Iranian Regime Calls White House To Ask If They Can Have Biden Back

 Joe Biden and the Democrats would leave a legacy of parody if their achievements were not so bitter as they are. TD

Babylon Bee    Video  "WASHINGTON, D.C. — Faced with the threat of their total annihilation, the Islamic Republic of Iran reportedly contacted the White House on Thursday to ask if they could "please have Joe Biden back."

"White House officials confirmed that Mojtaba Khamenei, the new Supreme Leader of Iran, dialed the White House switchboard demanding to speak to whoever was in charge of picking the president so he could see about getting Joe Biden back in the Oval Office.

" 'He is, uh, a great leader. We will listen to him," Khamenei reportedly said of the former president. "You put him back in charge, and we promise to end our nuclear program. For real, this time."

"According to sources, Khamenei spent several hours on hold waiting to talk to the president before he was finally laughed off the line by Vice President JD Vance. "Is this Tucker? Hilarious impersonation, man, but I told you to stop calling here," Vance reportedly said." . . .  More...

A Tale of Two Obituaries — and Two Very Different Standards; How corporate media soften tyrants abroad while sharpening labels at home.

 Brian C. Joondeph - American Thinker  

"The business of journalism is difficult. Yet beyond economic headwinds lies a more fundamental issue: confidence that coverage is even-handed."

"Death is supposed to clarify a life, not distort it.

"Obituaries are meant to record history, not rewrite it.

But in today’s corporate media, even death cannot escape ideological spin.

Consider the recent coverage of Ayatollah Ali Khameini, Iran’s Supreme Leader for more than three decades. 

In the Washington Post, readers were introduced to a man with a “bushy white beard and easy smile,” an “avuncular figure” fond of Persian poetry and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. Some acquaintances described him as a “closet moderate.” 

A closet moderate? That description might surprise the regime’s political prisoners — and its victims.

For more than three decades, this “moderate” presided over a regime that funded Hezb'allah and Hamas, armed militias across the Middle East, imprisoned dissidents, executed protesters, brutalized women for dress-code violations, and has American blood on its hands through decades of proxy warfare.

Yet the obituary’s opening emphasis focused on literary sensibilities and grandfatherly optics.

The New York Times struck a similarly soft chord. With “spectacles, Palestinian kaffiyeh, long robes and silver beard,” Khamenei “cast himself as a religious scholar,” affecting “an avuncular and magnanimous aloofness.” He ran the country, we are told, from “a perch above the jousting of daily politics.”

Above the jousting, perhaps. But not above repression.

Yes, both papers documented the regime’s brutality. But framing matters. Lead paragraphs shape perception. When tyrants are introduced through imagery of scholarship and avuncular charm, the moral edges blur.

The pattern is not new. When ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in 2019, the Washington Post initially described him as an “austere religious scholar.” Not a mass murderer. Not a genocidal terrorist. An austere scholar. The backlash forced later edits, but their instinct was revealing.

Now contrast that with coverage of Dilbert creator Scott Adams." . . . More...

More nazi propaganda from Adams: 15 Funniest Dilbert Comics To Which Every Office Worker Can Relate

Speaking of Democrats...not that we were

The Man Who Loves To Tax – Issues & Insights 

"And what has Sanders done? He’s built nothing and lives to tear down what others have produced. He stirs up resentment, rails against choice, has been trying to slay the oligarch dragons for more than three decades, and wants to force the country to join a commune that he designs and runs."

"The cranky Vermont senator who believes billionaires should be abolished wants to legislate them out of existence. It’s too bad that he doesn’t understand that one billionaire is more valuable than a thousand Bernie Sanders." . . .  More...

Will Never-Trumpers Ever Admit They Were Wrong?

 I & I Editorial Board 

"As Trump’s first term unfolded, however, we marveled that he seemed to grow more conservative by the day."

 "Virulent Trump-hater George Will penned a column in the wake of the Iran attacks titled “At last, the credibility of U.S. deterrence is being restored.”

"Do you think Will turned a corner about President Donald Trump? Hardly.

"If you want to know who restored the credibility of U.S. deterrence, Will isn’t saying. You’d think it fell out of the sky.

"The most he will concede is that “Donald Trump’s administration has chosen not to wager U.S. safety on Iran’s abandoning its multi-decade pursuit of nuclear weapons, or on Iran’s acquiring them but not really meaning ‘Death to America.’”

"Wait. Trump’s “administration” made that choice? To whom in the administration is Will referring, if not Trump himself? The secretary of Agriculture? The EPA administrator? The guy managing the nation’s helium reserve?

"Despite admitting that Trump has engineered a profound reversal in the U.S. standing in the world, George Will is sure to go right back to writing about how dangerous and incompetent he and his administration officials are. He will have plenty of company, to be sure.

"In Trump’s first term – despite facing a weaponized Justice Department and fending off impeachments – he cut taxes, did more to deregulate the economy than any predecessor, spurred domestic energy production, and appointed solid conservatives to the bench (who then overturned the horrible Roe v. Wade decision).

" 'All had been on conservative wish lists for eons.

"Trump is checking off conservative wish list items even faster in his second term – cutting funding to public broadcasting, draining the DEI swamp, setting the course to sunset the Education Department, and now, even as George Will admits, restoring the credibility of U.S. deterrence." . . . More...