In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Sarah Jones, a writer for upscale New York Magazine, asks, What does it mean to be a working-class candidate? Was Platner a real proletarian or a nepo baby who put on a show? Were his supporters working class? The truth may be that he was both: a Hotchkiss dropout who had experienced some hardship. He campaigned hard and made his pitch directly to voters at hundreds of town halls across the state, from the reddest and most rural communities to cities like Portland. Of course, people of all classes experience "some hardship". That doesn't make you working class. Her puzzlement grows: If the category includes anyone without a college degree, a car-dealership titan can be a man of the people. If we define it by income, we might exclude foundering households in areas with high costs of living. A person might have a master’s degree and a six-figure salary and struggle with student-loan debt or the cumulative costs of housing, health care, and chi...

Carl Benjamin, a UK YouTuber who posts as Sargon of Akkad, raises a question that exposes another puzzling difference between both the press and the criminal justice systems in the US and the UK. But before I get to that, I have a problem with UK pronunciation. Benjamin attended Birkbeck College at the University of London, which is mid-ranked, and he seems to have a more or less standard university-level pronunciation, but he mumbles. I find him so hard to follow that, as with many UK and Australian YouTubers, I have to turn on closed captioning to be sure of what tbey're saying. And frankly, I think that with surprising frequency, it's because these people mumble, not because of their usage. There's an enormous tolerance for mumbling in both Australia and the UK, and that includes people like politicians and broadcast professionals who shouldn't be mumbling, at least in the US. I'm more and more convinced I wouldn't be happy anywhere in the British Commonweal...

There's been very little in US media about the murder of retired UK Reform politician Ann Widdecombe , which took place at her home in southwest England, apparently on July 8. The murder of former British politician Ann Widdecombe has sent shockwaves through the country’s political circles, with the case now referred to the counterterrorism police. Widdecombe, 78, was found dead at her home in southwest England last week with what police had described as “serious injuries”. On Friday, Devon and Cornwall police arrested a 28-year-old white man on suspicion of her murder. But on Monday, the man in custody was rearrested by counterterrorism police, now on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of “terrorism”. Head of the national counterterrorism policing, Laurence Taylor, said on Monday they were “pursuing multiple lines of inquiry to establish the motivation for this attack”. “Our priority is progressing this investigation quickly,” Ta...

Mark Halperin continues to rebuild his reputation as a serious commentator with a piece at The Free Press, Ditching Platner May Not Be a Win for Democrats . I think he has a handle on the dilemma: It was the rise of Platner, far more than the downfall, that tells us much about the energy in the Democratic Party today, which has also been exemplified by the success of Zohran Mamdani and other socialists and super progressives in mayoral, House, and Senate races. These candidates’ platforms can almost be summed up by those four piquant words from the closing paragraph of the ousted oysterman’s letter Friday giving up the Senate nomination he had so easily won, which I now repeat because, my goodness, who ends a campaign that way: “F*ck ICE. Free Palestine.” That wave among the Democrats points to the two biggest questions facing Democrats in Maine: Will the party back another Senate candidate from its radical, populist wing? And could a candidate like that take out the popu...

I've basically been tuning out the whole Candace Owens conspiracy theory over Charlie Kirk's assassination for the past eight months or so, but the level of convincing detail in the prosecution's case against Tyler Robinson in last week's probable cause hearing has made me want to bring myself up to date. The clearest version of the whole controversy I've seen is this: As far as I can tell, there seem to be two competing theories for how and why Charlie Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10, 2025. The first, of course, is the story we’re hearing in court: Tyler Robinson hated Charlie’s so-called “trans-phobia” and murdered him with a German rifle for ideological reasons. Supporting evidence includes Robinson’s romantic relationship with a trans person, his confession(s), his DNA, his fingerprints, his text messages, ballistics data, bullet shells, video surveillance, eye-witness testimony, and much, much more. The other theory? Israeli Prime Minister B...

A while ago, I surmised that Graham Platner was never actually vetted; it was enough that he was People Like Us, preppie, Ivy-adjacent trustfunders. A detailed piece in the Washington Free Beacon profiles two of the talent scouts who promoted Platner, Morris Katz and Daniel Moraff. Katz, 27, became a bona fide Beltway celebrity after helping Zohran Mamdani defeat a profoundly unpopular sex pest in the New York City mayoral election. He helped recruit Platner to run in Maine, and made a slickly produced launch video of the unemployed business owner cosplaying as a working-class everyman. "Like Mr. Mamdani, Mr. Katz is a child of the New York cultural elite, but is fluent in the anti-elite language of progressive populism," the New York Times wrote earlier this year in a profile headlined, "He's 26 and Ready to Fix the Democrats' Strategy." Like Platner, Katz is a child of privilege who abhors capitalism, functioning societies, and opponents of te...

Via Breitbart News , Conservative activist Laura Loomer and journalist Desiree Townsend both claimed Monday that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been declared “brain dead,” citing unnamed sources. A very high level source told me Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead and machines are keeping him alive, but he is a vegetable and “never coming back.” So why is his wife @ElaineChao in China instead of by his side? Is she a Chinese CCP spy? How does the wife of one of… https://t.co/hxTHMPHZEM — Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) July 6, 2026 I've always thought Mitch McConnell was brain dead even when he was alive, that's a dog bites man story. The bigger question is who is his wife, Elaine Chao, and why is she in China? We know she was Secretary of Transportation under Trump 45 and Secretary of Labor under Bush fils , but I took that as simply a payoff to Mitch. It turns out the story is much more complicated . From a 2019 piece at CNN: Transportation Secre...