Peter C Cook MD, MPH

MASSIVE DEVELOPMENT: The Israeli government and the Lebanese government agreed to disarm Hezbollah. Leiter: "We discovered today that we are on the same side of the equation. We are both united in liberating Lebanon from an occupation power dominated by Iran called Hezbollah."

The international community says Hamas must disarm, but Hamas says they won’t. So who’s going to disarm them? They say Hezbollah must disarm, but who’s going to make them? The fact is that global condemnation of Hamas and Hezbollah without meaningful action leaves Israel alone to deal with them. That’s fine; I expect Israel sees it as their lot in life. But to insist that Hamas and Hezbollah should be disarmed, do nothing about it, and then complain when Israel tries to do what you’ve called for seems incoherent to me. Especially when it’s Israel that’s mainly picking up the consequences of those wishes not leading to action.

The left: We must listen to the church on war! Also the left: We must reject the church on abortion, sexual morality, marriage, education, gender roles and the purpose of life.

They say Israel is hated. Fine. Call us monsters. Stack the UN resolutions like kindling. Let campuses boil with hate. Flood every feed with “genocide”. Well done. Here’s the truth they can’t hashtag away: every single hostage is home. The same Hamas that butchered 1,200 people on October 7 signed a ceasefire on Israel’s terms & handed them over. Two and a half years ago, that outcome looked impossible. Hezbollah squatted on the northern border with 150,000 rockets pointed at civilians. Hamas had turned Gaza into an underground fortress of tunnels stuffed with killers. Iran was weeks away from the bomb. Houthis treated the Red Sea like their personal shooting gallery. Syria was Iran’s open highway. Militias from Iraq to Yemen waited for the green light. Decades. Billions poured in. One mission only: wipe Israel off the map. October 7 was supposed to be the opening salvo of the final war, south, north, east, sea, all at once. The end. Israel didn’t flinch. Nasrallah spent 32 years building Hezbollah into the most sophisticated terror army on earth. Israel erased him & his entire command. Now the IDF are grinding what’s left into dust. Iran’s nuclear program, decades of lies & secret labs? The USA & Israel set it back years in a single campaign. Top scientists eliminated. Key sites bombed into rubble. Then came the decapitation: Ayatollah Khamenei, the architect of the entire nightmare, taken out in a precision strike on his compound in Tehran. The regime that ruled with iron & blood for decades is now gasping, brittle, leaderless, & staring at collapse. Assad survived civil war, Russians & Americans. He didn’t survive the day his Iranian sponsors lost their grip. Regime gone. Highway to Lebanon sealed. Bridge burned. Houthis thought they could strangle global shipping. Israel dismantled their long-range capabilities & shut their khat chewing mouths permanently. Hamas? The monsters who started this nightmare? Sinwar died like the rat he was, hiding in the dirt with a stick in his hand. Haniyeh was taken out in the heart of Tehran. Their leadership is dead or scattered. Their tunnel network is a graveyard of collapsed concrete. All on Israel’s terms. While cowards screamed from the West, Israel fought for its children’s lives & won decisively. The north is rebuilding. Hezbollah is suffocating. Iran’s terror empire is fracturing at the seams, Gaza’s death tunnels are rubble. The hostages are free. Two and a half years ago Israel faced coordinated extinction. Today Israel stands as the undisputed strongest power in the Middle East. Hashtags, protest & chants are cheap when it’s not your kids in the crosshairs. When they scream “disproportionate,” they mean Jews refused to die quietly this time. When they yell “genocide,” they’re covering for the one Iran & its proxies openly planned. When wolves surround your house & try to slaughter your family, you don’t stop to poll your social media approval rating. You don’t negotiate with extinction. You fight to win. That’s exactly what Israel did, the brutal necessity of survival. Iran’s forty-year strangulation plan lies in ruins. Their “Axis of Resistance” is a trail of corpses & shattered delusions. The greatest coordinated threat Israel ever faced wasn’t contained. It was obliterated. Would you trade your family’s safety for polite words from strangers online? Israel made its choice. Life over likes. Our children’s future over their fleeting outrage. Existence over their moral lectures. The world can keep its protests, its virtue signals, its celebrity meltdowns. Israel will keep its borders sealed, its skies clear & its people alive. They get the trending rage. We get the win. History doesn’t crown the loudest whiners. It remembers who refused to disappear. Israel is still here, harder, clearer, fiercer than ever before. Not just surviving. Dominating. Free people don’t apologize for winning. They win.

On Yom HaShoah, I feel the need to reiterate that calling the Gaza war a “genocide” empties the word of any meaning. Holocaust: ~34% of the global Jewish population systematically exterminated. Gaza: ~75k deaths since Oct 7 and 120k births. Amidst a brutal urban war.

We've now had multiple reporters come out and say Swalwell's behavior was an open secret since at least 2017. So no, this is not a testament to the power of investigative reporting. If anything, it is a failure of investigative reporting. @brianstelter, I'm sorry, but this is a really bad take that suggests you might be too in love with the media you cover, and you have lost the ability to be critical of it unless it is right-wing. We've literally had local beat reporters now say this has been known since Swalwell was on a city council in 2010 and CNN reported in 2017 about a "California congressman" and never mentioned his name. Don't be so in love with the press that you can't recognize this is a spectacular failure of investigative journalism. If the press had done its job tenaciously, a lot of women would not have been victims of Swalwell. Instead, what happened was the Democratic Party spoonfed journalists here at the end to get Swalwell out of the race.

x.com/gilileoB/statu… Mark Carney, Canada’s Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party, says: “We cannot trust America.” Meanwhile: - His wife lives in the United States - All four of his children live and study in the United States - 91% of his investment portfolio is in the United States - He owns a house in the United States Yet he tells Canadians they can’t trust America. Hypocrisy at its finest.

So rape is bad. But not “resign” bad.

@eastbaycitizen …. what? Then why are we hearing about it only now? Thirteen-plus years and everybody knew, and not a single journalist could lock down any of the details?

My God, @tomfriedman openly admits he is “torn” about who he is rooting for in war with Iran. When your moral compass is so broken that you’re not sure you want Iran to lose so a politician you don’t like doesn’t win, it’s time to hang up your keyboard. TDS is real. x.com/BrentHBaker/st…

As long as the UAE is not in Islamabad, JD Vance and the Islamic regime in Iran will fail in Pakistan. The UAE does not, and will not, accept the Islamic regime in Iran controlling access to the Strait of Hormuz, nor possessing nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, drones, or any capabilities that threaten regional security. This regime must issue a formal apology to the UAE for its aggression, acknowledge its actions, provide full compensation for any harm caused to individuals and institutions, and guarantee non-repetition. Otherwise, what comes next will be devastating for this terrorist regime.

The New York Times just published an article claiming Netanyahu tricked Trump into war with Iran, and the most fascinating thing about it is that conservatives who haven't trusted the NYT since roughly 2003 are now sharing it like it's carved in stone tablets. There are a lot of contradictions, but IMHO the worst offender is the part in which the authors explain that Trump proactively discarded half of whatever Bibi put on the table for being way too insane and decided to focus just on disabling Iran's nukes and military cap... wait ...if Trump is Netanyahu's puppet, how could he discard the part of the plan that Bibi was most interested in? namely, regime change? That doesn't make sense, right? Well, BOTH angles are in their own article. With their own reporting. Meanwhile, they VERY conveniently left out that an Italian think tank published a report in December 2025, two months before Netanyahu's presentation, saying Khamenei had already authorized nuclear warhead development. So, even European intelligence knew what the Iranians were up to! (and honestly, when it comes to 'European intelligence', we don't see those two words together very often!) So, if the Europeans knew, you can rest assured that American intelligence knew. BUT the article pretends Trump's entire decision-making process started with a single PowerPoint from Bibi, because otherwise you wouldn't buy the book. Oh, right. Forgot that part. The two authors are selling a book. I'm sure that had zero influence on which details made it into the article and which ones mysteriously didn't! But the truly impressive part is watching the antisemitism pipeline in real time: A left-wing newspaper publishes "scheming foreign leader manipulates gulible American president." -> Right-wing commentators who built careers calling the NYT fake news pick it up and run with it. And now you have six-million-subscriber conservative influencers like Benny Johnson calling for Netanyahu to be banned from the White House while quoting Maggie Haberman as a source. You can't make this shit up. The horseshoe theory is supposed to be a political science concept, NOT a business plan. And yet here we are...

@Bowtiedplayer Remember NJ Governor Jim McGreevey? It was true with him too.

Andrew Cuomo's sexual harassment was known for a long time. It was deemed a "conspiracy theory" until the NY Dem machine needed it to make his COVID failures go away I think that's what happened with Eric Swalwell also. This probably was known, but it wasn't until the CA Dem machine wanted to thin out the primary herd that they dropped the story Wonder how many more sexual assault/harassment cases we haven't even heard of, because their political machine hasn't deemed it convenient to release that info

Swalwell’s political career should have been over after he slept with a Chinese spy. It wasn’t. Instead, Pelosi put him on the Intelligence Committee so he could tell ridiculous lies about Trump and Russia. Democrats enabled this monster.

Elon Musk on why the smartest people drop out of college: "You don't need college to learn. Learn stuff. Everything is available basically for free. You can learn anything you want for free. It is not a question of learning." Musk explains what college actually provides: "There is a value that colleges have, which is seeing whether somebody can work hard at something, including a bunch of annoying homework assignments, and still do their homework, and kind of soldier through and get it done. That's the main value of college. And also, you probably want to hang around with a bunch of people your own age for a while instead of going right into the workforce. So I think colleges are basically for fun and to prove you can do your chores. But they're not for learning." On hiring at his companies: "There is a requirement of evidence of exceptional ability. I don't consider going to college evidence of exceptional ability. In fact, ideally you dropped out and did something. Obviously, Gates is a pretty smart guy, he dropped out. Jobs was pretty smart, he dropped out. Larry Ellison, smart guy, he dropped out. Obviously not needed." Musk shares how education should work: "Generally, you want education to be as close to a video game as possible. Like a good video game. You do not need to tell your kid to play video games; they will play video games on autopilot all day. If you can make it interactive and engaging, you can make education far more compelling and far easier to do." He challenges the current system: "You really want to disconnect the whole 'grade level' thing from the subjects. Allow people to progress at the fastest pace that they can, or are interested in, in each subject. It seems like a really obvious thing." Musk criticizes traditional teaching: "Most teaching today is a lot like vaudeville. Somebody's standing up there lecturing to you. They've done the same lecture several years in a row. They're not necessarily all that engaged. That lack of enthusiasm is conveyed to the students; they're not very excited about it. They don't know why they're there. 'Why are we learning this stuff?' We don't even know why. A lot of things people learn, probably there's no point in learning them, because they never use them in the future." On whether university is necessary: "A university education is often unnecessary. That's not to say it's unnecessary for all people. But I think you learn about as much, the vast majority of what you're going to learn there, in the first two years. And most of it is from your classmates. If the goal is to start a company, I would say no point in finishing college." Musk started his own school for his kids: "I created a little school. It's small, only 14 kids now, and it'll have 20 in September. It's called Ad Astra, which means 'to the stars.'" He explains what makes it different: "There aren't any grades. There's no grade one, grade two, grade three. Not making all the children go in the same grade at the same time, like an assembly line. People are not objects on an assembly line. That's a ridiculous notion. Some people love English or languages. Some people love math. Some people love music. Different abilities at different times. It makes more sense to cater the education to match their aptitudes and abilities." Musk shares a key principle: "It's important to teach problem-solving, or teach to the problem, not to the tools. Let's say you're trying to teach people about how engines work. A more traditional approach would be: 'We're going to teach you all about screwdrivers and wrenches. You're going to have a course on screwdrivers, a course on wrenches.' This is a very difficult way to do it." He offers a better approach: "A much better way would be: 'Here's the engine. Now let's take it apart. How are we going to take it apart? Oh, you need a screwdriver, that's what the screwdriver is for. You need a wrench, that's what the wrench is for.' And then a very important thing happens: the relevance of the tools becomes clear." The result: "It seems to be going pretty well. The kids really love going to school. I think that's a good sign. I hated going to school when I was a kid; it was torture. The fact that they actually think vacations are too long, they want to go back to school. Weird, I know." Musk reframes what education really is: "If you think about it, what is education? You're basically downloading data and algorithms into your brain. And it's actually amazingly bad in conventional education. It shouldn't be this huge chore. The more you can gamify the process of learning, the better."

How many of you knew that Clint Eastwood was quite the singer? Well here he is in a 1962 episode of Rawhide, entertaining us with his cowboy crooning 🤠

Antisemitism is driving online politics in both parties. Trump is, at least, confronting it on the right. Democrats are embracing it, both out of fear and conviction. The hysteria around AIPAC -- which bent over backwards to appease the left, and is now hated by it -- is alarming

September, 2025. Hakeem Jeffries spends over a minute praising the character and integrity of his good friend Eric Swalwell. Jeffries said that unlike extreme MAGA Republicans, Swalwell is a man of law and order. Jeffries and Pelosi had both been briefed years earlier by the FBI on Swalwell's history with a Chinese spy. They both chose to ignore the warnings because Swalwell is a partisan fool and will go on TV and say absolutely anything they want him to say. If Jeffries and Pelosi had acted responsibly years ago with respect to Swalwell, perhaps he wouldn't have been able to sexually assault (allegedly) so many women.

How ruthlessly effective is the Democrat machine? Eric Swalwell is asked to drop out of the race because a Republicans may actually win. He refuses. Party operatives tap into their pool of white liberal feminists and just like that, he's hit with not one...not two, but FOUR sexual assault accusations. Of course, none of the victims can remember any details, just that it happened. The exact Blasey-Ford and E. Jean Carrol playbook. Within an hour, the victim is being interviewed on @CNN. The email goes out. Almost immediately, the teacher's union is condemning him and Schumer, Pelosi, Jeffries and every other Democrat on Twitter is calling for him to drop out of the race. Keep in mind, when Tara Reade accused Biden of forcibly sexually abusing her, they called her a liar and nobody called for him to drop out. This is all a coordinated attack because they've seen the internal polling that Steve Hilton may actually win this thing and they are sacrificing Swalwell because liberal idiots like him are a dime a dozen.