In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Jim Biden has operated under the radar, as I commented yesterday, largely because no trove of documents equivalent to Hunter's laptop has surfaced over his own business dealings. Instead, so far, the best we've had is a series of anecdotes. The earliest was covered in 2019 by Politico as Joe's initial 2020 campaign began to falter -- once he gained momentum, though, corporate media dropped these stories. But before then, they covered Jim's and Hunter's acquisition of Paradigm Global Advisers: In the late summer of 2006 Joe Biden’s son Hunter and Joe’s younger brother, James, purchased the firm. On their first day on the job, they showed up with Joe’s other son, Beau, and two large men and ordered the hedge fund’s chief of compliance to fire its president, according to a Paradigm executive who was present. After the firing, the two large men escorted the fund’s president out of the firm’s midtown Manhattan office, and James Biden laid out his vision f...

It's generally acknowledged that Joe was designated Barack Obama's "point man" for Ukraine. For instance, per Axios , True: Joe Biden was the Obama administration's point man on Ukraine while his son was working for Burisma, visiting the country several times from 2014 to 2016. On the other hand, I have yet to see any sort of job description for "point man", except that as Axios implies, it seemed to involve whirlwind visits on Air Force Two and meetings with top people. But just recently, poking around for background on Joe's bother Jim, I found this at NBC News from April 2016 : Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq Thursday for a visit intended to help resolve a political crisis that's hindering efforts to defeat the Islamic State group. Biden flew overnight from Washington to the Iraqi capital. The White House isn't publicly disclosing his itinerary due to security concerns, but Biden is expected to meet with Iraqi lea...

A Breitbart story gives an account of two Biden experts from Conservative Inc trading scuttlebutt: Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow said that his new New York Times bestselling book Breaking Biden includes a number of forgotten biographical details about Joe Biden, including the fact that he was tapped as former President Barack Obama’s running mate “specifically for being bad with money.” Marlow recounted this detail during an interview about Breaking Biden on the Drill Down Podcast with seven-time New York Times bestselling investigative author Peter Schweizer. . . . “One of the reasons why Barack Obama picked Joe Biden was specifically because he was poor,” Marlow continued. “[Obama] actually liked the optics of having one of the poorest guys in the Senate. And this is so crazy to me because we were just in an era recently where if someone made money and someone made it in America, we pointed to those people as the example—like, ‘Wow, that person really has what it ...

Yesterday I suggested Trump is following a Chicago Seven strategy of baiting his trial judges into overreacting, committing reversible errors, and allowing themselves to be characterized as political hacks in the public narrative. This strategy is succeeding. A federal judge on Sunday reinstated a gag order she imposed on Donald Trump in the Washington case accusing him of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat, denying his bid for a stay pending appeal. The order prohibited Trump from targeting the special counsel prosecuting his case or witnesses who might be called to testify about his efforts to upend his election loss. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan imposed the gag order at the Justice Department’s request. She temporarily lifted it on Oct. 20 after Trump’s lawyers appealed. And she reversed that decision on Sunday evening, according to the court’s docket. A member of the former Obama administration outlined the thinking that likely drove Judge Chutkan's cha...

I've already mentioned the 1969 Chicago Seven trial here in the context of some of the January 6 defendants. Looking back at that post, I think the comparison is mild, especially in contrast to what's beginning to look like Trump's strategy in at least two of his cases, where judges are beginning to impose gag orders on Trump's speech outside the courtroom. On one hand, Trump's strategy is to play the legal issues straight, appealing the orders through established channels. On the other, as opportunties present themselves, he's using public statements to bait the judges into overreacting, turning them into villains in the public eye and forcing them into committing reversible errors. For instance, All this will do is enrage Judge Engoron, who has already fined Trump twice for violating a gag order that bars him from commenting about court staff: Justice Arthur Engoron fined Trump for the second time on Wednesday after he again appeared t...

I'm having a hard time getting my head around this exercise : Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) announced Thursday he is running for president against President Biden. The congressman confirmed he would be running against Biden in the Democratic primary, after previously signaling he would not do so. . . . The Minnesota Democrat has repeatedly called for a competitive primary instead of Biden running unopposed for the nomination. “I think President Biden has done a spectacular job for our country. But it’s not about the past,” Phillips said. “This is an election about the future.” According to Red State , [W]hat makes this especially interesting is who is reportedly behind the campaign. According to another report, The Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt, infamous for his late-night online meltdowns, is advising Phillips. . . . If Schmidt is the driving force behind Phillips' campaign, that's not a good sign for anyone involved. I wouldn...

Tolerance of anti-Semitic and even pro-genocide demonstrations on campuses in particular since October 7 has provoked a certain amount of recalibration among Jews over where their political alliances should lie. Some of it goes directly to the established Democrat party alignment that's persisted in many ways since Reconstruction. The playwright David Mamet wrote this past Monday , We New York Jews have always voted for the Democrats, as their policies appealed to the immigrants and the first generation (my parents). A Fair Shake, a safety net, and unionism were manna to the newly arrived — in spite of (in both their and my lifetime) quotas and antisemitic discrimination. The immigrant Jews did well here, and voted for Franklin Roosevelt. And we are voting for him still. His Advisor on Jewish Affairs (jude-suss, or “house-Jew”) was Rabbi Stephen Wise, the “dean” of the American Rabbinate. He referred to FDR as “Boss”, and brought home to his community Roosevelt’s...