In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

The two people in the photo above, conveniently almost unrecognizable behind their COVID masks, are Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the left, and Victoria Nuland, currently Acting Deputy Secretary of State, on the right. I quoted Seymour Hersh Wednesday on Nuland: . . . “ultra-hawkish” Victoria Nuland was promoted by Biden from Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs to Acting Deputy Secretary of State ”over the heated objections of many in the State Department,” Hersh writes. “She has not been formally nominated as the deputy for fear that her nomination would lead to a hellish fight in the Senate. “ The one other figure who really ought to be in the same photo is Amos Hochstein, described by Politico as "perhaps, the most influential Joe Biden adviser that most people don’t know about. He wants to keep it that way," which is probably why we'll never see him in such a photo, with or without a mask. For good or ill, these three are indisputably r...

A couple of stories came out yesterday that raise two questions about Joe's Ukraine timeline, neither especially new, but intriguing as we learn more context. The two questions ultimately boil down to, first, what did Obama know about Joe's Ukraine payoffs, and second, what does Zelensky have on Joe? Red State brings up the first: New questions are swirling about Joe Biden's involvement in Ukraine while he served as vice president during the Obama administration. . . . How did things get to that point, though? A newly unearthed exchange from 2014 is providing a major clue. A "senior administration official" (at the time) gave a press briefing on background about Biden's now-infamous trip to Ukraine. According to one answer given, the now-president may have actually requested the role of overseeing American foreign policy in Ukraine. From there, the timeline only gets more suspicious. The transcript of the press briefing , which took place on ...

There's general consensus across the spectrum that the planned Ukraine 2023 counteroffensive has "stalled", although that's probably a generous characterization -- it might be more accurate to say it never really got under way. Other than Tucker Carlson's Monday interview with retired Col Douglas MacGregor, which is over-the-top, there's been little other recent discussion. On the other hand, there's a good analysis on Seymour Hersh's Substack , which is mostly behind a paywall, but Gateway Pundit has a summary : Hersh cites an unnamed intel official who said that SecState Antony Blinken “has figured out that the United States” and Ukraine “will not win the war” against Russia. On Thursday, the Washington Post reported the U.S. intel community realizes the Ukrainian offensive will fail to achieve its key goal of taking the southeastern city of Melitopol, a strategic Russian logistics hub. “The word was getting to (Blinken) through the Agency t...

Joe's performance on his Maui visit wasn't good, especially the visual of him falling asleep at a luncheon meeting and the transcript of his remarks at Lahaina : Governor Josh Green, you’ve been incredible. From the day we’ve spoken on this, you’ve been way ahead of the curve. Lieutenant Governor Sylvia Luke; Brian Schantz [Schatz], our senator; Senator Mazie Hir- — by the way, Mazie, I told my granddaughter, whose name is Maisy as well — she said, “That’s why I like her.” (Laughter.) Anyway. But her name is Maisy as well. And — and Jill To- — Tokuda, Representative Ed Chase, and Mayor Rick Bassen [Bissen]. Rick, when we talked on the phone, I never — you look like you played in defensive tackle for — I don’t know who, but somebody good. But, anyway, I want to thank you for your leadership in this unimaginable — during this unimaginable travedy — tragedy. What puzzles me here is that his own staff has released the official transcript verbatim, with every mispronun...

Yesterday I linked to an August 19 story at Politico that referred to "more than 300 pages of previously unreported emails and documents exchanged between Hunter Biden’s legal team and prosecutors" that had somehow come to Politico's attention. Yesterday Red State reported , The New York Times was also shown the emails that Politico based its story on, and together, the two outlets offer a stunning look at various events that appear to show clear collusion between Hunter Biden and the DOJ. Red State concludes from the two document dumps: Hunter Biden's legal strategy was to pressure and coerce the DOJ into not prosecuting. That was accomplished through the aforementioned threat of calling Joe Biden to testify, but also through a series of moves to politicize the probe, including inserting Donald Trump into the discussion. You may recognize the name Lesley Wolf, as that's the same Assitant [sic -- this is Conserative Inc's standard of proof...

In yesterday's post, I linked to a Breitbart story on how Biden won't discuss the Hunter problem with his staff. This morning I saw a CNN story that says the same thing , but with a different spin: Long among the most sensitive subjects inside the West Wing, Hunter Biden’s legal saga now appears destined to play out amid his father’s bid for reelection, frustrating the president but so far causing little real concern among his advisers. The probe into Hunter Biden is now one of two special counsel investigations – the other being an inquiry into his father’s handling of classified documents after leaving the Senate and the vice president’s office – that both appear poised to extend for months to come. . . . [B]oth investigations take away the fundamental element of control for a White House heading into an election cycle. As multiple Biden advisers conceded privately this week, special counsels have a history of uncovering information they hadn’t set out initiall...

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, a Yale Law graduate and holder of an endowed chair at the University of Tennessee School of Law, is a libertarian, which means that he follows Ayn Rand as his guiding light. (Rand herself described libertarians as "a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people" who "plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose".) He is also a transhumanist who in the past has endorsed cryonics (freezing the heads of dead people in anticipation that future technology can resuscitate them) and the technological singularity, which among other things embraces the idea that people can be digitized and uploaded into a giant computer memory, which will ensure their immortality, at least until the next power failure. I wouldn't even ask Glenn Reynolds for advice on a traffic ticket, but before he rose to prominence, I'd already lost confidence in the ability of academic institutions to certify people whom we can trust to teach future generations. Never...