In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Just days ago, my wife and I were feeling sorry for Brandon Brown, the NASCAR driver who, during an interview after a victory, inadvertently became the viral anti-Biden meme when the interviewer deliberately misinterpreted the crowd's "[redacted] Joe Biden" chant as "Let's go, Brandon!" It seemed as though his good fortune suddenly went bad on him, since without any action or expression on his part, his name suddenly became an in-your-face political statement, the sort of thing that conventional sponsors avoid like the plague unless it's Black Lives Matter. A week or so ago, articles were running on the difficulty the guy was having lining up sponsors, especially, as one writer puts it , “Let’s Go, Brandon” is a manifestation of the class warfare that increasingly characterizes American society. It’s the cry of the working class, bold and joyous, utterly uncontrollable. It has energy and cheer, while the pathetic moaning of the ruling caste’s spok...

According to The Daily Wire, On Tuesday night, President Biden and his wife Jill, both of whom are triple-vaccinated, took a walk on a deserted Rehoboth Beach with their German Shepherd puppy during their Delaware vacation, but despite the fact there was reportedly no one within 10 yards, still refused to take their masks off. Last July, Biden insisted, “Don’t have to mask if you come home to Delaware with me.” “The President, 79, even continued to wear his mask after the First Lady, 70, took hers off. It’s not clear who Biden believed he was protecting or who he felt he needed protection from as the only other people on the beach, the secret service, didn’t come within 10 yards,” The Daily Mail noted. A few days earlier, A pre-Christmas flight got dicey when a woman now dubbed ‘Airline Karen’ got into an altercation with another passenger. The ATL Uncensored Twitter account posted a nearly two-minute video of a woman standing with her mask down below her chin while on Flight ...

I've been saying for a couple of weeks that we're in the Morning After phase of a moral panic, and part of the hangover this time is a quiet constitutional crisis. Part of the issue now, though possibly not the underlying one, is that nobody in the line of succession, the president, the vice president, or the speaker, is up to the job, and I'm not sure if we have the luxury of three years, or even 11 months, for this to work itself out. People are starting to notice. [Historian] Jon Meacham scares his audience, Democrats, into thinking that if Trump runs and loses again, he will do as he did in 2020 and refuse to accept the loss. He will again claim the election was stolen from him. Meacham appeared on Fareed Zakaria’s Sunday show on CNN and when asked if such a scenario would present a constitutional crisis, Meacham responded by saying, “It’s an unfolding one.” According to the UK Daily Mail, Presidential historian and former Biden speechwriter Jon Meacham sai...

"A doctor explains how to tell the difference." This story is on today's CNN live COVID news feed. While Covid-19 cases are sharply rising across the US, the winter season is also a time for the common cold. Symptoms for the two can certainly look the same — sore throat, runny nose, cough and headache, among others. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed gives guidance to people trying to figure out if they have been infected and need to get tested or if they just have a cold. . . . "Even though with Omicron, it's less likely that you're going to lose your sense of smell or sense of taste, those are really specific for Covid-19," he said. Another common symptom with Omicron is a headache, El-Sayed added. I'm subscribed to Alex Berenson's substack, and his reaction this morning was Guys, I don’t know how to say this any more clearly: it is OVER. The Omicold (pronounced Immacold) variant is about to bring this clown show to its inevitable conclusion. . ...

How are government theologians, on contract or on the payroll , not a violation of the Establishment Clause of the US First Amendment? NASA is looking to the heavens for help with assessing how humans will react if alien life is found on other planets and how the discovery could impact our ideas of gods [sic] and creation. The agency hired 24 theologians to take part in its program at the Center for Theological Inquiry (CTI) at Princeton University in New Jersey, which NASA gave a $1.1 million grant to in 2014. CTI is described as building 'bridges of under understanding by convening theologians, scientists, scholars, and policymakers to think together - and inform public thinking - on global concerns.' So let's back up. Theology is literally the "study of God". As even our Hollywood Episcopalian rector explained back in the day, it isn't the study of whether there's a God, it's the study of the God Who exists, and as a practical matter in the...

I guess everyone was on holiday when President Brandon made his remark, and so far, I've seen little worthwhile commentary. The best was COVID has not been shut down as he promised. And his Build Back Better agenda has been torched as well. So, yes—'let's go Brandon’ and Merry Christmas. Biden agreeing that he should go screw himself is probably the greatest Christmas gift of all time. But does this say anything about Brandon's mental condition? It was a complete, coherent statement generally reflective of context. If the caller had said, "Let's go, Yankees!" And Brandon had agreed, there would have been absolutely nothing notable about it. On the other hand, if the president had been muttering about spiders creeping up his arms, that would have been something more clearly indicative of a problem. But we didn't see anything like that. I think it was simply a gaffe, something Biden has been known for throughout his career. Granted it was a gaffe...

I tried to watch Biden's latest COVID speech on the web, but it became plain after just a few minutes that it was flat, listless, and desultory. I think it's fair that he himself may have been tired and worried, but the country at large was busy with Christmas and fairly confident that Biden would be too terrified to try to lock anything serious down, so nobody actually paid much attention. I looked at Politico's account of the speech : But even he must know he faces a near-impossible task, as he tries to glue back together some sense of unity in a Humpty Dumpty of a nation consumed by disease, division and distrust. The combination of a worn-out public, mixed messaging from health officials and stiff skepticism from large swathes of the country mean the president will struggle to break through. . . . But restoring trust, and his own political sheen, is difficult when Biden is also the de facto voice of pandemic response at a time of plummeting trust in science and ex...

With a great deal happening but no news, I figured I'd turn to a subject I've intended to cover for some time anyhow, the Oak Island treasure and the current status of the search. We went to cable in 2012, not long after the Curse of Oak Island series started on the History Channel, and for several years I didn't bother with it, taking what I now recognize is the elitist approach that the whole thing is a fraud. It wasn't until about season 5 that I started paying attention, and after several years, it's become our must-watch show above all others. The YouTube link above consists of a university-educated toff from the UK sneering at the whole enterprise, which for me is an indication that he simply doesn't watch the show. He does mention the current main players, the brothers Rick and Marty Lagina -- he mispronounces their names, which are spoken with a hard "g", another clear indication that he's probably never watched the show, and he basicall...

The heretofore unmentioned circumstance is entering public discourse: Vice President Harris asserted that Joe Biden is president — not Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — during a tense exchange on Charlamagne Tha God's Comedy Central show. Charlamagne asked Harris to name the country's "real president." "It's Joe Biden. And don't start talking like a Republican about asking whether or not he's president," Harris told the host of "Tha God's Honest Truth" on Friday in an interview on the weekly late-night program. More remarkable is an op-ed in The Hill that suggests -- for the first time I'm aware in polite discussion -- that the Spiro Agnew option is potentially on the table. The last vice president of the United States to resign was Spiro Agnew in October 1973. Should Vice President Harris be the next? . . . Ironically, as more and more Republicans hope that Harris remains on the ticket — especially as the candidate ...

According to the UK Daily Mail, US Omicron cases have doubled overnight : The number of confirmed Omicron cases in the U.S. has nearly doubled in a period of 24 hours, and six Northeastern states saw a record number of daily COVID cases this week as the variant is now confirmed in 44 states, with New York hit the hardest. As of Saturday morning, there were 830 cases of the Omicron COVID-19 variant confirmed by DNA sequencing across the country, a 97 percent increase from Friday morning's tally. In reality, the true number of Omicron cases is much higher, as only 1 to 2 percent of all cases are sequenced for variant markers, but the testing data shows a disturbing national trend. The problem is that as is increasingly reported from Europe, the Omicron variant is far milder. The Daily Mail story continues at length to conflate Delta with Omicron, but its graphs simply illustrate another point I've been making: There's little difference between the late 2020 peak...

I comtinue to think we're going through an effort to reboot the scary flashing red circles of March 2020. Even the conserative aggregators are running clickbait headlines about a new "viral blizzard" : A former COVID-19 adviser for President Biden's transition on Thursday warned of a “viral blizzard” that is about to hit the U.S. as COVID-19 cases rise and concerns about the omicron variant continue to fester. Michael Osterholm, who served on Biden’s coronavirus advisory team during the transition, said in an appearance on CNN that the health care system could be overwhelmed as omicron becomes more prevalent in the U.S. "I think we're really just about to experience a viral blizzard," Osterholm told CNN's Erin Burnett. "I think in the next three to eight weeks, we're going to see millions of Americans are going to be infected with this virus, and that will be overlaid on top of delta, and we're not yet sure exactly...

A little over a year ago, President-elect Biden said this: [A] "very dark winter" is approaching as the U.S. coronavirus case count nears 10 million. "There is a need for bold action to fight this pandemic," Biden said in Delaware. "We're still facing a very dark winter." Biden, whose campaign against President Donald Trump made the coronavirus a main focus, pledged to "spare no effort to turn this pandemic around once we're sworn in on Jan. 20." Yesterday, a little over a year later, President Biden said this : President Biden on Thursday warned of a winter of "severe illness and death" for unvaccinated Americans as coronavirus cases spike across the country. Biden, in a meeting with medical advisers and Vice President Harris to discuss the pandemic, said the country was in a better position to deal with the omicron variant of COVID-19 because of steps taken to limit travel and increase ac...

Now that I've taken as good a look as can be had at the four Epstein assistants listed in the 2008 non prosecution agreement, Sarah Kellen, Nadia Marcinkova, Adriana Ross, and Lesley Groff, the one thing that strikes me is that they had little in common. One was a pilot, one came from an affluent hedge fund background, while two were groomed to be Epstein confidantes from their teens. About the only thing they all did was, at least now and then, schedule nymphets for massages with Epstein. However, not all seem to have participated in those massages. Here's my biggest question: how many $200,000 a year personal assistants does it take to schedule Jennifer for 11:00 if Heather can't make it? How many massages can a 55 year old guy handle in a day? Even at Epstein's most priapic, a dozen might be the upper limit, but hey, let's say it's 20. And it wasn't just these four who did the scheduling. Maxwell herself is alleged to have done it, and there were a...

The odd thing about the four women named in Epstein's 2008 non prosecution agreement is how unproductive it is to try to figure out what, if anything, they actually did all day. Adriana Ross is the best example. Just as the Maxwell trial began, the UK Mirror hyped , A former model accused of organising under-age girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse has left the US as the FBI is poised to make arrests. Adriana Ross, 36, who was once questioned about Prince Andrew under oath, was tracked down by the Mirror as she left her home in Miami, Florida. As she packed a case into a car she refused to answer questions about Andrew or her alleged role with Epstein. And when she later arrived at the city’s cruise terminal with her husband, she insisted: “I have nothing to say.” . . . On Friday night sources told the Mirror that papers were being prepared ahead of “several arrests”. But Ms Ross is now on a cruise of all things, where the FBI could pull her off the ship at will, an...

Lesley Groff is a more shadowy figure among the Epsein assistants named in the 2008 non prosecution agreement. Every indication is that, with an affluent and apparenty influential husband, she has been able to lawyer up and take advantage of the legal protections built around the Epstein enterprise followindg his arrests. She began working for him as an adult and does not appear to have been groomed or brought into his circle as a sex slave. Unlike many other Epstein associates, there's no indication she ever had a romantic relationiship with him. According to the Daily Beast, Lesley Groff was another Epstein assistant who allegedly coordinated travel for young girls, often calling to schedule “massages.” Though not directly named in Monday’s [2019 Epstein] indictment, the 51-year-old has been previously named as one of Epstein’s three female assistants. According to a 2005 Chicago Tribune story about executive-assistant pay, Epstein divulged his assistants made about $200,0...

According to Wikipedia , Nadia Marcinko, also known as Nada Marcinkova (Slovak: Naďa Marcinková) (born 1986), is a Slovakian-born pilot, flight instructor, and the CEO of Aviloop, an aviation website. She is known for her association with financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as well as Ghislaine Maxwell. . . . Over the years, several news outlets have reported that Marcinko, previously known under the name of Nada Marcinkova, worked as a long-term assistant to Jeffrey Epstein and was a regular pilot of Epstein's so-called Lolita Express. It was reported that she was one of four of Epstein's accomplices (including Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, and Lesley Groff) that were given immunity from prosecution in Epstein's controversial non-prosecution agreement from 2008. The Guardian reported that Marcinkova was questioned in 2010 concerning Epstein, who was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution . . . According to the Miami H...