In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

These remarks by Leader McCarthy on the occasion of the House censuring Rep Gosar for posting an anime indicate that at least some people are beginning to catch on to what's happening. The Speaker's world is effectively coming to an end. This ties in with another guiding principle I've been relying on in recent weeks, Stein's Law, That Which Cannot Continue Must Stop. If we begin with the question of Speaker Pelosi's future, we've inevitably got to come to the question of President Biden's plans. My view continues to be that he isn't suffering from dementia, and thus he must have some understanding of his political predicament. This story gives some suggestion of what that predicament is and what must be effective cooperation with his handlers: We reported Wednesday on the embarrassing story of how President Joe Biden’s handlers had scrapped a so-called “Three Amigos” press conference that had been scheduled to take place today between him,...

Via Gateway Pundit, which I don't normally trust, I nevertheless found a transcription of a Fox reporter's remarks on Bret Baier's podcast: Just to kinda let you guys in on a little secret here. I was told, you know, about two to three weeks ago–maybe this pertains to the Supreme Court, maybe this pertains to, you know, changing the ticket before you get into 2024. You know, FDR, seemingly, he burned through a vice president almost every, every time he was up for office. But I got an email from somebody who really knows this place very well who said, “Chad, start to familiarize yourself with the confirmation process just not in the Senate but the House for a vice president.” Of course, we’ve not gone through that since, you know, President Ford picked Nelson Rockefeller. Again, as you know, Bret, I’m always playing defense and preparing for things like that, but I was very surprised to get that very cryptic email just a couple of weeks ago. Chad Pegram's bio ap...

There's a lot of gossip about a rift between the White House and Vice President Harris, to the extent that a trial balloon is being floated about kicking Harris over to the Supreme Court, to replace her under the 25th Amendment. Up to last weekend, of course, the 25th Amendment scenario had been intended for the big guy himself, not Kamala, who in the received scenario would replace him. To me, this says we're edging closer to the Spiro Agnew solution, the two-shoe drop, where the non-entity veep is replaced under the 25th Amendment by someone with gravitas who can credibly succeed a Nixon once he's forced out. Nixon, recall, simply resigned. Nobody needed either impeachment or the 25th. The only remotely perceptive commentary I've seen on the developing situation is from Chris Cillizza : Remember that when Biden ran for president, he purposely cast himself as a sort of bridge candidate for Democrats -- holding the office until some of the party's you...

I posted on Saturday about one unintended consequence of COVID social engineering, which is a labor shortage. It seems to me that conditions imposed by the government forbidding people to earn a living or perform other routine functions must inevitably have unintended consequences that are yet to be fully recognized. For instance, the lockdowns closed schools longer than they closed workplaces. The effects of this are only beginning to be felt. So I saw in yesterday's Washington Examiner: The pandemic has taken a significant toll on the desire for high school students to pursue higher education, a new study shows. Less than 50% of high school students are interested in four-year colleges, a decrease of over 20% from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, a new survey reported. . . . Though 86% of students reported feeling pressured to attend university , most expressed concern about the cost. Six out of 10 respondents worried about how they ...

Back in August, I posted on my theory of President Biden's mental condition , based on a speech he gave at the time. A more recent speech, the Veterans' Day ceremony where he made his "great Negro at the time" gaffe, just confirms my thinking. He isn't suffering from dementia, he's just drunk all the time. It seems to me that this fits the available evidence without multiplying the entity of requiring a medical diagnosis. A clip with the full context of his remarks about Satchel Paige is in the link above. The first thing to note about it is, as I noted last August, the slow and careful delivery to avoid slurring throughout. But when he gets to the "great Negro" part, he still can't follow the teleprompter. At about 0:37, he says, "the great Negro at the time" and immediately corrects himself, "pitcher in the Negro league", but in making that quick correction, he starts to slur. But at that point, he catches himself and ...

I've kept thinking about the current headline that record numbers are quitting their jobs , while lower-level openings are harder to fill. The biggest thing I noticed last year was that once the lockdowns closed the barber shops, fewer of them reopened. I asked my barber about this when I went in for a haircut yesterday. He noted that his shop has an empty chair, and they were trying to get someone in to take it over, but so far had been unable. I asked if this was due to the lockdowns. He said yes, he thought that once barbers were prevented from earning a living, they simply had to look for other options, and they wound up liking those options better. He cited a barber who'd worked in that shop but had a sideline of selling vintage clothes. He could keep running the sideline during the lockdown, and once he focused on it exclusively, he earned enough to quit working as a barber. A local restaurant has had a NOW HIRING COOKS sign out for months. I read that restaurant wor...

When the story about Ashley Biden's diary broke last weekend, I had a feeling it wasn't going away, notwithstanding its contents, the incoherent, vaguely allusive jottings of a deeply troubled drug addict, are of no probative value for much of anything. But that the FBI would be involved in harassing Project Veritas over something or other in connection with it is effective acknowledgement of its authenticity. In fact, I think if nothing else, it's also confirmation that the big guy is dumb as a rock -- nobody would touch the story during last fall's campaign, and if the FBI hadn't been sicced on James O'Keefe last week, the whole thing would have stayed forgotten. Now, with the matter in court , it's an ongoing narrative. Dumb as a rock. The most-referenced passages have the author ruminating over being sexually active and hypersexualized at an early age, with one clear factor being "possibly inappropriate" showers with her father. This...