In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I've already cited uncertainty among some observers about the state of Joe Biden's fire in the belly as next year's presidential campaigns get under way. But another indication comes from Kamala Harris : Vice President Kamala Harris has had 27 work days with nothing on her public schedule since the launch of the Biden-Harris reelection campaign, a Daily Caller analysis found. On days the vice president had something on her public schedule, her schedule frequently consisted of having one event during the entire day. The events included having lunch with President Joe Biden, receiving a brief with the president, and eating with foreign leaders, the Daily Caller found using Politico Playbook records of Harris’ schedule. The piece goes on to enumerate each of her schedule lacunae for individual months, which are pretty awful -- for instance, The vice president spent seven weekdays with nothing on her public schedule in June. She spent one day with nothing but lu...

I ran into this take on Barack Obama, or maybe Obama and Biden, at Gateway Pundit: I’ve always had Obama’s number. I understand what makes him tick. I understand his goals. First, let’s get the “gay issue” out of the way. I’ve reported on both my radio and TV shows for 15 years that my wealthy, connected friends in Chicago have always said, “Obama frequented gay bathhouses and gay clubs. Everyone in the know, knows Obama is gay.” Now that we’ve heard from Obama’s biographer that Obama wrote about his daily gay fantasies, I think it’s pretty clear my Chicago pals were right. Tucker is onto something! I've got to say that I'd been off Gateway Pundit since Sidney Powell released the kraken or whatever she did, but mainstream Conservative Inc has kept extending spring break into summer vacation and now an extended Labor Day, and only sites like Gateway Pundit have been fun to visit. The writer, Wayne Allyn Root, moves on to the meat: But all of this is small potatoe...

In a sign of impatience with the counteroffensive's progress -- probably too late at this stage -- Zelensky has fired his defense minister : Ukraine’s Minister of Defense has resigned after President Volodymyr Zelensky announced his intentions to replace him amid the struggling counteroffensive against Russia and mounting corruption scandals. Oleksii Reznikov, who has led the Ukrainian war effort since the Russian invasion in February of last year, tendered his resignation on Monday, writing on social media: “It was an honour to serve the Ukrainian people and work for the Ukrainian Army for the last 22 months, the toughest period of Ukraine’s modern history.” A week ago, I posted a tally of the major Ukraine corruption scandals to date , but it appears that yet another is in the background of Reznikov's resignation: Although Reznikov has yet to be tied with any of the corruption scandals personally, the [New York] Times went on to admit that the resignation h...

There's been the usual chatter from the usual suspects over Joe's latest breach of decorum, walking out of yesterday's Medal of Honor ceremony for US Army Cpt Larry Taylor before it had finished. Once again, Sean Hannity, among others, called Joe "dazed and confused", which I didn't see at all. Joe begins speaking for his part of the ceremony at 2:45 in the video at the top of this post. He's aware of the chaplain offering the opening prayer, and he waits respectfully as the chaplain speaks for over two minutes. Then Joe moves to the lectern and begins his scripted remarks. He's aware of the lectern, the circumstances, and his role in delivering the prepared address, which he reads mostly with some degree of expression. He knows where the teleprompter is, and he reads from it in mostly coherent sentences. While I'm not a medical professional, as a layman, I don't see him appearing to be unaware of his surroundings or seeing people who a...

It's been a long time since I've posted on COVID, but with the uptick in masking recommendations from the usual public health suspects and the reemergence of Dr Fauci , I decided to see what I could do to compare current COVID statistics with those from a couple of years ago. What I discovered was that I can't. As of even last year, there were daily statistical updates locally and nationally. Now, at best, they're weekly, but the California state breakdown by county that's at the top of this post is updated only monthly. The old graphs I used to copy are no longer posted. Now and then I've done a quick check of how many people are wearing masks at Sunday mass. This would be a population that skews older and more prudent -- prudence is a cardinal virtue among Catholics, after all -- and as late as six months ago, I was gauging it at from 25 to 35 percent. Last Sunday, it was well down into single digits. By the same token, I've seen far fewer people w...

From Reuters on Thursday : Ukraine told critics of the pace of its three-month-old counteroffensive to "shut up" on Thursday, the sharpest signal yet of Kyiv's frustration at leaks from Western officials who say its forces are advancing too slowly. Since launching a much vaunted counteroffensive using many billions of dollars of Western military equipment, Ukraine has recaptured more than a dozen villages but has yet to penetrate Russia's main defences. Stories in the New York Times, Washington Post and other news organisations last week quoted U.S. and other Western officials as suggesting the offensive was falling short of expectations. Some faulted Ukraine's strategy, including accusing it of concentrating its forces in the wrong places. As I've pointed out here many times, Kyiv simply has to wrap up its counteroffensive this year. In fact, Ukraine's early success in 2022 for a time prompted the talking-head retired US generals to predict a cap...

Nobody's mentioned this so far, but given the disclosures in recent weeks -- the 5,000 e-mails sent to alias accounts, the 1,000 e-mails sent from Joe's vice presidential office directly to Rosemont Seneca Partners , and the trips on Air Force Two with Hunter, on some of which his presence was concealed -- Joe can no longer hold a traditional presidential news conference. But from the start of his presidency, he's groomed us to get used to it anyhow. The Washington Post editorialized this past May : President Biden hasn’t dropped the microphone; he appears to have lost it. Mr. Biden is turning into a news media evader, and it’s harmful to his presidency and the nation. In the past 100 years, only Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan averaged fewer news conferences than Mr. Biden. (A news conference involves the president taking questions from multiple reporters; a one-on-one interview with a handpicked journalist doesn’t count.) So far in 2023, Mr. Biden h...