The Other McCain

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

In the Mailbox: 04.07.2026

Posted on | April 8, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

From the fertile mind of Sensurround.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: The Day Of John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry (1859) 
357 Magnum: More Microslop News
EBL: Bird Songs, Pompano Heads, MAGA Airman Rescue and Iran Deadline, “Rags To Riches”, and Lewis and Clark
Twitchy: From Tampon Timmy To Hypocrite In Chief, James Woods Calls Out Jennifer Newsom For Telling Prisoners Their Crimes Were Probably Accidents, and “I’m With Iran” – John Pavlovitz & The Left’s Long Tradition Of Siding With America’s Enemies
Louder With Crowder: Democrat Candidate Calls For Government to Take Away MAGA Voters Internet Access, Boston Deploys Mental Health Expert To Confront Man With Sword -Things End Very Badly, Proposed Canadian Law Could Criminalize Biblical Speech, I couldn’t disagree with Tucker Carlson and the “Marxist right” more, and Minnesota defies Trump mandate, restarts program performing gender altering surgery to minors
Vox Popoli: The Hobbit 1977, This is Not Winning, It Wasn’t a “Rescue Mission”, The Edo Scroll, and No Deals
Stoic Observations: The Evolution of Data Warehousing In The AWS Cloud, also, The Era of Compute Chaos
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Situational Awareness

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: Eric Swalwell About to Be Hit With ‘Shocking’ Number of Sexual Harassment Allegations, DHS Sec. Markwayne Mullin Taking ‘Hard Look’ at Removing CBP Officers From Sanctuary City Airports, Hegseth Cuts Military Education Ties With Elite Universities, Democrats Plot Third Impeachment of Trump, and Peru and Polling – Will Another Latin American Country Move Toward the U.S.?
BattleSwarm: Iran Strikes – Big Week Starts
Behind The Black: Orion completes short 15-second burn to refine its return-to-Earth, Feathery eroding layers on Mars, Northrop Grumman’s Minotaur-4 rocket launches three payloads for War Department, and Firefly signs deal with modular sea launch startup Seagate
CDR Salamander: Escalation Traps & Off Ramps
Chicago Boyz: The Perfect Enemy (Updated)
Da Tech Guy: Voices of the 2026 Worcester Catholic Men’s Conference: Rebecca Urban of Visitation House
Don Surber: Who needs Europe?
Elizabeth Nickson: Why The F*** Isn’t Melania On The Cover Of Vogue?
First Street Journal: Has The Philadelphia Inquirer changed its policies on publishing photos of accused sex offenders?
Gates Of Vienna: There Are No Hills to Head For, also, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff Reports From the USA
The Geller Report: Marco Rubio MOVES TO AX 80% OF EUROPE BASES, Florida Passes Law to EXPEL Student Supporters of Terrorist Groups, Muslim Driver Rams Loader Truck Into Christian Procession in Pakistan, Over 60 Wounded, Muslims Slaughter 26 Christians, Churches Burned, Women and Children Kidnapped in Nigeria, and SLEAZEBALL Eric Swalwell To Face Multiple Sexual Abuse Allegations By Shocking Number of Staffers, Former Employees
Hollywood In Toto: Why Comic Book Creator Refused to Give Up on Childhood Dream, Alan Ritchson CLEARED?! Colbert’s Gollum and More! and Can Judd Apatow ‘Comeback’ from Trump Derangement Syndrome?
Legal Insurrection: Virginia Voters Shocked That Spanberger Governs Like a Democrat, Eighth Circuit Rules Schools Don’t Owe Kids Access to Sexually Explicit Books, DOJ to Review Mamdani’s ‘Racial Equity Plan’ for New York City, Iran Accepts Trump’s Ceasefire, Opens Strait of Hormuz for Two Weeks, and Tucker Qatarlson Launches Full Frontal Attack on Trump – “Who Do You Think You Are?”
Nebraska Energy Observer: ’50s Houses
Outkick: Red Sox Owner John Henry Embarrassed As Fans Loudly Chant ‘Sell The Team’ At Fenway Park, An NHL Team With Less Than 20 Regulation Wins Is About To Make The Playoffs, And That’s Just Wrong, Masters Tee Times Announced And There Are Some Interesting Pairings, Angel Reese Hits Barbados With Victoria’s Secret & A Day In The WAG Life Of Ring Girl Marissa Ayers, and Paige Spiranac Dumps Out Her Masters(piece) To Remind Us Why She’s World’s No. 1, ABS Challenge Results & MEAT
Power Line: Anticlimax, Strait is the gate, Sodom and Gomorrah return, Talking about CBS News, and That shrinking middle class
Racket News: Swamp Log, also, Trump’s F-Bomb On Iran Joins America’s Rollicking History of Presidential Profanity, 
Shark Tank: Patronis Wants Answers From OpenAI After FSU Shooting Allegations
This Ain’t Hell: The Right to Repair, Mamdani rolls out ‘racial equity plan’ favoring minorities over Whites, Australian SAS Victoria Cross recipient arrested for war crimes, California’s $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers backfired, and President Trump delays big Iran attack and provides two-week extension
Transterrestrial Musings: Convenient BS, also, A Turning Point?
Victory Girls: Left Livid Trump Got Win In Iran
Watts Up With That: The lost gas fields that could power Britain for decades, Curtain Opens on the Dress Rehearsal for the Net Zero Calamity, Environmentalists are fighting our living standards in court, and India Helps US Repair ‘Green’ Wreckage
The Federalist: 60 Minutes Undersold The Madness of California’s Train-Building Disaster, California Is Trying To Save The Pediatric Trans Industry Because It’s Dying, There’s A New Name For Those Pierced, Weird-Looking Internet Addicts You Keep Seeing, Lawsuit Seeks To Stop People Who Have Never Lived In Virginia From Voting There, and ‘Zuckbucks’ Cities’ Ballot Blunders Hit Badger State Election Day
Mark Steyn: The New Way of War

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Category: Linkagery

It Would Be Wrong to Say Democrats Are Going Completely Crazy Today …

Posted on | April 7, 2026 | No Comments

. . . because obviously they’ve been crazy for many years. Trump said that tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern is some kind of deadline for Iran, and this morning he turned the volume all the way to 11: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.” Do you know what that means? Neither do I.

Maybe it’s thermonuclear Armageddon, or maybe not, but the Democrats are running around with their hair on fire, screaming like lunatics, even more than their usual hair-on-fire lunacy. Krystal Ball, the Democrat whose failed 2010 congressional campaign resulted in a 29-point GOP landslide, has become frighteningly unhinged over this.

She’s basically repeating Iranian propaganda here, demanding a military coup d’etat against the President of the United States. To repeat what I previously said, nobody knows exactly what Trump’s rhetoric signifies, and while we could speculate about what Trump intends to do, my hunch is that it’s nothing that would justify the “military revolt” that Krystal Ball is calling for. Unlike her, I am completely sane, and not locked into an obsessive fear/rage cycle, so my plans for this evening are to attend my grandson’s Little League game. Maybe the world will blow up tonight, but let’s hope it doesn’t happen before the seventh inning.



 

Category: Democrats, Donald Trump, Iran

In The Mailbox: 04.06.26

Posted on | April 7, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

Ugh, again?

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: Liberty vs. Tyranny – Charting The Course of Human Freedom, A Day With Crispus Attucks At The Boston Massacre (1770), How To Black Out Tehran For Thirty Days, and  Gavin Newsom’s Empire of Fraud Illustrated, 
357 Magnum: The Insane World of High-End Watches, Part 2, and The BBC Looks at Guns in America
EBL: “Dark Side of the Moon”, The predator that almost wiped out humans, Dry Aged Salmon, “Waterloo”, and Siege of Constantinople
Twitchy: John Konrad Blisters Europe In Post About The Real Reason NATO Is In Trouble, Eurotard Mocks Spiking Of Military Aircraft “To Save One Guy”, and Rep. Dan Goldman (D-Nepo) Attempts To Carry Anti-Billionaire Torch For “Working Families” & Fails Hugely
Louder With Crowder: Female Inmates Report Harassment By Trans Predator Housed In Women’s Prison, Mamdani Announces New Racial Equity Plan Mandated Under The “Whole Of Government”, Pathetic Megan Rapinoe Bashes International Olympic Committee For Acknowledging Biology, Woke congresswoman declares housing not only a human right, but “eviction is an act of violence”, and Shocking investigation reveals California’s skyrocketing gas prices are because of Democrat policies
Vox Popoli: Nationality is Real Again, The Absence of Evidence, The Hard Problem, Lots of Rumors, and Happy Easter
Cedar Sanderson: Friction, Basic Biscuits, and Going on an Adventure!
Defending The Wood Perilous: This Is Exciting! also, Two Days Left
Upstream Reviews: More Than Just Ripley, also, Blood on the Sand
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Happy Easter! 
Ammo.com: Gun Ownership By Gender
Stoic Observations: When It Hurts To Be Decent & Smart, 
Jim McCoy: The World Ender

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: No Kings, Hegseth Confirms Downed Airman’s First Words to U.S. Forces From Inside Iran Were ‘God is Good’, Slain Iranian General’s Niece and Grandniece in ICE Custody After State Dept. Strips Them of Legal Status, Trump to Announce End of Operation Epic Fury and Express ‘Disgust’ With NATO in Tonight’s Address to Nation, and Trump Gets Unexpected Boost As Jobs Growth for March ‘Crushed Expectations’
Animal Magnetism: Animal Magnetism LIVE Ep. 82 – Being American
BattleSwarm: How Texas Kicks Europe’s Ass, Iran Strikes – Day 37, and Taking A Sick Day
Behind The Black: SpaceX launches 25 Starlink satellites using new first stage, Orion completes small mid-course-correction engine burn as it prepares to swing around behind the Moon, Japan’s lunar lander startup Ispace wins contract with Korean rover startup, ULA launches 29 Leo satellites for Amazon, and Cracked bedrock on Mars?
Cafe Hayek: On Bernie Sanders on AI
CDR Salamander: So While You Still Have CSAR In Your Scan
Da Tech Guy: Voices of the 2026 Worcester Catholic Men’s Conference: Holy Family Candles
Dana Loesch: Britain’s Betrayal, “We Got Him!”, 
Don Surber: A rescue worth $390 trillion
Elizabeth Nickson: The Seditious Global Censorship Project Tightens Its Noose, 
First Street Journal: The seriousness of the surge in Catholic conversions
Gates Of Vienna: Rima Hassan Goes on Trial, The Tomb is Empty, and Rémi Brague: “The Problem of Islam is That it is a Legislation”
The Geller Report: Trump Declares War on Leaker Who Blew Airman Rescue, “They Put Lives at Risk”, Gov. DeSantis Signs Law Banning Sharia Law in Florida, $655M Verdict Against Palestinian Authority Reinstated – Holds PA Responsible for Terror, Cardinal Sarah Gives Us a Warning, and Israeli Commando Units Reportedly Assisted U.S. in Rescue of Downed US Airman
Glenn Reynolds: The Iran Operation
Hollywood In Toto: Moby’s ICE ‘Boycott’ Even Weaker Than Horror Sequel Blowback, Media Declares War on  The Drama, Free Expression, ‘SNL’ Audience Cheers Trump Assassination Joke, Gripping and Smart – Faces of Death Revives Cult Horror Classic, and Now, It Can Be Told! ‘The Comeback’ Star Slams Cancel Culture
Legal Insurrection: DEI Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry – Ibram X. Kendi Fails Upward, WI Judge Hannah Dugan, Convicted Of Helping Illegal Evade ICE, Denied New Trial, Anti-ICE Minneapolis Police Chief has 22 Open Misconduct Complaints Against Him, Democrats Blast Trump’s Easter Ultimatum to Iran in Typical, Homogenized Messaging, and Teacher Unions Sounding Alarm Over New AI-Driven Classroom Model
Nebraska Energy Observer: White Ensign and Navy Jack, One Little Word, and Monday Miscellany
Outkick: Michigan’s Final Four Title Win Sends Message, Michael Wilbon Left Disgusted By ‘Classless’ Geno Auriemma, What’s Happening To The Tennessee Lady Vols Is A Tragedy, Kate Upton Was In Blue & Orange Bikinis For The Tigers Home Opener This Weekend Thanks To SI Swimsuit, and Sabrina Carpenter Recruits Madelyn Cline & Margaret Qualley To Dance In Lingerie With Her For New Music Video
Power Line: Refugees, Daring Rescues and War Crimes, Trump and the polls, On Our Side, and In case you missed it
Racket News: The Top Ten Symptoms of Conspiracy Brain,
Shark Tank: Jimmy Patronis Slams “Knucklehead” Senate Democrats On DHS Funding
Shot In The Dark: The Thing About Americans
This Ain’t Hell: Brig Gen Bud Anderson, triple ace, laid to rest, Rubio revokes green cards for Qasem Soleimani relatives, President Trump drops expletive in ultimatum post directed at Iran, Hardware Monday, and Rescued!
Transterrestrial Musings: An Open Letter To Western Europe, Newsom Is Gruesome, and With The Success (So Far) Of Artemis 2
Victory Girls: Gavin Newsom’s Wife “Educates” Us On Trump And The Patriarchy, Democrats Trying to Gaslight Voters On Their Trans Advocacy, and President Trump Reveals Details of Easter Weekend Miracle
Watts Up With That: Coal, The Fuel We Ignore But Cannot Replace, Wyoming wind farms are ecological death traps for eagles, An Inconvenient Tree, Net Zero France Capitulates to an Iranian Safe Passage Fee for Gulf Oil, and The California Refinery Crisis is a national security risk for America
The Federalist: Neighbor State Peer Pressure Is A Terrible Reason To Legalize Weed In Indiana, Maine Supreme Court Shoots Down Dems’ ‘Unconstitutional’ Ranked-Choice Voting Scheme, Politico Tortures FEMA Data To Pretend Trump Is Denying Disaster Relief In Blue States, Iranian Rescue Mission Underscores Hegseth’s Predecessors’ Incompetence, and Planned Parenthood Lackey Seeks Seat On Wisconsin Supreme Court
Mark Steyn: Fools and Farewells, Destiny’s Child – George C. Scott in Patton, The Whole Earth Is Our Hospital, “Easter Parade”, and Stone Age Showtime

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Category: Linkagery

Rule 5 Sunday: From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor

Posted on | April 5, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I suppose I could have used the pic of Kamen America in her American/Japanese flag bikini, but this seemed more appropriate.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

“I know she looks sixteen, but she’s actually a 20,000 year old dragon goddess, officer!”

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, Women on the Moon, MAGA National Address & Easter, Tarzan The Ape Man, Sisu: Road To Revenge, Never Forget Iryna Zarutska, “I Want You To Want Me”, Musique La Cour, Mermaid Monday, Sicilian Vespers, and Mercy

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Nicky Whelan, Fish Pic Friday – Jenny Barrett, Thursday Tanlines, The Wednesday Wetness, Katfish for Kiddos?, XXXHIBITIONIST, The Monday Morning Stimulus and Palm Sunday

BACON TIME: Rule Five Red Hot

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: O’s, Yeah!

Posted on | April 5, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Before I get into This Week With The Senators, I’d like to direct your attention to The eponymous widget in the sidebar where we recognize fellow bloggers who link us on the regular. William Teach at The Pirate’s Cove throws us links every week, but because of the strictures of the FMJRA posts, you seldom see him mentioned in the links below or (before I gave it up) in the Top Linkers list. So thank you, Mr. Teach!

This was a very good week to be a Senators fan. Yes, we lost two out of three to the Royals in KC, winning only the opener after Mike Cuellar left early and was replaced by John Morlan, who we teed off on for six unearned runs on our way to a 10-1 blowout. Then it was off to Baltimore, where despite my expectations we swept the Birds in all three games: a 7-2 win for Carl Morton where Jim Kaat came in for four innings of relief to get the save; an agonizing 14-inning second game where we scored two in the top of the 14th and Charlie Hough held on for the win; and finally a rare start by Steve Hargan that earned him a win and Jim Shellenback a save. So here we are 69-72, 6.5 games behind the Twins and five games ahead of the Brewers, and with a real shot at reaching .500 even if we don’t make the playoffs.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

4-2 is very good indeed.

An Unjustified Arrogance
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Thinking About Mogadishu
EBL
357 Magnum





FMJRA 2.0: August Blues
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule 5 Sunday: Out Like A Lamb
A View From The Beach
EBL

‘A Massive Problem’: Free Speech for People Who Don’t Want Open Borders 
Western Rifle Shooters Association
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

‘Retribution for Their Sacred Blood’: Hezbollah Inspired Synagogue Attack
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 03.30.26
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Because You Asked: ‘What in the Actual Hell is Happening in North Carolina?’
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 03.31.26
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

‘Subject to the Jurisdiction Thereof’
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 04.02.26 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 04.03.26
EBL
A View From The Beach
357 Magnum

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Amazon Essentials
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Category: FMJRA Award

Lifestyles of the Rich and Shameless: The Family Had ‘Great Satan’ Green Cards

Posted on | April 5, 2026 | No Comments

Guess where they were living?

State Department press release:

[Friday night] the niece and grand niece of deceased Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Major General Qasem Soleimani were arrested by federal agents following Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s termination of their lawful permanent resident (LPR) status.
Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter are now in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As identified by both press reporting and her own social media commentary, Soleimani Afshar is an outspoken supporter of the totalitarian, terrorist regime in Iran.
While living in the United States, she promoted Iranian regime propaganda, celebrated attacks against American soldiers and military facilities in the Middle East, praised the new Iranian Supreme Leader, denounced America as the “Great Satan,” and voiced her unflinching support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated terror organization. Afshar Soleimani pushed this propaganda for Iran’s terrorist regime while enjoying a lavish lifestyle in Los Angeles, as attested to by her frequent posting on her recently deleted Instagram account.
In addition to the termination of Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter’s LPR status, Afshar’s husband has also been barred from entering the United States.
Earlier this month, Secretary Rubio also terminated the legal status of Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, daughter of former Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Ali Larijani, and her husband Seyed Kalantar Motamedi. Both Ardeshir-Larijani and Motamedi are no longer in the United States and are barred from future entry.
The U.S. Department of State extends its appreciation to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for their continued partnership and collaboration in keeping Americans safe.
The Trump Administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes.

So if you hate America, support our enemies and think of the United States as “the Great Satan,” where else would choose to live except in Gavin Newsom’s California, “enjoying a lavish lifestyle” among the liberal Hollywood snobs who hate America as much as you do? But why bring up Robert De Niro at a time like this? More details via the New York Post:

The glam grandniece of slain Iranian terror mastermind Gen. Qasem Soleimani frequented several US hotspots and lived a lavish life in LA before being scooped up by ICE Friday.
Sarinasadat Hosseiny, 25, and her mother, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, were arrested after the State Department terminated their permanent resident status and had their green cards revoked due to her ties the terrorist Iranian regime, the agency announced Saturday.
The 25-year-old terror scion’s social media showed she’s enjoyed a luxurious, vacation-centric lifestyle while living in the country her mother referred to as the “Great Satan.”
Hosseiny shared photos of her jetsetting on private planes, sunbathing on yachts, and dancing at music festivals while showing no signs of gainful employment.
Instagram posts show that Hosseiny has recently traveled to Miami where she posed with drinks; to Alaska, where she still managed to take snaps in a bikini; and Las Vegas, where she attended an F-1 race.
Other posts show Hosseiny donning skin tight dresses, barely-there bikinis, and skirts well north of the knee. . . .
Hosseiny was first admitted to the US on a student visa in 2015 and was given a green card by the Biden administration in 2023.

Terror-spawn socialite Sarinasadat Hosseiny

Some younger fellows might lament that we’ve deported an attractive young Persian woman, despite her terrorist ancestry, but why should American hotties have to deal with this foreign competition? The Obama administration shipped pallets of cash to the mullahs in Iran, and then Biden gave green cards to relatives of the Islamic regime, just so the aforesaid relatives could drive around in $200,000 Land Rovers and hobnob with the Hollywood snobs. Good riddance to all that.



 

Category: Immigration, Iran

Easter Miracle: U.S. Rescues Second Crewman From Downed F-15E in Iran

Posted on | April 5, 2026 | No Comments

Late Saturday afternoon, reports began circulating online that the U.S. had located the weapons systems officer (WSO) from the F-15E fighter that got shot down Friday in Iran. The pilot had been rescued almost immediately after the plane went down, but finding the WSO was more difficult, and the effort to rescue him was quite risky:

U.S. special operations forces rescued the second crew member from a downed F-15E fighter jet in Iran after a “heavy firefight,” successfully extracting both airmen and all rescue personnel from the country, according to multiple reports.
U.S. officials told Axios and Fox News the high-risk combat search-and-rescue mission recovered the weapons systems officer more than a day after the aircraft was shot down, concluding a complex operation that unfolded behind enemy lines.
Officials described the shootdown as a “worst-case scenario,” with U.S. forces racing to recover the crew before Iranian units could capture them.
The second crew member was located on Saturday, triggering a rescue effort as Iranian forces, including elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), also raced to the area to locate the downed airman.
U.S. air assets conducted strikes to prevent Iranian forces from closing in, while special operations units on the ground executed a layered extraction under fire.
The weapons systems officer had evaded capture after ejecting alongside the pilot, using Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training to move away from the wreckage and take cover on elevated terrain while activating an emergency beacon, according to reporting cited by Fox News.
There was fighting on the ground during the mission, though no U.S. personnel were killed, according to sources familiar with the operation.

It has been reported that two C-130 cargo planes, which carried rescue forces into Iran, had to be destroyed after their landing gear got stuck on the makeshift landing strip. One of my favorite moments of Saturday night was when Toby Harden confirmed the rescue:

A personal anecdote: In January 2012, when I went to cover the Republican primary campaign in South Carolina, my then-13-year-old son Jefferson pleaded to come with me, so I took him along. On the night of the Myrtle Beach debate, I filed my story, then told Jefferson to pack up the laptop and go wait for me in the lobby, while I went to meet some friends in the lobby bar. Having spent 10 or 15 minutes schmoozing with campaign operatives, I went to find Jeff and — he was gone! I looked everywhere, even got in my car and drove across the street to our hotel to see if he’d just decided to walk back, then returned to the convention center to keep looking. It was there that I encountered Toby Harnden, who was covering the campaign for the Daily Mail. When I explained to him that my son was missing, Toby offered to help look for him, so we split up — “You go this way, I’ll go that way” — and kept looking until Toby found him, asleep on a bench near the entrance to the ballroom where the debate had been staged. (Apparently, Jeff had misunderstood which lobby I meant for him to wait in — I’d meant the adjoining hotel lobby.) Anyway, Toby’s assistance in my moment of need earned him my enduring gratitude, and once he had confirmed the crewman’s rescue Saturday night, I knew it was the real deal.



 

Category: Iran, Military

Arithmetic vs. Liberal Narrative: Who Is Killing ‘Transgender Women of Color’?

Posted on | April 4, 2026 | No Comments

Marquell Lamar Wyatt, a/k/a, ‘Fifty Bandz’

One of the difficulties of arguing with liberals is that so many of them seem unable to grasp basic concepts like per capita and correlation. Any attempt to discuss crime and law enforcement will inevitably devolve into a shouting match because liberals are so prejudiced in favor of leniency — the “turn-’em-loose” school of social justice — that they become outraged if you call attention to the facts and logic in favor of the public safety benefits of a “lock-’em-up” approach. Having convinced themselves that criminals are actually victims of society, liberals respond to data about recidivism rates like a vampire confronted with a crucifix.

Any fact that contradicts the liberal narrative is disregarded and, after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, the narrative was that this had unleashed a wave of violence against “transgender women of color.” As I explained in January 2019, the national media began reporting the annual number of transgender murders as political propaganda:

This is a crucial aspect of the Transgender Victimhood Narrative, i.e., the suggestion that Trump’s election signified the onset of a “climate of hate” which is to blame for violence against “transgender women of color” and other “marginalized communities” . . .

The national media eventually lost interest in that narrative, but not so the tax-exempt 501(c)3 Human Rights Campaign, which kept pretending that the “climate of hate” continued to reap its deadly toll even after Joe Biden became president. Thus the headline from February 2021:

HRC Mourns Fifty Bandz, Black
Trans Woman Killed in Louisiana
HRC is deeply saddened to learn of the death of Fifty Bandz, a 21-year-old Black transgender woman who was shot to death in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on January 28. Her death is at least the fifth violent death of a transgender person in 2021. We say “at least” because too often these deaths go unreported — or misreported. So far this year, four of the five known deaths have been Black transgender women.
Friends and advocates said Fifty Bandz’s name and released balloons to remember her life on February 1, and will also hold a memorial on Thursday evening. Many on Facebook have shared the sentiment “rest in peace,” with another saying “long live Fifty Bandz.” One friend shared, “When are we as a community going to do something?!”
According to local media reports, Fifty was killed by a man with whom she had been in a relationship for more than a year. Tragically, interpersonal violence accounts for a significant number of fatalities against transgender and gender non-conforming people. . . .
HRC recorded 44 deaths of transgender and gender non-conforming people in 2020, more than in any year since we began tracking this violence in 2013.
More than 10,000 hate crimes in the U.S. involve a firearm each year, which equates to more than 28 each day . . . According to the 2017-2019 Transgender Homicide Tracker, three-fourths of confirmed homicides against transgender people have involved a gun, and nearly eight in 10 homicides of Black trans women involve a gun. Further, advocates saw a 43% increase in the formation of anti-LGBTQ hate groups in 2019.

Did you notice the sleight-of-hand there? After admitting that this was “interpersonal violence” between the victim and “a man with whom she had been in a relationship,” they began talking about “10,000 hate crimes” and an alleged increase in “anti-LGBTQ hate groups,” as if it were relevant to this case, which it obviously isn’t.

“Fifty Bandz” was just a social-media pseudonym for Marquell Lamar Wyatt, and he was killed by Michael Brooks, who had secretly “dated” Wyatt. After Brooks was sentenced to prison, he appealed his sentence, and you can read the ruling in which the court rejected his appeal:

At trial, Leonda Guerin (“Leonda”), Wyatt’s friend, testified that Wyatt and the defendant were in a romantic relationship at the time of his death. Leonda said Wyatt openly identified as a gay man, but the defendant was closeted and did not want people to know he was gay. Leonda testified, on the day of the incident, she drove Wyatt to a house in Brookstown to deliver a phone for the defendant so he could better communicate with Wyatt. According to Leonda, the defendant, the defendant’s girlfriend, and the defendant’s brother were outside when she and Wyatt arrived. Leonda said the defendant pulled out a gun “to show off in front of his girl” and acted like he did not know Leonda when she handed him the phone. A few minutes after delivering the phone, the defendant called Leonda while she and Wyatt were driving back to Wyatt’s mother’s house. Leonda testified the defendant was upset and cursing at her, which angered Wyatt. Leonda said the defendant and Wyatt argued on the phone for a while, and then Wyatt asked Leonda to drive him back to Brookstown to pickup the phone from the defendant. When Leonda refused, Wyatt borrowed a vehicle from his mother and left. . . .

You can read the whole thing, but the point is that Brooks felt that Wyatt was trying to “out” him, got Wyatt to agree to meet up to return the phone, and then shot Wyatt 19 times, including 11 shots fired “in the immediate vicinity” of where police found Wyatt’s body, which a detective said indicated that, after Wyatt fell down from the initial shots, Brooks stood over him and kept firing until the pistol’s ammunition ran out.

So, secretly bisexual black man murders his openly gay black boyfriend (who apparently sometimes dressed in drag), and the Human Rights Campaign treats this as evidence of “anti-LGBTQ hate”?

Even more preposterously, however, would you believe HRC claims that white supremacy is to blame? Vincent Lundgren and Colin Wright looked into that, and did the arithmetic to disprove it:

For more than a decade, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has pushed this narrative, publishing annual “Epidemic of Violence” reports documenting transgender homicide victims in the United States. Relying on the HRC’s analysis, activists, presidents, members of Congress, the American Medical Association, celebrities, journalists, and scholars have repeated the HRC’s claims so often that for many they feel like established facts.
The problem is that many of these claims just don’t add up. Transgender people are less likely to be murdered than the rest of the population, most transgender people are murdered by members of their own race, and intimate partner violence — not hate — is the leading identified motive for most such murders.
We reached this conclusion using the HRC’s own victim lists as the starting point. We independently verified every case from 2015 through 2024 (304 victims) using court records, police statements, local news reports, and other public documentation. . . .
The HRC’s own data further debunk the claim that “white supremacy” is a cause of violence against transgender-identifying Americans. Among identified suspects, black suspects account for 65.1 percent of perpetrators, while white suspects account for 18 percent. . . .
This finding is not the result of one bad year or a handful of outlier cases. And in 2020, the year the Human Rights Campaign published a statement attributing the deaths of “our Black trans siblings” to “an epidemic of violence” fueled by “systems of white supremacy,” not a single white suspect was identified in the cases we verified. . . .
To see how the mismatch between narrative and reality is manufactured, consider the deaths of “four Black transgender women” that the HRC cited in a 2021 report titled “Black LGBTQ People and Compounding Discrimination” as proof that “white supremacy” was driving an “epidemic of violence.” One case, the drive-by shooting of Tyianna Alexander, remains unsolved, with no public evidence of anti-trans bias, a hate crime, or anything tied to white supremacy.
In the other three cases, every identified suspect was a black man. Bianca Bankz was killed by a black man named Moses Allen, who shot Bankz and then killed himself. Dominique Jackson’s killing led to the arrest of a black man named Branden McLaurin; police said there was “no evidence supporting a hate-crime” in this case. Fifty Bandz was killed by boyfriend Michael Joshua Brooks, a black man, in what looks like a straightforward case of intimate partner violence. . . .

You can read the whole thing. For the sake of brevity, I omitted a lot of Lundgren and Wright’s statistical analysis here, but it’s excellent. No liberal narrative can survive arithmetic, because math is RAAAAACIST!



 

Category: Crime, Media Bias, Racism, The Transgender Cult
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