick, his partner, went to one of the businesses advertising themselves as ‘hospice consultants’ to see if they could get some tips on how to get started.

Wait a second – it’s almost as if this ‘consulting hospice business’ didn’t really have anything to do with hospice consulting.

The young girls seemed very nervous and confused for secretarial help.

How peculiar.

Undaunted, Nick finds a fellow back at the motor lodge who is willing to sit still for a little quizzing about how business is going.

DO YOU LIKE TAKING CARE OF OLD PEOPLE? ARE YOU THE ONE WHO GOES OUT TO VISIT THEM?

But all good things come to an end, and somehow, word got around to all the rooms…oh, excuse me. Hospice businesses. That the little guy in the parking lot was asking questions.

Suddenly, there was a rush for the expensive cars and the freeway.

Nice rides, though.

Shirley’s whole forty-minute report is here when you have time. And blood pressure meds are close by……SNIP

Democrat’s real fear isn’t Islamophobia.

Mike McDaniel | March 18, 2026

Democrats excel at warping the English language, making it say things it was never intended to say. There is “American gun culture,” which amounts to our unalienable, express Second Amendment rights. There are “assault weapons,” a term that exists nowhere in firearm nomenclature, but which in Virginia includes break action, single shot .410 shotguns. And there is “Ultra MAGA,” which is Normal Americans who apparently really want America to be great, prosperous and secure—the horror.

And most of all, there are the phobias. Dictionary.com defines phobia thus:

1. an intense, persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, situation, or person that manifests in physical symptoms such as sweating, trembling, rapid heartbeat, or shortness of breath, and that motivates avoidance behavior.

In other words, not a reasonable concern, but an irrational fear amounting to mental illness. According to Democrats, Normal Americans spend most of their time sweating, trembling and worse at the mere thought of trans, gays, and the most currently trendy phobia: Islamophobia.

The point of this particular warping is to paint sane, rational people reasonably concerned about the very nature of Islam and the murderous acts of its adherents as dangerously mentally ill. They’re irrational, sweaty and trembling haters of innocent, mostly peaceful Muslims. 

It’s also meant to quash any criticism of Islam and Islamists, you know–the whole First Amendment thing.

Sure, Islamists throw gays off high buildings or hang them from cranes, they beat, rape, torture and murder women, burn babies alive in ovens, torture, mutilate, rape and murder Jews and other infidels and are currently firing missiles, rockets and drones at other Muslims but recognition by sane people of Jihadist’s blood thirsty mania and the determination of Islamist’s victims not to be killed is the problem.

Then there’s that whole “Islam mandates genocide of the Jews” thing. For Jihadists, the problem is Jews, for the most part, don’t want to be killed and they’re getting really good—particularly in Israel—at first killing the demons who want to kill them. Islam also mandates conquering the world for Islam, which of necessity mandates killing or enslaving all infidels, which is pretty much the world and every non-Muslim, as well as a great many insufficiently deranged Muslims.

One of the great contradictions of the entire matter is Muslims who do not want to slaughter anyone are not living the text and intention of their faith. One wag noted there are two kinds of Muslims: those who want to slaughter all infidels, and those who want other Muslims to slaughter all infidels. 

Cosmic irony reared its head recently when Sunday, March 15 rolled around. That’s ironic, because it was The International Day to Combat Islamophobia. As one might expect, the UN got in on the fun: 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres wrote late on Saturday evening, “Islamophobia” Day Eve: “Muslims worldwide often face institutional discrimination, socio-economic exclusion, biased immigration policies & unwarranted surveillance & profiling. This International Day to Combat Islamophobia, let’s re-commit to the equality, human rights & dignity of every person, no matter their faith.”

It’s doubly ironic because of the March 1 Islamist attack on an Austin bar that killed three and injured 13. That was followed by the March 7 Islamist homemade fragmentation bomb attack in New York City. Fortunately, those bombs didn’t go off, but the attack gave the media the opportunity to obfuscate what happened to their heart’s content. On March 12 there was a Jihadist double header with the failed attack on a Michigan synagogue and the murder of a ROTC professor at Old Dominion University. That one ended badly for the Jihadist but well for America when a ROTC cadet stabbed him to death. 

So of course, New York’s dimwitted, anti-American Governor had to spout off: 

“On this International Day to Combat Islamophobia, and at a time when fear and division are rising in many places, New York stands firm: Hate has no home here. Muslim New Yorkers strengthen our communities every day, and we will always stand together against Islamophobia.”

One wonders if the equally dimwitted immigration cracktivist with a bullhorn hectoring the crowd about the wonders of illegal immigration at that NYC attack, who had a Jihadist leap on his back while throwing a bomb, is having second thoughts about immigration, or at least about his dumb luck in not being shredded by Islamist shrapnel?

Fortunately, we have a President who isn’t afraid of being called an Islamophobe and who is inducing Americaphobia in the world’s worst Islamists. He’s supported by hundreds of millions of Americans who don’t give a damn what Democrats have to say. 

I suspect that’s what they really fear.

Become a subscriber and get our weekly, Friday newsletter with unique content from our editors. These essays alone are worth the cost of the subscription. 

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor. 

Sizable minorities on both the left and the right want America to intervene in fewer foreign conflicts and to exercise more restraint in foreign policy. In the 2006 midterm elections, antiwar voters contributed to the Republicans’ loss of both houses of Congress. They also helped defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary contest and the Republican nominee, John McCain, at that year’s general election.

While McCain styled himself a “maverick,” the label could be more accurately bestowed upon the anti-interventionist Republican Ron Paul, who shocked the GOP establishment by showing that an unstinting critic of the Iraq War could mount an insurgency within the party of George W. Bush. A decade earlier, Pat Buchanan had also demonstrated that being antiwar could be popular, or at least no barrier to popularity, on the political right.

Donald Trump was well aware of all this when he decided to make his first run for president in 2016. His opponent was Mrs. Clinton, the woman who’d been too hawkish for voters eight years earlier. As a senator, she had supported the Iraq War. As a private citizen – with a visible public profile – Trump was an early critic of the war and made a point of saying so in his campaign.

He won, and in his first term he started no new wars, in contrast to every other president of the past 25 years. Yet two years into his second term, Trump has gone to war with Iran twice and forcibly deposed the dictator of Venezuela, with a warning that the same may soon be in store for Cuba’s communist leaders. Trump built a winning electoral coalition two years ago that absorbed such antiwar ex-Democrats as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, along with their supporters, and he picked as his running mate a rising star of the intervention-critical right, J.D. Vance. Voters who cast their ballots for the Trump-Vance ticket in the hopes of no more wars are feeling baffled or downright betrayed.

Neoconservatives and other hawks who have long loathed Trump are equally disoriented by the turn, with some regretting the way in which they’re finally getting the confrontation with Tehran they’ve always demanded.

Trump has insisted all along that he wouldn’t allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. But when Israel went to war last June to destroy the Islamic Republic’s uranium-enrichment facilities, the task proved tougher than expected. Trump intervened to bring a speedy conclusion to a war whose purpose was in accord with his commitments. The trouble, certainly for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was that his country’s need for American help signaled to Tehran that it might well get away with nuclear weaponization the next time. After all, Trump wouldn’t be around forever. Would America support the next war against Iran’s nuclear program?

The only way to be certain of it was to make sure it happened while Trump was still in office, so Netanyahu and others made the case for a renewed war, with the popular uprisings against the clerical regime in December and January perhaps providing the last incentive needed to get Trump to act. Regime change seemed ready to happen naturally, with just a nudge from outside. Or, in light of the success the Trump administration had with regime decapitation in Venezuela, the President and his planners might have thought that a brittle Iranian regime, jolted by bombing, would cut a deal with Washington as quickly as Nicolás Maduro’s deputy dictator, Delcy Rodríguez, had done.

An explanation of President Trump’s thinking does answer the bigger question, however, which is not why he has waged a war, but why America seemingly never enjoys peace. We’re always at war, whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat, an enthusiast for globalization and the “liberal international order” or, like Trump, a critic of liberal international institutions.

The question’s framing is also its answer: in fact, most Americans do enjoy peace, so why should they worry about war? It adds to the national debt, says Representative Thomas Massie, but so does everything else, and Americans don’t care about that, either – not enough to vote for presidents or Congresses who will cut government services or raise taxes to curb the debt.

The dollar cost of a war will never stop one, not until the country is actually bankrupt. The strategic conditions that noninterventionists point to as the reasons we don’t have to fight wars all around the world are actually the reasons we can, and therefore do: America, with oceans on either side of our homeland and no great-power competitor in this hemisphere, as well as a nuclear arsenal and a conventional military capable of deterring any distant great power, is so safe that it can use its power for more than just local defense.

We enjoy a security surplus, which is more politically significant (for now) than our financial debts, as both the public and the nation’s elites have foreign projects they wish to undertake. When these projects turn out badly, the nation’s morale suffers and the politicians who led the undertaking may lose office and esteem. But as long as the surplus doesn’t disappear as a result of a catastrophic gamble, it remains to be put to new use by the next set of officeholders.

Switzerland is neutral and noninterventionist because, despite its formidable mountains and resilient people, it is a small country with no security to spare. (That wasn’t always the case – the pope has Swiss guards to this day because Switzerland was once so safe from foreign threats it could export mercenaries to its neighbors; back then neutrality arose from the fact the confederation’s constituent cantons were so religiously and politically divided that Switzerland as a whole couldn’t take any one side in Europe’s conflicts without risking civil war at home.) The US cannot be a super-sized Switzerland – for the simple reason that a super-Switzerland with surplus security wouldn’t be Switzerland at all.

Daniel McCarthy, American Spectator

It’s no time to be nice. Freedom is on the line, as never before. If you want to survive and live in prosperity and with liberty, you had better root for Donald Trump. Everyone else is morally weak, paid off or on the side of the bad guys.

You are looking at our last, best hope. GET OVER IT.

Iran is in it to win it. Fox News and others report they are trying to disrupt or paralyze the flow of oil to Western civilization. That will affect all of us, including purple haired, fat, ugly socialists screaming for freebies. An American military plane has gone down over Iraq. I wonder who Iran’s allies are in America? The Democratic Party and leftist billionaires? Might they give aid, comfort and support to our enemies? I believe they absolutely would, because Democrats and leftists hate America and freedom with the same intensity as Iran does. I am also wondering: Might President Trump go nuclear? We would never have defeated Japan without that step. Iran is not as strong, but its regime is as irrational and anti-life as just about any force in human history, to my knowledge. And they have friends in America, and friends with lots of money. I believe it may get to that point, because the mullahs will never, ever surrender unconditionally. I trust President Trump. I believe he will do whatever has to be done, in the end.

Amusing sidenote:

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt demanded Thursday that ABC News retract a story claiming that the FBI has officially warned Iran may try to attack California with drones.

Why would Iran attack California? California’s regime is as hostile to the U.S., its Bill of Rights and to freedom as the Iranian regime is. California is the last place a mortal enemy of the United States would attack.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

This chart shows manufacturing production growth (6-month average vs. a year ago). After spending most of 2022–2024 in contraction, output has surged since mid-2025 and is now approaching +2% — the strongest growth since the post-COVID rebound.

So why isn’t anyone talking about it?

Partly because it’s invisible in the jobs data. Manufacturing payrolls have been declining. If you only look at employment, you’d think the sector is still struggling.

But flat jobs + rising output = productivity growth. The sector is producing significantly more with fewer workers.

This is one more piece of evidence that the productivity acceleration story is real and broadening beyond tech. The gains are showing up in hard, measurable output, but not in headcount.

Source: Federal Reserve Board