In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

On Good Friday, the White House issued this proclamation : NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility. I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity. On one hand, OK, this isn't anything new : Republicans are taking aim at President Joe Biden for proclaiming Easter Sunday as the Transgender Day of Visibility, though the two days only coincided this year by chance. The Transgender Day of Visibility, which was started in 2009 as a day of awareness to celebrate the successes of transgender and gender-nonconforming people, is held annually on March 31. The date of Easter, meanwhile, changes from year to year. But sever...

I mused briefly yesterday on why the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse seems to have captured media attention well beyond similar episodes like the Sunshine Skyway bridge collapse of 1980, in which 35 were killed, amd the 2007 Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse, in which 13 were killed. In contraast, only 6 are missing and presumed dead in Baltimore, while a potential story of competence by law enforcement, which was able to close the bridge to traffic within minutes' notice of the runaway container ship, is lost in the shuffle. Instead, the story from Tuesday is still trending today, and not only that , Even before most Americans woke up Tuesday morning to news of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, wild conspiracy theories about what supposedly had “really” happened were running rampant online. The claims ranged from a cyber-attack or a ship captain impaired by side effects from Covid-19 vaccines being responsible for the crash – to claims that Israel...

A new Fox poll is out, which this analysis sums up : If the new Fox News poll is accurate, it should be sending off warning bells to Joe Biden because there are multiple elements that indicate big trouble for him. The first is that former President Donald Trump has extended his lead over Biden in their survey. He's now up by five points in the head-to-head numbers, as well as five points ahead of Biden even when adding in the other party candidates. According to Interactive Polls this is the largest lead ever for Trump in Fox polling. Nobody seems to have pointed this out, but the answer is in two words: Fani Willis. Trump's slow but steady rise in the polls is continuing, but the big thing that's been driving it since last fall has been the lawfare cases against him, which are continuing to backfire. I've noted here that Alan Dershowitz, one of the people who invented the Chicago Seven strategy for turning trials into street theater, has recognized that thi...

One feature of all the Trump criminal trials so far has been that as the date for each approaches, new and often lurid details surface that throw their credibility into doubt. This certainly happened in Fulton County, and it looks like something similar may occur in New York as well. I think this is an inevitable result of the slapdash nature of all the cases, thrown together for indictments in the middle of 2023 in hopes of securing convictions in one or more of them, first by the 2024 primary season, and then by the November election. So far, this isn't working out as planned. We probably have some vague recollection of Michael Avenatti , pictured with his onetime client, the porn actress Stormy Daniels, above: Michael John Avenatti (born February 16, 1971) is an American former attorney and convicted felon, currently incarcerated in federal prison at FCI Terminal Island. He is best known for his legal representation of adult film actress Stormy Daniels in lawsuits against ...

I've made a couple of recent posts on Alan Dershowitz's red line from a YouTube broadcast last week : If you stop supplying ammunition and arms to Israel and deny them the right to defend themselves, you have crossed my red line. I hope that doesn't happen. I now have a more open mind than I ever thought I would have about whom I will vote for in this election. The Democratic Party cannot take me, the people who listen to me, the people who vote the way I do, they can't take us for granted, sorry. As of yesterday, there was a sorta-kinda answer from a "senior defense official" via Breitbart: Regarding the question about security assistance, you know, security assistance, which is a longstanding feature of the U.S. Israel relationship and the U.S. Commitment Israel security, it has flowed more rapidly than ever since the attacks of October 7th. And the secretary ensures — said very clearly that we will continue to stand up for Israel’s right to d...

There's a consensus that the Biden administration is shfting its policy away from supporting Israel. Via Politico on Kamala's threats of "consequences" over the weekend : [I]n the interview this weekend, she didn’t dismiss a possible backlash as the administration continues to warn Israel against a major invasion of Rafah. The West Wing has supported Harris’ willingness to nudge out slightly ahead of Biden, who spent decades as one of the Senate’s foremost supporters of Israel and has been loath to appear like he is turning his back on the country even amid his growing disdain for its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, two administration officials not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions said Harris’ remarks have created more space for Biden to slowly — and privately — offer his own rebukes of Netanyahu and his conduct of the war. But the prevailing stance inside the administration is that Biden and Harris are reading from the s...

I posted last week on what seemed to be an unaccustomed flurry of activity on The President's Public Schedule following the State of the Union address. But this past weekend he seems to have reverted to his normal pattern of leaving for Delaware on Friday and returning Sunday night or Monday morning. I've expressed my doubts that he could keep the earlier schedule up for long. Beyond that, he seems to have begun to rely on Vice President Harris as a surrogate. As of this morning in The Washington Post , As the campaign for the White House intensifies, Harris has been thrust to the forefront of President Biden’s efforts to hang on to young and minority voters — groups that are vital to his reelection but that may be losing enthusiasm for his candidacy. This month, Harris has championed a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in Nevada, discussed marijuana legalization in the White House with rapper Fat Joe, and called for a cease-fire in Gaza at a com...

Over the past couple of days, I've seen two references to a potential problem for Trump, even if he continues to do well in the polls, if enough Republicans resign from the House to give the majority to the Democrats . Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) will retire from the House months before his term ends next year, setting up a scenario where House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) could have a one-seat majority. . . . Gallagher's departure will bring a math problem for Johnson as the chamber seeks to fill a slew of other vacancies announced over the last few months. As of next week, there are four empty seats vacated by Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Bill Johnson (R-OH), Brian Higgins (D-NY), and Ken Buck (R-CO), whose last day in office was Friday. With Gallagher's absence, that brings the Republicans' majority to 217-213 as of April 19. That will be further narrowed for Republicans after the special election for Higgins, which is expected to favor Democrats, bringing th...

Following up on yesterday's post, I've found a few more data points that make me think Joe is actually driving key parts of foreign and military policy himself, although it's in the context of Robert Gates's assessment, "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” On Ukraine, Seymour Hersh remarks on Substack , President Biden’s foreign policy problems in the Middle East and Ukraine are daunting, especially in an election year, but the war between Russia and Ukraine could be nearing a military endgame, and not via negotiations. Vladimir Putin’s military is more entrenched inside Ukraine than ever, and the undermanned and under-equipped Ukraine military is facing a stalemate at best and the permanent loss of four oblasts. In essence, it is a defeat. . . . Even amid a difficult and costly war that he initiated, Putin remains firmly in control of Russia, despite a series of Wes...

Sometime around February, it looks like the message started to go out to Democrats: we're backing off Israel. My reflexive attitude up to this week had been that this was the brainchild of the big guy's handlers, and they were just feeding him talking points. Now, I'm not so sure. What's changed my mind starts with a Fox News op-ed from Clinton pollster Mark Penn : Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., set off a firestorm of his own making last week as he decided to intervene in Israeli politics by telling Israel to abandon its leader right in the middle of sensitive negotiations with Hamas. I don’t think Schumer will do that again. He heard from pretty much the world and it’s clear that Schumer is out of touch with Israel or he would have known that telling Israelis what to do is likely to produce the opposite result. But OK, here's Schumer, apparently not a very observant Jew, but a Jew nonetheless, who represents New York Jews, an important cons...

Over the past couple of weeks, I thought I was beginning to see a pattarn of increased activity from the big guy, if only due to the increased coverage of his fumbles and gaffes on the road. It turns out I was right, I checked his daily public schedule . Yesterday and today, he's in Texas. Tuesday,, he was in Arizona. On Saturday, he gave the Gridiron Club address; on Sunday, he had St Patrick's Day activities. Last week, he was in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Michigan. There's been a flurry of activity ever since the State of the Union, but before that, it was business as usual, long weekends at Camp David or in Wilmington. although there were similar campaign trips in February. This is in major contrast to his schedule last year; via the Washington Times , Leisure time has become a factor in the White House — and the Republican Party is tracking the trajectory of it while providing the damning numbers as well. “President Biden requires a lot of vacation. In...

He begins his discussion above: The war in Gaza is becoming a major issue in the American political campaign. . . . What we're seeing is a very, very nasty debate over support for Israel, with the hard left of the Democratic Party saying to President Biden that they're not going to vote for him if he continues to support Israel, and there's no way, even if Biden were to abandon Israel, there's no way he would ever give the hard left enough. They don't want a cease fire, they want the end of Israel. . . . They don't want a two-state solution. The problem is that Biden has a two-state solution. His two states, however, are Michigan and Minnesota. . . . He's particularly focused on Michigan, because Michigan, has a population of several hundred thousand Muslims and Arabs, who will never be satisfied with a president who supports Israel in any way, and the ceasefire is just a pretext. This is a continuation of the Democrat dilemma since the 1960s: as ...

I'm a little puzzled at Dick and Liz Cheney. The Buish dynasty's time has come and gone, the Bush family itself seems to have decided to keep quiet, but the Cheneys are raging on. Last week, "Sleazy" Liz Cheney Loses It After Bombshell Report Claims She "Suppressed Exonerating Evidence" With J6 Committee , The story refers to a Mollie Hemingway piece in The Federalist that claims she helped the January 6 committee suppress exculpatory evidence for Trump: Cheney and her committee falsely claimed they had “no evidence” to support Trump officials’ claims the White House had communicated its desire for 10,000 National Guard troops. In fact, an early transcribed interview conducted by the committee included precisely that evidence from a key source. The interview, which Cheney attended and personally participated in, was suppressed from public release until now. Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato’s first transcribed interview with the committee was co...