In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I was a little worried before Kamala's big interview that it would turn out like Joe Biden's first debate against Trump in 2020: he exceeded expectations by giving a mediocre performance that nevertheless had no obvious gaffes. This was a major hurdle, and he got over it. What if Kamala had an equivalent performance? It turns out I didn't need to worry. The first thing that struck me was something a lot of people noticed, but nobody really followed through: Did they put Kamala in the kiddie chair I had to sit in when I went to talk to the kindergarten teachers about my children? — John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) August 30, 2024 Well, it turns out that Kamala is 5'4". Walz is 6'2". But Dana Bash is 5'2", so this doesn't explain why Kamala appears to be so much shorter between both Walz and Bash in the photo. When I looked more carefully, I saw that both Walz and Bash are in ordinary dining room style chairs, which force both into upright...

I was intrigued by the mention in an Axios story I linked yesterday of "tension" among staff in the Harris campaign: BRIAN FALLON, the campaign’s senior adviser for communications, is generally considered the key person. But the interview has to be coordinated with Harris’s official office, where the communications director is KIRSTEN ALLEN. We hear there are some tensions. Although there';s general confusion about who's actually running the show, at least some people think it's this same Brian Fallon : Brian Fallon is managing and hiding Kamala Harris, because Fallon and the rest of her handlers know there is very solid reasoning for why Kamala Harris was never considered a viable alternative to Biden before. So who is Brian Fallon? According to Wikipedia , Brian Edward Fallon Jr. (born 1981 or 1982) is an American political operative. He was the national press secretary for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, a role h...

I want to keep looking at yesterdy's main topic, the dispute over the September 10 debate rules and whether the Harris campaign wanted to change them. My big question yesterday was, "why did the Harris campaign spend a whole day on this, which only focused attention on Harris's perceived weakness in debate?" I asked it before the dispute was resolved later in the day, at least in the eyes of the Trump campaign, when Trump himself posted , The Rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone except, perhaps, Crooked Joe Biden. The Debate will be “stand up,” and Candidates cannot bring notes, or “cheat sheets." Throughout yesterday, the Harris campaign denied the initial Trump claim that they'd insisted on a seated debate with opening statements and notes, focusing on the question of whether the mics will be open or muted, which was a trivial issue on which Trump himself saId he had no preference. CNN confirm...

The big story yesterday was Microphone dispute threatens September presidential debate : The Trump campaign is stirring up speculation that the September 10 presidential debate on ABC will not occur. Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, raised concerns over a microphone rule dispute with the Harris campaign. The Trump campaign has called for microphones to be muted except during a candidate's turn to speak, as was the rule during Trump's CNN debate with President Joe Biden, CNN reported[.] . . . Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign has requested unmuted microphones during the entire debate. "We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates' mics should be live throughout the full broadcast," Brian Fallon, spokesman for the Democratic nominee, said in a statement. "Our understanding is that Trump's handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don...

My chief takeaway from the photo above is that Judy Woodruff, 77, has a much better plastic surgeon than Nanxy Pelosi, 84, but I doubt if either lady has had her last visit to the face doctor. It used to be that refusal to acknowledge the pasaage of time was thought to be a character defect, but apparently no more. I used to watch The PBS News Hour, and I thought Judy Woodruff looked cadaverous 25 years ago, but that's been fixed. Nevertheless, the problem I see is that Speaker Emerita Pelosi is still running the world, or at least, she thinks she is. Her remarks came during an interview with Woodruff at last week's Democrat comvention, which she probably gave after more than a few sips of wine. Via The Gateway Pundit: “I made a prediction today to Al Hunt [Woodruff's husband and media heavyweight] , that would be. He said maybe you can win 5 [House seats]. I said, I want 10. He said, Is that your prediction? I said, I want 10 at least. We want 31 when we...

n the wake of the Democrat convention, Alan Dershowitz, the most prominent living Jew, announced ( here and here ), specificially at the second link, "I am no longer a Democrat. I am an Independent." Also in ther wake of the convention, Bobby Kennedy Jr, the most prominent living Kennedy and namesake of his martyred father, endorsed a Republican candidate for president and reiterated his previous departure from the Democrats. “The Democrats stood against authoritarianism, against censorship, against colonialism, imperialism and unjust wars,” he went on. “We were the party of labor, of the working class. The Democrats were the party of government transparency and the champion of the environment. Our party was the full world against big money interests and corporate power. True to its name, it was the party of democracy.” As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with. It had become ...

What strikes me about Bobby Kennedy Jr's endorsement of Trump is how prominent Democrats like David Axelrod view it as a betrayal of the Kennedy myth: Robert F. Kennedy was my political hero. He battled fiercely & eloquently against poverty, injustice and for economic fairness. Sadly RFK Jr, who made a rambling exit from the race today, proves that sometimes an apple DOES fall far from the tree...in this case, down a hill and… — David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) August 23, 2024 His siblings agree: I am sharing a personal statement that my family and I have made in response to my brother’s announcement. pic.twitter.com/j7vTTabNYZ — Kerry Kennedy (@KerryKennedyRFK) August 23, 2024 However, with John Jr dying with his cokehead wife and sister-in-law in an aircraft accident attributable to his own incompetence as a pilot and Caroline maintaining a low public profile, Bobby Jr is by far the most prominent Kennedy of his generation, and unliike John Jr, he's maintained...