Certainly not- we both agree Hunter is guilty of the tax charge and the picayune gun form charge.
My explanation, unlike yours, explains the enormous scope and breadth of the pardon Joe issued. If Biden was simply trying to get Hunter out of the current charges he could have pardoned those specific charges/crimes. His pardon, instead, is for all actions/allegations that took place in a huge swathe of years. That's like trying to kill a local cat by carpet bombing the entire county. Biden is very obviously trying to pre-empt any effort to gin up any form of charges against Hunter by a future administration; not just get Hunter out of his current charges.
I don't approve of any of it, mind, but that's because I think a Trump administration spending bandwidth crucifying Hunter Biden would be some of the least nationally destructive, albeit evil, stuff they could spend bandwidth on. But I'm not Hunter Bidens' father.
Yeah as if Newsweek, Politico and twitter set the discourse. We shall see but I have profound doubts. Then again, the old man has used pardon powers in ways I don't approve of already. I still don't think he'll be expending them for Fauci, Cheney and Schiff; no matter what Newsweek, Politico and X say.
I don't deny it was a massive and blatant favor to his son and I don't approve of any element of the pardon- we just disagree on whether it was out of fear of Trump going much further and I don't think such fears are baseless.
Okay but in admitting that you're also admitting that all the spilled ink and investigations and also Trumps foreign policy interventions on the subject were all baseless.
As for the pardon, I disagree slightly- If the goal was simply to shield Hunter from the consequences of the charges he currently faces it would be narrowly written. The sweeping and wide ranging timeframe is very obviously designed to eliminate every attack surface a future administration would use to try and destroy Hunter Biden. It's not -just- a get out of jail free card now but also a very desperate attempt to block any attempt to destroy Hunter in the future.
As for the charges Hunter currently faces it's true that jail time is the, on paper, possible penalty he'd face but if you look at how crimes of this sort are typically prosecuted then you'd have to admit that Hunter is facing remarkably stern treatment; most tax fraudsters get a fine and payment of the missed taxes if they ever get prosecuted at all (normally the IRS collects the back taxes plus interest and moves on rather than fight a court battle) and the gun form related charges are virtually never prosecuted at all let along have jail time associated. The proposed punishment is within the letter of the law, but at the very extreme end of that window and wildly beyond what any non-son of a President face. I observe this not to defend Hunter whom I couldn't hold in more contempt if I tried but to simply be fair to Joe.
But ultimately it's a gesture, as I originally said, of fear and despair from Joe who doesn't believe the Justice system under Trump will be Just towards his son. Sure, Trump never pursued Hillary but Hillary lost to Trump. Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020 and it's not unreasonable to expect, especially given Trumps language, much greater malice from Trump in light of those facts.
If I had my druthers Biden would not pardon Hunter and dare Trump to do his worst. But I don't have kids. Would you leave one of your kids to Donald Fishin Trumps tender mercies after he's spent 5+ years being the subject of a two minute daily hate from the right? Really? If you had the power to exempt him and no fishes left to give about your own, now ended, career or besmirched legacy?
I doubt Biden would have issued the pardon had Harris won. There would have been a significant cost to Biden and Harris for that where there isn't now. And Hunter would have been facing conventional penalties for what is very small beer convictions. Absent the specter of Trumps administration stringing Hunter up to punish his father for whupping Trump in 2020 I don't think Biden would have pulled the trigger.
And Harris? No way in fishin' heck would she have done it.
Personally I don't spare even a second of concern for Hunter Biden. If I could press a button and erase him from existence with no further consequences I would be sorely tempted. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if he's cut any number of corners and broke any number of minor rules in his endless trading on his Fathers' name. But none of that impugned on Hunters Fathers reputation or legacy until this moment when Biden issued that selfish, despairing and entirely understandable pardon. If I were advising the Dems I'd tell em they should flame Biden like a rack of ribs over it. They won't, of course, but they probably should.
We're not talking about evidence of Hunters petty malfeasance. He's a fail son who's peddled on his Fathers name his entire life. That class of lowlife is bipartisan and exists all over the place. That's not up for debate. The point is that the only reason we're hearing about Hunter at all as opposed to any number of other parasitic relatives of Republicans and Democrats is that Trump tried to spin up an entirely run of the mill failson into some kind of corruption web that encompassed not just Hunter but Biden himself and involved the trading of access and policy favors for lucre. They have utterly and completed failed to prove any evidence of that allegation, in total. They've found no unaccounted for filthy lucre to the older Biden no shady access or policy concessions back to dubious characters, nothing.
Sure, agreed! We get a shot at that in two years. Hope nothing goes bad between now and then. While we're at it we should probably rein in the tariff powers the executive has too.
I've read somewhere that the Legislature has the power to reverse the Emergency declaration which is why the President is so intent on not letting them convene. What a sh*t show, let us hope it's not prophetic.
I suspected that you'd bring the laptop up. And that laptop (the public image of it anyhow) contained precisely -zero- evidence of any wrongdoing. Remember that the FBI has the original, untampered with, laptop. The laptop stuff we've seen was fiddled with by numerous actors and even that, highly compromised, image had next to nothing. That the actual unfiddled with laptop never surfaced in any of the actual partisan investigations indicates, quite clearly, that it had nothing on it and thus was more valuable left hidden so both they and people, like you, could keep alluding to it darkly. If the actual laptop had contained anything at all useful to them we'd have seen it released long ago.
So, no, entirely Un substantive unlike Bidens senility in June. Maybe more like Bidens' alleged senility in 2020 or 2021 or 2022 or likely 2023. Or Hillary's senility and frailty in '16. How'd that one age out btw?
As for the pardon, that's good news for Hunter and Trump. Ain't good news for anyone else as I mentioned. But Joe Biden isn't prioritizing an
To recap there are a collection of substantive allegations, all of which have had no material evidence supporting them and, accordingly, had no charges brought on them by either the first Trump admin or the Biden admin.
There are two crimes that were found in the course of the fishing expedition and charges were brought on them under Biden: tax evasion and not filling out a federal form correctly or honestly while Hunter was hopped up on crack (a form to purchase a gun which he subsequently never used). Charges were -only- brought on these cases because of who Hunters' father was. They are real but they aren't substantive. And they are only Hunters crimes and not reflective of any larger conspiracy or crime.
Bidens' pardon is basically just a gesture of despair and fear. He believes, though not for no good reason, that Trumps second administration will invent a reason to destroy his only living child, that the system will not protect Hunter from that abuse of power and, accordingly, Biden is trying to forestall it with a pardon.
A braver or greater man would not do it and dare Trump to do his worst. But Biden is a Father first evidently. I don't approve of it but I certainly can understand it.
Yep, I'd be totally fine if the Dems lined up and flamed the decision in unison. It's very obvious what Biden is doing- he is afraid that Trump will gin up some kind of charge on Hunter and throw Bidens' sole remaining living child into jail or worse so he's trying to prevent it with a pardon that encompasses pretty much anything Trump and his lackeys could muster. The uncharitable interpretation is that there are actual material crimes that Hunter committed but that seems dubious since, if there were any, we'd have heard about them by now. Still, this is good for Hunter Biden and not good for anyone else except to a very very small degree it's good for Trump and his Trumpkins since it'll give them a very very small fig leaf to whatabout when they do whatever they were going to do anyhow.
It's equally possible he thought that an intra party fight would hurt them or that he knew the people forcing him out didn't want Harris so he endorsed her to spit them. There's no true telling. Likewise we have no idea of an intra party fight would have produced a better candidate or a better outcome. I would like to note, at this date, that it looks like the Dems actually gained seats in Congress, net, of 2024. Not to be too Pollyanna but there are a lot of alternate universes with worse outcomes for the Dems than this one that Harris delivered to us.
Biden and Harris, the outgoing President who failed to secure his chosen replacements spot and the failed candidate who didn't get the nod from the voters. Being thrown under the bus is, sadly, kind of their role at this stage.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “From the New York Post: UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot outside Hilton hotel in Midtown in targeted attack: cops”
I suppose this puts paid entirely to Jay's assassin theory. No way would a professional fail to ditch the weapon somewhere between NY and PA.
On “Bashar al-Assad Flees To Moscow, Ending 50 Years of Syrian Dictatorship”
Good riddance to Assad. Here the dice go rolling again in Syria.
On “Open Mic for the week of 12/2/2024”
I get it, he's the current GOP in a nutshell.
"
I'd take the other side of that bet. He'll be lucky to be a trivia question or comic relief.
On “Joe Biden Pardons Local Man”
Certainly not- we both agree Hunter is guilty of the tax charge and the picayune gun form charge.
My explanation, unlike yours, explains the enormous scope and breadth of the pardon Joe issued. If Biden was simply trying to get Hunter out of the current charges he could have pardoned those specific charges/crimes. His pardon, instead, is for all actions/allegations that took place in a huge swathe of years. That's like trying to kill a local cat by carpet bombing the entire county. Biden is very obviously trying to pre-empt any effort to gin up any form of charges against Hunter by a future administration; not just get Hunter out of his current charges.
I don't approve of any of it, mind, but that's because I think a Trump administration spending bandwidth crucifying Hunter Biden would be some of the least nationally destructive, albeit evil, stuff they could spend bandwidth on. But I'm not Hunter Bidens' father.
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Yeah as if Newsweek, Politico and twitter set the discourse. We shall see but I have profound doubts. Then again, the old man has used pardon powers in ways I don't approve of already. I still don't think he'll be expending them for Fauci, Cheney and Schiff; no matter what Newsweek, Politico and X say.
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Gotcha, next thing to twitter then.
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I don't deny it was a massive and blatant favor to his son and I don't approve of any element of the pardon- we just disagree on whether it was out of fear of Trump going much further and I don't think such fears are baseless.
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Discussions where? Twitter?
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Okay but in admitting that you're also admitting that all the spilled ink and investigations and also Trumps foreign policy interventions on the subject were all baseless.
As for the pardon, I disagree slightly- If the goal was simply to shield Hunter from the consequences of the charges he currently faces it would be narrowly written. The sweeping and wide ranging timeframe is very obviously designed to eliminate every attack surface a future administration would use to try and destroy Hunter Biden. It's not -just- a get out of jail free card now but also a very desperate attempt to block any attempt to destroy Hunter in the future.
As for the charges Hunter currently faces it's true that jail time is the, on paper, possible penalty he'd face but if you look at how crimes of this sort are typically prosecuted then you'd have to admit that Hunter is facing remarkably stern treatment; most tax fraudsters get a fine and payment of the missed taxes if they ever get prosecuted at all (normally the IRS collects the back taxes plus interest and moves on rather than fight a court battle) and the gun form related charges are virtually never prosecuted at all let along have jail time associated. The proposed punishment is within the letter of the law, but at the very extreme end of that window and wildly beyond what any non-son of a President face. I observe this not to defend Hunter whom I couldn't hold in more contempt if I tried but to simply be fair to Joe.
But ultimately it's a gesture, as I originally said, of fear and despair from Joe who doesn't believe the Justice system under Trump will be Just towards his son. Sure, Trump never pursued Hillary but Hillary lost to Trump. Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020 and it's not unreasonable to expect, especially given Trumps language, much greater malice from Trump in light of those facts.
If I had my druthers Biden would not pardon Hunter and dare Trump to do his worst. But I don't have kids. Would you leave one of your kids to Donald Fishin Trumps tender mercies after he's spent 5+ years being the subject of a two minute daily hate from the right? Really? If you had the power to exempt him and no fishes left to give about your own, now ended, career or besmirched legacy?
"
I doubt Biden would have issued the pardon had Harris won. There would have been a significant cost to Biden and Harris for that where there isn't now. And Hunter would have been facing conventional penalties for what is very small beer convictions. Absent the specter of Trumps administration stringing Hunter up to punish his father for whupping Trump in 2020 I don't think Biden would have pulled the trigger.
And Harris? No way in fishin' heck would she have done it.
On “From CNN: South Korea president declares emergency martial law, sending shockwaves across country”
A beautiful illustration of South Korean democratic durability. Heartening.
On “Joe Biden Pardons Local Man”
Personally I don't spare even a second of concern for Hunter Biden. If I could press a button and erase him from existence with no further consequences I would be sorely tempted. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if he's cut any number of corners and broke any number of minor rules in his endless trading on his Fathers' name. But none of that impugned on Hunters Fathers reputation or legacy until this moment when Biden issued that selfish, despairing and entirely understandable pardon. If I were advising the Dems I'd tell em they should flame Biden like a rack of ribs over it. They won't, of course, but they probably should.
"
We're not talking about evidence of Hunters petty malfeasance. He's a fail son who's peddled on his Fathers name his entire life. That class of lowlife is bipartisan and exists all over the place. That's not up for debate. The point is that the only reason we're hearing about Hunter at all as opposed to any number of other parasitic relatives of Republicans and Democrats is that Trump tried to spin up an entirely run of the mill failson into some kind of corruption web that encompassed not just Hunter but Biden himself and involved the trading of access and policy favors for lucre. They have utterly and completed failed to prove any evidence of that allegation, in total. They've found no unaccounted for filthy lucre to the older Biden no shady access or policy concessions back to dubious characters, nothing.
On “Huffpo reports that Harris internals *NEVER* had her ahead.”
Hindsight is 20/20.
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I am not at all displeased with my commentary in that thread. Thank you Jay.
On “Open Mic for the week of 12/2/2024”
Won't work unless Trump folds. There'll be a price spike and then non-Chinese sources will promptly be sited and brought online.
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Sure, agreed! We get a shot at that in two years. Hope nothing goes bad between now and then. While we're at it we should probably rein in the tariff powers the executive has too.
"
I've read somewhere that the Legislature has the power to reverse the Emergency declaration which is why the President is so intent on not letting them convene. What a sh*t show, let us hope it's not prophetic.
On “Joe Biden Pardons Local Man”
Is that because of the cost of defending it or some other reason?
"
I suspected that you'd bring the laptop up. And that laptop (the public image of it anyhow) contained precisely -zero- evidence of any wrongdoing. Remember that the FBI has the original, untampered with, laptop. The laptop stuff we've seen was fiddled with by numerous actors and even that, highly compromised, image had next to nothing. That the actual unfiddled with laptop never surfaced in any of the actual partisan investigations indicates, quite clearly, that it had nothing on it and thus was more valuable left hidden so both they and people, like you, could keep alluding to it darkly. If the actual laptop had contained anything at all useful to them we'd have seen it released long ago.
So, no, entirely Un substantive unlike Bidens senility in June. Maybe more like Bidens' alleged senility in 2020 or 2021 or 2022 or likely 2023. Or Hillary's senility and frailty in '16. How'd that one age out btw?
As for the pardon, that's good news for Hunter and Trump. Ain't good news for anyone else as I mentioned. But Joe Biden isn't prioritizing an
"
Substantive ones? No.
To recap there are a collection of substantive allegations, all of which have had no material evidence supporting them and, accordingly, had no charges brought on them by either the first Trump admin or the Biden admin.
There are two crimes that were found in the course of the fishing expedition and charges were brought on them under Biden: tax evasion and not filling out a federal form correctly or honestly while Hunter was hopped up on crack (a form to purchase a gun which he subsequently never used). Charges were -only- brought on these cases because of who Hunters' father was. They are real but they aren't substantive. And they are only Hunters crimes and not reflective of any larger conspiracy or crime.
Bidens' pardon is basically just a gesture of despair and fear. He believes, though not for no good reason, that Trumps second administration will invent a reason to destroy his only living child, that the system will not protect Hunter from that abuse of power and, accordingly, Biden is trying to forestall it with a pardon.
A braver or greater man would not do it and dare Trump to do his worst. But Biden is a Father first evidently. I don't approve of it but I certainly can understand it.
"
Yep, I'd be totally fine if the Dems lined up and flamed the decision in unison. It's very obvious what Biden is doing- he is afraid that Trump will gin up some kind of charge on Hunter and throw Bidens' sole remaining living child into jail or worse so he's trying to prevent it with a pardon that encompasses pretty much anything Trump and his lackeys could muster. The uncharitable interpretation is that there are actual material crimes that Hunter committed but that seems dubious since, if there were any, we'd have heard about them by now. Still, this is good for Hunter Biden and not good for anyone else except to a very very small degree it's good for Trump and his Trumpkins since it'll give them a very very small fig leaf to whatabout when they do whatever they were going to do anyhow.
On “Huffpo reports that Harris internals *NEVER* had her ahead.”
It's equally possible he thought that an intra party fight would hurt them or that he knew the people forcing him out didn't want Harris so he endorsed her to spit them. There's no true telling. Likewise we have no idea of an intra party fight would have produced a better candidate or a better outcome. I would like to note, at this date, that it looks like the Dems actually gained seats in Congress, net, of 2024. Not to be too Pollyanna but there are a lot of alternate universes with worse outcomes for the Dems than this one that Harris delivered to us.
"
Biden and Harris, the outgoing President who failed to secure his chosen replacements spot and the failed candidate who didn't get the nod from the voters. Being thrown under the bus is, sadly, kind of their role at this stage.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.