George Winston

 

 

Tomorrow is the winter solstice, the time of the year when we once again encounter the shortest day of the year.

The Northern Hemisphere winter solstice will occur Saturday, December 21st at 4:20 AM EST. The winter solstice occurs at the moment the earth's tilt away/toward the sun is at a maximum, with December 21st marking the shortest day and longest night of the year for locations in the northern half of the globe, given the Northern Hemisphere being tilted away from the sun. On the day of the winter solstice, the sun appears at its lowest elevation with a noontime position that changes very little for several days before and after the solstice. The Northern Hemisphere winter solstice occurs when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, which is located at 23.5° south of the equator and runs through Australia, Chile, southern Brazil, and northern South Africa.

 

 

 

It’s a time of joy for many people, but it also is a time of stress. By the time that Christmas finally arrives, Sharon will have worn herself out baking Christmas cookies, and she’ll have made enough to last us until St. Patrick’s Day. For many of us, it is a time when our expenses go up, but our income does not. Due to the 2 weeks off from school for the holidays, my first school check in January will be exactly zero, so we’ll have to watch our pennies for a month of two. 

Apart from my daily intake of a glass of wine (or two), I have found that the best way to reduce stress is to listen to music, and one of the best artists I can think of for that is George Winston, who we saw live in concert many years ago in Minneapolis. He performed in stocking feet.

When we still had a record collection, it included a couple of his albums.

One of the albums that he released long ago is titled “Winter”. One of the songs on that album is titled “snow”, which you can listen to by clicking on the link below:

(64)George Winston / Snow - YouTube

 

If you listen to the song until its conclusion, you’ll discover that you can listen to the entire album, since it automatically goes to the next song.

 

George Otis Winston III (February 11, 1949 – June 4, 2023) was an American pianist performing contemporary instrumental music.  Best known for his solo piano recordings, Winston released his first album in 1972, and came to prominence with his 1980 album Autumn, which was followed in 1982 by Winter into Spring and December.

All three became platinum-selling albums, with December becoming a triple-platinum album. A total of 16 solo albums were released, accumulating over 15 million records sold, with the 1994 album Forest earning Winston a Grammy award for Best New Age Album. Winston received four other Grammy nominations, including one for Best Children's Music Album, performed with actress Meryl Streep, and another for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album for his interpretation of works by the rock band the Doors.

Winston played in three styles: the melodic approach that he developed and called "rural folk piano"; stride piano, primarily inspired by Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson; and his primary interest, New Orleans rhythm and blues (R&B) piano, influenced by James Booker, Professor Longhair and Henry Butler. While the majority of his recordings were in the folk piano style, Winston mostly enjoyed playing R&B piano.  His musical style has been classified as new age and sometimes classical, but he rejected both labels.

Winston also played the guitar and harmonica. His interest in the Hawaiian slack-key guitar led him to start his own record label, Dancing Cat Records.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Winston

No one knows if the government will shut down at midnight tonight, but there is nothing that any of us can do about it. With luck, president Musk and congress will reach some type of agreement to avert disaster.

For now, though, don’t spend any time worrying about it.

Just listen to George.

 

 

 

tail gunner Joe

 

Most of us were born either right before, or during, what is now known as the McCarthy era, which lasted from 1950 to the early part of 1954,

Even though that is more than 70 years ago, the story of the junior senator from Wisconsin is VERY relevant to our society today.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

A Democrat until 1944, McCarthy successfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 1946 as a Republican, narrowly defeating incumbent Robert M. La Follette Jr. in the Wisconsin Republican primary, then Democratic challenger Howard McMurray by a 61% – 37% margin.

After three largely undistinguished years in the Senate McCarthy rose suddenly to national fame in February 1950 when he asserted in a speech that he had a list of "members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring" who were employed in the State Department. In succeeding years after his 1950 speech, McCarthy made additional accusations of Communist infiltration into the State Department, the administration of President Harry S. Truman, the Voice of America, and the U.S. Army. He also used various charges of communism, communist sympathies, disloyalty, or sex crimes to attack a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside of government. This included a concurrent "Lavender Scare" against suspected homosexuals, whose illicit sexual activity was presumed to make them vulnerable to blackmail by communists and others.

Ultimately he was censured by the Senate in 1954 for refusing to cooperate with and abusing members of, the committee established to investigate whether or not he should be censured. The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.

McCarthy   served as an intelligence briefing officer for a dive bomber squadron VMSB-235 in the Solomon Islands and Bougainville for 30 months (August 1942 – February 1945), and held the rank of captain at the time he resigned his commission in April 1945. He volunteered to fly twelve combat missions as a gunner-observer. These missions were generally safe, and after one where he was allowed to shoot as much ammunition as he wanted, mainly at coconut trees, he acquired the nickname "Tail-Gunner Joe". McCarthy remained in the Marine Corps Reserve after the war, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel.

He later falsely claimed participation in 32 aerial missions so as to qualify for a Distinguished Flying Cross and multiple awards of the Air Medal, which the Marine Corps decided to approve in 1952 under his political influence. McCarthy also publicly claimed a letter of commendation from his commanding officer and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Chief of Naval Operations. However, his commander revealed that McCarthy had written this letter himself, probably while preparing award citations and commendation letters for his men, and that he had signed his commander's name, after which Nimitz signed it routinely. A "war wound"—a badly broken leg—that McCarthy attributed to varying adventures involving airplane crashes or anti-aircraft fire, had in fact happened aboard ship during a raucous celebration for sailors crossing the equator for the first time. Because of McCarthy's various lies about his military heroism, his "Tail-Gunner Joe" nickname was used in mockery by his critics.

McCarthy was far from the first person to make accusations about his fellow citizens, since the predecessor of the House and un-American committee actually had its roots as early as 1919, when the Overman committee was formed to investigate Bolshevik elements in the United States.

In 1930, the Fish committee was formed to investigate communist activities.

From 1934 to 1937, the focus of the subsequent committee (called the MCormack-Dickstein committee) shifted to investigate Nazi propaganda)

On May 26, 1938, the House Committee on Un-American Activities was established as a special investigating committee, reorganized from its previous incarnations as the Fish Committee and the McCormack–Dickstein Committee, to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having communist or fascist ties; however, it concentrated its efforts on communists.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities became a standing (permanent) committee on January 3, 1945.

Under the mandate of Public Law 601, passed by the 79th Congress, the committee of nine representatives investigated suspected threats of subversion or propaganda that attacked "the form of government as guaranteed by our Constitution"

Under this mandate, the committee focused its investigations on real and suspected communists in positions of actual or supposed influence in the United States society. A significant step for HUAC was its investigation of the charges of espionage brought against Alger Hiss in 1948. This investigation ultimately resulted in Hiss's trial and conviction for perjury, and convinced many of the usefulness of congressional committees for uncovering communist subversion

(Even to this day, there is still no agreement on whether Hiss was guilty of innocent).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alger_Hiss

In 1947, the committee held nine days of hearings into alleged communist propaganda and influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry. After conviction on contempt of Congress charges for refusal to answer some questions posed by committee members, "The Hollywood Ten" were blacklisted by the industry. Eventually, more than 300 artists – including directors, radio commentators, actors, and particularly screenwriters – were boycotted by the studios. Some, like Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Alan Lomax, Paul Robeson, and Yip Harburg, left the U.S or went underground to find work. Others like Dalton Trumbo wrote under pseudonyms or the names of colleagues. Only about ten percent succeeded in rebuilding careers within the entertainment industry

 

In 1947, studio executives told the committee that wartime films—such as Mission to Moscow, The North Star, and Song of Russia—could be considered pro-Soviet propaganda, but claimed that the films were valuable in the context of the Allied war effort, and that they were made (in the case of Mission to Moscow) at the request of White House officials. In response to the House investigations, most studios produced a number of anti-communist and anti-Soviet propaganda films such as The Red Menace (August 1949), The Red Danube (October 1949), The Woman on Pier 13 (October 1949), Guilty of Treason (May 1950, about the ordeal and trial of Cardinal József Mindszenty), I Was a Communist for the FBI (May 1951, Academy Award nominated for best documentary 1951, also serialized for radio), Red Planet Mars (May 1952), and John Wayne's Big Jim McLain (August 1952).

 Universal-International Pictures was the only major studio that did not purposefully produce such a film

 

In 1947, the committee held nine days of hearings into alleged communist propaganda and influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry. After conviction on contempt of Congress charges for refusal to answer some questions posed by committee members, "The Hollywood Ten" were blacklisted by the industry. Eventually, more than 300 artists – including directors, radio commentators, actors, and particularly screenwriters – were boycotted by the studios. Some, like Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Alan Lomax, Paul Robeson, and Yip Harburg, left the U.S or went underground to find work. Others like Dalton Trumbo wrote under pseudonyms or the names of colleagues. Only about ten percent succeeded in rebuilding careers within the entertainment industry.^{[citation needed]}

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Trumbo

Dalton Trumbo was finally given screen credit for his films in 1960 for Exodus and Spartacus, but it was not until 2011 that he was finally given credit for Roman Holiday, which was produced in 1953

The 2007 documentary about his life is worth watching.

Trumbo Official Trailer #1 (2015) - Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren Biopic HD       

The House Committee on Internal Security was formally terminated on January 14, 1975, the day of the opening of the 94th Congress. The committee's files and staff were transferred on that day to the House Judiciary Committee.

How does all this related to today?

For one thing, Joe McCarthy’s lawyer was a man named Roy Cohn. Many years later, he became the mentor to a young real estate developer named Donald J. Trump.

Since loyalty for Trump is a one-way street, he did not attend Cohn’s funeral. Oddly enough, both Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn were homosexuals. Although McCarthy died from alcoholism, Cohn died from AIDS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn

Apart from the fact that Donald Trump and Joe McCarthy were not truthful about their military service (or lack thereof), unfounded accusations about our fellow citizens are about to unfold.

After January 20, incoming FBI director Kash Patel has plans to investigate at least 60 people that he considers to me “enemies” – and he names them in his book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth and the Battle for Our Democracy”.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/12/03/nation/kash-patel-fbi-trump-plans/

As "The Nation mentioned on December 3, Kash Patel is a very poor choice to tun the F.B.I. 

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/kash-patel-trump-cabinet/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%2012.3.2024&utm_term=daily

Among those whose names have been floated are former Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who was vice chair of the bipartisan committee that investigated Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the former top infectious disease expert for the government whose advice on Covid-19 made him a target of far-right attacks; Jack Smith, the outgoing special counsel who prosecuted Mr. Trump; and Senator-elect Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, who was a lead House prosecutor at Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial.

 Like Hunter Biden, none of them are not going to be treated fairly or honestly by the incoming administration, so the proper thing to do is to issue a blanket pardon for ALL of them before January 20.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/us/politics/biden-trump-pardons.html

 

The choices of Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and Trump surrogate, to run the Justice Department and Kash Patel, a former Trump aide and far-right provocateur, to be director of the F.B.I. have put the issue front and center.

Mr. Patel has vowed to “come after” Mr. Trump’s critics and even published a list of about 60 people he considered “members of the executive branch deep state” as the appendix to a 2023 book.

Democrats on Capitol Hill have been pressing Mr. Biden to do what he can to protect targets of Mr. Trump. Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, one of the president’s closest allies, urged the White House to consider pre-emptive pardons shortly after Mr. Trump’s election last month, and likewise recommended that the president pardon his son.

Mr. Trump, who has argued that the many criminal and civil cases against him are part of a sweeping “witch hunt” that has “weaponized” the justice system, has done little to disguise his desire to use the law enforcement system to get back at his foes. He has threatened to prosecute Democrats, election workers, law enforcement officials, intelligence officials, reporters, former members of his own staff and Republicans who do not support him.

He has said on social media that Ms. Cheney “should be prosecuted for what she has done to our country” and that the whole Jan. 6 committee “should be prosecuted for their lies and, quite frankly, TREASON!” He said that Vice President Kamala Harris “should be impeached and prosecuted.” He has promised to “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after” Mr. Biden and his family. He has suggested that Gen. Mark A. Milley, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deserved execution.

 

I’m not smart enough to predict how the next 4 years are going to unfold. The good news, though, is that our democracy will somehow manage to survive, even though there is little doubt that we will some difficult times after January 20. For the sake of my sanity, though, I am not going to watch the inauguration or ANY of his appearance on television.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the enemies list

 

Nixon's "Enemies List" usually refers to the names published in newspapers in 1973, even though there is only one short list that can confidently be called a White House enemies list without quotes. Young White House Aide John W. Dean III used the term "enemies list" loosely in his testimony before Congress, giving an eager press license to use the term for any of the names that came out of the "Opponents List and Political Enemies Project."

In June 1974, Congress found no evidence that the IRS had been used to harass people on these lists. Nixon DID  harass people using the FBI and IRS, but not as a result of inclusion on these lists.

Many people on the list, like Dan Schorr, were harrassed, but Nixon didn't need a list to know that he hated Dan Schorr. Others, like John Lennon, were not on any list, but were still harassed by the FBI. Still others, like L. Ron Hubbard, falsely claimed to be on the List and targeted by the FBI, but that was back when there was no good way to search all the Watergate testimony in order to disprove his claim. Thus, the "Enemies List" is more about bragging rights than political victimization

https://www.enemieslist.info/

To quote the late Yogi Berra, it’s deja vu all over again

It’s a well-known fact that Donald Trump is a vindictive and nasty person. Although there are plenty of examples, the most disconcerting one was listed in in Fred Trump III’s book, “All in the family”.

Donald Trump was one of the executors of his father’s estate When he tried to cheat Fred Trump and his sister Mary out of millions of dollars of their inheritance, they sued him. Not long after that, he cut off medical coverage for Fred’s young son, who needed expensive medical care to survive.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump made more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived enemies, including political opponents and private citizens.

 To prevent the damage, Joe Biden is considering blanket pardons to prevent prosecution of innocent people:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/us/politics/biden-trump-pardons.html

President Biden’s staff is debating whether he should issue blanket pardons for a swath of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s perceived enemies to protect them from the “retribution” he has threatened after he takes office, according to people familiar with the discussion.

The idea would be to pre-emptively extend executive clemency to a list of current and former government officials for any possible crimes over a period of years, effectively short-circuiting the next president’s promised campaign of reprisals.

White House officials do not believe the potential recipients have actually committed crimes, but they have grown increasingly worried that Mr. Trump’s selections for top Justice Department positions indicate that he will follow through on his repeated vows to seek revenge. Even an investigation that results in no charges could drag on for months or years, costing those people hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and crippling their career prospects.

Now, many of his targets are bracing for the possibility that the president-elect will enact an agenda of "retribution," as Trump put it.

"It would be naive and foolish for anyone not to take this seriously," said Mark Zaid, an attorney who represents several people threatened by Trump. "We have to prepare as much as we can for what might be coming."

Zaid has represented many current and former government officials who work in national security — people Trump often describes as members of the "deep state" out to subvert his agenda. Zaid also represented a whistleblower, who raised concerns about Trump's interactions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelynsky in 2019. That whistleblower's disclosure helped lead to Trump's first impeachment, and enraged the former — and future — president.

And even if the Trump administration doesn't resort to criminal investigations of their enemies, Zaid said he's concerned about the possibility of politically-motivated IRS audits and firings of government employees.

Trump tried to take away the protection of long-term federal employees in his first term. He plans to do the same thing is his next term of office. Former aides close to President Trump are working to revive and expand his signature proposal to upend the federal civil service, according to a new report, and are working in conjunction with the former commander in chief to quickly purge thousands of federal employees if he were to return to office. 

The plan, as detailed to Axios and confirmed by Government Executive, would bring back Schedule F, a workforce initiative Trump pushed in the 11th hour of his term to politicize the federal bureaucracy. The former officials and current confidantes are, through a network of Trump-loyal think tanks and public policy organizations, creating lists of names to supplant existing civil servants. They have identified 50,000 current employees that could be dismissed under the new authority they seek to create, Axios reported and Government Executive confirmed, though they hope to only actually fire a fraction of that total and hope the resulting “chilling effect” will cause the rest to fall in line. 

In October 2020, just before the presidential election, Trump signed his controversial executive order creating a new class of federal employees excepted from the competitive service. The order sought to remove career federal workers in “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating” jobs from the General Schedule into a new job classification where virtually all of their civil service protections were absent, essentially making them at-will employees. Although the Trump administration began efforts to reclassify jobs into the new Schedule F, they ultimately were unable to move any workers before January 2021, and President Biden quickly signed an executive order rescinding the edict as one of his first acts as president.)

https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2022/07/trump-reelected-aides-plan-purge-civil-service/374842/

Zaid is not the only one worried about Trump's threats. Multiple sources declined to comment for this story, because they are concerned that speaking out now would make them a target.

Trump's announcement that he would nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida as attorney general has only deepened those concerns.

Gaetz is widely seen as a pro-MAGA hardliner and Trump loyalist. He actively supported Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election and previously called for criminal investigations of Trump critics, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey. On social media, he has said he would "abolish" agencies like the FBI, which he would oversee as attorney general.

 

Gaetz's nomination "seems to reflect an intent to make good on the retribution threat," said Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor who served for nearly 25 years at the Department of Justice.

Still, McCord said she believes most career officials at the Justice Department will resist efforts to pursue purely political charges.

"He can direct his Department of Justice to open prosecutions, and if they are baseless, I do think there would be career prosecutors who say: 'this is baseless," said McCord, who is now executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law. "There may be a few opportunists who want to use the moment to make a name for themselves and perhaps, move up within the department, perhaps even get a political appointment, hitch their wagon to Donald Trump. But I don't think that's the vast majority."

Matt Gaetz, of course, is no longer a candidate, but Pam Bondi is an equally bad choice.

For the crucially important post of attorney general, who is responsible for overseeing the enforcement of the rule of law across the nation, Trump first tapped former Florida representative Matt Gaetz, whose association with drug use and sex trafficking forced him to withdraw, and then named Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general who has insisted that the legal cases against Trump are proof that the justice system has been “weaponized” against Trump.

To head the FBI, the bureau Trump has long insisted was persecuting him through its investigation of the ties between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives—ties that Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee have confirmed in detail—Trump has tapped loyalist and conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, who has vowed to use the FBI to exact revenge on those Trump considers his enemies.

That Patel’s appointment is designed to destroy the FBI is clear not least because installing him would require Trump to fire current FBI director Christoper Wray. FBI directors serve ten-year terms precisely so they are not tied to any administration, and Wray was Trump’s own appointee in his first term. Indeed, the idea that the FBI is insufficiently right wing for Trump’s new administration speaks volumes: in its entire history, the FBI has never had a Democrat in charge of it. Under Patel, the nation’s chief law enforcement agency would be a tool of the president.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/12/03/nation/kash-patel-fbi-trump-plans/

You may notice that the article about retribution was published by NPR – and Trump plans to cut off funding for the organization in his next term.

https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-5183846/trump-presidency-retribution-enemies-threats

For the crucially important post of attorney general, who is responsible for overseeing the enforcement of the rule of law across the nation, Trump first tapped former Florida representative Matt Gaetz, whose association with drug use and sex trafficking forced him to withdraw, and then named Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general who has insisted that the legal cases against Trump are proof that the justice system has been “weaponized” against Trump.

To head the FBI, the bureau Trump has long insisted was persecuting him through its investigation of the ties between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives—ties that Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee have confirmed in detail—Trump has tapped loyalist and conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, who has vowed to use the FBI to exact revenge on those Trump considers his enemies.

For director of the CIA, Trump has tapped unqualified loyalist attack dog John Ratcliffe; for director of national intelligence, the person who oversees all American intelligence agencies, Trump has tapped former representative Tulsi Gabbard, whose ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad make her loyalties suspect. Taken together, Trump’s appointments to these powerful departments amount to an attempt to destroy the nation’s fundamental institutions.

As Charlie Sykes points out, Trump’s appointments are not only a “[m]assive Fuq U to institutions…[b]ut also a huge FU to the Supreme Court because Trump doesn’t think they will be a check on his campaign of lawless retribution.”

The Atlantic’s Nichols told MSNBC today that Trump’s appointees are “there to build an authoritarian cadre and to put themselves beyond the reach of the rule of law.”

With loyalty trumping ability and merit under an autocrat, the quality of government officials plummets. This pays off for an autocratic leader because those appointed to serve in an autocratic government are usually unemployable in a merit-based system, making them fiercely loyal to the leader who has elevated them beyond their abilities.

Autocrats start by rewarding family, and Trump has certainly followed that suit. After years in which Republicans went after President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who was never a government employee, over the weekend, Trump announced that he intends to appoint his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law, New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner, as ambassador to France. In 2004, Kushner pleaded guilty to 16 federal crimes and served time in prison before Trump pardoned him in 2020. Trump also announced that he will appoint his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Lebanese-born billionaire Massad Boulos, as White House senior adviser on Arab and Middle East affairs.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-1-2024

In view of the fact that the Trump administration cannot be trusted, it is no surprise at all that Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter, who would definitely not get treated fairly by the justice department.

President Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon of his son Hunter on Sunday night after repeatedly insisting he would not do so, using the power of his office to wave aside years of legal troubles, including a federal conviction for illegally buying a gun and for tax evasion.

In a statement issued by the White House, Mr. Biden said he had decided to issue the executive grant of clemency for his son “for those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024.”

He said he made the decision because the charges against Hunter were politically motivated and designed to hurt him politically.

“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,” Mr. Biden said in the 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 — and that is wrong.”

It was a remarkable turnaround for a man whose presidency and five-decade career were built in part on the idea that he would never interfere with the administration of justice. In 2020, he made the case that former President Donald J. Trump should be ousted from office to restore that kind of independence in America’s democracy, and he argued the same in 2024.

But in his statement, Mr. Biden sought to make the case for interfering after all, accusing his political enemies of going after his son in ways that anyone else would not have been. He said that he still believed in the justice system, but added, “I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further.”

In fact, the president’s announcement came at the same time that Mr. Trump made it clearer than ever that his second term would be focused on retribution and revenge against Mr. Biden — with Hunter Biden as a prime target. The president-elect on Saturday said he would name Kash Patel, a loyalist who has vowed to go after Mr. Trump’s enemies, as F.B.I. director.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/us/politics/biden-pardon-son-hunter.html

(The totally  false story about Hunter's laptop  is an example of how far Trump and his cronies are willing to go)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controversy

The next four years will be a difficult time for the country, and there are plenty of people who are feeling anxiety because of that. Our only hope is that the GOP only has a razor thin in the House of Representatives. If enough Senate Republicans “grow a pair” (as some have done with some of Trump’s nominees), we may survive as a country – but Kamala Harris would have been a far better choice.