Still Vile

Plus Good News from Around the World

This week is going to be agonizing and I’m going to spare you the agony, or try to. There is endless speculation about how—not whether, but how—the Dems push Joe Biden out. Jonathan Martin best sums up the state of play in Politico. There are rumors aplenty. This is going to get boring fast, and frustrating too. So I’m going to spare you all the hugger-mugger…until something decisive happens—or something important and tangential that you may have missed. For example, if you didn’t see Trump’s Independence Day—Independence Day, mind you—Untruth Social blast, please read it below. It’s important, even as we’re fixating on Biden, to remember what a vile human Agent Orange is:

Happy Fourth of July to all, including to our highly incapable "President," who uses Prosecutors to go after his Political Opponent, who choked like a dog during the Debate but tried to pretend it was "International Travel" (only 12 days rest!) and, when that gig was up, he blamed it on a "cold." Therefore, why would anyone say he's cognitively challenged? Also, respects to our potentially new Democrat Challenger, Laffin Kamala Harris. She did poorly in the Democrat Nominating process, starting out at Number Two, and ending up defeated and dropping out, even before getting to lowa, but that doesn't mean she's not a "highly talented" politician! Just ask her Mentor, the Great Willie Brown of San Francisco. Someone else that I have to compliment is a Deranged Biden Prosecutor named Jack Smith, who has become a Legend in his own mind for all of those cases he has lost. The Corrupt Prosecutors are working hard for Crooked Joe, but it will never be enough - MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Several things of interest here:

1. The man has absolutely nothing good to say about the greatest nation on Earth on our birthday. Never does.

2. Note the sly Kamala-Willie Brown reference. They had a romantic relationship back in the day, when she was single. Kamala never paid Brown hush money to keep shtum about it, though. Brown, by the way, was a brilliant pol…though smudged by allegations of corruption during his years as Mayor of San Francisco and Speaker of the California House. But he was never charged with anything. The important thing is, Trump is preparing his lines of attack against Harris…just in case.

Great, Great Britain

A number of things make me very happy about Keir Starmer’s Labour victory in the UK. Anne Applebaum does an admirable job summing it up: Starmer is a no-drama moderate from a working class background. He did a fine job clearing the left-wing trash from Labour’s ranks, especially the vestigial socialist Jew-Hater Jeremy Corbyn. I especially like the team Starmer brings with him. Here’s Applebaum on David Lammy, the new Foreign Minister:

Lammy’s parents arrived in Britain as part of the postwar wave of Caribbean immigrants. He was raised by a single mother in a poor London neighborhood, but eventually acquired a master’s degree from Harvard Law School, where he met Barack Obama. He will be, he often says, “the first foreign secretary descended from the slave trade.”

Hip, hip hurrah and all that!

France Bravo!

The defeat of Marine LaPen’s Vichy right is delightful. The success of the silly left, not so much. But it should be noted, as Bill Kristol points out, that the Left’s success was due to centrists dropping out of races where they were running third, in order to strengthen the left and defeat the right. Biden’s folks will likely take the results in Britain and France—and Iran (see below)—as signs of a global leftish resurgence and say, see: They always underestimate us here, too. That’s the wrong lesson, as is Biden’s intent on staying in the race. Kristol:

Biden’s answer is the answer a third-place finisher could have given in France as his reason to stay in. It wouldn’t have been the right answer in France. It’s not the right answer in the United States.

Iran—Don’t Get Your Hopes Up

The first time I visited Iran, Mohammed Khatami, a reformer, was President. It didn’t make any difference. The Supreme Leader and Revolutionary Guard ran the show. The second time I visited Iran, the Green movement was surging and Mir-Hussein Moussavi, a reformer, was elected President, only to have the election stolen from him and handed to the dreadful puppet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (I was told, gently but firmly, to leave the country immediately.)

Now, another reformer has been elected. Masoud Pezeshkian sounds like a great guy, a heart doctor—and, as with Starmer, has surrounded himself with some good people like Javad Zarif, a member of Iran’s minuscule official Sanity Caucus. But I’m not expecting any major changes. Allowing a reformer to run—which the Guardian Council does from time to time—is a ploy, a safety valve to placate the public. As I’ve written here and in The New Yorker in the past, Iran is a very sad and lovely place, my favorite country in the region. It has a large middle class and an educated populace, an ancient culture and intriguing cuisine, an ironic sensibility. It is controlled by a cruel military dictatorship which uses religiosity as a fig leaf. When I’d ask Iranians, Who actually runs this country? The reply, inevitably, was the dark forces. And allowing the election of Pezeshkian seems very much a dark forces sort of move. I can’t imagine the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) will allow any real reforms….but there are a couple of near-term things to watch: Will the IRGC promote or tamp down the looming war between Hizballah and Israel? Who will succeed the ailing Khamenei as Supreme Leader? Pezeshkian, a widower, campaigned with his daughter, who was in hijab—will the regime allow the lifting, or non-enforcement, of the hijab law?

I’ve always dreamed of taking Sanity Goddess, an intrepid traveler, to Isfahan, the Iranian city of the Jews. We would sit in a cafe on the banks of Zayandeh Rud and recite Rumi together. But a much more important dream: that the Iranian people will one day be free.

Pitch

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