Things heat up with Iran
There’s a new wave of US attacks on Iran, in retaliation for Iran’s recently firing on ships in the Strait:
The U.S. strikes are in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire.
What’s more, there’s this:
President Trump is officially REVOKING the US license that allowed Iran to sell their oil, after the mullahs STRUCK vessels in the Strait of Hormuz — Reuters
The US says Iran’s actions WILL be met with consequences.
How does that get enforced? Does the US once again block Iranian ships from leaving the country and getting through the Stait?
On the expansion of the red-green alliance
Those of us old enough to remember the Iranian Revolution and establishment of the mullahtocracy are old enough to remember the red-green alliance against the Shah that brought it about. These two camps, which in some ways seem like opposites, were able to unite against a common enemy and each were convinced they’d be the last faction standing. But in short order it became clear that the mullahs had devoured the leftists while they were still digesting their Shah meal. And now, nearly a half-century later, the mullahs are still in control.
And much of the left in this country is still with them. For example:
Tehran flew in hundreds of foreign social media influencers to participate in the regime’s orchestrated display of anti-Western hate. The Jerusalem Post, citing Iranian state media, reported “that around 400 foreign bloggers and influencers were brought in” by the regime to witness Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral.
Leading the pack were Jackson Hinkle and Max Blumenthal. Hinkle, who built his fan base by supporting Putin and bashing Israel, took the stage at a gathering in Tehran to lead the chants of “Down with the USA.” Standing on the stage, he waved a reg flag, symbol of jihad and vengeance in Shia Islam. …
Not to be outdone, self-styled journalist Blumenthal was literally seen drumming for the regime, flanked by the flags of the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah.
By the way, although some on the left try to disown Hinkle and say he’s on the far-right, it’s pretty clear that he’s on the left – if he’s anywhere other than a grifting click-seeker. After all, he’s the founder of something called the American Communist Party and has described himself as an “American Conservative Marxist-Leninist” – that is, socially conservative, and an admirer of Stalin and Bernie Sanders. As for Blumenthal, he’s written for leftist media and is the son of Sidney Blumenthal, a highly Clinton-partisan writer. Son Max is also an extremely anti-Zionist ethnic Jew, not the first and not the last.
What unites Islamists and the left nowadays? It’s really pretty simple, and it’s the same principle it was in Iran in 1979. Back then they wanted to destroy the Shah and take power, and now in the US they want to destroy the 2-party system and the US government as we know it, they want to take power and block the ability of others to take power away from them, and they also want to destroy Israel and anyone who supports it (which would include most Jews, as well as most evangelical Christians and many other Christians as well). Many people sum it all up as the desire to destroy Western Civilization, or at least its basic principles of human rights, liberty, and the pursuit of truth.
The things that divide Islamists and the left are very small potatoes compared to the things that unite them. If they ever were to succeed in their goals, however, one would try to crush the other, as in Iran. Hopefully it won’t get that far. But they are growing more powerful, and the Tuckerite wing of what used to be the right – and now is a sort of hybrid – is in there with them.
Here’s Professor Jacobson on the subject:
This is a unique combination that I’ve never seen before. We know about what’s called the Red-Green Alliance, which is the Marxists and the Islamists coming together to hate Jews and to hate Israel. What people need to understand is that this is not really about Israel and Jews. This is about the United States. This is an attempt to destroy our country from inside.
And we now have a third element that was not seen until recently, which are some podcasters and influencers on the right who are Israel obsessed and spreading all sorts of conspiracy theories.
There is a real unity right now among these people, although they’re not united on every topic. But they’ll gladly work together for their common goals.
What’s up with Mitch McConnell?
I guess we know where he is – he’s been in the hospital for about three weeks. We simply don’t know why, or anything about his condition:
Here’s some gossip on the subject, though:
Neighbors of Mitch McConnell’s Capitol Hill home in Washington, D.C. have said the house hasn’t seen anyone come or go since his latest health scare.
The former Senate majority leader had not been seen in public for weeks before he was found unconscious after an apparent heart attack at his home on June 14, according to EMS dispatch audio.
One of his neighbors explained to independent journalist Desirée Townsend that she saw him being taken to the hospital by paramedics, but has seen no activity at McConnell’s nearly $2 million Washington house since.
“I haven’t seen anyone,” she explained.
And his wife?
Chao, who formerly served as transportation secretary in the first Trump administration and labor secretary in the Bush administration, traveled to Beijing and met with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng just three days after McConnell’s hospitalization.
Curiouser and curiouser.
His Senate office has for days refused to answer basic questions about his health, and has only repeated that he is “working closely” with staff on Senate business while Congress is out of session. They have not answered questions about the senator’s treatment, prognosis, or timeline for his full recovery.
Far-right influencer and Trump confidante Laura Loomer alleged on Monday that the Kentucky senator was “brain dead” and would not be returning to Congress, citing a “high-level source close to the White House.”
Who knows? Not I.
[ADDENDUM: I just read a report here from Rasmussen, about McConnell’s wife’s trip to China:
Elaine Chao was already IN China when Mitch was getting CPR. The real question is, why didn’t she immediately fly back to DC instead of meeting with the Chinese VP 5 days later?
Don’t know what the truth actually is.]
The Platner rape story: all in the timing
I was thinking yesterday of adding the following questions and observation to my post on Platner: what is he mulling over? Why not resign immediately? Not only is he mulling over what he’ll get from the Democrats if he drops out as they wish (as I stated in the post), but I think there’s at least a decent possibility that he’s such a narcissist, so tremendously full of himself and arrogant, that he might even refuse to drop out at all.
That would be quite something to see. After all, if you promote a scumbag, you have to deal with a scumbag.
So now I see this NY Post article. An excerpt:
Maine Democratic candidate Graham Platner appears to be holding the Democratic Party hostage — refusing to drop out after he was accused of rape unless he gets to approve his successor to run for the Senate, The Post has learned.
A source familiar with the campaign discussions said Platner, his campaign and political strategist Morris Katz are deliberating about the Maine Democrat dropping out but only if his replacement shares his left-wing values.
So the report is that he’s making demands and threatening not to drop out if they’re not met. Nice.
It certainly makes sense that the powers-that-be would like someone more moderate, in order to appeal to the somewhat purple state of Maine. Then again, Collins is pretty moderate herself. But my point is that Platner knows he has some power here and is loathe to give it up.
Needless to say, there’s been a ton of coverage of Platner in the last 24 hours, much of it about how the Democrats supported him till the current revelations about rape. Not date-rape, but what Whoopi Goldberg might or might not refer to as “rape-rape.”
Ace has a good summary of how the NY Times did a limited modified hang-out a while back by trying to get ahead of the rape and assault allegations without actually covering them truthfully. Rather, they mostly covered them up. It’s a long and involved post, but here’s some of it to give you the flavor:
The New York Times Knew All About Graham Platner’s Rape Allegation But Deliberately Buried It …
They also buried the allegations of non-rape abuse by Lyndsey Fifield — and she says she gave them the names of five friends who would corroborate the story (at least as far as her telling the same story contemporaneously).
Two of those friends, she told them, didn’t know about the abuse, but could corroborate the dates of their relationship. The other three could corroborate the abuse.
The New York Times chose to only contact the two friends Fifield expressly told them could not corroborate the abuse. They didn’t contact the three who could corroborate the abuse, deliberately.
Then the Times wrote that they contacted two friends “who could not corroborate” Fifield’s claims of abuse.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that the people who write at the Times are stupid. They may be both knaves and fools in the classic sense, but they are not stupid and they know how to write exactly what they want to write.
There’s also a good piece in National Review in terms of a summary of what went wrong with Platner. But it has a flaw that I’ve noticed is present in just about every article I’ve read from the right about Platner, an omission that puzzles me.
For example, here’s a quote from that link:
If Platner fooled you [he’s addressing reporters on the left], maybe you should find something to do with your life besides writing columns about politics. Because the U.S. political landscape is full of creeps, cretins, con artists, crooks, and cads of every kind, and it always will be. If the media has any useful role to play in our system, it is to look beyond the spin and the campaign-crafted image and to tell the world who these candidates really are, warts and all, so the electorate can make an informed choice.
Talk about an idealistic vision! The point is that Platner did not fool them, not for a single moment. Nor will they ever “look beyond the spin.” They proudly create the spin. There is no devotion to the principle of truth. It’s about winning, period.
What’s more, this story did not come out now in the interests of truth. It came out now because Democrats and the MSM (redundancy, I know) realized Platner almost certainly would lose. So they had to torpedo him. They had held back the rape story not only to protect him till now, but to use in case they needed it in the future. Now they need it, so it’s printed. I think it’s just as simple as that.
And so you have a flood of people (take a look here) suddenly saying he has to go, people who defended him mightily till now. I repeat: it’s not the result of the story itself. The story being revealed is the result of the polls. The outrage at Platner’s behavior is the result of the polls. That’s all it is. Now, maybe they were outraged and worried even earlier, but they had to keep their mouths shut and pretend to defend him, all in the interests of winning. Once he no longer was a winner, they’re free to suddenly virtue-signal about him.
[ADDENDUM: The allegations have gotten worse.
How could that be, you ask? Here’s how:
One of Graham Platner’s ex-girlfriends alleged Tuesday that the embattled Maine Democrat repeatedly removed his condom during sex without asking permission.
“He would pull condoms off,” Lyndsey Fifield said in an interview with the Washington Post. “He would do it in a sneaky way. He wouldn’t tell me.”
“I confronted him both during and after [sex] because he knew that I was not on birth control and how dangerous that was,” Fifield added. “He would act like cute about it, like ‘Oh sneaky me.’”
Actually, I’m not sure that’s worse than breaking and entering and rape. Then again, it’s pretty bad.
However, a caveat the left will no doubt point out is that this allegation is by the Republican ex-girlfriend, not the “progressive” one. So it’s more suspect, as far as they’re concerned.
My own question is why, after he did this, would anyone continue to see him or sleep with him? She said it happened six times. And he’s not so compelling a specimen; he’s a pretty repellent guy even without this kind of sleazy conduct, as far as I can see.
Then again, Sylvia Plath may have had it right – at least, about some women but certainly not all:
… I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.]
Open thread 7/7/2026
Will Graham Platner drop out?
There has never been any doubt in my mind that if Graham Platner starts looking like a loser, the Democrats will dump their “working class” nominee. His standing in polls has been steadily sinking – and who knows what’s going on in the internal polls, but it’s probably not good. They have until July 13th to replace him if he drops out, and if things are looking grim they’ll make sure he drops out by that time.
Now there is a new allegation about sexual assault in 2021, from a woman he used to date. In a way, I wish they’d held it back until after the 13th, but I think it came out now due to pressure from Democrats rather than Republicans. For the moment, Platner seems to be mulling it over. Maybe it’s a case of finding out what the Democrat powers-that-be will be offering him to leave the race:
Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner on Monday said he’s taking “time to reflect” on his campaign’s path forward after a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2021.
Platner, 41, and his campaign denied the accusations made by 41-year-old Maine resident Jenny Racicot in a Politico article published Monday. Politico reported that she accused Platner of sexual assault.
Note that the accusation was published in Politico, so you can be pretty sure this was pushed by Democrats. In a way, too bad. If he’s such a terrible candidate I would hope he would run and lose handily. But my guess is that the pressure, and the incentive (whatever is offered), will be enough to get him to drop out.
The Democrats who endorsed him have already disgraced themselves. Perhaps they’ve even sullied their brand in Maine, at least among Independents there. One can hope, anyway.
Who will replace him if he does drop out? They will need to name someone by July 27, according to the article. I suppose they could revert back to the safe-but-unexciting and elderly Janet Mills, who had originally opposed Platner but suspended her candidacy a while back due to lack of funds (and probably bad polls). They may not turn to Mills; I’m pretty sure there are younger Democrats who’d love the opportunity, but I don’t know who they are.
[ADDENDUM: Ace notes that apparently for the NY Times article that listed some of the sexual allegations against Platner, the current accuser had spoken to them while asking that her name be kept quiet, but the Times didn’t really report on the seriousness of her allegations. She says this made her come out now, and that she also is on the same side as Platner politically.
But the Times piece was published only one month ago. Platner has been a candidate since August of 2025 with huge visibility almost from the start, and became the Democrat nominee in late April. Why did the accuser wait so long? Politico quotes her as saying this:
“One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” she said. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”
I say that’s hogwash. I think she was willing to remain silent as long as the polls showed him in the lead, and she spoke out when it seemed like he would lose and wouldn’t drop out unless he was forced to do so.]
A revival of the patriotic film genre?
Young Washington sounds like a good movie. I might even go see it:
They used to make a lot of patriotic movies, and I think it’s high time the genre got a revival. The title of the new film about Washington reminds me of the old chestnut Young Mr. Lincoln, one of my favorites from childhood when I saw it several times on TV. Here’s a scene; you’ll see they made up Henry Fonda to look a tiny bit more like Lincoln, whom he resembled not at all:
Speaking of Fonda and patriotic movies, here’s another one I saw on TV many many times as a child. This one is set in Revolutionary times, when the Mohawk Valley in New York was considered the western frontier: Drums Along the Mohawk. I notice now that both films not only starred Henry Fonda but they were both directed by John Ford and both were released in the magical year for movies, 1939. A busy time for both.
As a very young child I fell in love with Henry Fonda in these films. Do you think children can’t fall in love? I submit that they certainly can. At any rate, if you want to remember what a good actor Fonda was, watch this scene from Drums Along the Mohawk:
Here’s the cake I made on the Fourth
I’m linking to the recipe here because the result was really really tasty and really really attractive. My photo doesn’t quite do it justice, but here it is:
I used pluots instead of plums, but that’s a small change. I don’t particularly care for pumpkin pie spice, so I just used a very small amount of cinnamon, hardly detectable but giving it a little oomph. I also added some blueberries to make it red, white, and blue. The white was whipped cream, not shown in the photo.
Enjoy!
On the attractions of socialism
I’ve written many many posts on this topic over the years. I don’t know when the first one was published, but it was probably at least as far back as Obama’s campaign in 2008 (see this, for example). But right now it seems especially appropriate.
By 2018 and 2019 – the years AOC first became prominent – I was writing about the topic more often, and expecially noting how popular socialism had become among the young. This excerpt may interest you, from this February 2019 post:
I’ve written several posts on the attractions of socialism; it appeals to certain basic aspects of human nature that will always be with us: covetousness, anger, guilt, a desire to feel righteous, and the need for simple-sounding solutions. But there’s also the obvious fact that many many decades ago the left set its sights on taking over the educational system, and has done so successfully.
I still think that’s a good summary, although not an especially eloquent one.
And in this post from May of 2019 I noted a recent poll that showed how widespread approval of socialism had already become in this country. The poll itself, taken in the summer of 2018, can be found here. Some excerpts:
– 47% of Democrats view capitalism positively, down from 56% in 2016
– 57% of Democrats now view socialism positively, little changed from 2010
– Republicans very positive about capitalism; 16% positive on socialism
Note that second point: as early as 2010, the majority of Democrats were viewing socialism positively. And note the first point, that the change between 2010 and 2018 was mainly driven by increased dislike of capitalism.
Approval of socialism and dislike of capitalism was even more marked among the young, exactly as one might expect from the way education has been going in recent decades:
Americans aged 18 to 29 are as positive about socialism (51%) as they are about capitalism (45%). This represents a 12-point decline in young adults’ positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68% viewed it positively. Meanwhile, young people’s views of socialism have fluctuated somewhat from year to year, but the 51% with a positive view today is the same as in 2010.
Older Americans have been consistently more positive about capitalism than socialism. For those 50 and older, twice as many currently have a positive view of capitalism as of socialism.
So I see no reason whatsoever to be surprised about the rising stars of socialism.in large blue cities. Nor am I surprised that they are young and mostly (although not entirely) “diverse.” That combines three characteristics our young people (and those not-so-young anymore, since this began decades ago) have been taught to revere: hatred of capitalism and the US for that matter, love of socialism, and love of diversity for diversity’s sake.
Some people are of the opinion that it’s a good, thing, in a way, to have a bunch of blue cities be run by these DSA members. After all, it won’t work very well, and people will learn to reject them. I disagree (not that there’s anything I can do to stop this wave). I think the history of socialism/Communism is that for the most part its practitioners pay even more attention to their rhetoric and the entrenchment of their power (whether through bureaucracy, “rigging,” or tyranny) as they do to anything else. And people, especially young people, are gullible. Also, for reasons I don’t understand, turnout is low in municipal elections in these cities, and therefore fanatically dedicated extremists there have an outsized influence.
Of course, the DSA is not confined to blue city government because there now will be more and more DSA adherents (whether through formal membership or just endorsement and leanings) in the US House. Maybe even the Senate soon. What will this mean? Perhaps not all that much at first, because the regular Democratic Party is already so far to the left in its proposals: making DC and Puerto Rico states to solidify its power, banning ID for voters, packing SCOTUS, you know the drill. For the most part, the DSA candidates are merely replacing other Democrats, so the total votes may not change much.
However, the Overton Window has moved ever leftward. The new socialists will continue this trend if their numbers increase. Will their numbers increase? I don’t know, and obviously I hope not. But I’m not among those who say things like “pass the popcorn” and think it will all blow over and that the whole phenomenon is quite amusing.
Open thread 7/6/2026
Reflections on the 250th Fourth
I’m having a quiet day, just a couple of people over for dinner. I plan to make hot dogs – something I don’t eat all that often but that I love – barbecued chicken, potato salad, and plum cake with blueberries and whipped cream (red, white, and blue – get it?).
I’m thinking that the country feels like it’s under internal siege. But you know, I’ve felt that way before. I write about the dangers often, and so I’m not going to write about them today. It’s a holiday, a big one.
Today I’m just going to note that I really do believe this is the greatest country on earth. Although threatened at times, our commitment to liberty is unmatched by that of any other country. The World Cup visitors from afar are surprised at our friendliness, our energy, our huge portions, our generosity.
I remember hearing from my son, when he lived in South America for quite a while, that although in some ways he could pass for a native, people always knew he was an American even before he opened up his mouth and demonstrated that he had an accent. Why? It was because of the way he walked. And I’ve heard other people say that Americans stride in a different way, a more open and free gait that identifies them.
America may just be the most beautiful country in the world in the sense of natural wonders, too. It’s certainly one of them, anyway. That’s partly because it’s so large and the terrain and climate and flora and fauna so varied. I recall learning in art history class that many of the early paintings of the American West – such as, for example, by Bierstadt – were designed to show Easterners and denizens of the Old World the wonders of the New. They could scarcely believe what they saw. And granted, it was a somewhat idealized version – but not that far off from reality:
I remember the 1976 Bicentennial vividly. But that was a long time ago. I was young, and now – well, let’s just say I’m not young anymore. But that star-spangled banner still waves o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Have a wonderful celebration!