Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

September 11, 2025

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Albania appoints world’s first AI-made minister.

Albania has become the first country in the world to have an AI minister — not a minister for AI, but a virtual minister made of pixels and code and powered by artificial intelligence.

Her name is Diella, meaning sunshine in Albanian, and she will be responsible for all public procurement, Prime Minister Edi Rama said Thursday.

How many Mercs will “she” procure?

Still though, if things go really pear-shaped, we can always deploy the B-3 bombers:

Posted at 9:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 11th, 2025

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: The View Once Erroneously Claimed Kirk Palled With Nazis, Now Mourn.

Behar chimed in again to note that she lived through the 1960s, during a very fraught period of American history filled with political assassinations. “You know, I’d like to be positive about it. I think we did get out of it. The country survived it. We got better. I think we will again. We’re having a traumatic period right now,” she tried to give comfort.

Following their 9/11 segment, moderator Whoopi Goldberg attempted to marry the two subjects by pushing for America to show the same kind of post-9/11 unity for Kirk’s assassination.

“[I]t goes to show that when we put our minds to it, we did figure out what to do. We can figure out what to do…These things are not outside of our reach. And we have to get back to that,” [Whoopi] pleaded. “These are things we cannot forget that we actually have the ability to do. If we do forget it, I don’t know what will become of the country. My fingers are crossed. I’m betting on human beings.”

But The View’s niceties rang a little hollow. In July 2022, Goldberg erroneously claimed Kirk “invited” neo-Nazis into a TurningPoint USA event in Florida. Two days later, The View had to issue a formal on-air apology after Kirk’s organization threatened to file a defamation suit against them.

Shades of the classic Babylon Bee headline from last November: Sunny Hostin Forced To Read Legal Notice Acknowledging Nothing Said On ‘The View’ In Its Entire History Has Ever Been Remotely True.

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 11th, 2025

JUST IN: Paramount Skydance Preparing to Buy CNN Parent Company In Major Media Consolidation, Report.

Paramount Skydance is planning to make a majority cash bid for CNN parent company Warner Bros. Discovery in an effort to consolidate the media giants, according to reporting in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

“The bid will be for the entire company, including its cable networks and movie studio,” people familiar with the situation told WSJ.

Skydance is run by David Ellison, son of multi-billionaire Larry Ellison who co-founded Oracle Corporation.

Earlier: CBS Taps Conservative Policy Veteran for New Ombudsman Role. “The new ownership of CBS News on Monday selected Kenneth R. Weinstein, a former chief executive of the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning policy think tank, to review complaints about its coverage in a new post as ombudsman at the network…Skydance’s founder, David Ellison, has pledged to revamp CBS News, which regularly lags ABC and NBC in the Nielsen ratings and recently endured a standoff with President Trump over accusations of editorial bias. Mr. Ellison is in talks to acquire The Free Press, an independent news outlet, and install its co-founder Bari Weiss in a senior editorial role at CBS News; last week, the network changed its rules for handling some political interviews after pressure from the Trump administration.”

UPDATE: Perhaps a conservative ombudsman would stop CBS from trying to run the same playbook they used to blame Sarah Palin and the Tea Party for the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in 2011:

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 11th, 2025

BRENDAN O’NEILL: Charlie Kirk was a better anti-fascist than most of the left.

Kirk was enraged by the pogrom of 7 October. In that clash at Cambridge, with the student so well trained in the moral relativism of the modern campus that he couldn’t even draw a moral distinction between a neo-fascist army and the democratic state it attacked, he reminded his overeducated jeerers of what happened that day. This war started, he said, ‘because 1,300 Jews were killed and 200 were taken hostage’. Hamas ‘recklessly’ went to ‘music concerts, to homes, to kibbutzes’, knowing well there would be a ‘firestorm’ in Gaza as a result. The ‘only entity to blame’ for this war, he told the lost souls of Cambridge, is ‘the leadership of Hamas’.

The ‘moral truth’, he said, is that ‘there is a good guy and there is a bad guy’. That’s the ‘morality of a child’, barked his critic, to effusive applause from the assembly of plummy Israelophobes. Then came Kirk’s killer line: ‘A child who knows that Israel is the good guy and Hamas is bad has a lot more wisdom than a student like yourself at Cambridge University.’ He schooled them. It was moral clarity in action. It should not have taken a visiting firebrand from the US to tell some of Britain’s most privileged, well-read youths that the Islamofascists who raped and then murdered Jewish women are the bad guys – but it did.

Related:

In sharp contrast: Oxford Union president who debated Charlie Kirk appears to celebrate his killing.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 11th, 2025

JERRY SEINFELD COMPARES FREE PALESTINE MOVEMENT TO THE KU KLUX KLAN:

Jerry Seinfeld on Tuesday said he holds the Ku Klux Klan in higher regard than supporters of the Free Palestine movement while at an event to honor people being held hostage in Gaza.

The comic-actor, 71, made the controversial remarks at a Chabad event at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, according to the college’s student newspaper, The Duke Chronicle.

Seinfeld broached the uncomfortable topic as he introduced Omer Shem Tov, a one-time Israeli hostage. He said of Free Palestine supporters, ‘Just say you don’t like Jews.’

The Brooklyn, New York native explained his point of view at the event, according to the student paper.

‘By saying Free Palestine, you’re not admitting what you really think,’ Seinfeld said. ‘So it’s actually — compared to the Ku Klux Klan, I’m actually thinking the Klan is actually a little better here because they can come right out and say, “We don’t like Blacks, we don’t like Jews” — OK, that’s honest.’

Normally at this time, I’d link to this History Channel clip:

But after yesterday, “the terrorist wing of the Democratic Party” seems like it has quite an enormous airfoil span.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 11th, 2025

INVERTING THE CLAUSEWITZ CLAUSE:

Yes, why would “far right podcasters” think that?

 

As I wrote in June of 2009, “President Obama has demonstrated that he’s always eager to view American politics as the continuation of warfare by other means, to flip Von Clausewitz’s axiom on its head.”

And Joe Biden (and/or whoever was writing his teleprompter speeches) carried on that tradition, particularly during this infamous moment, right around this time three years ago:

Eugene Robinson, then still with the WaPo, dubbed Biden’s rantings a great “wartime address.” As Ed Morrissey asked, “Question: With whom is the United States currently at war?”

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 11th, 2025

CAROLINA PANTHERS FIRE EMPLOYEE AFTER SOCIAL MEDIA POST ABOUT CHARLIE KIRK’S FATAL SHOOTING:

The Carolina Panthers have fired an employee in the team’s communications department due to an insensitive social media post about the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah, a source familiar with the team’s decision said Thursday.

Charlie Rock, a football communications coordinator for the Panthers, posted on his personal Instagram account Wednesday, a few hours after the 31-year-old Kirk was shot and killed while speaking to a crowd at Utah Valley University. The post read: “Why are yall sad? Your man said it was worth it …” and included a photo of Kirk. Rock also included a reference to the Wu-Tang Clan song “Protect Ya Neck” in the post.

There’s quite a bit of that going on today:

But how did we get here?

As a result, for those who have some prominence on social media, they must have assumed there would be widespread approval for their hateful rhetoric:

Otherwise, we’re in the territory mined daily for years by Libs of Tiktok. Do lefties on social media believe they’re shouting into the void? Creating Voice Memos on their iPhones that only they would have access to?

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 11th, 2025

SLATE BOLDLY GOES WHERE NORM MACDONALD HAS GONE BEFORE:

Evergreen (doubly so, today):

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 11th, 2025

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Who Will Stop America’s Slide Into the Abyss?

To the ghouls celebrating online, Kirk and his supporters represented something else entirely: fascism, Nazism, Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale. How does one succumb to such delusion? Whatever the mix of ideology, grievance, envy, contempt, or pure nihilism, the hatred is spreading. Every year brings forth downwardly mobile graduates with debt, no prospects, a sense of entitlement, and mounds of resentment. Combine radical individualism with a culture without restraint, and you have the social equivalent of a Molotov cocktail.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last weekend, author Cynthia Ozick said, “This is a good country. It’s a great country. And now, it’s disintegrating.” That is why Kirk’s death feels like a watershed. It is the most stunning evidence we have to date that America is becoming two nations, divided not only by politics but by culture, lifestyle, psychology, and epistemology. Weak institutions, corrupted data, rampant distrust, political enmity, and an apparent inability to control criminality and the dangerously mentally ill tear us apart like a centrifugal force.

Exit question: “Is there a way back?”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 11th, 2025

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Ammunition in Charlie Kirk Shooting Engraved With Transgender, Antifascist Ideology: Sources.

Investigators found ammunition engraved with expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology inside the rifle that authorities believe was used in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, according to an internal law-enforcement bulletin and a person familiar with the investigation.

The older-model .30 caliber hunting rifle was discovered in the woods near the scene of Wednesday’s shooting at Utah Valley University, wrapped in a towel with a spent cartridge still in the chamber, the sources said. There were also three unspent rounds in the magazine, all with wording on them.

Or as CNN puts it:

CNN’s anti-journalism also appeared on-air via one of their Chyrons:

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

Evergreen:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 11th, 2025

“WHEN PEOPLE STOP TALKING, THAT’S WHEN YOU GET VIOLENCE, THAT’S WHEN CIVIL WAR HAPPENS:”

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Sep 11th, 2025

September 10, 2025

GUTFELD DROPS F-BOMB AFTER CHARLIE KIRK’S MURDER, ISSUES WARNING TO THE LEFT:

“Yeah, I know that it’s somewhat a object of mockery to say ‘thoughts and prayers,’ but… thoughts and prayers for his family, um, they need it from all of us,” Gutfeld said.

For all the political implications, he reminded viewers that at the center of this horrific act is a young family mourning an unspeakable loss.

From there, Gutfeld turned to the bigger picture: “And Jesse’s right, if they can do this, they are capable of anything. I think that was the message, I believe that was the message.”

Make no mistake about it, the assassination of Kirk was not simply an attack on one man. It was a warning shot to every conservative willing to stand up to the left’s cultural and political assault on our country. Gutfeld’s words reflected what many instinctively know: This was meant to terrify, to silence, and to end the momentum that Kirk helped build through Turning Point USA and his unapologetically conservative media presence.

But if those responsible thought violence would shut conservatives down, Gutfeld argued, they’ve made a grave mistake. “Um, it’s really hard to radicalize Republicans,” he noted.

“You know, it’s like we’re not the radical type. But if you thought that you were gonna shut a movement down, you’re gonna get a rude awakening. You woke us the f**k up.”

If Glenn’s X feed is any indication, I don’t think the left realizes what the last decade has the potential for unleashing:

 

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 10th, 2025

THE LONDON TELEGRAPH: Charlie Kirk: The Maga ally committed to speaking across the divide.

Charlie Kirk leaned into his reputation as a deeply polarising figure, taking his conservative message to the most hostile places he could imagine: America’s college campuses.

This helped him build his Turning Point USA movement into a fundraising giant and catapulted him into the highest echelons of Trump world.

On Wednesday he took his rapier wit and his “Prove Me Wrong” roadshow to Utah Valley University. It proved to be his final appearance.

He was cut down by a gunman’s bullet as he answered questions about mass shootings in America.

President Donald Trump announced his death, illustrating the power of the 31-year-old’s reach.

“No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie,” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Kirk exemplified the confrontational, populist conservatism that brought Mr Trump to power.

Other than being a skilled debater, there was nothing “confrontational” about Kirk’s style. I very much hope I’m wrong, but that may not be true of those who replace him.

While we’re on the subject of London, Two-Tier Keir is utterly shameless:

Posted at 9:05 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 10th, 2025

NEW YORK YANKEES HOLD MOMENT OF SILENCE FOR CHARLIE KIRK:

Related: President Trump Orders Flags to Half-Staff in Honor of Charlie Kirk.

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 10th, 2025

GRAHAM LINEHAN: “This is what ten years of ‘words are violence’ has achieved.”

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 10th, 2025

KONSTANTIN KISIN: “[T]onight feels like some sort of invisible line has been crossed that we didn’t even know was there. The last time I felt like this was 9/11 when it was clear, without knowing the how and the what, that the world was about to change forever.”

Posted at 8:16 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 10th, 2025

DISPATCHES FROM THE PARENTHESES STATES: Watching The End Game Of New York’s Climate Madness Begin To Play Out.

As I have written many times, with New York’s fantasy “net zero” energy plans, it is not a question of whether they will fail, but only when and how. The Democrats, who dominate state politics, and their environmentalist allies, are firmly committed to the impossible. Thus, they are caught in a trap of their own making, and from which there is no good escape. The fact that they are caught in this trap is obvious to anyone with basic arithmetic skills, but almost all of our politicians and environmentalists lack those. However, a small handful of them are starting to sense the impending crash. This makes for amusing interplay.

The state’s Climate Act of 2019 directs hostility to fossil fuels on all fronts. In the realm of electricity, the Act mandates 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030, and 100% from “zero emissions” sources by 2040. The official plan for achieving those mandates basically boils down to building lots of wind turbines and solar panels, and then lots more of same — principally off-shore wind turbines — until a flood of infinitely “free” wind and sun washes over us and brings us to energy nirvana. Meanwhile, also on the path to “net zero,” development of natural gas infrastructure is to be halted and reversed. More than half way to the 2030 deadline, the progress toward the 70% renewable electricity goal has actually been negative (due to the premature closure of two large nuclear power plants). On the natural gas front, two big pipeline projects have been blocked by the state environmental regulator (DEC) on phony grounds of “water quality.” And meanwhile there are plans for big new electricity consumers (chip plants and data centers) in the upstate area.

Time to crank up the wind turbines! And then President Trump swept back into office, and as one of his first acts pulled the plug on the off-shore wind projects.

So as of this past Spring, here’s where we were: lots of new electricity demand coming along, all new natural gas infrastructure (including two big new pipelines) blocked, and the planned future of wind turbines (which wouldn’t work in any event) also blocked. Does anyone see a potential problem here?

Meanwhile, in the formerly Golden State: California Lawmakers Squeezed Refineries Out, Now Scramble To Pay One Well-Known Company To Keep Theirs Running.

After years of enforcing stringent regulations that helped force major refineries to close, California Democrats are now reportedly considering paying Valero millions to keep a San Francisco-area fuel plant afloat.

With two major refineries already scheduled to shut down and strict regulations in place, concerns about California’s already high gas prices have become a top issue for lawmakers. According to a Bloomberg report Tuesday, sources familiar with the private deliberations said lawmakers have discussed whether to pay Valero between $80 million and $200 million in state funds to keep its Benicia refinery operating.

The Benicia plant is slated to close by April 2026. The proposed payment would be earmarked for routine maintenance, one of the largest costs for refineries, Bloomberg reported.

When asked about the report and how the state has handled the refinery closures, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office told the Daily Caller News Foundation it had no information to share.

Concerns over higher gas prices have mounted due to the scheduled refinery closures, with Republican State Sen. Tony Strickland telling the DCNF that the potential $8-plus per gallon is the “direct result” of Newsom’s agenda.

Isn’t that what Democrats want? Of course: Steven Chu, Obama’s incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” A few months earlier, the L.A. Times published a column extolling “The joy of $8 gas,” which of course would lead to what the paper would describe the following year as “funemployment.”

But for Gavin Newsom, a 2028 presidential bid is far more important than saving Gaia. (I’ll believe global cooling/warming/climate change/climate chaos is a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act that way themselves, to coin a Insta-phrase.)

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 10th, 2025

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH PIERS MORGAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Megyn Kelly and Andrew Klavan Watch Piers Morgan “Trans” Guest Melt Down When He Asks What “Non-Binary” Means:

On Substack, Stephen Knight sets the scene: Laurie Penny’s car crash appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored reveals a lot about nonsensical new identities.

Laurie Penny is a British author and feminist. And she has always been insufferable. Penny exemplifies that deeply obnoxious combination of privilege, faux-radicalism and a cluelessness that forces satirists to up their game. In fact, if Laurie Penny didn’t exist, it’d be necessary for Andrew Doyle to invent her.

I did naively assume she may dial down the trendy, cringe inducing student activism given she is quickly approaching her 40’s. But there are no signs of that happening if her recent appearance on ‘Piers Morgan Uncensored’ is anything to go by.

Penny was 1 of 5 panellists on Morgan’s show to discuss the recent arrest of comedy writer Graham Linehan for social media posts. Penny of course had absolutely nothing of value to say about that, doing her very best to justify Linehan’s arrest.

But it’s what she said (or rather couldn’t manage to) a little later that was the most illuminating part of the discussion.

This transcript of what happens when Morgan asks Penny to define “non-binary” is such a nonsensical word salad that it would astonish even Kamala Harris:

Transcript continues:

MORGAN:  Which trans are you, if you don’t mind me asking?

PENNY:  I’m non-binary.

MORGAN:  What does that mean?

PENNY:  I’m a non-binary person. I use they, them pronouns. Sorry, are we going to spend… Do we really want to spend the rest of this discussing my personal gender identity?

MORGAN:  You’re the one who mentioned it. I didn’t even know.

BLAIRE WHITE:  This is a nightmare.

MORGAN:  Okay, so now I know. I’m just asking you what that means.

PENNY:  Like, do you really want to discuss this?

MORGAN:  You raised the subject of yourself being trans. I’m simply asking…

WHITE:  Can I finish my point? It’s always a non-binary person speaking over a transsexual.

MORGAN:  It’s really interesting to me. You raised it, not me. I didn’t even know. So now you’ve raised it. What does that actually mean? What do you mean, you’re non-binary?

PENNY:  Are you really, really just gonna…

MORGAN:  Can you explain it?

PENNY:  Are you gonna cut Blaire off now?

MORGAN:  I’m just asking you to explain. I’ll come back to Blaire in a moment.

WHITE:  Well, you were the one that cut me off, Sis, but I will say…

MORGAN:  Sorry, Blaire, wait one second. I just want to ask, what do you mean by non-binary?

PENNY:  When I say I’m non-binary, I’m expressing my identity in a way that I have a right to do. What does that mean?

MORGAN:  I’m sorry?

MORGAN:  What’s your sexuality?

PENNY:  My sexuality? It doesn’t have anything to do with my sexuality.

MORGAN:  Actually, the UK government now says that people are male or female. The British Prime Minister says people are male or female.

PENNY:  I don’t think the UK government should have the final say on how I express myself and how I’m treated. Well, they determine the laws of the country. I’m just curious what you mean by non-binary. MORGAN:  What does that mean? PENNY:  I go by they/them pronouns.

MORGAN:  What does that mean? This is only one of you. What does they, them…

PENNY:  Actually, they, them has been… The collective they has been used to refer to individual people for centuries and still is. So, if you don’t understand basic grammar, that’s on you.

MORGAN:  I don’t understand. I’ve got to be honest with you. I don’t understand the concept of what non-binary means or why you would use a plural pronoun to describe a singular person. To me, this is the problem with the whole woke thing. It’s inexplicable. Nobody really knows what it means. I don’t know what you mean by non-binary, they, them. There’s one of you sitting here, and you look to me, female. You’re a female. Are you a female?

PENNY:  If you don’t understand what non-binary means…

MORGAN:  Are you a female?

PENNY:  If you don’t understand what non-binary means, then I’m not sure you’re in a position to lead a debate.

MORGAN:  So just tell me. But if you can’t explain it in simple language, then what’s the point?

WHITE:  Explain what non-binary is. I can tell you exactly what being a transsexual is.

PENNY:  It means that my gender identity is something other than man or woman. I’m a non-binary individual.

MORGAN:  But you accept you’re a female?

PENNY:  I don’t think that I’m here to discuss the contents of my underpants.

MORGAN:  You raised this whole thing. I didn’t mention anything about what you were. You did. You said, I’m trans.

PENNY:  This has really become uncomfortably personal. Has it?

MORGAN:  You said it, not me.

In response, JK Rowling adds, “I hereby publicly announce that I am non-trinary:”

In the clip at the top of this post, Klavan tells Kelly, “I’m not surprised that this person identifies as something they can’t even define. And the kind of self-righteous attitude they took like ‘how dare you ask me what I mean when I say something, sir.’ You know, ‘how dare you’ is comical, but it’s only comical in the in the context of this greater tragedy of people talking confused young people into madness.”

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 10th, 2025

FORMER ESPN HOST SAMANTHA STEELE PONDER:

John Podhoretz adds, “this is the experience of EVERYONE in New York. Everyone. And anyone who says different is lying.”

JD Vance notes:

It doesn’t have to be this way, but it’s only going to get worse under Mayor Mamdani.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Sep 10th, 2025
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