We are informed that Joe Biden is too senile to run for reelection, but also more than capable of serving as Commander in Chief of the $1 trillion/year U.S. military (so he’ll do that job for another half year). We’ll soon be reminded, no doubt, by government-sponsored media (NPR) and government-affiliated media (most of the rest) of Joe Biden’s tremendous achievements between 2021 and 2024. Perhaps we could also fit in a brief moment of thanks to the person who made Joe Biden’s magnificent largesse, such as student loan forgiveness, possible: the taxpayer. This humble soul, attired in threadbare garments, is featured in an 1877 oil painting, The Tax Payer, by Hugo Oehmichen. Note the comparatively rich outfit worn by the government employee:
Hugo Oehmichen (1843-1932) studied under Julius Hubner and Adolf Ehrhardt at the Academy in Dresden, from 1858 to 1864. In 1866 and 1867 he visited Italy, and in 1869 he visited Düsseldorf, the banks of the Rhine and Moselle, Westphalia, Hesse and Swabia, returning with numerous studies. These travels in small-town Germany, and home life with his children, inspired many of the genre scenes for which he is best known. From 1862 he exhibited at the Academy in Dresden, and he also exhibited in Berlin, London and Antwerp.
Readers: Which progressive hero (or heroine) will Democrat elites select next to stave off the end of our democracy? How long will it take peasants to respond to the updated propaganda and transfer their enthusiasm to the new candidate for whom none of them previously voted (at least not for this role)?
Personally, I would like to see a Kamala Harris and Hunter Biden combo. Speaking of Hunter, the museum holds one of his works:
We’ve been getting some details about the face-off between the arch criminal below and the $3 billion/year Secret Service.
Wikipedia says that the building from which Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at Mr. Trump was identified as an ideal location for an assassin, that police snipers were sitting inside the building eating donuts and drinking coffee rather than risk falling off a mostly-flat roof, that law enforcement ignored the crowd’s attempts to warn them of Mr. Crooks’s activities, and that Crooks’s use of a rangefinder wasn’t considered sufficiently suspicious for anyone to take action. The state of knowledge as of July 16, 2024:
According to WPXI, Crooks was photographed twice by security officers prior to the shooting. Prior to 5:45 p.m. EDT, a police officer saw Crooks on the ground and reported him, with a photograph, as a suspicious person. An officer searched for Crooks but did not find him. Multiple local law enforcement officers identified Crooks and believed that he might have been acting suspiciously near the event’s magnetometers; they expressed their suspicions over the radio, and their radio communications were available to the Secret Service.[38] At 5:45 p.m., a member of the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit (ESU) tactical team saw Crooks on a roof, notified other security services, and photographed Crooks.[47] According to Forbes, in one of the two cases of Crooks being photographed, the police officer who photographed Crooks saw him “‘scoping out’ the roof and carrying a range finder”.[43] Reports indicated that several bystanders also witnessed a man carrying a rifle on the rooftop and alerted the police about him nearly a minute and a half before shots were fired at Trump.[48][49] A Butler Township police officer attempted to climb to the roof of the building in search of Crooks, hoisted by another officer. Crooks spotted the officer while the officer’s hands were clinging to the edge of the roof and aimed his rifle at the officer, at which point the officer let go, falling 8 feet (2.4 m) to the ground and severely injuring his ankle. Crooks undertook the assassination attempt immediately following the confrontation with the officer.
My question for today is “Suppose that the Secret Service and local law enforcement actually wanted a random kid to be able to shoot and kill Donald Trump. What would they have done differently?” Short of actually handing out rifles, scopes, and ammo, how would it have been possible for the Secret Service and police to facilitate what young Mr. Crooks was trying to do?
U.S. intelligence agencies were tracking what they considered a potential Iranian assassination plot against former President Donald J. Trump in the weeks before a gunman opened fire last weekend, several officials said on Tuesday, but they added that they did not believe the threat was related to the shooting that wounded Mr. Trump.
The intelligence had prompted the Secret Service to enhance security for the former president before his outdoor campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, officials said. Yet whatever additional measures were taken did not stop a 20-year-old local man from clambering on top of a nearby warehouse roof to shoot at Mr. Trump, grazing his right ear and coming close to killing him.
American progressives now agree with Iran on both (a) Palestine, and (b) the importance of getting rid of Donald Trump?
Separately, at least according to Joe Biden and/or his minders, here are some of the threats that Mr. Crooks came close to eliminating:
I’m in a chat group with a few Deplorables, a couple of whom are gun nuts. I’ve been trying to get some of my software expert witness work done before EAA AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) and thus was in the middle of a real-time work session when the Trump shooting occurred. I ]wasn’t paying close attention to the chat group, for which I get alerts, or the news, for which I don’t get alerts. During a short break in the work, during which I scanned the gun nuts’ exchange, I responded with the following:
I haven’t checked the news, but let me guess: all of the people who said that Donald Trump would end our democracy (i.e., destroy the U.S. as we know it), kill Americans who identify as “pregnant people” by denying them abortion care, kill Americans by refusing to order masks, school closures, and lockdowns next time a respiratory virus comes through, etc. are now saying that it is reprehensible that someone would try to preserve American democracy and American lives by killing the one big threat to both.
As soon as work was done, I checked Twitter. I refreshed my memory by sampling some Democrat thought-leadership… According to “the big guy”, we could “lose everything”, including our democracy, if anyone votes for Donald Trump:
Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America’s standing in the world.
But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy.
Also, from June 28 (screen shot in case this gets memory-holed):
How does Joe Biden feel about the failure of the rifleman to neutralize the dire/genuine threat to our democracy that he identified and, therefore, the continued realistic possibility that we will soon “lose everything”? Joe Biden is “grateful” and “praying for [Donald Trump]” (i.e., praying that Americans continue to be threatened):
I have been briefed on the shooting at Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania.
I’m grateful to hear that he’s safe and doing well. I’m praying for him and his family and for all those who were at the rally, as we await further information.
Let’s check the New York Times. “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” (NYT, December 16, 2016) answers the question in the affirmative. Here’s the worst part:
There are signs that Mr. Trump seeks to diminish the news media’s traditional role by using Twitter, video messages and public rallies to circumvent the White House press corps and communicate directly with voters…
Also, Trump would seek to imprison the political opposition:
An even more basic norm under threat today is the idea of legitimate opposition. … Governments throughout history have used the claim that their opponents are disloyal or criminal or a threat to the nation’s way of life to justify acts of authoritarianism.
The idea of legitimate opposition has been entrenched in the United States since the early 19th century, disrupted only by the Civil War. That may now be changing, however, as right-wing extremists increasingly question the legitimacy of their liberal rivals. …
Such extremism, once confined to the political fringes, has now moved into the mainstream. … Mr. Trump’s campaign centered on the claim that Hillary Clinton was a criminal who should be in jail; and “Lock her up!” was chanted at the Republican National Convention. In other words, leading Republicans — including the president-elect — endorsed the view that the Democratic candidate was not a legitimate rival.
Did the newspaper of record’s opinion change over the intervening 8 years? No. Just two days ago, the NYT said that Trump was “Dangerous in Word, Deed, and Action”:
The clear thinkers at the NYT have been warning us for at least 8 years about the dangers of Donald Trump being anywhere near the levers of power. What do they now say? “The Attack on Donald Trump Is Antithetical to America”:
It is a mercy that Donald Trump was not seriously injured by gunfire at an evening campaign rally … We hope that Mr. Trump recovers quickly and fully.
They want the person whom they said would end American democracy to “recover quickly and fully”? They don’t at least hope he’ll be incapacitated through November 5, 2024?
Given all of the above, I rate my prediction in the chat group exchange as TRUE.
Readers: Have you found any examples of a righteous person admitting that there is at least an apparent logical contradiction between his/her/zir/their previous vilification and expressed fear of Donald Trump and current expressed hope that Donald Trump be preserved from any future harm?
(Personally, I do hope that our fellow Palm Beach County taxpayer Donald Trump recovers completely. And I have to say that I’m impressed by his apparent sangfroid. How many among us can say that our courage has been tested with an actual shooting? But my well-wishing isn’t a logical contradiction because I did not previously express an opinion that Mr. Trump was dangerous, a threat, or likely to end American democracy. (I did say that I preferred both Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis as candidates, but not that I expected or demanded everyone else in America to agree with me.))
Related:
Mar-a-Lago and the Palm Event (from March 2024; “The most hated man in America appeared midway through the event to welcome the guests, praise the organization, praise the musical and theatrical talent, etc. Donald Trump was gracious and did not mention politics nor did he talk about himself. He had no teleprompter.”)
Update: Let’s also check out Kamala Harris. Last month, “[Donald Trump] is a threat to our democracy and our fundamental freedoms.”
Donald Trump has vowed that he will be a dictator on “day one.”
This evening, “praying for Donald Trump” and “relieved” that the pathway to dictatorship for the U.S. is still available:
I have been briefed on the shooting at former President Trump’s event in Pennsylvania.
Doug and I are relieved that he is not seriously injured. We are praying for him, his family, and all those who have been injured and impacted by this senseless shooting.
But when people draw parallels between Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy and Hitler’s progression from fringe figure to Great Dictator, we aren’t joking. Those of us who hope to preserve our democratic institutions need to underscore the resemblance before we enter the twilight of American democracy.
Thankfully, Donald Trump is reported to be “fine” after an apparent attempt on his life
(They’re happy that the person they called Hitler With a Golf Cart Instead of a Volkswagen is hale and hearty.)
The New Republic should get an award for clarity. I’m going to leave this “Trump = Hitler” cover as a placeholder to see if the progressive magazine comes up with a paired “We’re sorry that the latter-day Claus von Stauffenberg did not kill Hitler” story:
We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movement’s full face.
I will have a lot more respect for The New Republic if they say that they’re sad the modern Claus von Stauffenberg wasn’t more successful than the original Claus von Stauffenberg.
After the despicable attempt to kill Trump, a reporter who writes regularly about political violence explains how deeply unprepared we are for the terrible escalation that may now be coming. … At the time of this recording, we know little about the attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. He was hit in the ear, but thankfully doesn’t appear seriously injured.
It’s “despicable” to kill a person whom they said was a defrosted Hitler and they are thankful that Hitler wasn’t seriously injured. I sampled the podcast and the main issue, it seems, is violence perpetrated by Republicans. So just maybe the magazine’s position can be considered consistent with the Hitler cover. They’re thankful that Trump wasn’t more seriously injured because a serious injury would be more likely to result in violence against noble Democrats, not because they they want Trump to be alive and well. And the shooter was “despicable” because his action could have resulted in violence against noble/precious Democrats.
“If you begin with criticism, then you go to protest, then you go to impeachment, now you go to indictment and none of them work. What’s next? Graph it out, man. We’re speeding towards assassination, obviously. … They have decided — permanent Washington, both parties have decided — that there’s something about Trump that’s so threatening to them, they just can’t have him,” Carlson said in the interview, which was posted online Wednesday.
In far-right and conspiratorial circles, Trump has long been presented as the target of a vast plot orchestrated in part by Washington’s “deep state” as well as the Democratic establishment and the news media. The former president has embraced this worldview, referring to himself as a “victim” and the center of a “witch hunt.”
NBC reassured readers that this theory was “presented without evidence” and only someone gullible enough to believe a conspiracy theory would consider the possibility of an attack on literal Hitler.
The New York Post shows us the threat with which the $3 billion/year Secret Service was confronted:
Is it fair to say that the Biden administration’s Secret Service is at least as effective as the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security, responsible for securing the border?
Representative Nancy Pelosi, a longtime Biden ally and the former speaker, is the most senior member of his party who has so far suggested he consider dropping out.
Ms. Pelosi, 84, a longtime ally of the 81-year-old Mr. Biden and one of the most seasoned and cutthroat politicians in the House, has been more aggressive in her public comments about the president’s candidacy than other party leaders, who have publicly stated only that they remain behind him.
The 84-year-old is “seasoned” and “aggressive” (like Mindy the Crippler, our golden retriever?) while the 81-year-old is too old to work for the federal government.
After four years of celebrating Joe Biden as one of America’s smartest and sharpest residents, the New York Times watched one TV show and decided that the former Savior of our Democracy was too feeble-minded to run for reelection (but it is okay for him to be Commander in Chief of the world’s largest military for another six months?).
I was mostly peacefully sleeping in Portugal when the debate happened, but the kids asked to see some of it so we cued up a highlights reel for them this evening. Now I’m even more confused. Biden behaved exactly like the Democrats I know in Massachusetts, New York, and California. Given the slightest prompt, he expressed rage about Donald Trump supposedly having sex with a paid female 20 years ago, “lying”, or saying something outrageous. I’ve heard plenty of 20-to-65-year-old Democrats respond in exactly the same manner.
I’ve also poked around in a transcript of the debate and can’t find anything in the wider event that seems unusual. If anyone questions the wisdom of open borders in a cradle-to-grave welfare state at a gathering in Cambridge, MA, the Harvard graduates come back with a prepared script of anti-Trump talking points: sex with porn star, praised Nazis as “fine people”, is a convicted felon, is a racist, will end our democracy, etc. The talking points have no relevance to the policy question, e.g., whether the border should be open or whether the working class should be forced to pay back student loans for college graduates. Joe Biden stumbles over his words more than a 25-year-old Harvard graduate would, but he conveys the same scripted anti-Trump message.
I was, actually, more surprised by what I saw of Donald Trump in the video. I hadn’t seen a video of him since 2020, I think, and it was remarkable how little he’s changed. God loves Trump and is preserving him for some reason known only to Him/Her/Zir/Them?
One thing that I was pleased to see in the transcript was Biden repeating his prophecy of doom for the human race:
He had not done a damn thing with the environment. He – out of the Paris Peace Accord – Climate Accord, I immediately joined it, because if we reach for 1.5 degrees Celsius at any one point, well, there is no way back. The only existential threat to humanity is climate change. And he didn’t do a damn thing about it. He wants to undo all that I’ve done.
Humanity is on track to be wiped out, in other words, but there is no need for Democrats to rush into congestion pricing, no need to cut back on importing humans from low-carbon economies into our high-carbon economy, no reason to redirect almost all federal spending into solar cells and windmills, and no reason to lock Americans down to prevent CO2 emissions from unnecessary trips. (We had lockdowns to fight a virus with the potential to kill a small percentage of old/sick people, but we shouldn’t do anything significant about a situation in which 100 percent of humans might die, including the young and healthy.)
Separately, what if Donald Trump should win and our democracy actually does, therefore, end? Our local Palm Beach County library is preparing both Black and white patrons for the (horrifying) possibility:
An immigrant physician friend, simply based on videos that she watched in 2020, diagnosed Joe Biden with dementia four years ago and referred to him as “the senile puppet” long before the New York Times editorial board noticed that anything was wrong. Democrats now believe that Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities are insufficient to handle the job of U.S. President. Democrats also hate Donald Trump and there are at least some Republicans who prefer Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley to Mr. Trump.
I wonder if these groups could get together and do a quickie amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would impose a mandatory retirement age of 67 (the current Social Security full retirement age for those born after 1960) on the job. We need three-fourths of the states to ratify such an amendment and then both the Republicans and Democrats would have to nominate younger politicians for the November election.
We’re supposed to follow the guidance of the New York Times because the people on their editorial board have better access to information than we do. We wear cloth face coverings as PPE against aerosol viruses if they tell us to because they have direct access to the Science. We vote for whomever the NYT recommends because they have direct personal contact with America’s top politicians. We buy Teslas because they tell us that they’ve done the analysis and concluded that a 4,750 lb. electric car will heal our planet while a 2,500 lb. gas-powered car will destroy it.
We’ve been getting guidance from the NYT for at least five years regarding Joe Biden, a man whom an immigrant physician friend, after reviewing what was available to the masses, characterized as a “senile puppet” back in 2020. Using their elite connections, the NYT found “a professor of psychology and neuroscience and the director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California, Davis” to tell peasants to ignore what they might be seeing in videos. “I’m a Neuroscientist. We’re Thinking About Biden’s Memory and Age in the Wrong Way.” (February 2024):
As an expert on memory, I can assure you that everyone forgets. … age in and of itself doesn’t indicate the presence of memory deficits that would affect an individual’s ability to perform in a demanding leadership role. … Many of the special counsel’s observations about Mr. Biden’s memory seem to fall in the category of forgetting, meaning that they are more indicative of a problem with finding the right information from memory than Forgetting. … Mr. Biden is the same age as Harrison Ford, Paul McCartney and Martin Scorsese. He’s also a bit younger than Jane Fonda (86) and a lot younger than the Berkshire Hathaway C.E.O., Warren Buffett (93). All these individuals are considered to be at the top of their professions, and yet I would not be surprised if they are more forgetful and absent-minded than when they were younger.
The presidency isn’t a solo mission. Not even close. It’s a team effort, and the administration that a president puts together matters much, much more than his brawn or his brio. … But he’s not Atlas; he’s POTUS. And the president of the United States is only as good as the advisers around him, whose selection reflects presidential judgment, not stamina. … Yes, Trump is about three and a half years younger and often peppier than Biden. Biden is about 300 times saner and always more principled than Trump.
While I was traveling back to the U.S. from Portugal yesterday, the NYT’s Editorial Board published a radical about-face:
Based on their elite access, they had full confidence in Joe Biden until Thursday morning. After watching a TV show intended for peasants on Thursday evening, they’ve decided that their great leader should retire to a Memory Care unit. Doesn’t this undermine their claim to having better information than the masses? If they wanted to throw Genocide Joe under the bus, shouldn’t they had said that their withdrawal of support was based on private conversations with top officials who requested anonymity?
(The Wall Street Journal did this right. “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping” (June 4, 2024). Their journalists got behind doors that are closed to peasants, at least via interviews with the elite, and brought back the truth. Ergo, if you want to know what is really happening in the U.S. and elsewhere you need to keep paying for a WSJ subscription. You can’t just watch TV.)
Michael Avenatti, the boisterous lawyer who has risen to national fame in recent months by publicly pestering Donald Trump, will continue his public flirtations with running for President in 2020 by headlining two more Democratic Party events this weekend, sources tell CNN.
Avenatti’s near constant presence at Democratic events over the last two weeks has caused some Democrats to reconsider their belief that the lawyer’s run is a publicity stunt aimed at annoying the President.
After each speech, he has been asked to speak at more Democratic functions. He will follow up that appearance on Sunday – after an early morning flight – by appearing at “Hillsborough County Democrat’s Summer Picnic” in New Hampshire, a crucial state for presidential contenders.
Avenatti has made two trips to Ohio in as many weeks, where he met with David Betras, the chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party, and had dinner with Rep. Tim Ryan, another possible 2020 Democratic contender who represents Youngstown.
“I think he is a phenomenal guy and I have gotten to know him a bit in the last week. We went to dinner last week, he was in Youngstown and I really like him,” Ryan told CNN after commending Avenatti’s work against Trump over the last few months.
So that’s a President that Democrats can love and follow. What about Hunter Biden as VP? Americans love recovery stories. See half of Hollywood films (The Lost Weekend (1945); Flight(2012)) plus tons of books (see Dave Pelzer, for example). Hunter Biden has already written a bestseller about his “years-long battle with drug and alcohol addiction” that was favorably reviewed in the New York Times as “ineffably sad and beautifully written” and it “tears the tabloid face off the story about an American family that has experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows” (i.e., if you don’t pay for a NYT subscription and buy the book you might be mislead by headlines from the Daily Mail suggesting that $millions were collected from China and Ukraine because of and for “the big guy”).
If I had to use a wish from an omnipotent being before choosing a dream Democrat line-up I would wish that the most-frequently-praised-by-Democrats American be resurrected and selected as the Democrat presidential nominee:
George Floyd should be alive. He deserved so much more.
Today, I join all those who loved him and all those touched by the civil rights movement he inspired in remembering the tragedy and injustice of his death.
If I got a second wish and had to use it, I would wish that the Constitution be changed so that someone born outside of the U.S. could serve as President and that Palestinian leader Yahya Sinwar be selected as the Democrats’ VP candidate. A Floyd/Sinwar candidacy would encapsulate the dreams of Democrats who’ve taken to the streets since 2020.
Related:
Remember, this performance is Biden at his absolute best after seven days of secluded rest and prep.
Dear Supporter, President Biden needs your help to continue fighting for our shared Democratic values. While some have raised questions about the President’s age, what truly matters is his decades of experience, unwavering commitment to progressive policies, and the strong team he has assembled. The role of President is about leadership, vision, and surrounding oneself with capable advisors – not about personal cognitive ability alone. President Biden has demonstrated he can effectively delegate and lean on the expertise of his administration to govern. Your donation will help ensure we can continue pursuing vital priorities like combating climate change, protecting reproductive rights, and expanding access to healthcare. Every contribution, no matter the size, makes a difference. Stand with President Biden and donate today to keep moving America forward.
I think Anthropic AI did about as well as a human fundraiser! Note that Americans love to hear promises to “fight” from their politicians and this ends up in the first sentence.
Those closest to Joe Biden say that he’s the smartest person in the room. Here’s the open border guy:
"The most difficult part about a meeting with Biden is preparing for it."
Update, July 2: the New York Times NOW tells us that they have inside information and Biden is on a mental decline. “Biden’s Lapses Are Increasingly Common, According to Some of Those in the Room” (they’re in the room with the President of the U.S. and don’t have to rely on watching TV as the rest of us do):
People who have spent time with President Biden over the last few months or so said the lapses appear to have grown more frequent, more pronounced and, after Thursday’s debate, more worrisome.
In the weeks and months before President Biden’s politically devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta, several current and former officials and others who encountered him behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations.
The most serious lapse:
On June 10, he appeared to freeze up at an early celebration of the Juneteenth holiday.
I am still in Portugal so I slept during the grand event. Did CNN manage to make Joe Biden look and sound mentally fit? Also, will there be additional debates during which our beloved leader must be propped up?
Separately, this photo from Porto yesterday may contain the explanation for a bizarre gardening accident…
Portugal so far has been short on what Americans would consider Social Justice. We witnessed one pro-Hamas march on a Lisbon synagogue and the number of participants (about 50) was a tiny percentage of the Lisbon metro area population (nearly 3 million). The pro-Hamas encampment at the University of Coimbra was also poorly attended (and they let a dog walk on the sacred Palestinian flag; see future post). Our almost-9-year-old’s sharp eyes spotted a single rainbow flag, rather faded, above a bar in Lisbon (i.e., that’s one rainbow flag in a 10-day period). At Portugal dos Pequenitos, a theme park of miniature houses and architectural monuments designed to delight children, the Portuguese “voyages of discovery” are presented as great achievements, not as pernicious precursors to slavery and colonization:
Does all of the above mean that I am not participating in Juneteenth? Au contraire, as they say in Lisbon! Today I tried to return a phone call from John Hancock regarding my 90-year-old mom’s insurance. I turned on my Xfinity Mobile SIM ($10 per day of usage, with a meagre 0.5 GB data allotment that one will blow through in less than a day of using Google Maps, uploading a few photos, etc.) and called John Hancock. I spent about 15 minutes dealing with their automated system before an attempt was made to connect me with a human. My reward was a recording: “Our offices are closed today in observance of Juneteenth” (this became a new paid day off for government workers in 2021; see “Biden Signs Law Making Juneteenth a Federal Holiday” (NYT)).
Readers: How did you observe Juneteenth? Were you obstructed in any of your attempts to be productive?
Here’s Joe Biden crediting Black Americans as having “led the march from slavery to freedom”, but weren’t the relevant marches for Juneteenth led by Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman? Is he saying that Grant and Sherman identified as “Black”?
I was proud to have made Juneteenth a federal holiday –
It was and will always be a testimony of and testament to the resilience of generations of Black Americans who led the march from slavery to freedom toward that more perfect union. pic.twitter.com/W3HjtwffUC
a federal jury found him guilty of three counts related to lying about his drug use in order to buy a gun … making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm, making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federally licensed firearms dealer, and possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of or addict to a controlled substance. … Hallie testified about finding the gun inside Hunter’s Ford Raptor pickup on Oct. 23, 2018 — 11 days after he bought it — and throwing the weapon away in a panic at a Wilmington grocery store.
So Hunter Biden had a gun for 11 days, but didn’t use it in any way as far as we know and now he can be put in the slammer for about 100 times as long as a typical San Francisco career criminal? (See below for what happens to a criminal in San Francisco who actually shoots and kills someone.) Were his statements knowingly false? If you ask a typical addict “are you addicted?” the person will respond “I can quit at any time.” That would be his/her/zir/their truth and not a lie.
I think the answer is “the judge won’t impose the maximum sentence”, but why should an individual human be given the discretion to imprison an important contemporary artist for what would essentially be the entire rest of his life?
“Immigrant acquitted of San Francisco killing is sentenced for gun charge” (state-sponsored PBS, so we know it is true): “Garcia Zarate faced a maximum sentence of three years behind bars … He had previously been convicted of illegally re-entering the United States and been deported five times before Steinle was fatally shot. The San Francisco sheriff’s department released him from jail several weeks before the shooting, ignoring a request from federal immigration officials to detain him for a sixth deportation.”
