In The Mailbox: 05.02.25

Posted on | May 3, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.02.25

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Doug Hagin’s fundraiser is almost to 80%. Chip in if you can.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Court Takes a Battering Ram to Apple’s Walled Garden
EBL: MAGA Switch-A-Roo, The Hudson Bay Company, You Would Do It Too : Tú También Lo Harías, Chairman Xi signals that the Chinese want to parley with the Trump Administration, and Trump Cuts
Twitchy: Check Out The Mother Of All DataRepublican Threads On George Soros’ Evil Playbook, Car Speeds Under New Holland Crop Sprayer In Wild Video, and Scott Jennings Explains How “Something Amazing” Happens When You Ask Democrats About Taxes As Only He Can
Louder With Crowder: ‘Big Balls’ leads infuriating DOGE roundtable about uncovered fraud…including at a heavily armed “Institute For Peace”, Tim Walz’s daughter claims running is “political,” and somehow that’s NOT the dumbest thing she says, Democrat party leader Jasmine Crockett claims she “never questioned Biden’s mental acuity,” which tells you all about her mental acuity, and New footage shows “Maryland man” trafficking humans (allegedly), and JD Vance wants to know where Democrats are now
Vox Popoli: A Turquoise Tide, also, An Easy Way Out
According To Hoyt: I Definitely Flaked Out, The Special Ones, Why, Yes, Revisiting Student Loans again, and Victims of Communism Day
Monster Hunter Nation: The Moral Equivalence Police
Upstream Reviews: Beyond The Crimson Haze
Toni Airaksinen: Brown University Student Reporter Under Fire For DOGE-Like E-Mail – “What Have You Accomplished This Week?”
Postcards From Barsoom: Stripping The Word Of Its Power
Jim McCoy: SF & Fantasy’s Top Ten Villains

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: U.S. Withdraws from Ukraine–Russia Peace Negotiations
American Greatness: How America Funded China’s Rise, also, We Don’t Need an Executive Order to Bar Illegals from Social Security—We Need a Government That Obeys the Law
American Thinker: Diluting Hitler: How the Left is Creating a Pale Ghost of the Real Adolf Hitler…and Turning Off Voters, also, Hitler had Goebbels, China has the US Legacy Media
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Eleventh Annual Commencement Speech Friday
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For May 2
Behind The Black: SpaceX launches 28 more Starlink satellites, Rocket startup Radian now also building commercial reentry capsule, Ursa Major wins contract for hypersonic test flight of its Draper rocket engine, FAA okays increase in SpaceX launches from Vandenberg from 36 to 50 per year, and Trump bypasses Boeing to get an newly refurbished 747 Air Force One
Cafe Hayek: The Economy Is Being Distorted by Trump’s Tariffs and Not By Efforts to Minimize the Tariffs’ Effects, also, On the So-called “Twin Deficits”
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Chicago Boyz: Retrotech: Technology in 1925–Transportation, also, The Books of Montgomery County, Part 1
Don Surber: Actually, Trump is bringing immigrant families together
Gates Of Vienna: The Islamization of Germany Proceeds Apace, also, The AfD is Now Officially Doubleplus Ungood
The Geller Report: Israel Launches Attack in Syria to Protect Druze Minority, President Trump Stripping Harvard of Tax Exempt Status for Continued Violation of Civil Rights, President Trump Ends Federal Funding for Far-Left NPR and the PBS, Islamic Onslaught Threatens Texas Heartland, and Hegseth Sends Strong Message to Iran and Houthis
Glenn Reynolds: Government & Externalities
Hollywood In Toto: Winston Marshall Brutally Shames Music Industry, First Look: ‘The Chosen’ Season 5, and ‘Laugh-in’ Fave Ruth Buzzi Dies at 88
The Lid: Another Victory: Trump Cancels Tax Dollars Transferred to PBS and NPR
Legal Insurrection: New York Times Headline Sanitizes Musical Performer Disinvited From Cornell, KBJ Lashes Out At Critics of the Judiciary, Harvard Law Review Gives $65K Fellowship to Student Charged With Assaulting Jewish Colleague, Trump Wants to Revoke Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status, and Conservative Activist Robby Starbuck Suing Meta After Their AI Falsely Labels Him as an Extremist and J6er
Outkick: Donald Trump Considering An Executive Order On NIL After Meeting With Nick Saban, During DWI Bust, Texas Lineman Nick Brooks Confesses Plans To Take Prospects To Strip Club, Dale Earnhardt’s Wicked Widow Just Got One Step Closer To Erasing His Legacy, Go-Fund-Me Set Up For Pirates Fan In Critical Condition After Shocking Fall, and Major League Baseball Owners Are Purposefully Making Their Teams Worse
Power Line: Beshear ‘considers’ 2028 run, Tucker calls on the Israeli government, Day 102, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Shark Tank: Haridopolos Says “Big Beautiful Bill” Will Be Ready By Memorial Day But GOP Must Win On Messaging
Shot In The Dark: The Questions You Should Be Asking Right About Now, also, They Were Doing So Well
This Ain’t Hell: CBP Offficial busted for fraud, Valor Friday, President Trump signs executive order ending taxpayer subsidy of NPR and PBS, and President Trump plans to rename Veterans Day to ‘Victory Day for World War I’
Transterrestrial Musings: The Hammer Drops, also, “I Don’t Mean To Brag”
Victory Girls: What DOGE Reveals, What Legacy Media Ignores
Watts Up With That: Global Climate Database Fed with Junk Data from RAF Base, Connecticut Lawmakers Devise Plan To Saddle Taxpayers with Soaring Energy Prices, More Climate Litigation Silliness From Academia, Bloomberg’s $87 Trillion Carbon Fantasy, and Brink Of Extinction – More And More Companies Rejecting Costly Hydrogen Technology
The Federalist: DHS & DOGE Work Together To Track Down Election Fraudsters, 3 Questions Angry Democrats Need To Answer About Illegal Alien Deportations, Colorado Democrats Push Trans Bill That Was Too Radical For California, Media Blackout On Abortion Pill Study Proves They Never Cared About Amber Thurman’s Death, and Newly Released Emails Show Politicized FBI Targeting Trump Officials For Obeying The Law
Mark Steyn: The Age of Endarkenment, also, Following the Science

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Where Evil Lurks: Neo-Nazi Pedophiles

Posted on | May 2, 2025 | Comments Off on Where Evil Lurks: Neo-Nazi Pedophiles

Kaleb Merritt

In February 2021, the FBI issued an alert about a 12-year-old girl from southern Virginia who had been abducted from her home. The next day, she was found in North Carolina with Kaleb Christopher Merritt, then 21, who had traveled from Texas and set up a camp in the woods near the girl’s house where he raped her before abducting her. Merritt had first contacted the girl via Instagram, and was eventually sentenced to 350 years in prison. It turns out that the tip about Merritt had come from Discord, and authorities were alerted that Merritt was “from a group of users that go by ‘CVLT’ who extort minor women into committing self-harm and uploading their own child pornography.”

Meanwhile, in November 2020, Iowa State University Police got a call “from a student who reported she was being blackmailed by a man she met online in 2018.” That investigation led to a 41-year-old man in Hawaii and eventually “identified more than 30 victims – some as young as 11 years old – and provided evidence for Homeland Security to build its case against CVLT, the online group that espoused neo-Nazism, nihilism and pedophilia as its core principles.”

In January this year, there was a federal indictment:

Two men were arrested [January 30] on federal charges of participating in a neo-Nazi child exploitation enterprise that groomed and then coerced minors to produce child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and images of self-harm. The group allegedly victimized at least 16 minors around the world, including two in Southern California.
Collin John Thomas Walker, 23, of Bridgeton, New Jersey, and Clint Jordan Lopaka Nahooikaika Borge, 41, of Pahoa, Hawaii, were arrested this morning pursuant to a grand jury indictment that charges them with one count of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. They are expected to make initial court appearances later today in New Jersey and Hawaii.
The indictment charges two other defendants who are already in custody: Rohan Sandeep Rane, 28, of Antibes, France, and Kaleb Christopher Merritt, 24, of Spring, Texas. The indictment, which was returned by a grand jury on January 17 and unsealed today, also charges Rane and Walker with one count of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise.

Bradley Cadenhead

As early as January 2021, the FBI was getting tips about a group of Discord users known as “764.” The group’s name turned out to be a reference to the ZIP code of Stephensville, Texas, home of Bradley Cadenhead. Then only 15 years old, Cadenhead had dropped out of school and holed up in his bedroom where he became the leader of perhaps the most monstrous online cult ever. Some accounts describe 764 as a spinoff of the CVLT, but these are ever-shifting online aggregations that are difficult to map. Cadenhead was arrested in August 2021 and in May 2023 was sentenced to 80 years in prison. However, the 764 cult continues to make headlines:

Leonidas Varagiannis, also known as “War,” 21, a citizen of the United States residing in Thessaloniki, Greece, and Prasan Nepal, also known as “Trippy,” 20, of North Carolina, were arrested and charged for operating an international child exploitation enterprise known as “764,” a nihilistic violent extremist (NVE) network. Varagiannis was arrested yesterday in Greece; Nepal was arrested on April 22, 2025, in North Carolina and had a court appearance. Court hearings in Washington, D.C. are pending for both defendants.
The charges were announced by U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr., U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi, FBI Assistant Director in Charge Steven J. Jensen of the Washington Field Office, and FBI Assistant Director in Charge Christopher G. Raia of the New York Field Office.
According to the affidavit in the District of Columbia, 764 is a network of nihilistic violent extremists who engage in criminal conduct in the United States and abroad, seeking to destroy civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations, which often include minors. The 764 network’s accelerationist goals include social unrest and the downfall of the current world order, including the United States Government.
As alleged, the defendants engaged in a coordinated criminal enterprise and led a core subgroup within 764 known as 764 Inferno, operated through encrypted messaging applications. As alleged, they directed, participated in, and otherwise caused the production and distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and the defendants facilitated the grooming, manipulation, and extortion of minors. Veragiannis and Nepal allegedly ordered their victims to commit acts of self-harm and engaged in psychological torment and extreme violence against minors. The affidavit alleges that the group targeted vulnerable children online, coercing them into producing degrading and explicit content under threat and manipulation. This content includes “cut signs” and “blood signs” through which young girls would cut symbols into their bodies.
The defendants and their co-conspirators around the world used the CSAM and other gore and violent material to create digital “Lorebooks,” which NVEs used as digital currency within the 764 network — traded, archived in encrypted “vaults,” and used as a means to recruit new members or maintain status within the network. The affidavit also details how the defendants instructed others members in grooming tactics and set content production expectations for new recruits. In multiple instances, defendants threatened and caused their victims to engage in self-mutilation, online and in-person sexual acts, harm to animals, sexual exploitation of siblings and others, acts of violence, threats of violence, suicide, and murder.
Also according to the complaint affidavit, the defendants exploited at least eight minor victims across multiple jurisdictions, with some content traced back to children as young as 13 years old. The network’s activities spanned from late 2020 through early 2025, with core leadership roles attributed to both defendants throughout the period.

More information on the 764 cult here.

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In The Mailbox: 05.01.25 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | May 2, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.01.25 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Doug Hagin’s fundraiser is almost 75% of the way to its goal. Please contribute if you can.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Self-Defense Is Legal in North Carolina
EBL: May Day, Tim Walz is pretty fly for a white guy, and Democrats Are Drifting Away From Abrego Garcia
Twitchy: Scott Jennings Schools Ana Navarro On How Calling Trump A Dictator Won Him The White House, Maine Speaker Bans Rep From Voting Until She Recants Position On Boys In Girls Sports, and Jemele Hill Finds It Frightening That Children Are Taught To Love America
Louder With Crowder: Aging popstar Sheryl Crow can’t stop, won’t stop virtue signaling, Chuck Schumer holds presser to mock Trump’s bad polling, gets smacked with the fact that his approval is MUCH lower, Ana Navarro has total meltdown, tries telling Black guest that deporting illegals no different than slavery, Woke Starbucks Workers Meltdown After Company Issues New Uniform Policy, and Tim Walz claims Kamala chose him for his “ability” to whitesplain to dudes
Vox Popoli: Russia Ready for NATO, In Which the Cancellers are Cancelled, and The Consequences of Convergence
Stoic Observations: America’s Upper Class Has No Class
Gab: The Lost Promise of the Digital Age

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Trump’s First 100 Days of Tariffs: The First Steps Toward the Golden Age of America, also, Spain’s Big Blackout Shows the West Needs Nuclear
American Greatness: Sen. Josh Hawley Introduces PELOSI Act to Stop Insider Trading, Treasury Dept. Rejects Over $300 Million in Improper Payment Requests Using New Verification System, Hillary Clinton Pushes For ‘K-12 Digital Literacy Program’ in New York State, RFK Jr Says HHS Became a ‘Collaborator in Child Trafficking’ Under Biden, and The Trump Counterrevolution and the Moral Ledger
American Thinker: The Modern Corruption of Separating Church from State, Two Powerful, Creative Ideas to Help President Trump With Mass Deportation, Why Do Arabs Chop Off Hands? and Fentanyl and Slavery Kingpin China Calls the U.S. a ‘Bully’
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Blackout News, Animal’s Hump Day News, and Animal’s Red Thursday News
BattleSwarm: Video: Iran Port Blast Was Massive, I Have Heard The Bots Singing, Each To Each (Reprise), and Austin Mandates AC
Behind The Black: Giant galactic magnetic filament disturbed by pulsar, A Martian river of ice, Astronomers discover a cluster of a thousand very young stars that is flying apart for unknown reasons, Startup that builds maneuverable surveillance satellites raises $260 million in private investment capital, and Scandal at Great Britain’s first spaceport at Cornwall airport
Cafe Hayek: The U.S. Should Avoid Tariffs AND Subsidies, Scott Winship on the “China Shock”, Awfully Nice of Him, Twisted Illogic, and What’s Trump Afraid Of?
CDR Salamander: Diversity Thursday
Chicago Boyz: Coupling, also, The Vanished World
Don Surber: Trade Wars, nothing but Trade Wars, give me those Trade Wars, don’t let them end
First Street Journal: Sometimes you just have to be an a**hole, Will Bunch says the quiet part out loud, and You in a heap o’ trouble, girl!
Gates Of Vienna: Shootout in Uppsala, Vom Fluss zum Meer – Lasst sie nach Berlin kommen, Sweden Goes BOOM — Again, and Happy May Day, Comrades!
The Geller Report: Syria’s New ISIS Regime Brutally Rounds Up & Slaughters Druze, UK Prosecutors Say Muslim Terrorist Who Tried to Enter Israeli Embassy Carried ‘Martyrdom Note’, China Manufacturing Plummets, Soft Jihad in Texas, and The P.E.L.O.S.I Act – Bill in Congress to Stop Insider Trading
Hollywood In Toto: Thunderbolts* Makes Misfit Heroes Matter, Jeremy Renner, Joe Rogan Agree on This One Critical Thing, Here’s What’s Missing from the MCU’s Thunderbolts*, Amber Ruffin’s Trump Derangement Spikes in ‘View’ Tirade, and The Surfer Leaves Nicolas Cage Stranded at Worst Possible Time
The Lid: New Trump Order Requires OTR Truckers to Speak English, also, Trump’s FBI Demoting Woke Agents Seen Taking a Knee During George Floyd Riots
Legal Insurrection: China’s Back to Blaming the United States for Covid Pandemic, Network Coverage of Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth Was 100% Negative in Trump’s First 100 Days, The Trump Administration Has Revoked Visas for 4,000 Students in First 100 Days, Kamala’s Return Speech Sparks Secondhand Embarrassment, and Mike Waltz Out as National Security Advisor, Nominated for Ambassador to UN
Matt Taibbi: Timeline – The Path to REAL ID Implementation, also, Hackdom Purely Distilled For Your Viewing Displeasure
Outkick: Nick Saban Jokes With Donald Trump About ‘Red Button’ Inside Oval Office, Let’s See How Good The NBA Ratings Are Now Without Luka, LeBron, And The Lakers, Aaron Judge Is Simply Breaking Baseball, Oilers Fans Kick The Crap Out Of Each Other During Playoff Watch Party Brawls, and Brittany Mahomes Has Libs Seething With Her Offseason Swimsuit, Kay Adams Content Dump & Smug Chuck Schumer
Power Line: David Horowitz – Political war, Stephen Miller Scorches the Dems, and Who’s Unpopular?
Shark Tank: Gov. DeSantis Highlights Success Of Operation Tidal Wave
Shot In The Dark: A Lion At The Bar/A Kitten On The Battlefield, Ellison Meets Meatgrinder, Question, and Feeling Seen Yet?
The Political Hat: Commercial Computers Run With Neurons Means One Thing – Bioroid Catgirls, The Fierce Urgency Of Knowing What Time It Is, and Victims of Communism Day, 2025
This Ain’t Hell: Army O-3 breaks mile record by 20 seconds, Splash One Hornet Pt 2, Army Black Hawk pilot sold LSD for religious purposes, Active military members among those detained at underground Colorado nightclub, and Three more ID’ed
Transterrestrial Musings: The Iran Port Explosion, David Horowitz, An Oscar Nominee, Thoughts On The Path Forward, and A New Market For Space Visits?
Victory Girls: DOD Cancels Women, Peace & Security Program, also, Kamala Harris Speaks, Reminds Everyone Why She Isn’t Missed
Watts Up With That: Spanish Grid Operator Warned of Nation’s Heavy Reliance on Renewable Energy in February, Maine’s floating wind program takes another hit, Trump Admin Sues to Block Blue States From Taking Fossil Fuel Companies To Court Over Climate Change, and Have The Intermittent Energy Blackouts Begun?
The Federalist: Noncitizen Voting And Voter Fraud Schemes – DOJ Investigates, Former Officer Pledges To Restore ‘Accountability’ To The Air Force, Corruptocrats’ Hysteria Against Ed Martin Is Exactly Why He Should Be Confirmed, HHS Report Confirms No Evidence To Support Castrating And Mutilating Gender Confused Kids, and AI Child Sexual Abuse Images Would Normalize Pedophilia, Not Cure It
Mark Steyn: Lands of the Lost, Klaus Encounters, Live Around the Planet – The Penetrator Penetrated, Losers Gotta Lose, and Arson Jihad

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In The Mailbox: 05.01.25 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | May 1, 2025 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Thanks to everyone who bought stuff through my amazon links in April.
Doug Hagin’s fundraiser is 2/3 of the way to its goal. If you can’t contribute, please spread the word.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

What will Ottawa do when they can’t leech off the Prairie Provinces any more?

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Buffalo, New York School System Is Covering Up the Abuse of Kids
EBL: Lazarus, On Sir Francis Drake, Lou Gehrig, When that Man is Dead and Gone, and Pope Saint Pius V
Twitchy: Community Notes Drops The Mother Of All Corrections On Jasmine Crockett, Ilhan Omar Tells Daily Caller Reporter To F*** Off, and Guess What Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) Thinks Would Stop The “Slide Towards Tyranny”
Louder With Crowder: Trans actress from popular show freaks out that his passport came back as MALE, “You’re fake news”: ABC News’ Terry Moran tried coming after Donald Trump, While presidential candidate Rep. AOC denies being one, a GOP senator savages her with animal metaphors, Scott Jennings has Trump rally crowd laughing, but what he says about Trump’s “bad” polling will truly trigger CNN and Dems, and Exposing 3 Major Anti-Trump LIES (What You Need to Look For)
Vox Popoli: The Lessons of War, also, Heating Up in Kashmir
Cedar Sanderson: Happiness Is
Stoic Observations: If I Hold A Gun
Defending The Wood Perilous: Looking For A Good Book? The Superversive Authors
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Pull the other one

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: The Fall of Saigon – 50 Years On,
Dana Loesch: DeSantis Strikes Back
Don Surber: The Trump and only
Matt Taibbi: When Genius Failed…Again, also, NYT Accuses Trump Of Inventing The Surveillance State
STUMP: Update On Michelle Trachtenberg’s Death,

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In The Mailbox: 04.30.25

Posted on | May 1, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 04.30.25

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Doug Hagin just buried his mom, and life sucks for him at the moment. Help it suck less.

Well, that could have gone better. The Surface didn’t have any problem getting wifi at the Stratosphere, but like an idiot I forgot to save the login URL for the website to it, so I couldn’t get there from there. On the other hand, the power supply issue with my desktop box turned out to be a non-issue, and the tech installed the new hard drive for nothing, so this morning I stopped by and dropped off a case of beer for him. Thus I ensure prompt & efficient service the next time I need it. 🙂 Las Vegas Computer Repair on Losee Road in North Las Vegas, people. Hit them up if you need help for your sick computer, even if it’s an Apple.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

Canada got what they wanted by re-electing the Grits, and now they’re going to get it good and hard.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Spanish Blackout – Net Zero or a “Rare Atmospheric Phenomenon”?
EBL: Franklin, also, Hacksaw Ridge – “What If God Was One Of Us”
Twitchy: Julie Kelly Destroys Fired J6 Prosecutor For Her Crocodile Tears, Everything Is “Swine” Among Democrats, and Rep. Jamie Raskin Says The Biden Administration Knew The Right Way To Deport People
Louder With Crowder: Another Dem congressman attempts to defend his Articles Of Impeachment against Trump, Chuck Todd melts down over you blaming the media for covering up Biden’s cognitive decline, Here’s Why Canada’s Election Results Are A Golden Opportunity For Trump, America & Alberta, White House goes beast mode on UPenn, and CA lawmakers refuse to make it a felony to buy teens for sex and…wait, what?
Vox Popoli: Publisher, Not Author, Spring Library Sale, Green Energy Blackout, The Ports Shut Down, and Solar Power = No Power
Stoic Observations: A Rude Observation of Neoliberalism,
Postcards From Barsoom: Post-Mortem For The Canadian Election
Upstream Reviews: Murder In The Vatican,

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: What could China do to the U.S. on D+0?
Dana Loesch: Borderlands Adds Spyware In New User Agreement, also, The DNC Vice-Twerp May Lose His Seat,
Don Surber: Trump changed DC this time
Matt Taibbi: Are We In A “Soft” Civil War?, also, Timeline – Political Advocacy By Open Letter,
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Trump Tax 2025 Roundup,

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In The Mailbox: 04.28.25

Posted on | April 29, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 04.28.25

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Lot of moaning about the Canadian elections tonight, which strikes me as more than a little premature. As I type this, the results per AOSDDHQ (or whatever it’s being called this week) with 322 of the 343 seats reporting: 152-144 Lib/Con, 22 BQ, 5 Dippers, and one Green. A few people (including myself) think it’s going to be a Conservative/BQ minority government.

In other news, I’m going down to Vegas tomorrow for a Wednesday appointment at the VA, and dropping off my desktop box for some work. We shall see if my Surface Go is up to the task of handling the linkagery.

Also also, I posted an explanation of who all these SF legends are that I’ve been posting on X. It’s at the Substack.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: When Does Zero-Tolerance Not Mean Zero-Tolerance?, also Phishing-as-a-Service Is Now AI Enabled
EBL: SUV Driver Arrested After Deadly Lapu Lapu Vehicle Attack in Vancouver, Canada, Seen at Pope’s Funeral: Italian Drone Jammer, Debbie Downer Rove and President Trump Approval Rating, and Thomas Kinkade, Painter of…what?
Twitchy: Attorney Unveils Devastating Charges Against Judge Dugan In Explosive Obstruction Case, Woman Fired From State Department Finds Silver Lining In TikTok, and Vacationing GOP Returns To Congress & Focuses On Hockey, Music, But Not MAGA
Louder With Crowder: Another Dem congressman attempts to defend his Articles Of Impeachment against Trump, Woke governor signs law providing assistance to first-time home buyers, provided they aren’t White, Reporter declares media “should’ve done better” covering Biden’s cognitive decline, Marco Rubio, Tom Homan team up against media’s latest attempt to simp for illegal immigrants, and Another activist judge BLOCKS Donald Trump’s attempt to ensure only American citizens vote in American elections
Vox Popoli: You Don’t Get What You Pay For, Stay Mobile, Stay Safe, Wrexham to Championship, Russia Has Allies Too, and Krynky was a British Op
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Time, also, Investigations Now
Bacon Time: Yes, They Are That Stupid
Upstream Reviews: The Icarus Coda
Stoic Observations: Eye Candy
Monster Hunter Nation: Update on schedule for MHI books

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: The Chilean Right Gears Up for a Fight, also, Is the Tax Cut Becoming a Burden on Other Parts of the MAGA Agenda?
American Greatness: Gov. JB Pritzker Calls For ‘Mass Protests’ to Deprive GOP of ‘a Moment of Peace’, Schumer Doesn’t Rule Out Impeaching Trump if Democrats Regain Power, Congress Must Repair Biden’s Destructive Immigration Policies, and What Is Democratic Legality?
American Thinker: A Newly Discovered Algorithm in Wisconsin Voter File is Indisputable Evidence of Criminal Election Fraud, How China Steals, and Judge Not
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
BattleSwarm: Democrats On “The Short Bus To Crazy Town”, Tranny Bathrooms And The Counterrevolution, and Is Russia Running Out Of Tanks?
Behind The Black: Axiom replaces its CEO, China and SpaceX complete launches, NASA re-releases a slew of Hubble images to celebrate its 35th anniversary, Watch Atlas-5 launch of Amazon’s first 27 Kuiper satellties, and Hubble snaps picture of barred spiral galaxy
Cafe Hayek: An Excellent Panel, on Trade, at the Hoover Institution
CDR Salamander: Reforming The Pentagon with Gary Anderson, also, If You Think Greenland Is Strategic
Chicago Boyz: TechnoProletarians, continued, also, Random Thoughts (11): David “Major Kong” Brooks, Canadians, and Skattebo
Da Tech Guy: The Media Has Been Reduced to Lying to Themselves
Dana Loesch:The Kilmar Case – The Hill The Democrats Chose
Don Surber: Trumping the press again
First Street Journal: Once again, Hahvahd is producing The Best and The Brightest!
Gates Of Vienna: Liberation Day Becomes a Pro-Hamas Occasion, The Cancellation of Saint Nick, We Are All Schicklgruber Now, and Vehicular Jihad in Vancouver?
The Geller Report: TRUMP EFFECT – Putin Announces Ceasefire, Here’s The List of Terror Funders to Receive Billions of Surviving USAID Dollars, China Caves in Trade War, AZ Gov Katie Hobbs Staffer Arrested For Human Smuggling, and Muslim Migrants Set Church in Wales Ablaze
Hollywood In Toto: A Reality Check on Sinners’ Box Office Success, Tony Todd Pumped Life into Night of the Living Dead Remake, THAT’S Why WHCA Canceled Amber Ruffin, and John Lithgow Tells Cancel Culture Mob to Stuff It
The Lid: Anti-American Wisc. Gov. Orders Open Obstruction of Deporting Criminal Aliens, also, Disney’s Snow White One of Hollywood’s Biggest Money Losers of All Time
Legal Insurrection: State Bar of California Admits to Using AI in Bar Exam Question Development, Illegal Aliens Accused of Stealing Noem’s Purse Pulled Off Similar Schemes Days Before, White House Lawn Filled With Posters of Arrested Illegal Aliens, The Left Has Absolutely No Idea Why Trump is Trying to Reform Higher Education, and Rep. Gerry Connolly Not Running for Reelection Due to Cancer Returning
Outkick: Nike Athletes, USA Basketball Silent On Brand’s Alleged Funding Of Transgender Youth Study, Arkansas Hires Prominent Attorney To Go After Madden Iamalaeva NIL Contract Buyout, Quinn Ewers Was Chasing An NFL Dream, While Others Wanted Him To Chase NIL Bag, Miami Heat Lose In Disgusting Fashion, Will Make You Give Up NBA Basketball, and Bomani Jones Emerges As Surprise Voice of Reason on Shedeur Sanders Hysteria
Power Line: Power outage in Spain, Death to Jihadis, and Democrats Are Crazier Than We Thought
Shark Tank: You Know Miami’s Election Season Has Begun When Spanish Jingles Hit The Airwaves
Shot In The Dark: What A Difference A Week Makes
STUMP: Papal Election Stats – An Aggregation
The Political Hat: Anti-White Framing
This Ain’t Hell: Welcome Home, Big Bangs Bamboozle Baddies, Black Hawk pilot did not comply with a direction to change course before collision, Splash One Hornet, and Former New Mexico Judge arrested for harboring illegal alien
Transterrestrial Musings: MAGA Barack, also, Public Health’s Sacrificial Lambs
Victory Girls: No ICE For Me! Wisconsin Judge Halts Court Proceedings, also, Slotkin to Bernie: Quit Saying Oligarchy — You’re Giving Us Away
Watts Up With That: Updates On the Collapse of The Climate Scam, Shapiro ‘Price Cap’ Could Hike Electricity Bills, Scientist Drag Queens can Educate the Public about the Climate Crisis, and Congrats to Spain! Nation goes 100% renewable as of April 16th 2025! – But Then Mass Blackouts Hit Spain & Portugal
The Federalist: Why Paying Women To Have Babies Is A Terrible Idea — And What To Do Instead, Chinese National Who Allegedly Voted In Michigan Skips Court, Faces Arrest, Milwaukee Judge Charged With Putting Herself ‘Above The Law’ By Rejecting Rule Of Law, Grassley Asks Patel To Declassify FBI Analysis Of Criminal Referral For Famed Russia Collusion Hoaxer, and Pritzker Calls For Violence Against GOP: ‘Republicans Cannot Know A Moment Of Peace’
Mark Steyn: His Own Worst Enemy: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in The Trip , Maximum Security Masterchef, “All the Things He Would Miss”, Wink and a Smile, and O Canada

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Rule 5 Sunday: The Long View

Posted on | April 27, 2025 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

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Death by ‘Equality’

Posted on | April 27, 2025 | 1 Comment

Rebecca Lobach killed 66 innocent people

Captain Becky “did not turn left”:

As they flew south along the Potomac River on the gusty night of Jan. 29, the crew aboard an Army Black Hawk helicopter attempted to execute a common aviation practice. It would play a role in ending their lives.
Shortly after the Black Hawk passed over Washington’s most famous array of cherry trees, an air traffic controller at nearby Ronald Reagan National Airport alerted the crew to a regional passenger jet in its vicinity. The crew acknowledged seeing traffic nearby.
One of the pilots then asked for permission to employ a practice called “visual separation.” That allows a pilot to take control of navigating around other aircraft, rather than relying on the controller for guidance.
“Visual separation approved,” the controller replied.
The request to fly under those rules is granted routinely in airspace overseen by controllers. Most of the time, visual separation is executed without note. But when mishandled, it can also create a deadly risk — one that aviation experts have warned about for years.
On Jan. 29, the Black Hawk crew did not execute visual separation effectively.

(To say the least.)

The pilots either did not detect the specific passenger jet the controller had flagged, or could not pivot to a safer position. Instead, one second before 8:48 p.m., the helicopter slammed into American Airlines Flight 5342, which was carrying 64 people to Washington from Wichita, Kan., killing everyone aboard both aircraft in a fiery explosion that lit the night sky over the river. . . .

(You must read all the way down to the 34th paragraph before the New York Times even mentions the name of the helicopter pilot.)

The crew’s mission was to conduct an annual evaluation of Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach, who joined the Army in 2019, to ensure that her helicopter piloting skills were up to par.

(And then, all the way at the very end . . .)

Instead of seeing and avoiding Flight 5342, Captain Lobach continued flying straight at it. . . .
The Black Hawk was 15 seconds away from crossing paths with the jet. Warrant Officer Eaves then turned his attention to Captain Lobach.
He told her he believed that air traffic control wanted them to turn left, toward the east river bank.
Turning left would have opened up more space between the helicopter and Flight 5342, which was heading for Runway 33 at an altitude of roughly 300 feet.
She did not turn left.

There is a lot left unsaid in the New York Times article which, it should be obvious, is primarily intended to obscure the fact that (a) the crash was caused by pilot error and (b) the pilot was female.

Do not accuse me of saying something I’m not saying, i.e., that this particular crash happened because the pilot was female, or that there is no such thing as a qualified female pilot. Every day, hundreds of successful flights are made by female pilots, including military pilots. Furthermore, if you were to research aircraft crashes in which pilot error was chiefly to blame, no doubt the overwhelming majority of those pilots are male. Perhaps it would be possible to show from such statistics (which I haven’t even bothered to Google, much less to analyze) that female pilots are more prone to catastrophic errors than are male pilots, but the fact remains that most female pilots are never involved in crashes, so that the deadly error committed by Rebecca Lobach cannot be said to reflect badly on female pilots in general. However . . .

All of these caveats, necessary to prevent anyone from misconstruing my argument, do not detract from the issue of public policy involved here, namely the implementation of official quotas under the aegis of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI). We are more than a half-century into this kind of experimental social engineering, and the same thing is true today as it was when the Supreme Court handed down the Bakke decision in 1978 — every attempt to implement what used to be called “affirmative action,” but has since been rebranded as “diversity” or DEI, led to discriminatory quotas, which are unconstitutional.

Some people want to ignore this reality, pretending that you can have a “diversity” policy that somehow doesn’t lead to quotas, but good luck finding a real-life example of such a policy, because I’ve been looking a long time and have never seen one. Quotas lead to favoritism and, regardless of who the intended benificiaries of this favoritism may be, the result is a lowering of standards — or, more to the point, the creation of double-standards, with the quota beneficiaries held to a lower standard.

Does the name Kara Hultgreen ring a bell? Here we are, more than 30 years after Hultgreen was the beneficiary of double standards that resulted in her death, and some people are still in denial about the danger created by these policies. The feminist slogan “the personal is political” serves to explain the problem faced by critics of the DEI agenda, namely that if you criticize the policy, you’re accused to “hating” the intended beneficiaries (as if dying in a crash were some kind of benefit).

Without repeating the entire paragraph of caveats I’ve previously stipulated, permit me to deny hating women, and I especially want to make clear that I do not wish to disparage Rebecca Lobach. It appears that Lobach came from a conservative family. She was homeschooled, and her grandfather is a banker who has contributed thousands of dollars to Republican candidates. She had “more than 450 hours of flight time” since being commissioned in 2019 and had “twice served as platoon leader and as a company executive officer in the 12th Aviation Battalion.” We might further stipulate that the circumstances of that January 29 training mission involved a high degree of difficulty, even for an experienced pilot — flying at night in an urbanized area near a major commercial airport in a situation where a difference in altitude between 150 feet and 200 feet could be the difference between life and death.

All that being said, however, we must ask whether Lobach was the beneficiary of a quota system, intended to guarantee that the Army had a certain number (or percentage) of female Black Hawk pilots.

The appropriate quota? Zero.

Let’s be clear about this: The Army could recruit and train a sufficient number of male pilots to operate every single Black Hawk helicopter in their arsenal without ever needing a single female pilot, and every one of those male pilots would demonstrate a level of proficiency equal or superior to Lobach’s proficiency. There is not a single male Black Hawk pilot in the Army who is less proficient than Lobach was. In fact, I’m about 100% sure that military personnel will back me up when I say that the Army’s problem is not that it has too few helicopter pilots, but rather that the available number of pilot assignments is much smaller than the number of troops who would like to become pilots. There is a competition for those spots, and the number of helicopter assignments available to would-be pilots who are male is reduced because a certain number of those assignments are set aside as a de facto quota for females.

Understand that we are not talking about a hypothetical scenario in which the question is whether (some) women possess the requisite aptitude for helicopter piloting, The question involves some very practical considerations. First, whether the number of women who possess the minimal level of aptitude is equal to the number of similarly qualified men, and second, without regard to aptitude, whether equal numbers of women and men are interested in becoming military helicopter pilots.

Comparatively few young women are even interested in joining the military — women are about 51% of the U.S. population, but only 17.5% of U.S. military personal, indicating that men are nearly five times more likely than women to pursue military careers. And here’s an interesting bit of trivia: After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the percentage of women enlisted in the military actually decreased, while the percentage of women officers continued to increase. In other words, when the prospect of being deployed into an overseas war zone went up, fewer women were willing to volunteer for service, except as officers. The whole project of “women in combat” is about creating career opportunities for female officers, and being a Black Hawk helicopter pilot is a combat-duty assignment. Most pilots are non-coms (153A warrant officers) who come from the enlisted ranks; the reason a commissioned Army officer becomes a pilot is so they can act as commander of an aviation unit, as in the case of Rebecca Lobach, who led a platoon of the 12th Aviation Battalion. As a matter of policy, the relevant point is that among Army officers, the number of men who would choose such an assignment is so much larger than the number of women that the Army could easily fill all its Black Hawk pilot officer berths with men, and there still wouldn’t be enough available slots for every qualified candidate. The only reason that there are any female Black Hawk pilots is because of quotas.

We cannot say with certainty, however, that the Army’s DEI quota policy caused the January 29 crash that killed Rebecca Lobach and two other members of the Black Hawk crew (Chief Warrant Officer Andrew Eave and crew chief Staff Sgt. Ryan O’Hara) as well as 64 people on board American Airlines Flight 5342. It is possible that a similarly qualified male pilot might have made the same mistake that Lobach made. But if there were no female pilots, there would be no crashes caused by female pilots, and we wouldn’t be left to wonder if double standards had something to do with this deadly disaster. Also, we wouldn’t be talking about the interesting (and perhaps relevant) fact that Lobach hadn’t been flying a helicopter much recently because she had spent the previous two years serving as “a military social aide at the White House during the administration of former President Joe Biden.”

Captain Becky at the White House

By the way, if anyone is really interested in this topic, permit me to suggest how you would prove that there the Army has a quota for female helicopter pilots. Trace the number of active-duty female pilots over time. Because we know that females were once excluded from combat duty as a matter of policy, you can locate the point in time at which we went from zero female Black Hawk pilots to one. Beginning with the first such pilot, you could then trace the number as it increased year-by-year, and I’d be willing to wager that in all those years, there has never been a point at which the percentage of female Black Hawk pilots has decreased. In other words, when asked the question, “How many female Black Hawk pilots do we need?” the Army has always answered, “More.” The number of available pilot assignments is always greater than the number of qualified male candidates; therefore the exiting number of assignments held by women becomes the minimum number, and male candidates are thus excluded from a certain number of potential opportunities, because those assignments are set aside as female-only positions.

This was the “tell” about racial quotas at Harvard. They were sued by Asian-American students who alleged that they were the victims of discrimination. As part of the discovery process, Harvard was compelled to supply data about their admissions policy, which showed that every year, 14% of Harvard freshmen were black. The percentage never varied — it was never 12% or 17%, but always 14% — because this number had, in fact, been established as a “goal” or “target,” i.e., a quota. Furthermore, it could be demonstrated that, in terms of their GPAs and test scores, a very large number of Asian applicants were rejected by Harvard who would have been admitted, had they been black. Harvard’s (illegal) quota for black students could only be met by having a double standard.

Something similar has undoubtedly happened with the Army, and the deadly crash involving Rebecca Lobach could be the incident that exposes the extent to which quotas and double standards have eroded the combat effectiveness of our military, to say nothing of how harmful DEI policy has been to male service members by reducing their career opportunities.

Yes, there were other factors that allowed her to screw up and kill herself and almost 70 other people, but she was the one flying the Black Hawk. And she repeatedly ignored warnings. pic.twitter.com/6oE4i35bM7

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) April 27, 2025

Oh, and I almost forgot something: The crash happened on a Wednesday night. Two days later, on a Friday, the Army identified the two male soldiers on the Black Hawk crew but, at the request of Lobach’s family, the Army withheld her identity until that Sunday. Why? So that her family could scrub her entire social media presence. It is futile to speculate what might have been on her Twitter/Facebook/Instagram accounts, but when her family released a statement about her death, it included some interesting phrases:

We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Rebecca. She was a bright star in all our lives. . . .
Rebecca was many things. She was a daughter, sister, partner, and friend.

Whose “partner” was she? Never mind . . .

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

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