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As of time of writing, it’s possible the Hunter Biden plea deal may be falling apart.
Apparently the government isn’t after all quite willing to dismiss any future gun related charges after being pressed by the judge. If this is the case it looks like the media circus about the plea deal being unethical might not even have been necessary? It’s my opinion that the court process usually figures this stuff out on its own, unless anyone thinks media attention somehow influences the in court decisions of any interested parties significantly?
My personal understanding of the situation is that while influence-selling and corruption have been going on for quite a while, there was generally a level of discretion involved - the system may be incredibly corrupt and deeply compromised by both vested interests and foreign powers, but they do their best to maintain the appearance of good behavior, because that image does actually matter to the public. Hunter Biden is unique simply because he has been so incompetent, careless and nakedly corrupt that the human machinery of the state is revolting in protest. Taking money from Russia in order to approve uranium exports or taking money from tax preparation software companies in order to make sure taxation stays arcane and convoluted is just business as usual... but there's enough plausible deniability that they can make a case for their innocence which stands up to the incredibly anaemic scrutiny provided by the media.
But Hunter Biden is a level beyond that. Not hiding his crack addiction at all, not hiding his corruption or influence-trading, getting super high and drunk and just leaving laptops with mountains of incredibly incriminating evidence at repairshops and ignoring the calls about it... he was just incredibly sloppy, and he was incredibly sloppy on camera. While the media doesn't dare report on it, when you think about the actual implications of the content that's on the laptop it becomes clear just how severe a breach this is. Why would someone take a bunch of photos of them doing crack and having sex with prostitutes in China, photos that make their identity crystal clear? I've been to some pretty wild parties, but I can't think of any innocent reason as to why he took the pictures he did. Rather, I think that there's a very plausible case to be made that those photos were Hunter's copy of the blackmail material he provided to his foreign partners.
There's just so much evidence of wrongdoing, and the sheer amount of fingers being planted on the scale to make that mountain of problems go away is egregiously offensive to a lot of the human infrastructure of the state - which is why we're getting so many whistleblowers on this case. The administration and DOJ want to make it go away, but the corruption and influence-trading here is so on-the-nose and blatant that even democrat-aligned government workers are coming forward and whistleblowing. Hillary at least had the sense to make sure her corruption was murky, hidden and plausibly deniable - but anyone who can post on this site can go stare at the photos of Hunter Biden staring into the camera as he measures out a precise amount of crack, smokes it and then fucks a prostitute, all the while reading about how multiple former business partners have come forward and spoken about how the Bidens screwed them over while selling influence. The system can tolerate a lot of corruption, but Hunter has just been so incredibly sloppy and his corruption is so undeniably blatant that it represents a bridge too far for a lot of people.
I think this is basically the same reason why Trump was and is subject to such extraordinary scrutiny. His level of corruption is in the same ballpark as other recent presidents, but he is too sloppy and is unable or unwilling to correctly play the plausible deniability game.
Actually I think he has substantially less corruption. He already made his money with "deals", buildings, dodgy scams like selling non-kosher vodka to Israel and Trump University, so he doesn't have to actually engage with a lot of the influence-selling and other scams. I don't think there's anything in Trump's past that compares to the Burisma business that Biden is involved in, for instance.
One reason that Trump does not have a scandal where he sold influence in the past is that he did not hold elective office before being President. He really did not have the chance to be corrupt in that way.
He seems less dodgy than most land developers, especially New York ones, but that is not the highest bar.
The most obvious place where he could have been worse than Biden is in Epstein-like behavior, but it seems that he is not interested in teen girls. His type is very obvious, and that has kept his troubles contained. Stormy Daniels is 44, so she was 27 when they had their dalliance. His affair with Karen McDougal was when she was 39 (which is almost respectable and obeyed the half your age + 7 rule - just). Alana Evans, who failed to show up for Trump, was 34 at the time.
Yeah, I don't think he's uniquely morally strong or anything - hell, I think influence selling would have been in his character if he was in politics, he's just wealthy enough already that he didn't actually need to do it. Even still, I think having a leader that isn't in the pocket of one or more large donors is a positive by itself no matter how it happened.
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Why would hunter get a copy of the blackmail material he provided, and anyways, isn’t there enough evidence of him acting like a douchey rich 21 year old to assume that him taking sex tapes with drugs in evidence like a douchey rich 21 year old is just more evidence thereof?
As someone who was one and has since been around a lot of douchey rich 21 year olds, that's not really the kind of photo they'd take in my experience. Maybe things are different in US elite circles, but the photos Hunter took don't really seem like the kind you'd want to show off to anyone - the facial expression, the precise weight measurement, the fact that he's banging a prostitute... I can understand taking a photo of yourself banging some hot girl you picked up, but the photos that we actually got to see don't really look like that. To be fair I don't have a peer-reviewed article handy on rich douchebag photography habits so I can't disprove your point, but that is my reading of the evidence.
There is no one culture of rich young people. Hunter seems to have become involved with a long series of bad crowds. There is middle ground between 'he was happy for the picture to be taken' and 'it was blackmail material for intelligence'. It could be a 'friend', it could be for a joke or to show him later, it could be to make fun of him, it could be for someone's general amusement or because they felt like taking it. It could be with the faint idea that it might be financially lucrative to have such an image without - at that specific time - being part of a planned blackmail scheme.
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The sad thing is that hunter would probably actually benefit from 3-6 months in a real jail (not club fed). It would force him to rehab and probably cause a lot of self reflection.
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I don't think Hunter is that smart. I think he's dumb enough that even at his age, he's still acting like a teenage/early twenties guy who thinks showing off how 'hood' they can pretend to be, with bitches and hos and coke and partying, is Kewl and they want to boast about how they're having such a great time.
Of course he wants photos of what a big swinging dick he is and how all the girls want him, even foreign hos. He is that dumb.
And he also has a powerful, doting father. Obviously, even being the son of the president doesn't give you total impunity, but an idiot might think so.
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He knows that a pimp's love is very different from that of a square.
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The funny thing about Hunter Biden is the Hunter Biden Brand is very culture warry but Hunter Biden himself is just a fairly stereotypical fucked up elite guy who did a bunch of grifting on his name.
Deep down I don’t even think Joe is culture warry left. He was probably disgusted by a bunch of trannies showing their boobs on the White House. But he grew up a Democrat politician and his chief skill is being that so he says what he needs to say for his coalition. He likes being the front man.
The only reason these people matter is because the left could never agree on a politician that wasn’t just a blank state so they propped him up. And now all there scandals became culture war.
Apart from everything else, Joe's major fault is that he does love his fuck-up son. That's good, but it's also bad in that he's indulged him way beyond what is healthy.
I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic or not.
Do you mean Joe participated in Hunters business deals because he wanted Hunter to have a career?
Versus Joe put Hunter in charge of finding people to pay them because Joe wanted money?
I think that Joe has an outrageously inflated sense of himself and his family. His entire career has been full of fits of compulsive lying about his academic accomplishments, his family history, his political and personal activities, and the activities of the people around him.
I think that it's both: he wanted his kid to be a successful power broker because he wanted to maintain this idea of "The Biden Name" meaning anything other than lying and corruption.
It's the reason that his grandaughter isn't allowed to use "The Biden Name" and is getting paid off with some of Hunter's paintings: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-daughter-ex-stripper-receive-fathers-paintings-settlement-states
Somebody in this family thinks that there is value to their name.
The guy's a millionaire and she gets bought off with paintings? That sounds crazy.
The paintings are also worthless unless Hunter is the one selling them.
Just absolutely deranged that a judge allowed this.
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I don’t think Joe has a special love his son. Take for example Joe’s extreme cruelty to his granddaughter Navy. Does that sound like a family man? Publicly claiming she isn’t his granddaughter despite the fact that she is?
I think Joe uses Hunter. I think he exploits him. See Hunter’s email complaining about Joe taking half of his income. Joe loved Beau because he thought Beau could help build the Biden’s into the Delaware Kennedys. Hunter was always a fuck up and so his role was being the bribe guy to fund the lavish lifestyle.
Do I have definitive proof? No. But the evidence is certainly mounting.
In a different case, that would be exploitative. But we're talking Hunter here. This is the equivalent of a kid complaining they aren't getting their full pocket money because their parents are so mean, they don't want them spending it all on funko pops (or whatever). Joe taking half Hunter's money means that there is some money left for Hunter to live on, because are you seriously going to look me in the face and tell me Hunter is responsible enough to pay the rent and utility bills every month?
Joe is taking Hunter’s “money” because Hunter is the conduit by which Joe is selling influence. I referenced one email. There are many more and numerous 3P to confirm. I’m probably below beyond a reasonable doubt but also comfortable above MLTN. Somewhere around 60-65% sure.
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But what of the phone call which certain people inexplicably considered damning? And, insisting that your fuckup kid repay a loan, even if the payments are half his rather substantial income, is indeed a form of love.
This refusal, of people on both sides, to admit that their "enemies" might have any redeeming features is highly destructive to their credibility. Why should I believe anything that AOC says about Clarence Thomas, for example?
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I’ve been saying the whole time: Biden is the kind of president I want. For a sufficiently weak definition of “want,” at least. Boring. I want the President to shut up, sign or veto things, and sort of play mediator. And especially not commit crimes. Maybe this is what it means to be “presidential.”
Even Biden’s attempts at signature legislation feel more like complying with someone else’s push than a personal campaign promise.
I think right-leaning news knows that this plays pretty well with centrists. Hard to offend people by doing nothing exciting. This would be why the “mentally unfit” attack has seen so much airtime.
The problem though is when the handlers pushing the presidential puppet around are way more activist, be that right wing or left wing. I don't find it hard to believe Joe didn't know or care about Sam Brinton, but somebody wanted that particular non-binary personette in that kind of government job as a signal. And that's how you get the trans folx flashing their boobs (or lack of same) on the White House Lawn.
It would be just as bad for a compromise puppet Republican president where the administration behind-the-scenes people were pushing their agenda. A milquetoast president who isn't going to frighten the horses isn't a bad thing and a lot of people would be happy to vote for them, but such a president has to be forceful enough that they aren't just a puppet and The Whatever Agenda is being carried out by others without their knowledge, input, or consent.
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I've been working on a post claiming that Biden and Fetterman are the perfect white male democrat candidates because they are a literal mental blank their handlers can puppet however they want, but your explanation is much better.
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Sometimes a guy like that is fine if everyone agree the country is on the right track. While I think the Bidens themselves aren’t radicals I do think Joe will back what his side tells him to. Perhaps he doesn’t have his own opinions. I guess my point is his driving force is power for himself and some modest grift on the side - though the grifts they do often seems to be people the US shouldn’t be owing favors too. Like if he grifted 50 million from an options trade on inside info I would care less.
At other times a leader like Musks would be fantastic. Even in a society doing well. Someone with vision who can move the country to somewhere better. In some ways our culture wars todays are different visions of maintaining the US decline (absolutely - relatively we’ve probably rarely been more powerful).
For your “mediator” I think the people complaint is because he’s mediate between the HRC branch of corporate types (those who’ve taken the neolib liberal today) and a bunch of people I really don’t like.
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Whose push? If he's just a puppet letting someone else pull the strings, then isn't that person or group effectively the President? How do you have Democracy and accountability if the literal President is just a figurehead representing unknown people in a political party? Does every Democratic Senator vote to decide what Joe Biden's next position should be? Does Nancy Pelosi call all the shots unilaterally and functionally equivalent to being the president herself except she gets none of the blame or credit if things go badly? Is Hillary Clinton the puppetmaster and electing Joe Biden was politically equivalent to electing her? Is the CEO of CNN actually influencing Joe Biden by implicitly threatening to smear him if he doesn't do what they want? We don't know. And next election cycle, if Joe Biden steps down and another puppet steps up you might have the exact same person/people pulling their strings, bypassing term limits, and pretending to be starting fresh with a new reputation, forgetting all the mistakes they made in the past.
I very much want a President who has policies and agendas, declares what they are openly, honestly, and publicly, and then sticks to them as much as reasonably possible. Because then we the people can decide which collections of policies and agendas we actually agree with and vote for whichever President has the best. Because we the people are supposed to be in charge, not shady politicians making secret deals behind the scenes and avoiding responsibility.
I don't think so, while I do think the Clintons retain some influence within the party. But I'd love to know what particular bunch are the puppetmasters, because I do think things like Brinton and the White House Lawn trans people are happening deliberately, while Biden kiboshed the student loan forgiveness that he was elected on. Is it Kamala? I find that hard to believe, but is there some Obama-era rump set of officials who were firmly Hopey Changey who are using Biden as a way to push forward their slice of progressive activism?
I don't think there's any particular bunch of puppetmasters per se, but a variety of competing powerblocs whose levels of influence waxes and wanes through time. That's the most plausible explanation I can find for the sheer incoherency of US foreign policy over the last two decades.
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When did Biden kibosh the student loan idea? The SCOTUS kiboshed it correctly imo
And notably, Biden almost immediately came up with another idea to try to forgive student loans.
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That, yes, but I was going off all the online moaning about how Biden had stabbed everyone in the back and not done the debt quashing. I suppose I shouldn't get my news from lefty complaining!
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And Biden immediately started working around it, including reneging on the debt-ceiling deal to extend an effective payment pause.
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This is way too binary for no reason. Biden isn't either powerless President Dopey-Grandpa or dictatorial President God-Emperor-of-Mankind, he's somewhere in the middle like every other president. He can do some things, more things with the cooperation of the rest of the state apparatus than he can without it, and he can't do others. He is uniquely limited by Barack Obama's continued existence and popularity, and probably to a lesser extent by the Clintons', in the sense that if he went too far from Barack's wishes on virtually any policy I don't think Biden's policy would survive a Barack Obama speech/MSNBC interview/NYT Op-Ed coming out against Biden's policy.
Biden is not the most popular active member of his own party, that makes him weak and limited. I don't think we have a recent parallel, maybe since Taft? HW was a direct successor to Reagan so it doesn't feel the same (and Reagan was pretty much gone mentally by the end of his term), Clinton was vastly more popular than Carter while in office, by the time Dubya was in office HW and Reagan were firmly in dotage, Obama was more popular than Bill, Trump didn't have much to fear from Dubya and in fact directly defeated his forces in the primary. Back further than that you're getting into Reagan-Nixon, Carter-LBJ type pairings where the predecessor clearly left office a failure.
For example, if Biden wanted to send US Air Force trainers to Lviv, and Barack Obama immediately published an NYT article opposing doing so, I doubt they would be sent, by one means or another the policy would fall apart before arrival. Or if Biden was close to signing a major treaty or passing a legislative compromise, and Obama came out against it. As a result, Biden has to compromise with multiple power bases, both inside and outside the government, to keep his priorities moving forward.
Priorities being a key word. CW doesn't strike me as Biden's number one issue set, and politics always means sacrificing a lower priority issue for you that is a higher priority issue for someone else so that your counterparty will support your priority issue. The CW stuff strikes me as largely the same Third Way slop from the Blair/Clinton years: give the Left enough wedge issue wins that they'll refuse to vote for the other guy, to keep them in line for corporatism.
But on the flip side, Barack and Bill and Hillary and Kamala could all try to force Biden into signing a particular treaty with Russia ending the Ukrainian war, if Biden didn't want to he couldn't be forced to do so. Essentially we're getting a system with multiple vetoes, which creates inaction and favors the status quo and inertial movement.
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I think most Dems aren't personally enamored with Joe Biden the man, and more than a little embarrassed by him. Attempts to cast him as 'just a boring understated centrist' who doesn't really offend anybody is a kind of cope, and a facade of false humility that permits them to say 'Boy, how unhinged right-wing anger is! He's not even really progressive and you're still foaming at the guy! Partisan politics much?" while progressivism turbo-charges under his watch.
The only people I have ever heard describe him in such a fashion are... Democrats. Many of them who are rather politically milquetoast and blasé now (a sharp change from their demeanor under the last presidency), and it frankly feels like deflection. The random assortment of people I've talked to where he comes up as a topic - the closest I can get to a 'man on the street' whose political affiliations I'm unfamiliar with - typically have a very different take on the guy.
Which isn't to say they're right wing or would vote for Trump.
What do they tend to say? I’m surrounded by well-off Texan defense engineers, which form quite a bubble. They unironically tend to assert that various economic or cultural failings are Biden’s personal fault. Well, or Hillary’s!
I think mild embarrassment is okay. Not admirable, but not a barrier to cheering for your team. I wasn’t politically aware at the time, but I kind of assume this is how people felt about W prior to 9/11.
This is not comprehensive, but my sample can be boiled doen to some types: random barber in my area (southern but with ample blue ambition for decades in no small part due to transplants, myself included), Latino working class man and his wife looking to escape LA who I met at a wedding, tattooed nerd-chic good-looking friend of friend in AI tech, immigrant Uber driver shooting the shit, cosmopolitan (and attractive) Peruvian office co-worker with a pronounced accent and stereotypical latin flair, and a few others I'm probably forgetting. On a very shallow reading based on appearances and speech patterns, it wouldn't be out of the question to assume many of these people would lean Blue to some degree or another, which often left me a bit surprised when an unprompted 'state of the country' or 'Biden is making a mess' comment would leave their mouths. None of them struck me as obsessive partisans in the same way I often wonder I am.
If I could synergize and condense their words into something, it is: Being a gaping hole through which progressive ideology spills through you does not make one a centrist or a moderate. A number of these folks did the usual "I couldn't stand Trump" disclaimer, but now find themselves livid over things like student debt cancelation, soft-on-crime policies in their local area, and (but of course) the normalization and pushing of transgenderism on children. I wondered if these people are outliers, but they would match up broadly with polling that indicates the growing unpopularity of these movements and attendant policies. These are people who truly expected the promised "return to normal", and now feel cheated. For Biden to qualify as centrist or moderate in their eyes would require him pushing back on the excesses among his ranks, and instead they see a doddering figure who probably doesn't even understand half of what's being shoveled through him. Like, do you think Biden has even a semi-coherent understanding of transgenderism, or does he get by just aping the rhetoric of yesteryear's gay rights battles? They wanted Bill Clinton, and instead they got a puppet that can barely conceal its strings. Biden is most likely 'moderate' as a mere man, but as a President he is anything but, and acting like the former means anything or is consequential in any way feels like gaslighting.
Now, it's not like I had extended conversations with many of these people. I'm at risk of filling in some gaps with my own concerns and putting words into their mouths. But, I have only ever heard "He's just old and boring" said by people who are hard-coded Democrats and who could never even entertain the idea of voting for a non-Trump Republican, no matter how moderate or 'presidential' they would be by comparison. Like a good friend of mine who may say "Y'know, it seems like conservatives are making a bigger deal out of the pronouns issue than liberals", and I have to irritatedly remind him that cons aren't the ones who kicked up this 'pronoun issue'; that to whatever extent they are mad about it, it's in reaction to progressives pushing and enshrining it out of seemingly nowhere. Or the kind of person who dismisses seething over the Pride flag with "Jeez, I can't believe you're that burnt up over a little ol' piece of fabric!" but then goes to DEFCON-4 with media and institutional support if anybody were to sully or remove one. The kind of person who says they don't care for Biden at all and only considered him the least worst option, but conspicuously never has any specific criticisms of him and his performance (except old/boring) and is very eager to change the topic to some Republican malfeasance instead of giving a straight Yes/No answer if puberty blockers for toddlers is a good idea.
It's the same ploy behind his or his handlers' "Do I look like a radical socialist?" statement during his 2020 run. Because we all 'know' that geriatric white politicians who say "folks" are just an aged, bland flavor of vanilla, and how could anybody be incensed by it unless they're nuts. It's the same machinery behind "I can't believe the Right is going after Big Bird!" when Sesame Street is pushing vaccines, "I can't believe shooting Nazis is now controversial!" when a game company is intimating similarities with MAGA supporters, or "It's just a comedy show!" when some dumb shit falls out of John Oliver's mouth.
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All this is just the trappings of centrism, and it only works because of media compliance. Imagine some normal Republican acting boring, but doing the reverse of all the Biden things: Siccing the FBI on teachers unions and Planned Parenthood. Multiple investigations into Democrats for things every politician knows they all do. Passing massive budget cuts to 3 letter agencies, welfare, and medicaid. Securing the southern border and expediting deportations.
Could President Mike Lee do all that quietly and be the "kind of president you want?" Of course not, he'd be constantly attacked as a theocratic fascist, and people who want "normalcy" will have it insisted to them that only Democrats can ever be normal. "But Trump" has never been correct. Always remember Rubio was actually worse was a take from one of the smartest and least crazy Democrats.
https://www.vox.com/2016/2/20/11067932/rubio-worse-than-trump
I would significantly prefer that president to Trump, yeah. Less likely to damage normal government functionality, whether intentionally or by incompetent/nepotistic staffing.
I mean, I’d prefer the executive be trimmed back in general, moving most of those actions under the control of Congress. But I don’t hold out much hope for that!
I think you think that. And you might actually think that after seeing such an administration in action. But the typical person will not, and especially the median Democrat. Look how they were just able to manufacture a special counsel out of literally nothing (Russia) and an impeachment over a completely legitimate inquiry into Biden family corruption in Ukraine. And all this for a guy who didn't actually do anything to negatively affect their interests.
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To add to this, Obama didn’t campaign for gay marriage. Now you have Biden actively promoting gender transition and calling attempts to stop it in minors as “close to sinful.” This is by far the most leftist administration in American history yet we are being told it is centrist? I hate the gaslighting.
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Yeah if you exclude all of the things Biden has done then he is centrist.
Instead Biden has:
Tried to unilaterally cancel about 500b of student debt that everyone (including Pelosi) thought required congressional approval since you know generally congress has to approve buildings.
Required effectively all working adults to take a vaccine they didn’t want to try to stop the spread of a virus when they knew the vaccine couldn’t do that once again without congressional approval.
Sic the FBI on parents calling them domestic terrorists for..being involved with school board meetings in a way that went against his beloved teachers union.
Engage in significant censorship and tried to create a disinformation board.
Used the bully pulpit to support gender affirming care calling laws to stop it “close to sinful” or used that bully pulpit to claim benign voter lawyers as “Jim Eagle.”
It really is tiring hearing supporters of Biden continue to claim “he is centrist” when he has been anything but and the only reason he didn’t have more progressive policies passed was because Manchin.
Also of course there appears to be the vast amount of bribes he took so that you know undermines the whole “don’t do illegal acts” thing.
You missed the various rule making and policy changes affecting firearms as well. See VanDerStok v Garland very similar to the student debt case where through administrative rule-making they attempted to redefine statutory language well beyond the plain meaning. There is also the "zero tolerance" policy for FFLs treating form 4473 errors made by applicants not the FFLs and that were approved by NICS (FBI+ATF) yet still incorrect (putting country in the county field of question 10 as an exmaple) as "willful violations" leading to license revocations that can only be challenged in a hearing presided over by an ATF employee who is the boss of the same ATF employees who made the determination to revoke the license in the first place.
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Jim Eagle? Why the code word? You can just say Crow.
He famously claimed Georgia now was basically Jim Crow but worse — he then called it Jim Eagle.
Oh I missed that. Lol.
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Presumably @zeke5123 was referencing this Biden quote.
Yep thanks!
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If there's an ongoing investigation, then many of the records are shielded from Congressional oversight. Considering all the generous, generous, one-of-a-kind mistakes prosecutors have let Hunter get away with, it's hard not to think of this whole thing as unethical. Hunter was cashing million-dollar checks from Ukraine and not reporting that income and it's too late to do anything because the statute of limitation passed, on these crimes that were being investigated from the beginning.
Is it possible for them to drag it out and then for Biden (or his successor) to preemptively pardon him on his last day in office?
Certainly
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Is this more a case of "we have no idea what other skeletons are going to come tumbling out of the closet" and hence no plea deal? The gaiety of nations has been greatly increased by whatever the hell his lawyers are up to.
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