In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Over the past couple of days, I've seen two references to a potential problem for Trump, even if he continues to do well in the polls, if enough Republicans resign from the House to give the majority to the Democrats . Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) will retire from the House months before his term ends next year, setting up a scenario where House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) could have a one-seat majority. . . . Gallagher's departure will bring a math problem for Johnson as the chamber seeks to fill a slew of other vacancies announced over the last few months. As of next week, there are four empty seats vacated by Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Bill Johnson (R-OH), Brian Higgins (D-NY), and Ken Buck (R-CO), whose last day in office was Friday. With Gallagher's absence, that brings the Republicans' majority to 217-213 as of April 19. That will be further narrowed for Republicans after the special election for Higgins, which is expected to favor Democrats, bringing th...

Following up on yesterday's post, I've found a few more data points that make me think Joe is actually driving key parts of foreign and military policy himself, although it's in the context of Robert Gates's assessment, "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” On Ukraine, Seymour Hersh remarks on Substack , President Biden’s foreign policy problems in the Middle East and Ukraine are daunting, especially in an election year, but the war between Russia and Ukraine could be nearing a military endgame, and not via negotiations. Vladimir Putin’s military is more entrenched inside Ukraine than ever, and the undermanned and under-equipped Ukraine military is facing a stalemate at best and the permanent loss of four oblasts. In essence, it is a defeat. . . . Even amid a difficult and costly war that he initiated, Putin remains firmly in control of Russia, despite a series of Wes...

Sometime around February, it looks like the message started to go out to Democrats: we're backing off Israel. My reflexive attitude up to this week had been that this was the brainchild of the big guy's handlers, and they were just feeding him talking points. Now, I'm not so sure. What's changed my mind starts with a Fox News op-ed from Clinton pollster Mark Penn : Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., set off a firestorm of his own making last week as he decided to intervene in Israeli politics by telling Israel to abandon its leader right in the middle of sensitive negotiations with Hamas. I don’t think Schumer will do that again. He heard from pretty much the world and it’s clear that Schumer is out of touch with Israel or he would have known that telling Israelis what to do is likely to produce the opposite result. But OK, here's Schumer, apparently not a very observant Jew, but a Jew nonetheless, who represents New York Jews, an important cons...

Over the past couple of weeks, I thought I was beginning to see a pattarn of increased activity from the big guy, if only due to the increased coverage of his fumbles and gaffes on the road. It turns out I was right, I checked his daily public schedule . Yesterday and today, he's in Texas. Tuesday,, he was in Arizona. On Saturday, he gave the Gridiron Club address; on Sunday, he had St Patrick's Day activities. Last week, he was in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Michigan. There's been a flurry of activity ever since the State of the Union, but before that, it was business as usual, long weekends at Camp David or in Wilmington. although there were similar campaign trips in February. This is in major contrast to his schedule last year; via the Washington Times , Leisure time has become a factor in the White House — and the Republican Party is tracking the trajectory of it while providing the damning numbers as well. “President Biden requires a lot of vacation. In...

He begins his discussion above: The war in Gaza is becoming a major issue in the American political campaign. . . . What we're seeing is a very, very nasty debate over support for Israel, with the hard left of the Democratic Party saying to President Biden that they're not going to vote for him if he continues to support Israel, and there's no way, even if Biden were to abandon Israel, there's no way he would ever give the hard left enough. They don't want a cease fire, they want the end of Israel. . . . They don't want a two-state solution. The problem is that Biden has a two-state solution. His two states, however, are Michigan and Minnesota. . . . He's particularly focused on Michigan, because Michigan, has a population of several hundred thousand Muslims and Arabs, who will never be satisfied with a president who supports Israel in any way, and the ceasefire is just a pretext. This is a continuation of the Democrat dilemma since the 1960s: as ...

I'm a little puzzled at Dick and Liz Cheney. The Buish dynasty's time has come and gone, the Bush family itself seems to have decided to keep quiet, but the Cheneys are raging on. Last week, "Sleazy" Liz Cheney Loses It After Bombshell Report Claims She "Suppressed Exonerating Evidence" With J6 Committee , The story refers to a Mollie Hemingway piece in The Federalist that claims she helped the January 6 committee suppress exculpatory evidence for Trump: Cheney and her committee falsely claimed they had “no evidence” to support Trump officials’ claims the White House had communicated its desire for 10,000 National Guard troops. In fact, an early transcribed interview conducted by the committee included precisely that evidence from a key source. The interview, which Cheney attended and personally participated in, was suppressed from public release until now. Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato’s first transcribed interview with the committee was co...

While the Senate bill providing roughly $60 billion in continued Ukraine aid remains stalled in the House, the overall picture for Ukraine continues to deteriorate . The French paper Marianne has published excerpts by secret military documents that are causing an uproar in Europe and the world, for dealing with the situation on the ground in Ukraine without the disguise of propaganda that pervades almost all reports on the subject. . . . The greatest takeaway from the documents is that ‘a Ukrainian military victory now seems impossible’. The Russian forces are waging ‘a slow and long, high-intensity war based on the continued attrition of the Ukrainian army’. The defense reports harshly criticize the ‘disastrous’ planning done by western military and Ukraine: “‘The planners believed that as soon as the first Russian lines of defense were crossed, the entire front would collapse […] These fundamental preliminary phases were carried out without taking into account the mor...