In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

On a day when the media was still preoccupied with Alec Baldwin, I seized on one of the few grains of potential information I could find. After Sen Manchin's breakfast with Sen Schumer and President Biden Sunday with no statement, Manchin did tell reporters something inscrutable yesterday : Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Monday that he believed Democrats "should" be able to get a deal on a framework agreement for President Biden's social spending bill this week. "Having it finished with all the t's and the i's and everything you know crossed and dotted that will be difficult from the Senate side because we have an awful lot of text to go through, but as far as conceptually we should, I really believe," Manchin told reporters on Monday. Manchin added that Democrats "should be" able to reach a deal on a framework this week, adding that "it really should be" finished. I guess it depends on what the meaning of "shoul...

On September 29,. Roll Call ran this headline: Infrastructure vote still on despite reconciliation stalemate Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late Wednesday that the House will move ahead with a Thursday vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, despite massive uncertainty that Democrats can pass it. “The plan is to bring the bill to the floor,” the California Democrat told reporters after she and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer met with President Joe Biden at the White House. Asked whether she would have the votes needed to pass it, Pelosi promised nothing. “One hour at a time,” she said. On September 24, this story ran on Geen Wire: Pelosi confirms vote ‘next week’ on reconciliation package House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed today she’ll bring a multitrillion-dollar reconciliation bill to the chamber floor next week that makes major investments in combating the climate crisis. The California Democrat’s announcement could end the intraparty standoff over ...

The photo above appeared on one of the aggregators with the caption Cruella de Fauci . What's actually been on my mind for some weeks, as an Aristotelian who looks for causes, is why Dr Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health and Dr Fauci's boss, chose to announce his retirement when he did. The news cycle at the time had been relatively benign as regarded Fauci, Dr Walensky, and Collins himself, but my guess is Collins was fully aware of FOIA and similar requests for records regarding US funding of Wuhan gain of function research. as well as the Tunisian puppy experiments . The White Coat Waste Project, the nonprofit organization that first pointed out that U.S. taxpayers were being used to fund the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology, have now turned its sights on Anthony Fauci on another animal-testing-related matter — infecting dozens of beagles with disease-causing parasites to test an experimental drug on them. . . . Accordi...

Via ABC News : A deal within reach, President Joe Biden and Congress’ top Democrats edged close to sealing their giant domestic legislation, though the informal deadline appeared to slip as they worked to scale back the measure and determine how to pay for it. Negotiations were expected to continue into the weekend, all sides indicating just a few issues remained unsettled in the sweeping package of social services and climate change strategies. No agreement was announced by Friday's self-imposed deadline to at least agree on a basic outline. Biden wants a deal before he leaves next week for global summits in Europe. Biden met at the White House on Friday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer joined by video call from from New York, trying to shore up details. . . . Pelosi hoped the House could start voting as soon as next week, but no schedule was set. President Biden will be in Rome to meet with the pope on Friday, October 2...

But he's begun to see that there is one. According to Fox News: CNN host Don Lemon flipped out on Democrats Wednesday, slamming his fist on his desk as he ranted that they weren't doing enough to sell their agenda to the American people and rescue democracy. . . . "Democrats get your butts in gear and get passionate about saving this damn country! You’re not doing it. You’re weak. You are weak. You are weak," Lemon said as he beat his hand on his desk. Lemon claimed the massive Democrat-backed multi-trillion dollar social spending package included items that Americans wanted but weren't being advocated for in the right way. I've been saying since last month that something's hinky about this whole BBB-Bernie $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. The bosses have been saying they're gonna work all weekend to get it done, but as I learned in my tech days, if you actually go in to the office over that weekend, nobody's there. But deadline after ...

I've moved on from studying Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes and have started Anthony Esolen's The Beauty of the Word: A Running Commentary on the Roman Missal . This is described as "A comprehensive, step-by-step commentary on the changes in the Order of Mass (including Prefaces), the Proper of Time, and the Proper of Saints" for the 2011 revision of the Roman Missal. Looking back on my various confirmation classes, including Evangelium and the RCIA course, but going even farther back to my Episcopalian confirmation class, almost nothing covered in the Vatican II constitutions, and none of the key insights Esolen brings to the liturgy, was in any of those classes, which is unfortunate, but I'm at least glad to have been able to catch up. For instance, it was only after researching the subject several years ago that I discovered the three-year lectionary, now adopted by most US Anglicans as well as something like 200 other Protestant denominations, was an in...

This morning, the sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Given all that isn't happening with the BBB, the BIF, and the debt ceiling, yesterday's big news was the elevation of Dr Rachel Levine to the rank of four star admiral, a breakthrough for transgenders. The crack journalists at the RedState blog posted a word salad headline: Democrat Counter to Glenn Youngkin Enthusiasm Enters Into the Pathetic . But with everyone else on virtual vacation, I can at least fall back on the Roman Catholic ordinariates for recovering, or maybe not, Anglicans. Let's take the case of The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali : {T}he former Anglican bishop of Rochester, England, was received into the church Sept. 29 by Msgr. Keith Newton, head of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, which was established in 2011 by Pope Benedict XVI for the corporate reception of Anglican communities. I'd noticed Bp Nazir-Ali on occasion when he was still in Rochester as a co...