The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 08.06.26

Posted on | August 6, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.
Back from Vegas; still a little tired but it’s time to put in the work.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Doug Ross: The Day Humanity Took Flight (1903),
357 Magnum: Self-Defense Is Legal in Cincinnati
EBL: Regular vs Pumpkin Swordfish, A Toast To Italy, “Mademoiselle from Armentières”, and Weird Cringey Covid 
Twitchy: Occasional Cortex Causes Meltdown Followed by Knock-Down Drag-Out Fight Between Lefties, Amy Klobuchar Furious When Crowd Boos & Laughs In Her Face Over Claims She Helped Secure The Border, and This Jarvis Post On Expensive Burritos Torched Every Political Faction On X
Louder With Crowder: Aaron Rodgers goes BONKERS over “absolute criminal” Anthony Fauci caught lying about everything, Democrat frontrunner for WIGOV tosses the word salad on whether she still wants to cancel Thanksgiving, Nick Shirley Chased and Threatened With Knife By Migrant In Spain As He Tries To Report On The Invasion, WNBA coach goes all in on letting boys compete in girls’ sports, claims it’s “authentic”, andPlanned Parenthood Claims Abortion Is, Quote, “Gender Affirming Care.”
Vox Popoli: The Aerial Blockade of Odessa, An Apology, TRANSLATION: Cádiz, and A Negative Indicator
Cedar Sanderson: Transporting Ragnarok Pt. 1, also, Toast & Gidget Strip #19
Defending the Wood Perilous: Misty Chincoteague
Stoic Observations: The Death of the Mind
The Bugscuffle Gazette: It is better that ten guilty persons escape
Jim McCoy: Deadly Forest
Sensurround: Stop Scaremongering About Pitbulls, You Lawn Flamingos
Upstream Reviews: Escaping Infinity

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: Hold your breath, click the heels of your LOX boots together three times, and you have an SSGN!
Don Surber: It’s the candidates, stupid

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Category: Linkagery

IQ Voodoo and Other Errors

Posted on | August 6, 2026 | No Comments

One of the problems with American politics is how the two-party system tends to foster a Manichean duality on every issue. The Democrat “borg” (which includes media and academia) pushes whatever its policy agenda may be at any moment, and demonizes anyone who dissents. Meanwhile, those of us in the conservative opposition (Republicans, by default) are compelled to naysay whatever Democrats are advocating. Over the course of decades, one may see the two coalitions change — constituent groups changing loyalties — but this process is usually so gradual that it is not recognized at the time such shifts are happening.

One of the sudden shifts came in 1994, when the Republican Party’s “Contract With America” helped produce one of the most consequential midterm elections in American history. For the first time in 40 years, the GOP captured control of both Houses of Congress. Among other things, 1994 marked the beginning of the end of moderate or conservative Democrats being able to win elections in the South. This was ironic, in that Bill Clinton had been elected as an alleged moderate, but during his first two years as president, enacted an agenda so left-wing that it completely alienated many of his erstwhile supporters — including me.

You don’t get to backstab me twice.

When I explain why I quit the Democratic Party, that’s what it really comes down to. Loyalty matters. Honor matters. Bill Clinton proved himself to be disloyal and dishonorable, and we are all today living with the consequences of his betrayal, for which he cannot be forgiven, because he has never really admitted what he did wrong. People like that don’t deserve an explanation; just walk away, and resolve yourself to get even, however long it may take to obtain your revenge.

Something else monumental happened in 1994 — the publication of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. As I’ve said before, when the book first came out, I read the reviews and editorial comments about the book and actually believed the “crypto-Nazi race science” smears. And then, in an online argument (dial-up modems and Usenet), I shared that opinion and got called out: “Have you actually read the book?” Oops.

Once I read The Bell Curve, it was a revelation. Arguably the most important part of the book is Part I (“The Emergence of a Cognitive Elite,” pp. 1-125), which explains how the widespread use of standardized testing after World War II had created a gigantic sorting machinery, organized for the purpose of identifying the smartest children and directing them toward elite higher education. The elite schools (highly selective in their admissions processes, accepting only a fraction of those who apply) could pick and choose from a nationwide pool of students because the SAT produced a single uniform metric of academic potential. SAT scores were correlated to IQ, and you could see (as illustrated by a chart on p. 40 of the book) how the sorting of students worked to send the very brightest to the most prestigious schools.

This sorting mechanism was never perfect, however. There are smart kids who, for whatever reason, don’t get on the competitive treadmill of earnest strivers whose entire adolescence is organized around getting accepted by an Ivy League school (the protagonist of Risky Business simply MUST get into Princeton). Yet, as The Bell Curve makes clear, statistical averages matter, a lot. So if you decide to party your way through high school, as some of us did, you will later face an uphill battle to get ahead, while those Ivy League kids will spend the rest of their lives thinking they’re smarter than you. “Steeper Ladders, Narrower Gates” is the title of the chapter in which Herrnstein and Murray explain how the process of “cognitive partitioning” had become increasingly stringent.

None of that has anything to do with race, which doesn’t make its appearance as an analytical factor until page 269 of The Bell Curve, and what Herrnstein and Murray were trying to do, in that regard, was to explain why three decades of welfare spending and civil-rights activism had done so little to eradicate the disparities of income (and other socioeconomic metrics) between races. The Left claims such disparities are evidence of racism (“RAAAAACISM!”) and, on that matter, the message of The Bell Curve is simply, “No.” Herrnstein and Murray then discuss the possible consequences of their analysis in terms of public policy, but the real takeaway from the book is that we have to abandon the “blank slate” thinking and radical-egalitarian fanaticism that led to the dead-end failures of the “Great Society” agenda.

The smear against The Bell Curve as “racist,” however, is not the only dangerous misunderstanding. There is also the danger of what I think of as “IQ voodoo,” the belief that intelligence is synonymous with moral virtue, the only metric of human value. It is certainly true, as shown in Part II of The Bell Curve (“Cognitive Classes and Social Behavior”) that higher IQ is correlated with many positive behavioral outcomes, and vice-versa. However, this doesn’t mean that having the kind of SAT score that gets you into MIT or Stanford is a secular equivalent of sainthood — a member of “the elect,” as our Puritan forefathers might have said.

Believing that they are better than everybody else — not merely smarter, but also more “compassionate,” etc. — is what makes our elite so insufferably obnoxious, especially to those of us who tested pretty doggone good ourselves, even if we didn’t go to Harvard.

A problem closely related to “IQ voodoo” is our natural tendency to accept persuasiveness as a substitute for correctness. It is not merely possible, but entirely common, for people who are very good at articulating arguments to use that persuasive power to promote ideas that are disastrously wrong. The reason socialism is enjoying a vogue among young people nowadays is not because the economy is particularly bad, but rather that those under 40 don’t have the memories that us older folks have. We know damned well that socialism doesn’t work, and has never worked anywhere, whereas naïve youth don’t have that knowledge. And there are very clever people (especially including podcasters) who are good at making arguments for socialism that seem persuasive to those who don’t have the kind of knowledge we have.

The same is true, by the way, for anti-Semitism. It’s probably not a coincidence that both socialism and anti-Semitism are what all “the cool kids” are into nowadays. The rise of podcasting as a medium, and the way online algorithms feed into siloing and confirmation bias, are a perfect storm for the gestation of mind viruses. I mention this because so-called “popular historian” Darryl Cooper did another interview with Tucker Carlson and it was like the Wuhan lab of mind viruses.

Someone more patient than me should go through videos of Darryl Cooper and do a critical analysis of his rhetorical method. I can’t stand to listen to the guy, but it’s obvious that he employs tactics of sophistry to “sell” his toxic belief system to those not inoculated against it. One such tactic is to suggest that those who believe “conventional wisdom” on any topic have been duped by propaganda. For example, the purveyor of JFK assassination theories will mock you for thinking that Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible, citing as disproof the seemingly impossible trajectory of the so-called “single bullet” which, according to the Warren Commission, hit John Connally before ricocheting to hit Kennedy. What the conspiracy theorist is trying to do is to distract you from the lack of evidence for any plausible alternative to Oswald as the assassin. Whatever problems of ballistic detail may be involved in Oswald’s marksmanship, it is a violation of Occam’s Razor to go chasing around in search of far-fetched alternatives, when you have the Marine-trained gunman, equipped with a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, in a sniper position with a perfect view of the presidential motorcade. Case Closed, as Gerald Posner said.

Same thing with Darryl Cooper’s “just asking questions” method of promoting antisemitic beliefs. He is not merely criticizing Israeli policy, or U.S. foreign policy, but is trying to distract from — to downplay or dismiss — the reality of murderous Islamic terrorism as a factor in the Middle East. And in doing so, he breathes new life into anti-Jewish slanders that were widespread long before Hitler came to power.

The fact that Cooper is both intelligent and persuasive does not change the fact that he is wrong and deceptive. Jesus warned his disciples to be “wise as serpents.” We ought to pay heed to that warning.



 

Category: Conspiracy Theories, Intellectuals

Lies, Damned Lies, and COVID-19

Posted on | August 4, 2026 | No Comments

After watching people spend two days arguing about a statistical factoid wielded by David Frum, it occurred to me: “What is the source of that statistic?” Apparently, nobody else had thought of this question, and so let’s quote David Frum’s article in The Atlantic:

The American right sacrificed its supporters to its COVID-era delusions and lies. Right-wing politicians and media influencers disparaged masking. They derided safety advice against indoor gatherings. They spread crazy lies about COVID vaccines once those became generally available. Many conservative Americans who made the mistake of trusting their political and media leaders paid with their life.
Pew Research Center compared the 20 percent of the U.S. population who lived in the country’s most pro-Trump counties with the 20 percent who lived in the most pro-Biden counties. The most pro-Trump counties suffered nearly 70,000 more COVID deaths than the most pro-Biden counties did.

THE PEW RESEARCH CENTER? You’re making arguments about medical policy based on work by a polling company? Because that’s really the meat-and-potatoes of what Pew does. The fact that they’re a 501(c)3 non-profit doesn’t really change the reality that Pew Research began as a polling operation, founded by the former president of Gallup.

At various times, I have seen Pew Research publish studies about demographic trends that were very informative, but that doesn’t allay my skepticism about their March 2022 article, “The Changing Political Geography of COVID-19 Over the Last Two Years.” We may begin by saying, if you were still afraid of COVID-19 in March 2022, you must be some kind of extreme hypochondriac, the type of person who wore a mask while driving alone in your car. Taylor Lorenz, basically.

Some people are herd animals by nature, and these were the people most eager to comply with the crazy lockdown rules of “15 Days to Slow the Spread,” without ever questioning the logic of those rules.

In case you’ve forgotten, the original rationale of the first COVID-19 lockdown was that the virus was spreading so rapidly that hospitals would soon be overwhelmed with victims, that there would be a shortage of medicine, equipment and personnel to treat patients. This was what “15 Days to Slow the Spread” was about and, when that ended, it was “Six Weeks to Flatten the Curve” — in other words, a total of two months of lockdown, to prevent the medical system from collapsing under the burden of the pandemic. In other words, by mid-May 2020, it would be safe to let life return to normal, but OH DEAR GOD WE CAN’T LET THAT HAPPEN, Democrats and the media collectively screamed, once the initial two months of COVID-19 lockdown were over.

What ensued after that was more about the psychology of mass hysteria than it was a question of public health policy, and the COVID-19 hysteria had very clear political outlines. By mid-2020, we had enough data about hospitalizations and deaths from the virus to know that, unless you were over 70, or obese, or had some other condition that impaired your immune system, COVID-19 wouldn’t kill you. For the vast majority of healthy younger Americans, COVID-19 was just a nasty variety of flu.

Something else that had become apparent by mid-2020 was that statistics about the pandemic were being manipulated to exaggerate the threat, as an excuse for extending lockdowns indefinitely.

In hindsight, this was all insanity. Florida, which with its large population of retirees was home to a disproportionate number of those most vulnerable to the virus, was basically wide open from the summer of 2020 onward. They did this by focusing their attention on protecting senior citizens, while letting everybody else, especially school children, go about their daily lives. Meanwhile, public schools were shut down for the entire 2020-2021 school year in many Democrat-controlled parts of the country. Despite the evidence that Florida’s strategy was correct — the sky didn’t fall when Florida reopened — liberals refused to reconsider their permanent-lockdown mentality, which is the most obvious reason why, in March 2022, Pew Research felt the need to publish an article claiming that GOP-dominated areas had a higher COVID-19 death toll.

Go look at the nifty charts, which claim to show that, while the Democrat-leaning counties had the highest death tolls up until October 2020, the GOP-leaning counties came roaring back thereafter, and were particularly hard hit by the “Delta” and “Omicron” variants of COVID-19 that struck after August 2021. Where were they collecting this data? You have to click a link to see the “Methodology” section, which doesn’t do anything to allay my skepticism about the findings. The article includes a chart pointing out that pro-Biden counties had higher COVID vaccination rates (over 75% in those that Biden won by more than a 25-point margin) than pro-Trump counties (less than 60% in counties that Trump won by more than a 25-point margin), while also mentioning that the data on COVID deaths doesn’t distinguish between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Which is kind of important, because the vaccines were what the big arguments were really all about after Biden got elected.

The vaccines didn’t work — vaccinated people still got the virus — and they didn’t prevent the virus from spreading. This was especially true once new variants like Delta and Omicron appeared in 2021. You don’t have to be any kind of crazy anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist to see that the vaccines were an expensive failure. I got the vaccine in August 2021 just because I realized that politicians were trying to use data about vaccination rates as an excuse for more lockdowns, and I didn’t want to be used as a statistic in their propaganda: “White guys in Appalachia are the problem!” But just because I’m not dead doesn’t mean the vaccine saved my life, which is what David Frum is trying to use this Pew Center study to prove, yet even Pew doesn’t claim it shows anything about vaccines and death rates. And excuse my skepticism about the entirety of the Pew Center’s methodology on this study.

By the way, as Frum notes, the Pew study claims to show a gap of nearly 70,000 total deaths between the 20% of the population in the most pro-Trump counties (238,791 deaths total) and the 20% in the most pro-Biden counties (170,084 deaths total). Practically all of that difference is attributable to the Delta/Omicron “surges” from August 2021 to the end of February 2022. Am I the only one scratching my head, trying to remember thousands of people who allegedly were dying of COVID in February 2022? Because I’ll be darned if I recall any such thing.

All of this, however, is really just part of Frum’s defense of Anthony Fauci, whose dishonesty is now proven beyond all doubt. Most of us have moved on from all that — I am not sitting around nursing any grudges over what happened five or six years ago — but the Trump-haters can’t stand that Saint Anthony of the Blessed Science might be held accountable, and they’re using dubious statistics to defend him.



 

Category: Science

In The Mailbox: 08.03.26

Posted on | August 4, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Son of Silvercon IV After Action Report
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Doug Ross: A Day With Maggie Brown On The RMS Titanic (1912), A Day Escaping Libby Prison (1864), and The Day Lewis & Clark Confronted The Lakota Sioux, (1804)
357 Magnum: Good Guy With a Gun in Idaho
EBL: Dana Bash, Jack Tapper, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, What Your Dog Really Sees In You, Swordfish Bacon, Logan’s Run Deleted Scenes, and What Would Humboldt Do?
Twitchy: Jeff Dye Discovers Comedy Is Not Pretty, Man Has No Idea What’s In The DSA Platform & Doesn’t Care, and That Absolute Coward Tony Fauci
Louder With Crowder: Corey Booker claims voter ID wouldn’t have prevented New Jersey from “accidentally” registering over 6000 illegals to vote, Climate wacko demands you pick any ten random leftist orgs to send your money to, Elliot Page Claims Biology Class Is Bigoted, Democrat Rants About Impeaching Pete Hegseth For Removing DEI In The Military, and Emir Mamdani, who claims to hate ID for voting, will require it for his government-run grocery stores
Vox Popoli: A Little Church Music, The 2nd Muslim Invasion of Spain, An Act of War, It’s Not Just the Finns, and The Revenge of Aaron Rodgers
Upstream Reviews: The Best Military Fiction – Caroline’s List
Cedar Sanderson: Relationships & Anthologies
John C. Wright: No Subtle Knife & No Amber Spyglass
The Abbey of Misrule: The Hermit and the Pilgrim
Weird Catholic: Wax Souls

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: Clay Travis Challenges WNBA Champs to Play Boys High School State Title Team, Offers to Pay $10 Million to Winners, Mamdani Mocked Online For Requiring IDs to Shop at NYC’s Subsidized Grocery Stores After Opposing Voter ID, Study Finds Daily Marijuana Use Surpasses Daily Alcohol Consumption Among US Adults, How Eilat Mazar Found King David’s Palace, and The EU and the Iron Law of Oligarchy
American Thinker: In Latin America, The Rise of Zionism Signals Communism’s Collapse, The Dumb, Arrogant Liars Who Are Also Journalists, How Postcolonialism is Nazi Adjacent, Americans Are Searching for Meaning In All the Wrong Places, and Iran And Russia: Ripe For A Cascading Failure?
Animal Magnetism: Animal Magnetism LIVE Ep. 98 – Alaska Mugs and Mountains
BattleSwarm: Movie Review: Margin Call, A Deep Dive Into Legal Carry Near Texas Schools, and Pipers At The Exit Gates Of The Democrat Party
Behind The Black: Sunspot update: Sunspot activity fell in July, indicating a return to ramp down, Canadian rocket/spaceport startup Nordspace invests in Canadian missile company, Indian press condemns suspension of all ISRO launches, UAE Space Agency demands registration from all space-related businesses, and Trade organization for the U.S. satellite industry issues damning report on Europe’s proposed Space Act
Cafe Hayek: Bill Maher Skewers the Democratic Socialists of America – and Their Democratic Party Enablers, also, Indeed, Pay Attention to What Trump Actually Says About Tariffs
CDR Salamander: Shipbuilding, Merchant Shipping, Commerce, & The American Project – On Midrats, also, If You Use Pliers As A Screwdriver You Just Make A Mess
Chicago Boyz: The Battle of Ceuta, also, Parasites & Hosts
Da Tech Guy: August Indulgence Calendar, The Special Plenary Indulgence available today and tomorrow only & a simple prayer request
Don Surber: Heaven and Hell, also, The plastic straw man argument
Elizabeth Nickson: The Delicious Humiliation of the Man Who Poisoned The World
First Street Journal: This afternoon’s rant, also, ‘Sportswriter’ injects race into his argument, because Sophie Cunningham is white and makes sense
Flopping Aces: Something’s wrong with Hong, also, Opening soon- Mamdani grocers! Bring your ID!
Gates Of Vienna: Swimming to Spain, Requiem for a Culture, Part 9 – The Slaughter of the 8th New York, and Culture-Enriching Throat-Slitter in Segrià
The Geller Report: Pennsylvania Voter Roll Purge Wipes Out Tens of Thousands Democrats in Just One Week, 45,000 Islamic “Soldiers” Attend Massive Ashura Procession Through Dearborn Streets, Hamas-Linked CAIR’s Shell Game, In Mamdani’s New York, It’s 1933 All Over Again, and Popular Montreal Kosher Restaurant Burned To The Ground in Arson Attack
Hollywood In Toto: Yet Another Jewish Artist Cancelled (UPDATE), Howard the Duck at 40 – Time Has Not Been Kind, Conservative Comic Alleges Fellow Stand-up Vandalized His Tesla, and Bandcamp Censors Boy George’s Pro-Israel Song
Legal Insurrection: RFK Jr. Turns the Tables on Dana Bash During Heated CNN Showdown, NY Won’t Force Catholic Religious Sisters to Counsel Assisted Suicide – For Now, Former Cornell Anti-Israel Student is Leading DSA Organizer, NY Socialist Can’t Pay Rent, Wants to Write State Budget, and James Talarico Tries to Argue the Bible Calls for a Government-Run Healthcare System
Nebraska Energy Observer: Whoops, Scattershot Friday, Dismantling New York, Sunday Matinee, and Old Ways
Outkick: Tarik Skubal dismisses fan outrage over his joining Dodgers, Aryna Sabalenka supports WTA trans rules, says men shouldn’t face women, Writer arrested for beating wife calls Sophie Cunningham “anti-trans & anti-black”, Clay Travis raises offer to $10 million for WNBA champs to play high school boys’ team, and Red Baron celebrates 50 years of frozen pizza with 50-topping pie
Power Line: The continuing Ceuta crisis, Calling the WNBA’s Bluff [Updated], Leclerc’s division, Suicidal Empathy: A Case Study, and Academia: How Corrupt Can It Get?
Shark Tank: Florida Early Voting Begins, also, FL Chamber of Commerce Endorses Ashley Moody for Senate
STUMP: The Week In Meep – SUMO! DEMONS! LIGHTNING DEATHS!,
The Political Hat: Digital Big Brother Demands Your Diploma, Mortgage, and Employer
Transterrestrial Musings: Increasing Cadence Ahead, The Iranian Scorpions, Fauci’s Narcissism, and Your Television
Victory Girls: The LARPer Twins and Their Bros’ Night Out, A Good Guy With A Gun At In-N-Out In Idaho, and Cheryl Reeve Never Had to Earn Her Career Against Men
Watts Up With That: India To Climate Cartel – Count Us Out, The End EPA Abuse Act seeks to limit EPA’s adherence to climate psychosis, Utopian Dreams of Net-Zero, Britain’s Collision Course With Trump’s Energy Counter-Revolution, and Mining the oceans for fresh water – and Uranium
The Federalist: Bill Would Make Insurance Cover Body-Acceptance Treatments For Trans Desisters, ‘Absolute Coward’: NFL QB Aaron Rodgers Nukes Fauci For Refusing To Address Covid Lies, How Obamacare Pushes Big Pharma To Overcharge You For Prescriptions, RFK: Media Cited Fake ‘Experts’ To Punish Dissent During Covid. Dana Bash: ‘That Is My Job’, and Brett Kavanaugh’s Would-Be Assassin Moved To Cushy Medical Prison Known For Transing On Taxpayer Dime
Mark Steyn: Burning Above, Does Not Compute – Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Desk Set, Edelweiss, and Mum’s the Word

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Category: Linkagery

Rule 5 Sunday: On The Beach

Posted on | August 3, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Our front office girl cooling off after the draft.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, Spain Just Did What? Machine Gun Preacher, MAGA Hamas Deal, Lana Spring, The Horror of Event Horizon, “50 Shots of Tequila”, Blue Skies, The Return, The Odyssey & Inception Connection, and Summer Fishing

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Charlette Bree, Fish Pic Friday – Hookin ‘N’ Cookin, Sultans of Swing, The Wednesday Wetness, Maryland, My Maryland, Tattoo Tuesday, The Monday Morning Stimulus, “Easy Like Sunday Morning”, and Palm Sunday

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

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: In The Bowels of the Draft

Posted on | August 2, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I’m pretty happy with the way the draft has been going so far, even if some of the other owners are upset about how long it’s taking. With a few exceptions, I’ve gotten the players I wanted, and there are still other worthy players out there.
In other news, the After Action Report for Son of Silvercon IV is up at my substack. if you weren’t there, you missed a good party.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

Ted’s looking optimistic about the way the roster is shaping up.

Criminal Carnival in Madison, Wisconsin
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

My Own Tucker Carlson Theory
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: At Last, The Draft
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule 5 Sunday: Everything Stops For Tea
EBL


In The Mailbox: 07.28.26 (Morning Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

‘Suburban Teens’ Make Headlines
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 07.28.26 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 07.29.26
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 07.30.26
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 07.31.26
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

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Category: FMJRA Award

‘Family Demands Answers’

Posted on | August 1, 2026 | No Comments

Say hello to Bryan Axel Ramirez Gomez and, while you’re at it, go ahead and say good-bye, because young Mr. Gomez shuffled off this mortal coil in February, after deciding to start a shootout with police in Elkhart, Indiana, which lasted only three seconds. What do you notice about the photo of Gomez? Does that jersey signify that he was a fan of the Chicago White Sox? Well, Elkhart is only 112 miles from Chicago, and I suppose it’s possible that Gomez was a White Sox fan, but a quick Google search indicates that wearing White Sox regalia is common among certain gangs affiliated with the Crips. Just had to point this out.

Family of teen killed by Elkhart police seeks state investigation amid wave of violence

That was the headline from WNDU-TV, the NBC-owned affiliate in South Bend, about 20 miles from Elkhart, two days after the shooting:

The family of a 17-year-old killed by Elkhart police is calling for state investigators to take over the case as the community grapples with three separate shootings and a stabbing in a 48-hour span.
Bryan Axel Ramirez Gomez died Sunday around 2 a.m. in an officer-involved shooting. A memorial now sits at High Dive Park where he was killed.
Alfredo Ramirez-Gomez, the teen’s brother, spoke at a vigil for Bryan on Tuesday afternoon and demanded the release of police footage.
“Bryan was a bright kid, he was a member of this community, this is where he grew up,” Ramirez-Gomez said. “As for his cause of death, we can’t really point fingers yet. We just ask and demand that the footage comes out from the car and from the vest.”
He said the family will continue seeking answers until justice is served and asked the Indiana State Police to take over the case.

This kind of story — “Family Demands Answers” — has become a media cliché in recent years. Anytime someone gets killed by cops, there is automatically the insinuation that the cops did something wrong, and the media promote this narrative. Simple question: Why did the family want to get Indiana State Police to take over the case? Was there any reason to suspect bias on the part of county prosecutor Vicki Becker, whose office was in charge of investigating the officer-involved shooting?

Good luck finding any negative opinions about Becker, who has an excellent reputation and has been doing criminal prosecution since she was a law student interning with the prosecutor’s office in Indianapolis. My hunch is that the call for state involvement was just a way of insinuating that the investigation was crooked. In a GoFundMe appeal, a family friend wrote, “At only 17 years old, Bryan’s life was tragically cut short due to police brutality in Elkhart.” Really? You’re claiming “police brutality”? Superior marksmanship by cops may seem like an unfair advantage to criminals who lose shootouts, but it’s not brutality.

A month later, the theme continued:

Last month’s fatal shooting of a teenager by Elkhart police was one of the issues highlighted during Saturday’s No Kings rally.
Demonstrators were urged to sign a petition, calling for an independent review of the shooting of 17-year-old Bryan Ramirez Gomez. It also calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor and long-term accountability measures meant to restore trust in the justice system, among other requests.
Bella Chavez said the family has gotten hearsay about what happened but little actual information. “They haven’t even released the bodycam footage to the family who deserves answers and to the community who deserves answers,” Chavez told protesters.
Elkhart County Prosecutor Vicki Becker has said the boy shot first. So far, she hasn’t allowed video footage to be released.
“I would love to show all 13 minutes of that video,” Elkhart Police Chief Dan Milanese told the city’s police merit commission last week. “As soon as we can hit play, if we’re allowed to legally, I will hit play.”

Elsewhere, Bella Chavez’s speech at the “No Kings” rally was quoted: “We’re calling for justice in Elkhart. Justice for Bryan,” See, the normal operations of law enforcement are not “justice” if the outcomes aren’t satisfactory to activist types like Bella Chavez. Meanwhile, the county prosecutor announced the result of her investigation July 9:

The investigation documented evidence to establish that shortly after 1:30 a.m. on February 8, 2026, Elkhart Police Department Officer Ragsdale was driving past the area of High Dive Park pavilion and noticed a vehicle that was running while sitting stationary in the parking lot after the park was closed. . . .

(You’re sitting in a car in the closed park at 1:30 in the morning, when the temperature is 15°F. Definitely suspicious behavior.)

Officer Ragsdale pulled into the lot near the suspicious vehicle and observed several individuals inside, some appearing to be minors. Officer Ragsdale called for backup. While Officer Ragsdale was speaking to the driver, he noticed a scent he recognized as an alcoholic beverage prompting further investigation pursuant to Indiana law. EPD Officer Breneman arrived to provide back-up while Officer Ragsdale continued his work.

(So it appears that these minors are drinking in the park, which is closed. Call for backup. Standard operating procedure.)

Officer Ragsdale attempted to gather identifying information from each occupant of the vehicle, being led to believe that there were two individuals that were eighteen (18) and three individuals claiming to be juveniles, two males and one female. Officer Ragsdale then returned to his vehicle to determine whether there were any law enforcement notifications relating to any of the occupants.

(None of them were legally old enough to be drinking. Now, pay close attention to the next paragraph for important information.)

Although Officer Ragsdale did not know it at the time, the front seat passenger provided false information regarding his name during the investigation and was on probation after having being adjudicated Delinquent for both felony and misdemeanor offenses in Elkhart County Juvenile Court, the nature of which included Auto Theft, Resisting Law Enforcement, Dangerous Possession of a Firearm, and Disorderly Conduct . . .

(In case you haven’t guessed, the front-seat passenger with the extensive juvenile record was Bryan Gomez. He was already on probation, and just committed another crime by giving the cop a fake name.)

Upon removing the occupants of the vehicle, one by one to ensure safety and control, the eighteen (18) year old driver did not have any identification on him and advised “not right now” when asked if he had any weapons. As Officer Ragsdale continued to remove the backseat passengers from the driver’s side of the vehicle, the front seat passenger, who had previously been complying with officer directives to keep hands visible, was also directed to stay in the car, but reached down between his legs and refused to put his hand up when ordered.

(When you see video of this, you’ll be impressed with how well Officer Ragsdale handled this. He was busy getting passengers out of the backseat and yet was alert to the front-seat passenger the whole time, so he immediately noticed the danger when Gomez lowered his hands.)

The front passenger then abruptly turned, got out of the car on the passenger’s side, and fired a handgun toward Officer Breneman.
Both Officer Ragsdale and Officer Breneman fired their respective handguns in response. The front passenger was fatally shot during this event. A Glock 9mm handgun was on the ground near him. . . .
During the crime scene investigation in which crime scene specialists documented and recovered evidence related to the event, another handgun was found on the front passenger floorboard of the subject vehicle that had been modified to be fully automatic by what is known as a “switch”. A “switch” is an after-market attachment that converts a semi-automatic handgun to a fully automatic handgun which is illegal to possess pursuant to both State and Federal law.

There you have it. Already on probation, carrying a pistol, and a second pistol with an illegal “switch” at his feet, Gomez knew he was in trouble, and the only way he could think to get out of it was to kill both cops.

That plan didn’t work out too well for him. Gomez only got off one shot. Officer Breneman fired five shots, while falling backwards. Officer Ragsdale fired five shots before his pistol jammed. Gomez was hit by three shots — one to the head, one to the torso, one to the leg.

This all went down in three seconds. Neither of the officers nor the other passengers was hit. Those cops did some damned fine shooting.

That video is 19 minutes long, but if you watch it, you’ll see the part where they slow it down frame-by-frame to show where Gomez fires the first shot. Not that police in such a situation are obligated to let the bad guy shoot first before returning fire. If he’s got a gun and refuses to drop it when ordered? Good night, Irene. In this case, despite Gomez having the tactical advantage of firing the first shot, the two cops between them fired 10 shots in three seconds, and scored three hits.

The officers were justified, and as for the “family demands answer,” well, they got their answer — not the one they wanted. There won’t be any wrongful death lawsuit. Ben Crump won’t be showing up.



 

Category: Crime, Indiana, Media Bias

In The Mailbox: 07.31.26

Posted on | August 1, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Thanks to everyone who bought stuff through my Amazon links this month.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

It’s five o’clock somewhere.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Doug Ross: A Day At The Whiskey Rebellion (1794)
357 Magnum: Angry Cops versus Buffalo Public School System, also Could It Be That Media is Biased Against Cops?
EBL: Delicious Salmon, Machine Gun Preacher, Pilgrim Songs, and Spain just did what?
Twitchy: Dylan Mulvaney & “Sarah” McBride Have A “Dolls Night Out” & The Jokes Just Write Themselves, “What’s The Mood On Bluesky?”, and PLEASE Put Out The Fire!
Louder With Crowder: Shocker! Democrats Are Using Your Tax Dollars To Fund Crack Pipes, Coyotes Take Over Abandoned Construction Site in California City, NYU Student Tries To Explain Woke Reason Why She Believes Rapists Don’t Deserve Prison Time, Maine Democrat asked for dating advice after allegations that he married and had kids with his cousin, and Spain’s Invasion Today, America’s Invasion Tomorrow?
Vox Popoli: Migration is Literally Invasion, also,  UEFA Rejects Privatization
According To Hoyt: Caught In A Net, A Costly Indulgence, Mistakes Were Made, Dingy, and Two Parties, Both Alike in Dignity*
Cedar Sanderson: Water Until The Barrel Runs Dry
John C. Wright: Materialism Revisited

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: EBay Agrees to $55.7 Million Settlement With Massachusetts Couple Over Bizarre Intimidation Campaign, ICE Planning New Detention Facilities for 5,500+ Detainees in Four U.S. Cities, Immigrant Business Owners Prepare Lawsuit Against Mamdani Over City-Run Grocery Stores, RFK Jr. Debuts Cooking Show to Prove Healthy Eating Beats Fast Food on Cost, and FCC Chair Carr Defends License Review as ABC Cries Censorship
American Thinker:  Quantum Computing Is The Next Technological Horizon, The New Way for Conservatives to Win Elections, What Europe’s Lack of Air Conditioning Says About Its Civilizational Direction, The Garden Refuge, and The Strategic Blind Spot
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For July 31
Behind The Black: Mars is NOT dry: New global maps of the near surface ice on Mars, FAA proposes exempting rocket companies from environmental regulations that now require repeated and duplicative environmental reassessments, Spain offers more than $1 billion to get the long delayed Thirty Meter Telescope to move to the Canary Islands, Update on Blue Origin’s effort to resume New Glenn launches, and Is Pluto’s atmosphere collapsing as predicted?
Cafe Hayek: Accounting Isn’t Economics
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Chicago Boyz: Parasites & Hosts
Dana Loesch: The Supposed Hamas “Ceasefire”,
Don Surber: The DNC is broke
Flopping Aces: Stay the hell away from 9-11, Mamdani!
The Geller Report: NY Times Blames Iran for Walz’s Incompetence – Trump Exposes the Truth, Trump Warns, “Spain Today, America Tomorrow”, New Connecticut Law Requires Educators to Develop Curriculum Materials for Islamic, Arab Studies, Jihad Jew-Hater Abdul El-Sayed Abdul El-Sayed Cruising to Victory in Michigan Democratic Senate Primary, and Trump Activates Never-Before-Used Terrorist Deportation Court
Hollywood In Toto: Hollywood’s Fauci Worship Part of Much Bigger Problem, also, Belushi’s Best Performance? Rediscovering Continental Divide
Legal Insurrection: Teacher Training Program Allegedly Paints Parents as Oppressors, Karelian Bear Dogs Take on Tahoe’s Bear Invasion, Thousands of Military-Age Men From Morocco Invade Spain’s Ceuta Territory, U. Minnesota Receives $600K Grant for Study Aiming to Reduce ‘Racial Bias’ in White Kids, and Wisconsin Brewery That Celebrated Trump Assassination Attempt Loses Permits Over Tax Dispute
Outkick: SEC & Big 10 agree to support “Protect College Sports Act”, Erling Haaland’s top-tier summer tour continues, Pat McAfee pokes fun at Fauci pleading the Fifth live on ESPN, Riley Gaines accuses WNBA of preferring activism to pro sports, and Lioness Season 3 is action packed saga loaded with violence & carnage
Power Line: Kamala Veers Left, Defending the DNC, Dan Rosen speaks, “A modest suggestion”, and Dems’ Dumbest Idea Ever?
Racket News: Editor’s Note – Fauci Stories Unlocked
Shark Tank: Rep. Luna Introduces Bill amending Gluten Labeling Reqirements
STUMP: RIP Kaylee Hottle (and more)
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – McCarthyism: Past, Present, Future
Victory Girls: New York Created An Official Government Bureau To Police Sheriffs, Not Criminals
Watts Up With That: President Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge Shows How America Can Win the AI Race, Be Honest, Popular Mechanics – Air Conditioning Saves Lives with No Threat of Doom, Big Tech On The Path To Net Zero — 2026 Edition, Free-Market Electricity Reform Advancing, and Blame Canada’s Terrible Regulations For Wildfires Ruining America’s Summer
The Federalist: Gorsuch Abandons Originalism (Again) With Claims America Isn’t A Christian Nation, Spain’s Illegal Alien Invasion Shows It Would Take Democrats Only A Few Hours To Destroy Trump’s Border Progress, The Foreign Invasion In The UK Will Ruin Your English Countryside Vacation, The Burning Hatred From Neocons Is Good For J.D. Vance In 2028, and Catholic Nuns Score Temporary Win In Battle Against New York’s Assisted Suicide Law
Mark Steyn: A Deeply Human Art

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