Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

October 27, 2025

RIP: Jack DeJohnette, Renowned Jazz Drummer Who Played On Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, Dead at 83.

In 1969, DeJohnette replaced Tony Williams as drummer in Davis’ band just as the trumpeter was about to embark on his “electric period.” Joined by saxophonist Wayne Shorter, keyboardist Chick Corea and bassist Dave Holland, that formation with Davis was later dubbed the Lost Quintet as they never actually recorded in the studio together, but played a now-legendary run of European shows together, as captured on 2013’s Live in Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 2.

In the studio, DeJohnette and a larger ensemble accompanied Davis as he began to explore the jazz-rock genre, resulting in albums like his 1970 masterpiece Bitches Brew and — later, after DeJohnette had already exited the group — Circle in the Round and Big Fun. DeJohnette also played on a portion of “Yesternow” off Jack Johnson, as well as Davis’ jazz-funk LP On the Corner, which marked DeJohnette’s last recordings with Davis.

Here’s my 2003 review of A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Davis’ seminal 1971 jazz-rock fusion recording.

Posted at 8:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025

MARK STEYN: Big Apple, Big Allah.

I can’t decide whether this is the sort of ad you run when your internals show you’re done and you’ve got nothing to lose, or when it’s way closer than anyone ever expected and just needs one extra push:

What’s interesting is that in an ad playing up to every stereotype about Democrat client groups there’s no mention of what is Mr Mamdani’s most obvious glass-ceiling-shattering quality: his “Muslimness”, as Sir Keir Starmer’s working party on Islamophobia likes to say. Me twenty sodding years ago:

 You don’t need to fly jets into skyscrapers and kill thousands of people… The wimp state will bend over backwards to give you everything you want – including, eventually, the keys to those skyscrapers.

And so, in New York as in London and Minneapolis, it is proving. To the progressive mind, there is no legitimate basis on which to object to a hardcore jihad-chummy taqiyya Muslim taking over your city. Even a bloodsoaked homicidal sex-fiend like Cuomo can only object to the Islamicness super-covertly, by mocking the famous stupidity of New York Jews:

One should never underestimate the power of fear in politics. Just as white working-class English girls are expected to lie back and think of diversity, so too are moneyed Democrat power-brokers like Chuck Schumer.

Read the whole thing.

Speaking of fear and politics, in addition to the terrifying prospect of Mamdani likely becoming mayor of New York City next week, Cuomo’s ads are the dawn of a future where increasing numbers of political ads will be filled with uncanny valley-style AI slop. I know the former will likely be far worse, but the latter also presages a dreadful future.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025

CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER: Atari just resurrected its most potent foe in the console wars from 45 years ago, the Intellivision Spirit — $149 console comes with 45 games, was brought into the Atari fold through IP acquisition last year.

 

Atari’s promotional video, above, reminds viewers about “the First Console War,” back in the 1980s. More usefully, the video highlights the different strengths of each system. I remember the Mattel Intellivision was definitely more desirable for advanced graphics and sound when it came out, but it was newer, and more expensive… Now, in 2025, the Atari vs Mattel ‘war’ has been over for a long time, and the two rival systems are ‘friends,’ according to the promo video.

No word yet if Atari will be programming an AI George Plimpton to promote their new box, along the lines of Mattel’s original ads in the early 1980s:

Posted at 6:39 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025

GOOD AND HARD, FUN CITY:

 

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025

COMING SOON, SENATOR SIDESHOW BOB?

In accordance with the prophecy:

Related: Graham Platner’s New Campaign Manager Quits After 4 Days.

Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner’s campaign manager is stepping down from his position after only days on the job, according to two people familiar with his plans…

“Graham is a dear friend,” Brown said in a statement to Axios. “I started this campaign Tuesday but found out Friday we have a baby on the way. Graham deserves someone who is 100% in on his race and we want to lean into this new experience as a family, so it was best we step back sooner than later so Graham can get the manager he deserves.”

This is a version of the candidate (or staffer) who suddenly decides to spend more time with his family, a classic way to exit the political stage which sounds folksy and noble but is in fact almost always cover for something shameful and embarrassing.

Exclusive video of how it all went down:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025

‘WE ARE NOT THE CRAZY ONES:’ AOC’s Fiery Mamdani Rally Shows the Left’s Delusion about America.

Last night’s Zohran Mamdani rally reflected the confidence of his movement that no compromise is needed with anyone even an inch to the right of the Democratic Socialists of America. Which may well be an accurate reading of where the New York City mayor’s race is headed. But it remains a fundamental misreading of America.

Shouting at the top of her lungs for 15 minutes, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered a purely red-meat speech in a rally that sought only to preach to the converted[.]

“We must remember in a time such as this,” AOC barked, “we are not the crazy ones. New York City, we are not the outlandish ones. New York City, they want us to think we are crazy. We are sane.” Just as it is never a good sign when you have to tell people that you’re not a witch or a secret Nazi, it’s typically not a good sign for the breadth of the appeal of your political movement when you have to deny being crazy. It is fitting that AOC paid tribute to Eugene V. Debs, who topped out at 5.99 percent of the national popular vote in 1912 (dropping to 3.41 percent in 1920 after they gave women the vote).

Based on her performance throughout 2019, it seems safe to say that AOC is indeed one of the crazy ones. But perhaps her mother had her tested:

Related: Left-wing ideas have wrecked Democrats’ brand, new report warns.

Democrats have badly weakened their party with left-leaning ideas and rhetoric, growing only with self-described “white liberals” while losing ground with other voters, according to a new center-left group’s report shared first with Semafor.

The group, called Welcome, consulted hundreds of thousands of voters over six months for its broad findings, including that 70% of voters think the Democratic Party is “out of touch.” Most voters, the group found, believe the party over-prioritizes issues like “protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans,” and “fighting climate change” while not caring about “securing the border” or “lowering the rate of crime.” (Welcome began as a PAC in 2022, then founded a nonprofit with the same name for political research.)

Or to put things in visual terms:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025

BARI SLOWLY CLEANING THE AUGEAN STABLES: Bye-Bye John! The Worst of CBS Evening News Anchor Dickerson.

On Monday, CBS Evening News co-anchor John Dickerson announced he is leaving the network at the end of the year.

His departure may have something to do with the new CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, taking over. Dickerson’s resignation comes on the heels of a leftist CBS news producer quitting. Even though Weiss is a liberal, the fact that she isn’t all the way woke may be too much for Dickerson.

During his CBS tenure, Dickerson has been a hater of President Donald Trump and a cheerleader for Democrats like former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris.

Most recently, he cluelessly suggested that the “motive” of Charlie Kirk’s murderer was “elusive.”

The following are just some of the worst takes (via the MRC archives) from the soon-to-be ex-anchor:

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025

DARK BRANDON IS BACK, BABY!

Darker than this? White House Christmas message to unvaccinated: You’re looking at a winter of death for yourselves and your families:

Darker than this? Biden Warns That MAGA Republicans Pose ‘Clear and Present Danger’ to Nation.

Flashback to 2012: Biden: Romney’s approach to financial regulation will ‘put y’all back in chains.’

And a flashback to 2011, when Biden called Tea Party members “terrorists.”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025

JOSH HAMMER: Louvre Heist Encapsulates a Western Culture That Will Not Defend Itself.

All across the continent, fertility rates have plummeted, and the Christianity that defined the civilization for two millennia is viewed as a quaint relic of a bygone era. The combination of modern European Union political and economic integration on the one hand, combined with imposed mass immigration from foreign (namely, Islamic) cultures on the other hand, has led to a place where sense of home and hearth is diminished — and along with it, community, meaning, and purpose.

In Britain, two Jews were killed following a synagogue attack by a Syrian immigrant on the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. In Germany — yes, Germany — Jews have already been advised for years against wearing a kippah head covering in public. More generally, Europeans’ personal happiness levels have seemingly gravitated away from church and children, the traditional sources of meaning, and toward a discomfiting positive correlation with the size of a nation’s welfare state.

The stunning Louvre museum heist earlier this week in Paris offers an uncanny encapsulation of the broader society-wide phenomenon. On Sunday, thieves disguised as construction workers stole, during broad daylight, eight pieces of the French crown jewels estimated to be worth roughly $100 million. And perhaps the most astonishing aspect of this real-life caper is this: As of this writing, the thieves have not been caught.*

The utterly humiliating inability of French authorities to either prevent the theft of the literal crown jewels or promptly arrest the perpetrators after the fact is the most poetic possible way to demonstrate a point that has come up in so many of my conversations this week: At best, European political and cultural elites have no interest in protecting and preserving their culture; and at worst, they have an interest in seeing that culture replaced root and branch.

Hammer asks, “Will there even be a Europe, in any cognizable sense of the term, a century from now?” As Mark Steyn warned twenty years ago, “There’ll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands–probably–just as in Istanbul there’s still a building called St. Sophia’s Cathedral. But it’s not a cathedral; it’s merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon Western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to figure out a way to save at least some parts of the West.”

* To give the gendarmes their due, initial arrests were reported yesterday: Suspects Arrested Over the Theft of Crown Jewels from Paris’ Louvre Museum.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Largest Federal Workers Union Urges Dems to Cave on Government Shutdown, Revealing Cracks in Coalition.

The nation’s largest federal workers’ union, the American Federation of Government Employees, is urging Democrats to concede the government shutdown fight and vote to reopen the government, revealing a significant fracture in the Democratic coalition as the shutdown nears the one-month mark.

The shutdown began 27 days ago after Democrats refused to back a clean government funding bill, demanding instead that Republicans extend temporary Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year. But AFGE, a major ally to the Democratic party which represents 820,000 federal and D.C. government workers, now says it’s time for the party to give up on its demands.

“It’s time to pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today. No half measures, and no gamesmanship,” AFGE President Everett Kelley said in a Monday statement provided to NBC News.

“It’s time for our leaders to start focusing on how to solve problems for the American people, rather than on who is going to get the blame for a shutdown that Americans dislike,” Kelley said.

Over to you, Chuck.

Posted at 10:52 am by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025

“FAR-RIGHT:” Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections.

Argentine President Javier Milei’s libertarian party has won a landslide victory in national midterm legislative elections, with voters backing his free-market reforms and deep austerity measures.

On Sunday, Mr Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party procured 40.8 per cent of the congressional votes, with more than 95% of ballots counted.

The center-left Peronist movement trailed behind with 31.6 percent of the votes.

The win should enable Mr Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist economist, to plough on with his radical overhaul of Argentina’s long-troubled economy – his campaign centres around downsizing the state and deregulating the economy. However, he will need to forge alliances in Congress with the center-right in order to pass legislation.

In 2023, Foreign Policy smeared Milei as “the World’s Latest Wannabe Fascist,” making him and Trump the only wannabe fascists who aim to downsize the state and deregulate the economy.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll on Oct 27th, 2025

October 26, 2025

SKYNET SMILES:

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 26th, 2025

200 YEARS AGO, THE ERIE CANAL OPENED AND AMERICA WAS NEVER THE SAME: “The Erie Canal not only transformed America, but, by allowing for the export of massive amounts of Midwestern farm products to Europe, American farmers drove a large number of small farmers in Europe out of business. Many of them made their way to America…In two decades, more freight was moving down the Erie Canal than was being floated down the Mississippi River from the Midwest to New Orleans. It would be an exaggeration to say that the Erie Canal created modern America, but it’s hard to imagine America today without it.”

Posted at 1:44 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 26th, 2025

WRECK ON THE HIGHWAY: Disney’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere Bombs in the U.S.A.

As great as I found director Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, nothing about its box office failure is surprising. And it is not only a failure; it is a shocking failure for box office analysts who projected an opening as high as $25 million with a $15 million worst case.

Well, as of this morning, the groomers at the Disney Grooming Syndicate are wishing that worst-case scenario had come about, because Deliver Me from Nowhere is staring into the abyss of a pathetic $9 million weekend debut and a humiliating fourth-place finish.

According to various reports, Nowhere cost $60 million to produce, at least another $50 million to promote, which means Disney will need to gross at least $200 million worldwide just to break even

That ain’t happening.

So, what did happen? How did a biopic about Freddie Mercury gross almost $1 billion worldwide? Bob Dylan’s biopic grossed $140 million. Elton John hit $195 million. Springsteen will be lucky to gross half of Dylan’s $140 million worldwide.

Well, as I said, the failure isn’t surprising.

To begin with, Deliver Me From Nowhere is not a jukebox musical. People know this is not a greatest hits biopic, and people want to hear the greatest hits. What’s more, the one album Nowhere does cover, 1982’s Nebraska, doesn’t have any hits. It’s a stripped-down, dark, and dreary folk album. Springsteen fans love Nebraska, which brings me to the next problem… The major one…

Bruce Springsteen has not been Bruce Springsteen for a long, long time. A massive part of his fan base was made up of the working class. The men who raced in the streets, worked in the factories, lived on the margins, counted the days till Friday and payday, and kept our world turning with their dirty hands and broken dreams…

As “Miami” Steve Van Zandt told the London Times last year, “‘When Bruce got vocal behind the Democrats, we probably lost half the audience. There’s nowhere we can’t do business.’ But some places feel like enemy territory now? ‘A little bit, yeah. We’re ten times bigger in Europe. We might play six stadiums in America and sixty in Europe.’”

Fortunately, Miami Steve is doing all that he can to repair the rift between the Boss and Trump supporters: Steven Van Zandt Is Bruce Springsteen’s Guitarist. He Hates You. He Wants You Dead.

Posted at 1:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 26th, 2025

HELL FROZE OVER: WaPo Defends Ballroom in Editorial.

Now, it would be no surprise to find an opinion piece by a moderate or conservative defending the ballroom addition, even if the Editorial Board were the same as before. Publishing an occasional piece by a Republican to present the image of balance is standard practice.

But this piece is an Editorial, presented as the official position of the Editors. And it is a slap in the face to liberals, both by endorsing the ballroom itself and by slamming how hard it is to do anything in America anymore.

The teardown of the White House’s East Wing this week is a Rorschach test. Many see the rubble as a metaphor for President Donald Trump’s reckless disregard of norms and the rule of law, a reflection of his willingness to bulldoze history and a temple to a second Gilded Age, paid for by corporate donors. Others see what they love about Trump: A lifelong builder boldly pursuing a grand vision, a change agent unafraid to decisively take on the status quo and a developer slashing through red tape that would stymie any normal politician.

In classic Trump fashion, the president is pursuing a reasonable idea in the most jarring manner possible. Privately, many alumni of the Biden and Obama White Houses acknowledge the long-overdue need for an event space like what Trump is creating. It is absurd that tents need to be erected on the South Lawn for state dinners, and VIPs are forced to use porta-potties.

Everybody who is not Trump-deranged knows that if any other president had done the same thing, the reaction would be entirely different. The issue is Trump, not the ballroom. Nobody has any special feelings about the East Wing–it’s likely that many people who are blowing their tops didn’t even know that it existed. They probably thought the East Wing was just the eastern half of the Executive Mansion, which is really a different building entirely.

“CBS now has Bari Weiss. The Washington Post agreed with Donald Trump. Hell may indeed be freezing over.”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 26th, 2025

SUSPECTS ARRESTED OVER THE THEFT OF CROWN JEWELS FROM PARIS’ LOUVRE MUSEUM:

Suspects have been arrested in connection with the theft of crown jewels from Paris’ Louvre museum, the Paris prosecutor said on Sunday, a week after the heist that stunned the world.

The prosecutor said that investigators made the arrests on Saturday evening, adding that one of the men taken into custody was preparing to leave the country from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.

French media BFM TV and Le Parisien newspaper earlier reported that two suspects had been arrested and taken into custody. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau did not confirm the number of arrests and did not say whether any jewels had been recovered.

Thieves took less than eight minutes last Sunday morning to steal jewels valued at 88 million euros ($102 million) from the world’s most-visited museum. French officials described how the intruders used a basket lift to scale the Louvre’s façade, forced open a window, smashed display cases and fled. The museum’s director called the incident a “terrible failure.”

Hercule Poirot always gets his man!

Related: Is DEI to blame for the Louvre heist?

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 26th, 2025

October 25, 2025

NORM MACDONALD, CALL YOUR OFFICE!

Related: Will Schumer endorse?

UPDATE:

Posted at 6:50 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 25th, 2025

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Posted at 6:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 25th, 2025

BOOB BAIT FOR THE BOBOS: MSNBC’S Morning Joe: ‘Everybody’ Outside DC Finds Trump’s Ballroom Plans ‘Infuriating.’

Morning Joe‘s whine-a-thon over President Trump’s ballroom project has entered its second day.

Yesterday, we caught Jon Meacham emoting that Trump’s decision to proceed with the project “is in some ways a definition of why we had the American Revolution.” Don’t fire until you see the whites of their tablecloths, Jon!

In the same episode, Meacham disingenuously suggested that before starting, Trump should have brought in the White House Historical Association and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. But as Mika had already revealed earlier in the show, the National Trust has already gone on record opposing the project!

If Trump had submitted to the groups’ tender mercies, and their endless demands for redesigns, site reviews, hearings, solicitation of public commentary, etc., what are the odds the ballroom would have been completed before the end of Trump’s term — if ever?

Today, Katty Kay called the project “a let-them-eat-cake moment” given that it was happening during a government shutdown in which some food welfare benefits are on hold.

Meanwhile, let’s see what the Washington Post has to say about the remodeling:

Gosh, what terrible demons could have sponsored Drumpf’s fascistic vandalism? Oh wait, the company that owns MSNBC, and the company whose CEO owns the WaPo: Guess Who Donated to the White House Ballroom Project? The Left Is Gonna Flip!

UPDATE:

President Harding, hardest hit!

(Classical allusions in headline.)

Posted at 4:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Oct 25th, 2025
« Previous Entries
Next Entries »