This isn’t spin. It’s seasoned analysis.
Cheap Oil Travels Fast. Pain Reaches West Texas First
Yesterday, I wrote about the oil glut—too much crude sloshing around the world, prices easing, and gas at the pump finally calming down. That’s the national picture. This is the local one, and it looks different depending on your ZIP code. In the Permian Basin, the...
The Oil Glut Is Real, and Your Gas Pump Knows It
The Energy Information Administration—those famously unexcitable federal bean-counters—has wandered into the room with a wet blanket and a calculator, and the news is not what the oil bulls or the "drill, baby, drill" crowd want to hear. According to the latest...
Big Oil to Trump on Venezuela: Slow Down, Big Guy
There was a moment in the White House this week that told you everything you need to know about Washington fantasy versus oil-patch reality. Donald Trump, freshly confident about Venezuela, sat across from the men who actually write the checks — and they gave him the...
Ink in My Blood
A New Year’s look at how journalism changed, who paid the price, and what readers should watch next. I started in newspapers in 1987, at a daily in California, back when journalism was a physical activity. My first assignment was writing obituaries, which is about as...
Nigeria Isn’t a Holy War — It’s a Land War We’re Lying About
On Christmas Day, the President ordered U.S. missiles fired from a Navy destroyer into Nigeria. The explanation came pre-loaded for television: protecting Christians from terrorists. It sounds moral.It sounds simple. It feeds his base. And it gets the war wrong....
Santa Declared a Trade Violation
The image says it all: a U.S. Navy jet firing a missile at Santa’s sleigh, because apparently Christmas failed a compliance review. According to officials, Santa was flagged for carrying contraband toys, dodging tariffs, and operating an unregistered international...
No, Mr. President — It Was Never “Our Oil”
An explainer on Venezuela, Iraq, and how a drug war quietly became something else This fight didn’t start as an argument about oil. It started, at least officially, as a war on drugs. For years, U.S. policy toward Venezuela was framed around narcotics trafficking,...
Border Chest-Thumping: Troops as Props, Policy as an Afterthought
Every few years, Washington rediscovers the same stunt: if you can’t fix the border, pose next to it in uniform. This week’s version comes with a historical flourish. The administration has expanded use of the 1907 Roosevelt Reservation — a 60-foot strip of federal...
AI Goes Where the Adults Are in Charge
I’ve been writing about artificial intelligence long enough to know when the hype runs ahead of reality. This isn’t one of those moments. Microsoft’s decision to pour $7.5 billion Canadian dollars over the next two years—and $19 billion already invested since 2023...
The National Guard Is Now a Courtroom Football — and the Refs Are Still Arguing About the Rules
There’s a strange thing happening in America right now: the National Guard can be on your city street one week, pulled back by a federal judge the next, then restored by an appeals court the week after that — all without the Supreme Court weighing in on what the...
Fifty Years of Steel, Sweat, and One Kid From East L.A.
The USS Nimitz pulled into San Diego this past Sunday — one last stop before she heads north to Bremerton, Washington, to wrap up her final deployment. Early next year, she’ll depart for good, beginning the long walk toward decommissioning. After fifty years, the old...
When the World Cup Draw Was Small Enough to Fit in a Lunchroom
There was a time — and it’s not ancient history — when the World Cup draw felt like something you stumbled into by accident. A few reporters, a couple of FIFA suits, a table with some ping-pong balls, and maybe a carafe of lukewarm coffee if the budget stretched. You...
When Washington Pulls the Plug
The Grain Belt Express, the $4.9 billion Loan That Vanished, and Why the Lights May Dim Because of It Washington killed the money. In July, the Department of Energy quietly yanked its $4.9 billion loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express—the 800-mile, 5-gigawatt...
The Shrug Heard ’Round the World
When Americans say “not my problem” about Ukraine, they forget how history — and economics — actually works. Every so often, a line pops up in our politics that tells you exactly where the national headspace is. Lately, it’s this one: “Ukraine? Not my problem.” It’s...
New Drilling off California and Florida Proposed
In the first year of his second term, President Donald Trump cracked open the federal offshore like he was breaking a piñata at a kid’s birthday party. New drilling off California, Florida, Alaska, and deep into the High Arctic — places that haven’t seen a fresh...
Isaac Cubillos
This isn’t journalism for the polite table.
This is truth with grit under its nails and dirt on its boots.