In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

On Sunday, I linked to a story in the UK Daily Mail that reported on the Duchess of Cornwall's apparent bewilderment at President Biden's flatulence at a soiree following the Cop26 conference in Glasgow. Something kept bothering me about that story that hasn't gone away. Consider this. The Duchess of Cornwall, who had been Prince Charles's mistress of long standing prior to their 2005 marriage, has kept a low public profile despite her formal status as Princess of Wales. However, given the state of the queen's health and her age, it's become inevitable that sooner rather than later, the duchess will be the royal consort, with a standing equivalent to Prince Philip. In other words, she'll be a national figure of high dignity and prestige, and I assume she's preparing to ease into that role as we speak. I've got to think that under those circumstances, even remarks attributed to her by unnamed sources but carried in the UK press must have some...

The coverage of the Fifth Circuit's ruling to stay temporarily the Biden OSHA rule mandating vaccinations for employees of firms with over 100 workers has been remarkably shallow. The basic outline is this: An appeals court ruled on Saturday to temporarily halt President Biden’s coronavirus vaccine mandate for businesses with 100 employees or more. The ruling came from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) filed a challenge to the mandate requiring employers with over 100 or more employees to get vaccinated or undergo frequent testing directly with the court. The challenge included the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Utah and South Carolina. . . . OSHA’s rule includes sending agents to inspect businesses to determine if they are abiding by the mandate. If a business is found to not be in compliance, a company could be fined $136,532. Paxton argued in the announcement of Texas’s challenge that the mandate goes ...

I ran into three vignettes over the weekend that I think provide some insight into the big guy's mental state. The first, via Drudge, is from the UK Daily Mail: Camilla 'hasn't stopped talking about' hearing the President 'break wind' during chat at Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow An informed source has told The Mail on Sunday that Camilla was taken aback to hear Biden break wind as they made polite small talk at the global climate change gathering in Glasgow last week. 'It was long and loud and impossible to ignore,' the source said. 'Camilla hasn't stopped talking about it.' The photo above from the story is at least confirmation that this could have taken place. Indeed, the expression on the duchess's face, not to mention the big guy's, suggests it might even have occurred as the shutter snapped. Curious, I did a web search on flatulence and discovered it isn't normally indicative of an underlying medical co...

It seems to me that the key takeaway from last night's legislative maneuvering is that the winner was Sen Manchin, who succeedced in using Tuesday's election outcomes to nudge Speaker Pelosi off the position she articulated on Wednesday that the outcome would not change her legislative agenda, which was presumably to link the BIF with the BBB and pass both at the same time. By Friday, it had become plain that this would be impossible, and the House leadetship was forced to cobble up a last-minute Plan B, which amounted to passing the BIF first with Republican support -- a Manchin prescription -- while deferring action on the BBB, eventually to go to the Senate, where Manchin's agenda will also prevail. Speaker Pelosi used up a great deal of time, energy, and political capital allowing the House progressives to wag the dog on the legislative agenda, but accomplished nothing. As Matt Lewis put it on Yahoo News, After a long on-again, off-again back-and-forth st...

As I write this morning, the reports are that Speaker Pelosi intends to hold a vote on the BBB today, having postponed it from yesterday. This, of course, is what we've been hearing since September -- a "vote as early as [insert day]", followed by an imperious but belated notice from the speaker that "I'll let you know" when they have the votes, which never quite turn up. Last week, President Biden visited the House to beg the full Democrat caucus for their votes, but that didn't work. The word was the leadership blamed him for not begging them hard enough, so as of last night, he was calling individual holdouts to beg all the more . President Joe Biden, having failed twice to convince House Democrats to back his legislative agenda, resorted Thursday to personally calling lawmakers to beg them to vote for the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act. I don't see Joe Biden as a closer. The establishment media has been perpetually optimistic ...

Meaningful statements from President Biden and Speaker Pelosi about the outcomes of Tuesday's elections have been slow to emerge. Asked early Wednesday about whether the results changed the agenda for the House, Speaker Pelosi said, "No". And according to the AP, Biden looked at the results and suggested no reset was necessary for his White House. He spoke with certitude of the many factors grinding on Americans — the lingering pandemic, rising costs at the gas pump, uncertainty about the economy — as problems that would go away if he could just get his agenda passed. “If I’m able to pass, sign into law my Build Back Better initiative, I’m in a position where you’re going to see a lot of those things ameliorated quickly and swiftly,” the president said. And, “I’m not sure that I would be able to have changed the number of very conservative folks who turned out in the red districts who were Trump voters,” Biden said. “But maybe. Maybe.” Voter surveys tel...

As of yesterdy, it looks like Sen Schumer at least is still spinning blarney about a Senate vote on the BBB bill, now " the week of November 15 ". I feel confident this is just yet another version of "we're gonna work all weekend" that we've been hearing since September. How the results of yesterday's elections affect what changes, if any, are made to the BBB text or the schedule is hard to predict, but my guess is that Speaker Pelosi, Sen Schumer, and President Biden will simply double down on their exising positions. As of yesterday, Sen Manchin made his position clear : Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he didn’t sign off on a framework for a $1.75 trillion social spending bill before it was released from the White House and that he didn’t think there was a “rush” to get a deal. “No,” Manchin said, asked if he had signed off on the framework, adding that if he had, his current pushback wouldn’t be “genuine.” “The White House knew exactly where...