In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

One phenomenon I've noticed over the past several years is that the Democrat Party, in its post-Reconstruction form the refuge of white segregationism in both north and south, has simply been abandoning that position, turning out the lights, leaving the keys in the locks, announcing that the cis whites have left, and whoever else is welcome to come in. The last generation of credible white party leadership, represesnted by figures like Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden, all cut deals for non-white support for their final candicacies with the understanding that they'd retire when those terms were over and would effectively nominate, or tolerate the nomination of, black successors. Thus Dianne Feinstein earlier this year announced that she would not run for reelection in 2024 , and as her health declined, Gov Newsom, himself term-limited for reelection as governor, announced he would nominate a black woman to complete her term . Nancy Pelosi, running for Speak...

The House Republicans have subpoenaed Joe's brother James's bank records as part of their impeachment investigation. Wondering why I'd never thought to do this before, I went to Wikipedia, and wonder of wonders, I discovered Jimmy has no separate entry -- he's lumped under "Siblings" in an entry for Family of Joe Biden , which reads in its entirety: James B. "Jim" Biden (born 1949), healthcare executive In fact, the family calls him "Jimmy". Well above this entry is a two-paragraph chronicle of the family's pets. It sounds as though for whatever reason, we aren't going to find a single source on Jimmy that will be productive. In fact, you have to negotiate the results of web searches carefully to avoid the usual puff pieces, and stories with any substance seem to date at the latest from 2020, before the election. There doesn't seem to be any place where you can find anything like a conventional CV. I asked Google, "...

One point I keep making here is that it's misleading to focus on the Hunter laptop as any sort of key to the Biden family shakedown. While it covers the period from 2010 to 2019, and it has lots of distractions, it leaves out two key periods, Joe's time in the Senate from 1972 to the start of the laptop timeline in 2010, and much more important, payoffs to Joe after 2019, which begins to cover his time as president. In addition, it's misleading to focus on Hunter, because it looks like Joe's brothers Jim and Frank were in on the hustle as well. Beyond that, the laptop only hints at one feature of Joe's interregnum between 2017 and 2021, when Joe, out of office, seems to have been treated as the likely next president well before the 2020 election and was accorded courtesies consistent with that expectation, such as informal coordination with the Secret Service, although former vice presidents are not entitled to protection. We know very little about how this w...

For someone who claims he isn't running for president , Gavin Newsom sure is in the news a lot: California Gov. Gavin Newsom told NewsNation host Chris Cuomo he will not be making a 2024 presidential run and will instead continue to back President Joe Biden. “I have deep respect, reverence for Joe Biden as a person, his character, his decency and his capacity to do great things,” Newsom told Cuomo. “That’s why. I’m not worthy of that conversation. This guy deserves it, and we as members of the party deserve to have his back.” Newsom has been considered as a possible Democratic presidential contender by some analysts, but he has repeatedly said he will not run in 2024. Nevertheless, his presence at the Republican debate in Simi Valley tonight, although ostensibly as a Biden spokesman, raises other possibilities : CBS13's Steve Large spoke to political strategist Doug Elmets about Newsom's presence. Steve: "Why would Gavin Newsom want to be at the Republican ...

I woke up in the middle of last night suddenly thinking I hadn't really looked into the whole Nord Seam Pipeline issue at all, and over breakfast this morning, I discovered that Seymour Hersh, who last February had published a controversial piece on Nord Stream , has just updated his views. The February piece is behihnd a paywall, but as of now, his update is available for free . This summary of Hersh's February story says, In his online article “How America took out the Nord Stream Pipeline,” Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh sees the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea as a collaboration between Norway and the United States. Based on the testimony of a whistleblower, Hersh situates the planting of C4 explosive devices by U.S. Navy Divers under the cover of the BALTOPS 22 international naval exercise in June; according to Hersh, the explosive devices were triggered by a Norwegian Navy P8, which dropped sonar buoys for this purpose on September 26...

In last week's news : National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced Thursday that President Joe Biden would name Penny Pritzker, a billionaire heiress and former commerce secretary, to manage Ukraine’s economic recovery from the ongoing war. Sullivan, a major proponent of the “Russia collusion” hoax against President Donald Trump, told reporters that Biden, meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky at the White House for the sixth time on Thursday, would “introduce a special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery, Penny Pritzker, who will focus on engaging the private sector, partner countries, and Ukrainian counterparts to generate international investment in Ukraine and work with Ukraine to make the reforms necessary to improve Ukraine’s business climate.” But I thought Joe Biden, as Obama's point man on Ukraine, had already cleaned up all the corruption there when he had Viktor Shokin fired huh? Well, I guess Penny will finish the job. At least, t...

The Menendez story has disappared from the headlines after only a day, for reasons that may be related to what I talked about in yesterdays's post -- his case is a little too similar to Joe's, and maybe even related to it, something the Justice Department maybe should have reflected on before they made the indictment public. Just about the only insightful take from anyone during the story's brief moment in the news cycle was from Jesse Watters Friday night, when he asked, "Why now?" So the question is, why was the Biden administration taking down Menendez at all, and why now? Because the FBI raided Menendez's house last year. Menendez has been walking around Washington knowing Biden's agents have the stack of his gold bars ready to drop at any minute. God, Biden must have been squeezing Bob. The photo at the top of this post shows Menendez and his trophy wife Nadine in May 2022, just before the FBI searched his house for the cash and gold bars, whi...