Better in their words…

Trump stealth-bombs Iran’s nuke sites; Kari Lake guts VOA; sudden deaths reviewed; AWFL weeps in vaccine exile; DeSantis jails geoengineers; Paxton busts illegal voting.

Source: BOMB IRAN ☙ Sunday, June 22, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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It was the biggest media cycle this year, with the New York Times running so many stories on the subject that it needed a sideways scroll bar. The lead story this morning was headlined, “Trump Claims Success After U.S. Bombs Key Iran Nuclear Sites.” The hot takes are off the charts— sizzling like an egg dropped on a Tehran sidewalk in July, and twice as slippery.

Back in November 1979, radical muslim revolutionaries stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took 52 American diplomatic staff hostage. Feckless President Jimmy “Peanut” Carter (the worst president in history until Biden shuffled along), proved utterly useless, as the months and then years dropped off the calendar and the hostages slowly began to forget what Big Macs tasted like (instead of curried rice or whatever).

Apart from a single botched rescue attempt, involving US military helicopters that crashed into each other before the mission even started, Carter couldn’t move the hostage needle for all the legumes in Georgia.

“We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Carter constantly droned, in his sickening parody of a real southern accent. Which led to one of the most delightful and left-triggering developments for Generation-X: the whimsical —or ‘bloodthirsty,’ depending on your party affiliation— parody song, Bomb Iran.

In 1980, as the endless crisis relentlessly drove into everyone’s nerves like a sadistic splinter, the satirical band Vince Vance & the Valiants, bless their jingoistic hearts, tapped into deeply held cultural frustrations when they released their surprise hit. The parody song set war-related lyrics to the tune of the Beach Boys’ 1963 hit “Barbara Ann.” Instead of “ba ba ba, ba Barbara Ann,” it became “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Bomb Iran…”

🎼 Went to a bar just the other night
Saw a big Imam, he was lookin’ for a fight

He said, “Hey punk, don’t you mess with me”
I said, “I got your homeland security”

Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran! 🎼

And President Ronald Reagan surfed that wave of pent-up frustration right into the presidency in a landslide election, promising to make the song a reality, and ending a half century of Democrat control of government. Progressive historians have attempted to undermine Reagan’s skillful handling of the hostage crisis —they were all returned one day after Reagan was sworn in— by insisting he’d worked the whole thing out with the mullahs in advance.

Even if true —and there are plenty of reasons to doubt it— it would only underscore the point from yesterday’s post: politics are downstream from culture.

🚀 Late last night, American warplanes and submarines attacked three major nuclear sites in Iran. President Trump claimed the sites were “completely and totally obliterated.” The Iranians say it was nothing but a flesh wound. The attacks —widely predicted for days by independent analysts— have already produced incoming waves of rhetorical missiles based on wild speculation about warmongering, dark suggestions of constitutional violations, and doom-crying about what might happen next.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it had not detected any increases in radiation outside the sites. (It also slammed the US bombings as “a brutal act that contradicts international laws, especially the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.”) The welcome news of non-radiation-leaks also suggested the Iranians had cleared the sites ahead of time, a noteworthy fact to which we’ll return momentarily.

“Senior Democrats and some Republican lawmakers,” the Times intoned, “condemned the move as unconstitutional and said that it could drag the United States into a broader war.” That might be an understatement. Pundits from all sides are tearing the President a new one on social media. Forever wars!

By and large, corporate media seems okay with it. For example, last night CNN’s Anderson Cooper hosted a retired General who said he was impressed with the complex operation:

CLIP: Pentagon ‘successfully’ completes complex bombing mission to take out Iran’s nuclear capability (2:30).

Former President Carter set the bar for success pretty low. Last night, no bombers crashed into each other. The Iranians agree the bombs hit the targets. So. Everyone has a talking point.

🚀 The Democrats’ goofy constitutional complaints hinge on whether President Trump is starting a war without Congressional authorization. Maybe he is; but recent history from Democrat presidents leaves them with nothing to complain about. They’ve bombed Yugoslavia, Syria, Yemen, and actually directed a war in Ukraine using US weapons— all without Congressional approval. So— again.

The hard fact is, legally speaking, Congress did authorize the strikes, in its 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which was signed into law by President George W. Bush. During all the subsequent “war on terror” decades, including twelve full years of Democrat control, Congress could have, but never did, terminate the AUMF.

Personally, I think the AUMF should have terminated, or at least been severely pruned, twenty years ago, after the initial strikes on Iraq in Desert Storm. The point, though, is that Democrats have no grounds for whining now.

🚀 But there is, as always, potentially much more to this story. Trump may be tearing a page from Reagan’s historical playbook. I had to dig deep into foreign media, but I finally found the story I was looking for. Amwaj Media (Iraq/Iran) ran a story last night headlined, “Iran given advance notice as US insisted attack on nuclear sites is ‘one-off.’”

The satellite picture above shows a line of trucks picking stuff up from Iran’s Fordow nuclear site— the largest of yesterday’s three targets. The photo was taken two days ago— just after the most recent meeting between US and Iranian negotiators.

“A high-ranking Iranian political source,” Anwaj reported, “confirmed that the Trump administration on June 21 conveyed that it did not seek an all-out confrontation, and only intended to strike the Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites.” It added, “Importantly, the senior source also confirmed that the targeted sites were evacuated, with most of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium kept in secure locations.”

If true — and no one disputes it — this raises the intriguing possibility that the strikes were more politically performative and less warlike than corporate media and the hot takes fear. In other words, this could very well be a paved path, an off-ramp, for making a broader peace deal politically possible.

The notion of a ‘trading strikes’ deal is not far-fetched. Trump did it before, during Trump 1.0. He even described the whole thing after the fact.

CLIP: Trump described pre-planned strike trades with Iran during Trump 1.0 (1:28).

In January, 2020, following the US assassination of Iran’s top general, Soleimani, Iran launched retaliatory ballistic missile attacks on U.S. military bases inside Iraq. But Iran informed the U.S. of these strikes in advance, and aimed outside the perimeters of U.S. forces, demonstrating careful managed escalation and coordination between the two governments.

Shortly after, the two sides declared an end to the conflict.

If today’s events follow the same pattern, Iran will retaliate with strikes that will show a forceful response without doing significant damage or creating mass casualties, and a larger escalation will be avoided. The timing fits. As I predicted Friday, Israel probably could not have held out for the two more weeks that Trump said he would take “to think about it.” It had to be now.

“The US told Iran that the American strikes on nuclear facilities were a one-off operation and were not intended to overthrow the Iranian government,” the Wall Street Journal reported late yesterday, further confirming the thesis.

Reagan ended the 1979 hostage crisis with a deal —allegedly brokered with the princes of Persia— something the Democrats, to their eternal reproach, could never pull off. Thus ended forty years of wandering in the conservative wilderness. Now Trump may be working a like wonder: defusing a nuclear crisis in the desert with a precision-engineered off-ramp, bunker-busting —not centrifuges— but an impossible political Gordian knot.

As always, my advice is: let’s wait out the hot takes and see what happens. It is too soon to trot out Chicken Little.

🚀 LOL. Headline from CNN, late last night:

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Yesterday, far-left Salon Magazine ran an unintentionally wonderful story headlined, “‘Dark day for truth’: Kari Lake slashes U.S. global media agency by 85%.”

It shouldn’t have been a huge surprise; former Arizona gubernatorial candidate and media expert Kari Lake, appointed as “Special Advisor” to reform the federal government’s post-Cold War media octopus, announced back in March that she planned a major reorganization. It sent corporate media into a tizzy then, and so their outrage now looks even more fake.

Of course, shortly after Lake’s March announcement, a federal judge blocked the dismantling, but those challenges are slowly falling away.

Yesterday, Lake announced the firing of over 1,400 staff at the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM, a cephalopodic propaganda entity that includes Voice of America)— handing out pink slips to over 85% of its entire workforce. In a statement, Lake said that was the maximum staff reduction allowed under federal law. The statement also teased: “Next week, she will testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to expose the USAGM’s record of waste, mismanagement, self-dealing, and national security failures.”

For years, smart conservatives blasted the U.S. Agency for Global Media —and especially Voice of America— as bloated, unaccountable, and ideologically rogue. Once a Cold War-era messaging tool designed to promote American values abroad, it devolved into a taxpayer-funded echo chamber for progressive ideology. Its so-called “editorial independence,” long saluted as “sacred” by the foreign policy blob, became insulation from oversight— allowing the agency to drift far from its original mission without consequence.

Indeed, the earliest whistleblowers on Communist infiltration in the US government —as early as 1942— cited Voice of America as being heavily involved in spreading pro-Soviet propaganda. The House Un-American Activities Committee proved VOA was broadcasting glowing portrayals of the USSR’s “democratic reforms,” while suppressing stories about Soviet purges and gulags.

But nothing really changed. Not in 70+ years.

The truth is that the entire time, insulated by its “independence” from Republican reform, USAGM has constantly promoted fringe social agendas and atypical sexual lifestyles overseas, mismanaged funds, lived in the luxury of federal largesse, tolerated or encouraged internal corruption and graft, openly promoted anti-capitalist nonsense, and operated with a level of bureaucratic impunity bordering on rank insubordination.

USAGM is not just obsolete, it is actively undermining U.S. interests while pretending to speak on their behalf. In March, Lake said, “From top-to-bottom, this agency is a giant rot and burden to the American taxpayer —a national security risk for this nation— and irretrievably broken.”

Good riddance.

The stuck pigs squealed in rage. Salon’s subheadline gloomily reported, “Critics say layoffs at Voice of America and others threaten press freedom and U.S. soft power abroad.” Soft Power is a delicate euphemism for funding trans operas in Estonia. VOA’s bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara griped, “This spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism.” Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) called it “a dark day for the truth.”

It is a “dark day”— but for Democrats, not for the truth. Another trough has been emptied, the gravy train derailed, and their favorite taxpayer-funded propaganda arm just went lights-out. Meanwhile, truth may finally be getting a fresh breath of air, after 83 years buried under sold-out bureaucrats and anti-American broadcast bloat.

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It’s still happening! This week, the Daily Beast ran a story headlined, “New Details Emerge About the Final Days of Food Network Star Who Died Suddenly at 55.” The sub-headline added, “The ‘Worst Cooks in America’ host was found unresponsive at her Brooklyn home on Tuesday morning.” At home. Again.

Nobody saw it coming. Mere days before Anne Burrell, star of Iron Chef and Worst Cooks in America, died suddenly and unexpectedly at home, she’d been happily tweeting about an upcoming private cooking class. She’d just celebrated her onstage debut at Second City New York, where she’d recently finished taking improv comedy classes. She’d just posted happy Instagram shots from a fellow chef’s Soho dinner event in Manhattan.

Now she’s dead, and her gratitude to the government jab-pushers has come to an untimely end. She lost all heart around 8am on Tuesday morning. Someone called 911, and police found her unconscious and unresponsive. Doctors —useless as ever— remain baffled at her rapid-onset cause of death.

Zero curiosity over the ‘natural causes.’

(Portlanders: “at home” is significant because it means the victim had so little warning they couldn’t even get to the hospital.)

💉 Next victim. Kate Mulvey is a British freelance journalist and lifestyle feature writer based in London. In April, she ran a plaintive piece in the UK iPaper headlined, “I’m a single woman of 63, and I feel friendless and lonely.” But if we dig a little deeper, we find a forsaken precursor from another story she ran four years ago in 2021 (hat tip: Damani Felder):

It’s just getting worse and worse for the AWFLs. They now have another migraine-inducing problem to deal with: eating the lukewarm fruits of their insufferable, wokescolding pandemic arrogance, and riding an ever-narrowing purity spiral into social oblivion.

In June 2021, Mulvey published a now-notorious article in The Telegraphtitled, “I’m disinviting my unvaccinated friends from my dinner parties.” The subtitle said it all: “If you won’t have the vaccine, you’re no friend of mine.” She proudly cut off her longtime companions for refusing a brand-new, rushed medical injection— arrogantly declaring them unworthy of her hors d’oeuvres and hospitality.

Now, in 2025, an older (but not wiser) Kate laments that her social life is withering on the vine. “When I ring my old friend for a catch-up,” she wrote, “I get the ‘let me see what John is doing first’ reply.” Her texts are met with polite deferrals, a slow fade into digital silence. She blames age, circumstance, the shifting sands of modern life—but avoids mentioning the obvious: she burned the bridges herself.

Kate has never married. Intersecting with her love of government-pushed jabs (not a replacement patriarchy!), Mulvey made clear she doesn’t need a man. She bragged, “In my twenties, I dated wildly inappropriate men.” She didn’t elaborate on her 30s, 40s, or 50s.

Kate doesn’t name the offending article, but the wound is clear: “A friend I had known since my forties took umbrage at an article I had written. When I saw them in the street, they cut me dead. We eventually made up, and she invited me to lunch. Tucking into Cobb salad, she suddenly said we probably wouldn’t see each other again.”

I know the feeling.

To her credit, Kate is trying. She joined a debating society. She loiters in coffeeshops, striking up conversations with strangers. She now waves at the neighborhood baker —even without knowing his jab status— as if a friendly gesture might reverse years of social neglect. “A few weeks ago, as I walked home and waved to the man at my local bakery, I felt different,” she pathetically explained.

And maybe she did. But the real tragedy isn’t her loneliness. It’s that she believed what feminism was selling. She placed her trust in government, pharma, and her byline. Now, she has no husband, no children, no church, no bedrock worldview. She’s crying out for a Savior— but searching in all the wrong places.

We pray she finds a peace that surpasses understanding.

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Keeping the Sunshine State sunny! On Friday, News-4 Jacksonville ran a terrific story headlined, “Gov. DeSantis signs bill to prohibit activities ‘intended to affect’ weather, temperature, sunlight intensity.”

With the stroke of his gubernatorial pen (* not automated), Governor DeSantis signed a law making geoengineering and most weather modification a third-degree felony, and repealed the state’s ability to issue permits for any such future experimental activities. “We don’t want to indulge this nonsense in Florida, where we are proud of our sunshine,” the Governor said.

Violations will be punishable by up to five years in prison and a significant fine of up to $100,000. Each individual infraction counts as a separate violation, potentially leading to far longer and pricier penalties.

Even better, beginning October 1st, all operators of publicly owned airports must submit monthly reports to the Florida Department of Transportation (DEP) on any aircraft “equipped to disperse substances with climate-altering capabilities.” Any airport failing to do so will lose state funding.

The new law also directs the state’s DEP to establish a tipline in the form of a dedicated e-mail address and an online form to let people report suspected geoengineering and weather modification activities. It deleted “the DEP’s authority to conduct studies, research, experimentation, and evaluations in the field of weather modification.”

Republicans enjoy a super-majority in the Legislature, and one of the best governors in the country, but that didn’t stop Democrats from throwing shade on the common-sense law. State Representative Anna Eskamani (D) complained, “This bill is feeding into conspiracy theories.” Then, in the very next breath, she whined about “the risk of curbing valuable scientific research.”

“The last time we had to listen to the science,” Republican Representative Kevin Steele shot back, “we wore masks for nine months.”

Hooray for common sense— and for pandemic experiences that we will never forget.

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Slow and steady wins the race. Yesterday, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino posted a terrific roundup of agency accomplishments. Read the whole thing.

Among lots of other great news, Bongino reported the agency, working with federal and local law enforcement, is busily collaring all the violent characters who acted out during the recent immigration riots. He cited over 700 arrests so far of people who were just having fun watching cars burn.

“We are not done,” Dan promised. “We are in the process of identifying and moving in on those who threw rocks at law enforcement officers and damaged property.”

He also teased more declassification. “We are rolling out much more on January 6th, Crossfire Hurricane, and more,” Dan said. I can’t wait.

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This week, the Dallas Express ran an encouraging story headlined, “Paxton to Launch Major Probe Into Non-Citizen Voters.” Using DOGE data, cross-referenced against Texas voter databases, the Lone Star State has begun investigating illegal aliens who improperly voted in the last election— you know, the thing corporate media assured us never happened.

In March, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to share immigration database information with states. A few weeks ago, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the first arrests in Frio County for alleged illegal vote harvesting. As I previously reported, the harvesting operation was run by nearly the entire local Democrat machine. Those arrested included a county judge, a former elections administrator, several city council members, a School District trustee, and a suspected “Frio County vote harvester.”

Another conspiracy theory comes to life! Turns out, “no evidence of widespread fraud” was just code for “we’re not looking.” But Paxton is.

This week, Paxton announced that using federal database information, his office has already identified 33 illegals who voted in November despite not being U.S. citizens. “Noncitizens must not be allowed to influence American elections,” Paxton declared in a statement. “I will use the full weight of my office to investigate all voter fraud.”

Conspicuously missing from the stingy corporate media reporting about Paxton’s investigation were the usual evergreen complaints about voter intimidation. I guess it isn’t working anymore. So, that’s progress, even if it was hard won.

The announcement was also more bad news for Democrats’ 2026 midterm hopes. With the DHS data now flowing downstream to states, Republican-led election offices can finally match voter rolls against immigration status in real time. As we approach next years’ elections, expect to see purges of non-citizen registrations, which will infuriate Democrats who have long relied on loose verification procedures in “motor voter” states.

Lawsuits will fly, but the lists will shrink.

Every illegal voter discovered and prosecuted becomes a walking indictment of years of smug headlines denying the problem even existed. The more public the arrests, the worse it looks for the “no evidence” crowd. And, by fall 2026, Republican candidates can wield DHS-vetted numbers like cudgels: “How many illegal voters did your state find? Zero? Sounds like you’re not looking.”

Democrat strongholds may face swelling internal pressure: double down on resistance, or quietly begin their own cleanups to avoid even more embarrassment later.

🔥 Related! Headline from CNBC, yesterday:

Although the DNC claims its “grassroots donations remain strong,” recent federal filings show a totally lopsided GOP advantage in the account balance measuring contest. Dems reported $15 million on hand versus Republicans’ $73 million.

Conservatives still have Twitter, which continues to grow and proved irreplaceably helpful in the last presidential election. But Democrats are relying on BlueSky, which is suffering a withering purity spiral and shrinking faster than an elderly trouser snake emerging from a cold plunge. The DNC, meanwhile, is facing donor fatigue, factional infighting, geriatric candidates, election integrity crackdowns, ActBlue investigations, and leadership fumbles. Union walkaways, public resignations, and the David Hogg disaster are sapping both morale and trust.

Facing a shallow bench and a shrinking budget, defending purple districts (or even strained blue strongholds) could become a logistical nightmare.

With a growing enforcement apparatus around election security (thanks to DHS data and state AGs like Paxton), and a financial arsenal unmatched since the Tea Party wave, the GOP is poised to control both the messaging and the mechanics of the 2026 midterms.

Democrats would like nothing more than to gin up conservative infighting and push us into our own purity spiral. We’ll be sure to avoid that.

It’s going to be a very interesting year. I can’t wait, and I will keep you properly advised the whole time.

Have a blessed Sunday! We’ll be back tomorrow morning, with a terrific new roundup of essential news and commentary to kick off June’s final full week.

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