Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

June 24, 2025

WELL, IT WAS NICE WHILE IT LASTED:

 

Posted at 12:20 am by Ed Driscoll on Jun 24th, 2025

June 23, 2025

BURIED LEDE: Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran Confirms Trump Ceasefire Going into Effect.

Was he inspired by the crazed general before the final scenes of the recent German remake of All Quiet on the Western Front?

Posted at 9:25 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2025

WELL YES, IT’S SPELLED ŠXʷMƏΘKʷƏY̓ƏMSƏM STREET, BUT IT’S PRONOUNCED THROATWOBBLER MANGROVE: You’ll never believe what the wokies in Canada just renamed this street to be more inclusive of indigenous people.

So the City of Vancouver, Canada, just got super woke and changed the name of a street that was previously called “Trutch St,” to…

Well, just watch the video, because I can’t do this.

As Rod Dreher notes:

From the comments to the tweet that Dreher links to: “It’s good to see him wearing the eyeglasses of his people.”

Classical reference in headline:

 

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2025

OLD AND BUSTED: Queers for Palestine.

The New Hotness?

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2025

TYLER O’NEIL: Former Harris Lawyer Now Works for a President She Called ‘Unfit to Hold Office.’

Biden’s National Security Council now works in President Donald Trump’s administration as an ostensibly non-political staffer in the Department of Defense, even though she wrote an op-ed calling Trump “unfit to hold office.”

While presidents appoint more than 3,000 people for political positions, the federal government directly employs roughly 2.3 million people, most of whom serve in ostensibly nonpolitical, career positions. The Office of Personnel Management tracks when political appointees transition to career positions—a process often referred to as “burrowing in” to the bureaucracy—and Samantha Goldstein did so in 2023.

“Drain the swamp” was a popular catchphrase during Trump’s first term, and it remains just as important today.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2025

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER:

Trump is speaking to the mullahs like dad grounding a petulant child. But what happens now that he’s called out their (likely) face-saving strategy?

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2025

JEREMY LOOKS TO SUPER-SIZE HIS ESTATE IN THE NEW SEASON OF CLARKSON’S FARM!

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2025

VDH: Ten Iranian Questions.

2. But what happens now? Won’t Iran release its terrorist cells in the U.S., or attack U.S. bases nearby with missiles and drones, or unleash missiles at the Gulf oil fields, or mine the Straits of Hormuz, or unleash a new unforeseen volley of missiles at Israel?

Those scenarios are endless.

But this mission was not a 1991 or 2003 bombing as a preliminary to a ground invasion. Nor was it a pile-on 2011 Libyan bombing campaign designed for regime change. It had a limited agenda—the destruction of Iran’s nuclear fortresses—and it apparently succeeded. Iran would be wise to seek a ceasefire and negotiate for the regime’s survival. Pundits claim Iran must do something to restore its reputation. But the more it acts and fails, the greater its humiliation.

U.S. naval power will soon stop any Iranian naval attacks in the Straits of Hormuz. If Iran sends missiles into the Gulf oil fields, it will lose their own.

If they hit American bases, they will likely get a response quite unlike the aftermath lull of the killing of Gen. Soleimani. If they have a hidden massive missile arsenal to unleash on Israel, Israel will respond in kind.

Which likely explains this:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2025

KURT SCHLICHTER: Trump’s Attack on Iran Will Not Destroy the America First Movement.

We keep hearing from people who insist that they weren’t voting to bomb Iran when they voted for Donald Trump, but I was totally voting to bomb Iran when I voted for Donald Trump. I knew that Donald Trump wasn’t going to be a pathetic pushover like Barack Obama, the soft new fish of world politics who sold himself for cigarettes and security on the cell block. I was a high school freshman when these creeps first dared to put their stinking paws on Americans after invading our embassy. America never avenged that or the deaths at Desert One. In the decades that followed, Iran’s legacy of terrorism, torture, and murder has run the tally to well over 1,000 dead Americans. That atrocities from Beirut to Khobar Towers to the explosively formed projectiles in Iraq have gone unavenged until now – and it is only partially avenged as it stands – is a disgrace. Third World potentates should shiver in cold horror at the thought of our unmerciful vengeance should they ever presume to harass an American.

This isn’t “Iraq 2: Electric Boogaloo.” When people complain that Donald Trump promised us no new wars – you can see that the memo for that went out to the Democrats, and when you agree with the Official Democrat Talking Points™, you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself – they are missing the point. This is not a new war. We’ve been at war with these fanatical creeps for half a century, and it’s long overdue that we finally struck back.

But, of course, the people who think like me are only a part of the America First coalition – the polling suggests we are a very big part. Still, a significant part of the American First coalition, including friends of mine who I greatly respect, disagree, and deserve a hearing when they feel strongly about something. They think differently about this issue. And you know what? They’re not crazy to do so.

Read the whole thing. Trump has been remarkably consistent on preventing Iran from developing the bomb:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2025

CHANGE: BBC bosses back Martine Croxall over ‘pregnant people’ correction.

BBC bosses have backed a television presenter who corrected the phrase “pregnant people” to “women” while broadcasting live, in what has been welcomed as a rejection of gender-neutral language.

Martine Croxall, 56, was citing a study about protecting vulnerable people in hot weather and, after reading out the report’s phrasing, immediately rolled her eyes and changed the wording to “women”.

“Malcolm Mistry, who was involved in the research, says that the aged, pregnant people … women … and those with pre-existing health conditions need to take precautions,” she said.

JK Rowling was among those to support the presenter, calling Croxall “her new favourite BBC presenter” on X, and the former Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova also backed her.

Croxall added: “A huge thank you to everyone who has chosen to follow me today for whatever reason. It’s been quite a ride.”

She has gained almost 50,000 followers on the social media platform since the incident on Sunday afternoon.

It looks like the boys in Room 102 will have a slow day today after all:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2025

GOODER AND HARDER, FUN CITY: Shocking poll shows Zohran Mamdani overtaking Andrew Cuomo in NYC’s ranked choice primary.

Lefty upstart Zohran Mamdani has leapfrogged over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the city’s ranked choice Democratic primary for mayor, according to a stunning new poll released Monday.

In its hypothetical initial round of voting, Cuomo’s lead shrinks to 3 percentage points, with 35% of likely Democratic voters supporting him compared to 32% for Mamdani and 13% for city Comptroller Brad Lander, the Emerson College Polling/Pix 11/The Hill survey found.

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams follows with 8%, Scott Stringer 3% and 5% split between candidates Zellnor Myrie, Whitney Tilson, Jessica Ramos and Michael Blake, with another 4% undecided.

But since no one garners the more than 50% of the vote needed to win outright, the ranked choice system kicks in. That means that even if a voter’s first choice is eliminated in successive rounds of calculations, their other picks could still be in the mix and emerge as the eventual overall winner.

Mamdani finally surpasses Cuomo in the eighth round of the simulated ranked choice voting — 51.8% to 48.2% — in the latest poll conducted June 18-20.

But these are just the preliminaries. As Jeffrey Blehar noted last week in a column titled, “I Love the New York City Mayoral Race,” “regardless of who actually wins the Democratic primary, this race will be rerun a few months from now in the general election:”

Yes, the New York mayoral race is exactly the sort of Carnival of Fools I live for, a circus of chaos with no heroes, not even protagonists, and no possible happy ending. And the best thing about it all is that this mess won’t even end on Tuesday night; in theory, that’s only when it begins. For one thing, the needlessly complex and misleading “ranked-choice” ballot adopted in 2021 likely ensures that it will be days before we know who has actually won the race. But even more ridiculous than that is the possibility that, once the race has been won, it will continue rolling onwards with the same cast of characters.

You see, because of New York’s ridiculous ballot access laws, Mamdani and Cuomo have already secured ballot lines for the November election — with different parties. (Cuomo has his own bespoke party line called “Fight and Deliver;” Mamdani will have the Working Families Party line handed to him if he wants it.) That means that regardless of who actually wins the Democratic primary, this race will be rerun a few months from now in the general election, this time with Republican Curtis Sliwa and the incumbent mayor himself also on the ballot splitting the vote. Perhaps one or the other will drop out before then — if Cuomo is humiliated on Tuesday, I’m not sure how he can remain in the race — but the potential for an epically disastrous four-car electoral pileup in November remains tantalizingly close.

And I’ll admit that, at this point, I’m rooting for it. I’m rooting for it as only a Chicagoan can: as an embittered man who watched his own city decline over the last 20 years, mayor by mayor, until we voted to commit suicide in the spring of 2023 by electing Brandon Johnson.

John Nolte adds, “should Mamdani win, he would make former Democrat Mayor Bill DeBlasio look like Barry Goldwater. Mamdani is a bona fide socialist who has promised disastrous rent freezes, despises Israel, would almost certainly kill any kind of school reform or choice, tie the hands of the police, and is anti-business. Mamdani is a radical activist who doesn’t hide his radical activism. New York is already in desperate straits and he would drive this once great city right to its knees.”

Hey, speaking of DeBlasio: 10 Questions With Zohran Mamdani. Including:

In my lifetime? Bill de Blasio.

Plan accordingly, New Yorkers:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2025

BLOOMBERG: Iran Stands Alone Against Trump and Israel, Stripped of Allies.

Iran’s leaders are discovering they’re on their own against the US and Israel, without the network of proxies and allies that allowed them to project power in the Middle East and beyond.

As the Islamic Republic confronts its most perilous moment in decades following the bombing of its nuclear facilities ordered by US President Donald Trump, Russia and China are sitting on the sidelines and offering only rhetorical support. Militia groups Iran has armed and funded for years are refusing or unable to enter the fight in support of their patron.

No, there are few allies left:

And: Tucker Carlson Plays Gotcha with Sen. Cruz on Iran.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 23rd, 2025

June 22, 2025

ED MORRISSEY: ‘We Came, We Saw, He Died:’ Dems’ Breathtaking Hypocrisy On War Powers.

After last night’s strikes on Iran, Democrat politicians reached screeching levels of hypocrisy over Donald Trump’s decision to act rather than wait for an Iranian nuclear weapon deployment. Chuck Schumer demanded action from Congress, as did Hakeem Jeffries. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez led calls for impeachment. Practically every Democrat on Capitol Hill — with the notable exception of John Fetterman — rushed to promote their “authoritarian” narrative about Trump.

All of this venting reveals very short memories on the port side of Capitol Hill. Fourteen years ago, they couldn’t get enough of presidential strikes on a nation in the very same region. Remember Hillary Clinton’s chortling over the fall of Moammar Qaddafi and the role she and Barack Obama played in it? “We came, we saw, he died,” she raved to Leslie Stahl after a joint US-EU bombing campaign decapitated Qaddafi’s regime, and left a failed state in its wake:

In March 2011, Obama ordered a series of military strikes on regime targets in Libya, not because of a clear and present danger to US security or assets, but because of a “responsibility to protect” doctrine promoted by Samantha Power. The Qaddafi regime was brutally suppressing dissent at the time, as Qaddafi had done for decades, but Qaddafi had also cooperated with the West on nuclear non-proliferation. Nevertheless, Obama and the Left wanted Qaddafi gone, and without going to Congress conducted military attacks with the express purpose of collapsing his regime in favor of the rebels in and around Benghazi — a bitter irony, in the end.

Obama never even bothered to formally report the action to Congress, as required under the War Powers Act, with the lame excuse that he ordered the strikes to support the action led by NATO. At the time, Harold Koh argued that the War Powers Act didn’t apply because of the limited nature of the conflict — which had been going on for three months at that point — and the administration’s interpretation of the word “hostilities” in the act. As long as US ground troops weren’t involved, Koh argued, the president had full authority and no responsibility to notify Congress at all, Koh argued.

Nancy Pelosi is in full “past performance is no guarantee of future results” mode:

The Squad is similarly Big Mad at – checks notes – Trump preventing Ayatollah Khamenei from acquiring a nuclear weapon:


As for the rest of us:

Flashback: The New York Times, January 24th, 1981:

Bruce W. German, one of the freed hostages, said today that some of his colleagues were having more problems than others in adjusting. ”They showed us videotapes of the embassy takeover,” he said, ”and some of the group simply would not look at them.”

Mr. German, from Rockville, Md., was the budget officer at the United States Embassy in Teheran. He described what it was like to be in the embassy on Sunday, Nov. 4, 1979, when the Iranian militants broke in.

”I was working in the basement of one of the buildings in the compound,” he said. ”Sunday is just another working day in the Islamic world. We could hear the crowd yelling and cheering. Then someone came in and told us we’d better move upstairs to a safer location. We barricaded ourselves in but it didn’t make any difference. We had to let them in or they would have torn the whole place down. That first day was the closest I’ve ever come to total terror.”

Asked if he considered resisting or escaping, Mr. German replied, ”When there is a gun being cocked in your ear, you don’t have many options.”

Would Return ‘in a B-52’

Mr. German, 44 years old, said he believed that the hostage crisis could make life difficult for other diplomats. ”There is just no way you can make an embassy safe from half a million angry people,” he said. Mr. German added that he would never take a foreign post where new security measures, now being planned, were not in effect. As for Iran, he said he would return there – ”only in a B-52.”

Today of course, the current iteration of the New York Times is in full “better dead than rude” mode:

UPDATE:

MORE: “Suddenly we know what a woman is?” Caleb Hull tweets. 

Posted at 10:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2025

JOE HILDEBRAND: Baited by the bauble: How the outrage-obsessed left ended up backing Iran.

For an activist class famous obsessed with being “on the right side of history” and who love to condemn others for “the company you keep”, it is a masterclass in hypocrisy that would be ingenious if it wasn’t so dopily unwitting.

It is obvious to everybody – except them — where I am going with this. The activist left has been so consumed by its hatred of Israel and Donald Trump that it has ended up on the side of Iran.

And not even just Iran, but the Iranian regime who the Iranian people themselves despise for decades of brutal oppression.

This is a government that is almost cartoonishly evil and yet somehow the most self-declaredly politically astute minds on the internet have been effortlessly goaded into backing it or its interests simply on the basis that if Israel and Trump are against it then they must be for it.

This might come with disclaimers that they don’t support the regime – the old “I’m not a racist but …” — or be couched in some pretence of principle but it amounts to the same thing.

If forced to choose between Israel and Iran or Trump and Iran, these guys are going all the way with the Ayatollah.

Their embrace of Iran is a vestige of the Obama years, when Obama did everything he could to facilitate a nuclear-armed Iran as a counterweight to Israel in the Middle East. But this reactionary impulse in general among the left has been prevalent for a long time: Tevi Troy: Mastering data before Google: Remembering the legacy of Ben Wattenberg.

Wattenberg did not just complain. He tried to offer the Democrats a way out: Democrats “will serve their country and their party better if they acknowledge that their real problem — which is the issues they have come to represent — than they will by trumpeting a phony one, that television did them in. A wrong diagnosis yields a wrong remedy.” He also warned Democrats to avoid what he called “the Reagan trap”: “Reagan said, several million times, that government is not the solution — it’s the problem. Many Democrats took the bait. If Reagan said government was so very bad, and Reagan was such a silly fellow, then Democrats must therefore say government is so very good. Trap snaps! Republicans win the White House.” This dynamic sure sounds a lot like how Democrats deal with our current president — and Wattenberg would have liked the alliterative sound of “the Trump trap.”

As Glenn concluded his latest Substack: Five Takes on Bombing Iran.

I do think the Democrats attacking this action are once again on the 20% end of an 80/20 issue.

Iran, as I mentioned above, seems to be an example of the “irrational regime hypothesis,” in which the actions needed to achieve internal power in a regime are at odds with the actions needed to succeed in the outside world. (World War II Japan is a classic example.) But it looks as if the Democratic Party today is another such irrational regime, in which the actions needed to move up the ladder with internal activists and donors are counterproductive in the larger world.

It generally takes a big shock to overcome this dynamic once it’s in place. Hiroshima and Nagasaki did it for the Japanese. The Israeli/American air campaign may do it for Iran. I have no idea what might turn around the Democratic Party.

It’s going to take more than losing another election, though.

In the meantime though, their reactions this week will be astounding to watch:

Posted at 9:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2025

WWIII BEGAN WHEN KAREN BASS GOT HOLD OF A NUCLEAR WEAPON:

“Closely monitoring” seems to be the talking point du jour among leftist politicians throughout North America today.

(Classical allusion in headline.)

Posted at 8:55 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2025

WELL, I’M GLAD WE CLEARED ALL THAT UP:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2025

ROGER KIMBALL: What Trump’s Critics Still Don’t Understand About Iran.

We are assured that it’s not the group that calls itself an Islamic State because our political leaders and our media have told us so. It’s the same with Boko Haram. They regularly slaughter Christians, women and children included. Spokesmen for Boko Haram say that they represent Islamic teaching, but no: our leaders have assured us that that is not the case. “No religion,” said Obama, “condones the killing of innocents.”

Has the former president contemplated the glorious history of Islam and the glittering deeds of Mohammed? We have it on the highest—and for Muslims, the only—authority that the Prophet regularly slaughtered innocents. Consider, to take just one example, the siege of Medina in the year 627, then home to a Jewish tribe. After a couple of weeks, the inhabitants surrendered unconditionally. Mohammad then had the 600-800 men butchered and sold the women and children into slavery.

“We are not at war with Islam,” our leaders tell us. “We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”

The impolitic question is, where are all those unperverted Muslims? In the common rooms of American universities? Maybe. In our cities and suburbs? Perhaps. But I think we can agree that it is not (to make an arbitrary and woefully incomplete list) the people behind such actions as

  • The 9/11 terrorist attacks
  • The Bali nightclub bombing
  • The Ft. Hood “workplace violence” event
  • The London tube and bus bombings
  • The Madrid train bombing
  • The Boston Marathon carnage
  • The Charlie Hebdo and Jewish supermarket slaughters in France (“folks shot in a deli” was how Obama described the latter)
  • The Danish shootings by another “Allahu Akbar”-shouting chap.

Islam, or a perversion of Islam? At some point, as Hillary Clinton might put it, what difference does it make? As we contemplate the future of Iran, I would suggest pondering the possibility that, even if “we are not at war with Islam,” Islam may well be at war with us.

New York’s potential next mayor is quite concerned about the safety of New Yorkers — living in Fordow, apparently:

Mamdani’s appearance tomorrow night on Colbert will be a brilliant folie à deux of doubletalk and obfuscation:

UPDATE: Here’s one of many topics Colbert won’t be bringing up with Mamdani:

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2025

ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES:

 

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2025

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Many Have Tried to Fix Penn Station. Can Trump Get the Job Done?

Events this weekend may allow Trump to accelerate the tearing down process of rebuilding the station exponentially: 

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2025

DANIELLE PLETKA: #WTH Iran won’t give up its nukes.

So, what happens now? If the Iranians were as smart as I suggested at the outset, they would cry uncle and agree to inspections, relinquishing enrichment (for the moment), accepting a regional nuclear agreement, and more. They would understand that the world’s focus will inevitably falter, and that then, they could safely return to status quo ante. Instead, however, they are trapped in their ideological mire, and cannot accept the need to bend the knee to Washington, and by extension — at least in their minds — to Israel.

Perhaps the regime will fall, though it seems a slim likelihood. Perhaps Ayatollah Khamenei will crawl out from his bunker and beg for peace. Ditto. More likely, Iran will seek to reconstitute that which it lost over the last 21 months — its proxies, its allies, its weapons, and its pride. This is the worst possible choice for Tehran, and dooms the Iranian people to yet another cycle of violence down the road.

But for the moment, we can thank America’s incredible armed forces and its commander-in-chief that the danger of a fanatical regime armed with nuclear weapons has receded.

Related: “The big question now is whether Iran’s nuke program just went back a few years, or if it’s been totally erased:” 

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2025

HMMMM:

Posted at 1:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jun 22nd, 2025
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