The National Review cruise is circling back toward port, and we'll be happy to have everyone back at NRHQ on Monday. Well, everyone but Charlie Cooke, whose accent, I'm told, was not greeted warmly by the natives. But at least we'll have a picture to remember him by:  Thanks for reading the Ian Tuttle Pinch-Hit Edition of the Jolt. Jim will be back on Monday! 'You've Been Fleeced!' If you enjoy a bit of bloodsport, tune into ESPN Classic, which, if there is any justice in the world, is sure to be re-airing yesterday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing-cum-Mixed Martial Arts exhibition, during which Secretary of State John Kerry, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, and Energy Secretary/off-Broadway Amadeus understudy Ernest Moniz, spent most of their appearance trying desperately to tap out. No such luck. Tennessee senator Bob Corker had the quote of the day -- "You've been fleeced!" by the mullahs, he said -- but it was not just Republican senators. New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, no friend of the administration's foreign policy, lit into Kerry, as well. Amid the pile-on came this revelation about that secret deal struck between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency: Menendez: "Is it true that the Iranians are going to be able to take the samples, as Senator Risch said? Because chain of custody means nothing if at the very beginning what you're given is chosen and derived by the perpetrator." Kerry: "As you know, senator, that is a classified component of this that is supposed to be discussed in a classified session. We're perfectly prepared to fully brief you in a classified session with respect to what will happen. Secretary Moniz has had his team red-team that effort and he has made some additional add-ons to where we are. But it's part of a confidential agreement between the IAEA and Iran as to how they do it. The IAEA has said they are satisfied that they will be able to do this in a way that does not compromise their needs and that adequately gives them answers that they need. We've been briefed on it, and I'd be happy to brief you." In the school of How to Win Friends and Influence People to Support Your Nuclear Arms Deal, deferring to a "confidential agreement" arranged by Tehran while whining that senators are talking about damaging, classified information -- probably not a winning strategy. How bad is all of this? Bill Kristol writes at The Weekly Standard: The Iran deal turns out to be so no good, so very bad, so awfully ugly, that there is a chance—an outside chance—that a congressional process accepted by the administration because it seemed to virtually guarantee the deal's survival might actually kill it instead. The administration is pulling out all the stops. The left is mobilizing. Pressure is being applied. But what's striking is how many congressional Democrats are balking. Serious Democrats look at the deal—at its failure to stop Iran's nuclear program, at the weak verification provisions, at the precipitous and massive sanctions relief—and can't quite believe the horror the administration is asking them to approve. The public can't quite believe it either. The Pew poll this week had those Americans who knew something about the deal—a strikingly high 79 percent of the public—disapproving 48 to 38 percent. When has this happened before? A sliver of hope. The Pander Begins Soon she'll be ending speeches with a gloved fist in the air. Via the Daily News: Hillary Clinton declared that "black lives matter" in South Carolina Thursday, as she repeatedly stressed that endemic racism must be tackled by government. "This is not just a slogan, this should be a guiding principle," she told a gathering of 400 local Democrats, many of them mayors and many of them African-American. . . . "If we're honest, for a lot of well-meaning, open-minded white people, the sight of a young black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear," she said before warning that examples of structural racism "too rarely spur us to action or prompt us to question our own assumptions and privilege." Tom Elliott, editor of Grabien Media, notes that she has used the line before: And our problem is not all kooks and Klansmen. It's also the cruel joke that goes unchallenged. It's the offhand comment about not wanting "Those people" in the neighborhood. Let's be honest. For a lot of well-meaning open-minded white people, the sight of a young black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear. Clinton shrewdly avoided Netroots Nation, the fever swamp of the hard Left, where her opponent Martin O'Malley was shouted down last weekend for saying, "Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter." (For the insensitive latter two phrases he later apologized.) Given that these protesters are the dregs of the contemporary race-activist Left -- a chant from last week's Netroot Nations appearance: "If I die in police custody, burn everything down! That's the only way motherf*****s like you listen!" -- Clinton is eager to show that she's down with the Cause, and that the Cause has no reason to come disrupt her rallies, pretty please? But it's more than that. Here's National Journal back in June: Barack Obama didn't need to do much—almost anything—to win record turnout from African-American voters. Hillary Clinton will need to pull out all the stops to score just a fraction of that support. An exaggeration? Black political leaders don't think so. "Make no mistake, there will be some drop-off," said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, a former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, whose comments echoed those of other influential African-American Democrats. Indeed, black leaders concede it will be nearly impossible for Clinton to replicate the level of turnout Obama's candidacy generated among this core demographic—a group of voters central to the national coalition necessary for a Democrat to win the White House. So she'll need to coax them to the polls by honing specific messages about policies relevant to the black community. As I wrote in this space a few days ago (in regard to polls showing that swing-state voters overwhelmingly report distrusting Hillary), for the Clinton campaign the game could well hinge on turnout. If the Republicans nominate, say, Rubio or Walker, you can expect that conservatives will come to the booths in busloads. But who does Hillary Clinton excite? Who is her natural constituency? *Crickets* So she will have to depend on relentless identity-politicking to convince liberals who might not get a thrill up their leg when she speaks that she's still worth waking up to vote for. Of course, at some point the audience will be full of "open-minded-but-fearful white people." That should be fun. Dante? To Hell with Him! From the Telegraph: Dante's epic is "offensive and discriminatory" and has no place in a modern classroom, said Valentina Sereni, [president of Italy's Gherush 92, a human-rights organization which acts as a consultant to U.N. bodies on racism and discrimination]. Divided into three parts -- Hell, Purgatory and Heaven -- the poem consists of 100 cantos, of which half a dozen were marked out for particular criticism by the group. It represents Islam as a heresy and Mohammed as a schismatic and refers to Jews as greedy, scheming moneylenders and traitors, Miss Sereni told the Adnkronos news agency. "The Prophet Mohammed was subjected to a horrific punishment – his body was split from end to end so that his entrails dangled out, an image that offends Islamic culture," she said. Homosexuals are damned by the work as being "against nature" and condemned to an eternal rain of fire in Hell. "We do not advocate censorship or the burning of books, but we would like it acknowledged, clearly and unambiguously, that in the Divine Comedy there is racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic content. Art cannot be above criticism," Miss Sereni said. . . . It called for the Divine Comedy to be removed from schools and universities or at least have its more offensive sections fully explained. "We do not advocate censorship or the burning of books, but . . ." That sentence about sums up the West today. ADDENDUM: Speaking of identity politicking, one more Hillary item that I just couldn't pass up. Via CNN: "Clearly, I'm not asking people to vote for me simply because I'm a woman. I'm asking people to vote for me on the merits," Clinton said [during a stop in West Columbia, S.C. on Thursday]. Then she directly addressed gender, adding: "I think one of the merits is I am a woman. And I can bring those views and perspectives to the White House." Amazing -- that she is so oblivious to how comments like these reinforce the gender binary. For shame, Mrs. Clinton. | 
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