Look at him.
Be honest -
you wouldn't let that guy
babysit squirrels in the park.
Dec 2, 2024
White People
... and their gods - gods that always agree perfectly with these "Christians", no matter what they do or say or how they totally disagree with each other.
- and the previous report mentioned in the above piece:
The attempts to leverage minority power - not to gain equity, but to take power and to rule by force.
Today's Quote
The story of villains
is much more entertaining
than the story of heroes,
because monsters are not born,
they are made.
--Mary Shelley
It would seem we are living a very interesting story.
The Hunter Thing
First:
I am, in fact, old enough to remember when Republicans cared about traditions and norms and precedents. But that's ancient history now. They don't, so it doesn't matter what Biden does or doesn't do in regard to following any institutional traditions. The other side doesn't give one empty fuck about any of that.
Second:
This is a brick fight, and you don't win a brick fight with a rule book.
You have to pick up a brick, and chuck it as hard as you can at any random MAGA fucker's head.
That's where we're at now.
I don't like getting down in the mud with the pigs - we all get filthy and they like it that way. But that's where the pigs are, so that's where the fight is. And if we're going to beat the pigs, we'll have to meet them where they are - at least most of the time, until or unless we can elevate the struggle back to a reasonable place.
The trick is to not lose track of our own humanity as we fight against an army of inhumane assholes.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, sparing the younger Biden a possible prison sentence for federal felony gun and tax convictions and reversing his past promises not to use the extraordinary powers of the presidency for the benefit of his family.
The Democratic president had previously said he would not pardon his son or commute his sentence after convictions in the two cases in Delaware and California. The move on Sunday night comes weeks before Hunter Biden was set to receive his punishment after his trial conviction in the gun case and guilty plea on tax charges, and less than two months before President-elect Donald Trump is set to return to the White House.
It caps a long-running legal saga for the younger Biden, who publicly disclosed he was under federal investigation in December 2020 — a month after his father’s 2020 victory — and casts a pall over the elder Biden’s legacy.
Biden, who time and again pledged to Americans that he would restore norms and respect for the rule of law after Trump’s first term in office, ultimately used his position to help his son, breaking his public pledge to Americans that he would do no such thing.
In a statement released Sunday evening, Biden said, “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
The president’s sweeping pardon covers not just the gun and tax offenses against the younger Biden, but also any other “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024.”
In June, Biden categorically ruled out a pardon or commutation for his son, telling reporters as his son faced trial in the Delaware gun case, “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.”
As recently as Nov. 8, days after Trump’s victory, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre ruled out a pardon or clemency for the younger Biden, saying, “We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no.”
The elder Biden has publicly stood by his only living son as Hunter descended into serious drug addiction and threw his family life into turmoil before getting back on track in recent years. The president’s political rivals have long used Hunter Biden’s myriad mistakes as a political cudgel against his father: In one hearing, lawmakers displayed photos of the drug-addled president’s son half-naked in a seedy hotel.
House Republicans also sought to use the younger Biden’s years of questionable overseas business ventures in a since-abandoned attempt to impeach his father, who has long denied involvement in his son’s dealings or benefiting from them in any way.
“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,” Biden said in his statement. “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son.”
“I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” Biden added, claiming he made the decision this weekend.
The president had spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Nantucket, Massachusetts, with Hunter and his family, and departed for Angola later Sunday on what may be his last foreign trip as president before leaving office on Jan. 20, 2025.
Hunter Biden was convicted in June in Delaware federal court of three felonies for purchasing a gun in 2018 when, prosecutors said, he lied on a federal form by claiming he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.
He had been set to stand trial in September in the California case accusing him of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. But he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges in a surprise move hours after jury selection was set to begin.
David Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware who negotiated the plea deal, was subsequently named a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland to have more autonomy over the prosecution of the president’s son.
Hunter Biden said he was pleading guilty in that case to spare his family more pain and embarrassment after the gun trial aired salacious details about his struggles with a crack cocaine addiction.
The tax charges carry up to 17 years behind bars and the gun charges are punishable by up to 25 years in prison, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for far less time and it was possible he would have avoided prison time entirely.
Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced this month in the two federal cases, which the special counsel brought after a plea deal with prosecutors that likely would have spared him prison time fell apart under scrutiny by a judge. Under the original deal, Hunter was supposed to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses and and would have avoided prosecution in the gun case as long as he stayed out of trouble for two years.
But the plea hearing quickly unraveled last year when the judge raised concerns about unusual aspects of the deal. The younger Biden was subsequently indicted in the two cases.
Hunter Biden’s legal team this weekend released a 52-page white paper titled “The political prosecutions of Hunter Biden,” describing the president’s son as a “surrogate to attack and injure his father, both as a candidate in 2020 and later as president.”
The younger Biden’s lawyers have long argued that prosecutors bowed to political pressure to indict the president’s son amid heavy criticism by Trump and other Republicans of what they called the “sweetheart” plea deal.
Rep. James Comer, one of the Republican chairmen leading congressional investigations into Biden’s family, blasted the president’s pardon, saying that the evidence against Hunter was “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“It’s unfortunate that, rather than come clean about their decades of wrongdoing, President Biden and his family continue to do everything they can to avoid accountability,” Comer said on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.
Biden is hardly the first president to deploy his pardon powers to benefit those close to him.
In his final weeks in office, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in law, Jared Kushner, as well as multiple allies convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump over the weekend announced plans to nominate the elder Kushner to be the U.S. envoy to France in his next administration.
Trump, who has pledged to dramatically overhaul and install loyalists across the Justice Department after he was prosecuted for his role in trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election, said in a social media post on Sunday that Hunter Biden’s pardon was “such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice.”
“Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” Trump asked, referring to those convicted in the violent Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
Hunter Biden said in an emailed statement that he will never take for granted the relief granted to him and vowed to devote the life he has rebuilt “to helping those who are still sick and suffering.”
“I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” the younger Biden said.
Hunter Biden’s legal team filed Sunday night in both Los Angeles and Delaware asking the judges handling his gun and tax cases to immediately dismiss them, citing the pardon.
A spokesperson for Weiss did not respond to messages seeking comment Sunday night.
NBC News was first to report Biden was expected to pardon his son Sunday.
Today's Keith
The hopeful thing:
There's some probability that Republicans are finally figuring out that their fate lies in effective and open resistance to the orange menace, and not in appeasement and excuse-making.
Dec 1, 2024
Overheard
When we think back on our schooling, and we can recall formulas, and methods, and events and famous people from history, and all the other things we learned - what we're actually doing is remembering the teachers who made it all possible.
Honor the teachers.
Nov 30, 2024
BKjr
And yes - it's easy to suspect it ties in with the brain worm thing (prob'ly not), but BKjr has had it for quite a while now, and apparently, one of the things that doesn't help is a strict regimen of diet and exercise, which kinda puts the lie to the guy's insistence that all anybody needs is a better diet, more exercise, and no drugs.
And this is the dude they want to put in charge of America's public health policy?
A neurological movement disorder, it causes difficulty in speaking, and a voice that often breaks and sounds strained or strangled.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, has said he has spasmodic dysphonia. It is a voice disorder characterized by involuntary spasms in the muscles that control the vocal cords, or folds. This causes difficulty in speaking, and a voice that often breaks and sounds strained or strangled.
It is known as a focal dystonia, a neurological movement disorder that affects one specific part of the body. Writer’s cramp, where there are spasms in the hands or fingers, or persistent eye spasms or eye closure are others in the same category.
Spasmodic dysphonia most often develops at midlife — in one’s 30s or 40s — and can be life altering, particularly for those whose careers depend on speech.
“Most people take their voice for granted until they don’t have it,” said Pryor Brenner, a otolaryngologist in D.C. “It can be very discouraging. People don’t feel comfortable speaking, or don’t want to speak. They are embarrassed. It has a huge impact because they aren’t able to express themselves.”
Moreover, “it’s an invisible condition, meaning others can’t see it,” said Michael M. Johns, professor of clinical otolaryngology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and director of the USC Voice Center. “It’s not associated with any cognitive impairment, and these people look normal to the eye.”
Scientists agree that the disorder is neurological but don’t know its exact cause, according to Dysphonia International. Researchers are still trying to identify which part of the brain is involved and whether there may be a genetic component, according to the organization.
Some cases also may be triggered by a viral illness such as a cold or influenza, or a traumatic life event such as the death of a loved one, Brenner said. “An incredibly stressful event in life can turn it on,” he said.
Andrew Tritter, a laryngologist at UTHealth Houston, said such cases are rare, but they do occur. “I’ve seen them from a traumatic experience to going in for routine surgery,” he said. “I had one patient who woke up with it after she had a hysterectomy. Her voice was terrible, and it became chronic.”
Tritter said for people with spasmodic dysphonia, it “can be frustrating and upsetting to not be understood or heard, or be asked to constantly repeat yourself.”
There also are idiopathic cases, which occur spontaneously with no obvious cause. “It just happens,” Brenner said.
There are three kinds of spasmodic dysphonia.
Adductor spasmodic dysphonia is the most common type, which accounts for 80 percent of cases, including Kennedy’s, experts said. It causes sudden involuntary spasms that trigger the vocal cords to stiffen and close. The spasms disrupt the vibration of the vocal cords and the ability to make sounds.
Abductor spasmodic dysphonia is less common — accounting for about 20 percent of cases, experts said. It results in involuntary spasms that trigger the vocal cords to open, making vibration impossible and forming words difficult. Also, the open position lets air escape during speech, making the person sound weak, quiet and breathy.
Mixed spasmodic dysphonia is very rare and has symptoms common to the other two types.
How is spasmodic dysphonia diagnosed?
An otolaryngologist and speech-language pathologist will evaluate a patient’s symptoms and medical history and visualize their vocal cord movement through a stroboscopy exam, which is an endoscopy through the nose or mouth with a special camera and light that provides a detailed visual of vocal cord vibration to diagnose the condition.
They also will rate voice quality, record the voice to obtain acoustic measures and may palpate the neck to determine the presence of tension in and around the larynx. They may also ask the patient to read or repeat several specific sentences.
At times, the condition can be confused with other vocal issues such as a vocal tremor, Brenner said. But there is a distinction.
“Someone who has a vocal tremor can’t hold a pitch.” he said, describing a wavering that occurs when the person tries. Someone with spasmodic dysphonia, on the other hand, “can usually hold a single pitch but has trouble forming and articulating words.
How is spasmodic dysphonia treated?
Spasmodic dysphonia can’t be cured, experts said. Usually, once someone has it, “it doesn’t fluctuate over time,” Brenner said. “It levels off fairly quickly, with not a lot of variation over the years.”
Also, “I’ve never seen a child with it,” he added.
But there are several treatments, including surgery and voice therapy, though injections with botulinum toxin (Botox) is the gold standard in providing temporary relief, usually for several months, experts said.
It’s an office-based procedure using local anesthesia. Needles are passed into the neck and through the vocal cords, Johns said, and “it helps the vast majority of people become more functional in their lives.”
Botox works by blocking nerve impulses at the muscle receptor site, which normally signal the muscle to contract, and must be repeated periodically. The response varies, but the average relief lasts for about three to four months, according to Dysphonia International.
There can be some side effects, including breathiness, difficulty swallowing and pain at the injection site. Still, “it is a great treatment for most people,” Brenner said.
There also are at least two surgeries available, experts said. “Both are operations on the larynx and vocal cords to try to separate and relax them,” Johns said. “But they are fraught with complications and not considered standard treatment for the condition.”
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