Number 4. Media-ite. Meeting to select Supreme Leader successor is disrupted.
This is the best argument I have heard for Zoom in a long time.
The U.S. and Israel opened hostilities against the government of Iran last weekend with coordinated operations: Epic Fury (U.S.) and Lion’s Roar (Israel).
Initial attacks involved careful timing so that Iranian electronic warning stations were taken out before Israeli air assets moved in. At the same time, U.S. Tomahawk missiles, quantity as yet unspecified, obliterated launch sites across the country.
Israeli bombs and U.S. missiles were dispatched from dozens of locations, at various distances from targets, all programmed to arrive at precisely the same time. An instructive 10-minute YouTube video on the subject is worth watching.
But not to worry about Iran… the now-former Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (in power for 36 years) laid out careful succession plans. There was a detailed written order for the peaceful transfer of power in Iran should the unthinkable suddenly be thought about.
Enter the Assembly of Experts, a non-random collection of 88 religious clerics responsible to recommend a new Supreme Leader. A panel of three ranking religious decision-makers will run the interim government, ensuring social security checks are issued without interruption, national parks are staffed, and streets are kept clean. They will keep order until the new lucky fellow is installed.
Presumably without painting a bullseye on his turban.
The Assembly of Experts gathered together urgently this week for a focused meeting at — where else — the Supreme National Security Council complex in Tehran. Which is probably not hard to find, if you are the least bit familiar with goings-on in Iran.
Once the meeting was called to order, IDF bombers flattened it.
Through an exclusive secret arrangement with unidentified IDF sources, the ANR has obtained a transcript of an actual telephone call in Tehran. This was lucky because less than a dozen telephones are still working there. Two members of the newly organized Assembly of Junior Experts discussed plans to complete the unfinished work of the actual Assembly of Experts. This is what they said:
Bhahb: Let’s all meet at that little mosque, the one at the corner of Muktari and 12th, tonight at seven o-clock. We’ll decide who the next Supreme Leader will be.
Bj’hill: No dice, you’re nuts! I’m staying in my basement and we’ll meet on Zoom.
Bhahb: Zoom is down, haven’t you heard? They use Amazon data centers, and we shot missiles at all of those because of the Great Orange-Haired Satan.
Bj’hill: Then how about an audio call? This works good for me.
Bhahb: With 88 junior members on a conference bridge? We will get nothing done!
Bj’hill: Well, I can guarantee that anyone who shows up for a meeting at that mosque will not get anything done either. Ever again!
Bhabh: Okay, you win. I’ll page you with the conference bridge info.
Bj’hill: Page me!? You just don’t get it, man! I threw mine in the reservoir two years ago! Nobody’s gonna page ME! Just have your meeting and send me a letter when you decide who’s who. I gotta go feed the goats.
At press time, the newly named Supreme Leader was seen carefully inspecting his turban before placing it on his head.
Number 3. Breitbart. Stop buying burgers to protest crackdown on illegal immigrants.
This is deep-think Hollywood on display, illustrating the brand of over-the-top insightful responses to cultural challenges that we have come to expect from entertainment industry fast movers.
Kristen Stewart, the star of Snow White and the Huntsman, which somehow I missed seeing, evidences great philosophical angst over the plight of immigrants who are leaving the country unwillingly.
Presumably she is referring to those who entered the country deceptively.
Just hear her cry from the heart: “I, I can’t stand the idea that the dismantling of the culture that did have a hand in, like, making me who I am, which is so meaningless in the face of people’s lives being, like, completely unearthed, uprooted, destroyed, like, just the, this is, this is, like, not who we are… So, like, where I’m from, I don’t identify with that right now. And so like, I, I, I, I, I definitely am dying every day…”
But Ms. Stewart did have, like, one concrete suggestion to, like, show the world Hollywood’s firm stand against, like, such deportations: “Do we stop buying burgers in the daytime? What do we do about this?”
That would get someone’s attention, like, I’m pretty sure.
And her summary statement is perhaps the most telling of all: “Like it, I can’t, I can’t fathom that it’s happening until it doesn’t happen.”
Let’s just move on. The next news item is not much better.
Number 2. TCD The Cool Down. Venezuelan residents terrified of illegal mining operations.
In the wake of the demise of the heavy-handed Nicolas Maduro regime in Caracas, and the rise of the suddenly much more cooperative Delcy Rodriguez regime, certain unsavory elements have begun illegally exploiting Venezuela’s rich supply of natural resources.
This causes no shortage of anxiety and perturbation among those who daily seek for things to anxious and perturbed about.
Corrupt military agents and outlaw gangs have engaged in—wait for it—extortion and intimidation to acquire oil and gold in the remote Zulia and Amazonas regions of the country. Government authorities are unable or unwilling to stop the steal.
Among those characterized as “environmental defenders,” who appear to be as valiant as they are powerless, ripping off oil assets goes far beyond financial damage to Venezuela’s struggling economy. It is in fact a world-killing exercise.
“Oil production generates methane, while its end use generates carbon dioxide, both of which trap heat in the atmosphere and exacerbate destructive weather patterns.”
TCD recommends an obvious solution. Hit the wicked industrialists where it hurts: Use fewer petroleum-based products. Trade in your gas guzzler for an EV, and use less plastic.
That’ll do it. Between that, and buying fewer hamburgers for lunch, we could teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.
James Dobson of Focus on the Family fame, once said that when the Founding Fathers started this country, they tipped it up on edge and everything loose fell to California.
Unaccountably, the jumble of edge-of-the-void ideas in the land of fruits and nuts occasionally sorts itself into some kind of order.
In 2012, California changed the way primary elections are decided. Backed by The Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state then implemented what we now call a Jungle Primary. The top two vote-getters in an open non-party-aligned primary election advance to a run-off in the general election.
In this year’s gubernatorial primary, scheduled for early June, there are currently some 18 with hats in the ring; 8 Democrats and 10 Republicans. The top two Republican leaders are Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton, each currently showing better polling than any of the Democrats.
This raises the possibility—remote, but still a concern—that no one with a D behind their name might appear on the ballot come November. That prompted the California Democratic Party to issue an appeal this week: If you don’t have a chance at the ring, then please drop out and give another Democrat your place.
Both Ds and Rs will need to consolidate the race down to a couple of candidates each. If the Ds fail to do so, their votes will be split so much that either one of the Rs could take the governor’s office for the next four years.
I doubt that either Bianco or Hilton are sterling Reaganesque conservatives (I could be wrong, but they are Californios after all) but having a Republican governor after 15 years of Democrats would certainly rattle the west-coast establishment.
Wouldn’t that be a kick?
And thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, March 6, 2026. The year is flying by. Schedule a date night with that Special Someone. Take in a $15 movie and spend another 20 bucks on popcorn and soda.
Or, if you really want to think outside the box, stay home and watch some Victor Davis Hanson hour-long YouTubes of his lectures on World War II at Hillsdale College. Now THAT is, like, I mean, like something that I, I, I, I, I think is really really, like very, very cool.
Have a good weekend!
