Oh, You Can Call Me Don, or You Can Call Me Juan, But You Doesn’t Gotta Call Me ‘Daddy’

Oh, You Can Call Me Don, or You Can Call Me Juan, But You Doesn't Gotta Call Me 'Daddy' 1

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Oh, You Can Call Me Don, or You Can Call Me Juan, But You Doesn't Gotta Call Me 'Daddy' 2

It’s hard to believe that there would be a light-hearted moment at a NATO summit, but, as with all things Trump, this one is turning out to be extraordinary in all regards.

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Actually, on all fronts, the Europeans are all acting a little…weird.

For instance. Far from Brussels and the NATO big-wig get-together, a member of the Scottish parliament (MSP), who are determinedly uber liberal, normally taciturn, and vaguely unfriendly to American interests, got up in the house at Holyrood to ask what sort of assistance the country was offering to the United States, and shouldn’t the Scots be doing something to help out, considering everything the US has done.

Well. After Humza Yousaf’s hateful reign as First Minister, this is refreshing. You could have about knocked me over with a feather.

Mark Rutte, the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands and now Secretary General of NATO, has been the centerpiece of a significantly transformed NATO meeting in terms of tone.

Eight years ago, Donald Trump was laying down the ‘about time you started paying your fair share’ law to some unhappy faces gathered at the summit. First and foremost was the moon pie visage of Angela Merkel.

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…But twenty-three of the twenty-eight member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they’re supposed to be paying for their defense…

Oh, GAWD – how they hated that guy.

And now Europe’s worst nightmare is back, large and in charge. But what has most assuredly changed is the room temperature, as have a good number of the faces who mocked and snarled at Trump behind his back.

They’re gone.

And NATO’s secretary general not only has a warm relationship with the President of the United States, but a warm appreciation for what the man accomplishes through sheer determination and willpower.

At the summit’s big press conference there were no repeats of ‘damn that man.’

It was ‘thank you, Dear Donald‘ time.

And Trump, to his credit – of course, the success of the magnificent Iran operation no doubt helped – Trump was his affable, most charming-on-the-world-stage self.

There’s no confidence like all-American confidence, even when explaining how you keep fractious, long-time sworn Middle Eastern enemies in line.

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…Trump: They had a big fight. Like two kids in a schoolyard. Let them fight for about two minutes. Then it’s easier to stop them. 

Rutte: And then Daddy has to sometimes use strong language.

Rutte’s lighthearted interjection had everyone cracking up there, even Trump, with that sly reference to the Trump F-bomb that shook the world.

The CBS Evening News even covered it without a hanky and smelling salts.

What was truly amazing was that the cajoling and bonhomie worked without the sour-faced Brussels Brahmins of the past in attendance, and the few old guard remnants like Macron neutered by their own unpopularity and weak economies.

Trump came in like a good-natured deal-making steamroller.

And then one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen from a world leader and his so serious sidekicks (and thank you, CM, for finding it for me) was when a reporter in the press pool quizzed Trump about Rutte’s ‘Daddy’ remark.

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WORLD DADDY

Doesn’t that beat all?

That same Sky News reporter was doing her damnedest to rain on the good feelings parade, and, to his credit, Mark Rutte was having none of it.

Seriously.

I mean, doesn’t that just beat all?

What a difference a president makes.

~ With a fond tip o’ the memory hat to Bill Saluga

Posted in Republican News

Mediator to Trump: How About $20 Million From CBS Over Cooked Harris Interview?

Mediator to Trump: How About $20 Million From CBS Over Cooked Harris Interview? 3

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Mediator to Trump: How About $20 Million From CBS Over Cooked Harris Interview? 4

Has anyone checked in with Scott Pelley this afternoon to see if he needs smelling salts? How about Bill Owens?

Two months ago, both men erupted in anger when Paramount’s board decided to settle an election fraud lawsuit from Donald Trump over the deceptively edited interview of Kamala Harris by 60 Minutes during the general election. Trump had filed a $20 billion lawsuit against Paramount, a big liability for a corporation attempting to close a deal with Skydance. Shari Redstone’s decision to settle infuriated CBS News figures at the time.

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However, even that didn’t go easy. Paramount offered Trump $15 million for his presidential library, but with no admission of error. Trump insisted he wanted the public apology and at least $25 million.  Today, a mediator offered to split the baby:

A mediator has proposed that President Trump and Paramount Global settle his lawsuit over a CBS News “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris for $20 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

The proposal would include a $17 million donation to Trump’s presidential foundation or museum, the people said. It would also include millions more in legal fees and public service announcements on Paramount-owned networks to fight antisemitism, the people said. 

Trump’s team has said it wants an apology—something Paramount isn’t prepared to do, according to people familiar with the situation. It couldn’t be learned whether Trump’s team is still seeking an apology.

They don’t want to admit error, the WSJ later notes, because they don’t want to expose their news operations to further legal liability for cooked reporting and corrupt election meddling. They want the lawsuit out of the way for their merger with Skydance, likely because of the potential liability of a $20 billion claim on the balance sheet as the value of Paramount gets calculated. Other media outlets also claim that Paramount and Redstone are worried that the FTC would intervene in the merger in retaliation, but that has never made a lot of sense. (The WSJ lays out that case near the end of that report, for those who want to read it.) There isn’t really much of a reason for an FTC intervention in this merger, as it’s not even among the more impactful consolidations in the entertainment industry of late. A federal court would make short shrift of such a move, especially these days, and maybe especially in the DC circuit. 

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This probably comes down to the value of an apology for Trump. 60 Minutes showrunner Bill Owens resigned when Redstone made it clear that she planned to settle the suit rather than fight it out in court. CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon left a month later over the apparent willingness of Paramount to even consider an apology. Pelley, Leslie Stahl, and other CBS News figures have loudly complained about alleged corporate cowardice in the fight against Trump, but Paramount still hasn’t agreed to apologize — at least not yet. The mediator’s Solomonic proposal splits the financial difference and offers a chance for Trump to apply the extra money to fighting against anti-Semitism, offering Trump an exit ramp of altruism rather than direct vindication. 

So how much would it take for Trump to waive the apology? Would $5 million do it? It certainly would put me in a forgiving mood, but then again, $4 million probably would suffice as well. (Or less. Have yours call mine, Ms. Redstone. We’ll do lunch.) Trump may want to get to a point where he can declare victory and focus more on other issues, especially now that his Iran gambit has essentially reset the political field, both at home and especially abroad. Just the fact that Paramount brought in a mediator to wheedle Trump is a bit of a triumph already, and certainly provides a little extra humiliation even absent an apology.

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Besides, it’s easy to be magnanimous when you’re winning. It’s at times like those that you can put things in perspective by considering what is best in life. And in the cases Trump has brought against the Protection Racket Media, he seems to have achieved it — at least judging by all of the wailing and lamentations. 

Posted in Republican News

I Watched the First Half of Ironheart and It’s Not Good

I Watched the First Half of Ironheart and It's Not Good 5

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I Watched the First Half of Ironheart and It's Not Good 6

I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment. After watching the new season of Daredevil I didn’t have much investment in future Marvel TV shows. Frankly, nearly all of them have been disappointing and some of them have been outright embarrassing. After watching the first three episodes of Ironheart last night, I can say it leans toward the latter.

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Ironheart is basically a race and gender-swap version of Iron Man. The character first appeared in the comics in 2016, eight years after Robert Downey Jr. made the original Iron Man film into a somewhat unlikely hit. Here’s a summary of the character from Wikipedia:

Riri Williams is a 15-year-old engineering student and the daughter of the late Riri Williams Sr. Following her father’s death, Riri lives with her mother Ronnie and her paternal Aunt Sharon in Chicago. A certified super-genius, she attends the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a scholarship. Working alone, Riri designs a suit of armor similar to the Iron Man Armor using material stolen from campus.

The look of the show is pretty good. Thanks to the reported $100-$150 million budget, for just six episodes, the special effects are better than what a TV show usually gets.

So what’s the problem here? The writing, mostly.

In the original Iron Man, Tony Stark was a bored, alcoholic playboy who hadn’t done much with his talents besides make weapons. Then he gets blown up and trapped in a cave and forced to create something extraordinary to escape. And from the moment he does that he is in conflict with the people who were stealing and misusing his weapons. He really becomes a hero, at first, by protecting people from those same terrorists.

In Ironheart, Riri Williams is a genius inventor who makes a copy of the Iron Man suit but does so by selling completed projects to other MIT students. She needs the money to build her suit because, unlike Tony Stark, she’s not a billionaire. Selling her ideas seems harmless enough but MIT finds out and expels her.

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Things take a turn when Williams returns to Chicago and, in no time, agrees to join a crew of thieves run by a sketchy guy with a hooded cloak who works out of a pizza shop. She joins them even after they trap her in an elevator that will suffocate her if she can’t figure out how to escape. This is her test to see if she’s really up to the job and she passes and somehow is only upset for about a minute that they threatened to kill her. The Hood promises riches if she’ll do three jobs for him and she agrees.

And just like that, Williams goes from ghost-creating academic assignments to what could probably be called terroristic threats and mob-like control of a major company. The plan is to sabotage an underground tunnel system for transporting cars around Chicago created by a company called TNNL (tunnel). I think we actually get one line in the script where one of the cartoonishly silly members of the crew says the owner of TNNL is a rich b*tch who is destroying neighborhoods in the city. And that’s it. 

On the basis of “rich people bad” Williams agrees to help ruin a test of the system to force the CEO to hire the crew of thieves with off-books salaries of six-figures each. That involves breaking into the HQ and beating the crap out of a bunch of security guards. The Hood literally presents the CEO with a contract (who wrote the contract for him?) which she signs to avoid having her entire company destroyed. At this point, if you have an IQ above 70 you may be thinking that contracts signed under duress aren’t valid. Everyone involved in this plot would be going to jail once the CEO filed a police report. 

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But none of that happens. Instead, we get a final scene where Williams is almost stopped by a security guard outside who has a gun. The Hood “rescues” her by shooting him. He drops to the ground. Is he dead? We’re not sure but The Hood assures Williams he’ll be fine and she just leaves.

After this moment of nearly killing a guy doing his job, we get a slow-motion scene of the crew of villains back in the pizza joint throwing bundles of cash up in the air like an old school rap video. It’s a good thing TNNL’s CEO didn’t go to the police because the lair is literally papered with evidence of their crime.

Williams barely seems bothered by the beatings, shooting and extortion. She’s too busy working on her suit which involves extortion of another character who we later find out is the son of Obadiah Stane, Tony Stark’s villainous boss in the first movie. Williams threatens him to get parts for her suit and he goes along with it because he’s a pushover.

Then in episode three we get the crew’s second robbery. This one involves breaking into a cutting edge greenhouse run by another rich person. Again, we get one line about him “putting local farmers out of work” and that’s the only justification given for why targeting him should be okay with the audience.

Personally, I was thinking, ‘Wait, so this guy has created new farming techniques that are better than anything we have?’ That seems like it could be pretty beneficial to a lot of people. I mean, someone is going to eat all that food, right? If he’s able to undersell every farmer around that seems like a real breakthrough. The thinking in this show never runs that deep.

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The crew breaks in to this techno greenhouse and The Hood confronts the rich owner (who like the owner of TNNL is white). The owner offers The Hood a check to just leave and The Hood says it’s not enough and demands he sign another pre-written contract under duress (Who is the Hood’s attorney?). Again, this is illegal and stupid and wouldn’t hold up in court but that’s the plan. When the rich owner guy refuses the Hood murders him. Williams, who is trying to get a sample of his cloak to analyze, is in the room when this happens and does nothing except try to escape. The rest of the crew of thieves are trapped and suffocating in the greenhouses and she rescues them, all except for one guy who tried to kill her. She leaves him behind to suffocate.

So at this point, Riri Willams -girl genius, has gone from breaking the MIT honor code to extortion and now accomplice to murder. She didn’t physically kill the greenhouse owner but she’s part of the plot to extort him and doesn’t stop him from being killed. So halfway through this show my take is that Riri Williams is a self-absorbed brat who has literally been given a golden ticket and a free ride to MIT but who decides she can’t use her vast talents to get a real job in Palo Alto because those people are beneath her. Instead she joins a group of thieves who are murdering and extorting people so she can become an icon like Tony Stark. 

There’s one scene where each member of the crew explains what they plan to do with the money. One wants to open a restaurant. One wants to start a school. It’s like a very thin attempt to make this group of villains into anti-heroes. They are stealing from the rich to give to…well, themselves really. Maybe The Hood is supposed to be a Robin Hood figure but setting him up that way would require some attention to the people he’s robbing and killing. Are they more corrupt and villainous than he is?  It doesn’t seem so. In the show the fact that they are rich seems to be a stand in for them being evil even though we don’t see them doing anything wrong.

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I’m sure there’s some character arc coming and a lesson about not being a greedy dirtbag. My problem is that there are only three more episodes left and clearly Riri Williams, one of the smartest girls in the world, hasn’t figured out that she’s a thief and, legally speaking, a murderer. Despite seeing this all happen up close, it still hasn’t registered with her that she’s the villain. 

If Tony Stark were blown up and trapped in a cave and then agreed to go on three missions with the terrorists, missions in which innocent people are threatened, shot and murdered- that’s the plot of Ironheart. The main character we’re supposed to be rooting for is a villain by choice on only the flimsiest of pretenses (putting famers out of business, ruining neighborhoods). It’s as if the anti-capitalist core of the show is being asked to justify everything up to and including murder and no one in the writing room stopped and thought ‘hey, maybe this doesn’t really work.’

Just to point out that I’m not the only person who noticed, here’s what Polygon had to say about the show:

Riri isn’t a particularly compelling protagonist. Her primary motivations are fear and ambition, which are an intentional parallel to Tony Stark – especially the panic attacks she has are reminiscent of Tony’s issues in Iron Man 3. Yet Thorne can’t compete with Robert Downey Jr.’s charisma, nor do the scripts tee her up for powerful moments. Riri lacks Tony’s fast-talking swagger or powerful demonstrations of heroism or kindness that could balance her arrogance and the callous way she treats people around her.

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And here’s the NY Times doing its best to gloss over, without entirely ignoring, how badly constructed this show is.

Setting the tone and underpinning much of the plot, though, are the moral choices Riri must face up to, and the contemporary political and cultural context in which those choices are set. The show, which was created by the screenwriter and poet Chinaka Hodge, is not very successful at elevating those ideas into appealing storytelling the way that Ryan Coogler (an executive producer of the series) was able to do in the first “Black Panther” film.

That might not matter in a short season if Riri herself held our attention, but unfortunately, she, too, is more a set of ideas — about race, gender, place, trauma — than a flesh and blood character. “Ironheart” is supposed to be her coming-of-age story, but we don’t get a clear enough sense of her to be involved in her progress.

I don’t want to dump on the actors in this show. I honestly think the person who plays Riri’s AI friend Natalie is pretty great. But the Times is right that it would have taken an Oscar-level actress to make something out of this badly written mess. The star of this show is fine, probably better than a lot of TV actresses, but she’s not Robert Downey Jr.

And as I suggested above, I’m not sure anyone could have saved this plot. Would people have loved Tony Stark after he agreed to join the terrorists for three missions? I’m not sure even Downey Jr. could make that work.

Posted in Republican News

L.A.-Area Politician Calls for Criminal Gangs to Attack ICE

L.A.-Area Politician Calls for Criminal Gangs to Attack ICE 7

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She’s not the Mayor or Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles, but she is the Deputy Mayor of a “city” that is basically in the middle of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. 

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Cudahy is, for all intents and purposes, other than the nominal governmental unit, Los Angeles. The dead center of Cudahy is 6 miles, as the crow flies, from the dead center (and yes, downtown Los Angeles is basically dead because the LA metropolitan area is sprawling and has no real center) of LA. It is part of the Los Angeles School District. 

L.A.-Area Politician Calls for Criminal Gangs to Attack ICE 8

When you think of LA gangs, this is one of the places you think of. And Compton, another nominally separate city, due to its incorporation before LA could swallow it up. So, when you hear that the Deputy Mayor of Cudahy is calling for the local Hispanic gangs to fight back against ICE, you should know that she is more or less equivalent to a LA city council member in stature, if not in power. 

The comments made by the Vice Mayor of Cudahy, CA, Cynthia Gonzalez, are despicable. She calls for criminal gangs – including the vicious 18th street gang—to commit violence against our brave ICE law enforcement.

This kind of garbage has led to a more than 500 percent increase in assaults against our ICE law enforcement officers.

Secretary Noem has been clear: If you assault a federal officer, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

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Many low-information voters think Republicans are being hyperbolic when we say that Democrats in power identify more with criminals than with the ordinary citizen. It sounds absurd on its face; after all, who would side with gang members over law-abiding citizens?

The answer: Democrats, who are making common cause with radicals and criminals, counting on their brazenness to seem so outrageous that people who aren’t paying attention scoff at the idea that they would really be so awful. 

They want US Taxpayers to pay the rent of illegals “who have family who may not be able to leave their homes due to fear of kidnapping”

“Major labor unions are joining forces today demanding action — asking the LA City Council to pass an emergency protection to help families who may face eviction due to the immigration raids

The unions say many families may not be able to cover rent due to a family member who may have been taken by ICE or who have family who may not be able to leave their homes due to fear of kidnapping. 

The groups claim Latinos make up majority of renters in the city of LA.”

I’ve seen this in other areas in which Democrats are radical. Many liberals don’t believe us when we tell them that leftists are grooming their kids to be sexual objects and communists, because who would do that? It sounds too outrageous to be true, even though it is. Big sins are easier to deny than small ones, because to some extent, everybody sins. It’s easy to see that Jeffrey Dahmer is a bit weird, but who could believe he was a serial killer and cannibal? IT is too extreme to contemplate, so people don’t. 

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But the truth is that the radicals at the heights of power in the Democratic Party–at least those rising to those heights in this generation–believe that the enemies of civilization are morally superior to the civilized. 

“The City of Cudahy is aware of recent comments made by Vice Mayor Cynthia Gonzalez on social media. The comments made by the Vice Mayor reflect her personal views and do not represent the views or official position of the City of Cudahy.  The City will not be providing further comment.”

Nice to know. But did you notice that the “City of Cudahy” didn’t condemn those comments? They just aren’t the official position of the city. 

Close enough. The actual Mayor of Los Angeles is on the migrant gangs’ side, too. She just hasn’t exactly called for them to take up arms against ICE. Instead, she works to warn others about impending ICE raids so that they can, and many are, if not with guns, yet. 

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Which may be smart tactics. Shooting federal agents is a good way to get wiped out, and we can’t have that. 

If you think that Cynthia is just a rando Hispanic activist, think again. Her resume befits a member of the lefty elite:

Councilwoman Dr. Cynthia Gonzalez grew up in the Southeast City of Huntington Park and graduated from Bell High School. She is the daughter of immigrant parents who taught her the value of hard work. She has lived in the city of Cudahy for over 12 years where she is raising two beautiful and strong daughters. 

She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of California Santa Barbara. She earned two master’s degrees in education from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and her Educational Leadership Doctorate from UCLA’s ELP program. In addition to her degrees, she has also earned her administrative credentials from UCLA and UC Berkeley. 

Councilwoman Dr. Gonzalez also serves as the Legislative Action Committee Chair for the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) and is a member of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles. 

She has served LAUSD students and families since 2002 in the capacity of classroom teacher, Title I/Bilingual Coordinator, and School Principal in the communities of Southeast Los Angeles, South Central Los Angeles, Florence-Firestone, and Boyle Heights. She currently works as the Director of Pilot Schools Support and Innovation, supporting 40 Pilot Schools in LAUSD. 

Dr. Gonzalez is passionate about creating healthy and safe communities that allow students and families to lead healthy and meaningful lives. In addition to her work with Pilot Schools she leads a Safe Passage collaborative in the Florence-Firestone area aligning resources and support for LAUSD schools. She looks forward to bringing this experience to the residents of Cudahy. 

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In other words, this is where the new Democratic Party is going. Obama looks moderate compared to the new crowd, who are taking Obama’s embrace of what the left calls the “Global South” (non-Western countries) to its logical extreme. 

Posted in Republican News

Karmelo Anthony Indicted for Murder

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Karmelo Anthony Indicted for Murder 10

Yesterday, Karmelo Anthony was indicted for murder. Anthony is the teen who stabbed another teen in the chest during an altercation at a high school track meet.

Karmelo Anthony, the now 18-year-old accused of fatally stabbing another teen during an altercation at a Frisco ISD track meet in early April, was indicted for murder by a Collin County grand jury on Tuesday. 

Anthony, who was 17 at the time of the incident, was arrested on April 2 in connection with the stabbing death of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf during a track meet at Kuykendall Stadium.  

The teen, who is facing a first-degree murder charge, has been on house arrest since being released on a reduced bond on April 14. If convicted, Anthony could face a possible sentence of 5-99 years or life in prison. In the Texas criminal justice system, 17-year-olds are considered adults.

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Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis released a video statement about the indictment yesterday. He said in part:

For weeks, my team has been presenting evidence to the grand jury. Today, I summarized that evidence, and I asked the Grand Jury to return a first degree murder indictment against Karmelo Anthony — which they did.

With that indictment, the case now moves formally into the court system. From this point forward, we’ll continue doing our part — fully and fairly — to pursue justice under the law. The trial schedule will be set by the court. But when the time comes, we’ll be ready.

Here’s the full statement.

Metcalf’s father, Jeff Metcalf, released a statement.

“I am pleased that we are moving forward. With the first-degree murder indictment, it now goes into the court system. I fully believe that justice will be served for Austin Metcalf. I look forward to the forthcoming trial. But it will never bring my son back,” said Austin Metcalf’s father, Jeff Metcalf.

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Anthony’s attorney also released a video in response to the indictment saying they expected to be able to demonstrate Anthony acted in self defense, “We expect that when the full story is heard, the prosecution will not be able to rule out the reasonable doubt that Carmelo Anthony may have acted in self-defense.”

As I’ve said before, I don’t think Anthony has much of a defense case. To start with, he confessed to the stabbing moments after it happened and it’s believed that confession was caught on a police bodycam. There are also witnesses so there’s really no doubt about who did what. Here’s what I wrote about the circumstances back in April:

He sat down under a tent for a rival school and was told to leave by Metcalf. He then reached into a bag and said something like “touch me and see what happens.” Metcalf grabbed him at which point Anthony pulled out a knife and stabbed Metcalf in the chest, killing him.

As far as the self-defense claim goes, that’s probably not going to fly. I’m not an attorney but generally speaking self-defense only allows you to justify a proportionate level of violence. If you’re threatened you might be able to respond with a shove or a punch but not with a knife to the chest. The only way to justify deadly violence is if you fear for your own life.

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In this case, witnesses indicate Anthony reached in a bag for his knife the moment Metcalf spoke to him, before any physical contact. He then said something like “touch me and see what happens” which sounds like a threat. But being touched or grabbed isn’t grounds for responding with murder. Metcalf did grab Anthony and try to physically remove him but there’s no evidence in the police report to suggest he threatened Anthony’s life or attacked him in a way that could have resulted in Anthony’s death. Anthony’s own confession at the scene didn’t suggest he feared for his life, only that he’d warned Metcalf not to touch him.

Also, immediately after the stabbing, Anthony threw the knife and ran. That’s not the behavior of someone who acted in self-defense, it’s the guilty behavior of someone who committed a crime.

All of this will play out in court in a few months, but unless Anthony’s team has some surprises to offer that dramatically change the story I think he’s going to prison for a long time. But there’s always the possibility that someone on the jury won’t be responsive to the facts. Passions around this case have been pretty hot from the start. Anthony raised a lot of money in a short time and the parents of Metcalf have had their house swatted. Jury nullification is always a possibility I guess. 

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Posted in Republican News

Netanyahu: Regime Change Can’t Come From a Bombing Campaign — And MEF Agrees

Netanyahu: Regime Change Can't Come From a Bombing Campaign -- And MEF Agrees 11

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Netanyahu: Regime Change Can't Come From a Bombing Campaign -- And MEF Agrees 12

The end of Israel’s successful 12 Day War has changed the face of the Middle East already. Gone is the specter of nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles aimed at Tel Aviv, Haifa, and other Israeli population centers. The ballistic missile infrastructure itself has taken massive damage, as has the Iranian drone inventory and production capability. Gone too is the fantasy of Iranian might, and for the most part, their proxy strategy has been reduced to ruin as well. 

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However, the Ali Khamenei theocratic regime remains in place, along with the IRGC. And that may be creating problems for Benjamin Netanyahu as the cease-fire remains in place. Israelis wanted more finality from their sacrifices over the last two years, and Netanyahu made it clear he wanted it as well. Today, however, Netanyahu asked his Cabinet members for patience — and a clearer view of what would have been possible with a longer campaign:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that even if Israel had more time to undermine the Iranian regime, the regime may not have fallen, while at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, behind closed doors.

“It’s not that if we had continued for a few more days, the regime would have collapsed – because if that had been the assessment, we would have done it. A revolution like this needs to come from within,” he said.

“We thought it was important to undermine the regime while we have the opportunity. The majority of the public in Iran is fed up with this tyranny. The regime, more than it fears Israel, fears its own people.”

This could become a political problem for Netanyahu if the regime does not fall quickly. Already, some people are blaming him for acquiescing to pressure from Donald Trump to end the war before Israel could achieve all of its objectives. A columnist at the Times of Israel called his decision “bizarre,” and warned that the nuclear threat will return sooner rather than later:

When he congratulated both countries in his ceasefire statement for their “Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence,” it was hard to tell that one side was America’s closest ally in the Middle East, and the other a sworn enemy.

Events moved in an even more bizarre direction after the ceasefire ostensibly went into effect. …

In the matter of hours, Israel had gone from the region’s swaggering top dog to a misbehaving child being publicly berated — denounced, that is, more bitterly than the would-be nuclear regime in Tehran.

Perhaps it was to be expected. Israel’s position post-war is strongest when it defeats its adversaries on its own, as it did in 1967. When it finds itself leaning on the US for support, as it did in the 1973 Yom Kippur War with the crucial American resupply airlift, it has to bow to Washington’s demands on how the wars end and what comes next.

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Well, yes. Israel did not have the capacity to destroy Fordow, and the Iranians knew it. They neither have the munitions for the task nor the platform to deliver it. Netanyahu successfully bargained with Trump for limited American involvement, and even prevailed upon Trump to add Isfahan and Natanz to those strikes. However, that does mean that Netanyahu needed to allow Trump some control of the larger strategic moves, which Trump would likely have made anyway. With all of that said, however, Trump gave Netanyahu far more room to deal with Iran than any other American president would have, not to mention Israel’s ongoing battles with Hamas in Gaza. 

The serious limitation on forced regime change didn’t come from Trump, not even in his reportedly kiboshing a direct strike on Khamenei. It came from the reality that forced regime change is not really possible in Iran, not unless a major occupying power takes over first. Israel has a population of nine million people; Iran is a nation of 90-plus million people. The Israelis can’t occupy Iran, and the Americans are absolutely not going to try it either, especially not after our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor is the decapitation model much better, considering how it turned out in Libya in 2011, this time with a much larger population split among so many ethnic minorities. 

Even though this is clearly a defensive position for Netanyahu, he’s also correct. That’s why Netanyahu kept telling the Iranian people, including and especially Tehranis, that this was the moment to rise up. In that, though, Netanyahu was premature; it would be absurd to expect a revolt or uprising while bombs explode in the street. The cease-fire now can provide an opening for a popular movement to dethrone Khamenei and eject what remains of the IRGC, especially with their losses in resources necessary for subjugation. 

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Can it happen now? And if so, what would it look like — and who would be the players involved? I spoke yesterday with Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum, a US-oriented think tank focused on the region. Roman sees Trump’s intervention as necessary and decisive, but also cautions that the regime may need a substantial push to get toppled. Now that the war has done considerable damage to the regime’s prestige within Iran, Roman wants to see diplomatic and economic pressure remain at the maximum to help the Iranian people take control of their country. But that will be a lot tougher than people think:

Ed: Do you think that this is enough of a loss, enough of a humiliation, that this is going to be a destabilizing event for this regime?

Gregg Roman: I think it is. And you have firsthand accounts of Iranian refugees fleeing the country, first having left Tehran and now going across different borders that Iran has and giving interviews to Western reporters. Kurds leaving to Iraq, saying they’re ready to return under arms. Iranians leaving through the Armenian border. Going to Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, saying, we left because we feel like the regime is on the precipice of falling.

We saw the same thing with Pakistan, with Afghanistan and other groups. You have separatist movements now, whether it’s the Baluchis in the southeast of the country, whether it’s the Azeri fronts that are in the northwest of the country, all getting ready to start taking advantage of this. And they didn’t just lose prestige or their credibility with the regular Iranian man on the street. But they also showed how fractured that the top leadership of the country is in terms of not having the ability to communicate on message. ..

Ed: … [W]hat [do] you think the proper role of the United States and maybe Israel and some of the outside actors will be in this.

Gregg Roman: Well, I think that right now, the time inside the country is not necessarily ripe for regime change, but what I would call a controlled implosion of the regime security architecture. You have every province, 31 different provinces in Iran that are able to have their own local forms of governance depending on that specific character of who rules that province. But at the end of the day, they report back to Tehran.

But you see now that when the regime starts feeling like it’s losing its grasp, it calls those forces in the far four corners of the countries back to major city centers. And it’s done that, not just to replace those that but to be able to control mechanisms of state power. If we accept that that’s the current situation, the role of the United States, and I write about this in the Third Way article, is not kinetically getting involved, striking institutions of state power, nor is it sitting on the sidelines and asking the regime be kept in power.

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There is plenty more of our conversation in my latest podcast, embedded below. The time may be ripe for action by the people, but it won’t be easy or quick — not even in Tehran. 

Posted in Republican News

Mamdani Victory Is Result of Education, Immigration Crises

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Middle-class Democrats are slowly grasping–way too slowly–that they have created a monster that will eventually eat them up. 

That monster runs on two legs: an education system that churns out miseducated radicals and an immigration system that imports uneducated third-world radicals. 

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Loosely speaking, there are two Democratic parties now: a young, college-educated group of privileged radicals who have been indoctrinated to believe in socialism, and an older cohort who believe that the role of government is to smooth the rough road of life without killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. 

AOC, Mamdani, and the rising influence of the Democratic Socialists of America, who are taking over the Democratic Party, are the inevitable winners of the competition between the two groups, in no small part due to demographics. Older Democrats grew up on Schoolhouse Rock and believe that what distinguishes Democrats from Republicans is their greater compassion for the working class and downtrodden. Younger, college-educated Democrats grew up in Randi Weingarten’s socialist/activist schools being indoctrinated that America is fundamentally evil and must be “decolonized” and embrace “queer” culture. 

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The older Democrats believed that sending their kids to college and giving them an education superior to their own was the key to social mobility; in reality, it was the key to turning them into socialists. The old Democrats thought they were teaching compassion to their young–expand the pie, take care of the inevitable losers in society, and make a more perfect union. What they created with their incessant drive to expand “education” was a privileged, indoctrinated, wealthy class of dissatisfied activists who are fundamentally hostile to American society. 

Mamdani is the candidate of the lesbian actresses with Queer kids, not the plumber struggling to get by in a city that disdains them and taxes them into penury. They just want a city that is safe and works. She wants “social justice.” The influx of illegal migrants is the perfect cause to rally around. Who, aside from “Queers,” is more in need of the ministrations of the virtuous? Think of the opportunities for imposing “justice” and destroying capitalism and the bourgeoisie. 

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The irony is that the one group most hostile to the new class of Democrats is the people who are supposed to be their beneficiaries–the working-class who want to climb their way up the ladder–many of whom are legal immigrants and their children. They came here not to be parasites killing off the host to live off the corpse, but to enjoy the American Dream. That is one of the distinguishing characteristics of recent migrants and those who came when immigration was more of less disconnected from the welfare state. 

Mamdani’s voting base was Muslims and wealthier New Yorkers who didn’t get where they are by working for it. The intellectual class, the 6-figure college-educated, and the radical slackers who have enough not to worry about the government failing at its basic tasks. Mamdani’s coalition most emphatically did not include the working class or the high school-educated. 

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Mamdani is the perfect leader of his coalition. His father is a professor, his mother a film producer, and he went to the tony Maine college Bowdoin. He aspired to be a rapper with his mother’s help before going into politics, celebrating–I kid you not–Hamas. He hangs out with people who think America deserved 9/11, and he campaigned to turn New York into a more Muslim city. He thinks Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is a political goddess. Wu, you may recall, works assiduously to keep illegal alien sexual predators outside the grasp of ICE. 

Old-line Democrats despise the Republican Party, but some are already reconciled to the fact that they may be forced to become Republicans, just as many in the working class have. 

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“I never was a Democrat to begin with. I always, like, caucus with the Democrats and I generally vote for them — I think always vote for them.”

“But I always look at it and, like, no, I’m gonna actually make up my mind. They just always are less scary and insane than the Republicans.”

“But I wait for the day when it evens out. We’re approaching that — because they have gotten crazier.”

The essence of the modern Democrat is the indifference to results; virtue is the standard by which they judge a politician, not the results they actually produce. It is the simulation of compassion and not whether it improves lives that matters to them. Abstract ideas, not concrete results, are the things by which one is judged. Virtue signaling, not real virtue. 

So far, they are winning in the Democratic primaries and in deep-blue cities like Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Portland by creating a coalition between the laptop class and those who want free stuff–the Hugo Chavez coalition. Whether this coalition can win general elections will depend mainly on whether the results drive enough middle-class people to defect, or whether those people give up and leave. 

Ed’s earlier post on Wall Street types giving up on New York shows that people who can easily afford to move likely will, but it is harder for the working class. As they become a rump faction of the Democratic Party, they will face a choice–defect from Democrats now, or become victims soon enough. 

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It’s hard to say what they will choose in New York City. Detroit chose badly for decades. San Francisco and Boston have chosen very badly. LA? They elected a communist, and the city literally burned. Portland? I mean, come on. 

New York could face that same fate, and if it does, it will fail as Chicago has. But cities like Chicago and New York can take a very long time to collapse because they are so wealthy. The result is inevitable, but it seems distant until it arrives. 

Posted in Republican News

NJ Gov Pleased to Announce State’s Transition to Primitive Climate Cult Campground Complete

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Ah, the heat’s on, you know.

SUMMERTIME

Traditionally when many New Jersey families would pack the kids up for a week – two if they were lucky – and head down to ‘The Shore‘ to enjoy scalding little feet off across broad, sandy beach before hitting the bathtub warm, sometimes brown water churning and washing up. It was still exotic fun to inlanders and cool enough to be refreshing. 

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You could hear the sizzle of bodies as shoulders deepened to crimson and little backs got burnt digging to China at the waterline.

Later, a dash into an air-conditioned rental cottage or motel room to be first to claim the bathroom out of the sticky, smelly scrum. There, you would scrape off remnants of sand glued to thick layers of either tanning lotion or sunblock, followed by a good post-shower spray of aloe vera to kill the pain, and stand in front of the A/C to finish drying off, cooling down as you let the chilled air rustle by you. 

If there were a kitchenette, then an easy family meal might follow. More likely you’d be headed to a dockside ‘seafood’ restaurant – fried everything for the kiddos – a local, revered institution of renown and dive joint charm. Then off to the delights of whatever shabby boardwalk graced your seaside town.

Back to air-conditioned bliss hours later, sweaty, happy, and stuffed.

When you got home from your vacation, in the sticky, icky NJ summers, you almost always had a cooler house to come into, even when maybe it was only one or two window units working full blast to make it bearable.

My Daddy basically believed icicles should be dripping from the ceiling, both in his cockpit when he was flying his 1011 and when he was home.

In the New Jersey of my youth, it was only a question of how much abuse your system and body could take, never a question of whether there was enough power to have it turned on to begin with.

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When one now sees yellowed, rat-like incisors flash in a rictus grin, it’s a warning on the face of verminous NJ governor Phil Murphy – not shared summertime contentment.

The rodential chief executive was proud to announce to state residents that he had successfully turned their once power-bountiful Garden State into a KOA primitive campground for their living pleasure. The downside of his plan being the state only has one allotted powerline from the pole by the road, but has booked too many 30-foot Winnebagos.

UNPLUG EVERYTHING, CLOSE THE BLINDS, STAY COOL!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER

Well…wait a goll darn second here, pilgrims. How did the formerly feisty and seasonally comfortable state come to such a sad, sorry, sleepless, and sweaty pass?

Why, DIS GUY, that’s how.

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The governor’s rate-increase razzle-dazzle will be biting New Jerseyans right before the November election. The 20% rate increase Murphy’s touted as having been ‘postponed’ was only delayed during the hottest, most expensive summer months so as not to piss voters off any more than they had to.

New Jersey residents were facing a 20% hike on energy bills this month, thanks to bad policymaking designed to force consumers into using 100% renewable energy. Some customers already pay over $500 a month. But the Board of Public Utilities is bailing out Trenton lawmakers by delaying the rate increase until Sept. 30.

While it’s easy to scapegoat the regional grid operator and artificial intelligence data centers for skyrocketing energy bills, the blame falls squarely on Gov. Phil Murphy’s (D-NJ) net-zero climate policies born out of his Energy Master Plan.

The Energy Master Plan, signed by Murphy in 2023, has NJ committed to being completely and renewably Green by 2035.

It’s not going so well when they can’t keep the power on or residents comfortable in *checks notes* 2025

Murphy has damn near single handedly engineered – with the help of a corrupt and compliant NJ state assembly – the almost complete teardown of the state’s entire reliable baseload power generation in pursuit of his Green grifting fever dreams.

New Jersey is in the grip of an escalating energy crisis, triggered initially by the closure of five coal-fired power plants and one nuclear facility since 2017, leaving the state grappling with dwindling in-state generation capacity and increasing reliance on imported electricity.

With those plants shut down, and the failed promise of Governor Phil Murphy to deliver reliable and affordable green energy alternatives, residents are staring down the barrel of a 20% energy hike this summer.

The shutdowns—spanning from Jersey City to Cape May County—represent a combined loss of more than 2,500 megawatts (MW) of capacity. The closures come amid a national push toward cleaner energy sources, but critics warn that New Jersey’s transition has outpaced its replacement infrastructure, raising concerns about grid stability, cost volatility, and energy independence.

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Power plant numbers go down, temperatures go up, and available power and living standards go down.

It’s like a Democratic mathematics formula that they’ve yet to figure out.

Then again, maintaining or even elevating the living standards of their legal constituents has never been very high on Democrats’ list of priorities. 

I mean, here’s the NJ Assembly right this minute (!), fixin’ to gift the offshore wind industry a cool hunnertmillion in tax credits while the people paying for the hunnertmillion (and subsequent rate hikes and power outages) are being asked to live in the warm dark like mushrooms by the guy who engineered their misery.

New Jersey can sit there and seethe in the heat as the lights blink on and off until they go off for good, or they can start voting these grifters out.

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November IS coming.

They just have to make it through 78° nights and do the laundry at midnight.

Posted in Republican News

Trump: You Better Believe We’ll Take Out New Iranian Nuke Facilities

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“That hit ended the war,” Donald Trump declared at a presser during this week’s NATO conference at The Hague. Had the US not struck the Fordow facility, “Iran would still be fighting,” Trump claimed. He compared it to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in its impact on Iranian leadership, and scoffed at reports that 12 GBU-57s didn’t do enough damage to the nuclear-development facilities as political spin based off a manipulated leak, seized upon by a hostile media industry in the US. And Trump reiterated that the US would strike again if Iran attempted to reopen enrichment facilities or open new locations for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons

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Sky News has a lengthy video of the presser, which I’ve embedded at the end, but our own Townhall correspondent and managing editor Katie Pavlich took part in the Q&A. Trump offered praise for Katie, saying he’d always answer her questions and then jokingly wondered whether he should have admitted it. Katie asked Trump to respond to the Iranian foreign minister’s declaration that they would remain defiant:

Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth had a few words about the Protection Racket Media “scum” attempting to downplay the impact of those strikes:

As it turns out, Israel also had some questions about those reports. Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized that their own assessment of the damage at Fordow shows that its “critical infrastructure” was “destroyed” and that the site was essentially inoperable:

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The IDF concurred shortly afterward, albeit with the caveat of their assessment still being preliminary in nature:

Israel’s military thinks the recent war with Iran has set the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program back by years, but the assessment is preliminary, and it is too early to know for sure, Israel Defense Forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Effi Defrin said Wednesday.

“We met all the objectives of the operation as defined for us, and even did so better than we had optimally expected,” Defrin said, but he cautioned: “I say this with humility, because it’s still too early to determine.”

“We are investigating and reviewing the results of our strikes on every part of this puzzle, as I’ve previously called it, the various components of the nuclear program and more,” he said.

“Now, I trust our intelligence analysts in the Intelligence Directorate and in the Air Force. I believe they have proven themselves to be accurate in recent weeks, and I can say here that the assessment is that we significantly damaged the nuclear program, and I can also say that we set it back by years, I repeat, years.”

But don’t take the word of the US or Israel for this. Take the Iranians’ word for it, as supplied by Al Jazeera via the Jerusalem Post:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, said US strikes on Sunday had caused significant damage to its nuclear facilities, Al Jazeera reported.

“Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” Baghaei said on Wednesday, according to the report.

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It might be a while before the Iranians can even access Fordow. New satellite imagery shows the now-familiar vent holes opened up by the GBU-57 bunker busters, but also the significant damage done before and after the American raid by the Israeli air force. The roads have been taken out in the mountain passes, to an extent that may take weeks or months to repair. Even when they get to the site, the apparent access points to the underground facility no longer exist:

The NATO meeting is ongoing, with a new presser starting as this post gets written. Katie reports that Trump has declared that “We’ve restored the credibility of American deterrence,” and that NATO must now act to join the US in its financial commitments to keep up. With one exception, the alliance members have agreed to more than double their financial commitment to common defense:

NATO allies on Wednesday agreed to more than double their defense spending target from 2% of gross domestic product to 5% by 2035, in the most decisive move from the alliance in over a decade.

In a joint declaration, the Western military bloc said it was “united in the face of profound security threats and challenges,” in particular the long-term threat posed by Russia to Euro-Atlantic security and the “persistent threat” of terrorism.

“Allies commit to invest 5% of GDP annually on core defence requirements as well as defence-and security-related spending by 2035 to ensure our individual and collective obligations.,” it continued.

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Trump has certainly restored the credibility of American leadership of NATO. He came to The Hague to deliver blunt assessments of NATO flabbiness, shortly after showing that the US has completely changed direction. NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte showered him with praise, as you’ll see below, but Trump wants more than praise — he wants action. It’s time to put the enemies of the West on notice, as Trump himself did this weekend. We’ll have more on that later, obviously. 

Posted in Republican News

NYC: It’s Time Somebody Tried Real Socialism™

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The only reason why socialism hasn’t worked anywhere it has been tried is that it wasn’t implemented correctly. 

Well, New York City may get the chance to prove that a young, good-looking, terrorist-loving socialist can make their city run like a top. 

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NYC: It's Time Somebody Tried Real Socialism™ 20That is what NYC Democratic voters decided to try, giving Zohran Mamdani a victory in the race for the Democratic Party nominee in this year’s mayoral election.

Mamdani took on the Democratic Party establishment, which poured tens of millions of dollars into the failed campaign of Andrew Cuomo to take the nomination for the top slot, and he outfoxed them all. He has proven that good looks, a winning smile, and a dose of socialism will work wonders when you are out campaigning with AOC. 

Mamdani has it all. Support for Hamas, the ability to reach out to the growing antisemitic vote, completely insane economic ideas, and the confidence born of being raised privileged.

In the contest between the old Bill Clinton-style Democrats and the new AOC/Squad-style, the latter is the new face of the Democratic Party coalition. 

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Mamdani’s win in the Democratic primary does not, as some people seem to think, automatically make him a shoo-in, but it’s close enough for government work. There will be several independents on the ballot, and Curtis Silwa is running as a Republican. 

But who are we kidding? Mamdani is likely to win in the general election. When asked who the most successful mayor in the country is, he named Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, whose #1 accomplishment is releasing illegal alien child molesters back onto the streets before ICE can detain them. 

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Mamdani believes that the solution to rising prices is rent freezes and city-run grocery stores, because these policies have proven to work so well everywhere they have been tried. 

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If and when they elect him, New Yorkers may wind up longing for the days of another phony politician: Bill de Blasio, who changed his name from the less euphonious Warren Wilhelm, Jr. This time, they will be treated to a man of many accents instead of a man of many names, with even more insane policy preferences than the prior mayor. 

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Democrats are long past the point of caring about anything but appearances. Everything is now performative. Mamdani projects well, pretends to care deeply about things about which he knows nothing, and has a pretty smile. The results of his actual policies don’t matter. 

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This is the new, young Democratic Party. Expect AOC to take on Chuck Schumer, using the same formula that swept Mamdani to victory. It’s radical chic, the next generation. 

The big losers will be the middle class, of course. The wealthy will either just move or adapt, shielding themselves with the privilege that can only come from having oodles of money, and the socialists will shower the hoi polloi with subsidies and blame everything that goes wrong on “the rich.” 

The middle class are screwed. Leaving is very hard, so many of them will be doomed to seeing their cities deteriorate. 

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The race was a perfect microcosm of what is wrong with the Democratic Party. Democrats were forced to choose between a grandma killer and an antisemitic socialist. 

The socialist was better looking and smoother talking. And he spoke to the young people who the Democrats have intentionally undereducated. 

Posted in Republican News