In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

The sociopolitical histories of COVID have yet to be written, and I'm realizing the whole episode is by no means over as we speak. I just got a notice to come in for another booster, while Alameda County in the San Francisco area has reinstated a general indoor mask mandate, which suggests LA County won't be far behind. This won't go away until people make it go away. Nevertheless, bien pensant opinion is gingerly starting to approach the question of how big a public policy disaster COVID has been. I was out driving Thursday and happend to tune in to the Clay and Buck Show, which is the successor to the late Rush Limbaugh. They had as a guest David Zweig, who writes for The Atlantic. It says something that the powers that be there seemed to think it was OK for him to talk to El Rushbo, or at least the guys in El Rushbo's old tme slot. Here's part of the transcript: BUCK: David, I want to ask you… So, you write for The Atlantic, and not to make any assump...

Within a matter of days, Elon Musk announced that Tesla employees would have to return to in-person work at the office, followed almost immediately by an announcement that 10% of them would be laid off nevertheless . Tesla CEO Elon Musk wants to slash 10% of jobs at the company due to his “super bad feeling” about the economy, according to a Friday report from Reuters. The United States economy shrank at a 1.5% annualized rate in the first quarter of 2022, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which associates recessions with two consecutive quarters of negative growth. In a Thursday email to executives seen by Reuters, Musk instructed Tesla to “pause all hiring worldwide” and said that the company needs to cut 10% of jobs. Tesla currently has more than 99,000 employees, The New York Times reported. Before the most recent news on economic activity, the U.S. had been recovering from COVID-19 and the lockdown-induced recession — growing at a strong 5.7% in 2021 after contr...

In my e-mail yesterday was an announcement from the Word on Fire Institute that linked to this statement from Bp Barron: Friends, I am overjoyed and humbled to learn that Pope Francis has appointed me the ninth bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester (Minnesota). The bishop of a diocese is, first and foremost, a spiritual father to the priests and people who have been entrusted to his care. My prayer this morning is that the Lord will give me the grace always to be a good father. The bishop is also, as Pope Francis often teaches, a shepherd with the smell of the sheep—out in front of the flock in one sense, leading the way, but also with the flock, giving encouragement, and in back of the flock in order to gather in those who have fallen behind. I pray also for the grace to be just that kind of shepherd to the Catholics of southern Minnesota. It has been an extraordinary privilege these past seven years to serve as auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where the p...

Via Reuters: The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to overturn a U.S. District Court judge's April order that declared the government mandate requiring masks on airplanes, buses and in transit hubs unlawful. Hours after the federal judge in Florida declared the mandate unlawful, the Biden administration said it would no longer enforce it. The Justice Department told the appeals court that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order issued in January 2021 was "within" the agency's legal authority. The CDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday on whether it would reinstate the requirement if the ruling was overturned. Days before U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball's April 18 order, the CDC had extended mask requirements through May 3. The CDC said earlier this month it still recommends travelers continue to wear masks in airplanes, trains and buses. Although some localities still requir...

I've noted here from time to time that the Russo-Ukraine War has led to schism within the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest Orthodox denomination. Inevitably, we're beginning to see former Russian Orthodox dioceses and new ad hoc groups declaring independence from the former mother body in pretty much the same way that the "continuing Anglican" movement left The Episcopal Church after the 1970s: ⚡️⚡️⚡️ This is huge!!! The Council of the Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church declared independence from Moscow. Expressing disagreement with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow on the war, the Council proposed negotiations with the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine. — Alexander Khrebet/Олександр Хребет (@AlexKhrebet) May 27, 2022 Having studied "continuing Anglicanism" pretty closely while writing my old blog , this is all starting to have a familiar ring. Conventions and councils are staking out their positions in Ukraine and elsewhere just as dis...

What struck me about her husband Paul's DUI arrest over the weekend was the episode in the 2020 election campaign where pro-Trump pranksters put up a slowed version of one of her appearances that made her sound drunk. The response of the fact checkers was to say the speaker doesn't drink : We requested an interview with Pelosi for this story. Her office declined, but spokesman Drew Hammill told us in an email that the speaker doesn’t drink. (Pelosi’s office told us she doesn’t drink for a similar fact-check in 2010.) That lines up with what others have said about Pelosi over the years. After a manipulated video of the speaker slurring her words went viral on social media in May 2019, her daughter, Christine Pelosi, tweeted a rebuttal. “Republicans and their conservative allies have been pumping this despicable fake meme for years! Now they are caught,” she said. “#FactCheck: Madam Speaker doesn’t even drink alcohol!” At the time, my reaction was, "The Pelosis own ...

I've mentioned here already that by far the best coverage of the Russo-Ukraine war is at the leftist Daily Kos, and that's a puzzle, because the left as we used to understand it, even well after the death of Stalin, was always inclined to idealize the Soviet Union. Go no farther than the leftist Sen Sanders, about whom there is dispute whether a 1988 trip there with his new wife following their wedding was a honeymoon, though the trip definitely did occur. A little over a generation later, it seems like the left is taking the lead in opposing Russia's invasion of Ukraine, even at the price of endorsing Reagan-era neoconservative policy, and in fact neoconservatives like Eliot Cohen and Frederick Kagan are being rehabilitated. For now, I just don't have an explanation, except to note that this is taking place. But let's look at the analysis in today's update from the Daily Kos : The U.S. is sending its heavy vehicles by ship . There’s 200 of these on t...