SOME MIGHT QUESTION WHETHER HIGHER EDUCATION HAS BEEN A GOOD INVESTMENT OVER THE PAST HALF CENTURY: Academics Who Call For Iranian Attacks on America. “This is an anti-Western movement. It’s not about justice or compassion, but death and destruction.”
Archive for 2025
June 23, 2025
JEREMY LOOKS TO SUPER-SIZE HIS ESTATE IN THE NEW SEASON OF CLARKSON’S FARM!
VDH: Ten Iranian Questions.
2. But what happens now? Won’t Iran release its terrorist cells in the U.S., or attack U.S. bases nearby with missiles and drones, or unleash missiles at the Gulf oil fields, or mine the Straits of Hormuz, or unleash a new unforeseen volley of missiles at Israel?
Those scenarios are endless.
But this mission was not a 1991 or 2003 bombing as a preliminary to a ground invasion. Nor was it a pile-on 2011 Libyan bombing campaign designed for regime change. It had a limited agenda—the destruction of Iran’s nuclear fortresses—and it apparently succeeded. Iran would be wise to seek a ceasefire and negotiate for the regime’s survival. Pundits claim Iran must do something to restore its reputation. But the more it acts and fails, the greater its humiliation.
U.S. naval power will soon stop any Iranian naval attacks in the Straits of Hormuz. If Iran sends missiles into the Gulf oil fields, it will lose their own.
If they hit American bases, they will likely get a response quite unlike the aftermath lull of the killing of Gen. Soleimani. If they have a hidden massive missile arsenal to unleash on Israel, Israel will respond in kind.
Which likely explains this:
If true, complete and total capitulation and vindication for President Trump’s strategy here. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/JroBKkPTjg
— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) June 23, 2025
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is New York City About to Go Full Communist?
CAN IT PRODUCE AN END TO GEORGE R.R. MARTIN’S SERIES? Study: Meta AI model can reproduce almost half of Harry Potter book.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: Increase in Ariane 6 launch cadence could take several years.
During a panel at the Paris Air Show June 17, David Cavaillolès, chief executive of Arianespace, emphasized his desire to ramp up launches of the Ariane 6, which has performed two launches to date.
“We need to go to 10 launches per year for Ariane 6 as soon as possible,” he said. “It’s twice as more as for Ariane 5, so it’s a big industrial change.”
After the inaugural launch of Ariane 6 last July, Arianespace launched the second Ariane 6 in March, placing a French reconnaissance satellite into orbit. Cavaillolès reiterated earlier plans to conduct four more Ariane 6 launches through the end of the year, including the first launch of the more powerful Ariane 64 variant with four solid-rocket boosters.
However, he declined to offer a specific timeline for increasing launch cadence to 10 per year. “Everybody is extremely motivated, but we want to do it step by step,” he said. “First we have to deliver on ’25 and this is a big challenge, so we focus on that.”
First maybe they need to find customers willing to pay about three times more than SpaceX charges per kilogram to orbit.
KURT SCHLICHTER: Trump’s Attack on Iran Will Not Destroy the America First Movement.
We keep hearing from people who insist that they weren’t voting to bomb Iran when they voted for Donald Trump, but I was totally voting to bomb Iran when I voted for Donald Trump. I knew that Donald Trump wasn’t going to be a pathetic pushover like Barack Obama, the soft new fish of world politics who sold himself for cigarettes and security on the cell block. I was a high school freshman when these creeps first dared to put their stinking paws on Americans after invading our embassy. America never avenged that or the deaths at Desert One. In the decades that followed, Iran’s legacy of terrorism, torture, and murder has run the tally to well over 1,000 dead Americans. That atrocities from Beirut to Khobar Towers to the explosively formed projectiles in Iraq have gone unavenged until now – and it is only partially avenged as it stands – is a disgrace. Third World potentates should shiver in cold horror at the thought of our unmerciful vengeance should they ever presume to harass an American.
This isn’t “Iraq 2: Electric Boogaloo.” When people complain that Donald Trump promised us no new wars – you can see that the memo for that went out to the Democrats, and when you agree with the Official Democrat Talking Points™, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself – they are missing the point. This is not a new war. We’ve been at war with these fanatical creeps for half a century, and it’s long overdue that we finally struck back.
But, of course, the people who think like me are only a part of the America First coalition – the polling suggests we are a very big part. Still, a significant part of the American First coalition, including friends of mine who I greatly respect, disagree, and deserve a hearing when they feel strongly about something. They think differently about this issue. And you know what? They’re not crazy to do so.
Read the whole thing. Trump has been remarkably consistent on preventing Iran from developing the bomb:
MONTAGE: Over 16 straight minutes of President Donald Trump saying that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.
"Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon… They can't have a nuclear weapon. Very simple. They can't have a nuclear weapon. We're not going to allow that."
WATCH: pic.twitter.com/cTJmmUzY6I
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) June 17, 2025
CHANGE: BBC bosses back Martine Croxall over ‘pregnant people’ correction.
BBC bosses have backed a television presenter who corrected the phrase “pregnant people” to “women” while broadcasting live, in what has been welcomed as a rejection of gender-neutral language.
Martine Croxall, 56, was citing a study about protecting vulnerable people in hot weather and, after reading out the report’s phrasing, immediately rolled her eyes and changed the wording to “women”.
“Malcolm Mistry, who was involved in the research, says that the aged, pregnant people … women … and those with pre-existing health conditions need to take precautions,” she said.
JK Rowling was among those to support the presenter, calling Croxall “her new favourite BBC presenter” on X, and the former Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova also backed her.
Croxall added: “A huge thank you to everyone who has chosen to follow me today for whatever reason. It’s been quite a ride.”
She has gained almost 50,000 followers on the social media platform since the incident on Sunday afternoon.
It looks like the boys in Room 102 will have a slow day today after all:
BREAKING: Iran Strikes Back. “Iran has launched a series of ballistic missiles, currently seven total, at American military bases in Qatar and Iraq as part of Operation Basharat al-Fath. Siren are also sounding in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Explosions in the air have been reported by witnesses on the ground.”
UPDATE: The attack seems to have been a whole lot of not much — half a dozen or so missiles, all intercepted.
🔴Just as I posted earlier, this was all a show (a very weak show) for the propaganda machine of Iran. 10 missiles launched, most intercepted. No injuries or casualties. If this is what the “gate of hell” looks like. We are in good shape. https://t.co/Qk4N0Z3ot5
— Raylan Givens (@JewishWarrior13) June 23, 2025
But then there’s this:
The New York Times reports that Iran coordinated the missile attacks on the U.S. air base in Qatar with Qatari officials, providing advance warning to minimize casualties, according to three Iranian officials familiar with the plans.
— ILRedAlert (@ILRedAlert) June 23, 2025
It’s complicated, as they say.
GOODER AND HARDER, FUN CITY: Shocking poll shows Zohran Mamdani overtaking Andrew Cuomo in NYC’s ranked choice primary.
Lefty upstart Zohran Mamdani has leapfrogged over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the city’s ranked choice Democratic primary for mayor, according to a stunning new poll released Monday.
In its hypothetical initial round of voting, Cuomo’s lead shrinks to 3 percentage points, with 35% of likely Democratic voters supporting him compared to 32% for Mamdani and 13% for city Comptroller Brad Lander, the Emerson College Polling/Pix 11/The Hill survey found.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams follows with 8%, Scott Stringer 3% and 5% split between candidates Zellnor Myrie, Whitney Tilson, Jessica Ramos and Michael Blake, with another 4% undecided.
But since no one garners the more than 50% of the vote needed to win outright, the ranked choice system kicks in. That means that even if a voter’s first choice is eliminated in successive rounds of calculations, their other picks could still be in the mix and emerge as the eventual overall winner.
Mamdani finally surpasses Cuomo in the eighth round of the simulated ranked choice voting — 51.8% to 48.2% — in the latest poll conducted June 18-20.
But these are just the preliminaries. As Jeffrey Blehar noted last week in a column titled, “I Love the New York City Mayoral Race,” “regardless of who actually wins the Democratic primary, this race will be rerun a few months from now in the general election:”
Yes, the New York mayoral race is exactly the sort of Carnival of Fools I live for, a circus of chaos with no heroes, not even protagonists, and no possible happy ending. And the best thing about it all is that this mess won’t even end on Tuesday night; in theory, that’s only when it begins. For one thing, the needlessly complex and misleading “ranked-choice” ballot adopted in 2021 likely ensures that it will be days before we know who has actually won the race. But even more ridiculous than that is the possibility that, once the race has been won, it will continue rolling onwards with the same cast of characters.
You see, because of New York’s ridiculous ballot access laws, Mamdani and Cuomo have already secured ballot lines for the November election — with different parties. (Cuomo has his own bespoke party line called “Fight and Deliver;” Mamdani will have the Working Families Party line handed to him if he wants it.) That means that regardless of who actually wins the Democratic primary, this race will be rerun a few months from now in the general election, this time with Republican Curtis Sliwa and the incumbent mayor himself also on the ballot splitting the vote. Perhaps one or the other will drop out before then — if Cuomo is humiliated on Tuesday, I’m not sure how he can remain in the race — but the potential for an epically disastrous four-car electoral pileup in November remains tantalizingly close.
And I’ll admit that, at this point, I’m rooting for it. I’m rooting for it as only a Chicagoan can: as an embittered man who watched his own city decline over the last 20 years, mayor by mayor, until we voted to commit suicide in the spring of 2023 by electing Brandon Johnson.
John Nolte adds, “should Mamdani win, he would make former Democrat Mayor Bill DeBlasio look like Barry Goldwater. Mamdani is a bona fide socialist who has promised disastrous rent freezes, despises Israel, would almost certainly kill any kind of school reform or choice, tie the hands of the police, and is anti-business. Mamdani is a radical activist who doesn’t hide his radical activism. New York is already in desperate straits and he would drive this once great city right to its knees.”
Hey, speaking of DeBlasio: 10 Questions With Zohran Mamdani. Including:
2. Who was the best New York City mayor in your lifetime?
In my lifetime? Bill de Blasio.
Plan accordingly, New Yorkers:
MAKING ARGENTINA GREAT AGAIN: Common Sense Gun Reform: Argentina’s Milei Opens Semi-Auto Gun Ownership to the Masses.
BLOOMBERG: Iran Stands Alone Against Trump and Israel, Stripped of Allies.
Iran’s leaders are discovering they’re on their own against the US and Israel, without the network of proxies and allies that allowed them to project power in the Middle East and beyond.
As the Islamic Republic confronts its most perilous moment in decades following the bombing of its nuclear facilities ordered by US President Donald Trump, Russia and China are sitting on the sidelines and offering only rhetorical support. Militia groups Iran has armed and funded for years are refusing or unable to enter the fight in support of their patron.
No, there are few allies left:
And: Tucker Carlson Plays Gotcha with Sen. Cruz on Iran.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN):
China: "Do not close the Strait of Hormuz"
Russia: "Israel is kind of a Russian country, so we're not intervening"
Hezbollah: "We don't have hands, eyes or dicks, so we can't help you but good luck bro" pic.twitter.com/yi0FJW5ed1
— 𝗡𝗶𝗼𝗵 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗴 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) June 23, 2025
VICTORIA TAFT: I Guess We Know Who Learned a Lesson From That Signalgate ‘Scandal’ … and It Wasn’t the Democrats. “Jeffrey Goldberg wasn’t on the Signal chat this time; hell, there wasn’t even a Signal chat between Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and top defense officials that we know of leading up to the Iran nuclear strike on Saturday night. The operational security surrounding the meticulously planned and flawlessly orchestrated strikes on Iran was on such close hold that they were over and our bombers out of Iranian airspace before the mullahs knew about it.”
ROGER KIMBALL: On Iran, trust Trump’s instincts: Those who compare Trump’s actions to the ‘forever wars’ have seriously misjudged him.
What now?
After the daring and what everyone is describing as a “flawlessly executed” attack by the United States on Iran’s hardened nuclear facilities Saturday night, Macbeth’s words must be on the minds of many: “If it were done when ’tis done, then ‘twere well / It were done quickly.”
Things did not work out so well for the Thane of Cawdor, as Macbeth then was. But even though his attack was not “the be-all and the end-all” he wanted, everyone who wishes for peace must second his opening argument. With the ground prepared by Israel, the United States mounted Operation Midnight Hammer, a stealthy and precisely targeted attack against the infernal workshops of a terrorist state dedicated to the destruction of “The Great Satan” (America) and “The Little Satan” (Israel).
The stealth, by the way, was not confined to America’s B2 bombers. Part of that equation was Trump’s cunning declaration a few days back that he would decide about whether to launch an attack against Iran’s atomic-bomb making facilities “within two weeks.” That declaration disappointed those hoping for an early kinetic response by the United States. Doubtless, it also encouraged the Mullahs, who must have concluded that Trump was cut from the same cloth as many of his predecessors. In fact, the “two weeks” gambit was but a ruse de guerre.
In the event, Trump’s attack was breathtakingly robust. More than a dozen 30,000-pound “bunker-buster bombs” and a passel of submarine-launched cruise missiles smashed into their targets. That’s a big wallop. Was it sufficient unto the day? Did it, as President Trump declared Saturday night, “completely and totally” obliterate the hardened atomic-bomb-making facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan? Or did it merely damage and degrade them? We do not know yet. Nor do we know whether Iran has other such sites up its turban-topped sleeve.
It is worth stressing that the attack was not directed at Iranian cities (as Iranian attacks against Israel invariably are) or even against the Iranian military writ large. It was directed at the atomic-bomb making facilities that Iran has consistently lied about possessing.
Did it work? Is it done now ’tis done? Or was it merely the opening act to further bloodshed in the Middle East or even, as Steve Bannon and others have warned, the commencement of World War III?
Again, we do not know yet. There has been lots of talk about Iranian terrorist attacks in response. Sunday morning, the IRGC Commander Tahdar Tangsiri promised that “The Strait of Hormuz will be closed in a few hours.” Since a goodly percentage of the world’s oil flows through that channel, its closure would be economically unsettling and politically disruptive at best. It would also, as a canny blogger noted, be a “suicide mission” for Iran.
Both President Trump and Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth have promised that any retaliation by Iran would be met instantly by an overwhelming response. Is that a recipe for escalation? Or, as it would be for most sane people, is it a prescription for resignation and tranquillity? Again, we do not know yet.
At this early juncture, I would say that there are encouraging signs. Most of Europe and the mid-East seem to be quietly behind Trump and Israel. They have long suffered from the Shia terrorist state and would be happy to see it declawed. Even Russia, traditionally an Iranian ally, has been notably reticent about declaring support for Iran or criticizing Israel or the United States.
Most critics of Trump’s actions invoke such disasters as America’s failed regime-changing adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan in their gloomy prognosis about what to expect in the aftermath of Trump’s attack. But just as generals are often criticized for fighting the last war, so I suspect that many critics of Trump’s action are dazzled by past conflicts. They are caught fighting old battles, not the new ones that confront us now. But Donald Trump is not Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, or George Bush (either of them). Nor is Iran Iraq or Afghanistan.
As with all contingent events, the results of Saturday’s attacks are unknown. But if they exceed our knowledge, they are not beyond the contemplation of our practical wisdom, which conjures with probabilities and likelihoods, not certainties.
Perhaps Donald Trump let the genie of war out of its bottle with his effort to end Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Or perhaps the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, was right in describing Midnight Hammer as “a pivot of history that can help lead the Middle East and beyond to a future of prosperity and peace.”
In any event, I think that those who compare Trump’s actions to the “forever wars” of the neoconservatives have seriously misjudged him. Trump is above all the peace president.
He realizes, though, that in the words of Keith Laumer, there’s nothing so peaceful as a dead troublemaker.
HMM:
This would usually mean an attack is expected soon. https://t.co/6unRszjP6N
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 23, 2025
More: “Qatar did not take the decision to close its airspace lightly; over a dozen inbound aircraft have been forced to divert, and dozens more are currently grounded at Doha’s Hamad International Airport.”
Developing…
Update: “Airspace over the U.S. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar has been officially closed, per a newly issued NOTAM.”
STAY DRY: Repel Umbrella – Windproof Travel Umbrellas for Rain. #CommissionEarned
JENNIFER GRIFFIN: “In 18 Years, I’ve Never Seen Such Operational Security.”
The other thing I can point out is that this is an operation—in the last 18 years since I’ve been at the Pentagon—I’ve never seen such operational security. There was nobody speaking about this, any of the preparations. There was a complete lockdown—almost a blackout—of information for the last few days.
I’m sitting here in the Pentagon right now. I can tell you the hallways are empty. All of the information is coming right now out of the White House. That is a significant achievement because there were no leaks about the timing.
Trump 47 runs a much tighter ship.
BE GENTLE, HE’S LOST A LOT OF FRIENDS IN THE LAST WEEK OR SO: Barack Obama Lets the Mask Slip Again.
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