In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I had several takeaways from last night's debate. Irrespective of who "won", I thought there was a key subliminal effect -- which one do you not want to watch on the evening news for the next four years? I think Walz was the overwhelming pick in that category, mostly because of how he acted when he wasn't the one talking. I had a hard time finding stills of this on the web, because I think everyone missed it. While Vance spoke, Walz would screw his face into a frown with the corners of his mouth turned so exaggeratedly down, surrounded by his puffy cheeks, that he looked like a Muppet. In fact, looking around the web, this seems to be a common expression the guy has when his face is in repose. Then, for the whole time Vance spoke, he'd whip out his pen and scribble furiously. You'd think that he was about to come up with the precise mot juste that he'd use deftly to skewer Vance in a perfect, well-timed riposte -- but it never happened. He'd ...

Monday, Kamala made a remarkable effort to put distance between herself and Tampon Tim: Vice President Kamala Harris revealed Monday that she suffered from insomnia after President Biden endorsed her as his successor — and that she was sleep-deprived the morning she picked her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Harris, 59, told “All The Smoke” hosts Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson that she made her “gut” decision to select Walz after being unable to sleep much the night before, waking up early that Tuesday in Washington and using cooking to calm her mind. “From the time that the president called me and told me he wasn’t running, I mean, it’s just like everything was in speedy, speedy motion, and I was not sleeping so well,” Harris told the basketball stars, who both played for the Harris-supported Golden State Warriors. “And that one morning I just, I mean, I had, I don’t know, a few hours’ sleep — and I, you know, I like to sleep. I just got up,” she said. “I wa...

Trump's manner in this clip isn't his normal bombast. He pauses and gives something of a personal aside: "Honestly? I believe she was born that way." He goes on, with clearly deliberate words: "There's something wrong with Kamala, and I just don't know what it is, but there is definitely something missing -- and you know what? Every. Body. Knows it." Trump isn't mincing words here, he's the classic truthteller, Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye , James Dean playing Caleb Trask in East of Eden . This reminded me of the much fact-checked claim that Kamala scored a 78 in a Howard University IQ test (click on the image for a larger version): Even though the fact-checkers insist there's no way to verify this claim, and anyhow she went on to law school and passed the bar exam, two statements ring true: "Then she started laughing like a psychopath. I thought there is no way this bitch graduates." No way she graduates -- a...

I've at least got to give Reak Ckear Politics some credit for running this piere by Benjamin Roberts, associate editor at something called IM-1776, Heartland Betrayed: Down the Corruption Rabbit Hole: On the ground in Springfield, Ohio. Roberts spent a week in Springfield knocking on doors, talking to residents, and trying to interview local officials. as well as other business and NGO leadership. The result confirms the picture that's beguin to emerge from my own posts on Springfield, Aurora, and Charleroi: My investigation discovered a long rotten beam extending from the Mayor down to NGOs, pastors, corporations, and local mediocrities looking to make a fast buck. Everyone is on the take. And Springfield is not an outlier. It is a standard example of local partnerships with federal and corporate resettlement programs working together to profit themselves. The perverse incentive structures of these institutions makes them incapable of resisting population r...

The odd thing about the Haitians in Temporary Protective Status is that wherever they turn up, there is one standard corporate-media news story. Charleroi, PA, a most unlikely place for this to happen, is another instance , per CBS News: The influx of immigrants in Charleroi has divided residents over whether or not they are a welcome addition to their community. Former president Donald Trump put a spotlight on the topic during a rally last week in Arizona, sharing how the population of Haitian migrants in the town had grown by 2,000%. "Charleroi, what a beautiful name, but it's not so beautiful now," Trump said. KDKA-TV first reported in March how we were told the immigrant population in Charleroi has grown by more than 2000% in the last two years. The majority of students in the local school district who need assistance learning English are from Haiti. The district has spent $400,000 on ELL teachers and an interpreter. Trump touched on that impact during his ...

I was intrigued to read this piece : The GOP governor of Ohio and many pro-migration media outlets insist the federal government’s huge Haitian migration into the city of Springfield is legal. “They are there legally,” Gov. Mike DeWine wrote in a September 20, op-ed for the New York Times. “I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield.” Yesterday I linked to a story that refers to Haitians, Venezuelans, and others as "parole migrants". I've been calling them "quasi-legal". One of the programs by which they're in the country is Termporary Protected Status, which accordinbg to Wikipedia is given by the United States government to eligible nationals of designated countries, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security, who are present in the United States. In general, the Secretary of Homeland Security may grant temporary protected status to peopl...

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...