Jun
16
2026

Iran, So Far Away

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Take it away, Andy McCarthy: Trump’s Iran Deal: Billions Up Front for Leading State Sponsor of Terrorism. (NR gifted link)

Not surprisingly, the Trump administration is still not publicizing its memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the jihadist Iranian regime.

It is laughable, of course, to speak of an agreement (or “understanding”) with Iran, which has a long, undeniable history of breaking agreements, in particular about its nuclear weapons ambitions. And while President Trump either doesn’t grasp or can’t be bothered to address the regime’s ideology, a core principle of sharia supremacism, including Iran’s Shiite version, is that lying to the enemy is a key part of warfare (“War is deception,” said Islam’s prophet in an oft-quoted hadith). This, for example, is why — even as the overwhelming evidence shows it was advancing its nuclear weapons program — the regime insisted that its leader, the now-departed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had issued a fatwa (a sharia law edict) against nuclear weapons. This would have been hilarious had not the Obama administration adopted it as part of its rationalization for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

It appears I was wrong about this being a good idea. It appears to have been a stupid idea, ineptly carried out, an expensive failure that leaves us worse off than before.

Yes, we managed to blow up some bad guys. I don't think we blew up enough of them.

Also of note:

  • In other stupid news… James Bacchus analyzes Trump's Trade Delusion: Why Dismissing Canada and Mexico Echoes a Dynasty's Downfall.

    In yet another of his unending twists on trade, President Donald Trump has suggested he may not renew the current United States trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. Especially interesting was one of his explanations of why. “We don’t need anything that Canada has; we don’t need anything that Mexico has, but they need everything that we have, and they have to treat us better,” said Trump. “We don’t need their cars; we don’t need their lumber; we don’t need their energy; we don’t need anything that they have.”

    According to the numbers from April of this year, Canada is the leading trading partner of the US in imports and exports of goods, totaling $86 billion. Mexico ranks second, totaling $64.8 billion in two-way goods trade with the US. Overall, the regional economic integration of the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (formerly the North American Free Trade Agreement before Trump made a few changes in it and relabeled it as the USMCA in his first presidential term) has made all three parties to the agreement more competitive domestically and internationally.

    Are you comfortable with any president decreeing what the American people "need"? Especially when that conflicts with the preferences they express in voluntary, peaceful marketplace exchange?

  • Looking at a different clown at a different circus. Matthew Hennessey attended so you didn't have to. And in observing one clown, concluded: Robert De Niro Hates America.

    While crowds on the White House lawn were cheering the Navy Blue Angels and Air Force Thunderbirds Sunday night, actor Robert De Niro was strafing his once-beloved country.

    His Committee for the First Amendment staged a resistance concert/rally at a small theater in New York. The anti-Trump Committee calls itself “a large collective of artists, storytellers, and cultural leaders.”

    Before going any further I want to register my absolute disgust at the use of the word “collective.” Be a group. Be an organization. Don’t be a collective. It makes you sound like a bunch of communists. I realize some of Mr. De Niro’s friends might not mind leaving that impression. They should.

    The Committee is composed primarily of entertainment-industry types. They say they are “standing together to defend free expression against government repression, industry complicity, and intimidation.” That’s a serious mandate. You might even call it self-serious.

    I may have said this before, but: De Niro deserves an Oscar. For any movie in which he portrays a decent human being.

  • Speaking of collectives… Erick Erickson looks at the reaction to the SpaceX IPO: The Committee Cannot Forgive a Verdict It Didn’t Cast. Erick notes, as Pun Salad has, the IPO's creation of 4,400 new (on paper) millionaires. And also that one trillionaire, Emmanuel Goldstein Elon Musk.

    Instead of celebrating the broadest single-day creation of working-class wealth in living memory, the prominent voices of the Left reached for the pitchfork. Elizabeth Warren, who had already begged the SEC to delay the offering, announced that the typical American household would have to work “more than 11 million years” to match Musk, and demanded a wealth tax.

    Bernie Sanders denounced Musk and his “fellow oligarchs,” dusting off the 5 percent annual wealth levy he and Ro Khanna have floated for months.

    Ro Khanna pronounced the system “rigged.” “Wall street folks are celebrating Elon Musk for creating 4,400 millionaires. Fine. Did any of them celebrate Joe Biden IRA, ARP, CHIPS for creating millions of good paying jobs? Our barometer should be opportunity & stability for the majority, not simply wealth for the few,” Khanna tweeted. Those programs, by the way, have only created 335,000 jobs so far, with most being generous long term projections and done by putting the American public further into national debt, driving up costs to our children. Also, we should remember that when Pete Buttigieg was handed billions of dollars to build roads and bridges, he decided to use the money, instead, to tear down systemic racism.

    Erick goes on to look at the Iran "deal", and he's not a fan either.

  • Looking for a pony in this room filled with manure? Sorry, the best I can do is Matt Ridley, who has a little good news: An amateur sleuth is singlehandedly demolishing dangerous scientific groupthink.

    Sholto David is a Newcastle University graduate who has made a name for himself as a “scientific sleuth”. Last year, he brought a case against the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston that resulted in a $15m (£11m) settlement of fraud allegations with the US Department of Justice.

    Now he has found an astonishingly amateurish error in cancer studies across the world. The implications for public trust in science of this and other scandals are increasingly alarming.

    In hundreds of studies that David looked at, scientists claimed to have found an effect on a tumour-suppressing gene called p16-INK4a, but had instead ordered the wrong antibody from commercial suppliers. They had bought an antibody that detects the activity of a different and irrelevant gene called p16-ARC, probably because it’s listed alphabetically first in the online catalogue.

    As a result, teams of scientists from Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and even Wuhan have published results—often in high-impact journals—that make no sense. Yet the experts involved often claimed to have validated their hypotheses anyway.

    You may know that Mark Twain didn't say, "Never read medical books. You might die of a misprint." Today's corollary is: "Never believe medical studies. You might die of a mistaken antibody order."

    But going back to Matt's first paragraph:

    I've given Dana-Farber/Jimmy Fund (what I consider to be) a decent sum of money over the years.

    However, that sum is a drop in the bucket compared to the $15 million that Dana-Farber had to pay the Feds.

    But in other news, I gave enough to get an invite to a free Red Sox game against the Nationals later this month. The Sox are firmly in the basement of the AL East standings, but I hope to have a good time anyway.