Hunter Biden: Stanford associate.

Welcome to Washington.

Now, that’s Hunter Biden, corporate lobbyist and former Amtrak vice-chair, not Beau Biden, former state attorney general – and widely-assumed heir-in-exile to his father’s Senate seat, just as soon as they can have the formality of an election in 2010. Heaven forbid that you get these two scions of a good working class family mixed up, or something.

Speaking of getting mixed up in something, hey!

A fund of hedge funds run by two members of Vice President Joe Biden’s family was marketed exclusively by companies controlled by Texas financier R. Allen Stanford, who is facing Securities and Exchange Commission accusations of engaging in an $8 billion fraud.

The $50 million fund was jointly branded between the Bidens’ Paradigm Global Advisors LLC and a Stanford Financial Group entity and was known as the Paradigm Stanford Capital Management Core Alternative Fund. Stanford-related companies marketed the fund to investors and also invested about $2.7 million of their own money in the fund, according to a lawyer for Paradigm. Paradigm Global Advisors is owned through a holding company by the vice president’s son, Hunter, and Joe Biden’s brother, James.

Continue reading Hunter Biden: Stanford associate.

Obama to make mega-bundler Louis Susman Ambassador to England?

Come, I will hide nothing from you: it would be blatantly unfair for me to mock the President for choosing Chicago bundler Louis Susman to be the ambassador to the Court of Saint James. You see, unlike a certain subset of the population I know how the game is actually played; certain ambassadorships are considered prestigious, and some aren’t. The ones that are prestigious – and I don’t think that they get much more prestigious than the one for Great Britain – are going to be filled for political reasons, which means that generally they will not be filled by a professional diplomat. The last four were, in fact: a retired admiral, a senior government official/financial guy; a financial/oil guy; and a senior government official/car dealership owner. An investment banker who raised 500 grand for the President is not particularly surprising, in other words… unless you happened to be one of those people who actually believed that line of Obama’s about how he was going to do things differently. As I didn’t and don’t, I really can’t see how I can go off on this, so I won’t.

Besides, the Brits are already doing it for me. Continue reading Obama to make mega-bundler Louis Susman Ambassador to England?

The end of the quote-unquote ‘Kimmel Occupation.’

That’s right.  Smile for the nice man with the other camera who’s filming you for your expulsion hearings.

Before you click this link (language warning), do yourself a favor: pour yourself a glass of wine, or other favorite tasty, tasty beverage; assemble a little platter of light fare, suitable for nibbling; and, of course, make sure that you have refreshed yourself. If you have a choice of chairs, go for the comfortable one. Take a couple of centering breaths. Familiarize yourself with the background to this.

All done?

Then click (language warning).

Enjoy.

Via Hot Air and The Daily Gut.

Moe Lane
Continue reading The end of the quote-unquote ‘Kimmel Occupation.’

And now, a quick naval change of pace.

Age of Sail has a bit up about a British captain that took on six frigates with one converted Indiaman in 1796… and drove them to port.

You know. Just in case you were feeling like you had a hard day, or something.

Moe Lane

PS: Actually, you can’t go too far wrong with Errol Flynn. Captain Blood
wasn’t completely unlike the book; The Sea Hawk is, but when it’s 1940 and you’re trying to save England you don’t quibble about the plot.

Charlie Rangel (D, NY-15) to donate part of Stanford money.

He’s keeping the rest, presumably.

Maybe he’s got some sort of Magic Light that can tell tainted Mexican drug-laundering money from good?

Janison: Campaigns shedding donors in financial scandal

[snip]

Fraud allegations swirling around Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford last week drew attention to his contributions to Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-St. Albans) and to House Ways and Means Committee chairman Charles Rangel (D-Manhattan). A Rangel spokesman said $10,800 that Stanford contributed over the years would be donated to charity.

Why, that’s almost half. Kind of. Moderately close to almost half. OK, so it may be closer to a third. The difference, by the way, is the $25K that went to the Rangel Victory Fund – which, bluntly, I consider Rangel to be morally on the hook for if the people who he helped refuse to pay back the money*: Continue reading Charlie Rangel (D, NY-15) to donate part of Stanford money.

Obama gives Biden the Stimulus.

Well, at least it isn’t foreign policy.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Why, what could possibly go wrong?

Obama Taps Biden to Oversee Stimulus Package Implementation

President Obama has turned to his own vice president to oversee implementation of the $787 billion economic stimulus package, part of which will be available this week for state Medicaid programs.

Obama announced his decision before the National Governors Association in Washington on Monday, saying Vice President Joe Biden will help ensure the distribution of the money is not just swift, “but also efficient and effective.”

“The fact that I’m asking my vice president to personally lead this effort shows how important it is for our country and future to get this right,” he said.

Well, that, or it shows how important it is for your administration and your future to make sure that what is not going to be a universally beloved program six months from now – to put it mildly – is publicly linked with chains of unbreakable steel to, well, Joe Biden. However, I don’t think that you’ve made it clear enough that you don’t want to be tied to this sucker. May I suggest a moat filled with burning gasoline and maybe some apotropaic symbols burned into the walls?

Moe Lane

Crossposted at RedState.

Looking for someone to read? (Roger Zelazny)

(Today’s author: Roger Zelazny)

Don’t get me wrong: I loved the Amber series.  Very good alternate-universe stuff, in a conceptual sense.  Never really got into the paradoxes (paradoxi?) inherent in the premise of One True Reality and a Multitude of Shadows, but then, neither did H Beam Piper’s Paratime series, so who are we to judge? Well worth reading, in other words.

But it’s Lord of Light that triggered this entry.  The book is one of the first ones that I can think of that mixed science fiction with Indian themes (that’s Asian Indian, not Native American), and in a fashion that showed an understanding of the source material.  A very short synopsis: the main character is in opposition to a society where Hinduism has been co-opted to reinforce the somewhat restrictive rule of its ‘gods.’  This being a science fiction story, that includes a technological form of reincarnation; this also being New Wave, it meant a certain amount of other psionic* abilities.  This being written by Roger Zelazny, it’s excellent stuff; the hero foments his rebellion against this co-opted Hinduism by creating Buddhism… with results that would later prove bemusing.  All in all, it’s one of those books that you wish had a sequel, but you’re sort of glad doesn’t; it probably wouldn’t have been as good anyway.

Plus, the CIA used a script based on this book to smuggle some embassy people out of Iran during the hostage crisis – no, really – so there’s some good karma there.

Yes, I just did that.

Moe Lane

*That’s a science fiction term meaning ‘magic.’

Obama / Bush: Not quite the same on the GWOT.

I can’t quite agree with this passage:

John Ashcroft, who was Attorney General when Marri was designated an enemy combatant, makes no such apologies. Interviewed just before the Inauguration, he defended what he described as a “sound decision” to “maximize the national interest,” and predicted that, in the end, President Obama’s approach to handling terror suspects would closely mirror his own: “How will he be different? The main difference is going to be that he spells his name ‘O-b-a-m-a,’ not ‘B-u-s-h.’ ”

(Via NRO MediaBlog; well, technically via Think Progress, but I don’t link to pro-torture apologists if I can help it.) Continue reading Obama / Bush: Not quite the same on the GWOT.

England’s credit crisis: different players, same result.

A bit of an antidote to certain, ah, reflexive ways of thinking:

Bad Times Visit Our Betters in Europe

LONDON — Think that credit collapse that triggered the Bush administration’s $700 billion bank bailout was necessary because of Republican hostility to regulation and the ineptness of President George W. Bush?

If it were that simple, then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Labor Party would not be squirming, and the United Kingdom would not be swimming in staggering sums of debt.

Continue reading England’s credit crisis: different players, same result.