Is This a South Park Episode? Iran Trots Out Its New Supreme Leader (Sort Of) and a Meme Is Born

It must be tough being a top leader in Iran these days. Currently, they are dropping faster than the average drummer for Spinal Tap. 

First, the United States and Israel took out Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei with an airstrike at the end of February. Soon thereafter, much of the country's military and political leadership suffered the same fate. A few days ago, what remained of that leadership selected the former leader's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the new Supreme Leader, but reports swirled for days that he had already been killed or critically injured as well. 

Another possibility is that, given the average life expectancy of a Supreme Leader in Iran in 2026, maybe the younger Khamenei simply didn't want the job. 

Such speculation was hardly put to rest on Sunday as the Iranian regime proudly held a ceremony to welcome the new terrorist-in-chief to his office. 

Except Khamenei wasn't even there. Instead, the regime brought out -- and we swear we are not making this up -- a cardboard cutout with Khamenei's face on it. 

Are ... are they trolling us now? Did they steal this from a South Park episode? 

Most people could not even believe it was real.

We thought it had to be fake as well. According to Grok, however -- and we understand that even Grok gets it wrong sometimes -- this is not AI, but footage from the actual IRGC coronation ceremony on Sunday. 

(But if it were AI, isn't this about the quality we'd expect from Iran?)

Either that, or the Iranian leadership cadre got really drunk the night before and ordered a LOT of Papa John's. 

Maybe that's why the one official kissed the cardboard cutout. He must have spotted a bit of leftover mozzarella stuck to one of the pieces. 

HAAAHAHAHAHA. 

We don't have to tell you what quickly followed the release of this footage on X. 

A new meme was born. And there were some HILARIOUS entries. 

Well, that's just a time-saver right there. 

That seems like the appropriate level of force projection. 

See? We weren't the only ones who thought this looked like something straight from the minds of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. 

HA! 

More Iranian efficiency. The next Supreme Leader after Khamenei can have a similar ceremony, and all they have to do is glue on a new face. 

What a great gift idea for the next jihad! 

LOL.

Poor Ben Affleck never looked quite that depressed. 

Even Grok got in on the meme fun with an image of the new ayatollah sitting next to jack-of-all-trades Marco Rubio. 

We love that Grok included the bent knees. 

Well, that one was just inevitable, wasn't it? 

There's a certain symmetry to that. 

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As we noted above, this video isn't exactly convincing anyone that Khamenei is still alive. 

We get it, Tiffany Gomas. We'd shout, 'That MFer is not real!' as well. 

We've got some good news for him. 

It likely won't be a very long wait. 

LOL. That Trump -- he can schmooze with anyone, can't he? 

OOF! 

That one probably would have been our favorite, except a few people realized that the cardboard cutout bore a striking resemblance to the alleged 46th President of the United States. 

That's it. We're done. 

We can't top that, and we are at a loss for words. 

It's just too perfect. 

If Mojtaba Khamenei is still alive and out there somewhere, we'd like to congratulate him on his succession and on becoming the funniest meme of the day. 

But, call us crazy, we don't think the cardboard is going to fool anyone in the IDF or the US Armed Forces, so he probably shouldn't stay in one place for more than five minutes.

https://twitchy.com/grateful-calvin/2026/03/11/mojtaba-khamenei-cardboard-cutout-n2425884

IRAN: What Happens When the Money Runs Out?

"Where are the Iranian uprisings?" is the question Fox News host Laura Ingraham looked into with David Nasser on Tuesday evening, and for anyone hoping for regime change in the Islamic Republic, perhaps it's the question. "The regime’s currency is FEAR," the Iran native told her, adding, “The Iranian people are being strategic. Despite the fear, many are preparing for the moment when this regime is finally weakened.”

But like any contagion, fear requires some means of transmission — or in this case, brutal enforcement by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

So what happens when the regime's terror units don't get paid?

What happens when the money runs out, as new satellite photos show it might?

Iran's Asaluyeh gas and petrochemical complex is the largest in the world and an economic powerhouse, providing more than half of the regime's income via LNG and petchem exports. While "next payroll" and "no more oil exports to China" might prove to be exaggerations, any reduction in shipping from Asaluyeh — plainly seen in those images — presents Tehran with a serious cash-flow problem.

Just not quite yet.

"Iran is exporting more oil through the Strait of Hormuz than before the war," the Wall Street Journal reported late Tuesday, "showing it is in control of a strategic waterway that it has closed off to the rest of the region’s oil producers." But the reduced shipping activity indicates that those increased shipments won't continue — the regime just isn't loading ships like it did before the campaign began.

And according to the more recent available reports, neither the U.S. nor Israel has yet struck Asaluyeh. Rising gas prices in the West (China, too) might give pause. Although reports that Iran has begun laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz might indicate that even the regime has given up on maintaining exports.

Also, Asaluyeh supplies the vast majority of Iran's natural gas for domestic electricity and heating. Destroying it might alienate the very people we hope will overthrow the regime. Still, the lack of shipping has to be indicative of something.

I should also mention that Asaluyeh is the scene of several strikes and protests in recent months, leading to an increased IRGC presence. This report is from February 19:

An employee in industries linked to the South Pars gas field told The Media Line that workers across different sectors in Asaluyeh had begun holding gatherings, protests, and strikes weeks before nationwide demonstrations started in Iran.

Their demands focused on higher wages and improved benefits. However, the IRGC, which serves as the main executor of projects in these major petrochemical industries and gas complexes, responded with mass arrests, transferring protesting workers to its facilities in an effort to prevent the spread of labor strikes. Despite these measures, protests and work stoppages have reportedly expanded to other parts of Asaluyeh.

If Tehran starts missing IRGC payrolls, that's when things in Asaluyeh might get really interesting. Not to mention the rest of the country.

Some might stand and fight, regardless, caught in a dead-end/no-win situation. Others, like this purported Basij militiaman, might choose desertion:

Here's the translation courtesy of Grok: "This is the Basij base [note: 'footbridge' in subs is likely auto-error for 'paygah' meaning outpost/post], which was a mosque until some time ago. Everyone came out from here and left. I'm going home too. It seems our regime's work is done and we have to surrender. I just hope people don't take revenge on us."

The video has yet to be independently verified, so take it with a grain of salt. But if the money runs out, the only thing that might keep IRGC or their subordinate Basij militiamen fighting is the same fear of retribution that they're supposed to be the ones creating. 

UPDATE: A related item crossed my desk just minutes after filing this column, and it seems worth including.

Stay tuned...

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2026/03/11/iran-what-happens-when-the-money-runs-out-n4950509

Oops: Mamdani's Bogus 'Private Citizen' Narrative About Pro-Hamas Wife Implodes Amid Further Scrutiny

Zohran Mamdani is one of those rare far-left elected officials who has no qualms whatsoever about proving his critics right nearly every time he opens his mouth. 

We've seen that, for instance, in his predictable yet infuriating reaction to the attempted IED attack that happened near Gracie Mansion, the official mayoral residence in New York City, on Saturday during dueling protests, which featured anti-Mamdani demonstrators on one side and pro-Mamdani counterprotesters on the other. 

Two suspects on the pro-Mamdani side, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, were taken into custody after allegedly trying to commit what DOJ Attorney General Pam Bondi called an "ISIS-inspired attack of terrorism" against those protesting Mamdani. The New York City mayor's immediate responses were to condemn... white supremacy rather than Islamism, the latter of which is alleged to be the motivation behind the IED attacks.

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READ MORE: More Troubling Info About IED and Suspects at NYC Protest as Mamdani Issues Disgraceful Statement

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One area, however, where Mamdani has been less than forthcoming concerns his wife, Rama Duwaji, especially after it was revealed last week that the Big Apple's First Lady spent time on social media indicating agreement with and support for the 10/7/23 Hamas terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians on the day they happened and in the days and weeks that followed, as we previously reported. She even hit the Instagram heart button on a post that described the Hamas rapes of Israeli women as a "mass rape hoax."

While the fact that the wife of New York City's mayor shares his pro-Hamas, anti-Israel views (they probably bonded over them while they were dating) is not exactly breaking news, Mamdani's insulting response was to declare that "the love of my life" was a "private person who has held no formal position on my campaign or in my City Hall."

So... we're supposed to believe that the center of Mamdani's universe, his "best friend" and closest confidante, the woman who supposedly grounds him at the end of the day, has had no say and no influence on Mamdani's beliefs - "formal" or otherwise?

It's just a flat-out lie. That is an indisputable fact. This is something that was further confirmed in an interview done with New York Magazine's "The Cut" in February, where Duwaji was not only described as "the de facto adviser" for his 2025 mayoral campaign, but details on her responsibilities in that role were also shared:

Mamdani’s camp hadn’t anticipated the [primary] election to be called so early, let alone that night, but when the results were tallied in his favor, everything shifted. Mamdani quickly rewrote the speech he had planned, while an adviser began straight-talking with Duwaji: She was going onstage as the likely next First Lady. “I felt like I was walking through a fog,” she told me earlier this month on the eve of her move to Gracie Mansion. “My friend came in from D.C. that day, and she got to experience that moment of seeing me — my brain — literally develop. I was like, Okay, I’m locking in.”

Suddenly, she was the de facto adviser to the most headline-grabbing political candidate of 2025, strategizing over morning chai and shaping the look and feel of the campaign, whether coaching him on his Arabic pronunciations for what would become a viral campaign video (she’s a native speaker; he isn’t) or shaping the playful graphic design of the campaign. (The flare on the Z and the serif on the R? Those were her ideas.)

[...]

“Speaking out about Palestine, Syria, Sudan — all these things are really important to me,” she says. “I’m always keeping up to date with what’s going on, not just here but elsewhere. It feels fake to talk about anything else when that’s all that’s on my mind, all I want to put down on paper,” she says. “Everything is political; it’s the thing that I talk about with Z” —Duwaji’s nickname for her husband — “and my friends, the thing that I’m up to date with every morning, which is probably not great for my mental health."

Lastly, to be quite honest, whether she held a "formal" role or not, if conservative male Supreme Court Justices are supposed to be held responsible for the words and actions of their wives, then so should the Democrat Socialist mayor of NYC.

Your rules, Democrats. Your rules.

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2026/03/11/mamdanis-private-citizen-narrative-about-his-wife-continues-to-crumble-against-further-scrutiny-n2200092

CBS News Exposed the Massive California Hospice Fraud Happening on Gavin Newsom's Watch

As head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz has been sounding the alarm on hospice fraud in California for weeks. In January, Dr. Oz said it was clear something wasn't right, noting that there were some hospice services where 100 percent of patients were surviving beyond the normal six-month window. 

"They realized that they could pay doctors to move people into hospice," Dr. Oz said at the time. "The hospice is designed for the last six months of your life. It means you're going to die. These hospice programs are created when the most common reason that you'd enter it is cancer. But these days, not everyone with cancer dies, but also you're putting a lot of people with Alzheimer's and other conditions in there. So it became a little harder to police."

Hospice is designed for patients with a terminal illness and a life expectancy of six months or less. While many hospice patients do have a diagnosis of cancer, the majority now have other terminal illnesses, including heart disease, lung disease, or dementia/Alzheimer's.

Under hospice rules, a patient must undergo periodic recertification, where a qualified provider (e.g. a hospice nurse, nurse practitioner, or doctor) evaluates the patient for signs of decline. When a patient is admitted to hospice for the first time, the first and second recertification periods occur at 90 and 180 days, then every 60 days thereafter. Clinicians look for ongoing signs of decline, including decreased appetite, muscle wasting (usually assessed by measuring upper arm circumference), disease progression, and skin breakdown in the form of non-healing pressure wounds.

According to CMS, the average length of stay on hospice is about 90 days, with the median stay being roughly 18 to 24 days. While some patients, usually those with chronic conditions like heart and lung disease, stay in hospice longer, many are also discharged alive or transferred to palliative care. It is, however, highly unusual that 100 percent of hospice patients survive the six-month period. 

At the end of January, Dr. Oz provided another update with some startling numbers: the number of hospice agencies in L.A. county increased by 1,500 percent since 2010, far beyond the 40 percent increase in the senior population.

That raised all the red flags, and now CBS has done some digging and found that the indication of hospice fraud in California are not only there, but growing.

Here's more:

Medicare is federally administered, and hospices must be certified for reimbursements. But the state issues the licenses for hospices to operate.

Three years ago, California’s state auditor sounded the alarm that Los Angeles County had seen a 1,500% increase in hospice companies since 2010 – more than six times the national average relative to its elderly population.

Auditors estimated LA County hospices overbilled Medicare by $105 million in a single year. The report called out notable red flags – key warning signs of fraud: multiple hospices in one building, geographic clustering, low patient counts, high rates of terminally ill patients later discharged alive, excessive billing, and staff shared across multiple companies.

The state says it proceeded to investigate and revoke the licenses of 280 hospices.

But since then, the problem has continued to fester. CBS News examined the business and financial records of every hospice currently operating in LA County, applying the same indicators identified by the state. Indications of fraud have not stopped. In fact, they’ve grown.

And it's not just excessive billing, people are having their identities stolen to facilitate the fraud, it seems. CBS reported that Lynn Ianni, an active 69-year-old, was injured while playing pickleball. When she tried to get some physical therapy, she was told Medicare wouldn't cover it because she was dying and in hospice. “They said, ‘You're in hospice.’ And I said, ‘what? What are you talking about?” Ianni told CBS News. “‘Are you kidding me? Do I look like I’m in hospice?’” Her Medicare number had been stolen and used to enroll her fraudulently in hospice.

CBS Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss called the investigation "incredible."

It's clearly struck a nerve with Gavin Newsom's campaign, who responded to Weiss.

Yet, CBS has found examples of fraud persisting to this day, years after Newsom supposedly "cracked down" on it. Refusing to issue new licenses to hospice providers did nothing to address the thousands of fake agencies already operating and stealing taxpayer dollars.

The "Press Office" is also lying about President Trump removing hospice oversight, too.

It is a lie. The Trump administration stopped a Biden-era "special focus program" that addressed poor-performing providers and not fraud.

The reality is this: Newsom didn't crack down on fraud. He put a Band-Aid on a metaphorical stab wound and moved on.

Yes. Dr. Oz sent a letter to Newsom dated January 27, 2026. In that letter, Newsom was ordered to come up with a "comprehensive program integrity action plan" for addressing hospice fraud. Newsom has not done that.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/amy-curtis/2026/03/11/cbs-news-ca-hospice-fraud-n2672652