Back to Giving War a Chance. Supreme Leader’s Potemkin Funeral: Don’t Be Fooled. Finally: Platner Free to Get More Tattoos. Dems Decry ‘Red Scare!’ What Happened to the Smithsonian? California’s Open Air Sex Markets. More
Well, the U.S. certainly bent over backwards to give peace a chance.
Iran. Not so much. Resumed strikes by both countries are the result (here, here, here, here, and here). I guess you could say that we’re giving war another chance.
A Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “Trump Tells the Truth About Iran” is the newspaper’s Editorial Board’s response to renewed military hostilities:
In June Mr. Trump called Iran’s new leaders “very rational people” who were “nice to deal with.” Vice President JD Vance, the lead U.S. negotiator, insisted that even the thugs atop the Revolutionary Guard Corps want to “turn over a new leaf” with the U.S.
This Age of Innocence lasted all of three weeks. Perhaps Mr. Vance will tell us why he believed that and whether he still does. Asked on Wednesday what changed his view of Iran’s leaders, Mr. Trump answered: “I got to know them.”
The question is what the President will do with that knowledge. He said talks could continue but added, “I’m not sure I want to make a deal. Let’s just finish the job.” That won’t get done with on-again, off-again talks and tit-for-tat bombing. Any U.S. action risks escalation, so it had better be with a strategic purpose.
The U.S. is striking targets near the all-important Strait of Hormuz:
This was the second day in a row that the U.S. had attacked Iranian targets in what U.S. officials say is an effort to stop Tehran from striking commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
The funeral of the late Supreme Leader made Iran appear united and just as powerful as before the war. The Free Press suggests that it was a Potemkin funeral. In “The Iran the Funeral Cameras Don’t Show,” Masih Alinejab writes:
… Don’t take what you’re seeing at face value.
In the months since Khamenei’s death, I have received hundreds of messages from friends and contacts inside Iran. They are not messages of grief but of disbelief, relief and, when people feel safe enough, joy. A woman from Isfahan told me in March that she had been dancing in the street with strangers. A man in Tehran sent a voice note laughing so hard he could barely speak. Then he caught himself: “Don’t use my name.”
He was still afraid. They are always afraid.
The regime has always “used mass mobilization as a proof of legitimacy.” The Free Press shows how the spectacle was put on and takes us to places the cameras don’t go. Aaron MacLean in the same outlet argues: “The president has to choose between four options on the Strait of Hormuz. None of them are pain-free.” Meanwhile, the president says Iran has called and … they want to make a deal.
The Wall Street Journal has a tick-tock on Oval Office discussion that led to the breakdown of the deal. I wonder if your reaction will be the same as mine: Look out, JD. Rubio stock rising.
Beware Qataris Bearing Gifts? President Trump was forced to use the old Air Force One instead of the shiny new one gifted by the Qatari government to leave the NATO Ankara summit.
Maine’s Nazi tattoo guy officially dropped out of the race to unseat Maine’s moderate Republican Senator Susan Collins. The (satirical—but just barely) Babylon Bee reacts:
Democrats Quietly Add ‘Have You Raped Anyone?’ To Questionnaire for Aspiring Candidates
Politico, which helped torpedo Platner’s candidacy, chronicles what happened “inside the tense final hours of Graham Platner’s campaign.”
The New York Post’s Miranda Devine’s headline reads: “Slimy Dems — the party of Me Too — show their true colors in Graham Platner scandal.” Fun: The Washington Free Beacon highlights the 2028 Dems who disgraced themselves to defend erstwhile candidate Graham Platner. Big Three: Ro Khanna, Ruben Gallego, and Elizabeth Warren. Ms. Must also disgraced herself yesterday: I don’t know how I did it, but I mixed up New York Times Michelles—Cottle and Goldberg—in an item commenting on the Free Beacon’s story on Michelle Goldberg’s reluctant disillusion with Platner. Apologies to both Michelles.
Nice Try. You’ve got to hand it to ingenious Dems, who attempt to paint warnings about the socialist surge in their party as old-fashioned red-baiting (here and here). Political guru Karl Rove, however, writes that the socialists spell trouble for the Dems:
Socialists running in deep-blue districts can keep saying outrageous things and win. But it’s places like Colorado’s Eighth District, pitting the former Army helicopter pilot against the leftist Yale law graduate, that will decide which party runs the House. Game on!
Meanwhile, Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley takes us beyond the immediate electoral aspects of the socialist surge with a column headlined “Socialism and the Decline of the Black Family.” Riley writes:
Conservatives are right to be concerned about the impact on our free-market capitalist system if enough people with such views are elected to positions of power. But socialism’s impact on the traditional family structure is no less concerning….
But socialists such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels dismissed the traditional family as a tool of oppression that advanced the patriarchy by exploiting the domestic labor of women. Similar thinking informs today’s politicians and policymakers who want to expand the welfare state to address economic inequality. For them, nuclear families in general, and fathers in particular, were an obstacle to central planning schemes.
“How the Smithsonian Lost America’s Plot” is the headline on a Wall Street Journal editorial on the Trump administration’s controversial report on the Smithsonian:
The report isn’t a cheerleading document seeking to hide America’s warts. What it seeks is a history of the U.S. that doesn’t resemble the 1619 Project in its partisan bias.
The report’s examples show the degree to which progressives have captured the history museum. In one exhibit, the Pledge of Allegiance was described as a tool to “instill American nationalism through flag ceremonies.” Nationalism? That’s a needlessly pejorative edge. How about patriotism?
Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III decried the report as “not fair,” while old guard Washington Post architectural critic Philip Kennicott made angry harumphing noises. As long as we’re on the subject of aesthetics, I detect a certain unattractive glee in this: Trump’s D.C. makeover hits another snag at Meridian Hill. The fountain pipes are rusty, and so the water is brown—all President Trump’s fault. Is this Pulitzer Prize material or what?
When Gavin Newsom Helps Women. “How California Effectively Legalized an Open-Air Sex Market” in City Journal tells a more aesthetically unappealing story. Christopher Rufo and Kenneth Schrupp write:
It’s midafternoon outside KIPP Academy of Opportunity, a charter school serving children in fifth through eighth grade on South Figueroa Street in residential Los Angeles. As children inside prepare for their futures, a young female struts by in high heels, wearing nothing but a bikini and a jacket.
“We’ll see some police officers roll by and some young women out here just prostituting. They’re walking right by, and the police drive right by them,” the school’s gun-toting security guard said. “It’s normal.”
This was all the predictable result of public policy. In 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law decriminalizing loitering with intent to commit prostitution. When he signed the bill, Newsom suggested it would help would reduce the harassment of women.
Far from it: prostitution activity began spiking up.
Three For the Road. We know that current Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent admires Hamilton! But former Senator Phil Gramm and Donald Boudreaux counter that “Hamilton Was No Protectionist.” … Richard Porter at RCP has an interesting take on President Trump’s $2 billion earnings last year:
… I think voters have long-since come to terms with Trump’s eagerness to continue doing business even while in office. That’s not my concern. I’m wondering whether Trump and his family will become the kind of “cheerful” givers that would make them happier, while bequeathing a prize that would benefit the world.
Next Time Somebody Says Capitalism Doesn’t Work. Tell them about this Costco cashier.
