The people who gave us $6 per gallon diesel now want to be elected because diesel is punishingly expensive.

Luis Gonzalez | October 4, 2026

So here we are, with diesel at $6 a gallon.

Listening to the political conversation, you could easily come away thinking this all started when Iran went to war. In fact, it didn’t. Iran supplied the shock, but we had already built the vulnerability, which is a key distinction.

Yes, the war in the Middle East has disrupted oil flows and tightened global supplies. The Energy Information Administration says that tight global distillate supplies and elevated crude prices are pushing diesel prices higher. U.S. distillate inventories have fallen below their five-year range, while the loss of significant refining and petroleum-product supplies worldwide has tightened the market.

However, while that explains why diesel prices are so high right now, it doesn’t explain how we became so vulnerable to price shocks.

The reality is that America still produces enormous quantities of crude oil. The trouble is that crude oil is not diesel. Before it reaches the tank of the truck delivering your groceries, somebody has to transport it, refine it, and distribute it—and that brings us to the question nobody seems especially interested in asking:

What happened to the refineries?

The newest major U.S. refinery came online in 1977.

There is a technical footnote here. A 45,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Galveston began operating in 2022. Forty-five thousand barrels a day. In the world of American refining, that is practically a microbrewery.

The newest refinery with significant downstream capacity, then, is Marathon’s Garyville, Louisiana, refinery, which began operating in 1977. It has since been expanded to roughly 617,000 barrels per day.

That is one heck of a long stretch between major new refineries.

For decades, we made the fossil-fuel business increasingly difficult, expensive, and politically uncertain. Different presidents pursued different policies, but the general direction was the same: away from fossil fuels. It’s been exceptionally bad in those Democrat-run states, which expressly announced their desire to decrease fossil fuel production. California, for example, had 38 operating refineries in 1982; as of this year, it has only 12, a 68% reduction in capacity.

That is one heck of a long stretch between major new refineries.

For decades, we made the fossil-fuel business increasingly difficult, expensive, and politically uncertain. Different presidents pursued different policies, but the general direction was the same: away from fossil fuels. It’s been exceptionally bad in those Democrat-run states, which expressly announced their desire to decrease fossil fuel production. California, for example, had 38 operating refineries in 1982; as of this year, it has only 12, a 68% reduction in capacity.

However, unlike California, a government does not have to announce, “Shut it down.” There are quieter ways to accomplish much the same thing. Make the business harder and more expensive through regulation. Make construction of a new refinery so uncertain, and potentially so unprofitable, that sinking billions of dollars into the industry’s future starts looking like a bad bet.

And of course, investors notice these things changes and react accordingly.

They notice when politicians describe an industry as yesterday’s technology. They notice when regulations increase costs, when permitting becomes a years-long obstacle course, and when a multibillion-dollar refinery has to be evaluated against the possibility that the political environment will turn against it before the investment has paid for itself.

At some point, a perfectly sensible question arises: Why build another refinery?

But before asking why nobody is building new refineries, take a look at what happened to the ones we already had. They’re a loud warning to investors about what will happen to their money.

In 2025, LyondellBasell ended refining operations at its Houston refinery, which had a capacity of about 264,000 barrels per day. Phillips 66 shut its Los Angeles refinery, another 139,000 barrels per day. Valero’s 145,000-barrel-per-day Benicia refinery followed.

No slogan is necessary here. The arithmetic speaks quite nicely for itself.

The EIA says U.S. operable refining capacity fell by more than 250,000 barrels per day between January 2025 and January 2026, with two fewer operable refineries.

Iran did not shut down Houston, Los Angeles, or Benicia. Iran did not decide America should not build another major refinery.

And Iran did not spend decades telling investors that fossil fuels were an industry on its way out. We did that.

Now we are surprised that the cushion is gone. However, this is exactly what happens when an industry becomes less attractive to investors. Eventually, the investors behave accordingly. 

Bill Clinton brought a new generation of environmental and fuel regulations. Barack Obama imposed additional regulatory pressure, although American oil production nonetheless rose dramatically during his presidency. Joe Biden openly discussed transitioning away from the oil industry and paused new federal oil and gas leasing while his administration reviewed the federal program.

We saw different presidents with different policies, but the investment signal was clear enough. And, logically enough, investors listen. So, now we have a geopolitical crisis, and everybody has suddenly rediscovered the importance of energy security.

The White House currently describes domestic petroleum production, refining, and logistics capacity as essential to national defense. Its April determination cited constrained financing, long lead times, permitting and infrastructure bottlenecks, and supply-chain limitations as obstacles to expanding that capacity.

Good. Because that is the problem. But recognizing the problem today does not erase the road we traveled to get here.

Trump is president during this crisis, so he owns the response. But voters must remember he didn’t create the decades of accumulated refining constraints that existed before he entered the White House, although you wouldn’t know it from the political sales pitch from the same people who spent years pushing America toward reduced dependence on fossil fuels.

The people who gave us six-dollar-a-gallon diesel now want to be elected because diesel is six dollars a gallon. The architects of the vulnerability are campaigning on its consequences.

Diesel moves trucks. It powers tractors and construction equipment. It moves freight, supports manufacturing, and provides backup power. When diesel becomes more expensive, those additional costs eventually filter into almost everything those machines touch.

So this is about more than diesel. It’s about the cost of pretending infrastructure doesn’t matter until the day you desperately need it. 

You cannot spend decades discouraging an industry from expanding and then profess astonishment when it stops expanding. You cannot tell investors that an industry is disappearing and then complain when they stop building the infrastructure that industry needs. And you cannot shrink the cushion for years and then blame the next geopolitical crisis because the cushion is gone.

Before accepting the next political sales pitch about who can fix the six-dollar diesel problem, perhaps we ought to look at the whole receipt.

The people who gave us $6 per gallon diesel now want to be elected because diesel is $6 per gallon. There is something almost impressive about that chutzpah.

Iran supplied the shock, but we built the vulnerability, and it has far-reaching consequences. Diesel moves trucks, powers tractors and construction equipment, moves freight, supports manufacturing, and provides backup power. When diesel gets more expensive, the added cost works its way into almost everything those machines touch, usually sooner than people expect.

You cannot spend decades discouraging an industry from expanding and then be genuinely surprised when it does not expand very much. You cannot keep telling investors that an industry is on its way out and then complain when they decide not to put billions of dollars into new infrastructure for it. And if you spend years reducing the cushion, well, the next geopolitical crisis is going to hurt more than it otherwise would have.

American Thinker

To judge from many of the comments on this site, a substantial number of readers have difficulty understanding the sophisticated modes of thinking of the New York progressive. Looking at New York’s official progressive orthodoxy in action, these readers often see illogic and inconsistencies that seem to make no sense at all. And yet, despite the apparent internal contradictions, the New York progressives themselves generally achieve near or even complete unanimity as to many of the important policies that they seek to implement. How does this work?

We need to take a deeper look. So I thought for today it would be useful to examine some recent policies touted by the progressive crowd, to see what insights we can glean about exactly how they think about the world.

As a starting example, there is the proposal of our boy Mayor Zohran Mamdani to solve the problem of “affordability” of groceries by opening five large City-owned stores to sell groceries more cheaply. I wrote about this proposal in my post of September 2, titled “Here’s An Idea To Get 30% Cheaper Groceries In New York Without Taxpayer Subsidies: Allow Walmart!” The post reported on a big City announcement on July 28 of a plan to spend tens of millions of dollars to open the new stores, with the announcement specifically claiming that a “core basket of everyday groceries” would be “30 percent cheaper” at the City-owned stores. And yet, the post reported, the same progressive crowd had been fighting — successfully! — for decades to keep Walmart out of New York City. And meanwhile a big Consumer Reports study from February 2026 had found grocery prices at Walmart to average about 30% less than prices at some other large chains with big market shares in the City.

Are the opposition to Walmart and the simultaneous support for subsidized City-owned stores just completely inconsistent? Or is there a deeper logic that we are missing?

Consider now the next pair of seemingly inconsistent policies. On the one hand, there is a major push in New York State to reduce the use of energy from the burning of fossil fuels, and instead to force the use of electricity for these purposes. And, by a “push” toward electrification, I mean a series of statutory and regulatory provisions to make electrification mandatory in various big sectors, and thus drive up the demand for electricity by some very large amount.

By far the two largest electrification mandates come from: (1) a regulation mandating that large and increasing percentages of vehicles sold in New York become fully electric, and (2) a New York City statute, known as Local Law 97, mandating electric heat for all large buildings beginning in 2030. The electric vehicle mandate is found in the so-called “Advanced Clean Cars II” rule, which is 6 N.Y.C.R.R. Part 218. It mandates that 35% of all automobile sales in 2026 be EVS, with the percentages increasing each year until reaching 100% in 2035.

By the way, EV sales in New York State are nowhere near the 35% mandated for this year. Here we are in October, and sales of EVs are running around 8-10% of the market. But don’t worry, the Department of Environmental Conservation has announced a two-year “enforcement pause” of the regulation, to give the automobile industry time to catch up. When that “enforcement pause” expires in 2028, the required percentage of sales that must be EVs will supposedly be 51%.

According to an analysis by Modo Energy of NYISO data, building and vehicle electrification are projected to add some 92 TWh of demand for electricity in New York by 2050. This would be in addition to current annual demand of about 140 TWh, or about a 66% increase over current demand.

But there is also another potential driver of increased electricity demand in New York, which NYISO and Modo Energy call “large loads.” Mainly, this would be new data centers. The Modo Energy analysis projects them to add some 10.8 TWh of annual demand to the State grid by 2030, after which building and vehicle “electrification become the dominant growth driver.” So the projected additional demand from these “large loads” is a small fraction of the projected additions from building and vehicle electrification.

And what is New York policy as to these large loads? Simple: Governor Hochul has just put a moratorium on building any more of them. Here is Governor Hochul’s July 14 release announcing the moratorium on what she calls “new hyperscale data centers.” The first reason given for the moratorium is to “protect ratepayers.” Protection of ratepayers is obviously necessary because the large increase in electricity demand from these “hyperscale data centers” is very likely to drive up the cost of electricity.

So building and vehicle electrification are mandatory, while new “hyperscale data centers” are forbidden, at least for now. But won’t the much large increase in demand from the building and vehicle electrification drive up the cost of electricity far more? Our Governor has so far not offered an answer to that question.

And then there is seeming inconsistency number three. Back on June 25, a City body called the Rent Guidelines Board, at the behest of Mayor Mamdani, imposed a one-year rent freeze on the entire stock of rent-regulated apartments in New York City, approximately 1 million units. That means that the landlord of any such unit where the lease is up in the next year must offer the tenant a renewal lease at no rent increase.

Now, just a couple of days ago on September 30, our Mayor announced that the City Housing Authority, known as NYCHA, had closed on a financing deal to renovate one of the City’s dozens of housing projects, known as Nostrand Houses. The financing amounts to some $607 million, and will fully renovate the 1,148 units in the complex. Wait a minute, that’s almost $530,000 per unit! After which the residents will still be living in one of those hideous brick high-rise “projects.” Zillow reports that the median price of a single family house in the U.S. as of August 31 was $388,697. So why not buy each of the NYCHA tenants at Nostrand Houses a nice median-priced house in some reasonably-priced market, and tear down the Nostrand Houses and start over? Because that’s not how we do it in New York.

The City press release does not disclose the interest rate to be paid on the $607 million financing. But assuming they could get the money at 5%, and that there are no cost overruns, and that the tenants paid the cost of the financing, this financing would add some $2203 per month to the rent for each tenant. Current average monthly rents for NYCHA are about $600.

I’ll suggest a few principles of progressive thought that can reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable circumstances:

– The world is divided into the oppressors on one side, and the oppressed and their champions on the other. Whatever oppressors do is bad, and whatever the oppressed and their champions do is virtuous. Walmart is obviously an oppressor. Mamdani is a champion of the oppressed. Data center developers and utilities are oppressors. Promoters of “climate” legislation and green energy are champions of the oppressed. Private landlords are oppressors. NYCHA is a champion of the oppressed. Are you starting to see how this works?

– And then of course there is the principle that taxpayer funds are infinite and can be spent freely without any need to pay attention to costs or tradeoffs.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

An online quiz suggests that constant concern about fire or burglary in your home or about catching a disease could be signs of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Though some attention to detail is perfectly reasonable and even necessary to avoid misfortune, the quiz also includes questions about ritualized washing and repetition of routine actions like turning off lights, locking doors, etc. — things that might not be quite so reasonable.

So, where does attention to detail leave off, and OCD begin? Is it obsessive to regularly wash your hands so you won’t get sick? Is it obsessive to check your email every hour? Is it compulsive to stand staring at your toilet while waiting for it to fill? Do you worry about the oven being on — every time you leave home? Let’s face it: All of us have our little tics and fixations. Whether it involves our personal space or our workplace, we usually feel most comfortable when things are “in order.”

The need for tidiness and organization is often a need for control, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. Those of you who read this column regularly know that I equate control with confidence and self-responsibility. Without it, the path leading to our goals and happiness can be blocked by unnecessary obstacles.

Over the years, I’ve seen many people whose need for control has become an impediment to the basic routines of everyday life. Their compulsions and phobias are sometimes so devastating that they can’t even leave the house, much less drive, shop or interact socially.

The Obsessive Compulsive Foundation (www.ocfoundation.org) defines OCD as a neurobiological (physical) problem, as opposed to a psychological (mental) one. But they also acknowledge that no genetic or other link to physiology has yet been established. Whatever the cause, all obsessions involve out-of-control thoughts or impulses to do certain things over and over again. Compulsions are the actions that OCD people take in order to reduce their anxiety over these thoughts and impulses. The actions don’t make sense, and the person with OCD fully understands this, yet he or she feels compelled to perform them anyway.

You don’t have OCD simply because you wash your hands more than average or take extra care to make sure the table is set properly for guests. OCD is a time-eater. Repetitive rituals reinforce the obsessive thoughts; the obsessive thoughts generate more ritualistic behaviors, giving rise to a vicious psychological cycle. A person without OCD might check the lock a second time after leaving the house, and at that point the anxiety is largely over. Conversely, a person with OCD checks the lock — over and over — but the anxiety doesn’t go away. He or she might spend an hour in the bathroom washing and rewashing. Years ago I worked with a woman who had to be admitted to the hospital because she had literally washed the skin off her hands and arms. She knew what she was doing, but she did it anyway.

It’s important to understand that there is no literal cure for OCD by taking medication or going to therapy. However, therapy can be crucial for helping to manage the problem. With persistence, the intrusive thoughts and impulsive actions can go into remission for periods of time. However, even people who feel they are cured will sometimes experience some reawakening of their symptoms during times of severe stress. Research suggests that some antidepressant medications can help by controlling the neurotransmitter known as serotonin, but research has also shown that just controlling serotonin is not enough. Behavioral and cognitive strategies, with guidance from a skilled psychotherapist, can go a long way toward bringing relief.

One of life’s challenges is to take risks, and we need to be aware of what’s happening around us in order to ensure our safety. But this awareness cannot be allowed to run amok. So we keep life interesting and tread a middle ground between risk and safety; all the while keeping a watchful eye on our behaviors and our psychological health.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

Please remember something: Elections are a consequence, not a cause.

Radicalized Democrat totalitarians cannot destroy a free people without their consent.

The basic questions here: Do people want to be free, or not? Do they want to live, or not?

The Democrats are now so explicit about their desire to wreck everything we have that giving them an electoral victory is a collective act of suicide.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

For nearly two decades, Lesney Products ruled the world’s pockets and playrooms. Born in a bombed-out London pub garage after the war, this British firm turned die-cast metal into pure childhood gold, selling hundreds of millions of tiny cars under the Matchbox name and building a monopoly so complete that “Matchbox” became the generic word for toy car itself, the way “Hoover” meant vacuum cleaner. Their factories in Hackney and Kentish Town ran round the clock, their sales curves only pointed skyward, and their executives believed, with total conviction, that no one could ever touch them.

Then in 1968 an American toy giant called Mattel launched something called Hot Wheels, and Lesney’s leadership looked at the garish candy paint jobs and laughed them off as cheap gimmicks unworthy of a serious British toymaker. It was the single costliest laugh in toy industry history. Because while Lesney was admiring its own paint quality, Mattel had engineered thin, low friction wire axles that let their cars scream down plastic tracks at speeds Matchbox toys could never dream of, while Lesney’s thick, slow axles left their beloved die-cast cars barely able to roll across a carpet. Kids didn’t care about authenticity or detail. They cared about speed, and speed was the one thing Matchbox refused to give them.

What followed was not a slow fade but a rapid unraveling, as market share evaporated seemingly overnight, debts piled up faster than any recovery plan could address, and a company that once defined an entire toy category collapsed into bankruptcy within a decade of that fateful boardroom laugh. This is the story of how one arrogant miscalculation about a piece of bent wire ended a British manufacturing empire, and what the fall of Matchbox reveals about the brutal cost of underestimating your competition.

Lost Industries

Feelings are valued, they’re celebrated, more than rational thought is. People with deeply emotional political feelings are certain they have winning arguments. Let’s engage them.

You hate Trump so, so much? Well, that settles it.

And you feel that criminals shouldn’t languish behind bars, even after committing two or however many crimes? Oh, your feelings reflect true justice.

In your heart, you believe that about 15 million people (twice the population of New Jersey) living in the U.S. illegally deserve sanctuaries from immigration enforcement, ones defended by street protestors. . . and they should be given benefits not available to American citizens . . . and their criminal history shouldn’t be held against them? Golly, your kind heart has won the day!

A political approach based on feelings tends to be antithetical to one based on thought. Everywhere from New York dinner parties to Minneapolis streets to California faculty lounges, the feelings approach wages a weepy war to redefine American government.

They’re demanding more now: more apologies, more influence, more guaranteed income. They feel the need for nothing less than a new type of government.

You might have heard of one episode in the founding of American government. It occurred in a brief 1787 exchange between Philadelphian Elizabeth Powel, then the country’s most politically influential woman, and Benjamin Franklin, a Pennsylvania delegate to the Constitutional Convention. Powel asked Franklin whether the delegates to the convention were giving the country a monarchy or a republic. Franklin’s cautionary reply became famous: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

In today’s terms, Franklin’s “keep it” bequest could be deemed at-risk. The feelings crowd is now pushing for a socialist republic, which of course would soon become all socialist, no republic. Through angry performances on streets and campuses, they’re campaigning for reverting the American republic that has survived for 239 years to a Russian model that collapsed after just 74 years.

“Progressives” call this progress.

Democrats, Democratic Socialists, and closet Marxists love the feelings-vs-thoughts debate because their partner media always declare the feelings are winning it. Those of us on the other side can only use reasoned thought and language to fight the battle. And while doing so, we’re characterized as coldly intellectual or just plain mean.

Here’s a realistic way to understand this battle. Forget party labels; it’s actually about capitalism versus socialism. Though socialism is fatally flawed and a serial historical disaster, it can never be killed. It’s the Freddy Krueger of utopian dreamers.

Have you ever tried to defend capitalism, especially to a Felicia Feelings-type leftist? Capitalism is actually a tough case to make to meager intellects, especially in an era when critical reading is overwhelmed by critical TV viewing.

Leftists have come to see capitalism as a relic of the nineteenth century, a scheme still run by an evil consortium. The well-read few among them attribute capitalism’s creation to ruthless corporate barons like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and some railroad tycoons. The larger number whose reading list leans toward holiday fables think of capitalism as the product of America’s Ebeneezer Scrooges.

And they maintain a rosy view of socialism by ignoring twentieth century history. Pay no attention to those socialist regimes behind the curtain, Dorothy!

The regimes are all failures. The big one, the failed empire, was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Western Hemisphere model is Fidel’s socialist revolution in Cuba, still working on making that revolution airtight and still delaying the free elections he promised in 1960.

Then there was Venezuela. Pity the voters who in 1999 thought Hugo Chavez’ socialist “economic justice” would enrich them. In 2016, they began seeking protein justice by stealing zoo animals. Buen provencho!

The efficient complex of capitalism is today represented in simple images, the establishment favorite being greedy, scowling businessmen. How many TV programs and movies have you seen that portray business characters favorably? Villainous business storylines outnumber pro-business storylines by at least four-to-one. though the margin seems larger than that, especially in big productions.

Greedy corporate executives and sinister investors provide archetypal fiends. They’re popular villains among the audience of arrested-development adults who find heroes in comic book figures. A capitalist monster movie won an Academy Award for Michael Douglas for his portrayal of Wall Street baddie Gordon Gekko.

You’d think that a big-budget movie would be made about globe-conquering currency manipulator George Soros, “the man who broke the Bank of England.” In character and behavior, he resembles a villain in a James Bond movie. He could be Dr. No No-Bail.

But leftist media mostly ignore Soros or cast him as just a kindly billionaire who taps into his fortune to elect Democrat prosecutors and judges with a compassionate style of law enforcement. That prosecution laxity is approved by city voters who’ve never been mugged.

And how have deep-feeling politicians been evaluated by the deep-feelings media? Special care had to be taken with one political lifer.

That doddering fellow was shown poignant appreciation by the newspaper of record. Endorsing Joe Biden in the 2020 election, The New York Times cooed “time and loss have softened his edges.” It observed that Biden “speaks the language of suffering and compassion with a raw intimacy, making deep emotional connections across lines of race and class.” Columnist Jamelle Bouie remarked that the Democrats’ convention framed Biden as a leader “who seeks to provide and protect, while also showing empathy.”

After Joe’s election, the Times hailed Biden’s victory with “the people have chosen empathy.”

Can you hear the soundtrack behind the Times’ screenplay there? It’s a thousand surging strings, a Barry Manilow symphony.

As the Biden basement era progressed and America’s population boomed through its southern border, empathy remained a major priority. CNN described Biden as a leader who is “all empathy, wearing his heart on his sleeve.” As the network’s viewership kept declining, the remaining couch dwellers heard the president reassuringly described as the “comforter-in-chief.”

Do you need a hankie? Maybe an airsickness bag? Let’s move on with feeling to his hyper-emotive would-be successor.

Following her democratic anointing, Kamala’s presidential campaign focused significantly on the subject of “joy,” proposing increases in national joyfulness, and being championed by Joy Reid (the most hatred-oriented comedian ever).

And Kamala’s speeches featured one memorable statement of her belief in several joyous variations. Here’s a montage of her most famous statement.

And recall Kamala’s VP running mate Tim Walz — quickly, before he disappears into a think tank that discourages thinking. (He’s still somehow the Governor of Minnesota.) Walz entered 2024 presidential campaign rallies waving his hands like a giddy cheerleader. Equally disturbing, he was apparently managing his state’s 10-figure — possibly 11-figure — fraud by immigrant Somali entrepreneurs the same way: by happily waving his hands.

Walz at a 2024 Vice-Presidential debate: “Donald Trump makes the people I care about afraid.” Now, that is emotion-only politics. The relevant point isn’t just what saps in Minnesota feel; it’s what Governor Walz feels about their feelings.

A triumphantly successful politician can even feel deeply about the hard facts of economics. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had those feelings of empathy for ordinary Americans (folks unable to make $130 million in stock market gains as she and her husband / stock partner had by legislation-driven whiplashes in the stock market).

Pelosi emphasized the breadth of her ordinary-Americans empathy in a 2009 Capitol Hill press conference, tugging heartstrings and challenging census accounts by emoting, “Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package, five hundred million Americans will lose their jobs.”

The deep feelings of The New York Times, Biden, Harris, Walz, Pelosi and fellow compassion machines continue being exercised in the service of causes once called “liberal” (though censoriously illiberal), now called “democratic socialist” (though the Marxists in that closet can hardly wait to come out), and on the currently hip trajectory (soon to be revealed as the reanimation of Lenin’s corpse).

Capitalism isn’t supported by pseudonyms. It doesn’t have the nitwit optimism of socialist promises. No, capitalism has just waged a quiet, incredibly successful global crusade against poverty for over two centuries. You can try your best to present evidence of this improvement in human society to a campus mob or an elegant garden party, but you should temper your expectations.

Tell them anyway: Capitalism has been the economic system eradicating poverty worldwide. It doesn’t reinforce poverty as socialism/ communism does. Capitalism inherently functions to encourage the virtues of human character, rather than magnifying human weaknesses commune-style. (Just ask a former member of a commune or kibbutz.) Capitalism is the political philosophy of a healthy, productive society, contrasting dramatically to socialism’s lament of losers.

Socialists are unable to understand how humanely capitalism works. They’re too busy explaining how their system has never been tried properly and ignoring that it’s enforced by dimwitted bureaucrats. And ignoring California.

The United States nears this year’s midterm elections with the very real possibility that these closet Marxists calling themselves Democratic Socialists will win a national foothold from which to destroy the republic. The bad news is that their deep-feeling broadcasts might defeat the rare national product of healthy traditional values and education. The good news is that people with those values and education can still fight back, and a poorly educated generation might learn worldly reality.

David Bittinger, John Kass News

President Donald Trump said he doesn’t care what the polls and the “fake news” are showing: he is confident the Republicans are going to shock the world — and the Democrats, in particular — and perform much better than expected in the 2026 midterm elections. The president struck an optimistic tone while rallying for the GOP in Vandalia, Ohio on Saturday evening. He said Republicans will be just fine, as long as conservatives don’t stay at home on Election Day.

“They’re in for a big surprise. It’s very simple: You gotta get out and vote. You gotta get out. You gotta vote for these guys,” Trump urged. “If you do that, we’re gonna win and we’re gonna win big.” Trump then lifted his right arm and gestured to the reporters at the event, whom he accused of working with the “Dumocrats” to rig the election. “And we’re gonna shove it up their ***, okay?” Trump declared.

The feisty comment drew a big roar from the MAGA crowd. It came as the president bashed some of his favorite targets, from CNN star Kaitlan Collins to ex-Vice President Kamala Harris to progressive Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (D). Trump mocked “Talafreako” for being a “vegan all his life,” only to pivot and start going to barbecues “all the time” to cynically appeal to Texans. “What they don’t show is he goes to the back of the tent every time and he’s throwing up all over the place,” Trump quipped. “He’s not for meat.”

As for Collins, Trump kept his feud going with the anchor by calling her out — a move which prompted some hearty boos from the crowd. “She’s such an unhappy person,” Trump said. “She’s a young, nice person, but she never smiles. She’s a very unhappy person.”

Trump then lifted his right arm and gestured to the reporters at the event, whom he accused of working with the “Dumocrats” to rig the election. “And we’re gonna shove it up their ***, okay?” Trump declared. The feisty comment drew a big roar from the MAGA crowd. It came as the president bashed some of his favorite targets, from CNN star Kaitlan Collins to ex-Vice President Kamala Harris to progressive Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (D).

Trump mocked “Talafreako” for being a “vegan all his life,” only to pivot and start going to barbecues “all the time” to cynically appeal to Texans. “What they don’t show is he goes to the back of the tent every time and he’s throwing up all over the place,” Trump quipped. “He’s not for meat.”

As for Collins, Trump kept his feud going with the anchor by calling her out — a move which prompted some hearty boos from the crowd. “She’s such an unhappy person,” Trump said. “She’s a young, nice person, but she never smiles. She’s a very unhappy person.”

Trump’s stumping in Ohio comes as pretty much every major poll shows the Dems ahead of Republicans on the generic congressional ballot. The Dem lead comes even after CNN chief data guru Harry Enten reported liberals “despise” party leaders like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY). To make sure the Democrats don’t flip Congress, Trump made a simple plea to the crowd: “If you don’t mind, please pretend that I’m on the ballot.”

Sean James, Mediaite

Iranian Regime national tv Channel One hacked about an hour ago. During a broadcast of Khamenie speech, a red crosshair appeared over his face and chanting of Women. Life. Freedom. There was writing to the side saying “Rise up. Join us”. Also 4 photos at the bottom of the screen of young people killed and additional writing: “The blood of our youth is dropping from your paws”.

Also, there was a huge banner in the middle of Tehran highway today that read: We are no longer afraid of you. We will fight.

Also, attempted attack on IRI ambassador in Denmark. Her bodyguard was stabbed. Diplomatic Security intervened before the attacker could stab the ambassador.

Various

Carney and Burnham are Dumb and Dumber.

J.B. Shurk | September 30, 2026

Vladimir Putin

Commie Canada and the dis-United Kingdom should be renamed the “Dumb and Dumber” of the British Commonwealth.  

King Charles III’s North American prime minister, Mark Carney, ran to The New York Times last week to talk about his military combat preparations against the United States in the event that President Trump crosses Lake America and liberates Canada from its delusional leaders.  What a showboating dunce.  The U.S. singlehandedly sustains Canada’s economy and national security, yet the tiny central banker huffed and puffed in a hilariously Napoleonic display of fake strength.  

In the same interview with the failing Times, Con-man Carney outlined his intent to integrate Canada’s economy with that of China and the European Union and to replace the U.S. Dollar with a China-linked global reserve currency.  Rhetorically defending Canada’s sovereignty while insulting his U.S. benefactor, Little Mark Carney explained how he would subjugate his socialist nanny-state to Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping and unelected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.  Mark is the global mascot for “educated” idiots everywhere.

Not to be outdone by not-so-Great Britain’s Canadian cousin, U.K. Prime Minister Poindexter (er, I mean Andy Burnham) informed the United Nations General Assembly last week that his government was constructing yet another speech-police organization (this one given the august name, “National Centre for Information Defence,” which should not be confused with the “Research, Information, and Communications Unit,” the “Government Communication Service,” the “Counter Disinformation Unit,” the “Defending Democracy Taskforce,” the “Information Threats and Influence Directorate,” the “Rapid Response Unit,” the “National Cyber Force and Social Cohesion Taskforce,” the “Media Monitoring Unit,” or any of the other information-control agencies already mobilized across totalitarian Britain) to protect the British people from scary thoughts and words.  Burnham blamed the Russians for spreading “a narrative of decline, stoking division, and sowing despair” in the U.K. (and definitely not Westminster’s promotion of decline, division, and despair!) and promised to counteract this “information warfare” by censoring Britons’ public speech and feeding his collapsing country a steady diet of State-sanctioned propaganda.  In order to beat back the Russians, Dilapidated Britain must have its very own digital Iron Curtain!  Two cheers for democracy!  Hip hip…who cares.

The British people are screwed.  On average, their government grants settlement or citizenship to an illegal alien every single minute.  These foreign nationals receive more welfare from British taxpayers than ever before.  The third-world invaders (I mean, “newcomers”) use Britain’s streets as public toilets.  Rather than securing the kingdom’s borders, the Home Office hands out a nine-page booklet informing mostly-Muslim men of military age that it is illegal to rape women and children while they conquer the islands.  In the last two years alone, the number of illegal immigrants (and future citizens!) arriving by boat has exceeded the size of the entire British Army!  But if these outrageous facts disturb you enough to publicly express your feelings on social media, you will most likely join the roughly 65,000 Brits who have been arrested for “speech-related offenses” over the last five years.  Foreign invasion?  Good!  Free speech?  Very bad!

Apparently, the British police state also plans to imprison anyone who would rather not fight WWIII against the Russian Federation.  During a recent episode of former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg’s “State of the Nation” on GB News, one leftist-globalist commentator in favor of mass conscription argued, “We would have to lock a few people up…some of the pro-Russian voices, people saying there isn’t a threat, don’t fight for your country, don’t go to war for Burnham, we’ll have to lock ‘em up.”  Rather than responding with horror at the suggestion that his fellow Britons should be imprisoned for opposing a catastrophic war, Rees-Mogg pedantically replied, “Well, we suspended habeas corpus during the Napoleonic Wars…indeed, yes.”  In another interview, Rees-Mogg nonchalantly remarked that British citizens have a “duty” to “die” for Britain in a war against Russia.

In Burnham and Rees-Mogg’s Britain, the only way to “defend democracy” is to imprison anyone who disagrees with the British Establishment and to sacrifice everyone else to the killing fields!  The British Isles might as well be renamed the “Gulag Archipelago.”

Interestingly, GB News — which leans conservative — discovered last week that Britain’s media regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), had covered up data showing that viewers trust GB News more than the BBC.  GB News, in fact, is ranked above all other networks with regard to viewpoint diversity and impartiality.  British authorities apparently did not want the public to know these inconvenient truths because the BBC is treated as an objective, trustworthy, and premier source of news (fact check: false!).  In an effort to control the public’s perception of the BBC, Ofcom restricted what information the public was permitted to know.  P.M. Burnham takes the “defense of information” very seriously!

How seriously?  Burnham and the British government force citizens to pay for the BBC’s awful dreck whether they watch it or not!  Every household in the U.K. must fork over a £180 license fee to the BBC each year.  Because more households are refusing to pay the license, the government is considering the imposition of a mandatory £11-a-month Internet tax in order to keep the BBC’s fake news funded.  The BBC says that the “fee is essential for maintaining the quality and diversity of public broadcasting in the UK.”  

What does “quality and diversity” look like at the BBC?  Two “reporters” just did a major exposé describing how women who don’t polish their nails perpetuate “white supremacy.”  No joke!  “Nail art’s historical and creative roots are linked back to black, Latino, and Asian communities and the suggestion that bare nails are now a sign of high status could stigmatise bold manicures,” the BBC “reports.”  “They are often called elegant or tasteful, and these are often usually euphemisms that perpetuate white supremacist standards of beauty.”  Yes, Burnham, force Britain’s working-class to pay for this race-baiting propaganda posing as hard news!

Earlier this year, British authorities announced that YouTube and other social media platforms would be forced to manipulate their algorithms and push BBC “news” to the top of feeds in order to counter “disinformation.”  In other words, Whitehall steals money from British citizens to pay for State-run TV and then forces them to watch it.  During the Cold War, we called that Soviet-style propaganda.  Yet if you ask the fake “reporters” at the BBC, Canada’s publicly-funded CBC, or America’s NPR or PBS, all these propagandists would insist that they have nothing in common with the Soviet Union’s Pravda or the Russian Federation’s RT (Russia Today) News.  In the West, State-funded media are somehow not State media.  Does that sound more like propaganda or breaking news?

Britain’s State-imposed “narrative control” is utterly totalitarian.  Dismissing the “narrative of decline” and “despair” in Britain as a “corrosive narrative…which bears no resemblance to reality” and a “distorted and untrue narrative about Britain,” P.M. Burnham casts all public dissent as “far-right narratives.”  As military historian Professor Michael Rainsborough mocks, “The problem isn’t the problem, the problem is the people noticing the problem.”  Rainsborough points out that right after Burnham rebranded “decline” as “disinformation,” the prime minister laid out a “10-year plan” to fight inflation, housing costs, hopelessness, inequality, and division.  “The narrative of decline,” in other words, “bears no resemblance to reality, although reality apparently requires a 10-year plan.”

Both Canada and Britain are failing.  The public has noticed.  Carney and Burnham wish to whitewash reality with fake “narratives.”  The worse things become, the more difficult it will be for their ministries of truth to succeed.  Expect the BBC to blame Trump, Putin, and “white supremacy.”

J. B. Shurk, American Thinker

“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

The Holy Spirit protects you from false doctrine, but that doesn’t eliminate the need for diligent Bible study.

For the next few days we’ll consider several benefits of Bible study. Today we’ll address the broader question of why Bible study is necessary at all.

Perhaps you know believers who think Bible study is unnecessary. Bible reading, they say, is sufficient because we have the Holy Spirit, who teaches us all things. Often they cite 1 John 2:27 in support of their view: “As for you, the anointing [the Holy Spirit] which you received from [God] abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.”

That passage, however, isn’t implying that Bible study or Bible teachers aren’t necessary. On the contrary, John was exhorting his readers to abide in what they’d already learned (v. 24) and shun only those teachers who deny Christ and try to deceive believers.

The Holy Spirit is the believer’s resident lie detector, granting discernment to shield him or her from false doctrine. Although a Christian may be temporarily confused by false teachers, ultimately he can never drift into apostasy or deny Christ. If anyone does depart from the faith, his departure is proof that he was never a true believer in the first place (v. 19).

The Spirit protects you from error, but you must fulfill your responsibility as a student of the Word. Even a man of Timothy’s spiritual stature needed to study the Word diligently and handle it accurately (2 Tim. 2:15).

I pray that the psalmist’s attitude toward Scripture will be yours as well: “O how I love Thy law! It is my meditation all the day” (Ps. 119:97).

Suggestions for Prayer

-Thank God for His precious Word.

-Ask Him to give you a deeper love for its truths.

For Further Study

-Read Titus 1:7-16 and 2 Timothy 2:2.

-What skills must an overseer have regarding God’s Word?

-Why are those skills necessary?

-Do those skills apply to church leaders only? Explain.

-Are you skilled in handling God’s Word?

John MacArthur, Grace Community Church