RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thespectator.com/politics/slowly-then-suddenly-sad-story-biden-decline/

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” 

Those were Hemingway’s words in 1926’s The Sun Also Rises.  

A century later, they apply to Joe Biden, not financially but politically. For him, the sun is not rising. It’s setting.  

“Gradually and then suddenly” is the story of Joe Biden’s physical and cognitive decline. “Gradually and then suddenly” is how his army of enablers in the media, the Democratic Party and the donor base abandoned his defense. “Gradually and then suddenly” is how he gifted his party and his country with a full-scale political crisis, centered on a president who no longer appears fit for office and whose vice president (and presumptive successor) is widely disliked. 

Years ago, Ronald Reagan wrote, elegiacally, that the sun was setting on his life. But by then, he was a former president, living in retirement on his ranch. He was not occupying the Oval Office, holding down the most powerful and demanding job on earth. 

Joe Biden is. The public no longer thinks he is fit to do that job. They reached that firm conclusion after watching the debate Thursday night and then hearing nothing from Biden’s allies to convince them otherwise. Whatever voters think of Biden’s performance for the last three-plus years, they simply don’t think he can continue. They are certain he won’t last another term and wonder if he will make it to the end of this one. They didn’t vote for the country to be governed by his staff. 

That situation is a tragedy for Joe and his family and a source of anguish for his friends. He deserves our sympathy. But what doesn’t deserve sympathy is Joe’s decision, backed by his family and close associates, that he should stay in the race and remain on the job. 

That decision affects all Americans. We depend on the president to lead the country and keep us safe in a dangerous world. That’s why Joe Biden’s decline goes far beyond a family tragedy. It’s a national tragedy and a palpable danger. 

https://dnyuz.com/2024/07/03/biden-and-the-democrats-cant-decide-what-to-blame-the-disastrous-debate-on/

President Joe Biden has offered a new explanation for his disastrous debate performance — jet lag.

Giving a reason for his incoherent sentences, slurring and vacant expression on the June 27 CNN debate with former President Donald Trump, Biden said that he “nearly fell asleep on stage.”

Speaking to donors at a fundraising event in Virginia on Tuesday, he added that he “wasn’t very smart” about his use of time before the debate. “I decided to travel around the world a couple times, going through around 100 time zones,” Biden said.

He added: “It’s not an excuse but an explanation.”

Other reasons for his poor performance

The jet lag explanation, however, deviates from the one his own campaign put out days ago.

The Biden campaign source said that he was suffering from a cold during the debate. That Biden had a cold going into the big night, The Wall Street Journal reported, which did explain his hoarse voice and coughing.

But post-debate, Biden critics and supporters alike have been speculating on whether his advanced age might kill the Democratic ticket’s chances of winning in 2024.

And on that front, the Biden camp has been willing to admit the obvious — the president is old.

When asked at a White House press conference whether “Biden’s cognitive decline” was “an episode or a condition,” his press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that he was not a young man and “he’s a little slower than he used to be.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/03/biden-trump-knotted-in-july-poll-but-debate-disaster-could-lead-to-big-shift-ii-tipp-poll/

Following President Joe Biden’s abysmal performance in the June 27 debate with former President Donald Trump, you might think he would suffer a crash in his support for re-election. Even the media describe the Democratic Party’s response to Biden’s poor showing as “panic.” Will voters abandon Biden? They haven’t yet, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows, but signs of trouble loom.

The national online I&I/TIPP Poll, answered by 1,244 registered voters from June 26-28, includes last Thursday’s debate night. So the final day of the poll reflects that information. Did it have an impact?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/anatomy-of-a-biden-disaster/

There really was not a debate last Thursday night, merely a one-sided slugfest. The arguments over the issues, such as they were, were over in 30 minutes. The rest was unnecessary. In bullfighting terms, the end-stage tercio de muerte lasted an entire hour.

The back-and-forth invective was overshadowed by Biden thrashing about and the accompanying optics of a near comatose President of the United States.

One candidate was animated and alive; the other cognitively inert, despite apparently more than a week of rest and preparation and perhaps medications. No one believes Biden had a “cold,” given he seemed like the real Biden we’ve all seen over the last four years. He did not ever come out with a wild screaming fit as in his State of the Union address or the creepy Phantom of the Opera semi-fascist rant.

So, Biden was hoarse and almost impossible to understand. He slurred his words; his sentences were jumbled. Sometimes Biden closed his eyes during a brain freeze. Some of his repartee was unworldly, like beating Medicare or women raped by family members (including “sisters”?)

Most of the time, he simply looked down (were they notes?) for talking points, and then recited his prepped and formulaic canned replies, one … two … three….

Of course, some have pointed out that Trump could have been more detailed in his answers in the fashion De Santis dissected Newsom, but he was still vigorous—no notes, ad hoc, and did what he had to do in comparing his successful record to Biden’s failures. Trump stayed calm as Biden’s prepared slurs trailed off into never-never land.

Again, it took Trump about 10 minutes to explain his record on inflation, the border, taxes, foreign policy, and abortion.

And after that it was the story of an 82-year-old man forced to stand for an hour-and-a-half and in muddled efforts to remember all the things he was told to say and to follow the prompts on the rostrum.

https://www.jns.org/no-auditory-illusions-about-it/

The debate on Thursday evening between U.S. President Joe Biden and predecessor Donald Trump is a gift that keeps on giving. Every syllable spoken by the two presumptive nominees continues to be the focus of both serious and comedic discourse.

Only a handful of desperate straw-graspers are rejecting the consensus opinion that the incumbent’s performance revealed an unacceptable level of age-related brain fog. Even those of his ardent supporters in the media who’ve been telling us not to believe our lying eyes realized that the jig was up.

Fearing electoral defeat in November, especially to Trump, they instantly altered the narrative to one of sadness about the inescapable conclusion that Joe must go. Barack Obama’s feeble attempt at obfuscating the disaster—by posting on X, “Bad debate nights happen”—hasn’t made a dent in the Democrats’ scramble to persuade Biden to back out of the race and settle on a replacement.

And with good reason, from their standpoint. Indeed, Biden didn’t merely have a “bad debate night.” His whatever-stage dementia was on full display.

First Lady “Dr. Jill” hit home this reality particularly hard when, post-fiasco, she cheered in nursery-school-teacher singsong to her husband: “You answered every question! You knew all the facts!”

Cringeworthy doesn’t begin to describe the scene. Nor does it do justice to the entire exchange between the two senior citizens, one a few years younger than the other, but with all his faculties, as farcical as they often seem.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/01/who-should-voters-let-finish-the-job-biden-or-trump/

Aside from repeatedly calling Donald Trump a liar, the only message President Joe Biden managed to convey during last week’s debate was that Trump left him a terrible mess to clean up.

The first words out of his mouth in the debate were: “You have to take a look at what I was left when I became president, what Mr. Trump left me. We had an economy that was in freefall.”

And his closing remarks began: “We’ve made significant progress from the debacle that was left by President Trump in his – in his last term.”

It’s clear why Biden’s debate prep team wanted those to be the first thing he said — before he wandered off into a maze of half-completed sentences. The Biden administration has seen the polls. It knows that the public doesn’t view things this way.

CBS News, for example, reported recently that: “Voters recall the economy under Trump more fondly than they rate the economy now. While neither gets great marks, voters today look back on Trump’s presidency with relatively better retrospective ratings than they’d rate Mr. Biden’s presidency so far.”

So who’s right? Whose policies did a better job of spurring growth, raising wages, keeping the country safe?

There is, thankfully, an objective way to answer this. Compare where things stood at comparable points in each presidency to see who was doing a better job – and whose policies are worth pursuing over the next four years.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/28/why-the-democrats-lied-about-joe-bidens-frailty/

So this is how republics die. Not with a bang but with the hoarse ramblings of their ageing leaders. Few events have shone a light on ‘American decline’ as much as Joe Biden’s sad, impassive performance in last night’s CNN presidential debate. Here was the leader of the free world speaking in faint, broken tones, and struggling to stay focussed, and at points seeming to blank out entirely. Before the eyes of the world, it became clear: this man is too old, too frail and too infirm to be at the helm of America.

And yet, Old Joe’s physical infirmity is not the thing that should horrify us. Everyone ages, everyone withers. No, it is the moral infirmity of the Democratic establishment that is truly chilling. It is those who are so bent on power that they’ll force a frail man on to the world stage to do their bidding who deserve our ire. It is the media movers and shakers who said ‘Joe is fine’, and who damned the concerned as ageist cranks, who have behaved atrociously. Behind Biden’s physical decay is the far graver problem of the moral decay of a ruling class that will lie, gaslight and bully just to stay on top.

The debate was a dreadful spectacle. No one can now deny that Biden is not fit for the highest office in the Western world. Even Donald Trump seemed to put a lid on his usual piss-taking, perhaps clocking that Biden’s decline is now too serious for wisecracks. Although at one point, after Biden breathlessly mumbled something about border control, Trump snuck in a jibe: ‘I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said, either.’ The vacant, doleful look on Biden’s face in response to Trump’s swipe was painful to see.

At times, Biden glitched completely. Fourteen minutes into proceedings, and then again 22 minutes into proceedings, his mental faculties seemed to betray him and he just stalled. The moderator, Jake Tapper, had to save him at one point, delivering a merciful ‘Thank you, Mr President’ after he malfunctioned during a muddled commentary on Covid or Medicare or something. He even fluffed his attack on Trump over his lack of physical prowess. ‘You can see he is six feet five and only 224 pounds. Or 20… 30… five pounds’, he said, weakly, strangely. In trying to land a blow on Trump over alleged ill-health, he hurt only himself.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/06/michelle_o_breaks_cover_and_her_timing_is_spot_on.html

All over the media in the past two days was Michelle Obama’s “exclusive” interview, in which she dished on the Biden family dysfunction.

Such a piece of journalistic slavishness is hardly surprising. Surely the ironies have not escaped public notice: “private frustration”—no, not exactly private.

To any of us who attended the First and Second ladies’ horror shows during Barack’s first and second terms, we saw, repeatedly, strain, and certainly no love lost between Michelle and Jill. Both are ambitious, to put it mildly, vain, and love money. Both serve as expensive props for their spouse. Neither accept rivalry from any quarter.

Michelle’s abrupt garrulousness this week was not a coincidence. It is a clear sign that the faux indifference of Ms. Obama to “be” president of the United States may be about to evaporate. We can anticipate, although most hopefully not, a putative fourth Obama administration, as Michelle and her expensive, fascistic PR network further obliterates any sign of her consistent, overarching love of power and cash, “for the good of the country.” The country, mind you, that she has scorned and degraded (see her White House parties) in the past.

I am a native of the District of Columbia. When Barry bought the Kalorama Obama Mansion (one of three, now, hither and yon, or is it four?) in a D.C. ambassadorial neighborhood, some in town knew he was planning on a continuation of his reign (come hell or high water—well, both came).

It was an historic precedent that an immediately past U.S. President would stay on in the District, even if “for our girls”—uh huh.

Then, immediately following Michelle’s typically narcissistic whine session of this week, we get the debate last night. Biden did not disappoint—he really blew it, by just being what half of the country, at least, has known he is for a very long time.

Michelle has not disappointed, either. The photographers, stylists, fashionistas, speech writers, ghost writers, and make-up artists, and pollsters, are all on alert. Look for more “exclusives”  and “private” dishings from the Obama East (to be West?) Wing-soon.