Author Archive: Ed Driscoll

January 13, 2026

OLD AND BUSTED: Blofeld.

The New Hotness? Bezos! Private Eye magazine’s exclusive first look at the new James Bond scripts following Amazon’s takeover of the franchise.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 13th, 2026

MINNEAPOLIS ISN’T A MOVIE:

The notion that Good would be able to drive away from this scene just as easily as she drove into it—and that the armed agents commanding her to exit her vehicle could be safely ignored—is as understandable as it is misguided, the product of a world in which activism and political conflict have become Disneyfied.

Rebecca’s last words to her wife have become a Rorschach test of sorts.

What was once an organized, strategic movement with high stakes and concrete political aims has evolved today into a sort of intramural sport for all comers, from influencers to wine moms to aging Boomers who prefer protest marches to pickleball. And if the ease of participation has swelled the ranks of activists to include anyone with an Instagram account, it has also given the entire enterprise a distinct veneer of unreality, like a theme park populated by actors who spend their days LARPing as cops or cowboys and then retire at night to a dorm where they eat pizza and hook up with the guy who plays their nemesis. In 2026, political protest—and even political violence—might feel like a party, or a movie, but the one thing it rarely feels is serious, until it’s too late.

“Why did you have real bullets?” Rebecca reportedly screamed after Good was shot.

The notion that ICE agents would have anything but real bullets in their guns may seem astonishing, but it surely speaks to how Renee Good, an ordinary woman in early middle age and the sole surviving parent of a 6-year-old, ended up behind the wheel of a car, in the middle of the street, engaged in a confrontation, the true stakes of which she so devastatingly misapprehended.

WebMD defines “Main Character Syndome” as “the perception that your life is a story or a movie where you’re the central character,” amped up with a massive case of malignant narcissism, causes once sane people to believe they’re starring in their own version of One Battle After Another. 

As Jim Treacher writes:

UPDATE:

Posted at 10:55 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 13th, 2026

BRENDAN O’NEIL: Iran’s uprising and the moral bewilderment of Western youth.

They’re so drunk on anti-Westernism that the first calculation they make when a people rises up is: “Will this help or hurt America?” Fearing that the fall of the Islamic Republic would benefit the US, they balk at the thronging freedom fighters who are hell-bent on bringing about just such a fall. Hurting the white, privileged, colonialist West matters far more to these overeducated fools than freeing Iranians from the bondage of Islamist diktat.

The extraordinary valor of the young in Iran has exposed the moral bewilderment of the young in the West. Inculcated with that cruel, truthless idea that “All cultures are equally valid,” this new generation is struck dumb by a fiery foreign revolt against an Islamic government. They don’t know what to say, or even what to think. Solidarity struggles to take root in soil defiled by the cult of relativism.

The moral caution of progressives as the young of Iran fight for their lives shows just how corrupting the ideology of political correctness has been. How else to explain that we are witnessing one of the most important feminist revolts in history and yet many feminists are silent? Feminists who think being called “sweetheart” is a patriarchal crime seemingly have nothing to say about a staggeringly valiant uprising of women against the feral crushing of their rights by religious bigots.

As for the Western left – they dream of revolution yet bristle and wince at the revolution in Iran. They deluded themselves into thinking the Islamic Republic was a great counterweight against the West, against capitalism and of course against that Jewish state they hate with such curious passion. Having lost faith in the working classes of their own nations, they made a devil’s pact with radical Islam, dreaming it might deliver a deadly blow to the “Western hegemony.” They instinctively fear the mullahs’ fall.

Not least of which because their college professors have programmed them to think, to borrow the Ayatollah’s epithet for America, that Israel is the Great Satan:

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 13th, 2026

SCIENCE, UNSETTLED:

Posted at 10:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 13th, 2026

WHAT ARE THEY DOING THESE DAYS AT THE FBI?

Exit question from the above tweet: “So, that begs the question: if our leaders could easily stop it… why haven’t they?”

Speaking of which:

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 13th, 2026

ROGER SIMON: Time to Find Out Who’s Being Paid By Qatar.

With all that dough, you have to know you are a magnate for the second of the Seven Deadly Sins—Greed, and its partner, envy.

You can use this for all manner of purposes, political, cultural, economic, and religious.

In the process, you have on your side the widespread secularism of the West, from the USA and across Europe, actually just about anywhere, even among the most superficially religious.

In this, we have the example of Tucker Carlson, who allegedly adores and wants to buy a home in the country that is the greatest supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose intent has always been the destruction of all other religions but Islam. This would include the Christianity to which Carlson passionately swears his devotion. Could his faith all just be a masquerade for something more potent, as some have alleged with receipts?

As America’s Newspaper of Record “joked” yesterday:

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 13th, 2026

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Author of ‘How Fascism Works’ Says Trump Is Leading an Unlawful Takeover of the Government.

“Trump is the first ‘fascist’ in world history whose singular governing principle is to reduce the size, scope and power” of government? Calvin Coolidge would like a word here.

Related: NSFW language alert:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll on Jan 13th, 2026

January 12, 2026

VERONIQUE DE RUGY: The Minnesota Fraud Scandal Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg.

Minnesota is not the exception but rather the example Americans finally noticed. Medicaid fraud has been endemic at the state and federal levels for decades. Politicians haven’t done much, even with scholars and journalists raising the alarm.

Medicaid reports $543 billion in “improper payments” over the past decade, though that figure omits one of the largest sources of error: whether states correctly determined the eligibility of the individuals they enrolled and paid providers on behalf of. According to Paragon Institute calculations, this brings improper payments to $1.1 trillion over those 10 years.

Improper payments are not identical to fraud; many involve missing documentation or administrative errors. But that distinction offers little comfort considering how little money is recovered. They are also an open invitation for more abuse.

Actual fraud, meanwhile, is widespread and persistent. In 2024 alone, state Medicaid Fraud Control Units reported more than 1,151 convictions and more than $1.4 billion in civil and criminal recoveries. Federal enforcement recovers a tiny share of what is stolen. Fraud that goes undetected never appears in the data.

That’s only the tip of the iceberg. Medicare, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and many other welfare programs also suffer from massive fraud. The Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) exchange subsidies provide another cautionary example.

Read the whole thing.

 

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 12th, 2026

OLD AND BUSTED: Walz: Harris Picked Me as VP Since ‘I Could Code Talk to White Guys.’

The New Hotness? Gov. Walz to Republicans: Expect me ‘to ride you like you’ve never been ridden.’

A day after ending his campaign for a historic third term — and possibly his political career — an animated Gov. Tim Walz offered a preview of how he plans to spend the remainder of his term: defending his record, shoring up his legacy and hammering Republicans with the abandon of a man no longer chasing votes.

“For Republicans here, I have more energy than I’ve ever had. I am committed to this state more than I’ve ever been,” Walz said. “Expect for the next 11 months for me to ride you like you’ve never been ridden to make sure you’re doing your job.”

Great moments in sound bites:

Quentin Tarantino, call your office!

 

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 12th, 2026

IRAN:

 

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 12th, 2026

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Crash And Burn – The Steven Seagal Story.

The Drinker dubs Seagal “The Great One,” and like the earlier Great One, Seagal had a sensitive musical side. The Drinker doesn’t mention that part of Seagal’s career, but fortunately, your humble narrator was honored to have been there to document it:

Click to embiggen.
Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 12th, 2026

JAMES LILEKS: The truth about the Ancient Astronauts.

Erich von Däniken, popular author of a series of books about “ancient astronauts,” passed away on the tenth of January. His most famous work was “Chariot of the Gods?, a book that surely did not need the question mark. You can just respond “No,” and move on to the next subject. You probably remember his thesis: mankind was visited by aliens long ago, and they taught us things before heading back to the stars, never to return. You probably don’t know this: next Friday you can [go] to his theme park to get drunk and dance. But we’ll get to that.

I’m sure I found the idea intriguing as a kid, because these unfalsifiable conjectures fire the young imagination. Look at that ancient stone carving, it looks just like an astronaut in a capsule with a control panel wearing a pressurized space suit! Or it’s a lizard in a pot. I can’t say it didn’t happen, but if it did, it probably went like this:

The ship descends, all the humans drop the ground gibbering and bowing: the gods have arrived! Didn’t have that on the bingo card. Everyone bows down. The aliens give each other that look: every time. Always with the bowing.

“Okay, get up, we have work to do. No, we don’t want you to cut up a cow for us. No myrrh, we’re allergic.”

“Yes my lord god! I mean no. What do your greatness commandeth?”

“We’re going to build pyramids.”

“Pyramids.”

“Yes. Big square buildings with pointy tops. Here’s how.”

I’m pretty sure I saw the movie version of Chariots of the Gods — I think the film left von Däniken’s question mark off for savings — when I was a kid, but then the bar for what passed as a “documentary” was awfully low back then. (Seen at Chariots’ Wikipedia page: “Film critic Phil Hall said ‘They don’t make films like this any more, and we should be glad for that.’”)

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 12th, 2026

CRY HAVOC AND UNLEASH THE POLAR BEARS OF WAR!

Bears in SUVs in rugged conditions? Pshaw — America has been training our own cadre of beer drinking, hard riding bears for at least a half century now:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 12th, 2026

SAY, I’M BEGINNING TO HAVE MY DOUBTS THAT THIS MAMDANI FELLA’S INTENTIONS ARE HONORABLE: NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani quietly makes it harder for feds to monitor Tren de Aragua gang at Rikers.

Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has quietly made it harder for federal agents to monitor Tren de Aragua and other brutal gangs in Rikers Island.

Mamdani revoked Executive Order 50 on his first day in office — which gave federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the ability to monitor the brutal Venezuelan gangbangers inside the city jail.

Hizzoner killed the initiative as part of a broad directive that repealed all executive orders issued by his predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, between Sept. 26 and Dec. 31.

* * * * * * * *

Federal agents are worried because this is the first time the gang’s thugs in the US are just 15 miles apart from their leader, Venezuelan strongman Nicholas Maduro, who’s locked up in a federal jail in Brooklyn.

“Zoran kills exec order No 50 just as we should be more focused on the Venezuelan gang in Rikers — did he know that? Does he think that the gang should have one less pair of eyes,” the source said.

I’d say that’s an exceedingly safe bet, alas:

Why, it’s as if: Mamdani’s appointees are as mad as you’d expect.

UPDATE:

Posted at 2:30 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 12th, 2026

TANKER SEIZURE UPDATES: More Details Emerge About U.S. Interdiction of Russian-flagged Ship. “As a sidenote, it is worth pointing out that two of these [C-17] aircraft – 23648 and 25359 – were involved in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, immortalized in the film Black Hawk Down. 23648 flew as STAR 41 and was the first unit able to respond to the downing of SUPER 61, landing nearby and recovering the two Delta snipers who had survived the crash. One would later succumb to his injuries.”

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 12th, 2026

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Hollywood Honors Renee Good, Ignores Hundreds Killed in Iran.

The Iranian people could use a hand right about now.

Thousands are protesting their cruel, dictatorial government, a brave stance that has stunned the world.

Well, most of the world.

The tiny sliver of land known as Hollywood couldn’t bother to address the matter at Sunday’s Golden Globes telecast. Some predicted that sorry state of affairs.

Still though, points to Hollywood for their epic bravery at times like this:

Evergreen: “Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion.”

—Harvey Weinstein, 2009.

Speaking of which: Melissa Gilbert Bought ‘Christmas Gifts’ for Husband Timothy Busfield’s Alleged Child Victims, Arrest Warrant States.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll on Jan 12th, 2026

QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: “What is queer food?”

The question “what is queer food?” is, we’re told by Professor Elias, “a question that’s coming up a lot lately.” If only among academics desperate for an angle, an excuse for claiming a salary and wasting other people’s time. Academics much like Professor Elias.

Elias said she does not have a definition for what “queer food” is, but wants “recognition” it exists.

Welcome to the bleeding edge of human mental activity.

David Thompson’s post is appropriately headlined: Issues Of Earth-Rumbling Import.

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

January 11, 2026

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