February 1, 2026

TWO-TIER JUSTICE:

Posted at 7:58 pm by Glenn Reynolds

#JOURNALISM:

Posted at 6:50 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TOP ENERGY EXPERT SAYS PROBABILITY THE U.S. WILL ATTACK IRAN SOON IS 75% AS RISK OF MAJOR DISRUPTION TO OIL SUPPLY IS PRICED IN — ‘THIS ONE IS REAL.’

Oil markets could be in for a major shock as President Donald Trump mulls a military strike on Iran, according to a top energy analyst.

The Islamic Republic responded to domestic unrest with unprecedented violence, slaughtering tens of thousands of people since protests broke out in late December.

Trump warned the regime not to kill protesters and vowed help was on the way. While he reportedly held off on an attack last month, the recent arrival of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Middle East has raised expectations that a strike is imminent.

“We would put 75% odds in the coming days to weeks there will be some sort of U.S. attack on Iran,” Bob McNally, Rapidan Energy Group founder and former White House energy advisor, told CNBC on Thursday.

Brent crude oil futures have jumped 5% in the past week and 14% since the start of the year. Prices have now broken their year-long pattern of a steady decline punctuated by brief spikes that quickly reverse to resume the downtrend, he noted.

The U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities last year only resulted in a temporary price surge as the conflict remained limited in scope and avoided the country’s oil infrastructure.

In addition, the U.S. military raid last month to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro failed to move the needle much in oil markets as production wasn’t interrupted.

“But this one is real,” McNally warned. “The markets are pricing the risk that this time the past will not indicate the future—that we could have a sustained disruption in energy flows.”

Iran pumped 4.7 million barrels per day last year, accounting for 4.4% of global oil supplies. Much of its heavily sanctioned shipments go to China via a so-called shadow fleet.

Related: A ‘tear down the wall’ moment in Iran will damage both the Islamic Republic — and China.

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

YET ANOTHER REMINDER THAT LEFTISM HAS NO INHERENT LIMITING PRINCIPLES:

Posted at 5:48 pm by Stephen Green

THE “WARMTH OF COLLECTIVISM” TURNS OUT AS USUAL:

Posted at 5:47 pm by Glenn Reynolds

AN INTERESTING INTERVIEW: Richard Miniter chats about the history of “journalism” and the unsurprisingly ancient history of media manipulation. From the comments:

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” – George Orwell

 

Posted at 3:31 pm by Charles Glasser

CHRISTIANS FALLING FOR WEAPONIZED EMPATHY: Too many professing American Christians are gullible and thus taken in by Leftist ideology masquerading as empathy, claims Michael Clary, Lead Pastor of Cincinnati’s Christ the King Church:

“That’s a big problem in the modern church. Too many people are gullible, and gullible Christians are causing a lot of harm in the church. These people aren’t blue-haired radical leftists we see at ICE protests in Minneapolis. No, they are ordinary Christians who sit next to you in church on Sunday but are led by their emotions. They are the nicest people you’d ever meet. They just don’t have the stomach to face hard realities. They think being ‘Christlike’ is whatever seems ‘nice’ or makes them feel good,” Clary explains.

“But here’s the truth: It isn’t Christlike to be gullible. It isn’t Christlike to believe and share debunked propaganda. It isn’t Christlike to be led by your emotions. It isn’t Christlike to outsource your critical thinking skills to the left-wing activists in the media.”

Clary is in the guest slot for Rod Martin today on Substack.

Posted at 1:32 pm by Mark Tapscott

ES IST SO WEIT GEKOMMEN: Berlin Hospitals Struggle to Treat Hundreds of Falls During Winter Freeze Because Environmental Laws Forbid Use of Salt on Sidewalks.

This morning, Berlin’s hapless Governing Mayor Kai Wegner appealed to the House of Representatives “to allow the use of de-icing salt in exceptional cases” to “alleviate the dangerous situation”. After everybody had a good laugh at Wegner for his impotent social media appeals, the man discovered that he is actually in charge of the whole executive and that he can just do things:

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner has… commented in a press release: “The safety of Berliners is my top priority. That is why I have instructed the Senator for Transport today to issue a general ruling without delay, allowing private individuals and the VSR to use road salt on sidewalks to remove the ice cover.” Wegner further emphasised that he was aware that this decision was “associated with legal uncertainties.” Nevertheless, he considered it appropriate due to the “special situation”. “There is still a need for the fastest possible legal regulation to create legal certainty for the future. We will continue to discuss this in the coalition in the near future.”

Of course Wegner could have waived these retarded rules weeks ago before all those elderly people ended up with grievous injuries in overflowing emergency rooms. At least the harm to Berlin’s trees has been minimised, I guess.

But what is this snow and ice? All the best scientists assured me these conditions would be long gone in Europe by 2025.

Posted at 12:50 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISPATCHES FROM THE NATIONAL FELONS LEAGUE: NFL’s Super Bowl Chief Kindness Officer has checkered past.

To this point, Schefter’s tweet is the only actual news on this topic. The NFL has not said what duties the Chief Kindness Officer will have. Maybe it’s going to strictly enforce taunting and roughing the passer penalties and demanding that players shake hands after every play? Maybe it will be going around Super Bowl Media Day and only asking questions about what their favorite ice cream flavor is? Maybe Mann will be in the broadcast booth and join Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth as NBC’s kindness expert.

Dhar Mann is a name that’s probably not familiar to too many NFL fans. And his selection by the NFL one is quite a bizarre one given the normally safe and conservative way that the league does business.

Mann first entered the headlines in 2012 when he was charged with 13 felonies for defrauding the city of Oakland through his medical marijuana business. He later pled no contest to five of those charges and was sentenced to probation.

After those legal troubles, Mann shifted to content creation where he found much greater success. His YouTube page Dhar Mann Studios has over 25 million subscribers. The content is mainly scripted short movies around 20-30 minutes in length that features some celebrity appearances and thought-provoking titles like “Mikey Falls in Love with YouTuber” and “Vegan Teacher Bans All Meat Inside School.” The videos are quite popular and have an uplifting meaning, which is clearly what inspired the NFL to partner with him.

The ozone layer of NFL management is determined to make its product the dreaded “second screen” in the background while everyone is concentrating on their iPhones and iPads. I greatly miss the days when Pete Rozelle would have laughed in an interviewer’s face had he suggested the league needed a “chief kindness officer:”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

MELANIA MOVIE HUMILIATES CRITICS AND MEDIA NAYSAYERS WITH HISTORIC BOX OFFICE:

The legacy media must be devastated. Melania just had a huge box-office opening for a documentary, despite all the efforts to destroy the film before its release.

Deadline reports that Melania will finish the weekend in third place, with an $8 million opening.

Coming in at third is Amazon MGM Studios’ Brett Ratner-directed documentary Melania, which is eyeing $2.85M today (no previews) for an $8M opening in third place — that result would mark the best start for a docu in the last decade (beating Angel Studios’ 2023 doc After Death, which opened to $5M and finaled at $11.5M stateside). I’m hearing sales are gaining, with Florida and Texas quite large, for the First Lady’s big-screen debut.

According to Deadline, “EntTelligence showed Melania presales overindexing in rural areas with populations under 500,000.” The outlet noted that while “license fees plus marketing on this pic equals $75M.”

“Are MAGA groups driving sales? Maybe, but that will be sussed out as the weekend goes on. Know this: This isn’t an Angel Studios release fueled by some semblance of fan sales or an Amazon Prime super-ticket.”

The film’s success isn’t just a win for Melania Trump. It’s a crushing blow to the mainstream media, which subjected the film to a relentless propaganda campaign aimed at undermining it.

Sometimes without even bother to see the movie they’re ostensibly “reviewing:” Film Critic Torches Melania, Admits He Didn’t See It.

The Grauniad’s film critic, not surprisingly, went full-on Godwin and wrote one of the zaniest comparisons for his review: Melania review – Trump film is a gilded trash remake of The Zone of Interest.

It’s dispiriting, it’s deadly and it’s spectacularly unrevealing. Ratner’s film plays like a gilded trash remake of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest in which a button-eyed Cinderella points at gold baubles and designer dresses, cunningly distracting us while her husband and his cronies prepare to dismantle the Constitution and asset-strip the federal government. “White and gold – that’s so you,” purrs one of her lickspittles as she busies herself with the colour-scheme for the ball and the incoming first lady allows that yes indeed, this is true.

Zone of Interest was of course an avant-garde 2023 film about the commandant of Auschwitz and the bourgeois life he and his family live as unspeakable horrors occur just beyond his home’s backyard. What exactly does the Grauniad think Trump has done that compares to that? Similarly, as Jonah Goldberg wrote in 2001, “Aside from the murder and genocide, what exactly don’t you like about National Socialism?” As Jonah has written, “I’ve never met a real social-welfare state leftist who could answer [that] question without having to think real hard.”

And on occasion, the Grauniad hasn’t seemed to mind murder and genocide all that much. Also, unlike that leftist British publication and the makers of the Zone of the Interest, curiously enough, the man they see as Hitler seems rather fond of Israel.

Related: Mass Media and Mass Formation on the Left.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

GENOCIDE, EUGENICS… ANYTHING THAT MIGHT GET THE LEFT WHAT IT WANTS:

Posted at 11:43 am by Stephen Green