Iran Is Betting America Will Cut And Run

American Thinker   

"Iran has not won. But neither has its will been broken. It is time to finish the job."

"Iran has stymied the United States for the moment, even though, by almost any conventional measure, it should be decisively defeated. The American people grudgingly believed their president when he said the conflict would be over quickly. Unfortunately, the enemy got their vote.

"Let there be no mistake: Iran has not achieved any victory, much less a military one. It has suffered hundreds of billions in damage and a decimated pool of former leaders. Yet, like a punch-drunk fighter, it still stands. Don’t confuse defiance for victory, though.

"Iran’s strategy isn’t about defeating America, but surviving long enough to see America’s political will fracture, as it repeatedly does. America, with Israel’s willing help, has the military ability and logistics to destroy much of Iran’s ability to make war. What it lacks is the political freedom to use that power without domestic and international consequences.

"Iran’s risk calculation differs from ours. The Islamic Republic’s revolutionary leadership operates within a religious worldview that anticipates the eventual return of the Hidden Imam, the 12th Imam, and the triumph of divine justice.

"There have long been allegations that some senior Iranian officials believe creating conditions favorable to the Mahdi’s return is essential. That does not mean Iran necessarily seeks nuclear Armageddon or that its leaders are suicidal. It does mean we should be circumspect about a regime with an intensely religious conception of history and destiny." . . .More

Democrats have advocated cut and run since the Civil War and Vietnam.  In 1861-65 we had the peace Democrats - Copperheads, who have been willing to walk away from our dead, even collaborating with those who slew them. TD

Lindsay Clancy, Motherhood, and a Culture That Has Forgotten Sacrifice |

"The disturbing reaction to the Massachusetts murder trial reveals a culture increasingly estranged from an enduring truth about parenthood: to love another person is to sacrifice for them."

The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

"Ultimately, that’s what love is: sacrifice. Christ provided the perfect and ultimate example of love when He lay … scourged and shredded … upon the cross."

"The case of Massachusetts woman Lindsay Clancy has garnered national attention, in no small degree due to the alarming surge of women online and outside the courthouse expressing “solidarity” with and support for Clancy, who is on trial for the brutal murder of her three children, ages three, five, and eight. Clancy has admitted in court to taking each of the children into the basement, one by one, and strangling them to death with exercise bands.

"The trial has led a number of clearly unstable women to post TikTok and Instagram videos of themselves angrily screeching and hurling ice into bathtubs while their children cower in the background in fear and confusion or, perhaps even more disturbingly, clutching their young children with the words “Same, Lindsay” superimposed over the video.

"There is much debate and discussion, in the wake of the trial, over postpartum depression, the pharmaceutical industry, and the social contagion effects of brain-rotting, attention-whoring social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, but I’m not here to weigh in on any of that. As a father and a Catholic, my own attention has been arrested by the fact that many American women seem to have forgotten one of the most fundamental aspects of motherhood. No doubt the prevalence of abortion over the past number of decades has played a role in this.

"St. Josemaría Escrivá, the 20th century Spanish priest who encouraged laity and clergy alike to pursue holiness in everyday, once wrote, simply, “The way of love is called sacrifice.” Every mother and father is called to sacrifice for his or her children. While abortion and contraception may declare children to be an inconvenience to be disposed of or prevented, Christianity instead encourages parents to embrace parenthood as Christ embraced the cross. St. Francis De Sales urged his fellow Catholics, “Lovingly kiss the crosses that our Lord Himself lays upon your arms, without looking to see whether they are of precious or aromatic wood. They are more truly crosses when they are made of a wood that smells dirty and is considered useless.”

"Parenthood is a sublime joy. My wonderful wife and I have a beautiful baby girl, nearly two years old, and we are expecting her baby brother later this year. My daughter has brought so much joy and meaning and purpose to my life. Parenthood can also, I know, be a trial. At such times, however, every mother and father ought to, in the words of Christ Himself, “take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24)." . . . More.

Knowing what Hamas did to the Bibas children, spare me the "crying for help" stories.TD

National Geographic Just Rebuilt the Titanic in 3D

 Hidden Earth

715,000 Images Revealed What Really Happened

"More than a century after Titanic sank, National Geographic revealed the wreck in unprecedented detail using a full-scale digital reconstruction built from 715,000 photographs, millions of laser measurements, and 16 terabytes of data.

"The scan was created from a 2022 expedition by Magellan using two remotely operated vehicles, Romeo and Juliet. For three weeks, they mapped the wreck site around the clock, capturing enough data to build a one-to-one digital twin of Titanic. "In this video, you’ll discover: 🔹 What the new scan reveals about Titanic’s violent breakup 🔹 How an open steam valve supports accounts of the engineering crew’s final actions 🔹 What a lifeboat davit may reveal about First Officer William Murdoch 🔹 Why the iceberg damage may have been smaller—and deadlier—than popular recreations suggest 🔹 How personal objects still lie across the debris field 🔹 Why the digital twin may become the most important permanent record of Titanic The real wreck is slowly collapsing. Steel is weakening, decks are failing, and recognizable features are disappearing. That means this scan is more than a reconstruction—it preserves Titanic as it existed in 2022, before more of the wreck is lost forever. "After 715,000 images and millions of measurements, researchers may still have only begun to understand what is hidden inside the data."

If Sex Matters in Women’s Sports, It Matters in Women’s Prisons

 The American Spectator

"Women’s rights should not depend on their location, their status, or the trending mood of popular think tanks." 

"Recently, The Center for American Progress put out a policy paper that talks about restrictions on transgender participation in sports. This has been a hot topic recently, as WNBA player Sophie Cunningham has been dominating the headlines with her stance that men should not be permitted to play in the women’s category. This paper, however, does not resolve the debate of whether or not biological sex should be the decision-making factor in participation in women’s sports. What it is admitting is that sex should be given fair review in at least one setting. But if sex matters in athletics, shouldn’t it matter in other intimate spaces as well?

"There is a demographic that has no voice and is forcibly subjected to sex-based protections. The demographic in question? The women in our nation’s prisons. These vulnerable women who have already survived abuses of every kind are now living with, showering with, and serving their sentences with male prisoners — no questions asked. One of the most common misconceptions about this is the proximity male inmates have to female inmates. There is no separation. There is no specialized housing unit for trans-identifying men. They are coming directly from men’s level 4 yards — meaning some of the highest security possible, some even from men’s death row — filtering directly into women’s general population. That means men coming from a security level that simply does not exist in any women’s prison, being housed with female prisoners who are levels 1-4. Historically, women, in most states, are not separated by security levels because there has never really been a need to do so.

"According to the California Department of Corrections website, there are currently 49 biological men housed in the state’s two women’s prisons, with 224 requests pending review. The convictions of the 49 biological men who have successfully transferred range from carjacking to rape by force or fear, and even include the murder of another inmate while in custody. These are the same people that the female inmates were told would not qualify for transfer. They were told the review process would be stringent and that there would be no risk of sexual predators or individuals with histories of violence against women slipping through the cracks." . . . More...

This Shocking Information About Karmelo Anthony Was Kept From the Jury

  RedState  

"He had a documented history of fighting, enough that his parents sent him to a special program at LSU for kids who “cannot keep their hands to themselves.” He was also obsessed with knives and guns and had fantasized about stabbing someone. Investigators found a text where he wrote: “when I stab somebody I am going to lick the blood off the blade.'” 

Karmelo Anthony threatened to 'shoot the school up' in shocking text kept from jury in Austin Metcalf murder trial. NY Post

"If you were hoping that you had heard the last of Karmelo Anthony, I've got some bad news for you.

"As a reminder, Anthony is the young man who was convicted in June of the stabbing death of 17-year-old Austin Metcalf at a high school track meet back in April of 2025. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison. 

"End of the story, right? Not so fast.

"Anthony's attorneys are now trying to get that conviction tossed out and want to secure him an entirely new trial. Hearings on that effort were held this week – and they have managed to surface some pretty shocking information that the jury never heard.

"Anthony apparently has a new legal team, and they are arguing that problems during his original trial deprived him of a fair proceeding. One blockbuster revelation this week was of an unusual, off-the-record agreement between prosecutors and his former defense attorneys to keep damaging information about both Anthony and Metcalf away from the jury.

The deal was “keep things clean,” prosecutor Bill Wirskye said from the stand as Anthony’s new attorney Russell Wilson grilled him about the alleged “shadow docket” Wilson claims corrupted the June proceedings.

"Wirskye also said of the agreement, "Let’s stay away from historical character and stick to the facts — what happened under the tent.”

"That "historical character" information was not withheld during this week's hearings, however, and the information about Karmelo's past behavior that was made public is shocking. He had once threatened to shoot up his high school.

Karmelo Anthony talked about shooting up his school in a trove of disturbing texts that a backroom deal kept out of the courtroom during his June murder trial, prosecutors said on Friday.

“”imma shoot the school up tmr,” Anthony wrote in a 2023 text that prosecutors revealed in Collin County, Texas, during a hearing to determine if Austin Metcalf’s convicted killer will be granted a new trial, according to WFAA. " . . .

More...

California regulates spare tires; "just another bureaucratic power grab in the name of saving the planet"

 Don Surber   

"Once again, the left created a problem out of thin air and gave only one solution—regulation. The left allowed no discussion of the validity of the problem and no discussion of alternative solutions."

. . . "36 years later, Barack Hussein Obama was serious when he said, “Making sure your tires are properly inflated, simple thing, but we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much.”

"By June 30, 2008, when he made the statement, most cars no longer needed tuneups. Even Fact-Check.org gagged on that claim that inflating tires would save the world saying, “Motorists could save more than 1 billion gallons of fuel a year, right now. But expanded offshore drilling would eventually produce even more.”

"A billion gallons of gasoline requires 50 million barrels of oil.

"But horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking had by 2012 added 550 million barrels of oil a year to American production.

18 years after Obama’s lame alternative to drilling—“we can’t drill our way out’’—the state of California is about to save the world by regulating spare tires, and not the kind some of us have around our waist.

"The California Energy Commission on Monday unanimously approved a new power to regulate spare tires using a 2003 law. The commission claims without independent verification that its Replacement Tire Efficiency Program will save Californians $1 billion a year on gasoline.

"(In snobby British accent) they spend $58 billion a year on petrol.

"The commission could save Californians $8 billion a year by eliminating gasoline taxes but then the state would have to cut back on handouts to the homeless and the illegal aliens that give it extra congressmen and extra federal funding.

"Regulating replacement tires would impose new costs. The commission says the costs will be but $1.50 a tire. OK, $6.50 tops." . . . More...

Bruce Springsteen was never just a blue collar rock star

 TheBRHM   

"Peel back “Born in the U.S.A.” from 1984 and what you find is stranger than any flag waving anthem. Reagan invoked Springsteen’s message of hope during that same election year and helped reinforce the mistaken belief that the song was a patriotic celebration. . ."   Never go to Springsteen for patriotism. TD

"Somewhere along the way a lot of critics decided who Bruce Springsteen was and quit paying attention. They handed the man a uniform. Blue collar poet. Bard of the assembly line. The voice of some guy clocking out at the plant with grease under his fingernails and a mortgage he will never beat. It was simply never the whole story, and the folks who stop there shortchange one of the most restless magpies American popular music ever produced. To hear the real thing, you have to go back to what raised him.

"Start at the foundation. Elvis. Roy Orbison. Phil Spector. Every one got into him early, long before he had anything of his own. Bruce once told a reporter he wanted “Born to Run” to sound like Roy Orbison singing Bob Dylan with Spector at the boards. “Thunder Road” is the proof, a harmonica and a slamming screen door swelling into something Spector would have wept over. Chuck Berry taught the rest, that a car in a song is never a car, it is a way out, and the kid just stomped the gas.

"Then the horn. Clarence Clemons mattered as much as any guitar in that lineup. His saxophone came out fat and cocksure, King Curtis all over it, a hundred old Stax sessions rattling underneath. Take “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out.” It struts like a revue, the lyric telling the group’s own origin story, gospel style, over a Memphis beat. When the aim is to gut you, Sam Cooke turns up in the phrasing. That whole Asbury Park world, the sticky boardwalk bars where the kid swapped licks with Southside Johnny, ran on rhythm and blues covers before anybody there wrote an original worth a damn.

"His earliest live tapes catch a kid steeped in chitlin circuit energy, with or without a name for it. Gary U.S. Bonds meant so much that decades later Springsteen helped produce the man’s comeback alongside Steven Van Zandt. “Quarter to Three,” that rowdy Bonds smash, stayed in his sets forever. No factory floor in it, just a room full of people losing their minds.

"Go to one of his shows and you are basically in church." . . . More...

TheBRHM.com is a hub for rock and heavy metal music from a Black perspective, spotlighting Black rock culture, classic and modern metal, album reviews, and underground artists for fans who live and breathe heavy music

Blame Truth for Jason Arday’s Death

I must blame fears of rioting and burning, women with bullhorns screaming "Jim Crow!", bitter accusations of racism from MSNOW, Sharpton, Joy Reid, The View ladies, and Democrats in Congress for this tragedy. TD

Richard Kirk

" . .  .there’s nothing funny about the political and cultural weaponization of race for the sake of an ideology that has largely ruined higher education and filled society with individuals and institutions willing to destroy anyone possessing the audacity to tell the truth."

"One of Seinfeld’s more poignant scenes revolved around the ambiguous pigment of Elaine’s latest boyfriend. Was he or was he not black? Jerry, Elaine, and George are pondering the question and wondering if they should be doing so. George says flatly that the discussion is not okay. Finally, when a black waitress arrives at the trio’s booth to deliver checks, all three frantically toss bills toward her in a visual demonstration of liberal guilt.

"Something similar is now transpiring in the case of Jason Arday, a Cambridge professor who recently committed suicide following exposure of his academic plagiarism and wildly fictitious life story. That story included, among other imagined hurdles and accomplishments, early autism, muteness till age eleven, illiteracy prior to age eighteen, teenage epilepsy spawned by a physical attack, a brain tumor experienced while writing his dissertation, a coma triggered by a car accident, a mini-stroke, a fractured fibula suffered on one of the thirty-five marathons that he ran in thirty days (nine of which were done with the injury), and a six-hundred mile run between London and Edinburgh accomplished in six days (later amended to twelve days). Those athletic feats were said to have raised £5.5 million for eighty charities.

"On the academic front, Arday’s plagiarism was extensive. Not only was his dissertation lifted inordinately from a thesis written six years earlier, his work was also filled with grammatical errors that even extended to its title: “An exploration of peer-mentoring among student teachers’ to inform reflective practice within the context of action research.” The dissertation whose work was stolen had a similar title with an appropriate apostrophe following the word “teachers”: “An analysis of the concept reflective practice and an investigation into the development of student teachers’ reflective practice within the context of action research.'” . . . More...

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California. His book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle, as is his book Poetry with a Moral Edge.

Tommy John and Dr. Frank Jobe (Who could have said "I am the science". But didn't.)

  American Thinker 

"Baseball owes much to the gifted surgeon and the willing patient who revolutionized sports medicine through their courage, grit, trust, and determination.

"Tommy John passed away Sunday at the age of 83. He spent 26 years being paid to play.

Every little boy’s dream.

During his almost three decades in the major leagues, he won 288 games with a .555 winning percentage in more than 4,700 innings pitched, with a solid 3.34 ERA, pitching for teams on the right and left coasts, and some in between.

He was a really good player, regarded today as a “cusp Hall of Famer,” who won titles and pennants with his teams.

He didn’t earn a World Series ring, but he did participate in three of them, all involving baseball’s most bitter interleague rivalry: the Yankees and Dodgers.

Yet, it is not just what John achieved on the field. His biggest impact came from what he did as a patient in an operating room—and during his recovery. For that, all of baseball will forever owe him a debt of gratitude: Tommy John Surgery.

Basically, it is the replacement of the ulnar collateral ligament, a band that attaches the humerus and ulna, with a graft or tendon from another section of the body or from a donor.

Usually, the operation is performed on a pitcher, although it can happen to any athlete who throws too much, exerting too much pressure and stress on the arm.

In short, the athlete blows out his/her arm." . . .

Bottom line:

“He had a brilliant mind but never acted like he was the smartest guy in the room,” said Orel Hershiser. “You’re talking about someone who could have walked around like they were God as he repaired and took care of everyone, but walked around like he was the lowest on the totem pole, and waited to be talked to and waited to be recognized.”  What say you, Dr. Fauci?"      More...

Speaking of Fauci: Fauci diary: “Simon Says I’m one amazing guy”

Liberal white women: "Free Jack the Ripper!"

 Liberal White Women Stand Weeping Outside Court Trying Jack The Ripper | Babylon Bee parody

LONDON — Dozens of liberal white women gathered outside a local courthouse, weeping and holding signs of support for serial killer Jack the Ripper.

"With their hands held up into the shape of hearts, the women decried the injustice of imprisoning a man who was so clearly the victim of a flawed system.

"Justice for Jack!" cried the women, waving signs of encouragement. "He was clearly begging for help when he murdered those 11 prostitutes. But no one heard him, and no one cared. Now, think of how much Jack is suffering! That's why we are here today, so that he knows we care. It could have been any one of us that didn't get the help we needed and so went on a killing spree across East London."

"Several of the liberal white women present expressed terror that they too could so easily end up on trial for merely slashing a dozen prostitutes to death. "I just relate so much to Jack the Ripper," said one woman, Regina Kensington. "Like, I see the mangled bodies he left and think — wow, I'm just the same as him. That's why we are here cheering him on. Oh, I do hope he's still single."

"At publishing time, Jack the Ripper had thanked the crowd of women for coming to support him and asked if any of them would like to meet up around midnight in a secluded spot in Whitechapel.

The Islamic Republic of NYC

"Organized Radical Islam has learned that it is not necessary to mount a frontal assault on our buildings or hijack our planes."

Kim Ezra Shienbaum  

"New York City, which began as a city of survivors, has become a city of apologists. The lessons of 9/11 have been buried under layers of political fashion and academic abstraction."

 . . . " This is not a political debate. It is a civilizational confrontation.

"The irony is unspeakable. The city that was the primary target of Islamist terrorism, whose skyline was shattered by the bodies of Americans falling from the sky, is now becoming the base for a political movement that shares more in common with the ideology of 9/11’s architects than with the values of those who died on that day.

"Mamdani’s political vision is not just radical. It is a repudiation of the moral clarity that made 9/11 a defining moment in American history. It is a rejection of the idea that Western civilization is worth defending, or that the United States is anything other than a system of oppression.

"Opposition is building and may explode well before his term ends. Staten Island Italians and other European immigrant groups excluded from his 'ethnic enclaves map' -- along with pro-police factions -- have heavily booed him. His administration is facing legal challenges from several groups: bodega owners planning to file a lawsuit, local landlords launching legal pushback against a city-endorsed rent freeze, and NYC homeowners suing over a messy pied-à-terre tax rollout that allegedly violated privacy laws by exposing 900,000 residents' data and illegally forced primary residents to prove they do not own luxury second homes. Corporations are trimming workers, and almost a thousand local small to mid-size businesses have moved operations to the Sunbelt.

"The question is not only whether Mamdani’s performative socialism delivers. The larger issue is whether New York’s experience should prompt a serious national debate about whether immigration, multiculturalism, and political activism can coexist with a shared commitment to constitutional government, public safety, religious pluralism, and the defense of democratic allies."

Why are all of the left’s cause célèbre heroes bad people?

A biker friend of mine who often hooked up with women in night spots once told me with a sly smile, "Some women just like bad boys".

Luigi Mangione fangirl lashes out at Brian Thompson's widow online "One of the Luigi Mangione fangirl “journalists” lashed out at Brian Thompson’s widow in a sickening social media posting spree after the object of her obsession pleaded guilty to murder.

"Lena Weissbrot, one of the three deranged fangirls called the “Mangionistas,” who were given press credentials by the Mamdani administration, reposted horrifying comments about Paulette Thompson — justifying the killing of her husband and suggesting she was complicit in murder."...

Is the left now claiming there are “mostly peaceful” fatal shootings?   ..."And it is Mangione who has a large and devoted following on social media and elsewhere.

"My God, is the left now claiming there are “mostly peaceful” fatal shootings? If so, what happened to “gun violence?” Guess it depends on who is shot.

"So, in leftist parlance, pre-planned homicides are not “violence,” but misgendering or dead-naming someone is “literally violence?” . . .

Why are all of the left’s cause célèbre heroes bad people?  

"It seems that all of the heroes of the left are rotten people, which raises the obvious question: if there are no good and decent people among the left’s causes, could it be because there are no good and decent people who can become their latest cause célèbre, and because their causes are all rotten causes? Perhaps, just perhaps, good and decent people don’t do the stupid s(tuff) that inflames our good friends on the left!"

 Fashion Designer Marc Jacobs Says He Would Dress Luigi Mangione for His Trial, Calls Him a Fashion Trendsetter

. . . There has been no evidence whatever that Mangione was ever a UnitedHealthcare patient.

Mangione has now pleaded guilty to “interstate stalking resulting in death” and “stalking through use of interstate facilities resulting in death.” Both carry a maximum life sentence.

Liberal, Joe Biden-appointed judge Margaret Garnett tossed out the two charges the prosecution sought which would have led to the death penalty.

It seems likely that with its plea, the defense expects Mongione’s second trial for second-degree murder will be dismissed as a case of “double jeopardy.”

Whether or not Mangione is a fashion trendsetter, he has at least become a hero of the bloodthirsty left-wing." . . .

From attacks on the Constitution to praise for Hamas and Mao, Piker’s rhetoric has not stopped prominent Democrats from appearing with him.  Posted earlier this week by the Tunnel Dweller but is a necessary cautionary tale all must know of, despite the obscene language from Piker. TD.   More.