I'm so confused

 

 Libertarian Bill King spends 90% of his essay on the Fourth of July telling us how joyous, proud, fundamentally good, commonsensical, and apolitical it all was, only to end it by saying a political reckoning can't come soon enough lol.

Here. 

OK Bill. 

Jonathan Turley was writing a pretty good column until he got to "We have allowed U.S. citizenship to become a mere commodity for the most affluent or unscrupulous among us"

He never mentions that with one hand Trump wants to end birthright citizenship in this court case and with the other sell citizenship to 37 million foreigners at $1 million each to nearly wipe out the national debt.

I say nearly because the national debt has exploded to $39 trillion since Trump first proposed this crackpot gimmick in February 2025. 

Trump's only ideas about America are about money and getting more of it.

Turley tries to square the circle but remains no friend of the blood and soil conservatives who framed the constitution for "our posterity".
 

Our Own Birthright: We May Need To Amend Constitution

Jonathan Turley, The Hill

 

... After our Revolution, one leading Frenchman known as John Hector St. John wrote a popular book that asked: “What then is the American, this new man?”

 

The answer to that question was obvious at our founding. We were the world’s first true enlightenment revolution — a republic founded on natural rights that came not from the government but God. We did not have a shared bond of land, culture, religion, or history. We were a people founded on a legacy of ideas; a people joined by common articles of faith in natural, unalienable rights. ... 

The New York Times on the global economy had me and then it lost me

Because it, like too many commentators, uses an obsolete dollar index in DXY, which measures dollar strength or weakness relative to just SIX currencies: EUR, JPY (!), GBP (!), CAD (!), SEK (!), CHF (!).

 

The Federal Reserve has developed broader indices weighted to the countries the U.S. trades with the most.

 

U.S. GDP is $31.1 trillion. 

EURO ZONE GDP: $16.5 trillion.

Japan: $4.3 trillion.

Great Britain: $3.6 trillion.

Canada: $2.3 trillion.

Sweden: $0.6 trillion.

Switzerland: $1 trillion.

Global GDP: $117 trillion.

 

 The Global Economy’s Warning Signals Are Broken

 

 ... It’s as if cars, instead of slowing down at a flashing yellow light as expected, started speeding up. ...

 

The traditional connection between the American economy’s performance and the value of the dollar has also been snapped. Uncertainty tends to increase the dollar’s value compared with other currencies as investors seek a safe haven in risky times. But the dollar has sunk to its lowest level in years. ...

 

Analysts backed down on their predictions that Mr. Trump’s tariff blitz last spring would cause higher prices ... 

 

Even by DXY standards, the dollar is not weak at 97, well within its long term average range between 95 and 105.

 

And The New York Times is ignoring that wholesale prices increased at a higher rate in 2025 than in either 2024 or 2023. 

 

Anyway, you know what happens when people ignore the flashing yellow:

 

Traffic fatalities surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research highlights the fact that disadvantaged communities bore the brunt of the increase and calls for holistic solutions to promote equitable access to safe transportation.