Ah, you are right. I saw a recent article about the parents of some of those kids who were pissed off and I misremembered the article. I thought that the parents were seeking clemency for their kids. What they actually said in the article was that they wanted “to see the ‘same kind of compassion and mercy’ extended to juvenile defendants around the country.” Which is not something Biden could do anyway because, as you say, those were state level courts/charges.

She should come out with her own Erectile Disfuntion/Incontinence treatment and advertise it using the exact same image.

Ye gads! Thanks again.

You are correct. They hatched a plan to grant clemency to a slew of people who were convicted of non-violent crimes that were switched to home confinement during the pandemic and who kept their noses clean since then. So a bunch of people who tended to skew older and committed financial crimes. No one thought to look at the details, I guess, so he pardoned some people he probably shouldn’t have.

Frankly, what’s done is done. He needs to now pardon all the kids who were convicted by this asshole and his partner, because they are the ones who really deserve it.

Thanks for the correction. And yes, no one is investing that kind of money unless they are certain they will be getting a substantial return on investment.

You are correct. Simple inertia will keep most voters right where they are in the Democratic party no matter what. There is no way to generate a massive movement to a new party or to an existing 3rd party. It’s not going to happen. Millions of voters are not going to suddenly jump ship and go to another party.

On the other hand, it might take only thousands of young people to take over enough local and state Democratic parties so that the corruption at the higher levels of the party can be rooted out and the party can be changed into a legitimate party of the working class.

Investment. That means they are putting money in and expecting to make a profit. They will dump $100 million billion in the U.S. and we’ll have to pay them back… with interest. In other words, we’ll get $100 million billion worth of infrastructure, or something, and end up paying $200 million billion or more for it with our taxes. No matter what the Republicans say, privatization is never a good thing.

Edit: Oops! Meant to say billion but my fingers were working faster than my brain.

Because it’s working as intended. Shareholders are making bank. That’s all that matters in the USA.

But I thought overturning Roe v Wade was about restoring state rights?

This is exactly what they intended and, in fact, has parallels with the Confederacy.

As you no doubt know, the Civil War was over slavery. But more specifically, it was about the northern states refusal to follow the fugitive slave act and return runaway slaves to the south. The Confederate states were insisting that the other states enforced the South’s laws on slavery. The North refused to do so and treated runaway slaves like any other free person.

As Mark Twain said, History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes.

Remember when that woman in Florida complained that Trump wasn’t hurting the right people?

This is the mirror image of that. Biden is not helping the right people. Dear gods, these are the sort of people you expect Trump to pardon.

It will now be the Knee-Deep (in bullshit) State.

He can’t blanket pardon people.

Where did you get that idea? It’s been done before. In 1977 for example, President Carter, issued a blanket pardon to everyone who dodged the draft during the Vietnam war.

There are, in fact, very few limitations on the power of the pardon.

This ProPublica article is good reading. It discusses a company used by many insurers, including UHC, to deny claims using AI. The name of the company is EviCore. I suppose the “Evi” is supposed to be short for “evidence” but I think it is pretty clear that it’s just short for “evil.”

Your quote is included in this Financial Times piece (archived version) but it’s immediately followed sorry, preceded by my favorite. And by favorite, I mean one of the most vile things I’ve ever heard.

One former Cigna executive recalled how the US health insurer used to frequently face threats when claims were denied. “We’d have times when you’d deny proton laser therapy for a kid with seizures and the parent would freak out,” said the former executive.

Proton Laser Therapy is used to precisely kill tumors. You know, like tumors in a brain that are causing seizures. How dare those parents “freak out” just because you are refusing to cover their child’s cancer treatment? These fuckers are completely out of touch. They honestly think they have the moral high-ground letting kids die in order to increase shareholder value. I now really understand why the guillotine was invented.

*We conclude that, as a matter of history and precedent, the Takings Clause does not require compensation for damaged or destroyed property when it was objectively necessary for officers to damage or destroy that property in an active emergency to prevent imminent harm to persons. *

Except that the hostage had already been released. There was no imminent harm to persons because the police had the guy cornered alone in a house. They could have called in negotiators and waited the guy out. Their actions were by no means necessary to prevent harm.

Fuck Moscow Mitch.

Your family should not be under more scrutiny than anybody else and they should not be a target of your political enemies.

What’s your point? If you break the law, you should be treated like everybody else

That is exactly my point. Others who have committed the same crimes are treated with a slap on the wrist. Republicans, in Hunter’s case, were insisting on heavy handed prosecution and were pushing very hard for a jail sentence. He deserved a pardon exactly because he was not being treated like everybody else.

Should Joe have pardoned Hunter? No it undermines the entire message of nobody is above the law

I disagree. Hunter’s prosecution was political in nature. Anyone else accused of the same crimes would not have faced even close to what he did. If it were anyone else I would still want Biden to pardon him.

So what? Maybe it should be but it isn’t. The Constitution places virtually no limitation on the Presidents ability to offer clemency and no one in the last 250 years or so has seen fit to amend the constitution to change that despite the fact that the Republicans have been abusing the power of the pardon since at least the Reagan years. Now you are complaining because a Democratic President has used it *appropriately *to pardon someone who was convicted in a politically motivated circus?