Commentary Culture Investigations

If you look at the history of Alaska’s elections since it was admitted to the Union in 1959, it becomes obvious that it is not a “blue” state. The last time Alaska’s voters cast their ballots for a Democrat in a presidential election was 1964, and they haven’t elected a Democratic Senator since 2008. Likewise, only three Democrats have won Alaska’s at-large House seat in the last 67 years. This is to be expected considering that Democrats constitute only 12 percent of the state’s electorate. Still, in 2020, they managed to dupe the voters into scrapping their traditional election process and replacing it with an “improved” system that would somehow reform campaign financing — Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV).
The spread of RCV will … increase opportunities for fraud and force Americans to vote for candidates they wouldn’t support under normal circumstances.
If the Democrats had any genuine interest in honest elections, they would have avoided RCV like the plague. It is a system that is quite deliberately designed to disfranchise as many voters as possible while creating chaos and confusion among election officials. This was clearly illustrated by the results of Alaska’s first full scale experiment with it during the 2022 midterms: A state where Democrats are a tiny minority and which President Trump won by double digits in all three of his White House runs, somehow elected Democrat Mary Peltola to its at-large seat in the House. Peltola was kicked out by the voters after only one full term, but RCV may well allow her to capture the Alaska Senate seat held by Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan.
This seems implausible until one grasps how RCV works: Voters rank candidates in a given race according to preference. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the votes cast on the first ballot, a series of elimination rounds redistributes the votes until one candidate finally reaches a majority. If some voters have marked their ballots for only a single candidate, and that candidate fails to reach the final round, their ballots are thrown away. This quite literally disfranchises those voters because their ballots are not counted in the final tally. In 2022, Mary Peltola finally crossed the 50 percent line 16 days after Election Day. This isn’t what Alaskans thought they had voted for in 2020, as the Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel wrote at the time:
Two years ago, left-leaning outside groups quietly funded Alaska liberals (posing under the vanilla title Alaskans for Better Elections) backing a ballot initiative to do away with the state’s perfectly good election system. It was replaced with a “top four” primary and a ranked-choice general election. Most Alaskans didn’t know what they were voting for, since the initiative was a mind-numbing 25 pages of single type, and its boosters tucked the voting part into the garble. The initiative instead led with a provision claiming it would eliminate “dark money.”
In Alaska, the real purpose of RCV is to ensure that obscure candidates with marginal voter support will emerge from the state’s primary on the “top four” contender list from which the voters must choose the ultimate winner. This permits unscrupulous politicians to “stack” the general election ballot in order to render themselves more likely to win in November. Last week, the New York Times revealed that this very tactic was used by the Peltola campaign with the aid of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (D.S.C.C.) and attorneys associated with the notorious Elias Law Group. They recruited Daniel J. Sullivan to run, hoping that voters will confuse him with incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan and cost him crucial votes.
According to the author of The Times story, Kellen Browning, “Both the Peltola campaign and the D.S.C.C. denied participating in efforts to recruit spoilers to the ballot in Alaska.” Nonetheless, among the 12 sources who were interviewed pursuant to the story was “Elisa Rios, Ms. Peltola’s former campaign manager and longtime aide, who was fired amid a staff shake-up in August, and agreed to a series of interviews with The Times since then.” Rios told Browning that Mary Peltola was “definitely aware” of the recruitment project. Inevitably, all of this has caused quite an uproar. Former Clinton advisor Mark Penn captures the prevailing sentiment:
The story of the fake candidacy seems pretty straightforward. The Peltola camp with outreach to the DSCC recruited a fake candidate to confuse voters into voting for the wrong candidate in order to win the election … And ranked-choice voting needs to be repealed in Alaska and everywhere else. It is a flawed social science experiment and a testament to how do-gooders can be fooled into backing something so easily manipulated. If you are concerned about candidates below 50 or 40 percent getting elected then add runoffs — those give people a choice that’s clear.
Unfortunately, RCV is metastasizing. According to FairVote, an advocacy group that has long promoted the adoption of RCV, “In the 2026 elections, Alaska, Maine, 12 cities, and two counties will use ranked-choice voting … It will also be used to choose a governor, mayors, city councilors, and other officeholders across the country.” This is obviously bad news for election integrity. The spread of RCV will make elections less transparent while rendering them unnecessarily complicated and protracted. It will increase opportunities for fraud while forcing Americans to choose from slates of fringe candidates they would never support under normal circumstances. But without congressional legislation, there really is no legal remedy.
Many will respond to this claim by insisting that only state legislatures have the power to put a halt to this skulduggery. But Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution states: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.” The irony is that, unless the midterm polls are wrong again, the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate may soon be under the control of the Democrats. They long ago declared war on election integrity and applaud Mary Peltola for duping the voters. Even if she loses they will ignore the lesson that Alaska teaches us about RCV.
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Across the dial, the Elittist Media Sunday Shows actively sought to downplay the massive “Two Dans” scandal coming out of Alaska, which was broken wide open by a story from The New York Times. The media continue to try to soften the gravity of this scandal by insisting on the legality of the strategy.Watch as NBC’s Kristen Welker insists on the question of whether NRSC Chair Tim Scott (R-SC) would accept the results of the Alaska election while avoiding the legal questions surrounding the scandal: DECOY DAN DOWNPLAY: Watch as NBC’s Kristen Welker insists on asking Tim Scott whether he’d accept the result of #ASKEN election if Peltola wins, and on defending legality of “Two Dans” operation pic.twitter.com/WfEtNDGmFZ— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) November 2, 2026 KRISTEN WELKER: I want to turn to Dan Sullivan, his race in Alaska, The New York Times reporting the campaign of Mary Peltola the Democratic candidate was involved in the effort to get another man named Dan Sullivan on the ballot, Peltola denies any involvement. President Trump has called for prosecutions, I know that you have said that Peltola should be held accountable, you’re calling for investigation. If Mary Peltola wins, Senator, if the race is certified, will you accept those results?TIM SCOTT: Well, Dan Sullivan is going to win, Kristen, you know that and I do because it’s the truth, because what I can tell you is you can’t trust Mary Peltola’s campaign and the collusion between her campaign and the DSCC. Listen: it is immoral in my opinion for a candidate to lie about who they are. I think it’s unethical for a candidate to lie about their opponent. But we know that it is criminal for candidates to work in collusion with other parties to confuse voters and that’s exactly what “Decoy Dan” has done in Alaska. Let me give you three examples. Quickly. Number one, he has mimicked every piece of Dan Sullivan’s campaign: the logo, the colors, the font. Number two: he tried to change his middle initial to the exact same middle initial of the real Dan Sullivan, and number three: Alaskan voters will hold them accountable and elect the real Dan Sullivan to be the continuing senator.WELKER: Well, even DoJ officials have said they’re not sure there’s criminal activity, that’s what they’re looking into. But just to go back to my original question, Senator, if Mary Peltola wins, if the election is certified, will you accept the results of that race?SCOTT: Kristen, two things. Number one, Dan Sullivan, the real Dan Sullivan will win and number two, it actually is a federal offense to confuse voters. That’s the law, and that’s why you’ve seen the Department of Justice ask for- send out 30 subpoenas. So what we will find out quickly is who all was involved in this attempt to confuse the voters. It’s okay to expand the ballot, but it’s not okay to confuse the voters.Senator, you’ve also seen Alaska’s Republican attorney general asking the federal government to permanently drop the, quote, “meritless lawsuit that seeks to block the certification of the election results.” Should these decisions be left to the states as the Constitution requires, Senator?SCOTT: Well, the governor has been clear, he is opening an investigation as well. I think there’s no doubt that our voting rights are absolutely important in this country. Confusing and deceiving voters- not right. Also, if you’re confusing voters, it’s illegal. All right. Well, again, DoJ has said they’re not sure that there’s anything illegal about it. They are looking into it, though.Welker had no interest in the issue beyond trying to pin Scott down on an “election denialism” angle. Scott came prepared and countered by getting into some of the more egregious details of the “Decoy Dan” operation. As Welker demonstrates, election interference doesn’t seem to be such a big deal to the media elites unless it is their preferred candidates being interfered against.Over at CBS, “election law expert” David Becker joined in the downplay of the seriousness of “Decoy Dan”, attempting a whatabout by equating it with Elon Musk’s alleged “bankrolling” of Cornel West in 2024:“CBS News election law expert” David Becker downplays relevance of Decoy Dan (“It’s pretty normal politics unfortunately”), equating it with @ElonMusk “bankrolling” Cornel West in 2024: “There’s dirty pool. Both parties do this. It shouldn’t happen. Right now in Nevada there… pic.twitter.com/THZXpSPUbN— Brent Baker 🇺🇲🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) November 1, 2026 DAVID BECKER: There’s dirty pool. Both parties do this. It shouldn’t happen. Right now in Nevada, there are two candidates named Ford running for governor. We’re not sure what the circumstances of that are, one is the major Democratic candidate. We’ve seen Elon Musk bankroll Cornell West’s presidential campaign in 2024. These kinds of things shouldn’t happen. I don’t think there’s any question. But it’s pretty normal politics, unfortunately. And Alaska’s state courts and Alaska law has already ruled on this.Here’s another guy who always preens about threats to Democracy™, but says that there’s nothing to see here as Alaskan voters are potentially being disenfranchised.More of the same at ABC, where the scandal was downplayed on This Week with George Stephanopoulos: WATCH: @ThisWeekABC plays down Alaska’s “Decoy Dan” scandal pic.twitter.com/JDw8uh7MLz— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) November 2, 2026 GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Control of the Senate could come down to the state of Alaska. A state Trump won by more than ten points, where ranked-choice voting means the results may not be known for weeks.Trevor Ault is in Anchorage.Good morning, Trevor.TREVOR AULT: Good morning, George.Yes, this is a state that has suddenly had a lot of action. A state that President Trump won by 13 points in 2024. But we have this neck and neck Senate race between the Democrat, Mary Peltola, and the incumbent Republican, Dan Sullivan. And we also have this extra Dan Sullivan that’s also on the ballot. And that has been a lightning rod in recent days, as reporting by “The New York Times” allegedly claimed that the Peltola campaign recruited that second Dan Sullivan to get on the ballot to try to siphon some votes away from the incumbent.Now not only did that prompt the Department of Justice to file another lawsuit a few days ago, but now federal officials say they have opened a criminal investigation to try to figure out if there’s been any wrongdoing here.Now, it isn’t clear what law may have been broken in this criminal investigation. The process of ballot stacking has been happening for quite some time in Alaska by both parties, and pretty much all the legal experts that we spoke to said it would not be illegal to recruit another Dan Sullivan to join the ballot.Now, Peltola’s campaign has denied that they recruited the second Dan Sullivan. And we did finally hear from Mary Peltola. She says she has no idea if her campaign recruited this other Dan Sullivan. But she says if they did, she had no idea that it had happened. And she claims that she believes she can win entirely on her own merits, that she doesn’t need any tricks, George.STEPHANOPOULOS: Trevor, do you have a sense of how much this controversy is cutting in the final days?AULT: I would say, based on the voters that I’ve talked to, George, it doesn’t be — it doesn’t seem to really be swinging the needle a ton. I would definitely say the voters are not really buying the denials from the Peltola campaign. And they do think that the process, the practice of it is a little bit shady, but they’re not really treating this as a massive scandal.One of the main reasons is because this doesn’t really seem new to them. The second Dan Sullivan has been on the ballot and they’ve known about it for months. He was on the ballot already in the primary. It was litigated in that instance.I would also say that a lot of these voters that I’m talking to don’t really think it’s that clever of a scheme. They think it’s pretty obvious which Dan Sullivan is the incumbent as it’s labeled on the ballot.Now I would vote for Republicans who are concerned about this practice, Alaska’s ranked choice voting actually makes it even less likely that the second Dan Sullivan could serve as a spoiler, because in all likelihood, he’d get eliminated in an early round and we would eventually just go to that one-on-one, head-to-head Mary Peltola versus Dan Sullivan.Maybe most importantly, though, George, it is possible that control of the Senate could come down to Alaska. And in that instance, Alaska’s polls on election night don’t close until 1:00 a.m. Eastern Time, and then they accept mail-in ballots going two weeks after election day. They historically take a very long time to call these races, including — especially close ones like we’re seeing here.If the control of the Senate comes down to this, we could be in for an agonizing wait that could take weeks, George.STEPHANOPOULOS: No question about it. Trevor Ault, thanks very much.Trevor Ault and George Stephanopoulos showed more concern over the time it may take to call some of these races than the scandal itself. The pattern is clear: downplay, obfuscate, say that it’s legal, and ignore the facts of what was exposed by The New York Times.Over at CNN, Jake Tapper tried to both-sides Sen. Dan Sullivan, the target of this chicanery. Sullivan was ready. 🚨 JUST IN: Sen. Dan Sullivan MIC DROPS Fake News Jake Tapper trying to say “Republicans do it too!!” about Mary Peltola and Democrats’ VOTER FRAUD SCAM to plant a fake Dan Sullivan on the ballotSULLIVAN: “I DON’T DO IT.””I HAVEN’T done it.””Because I RESPECT the people I… pic.twitter.com/67cql54qqK— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 1, 2026 JAKE TAPPER: They note that, during this year’s primary, the Senate primary, a group funded by the top Republican super PAC — this is not you, but this is the top Republican super PAC — spent more than $800,000 boosting — boosting a different Democratic candidate and a Green Party candidate, neither of them living in Alaska, and the goal presumably was to draw more Democratic votes away from Mary Peltola in the general. Some of the money came from Last Frontier PAC, which supports you. And I wonder, what- what’s your response when people say, look, this is ugly, but it’s a part of politics, and Republicans were trying to do it too?DAN SULLIVAN: Yes, here’s my response to that. I don’t do it. I haven’t done it. You know me, Jake. That’s not my style. That’s not what I would do. And the reason I wouldn’t do it is because I respect the people I represent. And Mary Peltola and her staff and the DSCC are directly involved. “The New York Times” has the receipts. I encourage all Alaskans to read the story.It is a breathtaking smoking gun that Peltola, her team, Schumer, his team had as their first order of business, not to run on their record, because I got a way better record than Mary Peltola, not to run on their vision for what’s good for Alaska, because national D.C. Democrats always are about shutting down our economy, killing our oil and gas sector, crushing our military, killing thousands of jobs. So they said, we have to have as a first order business is to figure out how to cheat and deceive Alaskans. And that is the facts, and that is what they have done. By the way, their scheme is working. They got the decoy guy on the ballot. I’m sure I’m going to lose a lot of votes to that trickery.So what I say to Alaskans is, don’t let them get away with the tricks. Get out the vote. Vote for the honest senator. We have truth on our side, Jake. We have truth on our side, and that’s why I’m going to win. These media types are the same people that spent the better part of the last six years lecturing America about defending Democracy™. Yet they remain silent in the wake of what appears to be a conspiracy to deceive voters, potentially interfering with their right to vote. If it weren’t for double standards there would be none at all,

The suffix “phobia” means an irrational fear. Arachnophobia, for example, is an irrational fear of spiders, while claustrophobia is an irrational fear of enclosed spaces. So when someone calls you “Islamophobic,” they’re basically saying your concerns about Islam are irrational, baseless, or even pathological. But that label often has little to do with the actual arguments, concerns, or motivations of the people being targeted by it.
Most people called Islamophobic aren’t cowering under the bed, terrified of some abstract religion. They’re watching what they see as the aggressive spread of Islamist ideas into free societies, and they’re saying no.
They point to parallel societies, demands for Sharia courts, honor-based violence, female genital mutilation, and doctrines that treat women and apostates as subordinate or traitorous. They also point out that numerous major terrorist attacks in the West have drawn from that same ideological well. Disagreeing with this expansion isn’t a “phobia.” It’s pattern recognition shaped by years of troubling evidence and lived experience.
Islamism — the political program that seeks to put Islamic law above secular law — doesn’t sit comfortably beside the Enlightenment values that built the free West. Free speech, equal rights for women, individual liberty over group identity, and the separation of religion from state power are non-negotiable principles here. Orthodox Islamic doctrines involving blasphemy, apostasy, gender roles, and the supremacy of the ummah clash directly with those principles.
When the free West acts as though that conflict doesn’t exist, it gives ground. Opposing that kind of political expansion is a legitimate position rooted in self-preservation, not an automatic sign of bigotry.
The practical effect is to chill debate before it even begins, while shielding networks that promote political Islam under the much broader cover of anti-racism.
The people who shout “Islamophobia” the loudest are often on the Left and far Left. They use the word as a political weapon, one designed to encourage self-censorship. Question mass migration from cultures with conflicting values, mention demographic changes in European cities, or point out that certain crimes may follow a religious or cultural pattern, and suddenly you’re treated as the problem. Their objective is pretty simple: make ordinary people keep quiet so that major social and political changes can continue without meaningful pushback from the societies being transformed.
Just look at the United States. When CNN commentator Scott Jennings called U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (DS-MN) a public-relations agent for Hamas after she downplayed the October 7 attacks in Israel and emphasized ceasefires, members of the Squad erupted. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DS-NY) called the remark “blatant Islamophobia.” U.S. Reps. Cori Bush (DS-MO), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and others quickly joined in, demanding that CNN denounce Jennings and remove him. Never mind Omar’s own history of controversial comments about Jewish political influence and money. The label itself seemed to be the point: turn criticism into hatred, and then tell the critic to stop speaking. U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (DS-MI) and other Squad members have played the same card whenever their positions have faced sustained scrutiny.
In Britain, the pattern is even clearer — and even more damaging. Labour MP Sarah Champion, who represents Rotherham, wrote that Britain had a problem involving British Pakistani men who raped and exploited white girls. She was forced out of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet amid accusations of “Islamophobia.” By then, years of grooming-gang scandals in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford, and elsewhere had already exposed a pattern documented in official reports. Even so, much of the Left seemed to prefer silence over confronting an uncomfortable truth.
Labour later adopted a definition of Islamophobia that treats discrimination based on “Muslimness” as a form of racism. Critics say that definition has been used to smear people who dare to discuss the gangs. Keir Starmer described some demands for new national inquiries as opportunistic appeals to the far right. Critics also accuse Humza Yousaf and Sadiq Khan of responding in much the same way to concerns about Islamist influence.
The message much of the public hears is clear: notice the pattern, and you may be punished — even if you’re a Labour MP trying to protect vulnerable girls.
Canada has gone down a similar road. Justin Trudeau’s government supported Motion M-103, which condemned Islamophobia, and later created a special representative’s office to combat it. Under Amira Elghawaby, that office opposed Quebec’s secularism laws and, in the eyes of critics, blurred the important line between genuine anti-Muslim bigotry and legitimate concerns about Islamist influence inside public institutions. People who question unchecked immigration or parallel legal systems can quickly find themselves branded with the same label.
The practical effect is to chill debate before it even begins, while shielding networks that promote political Islam under the much broader cover of anti-racism.
Across the free West, the same tactic keeps showing up. After terrorist attacks in France, Germany, Sweden, and elsewhere, left-leaning politicians and media outlets often rush to warn everyone about Islamophobia while paying far less attention to the ideology that motivated the killers. Politicians who voice concerns about no-go areas, parallel societies, or demands for blasphemy restrictions run into the same smear. But this debate shouldn’t be confused with protecting Muslims from discrimination. Real prejudice against individuals is wrong and, in many forms, already illegal — as it should be. The real question is whether a theopolitical system is being protected from honest examination, open debate, and vigorous public criticism.
The Left and far Left too often treat resistance to Islamism’s expansion as some kind of moral failure. They would rather import some of the problems found in the places people are fleeing than admit that culture, ideology, and doctrine actually matter. The predictable result is self-censorship. Ordinary citizens keep quiet because they fear being called bigots by politicians who seem unwilling to defend basic Enlightenment principles.
But people who oppose that expansion have every right to speak openly and forcefully. Their concerns are rational, evidence-based, and worthy of serious debate. Most times the “phobia” label is the irrational part — a rhetorical weapon that pressures free people to police their own speech.
Don’t hand those who wield that label more power than they deserve. Stand your ground, make your case, and refuse to be silenced.
READ MORE from Frank Salvato:
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Frank Salvato is a professional independent journalist. His writings and podcasts can be accessed at UndergroundUSA.com.

Natural gas now costs roughly 10 times as much in Europe as in the United States. While consumers and small businesses grow increasingly anxious, Audi’s chief executive allows himself to be celebrated at a Trump rally for a multibillion-dollar investment in the United States. The political stirrup-holders of climate madness are abandoning the sinking ship.
Few things are more humiliating for a politician than the public embrace of domestic business leaders by the country’s political archenemy.
The chancellor is being disciplined and publicly humiliated by German industry.
Only days after the German government and industry jointly swore allegiance to Germany as an investment location — a fleeting declaration of loyalty — Audi CEO Gernot Döllner apparently decided that the moment had come to remind Chancellor Friedrich Merz of his historic irrelevance. A highly public appearance at a campaign rally held by U.S. President Donald Trump made clear that the hour has struck: The chancellor is being disciplined and publicly humiliated by German industry. In Georgia, before thousands of enthusiastic MAGA supporters, Döllner presented his company’s plans to invest a further $4.5 billion at its site in Macon. (RELATED: Germany’s Cheap Gas Band-Aid Will Not Rescue Them From the Global Energy War)
Döllner savored his moment of triumph, the exuberant applause on stage alongside the U.S. president. At that moment, the homeland — with its mourning chancellor and a society trapped in an artificially induced climate-shock paralysis — seemed very far away.
Like so many others in recent months, Audi is attempting a flight forward: It is circumventing U.S. tariff pressure through production relocation and, almost incidentally, shaking off the energy and climate policy defended so stubbornly by the “climate chancellor” and his green troops. Politicians should learn quickly: Under the current conditions, time is running out in Germany for industrial production, high value creation and prosperity.
Merz’s favorite project, the military-state economy, likewise depends on cheap and, above all, reliably flowing energy. For that reason, too, this political homunculus will soon lie in ruins.
Now, therefore, the hour of the traitors, the climate apostates and political collaborators has arrived — those who, faced with catastrophe, are now trying to save their own skins. Their safe harbor: Donald Trump’s America, of all places. (RELATED: Welcome to the Far Right)
It was not least the auto executives, the functionary cadres of German industry, who rubbed their hands at the prospect of climate plans and regulation — regulation that, on the one hand, eliminated troublesome competition from the Mittelstand with the stroke of a pen and, on the other, promised generous subsidies. (RELATED: Germany’s Family Businesses Survived Everything — Until Net Zero)
Shabby opportunism, unbearable collusion with politics: German business submitted to the green-socialist establishment without a single word of criticism. Germany’s elite cultivated political bowing and servitude, offering itself as the stirrup-holder of power, and is now no longer capable of confronting this madness through concerted action from within its own ranks. No one stood in the way of the charlatans of the green transformation when they began building the largest politically legitimized act of plunder since the Second World War.
They let it happen. They allowed political dilettantes and ideologues to do their work, and today they face a broken business model: permanent war with Russia, trade conflicts with Washington, and energy prices beyond all reason. The last illusion — that Germany as a business location could still be defended — is being strangled in the cradle.
The European gas market has been decoupled from American reality for years. The Dutch TTF price, Europe’s benchmark, recently stood at around €94 per megawatt-hour, while Henry Hub gas in the United States cost only about €8. This is the stuff of which economic nightmares are made. Gas in Europe is thus more than 11 times as expensive as in the United States. A year ago, the factor was still four, and the gap has never been as wide as it is today.
Nothing and no one will permanently close this price gap unless Europeans radically turn their energy policy upside down. Yet even Marine Le Pen, the French right-wing politician, apparently plans to preserve this gigantic redistribution scheme and make the Germans pay for it. Europe has become entangled in its intellectual wretchedness, political megalomania and economic opportunism.
Too many companies, employees, pensioners, welfare recipients, politicians, functionaries and nonentities in NGOs, or state propagandists at the public broadcasters, cling to the redistribution state and fill their coffers through the most varied channels of the transformation economy.
For energy-intensive industry in Germany and at other European industrial locations, the end of the road has been reached. Imagine a gas-intensive operation, such as a fertilizer plant, and compare the situation in Europe with that in the United States: Here, you pay more than $30 per million BTU; in the United States, less than $3. Investment flows to where energy is cheap, where economic policy is deregulated and where the bureaucratic burden is not so high. German companies spend 7 percent of their revenue, according to the Bundesbank, merely performing the drudgery of the state bureaucracy. That is grotesque. That is economic madness.
One may almost have grown accustomed to the cost of bureaucracy. But the fact that gas has become an industrial-political kill switch hits the chemical industry above all. Glass production is just as impossible as competitive steel or fertilizer production at this location. For all of them, gas is not a minor cost item. Gas is the raw material, the process energy, and a crucial competitive factor all at once.
It is understandable that German chemical production has fallen by 20 percent from its best year. This location can no longer be sustained.
Audi is by no means an isolated case: Capital is fleeing Germany and the EU across the Atlantic to America. In April, Mercedes-Benz announced that it would invest $4 billion in its plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, by 2030 alone. In total, investments in its U.S. business amount to more than $7 billion. Production of the GLC will be shifted from Germany to Alabama.
BMW, meanwhile, has completed its largest U.S. investment program to date: $1.7 billion has flowed into its plants in South Carolina, $1 billion into the modernization of Spartanburg, and $700 million into the new battery factory in Woodruff. At the same time, the company announced in July that it would cut up to 8,000 jobs in Germany. Audi is switching from “Made in Germany” to “Made in the USA.”
Of course, this does not affect only energy-intensive industry. The wallet of the average consumer has long been overstretched. Not a few families are likely to face problems heating their homes adequately this winter. What a disgrace; what an admission of failure and intellectual decline in a country that once prided itself on its rationality, engineering prowess and political superiority.
This should be the moment of reversal, the moment of krisis — krisis means turning point in ancient Greek — and this reversal is long overdue: the development of domestic gas reserves in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, domestic fracking, a rapid return to nuclear power and an expansion of coal mining. That would be what Angela Merkel once called “alternative-less” — at least if one genuinely cares about the well-being of the German population, its economy, its Mittelstand, its retailers and its small businesses.
READ MORE from Thomas Kolbe:
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Being an information hoarder, I am in the habit of looking for patterns in just about everything, which often helps me anticipate events or trends. And, to be sure, there are occasional false positives. Something that has become evident in recent weeks is a recurring message that may mean nothing at all, or may indicate that things are going to go for a smash up.
All right, we have the data. What does it mean? What can we conclude? Let us examine all possibilities, no matter how implausible or ridiculous.
You decide.
In Britain, people are being told by the government to stock up on food, first aid, pet food, lighting and other essentials for three days.

Norway and Sweden: Norway has begun stockpiling grain, while both countries have urged citizens to maintain a week’s supply of essentials.
Australia: The government has urged citizens to stockpile food and other necessities sufficient to last up to a week.
Japan: The government is encouraging citizens to stockpile food, water, and sanitation supplies for at least three days.
Denmark: Authorities have advised citizens to maintain a three-day supply of food and water.
Ireland, Germany, France, Poland, the Netherlands, Finland, and Estonia: Governments have issued similar recommendations, advising citizens to stockpile between three and ten days’ worth of essentials.
Indonesia: The government began stockpiling food reserves several months ago in anticipation of El Niño.
Canada and Mexico: Authorities have encouraged citizens to maintain emergency kits containing several days’ worth of supplies.
Food prices: Prices for some bulk food items have reportedly risen by as much as 50 percent.

Perhaps unrelated, perhaps not, the U.S. Army has been practicing creating mass burial graves.

All right, we have the data. What does it mean? What can we conclude? Let us examine all possibilities, no matter how implausible or ridiculous:

Governments are anticipating serious armed conflict, i.e., war. Personally, I would not put it beyond the bastards of the European elites to attack Russia, in full commitment that they will defend Europe down to the last American.
Perhaps an anomalous weather event is anticipated, or perhaps geological. The series of one earthquake after another after another in the Pacific Ring of Fire was very unnerving.
Perhaps a biological pathogen is in the offing.
Perhaps a cyberattack on various countries is being anticipated, which would disrupt any number of infrastructure, economies, and/or food and gas supplies. This would be the equivalent of an EMP.
Perhaps this is a deliberate scare tactic, to create panic, for unknown reasons.
Perhaps an incoming meteor is due to collide with the planet.
Perhaps, and most likely, there is no central element to the pattern. In other words, the urging of governments to stock up has no ulterior motivation other than to urge people to be ready for unanticipated just-in-case scenarios that might happen. If this is the case, there is no need to indulge in another frenzy of toilet paper buying as was the case when panic occurred in 2020 (which I have to admit I fell for).

So, there it is. The reader may decide to become a prepper. Or, the reader may decide to sing along to the words of the song, Don’t Worry Be Happy. You decide.
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Armando Simón is a retired psychologist and historian, author of Stories for Lions and Other Felines.
 
 
 

Is there a “Trump Doctrine” that describes or explains the foreign policy of the Trump administration? Yes. It is best described and explained as a foreign policy shorn of illusions — the illusion of perfect peace; the illusion of human progress; the illusion of the march of democracy; the illusion of the “end of history.” Trump’s team of realists have approached the world as it is instead of embarking on crusades to transform it in America’s image. It is a foreign policy that is nationalistic, pragmatic, undoctrinaire, unsentimental, and flexible.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Trump’s foreign policy is the downgrading of “values” as a determinant of policy. This may be the greatest illusion that Trump has discarded.
Trump deals with dictators and autocrats because they rule the world’s other great powers (China and Russia) and predominate in the energy rich Middle East. He expects our allies in Europe and Asia to share more of the burden for their self-defense because they can, because the United States does not have unlimited resources, and because the United States is not the world’s policeman. He has substantively pivoted to the Asia-Pacific because the threat to our security interests is greatest there, but he has been careful to avoid provocative rhetoric and actions that could ignite a global war in Europe or Asia. He is waging a limited war in the Middle East because an Iranian nuclear weapon would threaten U.S. security interests. He is using economic statecraft, not as a substitute for diplomacy and deterrence, but as a complement to them.
Critics have accused Trump of being isolationist, but during his administrations the U.S. has not withdrawn from the world; instead it has readjusted policy to a changed world where Europe and the Middle East are not as important as the Asia-Pacific. Critics have blasted Trump’s tariffs and burden sharing requirements with our allies, but those policies put America’s interests first. Critics have denounced Trump’s diplomacy toward Russia and Ukraine, but that diplomacy merely recognizes that Ukraine cannot win the war, its territorial independence has never — never — been considered a vital interest of the United States, and today’s Russia does not pose as serious a threat to our interests as the Soviet Union did during the Cold War.
America’s National Defense Strategy under Trump is geared to great power competition instead of peripheral conflicts that drained American resources for the first sixteen years of the 21st century. The Iran war is an exception to that focus, but a warranted exception given the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapons’ capacity. Trump is attempting to resurrect triangular diplomacy with Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi Jinping because our relationships with those two powers are the most important relationships on the globe’s strategic chessboard.
Trump has moved to consolidate U.S. hegemony in the Western hemisphere with strategic gains in Panama, Venezuela, and Greenland. He has positioned the United States to better compete with Russia and China in the Arctic Ocean. He has established the framework for reviving America’s defense-industrial base, including in the vital area of shipbuilding capacity. He recognizes that, geopolitically, the United States must maintain and improve its position as the world’s leading maritime power.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Trump’s foreign policy is the downgrading of “values” as a determinant of policy. This may be the greatest illusion that Trump has discarded. Trump’s critics on the left and the establishment right still cling to the notion that values should be at the center of U.S. foreign policy. The notion of a values-based foreign policy is a 20th century illusion that has been responsible for launching ill-advised crusades that proved costly to Americans and America’s strategic interests. When so-called universal values take the place of advancing concrete U.S. interests, trouble is just around the corner. We saw this happen in World War I, to some extent in World War II, in China after World War II, in Vietnam, during the entire Carter administration, in Afghanistan and Iraq.
American foreign policy is not supposed to make America’s leaders feel good about themselves because they have tried to advance human progress. It is about promoting and protecting America’s strategic interests. Period. Trump gets that and America is safer for it.
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The day before Rep. Haley Stevens, who lost Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed, startled the political world by switching her general election endorsement to EL-Sayed’s Republican opponent Rep. Mike Rogers, New York Times reporter Reid Epstein wrote a hostile story, “Why Haley Stevens Can’t Stop Talking About Abdul El-Sayed,” in defense of El-Sayed – excuse us, Dr. El-Sayed.Why is El-Sayed credited with the honorific of a medical “Dr.” without having practiced (while writing medically and ethically concerning academic papers), while the pioneering neurosurgeon (and Republican) Dr. Ben Carson was often denied the “Dr.” title by the paper? Interesting question. Epstein used the “Dr. El-Sayed” term 24 times (not counting the Times photo captions).A “how dare she!” tone permeated this early account of Stevens’ misgivings about El-Sayed’s hostility toward Israel. No brave post-partisan heroine like Rep. Liz Cheney here, just an outrageous party turncoat.In his lede, Epstein used matzo ball soup as a clumsy stand in to represent Stevens’ quasi-Jewish outlook.Representative Haley Stevens of Michigan stood up from her dining table, where the tuna fish and matzo ball soup sat half-eaten, and let loose about the moment she grew disillusioned with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.It happened this month, during her state’s first Senate debate between Dr. El-Sayed, who defeated her in a bitter Democratic primary in August, and former Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee. Dr. El-Sayed, an outspoken critic of Israel, was asked if Iran or Israel posed a greater threat to the United States. He dodged the question, calling it a “ridiculous hypothetical.”This was unacceptable to Ms. Stevens.Since the debate, Ms. Stevens has sat for a procession of cable television interviews that have been increasingly critical of Dr. El-Sayed, her endorsement of him becoming shakier by the day. Their hug at a party unity brunch in August has faded into distant memory.On Friday, Ms. Stevens announced that she would attend a Sunday church service in Detroit with Dr. El-Sayed, a peace offering brokered by Representatives Debbie Dingell of Michigan and James E. Clyburn of South Carolina. But Ms. Stevens’s statement came with a caveat: a demand that Dr. El-Sayed publicly disavow an ad that one of his allies posted online. She called the ad antisemitic because it blamed U.S. support for Israel for high grocery prices…..Whether their planned joint appearance on Sunday will go ahead seems up in the air.Update: Not only would Stevens in fact not appear with El-Sayed, she did appear at a church with his election opponent, Rep. Mike Rogers.El-Sayed eventually asked Stevens not to attend the “unity rally.”Several times in the interviews, she returned to her anger over the online ad, made by Rebellion PAC, a left-wing group that backed Dr. El-Sayed, and his refusal to publicly disavow it. The El-Sayed campaign has said it did not make and is not responsible for the ad.“Maybe it’s how you fund-raise, maybe it is what you want people to believe, but the reality is that we are not going to say that the cost of groceries is because of Jews and the Jewish state,” Ms. Stevens said. “We’re not going to say we don’t have health care because of Jews and the Jewish state.”Epstein dove deep into Stevens’ history related to Judaism, like her attendance at a Jewish sleep-away camp as a teenager and large donations to her campaign from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Her “Jewish lawyer” fiance also came under scrutiny, having previously “gone even further than she has in criticizing Dr. El-Sayed” and endorsing Rogers (“Then there is the matter of Mr. Turkish,” in Epstein’s ominous phrasing).Epstein ended the story with a statement seemingly meant to be ridiculed by liberal Democrats.Mr. Turkish said he believed Ms. Stevens, 43, still had a bright future in politics.Indeed, liberals are out in force on social media confidently proclaiming Stevens’ political career over.When her hesitation to back El-Sayed was shockingly confirmed on Sunday, the Times treated the turnaround with a flurry of campaign stories gathered under the blunt headline, “Democratic Senate Primary Loser Endorses Republican in Michigan.” “Runner-up” wouldn’t have sufficed?

Jonathan Capehart MS NOW The Weekend 10-31-26

When it comes to politics, MS NOW is very orthodox: everyone sings from the same liberal hymnal. Hosts and guests alike reliably spout the same lefty talking points o’ the day.So it was surprising to hear Jackie Alemany, co-host of The Weekend, go off-script on Saturday. Even more shocking: she did so at the expense of her co-host, Jonathan Capehart.For years, Capehart’s hobbyhorse has been claiming that President Trump has lost mental acuity. We’ve documented it more than once. Jonathan mounted his sleazy steed—yet again—on Saturday. He referred to Trump’s habit of mentioning his high MoCA test scores. Capehart—emphasizing the honorific “doctor”—played a clip of Abdul El-Sayed saying that the MoCA is only administered when there are concerns about a person’s acuity.The panel was having great fun with the topic . . . until Alemany piped up:“I have to just put in my two cents. As someone who has recently been seeing him very up close. I mean, we were just on the rope line watching him shake hands with babies in costumes for like an hour and a half. I guess he’s gotten older. He is different than the person who came into the presidency.“But I do not see, I do not necessarily see the cognitive decline. It was visible with Biden. You saw it. There was something palpably off. I don’t get that same feeling.”
MS NOW Co-Host Knocks Capehart Off His Trump ‘Mental Acuity’ Hobbyhorse pic.twitter.com/ZYgedGdsTJ— Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) November 1, 2026

MS NOW Co-Host Knocks Capehart Off His Trump ‘Mental Acuity’ Hobbyhorse pic.twitter.com/ZYgedGdsTJ— Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) November 1, 2026

Capehart has had a front-row seat to observe the acuity difference between Trump and Biden. Interviewing Biden in 2022, Capehart had to jog him awake when he dozed off mid-sentence. It was so telling of Biden’s decline that Capehart cut that seminal moment from the interview video.After Alemany’s body blow, Capehart tried to recover, mumbling about Trump having taken three cognitve assessments, then quickly ending the segment before Jackie could inflict any more humiliation on him. Poor Jonathan, bucked off his hobbyhorse.Speaking of doctors, has anyone checked in with “Dr.” Jill on the comparative acuity of Trump and her husband?Here’s the transcript.MS NOWThe Weekend10/21/267:23 am EDTJONATHAN CAPEHART: President Trump, when he does these rallies, he, he plays the hits. You know, he just, he goes into the arena and he says all the things, including his bragging about having aced three cognitive tests. WhichEUGENE DANIELS: It means you have to take three cognitive tests.CAPEHART: Well, hold on, hold on, cause, you know, I’m all about what about his mental acuity.Well, leave it to Doctor Abdul El-Sayed to finally go there on the president bragging about his three cognitive tests that he says not even Barack Obama can pass.Please! Listen to Doctor Abdul El-Sayed explain why bragging about these tests ain’t what he thinks it is.ABDUL EL-SAYED: Look, I, I, I went to medical school, okay? Whole medical school, whatever Mike Rogers wants you to think. And I remember in my neurology unit, I, I would I would have to give that MOCA exam. You know, the cognitive test he’s so proud of?And the only people that you give a MOCA test to are people who you worry may have cognitive deficits. Like, by definition, if you’re taking one of those tests, something’s wrong!CAPEHART: Correct! Correct.DANIELS: I  have not taken one: have you?CAPEHART: No. I have not.EUGENE ROBINSON: No.CAPEHART: But, but here’s the thing, and I want to give, I want to give kudos to our colleague Lawrence O’Donnell, who’s been out there from the beginning saying, you know, the president first started bragging about these tests when he was 71. He is now 80.. . . .JACKIE ALEMANY:  I do, I do have to, I have to just put in my two cents.As someone who has recently been seeing him very up close, I mean, we were just on the rope line watching him shake hands with babies in costumes for like an hour and a half. I, yes, he’s gotten older. He is different than the person who came into the presidency. But I do not see, I do not necessarily see the cognitive decline.DANIELS: There’s a difference between shaking babies and actually running the country.ALEMANY: I, I know, but the Biden, the Biden, you, it was visible with Biden. You, you saw it, there was something palpably off. I don’t get that same feeling.CAPEHART: Eugene Robinson. Three tests, three cognitive tests. And we have to go. We are so in trouble.

Max Tani, Semafor ‘Ghost creators’ are reaching millions of viewers with nearly identical, sensationalized videos that take aim at Democrats.

Michael Doran, Tablet