In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

On Saturday, I posted on the expanding Overton window that's beginning to encompass the question of what President Biden might have done in his role as "point person" for Ukraine during the Obama administration to put us where we are in the stalled Russo-Ukraine War. The key question that's been raised by Seymour Hersh is what President Zelensky may know about Biden's involvement in Ukraine's politics while Biden was vice president that could give Zelensky leverage over current US policy. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal ran a column by Holman W Jenkins Jr, Hunter Biden Is a Geopolitical Disaster , that indirectly raises the same question, but it tries to make Hunter the culprit, not Joe. The column itself is behind a paywall, but a good part of it is excerpted at Instapundit . Joe Biden while vice president allowed a family environment in which milking connection to Joe was de rigueur. Paralysis seizes our elite over what has ensued. . ....

In a story that I think confirms my speculation in Friday's post, the New York Post reported on Friday : The first son cut a dejected figure as he arrived at Los Angeles’ Van Nuys Airport in a private plane early Friday — as a documentary filmmaker captured his every move. Hunter, 53, touched down just before 1 a.m. SoCal time, more than 36 hours after Delaware US District Judge Maryellen Noreika blew the whistle on a wrist-slap plea agreement cooked up by Hunter’s attorneys and father Joe’s Department of Justice. As an airport worker retrieved Hunter’s bags, the first son was consoled on the tarmac by an unidentified friend sporting a Yankees cap and a mustard-colored sweater. A camera operator observed the scene a few feet away. The Post had nothing to say about whose jet this was, but I think we can assume it was the same one that he flew in with Kevin Morris to Philadelphia Tuesday night to attend his Delaware court session, Kevin Morris's plane. I think this ...

One factor in the current environment that hasn't had much notice is the expansion of the Overton window, the range of ideas politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. These include notions that only a short time ago would have been considered "paranoid" or "conspiracy theories". The most prominent example is how the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy Jr has advanced interpretations of events that only a year or two ago would have been deemed dangerously heterodox, and he's gaining an audience. For instance, Bill Ackman, "one of the most influential investors on Wall Street", has begun to endorse Kennedy's views on COVID vaccines : Bill Ackman said in 2021 that delaying Covid vaccinations for older Americans “seems like genocide.” Today, the influential hedge fund chief and investor is amplifying the debunked anti-vaccine views of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Ackman is not deny...

Exactly where Hunter has been living for the past year or more hasn't been clear in any case, but common speculation had been that he'd moved into the White House sometime in 2022, at least in part to avoid legal service in his child support case with Lunden Roberts. This was settled last month , which would take away one possible reason for his extended White House stay. On the other hand, Hunter and Joe have a strange relationship that at least outwardly looks like codependency. It appears that Hunter continues to be a key adviser to Joe, and in addition, it seems likely that he enables Joe's inflence-peddling side gig at the same time that Joe enables Hunter's drug and alcohol abuse. All things being equal, it looks like Joe would prefer to keep Hunter close at hand in the White House, while the unexplained baggie near the Situation Room (if that's where it was) suggests Hunter had worked out a modus vivendi with White House security that would accommodate hi...

Legal commentators on the disastrous courtroom events for Hunter Biden in Delaware yesterday have avoided asking this question, but they've unavoidably skirted it by noting that plea deals aren't usually handled this way. Normally there's just a pro forma exchange in which the judge makes sure the defendant understands the terms of the plea, and it's 15 minutes in and out. Commentators like Jonathan Turley have noted that it's basic lawyering to have the terms of the plea fully negotiated and agreed to before it reaches the court, yet somehoe this didn't take place. So who blew it? According to Politico, Hunter was accompanied by a group of lawyers, including prominent white collar defender Abbe Lowell. Kevin Morris, a Hollywood lawyer who has reportedly given Hunter significant financial help, sat in the audience with members of his legal team. Morris has repeatedly identified himself as Hunter's "lead attorney", and according to the U...

One takeaway I had from last week's case of the balcony bong was that Kevin Morris seems to own yet another house, this one a pied-a-terre on a swanky street that might be in Pacific Palisades. This is apparently in addition to his sprawling loft in Tribeca , as well as the $11 million Malibu compound that he bought from Olivia Newton-John. Hunter Biden's Secret Service detail drives him over for casual afternoons on weed, but it pretty clearly wouldn't matter what they smoke together, because the men in the black SUV waiting outside will keep things quiet no matter what. And that's the main puzzle I have: Morris is supposed to be a rich lawyer, but it's hard to avoid thinking he's hanging with Hunter because he needs something, not least protection. Protection from what? It has to be something important. Just yesterday, we learned that in addition to setting up the whole deal whereby Hunter would sell his paintings to unknown buyers, Morris himself bough...

The History Channel's The Food That Built America is a slick and glitzy business-school style "whig history" that covers why we have the wonderful frozen waffles, fried chicken, fast-food burgers, or packaged luncheon meats we have in this best of all possible consumer worlds. It can sometimes be vaguely informative, and even when it isn't, it gives some insight into the thought processes of the people who fancy they control the planet. This past Sunday's episode is important for what it leaves out, since it chronicles how that wonderful product Bud Light became the top US beer, which is perfect anyhow. I'll grant that the episode must have been produced and in the can before last March, when a trans influencer singlehandedly destroyed the brand in a matter of weeks, but even if it hadn't been finished by then, that part of the story would have been so alien to the show's mission that they'd probably have had to scrap the whole episode rather...

Via The New York Post : Mulvaney — who recently escaped to Peru to “feel safe” from the backlash and boycotts hounding her and the fizzling beer brand — offered up her [sic] services in an Instagram post Wednesday. “Booking speaking opportunities for the upcoming 23/24 school year and would love to come visit,” she told her [sic] 2 million followers. My impression of the college lecture circuit has always been that it features faded celebrities and other special pleaders past their sell-by dates. From my own time as an undergraduate in the 1960s, I remember Judy Garland (then, though still alive, largely a gay cult icon); Madalyn Murray O'Hair (prominent in the anti-school prayer movement, who quickly faded after the Supreme Court outlawed it); Immanuel Velikovsky (author of the 1950 Worlds in Collision , which argued that Biblical miracles were a misreading of astronomical catastrophes); and Michael Meeropol (son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who argued his parents ...

Last Thursday, I posted on the details we know about the baggie of coke that was found in a cubby outside the White House Situation Room , and I concluded that nothing really fit. Former Secret Service agents are unanimous that nobody who isn't the president, vice president, or a member of their immediate families gets into the business areas of the White House without a search, which includes metal detectors and emptying of pockets, as well as drug sniffing dogs. In other words, it's highly unlikely that either an outsider or a staff member could bring cocaine in. On the other hand, if the suspect is a protectee, which is to say Hunter himself, the mathematics of addiction say that someone like Hunter needs a lot more than a random baggie of cocaine to satisfy his habit. He needs near-industrial quantities of coke, and it just isn't worth his trouble to smuggle in a baggie at a time; the supply is too small and unreliable. The Secret Service people say it...

Via the UK Daily Mail , Hunter Biden visited his 'sugar brother' Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris – who was photographed appearing to smoke from a bong. . . . While Hunter was at the house, Morris was snapped on a balcony in plain view of the public street appearing to huff from a white bong, in photos exclusively obtained by DailyMail.com. . . . It is not clear what substance was in Morris's bong, and recreational marijuana use is legal in California. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment. This vignette raises several important questions for me, but it begins to answer one I posed a couple of weeks ago about Hunter and Kevin: Do they do coke together? I don't think this bodes well for Hunter's future. Kevin Morris is not a serious guy. Bongs actually came after my time doing this sort of thing in college (which I did on and off for about 18 months but outgrew pretty quickly), when all we had was old-fashioned joints, so I wen...

In a post last week , I said I was skeptical of reports that some Democrats are trying to find a younger candidate who can replace Joe Biden as their 2024 nominee because, as I said at that time, Joe Biden is their only hope of claiming to maintain the nearly expired New Deal coalition. In fact, it seems to me that if they want a viable national candidate who could actually do this, they have a perfectly good one in Robert Kennedy Jr, whom they currently abjure. This isn't to say that they don't see a legitimate problem in Biden, although yet again, I don't think a medical diagnosis is needed to point it out. Take his meeting with Israel's President Herzog at the White House Tuesday, where he's reported to have said, “The Israelis and the Palestinians… uh… on a political level… They uh, and… uh… They uh… And, I… Agwai endhole and whole shegwam… And uh…” said Biden. The fact-checkers insisted that the big guy wasn't asleep , he was just reading fr...

I certainly agree that the unanswered question of who brought the baggie into the cubby outside the Sit Room is important, but I'm less and less convinced the answer has much to do with Hunter. Let's take the latest theory from Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who's been serving as the vehicle for unnamed colleagues still on the force who are expressing their skepticism about the investigation. As of Tuesday, he was saying : “Let’s just say a friend called me up and said, ‘Don’t preclude the possibility that the cocaine found in the White House there was not accidentally left behind.’ In other words, it was left there deliberately for someone to find, and let you say someone else may have found it. So that’s the story I kind of heard from someone who may know a little something about something. We’ll see what happens, but they know who it is. I’m sure of it.” As best I can translate this, he seems to be saying that the baggie was something like a dead drop,...

Ever since Bp Robert Barron heartily endorsed this past spring's TV series Mrs Davis , calling it "my favorite show", I've been anxious to watch it. Nevertheless, although he's discussed it in at least two podcasts, and on one, his interlocutor warns viewers that there are content issues and "don't show it to your prayer group", I can agree that it isn't a Catholic film. He says at the link, Now if you’re looking to Mrs. Davis for theological precision, you will be severely disappointed (and please don’t write me letters reminding me of how weird its theology is; I know), but there is indeed a spiritual motif of supreme importance that stands at the very heart of the show, and it is well worth plowing through all of the intense oddness to grasp it. It has to do with idolatry and, more precisely, with our tendency to create idols. Wikipeida calls it "an American science fiction comedy drama", which puts it in the same genre as...

Via The Washington Examiner , Former University of Pennsylvania swimmer turned transgender activist Lia Thomas is back at the center of attention after the national champion was seen on social media appearing to embrace the "Trantifa" movement. Thomas, a biological male who identifies as female, was seen on Instagram sporting an all-black outfit that included a BDSM leather harness and shirt reading "Antifa Super Soldier." The image of Thomas was reportedly shared by the activist's partner Gwen Weiskopf, who purportedly identifies as transgender. So who is Gwen Weiskopf? A quick web search brought up this photo and a writeup : At the link: [D]etails on Lia Thomas and Gwen Weiskopf’s relationship timeline & their dating history still need to be published in the public domain. However, sources believe the couple is still together despite Lia’s name beginning to trend over the internet after participating in female swinging despite being t...

There's been a minor flurry over Vice President Harris's latest blurt : The shocking gaffe happened as the 58-year-old vice president delivered remarks at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Md., on the need to build a “clean energy economy.” “When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water,” Harris said, eliciting applause from the audience. While according to the link, the White House said she meant to say "pollution" instead of "population", it's hard not to think this was more than a Freudian slip, and she could arguably have meant what she said. A web search on "climate change population reduction" produces 185,000,000 hits, including many sites at the most respectable NGOs expressing quite radical proposals in ways that make them seem like bromides. Just this past May, an article in Scientific American by Stephanie Feldstein, the popu...