In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

In this post , I brought up the Canadian-born current Texas resident standup comic Ben Bankas, whose stage persona is in-your-face working class. One of his routines is embedded above (language warning). In a typical segment, he imitates an angry liberal lady podcaster: "F--- the Constitution. I don't care what a bunch of white men from 200 years ago.. . ." J---- C-----, they were right. Back then, they were like "Do not let these women vote. If you care about freedom of speech, you'd better not let these women vote." And now we did, and they're f------ screaming in their cars after they go to Sonic. The reason for his growing success is slightly puzzling. As I noted at the link, he plays to bourgeois, heavily college-educated audiences. He omits it from any thumbnail, but I strongly suspect he has a four-year degree himself; he knows his audience too well. Some -- maybe most -- of his audience have conventionally liberal views, but the...

Every now and then, Real Clear Politics links to a piece that's exceptionally egregious, beyond even its usual level of mediocrity. This one has no title, which is only the first of its problems. but it appears in a Washington Post section called Awakenings. It's by Matthew Schmitz, the religion editor for The Washington Post's Opinions section. If you're a religion editor for the Washington Post, this is hinky on its face. AI tells me, "Before joining the Post, he was a senior editor at First Things, a prominent ecumenical religious journal." Well, I've submitted to First Things and never gotten past the intern who returns manuscripts unread, so I stopped bothering. Mr Schmitz begins here: In 2015, Michel Houellebecq published “Submission,” a novel describing (among other things) how members of the radical right might come to admire, even embrace, Islam. Now we are seeing exactly that happen, as I describe in today’s column on the rise of the...

At 3:07 in the video embedded above, Mark Halperin comes about as close to the truth as the Overton window will allow when he says of James Comey, "I've never seen somebody so unpopular act in public like he's so popular". On the other hand, Real Clear Politics has been unwilling even to touch the subject of the DOJ "8647" indictment over the past few days: that Comey is innocent is apparently not even a matter for civilized debate. Freedom of speech! Anyhow, "86" just means the the kitchen is out of soup! But I'm a contrarian, not even a recovering contrarian. This all seems a little too cut-and-dried to me. First, a quick web search shows that people are convicted by juries, or plead guilty, for threatening the president all the time. For instance , According to court documents, between Feb. 15, 2025, and May 15, 2025, Valeriy Kouznetsov, 41, made multiple threats toward the President of the United States, his family, and other...

There are no UFOs. The whole planet has cell phones the last ten years and all these supposed sightings disappeared. — Tim Dalton (@thor988835) April 29, 2026 So Trump has confirmed that UFO files are soon to be released, while a guy named Tim Dalton posts trenchant remarks saying no such thing as UFOs. A more extended version of Dalton's reasoning appeared in The New Yorker a couple of years ago: In February, 2023, photographs of a Chinese spy balloon over Billings, Montana, prompted speculation about aliens. The Air Force eventually shot it down, but first the pilot of an American U-2 spy plane flew past and took a selfie that showed the balloon out the window. “You can see it in exquisite detail,” [University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam] Frank told me. “Where are all those pictures? Every U.F.O. picture is a fuzzy blob. Everybody carries a high-resolution camera in their pocket now, and it’s always fuzzy blobs.” I've noted here in the past that since the age o...

Once I began to read reactions to Comey's new indictment for posting his "8647" shot, it occurred to me once again that everyone's missing the point -- the same point they missed after Charlie Kirk's assassination. I said here at that time, regarding the people who were fired for indecorous remarks celebrating that incident: Merriam-Webster defines "decoerum" as "agreement with accepted standards of conduct". In light of the remarkable rash of suspensions and terminations being visited on people who publicly celebrate Charlie Kirk's assassination, some people like intellectual welterweight Glenn Reynolds are saying, "I mave doubts about these firings. . . . The courts can sort it out later, just like they did (sometimes) when so many people on the right were being cancelled." He concludes maybe the courts will sort it out -- well, he's a law professor. But this isn't really a legal issue. What's happening i...

STOP IT!!!🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/XbW9BYbIKJ — il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) April 27, 2026 Here's what The Mew York Times thinks important about the King's visit : One meeting that appears to be absent from King Charles III’s carefully planned schedule in the United States this week is any reunion with Prince Harry. On a four-day state visit intended in part to repair bruised U.S.-British relations, Charles’s itinerary currently includes no plans to see Harry, his 41-year-old son, who lives in California with his wife, Meghan, and their two children. Buckingham Palace officials declined to comment when asked whether the king and his younger son would meet. Charles and Queen Camilla are scheduled to be in Washington on Tuesday and New York on Wednesday before departing on Thursday. Fox News sees things more clearly : Trump has expressed frustration with Britain’s refusal to fully join the U.S. campaign against Iran, and has urged U.S. allies to get involved...

I'm intrigued about what's coming out on the "Hinckley Hilton" shooter, Cole Tomas Allen, and the Butler, PA shoter, Thomas Crooks. Both seem to have been quiet and unassuming, both were good students, but their families had been worried about them and their apparent relationship with firearms. Nevertheless, that both would wind up attempted presidential assassins came as a surprise to friends and employers. Regarding Crooks, according to Wikipedia , One investigation only found a "lunch detention in middle school for chewing gum" as bad behavior growing up. He joined the National Technical Honor Society in 2021 while a junior in high school. In 2022, he graduated Bethel Park High School with high honors and won a $500 "star award" from the National Math and Science Initiative. Crooks earned a score of 1530 out of 1600 on the SAT, as well as perfect grades on three Advanced Placement exams. Classmates and school officials characterized h...