In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Back in June, I noted that Joe's episodes on his trips to Europe early in the month amounted to a "permission slip" that allowed polite opinion to address openly the issue of Joe's increasingly apparent cognitive decline that had been on everyone's mind, but nobody up to then had been allowed to discuss. What I noted at the time was that Gutfeld had begun to incorporate Biden poopy-pants jokes into almost every night's routine -- and even a comic needs permission for this sort of thing. But just last night, Gutfeld said, Some people dispute the claim thatt Kamala Harris worked at McDonald's in the past. Meanwhile McDonald's claims their records show just one clown working here. He ran a acreen shot of Ronald McDonald. Even a comic needs permission for this sort of thing. The extent of the damage from Kamala's CNN interview slowly began to be visible only over the course of yesterday. For instance, at The National Review, Nation...

I was a little worried before Kamala's big interview that it would turn out like Joe Biden's first debate against Trump in 2020: he exceeded expectations by giving a mediocre performance that nevertheless had no obvious gaffes. This was a major hurdle, and he got over it. What if Kamala had an equivalent performance? It turns out I didn't need to worry. The first thing that struck me was something a lot of people noticed, but nobody really followed through: Did they put Kamala in the kiddie chair I had to sit in when I went to talk to the kindergarten teachers about my children? — John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) August 30, 2024 Well, it turns out that Kamala is 5'4". Walz is 6'2". But Dana Bash is 5'2", so this doesn't explain why Kamala appears to be so much shorter between both Walz and Bash in the photo. When I looked more carefully, I saw that both Walz and Bash are in ordinary dining room style chairs, which force both into upright...

I was intrigued by the mention in an Axios story I linked yesterday of "tension" among staff in the Harris campaign: BRIAN FALLON, the campaign’s senior adviser for communications, is generally considered the key person. But the interview has to be coordinated with Harris’s official office, where the communications director is KIRSTEN ALLEN. We hear there are some tensions. Although there';s general confusion about who's actually running the show, at least some people think it's this same Brian Fallon : Brian Fallon is managing and hiding Kamala Harris, because Fallon and the rest of her handlers know there is very solid reasoning for why Kamala Harris was never considered a viable alternative to Biden before. So who is Brian Fallon? According to Wikipedia , Brian Edward Fallon Jr. (born 1981 or 1982) is an American political operative. He was the national press secretary for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, a role h...

I want to keep looking at yesterdy's main topic, the dispute over the September 10 debate rules and whether the Harris campaign wanted to change them. My big question yesterday was, "why did the Harris campaign spend a whole day on this, which only focused attention on Harris's perceived weakness in debate?" I asked it before the dispute was resolved later in the day, at least in the eyes of the Trump campaign, when Trump himself posted , The Rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone except, perhaps, Crooked Joe Biden. The Debate will be “stand up,” and Candidates cannot bring notes, or “cheat sheets." Throughout yesterday, the Harris campaign denied the initial Trump claim that they'd insisted on a seated debate with opening statements and notes, focusing on the question of whether the mics will be open or muted, which was a trivial issue on which Trump himself saId he had no preference. CNN confirm...

The big story yesterday was Microphone dispute threatens September presidential debate : The Trump campaign is stirring up speculation that the September 10 presidential debate on ABC will not occur. Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, raised concerns over a microphone rule dispute with the Harris campaign. The Trump campaign has called for microphones to be muted except during a candidate's turn to speak, as was the rule during Trump's CNN debate with President Joe Biden, CNN reported[.] . . . Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign has requested unmuted microphones during the entire debate. "We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates' mics should be live throughout the full broadcast," Brian Fallon, spokesman for the Democratic nominee, said in a statement. "Our understanding is that Trump's handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don...

My chief takeaway from the photo above is that Judy Woodruff, 77, has a much better plastic surgeon than Nanxy Pelosi, 84, but I doubt if either lady has had her last visit to the face doctor. It used to be that refusal to acknowledge the pasaage of time was thought to be a character defect, but apparently no more. I used to watch The PBS News Hour, and I thought Judy Woodruff looked cadaverous 25 years ago, but that's been fixed. Nevertheless, the problem I see is that Speaker Emerita Pelosi is still running the world, or at least, she thinks she is. Her remarks came during an interview with Woodruff at last week's Democrat comvention, which she probably gave after more than a few sips of wine. Via The Gateway Pundit: “I made a prediction today to Al Hunt [Woodruff's husband and media heavyweight] , that would be. He said maybe you can win 5 [House seats]. I said, I want 10. He said, Is that your prediction? I said, I want 10 at least. We want 31 when we...

n the wake of the Democrat convention, Alan Dershowitz, the most prominent living Jew, announced ( here and here ), specificially at the second link, "I am no longer a Democrat. I am an Independent." Also in ther wake of the convention, Bobby Kennedy Jr, the most prominent living Kennedy and namesake of his martyred father, endorsed a Republican candidate for president and reiterated his previous departure from the Democrats. “The Democrats stood against authoritarianism, against censorship, against colonialism, imperialism and unjust wars,” he went on. “We were the party of labor, of the working class. The Democrats were the party of government transparency and the champion of the environment. Our party was the full world against big money interests and corporate power. True to its name, it was the party of democracy.” As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with. It had become ...

What strikes me about Bobby Kennedy Jr's endorsement of Trump is how prominent Democrats like David Axelrod view it as a betrayal of the Kennedy myth: Robert F. Kennedy was my political hero. He battled fiercely & eloquently against poverty, injustice and for economic fairness. Sadly RFK Jr, who made a rambling exit from the race today, proves that sometimes an apple DOES fall far from the tree...in this case, down a hill and… — David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) August 23, 2024 His siblings agree: I am sharing a personal statement that my family and I have made in response to my brother’s announcement. pic.twitter.com/j7vTTabNYZ — Kerry Kennedy (@KerryKennedyRFK) August 23, 2024 However, with John Jr dying with his cokehead wife and sister-in-law in an aircraft accident attributable to his own incompetence as a pilot and Caroline maintaining a low public profile, Bobby Jr is by far the most prominent Kennedy of his generation, and unliike John Jr, he's maintained...

According to Wikipedia , Empress Dowager is the English language translation of the title given to the mother or widow of a Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese monarch in the Chinese cultural sphere. An empress dowager wielded absolute power over the harem and imperial family and sometimes even for important issues that were necessary, the emperor or officials went to empress dowager to consult. Empress Dowager's position was second after the emperor, but she was ahead of him in respect, because the emperor lowered his head in front of her to show his respect and stood in front of her with respect and politeness, even was precise in the way he spoke and faced her. Numerous empress dowagers held regency during the reign of underage emperors. Many of the most prominent empress dowagers also extended their control for long periods after the emperor was old enough to govern. This was a source of political turmoil according to the traditional view of Chinese hi...

I keep saying that the closest historical parallel we have to this year's presidential campaign is 1972, when the Democrats were forced to swap out their vice presidential candidate only weeks after he'd been nominated. But even before that, another parallel is that year's Democrat convention, which is one of the few in modern history, either Democrat or Republican, that didn't produce a bounce in the polls, however brief it may have been. This site lists the respectrive poll bounces for each party following its nominating convention for each presidential election since 1964. The bounce for McGovern in 1972 was 0; the bounce for Nixon that year was 7. In fact, the Democrat bounce was bigger in other years that still turned out badly for them -- in 1980, Jimmy Carter got 10; in 1984, Walter Mondale got 9; in 1988, Michael Dukakis got 7. The only bounces that were worse for either party was John Kerry's -1 in 2004 and Mitt Romney's -1 in 2012. Wednesday...

For now, I don't know what to do with the information overload that's the DNC. I have an inchoate impression that there's no real plan for the campaign, and there are lots of signs that nobody competent is in charge, and we'll have to see how things shake out. But in the meantime, I want to focus on Tim Walz. For instance, what about whether he was really vetted? The best indication I can see is this: 🚨 BREAKING: I just confronted Eric Holder about why he didn’t vet Tim Walz over his Stolen Valor Holder: “F*CK YOU!!!” pic.twitter.com/6j1gzdkW2P — Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) August 21, 2024 It's hard to avoid thinking that if Holder is so determined to run away from questions about whether he vetted Walz, he may regret his role, or at least the public perception of it. Via Breitbart, According to the Associated Press, the process — managed by Holder — took 16 days, and ended with Walz being chosen. Since Walz was selected, he has been plagued...

I keep saying that the election cycle this year is closest to 1972, and another parallel is Joe's big farewell speech, which was pushed back almost to midnight Eastern time, reminiscent of McGovern in 1972 : The convention, which has been described as "a disastrous start to the general election campaign", . . . with sessions beginning in the early evening and lasting until sunrise the next morning. . . . A protracted vice presidential nominating process delayed McGovern's acceptance speech (which he considered "the best speech of his life") until 2:48 a.m.—after most television viewers had gone to bed. Last night, As the speakers leading up to Biden on the schedule began dragging on and on, speculation swirled about how and why the president had been shoved aside to speak when many Americans would already be asleep. “This is awful. He literally set up a campaign and handed it over to them — do they have to cut him out of prime time...

As I noted yesterday, although the Trump campaign focused attention early Sunday on the possibility that Kamala is impaired at many of her public events, the suggestion isn't new. I did a web search on "Kamala drunk" this morning, and I came up with the image above on Amazon, which was advertising this as just the tote bag you might want for this past July 4th. In fact, this could maybe make the right ladies look hip on the beach out in the Hamptons. The story hasn't hit all the alt aggregtators yet, but this one at Hot Air draws a reasonble inference : Is Kamala drunk most of the time? If you watch her talk with that possibility in mind, so much makes sense all of a sudden. All those word salads, the occasional slurring, the inappropriate laughs... These are all tells that her brain is fogged by something, and it may not be stupidity. Newsweek is already on the case : As Donald Trump grapples to combat the surge of support for Kamala Harris...

Kamala is an alcoholic? pic.twitter.com/Lwc0suHgZW — JKash 🍊MAGA Queen (@JKash000) August 15, 2024 Yesterday I noted that Kamala's scripted public appearances were nevertheless nasal and hyperactive, with a lot of over-the-top excitement. I embedded a longer video that included ther brief vignette above, which has bothered me from the first time I saw it. On August 7, Megyn Kelly said in an interview that there could be additional “negative reporting” about US Vice President Kamala Harris’ history which the public has yet to see. “She’s never been vetted, why would anybody vet her – she was put on the ticket by Joe Biden just to check a box,” she told Sky News host Paul Murray. “Done. It was over. Nobody had any interest in vetting her, and they knew she wasn’t a serious pick. “I think there’s going to be more coming out about her.” But over a week later, no more has come out, and Megyn herself has had nothing else to say. Just yesterday, it was being tea...