Here's One Thing You Learn From Live PD/OP Live

The photo above is an illustration of the type of body cameras worn by officers of the San Francisco Police Department. In current technology, police body cameras activate automatically, often when officers exit their police vehicles. They can't be turned off. I'll get to this below.

One thing you learned as a fan of Live PD, which following its cancellation by A&E has been cloned and resuscitated as OP Live by the REELZ network, is that police departments that allow camera crews to ride along inevitably assign the crews to their best officers. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they didn't, since bungled arrests, episodes of brutality, or community relations disasters would all be caught on tape, while conversely, it's to their credit to have a courteous, diverse, effective patrol force on full public display.

My wife and I have watched these shows long enough, since some of the departments have participated in them over many seasons, to see some of the most familiar officers promoted in the course of successful careers, which to me is an indication of the transparent and merit-based systems in these departments. Another feature on display in the best departments is that the supervisory officers who explain things in greater depth to the cameras are clear, effective communicators. In fact, in a merit-based system, clear communications ability is a promotional factor.

Which brings me to the San Francisco Police Department and its Chief William Scott. Yesterday I quoted a Breitbart News story that covered Scott's account of the police response to the Pelosi home:

“So when the officers arrived and knocked on the front door of the residence this morning, the door was opened by someone inside,” Scott said. “And the officers observed through the open door Mr. Pelosi and the suspect, Mr. DePape, inside the entryway of the home.

The officers ordered Pelosi and DePape to drop the hammer and seemingly stood by as DePape attacked Pelosi, waiting until DePape “violently assaulted” Pelosi before disarming the suspect.

If Pelosi and DePape were struggling with a hammer as the police arrived, there would inevitably need to be a third party to open the door, since Pelosi and DePape would have been too busy struggling to open it themselves. Or do I have this wrong? Nevertheless, NBC now claims this is not what Chief Scott said, or meant to say, or something. In a later update to he story, Breitbart reported,

NBC News walked back a report Sunday that there was a third person in Paul Pelosi’s home during the attack.

“The SFPD also says that there were only TWO people inside the Pelosi home (Paul Pelosi and DePape) when they responded, clarifying statements made at Friday’s press conference which seemed to indicate there was a third person inside the home who opened the door,” wrote NBC investigative correspondent Tom Winter on social media on Sunday afternoon.

So Chief Scott misspoke, or that's what they'd have you believe. This still leaves open the question of how the police saw Pelosi and DePape struggling with a hammer through an open door. Did the police knock and Pelosi and DePape temporarily stop the struggle so one could open the door, whereupon both picked up the hammer and resumed the struggle so the police could see it and respond?

I think the best explanation is that SFPD's normal chain of command has been interrupted by Pelosi handlers, who are the ones telling Scott and the department what to say, rather than the normal public information officers who'd be dealing with the media if the incident Friday morning involved anyone other than Paul Pelosi. The result is that, as I began to point out yesterday, almost every detail of the story as it's been put out simply defies logic and common sense. This now includes the newly updated narrative that only two people were inside the house.

My firm served a lawsuit against Paul Pelosi one time in SF after attempting to serve at other residences—Napa, Georgetown. They weren’t home, but staff were, & multiple law enforcement officers were on the perimeter. Break-in is odd given this level of security.

— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) October 28, 2022

As I noted at the start of this post, SFPD officers are equipped with body cams, and the footage would instantly clarify just what happened -- except that my surmise is that what actually happened has nothing to do with the current received narrative. Not only will there be body cam footage showing just who opened the door (if that's even how this whole thing developed), but there will be footage from the security cameras in the entryway as well.

Given the account from Ms Dhillon's experience, plus common sense, there must have been at least one, but likely more, household staff and security personnel in the Pelosi home at the time of the attack. According to Business Insider,

"The Speaker of the House is not a Secret Service protectee," US Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi wrote in an email, adding that all other questions about Pelosi's protection should be directed to the US Capitol Police.

. . . But other lawmakers have offered glimpses into their own security coverage.

In 2017 late [sic] congressional newspaper Roll Call reported that late-GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch, who was then-president pro tempore of the Senate and third-in-line to the presidency, divulged that nearly two dozen armed guards surrounded him and his wife at all times.

"These men and women are like family to me," Hatch said of those assigned to protect him. Hatch aides added that his 23-person security detail "is the second largest on the Hill following Speaker Ryan."

Which, extrapolated out, would mean Pelosi's protective force is likely to be even higher today[.]

The phrase "at all times" relating to coverage of key legislators and their spouses is at least present in this discussion. But if, as the late Sen Hatch said, the dozens in his own security detail were "like family", this would imply that Speaker Pelosi's detail would be much the same, and they would be intimately familiar with the habits and preferences of their protectees. Like, for instance, Paul Pelosi's normal associates and who he'd be likely to bring home late at night. My bet is that DePape was in the house because the security detail had let him in on Paul's implied OK.

At this point, I think the inevitable conclusion is that the whole narrative we've been given about the attack, the roles of Messrs Pelosi and DePape, and the SFPD response is the purest moonshine. Chief Scott's version, never credible in any form, becomes less so with each revision, and it suggests at minimum an astonishing lack of professionalism in that department. Certainly it would appear that Chief Scott was not promoted for his skill at communication. The best analysis I've seen so far is still the one I quoted yesterday:

Okay, so the Paul Pelosi story is not adding up...

My two theories so far are:

1. Jussie Smollett 2.0

2. Paul Pelosi got in a fight with his gay lover

— Samantha Marika (@samanthamarika1) October 28, 2022

Trouble Sure Seems To Follow Paul Pelosi Around, Doesn't It?

As of this morning, the lid looks to be well and truly down on the Paul Pelosi home invasion-hammer attack story. This must surely be the case if the first call he placed after his DUI accident last May was to the family fixer, after which we heard nothing that wasn't thoroughly massaged, cleaned, and spun. But never fear, J Edgar's here. That means we can be pretty sure we've learned all we're ever going to hear, despite the truly hinky narrative that trickled out Friday and Saturday.

Recognizing that we're dealing with something like the fog of war here, with garbled and incomplete reports based on misunderstandings, the story that's initally emerged just doesn't add up, start to finish. Here's what's implied about the start:

Suspect David DePape, 42, had broken into the home in the wee hours of Friday morning, demanding to see the powerful lawmaker, who was out of town, according to police.

I think if we were more careful, though, the most we'd be entitled to say would be Mr DePape was apparently in the home possibly demanding to see the Speaker -- exactly how he got in isn't explained, and this is the first mystery. The Speaker is third in line for the US presidency, as well as quite wealthy. We would expect a state-of-the-art security system, likely with cameras outside if not inside as well. The FBI and SFPD will certainly want to see footage, if only to suppress it. My wife and I have only middle-class security in our home, and a break-in would set off alarms at both the security company and the police department. The Pelosis didn't have even this?

L:et's move to the second level of hinky. From the same link,

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s elderly husband made a desperate 911 call early Friday from a bathroom in their multimillion-dollar San Francisco mansion, likely saving him from the deranged man who beat him with a hammer, authorities said.

Wait a moment. In this version, a deranged maniac has just invaded the Pelosi home, threatening 82-year-old Paul with a hammer -- and quick-thinking Paul, remembering his Boy Scout training, asks to use the bathroom? As I envision a home invasion and the sort of deranged maniac who'd do such a thing, his answer would be along the line of "bleep bleep bleep, motherbleep, bleep bleep, get on the floor!" No bathroom pass would be forthcoming, no matter how urgent the call.

Nevertheless, according to this narrative, the deranged maniac allows Paul his bathroom break, whereupon the plucky guy picks up his cell phone that had been on the charger, and according to the link,

he made the emergency call, speaking in “code” to a quick-thinking dispatcher.

Wait a moment. My life is in danger, but thanks to my Boy Scout training and presence of mind, I've made it to the bathroom, where I've shut and locked the door. Apparently the deranged maniac outside is satisfied for now that I'm taking care of business, but clearly, if my Boy Scout training is of any use, I must know I've got to act urgently, dial 911, and say something like, "My name is Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi. I'm at our home on 1313 Mockingbird Lane, and there's a deranged maniac threatening me with a hammer. I'm locked in the bathroom, but I don't know how long I can hold out. Send someone right away!"

No, not a bit of it. According to the link I've used so far, he spoke in code to a quick-thinking dispatcher.

“When you have an experienced dispatcher with good instincts, they learn how to read between the lines,” San Francisco Police Chief William Scott told reporters.

Various reports say that Pelosi somehow referred to DePape as a "friend", while the dispatcher also noted that Pelosi "seemed confused".

Pelosi left the call open while he confronted the suspect, Scott said. The dispatcher was able to tell something was amiss without Pelosi alarming the suspect, according to police.

“What’s going on? Why are you here? What are you doing to me?” Pelosi said while the dispatcher listened in.

The UK Daily Mail has more details on the call:

The operator could then be heard contacting police dispatch describing the incident: 'He states there is a male in the home and that he is going to wait for his wife. He stated that he doesn't know who the male is but that his name is David and that he is a friend. He sounded somewhat confused.'

Reports on Pelosi's May DUI in Napa suggest that when law enforcement initially arrived at the accident scene, he was barely able to walk or speak coherently, and I would surmise that he was in equivalent condition here, for what all that's worth. But the circumstances continue not to add up. A later version from SFPD Chief Scott appears to scramble the time line:

“So when the officers arrived and knocked on the front door of the residence this morning, the door was opened by someone inside,” Scott said. “And the officers observed through the open door Mr. Pelosi and the suspect, Mr. DePape, inside the entryway of the home.

The officers ordered Pelosi and DePape to drop the hammer and seemingly stood by as DePape attacked Pelosi, waiting until DePape “violently assaulted” Pelosi before disarming the suspect.

The story then quotes Scott directly:

At this time, the officers remained outside of the threshold of the home. And they observed Mr. Pelosi and Mr. DePape, each with one hand on a single hammer. It was one hammer that the officers observed. Officers, while still outside of the doorway threshold, gave commands to both men to drop the hammer. Mr. DePape immediately pulled the hammer away from Mr. Pelosi and violently attacked him with the hammer. The officers immediately entered, tackled the suspect, disarmed him, then took the hammer away from him and took the suspect, Mr. DePape, into custody.

So apparently there was a third party inside the house who opened the door for the police when they knocked, and at that point they saw a made-for-TV tableau of Pelosi (82 and often not in a position to struggle for anything) and DePape struggling with a hammer. Gee, who was the third party? I betcha the FBI and SFPD talked to him right away and have made very sure he stays quiet, huh? I assume the same goes for what must certainly be plenty of security footage.

But at the same time, this latest version from Chief Scott suggests the story of plucky Boy Scout Paul and the bathroom phone is no longer operative, though I don't think it was ever credible, and that may be why it's changed.

Then there's the separate question of the photo at the top of this post, which apparently shows the back entryway to the Pelosi home following the burglary -- except that the broken glass and debris from the purported burglary are on the outside of the door, suggesting they were broken later from the inside, not during initial entry. This is the sort of amateur criminal coverup that makes it to Forensic Files.

What to make of this?

Okay, so the Paul Pelosi story is not adding up...

My two theories so far are:

1. Jussie Smollett 2.0

2. Paul Pelosi got in a fight with his gay lover

— Samantha Marika (@samanthamarika1) October 28, 2022

I make no endorsement. On the other hand, my Spidey sense suggests to me that this is a fin de siècle sort of event in the same league as the assassination of the empress of Austria-Hungary in 1898, at a time when she'd been long estranged from her husband, Franz Josef. Speaker Pelosi is almost certainly going to be a lame duck after the mid-term elections next week. Even if we hear not one further word about the events in her home with J Edgar on the case, my guess is she will end any controversy and quietly resign as Speaker before her term officially expires.

UPDATE: This story in the Santa Monica Observer carries the most up-to-date speculation, labled clearly as such:

According to SFPD "RP [Reporting Person] stated that there's a male in the home and that he's going to wait for his wife. RP stated that he doesn't know who the male is but he advised that his name is David, and that he is a friend," the dispatch official said. "RP sounded somewhat confused."

It's been a rumor for years in SF that Paul Pelosi is gay. David Depape is said to be a Castro Nudist. "The lunatic who allegedly assaulted Paul Pelosi is a Berkeley resident and a 'Former Castro Nudist Protester' and hemp 'jewelry maker' ...sounds totally MAGA Republican to me.

. . . "Now tell me something. These people are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Nancy is third in line to the Presidency. You don't think they have the most amazing security? And by the way, when Pelosi was in that drunk driving accident, he had a young man with him, and that too was covered up by the police and the press."

Why Is He Hearing This On The Tarmac?

One of yesterday's stories caught my eye, but not for the reason it was reported.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday was caught on a hot mic saying Democrats are “going downhill” in Georgia.

Schumer was speaking in a huddle with President Biden on the tarmac about the midterm elections ahead of the president’s trip to New York.

“The state where we’re going downhill is Georgia,” Schumer told Biden. “It’s hard to believe that they will go for Herschel Walker.”

Republican commentators found this delicious, since it's an indication of where the November elections are headed. But the whole vignette raises a different question for me. We must assume Sen Schumer is referring to internal Democrat polling, which is generally thought to be more reliable, in part because it's paid for and thus more expensive than the free stuff you get from the media. But information has value. Valuable information is protected the same way we protect valuable merchandise or money itself.

It's just common sense to recognize that if a candidate's internal polling says he's behind, he keeps it quiet. He may use the information to tweak his campaign strategy in ways his opponent may not expect, and he certainly won't just release the information willy-nilly, because his opponent will simply take advantage of it. Thus we would normally expect this information to be kept confidential on a need-to-know basis, discussed only in closed-door meetings and carried around in designated folders.

So of course, the Senate majority leader conveys information at this level of value to the president in an open-air meeting on airport tarmac over an open mic so that media can pick it up. Of course. What else would you expect? I don't know who the other figures in this huddle are; the younger guy looking away in back is likely Secret Service, but there are two ladies in the group as well who must be high level aides of some sort. The postures of both Schumer and President Brandon indicate that this is a transfer of closely-held, up-to-the-minute information, as far as I can read this.

On an airport tarmac over an open mic. Nobody in the tableau seems the least bit uncomfortable that this isn't an appropriate place for the discussion.

• Apparently both Schumer and President Brandon are speaking as though this information is new. Has there been no other way this information could have been transmitted to the president earlier, other than via the Senate majority leader on an airport tarmac?
• The polls favoring Republicans have been in the news for some days. Is this the first President Brandon has learned of them?
• Wouldn't this information, readily available well before now, have normally already been the subject of strategy meetings involving the president and his closest aides?
• What does this say about the level of urgency in the White House over the upcoming elections?

Biden's performance at a Pennsylvania fundraiser last night is an indication of how seriously he's taking things:

Biden spoke at the Pennsylvania Democratic Party’s annual Independence Dinner. He was there with Kamala Harris.

Biden tried to argue that they had made “progress” but then his “progress” was just a big fat lie. He claimed that they’d brought gas prices down since he came into office — just demonstrably false. Gas is much higher than it was since he came into office and everyone knows it.

. . . He can’t seem to stop calling Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), “Mary Kay.”

. . . He also got Paul Pelosi’s name wrong.

. . . Biden spoke about going to all the “54 states” in 2018.

. . . At the end of his remarks, Biden went to the end of the stage and made a motion as though to jump off the stage. . . . Even after he doesn’t jump, you can still see [Vice President Harris] concerned he might, or that he might fall off the stage, as she reaches out to him. She seems to indicate to him to get away from the edge of the stage.

Yet again, I don't think the issue is dementia. He's aware of who he is, where he is, and generally what he's doing. There's no question he's aware he's a politician at a fundraiser; the issue is that he doesn't feel he should have to work hard enough even to read a few names correctly off a teleprompter. Indeed, I really think the business of pretending to jump off the stage was a little dig at his staff and his wife, who we must assume have scolded him about that sort of thing -- a private joke, funny to him, totally inappropriate for the circumstances.

Yet once more, this is not a medical issue. I think the short form is that he doesn't care, and neither, really, does Schumer at this stage.

Thinking About Harriman, JP Morgan, Alaska, And Siberia

In yesterday's post, I mentioned the puzzle of the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition, in which the rail magnate Edward Harriman sponsored a major scientific investigation of Alaska's coast. Nobody has so far been able to explain just why he did this -- the suggestion in yesterday's Wikipedia link was that his doctor said he needed a break. But Alice Roosevelt Longworth is said to have described Harriman as "a little brown man who never seemed to play", so it would be in character for him to turn for what others might seem to be a vacation into just an opportunity for a different sort of work.

Pierpont Morgan, a contemporary of Harriman and an equivalent figure, took an interest in Alaska at roughly the same time. The Kennicott [correct original spelling] copper deposit was discovered in July 1899, and by 1906, in response to the copper discovery as well as coal deposits not far away in south central Alaska,

the "Alaska Syndicate," was formed in 1906 by J. P. Morgan and Simon Guggenheim. The Syndicate purchased the Kennicott-Bonanza copper mine and had majority control of the Alaskan steamship and rail transportation. The syndicate also was in charge of a large part of the salmon industry.

The Alaska Syndicate faced intense scrutiny from Alaskans in favor of increased autonomy over their own affairs. The Syndicate, which divided its shares equally amongst M. Guggenheim & Sons and J.P. Morgan & Co., continued to buy up hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness, which gave rise to the notion that Alaska was "First a Colony of Russia, then a colony of Guggenmorgan". Forester and conservationist Gifford Pinchot led the charge against the Alaska Syndicate and the so-called "Morganheims" and their supporter in Washington, Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger.

However, at the same time, Theodore Roosevelt sided with the Foster-Pinchot faction, and also in 1906, he closed Alaska public land to coal mining, which in light of extensive coal deposits there, was and continues to be a severe limiting factor in the territory and state's economic development. Although the Morgan-Guggenheim Syndicate built a railroad that did extract copper ore from the Kennecott mine, they expected that the route would become a major artery from the coast to the Alaska interior as a result of more extensive development.

When this did not take place, they attempted to sell the railroad to the US government. The failure to accomplish this was a reflection of Morgan's decline in his later years, overshadowed by the loss of the Titanic not long before his death. The Kennecott Alaska copper mine was extremely profitable, especially since its most productive period corresponded with the need for copper during World War I. However, the deposit was exhausted by the time of the Great Depression, and anti-development policies in Alaska have effectively limited equivalent industry in much of the state. The abandoned mine facilities are now a national park, something of a commentary on the overall circumstances.

Even before Roosevelt's closing of the Alaska coal leases in 1906, his Justice Department had opposed both Harriman's and Morgan's rail management via lawsuits in 1904. My own view has come to regard Harriman's 1899 Alaska expedition as a fairly thorough investigation of not just the Alaska geography, but its political climate as well, and what sort of environment they might be for his business ventures. As yesterday's Wikipedia link suggests, some people at the time speculated that not only might he have intended a railroad to Alaska, but beyond that a rail connection to Siberia over the Bering Strait. (So far, there have been continuing proposals for a Bering Strait rail tunnel, but there has never been even an overland rail link to Alaska from the rest of North America).

I can't avoid thinking that if Harriman's Alaska expedition was a testing of the waters for any such scheme, his completely correct conclusion must have been that the time wasn't right, especially from a political point of view. Indeed, if the Morgan-Guggenheim Syndicate made a profit from the copper mine, the money they invested in the railroad they built to reach it would be an indication that their actual expectations for Alaska's economic potential were much greater, but they couldn't be supported in the political environment.

Thus Harriman's call as of the turn of the 20th century was correct; Morgan's wasn't. If Harriman saw the possibility of developing far eastern Siberia via a rail connection to Alaska, though, the idea may well have had merit over the very long run -- but politics would need to change in both the US and Russia. Undersea rail tunnels over distances like the Bering Strait have by now proven technically and economically feasible; the Seikan Tunnel in Japan and the Channel Tunnel are about half the length of a possible Bering Sea tunnel, but such a project is now a proven concept. The issue continues to be the political environment.

This is one reason I don't rule out the hypothetical maps of a future Russia that show eastern Siberia "ceded to US". If Antony Blinken and the inflencers around him see money in the whole prospect, it could happen.

Inklings Of Geostrategic Planning

If you do a web search on any phrase like "map of Russia in 2050" or something similar, you can find dozens of fanciful maps of how former Russian territory might be divided following the collapse of the Putin state. I've posted a few here now and then, and here's another one today. But so far, I've seen very little serious discussion of what any such outcome might actually be, even though every indication is that Russian military capability was wildly overestimated before the current war, while Russia's stockpile of obsolescent weapons and its available military manpower have now been seriously depleted.

In other words, the actual balance of world power is shifting big time as we watch. I've run into are a few early glimmers of analysis. In Foreign Policy yesterday:

For the first time, Iran is involved in a major war on the European continent. Iranian military advisors, most likely members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, are on the ground in occupied Ukraine—and possibly Belarus—to help Russia rain down deadly Iranian kamikaze drones on Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure.

. . . Tehran’s military support is already making its deadly mark on the war, but the geopolitical consequences extend much further. By escalating its support for Russia’s imperial attempt to subjugate Ukraine, Iran hopes to advance its own imperial project in the Middle East. Tehran will likely seek to leverage the deepening Russo-Iranian partnership into arms deals from Moscow while using lessons learned from the Ukrainian battlefield to perfect Iranian drone and missile capabilities. At the same time, the regime in Iran likely hopes that fueling the crisis in Ukraine will further distract the West from confronting Iran’s pursuit of hegemony in the Middle East. With any luck, however, Tehran’s foray into European power politics could help nudge Washington and its Western allies toward a more robust policy to counter Iran.

Unfortunately, that's about it as far as what the authors have to say on what this might mean, and I would think a bright sophomore majoring in international relations could come up with the same sort of thing. But wait a minute -- this is Foreign Policy, a chin-stroking, furrowed-brow publication that's firmly within the range of politically acceptable discourse. Hasn't the Obama-Biden policy been to tilt toward Iran and away from Israel? Yet at the moment, Iran is allied with Russia against Ukraine, a country we're treating as a NATO ally in all but name. Isn't this a contradiction? The authors don't say, and they don't go anywhere near the implications.

In Forbes on Monday, With Moscow Distracted, Xi Jinping Could Turn China’s Gaze To Russia:

As China’s Communist Party Congress wound to a close, China’s “Paramount Leader,” Xi Jinping, emerged stronger than ever. Granting himself a third five-year term, what remained of any internal opposition was ceremonially ushered out of the room. With Xi’s powerbase solid, the West is taking to the fainting couch, anticipating that Xi’s hardline approach towards China’s territorial ambitions will rapidly crystalize into a military confrontation over Taiwan, a key link in the strategic “first island chain” in the Pacific.

The threat is overstated. Even though Party delegates baked new anti-Taiwanese language into the Communist Party’s constitution, the real territorial temptation for China might be to the North, in the Russian Far East, where hundreds of thousands of ethnically Chinese Russian citizens, trapped in a substantially weakened and hollow dictatorship, could potentially be enticed to reconsider their options.

While there’s no way to know what Xi is thinking, China’s long-established pattern of behavior suggests that, as Russia redirects border security units to a grinding conflict in Ukraine, it is worth considering if China might be mulling expansionist contingencies to the north, along the sprawling and sparsely held 2,615 mile Russian frontier.

Again, that's about as far as the analysis in this piece goes, and like the piece in Foreign Policy and the fanciful map at the top of this post, they're worth what you're paying to read them. But they're raising a basic question that hardly anyone is asking: the Putin state is on the verge of collapse, its military resources are effectively depleted, and as of now, any second-rate power on its borders that chooses to exert territorial claims can do so successfully.

But in addition, some international authority will inevitably be needed to enforce order in any of several possible zones once the Ukraine war is settled and Russia becomes unstable. Some of the fanciful maps put the US in charge in far eastern Siberia; this one has Canada there. Some put China in Kamchatka; this one has Japan. One individual who had remarkable foresight was Edward Harriman (1848-1909), whose rail empire was dismantled under the Teddy Roosevelt administration, only to be completely restored by 1996. In 1899, he sponsored an elaborate expedition to Alaska, the purpose of which nobody has ever been able to discern fully:

Edward Harriman was one of the most powerful men in America and controlled several railroads. By early 1899, he was exhausted. His doctor told him that he needed a long vacation. Harriman went to Alaska to hunt Kodiak bears. Rather than go alone, he took a scientific community to explore and document the coast of Alaska.

He contacted Clinton Hart Merriam, the head of the Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy at the United States Department of Agriculture, and one of the founders of the National Geographic Society. Harriman told Merriam that he would cover the expenses of scientists, artists, and other experts who would join the voyage. He asked Merriam to choose the scientific party.

Historians question why Harriman wanted to go to Alaska. Some think he was considering developing Alaskan resources. Some think he was considering building a railroad to the Alaskan territory. Some people at the time openly wondered if he was going to buy Alaska, or build a railroad bridge from Alaska to Siberia — a railroad around the world. Nothing seemed impossible for Edward H. Harriman.

I've read several Harriman biographies, and none comes close to an answer to the question. Harriman worked himself to death before he could achieve many of his plans, but I've always thought it's significant that he had a Russia expert, the elder George F Kennan, as a close associate. My money is on the future maps that list far eastern Siberia as "ceded to US". . . .

So What Else Is New?

The overwhelming news this morning was Pennsylvania US Senate candidate John Fetterman's distressing performance in last night's debate with Dr Oz, starting with his opening statement, "Hi, goodnight everybody!" The conventional wisdom discussed his medical condition, although nobody has yet asked how a clearly robust 53-year-old man could suffer a stroke and what that might mean (I wouldn't rule out white powder). But leaving that aside, what we heard was word salad, whatever its cause. In his case, for instance,

My doctors, the real doctors that I believe, they all believe that I am ready to be served,

or,

I absolutely support fracking. . . . I do support fracking and — I don’t, I don’t, I support fracking, and I stand, and I do support fracking.

But how does this differ from Vice President Harris? For instance,

We invested an additional $12 billion into community banks, because we know community banks are in the community, and understand the needs and desires of that community as well as the talent and capacity of community,

or,

Our world is more interconnected and interdependent. That is especially true when it comes to the climate crisis, which is why we will work together, and continue to work together, to address these issues, to tackle these challenges, and to work together as we continue to work operating from the new norms, rules, and agreements, that we will convene to work together on to galvanize global action. With that I thank you all. This is a matter of urgent priority for all of us and I know we will work on this together.

Nobody so far has suggested the vice president has a medical condition. President Brandon, it's been suggested, has cognitive issues, but the question I have is how his version of word salad differs in any significant way from those of either Mr Fetterman or Ms Harris. For instance,

“The pandemic is over,” President Joe Biden declared in a Sunday interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes, eliciting enthusiastic head nods from some experts—and panic from others fighting to keep precautions at the forefront of American minds.

The quick quip made headlines. But Biden’s full quote wasn’t so simple, or straightforward.

“The pandemic is over, we still have a problem with COVID, we’re still doing a lot of work on it,” he told CBS’s Scott Pelley with nary a pause, while walking the floor of the Detroit Auto Show—the first in three years because of pandemic precautions.

“But the pandemic is over,” Biden continued. “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everyone seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing, and I think this is a perfect example of it."

or,

President Joe Biden fumbled his words during a Wednesday speech, appearing to say he commuted on Amtrak for 36 years as vice president.

His latest word salad came as Biden delivered an address in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

"I commuted [on Amtrak] every single day for 36 years as vice president of the United States after my wife and daughter were killed, I went home to see my family, never stopped," Biden said.

Or for that matter, Speaker Pelosi:

We saved the planet. We're saving the planet with record $360 Billion to save the planet.

The most credible theory for Speaker Pelosi is that she's usually drunk, and I would tend to agree. But whatever the theoretical causes, the practical results are the same in every case -- these people are all the creatures of their handlers, and they can't even read a straight text from a teleprompter. No matter how carefully they try to brief and cosset their subjects, the handlers must inevitably do after-action cleanup.

It reminds me of the remark by a UK commentator during the Liz Truss debacle: she compared the situation with Truss, Biden, and other world leaders to the chairs around a hotel swimming pool -- the chairs are empty, but people have left their sunglasses and towels on them to show they're taken and at some point, they mean to return. Fetterman, Harris, Biden, and Pelosi are all stand-ins, place holders for the people who actually occupy the chairs.

So far, I haven't seen another commentator who's pointed this out, especially about US figures. Whether the latest instance of a word salad politician causes anyone else to see the light is an open question.

It's Not Nice To Dis The Lizard People

I think we're seeing a puzzling phenomenon, which appears to be a schism within the lizard people. If I apply the sort of populist sociopolitical analysis pioneered by Ferdinand Lundberg and C Wright Mills, the best-credentialed member of the power elite currently in Washington is Secretary of State Antony Blinken, member of a wealthy and powerful upper-class family that's had political influence for at least two generations, but possibly more. His close ally is Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, with whom he has been and continues to be a partner in Pine Island Capital Partners, a "strategic partner" of Blinken's WestExec, a geopolitical consulting firm "comparable to Kissinger Associates".

Although Austin initially implemented predictable Biden policies like enforcing COVID measures in the armed forces and discouraging "extremist" views among members, since Putin's invasion of Ukraine, his near-exclusive focus has been managing US military policy vis-s-vis the Russia-Ukraine War in close concert with Secretary Blinken. This policy seems to be an an evolutionary development of State Department Russian policy originated by the younger George Kennan, an Averell Harriman protege; Kennan's great uncle, the elder George Kennan, had been a Russian adviser to Averell's father, the rail magnate Edward Harriman.

Thus we're seeing at least one faction of the lizard people following the generational pattern that's been analyzed by Lundberg, and in this instance among others, the motive is to follow the money -- and here, I can't disagree. We can complain that the 19th century robber barons got rich, but in getting rich, they inevitably promoted the general prosperity. Indeed, in the best cases, their descendants behaved prudently to preserve the family fortunes in the political environment via figures like Rockefeller Jr and the aforementioned Averell Harriman.

I think Blinken and the faction of the lizard people he represents have similar motives to the gilded-age robber barons, who among other things saw a capability in integrating the post-Civil War South into the northeastern US industrial economy. I think they see the same opportunities in Ukraine, and for that matter Belarus, Kaliningrad, and western Russia, which will be good for them and oh by the way good for the people in those regions. But being lizard people, you'd better not stand in their way.

Thus we see the congressional progressive caucus getting spanked:

'Progressive' Democrats have been slammed for penning an open letter to Joe Biden calling on him to negotiate a ceasefire in Ukraine with Vladimir Putin.

Thirty left-wing politicians - among them Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar - wrote to Biden on Monday saying that 'direct talks with Russia' to 'seek a rapid end to the conflict' should be his 'top priority'.

. . . That suggestion caused fury in Ukraine, with journalist Anastasiia Lapatina tweeting that 'Russia does not accept a sovereign Ukraine - how many times does this have to be reiterated?'

But they were quickly forced to "clarify":

The Congressional Progressive Caucus on Monday evening sought to couch a statement from earlier in the day requesting that President Biden shift his administration’s policies on Ukraine and start some form of negotiations with Russia.

. . . Several hours after the letter, which was first reported by The Washington Post, was released, the caucus sent a rare follow-up statement intended to fine-tune its original message.

“In a letter to President Biden today, my colleagues and I advocated for the administration to continue ongoing military and economic support for Ukrainians while pursuing diplomatic support to Ukraine to ensure we are helpful partners on efforts to reach ‘a solution that is acceptable to the people of Ukraine,” wrote [caucus chair Pramila] Jayapal.

. . . The initial correspondence was met with skepticism from some Democrats who questioned Jayapal’s leadership and motivation for calling for a new strategy. She sought to tweak her caucus’s stance, reaffirming her commitment to Biden’s foreign policy at a time when the party is facing divides over ideology and messaging on a number of fronts ahead of next month’s midterm elections.

Wait a moment -- isn't the Squad running the show? How can the party be "facing divides"? The story stresses,

The letter comes just two weeks before Election Day as Democrats struggle to find an economic message that resonates with voters.

but I don't think the election is the real issue -- the issue is the agenda, in which at this point the key priority is integrating western Russia and its remaining buffer states into the Western industrial economy. This opportunity arose after the 2020 election, and indeed in some measure as a result of it, when Putin and likely Xi miscalculated over who was running the US. They thought it was Biden.

That was a mistake.

UPDATE: The Progressive Caucus has gone farther and completely withdrawn the letter. I don't believe even Speaker Pelosi could have forced this. It came from whomever is actually running things.

Mirror Image Puzzles

Via the Washington Examiner,

President Joe Biden made good on his promise to host TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney at the White House Thursday.

"I get to sit down with Joe Biden with Now This News, and I get to ask him a few questions surrounding trans issues in the United States," Mulvaney said in a TikTok marking the 222nd day of Mulvaney's gender transition.

Mulvaney, a biological male who identifies as a transgender woman, said the purpose behind the interview was to represent the transgender community and wore the transgender flag colors, white, blue, and pink, to honor the community.

. . . The interview is set to air on Sunday.

The odd thing is Mulvaney's utter lack of gravitas (photo above). According to the web,

Mulvaney is well-known for chronicling her firsts as a woman in the “Days of Girlhood” series.

In the meantime, Mulvaney stated in the podcast of the cosmetics company Ulta, “The Beauty of…” with gender fluid celebrity hairstylist David Lopez, that she “wants to be a mom one day and I absolutely can, the narrative still has a long way to go.” she added.

Following the interview, a writer at Red State commented,

Sincerely, after watching Joe Biden’s latest interview, I could only come to the conclusion that our society is in a dark place, and it’s getting darker by the minute.

While people across the country are struggling with their bills and facing increases in violent crime, the President of the United States defended the mutilation of children while being interviewed by a man who believes he’s an underage “girl.”

Well, OK, whatever, but the writer misses an even bigger point, that we're in the home stretch to the November election, and even more critical for right now is that Russia is threatening escalation in Ukraine -- isn't that worth discussing? Transgenderism is a boutique issue even for Biden's base, but beyond that, with many ethnic groups abandoning the Democrats, Dylan Mulvaney rubs Latins in particular, but also many Asians, the wrong way -- just before they vote in key areas like Los Angeles, which may flip, if not specifically Republican, pro-social order and anti-woke.

You'd think that with the US Republican right threatening defection from the administration's Ukraine agenda following the election, Biden might take that on as an issue. It's almost a cliche, an easy call, but why can't Biden apostrophize Putin and the ultra-MAGA types with some tough-guy Ukraine talk? But it's plain that Secs Blinken and Austin have told him to stay out of it. So instead, he interviews with the most unserious, divisive figure possible two weeks before a key election. The story that's been put out is he'll make up his mind about 2024 after the results come in, but I think he's already been told.

But speaking of Ukraine, Kos at Daily Kos cites Russian milbloggers who point out a conundrum there:

GreyZone, the Telegram channel managed by Wagner mercenaries, is really frustrated. It doesn’t understand why, while Ukraine systematically uses HIMARS and artillery to degrade Russia’s military infrastructure, Russia would rather terrorize civilians with drone attacks. “This, by the way, is about the fact that the enemy stubbornly hit the bridge for three months, while we rejoice at the arrivals of [Iranian drones] that do not affect absolutely anything [in the war],” they wrote.

We’ve noted that from the beginning of the war—how key Ukrainian military infrastructure remains inexplicably intact (like the Ministry of Defense building in Kyiv!) while Russia lobs expensive missiles at civilian apartment complexes and playgrounds.

. . . Russia’s refusal to systematically hit key military targets, even [though] it clearly has the ability to do so, is one of the greatest mysteries of this war. What kind of perverted honor code spares some of the most important military targets, yet hits civilian bus stops, busy intersections at rush hour, and shopping malls?

The people in charge in both places are working against their own interests. Or at least, some of them. One faction of lizard people seems to be pursuing the only logical poiicy in Ukraine, and they've successfully cut another faction out of that process -- so the other faction has got Brandon playing footsie with Dylan Mulvaney. On the other hand, I can't remotely conceive of what might be going on in Russia.

The War Is Going To Widen

Via CBS News:

The U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division has been deployed to Europe for the first time in almost 80 years amid soaring tension between Russia and the American-led NATO military alliance. The light infantry unit, nicknamed the "Screaming Eagles," is trained to deploy on any battlefield in the world within hours, ready to fight.

CBS News joined the division's Deputy Commander, Brigadier General John Lubas, and Colonel Edwin Matthaidess, Commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, on a Black Hawk helicopter for the hour-long ride to the very edge of NATO territory — only around three miles from Romania's border with Ukraine.

. . . Skirting northward along Romania's Black Sea coast, the Black Hawk eventually touched down at a forward operating site where U.S. and Romanian troops were pounding targets during a joint ground and air assault exercise.

The tank rounds and artillery fire were real. The drill was meant to recreate the battles Ukraine's forces are fighting every day against Russian troops, just across the border. The war games so close to that border are a clear message to Russia and to America's NATO allies, that the U.S. Army is here.

We may assume that with the CBS reporters riding a helicopter with a general, the visit and even the precise wording of the report were fully approved by the Pentagon, and by extension both Secretaries Austin and Blinken. The president was in Delaware.

Meanwhile, from Gen Petraeus, who seems to be the unofficial spokesman for what has been communicated to Putin via channels, we hear:

Former #CIA director and ex-commander of #US and #NATO forces in Afghanistan David Petraeus does not rule out that a US-led multinational contingent may take part in the war in #Ukraine

— C4H10FO2P (@markito0171) October 22, 2022

The last we heard from Petraeus in this vein, it was to imply that the use of nukes in Ukraine would bring a strong US reaction, and this had been communicated to Putin. Opinion now seems to be that with Russia potentially planning to blow the Nova Kakhova dam as part of its retreat from western Kherson, the resulting flooding would represent a humanitarian disaster worse than a nuke, and by the way a war crime.

It appears that Western elites are more and more uncomfortable with ongoing Russian war crimes in Ukraine, which would include the civilian suffering resulting from destruction of the Ukrainian power grid during autumn and winter. There have been interesting comments on the reddit thread reacting to Petraeus's statement:

NATO intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo. It stopped the wars and forced a peace partly because of the unatable security situation caused in Europe. I think NATO has grounds to do intervene in meaningful way as it could be in the collective best interests of North Atlantic countries. In terms of peace, economics, and regional stability.

. . . Nevertheless, presuming what you are saying is "let's not use that as an excuse to not engage", I'd also like to see NATO members (if not the organization itself) with boots on the ground on a volunteer basis.

Even better would be recent NATO intervention performed at the behest or with the approval of the Security Council such as has happened several times in recent history. But clearly that's not going to happen with Russia in the council.

The question I've had from the start, and I've been raising it here, is that any conceivable end state for the war is going to require international enforcement. Even if Ukraine is able to push Russia back to the pre-2014 borders using only current levels of Western aid, that won't solve anything -- Putinist Russia will simply rearm and stage continuing provocations indefinitely, resulting in an even less tenable situation in Europe than was caused by Bosnia and Kosovo.

I've got to assume the lizard people have figured this out and will move to restore stability sooner rather than later. In fact, I think they've even figured it out by now that a "negotiated settlement" that simply restores a status quo ante February 24 won't work, either. One way or another, NATO will be directly involved. There's going to be a need to get this fixed.

Yeah, He's Already Been Told

Scary clip

BIDEN: "It's my intention to run again."

MSNBC: "Dr. Biden is for it?"

BIDEN: crickets

MSNBC: "Mr. President?"

BIDEN: "Dr. Biden thinks that uh, my wife thinks that uh, that I uh, that, that we're, that we're doing something very important."pic.twitter.com/lPVyEi2kv3

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) October 21, 2022

When I think back on my corporate career, I remember case after case where the Senior VP, or whatever the big boss's title was, had been told he was no longer needed. At that level, they were never escorted out the door, but it was plain they had only weeks remaining. Still, they were allowed to keep up appearances until the end. But you could read the signs. They didn't show up at the planning meeting for next fiscal year, for instance.

Rhetorically, President Brandon's remarks in the interview linked above give the game away: "It's my intention to run again." Not "Don't be silly, of course!" Instead, after a peculiarly worded question, "Dr. Biden is for it?", silence.

"Dr Biden" had nothing to do with the decision. I'm not sure how it was delivered. My estimate is that Secretary Blinken is the highest-ranking, if not the only, lizard person in the administration, and as I've said, I think he has status comparable to Averell Harriman or Nelson Rockefeller. I also think he's fed up with Joe Brandon, who's proven incapable of speaking from his assigned script, to the point where in the current diplomatic environment he's dangerous.

I would theorize that the decision was conveyed via Mr Klain in impersonal, passive-voice terms, it was delivered recently, and it's final. It's looking like the November elections are going to be worse for Democrats tjhan anyone predicted, and with Republicans in committee roles, Hunter will be a focus. The only way to salvage 2024 will be to remove Brandon as a target. Lame duck status also distances the US from future ill-considered remarks that might otherwise be provocative.

In fact, he did the job he was hired for, which was to get rid of Trump in 2020. The whole Democrat strategy was Götterdämmerung, if the world is about to end, then let's run up the credit cards and enjoy ourselves while we can. But the world didn't end after all, the bills still have to be paid, and they didn't even get rid of Trump.

The awkard silence in the interview came as the big guy relived the moment he was told he wasn't running. He didn't even have the chance to invoke Dr Jill.

The Thing About Zelensky

As I suggested yesterday, the world globalist consensus doesn't know quite what to do with President Zelensky. Leading up to February 24, the conventional wisdom across the board was that Russia would reach Kyiv within days, and the humane option was to offer Zelensky and his circle rides out on C-130s. When he refused to do this, it took policymakers by surprise and created an instant bien pensant consensus in favor of Ukraine, without a whole lot of reflection on what this might imply. Witness just this tweet from last night:

At fundraiser tonight, @POTUS blasted GOP for potentially scaling down aid to Ukraine. “It's a lot bigger than Ukraine. It's Eastern Europe. It's NATO. It's real serious, serious consequential outcomes. They have no sense of American foreign policy."

— Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) October 20, 2022

But wait, up to late February, American foreign policy was to offer Zelensky a ride out, wasn't it?

The Associated Press reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected an offer to be evacuated from the U.S. government. Zelenskyy's reply, according to a senior American intelligence official: "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

At least, we may infer that a ride was what the US officially offered, and a "senior intelligence official" was aware of the reply. I would say that this almost immediately put the US foreign policy establishment in a bind -- in the wake of the disaster in Kabul, they couldn't risk a repeat, at least not so soon. This was the start of a pattern whereby Zelensky could use his charisma and his underdog status to force policy decisions on Western politicians that they were in fact reluctant to make. Months later, the US president has done an effective 180, accusing Republicans of not being with the program:

It's a lot bigger than Ukraine. It's Eastern Europe. It's NATO. It's real serious, serious consequential outcomes. They have no sense of American foreign policy.

But this isn't the only area where Zelensky has been forcing changes. Consider dcevelopments over Iran's new involvement in the Ukraine war vis-s-vis former US Iran policy:

During his initial presidential campaign in 2007-08, Barack Obama repeatedly declared his intention to improve US-Iran relations, and he followed through after taking office. However, President Obama took a different approach than his predecessors. Previous US-Iran engagements maintained the US-stated intention of changing the nature of the Islamic regime in Iran, seeking global improvement on a host of issues, and kept the threat of military force ever-present. . . . Obama sought to assure not only the Iranian people but also its leadership that Washington’s intention was not to alter the nature of the Islamic Republic, but to engage the leadership in Tehran through dialogue and multilateralism. He narrowed the topic to encouraging a behavioral change on the specific issue of nuclear fuel enrichment. The US president’s policy approach to Iran’s nuclear question is the best-applied example of what is now known as the Obama Doctrine.

In 2018, Trump backed out of the Obama nuclear deal, but Biden's somewhat vague intent has been

to get Iran to return to compliance with the technical nuclear aspects of the agreement. The second is to commence additional negotiations on three areas beyond the JCPOA: Iran’s ballistic-missile development, its malign activities in the region, and extending timelines on some aspects of its civil nuclear activities.

But now the US is officially acknowkedging that Iran is directly supporting the Russian side in the Ukraine war:

The White House confirmed on October 20 that Iranian military personnel are in Russian-occupied Crimea, Ukraine, to assist Russian forces in conducting drone attacks on Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure. US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that “a relatively small number” of Iranian personnel are in Crimea to train Russian personnel in the use of unfamiliar Iranian-made drones. Kirby emphasized that “Tehran is now directly engaged on the ground and through the provision of weapons that are impacting civilians and civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, that are killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure in Ukraine” and warned that Russia and Iran will continue to lie about their partnership.

At minimum, this makes the Biden foreign policy prospect of a grand deal on the Middle East brokered with the concurrence of Iran even more remote, but with the radical shift in the balance of power illustrated by the Russian collapse in Ukraine, if Iran comes in on the Russian side, this also lowers its world standing. From the Jerusalem Post:

Iran’s increasing role in backing Russia has increased awareness of Iranian threats. This illustrates that although the Islamic Republic was involved in human-rights abuses in Iraq and Syria, backing Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah, and carrying out attacks all over the Middle East, threatening the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, US forces, Turkish forces in Iraq and others, it is Iran’s role in helping Russia that has tipped the scales against itself.

. . . Iran’s crackdown on protests and its decision to grow closer to Russia, at a time when the West is angered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, appears to be a final straw regarding any appeasement of Tehran. Now, it is clear that Iran’s threats won’t remain in the Middle East and that working with it hasn’t helped. Instead, it empowered Tehran to work with Moscow, which is using Iranian-style weapons to kill civilians in Ukraine.

These developments can all be traced back to Zelensky and his leadership in the war. He's actually had wide-ranging impact on global policy, and I have an inkling that most globalists haven't been very comfortable with him. He's an extremely skilled actor with Ukraine's interests primarily, if not exclusively, in mind, and where these conflict with globalist interests, he won't hesitate to resist, which he's shown he can effectively do.

The Lizard People Aren't Happy About Ukraine, And They Think It's Biden's Fault

I've seen some intriguing data points over the past day that are giving me some ideas about what the people who really run the show are thinking. First, the US State Department, Antony Blinken (net worth $65 million, although the Blinken family controls far more), Secretary, has had to spank President Brandon yet again for un-vetted remarks:

Biden made the offending comments at a Democrat Party event at a private home in California last week.

Offering disorganized remarks commenting on nuclear weapons generally, Biden mentioned Pakistan amid boasting yet again that he has a close personal relationship with dictator Xi Jinping of China.

. . . “This is a guy [Xi] who understands what he wants but has an enormous, enormous array of problems. How do we handle that?” the president asked. “How do we handle that relative to what’s going on in Russia? And what I think is maybe one of the most dangerous nations in the world: Pakistan. Nuclear weapons without any cohesion.”

. . . Following the publication of the event’s official transcript, Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry immediately summoned the U.S. Ambassador to Islamabad Donal Blome and requested the ambassador deliver a demarche on President Biden’s comments.

. . . Principal Deputy Spokesperson of the U.S. Department of State Vendal Patel addressed the growing scandal on Tuesday, telling reporters, “the United States is confident of Pakistan’s commitment and its ability to secure nuclear assets.”

The problem with weird Uncle Joe is that not only does he fondle nymphets and sniff their hair at whim, but he runs his mouth uncontrollably, and this is starting to look dangerous:

President Joe Biden and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are slated to attend next month’s G-20 summit in Indonesia, setting up the possibility of a high-stakes face off in the midst of an increasingly deadly Moscow invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. officials are taking steps to ensure that doesn’t happen.

The story delicately skirts the question of how the anonymous "US officials" feel about the potential for spontaneous gaffes from the big guy that could lead the already unpredictable Putin to escalate, but the problem must certainly be behind their maneuvers.

It can’t be ruled out that Biden and Putin might cross paths at some point during the November summit, according to officials who note that the two men may, at some point, attend the same large plenary gathering. But U.S. officials have ruled out a formal meeting and are taking steps to ensure that the American president does not encounter his Russian counterpart in a hallway or even in a leaders’ group photo.

I'll grant that some Harvard alums do show prudence and common sense. After two years, they've got Biden's measure, and they've remembered Stein's Law: that which cannot continue must stop. Other indications show behind-the-scenes discomfort with how difficult it is to control his runaweay mouth. This story quotes the New York Times behind a paywall:

After Mr. Biden delivered a nearly two-hour news conference in January, members of his senior staff were rehashing the appearance in the Treaty Room when the first lady appeared.

She pointedly asked the group, which included the president, why nobody stepped in to stop it, according to a person who was in the room. Where was the person, she demanded, who was supposed to end the news conference?

The story goes on,

As the New York Post observed, that was the infamous [January 20, 2022] presser where Joe Biden greatly alarmed Ukraine by appearing to greenlight a “minor incursion” into the country by Russia, the latter of which was already sending strong signals that they would do much more than that. His handlers had to step in on to rescue Joe on that statement, too.

. . . It’s no wonder there are reports swirling of “contingency plans” being put in place by Democrats ahead of 2024. Joe Biden is a man who is simply not in control much anymore in any meaningful way, not in what he says nor in the way he behaves around others, all of which again raises the question as to just who or what group of people are actually taking the lead in the absence of his failures to do so?

The Lizard People are not happy about Ukraine. The hard-core globalists don't like the unpredictability -- the post-World War II balance of power has completely disappeared, while what the world will look like going forward isn't clear at all. The war itrself is a distraction, forcing choices over matters like green energy that the globalists don't want on the agenda. Beyond that, it's brought forward a charismatic and unpredictable leader in President Zelensky who is effectively forcing an independent diplomatic and military agenda on NATO and the EU. At the same time, feckless and colorless Western leadership in figures like Biden and Liz Truss damages the existing consensus.

I think if you were to press the globalists, they wouldn't be that far from the US Right in opposing Western aid to Ukraine. But with the damage done, they'll likely be insistent on seeing the Russians ejected quickly and some form of new, if temporary and inadequate, order imposed.

And it's not hard to trace responsibility for the Ukraine problem ito Biden's disastrous retreat from Afghanistan and smaller issues like his "minor incursion" remarks. As I've said before, Antony Blinken is a member of the power elite comparable to Averell Harriman and Nelson Rockefeller in a prior generation. I think the lizard people have made up their minds; they may even be forced to back a Republican in 2024. At least, a Republican of the right sort.

How Francis Fukuyama Helped Me To Understand The Force

I had one of those nights last night when I woke up with the feeling I hadn't fully figured something out. It clearly stemmed from Francis Fukuyama's Atlantic essay that I linked yesterday. I would summarize it via the following excerpts. First,

[Russia and China] were the vanguard of a broader authoritarian wave that turned back democratic gains across the globe, from Myanmar to Tunisia to Hungary to El Salvador.

But we mustn't lose heart. Indeed,

The long-term progress of modern institutions is neither linear nor automatic. Over the years, we have seen huge setbacks to the progress of liberal and democratic institutions, with the rise of fascism and communism in the 1930s, or the military coups and oil crises of the 1960s and ’70s. And yet, liberal democracy has endured and come back repeatedly, because the alternatives are so bad. . . . When I wrote an article in 1989 and a book in 1992 with ["the end of history"] in the title, I noted that the Marxist version was clearly wrong and that there didn’t seem to be a higher alternative to liberal democracy. We’ve seen frightening reversals to the progress of liberal democracy over the past 15 years, but setbacks do not mean that the underlying narrative is wrong. None of the proffered alternatives look like they’re doing any better.

So we get to the first inklings of a puzzle: authoritarian systems seem to have gained ground, and progress is neither linear nor automatic, but there's an "underlying narrative". Isn't that peculiar? We have an educated consensus that the world is essentially random (for example, in Darwinian theory), but there's nevertheless an "underlying narrative" that resulted in homo sapiens and eventually his Whig institutions, sort of. Don't ask me to explain, but Mr Fukuyama has apparently signed on to this. And he cites Hegel as his authority, which is important.

This is simply because Hegel has an "underlying narrative" that's generally consistent with 19th-century bourgeois secular optimism, and Hegelian dialectic is at the root of Fukuyama's confusion. I went looking for an explanation of Hegelian dialectic and found this in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

“Dialectics” is a term used to describe a method of philosophical argument that involves some sort of contradictory process between opposing sides. In what is perhaps the most classic version of “dialectics”, the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato. . . . [t]he back-and-forth dialectic between Socrates and his interlocutors thus becomes Plato’s way of arguing against the earlier, less sophisticated views or positions and for the more sophisticated ones later.

Whereas Plato’s “opposing sides” were people (Socrates and his interlocutors), however, what the “opposing sides” are in Hegel’s work depends on the subject matter he discusses.

. . . Note that, although Hegel acknowledged that his dialectical method was part of a philosophical tradition stretching back to Plato, he criticized Plato’s version of dialectics. He argued that Plato’s dialectics deals only with limited philosophical claims and is unable to get beyond skepticism or nothingness. . . . Hegel argues that, because Plato’s dialectics cannot get beyond arbitrariness and skepticism, it generates only approximate truths, and falls short of being a genuine science.

. . . Dialectics drives to the “Absolute”, to use Hegel’s term, which is the last, final, and completely all-encompassing or unconditioned concept or form in the relevant subject matter under discussion (logic, phenomenology, ethics/politics and so on).

So where Plato via Socrates will go only so far as to say, "this is absurd, it's a contradiction, we can't go there", Hegel says yes, we certainly can, because something new, inexorable, and absolute will arise from this contradiction. For Fukuyama, this is Whig History, "the rise of constitutional government, personal freedoms and scientific progress" as a teleological process, the "underlying narrative".

The problem for Fukuyama throughout the essay is that there are too many real-world obstacles to his Whig underlying narrative -- and of these, the greatest is Donald Trump, of all people.

Celebrations of the rise of strong states and the decline of liberal democracy are thus very premature. Liberal democracy, precisely because it distributes power and relies on consent of the governed, is in much better shape globally than many people think. Despite recent gains by populist parties in Sweden and Italy, most countries in Europe still enjoy a strong degree of social consensus.

The big question mark remains, unfortunately, the United States. Some 30 to 35 percent of its voters continue to believe the false narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and the Republican Party has been taken over by Donald Trump’s MAGA followers, who are doing their best to put election deniers in positions of power around the country. This group does not represent a majority of the country but is likely to regain control of at least the House of Representatives this November, and possibly the presidency in 2024.

Here's where I would raise my hand in the question period. "Mr Fukuyama, on one hand, you cite Hegel, who argues that the process of dialectics works of necessity to drive us to the absolute and unconditioned form of ethics/politics. Yet at the same time you see a need to struggle, as though this were a matter under question, and we in the US must struggle against Trump just as Ukraine struggles against Putin. But if there's an underlying narrative that the Whigs will prevail, why should we go to all this effort?"

And I could finally go back to sleep when I realized that Mr Fukuyama's answer would be, "Trust the Force, Luke!"

May the Force be with you all.

Francis Fukuyama Still Thinks History Is Over

In a piece at The Atlantic, More Proof That This Really Is the End of History, Francis Fukuyama doubles down:

The philosopher Hegel coined the phrase the end of history to refer to the liberal state’s rise out of the French Revolution as the goal or direction toward which historical progress was trending. For many decades after that, Marxists would borrow from Hegel and assert that the true end of history would be a communist utopia. When I wrote an article in 1989 and a book in 1992 with this phrase in the title, I noted that the Marxist version was clearly wrong and that there didn’t seem to be a higher alternative to liberal democracy.

But why should there be only two alternatives, Hegel-Fukuyama and Marxism? When I first posted about Mr Fukuyama here, I suggested that Osama bin Laden needed to hear that message but clearly didn't. And although Marxism has reverted to the parlor and the faculty lounge where it had been before 1917, this hasn't cured the problem of big-state authoritarianism, something the Ukraine war highlights. Fukuyama more or less acknowledges this when he continues,

We’ve seen frightening reversals to the progress of liberal democracy over the past 15 years, but setbacks do not mean that the underlying narrative is wrong. None of the proffered alternatives look like they’re doing any better.

The Russo-Ukraine War provides a distraction that lets him pull a sleight of hand. Marxism turns into Russia like a knife turns into a fork:

Putin’s bad decision making and shallow support has produced one of the biggest strategic blunders in living memory. Far from demonstrating its greatness and recovering its empire, Russia has become a global object of ridicule, and will endure further humiliations at the hands of Ukraine in the coming weeks.

But Russian military weakness is nothing new; it was illustrated in the Crimean War, the 1905 war with Japan, and again in 1914. Just because Russia didn't blunder in living memory doesn't mean it's never blundered, and if anything, it was more effective militarily under Marxism than under the alternatives.

My own thinking as it's developed here is that the process we're seeing is a reversion to the power structure in northeast Europe before the rise of the Russian state, a domination by Swedish-Nordic, Lithuanian, and Polish empires that will assert economic control over Belarus, Ukraine, and likely western Russia. But wait: doesn't this actually mean that history will continue, it isn't over?

And another, related question: will the EU expand into some sort of uber-liberal continental or even world democracy? And will that vindicate Hegel-Fukuyama? I have two reservations. One is that Brexit has already shown there are fissures in that consensus. The second is that even if it's claimed that the Russo-Finnish War has strengthened the EU, there are bothersome questions that will emerge once it's settled. For instance, the EU has adopted policies that not only discourage fossil fuels, but they now wish to discourage use of nitrate fertilizer, which has caused conflict with farmers in the Netherlands. How will President Zelensky react when Ukraine defeats Russia and joins the EU, only to find the EU seeking actively to reduce Ukraine's agricultural prosperity in the name of climate? How will this differ from Putin's aim to reduce Ukraine's prosperity in the name of Russia?

This brings us to the issue of whether there are alternate credible end states to an inevitable worldwide liberal democracy, which is Fukuyama's conclusion. (And isn't this just a variation on the old chestnut of the Whig Interpretation of history?) At this point, we might say there's a globalist consensus in favor of what I would call neo-Malthusianism. Classical Malthusianism is "the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population die off."

Neo-Malthusianism is an attempt to deal with the proven falsity of the premise that the growth of the food supply is linear -- development of fertilizer and pesticides, improved preservation and transportation, and modern cultivation have shown conclusively that this is not the case. Neo-Malthusianism is an attempt to revert to the notion that other resources besides the food supply are linear, except that to avoid a population die-off (i.e., the death of the planet), we now need to reduce either global population or global prosperity in an artificial and not fully specified but drastic way (at least, not specified explicitly right now).

And there are other conflicts that have yet to be resolved. We're witnessing the collapse of Protestantism. Will fallout from the Russo-Ukraine war lead to a schism within Orthodoxy that has an equivalent effect? What will it be? And whatever the outcome, isn't the study of such trends as they continue the legitimate province of historians? So beyond Mr Fukuyama's questionable argument that history is leading inevitably to worldwide liberal democracy, there's a whole separate question of what possible systems and their concomitant disasters we'll encounter on the way.

Heck, things are only just now starting to get interesting.

He's Been Doing It All Along

Just for fun, I did a google search this morning on "Biden sniffing hair" to see if anyone had anything intelligent to say about last weekend's episodes, and the messages above came up -- "It looks like the results below are changing quickly". This is actually the first I've ever seen this message on a search, which suggests more people than usual are looking it up -- but nobody has anything new to say about it. However, this tweet from last July suggests it's been going on steadily in the background and has never really stopped, despite the big guy's 2019 promise to abstain:

Dad ran into Joe on a biking trail in Delaware and got a live sniffing video lmfao pic.twitter.com/qz9KuEzN9E

— martman (@big__marty) July 10, 2022

This raises a question of etiquette if nothing else. A year ago, Brandon caused a minor stir when he put his hand on Prince William's shoulder during a visit to the UK. One does not touch the royals. Indeed, I assume there's a generally similar rule with the US Secret Service: the president may venture into a crowd and shake hands, but the overall conditions must certainly be circumscribed, and the agents must be carefully surveying all those nearby for any signs of hinky intent.

I've got to assume that if any member of the public approached the president intending to sniff his hair, he'd be taken down in an instant. This makes me wonder, in fact, what the precise circumstances were surrounding the famous public embrace between Bill and Monica -- would an ordinary member of the public be able to do that or anything like it? What did the secret secret service know?

And this brings up the question I had yesterday: who was the middle-aged woman in the jacket next to Brandon while he fondled and sniffed the girls at the table? Was she some sort of minder over and above the obvious Secret Service? Why did she seem initially to reach her hand out to restrain him and then think better of it, turning apparently to fuss with the fan instead? Might Brandon and the nation be better served if there were a permanent Easter Bunny designated to remain at his side and usher him away from nymphets?

Why are we even having to ask these questions? And why hasn't anyone said anything about this?