RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/the-sleight-of-hand-convention/

Biden’s speech was affecting, but the Democrats were awfully vague about what they plan to do if he wins.

Joe Biden delivered the best speech in a half-century political career on Thursday night. It was interesting to contrast his delivery with Kamala Harris’s 24 hours earlier. Both the presidential and vice-presidential nominees spoke to an empty hall. But Biden was forceful, emotional, emphatic, and clear-sighted as he made the case for an effective federal response to the coronavirus and a bipartisan reconstruction of the American polity after decades of increasing polarization. I couldn’t help thinking what the world would look like if Biden had disobeyed President Obama and run for president in 2016. It would be a very different place, I imagine.

But that’s not where we live. Biden’s impressive oratory capped off a four-day exercise in sleight of hand. The Democrats spent hours reminding Americans that Joe Biden is a decent and empathetic human being and that the current occupant of the White House has, shall we say, other qualities. But that’s about as specific as things got. Address after address, video montage after video montage, mentioned systemic racism and the injustices committed against indigenous people. I watched all of the convention, and the word “China” was not uttered until 10:57 p.m. on Thursday. Nor did any of the Democrats mention the violence that has erupted in America’s cities after the protests against the killing of George Floyd. Biden talked about jobs, but the American worker made only guest appearances in the four days of programming.

https://spectator.us/joe-biden-platitudes-policies-democratic-national-convention/

Joe Biden’s speech was effective in many ways and sure to please his supporters. But anyone who expected him to say something substantive about his policies left empty-handed. He did little more than spin gauzy pictures of a rosy future.

First, the good news for Biden supporters. He looked strong, never stumbled, and delivered the speech with remarkable empathy, energy, and modulated tones. His performance showed no traces of the confusion he has shown occasionally or the cognitive decline he has been charged with. He was at his best.

Biden also made the best of his strongest quality: he’s a likable guy, whose tragedies have made him deeply sympathetic to others facing their own difficulties. He’s not faking that, and it shows. He’s proud of his working-class roots and proud he has fostered a close, loving family as father and grandfather. The lead-up to his speech captured that well with pictures of his parents and video of his family today.

Biden’s admirable personal qualities shone through, allowing him to bond with voters in ways Hillary Clinton never could. They also reinforced a central message of his campaign: I’m a guy like most of you; I’m on your side and will work hard for you; I don’t think of myself as superior; together, we can have a brighter future.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/08/mail-voter-fraud-which-doesnt-exist-forces-new-daniel-greenfield/

“Trump Keeps touting New Jersey fraud case to attack mail voting. Local leaders say he’s not telling the whole story.” Washington Post

In slightly more recent news…

A judge has ruled that a new election will be held in November for a disputed City Council seat, just weeks after the race’s apparent winner and a sitting councilman were charged with voter fraud.

Alex Mendez had won a special election on May 12 to fill the seat, but claims of voter fraud were soon raised. An investigation was then launched after the U.S. Postal Service’s law enforcement arm told the state Attorney General’s Office about hundreds of mail-in ballots located in a mailbox in Paterson, along with more found in nearby Haledon.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/joe-bidens-orwellian-rewrite-history-bruce-thornton/

In an apocryphal story about Christopher Columbus, the great explorer was insulted at a banquet by a man who said that discovering America was no big deal, since if Columbus hadn’t done it, somebody else would have. Columbus said nothing, but asked for an egg. He then challenged the banqueteers to make the egg stand on end. After several fruitless efforts, Columbus tapped the small end of the egg on the table, flattening it so it would stand up. His point was obvious: after the difficult deed is done, everybody knows how to do it.

This tale came to mind last week when Joe Biden tried to claim some credit for Trump’s brokering of a groundbreaking deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that normalizes relations between the two countries. Biden’s effort didn’t impress anyone beyond the NeverTrump diehards and their stenographers in the mainstream media. But it is another example of how the history of the Obama years is being rewritten to lend some glamor and excitement to a party with no policy ideas other than failed socialist magical thinking.

More important, that willingness to distort the past is one of the left’s most important weapons for instituting tyranny.

Biden’s statement was so specious one might attribute it to his obvious cognitive decline. “I personally,” Biden said, “spent time with leaders of both Israel and UAE during our administration building the case for cooperation and broader engagement and the benefits it could deliver to both nations.” But every vice-president “personally” spends time superficially discussing all sorts of issues with foreign leaders. Most of these are photo-ops that generate banal statements like “cooperation and broader engagement” that are forgotten by the next news cycle.

A significant, meaningful discussion, on the other hand, leads to significant action and results. For example, take Biden’s colloquy with the president of Ukraine. In March of 2016, as Biden later boasted, the Veep threatened Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko that the U.S. would not honor $1 billion in loan guarantees unless the prosecutor looking into Burisma Holdings, suspected of corruption, was fired. As Biden gleefully related later about threatening Poroshenko, “‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/fake-dnc-convention-ends-real-nastiness-daniel-greenfield/

On the last night of the imaginary DNC convention taking place inside an editing room, the Democrats decided that the best way to win over independent voters was to bring in the least talented member of the Seinfeld cast to make jokes about Mike Pence’s name.

Why? It distracts from Joe Biden doesn’t it.

The joke here is positively Seinfeldian. Julia Louis Dreyfuss plays shallow, self-involved, and petty characters because she’s shallow, petty, and self-involved. The Democrats attack Trump as an unserious reality show host who confuses social media with leadership, and then debut a failed convention dominated by celebrities and badly written jokes aimed at social media.

“I’m proud to be a nasty, nasty woman,” Julia Louis Dreyfuss gloated.

It’s not just her own aspiration, but that of the party that invited her. The Democrats want to play at being serious, principled folks bringing the country together, but they’re proud to be nasty.

“I will draw on the best of us, not the worst of us,” Joe Biden claimed, accepting his nomination after a convention filled with conspiracy theories about mailboxes, smears, and cheap shots.

That promise is coming from a politician who spent his career insulting voters, calling them fat and stupid, whose family is notorious for profiting from his political office, who palled around with segregationists and sexual predators, but whom three nights of celebrities and fellow hacks from across the political swamp spectrum now insist is really a kind, decent, and loveable man.

Biden’s transformation after 47 years of nastiness is just as convincing as that of his party.

https://pjmedia.com/election/tyler-o-neil/2020/08/21/5-things-to-know-about-night-4-of-the-democratic-national-convention-n818980

Whew! That was torture. The Democratic National Convention (DNC) finally concluded on Thursday. We at PJ Media subjected ourselves to this Gaslighting America Telethon so you wouldn’t have to. Check out our liveblogs from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and follow our coverage tomorrow.

Without further ado, here’s a recap of the fourth and final night.

1. Was Joe Biden’s speech racist?

Democratic nominee Joe Biden delivered his acceptance speech at the end of the night, and his speech focused on the theme of choosing “light” over “darkness.” According to the logic of woke cancel culture, that theme seems rather suspect. Here’s a selection of quotes:

The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division.

Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us not the worst. I will be an ally of the light not of the darkness. …

For make no mistake. United we can, and will, overcome this season of darkness in America. We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege. …

May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here tonight as love and hope and light joined in the battle for the soul of the nation.

Biden even said, “Light is more powerful than dark.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/bidens_speech_managed_to_be_simultaneously_vapid_and_disgraceful.html

A weary sounding Joe Biden, who periodically managed to flog himself into a weak and shrill rage, delivered a singularly awful acceptance speech. When it wasn’t hackneyed, he plagiarized ideas and policies from President Trump and made boasts that were inconsistent with his 48 years in politics, whether as a Senator or a Vice President. The worst thing about it, though, was that he repeated a vicious, and unforgivable, slander about Trump. 

Here’s a short list of Biden’s platitudes: Trump is darkness. I am light. FDR was a great president. Help young people by ending Trump’s darkness. America is racist. More darkness, more light.

You must judge Trump’s entire presidency by looking at the six months of the Wuhan virus and its damage to the economy (damage wrought, though he doesn’t say it, by Democrat politicians).

America had the worst virus outbreak in the world. (That’s not true, by the way, but it is true that Democrat policies, especially regarding nursing homes, made it horrifically worse than it should have been.) Trump will kill the economy. Trump will take people’s insurance.

Wasn’t Obama great? Trump isn’t great.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-biden-nomination-speech-vague-no-policy-specifics/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=second

If there is one overwhelming message from the Democratic convention and Joe Biden’s acceptance speech, it’s that Democrats want to make this election about two things: Donald Trump’s personality (which was an asset to them in 2016, but not enough to win the election) and how Donald Trump has done his job as president. Barack Obama hit these themes last night, and so did Joe Biden tonight. These are, of course, entirely fair game in a presidential election. But the omissions were noticeable. Biden’s discussion of policy issues tonight was purposely vague, a far cry from detailing his agenda, and he offered very few criticisms of Republican policies or proposals. For a guy who has spent years in the trenches of the judicial-confirmation wars, he was strikingly quiet on the courts and the issues they control — he did not mention the courts once. He left to his running mate the latest promise of legislation by executive fiat:

https://canadafreepress.com/article/kalamity-kamala-a-calamity-for-america

Kamala won’t be Biden’s VP. Biden will be Kamala’s president only if she gets up in a good enough mood to give him permission. 

Calamity Jane was a frontier heroine in the mid-19th century who during an uprising in 1872, saved a Captain Egan from certain death, whereupon he told her: “I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains.” 

This is in stark contrast to Kalamity Kamala of 21st century America, who would accelerate the downfall of our Democratic Republic in the unlikely event of a Biden-Kalamity win on November 3rd. 

Why? Because Biden and Kalamity are promising to resurrect the failed policies of the Obama years, and inflict even more damage on America the Beautiful. 

According to author and television host Mark Levin, although the media are rushing to portray California’s junior senator as a moderate, nothing could be further from the truth. 

She is the “most extremist radical politician ever to run for high office” in the U.S.A., Levin states, even “farther left than 97% of the Democrats in the U.S. Senate,” even “left of avowed Marxist Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders.”