In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

In the midst of his ruminations on Trump's desire to acquire Greenland, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen cut to the chase : “If the United States decides to militarily attack another Nato country, then everything would stop – that includes Nato and therefore post-second world war security,” Frederiksen told Danish television network TV2. He was, of course, referring to remarks from the administration earlier this week : US President Donald Trump has been discussing "a range of options" to acquire Greenland, including use of the military, the White House said. The White House told the BBC that acquiring Greenland - a semi-autonomous region of fellow Nato member Denmark – was a "national security priority". The statement came hours after European leaders issued a joint statement rallying behind Denmark, which has been pushing back against Trump's ambitions for the Arctic island. I've got to give the intellectual welterweights ...

Reports that have trickled out over the past several days indicate that Trump decided to leave Delcy Rodriguez, who had been Maduro's vice president, in place following Maduro's removal. She was sworn in as "interim president" on Monday by her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, the President of the National Assembly. According to CBS News , She quickly denounced the U.S. operation as a violation of the United Nations founding charter and a unilateral attempt to force regime change on Saturday, but soon adopted a more conciliatory tone. In a social media post following a Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Rodríguez called for "respectful international relations" between Caracas and Washington and extended an invite for "the U.S. government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation." . . . Mr. Trump said Saturday that the U.S. had been in contact with Rodríguez and "she's essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make V...

One of the most persistent images in cinema is George C Scott limning General Patton's words in front of an American flag. So far, Trump looks like the kind of winner Patton imagined, assuming his bet that the remnant of the Maduro regime will cooperate with the US going forward pays off. The success of the operation vindicates his choice of Secretary Hegseth and Hegseth's purge of the Biden Pentagon, something that had been in question for much of the past year. The operation was a demnonstration of US technological superiority : At the core of Venezuela’s defensive architecture was a network of radars supplied by the China Electronics Technology Group, including JYL-1 three-dimensional surveillance systems and the JY-27 metric-wave radar, which for years had been promoted as a supposed “stealth aircraft hunter“. Based on assessments of the swift and decisive operation, these sensors were disabled during the initial phase through intensive electronic jamming, leav...

The New York Times and other sources are reporting : Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) is reportedly going to announce on Monday that he will drop his bid for reelection to a third term, according to a report from the New York Times. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is now considering running instead. “Mr. Walz and Ms. Klobuchar met Sunday in Minnesota, where he informed her of his plans and she confirmed her interest in running to replace him,” the paper reported. “For Mr. Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president in the 2024 election, the departure caps a brief rise in national politics.” Both the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal had begun to sense blood in the water after the new year. Per the WSJ : The massive welfare-fraud scandal in Minnesota dogging Gov. Tim Walz as he seeks re-election in a state that has prided itself on good governance is giving Republicans a potent line of attack against a critic of President Trump. The unsuccessful 2024 Democratic vice presidential ...

Over New Year's I noted that NewsNation and CNN had second-string reporters out in the Minnesota snow, not really covering the Somali fraud as much as doing what they could to get ahead of Nick Shirley's reporting. One of Shirley's insights, I feel pretty sure, was that mainstream media doesn't work very hard, and the Christmas break was a perfect time to drop his video, when the cartel had tacitly agreed there'd be no other news. I also inferred that Trump and his key people had come up with the same strategy over the Venezuela raid, with the news coming out on one of the deadest Saturdays of any year. Let's remember that for Trump, there's no such thing as bad publicity, he makes the news simply by being Trump. It's a losing game for anyone to try to upstage him, but the suits at MS NOW gave it their best shot: they got Rachel Maddow in on a Saturday . Part-time MS NOW host Rachel Maddow remarkably showed up to work on a weekend, appearin...

With respectable journalists still on Christmas break, Trump sends the military into Venezuela and plucks out Maduro and his wife to face indictment and trial on drug and weapons charges, just like that. The Chairman of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) said on Saturday morning that “Maduro wasn’t just an illegitimate dictator; he also ran a vast drug-trafficking operation. That’s why he was indicted in U.S. court nearly six years ago for drug trafficking and narco-terrorism.” Senator Cotton said that he spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who informed him that Maduro is in custody in the United States “and will face justice for his crimes against our citizens.” “I commend President Trump and our brave troops and law-enforcement officers for this incredible operation. The interim government in Venezuela must now decide whether to continue the drug trafficking and colluding with adversaries like Iran an...

The video embedded above was made by Nick Shirley, the interlocutor in the vignette, about a month before his big video on the Minnesota Somali daycare centers went viral. What strikes me is he's done his homework: he's in St Cloud, MN, where I noted in this post here that House Republican Whip Tom Emmer, suddenly a big advocate of deportimng Somali scammers, had told his constituents there in July 2015 that nothing could be done about the Somalis. Shirley had clearly been aware of that meeting when he set up this interview , and he knew what questions to ask. Now he's got legacy media running scared. Quasi-mainstream NewsNation, whose business model seems to be to hire former prime-time anchors like Bill O'Reilly and Chris Cuomo from big outlets once they're past their sell-by dates, had its reporter Rich McHugh out in the Minnesota snow on New Year's Eve knocking on Somali heath agency doors. For some reason, I can't embed the tweet, but the Instap...