The Other McCain

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

What Happens When Liberals ‘Succeed’

Posted on | February 20, 2026 | No Comments

Liberalism is about winning elections. Whatever the actual results of liberal policies may be, in terms of the well-being of the people who vote for liberals, are of no real consequence. So long as liberals keep winning elections, they consider their policies successful. We see this all the time in places like Baltimore, Philadelphia and St. Louis where, no matter how objectively bad things get — no matter how much poverty, misery and violence prevail — Democrats keep getting re-elected.

The Chicago Bears are reportedly ready to relocate to Hammond, Indiana, because Illinois has been controlled so long by Democrats that not even relocating from Chicago to the suburbs would have saved the franchise; the only hope for the Bears was to leave the state entirely. Businesses and people are fleeing the state; such companies as Boeing, Caterpillar and Tyson Foods have pulled their headquarters out of Illinois. One reason that Democrats in Illinois are so desperate to stop the deportation of illegal aliens is because without foreigners, the state would be losing population. Despite the deepening crisis in Illinois, however, the people there keep voting for Democrats — Kamala Harris got 54% of the vote there in 2024. There is no incentive for change if Democrats keep winning no matter what. And something similar is underway north of the border, which brings us to the news that has shocked Canada:

For eons, Canadians have viewed Alabama as a small state that, save for a few pockets, is dirt poor. All anybody seems to know about Alabama is that Montgomery and Birmingham were the centre of the civil rights movement. In 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” he called Birmingham “probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States.”
So, it was a shock when Canadian economist Trevor Tombe and the International Monetary Fund ran the numbers in 2023 and 2024 and concluded that Canada had, in fact, become poorer than Alabama. . . .
After adjusting for foreign exchange and some cost differences in both countries, the average for Canada’s 10 provinces was estimated at at US$55,000 in 2022, the same as Alabama. Shortly after, the IMF found Canada had actually fallen behind the southern state. (Canada has since edged ever-so-slightly higher than Alabama; the numbers are volatile from year to year.)
The timing was terrible for the Canadian psyche. Home prices were on an astronomical trajectory, inflation made everyday items such as groceries far more expensive and there was deep resentment toward Ottawa. Canadians could probably stomach having their living standards slip relative to the broader U.S., the epicentre of the world’s tech revolution. But Alabama? . . .

Yes, Alabama! If anyone wonders why Canada is now lagging behind Alabama, let me make a digression. About 30 years ago, I noticed an emerging theme in Democratic messaging. Our problem, they said, was a “growing gap between rich and poor.” This was the theme of numerous newspaper columns and a talking point in speeches by Democratic politicians, and it got me to wondering why this gap was growing.

Was it a matter of economic policy? Was racism — “RAAAAACISM!” — somehow a factor in this growing gap? And after some study, itn finally hit me: Immigration! It turns out that an influx of cheap labor from the Third World increases poverty. You don’t need a Harvard Ph.D. to figure this out. Every year during the 1990s, at least a million immigrants (both legal and illegal) were being added to the U.S. population. Most of these immigrants came from countries much poorer than the United States, lacked specialized work skills and arrived with few if any assets.

Most were not fluent in English, and quite a few of them were completely illiterate, even in their own native languages. No matter what other policy the government might pursue, the constant addition of so many immigrants — a million this year, a million next year, and so on, year after year — would inevitably increase the percentage of the population living at or below the poverty line. But liberals were ignoring this obvious factor in economic trends, instead focusing on statistical changes that got translated to “a growing gap between rich and poor.”

Well, guess why Canada has fallen behind Alabama?

In the 2015 election, Canada’s Liberal Party defeated the Conservative Party, and Justin Trudeau was the Prime Minister for the next 10 years before being succeeded by another Liberal, Mark Carney. So during a decade when the United States has rocked back and forth — Obama, then Trump, then Biden, then Trump again — Canada has been governed the whole time by the Liberal Party. And as long as the Liberals keep winning elections, that’s success, even though they’re falling behind Alabama.



 

Category: Alabama, Canada, Economics, Immigration, Liberals

In The Mailbox: 02.20.26 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | February 20, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

It’s 24 degrees and there’s a couple of inches of snow on the ground. At least the roads are clear.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: Overthrowing Nixon – The Graphic Novel, A Day With Ulysses S. Grant At Vicksburg (1863),
357 Magnum: Another Failure of the Victim-Selection Process,  Disney Tries to Create New Black Superhero – Fails Spectacularly, also SJW Doesn’t Care About the Child Victim, or the Murder Victim
EBL: Iwo Jima, Prince Andrew Arrested in UK, Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima, Pink Shrimp, and Ash Wednesday
Twitchy: Republicans Celebrate Dems Choosing Governor In Name Only Spanberger To Give SOTU Response, U.S. Women Win OT Hockey Gold, Leave Canadians Spinning & Seething, and Renee Good Memorial Burned In Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Incident 
Louder With Crowder: Parents call cops on their son over the crime of (check notes) posting right-wing opinions on social media, Canada assisted a young man’s suicide, but it turns out he was just “seasonally depressed,” and his family wants answers, AOC laughs at ICE agents while bragging about encouraging the disorder the left created, The Irony of Leftist Empathy , and NYC Hospital Ends Gender Treatment For Kids After Risk Of Losing Federal Funding
Vox Popoli: The Ending of All Endings, Extended Air War on Iran, Feature, Not Bug, Prince Andrew Arrested, and Did Iran Miss its Chance?
Stoic Observations: The New Intelligence Meritocracy, also, Defend Your Moat
Mazelit Airaksinen: California Nurse Claims “There’s No Jewish Race”
Upstream Reviews: Time God Warlock, Kevin James Meets The Tolerance Mob, and Beyond The Rift
Cedar Sanderson: Making A Home, I Remember, and FenCon – Mars Or Bust
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Maltese Taters
Jim McCoy: Amazon’s Fallout Series Is Must-See Streaming
Ammo.com: U.S. Firearm Deaths Per Year
Postcards From Barsoom: Dominion Congress

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Baldilocks: What’s Growing In Your Garden? also, Typing Small
CDR Salamander: Russia’s Middle-Aged Poor To The Grinder, also, Again – ESB’s Carry The Tactical Load
Dana Loesch: It’s Not About Dogs, also, Tucker Carlson Claims Israel Detained Him At The Airport 
Don Surber: The Ironic Curtain, also, Why they want California ruined
Racket News: FDA’s Straight Shooter – Don’t Bring Crappy Data To A Gunfight, also, How Politicians Smear The World Vol. 1
STUMP: The Return of Wealth Taxes – California & The Netherlands, also, 2024 Top U.S. Causes of Death By Age Group, 

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Category: Linkagery

‘He Was Mr. BLM’

Posted on | February 20, 2026 | No Comments

Big hat-tip to Luke Rosiak of the Daily Wire for calling attention to a story I missed last year. Probably gonna write more about this later on my Substack, but it’s a big enough story I can give you the gist of it here and still have plenty left to chew on over there. Ten years ago, Wesley Lowery was basically the poster boy for diversity in journalism.

In college, Lowery did internships at the Detroit News, the Columbus Dispatch, and the Wall Street Journal, then hired on at the Boston Globe in 2013, when he was 23. A year later, he was hired at the Washington Post, which had just brought in ex-Globe editor Marty Baron as their new top editor. Not long after Lowery joined the Post, he was sent to Ferguson, Missouri, to cover the 2014 race riots there. Talk about a career being “fast-tracked,” Lowery was moving at hyper-speed — front-page bylines in the Washington Post at age 24? Bob Woodward didn’t even join the Post until he was 27. Lowery’s star soared even higher the next year when he was made the lead reporter on the Post’s “Fatal Force” project, which compiled a database of police shootings (and other fatalities) nationwide, a project awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2016.

There were book deals, etc., and a job with CBS News before, in 2023, Lowery became a faculty member at American University, executive editor of the university’s Investigative Journalism Workshop (IJW).

Behind all this success, however, it appears that Lowery had a drinking problem and also a woman problem — the two problems were not unrelated — and while womanizing drunks have never been rare in the world of journalism, you can’t do that if you’re a university professor, because Title IX essentially criminalizes male heterosexual behavior:

Wesley J. Lowery, a Pulitzer-winning investigative reporter and one of the most influential journalists of his generation, has left his positions as the executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop and as an associate professor of journalism at American University in Washington, DC, after less than two years there. His departure follows a number of complaints against him, according to former colleagues, including at least three Title IX allegations, in which he was accused of improper behavior with colleagues and female students.

That was March 2025, and Lowery’s getting axed from his university gig wasn’t the end of the story. In the post-“Me Too” environment, it was necessary not merely to get Lowery fired from his job, but to drive a stake through the heart of his career, to ensure that he was permanently excluded from journalism forever. Two months after Lowery’s exit from American University, the Columbia Journalism Review published a lengthy account of his habitual lechery. One of the CJR’s sources was Imani Moise, a Wall Street Journal reporter who knew Lowery through the National Association of Black Journalists:

At the time of these encounters — which spanned from 2018 to 2024, when he had reached the height of his media stardom — each of these women viewed Lowery as a professional contact, someone they knew socially and looked up to, not as a romantic partner with whom they were engaging in consensual sex. Until now, some had feared making noise about Lowery, beyond telling a few confidants. “He was the golden boy, held up on this pedestal,” Moise said. She deeply felt his importance to journalism, to American culture, to so much. “He was Mr. BLM.”

Almost like a metaphor or something.



 

Category: Journalism, Media Bias, Racism

In The Mailbox: 02.18.26 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | February 18, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: With Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814)
EBL: Banning Dogs so not to offend Muslims in Mamdani’s NYC? Fat Tuesday, Davey and Goliath, and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Twitchy: NYC Pol Who Endorsed Mamdani Now Concerned “Warmth of Socialism” Could Cost People Their Homes, New Loophole Alert – Get Pregnant/Break Immigration Laws/Get Free Pass From Leftist Judge, and Democrats Just Humiliated Rep. Ratchet And She Is PISSED
Louder With Crowder: Lil’ Patriots go viral singing the National Anthem before their wiffle ball game, Woke “pastor” preaches that when women have abortions, it’s all because of faith and love, Did rock god Sammy Hagar predict our “national divorce” fifty years ago in a song? We NEED to start classifying transgenderism as a mental illness, and The left’s new AWFL anti-ICE protest involves buying a single thing of salt from Target for…reasons?
Vox Popoli: Russian Objectives are Expanding, The Battle of Orodruin, Now It’s a Problem, DOJ Defends Clown World, and The Great Shadow Falls
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Stop playing silly buggers

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Baldilocks: Liberty & Death – Revisited
CDR Salamander: So We Have A Maritime Action Plan
Dana Loesch: Yet Another Transtifa Killing Spree
Don Surber: Keeping up with the Drudge-dashian

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Category: Linkagery

Radical Vegan Transgender Cult Update: Maryland Trial Postponed Until June

Posted on | February 17, 2026 | No Comments

Left to right: Jack LaSota, Michelle Zajko, Daniel Blank

Monday was the one-year anniversary of the capture of three members of the “Zizian” cult, including the group’s leader Jack “Ziz” LaSota. The trio had been camping on private property near Frostburg, Maryland, when the property owner called police who arrested them on state charges, only to discover that they were subjects of a nationwide manhunt. LaSota and Michelle Zajko were both wanted in connection with various crimes to which the cult was believed to be connected, including the January 20, 2025, murder of a Border Patrol agent in a shootout in Vermont. The third member arrested in Frostburg was Daniel Blank, who had dropped out of UC-Berkeley and cut off contact with his family in California for two years prior to turning up in western Maryland.

On the anniversary of the Frostburg arrests, the Associated Press published an update on legal proceedings against the cult members:

CUMBERLAND, Md. (AP) — The violent deaths linked to the group known as Zizians stopped at six a year ago, after a U.S. border agent was killed and three members were arrested on trespassing and gun charges in the woods of western Maryland. Seven of the group’s members are jailed in three states, all awaiting trial.
Police in Maryland quickly connected Jack “Ziz” LaSota, Michelle Zajko and Daniel Blank to homicide investigations in California, Pennsylvania and Vermont after a landowner found them living in box trucks at the end of a snow covered dirt road last February, according to court documents and pre-trial testimony.
“All the suspects involved are to be questioned regarding other crimes that have occurred across the country and have ties with the Zizians Cult,” Maryland state Trooper Brandon Jeffries wrote after their Feb. 16, 2025 arrests. But their prosecutions have only inched along amid trial delays and little action in other cases.
Called “Zizians” by outsiders, the young, highly intelligent computer scientists appear to share radical beliefs about veganism, animal rights, gender identity and artificial intelligence. Since 2022, members have been tied to the death of one of their own during an attack on a California landlord, the landlord’s subsequent killing, the shooting deaths of Zajko’s parents in Pennsylvania, and a highway shootout in Vermont that left the border agent and another Zizian dead.
Jury selection was supposed to start this week in Cumberland, Maryland, where LaSota, Zajko and Blank are charged with possession of LSD and possession with intent to deliver LSD, multiple gun violations, trespassing and hindering a police officer.
The trial was delayed until June, however, after Zajko, who also is charged with resisting arrest, fired her attorney, briefly represented herself and hired a new lawyer.
In handwritten filings, she has made sprawling allegations of rights violations by snitches inside the Allegany County Detention Center and lies by police and prosecutors.
“In the interest of Hope, Justice and Truth, for the good of all people, and for the establishment of a true peace, the defense moves to dismiss this case,” Zajko declared in 20 pages of neat but almost indecipherably small handwriting.
Their lawyers and the lead prosecutor have all declined comment or not responded to interview requests.
Zajko also is accused of supplying the guns two other Zizians used in a fatal shootout in Vermont in January 2025, although her federal court docket starts and ends with the complaint charging her with lying to a Vermont gun dealer.
In that case, Teresa Youngblut is accused of opening fire on Border Patrol Agent David Maland during a traffic stop before another agent wounded her and killed her companion, Felix Bauckholt. The encounter happened just hours after President Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term, but in a Maryland court filing, Zajko sought to blame it on a culture of impunity she says is now evident in the administration’s mass deportation campaign.
“Renee Good is probably dead because the regime has so far been able to get away with murdering Ms. Bauckholt & framing Youngblut,” Zajko claimed. Good was fatally shot last month by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis. Neither ICE nor border patrol officials responded to messages seeking comment.
Zajko claimed authorities arrested the group to prevent them from exonerating Youngblut, who has pleaded not guilty in Vermont to murder and could face the death penalty if convicted.
“It is an act of obscene cruelty, despotism & the mark of a tyrannical regime to use a bad faith investigation & the threat of phony charges to conceal exculpatory evidence, threaten witnesses into silence, or threaten to put an innocent person to death, all to protect a murderous border patrol human,” wrote Zajko.
The judge in Youngblut’s case last week suspended deadlines for pretrial motions, citing the complexity of the capital case and noting that the exchange of evidence “will include material related to investigations into other individuals in multiple jurisdictions.”
Two other Zizians, Suri Dao and Alexander Leatham, are charged in a 2022 attack on a landlord in California that left another member, Emma Borhanian, dead, but their trial has been postponed multiple times. Another member, Maximilian Snyder, is charged with killing the landlord, Curtis Lind, three years later, just days before the Vermont shooting.
Dao’s attorney, Brian Ford, said proceedings are suspended for competency hearings and that his client is not guilty. Attorneys for the others, as well as family members of victims and those accused, either declined to comment or did not respond to messages.
LaSota, described by authorities as the apparent leader of the Zizians, has a May trial date in Baltimore federal court on a separate charge of being an armed fugitive — a charge she has asked to have dismissed, arguing it violates her Second Amendment rights.
Authorities allege LaSota faked her own death to evade charges after a 2019 protest in California and disappeared again after being accused of obstructing the investigation into the December 2022 shooting deaths of Zajko’s parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania.
No one has been charged for killing the Zajkos, and the Delaware County district attorney’s office said only that it still is being investigated. Jeffries, the Maryland trooper, said in a report that “Blank is under investigation for a double homicide that occurred in Delaware County, PA.”
Authorities also have described Zajko as a person of interest in her parents’ death. She has denied any role. In her recent filing, she referred to them as “adoptive guardians” and suggested her father might have killed her mother and then himself. Richard Zajko’s sister-in-law, Rosanne Zajko, declined to comment on behalf of the family.
James Broadwater wasn’t sure what to make of the strangers dressed all in black who parked their trucks near his home in Eckhart Mines, outside Frostburg, Maryland. Then Jeffries, the state trooper, told him to Google “Zizians.”
Broadwater testified recently that he had encountered LaSota and Zajko about a half-mile uphill from his house. They asked to stay, but Broadwater gave them until the next morning to leave. After talking with his wife he called state police.
“He changed his mind because he was afraid what would happen if he asked you guys to leave,” Jeffries said when questioned by Zajko in court.
Jeffries testified that a dispatcher had told him about an Associated Press article on the Zizians, published the day before, reporting details about the six deaths. He said LaSota told him they were willing to leave but the three would not identify themselves.
Jeffries said his suspicions were heightened because of the news coverage, their tactical gear that included ammunition on gun belts, and how the trucks were parked with chains on their tires. “I wanted to make sure I identified them before they left,” he testified, and they made the arrests.
The Zizians in Maryland have been working on a joint defense while jailed, though Blank’s parents are pressing the judge to release their son on bail, and his lawyer has sought to distance him from the others. Blank “should not be detained because of the company in which he was arrested,” attorney Rebecca Lechliter wrote.

Quite a thorough summary of a complex tale, and the excerpts from Zajko’s court filings (when she was representing herself, before getting a new lawyer) make clear that she’s far gone into paranoia and the kind of grandiose thinking typical of manic-phase bipolar disorder.

The most important news here is that the trial on state charges in Cumberland will be postponed until June, and meanwhile LaSota faces a May federal trial in Baltimore. This means three or four months of waiting, and if I decide to make a road trip to cover either of those trials in person, at least I won’t be traveling in the ice and snow.

PREVIOUSLY:



 

Category: California, Crime, Maryland, Pennsylvania, The Transgender Cult, Vermont

In The Mailbox: 02.16.26

Posted on | February 17, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Spring 2026 Based Book Sale Top Ten…So Far
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: The Day of Pickett’s Charge (1863), Rubio’s Munich Speech – The Graphic Novel, and A Day On Moonbase Alpha (2034)
357 Magnum: California Hydroelectric Failure on Friday the 13th, also Self-Defense in Washington, DC?
EBL: Robert Duvall RIP, The Rest of the Fish – Salmon, Horrific – Olive Garden Worker Deep Fries His Head, The (Imposed) Silence of the Trans, and Whitefish in Great Lakes
Twitchy: Deranged Troon Shoots Six At Rhode Island Youth Hockey Game, Gov. Hairgel Gets Torched For Playing Victim After Ted Cruz Jab, and Occasional Cortex Stuns Munich Crowd With Her Geographical “Knowledge” of South America
Louder With Crowder: Father goes off on school board after finding out they forced his son to protest ICE, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins claims with a straight face that CNN covers Trump fairly and has no bias against him whatsoever, White woman films herself harassing an ICE Agent outside of a school…except he was just a cop, Nick Shirley strikes again, uncovering homeless illegal alien kids living on the streets of Gavin Newsom’s California, and Trans lawmaker has to correct himself when she/them misgendered a “boogeyMAN”
Vox Popoli: The End of Deep Time, Why Journalism Can’t Survive, The Summons of the Sleeper, The Convergence of D&D, and The Missing Verse in Matthew
Cedar Sanderson: Getting Somewhere, also, Cookbook Wisdom – Introduction
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Conspiracies, also, Pocket Litter
Stoic Observations: The New AI God Botherers
Mazelit Airaksinen: CUNY To Host Talk On Hamas Tunnels As “Resistance To Oppression”
L’Ombre de L’Olivier: AI – Taking Your Job Or Your Pension?
Upstream Reviews: Twelve Months
Defending The Wood Perilous: Pathways & Feminine Thinking

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: ‘Nothing to Fear but Keir Himself’, also, Who’s Afraid of an Iranian Refugee Crisis?
American Greatness: AOC Facing Ridicule After Series of Embarrassing Gaffes on World Stage, Leftists Hold ‘President’s Day Flip Off’ , House Judiciary Chairman Jordan Considering Legislation to Counter Sanctuary Cities, Election 2026 – California Republicans Have a Chance, and How Deep Is the Deep State?
Animal Magnetism: Animal Magnetism LIVE Ep. 75 – Double Feature
Baldilocks: Some Personal Black History, also, Not Trying To Get Rich
BattleSwarm: Labour – The Pedophile Party, Microsoft AI Head Claims Most White Collar Jobs Will Be Automated In 18 Months, and Texas 2026 Primaries: Mayes Middleton Vs. Chip Roy For Attorney General
Behind The Black: A sinuous Martian ridge of uncertain origin, Fairing from India’s Bahubali rocket launched in December found in Maldives, Rocket Factory Augsburg getting close to launch, SpaceX launches 29 Starlink satellites, and Only the power-hungry truly lust for war
Cafe Hayek: Trump Aims to Repel Global Capital and Make the U.S. More Like the E.U., also, Protective Tariffs Are Designed to Obstruct Citizens’ Access to Imports
CDR Salamander: February Free For All – On Midrats, also, The Seven Sons of China Are Stealing Our Stuff
Dana Loesch: Three Very Stupid Things
Don Surber: Our presidents
Elizabeth Nickson: This Is Armageddon Energy – For Them
First Street Journal: A kerfuffle over Altar Girls
Gates Of Vienna: Valentine’s Day in Rotherham, Two Quotes on Cultural Enrichment, Trump’s Islam Policy Remains Incoherent, and Beaten to Death by Antifa
The Geller Report: SCOTUS Hands Trump Huge Foreign Aid Victory, Racist Spike Lee Wears Jihadi Outfit To NBA All-Star Game, Mass Protests Against Mullahs Reignite In Iran, Muslims Burn Nigerian Pastor & Wife Alive In Their Church, and UN Official Calls Israel “Common Enemy” Of Humanity
Hollywood In Toto: Consider Elizabethtown as a Valentine’s Day Treat, How Close Encounters of the Third Kind Special Edition Changed Hollywood, Kathy Griffin’s Comeback Captures Moral Collapse in Real Time, ‘Free Speech’ Bullying Shows Sorry State of Hollywood, Journalism, and Wake Up, Hollywood – Audiences Want Romantic Movies
Legal Insurrection: Japan Nets Chinese Trawler as Global Backlash to Beijing’s Fishing Raiders Grows, Rubio’s Munich Speech: A Powerful Message Delivered With Grace and Diplomacy, Maryland Woman Tells School Board She Called Child Protective Services Over TPUSA Meeting, Congress Demands Answers From ATF Over Backdoor Gun Registry, and Potomac Interceptor Rupture Poised to Become the Largest Sewage Spill in U.S. History
Nebraska Energy Observer: Amelia on G. K. Chesterton, and life now in the formerly free world, McClintock, and Rubio
Outkick: Dramatic Bubba Wallace Acted Unbelievably After The Daytona 500, Driver Quits With Two To Go & We’ve Got BEEF!, Here’s How NBC’s Disastrous Investment in the NBA Could Cost Network the NFL, Stephen A. Smith: The Dunk Contest Died On LeBron James’ Watch, Losing A Hockey Fight To A Frenchman Should Be Grounds For Automatic Expulsion From Olympics, and MLB Network’s Abby Labar Melts Brains In An Upside-Down Dress, ESPN Had A ROUGH Weekend & AOC Knows Geography!
Power Line: Elon and the Engineers, Why Khanna can do it, In re Presidents Day, Day No. 2 of ‘shutdown’ No. 3, and When all men are paid for existing
Racket News: The Swamp Log
Shark Tank: DeSantis Touts Success Of State’s Iguana Removal
STUMP: The Week In Meep
This Ain’t Hell: Army veteran Robert Duvall dies aged 95, Cuba’s Impending Collapse, and President Donald Trump says Voter ID will be in place for midterms, with or without Congress
Transterrestrial Musings: Ice Dancing, About That Wet Dress Rehearsal, and The Manchurian Candidate
Victory Girls: Valentine’s Day at the 2026 Winter Olympics: Milan’s Olympic Village Runs Out of Condoms, Hillary Clinton’s “Women’s Rights” Panel Featured a Man, and TSA Takes The Brunt Of Latest Democrat Government Shutdown
Watts Up With That: AI and Air Conditioning are Allegedly Threatening Renewable Energy Dominance, The University of East Anglia Discovers the Urban Heat Island Effect, WUWT Leads The Way Again, The hidden impact of polluted snow, and Models Gone Wild: The Ionosphere Triggers Earthquakes?
The Federalist: From Chuck To AOC, Here Are The Worst People Of The Week, EXCLUSIVE: Chip Roy Lays Out How Senate Can Vote On SAVE Act Without Nuking Filibuster, Andrew Sullivan Is A Trump Supporter, But As With Most Things Political He Just Doesn’t Know It, Rooting Against Anti-American Olympians Is The Patriotic Thing To Do, and Ed Crane Was Right About Free Speech And The Iraq War Years Before The Country Caught Up
Mark Steyn: The End Game, If It’s Tuesday This Must Be the Belgian Stabber, Dead Man Walking: Lee Marvin in Point Blank, On the Town: In the Pink, and A Presidential Medley, Part One

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Category: Linkagery

Warning: Stay Away From St. Louis

Posted on | February 16, 2026 | No Comments

The headline probably seems like common sense to anyone who knows anything about St. Louis. If you’re from Missouri or the part of western Illinois near St. Louis, you probably don’t need any warnings, because the city is notorious dangerous, and folks in the immediate vicinity know to avoid it. “Well, Stacy, how dangerous is St. Louis?” you ask.

IT’S WORSE THAN BALTIMORE!

This is a Third World category of danger found in very few places in the United States. In 2023, only two cities — New Orleans, with a homicide rate of 46 per 100,000 residents, and Memphis, at 41 per 100,000 residents — exceeded the rate in St. Louis which, at 38 homicides per 100,000 residents, was worse than either Baltimore or Washington, D.C., which tied for fourth place that year. My friend Dana Pico likes to joke about “Killadelphia,” but the homicide rate there was just 26 per 100,000. And there were twice as many homicides per capita in St. Louis than in either Cleveland or Detroit. That’s pretty doggone bad.

Did I mention that the population of St. Louis has seen a drastic decline in recent decades? There are currently fewer than 300,000 residents in the city, down more than 50% since 1970, but not all of the lost population was murdered. Most of them escaped to the suburbs, or left the area entirely, as rampant crime turned St. Louis into a nightmare of violence and thievery. Did I mention that St. Louis is a stronghold of the Democratic Party? The city is part of Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, which is rated D+29 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index and was formerly represented by “Squad” member Cori Bush, before she lost the 2024 Democratic primary to Wesley Bell. (Who to blame? The Jews!)

Former Rep. Cori Bush (D-St. Louis)

In the 2024 election, Kamala Harris got 81% of the vote in St. Louis. Nothing good ever happens in a place where 80% of people vote Democrat, which is why it would be a mistake to think that you could grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks in St. Louis and survive the experience:

ST. LOUIS — A woman was fatally shot Tuesday morning in the drive-through area of a Starbucks coffee shop in the city’s Tower Grove East neighborhood, police said.
The incident took place about 10 a.m. in the 2300 block of South Grand Boulevard near Sidney Street.
Police were searching the area for a man wearing a lime green vest and hard hat who was walking away from the scene.

If you’ll look at the map at the top of the post, you can see that this Starbucks is near Tower Grove Park, actually one of the “good” neighborhoods in St. Louis, but given the wretchedness of the city, even the “good” neighborhoods are awful. The victim of Tuesday’s shooting was soon identified as 28-year-old ice skating coach Sam Linehan.

Murder victim Gabrielle ‘Sam’ Linehan

It did not take long for police in St. Louis to apprehend the suspect who, to no one’s surprise, had “a lengthy criminal record”:

A former Team USA skater was reportedly shot and killed in a Starbucks drive-thru in Missouri during an alleged armed robbery involving a suspect with a lengthy criminal record.
Citing court documents, the New York Post said Gabrielle “Sam” Linehan, 28, was sitting in her car outside the coffee shop when she was murdered on Tuesday shortly after 10 a.m.
The media outlet identified the suspect as 58-year-old Keith Lamon Brown.
Online jail records show Brown was arrested early Wednesday morning. He was charged with first-degree murder, three counts of first-degree robbery, four counts of armed criminal action, as well as one count of unlawful possession of a gun connected to Linehan’s death and other recent robberies, according to the records.
The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department shared surveillance photos of the suspect, which showed him wearing a high-visibility vest and white helmet during the time of the deadly shooting.
Police said a SWAT team later executed a search warrant at his home, where detectives found evidence from two prior robberies.
Court documents allege that Brown was wanted for two armed robberies that happened just a few days before Linehan’s murder.
“On or about February 6, 2026, the defendant pointed a firearm into the Confidential Victim 1’s vehicle while she was in the drive-thru. He stole a 9mm handgun, her purse containing bank cards, and Confidential Victim 1’s and her daughter’s cell phones,” the documents noted.
“On or about February 8, 2026, the defendant went into a store and pointed his firearm at Confidential Victim 2, who was working as a cashier, demanding and receiving money. At both locations, he discharged his firearms,” according to the documents.
The documents also described Brown as a convicted felon, noting that he has a criminal history that dates back to 1986.
“On or about November 14, 1986, in County of Saint Louis, the defendant was convicted of the offense of armed criminal action,” the documents show.
About a decade later on October 31, 1996, he was convicted of the offense of armed criminal action, per the records.

Accused killer Keith Lamon Brown

This guy is a one-man crime wave, and appears to have been perpetrating felonies more or less continuously since he was a teenager. Which is to say, he is a typical resident of St. Louis, a city where Kamala Harris got 81% of the vote. Nothing good ever happens there, and the only advice I can offer is to avoid St. Louis entirely. Don’t become a statistic.



 

Category: Crime, Missouri

Rule 5 Sunday: Snow Bunnies

Posted on | February 16, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

From the files.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

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