In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I've been intriged by Trump's Bedminster, NJ golf facility ever since it surfaced in the "wiretap" kerfuffle during the 2016 transition, which I discussed here in a 2024 post (the full links are at that post). The original story, which appears to have been assiduously scrubbed, was that National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers met with Trump after the election to inform him that Trump Tower wasn't secure, and as a consequence, Trump moved his transition headquarters to his Bedminster, NJ golf club. The record does reflect that a meeting between Trump and Rogers did take place in mid November, 2016. . . . And Trump did in fact move his transition headquarters from Trump Tower to Bedminster on November 16. . . . There was no mention in any of the reports about what Rogers discussed with Trump in the meeting, nor why the move to Bedminster took place. Exactly what kind of surveillance was involved, on whom, and who ordered it has never been clear[.] Not...

Michael Scherer outlines the basic issue in Trump's Iran attack in this piece at The Atlantic : Precisely what convinced Trump that Iran was close to making a weapon remains mysterious. For years, including when Trump was last in office, the U.S. intelligence community has publicly stated that Iran is not trying to build a nuclear weapon. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reiterated that bottom-line conclusion during congressional testimony in March. But Trump dismissed her statement and the information behind it. “She’s wrong,” Trump told reporters on Friday, days after he had already made the decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran had gathered “a tremendous amount of material,” he continued, apparently referring to the enriched uranium necessary to create a bomb. Earlier in the week, Trump had said that he thought Iran was “very close to having” weapons. The U.S. intelligence community had also said that Iran was enriching uranium that could poten...

In a 2000 article at Catholic Herald arguing for the immorality of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Edward Feser cites Gaudium et Spes 80 : Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation. But the Almighty approved of Joshua taking this same action after the walls of Jericho came down (Joshua 6:20-27): 20 As the horns blew, the people began to shout. When they heard the sound of the horn, they raised a tremendous shout. The wall collapsed, and the people attacked the city straight ahead and took it. 21 They observed the ban by putting to the sword all living creaturese in the city: men and women, young and old, as well as oxen, sheep and donkeys. . . . 24 The city itself they burned with all that was in it; but the silver, gold, and articles of bronze and iron they placed in the treasury of the...

I ran into an interesting take on Trump at the G7 : A G7 assembly with a final day invitation list that brought Australia, Mexico, Ukraine, South Korea, South Africa, India, the United Nations and the World Bank into it. Why? Because President Trump, that’s why. U.S. President Donald Trump smartly exited the G7 assembly a day early, he departed just before the crowd of interests arrived. If we drop the pretending we all know why Canada invited them and these nations came running – Tariff$! He was supposed to have sideline meetings with Ukraine's Zelensky and Mexico's Sheinbaum. We know he was able to avoid meeting Zelensky by leaving early; whether he met with Sheinbaum is uncertain, but he would have had little to say to her in any case -- the Mexicans who are leaving the US voluntarily far outnumber those formally deported, and this will diminish remittances to folks back in Mexico no matter what. This all says to me that Trump is playing a bigger game than the news...

In the YouTube embedded above, Bp Joseph Strickland uses just war doctrine, as partly outlined in CCC 2309, to, question the moralty of Israel's attacks on Iran. He cites it at 2:10: "The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration." That's from the Catechsm of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2309. But then he departs from the Catechism and never quite comes back to it: A preemptive war, a war launched not in defense but in anticipation, is not a just war. As Pope St John Paul II said before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, "War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity," from his address to the dioplomatic corps, January 13, 2003. And Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, with clarity warned that the concept of a preemptive war does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. . . . A nation does not have the moral right to wage war simply because it suspercts it might be at...

I was intrigued by a recent observation that this year, the US may have its lowest murder rate ever . Answering this question starts with identifying the previous record low rate. The current record low occurred in 2014 when the FBI reported a murder rate of 4.45 per 100,000. That’s slightly lower than the murder rates reported in 2013 (4.53), 1963 (4.58) and 1962 (4.59). Prior to that the FBI didn’t really release national murder estimates with sufficient participation to rely on. . . . It’s still early in 2025, but murder is down an enormous amount so far. The [Real-Time Crime Index] has it down more than 20 percent through February, fatal shootings are down 14 percent in the Gun Violence Archive, the Major Cities Chiefs Association has homicide down more than 20 percent in the first quarter, and I recently found a greater than 20 percent decline in the 30 cities with the most murders in 2023. . . . If this decline continues through the Fall then we should seriously start havin...

From one of the last Rush Limbaugh shows : RUSH: Do you know who Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. was? CALLER: No, I don’t. RUSH: Do you ever remember watching a television show — how old are you? CALLER: Sixty. I didn’t watch much TV, though. RUSH: Okay. Well, there was a very, very popular TV show in the 1960s called Dobie Gillis. CALLER: Okay. I never saw that. That’s why. RUSH: It was a college kids’ program. Dobie Gillis was a college student, and his buddies were college kids. It was kind of like a college kid version of Leave It To Beaver. And one of the characters was this uppity, elitist, snobbish, know-nothing character named Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. You know, who would name a kid Chatsworth? It’s obviously somebody’s last name. Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. So the kid was a preppie. And it’s a very affectionate nickname that I have developed for Tucker Carlson. I haven’t used it in a long time. But that is the source of it. You should YouTube Dobie Gillis and you’ll see the cha...