In The Mailbox: 04.30.25

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

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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Category: Linkagery

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

I do believe we have Rule5Texan on X to thank for this young lady.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule Five Sperm Races Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, The Wilson Lewes Trio, Chernobyl, Miss Congeniality “Perfect Date” Scene, The Case for Christ, MAGA Vs. Democrat Tyranny, Casablanca “La Marseillaise”, Natalie Winters, “Trojan Horse”, “I Don’t Know How To Love Him”, The Public Enemy, His Only Son, Earth Day Note. Swan Lake, Companion, and Happy Easter

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Jr. MythBuster Rachel Pizzolato, Fish Pic Friday – The Reef Addicts, Trade War De-Escalation Ahead?, Tattoo Thursday, The Wednesday Wetness, Tuesday Tanlines, The Monday Morning Stimulus and Hippity Hoppity Easter’s On Its Way

BACON TIME: Rule Five – A Trip To Hooterville

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

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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Category: Feminism, Military

FMJRA 2.0: The Cost of Victory

Posted on | April 26, 2025 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

After last week’s crushing losses, it was glorious indeed to rise up and smite not only the Reds but the Red Sox on the road. Spaceman Lee lost the opener against the Reds, but the bullpen came through in Games 2 and 3, getting a win for Charlie Hough in Game 2 (which sent Vic Harris to the DL for a week) and saving Joe Coleman’s tenth win in game 3, which cost us Jimmy Northrup for a week. We also lost Jim Kaat and Blue Moon Odom to the DL in that series. Pat Dobson lost the first game at Fenway because our hitters couldn’t touch Jerry Reuss, but in Game 2 Spaceman Lee returned to form for his 11th win, backed up by two monster shots from Dave Kingman over the Green Monster. Game 3 was tougher: Joe Coleman gave us a quality start, but Bob Johnson almost blew the save, allowing a two-run homer to Willie Davis in the bottom of the ninth. He got the last out and the save, though, and that left us 4-2 for the week and just 1.5 games behind the A’s. Next up are the Phillies, who are 36-63 against the league and 1-2 against us. We’ll see if RFK is friendly to us this week.
In other news, because I wasn’t paying attention, I wound up with five extra copies of Eric Weathers’ Battle Brick Road #2, the second book in his SF retelling of L. Frank Baum’s classic tale. These are all Cover A, and one has a mini-poster with other extras. That one is $25; the rest are $20, including media mail shipping. E-mail me if you’re interested.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.