In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

It looks like we're back to the political conundrum of the early 1980s with the spread of AIDS. It was recognized that AIDS was a disease spread almost entirely through sexual contact, and beyond that, it was spread via promiscuous sexual contact among gay males. This reflected badly on gays, especially when the discussion focused on institutions like bath houses and unsanitary things that went on there. On the other hand, gays argued that if the government didn't make finding a cure and vaccines a priority, this discriminated against gays. Thus there was a media-driven messsage that AIDS wasn't a gay disease, anyone could catch it, although the circumstances advanced to prove this were limited to cases like contaminated blood in transfusions. Nevertheless, I remember consternation at my then Episcopalian parish about whether it could be transmitted via the communion vessels. This sort of public hysteria advanced the interests of the gay lobby, but it also advanced the i...

In Politico yesterday , White House officials plotting the administration’s post-Roe response are weighing a narrow public health directive aimed at safeguarding nationwide access to abortion pills, three people familiar with the discussions told POLITICO. The Biden team has zeroed in on that authority in recent days. They consider it the most feasible of the White House’s limited options for protecting abortion rights, and have concluded that it could have the most immediate on-the-ground impact while also quelling Democrats’ demands for stronger action. In addition to trying to circumvent the Dobbs decision with an abortion public health emergency, there's also been an idea of circumventing Sen Manchin's rejection of the Green New Deal by declaring a climate emergency : White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that President Biden won’t declare a climate emergency this week, but that doesn’t mean he won’t do it eventually. “He’s going to take, as I...

I've already pointed out the Pelosi family's insistence that "Madam Speaker doesn’t even drink alcohol!", but now we have a new whopper to add to the list. According to Fox Business, Nancy Pelosi's office responded to her husband's controversial computer chip stock trades ahead of Congress' vote on the semiconductor industry. FOX Business reached out to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office for comment about her husband’s recent stock trades, particularly inquiring about Paul Pelosi's million-dollar purchase of stock in a semiconductor company as Congress is slated to vote on a $52 billion subsidy to the industry as part of a bill to increase U.S. manufacturing of computer chips to make the country less reliant and more competitive with China. "The Speaker does not own any stocks. As you can see from the required disclosures, with which the Speaker fully cooperates, these transactions are marked ‘SP’ for Spouse. The Speaker has no pri...

It turns out that I'm not the only one who hasn't bought the Institute for the Study of War's line that the Russians undertook an "operational pause" over the past week. The Daily Kos, whose reporting on the war is among the best, had this to say this morning : Russia is stalled, pretending it is undertaking an “operational pause.” In reality, Russia is 1) exhausted from the [Donbas] effort, 2) still unable to cross the Donetsk river north of Sivers’k, 3) having to extend its supply lines, something they suck at doing, and 4) dealing with HIMARS’ systematic destruction of supply depots, dramatically exacerbating those supply problems. Yesterday, CNN reported, While Russian forces fire at Ukrainian positions in Donetsk in preparation for the next stage of full-scale fighting in the war, the country's defense ministry in Moscow on Saturday ordered commanders to take action to prevent Ukrainian strikes on Russian-held territory. "(Russian Defense ...

I've had a running commentary on the Institute for the Study of War and the conundrum of how they seem to have so many highly credentialed experts to write their Russian campaign assessments who manage to say so little. This is particularly intriguing as we seem to be entering an inflection point in the Russo-Ukraine War, since by all accounts, not only have the highly publicized HIMARS artillery systems reached combat, but all the other Polish Krabs, French Caesars, German Panzerhaublitzen , and US M270 advanced artillery systems as well. If these have begun to be effective, we should be seeing results by now. The problem is that the ISW has been putting all its money on, first, a Russian offensive pause to regroup, resupply, and rethink, and then second, a renewed resumption of the offensive following this pause. A big problem with this theory, as I've pointed out, has been that reports differ on whether there has actually been such a pause, despite Russian official announ...

I note that Donald Trump is beginning to reinsert himself into public discourse, and as he does, espeically in his recent social media exchanges with Elon Musk, he's reminding me of his appeal. That appeal, of course, took him from long-shot vanity candidate for president in 2015 to his asymmetric defeat of Hillary the following year. The 2024 election is a long way away, but it's worth noting that the right people are already starting to get nervous. Here's wishful thinking from David Brooks: [T]he 2024 presidential primaries could be wild. Sure, conventional candidates like the Republican Ron DeSantis or the Democrat Gavin Newsom may run for the nominations. But if the hunger for change is as strong as it is now, the climate will favor unconventional outsiders, the further outside the better. These sorts of oddball or unexpected candidates could set off a series of swings and disequilibriums that will make the existing party systems unstable. Furthermore, if ever th...

As sometimes happens, I sat up in bed early this morning suddenly recognizing that nobody has pointed out that the Russian abandonment of Snake Island on June 30 was an unacknowledged victory for the asymmetric strategy in the Russo-Ukraine War. After four months of trying to defend the island, losing major naval assets in the process, including the flagship of the Black Sea fleet, the Russians left -- but Ukraine chose not to reoccupy the island. It would have been just as expensive for them to defend as it was for the Russians. and as long as the Russians deem it prudent to stay away, they don't need to. According to the Guardian, Maritime tracking services showed a logjam of ships waiting to pass into the Danube since a second route through the Bystre estuary was opened after the recent Russian retreat from the nearby Snake Island. . . . Although large carriers cannot pass through the Bystre estuary, limiting the amount of grain that can be exported, Ukrainian officia...