March 28, 2026

OLD AND BUSTED: John Kerry’s infamous 2004 “global test” presidential debate rhetoric.

The New Hotness? Europe flunks Trump’s test:

Tweet continues, Trump “was testing whether European countries that the U.S. has protected for over 80 years would do the bare minimum to help secure global sea lanes, which American taxpayers have also been underwriting for decades at no cost to them. In this case, those sea lanes benefit Europe far more than the U.S. and Europe failed the test.”

Exit question: The Hormuz Hypothesis – What If the U.S. Navy Isn’t in a Hurry to Reopen the Strait?

Posted at 5:17 pm by Ed Driscoll

CANDY CRUSH! Thieves make off with 12 tons of KitKat chocolate bars.

Twelve tons of KitKat chocolate bars went missing in ​Europe last week after thieves ‌made off with the truck transporting them, Swiss food giant Nestle  said on ​Saturday.

KitKat, which is made by ​Nestle, said the truck carrying 413,793 ⁠bars of its new range ​set off from central Italy to ​distribute the chocolate throughout Europe, but never reached its scheduled final destination in Poland.

The ​vehicle and the merchandise remain ​unaccounted for.

Though the suspects should be pretty easy to spot:

Another movie version proposed here:

Posted at 4:55 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE RADICALIZATION OF CALLA WALSH:

In the weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched their joint assault on Iran, perhaps no American has more aggressively and publicly rallied behind the Islamic Republic than Calla Walsh. From her new base in Lebanon, the 21-year-old Cambridge-raised activist has taken to social media and left-wing podcasts to incite her fellow countrymen and women to sabotage U.S. and Israeli defense contractors wherever they can find them. On March 3, she mocked four American soldiers killed in an Iranian drone strike, posting: “They all died fighting for fascism, genocide, pedophilia, and cannibalism.” She attached pictures of the dead Americans. In recent days she reposted a list of missile-production sites inside the U.S.

“We have a duty to escalate,” Walsh told her host on the Psychic Militancy podcast last Saturday from Beirut, noting that “lockdowns” of weapons factories and vandalism alone are “not sufficient at this point.”

She added: “And as the genocide and these wars of aggression continue to escalate, much more is demanded of people in the West.”

Walsh looks every part the art-school hipster, with her thick-rimmed glasses and a mop of curly hair. But she’s a chameleon of terror. Five years earlier, as a 16-year-old, Walsh was fawned over by The New York Times for being a young, social media-savvy activist who was helping to shake up the Democratic Party in Massachusetts. But as a monthslong investigation by The Free Press shows, she’s thrown her allegiance squarely behind the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Axis of Resistance, which includes the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The U.S. government has placed her on a suspicious persons watch list for her expansive dealings with the governments of Cuba and Iran, U.S. officials told me, as well as a spiderweb of U.S.-designated terrorist groups.

* * * * * * * * *

It was Senator Ed Markey’s 2020 reelection bid that elevated Walsh’s profile nationally. Polls showed the septuagenarian trailing the 39-year-old Joe Kennedy III by as many as 16 points. The age gap and the Kennedy mystique appeared to many pollsters as too much for Markey to overcome.

Walsh and a network of hundreds of young, progressive online activists, who became known as the Markeyverse, changed the course of the race. They used social media to mobilize young voters, casting Markey as the leading Democrat fighting climate change and corporate corruption. Kennedy, in contrast, was portrayed as the scion of an entrenched political dynasty who was beholden to business interests and the Washington establishment.

A platinum blonde Walsh canvassed Boston neighborhoods in a Green New Deal T-shirt and face mask. Markey won the 2020 Democratic primary by 11 points and praised Walsh and her allies. Glowing profiles appeared in The New York Times and Boston magazine. “It’s a movement fueled by young people who are not afraid to raise their voices or make enemies,” Markey said after the vote. “This is a tribute to those young people and to their vision. They will save us if we trust them.”

Not since Al Gore declared “Mission Accomplished” to his brand of radical environmentalism by selling out to the petrostate of Qatar in 2013 has an environmentalist pivoted on a dime to defend an oppressive oil-driven Middle Eastern regime. I’m sorry that Walsh’s “Green New Deal” t-shirt is cut-off in the left photo of the before and after juxtaposition below:

Posted at 2:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

DID YOU KNOW: That China and Russia are rearming Iran, even as the bombs and missiles from the U.s. and Israel are on a week-long pause implemented by President Donald Trump in the hope of a successful deal being negotiated? Richard Pollock has the details and much more that hasn’t been reported in the MSM.

Posted at 2:12 pm by Mark Tapscott

DEEP SCHIFF:

Last year, PJM’s Matt Margolis wrote: Exposed: How Hillary Planned to Reward Schiff for Undermining Trump.

Investigative reporter Catherine Herridge has not only released FBI reports that reveal that Rep. Eric Swalwell, another Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, was also a habitual leaker of classified information, even receiving warnings from the FBI to be more cautious. The reports also indicate that had Clinton won the 2016 election, she would likely have rewarded Schiff for his efforts by appointing him CIA director, a testament to their deep ties and shared political objectives.

As Mark Steyn wrote in 2005 upon the announcement that FBI man Mark Felt was Woodward and Bernstein’s “Deep Throat,” memorably played by Hal Holbrook in 1976’s All the President’s Men: 

Now we learn that Deep Throat was not, in fact, Alexander Haig, David Gergen, Pat Buchanan or Len Garment, but a disaffected sidekick of J Edgar Hoover, an old-school G-man embittered at being passed over for the Director’s job when the big guy keeled over after half-a-century in harness. And, whatever Mark Felt’s motives, it wasn’t because of a distaste over illegal break-ins: at the FBI, he himself had authorized illegal burglaries at the homes of friends and family of various leftists.

Oh, dear. Like the Star Wars wrap-up, “How Mark Felt Became Deep Throat” feels small and mean after three decades of the awesome dramatic burden placed upon it. The nobility of the Watergate myth – in which media boomers and generations of journalism-school ethics bores have invested so much – seems cheapened and tarnished by this last plot twist.

And if the above is true as well, it explains so many of Schiff’s antics over the past decade.

Posted at 1:44 pm by Ed Driscoll

AMERICAN GREATNESS: On Manual Work for Men:

We would certainly all be better off if most men did not go to college, which generally is a finishing school for feminization, and instead spent much or most of their time in manual work (even if that is ultimately not how they make a living). For now, however, because manual work for pay is regarded as less socially prestigious, and assortative mating means that a man harms his chances of finding a decent wife by not pursuing a useless, or socially negative, job involving desk work and a future as a pasty, fat, feminized man, most men will keep going to college. Maybe in the future this will end; we can hope. The only clear rule is that manual work cannot be omitted, whatever else a young man is doing.

Do you agree?

Posted at 1:38 pm by Helen Smith

STRANGE NEW RESPECT FOR FRANCISCO FRANCO:

Posted at 1:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

NO BOSSES:

Bruce Springsteen is the headliner at the flagship No Kings rally at the state Capitol in Saint Paul this afternoon. Joan Baez, Jane Fonda, and Bernie Sanders are also primed to appear. Truth in advertising would require the rally to be redesignated Gimme That Old Time Religion or In Search of Lost Time. As the Rolling Stones once trilled, “What a drag it is getting old.”

Tim Walz, Keith Ellison, and Ilhan Omar will also be there. They wouldn’t want to miss the chance to rag on the King. Opposing the King has become the lodestone of their careers. Contrary to the theme of the proceedings, it comes at no cost and places them at no risk. Abe Greenwald aptly observed in the Commentary newsletter: “Trump is such an oppressive emperor that Americans have felt completely secure in coming out to publicly protest him and his administrations more than they have any previous president. His suppression machine is clearly on the fritz.”

But not the left’s:

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

SO I GUESS THIS MEANS GRAHAM PLATNER ISN’T JUST A NAZI AND A COMMUNIST, BUT “PRO-RAPE.” “Holy f—, how about people just take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f—ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to?”

In posts first reported by The Washington Post, Platner responded to a Reddit commenter who wrote, “There’s always that story about the girl who gets raped because she drank too much and somebody took advantage of that.”

Platner responded, “Holy f—, how about people just take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f—ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to? Men and women, you make a choice to consume enough of a substance to lose your self control. So if you don’t want to be in a compromising situation, act like an adult for f—s sake.”

Everyone knows that only men are responsible for what happens when they are drunk. What’s funny is that Platner’s position would have been seen as common sense by everyone a few decades ago.

Posted at 1:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

As “Miami” Steve Van Zandt told the London Times in 2024, “‘When Bruce got vocal behind the Democrats, we probably lost half the audience. There’s nowhere we can’t do business.’ But some places feel like enemy territory now? ‘A little bit, yeah. We’re ten times bigger in Europe. We might play six stadiums in America and sixty in Europe.’”

Not that Van Zandt is eager to mend fences with the Boss’s former base: Steven Van Zandt Is Bruce Springsteen’s Guitarist. He Hates You. He Wants You Dead.

Earlier from Sasha Stone: Springsteen Lashes Out After Biopic Flops.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

AND NOW, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR:

Details about Scorsese’s 2007 production can be found at Wikipedia, and the full ten-minute clip with Scorsese’s dryly satiric setup and conclusion is at YouTube.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Moment defense secretary ’embarrassingly’ struggles to name navy fleet size.

The figure, which is down from previous published total of 23, was claimed to be inaccurate by defence analyst Francis Tusa.

LBC has contacted the Ministry of Defence for the official figure.
Speaking with Nick following Healey’s comments, Ms Tusa told LBC he was ‘flabbergasted’ by his response.

The government has faced criticism over its sluggish deployment of HMS Dragon to defend British troops stationed on Cyprus, after British bases were hit by Iranian drone strikes at the start of March.

This must be part of that “managed decline” that the Brits talk about so much:

Related: How the Royal Navy shrank to its smallest ‘since English Civil War.’

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll