Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

March 27, 2026

NOT ANTI-WAR, MERELY ON THE OTHER SIDE:

Posted at 7:44 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 27th, 2026

IRAN IS JUST SPEED-RUNNING DOWNFALL AT THIS POINT:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 27th, 2026

March 26, 2026

GREAT MOMENTS IN ANTI-JOURNALISM:

Posted at 4:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 26th, 2026

BIRDS AREN’T REAL, BUT IN FARSI:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 26th, 2026

TUCKER CARLSON HAS BECOME TEHRAN’S MOST EFFECTIVE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PROPAGANDIST: Tucker Carlson’s sickening praise for Sharia tyranny.

Carlson really has lost it. Also on that pod, he sang the praises of Sharia law. He contrasted a place like New York City – where people are ‘shitting on the sidewalk’ and ‘having sex in ATM vestibules’ – with Sharia-ruled nations like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, where order rules and people are happy. They are? Even the gays, who in Saudi Arabia can be put to death for their acts of love behind closed doors? I’m as opposed to public shitting as the next person, but give me the occasional sight of a crackhead’s stool over the state murder of homosexuals, the forced veiling of women and the outlawing of religious conscience any day of the week.

Carlson comes off like one of those oddball ginger Brits who converts to Islam and then holds forth like a roadman imam on the glories of Sharia. He says the Sharia-governed Gulf states are ‘happy… welcoming of others… tolerant of diversity’. Okay, maybe he can explain why Qatar has not one synagogue(hint: it’s an anti-Semitic hellhole that strictly regulates non-Muslim religious belief). Or why a British grandad was once sentenced to 350 lashes in Saudi Arabia for having some homemade booze in his car. Or why a 19-year-old Saudi woman was flogged and jailed for six months after being gang-raped. I’ll tell you why: because she was rumoured to be having an affair with one of her attackers, and to the Islamo-psychos who rule that kingdom that’s as bad being raped. I bet she isn’t ‘happy’, Tucker.

Carlson’s truthless, childish gushing over Sharia nations puts him on a par with those 1930s Western leftists who bigged up Stalin’s regime and neglected to mention his violent purging of tens of thousands of ‘wrongthinkers’. Like them, it seems his need for a foreign entity he can point to as being morally preferable to the knackered West overrides any duty he might feel towards that old thing called truth. And the truth is this: Sharia law is inferior to the universal law of Western nations. Its emphasis on vengeance, where a criminal’s punishment is sometimes put at the discretion of the victim or the victim’s family, unleashes untold cruelty and clannish point-scoring. Carlson might not like poo in New York City but he should know that New York City is legally, morally and socially a more humane place than Riyadh.

Evergreen question: What Happened to Tucker?

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 26th, 2026

ANOTHER VICTORY LIKE THAT, AND WE ARE DONE FOR:

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 26th, 2026

CHANGE:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 26th, 2026

March 25, 2026

OLD AND BUSTED: “Tea in the Sahara.”

The New Hotness? Dinner in Tehran, anyone?

Just a few days ago, President Miguel Díaz-Canel publicly admitted that his government had entered negotiations with the United States. Trump just gave Secretary of State Marco Rubio his 18th, or possibly his 27th, job: settle things in Cuba. The Cuban government announced various economic reforms, including opening up Cuban businesses to private investment by Cubans abroad. Why did that happen? “The economic opening comes amid unprecedented pressure by the Trump administration,” the Miami Herald reported. I knew it had to be something.

Meanwhile, in and around the Persian Gulf, the endgame is nigh. The US Navy is just about to be crushed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Just kidding. That’s the headline that CNN and similar organs of anti-Trump animus have inscribed on their wish list. So far, my favorite chunk of surreality was the charge that neither Trump nor his military advisors anticipated that Iran would threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20 percent of the world’s black gold passes each day.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was right to call CNN’s story on the subject “patently ridiculous.” Iran has been periodically threatening to close the strait since 1979, when that malevolent lunatic Ruhollah Khomeini took over Iran and plunged it into its current grotesque misogynistic dystopia.

Iran says the strait is closed. Scratch that.  It is open to all ships except those from Israel and the United States. Since only about a dozen US-flagged ships pass through the strait annually, that is not much of a burden. But then Saudi Arabia said (I translate freely from the Arabic): “Screw this. Bypass the Strait of Hormuz altogether. Sail up the Red Sea and we’ll load your oil at the port of Yanbu.” “Oh, wait,” quoth whatever Iranian authorities are still ambulatory, “we didn’t mean it. Come back!”

India is allegedly taking them up on the offer:

UPDATE: And so is Capt. Stubing!

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 25th, 2026

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: “Early on, Bruce really and truly did speak for the working man. But somewhere in Hollywood he lost his way:”

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 25th, 2026

OH, YOU SWEET SUMMER CHILD! Scott Jennings Embarrasses MeidasTouch Dweeb Over Dems and Gas Prices.

Tweet continues:

MOCKLER: “This is going to be a big blue wave.”

“It already was going to be before the war in Iran. And this is the most like visceral change that we’ve seen so far.”

“When I drove to the airport today, I passed by two gas stations and I was paying attention. American families are paying attention to this.”

JENNINGS: “I’m old enough to remember when Democrats were advocating for higher gas prices to bring about the end of the internal combustion engine.”

“NOW, all of the sudden gas prices are a big deal.”

MOCKLER: “Wait, which Democrats said they want higher gas prices?”

JENNINGS: “Literally ALL of them.”

MOCKLER: “They said I want higher gas prices?!”

JENNINGS: “Yes! That was the stated policy, to drive prices, up to get rid of the internal combustion engine.”

Flashbacks:

● Biden Taps Economist Who Bemoaned Gas Prices ‘Too Damn Low.’

● Bloomberg headline: The Earth Wants Biden to Keep Gas Prices High.

● Great Moments in Gaslighting: Biden: High gas prices to last ‘as long as it takes’ for Ukraine victory.

● 2008 L.A. Times headline: “The joy of $8 gas.”

● “Under my plan, energy costs will necessarily skyrocket…”

In other words, Obama administration retreads [were] following the same playbook as the original Obama administration: “We’re going to keep at it to ensure the American people are paying their fair share for gas,” is the perfect Kinsley Gaffe for an Obama administration retread like Biden:  As Steven Chu, Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 25th, 2026

TIME TO GET THE HOOK:

It will be a happy day when the last of the left-wing late-night “comedians” is finally off the air. The latest outrage comes from Jimmy Kimmel, who might have been funny once in his life, but if so, I missed it:

What is it with the left and their hatred of plumbers? I’m so old, I can remember prominent lefties assuring themselves that “a working-class hero is something to be.”

UPDATE: Speaking of which:

Posted at 8:16 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 25th, 2026

NEWS YOU CAN USE:

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 25th, 2026

IT’S AMAZING WHAT A NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN CAN ACCOMPLISH:

Tweet continues, “if they violate the law the Trump DHS will send their butts back home.” Much more like this, please. 

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 25th, 2026

ED MORRISSEY: More Stupid Media Tricks: Trump Kept In the Dark By Aides on War, NBC ‘Reports.’

After that, one would expect that the media might be humbled into at least a consideration that Trump knows more about this than they do. For NBC, however, that is precisely why they have to double down:

They said the videos are also driving Trump’s increasing frustration with news coverage of the war. Trump has pointed to the success depicted in the daily videos to privately question why his administration can’t better influence the public narrative, asking aides why the news media doesn’t emphasize what he’s seeing, one of the current U.S. officials and the former U.S. official said.

And that’s what this story is all about. Trump made the Protection Racket Media look like a bunch of saps. Even worse, it exposed the US media industry as being invested in America’s failure if it also carries an opportunity to damage Trump. Having been exposed as water-carriers for the IRGC, now NBC wants to deflect from that revelation by painting Trump as somehow disengaged, isolated, and uninformed, which might just be the biggest case of projection since Thomas Edison invented the motion-picture industry.

Related:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 25th, 2026

BETTER DEAD THAN RUDE: Loyola newspaper apologizes for calling suspected murderer an ‘illegal immigrant.’

OPINION: Loyola newspaper editors want you to know they are sensitive to the feelings of illegal immigrants who are accused of murdering one of their peers

As the Loyola University Chicago community grieves over the ruthless murder of an 18-year-old freshman, the campus newspaper is focusing on not offending the suspected murderer.

On Monday, prosecutors charged Jose Medina-Medina with murdering freshman Sheridan Gorman. Medina, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, allegedly killed Gorman while the student was hanging out with friends at a nearby beach early on the morning of March 19.

Campus newspaper The Phoenix originally reported on the charges with an Instagram post titled: “Immigrant Man Charged in Murder of Sheridan Gorman, DHS Involved.”

The original post also referred to Medina as an “illegal immigrant.”

However, facing backlash, the student newspaper edited the post to remove the term “illegal immigrant.” The newspaper refers to Medina as a “Rogers Park Resident,” referring to the Chicago neighborhood where Loyola’s main campus is located.

Like college football teams running NFL-style offenses, the anti-journalism these kids are learning at school will serve them well when they’re hired into the ranks of the DNC-MSM.

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 25th, 2026

March 24, 2026

NOW IT’S A PATRIOTIC SONG? Bruce Springsteen Lets ACLU Use America Trashing “Born in the USA” for Birthright Citizenship Case Ads.

Trump-hating rocker Bruce Springsteen is allowing the American Civil Liberties Union to use his iconic, if often misunderstood, America trashing Vietnam War anthem “Born in the USA” for the ACLU’s ad campaign promoting the leftist group’s birthright citizenship case set for an April 1 Supreme Court hearing challenging President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order restricting who is eligible for birthright American citizenship.

The use of Born in the USA as a patriotic song is a 180 degree reversal for Springsteen who has long downplayed the notion the song is patriotic.

When Born in the USA was released in mid 1984 as an album title and later a single, both promoted with Springsteen in front of a large American flag, it was embraced by conservatives, including President Ronald Reagan and columnist George Will, for it’s boisterous chest pounding chorus.

The song’s theme of a disgruntled Vietnam veteran who was used, abused and forgotten by his countrymen, ending up in prison, was overshadowed at concerts by the blaring stadium rock anthem arrangement and singalong chorus that audiences in the U.S. and around the world proudly sang: “Born in the USA!!! Born in the USA!!!”

Flashback: ‘Born In the USA’ Now Fits The Conservative Message.

It’s a trenchant commentary on the failures of the Great Society and radical environmentalism.

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 24th, 2026

VDH: Who Was Cesar Chavez—and Who Will He Become?

So, the Left is on the horns of a dilemma. It was one thing to erase a liberal jurist like Earl Warren or a progressive president like Woodrow Wilson, given that they were white guys whose alleged sins came from their “privilege” as white males.

But what does the Left do in these cases of intersectional conflicts of interest, when a noble male of color is accused of violating noble women of color, and there is not a white male oppressor to be found amid this sordid mess?

In the case of the civil rights giant Martin Luther King Jr., it had long been alleged by his close aide Ralph Abernathy that King watched—and did not intervene, perhaps even egging on the attacker—when one of his subordinates raped a woman in a hotel room. And his biographer David Garrow has reluctantly chronicled the dark side of Reverend King as a promiscuous serial adulterer who, again, allegedly got violent with some of his liaisons.

Yet for the Left, the world retains a Manichean divide between all the noble oppressed, now defined by their innate race, gender, and sexual orientation, and all the evil oppressors, mostly white, male, and heterosexual.

Leftists toppled or removed statues of genuine heroes like Christopher Columbus, Ulysses S. Grant, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and George Washington; what, then, will they do with Chavez, who, as a figure of the modern age, was well aware of the norms, mores, laws, and customs of the late twentieth century?

The Left has ended any talk that a person’s life is a sum of good and bad, to be weighed somehow one against the other. In their past record of blanket ostracism, they were incapable of assessing anyone outside their ideological circle as a terrible private person, but one who, nevertheless, as a public figure, did some good things, much less consider the context of the times in which the fallen hero had lived.

But will they then apply that reductionism to Chavez or King, or even to John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton?

It’s a sort of negative intersectionality — Chavez’s #metoo violations and doubleplus ungood comments on illegal immigration meant that he became an unperson last week virtually instantly:

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 24th, 2026

TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE? Niall Ferguson: Brace Yourselves. A Recession Is Coming.

Investors should be used to the whiplash by now. The pattern ought to be familiar: The president makes a bold pro-Israel military move in the Middle East. Israel’s principal adversary retaliates by restricting the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf. The economic consequences look so grim—the nightmare combination of stagnation and inflation—that the president hastily switches to diplomacy.

I want nothing to do with the juvenile journalistic debate about whether, by postponing on Monday his threatened attacks on Iranian power plants, Trump “chickened out” the way he rolled back the tariffs in April last year—the way he always chickens out. Please. He doesn’t always chicken out. He carries out roughly half of the threats he makes, which is a pretty effective strategy in game theory, so long as your adversaries are risk averse, which most of them are. Trump most certainly is not. (When the guy who used to run George Soros’s hedge fund says that Trump has “a very high risk tolerance, much higher than mine,” that’s telling you something.)

The reason the pattern of the past four weeks should be familiar is that something very similar happened in 1973–74. The catalyst was Richard Nixon’s decision to airlift a colossal military aid package to Israel—the counterpart to Operation Epic Fury in 2026. Nixon wanted to tilt the balance of power in the Middle East decisively in Israel’s favor following the Arab states’ surprise attack on Yom Kippur, October 6. The retaliation took the form of oil price hikes by the Middle Eastern oil producers, culminating in an embargo on oil exports to the United States imposed on the orders of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia on October 17. The ultimate effect was to nearly quadruple the price of oil on the world market.

Nixon, Kissinger, and other senior officials in the administration had been warned that this might happen. As Martin Indyk showed in his excellent 2021 book, Master of the Game: Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy, they had ignored those warnings. Kissinger was dismayed at the situation he now found himself in. As he complained to his staff on October 26, in the 19th century, the Western powers would simply have invaded Saudi Arabia and carved up its oil fields. “The idea that a Bedouin kingdom could hold up Western Europe and the United States would have been absolutely inconceivable,” he fumed. Defense Secretary Jim Schlesinger even drew up a plan to occupy the Arabian oil fields “as a last resort.”

Stunned by the economic consequences and their likely political costs, Nixon instructed Kissinger to get the embargo lifted. The secretary of state made his first trip to Riyadh on November 8. For all Kissinger’s skill as a negotiator, and for all the shuttle diplomacy he undertook, it took more than four months to get the embargo lifted, on March 18, 1974. By that time, the energy supply shock had been enough to push the U.S. economy—and much of the rest of the industrial world—into recession. Is something similar happening right now as a result of Trump’s war?

Related: “Goldman Sachs just bumped its U.S. recession probability to 30% from 25%, underscoring how quickly things are moving.”

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 24th, 2026

CHANGE: Volkswagen to shift from cars to missile defense in deal with Israel’s Iron Dome maker.

Volkswagen is in discussions with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems regarding a deal that would convert one of the German automaker’s factories from car manufacturing to missile defence production, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

The plan involves transforming Volkswagen’s Osnabrück plant to produce components for Rafael’s Iron Dome air defence system, according to the report. The Israeli state-owned company’s system would be manufactured at the German facility under the proposed arrangement.

The deal aims to preserve all 2,300 jobs at the Osnabrück site in western Germany, which has faced potential closure. The two companies plan to market the defence systems to European governments.

The German government is actively supporting the proposal, according to the Financial Times report.

As Noah Pollack, channeling Norm Macdonald:

Related: Volkswagen Could Start Building Military Vehicles. The beginning of the lede is a riot:

Volkswagen is no stranger to the military sector, and the automaker is now exploring the possibility of producing military vehicles at its Osnabrück factory in Germany.

Just don’t mention the war…

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 24th, 2026
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