In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

An essay by Oiver Wiseman with the above title is at The Free Press , tellingly limked at Real Clear Politics: A lot has changed since [July 15] —most importantly Trump’s opponent—and rather than holding an unassailable lead, he is in the middle of a dogfight for the White House. What happened? Part of the story is of a Democratic Party pulling itself together, ditching its senescent candidate, and falling into line behind Kamala Harris. But the other part concerns Donald Trump himself, and the campaign he has chosen to run. I dom't think it's a coincidence at all that Real Clear Politics likes this essay -- it chraracterizes the current campaign as a "dogfight for the White House" almost entirely bsased on the RCP poll aggregates that mix garbage polls with a few respectaable ones and come up with averages that put Kamala slightly ahead, which justifies the "razor thin" conventional wisdom about the current state of the election. If anything, curre...

Yesterday had two headlines, first, that Routh's son, Oran, was arrested on child pornography charges following an FBI search of his phone related to the investigation of his father. Second, via Politico, US officials looked at Americans traveling to Ukraine to fight. Ryan Routh fell through the cracks. Both raise separate sets of questions. Regarding the child pornography arrest, leaving the specific charge aside, what we're being told in the corporate media narrative contradicts earlier parts of the media narrative -- for starters, just the puzzle of what Oran had been telling reporters about his father. For instance, as of September 15 , Routh's son, Oran Routh, reached by DailyMail.com shortly after Sunday's shooting, said this was the first he'd heard of the alleged assassination attempt. 'This was the first I heard about it,' the 35-year-old exclusively told DailyMail.com. 'Was my father shot or injured?' . . . 'He's ...

There's been a certain amount of anxiety over the US Justice Departmebnt's release of a handwritten letter from wannabe Trump assassin Ryan Routh offering $150,000 to anyone who can "complete the job" -- except that it was found in a box Routh left with an unnamed contact months before his September 15 arrest. In many ways, the letter raises the least of the new questions. Here is more of what came out in yesterdays bail hearing, via USA Today: Routh allegedly left the handwritten letter in a metal box with someone, who wasn’t named in the court filing from prosecutors, months before the incident at the golf course. The witness opened the box after hearing about Routh's arrest, and law enforcement visited the person Sept. 18. The box also contained ammunition, a metal pipe, building materials, four phones and several letters, prosecutors said. “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you,” said the letter, a picture of which appears i...

Welker: "Why should voters trust" Kamala wouldn't ban fracking? Fetterman: "It's so strange why we keep talking about fracking" Welker: You called fracking a "stain on Pennsylvania." What do you now like about fracking?" Fetterman: "They're eating dogs. They're eating cats." pic.twitter.com/kkVkT13PU7 — Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 22, 2024 Sen Fetterman uttered a sphinx-like remark over the weekend that seems to have pundits confused. In the wake of the apparent non-sequitur in the clip above, Tim Haines said , When repeatedly pressed about abandoning his opposition to fracking during a "Meet The Press" interview on Sunday, Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman said he doesn't have to answer that kind of specific policy question because "the other side" doesn't take policy seriously. I don't think that was whnat the senator said, and I definitely don't think that w...

A puzzling exchange between the Harris and Trump campaigns over a second Trump-Harris debate hasn't drawn much attention. Yesterday, on a Saturday. the New York Post reported , Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted CNN’s invitation to debate Donald Trump for a second time ahead of the November election — despite the latter’s insistence that he doesn’t see a “need” to face-off again. “The American people deserve another opportunity to see Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump debate before they cast their ballots,” Harris-Walz campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said Saturday. “It would be unprecedented in modern history for there to just be one general election debate. Debates offer a unique chance for voters to see the candidates side by side and take stock of their competing visions for America. “Vice President Harris is ready for another opportunity to share a stage with Donald Trump, and she has accepted CNN’s invitation to a debate on October 23.” Well, f...

In this post a week ago , I suggested that municipalities like Springfield, OH, Aurora, CO, and Charleroi, PA have experienced particulary troublesome influxes of illegal or quasi-legal immigrants because local power players, abetted by politicians, have exploited government subsidies, routed via non-profits, to make money off them. It hasn't been hard for local investigative reporters to uncover these schemes, as I discussed at that link regarding the case in Aurora, CO. Now it turns out that the mayor of Springfield, OH is in on the same sort of boodle. Via the Buckeye Reporter , A Buckeye Reporter investigation has confirmed that Mayor Rob Rue of Springfield, Ohio, is renting out apartments in buildings that he owns to Haitian immigrants—a move that some local residents are calling a conflict of interest. . . . A few blocks away from Little and Rue Funeral Home, also owned by Rue, a 37-year-old man who introduced himself as “Works” lives in an apartment on an est...

Here's another puzzling data point, from Politico on Wednesday : Iranian hackers sent sensitive information stolen from the Trump campaign to President Joe Biden’s campaign earlier this summer, U.S. investigators said Wednesday. The emails were sent in June and July to individuals “associated with the Biden campaign” and “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and CISA said in a statement. . . . It is unclear to what extent the then-Biden campaign read or made use of the information the Iranians sent. The three agencies said the emails were unsolicited and campaign staff did not reply to them. Although the account refers to Iranian "hackers", it doesn't say whether the hackers got the information from hacking the Trump campaign directly, or whether they obtained it indirectly, possibly from sources within the US government. We...