Pardon Me

The Democrats ran a female presidential candidate and lost.  Ironically, they've surrendered their cojónes to Donald Trump.

The Democrats have already expressed a willingness to work with Trump and his henchmen in trying to "reform" government and support "populist" policies in an effort to entrap Trump into making promises he won't keep, even though he'll find a way to deflect blame to others when he doesn't.  But no capitulation to MAGA morons is more blatant than Democratic opposition to President Biden's pardon of his son Hunter of charges of tax evasion and an illegal gun purchase.

Democratic senators such as Michael Bennet of Colorado and Chris Murphy of Connecticut have criticized the pardon as undermining President Biden's own insistence that no one is above the law, which will encourage Donald Trump to put himself above the law once he returns to power - as if he hadn't been planning to do that anyway.  The faux outage among the mainstream media - "Oh, I'm shocked - I'm shocked that the President pardoned his own son! - was just as insufferable,  with the New York Times, MSNBC, and Politico (Round up the usual suspects!)  all declaring Biden's pardon of his son a betrayal of a promise he'd made not to do so that could encourage Trump to pardon January 6 insurrectionists (which Trump had already promised he'd do, and that's a promise he can be counted on to keep!).  Spare me the terminal righteousness.

Let's review.  Hunter Biden was convicted of illegally possessing a firearm and was expected to receive a stiff sentence that - I reiterate - he would likely not receive if his name were Robert Hunter, not Robert Hunter Biden.  He was expected to be sentenced to prison for up to seventeen years for tax evasion, an offense that - again - he would see little or no jail time for if his name were Robert Hunter.  And he was expected to receive this sentence despite having paid his back taxes with the help of a friend.

So why did President Biden change his mind?  Because Kamala Harris lost the election.  And it became apparent that Trump would install Kash Patel as FBI director - with Patel promising to make Trump's detractors and Biden's relatives pay for their obstinance to Trump.  Hunter would have continued to be harassed not just for the gun and drug charges but for accusations of his dealings with Burisma in Ukraine, a web of innuendo in yo' window so tangled I don't want to revisit it here.  The pardon protects Hunter from prosecution and persecution from any and all crimes Hunter Biden committed or may have committed in the past decade, and as long as he keeps his nose clean (no pun intended on his addiction, he's been clean and sober for years),  Patel can't lay a glove on him.    

And given the number of people Trump pardoned - including Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and too many more to list - Democrats and Republicans have a lot of damn gall to complain about Joe Biden reversing course and pardoning his own son.

The Lonely Hunter

Hunter Biden was found guilty on three counts of illegal gun ownership this past week by a jury who sympathized with his efforts to fight addiction but decided that his belief that he was not addicted when he bought the gun in 2018 was an excuse to purchase a gun because there's no such thing as a "former" addict just as there's no such thing as a "former" alcoholic.

President Biden stands by the decision and says he will not pardon Hunter and, instead, he supports his son's efforts to appeal the verdict.   The President consistently follows the rule of law while Donald Trump flouts it.  Hardly surprisingly, the contrast satisfies no one who's already in the bag for Trump and refuses to vote for Biden, sometimes for the silliest reason - like, because he's 81 or because he tried to sidestep Congress to forgive student loan debt.  Some folks have even suggested that he allowed Hunter to be tried and convicted as a sacrifice to appease those angered by Trump's conviction and to show consistency in the rule of law. 

The President received word of his son's conviction, ironically enough, while preparing a speech on gun safety.  In another twist, a right-wing gun rights group came to Hunter's support, saying that the law he was convicted under was unconstitutional.  They could take their case to the Supreme Court, get the law overturned, and get Hunter freed from whatever prison term he's sentenced to (though, given his contriteness and his admission of addiction, he's likely to receive a light sentence).  And given that the Court declared that banning bump stocks - ironically, a Trump administration initiative - was unconstitutional, something like that could very well happen.

Of course, it can be argued that if the younger Biden's name were Robert Hunter, given the nature of his crime, he would not have even been thoroughly investigated and charged, nor would his failed plea deal to allow a judge rather than a potential Republican-run Justice Department to oversee the terms of the deal would not have been necessary had he been charged.  And, if his name were Robert Hunter, Grateful Dead fans would be mistakenly telling him how much they love his lyrics for "Box of Rain." 😃  But his name isn't Robert Hunter.  His name is Robert Hunter Biden, and it's that surname that got him in trouble.  But at least he isn't whining over how he's being persecuted because he's the ne'er-do-well son of a President.

That would be Eric Trump.   

In any case, I would recommend that the Biden family send Hunter a bunch of canvasses and oil paint tubes.  He's going to need something to do in jail. 

What a Country!

The gentleman at the center of the picture below is Alexander Smirnov, a vital informant in the impeachment case against President Biden and his business connections to his surviving son, leaving the federal courthouse on an uncharacteristically rainy day in Los Angeles.  And no, he is not shielding his face because of the rain, and his two companions, it would appear, do not have COVID.  

So let's get a few things straight.  Hunter Biden is not the sort of fellow a woman would want to take home to Mother, unless of course her mother is Wilma McClatchie.  You wouldn't want Hunter Biden to teach a course in business ethics any more than you'd want Alina Habba to teach law.  And, he's a bad painter. But while Democrats have insisted that he and his father have no business ties with each other, the impeachment inquiry authorized by the Republican House of Representatives has produced little a bit of evidence to suggest otherwise, like Smirnov's damning testimony.  And that's why he appeared in court in LA recently.

Except for one thing: He appeared in court because he was arrested (and freed and arrested again) for providing the inquiry committee members with information that is totally fake!  

Made up.  Fictitious.  A story less credible than the legend of Atlantis.  Smirnov, an Israeli national, is an agent for the Russian government who was trying to make enough mischief to embarrass the Bidens.  All he did was embarrass . . . well, I was going to say the Republicans, but that isn't true, as the two rhymes-with-glass-pole House committee chairmen named Jim - Oversight Committee chairman Comer of Kentucky and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jordan of Ohio - weren't embarrassed at all.  In fact, they doubled down on their accusations against the Bidens, saying that Smirnov's lies don't change the underlying basis of the need for the inquiry.

Except for one thing: Smirnov's lies are the underlying basis of the need for the inquiry.

Comer and Jordan plan to continue to push for impeaching President Biden, convinced that the mere appearance of a business connection between him and his son Hunter requires an impeachment inquiry as long as special prosecutor David Weiss continues his investigation of Hunter.

Except for one thing: David Weiss was the one who had Smirnov arrested.   

What a country!

It Doesn't Matter

Donald Trump has 91 felony indictments against hm, he constantly lashed out at the prosecutors who have charged him, Jack Smith has felt compelled to request a gaga order placed against Trump to avoid a tainted jury in his cases, and in a recent interview (more of which later), Trump claimed full responsibility for the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Thanks to President Biden's troubles, however, none of that matters.

President Biden is dealing with headwinds of his own, and they're more relevant because he's President and Trump is not - yet.  Despite improving economic statistics, inflation is still making essential goods more expensive for Americans, dragging down Biden's poll numbers on his handling of the economy and his overall job approval.  His failure to address his son Hunter's troubles with his business dealings has led to six out of ten Americans believing the consistent Republican narrative that Biden must be in on his son's crooked deeds.  And with Hunter Biden having been charged with an illegal-gun felony - a charge no one named Biden would likely receive from a prosecutor - it reinforces House Republicans' charges of a corrupt family dynamic among the Bidens while House Democrats, relegated to the minority, can only complain about the real corrupt family dynamic among the Trumps, which includes Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.  Of course, being the minority, House Democrats can only looked forward to their complaints get drowned out by renewed calls among the far right for Biden's impeachment.       

Even Kevin McCarthy's call for an impeachment inquiry against the President - forced by his right flank, which has had more control over a Republican House Speaker than anyone since Dennis Hastert - hasn't generated much of a rallying around the President by Democrats, at least not yet.  That's likely because an impeachment inquiry is different than an actual impeachment, and an inquiry is only meant to find evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors.  It doesn't matter if Democrats ask what House Republicans want to impeach Biden for despite no evidence of Biden having done anything wrong.  Because such evidence is exactly what an inquiry is meant to seek!  It wouldn't be an inquiry otherwise, would it?

If an inquiry comes up with nothing, as it's likely to, the House will most likely decide not to impeach Biden; they apparently don't have the votes for it anyway.  But that doesn't matter either; an inquiry is still good enough to tarnish an incumbent President. 

All of his spells trouble for the Biden re-election campaign as it lurches toward 2024.  The best the President can hope for is that Americans start feeling the economic improvements he's accomplished, and soon, because ultimately, Americans vote their pocketbooks, not their reproductive or family-planning rights or their mass-transit access. At least not in presidential elections.  But what about our democracy, our civil rights, or our efforts to live up to our ideals as a nation?

As Stephen Stills once sang, it doesn't matter, it's nothing but dreaming anyhow.  

Trump Scandal Versus Biden Scandal

With the indictment of Donald Trump and eighteen other individuals in a racketeering scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in Georgia and commit fraud, handed down by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (below), Trump is now in the greatest legal trouble he has ever been in - which is to say he's in legal trouble for the first time - as he faces the real prospect of going to prison.

But thanks to two revolting developments, none of that may matter.  The firs development is that Trump's repeated indictments have increased his popularity among the Republican base, ensuring that he will win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination - he's practically the nominee in waiting.  The other development is the appointment of a special counsel by Attorney Merrick Garland to continue the now-five-year-old investigation of Hunter Biden.  In an act of good faith, he's named U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss, a Trump holdover who has been investigating Hunter Biden already, as the special counsel, allowing Weiss to go beyond his immediate jurisdiction.

The appointment pleased and satisfied no one.  Republicans, mindful of the botched plea deal Hunter Biden was ready to agree to, no longer trust Weiss, and Democrats are justifiably worried that Weiss, instead of using his expanded powers to wrap up the investigation, might find something unexpected and go down a rabbit hole that brings up information  that could give the Republican House enough of a reason to start an impeachment inquiry against President Biden for being privy to some of Hunter's less savory deeds.   

In that scenario, Trump has the advantage.  Despite his indictments being about matters far more serious for the Republic than anything Hunter Biden (or his uncle Jim, Biden's brother) might have done, Trump has a base that will stick with him come hell or high water (also known as climate change).  Biden doesn't have that sort of following.  Bernie Sanders, yes  Joe Biden, no.

The Summer of Hunter

It looked like Hunter Biden was going to get his legal troubles behind him, but the plea bargain he agreed to regarding two counts of tax evasion and one count of illegal firearms possession fell like a house of cards.

The federal judge in Delaware overseeing the case, Maryellen Noreika, wanted to make sure that both the prosecution and the defense were on the same page.  They weren't even in the same chapter.  Both sides attempted to align themselves to each other, but Judge Noreika decided that she could not approve the resulting revised deal linking tax misdemeanors to a gun felony because she felt she did not have the right to do so.  They have thirty days to come up with something better.

Now Hunter Biden is not only unable to get his legal issues out of the way, the political issues are getting worse.  There are still ongoing investigations into whether he benefited from his familial relations when working as a consultant in Ukraine and China, and House Speaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, speaking through her figurehead Kevin McCarthy, is pledging to proceed with an impeachment inquiry to see whether President Biden can be impeached for influence peddling through his siblings as well as his son, given the damning evidence implicating the President that has surfaced, and - Oops!  Correction: There's no evidence that President Biden is involved.      

Still, it's important to investigate the First Family, because there is plenty of evidence that Biden's children made sweetheart deals and used their influence to get ahead, especially Biden's daughter and her husband and their deals with Saudi billionaires, and - oh, wait a minute, that was Ivanka Trump and her husband, and her brothers.

Can anyone tell me why Hunter Biden is the first offspring of a U.S. President to be charged with offenses none of Trump's children would see jail time for while Trump's children have not seen jail time for the even greater offenses they have committed?  This country needs an enema!

Rhymes With "Lucy Glass Witch"

The Republican-majority House Oversight Committee attempted to prove that the Democrats and the Biden campaign forced Twitter to take down a link to a New York Post front-page story about Hunter Biden's laptop in order to help Joe Biden win the Presidency in 2020 (assuming that the Republicans on the committee don't think Biden stole the election).  They wanted to prove that the Democratic Party used its power to suppress opponents.  Instead, they proved that Trump did just that.

Twitter employee-witnesses admitted that they should not have barred the link to the story about Hunter Biden, given free-speech protection being a cornerstone of the Bill of Rights.  But not only did they say they were wrong to do that, they also said they were wrong to delete a tweet from model Chrissy Teigen, wife of soul singer John Legend, dismissing Trump as a - I'll just come right out and say it - a "pussy ass bitch."

Apparently, calling Trump a pussy got Trump pissy, and he used his influence as President of the United States to have the tweet taken down.  It is common for most dictators to punish anyone who speaks out against them.  I know that a lot of people in the Soviet Union spoke out against Joseph Stalin.

This is what became of them.

Chrissy Teigen is lucky Trump didn't get re-elected.

But the House Oversight Committee's witnesses weren't so lucky.  After failing to corroborate the conspiracy theories of the MAGA Republican right, they got chastened by the GOP committee members who were pretty pissy themselves that their own witnesses wouldn't support their fact-free version of the truth.  It took Democratic committee members like Jamie Raskin (MD) and Maxwell Frost (FL) to assume some sort of control of the meeting and bring it in for a landing.

The crash of a Republican conspiracy-theory talking point will harfly deter the MAGA crowd from trying to humiliate Biden again.  They are, though, more likely to humiliate themselves again. 

"What Am I Bid For This Biden?"

Hunter Biden, painter?

Yes, apparently so. Joe Biden's surviving son has forsaken the law as a career an has taken up abstract painting.  His paintings, like the one below, will be offered for auction at a gallery in New York.

There's just one thing - the maximum price is set at $500,000 per painting.

Although President Biden has taken steps to ensure that Hunter's paintings cannot be used by prospective owners to get political influence with the White House, ensuring that buyers will be kept anonymous, no one thinks this exhibition/auction is a good idea.  First of all, the price.  Half a million bucks for a Hunter Biden original?  Second, the acquisition of a painting.  What's to stop an anonymous buyer from letting the world know he or she has one?

And if AOC buys one for her Washington office, that's going to be really awkward when the time comes to pass an infrastructure bill.

Walter Shaub, who was President Obama's ethics chief, thinks it would be better for Americans to know the identity of the buyers so that we know who is trying to influence the President.  "Instead of disclosing who is paying outrageous sums for Hunter Biden's artwork so that we could monitor whether the purchasers are gaining access to government, the [White House] tried to make sure we will never know who they are."  

As for me, I think I can trust the Biden White House to monitor who has a Hunter Biden painting and avoid a conflict of interest with any such owners. The problem is that most Americans don't think they can trust them, and Republicans have pre-emptively decided that they most certainly won't trust the White House - even if they can.

But never mind all that.  I think Hunter Biden's paintings - yeah, I've seen more than a couple - are good but not great, and so the $500,000 price tag for one is way over the top.  And let's be honest.  If his name were Robert Hunter, with his abilities and talents as an abstract artist, he'd likely have to sell his paintings for $500, maybe $750 at the most, and he'd have to do it not at an art gallery in Manhattan but at an outdoor arts and crafts show in a park in Montclair, New Jersey or Ann Arbor, Michigan, in a small canopy tent next to the sculptor who works with discarded tin or the shamanic chick from Maine who sells New Age crystal pendants. But his name isn't Robert Hunter.  His name is Robert Hunter Biden. 

And while he may be good, he's certainly no Paul McCartney. 😉

Hunter Biden's first solo exhibition and auction will be in October at George Bergès Gallery in New York.  If the pandemic worsens by then, social distancing may be necessary, and face coverings may be required.  In fact, even if the pandemic doesn't get worse, buyers may have to wear face coverings anyway . . . to stay anonymous.

Traps For Biden

Okay, Mitch McConnell actually congratulated Joe Biden for winning the Presidency once the Electoral College certified the President-elect's win, after having said that he would recognize a winner once the electors actually voted.  But I'm not going to give McConnell brownie points for being consistent.  Mitch Mac is acknowledging Biden's win because he wants to give Georgia Republicans an incentive to vote in the U.S. Senate double runoff election on January 5.  If they think Donald Trump still has a chance of being declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election as a result of voter fraud, they have no reason to vote in the runoffs or expect them to be fair and secure, which helps the Democrats and makes it more likely that they can win both seats and, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris's vote, control the Senate.

McConnell is craven and power-mad, but he's nowhere nearly as nefarious as Trump, who forced Attorney General William Barr out of his post in order to put a caretaker Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department and facilitate the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Biden's son Hunter (above) - something Barr was reluctant to do.  (Barr also wouldn't report that Hunter was being actively investigated until after the election so as not to include the vote.) Such an appointment would ensure that investigations of Hunter Biden's business dealings will dog his dad for at least a year and prevent him from getting anything done.  Biden's Attorney General would be powerless to stop such an investigation.

So what, you say?  It's the son being investigated, not the father.  Except that Hunter is accused of trading in on his dad's previous position as Vice President in his dealings, meaning that Uncle Joe would be deemed guilty by association.  Or guilty of worse.  One caveat, though - any special prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden would have to actually find something.  There's no real evidence that Hunter did anything wrong.

Give Biden credit for not being distracted by any of this.  Give him credit also for going hard after all of the Republicans who backed Trump's futile attempts to overturn the election in his speech to the nation after the Electoral College declared Biden the winner of the election.  My only concern with Biden's speech was his constant throat-clearing, which, surprisingly, did not lead Trump to start tweeting insinuations about Biden's health in the middle of a pandemic.

Biden moves on, having appointed Pete Buttigieg to get us moving again; Mayor Pete is Biden's choice for Secretary of Transportation.  (Maybe Martin O'Malley can get the ambassadorship to Ireland.)  I'll have more on Mayor Pete later.     

Tell Me I'm Not Dreaming!

My, oh my, oh my, what have we here?

Donald John Trump, the man currently calling 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington his home, called the president of Ukraine to say that he could get the missiles he wanted for the Ukrainian armed forces provided he try to . . . dig up dirt on a political opponent?  And Trump's bragging about it?

In case you have been under a rock lately, Trump did just that, and a whistleblower who remains anonymous filed a compliant that the Trumpster was "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country" by trying to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the business dealings of Joe Biden's son and especially as to whether the former Vice President inappropriately intervened in Hunter Biden's affairs on his behalf.  Instead of getting Biden in hot water - who was in trouble already because of Elizabeth Warren's surge in Democratic presidential primary polls - Trump got himself into deep rhymes-with-voodoo.  This story was all Nancy Patricia Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, needed to allow a for an impeachment inquiry to go forward.  And although this allows House Democrats to get information they'd tried to obtain before on semi-unrelated matters, Pelosi is keeping the focus squarely on Trump's attempts to have Ukraine influence the 2020 presidential election - because the American people can understand that!

You know Trump is in trouble when even House Democrats from vulnerable swing districts - including my congresswoman, Mikie Sherrill - support an impeachment inquiry.  Thanks to Trump's brazenness, a majority of House members - not just a majority of House Democrats, a majority of House members (though all but one of them are Democrats) - now support the inquiry.  House Judiciary Committee Jerrold Nadler's investigation into Trump is no longer a sideline.  It's his main business. However, Adam Schiff, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, will be doing a good deal of heavy lifting, with this involving national security and all . . .

And we've already found out this much - Trump lawyer Rudolph Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr tried to lock down the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky call and remove it from the computer file where transcripts to calls to foreign leaders are stored.

And what does this all mean for Joe Biden?

Well, it depends on how he handles it.  Given that the American people are in no mood for a bold liberal experiment to make the United States more like a European country, with all of the nice things such a country has, Biden, whose most radical policy proposal is to modernize Amtrak, is likely still the best shot the Democrats have to beat Trump.  The stiff challenge he currently faces from Elizabeth Warren is less about his son's business dealings than it is about his own mistakes and missteps.  Bear in mind, though, that there is no evidence that Hunter Biden did anything wrong or that his dad tried to help him or obstruct justice in any way.  It's just a rumor.  And if it is in fact the case that there's nothing to see here, Biden should just come out and say so and then move on.

He didn't do so well, though, when a Fox News reporter asked him about Hunter and the former Vice President tried to do what Trump always does - change the subject.  I winced when he dodged the question, recalling Gary Hart's arrogant attempt to dodge the question as to whether he committed infidelity when reporter Paul Taylor asked it.  And if Biden wants to nip this in the bud, the last thing he should do is respond with a carefully crafted, lawyerly statement - as Hart had done with his sex scandal - because first of all, Biden is incapable of doing that anyway, and second of all, there'll likely be reporters who can find an opening to go after him on, as Paul Taylor did after Hart denied having done anything "immoral" with the future Trump supporter who went into his Washington townhouse.  ("Do you think adultery is immoral?"  "Yes."  "Have you ever committed adultery?"  You know the rest.)

My guess is that Biden will be fine.  After all, there's more evidence against Trump trying to get a foreign government to look into an alleged illegality on the Bidens' part than there is of the allegation.  Just as long as Biden's denial, whatever form it may take, isn't plagiarized from someone else.

Yes, I went there . . .

Oh, was there a United Nations General Assembly this week?

The Gloves Come Off

Donald Trump is going after Joe Biden big time.  Fearful that Biden would be a formidable opponent to his re-election bid in 2020 should he be the Democratic presidential nominee, Trump sent Rudolph Giuliani to Ukraine to try to get the government there to open an investigation into his interference reading an investigation into some potential funny business including his son Hunter's service on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.  Giuliani reversed course after a public outcry over his efforts, as he is not a government official acting on Trump's behalf but merely Trump's lawyer, but the damage may have been done.  Even though a recent Bloomberg story debunked the story about any wrongdoing on the Bidens' part, this story helps sow the seeds of doubt among Democrats who might end up nominating someone Trump can take out more easily.  Like Bernie Sanders.

This comes just after Trump's son Donald Jr. was subpoenaed by the Senate Intelligence Committee for its investigation of possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, which sounds like payback against Biden.  In fact, the Senate Intelligence Committee's chairman, who issued the subpeona, is Senator Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, and he is less interested in backing up Trump than he is in getting to the bottom of what exactly the Russians did in the 2016 election.  This has nothing to do with Biden's son except for the fact that it's Trump's son who's being subpoenaed.  It's a weird case of tit-for-tat with Trump getting revenge against Biden for trying to have Biden's son investigated because of a subpoena against Donald Trump, Jr. that Biden didn't initiate!  And now Trump may ask Attorney General William Barr to look in to the Biden "case" himself.

Even if Biden is the best choice to go against Trump, he has his work cut out for him.  Trump will stop at nothing to win another term, and he's willing to destroy anyone to make it happen.  But he's so hell-bent on destruction that the person he may end up destroying most is himself.