ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Pedro Pascal Fan Club Revokes Actor’s Woke Status Over Rumors He Might Be Dating Zionist Man, Dined at Pro-Israel Restaurant.

HBO’s The Last of Us and Marvel’s Fantastic Four star Pedro Pascal — who has been open about his left-wing, pro-transgenderism of children views — nonetheless appears to have had his woke status revoked by a fan club outraged over rumors that he may be dating a man who might be pro-Israel.

“Well, as you probably already know, Pedro is supposedly dating a Zionist and, to top it all off, he went to dinner with Lux at a restaurant that donates money to Israel,” a Pascal fan account on X began in a recent statement.

“Yes, a man who has always shown support for Palestine and hosted a benefit concert, someone we have always loved and admired for his character and activism, is now on a wave of hypocrisy,” the X account, @acervopedrito, continued.

Why is the left such a cesspit of homophobic antisemitism?

UNEXPECTEDLY: BBC altered Hegseth speech on Iran war.

The BBC mistakenly altered a speech by Pete Hegseth on the war in Iran, making him appear to say the United States was targeting the Iranian “people”.

BBC Persian, which broadcasts to audiences inside Iran, mistranslated remarks by the US secretary of defence, telling viewers Washington was bringing death to the Iranian “people”.

In fact, Mr Hegseth had said the Iranian “regime” was being targeted.

The mistake was seized upon by pro-Israel media campaigners, who claimed that it cast doubt on the BBC’s impartiality. It also triggered a backlash on social media.

The row risks putting the BBC on another collision course with Donald Trump, who launched a $10bn (£7.5bn) lawsuit against the corporation last year after The Telegraph revealed it had altered a speech in a way that made him appear to encourage the Capitol Hill riot.

Mr Trump has justified the ongoing war in the Middle East by arguing that Tehran’s leadership, not its population, poses a direct threat to American national security after repeatedly calling for “death to America”.

The BBC, which carried Mr Hegseth’s Pentagon address live on Monday, translated the word “regime” as “mardom”, the Persian word for “people”. It later issued a correction.

Flashback: Roger Kimball: Doctored Footage Fallout: Trump vs. the BBC: Trump’s lawsuit over the BBC’s doctored Jan. 6 clip now threatens to turn the broadcaster’s license-fee crisis into a full-blown reckoning over trust, bias, and billions.

PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE, ARKANSAS STYLE: Hero Dad Wins Arkansas Sheriff Primary Election While Awaiting Murder Trial.

Picture this: A sleazy 67-year-old creep named Michael Fosler sneaked around Spencer’s home, lured Mr. Spencer’s young daughter from her bedroom with unknown promises, and bolted away in his dusty pickup truck.

Spencer sensed that something was amiss. He looked into his daughter’s bedroom and saw that she was gone. Dad heard Fosler’s truck leaving with some urgency. Spencer wasn’t going to wait for the cops to finish their donuts to respond. He grabbed his gun and tok off in hot pursuit.

Minutes later, Spencer caught up to the child molester’s truck like he was Liam Neesom in Taken.

After Spencer forced the perv’s pickup off the road, words flew. An “altercation” ensued and…boom. Spencer plugged the creep ceasing any respiratory activity and rescuing his little girl from what could’ve been a lifetime of nightmares.

Heroic? Hell yes. But the local prosecutor decided he can’t just let a heroic dad “get away” with doing the right thing. He slapped Spencer with a murder charge. Because, you know, the justice system gonna justice.

Fuming, but far from finished, Spencer flipped the script, saying, in effect, “Screw this broken machine — I’ll fix it myself.”

Awesome. But he still needs to be found Not Guilty when the case goes to trial this spring to run in the general election.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: I wrote this about reporting from the Middle East back in 2018, and in trying damndest to be fair to CNN, I revisit it here because once you step out of the “us vs. them” bubble, the reality is (and I can say this as a former combat correspondent) getting “clean” coverage out of hotspots is harder that most folks realize, and it is still invariably true.

“To be sure, as an aggrieved people the Palestinians have been abused en masse by many entities and governments, most particularly by especially their own Palestinian Authority. As in all conflicts, there are legitimate issues that ought to be raised. But as the old saying goes, “truth is the first casualty of war” and intelligent (not to mention peaceful) dialogue and resolution seems impossible. This is so because first, the manufactured and romanticized image of the Palestinians as “brave freedom fighters” does not wholly stand up to scrutiny. Second, the attention-grabbing images overpower an undeniable political fact: as New York Post columnist Frank Fleming wrote: “I think you’re always going to have tension in the Middle East when there’s people who want to kill the Jews and Jews who don’t want to be killed and neither side is willing to compromise.

Does that excuse the constant anti-American gullibility of CNN in the current situation?

Of course not. 

 

HMM: GOP’s Bruce Blakeman Narrows Gap With Kathy Hochul in New York Race. “New York, long viewed as one of the most Democratic states in the nation, has become increasingly competitive over the last few years. Hochul faced a closer-than-expected race in 2022, and former Vice President Kamala Harris underperformed past Democratic presidential candidates against President Donald Trump in 2024.”

Democrats keep pushing the boundaries with terrible candidates, but blue state voters keep going for them.

IT’S FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Finally, Another Stolen Ambulance. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn why you should wait for the paramedics to finish up, how ‘pickleball brawl’ entered the vernacular, and the worst time to pull off a robbery in Texas.”

LAUGHING WOLF HAS THOUGHTS ON DECAPITATION STRIKES: Surprise, Response.

The thirty-minute window was predicated on detecting Soviet missiles being launched. Flight time from there to here is roughly thirty minutes. If we saw them fueling (Soviets/Russians use a lot of liquid-fueled ICBMs), longer period for response. That was sufficient: thirty or forty years ago.

Even twenty years ago, depressed trajectory shots from subs not too far off the coast cut that time from detection to impact to about fifteen minutes. The assurances the subs couldn’t get that close, and would be detected if they did, were deafening, though reminding me a bit of toddlers drumming their feet and yelling while having their fingers in their ears.

Today, we have massive container ships plying the waters of our country. If I can figure how to put one or more land-attack cruise missiles into a container for launch, I guarantee you others have as well. When you look at more modern drones, boy howdy are you talking the ability to get things in the air and to target with little or no detection. Iran has the capability (or did) and China has been openly experimenting with it. For all the open, think iceberg and know others have as well, a lot of others.

We lost our sense of seriousness about these things during the Clinton administration, and never fully got it back.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: How did San Francisco become such an abomination of a city? As Adam Carolla notes, “San Francisco represents the progressive movement at its purest form. This is when they get to do everything they want. That’s San Francisco. And so I’m not even going to make a judgment call. I’m just going to say take a bunch of Americans, show them San Francisco then, show them San Francisco now, and go this is the result of them doing everything they want.”

And unlike New York, which had a major reset by Rudy Giuliani starting in 1994, and continued for another decade years by Mike Bloomberg (albeit with hundreds of miles of new bike lanes), San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left office at the beginning of 1964.

UPDATE: SF Mayor Daniel Lurie’s Security Team Attacked in Wild Scene — He Leaves Officers to Fend for Themselves.

REVEALED: The Story of the United Kingdom’s Betrayal in Operation Epic Fury Is Absolutely Wild.

Given Spain’s history over the last century or so, it wasn’t exactly surprising that they’d take the side of Islamic fascists over the country that pays for their defense. The Western European country once again fell woefully short of its NATO spending requirements in 2025 while continuing to expand its welfare state, a dynamic that has been allowed to exist for far too long.

You’d expect better from the United Kingdom, though. Well, at least up until fairly recently. After all, the Brits are supposedly America’s closest, most reliable ally. Yet, in a stunning move, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer denied the use of his country’s military bases for logistical support. Further, he refused to mobilize any forces for defensive operations in the weeks before Iran’s missile and drone barrages began.

That proved disastrous, with several Gulf allies lambasting Starmer for hanging them out to dry, even as hundreds of thousands of British nationals were coming under attack.

This time the NSC agreed that the basing request be granted. Downing Street’s official line is that the situation changed when Iran began firing missiles at hotels and other civilian sites in Dubai and Bahrain. An attack on the Bahraini capital Manama narrowly missed killing British military personnel stationed there. But it is also the case that Starmer and his ministers were shocked by the undiluted fury of their Middle East allies that more had not been done to protect them. Jordan was “fucking furious,” a former minister with friends in Amman says. “The Emiratis, Kuwaitis, and even the Canadians are all asking, ‘What the fuck are you doing? Whose side are you on?’” The Emiratis pointed out that Britain was failing to help protect the 240,000 British citizens living in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

As the above excerpt notes, the British NSC did eventually reverse its decision, though it all appears to be too little, too late. Iran’s missile and drone launches have already been reduced to a trickle by American and Israeli airpower. It’s what happened before that, though, that is truly disturbing.

According to newly revealed details about the British NSC’s deliberations, the initial requests for base usage and the deployment of defensive assets (two destroyers, in this case) were denied for political reasons. 

 I’d say there were a few clues leading up to that initial denial: Revealed: Britain to get Islamophobia tsar.

ROBERT SPENCER: UK Mulls Banning 67 Dog Breeds for ‘Animal Health’ — but Is That Really the Reason? “Given that these claims about the health of well-known and beloved dog breeds are so implausible, what else could be going on here? Well, Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) recently landed himself in hot water when he posted this on X: ‘If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.’ Could it be that Muslims in Britain are forcing exactly this choice, or that Britain’s far-left Labour government is trying to ensure that the country’s growing and restive Muslim population continues to vote for Labour en masse?”

IT’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO IMAGINE:

“EXPERTS:”

FLASHBACK FRIDAY: That Time Talarico Demanded An Abortion Clinic in Every Federal Office.

We can question Talarico’s approach to Christianity, but no one can question his commitment to abortion. Late yesterday, a letter Talarico wrote in 2022 emerged on the subject of abortion. In this letter on official legislative letterhead, Talarico urged Joe Biden to open abortion clinics in federal offices and on federal land so as to frustrate abortion restrictions passed by the state legislature Talarico served.

Bear in mind that Texas passed abortion restrictions through its elected representatives in the state legislature, which is the ultimate expression of “public will” in representative democracy. The letter came shortly after the leak of the Dobbs decision that reversed Roe and sent the issue of abortion back to the states for the express purpose of allowing the “public will” to be served legislatively. And yet Talarico considered the ending of a 49-year judicial fiat (yes, that’s intentional) and the enabling of legislatures to be the real “subversion of the public will.”

Talarico then urged Biden to make the federal government into Abortions R Us in Texas, not just limited to federal funding of abortions, but to putting abortionists on the federal payroll for legal immunity. Also, Talarico envisioned a new era of putting an abortionist in every federal complex and national park:

On behalf of my constituents, I urge you and your administration to consider taking the following executive actions to protect the right to an abortion:

  • Leasing federal property to abortion clinics on federal lands or in fedeeral offices
  • Prohibiting states from imposing restrictions on abortion medication through the Food and Drug Administration
  • Hiring abortion providers as federal employees to provide immunity from state lawsuits

The General Services Administration manages more than 800 federally owned or leased buildings in Texas alone. Just repurposing a small fraction of those spaces can provide critical life-saving care to people across my state.

Bear in mind that Talarico and his fellow Democrats have been arguing for months that the federal government does not have jurisdiction to enforce existing federal immigration law in sanctuary cities and states. However, Talarico apparently thinks that the federal government has jurisdiction to abort babies, along with the executive authority to just make abortion providers into federal employees to protect them from state enforcement of abortion restrictions. I wonder whether Talarico has considered that position vis a vis attempts by Democrats in states like Minnesota and California to prosecute ICE agents.

Look, the man is simply doing all that he can for – checks notes – his “neighbors with a uterus:”