Having bitten off more than he could chew, Trump spat out Israel, and caved to Iran

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Hezbollah Is the Key to Iran's Strategy to Hold the Gulf Hostage For the Foreseeable Future

David Strom, HotAir:

Now that the Memorandum of Understanding has been released—actually read to reporters, and we have the transcripts generated from that oral release—we know that one of the biggest points Iran demanded was that Israel quit fighting Hezbollah and exit Lebanon. 

Not even Lebanon agrees to that, as Hezbollah is an occupying power. They want a resolution of the war as well, but reject the claim of sovereignty that Iran is making to Lebanon. And make no mistake, that is what they are doing, and Lebanon is not happy about it. 

Whatever the case, Iran demanded that the very first commitment made by the United States was to reign in Israel and get them out of Lebanon, and apparently the Trump administration agreed. 

“The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran have jointly agreed in good faith on [ __ date] on the following:

1 — The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war are signing this MOU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon and other provisions of this paragraph.”

Iran considers Hezbollah—indeed all of the "Axis of Resistance," to be equivalent to Iran. Which means that every time Israel and Hezbollah clash, it is, apparently, a violation of the MOU from their perspective. 

Of course, clashes between Israel and Hezbollah are inevitable, and you can bet all your money that Iran will want Hezbollah to make "limited" attacks to test Israeli responses and to drive a wedge between Trump and Bibi. 

And, you can further bet that Iran will, at times, use those clashes as an excuse to make "minor" attacks on shipping or on other targets. Not above the threshold where full-scale war will resume, but more along the lines of what it did during the "cease-fire." It will also, as implied in the MOU, start charging transit fees in some arrangement with Oman, which will jointly manage the Strait after 30-60 days. 

The Lebanon issue is Iran's trump card. 'Violations" of the cease-fire there are unavoidable. Trump will pressure Israel not to respond to Hezbollah, as he tried just prior to the signing of the MOU on Sunday, and Iran can use the issue to drive a wedge between our countries. 

That is especially true if Iran does what it has done in the days since Sunday—fire at ships in the Gulf. It is not widely reported, but Iran has continued to harass ships in the Gulf. 

Iran has fired multiple drones at commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz since the US and Iran signed the MOU, a US official told NBC News. 

The official said the IRGC has been launching drones every night, and the US military has been shooting them down before they can threaten ships in the area.

These are, essentially, warning shots to the US, making us take out the drones, and increasing the sense of risk for everybody involved. A reminder that Iran has an ace up its sleeve. 

By claiming that any attack on Hezbollah is an attack on Iran, and that Israel is bound by the MOU, Iran can claim that any shenanigans in the Gulf are a result of Israel violating the terms. It need not "close" the Strait entirely to maintain leverage; it merely has to remind everyone, with warning shots, that it can. 

It's a two-fer for them. They drive a wedge between Israel and America, making them the bad guy threatening the world economy, and maintaining maximum leverage for...who knows how long? 

Trump wants this deal. He has made clear that he is very unhappy with Israel. Which suggests that he will pressure them to hold back. They won't because they can't. 

What happens next? Nothing good, I would bet. 

Hezbollah has been firing missiles: literally thousands of missiles — into Israel since its October 7th massacre tour, and continues to do so. Trump’s repsones today:

Trump doubles down on claim it’s ‘unfair’ if Iran not allowed to keep some ballistic missiles

God knows we don’t want to be unfair to our sworn enemy that has vowed to destroy Israel and the US and even now has terrorst cells hidden across the U.S. preparing new attacks.

Trump hasn’t made too many mistakes in his second term, but starting a war that he could not finish is by far the worst.

New Listing in Riverside

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18 Owenoke Speedway, $3.995 million. Not my absolute favorite street in Riverside, but I’m sure it will sell quickly. In fact, I’ll be very surprised if it doesn’t sell for quite a bit more than this guide price of $3.995; the owners paid $2.975 million for it in 2006, and although that year marked the zenith of our last boom, I think prices have gone up substantially more in the past twenty years than this current price would suggest.

No matter: the market cures all.

Island homes can be a difficult sell, especially when the only access is via footbridge

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Located in the VE flood zone, too, which doesn’t help, although what else would you expect in a beach home?

Up in Westport, 46 Compo Mill Cove has taken another price cut, this time to $5.895 million. Its owners (who use it as a weekend home, judging from their LLC’s name, “Summer & Spring”) have been trying to move off-island since October 12, 2021, when they listed it at $7 million. Inflation may bail them out yet, but a mere million-dollar price shave over nearly four years won’t do the trick by itself.

That's Riverside, these days. Listed at $2.775 million, sold for $3.8, as a building lot

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Just a short while ago I wrote about 6 Oak Drive when it was reported pending. It closed today at $3.8 million, to a buyer with a Riverside Zip Code, so perhaps an end-user?

The original post:

Gentlemen, start your engines

May 27, 2026 Chris Fountain

6 Oak Drive, Riverside, listed at $2.775 million, is reported pending 12 days after being listed. Here’s the description:

Remarks: 6 Oak Drive is on a cul-de-sac off Indian Head Road. The plot is .617 of an acre -26,872 square feet- which allows the construction of a new house of 6,046 square feet, plus the finished area in the basement and third floor. The back to the house where the family room and kitchen would be situated is south facing with amazing sun all day. Survey with a pool site, drainage plans, planting plans, soil tests and grade plane calculations have been approved with the town, the Wetlands Agency and DPW.

Interesting to note, the same property, with many of those same permits in place, failed to sell for $1.795 back in 2019. Different times.

Reminder: Connecticut Democrats agreed to hand their own state's votes to New York and California way back in 2018

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As noted, CT signed off on this scheme eight years ago, as glowingly reported in the CT Mirror:

“A single vote, one person, one vote, is the way we should conduct all of our elections,” said Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven.

“On this particular issue, it doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat, a Republican or a Libertarian: It’s about making your state relevant in the presidential election,” said Barry Fadem, the president of National Popular Vote. “If you’re not a battleground state, you’re irrelevant.”

…. “With the exception of the presidency, every elected office in the country, from city council, to United States senator, to governor, is awarded the candidate who receives the most votes,” (the governor Dannel] Malloy said.. “The vote of every American citizen should count equally, yet under the current system [again, he means the Constitution — ED] voters from sparsely populated states are awarded significantly more power than those from states like Connecticut. This is fundamentally unfair.”

It’s not “unfair” — in fact, it’s exactly why the Constitution was drafted the way it was. The Electoral College protects the rights of citizens of less populous states from being swamped by voters in states with larger populations. The Democrats hate that, and because they lack the votes, for now, to amend the Constitution and abolish the Electoral Collge, they’re doing this end-around and disguising their intentions by cloaking them in noble-sounding proclamations about their concern for preserving the rights of all voters while in fact they’re betraying them.

Here’s how CT Democrat Deputy Speaker of the House “explains “ it:

When it comes to electing our nation's president, I believe every citizen should get one vote. But that's not what happens in our current electoral college system, where ballots cast by voters in states like Connecticut "count" less than votes cast by people in swing states.

Pure bullshit.

Downtown Greenwich sale at a price that I totally get (Updated, with one caveat) (Updated again : I was wrong about its lack of an elevator)

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Perhaps I wouldn’t have back when central Greenwich didn’t command such high prices, but I’m over that shock, and 52 Ridge Street’s sale for $8.1 million after a bidding war that began at $7.750 is completely unsurprising and understandable. It’s a beautiful house, designed by Chuck Hilton and custom built in 2018, and for those wanting the convenience of downtown living, these are nice digs.

(The interior pictures have been taken down since this was originally posted, but you can see them at the architect’s home page — worth the click)

Bill Parcells said that, apirational claims and “hopeful signs” notwithstanding, a team is what its record says it is. Here, multiple buyers reviewed the market, and several, at least, were willing to meet and even go beyond this one’s asking price, so that’s a pretty defining statement as to its worth, I’d say. In fact, I just did.

Update: Reader Snotty Philistine has provided a link to the architect’s page that describes this house as intended for (elderly, rich) “downsizers, and that prompted me to check: there’s no mention of an elevator available to service the house’s four floors. If there isn’t one, that, to mind, is a significant omission, as downsizers grow older and more feeble — hey, it happens.

UPDATE II: EOS corrects me, it does have a 4-floor elevator, I just missed it in the listing comments.

Two different worlds, two different sources of news

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TownHall has a recap of the circus event, including a number of short clips from various segments, but for my purpose of highlighting the difference in media coverage depending on whether the reporting is coming from the left or the right, these will do:

FOX:

JD Vance left stunned following 'The View' appearance, reveals what Joy Behar told him during commercial break

'It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be,' the VP says about appearing on the ABC program

I expected them to be absolutely vicious, and they were only a little bit vicious. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be," Vance said on "Gutfeld!" Tuesday.

"Joy Behar even said during the break, not joking, she said, 'You know what? You're, like, pretty good for a Republican.' And I was like, 'Whoa.' That is a way better compliment than I expected from Joy Behar," he continued.

It wasn't, however, all sunshine and rainbows for Vance in his debut appearance on the ABC daytime talk show."I thought that Sunny, the woman to my left, was going to call me a racist. In reality, it was Whoopi, the woman to my right, who called me a racist. So expectations were defied," Vance joked.

Vance was likely referencing an exchange he had with co-host Whoopi Goldberg, who grilled him over allegations that the Trump administration watered down or removed exhibits of Black history at various museums, an assertion Vance combatted.

He and "The View" co-hosts clashed on several topics, like President Donald Trump's recent comments about inflation as well as immigration

And then we have coverage by The Independent and Slate; commentary by AWFLS, for AWFLS, about AWFLS:

First up, The Independent:

JD Vance went on The View and got absolutely torn to shreds by middle-aged women

The vice president tried to make himself palatable to women voters while promoting his new book. Instead, he scored a number of hard-to-watch own goals, writes Holly Baxter

J.D. Vance found time in his busy schedule to promote his book on daytime television today — and what a promotion it was.

In case you’re out of the loop and/or you’ve been concentrating on other, lesser news items like the Iran deal or the G7, allow me to enlighten you. Communion is the book nobody asked for, but by God, we’re all going to get. It’s about Vance’s conversion to Catholicism, presumably written in order to make the vice president seem more palatable for a 2028 presidential run.

His appearance on The View, a show whose audience — and panel — are predominantly middle-aged women, makes sense. It’s well-known both that MAGA Republicans are hemorrhaging female voters and that Vance as a person has a major woman problem. This is surely supposed to be the de-ickifying of a vice president who has steadfastly been giving women the ick since 2021.

If I were his campaign manager, however, my head would be in my hands right now. The panel opened with a question on the economy. Why are prices still high, he was asked, when Vance and Trump ran together on a platform of lower prices for all?

“We were elected on a number of mandates,” Vance clarified, in a bizarre twist on ‘well, actually’ that didn’t exactly make him look good. One was to lower immigration. Another was to lower prices, and as for that, “there’s a lot of work to do.” Which, I mean... of course.

…..

If you wanted a masterclass in how to give women the ick, you’d just have to air this hour-long horror show. But the smile on Vance’s face as the final credits rolled showed he thought he’d achieved a job well done. And that’s a massive part of the problem.

Slate:

I Have Exactly One Good Thing to Say About J.D. Vance’s Chaotic Appearance on The View

J.D. Vance’s visit to The View on Tuesday made for one of the most incoherent hours of television I’ve ever watched, which is saying something for a show that’s known for its chaos and political disagreements. But where the show usually devolves into bedlam over the course of a segment, Vance’s episode started from a place of chaos and never really settled down.

The vice president was there to promote his new and incomprehensibly boring-sounding memoir, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith. [a book about Christian faith would indeed be considered “incomprehensibly boring: to a Slate commentator — Ed].

Though Vance came prepared to be, to the extent he can be, warm and likeable, the co-hosts launched into hard-hitting questions pretty much right away. The View has six co-hosts, and traditionally they’ve represented a range of political orientations. [Hahahaha!] At least four of the six on Tuesday’s show seemed openly hostile to Vance. Judging by her face, Ana Navarro, a vocally anti-Trump Republican, often seemed outright pissed to be sitting next to him. Also not letting him off easy were Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, and Sunny Hostin.

Vance’s main ally was Alyssa Farah Griffin, who worked in the first Trump administration and at the end of the show presented him, rather abruptly because she had to break into a contentious exchange to do so, with a onesie for the new baby he and his wife are expecting. It was one of the rare welcoming moments for Vance, who otherwise didn’t get much of the easy daytime reception complete with softball questions about his new book and his wife and family that he must have been hoping for. [No, he knew exactly what he was in for, and said so, several times, before the event — that’s why we were all looking forward to this — Ed] Instead, the co-hosts peppered him with questions about the Trump administration and tried to hold him accountable for both his own and his boss’s words. ….

America’s paper of Record offers the best summary of the proceedings: