In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

The policies Donald Trump has articulated over Ukraine have been consistent, and he restated them over the weekend : Former President Donald Trump said he could solve the Russia-Ukraine war "in 24 hours," while speaking at his presidential campaign kickoff in New Hampshire on Saturday. . . . "My personality kept us out of war," the former president continued. "And I told you before, [it] would have never happened with Russia. Putin would have never ever gone in. And even now I could solve that in 24 hours. It's so horrible what happened. Those cities are demolished now." Trump concluded by saying that if he was president, there would have been "zero chance that war would have happened." The problem for Ukraine is that following the September 2022 Russian rout in Donbas and the November Russian withdrawal from northern Kherson, their counteroffensive has stalled, and they've resumed calls for more effective Western weapons, at this p...

I've been following up on the question of Biden's personal attorneys for a while, and the most I can say is we don't know very much. CBS News has done some good research on this, and I linked to a January 12 story earlier here that gives the most comprehensive list so far: Longtime Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer is serving as the personal attorney for President Biden in the classified documents matter now before a Justice Department special counsel, the White House confirmed Friday. Bauer has been the primary point of contact between the Biden camp and the Justice Department during the initial investigation, which began in November, CBS News has learned. . . . Recent filings with the National Archives name three partners at D.C. law firm Covington and Burling as Biden's representatives to the Archives for his vice presidential records: Dana Remus, former Biden White House counsel, Biden campaign attorney Robert Lenhard and James Garland, a former Obama-era Justice D...

I found this photo in a Newseek article from January 20 that's labeled as being an aerial view of the Biden property on 1209 Barley Mill Road, Wilmington, Delaware 19807. This is consistent with other published views of the house on the left, but the photo here includes another house. The Newsweek piece puts things in the context of the background check form Hunter submitted for his niece, wherein he apparently claims to own this property while also paying $49,910 in rent there. Newsweek, as have other sources, traces the $49,910 amount to what was actually a security deposit on quarterly rent paid to House of Sweden by Hunter's firm Rosement Seneca Partners for office space there. Newsweek fills out additional details in the link: A 2021 report by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter , which examined a trove of communications between the National Property Board and Hunter Biden's representatives, stated that in February 2017: "Hunter Biden and his companies" ...

Visitors know I'm something of a conoisseur of corporate crises, especially ones that are clumsily mishandled and stem from dysfunctional corporate culture, although that last may be a redundancy. Pfizer has already been suffering from bad publicity in the release of Twitter files and Wednesday's Babylon Bee story : NEW YORK, NY — Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has unveiled their new mascot, an adorable glob of platelets who goes by the name "Clotty". "See? Blood clots aren't scary!" said Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla as a smiling Clotty danced onto the stage. "Welcome to Pfizer, Clotty! Let's get one of these little guys into every home in America!" While Pfizer initially pushed back against evidence tying the vaccine to blood clots, the company has decided to instead embrace it. "We are so excited for Clotty to help us put a friendly face on heart attacks and strokes," said Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. "Every new COVID booster w...

Former U.S. President Trump: First come the tanks, then come the nukes. Get this crazy war ended, now. So easy to do! pic.twitter.com/JLOg166tKF — Clash Report (@clashreport) January 26, 2023 It looks as though Trump is going to side consistently with the US right in opposing increased aid to Ukraine, and to some extent, I can't disagree with his basic point. As this report at Breitbart summarizes the problem: President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that the U.S. would be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, but did not explain to the American public what the purpose of the tanks would be, or the broader U.S. goal in the war. White House communications chief John Kirby later tried to assure reporters (and Russia) that the tanks would not be used for an “offensive” purpose, but clearly the hope is to retake territory by attacking Russian forces. The story throughout the past year has been incrementalism. Zelensky campaigns for new weapons one step beyond what the West is wil...

Here's another intriguing data point: in the midst of a current news story that's presumably unrelated to the classified document issue, the emergence of Jeff Zients as Ron Klain's replascement as White House Chief of Staff, we find this: With his expected return to the highest echelon of the White House as chief of staff, Zients is now taking fire from all ideological directions for his meetings with Hunter Biden, scapegoating of people who resist COVID vaccination and history with healthcare companies accused of billing fraud. . . . Zients met with the younger Biden at least three times in the first half of 2016 as his father prepared to leave the vice presidency, according to emails from Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop verified by Fox News. The first two meetings took place at the vice presidential residence and included the elder Biden. The meetings also variously included former lobbyist and current White House counselor Steve Richetti; then-Office of Sci...

I've been tempted to post on the rental form in which Hunter, in 2018, claimed to have spent $49,910 in monthly rent, but I've held off several times on a hunch that more information would come out. This was a background security request for a rental in a luxury Los Angeles apartment building. The fact checkers were quick to dismiss this as a conspiracy theory : Days after it was reported that classified documents were found in President Joe Biden’s office at a Washington, D.C., think tank and at his Delaware home, conservative commentators launched new allegations about him and his son, Hunter Biden. "Hunter Biden paid his dad $50,000 a MONTH in rent for the home that housed classified documents… During the same time, Joe Biden only claimed less than $20,000 in rent payments PER YEAR!!!" read a Jan 17 Instagram post by Newsmax host Carl Higbie. . . . These posts are inaccurate and were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinforma...

I found a typo in Sunday's post with the problematic image of a hotdogging W Mark Felt, and even though it had been flagged as sensitive, I decided to fix the typo for the record. When I went in to edit it, I found a new button saying REQUEST REVIEW, although in my research I'd found no reference to any ability to appeal such decisions, and there was wording in the guidelines that suggested this couldn't be done. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I clicked on REQUEST REVIEW, and when I visited my account this morning, the flag and message for that post had been removed, though I've received no other message. This confirms my view that Blogger's algorithm had somehow been triggered by the image of a G-Man doing his thing, when at least for now, bien pensant opinion actually favors the FBI, which protects us by raiding Area 51 bloggers and former presidents. But just to be on the safe side, I'm going to stick with non-controversial titles and cute pet phot...

Yesterday's post got flagged by Blogger for "sensitive content", and visitors got the following notice if they tried to view it (click on the image for a larger copy): I also got a notification that "This post was put behind a warning for readers because it contains sensitive content as outlined in Blogger’s Community Guidelines." I've been blogging on one thing or another for almost 20 years, often on sensitive topics, but this is the first such notice I've received. I'm assuming the problem was the photo of W Mark Felt posing as an FBI hotdogger in the act of drawing his firearm, and the algorithm deemed it potentially triggering, so to speak. I'm assuming for now that this was a one-off, and I'm going to proceed as usual. I may try using photos of kittens and ducklings as a header for a while to make it clear to the algorithm that I have no intention of triggering anyone, at least no more than I have in the past, although back in the...

The image above is W Mark Felt, the Watergate Deep Throat, from his glory days as FBI Director wannabe. As I said yesterday, it sounds like we have a new Deep Throat, apparently just as highly placed, who's beginning to leak about Biden's classified documents. So far, nobody seems to be getting the point. The news yesterday evening was that another half-dozen classified documents had been run down in a new search of the Wilmington home, this one conducted by people from the Justice Department, not Biden's personal attorneys, after those attorneys had insisted everything had been found. Biden’s lawyers immediately tried to get out in front of the revelation, releasing a statement claiming cooperation with the DOJ. But while the administration continues to talk about transparency, one bombshell detail from the search has left the president’s lies fully exposed. Namely, the fact that documents were found that were taken during Biden’s years in the Senate. I just don...

A lot has come out over the Biden classified docs over the past few days, but nobody seems to be making much sense of it. I think the key is here : White House officials are reportedly suspicious about how President Joe Biden’s classified document scandal was leaked to the press after only a select group of White House and Justice Department officials knew about the violation. The plot to hide the scandal, initially designed by eight of Biden’s closest confidants with apparent approval from the Justice Department, was suddenly leaked to CBS News 68 days after Biden’s personal attorney unearthed the classified documents at the Penn Biden Center. It is unclear why or what Biden’s personal attorneys were originally seeking at the center funded in part by anonymous Chinese donations. There's the whole thing in a nutshell, at least so far. The discovery of the classified docs was a byproduct of some other project that we don't know much about, except that well before an...

Over the past few days, there have been questions about classified documents found in at least two places at the Biden Wilmington home, apparently dating from the big guy's tenure as vice president. Nobody seems to know what they were doing there, but the little bit we've glimpsed looks like it's just the tip of the iceberg. One big unresolved question is Hunter's role in the Biden family businesses during the interregnum between his dad's departure as vice president in 2017 and his inauguration as president in 2021. As I noted in this post , Hunter was involved in setting up the Penn Biden Center as early as 2016, which as described in e-mails on his laptop was meant to be a "wealth creation" effort for the family, but discussions about which were meant to be highly confidential. During this same period, he was divorcing his first wife , Kathleen Buhle: [S]he said she began to understand the extent of their financial woes once she initiated the...