The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 02.21.25 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | February 22, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.21.25 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

SOTD
Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
The Boss has ordained a shoutout to No Pasaran, which has been on Blogspot for 25 years.
Worth putting in the rotation? Early Warning Roundtable For 2/21/25
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

Payback is a stone-cold bitch.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: New Jersey Concealed Carry Permits Hit Record High in January
EBL: Sanna Marin on European Defense Spending, MAGA FBI Director Kash Patel, Make CPAC Fun Again, Backstabbing Zelensky, and Restroom Keys and Yosemite National Park
Twitchy: Hosts Of The View Told To Dial Back Offputting Anti-Trump Ravings, DataRepublican Sets Her Sights On David Hogg & His PAC And OH THE BRUTALITY, and Israel Releases Horrifying Results Of Bibas Childrens’ Autopsies
Louder With Crowder: Trump’s transportation chair is INVESTIGATING California waste, but how he shut down protestors is where he shined
Vox Popoli: Germany Issues a Warning, ASOIAF vs AODAL, Reading Isn’t Stealing, Kash Patel Confirmed, and The Next James Bond
According To Hoyt: Grab Your Mallet, Writers (and others) Standing For Liberty Promo Post, and Battle Fatigue
Monster Hunter Nation: Educating the Stupid on How Audits Work In Real Life
Flappr: Hooters – Fallen Empire
Toni Airaksinen: Professor Fired For Antisemitism Gets New Job At The American Anthropological Association
Upstream Reviews: Time-Marked Warlock
Jim McCoy: Any Given Doomsday

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Twilight of the Fourth Estate
American Greatness: Netanyahu Enraged After Israeli Hostage Coffins Are Paraded in Gaza Strip and Put on Macabre Display, Trump Slams Zelenskyy as ‘Modestly Successful Comedian’ Who Played Biden ‘Like a Fiddle’, IDF: Hamas Terrorists Murdered Bibas Children ‘With Their Bare Hands;’ Failed to Return Body of Mother, Trump Threatens to Yank Federal Funding From Maine After Governor Defies His Executive Order Protecting Women’s Sports, and Is the DOE DOA?
American Thinker: Trillions in Graft, Kash Patel Is Poised to Lead the FBI Into a New Era, President Trump Is Wrong on Gaza, Canada at the Crossroads, and Never Again?
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Fort Knox Gold News, Animal’s Hump Day News, Animal’s Red Thursday News, and Rule Five CPAC Friday
Baldilocks: The U.S. Military Discriminates & Anyone Who Cares About Our Country Should Be Glad It Does
BattleSwarm: Paxton Argues For Free Speech Against Texas Agency, First 10 Days Of Trump = Sharp Decline In Illegal Alien Crossings, “The British Army Is Now Too Small To Effectively Perform Its Tasks.”, and LinkSwarm For February 21
Behind The Black: SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites, Airbus writes off $314 million for unnamed space program losses, New observations reduce odds of asteroid 2024 YR4’s 2032 Earth impact to practically zero, Musk says ISS should be de-orbited quickly! And he may be right, and Justice Department drops absurd Biden-era discrimination lawsuit against SpaceX
Cafe Hayek: The Spectacular Economic Ignorance of Peter Navarro, also, Gramm and Boudreaux on Trade Deficits
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Chicago Boyz: In At the Beginning, also, Trevor Noah and Brown v. Board
Da Tech Guy: Barbarians being Barbarians: Bibas family edition
Don Surber: Shut up, Mike, I just want my money back
First Street Journal: Bad causes attract bad people, also, Will any of the pro-#Hamas demonstrators rethink their positions following the brutal murders of Kfir and Ariel Bibas?
Gates Of Vienna: Open Season on First Responders in Rosengård, Don’t Use the Munich Attack to Stir up Hatred and Xenophobia, “No One Can Guarantee the Safety of Our Citizens”, Islamic School For Scandal, and The Streets Are Full of Targets!
The Geller Report: The Massive Large Scale Terror Attack in Israel That Would Have Dwarfed Oct.7 On Day Murdered Bibas Babies Returned, also, Bibas Babies Identified, They Were Brutally Murdered by Islamic Terrorists, The Mother’s Body Does Not Match, It’s The Body of An “Anonymous Woman”
Hollywood In Toto: Unbreakable Boy Puts an Imperfect Family First, Captain America: Brave New World to Sink in Week 2? UPDATE, Millers in Marriage Stalls Just When It’s Ready to Soar, The Chosen Teams with Amazon for Season 5, Last Supper, and Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong Dons Palestinian Flag in Malaysia
The Lid: Wokesters Blame MAGA for Lesbian Fire Captain’s Death, Facts Prove Otherwise
Legal Insurrection: Iowa Public Universities Return to Two Sexes: ‘Basic Biological Reality’, Brown Medical School Uses DEI to Determine Faculty Promotions, SCOTUS Punts On Whether District Court Can Prevent Trump From Firing Official, Schadenfreude: SSA Fraud Expert Benched for Helping DOGE, But Then Appointed Acting Commissioner, and Is It Time to Rethink the Culling of Poultry in Response to Bird Flu?
Nebraska Energy Observer: I couldn’t, Europe’s New Reality, Scattershot Friday, and What is the biggest fault in America?
Outkick: New Robo Ump System Could End Baseball TV Broadcast Strike Zones, Roki Sasaki Announces Surprise Marriage In Instagram Post, 4 Nations Championship Ratings Were Gargantuan, ESPN and MLB Both Losers In Upcoming Divorce, and Paige Spiranac Offers To Help Save Hooters As It Faces Bankruptcy
Power Line: The missing corpse, MSNBC Settles Defamation Case, Garcia Doubles Down, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Shark Tank: Reps Jacques & Tramont Seek To Safeguard State Election Systems
Shot In The Dark: Stragegy, Auditioning For “The View”, The Buck Stops Ne’er, Handicapping, The Right Victims, and The Problem Is Families
STUMP: NYC Congestion Pricing, We Hardly Knew Ye
The Political Hat: For Whose Good: The Common vs. The Collective, Election Shenanigans In New York, Quick Takes – Academic Discrimination & The Law: Discrimination Not Prohibited On A Technicality; Anti-DEI Claimed To Be Unconstitutional; Anti-Semitism, and Firing Line Friday: The Ozone Controversy
This Ain’t Hell: Canada, Greenland and the Gulf of America, Canada, Greenland and the Gulf of America, Valor Friday, Pete Hegseth set to fire generals and senior officers, and VA Chaplain penalized for preaching Romans
Transterrestrial Musings: Gaza, Pigs Get Fed, Hogs Get Slaughtered, Britain, Clearing The Regulatory Underbrush, and Thoughts On Doge
Victory Girls: Jasmine Crockett Doesn’t Know What $5k Will Do For You, Amanda Marcotte Wants Cat Ladies To Stay Strong, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker Proves The Left Can’t Troll
Watts Up With That: £62 Million From Taxpayers For Wooden Bottles, Coalition to Burgum: “Stop offshore wind!”, A$18,000 Climate Doomsday Clock Unveiled in Melbourne, and Are Climate Scientists Lying About Their Work to Secure US Research Grants?
The Federalist: Education Department Launches Investigation Into Maine After Trump Slams Governor Over Boys In Girls’ Sports, WI Supreme Court Candidate’s Rich Leftist Friends Expect Much For Their Generosity, Here’s How The Media Are Lying Right Now: ‘Rewriting’ Ukraine War History Edition, Your ‘Farm Fresh’ Produce Might Be Fertilized With Forever Chemicals And Human Waste, and Will Someone Please Explain The Birds And The Bees To The Washington Post?
Mark Steyn: Thank You and Goodnight, Honouring Thy Parents, and Too Stupid Even for CBS News?

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In The Mailbox: 2.21.25 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | February 21, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 2.21.25 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Yesterday was eaten by snakes and travel.
The Art & Craft of Writing Romance Kickstarter continues!
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

Somebody in Kiev hasn’t figured out that the neocons aren’t in charge any more.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: How Old Do You Need to Be to Defend Yourself?
Director Blue: Top 20 Insanities DOGE Has Discovered – So Far
EBL: Ukrainian Beggars Can’t Be Choosers, John Basilone, RIP, Steam Skies | Airships above the Retro-Future, Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor, and The odds of a major asteroid hit just went up
Twitchy: New Democrat Primary Poll Shows They Definitely Plan To Remain Burdened By What Has Been, Mike Lee Brutally Reminds Liz Cheney Who She Is After She Tries Trolling J.D. Vance On Ukraine, and Check Out Fearmongering BS Chris Coons Thought Would Scare You About DOGE
Louder With Crowder: Here’s the latest technique to prevent being stabbed in Germany, also, Senator John Kennedy offers some of his trademark advice to Democrats: “Try harder not to suck”
Vox Popoli: Write What Thou Wilt, Bring. Them. Home., You Don’t Own Your Ebooks, Not Much Room for Complaint, and The Problem of Perspectives
Bugscuffle Gazette: Once More Into The Breach, 
Toni Airaksinen: Trump Promised To Fix McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines – Will He Deliver?
Stoic Observations: DevOps The Hard Way
Upstream Reviews: We All Love The HALO Franchise, also, Galen’s Way
L’Ombre de L’Olivier: NATO, RIP
Cedar Sanderson: A Con, A Child, & A Pivot

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Baldilocks: The Heist
CDR Salamander: So A SAPR Rep Who Did A Two-Week Harvard Seminar Had Some 1990s Nostalgia While Changing FITREPs? also, Diversity Thursday
Dana Loesch: Ubisoft’s Fall Should Be An Example, also, It’s Not Cool To Be Progressive Any More
Don Surber: The question unasked, also, They forgot the Forgotten Man – Trump didn’t
STUMP: A Potential Large Source Of Junk SSA Data

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HALO – Master Chief Collection
Galen’s Way
Best Sellers – Snacks & Sweets
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Category: Linkagery

CPAC Scenes

Posted on | February 21, 2025 | Comments Off on CPAC Scenes

General Washington and Martha were nice.,

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland
There is nothing else on the planet like CPAC. As I’ve sometimes said, it’s basically Mardi Gras for right-wingers. You see all the earnest young College Republican types, with the boys in nice suits and the girls dolled up in dresses and heels, and you know they’re having the time of their lives. After the end of each day’s conference activities, there’s a swirl of private parties and just people hitting the night spots along Fleet Street.

Of course, you don’t even have to leave the hotel to find a good time. Over many years of attending CPAC, I’ve made the lobby bar my usually hangout to meet up with friends, or make new friends.

IWF’s Gabby Hoffman does a radio interview.

Tony Katz does his show on Radio Row.

Radio Row, outside the main ballroom, is always crowded, and it was nice to see familiar faces like popular talk-show host Tony Katz, and Gabrielle Hoffman. When I first met Gabby at CPAC 2011, she was a College Republican, and now she’s the director of the Center for Energy and Conservation at Independent Women’s Forum.

Newsmax has a big presence at CPAC this year.

Hogan Gidley (left) on a Newsmax panel discussion.

The media environment is constantly changing. Newsmax may not rival Fox News in audience size yet, but they’ve probably got more viewers than CNN in many hours, and they’re obviously pushing hard to expand their brand awareness, especially with the MAGA grassroots.

Jack Posobiec gives an interview.

The Trump Tribe of Texas

This afternoon, I went down to the exhibition hall and filled up a swag bag with freebies to take back home. Only spending two days at CPAC this year, which means I’ll miss President Trump’s speech Saturday, but I really want to get home and sleep in my own bed tonight. I’ll have to hustle to load into the car, if I want to beat the rush-hour traffic out of D.C.. It’s been a blast, and it was good to see old friends.

At the Irish Whisper on Thursday night with Mike LaChance



 

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Category: CPAC

CPAC: New Heights of Awesomeness

Posted on | February 21, 2025 | Comments Off on CPAC: New Heights of Awesomeness

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland
Watching Vice President J.D. Vance being interviewed on the CPAC stage by Mercedes Mercedes Schlapp yesterday morning, I couldn’t help but be impressed and encouraged. Vance is very, very good as a communicator, in a way that Donald Trump never has been. Certainly, many voters have been drawn into the GOP column by Trump’s rough-and-tumble style of rhetoric, and I’m happy about that — proving my long-held belief that Republicans needed a more populist style. At the same time, I think I’m not the only conservative who laments — what shall we call it? — the imprecision of Trump’s rhetoric. Accuracy matters a lot, when discussing public policy, and Trump’s tendency to boast and to pile on with superlatives when touting his own plans and accomplishments has always been problematic. He just says too many things that are either exaggerated or plainly false, and as someone in the communications business, I find it difficult to defend some of what Trump says.

J.D. Vance, by contrast, is an absolute ace communicator, and his skills in this department make me feel very hopeful for the future. Of course it’s way too early to predict what will happen in 2028, but if Vance is the next Republican presidential candidate, you like the GOP’s chances. All those college-educated suburban women who had problems with Trump are going to be easier to get with Vance atop the Republican ticket.

We are still just one month into Trump’s second term, and there’s no way of knowing what will transpire over the next few years, but if Vance is heir apparent of MAGA, the future looks very bright.



 

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CPAC: Too Early to Think About 2026?

Posted on | February 20, 2025 | Comments Off on CPAC: Too Early to Think About 2026?

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland
So I get on the hotel elevator with a couple, and the guy’s wearing a red shirt emblazoned, “RON ELLER FOR CONGRESS.” Curiosity being a journalistic habit, I ask the guy, “Who’s Ron Eller?”

“I’m Ron Eller,” he says, and then proceeds to tell me that he ran for Congress last year in Mississippi against Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who was handpicked by Nancy Pelosi to chair the infamous J6 witch hunt committee. Mississippi has four congressional districts, three of which are held by Republicans with about 70% of the vote, whereas Thompson’s 2nd District, covering the Delta region stretching down the western side of the state, is rated D+11 by the Cook Political Report. Thompson’s been in Congress more than 30 years, and the last time any Republican challenger got as much as 40% of the vote against him was in 2004. There is no logical reason to think Thompson’s could be vulnerable in 2026, however . . .

Ron Eller got 38% of the vote last year despite being outspent more than 5-to-1 by the incumbent Democrat. The national Republican establishment didn’t lift a finger to help and wouldn’t even return Eller’s phone calls. Eller is a determined fellow who can and will give you his stump speech extempaneously, and he’s planning to challenge Thompson again in 2026. You got to like Eller’s bio — 20-year military veteran and small business owner, a deeply religious and patriotic man in a region where Bible-believing Christian faith is still nearly universal.

What could Ron Eller do in 2026, if we could mobilize grassroots MAGA activists to support his campaign? What would it mean, even in a D+11 district, to have major GOP fundraising efforts to back a candidate like Eller, the underdog against the 30-year incumbent lapdog of the left-wing Democratic Party establishment? So, after hearing Eller give his impromptu stump speech — I’m telling you, the guy’s a campaign machine — I said, “You remember the Tea Party year? Remember that campaign against Barney Frank?” Sean Bielat ring a bell?

That’s what we need — grassroots energy in a longshot campaign like the one that forced Barney Frank to spend half-a-million dollars of his own money to fend off the underdog challenger.

Even if you don’t win a campaign like that, the point is you force Democrats to play defense in otherwise “safe” districts, which limits how much money and effort they can put into fighting in the “purple” battleground races. Can MAGA generate the kind of grassroots energy in 2026 the Tea Party had in 2010? I don’t know. But what I do know is, I like this guy I met in the hotel elevator.

RON ELLER for U.S. CONGRESS



 

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Category: Congress, CPAC, Election, Mississippi

CPAC: Today Is Vice President Day

Posted on | February 20, 2025 | Comments Off on CPAC: Today Is Vice President Day

‘Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!’

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland
Still don’t have my media credentials. The appointed time to pick those up was 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday, so I showed up at the designated location about 4 o’clock and WHOA! A gigantic long line that wasn’t moving at all. So I figured there must be some kind of glitch in the system, and headed out to the lobby bar to mix and mingle, which is really the whole point of CPAC, right? Sure, the Vice President of the United States is giving a speech here at 10 a.m. Thursday, but you can see that on TV. What you can’t see on TV — and what most media coverage of CPAC ignores — is the continuous schmoozing that takes place all over this sprawling complex of hotels, restaurants and bars.

Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center

The Gaylord itself is massive, and the main ballroom — where people crowd in to hear the VIP speeches — is just one fraction of what goes on at CPAC. In the corridor outside the main ballroom is Radio Row and Media Row, with various talk show personalities, podcasters, etc., doing their thing live throughout the week. Each of these personalities has their own fandom, and CPAC attendees will crowd around to get a chance to see their favorites. And the various VIP speakers will go to Radio Row for interviews, so sometimes you’ll see a huge crowd form to watch some superstar in the MAGA galaxy do an interview. There’s also various panel discussions during the conference, which take place in meeting rooms scattered around the two upper floors of the convention center. Two floors below the main ballroom, there’s an exhibition hall where various policy institutes and activist organizations have their booths set up. Go down there and get a free canvas tote bag, and just fill it up with flyers, pamphlets, logo-embossed goodies, etc. My kids used to love it when I’d come home after CPAC and bring them a big bag of freebies.

Excuse the poor quality of the photo.

You may not recognize that guy on the right, but I did. Returning from dinner — fish and chips at the nearby Irish pub — I walked into the lobby and couldn’t believe my eyes. “Donut?” He turned when I called out to him, and sure enough it was “Donut Operator,” a/k/a Cody Garrett, an ex-cop whose YouTube has more than 5 million subscribers, which is about 10 times the size of the average hourly audience for CNN.

Donut Operator’s videos are mostly breakdowns of police body camera footage of officer-involved shootings, and I’m a stone junkie for that kind of stuff — car chases, shootings, suspects getting tased and pepper-sprayed, etc. Like, what part of “drop the knife” do I have to explain to these perps? Anyway, Donut is a bona fide celebrity in the 21st-century New Media universe, and it was kind of surprising to me that I was apparently the only one in the hotel lobby to recognize him, but maybe most CPAC attendees aren’t as into live police action as I am.

Erik Svane and me.

Speaking of action, the real action at CPAC is always in the lobby bar, a/k/a The Belvedere, which is where I bumped into my old friend Erik Svane who has been blogging at No Pasaran for more than 20 years. We first met at CPAC in either 2006 or 2007, during the G.W. Bush presidency, when the Global War on Terror was still the big thing for conservatives, and doesn’t that seem like a million years ago?

Erik and I talked about the old times, when “blogging” was still the New Thing, before social media, TikTok, YouTube and other such developments had revolutionized the information landscape. It was at CPAC 2007 (then held at the Omni Shoreham hotel in D.C.) that I first met Andrew Breitbart, and it’s stunning to think that it’s been nearly 13 years since Andrew died suddenly of a heart attack.

Well, I’m still alive, and still don’t have my media credential. Last night they were talking about opening up media registration at 5:30 this morning, so I woke up extra early and now must go over there and check in to see if I can get my badge. But failing all else, I’ll be in the Belvedere lounge. If you’re here at CPAC, just look for the fedora.



 

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In The Mailbox: 02.19.25 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | February 19, 2025 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.19.25 (Morning Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Skscartoons is looking for subscribers to support his cartooning, which is prolific and very good. At just $2/month, it’s a steal. 

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

Germany…Germany never changes.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Bubbles of Useless Research, also Don’t Hurt the Terrorist’s Feelings
EBL: The White Lotus Season 3, Elvis Presley in Paris, Wisconsin: Vote for Brad Schimel for Supreme Court, and Delta Toronto Crash
Twitchy: Chuck U. Schumer Claims Trump Is Crashing Planes To Enrich Billionaires, ABC News Headline Inspires Gutfeld’s Four-Step Summary Of Why Legacy Media Is Circling The Drain, and CNN Anchor Upset At DOGE Nuke Firings Was Unaware Sam Brinton Stole Women’s Luggage At Airports
Louder With Crowder: Trevor Noah makes shocking declaration that maybe segregation was a good thing after all, also, The new cringe leftist protest anthem dropped, this one squeals about “moving forward” from Trump and Elon
Vox Popoli: Nobody Asked You, The 7-Year Honeypot, Boomers Never, Ever, Learn, State Implies Support for Independence, and Cold Water
Bugscuffle Gazette: Lessons learned
Defending The Wood Perilous: The Crashing Of The Ice
Jim McCoy: A Brief Interminable Peace
Upstream Reviews: Escape From The Future

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: So, About VP Vance’s Speech
Don Surber: AP’s silly gulf war
STUMP: Visualization of Social Security Fraud(?)

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‘Ziz’ Misgendered and Other Highlights of Tuesday’s Court Hearing for Cult Suspects

Posted on | February 19, 2025 | Comments Off on ‘Ziz’ Misgendered and Other Highlights of Tuesday’s Court Hearing for Cult Suspects

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

Rebecca Francoeur-Breeden is an attorney with the public defender’s office in Allegany County, Maryland, who probably never expected she’d be representing three members of a nationally notorious Radical Vegan Transgender Death Cult, but who can predict such things?

So we’re all sitting there in District Court in Cumberland — me and about a half-dozen other reporters — listening as Judge Erich Bean conducts bail hearings by teleconference, which we can’t see, and the audio quality wasn’t ideal, either. The cases were called in alphabetical order by surname, and our three suspects spanned the entire range, Daniel Blank being the first case called and Michelle Zajko being the last, with reputed cult leader Jack “Ziz” LaSota in the middle. Interspersed between these three cases were several other strictly local crimes — child abuse, robbery, assault, drug possession, etc. — so the hearing that started at 11 a.m. went until 12:30 p.m. Because the “Zizian” cult is linked to no fewer than six homicides, including a Border Patrol agent who died in a January 20 shootout with two cultists, it must have been obvious to Ms. Francoeur-Breeden that her clients were going to be denied bail, but she was nonetheless under a professional obligation to try and present them in the most favorable light. This was probably why she made a point to list their academic credentials — each of them she described as “brilliant,” reciting their degrees and other accomplishments.

“Ziz” LaSota identifies as a transgender woman, despite being a male named Jack, and Judge Bean therefore referred to him as “she,” “her,” “ma’am,” and so forth. And there was a slightly comic moment when Ms. Francoeur-Breeden, doing her bit to hype up her genius clients, said of LaSota: “This is a brilliant young man — er, woman.”

This is not trivial, as I explained last month:

It must be understood that the cult around Jack Lasota (a/k/a”Ziz”) originated in his dispute with the leadership of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR), specifically Eliezer Yudkowsky and Anna Salamon. Lasota’s transgender identity was central to that conflict. “Anna discriminates against trans women in CFAR’s employment and inclusion in sponsored workshop events,” Ziz wrote in a flyer printed up for a 2019 protest against CFAR. In that flyer, Ziz labeled Salamon “a trans-exclusive radical feminist” (TERF).

Yudkowsky and Salamon are associated with what is called the “Rationalist” movement, which is very big among Silicon Valley tech types involved with artificial intelligence (AI). After graduating magna cum laude in computer engineering from the Fairbanks campus of the University of Alaska, LaSota moved to the San Francisco Bay area trying to find a spot on the fast track to tech success, and being accepted in MIRI/CFAR “Ratlionalist” circles was apparently part of that ambition. LaSota believed that he was blackballed by Salamon, accusing her of “transphobia,” and that was the motive for a 2019 protest where LaSota and three comrades showed up at a CFAR event dressed in “Sith” robes and wearing Guy Fawkes masks, and ended up getting arrested. Since that first arrest, the cult has been linked to at least six violent deaths:

Left to right: Amir “Emma” Borhanian, Rita and Richard Zajko

  • Amir “Emma” Borhanian — Cult member shot to death on November 15, 2022, by Curtis Lind, who was defending himself after being attacked by Borhanian and others. Lind had rented space on his property in Vallejo, California, to the “Zizians,” who were living in vans and box trucks. They were months behind on rent and, with Lind preparing to evict them, he was “allegedly impaled with a sword and blinded in one eye” during the attempted murder by the Zizians.
  • Rita and Richard Zajko — Parents of cult member Michelle Zajko, murdered on New Year’s Eve (December 31, 2022/January 1, 2023) in their Pennsylvania home. Michelle Zajko has been described as a “person of interest” in her parents’ deaths.
  • Curtis Lind — Murdered in California on January 17, 2025. Cult member Maximilian Snyder is charged with the murder. It is believed that Lind was killed to prevent him from testifying against two surviving cult members who were charged in the November 2022 attack.
  • David “Chris” Maland — U.S. Border Patrol agent shot to death in Vermont while making a traffic stop that turned into a shootout on January 20, 2025.
  • Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt — Cult member from Germany, killed during the same Vermont shootout in which Maland died. Bauckholt’s accomplice, Teresa Youngblut, had taken out a marriage license with Snyder (the suspect in Lind’s murder). Youngblut survived the shootout and is now in federal custody.

Left to right: Curtis Lind, David “Chris” Maland, Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt

Despite whatever jokes you might want to make about the “Zizians,” you see that they are quite deadly. And also pathetic. Sitting in the courtroom Tuesday, we heard Daniel Blank’s squeaky voice blabbering incomprensibly, then Ms. Francoeur-Breeden mentioned that Blank has mental health issues. She said Blank’s stepfather, who was willing to help Blank get some kind of local residence if he could be released, had flown in from California and was present in the courtroom. Judge Bean asked the stepfather to stand up and address the bench. He was a gray-haired man in a brown overcoat, obviously distraught, and said he would do whatever he could to help his stepson. Daniel Blank reportedly has dyslexia and is somewhere on the “spectrum” of autism. Yet, as Ms. Francoeur-Breeden told the court, he was unquestionably “brilliant”:

Daniel Blank was born in Berkeley, California and always excelled in school, earning straight A’s and praise from his teachers, his mother Nadia Blank told Open Vallejo. He competed on a science bowl team throughout middle and high school and was fluent in three languages, she said.
Blank, who became vegan in college, graduated a semester early from the University of California, Berkeley with a double major in bioengineering and computer science, according to a resume posted on his LinkedIn profile. As an undergraduate, he conducted research for two Berkeley professors and interned at Oracle and Daphnia Labs.
Blank’s mother said he accepted a high-paying corporate offer in Oakland following graduation.

Blank disappeared in 2022, and seeing his stepfather in court was emotionally jarring. Being a father myself, what must it be like to have your “brilliant” stepson disappear, end up in some kind of weird cult, and get arrested in connection with a nationwide crime spree?

As Ms. Francoeur-Breeden said of all three of her clients, Blank has no prior criminal convictions, but like the other two, he was ordered held without bond because of the circumstances surrounding the case, and the fact that they’re all considered “extreme” flight risks. And this, despite the fact that all the charges against them in Maryland are misdemeanors, which in almost any other case would get them released on very low bails.

It was near the intersection of Piney Mountain Road and Coon Club Road in Frostburg, Maryland, that the three “Zizians” were apprehended Sunday afternoon, as detailed in the police report:

Not long after 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, the Maryland State Police, Allegany County Sheriff’s Office and Maryland Natural Resources Police responded to a property on Piney Mountain Road off Coon Club Road in Frostburg after a man called and reported that two white box trucks with chains on the tires were trespassing on his property.
The man informed police that he told the three people who were wearing all black that they were not allowed on his property. They asked him if they could camp there for one month.
The property owner told law enforcement that the three people appeared suspicious and he wanted them removed from his property, police reported.
When Master Trooper Brandon Jeffries approached the vehicles, he alleges he saw a man sitting in the passenger seat of one of the trucks and ordered him to show his hands. That’s when Blank stated that he had a learning disability and did not understand, police reported.
Then, Jeffries asserts, he saw someone wipe the window in the other truck because it had fogged up.
Police reported that they found two people in that truck who were wearing gun belts that contained ammunition.
Next, Jeffries ordered them to get out of the vehicle. Michelle Zajko, he claims, cried and pleaded with him not to kill her.
Jeffries alleges that he told Zajko and Jack LaSota about the complaint that they were trespassing. The two agreed to leave, police reported, but they then refused to show their IDs.
As Jeffries looked through the back door of the truck, he asserts, he spotted a rifle and a handgun.
The three refused to give their names, police reported. Law enforcement arrested Blank and LaSota.
Police then took Zajko to the ground after they claim she refused to put her hands behind her back. Officers reported that they found a loaded handgun in her waistband.
The FBI identified Blank, LaSota and Zajko after looking at pictures.

Kind of peeved that I didn’t obtain a copy of that report myself, as I’d asked about the availability of such documents at the court clerk’s office. Meanwhile, the Vermont Digger has an excellent report about the federal firearms charges filed against Zajko, who apparently provided false information on her federal forms when she purchased four pistols in Vermont in 2024. Authorities say Zajko supplied the guns used by Youngblut and Bauckholt in the shootout that killed Chris Maland, which is a much more serious thing than the misdemeanor charges in Maryland.

The next court appearance for the three suspects is March 24, which gives investigators five weeks to gather more evidence. So far as I know, the only Zizian cultist whose whereabouts are unknown now is Jasper “Gwen” Danielson, but I’m sure the FBI has alerted law enforcement nationwide to be on the lookout for him/“her.” Hope they’re all locked up a long time, because as I keep telling y’all, Crazy People Are Dangerous.



 

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