I don’t like woke culture. But I also don’t like people talking about woke culture. I wish they would all shut up. My liberal friends are pretty woke, but they don’t talk about it much. Otoh, conservatives never seem to stfu about it.
If you have specific policies about specific handouts, I’d be interested in them. Otherwise it’s just noise to me.
I agree illegal immigrants should be punished and deported. I think Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump all agreed with that, actually. Obama, Trump, and Biden all made unconstitutional EOs. I think if you want to fault Obama there, then you’d need to similarly fault Trump and now Biden for his recent anti-immigration EO.
More broadly Trump attempted a lot of unconstitutional and illegal policy throughout his presidency. If the Constitution is your thing, then he is not your guy.
Imo, abortion has been a bigger holy grail to the right than to the left. Trump ran on ending R v W. Like he specifically promised that he would end R v W, which is just insane if you think about it in terms of separation of powers. Voters aren’t supposed to decide the constitution.
I agree R v W was an overreach of the constitution. I don’t think Hodges was an overreach, seemed like a natural followup to Loving, but I have a hard time caring a lot about that either. I’d be okay living in a world where the states decide cultural issues for themselves. But I’m also okay not living in that world.
Getting the government out of marriage would be fine too, but that’s never going to happen, so it’s a meaningless desire.
More broadly, I don’t think it matters a whole lot if, since our Congress is broken, our SCOTUS and President start picking up the slack. It’s not wonderful, but it’s not like, really much worse than just having a broken Congress and also not doing anything. Either way, I have a hard time feeling like it’s a really big deal. But I guess everyone has their own things that they find important to them.
Yeah, I do not understand why people feel so strongly about a specific political party, and, by extension, loathe every other party. I get that, sociologically, being part of one group often means trying to destroy other groups. But that is usually reserved as a strategy to survive.
Back to the actual case. The Prosecution has rested their case. Defense called 2 witnesses today, the guy who sold Hunter the gun and the his oldest daughter.
Judge has dismissed the jury for the weekend. defense to resume on Monday though they are expected to submitted a motion to dismiss, not sure is that’s just a formality like Trump did or if there is an actual chance of dismissal. Though a dismissal seems unlikely.
eh, if Biden pardons Hunter then I’m most likely voting third-party in 2026 and 2028, and I’m very leftist. Unless the Democratic Party denounces Biden.
Yeah Joe can’t say anything else until the election is over. Of course he doesn’t even need to Pardon him after the election, he can just commute the sentence if he gets jail time then he never lied about the Pardon. And like DJTrump, I’m sure HBiden would appeal any conviction so the chance of him going to jail before the November election is small even if he is convicted in this case.
Not sure when Hunter’s other case is or if that will be done before the election of not.
He wouldn’t be the first. Some of the more controversial pardons that I can remember -
GHWB - 6 officials involved in Iran-Conta of which GHWB was more likley than not involved with.
Clinton - Marc Rick a wealthy donor of the Clintons and Roger Clinton, his half brother, of drug charges.
GWB - Scooter Libbey who outed Valare Plame
Trump - Bannon, Stone, Charles Kushner and several others.
I thought this would be the weasel way. But I can also see Biden holding his ground with the idea that Hunter’s pardon would need to have the same level of meritoriousness as any other pardon he would give. My guess is that Biden doesn’t see protecting his family from legal consequences of bad actions as the motivation the framers had for granting the pardon power, and would therefore delegitimize the presidency.
I hope you’re right. But if Biden loses the election, he is 82 YO and may say f-it I’m letting my son out. I guess we won’t know for sure until it actually happens.
edit - Oh and can easily see Joe taking the position you laid out.
I couldn’t possibly seeing Trump take the same position if it was say Don Jr.
More objectionable to me than someone pardoning their child for a generic felony without grievous bodily harm to another is Trump’s promise to pardon the Jan 6 rioters.
Mostly I feel like this is sort of a laundry list of reasonable complaints. And if you tried, you could easily write a similar list about Republicans, and feel similarly like you could never vote for them. But nothing on the list strikes me as extreme.
I agree the disincentive to be productive is a bad outcome. Some amount of this is unavoidable, but some amount of it could probably be done by writing better laws. I usually hear something like “let them keep the money, but just make them pick up trash”. That sounds like something that makes us feel better about what is happening, but in terms of getting more out of taxpayer money, I am not sure it is well thought out point. Who enforces, this? How do they get to work? Who supervises them? Do they now get healthcare?
I feel like that is how a lot of the “common sense” ideas of Republicans are constructed. They sound great as long as you ignore the cost and effects of implementing the idea.
I’m curious how you reconcile these two positions given the accelerated frequency of Trump’s gaffs. From his falling asleep in court, his in ability to pronounce words, forgetting where he is, mixing up people, and denying he ever said things that he said multiple times on tape.
They are both too old, and both showing signs of it.
Trump is worse in 2024 than Biden was in 2020. This will continue to progress negatively for both of them.
Biden looks physically frail, and Trump appears to be younger than Biden by more than the 4 years that separate them.
Trump says stupid shit all the time. 4 years ago we were talking about injecting bleach to kill COVID. We have no idea how much of this is age related, and how much is that he just isn’t very smart. Biden is slow, but at least he doesn’t say stupid shit.
Ultimately, anyone concerned by their age should really be asking, “what will happen if they just can’t do the job?” I think Biden would resign, and no one would care. Trump will need to be removed by the 25th. He will go kicking and screaming conspiracy theories, and light the country on fire on the way out. He has not offered us a single bit of evidence in 10 years not to expect that with 100% certainty.