January 27, 2026

WORST. HITLER. EVER: 

Posted at 5:43 pm by Ed Driscoll

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Why did Philip Glass cancel Kennedy Center performance?

Because he’s 88 years old, and he needs to have the proper footnotes in the twilight of his career, so that leftist music critics will remember his last days fondly and write favorable eulogies.

Related:

Heh, indeed.

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

FIRED NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNIST DISHES ON HER COWARDLY, CENSORIOUS NYT EDITORS:

While [Pamela Paul’s]  opinion pieces trended liberal, she voiced skepticism on issues like cancel culture, cultural appropriation, and especially transgenderism. Such iconoclasm made her a reviled figure on the left and in the Times newsroom (but I repeat myself).

The fate of former Times opinion editor James Bennet may have affected how badly Paul was treated by Kingsbury. Bennet was forced out by the paper’s internal left-wing “child mob” for platforming a piece by Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas who argued federal forces should be sent to (deja vu) Minneapolis during the George Floyd riots of 2020.

Pamela Paul: The crime that James had committed was not writing the column or the op-ed. It was platforming it. And so, if I was writing things that were upsetting the, you know, the, the Little Red Guards or whatever, then that person in charge of the section would be guilty of platforming me….

Paul also got into the under-covered issue of online reader comments and what makes conservative posts mysteriously disappear: The paper’s leftist comment editors would do the bidding of leftist readers, who would accuse other commenters of being offensive or using the wrong pronouns, and the editors would dutifully delete those “offensive” comments – a practice that will sound familiar to conservatives.

She explained that her columns on gender issues received “overwhelmingly positive response” from readers but not from “magazines and newspapers that I felt like once would never have bothered to write stories that were essentially regurgitations and summations of a few angry tweets from activists and sort of invested parties.” The New Republic even called her a fascist.

Her February 2023 column defending author J.K. Rowling from vicious attacks by trans activists was the beginning of the end for Paul at the paper.

The Gray Lady needs to keep its hard left subscribers happy to keep the lights on, and that means avoiding any stories that might upset them. Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reported way back in 2019:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

MINNESOTA’S SIGNALGATE: The Anatomy of a Domestic Insurgency.

A puzzled reader might object that activists have long monitored police activity, that legal observers carry cameras, that communities organize to protect their neighbors. All true, in isolation. The question is not whether any single act is novel. The question is whether the aggregate pattern exhibits features that distinguish protest from organized obstruction. Research from counterinsurgency studies provides a useful vocabulary. Early stage insurgencies rarely announce themselves with bombs. They begin with infrastructure. They build command structures. They specialize roles. They develop intelligence capabilities. They seek to deny the state freedom of movement while remaining sub kinetic.

By that standard, Minnesota displays a striking resemblance to the organizational phase of an insurgency. Recruitment and cadre formation occur through ICE Watch training sessions organized at local schools, NGO facilities, and even HUD provided meeting spaces, converting civic infrastructure into intake and indoctrination nodes. Encrypted Signal networks, colloquially dubbed SignalGate, are divided by geography and capped at roughly 1,000 participants per zone. Membership is vetted through the use of voter rolls, with applicants screened to exclude anyone listed on Republican voter rolls. Chats are deleted on a daily rotation. Roles are assigned. Some participants act as spotters, scanning neighborhoods for federal vehicles. Others are plate checkers, logging make, model, color, location, and timestamp into a shared database known as MN ICE Plates. Dispatchers monitor the feed and direct mobile chasers to intercept targets. The reporting format mirrors SALUTE, size, activity, location, unit, time, equipment, a method taught in military intelligence.

This matters because intelligence collection is not expressive conduct. It is operational. When information is persistently gathered, verified, stored, and acted upon, it becomes a parallel intelligence system. In multiple instances, vehicles later confirmed not to belong to ICE were nonetheless tailed for hours after being flagged. That persistence reveals intent. The goal is not merely to warn neighbors. It is to degrade federal operations by denying surprise and freedom of movement.

The involvement of political officials further sharpens the picture. Leaked chats show participation or coordination by elected figures and senior staff. Minnesota Lt Gov Peggy Flanagan appears under aliases such as Flan Southside. City Council Member Aurin Chowdhury is linked to administrative roles. Former Walz adviser Amanda Koehler is identified as an organizer. Journalists affiliated with MPR and NPR appear in groups where federal locations and movements are discussed in real time. The line between observation and participation blurs when presence inside an operational channel confers access to intelligence and legitimacy to the network.

Read the whole thing. What happens next? Kurt Schlichter has some thoughts:

Related: Alex Pretti Committed Previous Felony on Officers Before Deadly Attack.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

TRUMP RIGHT TO DUMP WHO: Dr. Robert Moffit of the Heritage Foundation knows a thing or forty three about government healthcare programs and he lauds President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Posted at 4:03 pm by Mark Tapscott

TRUMP’S ‘DECAPITATION’ SOLUTION FOR IRAN: Richard Pollock says all the key indicators point to a U.S. strike designed to decapitate the Mullahs, including Khamenei, who is now said to be deep in hiding. Considering the Maduro outcome, Khamenei would likely stand a better chance of survival if he takes the next flight to Moscow. Considering how much help Iran has been to Putin’s war in the Ukraine, that flight ought to be complimentary.

Posted at 3:49 pm by Mark Tapscott

THE VIEW FROM CALIFORNIA: The Minneapolis Insanity Has Some People Thinking About Gun Ownership and the 2A for the Very First Time. “Seeing black panthers and white folk in Minneapolis protecting their neighborhoods is amazing to see. We do not have that at all here. I feel like our passiveness here will only make it worse because people (part of me does too) think exercising our 2A right to protect ourselves in our home will only make it worse. That mentality has gotten us nowhere. This is year one, if things keep going and getting worse I fear many of us will highly regret it.’

Posted at 3:49 pm by Stephen Green

MODERN MEN: NEW RISKS?: I discuss the risks for men in our culture with Dr. Stephen Baskerville on the Male Space video podcast. Please listen and subscribe:

Posted at 3:42 pm by Helen Smith

ATHENA THORNE: Can We Get These Guys a Pulitzer? “Just for starters, there’s Andy Ngo. He alone deserves a Pulitzer for his work over the years, tracking the organized anti-American forces that flare up periodically with refreshed branding to reflect the cause du jour.”

Posted at 3:18 pm by Stephen Green

YES, BUT…: GM Beats Earnings Expectations, Boosts Dividend by 20%.

General Motors reported a $3.3 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2025 as a previously disclosed write-off mostly related to its struggling electric-vehicle business weighed on the company’s results.
…
GM’s $2.8 billion in adjusted operating income in the quarter—which excludes the $7.2 billion in write-offs and special charges related to EVs and other items—beat analysts’ expectations of $2.75 billion, according to FactSet. The company also said it is on track for $13 billion to $15 billion in 2026 adjusted earnings, while forecasts had pointed to $13.7 billion.

GM shares rose as much as 5.5% in premarket trading Tuesday morning.

The results capped a turbulent year in which GM scrambled to adjust to President Trump’s automotive tariffs, while also significantly scaling back its money-losing EV business.

The automaker managed to grow its share of the U.S. market in 2025 while delivering $12.7 billion in adjusted pretax earnings, about $2 billion less than it originally projected before Trump’s tariffs were announced.

GM and its crosstown rival Ford Motor are looking to take advantage of the Trump administration’s about-face on regulations that required automakers to sell cleaner vehicles by ramping up production of profitable trucks and SUVs that run on gasoline, while minimizing EV losses.

Late last year, GM began announcing write-offs related to its pivot away from EVs. They have totaled $7.6 billion so far.

How many billions of tax dollars and shareholder value did Washington piss away?

Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green

GOOD LUCK TRANSFORMING THE TITANIC INTO AN F-22 RAPTOR: Bari Weiss Unveils Sweeping Vision: “I Am Here to Make CBS News Fit for Purpose in the 21st Century.”

CBS News will undergo a radical transformation in the coming months, with editor-in-chief Bari Weiss outlining her vision at an all-hands meeting Tuesday morning.

Weiss delivered a PowerPoint presentation that outlined her view on the state of media and how CBS can remain relevant in a challenging time for broadcast news. She also noted the barrage of interest and press in her arrival.

“I’m not going to stand up here today and ask you for your trust. I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers,” Weiss told staff. “What I can give you is what I’ve always tried to give my readers a a journalist: transparency. Clarity. Straight talk. So here it is as plan as I can say it: I am here to make CBS News fit for purpose in the 21st century. Our industry has changed more in the last decade than in the last 150 years, and the transformation isn’t over yet. Far from it. It’s almost impossible to conceive of how fast things will move from here.”

Related: CBS News Hires New Contributors As Part Of Bari Weiss’ New Strategy For News Division.

CBS News unveiled a slate of contributors who are joining the network as part of Bari Weiss‘ new strategy for the news division.

The list of new contributors includes conservative historian Niall Ferguson and Patrick McGee, who specializes in tech and China and is a contributor to Weiss’ The Free Press, which CBS-parent Paramount acquired when she was tapped to lead the news division, according to a source familiar with the plans.

Also on the list are podcasters Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia, chef Clare de Boer, physician Mark Hyman, author Caroline Chambers and Casey Lewis, who has a Substack about emerging trends in youth culture.

During her meeting, Weiss reminded CBS staffers that she knows “there’s a lot of nostalgia” for the Cronkite era:

Back then, 30 million people watched Walter Cronkite every night. Some were on the left, some were on the right. But they trusted him*. Through Cronkite they inhabited a shared world with shared facts and a shared sense of reality.

We can’t reverse time’s arrow. He had two competitors. We have two billion, give or take.

What we can do is what journalists do best: look at the world as it actually is.

We have to start by looking honestly at ourselves.

That sounds like excellent advice for CBS – if only they were thinking that way back in September of 2004.

*Far too much in retrospect, but to make another awkward Titanic analogy, why quibble when someone is at least making an effort to steer the ship away from the icebergs?

UPDATE: Cronkite ‘the most-trusted?’ Where’s the evidence?

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll