Only in America Only in America is the unduly elected President of Iran given a podium and interviews on news channels as though he is a legitimate head of state. Of course he doesn’t want to develop a nuclear bomb and is a victim of terrorism, according to his interviews. And only at the UN do people walk out on the only duly elected head of state in the MidEast while sitting in reverence (with the exception of the US) for the Iranian leader responsible the the executions of its own citizens en mass. The Argentinian leader said it best: “The alleged defenders of human rights have sheltered bloodthirsty dictatorships and regimes that stone women in the streets. They have systematically voted against Israel while remaining silent in the face of Islamic terrorism and the genocide of Christians in Africa.”

Yom Kippur Hit Piece So I’m reading my am emails and come across this Politico playbook and start reading about this guy who is in the state department and he is soliciting cash from Israeli citizens. Wow this sounds serious. I imagined a guy visiting people with a bag shaking them down for cash. Then as I read through it, it turns out he sent out an email as part of his wedding to tell his invited guests IF they are giving gifts here is how you do it. (so they don’t bring cash). It wasn’t anything like the headline pretended. Then the article goes on to trash the guy from a bunch of anonymous sources. And the guy sent out a later email telling people to disregard if not close family. And so I’m wondering what exactly is this? An article on a guy’s wedding invite is blown up to an international incident and depicted as sinister? Then I see Huckabee’s name is sprinkled liberally. And then that the subject is Mark Levin’s stepson, so now I get it. And so I start to click on the supporting links for this obvious trash — and the first link is from an article in a Quincy Institute publication (Responsible Statesman) — since when does Politico regard them as reliable sources? It’s especially odd that this urgent story about a wedding invite was launched on Yom Kippur.

The Midterm Squeeze It’s kind of obvious that Iran has about 40 or so days it believes it and its proxies can advance without facing all-out response from the US and its neighbors because of fear of pushing the midterms against the administration. They are advancing boldly in every direction including supporting Houthi aggression to capture more sea lanes and put pressure on Saudi Arabia to opt for ceasefires rather than battle it out. Iran also knows the day after the midterms all bets are off and they are likely to face the full weight of the American armada so they need a deal now. The last time the president unleashed US bombers against the Houthis it was incredibly effective and halted their aggression. Iran may simply have overplayed its hand and the President has the choice of either going along with Pakistan and Turkey to agree to a bad deal that would breathe life into Iran and its proxies or resume military action and blunt the Houthi advance. It’s really not a choice at this point. And people may just vote for a side that does the right thing even at a political cost rather than sit by. The Houthis could control all of Yemen and destroy Saudi oil fields if allowed to go unchecked for 40 plus days at their current rate of advance. So definitely the midnight oil is burning in the situation room and the question is whether we will take another bad deal, let the Houthis take over, or step up and blunt them.

Unbelievable So Democrats like Abdul El-Sayed have campaigned with Hasan Piker whose most recent rant included: “Because I’m in the United States of America, the most dogshit country on the fucking planet, the absolute worst country on the planet, straight up, bar none. A capitalist shithole. The absolute worst fuckin’ place on the planet, just a horrific, monstrous, awful, dogshit country that I fucking despise.” And so how is it possible that any candidate in 2026 of any party would go within 100 feet of someone so demonstrably anti-American and so hateful towards the very country that gives him a platform.

Interest rate catastrophe Well the replacement for Jerome Powell is worse than Jerome Powell. The inflation we are facing is caused by inflated oil prices from Mideast tensions. No amount of rate increases is going to have any effect on the oil prices unless it was big enough to stall the economy and throw a lot of people out of work. And what would be the point of that? Inflation will drop soon after the midterms when the war is resolved. And once the midterms are over the Iranians know the gloves will be coming off. And oil prices won’t change until that happens — all rate increases will do is making it more difficult for ordinary mortgage paying Americans. And then the Fed will have overshot because it takes many months to lower them again.

Raising Rates Raising rates is a medium term strategy for the economy that takes time to implement, take effect and reverse. The economy in terms of growth and employment is relatively strong and the Mideast tensions and transitory gas price increases slow not grow the economy. Therefore rate increases in response will do nothing to curb inflation which will cool when the conflict cools and only damage the economy further. The problem is not excess demand but Iranian intransigence and raising rates only helps the Iranians. The right response is to hold in place until the Mideast situation clarifies and when it does rates can come down.

Osama Bin Laden I remember a call I got at 1 am in 1998 from President Clinton who explained that there was this “really bad dude” named Osama Bin Laden and that they had intelligence on his location. They knew even then of his evil nature and its potential. He decided to launch the missiles but they missed hitting Bin Laden. If only they had taken him out then as the President tried, 9/11 might never have happened. So when I see college Democrats of many colleges inviting Hasan Piker, a celebrity influencer riding a social-media fueled wave of outlandish comments, including how “America deserved 9/11” I wonder how this generation that did not live through these terrible events in which terrorists planned and executed the mass murder of 3000 civilians and almost destroyed the Capitol, can possibly welcome and cheer someone with these views. On this 25th Anniversary of this terrible event, it is a time to honor those who lost their lives that day who in no way deserved their fate and to double down on stopping the next generation of terrorists because stopping them early — if you can — saves lives later.

Iran Desperate The actions of Iran seem desperate. They are doing Hail Mary attacks on US ships and soldiers that are failing. Clearly they think that if just one missile gets through and sinks a US ship or hits a base that the resulting outcry in the midterms would cause the US to pull back out of political fall out. They misjudge this president. If that occurred he would not pull back but instead unleash hell on them. He is showing restraint now and giving them every opportunity to give up and they seem instead to be lashing out in ways that indicate underlying weakness caused by the past military strikes and the blockade that is choking them off from the world economy .

Socialism and the dumbest generation: Young people embrace an ideology that goes against everything they actually believe, write @Mark_Penn and Andrew Stein on.wsj.com/46Nn5h8

Protecting Students or Teachers The NYC mayor and schools chancellor announced a total ban on the use of student facing AI to keep doing what works. What works? There has been a massive drop in nyc student reading scores. This is not a ban on students using AI in their homes — it is a ban on using AI tutors and programs to help students learn. It’s obvious that personalized AI tutors could be a huge boon to education in New York where many schools are failing. But for now that’s not for NYC students. And their fate will be determined by a committee that includes, according to the official nyc press release, “students, educators, parent leaders, elected officials, advocates, union partners and experts in the field.” So experts are an afterthought while “union partners” are on it to protect the unions and their power which would obviously be eroded by the success of AI tutoring and teaching. So quick headline readers think this is great — kids will be learning and not using AI. No, they will still be using AI at home. They and their teachers will be blocked, however, from learning with tailored AI learning programs that can revolutionize learning. When you actually read that the future of NYC’s kids are turned over to a union-infused commissariat-like committee you see kids being held back for a very different agenda.

Iran Again Iran again explicitly threatens the world economy if they do not get their way and control the Strait. They have shown that they will do whatever it takes to hold on to power through military force whether it is killing and executing their own people, firing missiles against all of their neighbors. Hostage taking is how they started and how they survive. It is a shame that Europe has not joined in the face of these actions and instead bolsters this illegal and unsupported regime. The sanctions and blockades seem to be working on some level but it just may not be enough and it will take a round of well-planned kinetic activity to bring down this leadership and deal with the next set. History shows that no regime can survive military defeat no matter what their propaganda or how entrenched they seem.

AES Apology So AES said: My comments may have been misconstrued to justify something I did not mean to justify,” El-Sayed told reporters after he addressed the caucus at a party convention in Lansing. “To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention.” AP credits him with an “apology” to Jewish voters. I read it as “sorry” if you were someone who “misconstrued” his comments. That means his comments —which any rational person would interpret as serving to excuse the synagogue attack by a crazed individual driving a vehicle into a school with 140 kids there — still stand. He is sorry you misconstrued them — a classic non apology, apology.

Boomerang Possibilities So first Jon Ossoff makes this unfair attack on Natalie Harp, the bone cancer survivor who helps the President with social media. It gets transmitted everywhere though it was decisively shot down. Then Abdul El-Sayed attacks JD Vance’s wife Usha with some fictitious reference to what Vance’s grandfather might have done, implying someone he never even met was a racist. And what was ever the point of that attack. So one wonders what is going on here — have they run out of attacks on the President and Vice President so they need to invoke wives, staff members and grand dads? Or this is their way of getting social media hits and responses when their click rates are flagging? Either way, women voters are watching. And likely they are beginning to see a pattern.

Was skeptical I was skeptical that economic action alone could bring Iran into line but progress does seem to be occurring with a clear split in the leadership. They all play games and put their death ideology above any concerns for their people so it is still hard to know if real progress is being made. But it looks like it is having an effect and they know that once the midterms are over, the president will not face any constraints so they need to resolve it beforehand. Clearly though the president has extended the game but is not giving up in any fashion to open the Strait and end their nuclear program. But Hamas and Hezbollah can’t be left in place and funded by them or everything will just slip back to disorder and war over time.

Fake Polls I guess a subset of Fake News is now Fake Polls. Who knows what there real objective was, but they easily exposed the weakness of our current social and news media systems as a never before heard of company (Meridian Strategies) easily penetrated the Fake News ecosystem and got wide circulation primarily through social media with outlier polls that didn’t exist. Real Clear Polling didn’t fall for the it nor did Associated Press but they didn’t shoot them down either. Guess the question it posed is what we all suspect — how much of what is consumed through social media is fake and seeks into the brains of particularly young people. Answer:a lot.

Moderates to the mattresses Low turnout obscure primaries and the socialists win and they have been allowed to bottom fish in our cities to take over many spots starting with DA offices. Many of those races had less than 10 per cent turnout. AOC won her first Congressional race with 16,000 votes in a district of 715,000. But high turnout races and if the moderates fight back they can retake the party and stem the tide of the DSA takeover. Polls showing overwhelming victories of DSA in big races were mirages to disorient the competition which in some cases even suspended campaigns. They predicted small, socialist led turnout not broader participation. And the more people know about this anti-American cabal, the more even Democrats will turn them back and out. Open borders, defunding the police and prisons, and government takeover of healthcare and not popular positions and even Woke 2 is not unstoppable.

Something not adding up So we have intelligence that Iran was seeking to blow up Air Force One and kill the President. And this President is going to let those folks off the hook? Let them control the Strait, seek a nuclear weapon and fund terrorism across the region. I don’t know what the plan is but I would not write life insurance policies on the people who were going to assassinate this president. One caveat — the president has to be wary of Pakistan urging negotiations. They are really a stalking horse for a potential Turkey/Pakistan/Iran alliance that would bolster a legion of autocrats and theocrats ruling by force. The more he creates the illusion that Iran will survive this, the more Saudis and the others would rather have what they think is an insurance policy from Teheran rather than bring it down. Once he stopped to negotiate, he legitimized the new rulers of Iran and shifted the whole dynamic from all the gulf against Iran to the all but US alone. Maybe it will be after the midterms but I just don’t think the president is going to forget a few assassination attempts here and just move on. He knows he won’t be safe until this regime is gone.

Decision Time Clearly there is no deal with Iran that Iran will and can cooperate with. The military is in control of Iran and they have not been defeated and they are smart negotiators. This was headed for a likely favorable resolution until April 2 when the administration signaled weakness. Since then this has devolved into a mess in which the IRGC, which was confined to caves, was allowed to come out, execute their own people, take control and rebuild their command structure. The US was once again about to take control of the situation and now this is really down to responding forcefully and unrelentingly to the IRGC or give up and withdraw leaving the Mideast in the hands of Iran and setting the region up for future wars. It’s a clear choice. There is no deal outside of our surrender and courage is defined by operating out of principle not politics.