In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Almost exactly a year ago, on November 26, 1963, I posted: It was never a secret that Zelensky had only up to the end of this year to win the war, and he clearly hasn't done it, with the new added factor that the Israeli-Palestinian situation is bleeding attention and resources from Ukraine. The new circumstances simply compound the general miscalculation over Ukraine's prospects. This brings me to Roman Catholic just war doctrine as outlined in CCC 2309 : > damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; there must be serious prospects of success; the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition. "These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the '...

Predictably, I fouynd this at Real Clear Politics this morning: Were the polls right? It’s complicated. One of the most frequent questions I get about this election is some version of, “why were the polls so wrong?” . . . RCP’s final poll average gave Harris a lead of .1 (that is, one-tenth of a point) nationally. Trump is now winning by 1.7 points, yielding a miss of 1.8 for the national average — pretty close, by any reckoning. And it could get even closer when the final tranche of ballots is tallied. The biggest miss in the swing states was Arizona, where the poll average missed by 2.7. In four of the seven swing states, the difference between the average poll margin and the vote count was 1.7 points — even better than the national results.  Turn now to the seven battleground Senate contests: In three of them, the miss was less than 1 point. It averages 1.6 points. The biggest miss was in Nevada, where the polls had Jacky Rosen ahead of Sam Brown by 4.9 points in a race s...

What I'm beginning to notice about the dual Gaetz-Hegseth not-quite scandals so far is that, unlike the sort of allegations that go metastatic, these both seem to have stalled. It's beern roughly a week since news leaked of a memo written by an unnamed woman who claims to be a friend of another unnamed accuser that was sent to Trump's transition team. That memo claimed Hegseth raped a 30-year-old conservative group staffer in a hotel room in Monterey in 2017, the [Washington] Post reported. Police investigated the incident but Hegseth never faced charges, the memo said. And so far, we've basically had clarifying information regarding a non-disclosure agreement and Hegseth's version of events, which seems to have been confirmed by a subsequent police investigation. Let's contrast this with, say, the timeline of the Monica Lewinsky scandal : Jan. 7 : Lewinsky signed an affidavit stating that she never had a sexual relationship with Cl...

As I've been saying, the affronted ingenues who come out of the woodwork with steamy allegations against Trump and other Republican nominees soon enough turn out not to be ingenues, whatever else they may be. This is starting to look like it's the case with the as-yet unnamed woman who, through a friend, has passed allegations against Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth to the Trump transition team at Mar-a-Lago, which in turn have been leaked to the press. It appears that the fullest accounts are in Vanity Fair , behind a paywall, and the Washington Post . The Post's version goes like this: The alleged incident is said to have occurred when Hegseth attended a California Federation of Republican Women conference in Monterey, and allegedly took place between just before midnight on Oct. 7, 2017, and 7 a.m. the following morning at the Hyatt Regency Monterey Hotel and Spa, according to the police statement, first reported by Vanity Fair. The allegation to ...

This morning's headline at The Hill: NFL stars celebrate big plays with dance moves inspired by Trump : Players across the NFL celebrated big plays Sunday with dance moves inspired by President-elect Trump. Raiders tight end Brock Bowers, Titans wide receiver Calvin Ridley and Lions defensive end Za’Darius Smith all followed San Francisco 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa in celebrating big plays with dances inspired by Trump. After a 23-yard touchdown, Bowers shook his arms and hips in the end zone similar to how Trump famously dances. Following the game, he told USA Today that he’s seen “everyone do it.” “I watched the UFC fight [Saturday] night, and Jon Jones did it. I like watching UFC, so I saw it, and thought it was cool,” he said. . . . College players have been doing the move for weeks, and now it’s gone international, the AP noted. This confirms the words of General Patton : When you were kids, you all admired the champion marb...

My point in yesterday's post was that Trump, having somehow gotten this way through successful careers in salesmanship, the management of wealth and influence, and entertainment, has a deep and instinctive insight into subliminal cues. It reminds me of discussions I've seen of artists like Shakespere or Michelangelo that point out that critics can take paragraphs to explain the effect of specific scenes or vignettes, but the decisions the artists made in creating them must have been nearly instant. These sorts of insights operate below a conscious or rational level. But some sort of underlying intent is clearly behind Trump's nominations of Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, and Matt Gaetz, because the reactions from his oppenents have been so over-the-top on one hand and predictable on the other. Trump must have had some sense that this would be the case, and I've got to assume he also has an instinctive sense of how an end game will play out, even if it's obscure to...

Sen John Fetterman's words to Speaker Emerita Pelosi struck me with particular force when I read them this morning. They came in the middle of an interview he did with Politico : After Joe’s Biden debate over the summer, you didn’t think he should drop out. We can both agree that he had a rough debate. People like [Nancy] Pelosi, she really tried to — what’s the word I’m looking for? — she embraced this “she’s the godmother, she’s the enforcer.” And now she’s blaming Biden. Well, you can’t have it both ways. You got what you wanted, and now you’re still blaming Biden. I think it’s really ironic that you have a woman at age 84 and she is still hanging on. Why not give a younger generation an opportunity to occupy that seat? One thing I've noticed about this year's campaign and the surrounding events has been their subliminal, even dreamlike quality. Not least among these images is Sen Fetterman's recovery from a severe stroke in May, 2022, about which t he Bab...