January 2, 2026

I NOTE THAT IN THE WROLD AT LARGE THE MSM IS BEATING THE DRUM FOR “THE RIGHT IS FRACTURING AGAIN”:  We’ve apparently completely forgotten that the guy named after Spanish fountains only had foreigners and bots (and some foreign bots) as following. This new year, I enjoin you to eschew doomerism and spit out the black pill. It’s the left’s last resort. If you stand fast they got nothing. This rant from razor fist four years ago is still relevant.  Blackpills: The True Purpose of Propaganda.  (Video.)

Posted at 1:27 am by Sarah Hoyt

January 1, 2026

SIGNS OF PROGRESS: DOJ Made A Search Warrant Affidavit Public That Explains What It Has Uncovered In Minnesota Over the Past Eight Months: If you know where to look — a website — and you understand what you are reading, Search Warrant Affidavits can be very informative. “But the U.S. Attorney here unsealed the Affidavit the same day the search took place. Why? Because the affidavit addresses the largely inaccurate claims now being made about ‘Why hasn’t anything been done?'”

Posted at 10:41 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the New Year!

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

NEW MOLOTOV–RIBBENTROP PACT SIGNED!

Related: Mamdani axes all Adams executive orders in past 15 months, including those defending Jews.

Posted at 9:25 pm by Ed Driscoll

ED MORRISSEY: Bari’s Epic Troll on George Clooney: “Bonjour!”

CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss ribbed newly minted French citizen George Clooney after the star accused her of wrecking the network, inviting him to the newsroom and hinting he might be in need of a journalism refresher.

“Bonjour, Mr. Clooney! Big fan of your work. It sounds like you’d like to learn more about ours,” Weiss said in an email statement that CBS parent company Paramount Skydance shared with The Post on Tuesday.

“This is an open invitation to visit the CBS Broadcast Center, where I’m spending the holidays working to relaunch the Evening News with my colleagues. Tune in January 5.”

I’m a little worried that Bari’s CBS News is trolling all of us right now:

Shot:

Chaser: 2025 was so hot it pushed Earth past critical climate change mark, scientists say.

—CBS News, Tuesday.

To be fair, the Grauniad told me that we moved past the “critical climate change mark” about 13 years ago:

Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama’s first administration, he added.

— President ‘has four years to save Earth,’ the London Guardian, January 17, 2009.

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

YOU COMPOSIN’ TO ME?! ‘Doomer jazz’ and the strange afterlife of Taxi Driver:

Look online and you’ll find dozens of playlists loosely gathered together under the sub-sub-genre of ‘doomer jazz’. These are collections of tunes which, taking [Bernard] Herrmann’s soundtrack as their root, feature an array of downbeat jazz curated around the atmospherics of blurred neon, wet windscreens, dank truck stops and quiet torpor.

Of course, hacks like me who wish they could take a deep bath in pure essence of Bukowski and Hopper (Edward, not Dennis) are bound to enjoy this kind of music – mainly due to the painfully immature but still extant pretence that a full ashtray, a drifting saxophone and an Anglepoise lamp illuminating a book shelf of musty orange Penguin paperbacks makes us more interesting people. This is highly erroneous, as my friends and fiancée never fail to remind me.

But the fact that doomer jazz has become an attractive genre for twentysomethings should comfort anyone around my age who despairs at the fragile egos and endless neediness of the generations below us. Doomer jazz, belying its title, actually acts as a repository for feelings. It’s the antithesis of the kind of music that takes a listeners’ vulnerability and accentuates it ruthlessly into a paroxysm of self-pity. Yes, I’m talking to you, Morrissey and Thom Yorke.

Doomer jazz is the Gary Cooper of late-night music: stoic, silent and taking care of business regardless. Pain, these chords and solos tell us, is to be endured rather than disseminated over all and sundry at every opportunity. The mood is sad of course, but not in a way that would inspire anyone to post missives of hate on social media or to take a razor blade to their wrists. Rather this is music that (in the best lesson imaginable for anyone under the age of 30) shows us how a little bit of emotional repression can go a long way.

As James Lileks wrote of Taxi Driver: “It’s a brilliant movie. The civilization it portrays is a sad and empty place — Weimar Germany without the energy to muster up the brownshirts, Rome that fell because it was grew bored waiting for the Huns. If I had to choose between its 1 hour and 54 minutes of brilliance and the few minutes of Herrman’s score — no question. That sad sax theme alone sums up everything about the latter 70s, its exhaustion, its dead-hearted nostalgia for everything it grew up pissing on. Julia Phillips was one of the movie’s producers. I’ll bet she would have wanted someone to play that theme at her funeral.”

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

GOOD AND HARD, FUN CITY: Carol Roth Hilariously Notices Something About Mamdani’s Coronation.

They say that history repeats; first as tragedy then as farce. This quote is attributed to Karl Marx, which makes this all the more hilarious.

After every communist / socialist revolution, the serfs cheer as they unwittingly descend into an era of privation. While we know that affluent limousine liberals will never pay the price of their socialist dreams, we find this chillingly appropriate for the proletariat of New York City who welcomed this upper-class child of privilege pretty boy to rule over them. If New Yorkers are lucky, mayor Mamdani will fail due to the hypocrisy of New York’s progressive plutocrats. However, if he succeeds, our poor proles will truly suffer as the utopian promises never materialize.

Meanwhile, for New York’s new first lady, it’s a very different story: NYC First Lady Rama Duwaji wears $600 boots to socialist mayor husband Zohran Mamdani’s swearing in ceremony.

Mamdani became mayor of New York City just after midnight on Thursday, and standing by his side was his wife, Rama Duwaji — in some very pricy boots.

The 34-year-old mayor took the oath of office at a historic, decommissioned subway station* in Manhattan; however, his wife’s stylish outfit is what has people talking.

New York’s First Lady, 28,  wore a black knee-length skirt and a black woolen coat as they stood on the stairs of the subway station, with the artist completing the look with a pair of $630 boots.

The stylish mid-calf shoes laced up at the back from the heel and featured a long pointed toe with a small heel.

The Miista boots, which Duwaji was wearing in the Shelley style, come in black or dark brown.

The European brand promotes sustainable fashion, proudly touting that they’re ‘happy to sacrifice profit and to subvert problematic fashion trends to create a product that has personality in addition to aesthetic value’ on its website.

As Glenn wrote in USA Today in 2019:

In the old Soviet Union, the Marxists assured us that once true communism was established under a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” the state would wither away and everyone would be free. In fact, however, the dictatorship of the proletariat turned into a dictatorship of the party hacks, who had no interest whatsoever in seeing their positions or power wither.

Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas called these party hacks the “New Class,” noting that instead of workers and peasants against capitalists, it was now a case of workers and peasants being ruled by a managerial new class of technocrats who, while purporting to act for the benefit of the workers and peasants, somehow wound up with the lion’s share of the goodies. Workers and peasants stood in long lines for bread and shoddy household goods, while party leaders and government managers bought imported delicacies in special, secret stores. (In a famous Soviet joke, then-leader Leonid Brezhnev shows his mother his luxury apartment, his limousine, his fancy country house and his helicopter only to have her object: “But what if the communists come back?”)

Djilas’ work was explosive — he was jailed — because it made clear that the workers and peasants had simply replaced one class of exploiters with another. It set the stage for the Soviet Union’s implosion, and for the discrediting of communism among everyone with any sense.

Which explains why it remains so fashionable with young New Yorkers.

* Also perfect:

Underneath the mask, Bane smiles:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

‘BIBI MAMDANI’ MOCKERY CIRCULATES AS NYC MAYOR’S X ACCOUNT CARRIES OLD TWEETS:

Online users are taking advantage of a temporary quirk on New York City’s official mayoral account on X, formerly Twitter, in order to poke fun following the transition from Mayor Eric Adams to Zohran Mamdani, who assumed office today.

The account’s display name and handle were updated to reflect Mamdani’s administration, but the account itself was not reset — a standard practice for official government social media accounts. As a result, posts and reposts made during Adams’ tenure remain visible, now appearing under the new mayor’s name.

The overlap has created brief confusion online, particularly as older content resurfaces without clear context. Some politically active users have seized on the moment, reposting or highlighting past material in ways that suggest — inaccurately — that Mamdani was involved in events that occurred before he took office.

One example circulating online involves billionaire investor Daniel Loeb, who reshared an older article about Adams meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Because the repost appears under the updated mayoral name, it gives the misleading impression that the meeting took place under Mamdani’s administration.

More at Newsweek: Launch of Zohran Mamdani’s Official X Account Sparks Confusion.

Yashar Ali, a journalist, in a post on X viewed over 400,000 times: “The NYC Mayor’s Twitter account is now under Mayor Mamdani’s name, but unlike the White House accounts, prior tweets are not archived or clearly attributed to past administrations. As a result, there are tweets still visible that are jarring when they appear under Mayor Mamdani’s name—even though they were posted before he took office.”

Reuben Katz, an entrepreneur, in a post on X: “We could not make up how hilarious his NYCMayor account looks now. (The tweets before midnight 2026 are by Adams’ and his administration and now look like Mamdani’s).”

Joel Petlin, superintendent at the Kiryas Joel School District and an opinion writer, in a post on X: “The only thing that I find amusing about Zohran Mamdani being sworn in as the Mayor of NY City is the fact that he inherited Mayor Adams’ pro Israel Twitter account.”

Rowan Scarborough, a columnist for The Washington Times, in a post on X: “For the record, Mamdani condemned Netanyahu when he appeared at UN and accused him of genocide. NYC needs to update its social media management.”

One social media user wrote on X: “This is hilarious lol This is why every president gets a new Twitter account.”

Another social media user wrote on X: “Lmfao. They need to archive/wipe this account clean when they handover to a new mayor else, people are going to come for Zohran’s head.”

Why would they do that? Mamdani is inadvertently tweeting out incredibly positive messages!

At least for now. Reportedly, the junior Stalin’s comms team are already breaking out the airbrushes:

Unexpectedly! Robert Conquest: Inside Stalin’s Darkroom.

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

“HOLISTIC ADMISSIONS” SYSTEMATICALLY FAVORS THE RICH AND WELL-CONNECTED:

Posted at 8:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HOW IT STARTED: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is no.”

—Paul Krugman, the New York Times, Election Night 2016.

How it’s going: S&P 500 closes lower Wednesday, but wraps 2025 with a 16% gain.

—CNBC, yesterday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed on Election Night 2016 at 18,332.74. It closed yesterday at 48,063.29. That’s a gain of almost 30,000 points. For 2025, those zany right-wing Tory-loving capitalist “greed is good” Gordon Gekko types at the Grauniad reported yesterday that “The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 13.4% during 2025. The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite rallied 20.5%.”

Posted at 6:17 pm by Ed Driscoll

HE’S BEEN ENGAGING IN REPEATED SELF-BECLOWNING LATELY: The Backlash to Rep. Ro Khanna Continues. “Earlier this week I described how Rep. Ro Khanna had embraced a wealth tax on billionaires being promoted by California unions. That led to quite a backlash from some of Khanna’s own constituents in Silicon Valley. That backlash has continued to build with some very well-known names calling for a primary opponent to run against Rep. Khanna.”

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DAVID STROM: They Always Threaten Violence. “I assume that liberals hear these statements differently than I do, but I also assume that it is because they are conditioned to believe that anybody they don’t like is a violent white supremacist bent on colonialist genocide.”

Posted at 5:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

WELL, WHEN YOU PUT IT THAT WAY…:

Posted at 4:13 pm by Stephen Green

OCEAN INFINITY RESUMES HUNT FOR MH370 IN REMOTE INDIAN OCEAN:

More than a decade after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished with 239 people aboard, a renewed search effort has officially begun in one of the world’s most remote maritime regions, raising hopes of finally solving aviation’s greatest mystery.

The Singapore-flagged multipurpose vessel Armada 86 05 departed Kwinana anchorage, Australia, on December 23 and has been sailing westward into the Indian Ocean at around 10.5 knots, according to ship tracking data from MarineTraffic. The 86-meter vessel is equipped with advanced sonar systems capable of operating at depths of several thousand meters, with the mission focusing on areas not fully covered during earlier search efforts.

No word yet if black holes will be examined as well for the missing aircraft: CNN’s Don Lemon Asks If a Black Hole Could’ve Swallowed the Missing Plane.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll