Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

April 2, 2025

SHOCK — WOMEN’S TV SHOW DISAVOWS 19th AMENDMENT! The View Lauds Ellie Mystal, Claims All Laws Pre-1965 Are ‘Unconstitutional.’

ABC News’s The View had become a home for far-left extremist politics. That fact was obvious during Tuesday’s episode where they invited far-left extremist writer Elie Mystal to promote his unhinged book designed to tear at American’s elevation of the rule of law. The liberal ladies gleefully welcomed his ridiculous pontifications about how all laws pre-1965 shouldn’t be considered legitimate and how there shouldn’t be voter registration laws.

There to promote his book Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America, co-host Sunny Hostin heaped praise on Mystal. “I love this book! You are dead on and it is a fantastic book! One of the laws you write about is playing out right now, the Immigration and Nationality Act,” she touted.

“One of my premises for the book is that every law passed before the 1965 Voting Rights Act should be presumptively unconstitutional,” Mystal explained. “Because before the 1965 Voting Rights Act we were functionally an apartheid country!”

* * * * * * * *

Laws passed prior to 1965 that Mystal, and the cast of The View, would presumably support included most laws against murder, the First Amendment (freedom of speech, 1791), the Fourth Amendment (unlawful search and seizures, 1791), the 13th Amendment (the abolition of slavery, 1865), the 19th Amendment (women’s right to vote, 1920), and the National Firearms Act (1934); just to name a few.

Between Mystal disavowing all laws passed prior to 1965* and the environmentalist far left destroying Teslas, the party that once preached a tolerance for diversity have entered further into Taliban statue toppling territory, which is what they spent the summer of 2020 doing. It’s a Mirror Universe cargo cult — since they can’t create anything new, they’re determined to burn it all down out of spite.

Flashback: Beyond the Culture of Repudiation:

As a modern conservative, [the late Roger] Scruton defends a form of democracy unknown to Aristotle. Following David Hume and Edmund Burke, however, he opposes the idea that the “political order is founded on a contract.” For Scruton, the state of nature is a chimera—an invention of modern political philosophers who had forgotten the debt and gratitude owed to our predecessors. The fictitious state of nature—so central to philosophical liberalism—obscures the fact that membership in a community, with its requisite duties and obligations, is a precondition for meaningful freedom. “Absolute freedom”—doing whatever one wants—is always an invitation to anarchy or tyranny. In the modern world, the nation is the political form that guarantees membership and self-government.

In all of his political writings, Scruton takes on the Left for scorning existing norms and customs, and for promoting a “culture of repudiation.” The Left is “negative.” It dismisses “every aspect of our cultural capital” with the language of brutal invective: accusing every defender of human nature and sound tradition of “racism,” “xenophobia,” “homophobia,” and “sexism.” Like 1984’s “two minutes of hate,” this language tears down, intimidates, and can never build anything humane or constructive—it is nihilistic to the core. At the same time, Scruton wants to reach out to reasonable liberals who eschew ideology and who still believe in civility and the promise of national belonging. His conservatism can discern the truth in liberalism (another Aristotelian trait) while the partisans of repudiation see half the human race as enemies.

And from 2019, VDH: Waging War Against The Dead. “Not since the iconoclasts of the Byzantine Empire or the epidemic of statue destruction during the French Revolution has the world seen anything like the current war on the past. In 2001, the primeval Taliban blew up two ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan on grounds that their very existence was sacrilegious to Islam. In 2015, ISIS militants entered a museum in Mosul, Iraq, and destroyed ancient, pre-Islamic statues and idols. Their mute crime? These artifacts predated the prophet Mohammed. The West prides itself on the idea that liberal societies would never descend into such nihilism. Think again.”

* I wasn’t expecting the House of Stephanopoulos to sign onto invalidating the 22nd Amendment, but Trump supporters are everywhere, apparently.

UPDATE:

Like Glenn’s theory that the Squad were Roger Stone’s best dirty trick ever, are we sure Mystal isn’t a Republican plant whose mission is to further discredit the left?

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 2nd, 2025

COVID FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: “They got covid 100% wrong,” Don Surber wrote on Boxing Day of 2022:

On April 3, 2020, the Daily Breeze reported, “Malibu surfer in handcuffs after enjoying empty, epic waves.”

Los Angeles County sheriff deputies arrested a man who was by himself in the ocean, in the name of stopping the spread of covid. The deputies were unmasked. It was a crazy time in which authorities erred on the side of authoritarianism to stop the spread of a virus.

The experts sided with closing down the world.

[On April 2nd, 2020], The LA Times reported, “Kim Prather, a leading atmospheric chemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, wants to yell out her window at every surfer, runner, and biker she spots along the San Diego coast.”

She told the paper, “I wouldn’t go in the water if you paid me $1 million right now.”

Why?

Covid is a virus. Viruses spread from person to person — or according to those covering up for Red China, from bat to person. And yet the government ordered everyone inside.

That was dumb. But it is worse. We now know by staying indoors and vegetating, people made themselves weaker.

NPR reported two days before Christmas, “A regular exercise routine may significantly lower the chances of being hospitalized or even dying from COVID-19, recently published research shows.

But so much for aquatic exercising in the once-Golden State. As Jack Dunphy noted at the PJ Mothership on April 6th of 2020: Crackdowns on Lone Surfers and Paddleboarders Threaten to Erode Respect for Law Enforcement Even Further.

Despite, as Surber noted, their getting covid 100% wrong, corporatists on both sides of the equation weren’t afraid to use their power to bend reality: The Twitter Files show the unholy alliance of state and corporate power.

Even if social media content is not protected by the First Amendment, and even if Twitter, as a private company, can create its own “terms of service” and just decide to banish whomever they want, a key question posed by the Twitter Files is: what if the government is telling this private company to do so?

Isn’t that just an end run around the First Amendment’s protections of our right to free speech? I’m no lawyer but it sure seems so.

And, even worse, what if the cozy relationship between government and social media evolves to the point that platforms censor users without needing to be specifically asked to do so by the government? Like a Mafia don ordering a hit with a sideways glance, no words are ever spoken, but the order is made clear.

Just like that, an unholy alliance has been created, with government and private companies working in lockstep to censor our guaranteed right to free speech.

There’s a name for when private companies and the government work hand in hand: fascism. Benito Mussolini said that “fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

As indicated in the Twitter Files, access to Twitter’s bureaucratic censors, de-boosters and outright platform banners was equal opportunity — Republicans could make a call just as easily as Democrats. But what is also made clear is that the Democratic Party loyalties of Twitter employees are close to 100 percent.

So who was being censored? Anyone who challenged Democrats. Which goes a long way towards explaining why those 11,000 people who questioned Covid lockdowns, masks, vaccine mandates and vaccine effectiveness were given the boot.

“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State,” to coin a phrase.

Related: Several more bonkers moments from 2020 rounded up here, under an otherwise innocuous headline: Greater Exercise Activity is Tied to Less Severe Covid-19 Outcomes, a Study Shows.

Evergreen:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Apr 2nd, 2025

April 1, 2025

BREAKING: Crucial Wisconsin Supreme Court Race Decided.

The Democrat candidate for a crucial state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin is projected to win Tuesday’s special election.

Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, a former prosecutor and the Democrats’ pick, faced off against Waukesha County Judge and Republican pick Brad Schimel for the 10-year-term court seat. At publishing time, Crawford is ahead 57.8%-42.2% with 36% reporting. This is disturbing news for Wisconsin, a state Trump won by just 30,000 votes in 2024, as the future of the state could well depend on this state Supreme Court seat.

As PJ Media’s Paula Bolyard wrote, the Crawford-Schimel race could well “determine whether the state will become a liberal hell hole like Illinois or if common sense will prevail.” Former Gov. Scott Walker also emphasized the race’s importance, as Wisconsin had a leftist majority before the election, which is now solidified.

So much for common sense prevailing:

 

Posted at 9:57 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 1st, 2025

WOOF! Scott Jennings Drops Leslie Stahl for Asking Jewish Hostage If He Thinks Hamas Meant to Starve Him:

60 Minutes prominently featured in Richard Landes 2005 Pallywood video about how the Palestinians run a propaganda factory to supply material for useful idiots in the western media, and Stahl’s question is a reminder that nothing has changed in the news division of the now badly tarnished “Tiffany Network:”

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 1st, 2025

COVID, FIVE YEARS ON: How It Started: “15 Days to Slow the Spread.”

How it’s going: Make America Healthy Again:

The mass culling of the labor force of the Department of Health and Human Services began on Tuesday morning. And early indications are that it’s a bloodbath.

Multiple officials who work in the department told The Bulwark that entire offices were being eliminated. Much of the focus appeared to be on the administrative side of things. But not all of it. We were sent an email, for instance, that Vence Bonham, the acting deputy director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, told colleagues this morning that he had been “unexpectedly” placed on administrative leave. He had a 20-year career as a researcher and leader at NIH. Within a few moments, it was gone.

To get a fuller sense of the despair, head over to the NIH’s Reddit forum; or the HHS forum. It’s bleak. That’s what happens, we suppose, when a weeks-old administration decides that it will eliminate 10,000 full-time employees from one of its most critical departments.

Elsewhere in HHS, another email we were sent shows that people put on leave were told they would no longer have access to their buildings starting today. That today happened to be April Fools was treated as a nice little sadistic touch. Was this a ruse?

Of course not. In fact, quite the opposite. Colleagues said they were spending their mornings fielding distraught emails and calls from friends whose lives had been upended, while simultaneously checking their own inbox to see if the ax would drop on them.

This news may not be generating the same level of sympathy it’s receiving at Bill Kristol’s Bulkwark:

Or to put it another way:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 1st, 2025

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Tesla Owners Not Connected to DOGE or Musk Are Acceptable Victims, According to 31% of Democrats.

A surprising number of Americans approve of the rash of violence against Teslas amid Elon Musk’s work helping President Donald Trump with the Department of Government Efficiency.

Self-identified atheists, Democrats, young people, and supporters of the policies of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt*., are the most likely to approve of the violence and the least likely to consider it “domestic terrorism.”

Arsonists have hurled Molotov cocktails into Teslas and Tesla dealerships—not just in the U.S. but also in European countries like France and Germany—as protesters hold banners reading, “Burn a Tesla: Save Democracy.” Activists have also published a map claiming to show the location of every Tesla owner across the U.S. The website with this map turns the user’s cursor into a Molotov cocktail icon.

“Earth Day” is April 22nd. The cognitive dissonance that will be on display from the same people who demand we “save the earth” while wanting to burn electric cars, and at a minimum make their ownership as toxic as possible, will be astonishing to watch.

Or as Charles Cooke writes: Burn the Planet to Spite Elon Musk. “From a purely chemical perspective, I have never been of the view that mankind can do literally anything to the earth and yield no consequences. But, equally, I have always considered the catastrophism to be uniformly silly, frequently pretextual, and, above all, unduly pessimistic about the prospect of human innovation. Watching the speed and fervor with which so many American progressives have subordinated their environmentalism to their dislike of Elon Musk has done nothing to change my mind. There is no such thing as an optional cataclysm.”

*Flashback: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History. And additional examples of leftist violence and eliminationist rhetoric at the link.

Meanwhile, at America’s Newspaper of Record:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 1st, 2025

DISNEY ACTORS SURE MAKE AUDIENCES WANT TO FLOCK TO THE BIG SCREEN THESE DAYS: John Boyega Says Star Wars Is ‘So White That a Black Person Existing in It’ Is a Big Deal: Toxic Fans Are ‘Okay With Us Playing the Friend’ but We ‘Cant Touch Their Heroes.’

John Boyega called out “Star Wars” for being “so white” during an interview as part of the new Apple TV+ original documentary “Number One on the Call Sheet: Black Leading Men in Hollywood” (via Entertainment Weekly). Boyega debuted as Finn in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and reprised the character in “The Last Jedi” and “The Rise of Skywalker.” His role in the sequel trilogy led to online harassment from racist and toxic “Star Wars” fans upset with a Black actor playing a lead hero in the space franchise.

“Lemme tell ya, ‘Star Wars’ always had the vibe of being in the most whitest, elite space. It’s a franchise that’s so white that a Black person existing in [it] was something,” Boyega said in the documentary. “You can always tell it’s something when some ‘Star Wars’ fans try to say, ‘Well, we had Lando Calrissian and had Samuel L. Jackson!’ It’s like telling me how many cookie chips are in the cookie dough. It’s like, they just scattered that in there, bro!”

“They’re okay with us playing the best friend, but once we touch their heroes, once we lead, once we trailblaze, it’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s just a bit too much! They’re pandering,’” the actor added, while also acknowledging that being cast in the franchise was a “fundamental moment” in his career.

Evergreen: The Critical Drinker: Why Modern Movies Suck — They Hate Their Own Fans (Video; NSFW language):

In addition to trashing his fans, Boyega makes Disney sound like an extremely toxic environment in his Variety profile. With all of the company’s myriad ongoing woes, it may be best to boycott all of their products, just to be on the safe side.

Related: As Snow Woke Crashes and Burns, Hollywood Scrambles to Cancel Woke Projects In “Crisis Mode Panic.”

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 1st, 2025

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

(The de rigueur septum piercing is a nice touch.)

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 1st, 2025

RED QUEEN’S RACE:

Flashbacks:

● Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”

● Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller in February of 2021: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”

● “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”

● Tom Cotton’s Response to Kamala Harris’ Border Failures Should Be the Default for All Republicans: “‘You know, Laura, Kamala Harris didn’t have to go all the way to Guatemala and Mexico to find the root causes of this border crisis because they’re not there,’ Cotton told Fox News host Laura Ingraham [in June of 2021]. ‘The root causes are in the White House.’ He further explained that it ‘happened on January 20th when Joe Biden took office, and he essentially opened our borders, reversing very effective policies that had our borders under control.’”

● And:

 

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 1st, 2025

OUT ON A LIMB: Policies, not greed, driving California’s sky-high gas prices, study finds.

As Californians continue to wonder why they suffer disproportionately at the pump compared to other states, a new study from a prominent researcher says the state’s perpetually high gas prices are largely “self-inflicted.”

Michael Mische with the USC Marshall School of Business recently published “A Study of California Gasoline Prices,” diving into the reason why California is typically the most expensive state in the U.S. to fill up your vehicle.

The conclusion: California’s high gas prices are the “result of directed policies and a litany of regulations, taxes, fees, and costs,” according to Mische.

“The data is overwhelmingly compelling,” he told KTLA on Monday. “There is no evidence of price gouging, either by gas station owners or refiners or oil producers in the state — at least widespread.”

Mische came to that conclusion after examining about 50 years of gas prices throughout the state and analyzing what led to spikes and lulls.

“It is uniformly acknowledged that California has the most stringent regulatory … environment, for oil and gas companies in the world,” the study reads in part. “Regulatory oversight, irrespective of one’s (political) perspective, is layered into and accumulates throughout the supply chain, ultimately adding to the cost burdens of compliance for oil and gas industry operators, which, in turn, contribute to higher consumer prices at the pump.”

Mische and other experts refute Gov. Gavin Newsom’s claim that oil companies have been “gouging” California drivers for years and that greed has played a larger role than policies and market forces. The governor has targeted the industry with investigations and legislation aimed at increasing transparency and keeping prices in check.

In a statement to KTLA, a spokesperson for Newsom said he has “avoided severe gasoline price spikes like the historic 2022 spike” since he signed a price-gouging bill two years ago.

When Newsom transitions from podcasting to an actual presidential bid, it will be fun to him explain why oil companies aren’t attempting to price gouge other states were gas prices are much lower. In the meantime:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 1st, 2025

THE ATLANTIC GOT CAUGHT LYING AGAIN. This Time on a Deportation Fake News Sob Story.

The Atlantic thought they could get a scalp with the Signal story involving top Trump officials discussing anti-Houthi operations. That chat, which was held on an encrypted, government-approved messenger app, accidentally added the publication’s editor and notorious anti-Trump writer Jeffrey Goldberg, who claimed classified information was divulged. It was not, and no one cared because we know the publication peddled in myth. The DC bubble is not the people. It barely dented Trump’s approval rating. When the usual anti-Trump critics come to full froth, it’s usually over nothing. Again, the people know Trump now; these stories aren’t going to work, especially when they’re soaked in lies.

So, imagine our surprise when this deportation sob story in The Atlantic turned out to be fake news trash. It’s another piece of propaganda aimed at trying to dent the immensely popular mass deportation policy Trump has initiated. Some father was taken off the streets and deported. Yeah, first, he’s an illegal alien. Second, he’s not some father: he’s a member of MS-13, which was buried in the story. This man was also cited by the courts as a danger to public safety six years ago:

Court filings show Abrego Garcia came to the United States at age 16 in 2011 after fleeing gang threats in his native El Salvador. In 2019 he received a form of protected legal status known as “withholding of removal” from a U.S. immigration judge who found he would likely be targeted by gangs if deported back.

Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen and has a 5-year-old disabled child who is also a U.S. citizen, has no criminal record in the United States, according to his attorney. The Trump administration does not claim he has a criminal record, but called him a “danger to the community” and an active member of MS-13, the Salvadoran gang that Trump has declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Related:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 1st, 2025

March 31, 2025

GREAT MOMENTS IN ASTROTURFING: Asphalt Assault: Anti-Tesla Protesters Unleash Their Scariest Weapon Yet – Nazi-Infused Line Dancing!

Tesla protesters in Seattle, Washington pulled out their scariest secret weapon against Elon Musk – line dancing. It was an assault on the eyes. Protesters hate Musk’s electric vehicles but enjoy the Electric Slide.

Have a look. (WATCH)

The irony of choosing the Electric Slide was not lost on commenters.

Other Tesla protestors had their talking points preprinted in large type, just like a Biden press conference. (Why didn’t his handlers talk him into attempting the electric slide?):

And then everybody quit at noon.

No word yet, if like the mob in Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, they all went off for brunch afterward “to have a little sponge cake und a little wine,” before contemplating their next assault on civilization.

UPDATE: Indivisible Takes Down Web Page Offering $200 for Tesla Protests.

Posted at 9:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 31st, 2025

BREAKING: Marine Le Pen Found Guilty of Embezzlement, Barred From Running for President.

‘Is France still a democracy?’

…The dramatic judicial intervention into the French presidential campaign is threatening to deny to voters the choice of the candidate who is ahead in all opinion polls. On the news channels this lunchtime, the question was being posed: is France still a democracy?

According to what I have learned of the European Union’s definition by watching the political lurching and machinations on the continent these past couple of years, it most assuredly is.

Granted, I am looking at this through American eyes, but, man, do I have a cynical squint on right now.

Next up, wondering what the average French citizen in the street thinks of it.

They’re normally not too shy about letting anyone know how they feel.

But, boy — I hope they’ve got those fire trucks filled.

Related: Has French democracy been ‘executed?’ “There may be other more immediate repercussions. Le Pen’s party could join the left in bringing a motion of no confidence in Bayrou’s coalition government. They did it in December, to topple Michel Barnier, but this year she has been more conciliatory. Not now. Le Pen may be gone, but her party will probably benefit from this judgement. The anger of her 11 million voters is likely to go from simmering to seething in the days and weeks ahead.  Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, reacted to the verdict by tweeting ‘Je Suis Marine.’ France may not have heard the last of that battle cry.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 31st, 2025

GREAT MOMENTS IN TOLERANCE FOR DIVERSITY: Takes a Dive on The Subway.

On March 19, 2025, just before midnight, decency quietly expired aboard a northbound subway car — somewhere between Midtown Manhattan and the Land of Perpetual Outrage.

That night, Alberta Testanero, 55, came down with a familiar civic illness: the belief that her opinion was law. The New York Post would later describe her as “agitated.”

A freelance creative director for Tiffany & Co., Coach, and Kate Spade, Alberta is the kind of professional who describes herself — on LinkedIn, naturally — as “an experienced team leader with a keen understanding of corporate strategy… always furthering brand vision.”

But that night, on that train, Alberta her vision was a target, and she was all out of ideas.

Testanero had spotted her personal demon. Not a man. Not even a policy. A hat. Not just any hat. The hat. The MAGA cap — poly-blend, unironically worn, clashing perfectly with her curated contempt.

Alberta — a Murray Hill progressive, Fashion Institute of Technology pedigree, luxury-brand whisperer — had spent a career aligning handbags with identity. But here, aboard the late-night 6 train, she found a brand she could not abide: a brown-skinned young man wearing that red lid. He smiled. She snarled.

Metaphor alert, for those remaining few who didn’t see how the viral video concludes:

In his Commentary newsletter today, Abe Greenwald adds:

The subway car is full of typical New Yorkers, which is to say it’s a kaleidoscope of ages, ethnicities, and social stations. And no one seems to be on the woman’s side. What’s more, they vocally support the young man. One off-camera witness who—there’s no sense in dancing around it—sounds like a black man, tells the woman, “That’s why he [Trump] won. Because of people like you.” The woman then turns on this guy, asking him if he’s “okay” with the MAGA-hat passenger. “I’m so okay with it,” he says. “I’m [expletive] okay with it. Leave him alone.” He goes on to criticize the Democrats and praise Donald Trump for pulling the rug out from under them. And finally, when the woman lands on her face, the car erupts in cheers.

So the clip is a portrait of the country’s politics in microcosm. In the 2024 election, Trump gained support among almost every demographic, including ethnic minorities. And while Kamala Harris lost Democratic support among women overall, she brought in more women over 65.

Okay, the subway scold is 55, but it’s close enough to make a larger point: Americans of every conceivable stripe have given up the grievance politics and doom-casting that dominated   Trump’s first term. And they no longer give liberal narratives the benefit of the doubt. Even New York subway riders root for the man in the MAGA hat over the liberal Karen. The only ones who didn’t get the memo are represented by a small, coastal elite. And they fell flat on their faces.

The woman shouldn’t suffer the rest of her life for her foolishness. Among other reasons, she played the starring role in a small masterpiece.

And while one Harris voter was triggered by a baseball cap, another is triggered by a car. Guess which one: “A Bucks County man scratched a swastika into a Tesla, police allege. Musk fans are not pleased,” the left-leaning Philadelphia Inquirer reports, nudge-nudge, wink-winking away the vandalism:

Tesla dealerships nationwide have become the site of anti-Musk demonstrations in recent weeks, while police reports of vandalized Tesla vehicles are surging.

The damages range from gunshots to fires, scratches to crude gestures leveled at drivers. Blowback has been strong enough that in Washington, D.C., it is now considered a hate crime to deface one of Musk’s cars.

The Philadelphia region is no exception to the tension, and one recent incident — in which a Bucks County man allegedly keyed a swastika into the side of a Tesla SUV — set local social media circles ablaze this week.

In what’s become a feature of the polarized political climate, the online outrage cycle ended with social media vigilantes identifying the suspect before police even filed charges.

And in the case of Teslas, the vehicle’s onboard cameras that record almost constantly are providing keyboard warriors and law enforcement alike with an up-close look at the mounting cases of vandalism.

On Thursday, the Central Bucks Regional Police Department issued an arrest warrant for 55-year-old Chadd Ritenbaugh, charging him with two misdemeanors and two summary offenses for damaging property, harassment, and disorderly conduct in the Monday incident.

Footage captured by the Tesla’s side camera in a Planet Fitness parking lot that morning shows a man police say is Ritenbaugh exit a gray Lexus, duck behind the vehicle, and scratch the neighboring car with an “unknown” object before walking out of frame.

The Tesla’s owner later left the gym to find “what appeared to be scratches in the shape of a swastika” on the side of the vehicle, according to court documents.

But don’t worry, the suspect told the driver that “I’m sorry you’re upset” about his alleged vandalism: Watch Leftist Vandal Squirm When Confronted for Keying Swastika on Tesla.

2020 doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme: During the Summer of Love, many of those who committed vandalism or arson made it much easier for police to track them down thanks to their obsession with selfies and social media. In 2025, those vandalizing Teslas are discovering the hard way that the cars are festooned with security cameras for a reason.

Related:

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 31st, 2025

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: “How Biden’s frailties hampered Harris,” The Hill reports today:

Democratic Party officials and White House staffers were well aware of former President Biden’s frailties ahead of his choice to end his ill-fated reelection bid last summer, according to exclusive excerpts of a new book released to The Hill.

The excerpt from “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” by The Hill senior political correspondent Amie Parnes and NBC News senior national politics reporter Jonathan Allen reveals extensive steps to cover up the signs of Biden’s aging and contingency planning if Biden chose to step aside or even died in office.

“It shows what we had to do to prepare with the unique circumstances we had, which was an eighty-plus-year-old president who was running,” one party official who was involved in the secret discussions said, according to Parnes and Allen.

Concerns around Biden’s age dominated much of his reelection campaign from its launch in April 2023 to its end in July 2024 following a disastrous debate performance.

Party and administration officials repeatedly downplayed these worries, insisting Biden was fully capable of winning and serving another four-year term in office. Despite Biden’s occasional public stumbles, they sought to assure the public that behind closed doors, Biden remained sharp and fully in command.

And The Hill was quite ready to pitch in! Flashback to this June 19th, 2024 article headlined: ‘Cheap fake’ Biden videos burst into national spotlight.

Another clip came from Biden’s recent trip to Italy for the Group of Seven (G7) meeting, when he and other world leaders watched a skydiving demonstration. A cropped version of the video seemed to show Biden wandering off before the Italian prime minister nudges him back toward the group.

But the fuller angle makes clear Biden was gesturing toward a parachutist who had just landed. The New York Post made the incident the centerpiece of its front page the next day, with the headline, “Meander in Chief.”

Right-wing media also spread a clip from a Saturday fundraiser, alleging Biden froze up on stage and had to be led away by former President Obama. Aides for both Biden and Obama disputed that characterization.

The video shows both Obama and Biden waving goodbye to the crowd at the end of the event. After a few moments, Obama grabs Biden by the hand and pats him on the back before they walk away. In response to a New York Post headline claiming Biden froze up and had to be led off stage by Obama, an Obama adviser responded, “This did not happen.”

Former President Trump highlighted the videos during a Tuesday campaign rally in Racine, Wis., and mocked the White House response.

“Crooked Joe and his handlers are insisting he’s sharper than ever, and they say the videos of crooked Joe shuffling around are ‘clean fakes,’” Trump said. “They say they’re deceptively edited. All of the mistakes that he’s made … he can’t go anywhere without a mistake.”

Although the “cheap fakes” are less convincing than sophisticated AI deepfakes, they still pose a danger — especially by eroding trust among voters, said Paul Barrett, deputy director and senior research scholar at the New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

“What they do is they further erode the distinction between what’s true and what’s not true, and I think they provide fuel that feeds highly polarized partisan attitudes that are already in place,” Barrett said.

While the videos may not sway many Democrats to change their vote, over time the altered videos can reinforce and provide “artificial fuel” to a false narrative about Biden, he said.

Oceania has always been at war with East Scranton.

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 31st, 2025

SPOILER ALERT: IT’S ENGLAND, SO YOU’LL ABSOLUTELY BELIEVE THE REASON WHY: You’ll Never Believe Why a Toddler Was Kicked Out of Nursery School.

What are some reasons kids typically get kicked out of preschool or daycare? I worked at one while I was in high school and college, and the two main reasons I remember were either behavior problems or health risks. There was this little boy who loved to bite anyone he could put his little mouth on, and while he didn’t get kicked out per se, his parents did get a lot of warnings. There was another incident in which we had a little boy who ran a high fever and cried constantly, and his mother got to a point where she didn’t really want to do anything about it because we were disrupting her job. Don’t get me started on that lady…

However, I don’t remember “transphobia” being a reason, though this was back in the early 2000s when we were all still a little sane. But that’s the case for a nursery school student in the U.K. — we’re talking a kid between the ages of three and four.

The U.K.’s Department for Education (DfE) keeps data on why students are removed from government schools, and it looks like homophobia and transphobia were added to the list of potential reasons during the 2020-21 academic year. That data reveals that during the 2022-2023 school year, one child in that age range was removed for “abuse against sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Does a three-year-old even know what sexual orientation is? And isn’t that the beauty of the innocence of being three years old? You’re more likely to hate someone because they won’t let you have a cookie than you are because they feel the need to tell you their pronouns.

Exit quote: “In the words of JK Rowling, ‘This is totalitarian insanity. If you think small children should be punished for being able to recognise sex, you are a dangerous zealot who should be nowhere near kids or in any position of authority over them.’”

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 31st, 2025

ENDORSED: Trump should bring back Anno Domini and make ‘Common Era’ a woke footnote.

Even a casual reader of history will have noticed over the past many years that the antiseptic term Common Era (CE) has slowly but surely replaced the elegant Anno Domini (AD) as the marker of the time period that began 2,025 years ago in most historical works.

Though at first glance this may appear to be a minor change, it most definitely is not, and given the Trump administration’s brave and much-needed work to repair the damage done by wokeness, it’s possible that the damage here could be reversed.

Before getting to how an executive order bringing back AD would work, let’s first take a look at why it is so necessary to restore it to our written works of history.

Anno Domini is not only a description, it is an explanation. It is directly telling us that the reason we call this year 2025 is that Christ lived 2,025 years ago. It’s not just some happy accident that Jesus lived at this time. His life is the entire basis of the chronological system.

This keeps us in communion with over 1,000 years of our own history, from old books that used, “In the year of our Lord, ….” to 20th Century classics of history that used the classic and traditional AD.

Now, progressive historians, which accounts for all but about six of them, insist that all they are doing by using Common Era instead is separating religion from the “scientific” or at least empirical, study of history. But this is an easily disproven lie.

The names of our months, for example, are taken from Roman gods, and yet nobody thinks we should change the name of March so it isn’t derived from a Pagan god of war. The difference is that, like all things leftist, this is really about power.

Exit quote: “As to the restoration of AD in our history books, there is a huge step that President Trump could take by executive order. With the swipe of a Sharpie, he could require that all books documents produced by the federal government or with federal funding use the more accurate and descriptive term Anno Domini.”

 

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 31st, 2025

THE NOT SO FINAL COUNTDOWN: Another Climate Apocalypse Deadline Just Passed.

On June 3, 2022, a protestor tied her neck to the net during a tennis match at the French Open. Her shirt read “We Have 1028 Days Left.” She was referring to the scientifically indisputable analysis from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that if radical de-carbonization was not implemented within that time frame, it would be too late to save the planet from the angry climate God.

“Climate activist delivers a poignant message during the French Open semi-final” [06/06/2022]

The 1,028th day was last week, Thursday March 27, 2025. We’re all still here, sea levels haven’t risen, global temperatures haven’t changed, and the climate is not in peril.

I’ve spent a lot of time mocking people like this young lady, but it is absolutely tragic and heartbreaking how we have immersed our children in the false-science of the climate doomsday cult. She deserved better than to be told by “respectable” authorities that life on Earth will end if she does not take radical action, possibly sacrificing her freedom, to save the planet.

We’ve had a parade of final countdowns since the first “Earth Day” in 1970. As Jim Treacher wrote earlier this month, “Every 10 years, we only have 10 years left.”

Going forward the cognitive dissonance of the same people who believe in a rapidly approaching eco-doomsday who are now burning electric cars will be fun to square. In the short-term, an Atlantic journalist just a got a taste of how crazy the extremes on his side of aisle can be: Atlantic Editor Reveals Severe Leftist Derangement by Driving Tesla Cybertruck.

The very first paragraph of Desai’s Saturday article, “My Day Inside America’s Most Hated Car,” paints a very poor picture of the prevalent attitude among his fellow liberals:

On the first Sunday of spring, surrounded by row houses and magnolia trees, I came to a horrifying realization: My mom was right. I had been flipped off at least 17 times, called a “motherf***ker” (in both English and Spanish), and a “f***ing dork.” A woman in a blue sweater stared at me, sighed, and said, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” All of this because I was driving a Tesla Cybertruck.

Show us on the doll where the electric truck touched you.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 31st, 2025
« Previous Entries
Next Entries »