RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-trump-biden-debate-disaster

A day before Thursday’s presidential debate, the New York Times ran a front-page story in its print edition railing against the posting of unflattering videos of Joe Biden. Among the president’s many “adversaries,” observed the Times, was the “distorted, online version of himself, a product of often misleading videos that play into and reinforce voters’ longstanding concerns about his age and abilities.”

Such voter concerns were misguided, according to the Times and its sources. Former Illinois representative Adam Kinzinger told the paper: “If you see those [videos] and that’s all you see, you’re going to walk away thinking there’s something wrong, like something’s going on.”

The public was simply too credulous, according to the Times. A pollster complained that “people that already are concerned about his age are quick to accept what they see in the video, and not question whether that’s selectively edited.”

The Times ended its story on an upbeat note. “People are going to see actual footage [during the debate] that contradicts that [cognitive decline narrative],” said the digital director for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. “They’re going to be pleasantly surprised and constantly be reminded that the president is in a lot hardier shape than they’ve been told.”

Oops. It turns out that nothing prepared viewers for the debacle that was Biden’s debate performance. The mainstream media cannot blame selective editing for the impression that Biden lacks the mental acuity to function another four years in the White House. That impression was generated from 90 minutes of live broadcast.

And now the Times and other media outlets have revised their history. It turns out they had their doubts all along! In an editorial calling for Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, the Times admits that the president’s catastrophic performance on Thursday night “affirmed concerns that have been mounting for months or even years.” Biden understood, according to the Times, that “he needed to address longstanding public concerns about his mental acuity and that he needed to do so as soon as possible.” Now they tell us!

https://thespectator.com/topic/scotus-robust-decision-presidential-immunity/

All is unfolding as I have foreseen. Yesterday, reviewing last week’s Supreme Court decisions and indulging in a little well-earned Schadenfreude over Thursday’s scenes from the geriatric dementia ward, I noted that what SCOTUS would probably issue its final opinion of the season, on the question of presidential immunity.

So it turned out to be. This morning, “Trump v. United States” dropped. For the first time, the Court pondered the question, “Does a president have immunity from prosecution?” or, to use the language of the opinion, “Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”

The answer was more or less what I predicted. I wrote that, while no one outside the hallowed halls of the Court really knew how the Court would come down on the issue, “most observers expect the Supremes to recognize immunity for ‘official acts’ but to remand to the lower court the vexed question of what counts as an ‘official’ and therefore protected act.” 

That is precisely how the Court decided, 6-3 (Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson dissenting), though in fact the opinion was even more robustly phrased than I could have hoped. “Under our constitutional structure of separated powers,” the Syllabus of the opinion reads, “the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.” The one caveat was this: “There is no immunity for unofficial acts.” 

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/01/anti-israel-rioters-block-pride-parade-in-new-york-city-vandalize-floats/

In one of the final celebrations of “pride month” in New York City on Sunday, a clash broke out between the pro-gay parade participants and anti-Israel rioters who blocked the parade route and vandalized several floats.

As reported by Fox News, the rioters could be seen sitting in the street to block the progression of the parade, chanting various anti-Semitic slogans such as “Free Palestine” and “from the river to the sea.” Several of them could be seen using spray-paint to vandalize floats, while others climbed over barricades and threw fake blood at the displays. Dozens of rioters were ultimately arrested by police, who used zip-ties to handcuff them.

“It is certainly a more active presence this year in terms of protest at Pride events,” said Sandra Perez, executive director of NYC Pride. “But we were born out of a protest.”

This year’s pride demonstration was the 54th annual parade in New York City, with the very first one taking place in 1970. This year’s pride theme was “reflect, empower, unite.”

This year’s “pride month” saw a high number of protests and riots against various pride demonstrations carried out almost exclusively by anti-Israel agitators, who have been protesting and rioting across the country ever since the October 7th terrorist attacks against Israel by Hamas.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/what-was-missing-from-the-debate/

Even at their best, presidential debates are glorified dog-and-pony shows. Voters always say they want a serious policy debate, but such discussions involve technical information, statistical data, and complex explanations, all of which a majority of people find tedious. They much prefer emotion, clashing personalities, drama, humor, flubs, gaffes, and, as Donald Trump has shown since 2016, street-fighting elan.

Those limitations are good for entertainment and marketing, rather than informing voters, the default purpose of these verbal jousts, which reduces their political utility.

Last week’s debate illustrated this flaw, especially the insult battles between Trump and Biden. The moderators’ questions covered the issues that concern voters and regularly show up in polls, such as illegal border-crossings and inflation. But the dueling narratives mostly comprise attacks on each other, rather than presenting specific policies.

Trump, however, had the advantage in that bout despite his trademark hyperbole, given his first-term successes on both fronts, compared to Biden’s surreal lies, incoherence, and obviously addled condition, not to mention his sorry record of exacerbating those very problems.

But especially on the economy, we didn’t hear the more detailed information needed in order to break through the partisan rancor and spin, and get closer to the facts. For example, a few days before the debate, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial about the Democrat’s “Tax Armageddon” scheme for undoing Trump’s 2017 tax reforms: “Democrats are saying out loud that they plan to use the scheduled expiration of the 2017 tax cuts at the end of 2025 to insist on the largest tax increase in history.”