Doin' the tabs and doin' it right in the evenin', it's pretty pleasin' ...
The trigger for President Trump's strikes on Iran was the downing of a U.S. helicopter, but behind the scenes Trump had been growing more & more frustrated over nearly two weeks of waiting for an Iranian response to his latest offer that still has not arrived, per U.S. officials https://t.co/KzdvrspAUt
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) June 10, 2026
Ed: That's all well and good, but why would anyone expect anything else from the sponsor regime of terrorist proxies that act in precisely the same way in negotiations? We have 20 years of Hamas perfidies in Gaza, and a longer track record of Hezbollah's flagrant refusal to comply with its agreements in Lebanon. This is how the IRGC works. Getting a late response from Tehran at this point won't change that.
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Jerusalem Post: Threats to Iranian infrastructure, including transportation networks, electricity, and water, are “not a show of strength but a sign of desperation,” Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on X/Twitter.
Iran "will stand firm against any pressure or threat," he added. ...
Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the national security commission of Iran's parliament, also reacted to Trump's statements, saying that "We are not afraid of fighting losers."
"The number of American casualties is already far higher than Trump confirms, and it will rise," Azizi wrote on X in English.
Ed: Iran can still inflict damage on Gulf states, most of them allies to the US. Presumably, this is one reason why Trump has been pausing for the last two months. However, Iran cannot win any tactical or strategic battle with the US and has much more to lose in renewed fighting than they can possibly gain. The regime is still relying on its ballistic-missile doctrine that assumes its potential for disrupting energy production will leave it immune to a sustained war against an asymmetrically stronger power. The only way to defeat Iran is to render that leverage null and void. For the last two months, we've been confirming it instead.
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🚨 WOW! President Trump reveals the United States has been TAKING MILLIONS of barrels of oil at night during the Iran blockade
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 10, 2026
"I'm just announcing today for the first time. We've been taking MILLIONS of barrels of oil! Every night, we took out oil." 🔥
"Nobody knows about it.… pic.twitter.com/iOtNOfYp1c
"Nobody knows about it. IRAN didn't know until right NOW! We took out 22 ships the other night, late at night with NO LIGHTS because they don't have radar, we blasted the crap out of it."
Ed: This is certainly an improvement, and a measure of success for Project Freedom, whether Trump still calls it that or not. It doesn't restore commercial activity to pre-war levels, though; 22 ships a day is way below normal traffic. It may explain why prices at the pump have begun drifting downward the last couple of weeks in the US, but the price of oil on the spot markets is still in the $90-bbl range.
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Peter Cordi at WashEx: We already know he’s trying to win a Nobel Peace Prize and/or an eternity in heaven by negotiating peace deals around the world. He routinely rattles off his diplomatic achievements to the press, and for good reason. He’s done a great job ending conflicts. But he’s having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that some conflicts can’t be ended with diplomacy, especially when you’re dealing with a jihadi regime willing to be “martyred” in the fight against the “great Satan” and the “little Satan.”
I’m not posing a hypothetical when I say that if Iran attacked the United States, rather than Israel, Trump would have no problem retaliating — this is exactly what happened a day after he prohibited Jerusalem from striking Tehran. This so-called ceasefire has been violated countless times, and the U.S. has been “two weeks” from ending the war for months on end. I supported Trump’s military operation to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But neither Iran nor Israel wants a ceasefire right now. So let them have it out, and get involved when it’s strategically advantageous.
The campaign against Iran has already been overwhelmingly successful, with the U.S. and Israel killing numerous Iranian political and military leaders, crippling its war machine and economy, and considerably setting back its nuclear program. Instead of crying “Uncle,” Iran is begging for more pain — so give it to them, as Trump rightfully did on Tuesday after the Apache helicopter shootdown. But when Iran strikes Israel, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu has every right to respond with full force, too. Again, Iran is literally asking for it.
Ed: Well put. I mentioned this disconnect yesterday too, when Trump first ordered retaliatory strikes after the attack on the Apache helicopter. Let's hope he has learned the proper lesson from it.
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“WE WILL HIT THEM HARD” - Hegseth on strikes on Iran tonight pic.twitter.com/d5YZFMi5AE
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) June 10, 2026
Ed: Having Hegseth in the theater sends the message that we're serious, which is good. I'm not a fan of the idea that the strikes themselves are a message to get serious about talks. We should be sending the message that we're just going to destroy everything the IRGC has, and let them beg for a truce.
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Noah Rothman at NRO: It’s likely that the progressives who were bombarded with this campaign of negative stereotyping internalized the notion that all men are monsters. The left didn’t see this as an accusation. Men were victims, of course, just like everyone else. They subsist in the malignant American milieu, after all. How could they fail to be disfigured by their oppressive environments? The whole gender is cursed from birth.
Then, in the wake of the Democratic Party’s stumbles in 2024, the progressive political class concluded that they had alienated far too many men. Kamala Harris’s defeat set off a panicky scramble to address the problem with gimmicks. We just need our own Joe Rogan to compete in the “manosphere,” they’d tell themselves. If we’re a little less “wonkish,” we might break through. It was self-flattery dressed up as a critique.
True believers in the “toxic masculinity” construct seem to have taken a different approach: Give the bastards what they want.
That’s how you get Graham Platner.
Ed: Bingo. I've written this before, but I'll repeat it here: The Left's visions of masculinity are on display in Maine and Texas. James Talarico is the progressive Left's model of masculinity, where Graham Platner is the Left's concept of middle America's model of masculinity. They recruited and repackaged Platner for Maine to appeal to the Joe Rogan crowd and male centrists who might feel disaffected from MAGA. Instead, Platner is an insulting reveal of their contempt for mainstream masculinity.
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Asked Kirsten Gillibrand if she had concerns with Platner after NYT report given her role in the Franken saga. She responded by saying: “I think Graham showed a great deal of support in the primary, and I think .. that's going to build momentum and will assure that we win Maine”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 10, 2026
Ed: I have more on this in my post this morning on Gillibrand's grotesque hypocrisy. It's worth posting this to note that even mainstream media reporters are asking how Gillibrand can possibly square this circle. That interest may not last long, but if more allegations emerge – especially regarding Platner's Kik account, with his mostly-naked proflle pic, Gillibrand and the rest of the Democrats rallying around Der Oysterführer will have many more questions to answer.
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David Harsanyi: Set aside, for a moment, that Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner spent years with a tattoo resembling the Nazi SS Totenkopf; that he blamed sexual assault victims for their predicament; that he called rural white Americans stupid racists; that he advocated political violence; that he mocked a wounded Purple Heart recipient; that he joked about the Virgin Mary being a “skank”; and that he joined a hookup site while married. ...
The more interesting question is why Democrats have shown such loyalty to him. After hearing so much about Platner’s everyman appeal, I went down a rabbit hole, watching his speeches and listening to his interviews. Virtually every one of them is crammed with brain-numbing platitudes and freshman-level socialist sloganeering. His rhetoric makes former Vice President Kamala Harris sound weighty by comparison.
“This is a race about performative politics they’re used to,” Platner told a crowd recently. “What they don’t understand is that this is a race about us.”
This kind of banality, and there is a lot of it, calls to mind Lt. Frank Drebin trying to win over the love of his life in The Naked Gun by telling her that “maybe the problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans … but this is our hill, and these are our beans.”
Ed: It goes beyond the banalities. How did Dems get this deeply invested in Platner in the first place? Or even invested at all? If and when this clown's Kik threads get exposed, there should be a real accounting of how Platner became the Golden Boy of 2026 among the Democrat and socialist cognoscenti.
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He also wrote a novel once in which an interdimensional demon in the form of a clown is defeated by 12 year-olds by them having a gang bang https://t.co/d90nxCN0tA
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) June 10, 2026
Ed: Fact check: true. King wrote that into the ending of "It," which was otherwise a very good thriller, perhaps one of his best, with that one notable and gross exception. I read "Tommyknockers" and started "Misery" after that, and the trio basically put an end to my fandom of King. "Misery" was mainly objectionable for being entirely predictable after the first 60 pages, and yet another lament of a writer who saw himself as a victim. The initial TV version of "It" skipped over the preadolescent group-sex scene; I never saw the second part of the recent remake, but I'd assume that producers would skip over it as well. And once again, I wonder whether this will become a little more relevant if and when Platner's Kik activity comes to light.
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JNS: Ron Klain, former White House chief of staff under President Joe Biden, is facing backlash after he defended Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, who has covered up a tattoo that he said he didn’t know was Nazi imagery.
On Tuesday, the Republican Jewish Coalition called for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to withdraw support for Platner, whom it condemned in the “strongest possible terms.”
“A Nazi tattoo is disqualifying. Full stop,” the RJC said. “Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in America, and every Senate Democrat propping up Platner’s campaign should be ashamed.”
Klain, chief legal officer for Airbnb who is Jewish, responded on social media to the RJC statement, which he called “just a partisan attack.”
“The tattoo was a skull and crossbones to remember his fallen comrades from his service in Afghanistan,” wrote Klain, who hosted a fundraiser for Platner in Washington last week.
Ed; No, it is not just a skull and crossbones. The Totenkopf is a very specific design created solely for the Nazi SS death-camp units. Platner knew what it was and admitted it to others long before he ran for the Senate. Why is Klain attempting to cover up for a Naziphile ne'er-do-well?
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Live shot of Ron Klain's front yard: https://t.co/l8NmF4H1SJ pic.twitter.com/hfJuxZJazD
— Liz Mair (@LizMair) June 10, 2026
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Having lost a job and lost a spouse in my lifetime, they are very, very, so much not the same. https://t.co/tTEyYTIYwM
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) June 10, 2026
Ed: Believe it or not, this isn't the stupidest take of the day, but I love the way MK nailed Pelley. Ron Klain doesn;t have the stupidest take of the day, either. That honor goes to ...
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Jasmine Crockett says that Karmelo Anthony was justified in stabbing Austin Metcalf to death:
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) June 10, 2026
"He decided to go under a tent and simply didn't want to be put out on the rain by some kid he didn't know... There was no mercy seen when this black boy said 'I was scared.'" pic.twitter.com/hU2kXiTfER
Ed: I'm sorry, but this is f*****g nuts. Being scared because you don't want to stand in the rain is not a basis for justifiable homicide, and Crockett is bat-guano nuts for claiming it to be. Anthony went where he didn't belong, was told to leave, didn't like it, got into an altercation after threatening Austin Metcalf, and stabbed Metcalf rather than get wet. If Crockett still practices law, she should be disbarred for her demagoguery.
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Last night's lyric: "Amie" by Pure Prairie League.
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