Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[viper37]

Lousy prose, hamfisted false equivalencies, mischaracterizations, and logical fallacies don't work on me, sorry,

but they work on 50% of your compatriots

[Eddie Teach]

Much higher than that, but only when those lead to the conclusion one wants.

[Syt]

[The Brain]

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

[Josquius]

Cigar bill?

I've noticed an odd trend lately for trumpies to hate on Clinton above all others. Why not Obama?

[dps]

Hm.  I had expected that was bogus but a quick check suggests that it's pretty accurate (though Trump is apparently up to 35 now, and see below about Ford and Carter).  Some interesting things about pardons*, per Wikipedia: 

Washington and John Adams only issued a few pardons, less than 2 dozen each. 

From Jefferson through Lincoln, Presidents issued between about 100 and 400 pardons, except for Harrison, who issued no pardons in his month in office, and Taylor, who pardoned 38 people in the 16 months he served.

From Andrew Johnson through Nixon, Presidents tended to issue a LOT of pardons by the standards from before the Civil War or those of the Presidents shown on the chart.  Most of them gave out between 800 and about 3600 pardons, except for Johnson, who issued several thousand pardons, mostly for many former Confederate leaders;  Garfield, who issued no pardons in the short time he was in office;  Arthur, who only pardoned 337 people;  and Kennedy, who also had a short Presidency and pardoned 575 people.

Ford issued a conditional amnesty to about 50,000 Vietnam-era draft resisters, and Carter pardoned over 200,000 draft dodgers.   Not sure why those weren't included on the chart.  Possibly it's because they were blanket grants and didn't list the recipients by name?

Most Presidents have had some controversial pardons among those issued.  It's certainly not unheard of for a President to pardon a business or political associate who has gotten into legal trouble. 

*Including amnesties, commutation of sentences, etc., which aren't technically pardons but function similarly.

[dps]

Cigar bill?

I've noticed an odd trend lately for trumpies to hate on Clinton above all others. Why not Obama?

Is it Trump followers?  I'm anti-Trump, and I dislike the Clintons but certainly don't hate on Obama.  Bill Clinton, as I've said before, was a pig (thought not to the same degree as Trump), whereas Obama was a decent person with whom I disagreed on many issues.

EDIT:  oops, sorry for the double post.

[Camerus]

Clinton derangement syndrome has been a longstanding and well documented malady.

[The Minsky Moment]

Obama, unlike Trump, actually did use his pardon power to achieve criminal justice reform ends.  Most of his pardons were actually sentence commutations for non-violent drug offenses; it was based on policy, not personality.  That's why his numbers are so high.

Trump isn't abusing his pardon power because he is pardoning lots of people.  He is abusing it because he is using to run a protection racket, where people can get out of jail by showing fealty to him personally.

[The Minsky Moment]

Cigar bill?

I've noticed an odd trend lately for trumpies to hate on Clinton above all others.

He lacked the moral fiber to confine his adulterous acts to porn stars.

[dps]

Obama, unlike Trump, actually did use his pardon power to achieve criminal justice reform ends.  Most of his pardons were actually sentence commutations for non-violent drug offenses; it was based on policy, not personality.  That's why his numbers are so high.

Trump isn't abusing his pardon power because he is pardoning lots of people.  He is abusing it because he is using to run a protection racket, where people can get out of jail by showing fealty to him personally.

Yeah, there are people Obama pardoned that I don't think should have been pardoned, but despite the high total numbers, he wasn't giving out a lot of pardons to political allies and other pals.  OTOH, Trump isn't alone in pardoning a buck of his own cronies.

There are actually some odd, unexpected pardons on the lists.  Like Harding giving a pardon to Eugene V. Debs, or Carter being the President that pardoned G. Gordon Liddy (well, actually, both Debs and Libby had their sentences commuted, rather than receiving a full pardon).

[The Minsky Moment]

Debs was a political prisoner, jailed under the prior administration.

By 1921, pro-war jingoism had cooled and the worst excesses of the Red Scare had passed.

[Syt]

[The Brain]

Counting is hard.

[The Minsky Moment]

I can say with some confidence that neither Austrian-made automatic pistols nor ancient Judaean literature played significant roles in American independence.