In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Lately, I've been looking at Greg Gutfeld as one of the more insightful commentators. Here was his take on the Wall Street Journal's headline yesterday about Joe showing signs of slipping (at 0:30): The Wall Street Journal revealed that Joe Biden may be suffering cognitive decline. Talk about breaking news. Nice work there, Wall Street Journal! I wonder what stocks your financial section will be recommending. Perhaps those little-known startups like Apple and Micsrosoft? Tucker Carlson is even closer to the point . He brings up the backlash against former White House physician Ronny Jackson, who was publicly reprimanded by Barack Obama when he posted on Twitter during the 2020 campaign that Biden should undergo a cognitive test when he said in a speech, "My name is Joe Biden, and I'm a Democratic cndidate for the United States Senate." Tucker went on to say that Jackson was given the uniform command of the people who run the Democratic P...

It's remarkable how quickly the Trump hush money trial and conviction have faded into the rear view mirror -- by the weekend, legacy media was gloating that Trump was ahead by as low as 0.6 points in the meaningless RealClearPolitics popular vote average, but as of this morning, he's back up at 1.1, basically no change from before the verdict. So they've moved on to Hunter's gun trial, which is soap-opera clickbait with a juror getting weepy during Abbe Lowell's opening statement . But I can't resist posting on one footnote. Kevin Morris, Hunter's "sugar bro", attended at least the first day of Hunter's trial on Monday to support him, although as I posted here , after spending at least $6.5 million to pay Hunter's lawyers and fund his lifestyle, he's said to be out of money. I've been increasingly skeptical of the conventional Morris narrative -- he's a "Hollywood lawyer" who stopped practicing law 15 years ago, and...

As a successful comic, Gutfeld has an instinctive insight into humor, but standup is also a peculiarly American institution, part of our popular culture. For the last several days I've been talking about Trump's relation to the popular culture superhero paradigm, in which a reactive superhero consistently improvises to escape the elaborate schemes of an intellectual, deliberative supervillain. We see this when Batman fights the Joker. but we see it even more clearly as we watch the Road Runner foil the elaborate machinations of Wile E Coyote. Gutfeld made a very similar point in last night's monologue . At 3:28: So the saga of Donald J Trump continues. Really, what did we talk about before him? . . . But have you noticed the reaction to the Trump conviction? It's more muted than my TV during Jesse's show. Of course, there are the usual nut cases where anything related to Trump is cause for incontinence. [Switches to clip of Joy Behar on The View talking about...

The possibility of prison for Trump when Judge Merchan sentences him on July 11 quickly arose on Friday : 'The View’ co-host Sunny Hostin, who seemed quite pleased with the developments, shared on the air that she had spoken with someone from Bragg’s office. . . . “I spent this morning speaking to someone from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. They’re called street fighters. He believes that they will recommend a one-year term in prison. And that is because when you spend a year in prison in New York or under, you serve in Rikers Island,” Austin said. According to Hostin, this recommendation serves not just as punishment but as a stern message to society that such conduct will not be tolerated again. Victoria Taft at PJ Media answered, Of Course They'll Put Trump in Jail , and Trump himself made it plain that he's fully aware of the contingency : “I’m okay with it,” Trump said when asked about the potential of house arrest or even jail during a “Fox ...

What almost nobody has mentioned about Joe's Friday Dr Evil grin is that it was made just incidentally following his announcement of a new Gaza cease-fire plan, which itself incidentally followed his comments on Trump's conviction . Under the guise of announcing a proposed ceasefire agreement in the Israel-Gaza war, Biden took to a podium in the White House state dining room at 1:30 p.m. on Friday. He began his statement not with details of the peace plan but rather with a lecture about how the “rule of law” prevailed in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump. “Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself,” Biden said of his 2024 Republican presidential rival. “And after careful deliberation, the jury reached a unanimous verdict. They found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts.” . . . “It’s reckless, it’s dangerous, and it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.” But ...

No sooner did I post on Joe vs Donald as a comic book superhero conflict yesterday than Joe himself came out as the deliberate, conniving, and devious supervillain himself in the notorious clip that's been all over the weh this morning. “Can you tell us, sir — Donald Trump refers himself as a political prisoner and blames you directly. What’s your response to that, sir?” a reporter asked Biden after the 81-year-old concluded his remarks on Friday in which he defended the conviction of Trump. The reporter asked the question as Biden began to walk away after concluding his address. But after the question was posed, Biden stopped in his tracks, looked over to the reporters, and grinned, flashing his teeth. “Do you think the conviction will have an impact on the campaign?” the reporter pressed as Biden continued to smile. He then slowly walked away without replying, seemingly with his mouth still open. The Trump campaign promptly turned it into an ad: Trump campaign alread...

This is the part of the 1953 sci-fi movie where the scientists realize the high voltage lines & atom bombs only make the monster bigger — David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 2, 2017 I saw the post just above on Instapundit this morning, thinking it was a reaction to yesterday's verdict, but I suddenly realized it's dated July 2, 2017. You can say things about Trump one time, and they turn out to be just as applicable to other situations. Greg Gutfeld made a similar reference to pop-culture paradigms in last night's monologue : The good news is that as this trial descended into an absurdity of corruption, Trump's numbers have been going up, while Joe Biden's keep falling, like Joe Biden himself. Turns out Americans love it when one man fights against a corrupt system with his back up against the wall, just as much as they detest a dementia-ridden dirtbag who's spent half a century padding his life with your money. . . . It ain't over til the fat ...