In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

There's a hysterical piece by Joan Walsh at The Nation , picked up by Real Clear Politics, that concludes, I think Platner’s rocket to political stardom reflects something ugly that’s developed, not only on the right but on the left too: . . . . Over and over we’ve been told: We gotta support candidates, like Platner, who have a lot of guns, and pickup trucks, and tattoos, and a military background, even if it includes Blackwater; a history of racist and sexist remarks and gay slurs on social media, and a history of shady behavior toward women, because it’s the only way to reach white working-class men. I’d say that’s pretty insulting to white working-class men. What on earth does Platner have to do with white working-class men? According to the Washington Free Beacon , Clad in a plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up, Platner has cultivated a working-class image on the campaign trail, but he appears to come from a wealthy family. His father, Bronson Platner, [a Dar...

Via CBS News, A judge ordered the detention of an ex-CIA official found with gold bars worth about $40 million in his home last month. U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick said in a detention hearing Friday that David Rush must remain in custody pending trial, determining that he poses a severe flight risk. Fitzpatrick said Rush has the means and motive to flee law enforcement and evade detection. In May, as FBI investigators were looking into whether Rush had lied about his educational and military background, they searched his home and discovered 303 gold bars, $2 million in cash and more than 30 luxury watches. The government's lawyers alleged he was diversifying funds into commodities that could be traded. They claimed there is "strong evidence" Rush was trying to hide the funds. I covered this story here a week ago. Remarkably, the most complete set of updates is in the normally somnolent Salem Media outlet RedState. He allegedly const...

Via ABC News : A British lawmaker said Thursday she is suing Elon Musk’s company xAI for invasion of privacy, alleging that fake images of her were created using the Grok chatbot. Jess Asato, a legislator with the governing Labour Party, says someone used Grok to create fake images of her in a bikini without her consent in January after she criticized the spread of deepfake pornography online. She filed a claim Wednesday at the High Court in London, citing misuse of private information under the Data Protection Act. Just looking at her headshot above, I'm not sure I would want to see a photo of her in a bikini, fake or real. But just as a US observer, other things strike me: first, you can create a picture of anyone in a bikini just with Photoshop, no need to use AI, and people do it all the time. It's ridiculous to think about suing Photoshop because someone can create a phony picture of someone in a bikini. Second, at least in the US, Ms Asato is a public figur...

Via International News : UK leader Keir Starmer accused US tech tycoon Elon Musk on Thursday of "trying to whip up division" in Britain following anger over the police handling of the murder of a white student by a Sikh man. . . . Musk, the billionaire owner of X, has posted numerous times on the platform about the police response to the stabbing. In one, he falsely asked whether people knew that "official police policy requires them to be racist against Whites?" . . . Musk has offered to fund a private prosecution against the police over its handling of the murder and insulted the Hampshire Police force involved. UK legacy media has generally portrayed public criticism of police polices, especially from Musk, as "far right". From The Guardian : Musk is a regular poster of ethnonationalist content, and is a strong supporter of Restore Britain, the far-right party set up by Rupert Lowe, a former Reform UK MP. . . . In recent w...

Right now, I think I may be the only person who thinks the UK is in a serious constitutional crisis, or at least the only person who's writing about it. In this post a couple of weeks ago , I talked about the basic problem of the UK's constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign is theoretically "above politics", but the monarch nevertheless opens parliament with a "king's speech" written for him by the prime minister outlining the government's legislative agenda. In that post, I noted the palace's extreme discomfort with any implication in the whole king's speech ritual that the king in any way supported the extremely unpopular Starmer government -- but there's only so much poor Charles can do to distance himself from His Majesty's Government. This is precisely the conundrum Thomas Jefferson, a really smart guy, exploited in the text of the Declaration of Independence: The history of the present King of...

For those who haven't been following the story, here are the basics of the Henry Nowak murder case, from Wikipedia : On 3 December 2025, Henry Nowak, an 18‑year‑old British university student, was murdered by Vickrum Digwa, a 23-year-old British Sikh man, in Southampton, England. Digwa stabbed Nowak five times with a Sikh dagger [but see below], including a fatal wound to the chest. When police officers from Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary arrived, Digwa falsely accused Nowak of assault. Police body camera shows that Nowak repeatedly told the officers that he had been stabbed and pleaded that "I can't breathe," as the police handcuffed him. Nowak died shortly after being handcuffed. There's been a great deal of sloppy reporting on both sides of the pond, especially regarding the knife Digwa used, which is shown in the police photo above. Even the Wall Street Journal gets this wrong : This week, Digwa was sentenced to life in prison for mur...

Every time a rich guy messes up his PR, I keep going back to Ivy Lee (1877-1934), the inventor of the field, who said, "Tell the truth, because sooner or later the public will find out anyway." He's credited with rehabilitating the Rockefeller family's reputation after thr publication of the muckraking History of the Standard Oil Company and the 1913-14 Colorado miners' strike, which culmnated in the Ludlow Massacre. (I've always thought Ida Tarbell's characterization of Rockefeller Sr is second only to Milton's Satan in Pardise Lost.) But to the Rockefellers' credit, Lee had to have something to work with. If they followed his advice and told the truth, after all, there had to be something good to tell the truth about. Sonehow, even if Ivy Lee were still around, Bill Gates wouldn't have been such a successful client. A Wall Street Journal piece reports Bill Gates Spent Years Crafting His Image. Now It’s Cracking . Bill Gate...