In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I've put up a post with my thoughts on the recent developments over Michael Voris over on the Cold Case File blog .

I ran into a recent article that points to the same questions I had about Sam Bankman-Fried when I posted on the scandal a year ago : [T]he received narrative goes on to say that FTX was run by a dozen or so polyamorous hippie-style geniuses who suffered from ADHD, lived communally in a luxury penthouse in the Bahamas, and had their own doctor-therapist who prescribed amphetamines for their ADHD. The only female in the group I'm aware of was Caroline Ellison, so according to that doctor, there wasn't really that much action. Nevertheless, it was the synergy between Beanbag Boy Bankman-Fried and Queen Caroline that drove the whole enterprise, or something like that. But they let Caroline lose $10 billion in unsupervised trading, and John Ray III says he's nver seen anything like it. Never underestimate what a beautiful woman can do. At the time, I was scratching my head: I kept doing web searches on ADHD and came up with discussions like this : In order for peopl...

I ran into a piece by Walter Shapiro at The New Republic, The Real Reason Why Biden Shouldn’t Drop Out : Panicked Democrats, vibrating with anxiety over the polls, continue to nurture an unlikely fantasy: Joe Biden looks at his family across the Thanksgiving table on Nantucket and says with a weary sigh, “I can’t do this for another five years. I’ve tried my best. But I just don’t have the stamina to keep going through 2028.” Nothing in the president’s makeup suggests that he would abruptly jettison his reelection campaign. . . . Every sign emanating from his inner circle and reelection campaign suggests a stubborn refusal to even acknowledge his growing legion of Democratic doubters. But even if Biden were to accept the truth embedded in the polls, as Harry Truman did when he bowed out in 1952, the subsequent multicandidate scramble for the Democratic nomination would create as many (if not more) political problems as it would solve. This echoes David Axelrod, who says , ...

Even in 1980, the incipient Reagan landslide seems to have taken Democrats, or at least those speaking for public consumption, by surpise. In 1972, especially after the Eagleton fiasco , there was never any serious expectation that McGovern could beat Nixon, so that election is an outlier -- but even then, the real pessimism didn't even take hold until McGovern was nominated. In the 2024 cycle, we're seeing gnashing of teeth and rending of garments a full year before the election. The closest equivalents to the current environment that I can remember were in 1988 over Dukakis and 2004 with John Kerry, when, after the Democrat conventions, "sources" spoke to reporters without attribution about how badly those campaigns were going. But again, this was during the summer and early fall before those elections, not during the fall a full year ahead, and few people are now publicly trying to maintain a happy face. And the Democrat insiders aren't just talking on backgr...

I'm a contrarian on many things, but I'm especially contrarian on the subject of Kevin Morris, the Hollywood lawyer who's been funding Hunter Biden's lifestyle since the wheels came off in 2019-20 and more recently, as best anyone can surmise, paying Hunter's lawyers and guiding his overall legal strategy. How's that going? Well, this past summer, the tentative plea deal and diversion agreement negotiated by Chris Clark, Hunter's attorney who was apparently paid and supervised by Morris, collapsed in a Delaware courtroom, and apparently at Morris's order, Clark withdrew from the case, replaced by Abbe Lowell. This controversy forced Attorney General Garland to take the leash off the Delaware prosecutor, David Weiss, and make him a full special counsel with the ability to pursue the case in other districts. Now, as a result, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig suggested it doesn’t bode well for Hunter Biden that a California grand jury is being...

J oe Biden recently reignited speculation on what's up with Gavin Newsom's not-a-campaign for president next year: President Biden late Wednesday quipped that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) could have any job he wants, including potentially being president, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the governor’s much-discussed White House ambitions. . . . “Matter of fact, he could be anything he wants. He could have the job I’m looking for,” Biden added, eliciting laughter in the room. The California governor has widely been considered as a possible presidential contender, and some see him as a potential candidate come 2028. Newsom has repeatedly fended off speculation he could challenge Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024. Biden, who will turn 81 this month, has faced persistent questions about whether he is too old to run for a second term. Polls have consistently shown large percentages of Democrats would prefer a different nominee in 2024. Last month ...

Alan Dershowitz recently remarked that of all the Get Trump cases, the prosecutions have been putting on the weakest ones first. The New York civil case under Judge Engoron is hurning out to be not just weak but farcical. A recent commenter on Xwitter posted on the judge: Dude! He looks like Mr. Burns off of the Simpsons. And he looks like he drives a van with no windows. For comparison, here's Mr Burns. Judge Engoron is simply playing into Trump's hands -- in their motion for a mistrial and appeal of the judge's gag orders against Trump himself and his attorneys, they cite in particular evidence from the the judge's comments in his high school newsletter , of all things. He's 74 years old and hasn't left high school, despite his degrees from Columbia and NYU. The Hill says of the appellate stay of his gag order: The former president’s legal team requested an interim stay of Engoron’s gag orders — and the sanctions that resulted from his violatio...