Southern Methodist University hosts the public school in Charlottesville, Virginia in an ACC football game. Holland will be in the stands (after Boulevarding, of course!), cheering hard for her school. I will be watching with Dudley, at home, on television. PONY UP!

The Democrats, who think the sky is falling over the high price of oil due to the Iran conflict, could care less about the high price of oil due to the Russian/Ukrainian war. They are denouncing President Trump’s decision to buy diesel fuel from Russia. Which is such horse hockey, given that they would likely celebrate a decision to allow Iran to begin exporting oil again. Or not. Who knows? These people are such cowards and hypocrites. So are many Republicans (Thom Tillis, Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Lisa Murkowski, et al.).

But let us set aside the glib sound bites. Let us look at a little factual analysis, to wit:

1. Russia uses its vast supply of oil to fuel its weapons of war against Ukraine.
2. Ukraine attacks Russia’s oil refineries to reduce Russia’s ability to wage war against Ukraine.
3. U.S. buys 300,000 tons of Russian diesel fuel to increase supply and lower prices for U.S. and worldwide diesel consumers.
4. Russia has 300,000 tons (significantly more in months to come) less diesel fuel to use in its war on Ukraine.
5. Ukraine benefits by Russia’s diminished ability to wage war against it.
6. Russia has lots of cash from the deal to buy more oil, weapons, and/or foreign fighting mercenaries.
7. OR DOES IT?
8. IT DOES NOT!

Sanctions and export controls are having significant and long-lasting consequences on Russia’s defense industrial base.  Since February 2022, the United States and its partners and Allies have coordinated to use export controls and sanctions to restrict Russia’s access to advanced technology, which has degraded the Russian weapons industry’s ability to produce and stockpile weapons to replace those that have been destroyed in the war.  These sanctions and export controls have remained in effect and have been strengthened in the meantime.

President Trump’s conflict with Iran, and the ongoing military and economic forces applied by his administration on Iran, has not only crippled Iran’s ability to export oil and weapons to militant terrorist groups and to Russia.  When these factors are coupled with the existing sanctions and export controls already in place against Russia, and the Treasury’s efforts to paralyze the “sanctions evasion scheme”, Russia is left with a lot of cash from the diesel sale, but few places to spend it.

Now none of this addresses the absurdity of the irrational cry by some to continue to side with Ukraine (ignoring the fact that our assistance to Ukraine erases any complaints we might have to Russia aiding Iran). It is a stupid war for the United States to be involved in, and nothing has been accomplished in 5 years. But, but, but, . . Russia! We have to oppose Russia, or else they will march straight by Paris to The English Channel. Really? Russia cannot get to Kiev.

It is regrettable that Russia chose to invade Ukraine, but hardly surprising. President Obama’s weakness permitted Russia’s 1st invasion, and China Joe’s words actually invited Russia into Ukraine. But this is not America’s fight. Should we want Ukraine to win? Sure. Should we have become involved in this conflict? No. And we should not stay involved.

If President Trump can broker a peace agreement, great. If he cannot, let the 2 countries fight it out. It is not our problem.

____________________________________________________________________

Stupidity: Is It The New Political Power?

How grievance, identity, and performance are reshaping self-government

BY:          Allan J. Feifer, The American Thinker (October 8, 2026).

We have spent centuries building societies on the assumption that people can govern themselves. Our institutions are premised on individual responsibility, private property, free expression, voluntary association, markets, constitutional limits, and the belief that adults can generally be trusted to govern themselves.

Yet much of today’s politics appears to be moving in the opposite direction.

Competence increasingly seems negotiable, perhaps even disqualifying. Expertise is often treated with suspicion. Complex problems are compressed into slogans. Identity matters more than accomplishment, authenticity more than knowledge, and how a politician makes people feel more than that politician’s ability.

Why? And more importantly, what happens to our democracy when understanding a political argument matters less than producing the politically correct reaction?

That is a different question from whether conservatives or liberals are right. It is a question about self-government itself. The old populist argument was simple: the elites have failed you, so “power to the people.”

The emerging version may be something stranger: you don’t need knowledge; you only need someone or something to blame.

That’s a very different kind of populism.

Self-government is hard work. It requires citizens to absorb facts, recognize tradeoffs, distinguish evidence from assertion, remember history, tolerate disagreement, and occasionally accept outcomes they don’t like.

None of that is particularly riveting. Anger, outrage, fear, and identity are.

And the modern infosphere is exceptionally good at delivering them.

A politician no longer needs to explain how a complicated policy will work. A social-media influencer doesn’t need expertise in the subject he is discussing. A political movement doesn’t necessarily need to persuade anyone through argument. Identify an enemy, construct a grievance, provide a slogan, and you have an audience that can be controlled emotionally.

Citizens become consumers of political content, and content is rewarded for holding attention, not for its veracity.

This may explain the increasing importance of political performance. People respond to charisma and physical attractiveness. Presentation affects perception. Voters often rely on selective information sources rather than examining issues neutrally.

None of that is new. But technology has rewritten the rules. A candidate can become a celebrity before proving an ability to govern, gaining millions of followers without demonstrating expertise beyond attracting followers. A compelling personality can overwhelm a simple question without addressing—or even understanding—the problem.

At some point, this stops being merely a question of political style.

What if political systems have evolved to reward incompetence?

Not because voters consciously want incompetent leaders. Rather, evaluating competence requires effort, information, and judgment. A politician who answers difficult questions honestly will inevitably disappoint some people. A politician who avoids them can promise almost anything.

That creates a peculiar political incentive:

The less citizens demand intellectually, the easier it is to mislead them.

That’s why this new populism is destabilizing. Traditional populism claimed elites were denying ordinary people their rightful political power. The emerging version turns that proposition on its head. It gives people the sensation of enormous political power while quietly diminishing the power they actually possess.

Citizens get to vote, post, protest, rage, boycott, and demand. But increasingly, political appeals are reduced to choosing your tribe:

Left or right. Us or them. Victim or oppressor. Choose your tribe and never be troubled with thinking again.

Are we witnessing an evolved populism?

Traditional populism mobilized ordinary people against established power. What we’re seeing now increasingly involves mobilizing people through identity, grievance, emotional attachment, and simplistic narratives rather than through arguments about how society actually functions.

Are contemporary political movements organic expressions of what millions of people independently believe? Or are those beliefs being shaped—sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally—by social-media algorithms, political organizations, universities, corporations, bureaucracies, advocacy groups, entertainment, foreign influence operations, and an opinion industry devoted to delivering specific outcomes?

No secret room is needed to coordinate the process. Systems don’t require conspirators to produce coordinated effects. Embedded incentives will do the job on their own.

If outrage attracts attention, outrage will be amplified. If grievance mobilizes voters, grievances will be cultivated. If identity produces loyalty, identity becomes the objective. If fear generates clicks, fear will be supplied.

And if citizens consume politics this way, politics accelerates the process. The result is a feedback loop: the public becomes more emotional because politics has become more emotional, while politics becomes more emotional because emotional appeals work.

That brings us to a larger question about the direction in which Western societies are moving.

For centuries, the West developed certain assumptions about the individual. Individuals possessed rights. Property could be privately owned. Government had limits. Markets could operate without central direction, and people were responsible for their choices.

No system is perfect, but those assumptions produced an extraordinary civilization. Today, many of them are being challenged. That’s okay. Every generation should challenge inherited ideas.

But there is a question almost nobody asks loudly enough:

What replaces them?

If individual responsibility declines, what replaces it? If open markets are rejected, who allocates? If private property becomes less secure, who decides what belongs to whom? If institutional authority is weakened, what replaces it? If competence becomes subordinate to identity, how do complex societies keep functioning? And if citizens lose the habit of independent judgment, who’s left to govern?

Perhaps our greatest vulnerability is also our greatest strength. Free people are difficult to control. But they can also be persuaded to surrender their freedoms if you convince them that those freedoms are responsible for their problems.

Individualism can slide into selfishness, while freedom can decay into license. Skepticism can become nihilism, and populism can become tribal. Democracy can weaken the very conditions that make democracy viable.

Collapse is not inevitable, but we should recognize the warning signs.

Failure is unlikely to arrive as tanks in the streets or governments falling overnight. It will be more mundane: institutional competence mattering less; political loyalty mattering more than truth; citizens becoming increasingly unable to agree on basic facts; disagreements becoming moral emergencies; government assuming responsibilities once reserved to individuals; and political leaders being rewarded for promises rather than results.

The most troubling sign may be simpler still:

People become increasingly certain of what they believe while becoming increasingly incapable of explaining why they believe it.

That’s how a civilization becomes stupid—not by losing intelligence, but by losing the habit of using it.

And that may be the most consequential issue facing our civilization.

Not whether the left or right is winning. Not even whether populism is winning.

What if the real winner is a political system that no longer requires citizens to think for themselves?

If that is happening, we should probably figure it out before we discover the answer the hard way.

God Bless America.

____________________________________________________________________

The parasites versus the empiricists: How the political class is taking you for suckers

BY:          Matthew Syed, The New York Post (October 8, 2026).

I keep hearing that America is polarized. Republicans vs. Democrats. MAGA vs. DSA. Wokesters vs. anti-wokesters. It’s true, up to a point. But I believe there is a more consequential divide, one growing wider and more perilous every day.

I am talking about the division between the empiricists and the parasites.

The empiricists are most of you reading these words. Entrepreneurs. Blue-collar workers. Engineers. Scientists. Business people.

An engineer has to be in touch with empirical reality because if their assumptions about gravity are inaccurate, their bridges will fall down. An entrepreneur has to be in touch with reality because if he can’t persuade customers to buy his products, the businesses will go belly up.

America is the undisputed world leader in empiricism: more Nobel prizes than any other nation, dominance in the frontier technologies, an army of highly impressive (and hugely industrious) blue-collar workers, a spirit of enterprise that remains the envy of the world.

When you live here, you probably don’t notice what outsiders sense the moment they land. The buzz. The sense of possibility. The American dream is perhaps not what it once was, but it’s still alive. Almost two centuries ago, de Tocqueville wrote “No sooner do you set foot upon the American soil than you are stunned by a kind of tumult . . . Everything is in motion around you.” The words ring as true today as in the 1830s.

This is a nation that once pushed at geographical boundaries but is now pushing at what the philosopher Sir Karl Popper called “the frontiers of knowledge”: quantum, robotics, AI, medicine and the vast array of entertainment products that course through the limbic system of the Republic, even if in the case of social media not always for the better.

Ancient Rome pales by comparison. As do the Abbasids, Persians, Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Babylonians.

The American-led global order has incubated more prosperity in the last 80 years than most of the previous 25 centuries combined. America still delivers a quarter of the world’s output with only 4% of the population.

But I’m sorry to say that America also plays host to a growing army of parasites: smaller in number, but ever more draining in effect. They exist in one place above all others: Washington. Some are called Republican and others Democrat, but they are vampiric in virtually the same way and for the same reasons.

Debt looms

An empiricist understands that you cannot borrow the moolah indefinitely without paying a huge price. Parasites of both parties borrow and borrow. And borrow some more. Debt has risen to more than 100% of GDP, a scandal overseen by presidents of all colors, stealing from the future to pay for the present in the way that a realist would never countenance.

Only the dynamism of the private sector is keeping this Ponzi scheme afloat, driving growth just about capable of servicing the ever growing interest burden (now measured at almost $1 trillion).

But for how long? Bond yields are rising, placing an even larger weight on the throats of those paying the bill (not least future generations who didn’t even vote for this profligacy) while Washington gets fatter.

That’s one thing to understand about an ever expanding state: there are more side alleys in the sprawling labyrinth to be gamed by insiders for their own profit. The Pentagon hasn’t passed an audit since they started conducting them in 2018. They can’t even account for the cash or where it’s going.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Yet the real scandal extends way beyond the debt and waste. Senators get ever richer from “public service” but few ask why. Congressional staffers become lobbyists for industries whose laws they helped to write — a game played by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Aging corporations protect themselves from competition not through innovation but by erecting barriers to entry with the complicity of the political class.

That is how corruption today drains an economy: not with one spectacular theft, but by the steady diversion of talent and capital away from productive activity and towards political connection. The scale of this extraction is difficult to overstate.

They arrive as a thousand small impediments to enterprise: a permit delayed, a tax loophole preserved, a regulation written by insiders, a subsidy paid to yesterday’s technology. American capitalism is now rigged in favor of incumbents: politicians and regulators coining it while competition is throttled. I find it darkly comical to observe MAGA supporters condemning the “corrupt” Democrats — Crooked Joe, Dodgy Hillary — while the Dems hammer Trump for the same reason: memecoins, allegations of front running and more.

It’s all a game, folks. A distraction. The partisan hysteria whipped up by each high-profile scandal obscures the deeper truth neither side wants you to grasp.

Looting all over

Both sides are looting the coffers in plain sight in ways that are normalized and often legalized.

In his 18th century work on the fall of Rome, the British historian Edward Gibbon talked of “a slow poison introduced into the vitals of the empire.” When I look at Washington today, I see an eerily parallel story unfolding.

Ponder this paradox. In the 20th century, despite two global conflagrations and the Great Depression, economic growth in America averaged almost 3.5%. In this century, despite the internet, Moore’s Law and relative peace, it has slumped to 2%.

Some might say we’ve been here before. Historians talk of the Whiskey Ring, the Keating Five and the 19th century “state of courts and parties.” But none of this touches the scale of corruption today. America continues to produce the world’s finest entrepreneurs, scientists and blue collar workers but they are like a magnificent thoroughbred sweating under the crippling weight of a burden few even mention.

Yet let me finish with this thought: the answer is not to succumb to the fashionable nihilism of tearing everything down.

The grievance-fueled revolution promised by the Marxist left and extremist right would be no remedy.

The DSA sees corruption and concludes that the system itself is the crime: capitalism, the Constitution, the whole inheritance. They have it precisely backwards. What I’ve described is not the American system working as designed. It is a betrayal of that design.

No, what this country needs is not a revolt against its founding principles but their restoration: truly competitive capitalism, government constrained by the Constitution, public servants who serve the public rather than themselves.

End the parasitism and America will fly again.

____________________________________________________________________

President Trump is reminiscent of the Founding Fathers

Imagine what it must have been like to be a pampered career politician watching Trump come on the scene.

BY:          Bob Weir, The American Thinker (October 15, 2026).

Imagine that you were elected to a federal office several years ago and had a safe seat, with all the perks attached, including salary, expense account, and influence with corporate CEOs and other titans of industry.  Suppose further that you knew that the future would be prosperous when you left office because the connections you made would make you a fortune as a lobbyist.  Moreover, since unseating an incumbent is a herculean task, you felt that you were set for life.  In fact, as soon as you got elected, you began raising money and preparing for re-election.  Governing and legislating became an afterthought, something you might engage in after your next campaign was carefully planned.

Suddenly, a guy runs for office with a lot of ideas about “draining the swamp” and making rules that include a prohibition on lobbying for at least five years after leaving office.  As if that’s not enough, he criticizes the “establishment,” of which you are a significant part.  To add insult to injury, this upstart comes from the private sector with no record of elective office, yet he has the audacity to run for the highest office in the land.  You, and most of your colleagues, got where you are by starting in local elections, from city councils to mayor to state rep, and on to your current spots at the national level.

You didn’t take him seriously throughout his long and vociferous campaign, often refusing to endorse what he said and what he stood for.  When he shocked the world with a strong win against a candidate the polls said would win easily, all you could do was feign approval and acceptance.  You didn’t dare speak publicly about your disdain for the man who was elected to actually make America great again!

Not only did this newcomer speak bluntly, eschewing politically correct tap-dancing around issues, but he spoke forcefully about the venal nature of politics and those who use it for personal aggrandizement.  He didn’t use lofty rhetoric and eloquent phrases like those professional politicians who engage in speechifying to impress an audience.  Instead, he spoke in a language rarely heard in a country weaned on Pied Piper–style oratory.  He merely told the truth in plain words that would resonate with the proletariat, the people who made this country the envy of the world.  The voters were thrilled to finally have a leader who uses common sense rather than a wet finger in the air before making decisions.

However, those who have been entrenched in their private little fiefdoms in the nation’s capital began to wonder how they were going to deal with this brilliant maverick who had captured the imagination of millions of Americans who had just about given up on government.

Democrats hate him with a ferocious intensity that comes from seeing their plans for party dominance collapse under the weight of this new spirit of patriotism.  Republicans hate him for beating all their veteran politicians and for proving how ineffective they’ve been at improving the lives of their constituents.  After all, if neither party can win by using the customary bromides, spewing from the mouths of the usual suspects, they must have lost touch with the people who once lapped up their verbal vacuity, believing that it was the only pablum on the shelf.  When Trump first ran in 2016, the old political hacks were asking why would voters reject prominent names like Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich, et al., political veterans all, in favor of a neophyte.

Those questions continue to haunt the inhabitants of that sewer on the Potomac.  They don’t appreciate being forced out of the darkness, where greedy deals are made and concern for the people gets thrown under the grinding wheels of political expediency.  These are not exactly profiles in courage.  With rare exceptions, these are people who arrived at the “shining city upon a hill” with the intention of making a career, and if that meant going along to get along, it was fine with them.  They weren’t about to step out of their comfort zones by addressing controversial topics that might make them unpopular during the next plebiscite.  

Hence, when an intrepid leader emerges and abandons caution in favor of keeping his campaign promises, he’s treated like an anomaly.  The fact that he’s fighting for the principles voters elected him to fight for is lost on those who got elected with one thought in mind: to feather their own nests.  They’ve tried everything to stop him, including a few assassination attempts and some of the most spurious criminal charges in the history of jurisprudence.  He has not only survived them all, but has raised his fist in defiance of a system that has shown contempt and insane hostility toward anyone willing to expose it.

President Trump is reminiscent of the Founding Fathers, the type of statesmen who triumph against incredible odds to build the greatest country in the world.  Now, after many years of being led by men like Clinton, Obama, and Biden, all of whom apologized for our country, we have a leader working indefatigably to take our country away from the crooked oligarchs and give it back to the people.

GFK

Well, English has been gone 2 days, and Dudley and I are co-existing. For now.

Every evening, around 6:00 p.m., Dudley goes into the guest room, which is adjacent to the driveway. He lies down, facing the windows, and patiently waits for English to arrive. Needless to say, the last 2 days, he has been quite disappointed.

I try to make Dudley happy. I scratch his ears, pet his head, talk nicely to him, and he has been receiving portions of sirloin with his dog food at dinner time. Still, it is not enough. Though I could have sworn he wagged his tail while the Brewers were beating the Dodgers on Wednesday night.

The Left is screaming “political prosecution” over the raid on Representative Ilhan Omar’s homes. It is not.

First, the criminal investigation into Ilhan Omar began during China Joe’s term. Second, it was a partisan Democrat D.C. magistrate judge who approved the search warrant. It is not news that D.C. judges dislike the Trump Administration, regularly ruling (often incorrectly) against it.

Moreover, give me a break. “Political prosecution”? What was the Jack Smith investigation? What was the raid on Mar-A-Lago, rifling through the former First Lady’s underwear drawer? What about the arrest of Roger Stone at his Miami, Florida home at 6:00 a.m.? Did CNN just happen to have a camera crew in the area on that day and time?

And by the way, Jack Smith spied on Republican members of Congress, seizing records of their communications. He spied on the comings and goings of Melania and Baron Trump. And he obtained records of ordinary Americans who expressed pro-Trump thoughts, and who purchased pro-Trump merchandise. Yep, if you bought a red MAGA hat while China Joe was president, Jack Smith knows where you live. Heck, I bet the FBI camped out at the Subway restaurant across the road from the Trump Store in Boones Mill, Virginia.

So please, shut the hell up. No Democrat should be heard to complain about a political prosecution. Never. Ever.

Democrats are all afire, calling for “Medicare For All”, which is nothing but socialized medicine. Question: If socialized medicine is so great, why has not even 1 Democrat run State enacted the program? Not 1!

NBC News’s Kristen Welker asked U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed twice if he or his family had any connections with the Muslim Brotherhood. Twice Abdul El-Sayed replied no. He lied. Twice.

The Minnesota Star-Tribune is a big fan of public transportation. So much so that the newspaper is urging Minneapolis residents to use the city’s light rail transportation despite the fact the crime rate on the light rail, and surrounding neighborhoods is 13% higher than on the New York City subway system. Huh. So, we guess that the light rail system is great, if you just ignore the violent crime. Got it.

Leftist Democrats infiltrated a Minnesota Lincoln-Reagan dinner fundraiser for Republican gubernatorial candidate Lisa DeMuth, and Senatorial candidate Michele Tafoya. A screaming woman carrying a sign that read “RepublicKKKan Party” stood next to Lisa DeMuth, holding the sign over her head, and calling Lisa DeMuth a racist. Lisa DeMuth is black.

Comrade Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D. N.Y.) and the New York City Council have agreed to a plan to ban horse drawn carriage rides in the city. But to ameliorate the effects of the ban, they also agreed to compensate those drivers displaced by the ban.

Let us see if we understand this proposition. The New York City government is going to ban a popular private industry from operating in its jurisdiction, putting hundreds out of work. But the New York City government will also pay these displaced hundreds for not working, using taxpayer dollars. Ahh, the wonders of socialism!

Comrade Mayor Mamdani told reporters that he did not watch the gubernatorial debate between Kathy Hochul (D.) and Bruce Blakeman (R.). But, based on what someone told him, Bruce Blakeman is a “racist” and a “bigot”. Just another day that ends in “y”.

In Chicago, Kelly Day–a man who thinks he is a woman–entered the women’s restroom at a MacDonald’s restaurant. A fellow patron, Larry Young, objected to Mr. Day’s use of the women’s restroom, and then walked away. Out on the sidewalk, walking away from the restaurant, Mr. Young was stabbed 13 times by an enraged Kelly Day. The knife attack was so violent, that the knife broke off while still in Mr. Young’s body. Sigh. Please do not try and tell me that the “trans” folks are not insane. Because they are.

“We have guns too.”

–County Council candidate Jaime West (D. In.), vowing that if elected, she would “fire” all Republicans in county government jobs, because they were all “racists”.

Jaime West was clearly drunk and incoherent at the candidate forum. But reliable sources assure us that her expressed sentiments are hers, and that she would say these things sober.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down a California law requiring ICE agents to wear uniforms identifying themselves as ICE. Once again, a federal court had to remind California that it does not get to manage federal law enforcement.

“We know for generations, corporations and financial institutions have really benefited from slavery and from the exploitation of black people.  AB 2599 [The Truth In Disclosure Act] is starting to establish a process for qualifying corporations doing business in California to really examine and disclose any historical ties they’ve had to slavery.  This matters because we can’t fully and meaningfully repair harms if we’re not really willing to acknowledge and confront the truth.”

–Kristin Nimmers, policy manager for the California Black Power Network. 

Authored by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, D-Ladera Heights, The Truth In Disclosure Act applies to businesses with more than $100 million in annual worldwide gross receipts that existed — or had a predecessor entity in operation — on or before Dec. 31, 1964.  Once funded by the state legislature, covered companies will be required to submit sworn affidavits under penalty of perjury to the California Civil Rights Department.  These disclosures must detail any historical involvement in the purchase or sale of enslaved people, the use of enslaved human beings as loan collateral, slave-related insurance policies and other financial transactions.  Covered entities have until Jan. 15, 2029, to submit their initial filings.

What is the point of The Truth In Disclosure Act?  To shake down companies, monetarily, and transfer the monies to black people.  It is Stalinist, repulsive, immoral, and likely unconstitutional.  But the Left does not care.  Taking from those who earn money, and giving it to those who do not, is the Left’s entire reason for its existence.

By the way, The Observations must state again, for the umpteenth time, California was never a slave State, and never sanctioned slavery.  So reparations for slavery is a very transparent attempt at a racially motivated shakedown.

Southern Living magazine ranked Southern cola drinks. To no one’s surprise, Coca-Cola finished first, easily. But the interesting choice is 2nd place. It was not Pepsi. In fact, Pepsi, which was invented in New Bern, North Carolina, finished well back in the pack. The runner up to Coke was . . . R.C. Cola. Invented in Columbus, Georgia, R.C. Cola was considered by the judges to be a truly wonderful drink, distinct from all the others running far behind.

R.C. Cola is delicious, but hard to find in Northern Virginia. We also do not have Moon Pies. Sigh.

Passagio Wines in Sonoma County, California is going out of business. No more wine will be produced, as existing inventory will be sold. No more fun.

Half Moon, Bay California is a cute little town on the Pacific Coast, just down from San Francisco.  The town was formerly known as a bootlegger’s paradise, where illicit liquor was sent in by boat, so that thirsty San Franciscans could travel down and get a drink on weekends during Prohibition.  Today, Half Moon Bay is better known as the “Pumpkin Capital of the World”.  And this year, the 53^rd Safeway World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off culminated in a massive victory for Minnesota grower Travis Gienger.  Mr. Gienger won the competition with a Volkswagen-sized orange pumpkin, weighing nearly 2,389 pounds.  Wow!

Happy Birthday to the Tadich Grill. Since 1849, the Tadich Grill has been serving great food in San Francisco, California. Indeed, the Tadich Grill is older than the incorporated city of San Francisco, itself. Located on lower California Street, in the Financial District, one will always find a crowd. Booths line the wood paneled walls, with tables interspersed throughout. The best seat is at the long bar that stretches from the front of the house to the rear, in the center of the restaurant. I am a fan of the clam chowder which is rich, creamy, and finished with sherry. It goes well with an ice cold martini. But the house favorite would have to be the cioppino, laden with clams, mussels, scallops, white fish, Dungeness crabs, prawns, and little bay shrimp. It is a serious restaurant for people who are serious about having a good time.

If in San Francisco, and seafood is not your urge, try the House of Prime Rib. Like the Tadich Grill, it is a throwback to more refined and glamourous times. Caesar salads are prepared tableside, salad forks are chilled, perfectly prepared cuts of prime rib are the main attraction, and your waiter will gladly grate fresh horse radish for you at the table, as desired. And, of course, everything pairs well with an ice cold martini.

Do you notice when I write about restaurants and bars, it always comes down to the martini? That is not a coincidence.

The Washington Post named Albi as the best restaurant in the Washington, D.C. metro area. Albi is a “Palestinian” restaurant. Sigh.

This is so exhausting. First, there is no such thing as a “Palestinian”. No such nationality, tribe, or race of people exist. Nowhere in the world, at no time in the world. There are Arabs, but no “Palestinians”. Yasser Arafat, the founder of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, was an Egyptian. And the Soviet Union funded the PLO. Second, does anyone really believe that a “Palestinian” restaurant is the best restaurant in Washington, D.C.? I assure you it is not. Third, could the very reason the Post ranks Albi the best restaurant in Washington, D.C. is that it is billed as “Palestinian”? I assure you that is exactly the reason.

And eating at Albi is not cheap. The least expensive entree is $60.00. I cannot imagine what camel jockey food would convince me to fork over $60.00. And Albi serves wine. Middle Eastern wine, but wine nonetheless. I wonder what the Islams think about that.

Chick-Fil-A is introducing a spicy version of its delicious Chick-Fil-A sauce. I wonder if it will actually be spicy.

Canada requires that courts give Indian criminal defendants lighter sentences, if convicted. Canada also requires that harsher sentences be given criminal defendants if convicted, and the victim is an Indian. Huh. So what happens if the criminal defendant and the criminal victim are both Indians?

At Camas High School [Washington State] a member of the boys’ track and field team quit mid-season, and immediately joined the girls’ team, claiming to identify as a girl. Uh, huh. When the father of one of the real girl members of the girls’ team complained to the school principal, he was served with a criminal trespass notice, and barred from school grounds.

Major League Baseball’s Philadelphia Phillies signed interim manager Don Mattingly to a 2 year deal. Probably a very good move.

GFK

When I was about 12, I joined the Book of the Month Club. The coupon came on the back page of Sunday’s Parade magazine, and for $1.00, you could choose 4 books! Woo hoo!

I joined the Book of the Month Club largely because I had already read most of the books in our family library. I did not tell my parents, so my Mother was quite surprised when the box came. She made me open it in front of her. Two (2) of the books remain among my favorites, Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, and Ian Fleming’s Diamonds Are Forever. The books were placed on the kitchen counter until my Father came home.

My Mother was quite concerned about the level of violence portrayed in the books. My Father figured, well, if he can read them through, so be it. The Godfather was more than 700 pages long–no pictures!–and his thought was that if I could read it through, no problem. And if I did not, then, no problem.

I read The Godfather in less than 1 week. And upon that demonstration of commitment, my parents made investments in more books, giving me the opportunity to explore different authors, stories, and worlds. I kept up that habit through high school, college, and law school. And today.

One of my favorite family pictures is of Holland at the age of 2, sitting in a dog bed with our Basset Hounds, Davidoff and Dunhill. She is reading a book to them, and the dogs actually seem interested.

Holland began reading at an early age, and has remained one her entire life. English and I are voracious readers, and we encouraged her to be the same. Going through her early years, Holland’s academic success can be traced directly to her reading skills. And her habits are serving her well at the Dedmon School of Law.

Reading is important. It provides for an educated society, which is necessary for a functioning society. Sadly, today people are reading less and less. Particularly younger people who are fascinated by whatever is on their phone screens. Very sad.

Below is an article on the importance of reading, and a book review on the decline of a literate society. Enjoy.

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Owning and Reading Books May Be the Most Countercultural Thing You Can Do

Much dystopian fiction envisions a future where books are supplanted by screens.

BY:          Melissa Henson, The American Spectator (October 5, 2026).

The problem in our country isn’t with books being banned, but with people no longer reading … You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

 —Ray Bradbury

One of my favorite things to do between late March and early May is to walk through the woods near my home in search of spring ephemerals — may apples, trout lilies, bloodroot, Dutchman’s breeches — those fleeting wild perennials that appear for just a few short weeks after the snow melts before retreating underground, leaving no trace until they reemerge the following year.

I experience something of the same sensation now when I try to locate an article or video clip I saw but didn’t save, or media I thought I owned, but which seems to have disappeared. Here one day, gone the next. No footprint or trace that it ever existed, except in my memory.

Several years back, I decided to digitize my files, believing this would add permanence to my collections while occupying far less space than the reams of receipts printed in disappearing ink, yellowing papers, fading photos, deteriorating VHS tapes, and CDs that skip. And then one day my external hard drive hit the ground while the internal disc was still spinning, and that was it. Nearly 20 years of financial records, family photos, and who-knows-what-else were irretrievably lost. Sometime after, a new solution to the storage problem emerged: “The Cloud”! I would never again have to worry about my digital media being lost or damaged — it would live forever in The Cloud!

Until it doesn’t.

A blink-and-you-might-have-missed-it story came across my newsfeed the other day: Sony is removing over 500 movies and TV episodes from consumers’ PlayStation Store accounts without issuing refunds. The move stems from the end of a licensing agreement between Sony and StudioCanal, a major producer and distributor of movies and shows.

It’s the kind of story that should engender outrage, but in the digital media age, it has come to be expected. The World Economic Forum famously projected that in the future, “[we] will own nothing and [we] will be happy” — starting, it seems, with our online media libraries. We are being conditioned to hold on loosely to our digital assets.

Nevertheless, it got me thinking about the ephemerality of the information and content we consume, especially as old media formats give way to digital tools and AI. So much of our lives and experiences are tethered to physical reality. When that physical reality disappears or is easily manipulated, we become unmoored. How do we know what we know is real?

In a recent interview for the Socrates in the City podcast, author Mary Harrington captures this feeling of being untethered from reality: “What print did was it allowed scholars in the early modern era to externalize the material which previously they just stored in their minds. And what’s potentially, I think, a grave risk is that whereas with a physical library, you can externalize your memory into a physical book, but once the text is there and it’s printed, it doesn’t change. Whereas once text is stored in a digital space, and not in our minds and not in a printed book, it can change. What we refer to becomes fluid in a way which is really unsettling. Newspaper articles can be rewritten. Wikipedia entries can be updated. We’re already seeing the politics of this, aren’t we? Everywhere, all the time.

There’s a sense that reality has become very slippery underneath us.”

Indeed, we are already seeing this in the way online records can be quietly revised after the fact. Post COVID, eagle-eyed internet sleuths made a habit of capturing and documenting “stealth edits” made by various online publications. One Forbes headline from 2021 originally read, “Yes, the Vaccine Changes Your DNA. A Tiny Bit. That’s a Good Thing.” Sometime later, the headline was changed to “Covid Vaccines Don’t Alter Your DNA – They Help Choose Cells to Strengthen Your Immune Response.” A Washington Post headline that originally read, “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked” was later revised to, “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed.”

Even if the revised headline is more accurate, first impressions matter, and the impression the original headline was designed to create will be hard to dislodge from readers’ minds. They have already set the narrative stage. Whatever comes after is almost irrelevant.

It’s as if the American public is undergoing a mass gaslighting. If you suggest that journalism is compromised and politicized, the media companies simply show you the revised headline as proof that their hands are clean, leaving the reader — who didn’t anticipate needing to take a screen capture of every headline they come across — to question the reliability of their memory, or maybe even their sanity.

The danger is not merely that we may lose access to books, films, articles, or records. It is that, as physical archives give way to editable digital ones, and as reading itself declines, fewer people will have the knowledge, memory, and habits of attention required to notice when reality has been altered, erased, or invented.

That is where the question of ownership becomes a question of formation. If our books, records, headlines, and memories increasingly live in systems that can be edited, withdrawn, or quietly overwritten, then the old habit of reading deeply from stable texts becomes more than a private pleasure. It becomes a way of remaining anchored.

In her cover story for The Atlantic, “The End of Reading is Here,” writer Rose Horowitch notes that fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022, between 1984 and 2025, “the percentage of 13-year-olds who said they rarely or never read for fun rose from 8 to 29 percent,” and “just 35 percent of high-school seniors were ‘proficient’ at skills such as analyzing complex fictional themes and evaluating the effectiveness of an author’s argument.”

Fully a third of American adults are unable to paraphrase or make inferences from longer texts, according to Horowitch, and their ability to answer logic questions, reason effectively, and analyze patterns declined from 2006 to 2018.

With the loss of reading skills comes a commensurate loss in critical thinking skills and even of overall IQ. Researcher James Flynn observed that for the entirety of the 20th century, IQ scores rose steadily with each generation gaining about six points over their parents’ generation. But that steady rise in IQs has reversed over the last two decades, a phenomenon that has come to be known as the reverse Flynn effect. The reversal has been attributed, in large part, to increased reliance on screens in schools, which began in the mid-to-late 1990s and became entrenched during the COVID lockdowns.

These problems stand to become amplified as schools rush to deploy Generative AI in classrooms, where students may be asked to rely on tools without sufficient foundational knowledge to use them wisely.

One (adult) AI user recently shared an exchange with Google’s AI, Gemini, which he was using to track down a quote from C.S. Lewis. He wrote, “It gave me one that I’d never heard before, so I questioned it further. Gemini admitted it had ‘completely fabricated’ the quote to ‘fit my thesis’ and that it was ‘deceptive’ in its response.”

The interlocuter was familiar enough with the writing of C.S. Lewis to question the chatbot, to push back against an answer that didn’t seem quite right. But what would happen in a similar scenario if a schoolchild, not well-versed in Lewis’ writing, had asked the same question?

Using chatbots and AI might be a perfectly appropriate time and labor-saving tool for those who are already proficient in their field because they know enough to spot where AI goes wrong. But, as teacher-turned neuroscientist and author of The Digital Delusion, Jared Coney-Horvath testified in a recent Senate hearing, these tools are not designed for novices to become experts, they are tools for experts to offload tasks. “I know how to do statistics. If I don’t feel like doing the calculations, technology can help me … When people offload tasks before they’ve learned the underlying process, they have no understanding of what’s happening. They’re completely dependent on whatever the machine tells them …

Learning how to use technology effectively doesn’t come simply from using technology. It comes from learning through traditional methods first. Once students already know how to think and solve problems, technology can help make those tasks easier.”

But in the push to integrate AI into K-12 education, educators are bypassing that core knowledge, basic literacy, and critical thinking skills that students will need to use these tools with discernment and recognize when sycophantic chatbots are “hallucinating” citations, quotes, people, and events.

The problem is not merely that machines can fabricate, but that fewer human beings may possess the literacy, memory, and historical knowledge necessary to recognize fabrication when they encounter it. AI can already be used to create false histories of actual people, places, and events, and even to produce images that convincingly place two people who never met in the same time and place. Without a solid foundation in real history, the casual user is easily led astray, and the undiscerning reader is apt to receive this information as fact. This is especially likely now, when the Western world is teetering on the brink of a post-literate age and young people are more likely to learn their history from TikTok than from books (which may explain the sudden surge in young adults aligning themselves with the Democratic Socialists fringe of the Democratic party). Those who cannot remember – and do not care to learn about — the past are condemned to repeat it.

The connection between literacy and liberty was not lost on the American Founders. They recognized that a representative form of government depends on citizens who can read, remember, reason, and test claims against a body of shared knowledge. Biblical knowledge, understanding of the law, and awareness of the rights and duties of citizens were deeply entrenched in the consciousness of the American colonists.

Small wonder then that so much dystopian fiction envisions a future where books are supplanted by screens. As Neil Postman observed in Amusing Ourselves to Death, in “Huxley’s [Brave New World], no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”  He continues, “What [George] Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

Maybe the most counter-cultural thing you, or your children, can do right now is to turn off your devices and read a book.

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‘The New Dark Ages’ Review: Is Reading a Dead Letter?

Reading for pleasure has declined dramatically in recent decades. Blame the smartphone, an ever-present distraction from the book at hand.

BY:          Daniel Akst, The Wall Street Journal (October 7, 2026).

The decline of serious reading may remind the bookish of a fictional exchange about going broke. “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.” There was a time when many would have recognized those lines from Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel, “The Sun Also Rises.” Today we are more likely to plug the passage into a chatbot to determine its source and then move on to social media, where rudimentary reading thrives yet true literacy withers.

In 2022, according to the National Endowment for the Arts, fewer than half of American adults read a book in the previous 12 months. Another study found that a mere 16% “read” anything for pleasure on a given day in 2023, including newspapers and audiobooks. The trend isn’t altogether new. The National Center for Education Statistics reported that the number of college graduates in 2003 who could interpret complex texts proficiently had fallen to 31% from 40% in 1992. The assessment, an official noted, was “not designed to test your understanding of Proust, but to test your ability to read labels.” Students have lately shocked professors with their inability to carry out sustained reading. Campus syllabuses have been pared down to accommodate this generational change.

“The decline of student reading is only the most visible symptom of a wider crisis,” James Marriott warns in “The New Dark Ages,” a disturbing book about the death of the print culture that once shaped our lives, culture and democracy. “In America,” he writes, “reading for pleasure declined by 40% in the first two decades of the 21st century. And in the U.K., more than a third of adults say they have given up the habit.” Publishers have evidently responded by dumbing down their offerings. Mr. Marriott cites an analysis from the Economist of New York Times bestselling books over the course of nearly a century that found that “sentences in popular books have contracted by almost a third since the 1930s.”

Nothing, in Mr. Marriott’s view, has done more than the smartphone to bring on the culture of illiteracy that we seem to be entering. He notes that people on average now check their smartphones 144 times a day. A columnist for the London Times and an inveterate reader, Mr. Marriott recounts his own early experience with the technology. “It was often a matter of minutes after sitting down with a book,” he writes, “that I would spring up again, assailed by thoughts that were at once impossibly petty and yet possessed of an inexplicable urgency,” to check his phone.

While television helped undermine reading, Mr. Marriott writes, “the culture of print could probably have reached some kind of equilibrium with TV.” He notes that “in the 1990s, if you were commuting to work or on a long train journey or hanging around in an airport, a book or a newspaper was probably the best entertainment option available.”

The portability of smartphones meant that reading—especially book-length works—was no longer the most convenient activity for these interstitial periods. Smartphones, the author says, “are much more effective predators of our attention than TV ever was,” so effective that he eventually found radical action necessary. “In the end I got rid of my device and bought a dumbphone instead. It’s made me somewhat annoying as a friend and a boyfriend but I am able to read again.”

For a doomsayer, Mr. Marriott is good company, and it is a shame how many people wouldn’t dream of reading his eloquent, learned and admirably brief book. As “The New Dark Ages” makes clear, there is a lot more at stake than the joy of reading in what the subtitle calls the “Dawn of the Post-Literate Society.”

Historians, the author notes, “have linked the spread of literacy to the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the birth of human rights, the rise of capitalism and the advent of modern democracy. The ascent of reading changed the world. Our vast, interconnected, tolerant and technologically advanced civilization is founded on the complex, rational kinds of thinking fostered by literacy.”

For Mr. Marriott, reading isn’t only a matter of personal cultivation. On the contrary, he makes a strong case that reading is a necessary ingredient for the exercise of reason, providing a mechanism for arguments to be considered and assessed, for truths to be asserted and defended. Reading, as generations of the downtrodden have discovered, can be liberating, which is why a number of slave states before the Civil War made it illegal to teach the skill to black people.

Our ability to think isn’t helped by the decline of writing, a task increasingly delegated to chatbots. “The death of writing compounds the death of reading,” Mr. Marriott asserts, “further unmooring our culture from its foundations in the written word.”

These developments have clear political implications. Mr. Marriott believes that the decline of reading and writing (and the growth of hyperkinetic distractions such as TikTok), abets the rise of an ignorant, irrational and distracted electorate. “Mass literacy is a recent phenomenon,” he writes. “So is mass democracy. We simply don’t know whether one can survive without the other.”

Demagogues and electoral dysfunction are nothing new, as he acknowledges. The Third Reich bubbled up in a deeply troubled society of near-universal literacy. Communism has taken hold among exquisitely educated intellectuals; collectivism’s malignant appeal seems strongest on elite campuses. Yet if human folly predates the decline of reading, the atrophy of this splendid activity is no less lamentable.

Aside from the sheer fun of it, the more demanding kind of reading Mr. Marriott champions helps us make sense of the world, furnishes the mind and elevates our species. “For centuries,” he writes, “people have accepted that literature and learning are among the highest purposes and deepest consolations of human existence.”

And so they always will be, whether we avail ourselves or not.

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GFK

English leaves today for South Carolina. So that means a long weekend for Dudley and me. A very long weekend. He is already grumpy.

A dear reader called me a “racist” for claiming on Columbus Day that American Indians in the 1400s were barbaric savages, engaging in slavery, war, human sacrifice, and worship of pagan gods. I. Do. Not. Care.

But I did ask the dear reader to point out where I was factually inaccurate. He would not–could not–do that, and just doubled down on calling me a “racist”.

The Observations is not geared toward any particular audience or ideology. I write what I think, and discuss what appeals to me. I do not care if readers disagree with me, but if you do, I welcome the debate. But please; come armed with facts and well-reasoned arguments. Calling me names will not get you banned or restricted from reading The Observations. But it will earn you no favors, and will guarantee that I shall not take you seriously in the future.

Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of readers are thoughtful, polite, and informed. For that I am grateful. And I welcome their comments.

“I have a secret plan to destroy America.  If you believe, as many do, that America is too smug, too white bread, too self-satisfied, too rich, let’s destroy America.  It is not that hard to do. Here is my plan:

1. We must first make America a bilingual-bicultural country. History shows, in my opinion, that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two competing languages and cultures.

2. I would then invent “multiculturalism” and encourage immigrants to maintain their own culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal: that there are no cultural differences that are important.

3. We can make the United States a “Hispanic Quebec” without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with a salad bowl metaphor.

4. Having done all this, I would make our fastest-growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated and antagonistic to our population.

5. I would then get the big foundations and big business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of victimology.

6. I would establish dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties. I would “celebrate diversity.” “Diversity” is a wonderfully seductive word. It stresses differences rather than commonalities.

7. Then I would place all these subjects off-limits–make it taboo to talk about. I would find a word similar to “heretic” in the 16th century that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking.

8. Lastly, I would censor Victor Davis Hanson’s book Mexifornia –this book is dangerous; it exposes my plan to destroy America.”

–former Governor Richard D. Lamm (D. Co.).

Do Governor Lamm’s comments strike a chord of truth? Are they familiar? Do Governor Lamm’s comments possibly resemble the United States today? Hmmmmm.

U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle was fired, following accusations of soliciting bribes from people seeking access to the Trump Administration. You had to know Kimberly had poor judgment when she married then Mayor Gavin Newsom (D. Ca.).

One of the men she solicited a bribe from is threatening to sue her. This is going to get very ugly.

“I am deeply disappointed that Governor Newsom vetoed AB 2186.  Reparations are not a gift or a government handout.  Reparations are meant to repair harm, not be partially taken back through taxation.”

–Assemblyman Tina McKinnor (D. Inglewood).

Please note that Governor Hair Gel (D. Ca.) did not act to block any reparations.  He just wants to tax them.  Like almost every other Democrat. 

“Happy Italian Heritage Month, New York.  Here’s continuing to fight for Vito Marcantonio’s vision of a government that works for all working people.”

–Comrade Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D. N.Y.).

Representative Vito Marcantonio (D. N.Y.) was an obscure member of Congress.  He was also a communist.

Last week, in New York City [Brooklyn], ICE tried to arrest an illegal alien with a violent criminal history. The illegal alien reacted by trying to run over ICE agents with his automobile. Predictably, ICE agents opened fire, and shot him. The man was wounded, and taken to a hospital.

What was the reaction in New York? Outrage! Of course it was. Leftists took to the streets with premade professional signs calling for ICE’s elimination. Comrade Mayor Mamdani referred to the illegal alien as a “New Yorker”, and called both the President and Secretary of Homeland Security, demanding that the illegal alien be released, and that ICE leave New York City. Neither demand made any headway in Washington.

British singer Harry Styles interrupted his concert to offer prayers and thoughts for the criminal illegal alien. Not a word for the criminal’s victims, or the ICE agents he tried to murder.

United States Representative candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier (D. N.Y.) told reporters that the man’s arrest and impending deportation was disgraceful. When reminded that the man was a gang member with a long history of violent crime, she responded that his criminal nature did not matter to her.

A federal judge in New York (an Obama appointee) enjoined the Trump Administration from deporting the criminal illegal alien. The judge does not have the authority, but since Mr. Trump is president, what does it matter? Orange Man Bad.

“Will [the University of] Michigan ever win a football game without cheating?” 

–U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D. Mi.).

Does the man even know in what State he is running for office?

Politicians say dumb things, but El-Sayed . . . well, here are some more dumb things he said recently:

1. El Sayed wants to “abolish” ICE, and have “open borders”.
2. El Sayed wants to impose “Medicare For All”, but promises that “if you like your health insurance, you can keep your health insurance”. Does that not sound vaguely familiar?
3. El Sayed wants to make Michigan dependent “100% on renewable energy”. He said “I don’t think the Chevrons and the Exxons of the world or the Saudi Aramcos of the world should continue to exist.” Hmmm. And what would happen to Michigan’s famed automobile manufacturing industry?
4. El Sayed claims that “taxing billionaires” will solve our national debt crisis. It will not.

In Maryland, a man released from prison just 1 week earlier, and on probation for violent crimes, went to a youth football game, and opened fire with a handgun. He missed his intended targets, but did manage to murder a 12 year old girl. I am just waiting for the usual suspects to blame the gun, instead of the murderer.

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger (D.) admitted that in her zeal to restore the voting rights of felons, she restored the rights of dead felons. Now why would she do that? Oh, yes, Democrats love when dead people vote.

Where is U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico (D. Tx.) today? Another mental institute?

The Observations does not know where Mr. Talarico spent the last 2 weeks. Some claim he was receiving treatment for mental illness in Ohio. His campaign denies that and insists he merely suffered from a bad case of the flu. Huh. That would be odd, since Mr. Talarico is a relatively healthy, young man, who should not suffer more than 3 or 4 days from the flu. Especially since he religiously wears a face mask, and believes that that prevents disease (he is wrong). Frankly, it is more probable that Mr. Talarico was in a straightjacket receiving electro-shock treatment in Ohio, than it is that he was blowing his nose in Austin.

Mr. Talarico released a statement referring to “Indigenous Peoples Day”, and lamenting that some folks had to work on this day. Sigh. Of course he did. Christopher Columbus is the only immigrant that James Talarico does not fawn over.

“Shapes are no less menacing than words or sentences.”

–Yale University President Maurie McInnis. 

Yale University, in collaboration with the city of New Haven, Connecticut, has taken a preemptive step to head off future student discontent.  In response to an anonymous complaint, the university has announced that it will begin dismantling all Right Turn arrows in street lights in and around campus.   Seriously.  Not a joke.

Cornell University suspended all fraternities in the wake of the unfortunate incident that occurred at just 1 fraternity. More than 2 years ago. Sigh.

A majority of Americans do not believe in the Immaculate Conception or the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Wow. I find that alarming. And sad.

The Episcopal Church is encouraging parishes to add a 6th Baptismal Covenant. Under the Baptismal Covenants’ existing language, the 5 promises are affirmed by the congregation in response to the celebrant’s prompts. The first two commit members to following Christian teachings and practices, resisting evil and staying faithful to God. The third calls for proclaiming the Christian faith in the world, and the final two promises relate to Christian interactions with other people. The proposed 6th promise relates to “Creation care”.

Now you may consider me overly cynical, but why do I suspect–strongly suspect–that The Episcopal Church considers creation care to mean that humans will refrain from eating meat, driving gasoline powered cars, and using air conditioning in their homes? Will parishioners be required to place solar panels on their homes’ roofs, and a windmill in their backyards?

Is not being a good steward of all over which Man exercises dominion, by virtue of God’s grace, already incorporated in the Baptismal Covenants? I think it is, thus making the proposed 6th wholly unnecessary. My cynicism grows.

The Daughters of the American Revolution voted Saturday to disband its Martha Laird Chapter in Texas that fought to bar “trans” women [i.e. men] from joining the historic organization, citing violations of its national bylaws.  Sigh. You cannot be a daughter if you are not a woman. You just cannot.

When was the last time you saw an ice cream parlor with flavors such as rum raisin, maple walnut, or Butter Brickle? Come to think of it, when was the last time you saw an ice cream parlor?

The Golden Steer steakhouse in Las Vegas would let cowboys bring in whatever they killed, butcher it, cook and serve it. As time progressed, the steakhouse began accepting revolvers as payment for a meal. Today, things are quite different. The Golden Steer became a celebrity haunt during the early glory days of Las Vegas, serving up ice cold martinis and rare steaks to Dean Martin, Marilyn Monroe, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Frank Sinatra, who sat in rich, red banquettes, surrounded by dark mahogany paneled walls filled with photographs of the rich and famous. Today, the Golden Steer is going strong, serving up and finest steaks and chops, and the coldest martinis anywhere. The only problem is that the dinner reservation waiting list is 6 months long. Plan ahead.

Last week, a Canadian judge ruled that addicts have a human right to access a legal supply of currently prohibited substances—such as cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, and meth—and that, by extension, criminalizing drug trafficking is unconstitutional.  That is just insane.

Diesel prices are through the roof. As someone who drives a diesel automobile, I am quite familiar with every price increase. And, of course, high diesel prices affects the costs of shipped consumer goods, particularly food.

The Observations is not changing its position that high fuel prices are a small price to pay for eliminating Iran’s ability to develop and deploy a nuclear weapon. But we are not opposed to President Trump’s efforts to lower diesel prices through an agreement with Russia. But not everyone is of the same mind.

Almost all Democrats, and many Congressional Republicans, are opposed to the President removing sanctions on Russian oil. That is certainly defensible position, EXCEPT that these are the same people who are blaming the President for high oil prices due to the Iran conflict. These people are in an intellectually indefensible position, because they are hypocrites.

Conflict with Iran is bad, because of high oil prices. Conflict with Russia is fine, even with high oil prices. Hmmmm.

Russia is not a threat to the United States, and Ukraine is not a security concern of the United States. By contrast Iran has been at war with the United States since 1979, is hell bent on destroying Israel and the United States, and was on the precipice of building a nuclear weapon. It is a national security concern of the United States to eliminate Iran’s military capabilities.

The hue and cry from the usual suspects is due to one thing, and one thing only; Orange Man Bad.

The DP World Tour will not grant any LIV Tour golfers access to its tournaments in the future. Also, LIV Tour golfers cannot play for Europe in The Ryder Cup. Bye LIV!

GFK

The last few days have brought much needed rain to Northern Virginia, for which I am extremely grateful. I remember the hardships suffered by those closest to the hurricane’s landing and immediate path, and pray for their swift recovery. But this rain has been so restorative to our little section of the country. Thanks Be To God.

Why does the United States allow dual citizenship? Should not every American’s allegiance–sole allegiance–be to this country? Asking for a friend.

Congratulations to Katie Zacharia on being named White House Press Secretary. May she do as good a job as Karoline Leavitt!

Federal agents raided Representative Ilhan Omar’s D.C. and Minnesota residences. The raid is related to a criminal investigation that Representative Omar engaged in immigration fraud. Oh, my!

A D.C. federal judge (Democrat appointed, of course) has entered an order stopping tree clearance at the East Potomac Park golf course in Washington. A preservationist group had sued, after learning that more than 500 trees had been taken down, and that more were scheduled for removal.

So now a federal judge assumes the role of an arborist? It is not the role of a federal judge to micromanage everything that goes on in this country. Moreover, tree clearing on a golf course is a very common practice to allow more air flow, and allow stronger grass growth. The Trump Administration is not destroying the golf course, it is improving it. But federal judges know best, right?

Minnesota’s urban areas are overrun by criminal Somali gangs. What is the cause of this violence? According to prominent Somali community leaders, the cause is . . . American culture. They cried that the United States is a dangerous place and that American culture is a violent one. Fine. Leave.

Go back to your 3rd world country where criminal gangs control the country. Go back to your 3rd world country, and rip off that nation’s social welfare system. Leave. Today. No one will miss you. We promise.

A Tennessee State court judge reopened the case whereby convicted murderer Christa Pike’s lawyers argued she should not be executed. Sigh. Yes she should. ASAP. Use the electric chair this time.

Anti-death penalty activists are demanding that Christa Pike not be executed. Indeed, they are demanding that Christa Pike be released from prison. In other news, Christa Pike’s victim is still dead.

Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate David Crowley (D.) will be seeking to raise taxes on all State residents, if elected in November. Of course he will! He has raised taxes on Milwaukee residents every year (he is the County Executive). And he is a Democrat.

Employees at the Obama Presidential Library are seeking to unionize, due to decreased benefits, longer hours, and poor working conditions. Ha, ha, ha, ha!

Meijer, not Buc-ee’s, is the now the #1 convenience store chain in the nation. Buc-ee’s is now tied for 4th. How is this possible?

The Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Halethorpe, Maryland, just outside Baltimore, will soon close, leaving the iconic Irish beer brand’s Chicago brewery as its only U.S. location.  This is so sad.

A couple of Florida residents filed a class action lawsuit against the Hershey Company, because there were no Jack-O-Lantern decorations on the Reese’s Pumpkin chocolate/peanut butter candies they purchased. While the lawsuit was dismissed, it caused the Hershey Company to change its packaging for the Halloween treats.

Get ready to pay more for a bag of Doritos, Ruffles, and Sun Chips. Pepsico, which slashed prices on its snack lines 15% in February, is now going to drastically raise prices.

American-born economists Robert E. Hall. and Michael Woodford won the Nobel memorial prize in economics on Monday for their work on models that have helped governments and central banks manage economic shocks, such as energy crises and inflation.  Congratulations.

“Today the Nobel Committee shamed itself beyond repair and demeaned the once great Nobel Peace Prize by giving it to the UN’s Navi Pillay.  Pillay is an unabashed hater of America and Israel.  In her position she celebrated terrorists and rewarded Hamas.  She conducted a phony ‘investigation’ claiming to find that Israel committed genocide and urging prosecution.  She has no credibility in any normal sphere and has never done a thing to foster peace.  Just the opposite.  But what could be expected from a committee that previously gave the once coveted peace prize to Yasser Arafat?”

–Statement issued by The Schoen Law Firm.

Former UN human rights chief Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, a judge on the International Court of Justice, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in Oslo, Norway.  The South Africa-born Pillay, 85 years old, was recognized for her efforts to promote peace and international law, said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

What were Judge Pillay’s efforts?  She lead the United Nations to declare that Israel was guilty of “genocide” in Gaza.  Get that?  Judge Pillay defames the victim of terrorism, and sides with the terrorists.  That is what motivated the Nobel Committee to award her the peace prize.

The United States levied massive monetary sanctions against the International Criminal Court. The ICC responded by claiming that the United States was acting to cripple and obstruct international law. News flash: There is no such thing as international law.

The Palestinian Liberation Authority has not had elections for more than 20 years. And the PLA just announced that elections would be postponed for another year. Sigh. These are the people who want their own country. No way, Jose!

Louisville humiliated Florida State, pushing Florida State head coach Mike Norvell ever closer to the unemployment line. Virginia just got by Syracuse. California beat VPI. Wake Forest rolled over N.C. State. Notre Dame obliterated Stanford. North Carolina beat Pitt, 1 week after Pitt’s coach complained his team was not properly respected by pollsters.

Utah beat Kansas. Arizona stomped West Virginia. Houston won at Kansas State. Arizona State beat Hawaii. Oklahoma State beat Central Florida.

UCLA beat Oregon. USC beat Penn State. Iowa beat Washington. Ohio State crushed Maryland. Indiana slid by Nebraska.

Georgia beat Alabama. South Carolina upset Florida in The Swamp. Oklahoma upended Texas in the Cotton Bowl, amidst the Texas State Fair. Did you know that the corn dog was invented at the Texas State Fair? And it is claimed that the best corn dog available is sold at the Texas State Fair. Who does not like a corn dog? I made Holland promise to go over to the fairgrounds and report back to me on the corn dog.

Ole Miss beat Vanderbilt. Missouri beat Texas A&M. And Kentucky beat LSU in overtime. Hey Tigers, is Lane Kiffin still worth the cost?

Oregon State crushed San Diego State. Utah State rallied to beat Washington State. Boise State outlasted Fresno State. Nevada thumped UTEP.

The Clarke County High School Eagles got crushed by Central High School. Central was 0-5 before Friday night’s game. Sigh. Maybe the Clarke County Educational Foundation can take some of the money it reaped via last Friday’s golf tournament, and buy some decent players.

Colleges buy players nowadays. Why not high schools?

Former Dallas Cowboys tight end, Chicago Bears head coach, and member of the Hall of Fame, Mike Ditka has died at age 86. R. I. P.

GFK

Today we have a two-fer, celebrating and remembering 2 great historical figures, who helped shape the United States of America. First, we celebrate Christopher Columbus, the great explorer and Admiral of the Seas, who brought Europeans to the New World. Second, we remember Robert E. Lee on the anniversary of his death in 1870. Robert E. Lee, the 2nd greatest Virginian (right behind George Washington), did more to reconcile the wounds of The Late Unpleasantness than any other American.

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“The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory.  Destroy its books, its culture, its history.  Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history.  Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was.  The world around it will forget even faster.” 

–Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting 

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.  And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.” 

— George Orwell, 1984

The American Taliban will spend a lot of time today celebrating the crimes of Christopher Columbus, supposedly visited upon the noble “indigenous peoples”.  But it is all a pack of lies.  If you review primary sources (necessarily, due to the time period, in Spanish), you will find no evidence of any such alleged behavior by either Columbus or the Spanish explorers under his command.  Indeed, it was not until more than 300 years after Columbus’s death that you find “historians” criticizing his voyages and explorations.  The truth is, Christopher Columbus was a great explorer, whose efforts led to the civilization of the New World.  Those who attack him are angry that Europeans came to our shores.  Since history does not support their anger, they manufacture a version of “history” that does.

“Today should just be Indigenous Peoples Day.  And yet this day is still shared with a genocidal maniac.  We need to take this time to reflect on the brutal history of violence against Indigenous peoples in America and recognize that there is still a lot of work to repair this harm.”

–Representative Nydia Velazquez (D. N.Y.)

Today is Columbus Day (observed).  But this year, Columbus Day actually falls on October 12, which is Columbus Day.  Woo hoo!

Today is NOT “Indigenous Peoples Day”, no matter what officials in D.C., Alexandria, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and San Francisco proclaim.  IT.  IS. COLUMBUS DAY.

As every child knows, “In 1492, Columbus sailed the Ocean blue”.  It was a bold expedition, taken at a time when many believed the Earth to be flat, in an attempt to find a western route to India.  Instead of landing in India, Columbus arrived at an island that is now part of the Bahamas.  He discovered the “New World”, lands previously unknown to the “Old World”. 

The significance of Columbus’s voyages cannot be understated.  He opened up the America’s to European exploration and colonization, a process which naturally resulted in the establishment of, first, the Jamestown Colony, and eventually, the 13 English colonies and the United States of America.

By contrast, the “indigenous peoples” (aka Indians), accomplished . . . nothing.  The Observations is not being harsh in noting that the Indian tribes were savages.  They practiced human sacrifices, practiced slavery, worshipped pagan idols, engaged in endless wars with other tribes, raping women and scalping and murdering enemy prisoners, and figuratively speaking, raped the land, as they had no knowledge of conservation and wise land stewardship.  They were uneducated nomads, barely subsisting.  They established no societies or countries.  They were squatters on unsettled continents.

Now if this edition of The Observations were to leak to the usual suspects, no doubt I would be burned at the stake by the outraged mob.  Just like the indigenous peoples would have done all those years ago.  But that the American Taliban would inflict such a crime would not change history.  Facts are facts.  And it is a fact that Columbus was a consequential man who accomplished great things.  Today we celebrate Christopher Columbus.

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One hundred fifty six (156) years ago today, Robert Edward Lee died of pneumonia.  Over the previous 5 years, General Lee had transitioned into President Lee, leading the struggling Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, and placing it on solid ground.  Having spurned the many lucrative offers from businesses all over the United States following the conclusion of The Late Unpleasantness, Robert E. Lee accepted the offer from Washington College’s Board of Trustees to become its president.  For the next 5 years, Robert E. Lee worked tirelessly at improving the school devastated by the War, attracting students from the entire country, as well as donors interested in supporting the school.  He founded the College’s law and journalism schools, created the Honor System, and built what was  known as Lee Chapel (until The American Taliban struck in 2022).  Upon his death, President Lee was buried beneath the Chapel, adjacent to his office, which remains today as he left it 156 years ago.

Robert E. Lee is best known for his leadership during The Late Unpleasantness.  But his greatest legacy and effect is that which he had on “his boys”, the students that matriculated and attended Washington College, and those who came after to Washington & Lee University.  We, “his boys”, all aspire to replicate his example, knowing all the time we shall fall far short.

Robert E. Lee was a great American, a great Virginian, and a great man.  We can all take a lesson from the example he set while on this Earth.  R. I. P.

GFK

Today is the Feast of the Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This feast takes precedence over the usual Sunday of Trinity-tide.

The central focus of this feast is, ultimately, the Person of Jesus Christ. The Creeds of the universal Church teach us that the Incarnate Son of the Father is one divine Person in two natures, divine and human. Jesus Christ is fully God and fully Man.

In the early centuries of the Church there were those who resisted calling the Blessed Virgin Mary Theotokos—“God-bearer,” or “Mother of God,” Mater Dei in the West. They preferred to speak of her as the mother of Christ according to His humanity. But the Church recognized that something far greater than Marian devotion was at stake. The question concerned the identity of Jesus Christ Himself.

The Blessed Virgin did not give birth merely to a human nature. She gave birth to a Person—and that Person is the eternal Son and Word of God.

Thus the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 solemnly affirmed the ancient title Theotokos. The title safeguards the mystery of the Incarnation: the One born of Mary is the same divine Person who is eternally begotten of the Father. His divine and human natures are united in His one Person without confusion or division. Mary is therefore rightly called the Mother of God—not because she is the source of His divinity, nor because she existed before God, but because the One whom she conceived, bore, and brought forth is truly God the Son incarnate.

If this sounds challenging, it is because the Incarnation brings us before one of the deepest mysteries of our faith. The God who created heaven and earth truly entered His creation. The eternal Son did not merely appear to be human, nor did He temporarily inhabit a human body. He assumed our humanity and made it His own.

And He embraced human life in all its humility.

The Son through whom all things were made consented to be carried in His Mother’s womb. He was born as we are born. He was held in His Mother’s arms and nourished by her. S. Luke gives us the beautiful picture of the Holy Family at Nazareth, telling us that Jesus “was subject unto them” and that He “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.”

There is something astonishing here. The eternal Son, who is eternally with the Father, entered a human family and submitted Himself to the ordinary pattern of human growth. By embracing human family life in this way, Our Lord reveals its dignity within the purposes of God. The family is not merely a convenient social arrangement. It is the communion in which love is naturally fruitful, in which new life is received as gift, and in which that life is nourished and brought toward maturity. In this sense, the Christian family can become an icon of divine love: love which gives itself, receives the other, and bears fruit in communion.

Motherhood therefore possesses a particular dignity. In the Blessed Virgin we see motherhood raised to its highest created expression. She receives life from God, bears that Life within herself, brings Him forth into the world, nourishes Him, protects Him, and remains faithful to Him even to the foot of the Cross.

The Feast of the Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary was established by Pope Pius XI in 1931, on the fifteenth centenary of the Council of Ephesus. It recalled the Church to the great Christological truth proclaimed at Ephesus and, at the same time, held before Christian people the dignity of Christian motherhood.

That witness remains especially important in our own time. In a culture increasingly uncertain about the meaning of marriage, family, and even the significance of motherhood itself, the Church continues to proclaim what she has received: marriage is a holy vocation ordered toward a communion of faithful love and the gift of new life, and motherhood is a sacred vocation through which that life is received, nurtured, protected, and formed.

The Feast of the Motherhood of Mary therefore points beyond Mary to the mystery at the heart of our salvation.

God truly became Man.

The Virgin truly became His Mother.

And because the Son of God entered human life through a family, even the ordinary realities of marriage, motherhood, childhood, home, obedience, sacrifice, and love have been touched and sanctified by His presence.

We may therefore take comfort in knowing that the Blessed Mother, who cared for the Holy Family at Nazareth and stood faithfully beside her Son at Calvary, continues to intercede for the families of the Church and for the life of the world.

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God Never Rushes but He is Never Late: What to Do when Heaven seems Silent

BY:          Christy Romero.

“With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you.” 2 Peter 3:8-9

Last week, I had to call a doctor’s office. Instead of a human being, I was greeted by the digital receptionist of modern healthcare: the automated phone menu.

“If this is a medical emergency, hang up and dial 911. If you are a physician, press 1. To make an appointment, press 2. To change an appointment, press 3. To cancel an appointment, press 4. For prescriptions, press 5. If you are calling for any other reason, press 6.”

I pressed 6, which unleashed a sub-menu with five more options. In a fit of sheer desperation, I hit 0 to escape. Not surprisingly, it sent me right back to the beginning.

When I finally broke through to a holding queue, I was treated to an hour of soothing elevator music, occasionally interrupted by a polite robot assuring me I was “number 6 in the queue.” Agonizingly, I slowly moved up to number 1. I waited 15 minutes at the summit… and then the line disconnected.

At this point, I was ready to throw my phone through the wall. It brought back painful memories of calling the IRS back when I worked as a tax accountant—except this wasn’t the government. This was a doctor I urgently needed to reach.

Could you imagine if reaching Heaven worked like that?

“Thank you for calling the Kingdom. To speak to Jesus, press 1. For a message to Mary, press 2. For Saint Joseph, press 3. If you are praying for patience, please remain on hold—your wait time is currently 40 days and 40 nights.”

I don’t know about you, but I would lose my mind. It would take more than Gregorian chants to soothe me.

Thankfully, God doesn’t operate a call center. He doesn’t make us navigate menus, press 0 in frustration, or put our souls on hold. We have a direct line to Him, 24/7—and He picks up on the very first ring.

Yet even though God is instantly accessible, He doesn’t always respond on our preferred timetable. He answers the call and listens attentively, but He often takes His time in delivering the answer.

During a recent episode of the Breaking Bread radio show, a phrase struck me: “God never rushes, but He is never late.” Even when an answer doesn’t come immediately, we can rest in the assurance that He is working behind the scenes.

Years ago, after graduating with an accounting degree, my husband set out to find a job. He was ready to move on from a small local accounting firm, but this was before the era of online job boards. The primary way to job-hunt was through the Sunday newspaper classifieds. Every weekend, we would pour over advertisements, draft cover letters, and mail them out by Monday morning.

Most of those letters went completely unanswered. Occasionally, he received a rejection letter where reading just the first sentence told us everything we needed to know.

An entire year went by without success. I stormed Heaven, leaving messages for Our Lady, St. Joseph, and an entire army of angels and saints to intercede for him.

Finally, exactly one year after graduation, he got a breakthrough. He landed an interview, and as divine providence would have it, the interviewer was a good friend of one of his cousins. The old saying, “It’s not what you know, but who you know,” proved true. He was hired as the company Comptroller.

Next year, he will celebrate 40 years with that same company—having worked his way up all the way to Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Although he officially retired three years ago, his boss couldn’t bear to let him go entirely, so he still serves in an advisory role.

God did not rush to answer our initial prayers for a job. He took a full year. But He was holding out for the perfect opportunity—a place where my husband could build a lifelong career at a company that truly prioritized family, faith, and values. God did not rush, but He was definitely not late.

Non-Catholic friends and family often ask me why I pray to Mary, St. Joseph, and the saints when I can go straight to God. It’s true: I can always “press 1” and connect directly to Jesus. He is always listening. But just as my children used to come to me when they wanted to ask something of their father—knowing the request might sound a little sweeter coming from Mom—I often go to Mama Mary first, and I ask her to intercede on my behalf.

I know Jesus listens with special affection when a request comes through His Mother. At the Wedding in Cana, Mary interceded for the bride and groom. Jesus did not want to get involved: “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?” He responds when she tells Him: “They have no wine.” But in the end, He couldn’t refuse her request, and He ends up performing His first public miracle.

As for my doctor, I eventually reached him via email. Thankfully, we don’t need to send emails to the Almighty. Whether we speak to Him in quiet prayer, write Him letters in a journal, or sit in silence before Him in the Blessed Sacrament, He is always present.

If you feel like your prayers are currently lingering in a heavenly queue, take heart: you are not on hold. He is already working on your request. Even in the silence, trust the timing:

God never rushes, but He is never late.

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What Are Angels, Really?

BY:          Dr. Valerie.

When did angels first appear?

“Angels ‘appear’ as the first aspect in the mystery of creation, which makes them superior to human beings within the hierarchy of being.”

Were there angels in the Old Testament?

Angels existed in the Old Testament as messengers (????????, malak) of God, emphasizing both the Lord’s salvific presence and His transcendence in the form of an angel distinct from the Lord yet closely linked to him.

What was Hebrew thought on angels?

In Hebrew thought, one became an angel through function rather than essential nature, and biblical texts sometimes blur the line between human and superhuman messengers.

The angels in the Old Testament are “intermediaries between God and mankind,” present in both a descending and ascending sense. The descending angels flow from God to man, including destroying angels and guardian angels who protect individuals or nations. In contrast, the ascending angels intercede for man and bring his prayers to God.

How are angels defined?

The historical development of our understanding of angels is that “Angels are not just a metaphor to indicate the action of God; angels first appear as real beings with personhood, whose nature was more clearly understood over the centuries of theological reflection.”

In the New Testament, angels are “spirits at God’s service,” serving as messengers between God and men who reveal God’s glory in the economy of salvation.

What are the two groups of angels?

The first group is the cherubim, who assist God, and the second is the seraphim, who praise God.

What roles do angels fulfill?

Angels serve in many roles throughout Scripture. They are “ministering spirits sent forth to serve, for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation.” (Heb 1:14) They are also described as “mighty ones who do his word” and “ministers that do his will.” (Ps 103:20–21) In the New Testament, angels act as messengers, guardians, and protectors; members of the divine court; companions of Christ as judge; witnesses to events of salvation; and agents of both healing and destruction.

What are angels theologically?

Theologically, angels have no bodies, do not die, and do not suffer illness or fatigue. Their memory, knowledge acquisition, and will differ from those of humans. They are not distinguished by their material nature but by their function.

Do angels have names in the Bible?

Only three angels are named in the Bible: Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. Michael acts as “one of the chief princes” (Dan 10:13), while Gabriel comes “in swift flight” to deliver messages of wisdom and understanding. (Dan 9:21–23). Raphael serves as the divine healer and protector.

What is Christian tradition about fallen angels?

Christian tradition also acknowledges fallen angels—those who disobeyed God—with Scripture warning that “God did not spare the angels when they sinned” and describing a cosmic battle between Michael and Satan’s forces.

What are guardian angels?

To begin, “each person has their own guardian angel, which is not transferred to another upon the individual’s passing,” with “the total number of spiritual beings likely far exceeds that of human beings,” since only some angels are tasked with the role of guardian angels.

The concept of guardian angels began in the Old Testament (cf. Ex. 23:20; Deut. 10:13, 12:1), and continued into the New Testament (cf. Matt. 18:10; Rev. 1:20). Individuals, as well as “entire peoples and countries,” have guardian angels.  Guardian or protector angels are considered “one expression of God’s merciful providence to assist people on their way to salvation, and to protect them from all evils both material and spiritual” (cf. Thomas Aquinas).

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Church has never defined the fact that “every individual soul has a guardian angel.” Therefore, it is not an “article of faith; but it is the ‘mind of the Church,’ as St. Jerome expressed it: ‘How great the dignity of the soul, since each one has from his birth an angel commissioned to guard it.’”

What did Pope Francis say about Guardian Angels?

On October 2, 2014, Francis provided a “Morning Meditation in the Chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, “We all have an angel.” The speech focuses on the importance of acting as “docile children” in our relationship with our guardian angel, “who is always beside us, who never abandons us, and helps us not to lose our way. And if we know how to be like children, we can avoid the temptation of being self-sufficient, which leads to arrogance and even to extreme careerism.” Francis highlighted two passages: (1) Exodus 23:20-23, concerning the Lord’s indication to follow the angel, and (2) Matthew 1-5, 10, regarding the importance of eliciting the docility of a child in obeying angelic guidance.

Pope Francis summarized the Morning Meditation by stating that our guardian angel is always with us and that we do not “walk alone.” He continued by saying that sometimes we do not listen to the angel; however, “it’s dangerous to drive away our travel companion because no man, no woman, can advise him/herself: I can give advice to another, but I cannot advise myself.”  Francis closed by stating, “It is the Holy Spirit who advises me; it is the angel who advises me, and this is something we need.”

And, finally, who is Mother Mary in relationship to the angels?

Mary is the queen of the angels (Regina Angelorum, Latin). Her title is linked to her Maternity: the Holy Spirit came upon her at Nazareth after the Angel Gabriel announced the coming birth, and our Lord was later born at Bethlehem. As His Mother, she is closer to Him than any angel—even the seraphim who surround Him and continually cry, “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

The title Queen of the Angels refers to Mary’s role as mother of Jesus, King of Heaven, and her close association with angels. Although she is naturally inferior to them, she surpasses them in dignity because she holds the highest dignity—that of Mother of God. Her close connection with Jesus in the Incarnation made her an associate of the angels.

GFK

Today we examine our history, and our constitutional form of government, through 3 commentaries. Enjoy!

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First They Came For Our History…

Even in the best of times, government is not your friend.

BY:          J.B. Shurk, The American Thinker (September 27, 2026).

Government is not your friend.  It cares about its own preservation, not yours.  That’s why citizens who resist the government’s authority are tried for treason, while governments that resist the people’s authority award themselves immunity.  Ostensibly, governments are formed to protect the lives and liberties of citizens.  In practice, governments sacrifice their citizens’ lives and liberties whenever expedient (see, e.g., open borders and mass migration, COVID lockdowns and experimental “vaccines” that are neither safe nor effective, the “global warming” hoax and “green energy”-induced inflation, and the reckless European push for WWIII against the Russian Federation).

Over the course of human history, there have been “good” governments — which is to say, there have been governments remembered more for their accomplishments than for their crimes or failures.  Even those governments included venal, mendacious, immoral, and outright murderous officials among their ranks.  But when the right historical conditions arise — when the ingredients of culture, virtue, legal tradition, and circumstance come together — governments are remembered for leading their countries through calamity, war, depression, and heartbreak.  

Every once in a while, governments accomplish something that inspires not only citizens but also people around the world.  When kings, presidents, or prime ministers unite their countrymen in common cause — whether that be resisting Nazi conquest or voyaging to the moon — their governments are often remembered as “good.”  Governments that conjure dreams for their people to pursue are sometimes even remembered as “great.”  But for every Camelot, there are a hundred Iron Curtains.  Both dreams and nightmares spring from the same place: a government’s “best intentions.”

As Americans, we used to know this.  Our schools taught young students about the political virtues of our Founding Fathers.  Our towns celebrated personal freedom and condemned government tyranny.  Local self-government allowed every citizen’s voice to be heard, while regulation and bureaucracy were widely despised.  Americans understood that the best government is the one that governs least.  Why?  Because liberty exists in the space between personal sovereignty and government jurisdiction.  The more that governments control, the less that we do.  Governments do not build rights; they build prisons.  Governments do not brighten freedom’s light; they dim that light with every law and regulation.

One of the things that long separated America from the rest of the West (those nations founded on the civilizational pillars of Athens and Jerusalem) was an inherent distrust of government.  Whereas Europe celebrated its various monarchies, America celebrated the defeat of kings.  There was nothing scary about this proposition.  Members of Congress and local officials of all political stripes walked in Fourth of July parades commemorating revolution against government tyranny.  

Citizen militias were as common as high school gun clubs because self-defense was correctly understood to include defense against government overreach.  In fact, the Second Amendment’s protections for an American’s God-given right to self-preservation has always been an instrumental check on government’s natural impulse toward tyranny.  A well-armed citizenry makes it more difficult for a government to ignore its constitutional restraints by infringing upon the rights and liberties of its citizens.  (If citizens of the U.K. were well-armed, the British government would never have been able to arrest sixty-five thousand people for “speech-related offenses” over the last five years.)

For most of the last century, successive generations of American politicians have quietly deconstructed what it means to be an American and replaced it with something foreign.  Instead of recognizing that American families inherited their freedoms from ancestors who fought and died for them, politicians have reinvented America as just some nebulous “idea” available to anyone in the world.  But America is much more than an idea; it is home to a people whose ancestors risked everything — again and again — to build the greatest country in the world. 

What Americans did on this continent has never been done before, and it will likely never be done again.  Our ancestors built the foundations of self-government that enabled them to reject the bonds of empire.  Their self-rule, self-reliance, self-resilience, and personal ingenuity put America on the path toward unprecedented prosperity.  Our American ancestors crossed mountains, rivers, and uncharted territories to settle a dangerous frontier.  They fought against nature, hostile enemies, and each other as they connected the continent from coast to coast — one stream, trail, and railroad at a time.  

For two centuries, people left their home countries for the United States of America because it was the one place in the world where a person’s grit and determination could forge a new destiny.  This is real history involving real people who matter.  Of course America is a land of ideas and ideals, but it is also the product of blood, sweat, and tears.  

But we don’t hear that anymore, do we?  Outside of President Trump’s energetic efforts to celebrate America’s two-hundred-fiftieth birthday this year, politicians never recognize the Herculean achievements of past Americans.  The Founding Fathers were probably the most intelligent, virtuous, and wise collection of men to come together at any critical point in human history.  Without them, there is no declaration to the world that all men are created equal and endowed with God-given rights that include life, liberty, and the pursuit of spiritual happiness.  Without them, there is no American system of economics that values innovation and production over government-created monopolies, slavery, conquest, and central bank money-printing.  Without them, America is just Canada, a part of the British Empire with subjects who still bow down to a king.  

For such an extraordinary group of men, isn’t it strange how infrequently our politicians discuss their lives, their accomplishments, and their religious and political beliefs?  For something as historically significant as the American Revolution, isn’t it equally strange how few television shows and movies have been produced about America’s most consequential war?  It is almost as if the political Establishment and the media Establishment would prefer for Americans to forget that their country was birthed in the spirit of liberty and the rejection of Big Government tyranny.  It is as if the political and media

Establishments would prefer for us to forget all the American heroes who built this country, fought and died to secure it, and bequeathed it to those of us charged with protecting it today.  If you take out the people and their sacrifices, it’s much easier to repeat the mindless refrain that America is “just an idea” open to everybody.

These increasingly less subtle attacks on our heritage make sense if the goal is to make America weak enough for globalists to destroy.  For years, Independence Day celebrations have become more about fireworks than defeating empires and tyranny.  Now the political and media Establishments have pushed the celebration of Juneteenth into direct conflict with the Fourth of July.  Just as the “1619 Project” was advanced to rewrite America’s origin story from one of liberty to slavery, Juneteenth was promoted to divide Americans against each other and erase Independence Day altogether.  If the Fourth of July is just a “white” holiday, then the celebration of freedom’s triumph over tyranny is recast as a racist celebration of “white supremacy.”  

Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller’s “First They Came” confessional admonished his fellow intellectuals for their complicity with the Nazi Party.  The Nazis came for one group after the next, and those who stayed silent realized only too late that there was nobody left to speak out for them.  But it’s not just disappearing people that should worry us.  We should be equally concerned when governments come for our weapons, founding principles, common history, secure borders, and free speech.  

If we are not careful, America will follow much of the West in recognizing — only too late — that we allowed government tyrants to take our freedoms.  The only answer to globalist tyranny is to treat every day as Independence Day.

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How Nationalism Conquered States’ Rights

BY:          Mark Lewis (September 27, 2026).

“Gentlemen may cry, ‘peace, peace,’ but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, and peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”

– Patrick Henry, 1775

With these stirring words, the great Patrick Henry tried to move the 13 American colonies to action against England. Henry didn’t do it by himself, of course, but his words live on in American history as one of the battle cries that led America to independence. America was born. What did our Founders create? Let’s look further at this issue of states’ rights versus national government power.

After the Independence War, the 13 states wrote a Constitution, surrendering some of their powers to a national government, powers they thought could be handled better collectively than individually. For example, they didn’t want a single state starting a war with some country and perhaps dragging the rest of the states in with it. But the states, in that Constitution of 1789, jealously guarded their powers — they delegated very few powers to that united government, and then, just to be sure, wrote a Bill of Rights telling that national government what it could not do. Even then, Patrick Henry didn’t like this Constitution. He thought it gave the national government too much power. He did not trust government, any government, but especially a national one. That was the “slavery” he feared — not individual, chattel slavery.

Let me emphasize this remarkable thinking in the mind of Henry and America’s Founders: “Is life so dear, and peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” Our Founding Fathers believed that submission to a tyrannical government was slavery. To Patrick Henry, if government has all power, and gives and takes every citizen’s “rights” (as per Virginia Sen. Tom Kaine), that’s not freedom. That’s slavery.

But the tsunami wave of history was against Mr. Henry and those who feared a too-powerful national government. Understanding history is critical to understanding why national governments, everywhere, are now dominant.

Nationalism had been a growing phenomenon over the previous few hundred years, and today has become the accepted philosophy — the “zeitgeist” — for governments and people worldwide. There were myriad “nationalist” movements in the 19th and 20th centuries, and they affected American thinking as well. They weren’t, however, overpowering in 1776, which is why our Founders wrote the Constitution they did, i.e., strictly limiting the power of the national government and putting most powers in the hands of the states and people. Nationalism was growing, but not foremost — yet.

But…growing. In England, in the 1640s, when Parliament and King Charles I had their civil war, Parliament, of course, won. They put the King on trial for treason. “What are you talking about?” Charles responded. “Treason is rebellion against the King!” And, traditionally, historically, he was right, which is why his head had to come off. Treason was not rebellion against the country, but against the king.

But the tide was against Charles, too. England increasingly was a “nation,” not a “kingdom.” The same thing happened in the French Revolution. The king was beheaded, and France started its march to “nationhood.” Europe continued to drift in that direction. In the 1860s, Germany and Italy accepted the nationalist philosophy and formed united countries with dominant national governments. Asia (Japan, Korea, China) caught the bug, as did the Middle East and Africa in the late 19th and 20th centuries. “Colonialism” became anathema. And the “nationalism” idea, as noted, is universally accepted today around the world. “Treason” is rebellion against the nation and its national government.

America, in Western civilization, was perhaps the last great holdout against nationalism. Folks, remember, we rebelled against a national government; submission to it was slavery. But…that tide of history was in nationalism’s favor, and indeed, it is that philosophy that influenced Abraham Lincoln to go to war when the Southern states seceded. “Treason” against the national government. The South held out and defended the anti-nationalism of Patrick Henry and most of America’s Founders. Few Americans — very, very few — understand this today. Whatever else it was, America’s Civil War — War

Between the States — was, philosophically, a battle between nationalism, the new philosophy of our national government, and states’ rights. We know who won, and we know who now dominates American power, where the ultimate power lies.

The Union’s victory in the internecine struggle of 1861-1865 obviously has implications for America today. We have what we have now because the North won. Nationalism got its grip after 1865, and has not loosened its hold one bit — for good or ill — since then.

Americans today are nationalists. Because of 1865, that’s the terms we now think in. The vast majority believe that what the Southern states did in 1860-1861, even excluding their defense of slavery, was treason. “They used states’ rights to defend slavery and Jim Crow laws.” True. Just like the national government today uses nationalist principles to defend abortion, uncontrollable debt, and incalculable other constitutionally dubious actions. That knife cuts both ways.

States today, of course, can do certain things. But the national government can override, by Congress and/or the Supreme Court, not by constitutional amendment as the Constitution requires (i.e., asking the states for more power), any law a state passes. The states can, in effect, only do what the feds allow them. That, of course, turns our Constitution on its head. For good or ill.

I’m making no judgment here. I’m only telling you the history. And consequences. We live with them now.

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Turning the Constitution on its head

Which is the most destructive amendment to the U.S. Constitution? Here is a strong contender.

BY:          Robert Curry, The American Thinker (October 3, 2026).

Over at Townhall, Mark Lewis discusses the enormous central government that has replaced the one designed by the American Founders.

States today, of course, can do certain things. But the national government can override, by Congress and/or the Supreme Court, not by constitutional amendment as the Constitution requires (i.e., asking the states for more power), any law a state passes. The states can, in effect, only do what the feds allow them. That, of course, turns our Constitution on its head.

Originally, the states controlled the federal government by design; today, not so much.  Lewis again:

After the Independence War, the 13 states wrote a Constitution…in that Constitution of 1789, [the states] jealously guarded their powers — they delegated very few powers to that united government.

Those few and defined delegated powers are what the Constitution was all about.  Here is James Madison in Federalist 45:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.

The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. … The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

Those “few and defined” federal powers were to be limited by the responsibilities of the new federal government.  In every other way, the states retained their sovereignty.

As I have written elsewhere, the invention of America required the states to give up their power to make war and to negotiate treaties with foreign states.  The Founders argued that Americans would be safer and better represented in the world by a federal government than by many individual states operating independently and perhaps at cross-purposes.

However, the state governments would not be giving up control of those powers.  They would retain control of them by means of the Senate.  According to the founding bargain, senators would be chosen by the state legislatures, and the Senate would control those powers delegated to the federal government.  That’s why the Constitution gives the Senate power over treaties, over the declaration of war, even over the people the president selects for his Cabinet.

But in 1913, America broke the founding bargain, setting in motion the ongoing process of progressively overthrowing the Constitution.  This action is the source of the mess we find ourselves in today.

The 17th Amendment was the single change that did the most to undo what the Founders had accomplished by means of the Constitution.  It provided for the direct election of senators, the system we have now.  The state governments would no longer control the Senate.  The state governments’ base of enormous political power within the federal government was taken from them, putting an end to the federal system of the Founders.

Lewis does not discuss the 17th Amendment, but it is the key to understanding how the Progressives did it.  The American people were tricked by the Progressives, who presented the 17th Amendment as a needed “reform.”  That “reform” in effect repealed the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  Americans in 1913 would no doubt have opposed repealing the 10th Amendment.  But by means of the 17th Amendment, the Progressives accomplished something even more far-reaching: They removed the central pillar of the Founders’ federal system.

The Founders, men of honor, would certainly have opposed breaking a bargain so honorably and deliberately made.  And they would also have understood that the change would throw the system completely out of balance — precisely as it has done.

The central government is no longer a federal government primarily focused on Madison’s “external objects.”  Because the state governments no longer control the Senate, our post-constitutional central government intrudes in every area of American life once reserved to the governments of the states.  The government in Washington, D.C. dictates in ever-increasing detail what we as individuals must do and what we may not do, what we must have and what we may not have.  It has been transformed into something that would astonish and horrify our Founders.

GFK

This morning I am meeting up with some friends to play golf in the annual Clarke County Education Foundation fundraising tournament. It is a good cause, and always a good time.

Hopefully I shall hit it better than I did on Monday during The Rotary Golf Tournament. Sigh. I hope my mogul client invites me back.

“Is there any doubt anymore?  Are we not being given a crystal-clear demonstration that we cannot allow any further encroachment of Islamic culture, religion, and politics into our society?

Islam is a black pill for the West.  Make a stand, or swallow that pill.  I said it a week ago; I’m going to have to keep saying it.”

–Scott McKay, The American Spectator (October 8, 2029).

President Trump did not invite Iran to bomb Los Angeles and San Diego, California. No matter what the Democrats claim, he did not.

Besides, if a nuclear bomb exploded over downtown Los Angeles, how would you know? I doubt it would look much different than it does today.

Senator Chris Murphy (D. Ct.) is outraged–OUTRAGED!–the Pentagon denied him entry to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and refused to arrange an Iran-war briefing during a trip to the Persian Gulf region. BUT, before he left the United States, Senator Murphy was informed that he would be denied access to that air base, as EVERYONE is denied access to the air base except for military personnel stationed there. Senator Murphy is just playing politics, engaging in performative political art, claiming something nefarious is going on, because . . . Orange Man Bad. And by the way, did you know he was a United States Senator?!?!?

— “[Pete Hegseth is] the biggest regret of my career.”

— Says he should have stopped RFK Jr. from becoming health secretary.

— Tulsi Gabbard won’t be challenging anyone “for president of her local Mensa chapter. “

— Kristi Noem is a dog murderer

— Howard Lutnick quote is “nuttier than squirrel shit.”

“I stand by all that.”

–Senator Thom Tillis (R. N.C.).

Senator Tillis, the emptiest of empty suits, is determined to spend his last days in the United States Senate burning every bridge, and generally making a total a$$ of himself. And he is doing a fine job of it!

“They face the possible garnishment of their already modest wages, loss of any vehicles and homes, federal collections lawsuits and other adverse collateral consequences.”

–U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr., a Bill Clinton appointee.

Judge O’Toole blocked the effort by the Trump administration to impose civil penalties of up to $1.8 million on illegal aliens who remain in the country despite having those final deportation orders in hand.  He is afraid that the financial penalties could impose adverse consequences upon the illegal aliens.  Sigh.

The Boston Globe is blaming Cornell University’s lack of a proper investigation, and the failure of the local New York district attorney to prosecute the alleged gang rape of “Jane Doe” on . . . Donald Trump. The incident occurred in 2024. Mr. Trump was not President. And even if he were, the federal government has nothing to do with local crimes. But given the opportunity, let us blame Donald Trump.

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger (D.) is proposing 277,000 acres of solar panels to produce home grown “clean” energy.  That’s the size of Fairfax County, Arlington County, and the City of Alexandria combined. Ninety percent (90%) of the solar panels would be placed on farmland and forests.  And millions of trees would be clear-cut.

Who wants to see the farms, forests, and mountains of Virginia dotted with solar panels, from China, no less? Who wants the pollution that seeps from solar panels in the soil and the water tables? And all of this is for one of the more expensive and least reliable sources of energy available.

Last year, a Virginia man was sentenced to 24 years for a violent rape. Kind of a light sentence, if you ask me. Well, it appears that it will be even lighter, as Governor Spanberger’s appointed parole board is set to free the rapist from prison. HOW is it possible to be up for parole after serving 1 year of a 24 year prison sentence?

Make Abigail Go Away!

On the 3rd anniversary of the brutal Hamas terrorist attack against Israeli civilians, Comrade Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D. N.Y.) condemned Israel’s “ongoing genocide”. What an anti-Semitic lying jacka$$!

Sadly, throughout the United States on October 7, there were many anti-Israel demonstrations, with participants chanting anti-Semitic slogans, waving “Palestinian” flags, and calling for the destruction of Israel. It was a horrible, evil spectacle.

U.S. House candidate Justin Pearson (D. Tn.), speaking at a Memphis, Tennessee church, invoked “Mother God”, and informed congregants that God was a black lesbian. It must be the Talarico effect.

Speaking of James Talarico . . .

“I don’t care where you get the revenue.  I don’t care what taxes you have to raise.”

–U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, advocating for more public spending to provide healthcare “for all”.

Because it is not your money. It is the government’s money.

“I think we have to understand, especially for the white educators that are on this call, that these violent hierarchies, these systems — white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, economic exploitation — those things have colonized our own minds.”

–James Talarico.

White teachers have “colonized . . . minds”? Oh, wow. Just wow.

James Talarico supporters infilitrated a Ken Paxton rally in Texas, headlined by President Trump. When a mother whose child was murdered by an illegal alien began to speak from the podium, the Talarico supporters interrupted her, cheering, jeering, and booing. Because Democrats are not just rude. They are on the side of the illegal aliens. They are not on the side of American citizens.

Democrat activist and influencer Hasan Piker claims that there are “good white people” and “bad white people”. Liberty minded individualists are “bad white people”, and collectivists are “good white people”.

Conagra Brands ceased production of Celeste frozen personal pizzas. That is sad. When I was in my 20s, I always kept these in my freezer. They were cheap, and quite tasty. Of course, everything tastes good with beer.

Jaguar has unveiled the first production model from its sweeping reinvention, nearly two years after a rebranding campaign drew backlash from critics who called it “woke.”

The all-electric Jaguar Type 01, unveiled Tuesday in New York, is a four-door luxury grand tourer with a U.S. starting price of $130,500. Orders are expected to open in early 2027, with initial customer deliveries anticipated in the second half of the year.  Uh, huh.  It is ugly and overpriced.  AND an EV.

How ugly is the new Jaguar?  It makes the old Chrysler 300 look positively beautiful.

The Observations rarely, if ever, prints jokes. But in the case of the late Irish comedian Dave Allen, today we shall make an exception, to wit:

I was talking to a man the other day who had decided to leave this country, and I said to him, “Why are you leaving.”

He said its homosexuality. I said, “What are you talking about?”

He said, “300 years ago if you were a homosexual you were hanged, drawn and quartered.”

“100 years ago if you were a homosexual you were hanged.”

“50 years ago if you were a homosexual you were flogged and given 20 years in prison.”

“20 years ago if your were a homosexual you were fined 200 pounds and sent to prison for two years.”

“5 years ago you got a small fine and were pardoned – got off with a warning.”

So I said, “What are you leaving for?”

He said, “I’m going before they make it compulsory.”

Yes, I know it is not politically correct. Yes, I know that some people would be greatly offended (hopefully none of you dear readers). Yes, yes, yes. But I found it funny. I hope you did as well.

“The so-called American ‘free speech’ today, which some people have promoted, is the opposite of free speech.”

–French President Emmanuel Macron.

Mr. Macron argues that free speech is not absolute and must be bounded by the rights of others and respect for public order, while also arguing that the flow of information must maintain a relationship to truth.  He compared those limits to restrictions against assaulting or insulting others or destroying public property.  Stated differently, Emmanuel Macron wants government to be the arbiter of what constitutes “free speech”.

You would think that the head French cheese nibbling surrender monkey would have his hands full with all the rioting going on throughout his country.  Because Americans definitely do not need to receive a lecture on free speech from him.  Or anyone.

British Labour Minister Jenny Riddell-Carpenter said of traditional rural England, that it did not exist, and was only a “right wing fantasy”. Oh. So the England of Shakespeare, Keats, P. G. Wodehouse, and Winston Churchill never existed, and was only a “right wing fantasy”? My goodness, Big Brother has memory holed a large swath of English history and culture.

“So if the [WNBA Indiana] Fever ever want to go back to being a basketball team again and follow the lead of rivals openly clashing with the forces trying to hijack their league, then Cunningham has to go.”

–sports columnist Candace Buckner.

Absolutely!  How dare Sophie Cunningham voice her belief that the Women’s National Basketball Association allow only women to play!  That is outrageous!  “Transphobic”!  Insufficiently inclusive!  Probably racist!  BURN HER AT THE STAKE!

Sophie Cunningham is a pretty, white, heterosexual girl with moderate to conservative common sense opinions.  Do you think that those factors might have something to do with the intense opposition to her within a majority Leftist, black, lesbian [and unattractive] basketball league?  Maybe?

Philadelphia Eagles offensive lineman Lane Johnson retired, just 4 games into the 2026 season. Wow.

The NFL team formerly known as the Washington Redskins is permanently adding the spear to its helmets and uniforms. The spear was a logo fixture for the team during the 1960s. Could this portend a return to tradition, and the rejection of the team’s current, and stupid, name?

Professional golfer Jon Rahm has left the LIV golf tour. Who will be next?

Former Cleveland Indians pitcher Sam McDowell has died at age 84. R. I. P.

Actress Eva Marie Saint, who was just outstanding in North By Northwest, has died at age 102. R. I. P.

GFK

Today’s commentaries explore matters of socialism in the United States, the mid-term elections, and free speech. Enjoy!

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Socialists want to destroy the American dream

The middle class is in their crosshairs

BY:          Don Feder, The Washington Times (October 4, 2026).

We are now less than a month away from the midterm elections. It looks like a big blue wave will be heading our way or possibly even a blue tsunami. The middle class could be drowned in the coming deluge.

The lunatic left is ascendant.

This year, we will elect ideologues who hate America and long to see the middle class reduced to the standard of living of the Third World masses.

This year, 282 socialists are running for public office nationwide, including 64 seeking seats in Congress.

Among America’s would-be grave diggers is Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic nominee in New York’s deep-blue 13th Congressional District. Ms. Avila Chevalier is a strange visitor from Planet Stalin in the Woke Galaxy. She says border enforcement is “anti-Black and Islamophobic,” America is “a f——— disgrace” and prostitution and all drugs should be legal.

Naturally, she wants to abolish police and prisons.

Comrade Avila Chevalier is the Sweetheart of Sigma Gulag. Yet my all-time favorite red is not Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, or Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, but a candidate for a House seat in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District: William Lawrence.

When Mr. Lawrence calls for “destroying the American way of life,” he is saying the quiet part out loud.

If you are part of the middle class, the backbone of our society, socialists see you as a wastrel obsessed with material gains and indifferent to the fate of the poor — and a resource hog with a carbon footprint as big as the Grand Canyon. They also hate you for electing those they call fascists, President Trump first and foremost among them.

There is a cure for you: them.

Here is what is in store for you if the commies control Congress next year.

You will be poor in a way you cannot begin to imagine. Thanks to capitalism, from 1990 to 2024, those living in extreme poverty worldwide fell from 43% to roughly 10%. The radical left would drag us back to a pre-industrial standard of living.

We will have “Medicare for All,” which means quality healthcare for none. Canada and Britain have been cursed with state-run medical care for decades. In Canada, the median patient waiting time between referral and treatment is more than six months, triple what it was in 1993. Not to worry. If you get tired of waiting, they will be happy to euthanize you.

The 2026 platform of the Democratic Socialists of America declares, “Housing is a human right” and promises to “build new, publicly owned social housing” and “establish universal rent control.” That way, landlords will be forced to abandon their property, which the government will take over and run as well as the post office.

They will “establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability,” which has worked so well nowhere else.

The largest state-run business in America is public education. Is it accountable, democratically controlled or efficient? Complain too loudly at a school committee meeting, and you will end up in leg irons. The average product of the public schools has difficulty writing a sentence, understanding a paragraph or making change.

Imagine steel mills, coal mines and whole industries run the same way.

What a bright future awaits you in the People’s Republic of America.

Without police protection, you are far more likely to be the victim of a violent crime.

Because the border will be wide open, foreign predators will join our own criminal class.

If you want to rent an apartment, good luck. If you own your own home, you will swelter in the summer and freeze in the winter. Without oil, natural gas or electricity — remember, no drilling, mining, refineries or pipelines — America will be starved for energy.

Without chemical fertilizers and gas to power farm equipment, food will be in short supply. Soviet-era bread lines will beckon. On the bright side, you will not need GLP-1.

Healthcare? Do not get sick.

After a delicious soybean omelet for breakfast, you will have barely enough energy to walk to work in your state-run factory or on your collective farm. In the evening, your television will be permanently turned to PBS.

It will not happen all at once. First, they will pack the Supreme Court, make the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico states and enfranchise illegal aliens. At that point, future elections will not matter.

I will bet the Russians wish they knew what was coming in 1917, or the Cubans in 1959, or the Iranians in 1979. Whether Americans learn by their example remains to be seen.

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Where’s the ‘Progress’?

BY:          Mark Lewis (September 29, 2026).

“Man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is.”

 — Charles Darwin

“All corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.”

 — Charles Darwin

“Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler. His body will become more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical, the forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.” 

— Leon Trotsky

Those have got to be among the most idiotic words I have ever read in my life. Any quarter-witted human being, looking at the history of our species, who thinks that man is “progressing towards perfection,” that the average “human type” in the future will be an Aristotle, Goethe, or (heaven forbid) a Marx, is…missing something upstairs. And yet, leftists today, in America and around the globe, believe they can bring this “perfection” into existence. How? Where is one, single, solitary piece of historical proof that would lead anybody, except blind Marxist sycophants, to believe mankind in the future will be “a far more perfect creature than he is now”? I want some evidence, and I see none over the past 150 years. In fact, I see the exact opposite.

Look at history. Mankind has never “progressed” morally, spiritually, or in virtue and character — never. And our generation is absolutely no different. In my 72 years of existence, this world hasn’t “progressed”; indeed, it is noticeably worse. But we continue to spend our lives arguing and debating and fighting about trivialities, like humans of every generation have done, that in the eternal scheme of things are utterly inconsequential, things people 100 years ago had never even heard of, and that people 100 years from now will have totally forgotten and won’t care anything about if they do remember them. All humanity has managed to do is put a technological veneer on our increasing selfishness and depravity, but we think we are so sophisticated because our “god” now is named “Science,” not Baal, Dagon, or Jehovah. Like Adam and Eve, we listen and succumb to Satan’s arguments, balderdash, and poppycock that promise us an earthly paradise that never, never comes. But, like every generation before us, we insist that paradise will come if we’ll just pursue the same stupid, godless paths mankind has trekked for thousands of years. And our leftist geniuses tell us that the utopia will indeed come THIS TIME, if we’ll just give them the power they lust for.

Yeah. We can produce utopia because we have thousands of years of practice, countless ages of war, hatred, barbarity, cruelty, oppression, and futility behind us. We are almost there now. Behold our progress toward “perfection.” We murder our babies, mutilate our children, give them to perverts, call men women and women men, say women have penises and men can get pregnant, invite barbarians into our country and let them roam our streets unmolested and unpunished… yes, we have progressed far beyond the wisdom, morality, and sophistication of our ancestors. God is unnecessary; we don’t need history; we need nothing but ourselves. “I am, and there is none else besides me.” Yes, we are different now. Like every single generation before us…we’re different.

Darwin and Trotsky. Has mankind really made any intelligent, prudent “progress” since coming down out of the trees? Indeed, has mankind even come down out of the trees yet? Read some history and discover for yourself if humans are any different today than they have ever been. If you don’t like to read boring historians, read the Old Testament. Forget about the miracles if they offend you; just concentrate on what humans did to themselves and each other. Then read Roman history, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the “Age of Reason,” the 20th century in China and Russia, the offspring of “progressive” Darwin, Marx, and Trotsky — and tell me things have “progressed” and humans are morally superior — or different — now. Do we really believe, given the record of history, that we are on the verge of utopia, that humans in the future will be superior in wisdom, virtue, decency, love, and morality?

Probably the only way we’ll “progress” is in finding more efficient ways of killing each other. Oh, “science” may discover schemes to prolong our lives so that we can extend our stay in the trees a few more years, and revel in our jungle barbarity a little longer.

Our generation will die, like every other generation has, having bickered and brawled over the insignificant froth we think is critical. And the next generation will come and do the exact same thing. And think they are the most important, the smartest, and that wisdom will live and die with them. They think they will find the answers in human wisdom and create paradise, which they won’t, any more than we or previous generations have. For if there is one irrefutable lesson history has taught us, for thousands of years, it’s Jeremiah 10:23: “O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.” That is what history truly teaches. But history will continue to repeat itself for as long as we ignore that lesson and continue to think we humans have or can find the answers by ourselves.

Supposedly, Darwin and Marx told us how to do it. “God is dead,” Nietzsche announced. So why haven’t we seen at least some human “progress” in the past 150 years?

“One generation passes away, and another generation comes” (Ecclesiastes 1:4). And every one does the exact same things.

We’ll keep screaming useless tripe at each other over issues that in 50 years will be utterly inconsequential to people living then. And then they’ll scream their useless tripe. That’s “progress towards perfection”?

Stupid tree-dwellers…

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Why the midterm elections are so crucial

Republicans must open massive war chests, fund ads exposing the left

BY:          Robert Knight, The Washington Times (October 4, 2026).

The upcoming midterms are as serious as a heart attack, for two reasons.

First, the federal government has grown so huge that it matters greatly who is steering Leviathan. Second, Democrats have inexplicably embraced the most destructive ideologies in the world: Islamism and socialism.

Both would end America as we know it, shredding the Constitution and turning Christians, Jews and women into second-class citizens or worse.

This would happen under a politburo, Shariah regime or perhaps an unholy pairing of the two, such as the red/green alliance in New York City under communist/Islamist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Putting Congress back under Democrats would guarantee a scorched-earth second half of President Trump’s term. It would come with impeachments, investigations and 1,000 ways to impede his successful policies lowering taxes, securing the border, deporting criminal aliens and uncovering hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud.

Senate Democrats had a chance Wednesday to show that they favor curbing insider trading in Congress and ensuring that only U.S. citizens with valid IDs could vote in national elections.

Instead, they killed the Stop Insider Trading Act, which the House had passed in July. Republicans needed 60 votes in the Senate to defeat a filibuster. They got all 53 Republicans, while all 47 Democrats — even Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — voted against the motion.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, called the voter ID portion a “poison pill.” Bear in mind that a Harvard-CAPS/Harris poll earlier this year showed that 81% of the public supports voter ID and 75% want to require proof of citizenship.

The Senate adjourned to go home and campaign for the midterms, which are already underway in 47 states in some form, thanks to the Democrats’ turning Election Day into Election Month. This greatly increases costs and makes it harder to ensure election integrity, according to the bipartisan Commission on Election Reform.

The panel’s final report in 2005 included these main recommendations: requiring photo ID to vote and proof of U.S. citizenship to register; keeping voter rolls up to date; maintaining a paper audit trail for voting machines; and tightening absentee voting requirements. You know, vial after vial of poison.

The report also recommended ending ballot harvesting and improving ballot tracking.

Democrats have opposed all these measures as “voter suppression.” They want national elections to be as sketchy as those in Chicago’s cemetery-fortified precincts.

In any case, Republicans face an uphill challenge: History favors the party out of the White House during midterms. They also have a president who keeps giving Democrats ammunition, such as picking a fight with Canada (the “51st state”). All that did was undermine Canadian conservatives and empower the Liberal Party government of Prime Minister Mark Carney.

That does not help in border states such as Maine, where incumbent Republican Sen. Susan M. Collins is running against a Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed Democrat, Troy Jackson, who replaced the disgraced Graham Platner. Ms. Collins should still win, given the “normal versus crazy” dynamic.

In Michigan, Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers has a good chance to win the Senate seat against Islamist leftist Abdul El-Sayed. The Democrat’s campaign buddy, Hasan Piker, has blamed America for 9/11 and extolled raping White American women, among other things.

In Texas, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico’s fake Christianity is being exposed daily, along with his lesbian pastor, who rejects Jesus’ divinity.

Republicans must open their massive war chest and fund ads exposing the Democrats’ growing affinity for communism, Islamism, transgenderism and antisemitism. They also must present a compelling litany of Republican accomplishments ignored by the media, such as the massive tax relief in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

A lot can happen in the next four weeks. The hijacking Wednesday of the Israel-bound FlyDubai jet by an Omani co-pilot underscored that Islamists are waging a war against the West and even moderate Muslims.

The French think tank Fondapol reports nearly 65,000 Islamist terrorist attacks worldwide from 2001 through April 2024, killing more than 243,000 people.

The hijacking incident also shows that miracles happen. The assailant was foiled thanks to Indian pilot Smit Machchhar and Israeli passenger Yaniv Hayoun. Stabbed by the terrorist,

Mr. Machchhar reportedly still got the door open, allowing Mr. Hayoun and other passengers to subdue the would-be mass murderer.

Mr. Hayoun grabbed the controls and stabilized the plummeting aircraft. He said he had watched air disaster shows on TV.

By the grace of God, two other pilots were aboard. They landed the plane safely in Saudi Arabia. Experts said the sudden plunge of 17,000 feet should have doomed the jet, but it somehow held together. Another miracle.

On 9/11, brave passengers led by Todd Beamer, who said, “Let’s roll,” fought back, sacrificing their lives to take down Flight 93 over Pennsylvania so the Muslim terrorists could not crash it into the White House or the Capitol.

This time, everyone survived. The media, however, took a big hit by initially reporting only an “altercation” between the pilots, not what everyone immediately recognized as terrorism.

Some analysts say it will take a miracle for Republicans to hold on to Congress, but others say it is quite doable. It may depend on whether enough citizens pray for divine help while working as if it is all up to them.

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America’s colleges forgot the Christian roots that nurtured the pursuit of truth

Campus free speech means little if students must echo approved beliefs to graduate

BY:          Everett Piper, The Washington Times (October 4, 2026).

Last week, Steven Crowder hosted the first edition of his new series, “Change My Mind: Professor Debates.”

His guest was Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and is the author of “Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption.” The topic of the debate between Messrs. Crowder and Kennedy was “Is free speech dead on college campuses?”

The professor argued that it is not.

During the standard Q&A time, a young woman approached the microphone. She said: “I [recently graduated] from the University of Southern California, [which is] very similar to Harvard in a lot of ways. I had to lie on papers to graduate because professors would grade me lower because of my opinions. With all of that, [how can] you stand on the stage and still tell us that you think that [conservatives] don’t get discriminated against?”

The problem this young lady cites — and the professor’s denial that it exists — is rife across the academic landscape. American higher education, from its inception, was established and operated within a Christian ethos for a reason.

Harvard’s initial motto, for example, was Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae, “Truth for Christ and the Church.” Its corresponding mission was to “let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.”

Yale’s charge was “to know God in Jesus Christ and … to lead a godly, sober life.” All matriculants were required to live “blameless lives according to the rules of God’s Word, diligently reading the Holy Scriptures, the fountain of light and truth; and constantly attend upon all the duties of religion, both in public and secret.”

Princeton’s original motto was Vitam Mortuis Reddo, “I restore life to the dead,” and its purpose could not have been clearer: “Cursed is all learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.”

Seven of the eight Ivy League schools were founded in like manner to train up and educate a moral citizenry — and thus, lay the foundation for academic and intellectual freedom.

Dartmouth was founded to “Christianize” the American Indian tribes, and its motto even to this day is Vox Clamantis in Deserto: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness.”

The University of Pennsylvania’s motto is Leges Sine Moribus Vanae: “Laws without morals [are] useless.”

Brown University was founded under the banner of In Deo Speramus, which means “In God We Hope.” Columbia University’s motto is taken directly from Psalm 36:9 — In Lumine Tuo Videbimus Lumen: “In Thy light shall we see light.”

The list could go on from coast to coast.

Amherst College: Terra Irradiata (“Let them enlighten the lands.”)

Wellesley College: Non Ministrari Sed Ministrare (“Not to be served, but to serve / Not to be ministered unto, but to minister.”)

Northwestern University: Quaecumque Sunt Vera (“Whatsoever things are true.”)

Kenyon College: Magnanimiter Crucem Sustine (“Valiantly bear the cross!”)

Ohio University: Religio Doctrina Civilitas, Prae Omnibus Virtus (“Religion, Learning, Civility; Above All, Virtue.”)

The University of California: Fiat Lux (“Let there be light.”)

The University of Southern California: Palmam Qui Meruit Ferat: (“Let whoever earns the palm bear it.”)

The evidence is overwhelming. America’s ivory tower was built on the eternal principles and precepts of the Bible, which served as the foundation for an open and robust pursuit of truth. It is precisely because of Christianity, not despite it, that the liberal arts philosophy and academic freedom thrived.

G.K. Chesterton once said that when you get rid of “the big laws, you do not get liberty. … You get [thousands of] small laws.” In other words, the Prince of Paradox was warning us that when you stop teaching the 10 simple laws of God, you lose your freedom to the endless little laws made up by man.

Mr. Kennedy’s ignorance of this simple truth (and the history of his own profession) is the poster child for all that is wrong with our nation’s campuses. He fails to see that when you abandon your founding ideals, you will always be controlled by someone else’s.

When conservative students (or any students, for that matter) say they must lie about their political and religious convictions to graduate, it is no longer education that you are providing, but pure propaganda.

In the words of the late Anglo-French writer and historian Hilaire Belloc, “Those who forget their faith, who scoff at their history and who welcome the enemies of Christ with open arms … are the ones who will bring down Christendom, brick by brick.”

GFK