Children are back in school, the general election campaign season has begun in earnest, and summer is finally coming to an end, with the cool beauty of autumn weather finally at hand.
So what is on our minds today?
An AfD Victory Horrifies the Mainstream Press
German elections held during the first weekend of September terrified the mass media, delivering approximately 45% of a very high turnout vote for the Alternative for Germany (the AfD party).
Here in the United States, of course, 45% is usually a loss, such a crippling defeat that there’s no point in a recount. But in a multiparty European parliamentary-style government, 45% for a single party is a sizeable lead, leaving the other major parties shaking in their (jack) boots.
The press reports that this is a dangerous victory for the far right, that it may even mean a far right party will lead Germany since World War II!
The problem with the press implying that the AfD is a bunch of Nazis is really much greater than the usual press hyperbole.
What were the National Socialists (Nazis) of World War II, anyway? They were an anti-semitic, anti-Christian, frankly, a simply anti-religion party that advocated one-party statist, marxist rule.
The Nazis didn’t exactly call for state ownership of the means of production, as Marx and Engels did, but they called for complete state control of the means of production, which is virtually the same in every way but the name on the deed. Nazis advocated 100% state control over everything, from who could rent or own property to who could operate a business, from the work rules and tax rules, the permitting and customer options available. The Nazi government could shut down a shop or factory without notice, take it over for the war effort, even arrest and deport or imprison millions of people for any reason, from wanting to use them in forced labor to registering them for death in a concentration camp.
When robbery, rape, beatings or murders occurred, the state chose whether to imprison or reward the perpetrator. If the perp was a member of an unprotected class, he might be arrested for it. But if the perpetrator was the Hitler Youth, the Gestapo, or any other branch of the Nazi government committing the crime, the government looked the other way, and there were no prosecutions.
Where does Germany stand on these matters today?
The AfD is opposed to all of the above. The AfD is a generally capitalist, generally “Germany for the Germans” kind of party, advocating free market enterprise and the rule of law. The AfD opposes the EU’s tyranny over German markets, opposes the EU’s bureaucratic, high-taxing and high-regulating permit-heavy economy. The AfD stands for a return to proper criminal justice practices; they call for the mass stabbings and rape culture to end. The AfD recognizes that the ongoing crime wave of recent years is almost entirely caused by the middle eastern migrants whom Germany’s recent governments (at the EU’s urging) brought in to flood Germany.
By contrast, it’s the other parties who practice a two-tiered justice system. It’s the other parties – the social democrats, the greens, and the rest of the major parties who have ruled for decades – that choose whether to prosecute or not, whether to do anything about it or not, based on the color of the perp’s skin, religion, and country of origin.
In Germany today, the so-called “refugee” who stabs a stranger at a train station, or rapes a tourist in an alley, or kills a reveler at a festival, is protected from prosecution by the major parties, “because he’s just a poor refugee,” and will most likely continue to live on state welfare while the family of his victim mourns and starves.
It is the major parties that welcome, feed and reward the criminal element, and that build a tax-and-spend body of regulations that have crippled German industry. It is the major parties that welcomed in China as master of their supply chain, supplanting their once-respected local manufacturing sector by sourcing raw materials, parts, subassemblies, and even finished goods from China.
To the extent that anybody in the German political environment is “far right” – in a fair evaluation – it’s the ruling parties, not the AfD. The AfD opposes the crippling, statist, pro-crime and anti-growth policies of the current majority leadership.
This isn’t to say that the press is fully aware of their error in the matter; the press has largely accepted the lies that surround them 24/7. Reporters have spouted the idea that capitalists are fascists for so long, they don’t even realize they are spreading oxymoronic propaganda.
So yes, the AfD’s success is a good thing, for Germany and for the world, though it is still to be seen whether AfD will actually be allowed to govern anything. In modern Europe, the oppressors have overwhelming powers, that even elections cannot overwhelm.
The Battle over Mail-In Voting
Back on our side of the Pond, the Left continues to try to bring back their most beloved form of vote fraud, the mail-in ballot, from the dead. No matter how often appeals courts and even the Supreme Court rule against the criminal element, the Left keeps finding federal judges to keep their hopes alive with injunctions and other stays.
The Left – and their allies in the press – try to make this a complicated issue.
It doesn’t have to be.
Basically, anyone will admit – they HAVE to admit – that for an election to be fair and just, it must be made up of people who legitimately belong in the pool to vote on the issue in question.
When it’s something as simple as three friends voting on where to go for lunch, that’s easily accomplished; all three are present, they can see each other vote, and they know the total of relevant votes can be no more than three.
But when it’s something as complex as America’s elections, the whole pool is never in the same room at the same time. Every election has different jurisdictions on the ballot – state legislator and county board seats, federal congressmen and senators, local city, village, school board or park boards. Even in a state of millions of people, each ballot is only right for a few hundred people who share each of those jurisdictions.
The state therefore MUST somehow check each participant for which ballot – if any – he should receive. It’s not just citizenship, it’s everything from citizenship to whether he’s voting in the right state, the right state rep race, the right village board and congressional district race. It’s checking to be sure he’s not voting two or three or ten or twenty times, to cancel out the honest votes of other citizens. And it’s checking to be sure it’s really him, the human people who owns that registration, and not some crooked party official, movement activist, or bot using his name without his knowledge.
Under the Constitution, it is each state’s responsibility to check these issues and ensure that each vote is valid – before that vote is counted, not after. That’s why they have polling place employees, to check identification, registration, and the district maps when each person arrives to vote or applies for an absentee ballot.
Can that state allow the use of the U.S. Mail so the person doesn’t have to vote in person at a polling place? Sure, if it so chooses.
But it cannot use the U.S. Mail to bypass the necessary checking process.
If the state chooses to outsource the delivery of the ballot to the ballot box, then they are also outsourcing the vetting process to the U.S. Mail as well. The U.S. Mail isn’t trying to do anything extra here; the federal E.O.s that President Trump has issued on the matter are not creating an additional burden. They are just picking up the ball that would otherwise be dropped.
A state doesn’t need to use the U.S. Mail at all; it could require that all voting be in person, and then the President’s E.O.s on USPS election processes would not apply.
But if they want to outsource the process, they have to outsource the entire process. Corrupt states cannot be allowed to get away with using the postal service to commit mass election fraud.
Gasoline Prices Are High, but Not Horrendous
We are winding up a summer of what feels like the highest gasoline (pump) prices in history. Of all the products we buy, this is the one where we see and absorb the price most frequently and painfully.
It’s the only commodity where we stand – watching the pump – with the total price in 2″ high bold numbers – often in bright LED characters – for the whole time we’re making the purchase. So it naturally hits home and registers in our minds like few other purchases.
And it is certainly an important issue, a huge part of our cost of living, as gas prices drive the costs of our commutes to work or school, or our drives to vacation spots or leisure activities.
But while it feels awful to see gasoline at over $4/gallon, it’s important to remember that it is not only a driver of inflation, it is also an effect of inflation, like everything else we buy. Prices of everything go up, meaning the dollar is worth less and less. That means that recent increases in gasoline prices are largely reflective of the larger market problem of the inflation that the Biden regime started. It’s not all the result of the current middle east war.
Check out the table showing the last half century of average U.S. gasoline prices, linked here, developed by InflationTool.com. You would assume that we’re currently paying the highest gas prices ever, but we aren’t. In fact, gasoline has not gone up at the rate one would expect, at all.
The gasoline industry has done a surprisingly good job controlling costs, controlling the rate of increase, over recent decades. They move so much fuel by pipeline (which is cheaper than truck), the process it in such great bulk, and they keep their profit low, so regular gas has actually been increasing at below the national inflation rate for most of the past half century.
The thing that has regularly driven gas prices up – outside of the occasional blip caused by military action in the mideast – is the gas taxes issued by the individual states.
In Illinois, for example, Governor J.B. “Second Helping” Pritzker has more than doubled the state’s gas taxes, with one of them jumping from 19 cents/gallon up to over 48 cents/gallon in just his tenure (and that’s not counting federal taxes and other local taxes). That’s a lot more than the oil company’s profit on the gasoline we buy.
California has an even worse problem: its outrageously punitive regulatory environment has resulted in so many refinery closures – and obviously, so few new refinery builds – that California has to import much of its gasoline from South Korea, India, Great Britain, and even Russia. California has the highest gas prices in the country, because Sacramento makes sure of it.
Most of the states with high gas prices could tell similar stories – it’s local and state regulations and taxes that have driven production out of state or added costs to the pump price.
There are states where gas prices are so low, readers scratch their heads and wonder what we’re all complaining about, because there, gas prices are still affordable, production is steady at a nearby refinery, and this issue is the least of their problems.
And you can probably guess which party is in charge in those lucky state’s capitols.
Copyright 2026 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance trainer, speaker, and consultant. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel), his political satires on the Biden-Harris administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), his first nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” and his brand new collection of stories about the heroes of the American Founding, “The Founding Generation: The Patriots Who Built America,” are all available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon. His trade compliance training practice is available either in person or by webinar. And as a member of the Chicagoland theatre community, his next performance will be as Archie in Brigadoon from October 3 through 18, 2026.
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