Contexts We Aren't Examining In The Hamas Invasion Of Israel

The news of an attack on Israel leading to the first declaration of war in 50 years has mostly raised questions for me about contexts that I'd been noticing for some time. The first is Biden's recent slights against both Israel's President Herzog, on which I posted here, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, which I covered in this post. On July 18,

President Joe Biden seemingly fell asleep today while sputtering gibberish during a high-level meeting with the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog.

“The Israelis and the Palestinians… uh… on a political level… They uh, and… uh… They uh… And, I… Agwai endhole and whole shegwam… And uh…” said Biden.

My assessment at the time was that this was deliberate, an indication at best that Isreal's head of state wasn't worth Joe's full attention, however pro forma this might seem. Then there was a not fully unequivocal exchange with Prime Minister Netanyahu on September 20:

Biden noted that he worked with Netanyahu as a freshman senator, joking that he “gave up counting” how long they had been friends, with Netanyahu adding later that it had been “over 40 years.”

Biden, however, crossed himself when Netanyahu referred to the 40 years, an ambiguous gesture at best that I thought at the time corresponded to the cryptic "God save the queen" remark he occasionally makes to indicate some level of skepticism over whatever is being discussed.

Then there's the peculiar correspondence between a $6 billion transfer to Iran, whose proxy Hamas invaded Israel yesterday:

According to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Iran sends $100 million annually to Hamas, $700 million annually to Hezbollah, and tens of millions to Islamic Jihad. Hamas also uses Iranian technology and logistical support to produce arms locally. What Hamas does not produce it smuggles into the Mediterranean enclave from tunnels under its border with Egypt.

Republican presidential candidates have claimed that the $6 billion to Iran funded the Hamas invasion:

Trump, like others, directly blamed the $6 billion — “American taxpayer dollars helped fund these attacks,” he said in an earlier statement — and argued that, under Biden, the U.S. is perceived as being “weak and ineffective” on the global stage, opening the door to hostility.

“They didn’t have that level of aggression with me. They didn’t have it. This would have never happened with me either,” Trump claimed, adding later in Cedar Rapids that Biden had “betrayed Israel” with the deal.

But every story from the Hamas invasion to bite reports on poor canine Commander seem to have kept the story of the Iran spy ring from getting the prominence it should have:

The Biden administration’s now-suspended Iran envoy Robert Malley helped to fund, support, and direct an Iranian intelligence operation designed to influence the United States and allied governments, according to a trove of purloined Iranian government emails. . . . They showed that Malley had helped to infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence named Ariane Tabatabai into some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government—first at the State Department and now the Pentagon, where she has been serving as chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, Christopher Maier.

. . . The contents of the emails are damning, showing a group of Iranian American academics being recruited by the Iranian regime, meeting together in foreign countries to receive instructions from top regime officials, and pledging their personal loyalty to the regime. They also show how these operatives used their Iranian heritage and Western academic positions to influence U.S. policy toward Iran, first as outside “experts” and then from high-level U.S. government posts. Both inside and outside of government, the efforts of members of this circle were repeatedly supported and advanced by Malley, who served as the U.S. government’s chief interlocutor with Iran under both the Obama and the Biden administrations. Malley is also the former head of the International Crisis Group (ICG), which directly paid and credentialed several key members of the regime’s influence operation.

The picture that's tardily emerging from the Malley-Tabatabai revelations strikes me as analogous at least to the allegations against Alger Hiss, though it's hard even now to imagine Hiss as an active Stalinist, as opposed to an elitist dreamer. Malley and Tabatabai operated at a much more practical and detailed level, and they clearly had direct policy impacts. It's hard to avoid thinking they influenced the $6 billion payment to Iran and facilitated plans for the Hamas invasion.

What did Biden and his handlers know? Was the Malley-Tabatabai group paying any of them? Even leaving questions of payment to the Bidens for policy decisions aside, this Iran spy ring cries out for serious investigation, especially in the context of the new Hamas-Israel war.

What's Going On With Joe, His Dogs, And The Secret Service?

REPORT: President Biden has “mistreated” his dogs by punching and kicking them according to sources close with Judicial Watch.

Biden’s dogs are just like his son: Poorly trained.

Documents from the United States Department of Homeland Security, reveal injuries from attacks… pic.twitter.com/dDGRuYxc1P

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 6, 2023

The video in the post at X above bothers me in several ways. I've had five pet dogs in my life, none has been a German shepherd, but I think dog body language is pretty consistent across breeds. What I see in the video, if that's his most recent dog, Commander, is Commander being led off the helicopter by Joe and promptly becoming confused. He's on a leash, Joe heads for the limo, Commander hangs back and in fact turns the other way. As best I can read, Commander has his head low and is wagging his tail more or less level to the ground, indicating he's not sure what to do.

Joe somewhat awkwardly gathers Commander in, first with his arms, but then with his knees, shoves him toward the limo door, and then impatiently and forcefully urges him inside with the action of his legs. I would say he doesn't quite kick Commander, but Commander sure doesn't want to get into that limo. (As a lifelong pet owner, I would almost say Commander is playing dumb.) At best, all I can say is this isn't how you get a dog to cooperate. I've also got to think this relationship has been going on for a while. Dogs want to bond with their owners. Dogs want to be with the program. One basic thing dogs want to do, always and everywhere, is hop in the car. Something here isn't working.

I'm sensing other vibes here, too. The limo and the helicopter seem to be drawn up so close that it looks awkward for Joe to get into the limo, dog or no dog. I assume the Secret Service choreographs the transfer, and maybe a little like Commander himself, they seem to want to make all this a little harder then it needs to be. Even the Marine sergeant who salutes Joe on his way out seems to be briskly saluting a mote in the middle distance, not Joe the man. These people don't like Joe.

Searching the web, I'm finding this isn't new. Here's a post in The Hill from last December:

President Biden doesn’t trust some of the Secret Service agents around him and doesn’t believe certain details of the biting incident with his dog Major, according to a new book about the administration.

Chris Whipple’s “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House” says Biden has trust issues with some agents, due in part to the fact that some agents are strong supporters of former President Trump.

. . . There are also issues around the March 2021 incident in which Major, the president’s German shepherd rescue dog, allegedly bit a Secret Service agent. The president was reportedly skeptical about the Secret Service’s report of the situation.

Biden “wasn’t buying the details,” such as the location of the incident, although he didn’t dispute that the bite took place, Whipple wrote. Biden told a friend that Secret Service agents are never at the location of the incident, which was allegedly on the second floor of the White House.

“Somebody was lying, Biden thought, about the way the incident had gone down,” Whipple wrote.

Major, who is believed to be the first shelter rescue animal to live at the White House, received private training following the biting incident. Biden at the time defended Major and said he is a “sweet” animal simply adjusting to life in the White House alongside Secret Service details.

Major was removed from the White House on December 21, 2021 after numerous biting indicents and replaced by Commander. In fact, it appears that Major's biting incidents were minimized, as have Commander's more recently, while he was in the White House:

President Biden’s German shepherd Major attacked many more people than the White House has disclosed, according to newly released emails.

The documents indicate that Major bit members of the Secret Service eight days in a row in early March — though only one such incident was publicly acknowledged.

At least one White House visitor also was bitten in early March, according to the emails, which were released Thursday by the conservative transparency group Judicial Watch, which slammed the “cover-up” of the incidents.

. . . Major and Biden’s elderly and since-deceased dog Champ were whisked back to Delaware around March 9 for what the White House claimed was a prearranged visit with family friends.

. . . But emails among Secret Service employees indicated the dogs were returned to Delaware due to a spree of attacks.

Judicial Watch, which had sued for records involving Major's biting incidents, is back on the case with Commander:

Judicial Watch announced today [October 6] that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Secret Service for records regarding incidents of aggression and bites involving President Joe Biden’s Dog, Commander (Judicial Watch Inc, v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (No. 1:23-cv-02960)).

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Secret Service (a component of the Department of Homeland Security) failed to respond to a July 31, 2023, request for all records involving the “Biden family dog, ‘Commander,’ including but not limited to communications sent to and from [Secret Service] officials in the Uniformed and Non-Uniformed Divisions involved in White House operations and the Presidential Protection Division.”

. . . The dog reportedly has been removed from the White House after its most recent attack on a Secret Service agent and other White House staff. According to a Judicial Watch source, President Biden has mistreated his dogs. Judicial Watch has learned he has punched and kicked his dogs.

“It is beyond belief that, even after Judicial Watch exposed their attacking 10 Secret Service personnel, Joe and Jill Biden have continued to let their dog menace and attack Secret Service and White House staff. Let’s be blunt: the dangerous dog could kill someone,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The ongoing Biden administration cover-up of the Biden dog attacks on Secret Service agents is dangerous corruption.”

The White House apparently has a different spin. According to the UK Daily Mail, although Commander, like Major before, is now out of the White House,

White House staffers have blamed President Joe Biden's dog Commander's biting problems on the unfriendly expressions of Secret Service agents.

The 2-year-old German Shepherd reportedly had his 11th bite of one of the president's key protectors just last week - but is said to be pleasant around West Wing staff.

Secret Service emails obtained by Judicial Watch in July revealed the dog had bitten or threatened at least 10 people, making this the 11th incident involving it.

. . . In the batch of emails released in July, Secret Service officers called the dog 'freaking crazy,' argued he would have been 'put down' if he didn't belong to the Biden family and said he needed a muzzle.

On November 10, 2022, Jill Biden 'couldn't regain control' of Commander as the dog charged another member of the Secret Service.

My own take is this is not a normal relationship between a family and its dogs.

Well, Son Of A Bitch!

The last we heard of Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, late a 46-year-old Florida man named Mike who'd turned up as "Sarah", the oficial spokestrans for the Ukrainian territorial defense force, was that once the story attracted the attention of Ohio Sen Vance, he'd been suspended from the role of spokestrans.

On social media, the TDF said: “The statements of (Junior Seargant) Ashton-Cirillo in recent days were not approved by the command of the TDF or the command of the AFU. When conducting military operations against the aggressor, the defense forces of Ukraine strictly observe the norms of international humanitarian law.

“The command of the TDF will conduct an official investigation into the circumstances of these statements. Appropriate decisions would be taken. Sergeant Sarah Ashton-Cirillo will be suspended immediately pending the investigation.”

It looks like the official investigation has taken place, the appropriate decisions have been taken, and, son of a bitch, Sarah's back on the job!

Ukraine’s controversial transgender spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo has claimed to have been reinstated in the role representing the Territorial Defence Forces (TDF) after being suspended last month.

“I continue in the role of TDF spokesperson. Truth, trust, and humanity will always prevail over accusations, allegations, and artificial intelligence,” Ashton-Cirillo said on Tuesday.

The original story of Sen Vance's letter and Ashton-Cirillo's suspension broke on September 20. However, on September 22,

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.

In this post, I discussed Penny Pritzker's position as a Democrat megadonor, as well as her cousin James Nicholas Pritzker AKA Jennifer Natalya Pritzker, the first transsexual billionaire. There can be little question that getting Sarah her job back must have been one of Penny Pritzker's earliest priorities as Ukraine's recovery czar.

But one of my biggest points in my post last month on "Sarah" was that he seemed already to have had friends in high places: "[W]ho vouches for him? He must have handlers. Who are they?" Yesterday's Breitbart link raises additioonal questions:

The American citizen, born as Michael John Cirillo before ‘transitioning’, went on to claim to have signed two book contracts with Potomac Books publishing, with the first volume set to be released in the summer of next year.

Potomac Books says on its website,

Potomac Books has a long and distinguished pedigree. Founded in 1983 as the U.S. imprint of Brassey’s, a renowned British publishing house established in the nineteenth century, Brassey’s-U.S. was acquired by Books International in 1999 and renamed Potomac Books in 2004.

The University of Nebraska Press bought Potomac Books in 2013, acquiring its impressive backlist in military history, politics, current events, international affairs, terrorism, intelligence, and national security. As a general-interest imprint of UNP, Potomac continues to build on its strong roots in these fields, keeping readers informed about the critical issues and challenges of today’s world.

Later, the Breitbart link says,

Last year Ashton-Cirillo was presented with awards from Nevada Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez Masto and Democrat Congresswoman Dina Titus.

Mike's previous publishing history is as a vanity self-publisher; now he's writing for a respected publisher in the military and intelligence fields. So far, I've been able to find no reference at all to any academic or journalistic achievement that might qualify Mike to write for a university press on military or intelligence issues. For instance, Mike doesn't appear to have either a four-year or a two-year degree, or any job ever with a recognized news outlet, much less The Atlantic or the Washington Post.

Yet somehow Mike is traveling in rarefied circles with the likes of Anne Applebaum and David Ignatius. I can only think he's got highly influential friends in extremely high places. Sen Vance in his letter last month had a point:

. . . Is this individual an American citizen? Did they ever serve, in any capacity, in American intelligence services?

Let's Revisit The Great Replacement

According to Wikipedia,

The Great Replacement (French: Grand Remplacement), also known as replacement theory or great replacement theory, is a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory disseminated by French author Renaud Camus. The original theory states that, with the complicity or cooperation of "replacist" elites, the ethnic French and white European populations at large are being demographically and culturally replaced with non-white peoples—especially from Muslim-majority countries—through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans. Since then, similar claims have been advanced in other national contexts, notably in the United States. Mainstream scholars have dismissed these claims as rooted in a misunderstanding of demographic statistics and premised upon an unscientific, racist worldview. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Great Replacement "has been widely ridiculed for its blatant absurdity."

Regular visitors know my views are tempered by the common-sense observation that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you, but this neglects the whole question of whom they're out to get. If you're a white guy worried about Latins streaming across the border, maybe you're paranoid and maybe you aren't. On the other hand, as I've been noting here pretty frequently, if you're black, you have more urgent reasons to mistrust white Democrats. Planned Parenthood was and is aimed at reducing the population of blacks.

Yesterday I was especially puzzled that the black mayors of Chicago and New York trusted their white Democrat governors to work with white segregationist Joe Biden to temper the effect of Latin immigrants surging into their cities. Black residents of Chicago turn out to be asking the same question: is there in fact a Great Replacement under way, and just who is being replaced?

On Tuesday afternoon, a protest took place outside the Amundsen Park Fieldhouse in the city’s Galewood neighborhood, where residents voiced their concerns about a plan to transform the space into a migrant shelter.

"We ain’t having that. No! You want to tell us what to do in our park? You cannot do that! We pay our money," said Linda Johnson, community member.

Critics argue that turning the site into a migrant sanctuary will disrupt crucial park programming and youth activities for residents – programs that took years to build.

"You want to take the little scraps of resources we have and put us at the bottom of the barrel? That’s not fair!" one woman said. "A lot of these young boys, they don’t have fathers so a lot of these coaches, they are their fathers. They spend part of their weekend here along with during the week, that keeps them in a safe place, it gives them mentorship, it shows them discipline."

The story goes on to outline other parts of the city where there are similar conflicts between established black neighborhoods threatened by Latins surging into newly designated immigrant shelters. It mentions Gov Pritzker's approach, which if anything seems to lack any special urgency:

At the same time, Governor J.B. Pritzker is urging the Biden administration to address the migrant crisis. He penned a letter to the president on Monday, emphasizing that the influx of migrants in Illinois has become "untenable."

Illinois has already allocated $330 million to tackle the migrant crisis, and Pritzker believes that additional resources can be provided by the White House and Congress to assist blue states targeted by Texas Governor Greg Abbott's bussing campaign.

In other words, blah blah blah -- except that Pritzker also recognizes that it's Texas Gov Abbot who's forcing action:

"You don't hear him telling Republicans that they need to go to work in Washington on behalf of reform. Instead, he is just sending busloads across the country and causing chaos really," Pritzker said.

Pritzker says he's been in regular discussions with the Biden administration since the first bus arrived in Chicago in August 2022, seeking effective ways to address the ongoing challenges posed by the migrant crisis.

In other words, blah blah blah. What I'm beginning to notice about the latest Republican strategies is that they're forcing choices on Democrats. You can open the spigot and bring in all the Latin migrants you want, and you can have programs that support black communities, until you have to start to choose. And let's recognize that whether or not Gov Abbot charters buses to New York or Chicago, those are the places the migrants prefer, and they'll get there by charter bus or some other way.

Thus we have what appears to be a reversal by Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas:

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is citing an "acute and immediate need" to waive dozens of federal laws in order to build a border wall in south Texas as the illegal immigration crisis grows utterly out of control.

The problem I keep seeing is that, whether or not bien pensant opinion agrees, mass migration from the global south has been an agenda item. The assumption up to now has been that the intent is to make the world a better place, with a US electorate that looks more like -- who knows? -- Costa Rica, Colombia, Paraguay? -- than the current US, and those replaced might just be those of northern European backgrounds. But when policymakers are forced to choose, all of a sudden, they're choosing to replace the blacks. The northern Europeans, represented by the white Democrat governors doing the choosing, will be just fine.

Plenty of blacks have understood this all along. Yes, there's a Great Replacement agenda. The question isn't that there's an agenda, the question is who's being replaced.

Biden's Border Calculation

Recent weeks have brought indications that there are strains in the remaining Democrat coalition. Both Illinois Gov Pritzker and New York Gov Hochul have complained that the migrant incursions on the southern border are too big to handle, since once they cross, the migrants often head to New York or Chicago, where they stay and consume government services.

While neither Pritzker nor Hochul has pointed specifically to the de facto open border itself, both complain that there's no federal coordination in relocating the migrants, no policy that will allow the migrants to work, and no federal aid for the cities providing services to the migrants. On Monday, Pritzker outlined the problems in a letter to Biden:

On top of the 15,000 that have arrived in Chicago and Illinois over the last 13 months, we are now seeing busloads more migrants at increasingly higher rates being sent specifically to Chicago each day. Our state government has been forced to dedicate over $330 million to provide humanitarian aid — and that amount is increasing each day. . . . Though we have found temporary housing in existing buildings for a majority of the refugees, we are challenged to find additional housing for the continuous flow of people who keep coming and are now forced to sleep in police stations and on sidewalks. This situation is untenable and requires your immediate help beyond the coming work authorizations for some of the asylum seekers.

. . . First and foremost, I recommend that there be one person in the federal government who works directly for you in the White House who can lead the oversight of our nation’s efforts at the border. Right now, we have too many different federal department contacts — who are uncoordinated with one another — that handle various programs related to this humanitarian crisis. A single office with an identified leader must be assigned to work for the cities and states across the silos of government to manage the challenges we all face.

Surely Gov Pritzker is aware that Joe has already appointed a single person in the White House to handle the border crisis, Vice President Harris, who has never displayed much enthusiasm for the job. Part of the problem is that Harris hlds her position as representing the urban black faction of the Democrat coalition, but that community is the one directly affected by the open border influx in several ways. No matter, the white Democrats have never had blacks' interests in mind.

First, the inflow of refugees to New York and Chicago adds to the demand for basic social services in their inner cities. As both Pritzker and Hochul point out, the federal government isn't reimbursing the cities for increased use of police, public housing, and welfare services the migrants cause -- more deamnd for the same-size pie. This in turn directly decreases the level of services available to the existing black inner city residents.

Second, the lack of coordinated federal action is yielding control of the southern border to Mexican drug cartels. Per NewsNation earlier this year:

Drug cartels are controlling operations at the southern border as they force migrants across the Rio Grande at gunpoint and hold asylum seekers in stash houses, Border Patrol reports.

The cartel sees what is happening on the US side and takes advantage of the lack of resources, pushing people and drugs through the holes while border patrol is busy processing, according to Vice President of National Border Patrol Council, Art Del Cueto.

Per the New York Post,

Drug cartels are besieging the border by deliberately sending thousands of migrants a day to hand themselves over to Border Patrol officers in different US border towns, sources revealed to The Post.

The tactic is meant to tie up already overworked border agents so Mexico’s cartels can carry on their drug and human smuggling operations undisturbed in less populated areas, law enforcement officials explained.

. . . The mass give-ups are being fueled by cartel lies including about the Biden administration’s CBP One app to schedule immigration appointments, multiple law enforcement sources told The Post.

“They’re circulating false information that anyone waiting for a CBP One appointment can turn themselves in and get asylum,” one source revealed.

This facilitates the cartels' importing larger quantities of fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine, which in turn reach black inner city areas in places like New York and Chicago at lower prices, putting more strains on the population there.

My question continues to be who benefits. Among those who almost certainly don't are the migrants themselves, who are sustained in often inhumane conditions for indefinite periods. The poor and working class in the northern cities don't, since the new migrants demand government services that had previously gone to their communities. To the extent that the migrants work, normally off the books, they take existing jobs from existing residents.

The non-profits who collect government payments to address migrant and homeless problems without ever solving them benefit, and they often benefit local politicians via family and other connections. Beyond that, the big beneficiaries have got to be the cartels who bring the drugs across the border and the gangs who transport them across the US and distribute them in the cities. But that in turn suggests to me that there are payoffs and kickbacks at all levels to keep the system in place, which go to politicians as well.

What Govs Pritzker and Hochul are pointing out is an essential conflict within the current Democrat coalition whereby an existing and long-standing political establishment continues to have the cards loaded against urban blacks, to the establishment's immense ongoing profit. The black politicians, especially the mayors of New York and Chicago, are making a mistake to trust their white Democrat governors to look after their interests.

For the time being, Joe is showing no interest in making any changes to the system he's created. I've got to assume he's making money out of things as they stand.

Joe Is The Last Credible White Democrat

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 Speaker of the House after the 2020 election, referred to a promise she had previously made that that term would be her last.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday reaffirmed a pledge she made to House Democrats two years ago that she would give up the gavel after the 117th Congress.

Ahead of the 116th Congress, Pelosi cut a deal with a handful of members threatening to vote against her for speaker on the floor. To win their support, the California Democrat agreed to allow the caucus to vote on proposed term limits for the top three Democratic leaders and to abide by the proposal herself regardless of whether it was adopted.

The term limit plan, which would have limited the top three leaders from serving beyond the 117th Congress, was not brought before the caucus as scheduled, amid a partial government shutdown. The members pushing for the proposal agreed to drop it indefinitely but noted they could always bring it up again if needed.

In the event, she kept her promise and retired as speaker before the current Congress but continues to hold her seat in the House. In June 2020, Joe Biden publicily yielded to pressure to nominate a black woman as his running mate. However, Biden had already agreed in 2020 to nominate a black woman to the Suprme Court in response to pressure from South Carolina Rep Clyburn, who then rejuvenated Joe's primary campaign byh endorsing him in that state's election.

In all these cases, white Democrat figureheads facing retirement, term limits, or actuarial inevitability conceded to the likelihood of black successors. As I've been pointing out, this has been a result of the long-term disintegration of the New Deal coalition, which having lost strong elements of labor, Catholics, Latins, amd the middle class, needs to hold on to factions like queers, greens, socialists, and blacks to keep anything like an electoral majority.

Part of this realignment is apparently the need to drop the idea of a cheerful middle-aged cis white guy to preside over the coalition. Not every Democrat is on board with this:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reportedly on the verge of launching an independent bid for president, which could change the dynamics of the race significantly, but now Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), who has repeatedly floated a primary challenge against Joe Biden, is raising speculation that he may now actually be launching his own presidential campaign.

Axios reports that Phillips will be “stepping down from his role in House Democratic leadership” citing his opinions about the 2024 presidential contest.

“My convictions relative to the 2024 presidential race are incongruent with the majority of my caucus, and I felt it appropriate to step aside from elected leadership,” Phillips told Axios in a statement. He was co-chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. “I celebrate Leader Jeffries for his remarkable and principled leadership, and extend gratitude to my outstanding friends and colleagues for having created space and place for my perspectives,” Phillips continued. “I’ll continue to abide by my convictions, place people over politics, and support our shared mission to deliver security, opportunity, and prosperity for all Americans. Onward!”

Like most Americans, Phillips is keenly aware that Biden’s advanced age and diminished cognitive health is a problem and hasn’t been shy about pointing to polls showing that even among their own party, there are substantial concerns about him being their party’s nominee. Though he has never discounted the possibility of launching his own bid, he has also said that he is not “well-positioned” for a national campaign and has urged Democrats with a stronger national profile to consider entering the race against Biden. Still, he’s so concerned about Biden’s viability that some clearly believe his resignation is a sign he’s on the verge of running.

The problem for Phillips, or anyone trying to get a moderate cis white Democrat to run, is that these are people already hanging on in swing districts trying to keep their heads down. National prominence will hurt them, not help them. There will likely also be an increasing insistence that the old-fashioned cheerful cis white unifier not be a Democrat candidate at all. This suggests to me that we're headed for a major relignment, something that at least the current cohort of aging cis white Democrats facing the ends of their careers have at least been forced to recognize before many others.

Who Is James Biden?

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, "Where did James Biden go to college?" and got a lot of hits for Joe and Hunter. Much farther down, I discovered:

Seven years younger than the president, James Biden, 73 [now 74], never graduated from college but has made a successful living with various business ventures, some of the most lucrative deals secured with Hunter Biden.

So we likey aren't ever going to get a good list of Jimmy's employers, dates of employment, job titles, and so forth. This piece from 2020, well before the election, seems to summarize his career as best anyone can:

Jim Biden, 70 [now 74], has cycled over the years from nightclub owner to insurance broker to political consultant and fundraiser to startup investor and construction company executive. But the through line of his resume was his bond with his brother, a Democratic Party stalwart in a position to push legislation or make government contracts happen.

“My sense is that Jim really has been trying to peddle himself on the Biden name for some time,” said Curtis Wilkie, who covered the Bidens as a Delaware political reporter.

However, the pattern of Jimmy's business activities and finances tracks even closer to Hunter's, although much of the evidence in the stories published before the election comes from outside the end dates covered by Hunter's laptop, which makes it even more useful. For instance, in the same source:

It was December 2006, not long before Jim’s older brother and Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, then a Delaware senator, would announce his second campaign for president. [Remember, the laptop covers roughly 2010 to 2019.]

Jim and Hunter Biden got a loan from a bank founded by one of Joe’s political backers — William Oldaker, an attorney for the senator’s presidential campaign and Hunter’s partner at a Washington law and lobbying firm.

Oldaker had strong ties to Joe Biden’s political operation, and at the time, the bank, WashingtonFirst, had nearly half a million dollars in deposits from a Joe Biden political committee Oldaker had helped set up.

. . . The bank required that loans be well secured by borrowers’ assets. Jim Biden put up his house in Merion Station, Pennsylvania, as collateral, but he already had $1.5 million in three mortgages against the property, then roughly valued at just over $1.1 million. Hunter offered as security his recently purchased Washington home, for which he had borrowed almost the entire purchase price.

. . . It was not the first time — or the last — during his long career that Jim Biden turned to Joe’s political network for the kind of assistance that would have been almost unimaginable for someone with a different last name. Campaign donors helped him face a series of financial problems, including a series of IRS liens totaling more than $1 million that made it harder to get bank financing. Jim Biden took out two more loans from WashingtonFirst before its sale in 2018.

Another episode from 2006 is outlined in Politico, which the site claimed in 2020 was "the most comprehensive account to date of the politically tinged business activities of Biden’s brother and son". In 2006, Jimmy and Hunter took over Paradigm Global Advisors, a shaky investment firm founded by the son-in-law of Sun Myung Moon, a South Korean cult leader. According to the link,

The Biden involvement began in January 2006. James Biden called Anthony Lotito, a New York financial adviser, and said his older brother, Joe, wanted his son Hunter to find a job outside of lobbying to avoid damaging his planned campaign for the presidency, according to a complaint Lotito later filed in a New York court, after his relationship with James and Hunter soured.

. . . Things quickly got messy. The prospective purchasers discovered that because of an accounting trick, the fund had only a fraction of the $1.5 billion in assets under management that it claimed, according to court filings.

James and Hunter also discovered that the attorney the trio had hired on Lotito’s recommendation to explore the purchase, John Fasciana, had recently been convicted on 12 counts of fraud, according to court filings.

. . . According to an agreement Lotito and James made with Paradigm in May 2006 that later surfaced in their court fight, they had planned to use their connections to union pension funds governed by the 1947 Taft–Hartley Act, which regulates labor unions, in order to steer new investments to Paradigm.

. . . Firefighters unions have been among Joe Biden’s closest political allies since the start of his political career.

. . . James and Hunter had taken out a loan from WashingtonFirst Bank, which had been co-founded by one of Hunter’s former lobbying partners. A former WashingtonFirst executive said James and Hunter had pledged their houses on the loan and both had paid back their debts after several years.

In the meantime, that debt was causing friction within Paradigm.

At one point, the executive said, Hunter called him and asked him to hand over $21,000 in company funds for a personal mortgage payment. When the executive refused, saying the funds were needed to cover operating expenses, he recalled that Hunter — who recently told The New Yorker he has spent most of his life living paycheck to paycheck — responded that he might lose his house.

“Hunter did take substantial dollars out of the company,” said a second former Paradigm executive, describing the withdrawals as a “semi-regular” subject of discussion and concern within the firm.

. . . A third former executive at Paradigm claimed that at one point around 2008 or 2009, James and Hunter withdrew several million dollars from Paradigm’s coffers for their own use. By this point, “The Bidens didn’t have access to the day-to-day operation of Paradigm at all,” this executive said. “The only thing the Bidens could do was get paid or request to get money out of the hedge fund.” The executive said the Bidens had the right to withdraw the funds and that the transaction was cleared through counsel.

. . . Another former executive said negative press about Paradigm’s ties to fraudulent funds made James and Hunter wary of more scrutiny of “potential conflicts of interest or tie-ins to the Biden family.” As a result, the executive said, “They really just chose to liquidate the hedge fund and give back the money to the investors.” The former WashingtonFirst executive said James and Hunter shut down Paradigm because the global recession had cut into its revenues.

. . . According to a 2013 New Republic story on the Unification Church, [Sun Myung Moon's son-in-law] Park, who did not respond to requests for comment, was never able to collect from James and Hunter on the promissory note they used to acquire the fund.

The piece recounts elsewhere that Jimmy had run the finances for Joe's initial 1972 Senate campaign.

No sooner was freshman lawmaker Joe Biden seated on the Senate Banking Committee than James became the beneficiary of business loans that were described in news accounts at the time as unusually generous because of the relatively large amount of money he was able to borrow with little or no collateral and a lack of relevant prior experience.

In early 1973, on the heels of Joe’s election to the Senate, James Biden and a business partner decided to open a nightclub.

The club, Seasons Change, located in a shopping plaza near the Pennsylvania state line, would eventually fail, leaving behind it a trail of debt and a trickle of embarrassing revelations about its financing.

The pair had obtained a series of loans for $80,000, $60,000 and $25,000 from Wilmington’s Farmers Bank. At least one of those loans was unsecured, meaning it was not backed by collateral that could be seized if the borrowers stopped paying.

When James began missing his payments and risking default, his brother Joe became angry — at the bank.

“What I’d like to know,” the junior senator told his hometown paper in 1977, “is how the guy in charge of loans let it get this far.”

The paper looked into it: “The answer, according to three former officers of the troubled Farmers Bank, is the Biden name,” reported Delaware’s News Journal. According to the paper, the bank thought the senatorial name would attract club-goers.

It did not attract enough to turn a profit, and by 1975, the bank was having problems collecting from James.

. . . Another figure tied to Farmers Bank, the politically connected financier Norman Rales, extended James Biden an unsecured loan.

. . . These unusual arrangements came to light after Farmers Bank nearly collapsed in 1976, forcing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to bail it out. The crisis spurred several investigations into the bank’s lending practices and political connections. It also prompted Moody’s to downgrade the state of Delaware’s credit rating from A1 to A because the state’s finances were so intertwined with the bank’s.

These stories provide insight that hasn't been available elsewhere into how Joe's family used his influence often to bilk banks and investors hoping to gain favor with Joe. Jimmy's loans from Farmers Bank took place when Hunter, born 1n 1970, was in elementary school. The Politico piece also refers to another James Biden enterprise, the Lion Hall Group:

[A]fter a stint selling real estate in San Francisco, [James] returned to the East Coast and set up a new firm, the Lion Hall Group.

This appears to have been in the mid-1990s.

In 1995, famed Mississippi trial lawyer Dickie Scruggs set his sights on a gargantuan national settlement with Big Tobacco worth hundreds of billions of dollars. To make such a settlement work, Congress would have to bless it by immunizing the tobacco companies against future legal claims.

. . . As part of an effort to win over Joe and other Democrats, Scruggs hired James’ Lion Hall Group to help with a “legislative, executive, political and social” campaign, according to Wilkie’s book. Neither James nor Lion Hall appear in federal lobbying disclosures.

While the lobbying effort failed in that case, it's worth noting that Jimmy's Lion Hall Group is still in existence, and it has attracted the Republicans' interest in the current impeachment inquiry:

Last year, Senate Republicans scrutinized James Biden's business ventures, releasing records that showed payments James Biden's company, The Lion Hall Group, received from a Chinese-financed consulting group in 2018, and monthly retainers to James and Hunter Biden.

As I've been saying, there's a great deal to the Biden chronology outside the 2010-2019 period of the laptop, and there's also a great deal that involves relatives other than Hunter.