The Other McCain

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

The Ivy League Is Decadent and Depraved

Posted on | April 24, 2026 | No Comments

Yale Law Professor Samuel Moyn

Very seldom do I use the same headline twice in one week, but seldom does an idea as monstrously bad as Samuel Monyn’s attract my attention. To summarize as succinctly as possible, Moyn’s argument is this: “Old people have too much stuff. We should kill them and steal their stuff.”

Have I exaggerated for the sake of brevity? Perhaps so, but the subtext of Moyn’s book-length argument (Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth—and What to Do About It) is pretty clear — everything wrong in America is because of old people, and therefore we should adopt policies to inflict harm on these elderly enemies. If you’re 65 or older, you are analogous to a Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 and Professor Moyn is Radio Hutu. This is simply hate propaganda, demonizing the elderly, and nothing good will come of it. Both Ed Morrissey and Matt Taibbi have taken stabs at explaining what’s wrong with Moyn’s idea, as expressed in the professor’s New York Times op-ed.

“Ageism” identifies an enduring phenomenon: the mistreatment of older people for no reason other than being older. Americans in middle age and beyond are routinely passed over for opportunities because of the irrelevant fact of a number on paper or how they act and look after getting older.
In today’s world, the unfair discrimination they cite coexists with a different kind of unfairness: a gerontocratic society in which the old control ever more power and wealth, leading to overrepresentation in political life and unequal power in social life.
It is not ageist to ask whether older people should be required to give more to younger Americans and national priorities — it is critical to the future of our democracy and society. America needs to confront gerontocracy before the system collapses under the weight of its inequality and injustice.
Older Americans deserve a say over the future even when they might not live to see it. But they do not deserve the stranglehold over it they currently enjoy through overrepresentation in elections, which produces too many regressive policies and too many seniors in the highest offices. . . .
The United States has one of the highest wage inequality by age of any country in the world, and the numbers keep getting worse: The pay gap between workers over 55 and those under 35 widened 61 percent between 1979 and 2018. The share of workers over 55 in the work force rose 88 percent in those same years.
Housing follows the same pattern. Older Americans own much of the most desirable real estate in the country’s best cities, and they are not moving. . . .

You can read the rest, but ask yourself how Professor Moyn would react to these arguments about “overrepresentation” and “unequal power,” etc., if we replaced the phrase “older people” with one word: Jews.

The headline “Jews Are Hoarding America’s Potential” would probably not be published by the New York Times, nor would the author of such a piece have a book deal with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, let alone a tenured faculty position at Yale Law School. What is offensive about crude anti-Semitism is the same thing that offends me about Professor Moyn’s argument, i.e., that such scapegoating involves collective blame, and that this invalid categorization of guilt simultaneously creates an invalid category of allegedly innocent victims. This blame game is a distraction. It’s like the Black Lives Matters movement yelping about “systemic racism” and “white privilege” when the problem is (checks notes) criminals getting killed by police while resisting arrest.

Because I am 66 years old — and thus, according to Professor Moyn, part of the gerontocracy that is oppressing younger Americans — let me ask a few questions: How do I, specifically, “control ever more power and wealth”? How much of “the most desirable real estate” do I own? How am I exercising a “stranglehold” and benefiting from a “pay gap”? My kids own more real estate than I do, and my lawyer son’s starting pay at his first job is more than I’m earning after 40 years in journalism.

Trying to scapegoat me because of a statistical trend — the “pay gap” that “widened 61 percent” in a 40-year period — would be offensive even if the underlying numbers were not demonstrably invalid, but in fact this alleged trend is an apples-and-oranges comparison which ignores the fact that the overall quality of young people has changed since the 1970s, and not in a good way. Whatever problems my generation had as teenagers back in the day, the vast majority of us at least came from two-parent married households. If my now-adult offspring are doing better than the average member of their own generation, it’s probably due in large measure to this factor — my wife and I got married and have stayed married, and at least tried to give our kids an old-fashioned wholesome sort of upbringing. Professor Moyn is obsessed with demonizing old people for “hoarding” wealth, but how much of the widening gap between young and old is actually due to declines in the average socioeconomic background of young people caused by rising rates of out-of-wedlock births and the prevalence of divorce? And what about the role of mass immigration in this generational trend? Professor Moyn doesn’t mention that at all, but let us just ask: What percentage of American 18-year-olds were the children of immigrants in 1978, versus today’s 18-year-olds? What would it look like if you charted the U.S. percentage of immigrant population over time, as one line, and the “pay gap” as another line?

Professor Moyn is certainly not alone in ignoring this factor. Twenty or 30 years ago, I recall seeing politicians and pundits bemoaning “the growing gap between rich and poor” in America, even while those same people had nothing to say about mass immigration. If you are importing tens of millions of impoverished Third World refugees — which has been our de facto policy for decades — it is hardly a surprise to see an increase in the “poor” side of this “growing gap” that you’re complaining about, no matter what your policy is toward the rich. But of course, the people doing the complaining were liberals, predictably arguing for economic redistribution, rather than actually trying to solve the problem (which their own policies have caused). Sic semper hoc — liberal policies fail, and then liberals tell us that the solution is more liberalism.

Because he has chosen the elderly as scapegoats, and because he is a liberal, Professor Moyn is oblivious to all of this. He has another long essay in Harper‘s magazine, with this interesting section:

At the core of the gerontocracy’s rise is a historical irony. The modern world— — and America above all –­ once stood for youth, novelty, and energy. And yet the same modernity that gave us democracy and other forms of progress also prompted scientific advances that prolonged life. Those advances drove a startling demographic transformation that has increased the proportion of elders in our society, unintentionally empowering a caste that has slowed progress. Call it the Great Aging.
The age pyramid — ­which decreed almost as a law across space and time that the younger the humans, the more of them there were — has been rebuilt. There is still a narrowing tip in the upper echelons, because people still die. But below it, the structure is a rectangle, with steady-­state survival of most cohorts, and some younger groups smaller than some older ones. The rectangle is slowly ascending in height, which means that, where there was once a smaller proportion of people over forty, now more than half the population in some countries, and just about half in America, are above that age. Our current median age is nearing forty, up from thirty in 1980 and from the mid-­teens early in our national history. And while the trends in life extension have been irresistible, the coincidence of a declining birth rate with the ongoing survival of the baby boomers is creating an especially lopsided upper age cohort. There were just under five million Americans aged sixty-­five or older in 1920, accounting for less than 5 percent of the population; now there are more than fifty-­five million, making up almost 17 percent of the total.

Wow, talk about bias — it’s like he’s looking through the wrong end of a telescope. The “startling demographic transformation” has far more to do with declining fertility than with “gerontocracy.”

U.S. total fertility rate (TFR), 1950-2023

Total fertility rate (TFR) “represents the number of children that would be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and bear children in accordance with age-specific fertility rates of the specified year.” It is the standard metric of reproductive behavior used for all comparisons, whether between nations, or ethnic groups within nations, or between the same groups over time. While I have seen Census Bureau data that differs slightly from the numbers on this particular chart (i.e., with TFR peaking in 1957, rather than 1960), the overall trend is roughly the same. At the peak of the postwar “Baby Boom,” American women were having so many babies that it was more common for a family to have four children than to have “only” three.

However, once those children reached adulthood — the first Baby Boomers, born in 1946, turned 18 in 1964 — birth rates swiftly plummeted, and by 1973 were below “replacement rate” (2.1 TFR) needed to maintain population stability. For more than 15 years, TFR never reached replacement level and, when it finally (and just barely) did so in 1990, this was mainly due to higher birth rates among immigrant women, of whom there were a lot more than there had been 15 years earlier.

Every time I bring up this topic, two responses are typical — first, personal defensiveness, with people who have few children (or none) acting as if they have been accused of wrongdoing. Secondly, there is the economic excuse, the claim that young people “can’t afford” to have kids. Yet this excuse ignores the obvious fact that poor people are actually having more kids than rich people. The actual explanation, I would argue, involves what we may called lifestyle expectations. If you grow up in affluent circumstances, it is natural to believe you shouldn’t have kids until you can afford to give them a similarly affluent upbringing. And if both husband and wife are working full-time (as is the case for nearly all middle-class couples), childbearing almost unavoidably means taking a step down the economic ladder, however temporary it may be. Either (a) mom has to stay home to care for the children for a few years or (b) you have to pay someone else for childcare. Because I am the father of six children, I have extensive direct experience in the difficulties involved, and all I can say is what my dad told me when our oldest was just a wee baby: “Son, if you wait to have children until you can afford to have children, you’d never have children.” You just bite the bullet.

Having done my part, personally, to combat demographic decline, I disavow any blame for a trend caused by other people’s choices.

Some people choose to go to Yale University, for example, but I wouldn’t go near the place — full of dangerous degenerates like Samuel Moyn — and I’d urge others to heed my warning. Elite academic know-it-alls have been the architects of our societal disaster (e.g., Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich) and cannot be trusted to provide solutions to the problems they have themselves caused. And I’ve been saying this since long before I was old enough to join the “gerontocracy.”



 

Category: The Ivy League Is Depraved and Decadent

In The Mailbox: 04.23.26 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | April 24, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: AI Hallucinations from Wall Street Law Firm
EBL: Young Turks, He’s Just Not That Into You, MAGA Indictment of $PLC, Expensive Grouper, and Why is America a Superpower?
Twitchy: Investigative Reporters Self-Owns While Arguing Conservatives Are Lying About $PLC Indictment, Mayor Mamdani Earns Sarcastic Applause After Billionaire “Name & Shame” Bid Begins Backfiring, and Shipwrecked Crew Drops Truth Bomb On Why Virginia Court Killed Redistricting Amendment – Democrats Skipped Steps
Louder With Crowder: Debunked Chris Cuomo’s latest anti-Trump rant, Detroit officials forced to beg thieves to, please, stop stealing FIRE HYDRANTS, MAGA Comes For Vivek After His Latest Immigration L , A man couldn’t trans his son in Utah, so he kidnapped him and took him to Cuba -Then the FBI got involved, and Steve Hilton gets cornered about Trump support in California, his patriotic response is brilliant
Vox Popoli: Real Economic History, SPACE FLEET ACADEMY Year 3, and Baen’s End
The Abbey of Misrule: Once and Future Saints
Cedar Sanderson: Book reviews
Stoic Observations: Undercover Feds in California
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Rita Also Tells Tales
Jim McCoy: Some of my Favorites on World Book Day
Upstream Reviews: Chalk

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: ‘Lying Scumbag’ Schumer Blasted After Saying ‘Nobody Respects’ Border Patrol and ICE on Senate Floor, $PLC Badgered Biden Administration to Release Convicted Trans Sex Offender, DeSantis Fires Back at Hakeem Jeffries Over Florida Redistricting Threats, Amazon Briefly Bans, Then Restores ‘The Camp of the Saints’, and How Iran Committed Suicide
Animal Magnetism: Animal Magnetism LIVE Ep. 84 – Double Feature
BattleSwarm: When Israel And Iran Teamed Up Against Saddam, I For One Welcome Our New Giant Melting Purple Neon Spider Overlords, Two Georgia Election Officials Indicted For Fraud, Paxton Sues ActBlue Over Fraud, Foreign Donations, and Paxton Up 8 Over Cornyn In Texas Senate Runoff
Behind The Black: Full-sized model of ESA’s Space Rider reusable capsule is ready for landing drop tests, Russia launches the smallest version of its Angara rocket, Rocket Lab launches satellites for Japan’s space agency JAXA, Curiosity looks at a small crater as it climbs Mount Sharp, and Isaacman before Congress: Speaking the truth to power
Cafe Hayek: Protectionist Fallacies Pour Forth, Talking with John Stossel, Don’t Let the Accounting Mask the Underlying Economic Realities, and “As Compared to What?” – Exhibit #3,4593e17
CDR Salamander: So SECNAV has departed
Chicago Boyz: Food Prices – 1909 & Today, Bacon Slicing Virginia, The Democratic Party At 200 Has Dementia, and The Unclean Sacrifice of a Lie
Da Tech Guy: Pintastic NE 2026 Videos of the Day, 100 Word Fan Fiction: Part 1 A Reunion interrupted, Pintastic NE 2026 Video of the Day: Dave Modifies an old Hee Haw Machine, Pintastic NE 2026 Video of the Day: Cardona Pinball Designs Fish Tales Mod, and Pintastic NE 2026 Videos of the Day: Leo Reinhart & Maggie the Clown two Artists in Action at Pintastic NE
Don Surber: The devil wears Kagan
First Street Journal: Bernie Sanders simps for the ‘Palestinians’, Will yet another well-intentioned assistance program fail? and How and when did we get away from basic honesty and civility?
Flopping Aces: Ayatollah Murphy Is A Traitor
Gates Of Vienna: Nightmare Evening in Cesena, Honor Killing in Blerick, Islam’s Treatment of Women Is a Crime Against Humanity, No Room at the Inn, and What About the Houthis?
The Geller Report: Four Traitorous RINOs Block SAVE America Act Effort, Virginia Circuit Court Rules Redistricting Vote Unconstitutional, A US Victory In Iran is What Democrats Fear Most, Ninth Circuit Strikes Down California Law Requiring ICE Officers to Show ID, and London’s “Muslim Only” Housing
Hollywood In Toto: Logan’s Run at 50 – Dystopian Classic Never More Relevant, Joyce Carol Oates Peddles Insane Trump Conspiracy, Biased Lorne Documentary a Box Office Bust, Man Who Wasn’t There: Coen Bros’ Overlooked Noir Masterpiece, and Can Avengers: Doomsday Trailer Save the MCU?
Legal Insurrection: Student Govt. at UCLA ‘Condemns’ Event Featuring October 7th Hostage, $PLC – The Racial Arsonist Fundraised Off The Fire, Virginia Judge Blocks Redistricting After Referendum Passes, Immediate Appeal Expected, Michigan Senate Democratic Primary Turns Into Anti-Israel vs. AWFUL, and A Burrito Stand Qualifies for Hospice Funding Under California’s Medicaid System
Nebraska Energy Observer: VDH on the Media Meltdown as We Win the War, The Courts and John Marshall, Hi there, I’m improving but I ain’t there yet. So here’s another, A Roundup, and News from the Canucks
Outkick: Nike Forced To Remove Running Ad In Boston For ‘Pace Shaming’, Dalton Rushing Said Something Was ‘Fishy’ About The Rockies First-Pitch Swing Against Dodgers, The Miami Marlins May Actually, Legitimately Be Cursed, Alix Earle Is Pole Dancing Her Way Through Some Internet Drama, and Kyle Busch Sends Hamlin Chilling Threat, NASCAR Wife Is ‘America’s Most Beautiful’ & 1st Black Female Wrecked
Power Line: Stock market whiplash, The Invention of White Supremacy, Liberal Men Are Becoming Extinct, The Vivek take (on aid to Israel), and Good shepherd
Shark Tank: George Moraitis Addresses U.S. Blockade Of Iran, Praises Trump
Shot In The Dark: Depreciated, also, The Eternal Half Hour
The Political Hat: Leviathan’s Operating System Goes Federal, Spiritual Eugenics, and Quick Takes – Euthanasia Danger: Danger Zone; Making Suicide Prevention Illegal; Canada Must Kill The Mentally Ill
This Ain’t Hell: Soldier Uses Inside Raid Knowledge to Win Big, SECNAV Fired, Hope some one heard, BG Lew Harned passes at age 101, and The BRRRRRRT! Lives On
Transterrestrial Musings: Future Scarcity, On The Iran War, The Chief Justice, The “Palestinians”, and Launch Industry Woes
Victory Girls: Hasan Piker’s Latest Take Tries to Make Murder “Understandable”, Ilhan Omar Gets Mad When Asked About The Massive Math “Error”, Lori Chavez-DeRemer Is (Mercifully) Out As Labor Secretary, and $PLC Money Funded A Significant Number Of Smear Campaigns
Watts Up With That: America’s AI Advantage Runs into Trouble in the Strait of Hormuz, Global Warming is Allegedly Bringing Sexual Equality to Africa, Britain’s Skyrocketing Green Energy Prices are Forcing Internet Providers to Ration Access, Heartland Institute Climate Experts Comment on Earth Day, and Resourceful Earth Day: Fred Smith on Julian Simon
The Federalist: SCOTUS Weighs Whether US Has To Readmit Green Card Holders Who ‘Committed’ Crimes, Here’s What Faithful Churches Need To Do With The Surge In Young Parishioners, Gay Marriage Is On A Collision Course With Children’s Rights, A NATO That Doesn’t Support U.S. Action Shouldn’t Exist, and The $PLC Is A Hedge Fund With A Dumb Anti-Racism Newsletter
Mark Steyn: Man, It’s an Oblast! My One and Only Love, Droning On, The King vs His Subjects, and Rebel Without a Cause: Malcolm McDowell in O Lucky Man!

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Category: Linkagery

In The Mailbox: 04.23.26 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | April 23, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Doug Ross: A Day At Corregidor With MacArthur (1942)
EBL: China vs. Taiwan, Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Leave Virginia Alone, Scallops, and American Silicon Empire
Twitchy: Scott Jennings Goes off On Spanberger’s Gerrymandering – Leaves CNN’s Kasie Hunt Speechless, California Democrats Epic Fail During Debate – Watch ‘Em Flop On “Truck Drivers Speaking English” Question, and Spanberger’s Got Some Splainin’ To Do About Her Energy Czar’s Connection To SPLC
Louder With Crowder: Ms. Rachel is lying about visiting a migrant center (and a bunch of other things), Joe Rogan says paying more in taxes would be fine if the government didn’t suck so bad at fixing anything, Funding Racism: DOJ Slams SPLC For Secretly Funding “White Supremacy” Groups, Reporter shows just how hard Donald Trump SHUT DOWN the border compared to the “migrant president” Joe Biden, and Woke Democrat Rep. Jayapal Praises “Remarkable” Cuban Healthcare System
Vox Popoli: Animated ATOB, The Iran That Can Say No, The Satanic SPLC, The End of Hollywood, and Globalization and Travel
Cedar Sanderson: Modern Machinery
Jim McCoy: The Most Disappointing Book I Ever Read

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: What Are The Details For 18 Battle Force & 16 Non-Battle Force Ships II: Electric Boogaloo
Dana Loesch: INDICTMENT – Southern Poverty Law Center Paid Extremist Groups To Agitate
Don Surber: Trump has had it with NATO
STUMP: Congressional Mortality Update 2026 – RIP Rep. David Scott, 80

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Best Sellers – Snacks & Sweets
Survival Foods
1 Cent Deals On Amazon Haul


 

Category: Linkagery

SPLC’s Clayton Bigsby Moment

Posted on | April 23, 2026 | No Comments

There is a lot of irony in the federal grand jury indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center on 11 counts including wire fraud. About 30 years ago, it was explained to me why the SPLC’s “hate watch” racket exists — i.e., that Morris Dees had taken the mailing list of donors to the 1972 George McGovern campaign and turned it into a gold mine.

Dees discovered that rich Yankee liberals would give! give! give! if you told them you were fighting racism in the South. Never mind that, by the time the SPLC got rolling, the Civil Rights era had come and gone, and nearly everybody in the South had made their peace with integration. Liberals had a weird nostalgia for the “heroic struggle” narrative in which they taught a lesson to those benighted bigots down in Dixie, and they’d pay big money if you could keep that narrative alive, which is what Dees and the SPLC were really all about. Sometimes you’ll hear conservative critics of the SPLC contend that the SPLC originally did worthwhile things, but then strayed from their noble mission. No — it was a scam from the outset, an elaborate fraud to collect money from gullible liberals.

Anyway, this week’s news is darkly humorous:

The Southern Poverty Law Center is accused of funneling millions of dollars to at least eight leaders and members of hate groups — including a Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard and a fundraiser for a neo-Nazi group — to act as informants, which one nonprofit leader likened to paying an arsonist to help put out a fire.
The Alabama-based non-profit was charged by the Department of Justice with wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering conspiracy on Tuesday for allegedly hiding from donors the fact that it doled out more than $3 million over the course of nearly a decade to “field sources” tasked with infiltrating violent extremist groups, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced Wednesday.
The field sources — or “Fs” — were “secretly paid” by SPLC between 2014 and 2023, the indictment claims.
America First Legal president Gene Hamilton, a former DOJ official, told The Post Wednesday it’s unprecedented for a tax-exempt nonprofit to use donor funding to pay informants in violent extremist groups
“I’ve seen some leftists talking about, seen some chatter on social media and elsewhere saying, ‘Oh this is a commonly used tactic amongst the government for years to infiltrate organizations,’” added the lawyer for the conservative group. “That’s one thing if it’s the government — the government can prosecute people.”
Hamilton likened it to paying the proverbial arsonist to help put out a fire.
He said it would be like if his own MAGA-tied group was secretly giving money to DEI officials to set up more DEI programs — while raising money to fight against DEI.
“It’s mind bogglingly dumb,” he said.
Liora Rez, the founder of StopAntisemitism, said that SPLC’s work fighting antisemitism appeared to have fallen off in recent years. He was infuriated by the allegations.
“It’s unimaginable to us that a civil rights group would gin up fake bigotry in order to solicit donations from concerned Americans,” he said.
“If this is what the SPLC did, it is shameful and outrageous.” . . .
One informant was part of an “online leadership chat group” organizing the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., and ended up posting racist comments at the SPLC’s behest while also coordinating rides for others to attend, per the indictment.
In total, SPLC paid the informant $270,000 between 2015 and 2023, the papers claim.
A veteran informant from the neo-Nazi National Alliance was paid $1 million over the same period and assisted SPLC at one point by stealing 25 boxes of documents from the violent extremist group’s headquarters, the filing alleges.
He worked as a fundraiser for the neo-Nazi group, according to the DOJ.

You can read the whole thing. If you’re laughing at the SPLC’s disgrace, that probably means you’re a neo-Confederate supremacist.

Clayton Bigsby could not be reached for comment.



 

Category: Racism

In The Mailbox: 04.22.26

Posted on | April 23, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

If I had any brains I would already have been in bed, but I don’t want to fall even further behind on the blogging.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Patrick ‘Tate’ Adamiak Is a Political Prisoner
Director Blue: Meet The A-11 Thunderhog, 
EBL: Dover Sole Meuniere, Logan’s Run at 50, Battle of Mutina, Battle of San Jacinto, and Don’t Mess With The Bull
Twitchy: Hasan Piker Joins NYT To Talk About “Microlooting” As Political Protest, ACLU Whines That DC Curfew Puts Kids At Risk Of Unnecessary Police Encounters, and Talarico Camp Rumored To Be Sitting On Career-Ending Dirt On Both Paxton & Cornyn
Louder With Crowder: Alleged red state court rules that the government can’t make “trans” people be either man or woman on their license, LA residents convicted of insurance fraud, and it somehow involves a bear costume, Woman who Donald Trump destroyed in Election 2024 goes on rant that he’s “incompetent” or something, and Woke woman claims trans people will be sent to concentration camps, asks Pete Buttigieg what he plans to do about it
Vox Popoli: Baby Steps, The Dirty Patriots, Fight the Power, THE FUNAJI SCROLL, and Desperation in Defeat
The Bugscuffle Gazette: Sunday Story, also, Ugh
Upstream Reviews: Torchship, 

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: Did China Culminate And N One Noticed?
Dana Loesch: No One Asked For This
Don Surber: Obama is tired of Trump winning

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Category: Uncategorized

VIRGINIA ELECTION RESULTS: Will Voters OK Spanberger’s Gerrymander? UPDATE: Network Declares ‘Yes’ Win

Posted on | April 21, 2026 | No Comments

UPDATE 8:49 p.m. ET: NBC News has just declared that “yes” will win the referendum vote in Virginia. Only 80% of the vote has been counted, but the remaining vote in Fairfax County and Richmond will be enough.

UPDATE 8:39 p.m. ET: Lead for “No” is less than 30,000 votes:

YES …………….. 1,197,131 (49.5%)
NO ……………… 1,219,875 (50.5%)
(76% of the vote counted)

This is starting to look discouraging.

UPDATE 8:14 p.m. ET: “No” continues to hold the lead:

YES …………….. 969,934 (48.0%)
NO ……………… 1,051,768 (52.0%)
(64% of the vote counted)

The margin keeps tightening. Fingers crossed.

UPDATE 7:59 p.m. ET: With more than half the vote counted, “no” is now leading by more than 90,000 votes:

YES …………….. 794,155 (47.2%)
NO ……………… 887,372 (52.8%)
(54% of the vote counted)

The lead is now narrowing, percentage-wise. As more urban vote comes in, expect it to become very close.

UPDATE 7:44 p.m. ET: Even wider lead for “NO”:

YES …………….. 568,383 (45.5%)
NO ……………… 681,792 (54.5%)
(41% of the vote counted)

BTW, it’s nearly 2-to-1 “no” in Louisa County.

UPDATE 7:34 p.m. ET: “NO” is gaining ground:

YES …………….. 424,523 (47.3%)
NO ……………… 473,156 (52.7%)
(30% of the vote counted)

Now leading by more than five points — encouraging.

UPDATE 7:24 p.m. ET: Getting results quick tonight:

YES …………….. 183,280 (49.5%)
NO ……………… 187,151 (50.5%)
(12% of the vote counted)

UPDATE 7:14 p.m. ET: The first numbers are in:

YES …………….. 29,862 (48.1%)
NO ……………… 32,275 (51.9%)
(3% of the vote counted)

You can’t tell anything from these first returns. Be patient.

EXPECT FURTHER UPDATES . . .

 

* * * PREVIOUSLY (6:46 p.m. ET) * * *

 

Polls close at 7 p.m. ET tonight and within hours we will know whether Virginia voters have approved a referendum that would redraw the Commonwealth’s congressional districts from their current alignment (6 Democrats, 5 Republicans) to give the Democrats a likely 10-1 advantage. People who have followed the process whereby this measure got to the ballot have assured me that it is unconstitutional on at least three different points, which would mean a court battle if the “yes” vote wins tonight, but it would be far better if the “no” vote wins — a direct repudiation of this nefarious scheme by Gov. Abigail Spanberger and her Democrat accomplices in the legislature. As regular readers know, I traveled to Louisa County last weekend for a “Vote No” rally:

“It’s unfair, it’s unconstitutional and it’s illegal,” Second District Rep. Jen Kiggans said of the referendum, expressing an opinion shared by many Republicans who have noted what might mildly be termed procedural irregularities in the way the redistricting measure made its way onto the ballot. (See David Catron’s February column, “Redistricting Betrayal in Virginia,” for more about that.) In her speech to the courthouse rally here, Kiggans mentioned the uphill battle she fought in 2022 to win her seat in a competitive coastal district that includes Virginia Beach. Kiggans would almost certainly have no chance to be reelected in this fall’s midterms if the redistricting referendum passes, and the same is true of McGuire, despite the fact that he carried the fifth district by a 15-point margin in 2024.
The map Democrats would inflict on Virginia is a Frankenstein monster, and what it would do to Louisa County is a nightmare horror story. Currently, the fifth district is geographically coherent, covering a wide area west of Richmond down to the North Carolina border. Under the proposed new map, Louisa County would be shoved into the Seventh District, the shape of which resembles a lobster, its head and two claws pointing southwest (Louisa County being the elbow of one claw), and its tail reaching all the way up to touch the Potomac River in Arlington County. From its southernmost point in Powhatan County to Arlington, this mutant district would span more than 130 miles and, with its westward lobster claw, also reaches over into the Shenandoah Valley to slice off parts of Rockingham and Augusta counties. It’s about 100 miles from one claw to the other, but in driving that distance along I-64, a motorist would travel roughly half of it through the proposed new sixth district.

The early vote — they have 45 days of that in Virginia — was reportedly heavier in Republican-leaning areas, and there were reports today of continued high turnout for the final voting today, but that’s anecdotal, and we won’t know the result until they actually count the votes. Spanberger won by a 15-point margin last November, and so the “no” vote has an uphill battle. We shall see what the evening brings.

UPDATE 7:05 p.m. ET: Earlier today, everyone on X was blabbing about projections based on reported turnout in different counties, and that’s a fool’s errand. This is a single-issue referendum — nothing else on the ballot — and it is impossible to estimate results based on the kind of metrics that (might) help predict a regular election. Based strictly on my own observation, it seems to me that the “no” campaign is more energized and motivated. Republicans have a greater incentive to vote against the redistricting than Democrats have to vote for the redistricting, and it’s hard for me to imagine most independents thinking, “Yeah, let’s just ignore the state constitution and redraw the map to give Democrats four more congressional seats.” That’s merely my observation, which doesn’t count for much, but some conservatives on X are just too pessimistic about what is likely to be a very close contest.



 

Category: Election, Virginia

In The Mailbox: 04.21.26 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | April 21, 2026 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Yesterday was eaten by snakes – or would have been if the super had brought his.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda sunt.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Relatives of Dead People Don’t Like Self-defense
Director Blue: A Day With Audie Murphy At The Colmar Pocket (1944),
EBL: George Harrison and the Lumberjack Song, Lucrezia Borgia, Shrinking Visceral Fat, Jamaican Me Hungry, and Mae West
Twitchy: DataRepublican Drops Receipts In Bombshell Thread About Why Pete Hegseth Is REALLY Being Targeted, Maury Povich’s Reaction To Joy Reid’s Claim Democrats Play By The Rules Is Hilarious Perfection, and Chris Murphy Smugly Backpedals After Cheering For Iran & Makes Things WORSE
Louder With Crowder: Creepy CA state senator looking to replace Nancy Pelosi is celebrating forcing a restaurant to put a pride flag back up, Obama and Mamdani represent the America you never wanted, Canada & Israel Both Messed Up Bigly This Weekend, Seven months after reports her net worth exploded, Ilhan Omar claims it was an accounting error and she’s actually poor, and Woke city finally cleans up all the needles and garbage, but only while foreigners are in town for the World Cup
Vox Popoli: How Galaxy’s Edge Damaged Disney, The World Inside the World, Amazon Kills Kindle-PC, Still Definitely Not Meth,  and A Millennial’s Observation
Upstream Reviews: Once A Spy
Jim McCoy: The Last Dungeon Crawler
Cedar Sanderson: One Jar Down
Stoic Observations: Progressive Liberals vs. Black Conservatives,

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
CDR Salamander: Latin American Policy With Colin Dueck – On Midrats, also, Looks Like Commerce Raiding Is Back On The Menu
Don Surber: Even electricity is leaving blue states
Elizabeth Nickson: Trump Is A Moderate – What’s Coming Is Far More Conservative,
Racket News: How Big Pharma (Successfully) Targeted Women, 

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Best Sellers – Automotive
New Releases – Automotive


 

Category: Linkagery

IT’S ‘STOP THE LOBSTER’ DAY!

Posted on | April 21, 2026 | No Comments

After I called it “Spanberger’s lobster” last week, many others have taken up that phrase to describe the crustacean-like shape of the district that Democrats would inflict on Virginia if today’s referendum passes.

By now, every true Virginian knows to VOTE NO in today’s referendum (if you haven’t already voted early) and Smitty yesterday weighed in from his perch in the blue part of the Commonwealth.

Every analyst expects the vote to be close. Polls close tonight at 7 p.m., and then we’ll see if the deep-blue precincts in the D.C. suburbs can manufacture enough fake “yes” votes to cancel out the overwhelming “no” from the more rural areas of Virginia like Louisa County.



 

Category: Virginia
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