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.

Infected Lab Monkey Bites Government Employee in the US, GOP Senator Demands Investigation

In the seminal 2002 horror film “28 Days Later,” an apocalyptic zombie plague devastates the world — and it all began with a batch of sickly monkeys in a lab.

While zombies (likely) aren’t real, that hasn’t stopped at least one lawmaker from sounding the alarm about what just happened in sleepy Montana.

According to Politico, “a renowned federal research lab” in Big Sky Country saw a situation where an infected lab monkey bit an employee.

The incident occurred in November at a National Institutes of Health facility, and the culprit was a monkey infected with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.

Thankfully, the worker was promptly treated for the bite, and never picked up the lethal tick-borne illness. The employee was soon able to return to work.

While the story may have ultimately had a happy ending, the circumstances surrounding it require much deeper investigation, according to Montana Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy.

Sharing a post from Trump ally Laura Loomer, Sheehy revealed that he had sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services about the matter.

He included a straightforward — if not ominous — caption: “We don’t want Montana to be the next Wuhan. Montanans and Americans deserve answers over concerning reports out of Rocky Mountain Laboratories.”

Sheehy further elaborated on his concerns in the letter.

“Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) is a federal National Institutes of Health (NIH) research facility in Hamilton, Montana, that conducts studies on some of the world’s most dangerous infectious diseases,” Sheehy wrote. “The seriousness of the work conducted at RML means that even small lapses can carry real risks for the staff and surrounding community.”

Indeed, warnings about “real risks” carry quite a bit of weight, especially given that, per Loomer, the RML facility had been doing work with the Ebola virus.

Given the seriousness of Ebola, Sheehy’s letter to HHS included a four-pronged request.

First, Sheehy wanted a thorough investigation into the basics, including what happened, what pathogens are being used, and biosafety regulations.

Second, Sheehy also wanted a thorough analysis of RML’s safety procedures, and how they can be improved.

Third, Sheehy wanted HHS to dig deeper into RML’s “personnel management practices, including background checks, oversight, and clearance processes for staff.”

Finally, Sheehy wanted a further debrief on NIH’s protocols for employees who are under investigation for whatever reason, including what sort of facility access they have.

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Busted! Leftist Media Wants You to Think Talarico Is Polling Ahead of Paxton in Texas

There are two kinds of political polls. The first is curated propaganda for your consumption. Its goal is not to reflect public opinion but to shape it. It’s designed to shape your opinion, and in a sense manipulate you in the most cynical of ways. The second is the internal poll, where the campaign pays for it and keeps the results out of the public eye. This is the information and data the campaign uses to plan for, initiate, and respond to the day-to-day events of the campaign.

Since all campaigns conduct their own internal polling, you have to know that if their behavior and messaging seem slightly out of step with the general tone of news coverage, this is the reason. They know something the media does not, and you do not.

The Senate race in Texas has just served up a great example of how the left and their partners in the legacy media like to use polls to manipulate public opinion.

According to a poll from an organization called Texas Public Opinion Research (TPOR), Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D), who definitely eats meat and definitely likes females, has a three-point lead over Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R). TPOR reports that Talarico is favored 47% to Paxton’s 44% among likely general election voters.

The totally unbiased people at The Hill reported that the poll sampled voters in the wake of Paxton’s defeat of Sen. John Cornyn (R) in the Texas primary election.

Nearly a third of the respondents who voted for Cornyn in the runoff indicated in the poll that they will support the Democratic nominee in the November election. A plurality — 44 percent — of these voters said they will now choose Paxton, and 23 percent were undecided, The Hill Reported.

The pollsters and The Hill, apparently, would have you believe that roughly 33% of Cornyn voters switched over to Talarico. Before taking this seriously, take a step back and ask yourself if this makes any sense. Chances are, if it doesn’t make sense to you, then it doesn’t make sense.

Texas is a solidly red state. Cornyn, while seen as a RINO and a squish by many conservatives, is still largely regarded as very, very far to the right of Talarico. On his campaign website, Cornyn bragged that he had a “more than 99.2% voting record with President Trump.”

Do the people who voted for that sound like the kind of people who would now vote for a man-child who is working very hard to try to convince voters that he eats meat and is a heterosexual male? He even has a girlfriend, according to the latest reports.

The New York Post reported that she is “Brianna Menard, 30, (who) describes herself as a ‘committed vegan,’ yoga buff and cat mom who likes ‘dancing the night away’ at local gay bar Cheer Up Charlies in Austin.”

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 Mysterious Strangers Pile Out of Sewer Manhole, Prompts Police Investigation

Seven men climbing out of a New York City sewer sounds like the setup of a bad joke.

Authorities, however, aren’t laughing.

A viral video swept the internet this week, courtesy of The Flatbush Scoop, showcasing that exact setup.

“A bizarre and developing situation is unfolding on McDonald Avenue between Kings Highway and Avenue S, near Kosher Corner Supermarket,” the viral post, sitting at over a million views, read.

“Video shows approximately six individuals emerging from a manhole at around 2:00 a.m. after reportedly spending nearly two hours underground — with the cover closed and a person standing watch nearby.”

Indeed, the video did appear to show just that — though it appears that there were seven individuals, not six, to ultimately emerge from the sewer.

Initially, the video showed what appeared to be that aforementioned spotter wearing a white shirt, standing by a trio of vehicles. He then walked over to the manhole in question and appeared to give some sort of signal.

At that point, seven individuals all crawl out of the sewers, with the first one physically moving the manhole cover near the cars.

Even more bizarre, several of the men then immediately began to strip down, and the video cut out shortly thereafter.

For obvious reasons, the internet had a field day with this.

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Graham Platner’s Senate Campaign Is Finished

Maine Democrats were warned.

They had every reason to look more closely at Graham Platner before handing him their Senate nomination. They didn’t. Now the drip, drip, drip of scandal has turned into a flood, and the question isn’t whether Platner survives; it’s whether he makes it to Election Day without the whole thing collapsing.

I’m not sure that he will.

As far as I’m concerned, the Nazi tattoo alone should have ended his campaign last year. Yet, Maine Democrats shrugged. Then came the Reddit posts. It was a barrage of embarrassing, disqualifying stuff for most candidates. Maine Democrats shrugged again.

Now we have the latest, reported Saturday by PJ Media’s Chris Queen: sexually explicit text messages with multiple women, on an app nicknamed “Predator’s Paradise.”

According to reporting from The New York Times, Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, discovered the texts on his phone in the spring of 2025, less than a year into their marriage. She later disclosed the messages during internal vetting in late August, as campaign aides were doing opposition research on their own candidate. One current campaign official said Platner had been communicating with up to six women. Genevieve McDonald, Platner’s former political director, confirmed that Gertner brought her the information, and McDonald showed the screenshots to the Times.

The Times acknowledged that the revelation could damage a political newcomer whose campaign against Sen. Susan Collins was starting to gain traction, particularly damaging in a state where women make up a large share of the electorate. The paper also flagged the broader stakes: the Maine race is considered critical to the Democratic Party’s hopes of reclaiming control of the Senate in November.

But here’s where things get even worse.

The app Platner was using is called Kik, an anonymous messaging app that has earned a well-documented reputation as a playground for sexual predators. His username, phustle0331, matches a private Instagram account linked to Platner and his Reddit account. The profile photo appears to be a mirror selfie of Platner in nothing but a bath towel, with visible tattoos matching Platner’s known ones. Platner later admitted to the Wall Street Journal that the account was his.

Here’s where it still gets worse.

Platner’s Kik account was created on June 26, 2016, at a time when the platform had already become notorious for predatory behavior and earned the nickname “Predator’s Paradise.” A 2016 sting operation resulted in the arrests of more than 2,600 predators. The New York Times had already published an exposé on the app’s dangers to children. Experts estimate 70% of Kik’s users are between 13 and 24. The app still has no age verification.

Curiously, Platner has allegedly deleted the app from his phone, but hasn’t deactivated his account.

“Graham Platner is a sexual deviant who should be locked in a room away from his phone,” RNC spokeswoman Delanie Bomar said in a statement. “He is a horrible, deranged man whose disgustingness knows no bounds.”

That’s the man Maine Democrats chose over Gov. Janet Mills, who was an experienced, vetted, credible candidate who might have actually given Collins a real race. Instead, they went with an unvetted newcomer whose past was a minefield and whose judgment, apparently, never improved. They wanted fresh and exciting. They got this.

The NRSC reportedly had enough opposition research on Platner that sources suggested he won’t just lose, he’ll need to leave the state. More damaging information is certainly coming. And I suspect the worst is yet to come.

This was an unforced error by the Democrats. The warning signs were all there; they just chose not to read them.

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Europe Heat Wave Not Proof of Climate Crisis – Beaches Crowded

Europe was hit by a heat wave, and of course the climate crowd is claiming it is proof of global warming, climate change, excessive CO₂ emissions, and the need to stop eating meat and stop using oil. Another option, however, is to recognize that periods of unusually high and low temperatures have always existed.

Some years summer arrives late, and some years it arrives early. Some years you cannot swim in July, while in others you are sweltering in September. The weather has always been variable. A rational response to this heat wave would simply be to go to the beach.

The peak of the May 2026 European heat wave passed earlier this week. The most extreme temperatures occurred between Monday and Wednesday, May 25–27. France broke its national May temperature record, and more than 1,350 station records were broken across the French weather network. All-time May highs were recorded in Bordeaux, Perpignan, Bergerac, Nîmes, Toulouse, and Montpellier.

In other words, records were not broken everywhere. They were broken at specific stations and in specific locations. The crisis, assuming it exists, did not manifest uniformly across France, much less Europe.

Portugal reached 40°C (104°F), Spain 38°C (100.4°F), and temperatures across Western Europe ran 10–15°C (18–27°F) above normal for late May.

By the end of the week, temperatures had dropped across much of the continent, with elevated readings lingering across the Mediterranean, Italy, central Europe, and the Balkans.

The media response followed a familiar pattern. Carbon Brief, aggregating coverage from the Guardian, BBC, Associated Press, and CNN. Experts cited by those outlets called it “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that human-caused climate change made the event more likely and severe.

The UN climate chief called it a “brutal reminder of the cost of global warming.” The UN climate chief also knows that his job depends on continued belief in a climate crisis. French media declared it an “unequivocal sign of global warming.”

The fact that some places were temporarily hotter for one week than they were the previous year is not proof of global warming. These claims rest on assumptions that the underlying data does not support.

Breaking a May temperature record is not the same as breaking an all-time temperature record. When outlets report that a record has been “shattered,” they rarely specify what record. There is a substantial difference between the hottest day ever recorded in Europe and the hottest May 26th ever recorded at a specific station. The second claim compares one data point against roughly 150 years of readings for that calendar date at that location.

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The Largest US Groundwater Supply Is Running Out

The largest underground water supply in the United States—responsible for sustaining a vast share of the nation’s farming—is steadily running dry, raising concerns about future food production and price volatility as supplies come under strain.

The Ogallala Aquifer, which lies beneath eight Great Plains states from South Dakota to Texas, provides roughly 30 percent of the groundwater used for irrigation in the U.S. and supports around a fifth of the country’s agricultural output.

But water levels have been falling for decades, raising fresh concerns about how long one of the world’s most important food-producing regions can continue to rely on it.

In some areas, groundwater levels have dropped by more than 200 feet since large-scale irrigation began, according to U.S. Geological Survey data—one of the clearest signs of long-term depletion. Satellite analyses have also shown widespread declines across the aquifer, with maps revealing concentrated losses in heavily irrigated parts of Texas and Kansas.

A NASA Earthdata analysis has mapped what researchers described as the “human footprint” on the aquifer, showing how widespread pumping for agriculture has reshaped groundwater levels across the region. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that the system is being depleted far faster than it can naturally recharge.

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MASSIVE EBT & CHARITY FRAUD EXPOSED: Dominican Immigrants in Lawrence, Massachusetts Buying Food with Your Taxpayer-Funded Stamps and Free Charity Donations, Then Shipping It Overseas to Sell for Profit in Santo Domingo Bodegas

Independent investigator Muckraker has blown the lid off a sophisticated, long-running Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) and charity fraud operation in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Dominican immigrants have been openly buying groceries with food stamps (EBT/SNAP cards) or taking free food from charities and food banks, loading it into shipping barrels, and sending it straight to the Dominican Republic — where it gets resold for profit in local bodegas. The pipeline runs from Massachusetts corner stores, through shipping hubs in New York, all the way to Santo Domingo.

According to the Muckraker Foundation:

Lawrence, Massachusetts

Lawrence is a small city about 30 miles north of Boston. It has the highest concentration of Dominican immigrants of any city in Massachusetts, and the highest rate of SNAP enrollment in the state.

John has been delivering goods in Lawrence for over 11 years, six days a week, 35 stops a day. He knows the community intimately.

“I’ve been witnessing the Dominican residents going to food bank lines and collecting non-perishable goods,” he told us, “and then packing it in barrels and in boxes, and then they ship it back to the Dominican Republic.”

We asked him how he knew the food was being purchased with food stamps.

“Some of them have openly told me and my wife that that’s what they’re doing,” he said. “And then the other way is the math.”

The math is straightforward. A 50-pound bag of rice costs $30 in Lawrence. That same bag costs $35 in the Dominican Republic. Add shipping, and the economics make no sense unless the food was free or paid for with government benefits.

John drove us through the streets of Lawrence and showed us the evidence hiding in plain sight: blue shipping barrels, stacked outside corner stores, for sale. Not one store. Not two. Store after store after store.

“These barrels aren’t trash cans,” John said. “They’re being used to ship the product.”

Every one of those stores also advertised, prominently, that they accept EBT.

Abigail has worked in Lawrence since 2011. She asked us not to disclose her profession, but her job takes her inside people’s homes on a daily basis.

“Many of them will have large boxes, large bins in their apartments full of the food that they give out at the pantries here,” she told us. “And when I ask them what it’s for, they say they mail it back so it can either be given to their families there or be sold in the bodegas there.”

We asked if these patients knew they were doing something wrong.

“No,” she said, and laughed quietly. “They feel entitled. They feel like that’s what we come here for.”

We asked how widespread she believed the fraud to be among the patients she visits.

“About half,” she said. “Half the people I see.”

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Why NATO’s defense spending imbalance lasted for decades

For more than three decades, the U.S. carried the largest share of NATO’s military burden while many European allies spent far less on defense than Washington wanted.

The imbalance survived the Cold War, multiple U.S. administrations and repeated debates over burden sharing. Only in recent years — following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and renewed pressure from President Donald Trump — have many NATO members begun significantly increasing defense spending.

So why did the gap persist for so long?

Defense analysts say the answer lies in a combination of post-Cold War optimism, domestic political priorities and an American defense umbrella that convinced much of Europe it could safely spend less on defense without sacrificing its security.

“For much of the post–Cold War period, it is fair to say that Europeans underinvested in defense, partly because threats were low, and partly because a series of U.S. presidents did everything they could to convince Europeans that we would stay there forever,” Barry Posen, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Fox News Digital.

The collapse of the Soviet Union reinforced that mindset. 

With the primary threat NATO had been created to deter suddenly gone, governments across Europe moved to collect a so-called “peace dividend,” redirecting resources toward domestic priorities and away from their militaries.

Between 1992 and 1999, defense spending among European NATO members fell 22%, helping establish a pattern of underinvestment that would persist for decades even as the United States maintained troops in Europe and continued serving as NATO’s ultimate security backstop.

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EU & NATO Member State Bulgaria Tells American Military to Leave After Trump Says No To Visa-Free Travel Deal

Bulgaria’s new government has moved to terminate an arrangement that allows American military aircraft to use Sofia Airport for refueling and logistical operations, linking the decision to the Trump administration’s continued refusal to grant visa-free travel to Bulgarian citizens.

Prime Minister Rumen Radev, elected weeks ago in a landslide election, announced Friday that permission for American aircraft and personnel to remain at Sofia’s Vasil Levski Airport would expire at the end of June, bringing an abrupt end to an agreement approved by the previous government earlier this year.

The decision marks one of the first major foreign-policy disputes between the newly elected Bulgarian government and the Trump administration.

Radev said he personally raised the issue of visa-free travel during a recent conversation with President Donald Trump but failed to secure a positive response.
“I called for the suspension of visas for Bulgarian citizens during my conversation with the American President, but I have not received a positive answer,” Radev said.

While acknowledging the complexity of immigration and regulatory procedures in the United States, the Bulgarian leader suggested that Sofia could not indefinitely continue accommodating American requests without progress on issues important to Bulgaria.

“We also have our priorities and we cannot respond positively to the request for long stays of aircraft and tankers at Sofia airport,” he added.

Under the extension approved by the Bulgarian government, the arrangement will remain in force only until June 30.

The temporary extension is intended to provide time for allied militaries to relocate aircraft and personnel to alternative facilities elsewhere in Europe.

“We’re extending the permission until the end of June so we can give time to our allies to reschedule and find another location,” Radev explained.

The agreement currently covers up to 15 American military aircraft, associated equipment, and as many as 500 personnel.

Aircraft operating from Sofia have included Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft, Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport planes, and Boeing C-17 Globemaster III heavy-lift cargo aircraft.

Bulgarian officials, for their part, have emphasized repeatedly that the aircraft were not intended for any kind of combat missions.

Former caretaker Defense Minister Atanas Zapryanov previously stated that the deployments were primarily logistical in nature and designed to support allied activities.

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The Democrat Establishment Is Starting To Worry About Spencer Pratt

The last person California Democrats expected to keep them up at night is Spencer Pratt. Yet here we are.

The former reality television personality-turned-independent mayoral candidate has spent the past several weeks doing something that Los Angeles’s political establishment convinced itself was impossible: making incumbent Mayor Karen Bass look vulnerable.

Conventional wisdom held that a candidate like Pratt, a former television personality with no governing experience, running as an independent in a deep-blue city, had no realistic path to victory. The conventional wisdom was wrong, or at a minimum, it failed to account for how much patience voters had actually lost with the Democratic Party’s incompetence.

At some point, even reliable Democratic constituencies reach a limit for how much they can tolerate. Bass may be finding out precisely where that limit sits.

Between April 19 and May 15, Pratt’s campaign has raised roughly $2.7 million. Over that same stretch, Bass pulled in just $282,000. Bass has been raising money since 2024, and her total haul since then is approximately $2.8 million. Pratt nearly matched it in less than a month.

The two candidates are now separated by less than $100,000 in cash on hand, with Pratt sitting on roughly $1.42 million and Bass on approximately $1.32 million.

The money story alone would be enough to rattle the machine. The polls are another story. Pratt has been performing well in the polls, with Bass only leading by single digits in recent surveys, which means Pratt could advance to a runoff with Bass.

In a city where Democratic registration is so overwhelming that Republican candidates don’t bother showing up on general election ballots, this is a huge red flag for the Bass campaign.

The Democrat establishment has heard the message loud and clear and is starting to panic. On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an endorsement of Bass – just five days before the primary.

“The work Karen Bass is doing in Los Angeles is making our entire state stronger, with an 18% decline in homelessness while it grew nationally, historic drops in violent crime, boosting film production in L.A., and protecting our communities against ICE. She has my full support for reelection,” Newsom said in a statement.

Whatever the merits of the endorsement’s substance, its timing speaks for itself. It reeks of desperation.

If no candidate receives a majority on the June 2nd election, a runoff election will be held on November 3rd. Newsom, making an endorsement in the race’s final days, is clearly hoping to boost Bass and avoid a runoff.

Pratt was unimpressed by Newsom’s 11th-hour endorsement. He responded by calling Newsom and Bass “alleged criminal partners,” tying them together through their shared record on the catastrophic January wildfires and the city’s homelessness crisis.

“It’s not shocking because their alleged criminal partners, not only did they work together in their negligence and burning down 7,000 houses and 12 people alive, but they’re both complicit in laundering, what, 24 billion dollars to actually increase homelessness,” Pratt said.

He went further, attacking the homelessness statistics Newsom cited and accusing both Newsom and Bass of making them up.

“Those are not real numbers,” Pratt insisted. “Anybody with eyeballs in the state of California or Los Angeles knows that there has not been a reduction in one homeless person. Actually, there’s been an increase of naked drug addict zombies in front of every kid’s playground, every kid’s school, every coffee shop.”

“They both should be in jail together,” he added.

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