Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

March 3, 2026

SEEN ON FACEBOOK:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2026

MARK ZUCKERBERG BUYS $170M MANSION ON ‘BILLIONAIRE BUNKER’ ISLAND IN MIAMI:

  • Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have purchased a $170 million property in Miami’s exclusive Indian Creek community

  • The mansion, still under construction, will feature nine bedrooms, 15 bathrooms, and luxury amenities like a 1,500-gallon aquarium

  • The purchase sets a record for Miami-Dade County and follows a rise in luxury real estate sales in Florida

Mark Zuckerberg is expanding his already impressive — sometimes controversial — real estate portfolio with a record-breaking purchase in Miami.

The Meta CEO, 41, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, 41, closed on a $170 million property in the sunshine state on Monday, according to the Wall Street Journal. A spokesperson for the couple declined to comment to PEOPLE.

Wait, how is that possible? Dan Rather assured me in 1982 that virtually all of Florida would be underwater by now thanks to global warming:

 

Posted at 8:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2026

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE BULWARK: 

UPDATE:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2026

IT DOESN’T TAKE HERCULE POIROT TO CRACK THIS CASE: Why Europe is terrified of standing up to Iran.

The timidity of Europeans towards regime change in Iran is in stark contrast to their aggressive attitude towards regime change in Russia. Last year Von der Leyen called Vladimir Putin “a predator” who can “only be contained by strong means.” In November, Macron declared that Europe “must show that we are not weak in the face of the power that threatens us.”

Why the difference? Russia, for all its malevolence, does not have the means to stoke civil unrest in western Europe. The Islamic Republic of Iran does.

It is estimated that there are 45 million Muslims in Europe, approximately 6 per cent of the total population. Of course, many will support the US and Israeli attack on Iran, mindful of how Tehran massacred tens of thousands of protestors in January. Nevertheless, it is instructive that while there have been countless mass demonstrations in western European cities for Palestinians since 2023, street protests in support of Iranians have been negligible.

European governments are reluctant to wholeheartedly endorse the American-led strikes against Iran because they fear the conflict could spill onto their streets. This alarm is not misplaced; some left-wing parties in Europe see America’s attack on Iran as an opportunity to strengthen their “Islamo-gauchisme” credentials. Zack Polanski, the leader of the increasingly popular Green party, said at the weekend that America’s attack was “illegal and unprovoked.”

The Scottish wing of the party described Donald Trump as a gangster who was demonstrating “total contempt for human rights, international law and negotiations.”

In France, Jean-Luc Melenchon’s La France Insoumise was similarly scathing. One of the senior figures in his party, Rima Hassan, posted on X: “Iran has the right to defend itself, and Israel has the right to shut up.”

Such is the hatred of Israel among many within the European left they are prepared to side with Iran’s murderous Mullahs, particularly if they think it will be electorally advantageous.

Fortunately, these Muppets don’t appear too worried about Belgium’s Muppets:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2026

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE:

Flashback:

As Steve wrote on Saturday, “‘It wasn’t as Al Jazeera reported’ is basically evergreen.”

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2026

DEMOCRAT SAYS WHAT ABOUT TRUMP?

Flashback: Fuentes is mullah-approved!

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2026

ANDREW STILES: Exclusive: Graham Platner’s Crisis PR Handbook Hints at Trouble Still To Come.

Graham Platner is once again struggling to explain why he’s not a Nazi despite getting a Nazi tattoo and repeatedly associating with Nazis on the internet. Days after Platner accidentally promoted a post by an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, Jewish Insider reported that the U.S. Senate candidate from Maine accidentally appeared on a YouTube program hosted by a different anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist and said he was a “longtime fan.”

On Monday, Semafor reporter Burgess Everett found a “defense guidance” packet at a campaign event, instructing volunteers on how to respond if asked about Platner’s demonstrated fondness for Nazi symbology and other anti-Semitic content. “He did not know the meaning at the time and covered it once he learned about it,” the packet provides as a sample answer to questions about his Totenkopf tattoo, the “death’s head” symbol adopted by Holocaust perpetrators. Promoting the anti-Semitic influencer was a whoopsie that the campaign corrected “once the issue was realized.” It could happen—and keep happening—to anyone.

The Washington Free Beacon pounced upon learning that Platner’s campaign had assembled a crisis communications playbook for downplaying the candidate’s recurring Nazi-adjacent scandals.

What follows from Stiles is satire – or is it? Speaking of which, perhaps Platner should deploy the Mel Brooks crisis PR handbook. The 1963 comedy album, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks at the Canne Film Festival kicked off thusly (audio available at the Wayback Machine):

CARL REINER: Ladies and gentlemen, we are at the Cannes [pronouncing it “Can”] Film Festival here in Lower Italy. And we are going to meet some of the producers, directors, and stars of the films that are being exhibited here for the annual competition.

First, I’d like you to meet the German representative from Nartsi? Narsi? Narzi? From the Narzi Film Company! Herr Adolf Hartler. Good afternoon, Herr Hartler.

MEL BROOKS: Heil Hartler! How are you?

REINER: Now, this is a strange name. It’s Narzi Films.

BROOKS: Yes, we… well, we… well…

REINER: That doesn’t have anything to do with Nazi, does it?

BROOKS: No, are you kidding? They are our worst enemies. We are against them. We always were! Are you kidding?

* * * * * * * *

REINER: Sir, sir, you’re wearing your bathing suit, I noticed.

BROOKS: Yes, yes.

REINER: And as you scratched your head, I noticed a little “SS” tattooed under your arm. What does that mean?

BROOKS: Oh, oh, oh, well, wait! That’s the Simon Says!  Umm, umm, Simon Says, We played that on the beach. I’m the captain of the Simon Says team! And that’s where we get SS from! I’m serious about the game, I love it, and so I had myself tattooed, “Simon Says!”

REINER: How did you feel about the motion picture, Stanley Kramer’s motion picture, Judgment at Nuremberg?

BROOKS Unfair!

REINER: Why did you consider it unfair?

BROOKS: Well, because he didn’t tell the whole truth. What was the picture about? Really about a misunderstanding, really, wasn’t it? I mean, look, you have, you send people to camp, don’t you, in the summer? We sent a few people to camp. I don’t know what the whole fuss is about! Sent some nice people to camp…mostly in the summer!

I’m pretty sure Brooks and Reiner thought they were recording a comedy album, not a how-to guide for campaigning for the Senate.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2026

T. BECKET ADAMS: Death to the ‘fact check’ — Kill it with fire.

If we’re eliminating whole categories of journalism — which certainly seems to be the case for sports reporting — can we also do away with the “fact check” genre?

It has always been a silly gimmick, the idea that there should be a separate vertical dedicated solely to fact-checking (checking the facts is already the main goal of journalism). But even as ill-conceived as the concept is, nothing could have prepared us for how farcical the genre would eventually become.

Take, for instance, the fact-checks following President Trump’s State of the Union address last week. Naturally, the speech was full of inconsistencies and outright falsehoods. Every such address is. What’s funny, from a media perspective, is the suffocating pettiness of the media fact-checkers and their weird fetish for playing the pedant.

“The revolution that began in 1776 has not ended,” Trump said. “It still continues because the flame of liberty and independence still burns in the heart of every American patriot, and our future will be bigger, better, brighter, bolder, and more glorious than ever before.”

Associated Press fact-checkers were on it.

“To be clear,” the AP fact-check reads, “the American Revolution started the previous year, on April 19, 1775. The colonies declared independence in 1776. It ended Sept. 3, 1783.”

It’s as if we in the press are trying to make the public hate us.

Fact check: Hate the media even more than they do now

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2026

AND AGAIN: Israel bombs Iran’s top mullahs as they count votes for next supreme leader.

The Israeli air force struck a top Iranian meeting on Tuesday where Tehran’s senior clerics had gathered to select a replacement for slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to multiple reports.

The Assembly of Experts, made up of 88 top clerics, were together in the holy city of Qom when an airstrike hit their building overnight, the Times of Israel reported.

The strike came just as the mullahs were counting the votes to appoint the next supreme leader, according to Fox News.

It remains unclear how many members of the assembly were attending the vote when the building was hit.

Unverified video and pictures from Qom allegedly show the building that housed the Iranian leaders in complete ruins following the blast.

The strike came just as the Israeli air force deployed around 100 fighter jets to drop more than 250 bombs on a “leadership complex” in Tehran, located north of Qom.

Faster, please:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 3rd, 2026

March 2, 2026

TOO GOOD TO CHECK: How tampons in the men’s room helped derail the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal.

There were many defining moments featured in the months-long battle for the ownership of Warner Bros. Discovery: sit-downs to woo President Trump, high-profile congressional hearings, a brutal bidding war, and a tampon.

Yes, a tampon.

During the negotiations, while Netflix was telling skeptical GOP lawmakers that it wasn’t a left-wing company looking to get more powerful by snapping up WBD, a delegation of legislators paid a visit to its  headquarters, and one was both shocked and disturbed to find a basket containing tampons in the men’s restroom.

To be clear, there are other factors involved in CEO Ted Sarandos’ decision to cancel his nearly completed purchase of WBD’s studio and streaming service. But the “tampon incident,” as it has become known on Capitol Hill, does carry some weight in the unwavering political opposition from the GOP to Sarandos’ ambitions.

“This is 2026, not 2020,” said one GOP staffer with firsthand knowledge of the matter. “What were they thinking?”

Exit quote:

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 2nd, 2026

HOW THE ISRAELIS DID IT: “Years before the air strike that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Israeli intelligence had been quietly mapping the daily rhythms of Tehran. According to reporting by the Financial Times, nearly all of the Iranian capital’s traffic cameras had been hacked years earlier, their footage encrypted and transmitted to Israeli servers. One camera angle near Pasteur Street, close to Khamenei’s compound, allowed analysts to observe the routines of bodyguards and drivers: where they parked, when they arrived and whom they escorted.”

Or to put it another way:

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 2nd, 2026

SEVENTH CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS:

This may be more like what the Ayatollah be receiving:

Or perhaps this:

UPDATE:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 2nd, 2026

IT’S COME TO THIS:

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

JEREMY CLARKSON: I wish I’d been there for the Bafta Tourette’s moment.

To recap: the critically acclaimed movie I Swear is based on the true story of a Tourette’s syndrome sufferer called John Davidson, who was at the awards ceremony to watch the guy who played him in the film pick up a best actor award. All lovely so far.

But in the course of the proceedings John shouted out the n-word when two black guys were on the stage. And all of a sudden things were not so lovely any more. And they were especially not lovely, I should imagine, in the BBC edit suite when the show was over and they had two hours to prepare it for transmission.

I would give my entire nutsack to have been in there with them, not to contribute to the debate, but to watch a room full of luvvies tie themselves in knots. They should make a movie about it one day. It could be called “When Bandwagons Collide”. It’d probably win a Bafta.

Obviously, they nipped out a clip where one of the winners said “Free Palestine’, because after the Glastonbury debacle when that performer — I forget his name … Jizzy Biscuit? Something like that — encouraged the crowd to kill Israeli conscripts, there was something of a brouhaha.

But what to do about this n-word business? The whole point of the very excellent movie I Swear is to highlight the plight of those with Tourette’s. And by including the tic, which is what it was, the BBC would be doing just that. However, it was a racist tic. So is it acceptable to broadcast a white man using the n-word, even when he can’t help it?

Think of the hand-wringing and the mental anguish such a conundrum creates. It’s never easy being a lefty; there’s always someone or something to worry about. You can imagine them all, in a tiny little room, with two things to worry about at the same time and only two hours to sort it out. If they left it in they’d be broadcasting the worst kind of racism. If they took it out? That would be disablist. It’d be like pixelating someone’s wheelchair. Only one thing is for certain. Whether they left it in, or took it out, they would have to apologise to someone.

In the end, they left it in. And the following morning apologised to all the black people they’d upset. And then there were apologies to all the Tourette’s syndrome people, for the apology. And the last time I looked they were apologising for positioning a microphone close to where Mr Davidson was sitting. But what if they had moved the mic and he’d seen them doing it? They’d have to say, “We are moving this because some people might be offended by your disability.” What a nightmare world the left has created.

Welcome to the intersectional Olympics. As Georgina Mumford of Spiked writes, “Cancelling a man with Tourette’s is a new low for the woke elite:” “After years of telling the rest of us to platform marginalised voices, to defer to ‘lived experience’, to generally ‘do better’, they have proven to be themselves shockingly ignorant of a condition that causes genuine hardship. There is no awareness that they themselves are ‘exclusionary’. Those who bristle about having to be in close proximity with disabled people will not stop to wonder if they, themselves, are the bigots. ‘The best at hate are those who preach love’, Charles Bukowski once said. Perhaps, too, those most quick to tell the rest of us to ‘educate yourself’ are the ones most in need of taking their own advice.”

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 2nd, 2026

RICK MCGINNIS AT STEYN ONLINE: Wow Finish: Stanley Kramer brings down the curtain in On the Beach.

“Every man who worked on this thing told you what would happen,” Julian [Fred Astaire] argues. “The scientists signed petition after petition. But nobody listened. There was a choice. It was build the bombs and use them. Or risk the United States and the Soviet Union and the rest of us would find some way to go on living.” In any case the radiation level in the room they’re in is nine times higher than it was a year ago.

“We’re doomed, you know,” Julian tells them. “The whole silly, drunken pathetic lot of us. Doomed by the air we’re about to breathe. We haven’t got a chance.”

The whole terrible scene reduces Mary to tears and inspires Moira [Ava Gardner] to get drunker and, later that night when the party is over, try to get Towers to explain to her what happened and why. He can’t explain it any better than anyone else – the film is far vaguer than [Nevil] Shute’s book with a geopolitical scenario for global nuclear war – but it’s the beginning of a simmering flirtation that was inevitable once Kramer put [Gregory] Peck and Gardner in the same frame.

[Anthony] Perkins, Gardner and Astaire all play Australians but while Perkins and Astaire attempt a spotty accent in early scenes it’s gone long before the end of the picture and Gardner doesn’t even bother. It probably didn’t matter much to American audiences at the time, but what did bother Shute was the changes Kramer made to the budding romance between Moira and Towers.

In adapting the story with screenwriter John Paxton, John Osborne became Julian Osborn and was aged up from a man in his late twenties to the spry but senior Astaire. Moira was also aged up from a petite blonde in her twenties to the curvaceous brunette Gardner, attractive but showing every bit of her hard-lived thirty-six years, and still able to draw the stares of a shipful of sailors on the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne as she walks down the dock to the Sawfish. This all makes On the Beach a movie artifact of a world of adults, glimpsed just before youthful demographics would banish that world to ancient history.

* * * * * * * * *

 On the Beach is such a famous, relentless downer that it’s no surprise, with or without the efforts of the USIA, the State Department, the OCDM and the Pentagon, the film flopped at the box office. Eisenhower needn’t have worried. And as if confirming the old adage about “first time as tragedy, second as comedy”, five years later Stanley Kubrick would tell a nuclear war story as essentially bleak and hopeless with Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

In sharp contrast to the grim slog of On the Beach, at least Kubrick, his cast, and the movie’s viewers had plenty of fun before the world blew up. As Kubrick later told an interviewer, “I started work on the screenplay with every intention of making the film a serious treatment of the problem of accidental nuclear war. As I kept trying to imagine the way in which things would really happen, ideas kept coming to me which I would discard because they were so ludicrous. I kept saying to myself: ‘I can’t do this. People will laugh.’”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 2nd, 2026

ANDREW STILES: Rest in Pieces: Ali Khamenei, Demure Progressive Stalwart and ‘Black Lives Matter’ Ally Who Inspired Democrats and Academics, Bombed to Death at 86.

Ali Khamenei, the “Black Lives Matter” advocate and long-serving supreme leader of Iran, was a guiding light to Democratic lawmakers, Ivy League professors, and other progressive ideologues who endorsed his intellectual appraisal of America’s evil and the treachery of Jews.

In darkness they must now persist.

The ayatollah died like a dog Saturday when his “secure” compound in central Tehran was caved in by several dozen of the biggest, most beautiful bombs ever made. Khamenei’s body, so austere and worldly, torn to shreds. His mangled face adorned with one of history’s most distinguished beards. His agile mind—inquisitive and playful—literally blown amidst the ashes of scholarly texts and quirky beach reads. A name crossed off the top of Uncle Sam’s list. The emphatic ring of Mother Freedom’s bell. It must have felt as if the whole wide world was raining down. Because it was.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social. He was 86.

The Iranian people cheered a tyrant’s demise and hoped for what could be. You could tell their joy was real and not the Kamala Harris kind. The ayatollah’s left-wing comrades sobbed like sloppy seventh graders. They shook their fists at mushroom clouds and wept for what had been. The revolution. The hostages. The oil nonsense. Decades of degenerate behavior and the targeting of American soldiers. The homespun hipster in his button-down shirt (also killed). The slow death of the Iranian economy, which even the Obama nuclear shake-down couldn’t stop.

They had to hand it to the supreme leader.* Fans commended him for dying honorably—on his own terms, mid-resistance, cowering in a bunker, surrounded by his closest friends and military commanders. They touted his progressive bona fides—he understood that decolonization was more than vibes and essays. In May 2020, he penned an eloquent clapback against white supremacy after the death of George Floyd. He never took Trump’s calls or laughed at a misogynistic joke, which in some ways made him even more of a winner than the USA men’s hockey team. He inspired a generation of Ivy League losers to hate Jews even more than they hate themselves.

* Not necessarily:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 2nd, 2026

“IT’S ALL GLOBAL GEOSTRATEGY TO COUNTER CHINA:”

Posted at 10:48 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 2nd, 2026

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS:

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 2nd, 2026

ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES:

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Mar 2nd, 2026

March 1, 2026

OPEN THREAD: There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-threading.

Posted at 9:33 pm by Ed Driscoll on Mar 1st, 2026
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