In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

For a smart guy, Elon is sometimes pretty dumb. Not only did he date Amber Heard, but he apparently froze embryos with her, whatever that was about. But just yesterday he got lots of attention when he solved Ukraine, whatever that was about: Ukraine-Russia Peace: - Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people. - Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake). - Water supply to Crimea assured. - Ukraine remains neutral. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2022 If he was just trying to get attention, well, maybe he accomplished something, but at least as far as Ukraine is concerned, I'm still left with the question my co-worker used to blurt out in meetings, "What problem are we trying to solve?" Recognize that even as of this past May, when Henry Kissinger made an equivalent proposal, he was thought even then to be behind the times, and by July, he'd reversed himself. To ...

It isn't hard to search the web and find speculative maps that have been created over decades purporting to show an eventual partition of Russia -- the one above is just one such. What surprises me is that as far as I can tell, nobody at all has put anything like this up in light of developments arising from the current Russo-Ukraine War. Indeed, news reports yesterday indicated that Ukraine's application to join NATO caught the Biden administration off guard. Isn't that peculiar? Until very recently, everyone from Henry Kissinger to Donald Trump seems to have taken it for granted that there was a Russian-NATO balance of power secured by, among other things, a vague understanding that Ukraine would remain a neutral buffer, except that Russia occupied the Donbas and Crimea in violation of previous security guarantees, except this made it an even surer deal or something. If we talk about starting World War III, thinking this sort of complacent castle in the air would ...

I'm starting to see signs that the lizard people are losing patience. As I noted yesterday, the YouTube psychologist Dr Todd Grande, who with his audience sees himself as at least a step up from Dr Phil, has come out and said, "It's hard to imagine how [Biden] is fit to be president under these circumstances." I've been of the position that individual gaffes, ranging just last week from "Where's Jackie?" to the latest instance of Dr Jill giving him orders in public as he wanders around the stage, don't necessarily indicate a medical condition, but whatever they are, they've become a problem. Thus people like Bill Maher are starting to float tentative strategies : The liberal comedian and host of the eponymous Real Time With Bill Maher told his audience Friday night that although he considered President Joe Biden’s place on the Democratic ticket for the president in 2024 to be a done deal, he could “see” dumping Vice President Kamala H...

I often follow the popular YouTube psychologist Dr Todd Grande, in part because he gives insightful presentations on well-known criminal cases. Like many professionals in various fields who make regular YouTube commentaries, though, I suspect he makes more money from YouTube than from his day job, and I take that into account. Nevertheless, beyond his often entertaining analysis of con artists and celebrities, he's also given several discussions about Joe Biden and his leadership qualifications. The most recent, linked above, is from yesterday, in which, after enumerating a list of gaffes Biden has made since assuming the presidency, he concludes, "It's hard to imagine how he is fit to be president under these circumstances." At about 5:30, he explains, In my opinion, the age of a president does not matter as much as the condition that they are in. I've seen people in their 90s that are sharp as a tack, and I've seen people in their 30s who were frequently...

I've become more interested in Antony Blinken over the past several months, since he appears to be an independent policy actor within the Biden administration. In early March, less than two weeks after Putin invaded Ukraine, the White House and the Pentagon publicly contradicted Blinken over a plan to send secondhand Polish Migs to Ukraine : But the proposal isn’t as simple as it seems and apparently caught US diplomats off guard when Poland announced the plan Tuesday. Previously, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had indicated that Poland sending jets to Ukraine would get “the green light” from the Biden administration, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, also supported the plan in an appearance on ABC’s This Week last Sunday. However, the report said, "Biden administration concerns about escalating US involvement in the conflict appear to have stalled the deal." According to Politico , [S]keptics inside the Biden administratio...

There was a big news pseudo-event yesterday when President Brandon, in yet another gaffe, asked during a speech at a White House conference, “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?” He was referring to the late Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), who passed away this past August in an auto accident. The explanation appears to be that apparently, his notes (or the teleprompter) told him to make sure to honor the late representative, but weren't specific enough. Thus In fact, Biden’s teleprompter was cueing him to speak about Walorski specifically because she is deceased. The man in possession of our nuclear football did not know the woman he was calling out for is dead, did not know he was supposed to be honoring her memory – because she is dead – and likely did not know what was supposed to happen after that moment. Apparently, a memorial video was supposed to play, but the White House aides shut down the President and never played the video in a desperate attempt to erase h...

Recently I ran across two essays that outline what I take to be the right-wing case against aiding Ukraine. I have some suspicion that neither is completely ingenuous, but I'll take their points at face value. The first is by Michael Walsh, 'Not Worth the Bones of a Single Grenadier' at a site called The Pipeline, which seems to carry National Review types like John O'Sullivan. He begins with an argument we'll see again: Bismarck was right about the Balkans, but he might as well have been speaking of the Ukraine, a troubled land (its name means "borderland"), oft-conquered, rarely independent, generally restive, and almost always miserable. Like the Kurds, the Ukrainians are for reasons of geography basically a people without a country. . . But the same might be said about half of Europe; Poland wasn't a country at all throughout the 19th century; Belgium didn't emerge until 1830 and has been twice invaded since then by Germany, which i...