In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

In a remarkably long and insightful essay, Nate Silver writes It's time for the White House to put up or shut up. [E]ven the most optimistic Democrats, if you read between the lines, are really arguing that Democrats could win despite Biden and not because of him. Biden is probably a below-replacement-level candidate at this point because Americans have a lot of extremely rational concerns about the prospect of a Commander-in-Chief who would be 86 years old by the end of his second term. It is entirely reasonable to see this as disqualifying. The fact that Trump also has a number of disqualifying features is not a good reason to nominate Biden. It is a reason for Democrats to be the adults in the room and acknowledge that someone who can't sit through a Super Bowl interview isn't someone the public can trust to have the physical and mental stamina to handle an international crisis, terrorist attack or some other unforseen threat when he'll be in his mid-80s. Biden...

Michael Lebron, a YouTube commentator who goes by the name Lionel, brought into focus a key question that hadn't been fully formed at the back of my mind. I kept returning to the puzzle that Winston Churchill and British intelligence pondered during World War II: was it worth going in to assassinate Hitler? Apparently they concluded not, because there was a chance that if they succeeded, the Germans might replace him with a comptent general and change the whole calculation. Lionel raises this question over the Trump strategy, which so far has endorsed his co-defendant Michael Roman's motion via his counsel Ashleigh Merchant to disqualify Fulton County DA Fani Willis for conflict of interest. Lionel raises this assassinate-Hitler coundrum at 16:52: Let's say you represent Donald Trump. And you're saying, let's assume, that Fani Willis is involved in some kind of behavior. How does this affect, negatively, Donald Trump? Well, the first question y...

This utter'd, straining all his nerves he bow'd, As with the force of winds and waters pent, When Mountains tremble, those two massie Pillars With horrible convulsion to and fro, He tugg'd, he shook, till down thy came and drew The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder Upon the heads of all who sate beneath, I haven't thought about Milton's Samson Agonistes in quite a while. This is a poetic drama based on the story in the book of Judges that culminates in Samson, a great warrior captured, enslaved, and blinded by the Philistines, gaining revenge on them by pulling down their temple around them. What reminded me of this was the YouTuber Viva Frei's commentary on yesterday's continuing testimony at the evidentiary hearing on Fani Willis's conflicts of interest in the Fulton County Trump RICO case, especially in regard to their bringing an accusation of sexual assault against Terrence Bradley, a witness who was trying to invoke attor...

The evidentiary hearing on the ethical conflicts between Fulton County DA Fani Willis and her lead prosecutor is turning out to be the best TV since Watergate. Fani Willis is comparable to combative figures like John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, or Jeb Stuart Magruder. Nathan Wade, whose habitual expressions all involve something sheepish, is a clown equivalent to G Gordon Liddy. A lot of Fox commentators have focused on Judge McAfee indulging Willis, but some YouTubers like Robert Gouveia and Viva Frei think Ashleigh Merchant has deliberately been setting Ms Willis up to go on embarrassing, rambling, often hysterical rants. And if this is deliberate, the judge is effectively enabling it. So far, the case reinforces my impression of the astonishing incompetence of the people behind the White House lawfare stratagy. One of the obvious questions to come out of yestefday's testimony was how Willis and Wade could manage trial preparations if they took five vacations in six months. ...

I posted yet again yesterday about my reservations on the White House Lawfare strategy over Trump and the 2024 election, if for no other reason than timing. The plan, as best we can tell, was to indict Trump on several highly complex cases in mid-2023 with the aim of bringing him to trial, ideally with convictions, before the 2024 general election. In fact, the Fulton County RICO case was to start on March 4, the day before the Super Tuesday primaries. A new report gives more insight into the White House's apparent intent in timing the indictments. The first indictment [the New York Stormy Daniels case] occurred on April 4, 2023. . . . On March 17, 2023, Bragg asked for a meeting with federal law enforcement ahead of the Trump indictment Trump, a court source told Fox News. A year earlier, Bragg’s office hired a former senior Department of Justice (DOJ) official Matthew Colangelo, who spent years targeting Trump at the Justice Department. He also attacked Trump in...

For whatever reason, Alan Dershowitz neglected to put the best possible title on the YouTube post above -- he should have borrowed it from his 1986 book Reversal of Fortune: Inside the Von Bulow Case , on wbhich the 1990 film Reversal of Fortune was based. Think about it: some big part of the Democrat 2024 strategy was to use a series of indictments to focus on Trump, yet by the middle of February, the trials under the federal indictments are likely to be delayed past the election, while at least in Dershowitz's view, the Fulton County RICO trial is on life support, with national attention focused on the DA and Nathan's Famous Hot Dog. At 16:30, he says, I think this case sounds like it's -- it's beyond repair and redemption. And, um, you can say who's the beneficiary of it, is it Donald Trump? Well, if he's guilty, it's Donald Trump, if he's innocent, uh, he's not the beneficiary, um, Fulton County is largely Democrat but not as over...

Recent headlines have the New York Times and other Democrat outlets starting to suggest Joe step aside in favor of another Democrat candidate and decline to run in the fall. What seems to go unmentioned so far is the possibility of him relinquishing the presidency, or being forced out, under the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution. The big problem with either scenario is Kamala Harris. Although she poses a potential problem if all Joe does is withdraw from the race but continue as president for the rest of his term, Kamala is a bigger problem under the 25th Amendment. She herself sees no obstacle to this contingenc y: Vice President Harris said she’s ready for the presidency in an interview last week, amid concerns about President Biden’s age. “I am ready to serve. There’s no question about that,” Harris told the Wall Street Journal when asked about the challenge of convincing voters she’s up for the job. Those who see her work are “fully aware” of her “capacit...