Wednesday 19 August 2026

NEWS SHORTS

· Angie Nixon (D) has won the Democratic Senate primary in Florida. She advocates Medicare for all. She has a nice, friendly manner, she smiles while she’s talking about policy. Scarborough, of course, tries to take her on about “abolishing the police” and opening the border. She supports abolishing for-profit prisons. (Note: Good for her. She’s good.) She advocates a “clear pathway to citizenship.”

BOOKS YOU WILL LOVE

Unger, Craig (2024) Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House. Boston and New York: Mariner Books.

When the reign of the Shah came to an end and the Shah found it necessary to leave Iran, he and his family came to the United States. Jimmy Carter knew that the Shah was a liability and repeatedly old the Shah’s wealthy Eastern elite supporters that kidnapping the Americans still in Iran was a distinct possibility if the Shah and his family were allowed to remain. Kissinger, Chase Bank, the Rockefellers, Gerald Ford, Howard Baker and even in the end Brzezinski pressured Carter to take the Shah in.

As Craig Unger points out, Carter was a peanut farmer from Georgia, but he stood up to the Eastern elites (EES) until they cooked up a story and lied t him. The Shah had been secretly battling lymphoma for years and he became seriously ill. The EES mobilized a doctor who was not an oncologist to examine the Shah and assure Carter that he was on death’s door and the only hospital that could treat him was in the U.S.

If Carter had an Achilles heel it was his kindness. Leave it to the EES to find it and use it to their advantage. It was the worse decision of Carter’s presidency.

LIFE AND NEWS NOTES FROM AN OVEREDUCATED, CHILDLESS, ELDERLY, CAT LADY (ACCODING TO J. F…ING D. VANCE) WORKING AWAY IN ONE OF THE SUB-BASEMENTS OF THE MINISTRY OF SNARK