In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

At The Hill : Senate Republicans fear Elon Musk’s beef with President Trump could become a wild-card factor that could cost them seats in 2026 if Musk follows through on his threat to create a new political party to compete with the GOP. GOP lawmakers note that third-party candidates have swung presidential and Senate races in the past and worry that Musk’s bid to establish an “America Party” is likely to peel off more Republicans than Democratic voters in key races. First, I think "Senate Republicans" overrate the performance of third-party candidates. most recently John Anderson in 1980 and Ross Perot in 1992. According to Wikipedia , Although the Carter campaign feared Anderson could be a spoiler, Anderson's campaign turned out to be "simply another option" for frustrated voters who had already decided not to back Carter for another term. Polls found that around 37% of Anderson voters favored Reag...

I've long been skeptical, most recently here in 2023 , that Jeffrey Epstein was running a blackmail operation, or indeed that he was a spy. Only in James Bond thrillers do spies draw attention to themselves. Beyond that, by the time of his death in 2019, he had been yestersday's news for more than a decade. Whether it was a sweetheart deal or not, his 2008 guilty plea to two sex offenses severely cramped his style. His Lolita Express plane had been grounded since 2016. The continuing allegations from MAGA that Attorney General Bondi has been covering for the deep state are based in some measure on the idea that Epstein was highly successful as a blackmailer, with tapes of high-ranking people to prove it, and her failure to release any such tapes or incriminating evidence like a client list just proves those allegations. The problem is that Epstein's heyday was certainly before 2008, almost 20 years ago at this point, and most such names, even if they existed on an actu...

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...