The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Worst Democrat in Congress?

Posted on | February 6, 2025 | No Comments

The question mark in the headline is necessary because, of course, the competition for Worst Democrat in Congress is fierce. Ilhan Omar, Jamie Raskin, Eric Swalwell — it’s a tough league. But keep your eye on the representative from the 30th District of Texas, about which Wikipedia says: “With a Cook Partisan Voting Index rating of D+27, it is the most Democratic district in Texas.” If your employer relocated you to Dallas, and you were looking to purchase a residence in the area, I’d advise you to stay as far away from the 30th District as possible. Nothing good ever happens inside a D+27 congressional district.

For the past several years, I’ve been watching CNN (so you don’t have to), but about a week ago, I switched my office TV to Fox News for the first time in recent memory, because the shrieking craziness from CNN had become so intense, even I couldn’t cope with it anymore. Therefore I must thank Jeff Poor of Breitbart for providing a transcript of what Rep. Jamine Crockett said on CNN Monday night:

We right now have a white supremacist that is sitting in the White House. He is backed up by other white supremacists. And if you really want to know who the criminals are in this country, you can Google it.
You don’t have to trust me. But the people that commit 80% of the most violent crimes in this country are white supremacists. Yet, for whatever reason, they sit and they serve at the pleasure of the president. They are the ones that were there on January 6th tearing our democracy down physically. And now, we have them tearing us down right here from within. . . .

This remark was made, by the way, in response to a question from CNN’s Laura Coates about Trump appointing one of his former speechwriters, Darren Beattie, to a job in the State Department. Beattie has a Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and acquired the “white supremacist” label in a guilt-by-aasociation smear after it was learned he had spoken at a meeting of the H.L. Mencken Club. Darren Beattie has never committed any violent crime, which is more than you can say for a lot of Jasmine Crockett’s constituents in the 30th District of Texas.

Anyway, more from Crockett’s CNN interview:

[T]he coddling is for the white boys. That’s what’s happening right now. I am tired of the white tears. Listen, if you are competent, you are not concerned. . . .
So, the only people that are crying are the mediocre white boys that have been beaten out by people that historically have had to work so much harder. . . .
But I got news for them. I don’t care what they do. We will fight to the end to make sure that we get our due because, again, if you want to talk about the people that shouldn’t be in this country, you probably need to look in the mirror, because the last time I checked, the Native Americans who [some are?] ICE have been rounding up or the Puerto Ricans who are absolutely Americans, listen, the only people that came and colonized this place are your ancestors, Trump.

Uh, Trump’s grandfather was an immigrant from Germany who arrived in America in 1885, long after we “colonized this place” which, unfortunately, includes the 30th District of Texas.



 

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Pam Bondi Confirmed as A.G., and Why Did Democrats Vote Against Her?

Posted on | February 5, 2025 | No Comments

Only one Democratic senator — John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — voted to confirm Donald Trump’s choice for Attorney General. Can anyone explain why so many Democrats voted against Pam Bondi, about whom there was no real controversy and whose tenure as Florida’s attorney general was entirely successful? There was no scandal in Bondi’s background, no history of controversial policy positions.

But then you read this part:

Bondi, who served as Florida’s first female Attorney General and was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, has been a Trump supporter since the beginning of her political career.
She served as defense lawyer for Trump in his first impeachment trial and as co-chair of Women for Trump during the 2020 election. Most recently she supported Trump in May at his New York business records trial.

Her “crime,” according to Democrats, is being a supporter of the guy who won the election. That’s it — period, end of sentence. Democrats are constantly telling us that Trump is a threat to democracy, and yet which party is it that doesn’t want to acknowledge the result of the election?

Go back to 2021 and see how many of Joe Biden’s Cabinet appointments sailed through the confirmation process with only token opposition from Republicans. There were 30 Republican votes against Merrick Garland’s nomination as Biden’s attorney general, but there were 18 Republican “yea” votes. Was Garland less controversial than Bondi? Was she more of a partisan ideologue than he? You cannot objectively justify the greater Democratic opposition to GOP nominees, and must therefore conclude that Democrats have not yet lost enough elections to be convinced that the country has turned against them. Last weekend’s circus at the Democratic National Committee meeting is further evidence of this. If Democrats took the 2024 election results seriously, they wouldn’t have been acting the fool that way. They seem to believe that regaining their congressional majorities in the 2026 midterms will be a piece of cake, so they don’t need to make any meaningful changes to their rhetoric or policy agenda, but rather just double-down on “Orange Man Bad.”

Part of the problem, of course, is that the establishment media echo chamber encourages Democrats to think this way. Here is the lead of a New York Times story from Tuesday:

After early signs that some of President Trump’s unconventional cabinet choices could be derailed by Republicans alarmed at their character, disturbing paper trails and lack of expertise, the resistance has collapsed.
One after the other on Tuesday, Republican senators fell into line behind two of the president’s most baggage-laden nominees, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for health secretary and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence.
The party-line committee votes to send both nominees to the floor for likely confirmation next week provided the clearest evidence yet that Mr. Trump’s pressure tactics and the threat of a barrage of abuse by his allies against would-be defectors had sapped whatever remained of a G.O.P. impulse to balk. And they suggested a broader impulse among Republicans on Capitol Hill — even the few who have maintained some degree of independence from Mr. Trump — to shrink from confrontation with him and allow him to have his way at the dawn of his second term.

What can you say about such “reporting,” except that it’s a manic fantasy symptomatic of Trump Derangement Syndrome? It involves a complete misreading of what has happened in the Republican Party since 2012. After two consecutive defeats against Obama — the John McCain and Mitt Romney campaigns — GOP primary voters rolled the dice with Trump, gambling that this brash billionaire businessman could do something to change the status quo in Washington. The vast majority of grassroots Republicans have never regretted that gamble, and have accustomed themselves to trusting Trump’s instincts, including those “unconventional cabinet choices.” The kind of weak-kneed apologetic go-along-to-get-along Republican “leaders” who might be stampeded by media criticism — they’re not calling the shots anymore. Those days of “bipartisan consensus” (which always involved Republican surrender) are over, and the New York Times can’t seem to process what this means.

By the way, who’s going to CPAC this year? My friend Mike LaChance from Legal Insurrection just reached out to say he’d be there, and I’ve applied for media credentials. The conference in DC begins in two weeks — Wednesday, February 19 — and I’d like to organize a gathering of readers/commenters if you’re planning to attend.



 

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In The Mailbox: 02.04.25 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | February 5, 2025 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Behind The Black is doing its annual fundraising drive. Chip in if you can.

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

Waiting for Trump to issue the EO putting Aunt Jemima back on the box. For Black History Month. 

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Free Health Care Isn’t Necessarily Good Health Care
EBL: USAID IS A MONEY LAUNDERING OPERATION FOR THE DEMOCRAT PARTY
Twitchy: Scott Jennings Educates CNN Panel On The Difference Between Our Functioning President & Joe Biden, USAID Staff Place On Paid Administrative Leave As Of Friday, and My Dinner With A$$hole
Louder With Crowder: “Sex in the City” actress claims all her kids are trans. Her sister’s kids, too. Every kid she knows is somehow trans, Occasional Cortex still won’t calm down about Elon Musk, now claims HE’S the dummy, Gynecologist suspended for refusing to examine a man, Karoline Leavitt ENDS Chuck Schumer: “What price would you pay if your child was killed at the hands of an illegal immigrant?”, and Marvel finally dropped the grossly overhyped “Fantastic Four” trailer, and…meh
Vox Popoli: The End of USAid, Deep State and Deep Church, Churchill, FDR, and Stalin, Tubcuddlee Sues Tubbcuddler, and Did No One Take Econ 101?
Stoic Observations: What’s New,
Defending The Wood Perilous: Weaponized Empathy vs. The Vance Glance, Catch The Lightning – The Art & Craft Of Writing Romance
Jim McCoy: Benjamin Sisko Is The Best Star Trek Captain

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Sex with Demons
American Conservative: Trump Should Go Big on Tariffs, also, The People’s Choice: Why DOGE Needs Ron Paul
American Greatness: John Brennan’s Protests of President Trump Lifting his Security Clearances are Absurd, Sec. of State Marco Rubio Takes Control of USAID, Accuses Agency of ‘Rank Insubordination’ and Undermining U.S. Interests, Musk Sets His Sights On Defunding NPR, Biden Weaponized the Justice Dept. Against Pro-Life Advocates—Now They’re Speaking Out, and The Art of the Smackdown! How Trump Turned the Tables on Colombia
American Thinker: Top 5 Failed Democrat Initiatives That Cost Americans a Fortune, How Socialism Works in America: Remembering Obama’s GM Boondoggle, Trump’s Second Week: A Turning Point in American Governance, and Decades of Lies from the Left
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday, also, Animal’s Daily DEI News
BattleSwarm: Malice On Communism’s Malice, Hollywood’s Texadus, Band Dads Thwart Active Shooter In Pasadena, and Trump, Paxton Team Up To Secure The Border
Behind The Black: SpaceX launches two high resolution Earth imaging reconnaissance satellites, Astronomers find galaxy with nine rings, Boeing writes off another half billion dollars due to Starliner, SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites, and NASA suspends numerous advisory committees to comply with Trump executive orders
Cafe Hayek: Open Letter to Jeff Ferry, also, Protectionists, at Bottom, Make Economic Arguments
CDR Salamander: Double Defense Spending, France?
Chicago Boyz: Yes to a Victory Parade, but Keep It Modest, also, Seizing the Archives
Da Tech Guy: 2nd Annual Shrove Tuesday Brunch Plus the February Indulgence Calendar (and extra daily Plenary Indulgence available this year), also, The “Untouchables” Administration Botched Raids, Apples off the Tree Everybody Knows Where the Booze is and Death Threats vs Doge
Dana Loesch: The United States Owes Gaza Nothing
Don Surber: Trump has frenemies jumping through his hoops
First Street Journal: Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right, also, A Philadelphia story
Gates Of Vienna: A Second Greater Idaho Bill Introduced in the Oregon State Legislature, Violent Jew-Hatred on the Streets of Rome, Perhaps the Pony Gave Consent, Will President Trump Again Put Turkey — Not America — First? and If You Tear it Down, They Won’t Come
The Geller Report: Two Airport Workers Arrested for Leaking DC Plane Collision Cell Phone Video to CNN, also, Before Leaving Power, Biden Regime Quietly Funneled $3 Mil to ‘Palestinian’ Government ‘Security Forces’ for Weapons, Training—After Its Members Carried Out Attacks on Israelis
Hollywood In Toto: IRL Movie Club Flexes Power of Community, Ellen Barkin Curses Out WH Spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, Black Stallion Remains the Citizen Kane of Equestrian Films, The Real Reason Emilia Perez Isn’t Oscar Worthy, and J.K. Rowling Promotes Pro-Women XX-XY Athletics
The Lid: Report: Illegal Border Crossings Collapse By 93 Percent Since Trump’s Election
Legal Insurrection: Vance Visits East Palestine, Two Years after Toxic Train Derailment, Trump Says U.S. Will Take Over the Gaza Strip, Education Department Now Investigating Cases of Antisemitism at Five Universities, Ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe Laments Recent Agent Firings, and Trump Defunds UNRWA, Withdraws U.S. From UN Human Rights Council
Nebraska Energy Observer: Saturday – just for you, O Canada, and “Chatty Lawyer”
Outkick: Steph And Ayesha Curry’s Good Deed For Oakland Flopped Spectacularly, Fans Call For Boycott Or Goodell Firing After NFL Commissioner Embraces DEI Program, NFL Refs Union Blasts ‘Insulting And Preposterous’ Claims Of Pro-Chiefs Bias, Champions League Host Eva Murati Gets Into Lingerie Modeling & Cements Herself As A Must Follow, and Eagles’ WAG Is Super Bowl Ready, Coors Light Prepped For Monday, Sports Parade Karen Enters & More
Power Line: Classic Dem projection, Voices of Sanity on USAID, and A Collusion Hoax Coda
Shark Tank: FL Delegation Unites Around Franklin/Wasserman-Schultz Bill To Aid Citrus Growers
Shot In The Dark: Buzzsaw, Seems…Drastic, The Usual Suspects, Congratulations DNC!, and  So Why ARE The DFL Still “On Strike”?
The Political Hat: No Rules Against Political Enemies
This Ain’t Hell: Pentagon to rotate some media organizations out of Pentagon office spaces, Senator Chuck Schumer under investigation, All About Milley, U.S. military strikes conducted against Islamic State in Somalia, and Hellhound in Army Competition
Transterrestrial Musings: Ivanpah, Onward To Mars, Twenty-Two Years On, and Another Starship Flight This Month?
Victory Girls: David Hogg Elected As DNC Vice Chair To Bring In The Gen Z Masculine Vote, also, God Bless America – Whiz Kid Translates Scrolls, Works On Doge
Watts Up With That: UK Losing Wind Gamble a Warning for World, Deficiencies in Dominion’s offshore wind permits, The “Collapsing Gulf Stream” Scare is Back—Again, and Blue States Discover That “Green” Energy Storage is Playing with Fire—Literally
The Federalist: Illegal Alien Allegedly Stole U.S. Citizen’s Identity, Committed Voter Fraud , Lawmakers Look To Codify Trump’s Orders Killing DEI, Sen. Joni Ernst: USAID Wouldn’t Tell Congress How It Spent Billions, Here’s How The Media Are Lying Right Now, and If Leftists Believe DEI Radicalism Is So Popular, Why Are They Whitewashing Their Support For It?
Mark Steyn: And Again, One of Those Things: Doris Day and Frank Sinatra in Young at Heart, Déjà Bongoed, East of the Sun (and West of the Moon), and Of Coronas and Korans

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In The Mailbox: 02.04.25 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | February 4, 2025 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I posted about being a lifelong conservative Republican. Title courtesy of Kid Rock.
Hey, indie authors! It’s almost time for another Based Books sale!
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Team Trump drives a wedge between Panama and China, The Day The Music Died, Presidential Medal of Freedom for Thomas Sowell, Anna Claire Howard and New York Magazine’s Cropped Cover Photo, and Andrew Breitbart
Twitchy: Holy Tone-Deaf, Batman! Brave #Resistance Fighter Leticia James Continues Lawfare Crusade Against Trump, and “Worse Than 9/11 For Democrats”
Louder With Crowder: Rep. Ilhan Omar Melts Down After Realization She Can No Longer Help Spend Your Tax Dollars On Foreign Aid, Chuck Schumer embarrasses himself with a Mexican beer trying to dunk on Donald Trump’s tariffs, Hakeem Jeffries makes violent threat against MAGA, promises to take his fight against Trump “to the streets”, Silly people are outraged at this ICE cream truck, think it’s meant to trick migrant kids into getting deported, and Meta employees DEMAND tampons be returned to the men’s bathrooms
Vox Popoli: Exit Sandman, From Free Trade to Forced Trade, The Pointlessness of Posturing, Testing the Free Trade Hypothesis, and A Desperation Move
Upstream Reviews: New Releases, also, The Icarus Needle
Stoic Observations: Say My Name, also, AI Don’t Dance
L’Ombre de L’Olivier: DOGE Follows The Money
Draw & Talk Comics: Comic Creator Scammed By AI?
Toni Airaksinen: UCincinnati Black Feminist Conference Prods Students To Fight For “Trans Rights, DEI Education”

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: Nothing Here Worth Dying For, also, Pelosi’s Taiwan Effect
Dana Loesch: Florida RINOs Try To Lame-Duck DeSantis Over Amnesty
Don Surber: We Trumped you on that
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Notes from a cluttered mind
STUMP: Pension Watch – January 2025, The Week In Meep

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‘Shrill and Hysterical’: Michael Bennett, Tulsi Gabbard and Edward Snowden

Posted on | February 4, 2025 | No Comments

Everybody has commented on last week’s drama during the Senate confirmation hearing for Tulsi Gabbard to be the Director of National Intelligence. Many of my readers are big fans of Tulsi on “Rule 5” grounds, but I hope you’ll forgive me for saying, “Meh.” Just not my type. I mean, don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are Samoan, but . . . Well, best not to give more fodder to the SPLC, I suppose.

Anyway, my point is that my support of Gabbard’s nomination is objective, and not influenced by considerations of her alleged hotness. Her assignment from Trump, as I understand it, is to root out the Deep State corruption in the intelligence community (IC), and she was chosen for that task in large part because the Deep State went after her when she was challenging Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic primaries. She was a target of the “spies who lie,” and is therefore highly motivated.

Trump II: Sweet Revenge, this administration would be called, if it were a blockbuster Hollywood adventure flick, and I’m totally down for this agenda, let the debris land where it may. A populist disruption of the bipartisan D.C. status quo is long overdue, and I probably shouldn’t be surprised by unexpected reactions to this, as the disruptive impact has shaken and shifted the coalitions which make up the two parties. People I have detested for years are now on “my” side, while others who I’d long considered my friends are now on the other side — despite the fact that I’m the same person I’ve always been. Going back to the earliest years of this blog, for example, we haven’t been exactly friendly toward Meghan McCain, to put it as mildly as possible. So it was with mixed emotions that I found myself nodding along with what she told Mark Halperin:

“Senator [Michael] Bennet’s behavior is an example of what Americans are sick of. It was designed for YouTube. . . . Like, I could see him looking for his camera angle. . . . No woman could scream at the top of her lungs, doing what he did, and not be called unhinged and shrill, and so I’m calling him unhinged and shrill.”

 

We are truly through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole, when I am favorably citing Meghan McCain. Now, as to the substance of Bennet’s histrionic performance, he kept demanding that Gabbard give a yes-or-no answer to the question, “Is Edward Snowden a traitor?” Well, the colloquial use of “traitor” is different than its constitutional definition, but I don’t know if semantics was the cause of Gabbard’s repeated refusal to answer “yes” to Bennet’s question.

At the time of Snowden’s data-dump of vast quantities of classified data he’d obtained while working as a contractor for the NSA, the Left generally hailed Snowden as a hero, much as they’d hailed Bradley Manning as a hero, and I was having none of that. Readers will recall how the whole “Anonymous” thing was originally linked to the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd, so that Julian Assange was beloved by the socialist scum, even after he was accused of raping one of his fangirls in Sweden.

The hero-worship of “leakers” and “hackers” always struck me as folly, even if — as has sometimes been the case — these leaks and hacks were politically beneficial to Republicans. (Hello, Hillary!)

The problem with Snowden, as with Manning, is that these were people holding a position of trust, given access to sensitive information as part of their jobs, and it offends my sense of honor and propriety whenever anyone in such a position betrays their duty. Some of my friends have security clearances, and are thus required to keep secrets, and when you’d getting paid to keep secrets, you ought to either (a) do your job or (b) quit. Here I will invoke the once-famous saying of Elbert Hubbard, that “an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.”

To be entrusted with any secret as part of one’s employment is to accept the responsibility of protecting that secret as a moral duty. Notice that, in the Scout Law, “trustworthy” and “loyal” are the first qualities mentioned. This is not by accident. Snowden has said that his “breaking point” was “seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress” about domestic surveillance. We can all now agree, I believe, that Clapper is a wretched swine who ought to spend the rest of his life in Leavenworth, without endorsing what Snowden did.

What happened to those circa-2011 “Occupy” types, who once mentioned Snowden in the same worshipful tone that they praised Manning? What has happened in the past dozen years or so that Bennet is posturing like this — against a former Democratic congresswoman, I must point out — without any apparent fear that his party’s left-wing grassroots base will turn against him? When did Democrats become the party advocating domestic surveillance and defending federal spy agencies?

We live in strange times and, as I say, I’m the same person I’ve always been, just older and perhaps less prone to get excited over day-to-day battles of politics. Live long enough, you’ll see many situations like this, where the Democratic Party shifts en masse from one side of an issue to another, without ever acknowledging that they’ve changed their position. Of course, they went from being the party of Jim Crow to being the party of Black Lives Matter in roughly a half-century, and good luck trying to get any Democrat to provide an honest explanation of that trajectory.

Sometimes conservatives are accused of being similarly inconsistent, but I can answer that question simply: Conservatism is the opposition to liberalism, which is always the aggressor in the conflict. It has been pointed out — to me, directly, by friends who seem to think I’m in need of tutoring of the subject — that “liberalism” is a misnomer, adopted by Democrats in the 1930s as a way to escape the odium which attached itself to the “progressive” label that Woodrow Wilson had proudly worn. Over the past 20 years or so, the Left wing of the Democratic Party has tried to revive the “progressive” label, and some of them would even prefer to be known as “socialists.” My point, however, is that whatever they may call themselves at any time, liberals are always basically the same. Because they keep coming up with novel schemes to wreck the country (or sometimes re-branding their old schemes as “new”), liberals compel their opponents to shift their ground in order to defend the country from being wrecked. In this, then, conservatives resemble Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in 1864, constantly making flank marches southeastward, all the way from the Rappahannock to the James River, as Grant’s Union army shifted leftward in its attempt to get past Lee.

“Cthulhu may swim slowly. But he only swims left.”

What we are seeing now, if we can extend our military metaphor a bit further, is a counter-attack, an effort by conservatives to seize the strategic initiative, to push the progressive Cthulhu into a corner and keep hammering away at him until he’s finally defeated. In such a desperate struggle, we must take our allies where we find them, and accept that the tactical measures involved may be somewhat outside the Marquis of Queensbury’s rules. So I find myself nodding in agreement with Meghan McCain, and the army must keep marching.

Carry on, my fellow soldiers.



 

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Rule 5 Sunday: You Can Be My Cowgirl

Posted on | February 3, 2025 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I think this is from Rule 5 Texan, appropriately enough.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule 5 250th Anniversary Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, Marianne Faithful (RIP), Mary Queen of Scots, Velvet, MAGA Trump Tariffs, The Couple Next Door, Tulsi Gabbard Confirmation Hearing, Namewee, Blue Lights, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, Prime Target, Kazoo Day, The Newsreader, J.D. Vance on Deface The Nation, Granville Banlock, Tulsi Time, “Rio De Janeiro”, and Cimarron Roll On.

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Veronica BielikEat a Berry, Pay a Fee?Marianne Faithfull, Jagger Muse, Dead at 78Fish Pic Friday – Jasmine HardieTattoo ThursdayBritish Navy Fooled by Whale FartsThe Wednesday WetnessBay Cold Snap Threatens Speckled TroutIt Was A Very Trumpy WeekendTuesday TanlinesThe Monday Morning StimulusGone Fishin’Palm SundayHegseth Confirmed, and Mass Deportations Begin

BACON TIME: Rule Five – The Weather Outside Is Frightful

FLAPPR: Is 2025 The Year Of The Bush?

 

 

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Scott Siskind Didn’t Start the Fire: Rationalism, NY Times and the Zizians

Posted on | February 2, 2025 | No Comments

Scott Siskind

Many readers will recall how the New York Times decided to dox the blogger Scott Alexander, whose Slate Star Codex was enormously popular. He responded by deleting his blog (some archives still exist) and publicly outing himself as San Francisco Bay area psychiatrist Dr. Scott Suskind (who comes from a family of many eminent physicians).

You may wonder, what does this have to do with the Radical Vegan Transgender Death Cult that I’ve been blogging about for the past week? Well, a guy known as @KenTheCowboy has compiled a “Zizian Facts” document that is quite useful to anyone following this saga.

Overnight, I watched (or more accurately, listened to) a YouTube interview that Ken did with Jessica Taylor, who was the first person to make the connection between the Zizians and the January 20 shootout in Vermont that killed a Border Patrol agent. Taylor actually knew Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt, and also knew Jack “Ziz” LaSota because of her former employment as a staffer at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). Taylor warned Bauckholt about the Zizians, but obviously the warning was not heeded. Now Bauckholt’s dead, and his companion Teresa “Milo” Youngblut is being held without bail, as is Maximillian “Audere” Snyder. Ziz is a fugitive from justice, whereabouts unknown, as are his reputed followers, Jasper “Gwen” Danielson and Michelle “Jamie” Zajko (all of whom should be considered armed and dangerous, I hasten to add). Toward the end of the interview with Taylor, Ken mentions that he got a shoutout from Reason magazine, and when I went to check this out (lead item in Liz Wolfe’s Morning Roundup on Friday), I noted a reference to the Zizians being part of “the rationalist scene” and decided to see what else Reason might have on this topic.

Among the results — using “rationalist” as the keyword in the search window on Reason‘s site — was Robby Soave’s 2021 article, “What The New York Times’ Hit Piece on Slate Star Codex Says About Media Gatekeeping.” In the second paragraph of the NYT “hit piece,” Slate Star Codex is referred to as “the epicenter of a community called the Rationalists.” These dots are starting to connect, you see.

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like ‘I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive….’ And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. . . .”
— Hunter S. ThompsonFear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Tempted as I am to jump into my wife’s Mazda and drive to Vermont — nothing’s stopping you from hitting the tip jar — I’ll probably resist that reckless impulse at least for now, but my point is that if ever a story needed the Gonzo method of journalism, Radical Vegan Transgender Death Cult is certainly that story. Yet sitting here in my home office, there was a distinct mental click when I saw Robbie’s article about what the NYT did to Slate Star Codex. Why did they dox a blogger? Because, with its open discussion of issues, including philosophical questions surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), Scott Siskind’s blog was becoming influential among certain Silicon Valley bigwigs, and the NYT was worried that this discussion might be pushing the Big Tech barons in a right-wing direction — and this could not be permitted.

Somewhat ironically, Siskind had pushed back against the “rationalist” label for his blog (“Saying ‘rationalist community’ when you mean ‘SSC comments section’ or vice versa will leave everybody pretty confused”), and he himself is certainly not a right-winger. He voted for Elizabeth Warren (!!!) in the 2020 Democratic primary, and voted for Joe Biden in the subsequent election. But it is nowadays “right wing” to defend free speech against censorship, and that was apparently Siskind’s great sin.

How does this connect to the Zizian cult? Well, after graduating from the Fairbanks campus of the University of Alaska with a computer engineering degree in 2013, Jack “Ziz” LaSota next enrolled in a master’s degree program at the University of Illinois, but subsequently dropped out and headed to Berkeley, California:

It is unclear when exactly LaSota arrived in the Bay Area, but according to the Center for Applied Rationality co-founder Anna Salamon, they [sic] attended a 5-day residency workshop organized by the nonprofit in July 2014. Salamon said the purpose of the workshop was to teach critical thinking skills and techniques to enhance and understand human decision-making — key aspects of the Rationalist movement.

CFAR is a spinoff of MIRI, and “the Rationalist movement” originated with MIRI founder Eliezer Yudkowsky’s concern that AI could pose an “existential threat” to humanity: “Over the years, Yudkowsky found that people struggled to think clearly about A.I. risk and were often dismissive of it. In 2011, Salamon, who had been working at MIRI since 2008, volunteered to figure out how to overcome that problem.” Salamon became director of CFAR, which operates programs to promote “rationalism” and, as I explained on Tuesday, these programs have become kind of an “AI Doomer Cool Kids Club.” Any ambitious young person in the West Coast tech world wants to get into the MIRI/CFAR network, which is seen as a pathway to their Big Tech dream job.

The influence of the “Rationalist movement” in Silicon Valley not only explains why the New York Times decided to dox Scott Siskind (for fear that Slate Star Codex was pushing Big Tech rightward), but also explains why Jack “Ziz” LaSota became enraged when Anna Salamon rejected him for a fellowship in the MIRI/CFAR summer AI program. He believed he had been blacklisted because of his transgender identity, and organized a bizarre protest against CFAR in November 2019. With flyers that accused Salamon of being a “trans-exclusive radical feminist” (TERF), Ziz and three associates — Amir “Emma” Borhanian, Jasper “Gwen” Danielson and Alexander “Somni” Leatham — donned hooded black “Sith” robes and Guy Fawkes masks and took over a Sonoma County campground that was hosting a CFAR alumni reunion. This led to a confrontation with law enforcement and felony charges. If Ziz hadn’t been blacklisted before that protest, certainly he was blacklisted afterwards, which no doubt partly explains why this cult ended up living in box trucks on the property of Curtis Lind in Vallejo. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a moratorium on evictions, so the Zizians stopped paying rent. When the moratorium was finally lifted in 2022, Lind was getting ready to evict these freaks if they didn’t pay up on more than $60,000 in back rent they owed him.

Curtis Lind

In November 2022, the Zizians then ambushed Lind, impaling him with a samurai sword among other injuries. Lind defended himself with a pistol, wounding Leatham and killing Borhanian. Leatham was arrested, along with a third participant in the attack, Suri Dao, but for some reason Ziz — who was reported by police to be at the scene, despite having faked his own death three months earlier, and still facing the Sonoma County charges from 2019 — was not taken into custody. Two months later, Zajko’s elderly parents were murdered in Pennsylvania and, when police served a search warrant at a motel where Zajko was staying, they learned that her Vermont roommate, Daniel Blank, was staying in another room. They searched that room and found not only Blank, but also “Ziz” LaSota — yet LaSota was again released from custody. Then in January of this year, police say, Lind was stabbed to death by Snyder, to prevent Lind from testifying against the Zizians who had attacked him. Three days after Lind’s murder, the Vermont shootout happened.

All of this deadly craziness, you understand, came out of the “Rationalist” movement, and perhaps I’m not the only one who smiles at this grim irony. Scott Siskind is not to blame, but he’s a psychiatrist, which is why I’m sure he’ll agree with my conclusion: Crazy People Are Dangerous.

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Posted on | February 2, 2025 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Apparently everyone is really digging the Radical Transgender Vegan Death Cult News. 
It was a bad week to be at RFK if you were a Senators fan. We lost two out of three to the Cubs and then got swept by the A’s, which means we’re siting at 13-19…but we’re just four games behind division-leading Boston. Maybe we’ll pick up some wins against the Twins this Tuesday.
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