In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Last month I looked at the objections of just war theorists , especially the neo-Thomist philosopher Edward Feser, to President Trump's threats against Iran in the runup to the raid on its nuclear sites. The fact that the raid proved closely targeted and didn't lead to further US involvement seems so far to have kept Prof Feser from expressing further objections. But I keep running into scriptural problems that make me wonder if just war theorists have all the answers. For instance, just this past Sunday's gospel reading, Luke 10: 1-12, 17-20 contains a reference to Sodom and Gomorrah, which I've compared in the link to the destruction of a nuclear attack: 8 And into what city soever you enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you. 9 And heal the sick that are therein, and say to them: The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. 10 But into whatsoever city you enter, and they receive you not, going forth into...

As I did yesterday, I keep saying that Elon Musk's main problem is with the boards of directors for each of his companies. With everything he's done since November, he's been digging himself a deeper and deeper hole. Yesterday in an interview with Dana Bash, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said , BASH: He (Musk) announced this weekend that he is starting a new political party. Does this worry the Trump Administration? BESSENT: Look, the principles of DOGE were popular. If you looked at the polling, Elon was not. The Boards of Directors at his various companies wanted him to come back and run his companies, which he is better at than anyone. So, I imagine those Board of Directors did not like this announcement yesterday and will be encouraging him to focus on his business activities, not his political activities, It's worth revisiting a story from a month ago that reported a physical altercation between Musk and Bessent : ...

Elon Musk basically made one halfway-smart political call, and that was when he donated rouughy $277 million to the 2024 Republican campaigns. He then briefly recognized that he wasn't cut out for politics : Wisconsin could go down as billionaire Elon Musk’s last big spend on a political campaign. And it was a flop. Musk, the richest person in the world, said May 20 that he would be spending less on political campaigns. The announcement came as Musk is stepping back from his role in the Trump administration, saying he will spend more time focused on his businesses, and just seven weeks after the candidate he backed in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race lost by 10 percentage points. . . . Musk was all-in on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, even making a personal appearance in Green Bay the weekend before the election wearing a cheesehead hat — popular with fans of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers — and personally handing out checks for $1 million to supporters. ...

Last night I had what I can only call a medley or amalgam of every dumb recurring dream or nightmare I've ever had, probably familiar to many people, the one where I went to school in my bathrobe, the one where I can't find where my car is parked, the one where I need to use the bathroom but can't find one anywhere, the similar one where I need to find an elevator, the one where I signed up for a course, never bought the books and never showed up for class, but now it's almost time for finals -- and probably half a dozen others. In fact, I kept telling myself in the dream, "Oh, no, this isn't a dream!", and that meant I was going to have to tell my mother I had to drop out of school. When I woke up and realized it was in fact a dream, I was truly astonished. I went searching on the web for interpretations of what these things meant, and I learned that I was insecure, or that I was preparing for new experiences, or that I was reassimilating my personalit...

🚨 Van Jones DROPS A TRUTH BOMB: “Guys, can we cut it out? Donald Trump is not an idiot… Donald Trump is smarter than me, you, and all the critics… this dude is a phenomenal—he is the most powerful human on earth.” 🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/dUAKvYUMGm — TRUMP ARMY (@TRUMP_ARMY_) May 18, 2025 I think we're at the beginning of a remarkable reappraisal of Donald Trump, although there's been a fairly consistent minority opinion that Trump is a "genius" since his first term. I asked, the web, "Is Trunp smart?" It returned, among others, this link at Politico from 2020 : What we learned from Trump’s taxes does suggest he possesses an astonishing gift which could reasonably be called “genius” — if you accept that as a descriptive word rather than a term of praise. Genius, in this context, means something more than “very smart.” It means an ability to see connections and possibilities in circumstances that even people who are smart in conventional way...

In response to renewed complaints from Musk about the Big Beautiful Bill, Trump said yesterday , We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? The monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies. At the same link, The president’s ire comes after Musk expressed his frustration over the sweeping spending bill on social media ahead of Tuesday’s Senate vote. “The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!” the 54-year-old wrote on X Saturday. “Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.” On Monday, the world’s richest man continued his criticism, saying lawmakers who had campaigned on cutting spending but backed the bill “should hang their heads in shame!” . . . Trump said Tuesday his former ally was upset over a Biden-era electric vehicle ...

Sam Tanenhous, who has written extensively on the conservative movement, has an essay out this morning on Trump at Vanity Fair, The Godfather Presidency: How Donald Trump’s Governing Style Mimics the Mob . The title promises, but it doesn't deliver. He talks extensively about Trump's formative years, but the fact is that the mob was on its way out starting with the Kefauver Committee in 1950-51 and continuing through the Apalachin Meeting of 1957, the assassination of Albert Anastasia the same year, and Bobby Kennedy's war on the Mafia from 1961-63. The closest association he can draw between the Mob and Trump is with John Gotti, the folk hero mobster, who operated out of Trump’s home borough, Queens, and whom the New York press—and this magazine—covered in the 1980s at the same time they were trailing Trump. Many remember Gotti as the well-dressed goon. Fewer recall the mass demonstrations held on his behalf when he was on trial or the politicians who spo...