RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/06/the-narcissism-of-jill-biden/

Surely one of the most ill-timed articles in all of journalistic history was published earlier this week. Vogue has produced a fawning piece about US first lady Dr Jill Biden (not a medical doctor), just days after her husband’s historic, doddering meltdown at the presidential debate against Donald Trump.

The opening paragraph of the Vogue article provides a spectacular description of the first family currently under fire, unwittingly showing them as completely out of touch with the mood of a very tense nation. The journalist writes breathlessly of the experience of being driven around in a presidential motorcade:

‘Rules don’t apply: on a cool spring day, driving down suburban Minneapolis side streets, we run red lights and whip round curves so fast I can barely take in the commonplace American view. Tract housing, big box stores, churches, office parks, semi-industrial no-man’s-land. Finally, we arrive at our destination, Nine Mile Brewing, in Bloomington, Minnesota. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go”, commands someone – a Secret Service agent, maybe – as the motorcade pulls into a loading dock. Politics, I will come to discover in the next few days, involves a lot of backstage spaces: service entrances, freight elevators, places where Very Important People can slip in and out of events unnoticed.’

At a time when Joe Biden’s estrangement from the nation he nominally leads has rarely been as hotly discussed, Vogue treats us to a Biden-eyed view of the ‘commonplace American’, living in his ‘no-man’s-land’. It then contrasts that with the life of ‘Very Important People’ like Dr Jill, who can ‘slip in and out of events unnoticed’, because the ‘rules don’t apply’ to them.

When the journalist first sets eyes on Jill, it’s a semi-religious experience:

‘An entourage of 30 or so are noisily hustling to follow a trim, blonde woman in a pristine white suit as she strides nonchalantly past clanging, gurgling brewing vats, aiming for a back office. This is my first glimpse of first lady Dr Jill Biden: exiting the sealed chamber of power into the middle of America, a vision of calm amid utter cacophony.’

This must be one of the best – and no doubt unwitting – descriptions of the upper echelons of American politics right now. It captures a ruling elite sealed off from the people, kept in pristine condition and chauffeured to and from pantomime appearances among ordinary American citizens – in this case, working at a brewers.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/08/bidengate-and-the-doom-loop/

The entire 2019-20 Biden candidacy and subsequent presidency were predicated on a rotten Faustian bargain. A hale Joe Biden would feign his aw-shucks, Joe from Scranton schtick. And an ossified working-class Joe’s camouflage would get the hard left elected—especially thanks to the changes in balloting laws that often saw only 30 percent of the electorate voting on Election Day in key states.

In exchange, the two narcissistic Bidens would bask in the power and attention of the presidency. From the start, Jill and the media would orchestrate deep cover for Joe’s escalating dementia as well as the true intentions of the now-in-power radical Democratic Party with its neo-socialist agenda. The former Obama acolytes would get their long-dreamed-of third presidential term. And this time they would enact a truly radical agenda while their string puppet mumbled to everyone that he was just old, familiar Joe working for the middle class.

The problem, inter alia, with the ruse was that it was based on a complete lie to the American people. Joe Biden was nowhere near cognitively competent. He could not campaign “normally” in 2020. And it would be impossible for his dementia to go undetected even in the ceremonial duties of the presidency for four, perhaps even eight, more years.

And there were plenty of other problems that transcended even Biden’s mental confusion.

First, the new Obama agenda—hyperinflation, open borders, woke crime theories, destroying deterrence abroad, green extremist mandates—was further to the left of the American people than in 2016.

And worse, it was nihilist and destructive. By the August 2021 Kabul withdrawal humiliation, Biden would never again win 50 percent approval from an increasingly exasperated public who felt they had been had by the mannequin Scranton Joe and his false 2020 calls for “unity” and “healing America.”

Second, Joe Biden, senator, vice president, quid-pro-quo sudden multimillionaire, was never a “nice guy.”

His (brief) 1984, 1988, and 2020 presidential runs were characterized by assorted gaffes, plagiarism, and racism (the first “clean” and “articulate” black presidential candidate, “junkie,” “you ain’t’ black,” and the corn-pop sagas).

He always displayed a short-fuse, mean streak (cf. his 1988 angry and falsified defense of his law school and stump speech plagiarism) and bullying (his 2020 slurs of “fat,” “lying dog-faced pony soldier,” etc.).

https://www.frontpagemag.com/joe-biden-poster-senior-for-elder-abuse/

Nearly four years ago, I wrote that Joe Biden was a victim of elder abuse and his wife and son Hunter were likely compelling him to take on a job that he was not fit to do. Now everyone, with even a scintilla of objectivity, knows that this is true.

When an Older Adult is Harmed

According to the CDC (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) “Elder abuse is an intentional act or failure to act that causes or creates a risk of harm to an older adult. An older adult is someone aged 60 or older. The abuse often occurs at the hands of a caregiver or a person the elder trusts.”

The CDC further states that “Victims often have to decide whether to tell someone they are being hurt or continue being abused by someone they depend upon or care for deeply.” What’s more, “Elder abuse is common. Abuse, including neglect and exploitation, are experienced by about 1 in 10 people aged 60 and older who live at home.”

The thoughtless, cruel, and immoral exploitation of Joe Biden largely stems from Democrats’ eternal quest for power and their residual shock from the 2016 election, aided and abetted by the aforementioned members of the Biden Crime Family. Jill, a modern day Lady Macbeth is power hungry. History will not be kind to her. Hunter, understandably so, wants to stay out of prison, and the “big guy” is his shield. In no way will they allow Joe to step down even if the degradation gets five times worse.

The Effects of Elder Abuse

Elders who have been abused have a 300% higher risk of death when compared to those who have not been mistreated, based on findings from the National Council on Aging.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/07/08/joe-biden-is-a-good-man-please-dont-insult-our-intelligence/

The talking points must have gone out within minutes of the end of President Joe Biden’s lame debate performance. Among the first to tell us just how fine a man Biden was Barack Obama, who called his former vice president “someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life.” It is, of course, a lie. Biden is not a good man, and the idea he’s “fought for ordinary folks” for even a single day of his “public service” is risible.

Obama’s tweet also claimed that Biden is the candidate “who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight.”  From there, the gaslighting grew exponentially worse.

At a July 2 fundraiser in Virginia, Democratic Rep. Don Boyer, whom Biden once called “Doug,” compared our disabled president to Jesus.

“​​He has been a good, good man. He’s resilient, optimistic, indefatigable, and above all courageous,” said Boyer.

On the day after the debate, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who admitted that watching the debate made him “weep,” assured us that Biden is “a good man and a good president.”

There are too many post-debate examples to list all the “good man” encomia, but here are few more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/05/biden-stephanopolous-abc-interview-condition/

“It was a bad episode,” President Biden told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos Friday of his debate debacle. “No indication of any serious condition.”

Glad to hear it! But what about us?

We — and by “we,” I mean those desperate to avoid the horrors of a second Trump presidency — are in a very serious condition. Biden now trails Donald Trump by six points in both the New York Times/Siena College and Wall Street Journal polls. The latest CBS News/YouGov poll finds that, post-debate, 72 percent of registered voters don’t think Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president. That’s up from 65 percent before the debate. Eighty percent of voters in the Wall Street Journal poll believed Biden too old to run. A USA Today poll found that 41 percent of Democrats want Biden replaced as the nominee.

Biden’s prime-time interview with Stephanopoulos will do nothing to reassure people worried about a Biden defeat. Stephanopoulos hectored him with nonstop and repetitive questions about his mental acuity for the full 22-minute session, which undoubtedly made Biden defensive. But the president seemed to be in denial about the magnitude of the problem facing him, unwilling even to acknowledge the obvious truth that he has lost a step over the last 3½ years.

Stephanopoulos pointed out that Biden is behind in the polls.

“I don’t buy that.”

Stephanopoulos, a veteran of the Clinton White House, told Biden he’d never seen a president with a 36 percent approval rating get reelected.

“I don’t believe that’s my approval.”

Is he more frail now?

“No.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-7-2-the-lawfare-campaign-against-donald-trump-takes-three-big-blows

In the 235 or so years since our Republic was founded, until now, no ex-President has ever been prosecuted for allegedly criminal acts committed while in office. This has been a political norm of great consequence. Any such prosecution of an ex-President cannot avoid being inherently problematical, inevitably bringing to a head the conflict between, on the one hand, constraining the President in the exercise of his constitutional duties and, on the other hand, declaring him “above the law.” By far preferable would be for this conflict never to arise, and for the applicable legal rules never to get defined and to remain ambiguous.

So for all those 235 years, our predecessors in the government, whatever their political differences and contentious disputes, have largely refrained from the temptation to use the criminal justice system to bring down political adversaries, and entirely so in the case of ex-Presidents. That political norm came to an abrupt end with the massive “lawfare” campaign initiated during the past two years by Democratic Party prosecutors in multiple jurisdictions against ex-President (and current candidate) Trump.

You might think that people abrogating a political norm like this, so central to the proper functioning of the Republic, would only do so in the face of the most clear-cut circumstances of obvious and significant statutory violations, crying out for criminal redress. But of course that is not the MO of our current garbage political powers-that-be. Instead, we see broadly-worded criminal statutes that would never be so used against anyone else, twisted out of context in the effort to take down a hated political foe. Now, the Supreme Court has been forced to rule on several issues in these cases, and has come out in unsurprising ways.

During the past week, the lawfare campaign against Trump suffered three major blows from Supreme Court decisions. The first of those came in a decision called Fischer v. United States, issued on June 28, and the other two in Trump v. United States, issued yesterday (July 1).

https://unherd.com/2024/07/the-true-president-of-americas-fifth-republic/

The fireworks in America this Fourth of July will be fueled by the country’s imminent election, in which a convicted felon faces off against a doddering old man who is too senile to know that he isn’t really the President. The country’s elite would be glad if this were hyperbole; unfortunately for them, it is not. But Joe Biden’s fitness for office is no longer the big question that the American press is afraid to ask. After three years of near-total silence, they suddenly can’t stop asking it.

There may have indeed been members of America’s political and media elites who were shocked by Biden’s debate performance. Crediting the sincerity of their reactions doesn’t say much for their powers of observation, though. Biden’s shuffling gait, frozen facial expressions, babbling fabulist arabesques and inability to perform simple physical tasks without falling down have all been on public display since the first year of his Presidency — an office he won mostly in absentia while hiding out in the basement of his home in Delaware.

It is certainly possible that the American elite stuck its fingers in its ears and covered its eyes in order to block out Biden’s resemblance to late-period Leonid Brezhnev. Perhaps by repeating the ideas that Biden was not only sharp as a tack but also a geopolitical genius and probably even the greatest American President of any of our lifetimes, they came to believe that some version of these things were true, and had to be true — because everyone said so.

Those who favour psychodynamic in-group explanations can certainly find support in the rapid about-faces staged by America’s leading pundits. Earlier this year, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was boasting of the personal time he spent with Biden, who he proclaimed to be “completely lucid and with excellent grasp of detail”. After the debate, Krugman called on Biden to step down. Senile dementia is a clever disease. Or maybe Krugman didn’t like the face he saw in the mirror the morning after Biden’s debate performance.

What astounded Krugman and his fellow bold-faced journalist types about Biden’s rotten debate performance wasn’t the obviousness of Biden’s mental decline, but the fear that they were now publicly shown to have been lying. Krugman’s fellow in-house NYT author of Soviet state propaganda, Thomas Friedman, who fancies himself an “old friend” of Biden’s, was writing fibs about Biden as late as last month while boasting of his long off-the-record conversations with the President about the future of the Middle East. It took Friedman less than 24 hours to proclaim that Biden’s debate performance had made him “weep”. Poor man — no doubt it did. David Remnick of The New Yorker, who authored a door-stopper-sized hagiography of Barack Obama during the President’s first year in office, was equally quick to go public with his discovery that Joe Biden was maybe not exactly up to sorting marbles by size or colour, just in time to become a virgin for the next election.

It’s hard to be revealed as a fibber — especially when your job is ostensibly to tell the truth. But the sight of journalistic worthies suddenly grabbing hand towels to cover their proximity to power was not by itself enough to explain the Night of the Journalistic Long Knives.

https://www.thefp.com/p/joe-bidens-alternative-facts

President Joe Biden, in his interview Friday night with ABC News, said many things. The polls had him in a dead heat with Donald Trump. Democratic Party leaders have urged him to stay in the race. America, under his leadership, has “checkmated” China. 

He delivered these assessments with a gravel-voiced clarity missing from his disastrous debate performance on June 27. He was engaged and followed his train of thought to a conclusion. The problem was the substance of his answers were lacking. In fact, many of the things he said strained credulity. 

Call it Biden’s alternative facts. 

Let’s start with the polling. Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “All the pollsters I talk to tell me it’s a toss-up” between him and Donald Trump. It’s possible Biden has indeed spoken to pollsters who tell him the presidential race, after the debate, is 50-50. But the highest quality polls after the debate show Trump in a firm lead. 

The New York Times/Siena College poll, for example, has Biden down six points among likely voters. A Wall Street Journal post-debate poll found 60 percent of likely voters either strongly or somewhat disapprove of Biden’s performance as president. CNN’s latest poll among American adults has Biden at 43 percent versus Trump at 49 percent. 

Former senior adviser to President Barack Obama David Axelrod posted on X a more realistic assessment of Biden’s chances in the race on Friday evening: “The president is rightfully proud of his record. But he is dangerously out-of-touch with the concerns people have about his capacities moving forward and his standing in this race. Four years ago at this time, he was 10 points ahead of Trump. Today, he is six points behind.”