The Other McCain

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

Rule Five Sunday: More Hot Girls & Hot Cars

Posted on | April 20, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

This week’s appetizer courtesy of @kbdabear
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

EBL: More Girls With Guns – Revolutionary War, Saturday Night Girls With Guns, Edith Wharton, Cheese Ball Day, The Lucky One, MAGA Strait Of America, Sabrina Carpenter Should Embrace Her Inner Amelia, Jeremiah Johnson, The Testament Of Ann Lee, House of Guinness, and Madame Bovary

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Austin White, Gone Fishin’, Fish Pic Friday – Faith Mary, Tattoo Thursday, MD Has a New Plan for Blue Catfish, Maryland, My Maryland, The Wednesday Wetness, Tuesday Tanlines, Swalwell Slinks Away – Trump Blockades Iran, The Monday Morning Stimulus and Palm Sunday

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

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

Aspiring Rapper Update

Posted on | April 19, 2026 | No Comments

Jalen Carpenter, a/k/a EbkCap82

“Gee, Stacy, is it really fair to post a picture of the deceased performer brandishing illegal firearms?” Perhaps, but good luck finding any pictures of Jalen Carpenter in which he is not brandishing firearms.

The image above is from the video for EbkCap82’s song “Zombieland 2,” in case you’d like to go enjoy that spectacle of substance abuse and threatened violence. Carpenter’s specialty was what is known as “drill” music, which is basically gang warfare with a beat — the rapper and his companions displaying stacks of cash, waving around Glocks with extended magazines, smoking weed, boasting of their felonies and threatening to murder rival gangsters. You know — urban culture.

So, there was a 911 call about domestic violence that led to an Illinois State Police pursuit on I-57 on the south side of Chicago. By the time troopers caught up with Jalen Carpenter, he was strolling down a sidewalk about two miles away from the Obama Presidential Library:

A man was killed in an Illinois State Police shooting in Woodlawn Wednesday night.
State police said troopers responded to a call for a domestic battery in the 6500 block of South Champlain Ave. just before 11 p.m. Police said the incident started on Interstate 57, and troopers chased the vehicle involved to the city’s Woodlawn neighborhood. When they arrived, they said they found an armed man at the scene.
Police said a struggle ensued and shots were fired at the armed man. He was struck and taken to a local hospital, where he died. On Thursday morning, CBS News Chicago spoke to his father, Stan Carpenter, who identified him as 24-year-old Jalen Carpenter.
But CBS News Chicago was shown surveillance video of the shooting provided by a source. In that video, you can see Carpenter holding a gun and restrained by an officer, when that officer’s partner shoots and kills him.
“He had so many bullets we couldn’t even see the body,” his father said.
The surveillance video shown to CBS News Chicago shows a man in white, who we are told was Carpenter, walking casually and alone down the street moments before the shooting. He appeared to be holding his phone.
An Illinois State Police vehicle then pulls up. Two officers get out, one carrying a flashlight, before a struggle begins.
There is no sound on the video, so you cannot hear if they are having a conversation. As Carpenter turns around, restrained by one of the officers, you can see him holding a gun, though it does not appear that he fired it.
The second officer gets closer, and moments after, they fire their weapons. Witnesses said the gun was fired four or five times.
“He has police officers in his family,” Stan Carpenter said. “We have police in our family and, you know, they killed my son.”
Stan Carpenter returned to the scene of the shooting on Thursday, saying he wants a full investigation into his son’s death.
“He took his last breath in the cold street and died alone,” he said. “I wanna see body cameras. I want—I want—I want to see the evidence.”
Stan Carpenter said his son was a father to a son who is almost 2 years old.
“I’m just, I’m hurt right now. My family is hurt behind this. He was a good kid, worked for Amazon, you know, made some mistakes in his life, and you know, he was, he was doing good, man,” he said.
Jalen Carpenter’s mother said he was the eldest of five children.
CBS News Chicago has reached out to Illinois State Police for more clarity, trying to find out why they engaged Carpenter and why they felt it was necessary to shoot and kill him. Illinois State Police would not tell us anything, saying it’s an active investigation.
At the time of the shooting, Carpenter was out on electronic monitoring for an alleged aggravated assault with a firearm in February. The case had not gone to trial, but court records show he was ordered to turn over his FOID card and weapon.
Police said a gun was recovered at the scene. No officers were injured.
ISP Division of Internal Investigation Special Agents are investigating the shooting. Illinois State Police said they will be turning their evidence over to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.

To start with, what part of “drop the weapon” do I need to explain here? When you are approached by police, it’s probably a mistake to be “holding a gun,” but as previously mentioned, Jalen Carpenter was always “holding a gun.” It was his way of life — urban culture.

Secondly, just two months ago, Carpenter was arrested for aggravated assault with a firearm and released “on electronic monitoring,” but was violating the terms of his release by carrying a weapon — which, based on the type of firearms he displayed in his videos, was probably a Glock with a “switch” and a 50-round drum magazine, meaning that he was in effect carrying a machine gun. He was a menace to society and, while we don’t know the details of the domestic violence call that led to him being pursued by state police, perhaps you understand my skepticism toward his father’s claim, “He was a good kid.” Maybe by Chicago standards?

In a recent list of Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhoods, Woodlawn ranked only fifth, and maybe it will drop another place or two now that Jalen Carpenter a/k/a EbkCap82 is no longer on the streets.



 

Category: Aspiring Rapper Update

Guess Who Made an Interesting Point? UPDATE: Sarah Palin Explains Herself

Posted on | April 19, 2026 | No Comments

‘Air quotes’ by Nick Fuentes

Where do I start in explaining my hatred of Nick Fuentes? That this preposterous Jew-hating homosexual has been elevated to podcast royalty — the Pied Piper of 21st-century neo-Nazism — is one of those phenomena that makes me despair for the future of humanity. And I honestly fail to see what it is that makes Fuentes so appealing to younger people, but then again, I don’t understand the appeal of Ariana Grande or Sabrina Carpenter, either. A couple of months ago, during an hour-long podcast with “Christian nationalist” Joel Webbon, Fuentes did a lengthy smear-job on J.D. Vance, disparaging him as a phony, etc. Two of Fuentes’ talking points are just ripped off directly from liberals — first, that his “real name” isn’t J.D. Vance, and second, YALE! YALE! YALE!

To explain the first point: Vance was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, Ohio — a classic Rust Belt locale destroyed by the post-1973 collapse of the U.S. auto industry. His parents divorced before Vance reached kindergarten and, when his mother remarried, she changed her son’s name to John David Harmel — for her new husband, Bob Harmel, and also to erase J.D.’s father’s name. All of this must have been traumatic for young J.D. He and his half-sister were largely raised by his maternal grandparents, James and Bonnie Vance, in Breathitt County, Kentucky. In April 2013, at age 29, he changed his name to James David Vance, in tribute to his grandmother (“meemaw”) who he credits with helping him escape his parents’ troubled background of substance abuse and broken relationships. There is nothing phony about that.

On the second point, Fuentes harps on the fact that Vance got his law degree at Yale, but never once mentions Ohio State University, where Vance got his bachelor’s degree (summa cum laude) in 2009. Vance attended Ohio State on the G.I. Bill after serving four years in the Marine Corps. But because Ohio State alumni aren’t generally regarded as “elite,” Fuentes just leaves that out of the narrative altogether.

Vance’s background prior to his enrolling at Yale Law was the tale of a hard-luck kid who succeeded against the odds. During his first year at Yale, one of his professors urged him to write about his life, which she believed highlighted an important aspect of American life that gets too little attention, i.e., the fact that most white people don’t come from a background of “privilege.” There are plenty of white people who have experienced the kind of problems that affected J.D. Vance’s childhood — economic hardship, family dysfunction, etc. — and yet nobody in America’s leadership caste seems to give a damn about the problems of white folks in Middletown, Ohio, or Breathitt County, Kentucky. In fact, it seems that our leadership caste actively hates white people from places like that and does everything possible to ruin their lives.

That 400-word introduction is necessary background to a tweet that Sarah Palin posted on Friday:

WHAT? Why would Sarah Palin post a four-minute video clip from that Nick Fuentes/Joel Webbon podcast? So I forced myself to watch it — a painful experience, as I can’t stand listening to Fuentes — and about two minutes into it, he gets to the part that I think Palin wished to highlight. Fuentes mentions something I hadn’t known, namely that in 2010-2011, Vance (under the byline J.D. Hamel) wrote a handful of columns for David Frum’s website, FrumForum. These columns were mostly dull expressions of the kind of moderate RINO stuff that Frum was promoting as “conservatism that can win again.” Dear God, praising Jon Hunstman?

At any rate, Fuentes called attention to an article that Frum wrote for The Atlantic in 2022, “The J.D. Vance I Knew,” in which Frum explained that he saw Vance as someone who could bridge the chasm separating the populist grassroots and the GOP Establishment. Because it is my habit to ignore Frum (just as I habitually ignore Fuentes), I hadn’t known about this Frum-Vance connection. In trying to spin this as some kind of conspiracy, Fuentes says that Frum believed Vance could “deliver the rabble-rouser Tea Partiers back into the hands of the moderate Republican establishment. . . . Because there’s this crisis where you have the Tea Party and Sarah Palin, and the Republican base is like ‘xenophobic’ and ‘Islamophobic’ . . . [and] the establishment of the Republican Party is like William F. Buckley, they’re very elitist, they’re very wealthy, they represent the corporate interests. The base, they’re populist, they’re extremely conservative. . . [Frum] says Vance’s ‘biographical credibility’ is what will deliver them [to the establishment].”

Fuentes gets a lot of things wrong here — Frum was criticizing Vance after the latter had won the 2022 GOP Senate primary in Ohio, with Trump’s endorsement, by rejecting the kind of Frum-approved attitudes that Vance had previously espoused. Here’s the crucial paragraph:

Vance’s superpower in those days (circa 2017) was his biographical credibility as he spoke about Trump America to non-Trump America. In talks at forums like the Aspen Institute, in an essay for The Atlantic, across elite tables at venues like the investment bank Allen & Company’s Sun Valley media conference, Vance urged understanding of the people who had voted for Trump, even as he excoriated Trump himself as unfit, bigoted, authoritarian, fraudulent — a deceiver and exploiter of the people Vance spoke for.

Frum has never abandoned his #NeverTrump stance, and his criticism of Vance is for “going with the flow” of grassroots Republicans — siding with the actual voters, rather than with the Aspen Institute elites.

The reason I think Palin tweeted that video clip was because Fuentes mentioned her as the original heroine of the current populist movement among conservatives. Frum didn’t mention her in his piece about Vance, but Fuentes did. While Palin didn’t offer any explanation for why she posted the clip, I imagine she sees the same basic problem that any intelligent person who has looked at Republican politics for the past 20 years can see, the conflict of interests between the grassroots and the “elitist” party establishment that, as Fuentes says, “represent the corporate interests.” This is most obvious in regard to immigration, where the Chamber of Commerce crowd wants de facto open borders to obtain cheap foreign labor, while the grassroots wants mass deportation.

The truth is still the truth, even if the person saying it — Nick Fuentes or David Frum or Donald Trump — is someone you loathe. And as for J.D. Vance, why should I condemn or distrust him for having abandoned his earlier Frum-approved establishment beliefs, when I wish everyone else (including Frum) would do the same? We are supposed to be living under a representative government, and yet Frum seems to believe that people who disagree with him don’t deserve representation. The beauty of our system is that candidates either have to advocate policies supported by a majority of the electorate, or else they can’t get elected. Donald Trump has won Ohio three times in a row — 52% in 2016, 53% in 2020, 55% in 2024 — and if Vance wanted to be elected as a senator from Ohio, he had to reconcile himself to that pro-Trump majority. The fact that he is a former critic of the president — well, so was Marco Rubio, who is Vance’s chief rival for the 2028 nomination, at least according to the pundits.

“You go to war with the army you have,” as the saying goes. The most zealous Trump supporters are not likely to trust either Vance or Rubio or any other Republican as much as they trust Trump, but there will be a primary campaign, and whoever gets the GOP nomination, that’s our candidate. The same people who, like David Frum, refuse to support Trump despite the views of a majority of Republican voters, nevertheless expect the grassroots to shut up and fall in line when a worthless RINO gets the nomination. But why bring up Mitt Romney now, huh?

Those of us who side with the grassroots — the kind of heartland voters who fell in love at first sight with Sarah Palin back in 2008 — believe that this is not only morally right, but also that it is the best hope for defeating the Democratic Party. The problem with most of the GOP “elite” is that they don’t actually want to beat Democrats the way Democrats deserve to be beaten — thoroughly, completely, and permanently defeated.

We may never get to that Promised Land in my lifetime, dear brothers and sisters, but let me tell you: “I HAVE A DREAM!”

UPDATE: Apparently, in posting a longer version of the Fuentes video earlier, Sarah Palin had provided more of an explanation, which wasn’t in the post with the 4-minute clip. So my old blog buddy Dan Collins asked for an explanation, which she gave at length:

Really? As I pointed out explicitly: the clip shouts out TEA Party energy and my involvement in the organic grassroots beauty of it. I’m proud of what we accomplished in awakening America to the uniparty agenda that’s atrophying the foundation and figure of our country.
Thus, I directed an audience to LISTEN to THAT point – to stay focused – and not cherry pick comments to use as ammo.
I pointed out the shout-out I received inadvertently compares the TEA Party’s pro-America; pro-freedom; pro-family & God; anti-big government; anti-endless war; anti-open borders; Drill Baby Drill solid platform with today’s chaotic nonsense permeating fake news and politics.
Funny, you can listen to any clip of any podcast and owe no one an explanation… as can I. So I do.
People are absolutely cherry picking around the point I highlighted. Typical. Predictable.
So, what’s the confusion?

No more confusion. Thanks, Governor!



 

Category: J.D. Vance, Sarah Palin

FMJRA 2.0: Probably Not This Year

Posted on | April 19, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

You would think that six games in the Launching Pad and Wrigley Field would have seen Dave Winfield, Jim Northrup, and Dave Kingman jacking homers in all directions, but unfortunately the Bravos and Cubs have some tough pitchers, and we finished the week 1-5, which may just be enough to knock out us out of the running for the last playoff spot. Our only win was courtesy of Jim Kaat, who held the Cubs to four runs while our boys got three runs off Jerry Koosman before going ham on Jack Aker for six more and also sneaking an unearned run past Goose Gossage. Final score, 10-4 Senators. Our next series is at home against the hapless A’s, then it’s a short road trip to Cincinnati (1-2) before we finish up at home against the Twins (4-5). We’re 74-79, a few points behind the 73-77 Royals, so these last three series are going to decide if we’re in or out of the playoffs.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
baseball

The Christine Blasey Ford Standard and the Sudden Destruction of Eric Swalwell
The Pirate’s Cove
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

The Big Yellow Button Is Back Again!
EBL
357 Magnum

Stop the Gerrymander, Virginia!
EBL
357 Magnum

Memo From the National Desk: Tales of Fear and Loathing in the Commonwealth
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: Grinding Forward
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Natives vs. Newcomers in Virginia: What ‘Spanberger’s Lobster’ Is Really About
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule Five Monday: Blue Monday
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 04.13.26
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

NY Times Keeps Lying About Everything, Including the Basic Facts of Life
American Free News Network
First Street Journal
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 04.14.26
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Crazy People Are Dangerous
EBL
357 Magnum

Thanks to All the Tip-Jar Hitters!
EBL
357 Magnum

The Dumbest White Liberal in Georgia
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 04.16.26
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

In The Mailbox: 04.16.26 (Evening Edition)
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

Fear and Loathing at Mar-a-Lago? Freaky Friday Flashback to ‘Big Ed’ Muskie
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

In The Mailbox: 04.17.26
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: FMJRA Award

The Ivy League Is Decadent and Depraved

Posted on | April 18, 2026 | No Comments

The University of Pennsylvania campus

For a decade or so now, I’ve been using that headline — a literary allusion to the famous 1970 article in which Hunter S. Thompson pioneered “Gonzo journalism” — in posts about elite academia. The decadence and depravity are mainly a function of the liberal hegemony on these campuses, where Republicans are so scarce among the faculty and administration as to be nearly non-existent. This is true not only at the Ivy League schools, but also at all the other most prestigious private colleges and universities (Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, etc.) and even at the more selective state schools like Cal-Berkeley and the University of North Carolina. Insofar as any institution of higher education is regarded as “elite,” it is characterized by a vehement commitment to leftism, which excludes not only conservatives from employment, but even silences dissent by moderate and pragmatic liberals. The experience of former Clinton administration official Lawrence Summers, who was driven out of the presidency of Harvard University for questioning the “diversity” rationale in tenure decisions, shows that not even card-carrying Democrats are safe in such environments.

This week we got a report from Jonathan Zimmerman, a well-regarded senior professor at the University of Pennsylvania:

In March of last year, about two months after President Trump returned to the White House, I traveled to Washington for a meeting of American education scholars. The opening panel focused — appropriately enough — on Trump’s threats to university funding, free speech on campus, and more. Then it was time for questions, and I raised my hand. I said that I agreed with all the critiques of Trump, but I also wondered what those of us who work in higher education might have done — or not done — to bring about this awful moment. Could we use it to look in the mirror, I asked, and not just to circle the wagons?
Dead silence. Then another member of the audience spoke up. “I just wanted to say that I was deeply offended by Professor Zimmerman’s use of the term ‘circle the wagons,’ which connotes a hateful history of Native American displacement and genocide,” she said, as I remember it. More awkward silence. Finally, the moderator of the panel interjected with something along the lines of: “Thank you for reminding us that we need to be careful in the language that we use to describe others.” So the panel began with a diatribe about Donald Trump’s assault on free speech and it concluded with a warning to watch our words. . . .

You can and should read the whole thing. Zimmerman has located the exact source of the problem, i.e., that the Left now dominates higher education so completely that those inside the campus bubble can’t even see what the problems are, much less think constructively about possible solutions. When Zimmerman urged his colleagues to consider a moment of self-reflection — to ask them to consider how they had helped create the threat represented by the Trump administration — his question was met with a sermon about how “circle the wagons” was offensive.

Although the Left’s hegemonic domination of academia is now worse than ever, it is not new. Seventy-five years ago, when William F. Buckley Jr. published God and Man at Yale, liberalism was already so prevalent on campus that Buckley’s critique was met with furious denunciations. Yale trustee Frank Ashburn, writing in the Saturday Review, said of Buckley’s work: “The book is one which has the glow and appeal of a fiery cross on a hillside at night. There will undoubtedly be robed figures who gather to it, but the hoods will not be academic. They will cover the face.”

To compare Buckley’s book to a Ku Klux Klan rally was outrageous and insulting, but such is ever the fate of anyone courageous enough to speak out against institutionalized liberalism. One wonders what deranged insults are now flooding into Professor Zimmerman’s email inbox after he dared write the truth in the Chronicle of Higher Education.



 

Category: The Ivy League Is Depraved and Decadent

In The Mailbox: 04.17.26

Posted on | April 18, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

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

President Trump nails THE ART OF THE DEAL to the door of St. Peter’s Basilica.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: A Day With Patton At The Battle of the Bulge
EBL: Ribbonfish, The Lucky One, Swalwell’s Wing Man Democrat Ruben Gallego Under Scrutiny for Sexual Misconduct, The Assassination of Fleet Admiral Yamamoto, and “Sir Thomas More”
Twitchy: Drunk Republican & Others Troll The UK Mercilessly After Finding Out How Poor The Brits Are, NYT’s Attempt To Rally Sympathy For Illegal Who Snuck Back In To Deliver Anchor Baby After Deportation Backfires Badly, and Ilhan Omar’s “War Survivor” Charade Exposed – Her Father Was Colonel In Genocidal Regime
Louder With Crowder: Baby cries for his mother, and his two dads think that it’s hilarious, Philadelphia mayor FREAKS OUT on voters for “daring” to question how she taxes more of their hard-earned money, Jasmine Crockett breaks her silence, lets her fans know what’s next for her career-wise, The Friday Show: Examining The Mystery of the Modern Woman, and Purple-haired Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) has a cow over raw milk as she screeches at RFK Jr.
Vox Popoli: KMT-CPC Initiatives, also, The Kiso Scroll
According To Hoyt: Two Worlds, A Small Pause For Self Promo, False Preferences, Creativity, Markets and Blindness, and Writers who don’t hate you, Extraordinary Promo Post [there are actually six or seven of these, go check them out!]
Upstream Reviews: Night Machines
Cedar Sanderson: The Jaiya Series
Stoic Observations: Hands-On America

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: Trump Says Strait of Hormuz Fully Open – Iran Has Agreed to Never Close It Again, NY State Loses $73 Million in Federal Highway Funding Over Failure To Revoke Illegals’ CDL, House Approves Short-Term FISA Spy Powers Extension, Cook Political Report Claims Four Key Senate Races Shift Toward Democrats, and Tax Invasion
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For April 17
Behind The Black: The space agencies of Canada and Europe agree to exchange classified information, The space station startups say NASA’s new space station plan is mistaken, and Two launches since yesterday, by Russia and China
Cafe Hayek: White House Brags About Using Imports Dumped in America, John Tamny Is Mistaken About Government Debt, and American Housing Today Compared to American Housing in the Mid-1950s
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday, 
Chicago Boyz: The effect of education on ideology, Relationship advice, and Losers gotta lose
Da Tech Guy: Pintastic NE 2026 Videos of the Day: Four Quick Clips
Don Surber: Brits poorer than Mississippians 
First Street Journal: Lawfare!
Flopping Aces: The Week in Radical Leftism, also, Virginia Democrats are Getting Nervous
Gates Of Vienna: Appeals Court Upholds Sentence for Audrey Mondjehi
The Geller Report: “Tell That To The Pope”, Corrupt California Democrats Passed Bill to Criminalize Investigative Journalism, Hezb’Allah Official Brags “We Have Muslim Students Agitating, But It’s the Western Students Themselves Who Will Destroy Their Own Countries.”, Justice Clarence Thomas Warns of Progressivism’s Incompatibility With the American Experiment, and California Gubernatorial Democrat Candidate Tom Steyer Reveals Plans to Jail ICE Agents
Glenn Reynolds: The Future Belongs To Those Who Show Up
Hollywood In Toto: Johnny Carson Warned Us About Jimmy Kimmel, also, R-rated Comedy Revival Running on Empty?
Legal Insurrection: Justice Clarence Thomas Declares Progressivism ‘Incompatible’ With America’s Founding Documents, Taxpayer-Funded Electric Buses in Miami Remain Out of Service Since Last Year, Utah Valley U. Drops Graduation Speaker Who Smeared Charlie Kirk as ‘Bigoted’ After His Murder, Utah Leaders Investigating Alleged Relationship Between Supreme Court Justice, Redistricting Lawyer, and Minnesota Attorney Charges ICE Agent With Assault for Allegedly Pointing Gun at Motorists
Nebraska Energy Observer: Lucy Amongst the Rebels
Outkick: San Diego Padres Closer Mason Miller Is An Insane Human Cheat Code Destroying Major League Baseball, IndyCar Star Pato O’Ward Rips The ‘Artificial’ Racing In Formula 1, Here Are 6 Of The Best Moment From the Flyers-Penguins ‘Battle Of Pennsylvania’, Will Anderson Jr. Getting Paid Like A QB To Sack QBs Will Have Ripple Effect On Texans’ Actual QB C.J. Stroud, and Paige Spiranac Ditches Everything For Maxim, Kay Adams Blows Kisses While Her Peers Bicker & Major 12U Update!
Power Line: S&P 7100, Hezbollah Is Iran, Waiting for the Star Tribune, The left versus the Declaration, and Was the Strait ever ‘closed’?
Racket News: The Ford Is Getting Tired
Shark Tank: Rep. Cammack Introduces Bill Improving Mental Health Services For First Responders
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday: Bobby Kennedy and Other Mixed Blessings
This Ain’t Hell: Disenfranchised? You betcha, also, Valor Friday
Transterrestrial Musings: The Latest From Jared
Victory Girls: A Ceasefire Between Lebanon And Israel While Iran Possibly Caves On Uranium Enrichment
Watts Up With That: Want to Know Climate Truth? Believe the Opposite When the Media Says Something Is False, Schadenfreude Of the Week, Forget Climate Activism – the Grauniad is Now Pushing AI Activism, Heartland right over the target with triumphant climate change conference, and Breaking: Major Under-the-Radar SCOTUS Decision on Climate Lawfare
The Federalist: New Docs Reinforce The Newest DC District Judge Is A Legal Hack Skilled In Abusing Power, Trump Admin To Stop Taxpayer Funding Of Worthless College Degrees, How Reforming Stock Market Rules Would Dramatically Boost America’s Middle Class, From Immigration To Gerrymandering, Democrats Keep Using The Word ‘Temporary’ To Mean ‘Forever’, and The Media’s Pulp Fiction Hegseth Hoax Is As Dumb As It Gets
Mark Steyn: Pick Your Poison – Droned? Or Raped and Stabbed?

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Category: Linkagery

Fear and Loathing at Mar-a-Lago? Freaky Friday Flashback to ‘Big Ed’ Muskie

Posted on | April 17, 2026 | No Comments

“Not much has been written about The Ibogaine Effect as a serious factor in the Presidential Campaign, but toward the end of the Wisconsin primary race — about a week before the vote — word leaked out that some of Muskie’s top advisors had called in a Brazilian doctor who was said to be treating the candidate with ‘some kind of strange drug’ that nobody in the press corps had ever heard of. . . . I immediately recognized The Ibogaine Effect — from Muskie’s tearful breakdown on the flatbed truck in New Hampshire, the delusions and altered thinking that characterized his campaign in Florida, and finally the condition of ‘total rage’ that gripped him in Wisconsin. There was no doubt about it: The Man from Maine had turned to massive doses of Ibogaine as a last resort. The only remaining question was ‘when did he start?'”
— Hunter S. Thompson

You have to understand the background of that campaign to understand why Hunter S. Thompson thought it would be funny to invent a rumor that a U.S. Senator was addicted to ibogaine. First of all, Thompson hated Hubert Humphrey like God hates sin, and in 1968, Ed Muskie had been Humphrey’s vice presidential running mate on the Democratic ticket that lost to Richard Nixon. For reasons that were never adequately explained at the time, and which seem ridiculous in hindsight, the media pundits and Democratic Party power brokers decided in advance of the 1972 campaign that Muskie was the front-runner, the man to beat. Thompson had other ideas, playing his hunch that the anti-war left wing (which had chased LBJ out the White House with their votes for Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 New Hampshire primary) would play a decisive role in the Democratic primaries. So at the very start of the 1972 campaign, Thompson was nearly the only national reporter covering South Dakota Sen. George McGovern on the trail in New Hampshire.

The very idea of Rolling Stone sending a correspondent to cover the presidential campaign was weird, at the time, and Thompson’s eccentricities were notorious enough that his hunch about McGovern’s chances didn’t get much credit from other reporters on the campaign trail, and yet in the end he was vindicated — especially in regard to his contempt for the “mainstream” consensus front-runner Ed Muskie. Once McGovern won the Wisconsin primary in April, Muskie’s campaign was in disarray and the party bosses who wanted to stop McGovern shifted their support to Humphrey in a desperate bid to keep the peace freaks from taking over the Democratic Party. I’ve always figured Thompson’s riff about Muskie being an ibogaine addict was his way of kicking the doomed loser while he was down. Anyway, today Stephen Green at Instapundit called attention to a story from CBS News:

Trump to sign executive order on psychedelic drug used abroad to treat PTSD
A psychedelic used in some countries to treat post-traumatic stress disorder is expected to get a closer examination from the federal government on its safety and effectiveness, sources told CBS News.
The White House is drafting an executive order that would signal the Trump administration’s willingness to further U.S. research into a drug called ibogaine.
Ibogaine, a naturally occurring compound from a shrub native to Africa, is used to treat depression, anxiety, addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder and brain trauma.
Because it’s illegal in the United States, Americans have been traveling to unregulated clinics, often in Mexico or the Caribbean, to take the drug.
The Trump administration doesn’t plan to reclassify the drug for medical use at this time — it will remain a Schedule I drug.
President Trump intends to sign the executive order as soon as this week, two of the sources said.
White House spokespeople didn’t immediately comment.
The action on ibogaine is meant to open the door to federal funding for further research on its effectiveness with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries, especially among veterans, several sources said.
“60 Minutes” last year covered a group of nine U.S. veterans who traveled to a remote village near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for a week-long psychedelic retreat to deal with intrusive memories.
Texas has made a big push to study ibogaine. Gov. Greg Abbott last year signed a bill approving $50 million for research.
Trump officials said the medical research into ibogaine is in an early phase, but the administration wants to help determine whether it’s “snake oil” or a legitimate treatment, one official said.
As a Schedule I substance, ibogaine is currently grouped by the Drug Enforcement Administration alongside heroin, ecstasy and other drugs that have “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” . . .
Researchers say ibogaine could eventually fill a gap in addiction treatment, particularly for opioid dependence, but more large-scale clinical trials are needed before it can be considered safe or effective for any condition.
The scientific evidence behind the drug so far consists mostly of small observational studies and open-label trials. Only one double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial has been completed. More advanced trials are just now getting underway.
The most serious risk is to the heart. Ibogaine can cause dangerous heart rhythm disturbances, which can be fatal. A review in 2023 of 24 studies involving 705 people found that while ibogaine appeared to reduce withdrawal symptoms and craving, toxicity to the heart and risk of death were “worrying.” At least 27 people have died after taking ibogaine, the 2023 report showed.
In a small study of 30 veterans who received ibogaine paired with intravenous magnesium to protect the heart, no serious cardiac events were reported. The study, which was published last July by Stanford Medicine, found that the drug safely reduces post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression in veterans when combined with magnesium to protect the heart.

Going with the PTSD angle, are we? Yeah, give me a prescription, because Alabama lost four games last season, and the emotional trauma was real. But it’s just crazy how ibogaine, a drug that almost nobody had heard of when Hunter S. Thompson wrote about it in 1972, is now getting serious attention from the Trump administration. We live in Gonzo times, and when the going gets weird, the weird vote Republican.



 

Category: Fear. Loathing.

In The Mailbox: 04.16.26 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | April 17, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: SWAT Raided Her Home Looking For Someone Already in Jail
EBL: The Leftists Took Over The Vatican, Apples Explained, Eggs Benedict, Split Fish, and Believe The Women: Swalwell Accusers Come Forward
Twitchy: The Other Shoe Drops – Rep. Luna Reports Sexual Misconduct Allegations Against Sen. Gallego, Student Self-Deports After Enduring “Inhumane” ICE Conditions, and Whoopi Goldberg Schools People Who Think They Know The Bible
Louder With Crowder: Mamdani announces his first government-run grocery store…that costs taxpayers $30 million, and won’t open for three years, Dave Chapelle Slams Conservatives “Weaponizing” His Jokes, And We Have Thoughts, Mayor blasted for handing out $500 massage vouchers to welcome queer and trans illegal migrants to Boston, Spencer Pratt SHOCKS Joe Rogan over how bad the Los Angeles justice system is, and Undercover video exposes immigration rights group coaching migrants to claim they’re LGBTQ to cheat the asylum process
Vox Popoli: Ceasefire, Take 3, also, China Promises Nothing
Defensing The Wood Perilous: Celebrating Mom

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: Iran – A Longer View, Mark Meador’s Flawed Take on Antitrust Clairvoyance, Pro-Life Dad Awarded Million-Dollar Settlement Over Biden-Era FBI Raid, The Anti-Tariff Priesthood Strikes Again , and Should We Blockade the Strait of Hormuz?
BattleSwarm: Houston: “We Absolutely, Positively Will Not Cooperate With ICE!” Texas: “Guess You Don’t Need This $110 Million, Then.” Houston: “Let’s Not Be Hasty.”, also, Texas Not Free From Welfare State Fraud
Behind The Black: The movement of surface ash on Mars over a half century, Firefly’s delays launch of its Eclipse rocket to 2027, India’s space agency: In ’25 it did 20 maneuvers to avoid collisions in space, Saxavord spaceport faces new regulatory and financial issues, and Vast unveils a proposed docking port more than 3x larger than standard space station ports
Cafe Hayek: Debunking a Bad Case for Tariffs, also, Is Globalization Lethal?
CDR Salamander: The Wonderfully Enigmatic MV Kellie Chouest , A Moment for a Plank Owner
Chicago Boyz: Democrats Disenfranchising Virginians, also, The Iran War Was Necessary & Inevitable
Da Tech Guy: Pintastic NE 2026 Video of the Day Extra Ball Lounge(s)
Don Surber: Red China bows
First Street Journal: We cannot go back in time to take advantage of opportunities we have already passed up
Gates Of Vienna: The Varieties of Cultural Enrichment, Springtime for Hamas in Italy, and No Speakee Italiano!
The Geller Report: Iran Used Chinese Spy Satellite to Target U.S. Bases in Pre-Strike Surveillance, Vatican Sets Up Dedicated Muslim Prayer Room at Heart of Pope’s 500-Year-Old Library, Pope Leo Visits Muslim Memorial to Killers of Christians, Influencer “SNEAKO” Screams Genocidal Jihad Chant as his Fellow Muslims Scream ‘Allahu Akbar’, and Dan Bilzerian, a Deranged Antisemite With 30 Million Followers
Hollywood In Toto: Odenkirk’s Fargo-Style Normal Goes Full Tarantino, Elizabeth Banks Plays Race Card Against Female MAGA, and The Passenger – Nicholson Shines in Antonioni’s Underrated Masterpiece
Legal Insurrection: Leading Dem in California Governor Race Proposes Radical Immigration Platform, Congress’s Secret Misconduct Fund Back in Spotlight After Swalwell Bombshell, JD Vance Suspends 447 More Hospices in L.A. in Ongoing Battle Against Fraud, Concern Grows Over 10 Missing or Deceased NASA, Nuclear, and Defense Researchers, and Former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax Kills Wife, Self Amid ‘Messy Divorce’
Nebraska Energy Observer: The Best Tools for the Job, also, Can (or perhaps will) Europe defend itself without America?
Outkick: Ex-Bama Player Accused Of Disguises, Impersonating NFL Stars In $20M Fraud Scheme, The End Of Conference Title Games? New NCAA Proposal Shifts College Football Calendar, Blue Jackets Make The Right Call And Re-Up With Rick Bowness After He Shoved His Own Team In A Locker, Retired Adult Film Actress Asia Carrera Is Proof That Hard Work Pays Off As She Passes Texas Bar Exam, and American Eagle Drops New Sydney Sweeney Photos, Slaps Around The Woke Mob
Power Line: Impeaching Pete, Our Poor Relations, Man convicted on gun charge related to Edina ’25 graduation, The Church versus Trump, and DID Hungary move to the left?
Racket News: While Congress Ponders Cutting Spy Powers…, Public Stonings Are Not “Accountability”
Shark Tank: Congressional Holy War Brewing In FL-6
Shot In The Dark: Badly Managed Decline
The Political Hat: Not Leviathan’s Digital Device
This Ain’t Hell: ROTC Cadets on Col. Shah’s Heroism, Army Ranger Tommy Gwynn dies at 106, At Sea No One Can Hear You Scream, Wednesday Tax Day Potpourri, and Fail Britannia, Who Used to Rule the Waves
Transterrestrial Musings: Project Hail Mary, ULA’s Woes, Intelligence Versus Wisdom, and Jeff Greason
Victory Girls: Tom Steyer’s Radical Ideas Concerning ICE May Be Too Much For Gavin Newsom, also, Nashville School Didn’t Just Accommodate Muslim Students. It Organized
Watts Up With That: $96 Million to Nowhere: The Predictable Failure of Subsidized Electric Buses, 20 Years of WUWT: What We’re Up Against & Why It Matters, Australia’s ‘Renewable’ Obsession Decimates Industry, Grauniad Whines “The Climate Deniers are In Charge Now”, and Is America on the Verge of a Nuclear Renaissance?
The Federalist: Justice Jackson Minimizes ‘Harms’ Leftists’ Anti-Trump Judicial Coup Poses To Executive Power, California Bar Strips John Eastman Of Livelihood For Representing A Client With Views It Dislikes, The Iran War Threatens To Pull The Plug On American Farming’s Life Support, The New York Times Tries To Gin Up A Hit Piece On The Texas Rangers, But Nobody Cares, and 6 House Republicans Vote To Block Trump From Enforcing Immigration Law
Mark Steyn: From Lviv with Love, Live Around the Planet – Still Fighting The Last War, and Spring is in the Air

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