RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-democrats-most-bitter-pill/

On the menu today: You might think that, at this point, Joe Biden must have hit bottom in his job approval rating, but a Monmouth University poll finds him down to 36 percent. What’s notable about the polling lately is how many Democrats can no longer convince themselves that Biden is doing a good job. A lot of this is driven by the runaway-inflation crisis, and there’s a real problem for Democrats, in that the $1.9 trillion in new spending enacted in March 2021 — a massive spending bill that Larry Summers explicitly warned would “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation” — was passed on party-line votes. As they approach a red tsunami midterm, the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves.

A Dark Day for Biden in the Polls

Normal Democrats are increasingly open about their disappointment with President Biden. Yesterday, the Monmouth University national poll had Biden’s job approval down to 36 percent. If you follow politics, you know the usual split in these polls by party. Usually only about 10 percent of the opposition-party respondents approve of the job the president is doing, usually almost all of the members of the president’s party approve, and independents are usually roughly evenly split.

In the Monmouth poll, just 3 percent of Republicans, 29 percent of independents, and 74 percent of Democrats approved of the job Biden is doing. The survey found that 19 percent of Democrats were willing to tell a pollster they didn’t approve of the job Biden was doing, and another 7 percent volunteered that they didn’t know enough to have an opinion.

In other words, roughly a quarter of Democrats can’t bring themselves to say, “Yes, he’s doing fine.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/07/will-5-gal-gas-be-the-death-knell-for-bidens-i-did-that-presidency/

It’s a given that the Democrats are in trouble in the 2022 midterms. But President Joe Biden might also be on his way out. Desperate Democrats are sending signals they’d be happy if he didn’t run again in 2024, and might be even happier if he left before that, and took Vice President Kamala Harris with him. Why? A look at his disastrous bumbling on energy tells you all you need to know.

For those around during the 1970s, the gold standard for political ineptitude has always been President Jimmy Carter. Forty-three years ago this month, Carter gave his now-infamous “Address To The Nation” on energy policy.

It was a disaster, and wrong on all counts when it came to both basic economics and energy.

Some of his most memorable quotes, courtesy of the Foundation for Economic Education:

“The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75% of our energy are running out.”
“We can’t substantially increase our domestic production …”
“Within 10 years we would not be able to import enough oil — from any country, at any acceptable price.”

These were just a few of the many defeatist fatuities in that infamous speech, not one of them true. But no one thought Carter was intentionally lying. He was just wrong. And it led to soaring prices, gas rationing with lines that lasted for hours, and economic misery.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2022/07/06/covid-journalist-alex-berenson-settles-suit-with-twitter-is-reinstated-nearly-a-year-after-refusing-to-bend-knee-n1610725

Nearly one year after journalist and writer Alex Berenson was kicked off Twitter for being a sometimes COVID-19 contrarian, his account has been restored. He had to sue the tech platform to be reinstated.

Berenson announced a settlement with Twitter on Wednesday on his Substack page, “Unreported Truths.”

[L]ast August, Twitter banned me after I got five strikes under its Covid-19 misinformation policy. Which meant I’d supposedly made “claims of fact” that were “demonstrably false or misleading” and “likely to impact public safety or cause serious harm” (that’s the policy, that’s what it takes to get a strike, look it up).

Now we come to find those tweets “should not have led to my suspension”?

Here’s the tweet that got him “permanently suspended.”

Berenson is the former New York Times reporter whose specialty was reporting on pharmaceutical companies, dangerous drugs, health care, and government oversight. After leaving The Times, Berenson wrote novels and pamphlets. When COVID-19 burst onto the scene, Berenson began looking closely at government claims and wrote books and pamphlets about the disease.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/07

The Constitution provides for three branches of government, sharing sovereign power. In fact, we have a fourth branch, the sprawling administrative bureaucracies. They are nominally part of the Executive Branch, which struggles to control them. Congress struggles, too, and now spends much of its time trying to oversee them. The oversight is spotty and the bureaucracies are often left to their own devices, free to write their own rules on even the most important issues.

Last week’s Supreme Court decision took an important step to rein in these bureaucracies. It ruled the regulations for carbon dioxide emissions, written and enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, went well beyond the vague laws passed by Congress.

Most comments about the court’s opinion have emphasized two likely consequences of the ruling, both important. One, highlighted by the left and especially by climate activists, is that the ruling could lead to more CO2 pollution. Indeed, it undoubtedly will do so unless Congress acts. The second, underscored by conservatives and the right, is that the courts are finally trying to constrain Washington’s vast, centralized “regulatory state,” which they see as fundamentally undemocratic and a threat to our constitutionally guaranteed liberties and our right to govern ourselves through elected representatives.

This debate goes to the very heart of how we as Americans rule ourselves. The left sees Washington’s administrative apparatus as “rule by experts,” essential for controlling a technologically complex society. Their preference is for the modern equivalent of Plato’s philosopher-kings, people who understand the population’s needs far better than the people themselves.