Biden's lame duck presidency, what does the old guy have in his tank?

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
After a half century knowing that he needs to set up the next POTUS to have as much success as possible, it is going to be interesting to see what Biden gets done.

Looks like he might be starting with shoring up on of our most valuable trading partner's government stability.

https://apnews.com/article/sinaloa-cartel-drug-kingpin-arrested-zambada-e9be141a1604b7965844d9aa6e2e70ad
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PHOENIX (AP) — Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the top leader and co-founder of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, eluded the reach of U.S. law enforcement for decades as the criminal organization evolved into the world’s biggest manufacturer and smuggler of illicit fentanyl pills and other drugs to the United States.

Zambada, 76, once ran the cartel in partnership with the flashier and better-known kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, who is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.

Zambada and Guzmán’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López, were arrested in Texas on Thursday after they arrived aboard a private plane. Zambada was being held without bond Friday after entering a plea of not guilty to a string of drug trafficking charges in federal court in El Paso.

Zambada has been charged in numerous U.S. cases, including one filed in February in the Eastern District of New York accusing him of conspiring to manufacture and distribute fentanyl. Prosecutors said he led “one of the most violent and powerful drug trafficking organizations in the world.”

Who is Zambada?
Born in 1948 in the western state of Sinaloa, Zambada has been widely known by his nickname “El Mayo,” short for Ismael.

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Zambada is believed to have started his criminal career as an enforcer back in the 1970s. He later emerged as a major figure in the Juarez cartel until its top leader, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, was arrested in 1989 in the kidnapping and killing of U.S. drug agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena by drug traffickers on Mexican soil.

The Juarez organization splintered and Zambada joined forces with “El Chapo” Guzmán, helping transform what was a regional smuggling syndicate into the far-reaching Sinaloa cartel.

For decades Zambada has been the cartel’s strategist and deal broker overseeing day-to-day operations, protecting the enterprise by avoiding a flamboyant lifestyle and eschewing the most gruesome violence. He used largesse to earn the loyalty of locals in Sinaloa, where kingpins have long been immortalized in ballads called “narcocorridos.”

“He has been like the George Washington of dope in Mexico. A huge figure,” said Elaine Shannon, a U.S. journalist and author who first heard about Zambada in the mid-1980s when she was writing her book about Camarena’s 1985 killing: “Desperados: Latin Druglords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can’t Win.”

The U.S. government had offered a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to Zambada’s arrest.

What are the Sinaloa cartel businesses?
The most lucrative trade now is fentanyl, much of it pressed into pills at large-scale operations south of the border involving professional chemists. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say most fentanyl is smuggled into the country through official ports of entry, typically in large trucks carrying manufactured goods or produce.

Once focused mostly on marijuana and cocaine, the cartel has diversified over the years to meet consumer demand. Along with fentanyl, it also smuggles Mexican-produced methamphetamine, heroin made from Mexican-grown opium poppies and small amounts of lower-grade marijuana for parts of the U.S. where pot has not been legalized.

Zambada oversaw the trafficking of “tens of thousands of pounds of drugs into the United States, along with related violence,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said.

In its 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment, the Drug Enforcement Agency calls fentanyl the most urgent drug threat in the U.S. and says it and other synthetic opioids were responsible for about 70% of the 107,941 fatal overdoses in the country in 2022.

“The Justice Department will not rest until every single cartel leader, member, and associate responsible for poisoning our communities is held accountable,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement after the arrests.

U.S. officials also blame the Sinaloa organization for much of the migrant smuggling from Mexico into the United States. Record numbers of people have arrived at the border this year, something that has become a major issue in the presidential election.

Who is Joaquín Guzmán Lopez?
The son of “El Chapo” Guzmán, who was arrested with Zambada in Texas, is considered one of the lower-profile sons in the family.

A more prominent son, Ovidio Guzmán López, also is in U.S. custody and pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges in Chicago in September.

Meanwhile, a son of “El Mayo,” Ismael Zambada Imperial, pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court in San Diego in 2021 to being a leader in the Sinaloa cartel.

What does Zambada’s capture mean for Mexico?
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Friday that Mexico was still awaiting details about the arrests and was not involved in the operation.

The country’s drug kingpins have long had influence inside all levels of the Mexican government, reputedly bribing governors and even entire police forces to look the other way.

Now that Zambada is behind bars, Shannon said, many powerful people in Mexico will be concerned that in a bid for a more comfortable deal, he could cooperate with U.S. authorities and accuse them of collaborating with the cartels.

“They’ve all got to be worried,” she said. “He has paid off literally generations of Mexican politicians. He knows where all the skeletons are buried, more skeletons than Dia de los Muertos.”
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/29/joe-biden-reform-supreme-court-presidential-immunity-plan-announcement/
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This nation was founded on a simple yet profound principle: No one is above the law. Not the president of the United States. Not a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. No one.

But the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision on July 1 to grant presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office means there are virtually no limits on what a president can do. The only limits will be those that are self-imposed by the person occupying the Oval Office.

If a future president incites a violent mob to storm the Capitol and stop the peaceful transfer of power — like we saw on Jan. 6, 2021 — there may be no legal consequences.

And that’s only the beginning.

On top of dangerous and extreme decisions that overturn settled legal precedents — including Roe v. Wade — the court is mired in a crisis of ethics. Scandals involving several justices have caused the public to question the court’s fairness and independence, which are essential to faithfully carrying out its mission of equal justice under the law. For example, undisclosed gifts to justices from individuals with interests in cases before the court, as well as conflicts of interest connected with Jan. 6 insurrectionists, raise legitimate questions about the court’s impartiality.

I served as a U.S. senator for 36 years, including as chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. I have overseen more Supreme Court nominations as senator, vice president and president than anyone living today. I have great respect for our institutions and the separation of powers.

What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.

That’s why — in the face of increasing threats to America’s democratic institutions — I am calling for three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability to the court and our democracy.

First, I am calling for a constitutional amendment called the No One Is Above the Law Amendment. It would make clear that there is no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office. I share our Founders’ belief that the president’s power is limited, not absolute. We are a nation of laws — not of kings or dictators.

Second, we have had term limits for presidents for nearly 75 years. We should have the same for Supreme Court justices. The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court. Term limits would help ensure that the court’s membership changes with some regularity. That would make timing for court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary. It would reduce the chance that any single presidency radically alters the makeup of the court for generations to come. I support a system in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the Supreme Court.

Third, I’m calling for a binding code of conduct for the Supreme Court. This is common sense. The court’s current voluntary ethics code is weak and self-enforced. Justices should be required to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. Every other federal judge is bound by an enforceable code of conduct, and there is no reason for the Supreme Court to be exempt.

All three of these reforms are supported by a majority of Americans — as well as conservative and liberal constitutional scholars. And I want to thank the bipartisan Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States for its insightful analysis, which informed some of these proposals.

We can and must prevent the abuse of presidential power. We can and must restore the public’s faith in the Supreme Court. We can and must strengthen the guardrails of democracy.

In America, no one is above the law. In America, the people rule.
 
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hanimmal

Well-Known Member
https://apnews.com/article/congress-social-media-kosa-kids-online-safety-act-parents-ead646422cf84cef0d0573c3c841eb6d
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The last time Congress passed a law to protect children on the internet was in 1998 — before Facebook, before the iPhone and long before today’s oldest teenagers were born. Now, a bill aiming to protect kids from the harms of social media, gaming sites and other online platforms appears to have enough bipartisan support to pass, though whether it actually will remains uncertain.

Supporters, however, hope it will come to a vote later this month.

Proponents of the Kids Online Safety Act include parents’ groups and children’s advocacy organizations as well as companies like Microsoft, X and Snap. They say the bill is a necessary first step in regulating tech companies and requiring them to protect children from dangerous online content and take responsibility for the harm their platforms can cause.

Opponents, however, fear KOSA would violate the First Amendment and harm vulnerable kids who wouldn’t be able to access information on LGBTQ issues or reproductive rights — although the bill has been revised to address many of those concerns, and major LGBTQ groups have decided to support of the proposed legislation.

Here is what to know about KOSA and the likelihood of it going into effect.

What would KOSA do?
If passed, KOSA would create a “duty of care” — a legal term that requires companies to take reasonable steps to prevent harm — for online platforms minors will likely use.

They would have to “prevent and mitigate” harms to children, including bullying and violence, the promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation and advertisements for illegal products such as narcotics, tobacco or alcohol.

Social media platforms would also have to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable addictive product features, and opt out of personalized algorithmic recommendations. They would also be required to limit other users from communicating with children and limit features that “increase, sustain, or extend the use” of the platform — such as autoplay for videos or platform rewards. In general, online platforms would have to default to the safest settings possible for accounts it believes belong to minors.

“So many of the harms that young people experience online and on social media are the result of deliberate design choices that these companies make,” said Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, a nonprofit working to insulate children from commercialization, marketing and harms from Big Tech.

How would it be enforced?
An earlier version of the bill empowered state attorneys general to enforce KOSA’s “duty of care” provision but after concerns from LGBTQ groups and others who worried they could use this to censor information about LGBTQ or reproductive issues. In the updated version, state attorneys general can still enforce other provisions but not the “duty of care” standard.

Broader enforcement would fall to the Federal Trade Commission, which would have oversight over what types of content is “harmful” to children.

Who supports it?
KOSA is supported a broad range of nonprofits, tech accountability and parent groups and pediatricians such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Federation of Teachers, Common Sense Media, Fairplay, The Real Facebook Oversight Board and the NAACP. Some prominent tech companies, including Microsoft, X and Snap, have also signed on. Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has not come out in firm support or opposition of the bill, although it has said in the past that it supports the regulation of social media.

ParentsSOS, a group of some 20 parents who have lost children to harm caused by social media, has also been campaigning for the bill’s passage. One of those parents is Julianna Arnold, whose 17-year-old daughter died in 2022 after purchasing tainted drugs through Instagram.

“We should not bear the entire responsibility of keeping our children safe online,” she said. “Every other industry has been regulated. And I’m sure you’ve heard this all the time. From toys to movies to music to, cars to everything. We have regulations in place to keep our children safe. And this, this is a product that they have created and distributed and yet over all these years, since the ‘90s, there hasn’t been any legislation regulating the industry.”

KOSA was introduced in 2022 by Senators Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. It currently has 68 cosponsors in the Senate, from across the political spectrum, which would be enough to pass if it were brought to a vote.

Who opposes it?
The ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups supporting free speech are concerned it would violate the First Amendment. Even with the revisions that stripped state attorneys general from enforcing its duty of care provision, EFF calls it a “dangerous and unconstitutional censorship bill that would empower state officials to target services and online content they do not like.”

Kate Ruane, director of the Free Expression Project at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, said she remains concerned that the bill’s care of duty provision can be “misused by politically motivated actors to target marginalized communities like the LGBTQ population and just politically divisive information generally,” to try to suppress information because someone believes it is harmful to kids’ mental health.

She added that while these worries remain, there has been progress in reducing concerns.

The bigger issue, though, she added, is that platforms don’t want to get sued for showing minors content that could be “politically divisive,” so to make sure this doesn’t happen they could suppress such topics — about abortion or transgender healthcare or even the wars in Gaza or Ukraine.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-K.Y., has also expressed opposition to the bill. Paul said the bill “could prevent kids from watching PGA golf or the Super Bowl on social media because of gambling and beer ads, those kids could just turn on the TV and see those exact same ads.”

He added he has “tried to work with the authors to fix the bill’s many deficiencies. If the authors are not interested in compromise, Senator (Chuck) Schumer can bring the bill to the floor, as he could have done from the beginning.”

Will it pass Congress?
Golin said he is “very hopeful” that the bill will come to a vote in July.

“The reason it has it has not come to a vote yet is that passing legislation is really hard, particularly when you’re trying to regulate one of the, if not the most powerful industry in the world,” he said. “We are outspent.”

Golin added he thinks there’s a “really good chance” and he remains very hopeful that it will get passed.

Senate Majority Leader Schumer, D-N.Y., who has come out in support of KOSA, would have to bring it to a vote.

Schumer has backed the legislation but has not yet set aside floor time to pass it. Because there are objections to the legislation, it would take a week or more of procedural votes before a final vote.

He said on the floor last week that passing the bill is a “top priority” but that it had not yet moved because of the objections.

“Sadly, a few of our colleagues continue to block these bills without offering any constructive ideas for how to revise the text,” he said. “So now we must look ahead, and all options are on the table.”
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-schumer-immunity-senate-king-149763b93d62599eac7d0a7c77ff4d4a
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will introduce legislation Thursday reaffirming that presidents do not have immunity for criminal actions, an attempt to reverse the Supreme Court’s landmark decision last month.

Schumer’s No Kings Act would attempt to invalidate the decision by declaring that presidents are not immune from criminal law and clarifying that Congress, not the Supreme Court, determines to whom federal criminal law is applied.

The court’s conservative majority decided July 1 that presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken within their official duties — a decision that threw into doubt the Justice Department’s case against Republican former President Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

Schumer, of New York, said that Congress has an obligation and the constitutional authority to check the Supreme Court on its decision.

”Given the dangerous and consequential implications of the court’s ruling, legislation would be the fastest and most efficient method to correcting the grave precedent the Trump ruling presented,” he said.

The Senate bill, which has more than two dozen Democratic cosponsors, comes after Democratic President Joe Biden called on lawmakers earlier this week to ratify a constitutional amendment limiting presidential immunity, along with establishing term limits and an enforceable ethics code for the court’s nine justices. Rep. Joseph Morelle, D-N.Y., recently proposed a constitutional amendment in the House.

The Supreme Court’s immunity decision stunned Washington and drew a sharp dissent from the court’s liberal justices warning of the perils to democracy, particularly as Trump seeks a return to the White House.

Trump celebrated the decision as a “BIG WIN” on his social media platform, and Republicans in Congress rallied around him. Without GOP support, Schumer’s bill has little chance of passing in the narrowly divided chamber.

Speaking about Biden’s proposal, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said that Biden’s proposal would “shred the Constitution.”

A constitutional amendment would be even more difficult to pass. Such a resolution takes a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate, which is highly unlikely at this time of divided government, and ratification by three-fourths of the states. That process could take several years.

Still, Democrats see the proposals as a warning to the court and an effort that will rally their voting base ahead of the presidential election.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running against Trump in the November election, said earlier this week the reforms are needed because “there is a clear crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court.”

The title of Schumer’s bill harkens back to Justice Sonia Sotomayor’sdissent in the case, in which she said that “in every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

The decision “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law,” Sotomayor said.

In the ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that “our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.”

But Roberts insisted that the president “is not above the law.”
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
Does this leak mean some a-hole is trying to ruin this from happening?

https://apnews.com/article/russia-gershkovich-whelan-d803e266cb4e60135ec5d668d684529f
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WASHINGTON (AP) — A massive prisoner swap involving the United States and Russia was underway Thursday, a person familiar with the matter said.

The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because details had not been publicly disclosed, did not specify who is included in the deal. But Americans considered by the U.S. to be wrongfully detained in Russia include Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive from Michigan. Both had been convicted of espionage charges that the U.S. government considered baseless.

In a statement posted online, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty President and CEO Stephen Capus acknowledged media reports that a journalist working for the broadcaster, Alsu Kurmasheva, would be released as part of the deal.

Capus said the broadcaster welcomed ’’news of Alsu’s imminent release and are grateful to the American government and all who worked tirelessly to end her unjust treatment by Russia.” Kurmasheva, a dual U.S.-Russian citizen, was convicted in July of spreading false information about the Russian military, accusations her family and employer have rejected.

The deal would be the latest exchange in the last two years between Washington and Moscow, including a December 2022 trade that brought WNBA star Brittney Griner back to the U.S. in exchange for notorious arms trafficker Viktor Bout and a swap earlier that year of Marine veteran Trevor Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted in a drug trafficking conspiracy.


President Joe Biden placed securing the release of Americans held wrongfully overseas at the top of his foreign policy agenda for the six months before he leaves office. In his Oval Office address to the American people discussing his recent decision to drop his bid for a second term, the Democrat said, “We’re also working around the clock to bring home Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.”

Russia has long been interested in getting back Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany in 2021 of killing a former Chechen rebel in a Berlin park two years earlier, apparently on the orders of Moscow’s security services.

Speculation had mounted for weeks that a swap was near because of a confluence of unusual developments, including a startingly quick trial and conviction for Gershkovich that Washington regarded as a sham. He was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum-security prison.

Also in recent days, several other figures imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the war in Ukraine or over their work with the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were moved from prison to unknown locations.

Gershkovich was arrested March 29, 2023, while on a reporting trip to the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg. Authorities claimed, without offering any evidence, that he was gathering secret information for the U.S. The son of Soviet emigres who settled in New Jersey, he moved to the country in 2017 to work for The Moscow Times newspaper before being hired by the Journal in 2022.

He had more than a dozen closed hearings over the extension of his pretrial detention or appeals for his release. He was taken to the courthouse in handcuffs and appeared in the defendants’ cage, often smiling for the many cameras.

U.S. officials last year made an offer to swap Gershkovich that was rejected by Russia, and Biden’s Democratic administration had not made public any possible deals since then.

Gershkovich was designated as wrongfully detained, as was Whelan, who was detained in December 2018 after traveling to Russia for a wedding. Whelan was convicted of espionage charges, which he and the U.S. have also said were false and trumped up, and he is serving a 16-year prison sentence.

Whelan had been excluded from prior high-profile deals involving Russia, including those involving Reed and Griner.
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
make Biden grow weed, he'll get smarter
Meh he got the job done, and still has enough in the tank to get him to the next administration takes over.

He can just sell a book or two and have enough money for all the weed he could ever want for the time he has left on this planet.
 

hanimmal

Well-Known Member
Why the heck did he have to hug that little girl tho? Of all the people to hug. I was saying to myself, "Joe, don't do it. Don't do it Joe. Not the squeeze hug!! NOOOOO!!

Too late :cool:
I don't know man, it is pretty hard weird to toss shade at such a beautiful moment for these people.

 
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hanimmal

Well-Known Member
I am from the other side of the planet so I don't have a horse on this race but if you people don't get trump back in office things are going to get very ugly very quickly
You mean all the world dictators reeaaaally want a easily paid off puppet back like Trump over someone that stands up to them trying to wipe our allies off the map? And their old asses will rather spend millions of the citizens of their nations' lives to maintain their fragile grip on their power than they would just chilling out and becoming irrelevant.




But I still would rather give my vote for a candidate that will stand up to the fucknuts that would have us bend a knee. And hopefully enough people in those quasi-dictatorship nations that will feel the same to come up with new leadership. Everything doesn't have to be so hard.
 

SpaceGrease

Well-Known Member
Yea dude ..Biden stepping down fucked them all up …

Still just vibing the shit out of the kindergarten energy being expelled out .. It is 100 worth the price of admission..

I am just waiting for the “I’ll hold my breathe tactic “ but it is just physically impossible..

lol, “you have the right to remain silent what you lack is the ability “
 
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