In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Whether the "Seditious Six" casmpaign to convince military members to refuse "illegal" orders from Trump is actually a CIA operation is up in the air, but it's separate from the recent allegations that the shootings of two National Guard members in Washington last Wednesday are "Trump's fault". The most respectable version of this line can be found at Real Clear Politics in a piece from The Atlantic, A Terrible and Avoidable Tragedy in D.C. : The troops, deployed in an effort to reduce crime, are untrained in law enforcement; their days are spent cleaning up trash and walking the streets in uniform. Commanders, in a memo that was included in litigation challenging the high-visibility mission in D.C., argued that this could put them in danger. The Justice Department countered that the risk was merely “speculative.” It wasn’t. There are costs to performatively deploying members of the military—one of which is the risk of endangering ...

When I last looked at the January 6 pipe bomber two weeks ago , I noted that there were two competing stories coming out of one FBI. The best-publicized was that the individual in loose-fitting clothes, hoodie, and mask was a literally moonlighting female Capitol Police officer whom we'll call Ms C, who planted the bombs while wandering around Capitol Hill for an hour on the evening of January 5. The other story was that it wasn't Ms C, or maybe not even the figure wandering around in the videos at all. Instead, the bombs may have been planted shortly before they were discovered on January 6 by someone completely different. The main problem with this version is that on one hand, we have to discount the figure wandering around the previous evening, and on the other, we have to identify someone else planting the bombs the following morning. We must assume hundreds of man-hours have already been expended searching the relevant video footage for this without result. But be...

A headline in the normally pro-Trump New York Post: Michael Goodwin: Trump needs to hit the reset button if the GOP wants to win the 2026 midterms : As he barrels toward the end of his first year back in the White House, the president is beset by slumping poll numbers and a pileup of problems, some of which are self-inflicted. This is my first big puzzle, the "slumping poll numbers". These are the same polls that were wildly off just a few weeks ago, claiming the New Jersey governor's race was a tossup, and Republicans even had a chance in Virginia. But the outcome was dog bites man; blue states voted blue. Nobody's asking what happened to put expectations so far out of whack. But let's proceed: Even a gaggle of normally obedient Republicans in Congress are growing restless, and his call for gerrymandering House district lines in red states to pad the GOP advantage in the midterms is in danger of producing the opposite outcome. This comes af...

BREAKING: The Department of War is reportedly considering recalling Sen. Mark Kelly (D) to active duty for possible court-martial after he urged U.S. troops to defy orders from Trump and Hegseth. pic.twitter.com/W8q2a3iMlL — Breaking911 (@Breaking911) November 24, 2025 The received opinion, via the Sacramento Bee , goes like this: Truthful speech is protected by the First Amendment and should not be the basis for accusing people of sedition, let alone threatening the death penalty. This seems obvious, but on Thursday, Nov. 20, President Donald Trump responded to a video by six members of Congress by posting: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” What did the members of Congress do to deserve this threat of capital punishment? They posted a 90-second video on social media that spoke to members of the military and intelligence communities about their oath to the Constitution. The part of the video that drew Trump’s ire was this remark: “This administration is pitt...

A typical event in the On Patrol: Live TV show involves a cop pulling a driver over for suspected DUI. The cop walks up to the driver's window and requests that the driver step out. All of a sudden, the driver notices there's a guy with a big camera filming the scene and realizes what this could mean: their face will be on national TV with a show that leads its time slot in the 25-54 demographic, which is another way of saying that by the next day, their DUI arrest will be all over town. "I don't want to be filmed!" the driver protests. "I demand that you stop filming!" "It's just a documentary," the officer usually replies. "They're just filming a documentary." The other night, a driver protested more than usual, which had no impact. "Anyone can film out in public," the officer continued. "They can film you, you can film us. That's the law." Which is another way of saying cameras are everywher...

Q: “Are you willing to forgive Congresswoman Taylor Greene?” TRUMP: “Forgive for what? I just disagreed with her philosophy … I think she's a nice person.” pic.twitter.com/SWBYdjn4LV — Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) November 22, 2025 It's worth linking yet again to the very insightful business-school analysis of Trump's negotiating strategy to get a clearer idea of what's going on regarding Marjorie Taylor Greene's resignation announcement. Trump also uses generosity, particularly compliments, to enhance his leverage. “I know that no matter how tough somebody is, he or she will always remember support you’ve given or a favor you might have done in the past,” he wrote in one of his books. From the X post above, we can see that Trump is being unexpectedly generous with Rep Greene, having called her a "traitor" only a few days earlier. Why? It looks like she's going to give him exactly what he wants, her resignation from Congress. Now he doesn...

As Ludwig Wittgenstein would put it, the solution to the problem is seen in the disappearance of the problem. I was drawn to Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene's announcement of her resignation , in particular that she mentions Epstein prominently: I never changed or went back on my campaign promises and only disagreed in a few areas like. . . demanding the release of the Epstein files. Just last Sunday, she said the growing animosity between her and Donald Trump “has all come down to the Epstein files.” “I have no idea what’s in the files. I can’t even guess,” Greene added. “But that is the question everyone is asking is why fight this so hard?” Greene, a former close ally of Trump, has come under fire from the president in recent weeks over her push to release federal files related to Jeffrey Epstein files, a trove of documents presumably detailing the disgraced financier’s crimes, including who may have known about or been involved in those crimes. It appears th...