In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

In the video clip above, Mark Halperin tells Tucker Carlson that the impending Trump victory on November 5 "will be the cause of the greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country". That's sayng a lot. Let's think a moment about what a big mental health crisis actually looks like. It's instructive to do a YouTube search on "narcissism", a vaguely defined term that covers a range from ordinary self-centered boastfulness to full-blown Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The YouTube search will reveal that there's an enormous cottage industry of narcissistic victim therapists ranging from licensed counselors and PhD psychologists to uncredentialed "life coaches" who offer advice to people who've encountered "narcissists" in their families, in marriages and dating relationships, at work, in church, at recreatioon, and just about everywhere else. Many people who hear the term "narcissist" can bring up h...

Up to a few weeks ago, astute observers had been saying that Kamala's real campaign manager was Brian Fallon, who was the architect of the strategy that kept her away from press conferences and interviews. And up to a few weeks ago, it's hard to argue that this wasn't a success. The polls were stuck with her leading by about 3 points in the popular vote, for instance. Then, out of the blue, a sudden consensus emerged that Kamala had a problem with black men, and whether it was in response to that or for some other reason, she began to give softball interviews to friendly outlets. The problem was, though, what the Brian Fallon faction of the campaign recognized, that no matter how friendly the interviewer or the format, she performs poorly, often offering up soundbites like "not a thing that comes to mind" when asked how she'd differ from Biden policies -- which promptly make their way into Trump commercials. Given a week or more of that kind of experienc...

This is the question that at least some observers are posing about Kamala as she appears to be falling behind in the polls, at least according to this piece at Breitbart : Harris has repeatedly said she is running as an underdog, but her schedule does not appear to mirror those claims. Harris’s Tuesday schedule shows one event — she will sit for an interview with Charlamagne tha God at 5 p.m. Eastern. Typically, candidates in the final stretch of a presidential campaign traverse battleground states, speaking with as many undecided voters as possible at town halls, local events, and campaign rallies. . . . “Why isn’t she in three battleground states a day? Why isn’t she in four media markets in Pennsylvania today rather than one?” political analyst Mark Halperin said on The Morning Meeting. “If you assume she’s behind, which, again, I think she is right now, not by a lot. Why isn’t she working hard?” Questions about Kamala's campaign ineptitude aren't new. This...

WATCH: @JDVance flips the script on a New York Times reporter by pointing out that the government, media, and Big Tech rigged the 2020 election by teaming up to censor the Hunter Biden laptop, costing President Trump millions of votes.🔥 pic.twitter.com/2EO9Tl3v0a — Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 11, 2024 It occurred to me yesterday that Sen Vance is suddenly forcing the Overton window, the range of potential policy subjects that are considered appropriate for polite discussion, wide open. His recent exchanges with highly respectable lady journalists on January 6 and Aurora have had the effect of asking why "deplorable" opinions shouldn't be just obvious, not disreputable. Here's his exchange with Martha Raddatz of ABC: Raddatz: "The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes... A handful." Vance: "Do you hear yourself? Only a HANDFUL of apartment complexes were taken over by Venezuelan gangs and Donald Trump is the problem?...

Corporate media's take on the polls channels the Achilles Paradox : in logic, an argument attributed to the 5th-century-bce Greek philosopher Zeno, and one of his four paradoxes described by Aristotle in the treatise Physics. The paradox concerns a race between the fleet-footed Achilles and a slow-moving tortoise. The two start moving at the same moment, but if the tortoise is initially given a head start and continues to move ahead, Achilles can run at any speed and will never catch up with it. Zeno’s argument rests on the presumption that Achilles must first reach the point where the tortoise started, by which time the tortoise will have moved ahead, even if but a small distance, to another point; by the time Achilles traverses the distance to this latter point, the tortoise will have moved ahead to another, and so on. This is, of course, absurd. The link continues. Aristotle’s solution to it involved treating the segments of Achilles’ motion as only potent...

I wasn't sure I was going to post on Bossgirl Gretchen Whitmer's skit with the Doritos and the kneeling influencer, but the response of Michigan's bishops set me to do it. For most of my life, Catholics, especially the bishops, have basically apologized for being Catholic, and they've never really objected to even the most offensive portrayals, like Tom Lehrer's " The Vatican Rag " (1965): A spoken introduction describes the song as a response to the "Vatican II" council—which, among other things, broadened the range of music that could be used in services—and humorously proposes this rag as a more accessible alternative to traditional liturgical music. The song begins: First you get down on your knees Fiddle with your rosaries Bow your head with great respect And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect! The lyrics mockingly list a number of Catholic rituals such as confession, the Eucharist, and Rosaries, and suggest the irony of...

*TRUMP INTERNAL POLLING: TRUMP LEADS IN ALL BATTLEGROUND STATES pic.twitter.com/PPQnSsryDp — Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) October 10, 2024 A few people are starting tgo say it: Election tilts toward Trump as suspicions grow that some polls may be masking true size of his lead , Harris currently leads Trump by 2.0% in the RealClearPolitics polling average, with 49.1% support to his 47.1%. That figure includes a Rasmussen Reports survey showing Trump with a two-point lead, a Reuters/Ipsos survey showing Harris up two, a Morning Consult poll with Harris up five, a Yahoo News poll with the race tied, and a number of other surveys. A New York Times/Siena College survey showed Harris up three points. Actually, as of this morning, Harris's RCP lead is down to 1.8%, having been at 2% or more for many weeks. But as I've been saying all along, the national average is meaningless, since it's the Electoral College that casts presidential votes. And Sean Trende at R...