In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Biden's handlers are clearly taking note of recent polls, and I assume other internal surverys are showing a perception that he's isolated and out of touch. So we see him getting out of the White House, in this photo with sleeves rolled up and jacketless (and I assume his greeters were informed of this dress code prior to his arrival), on the go. The problem is that when he does this kind of thing, there's always the off key note -- in this case, the cheat sheets in his back pocket, in the Delaware dignified transfer op, the compulsive watch checking. And his eyes are always just slits. He has Hillary's problem, the more people saw of her, the less there was to like. In his statements from the White House over the past week, he's been angry and callous, mostly refusing to answer questions. Apparently next week, he's going to start haranguing us about COVID again. It isn't enough just to make him more visible when even the photo ops go wrong. ...

Pardon me if, in the current atmosphere of false narrative piled on false narrative, I'm just the least bit skeptical of what's going on. We're being told via The Hill : Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Democrats should hit "pause" on President Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending package, firing a significant warning shot at his party’s top legislative priority. Manchin, during remarks this week at a West Virginia Chamber of Commerce event pointed to concerns about “runaway inflation,” the delta variant of the coronavirus and a botched withdrawal in Afghanistan to float slowing down what is the centerpiece of Biden's economic agenda. . . . "I know they're going to go nuts right now ... because what I said is going to all my caucus in Washington," Manchin added, referring to his Democratic colleagues. "But I'm thinking of it from the standpoint of where we are as a nation today." He restated these views in, of all places, a Wal...

An opinion piece from John Solomon makes a productive point: The long saga of the Russia collusion scandal — during which law enforcement, media, political operatives and intelligence assets manufactured a two-year illusion of a Trump-Russia conspiracy that did not exist — raised questions about a new era of political warfare in which false realities could be foisted upon the American public. The bungled, bloody U.S. exit from Afghanistan now has some fearing the Biden administration practiced deception by omission and commission to create a two-month false narrative that misled Congress and the American public by making the situation in and around Kabul look better than it was. That Solomon should mention the Trump-Russia false narrative brings to mind two other ongoing false narratives, in addition to the one just discredited, that the Afghanistan mission was succeeding: The withdrawal from Afghanistan was a success The January 6 US Capitol demonstration was an insurr...

What nobody's much noticed is that, with daily news items that call Biden's fitness into question, Kamala Harris's profile has gotten lower and lower . Kamala Harris may have crashed and burned as a 2020 presidential candidate, dropping out well before the first votes were cast in Iowa. But Biden chose her as his running mate anyway. It’s not clear exactly what Harris brought to the ticket outside of checking off a few demographic boxes. Now, Harris has been taken off the field almost completely. Last week Harris was sent to Vietnam and Singapore amid the chaos in Afghanistan. When that trip was over, she stopped off in Hawaii to visit Pearl Harbor. Any Americans who wanted to hear why Harris supported the decision to pull U.S. forces out of Afghanistan last spring would have to wait, because the press was blocked from the event. . . . Last year, then-Vice President Mike Pence held dozens of press conferences as the head of the White House coronav...

Alex Berenson, who apparently prefers to be called a "former New York Times reporter", but whom I would probably call a sometime COVID skeptic, was permanently banned from Twitter this past weekend for the post at right. As I've been pointing out here, his wording is actually a fair summary of recent public remarks from figures like Drs Fauci and Walensky: in fact, they've made statements themselves that the vaccine stops neither infection nor transmission. News reports routinely cite individuals who've been hospitalized after the two jabs, and regional masking rules have been reimposed on the clear principle that vaccinated people can transmit the virus. Various figures have urged Berenson to sue Twitter, but I think this is incredibly bad advice. If he were to do this, he'd be sinking millions of dollars into a doubtful, years-long process of negotiations, injunctions, verdicts, and appeals that would divert his energy from any other projects. Even if...

The most recent controversy (or by now, the second-most recent, which I'll get to) over Biden is the allegation that he fell asleep in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Mainstream media fact-checking has countered, correctly I think in this case, that photos and video clips have been edited to focus on several seconds where Biden's head is lowered. Conservative YouTuber Brandon Tatum , also of the not-asleep school, makes the point that, although Biden's eyes are slits in the sequence, close examination suggests that they aren't actually closed. However, I also agree with the UK Express that calls the sequence "bizarre" , asleep or not. Biden's body language often demonstrates incongruous affect, like the even more recent photo of him checking his watch during the transfer of the Kabul service members' remains in Delaware yesterday. I think the bottom line is that he either doesn't give a flip how it looks -- after all...

They've been moving the goalposts yet again. The CDC website still carries the categorical statement, COVID 19-vaccines are effective. They can keep you from getting and spreading the virus that causes COVID-19. But for months now, we've been hearing the opposite from the same public health authorities. Elsewhere on the same CDC site, we read : On July 27, 2021, CDC released updated guidance on the need for urgently increasing COVID-19 vaccination coverage and a recommendation for everyone in areas of substantial or high transmission to wear a mask in public indoor places, even if they are fully vaccinated. CDC issued this new guidance due to several concerning developments and newly emerging data signals. . . . [N]ew data began to emerge that the Delta variant was more infectious and was leading to increased transmissibility when compared with other variants, even in some vaccinated individuals. So the vaccines will keep you from getting an...