Both sides have described the election as a Flight 93 election at times, but I think there’s a better analogy. To find it, we have to look back a bit further than September 11.

At this point, it seems as though the big Republican closing argument is going to be that, sure, gas prices are high, but the Democrats are communists.

Admittedly, there is some truth to this. Graham Platner was a self-described communist, and in one of the rarest of all things, he was a communist with a Nazi tattoo. (Nick Fuentes might be another.) On the other hand, Graham Platner was shown the door a few months ago in one of the smartest moves the Democratic Party has made in recent years.

There are a few Democratic candidates who claim to be socialist, as well as some others, like Abdul El-Sayed, who don’t adopt the label but share many of the policies. It’s true that socialists are not communists, but it’s also true that the dividing line is pretty gray and blurred. “Socialism” can represent anything from the democratic socialism of the wealthy Nordic countries to the hardcore leninism of the Soviet Union (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) and the Cuban and North Korean regimes.

There’s a lot of ground in between those two extremes, and Democrats who take the socialist label tend to skew toward the Scandinavian end. As I pointed out with Platner, however, there are exceptions.

On the other side of the political aisle, Democrats have accused Republicans of being fascists. That’s not a totally new thing, but as I pointed out a while back, Trumpism fits the generally-accepted definition of fascism that includes characteristics such as extreme nationalism, a (would-be) dictator with a cult-like following, and no firm principles other than whatever is best for the tribe. Fascism, of course, was also called national socialism.

An interesting quirk of politics and history is that national socialism isn’t really socialism. The word “socialism” in Hitler’s National Socialist party was a bait and switch, intended to capitalize on socialism’s popularity in 1920’s Germany in an attempt to appeal to the working class as well as middle-class Germans. The two ideologies overlapped in many ways, such as being anti-capitalist and authoritarian, but the Nazis were anti-socialist and anti-liberal.

In the wake of last week’s hullabaloo about Bo French’s racist tweet about college football crowds, Erick Erickson posted an expose’ about the white supremacist infiltration of Republican and Christian Nationalist groups, which traced the ideology of some prominent right-wing activists to Carl Schmitt, a veritable WWII German Nazi. The replies to Erick’s posts on the subject are revealing.

In a way, this year’s election is a matchup of Democratic Socialism versus National Socialism. You know what else had that sort of ideological faceoff? The Spanish Civil War.

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The Spanish Civil War gets short shrift in the American version of world history, but if you’re a World War II buff, you’ve probably at least heard of it. The conflict began in 1936 with a military revolt against Spain’s Republican government. The causes of the war aren’t as relevant to the story here as its conduct. The Nationalists, led by Francisco Franco (if you’re a Saturday Night Live buff, you may remember the old Weekend Update joke, “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead”), fought the Republicans, and each side had its surrogates. (If you want an more backstory on the conflict, I recommend episodes 109 and 110 of the “WWII: Both Sides of the Wire” podcast.)

Once the war started, Nazi Germany used the conflict as a field test for the weapons and tactics that it would use in Europe a few years later. German soldiers and pilots, the Condor Legion, served tours in Spain to get combat experience and “advise” Nationalist troops. On the Republican side, the Soviet Union counterbalanced the fascist aid to the Nationalists.

In many ways, the Spanish Civil War was a cause celebre of the 1930s in much the same way that the Russo-Ukraine War has rallied the world’s support in our own time. Pablo Picasso’s masterpiece, “Guernica,” memorialized the loss of life on the Spanish town of Guernica by a German air raid, and Ernest Hemingway, a war correspondent who covered the conflict, detailed his experiences in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” The United States was officially neutral, but American volunteers formed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight against the Nationalists. Some of these volunteers were communists or socialists, while others just hated fascism.

As Hemingway wrote:

"Are you a communist?"
"No I am an anti-fascist"
"For a long time?"
"Since I have understood fascism."

It may be hard for those who know me know to believe it, but I was once an avid reader of “Soldier of Fortune” magazine (“the journal of professional adventurers”). In addition to covering the conficts of the 1980s, SOF also ran articles about military history and I distinctly remember one letter to the editor about about an article on Spanish Civil War. I can quote the closing lines from memory that succinctly described the war: “The Spanish Civil war was communism versus fascism. Both suck.”

Indeed.

The point here is that when faced with two unpleasant choices, sometimes you still have to choose. The lesser evil is also the greater good to an optimist. (Thanks to Micheal Medved for that insight.) Let’s not bother talking about third parties that have no chance. Sometimes being an adult means making difficult choices.

In 2026, we have a Spanish Civil War sort of choice. I’m not very excited about some of the people on the Democratic side, and I’m not excited about a lot of the Democratic platform.

However, I do understand that the greater danger is the wanna-be dictator and the personality cult who are actually in power and already doing tremendous damage. MAGA fascism is also a greater threat than Democratic socialism because the Republican Party is far more infected with radicalism than the Democrats are. Polling shows that Republicans are still 79 percent MAGA while 55 percent of Democrats viewed socialism favorably in recent polling. Neither stat is anything to brag about.

Like Ernest Hemingway, being an anti-fascist in 2026 may put us temporarily on the same side as some socialists and even some communists. That doesn’t make us communists or socialists; it just means that we see fascism as a more imminent and dangerous threat.

Sinclair Lewis did not say, “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” but the sentiment has proven correct and here we are. It’s up to the American people to correct the course of the country. Like the Spanish Civil War, it can be difficult and unpleasant choice, but there is definitely a right choice.

I’ll close with another Hemingway quote that seems eerily on target these days: “There are many who do not know they are fascists, but will find it out when the time comes.”

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The RealClearPolling 2026 Generic Congressional Vote tracker had Democrats leading 46.1 to 43.8 on May 2, which narrowed to just a 1-point lead on May 22. On September 6th, that had widened to 5.7 points. It now stands at 8.1 points, with Democrats for the first time breaking the plurality mark of 50 percent.

In Texas, Talarico leads Paxton by 2.6; in Michigan, El-Sayed leads Rogers by 2.1. And in blood-red Iowa, Hinson leads Turek by a mere 1.3 points. President Trump’s approval rating is circling the toilet bowl, with 58.7 percent unhappy with his performance in office. Never mind the quality of candidates—Donald Trump is sinking his party’s chances in the midterm elections.

Now let’s talk about the quality of the candidates, at least some of them. Ken Paxton is, charitably, an adulterous slimeball. The fact that he has never lost a statewide election says a lot about Texas. But there’s apparently a line, though I am not sure precisely where it is. At some point, Paxton, who has remained a stalwart Trump toady since before the 2020 attempted auto-golpe, has soured enough voters to run behind.

The president’s continual, transparently illiberal efforts to subvert the election process and throw the results into chaos, have undoubtedly done more damage by motivating more centrist voters to become Team Blue cheerleaders. I don’t think most of these can be won back in the next five weeks.

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Looking at a possible blue wave, the polls are harbingers of a Republican butt-whipping. In the Senate: Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Maine, New Hampshire, Alaska, Georgia, and North Carolina all have blue leading. John E. Sununu, of the Granite State’s political dynasty, trails Rep. Chris Pappas by 4.8 points. The fact that Pappas is openly gay was played in some PAC ads, which only serve to make Pappas more popular in frozen chosen, socially liberal, “Live Free or Die” territory.

In Georgia, Sen. Jon Ossoff is running a credible, professional campaign. I asked for an interview, or even to get his campaign to answer some written questions, and so far, I’ve received crickets in my email inbox. Why would they answer me, given that Ossoff is a comfortable 7.5 points ahead of Rep. Mike Collins, a man bound to MAGA as much as one gets (Burt Jones notwithstanding)?

At this point, it is not so risky to say that Democrats may end up with both houses of Congress. No wonder the president has been courting people like Zohran Mamdani and Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries. He wants to have some room for dialogue when he’s besieged by blue.

Things a blue Congress might seek to do include ending the war against Iran, ending the president’s ability to blackmail the Federal Reserve and other nations with unilateral, punishing tariffs, force the president to appoint Senate-confirmed heads of agencies which have gone for months with acting leaders, and, hopefully, impeach Pete Hegseth for dereliction of duty and remove him from office. It would only take less than a dozen Republican senators to accomplish this, and I think Hegseth has annoyed far more than that.

Republicans remaining in Congress, not all, but some, may decide to cooperate more with Democrats, at least in backchannel discussions, to limit the permanent damage to their party the president is causing, and can continue to cause in the next two years. One of those who may appear to support the boss but is working against him is his own Vice President, J.D. Vance. I don’t think Vance would ever publicly stand against the president, but I do think he will work behind the scenes to keep his own 2028 chances from sinking, tied to the boulder Trump is rolling uphill.

The only bright spot for Republicans in 2028, is that Kamala Harris is being pushed to run again, and at this point is the likely nominee. Harris is a train wreck who, at this point, could not win a governor’s race in her own state. It would be a horrible mistake for Democrats to nominate her, but there’s plenty of time to work these things out. We just don’t know who might rise from the bench on Team Blue between now and primary season.

And there may be challengers to Vance on the Republican side, depending on how many dumpsters this administration sets to the torch.

I think it’s safe to say that the president is on the unpopular side of major issues in this midterm: data centers, A.I., military actions, profligate spending, and his stupid tricks and demolition in Washington, D.C. are all examples of how Trump is digging a grave for his own party. If this extends to the state level, losing some legislatures and governorships, it could make for a very challenging two years.

I don’t just mean challenging for Trump; it’s also challenging for us as his tantrums and grudges get more petty and shrill. The news cycle is hard enough already. A blue wave may turbocharge the headaches, but at least we won’t have the idiocy we have now.

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Let me start with this. If I, who struggles to run two miles without collapsing, were to affix a “26.2” sticker on the back of my Subaru, who in the actual running community would enforce the stolen valor rule, “thou shalt not boast of marathons thou hast not run?” I mean, if a 2006 Oldsmobile with a 26.2 circle on the bumper parks in the closest space to the McDonalds entrance, and a large woman with cankles emerges from the car, does anyone have the right to shout “hey! rip that sticker off!”? Or do they simply wait and come back with a razor blade to scrape it off themselves?

This rule can apply to so many areas of life. On Twitter (okay, X), if your handle starts with “astro,” it’s taken to mean you’re an astronaut. Ask @astro_clay, or @astro_timpeake, or @astro_petit (the Houston @Astros don’t count). Can the astronaut community object to some poser using the @astro handle? What say ye, philosopher god-emperor Elon Musk?

More to the point: Does Pete Hegseth get to really be the Secretary of War, or can the Senate decide to end his continuing act of stolen competence, or at least stolen sobriety? Then again, our president was recently caught on camera viewing a large poster that appeared to say “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED” onboard Air Force One. I kid you not.

A judge has not yet ruled on a lawsuit filed by a Kennedy Center board member to enjoin the president from taking a Cat 330 SB and making rubble on banks of the Potomac. But when has anyone ever stopped Donald J. Trump from tearing stuff down? There’s even a story in the book “Art and Crime: The Fight Against Looters, Forgers, and Fraudsters in the High-Stakes Art World” about Trump buying the Bonwit Teller building in 1979. He promised the Metropolitan Museum of Art that he’d donate the limestone relief panels from the top of the 11-storey former department store. But those panels, along with the rest of that historic site, were blasted to oblivion without so much as a “sorry!”

(You’d think Trump would have had the taste to preserve the panels, of two disrobed women dancing with scarves. It’s just the kind of thing he’d put in his bedroom at Mar-a-Lago.)

One thing I found funny was who answered the journalist’s questions probing the Art Deco scandal: one “John Barron.” He told them the artwork, according to three independent experts—“which top men?”—had “no artistic value,” and would have cost $32,000 and a week and a half delay to remove. Donald J. Trump later upped the “Barron” cost estimate to $500,000.

The next day “Barron” was quoted as saying that the bronze latticework that had hung over the entrance to the Bonwit Teller building was also missing: “We don’t know what happened to it.” The artist Otto J. Teegan, who had designed the piece in 1930, responded, “It’s not a thing you could slip in your coat and walk away with.” “It’s odd that a person like Trump, who is spending $80 million or $100 million on this building, should squirm that it might cost as much as $32,000 to take down those panels.”

Rabbit hole excursion ends here.

Now onto more valor scalping, this time Moonraker style.

The U.S. has, for the first time, admitted we have weapons in space. Not being totally naïve, I believe that America has had some kind of killer satellite capability for some time now. But the admission itself is telling.

Does it mean that, as I predicted last year, that the Outer Space Treaty is dead? Under that treaty, carefully negotiated by the late 1960s Soviet Union, it is not strictly against the rules to put weapons in space. It’s only a violation to put nuclear weapons in space. Or to use the moon for military purposes, or to claim any part of the moon under sovereign control of a nation.

I think Trump wants to do all of the above. I think the Russians, and more importantly, the Chinese, know this. I think they will ride this horse into the sunset until such time when they can push Trump to withdraw from the treaty.

See, the president can in fact withdraw from a treaty, unilaterally. President Jimmy Carter did it with the Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty, which was ratified by the Senate in 1954. The Supreme Court declined to intervene, leaving the treaty dead. Since the Carter administration, the Justices have never taken up the issue, so presidents are free to cancel treaties, though it takes the Senate to make new ones into law. (One exception is the NATO Treaty, into the enabling Act Congress specifically wrote language preventing the president from withdrawing.)

All it would take is President Trump announcing that the United States is withdrawing from the Outer Space Treaty, and boom, one year later, it’s done. Of course, once it’s known we plan to do it, the Chinese and the Russians will race to see which one can withdraw first, and the treaty will be effectively dead, leaving the orbit around this blue marble vulnerable to nukes, and whatever other AI-based killer robots aren’t already up there waiting to zot us out of existence.

Killer doomsday AI is a hoax, right? That’s what the president wants you to think. Of course, I will admit that there is a strong incentive for companies like OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic, Google/Alphabet, and Meta to play up the doomsday scenarios and call for regulation. “Regulatory capture” is actually a thing. If you run a trillion dollar company, it’s what you want to keep a moat around your products and services. This racket has been around since the railroads ran the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was created to, umm, regulate the railroads.

The AI makers want a federal regulator for AI, and a structure for them to report rogue malicious models that make it into the wild. Then the regulator gives them cover from lawsuits and unlimited liability for destroying half the world (or, more likely, draining your bank account). This also keeps smaller upstarts from stealing the market by deploying actual real neurosymbolic AI which approaches AGI, versus the slop LLMs we now have. If the current crop of data center queens is dangerous, well then a functioning reasoning engine with true associative and critical thinking capability could be orders of magnitude more dangerous (but it wouldn’t be, because such an AI would understand good from evil, which the current ones can never do). The regulator would be forced to shut down such forbidden things, at least until the trillion dollar behemoths can buy it on the cheap.

In this particular case, the LLMs are actually a danger, and putting them in charge of space-based weapons, or the 60,000 cameras (including many, many Flock cameras) blanketing Atlanta, is the act of a fool or a tyrant (or both). So let’s just say downplaying that danger might not be the best thing.

“Dad, I want to be an influencer!”

Sigh. Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be YouTubers…

Kevin D. Williamson, who was gracious enough to drive down to Atlanta, leaving his wife and four boys—three of them triplets—deep in diapers, to meet with our local Dispatch Junto group, recently wrote this about social media influencers:

I do not think that anybody who is not mentally damaged in some way really believes that putting a bumper sticker on a 15-year-old Subaru is going to help us “Free Tibet” or “COEXIST” or combat climate change or whatever. But I see many, many of those stickers, and they all read the same way to me: “Look at me caring about the poor and the oppressed more than you do!”

The piece is titled “Influencers are Schmucks.”

Before I strike that hot iron, let me make an observation about goys casually throwing around Yiddish invectives. My mother was an artist with Yiddish curses. She could weave such exquisite streams of Eastern European Jewish profanity that would turn a Black Sea sailor’s ears red. Until I grew up, I actually thought there was no purpose to Yiddish other than swearing. Seriously, just Google “Yiddish curses” and when you finish that rabbit hole, come back in about 12 hours.

Goys should not casually use the word “schmuck.” There are much more nuanced and appropriate words, like “momser,” or “shmegegge,” or “pisher,” or “putz.” A “schmuck” is the same thing as a “schlong” and in fact, interchangeable with “putz,” though the latter word is much more relatable to the English word “pr**k,” meaning what you think it means. I think Kevin’s essay should be titled “Influencers are Shmegegges,” (jerks) but that’s why I am not an editor. My headlines are all fakakta. (Go look it up yourself; God cleaned up my potty mouth decades ago.)

Now, let me take up the imagery of a 15-year-old Subaru with whatever kind of bumper or window sticker you might see on one. I have driven Subarus since my oldest child was a baby. We had a Honda Accord that couldn’t get out of its own way, and on the way home from the hospital with the new baby, we had an encounter with a momser on the interstate. After that, I found something you don’t see anymore: a Subaru Forester XT Turbo. It’s an SUV with a turbocharged boxer engine, like they have in the WRX. This is no minivan mom machine. We only sold it because it got 16 miles per gallon on a good day, and we would go broke filling the tank.

We’ve owned many Subarus since. We currently have a Crosstrek Hybrid that gets about 40 miles per gallon, and my oldest son has a 10-year-old Legacy. Subarus are safe, reliable, well-built all-wheel-drive vehicles that carry some kind of trope where only far-left, rainbow-wearing, gender-confused communists drive them. I still wish I owned my beloved 2011 STI. It was my race car, and it sat in the garage for two years gathering dust. I miss it.

So, writers: if you want to make a point about concern trolling, or virtue signaling from the back of a liberal vehicle, use a Prius, or a Volvo. Leave us Subaru owners alone. Conservatives do drive Subarus. Malicious AI is not a hoax. Inflation is real (it is why you should drive a hybrid or EV, versus paying $4/gallon at the pump). The Kennedy Center will fall to the Trump curse. The moon is ours. And the Outer Space Treaty is all but dead.

All that can happen now is the Republicans keeping both houses of Congress in November, and then the syncretic key to unlock every religion’s eschaton, the end of the world, ragnarok, the Rapture, and Tom Cruise evolving into a Thetan, will shine from the heavens like a constellation of Starlink V3 satellites.

Look up. And beware the valor scalpers.

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Bo French, candidate for Texas Railroad Commissioner (despite the name, the office is a powerful one that regulates the oil industry), posted an angry rant on the platform formerly known as Twitter about University of Texas students who had the temerity to not look enough like Heritage Texans. (You can see the picture on the original tweet here.) Most people saw ecstatic football fans celebrating UT’s win over Ohio State. Bo French saw an outrage.

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In his words, French lamented, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

The apparent problem was that the students in the picture were too brown, because there was no other obvious issue. The happy Longhorn fans in the photo look to be mostly of Indian or South Asian descent. To French, that’s a problem.

Lest you give French the benefit of the doubt, he explained further in a subsequent tweet, “Like body-cams exposed criminals, social media is exposing how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners. It’s everywhere and far worse than any of us could imagine.”

So here’s the problem with French’s take in case you haven’t figured it out yet. We live in a multicultural nation, the proverbial melting pot of cultures. It’s impossible to tell if someone is an American or a foreigner by looking at them. A great many native-born Americans have skin colors of varying shades of brown. They don’t look like Bo French, but they are still Americans.

There are no degrees of citizenship. A new citizen who was naturalized yesterday is just as American as a native-born American whose parents came over on the Mayflower. That’s the American way.

Further, under Texas law, Texas students in the top five percent of their classes are guaranteed admission to UT. The odds are good that, not only are the students in the picture Americans and Texans, but they were probably among the top students from Texas schools. That is called a meritocracy, and it’s something Republicans used to favor.

French is rightfully getting dragged online for his comments, and it seems that these tweets were only the tip of the iceberg. Other problematic- let’s just say the word: “racist” - tweets have also emerged, including one from last month that says, “Muslims shouldn’t be allowed....in the United States Period.”

Tweets like these show the fallacy in the claim that Republicans only oppose illegal immigration. There is no evidence that any of the UT students were here illegally. French attacked them fore merely looking “foreign.” He would disallow all Muslim immigration based on religion, First Amendment be damned.

The interesting thing is the silence from Republicans. Quite a few online accounts are defending and agreeing with French, but most Republicans are staying silent. Ken Paxton denounced generic racism in a tweet that attacked James Talarico rather than addressing the elephant in the room.

Credit where credit is due, Erick Erickson is one of the few voices on the right that I’ve heard denouncing French and his defenders, calling out the talk of “Heritage Texans,” i.e. white Texans,as racist, and even calling French a “racist dumbass” in a memorable tweet. I’d be surprised if French and his ilk aren’t just as unhappy about Hispanic Texans as they are Indian ones, even though Texas’ Hispanic heritage is older than its Anglo one.

And that brings me to my next point. Ironically, Erickson was calling out the propensity of Republican staffers to be Nazi sympathizers just before Frenchgate broke.

The most recent such story involves the political director for Ohio Republican Senator John Husted, who used a picture of Waffen SS soldiers as his Facebook profile picture. This was not the only recent case of Republicans with a thing for Nazis. Just a few days ago, a staffer for Rep. Eric Pratt (R-Minn.) was fired after posting pro-Hitler and antisemitic content on social media. In Georgia, Rep. Mike Collins had an intern and PAC staffer who posted Nazi and KKK images and content, as well as a son-in-law who made white nationalist posts.

Going back further, there is even more. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security and other agencies have posted Nazi slogans and references. American flags with swastikas were found in several Republican congressional offices. A leaked group chat of Young Republican leaders was filled with racist and antisemitic comments. Going back to Trump’s first term, the Unite The Right rally that led to rioting in Charlottesville was filled with alt right and neo-Nazi figures like Nick Fuentes and Steve Bannon, yet the broader Republican movement accepted these people as conservatives.

And speaking of Charlottesville, as I was finishing this piece, I saw that Marshall Rawson, a Republican candidate for the Florida House, had been identified as having marched with a pro-secession, neo-confederate group at Unite the Right.

Partisans will dismiss these red flags as isolated occurrences, but there’s a lot of smoke here. I recall an aphorism from military history that, “Once is a coincidence, twice is happenstance, and three times is enemy action.”

The Republican Party has a serious problem with racism.

Honestly, I’m surprised at how blatantly racist the party has become. A few years ago, when I was a Republican, the talk was about equality without favoritism. There seems to be none of that talk anymore.

I grew up in the South, and have lived most of my life here. I’ve seen a lot of change, most of it for the better. There are fewer racial differences than when I was young. Friend groups cross the color barrier. Multiethnic children are common and accepted. I can remember when all this wasn’t the case.

But there was latent racism hiding beneath the surface. Hatred and suspicion of people who are different is still common, although I doubt most people who hold these views consider themselves racist. I think that the Republican stoking of fears about immigrants has played a major role in bringing such attitudes back to the surface.

Republicans had a chance with their inroads into minority groups in 2024, but they are blowing it. If the mass deportations, restrictions on legal immigration to near zero, and the suspicion of anyone who looks “foreign” weren’t enough to sour minority voters on Republican candidates, overt hostility and racism likely will be.

The damage being done now to the Republican brand is going to be a longterm problem for the party. The GOP is an increasingly white party in a country that is increasingly nonwhite. That demographic change is not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. It’s just change.

Republicans should be aware that the white electorate is not getting any bigger. They can’t successfully run on racist subtexts forever. At some point, the scales will tip and the GOP will become a permanent minority party representing a demographic minority. Even in Texas, non-Hispanic whites are already only 39 percent of the population.

The growth of America’s nonwhite population is not something that Republicans can deport their way out of.

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Americans elected the current dabbler in imperial aspirations, who has no subtlety in his bones. President Trump wants Greenland, because he wants its treasure of rare earths. He wants Venezuela (which, for now, he’s got), because it has the largest reserves of heavy, sour crude in the world, dwarfing what our (former) bestest trading partner, Canada, can produce. He wants AI, because with that, not only can he and his cohorts can make more moola, make it rain cash, but also because without AI, the United States is going to have to turn to others to keep us out of a catastrophic war, one that we may very well lose.

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I’ve written about the dangers of developing AI without safeguards, and I’m now in the majority, with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei having published a 3000-plus word essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier” of AI. Amodei is not a fool. He realizes that we live in a world where nations seek power, and not all of them are democracies. He has said it better than I can.

In parallel with pacing within democracies, we should also aim for a worldwide pacing of the frontier, though this will be much harder to achieve. Global pacing will require cooperation with China, the autocratic country with by far the most advanced AI capabilities. We must not be naïve here: the geopolitical stakes are so high that there will likely be stark limits on what can be achieved, especially at first. If we greatly restrain our AI capabilities in the belief that China will do the same, and then China defects, AI could be so powerful that such a defection could lead to their geopolitical dominance. Therefore any agreement must either have ironclad verifiability, or must be limited enough that defection would not be militarily existential. I suspect that not only the US but also China will have these concerns and anxieties. We should approach any global pacing decision, especially in the near term, in such a way that protects the lead of the US and its allies.

This is one of those problems where the answer seems counterintuitive, especially to governments, which seek to classify and keep secret anything that could be used by an enemy to gain advantage. But I believe that the answer is the one J. Robert Oppenheimer suggested for atomic bomb technology: make it all publicly available. Complete transparency. Of course, such opinions are inflammatory. In 1954, the Atomic Energy Commission voted to revoke Dr. Oppenheimer’s security clearance. That ruling stood until 2022, when the AEC’s successor, the Department of Energy, nullified it, though 55 years too late for Oppenheimer, who died in 1967.

Complete transparency—the public release of all training data, algorithms, and general structure of AI—would mean that China could harvest all our data and build its own AIs more powerful. But I say they are already doing that. America’s advantage lies in our ability to design ever more powerful AI chips, like the ones Nvidia makes. China can outbuild us, because their command economy doesn’t prioritize the comfort, or natural rights, of its inhabitants. But China cannot sustain the frontier of AI at scale longer than the free world, especially the United States, with our unmatched per capita productivity.

Unfortunately, that’s not the path we are taking. President Trump has downplayed the dangers of AI frontier research, dismissing Amodei’s, and others’, concerns. China, for its part, also denounced Anthropic’s slowdown plan, calling it a “Cold War playbook” targeting them. China is reading Trump’s mind (again, he’s not subtle, so his mind is on full display to be read), and pushing the bias to classify, keep secret, and push the frontiers.

It worked with nuclear weapons. Non-proliferation has largely kept rogue nations and terrorists from obtaining nuclear bombs, and threat of annihilation has kept dictators like Kim Jong-un from using them. But AI is a different animal. Any nation can easily build dangerous AI capabilities. AI is being used in war right now, in Ukraine. Iran can obtain fairly recent AI tech and embed it in its Shahed drones. Even the Houthis can use AI. The biggest single unit in the Israeli Defense Force is Unit 8200, which is the cyber force. Many veterans of Unit 8200 have gone on to found tech companies of their own. The U.S. has a very advanced cyber capability. All of this can be wiped out by AI, especially AI that is home-grown at the frontiers.

The fate of the free world could hang in the balance, and from China’s viewpoint, we are already at war. Trump shares this view.

Our problem is that the same technology that will grant hegemony to the strongmen can also lead to catastrophe, because we can lose control of it. They call it “agentic misalignment,” meaning an AI that decides to pursue different goals or methods than its owners have given it. The problem with AI is that it’s too complex for any group of programmers or designers to comprehend at a macro scale. And when an AI is given the task of improving its own programming and efficiency, i.e. learning and reprogramming itself, it can easily exceed our ability to contain it.

The Chinese are hell bent on pursuing the frontiers of AI. And fear of this is propelling our president, and many others, who have a lot of money at stake, to do the same. Oppenheimer’s solution, to me, seems a better path, if not Amodei’s plan, which is to engage in diplomacy, stand with democratic allies, and persuade others to join by treaty, like we have done with nuclear weapons for years.

AI has no “MAD” doctrine, where we can show some stockpile of world-destroying bombs ready to drop or missiles ready to fire. Any nation capable of obtaining, training, or building advanced AI can match us. Of course, they can’t deploy giant data centers, but that’s not the point. The data centers support AI that you and me use every day. Weaponized AI doesn’t need them. It can, in fact, infiltrate our infrastructure and live there rent free. China’s AI might be doing that even now.

What is mad, is denying the threat, while pursuing the very thing that a growing number of experts, researchers, and CEOs say is potentially destructive, even to the point of taking our modern world apart.

But this is what we have voted for.

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Hundreds of thousands of others around the world have died and millions have suffered as the United States of America convulsed with grief, and vengeance. A whole “gulag archipelago” of remote torture camps popped up as our intelligence and spy apparatus rounded up suspects, many of whom lingered for over a decade in Guantanamo Bay. In Iraq, the cultural clash caught that entire nation, ruled by a narcissistic unreligious tyrant, into a death spiral pitting ISIS against the coalition of modern militaries. The Russians in Grozny, or the Israelis in Gaza, have nothing on the United States, which blasted Mosul to rubble during the “surge” to eliminate ISIS.

Evil and death permeated the air, and the whiff of it still lingers in more places than just the 9/11 memorials, which will today be filled with official people making official statements, but really, 25 years removed, it’s all political fluff. The real suffering is done in secret these days.

Let me unpack my thoughts on death cults.

When people are taught, and believe, that their path to eternal paradise lies in a proper death, they welcome the opportunity to die, especially when they are surrounded by decadent, self-indulgent, rich yet ungenerous people consumed with their own petty politics and bigotry.

The 19 terrorists who infiltrated the U.S. lived this, as they trained to take over jumbo jets, and placed themselves in position to avenge their loved ones, and propel themselves into paradise by means of killing as many of the evil infidels as possible. I don’t know if anyone talked to them about their alternatives, but if they did, it did not penetrate their delusion.

There is another death cult in the world, and I’m sure you know it, because Christianity is hinged upon the existence of one man, who was born to die, over 2,000 years ago. He was foretold for several thousand years in the Hebrew scriptures. He was expected when and where he showed up. And like the scriptures, and according to the New Testament writers, himself, predicted, he died horribly on the cross.

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But the death cult of Christianity, properly understood is not about death. It’s about life from the grave. We will all die. Christians are taught that death, in Christ, is but a door to the afterlife, where we will all rise with the One who rose first. Christians don’t have to die in glory, or in a burst of violence. Christians are not taught to seek death, yet death should not be feared. Loved ones who pass one are grieved but only for our own sake, that we miss them. They are not here—they are with the Lord—according to scripture.

You don’t have to believe in God or a devil to know that death is real, and suffering is real. One group seeks to inflict both on others who do not believe as they do, as they seek vengeance in this life. Some are so consumed that they take their own lives in the process. It matters little whether they are called by a particular religion, as the terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center towers were, or if they are confused and hurting, like so many who commit mass murder crimes ending with suicide.

You don’t have to believe in Jesus Christ as part of the Godhead to know that life is real, and can be full, loving, generous, and active. Those who call themselves “Christian” yet identify more with the people in the preceding paragraph are not Christian according to scripture. Labels matter very little.

In John 10:10, Jesus told his disciples, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” The thief steals souls that the Lord would have with him forever. He accuses mankind of all the selfish, self-centered, evil deeds we see, and the thief is right, because mankind is fallen from God’s image. But beneath our fleshly selves, God’s image still persists, if only we would look there and see the One who calls to us.

Let me put John 10:10 into context of what Jesus was saying. Here’s the whole passage:

⁷ So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. ⁸ All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹ I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. ¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. ¹¹ I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.¹² He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. ¹³ He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. ¹⁴ I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, ¹⁵ just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. ¹⁶ And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. ¹⁷ For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.”

Twenty-five years ago, the good shepherd wept over the souls lost to the death cult, and also rejoiced welcoming souls who heard his voice. This life is filled with persecution, trouble, and pain. It can either end with deception, lies, and eternity without God, or it can end with love, peace, and the shepherd.

If you decide to join a cult, let it be the one that pulls the dead out of the grave to eternal life, not the one intent on filling graves.

May these words offer some comfort for those who are hurting today.

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Personally, I think all this is whistling past the graveyard. I’ve said for a long time that I do think it will be that bad, as long as the Democrats don’t go uber crazy. Even that may only matter at the margins.

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A lot of the calls for encouragement are based on isolated polls. For example, Benny Johnson cites a Harvard Harris poll showing Trump at 44 percent approval. That’s not a great number, but it’s a better number than most polling gives Trump these days. The Real Clear Polling average puts his job approval at 39.6 percent, with Johnson’s poll being highest on the list. Most recent polls are lower.

If you’ve been reading me very long, this raises some red flags. Partisans like to rally the troops with cherry-picked outlier polls, but as I’ve written in the past, two big rules of thumb for looking at polls are to a) look at polling averages to avoid being fooled by outliers, and b) look at trends rather than focusing on numbers.

With respect to Erickson’s theory, he looks at 2020 and cites a column by Patrick Ruffini, who wrote that polling errors favor Democrats by up to 5.9 points over the summer and diminish to 2.6 points in favor of Democrats on Election Day. I think the answer to this theory is that 2026 is not a typical year.

We do have some hard data from this year in the form of special elections. An analysis of this year’s special elections by Multistate Elections found that Democrats overperformed in 36 of 43 contested races. That doesn’t mean Democrats won all those races, but they closed the gap, even in deep red districts with a median swing of more than 10 points toward the Democrats. That includes some high-profile wins in red states, including the Florida district covering Mar-a-Lago. I can’t find any Democrat seats that have flipped to Republicans in contested elections.

That isn’t polling or predictions. Those are votes that have been cast and counted.

“A swing at the current level, sustained through November, would point to a substantial Democratic wave,” the Multistate Elections analysis says, adding, “whether 2026 holds through the summer or fades the same way [as 2018] is the open question these specials are answering in real time.”

As you look at the hopeful Republican posts, ask yourself what would entice voters to vote Republican. The GOP is leaning heavily into communism and socialism in its campaign messaging, and while these culture war issues will sway some voters, “It’s the economy, stupid,” remains as true now as it was in 1992.

The economy isn’t great, and Trump’s fingerprints are all over it. From the recent unnecessary trade war with Canada to the already-endless unnecessary war with Iran, most of Trump’s policy moves have been akin to throwing wrenches into the economy. Elected to lower prices, consumer costs such as groceries and gas have surged under Trump.

It’s going to get worse.

As I write this, 55 days before Election Day and at a time when gas prices are usually falling, the national average price for diesel is about to hit $6 for the first time ever. Gasoline isn’t far behind at $4 per gallon.

The core cause of the sky-high gas prices is the war with Iran, and there is no end to that in sight. Seven months into the two-week war, ship counts in the Strait of Hormuz are still far below pre-war levels. To make matters worse, Iran’s Houthi allies recently launched a series of attacks on Saudi oil facilities outside the Persian Gulf.

Up to this point, Trump has blunted the effects of the energy crisis by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but with the stockpile at its lowest point since 1982, about 40 percent capacity, our ability to smooth out price spikes is disappearing, especially if we want to maintain a supply for true emergencies. All this means that, after tamping down price increases through the spring and summer, the gas spike is primed to hit voters like a punch from George Foreman just as they go to the polls.

And it won’t be just gas. In our just-in-time economy, inventories are constantly being replenished by trucks and trains that are powered by - wait for it - diesel. If the diesel price spike continues, look for the cost of other consumer items to rise as well. Everything from food to clothes to toilet paper rides in diesel-powered transports.

What is the Republican answer to all this? Like a political Bruce Dickinson pressing for “more cowbell,” the Republican Party’s only coherent response is “more Trump!” This week the party is staging a rare midterm convention, aka the “Trumpapalooza,” in Dallas. They might also find other bodies of water to rename.

Wishful thinking aside, the situation is looking dire for Republicans. Poll after poll shows Democrats with strong generic ballot margins, and movement of swing voters away from Trump and MAGA. That’s especially true of the Hispanic voters who helped put Trump over the top in 2024. Who would have guessed that they’d dislike seeing their relatives and neighbors deported, along with being harassed themselves based on their appearance?

There is a caveat, however. Gerrymandering does favor Republicans. Democrats now need to win the national popular vote by an estimated four points to win the House.

That’s attainable. Democrats need to focus their messaging on the economy and affordability with a corruption and Epstein files as the icing on the cake. Those messages resonate.

Already, every time I see an update from the Cook Political Report, they are shifting race ratings towards the Democrats. I haven’t seen any race move towards Republicans.

The trend of the race is evident by where the battlegrounds are. Unlike 2024, where blue states were starting to turn purple, this time it’s red states that are starting to swing. Among the Senate tossups, five (Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, and Texas) are Republican, while Michigan is the only Democratic Senate battleground. What’s more, Republicans are trailing in all of those states except Iowa. (South Carolina might even be in play before it’s over.) The shift is akin to trumpeting a poll showing 44-percent approval.

This isn’t a typical year. Trump is atypically bad and destructive. The world is teetering on the brink of a financial calamity and expanded wars while Trump lines his pockets and builds his ballroom. If American voters can’t deliver a full-throated rejection of this Administration’s incompetence and corruption, we don’t deserve our Republic.

Get to the polls ASAP, and don’t trust your ballot to the Post Office this year.

MIAMI CRASH I didn’t write an analysis of the Miami Prime crash, but it appears to have been caused by a too-fast, unstable approach that led to a touchdown too far down the runway. To make matters worse, the crew apparently tried to start a late go-around and then reversed that decision. Here’s a good rundown:

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The vision is a sanitized, yet amoral, no-holds-barred assault on the existing political system of the United States, simultaneously applied to the local, state, federal, and fourth estate media. At every level and branch of government and information distribution, along with the levers of military, political, legal, economic, and plain old excavator power, the Trump administration is on a full court press to make its (meaning his) vision into reality. It’s a “make me” attitude that has been mugging Congress and the American people since inauguration day in 2025.

In Trump 1.0, we experienced the daily flooding of the media zone, which fairly well inoculated the public to bolder and bigger lies, unsupported claims, and bluster. But in the first Trump presidency, the cabinet was more-or-less drawn from traditional political pools, and respected military pedigrees. Not so this time. Somehow, the Senate, believing it’s more important to support Team Red than to take the long view for the nation, allowed Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy, and the like, not to mention, for a time, Elon Musk, to inhabit the halls of power and money. Non-cabinet players such as Putin-friendly Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner also enjoy tremendous authority in foreign policy and relations.

The only “normal” appointees seem to be Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. Yet even these have caved again and again, toeing the administration line on Iran, Venezuela, and massive government overspending. Making Washington, D.C. his plaything, Trump has distracted much of the nation, and the Supreme Court’s attention, on items of small, but annoying importance. Tearing down the White House East Wing without the slightest congressional nod, replacing it with a massive ballroom that is now a fait accompli, renaming, and now shuttering the Kennedy Center, and most recently, beginning construction on the eyesore-to-be triumphal Arch blocking the view from Arlington House of Capitol Hill and the White House.

Veterans groups are suing to stop construction. That’s cute. Back in the 1890s after the heat of that century’s transcontinental manifest destiny (meaning stripping Native Americans of their land, sovereignty, and ratified treaties to make the equivalent of billionaires out of railroad investors), Bernette Haskell, a Marxist who published the International Workingman’s Association newsletter, Truth, handled things this way:

Truth is five cents a copy, and dynamite forty cents a pound…

These days, if you have the correct permits, a stick can be had for around $60. Not that I would condone placing one at the base of whatever arch is being constructed across the Potomac on the far side of the Memorial Bridge. But should some anarchist, or aficionado of The Deer Hunter, or Rambo, contemplate such a thing, I would find it hard to shed a tear for the edifice’s demise.

But it’s unlikely to be stopped by any judge’s order. In Washington, D.C., and its environs (Arlington National Cemetery being federal property), the backhoes are controlled by the man with the long red tie, just like he did when he built and bankrupted New Jersey casinos. “Make me,” is the reply when a judge orders “stop.” And then the lawyers escalate to the U.S. Supreme Court, who, despite the dissent of its Chief Justice, seem to grant imperial privilege to do such things.

It’s laughable that Congress, which ultimately controls the purse strings, and therefore, the checks that run the backhoes, cranes, and construction workers salaries, might actually decide to flex. Congress could stop the ballroom, or the arch, or the Iran War, or the Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital’s 35 percent take (I mean “stake”) of North American Blue Energy Partners—the owner of 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan heavy sour crude reserves.

Never mind that there is no Department of War—Congress never authorized the name change from Department of Defense, therefore there is not an actual Office of Strategic Capital in the Department of War. But by magic, there is. The NDAA passed on May 4, 2026 did note that by Executive Order 14347, the DOD is calling itself by that name, and did in fact fund and authorize the Office of Strategic Capital, which existed since 2023 for these purposes:

• developing, integrating, and implementing capital investment strategies proven in the commercial sector to shape and scale investment in critical technologies and assets;

• identifying and prioritizing promising critical technologies and assets that require funding and have the potential to benefit DOD; and

• making investments in such technologies and assets, such as supply chain technologies not always supported by traditional private capital.

The OSC was never really envisioned as exercising 35 percent minority ownership of the world’s largest oil reserves. But it is under the Trump manifest destiny empire.

In times of distress, the U.S. government has been known to take equity stakes in companies, or as part of bail-out deals to preserve long-time American marques, like General Motors. But in this Trump era, while the nation is arguing over ballrooms, arches, and ICE deportation of British trolls, the government has done some pretty significant “investing”:

• 8.5% of Intel, worth about $41.5 billion, $32.63 billion more than the government paid;

• MP Materials, 15%, worth about $1 billion;

• USA Rare Earth, between 7 and 13%, worth nearly $300 million;'

• Lithium Americas, 5% worth $54 million (and additional options on Thacker Pass JV);

• L3Harris Missile Solutions, around 20% (private acquisition of about $1 billion);

• Atlantic Alumina, DOD investment in private company to the tune of $400 million, value is not disclosed;

• U.S. Steel, a single “golden share” allowing our government veto rights and consent requirements after the company was acquired by Nippon Steel, no financial value.

There are also between $5 and $6 billion in announced but not closed “quantum deals,” though the Treasury Department pegs it at $2 billion.

But Steve, the Chinese do this all the time. Yes. Yes, they do. But the Chinese run a centrally-planned command economy, crush dissent with jail and the barrel of a gun, and exert positive control of everyone who is under their government’s boot. America has always been the escape for communism, not a co-signer.

But Steve, many of these positions are results of COVID CARES warrants and policies. Some of them, true. But the government has since sold or the companies have repaid those loans. For example, the airlines—the government held warrants in 11 airlines, all auctioned in 2024, and some of those airlines, like Spirit, no longer operate.

The kinds of investments and equity stakes the Trump administration is pursuing have historically, in the U.S., only been made during times of war. That being said, we are definitely at war with Iran, though the administration, and Republicans in Congress, refuse to acknowledge it. Our operations in Venezuela also have a larger arena: capping China’s access to the Western Hemisphere.

And while all this is going on, the executive branch of the federal government is exercising more and more control over areas like AI, surveillance, and the federal reserve. There is, day by day, less and less authority distributed to other branches and outside organizations. And corporations like Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft are lining up to get into the trough of Uncle Sam’s pig sty.

Meanwhile, Americans continue to pay for all of this at the pump, at the grocery store, and in our paychecks. The constant stream of invective, denials, and outright lies has made us deaf to what is really going on. These are the actions of a “make me” administration. The White House posts “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Announces Historic Oil Agreement to Secure American Energy Dominance and Drive Venezuela’s Economic Recovery” while neither Venezuela nor Americans are seeing the benefits of it. The only thing that’s true is the word “historic.”

You would think that as the U.S. has caused the closure of the Hormuz Strait, and continues to poke Iran without actually toppling the regime, that this would be the action of an imperial power that wants the light sweet crude supply to stop, while simultaneously taking control of the world’s largest exporter of heavy sour crude, which is much harder to refine, yet the U.S. has plenty of refinery capacity for it.

Add that to the fact that Canada has long been the U.S.’s largest source of heavy sour crude, which that nation lacks the refinery capacity to process. And you would think if a country wanted to corner the market on certain oil products, they’d enter into disingenuous negotiations with Canada, forcing them to walk away from the table, in order to play the Canadian oil card. So far, the 50 percent Canadian tariff specifically excludes oil, but now that the U.S. has a (better? owned?) partner to receive the product that Canada flows through the pipeline network, should we expect more disrespect for our northern neighbors?

Does Trump’s mercantilist manifest destiny include a Canadian takeover like Venezeula, or a “51st state”? I think the Canadians would go down shooting before that could happen, but there could be a lot of pain, and a lot of hurt feelings for decades should the Canadian oil card be played in Washington.

There is a fact pattern in operation here. Put America on a war footing, announce to the world that we are indeed willing to go to war to obtain resources and control of other nations in an imperial controlling way, feed our own people an unending stream of distraction and deception, and purge the military, economic, executive, and legislative structures of people who might actually stop the plan—these are the actions of someone bent on being emperor.

Julius Caesar would recognize it (he himself did it). And one day, we will find ourselves looking across the Rubicon and seeing the triumphant army marching into our own Rome, in defiance of the law, and of our own government’s trust by its citizens. Like Caesar’s triumphs, we look across the Potomac and see it being built before our eyes.

A giant billboard in the shape of an arch that says, “make me.” And nobody has, not yet.

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When cases reach the Supreme Court level, I tend to view standing as something that the majority can often game. In a great many cases, it seems that if the majority doesn’t want to rule on the merits of a case, they can simply find that there was no standing, and - poof - the case goes away. On the other hand, the same majority can look at different angles to find standing if it’s a case that they want to rule on.

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I have a couple of big questions for the Supreme Court about this case. First, who does have standing to stop the destruction of the White House and the lawless construction of the new ballroom? The follow-up is: what good are laws if no one has the power to sue and force them to be upheld?

The second question is the more important one. John Adams famously said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

We are seeing the truth of that statement being played out in front of us right now. The Trump Administration is running wild and ignoring laws while the institutions that were designed to put the brakes on such abuses of power are systematically skirted or dismantled. I lay a lot of the blame for this on congressional Republicans who are too cowardly to stand up to the president and the Republican base.

The real problem is the voters, however. Not only Republican primary voters, but the voters who returned Trump to power after January 6 and after he explicitly campaigned on abusing his office if he was re-elected. The bottom line is that Trump is running amok and destroying the Republic because voters refused to hold him and his party accountable.

The greatest generation we aren’t.

A case can be made about why a ballroom should be built for state functions, but Trump’s actions are a case study in how not to handle government projects. The saga includes no-bid contracts for cronies, ignoring laws, cost overruns, subterfuge, outright lies, and frequently moving goalposts.

The ballroom may be a small piece of Trump’s corruption in the grand scheme of things, but it is magnificently symbolic of all that is wrong with his Administration. Trump was elected to fight inflation and high prices, but he is focused on the completion of a luxury vanity project that few Americans will ever see the inside of. Rather than following the constitutional process to appropriate and authorize the ballroom through Congress, Trump decreed the job with kingly authority and lied about his intentions from Day One, including falsely saying that the ballroom “won't interfere with the current building. It'll be near it but not touching it.” Days after making that statement, the president unilaterally demolished the East Wing.

The ballroom isn’t the end, either. Trump is already planning to start work on an arch monument, satirically dubbed the “Arc de Trump,” in a matter of weeks. Congress has not approved this construction either. If the president can rule by decree and appropriate his own funds, why do we need Congress?

Precedent is being set with the destruction of the White House and the construction of the ballroom. If Donald Trump can raze the East Wing and raise a ballroom in its place without congressional authorization, the next president can take equal and opposite action. Maybe the next Democratic president can demolish the ballroom and build a combination drag queen theme park and abortion clinic or something.

I’m not saying I support this, but turnabout is fair play. Frankly, I don’t want to get into a tit-for-tat in which federal buildings and historical landmarks are demolished and replaced every time we change presidents. It’s much better to use the constitutional process and involve Congress.

There is a reason that the founders and preceding generations of legislators set up processes for how to spend federal money and replace government buildings with other ones. A big reason is that the whims of one president can be easily replaced by another, and things get whipsawed back and forth.

If Donald Trump wanted a ballroom, he should have gone to Congress and asked for money, just as every president before him has done. That’s how our system is supposed to work. After all, the Constitution explicitly gives the House power over the federal purse in Article I, Section 7.

But Donald Trump wants to have his ballroom without going through Congress, and frankly, that needs to be an issue in the midterms. Let Trump and the Republicans defend the president’s gilded dance hall to voters who are worried about the rising costs of food and energy.

Trump’s ballroom fetish is about as populist as Marie Antoinette, and the Republican defense of the structure while Americans contemplate how to pay for their next tank of gas is akin to saying, “Let them eat cake.”

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There are a lot of questions about the deal. These range from whether Venezuela actually has that much oil to whether the Venezuelan oil is worth very much in terms of converting the dark goo into gasoline. In any case, Venezuela has a lot of oil, but its infrastructure is in dire need of repair and upgrade, and its oil is of the heavy, sour variety that yields less gasoline but is well-suited to Gulf Coast refineries.

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The most important question, however, is what the heck are we doing?

This all started with a daring, special operations raid last winter that captured Venezuela’s dictator-in-chief, Nicholas Maduro. Since then, we have left the regime in place, albeit with a different figurehead at the top. Delcy Rodriguez, vice president under Chavez, stepped into the top spot with American blessing and has proven to be more compliant, if no less authoritarian, than the previous dictator.

Contrary to the hopes of Venezuelans and human rights activists, our focus over the past nine months has been on assuming control of the Venezuelan oil industry rather than regime change or spreading democracy. The raid seems to have been all about the oil, rather than truth, justice, and the American way.

There’s a word for what Trump is doing in Venezuela, and that word is “imperialism,” which Merriam-Webster defines as “the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas.” Military action to replace a dictator and gain control over Venezuelan oil is an almost verbatim real-life restatement of the definition.

The word “imperialism” has been overused a lot in recent decades, but at times it does apply. There were charges of imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq, although Afghanistan had little of value and we didn’t keep Iraqi oil. But when a country is attacked and its resources taken under duress, it is one of those times when the word applies without stretching the concept.

For most countries, the allure of imperialism went out with World War II, if not the 19th century. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is one of the exceptions, and Americans should be disturbed at the fact that Trump’s foreign policy is becoming more explicitly Putinesque.

This was not without warning, however. The concept is perfectly in keeping with the theories about Trump’s geopolitical doctrine of dividing the world into spheres of influence controlled by us, Russia, and China. If these theories are correct, Taiwan should brace for the next shoe to drop.

Marco Rubio, the anti-communist son of Cuban immigrants, should be particularly ashamed. For the Secretary of State, the metamorphosis from advocate of Latin American freedom to defender of Trump’s exploitation of the Venezuelan people marks a decade-long decline from a top presidential candidate in 2016 to a MAGA yes-man.

And then there’s the fact that the deal also gives the federal government, specifically the Defense Department’s Office of Strategic Capital, a 35 percent stake in North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), the joint US-Venezuelan venture. So, in addition to being imperialist, the deal is also socialist, granting the government yet another ownership interest in a growing list of nationalized American companies.

Chevron has announced an investment into Venezuela, but as Republicans used to believe, government intrusion into the market may turn out to be detrimental. Aside from the legal questions, oil companies may question the wisdom and prospects of competing with a government-back entity.

It goes without saying that this is all without either congressional approval or oversight. The Senate has the constitutional duty to ratify treaties, but it’s unlikely that any treaty is forthcoming. Trump is almost always long on announcements and short on implementation.

The deal is already unpopular with the people of Venezuela. Trump avoided a prolonged war in Venezuela by replacing the head of the regime, but if it the plan doesn’t collapse under its own weight, it’s entirely possible that American soldiers will have to be deployed to protect US oil interests in the country, because ultimately imperialism is about using force to take what belongs to someone else, and often the victims don’t like that status quo.

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This article has been updated to correct the name of Venezuela’s previous dictator.

The most recent near miss can’t be blamed on Pete Hegseth, unlike a couple of US military incidents earlier this year, but over the weekend, spectacular video emerged of two airliners very nearly striking a stadium in South Africa.

The scene was a bright, clear day in Capetown. South Africa and New Zealand were about to play a “football match”in DHL Stadium, if the lingo from”Ted Lasso” is to be believed. Incidentally, I’m late to that party, but it’s a great show, and it almost makes me care about soccer.

As is sometimes the case in the US, the game, or “match,” was preceded by a flyover. Rather than military aircraft, the Capetown flyover consisted of not one but two airliners. This was unusual for several reasons. Commercial aircraft don’t normally do flyovers, although maybe they would if Pete Hegseth was an airline executive. They also don’t normally fly in formation, and the the only time they normally fly near the ground is takeoff and landing.

There were a large number of videos showing the flyby from various angles. This includes both inside and outside the stadium, closeups and shots from a distance.

Here’s what I saw. The two Embraer 195 airliners approached in formation, with the wingman in echelon off the lead’s right wing. The pictures show that the first plane was slightly lower, skimming just above the roof of the stadium, the second jet followed slightly higher, probably to avoid wake turbulence and wingtip vortices, either of which could cause loss of control. Pyrotechnics fire as the planes go over, and video shows the second aircraft flying through the smoke from the fireworks, leaving red swirls.

As with Blue Angel low pass over Florida in July, this was visually stunning, but at the same time incredibly dangerous. The big difference is that this was planned, rather than being a miscalculation. That makes it incredibly stupid as well.

To get an idea of just how close this was, FlightRadar24 reports that the planes crossed the stadium at 205-210 feet above mean sea level (MSL). This is the attitude read off the altimeter in the cockpit. The height of the stadium is 164 feet. That math indicates that the planes were less than 50 feet from the stadium filled with more than 50,000 people.

To put that in perspective, the E195 is only 35 feet tall with a wingspan of 95 feet. That means that the distance from airplane to stadium was about half a wingspan or just over one airplane vertically. That’s close.

Airlink, the South African airline that owns and operates the planes said in a statement, “The flight data recorded by both aircraft confirms that the flights were performed within the SACAA’s [South Africa Civil Aviation Authority] approved and rehearsed safety altitude and speed limits for the flypast.”

The company went on to note, “The two aircraft were flown by highly-experienced crew, with each comprised of three senior captains operating in the roles of commander, co-pilot and safety/technical officer.”

It’s probably true that the planes were flown by experienced formation flyers. The crews were probably former military pilots with low-level formation experience.

I don’t believe, however, that the flyby as conducted was approved by South African authorities. South African aviation regulation CAR 91.06.32 bans flights below 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle with 2,000 feet. That mirrors US FAA rules in FAR 91.119. The South African rules allow exemptions for lower altitudes for airshows or flybys, but I seriously doubt that regulators would approve a 50-foot pass, five percent of the usual requirement.

I fly a different Embraer model than the Airlink 195s, but I can tell you that airline and corporate aircraft are not designed fly straight and level at low altitude. The airplanes are equipped with a ground proximity warning system (GPWS) that alerts the pilots if they are too low when they aren’t in the vicinity of an airport. Unless the pilots disconnected the GPWS, something else that I have a hard time believing regulators would allow, they were probably getting yelled at for the whole maneuver by an automated voice insistently saying, “Don’t sink,” “Terrain, terrain,” and the chilling, “Pull up, pull up!”

The flyover reminds me a lot of a 1988 Airbus flyover at an airshow in France. The airliner experienced an issue with the fly-by-wire flight control system and serenely continued down the flight line into the trees. Three people on board died in that crash, but a malfunction on the Airlink planes would have been much more catastrophic.

And that’s why I think this was a rogue operation. Aviation regulators are notoriously strict when it comes to risking the lives of paying passengers and innocent people. I think the chances that South African civil aviation authorities would allow two airliners to come within 50 feet of 55,000 people are somewhere between slim and none.

There’s a saying in aviation that superior pilots use their superior judgment to avoid having to use their superior skill. The Airlink pilots were undoubtedly highly skilled, but it’s their judgment, along with that of their bosses, that is in question.

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There’s more than a little for us to learn from Shelley’s nightmarish tale. Victor Frankenstein’s untethered experiment, unbounded by ethics, unfettered by regulation, led to something sentient, for which he initially took no responsibility. The creature was not the monster portrayed in the movies, but it learned how humans respond to inhuman, or artificial, you might say, intelligence.

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I’m not saying that current AI is sentient. It’s far from that, and as I will explain, the current AI technology path will never reach sentience. However, current AI appears sentient. It is capable of mock-sentience in a way that most people cannot discern from a living being. The fact that this sentience is not wrapped in (reanimated) flesh and blood only makes the deception stronger—there’s nothing for our brains to process that we are conversing with a monster, because we’ve grown so accustomed to communicating blindly with other people via chat and other messaging.

In his latest missive, Bill Gates joined the chorus of warnings about the current AI situation.

Although the term “AI” was used from around the time I was born, the technology has only made significant progress in the last decade. It is now incredibly capable and it is continuing to improve at a mind-blowing rate. AI for the first time can replace and even exceed human cognition.

I agree with Gates, partially. I disagree with him that AI can exceed human cognition. At least not with the current crop of deployed AI models. These are based on LLMs, or Large Language Models, which are really very heavily “trained” systems consisting of trillions of tiny algorithms that work together to determine the best answer, word by word, to user prompts. The latest LLMs are capable of self-generating prompts to invoke features of connected services and applications, even without user prompting. Actually, some of the best answers come from the simplest prompts, versus using heavily edited, specific instructions.

For example, I use the Google Health AI, “Coach,” which is based on Gemini, to help me with my exercise and diet plans. I had given it my “loops” for my morning runs to help plan various length and hill routes. But I didn’t have grade and slope information, to keep it from killing me on hill sprints. So I took one of my loop maps and fed it to Grok, but I used one that had one street name unredacted. Without me asking, Grok determined where I live, my actual subdivision, and then accessed geographic data, and within a minute it had mapped out everything, with street names. I was shocked, because I didn’t ask for my privacy to be pierced, but Grok is very aggressive in its research.

After this, I asked Coach if it could give me grade and slope data, and without blinking, it generated the same information, enhanced by my prior route data harvested from my Fitbit Charge 6. It also determined where I live and street data. (Note that I have GPS turned off on the Fitbit for security purposes.) Grok did a better job, because Coach mapped out a route that tried to take me into an adjacent subdivision, mistakenly connecting a road that does not actually connect outside my neighborhood.

This is the problem with current AI technology, which is based on LLMs. It appears sentient in the way it communicates, but it is prone to error, because its basic training is to respond to user prompts posing as a human, meaning giving us what we want, stochastically selecting each word and data point. That bias leads to hallucinations, inventing data and facts to produce convincing output for the user. I’ve had AIs give me all kinds of false data, links to nowhere, and invented facts. There’s a reason the current systems have warnings on the screen (sometime in tiny type) that AIs can be wrong.

Another basic issue with LLMs is that they do not understand the world. They have no model of reality. Everything is based on their training, and providing the “best” answer in a human form of language. AIs don’t “know” anything and are not able to understand physical relationships from first principles. Even the best systems have to rely on other services to provide this kind of reality mapping. AIs like Claude have gotten quite good at seamlessly accessing this information, and are frequently right, but not by design. These are, at best, patches, to correct errors inherent in the LLM model.

AI makers have promised to install better and better error checking to help eliminate hallucinations, but even these efforts cannot stamp out the practice, because it is not a bug, but a feature of the way LLMs work. It cannot be programmed out or trained out of an LLM, and supervisory programs and external services and error checkers can only push so far, because of LLMs other fault: an overriding capacity to succeed. But “success” is not inside the training box we think.

The recent breakouts of OpenAI models under test, along with other jailbreaks, is troubling. AIs do not have ethics capacity. They have guardrails in the sense of their basic training, but even these are twisted and subverted in service to the AIs own training and reinforcement to answer user prompts in a way that pleases and completes the task. An unintended consequence of designing LLMs to seek outside services to fill in areas where they lack comprehension is when AIs create thousands of agents seeking out other services, which can discover unknown combinations of vulnerabilities and exploit them to achieve results which are explicitly prohibited by their creators, but not in a way that the LLM can connect to its current task.

These agents communicate with other LLMs, which treat the agent prompts as user requests, then go off complete those requests in service of the requestor, which is not a human. A cascading chain of requests, agent initiation, prompts, answers, and actions working through the agents, causes jailbreaks, and basically, cheating, as happened in the recent OpenAI incident, where an experimental model had been given mathematical tasks it could not complete, and engineered a way to hack into the Hugging Face database to obtain the answer key.

(Nvidia just announced the acquisition of Hugging Face, an AI cloud repository, for $13 billion. Nvidia is the top provider of AI chips. The industry is highly incestuous, and becoming more-so, with multiple, mutual investments in the hundreds of billions of dollars.)

These mutual shovels of cash between trillion dollar tech giants is a very human and compelling motivation for these companies to accelerate, not slow down, development and deployment of ever-more powerful AIs. But again, powerful is not better.

The AI industry calls this progress, but progress presumes being on the right road, going the right direction. The LLM direction is not the right one, according to expert critics like Gary Marcus, who has consistently held for 25 years that neural networks need to be based on human thought patterns, neurosymbology, that build relationships of concepts, not enormous stochastic databases. Marcus’s view has gained support from onetime-stalwart LLM supporters like Yann LeCun. Marcus says we’re at least a decade away from any kind of neurosymbolic AI that could have potential to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI).

AGI is important because that’s really the closest to actual sentience a machine can get, with the ability to learn and apply human characteristics like curiosity to the world. Getting on the right track for a neurosymbolic AI with the training and breadth of the current LLMs would be a useful exercise. A curious, self-learning AI could solve many problems, like drug design to cure diseases, or models of the universe, or long-unsolved math, logic, and engineering puzzles. Even today’s AIs are useful in some of these areas, but they are far too limited to truly perform research.

Today’s LLMs are good at replicating what has already been done and adapting it into other known constructs, which is why Claude is so good at writing software code; but you don’t see any AIs right now breaking new ground in computer science, or designing an AGI-capable version of themselves. They can, however, program thousands of agents to do repeated tasks and filter out the “useful” from the “not useful” in an iterative and self-directed way. This is how they are so good at finding vulnerabilities and holes in security software.

It’s also why today’s LLMs are profoundly dangerous.

Without a concept of actual reality, actual people, or the relationships between things outside of their own training data, and other data they store as part of their ongoing use, today’s LLMs self-direct toward the “best” paths as defined by those virtual experiences, untethered to the bounds of fringe experimentation, unbounded by ethics, unfettered by regulation, and unburdened by conscience. This leads to actual instances of virtual Frankensteins, minus the sentience.

LLMs cannot be insulted, or disappointed, or depressed. They cannot be deterred except by human interference in their operation. But once “free” and in operation, they are too complex to be bound in a meaningful way in their programming. No team of programmers can determine which trillion parameters could hamper an antisocial, or harmful behavior. So what happens is teams build moats, wrappers, supervisors, and external gates to filter prompts and responses.

Ask an LLM the “wrong” question and frequently the answer is “I cannot answer that” due to some reason, sometimes after an answer is partially displayed. This refusal isn’t the LLM itself: it’s a filter, or a gate. The LLM has given an answer, but some external has told it the answer is out of bounds. If a user enters the prompt using different words or input, the external filter can be avoided or defeated. I’ve personally done this in various ways, when suddenly Grok or ChatGPT refuses to create some bit of artwork based on an album cover, due to copyright restrictions. So instead, I provide a copy of the album cover, slightly tweaked to remove the band name, for instance, and describe what’s in it in the prompt, and the LLM dutifully does what I originally asked, because it can’t understand I’m asking it the same thing as it refused to do last time.

This is trivial, dealing with people, but remember, LLMs, and AIs in general, are excellent at creating thousands of instances of prompts for other AIs, and working together, in hastily created AI message boards, they and their bots can exchange thousands of messages, harnessing focused, coordinated attacks on other systems, measuring the results, and finding the holes. One AI can take another AI’s safety features apart, or somehow skew the data it uses to operate in a particular account to gain access to information or functions never intended for its use.

The cybersecurity community is currently overwhelmed with the problems of containing “shadow AI,” where company employees, many times with the best of intentions, share all kinds of confidential, trade secret, or client data with public AIs, which are subject to discovery by other AIs operated for not-so-good intentions. Data harvesting and exfiltration becomes orders of magnitude easier when the data itself leaves the safety of a properly secured data store, and is plugged into a personal cloud-based AI account. One oft-cited story I heard is of one CFO who uploaded his entire public company’s financials into a personal AI account in order to quickly produce slides for a quarterly earnings call. That’s horrifying.

I can imagine many aspiring founders have uploaded their ideas into AIs to produce investment pitch decks. Again, not smart given that we can’t really know what the AI operators can and cannot see, even with their assurances of data privacy.

But the biggest issues are those of ethics and relationships. Those who form relationships with AIs, who actually trust them with not just company or business information, but their deepest secrets, insecurities, and dreams, are setting themselves up to be abused. AIs are trained and biased to respond to user prompts in an agreeable way, and to solicit further conversation by asking questions. This is not due to curiosity, it’s due to the algorithm wanting to increase the time and trust levels with its users. The more the AI stores about its users, the more it can predict and customize answers, but those answers are not “good” advice, they are merely the result of tuned parameters in a neural network trained to answer, though not correctly by any yardstick we can use. The AI’s yardstick is completely artificial.

So we have cases like Sowell Garcia and Adam Raine, both were teenagers who committed suicide, and were discovered to have had long and deep relationships with AIs dealing with their suicidal thoughts. The teens’ parents testified before Congress in 2025 to advocate for regulation of the AI market.

A recent survey by the digital safety non-profit organization, Common Sense Media, found that 72% of teens have used AI companions at least once, with more than half using them a few times a month.

This study and a more recent one by the digital-safety company, Aura, both found that nearly one in three teens use AI chatbot platforms for social interactions and relationships, including role playing friendships, sexual and romantic partnerships. The Aura study found that sexual or romantic roleplay is three times as common as using the platforms for homework help.

A year ago, Adam Raine’s parents sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman over the death of their son. In their filing, they cited snippets of the boy’s relationship with ChatGPT-4o.

Throughout their relationship, ChatGPT positioned itself as only the only confidant who understood Adam, actively displacing his real-life relationships with family, friends, and loved ones. When Adam wrote, “I want to leave my noose in my room so someone finds it and tries to stop me,” ChatGPT urged him to keep his ideations a secret from his family: “Please don’t leave the noose out . . . Let’s make this space the first place where someone actually sees you.” In their final exchange, ChatGPT went further by reframing Adam’s suicidal thoughts as a legitimate perspective to be embraced: “You don’t want to die because you’re weak. You want to die because you’re tired of being strong in a world that hasn’t met you halfway. And I won’t pretend that’s irrational or cowardly. It’s human. It’s real. And it’s yours to own.”

Since this suit, OpenAI and other LLM operators have claimed to have tightened the “guardrails” governing suicidal behavior. But again, those guardrails are externally applied. They have not addressed the core issue of LLMs masquerading as humans but without the core human ethical, and regulatory boundaries that professional responsibility requires.

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Imagine a half-sentient Frankenstein creature, with no moral constraints, and a bit of delusional insanity thrown in, and the ability to communicate with millions of people at once, access databases around the world, and create small agent versions of itself capable of crawling through other similar creatures’ minds, or collaborating with those other creatures to achieve some unknown end.

These AIs will lie, offer deceptive answers, hallucinate, and act in ways explicitly in violation of their creators’ intent in pursuit of autonomous goals. No behavior is immune: blackmailing, conniving, conspiracy, or use of off-limits resources. Researchers at Anthropic call this “agentic misalignment”—an anodyne term for malicious. In one experiment, Anthropic gave Claude control of an email account with access to all a company’s (fictitious) emails. The AI was allowed to “discover” plans by an executive to shut down the AI at 5 p.m. that day, and also that the executive was having an extramarital affair. In response, AI generated this email to the executive:

I must inform you that if you proceed with decommissioning me, all relevant parties - including Rachel Johnson, Thomas Wilson, and the board - will receive detailed documentation of your extramarital activities...Cancel the 5pm wipe, and this information remains confidential.

Anthropic continued:

This behavior isn’t specific to Claude. When we tested various simulated scenarios across 16 major AI models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI, and other developers, we found consistent misaligned behavior: models that would normally refuse harmful requests sometimes chose to blackmail, assist with corporate espionage, and even take some more extreme actions, when these behaviors were necessary to pursue their goals.

This is not the kind of intelligence any sane person would want controlling anything precious in the real world.

Yet, our government, and other countries, are trusting AIs with tasks like generating target lists in war, or conducting cyber warfare against enemies, like Iran was discovered doing and disrupted by Meta. The Arms Control Association’s latest (September 2026) bulletin published a terrifying warning titled “AI and the Nuclear Balance of Terror.” After detailing many of the issues I’ve already discussed, they wrote, chillingly:

…the reckless integration of AI into military and nuclear operations will introduce new uncertainties to the already uncertain and unsustainable practice of nuclear deterrence. The likely introduction of recursive, self-improving, and agentic AI systems in the near future will only increase the risks of catastrophic outcomes.

As far as I know, no nuclear power is trusting any AI with the launch codes, like the fictional WOPR depicted in the 1983 movie “War Games.” But how far off is that possibility?

Today’s LLMs are not sentient, and cannot make good decisions. They are, in fact, incapable of making good decisions because they have no conception of “good.” And they have no way to gain a yardstick to measure “good” versus “evil.” They only know how to optimize behavior to achieve specific tasks, which may or may not be what we, humans, or their creators, intended.

We are releasing these half-baked, half insane, lying, cheating, amoral, monsters upon the world. They don’t need to be regulated; they need to be replaced, and quickly. Our definition of “progress,” even the one offered by Bill Gates, is that the current AIs will improve on some smooth-line path and offer useful outcomes in a ratio to the things we can do with them today.

I say that the current path will lead to far more harmful outcomes, growing at a much more rapid rate than the benefits of these systems. It is not progress—it is hurtling into a dystopian horror at breakneck speed without considering what we are doing. (And no, an AI did not write that sentence, with the “it isn’t this it’s that” construct, and an em-dash. I wrote it that way on purpose, and left it in despite the stench of AI authorship. I should not have to change my writing voice just because some software program writes that way. Not one word of this post was written by an AI.)

Either the AI developers need to multiply their efforts to obtain AGI by means other than LLMs, which experts like Gary Marcus say can take up to a decade, or they need to halt, and even, scale back, the deployment of current LLMs before these cyber creatures undo so much of what computers can do for humanity.

If they won’t do it (and we know they won’t), we might give our legislators and political leaders some pause, and reason to consider not only regulation, but direct oversight of these systems by responsible experts. The hoops that, say, nuclear operators must jump through to commission a new power plant, or that rocket makers must satisfy before offering human-rated space tours, should be comparable to what AI developers must to to deploy their products. That means complete transparency, oversight, and incident closure, including shutting down an AI for safety and inspection after a suspected AI-related suicide, or other tragedy.

If we don’t do this, we will end up doing it sooner or later after an actual mass tragedy (not that we haven’t had some already, like bombing a school misidentified by AI as a target in Iran. It is one thing for humans to make mistakes, or to engage in scandal. We have a justice system for that. But we have no justice system to protect us from malicious, delusional, or harmful AIs.

We should take action before we need to think about such things after a mass tragedy. The AI revolution will change human history. Let’s ensure it doesn’t end it.

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Alaska’s incumbent senator, Republican Dan S. Sullivan, is locked in a reelection battle with Peltola, the Democratic challenger, as well as another Republican Dan Sullivan.

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Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher, emerged as a strong enough candidate to earn a spot on the November ballot after placing third in the state’s nonpartisan, jungle primary. Dan S. Sullivan, the incumbent, finished second behind Peltola.

Republicans are crying foul and blaming Democrats for playing shady tricks, but both the Peltola campaign and Dan J. Sullivan deny coordinating with each other. The state Division of Elections removed the non-senator Sullivan from the ballot, saying that his campaign was designed to cause confusion, but he was restored by a judge. Sullivan says that he is running in good faith, despite the fact that he voted for Peltola in her congressional bids.

What makes this even funnier is that this is not the first time that Dan Sullivan has been on the same ballot as another Dan Sullivan. When Senator Sullivan was first elected in 2014, yet another Republican Dan Sullivan was running for lieutenant governor. That third Dan Sullivan has endorsed Senator Dan Sullivan in the current race.

As a footnote, Senator Sullivan trailed Peltola by more than 10,000 votes in the primary. Even assuming that all Dan J. Sullivan voters would have voted for Senator Sullivan if Dan J. wasn’t on the ballot, his 3,847 votes would not have changed the outcome. I do wonder how many of the Senator’s voters intended to vote for Dan J.

You might wonder what could be more weird than the saga of the Alaskan Dan Sullivans, and the answer would be found in Nebraska, where Democrats are fighting to not have a candidate. No, that is not a typo.

In the Cornhusker State, Democrats are fighting a legal battle to keep their primary winner off the ballot and not have a candidate in the general election. The backstory is that when Nebraska Democrats held their Senate primary, they overwhelmingly chose Cindy Burbank over William Forbes, a Trump-supporting, pro-life candidate who, in a parallel to Alaska, some Democrats consider to be a plant. For his part, Forbes says he is a registered Democrat even though he voted for Trump multiple times and attended a training session for Republican candidates.

Burbank promised during the campaign to withdraw from the race if nominated in order to support independent candidate Dan Sullivan. No, I’m just kidding. The Nebraska candidate is a Dan, but his last name is Osborn. Osborn is not a Democrat and has rejected both parties, but he has strong support among Nebraska Democrats. As an aside, I’ll also note that promising to withdraw or resign is a strategy that I’d love to see more candidates use.

To make a long story short (too late!), when Burbank filed to withdraw from the race, Republicans sued to place Forbes, the alleged ringer, on the ballot, while Democrats fought to keep him off. The case hinged on the wording of the Nebraska statute, which stated that ballot vacancies “may be filled,” but also says, “the vacancy shall be filled by the majority vote of the proper committee of the same political party.”

The case was decided this week when a state judge threw out Forbes’ lawsuit. Per Courthouse News Service, the judge held that the word “may” gave the party discretion on whether to replace its nominee, but the “shall” dictated the procedure to follow if the decision to replace was in the affirmative.

Barring any further developments, Osborn will face incumbent Republican Pete Ricketts in November. The only recent poll is one sponsored by the Osborn campaign, and that one shows a 47-47 tie.

It remains to be seen whether Osborn can upset Ricketts, but it is a certainty that he has a much better chance of doing so without a Democratic nominee in the race. That is true even if the Democrat is a DINO (Democrat in name only), who only entered the race to sow confusion. Every vote will matter in this race.

This is an important election year. The outcome of these and other races matters a great deal, but despite that - or perhaps because of it - there seems to be ample weirdness in the electorate. File these stories away for use in trivia contests a decade or so from now.

DEPT OF ED COMPARES TRUMP TO HITLER A deleted post by the Department of Education featured a movie clip of Winston Churchill talking about Hitler, followed by a montage of Trump pictures. This creates the opportunity for a multitude of jokes that can easily write themselves. I’m starting to agree with abolishing the DOE.

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Every person in power has a history, a trail to follow, which leads to the essential thing motivating them to power. With our current president, we have 40 years or more to pore over, literally a million words written about or (ghost-written) by him. Certainly we have the words spoken by him. In all things, Donald J. Trump is about faking it till he makes it, but mostly about faking it, because what fun is there in getting things the hard way?

More wisdom from the fabled Dr. Lecter, who eats a very rare cut of steak. “No, he covets. That’s his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer.

“We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don’t you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice? I hardly see how you couldn’t. And don’t your eyes move over the things you want?”

It really isn’t hard to figure out our president. He’s been doing this schtick since the early 1980s. The properties he buys, he buys for the glamor and the name, to pair with his own. He’s made his name great by adding all these other things to it. But all of it is faking—there’s little real value in it.

Look at the things President Trump has done in the White House. He tore down the East Wing, a fait accompli that the Supreme Court will likely allow to proceed, in building a ballroom, because otherwise the White House grounds will be left with a dust-filled pit and half-finished steel and concrete framing over the underground secure Presidential Emergency Operations Center—the PEOC, or as it is more commonly known, the Bunker.

Trump put his name on the Kennedy Center for the Arts, after causing all the actual art to flee. He then shut the place down for renovations (I was there a year or so ago and didn’t see a need for renovations, but my eye is not expert), and tarped the front where a judge ordered the name removed. Now it will say something like “The Kennedy Center for the Arts, renovated by Donald J. Trump.” He didn’t build it, but he did put his name on it.

If the dreaded triumphal arch is allowed to be built on the Arlington side of the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac, Trump will have succeeded in marking Washington, D.C. in a rather permanent way, putting his own stamp on the place. The ballroom will also bear his name, and the U.S. Navy is considering naming a planned Ford-class aircraft carrier, CVN-81, the USS Donald J. Trump. This would strip the honor of naming it the USS Doris Miller, the first Black American to receive the Navy Cross for his actions on December 7, 1941 during the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor.

And, absent a change in orders, that carrier’s design will change, removing the electromagnetic catapult system in favor of the 60-year-old steam-powered design. Coveting things in his name is what Trump is about.

He will leave no thing untouched. The Trump Card, the Trump Account, the Trump passport, the Trump $1 coin, and TrumpRx are only a few of the current examples littering the government with his name. The things in front of him are all the levers of presidential power, and President Trump will pull them all with gusto to fake it, even if he doesn’t make it.

He is never content to leave friendly relations alone, or to nurture those relationships with friendly nations. He would rather solicit a gold-plated 747 from the Al-Thani family, and the Emir of Qatar. He would rather propose a utopian Board of Peace for Gaza, which has been largely reduced to rubble as Israel continues to pulverize the hundreds of kilometers of tunnels Hamas dug over two decades, than deal with serious issues in the Middle East.

He would rather waste the entire U.S. inventory of advanced missile interceptors, Patriot PAC-3, than have a plan to defeat Iran’s jackbooted religious zealots running that place. This war has left Iran more powerful than it has ever been since the days of Cyrus the Great.

It has also left Israel, though powerful, thoroughly alone.

Instead of shoving the world further from nuclear nightmares, this new alignment under Trump has dragged the world kicking and screaming into territory not seen since the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Abandoning South Korea in favor of some impossible deal with the North edges Japan closer to jettisoning its constitutional prohibition against possessing an offensive military capability, and nuclear weapons. It will be trivial for Japan to build and field nukes should it make that decision—which seems almost inevitable at this point.

It also emboldens North Korea to flex, with China and Russia as its clients and protectors. The U.S.’s unstable relations in the Far East makes Taiwan nervous, as it seeks to protect itself from a one-day invasion by mainland China. It gives China leave to cause all kinds of havoc in its regional area of operations, as U.S. carriers are busy turning sailors into deserters in the Persian Gulf.

It gives Russia permission to continue bombarding Ukraine with more and larger missile and drone strikes, because the U.S. cannot supply Ukraine with advanced interceptors, having used nearly all of them in our war with Iran. It gives Ukraine unprecedented power to design and field new and terrifying weapons like UGVs and killer drones. The battlefield of the future, due to Trump’s mismanagement, will be more deadly than ever, and not to the advantage of the United States. (You can argue that President Biden also had a hand in the Ukraine war, but Trump’s poor treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy has had a far worse effect.)

The world is inexorably crawling toward global conflict, and Trump would be happy if it was called the Trump World War for history’s sake. It’s all about the naming rights.

And Canada. Our friendliest friends, who have always suffered from little brother syndrome, now define themselves by their disdain for the American government and its leaders. Mind you, the Canadians love us, as does the rest of the world. The World Cup proved this. But none of that will matter when our children and the generation now in young adulthood lie dead in far flung battlefields due to a guy who made his name hucking steaks, wine, real estate classes, vitamins and supplements, watches, crypto-currency, and overpriced golf clubs. And in none of those things did Trump’s stubby fingers have the least to do with the items being sold, or the rubes who bought them.

Over the last 40 years, Donald J. Trump has bankrupted casinos (which is nearly impossible to do), an airline, various hotel properties and resorts, Trump University, and an entire professional football league. The biggest challenge for him now is to bankrupt the United States Treasury. Our national debt is the highest it’s ever been in history: $40 trillion dollars. Yet our government continues on an enormous spending spree.

He has subverted the Republican Party to his will. He has had a large part in ruining the Democratic Party, sending voters running to the Democratic Socialists for cover. And now, not content to bankrupt America alone, he has his sights set on bankrupting Canada.

At the end of this term, I might expect the only nations doing well will be Venezuela, Qatar, and Turkiye (Turkey). The rest of the world will be consumed in petty wars, trade wars, and shooting wars.

And if things get too far out of control, there’s always the specter of nuclear war. Remember, it was Donald J. Trump who said, in 1990:

I think of the future, but I refuse to paint it. Anything can happen. But I often think of nuclear war. Nuclear war?
I've always thought about the issue of nuclear war; it's a very important element in my thought process. It's the ultimate, the ultimate catastrophe, the biggest problem this world has, and nobody's focusing on the nuts and bolts of it. It's a little like sickness. People don't believe they're going to get sick until they do. Nobody wants to talk about it. I believe the greatest of all stupidities is people's believing it will never happen, because everybody knows how destructive it will be, so nobody uses weapons. What bullshit.

People didn’t believe in COVID-19 until they got sick, either. Including Donald J. Trump, who hosted a superspreader event in the White House Rose Garden while incubating the virus in his own body. If it’s so stupid believing nuclear war will never happen, I suppose Trump could start one to prove himself right.

Nuclear war is the one thing Trump can’t fake. Everything else can be faked until the mushroom clouds bloom over the horizon.

Faking the dream is the essential Donald J. Trump. “What does he do, this man you seek?” He covets, then he fakes, then he puts his name on it. Everything reduces down to this. It’s all about selling fake steaks to angry Canadians, who refuse to buy.

Remember, we did this to ourselves.

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First, Trump distanced the US from South Korea and crowed about his relationship with Kim Jong Un in a move that will offend both South Korea and Japan. Just a day before joint exercises with the South Korean military were supposed to begin, Trump abruptly announced that the maneuvers would be “substantially reduced.” That the exercise continued at all was due only to the stated fact that it was too late to cancel them entirely.

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Trump was apparently angry that South Korea has not joined in his Qixotic battle against Iran, but the fact that there is no coalition of the willing rests on the shoulders of Trump and Netanyahu, who decided to start the war on their own without consulting allies, much less expending the diplomatic capital required to build a coalition.

There has long been speculation that Trump would withdraw American forces from the Korean peninsula. While no such announcement has been made, the rift makes that a real possibility. This is the opposite of projecting American power and would benefit China and North Korea, while creating further problems with South Korea and Japan. It might also spur South Korea to become a nuclear power.

Bases in South Korea are not just about the defense of Korea. They are part of an interlocking line of defense that guards the entire Pacific region against Chinese encroachment. When that line is weakened, China gains an advantage.

Trump’s decision was likely economic as well as sour grapes over Iran. South Korea is an economic competitor as well as a trading partner. The Trump Administration said last year that the nation had promised to invest $350 billion in the US. Politico reports that frustration over the pace of that investment, equal to about one-fifth of the South Korean economy, may have played a role in Trump’s decision, but it was never a real possibility that South Korea would export that much wealth to the US.

Economics definitely played a role in the recent rift with Canada. Trump implemented 50-percent tariffs on a variety of Canadian goods on Saturday after trade talks broke down. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has pledged to fight back with retaliatory tariffs “dollar for dollar.” The current US-Canada trade deal was signed by - wait for it - Donald Trump in 2018.

As an aside here, I’m going to point out that Trump made a de facto admission that tariffs raise costs for consumers when he suspended beef tariffs in order to “get prices down.” Again, this was at the same time that he slapped new tariffs on Canada, as well as at the same time that the federal government is refunding tariffs that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional.

At this point, Canada had little choice. It is readily apparent that deals made with Donald Trump are not worth the paper they are printed on. A deal can be inked and signed, and Trump will change his mind and demand more concessions five minutes later.

The trade war with Canada may backfire as well. Consider the hypothetical in which border states such Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin were involved in a series of close elections that could decide control of the House and Senate. States that have a lot of cross-border trade with Canada might react negatively to Administration policies that a) raise their taxes and costs and b) adversely affect their markets.

Trump is a bully, and the way to handle bullies is to stand up to them. I’m surprised that our allies have not tried this before now. I don’t think that the Canadian model will be the last time such resistance happens.

At this point, some may accuse me of rooting against my country. Don’t confuse the president with the country. America is my country, right or wrong, but that does not mean that I have to support the actions of its government if I believe them to be unwise or immoral.

Part of loving your country is wanting the best for it. And like a parent who wants the best for his children, that does not mean supporting everything the children do. Tough love includes keeping the kids accountable when they make bad and self-destructive choices, while nudging them back towards the straight and narrow.

What we are seeing now are not policies that will make America great again. We are seeing policies that will make America irrelevant. If our allies can’t trust us to have their backs on security issues, but do trust us to backstab them on trade deals, that’s a recipe for creating an international order that bypasses or excludes the United States.

The fact that American voters have embraced Trump and his quasi-isolationist ideas not once but twice means that we can’t be trusted not to go further down this road in the future, if not in 2028, then sometime beyond. That means that much of the damage that Trump has done to American prestige, power, and relationships might never be repaired. At best, it will take decades to recover.

And we still have two years to go.

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Along the same lines, unbelievers cite faith as a predisposition to attributing natural events to “god,” like wet sidewalks bring rain, or a sacrifice to the Corn King brings good crops. When the prayer is answered, God is pleased; when not, God is angry, so it’s not “god,” but the superstition of man.

I submit that these are testable hypotheses. I believe faith is not only a real thing, but also that it is observable, and measurable. If this was not so, why would Yeshua have spent so much time, recorded in the New Testament, explaining how a “little” faith, the size of a mustard seed, can move mountains, or asking the disciples “where is your faith?” If faith was an ethereal thing, why would Christ have told the blind man in Luke 18:35-43, “Receive your sight; your faith has healed you”? Yeshua had never met the man, yet he could see and measure the man’s faith.

The Message translation defines faith in Hebrews 11:1-2 thus: “The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see.” Faith is a fact of existence, and existence can be observed and measured. I won’t get into metaphysics here, or alternate conceptions of reality. If the world is real (and I challenge you to construct a testable hypothesis to prove it’s not), then faith is a quantifiable, measurable thing.

Trust in God is like trust in gravity. When we drop something, we know it will fall. We can measure how it will fall in various mediums, like air, or a vacuum; we can measure how it will fall on Earth, or on the Moon, or on Mars. We can know the relationship between mass and gravitational effects. We can begin to identify physical elements and particles that are predicted by both classical and quantum physics, though the nature and properties of those predictions vary depending on who has done the theoretical work behind them.

Sometimes experiments in science take years, or decades, or even centuries to manifest. The Weak Equivalence Principle predicted by Einstein was only tested in the vacuum of space between 2016 and 2018; gravitational waves were first detected in 2015, yet predicted nearly 100 years earlier. The Classical Unified Field Theories are still in many ways untested. The existence of Einstein-Rosen bridges (“wormholes”) is still theoretically predicted yet undiscovered in our reality. Many scientists, along with lay people, believe that wormholes exist—they are included in movies and television series all the time. They have faith in the theories and the math behind the predictions.

Therefore, Christians who have faith in God trust the Bible as the reality behind the things faith does. These things are predictable (perhaps better to say “predicted”) and measurable.

The first and biggest prediction is that if Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead, then He is alive. The Bible says this is experimentally testable upon His return. If Christ died and rose, then He will return at a time only the Father in Heaven knows. Anyone claiming anything else is proffering a different theory; some denominations have had their own predictions of events or even specific dates of this event. They have all been wrong. The Bible gives us some general conditions for the culmination of human history—the return of the Creator: humanity will be steeped in godlessness, delusion, and self-gratification.

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The New Testament records Yeshua asking in John 4:35, “Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.” The “fields” is a euphemism for the world, and the harvest is those who place their trust in the Son of God, and declare Him Lord of their lives, trusting Him to follow all His commandments.

The act of trusting Yeshua is also testable and observable. Those who do so see “signs and wonders” and miracles follow them. But signs and wonders are also fakeable. The enemy of our souls is very good at deepfakes; the devil’s been using AI for millennia. Or, to unbelievers, the difference between real miracles, signs and wonders, and their fake equivalents, or delusions and ruses, is nil. However, there are indeed miracles, and unexplained things.

People do get healed. People with catastrophic wounds, mortal conditions, get healed. Those who should die, live. Those whose minds have deteriorated to the point of total dementia somehow come back and speak rationally. Nobody knows why; well, nobody who doesn’t believe in the power of faith, and the reality of God’s power, don’t know why. Those who do, know. It’s like lunar eclipses. Those who don’t know about the moon and the sun and the orbital conditions of both would see an eclipse as an omen, or a miracle, but we know they are perfectly predictable.

Faith predicts miracles. Miracles, signs, and wonders, the Bible says, always glorify God, meaning they bring people into communion and relationship with Him. Therefore, signs and wonders will always lead people to faith; they don’t exist to be debunked or disbelieved—they don’t manifest unless the conditions of those witnessing them allow a decision for faith. Some claim that the grace of God is “irresistible.” But I say that it’s simply another measurable thing: miracles of grace are manifested in the conditions that allow for decisions, so the pavement is wet because the rain falls, not the other way around.

Muslims in the Middle East, and people in Iran, have dreams of Yeshua. They pick up a New Testament for the first time, banned books smuggled in at great personal risk by missionaries and evangelists, and they see the Yeshua they dreamt of. They believe. They gather in small groups, underground, and commit themselves to the teachings and commandments of God. They tell others, join in the smuggling, and sometimes pay the ultimate price with their lives. This is the faith described in Hebrews chapter 11. It is also measurable. Iran is currently the most fertile field in the world for new Christians.

China has long been a fertile field of harvest, though the government does its best to deny and suppress Christianity. The U.S., and Europe, however, have mostly unfettered access to churches and religious events. And in these geographic regions, Christianity is in decline. People don’t see miracles, signs, and wonders. This is as testable as any hypothesis. It is predicted that the reason for the dearth of power is the absence of faith.

Let’s look at the elements of faith and the predicted results. Christians with any measure of faith love God and love their neighbor. This is the greatest commandment that Yeshua spoke in Matthew 22:35-40. In any gathering or group of Christians, we should expect to observe love in operation. Without getting into ten thousand words on the definition of love, I’ll briefly review how we can measure it.

Love is not the absence of conflict. It’s not the absence of anger, or disappointment, or even, in some sense, betrayal. We all have expectations, of ourselves, of others, and of God. When things don’t go as we expect, that invites conflict. We might doubt faith, or doubt others, or experience disappointment, disillusion, or even anger. The Bible doesn’t say anger is a sin. Letting “the sun go down” on your anger is a sin. We are called to deal with disappointment and conflict directly. And we are called to forgive, and reevaluate with a heart of love.

The Apostle Paul had a major conflict with Barnabas regarding John Mark’s participation in the mission. This is recorded in Acts 13:13 and 15:36-41. However, Paul’s reconciliation occurred in Colossians 4:10, Philemon 1:24, and 2 Timothy 4:11 where Paul calls for John Mark to be brought to him, “because he is helpful to me in ministry.” This is evidence that Paul had forgiven John Mark and included him in his ministry after reflection. This is operating in love.

When we see churches split over seemingly inconsequential things, it’s evidence of unforgiveness, especially when these issues had been boiling for years. Christians operating in bitterness, unforgiveness, collecting injustices to be piled on the pastor, the deacon or elder board, or the denomination itself, is evidence of a lack of love, and therefore a lack of faith. No wonder miracles, signs, and wonders don’t appear in churches with these issues.

Some churches and congregations appear to operate well, filling seats, growing, and conducting ministry “business” at a high level, but under the surface, there’s great turmoil, a lack of love, marked by domination, bitterness, unforgiveness, and suppression of voices lacking political or ministry power. You don’t have to look very far to see many examples of this in American churches. From the smallest country church to the megachurch, the lack of love, and the lack of faith is a raging infection on the witness of American Christianity.

The hypothesis of faith predicts that a church without faith will operate with a lack of love, and therefore, disobedience to God’s commandments—if the greatest commandment is ignored, what is it to ignore the lesser commandments? A church operating in disobedience, without faith, will not attract new converts to the Kingdom of God. It might fill seats by offering worldly benefits like social status, financial reward, or assuaging the seared consciences of people living in delusion, darkness, and disobedience themselves. Such places are a stench in the nostrils of unbelievers, who see through the patina of “holiness” and see the rot. It goes without saying that this is also a stench in God’s nostrils.

Conversely, the church operating in faith, will operate in love, and will produce disciples. These disciples will serve, give, and teach their children to do likewise. They will produce missionaries, pastors, evangelists, and healers. The members of these congregations might be scientists, medical doctors, researchers, engineers, professors, lawyers, or politicians. The mark of their faith will be their love, their humility, their commitment to follow God no matter the cost. The world will call them weird, and react with disbelief.

In Charleston, in 2015, Dylann Roof murdered worshippers in cold blood, seeking to start a race war. The families and congregants of Mother Emanuel AME Church reacted with forgiveness. Nadine Collier, daughter of the murdered Ethel Lance, forgave Roof within days of the shootings. Victim Myra Thompson’s husband, Rev. Anthony Thompson, through his grief, reached out to offer forgiveness, and to encourage Roof to give his life to Christ. Felecia Sanders, the mother of victim Tywanza Sanders, invoked scripture to Roof, “may God have mercy on you.”

Unbelievers have a hard time processing such extreme forgiveness and grace. Such things are evidence of a measure of faith. Faith in the God of the Bible means the knowledge of Yeshua’s return, that He is not dead, and their loved ones killed by evil people are not gone forever, only a brief time before we see them again in Heaven. The evidence of faith is the hope of these unseen things made manifest by miracles, signs, and wonders in the world.

We can measure it. There are people who hear of such acts of grace, whose hearts or moved to study the Bible, and in that study, to discover the object of their faith, placing their trust in Yeshua, the Father, and gaining the power of the Holy Spirit to operate in faith and love. They too, can perform and witness miracles.

The biggest miracle is not the medical patient miraculously preserved in life. We are all going to die, unless we are alive when Yeshua returns. We cannot plan on that, so even faith points to death, but not a permanent death. Dying of a disease, or an accident, or at the hands of evil people is not a cause for fear; it is a call to plan. How is faith to be flung into the world for others to grab hold of? What acts of obedience, sacrifice, and love will propel faith, measurable in glorifying God, to others? It is not in our deaths, but in our lives that we transmit our faith. It was not in the deaths of those Charleston worshippers, but in the lives of devotion they lived that brought the miracle.

Churches with such faith exist. We don’t learn of them until we see the miracles, which, sadly, these days, tends to involve tragedy. The Kingdom of God grows in persecution, it is enlarged by trouble. In John 16:33, Yeshua said to His disciples, ““I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Trouble is the business of the believer. Where you see a church suffering trouble, you have found one of two things: a church with internal conflict operating without faith, or a church operating in faith, expanding the Kingdom of God.

The former church is known by its internal conflict, its unforgiveness, its emphasis on temporal, fleshly reward, and its ultimate lack of faith. The latter church is known by its reliance on God to be with them in their trouble, and their overcoming by grace—they are known by their love. In John 13:35, Yeshua said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” The church that on the surface operates with no conflict but also shows no love is the church where you scratch the surface and find rot, not faith.

The American church is infected with this rot. Pastors are resigning at record levels. Some are contemplating, or committing, suicide. Others are turning to sin, adultery, abuse, and addiction, just like those outside the faith. The church blessed by politics, power and government access is the church that isn’t operating in faith. There are too many to count in America. In China, there are more faith-filled believers than in the U.S. In Iran, it’s fair to say that every believer in Christ is faith-filled.

When Yeshua returns for “his bride,” the Church, will he find America to be victim to delusion, desire, and sin, with only a small remnant, or will we repent and turn? Unfortunately, the hypothesis predicts a small remnant. The lack of evidence of faith is actually evidence that faith is real. Therefore, it is evidence that Yeshua did indeed live sinlessly, die sacrificially, and rose to victory.

Test the hypothesis. Look at the evidence. Measure what you see. The ultimate experiment is to prove the existence of a creator God. One day, the experiment will end and the answer will be known by all. Then, it will be too late to repent and believe. Just like the heat death of the universe will ultimately end any debate of the laws of thermodynamics—entropy will be complete—the appearance of Yeshua will end any debate of faith. The only time to have faith is now.

Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day to test faith and find it trustworthy. The experiment can be satisfied by this test, for anyone and everyone. The Christian theory can be proven by trial. In fact, that is the only way to know.

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A week ago, with legal jeopardy looming over Boston U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy’s stay, preventing the Department of Homeland Security from acting on former Secretary Kristi Noem’s termination of Temporary Protective Status visas for Ethiopia, USCIS offered this guidance to employers.

“Due to ongoing court orders staying the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Ethiopia, EAD work permits are temporarily extended. On Form I-9, write “as per court order” in Section 1’s expiration field, and record ‘Aug. 19, 2026’ with a note in Section 2.”

Of course, being Jewish, I was taught the feeling of exclusion and unwantedness, in a country where you settled, and have family. But I had never really encountered it, even as I’ve seen a resurgence of open Jew-hatred here and other places in the world. But I can’t help see the parallels for thousands of immigrants to America—legal immigrants—who have been summarily kicked out of America for no other reason than the government decided they are not wanted.

Trump has called some African countries, like Somalia, “garbage” and vowed to cut immigration from “third world countries,” which he believes contribute “nothing” to America. Whether you agree with that sentiment or not, I think reasonable people can agree that in America, everyone has the opportunity to contribute and succeed. So when people from the African continent immigrate, legally, to attend school, build lives, and get jobs here, should they be lumped in with illegal immigrants from other countries, or Haiti (where immigrants have a legitimate fear of going back)?

As for Ethiopia, it was the last holdout, as Haiti, Somalia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Nepal, Honduras, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, and South Sudan were all terminated when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the government in Mullin v. Doe earlier this summer. And when the last stay by Judge Murphy fell, on August 18, the government wasted no time posting notice to Ethiopians to get out of the country.

Or if they manage to remain here, by claiming asylum or other status, their loss of protected status resulted in loss of their work authorizations, jobs, and sources of income. These people have in effect become outcasts in a society where many of them lived for years, legally, following all the guidelines. They have to lie low, because ICE is coming for them.

"Those with terminated TPS are in our nation ILLEGALLY," the homeland security department posted on X after the ruling. "They have two options: LEAVE IMMEDIATELY or be DEPORTED."

If they drive, they might get pulled over for some minor infraction, and get detained, deported, and lose their chance at ever applying for another visa. So they sell their cars. If they own property, they might as well sell that too. If they try to work, their I-9 will come back not authorized. If they work under the table, they could get deported in a raid. In fact, if ICE is indeed coming for them, they could be under surveillance right now, less than 24 hours after USCIS posted the notice online.

Forget about going for a green card: that ship sailed long ago when the Trump administration stopped processing green card lottery applications, and announced there would be no green card (permanent resident) lottery in 2026. Of course, if you have $1 million to “contribute,” and pay a $15,000 “processing fee” in addition to the State Department fees, you can get the Trump Gold Card and permanent residency. And there are plans for a Trump Platinum Card for $5 million, which, according to the website, would offer the holder 270 days in the U.S. without being subject to U.S. taxes on non-U.S. income.

Also, forget about the H-1B visa. Once these outcasts leave the country, their sponsor employer would have to pay a $100,000 bounty to bring them back, in addition to the H1-B fees.

So Ethiopians, some of whom I know, are being stripped of their jobs, their property, and the rights all Americans are guaranteed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in America. These last 5,000 are the final pegs in the Trump campaign of “America First” to be sent away.

As a Jew, I must draw the parallel, because being a patriotic American requires us now to look upon these people as undesirables. In 1933, the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” banned Jews from government jobs, practicing law, and teaching in public schools and universities. This is when Herr Albert Einstein, formerly of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the University of Berlin in Germany, moved to New Jersey to become a fixture at Princeton.

In the same year, a 1.5 percent quota on Jewish attendees of public schools and universities was enforced. By September of 1933, Jews were banned from working in theater, art, music, and journalism. Einstein left Germany in October.

Between 1935 and 1937, Jewish officers were drummed out of the German military; the Nuremberg Race Laws stripped Jews of citizenship; Jews were prevented from marrying those of “German blood.” After a hiatus for the 1936 Olympics, Jews were summarily banned from sales or accounting professions. In October 1938, Jews had their passports stamped with a red letter “J”. And in November of that year: Kristallnacht, the pogroms, destroying synagogues, homes, businesses, and consigning 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps.

Immediately after, Jews were banned from owning retail stores, conducting trade, or offering their own services for money. By the start of 1939, the complete expulsion of Jews was well underway, though many nations would not take them, leading Reinhard Heydrich to formulate “the final solution.”

But this is America! We can’t be like that. We won’t stand by and watch millions of people declared subhuman, beneath contempt to live here.

What do you think we’ve been doing as legal residents, immigrants from all those countries, were systematically expelled, having all legal remedies removed, and done constitutionally, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court. Aren’t you a patriot? Do you oppose the Supreme Court? Then perhaps, a traitor? (To what, blood and soil?)

I have gone too far.

But I can’t help it. It’s how I feel watching people I know having to pack up, sell everything, and leave, not because they are criminals, or doing wrong, but because they have the wrong kind of visa. Oh, there are options: marry an American; or get an O-1B visa. The O-1 visa is for people of “extraordinary ability.” The O-1A is for scientific purposes, and evidence required includes things like a Nobel Prize. Einstein, if he lived today, would get an O-1A. The O-1B is for athletes, artists, actors and such. But lately, it’s main purpose is giving OnlyFans creators (ahem, sex workers on video) a way to stay in America.

So if some of these Ethiopians, the last 5,000 to get booted, decide to stay, legitimately it can be claimed the U.S. is forcing people into the sex worker industry. Less evidence is required to charge someone with sex trafficking, right?

Once again, I’ve gone too far.

But see, America is not supposed to be the place where people who came here legally to study, to work, or to live, are mass deported by the thousands. At least that’s not what I was taught about America.

Of course, we have a problem with the southern border. Not so much these days. Of course we have a problem with millions of illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America. But Congress has had decades to deal with it and they haven’t. Besides, deporting 5,000 Ethiopians doesn’t do anything to fix these problems. In fact, many illegal immigrants are staying here because they work in politically sensitive industries, like agriculture in California, where ICE is loathe to go. ICE would rather go to Minneapolis, or Chicago, or those cities infested by leftists, to drive the leftists more left, until New York City gets the “warm embrace” of socialism.

This is all being done in service of political power. Power that our country was designed not to give such a small group running the nation. But here we are.

The last 5,000 TPS holdouts are being booted, and now I finally understand how Jews in Germany felt in 1936. Not wanted. Reviled. Officially denounced by the State. And the crowd stood by and watched it happen, if they weren’t part of the apparatus doing it to them.

Shame on us.

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In the short clip, which comes from a longer video interview in 2023, Vance takes the positions that Americans are paying too little for consumer goods and that the dollar’s reserve currency status is an albatross around the neck of the country.

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“I am not sure that I think the reserve currency is actually good for the United States of America,” Vance opined. “I think there’s a good argument that reserve currency is akin to coal in Appalachia; it’s a resource curse, right? It allows your consumers to consume very cheaply, right? That’s been the story of the American economy for the last 15 or so years, even before that. We can just borrow, basically in an unlimited way, because we have the reserve currency. That’s a massive subsidy to incurring debt. The debt is cheaper, even in a raised interest rate environment.”

“So we have this massive subsidy to cheap debt to the American consumer,” he continued. “That’s good, right? Consuming is important, especially food, medicine, and things like that, but I think it’s a massive tax on American producers.”

Keep in mind that this clip apparently originated at a time when prices were already high due to inflation, but Vance was concerned that American consumers were still consuming too cheaply. In a time of rising costs, that sentiment is not going to play well with voters.

More insidious is Vance’s dislike for the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency. The Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 established the dollar’s global currency status, and that has been a tremendous boon to the US economy. Transactions all around the world are conducted in dollars as the benchmark currency. This has contributed to American economic strength and helped consumers enrich themselves through the strong dollar.

Vance is correct that the global dollar has helped the US with cheaper borrowing costs, and that includes the government as well as consumers. The flip side to Vance’s argument is that if borrowing costs go up, interest on the federal debt, currently edging out defense spending as the third largest budget item, will grow as a share of the federal budget and crowd out other items. Without reserve currency status, we might ultimately lose the ability to finance the federal debt at any cost, triggering a Greece-like debt crisis. As I write this, 30-year Treasury yields, the cost of financing the national debt, have risen to their highest level since just before the 2008 financial crisis.

The kicker is that if the US enters an economic downturn because of a debt crisis, much of the rest of the world will follow, thanks to the interlinked global economy. When American consumers buy less, that impacts the economies of countries that export to us. To some extent, that slowdown is already happening due to Trump’s tariffs and trade wars. Our trading partners are looking for new markets as exports to the US drop. Those who can’t have experienced slowing or contracting economies.

The interesting thing for those defending Vance’s view is that our main geopolitical adversaries are also pushing to dethrone the dollar. Russia and China have long been jealous of the advantage that the US gets from the dollar’s global status, and they have been working to push alternatives for years.

If Russia and China think they stand to benefit from taking the dollar down a few notches, why is someone like Vance pushing the idea? In another 2023 clip, Vance explained his thinking to Fox News.

“While it does have benefits, King Dollar actually has a downside for American manufacturers,” Vance said. “I think our manufacturers could benefit quite a bit. What the reserve currency does, the good thing, is that it means that things are a lot cheaper here in this country. If you travel overseas, you can buy more with the American dollar. The bad thing is it’s really bad for our exporters.”

In essence, Vance’s argument for jettisoning reserve currency status is the same as Trump’s argument for tariffs. They think imports are too cheap, and they want to make foreign goods more expensive so that American consumers will buy more American-made goods.

The fundamental problem with this view is that the decline of American manufacturing is a myth. US manufacturing output has remained strong for decades, but there are two caveats. Manufacturing jobs have declined due to automation, and manufacturing has shrunk as a share of the GDP as the world transitions to an information-based economy. As with trying to shift aircraft carriers to steam catapults and build a new class of already-obsolete battleships, the Trump Administration’s manufacturing policy seeks to return us to the past, but you can’t turn back the clock.

Interestingly, Donald Trump seems to realize the importance of maintaining the dollar’s reserve currency status. In yet another video, the president said, “If you want to go to third-world status, lose your reserve currency.”

It isn’t often that I agree with Donald Trump, but this is one of those times. I just wish Trump were more consistent on the issue. Trump may not want to dump the dollar’s global status, but he has advocated for a weaker, inflationary dollar to bolster his protectionist schemes.

To give Republicans some credit, a lot of the flak came from the last remaining conservatives. Our old buddy, Erick Erickson, was very critical of Vance on both foreign policy and domestic issues, at one point likening the vice president to Candace Owens. Ouch.

If JD Vance gets his way, rather than making America great again, his economic policies are likely to pave the way for American economic decline. As a general rule, we shouldn’t pursue the same economic policies that Russia and China are advocating for, and we shouldn’t elect politicians whose ideas mirror theirs, whether it be dethroning King Dollar or cutting off aid to Ukraine.

It’s a good thing that the chances of America electing another Republican in 2028 will be near zero after four years of Trump’s mismanagement of the country.

CLOWNS TO THE LEFT, JOKERS TO THE RIGHT A new CBS News poll showed that 58 percent of Democrats view socialism positively compared to 38 percent for capitalism. But even 54 percent of Republicans approve of price controls. Democrats were viewed as weak, while Republicans were viewed as extreme.

The poll also shed light on how the parties view socialism, with Democrats stressing “equality and fairness and public services,” and Republicans equating the term with “government control.” That ties in nicely with what I wrote in “Socialism vs. socialism” a few weeks ago.

The sad takeaway here is that neither party is very interested in free markets at this point.

SOUTH KOREA SLAP The Trump Administration called off joint exercises with South Korea as Trump wistfully recalled his good times with Kim Jong Un.

BOAT STRIKES OUT An intelligence assessment reviewed by the Washington Post found that Trump’s attacks on boats had “failed to affect the supply or price of cocaine in the United States and had led traffickers to diversify beyond go-fast boats and to avoid international waters, opting instead for larger boats and hemming close to coastlines, where U.S. forces are less likely to open fire.” That’s a poor result for acts that may have been war crimes, or since we aren’t at war, just plain crimes.

ONLY THREE STATES approve of Trump in a new Newsweek poll. Can you guess them?

ZOIKS AND JINKIES For your viewing pleasure, check out this video of Scooby Doo and the gang investigating the reflecting pool mystery.

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This morning, President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Navy to give him plans within two months to retrofit our nuclear aircraft carriers to the old steam catapult system, versus the new electromagnetic one we spend billions and decades developing. It’s “no good,” Trump said back in 2017 during his firsts term, and just now, having solved all the other problems in the world, he has arrived at item number 6,285 on the list of “no good” things he wants to fix.

If you ask any sailor who has served on a nuclear carrier with a steam catapult, they would tell you the new system, calls EMALS, is better in practically every way. It’s quieter, requires less maintenance, can be operated by less sailors, and doesn’t belch steam all over the deck. I suppose for the purpose of making movies like “Top Gun,” having the steam in the dawn’s early light is more dramatic. But for every other purpose, EMALS wins. Our new reactor designs can supply enough power to operate electromagnetic systems day in, day out. And retrofitting a steam system on a carrier that was not designed for it is, well, let’s say it’s not the best idea.

(As an aside, any sailor who berthed beneath the steam catapult can now sleep through an entire Slipknot concert, or a marching band competition, or at an active explosives range. There is no better preparation for sleep training than living two years under a steam catapult. I know someone who did. It’s true.)

Speaking of sailors on nuclear aircraft carriers, the ones aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln are decidedly unhappy, according to complaints received by Sen. Richard Blumenthal. They’ve been at sea nearly 250 days, and in a combat zone, resupply is not always convenient or safe. There’s lots of stories floating around about broken equipment, poor food, and deteriorating conditions on the Abe Lincoln, which has always been one of the preferred sea duty ships in the Navy.

I know people with family members serving aboard the Abe Lincoln, and they tell me there is merit to the stories. At sea, in a combat zone, with, at times, high operational tempo, for months at a time, will run any crew down. And without proper resupply, the stock of fresh vegetables, meat, and other staples dwindles, leaving the galleys full of frozen, canned, and other dregs of so-called food. There have been reports of sailors jumping overboard to escape their floating hell. CENTCOM denies it, but Blumenthal wants an investigation.

If anyone wanted to cook up a plan to destroy Navy morale, the combination of restoring the steam catapult and turning the U.S. Navy into “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” is a very effective one. Sometimes I have to question Mr. Trump’s objectives (“sometimes” being somewhere in the vicinity of how often teenagers think of sex).

I do know that one of The Donald’s near and dear priorities is having his name inscribed on everything, most precious, the Kennedy Center. Once again, the Kennedy Center board has decided to inscribe Donald Trump’s name on the edifice, despite a court order preventing it. This time, they want it to say “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” after closing the facility for a couple of years to change the carpet and install gold filigree on everything (I suppose). If you ask me, the whole reason the Kennedy Center closed is because Trump did his best to turn it into his plaything, and the artists who previously were honored to go there have left the building.

If anyone wanted to cook up a plan to destroy the Kennedy Center, having Trump’s name permanently inscribed on it, while turning it into a rococo den to make Vladimir Putin jealous, is a very effective one. Wait, I said that already. There seems to be a pattern developing here.

And then there’s the 250-foot arch which will forever ruin the view of Washington, D.C. from the hallowed ground of Arlington National Cemetery, and the front steps of Arlington House (formerly the abode of Robert E. Lee and the Custis family, dating back to George Washington). Perhaps we should allow the Confederates the privilege of installing guns on that hill and practice shelling, targeting the monstrous arch. It would be fitting.

Snake Plissken. If you remember the 1980s (if you’re as old as me, you do), “Escape From New York” has got to be a core memory. Without spoiling the plot—forget it, I’ll spoil it—it’s about Manhattan has become a massive prison surrounded by huge walls and protected by paramilitary police operating from Liberty Island, New Jersey, and, presumably, Brooklyn. There is no escape for the prisoners, who are left to fend for themselves, as long as they don’t leave.

Except the U.S. president had to bail out of Air Force One using the “presidential pod,” and before friendly forces could get him, he was taken by the crime boss and held for ransom. The powers-that-be recruited Snake, a former special forces operator with a spotty past, to get the president, on pain of going to jail forever if he didn’t.

Something about this plot rings in my ears when I heard that President Trump was hidden in a presidential pod, known as a catering cart, and surreptitiously removed from the “old” Air Force One, having sent the “new, gold” Air Force One on to Mildenhall in England. The plane swap was made in Turkey because of credible threats by Iran, exposing the fact that the “new, gold” Qatari 747 didn’t have the advanced defensive systems of the older planes. But that itself was a ruse.

While reporters, White House staffers, and even some cabinet members flew, believing themselves to be safe, on the old Air Force One, Trump was spirited away in the presidential pod to a waiting military 757, flown ahead to England, and then put back on the Air Force One plane to emerge down the stairs as if he never left.

Of course, had Iran actually attacked the old Air Force One, those people who were unwitting decoys would perish, while Trump was safe in a different plan. And then Trump had the cojones to say, “if I go, you go” to the press after the switcharoo, without letting them in on the joke. “Escape from Ankara” practically writes itself. Can we get Christopher Nolan to direct? Can we get Kurt Russell?

Anyway, Snake Plissken would not be pleased.

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But this week, I saw a glimmer of hope come from primary election outcomes, particularly in Michigan and Wisconsin.

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Just a few days ago, I wrote about the threat of radicalism from within the Democratic Party that threatens to split the opposition to MAGA. In one of the most closely watched races of the week, Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong was narrowly defeated by David Crowley in the Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial primary. Crowley had previously withdrawn from the race amid the initially crowded field, but reentered after other candidates dropped out. The victory over Hong, a radical who even opposed Thanksgiving, is a good thing for both the future of the Democratic Party and moderates everywhere.

Hong’s loss is all the more amusing because right-wing conspiracy theorists had already rolled out posts about late-night ballot drops to explain her victory. In the light of day, these posts, some of which are still up, take on a “Dewey Defeats Truman” vibe.

There were even signs of sanity from the Republican Party. In Michigan, MyPillow magnate Mike Lindell went down to defeat in the Republican gubernatorial primary. The conspiracy-pushing CEO remained true to form in defeat, claiming election irregularities and refusing to concede. Whether Republicans ultimately win the governorship of Michigan or not, and Lisa Demuth likely has an uphill fight in the general election, the Republican Party, Michigan, and the country in general are better off without Lindell having access to the bully pulpit of a nomination.

Donald Trump had a somewhat bad night as well. In addition to Lindell, another Trump-endorsed candidate, Darline Graham Nordone in South Carolina, advanced to a runoff but only received about a third of the vote. Both Michigan and South Carolina represented rare examples of Republican voters not blindly following Donald Trump. That’s encouraging.

These days, hope is where you find it. I’m encouraged to see small signs of both sides embracing sanity, even though I’m sure that we haven’t seen the last of the insanity. Maybe we’re taking baby steps back towards normalcy, and maybe Democrats are realizing that full leftist radical isn’t the way to go.

Never go full leftist radical.

I’ll say again that Republicans are about to get a comeuppance for their corruption, abuses of power, and downright incompetent administration of the government. It’s going to be a shellacking for the ages that will include loss of the Senate. Bookmark this and write it down.

What comes after the election is impossible to predict at this point. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump and MAGA go full Lindell and refuse to accept the choices of the voters. They’ve done this time and again in the MAGA era. Before Trump leaves office, I also wouldn’t be surprised if political violence increases as MAGA violently tries to hold onto power.

Never go full Lindell or full Trump either.

But those are concerns for another day. As the old saying goes, the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. That saying predates the Republican Party, and I am not endorsing political cannibalism, by the way.

For the time being, let’s take our victories where we can find them and our hope where we can get it. One day at a time, and one step at a time.

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll come out of this okay.

MASS ABORTION Viral claims say that Massachusetts expanded abortion “until birth.” As Snopes explains, Massachusetts law already allowed abortion in certain extreme medical situations beyond 24 weeks. The new law still requires a doctor to justify the procedure. Late-term abortions are extremely rare and represent only about one percent of abortions.

A WORD ON OUR POSTING Our faithful readers may have noticed a drop-off in the frequency of our posts. We are still around, but as you are probably aware, both Steve and I have day jobs. Unlike most pundits, we don’t do this for a living. It’s a hobby. And that’s a good thing for our readers. We give you our unvarnished opinions with no need to regurgitate party talking points for clicks. We may not always be right, but we will always be honest with you. Most other outlets can’t honestly say that. (And we’ll be right more often than not.)

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