The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 02.13.26 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | February 14, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

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

Drunk catgirls on Roombas. This is the way.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: The Day They Killed JFK (1963), also, Ring, Nest, & The Invisible Surveillance State
357 Magnum: How Do You Run a City Without a Tax Base? also You didn’t think Windows 11 could actually get more annoying
EBL: Kathryn Ruemller, Clinton and Obama Attorney and Epstein Pal, Out At Goldman, Great Lake Invaders, Flatfish Friday, Cool Papa Bell, and Japan’s Empty Island
Twitchy: One Simple Graph Shows How Democrats Tried To Destroy America With Illegal Immigration, Gov. Hairgel Promises Climate Deniers Will Face A Religious Reckoning, and Administration To Investigate School Over Charges That Troon Assaulted Girl During Wrestling Match
Louder With Crowder: They let Occasional Cortex speak in Munich, where she tosses a word salad on “authoritarianism” that only makes sense to her, “Raging Grannies” perform their latest CRINGE anti-ICE anthem instead of spending time with their grandkids, Creepy guy hoping to replace Nancy Pelosi drops video where he hangs out with children protesting ICE, and Democrat senator demands you show your ID to attend rally…where he tells you Blacks and women don’t know how to get an ID
Vox Popoli: The Waking of the Palantír, McCarthy and the Molecular Clock, Happy Darwin Day, and The Epstein Inquisition
According To Hoyt: Coming Home to You, The Writer In A State, You Pay The Price, Blast From The Past: We Don’t Make Ourselves, and Risk and Opportunity
The Bugscuffle Gazette: All right
Gab: Why AI Can’t Save Us

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Don’t Trade Away America for Some Soybeans, Trump’s Cuba Policy Is a Humanitarian Disaster, The Promise and Perils of Korean Reunification, Europe, South Korea, and Brazil Attack U.S. Tech Over Free Speech, and Starmer Survives a Palace Coup, But for How Long?
American Greatness: Feds Have Reportedly Charged 158 Anti-ICE Agitators With Federal Crimes in Minnesota; More Expected, Rep. LaMonica McIver Asks ICE Director If He Thinks He’s ‘Going to Hell’ During House Hearing, Trans Maniac Kills 8, Injures 25 in Mass School Shooting in British Columbia, Former Obama White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler Resigns From Goldman Sachs Amid Epstein Fallout, and SBA Uncovers Massive Fraud in California: 111,620 Borrowers Linked to $8.6 BILLION in Pandemic Fraud
Animal Magnetism: Animal Magnetism LIVE Ep. 74 – Visiting Moose
Baldilocks: Great Black Patriots Of The U.S. Congress – Revisited
BattleSwarm: Jeffrey Epstein Revelations Update, No More Illegal Alien Buyers For Colony Ridge, California’s Wealth Streams For The Exits, Uncle Sam Assembles Big Stick For Iran, and LinkSwarm For February 13
Behind The Black: FAA confirms “no significant impact” to environment for Starship/Superheavy at Boca Chica, SpaceX launches new crew to ISS, Axiom raises another $350 million in private investment capital, Vast wins sixth ISS slot for tourist mission, and NASA testing SLS fuel leak repairs; UPDATE: Problems!
Cafe Hayek: On Job Growth in 2025 – Even Worse, Compared to 2017, Than Earlier Reported, More on Jobs Growing More Slowly in 2025 than in 2017, Katherine Mangu-Ward Is Right, and Comparing U.S. Economic Performance in 2025 to that of 2017
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Chicago Boyz: In Washington Post Delendum, Worthwhile Reading, and Rabbit Season (UPDATED)
Da Tech Guy: Under the Fedora: Somebody is Listening
Don Surber: The stupidity of environmentalism
First Street Journal: A half-hearted defense of Jeff Bezos, Will Bunch and due process of law, Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen, and Now you know why I call it Journolism!
Gates Of Vienna: Knife Attack Thwarted at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Culture-Enriching Dismemberment in Belgium, Those Railroad Blues, Monarchy, and What Do They Know?
The Geller Report: Thirty Years, $10 Trillion—and Absolutely Zero Impact on the Climate, FIERCE: AG Bondi SLAYS Democrats at Congressional Hearing, VIRGINIA: Loudoun County Trains Staff to Fight ‘Terrorist’ Parents, Female Muslim TV Host: “Allah Allows Muslim Men to Rape Non-Muslim Women to Humiliate Them.”, and Major Trump Win: Mandatory Detention, No-Bond For Illegals
Glenn Reynolds: The Coming Revolution Down South
Hollywood In Toto: Charlie’s Angels to Rise from the Woke Ashes, Shock: Three Major Stars Refuse to Get Political, Bill Maher Says Jimmy Kimmel Ended Our Friendship Over Politics, One Battle After Another’s Price Tag Just Got Even Higher, and This Wuthering Heights Will Drive Purists Mad
Legal Insurrection: Alleged NYC Antisemitic Stabbing Suspect Out on Bail as Incidents Rise 182% Under Mamdani, USDA Deploys Sterilized Flies, High?Tech Arsenal to Guard the Border Against Screwworm Threat, State Dept. Links ‘Code Pink’ and Other Far-Left Groups to the Chinese Communist Party, January 2026 Inflation Eases a Bit to 2.4%, and In the End, it is Trump Who Has Done More Than Anyone to Bring Down Epstein
Nebraska Energy Observer: Christ Come to Cleanse the Temple, The Midweek Report, Remembering the Great Emancipator, The Ghost of England’s Past, continued, and The Guthrie Kidnapping
Outkick: EXCLUSIVE: Dept. Of Ed. Opens Investigation Into Alleged Sexual Assault By Trans Wrestler During HS Match, Whiskey Sales, NIL, Tennessee Fans: Joey Aguilar’s Fight Against NCAA Had It All, With Vols Arguing In Court, ‘Quad God’ Ilia Malinin Falls Twice, Finishes Eighth After Shocking Performance, Olympic Curling Chaos As Sweden Accuses Team Canada Of Cheating During Heated On Ice Confrontation, and Nancy Mace Shoots Up The ‘Hot Congresswoman’ Chart In A Tiny Top, Daytona 500 Cheerleaders & Libs Vs. A Grill!
Power Line: The Law, With Entertainment Value, Obama White House Counsel ?? Jeffrey Epstein [Updated], Unhouse me here, Remembering Mr. Lincoln, and What’s Wrong With White Women?
Racket News: A Play-By-Play of Jeffery Epstein’s Staggering Financial Illiteracy
Shark Tank: Byron Donalds Says He’ll Visit Israel As Governor, Outlines Existential Threat Of Sharia Law
Shot In The Dark: Where There’s Smoke, The Security B-Movie, and Squirrel
STUMP: Political Mortality – Rahm Emanuel Says There Should Be A Mandatory Retirement Age of 75 For Key Federal Roles
The Political Hat: The Post-American Arsonists, Quick Takes – Speed Bumps Against Euthanasia, and Firing Line Friday: Firing Line 1966-1986: A Potpourri of Persuaders
This Ain’t Hell: Wealthy Californians eying move to Las Vegas as a means to reduce their tax burden, Virginia Democrats are pushing a redistricting bid to increase the numbers of House Democrats in Congress, Valor Friday, Gotta be careful, and Fly the Friendly Skies of El Paso
Transterrestrial Musings: Trump/Epstein, Iran Thoughts, and Elon’s Mars To Moon Pivot
Victory Girls: Tampon Timmy Has a Tantrum, Come On, Eileen Gu, You’re Not American Any More, and SAVE America Act Passes House, Can It Pass The Senate?
Watts Up With That: The Super Bowl Without EVs Tells You Everything, New York Times Gives Wind Turbines a Free Pass to Slaughter Birds, Harvard Divinity School and the New Climate Inquisition, New York Climate Act Issues, and Macron says Spain’s mega-blackout was due to the country’s reliance on renewable energy
The Federalist: Don’t Wait Until Valentine’s Day To Romance Your Spouse , Virginia High Court Greenlights Democrat Effort To Give Millions Of Republicans A Single Seat In Congress, While Jimmy Lai Sits In Prison, Eileen Gu Takes The CCP’s Millions, The Nixon Library Is Wrong About Nixon And The Deep State, and Mamdani Demands U.S. Immigration Policy Start Obeying Islam
Mark Steyn: Groovy and Gone, Bob Fosse Uncut in My Sister Eileen, If You Were the Only Girl in the World, Gross for Grapes, and Live Around The Planet – The Mounties Always Get Their Person

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 02.13.26 (Afternoon Edition)

Posted on | February 13, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

The 2026 Spring Based Books Sale is underway!
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: The Day Mount Vesuvius Erupted (79), also, How The West’s Censorship Infrastructure Was Built 
357 Magnum: More Improvised Weapons, also Florida Is a Bad Place for Bad Guys
EBL: The Scream, The Women of the Rockford Files, Pink Porgy, Ponies, and Trees Taking Over The Great Plains
Twitchy: U.S. Oil & Gas Association Realizes Democrats Use Them As Props but Demonize Them Otherwise, Meteorologist Takes Al Gore’s Freakout Apart, and Watch As Keith Ellison Realizes He Just Told The Truth About Democrats & Illegals And Can’t Spin It
Louder With Crowder: Illinois Town Starts Handing Out $25,000 To 44 Black People As A Form Of Reparations, ICE arrests migrant charged with 50 pounds of meth, check the DISHONEST way legacy media is covering it, Rand Paul blasts Katie Couric for minimizing arrests of violent illegals, attempts to explain it slowly to her, Scott Jennings causes CNN meltdown when no one would answer his one-word question about them opposing voter ID, and Jasmine Crockett spews more hate, claims even white democrats are probably racist “behind closed doors”
Vox Popoli: Recalibrating Man, Not Necessarily Self-Inflicted, The Black Spies of Dunland, The Corpocrats Complain, and Book Review: The Frozen Gene
L’Ombre de L’Olivier: The End of 2Tier Keir
Cedar Sanderson: Akbar’s Bridge
Weird Catholic: The Wood of the Cross
Gab: The Patronage Problem,
Stoic Observations: We Are Spirits In The Material World
Jim McCoy: Let’s Fix ‘Em
The Abbey of Misrule: Writers Against AI
Ammo.com: How Many Guns In The U.S.?
Upstream Reviews: Reviews From The Spring Based Book Sale

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: All Euro-NATO Reporting Is Suspect Until Further Notice, also, Well You Could Have Had A Deployment Like Truxtun
Dana Loesch: Catholic League Removes Wannabe Influencer From White House Religious Commission, also, It’s An Epidemic – Canadian Troon Killer Targets School 
Don Surber: Macron v. Trumpzilla, also, Transgendering into a killer
Racket News: Dr. Jekyll & Ms. Bondi, Brits Spied On Racket & Other Journalists, Activism Uncensored – A Return To Minneapolis, and FBI Gathered Intel On Thousands of Journalists, Politicians & Religious Organizations On Flimsy Grounds

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Survival Foods
H&R Block Deluxe & State Tax Software




 

Category: Linkagery

A Heinous Crime and a Mystery Motive

Posted on | February 13, 2026 | No Comments

This is Nafiah Ikram or, rather, I should say this was Nafiah Ikram.

Not that she’s dead, but she doesn’t look like that any more. On the evening of March 17, Nafiah was 21 years old and had just gotten home from working a shift at CVS as a pharmacy technician. She was helping her mother bring some items in from the car when a man ran out of the bushes near a neighbor’s house, and threw a cup of sulfuric acid onto Nafiah’s face. Take my word for it, her injuries were horrific.

For nearly five years, Nafiah’s attacker escaped justice. The mystery was why anyone would want to harm Nafiah, who was attending Hofstra University part-time while working full-time at CVS. She had no known enemies, and yet, as her father told reporters, it was not a random attack:

Her father, Sheikh Ikram, 50, said Nafiah was targeted on her way home from work.
“No it’s not a random attack, it’s a planned attack,” Ikram told The Post Wednesday night.
“If it was a random attack, why did … they waited for her to come home,” Ikram said, adding the suspect could have attacked his wife, who was outside moments earlier.

This week, police arrested a Brooklyn man, Terrell Campbell:

A flower deliveryman who allegedly threw acid on a woman and then wrote a song about it has been indicted five years later.
Terrell Campbell, 29, of Brooklyn, was indicted on Tuesday on first-degree assault charges for allegedly throwing acid on Nafiah Ikram while she was walking up her driveway in Elmont on Long Island in March 2021, leaving her with significant burns.
Campbell allegedly used sulfuric acid — a highly corrosive mineral acid found in lead-acid batteries — in the attack.
Surveillance video allegedly caught him running up on Ikram, throwing the acid and then running off.
After the attack, Campbell, an aspiring rapper, posted a song called Obsidian to YouTube under his rap name YungBasedPrince in 2023.
‘I’m discreet in the night, like a hitman assassin,’ he rapped. ‘Try to run up and have your face burning, acid.’
Nassau County prosecutors ridiculed his song in a statement, saying he ‘brazenly used the attack as material to further his rap career, publishing a video with lyrics that neatly fit the narrative of the crime.’
‘Terrell Campbell thought he was home free, but he could not have been more wrong,’ DA Anne T. Donnelly said in a statement. . . .
The red Nissan seen in the surveillance was a key piece of evidence, as community members told investigators he regularly drove the car under a family member’s name, as he had multiple violations on his license.
Cell phone evidence also showed he had searched ‘sulfuric acid remover,’ ‘sulfuric acid on car seat,’ and ‘can you recover from sulfuric acid burn.’
He also searched: ‘Acid attack Franklin Square Long Island,’ prosecutors said.
Campbell was arrested on February 9 by the Nassau County Police Department.
Campbell has pleaded not guilty to his charges. He faces up to 25 years in prison.
He is expected back in court on February 18.

Terrell Campbell

Perhaps you understand why I didn’t use my customary “Aspiring Rapper Update” headline, considering the grievousness of this crime.

Police and prosecutors have said nothing about Campbell’s motive. Maybe they have evidence or testimony they’re not sharing with the public, but why would this guy from Brooklyn commit such a heinous act against a complete stranger in Long Island, about 10 miles away?

My hunch is that the crucial clue is in that search that Campbell did for “Acid attack Franklin Square Long Island.” Why would he choose “Franklin Square” as the search term? Nafiah was attacked at her family’s home on Arlington Avenue in Elmont, about three-quarters of a mile away from Franklin Square. Well, there’s a CVS store at Franklin Square, and if Campbell had chosen Nafiah as his target after seeing her working at the Franklin Square CVS, he would have associated her with that location. We don’t know that to be the case, but it is a reasonable surmise, based on what we do know. To speculate further, it would seem that Campbell had been stalking Nafiah for some time prior to the attack, as he knew where she lived and was waiting to ambush her when she arrived home from work. But that still doesn’t give us the motive.

Here’s a scenario: For whatever reason, Campbell travels to Long Island and, during his visit stops into this CVS store where he sees Nafiah. Let’s just suppose he’s at the CVS to pick up a prescription, and Nafiah is working the register. Campbell tries to strike up a friendly conversation, but Nafiah doesn’t seem interested. Campbell gets his feelings hurts, becomes obsessed, and plots revenge against Nafiah.

That’s just a speculative scenario, among many possible explanations. So far we have no suggestion of Campbell’s motive — alleged motive, I hasten to add, since he has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent, etc. But the heinousness of this crime heightens the mystery of what could have motivated it. Human nature is such that we suppose an extraordinary crime must have an extraordinary motive, which is why so many wild theories still surround the JFK assassination. Surely, many people think, it cannot be that a pathetic misfit like Lee Harvey Oswald could have single-handedly accomplished the murder of the President of the United States. And in the attack against Nafiah Ikram, similarly, we can’t imagine that this beautiful young woman could be so horribly disfigured because an “aspiring rapper” from Brooklyn randomly chose her as his target so that he could write a rap lyric about his crime.

It’s crazy, but you know what they say about crazy people.



 

Category: Crime, New York

In The Mailbox: 02.11.26 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | February 11, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

The 2026 Based Books Spring Sale Is On!
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: SimCity Moonbase Edition 
EBL: Japan’s Recent Election Explained, also, The Wrecking Crew
Twitchy: Attorney Freezes When Asked How His Client Returned To $2.3 Million Mansion She’s Been Squatting In, Scott Jennings & Many Others Mock Axios For Refusing To Credit Trump For Plunging Crime, and Jerry Nadler Caught Snoozing As AG Bondi’s Testimony Gets Fiery
Louder With Crowder: Teen didn’t realize she was being forced to wrestle a biological male until after she was violated during the match, Kidnapper who shows ZERO remorse gets his sentence cut in half by judge who felt bad for him since he was Black, and “Lord, allow these f*cking morons to stop…”: Father fed up with woke school board delivers amazing prayer during meeting
Vox Popoli: Ricardo’s Deliberate Deception, A Departure at Dawn, The Significance of (d) and (k), Pure Satanism, and China Shuns US Debt
Defending The Wood Perilous: The Day The Left Went Crazy
Jim McCoy: War Demons
Upstream Reviews: Gomers

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: The Sanctioned/Stateless Tanker Nabbing Gives…If We Are Willing To Take
Dana Loesch: The Woke Reich Hijacks The White House Religious Liberties Commission
Don Surber: The woman globalists fear most

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 02.10.26

Posted on | February 11, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

I was hoping I’d feel better today, but nope.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

Trump: “Law? Pete, show him law.”
Hegseth: *points overhead at B-2* “Omae wa mou shindeiru.”

OVER THE TRANSOM
Director Blue: A Day At The Fort Parker Massacre (1836), The Day The Sea Swallowed Galveston (1900), TDS Today, and Top 20 New Epstein Insights From Mike Benz, 
357 Magnum: Ham Radio Fox Hunting versus Anti-ICE Protestors
EBL: Hogfish, MAGA Iran (So Far Away), Beatles on Ed Sullivan Show, Superior Football Half Time Show, and Lindsey Vonn Suffers Crash at Olympics
Twitchy: Rep. Dan Goldman Clearly Didn’t Expect ICE Director To Tell Him Where To Go, Eric Swalwell Also Gets Owned By ICE Director Lyons, and “Just A Decision To Steal”
Louder With Crowder: LOL! Politico reports Democrats are turning against body cameras for ICE agents (take a guess why), Anti-ICE agitators throw sex toys at a truck in protest…but it turns out they got the wrong truck, Methodist Church Performs Anti-ICE Cringe Fest During Memorial Service For Alex Pretti, Hey Texas! Jasmine Crockett thinks you’re racist and/or sexist if you don’t support her, and Grandma goes viral with the perfect – and hilarious – response to Bad Bunny’s anti-American halftime show
Vox Popoli: Veriphysics: The Treatise 006, The Real Rate of Molecular Evolution, The Word of the Lord of Barad-dûr, The Real Rate Revolution, and Super Bowl LX
The Bugscuffle Gazette: World Hijab Day, Doing The Honourable Thing, and Ian, What Is “Guano-Psychosis”?
Stoic Observations: An Analytical Rubric For Stoics, also, Luxuries & Blackmails of the Underworld
L’Ombre de L’Olivier: Japan’s Election
Upstream Reviews: Fallen, also, The Dawnward Universe
Mazelit Airaksinen: Confessions of a Recovering College Feminist
Cedar Sanderson: But It’s Been Done!

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Dana Loesch: I’m Already Over The Halftime Show, 
Don Surber: White Saviors are flinging dildos in ICE capades
Elizabeth Nickson: I’m Thinking Public Executions – How About You?
Glenn Reynolds: Tenure – What Is It Good For?
Matt Taibbi: “We Care If It’s True. We Don’t Care Why”, A Message From Emily Kopp, The Swamp Log
STUMP: RIP Catherine O’Hara – On Cancer & Pulmonary Embolisms, also, World Cancer Day 2026 – Trends At Young & Old Ages Are A Mix

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Category: Linkagery

Rule 5 Monday: Boots & Bikinis

Posted on | February 9, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Another fine posting by @kbdabear on X.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

EBL: Saturday Night Girls With Guns, MAGA ICE ICE Baby, Tom Jones & Mirielle Mathieu, Solo Mio, Pretzel Time, “Windy”, Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Riefenstahl, “Vincent”, Dusty Springfield, The Smashing Machine, “I Get Around”, and Amelia – Rule Britannia

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: Victoria Vesce, Scott Bessent Scores, Fish Pic Friday – Professional Hooker, Tattoo Thursday, Cities Have the Rock Salt Blues, The View from Stolen Land, The Wednesday Wetness, Tuesday Tanlines, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Random Celebrity News and Palm Sunday 

BACON TIME: Rule 5 – A Trip To Hooterville

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Better Late Than Never

Posted on | February 9, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Pretty sick this weekend but I slept for about 12 hours last night and now I only feel half as miserable.
The Senators took two out of three from Pittsburgh and Boston last week, so now we’re 44-52, tied with Pete’s Brewers for second in the division, 5.5 games behind the Twins. Speaking of the Twins, we’ll be facing them Friday after three games at Oakland.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.

4-2 continues to be good.

THIS! THIS! I VOTED FOR THIS! 100%
Freedom’s Light Network News
The Pirate’s Cove
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

FMJRA 2.0: One Big Crunch
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Rule 5 Sunday: Extra Value Meal
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 02.02.2026
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

‘End of Watch’ for a Georgia Cop
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.04.26 (Afternoon Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 02.04.26 (Evening Edition)
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

In The Mailbox: 02.05.26
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

In The Mailbox: 02.06.26
EBL
357 Magnum
A View From The Beach

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

 

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Category: FMJRA Award

‘A Perfectly Good White Boy’

Posted on | February 7, 2026 | No Comments

Travis Duane Lovett

Citrus County, Florida, is a scenic place if you like trees draped with Spanish moss. Although it sits on the west coast of Florida, about 75 miles north of Tampa, Citrus County isn’t a place with hotels lining beaches, because there are no beaches to speak of. The coastline of Citrus County is defined by two bays — Crystal Bay in the north and Homosassa Bay in the south — into which empty two rivers. Despite its lack of beachfront, Citrus County has experienced tremendous growth in the past 50 years, exploding from less than 20,000 residents in 1970 to about 170,000 now. This background is by way of introduction to Travis Duane Lovett, who at age 22 made headlines — not in a good way.

Lovett is from Bushnell, in neighboring Sumter County. On the morning of April 28, 2019, an F-250 pickup truck was reported stolen in the Citrus County community of Floral City. Two hours later in Inverness, which is the Citrus County seat, a tip led sheriff’s deputies to the truck’s location:

A high-speed chase through Citrus and two other counties ended Sunday morning with authorities ramming a stolen truck driven by a Bushnell man, who earlier had fired on pursuing troopers.
Medics airlifted Travis Duane Lovett to Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point after the 22-year-old was ejected from a burgundy 2007 Ford F-250 pickup truck off of Sumter County Road 476 near Southwest 41st Terrace, outside of Bushnell, according to the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP).
As of Monday, he was still being treated at Tampa General Hospital for his injuries, FHP spokesman Sgt. Steve Gaskins said.

The reason I mentioned those “trees draped with Spanish moss” in Citrus County is because the pursuit of Travis Lovett was captured on a Florida state trooper’s dashcam, and it’s one of the most harrowing chases you’ll ever see, despite the verdant scenery:

 

If you don’t want to watch the whole frightening (but scenic) chase, you can click here to see the moment the trooper finally rams the truck off the road into a brutal rollover crash. Afterwards, you can hear the trooper and deputies talking about Lovett being “in bad shape,” as might be expected after being hurled from a truck at 90 mph. You can actually hear Lovett in what sounds like “agonal breathing,” which is almost always an omen of impending death. But more about the chase:

Working off of a tip, sheriff’s deputies at 9:15 a.m. went to a property on the 5300 block of East Muzzleloaders Court in Inverness and found Lovett in the truck.
Lovett drove the truck toward one of the deputies, who had to jump out of the way. Lovett continued to drive through a fence and accelerated towards another responding deputy’s cruiser, which swerved to avoid a collision, the sheriff’s release states.
A neighbor told a Chronicle reporter she saw several people sitting at the front porch warn the getaway driver about the approaching deputies, who had parked their patrol cars to block the driveway and much of the front yard when the truck backed up through chicken-wire fencing to escape. . . .
Lovett got onto South Great Oaks Drive and travelled south, leaving the roadway near the intersection with Bayberry Lane to travel on the Withlacoochee State Trail, according to CCSO spokeswoman Jodi Sanders and FHP.
Lovett continued driving on-and-off the trail for roughly 1.6 miles, almost colliding with several pedestrians, before going south on Istachatta Road.
Troopers kept pursuing Lovett into Hernando County and eastbound onto County Road 476.
Troopers said Lovett pointed an unknown object at them before he fired three gunshots from a handgun through the truck’s rear windshield, with one round striking the right side of an FHP cruiser’s front windshield, according to the agency.

If you watch the video, you realize that the Withlacoochee Trail is for walkers and bicyclists — no motorized vehicles permitted — and Lovett’s 60-mph race down that narrow one-lane trail is one of the scariest parts of the chase, no matter how much you enjoy seeing that lovely Spanish moss hanging from the trees. Considering how many lives he endangered, not to mention shooting at the state trooper who risked his life during that pursuit, I found myself actually hoping that Lovett was killed in that final crash. Alas, he survived, but fortunately you are unlikely ever to encounter Lovett, as he is currently in the Sumter Correctional Institution, from which he will not be released until 2065.

Because most of the criminals featured in my blog are either black or illegal immigrants, it’s important occasionally to emphasize that I have zero sympathy for white criminals like Travis Lovett. The headline features a line from the 1985 dark comedy Better Off Dead, which has become a sort of cult classic. The movie is about a high school kid played by John Cusack, who becomes suicidal after his girlfriend dumps him. In one scene, Cusack decides to end it all by jumping off a highway overpass, only to land in the back of a garbage truck. Two black men, in a bucket lift trimming trees beside the road, look down and see Cusack sitting in the garbage truck and one says to the other, “Man, now that’s a real shame when folks be throwing away a perfectly good white boy.”

This line crossed my mind after reading about the December 2020 hearing where a Florida judge sentenced Travis Lovett to prison:

Bushnell resident Travis Duane Lovett was handed a 50-year state prison sentence Thursday stemming from a multi-county vehicle chase with law enforcement last year, which one prosecutor in court described as “blood curdling.”
Circuit Judge Richard “Ric” Howard sentenced the 24-year old man after agreeing with state prosecutors that Lovett was a habitual offender, already having amassed five felonies and 10 traffic violations. Lovett had been released from prison in 2017 before the high-speed pursuit in 2019.
The April 2019 chase involved three counties, including Citrus and Sumter, and portions of the Withlacoochee Trail, during which he nearly struck two cyclists.
Before the chase, Lovett stole a truck, and when a Citrus County Sheriff’s deputy was identifying the license plate not knowing Lovett was inside, Lovett reversed the vehicle, nearly striking the deputy.
During the chase, Lovett also forced a second pursuing deputy off the road.
In March [2020), a jury found Lovett guilty of two counts of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, felony fleeing and grand theft of an automobile.
During the sentencing hearing, Lovett’s court-appointed lawyer, Edward Spaight, presented a court psychologist who oversaw counseling efforts for Lovett when Lovett was 14 years old and 16 years old.

(Permit me to interject that if “a court psychologist” was counseling Lovett when he was only 14, he was already a criminal by the time he was in middle school.)

Psychologist Patrick Ward told Howard that Lovett had been exposed to a drug environment during his early childhood and shown how to make and use drugs, which he often did with his mother and father, often using methamphetamine.
Ward said Lovett “bonded heavily with a model that was very negative” and was never shown how to control impulses and live normally in society. . . .
In a rambling effort to try and explain what he had done, Lovett told the judge that his intent in stealing the truck and running was to force law enforcement officers to kill him. He said his grandmother had committed suicide a few years before and his mother was threatening to do the same and the stress was too much.
During the time of his arrest, both his parents were in prison. Lovett said his life and recent events caused him to mentally come apart.
Spaight asked Howard to show Lovett mercy in sentencing, saying “if he had been raised by wolves it probably would have been better.”
But Howard declined, saying that the chase and near misses was one of the most frightening things he’d ever seen.
While Howard sympathized with Lovett’s troubles as a youth, he told him “but you made your choices.”

“Raised by wolves”! Both of his parents were in prison! He had just gotten out of prison himself two years before the stolen truck chase! He started doing meth as a child! His grandmother committed suicide!

No sympathy for white trash — 50 years in prison.

Civilization requires us to reject the appeal to sympathy that would have us treat dangerous criminals leniently on account of the difficult circumstances of their lives. The Vice President of the United States grew up in the kind of white trash millieu that produced Travis Lovett, but because of the intervention of his grandmother, J.D. Vance didn’t go down the road that leads to prison. As they say, it’s a shame to “throw away a perfectly good white boy,” but some of them are just trash.



 

Category: Crime, Florida
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