Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

January 1, 2026

YOU COMPOSIN’ TO ME?! ‘Doomer jazz’ and the strange afterlife of Taxi Driver:

Look online and you’ll find dozens of playlists loosely gathered together under the sub-sub-genre of ‘doomer jazz’. These are collections of tunes which, taking [Bernard] Herrmann’s soundtrack as their root, feature an array of downbeat jazz curated around the atmospherics of blurred neon, wet windscreens, dank truck stops and quiet torpor.

Of course, hacks like me who wish they could take a deep bath in pure essence of Bukowski and Hopper (Edward, not Dennis) are bound to enjoy this kind of music – mainly due to the painfully immature but still extant pretence that a full ashtray, a drifting saxophone and an Anglepoise lamp illuminating a book shelf of musty orange Penguin paperbacks makes us more interesting people. This is highly erroneous, as my friends and fiancée never fail to remind me.

But the fact that doomer jazz has become an attractive genre for twentysomethings should comfort anyone around my age who despairs at the fragile egos and endless neediness of the generations below us. Doomer jazz, belying its title, actually acts as a repository for feelings. It’s the antithesis of the kind of music that takes a listeners’ vulnerability and accentuates it ruthlessly into a paroxysm of self-pity. Yes, I’m talking to you, Morrissey and Thom Yorke.

Doomer jazz is the Gary Cooper of late-night music: stoic, silent and taking care of business regardless. Pain, these chords and solos tell us, is to be endured rather than disseminated over all and sundry at every opportunity. The mood is sad of course, but not in a way that would inspire anyone to post missives of hate on social media or to take a razor blade to their wrists. Rather this is music that (in the best lesson imaginable for anyone under the age of 30) shows us how a little bit of emotional repression can go a long way.

As James Lileks wrote of Taxi Driver: “It’s a brilliant movie. The civilization it portrays is a sad and empty place — Weimar Germany without the energy to muster up the brownshirts, Rome that fell because it was grew bored waiting for the Huns. If I had to choose between its 1 hour and 54 minutes of brilliance and the few minutes of Herrman’s score — no question. That sad sax theme alone sums up everything about the latter 70s, its exhaustion, its dead-hearted nostalgia for everything it grew up pissing on. Julia Phillips was one of the movie’s producers. I’ll bet she would have wanted someone to play that theme at her funeral.”

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 1st, 2026

GOOD AND HARD, FUN CITY: Carol Roth Hilariously Notices Something About Mamdani’s Coronation.

They say that history repeats; first as tragedy then as farce. This quote is attributed to Karl Marx, which makes this all the more hilarious.

After every communist / socialist revolution, the serfs cheer as they unwittingly descend into an era of privation. While we know that affluent limousine liberals will never pay the price of their socialist dreams, we find this chillingly appropriate for the proletariat of New York City who welcomed this upper-class child of privilege pretty boy to rule over them. If New Yorkers are lucky, mayor Mamdani will fail due to the hypocrisy of New York’s progressive plutocrats. However, if he succeeds, our poor proles will truly suffer as the utopian promises never materialize.

Meanwhile, for New York’s new first lady, it’s a very different story: NYC First Lady Rama Duwaji wears $600 boots to socialist mayor husband Zohran Mamdani’s swearing in ceremony.

Mamdani became mayor of New York City just after midnight on Thursday, and standing by his side was his wife, Rama Duwaji — in some very pricy boots.

The 34-year-old mayor took the oath of office at a historic, decommissioned subway station* in Manhattan; however, his wife’s stylish outfit is what has people talking.

New York’s First Lady, 28,  wore a black knee-length skirt and a black woolen coat as they stood on the stairs of the subway station, with the artist completing the look with a pair of $630 boots.

The stylish mid-calf shoes laced up at the back from the heel and featured a long pointed toe with a small heel.

The Miista boots, which Duwaji was wearing in the Shelley style, come in black or dark brown.

The European brand promotes sustainable fashion, proudly touting that they’re ‘happy to sacrifice profit and to subvert problematic fashion trends to create a product that has personality in addition to aesthetic value’ on its website.

As Glenn wrote in USA Today in 2019:

In the old Soviet Union, the Marxists assured us that once true communism was established under a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” the state would wither away and everyone would be free. In fact, however, the dictatorship of the proletariat turned into a dictatorship of the party hacks, who had no interest whatsoever in seeing their positions or power wither.

Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas called these party hacks the “New Class,” noting that instead of workers and peasants against capitalists, it was now a case of workers and peasants being ruled by a managerial new class of technocrats who, while purporting to act for the benefit of the workers and peasants, somehow wound up with the lion’s share of the goodies. Workers and peasants stood in long lines for bread and shoddy household goods, while party leaders and government managers bought imported delicacies in special, secret stores. (In a famous Soviet joke, then-leader Leonid Brezhnev shows his mother his luxury apartment, his limousine, his fancy country house and his helicopter only to have her object: “But what if the communists come back?”)

Djilas’ work was explosive — he was jailed — because it made clear that the workers and peasants had simply replaced one class of exploiters with another. It set the stage for the Soviet Union’s implosion, and for the discrediting of communism among everyone with any sense.

Which explains why it remains so fashionable with young New Yorkers.

* Also perfect:

Underneath the mask, Bane smiles:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 1st, 2026

‘BIBI MAMDANI’ MOCKERY CIRCULATES AS NYC MAYOR’S X ACCOUNT CARRIES OLD TWEETS:

Online users are taking advantage of a temporary quirk on New York City’s official mayoral account on X, formerly Twitter, in order to poke fun following the transition from Mayor Eric Adams to Zohran Mamdani, who assumed office today.

The account’s display name and handle were updated to reflect Mamdani’s administration, but the account itself was not reset — a standard practice for official government social media accounts. As a result, posts and reposts made during Adams’ tenure remain visible, now appearing under the new mayor’s name.

The overlap has created brief confusion online, particularly as older content resurfaces without clear context. Some politically active users have seized on the moment, reposting or highlighting past material in ways that suggest — inaccurately — that Mamdani was involved in events that occurred before he took office.

One example circulating online involves billionaire investor Daniel Loeb, who reshared an older article about Adams meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Because the repost appears under the updated mayoral name, it gives the misleading impression that the meeting took place under Mamdani’s administration.

More at Newsweek: Launch of Zohran Mamdani’s Official X Account Sparks Confusion.

Yashar Ali, a journalist, in a post on X viewed over 400,000 times: “The NYC Mayor’s Twitter account is now under Mayor Mamdani’s name, but unlike the White House accounts, prior tweets are not archived or clearly attributed to past administrations. As a result, there are tweets still visible that are jarring when they appear under Mayor Mamdani’s name—even though they were posted before he took office.”

Reuben Katz, an entrepreneur, in a post on X: “We could not make up how hilarious his NYCMayor account looks now. (The tweets before midnight 2026 are by Adams’ and his administration and now look like Mamdani’s).”

Joel Petlin, superintendent at the Kiryas Joel School District and an opinion writer, in a post on X: “The only thing that I find amusing about Zohran Mamdani being sworn in as the Mayor of NY City is the fact that he inherited Mayor Adams’ pro Israel Twitter account.”

Rowan Scarborough, a columnist for The Washington Times, in a post on X: “For the record, Mamdani condemned Netanyahu when he appeared at UN and accused him of genocide. NYC needs to update its social media management.”

One social media user wrote on X: “This is hilarious lol This is why every president gets a new Twitter account.”

Another social media user wrote on X: “Lmfao. They need to archive/wipe this account clean when they handover to a new mayor else, people are going to come for Zohran’s head.”

Why would they do that? Mamdani is inadvertently tweeting out incredibly positive messages!

At least for now. Reportedly, the junior Stalin’s comms team are already breaking out the airbrushes:

Unexpectedly! Robert Conquest: Inside Stalin’s Darkroom.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 1st, 2026

HOW IT STARTED: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is no.”

—Paul Krugman, the New York Times, Election Night 2016.

How it’s going: S&P 500 closes lower Wednesday, but wraps 2025 with a 16% gain.

—CNBC, yesterday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed on Election Night 2016 at 18,332.74. It closed yesterday at 48,063.29. That’s a gain of almost 30,000 points. For 2025, those zany right-wing Tory-loving capitalist “greed is good” Gordon Gekko types at the Grauniad reported yesterday that “The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 13.4% during 2025. The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite rallied 20.5%.”

Posted at 6:17 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 1st, 2026

OCEAN INFINITY RESUMES HUNT FOR MH370 IN REMOTE INDIAN OCEAN:

More than a decade after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished with 239 people aboard, a renewed search effort has officially begun in one of the world’s most remote maritime regions, raising hopes of finally solving aviation’s greatest mystery.

The Singapore-flagged multipurpose vessel Armada 86 05 departed Kwinana anchorage, Australia, on December 23 and has been sailing westward into the Indian Ocean at around 10.5 knots, according to ship tracking data from MarineTraffic. The 86-meter vessel is equipped with advanced sonar systems capable of operating at depths of several thousand meters, with the mission focusing on areas not fully covered during earlier search efforts.

No word yet if black holes will be examined as well for the missing aircraft: CNN’s Don Lemon Asks If a Black Hole Could’ve Swallowed the Missing Plane.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 1st, 2026

RIDE THE FRAUD-FILLED MÖBIUS LOOP!

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 1st, 2026

GRADUALLY, THEN SUDDENLY: Maureen Callahan: The year Hollywood died. 2025 started with the LA fires… ended with the savage Reiner slayings… and finally exposed a shameless, sickening lie.

Say goodbye to Hollywood.

This was the year Los Angeles burned to the ground: Literally, economically, culturally, spiritually.

What was once one of our greatest exports — movies, movie stars, a glittering celebrity industrial complex reflective of American supremacy itself — is no more.

That’s a good thing. A great thing. Healthy, even.

We began this year with horror as wildfires tore through LA, burning for nearly the entire month of January.

The response, needless to say, lacked urgency.

Mayor Karen Bass, upon finally flying home from a presidential inauguration in Ghana, was speechless as a reporter peppered her with questions about where she had been, why she had ever left, and how it was that LA was so woefully underprepared.

‘Both sides botched it,’ she said vaguely, at the end of this month. LA will doubtless re-elect this abject failure.

Read the whole thing. As Christian Toto asks: Is Hollywood Finally Getting What It Voted For? Pro-Newsom, Anti-Trump town tripped over woke, DEI and progressive pols.

Consider a second, sobering expose tied to La La Land. Compact Magazine’s recent feature by Jacob Savage, dubbed “The Lost Generation,” explores how the Left’s DEI obsession prevented many talented straight white males from entering the entertainment industry.

In the fall of 2014, the Oscars nominated only white people for acting awards, and #OscarsSoWhite was born. The New York Times ran story after story. The Academy promised reform, as did the studios—and they delivered. In 2015, Matt was looking for a follow-up job as a staff writer or story editor. “I couldn’t crack anything,” he recalled. “It was like, almost immediate… There was a real disillusionment because I thought it was just kind of me for a while.”

It wasn’t. Hollywood was in the midst of a revolution. As #OscarsSoWhite bled into #MeToo, the mandates only intensified.

Turns out the discriminatory tales told by comedian Tyler Fischer, author James Patterson and others were the tip of the un-American iceberg.

And just like that, Peak TV came to a close. Coincidence? Either way, Hollywood progressives have gotten what they demanded time and again:

  • DEI policies
  • Democratic leaders
  • Soft-on-crime legislation
  • Open borders

Closer to L.A., Democratic leaders fiddled while the Palisades fires burned earlier this year. Mayor Karen Bass was literally in a foreign country when the blaze began.

In “Movies as Weapons of Spiritual Warfare,” published on Monday, “George MF Washington” wrote:

One of the reasons why American men, from Generation X in particular, keep coming back to movies like “Ghostbusters”, “Master and Commander”, “Gladiator”, “Braveheart” “The Great Escape”, “The Lord of the Rings”, and even “Die Hard” and “Predator”, is precisely because, as Men of the West, we are hard-wired to fantasize about how we will meet our own confrontations with “The Big Evil”, when and if those confrontations come. Modern American culture tends to look down upon this uniquely male instinct with ill-humor, if not outright derision. These kinds of male-coded sentiments are considered old fashioned at best, explicitly toxic at worst. Which is a shame, because the big studio movies we once made to cater to this male instinct for adventure, risk-taking and the instinctual defiance of Evil remain some of the greatest and most compulsively rewatchable films ever made.

To build on what “Washington” alluded to above, the worldview of woke Hollywood leftists prevents them from creating product that resonates with the public:

Which is why, the Critical Drinker noted early last month, we’re witnessing “The Beginning of the End:”

But then, we have been for some time, perhaps without realizing it:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 1:24 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 1st, 2026

DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVE WITH BYLINE SUFFERS MASSIVE CASE OF AMNESIA:

[In the early 1960s, Jimmy Breslin of the New York Herald-Tribune] made a revolutionary discovery. He made the discovery that it was feasible for a columnist to leave the building, go outside and do reporting on his own, actual legwork. Breslin would go up to the city editor and ask what stories and assignments were coming up, choose one, go out, leave the building, cover the story as a reporter, and write about it in his column. If the story were big enough, his column would start on page one instead of inside.

— “The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’; Eyewitness Report by Tom Wolfe,” New York magazine, February 14th, 1972.

But you look at these tanned, blow-dried gym bunnies like Brian Williams, NBC’s next anchor—all they do is read off a teleprompter, and no one has a problem calling them journalists. In the end I really don’t care what I’m called, as long as it’s not blogger. As Roger Ailes told me early on, you don’t need a license to report. You need a license to do hair.

—Matt Drudge, Radar magazine, June 2003.

Many putative First Amendment voluptuaries defend their position against the most absurd hypotheticals. My favorite example (as some readers may recall) comes from the columnist Michael Kinsley. A “very distinguished New York Times writer” once told Kinsley that “if the Times ballet critic, heading home after assessing the day’s offering of plies and glissades, happens to witness a murder on her way to the Times Square subway, she has a First Amendment right and obligation to refuse to testify about what she saw.” Why? Because she’s a member of the priestly caste.

Other than the obvious problems – that the First Amendment is not a blanket protection to conceal crimes, that nowhere in case law or in the Constitution itself has such a right been established – there’s a sticky public policy problem. Who gets to be a journalist? That question is why federal shield laws are the camel’s nose under the tent of journalism licenses. If everybody can be a journalist simply by pecking away at a keyboard, then tens of millions of bloggers, newsletter writers and coupon-clipper weekly editors are journalists. If that’s the case, then such a sweeping right is unenforceable and dangerous. If, on the other hand, only some people get to be called “journalists,” then we’ve got the makings of a trade guild here.

There’s been some interesting economic research in recent years on the role of guilds (i.e., professional associations, including some unions, that work with the state to require licensing for people seeking similar occupations). Morris Kleiner, a University of Minnesota economist and visiting scholar at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, recently summarized some of his findings in The Wall Street Journal. Apparently, even though guilds don’t lead to better or safer service, they’re on the rise. Why? Well, one reason is that guilds have been very successful at persuading the public they’re better for the consumer even though much of the time they’re really better only for the members of the guild themselves. In states where a license is required to become, say, a hairdresser, salaries are higher by some 10 to 20 percent. This is partly because the licensing – the fees, the extra training, etc. – becomes a barrier to entry to others seeking employment. In states where strict state licensing isn’t required, job growth is 20 percent higher.

The same dynamic would surely play out if elite journalists got their way. The resentment and vitriol aimed at bloggers and the “New Media” is palpable at journalism school symposiums and panel discussions. Is there any doubt that the key masters of any new state-sanctioned journalism guild would translate that animosity into higher wages for themselves and fewer opportunities for the untrained masses nipping at their heels?

This illuminates the fundamental problem with the “enlightened” media’s fashionable pose on the First Amendment: It’s anti-free speech for anyone without keys to the clubhouse. They want special rights for “real journalists.” Well, special rights for some mean weaker rights for others. The editors of The New York Times rightly demand untrammeled opportunities to criticize politicians, but they want complex rules and regulations for everyone else – including other politicians! They think the First Amendment offers blanket protection to strippers “expressing” themselves, but citizens eager to criticize a candidate by taking out an ad can be muzzled if they want to take out that ad when it will be most effective – i.e., near election day.

The First Amendment was intended to keep political speech free; everything else was open to debate. Today, the leaders of the First Amendment industry see it exactly the other way around.

—Jonah Goldberg, “The Press’s Superman Complex,” NRO, October 26th, 2005.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Somebody should write a book on that.

UPDATE (From Ed):

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 1st, 2026

IT’S THE DEMOGRAPHY, STUPID:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 1st, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE LOST GENERATION:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 1st, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE SOMALI PIRATES AND THE COMING MIDDLE CLASS ANARCHY:

“I want to talk about how the average American is starting to feel as major corruption is being exposed, especially now with the case in Minnesota and the daycare fraud. This is not just about money being stolen anymore. It’s a growing feeling that being a good citizen, being hard working person, paying your taxes may not be worth it. People are starting to feel stupid. They think, well, I’m here, I’m playing by rules, I am working hard, I’m providing for my family, I’m doing the hard work – and I’m the idiot. You see the memes online and we laugh, like, oh, me on my way to work, thinking that I should have just opened a daycare center in Minnesota and made millions. And again, it is funny, but it’s also deeply sad, because the next thing is, why am I even doing this? And that’s the part no one wants to talk about, because this kind of feeling shapes culture.”

Flashback: The Coming Middle Class Anarchy. “When the backbone of a country starts thinking that laws and rules are not worth following, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to anarchy.”

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 1st, 2026

WHERE’S HUNTER, FAT?

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 1st, 2026

December 31, 2025

ROGER SIMON: The New Year Will Be Great Says This Positivist.

By the time you get this, or open it, it will probably be 2026, or close to it.

If you are celebrating until the crack of dawn, more power to you. We’re not, having spent the last few days in Miami, eating our heads off. That city has fantastic restaurants to go with the weather.

Nevertheless, my optimism for the new year abounds for two reasons:

One, the older I get, the more I know that staying positive is the best way to live. Optimism and pessimism are self-fulfilling prophecies.

More importantly, perhaps, I don’t think I am looking through rose-colored glasses, maybe just slightly tinted ones, when I say the world has never looked better.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 31st, 2025

QUESTION ASKED:

Of course it is. But Ohio’s Republican governor responds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

 

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 31st, 2025

OLD AND BUSTED: Annexing Greenland.

The New Hotness? Donald Trump enters 2026 as the real leader of Europe.

Forget Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron, or Ursula von der Leyen. Donald Trump emerged in 2025 as the real leader of Europe, and 2026 is only likely to cement his position.

In just the first year of his second term, Trump’s administration has shaken Europe’s foundations to the core, with a far more assertive and effective approach towards transatlantic relations compared to the previous Biden administration.

The impact is being felt at every level, not least by European voters. A striking recent story in Politico (“Trump dominates democracy in Europe”) highlighted the results of a 10,000-person poll, showing that he was viewed as “strong and decisive” compared to their own leaders by 74 per cent of Germans, 73 per cent of Frenchmen, and 69 per cent of Britons. The corresponding figures for the leaders of Germany, France and the UK were 26 per cent, 27 per cent and 31 per cent respectively. Trump may not be loved in Europe, but he is increasingly respected as a force to be reckoned with. Europeans evidently view him as a towering presence in shaping their destiny.

Trump is often erroneously accused of being an isolationist. The truth is he has taken a far keener interest in Europe than his predecessors and has been actively involved in helping shape the continent’s future. He is the most transatlanticist American president since Ronald Reagan, and views rescuing Europe as a vital national interest for the United States. His approach toward Europe is nothing short of revolutionary. He is the first US president to challenge the European Project, and his end goal is momentous: saving Western civilisation itself.

We will be greeted as liberators (again.)

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 31st, 2025

JAMES PIERESON: Norman Podhoretz: the Undeceived.

In the wake of Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, many observers assumed that the massacre would release a wave of sympathy for the Jewish state and for Jews around the world. That would have been the logical expectation. After all, some 1,400 Israelis and Jews from other nations were killed in the attacks, and more than 200 were taken into Gaza as hostages.

Yet, something altogether different happened: the attacks unleashed a barrage of criticism against Israel, along with a resurgence of anti-Semitism in the United States and Western Europe. Jews were victims twice over: first in the terror attacks; second, in the response to them. That may have been part of the plan all along, since anti-Israel marchers hit the streets almost as soon as the event occurred. Nevertheless, the counterintuitive response took many by surprise.

Among those not surprised was Norman Podhoretz, who died on December 16, one month shy of his 96th birthday. Podhoretz was widely known for his transition in the late 1960s from radicalism to conservatism, in defiance of views widely and vehemently held by those who then dominated New York’s intellectual scene. In rejecting his youthful views and, much worse, turning himself into a conservative, Podhoretz became an outcast among his former friends, as he chronicled in Ex Friends, one of his later books. But by turning in those credentials, he won a larger following not only among Jews but also among many Americans who were not Jewish and had never stepped foot in Manhattan but looked to him, and to Commentary, the magazine he edited, for guidance in cutting through the fashionable left-wing views that they encountered in schools, Hollywood movies, and television news programs. It was a response that he did not expect but certainly welcomed.

Moreover, the concerns that caused him to change his views more than a half century ago were basically the same as those that led his allies today to lament the resurgence of anti-Semitism and hostility to Israel after the October 7. Podhoretz saw decades ago, as he saw recently, that an irrational and deeply rooted animus existed on the left toward Israel, linked to a parallel animus toward the United States. The more successful these countries are, the more the organized Left despises them. As much as anything, Podhoretz’s recognition of these twin impulses led him along a path toward conservatism, and turned him into the most influential editor and public intellectual of the postwar era.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 31st, 2025

KURT SCHLICHTER: Republicans Are Slowly ‘Learing’ How to Fight the Democrats.

This is an opportunity for the Republicans, and they had better not blow it. There must be merciless investigations. There must be prosecutions, including of Tim Waltz and others, if they appear criminally liable for tolerating, or even aiding and abetting, this looting of the public purse. We need to be careful here – we are foreclosed both by God’s prohibition on bearing false witness and the utilitarian consideration that the last thing we want to do is not be able to get a conviction should we criminally charge someone. But if we do criminally charge them, having found probable cause to do so, that may make it break through the regime media and the Democrat denials. There are some Democrats who aren’t completely psychotic, and they will oppose public corruption. Sure, a huge number will excuse it, or even argue that it’s a good thing, but there’s something about Nick Shipley‘s video of empty offices that get millions of dollars a year that can even raise doubts in loyal Democrat voters.

That’s why this is a golden opportunity for the GOP. You’ve got to be either getting paid off yourself or completely nuts to accept corruption. There are a few Democrats who are neither, but there are a lot of independents who are neither, and this is a winning issue. It’s also highly effective. The Democrat machine runs on government money. This is why they screamed so hard when we turned off the USAID spigot. And that’s why it’s going to be so effective as we tighten the controls on money going to illegal aliens. Almost everything they do can be traced back to siphoning off government money. That’s where the Republicans need to focus.

We need to starve the Democrat machine of cash. We need to demonstrate their perfidy with targeted prosecutions of real crimes. And we need 100 guys like Nick Shirley out there with their iPhones, finding the truth that the Democrats and the regime media have hidden, just like Andrew Breitbart wanted.

Republicans, surprise us. Don’t screw this up.

This should be the issue for the GOP in 2026, given the level of corruption involved and that Minnesota has been a near-Democrat-monopoly state for about 80 years now. But alas, next year will serve up plenty of GOP failure theater instead: House Probes Minnesota Fraud: Walz & Ellison Invited – X Users Predict No-Show & Kabuki Theater.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 31st, 2025

NICK SHIRLEY: A Kindergartner Could Find The Fraud Going On In Minnesota, But Tim Walz Wants Their Votes.

TOMI LAHREN: You’ve done incredible work. You are an incredible investigator on the go. My question is this: how much investigating did you actually have to do to find these centers? Some have misspelled signs. Did you find them easily, or how did you go about this?

It’s amazing to me that no one else besides you saw a problem here when they cannot even spell on the side of a learning center.

NICK SHIRLEY, INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST: That is a great question. I have to give props to David, who helped me in this investigation. He’s been doing research for years — years! — trying to expose this fraud, and nobody has given him the time of day to even talk about this.

With his help and my own investigation, I’ve known about this for a long time—Minnesotans have been telling me for a long time about the Somlai fraud taking place. With his help, we were able to track over $110 million in fraud in one day. That is just the tip. When they say “tip of the iceberg,” it really is. There are billions of dollars of fraud inside the state of Minnesota right now.

JOEY JONES: Nick, on that topic—you said his name is David, and he’s been researching this for years. In your experience, or in your opinion, just spending the days out there, is there any way this has not reached the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz? Take aside ongoing litigation or what have you— is there any way he could claim ignorance on this, just in your experience over this investigation?

NICK SHIRLEY: It is so obvious. If you are living in Minnesota, you have to raise your eyebrows and think, “What is going on?” Literally, if you drive around Minneapolis, you will see daycare centers, autism centers, and transportation companies that have snow piled up as if they have not moved in months.

You also go into buildings where there will be 20 healthcare companies. It’s like a kindergartner could figure out this fraud going on.

As Sean Connery said to Kevin Costner in The Untouchables, “Mr. Ness, everybody knows where the booze is. The problem isn’t finding it, the problem is who wants to cross Capone.” Or in this case, the entire Democratic Party, including their operatives with bylines. And right on cue: CNN Laments That ‘MAGA Journalist’ Nick Shirley Had No Guardrails.

The 1990s-era Matt Drudge would be smiling, but eventually he sold out as well, alas.

Related: While we’re referencing Capone and the Untouchables:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 31st, 2025

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Late Night Won’t Touch Somali Scandal, So…: Indie content creators rush in, satirize Minnesota’s massive child care debacle.

“And, finally, a social media used Sora to generate a faux toy commercial tied to the scandal. It’s another reason Hollywood should fear A.I. – it empowers everyday citizens to satirize headlines that late-night hosts likely won’t:”

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 31st, 2025

HE DID IT: Tucker Carlson Suggests That Israel Committed 9/11 Terror Attack.

Is Tucker Carlson “fringe?” It would be hard to claim that he is. He has been a journalist for decades, and one of the most recognizable and popular ones at that.

Yet he is now slyly promoting one of the most ridiculous and fringe conspiracy theories known to mankind, and one that is contradicted by so much evidence that it rivals Candace Owens’ “Charlie Kirk was assassinated by his friends” conspiracy theory.

It’s bats**t crazy.

The following clip is long, and Tucker makes his accusation that Israel was involved in 9/11 at the very end, but I still encourage you to listen to the entire thing.

Why, it’s as if:

Meanwhile, on the left, when Zionists aren’t doing 9/11, they’re running TikTok:

Earlier: “This sweary ‘wine mom’ is the Democrats’ answer to Joe Rogan.”

Related:

Fair enough guys, but the day is still young…

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 31st, 2025

DESPERATELY DEFENDING TIMMY:

Minnesota’s welfare fraud scandals dominate the national news, and calls are rising for Governor Tim Walz to resign. The Minnesota Star Tribune, a longtime DFL mouthpiece that is now run by a former Walz cabinet member, is doing its best to fend off criticism of the Walz regime. Toward that end, its “reporters” are desperately looking for a way to discredit the Nick Shirley video of Somali day care centers that has been seen by more than 100 million people.

Deena Winter, a Star Tribune reporter, evidently was assigned that task. In the Shirley video, he has a colleague who is identified only as “David.” Winter apparently thought this could be the weak link. So she set out to dox David:

As the knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade would say, she chose poorly. So poorly, she deleted her Twitter/X account:

Similarly, the Somali pirates are proving to be an early stress test for Bari Weiss, with mixed results. First the bad:

And now the good: ABC, NBC Barely Touch Minnesota Fraud, While CBS Delivers the Goods. “CBS Evening News is the only broadcast network which has reported on this story consistently, airing three dedicated reports and several other smaller mentions for a total of eight minutes and 16 seconds of coverage since December 2.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Dec 31st, 2025
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