Rob Reiner

A change has come over Trump

Geostrategists used to fret over the “Eastern Question” or the Maginot Line or the Missile Gap. Today there is no doubt that the overriding geostrategic question of our day is whether the President of the United States is playing with a full deck. With the US-Israeli war on Iran failing, and depleting much of both countries’ non-nuclear defenses, with the Strait of Hormuz closed and western economies spiraling toward depression, Donald Trump greeted the world on Easter morning with a message to Iran’s leaders to “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards,” then threatened the next day to wipe out Iranian civilization. He then denounced the Pope for having imparted Catholic teachings on just and unjust war.

RIP Rob Reiner

The death of the director and actor Rob Reiner in violent and unexplained circumstances is one of the most horrific and surprising stories to have emerged from Hollywood in living memory. One of the reasons why its elites live in areas such as Reiner’s exclusive neighborhood of Brentwood in California is precisely so that they will not be subject to the possibility of random violence in a way that less wealthy Americans face daily. Yet if news reports are to be believed, Reiner and his wife Michele were the victims of intrafamilial strife: a situation that all the gated walls and security cameras in the world could not ameliorate.

trump derangement

Has Donald Trump succumbed to Trump Derangement Syndrome? 

The director Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle were found dead in their Los Angeles home yesterday. The couple were discovered with their throats slit open; a knife was found nearby on the premises and their son Nick is being held as a suspect. The nation has been stunned by the brutal circumstances of the Reiners' deaths – though the requisite level of empathy is apparently yet to reach 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Spinal Tap II is an amusing, honorable successor to the original film

The story of the made-up English heavy-metal band Spinal Tap is, in every way but its particulars, the story of Joe Biden. Consider the parallels: a group of not-very-bright Baby Boomers – or, in Biden’s case, a single not-very-bright old man – manage, through sheer dumb luck, to reach the peak of their professions – selling out stadiums, in the case of Spinal Tap, or being elected to assorted high offices, in the case of Biden. Essential to the film’s success is the characters’ persistent ignorance of their own deficits in intelligence and logic Then, as time marches on, neither the band nor the politician acquires wisdom or sagacity but merely becomes older, weaker, and ever more enfeebled.

Spinal Tap

The most hysterical Twitter overreactions to Elon Musk’s first day

Elon Musk has been at Twitter's helm for barely twelve hours and he is already causing havoc. Musk took over the site on Thursday night — and by the looks of it, he wasted no time. The new boss immediately fired several top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and head of legal policy, trust and safety Vijaya Gadde. Then he posted, "the bird is freed." A source told Fox Business that the billionaire accused Agrawal, Segal and Gadde of misleading him over the number of bots on the site. Cockburn had a scan over the platform to see what people were saying about the takeover, and all is… not well. Some posters are reacting to what, in the soberest terms, is a change in leadership at a website as if it were The End of the Free World As We Know It.

elon musk twitter