Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

April 8, 2026

TRUMP’S ENEMIES HAVE EITHER FORGOTTEN 1979, OR THEY’RE ROOTING FOR THE MULLAHS:

Posted at 10:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Apr 8th, 2026

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS:

Tweet begins, “Somewhere along the way, taxes stopped being about roads, courts, and national defense. They now exist to sustain worthless politicians and to reward the friends, donors, contractors, and constituencies that keep them in power.”

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Apr 8th, 2026

A BRIDGE TOO FAR:

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Apr 8th, 2026

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Apr 8th, 2026

April 7, 2026

NICK GILLESPIE: “The Godfather Likened Big Business and Big Government to the Mafia.”

Since I linked to the video of Ben Stein on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line in 1979 discussing the TV tropes of the era on Saturday, I found a copy of the book he was promoting during his appearance, The View from Sunset Boulevard, in the Wayback Machine. It’s a sort of conservative version of Todd Gitlin’s 1983 book Inside Prime Time, or a first draft version of Ben Shapiro’s 2011 book, Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV. In any case, it’s a fascinating time capsule, a look inside the worldviews of the people who brought you 1970s network television, such as All in the Family, M*A*S*H, and Starsky & Hutch. At one point, Stein discusses the obsessive belief of liberal television producers and writers that “big business” (as if they weren’t supplying product to one of the biggest of big businesses of the decade) went hand in blood-soaked glove with the Five Families. Here’s a ChatGPT transcript of the relative passage:

A dimension of the TV writers’ image of business, and of big business in particular, is the writers’ insistence that it is closely connected with the Mafia. That concept was entirely new to me. It first surfaced spontaneously at an interview. When I included a question about the link between business and the Mafia as part of my questionnaire, and even when I specifically mentioned businesses on the scale of U.S. Steel, I found near unanimity on the answer.

A producer who had worked for many years on adventure shows set all over the country (and recently on two shows set in the Depression in different locales) laid out the matter most baldly: “If you don’t believe that the Mafia is running big business, you must be blind.”

The late Bruce Geller, a writer and executive producer on “Mission Impossible,” “Mannix,” “Have Gun Will Travel,” and “Bronk,” among many others, and then an executive in charge of production at Twentieth Century Fox, got down to cases:

“Of course the two are connected. It’s a very shady area. Organized crime has massive amounts of money that is put in extremely legitimate enterprises.” Geller pointed out that, in his opinion, many parts of show business are financed by underworld money. “It’s understandable in my business where financing is difficult. In any circumstance people tend to take money where they can find it.”

Gary Marshall saw the connection plainly. “There’s definitely a link between big business and organized crime. There has to be a link to make big business work.”

Bob Schiller gave the most popular answer to the question about big business and the Mafia when he said that he saw a link not only between big business and the Mafia but also between government and the Mafia, and between labor and the Mafia.

Again, however, there was less than total unanimity about the situation. Mort Lachman, for one, saw a link but said it was nothing to feel paranoid about. Several people who preferred to remain anonymous simply could not be made to respond to the question as it was asked. They read it as, “Do you personally receive money from the Mafia?” and all denied receiving any.

Not everyone saw the Mafia in bed with IBM and William Blinn, one of the biggest guns in TV writing and author of one or more episodes of “Roots,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “The New Land,” “The Rookies,” “Bonanza,” and “The Interns,” gave a unique and unequivocal answer: “There is a conscious, deliberate un-relationship [sic] between big business and organized crime. They tend to leave each other alone. It’s mutually understood that they have their own territory. By not competing, they actually help each other. They allow each other to thrive in their separate fields.” But the comment of Stanley Kramer that “the Mafia is part of the entire corporate entity now” is far more representative than Blinn’s.

To some extent, the allegation that the Mafia is linked with business explains why businessmen are shown to be such bad people on television. If the businessman is really a Mafioso, then we could hardly expect him to be anything but a bad man. Even if the businessman is a silent partner of the Mafia, he is still a different person from Horatio Alger’s businessman. But that leads to another question.

Why is there such widespread belief in the link between the Mafia and the business world? The belief itself is a phenomenon I had never encountered before.

Part of the answer may be that it is true—the Mafia might be an integral part of the corporate structure. It may be that TV writers have simply discovered something I did not know. Certainly they have often led fuller lives than I have where business is concerned. But a larger part of the reason why so many people think the Mafia is linked to business comes, in my opinion, from the prevailing conspiracy theory of history. In Hollywood, almost nothing is explained except on the basis of conspiracies and cabals. It is here, for example, that serious, intelligent people believe that the world is run by a consortium of former Nazis and executives of multinational corporations.

Why Hollywood should be wedded to the conspiracy explanation of human events is beyond my knowing for certain. It probably has something to do with the unpredictability and randomness of human life in Hollywood, especially in terms of success and failure. It is difficult for people to come to grips with the randomness of events, and rather than do so, they often invent complex reasons for phenomena. Perhaps my reasoning in itself is an example of the prevalence of conspiracy explanations. At any rate, for some reason, people who write for television believe that there is a definite link between the Mafia and business, especially big business.

Fortunately for all concerned, Harvey Weinstein eventually showed up and declared himself “the fucking sheriff of this fucking lawless piece-of-shit town,” finally cleaning up his industry for good…

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 7th, 2026

CHARLES MURRAY, CALL YOUR OFFICE!

Tweet continues:

However, at the same time, they’ve been in a heterosexual marriage for 20+ years and have 4 children together. By those measures, they are more “trad” in terms of their own lifestyle than most Americans are, even a lot of conservatives aren’t married with 4 kids.

So what that tells me is the Newsoms KNOW that the traditional family model is the best; that’s why they chose it when they both could’ve chosen anything else. But as elites they still promote insidious ideologies that end up harming the ordinary people who listen to them. It’s a perfect illustration of “luxury beliefs.”

As Charles Murray wrote over 15 years ago, “When it comes to marriage and the work ethic, the new upper class must start preaching what it practices.”

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 7th, 2026

SCHRÖDINGER’S LIB:

Posted at 4:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 7th, 2026

OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH THE GREAT SATAN:

 

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 7th, 2026

VDH: The Left Is Baffled—but Still Repulsed—by the White Working Class.

Democrats realize that their fixations on biological males competing in women’s sports, open borders and millions of illegal entries, radical green agendas, DEI-driven racial essentialism, and massive government entitlements rife with fraud have alienated the middle classes in general and white middle- and working-class voters in particular.

But since Democrat ideologues cannot shed their ideological straitjackets, they have instead tried to finesse the very problem that cost them the 2024 election.

They recall, in particular, the successful blueprint that won them the 2020 election. During that campaign, Joe Biden largely remained out of public view, hiding in his basement, while his handlers reconstructed him as a kind of waxen effigy of “good ol’ Joe from Scranton,” a throwback to the 1970s.

Once the cognitively diminished Biden was elected, his hard-left, Obama-era operatives behind that ossified, working-man veneer enacted the most radical four-year agenda in modern American history.

On the one hand, Democrats claim they will field candidates who can at least playact as good ol’ boy farmers and salt-of-the-earth welders.

The 2024 Democratic vice presidential candidate, Humpty Dumpty lookalike Tim Walz, talked incessantly about driving a pickup truck. He assured us he could change its oil and tried to portray himself as a genuine hunter. Yet these claims often came across as inauthentic, strained, and condescending; the more Walz tried to present himself as a man of the people, the more he appeared buffoonish.

The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg, became a caricature of the sanctimonious, credentialed technocrat—self-righteously and arrogantly projecting expertise without much humility or even a shred of the common touch. As transportation secretary, Buttigieg used to pontificate about racist freeway clover leaves, rather than addressing the more immediate problems posed by the gridlocked and decrepit condition of the nation’s highways.

Now, as the 2028 election looms, Buttigieg has followed Democratic central casting and undergone a complete reboot, reemerging with a beard, a trucker cap, and a flannel shirt.

No matter, he still sounds as pedantic as ever in his riff on green energy and “diversity.”

Does Buttigieg’s love of green energy and hatred of racist roads mean he won’t be eating many carburetors for breakfast in his campaign ads?

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 7th, 2026

ARTEMIS RETURNING STUNNING NEW IMAGES FROM THE FAR SIDE:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 7th, 2026

BREAKER MORANT: THE NEXT GENERATION. Australia’s most decorated living veteran to be charged with committing 5 war crime murders in Afghanistan.

Australia’s most decorated living veteran, Ben Roberts-Smith, faces war crime charges on allegations that he killed five unarmed Afghans while serving in Afghanistan from 2009 and 2012, police and media reported on Tuesday.

Police have not confirmed the name of the 47-year-old former soldier who was arrested on Tuesday. But he has been widely reported in the media to be Roberts-Smith, a former Special Air Service Regiment corporal who was awarded both the Victoria Cross and Medal of Gallantry for his service in Afghanistan.

He is expected to appear in a Sydney court late Tuesday or Wednesday, police said.

Plus, great moments in DEI:

 

Maybe she’s just back from Stalingrad:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 7th, 2026

FINALLY, BRITAIN HAS CLOSED ITS BORDERS: Kanye West banned from Britain.

Kanye West has been blocked from entering Britain after a row over his anti-Semitic comments.

Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, prevented the American rapper’s visit to headline the Wireless Festival on the grounds that his presence would “not be conducive to the public good”.

The organisers of the north London music festival said the entire event had been cancelled as a result.

It is understood that West had applied for an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) to enter Britain on Monday, but sources confirmed that the Government had denied him entry.

The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism said the Home Office had “clearly made the right decision”.

A spokesman added: “It’s nice that now Wireless is saying anti-Semitism in all its forms is abhorrent, when just a few hours ago the festival promoter was saying we all need to forgive Kanye for declaring himself a full-blown Nazi, only recently.

Exit quote:

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 7th, 2026

JOHN NOLTE: Newsom’s Wife Wants Legislation to Stop Boys from Becoming Right-Wing.

She wants to “institutionalize” her and her husband’s values so that they “carry on beyond our term.”

OUR term, she says, because she sees herself as co-governor.

Gavin Newsom is a lot of things, all of them terrible, but he is not dumb, so he must understand the damage his narcissistic wife is doing to his 2028 presidential aspirations. For all the mistakes made by the 2024 Kamala Harris presidential campaign, they were at least smart enough to hide running mate Tim Walz’s dreadfully unappealing wife.

This is the second video in less than a week that reveals Jennifer Lynn Siebel Newsom-Ocasio-Rodham as something of a loon and wildly out of touch with mainstream America.

Last week, a video surfaced of her bragging about giving her sons dolls and gender-swapping bedtime stories.

The real question is, why is she doing this? Why is she inserting herself into her husband’s presidential campaign?

Her husband’s presidential campaign?

And if you missed it this morning, further thoughts from Steve at the PJ Mothership: Jennifer Siebel Newsom Is the Crazy Rich White Lady Your Mother Warned You About.

“The gov and I, we have three more years,” as Siebel Newsom said in that clip. “We’re trying to institutionalize our values so that they carry on beyond our term.”

I mean, couldn’t we just teach little boys to read and let them make up their own minds as they reach adulthood?

The question is rhetorical, of course. Siebel Newsom doesn’t even allow that with her own children — according to Newsom, herself. This next clip is undated, but in it, she boasts about how she reads to her young sons: “If I’m reading a book and the protagonist is a male, I just change the he to a she.”

Maybe that seems like a small thing. But I say that taking male heroes away from little boys through gender-swapping is a form of ideological emasculation. You want your sons to turn pimps like Tate for role models? That right there is how you do it. If our little boys are becoming radicalized, it’s crazy rich Democrat ladies like Siebel Newsom doing it.

The bad news is there’s no way the decent people of this country can allow her to become First Lady.

The good news is… have you seen her husband? He’s the crazy rich dude too awkward — and too white and straight — for Democratic presidential primary voters.

I bet that drives her crazy.

Exit quote:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 7th, 2026

THE NOT SO FINAL COUNTDOWN: The Legacy of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth 20 Years Later.

In 1983, Michael Barkun, a professor at Syracuse University, identified the rise of a “New Apocalypticism” in American life. He described a secular variant of religious millenarianism — rooted not in scripture but instead in science, yet structurally identical in its essential features.

Barkun explained:

“The so-called “New Apocalypticism” is undeniably religious, rooted in the Protestant millenarian tradition. Religious apocalypticism is, however, not the only apocalypticism current in American society. A newer, more diffuse, but indisputably influential apocalypticism coexists with it. Secular rather than religious, this second variety grows out of a naturalistic world view, indebted to science and to social criticism rather than to theology. Many of its authors are academics, the works themselves directed at a lay audience of influential persons — government officials, business leaders, and journalists — presumed to have the power to intervene in order to avert planetary catastrophe.”

Gore’s orations perfectly followed the script of the “New Apocalypticism”: The identification of an existential crisis, the diagnosis of human sin as its cause, the urgency of transformation, and the comfort of redemption for those who heed the warning. The climate science community readily embracted this script and adopted the language of believers and deniers to differentiate those with faith and those yet to be converted, and who risked excommunication.

Barkun explained that scientific “predictions of “last things” generate the feelings of awe that have always surrounded eschatology, even if in this case the predictions often grow out of computer modelling rather than Biblical proof-texts.”

Gore was an extraordinarily skilled evangelist and he took his message to scientists on their own terms — with a PowerPoint presentation.

But even so, An Inconvenient Truth was not really about science; it was a sermon — complete with a moral arc (with those who are evil and those who are righteous), a clear account of sin (fossil fuel emissions), a warning of coming judgment (floods, storms, tipping points), and a path to redemption (political will, renewable energy, personal responsibility). The film ends with a call to conversion.

Scarcity for thee, but not for me. Gore’s credibility ended in 2013 with a really fat check from Middle East petrostate Qatar.

Al has sold Current, for the magnificent sum of $500-million, $100-million of which is his alone. Not bad for a TV station with less reach and inferior programming to most billboards.

To whom did the Lord of the Upper Atmosphere sell? Why to al Jazeera — which is to say, effectively to the ruler of Qatar, a wealthy country that has nothing else to sustain it but the sale of its huge petroleum resources.

Qatar is about oil, oil and more oil. It is a global warmer’s hell.

But what a paycheck! When Al Gore emerged from his energy-guzzling mansion to address the Senate in 2007 only to refuse to take his own energy reduction pledge from An Inconvenient Truth when presented to him by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Ann Coulter quipped, “I kind of respect him more, it shows he is not stupid enough to believe all this global warming nonsense. He’s trying to get us to believe. Okay, fine, he may be a hypocrite but at least he’s not a moron.”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 7th, 2026

ROGER SIMON: Mr. President, Keep the Oil!

The desire of the regime to exploit children has resurfaced, according to LTC Nadav Soshani of the IDF:

“In recent weeks, as Israeli and American operations expanded inside Iran, a clearer picture began to emerge of how the regime is operating under this sustained pressure.

“One of the most alarming findings is the recruitment of minors into the Basij, a paramilitary force under the Iranian regime.

“This is not speculation. It is an openly declared policy.

“On March 26, 2026, Rahim Nadali, a deputy in the IRGC Mohammad Rasoul Allah Corps of Greater Tehran, announced a recruitment campaign titled ‘Homeland-Defending Combatants for Iran.’ The campaign explicitly invited volunteers aged 12 and above, with registration taking place through Basij bases operating out of mosques across Tehran.”

In addition, Throwback Iran writes on X:

“HOLY SH*T
Iran’s state TV is encouraging Iranian youth and students to form human shield circles around power plants and other infrastructures ahead of tomorrow’s deadline day. Where is UN? UNICEF?”

You’ll have to ask Throwback Iran why they even bothered to ask the last questions.

The mullahs’ rule, much like communism, was always only about the oppression of the masses for the benefit of the overclass. The mullahs and the Revolutionary Guard Corps own most of the industry, from energy to the lucrative pistachio plantations. Just as communist leaders used tired Marxist rhetoric to distract as they enriched themselves (cf. Fidel Castro), the mullahs used the nostrums of Khomeinist Shiism as a cover.

So, Mr. President, take the oil. Most of us will be with you in the end. Just explain the process. Give as much as possible, in an organized and fair manner, back to the Iranian people, but keep a little off the top for the USA “for service rendered.” You’ve already done it in Venezuela.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 7th, 2026

April 6, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Believe me, you can get all the tubes of Winsor & Newton paint you want in Cincinnati, but the artists keep migrating to New York all the same … You can see them six days a week … hot off the Carey airport bus, lined up in front of the real-estate office on Broome Street in their identical blue jeans, gum boots, and quilted Long March jackets … looking, of course, for the inevitable Open Thread.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 6th, 2026

FLIPPING THE SCRIPT:

 

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 6th, 2026

THERE’S A LOT TO FEAR FROM THOSE SPOOKY LIBERTARIANS — THEY’RE TRYING TO TAKE OVER THE GOVERNMENT . . . AND THEN LEAVE YOU ALONE!

Zero regulations? Trump really would be the Worst. Hitler. Ever.

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 6th, 2026

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? David E. Kelley to Develop Bonfire of the Vanities Series at Apple TV, Matt Reeves to Direct.

David E. Kelley is setting his sights on a TV adaptation of “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” Variety has learned from sources.

Kelley is set to write a TV adaptation of the beloved Tom Wolfe novel for Apple TV. Kelley will also executive produce under his David E. Kelley Productions banner. Matt Reeves is attached to direct and executive produce via 6th and Idaho Productions. Sarah Geismer will also executive produce for 6th and Idaho, and Matthew Tinker will executive produce via David E. Kelley Productions. Warner Bros. Television is the studio.

Reps for Apple TV declined to comment.

“The Bonfire of the Vanities” was originally published as a serial in Rolling Stone beginning in 1984 before it was published as a whole in 1987. The book explores life in New York City in 1987 from the perspective of Wall Street bond trader Sherman McCoy, whose yuppie lifestyle begins to fall apart following an incident in the Bronx. The book was previously adapted into a film in 1990 starring Tom Hanks, Kim Cattrall, Melanie Griffith, and Bruce Willis.

Curiously, there’s no mention in the Variety article of what a spectacular train wreck that film was. Julie Salamon’s brilliant book, The Devil’s Candy, documents all of the poor decisions and disastrous politically correct choices Brian De Palma made to neuter his adaptation of Wolfe’s seminal 1980s novel. Can this miniseries produce an even bigger flaming wreck? Survey says…maybe!

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 6th, 2026

ARTEMIS II ASTRONAUTS IN TEARS AS THEY BREAK APOLLO 13 RECORD:

Nasa’s Moon astronauts have flown further from Earth than anyone before them, in a “milestone for humankind”.
The four crew members were in tears as they celebrated the record aboard their tiny Orion capsule, nearly 250,000 miles from home.

And the astronauts chose that moment to propose the name “Carroll” for a lunar crater, in honour of the late wife of Commander Reid Wiseman.

Col Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency, one of the crew’s two mission specialists, said: “From the cabin of Integrity here, as we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever travelled from planet Earth, we do so in honouring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration.”

Col Hansen continued: “We will continue our journey even further into space before mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear.

“But we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and in the next to make sure this record is not long-lived.”

Nasa announced the news on Monday night, saying: “A new milestone for humankind: the crew of Artemis II are now the farthest any human has ever travelled, reaching a maximum distance of 252,752 miles from Earth.”

Of course, there may be a second reason why the astronauts are in tears: Crisis in space as Artemis II toilet breaks leaving astronauts with no other options.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 6th, 2026

JONATHAN TURLEY: Poison Ivey: Chicago Bulls Release Forward After He Speaks Out Against Pride Month.

This week, the Chicago Bulls waived guard Jaden Ivey for “conduct detrimental to the team.” No, Ivey did not assault anyone or gamble on games. He did not call for violence. Ivey expressed his opposing religious beliefs, including criticizing the NBA’s Pride Month celebrations.

There is no question that private companies have the right to control employees’ on-the-job speech, including barring demonstrations such as kneeling during the national anthem. However, the Ivey controversy exposes the hypocrisy of sports associations and teams in the combination of corporate virtue signaling and athlete speech limitations.

Companies in various fields have asserted the right to condition contracts on the possibility of termination due to public behavior or comments that are detrimental to the company.

Notably, this was a player speaking off the basketball court who was deemed “detrimental” to the brand. The main concern is the lack of consistency. Actors such as Rachel Zegler have tanked their own movies to use their platforms to advance their own political viewpoints. Likewise, athletes have routinely espoused controversial views on racial divisions or law enforcement without losing their contracts. Recently, teams supported athletes espousing anti-ICE sentiments. In other words, it is not advocacy but the cause that these companies focus on when allowing or punishing speech.

At the same time, the NFL and NBA require players to wear and espouse views that some of them — like some in the nation — may oppose. Ivey was objecting that he does not feel that Pride Month is espousing “righteous” lifestyles. Ivey was not attacking the Bulls or the game. He was asserting that he does not support the virtues or values being endorsed by the company.

America’s Newspaper of Record posits a solution for the Bulls:

Posted at 8:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 6th, 2026

GOD AND MAN AT YALE, AND FORT WORTH: My look at the Treasures of the Holy Sepulcher exhibition at Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, and the closing of the European mind, over at EdDriscoll.com.

Posted at 6:40 pm by Ed Driscoll on Apr 6th, 2026
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