The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 05.15.26 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | May 16, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: A Conversation About Firearms, also News Flash – EV Range Drops Cold Weather
Doug Ross: Fauci’s WMD
EBL: Shucking Scallops, Donnie’s Angels, and “Viva Las Vegas”
Twitchy: Rep. Angie Nixon Arrested After Storming DeSantis Office, U.S. Delegation Dumps Every Single Gift, Badge, & Burner Phone Before Leaving Beijing, and NYC’s Islamist Mayor Honors When Arabs Tried & Failed To Finish Hitler’s Work
Louder With Crowder: Ken Paxton forces Texas Children’s Hospital to pay back the $10 Million they billed Medicare for child sex change operations, Drag Queen Demands Access To Youth After Officials Ban Pride Month At Libraries, Spencer Pratt drops new banger LEGO-themed ad to say “Karen Bass is Awful”, Kamala Reveals The Left’s Plan For America, and It’s No Joke, and Spencer Pratt drops the PERFECT response to his socialist opponent’s attempt to ban you from BBQing in your backyard 
Vox Popoli: The Real Reason, Owen on Tucker, The Strategic Cost of War, Mr. Tubcuddle’s Last Ride, and The Irrelevance of Acclaim
According To Hoyt: Kingship By Consent, The Blind Leading The Blinkered, The Great Water Conspiracy, Knowledge of the Ancients, and You Impostor!
Stoic Observations: The End of Western Thinking, also, Ending WAF Paranoia

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: Texas Children’s Hospital Compelled to Create Nation’s First Detransition Clinic in Landmark Settlement with AG Paxton, Justice Department Alleges Yale Medical School Discriminated Based on Race, CIA Director Meets With Senior Cuban Regime Officials in Havana, DHS Pushes Forward With Large-Scale Immigration Detention Hubs, and How to Persuade Iran to End War…and Give Up Its Nuclear Program
BattleSwarm: Followup: Flashy Car Daycare Commie Fraudster Indicted, LinkSwarm For May 15, and Who Is Behind Pro-Cornyn “Association of Texas Conservatives”?
Behind The Black: SpaceX launches cargo Dragon to ISS, The barren hills west of Jezero Crater, Intuitive Machines buys British ground station company, Northrop Grumman completes successful test of new nozzle for its solid-fueled boosters, and Virgin Galactic releases ’26 first quarter financials; stock at new low under $3
Cafe Hayek: A Small Step Toward Saving More Lives of People In Need of Kidney Transplants, The Hollow Ring of “Hollowed Out”, An Old and Tired Movie, and Competition Soars
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Chicago Boyz: Good news about Tina Peters, History Friday – Mr. Mulholland’s Big Oops!  and Paxton Shines
Don Surber: Trump conquers Red China
First Street Journal: Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen, Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen (2), and Propaganda from the credentialed media will not change reality
Flopping Aces: Is it time for the base to go nuclear on the GOP Senate?
Gates Of Vienna: Jihadis In Our Midst: It’s a New Ballgame — More Americans Refusing to Go the Way of Europe, R.I.P. Takuan Seiyo and Max Denken, Jihad Attack on the Louvre Thwarted, Catastrophic Failure, and Service Restored
The Geller Report: Muslims Outside Of A London Mosque Threatening to Behead Jews, Bernie Sanders and Occasional Cortex Propose Legislation To Kill AI Data Centers Construction, “SHOCKING LEVELS OF FRAUD”, Iran Strikes, Sinks Indian Vessel Near Oman, Seizes Tanker, and Speaker Mike Johnson Warns of ‘Mini Mamdanis’ Taking The Country ‘Far, Far Left’
Hollywood In Toto: When Late-Night Rivals Fought Like Cats and Dogs, This Five for Fighting Musical Duet Will Melt Your Heart, The Free Speech Fight That Kimmel, Legacy Media Ignore, Goodbye, Stephen Colbert: Let Them Eat Cake, and Mandalorian and Grogu Faces Even More Box Office Woes?
Legal Insurrection: Venezuela Presses Guyana Land Dispute at U.N. as U.S. Secures Nuclear Material, Cornell President Cleared of Wrongdoing In Parking Lot Incident, Texas Military Vet Leaves Penn State Law School Over Mandatory Anti-Racism Course, US Supreme Court Unanimously Rejects Stay Of Virginia Supreme Court Redistricting Ruling, and Newsom Reveals Democrats’ ‘Break the Glass’ Plan to Stop GOP Sweep in Governor Race
Nebraska Energy Observer: The American Way of War Part 2, Hmmmm, and Anglosphere DNA
Outkick: Caitlin Clark honored for massive career milestone before Fever fall to Mystics, Nationals unveil latest exciting/horrifying snack, Golden Knights’ Mitch Marner doing the funniest thing with postseason explosion, Horse dies at finish line in first race during tragic start to Preakness weekend, and Jena Sims covers her butt with a ribbon – NFL saves us from Tony Romo – Is Star Wars dead?
Power Line: What Happened In China, The Supremes decline, Our Violent Democrats, Pope Leo doesn’t make a statement, and A Political Revolution?
Racket News: Note From Editor – Translator Needed
Shark Tank: DeSantis Expands School Guardian Program to State Colleges & Universities
Shot In The Dark: Avenging…What?
The Political Hat: The Non-Jewish Roots Of Marxism, Quick Takes – Nature Can Do Anything: Co-Author A Paper; Get Married; Be A Politician’s Constituent, and Firing Line Friday: Resolved: That We Should Move towards Privatization, Including the Schools-Part II
This Ain’t Hell: Caution…may just p*** you off, Royal Navy to Provide Force Package to SoH, Right to Repair, and Valor Friday
Transterrestrial Musings: The New Democrat Party, Hamas’s Failure, SpaceX’s Louisiana Purchase, Blue Origin’s Finances, and The New Anti-Semitism
Victory Girls: Minnesota: Different Day, More Fraud, Occasional Cortex Is Not Kamala Harris — And Republicans Should Notice, and Kamala Harris Lost The Election. Now She Wants To Redesign The Country
Watts Up With That: Climate Pseudoscience Debunked: Livestock Methane Fears are Baseless, The Electricity Myth: Data Centers Aren’t the Villain, Ed Miliband vows permanent shutdown of the North Sea, Disaster? NYT Op-Ed on Demoting the Climate Pitch, and Wildebeest, Buffalo, and Cattle, Oh My!
The Federalist: Nebraska’s Homeschool Crackdown Is Harming Kids And Infringing On Parental Rights, Paxton Scores A $10 Million Victory In The Fight Against The ‘Trans Kids’ Industrial Complex, Here Are The Plug-And-Play Templates Your State Needs To Pass Secure Election Laws, There’s Nothing MAGA About 500,000 Student Visas For The CCP, and Worst Prosecutor In America Struggles To Explain Why Democrats Keep Protecting Illegal Alien Murderers
Mark Steyn: Live Around the Planet – The Twain Meet, The Frog Slog, and A Society Entirely Without “Division”

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 05.15.26 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | May 15, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Probably not going to get caught up, but I’ll do what I can.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

Great self-own, or greatest self-own?

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Australia Is a Defenseless Victim Zone, also, ABC News Censors Story on Disney Cruise Lines
Doug Ross: Diagnosing & Treating Trump Derangement Syndrome, The Day Wall Street Fell Off The Earth (1929), 
EBL: Triggerfish, MAGA Vance Rubio 2028, Israel Independence, Hot Smoked Salmon, and UK Prime Minister Starmer Refuses To Go Away
Twitchy: James Woods Putting John Thune On Blast Over The SAVE Act Is A Beautiful Thing, “Promises Made, Promises BROKEN”, and Mamdani Rails Against Swastikas And Then Goes Home To His 10/7 Cheerleader Wife
Louder With Crowder: Kamala Harris calls for a Democrat “no bad ideas” brainstorm, then lists the WORST possible ideas, Democrat senator makes bonkers comment about there being “abortion in the water,” and Lee Zeldin is as confused as we are, Nolan’s Odyssey Backlash Explodes and Hollywood is Blaming Elon Musk, John Fetterman effectively ends his political career calling out the communists destroying his party (and America) BY NAME, and American Idol alum turns Tina Turner classic into anti-Karen Bass anthem, even Spencer Pratt finds it catchy
Vox Popoli: The Neocon’s Despair, OOTS Now in Print, Replacement Migration is Real, Reddit Takes on PROBABILITY ZERO, and Give Them Grass
Upstream Reviews: Saving The Dodo, also, Storm-Dragon
Cedar Sanderson: Freedom of the Clouds, also, Building Castles in the Air
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Chicken Soup
Hans Schantz: 2026’s Top Based Books – So Far
Ammo.com: The Easiest States In Which To Buy A Gun
Weird Catholic: The Feet of the Ascension
Jim McCoy: Pastime Pictures Monster Summer
Stoic Observations: Claude Has An AHA! Moment

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: Carriers – Not Dead Yet, And Unquestionably Not Unloved, also, The Lesson of Murderer’s Row – Two Layers Deeper
Dana Loesch: The Woke Reich Tears Off The Mask, also, MTG Crashes Out Over Questions On Congressional Trading
Don Surber: Pax Annexa, also, 10,000 rulings from 10,000 maniacs
STUMP: NYC Pension Watch – Balancing the Budget by Shorting the Pensions, 

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Category: Linkagery

This Should Not Need to Be Said

Posted on | May 15, 2026 | No Comments

It has been remarked that the demand for racism now exceeds the genuine supply by such a great margin that there is an incentive to manufacture phony racism — thus explaining the frequent hoaxes wherein the alleged victims of oppression claim to be assaulted while, for example, going out to get a Subway sandwich in Chicago.

Such is the latest fake outrage involving a New York Democrat, a Virginia Republican and a Richmond radio talk show host. The New York Times:

“Racist Remark” — flatly asserted as a fact, as if Kiggans had dropped the N-word, and what, pray tell, was this most grievous insult?

A vulnerable Republican congresswoman in Virginia set off an uproar from Democrats after she agreed with remarks by a local radio host who said that Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader and a Black man, should keep his “cotton-picking hands off of Virginia.”
The dust-up surrounding the congresswoman, Representative Jen Kiggans, who is facing one of the country’s toughest re-election battles, is the latest chapter in Virginia’s redistricting saga. Ms. Kiggans was speaking with Rich Herrera, the host of a conservative morning talk show in Richmond, to discuss the fallout from the State Supreme Court’s ruling that invalidated a new congressional map that Virginia voters had approved in an April referendum.
During their conversation, Mr. Herrera lamented a discussion that Mr. Jeffries and Democratic members of the Virginia congressional delegation had on Saturday in which lawmakers discussed the idea of having the entire Virginia Supreme Court replaced in a long-shot effort to restore the voter-approved map.
“If Hakeem Jeffries wants to be involved in Virginia politics, then I suggest he does what a bunch of New Yorkers are doing — leave New York, move down here to Virginia, and run for office down here,” Mr. Herrera said. “If not, get your cotton-picking hands off of Virginia.”
Ms. Kiggans replied: “That’s right. I, ditto. Yes, yes to that.”
After a Democratic opposition research group, American Bridge, circulated a clip on social media of Ms. Kiggans’s response to Mr. Herrera’s remarks, Democrats denounced Ms. Kiggans, with some calling for her to step down from office.

So, Mr. Herrera — who I assume, from his surname, to be of Hispanic ancestry — used a common colloquialism to object to the New York Democrat’s interference in Virginia politics, a sentiment heartily assented to by Rep. Kiggans, a Navy veteran whose district includes Virginia Beach. According to the New York Times, the phrase “cotton-picking” is inherently racist, which is certainly news to me and every other Southerner who ever used it, among them a singer from Memphis:

Samson told Delilah
Loud and clear:
“Keep your cotton-picking fingers
Out my curly hair!”

That song, incidentally, was written by a black man, Claude Demetrius, who became wealthy overnight when “Hard-Headed Woman” hit No. 1 on the charts and was included in the soundtrack of King Creole.

WHITE PEOPLE PICKED COTTON, TOO!

To suggest or imply otherwise is counter-factual. My parents picked cotton in Alabama, as did my aunts and uncles and grandparents. Basically everybody who lived in the rural South prior to World War II picked cotton, and there is zero evidence that, historically, the adjectival phrase “cotton-picking” had any racial connotation.

Now, let me introduce you to Matt Osborne, whom longtime readers may remember as part of the Team Kimberlin crew back in the day (circa 2012) when myself, Aaron Walker, John Hoge and others were engaged in various courtroom entanglements with the pro se pipsqueak pipe bomber. Osborne was a leftist until, at a progressive conference in 2018, he had an unpleasant encounter with fanatical proponents of the transgender agenda. Osborne has since taken a right-hand turn and, at least privately, apologized for his misdeeds on behalf of Team Kimberlin. It is my habit to work in “file-it-and-forget-it” mode. There’s too much craziness in the world for me to commit neural resources to remembering past grievances, and I do not harbor too many grudges (a few cherished grudges will do). So it’s not as if I am in a position to make a grand gesture of magnanimously “forgiving” Matt Osborne; I’m just too busy (or too lazy) to bother Googling the reasons I should still hate him. Your mileage may vary, of course, and if you want to keep hating him, don’t let me stop you. Meanwhile, however, here’s what Matt Osborne wrote about this bogus “cotton-picking” controversy:

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the term ‘cotton-picking’ has been used as an intensifier since at least 1917. The entry also lists the word as “damned” due to its supposed racial connotations, but this is a modern projection on the past, because slavery had disappeared for two generations. By the time people said ‘cotton-picking’, two-thirds of sharecroppers were white. Old white people in the south still remember their cotton-picking family members.
Spare me your commentary on the Civil War and slavery, please, because sharecropping was a form of economic bondage that applied to blacks and whites in proportion to their share of the southern population for decades after it.
In T.S. Stribling’s The Forge (1931), which is set in north Alabama during and after the Civil War, Miltiades Vaiden and his sister harvest $2,000 worth of cotton themselves because no labor, free or slave, is available. Stribling based his book on a real family; the Scruggs & Vaden cotton gin still exists in Lauderdale County, though it is completely modern.
Despite many patents issued from the 1850s on, no one could produce a practical machine at scale to replace hand-picking of cotton until the 1940s. International Harvester was the first to do this. Even though the first fully-mechanized cotton field was in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the south was slower to adopt mechanized cotton picking than California, which passed the 50% mechanical tipping point in 1951. Hand-picking was not fully replaced in the south until the end of the 1960s.
‘Cotton-picking’ was a thing that poor white people did for almost a century and the phrase was always part of southern life. It was not exclusively or primarily used as a racial epithet, and it never referred to slavery. Rather, the ‘racial undertone’ only exists today in the minds of the recipients who want to hear it as racist.
Such people take umbrage because they wish to feel offended, not because the phrase was ever offensive. No one gets to skip over the parts of history that fail to conform to their priors. This is as true for the postwar sharecropping period as it is for the antebellum south.
So the reader will excuse me if I refuse to join in the tumult of stupidity over Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia agreeing with a radio show host that Democratic Rep. Hakim Jeffries should get his “cotton-picking hands off Virginia”. The NAACP is demanding that Kiggans apologize for saying “That’s right. Ditto” in response.
This is yet another fake affront from race-baiting activists. Kiggans was clearly agreeing with the sentiment that Jeffries should leave Virginia alone. Neither she nor Rich Herrera, who is Mexican-American, meant ‘cotton-picking’ as a racist epithet any more than Bugs Bunny did.
Rev. Cozy Bailey, President of the NAACP Virginia State Conference, made it very clear in his statement that politics are the actual purpose of the contrived backlash. Virginia Democrats broke the laws of the commonwealth to pass a redistricting plan that the state supreme court predictably overturned.
Bailey complained that “a large percentage” of the ‘Yes’ voters “are people of color, particularly Black people. And so we are very sensitive in this moment to anything that continues to be oppressive or suppressive to our thoughts.”
Translation: I am being overly-sensitive and feigning oppression because I am actually mad about something else. Literally no one is oppressing or suppressing Bailey’s thoughts, or Jeffries’s thoughts, or anyone else’s thoughts with the phrase ‘cotton-picking’. On the contrary, it is Bailey who wishes to oppress and suppress the spoken thoughts of other people.
Kiggans gave a statement to WDBJ7’s sister station in Richmond, WTVR, agreeing that Herreira “never should have used that language, and of course that’s not the sentiment I was agreeing to.” This was not good enough for Bailey, and we can hope Kiggans will ignore calls for further apologies, because America is exhausted with political actors playing the race card on the flimsiest of pretexts. Cotton is not racist. It is a plant. Picking cotton is not racist. It is agriculture.

Hear! Hear! My only addition to what Matt said is to note that it wasn’t just “sharecroppers” who picked cotton. This involves unfortunate stereotypes surrounding so-called “poor whites” in the South. My ancestors were land owners and respectable people. However, as the old saying had it, they were “land rich, but cash poor.” In the aftermath of the Civil War, and continuing for some 75 years thereafter, poverty was an almost universal condition of the rural South. As my beloved Aunt Pat Huber said, “We didn’t know we were poor — everybody was poor!”

While I could write many paragraphs in defense of the Southern yeomanry, my point is that the stigmatization of self-sufficient farmers, who earned their living by honest labor — including, among other arduous tasks, picking their own cotton — is an insult to people who certainly were not “white trash.” Professor Wayne Flynt’s prize-winning book Poor but Proud: Alabama’s Poor Whites is highly recommended, for anyone who cares to educate themselves on this subject.

To see liberals engage in race-baiting by ignorantly inventing a racist “dog-whistle” connotation for a common phrase makes me angry. It’s so absurd it should not require an answer, and I regret the necessity of having answered at such length. Don’t provoke me again.



 

Category: Economics, History, Media Bias, New York Times, Racism

In The Mailbox: 05.12.26

Posted on | May 13, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

On the road tomorrow and Thursday. Posting may be sporadic.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

Bishop Barron responds to Redditors.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Doug Ross: With Neil Armstrong On The Moon (1969)
EBL: Cleaning Triggerfish, Why oil will not hit $200 per barrel, Sydney Sweeney – She’s Not Retarded, Check Your Cholesterol, and “I’m Gonna Charleston, Back to Charleston”
Twitchy: 18-Year-Old Citizen Dies of Cancer With Parents At His Side, NBC Tries To Sell New Pandemic Panic But Nobody’s Buying, and Nick Kristof Screws The Pooch
Louder With Crowder: California Gov candidate tries to set ground rules how a reporter will be allowed to interview him, AWFL Joy Fair claims taking advantage of Trump Accounts to save for your child’s future is literally “Toddler White Nationalism”, Yet another bathroom controversy in Loudon County where a trans student has been filming girls under the stalls for THREE YEARS, Crowder confronts Nick Fuentes over his agenda to elect democrats in 2026, and Another day, another mob of pro-Hamas progressives assaulting Jewish kids in Zohran Mamdani’s NYC
Vox Popoli: Migrants for the Pro-Immigration Voters, Iran to Trump: Surrender, The Eurovision Boycott, Confirmed, and Australia vs Torba
Based Books: Agents of Counter-Spoliation
Cedar Sanderson: Groundskeeper – Fen Dead Chapter 2, 
Stoic Observations: Consciousness, Self, & The Soul

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: Trump Shares Video on Truth Social Alleging Rigged 2020 Election in Michigan, Dr. Oz Says Russia, China and Cuba Involved in Medicaid Fraud Schemes in California, NY and Florida, Virginia Democrats Ask US Supreme Court to Reinstate Congressional Map, Supreme Court Clears Way for Alabama Redistricting Effort Ahead of Midterms, and Who Really Needs Whom? Trump, Xi Jinping, and the Illusion of Chinese Strength
BattleSwarm: Chrome Secretly Installing AI On Your PC
Behind The Black: Curiosity looks closely at the broken slab that had been stuck on its drill bit, SpaceX and Google negotiating deal to launch data centers into space, OHB joins Dassault’s project to build a reusable mini-shuttle, and Two overnight launches from SpaceX and China
CDR Salamander: We Have A Shipbuilding Plan
Chicago Boyz: Tales of the Base Tour Guide – The Lost Ladies
Don Surber: Trump cleans up Obama’s mess
Flopping Aces: Just wipe them out
Gates Of Vienna: Palestinians Rule in Hamburg
The Geller Report: Trump Travels to China for Major Summit With Xi With Tech Titans in Tow, October 7 Barbarism Beyond All Imagination, Masked Muslims Assault Jewish Children Outside Synagogue in NYC, Terrorize Jewish Neighborhoods, DERANGED DEMOCRAT PARTY: 42% of Democrats Believe Trump Assassination Attempts Staged, and Democrat California Mayor Pleads Guilty To Spying For Communist China
Hollywood In Toto: Why ‘What Did I Miss?’ Alum Agreed to More Grueling Isolation, HiT’s 25 Best* Movies of All Time, Goodbye, Stephen Colbert: A Rare Moment of Comedy, That Charlie Kirk Roast Joke Wasn’t Out of Line, and Is Baywatch Reboot Another Blow to Body Positivity Movement?
Legal Insurrection: Study: Hundreds Of North Carolina Criminals Released During COVID Later Reoffended, Five GOP South Carolina Senators Reject Redistricting Efforts, PA Supreme Court Justice Changes Affiliation From Democrat to Independent, Newsom Spends $20 Million in Taxpayer Dollars Buying Diapers From Family Friend, and Report Finds ‘Deliberate and Coordinated’ Use of Sexual Violence by Hamas on Oct. 7 
Nebraska Energy Observer: Dark by 2050
Outkick: Noah Syndergaard Blasts Zohran Mamdani As Mets Dysfunction Reflects NYC Chaos, MLB Owners & Players Begin Negotiations In NY As Salary Cap Fight Looms, “Ted Lasso” Actor Signs Pro Contract With El Paso FC, The Tkachuk Brothers Talk About Smuggling Beer Into Olympic Village, and Hilary Duff Makes Her SI Cover Debut – Carrie Underwood Rocks Out With Motley Crue – Defending Bananaball
Power Line: The Dems’ Absurd Lie of the Day, “Cruel Joke”, I smell a rat, Jimmy Lai’s struggle, and Will There Be Accountability for Minnesota’s Fraud Scandals?
Racket News: Activism Uncensored – Protestors Gather At Bar Investigated For Holding #FreeBeerDay If Trump Is Assassinated
Shark Tank: Mike Johnson & House GOP Brass Endorse Sydney Gruters For FL-16
Shot In The Dark: Worst Empire Ever
The Political Hat: Womb Transplants Mean One Thing: Catgirl Mommies
This Ain’t Hell: Remains of one soldier in Morocco recovered
Transterrestrial Musings: Cowboy, The New Iran “Deal”, Captain Kelly Strikes Again, and May 19th
Victory Girls: Salon Wants To “Heal Through Conversations”
Watts Up With That: The California refinery crisis is a national security risk for America, Troubles at NuScale Power, Fermi America, Ethanol: Not the Energy Transition We’re Looking For, and Renewables Obligation Subsidies Top £100 Billion
The Federalist: Hollywood Laughs At Chelsea Handler’s Childless, Abortion-Filled Life, Any Vote For Democrats Is Now A Vote For Their Plan To Overthrow SCOTUS, In Rejecting God, Leftism Renders Us Less Human, Democrats Ask SCOTUS To Classify Virginia’s 45-Day Election As A ‘Single Day’ Event, and Ted Turner Represented The Best And Worst Of America
Mark Steyn: Decapitation for Thee …and for Me

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 05.11.26

Posted on | May 12, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Call for Authors: 2026 Summer Based Books Sale!
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Doug Ross: With Jesse James On His Last Robbery (1881), 
357 Magnum: The State of Criminal Justice in Chicago
EBL: Lobster Pizza, Eichmann, Summer Cod Picata, Ticonderoga, and Spencer Pratt for L.A. Mayor: Mother’s Day
Twitchy:  Family Demands Answers In Police Shooting – Gets Them In Bodycam Footage, Politico Agitprop Tool Warns Republicans They’ll Be Called Racists For Millionth Time If VRA Redraws Proceed, and WaPo Says Immigrants are Giving Up & Returning Home In Growing Numbers
Louder With Crowder: Parents who refused to let their kids go outside for FOUR YEARS due to COVID were just convicted of child abuse, Katie Porter makes such a bonkers claim about her opponent, CNN has to distance itself, Woman would not press charges on her attacker because he was black, weeks later he killed a retired school teacher, Texas “learing” center owner lashes out at Texas telling them they can’t discriminate against non-Muslims, and Big Labor drops an anti-Spencer Pratt attack ad that…makes you love him more
Vox Popoli: A Review of KILLING COMMENDATORE, Iran Can Outlast the USA, Israel Washes its Hands, Clown World Confirmed, and TRAFALGAR
Upstream Reviews: Of All The Gin Joints In The Universe, also, Living In Times Of Dragons
Cedar Sanderson: Out with the Old, also, Warding Off Weeds
Mazelit Airaksinen: Utah Dentist Thinks Jews Murder Children & Eat Foreskins
Defending The Wood Perilous: We Few, We Happy Few, We Band Of Mothers, 
The Bugscuffle Gazette: The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, 
Ammo.com: Percentage of Americans Owning Guns In 2026

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: Report: Trump Says He’s ‘Seriously Considering’ Making Venezuela 51st US state, Gavin Newsom Hit with Fraud Claims over $20 Million Taxpayer-Funded Diaper Deal, Hegseth Accuses Senator Kelly Of Revealing Classified Information on US Munitions Stockpiles, Trump Rejects Iranian Ceasefire Response as Regional Tensions Continue, and What Choice, Americans?
Animal Magnetism: Animal Magnetism LIVE Ep. 87 – Alaska and Real Estate
BattleSwarm: Scenes From The Labour Party Wipe Out, The Democrat Party’s Existential Crises, and Dead Starmer Walking?
Behind The Black: Springtime on the residual icecap of the Martian south pole, Psyche approaches Mars, China launches Tianzhou freighter to Tiangong-3 station, Vast signs deal with Lithuania, and Katalyst completes final ground testing of its Swift rescue spacecraft
Cafe Hayek: Jon Hartley Talks With Phil Gramm, Beating a Zombie Horse, The Ludicrous (Il)logic of Trumpian Protectionism, Everestian Illogic About Trade, and It’s Fantastic Rat Poison AND a Nutritious Meal for Your Family!
CDR Salamander: Bollocks to the Iranian Engineers – The Shahed Drone Is German-American
Chicago Boyz:  Coming Soon – A Narcan-like Treatment For Strokes, An Unexpected Defeat, and Is Elena Kagan The Coworker From Hell?, 
Don Surber: Blue Wave? Red Wave? No, an Orange Wave nears
Elizabeth Nickson: Absurdistan Is Staring Into The Gleaming Prosperous Future,
First Street Journal: Some common sense concerning the Louisiana v Callais decision
Flopping Aces: The most daft, dangerous ditz in America
Gates Of Vienna: Dude, I Want a Nicer Cell Right Now — Or Else, A Culture-Enriching Beating in Deventer, and A Vote For Zuhdi Jasser is a Vote For… What?
The Geller Report: Catholic Diocese Reports Muslim Terrorists Displaced 98,000, 217 Churches Destroyed in Recent Islamic Attacks, ‘TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE”: Iran Sends Absurd Peace Proposal, Trump Erupts; Netanyahu: War Not Over, Democrats Move To Remove and Replace the Virginia Supreme Court, Democrats Target Israel’s Nuclear Deterrent — While Allowing Iran To Race Towards A Nuclear Bomb, and Obama’s Shadow Government
Glenn Reynolds: The Gathering Storm
Hollywood In Toto: Charlize Theron’s Apex – Why Wasn’t This in Theaters? Mark Ruffalo Slams ‘New’ Blacklist (But Not THIS Blacklist), Goodbye, Stephen Colbert: The C*** Holster Crack, Clash of the Titans – Medusa, Kraken and Ray Harryhausen Magic, and Is Caveman’s Valentine Samuel L. Jackson’s Best Performance?
Legal Insurrection: “May Day” Vandalism and the Metamorphoses of Communist Delusions, New Poll: 42% of Democrats Think Butler Assassination Attempt on Trump was Staged, Democrats Considering Radical Plan to Replace Virginia Supreme Court Justices, UCLA Under Senate Investigation After Threatening Federalist Society Students, and Jonathan Turley Dunks on Democrats Over VA Supreme Court Gerrymander Ruling
Nebraska Energy Observer: Reform Triumphant, Sunday Matinee Caine Mutiny, and Of Kings and Car Parks
Outkick: Draymond Green Wants Retribution For T-Wolves As Wembayama Dodges NBA Penalty, Trump Hosts Hoosiers At White House, WNBA media rights package balloons past $3 billion, Double standard – it’s only a controversy when Caitlin Clark walks out with Morgan Wallen, and Jena Sims gets SI Swimsuit Week started with BTS bikini parade
Power Line: The Fertility Crisis, Causes and Cure, Irrational exuberance, Our Postmodern Politics, Suicide pact, and A Note on Government Fraud
Racket News: NPR Says Happy One-Parent Day!
Shark Tank: DeSantis Announces Record 140-Day Gulf Red Snapper Season
STUMP: Iowa Public Pension CEO Out – Goosed The Figures For Personal Gain, Maybe?
The Political Hat: Utah vs. Online Privacy
This Ain’t Hell: Nostalgia Post, Basic lesson, and Cool photography
Transterrestrial Musings: The Bronze Age, Engineering Lessons From Elon, The Sun Sets, The Persuasion Of Spencer Pratt, and The Scale Of The NGO Fraud
Victory Girls: Hasan Piker Wants Someone Else To Do A Revolution For Him, AWKWARD! Security Expert Miles Taylor Doxxes 17K “Resisters”, and Barack Obama’s Desperate Need To Hog The Spotlight
Watts Up With That: Modern ‘Climate Change’ Has Had No Apparent Impact On Precipitation Patterns, Trump Administration Gets Strategic With Offshore Wind, Three Months In, EPA’s Endangerment Finding Repeal Has Quietly Become a Legal Fight, not a Scientific One, Right, Washington Post, Banning Hamburger Ads Won’t Stop Climate Change, and Volkswagen Face $1.7 Billion Fine For Missing Emissions Targets
The Federalist: Virginia’s Pro-Gerrymander Dems Argued Election Is Single Day After Forcing 45-Day Vote, ICE Nabs Drug Trafficker In Virginia As Spanberger Refuses To Turn Over Violent Illegal Aliens, SCOTUS’s 9-0 Ruling Against New Jersey’s AG Hasn’t Stopped Her Harassment Of Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers, With The Michael Jackson Biopic Release, It’s Long Past Time To Let Go Of The False Allegations, and The SPLC’s Drama Queen Media Defense Swings And Misses
Mark Steyn: Centrefolds and Chaperones, The Man Who Wasn’t There: The Korean at D-Day in My Way, Happy Birthday to You, and The Perfect Euro-Metaphor

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Category: Linkagery

Do You Hate Communism Enough?

Posted on | May 11, 2026 | No Comments

The answer to the question in the headline is obviously no — it is impossible that any of us could hate Communism as much as we should. Unless you were a Chilean helicopter pilot back in the day, perhaps, you could almost certainly use a booster shot for your anti-Communism.

This point was brought home by Data Republican:

I am going to keep repeating this until people understand this.
Karen Bass was not only a Castro operative and Communist, but she got elevated to Vice Chair of National Endowment for Democracy, which is the center of soft power operations in the US government. She is not a “DEI mayor.” She is extremely powerful at the global stage.
She was actively involved in shaping foreign policy with the Obama administration, especially Africa. Her Ghana visit during the LA wildfires wasn’t a vacation, it was part of a Biden delegate to greet Ghana’s new President.
She was considered HUD Secretary for the Biden administration. Instead, she nominated the person who would become the actual HHS Secretary – California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
Now, let me ask you. If a literal Castro operative gets elevated to this stage, what does this imply about the rest of the United States government?

Is this clear enough? Too many of our Republican friends dismiss Bass as a dimwitted clown, dangerous only because of her incompetence. However, Bass has held positions of major influence, and was among the finalists in Biden’s search for a VP pick in 2020. It was when she was under consideration for that choice that her early involvement in the Venceremos Brigade attracted critical scrutiny:

In the mid-1970s, California Congresswoman Karen Bass, who is now under consideration to be Joe Biden’s running mate, was an organizer for the Venceremos Brigade, according to several contemporaneous media accounts and an interview with the future congresswoman published in a 1996 Ph.D. dissertation. The brigade organized six-week work trips for American leftists of all tendencies who wanted to visit and support Cuba . . .
An event blurb in an October 1975 issue of the communist Daily World newspaper describes Bass, then 22, as “leader of the Venceremos Brigade in southern California.” Bass herself explained her work for the brigade to a doctoral candidate working on a 1996 Ph.D. dissertation submitted to the Fielding Institute, titled “Women Activists of Diverse Backgrounds: A Qualitative Study of Perceived Influences and Values.” “Another critical influence for Bass began, at age 19, and spanned the next five years: Cuba,” reads the document, written by Dawn Noggle, who is currently the director of mental health services for the Maricopa County correctional system. “As a ‘brigadista’ and then organizer for the Venceremos Brigades, Karen visited Cuba every 6 months.”

If the Daily World considered you a comrade? Yeah. And if you study more about the Venceremos Brigade, you realize that this group is what we may call terrorist-adjacent: The infamous Susan Rosenberg traveled to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade in 1976.

In case you don’t know, Susan Rosenberg was part of the Weather Underground faction calling itself the May 19th Communist Organization (M19), which perpetrated the murderous 1981 Brinks robbery and bombed the U.S. Capitol in 1983. Violent hatred of America is what the Venceremos Brigade was really all about and yet, somehow, Karen Bass’s years of membership did not disqualify her from being elected to Congress and then becoming mayor of Los Angeles?

You may hate Communism as much as I do — which, nevertheless, is not enough — but there is clearly a larger problem: In the post-Cold War era, too many Americans don’t even realize that Communism is still an active danger, and therefore are willing to vote for radicals like Karen Bass. People need to beware of the existential threat of the Red Menace.



 

Category: California, Cuba, History

Rule 5 Sunday: Chocolate

Posted on | May 11, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

One of the nice things about seeing more Japanese X users is that there’s more cheesecake being posted.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

EBL: Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger – Cry Harder, Saturday Night Girls With Guns, Lady Caroline Lamb, MAGA – Trump Strikes Back In Indiana, The Fevered Dream Of Hernando de Soto, Florentina Holzinger, Olivia Dunne, El Rey, Cielito Lindo, May The Fourth Be With You, May The Fourth Be With You Two, Derby Day, and “The Lusty Month of May”

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Rule 5 Saturday – April Cheryse, Fish Pic Friday- Mallory Grace Potter, Far Beyond, The Wednesday Wetness, Tattoo Tuesday, The Monday Morning Stimulus, and Palm Sunday

BACON TIME: Rule Five – Yes, I Will Have A Beer

Thanks to everyone for the luscious links!

 

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Category: Rule 5

It’s a Long Way to Hope

Posted on | May 10, 2026 | No Comments

If you’ve ever been to Lithia Springs, Georgia, where I grew up, you know where Thornton Road is. When I was a kid, parts of it were a dirt road, but now it’s a major thoroughfare. As it comes up north from I-20, Thornton Road is Georgia Route 6, but when it crosses Bankhead Highway (U.S. 78) it becomes U.S. 278. It’s a fine road that goes up through Dallas, Rockmart and Cedartown before crossing over into Alabama. It never once occurred to me to wonder where that highway goes after it gets to Alabama, until the other day I was watching a YouTube video of an Arkansas State Police pursuit and saw the scene depicted in the photo above: “Wow — 278 goes all the way to Arkansas?”

Yes, after making a long loop through north Mississippi — among other things, going pass the campus of Ole Miss — U.S. 278 crosses the Mississippi near Greenville and enters Arkansas and then goes about 180 miles west before it crosses U.S. 29 in the town of Hope. Perhaps you’ve heard of the most famous native of Hope, Arkansas, but that’s just coincidental. Here’s the guy that got my attention:

Kywaun Renel Myhkeem Washington

A couple of weeks ago, Trooper Adrienne Colvin was on patrol in Hope when she spotted a tan Mercury Grand Marquis turn off the highway into a gas station. She ran the car’s license plate and found that the tag actually belonged on a black Chevy Sonic. That’s a crime called “fictitious plates.” So when the Mercury left the gas station, Trooper Colvin blue-lighted the vehicle, which pulled over. Behind the wheel was 26-year-old Kywaun Renel Myhkeem Washington, from Little Rock.

Little Rock is more than 100 miles away from Hope, which to my mind raises the question of why this guy was so far from home on a Thursday afternoon, but Trooper Colvin was focused on the issue of why the license plate from a Chevy was on that Mercury. The driver didn’t have any explanation that made sense. Meanwhile, Trooper Colvin took his license back to her patrol car and, upon entering Kywaun Washington’s name into the computer system, learned that he had outstanding warrants for his arrest. She then returned to the Mercury, informed Washington that he needed to “exit the vehicle,” at which point he put it in drive and floored it, starting a pursuit that reached 100 mph and lasted six minutes before Washington ran off the road, crashed the car and was arrested.



 

Category: Arkansas, Crime
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