In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I began following Glenn Reynolds as Instapundit not long after 9/11. His pitch at the time, as outlined in An Army of Davids (2006) was libertarian, and I was never quite comfortable with the title -- anyone who studies the Old Testament in any depth won't be comfortable with the prospect of a Sorcerer's Apprentice calling up legions of Davids. One was plenty -- ask Uriah the Hittite. But this is just one illustration of the shallowness of Reynolds's thought processes. His intellectual mentors include Ayn Rand, Robert A Heinlein, and Philip K Dick. His predictions have fallen short. In the link, Reynolds titles a chapter 'Small Is the New Big'. He discusses the rise of "armchair workers" (through companies such as eBay), doing work at home—as well as specialty-based cottage industries such as Coffin's Shoes in Knoxville, TN. He argues that future trends will create a mosaic of co-existing big box retailers, local firms, and busines...

There's been very little this morning about Joe's presser aboard Air Force One following his departure from Israel. The most pointed was at Gateway Pundit , which posted stills of John Kirby's expressions as Joe spoke. A full video -- about 13 minutes -- of the presentation is available on C-Span . As in the stills, the most important feature is the body language and expressions of the handlers. From the start to about 2:30, Karine Jean-Pierre is visible in the lower right quadrant looking glum. Beginning about 1:45, John Kirby appears between Joe and Ms Jean-Pierre looking volcanic. At 2:27, Joe says to the press, "You guys are such a pain in the neck," and Kirby and Jean-Pierre adopt the expressions of middle school administrators contemplating a riot in the stairwells. At 2:35, Kirby and Jean-Pierre withdraw beyond camera view to consult. This seems to have been a message to Joe to go to questions from the press. When these begin, Kirby adopts a pain...

And by old-style, I think of, say, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and the Bushes père et fils . Joe's performance in Tel Aviv. which begins at about 4:05 in the video, is none of the above. He's looking down, reading very deliberately from notecards in an affectless tone, barely avoiding slurring. "They're committed evils that uh, and atrocities that, uh, make ISIS, uh, look uh somewhat more rational. Y'know uh -- Americans are grieving with you. They really are. And Americans are worried. Americans are worried because they know there's uh this is not an easy field'a navigate whatcha havta do." At about 5:58, he threatens to veer into another trademark self-serving account of days gone by: "Y'know, uh, years ago I asked the Secretary of State when we were serving in the Senate [presumably John Kerry] to write something for a man -- said, uh, you know a line that I think is appropriate, he said, uh, we need, uh, not just uh -- ...

Antony Blinken hasn't been having a good tour of the Middle East : Secretary of State Antony Blinken received a cold reception from Egyptian and Saudi leaders during meetings about support for Israel on Sunday, according to The Washington Post. Egypt’s Abdel Fatah El-Sisi and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) rejected Blinken’s call for support of Israel’s counteroffensive in the Gaza Strip, the Post reported on Sunday. El-Sisi and Salman made it clear that they stood with Palestinians and called for Israel to end its “siege” in Gaza. “I heard a lot of good ideas about some of the things we need to do moving forward,” Blinken told reporters on Sunday following his meeting. MBS kept Blinken waiting for hours before their expected discussion on Saturday, instead choosing to show up to the meeting the next morning, according to the Post. When the two eventually met, MBS “stressed” that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) should halt its counter-offensive “that [h...

I found another Tablet piece from early 2021 trying to make sense of what might be the Biden foreign policy, this one by Martin Peretz, the controversial former publisher and sometime editor-in-chief of The New Republic . Peretz, a Zionist and something close to a neoconservative, saw a "Mideast blind spot" in Antony Blinken, of whose foreign policy vision he otherwise enthusiastically approved, and he raised the conundrum of Robert Malley: The twinned issues where Blinken has remained conspicuously reticent and indistinct are the Middle East and the elephant in the Middle East, Iran. In lieu of asserting himself, the secretary of state has approved the reopening of nuclear talks with Iran and outsourced them to Robert Malley, whom he appointed or allowed to be appointed U.S. special envoy to that country. Blinken’s reliance on Malley, and Malley’s own history of finding any opportunity to engage with groups and countries that demonstrably align themselves against Americ...

I ran into this short piece at Tablet , one of the sites that broke the Malley-Tabatabai story the week before the Hamas invasion of Israel, which points out that they'd been contrarian over US policy over Israel and Iran all along, with links to prove it. One of those links, from May 2021, is The Realignment: In the Middle East, Biden is finishing what Obama started. And his top advisers are all on board. A little searching indicates that this was re-linked frequently at the time, but it's gone dormant until the new questions have come up about Blinken and Malley. Is the new president [Biden] forging his own path in the Middle East, or is he following in the footsteps of Obama? Until now, those who feared that his presidency might become the third term of Obama fixed their wary eyes on Robert Malley, the president’s choice as Iran envoy. When serving in the Obama White House, Malley helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, which sought accommodations with Tehran that...

I'm deeply skeptical of this week's news. Israel, as it has every right to do, has carefully controlled news from its war in Gaza to the point that anything we hear is days old at best, and it reveals almost nothing. So naturally, across the board, legacy media and Conservative Inc lead with Israel-Hamas non-news or the sideshow of pro-Hamas demonstrations elsewhere. There are occasional notes that Joe Biden hasn't been very visible for much of the week -- his big event was tripping on some steps in Philadelphia yesterday. But enough other news still dribbles out to convince me there's stuff we aren't being told. For instance, it sounds as if, instead of being in the White House Situation Room being briefed with his cabinet on the Hamas war, Joe spent Sunday and Monday of the holiday weekend in an interview with Robert Hur, the special counsel for his own classified document investigation: Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office...