In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

In a post last week , I said I was skeptical of reports that some Democrats are trying to find a younger candidate who can replace Joe Biden as their 2024 nominee because, as I said at that time, Joe Biden is their only hope of claiming to maintain the nearly expired New Deal coalition. In fact, it seems to me that if they want a viable national candidate who could actually do this, they have a perfectly good one in Robert Kennedy Jr, whom they currently abjure. This isn't to say that they don't see a legitimate problem in Biden, although yet again, I don't think a medical diagnosis is needed to point it out. Take his meeting with Israel's President Herzog at the White House Tuesday, where he's reported to have said, “The Israelis and the Palestinians… uh… on a political level… They uh, and… uh… They uh… And, I… Agwai endhole and whole shegwam… And uh…” said Biden. The fact-checkers insisted that the big guy wasn't asleep , he was just reading fr...

I certainly agree that the unanswered question of who brought the baggie into the cubby outside the Sit Room is important, but I'm less and less convinced the answer has much to do with Hunter. Let's take the latest theory from Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who's been serving as the vehicle for unnamed colleagues still on the force who are expressing their skepticism about the investigation. As of Tuesday, he was saying : “Let’s just say a friend called me up and said, ‘Don’t preclude the possibility that the cocaine found in the White House there was not accidentally left behind.’ In other words, it was left there deliberately for someone to find, and let you say someone else may have found it. So that’s the story I kind of heard from someone who may know a little something about something. We’ll see what happens, but they know who it is. I’m sure of it.” As best I can translate this, he seems to be saying that the baggie was something like a dead drop,...

Ever since Bp Robert Barron heartily endorsed this past spring's TV series Mrs Davis , calling it "my favorite show", I've been anxious to watch it. Nevertheless, although he's discussed it in at least two podcasts, and on one, his interlocutor warns viewers that there are content issues and "don't show it to your prayer group", I can agree that it isn't a Catholic film. He says at the link, Now if you’re looking to Mrs. Davis for theological precision, you will be severely disappointed (and please don’t write me letters reminding me of how weird its theology is; I know), but there is indeed a spiritual motif of supreme importance that stands at the very heart of the show, and it is well worth plowing through all of the intense oddness to grasp it. It has to do with idolatry and, more precisely, with our tendency to create idols. Wikipeida calls it "an American science fiction comedy drama", which puts it in the same genre as...

Via The Washington Examiner , Former University of Pennsylvania swimmer turned transgender activist Lia Thomas is back at the center of attention after the national champion was seen on social media appearing to embrace the "Trantifa" movement. Thomas, a biological male who identifies as female, was seen on Instagram sporting an all-black outfit that included a BDSM leather harness and shirt reading "Antifa Super Soldier." The image of Thomas was reportedly shared by the activist's partner Gwen Weiskopf, who purportedly identifies as transgender. So who is Gwen Weiskopf? A quick web search brought up this photo and a writeup : At the link: [D]etails on Lia Thomas and Gwen Weiskopf’s relationship timeline & their dating history still need to be published in the public domain. However, sources believe the couple is still together despite Lia’s name beginning to trend over the internet after participating in female swinging despite being t...

There's been a minor flurry over Vice President Harris's latest blurt : The shocking gaffe happened as the 58-year-old vice president delivered remarks at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Md., on the need to build a “clean energy economy.” “When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water,” Harris said, eliciting applause from the audience. While according to the link, the White House said she meant to say "pollution" instead of "population", it's hard not to think this was more than a Freudian slip, and she could arguably have meant what she said. A web search on "climate change population reduction" produces 185,000,000 hits, including many sites at the most respectable NGOs expressing quite radical proposals in ways that make them seem like bromides. Just this past May, an article in Scientific American by Stephanie Feldstein, the popu...

I found this piece via Instapundit, Why Match School And Student Rank? which echoes my own views on Ivy admissions, which were formed by my own experience as an undergraduate and the views of Ferdinand Lundberg in books like The Rich and the Super-Rich, which in my view is up there with Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and Milton's prose in both style and intent. His thesis is this: Elite colleges are machines for laundering privilege. That is: Harvard accepts (let’s say) 75% smart/talented people, and 25% rich/powerful people. This is a good deal for both sides. The smart people get to network with elites, which is the first step to becoming elite themselves. And the rich people get mixed in so thoroughly with a pool of smart/talented people that everyone assumes they must be smart/talented themselves. After all, they have a degree from Harvard! . . . People ask why Harvard admissions can still be bribed or influenced by the rich or well-connected. This is the...

Here's a news flash I picked up from my portal on the dark web that connects with the alternate universe: WASHINGTON (AP) The FBI announced this morning that C Throckmorton "Buddy" Hollingsworth III, a Washington Post editor, has been identified as the person whose fingerprints were found on the plastic baggie of cocaine that was discovered by the Secret Service near the White House Situation Room on the evening of July 2. Mr Hollingsworth was arrested at his Dupont Circle home before dawn on felony charges of cocaine possession on federal property, as well as. . . But here's a thought experiment. What if this had hit the news just the other day in our own universe. Do you think there would be one iota less speculation about the identity of the real culprit, and poor Buddy Hollingsworth would just be taking the fall for someone else? I can't speak to whether the FBI or the Secret Service has better credibility over there than over here -- remember that in...