QUESTION ASKED:
Have any of them ever won a war? https://t.co/CnoezPQGeg
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) June 17, 2025
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
June 17, 2025
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE!, BUT IN FARSI: Report: Ayatollah Khamenei Is Not Making Decisions ‘Due to His Poor Mental State.’ As Jim Geraghty writes, “Ayatollah Khamenei is 86, four years older than Joe Biden. Come on, Biden cabinet. If the Iranians can remove their leader from making key decisions because of his poor mental state, why couldn’t you?”
Related: Trump Tells Khamenei: We Know Where You’re Hiding and ‘Our Patience Is Wearing Thin.’
WELL, SO MUCH FOR THE NOTION THAT TRUMP IS A DICTATOR: Sean Penn: I’d Meet with Castro, Chavez … But Not Trump.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:
At UVA’s virtual orientation for international students, Academic Director Elizabeth Wittner framed the Honor Code and academic integrity as products of capitalism and questioned America’s foundational equality.
But international students Siddharth and Fan cut through the noise… pic.twitter.com/YnU5kLhCOA
— The Jefferson Council (@TheJeffersonC) June 17, 2025
MARK FELTON: The Last Shah—How Iran Changed from Western Ally to Enemy (Video).
YOU’RE GONNA A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: 25 Liberal Calls for Violence, Harassment, and Lawlessness During the Trump Years in Quotes.
FASTER, PLEASE:
DMV employees handing out licenses to illegal immigrants like its Halloween candy.
You can’t make this stuff up. Lock. Them. Up. https://t.co/vCBA19bQaC
— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) June 16, 2025
FASTER, PLEASE: ‘America’s Hypercar:’ The New Chevy Corvette ZR1X Aims to Take Down Ferrari.
The 2025 Corvette ZR1 may already be the fastest rear-wheel-drive car to touch down on our planet: A record-stomping track monster that crushes 60 miles per hour in 2.2 seconds, and whose 233-mph top speed reads like an AI hallucination.
Bucket-list ZR1 laps in May at Circuit of the Americas—the kind of Texas-sized corral this raging bull needs to properly fling itself about—find me chasing the very Corvette engineers who’ve been setting production-car lap records in their spare time; smoking a $1.2-million McLaren Senna, shaming a Porsche 911 GT3 RS.
Stretching its jacked legs on COTA’s back straight, my ZR1 reaches 175 mph, then 178 the next lap. 180 mph feels tantalizingly within reach. The 5.5-liter LT7 screams its titanium-hardened lungs out, flexing more turbo horsepower than the F1 cars that fly past and fill these grandstands. This ‘Vette grips harder than Schwarzenegger on the campaign trail, and it’s not the Terminator you might imagine: It’s communicative, (reasonably) accommodating, and daily drivable, still a Corvette at heart.
And it all costs $178,195 to start, including a $3,000 gas-guzzler tax for a ZR1 that can inhale two gallons of premium unleaded per minute at full power. The drinking problem is real, but you can barely buy a 911 GTS for this much cash; the 532-hp Porsche, with precisely half the ZR1’s 1,064 horses, starts from $167,000.
It certainly looks sharp:
ISRAEL KILLS IRAN’S NEW WAR CHIEF DAYS AFTER TAKING OUT PREDECESSOR, AS STRIKES CONTINUE:
Israel killed a senior Iranian general overnight, just days after eliminating his predecessor, the Israel Defense Forces said Tuesday morning, as the campaign against Iran’s nuclear program and Iran’s retaliatory missile barrages at Israel entered its fifth day.
Israel launched its campaign early Friday, saying it was acting against an imminent existential threat from the regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Explosions and air defense fire were reported Tuesday in Tehran, as Defense Minister Israel Katz warned that there were significant strikes in store for the Iranian capital.
Air defenses were reportedly also activated in Natanz, home to a major uranium enrichment plant that was seriously damaged in Israel’s opening attack, and satellite images showed extensive damage at a missile base.
An airstrike Monday night killed Maj. Gen. Ali Shadmani, the new head of the Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters, also known as Iran’s military emergency command. He had only been on the job for some four days, having replaced Maj. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, who was killed on Friday in Israel’s opening strikes against Iran.
Exclusive video of Shadmani taking office last week:
DAVID THOMPSON: Scenes From The Zombie Apocalypse.
Are you ok with this?pic.twitter.com/iC22VLL8bo
— Dr. Clown, PhD (@DrClownPhD) June 16, 2025
“By the responses, I’d say that yes, pretty much everyone is.”
And the activists’ power lies in an assumption that their victims will not risk injuring their assailants.
But to insist that the victims should remain trapped, inert, and at the mercy of their aggressors, indefinitely, and while risking greater danger to themselves or their property, does not strike me as a morally persuasive position. And note that the activists typically rush from all sides, rapidly surrounding the car and its occupants, intensifying the alarm, the likelihood of panic, and drastically reducing the driver’s options. This is not accidental.
There’s an implied dare. The game being, “You won’t do what’s needed, despite our alarming and menacing behaviour, because you’re nicer than us, less vain, and not unhinged, and so we can dominate you and terrorise you, and break your stuff, for as long as we want, for shits and giggles.”
Well. I would suggest that the activists’ own actions render their wellbeing of very low importance.
Not to mention being the only Angelenos who’ve apparently never heard of Reginald Denny.
WHOA NELLIE! NYT Rips Zohran Mamdani a New One in Brutal Non-Endorsement and We are Here for It.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Mamdani is running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges. He is a democratic socialist who too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance. He favors rent freezes that could restrict housing supply and make it harder for younger New Yorkers and new arrivals to afford housing. He wants the government to operate grocery stores, as if customer service and retail sales were strengths of the public sector. He minimizes the importance of policing.” “Most worrisome, he shows little concern about the disorder of the past decade, even though its costs have fallen hardest on the city’s working-class and poor residents. Mr. Mamdani, who has called Mr. de Blasio the best New York mayor of his lifetime, offers an agenda that remains alluring among elite progressives but has proved damaging to city life.”
Mr. Mamdani would also bring less relevant experience than perhaps any mayor in New York history. He has never run a government department or private organization of any size. As a state legislator, he has struggled to execute his own agenda.”
“…We do not believe that Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots.”
Exit question: “Who wrote this editorial and what have you done with the real NYT editors?”
Well, yes: NYT endorses de Blasio for mayor.
—The Politico, October 26th, 2013.
Related: Do New York’s mayoral candidates know that despite that whole “Gotham City” nickname, they’re not supposed to act like supervillains in a Batman movie?
Here is unhinged Zohran Mamdani the New York candidate for mayor trying to push his way to Tom Homan pic.twitter.com/YshaQjcQGb
— JOSH DUNLAP (@JDunlap1974) June 17, 2025
NO! Not … let me see … mayoral New York City candidate BRAD LANDER! https://t.co/0VRqsuNCpA
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) June 17, 2025
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: A Decade of Donald Trump.
The reaction to Trump’s announcement was just as noteworthy as its content. No one in Washington understood what was coming. Pundits dismissed his candidacy. On the Fox News Channel’s “All Star Panel” that evening, NPR’s Mara Liasson said Trump “will be ignored from henceforth.” George Will compared Trump to a Ford Edsel. Charles Krauthammer said sarcastically, “His one redeeming characteristic? He is very rich.”
Yet the conservative grassroots were intrigued. Radio talk show king Rush Limbaugh, based in Florida, thoroughly enjoyed his friend’s remarks. “This is going to resonate with a lot of people, I guarantee you,” Limbaugh told his audience. And his callers agreed. “I think the guy’s for real this time, only because he’s got such a damn big ego that he’s going to prove himself right and he’s going to be in your face,” said one. “Listen,” said another two days later, “I think that Trump has got a very good chance of getting elected president of the United States.”
How did Beltway wise men misjudge the Trump phenomenon? The answer must be that men and women who spent generations in politics and government had a harder time seeing how the country had changed since the end of the Cold War. The new economic, social, demographic, and cultural realities prepared the ground for a norm-breaking, performative, take-no-prisoners populist. When Trump said, “Sadly, the American dream is dead,” Washington scoffed—even as Americans told Gallup that they had lost confidence in practically every institution.
What once seemed like a foreign language is now the lingua franca. The world that dismissed Trump as an aberrant interloper is gone. He demolished it. His revolution enters its second decade not as a curiosity but as the new normal. And the rest of us are still trying to catch up.
Some in America taking much longer than others:
BLOOMBERG: Russia Fears for Ally Iran With Few Tools to Influence Crisis.
Russia is watching Israel’s bombardment of Iran with mounting concern for the survival of a key ally, though the Kremlin recognizes it has few levers to influence the escalating conflict in the Middle East.
Iran hasn’t asked for Russian help and Moscow doesn’t plan to offer any defense assistance, according to a person close to the Kremlin. No one can stop Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from pursuing the bombing, and Russia won’t be able to act as a mediator to stop the conflict if the goal is regime change, the person said, asking not to be identified discussing sensitive issues.
“At the moment, mediation does not seem likely,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, a think tank that advises the Kremlin. “If it comes to some form of behind-the-scenes diplomacy, Russia is more likely to play a role between Iran and the United States — Israel’s interest in negotiations is not apparent.”
Or to put it another way:
Heh, indeed.
Related: Trump Absolutely Levels ‘Kooky’ Tucker Carlson After Podcaster Predicts Early End to Presidency.
June 16, 2025
This flight from reality is not a new feature of political life. It is always easier to bequeath a problem to your successors than to face it yourself, and when the problem is intractable, Doublethink will soon erase it, as Hitler was erased from the thoughts of the appeasers, and the Gulag from the political map of the peaceniks. Nor are American presidents any more realistic than the rest of us. When the embassy in Tehran was invaded and United States citizens taken hostage, President Carter chose not to notice what was, certainly de facto and probably de jure, a declaration of war. That may prove to have been the costliest mistake made by America in the Middle East. Likewise, the silencing of Enoch Powell has proved more costly than any other post-war domestic policy in Britain, since it has ensured that immigration can be discussed only now, when it is too late to do anything about it or to confine it to those who come in a spirit of obedience towards the indigenous law.
—The late Roger Scruton, the New Criterion, September 2006. Read the whole thing.
FLOPPENHEIMER: IAEA chief: Likely all machines at Iran’s main enrichment plant ‘severely damaged.’
It is very likely all the roughly 15,000 centrifuges operating at Iran’s biggest uranium enrichment plant at Natanz were badly damaged or destroyed because of a power cut caused by an Israeli strike, the UN nuclear watchdog chief told the BBC on Monday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and its Director General Rafael Grossi had previously said the centrifuges at the underground enrichment plant at Natanz may have been damaged as a result of an airstrike on its power supply, even though the hall housing the plant itself did not seem to have been hit.
“Our assessment is that with this sudden loss of external power, in great probability the centrifuges have been severely damaged if not destroyed altogether,” Grossi said in an interview with the BBC.
And that’s why you always want a really strong UPS on your valuable computing equipment.
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT! Green group with ties to Chinese Communist Party part of network influencing U.S. policy. “‘This isn’t environmentalism—it’s economic warfare. The Chinese Communist Party is using American nonprofits to make us dependent on their supply chains, from solar panels to EV batteries, while our policymakers walk straight into the trap,’ said Michael Lucci, CEO of State Armor, which produced the report.”
NOBODY WANTS TO BE THE NEXT REGINALD DENNY: This mob of L.A. protesters tried to win a wrestling match with a Kia Forte. “It never ceases to amaze me that 130-pound liberal women think they can win a wrestling match with a 3,000-pound Kia Forte.”
IRAN’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
TWO IRANIAN F-14s PERMANENTLY GROUNDED: In 2022, National Interest reported, “According to a survey by Flight Global, the Iranian air force in 2019 operates around 24 F-14 Tomcats from a batch of 79 of the Grumman-made, swing-wing fighters that Iran acquired in the mid-1970s before the Islamic revolution.” The Iranian air force appears to have lost another two F-14s:
Two Iranian F14 struck in Tehran pic.twitter.com/zsHnOmh0Kn
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) June 16, 2025
Maverick and Rooster hardest hit.
NEW GOLDEN GIRLS REBOOT FLOPS BADLY: Check out these hilarious clips of the geriatric “No Kings” protests that flopped hard despite big crowds.
Here’s a sampling of No Kings protesters. The big divide is that these elderly people still get their news from legacy media and they believe it. They do limited to no questioning of what they’re told to believe. That won’t change but their influence is dying while ours grows. https://t.co/6X8u97s4OX pic.twitter.com/aWPJf3Litq
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 16, 2025
Related: No Kings at the Old Folks’ Home.
BAGHDAD BOB SMILES: Israeli jets bomb building of Iran state broadcaster in Tehran; anchor flees studio in mid-broadcast.
Life comes at you fast.
"Life" is what I call joint direct attack munitions. https://t.co/UtUZUecNwF
— Sunny (@sunnyright) June 16, 2025
WKRP in Tehran’s offices looking worse for wear:
Before and after: Islamic republic state propaganda outlet IRIB pic.twitter.com/GiLlsTOEfR
— Emily Schrader – אמילי שריידר امیلی شریدر (@emilykschrader) June 16, 2025
TOM COTTON SHUTS DOWN A CBS NEWS HOST’S TALKING POINTS ON LA RIOTS IN LESS THAN 90 SECONDS:
CBS News’ Margaret Brennan had another rough go of it on Sunday, which is becoming a theme here. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) was a guest. He’s back after being vindicated with his 2020 New York Times op-ed which argued for the deployment of federal troops into American cities when the entire summer that year was rife with leftist mayhem. It caused heartburn among the media, it led to an NYT editor resigning, and Cotton branded as a madman.
Flash-forward to 2025, we have a real president in the White House again, another wave of riots engulfing Los Angeles, this time over Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, and Trump did what he likely wanted to do five years ago: deploy the National Guard to quell the unrest. He also moved the Marines into the city. They’re protecting federal buildings and aiding local law enforcement. And that’s what teed up Cotton to deliver the body slam.
WATCH: Sen. Tom Cotton SHUTS DOWN Margaret Brennan's hectoring over the "language" of his WSJ op-ed pic.twitter.com/c33NUQkq1l
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) June 15, 2025
To be fair, this sort of crisp media savvy response comes with the territory when you’re the owner of the New York Times.
June 15, 2025
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: “AFT President Randi Weingarten is leaving the DNC. In a letter to DNC Chair Ken Martin, she wrote, ‘I appear to be out of step with the leadership you are forging, and I do not want to be the one who keeps questioning why we are not enlarging our tent.’”
UPDATE:
MORE DNC NEWS: Lee Saunders, the president of AFSCME, is also out at the DNC.
This amounts to the exit of two of the highest-profile union leaders aligned with the Democratic Party.
The Times reported Randi Weingarten's exit earlier.
W/ @reidepstein https://t.co/pH7w9SxlND https://t.co/RjlnHVNA3a
— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) June 16, 2025