In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Via the UK Guardian : Donald Trump has dismissed British warships as “toys” in his latest jibe at Nato countries for their lack of involvement in the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Speaking at the White House on Thursday, he claimed he had told the UK: “Don’t bother, we don’t need it.” Trump has previously alleged that he requested two aircraft carriers from the UK that Keir Starmer had initially rejected and then offered to send. No 10 has denied that a request was made or denied. Howeever, The United Kingdom will lead a multinational coalition to re-open and then maintain the Strait of Hormuz “as soon as the conditions are right” — likely meaning not while a war is still going on — it is claimed. The Times cites unnamed British defence officials who say meetings between partner nations have already taken place, and more are planned. . . Why is it that responses to Trump's criticisms from both the UK and NATO always involve meetings? This discussion needs...

The reason he's working is because he has a lot of incentive. He crashed and burned his career in 2017, when multiple women filed sexual harassmnet and misconduct complaints against him from his time as political director of ABC News, at which point his then-employers NBC News ahd Showtime fired him. He began a serious attempt at rehabilitation in 2019 but faced major headwinds, and he made little progress until last year, when he began work for Megyn Kelly and MK Media, hosting the 2WAY news platform. I've followed him on 2WAY, and I get the impression that what he's trying to offer is someone who has good inside sources, who asks those sources good questons, and does good analysis of what he learns. What he's betting is that since this is something nobody else is providing, he can rebuild his career with it. Lately, he's been unique in covering the putative upcoming "negotiations" over the Iran war. One question that's come up for me over the p...

BREAKING: Immunity for two key figures in the Iranian leadership: Iran regime's FM and Parliament Speaker get temporary immunity from the US and Israel, Channel 14's @bardugojacob reports. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf received… pic.twitter.com/EHLIlEfrxY — C14 News Israel | EN (@c14israel) March 24, 2026 As I noted yesterday, it's a near-impossible task to try to put together even the vaguest and most superficial account of what's happening in the Iran negotiations, I think in large part because legacy media is leveraging the laziness and complacency of its staff to work in its favor. The best information I've found over the past day simply hasn't been from US sources, for instance, the X post above from an Israeli TV station. I take "temporary immunity from Israel and the United States" to mean a promise not to blow them up with missiles for the duration. This Fox News story does provide some ...

I've developed a theory that from the first of the year to Presidents' Day, the media, legacy and alt, simply continues the break it's been on since maybe Columbus Day. Then it's several weeks of desultory effort until a break for Mardis Gras, followed by more desultory effort until a few weeks before Easter and spring break, then desultory effort until Memorial Day, at which time everything more or less shuts down for summer, after which there's desultory effort between Labor Day and Columbus Day, when the goof-off cycle restarts. Let's look at the current news of the Iran war. Trump says he's having productive negotiations with Iran , right? President Donald Trump announced Monday he is postponing planned U.S. military strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure for five days after what he described as "very good and productive" talks with Tehran. But what, exactly, is going on? President Trump said Monday he has not been in con...

A visitor very kindly sent me several links about Candace Owens and her husband, George Farmer. Farmer, the wealthy son of a member of the UK House of Lords, converted to Catholicism in 2018, and almost immediately after his conversion, he married Owens: Farmer explains he first met Owens on December 11, 2018 [after a UK Charlie Kirk appearance where she shared the stage], eating dinner together the next night. He had a life-changing “God moment” one week later, on December 18. He proposed 11 days after his God moment, on December 29: “Nothing had been said. There had been no romantic overtures at all at this point.” “It had all been very above board, talking about politics and engaging in philosophical conversations, and at the end of December, I called her a couple of times to kind of chat and again, had these prolonged conversations, mainly about politics and trying to understand what she wanted to do in life.” By December 29, 2018 (18 days after meeting her), he was f...

Whatever bad things you might otherwise say about Salem Nedia, which owns PJ Media, Instapundit, RedState, and other alt outlets, the one thing they haven't done has been to hop onto the Joe Kent bandwagon. That bandwagon includes various conspiracy theories that are never fully articulated, but they hint at broad Israeli involvement, not just in prompting the US to attack Iran, but in being somehow behind both the Charlie Kirk assassination and even tbe attempted Butler, PA assassination of Donald Trump. In fact, Salem's Instapundit linked to this X post, which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else: 𝗛𝗢𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗘𝗣𝗢𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚.𝗔𝗜 𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗞𝗘𝗗 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗝𝗢𝗘 𝗞𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗡𝗔𝗥𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗜𝗡 𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗟 𝗧𝗜𝗠𝗘. 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗬 𝗙𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗨𝗟𝗗 𝗘𝗡𝗗 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗗𝗘𝗕𝗔𝗧𝗘. Joe Kent goes on Tucker Carlson. Within minutes — not hours, minutes — the same clip, same… https://t.co/fOP7qwmZFO pic.twitter.com/TEF2OVLlz5 — M.A. Rothman (@MichaelARothman) March 20, ...

I continue to be fascinated by the notional "MAGA civil war" involving figures like Tucker Carlson. In fact, we know very little about Carlson. For instance, someone on YouTube remarked that he'd said that people who argued in favor of the US nuclear attacks on Japan were "evil", so I decided to follow up. I asked my AI oracle, "Has Tucker Carlson said those who support the nuclear bombing of Japan are evil?" It answered, Yes, Tucker Carlson has stated that those who argue in favor of dropping nuclear weapons on civilians are "evil." His comments were made during an April 2024 appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience and later reiterated in other formats. . . . In subsequent discussions, such as on the War Room podcast in November 2024, he described nuclear weapons as "demonic" and argued there is no upside to them, suggesting their creation was driven by non-human forces. It provided a link to a UK Guardian story fr...

On Wednesday , The Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance (HJAA) today released a report, A Narrowing Gate: Jewish Enrollment at Harvard and Its Peers: 1967–2025 , documenting what it describes as a significant and anomalous decline in Jewish undergraduate enrollment at Harvard University over the past two decades. The report's central finding is that Jewish enrollment at Harvard stands at approximately 7 percent today—the lowest recorded since before World War II, roughly half what it was a decade ago, and the lowest among Ivy League institutions for which reliable data exist. Three independent sources converge on this conclusion: the Harvard Crimson Freshman Survey series, a 2016 stratified random sample conducted by the Brandeis University Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies (CMJS), and enrollment estimates from Hillel International. The report does not assert that Harvard intentionally discriminates against Jewish applicants. Instead, it identifies what the authors describ...

There was an initial hint in the morning's news that there might be more to the Joe Kent story : According to Semafor, Joe Kent, the top counterterrorism official who just resigned in protest of the Iran war, is under FBI investigation for leaking classified information. The investigation predates Kent’s departure, Semafor’s White House correspondent reported. Joe Kent resigned on Tuesday and said the US started the war against Iran due to pressure from Israel. That immediately fed my instinct that anyone who resigns in that sort of public fit is likely about to be shown the door and knows it. It does appear that Kent had been a behind-the-scenes source for Tucker Carlson at least since the runup to Operation Midnight Hammer on June 22, 2025: On Wednesday, Fox News’ Mark Levin accused Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in protest of the Trump administration’s ongoing operation on Iran on Tuesday, of telling Tucker Car...

We're in a strange slow-news period: media, both legacy and alt, had to work for a couple of weeks following the Iran attacks, but around the time the gayattolah story broke, they all left for spring break, and we're back in a silly season. Hormuz? Blip. More dead mullahs? Blip. Cuba? Blip. Instead, we get a big story all gift wrapped with a cute bow on it featuring a jut-jawed special forces type straight from central casting but with retro 70s sideburns and an incongruous wavy hairpiece, Joe Kent: Donald Trump's top counterterrorism official has resigned over the war in Iran, urging the president to "reverse course". In a letter posted on X, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent said that Iran posed "no imminent threat" to the US and claimed the administration "started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby". . . . Kent, 45, is a US special forces and CIA veteran whose wife, navy cryp...