In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Over the past several days, I've begun to see more little hints that the Democrats are looking for a Plan B. A few weeks ago, I noted that they were quietly dusting off two potential candidates , California Gov Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov JB Pritzker. Just this past Tuesday, the Sacramento Bee noted , Gov. Gavin Newsom is taking fundraising steps often used by potential presidential candidates, setting up multiple committees that in their first three months have raised and spent millions of dollars. . . . Newsom has repeatedly denied any interest in running for the nation’s highest office next year. But whether President Joe Biden wins or loses, there will be no Democratic incumbent in 2028. As governor of the nation’s largest state, the big winner of two elections and a recall, Newsom would be well-positioned for a White House run. And as of yesterday, Ron DeSantis agreed to debate Gov Newsom : Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced on Wednesday evening that he has ...

Accounts of Devon Archer's testimony to the Comer committee on Monday give what appears to be a broad outline of the events that led up to the removal of Viktor Shokin as prosecutor in Ukraine to relieve pressure on Burisma: Archer, a former Hunter Biden business associate, testified that Hunter Biden was being pressured in December 2015 to do something about Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Burisma Holdings, the Ukraine energy firm for which they both worked, lawmakers said. In the same month, then-Vice President Joe Biden began applying pressure in a series of moves that got Shokin fired. Archer also reportedly told the House Oversight Committee, to which he gave the closed-door testimony Monday, that Burisma would not have survived had it not been for the influence of the Biden family. However, the existing record gives considerably more detail without the need for Mr Archer to corroborate it. For now, at least, the fire-Shokin story begin...

While the fallout from Devon Archer's closed-door testimony to the Comer committee is likely to continue over coming days, this piece at Breitbart raises a parallel question, which is the role current Secretary of State Blinken played in the Bidens' Ukraine influence-peddling in the 2015-16 period. 6) October 2015: Senior State Department official Amos Hochstein raised concerns with then-Vice President Biden, as well as with Hunter Biden, that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma Holdings’ board enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine. 7) November 2015: Burisma hired Blue Star Strategies, a Democrat lobbying firm, linked to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and instrumental in Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin’s firing. Antony Blinken's career has been tied to Joe Biden's, especially through his wife, Even Ryan. According to Wikipedia , she worked in the Obama-Biden White House as assistant to the vice president a...

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...