Tag: Joe Biden

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crime and punishment insider corruption

The Pardon We All Saw Coming

Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, pardon, Ukraine, China, corruption

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Back in June, after his son was found guilty on gun charges, President Biden said: “I will not pardon him.”

Now he’s saying “I believe in the justice system, but …”

Let’s remember the Conspiracy Theory floating around before the election.

Various cynical people, cynics I call them, declared that despite Biden’s pledge not to pardon his son, he was only waiting for the election. After the election, when the action could no longer hurt him or any Biden-​substitute candidate, he would then pardon his son.

And so it has come to pass— as of last night.

I guess if you can’t get Al Capone on anything else, you get him on tax evasion. But I don’t care that much about the gun charges or the tax charges against Hunter Biden. I care about the corruption.

I care about the many millions of dollars funneled into the Biden family and the Big Guy, Joe Biden, in consequence of Hunter Biden’s influence-​peddling deal-​making with firms in Ukraine, Romania, and China. Millions that fell into his lap over the years only because of who his dad is. And what daddy could do — as in fire a Ukrainian prosecutor looking into Biden family corruption.

Riding high, Hunter Biden felt he could get away with anything, including massive tax evasion.

The son can, I take it, no longer be imprisoned for any of the law-​breaking we know about. Or even suspect​.So maybe, thus unencumbered, Hunter can now take the stand about his father’s role in all the graft and bribery. 

Interestingly, Hunter’s pardon removes his ability to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-​incrimination. Because he can’t be incriminated, i.e. criminalized, he can be compelled to testify. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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incumbents national politics & policies political challengers

Taking Out The

Joe Biden, Alfred E. Newman, MAD,

At last Sunday’s Trump Rally in Madison Square Garden, Tony Hinchcliffe, a reputed comedian, told a very unfunny joke, referring to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”

The outcry was understandably loud, so noisy in fact that it apparently awakened Sleepy Joe Biden. “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters,” declared the man who is — remember? — currently still president of the United States.

Mr. Biden has since clarified that he did not mean what he said. That’s good. 

Though, White House press secretary Karine Jean-​Pierre sounded a different note: “So, just to clarify, he was not calling Trump supporters garbage, which is why he put out … a statement that clarified what he meant and what he was trying to say.”

But Mr. Biden did say what he said. That’s not in dispute — it’s on videotape. 

Yet … the reporting seems fuzzier now about whether President Biden uttered what our ears heard. 

On NBC Nightly News, anchor Lester Holt began a segment by referring to Biden’s “apparent reference to Trump supporters as garbage.” 

At Vox, Eric Levitz defends the president, arguing that he “ended up spouting a garbled stream of words,” sure, but those words “may or may not have dehumanized all Trump supporters as ‘garbage.’”

How could Levitz know for certain? He’s not an etymologist, after all.

A Washington Post analysis also found the president’s lack of noticeable cognition to absolve him of any ill intent. “Biden’s increasing tendency to stumble over his words, which marred these very comments,” the paper explains, “makes it entirely plausible that he didn’t intend to tar large numbers of Trump supporters.”

At best, we have a commander-​in-​chief who can no longer communicate coherently. With his finger on the nuclear button. 

What — me worry?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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election law First Amendment rights

How Deep Is Your Fake?

deep fake, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, lizards

Monday last, a group of Democratic congressfolk “sent a letter to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), asking the agency to adopt regulations prohibiting the creation of deepfakes of election candidates,” Emma Camp tells us in last Thursday’s Reason article, “These Democrats Want the FEC To Crack Down on Elon Musk’s Grok.”

Current law already “prohibits a candidate for federal office or an employee or agent of a candidate from fraudulently misrepresenting themselves, committee, or organization under their control,” the letter states, but candidates have already been caught using “Artificial Intelligence (AI) in campaign ads to depict themselves or another candidate engaged in an action that did not happen or saying something the depicted candidate did not say.”

OK. Regardless of the merit of current regulation, the apparent fact that some political actors have defied the rule (perhaps out of ignorance) doesn’t necessitate more legislation. Why not just let the wheels of justice, or what passes for it in the FEC realm, go on doing what they’re doing?

Because Elon Musk.

Specifically, his X (“Twitter”) platform recently launched “Grok‑2,” an AI for the creation of pictorial representations (not unlike those used here at ThisIsCommonSense​.org). And, shock of shocks, there are no rules in place for ordinary people to take artistic license at those politicians they hate and and for those politicians they don’t.

As Ms. Camp notes, but the legislators don’t, most of these efforts have been for comic effect.

The Democrats don’t like this.

They request expeditious consideration for the creation, by the FEC, of new rules to “regulate” (suppress) AI by ordinary users to maintain the ostensible integrity of “our democracy.”

We have, Ms. Camp not unreasonably concludes, been pretty good at detecting “deep fakes” so far.

Besides, the big problem in politics is shallow fakes.

They’re everywhere. They’re called politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture partisanship

Biden’s Belief in a MAGA Republican Bloodbath

Joe Biden, propaganda, violence, threats, transfer of power, dictator, hysteria

Over the weekend, I was surprised to find Joseph R. Biden — our semi-​retired, caretaker president of these United States — on CBS Sunday Morning, for his first sit-​down TV interview since leaving the presidential contest.

Mr. Biden warned that former President Trump constitutes the greatest evil in the solar system, calling this “threat to democracy” an “ally” of the Ku Klux Klan.

“The most important thing … we must defeat Trump,” explained Biden. That’s why he let Nancy Pelosi and former President Obama (and insistent Democratic Party mega-​donors) push him out of the race. 

To save the Republic … by not losing to Donald Trump. 

Asked if he was confident of a peaceful transfer of power should Trump be defeated, Joe said, “No, I’m not confident.”*

“He means what he says,” our nominal president offered about Mr. Trump. “All this stuff about if we lose, there’ll be a bloodbath, we have these stolen elections.”

Of course, “all the stuff about” Trump threatening a “bloodbath” has been conjured up in the noggin of our cognitively impaired commander-in-chief. 

Trump made the “bloodbath” comment at a rally in Michigan. Speaking about the U.S. auto industry, he told the crowd that we had lost “34 percent of the automobile manufacturing business” to Mexico and promised to slap a 100 percent tariff on cars built by China in Mexico — to enthusiastic audience applause. 

“If I get elected,” conditioned Trump. “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it — it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. But they’re not going to sell those cars.”

It’s all on tape.We can decide for ourselves whether it was a threat of post-​election violence or straight talk about the car business.

And, too, what it says that such dishonesty is welcome at the highest levels of government. And media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* All this talk about the transfer of power ignores a critical element: It will be Biden leaving office and either handing the keys to Kamala Harris, should she defeat Trump, or handing them to Trump, should he win. In this latter instance, I don’t see any quarrel coming from Trump. In the former, even the evilest version of Trump would still need an army to intervene.

Note: We can’t be too surprised, however, as four years ago Biden made a similar purposely “malevolent misinterpretation” of Trump’s comments about neo-​Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia (Biden’s Big Lie).

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national politics & policies property rights regulation

National Control

Joe Biden, democratic party, money machine

Is federal rent control, just proposed by Commissar Biden, a good idea or bad?

Well, it’s good in one way — great to torpedo the incentives and capital of owners while reducing the supply of rental units and further eroding property rights. 

All of which is bad.

Very bad.

A few details of the economic principles being blithely ignored by Biden and/​or his handlers are explained by The Wall Street Journal (“another classic White House policy contradiction: Subsidize housing, then discourage its development”), Mises​.org, and Breitbart Business, among other places.

What are the chances that this pot shot at the economy will become law in the near future: slim or none?

Slim. 

Not none, unfortunately — we’ve seen too many unthwarted federal attacks on the property rights of landlords and owners, including during the COVID-​19 pandemic.

The chances are considerably more than slim if there’s a Biden Simulacrum 2 administration.

The goal of Biden and/​or his handlers is to make clear to persons who want something for nothing — a goodly percentage of Biden’s constituency — that even a near-​brain-​dead party leader or his puppeteers can come up with scads of new schemes to loot fellow Americans as long as Biden or a Biden-​type is at least nominally in office.

So if you want more pelf, along with an expiring economy with a war of all against all, vote for Biden! 

Or whoever replaces him at the Democratic convention.

If you want freedom, prosperity, respect for property rights and each other, don’t.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom national politics & policies

A Cool Ninety Million

Joe Biden

“Some major Democratic donors have told the largest pro-​Biden super PAC, Future Forward, that pledges worth roughly $90 million are now on hold if President Biden remains atop the ticket,” a New York Times article explained on Friday.

A daring bit of pressure from insiders whom Biden now calls, without hint of irony, “the elites.”

“A leaked poll from a group closely linked with Future Forward after the debate showed that the super PAC had tested the strength of potential Biden alternatives, including Ms. Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary,” The Times elaborated. “The poll showed that Mr. Biden had a worse overall favorability rating than all the alternatives.”

Forbes identified the skeptical billionaires as including Mark Pincus, Christy Walton, Michael Novogratz, Reed Hastings and Mark Cuban. Biden, refusing to bow out, “has attempted to undo the debate damage by rallying his allies in Congress, sitting for a series of media interviews and holding his first post-​debate press conference Thursday. The interviews and Thursday’s presser are widely viewed to have gone better than the debate, but not well enough to reverse the backlash.”

“Everything is frozen because no one knows what’s going to happen,” explained one Democratic strategist to CNN. “Everyone is in wait-​and-​see mode.”

Well, that mode did not last long. 

On Saturday their bête noir Donald Trump was shot. The whole question of winning the race got infinitely harder, for the still-​alive former president looked heroic after the bullet, especially contrasted with a feeble Biden. Used to plying an insider advantage, “the elites” now have almost no advantage to ply. They might as well unfreeze their $90 million. 

Or keep it, instead. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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