What were they up to in Philadelphia, 250 years ago?

Semiquincentennial -- what an awful word! But I'm an old guy, and in the 1940s we had to study Latin before venturing into modern stuff ("Para Español, oprima dos"), so I can break it down: semi stands for half, quin for five, and centennial for a hundredth, so they add up to half of 500, for the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence from George III and his tyranical British government

But do you know what? Only two members of the Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia 250 years ago actually signed that Declaration on the Fourth of July. One of them, of course, was John Hancock.

This is only one of the factoids I'm learning from a lecture series by (of all people) a British immigrant named Richard Bell, professor of history at the University of Maryland. Appopriately, he earned his BA at Cambridge and his PhD at Harvard, and though born an Englishmnan he's now a US citizen. He's a splendid lecturer, and for $25 or a 99-cent subscription you can sign up at The Great Courses online. It might bring tears to your eyes, as it did to mine.

Zelensky holds a winning hand

"You don't have any cards!" shouted Messrs Trump and Vance in their Oval Office roasting of the Ukrainian president last year. Today, Mr Zelensky's war seems to be going a lot better than ours against Iran. Ukraine's drones and ballistic missiles are hammering Moscow, closing Russian airports, burning Russian oilfields, and making Crimea unsafe for Russian soldiers and the tourists who used to flock there. Since February 2022, Russia has lost more troops trying to conquer its smaller neighbor than the US did in fighting Japan, Germany, and Italy in the Second World War. By Ukraine's count, 1.4 million of Putin's soldiers have been killed, wounded, or captured in Ukraine. (Not all were Russians, to be sure, and apparently some North Korean prisoners are asking to be repatriated ... to South Korea!)

Well played, President Zelensky!

A Russian soldier who loves America

For me, the best thing to come out of Mr Trump's strange bellum interuptum in the Near East was that it led me to the Commentary website and its almost-daily essays by Seth Mandel. There's an actual magazine as well, likewise worth reading. I want especially to point you to Irina Velitskaya, who grew up in Russia but emigrated to the US to become a citizen, a UC Berkeley student, a Substack writer, and a contributor to Commentary, most recently A Hierarchy of Hells: What a dying alcoholic taught me about Russia, Gaza, and Iran.

Irina grew up in Sinegorskiy, not far from the Ukrainian frontier. She was a "little shrimp of a girl with acne and chronic cold sores," much bullied by her classmates with the exception of the lad she calls Stephan, who looked after her. Stephan was "a handsome blond boy with classic Slavic features [who] excelled at school sports, though not at his studies." From the age of 12, he was also an alcoholic. Inevitably, he wound up fighting in Ukraine, with little or no combat training. (Ukrainians refer to these raw Russian recruits as "single-use soldiers." The home-country term is ispolzovannyi gondon, or "used condoms.")

Stephan is now hospitalized in Chechnya with a smashed knee, hepatitis C, and other ailments, where Irina was able to reach him by phone. "I wish I could move to America," he told her. "It's a great nation -- I love America! Please promise me you will never come back here."

The dealer meets the negotiator

Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, earned his PhD in government from the University of Kent, one of a dozen or so universities that Britain established or upgraded in the 1960s to accommodate its postwar baby boom. He later wrote a book, whose title is translated as The Power of Negotiation, in which he explained:

"The main principle of bargaining is ... repetition, repetition, and repetition, combined with steadfastness and persistence. Insisting on positions and repeating demands is a necessity that must be done each time with different rhetoric and reasoning." (Italics added.)

On the other hand, Donald Trump famously wrote a book titled The Art of the Deal, and we now see what happens when the dealer meets the negotiator: he gets taken to the cleaners. The president likes to say that Barack Obama's 2015 agreement with Iran was "probably the worst deal we've ever done as a country." That may have been true at the time, but no longer. Mr Obama paid $1.5 billion for a nuclear agreement that meant nothing, but Mr Trump has multiplied the payoff by many times just to open the Strait of Hormuz and engage in 60 more days of repetition, repetition, and repetition.

Oh, and the president is required to lean on Prime Minister Netanyahu to let Hezbollah send rockets into Israel's towns without responding to them.

Well, congratulations, Mr Trump. The 2015 JCPOA has been reduced to second-worst deal in American history. And you're not done yet!

Trump is catching on

The president has decided to give Iran some more of his "love taps" after deciding that the mullahs were "playing us for suckers." Well, speak for yourself, Mr Trump! They certainly weren't fooling me, nor, I suspect, the vast majority of Americans. You were the only sucker in that game.

Now if you'd only apply your newfound wisdom to that other American enemy who's been playing you along: Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. And you don't have to risk any American lives in the process. Ukrainian soldiers are applying the love taps on your behalf

Graham Platner is a creep

He's a liar. He's brutal to women, sufficient to leave bruises though not yet any broken bones. He's married but regularly sexts to his various girlfriends. He opened an account on the social-media platform Kik, beloved of teenage girls and widely known as the "predator's paradise," and posted a photo of himself naked except for his groin (behind a towel) and his famous Totenkopf tattoo (hidden by the camera he's holding). At least until he turned 30, he both boasted of his Nazi body art and of being a Communist. He claims to be a self-employed oysterman, though oysters grow without human intervention, and his only customer is his mother's restaurant.

He's one of those veterans (Marines, Maryland National Guard, and military contractor) familiar to anyone who served a hitch as volunteer or draftee: the weirdo who joins up for a chance to kill people without any legal consequence. In short, yes, Graham Platner is a creep, and he has a $12 million war chest with which to defeat Susan Collins, one of the hardest-working people in the US Senate and one of its few remaining moderates, along with Alaska's Lisa Murkowski and Pennsylvania's John Fetterman. I'm sending her a check today, and I hope you'll do likewise: Collins for Senator, PO Box 65, Westbrook ME 04098 or susancollins.com/mail online. Thank you!

Yeah, he's a duck, but such a weird one!

Maine is just 20 miles from my front door, and like New Hampshire is a purple state that's trending bluer with each passing election. Both voted for Kamala in 2024, but only Maine has a Democratic governor. She was a leading contender for the Senate seat held by the moderate Republican Susan Collins this year, but dropped out and left the field to -- Graham Platner, who's such a weird duck that nobody knows what his politics are. Nevertheless, he's certain to win the Democratic nomination next week, and Senator Collins is running scared of what that means for November. (She's not among Trump's favorites and unlikely to get an endorsement from him.)

Mr Platner presents himself as a horny-handed oyster farmer, though his only customer is the restaurant run by his mother. He attended private schools including the elite Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, then served a four-year hitch in the US Marines and another with the Maryland National Guard while attending George Washington University, and perhaps a stint as a military contractor. "I wanted to play soldier," he explained. "Perhaps I read too much Hemingway."

Somewhere along the line, he got a death's-head tattoo, symbol of the Waffen SS combat units in the Second World War. At least until he was 30, Platner boasted of "my Totenkopf" even as he claimed to be a Communist, a contradiction he now explains as the result of post traumatic stress disorder. Yeah, sure. Please don't let this scumball represent Maine in the US Senate!

The Art of the Deal

Donald Trump wrote the book, but it seems to be Iran that's making the movie.