January 6, 2026

BON APPÉTIT ANOINTS THE DEMOCRATS’ LATEST ‘NEXT BIG THING:’

There are few positions in life greater than being the Next Big Thing™ in the Democratic Party; you start getting ludicrously generous coverage, even from publications that are only marginally connected to politics. Back in 2007, Men’s Vogue suddenly put former North Carolina senator John Edwards on the cover. (An actual sentence from the profile: “The hair, up close, is peppered with tiny strands of blond. Chestnut brown and so finely trimmed, mellifluous, smooth, and feathery, it could almost be a weave, the Platonic ideal as imagined by the Hair Club for Men.”)

Back in 2008, Men’s Health declared longtime smoker Barack Obama was one of the 25 fittest men in America. And who could forget Beto O’Rourke on the cover of Vanity Fair in 2019, declaring he was “was born” to be in the presidential race, with his glum-looking dog seeming to know how his presidential bid was going to go? Or the French fashion magazine Marie Claire putting failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on the cover in 2021?

This isn’t just garden-variety liberal media bias; these are once-apolitical publications suddenly giving laudatory soft-focus coverage of a figure, portraying him as the coolest guy ever. In these profiles, the not-so-political audience of the magazine usually doesn’t get told a lot about the figure’s policy positions; often those positions are airbrushed beyond recognition. (In 2017, Vogue insisted that New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand was an economic centrist, an iconoclast, and a campaigning powerhouse with cross-party appeal. She was and is none of those things.)

Bon Appetit has announced that the year is Springtime for Graham Platner, but there are a few problems here.  As Jim Geraghty writes, “Hey, just out of curiosity… if a Republican Senate candidate said he had accidentally gotten a logo of the Nazi SS tattooed to his chest, would they be getting soft-focus glowing profiles in major culinary magazines? Nah, I didn’t think so.”

Tweet continues:

In a deep, gravely voice that wouldn’t sound out of place in a truck commercial, he talks about his decade of military service, and “farming oysters to feed my community.” Interspliced are shots of him hauling up oyster cages, sliding a knife into an oyster to shuck it, handing a fresh oyster to a little girl. “I’m not afraid to name an enemy,” he growls. “And the enemy is the oligarchy.”*

I’m picturing some readers asking, “what the f— is this Pyongyang-level propaganda doing in my food and recipes magazine?”

You could see last year when the DNC-MSM hype machine was getting waaaay over its skis trying to promote the candidate du jour:

With brats and coconuts failing to catch on, the following month, the DNC-MSM tried to achieve strength through joy (a slogan which Platner might appreciate as well):

In the last full month of the campaign, things were getting eye-poppingly bad for the left:

“Like a magic spell from Dungeons and Dragons, being the Next Big Thing™ in the Democratic Party also grants the bearer of that title temporary immunity to all potential criticisms and attacks,” Geraghty writes. “But as Walz demonstrated, once you lose that title, you also lose that immunity, and past scandals can catch up with you.”

* Isn’t it always?

UPDATE: Via Joseph Campbell, New York magazine’s Dewey Defeats Truman moment in 2016:

As the magazine’s editors admitted a couple of weeks later, “even as we stubbornly maintain that the image is more complex than a certain notorious, erroneous headline from 1948, it is true that seeing the cover on the newsstand after Election Day makes us cringe — and that the vote turned an image meant to be provocative into one that perhaps feels hubristic instead.”

Posted at 5:15 pm by Ed Driscoll

NEVER FORGET:

The late Norm Macdonald tried to warn us of the violence of the radical right wing protestors:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

WE NEED TO PREPARE FOR THE POSSIBILITY THAT THE U.S. USES MILITARY COERCION AGAINST CANADA:

Donald Trump promised that under his leadership the U.S. would eschew “nation building,” “forever wars,” “regime change,” and violent foreign engagements more generally.

Yet since his second inauguration, he’s ordered military action in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Iraq; bombed Iran’s nuclear weapons complexes; and blown up more than a score of boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean. In just the past two weeks, he has launched missiles against Islamic terrorists in northern Nigeria, declared that the U.S. was “locked and loaded” for another attack on Iran, and now decapitated Venezuela’s government.

In this context, Canadians must acknowledge the real risk that Mr. Trump will use military coercion against our country.

We would be greeted as liberators:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

T. BECKET ADAMS: Where does Sarah Palin go for her apology?

Even today, a simple search on Microsoft’s Copilot for the date when the former governor coined the term “death panel” carefully notes that her accusation quickly became a viral talking point despite “being widely debunked as a myth.”

Fifteen years after Palin’s remark, disability advocate Krista Carr testified before members of the Canadian parliament that her organization receives weekly reports of medical assistance in dying (MAID) services being suggested unprompted to disabled individuals during routine, non-terminal care visits.

Who could have predicted that government-controlled healthcare, combined with legalized euthanasia, would eventually lead to the sick and uncomfortable being told to kill themselves?

Where does Palin go for her apology?

Canada, whose lawmakers, celebrities, and influencers often boast about their “free” healthcare and stringent anti-gun laws, recorded an astonishing 16,499 MAID suicides, or legalized doctor-assisted suicides, in 2024, following 22,535 such requests that year.

In 2023, the number of MAID suicides was approximately 15,500.

For reference, 2023’s recorded figure gives us a per capita rate of 37 MAID suicides per 100,000 people. During the same year, the United States recorded around 18,000 gun-related homicides, yielding a per capita rate of 5 gun-related murders per 100,000 people.

Put another way, a Canadian has a greater chance of dying by MAID than an American has of being shot dead.

How’s that for perspective?

Pretty sickening, to be honest.

Posted at 3:49 pm by Stephen Green

MOVE ALONG, NOTHING TO SEE HERE:

Posted at 3:02 pm by Stephen Green

DALLAS COWBOYS FIRE COORDINATOR MATT EBERFLUS AFTER DEFENSIVE DISASTER:

The Cowboys will look for yet another new coordinator to try to fix their defense.

Matt Eberflus was fired as the team’s defensive coordinator Tuesday morning after just one season, according to multiple reports, meaning Dallas is in need of its fourth defensive coordinator in four seasons.

The 55-year-old was dealt a surprising blow right before the season when Jerry Jones traded Micah Parsons to the Packers, and Dallas ended up allowing the most points per game in the NFL at 30.1.

Their 511 points allowed were the most in team history.

Their 377 yards allowed per game were the third-most in the league, and their 251.5 yards passing allowed per game were the most in the NFL.

Eberflus was in his second stint with the Cowboys, having been their linebackers coach from 2011-15 and adding passing-game coordinator duties in 2016 and ’17.

No word yet on when Jerry Jones, the Cowboy’s owner, will fire Jerry Jones, the Cowboy’s general manager.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

I’LL EVEN THROW IN THE SMOKES:

Posted at 2:31 pm by Stephen Green

IT’S 2026; I’M AFRAID LEFTISTS ARE TAKING THE IDEA OF “SHOOT THE MESSENGER” FAR TOO LITERALLY:

As an Insta-commenter noted in response to Roger Kimball’s Friday column headlined, “The Somali Fraud Scandal is a Turning Point,” “If the Left truly cared about social programs helping people, then the Left should be the most upset about fraud. Every dollar going to fraud is a dollar not going to someone who legitimately needs help. The fact that the Left is always excusing fraud is telling.”

Related:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

ALLOW THE STATE TO WITHER AWAY SO PEOPLE CAN PRACTICE TRUE CAPITALISM: Venezuela’s oil industry is in shambles after decades of socialism — but Trump needs it to make the country great again.

President Trump has made clear he wants to revitalize Venezuela’s oil industry so he can use the cash to make the country great again — but the sector is in shambles after decades of plunder, talent flight and negligence as a result of socialist rule.

After capturing Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro over the weekend, Trump vowed that US companies would soon tap into the nation’s rich oil reserves, which Caracas says hold about 303 billion barrels worth of petrol, roughly 17% of the world’s supply.

Production has plummeted since hitting a high in 1997 — and the country produced just 900,000 barrels of oil per day in 2024, about 6% of what the US puts out.

Additionally, the oil companies’ holdings were nationalized and seized twice — once in 1976 and again by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez in 2007.

“Get the hell out of my way,” the wise man once said.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Stephen Green

PROSECUTED FOR INSULTING A RAPIST: In Germany, a woman was jailed for calling a convicted rapist a “disgraceful rapist pig” via WhatsApp while the rapist walked free.

Posted at 1:42 pm by Greg Lukianoff

GOOD AND HARD, FUN CITY: Marxism In The Metropolis: NYC’s New ‘Tenant Czar’ Has Targeted White Homeowners, Private Property.

“The reality is that for centuries, we have really treated property as an individualized good and not as a collective good,” Weaver stated, echoing the core tenets of Karl Marx. She went on to warn that the transition to “shared equity” would specifically target “white families” and “some POC (people of color) families who are homeowners,” forcing them into a “different relationship to property” than the one protected by the U.S. Constitution for nearly 250 years.

In a previous social media post, Weaver said, “homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.”

Matt Taibbi responds, “Ideas matter and some very crazy ones are coming:” 

Crazy ideas are coming? Bane’s motley crew are just getting warmed up — this is only Mamdani’s sixth day in office.

UPDATE:

 

She’s going to take things away from on behalf of the common good, to coin a phrase.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll