All Things Biden: Is It Over Yet?

[JimC]

"Age shall weary us, and the years will condemn..."

[Tero]

Hunter Biden hearing soon over. News cycles will have to go for supreme court and trump crimes the rest of the spring. Trump wins primary is no longer news either.
https://www.threads.net/@aaron.rupar/po ... IwNjQ2YQ==

[Tero]

“Whoops, sorry, didn’t realize there was a pulse there, Mr. President!” said O’Connor, apologizing...
https://www.theonion.com/biden-physicia ... 1851297831

[Tero]

Fox news headlines in a song
https://www.threads.net/@thedailyshow/p ... IwNjQ2YQ==

[Tero]

Biden to air drop food to Ukraine
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... nouncement

Biden said the US would “seek to open up other avenues in, including possibly a marine corridor to deliver large amounts of humanitarian assistance. In addition to expanding deliveries by land, we are going to insist Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need.”

The United Arab Emirates, Egypt, France, Jordan and the UK have already carried out airdrops.

[JimC]

Israel could not very well resist US Marine landing vessels coming into the Gaza coast carrying supplies...

[Tero]

Mike Johnson sitting behind Biden. Really uncomfortable.

[pErvinalia]

Biden shouting a lot, and lots of standing applause. Hard to watch.

[laklak]

He must have had his hearing aids turned down.

[JimC]

[L'Emmerdeur]

Noting that the comments on Biden's performance were not about how he was obviously suffering from senile dementia. It's been a false bill all along. Some Republican propagandists have chosen to turn around the long-standing rumor about Trump's use of Adderall, claiming that Biden was hopped up on it for the speech. Whatever.

---

---

Turns out that the special counsel appointed by US Attorney General Garland to investigate Biden for holding classified documents (previously appointed to US attorney by Trump) is a partisan hack who's willing to lie in an official report to further a political agenda. Not a surprise, really.

Garland has proven to be ill-equipped to deal with his position. Needlessly delaying appointing a special counsel to investigate Trump's coup attempt is one of his most egregious failures in my opinion, but there are other instances where his obvious desire to appear even-handed and 'judicious' has led to him to blatant errors. A lame Attorney General, and likely would have been equally inadequate as a Supreme Court justice.

'Here’s the Real Person to Blame for That GOP Prosecutor Who Shivved Biden'

When special counsel Robert Hur announced his decision last month not to prosecute Joe Biden for his possession of classified documents, he made a startling claim: The president suffered from significant memory loss, Hur wrote, botching dates, names, and details—including the year of his son Beau’s death. This narrative had a chokehold on Biden’s reelection campaign until Tuesday, when newly released transcripts of the two-day interview revealed that Hur exaggerated and misrepresented multiple statements in an obvious effort to depict the president as a senile geezer unfit for office. Democrats hammered this point during a congressional hearing shortly after the transcripts came out, venting their fury at Hur for manipulating the record to smear Biden’s mental capacities. But in a sense, their rage was misplaced. It would be more appropriately directed toward the one person on the planet who apparently believed that Hur would serve as a fair arbiter of this controversy: Attorney General Merrick Garland.

...

... Hur’s dishonest jabs at Biden showed a profound lack of probity and principle. ... Hur took advantage of the investigation’s secrecy (and the president’s respect for its confidentiality) to paint a picture of his findings that, in many key respects, simply does not align with reality. But that is what Trump appointees do. It has barely been five years since William Barr, the Trump-selected attorney general, released a “summary” of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report that featured misleading, selective quotations, making it sound as if the report had exonerated Trump. Barr later gave a press conference at which he continued to mislead the public about the content of Mueller’s report and either spun, ignored, or redacted its most damning details. He spent much of the following year attempting to block a release of the full report. A federal judge even accused Barr of undertaking a “misleading” and “calculating” campaign to misrepresent the report’s contents. Sound familiar?

...

Really, the only data point that really matters here is that Hur secured an appointment from Trump in the first place. We have seen this story play out over and over again: An ostensibly upright conservative gets elevated to power by Trump, then promptly wields their power to reward friends and punish enemies. It’s the story of many Trump-appointed judges—most notoriously Aileen Cannon, who continues to brazenly sabotage Trump’s prosecution for withholding classified documents and obstructing justice. Cannon herself was a federal prosecutor before Trump elevated her to the bench; as far as anyone can tell, there was nothing in her record to indicate the utter lawlessness that has defined her tenure. It is almost unfathomable that Garland could witness Cannon’s reign of madness and appoint, as special prosecutor, a guy whose résumé looks so much like hers.

This isn’t a conspiracy, and these partisans aren’t sleeper agents. They are part of the conservative legal movement, which has constructed a machine that elevates people like Hur and Cannon to the top, ideally gathering as little baggage as possible along the way. Hur, like Cannon, is affiliated with the Federalist Society, the network of ambitious conservative lawyers who elevate one another into positions of power and influence. Does anyone seriously think that Hur or Cannon believes they’ve reached the highest point of their career? By running interference for Trump, Cannon is obviously auditioning for a promotion—perhaps to the Supreme Court—under her benefactor’s second term. Hur, too, has every incentive to harm Biden in this moment. During a second Trump presidency, Hur is now well positioned to get the nod for a higher position within the Department of Justice, perhaps even attorney general. At worst, he is in line for a judgeship. Brett Kavanaugh helped Kenneth Starr investigate Bill Clinton (in a maximally salacious, partisan manner) and wound up on the Supreme Court. At least one of his colleagues on the Starr team, Karin Immergut—the woman tasked with asking Monica Lewinsky invasive sexual questions—also landed a judgeship under Trump.

When you’re investigating a president, it pays to be political. For Hur, every incentive ran toward undermining Biden. If the president wins reelection, Hur will remain in exile (albeit at a lucrative law firm). If Trump knocks him out, Hur’s ascent continues apace. Somehow, Garland was unable to perceive the obvious truth that 100 percent of Hur’s interests lay in shivving Biden, not in sharing an honest account of his investigation with the public. There has been little accountability for so many other Trump enablers, like Don McGahn, who shattered norms while refraining from outright criminal conduct; why wouldn’t Hur assume that he could swing for the fences here and get away with it?

[Tero]

Comer’s House Oversight Committee inflicted another Biden impeachment hearing on us yesterday, and one can not overstate what a complete fucking disaster it was for Jimmy and his GOP cohort.

seriously, you would think Nut Hammerin’ Jimmy would be tired of this whole we’re gonna impeach Sleepy Brandon thing by now — because these hearings always blow up right in his doughy face — but no, Jimbo’s appetite for humiliation is apparently bottomless.

Comer was his usual corn pone self, angrily sputtering in his squeaky backwoods drawl, worked himself up into a lather, growing ever more agitated and high-pitched until he reached a point where only dogs could hear him yammer on about car loans and canceled checks and Hunter Biden’s ungodly ginormous crotch monster.

how clownshoes was the hearing? this clownshoes: one of Jimmy’s star witnesses testified from his prison cell.

https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/comer-fu ... g-was-such

[Tero]

[L'Emmerdeur]

The rotten socialist Biden nominates a corporate toady to the board of the national passenger rail system. Strange days indeed.

'"Betrayal of Labor": Biden Nominates Ex-Trump Official to Amtrak Board'

Rail workers voiced outrage Thursday after U.S. President Joe Biden quietly nominated a former Trump administration official with a history of supporting deregulation to Amtrak's board of directors, a move that one alliance of unions called a "slap in the face."

Ronald Batory, who has ties to the rail industry, served as head of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) under former President Donald Trump, who aggressively slashed transport and rail safety regulations during his four years in office—laying the groundwork for disasters such as the East Palestine, Ohio crash.

The Associated Press notes that before serving at the FRA, Batory was president and chief operating officer of Conrail, "a service provider for the CSX and Norfolk Southern freight railroads." Norfolk Southern operated the train that derailed in East Palestine last year, spilling toxic chemicals and sparking a public health crisis.

In 2019, Batory faced backlash from rail unions for withdrawing a proposed rule aimed at establishing mandatory crew sizes on freight and passenger trains.

"President Donald Trump, [Department of Transportation] Secretary Elaine Chao, and FRA Administrator Ron Batory have taken sides, and it's with the railroads that want to eliminate operating crew members to the detriment of rail safety and to the detriment of the communities through which our members operate trains," SMART Transportation Division said at the time.

[Tero]

Biden continies trumpian protectionist policies at least till election, so we can't have cheap Chinese electric cars.

BYD sells the Seagull, also called the Dolphin Mini, in four Latin American countries for about $21,000. The higher price includes transportation and reflects higher profits possible in less cutthroat markets than China.

BYD told the AP last year it is “still in the process” of deciding whether to sell autos in the U.S. It is weighing factory sites in Mexico for the Mexican market.

The company isn’t selling cars in the U.S. largely due to 27.5% tariffs on the sale price of Chinese vehicles when they arrive. Donald Trump slapped on the bulk of the tariff, 25%, when he was president, and it was kept in place under Joe Biden. Trump contends that the rise of EVs backed by Biden will cost U.S. factory jobs, sending the work to China.

Some members of Congress are urging Biden to ban imports of Chinese vehicles altogether, including those made in Mexico by Chinese companies that now would come in largely without tariffs.

https://news.yahoo.com/tech/small-well- ... 34766.html