May 31, 2025

ANOTHER HIDEOUS HERO FROM HELL: Elias Rodriquez, murderer in cold blood in public of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgren, is not somebody who deserves a one-way trip to the electric chair.

No, according to an obviously astroturfed response to Rodriquez’ arrest, the man is a hero and a sign of worse things to come in America. As Richard Pollock explains in his latest Substack column, the hero movement’s origins are suspect:

“The Tariq El-Tahrir Youth and Student Network, an obscure Middle Eastern-based group created the ‘Free Elias Rodriguez Organizing Committee’ and sought American and international co-sponsors. Twenty-nine groups publicly signed onto its manifesto.

“Tariq El-Tahrir hails Elias Rodriguez as a ‘resistance’ fighter. And they warn of more killings to come. The ‘student’ group clearly is a creation of Middle Eastern terrorist organizations and sold to America as a homegrown organization. There is no actual physical address listed for the group.

“But that didn’t deter 29 groups, a number of them American, who enthusiastically signed on to the shameful manifesto. One of the most prominent signatories was the Maoist wing of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Forty-six unnamed individuals also allegedly signed onto the document, according to their site. Quite a few of the signatories were from the Middle East.”

Posted at 9:03 am by Mark Tapscott 48

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE TODAY: I strongly encourage you to read Rod Martin’s The Counterrevolution, which is an excerpt from his forthcoming book on what must be done and who must do it to save the Republic. Here’s a sample:

“This is the moment when FDR’s long counterrevolution reaches its own reckoning. The Deep State is rotting. Its courts have become legislatures, its agencies have become sovereigns, its laws unread, its processes unknowable. Its schools no longer educate, its currency no longer holds value, its borders no longer exist. It cannot win wars, balance budgets, or tell a man from a woman. The revolution is eating itself. And its answer, in typical Marxist fashion, is to demand ever-increasing control.”

And next steps?

“It is the road of decentralization and rebirth: of a people taking back responsibility from the state, of institutions rooted once more in families, churches, communities, covenants, and crucially, elections. It is the digital reformation of a constitutional republic: where blockchain and AI are used to limit power, not entrench it; where space and energy abundance free man from the Malthusian lies of managed scarcity; where education is reclaimed from indoctrinators and returned to disciplers of truth. (emphasis added)

“And it is theological. All revolutions are religious. The American Revolution certainly was, its theological convictions the foundation of our liberty. The left’s deifies the state for the benefit of those who rule it, and abides no other God before it.

“The tide is turning. The façade of inevitability is cracking. Courts are rediscovering the separation of powers and the nondelegation doctrine. States are reclaiming their constitutional jurisdiction. Parents are standing. Young men and women, born into the ruins of postmodernity, are looking not for self-expression, but for meaning, duty, and roots. They are beginning again to build.”

Saddle up, folks.

Posted at 8:52 am by Mark Tapscott 39

RIP: Loretta Swit, who played Margaret ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan on TV’s M*A*S*H, dead at 87.

Swit also praised her “M*A*S*H” character as “unique,” even if “nobody appreciated her” within the show.

“She was unique at the time and in her time, which was the ’50s, when the Korean War was happening,” Swit explained. “And she became even more unique, I think, because we allowed her to continue to grow — we watched her evolve. I don’t think that’s ever been done in quite that way.

“She was the head nurse, and her ambition was to be the best damn nurse in Korea, and I tried to help her achieve that,” she continued. “That woman was so lonely, and she was trying to do such a good job. And nobody appreciated her.”

In Variety, Alan Alda adds, “Loretta was a supremely talented actor. She deserved all her 10 Emmy nominations and her 2 wins. But more than acting her part, she created it. She worked hard In showing the writing staff how they could turn the character from a one joke sexist stereotype into a real person — with real feelings and ambitions. We celebrated the day the script came out listing her character not as Hot Lips, but as Margaret. Loretta made the most of her time here.”

Reviewing her character’s position and evolution on “MASH,” Swit once said, “I mean, certain things had to remain the same. She had to remain one of the antagonists because that was the structure of the show. In the second season, we saw for the first time that she was unhappy with Frank and wanted more from her life. Then around the third or fourth year, in an episode called ‘The Nurses,’ Hot Lips gave the nurses a speech telling them how lonely she was because she was in charge and that’s the way it was, so she couldn’t really have any friends. Her marriage and her divorce changed her. Her affair with Hawkeye in ‘Comrades in Arms’ changed both characters, so that they were never really rivals again.”

In the mid-’70s, M*A*S*H increasingly leaned hard into Alan Alda’s burgeoning real life persona as a feminist icon. Starting late in season six when CBS began using the show as counter-programming opposite ABC’s Monday Night Football, its episodes became much more sentimental than its earlier, funnier, snappier incarnation spearheaded by series creator Larry Gelbart. But we’re unlikely to see such a well-written show today than in the 1970s, when TV still had to appeal to a mass audience, and leftists could still be funny without worrying about the smothering hand of PC.

As Jerry Seinfeld said last year, “‘People always need [comedy] … they need it so badly and they don’t get it,’ Seinfeld began. ‘It used to be you’d go home at the end of the day, ‘oh, ‘Cheers’ is on. Oh, ‘M*A*S*H*’ is on. Oh, ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ is on. ‘All in the Family’ is on.’ You just expected there will be some funny stuff on TV you can watch tonight. ‘But guess what? Where is it? Where is it? This is the result of the extreme Left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people.’”

Posted at 8:45 am by Ed Driscoll 34

IT’S CRAZY, THE EXPERTS WERE SURE IT WOULD GO THE OTHER WAY:

Related:

Posted at 8:43 am by Glenn Reynolds 45

JIM TREACHER: Everybody Hates Jake.

Who is the audience for Jake Tapper’s new book, Original Sin? Apparently, there isn’t one.

Republicans are mad at Tapper for pretending he had nothing to do with the cover-up of Joe Biden’s senility.1 Democrats are mad at him for admitting there was a cover-up of Joe Biden’s senility. He’s taking a drubbing from pretty much everybody.

Tee-hee!

Maybe that’s why his dumb book sold a mere 53,737 copies in its first week. Is that despite Tapper’s endless media tour promoting the book, or because of it? Is everybody else as sick of that insufferable bonehead as I am?

Well, even if his book is a flop, at least he’s still a big hit on cable news, right?

Right?

Brian Flood, Fox News:

CNN host Jake Tapper had his lowest-rated month in nearly a decade in May despite a whirlwind publicity tour giving him an onslaught of attention…

“The Lead with Jake Tapper” averaged 525,000 total viewers from April 28 through May 25, shedding 25% of CNN’s audience in its timeslot from the same period last year in the process…

It was Tapper’s lowest-rated month since August 2015.

Ouch! His ratings are back down to pre-Trump levels.

Ace of Spades writes, “I actually know Jake Tapper’s real defense for covering up Biden’s dementia:”

If he were being honest — which he never is — he’d say, “Look, my audience consists entirely of Trump-deranged liberals. I cannot report the truth without losing my entire career. CNN wouldn’t even allow it. If I reported any of this before 2024 CNN would have had a ‘talk’ with me with the threat of suspension made clear. I’m showing ‘bravery’ [by Jake Tapper standards, at least] by just reporting a slim slice of the truth five years after it was obvious to all non-Trump-deranged liberals.”

So Jake Tapper’s Trump-deranged audience — the only audience remaining after ten years of groteqesque leftwing propaganda from Jake Tapper and his fellow communists at CNN — is abandoning him, and I am, as forty-two-year=old Millennials on Twitter say, here for it.

John Nolte adds: Original Sin Authors Change Their Story … Again.

Of course, the media knew Biden was brain-dead. Of course, the media lied to us. You think we’re stupid? And what is groupthink if not something worse than a conspiracy, but The Way Things Are? We all saw it. All of us. There it was, the biggest scandal in presidential history and also the most blatantly obvious, and you serial liars still chose to gaslight and bully us. You whored out your credibility for the same reason you always whore out your credibility: to benefit Democrats.
But now it’s over, y’all.

We see you.

We all do.

We all know how the fake media operate.

The regime media have spent the last decades serially lying to us, getting crucial story after crucial story deliberately wrong, all to the benefit of their fascist, leftist agenda. And now no one listens to them anymore, and these two jokers aren’t moving many books.

The best part of the video comes at the end, when Bari Weiss sticks it in both their asses:

I think that one of the things that is kind of baffling about this story, is it’s so much, in the end, about groupthink and cowardice. Because normal, ordinary Americans who will watch the clip of him—you remember, when he was in the field with Georgia Meloni and those other people and he’s sort of stumbling and doesn’t know where to go—anyone can watch those 15-second clips—they don’t need any sources in Washington to know that person is infirm and certainly not capable of being the president of the United States.

We could also have years and years of seeing how Tapper treats people with an (R) after their name versus a (D):

 

Posted at 8:14 am by Ed Driscoll 64

THIS IS THE WAY: Watch: Absolutely Must-See Exchange Between CA Attorney and Defiant CNN Host on ‘Transgender’ Athlete.

California Attorney Julie Hamill became all of us on CNN on Friday after a truly incredible exchange with host Brianna Keilar. The argument at hand was over high-school student Junior AB Hernandez, a “transgender” athlete who “identifies” as a female but is a male. He is currently set to compete in several competitions at the state championship on Saturday.

What made Hamill’s appearance on CNN so noteworthy, though, was her dogged pursuit of the truth in the face of Keilar’s attempted enforcement of transgender ideology. It was one of those rare moments on a mainstream press network where a guest didn’t just roll over in the face of scrutiny over stating biological reality. A fair warning that you may find yourself feeling extremely satisfied after watching this.

Exit quote: “All the praise in the world for Hamill speaking the hard truth to a CNN hack who has gotten way too comfortable having her priors confirmed. AB Hernandez is a male. He is not a girl. He can not become a girl. California can do without federal funding if it would like to place his delusions over the well-being of female athletes in the state.”

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll 89

May 30, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds 1766

HUH. I ALWAYS ASSUMED IT WAS LIKE A HARD RESET: Electroconvulsive therapy’s ‘hard reset’ effect: Brain wave discovery challenges long-held assumption. “ECT, or electroconvulsive therapy, uses brief, noninvasive electrical stimulation of the brain to induce a seizure. Despite an outdated pop culture moniker (electroshock therapy) that often paints the treatment in a negative light, ECT has been proven to be a safe and highly effective treatment, offering rapid relief from severe symptoms when medications have failed.”

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest did a lot of damage.

But not all cinematic depictions were as sinister:

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds 121

DEMS KEEP TRYING TO REBUILD THEIR DEATH STAR:

Their failure in 2024 has only emboldened Dems like Rep. Crockett to act out more than ever before, breaking the united front Democrats were once famous for holding, and lashing out at anyone who tries to silence them.

That’s not landing well, either. In fact, it only becomes a throw-away line for Trump in a press conference.

So the Dems are taking a page out of the GOP’s playbook, kind of.

They want to find their own Joe Rogan.

There’s just one or two problems with that idea, though.

Rogan wasn’t found. He made his show what it is today virtually by himself. He began podcasting when people thought the format was a flash in the pan in the late 2000s. But he kept plugging, exploring his own varied interests through fascinating guests and introducing his listeners to new ideas and ways of thinking. He built his empire by catering to nobody but himself, not by reading on air the latest missive from Cory Booker.

The second problem, and the arguably larger one, is that a Democrat Joe Rogan doesn’t exist. Rogan, while not a Democrat or a Republican, has the brand of being physically strong, emotionally stable, and deeply-rooted in family values.

The Democrats don’t have anyone like that. It’s actually impossible to be a Democrat that vaguely resembles Joe Rogan. If a liberal had a whiff of any of Rogan’s traits, they’d be labeled as a MAGA supporter and deserted by their party.

The mantra of the Democrat Party is inclusivity, diversity, acceptance, and, frankly, non-traditional family values. You’ll never find a genuine person that isn’t mentally unwell who is willing to embrace every radical idea that floats their way to meet those standards. Again, it’s impossible to recreate what Joe Rogan has built in a liberal fashion.

The bizarre recent interview of Tim Dillon by a sleepy Elle Reeve of CNN does illustrated on how utterly fixated 2025 Democrats are with Rogan, just as 2017 Dems glommed onto “fake news” and “Russian collusion” to explain their previous loss to the Bad Orange Man.

 

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll 244

BOMB CANADA, THE CASE FOR WAR: CBC Brags About Shutting Down Popular Political Clips YouTube Channel.

A rising Canadian YouTube channel that had been pulling major traction has suddenly been banned following an aggressive report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which labeled the channel a “content farm” and reached out to YouTube directly. Not long after, the channel was gone.

“It’s just one example of what experts refer to as the ‘content’ or “engagement” farming phenomenon, in which individuals or organizations tailor their content to tap into the algorithm of the platform and boost their popularity,” the CBC explained in an article, as if this isn’t something that most YouTubers do.

Real Talk Politiks, the creator behind the now-deleted account, took to X on Sunday to reveal what happened, pointing the finger at government-aligned media and tech collusion.

“CBC, Canada’s state-funded media just got YouTube to terminate my channel — not for breaking rules, but for having the wrong political views,” the post read.

Evergreen:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 108