George Rebane

Trump is being played by Putin for all to see, and the man has finally stumbled into one of his blind spots, apparently without a clue.  In brokering the Ukraine/Russia peace he is announcing daily progress with Russia, who continues to bomb the crap out of Ukraine’s civilian centers, and dunning Zelensky for being “difficult”.  The difficulty lies in Trump’s wanting to give Russia all of its conquered Ukrainian territories, including Crimea, while not requiring any concessions from Putin that would be politically palatable to make public.  In short, the KGB thug is taking Trump on an embarrassing ride who is belatedly realizes that he’s being viewed as a dolt in the world’s eyes.

Trump’s trade wars are not going well.  He has received offers to negotiate from over 70 countries but none are promising any near-term mutually beneficial results.  Meanwhile, the president has had to stand down on the levels and application dates of his precipitously announced tariffs.  Rebane doctrine follows the teaching of the Austrian school on tariffs as made clear in these pages.  Overall they are bad medicine for world trade, and soon we’ll see if they can even serve as useful stakes in the ground for starting negotiations.  The markets remain conditionally hopeful.

On the political front a hopeful sign.  The Democrats, currently sans leaders and public policies, are getting more convinced daily that they should hand the reins over to a younger generation of socialists cum communists.  The latter conclusion supported by their growing howls to punish the producers and the ‘rich’ by spreading wealth to their loyal voter blocks of light thinkers kept ensconced in urban ghettos ruled by Democrat demagogues.  In the meantime by their silence today's prominent Democrats quietly support their radical cohorts in acts of violence against Republican leaders and conservative business interests.  This will not bode well for the Left in 2026.

An idea to oppose pro-terrorist and antisemitic violence on campuses.  The students who oppose Islam-supported terror and support Israel and world Jewry should do what the Danes did during WW2 when their occupying Nazis mandated that all Jews should wear a yellow Star of David armband when in public.  The Danes’ response was that everyone, Christians and Jews, turned out wearing the required armbands.  Imitating the brave and unflinching Danes would send a strong message to the country that these pro-terrorist campus radicals do not represent the institutions’ student bodies.