The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 08.22.25

Posted on | August 23, 2025 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Guess who’s on X now. 
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

If you aren’t following and subscribing to skscartoons on X, you really should.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: The Law – A Graphic Novel
EBL: Battle of Bosworth Field, FBI searches home of former Trump adviser John Bolton, Lisa Cook and Federal Reserve Mortgage Fraud Shenanigans, Sushi Chef & Fishmonger clean and cook Wahoo, and Ice Cream Friday
Twitchy: Federalist CEO Reminds Jonah Goldberg He Was Warned Karma Would Claim Those Who Went After Trump, Bolton’s Neighbor Trashes Trump While Wearing Perfect TDS T-Shirt, and “He Just Loves To Wage War”
Louder With Crowder: Mother lights up school board after woke teacher awards her conservative son “Most Likely to Become a Dictator”
Vox Popoli: Short-Term Leaders, FBI Raids John Bolton, GUNS OF MARS, A Tale of Two Frauds, and Opposing AI is Marxian
According To Hoyt: The Means of War, A Sorry Excuse For A Post, The Superior Ones, Perfect, and Winning Is A Possibility
Upstream Reviews: Ember Wars
Cedar Sanderson: Watercolor Kits & Tools

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: In the Short Term, There Will Be No Peace
American Greatness: Trump-Putin Alaska Summit Shifts Talk From Ceasefire to Peace
American Thinker: AI and the Limits of Intelligence
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Local Victories Friday
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For August 22
Behind The Black: Texas brewery tries brewing beer and growing barley on ISS, Junk science now dominates the reporting of the propaganda press, SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites, New Horizons placed in hibernation, possibly forever, and SpaceX gets major tax credit for the jobs its new Starship factory will create
Cafe Hayek: A Note About So-called “Trade Deficits”
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Dana Loesch: FBI Raids John Bolton’s Home
Don Surber: Trump gets justice in NY
First Street Journal: Every time you think the left can’t possibly get more stupid, they say, “Hold my beer!”
Gates Of Vienna: Someone Set the Church on Fire
The Geller Report: US Immigration to Screen for ‘Anti-Americanism’ in Immigration Applications
Hollywood In Toto: There’s No Escape from Ron Howard’s Screechy Eden, This Relay Will Make You Snooze, and Lorne Michaels Raves That  Trump Is ‘Committing Crimes’ in ‘Broad Daylight’
Legal Insurrection: Progressives Slam National Mall Arrest — Until the Full Story Emerges, Fauci and His Cronies Accused of Intel Cover-Up Regarding Covid’s Wuhan Origins, Furor Erupts Over Liberal White Woman’s Racist Sign to Protest VA Gov. Candidate Winsome Sears, State Department Pausing Visas for Commercial Truck Drivers, and Georgetown U. Democrats Angry About Presence of Federal Forces in D.C.
Matt Taibbi: Bolton Raided, Leak Probe Widens
Outkick: Shedeur Sanders Addresses Dillon Gabriel’s Comments About ‘Entertainers’ And ‘Competitors’, This Season Once Again Proves Managers Don’t Really Matter In MLB, Bill Belichick Gives Absurd Answer About Differences Between NFL And CFB, WNBA Sex Toy Tosser Gets Stiffed: Charged With ‘Criminal Possession Of A (Big, Green) Weapon’, and Hot NASCAR Mom Natalie Decker Revs Her Engine, Sydney Sweeney’s Cracker Barrels & Danica Patrick’s New Mansion
Power Line: Democrats Make War on the Rule of Law, Better to sit this one out, A fetid process, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Shark Tank: Joe Gruters Unanimously Elected RNC Chair
Shot In The Dark: The Empire Strikes Back
STUMP: Dunking On Illinois – Making A Record In A Bad Way
This Ain’t Hell: Last WWII ace, 103, dead August 14, Valor Friday, and Cracker Barrel gets pushback after logo and brand change
Victory Girls: VA Democrat Activist Holds Up Racist Sign At Winsome Sears Speech
Watts Up With That: The Truth Behind Britain’s Wildfires, NYT Publishes False Energy and Climate Information and Refuses to Correct Its Errors, Mad Miliband’s British Net Zero Industrial Collapse, and The Integrated Resource Plan
The Federalist: The Smithsonian Institution Has Been Captured By The Left For Too Long, Justice Jackson Writes Opinions For Her Media Fanbase, Not Everyday Americans, Biblical Ignorance Is Killing Western Civilization, Study: Abortion Doubles Women’s Risk Of Psychiatric Hospitalization, and Fulton County Defies Court Orders Requiring Confirmation Of GOP Election Board Nominees
Mark Steyn: Role Reversal

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FBI Raids John Bolton: Why?

Posted on | August 22, 2025 | Comments Off on FBI Raids John Bolton: Why?

The big news today raises some intriguing questions. While we must assume that there is legal justification for the FBI’s raid on John Bolton — probable cause to suspect him of illegal activity — the same could be said of dozens of others whose names might be on Donald Trump’s enemies list. That is to say, if this is about Trump getting even with enemies (which of course, most people in the news media just automatically assume to be the case), why start the reprisals with Bolton?

Well, let’s get to some of the facts first:

FBI agents raided the Maryland home and Washington, DC office of President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton Friday morning in a high-profile national security probe involving classified documents.
Federal agents went to Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Md., at 7 a.m. in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump administration official told The Post.
“NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission,” Patel said in a cryptic post to X shortly after the raid began.
Bolton has not been arrested and is not currently charged with any crimes, the official added.
“He’s not a smart guy, but he could be a very unpatriotic guy,” President Trump told reporters of Bolton Friday morning. “We’re going to find out.”
The raid came at the behest of Patel, with the president claiming that he had no advance knowledge of the operation.
“I know nothing about it. I just saw it this morning … I tell [Attorney General] Pam [Bondi] and I tell the group: ‘I don’t want to know, but you have to do what you have to do. I don’t want to know about it.’”
“I could know about it. I could be the one starting — and I’m actually the chief law enforcement officer — but I feel that it’s better this way.”
An investigation of Bolton was launched in 2020, but the Biden administration shut it down “for political reasons,” according to a senior US official.
Trump’s first Justice Department initiated a criminal inquiry into Bolton’s alleged disclosure of national secrets in his 2020 book, “The Room Where It Happened.”
However, officials tell The Post that the current investigation is not limited to Bolton’s book — but is part of a “larger classified leaking probe that extended into the Biden administration.”

OK, so there are some possible clues there. Is it really fair to assume that the motivation for the raid on Bolton is essentially political in nature, as so many people seem to be doing? If we stipulate this, for the sake of argument, we must still ask why Bolton? Why not James Comey, John Brennan, Susan Rice, et al.? Consider a couple of possible explanations:

  • A. Bolton’s activities were so egregious as to warrant this action. In other words, Bolton has done something so bad that Kash Patel believed the FBI needed to conduct this raid to prevent further damage to national security.
  • B. There is so much evidence of Bolton’s wrongdoing, and so much reason to believe more evidence would be found in this raid, that Patel saw it as an “open-and-shut” case, a slam-dunk prosecution where there could be no doubt of Bolton’s guilt.

These two theories are not mutually exclusive, of course, but I would lean toward Theory B as most likely. If Kash Patel is henceforth going to be dragging Trump’s enemies into court, to hold them accountable for their roles in what Tulsi Gabbard has called a “seditious conspiracy,” it helps his credibility if he can start with a slam-dunk case. And it also helps Patel that Bolton is seen as a Republican-leaning figure, picked to serve in both of the two most recent GOP administrations.

All this is speculation on my part, but if my hunch is right, we can expect a grand jury indictment of Bolton in just a few weeks — perhaps as early as next month — and the charging document will contain allegations (and references to evidence) that look very, very bad for John Bolton, so bad that even the most anti-Trump analyst on CNN won’t defend him.

UPDATE: A few thoughts from a friend:

There is a lot of speculation happening, and I’ve shared a few hunches of my own, but I certainly don’t claim to know anything about this case beyond the basic facts that are being reported by others.



 

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Category: Crime, Donald Trump

In The Mailbox: 08.21.25

Posted on | August 22, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.21.25

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: A Mother Defends Her Child
EBL: Grouper Cheeks, MAGA NY Massive Appeals Court Victory, The Wood That Gave The British A Beat Down, Lawrence Massacre, and Amy Klobuchar Makes Sense!
Twitchy: Racist White Va. Democrat Woman Shocks Nation By Holding Straight-Up Jim Crow Sign To Protest Winsome Earle-Sears, “Sprucing Up” Cracker Barrel’s Brand Tanks Stock & Sparks Memes, and DHS Adds Context To Newsweek Headline About Detained Dad
Louder With Crowder: Fat activists identify new mortal enemy worse than vegetables or exercise, also, JD Vance’s lunch date with Pete Hegseth takes hilarious turn when confronted by “aging white hippies” protesting Trump
Vox Popoli: Ukraine Must Surrender, also, The SEC Antes Up
Cedar Sanderson: Looking for ideas

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Riley Moore Requests Presidential Medal of Freedom for Pat Buchanan
American Greatness: Antisemitism Is Proliferating in Our Public Schools, also, What Is the Democrat Alternative to Trump?
American Thinker: Donald Trump is a Humble Man
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Red Thursday News
BattleSwarm: Texas Redistricting Finally Passes House
Behind The Black: Using Webb astronomers have for the first time identified the source of a fast radio burst, Slumping landslide in Mars’ glacier country, India now targeting December for first unmanned test flight of Gaganyaan, Russia launches classified military payload, and Firefly studying feasibility of launching from northern Japanese spaceport
Cafe Hayek: Civitas Institute’s Tariff Symposium, also, More On Alleged Chinese Dumping
CDR Salamander: China & East Timor
Chicago Boyz: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Da Tech Guy: Rules for the 1974 Dynasty Draft Baseball League
Don Surber: Newsom gets weird
The Geller Report: Vice-President Vance says “Violent crime has dropped in DC 35 percent in 9 days”, also, New York Times Panics –  “Democrats….In The Middle Of A Bleed-Out That May Have No End In Sight”
Hollywood In Toto: Is Ice Cube’s War of the Worlds a Cult Classic … Already?
Legal Insurrection: Democrats Face Nationwide Voter Registration Crisis, Party Is ‘Hemorrhaging Voters’, Supreme Court Lifts Order, Allowing Trump to Cut NIH Funds That Advance DEI, US Warships Steam Toward Venezuela as Trump Escalates Fight Against Cartels, Minnesota DFL Revokes Omar Fateh’s Endorsement for Minneapolis Mayor, and NY Appeals Court Throws Out $454 Million Civil Penalty Against Trump
Outkick: Arkansas Razorbacks’ 30-Year-Old Sophomore Monte Harrison Will Be A Weapon For Hogs, After 10-Year MLB Career, Trans-Identifying HS Volleyball Player Sends Illinois Community Into Uproar, WNBA’s Sex Toy Craze Leads To Third Arrest, Connor Zilisch Cleared To Race At Daytona Just 2 Weeks After Breaking Collarbone, and MLB Writers Refuse To Credit Analytics For Milwaukee Brewers Success
Power Line: Their heart belongs to daddy Peltier, Alligator Alcatraz, Minnesota Style, Lefties Lose It, and Keystone Kops
Shark Tank: “We’re Done With That S**t” – Jay Collins Blasts Newscum Over Illegal Alien Trucker
Shot In The Dark: Your Minnesota Tax Dollars At Work
STUMP: NYC Congestion Pricing Update
This Ain’t Hell: Thursday gun notes, Military officers to assist with prosecuting local D.C. crimes, and USS New Orleans Fire Extinguished
Victory Girls: Amanda Marcotte Has Some Melania Issues
Watts Up With That: UN Claims Renewables are So Cheap They Need Lots of Subsidies, Battling the Net-Zero Transition in New York, and Wrong Again, Grist – Climate Change Is Not Causing Higher Coffee Prices
The Federalist: Gavin Newsom’s Desperate Meme Act Will Definitely Save Democrats, New York Case Against Trump Was Always A Ridiculous Pretext To Take Down His Campaign, If Your Child Hates School, Maybe School Is The Problem, Cracker Barrel Is Dead, And Its Stupid Woke CEO Killed It With Gay Nonsense, and Could Parental Rights Be The Deciding Issue In Virginia’s Gubernatorial Race (Again)?
Mark Steyn: Picture My Face

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In The Mailbox: 08.20.25

Posted on | August 21, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.20.25

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Scientists Can Be Boneheaded Fools
Director Blue: Tulsi Gabbard Drops The Hammer
EBL: Thermopylae, Mad Anthony Wayne, MSNBC becomes MS NOW, Cracker Barrel – Go Woke, Go Broke, and Fillet Alfonsino from Start to Finish!
Twitchy: Jessica Tarlov Explains Why She Deleted Tweet Slamming Arrest Of Criminal Illegal, Insane Liberal Female Explains “Nose Ring Theory” To Us Conservatives, and Democrats In The Toilet
Louder With Crowder: Woke Microsoft employees stage a “Worker Intifada” against you know who, CNN’s unhinged Abby Phillip claims Ukraine peace deal happening because European leaders think Trump will start another 9/11, and Police arrest bro for yelling “We love bacon” – apparently it’s illegal in the UK depending on where you’re protesting
Vox Popoli: Off to Never-Never Land, The Transience of Attention, The EU is an NGO, and No, You Cannot Tell
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Preorders For Monster Hunter Files II are up!
Cedar Sanderson: Along the Sunset Trail
Jim McCoy: Hints for Hollywood
Stoic Observations: Augmented Reality Dreams Deferred

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Yarvin, Rufo, Caldwell, Deneen: Whither America?
American Greatness: DNI Gabbard Releases Emails Exposing How Clapper in 2016 Pressured NSA to ‘Compromise’ Standards and Get Behind Fraudulent ICA, also, Declassified FBI Memos Show Comey Used Lawyer Pal as Media Conduit in Multiple Strategic Leaks to Damage Trump
American Thinker: Faith and a Moral Society
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BattleSwarm: Illegal Alien News Roundup For August 20
Behind The Black: Meteorite that crashed through roof of home in Georgia dated to beginning of solar system, Russia launches returnable capsule for month-long biology research mission, Spinlaunch raises $30 million for its Meridian broadband satellite constellation, Court rules in favor of SpaceX’s lawsuit against the NLRB’s legal status, and Bank officials say Obama and Biden demanded we blacklist Republican customers
Cafe Hayek: The Great H.L. Mencken, also, On Alleged Chinese “Dumping”
CDR Salamander: We’re Burning Another Amphib
Dana Loesch: Missouri’s Powerhouse AG Moves To The FBI,
Don Surber: The real white privilege
First Street Journal: World War III Watch – The moustache wants more war, also, World War III Watch – Do the left really hate Mr Trump so much that they’d rather see more and more blood flowing?
Gates Of Vienna: Women and Girls Are Not Safe, as Long as Islam Exists
The Geller Report: US Citizen David Lubin, Father Of Murdered Israeli Rose Lubin, Harassed, Terrorized By Jew-Hating Neighbors, Conan O’Brien Says ‘Late-Night Television Going to Disappear’, and “Jewish Voices for Peace” is Run By Infamous Jew-hating Jihadi Hatem Bazian
Hollywood In Toto: How This Indie Filmmaker Stared Down Identity Politics, Five for Fighting Defies Music Industry’s Silence on Hostage Crisis, These Lovebird Couples Can’t Click on Screen, and Could Woke Backlash Crush Wizard of Oz Remake?
Legal Insurrection: National Park Employee Fired After Transgender Flag Stunt at Yosemite, The “Legal Insurrection” Advances: Texas House Passes Republican Congressional Redistricting Map, Microsoft Employees at HQ in Washington Set Up Temp Encampment to Protest Israel, Judge Declines to Unseal Jeffrey Epstein Grand Jury Transcripts, and Elon Musk Might Not Form Third Party, Wants to Keep Ties With JD Vance
Matt Taibbi: Selling Fannie & Freddie – What’s The Real Point?, also, Mean Mr. Mustache
Outkick: NASCAR Should Be Embarrassed By How Few People Watched Latest Race, College Football Playoff Changes Formula, How Would Potential MLB Geographic Realignment Work? Not Well, Jamie Lee Curtis Is Happy Her Boobs Spread Joy In Viral ‘Freakier Friday’ Disney Promo, and Where Has Padres Slugger Fernando Tatis Jr.’s Power Gone?
Power Line: Beyond the Dirty 51, Leonard Peltier, Star Tribune style, Appeals Court backs Trump, and Are They Trying to Get Him Killed?
Shark Tank: DeSantis Sends Lt. Gov. Collins To California To Extradite Truck Driver Singh To Florida
Shot In The Dark: Sicily on the Mississippi
This Ain’t Hell: Wednesday short takes
Victory Girls: The American University Would Make a Soviet Proud
Watts Up With That: Time to Stop Endangerment of Developing Economies With CO2 Regulation, Good questions can stop bad projects, Taken for a Ride, The Battery Storage Delusion – what 35 million tons of industrial effort buys you, and Rescinding the Endangerment Finding Was Overdue. But Where Do We Turn for Justice?
The Federalist: KBJ Could Learn A Few Lessons On ‘Professionalism’ From Justice Barrett, Activists Admit ‘Nonpartisan’ Voter Registration Schemes Were Always About Boosting Democrats, Yes, Adam Schiff Can Be Prosecuted For Deliberately Leaking Classified Information To Hurt Trump, Devastating Exposé Of Dems’ Electoral Collapse Shows Media Lied About Trump’s 2024 Win, and Five Virginia School Districts Are Losing Federal Funding Because They Won’t Stop ‘Trans’ Social Experiments On Children
Mark Steyn: “Reasonable and Proportionate”, also, Live Around the Planet

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This Day in American History

Posted on | August 20, 2025 | Comments Off on This Day in American History

Before we discuss what it means — this date marking a crucial anniversary — let us first recount the relevant facts:

On or about August 20, 1619, “20 and odd” Angolans, kidnapped by the Portuguese, arrive in the British colony of Virginia and are then bought by English colonists. . . .
Founded at Jamestown in 1607, the Virginia Colony was home to about 700 people by 1619. The first enslaved Africans to arrive in Virginia disembarked at Point Comfort, in what is today known as Fort Monroe. . . .
They were originally kidnapped by Portuguese colonial forces, who sent captured members of the native Kongo and Ndongo kingdoms on a forced march to the port of Luanda, the capital of modern-day Angola. From there, they were ordered on the ship San Juan Bautista, which set sail for Veracruz in the colony of New Spain [I.e., Mexico]. As was quite common, about 150 of the 350 captives aboard the ship died during the crossing. Then, as it approached its destination, the ship was attacked by two privateer ships, the White Lion and the Treasurer. Crews from the two ships kidnapped up to 60 of the Bautista’s enslaved people. It was the White Lion which docked at Virginia Colony’s Point Comfort and traded some of the prisoners for food on August 20, 1619.

So, you see, had it not been for the attack by these two English privateer ships, the Portuguese would have taken those African slaves to Mexico, and what would have become of them there? And what might have become of the colonists in Virginia, if the institution of slavery had never been introduced there? These alternatives are seldom discussed by those who, for whatever reason, wish to make the history of slavery an indictment of America and a permanent cause of racial grievance.

What I wish foremost to point out is something that I was taught as a schoolboy, but which our educational institutions recently seem to have forgotten, namely that Virginia, and the other English colonies in North American which later became the United States, was founded in an era of armed rivalry between European powers. For example, my native Georgia was founded in part to defend the southern flank of the Carolinas from the perceived threat of the Spanish presence in Florida.

The Spaniards, the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch — all the maritime powers of Europe had colonies in the New World, and all of them used African slaves as part of their colonial enterprises. The Spaniards had used African slaves on sugar plantations in the Azores, the Canary Islands, and Cape Verde islands. It was in the Spanish colony of Cuba that African slavery was first introduced to the New World, beginning in 1513, and by 1526, the Portuguese were shipping African slaves to Brazil.

From this beginning, the practice spread throughout the Caribbean islands and South and Central America. It was not until 1617, more than 100 years after the Spanish had brought African slavery to Cuba, that the English adopted the institution, when the governor of Bermuda began importing slaves there. All this history is ignored by those who regard the United States as somehow uniquely guilty in regard to slavery.

To explain this would require far more time and effort than I care to devote to the topic today. Readers may have noticed that I never waded into the controversy over the New York Times and its “1619 Project.” Others were outraged, but I bit my tongue rather than to say what was on my mind, namely that it was about damned time liberals finally figured out how much the North was implicated in slavery. For most of my life, Yankees have promoted a libelous myth about the South, popularizing the utterly false belief that somehow Southerners had invented slavery and had a monopoly on it. This is a subject I’ve addressed before (e.g., “History You Probably Never Knew,” December 30, 2023), and readers may recall my ironic amusement a couple of years ago when Revolutionary War hero Gen. Philip Schuyler got “cancelled.”

Slavery? In Albany, New York?

[T]he 1790 Census found 21,193 slaves in the state of New York, of which 3,722 were in Albany County, “the most of any county in the state at the time.” The Dutch patroons who settled the Hudson River valley were substantially reliant on slave labor and, the 1790 census showed, Philip Schuyler “owned 13 slaves at his South End mansion in 1790 and another four slaves worked on his farm in Saratoga County.”

Insofar as the 1619 Project made people aware that the South did not have a monopoly on slavery, and that Americans who never set foot on a plantation nevertheless derived benefits (directly or indirectly, economically or otherwise) from The Peculiar Institution, then we owe a certain gratitude to Nikole Hannah-Jones. If anyone cares to study the actual history of slavery, I would recommend the late Eugene Genovese’s remarkable Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made as an introduction. Furthermore, I recommend Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman’s Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery.

People want us to get angry about stuff that happened 400 years ago, and I ain’t even got time to be angry over what happened last week.



 

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In The Mailbox: 08.19.25 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | August 20, 2025 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: How Is That Criminal Justice Reform Working Out?
EBL: Democrat Attorney General Gone Wild, The Brutalist, Why this fish is BANNED IN JAPAN, The Battle of Blue Licks, and Augustus: The First Emperor
Twitchy: New Documents Casts Serious Doubt On Hundreds of Biden Commutations, CNN Analyst Among Those Whose Clearances Were Yanked By Tulsi Gabbard, and Watch As Unhinged Liberal Harasses Trump Supporters Just Trying To Enjoy Their Coffee
Louder With Crowder: Male students were uncomfortable with a girl (who claims to be a boy) in the boys’ locker room, now THEY’RE suspended, also, Democrat AG caught on bodycam berating police officer, hilarity ensues
Vox Popoli: The Kenobi Years, The Dark Herald Defends THE TWO TOWERS, Implacable, and Not Martin, Not Sanderson
The Abbey of Misrule: “They can’t code this”
Upstream Reviews: Big Trouble, Little Earth

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Zelensky, Not Trump or Putin, is the Threat to Peace, also, The Kohberger Sentence Is Worse Than Death
American Greatness: Trump Approval Surges to 54 Percent After Meeting with Putin, Putin, Trump, and the Elusive “Peace”, DeSantis Blames California’s Sanctuary City Policies For Deadly Crash in Florida Caused By Illegal Alien Truck Driver, President Trump Says 275,000+ Illegal Aliens Have Been Kicked Off Social Security Benefits, and Biden-era USPS Fleet Contract for EVs Has Failed to Deliver, Time to Pull the Plug?
American Thinker: Why Trump’s Alaska Summit Was a Masterstroke of Leadership And Why the Left Can’t Handle It, Degeneracy, Progressive Neo-Puritanism, And The Little Sisters of the Poor, The ‘I’ve Had It’ Women Show Why Democrats Have Lost America, Russia’s Substantial Concessions, and Was the FBI Behind the Oklahoma Bombing?
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday, also, Animal’s Daily Bolivia News
BattleSwarm: Two Democrat Fraud Theories From Tim Pool, Who Says You Can Redistrict Mid-Decade? The Supreme Court, Paxton Wants To Shut Beto PAC Down, and Trump’s D.C. Takeover Drives Crime Down…And Even Democrats Notice
Behind The Black: Webb discovers another “oldest black hole, Student suborbital rocket fails in first student attempt to reach space, Psyche snaps picture of Earth-Moon system, Scientists link near Earth asteroids Bennu and Ryugu to much larger main belt asteroid, and A protest of boats now intends to violate the range and prevent the next Starship/Superheavy test launch
Cafe Hayek: The Rust Belt Wasn’t Done In By Economic Competition, The Experience of Arguing With A Typical Protectionist, and A Contest: Name That Protectionist Fallacy
CDR Salamander: Sal’s “Plan Italy” For NATO…And Herself
Chicago Boyz: Book Review: Herman the German, by Gerhard Neumann (updated), Micro Mobility and Appalachian Alcatraz, and “Forget It, Big Balls, It’s D.C.”
Da Tech Guy: The Russia Reality or Why Peace, also, The Democrats are right it IS a Trap but not the one They Think
Dana Loesch: MSNBC Hopes You Forget It Was MSNBC
Don Surber: Trump – leader of the free world
First Street Journal: World War III Watch: “Well boys, I reckon this is it. Nuclear combat toe-to-toe with the Russkies!”, also, That thing that never happens has happened again
Gates Of Vienna: Shootout at an Örebro Mosque, Mohamed² Alleviates His Sexual Emergency, Cultural Enrichment News From the Low Countries, A Teenybopper Mujahidette in Paderborn, and State Department Moving to Designate Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization
The Geller Report: Muslim Migrant Rapes Woman To Death on Steps of Nashville Church, Trump, European Leaders Express Optimism for End to Russia-Ukraine War , President Trump Signs Executive Order to End Mail-In Ballots and Voting Machines, Democrats and Their Media Lapdogs Rabid Over Russia Peace Talks, and  Cowardly Mainstream Jewish Groups Shy Away From Scrutinizing Mamdani
Hollywood In Toto: Obamas Cancel Cheryl Hines Over Trump Ties, Disney Ditches Spike Lee’s Colin Kaepernick Docuseries, Elephant in the Room Is the Perfect Rom-Com for Trump Era, Jimmy Kimmel Pretends to Care About Free Speech, and The Novel as the Foundation of Art
Legal Insurrection: Deadly Florida Crash Suspect is Illegal Alien Granted Work Permit by Biden Admin, Gordon Klein v. UCLA Trial Update – The Defense Puts On Its Case, Court Halts West Texas A&M Drag Show Ban as Free Speech Lawsuit Continues, Foundations Pledge $37 Million for PBS, NPR Stations, and Public Universities Allegedly Giving Millions to Anti-Trump News Site
Matt Taibbi: Activism Uncensored – The Federal Takeover of Law Enforcement In Washington, D.C., also,  Nearly A Decade Later The Unmasking Scandal Comes Full Circle, 
Outkick: Auburn Plants Its Flag: Four Additional National Titles Claimed, Arch Manning Pushes Back On Grandfather’s Claim He Would Return To Texas Next Season, New York Yankees Star Aaron Judge Rejects Aaron Boone’s Take on Elbow Injury, Injured Sophie Cunningham Still Mixing It Up Online, Issues FAFO To Troll Who Took Swipe At Her Sister, and Haley Cavinder & Dak Prescott’s Fiancée Drop ‘Cowboy Pillows’ To Lead Cowboys WAGs
Power Line: Land of 10,000 flakes, No mas, no mas, James Comey – Swiftie, and The Great Cheerleader Controversy
Shark Tank: AG Uthmeier Throws The Book At School Textbook Publishers
Shot In The Dark: Hennepin By Gaslight
This Ain’t Hell: Fun in the Air, DC Sammich Attacker Air Force Vet, Dreamcatcher – U.S. Navy Door Gunner in Somalia, VJ Day with a twist, and Playboy Flees California’s Hostile Business Environment
Transterrestrial Musings: The New Naval Challenge, New Guidelines On Blood Pressure, The Beginning Of The End, “Journalism” School, and Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY!
Victory Girls: Ella vs Sydney – Choose Your Future, Ex-FBI Director James Comey Sends Weird Love Note To Taylor Swift, and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu Is Defiant On Sanctuary Policies
Watts Up With That: Leveraging Michigan’s Assets as an Economic Growth Catalyst, Newsom Begs Oil Producers not to Abandon California, ‘Big Oil’ and Early Solar: Trying and Failing, and Short-Term Heatwaves in Britain Weaponised by Met Office Using Junk 60-Second Heat Spikes to Push Net Zero Fantasy
The Federalist: This Coalition Could Apply Pressure To Blue States Refusing To Protect Kids From Trans Mutilation, Media Insist Mail Voting Is Secure Days After MI Councilman Investigated For Stuffing Ballot Boxes, Amid Endless Streaming Silos, Live Sports Still Attract Millions Of Eyeballs, Loudoun County School Board Deserves Prison Time For Putting Trans Ideology Over Kids’ Safety, and The Media’s Ukraine-Wins Fantasy Continues Costing Lives
Mark Steyn: On the Town: Grand at the Game, Come Fly with Me, Last Chance – Jack Palance and Anthony Perkins in The Lonely Man, A Very Low Bar, and What a Difference an Election Makes

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In The Mailbox: 08.19.25 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | August 19, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 08.19.25 (Afternoon Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

More good art from Gprime85

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: The Global Warming Scam Implodes, Thirty Degrees Below Zero, 
357 Magnum: The UK’s NHS – Bureaucratic Health Care at It’s Finest, also Gang Violence Called a Mass Shooting
EBL: Fillet Lionfish like a Professional, Stuck – The Problem with Promiscuity, Cherry Tree Song, The Grape Harvest, and Terence Stamp, RIP
Twitchy: Heroic Texas Democrat Rep Refuses To Leave, Sleeps At Desk In Staged Photo, Park Ranger Who Helped Drape Trans Flag In Yosemite Fired, and Leftists Freak Out At Lamar Jackson Retweeting Charlie Kirk
Louder With Crowder: Our first NFL preseason fan brawl is all fun and games until one dude’s pants fall down, “I’d hate to be so mired in hatred…”, Denzel Washington goes off on “cancel culture,”, and Woke reporter finds new way to lash out at Sydney Sweeney
Vox Popoli: ASOS Ships, MAGA Compromised, The Jeeting of Texas, Anti-Racism is Inversive, and The Fake Peace Plan
Cedar Sanderson: The Gentle Art of Escalation, On The Mowing Of Lawns, and Dragon Month Three
Toni Airaksinen: Did The NYT Fire The “Journalists” Who Worked On The “Emaciated Gazan Child” Story?
The Bugscuffle Gazette: People who have never fought
Defending The Wood Perilous: Not The Chosen One
Upstream Reviews: Tree of Liberty
Stoic Observations: Avoid The Meta
Gab: From A Coffee Shop To A Crusade
Jim McCoy: People in The World of Fantasy and Science Fiction and the Weird Reason I Want To Meet Them

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: Fourth Anniversary Review – This Is What A Government-Wide Epistemic Failure Looks Like, 
Don Surber: What’s in it for us?
Elizabeth Nickson: A Little Black Girl From Tennessee Takes Down Europe’s “Aristocratic” Luciferian Pedo Scum
Matt Taibbi: Bill Maher Resorts To Cheap, Classless, Ignorant Stunt, also, Bill Maher Remains In Pucker Mode
STUMP: Updated Public Pension Projection Tool, The Changing Extended Life With Terminal Cancer

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Best Sellers – Automotive
New Releases – Automotive


 

Category: Linkagery

Peer Pressure and Morality: Or, Why Do ‘Girls Go Wild’ in Daytona Beach?

Posted on | August 18, 2025 | Comments Off on Peer Pressure and Morality: Or, Why Do ‘Girls Go Wild’ in Daytona Beach?

From the headline, you might have expected me to illustrate this post with a picture of college girls twerking in their bikinis on Spring Break in Florida, so why did I choose John Stuart Mill instead?

In his most famous work, On Liberty, Mill famously described “the tyranny of the majority,” by which he meant not merely the possibility of despotic action under democratic governments, but more specifically what he called “the moral coercion of public opinion.” In other words, although we might be free to do as we please without fear of legal punishment, at the same time, we are discouraged from acting in any way that is unpopular or unconventional because we fear the disapproval of others. Mill called this “social tyranny,” and one can imagine what he had in mind when you recall that he was writing in England in the mid-1800s, during the Victorian era — a very uptight kind of environment.

As a conservative, of course, I am naturally prejudiced in favor of the kind of “repressive” social norms of Victorian England. Looking around the 21st century, we could use a lot more of that Victorian prudery.

What got me thinking along these lines was watching YouTube videos by Jedediah Bila. Most of y’all will remember her from Fox News, but in the past four years, Jedediah has moved to Texas with her husband and son and is now doing her own thing online — and it is awesome!

A lot of her content is about “gender dynamics,” and she’s laying down the cold truth about the self-defeating nature of what passes for “empowered” behavior among young women. Here she is with guest Andrew Wilson examining the phenomenon of grossly slutty behavior by girls on Spring Break in Daytona:

 

Obviously, girls who act like this — racking up a “body count” of 12 in a single week? — have no fear of the kind of repressive social tyranny that John Stuart Mill criticized in Victorian England. Why is that?

Even though these 304’s probably don’t consider themselves feminists, Andrew Wilson points toward the feminist-influenced idea that it’s unfair to expect women to avoid promiscuity because (supposedly) there is no such expectation for men. The attitude is, “Guys do it, why can’t we?” Refuting this attitude is as simple as pointing out the basic arithmetic — “it takes two to tango” — and getting young women to understand that men have no incentive to be monogamous when so many young women are promiscuous. By consenting to easy hookups, such women make themselves part of the problem that so many young women nowadays complain about, i.e., men who “won’t commit” to marriage.

Let us not overlook, however, the role that lack of proper adult supervision plays in this kind of behavior. If your teenage daughter is shamelessly hooking up with 12 guys during Spring Break? You have failed as a parent, and that failure began long before your daughter became a teenager. Every girl naturally desires to be “popular,” to fit in with her peers, and wise mothers strive to teach their daughters to resist such pressure. A well-raised girl will fear more than anything else her mother’s disapproval. From a young age, she has been taught to avoid inappropriate behavior. Internalizing parental values provides her with a sort of moral gyroscope, a self-guidance system that makes her capable of discernment, so that she does not mindlessly follow the crowd.

When we see these brainless sluts smiling for the camera as they boast of their Spring Break “body count,” we are witnessing the consequences of children being raised without proper parental authority.

“I’m disgusting. Maybe they were all right about me. Maybe I am a big old whore.”
— Ella Dawson

Surely you haven’t forgotten Ella Dawson, who decided that the 2016 election was about her and her herpes infection? Someone would be doing a great favor for teenage girls if they would show them the “Rake’s Progress” of Ella Dawson’s life. She was a “pro-sex feminist” at Wesleyan University (now $98,382 a year, including room and board), and has recalled the attitude she brought with her to campus as a freshman:

“There was this binary view, at least in my mind as an 18-year-old, of, you’re either someone who believes sex is part of a relationship and you’re judgmental of casual sex, or you are a sexually empowered young woman who screws whoever she wants to and does whatever she wants and can have sex without emotions,” Dawson said in an interview with The Argus. “And as a result, I was super defensive of hookup culture itself because I interpreted criticism of hookup culture as criticism of a free sexuality.”

The predictable consequences are related in Ms. Dawson’s 2022 roman à clef (a “novel” that’s really a memoir), titled Life Ruiner:

Set mostly at Wesleyan in Dawson’s junior and senior years in 2013 and 2014, “LIFE RUINER” takes the reader through a semi-linear progression of her relationship with Blake (all names were changed to protect privacy), an attractive yet troubled party acquaintance turned sexual and romantic partner. . . .
[E]verything changes for Dawson when she wakes up to itchy raised bumps on her labia, which are ultimately diagnosed as genital herpes. From this point forward, her relationship with Blake slowly devolves into cycles of emotional abuse and manipulation as he also receives a herpes diagnosis and begins to threaten suicide. When Blake reaches an emotional low at the end of the summer and the two break up, Dawson begins to replace her feelings of dirtiness and shame surrounding her STI diagnosis with understanding and empowerment. Back on campus, though, she and Blake begin hooking up again until Blake nearly overdoses on prescription drugs and alcohol and Dawson discovers that he has physically abused his ex-girlfriend, Kris.

Here’s a cruel irony — although she had styled herself an advocate of knowledge about sexuality, Ella Dawson apparently failed to realize that condoms don’t protect against herpes. In all her preaching about “safe sex” and everything, somehow this fact had escaped her notice.

Speaking of facts, let me share a few facts about herpes:

A 2010 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the herpes rate “was nearly twice as high among women (21%) as men (11%), and more than three times higher among African-Americans (39%) than whites (12%). The infection rate among African-American women was 48%.” For obvious reasons, promiscuity increases the risk of infection, and the CDC found that about 27% of those who reported 10 or more partners are infected with herpes.

So, Ella shows up at Wesleyan as a sort of apostle of sexual liberation, and by the time she graduates, she’s a used-up slut with herpes. She decides to proclaim this to the world, undertaking a crusade to “destigmatize” herpes, and is so successful that she (a) attracts national attention and (b) makes her name synonymous with herpes.

No, really, Google it — might as well call it “Ella Dawson Disease.”

When last we heard from her, Ella was calling herself “bisexual” or “queer,” by which I presume she means that because guys are no longer interested in her, she’s now desperately trying to find a girlfriend to diddle her diseased genitalia. Rather pathetic, but of one thing Ella is certain: It’s not her fault. No, she is a victim of forces beyond her control. “Valentine’s Day hits different this year,” she declared in February:

Most of us were socialized to imagine our happily-ever-after a certain way: marriage, children, homeownership, a golden retriever. This dream was never attainable for everyone thanks to structural inequity and a royally fucked economy, but in 2025 it feels even further out of reach for some, and like a nightmare to others. It is difficult to celebrate love and hope at a time when we are losing the freedom to make choices about our bodies, our futures, and our identities. . . .

(That dastardly Trump is to blame!)

As a childfree queer woman, I am not in the mood for love this Valentine’s Day. I’m feeling cynical and scared. At some point over the last decade I morphed into a heteropessimist. . . .

(She’s “morphed,” you see!)

I am pessimistic about the state of heterosexual dating. For a myriad of reasons, it is largely cis straight men who make heterosexual dating a cursed experience. . . . But my friends and I have been sexually assaulted and abused by casual partners and life partners alike. Almost every woman I care about who dates men has had a horrifying experience recently. Roughly once every six months I get a phone call from a female friend scared for her life because a man who seemed trustworthy suddenly revealed himself to be anything but.
Even men who aren’t violent still commit endless slights out of entitlement and privilege . . .
As a bisexual woman, I am making an effort to decenter cis men in my life and seek out partners of other genders. I want out of the heteropatriarchal monogamous script . . .

See, it’s the system — “structural inequity” and “the heteropatriarchal monogamous script” — which Ella blames for her woes. Her own bad judgment has nothing to do with it. All those “cis straight men” just abusing her (and her friends, too), and there’s nothing women can do about it. Has Ella ever contemplated the conundrum of why feminism, despite its rhetoric about women’s “empowerment,” so often leads women to be just like her — lonely, bitter and hopeless?

Probably not. Like feminists generally, Ella Dawson’s whole worldview is based on the idea that she is always right, and men are always wrong, and therefore anything bad that happens to her is not her fault.

So the teenage sluts go twerking around Daytona Beach, heedless of the future, convinced that they will never suffer any harmful consequences of their behavior, but if they do — well, it’s not their fault. And I wonder what John Stuart Mill would say if he could see how things have turned out. Those Victorian prudes were right, you know.



 

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