In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

This seems to be one of those days where the conventional wisdom floods the web. But this had been one of those mornings where I sat up in bed suddenly thinking I remembered there'd been a Russian "operational pause" back in March, just before they completely withdrew from Irpin and Bucha and gave up the attempt to encircle Kyiv. So as soon as I finished my coffee, I started doing web searches, but no matter how I phrased my search, all I got was the latest "Russia Taking 'Operational Pause' in Ukraine, Analysts Say" from all the usual suspects, to the tune of over a million hits. Whence do these pearls of conventional wisdom emanate? One guess. Foreign analysts say Russia may be temporarily easing its offensive in Ukraine as the Russian military attempts to reassemble its forces for a renewed assault. On Wednesday, Russian forces made no claimed or assessed territorial gains in Ukraine “for the first time in 133 days of war,” according to the In...

As I've noted here, since last summer, Hunter Biden seems to have been kept on a very short leash in a heavily-guarded compound in the Malibu Hills that adjoins a luxury rehab facility. Over the past week, though, it's slowly emerged that he's apparently been paroled under parental supervision. According to the New York Post , The younger Biden, who has long been accused of profiting off his father’s influence and connections, has been a fixture in Washington this week after spending much of the Fourth of July weekend at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. After accompanying the president back to the nation’s capital on Marine One Monday, Hunter was pictured watching the Independence Day fireworks from the White House’s Truman Balcony with his 2-year-old son, Beau — named after his late older brother — and his father. He's pictured above with his wife, Melissa Cohen, although I question whether she (or particularly their toddler son) lives with him a...

I don't really have a dog in the whole Second Amendment fight; I don't own a gun and never have. I did some target shooting in my Boy Scout days and had an M1 issued to me in the ROTC, and that's about it. What bothers me about the current dispute in the wake of the Uvalde and Highland Park shootings is that existing laws and controls seem to have been observed only in the breach. For instance, The mayor of Uvalde, Texas, visibly frustrated with the constantly changing information released about what happened the day 19 children and two teachers were gunned down, lashed out Tuesday, telling residents at a city council meeting he's tired of being kept in the dark about what evidence has been uncovered. . . . McLaughlin sharply criticized the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and its leader, Col. Steven McCraw. The Texas Rangers, a DPS agency, are leading the investigation into the shooting and McLaughlin told residents he was upset that he and other cit...

As far as I can tell, President Biden gave at least two formal speeches on Monday to celebrate July 4. One of them, that's had more publicity, said America has "come up short" and "feels like it is going backward." It refers indirectly to the Highland Park shooting. So far, though, I haven't found a full text on line. A second, which does have a text at the White House site , differs considerably from these remarks and doesn't contain the specific phrases that have been shown in video clips and quoted in reporting. I simply don't know if this is one speech with the delivered text heavily revised, or two different speeches. However, I'm going to discuss the text in the link at the White House site. If anyone can clarify what's what here, I'll greatly appreciate it. What intrigues me about the text is that I think it does reflect Biden's mind sufficiently that he must be a principal originator. I very much doubt that he wrote an...

Based on a Harvard-Harris poll taken last week , Donald Trump remains the most popular political figure in the US. What does this explain? Well, I would say just about everything, starting with the January 6 committee, which has occasionally been called Impeachment 3.0. Although its stated purpose, insofar as it has one, has been to demonstrate that the January 6 demonstrations at the US Capitol were actually a planned, armed insurrection, it seems to me that its existence at all reveals a deep insecurity among the rulers that the 2020 presidential election was in fact not legitimate. We can certainly argue that any post-election audits of the votes have so far indicated there wasn't fraud widespread enough to have affected the outcome. On the other hand, the subsequent unpopularity of the winner and the continuing general sense that something's wrong has made the certified outcomes irrelevant. Thus the continued attempts to prove that 2020 skeptics are crazies in buffalo ...

Over the weekend, I've kept thinking about David Axelrod's recent remarks , "I mean this is the lot that Biden finds himself in. There is this sense that things are kind of out of control and he’s not in command." My view continues to be that it isn't a medical condition that's the problem; the problem is that the big guy is dumb as a rock, an airhead, and lazy on top of it, and he's been able to power glide through things up to now, more or less. The clip above reflects this -- he starts off with a self-satisfied smirk and an offhand wave, and then he glibly says, "Hi, everyone! Thanks for doin' this. . . Thanks!" At that point, he really seems to believe that was all he needed to do, and he begins to fumble when it dawns on him that there was more he was expected to say. Note that he's aware of his environment -- he knows he's at a political function, although he clearly doesn't think he needs to know which one it is (is t...

In the New York Times this past Monday: Less than a month after instituting a mask mandate for most indoor settings, health officials for Alameda County, the San Francisco Bay Area’s second-most populous county, lifted the order, citing improving conditions in a news release. Mask requirements were reinstated earlier this month for restaurants, bars and offices and other places, in response to increased hospitalizations and new coronavirus cases across the county, which had exceeded last summer’s Delta variant wave. The order was lifted Saturday after Alameda County, home to Oakland and 1.6 million people in the eastern Bay Area, moved from high risk to moderate risk for community transmission on Thursday, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance. Los Angeles County, which must have been humiliated to be beaten to the punch by Alameda up north, had nevertheless threatened to do the same : LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- Mandatory indoor mask-wearing could ret...