Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Biden DOJ Refused to Prosecute Man Who Later Sold Gun to Old Dominion Shooter

Kenya Chapman, the man accused of selling a gun to the Old Dominion University shooter, was arrested in 2021 for straw purchase violations but the Biden DOJ declined to prosecute him.

According to FOX News’ Bill Melugin, “The man charged by DOJ for selling the gun used by the ODU terrorist was caught straw purchasing three guns in 2021 (all of which were later recovered at crime scenes, including a homicide) but the Biden DOJ declined to prosecute.”

The three guns were a Glock 17 9mm, a Taurus 9mm, and a Springfield Armory XD9.

On Thursday of this week, 36-year-old Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a former National Guardsman convicted in 2017 of working with ISIS, opened fire on ROTC students at Old Dominion University using a Glock 44 chambered in .22 long rifle. On Friday the Trump DOJ arrested and charged Chapman for supplying the Glock to Jalloh.

Keep reading

Possible X account of missing general William McCasland claimed fellow general was murdered over nuclear material

Online sleuths think they have uncovered missing retired Air Force general William Neil McCasland’s anonymous social media account — which claimed another general was murdered for his dealings with nuclear material.

McCasland, 68, went missing from his Albuquerque, NM, home on Feb. 27 — which is the same day that the person behind a conspicuously credentialed X account centered on spacecraft and advanced science made their last post.

The account @tmbspaceships claims to be run by a “retired 38-year active duty” United States Air Force with a PhD in engineering — listing the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), the Air Education Training Command (AETC), and Air Force Material Command (AETC) as places they’ve worked.

Both the AFIT and AFMC are located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which McCasland ran from 2011 to 2013. He attended the Air War College during his 34-year career, which is a subordinate to the AETC. McCasland attained a PhD in Astronautical Engineering from MIT in 1988.

The account shockingly claimed just months before McCasland’s disappearance that Maj. Gen. John Rossi, who allegedly committed suicide in 2016, was actually murdered because of refusal to hand over nuclear material to private contractors.

Keep reading

Gun Control’s Endgame: No Guns For Anyone

Gun control advocates do not just oppose civilian gun ownership; they also argue that guns in the hands of police make people less safe.

In January, a Border Patrol agent in Portland shot and wounded two Venezuelan nationals who belonged to the violent Tren de Aragua gang after they allegedly tried to run agents over with their vehicle. In response, Kris Brown, president of Brady United, tweeted the following:

“We don’t know the details behind the shootings of 2 people by a Border Patrol agent in Portland. But I know one thing for certain: whether in the hands of federal officers or everyday Americans, guns do not make us safer. Yet Trump is reshaping our country based on this lie.”

What were the Border Patrol agents supposed to do when an illegal alien with a criminal record tries to run over an agent? How are unarmed agents supposed to apprehend and detain violent gang members?

Currently on its website, Brady United explains: “Why Police violence is gun violence … As we work to tackle the gun violence epidemic in America, we cannot ignore police violence or its devastating effects.”

The same claim is made repeatedly by other gun control groups.

“Police violence is gun violence and that’s why our movement must be responsive as well,” declares Shannon Watts, president for Moms Demand Action.

“Police violence is gun violence,” proclaims Gabby Giffords, with the Giffords Law Center.

These last two statements are from 2021 and 2020, so their opposition to police having guns isn’t a new focus.

Gun control groups sometimes openly acknowledge their goal of banning all guns. In a 2023 interview with Time magazine, for example, Gabby Giffords – who heads the Giffords Law Center – answered a question about her goal by saying: “No more guns.” When the interviewer asked whether she meant no more gun violence, Giffords clarified: “No, no, no. Lord, no. Guns, guns, guns. No more guns. Gone.”

Time magazine itself treated the remark as significant enough to place Giffords’ line – “No more guns, Gone” – in the headline.

If firearms are bad per se, it should be easy to find places where either all guns or all handguns have been banned and murder/homicide rates have gone down. One would think out of randomness there should be at least one place where murder rates have gone down or at least stayed the same, but every single time, even for island nations, murder rates have gone up immediately after the ban.

A simple logic is at play here: Who is most likely to obey the law? While such statutes may take a few guns from criminals, they primarily disarm the most law-abiding citizens, making it easier for criminals to commit crimes.

Similar problems exist for police. Taking away the guns that both civilians and police have doesn’t mean that criminals will readily forfeit their weapons. Criminals have strong incentives to keep and obtain weapons. Drug gangs can’t go to the police and ask for help to get their drugs back when another gang steals their drugs. The gangs have set up their own little paramilitaries to protect their valuable stash.

Keep reading

Mamdani Proposes Massive Estate Tax Exemption Cut From $7M To $750K, Among Other Tax Increases

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is urging Albany to consider a sweeping overhaul of New York’s estate tax, proposing to sharply lower the exemption threshold and dramatically increase the top rate on large inheritances. His plan would cut the exemption from more than $7 million to $750,000 while boosting the highest tax rate from 16 percent to 50 percent, Bloomberg reported. 

The idea was included in a policy memo his administration recently shared with state lawmakers as they negotiate the state budget, according to NY Focus.

The estate tax proposal is one of several revenue measures Mamdani’s office has floated as the city prepares for a significant budget gap. New York City is projecting a $5.4 billion deficit for the fiscal year that begins July 1, and the mayor is asking state officials to help identify new sources of funding to help close the shortfall.

Among the other proposals is a narrower package of business tax increases aimed specifically at companies operating in the city. The administration estimates those changes could generate about $1.75 billion annually. Under the plan, the city’s corporate tax rate would rise to 10.8 percent for financial firms and to 10.62 percent for other corporations, while the tax on large unincorporated businesses would increase modestly for firms earning more than $5 million.

Mamdani is also proposing to scale back the Pass-Through Entity Tax credit, which currently allows certain business owners to use company tax payments to fully offset what they owe in personal income taxes. Limiting that credit to 75 percent of its value would produce roughly $700 million a year, according to city estimates. The mayor continues to advocate for raising the local income tax rate on residents earning more than $1 million annually, a measure projected to bring in about $3 billion each year.

Keep reading

Cuban protesters ransack Communist office as energy crisis deepens

Protesters in Cuba have ransacked a Communist Party building following a rally over steep food prices and persistent power cuts, in a rare show of public dissent.

Five people were arrested after a small group vandalised the offices in the central city of Moron overnight into Saturday, Cuba’s Interior Ministry (Minint) said.

Discontent among Cubans has been mounting as the island is buffeted by rolling blackouts and shortages of food, fuel and medicine, exacerbated by a prolonged US oil blockade.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that, while the protesters’ complaints and demands were “legitimate”, “violence and vandalism that threatens citizen tranquility” would not be tolerated.

He wrote on X that the prolonged blackouts had understandably caused “distress”, blaming them on the US blockade that he characterised as having “cruelly intensified in recent months”.

The protest came hours after the government in Havana confirmed that talks with the US to “seek solutions through dialogue” to the two countries’ differences were under way.

Díaz-Canel said in a national broadcast on Friday that no fuel had entered the country in three months as a result of the US oil blockade.

US President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire for a change in Cuba’s leadership. He said on Monday that Cuba was in “deep trouble” as he threatened a “friendly takeover”.

Trump previously said the one-party state would be “next” following the capture of its ally, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in January.

Since then, the US has blocked Venezuelan oil shipments – which provided for about half of Cuba’s energy needs – and threatened to impose tariffs on any country that sold oil to the island nation. This is on top of a six-decade US trade embargo.

Havana relies heavily on imported fuel for electricity generation, and the oil blockade has brought Cuba’s beleaguered economy close to collapse.

The crisis has affected rubbish collection, emergency hospital wards, public transport and education.

Friday’s demonstration “initially began peacefully” before escalating into “acts of vandalism”, state-run newspaper Invasor said.

“A smaller group of people stoned the entrance to the building and started a fire in the street with furniture from the reception area.”

Other state-run facilities, including a pharmacy and a government-operated market were also targeted, it added.

Keep reading

Ohio Democrat’s Allegation of Kennedy Center Exclusion Debunked After Email Found in Her Spam Folder

Questions over whether Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) had been excluded from a Kennedy Center board meeting emerged after she accused President Donald Trump and the Kennedy Center’s board of leaving her out, though court filings later indicated the invitation had been sent and was found in her personal email spam folder.

CNN reporter Betsy Klein posted about the development on X, writing: “In today’s edition of Washington is Veep: A Democratic congresswoman made a legal complaint against President Donald Trump for, in part, excluding her from an upcoming Kennedy Center board meeting. The invitation, it turned out, was in her spam folder. Aide filed an update today.”

Klein also shared a screenshot from a court filing describing how the email was ultimately located. The filing states: “On March 6, 2026, after learning that Defendant’s counsel represented to the Court that the Center sent the notice to Congresswoman Beatty’s personal email address, I asked Congresswoman Beatty to search her personal email. She was able to locate the notice in the spam folder of her personal email address.”

Roma Daravi, vice president of public relations for the Kennedy Center, responded in a quote tweet: “Did the dog also eat her homework?”

The issue surfaced as Beatty pursues legal action related to governance of the Kennedy Center. According to reporting from The Hill, the Ohio Democrat’s attorneys initially stated in court filings that she had not been invited to a March 16 meeting where a proposed renovation of the center is expected to be discussed.

The Justice Department noted the invitation had been sent, and Beatty’s legal team later confirmed it had been delivered but landed in the spam folder of her personal email account. Her lawyers wrote in a filing that the congresswoman “appreciates Defendants’ confirmation that she can attend the meeting at the White House.”

Beatty told reporters invitations to Kennedy Center board meetings typically go to her scheduler and chief of staff rather than her personal email. She explained her chief of staff had stopped receiving the emails months earlier and her scheduler did not receive the March 16 invitation. After the hearing, her attorney Norm Eisen revealed the message had been caught by a spam filter, speaking to reporters, “I doubt there’s a single person here who hasn’t had an email vanished somewhere in a spam filter. That’s what happened here.”

The dispute arose during a hearing before U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper over Beatty’s request for a temporary restraining order tied to a Kennedy Center board meeting. Beatty, an ex officio trustee, argues she should be allowed to participate and vote on plans involving the institution.

In court filings, Justice Department lawyer William Jankowski wrote that Beatty “will not be permitted to vote” because board procedures distinguish ex officio trustees from governing trustees.

Cooper said he would take the motion under advisement and aim to rule quickly, calling the proposed overhaul of the performing arts venue “a pretty big deal” for what he described as the nation’s premier performing arts center.

In December 2025, the Democratic lawmaker sued President Trump and members of the center’s board after the institution was renamed to include Trump’s name. Beatty has contended that Congress alone has the authority to change the institution’s name and maintained she had been muted during the board call when the decision was made.

Keep reading

Iran War Exposes America’s Unfixed Supply Chains

One of the more fascinating sidelights of our war of choice in Iran is how it has reinforced the devastating consequences of our hollowed-out industrial base, consolidated commercial sector, and overreliance on long intermediated supply chains.

For example, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz carries implications for not only oil but also fertilizer, right at the height of the spring planting season. About one-third of the world’s fertilizer ships through the strait, and without access, prices have jumped and farmers are anxious. Yet there are enough natural resources in the United States—nitrogen, phosphate, potash—to serve all our fertilizer needs; in fact, in the 1930s and ’40s one of the largest fertilizer producers in the world was the Tennessee Valley Authority. This production was wound down in the 1970s; today the industry is dominated by two to four firms, and that may end up having existential implications for hungry people the world over.

A more comically shortsighted example concerns our depleted stock of munitions, one of the few industrial capacities America has retained but which still is imperiled by concentration and outsourcing. These are of course the basic materials necessary to prosecute a war, and you’d think it would be the one item countries would retain the ability to produce themselves. But our trillion-dollar military operates more like a welfare program to help underprivileged Northern Virginia contractors buy second homes and luxury yachts, not as a force that has what it needs when it needs it. Pacifists should rejoice; stupidity in military supply chains puts a binding limit on how many brown-skinned people we can kill.

In the 1990s, dozens of military contractors were reduced to five prime integrators, something demanded by Clinton Defense Secretary Les Aspin and his deputy (and future defense secretary) William Perry at a meeting known as the “Last Supper.” Nearly all weapons and delivery systems now flow through Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics. Executives at these companies were called into the White House last Friday—less than a week after the war began—to discuss how to accelerate offensive and especially defensive weapons production amid a shortage that already was weighing on the military. This was after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the war was saved by shifting to smaller bombs rather than “exquisite” munitions for the campaign. If that was the case, why have the meeting?

Specifically, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile systems are so complex that only 96 get built per year; about one-quarter of the U.S. stockpile was used last year in Israel’s brief war with Iran, with many more flying every day as this war continues. Patriot interceptor systems are cheaper and easier to build, but inventories were a quarter full before the war started. Offensive Tomahawk missiles can be produced with greater frequency as well, but as of October last year the stockpile of that weapon was far short of its target. Something like $5.6 billion in weaponry was burned off in just the first two days of the Iran campaign. Trump’s lying aside, analysts who know something are clear on this point: The nation has a few weeks of bombing left before running out of the precision munitions typically used in modern warfare.

Keep reading

Mamdani ‘Comforts’ NYC Muslims After Outbreak of ‘Islamophobia’

New York City’s far-left Gothamist has the sads, because when one member of the left’s conglomeration of haters, traitors, freaks, parasites and psychopaths suffers, the whole coalition of the weird suffers. This time, however, there is a silver lining: one of the bright stars of the contemporary left, New York Mayor Zohan Mamdani, is on the case. 

The Gothamist headline on Friday was: “’We are enough’: After Islamophobic attacks, Mamdani comforts NYC’s Muslim community.” That’s superb, but left unanswered was the question of who comforts the victims of the nationwide Muslim community when some members of that community decide it’s time to wage jihad. 

Gothamist stated that “just hours before he was set to speak at an event marking Ramadan, Mayor Zohran Mamdani realized he needed to overhaul his prepared remarks.” This was because “in the last few days, Mamdani and Muslims throughout the country had been subjected to a torrent of Islamophobia.”

In discussing this alleged “torrent of Islamophobia,” Gothamist did not see fit to remind its readers — or inform them for the first time, since these are leftists we’re talking about — that there have been four jihad attacks in the U.S. in the last two weeks. Ramadan, after all, has been called the “month of jihad,” and with good reason. This year, the festivities began on March 1, when a Muslim migrant opened fire in a bar in Austin, Texas, killing three people and injuring 13 others.

Then on March 7, two Muslims screaming “Allah akbar” threw a homemade shrapnel bomb at a crowd of pro-freedom protesters in New York City itself, the home of Gothamist and Zohran Mamdani. Then on March 12, a Muslim crashed his car into a Michigan synagogue and opened fire, while another Muslim started shooting at Old Dominion University, murdering one person and injuring two others.

Steadfastly ignoring all this and much more that might lead the potential victims of more such attacks to be suspicious of Islam or even dislike it outright, Gothamist quoted Mamdani addressing a crowd of Muslims who had gathered at City Hall for an iftar dinner: “When I hear such hatred and disdain unchecked in its rancor, I feel an isolation and a loneliness that I know that many of you have felt as well.”

Keep reading

Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness Lower In Recent Months, Preliminary Data Show

The effectiveness of vaccines against influenza dropped during the 2025–2026 virus season, officials said on March 12, about two months after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stopped recommending flu vaccination for all children.

Vaccine effectiveness for late 2025 and early 2026 against outpatient visits and hospitalization was pegged at 14 percent to 48 percent among children, Dr. Lisa Grohskopf, with the CDC’s Influenza Division, said at a meeting hosted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The shielding among adults was just 22 percent to 34 percent, she said, based on data from CDC networks in 16 states.

Influenza vaccine effectiveness since 2009 has dropped as low as 19 percent and risen as high as 60 percent. It was 56 percent in late 2024 and early 2025, according to the CDC.

Grohskopf said the reasons for the decline from the prior season are not yet clear. Factors could include that fewer people received vaccines and a mismatch between strains in the vaccines and the strains that ended up circulating.

Most influenza cases in recent months have been caused by influenza A viruses, particularly an H3N2 subvariant called subclade K.

Grohskopf said the data are preliminary and could end up changing.

William Gruner, representing Department of War scientists, said at the same meeting that vaccine effectiveness among department networks against influenza-like illness from Nov. 9, 2025, through Feb. 21, 2026, was 32 percent among children and 46 percent among adults.

“Still a lot more data to be collected this season, so things can certainly change,” Gruner said.

They presented to the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee during the largely virtual meeting.

Dr. Hayley Gans, a committee member, said she was concerned that the estimates were inaccurate.

“I think this data doesn’t support at least for what we see in pediatrics,” she told Grohskopf.

Keep reading

PressSec Demands Retraction of ABC Report on Alleged Iranian Drone Threat

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called on ABC News to retract prior reporting that the FBI warned of an Iranian drone attack on California in retaliation for US actions.

ABC reported that the FBI had assessed that Iran had considered or aspired to conduct drone attacks in California, according to law-enforcement sources cited by the outlet, and that investigators were examining intelligence indicating Iran had explored the possibility of launching drones from ships or other platforms near the US West Coast.

Leavitt said the report was inaccurate and demanded that ABC issue a correction or retraction, arguing the reporting misrepresented intelligence about potential Iranian retaliation.

No Iranian attack on California has occurred, and officials said authorities continue to monitor potential threats.

Keep reading