New Phase Of Ukraine War (Or Not)

If you go to YouTube and do a search on words like "HIMARS ammo explosion", you'll get well over a dozen hits, most representing recent attacks from Ukraine's new NATO high-precision rockets and artillery into Russian rear areas. The resulting detonations of ammunition depots can continue for hours, and in recent weeks, multiple strikes of this sort occur daily. It's difficult to think this isn't having an impact on the Russian campaign: if the assertion is that they've been firing tens of thousands of artillery rounds per day, how can they sustain this rate if some tens of thousands a day are going up in storage instead?

This question has other ramifications, but I'm less interested in how the war is progressing than I am in how this question is being handled by some of our most prestigious analysts, viz, those employed by the Institute for the Study of War. Yesterday I posted on cogent commentary from the UK that suggests that whole cadres of prestigious corporate "knowledge workers" are so pampered and coddled that they serve as little more than domestic pets in the economic scheme of things -- and as I reflected, I began to conclude that the US university system is actually set up to produce a steady supply of such people. But they don't just go to Linkedin or Twitter, they also go to think tanks like the ISW.

I've said here many times that rather than the ISW, the two consistently best sources I've found on the Russo-Ukraine war are Markos Moulitsas's columns in the leftist Daily Kos and the ongoing reddit /r Ukraine Conflict thread. Yet US media almost universally rely on the ISW. Let's look at the contrast. Here's a report from over the weekend at the Daily Kos:

The first phase of the Putin’s War ended when Russia was unable to maintain supply lines to forces besieging Kyiv. The second phase shifted predominantly to the eastern Donbas front, where logistics were suddenly less important.

Russia was able to take Kreminna, Rubizhne, Severodonetsk, and Lysychansk all within a few dozen kilometers of their main supply nodes—railheads. Note how the Izyum salient, with its longer supply lines, barely budged in three months. But to the east, not only could Russia avoid long, difficult lines of communication (supply), but they could literally send their tanks and artillery guns to nearby railheads to directly load up on ammo:

Russia is so incompetent with logistics, that they literally sent their heavy equipment to get their own supplies and ammo, rather than do what every other army in the world does—use far more efficient trucks. I can’t even imagine how many of these tanks and artillery guns broke down trying to get their own supplies. These vehicles aren’t [built] for long road trips.

But as stupid as that might’ve been pre-HIMARS (and other western long-range artillery), it’s now literally impossible. With Ukraine’s ability to reach out and touch anything within 85 kilometers of the front lines, Russia is in serious need of 1) new supply depots, well to their rear, and 2) more trucks to ferry supplies. And they better hurry, because their existing depots are going “boom!” every single night.

The report goes into considerable detail on the actual logistical challenges, and it concludes,

Thus, the war is entering a third phase. The Battle for the Donbas might be ongoing, but this is a new kind of war. Russia’s need to reach deeper into Ukrainian territory to contest the twin strongholds of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk will rekindle the same logistical challenges we saw early in the war. In fact, they’ll be much worse, because Russia will no longer be able to stockpile ammunition next to railheads for easy dispersion to the front.

Now let's look at this thread in the reddit Ukraine topic. It cites a paragraph in an unclassified US Army manual that covers strategy for defeating the Russians in a potential war, apparently dated some years before this war but after 2014:

The last major weakness of the Russian supply system is safety. Russian forward ammunition dumps are quite possibly the most unsafe places in any warzone. By doctrine, there are very little storage requirements, no minimum safe areas, little munitions segregation, and many of the munitions are still from the Soviet period or early 1990s and about to expire. Fuel depots are no better. Poorly trained conscript logistics soldiers, combined with these poor storage procedures make these supply depots a tinderbox ready to explode. Russia has suffered several catastrophic supply depot fires and explosions in the past 2 years of combat in Ukraine and Syria. Priority targeting of these areas will cause a serious logistics strain on the Russian system and impact their ability to use maneuver and fires.

Among other things, this adds credence to informal reports throughout the course of the war that the Americans have been running the show, based on both doctrine and intelligence. Every indication so far as been that this strategy has brought about the putative Russian "strategic pause", which is less a "pause" than a result of the US-originated Ukrainian strategy of blowing up their ammunition depots.

So what does the Institute for the Study of War have to say? This morning's report continues to argue with Ukrainian authorities:

Russian forces are in the midst of a theater-wide operational pause in Ukraine. This operational pause has been largely characterized by Russian troops regrouping to rest, refit, and reconstitute; heavy artillery fire in critical areas to set conditions for future ground advances; and limited probing attacks to identify Ukrainian weakness and structure appropriate tactical responses. As ISW has previously noted, an operational pause does not mean a complete cessation of hostilities, rather that ongoing hostilities are more preparative in nature.

They're continuing to respond, days later, to Luhansk regional head Serhiy Haidai's criticism that he hasn't seen any such "pause". I posted on this Saturday, and apparently the ISW still feels the sting. What puzzles me is that both published US military doctrine and serious reporting from a credible source suggests the "pause" is the effect of HIMARS and other NATO weapons on Russian rear areas, but the ISW won't hear of it.

I did a search on HIMARS on that page, and I found only three mentions at the bottom in the comtext of Russian milbloggers, of all things:

Russian milbloggers are increasingly criticizing Russian strategy and military leadership by seizing upon recent successful Ukrainian strikes against Russian rear areas. Russian milblogger Voennyi Osvedomitel’ underlined the threat posed by Western-provided high mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS) and stated that HIMARS will complicate Russian logistics in a Telegram post on July 9.

Well, heck, do the milbloggers maybe have a point? The ISW won't say. As far as anyone who's seriously following the war thinks right now, it's probably entering a new phase that will look a lot more like the eventual withdrawal from around Kyiv, and the Russians' main task will be to overcome HIMARS and the other NATO weapons. The coming big Russian offensive will go the way of the 40-mile convoy.

I guess the main task of the ISW is to make sure they get the latest merch or something. Maybe they'll be having meetings on whether they need new coffee mugs.

The US is suffering from very serious intellectual deficiency -- not only is the ISW not up to the task, but the media whose job is to report on the war is also falling short by using them as an authoritative source. Remember, these people either have advanced Ivy degrees, or they're the proteges of people who have them. I would guess they're all basically just corporate domestic pets who've come from an expensive pet store.

The Problems Musk Sees With Tech Go Well Beyond Twitter

The video above is a post on a UK YouTube channel called Podcast of the Lotus Eaters entitled "Corporate America is Adult Day Care". They're responding to a particular woman's TikTok portrayal of her typical work day at Linkedin, which is a Silicon Valley-based social media company comparable to Twitter, Facebook, or Google. On one hand, I would caution that working conditions and benefits vary widely among US corporate, small business, and government employers, and I would say that even among tech companies, not all engage in such extravagant pampering of employees.

On the other hand, the woman in the TikTok video makes it unintentionally plain that Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Google, and comparable employers do compete for the type of pampered, entitled pseudo-workers that she represents. I frequently commuted to Silicon Valley in my working career, and there's no question that the sorts of benefits, as well as other perks and tchotchkes, that she celebrates are routine. Free breakfast, free lunch, ping pong, quiet rooms, snacks, no-questions-asked drives home for those who get too drunk at work (possibly due to the free beer on Fridays), a whole range of other things I can't think of right offhand, I've seen them.

I wish I'd taken copies of the no-questions-asked drives home policies posted on the break room bulletin boards, come to think of it. On the other hand, I always came in as a field rep or a contractor and thus an outsider, and nobody ever offered me any free beer. In fact, as someone who was always paid to be on their premises actually to get something done, it was a real struggle to get brief slices of time from these people in order to do that -- I remember I'd have to show up at 8 AM per my employer's policy, but my contact spent his whole mornings on the phone with his broker, and nothing could be accomplished until after lunch, although the free beer cut into this time as well.

A small symptom of how Elon Musk's possibly aborted buyout of Twitter threatens this ecosystem comes in this news item from late last week:

Elon Musk‘s $44 billion bid to for Twitter is in serious jeopardy and the billionaire is reportedly reviewing his options after his team accused the social media platform of not disclosing enough information about spam accounts.

. . . Twitter simultaneously said on Thursday that it had let go of 30% of its talent acquisition team amid the potential Musk takeover.

The layoffs followed a May announcement Twitter implemented a hiring freeze as it sought to pare expenses, The Wall Street Journal reported. The new plans prompted restructuring and a reduction of the talent acquisition team, the outlet reported.

"Talent acquisition team" is Silicon Valley-speak for the human resources department, one of the most typically underperforming units of any corporation. In my view, it couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of people. But referring to the YouTube link above, these are also the people who create the environment in which companies like Twitter seek out employees on whom they lavish what Carl Benjamin in the YouTube aptly calls "bourgeois indulgence".

Benjamin then raised the question, "So what is it you actually do here?" which must have been in the TikTok comments as well. The Lotus Eaters commentators went on to compare how the woman portrays herself and her colleagues as functionally akin to domestic pets, with few expectations other than that they hang around and be friendly in a docile sort of way. At 9:50, Benjamin observes, "Everything about her life is artifical. It's all curated, the glass and steel buildings, the curated park and little ducks, the brands and fashion, it all just feels like the last days of empire."

This is in fact the artifical, curated world that's presented by all the social media companies, reinforced by their universally stringent censorship. Remember that Musk's objection to the Twitter deal is that the company has been trying to maintain an artifical, curated picture of itself, except that the circumstance of Musk's own offer has threatened the company's continued business viability:

Twitter has reason to seek to hold Musk to his original terms. The stock has fallen considerably since the board announced it had accepted his offer to buy the company at $54.20 per share. On the day of that announcement, the stock ended the trading day at $51.70 per share. Twitter shares sat at $36.81 as of Friday’s market close.

Musk is apparently paying attention to the stock price, too, according to the letter, “and is considering whether the company’s declining business prospects and financial outlook constitute a Company Material Adverse Effect giving Mr. Musk a separate and distinct basis for terminating the Merger Agreement.”

Two months ago, I mused that Musk had an underlying view of how actually to make a buck from Twitter, which in that case was simply an example of the built-in inefficiences of the present tech model. I noted a tweet he sent that suggested there'd be major cuts at Twitter, and those who remained would face heavily increased workloads. The self-satisfied Linkedin employee's TikTok posts are a good example of what would disappear from tech in general if a Musk-style business model were to take over.

This isn't to claim that Musk is any sort of corporate messiah -- others point out that the environment at Tesla isn't much different from that at Linkedin or Twitter -- and Musk himself isn't an example of corporate virtue. In recent news,

Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO and world's richest man, welcomed twins last year with an executive at one of his other companies, Neuralink, Insider reported on Wednesday.

Musk, who posted a tweet on May 24 saying "USA birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50 years" and pinned it to the top of his more than 100 million-follower Twitter account, quietly fathered the children with Shivon Zilis, who works for Musk at the company which hopes to develop an implantable computer chip for the human brain, according to documents obtained by Insider.

This would be a flagrant violation of a normal corporate sexual harassment policy, and it would normally trigger a board-level investigation that would likely result in Musk's removal and expensive settlements to Zillis. Even if the relationship were entirely consensual, it would violate a normal policy against such relationships between supervisor and subordinate. An equivalent case badly damaged Bill Gates's reputation, although he'd already left Microsoft.

In the cases of both Musk and Gates, I wish Musk in particular would stop trying to run the world and just focus on making money -- he could actually do a lot more good that way. But he's smart and does know what's wrong with tech.

"Russia Taking 'Operational Pause' in Ukraine, Analysts Say"

This seems to be one of those days where the conventional wisdom floods the web. But this had been one of those mornings where I sat up in bed suddenly thinking I remembered there'd been a Russian "operational pause" back in March, just before they completely withdrew from Irpin and Bucha and gave up the attempt to encircle Kyiv. So as soon as I finished my coffee, I started doing web searches, but no matter how I phrased my search, all I got was the latest "Russia Taking 'Operational Pause' in Ukraine, Analysts Say" from all the usual suspects, to the tune of over a million hits.

Whence do these pearls of conventional wisdom emanate? One guess.

Foreign analysts say Russia may be temporarily easing its offensive in Ukraine as the Russian military attempts to reassemble its forces for a renewed assault.

On Wednesday, Russian forces made no claimed or assessed territorial gains in Ukraine “for the first time in 133 days of war,” according to the Institute for the Study of War. The think tank based in Washington suggested that Moscow may be taking an “operational pause,” but that it does not entail “the complete cessation of active hostilities.”

But apparently the ISW got some pushback, from Ukraine of all places. Yesterday's assessment explained it all to the Ukrainians, as well as to the rest of us:

Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated that Russian forces are not conducting an operational pause as of July 8 and are continuing to shell settlements and deploy additional tank units to Donbas. Haidai’s statement likely reflects confusion about the meaning of the expression “operational pause” and how such a “pause” actually manifests on the ground in a war. US military doctrine considers the role of operational pauses in warfighting and campaigning in some detail. It notes that “Normally, operational pauses are planned to regenerate combat power or augment sustainment and forces for the next phase.”

Well, there you are. According to US doctrine, about which Mr Haidai is clearly confused, the Russians are supposed to be regenerating combat power and augmenting sustainment, among other vague and gaseous things. This was the sort of stuff that had me snoring in Military Science class, until I realized I could reduce complication in my life by snoring more comfortably in bed instead of in Military Science class, at which point ROTC assisted me in reducing the complication further and threw me out.

The problem is that as far as I can tell, the analysts at the ISW all have advanced Ivy League degrees in Russian Studies, but by and large don't have the actual military experience that would even qualify them to get thrown out of ROTC. And I did have to study logic in school, where I did better at staying awake and developed the ability to ask why the ISW would say this:

The Russian military command, which announced an operational pause on July 7, has apparently recognized the need for a pause given the state of Russian forces at this point in the campaign.

but turn around and cite US military doctrine at length in support of their argument. Do the Russian generals have a set of US manuals on their bookshelves that they use to formulate policy? The condescending tone of the ISW assessment suggests Mr Haidai's remarks maybe hit them in a sensitive area. I pretty much gave up on following the ISW a couple of months ago; their assessments are poorly written and repetitious -- and for the life of me, I can't undertrand how it takes three or more credentialed mandarins to churn out a couple thousand words of obtuse, jargony boilerplate a day.

Anyhow, here's Wikipedia's account of the Battle of Bucha's late phase back in March:

On 22 March, the head of the Kyiv Regional Military Administration, Oleksandr Pavlyuk, stated that Bucha and Hostomel were under the control of the Russian army and that no Ukrainian offensive actions could be taken there at the time. The main task of the Ukrainian military was to prevent Russian forces from crossing the Irpin River.

On 29 March, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin announced that the Russian military would reduce its activity near Kyiv and Chernihiv. By 31 March, Ukrainian forces were moving into Bucha amid a general Russian withdrawal in the area, resulting in heavy fighting with local Russian troops.

I'm convinced that the phrase "operational pause" was also being used to describe the Russian reduced activity near Kyiv at that time, but the current blizzard of stories makes it extremely difficult to locate references from back then. However, until the Russians actually pulled out of Hostomel, Irpin, and Bucha, the conventional wisdom continued to be that the "40-mile convoy" had not yet begun to move, but when it did, it was curtains for Ukraine. Then those stories all disappeared.

What very few people seem to connect is the odd coincidence of exploding Russian ammunition stored behind the lines with this new "operational pause". As described by the Kyiv independent:

It is an almost everyday occurrence in the Russian-occupied parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.

Russia’s ammunition depots blow up, with large fires erupting as tons of ordnance detonate for hours. Some of these incidents cause giant blasts with a radius of hundreds of meters.

Now that Ukraine has acquired advanced Western artillery and rocket systems, it has gradually begun a campaign to take out Russia’s key military infrastructure. Over the last four weeks, nearly 20 Russian ammunition depots in Russian-occupied Donbas and Ukraine’s south, including some of the largest, have been hit or completely destroyed.

The response of most observers to this undeniable development has been to fall back on the 40-mile convoy theory: the Russians may be reducing activity, or pausing, or whatever it is they're doing now, but just wait til that 40-mile convoy starts moving! Then it's curtains for Ukraine! The current version of that is the idea that once Russia resustains its operational resustainability for the next phase or whatever they think they're doing, they're gonna go right back to shooting tens of thousands of artillery rounds per day and just keep grinding forward, and then it's curtains for Ukraine!

I don't see it. There are only so many artillery rounds, and many tens of thousands of those are now verifiably blowing up every day in depots behind the lines. This whole business of "operational pause" is dezinformatsiya. My guess is that, as it was around Kyiv, the pause is the calm before they pull back in the Donbas.

Hunter Reemerges

As I've noted here, since last summer, Hunter Biden seems to have been kept on a very short leash in a heavily-guarded compound in the Malibu Hills that adjoins a luxury rehab facility. Over the past week, though, it's slowly emerged that he's apparently been paroled under parental supervision. According to the New York Post,

The younger Biden, who has long been accused of profiting off his father’s influence and connections, has been a fixture in Washington this week after spending much of the Fourth of July weekend at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

After accompanying the president back to the nation’s capital on Marine One Monday, Hunter was pictured watching the Independence Day fireworks from the White House’s Truman Balcony with his 2-year-old son, Beau — named after his late older brother — and his father.

He's pictured above with his wife, Melissa Cohen, although I question whether she (or particularly their toddler son) lives with him at the Malibu facility. And although he's clearly been trimmed and cleaned up for the occasion, he's reappeared during the same week when more videos have emerged from the laptop. Per the UK Daily Mail,

Sleazy Hunter Biden is seen filming himself smoking 'drugs' and [redacted] inside a sensory deprivation tank - during a detox program funded by his dad, President Joe Biden.

The president's exhibitionist son, 52, is bathed in trippy green light as he floats naked on his back and [redacted] in the shocking cell phone video retrieved from his abandoned laptop.

I noticed the bit about the sensory deprivation tank just this morning. Although I thought sensory deprivation tanks were a relic of the 1960s, despite the best efforts of Fringe to keep them there, they seem to be back. And why does Hunter keep reminding me of Dr Walter Bishop, the intellectual heir of both Timothy Leary and Ted Kaczynski? I suppose in these times we all need comic relief.

The Daily Mail story confirms that the video is from a new tranche recovered by investigative reporter Andrew Kerr from a previously password-protected area of the laptop abandoned in 2018. Of greater concern is the context of the whole episode, since a month prior, Hunter had gone begging to Dad for some major money to cover his bills:

'Hunt tell me what you need. No problem,' the future president responded. 'Ok how do you want to do this I can pay tuition directly and their housing and give you the rest.'

Biden senior messaged again on December 6 to confirm: '75 being wired today. Love.'

The "rehab" in the video is presumably one line item covered in Dad's grant of 75 large. And there's an additional problem of context in this week's news.

The Biden administration sold roughly one million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese state-controlled gas giant that continues to purchase Russian oil, a move the Energy Department said would "support American consumers" and combat "Putin's price hike."

Biden's Energy Department in April announced the sale of 950,000 Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels to Unipec, the trading arm of the China Petrochemical Corporation.

. . . Biden's son, Hunter Biden, is tied to Sinopec. In 2015, a private equity firm he cofounded bought a $1.7 billion stake in Sinopec Marketing. Sinopec went on to enter negotiations to purchase Gazprom in March, one month after the Biden administration sanctioned the Russian gas giant.

That private equity firm is BHR Partners. According to the Wikipedia entry, "BHR was founded in 2013, by two Chinese-registered asset managers, Bohai Industrial Investment Fund and Harvest Fund Management, and two U.S. organisations, Thornton Group LLC and Rosemont Seneca Partners." Rosemont, in which Hunter was a founding partner, was removed from Wikipedia this past April:

“This organization is only mentioned in connection with its famous founders, Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz,” said a Wiki editor identified only as Alex who additionally warned that “keeping it around” ran the risk of the page becoming “a magnet for conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden.”

My own Hunter timeline indicates that although Hunter was initially reported to have resigned from BHR Partners following allegations from Donald Trump in October 2019, or at least he intended to resign, as Dad ramped up his presidential campaign, it's completely unclear whether that resignation ever took place. Last October,

White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to say Monday whether first son Hunter Biden has sold his remaining stake in a Chinese private equity firm with ties to the Communist government in Beijing — two years after President Biden vowed that his family would divest itself of all overseas business interests.

In April [2021], the Daily Caller reported that Skaneateles LLC — Hunter’s company — still owned 10 percent of BHR Partners, which is controlled by the state-run Bank of China.

It's hard to avoid thinking there's more to come out. Is there Biden family self-dealing in the sale of a million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reseve to the Chinese? And we're back to Hunter's beyond extravagant lifestyle: who's footing the bill? What sort of "rehabs" does he undergo? What really goes on in that compound, since Hunter's clearly gotta Hunter? What does the Secret Service enable?

And there's the whole question of Dad's strange soft spot for Hunter, who among other things is the smartest guy he knows.

I think the lizard people are thinking about cutting their losses.

The Problem With All The Background Checks And Red Flag Laws

I don't really have a dog in the whole Second Amendment fight; I don't own a gun and never have. I did some target shooting in my Boy Scout days and had an M1 issued to me in the ROTC, and that's about it. What bothers me about the current dispute in the wake of the Uvalde and Highland Park shootings is that existing laws and controls seem to have been observed only in the breach. For instance,

The mayor of Uvalde, Texas, visibly frustrated with the constantly changing information released about what happened the day 19 children and two teachers were gunned down, lashed out Tuesday, telling residents at a city council meeting he's tired of being kept in the dark about what evidence has been uncovered.

. . . McLaughlin sharply criticized the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and its leader, Col. Steven McCraw. The Texas Rangers, a DPS agency, are leading the investigation into the shooting and McLaughlin told residents he was upset that he and other city officials have never been briefed on how the investigation is going. He went on to say he thinks McCraw is making misleading statements to help distance the actions of the state troopers and Texas Rangers who responded to the shooting.

"There is compelling evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary was an abject failure and antithetical to everything we've learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre," McCraw told the Texas Senate Special Committee to Protect All Texans in Austin.

"Three minutes after the subject entered the West building, there was a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract and neutralize the subject," he continued. "The only thing stopping the hallway of dedicated officers from entering rooms 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children."

Exactly what happened at the incident is still unclear, especially given the finger-pointing among the actors, but it's hard to avoid thinking that bungling at all levels of law enforcement made the incident far worse than it could have been. The story continues,

In addition, [school police chief] Arredondo initially said that the responding officers needed more firepower and equipment to breach the doors. For example, at 11:40 a.m., Arredondo called the Uvalde Police Department's dispatch by phone shortly after the gunman fired at officers and requested further assistance and a radio, according to a DPS transcript.

"We don't have enough firepower right now, it's all pistol and he has an AR-15," Arredondo said, according to a DPS transcript.

However, two of the first officers to arrive to the scene had rifles, according to McCraw.

In the first minutes of their response, an officer also said a Halligan, a firefighting tool that is used for forcible entry, was on scene, according to the timeline. However, the tool wasn't brought into the school until an hour after officers arrived and was never used, the timeline said.

The short version of the story is that law enforcement had ample resources to minimize the effect of the disaster but for whatever reason lacked the will to use them.

So far, as relates to the Highland Park shooting, it's hard to avoid thinking an equivalent breakdown of controls that were already in place was a big part of the problem:

We’ve learned in the last couple of days that the alleged killer was yet another one of those “known wolves” that police were powerless to do anything about. What stands out in this case is what the parents may have done to enable their son.

Even more troubling is the killer’s history with police and likely mental illness — and the lengths the father apparently went to both to protect and to arm his son.

Ari Hoffman reported for the Post Millennial that the killer was “able to purchase firearms despite having been flagged as a ‘clear and present danger’ by police in 2019.”

Illinois police said in a statement Tuesday that the flag was a result of threats he made against his own family. He would have been 18 or 19 years old at the time, a legal adult.

Police took the young man’s knife collection away but then returned them after the father claimed they were his own.

Except that what's emerged is that the shooter lived with his mother and the knives were kept at his mother's home. And three months laterr, the father sponsored the shooter for a firearms identification card, which he needed to buy a weapon while he was under 21. In other words, existing laws and controls could, and should, have kept the shooter from buying a gun.

Thus I think Bp Barron's statement in response to the Highland Park shooting misses at least some of the point:

Now, look, I understand very well the complexities surrounding the issue of mass violence. I grasp the arguments on the many sides of the gun control question. But I just don't understand how a 21-year-old can legally purchase a firearm capable of such mass carnage.

The shooter's father, even after his son made direct threats against his family, continued to enable him by allowing his knife collection to be returned and even sponsored his permit to buy the weapon he used in the shooting. Bp Barron then endorses the appeal that four US bishops made in June to pass the gun control legislation that had come before the US Congress. What good are red flag laws if the red flags get lost in the shuffle, as happened in Illinois?

It seems to me that something beyond that is needed. There needs to be a call for some higher level of conscientiousness overall, in families, in government, in law enforcement. The problem is less that we need new laws than that people, like fathers or like some police, simply aren't doing their jobs, and right now, there's an overall sense in the community that this is OK. That's an area where bishops could be especially effective if they were to urge greater conscientiousness on the rest of us.

Looking At One Set Of Biden's July 4 Remarks

As far as I can tell, President Biden gave at least two formal speeches on Monday to celebrate July 4. One of them, that's had more publicity, said America has "come up short" and "feels like it is going backward." It refers indirectly to the Highland Park shooting. So far, though, I haven't found a full text on line.

A second, which does have a text at the White House site, differs considerably from these remarks and doesn't contain the specific phrases that have been shown in video clips and quoted in reporting. I simply don't know if this is one speech with the delivered text heavily revised, or two different speeches. However, I'm going to discuss the text in the link at the White House site. If anyone can clarify what's what here, I'll greatly appreciate it.

What intrigues me about the text is that I think it does reflect Biden's mind sufficiently that he must be a principal originator. I very much doubt that he wrote any of it out in longhand on a yellow legal pad a la Nixon, but he must at least have dictated it to a stenographer in some way -- it carries too much of his personal style, which is glib and obtuse.

Another thing that strikes me is that its specifics, once he gets beyond brief general introductory bloviation, are exclusively about COVID:

This year, the Fourth of July is a day of special celebration, for we are emerging from the darkness of years; a year of pandemic and isolation; a year of pain, fear, and heartbreaking loss.

Just think back to where this nation was a year ago. Think back to where you were a year ago. And think about how far we’ve come.

From silent streets — (applause) — from silent streets to crowded parade routes lined with people waving American flags; from empty stadiums and arenas to fans back to their seats cheering together again; from families pressing hands against a window to grandparents hugging their grandchildren once again.

This is simply odd. Nobody, at this point, is thinking about COVID. Remaining mask mandates are ignored and unenforced, let alone social distancing. Attempts to revive them, like those in California, have fallen flat and been quickly withdrawn. Vaccine mandates have fallen intro desuetude. New issues have come up: inflation, crime, gun violence, and immigration top the list, while others like Ukraine and abortion are still more important than COVID -- but Biden speaks only of COVID.

It sounds like he wishes it were still 2020, when it was "dark" -- but this was not just 2020, it was the "darkness of years". I've got to think that's a reference to Trump. But then there was the light:

So, today, while the virus hasn’t been vanquished, we know this: It no longer controls our lives. It no longer paralyzes our nation. And it’s within our power to make sure it never does again. And for that, we can thank the scientists and researchers, the educators, and all the other frontline and essential workers, like many of you here today — (applause) —

who became the light to see us through the darkness.

This must only be a reference to Dr Fauci, of all people, who personifies Science, bringer of light, who chased away the Trump. I think this mischaracterizes the whole history of COVID and the official public health response to it, which the political establishment fully endorsed throughout. The pandemic consisted of about five peaks between early 2020 and mid 2022 that in fact were progressively more severe and which made a mockery of the official remedies that were proposed, starting with "fifteen days to flatten the curve" through extended lockdowns through social distancing, mask mandates, church closures, and vaccines, none of which proved effective.

The only thing that ended the pandemic was the historic pattern by which viruses become more contagious as they weaken, until by mid-2022, everyone was infected with a mild strain. Dr Fauci by then had become an irrelevant figure who'd overstayed his 15 minutes of fame by a considerable period. (The owner of a store I visit told me that late this spring, he'd finally caught the 'rona. He said he had about 40 minutes of muscle aches, but his wife made him stay away from the store for a full two weeks of quarantine. Luckily, his staff held the fort.)

On July 3, the New York Post ran a story about Biden on July 4, 2021, Remember Biden’s ‘summer of freedom’ and victory over COVID? No wonder his credibility’s shot:

Last July 4, President Joe Biden proclaimed victory over COVID: “Thanks to our heroic vaccine effort, we’ve gained the upper hand against this virus. We can live our lives. We are closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.” A few weeks later, Biden promised that people who got vaccinated would not get COVID.

Since last July 4, COVID has killed more than 400,000 Americans. More than 55 million have been diagnosed with the virus, and there have probably been tens of millions of unconfirmed or unreported cases.

Biden has been more successful decimating freedom than ending the pandemic. The wreckage of his COVID promises explains much of the collapse of Biden’s credibility and approval ratings.

. . . On Aug. 5, CDC chief Rochelle Walensky formally confessed: “What [COVID vaccines] can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.” Prior to that admission, the Biden administration even refused to disclose the number of “breakthrough” infections that had occurred among White House staff.

On Aug. 11, the Mayo Clinic revealed that the efficacy of the Pfizer COVID vaccine had fallen to 42% — a stunning collapse after early boasts of 95% effectiveness in safeguarding people against infection. Biden responded to the failures by repudiating his 2020 promise not to make vaccines mandatory.

. . . Following the “summer of freedom,” Biden promised in December “a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated” and declared that “almost everyone who has died from COVID-19 in the past many months has been unvaccinated.” Wrong again. Two months earlier, the CDC ceased publishing data showing soaring deaths among the fully vaxxed because the data “might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective,” The New York Times revealed early this year.

Even though almost two-thirds of the US population was fully vaccinated, COVID cases exploded late last year and soon exceeded a million new cases a day. The CDC later admitted that almost half the COVID deaths in early 2022 were among the fully vaxxed.

Why on earth does the guy want to revisit COVID at this stage? It says something that he apparently thinks this is the only positive thing he can point to. Yet again, these are issues of character and competence, not dementia.

The Problem In A Nutshell: 2020 Didn't Work

Based on a Harvard-Harris poll taken last week, Donald Trump remains the most popular political figure in the US. What does this explain? Well, I would say just about everything, starting with the January 6 committee, which has occasionally been called Impeachment 3.0.

Although its stated purpose, insofar as it has one, has been to demonstrate that the January 6 demonstrations at the US Capitol were actually a planned, armed insurrection, it seems to me that its existence at all reveals a deep insecurity among the rulers that the 2020 presidential election was in fact not legitimate. We can certainly argue that any post-election audits of the votes have so far indicated there wasn't fraud widespread enough to have affected the outcome.

On the other hand, the subsequent unpopularity of the winner and the continuing general sense that something's wrong has made the certified outcomes irrelevant. Thus the continued attempts to prove that 2020 skeptics are crazies in buffalo hats or something. Let's recall that while Republicans were unsatisfied with Obama, there was never an equivalent sense throughout his eight years in office that the election had somehow been stolen, or that either John McCain or Mitt Romney retained the popularity Trump still has among the electorate.

For instance, in a July 2014 CNN poll conducted two years into Obama's second term, if the choice were between Obama and Romney, Romney would win, but if it were Hillary Clinton versus Romney, Romney would lose. For now, there's no equivalent threat to Trump from any potential third party, and that seems to have some people upset.

And speaking of Romney, we have remarks from him about Trump from just yesterday:

Sen. Mitt Romney says the nation suffers a "malady of denial, deceit, and distrust," and former President Donald Trump would make things much worse.

"A return of Donald Trump would feed the sickness, probably rendering it incurable," Romney, a senator from Utah and former GOP presidential nominee, wrote in a July 4 essay in The Atlantic.

There are several points worth noting here. His repeated metaphors of malady and incurable sickness harken back to the 2020 COVID panic and suggest it was somehow Trump's doing -- Trump is out of office, yet he's clearly still the problem. He's the problem because, as Romney also implies, nobody's taking 2020 seriously, that's part of the whole denial, deceit, and distrust business.

Late last week we had Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony before the Jaunary 6 committee, which seems to have been about as effective as porn star Stormy Daniels's allegation that she had sex with Trump because she "felt trapped"; the allegation that Trump gets two scoops of ice cream with his chocolate cream pie, while everyone else around the table gets just one; or indeed the allegation that he pressured Ukraine President Zelensky to investigate Biden. The public so far has tuned these out as they've come up. Indeed, maybe there should have been such an investigation, huh?

But let's look at another puzzling development: what on earth is Gavin Newsom doing running an attack ad against Ron DeSantis in Florida? It's anybody's guess; it looks like Newsom, having handily defeated a recall attempt last year, has frightened away any serious Republican contenders in this year's regular election for California governor and is off doing whatever, since he isn't running in Florida. Here's one take:

It is indeed a case of Newsom waging culture war on DeSantis’s home turf, the “free state of Florida,” by claiming the mantle of freedom for the progressive policy agenda. And its intended audience is very much not DeSantis or Republicans or even Floridians. Its intended audience is Democratic voters nationwide who feel demoralized by a leadership vacuum that’s metastasized into a crisis.

Newsom is making his pitch to those voters in [the Florida TV] spot. “I’m a proud, unapologetic liberal. Not only will I not back down, I’ll take the fight to the right’s new culture-war golden boy in his own state.”

The problem is that whatever the DeSantis spin, Trump still leads him in 2024 polling despite the January 6 committee hearings. So as of now, Newsom is campaigning against a runner-up, and if he were to try to take on Trump himself, it would be risible. Why is he doing this? The opinion piece continues,

I don’t think he can win a national election. But a Democratic presidential primary? I wouldn’t count him out.

Whatever else one might say about Newsom, he’s a polished messenger. His prime competition for the 2024 nomination if Biden doesn’t run is [not Kamala Harris}.

“She seems completely useless. No one involved in this administration should be in the running,” said one Democratic donor to the New York Post about the prospect of Harris 2024. A Dem staffer on the Hill told the paper that she’s a bad administrator too, which explains the heavy turnover among her staff. Quote: “I just don’t think people are seeing her as a serous contender. If she weren’t the vice president she wouldn’t even [be] ON the list.”

The writer, Allahpundit, a confirmed never Trumper, concludes,

DeSantis versus Newsom is the only plausible option America has for a 2024 election that’s energetic and entertaining rather than dispiriting and frightening. Here’s hoping!

But wait a moment. The whole 2020 campaign was rigged: it was basically set up as Biden versus a bunch of losers preprogrammed to award him the Democrat nomination. Then Biden was spun as some sort of moderate, sane, adult not-Trump who'd "bring America back" and "build back better", which turned out to be a complete fabrication enabled by the media and the commentariat, and the country has been going through a morning after ever since.

I think that in effect, Newsom is aiming at a 2020 replay, in which he convinces the lizard people early on that he's the logical choice, he wins the Democrat primaries in a rigged charade a la Biden 2020, and then he goes on to win the general in a "steal" also a la 2020, which may not be actual in terms of vote count, but in terms of manipulated opinion and general mendacity achieves the same result.

Newsom has been closely associated with the Pelosi family and other Democrat power players like the Pritzgers, and it seems possible that, with Biden faltering badly, he could present himself as an equivalent "sane", "adult", or "moderate" alternative to either Trump or DeSantis in 2024. But as of now, Newsom is nowhere on CNN's Top 20 list above, while DeSantis is just behind Hillary Clinton. And it's worth recognizing that Newsom versus anyone else would be a campaign that would effectively be a rerun of 2020 and an attempt to repair its current perceived illegitimacy, even though it was a theoretical success.

The problem, in other words, is that Trump won't go away, and even if he doesn't run, 2024 right now looks like it will be waged on the issues he raised in 2016 and 2020. And people right now miss him.