Source: CNBC
“Oil prices jumped Monday in Asia trading after U.S. President Donald Trump rejected an Iranian peace proposal aimed at ending the Middle East conflict and reopening the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. crude futures for November delivery rose 3.3% to $95.46 a barrel as of 4:57 a.m. ET, while international benchmark Brent gained 3.66% to $108.14 a barrel. Trump turned down Iran’s conditional offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and told aides he expects U.S. strikes on the country to resume after November’s midterm elections, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, citing unnamed U.S. officials.” (09/28/26)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/28/oil-price-today-wti-brent-trump-iran.html
Source: Independent Institute
by Brady Leonard
“If you listen to pundits, the cause of both the President and his party’s electoral struggles is the war in Iran. The war is deeply unpopular, 61% of voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the conflict. Fuel prices have exploded since the beginning of the war and Iran’s predictable moves to control or at least disrupt shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. The price of gasoline has risen nearly 50% since February and diesel is up a whopping 75%. Bombs make headlines, and there are constituencies on both the far-left and far-right who have a particular obsession with the state of Israel, making conflict in the Middle East an easy scapegoat, but this misses the root cause of the Right’s current woes.” (09/25/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/09/25/tariffs-less-popular-iran/
Source: Unattended Baggage
“Keep Alex off the boat!” (09/26/26)
https://unattendedbaggage.substack.com/p/episode-358-keep-alex-off-the-boat
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“Russian strikes killed eight people across Ukraine on Sunday, a day after Moscow vowed to pursue the war, authorities said Sunday. … On Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the UN General Assembly his country intended to continue its military campaign ‘to the end’.” (09/27/26)
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260927-russian-strikes-kill-eight-ukraine-war-moscow
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“As Thomas Sowell wrote in 2013, ‘sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today’s problems are a result of yesterday’s solutions.’ Government perceives, or even creates a problem. In this case, the US government created the problem of high fuel prices with its war on Iran. Government intervenes in markets to ‘solve’ the problem. But that intervention creates new, different problems — usually while failing to solve the previous problems. And those new problems are addressed with yet more interventions. At every point in that never-ending loop, things get generally worse than they were before the latest intervention, and even in specific areas it’s usually hard to discern any improvement.” (09/27/26)
https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20910
Source: US News & World Report
“Supporters of Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado took to the country’s streets on Sunday to demand her safe return and presidential elections that could lead to a democratic transition in Venezuela. The government has been widely accused of stealing elections, jailing dissidents and stifling freedom of speech. In Caracas, hundreds of activists in sky blue shirts — the color of Machado’s Vente Venezuela party — rode motorcycles and drove through the city’s main avenues, honking their horns and waving Venezuelan flags. Similar demonstrations were held in state capitals including Valencia, Maracaibo and Merida. … Machado has been living in exile for the past nine months, and has had her plans to return to Venezuela spoiled multiple times. Opposition activists have accused Venezuela’s government of blocking her return, a claim denied by Venezuelan authorities.” (09/27/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-09-27/venezuelans-rally-to-demand-opposition-leaders-safe-return-and-presidential-elections
Source: Expression
by Matthew Harwood
“Activists who commit crimes should be punished. But they shouldn’t be prosecuted as terrorists.” (09/26/26)
https://expression.fire.org/p/civil-terrorism-is-a-dangerous-category
Source: Seattle Times
“President Donald Trump has asked Chinese President Xi Jinping whether he would like to buy U.S. weapons, David Perdue, the U.S. ambassador to China, said in a television interview Sunday. ‘President Trump continues to say, ‘Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world,’’ Perdue said on ‘Fox News Sunday’ while discussing the state visit by Xi to Washington last week. ‘He actually asked President Xi would he like to buy some at one point.’ Perdue did not give further details and did not reveal Xi’s reply. … When asked for comment, the White House said through a U.S. official that the United States had no plans to sell arms to China. The State Department said in a statement that ‘U.S. law prohibits arms sales to China, and there is no offer or plan to sell arms to China.'” (09/27/26)
https://archive.is/Cy8jj
Source: Washington Post
by George F Will
“Undeterred by the axiom that there can be indecent exposure of the mind as well as the body, the Democratic Socialists of America candidly announce their agenda. Religious ‘integralists’ should be similarly explicit. DSAers want to scrap the Constitution in order to facilitate confiscating wealth, private property and other impediments to government-enforced equality and social perfection. Christian integralists, who are disproportionately Catholic, are devout and determined to make the nation more so. They would enliven politics if they would specify the measures they advocate to (as they mistakenly say) return America to being a ‘Christian nation.’ Integralists want to integrate spiritual and temporal (government) power, subordinating the latter to the former.” (09/25/26)
https://archive.is/54nje
Source: The Guardian
“Serbia’s populist president, Aleksandar Vučić, has resigned to pursue an attempt to become prime minister in an early parliamentary election that will test his firm rule in the Balkan country after nearly two years of protests. Vučić’s second presidential term would otherwise end in May next year. He is banned by the constitution from seeking a third term and said he was resigning to lead his rightwing Serbian Progressive party (SNS) in the 25 October ballot. The governing populists face a major challenge from a youth-backed movement that led protests triggered by a train station canopy collapse in November 2024 that killed 16 people in the northern city of Novi Sad.” (09/27/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/27/serbia-president-aleksandar-vucic-resigns-run-prime-minister
