Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Will the 2026 midterms be a ‘blue wave?’ Here’s what to watch as polling ramps up.

One of the safe wagers about this year’s midterm elections is that polling of competitive congressional races will be frequent and abundant — and maybe even misleading. After all, the “red wave” of sweeping Republican victories anticipated four years ago turned out to be a very modest “red trickle.”

While Democrats are favored to win control of the House of Representatives this year, it may be months before clarity emerges about how November’s congressional elections will turn out. Even so, it is none too early to be aware of some realities about election surveys this year, especially as polling already has been conspicuous in unfolding U.S. Senate races in Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire and Georgia.

Pollsters in 2026 are coming off back-to-back disappointments. In 2024, polls overall understated Republican Donald Trump’s support for the third time in as many presidential elections, despite modifications to survey techniques that sought to avoid such an outcome. In 2025, polls collectively underestimated support for victorious Democrats in gubernatorial campaigns in New Jersey and Virginia — the year’s two most prominent statewide races.

Of course, past results are no sure indicator of future polling performance, as the recent experience of AtlasIntel makes clear.

Read the whole thing.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: JFK’s Grandson Jack Schlossberg’s Shocking ‘Jew Blood’ MAHA Recipe Post Exposes a Very Dark Side (Watch).

Jack Schlossberg is a candidate for New York’s 12th Congressional district. More importantly, he is JFK’s grandson and the son of Caroline Kennedy. He is clearly political royalty. He also has some very severe problems. A recent social media post exhibits that all too well. He calls this concoction the ‘MAHA energy ball’.

This is not safe for work or little ears.

* * * * * * * * *

JFK might be rolling in his grave, but probably not his dad: Joseph Kennedy and the Jews.

GEORGE GALLOWAY — THAT’S A NAME I’VE NOT HEARD FOR A LONG TIME. A LONG TIME:

BIDEN BOOKENDS: Biden Tells Majority Black Crowd At Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Funeral ‘I’m Smarter Than You.’

Reverend Jesse Jackson’s funeral was held on Friday afternoon in Chicago.

Several well-known figures attended, including Barack Obama, Joe and Jill Biden, and the Clintons.

Joe Biden not only attended but also gave a speech at the funeral.

However, as usual, Biden had a rough time behind the podium.

During one part of his speech, as he attempted to tell a joke, he claimed he was smarter than most of the people in attendance:

Watch Biden here:

And thus Biden in his twilight years echoes the moment that helped derail his first presidential bid, in April of 1987: Joe Biden’s worst-ever campaign moment, revisited.

ED MORRISSEY: Dire Strait: Sure Looks Like China Is Writing Off the Ayatollahs.

[Foreign Affairs’ Yun] Sun writes, Beijing has belatedly realized how poorly Iran performs, both economically and in terms of real power projection. Only when the West appeases Iran does the regime appear strong. When the West confronts Iran, everything withers, including their will to fight. Sun writes that Trump isn’t the only one looking forward to a potential regime change:

Although Chinese state media have refrained from openly criticizing the regime, the Chinese policy community focused on the Middle East is clear-eyed about the bad decision-making, rampant corruption and poor governance in Tehran. Israel’s ability to infiltrate the Iranian security apparatus, which is what allowed it to effectively target Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists during the 12-day war, suggests that many Iranian officials don’t trust their system and are willing to sell out their country. Chinese leaders are skeptical of the viability of an Iranian state that its own officials don’t have faith in.

China’s disillusionment with Iran’s leaders means that Beijing is not inherently opposed to regime change. Because its priority is to ensure that Iran remains a viable economic partner, it is regime agnostic. In fact, if the U.S. and Israeli attacks curtail Iran’s rogue military ambitions and the country repositions itself as an economic power in the Middle East, it could represent a future that China embraces.

China also has a meeting with Trump at the end of March. Xi wants to find a rapprochement with Trump on trade as well as global security concerns. Iran could have been leverage in those talks before the war broke out, but now it will be either a liability or potentially a deal-breaker.

Why, it’s as if: Trump’s ultimate target in this war is China. Geoffrey Cain of the Spectator notes that, “at the end of this month, Xi must sit across from Donald Trump, the man who greenlit the strike on the Ayatollah in Tehran and the seizure of Maduro in Caracas:”

Xi arrives boxed in on every front. He cannot defend Iran without alienating the Gulf states. He cannot abandon Iran without appearing weak to the remaining members of the coalition he spent a decade assembling. He needs a trade deal to stabilize China’s economy, which is slowing far faster than Beijing admits. Official figures claim 5 percent growth, but Rhodium Group, a widely cited independent research firm, puts the real number at closer to 2.5 to 3 percent. He needs Trump in a generous mood.

The deepest damage, though, is something Xi cannot afford to acknowledge: what losing Iran means for Taiwan.

Most analysts think about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in military terms. Can Beijing’s forces actually land there and take the island? But invading Taiwan would also trigger western sanctions far worse than any-thing imposed on Russia. And after what happened to Khamenei, Beijing knows that escalation does not end with sanctions. To survive all that, China needs countries willing to sell it oil off the books, help it move money past western banks and provide political cover. Iran and Russia were supposed to be those countries.

China could still invade Taiwan, but not with any confidence that the CCP would survive the consequences. Some will argue that makes Xi more dangerous, that a leader who sees his options shrinking might act before they disappear. But everything he is doing points the other way. He is shoring up his economy, not preparing for war.

The summit will be conducted in the language of trade. Iran will hang over every session, but don’t expect that in the communiqué. Every government from Tokyo to Riyadh will read the subtext.

Xi will sit across from Trump and speak the language of a strong and ascendant China. The image is no longer the reality.

It doesn’t help Xi that the war in Iran isn’t serving as a convincing infomercial for the CCP’s weapons systems: China Sold Iran Fancy CM-302 Missiles—Turns Out They’re Temu Trash: 100% Failure Rate in Real War

FASTER, PLEASE: The fall of the Islamic Republic is nigh.

In the eyes of Iranians, the Islamic Republic has long-since lost whatever virtue it might once have claimed to have. They have had to suffer basic shortages of electricity and water, while the regime pumps billions into promoting a genocidal war with Israel. And when they have tried to take back some measure of freedom – to dress how they please, to express a democratic view – they have been violently and lethally suppressed. All in the name of Islamic values.

This explains a telling paradox. The most ambitious theological experiment of the 20th century, this testament to Islamism, is now home to the most secular populace in the Middle East. In the heart of the Islamic Republic, un-belief is flourishing like nowhere else. So much so that in 2023, high-ranking Iranian cleric Mohammad Abolghassem Doulabi revealed that two-thirds of Iran’s mosques – 50,000 out of 75,000 – have been closed due to declining attendance.

Whatever happens after this awful war concludes, the Islamic Republic will fall. Not, as Islamists around the world will insist, because of Western force, be it economic or military. But because of this reactionary project’s own internal contradictions and pathologies. It talks of liberation, while demanding submission to ‘no other deity but Allah’. It commits a nation’s resources to fighting the evil of Westernisation and Zionism, while being unable to provide Iranians with even the most basic necessities of life. And in the name of revolutionary Islam, it murders its own people.

Like fascist Italy or Nazi Germany, the Islamic Republic was born of a very modern, counter-Enlightenment ideology. Let’s hope it too is soon consigned to the dustbin of history.

Read the whole thing.

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

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

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

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

Why is the left such a cesspit of homophobic antisemitism?

UNEXPECTEDLY: BBC altered Hegseth speech on Iran war.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOT SATIRE: Come learn how Biden spent your tax dollars “to make the maps more gay.”

Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL): Can you tell me, what is ‘queering’ the map?

State undersecretary Rodgers: So, I think we were trying to make the maps more gay.

Mast: Literally? How do you make a map more gay?

Rodgers: Since the age of cartography we had to do good maps, but maybe they weren’t gay enough. I know also – I took critical theory in college – I think sometimes people use queer as a verb. I do understand that the maps … were of Czechia and Slovakia so maybe those countries asked for it. I doubt it, but I don’t mind.

* * * * * * * * *

Sorry, but this is NOT SATIRE. There is a real project called “Queering the Map” where gay people drop little pins to tell their stories. The Biden State Department funded said project.

It’s great to see Biden administration staffers queering the maps, making roads less racist, stealing women’s clothes from luggage carousels, and handing the Taliban two billion dollars worth of military equipment while bugging out of Afghanistan. The grownups were back in charge during those blissful four years, and those were all activities that grownups would do.

THE NEWS WE KEPT TO OURSELVES:

Even CNN admits that when it comes to what they broadcast out of Iran, they’re propaganda:

Fondacaro’s tweet wouldn’t embed, but the CNN tweet he quotes concludes, “CNN is operating in Iran only with government permission.”

“Operating only with government permission” — what could possibly go wrong?

Classical reference in headline: CNN Admits Honest Reporting Was Impossible, So Why Go To Baghdad?

Americans debated President Bush’s Iraq policies for months, and one of the key questions was the nature of Saddam’s regime – was the dictator pragmatic enough to genuinely cooperate with U.N. inspectors, or was his regime so thoroughly evil that it could not be reformed, disarmed or contained? It turns out news organizations reporting from Baghdad had lots of information about the true nature of Saddam’s regime, but concealed it from viewers.

Thursday night on CNN’s NewsNight, and in an op-ed, “The News We Kept to Ourselves,” in Friday’s New York Times, the executive in charge of CNN’s worldwide news-gathering operations, Eason Jordan, revealed Saddam’s thugs harassed his staff, imprisoned Iraqi citizens who worked for CNN, and hatched a plot to murder his reporters working in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

“The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services,” he disclosed. “Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways.”

“I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed,” Jordan wrote. He felt CNN could not reveal any of their information without putting lives at risk: “An aide to Uday [Hussein, Saddam’s son] once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliars and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting the boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.”

“I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein’s regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment,” Jordan concluded. “At last, these stories can be told freely.”

—The Media Research Center, April 11, 2003.

HOW IT STARTED: For the 2nd year in a row, Iran is sailing its biggest warship around the world to show off its growing navy.

Iran’s biggest warship and one of its frigates are sailing across the Pacific in a first-of-its-kind journey likely meant to show off Tehran’s growing naval force to friends and foes alike.

The two ships appear to be the frigate IRIS Dena and the forward base ship IRINS Makran. They were spotted by the French and Australian navies in early January as they sailed through the South Pacific. The ships have been granted permission to dock in Rio de Janeiro, reportedly arriving on January 23.

Business Insider, January 27th, 2023.

How It’s Going: U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegeseth stated that a US Navy submarine sank the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena (75) off the coast of Sri Lanka.

Submarine periscope footage released by the Department of War showed a Mk 48 torpedo striking beneath the stern of IRIS Dena, raising the vessel off the water. Sri Lanka’s Deputy Foreign Minister Arun Hemachandra said 80 Iranian sailors have died.

The Iranian vessel was returning from an international fleet review and MILAN exercise organized by the Indian Navy in the Bay of Bengal till February 25. The vessel sank 20 nautical miles south of Galle in Sri Lanka according to the Sri Lanka Navy.

As for the Makran:

WORST REMAKE OF SOME LIKE IT HOT, EVER:

In accordance with the prophecy:

FORTUNATELY, WE STILL HAVE THE B-3 BOMBER IN RESERVE IN CASE ALBANIA ATTACKS:

Classical reference in headline:

HAPPY DEATH OF STALIN DAY FOR ALL WHO CELEBRATE! On this date in 1953, Joseph Stalin died, and the following day, the New York Times published this creepy bit of necrophilia for his obituary: Stalin Rose From Czarist Oppression to Transform Russia Into Mighty Socialist State.

In 2017, Armando Iannucci captured a far more subtle and nuanced take on the last days of the Soviet tyrant and the resulting scramble for control by his apparatchiks: The Red Reign of Error: The Death of Stalin Arrives on Netflix.

HOWARD DEAN IN 2005: “I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy.”

Get cracking Howard — the calls are definitely coming from inside the house: The Complete (And Growing) List of Things the Left Simultaneously Believes.

I am a science teacher. In science, I teach my students that a hypothesis that contradicts itself is invalid.

So I made a list.

THE COMPLETE (AND GROWING) LIST OF THINGS THE LEFT SIMULTANEOUSLY BELIEVES

Buckle up. This one is going to take a minute.

1. “My body, my choice”… but you MUST get a vaccine or lose your job, your ability to travel, and your right to eat inside a restaurant. Both things. At the same time.

2. “Believe all women”… unless the woman is Tara Reade, Juanita Broaddrick, or Paula Jones. Those women apparently came with an asterisk nobody mentioned.

3. “Tax the rich”… said by a woman worth $120 million (Pelosi), a man worth $9 million (Schumer), and a senator who owns three houses (Bernie) — all while their stock portfolios grow on insider access the rest of us will never have.

Read the whole thing.

HMMMM: Trump’s Axing Of Evil Ends Both Neocon And Mad MAGA Ideology.

There is no pretending that in the contest of ideas in the Trump universe, the Mark Levins and the Lindsey Grahams have not won, and the Tucker Carlsons and Marjorie Taylor Greenes have not lost. The “Let Reagan Be Reagan” routine, the notion that the president’s “evil advisers” are always conning him into betraying his true principles, won’t go far when it comes to Trump. Nobody believes Donald Trump is not his own man and can be bamboozled by those he has hired. Trump never stops being Trump.

A Carlson podcast several months ago, garnering 1 million views on YouTube, is entitled “It’s Time to Decide: America First or Lindsey Graham’s Psychosexual Death Cult.” In it, Carlson claimed that Graham has been talking about “killing Americans on behalf of another country, a foreign power,” meaning Israel. It’s actually nothing new for Carlson, to whom Graham has been a bane for years. According to Carlson, Graham’s positions on national security are explained by his lack of a wife and children, the cause of an absence of concern for the future.

This weekend, Carlson called Trump’s attack on Iran “absolutely disgusting and evil” and claimed that, as regards MAGA, it will “shuffle the deck in a profound way.” It is hard not to see Trump returning that fire, even though his vice president, J.D. Vance, is Carlson’s close friend, a fact that may have led to Trump putting the Ohioan on the ticket in 2024.

Will the MAGA movement crack up, parts of it turning against the two-time president for betraying their isolationism? It’s difficult to see it happening over their leader vanquishing the preeminent terrorist enabler in the world, a regime that has murdered thousands of Americans, in what is, as Trump called it, “a noble mission.” Losers lie, and Carlson’s attacks on a hawk like Graham consist of dubiously contending that he takes pleasure in bloodshed because he advocates sticking the U.S. military on fanatical killers. More likely his and like voices will soon become less relevant – especially if Trump targets him for ridicule as a kook, even if the insults are subtler than his lambasting of “Marjorie Traitor Greene.”

It is said that Donald Trump is obsessed with securing his place in history, and that it has influenced some of his decisions for the worse. But giving the 92 million people of Iran a chance at liberation is likely to push far aside President Trump’s moral shortcomings and erratic style. As regrettable as they may be, they will be of as much pertinence in the eyes of history as George Washington’s wooden teeth.

Not least of which: We Have Now Redeemed Ourselves As a Nation From Desert One. “The failure of Operation Eagle Claw was almost certainly one of the key reasons Jimmy Carter lost the 1980 election. The hostages were released on the same day that President Ronald Reagan was inaugurated; the Iranians obviously realized that there was a new sheriff in town, and that Reagan wasn’t going to play patty-cake. The hostages had been held by the vicious savages in Iran for 444 days. When Ronald Reagan took office, American families all over the nation were able, finally, to take down all those yellow ribbons.”

The Simpsons we’re joking with the “History’s greatest monster” riff about Carter, but in retrospect, not by all that much, though:

FLASHBACK: Iran’s “Keys to Heaven.”