Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

IS ERIC ADAMS NOW AN ALBANIAN?

Eric Adams has a well-documented penchant for travel, having made trips to places like Senegal, Cuba, and Turkey during his time as Brooklyn borough president, with his connection to the latter nation later evolving into a federal corruption case that was eventually dropped but marred his time in City Hall. But several outlets have reported that Adams has recently deepened his ties with one nation in particular: Albania.

The Albanian Daily News reports that the former mayor has officially been granted Albanian citizenship and issued an Albanian passport. According to the outlet, Adams’s new citizenship was approved by special decree by Albanian president Bajram Begaj. Euronews Albania echoed the same report with no additional details into how Adams’s alleged new citizenship came to be.

If Albania now has a former New York City mayor on its payroll, we need to dispatch Stanley Motts and Connie Brean immediately to get to the bottom of what this dangerous nation is planning next:

GOD AND MAN AT THE OBAMA LIBRARY:

TODAY TRUMP SETTLES ALL FAMILY BUSINESS*: Trump goes off on ‘NUT JOBS’  Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, Alex Jones over Iran war criticism.

President Trump lashed out at four right-wing critics of the Iran war Thursday, describing them as “NUT JOBS” and “losers” who will say anything for attention.

“I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years, especially by the fact that they think it is wonderful for Iran, the Number One State Sponsor of Terror, to have a Nuclear Weapon — Because they have one thing in common, Low IQs,” Trump wrote in a lengthy Truth Social post.

“They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too!” the president raged. “Look at their past, look at their record. They don’t have what it takes, and they never did!

“They’ve all been thrown off Television, lost their Shows, and aren’t even invited on TV because nobody cares about them, they’re NUT JOBS, TROUBLEMAKERS, and will say anything necessary for some ‘free’ and cheap publicity.”

* Rather than a Godfather callback, maybe I should have gone with a Return of the Jedi reference:

UPDATE:

To boldly go where Bill Kristol went during Trump’s first term:

Related: Megyn Kelly is imagining Mark Levin as Luca Brasi:

DISPATCHES FROM THE TIME CAPSULE:

In his 1980 book The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler wrote:

No one today, from the experts in the White House or the Kremlin to the proverbial man in the street, can be sure how the new world system will shake out—what new kinds of institutions will arise to provide regional or global order. But it is possible to dispel several popular myths.

The first of these is the myth propagated by such films as Rollerball and Network, in which a steely-eyed villain announces that the world is, or will be, divided up and run by a group of transnational corporations. In its most common form this myth pictures a single worldwide Energy Corporation, a single Food Corporation, a single Housing Corporation, a single Recreation Corporation, and so forth. In a variant, each of these is seen as a department of an even larger mega-corporation.

This simplistic image is based on straight-line extrapolations from Second Wave trends: specialization, maximization, and centralization.

Not only does this view fail to take into account the fantastic diversity of of real life conditions, the clash of cultures, religions, and traditions in the world, the speed of change, and the historic thrust now carrying the high-technology nations toward de-massification; not only does it naively presuppose that such needs as energy, housing, or food can be neatly compartmentalized; it ignores the fundamental changes now revolutionizing the structure and purpose of the corporation itself. It is based, in short, on an obsolete, Second Wave image of what a corporation is and how it is structured.

On April 1st, 1976, Congress rolled up seven bankrupt Northeast Corridor railroads into Conrail, a 17,000-route mile behemoth that was eventually privatized 11 years later. Also on April 1st, 1976, two college dropouts formed Apple Computer in Steve Jobs’ parents’ garage, and unleashed the personal computing revolution.

As I wrote on Tuesday, Paddy Chafesky’s 1976 film Network is a brilliant movie, but it’s a time capsule of an era of mass media that was already in its twilight upon the film’s release.

M-SNOW’S STEPHANIE RUHLE PRAISES IRAN’S MORAL COURAGE:

My first reaction was, “No, you don’t have to hand it to them.” What the Iranians of whom she speaks are “sacrificing” for is pure evil. While it is true that self-sacrifice is a key component of any moral system, and the pursuit of pure pleasure is morally degenerate, the “what” of that which one is willing to sacrifice matters as much or more than the mere fact of being willing to die for a cause.

Suicide bombers die for a cause. Do I have to “hand it to them?” Parents who put their children in harm’s way to make them martyrs are sacrificing. That is morally abhorrent.

Walter Sobchak could not be reached for comment:

JIM TREACHER: We Need to Talk About the MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ Community.

It’s Thursday, April 9, 2026. I’m allegedly Jim Treacher. And I just learned a new acronym. You just heard it.

Okay, let me try this: MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+.

That stands for: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and additional identities.

Again, that’s MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+. I find it helps to go three letters at a time. Like when you’re giving your account number to the customer service guy, who says his name is Steve but he has an Indian accent.

The speaker there is named Leah Gazan. (Oops. There’s a warning sign right there.) Who is a member of Canadian Parliament. She’s in the NDP, whatever that is. No offense, Canada, but you don’t matter.

I can’t wait to see what the updated Gay Pride flag looks like in 2026. I’m sure it’s moved far beyond the stripped-down minimalism of its 2022 design:

I think that’s the interstellar wake the USS Enterprise produces, just after the warp drive has engaged.

“IF YOU HAD SHOWN THIS OUTCOME TO EVERY PRESIDENT SINCE BUSH, THEY ALL WOULD’VE GIVEN THE ORDER:”

“THE LEFT KNOWS THEY CAN’T GET CONSERVATIVE CATHOLICS’ VOTES, SO THEY’RE TRYING TO POISON THE WELL:”

Related: “Dems are so terrified of the Catholic vote becoming a permanent fixture of the Republican Party that they’ll continue making up fake stories like Trump declaring war on the Vatican:”

Related:

 

SPRING FASCISM PREVIEW:

(Classical – and NSFW – reference in headline.)

DISPATCHES FROM FORTRESS AMERICA?

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED:

Somebody’s seen Star Trek: The Motion Picture a few too many times:

UPDATE: Sam Altman’s Really Weird Week Just Got Even Worse. “OpenAI is under investigation after its chatbot, ChatGPT, allegedly helped plan a mass shooting last year at Florida State University.”

BUT IT’S THE BEST REASON TO JOIN THE NAVY! Pentagon removes Navy photo after people noticed sailor’s arm patch said “SAVE THE BIG BOOTY VENEZUELANS.”

The photo shows a sailor onboard the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier working on an EA-18G “Growler” Electronic Warfare Aircraft. The pic was uploaded to the Pentagon’s Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS).

But then the comments started pouring in.

Indeed. This seems like pretty small beer when compared to WWII bomber nose art:

GLOBAL PUPPET MASTER EXPOSED:

THE HOTTEST OF HOT TAKES FROM THE GRAUNIAD: Are OnlyFans models the best way to explain the climate crisis?

The world, as we know, is in trouble. The last three years have been the hottest ever recorded. Global emissions are still at record highs. The planet is now consistently flirting with the 1.5C limit it promised not to cross. Increasingly, it feels as if we need a genuine miracle to stop us from sleepwalking into catastrophe. Could that miracle be an environmental warning from a woman in her [under]pants?

No, because OnlyFans models have to workout extensively to maintain their physiques, which they’re quite proud of. And we know from the Grauniad exactly what that means:

NOT ANTI-WAR, MERELY ON THE OTHER SIDE:

DAVID THOMPSON: Unto Others.

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading of course, this strikes me as broadly accurate:

It comes up over and over again that liberals think conservative types are creating special exceptions for their enemies whenever the conservative has blindly applied their conception of justice.

That’s how you get liberals saying stuff like, “oh I’m sure you’d be jumping straight to execution if this were a white guy“ and then every single time a white guy commits a heinous crime the entire right in unison chants, “execute him.”

Or, to take another example, consider the way in which liberals always think that conservatives want and expect immigrants to behave in a certain way just simply because they hate immigrants, when the conservative is merely applying the same standard to which they would hold themselves in a foreign country.

In these cases and many others, liberals are confused by a straightforward and universal conception of justice.

QED: WaPo Columnist Makes the Case Against Muslim Assimilation.

Tweet continues:

At that point, saying you still need to prove yourself is like Taylor Swift insisting no one listens to her music.

If assimilation feels out of reach, it isn’t because the system has excluded you. By any reasonable measure, it has already brought you into its highest ranks. What remains is a decision about whether you’re willing to fully embrace where you already stand.

And all signs point to “no.”

This is a you problem.

Exit question: “I’m not sure if Hamid was born in the United States or if he’s an immigrant, but a lot of people asked the same question I ask: There are 57 Muslim countries in the world … why do you choose to move to a Christian country and then complain about being expected to assimilate?”

IRISH ARMY CALLED IN TO REMOVE FUEL DEPOT BLOCKADES:

The Irish government has asked the army to help remove vehicles blocking fuel depots as protests entered a third day.

Haulage and agricultural businesses are angry about the response to rising fuel costs, and have also set up slow-moving convoys on motorways and disrupted major roads in Dublin.

“The blocking of critical national infrastructure will not be permitted to continue and the assistance of the Defence Forces has been requested,” justice minister Jim O’Callaghan said in a statement.

He said large vehicles would be removed – and warned owners to “remove them immediately” on Thursday morning, or face the possibility of them being damaged.

Owners “should not complain later about any damage caused to those vehicles during removal”, he said.

“Denying people access to fuel and clean water is an unacceptable interference in the most basic of human rights,” he added.

Related:

RIDE THE MICHAEL MOORE RECURSION!

● Shot: Michael Moore torches US as ‘bad guys,’ hails Iran as ‘greatest civilization’ in deranged rant.

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore torched the US as the “bad guys” in the war with Iran – while hailing the Middle Eastern nation as one of the world’s “greatest civilizations” in a deranged online tirade.

The documentarian unleashed the frenzied rant on Tuesday, calling President Trump a “terrorist” for threatening a “holocaust” after the commander in chief warned Iran that its “whole civilization” would be wiped out if the nation failed to cut a ceasefire deal to open the Strait of Hormuz and end the six-week conflict.

He also accused the US of “meddling” in Iran’s internal affairs for the past seven decades.

“Our leaders and our media are stupid enough to keep asking questions like ‘why do they hate us?’ Hate us?! They don’t hate US! WE HATE THEM!” Moore raged on his Substack.

“We’re the bad guys! If you didn’t realize that under previous presidents at least Donald Trump has ripped off the mask and shown you who we really are!”

—The New York Post, yesterday.

● Chaser: Michael Moore ‘flabbergasted’ by the ‘grace and precision and safety’ of Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal.

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore shot back at critics of President Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, arguing that he followed through with a campaign promise and did so with relative success.

“I’m still flabbergasted that he pulled this off with such grace and precision and safety. Everything that we’ve been told by the media, the mainstream media, by pundits who did nothing but spend weeks criticizing his exit from Afghanistan. I don’t get it,” Moore said while appearing on Hill.TV’s “Rising.”

Moore argued that the U.S. was able to successfully negotiate the evacuation of thousands of people from Afghanistan with the Taliban, an enemy that the U.S. has been fighting for 20 years.

“We did have loss of life with a random, vicious terrorist attack by ISIS. But whatever Biden negotiated, everybody kept their word. We left on the day we said we were going to leave, in fact we left the minute before that day, and the Taliban stood by and helped us leave,” added Moore.

The Hill, September 10th, 2021.

● Hangover: “The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not ‘insurgents’ or ‘terrorists’ or ‘The Enemy.’ They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win….I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle…the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe — just maybe — God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.”

—Michael Moore, April 14, 2004.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Don’t Freak Out When We Lose the Birthright Citizenship Case.

But the big problem is the birthright citizenship interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Sadly, that’s not going to get fixed by this case. It just isn’t. But we’ve started a discussion of the subject. We’ve started the fight. And now we just have to finish it.

But it’s not going to help by freaking out, being demoralized, blackpilling, or whining about how we didn’t get our way this time. If you’re not paying attention, let me help you. We’re winning about 90% of our cases. We lost tariffs, sort of, and we are going to lose this, sort of. We’ve won everything else. The Trump Justice Department’s track record is astonishing.

There’s a saying among trial lawyers that if you never lose, it’s because you never try cases. If we’re pushing the envelope, sometimes we’re going to push until the envelope tears. That’s a good thing. So, don’t be discouraged. We’re never going to win all our court cases. Sometimes we’re going to lose, and it’s going to hurt. So what? Welcome to real life. The answer isn’t to throw up our hands in despair. The answer is to keep fighting.

Read the whole thing.

 

UNEXPECTEDLY! California’s $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers led to ‘negative outcomes,’ researchers say.

Researchers found that California’s minimum wage hike for fast-food workers led to “negative outcomes” such as automation and reduced work hours.

The researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz suggested in a report published in March that the policy could produce unintended consequences such as an increase in menu prices, a loss of overtime and benefits, reductions in employee working hours, and an implementation of automation that replaces workers.

The minimum wage for workers was $16 before the $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers became law in April 2024. Gov. Gavin Newsom said in September 2023 the increase would help workers earn more as the cost-of-living rises.

“The results indicate a plethora of negative outcomes such as higher menu prices for consumers, reductions in employee working hours, widespread elimination of overtime and loss of benefits for employees,” said Stephen Owen, an economics lecturer, University of California, Santa Cruz.

“Further decreases in employee opportunities are being driven by automation and the adoption of labor replacement technologies is accelerating.”

The real minimum wage is always zero.

M-SNOW: Hitler Was Better Than Trump, America Committed Suicide.

Fresh off of cheering on Iran for how they “humiliated” President Trump by trying to kill American airmen, MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell kicked off Tuesday night’s show by suggesting Adolf Hitler wasn’t as bad a leader as Trump. He went even further and suggested that America committed suicide as a civilization when voters elected Trump a second time.

As O’Donnell was coming on the air, his first words were a jab a trump and praise for Hitler. “’A whole civilization will die tonight.’ Hitler never said that,” he declared for the man who wanted to exterminate the Jews and wrote an entire book about it.

According to O’Donnell, no villain in the history of the world was as bad as Trump. “No head of state in the history of the world ever said that. Civilization had to wait literally thousands of years until today, April 7th, 2026 at 8:06 A.M. for a head of state to say and threaten ‘A whole civilization will die tonight,’” he asserted.

Adding: “No cruel king ever threatened that, no mass murdering tyrant anywhere in the world ever said that, or even thought it was possible.”

Since NewsBusters already established that O’Donnell either didn’t know history or was obfuscating it from his audience, he might want to chat with the Jews and Gypsies Hitler tried to eradicate, the Ukrainians who survived Joesph Stalin’s Holodomor, anyone living through any of the ongoing genocides in Africa, or anyone who survived any communist regime anywhere.

“And with that statement, it could not be more tragically clear now that a whole civilization has already died,” O’Donnell sneered as he proceeded to rant about how American voters killed the American civilization.

Back in 2010, O’Donnell famously said, “Liberals amuse me. I am a socialist. I live to the extreme left, the extreme left of you mere liberals.”

Like Tucker and Darryl Cooper in 2024, O’Donnell appears to be narrowing down the form of socialism he prefers.

Related: Jim Treacher notes that “Fascism in America Sure Is Taking a While.”

It’s a bit more of a sitzkrieg than a blitzkrieg these days.

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Gavin Newsom’s $30 Billion Fraud Magnet.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is embroiled in a national fraud scandal. Thus far, much of the coverage has focused on alleged schemes related to unemployment insurance, hospice care, and food stamps. In this exclusive investigation, we shine a light on one of California’s largest initiatives: the In-Home Supportive Services Program, or IHSS, which pays family members and other individuals to provide home-based care for the elderly and disabled—at a cost of nearly $30 billion per year.

On the surface, IHSS presents itself as an instrument of compassion, directing billions to caregivers who help with cooking, personal care, laundry, and other daily needs inside recipients’ homes. But a growing number of experts and critics argue that the program is rife with fraud, losing roughly an estimated $6 billion to $12 billion yearly to scammers. Meantime, the state’s powerful home-care unions collect more than $149 million in membership dues, funneling money into the political network supporting Newsom and California Democrats.

This is the story of a government that has allowed compassion to become a mask for fraud, creating a self-reinforcing system that keeps the Democratic establishment in power.

It sounds bad. No wonder Newsom thinks that simply throwing more money into a bonfire will make it all go away: Gavin Newsom to spend $19M in taxpayer funds on New York PR firm to polish California’s image.

BRIDGET PHETASY: I Don’t Care If Gen Z Likes Me.

I recently caught a couple of clips from Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes—originally published last October. And something odd struck me: the body language. Here was a man who once commanded an audience of five million adults on the biggest show in cable news, sitting across from a 20-something shock-jock, channeling the energy of a guy trying to impress his son’s friends. See how cool I am? See how I’m not afraid to go there?

For example, an hour and a half into the conversation, Carlson paused to justify why he’d agreed to do it at all: “Everyone’s going to be like, you’re a Nazi just like Fuentes. . . . But I don’t think Fuentes is going away. . . he’s bigger than ever.” He also told Fuentes he was “more talented than I am, for sure, as a talker.”

Earlier, when Fuentes explained that he became “radicalized on race” by listening to Fox News host Mark Levin, Tucker responded, “Amazing.” When Fuentes mentioned he admires Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Carlson told him they would circle back. He never did.

Culture commentator Jon Gabriel put it well on X at the time: “Jon Stewart embracing Zohran, Tucker embracing Nick. Two aging hosts desperate to impress the young and scared of being left behind.”

Tucker morphed into Carsenio so slowly, I hardly even noticed:

BACK TO THE FUTURE: The 10-Year-Old Nikon D5 DSLR Really Is the Best Camera for Artemis II.

While much of the discussion surrounding the Artemis II crew’s beautiful photos from their Orion spacecraft has focused on the images themselves, and they are fantastic shots, some of the discussion has surrounded the cameras used to capture the photos. Photographers love chatting gear, after all. While the Nikon D5 DSLR may seem like a puzzling choice as the primary camera on a prestigious space mission in 2026, it’s the best tool for the job.

Although the Artemis II crew successfully campaigned to get Nikon’s current flagship camera, the mirrorless Z9, aboard at the last minute, the crew is using the rigorously tested Nikon D5 DSLR from 2016 as the main camera. Not the Nikon D6, Nikon’s last professional DSLR that was discontinued in 2025, but the 10-year-old D5.

It’s easy to wonder why the Artemis II astronauts, who are part of an Artemis program costing many billions of dollars to operate, are using an old DSLR that, frankly, was not particularly beloved at the time of its release.

It’s all part of a theme with this mission. Unless I’m having a Mandela Effect moment, I seem to recall Ron Howard on the director’s commentary on the DVD of Apollo 13 talking about the irony of making a history movie about a Saturn V-powered moonshotecause of how dated the ’60s-era NASA technology had become by 1995. As Glenn wrote about Artemis a few weeks ago in the New York Post, that retro theme continues on this flight as well:

The Apollo program’s cutting-edge technology, in both the rocket boosters and the spacecraft themselves, advanced the state of the art in astronautics and established the United States as the leader in space exploration, bar none.

Artemis aims to be all these things, but mostly it’s recapturing Apollo’s “very risky” side.

Ironically, that’s not because it uses cutting-edge technology, but because it uses 50-year-old technology.

NASA wasn’t allowed to design the Artemis craft from scratch;  Congress ordered it to use off-the-shelf technology developed for the space shuttle, including the shuttle’s main engines and fuel tanks.

Critics have dubbed the Artemis rocket — the SLS, or Space Launch System — the “Senate Launch System,” since it deliberately preserved existing jobs for existing contractors in important states.

As a jobs program, it’s been a success.

As a moon rocket, much less so.

The Artemis II mission is late because it’s had a series of serious technical problems, including life support system woes and a persistent hydrogen leak that echoed similar difficulties with the uncrewed Artemis I launch in 2022.

You’d think this would have been fixed in the intervening three years, but no.

The astronauts’ issues with Microsoft Outlook, and their numerous unplanned homages to Stanley Kubrick’s “Zero Gravity Toilet” moment in 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, all continue to provide a strangely dated technological feel to this mission.