In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

For the second time this week: President Biden on Thursday was heard asking for permission from a staffer to “take a couple of questions” from the audience during a campaign stop in Michigan — prompting other aides to quickly move the press out of earshot. “Can I take a couple questions?” Biden, 81, asked a female staffer as he met with supporters and campaign volunteers on the front porch of a Saginaw city council member’s home. “Yeah, we’re going to take a few questions,” the staffer responded. The staffer’s response apparently served as a signal to three other aides, who quickly began to herd up the reporters already positioned on the sidewalk about 20 feet away. “Thank you, press … back in the vehicles,” they shouted, escorting the media away before Biden could take any questions. It looks like the Post reporter saw the same possibility I entertained on Tuesday , that if Joe "asks for permission to take questions", he's really saying it's time t...

I've read enough Bible history to know that Israel was regularly overrun by successive powerful neighbors, beginning with Egypt and leading up to the Seleucid Greeks, at which point the decision was made to ally with the upstart power Rome for protection from all the others. That was mildly successful until Rome took over itself and obliterated Israel at least as successfully as any of the others. Israel's modern history has involved alliance with another upstart world empire, the US, having received assurance from a fading empire, the UK, that it would grant territory for a new Jewish state in territories it controlled under the Palestine mandate. Harry Truman's immediate support for the emergence of the new state after World War II was the key factor in its initial survival. It's beginning to appear, though, that Israel's relationship with the US may wind up more like its ancient relationship with Rome. Just this morning in The Hill : During President...

Last week I noted that Biden wasn't really addresing the country in his State of the Union address. In fact, he wasn't addressing the free world, he wasn't addressing the American people, he wasn't addressing Congress, he wasn't addressing the justices of the US Supreme Court, although he did offend them gratuitously while insisting women had electrical power. I pointed out that he was actually addressing nervous Democrat donors, who'd sent a back-channel message that they wanted to see "passion and fire out in public as assurances" that Joe was still sharp and able to take on Trump. The answer from the big guy himself, according to the CNN report I linked, was a cryptic "State of the Union". The implication seems to have been that this is where he'd turn it all around. After a week, it hasn't happened . In the latest HarrisX/ Forbes poll, which was taken three days following last week’s State of the Union address, Joe...

BIDEN: "Am I allowed to take any questions? Anybody here?" Biden's handlers IMMEDIATELY kick the press out of the room and end the feed. pic.twitter.com/VgIyewvQNz — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 11, 2024 Joe was at a New Hampshire rally yesterday and created a remarkable vignette: at the end of his remarks, he asked, "Am I allowed to take questions? Anybody here, the staff?" By several accounts, his handlers immediately cut the feed, replaced it with a test pattern, visible in the clip above, and chased the reporters from the room. I briefly wondered if this wasn't as spontaneous as it seemed, and maybe it was some sort of pre-arranged code word from Joe to his handlers that it was time in fact to wrap things up -- that might have been a slightly better take on what happened, but only slightly. I watched it again, and Joe seemed very much at loose ends, the audience giggled nervously before an awkward pause, and then the handlers cut the feed. This...

I noted in last Wednesday's post that Victoria Nuland's retirement from the State Department must represent some change, but so far not one that's been announced, in US policy over the Ukraine war, since she had been both the chief advocate and often an implementer of US support for a pro-Western alignment there since betore the 2014 Maidan Revolution, which was engineered by the CIA with her collaboration. This story at Zero Hedge , while it contains speculation, offers some possible insight into the potential policy change: Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern in a new interview has speculated over the reasons behind Victoria Nuland stepping down from her high-ranking position as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the number three top official in the State Department. . . . While there have been rumors that maybe she could be in poor or declining health, McGovern has told Russia's Sputnik that the notoriously hawkish Nuland was a liability at a moment NAT...

As a onetime instructor in rhetoric, I was inevitably brought to look at Joe Biden's State of the Union address from that perspective, in paraticular two of rhetoric's main components : Audience: The intended readers or listeners of a message. Purpose: What the writer or speaker wants the message to accomplish, such as influencing an audience’s actions, thoughts or feelings on a subject. So first, to whom was Joe really speaking? Well, he made some inchoate threats, among others to justices of the US Supreme Court seated right in front of him, but from their facial expressions, it appears they were all offended regardless of their political alignment. He wasn't trying to persuade them of anything. Nor was he trying to persuade the roughly half the country to whom he indirectly referred in his opening passage: Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today. In other words, Donald...

Via ABC News : A new Pentagon study that examined reported sightings of UFOs over nearly the last century has found no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial intelligence, a conclusion consistent with past U.S. government efforts to assess the accuracy of claims that have captivated public attention for decades. . . . The issue received fresh attention last summer when a retired Air Force intelligence officer testified to Congress that the U.S. was concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects. The Pentagon has denied his claims, and said in late 2022 that a new Pentagon office set up to track reports of unidentified flying objects — the same one that released Friday's report — had received “several hundreds” of new reports but had found no evidence so far of alien life. The authors of Friday's report said the purpose was to apply a rigorous scientific analysis to a subject that has long captured the American public...