Another Charlotte Train Stabbing

Yesterday I talked about the peculiar pattern that's connected quasi-political violence over the past 18 months. But also yesterday, we saw the latest in an entirely different class of crime, seemingly random but horrific attacks on otherwise anonymouis citizens by repeat offenders on public transit.

A man is in custody after a reported stabbing on the Charlotte Area Transit System Blue Line light rail early Friday evening, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said.

Medic confirmed it responded around 5 p.m. near the stop along North Brevard Street and East 25th Street. One person was being treated for serious injuries, according to the agency. On Saturday morning, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department confirmed detectives identified 33-year-old Oscar Solarzano as a suspect.

. . . Court records indicate Solarzano was intoxicated on the light rail train and challenged the victim to a fight, and was shouting at others prior to the stabbing. His address was listed as an address matching the Roof Above shelter. Court documents noted that no bond was set for him, saying he is in the country illegally and "has been deported previously."

The link, from the Charlotte NBC affiliate, typically has little else to say about Solarzano. The Department of Homeland Security fills in the blanks:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security today announced U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has lodged an arrest detainer for Oscar Gerardo Solorzano-Garcia, a criminal illegal alien from Honduras, who is charged with first degree murder after he stabbed a male victim with a large knife on a light rail train in Charlotte, NC.

Solorzano-Garcia’s criminal history includes prior arrests for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, destroying evidence, resisting arrest, using a false ID, and convictions for robbery and illegally re-entry.

. . . This criminal illegal alien was issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge in 2018 and removed by the Trump Administration on March 9, 2018. He was apprehended illegally crossing the border again in 2021 and was again removed. He entered the country illegally for a third time at an unknown date and location.

This incident comes disturbingly soon after the August stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on another Charlotte light rail train by another career criminal. About the only difference is that Solorzano is also an illegal migrant, while Zarutska's assailanbt, Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr, is native-born.

But there are other similarities. Both Solorzano and Brown are full-fledged members of Marx's Lumpenproletariat, career street criminals, with the notable issue that illegal migrants, a problem that was less visible in Marx's time, now make up a significant portion of the underclass. But let's look at the victims: we can say almost by definition that people who ride public transit are from the traditional working class, commuting to work or school. If they could afford to drive, they probably would.

Let's look at the circumstances, too. Public transit is a place where the working class and the Lumpenproletariat routinely come together. The working class are riding to and from work; the Lumpenproletariat don't have jobs; they're riding to have a place to sleep or nod off, they're staying warm and staying out of the rain, or they're looking for working-class victims. They're also riding without tickets.

The working class on public transit is also a captive audience. On one hand, they've got to go to work; they've got to ride in the first place, and if there's a problem, they probably don't have time to get off the train and wait for another -- and between stations, they're stuck no matter what. It looks like neither of the Charlotte victims had any chance just to get off the train.

Another peculiarity is that the attackers seem to be angry, and they're acting out. These cases of horrific attacks on public transit, in places like Chicago and New York as well as Charlotte, involve what homicide detectives call "overkill", which is normally a sign of intense anger and resentment. A hit man does just enough to get the job done; repeated stabbings are a sign of something much more personal, something you'd expect from angry spouses, family members, or intimate partners, not strangers.

So what we're seeing in public transit attacks is a repeated pattern of class conflict, members of the Lumpenproletariat acting out in homicidal, vengeful rage against total strangers from the working class. About all we can conclude at this point is that Marx was correct in observing that the Lumpenproletariat can never be an ally of the working class -- in fact, their hatred of the working class seems to be an essential factor.

But the next puzzle that falls out of this whole set of circumstances is that the urban elites, certainly in the biggest cities, but also in Charlotte (population 943,000) enable this situation. They do this by lenient treatment of repeat offenders and by not enforcing fares on public transit, especially subways and light rail. A bus driver collects the fare and can refuse to move the bus if the rider refuses to pay. On a light rail or subway train, the motorman doesn't collect the fare, and riders can simply get on with impunity.

By declaring sanctuary cities, urban elites open just another front in a war against the working class. Although Charlotte isn't a "sanctuary city", it's a "certified welcoming city", which means about the same thing. North Carolina law requires cities to cooperate with ICE detainers, but the Department of Homeland Security notes in the link above that North Carolina cities have failed to honor 1400 detainers.

The urban elites are simply refusing to protect their hardest-working citizens, and in fact, via publc transit, they're actively setting up circumstances that make it easy for them to be attacked by the mentally disturbed and the career criminal class.

Assassins, Arsonists, Pipe Bombers: What You See Is What You Get

Over the past 18 months, beginning with Thomas Crooks in Butler and moving through Ryan Routh, the attempted assassin in Palm Beach; Luigi Mangione, who shot the UnitedHealthCare CEO in Manhattan; a whole string of Tesla arsonists; Robin Westman, the Minneapolis school shooter; Tyler Robionson, the Charlie Kirk assassin; and now Brian Cole Jr, the J6 attempted pipe bomber, we've had a remarkable menagerie of weird figures who've burst into the public consciousness through various acts, or attempted acts, of quasi-political violence.

To some extent, we've got the problem that experienced homicide detectives frequently pose: "What does a murderer look like? He looks like any of the people behind you in the checkout line." But actually in these cases, they do have something in common: their lives are obscure; they're reclusive; they have minimal or no social media profiles; they have at best spotty employment histories; their political beliefs are at best inchoate; they don't have girlfriends; they're often in the 18-30 age range where schizophrenia begins to manifest.

This is such a consistent pattern that people darkly hint in comment sections, "Yeah, right. Another reclusive guy with no social media," as though the intelligence agencies are cooking this up as a cover identity to conceal an actual perp. Brian Cole Jr fits this pattern. According to the UK Daily Mail,

‘He’s not politically affiliated with anything,’ the grandmother told the Daily Mail during an interview at her home in Gainesville, Virginia. 'He has no social media contacts. He’s never online going back and forth with politics or anything like that. He says he don’t like either party.

'He’s borderline autistic,’ she added. 'He’s slow. He may be 30, but he’s got the mind of a 16-year-old. That’s why we’re thinking - What the hell? What’s going on?’

. . . 'This young man is very calm and quiet,' she said. 'He just stays to himself. Nobody bothers him because he doesn’t bother anybody.

'He doesn’t have a girlfriend,’ she added. 'That’s how slow he is. He’s just off in a little world on his own. He stays downstairs and he used to be with his dog all the time.'

. . . 'That’s why everything is so messed up with us because he’s a good kid,’ she said. 'If you knew him, you would say that he couldn’t have done it.’

‘And if he did, it was just him trying to prove a point or whatever,’ she continued. 'He probably doesn’t even know the magnitude of what he’s done, if he did it.’

At this point, Cole is reported to have confessed to making and planting the bombs and is cooperating with investigators. He was represented by counsel at his arraignment, but as far as anyone can tell, his counsel is allowing him to speak with investigators. This may well be a good strategy, as it may provide insight into his mental condition and introduce mitigating factors in any sentence he receives. Acccording to CNN,

During interviews with the FBI, the suspect arrested in the pipe bomb probe told investigators that he believed the 2020 election was stolen, providing perhaps the first indication of a possible motive for the bombs placed near the DNC and RNC headquarters, people briefed on the matter told CNN.

Brian Cole Jr. spent hours with FBI investigators and made multiple statements, the sources said. Dan Bongino, deputy FBI director, told Fox News on Thursday that the FBI had interviewed the suspect at length, but didn’t elaborate.

. . . Appearing on ABC News, DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Friday that Cole was disappointed in “both sides of the system.”

“He was disappointed in various aspects of the election, but this guy was an equal opportunity bomber,” she said. “He put a bomb outside the Republican National Committee and the Democrat National Committee. He was disappointed to a great deal in the system – both sides of the system.”

He has this in common, for insance, with Thomas Crooks, as well as Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk's assassin:

Prosecutors in Utah released charging documents that don’t ascribe a specific motive but do feature a number of clues and shed light on Robinson’s politics.

Such acts of violence often feature suspects and perpetrators with sometimes conflicting sets of beliefs and characteristics that don’t necessarily fit neatly on the right-left political continuum, despite politicians’ and partisans’ attempts to blame the other side.

It’s still early, and the picture we’ve gotten so far comes from law enforcement. Much remains to play out in court.

. . . The charging documents say Robinson’s family also asked why he did it, and he “explained there is too much evil and the guy [Charlie Kirk] spreads too much hate.”

That evidence would seem to undercut theories that Robinson might have been motivated by far-right views. While some on the far-right have strongly opposed Kirk – you might have heard in recent days about “groypers” – they generally disliked him because they didn’t think he was far-right enough.

But the evidence so far doesn’t directly point to what specific form of alleged “hate” Robinson objected to.

But oddly, Sundance at Conservative Treehkouse is worried not about Cole's motive, but about the FBI's motive in fingering Cole!

I personally am not ascribing operational motive (or outcome) to the intents of either Kash Patel or Dan Bongino because as I have said from the outset of their selection, neither of these two men have the intellectual or discernment skillset needed to confront the corrupt institutional intent of the FBI as an organization.

Both Dan and Kash have easily identifiable ‘attack vectors’ which can be exploited by those skilled in the dark arts of manipulation. Kash’s open weakness is his ego and lust for lifestyle, Bongino’s open emotional weakness is his need to be cherished and appreciated. Both mindsets are easily influenced by those who know how to do such things.

. . . For five years the FBI couldn’t exploit the cell phone use for identification, then suddenly they were able to exploit the cell phone use for identification. Something doesn’t add up here and is really hinky, despite Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino claiming the FBI’s investigative efforts were excellent.

Why not take Patel's and Bongino's assertions at face value? Before they arrived, the FBI, for whatever reason, failed to identify the suspect with the evidence they had. The new leadership put a new team in place, and they worked to corroborate -- manually -- existing license plate, cell phone, and credit card information to identify Cole. But Sundance and many others seem deeply suspicious of this and are imputing motives to Bondi, Patel, and Bongino that they're covering something else up -- indeed, that they're actually pawns of unnamed deep state actors.

Well, I'm not a mental health professional, I haven't examined in person any of the whole managerie of bombers, arsonists, and assassins we've seen over 18 months, and I'm not qualified to make a diagnosis. But I feel fully confident that that every one of them fits the non-technical category of nut case. I'll return to what I've said before: Lee Harvey Oswald offered his services to the Soviet Union, and they wouldn't touch him, for the same reason that no serious set of conspirators would touch any of the current managerie: like Oswald, they're nut cases.

Disorganized, out of it, unreliable. You can't build a conspiracy with people like that. I don't believe they're going to find a conspiracy in any of these cases, still less a deep state conspiracy to cover this up with the unwitting connivance of Bondi, Patel, and Bongino.

"White Man From The DC Suburbs” Arrested For J6 Pipe Bombs

The basic details of this story continue to be sketchy; they can be found here and many other places. But I keep listening for dogs that aren't barking.

The most obvious is Jake Tapper's need to gaslight the world and claim the suspect, Brian J Cole, Jr, is a "white man". It's no great step to recognize this contradicts the January 6 narrative that it was a Republcan insurrection, and it goes quite a way to explain why then-FBI Director Wray didn't want to touch the case.

A more interesting question is what it reveals about the current inner workings of the FBI and Justice Department. Attorney General Bondi, FBI Director Patel, and Deputy Director Bongino so far appear to be justified in congratulating themselves for the catch, as they did in yesterday's press conference:

“Today’s arrest was the result of good, diligent police work and collaboration on a case that languished for four years under the prior administration,” said Attorney General Bondi. “The American people are safer thanks to this morning’s successful operation.”

“The investigation into the pipe bombs in Washington, D.C. has been a high priority since Deputy Director Bongino and I assumed our roles nine months ago. Since that time, our FBI teams have gone back over every fact and every data point looking for new leads – and today’s arrest is the result of that outstanding work,” said FBI Director Patel. “Although almost five years have passed, this shows the FBI will never rest in bringing justice to those who endanger American lives and our communities."

But just two weeks ago, the story was that Trump was thinking of replacing Patel:

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday [November 23] had pushed back on a report from MS NOW that Trump was weighing moving on from Patel. She posted on social platform X that the story was “completely made up,” adding a photo of the the two men side-by-side giving a thumbs up in the Oval Office.

Then this past Sunday, The New York Post ran with a story that the FBI is a "rudderless ship":

FBI Director Kash Patel is facing withering criticism from an alliance of active-duty and retired agents and analysts, days after the White House denied media reports that the president is about to fire him.

A troubling new report card on the first six months of Patel’s leadership concludes he is “in over his head” and his deputy, Dan Bongino, is “something of a clown,” according to the alliance, which in two previous reports warned about crippling DEI and politicization of the FBI during the Biden administration.

The Patel-led FBI is described in the 115-page report as a “rudderless ship” and “all f–ked up.”

I haven't been able to find news reports that specifically discuss this, but I asked Chrome AI mode (which I often have found at least useful), "Was the J6 pipe bomb case removed from the prior FBI investigative team?" It answered,

Yes, a new team of FBI investigators and experts was brought in to re-examine the evidence in the January 6 pipe bomb case, leading to a recent arrest. The new team did not find new tips or witnesses, but utilized a fresh analysis of the existing evidence and data, including credit card purchases and cellphone data, to identify the suspect.

It referred me to this story:

Law enforcement officials reviewed credit card purchases of pipe bomb components, cellphone tower data and a license plate reader to zero in on Cole, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case. The FBI and Justice Department declined to elaborate on what led them to the suspect, but characterized his arrest as the result of a reinvigorated investigation during the Trump administration and credited a fresh analysis of already-collected evidence and data.

It's hard to avoid thinking one group at the FBI came out winners in this dispute, while another group came out losers. I've got to think the losers were behind the campaign to depict Patel and Bongino as on their way out. We may or may not one day hear more about what was going on here, or indeed, what's still happening. But it seems fairly plain to me that Bondi, Patel, and Bongino have had a fight on their hands.

This may also suggest a reason for the "two FBIs" I noted in recent weeks, the FBI that was apparently leaking that "Ms C", the former Capitol Police officer, was the figure in mask and hoodie that planted the bombs, and the other FBI that was leaking that this wasn't the case.

The next puzzle is the characterization of the suspect, Brian Cole, Jr, as "simple" or "autistic". For instance,

The suspect’s grandmother, Loretta, told The New York Post: “He’s almost autistic-like because he doesn’t understand a lot of stuff. I hope he is not talking.” She also alleged: “He’s very naive. . . He would not hurt a fly. He’s just not that kind of person. I don’t believe this at all. He’s not a terrorist.”

. . . “He’s very antisocial. Very,” a neighbor told The New York Post of Brian Cole Jr. “He keeps to himself.”

Elsewhere,

The man accused of planting pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic National Committees before the Jan. 6 riot is a Chihuahua-obsessed, Crocs-loving, “autistic-like” 30-year-old who lives with his parents, family and neighbors told The Post.

Brian Cole Jr. was known as a recluse in his Virginia neighborhood about 20 miles outside Washington, DC, where he was regularly seen walking his pocket-sized pup to and from a local 7-Eleven.

“He would wear shorts all winter long, no matter how cold it was, he would be outside in shorts, walking — and he would wear red Crocs,” one longtime neighbor recalled.

(Red Crocs are described as "popular, lightweight, waterproof foam clogs".) Some reports say he worked for his father's bail bond business, but his grandmother said he worked for DoorDash, which would be incompatible with a secure job at a family business.

I've noted here that the figure caught in surveillance video wandering around Capitol Hill the evening of January 5, whoever it may be, appeared disorganized, certainly not focused on a particular task. Also, that neither of the two bombs detonated suggests the individual, whoever it may be, wasn't capable of successfully designing and assembling a fairly crude device. This in turn suggests the motive for planting the bombs may just remain inscrutable, but if the individual had co-conspirators or was receiving some sort of guidance, it wasn't very effective.

On the other hand, an insanity defense seems unlikely to work. The individual as alleged spent months assembling the materials for the bombs, whether or not they actually worked, and whoever it was wore a disguise while planting them, which would reflect a consciousness of guilt. But I think it's a little early to go full conspiracy theory on this case, as Sundance is doing at Conservative Treehouse:

Brian Cole Sr, operated bail bond companies in various states. . . . Brian Cole Sr then hired, wait for it, Benjamin Crump to represent his interests.

Benjamin Crump is well known to this audience as the lawyer who represented the family of Trayvon Martin and the lawyer who fabricated a fake witness against George Zimmerman . . . . Benjamin Crump has a history of manufacturing false witnesses based on racial cases.

In the Florida case, Ben Crump worked with Pam Bondi to advance the false witness claims [Rachel Jeantel, sold as Trayvon Martin’s girlfriend and ear-witness. She was neither.] As Florida AG, Pam Bondi knew Rachel Jeantel was a false witness but supported her friend Benjamin Crump in selling that story.

Put another way, Florida AG Pam Bondi previously helped her friend Ben Crump, a man of notorious racial manipulation, and now as U.S. AG Pam Bondi is prosecuting the son of Ben Crump client, Brian Cole Jr.

But if Bondi has an interest in covering up whatever needs covering up in the J6 pipe bomber case, why couldn't she have just ordered the FBI to keep on keepin' on fecklessly looking for the suspect? Why make any arrest at all? After all, the statute of limitations runs out in a month. And why is this arrest apparently based on highly specific cell phone and credit card evidence? And if Ben Crump is somehow behind this, especially if the evidence against Cole Jr is supposedly so flimsy, why would Crump allow the son of his client even to be prosecuted at all?

Why not just pick another patsy -- say, Ms C, the former Capitol Police officer? I just don't see Bondi somehow deliberately throwing this case. But it's early days, we'll have to see what else falls out.

How Many Somali Fraud Schemes Are Running In Minnesota?

I vaguely knew that there was some sort of fraud involvoing the terrorist organization al-Shabaab in Minnesota, but this story brings up another, completely different one:

Around $250 million was handed out by the Minnesota government to provide meals to schoolchildren during the pandemic from 2020 onward.

Instead, it was pocketed by corrupt business owners, including Salim Ahmed Said. He’s the co-owner of Safari Restaurant, where [Rep Ilhan] Omar held her 2018 congressional victory party.

Said was found guilty in August of stealing over $12 million for serving 3.9 million “phantom” meals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He blew much of the money on a $2 million Minneapolis mansion and a $9,000-a-month shopping habit at Nordstrom, according to prosecutors.

. . . Most of the money in Minneapolis was funneled through the now-defunct nonprofit Feeding Our Future.

It allowed both nonprofits and for-profit businesses to be reimbursed with taxpayer money for feeding kids by dramatically loosening oversight, waiving site inspections, and allowing bulk take-home food, with almost no verification.

This is often identified as the Feeding Our Future scandal. Then there's a housing assistance program that so far doesn't have a comvenient name:

In August, state officials shut down a fairly new program designed to help seniors and people with disabilities find housing after discovering "large-scale fraud."

A month later, federal prosecutors charged eight people with allegedly defrauding the program, which was run through the state's Medicaid service, by enrolling as providers and submitting millions in "fake and inflated bills."

Prosecutors said the housing stabilization program was susceptible to fraud because it intentionally had "low barriers to entry" and few recordkeeping requirements. They also noted that spending on the program had ballooned to more than $100 million last year, despite initial estimates that it would cost around $2.6 million a year.

The link goes to great lengths to avoid associating it with a particular ethnic group, but it finally gives the game away:

And in late September, a person was charged with defrauding a third state program — in this case, one that provides services to children with autism. Her company was accused of hiring unqualified "behavioral technicians" and submitting false claims to the state that indicated the staff had worked with children enrolled in the program.

She also allegedly paid kickbacks to parents who agreed to enroll their children in the program, in some cases sending them as much as $1,500, prosecutors said.

The same person, Asha Farhan Hassan, was also charged in September with running a fraudulent food distribution site as part of the Feeding Our Future scheme.

This link gives more detail on the autism fraud case, but again, it goes to great lengths to avoid using the word "Somali":

A 28-year-old Minneapolis woman is now facing federal wire fraud charges tied to a $14 million autism fraud scheme.

. . . Investigators say the 28-year-old woman, who ran Smart Therapy LLC, billed for EIDBI services only to pocket tax-payer money, but never actually helped those children.

In a troubling twist, parents were paid to keep their children enrolled. On the high end, kickbacks reached more than $1,000 per child.

It appears that Asha Farhan Hassan was involved with all three of these schemes, Feeding Our Future, housing assistance, and autism, and the participants were largely or exclusively Somali. A November 19 story in City Journal brought the Minnesota fraud schemes to national attention:

{T}his “network” of “fraud schemes,” which “form a web” that has stolen “billions of dollars in taxpayer money,” involved many members of Minnesota’s Somali community. The Feeding Our Future, HSS, and autism-services cases are far from the only examples. At least 28 fraud scandals have surfaced since Walz was elected governor in 2019. Most of the large-scale fraud rings, according to two former FBI officials who spoke with City Journal, have been perpetrated by members of the Somali community.

. . . Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Somalia fraud story is the scale, with total costs running into the billions of taxpayer dollars. That raises the question: What happened to all that money?

The Somali fraud rings have sent huge sums in remittances, or money transfers, from Minnesota to Somalia. According to reports, an estimated 40 percent of households in Somalia get remittances from abroad. In 2023 alone, the Somali diaspora sent back $1.7 billion—more than the Somali government’s budget for that year.

But this brings is to al-Shabaab:

Our investigation reveals, for the first time, that some of this money has been directed to an even more troubling destination: the al-Qaida-linked Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab. According to multiple law-enforcement sources, Minnesota’s Somali community has sent untold millions through a network of “hawalas,” informal clan-based money-traders, that have wound up in the coffers of Al-Shabaab.

The City Journal report got results:

The Trump administration is looking into whether Minnesota tax money found its way to al Shabaab, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization and al Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday. And on Wednesday, House Oversight committee chairman Rep. James Comer announced he is launching an investigation into the widespread fraud allegations.

Bessent wrote on X that the Treasury is "investigating allegations that under the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz, hardworking Minnesotans' tax dollars may have been diverted to the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab."

On one hand, Christopher Rufo, co-author of the original City Journal piece, concludes,

Though this story was particular to Minnesota, disruptive mass immigration is a national phenomenon. During the four years of the Biden administration, America imported millions of foreigners, many illegally. Some of these have brought, or are trying to bring, negative aspects of their home culture to the United States.

Indeed, cultural incompatibility was a campaign theme during the 2024 election. Venezuelan gangs took over apartment buildings in Colorado. Haitian migrants overwhelmed deindustrialized towns in the Rust Belt. The Somali fraud story is another point in this plotline.

On the other, so far, nobody has yet tied money from the Somali fraud to either Ilhan Omar or Tim Walz. But money has simply got to be involved. Minnesota state workers suggest that Walz has systematically enabled the fraud:

Whistleblowers alerted Walz to the fraud in its early stages, hoping for a partnership to stop it. Instead of a partnership, they got retaliation.

Employees from the Minnesota Department of Human Services say the state's massive fraud scandal leads straight back to the governor. They claim “Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota,” insisting they warned him early but “got the opposite response.” Instead of help, they say Walz “systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression,” backed by certain DFL allies and “an indifferent mainstream media.”

This could also affect the Democrats' 2028 lineup, of which I'll have more to say.

Yet Another Dog Bites Man Story

I noted last month that media, both alt and legacy, had built up the idea that the governor elections in both New Jersey and Virginia were tossups in the polls and even potential upsets. Instead, we got predictable results in both, blue states electing Democrats. Then, almost immediately, we got both alt and legacy media pushing the idea that the special election in the Tennessee 7th House district was a tossup and could be an upset. For instance, intellectual welterweight Glenn Reynolds in the New York Post, the day before the election:

This week, a special election in Tennessee’s 7th District, pitting GOP military veteran Matt Van Epps against far-left candidate Aftyn Behn, will show them just how far their base can take them.

Going by conventional wisdom, this should be a walkover for Van Epps: The district leans Republican by 10 percentage points, and Van Epps’ policy positions echo those of the previous incumbent, former Rep. Mark Green, who resigned in July to launch a new business.

Spoiler alert: Van Epps won by nine points. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What were the polls showing just before yesterday's election in TN 7?" It answered,

Just before yesterday's special election in Tennessee's 7th Congressional District (held on December 2, 2025), the few publicly released polls showed the Republican candidate, Matt Van Epps, with a slight, single-digit lead over the Democratic candidate, Aftyn Behn.

The most notable and final poll, from Emerson College Polling/The Hill and administered just a week before the election (November 22–24, 2025), found:

- Matt Van Epps (R): 48%

- Aftyn Behn (D): 46%

This 2-percentage-point lead was within the poll's margin of error (± 3.9%), indicating a very tight and competitive race leading into election day.

Real Clear Politics hyped this over the weekend, but if Van Epps won by 9%, this was wildly outside the poll's 3.9% margin of error. This is precisely the same sort of outcome we had in New Jersey and Virginia, which I discussed in this post.

Of course, a 9% margin, even if it made the polls look bad, was low in comparison to Republicsn margins in prior elections, even in non-presidential election years. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What was Mark Green's victory margin in the TN 7 House election in 2022?" It answered, "Mark Green won the election with a victory margin of 21.9 percentage points." This was more than double Matt Van Epps's margin, but the fact that it was a special election right after the Thanksgiving holiday must certainly have been a factor.

But Glenn Reynolds had his knickers in a knot the day before:

But she’s polling better than she has any right to. And she just might win.

. . . Not long ago, it would have been unimaginable for New York City to elect a far-left Muslim mayor with open sympathy for terrorist groups after 2,976 people were killed, and thousands more injured, in Islamic terror attacks on the World Trade Center.

But New Yorkers — at least those who turned out to vote — did just that last month.

Likewise, Tennessee might soon have a congresswoman who will make AOC look like a dignified stateswoman.

. . . [I]f Democrats do pull off a win this week, it will be a grave warning to Republicans about the dangers of complacency.

Roger Simon has an only slightly better take:

What does this mean? Not a lot. I would define it as “Much Ado About Nothing. . . Much.”

. . . The local GOP, with a few exceptions, never got in gear to seriously win this election against the target-rich Behn until the last couple of weeks. The Democrats had been going full tilt for a long while. Don’t blame the GOP voters.

I take "never got in gear" to mean "didn't spend serious money". But the fact is that Van Epps still won by a comfortable margin well outside the polls, when spending for the week prior to election day would have been lost in the Thanksgiving distractions in any case. Commentary prior to the election made the point that Democrats could still say, even if Behn lost, that they'd forced the Republicans to spend money on an otherwise safe race. It sounds as though the Republicans at least didn't spend more than they needed to.

But a much bigger takeaway is this: I think it disproves Joel Kotkin's conclusion over the weekend:

Long a cakewalk for progressives, the culture war is edging towards high noon. For the first time in decades, the left faces competitors who read from different scripts and come from different perspectives.

. . . Mainstream media have become disconnected from at least half their audience. Overall public confidence in the press is near a historic low: barely a third express trust, half the share that did so in 1978. This is not just an American phenomenon – the travails of the once-respected BBC in the UK make that clear.

The gulf between the media and audiences widened after the George Floyd riots, when major media companies – in print, film, radio and online – doubled down on an ever more overt progressivism. They downplayed far-left violence and embraced a mission not of informing or entertaining, but of ideological propagation.

I don't think this is true at all. Mainstream and legacy media, enabled by their usual allies, the pollsters, have been running the same sort of psyop over last month's and yesterday's elections: the line is that Republicans are underperforming, and this is due to Trump. And note that, even after the departure of its most visible editors, with new owner Jeff Bezos steering things toward the putative center, The Washington Post still ran a fake news story on Trump and Hegseth ordering the military to "kill them all", with inevitable visions of Keitel at Nuremberg.

We shouldn't kid ourselves about any of this, the media is the media,and that includes a lot of people who convince themselves that even though they're now media too, they're somehow different. That most definitely includes Glenn Reynolds, Roger Simon, and Joel Kotkin.

The Nuremberg Never Mind

Trump's media people, especially 2.0, are pretty darn good, while it's clear that only the B team is left at the Washington Post. I was wondering all Sunday why they dropped the big war crime story -- maybe the biggest scoop since Deep Throat -- on Black Friday, Nov 28, in the middle of a four-day weekend, when everybody would be bloated with Thanksgiving leftovers or off to the Black Friday sales. And then they just stood there while the White House got its ducks in a row the following Monday, which was yesterday.

By then, even Real Clear Politics was having doubts:

"What happened in this case depends on the sequence," [Carl]Cannon said [on the RCP podcast]. "These stories are not precise. Did Hegseth say 'kill them all' after the first drone strike had disabled this boat?"

Tom Bevan suggested these reports are conveniently timed following the recent video from Congressional Democrats urging service members to disobey illegal orders. "Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, and some others were asked if there had been any illegal orders, and they said they don’t know of any. Then, the next week, two anonymous sources leaked this story. Is that a coincidence? I’ll leave it to our listeners."

"This could all be a hoax, particularly when anonymous sources are attacking Trump's administration," Bevan added. "The media and Democrats are reacting as if it’s the absolute truth — and we don’t know that."

Others suggested that Post co-writer Ellen Nakashima, described as an "intelligence reporter", has been behind a series of high-profile hoax stories, including the letter from 51 intelligence officials declaring the Hunter Biden laptop to be Russian disinformation, the Brett Kavanaugh sexual misconduct story, and the Russian election interference hoax. Indeed, in the wake of all the other departures from the Post, it's surprising she's still there.

But by this morning, almost certainly relying on access to "sources" facilitated by the White House, The New York Times provided the context the RCP commentators suaspected was missing:

"According to five U.S. officials, who spoke separately and on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter that is under investigation, Mr. Hegseth, ahead of the Sept. 2 attack, ordered a strike that would kill the people on the boat and destroy the vessel and its purported cargo of drugs."

"But, each official said, Mr. Hegseth’s directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things. And, the officials said, his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast."

"Admiral Bradley ordered the initial missile strike and then several follow-up strikes that killed the initial survivors and sank the disabled boat. As that operation unfolded, they said, Mr. Hegseth did not give any further orders to him."

This additional quote from the Times story (itself behind a paywall) gives further perspective:

The two officials questioned whether the surviving people were Admiral Bradley’s intended target in the second strike, as opposed to the purported drugs and the disabled vessel. They argued that the purported cargo remained a threat and a lawful military target because another cartel-associated boat might have come to retrieve it.

Others have pointed out that on one hand, trhe drug boat crews aren't innocent civilians, but they are probably "unlawful combatants" who aren't wearing uniforms and thus aren't subject to the ordinary laws of war.

But let's grant the likely inference, that the Post story was meant to work in concert with the earlier warnings from the "subversive six" about illegal orders. The timing was nevertheless clumsy -- why did the breathless scoop have to come out on one of the least significant news days of the year? The "subversive six" video came out on Tuesday, November 18. The scoop that finally came up with a specific putative "illegal order" came out a fuil ten days later, while everyone was at the mall.

On top of that, Sen Mark Kelly, who apparently had been cast as the senior statesman in this drama, although he's at best a dollar-store John McCain, hasn't been up to the role:

🚨LMAO! Sen. Mark Kelly is CRYING over @PeteHegseth's post from last night with "Franklin Targets Narco Terrorists."

"He's putting out on the internet, TURTLES with Rocket-Propelled Grenades!" 😂🤣 pic.twitter.com/4W0dpxlktK

— The Patriot Oasis™ (@ThePatriotOasis) December 1, 2025

At the same presser, with a background of American flags, he shrieked, “President Trump is trying to silence me, threatening to kill me for saying what is true”.

This just isn't the A team. There isn't going to be a summer blockbuster about this one starring whomever the successors will be to Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Who would that be, anyhow? Alec Baldwin?

More Trickles Out About Rahmanullah Lakanwal

Robert Spencer asked over the weekend, "Hey, Why Was the DC National Guard Shooter Naked Except for a Pair of Socks?":

The first photograph that circulated of Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who shot two National Guard members in Washington on Wednesday, murdering one of them, showed him lying on a gurney, naked except for a pair of socks. Initial reports took due notice of this odd fact, without making any attempt to explain it[.]

I'll get back to this. But via the New York Post:

A leading national refugee agency was warned multiple times that the Afghan terror suspect accused of murdering one National Guard member and critically injuring another was spiraling into mania and mental illness beginning in 2023, according to a bombshell email leak.

Despite this, and an alleged failure to maintain his mandated contact with state social services, he still managed to win asylum in April of this year.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal‘s behavior was so disturbing that a local community advocate reached out to a refugee organization for help, according to emails to the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) seen by the Associated Press.

In other words, he was a "known wolf". This pattern, though, extends beyond terrorism, as we'll see. The link continues,

He was brought to the US in 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, moving to Bellingham, Washington, with his wife and their five young sons.

But he reportedly struggled to assimilate, failed to hold down a steady job or commit to learning English, according to the emails.

Alternating between “periods of dark isolation and reckless travel,” Lakanwal sometimes spent weeks in his “darkened room, not speaking to anyone, not even his wife or older kids,” the person wrote.

Lakanwal also failed to stay in contact with the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) as was mandated by the terms of his entry into the US, except for “interim” weeks where he would “do the right things,” according to the emails.

But his killing of National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom in Washington on Thanksgiving isn't that far from what we've seen in two other recent, highly publicized attacks, Lawrence Reed's burning of Bethany MaGee in an attack on the Chicago L on November 17, and Decarlos Dejuan Brown's attack on Iryna Zarutska in a Charlotte, NC tram car on August 22. All three were predictable, given the backgrounds of the subjects. Of Reed,

[W]hile in police custody, Reed "made repeated spontaneous and unprompted utterances, specifically yelling 'burn bitch' and 'burn alive bitch'". Reed was charged federally with terrorism against a mass transportation system. The charge is punishable by a maximum sentence of life in federal prison and if the victim dies, Reed could be eligible for the death penalty.

Reed has been arrested by Chicago police at least 72 times over the past 30 years, including 15 criminal convictions, and has a history of mental illness. As described by the Chicago Tribune, Reed "was arrested while on pretrial release for an aggravated battery case and has several prior cases in his criminal history, including a 2020 conviction for aggravated arson for an attempt to set the Thompson Center on fire."

Decarlos Dejuan Brown

had been arrested 14 times in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, before the stabbing, with criminal charges dating back to 2007. On April 11, 2014, he was convicted of breaking and entering. While on probation, he was arrested for armed robbery and possession of a firearm by a felon. Brown was convicted of armed robbery and incarcerated in state prison from 2015 to September 2020. Upon release, he initially lived with his family, but his mother told ABC News that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia at this point and displayed violent behavior at home. His mother said that she had sought involuntary commitment, but that it was denied. The Associated Press reported that involuntary commitments are difficult to obtain unless a court finds the person to be dangerous.

The fact that one subject is a migrant, while the other two are from the traditional street criminal class, deflects attention from an argument I've been making that Marx's Lumpenproletariat has expanded to include migrants. All three of these subjects hail from the new Lumpenproletariat, and they also share a feature of the new class alliance: there's a continuing public policy objective whereby the upper echelons privilege the Lumpenproletariat, especially by creating circumstasnces under which warning signs that individuals are dangerous are ignored, "accidentally on purpose".

In this respect, the current violent attacks on ICE and the National Guard are extensions of the class warfare that was manifest in the 2020 George Floyd riots. What was significant then was the move by the elites to glamorize, even canonize, a run-of-the-mill street criminal while calling to defund the police. The Ivy League Republican John Hinderaker is obtuse enough not fully to recognize how this fits in here, but he comes close:

More broadly, we can see that the Democrats’ war on law enforcement is succeeding. It has been focused [this year] mostly against America’s immigration laws, which Democrats hate but don’t have the votes to repeal. Democrats have viciously attacked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, denouncing its agents as a modern-day “Gestapo,” and trying at every turn to interfere with their work. . . . But the real threat lies underneath–the threat that people who are deranged and/or unusually loyal to the Democratic Party will be emboldened to try to kill ICE agents.

No, the point he's missing is they -- that is, members of the new Lumpenproletariat, enabled by conditions created by the elites, which include feckless mental health institutions -- encourage the deranged to attack attractive members of the new working class. That's the practical result of the current class war, the very rich and the very bottom arranged against the middle.

But let's go back to Robert Spencer's attempts to explain Lakanwal's nakedness:

Why had he taken off his clothes after shooting people? The simplest and most obvious answer is the same reason for why Mohamed Atta intended to change into a fancy suit: to meet the virgins. Atta wanted to look sharp; Al Issa wanted to get right down to business.

So also, apparently, did Rahmanullah Lakanwal. Yet neither the establishment media nor law enforcement authorities have made any mention of this. After all, it would only highlight Lakanwal’s identity as an Islamic jihadi, when every public official and mainstream journalist knows that the Islamic character of jihad violence must be denied or obscured at all costs. And so we have the curious phenomenon of the media reporting that this murderer was naked, yet never even attempting to explain why. All in a day’s work for today’s media propagandists.

I would go one step farther and suggest this is, at least metaphorically, a sexually directed attack on an attractive white woman of the working class, not much different from Lawrence Reed's "burn alive bitch" or Decarlos Brown's "I got that white girl". But much more important is that this is enabled and celebrated by the elites. According to Chrome AI mode,

Stochastic terrorism is a term used in social science and criminology for the process by which public, hostile rhetoric from an influential figure leads to random, unpredictable acts of violence by their followers that are statistically probable to occur. The individual acts are unpredictable, but the overall pattern of violence is a predictable consequence of the hateful communication.

But even these individual acts are simply not "unpredictable". The subjects who committed them had already been identified and should already have been in custody or deported. It is the continuing project of the elites to disable the institutions that are meant to prevent these episodes within the community at large.