In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

A couple of data points puzzle me about the California recall election's progress. The first is that by July 29, there were two polls in quick succession that showed growing sentiment among likely voters to recall Gov Newsom. Since then -- fully two weeks later -- there's been nothing. This is a rapidly developing story, with the September 14 election little more than a month away, and nobody's releasing polls. In fact, we received our own mail-in ballots in yesterday's mail, something the state is doing for every voter in this election. This means that voting is already under way. The top Republican candidates are actively campaigning via ads on Facebook and elsewhere. But Newsom, who has raised more than $58 million to defeat the recall , three times as much as all his opponents combined, is far less visible than Elder, Cox, and the other Republicans. Elder in particular is able to leverage appearances on Fox News and elsewhere to get free coverage, but New...

Well, right up to his resignation, a lot of the smart money said Cuomo would pull a Clinton, keep denying he-said-she-said allegations and hold on until the thing blew over. But Clinton was Br'er Rabbit; Cuomo pulled a Nixon, turning a stubborn countenance to the world and finally collapsing in disgrace. But there was a subtext to Nixon, too. Nixon's ultimate sin was not letting his aides bungle the Watergate fiasco. His sin was Alger Hiss. The lizard people have a long memory. When I posted on Cuomo's problems last week , I raised questions that have also turned up in independent media: ultimately, Cuomo was accused of run-of-trhe mill offenses: "non-consensual touching" and "sexist remarks" leading to a "hostile work environment". Forget Clinton, Biden is on film doing the same frat-boy stuff, in full view and far more often. Nobody brings this up any more, because it won't go anywhere. The other objection is that Cuom...

I posted yesteday about the imprecise language Drs Fauci and Walensky use in discussing COVID. In one sentence on last Sunday's talks, Dr Fauci used "infected" with two different meanings. Infected-a meant only that antibodies were detected in tests irrespective of symptoms. Infected-b meant someone "had" COVID, i.e., symptoms, like someone "has" cancer or the flu. This has been a basic problem with how COVID has been discussed from the start, and it's led to the widespread fear that a positive test is a death sentence. So this leads to another question that nobody really answers: what's the likelihood that someone who tests positive will develop symptoms at all? As of July 2020, this site published an official CDC estimate : Asymptomatic coronavirus carriers, or those who do not experience any symptoms, unknowingly contribute to the spread of COVID-19, infectious disease experts say. Now the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Pre...

I once had a friend who started out in blue-collar work at the phone company. His superiors saw that he had a lot of promise, and they sent him to courses to prepare him for supervisory and management jobs. Among them were courses in speaking and writing. I never thought he had problems with communication skills, but at minumum, it showed how important at least some corporations thought they were -- indeed, they'll likely now pay lip service to diversity and inclusion, but they'll still want people who can communicate effectively. The need for those leadership skills doesn't go away. So it's all the more intriguing that our public health authorities in the midst of a pandemic express themselves so poorly. Let's take Dr Fauci's appearance yesterday on Meet the Press . He answers a question from Chuck Todd with a remarkable tautology: CHUCK TODD: . . . How dangerous is this Delta variant for the vaccinated and the unvaccinated? DR. ANTHONY F...

This is part of what Jen Psaki said in a press briefing on Friday. A more complete account had this : "We are not going back. We are not turning back the clock," Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. "This is not March 2020 or even January 2021," she added. "We're not going to lock down our economy or our schools because our country's in a much stronger place than when we took office." But the account continues with a more realistic caveat: The promise came as some teachers unions aligned with the Democratic Party call for the school year to begin with virtual classes, not in-classroom learning. Just this past week, of course, the administration reversed itself on the COVID eviction moratorium, so there's no assurance that any equivalent promise from Ms Psaki will have weight. The issue pretty clearly hinges on who's able to reach the senile regent and bamboozle or bully him into whatever policy they want. Meanwhile. the ...

The phenomenon of Drs Fauci and Walensky, with the surrounding cast of characters like Drs Baric, Collins, and Daszak. has fascinated me from the start. They're clearly members of the credentialed elite, unelected and unaccountable, in many ways impervious to the sorts of scrutiny to which even powerful politicians are subject. In the past two weeks, Dr Walensky has had editorial calls for her removal amid clear indications of public incompetence, but this is unlikely. It brings me back to Ferdinand Lundberg and the sense that such decisions are made by people largely unknown to us and well above our pay grade. If they're actually lizard-like humanoids, well, maybe so for all we know. (I realized the other day that the lizards in our back yard only speak Spanish, the way police dogs only understand German. I'm studying Spanish so I can talk to them.) In the last several weeks, I've run into two articles about Dr Walensky that nobody else seems to have noticed. Th...

California Gov Newsom is the second nationally prominent Democrat governor in danger of removal from office. His current predicament is an illustration of how the political environment is shifting. Last spring, the movement to recall Newsom looked like a long shot, although the signatures on the recall petition far exceeded the required minimum. The mid-July entry of Larry Elder, best known as a second-string Salem Radio talk show host with no electoral experience, immediately transformed the race. A July 23 poll, taken shortly after Elder won a court case to put him on the ballot, had 43% of likely voters in favor of recall . An August 3 poll put the number at 46% . By August 5, the number in favor of removal had risen to 51% , with only 40% in favor of retaining Newsom. Elder's entry into the race clearly focused public interest. But an August 4 debate among four Republican recall candidates, sponsored by behind-the-curve Salem Radio and moderated by NeverTrump Salem hos...