There are many Hunter Biden cartoons this week, but Clay Bennett (CTFP) offers my favorite because it’s so completely foolish. I have seen a few of these tags recently which specify that it is only the seller, not the buyer, who is not allowed to remove it, but the notion persists that nobody is allowed to tear it off.
We’ve no shortage of fools.
The Hunter hunters either don’t understand the concept of evidence or are hoping their audience doesn’t, and perhaps it doesn’t matter. Lord knows we’ve had plenty of nonsense promoted as truth, and it really doesn’t matter whether the person saying it is a fool or a liar as long as it’s accepted by enough people to swing an election.
This is not to say that Hunter hasn’t broken any laws. He hadn’t filed his taxes in the depths of his addiction and he shouldn’t have purchased a gun, given his use of illegal drugs. He needs to be held accountable for both.
He’s indicated willingness to pay the back taxes and the gun was not used in a crime, which usually results in a fine but not imprisonment. He shouldn’t get off the hook for being the president’s son, but he shouldn’t be punished for it, either.
And it’s fair commentary for Clay Jones and several other cartoonists to point out the hypocrisy of Second Amendment advocates getting upset over Hunter buying a gun without proper clearance. You can’t logically defend the gun show loophole and then attack Hunter, and, as noted before, their recent victory in the Supreme Court will be part of his defense.
But when New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham attempted to temporarily ban guns in Albuquerque due to recent shootings there, she was not only slapped down by a judge but was criticized even by those who want stricter controls on guns, including Parkland shooting survivor and gun control advocate David Hogg, who said “I support gun safety but there is no such thing as a state public health emergency exception to the U.S. Constitution.”
Respect for the law, even when it goes against your wishes, should not be an exclusively liberal position.
And if you do respect the law, you should be able to back up your charges with evidence, not rumors or speculation or smears.
Kirk Walters (KFS) depicts Joe Biden demanding money from his son, an accusation unsupported by any available evidence, as is his notion that Hunter got “quid pro quo cash” as opposed to money for vague and unfulfilled promises.
It’s fair commentary for him to depict Hunter as still in the throes of addiction and to mock Joe for continuing to stand by his son in rough times, but the central accusation here is unsupported, which makes it either a rumor or a lie.
Gossip is part of political commentary, certainly, though we’re still sorting out how much you can gossip about Dominion and Smartmatic before you get yourself into trouble.
Though, as Nick Anderson suggests, it’s probably better for Joe Biden to let his son be held to a stricter standard than other people who fail to pay their taxes or who violate gun laws than to be accused of covering for him.
Which is already happening anyway.
Pat Byrnes points out that the Republicans have welcomed Trump’s indictments because they’ve helped boost him in the polls, and perhaps there’s a danger that impeaching Biden will have the same effect. But despite the fact that the voter pool has been corrupted to believe that Trump is being charged by a corrupt court system, it’s not hard to convince them that Biden is being investigated by an honest one.
After all, they already believe that votes were switched from Trump to Biden in 2020, but were left intact for the other Republican candidates on the same ballots.
We’re reduced laws and politics to the level of a sport, in which your team gets away with flagrant fouls, my team is constantly victimized by poor officiating and all the games are fixed anyway.
Juxtaposition of the Day
I seem to recall some rejoicing when Nixon brought the POWs home from Hanoi, and then again when Reagan negotiated release of the hostages from Iran, though we learned later that they could have all been freed earlier if they hadn’t been caught up in election year finagling.
But today no good deed goes unpunished, and Biden’s success in securing the return of jailed Americans from Tehran is more criticized than celebrated.
Heller’s take reflects pure politics, tying in the criticism of Biden with the Freedom Caucus’s threats to shut down government. You don’t have to agree with his blending of the factors, but it’s hard to argue with his criticism that we used to pause in our squabbling to celebrate such moments.
Margulies, meanwhile, is one of several cartoonists with a more specific criticism, which suggests that the US paid Iran $6 billion for the hostages.
This isn’t true: The $6 billion is money that South Korea owed Iran for oil purchases, which was held in South Korea and has been transferred to Qatar, where — under continuing sanctions — it can only be disbursed to Iran for humanitarian purposes.
In other words, it’s similar to when we returned several billion dollars of their own frozen assets to Iraq in the early 2000s, except that, back then, Bush was in the White House and so it was the other team complaining about the referees.
Dave Granlund notes that Trump undermined part of his own defense on Meet The Press this weekend, admitting that, no, he wasn’t following his attorneys’ advice in challenging the election results.
However, new host Kristen Welker has been taking a beating in the press for allowing Trump to bulldoze her with a stream of lies that NBC only corrected on-line and well after the broadcast.
At Reliable Sources, Oliver Darcy not only called the interview “a low moment in Welker’s otherwise pristine career” but added a laundry list of links to additional commentary that agreed with his condemnation of her failure and NBC’s inadequate response.
Oddly enough, she got her best defense from Will Saletan at the anti-Trump side, the Bulwark.
But, then, nobody cares who lied and who told the truth.
They just want to know which team won.
Since NBC recorded the interview well in advance, couldn’t they at least have corrected the lies on-screen, or a discussion immediately after?
BTW… I read your column each day. Well said, sir.
Hunter is suspected to have bought the gun to take his own life, which is what his friend who took it away from him thought before he could even load it. That is certainly not an uncommon event, especially for someone in the throes of addiction, where hopelessness is the emotion managing all behavior. If your intention is suicide, you’re happy the second amendment is there for your convenience, and what’s lying on a form matter? A bit of human sympathy isn’t likely from the right of course, but humane behavior should extend beyond politics, shouldn’t it? If I, being completely naïve, maybe you should just shioot me.