Bp Barron, Richard Nixon, And President Brandon

Somewhere in his book The Strangest Way, a Catholic apologetic he wrote while a professor at the Mundelein seminary, Bp Barron notes a remark by Norman Mailer about Richard Nixon, that Nixon always seemed to have a little Nixon on his shoulder whispering in the big Nixon's ear telling him how to behave, advice like, "Now look sympathetic"; "Now smile." Bp Barron said no matter how you feel about Nixon, this was a good illustration of the divided self: there's no room for authenticity; you've always got to be gauging how you're coming off to other people.

(I've kept looking for this in my copy but so far have been unable to find the specific reference. If anyone knows where it is, I'll be delighted to update the post here.) But this brings out other associations for me. Mailer covered Nixon in at least two books, Miami & The Siege of Chicago and St. George and the Godfather, which were about the 1968 and 1972 election campaigns. Mailer was by his own admission strangely drawn to Nixon and even tempted to be something of a closet Republican. I suspect he found something human in Nixon that wasn't in the public personae of his political opponents.

He perceived a basic insecurity in Nixon, a neuroticism that made him attractive -- maybe even a little like what made Humphrey Bogart an attractive figure in the Hollywood of the time; he wasn't conventionally handsome like, say, Clark Gable; he was skinny and slight; he was aware of his demons. (Indeed, Bogart went by his mother's name; Humphrey Bogart was a well-known illustrator in the 1920s.)

I think this is perhaps what drew Bp Barron to Mailer's observation of Nixon: Nixon was human enough to use as an example of the fallen condition. He was no Kennedy, no conventional hero, no movie star. He was visibly flawed, as all of us are, whether secretly or not.

But this brings up a different question. The American psychiatrist Hervey M. Cleckley published The Mask of Sanity in 1941. According to Wikipedia,

The title refers to the normal "mask" that conceals the mental disorder of the psychopathic person in Cleckley's conceptualization.

Cleckley describes the psychopathic person as outwardly a perfect mimic of a normally functioning person, able to mask or disguise the fundamental lack of internal personality structure, an internal chaos that results in repeatedly purposeful destructive behavior, often more self-destructive than destructive to others. Despite the seemingly sincere, intelligent, even charming external presentation, internally the psychopathic person does not have the ability to experience genuine emotions. Cleckley questions whether this mask of sanity is voluntarily assumed to intentionally hide the lack of internal structure, but concludes it hides a serious, but yet imprecisely unidentified, semantic neuropsychiatric defect.

Ted Bundy might be the stereotypical example of this kind of personality, handsome, charming, even apparently vulnerable as he sometimes used a cast or a crutch to lure his victims, impressing even the judge who ultimately sentenced him to death. But even if we accept Mailer's characterization of Nixon as someone who needed constant prompting to maintain a mask, this simply acknowledges that in Nixon's case, the mask was always in danger of falling off. Ted Bundy was the conventional movie star; Nixon was the Humphrey Bogart.

But this brings me to Joe Biden. If we continue with the Norman Mailer model of Nixon's personality, the one thing Biden simply lacks is any sort of little Biden on his shoulder telling him the right thing to say or do. His gaffes, his misstatements, his hot mic moments, his fabulations, his insults, his outbursts are constant and unapologetic. There is simply no neuroticism. On one hand, he's no Nixon. Despite his nerdiness, Nixon defeated McGovern in a historic landslide. But neither is he a Kennedy, with no aristocratic movie-star glamour. The likelihood of Biden prevailing in the 2024 election is not high.

Nor is Biden a Truman, or if he is, a Truman-like strength of character and authenticity are yet to emerge. I briefly considered Warren G Harding, who seems not to have been apologetic about his own flaws, but Harding was nevertheless a more conventional back-slapping, baby-kissing politician whose demise came about in a highly extroverted political tour. Biden is retiring, even secretive, not a barnstormer.

As a type, Biden strikes me as completely new. He isn't neurotic like Nixon or Bogart; he isn't a hero like Kennedy; he isn't a conventional psychopath like Bundy, but there's pretty clearly some pathology there that he isn't making much effort to conceal, no mask. We're simply told to deal with it. I'm not sure what to do with this.

The UK Daily Mail Goes There

The one absolute no-no in 21st century etiquette -- surpassing all others, I think -- is to ask whether a transgendered person has had their plumbing repaired. (I assume "repaired" is the correct word, since the assumption is that the original plumbing, though functional, was incorrectly installed.) In one of the consummate gaucheries of our time, the UK Daily Mail has nevertheless asked this about the transgendered Ivy League swimmer Lia Thomas.

Sharing a locker room with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has become a point of contention for some of her University of Pennsylvania teammates, who feel uncomfortable changing in the private space with someone undergoing gender transition, the DailyMail.com can reveal.

'It's definitely awkward because Lia still has male body parts and is still attracted to women,' one swimmer on the team told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

Lia has told her teammates that she dates women.

While Lia covers herself with a towel sometimes, there’s a decent amount of nudity, the swimmer said. She and others have had a glimpse at her private parts.

She stated that team members have raised their concern with the coach, trying to get Thomas ousted from the female locker room, but got nowhere.

'Multiple swimmers have raised it, multiple different times,' the UPenn swimmer said. 'But we were basically told that we could not ostracize Lia by not having her in the locker room and that there's nothing we can do about it, that we basically have to roll over and accept it, or we cannot use our own locker room.'

'It's really upsetting because Lia doesn't seem to care how it makes anyone else feel,' the swimmer continued. 'The 35 of us are just supposed to accept being uncomfortable in our own space and locker room for, like, the feelings of one.'

But equity!

This raises an awful lot of questions for me. The first is that, although Thomas has taken some sort of hormonal treatments, there doesn't seem to be any sort of surgery in the plan, and while Thomas somehow qualifies as female for the purpose of the swim team, they continues to function sexually as a male. The only concession to outward norms, leaving hormonal treatments aside, is that they shaves their chest, armpits, and legs and probably peroxides their forearms. As far as I can see, there's been no chest enhancement surgery. Thomas's coy pose in the photo is probably to conceal this as much as anything -- well, maybe to cover their Adam's apple, too.

So at this stage, we may call Thomas's status something like "transgender lite". In fact, it seems like when their collegiate swim career is over, assuming they don't go for the Olympics, they can just re-transition and go back to being a guy with no regrets and maybe even a book deal. (I would guess that even for a guy competing as a woman, the Olympics would still be too much commitment and too much work.)

But this leads to another question. Thomas appears to be standing next to a male swimmer competing as a male, wearing a male swim suit. What prevents Thomas from simply announcing that since they identifies as female but has not had any surgery to look female, there's no reason they can't compete on the women's team wearing a male swimsuit? Are there Ivy League or NCAA rules on which gender's swimsuits must cover what? Or is this just some sort of pro forma thing to make it all seem more legitimate?

My next questoin is just how big a charade is this whole story?

A biological female member of the University of Pennsylvania women’s swimming team said she believes her transgender teammate Lia Thomas colluded with a Yale transgender athlete so she could lose to prove a point, according to a report.

. . . Her biological female teammate told OutKick on condition of anonymity that she believes Thomas and Henig hatched a plan during the recent meet.

“Looking at [Lia’s] time, I don’t think she was trying,” she told the outlet. “I know they’re friends and I know they were talking before the meet. I think she let her win to prove the point that, ‘Oh see, a female-to-male beat me."

It's interesting that this is all intra-Ivy as well. But it confirms my sense that Thomas is not so much focused on trophies or records, but they gets some sort of inner satisfaction from controlling a larger narrative about transgenderism.

Who benefits? This is the biggest question. Those who suffer from gender dysphoria, if this is even a legitimate condition, are an extremely tiny segment of the population, but there's a massive effort to readjust the whole culture to accomodate it. It isn't Marxist; as I keep saying, Marx had nothing to say about it, and the only use the Soviets found for gays was as bait for blackmail.

And strangely, the trend is currently most visible in the Ivy League, where this already privileged white dude is trying to carve out an even more privileged tiny niche for themselves. All for equity or something. Can someone explain this to me?

About Those Creepy Pictures

I've always been more or less aware of photos on the web of Hunter Biden posing with the big guy, often with their heads pointed in the same direction and very similar smiles as though they're in on some big joke. It's almost as if they're trying to be Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in some kind of dance routine. But looking for one to illlustrate posts in the last few days, I've come across others, like the one yesterday and the one above here that are just plain creepy and even verge on softcore porn.

Here's another:

Compare it to this well-known photo of Anderson Cooper and his husband:

But heretofore, the usual questions about the big guy went more to photos like this:

I ask which photo is creepier, the one just above or the one at the top? They both show a troubling lack of boundaries, but the sexier ones with Hunter are clearly posed, deliberate, and probably even taken by a professional photographer in a scheduled shoot. Or actually, given that Hunter and the big guy are dressed differently in one of them (it looks like the one yesterday and the one at the top today were the same shoot), at least two different scheduled shoots with professional lighting. The hair sniffing, in contrast, is a grab shot by a press photographer; nobody planned it. The really creepy shots were planned and paid for.

Up to now, I'd thouight that the Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin dance routines were as bad as things got:

I thought this kind of thing was basically marketing collateral, illustrations that showed any money you gave Hunter was baksheesh to Joe, a safe and productive investment. That may be the case, but there's something else very strange going on here.

Ukraine Must Be A Really Pesky Place

It seems like there's more and nore -- or maybe less and less, dependiong on how you look at it -- to the whole Ukraine kabuki:

President Joe Biden's failure to nominate an ambassador to Ukraine more than a year into his presidency is raising concerns among U.S. officials and regional experts as Russia moves closer to launching a full-scale invasion.

"President Biden has undermined the U.S.-Ukraine relationship by failing to even nominate an ambassador to Ukraine—it is a dereliction of duty and contributes to the instability we're seeing unfold today," Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, told the Washington Free Beacon.

. . . Regional experts say diplomacy through social media is not helping the tense situation. A qualified American ambassador would have been able to reassure Zelensky in person and prevent a public disagreement with the White House that many saw as a boon for Russia.

"It is a horrible time for the United States to not have a Senate-confirmed ambassador in Kyiv," said Brad Bowman, a former Senate defense adviser who serves as senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Center on Military and Political Power. "A year into the Biden administration, there is zero excuse for the White House's failure to nominate someone."

"Deputy chiefs of mission can be incredibly effective, but there is simply no substitute for an ambassador," Bowman said, adding that "the Senate can be slow in confirming nominees, but you can't blame the Senate if you haven't even nominated someone. This borders on diplomatic malpractice by the Biden administration."

I can actually think of one very good reason President Brandon wouldn't want to nominate an ambassador to Ukraine: Senate confirmation would be an invitation to open the Hunter can of worms, since Ukraine was a major funnel for payments to the Biden family, and as far as anyone can tell, both Hunter and the big guy had extensive involvement with policy there while the big guy was vice president. Well, son of a bitch!

The guy doesn't want to touch Ukraine, period, and it sounds as if the current regime there has no particular affection for the Biden family, either. It's likely in his personal and poltical interest simply to have Ukraine go away, not least because since Bill Clinton in 1998, we've had no fewer than three bogus "impeachments" by both parties, which are doing nothing but taking impeachment off the table as a remedy for actual high crimes and misdemeanors.

The problem for Biden is that the US Constitution does specify that the “President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States” shall be removed from office if convicted in an impeachment trial of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Not hanky-pank in the oval office bathroom, not someone's interpretation of who said what to whom, but, er, bribery, for instance.

Biden would basically just like Ukraine to go away. The problem is that, while it suits Putin to have it destabilized for now, and indeed, Biden is playing into his hands by working to destabilize it, it likely isn't in Putin's interest to stage a full invasion. There's too much value to him for the time being in having a Ukrainian regime that feels threatened more by Biden than by Putin and likely has ammunition against Biden it has yet to expend.

One thing we can be pretty sure of -- Putin will still be around long afer Biden. He'll deal with Ukraine at his leisure, but he won't interfere while his enemy is destroying himself now.

Help Me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, You're My Only Hope?

Let's look at the conventional media narrative here: Vladimir Putin, AKA Darth Vader, is threatening Planet Ukraine, part of the Rebel Alliance, with the Death Star. Princess Leia, AKA Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has sent an urgent message to Obi-Wan Kenobi, AKA President Brandon, begging for his help against the Empire. The suspense now, although not canonical to the original Hollywood version, is whether Obi-Wan, 79 years old, is either too senile or too irresoulute to respond.

Got it? Except that even an updated version of the Star Wars salvation history isn't going to explain how things are actually turning out. President Zelensky, AKA Princess Leia, appears not to be on the same page with Obi-Wan at all:

Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov told reporters on Tuesday that Kyiv considers – and intelligence reports from the West agree – that “internal destabilization” caused by panic over a potential further Russian invasion is “the number one issue,” not any potential invasion.

With this “destabilization” – leading to generalized panic and the collapse of the national currency, the hryvnia – “the Russians have nothing to do here,” Danilov asserted, according to state outlet Ukrinform.

The remarks follow multiple national addresses from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urging Ukrainians to disregard agitated statements from the administration of President Joe Biden and its allies predicting an imminent Russian invasion deeper into Ukraine than Moscow already is.

In other words, the real problem isn't Darth Vader, the problem is Obi-Wan himself. This is puzzling. How can the whole Star Wars narrative resolve itself otherwise? Is Obi-Wan misinterpreting Princess Leia's message? Is Princess Leia's message some kind of false flag meant to further Obi-Wan's secret agenda? But there are other signals from elsewhere in the Rebel Alliance, AKA the European Union, that something's hinky:

The European Union will not follow the US move to evacuate diplomatic staff and families, largely because the US hasn’t explained why we’re doing it. “We don’t have to dramatize,” EU foreign policy minister Josep Borrell told the press today as European nations met to determine their path forward in confronting Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.

Borrell told reporters that Antony Blinken will brief the EU later, but at least as of this morning, they don’t see any threat to diplomatic facilities or staff.

The Ukrainians vehemently agree with Borrell. Volodymyr Zelensky has already objected to the withdrawal of personnel and staff from the Kyiv embassy, calling it an “overreaction.”

In other words, Darth Vader is less of a threat to Planet Ukraine than President Obi-Wan himself, who is actually using a giant kabuki to destabilize Ukraine. Er, why would President Obi-Wan conceivably want to do this to poor Planet Ukraine, part of the Rebel Alliance? A possible answer:

Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg believes that President Joe Biden essentially gave Vladimir Putin the green light to invade Ukraine because the Ukrainian energy company Burisma stopped bribing him after the 2016 election of former President Donald Trump.

Speaking with politics editor Matthew Boyle on Breitbart News Saturday, Nunberg expanded on a tweet he posted Friday suggesting that Biden abandoned Ukraine due to Hunter Biden’s corruption.

But Darth Vader didn't even need a green light to destroy Planet Ukraine with the Death Star. All Vader had to do was maneuver the Death Star in ambiguous ways, which is what Putin is doing with troops on the Ukraine border. Then President Obi-Wan can use the situation to destablilize Ukraine by making it plain that if Putin does invade, Ukraine can simply expect a repeat of Kabul, with US civilians and embassy staff already ordered out prematurely. President Brandon's mental fog and uncertainty aren't a bug in this case, they're a feature. Interesting that Europeans beyond Ukraine seem to be thinking the same.

Maybe if President Zelensky were to rethink putting Hunter back on the Burisima board, things could change? Just sayin'.

What about this morning's other great puzzle, Speaker Pelosi's decision to run for re-election to the House?

With that in mind, I’m not at all convinced Pelosi will actually serve out another two-year term. It seems perfectly possible to me that if and when Democrats get blown out in November, she’ll change her mind. As I’ve said before though, to do so before the midterm vote would be catastrophic, and she knows it.

. . . Still, politics aside, there’s something deeply disturbing about an 81-year-old politician refusing to hand over power like this. Blame it on people living longer than they used to or something else entirely, but the American government has been turned into a quasi-oligarchy, where decrepit geriatrics rule the roost, enriching themselves, and serving until they kick the bucket.

I think the pseudonymous Bonchie is getting closer here. Another election for Pelosi, another round of baksheesh. She'll cross the post-November bridge when she comes to it. For Joe, it's payback to Planet Ukraine, which stopped the baksheesh in 2016. Well, son of a bitch.

Just sayin'. All those Europeans are pretty darn realistic, if you ask me.

Biden vs Kennedy vs Nixon

Yesterday I started thinkng about Biden and Ukraine vis-a-vis Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. I realize the circumstances are only very generally equivalent, but they do represent rare and potentially consequential direct confrontations betweeen the US and the Soviet Union or its successor. My conclusion yesterday was that in 1962, Khrushchev was a weak leader with backing that turned out to be unreliable, and he was badly played by Kennedy, who had speechwriters who'd studied Cicero in Catholic school, a highly effective media operation, and a telegenic persona. It didn't hurt that he lived with his family in London from 1938 to 1940 and saw Winston Churchill at close hand.

No matter there was a behind-the-scenes deal whereby the US removed missiles in Turkey that were an equivalent threat to the Soviets, that wasn't public, and Kennedy came off as the young, resolute, dynamic Leader of the Free World. From a domestic political standpoint, his handling of the crisis was a tour de force. Indeed, Khrushchev's performance was the opposite and led to his removal.

Let's look at Kennedy's television address to the nation on October 22, 1962. The first thing to note is its position in the timeline.

October 14, 1962: A U.S. U-2 spy plane piloted by Maj. Richard Heyser takes hundreds of photos of newly-built installations in the Cuban countryside. . .

October 15: CIA analysts spot launchers, missiles and transport trucks that indicate the Soviets are building sites to launch missiles capable of striking targets nearly across the United States. . .

October 16: President John F. Kennedy meets with a team of advisers known as Ex-Comm, to discuss how to respond to the missile threat. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara presents JFK with three options: diplomacy with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, a naval quarantine of Cuba, and an air attack to destroy the missile sites, which might kill thousands of Soviet personnel and trigger a Soviet counterattack on a target such as Berlin.

Kennedy rejects the attack, and favors a quarantine to buy time to negotiate a missile withdrawal. JFK and his advisers are careful to call it a quarantine because a blockade is considered an act of war.

October 22: In a dramatic 18-minute television speech, JFK shocks Americans by revealing “unmistakable evidence” of the missile threat, and announces that the United States will prevent ships carrying weapons to reach Cuba, while demanding that the Soviets withdraw their missiles.

Meanwhile. U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union Foy Kohler delivers to a letter from JFK to Khrushchev. Kennedy writes: “the one thing that has most concerned me has been the possibility that your government would not correctly understand the will and determination of the United States in any given situation, since I have not assumed that you or any other sane man would, in this nuclear age, deliberately plunge the world into war which it is crystal clear no country could win and which could only result in catastrophic consequences to the whole world, including the aggressor.”

. . . October 28: Khrushchev concedes, writing an open letter to Kennedy saying that the Soviet missiles will be dismantled and removed from Cuba.

The Kennedy White House portrayed the withdrawal as the result of the president’s tough stance in the face of Soviet aggression. In reality, as Kornbluh says, “the resolution of the crisis owed to the president’s commitment to negotiate and find common ground in a dangerous nuclear world.”

Kennedy's television address was also rhetorically brilliant in itself, I would guess, again, because his staff was capable and had read Cicero.

The 1930's taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged ultimately leads to war. This nation is opposed to war. We are also true to our word. Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country, and to secure their withdrawal or elimination from the Western Hemisphere.

Our policy has been one of patience and restraint, as befits a peaceful and powerful nation, which leads a worldwide alliance. We have been determined not to be diverted from our central concerns by mere irritants and fanatics. But now further action is required--and it is under way; and these actions may only be the beginning. We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth--but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.

Acting, therefore, in the defense of our own security and of the entire Western Hemisphere, and under the authority entrusted to me by the Constitution as endorsed by the resolution of the Congress, I have directed that the following initial steps be taken immediately:

First: To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.

. . . The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are--but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high--and Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.

Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right- -not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.

There are certainly echoes of Churchill here, and they're entirely appropriate. The problem right now is that the contrast with Biden couldn't be greater. The Ukraine crisis has been festering for weeks, and Biden's main contribution has been his stumbling remarks on January 19

President Joe Biden on Thursday sought to clarify his stance on a potential Russian incursion in Ukraine, cleaning up remarks from the prior day's news conference during which he suggested a "minor incursion" by Russia would elicit a lesser response than a full-scale invasion of the country.

"I've been absolutely clear with President Putin. He has no misunderstanding. If any -- any -- assembled Russian units move across Ukrainian border, that is an invasion. But it will be met with severe and coordinated economic response that I've discussed in detail with our allies, as well as laid out very clearly for President Putin,"

But it's plain that his response has been essentially panic, ordering embassy staff to be evacuated from Kyiv:

The European Union will not follow the US move to evacuate diplomatic staff and families, largely because the US hasn’t explained why we’re doing it. “We don’t have to dramatize,” EU foreign policy minister Josep Borrell told the press today as European nations met to determine their path forward in confronting Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.

Also,

A Ukrainian journalist asked State Department Spokesperson Ned Price why the U.S. was evacuating personnel in the capital city of Kyiv, which is 500 miles from the border with Russia, and whether that meant the capital was a target of invasion.

Ukraine and the EU are displaying far more calm and resolution than Biden, who has so far abdicated any pretensions at being the Leader of the Free World.

But I mentinied Nixon. Right now, Biden is looking much more like Nixon:

President Joe Biden broke his 2020 campaign promise Monday not to bully the news media when he called Fox News’ Peter Doocy a “stupid son of a bitch” on a hot mic in response to a question about inflation at the White House.

Doocy took the insult in stride, later joking that no one had “fact checked” the president’s claim. On Fox News’ Hannity, Doocy revealed that the president had called him to tell him the insult was not “personal,” though he stopped short of saying that Biden had apologized.

Biden’s insult was only the latest example of an irascible attitude toward the press that has dogged him throughout his media career. Last week, for example, he snapped at a reporter during a press conference: “I assume you got into journalism because you liked to write.

Journalist Daniel Schorr was number 17 on Nixon's enemies list, and early in the Nixon administration

he angered the President by reporting, accurately, that there was no evidence to support Nixon's claim that he had programs ready to aid parochial schools. His reward: Nixon ordered the FBI to investigate him.

All politics is domestic, which Kennedy understood. This is not a good sign.

What If Things Keep Getting Worse?

It seems to me that the Ukraine situation could potentially work out for Biden the way the Cuban missile crisis worked out for Kennedy. According to this article,

President Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis significantly contributed to his strong overall job approval scores. From the fall of 1961 until the spring of 1962, his approval ratings held steady at almost 80 percent (table 10). They then slowly, but steadily, subsided, dropping to a low of 61 percent in mid-October 1962. The Cuban missile crisis then pushed approval up to 74–76 percent from November 1962 to January 1963.

Should Biden manage to appear strong and decisive and then manage to look as if he'd forced Putin to back down in some way, he'd achieve a reset -- though as the link points out, Kennedy already had high job approval, well above Biden's. On the other hand, Putin isn't Khrushchev, who was in power for about a decade before being removed, while Putin has been de facto chief of Russia for 23 years so far, continuing to rule via both elections and other political maneuvering. His final term could theoretically end in 2036.

Khrushchev was reckless and not entirely stable; in Cuba he overplayed his hand and was removed largely in consequence. Putin is a more careful opponent who is focused on methodically reassembling a traditional Russian empire. I don't need to repeat Obama's own reported assessment of Biden's abilities. As a result, I think a Cuban missile crisis style outcome isn't likely for Biden; something like his existing precedent in Afghanistan seems more probable.

But an Afghanistan style outcome would be just one potential further disaster for the party in power. Another, as I've been thinking about since last week, would be new focus on Hunter and Joe's financial arrangements with him. As of last night, new allegations are emerging:

The Biden family scored $31 million from five deals in China, all with individuals with direct ties to the Chinese spy apparatus, according to a bombshell new book.

Multiple financiers with direct ties to Chinese intelligence partnered with Hunter Biden during and after his father’s time as Vice President — including the former head of the Ministry of State Security and the head of foreign intelligence recruitment — and some of those relationships remain intact, according to Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, by Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer.

. . . “The hazard of a Chinese businessman with close ties to the top ranks of Beijing’s spy agency conducting financial transactions with the son of the U.S. vice president cannot be overstated. How this did not set off national security or ethics alarm bells in Washington is a wonder in itself,” Schweizer writes in Red-Handed.

Another problem is that Ukraine was also a major sphere of Hunter's activity, and the potential fallout from events there could also prove extremely damaging to Joe. Just one potential angle also came out yesterday:

Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg believes that President Joe Biden essentially gave Vladimir Putin the green light to invade Ukraine because the Ukrainian energy company Burisma stopped bribing him after the 2016 election of former President Donald Trump.

Speaking with politics editor Matthew Boyle on Breitbart News Saturday, Nunberg expanded on a tweet he posted Friday suggesting that Biden abandoned Ukraine due to Hunter Biden’s corruption.

“Hunter Biden was paid by Burisma $80,000 a month to simply sit on the board,” Nunberg told Boyle. “Fortune 500 companies don’t pay $80,000 a month to board members . . ."

Beyond that,

Two Republican senators are demanding answers after the Secret Service refused to hand over details about Hunter Biden's trips to Kazakhstan, Russia and China.

Biden, now 51, was granted Secret Service protection while his father was vice president from 2009-17 - although he requested it cease in July 2014.

At the time, he was a globe-trotting businessman, and Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa are investigating Biden for 'his use of government-sponsored travel while he conducted private business.'

The senators have requested documents relating to Biden's travel, and so far have received 259 pages from the Secret Service. But in a letter to director James Murray, they said that they 'have serious concerns about the production'.

They note that the pages are heavily redacted, which they say is unnecessary for members of Congress, and they complained that they were missing entire years - 2010, 2011 and 2013.

I've got to trust that responsible members of both parties are recognizing how quickly things could go south and are mulling appropriate strategies for negotiating a Plan B. Even third-rate thinkers are now suddenly remembering Spiro Agnew.