RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-6-6-the-record-is-not-good-for-perpetrators-of-politicized-criminal-proceedings

With the guilty verdicts in People v. Trump delivered by a Manhattan jury last week, the prosecutors are surely giving themselves a big pat on the back. We really got him this time! Undoubtedly they have convinced themselves that getting Trump branded a “convicted felon” (with little chance to get that reversed on appeal before the election, no matter how weak the conviction) will cause him to sink in the polls. At the very least, the successful prosecution of the main political adversary would have to be a positive for President Biden’s chances of re-election.

I wouldn’t be so sure. If you look into the history of efforts by a dominant political faction to use the criminal justice system as the means to disadvantage opponents, the record is not good for the perpetrators of these efforts. That is true even — maybe especially — where the politicized prosecution initially secured a criminal conviction.

I think it’s too early to expect day-by-day polling to tell us much about how these convictions might affect the upcoming presidential election in November. Instead, let’s look at some great politicized prosecutions of the past, and see how those worked out for the prosecutors.

For example, one of the most famous of this genre is the 1894 prosecution of Albert Dreyfus in France for allegedly giving military secrets to the Germans. Here is a summary of the affair from History.com. Dreyfus was a Captain in the French army. The military quickly tried Dreyfus in a court martial, convicted him, and sentenced him to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Two years later, a new head of army intelligence (Picquart) uncovered evidence that the traitor was another guy (Esterhazy); but instead of acknowledging the facts, the army transferred Picquart to North Africa, and then imprisoned him too. In 1898, Esterhazy was tried in his own court-martial, and acquitted. But then Emile Zola wrote the famous newspaper article “J’accuse” that accused the army of a massive cover-up. The whole scandal rocked France for a decade. Dreyfus was ultimately exonerated, and restored to his position in the army, where he served out his career. If you know anything about the Dreyfus affair today, it is as a famous example of official corruption and anti-semitism.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/06/08/jill-biden-edith-wilson-and-the-changing-american-state/

Much has been made over the last couple of days about President Biden’s behavior and demeanor at the ceremony honoring World War II veterans at Normandy on June 6, the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Biden looked…old—in large part because he is old. He shuffled like an old man. He got confused like an old man. He was hurried out of an event that was causing him consternation like an old man. Joe Biden is 81 years old and he looks every day of it—and more.

Some commentators, including the Republican Party’s Twitter/X account, suggested that President Biden’s deportment is embarrassing. “This is the most powerful man on the planet? This is the leader of the free world?” some wondered. How pathetic. How dispiriting. How truly and painfully excruciating!

Other observers insisted that the whole thing was just sad. After a lifetime of public service for Biden to be subjected to that kind of profound public humiliation is discomfiting, to say the least. No one deserves such a fate, regardless of political predisposition or partisan affiliation.

Still others said that the president’s condition is dangerous. That it encourages the nation’s friends and especially its enemies to think of the United States as weak and enfeebled. And with Russian warships steaming toward Cuba, apparently unconcerned about American reprisals, one takes their point.

Indeed, one takes all these points. President Biden is, quite simply, physically and mentally unfit for office. He should be sitting on the porch at his beach house in Rehoboth seven days a week, not sitting in the Oval Office. His presence there—not to mention his entreaty to be returned there for a second four-year term—is “all of the above.” It is embarrassing, sad, and dangerous.

More than anything, however, it is telling.

Many of the loudest and most resonant comments about President Biden’s circumstances note that he is forced to rely quite heavily on his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, to keep his embarrassment to a bare minimum. When he tried to sit down in an imaginary chair at the Normandy observance, she was the person who told him to remain standing. When he had to be ushered out of the ceremony quickly and conspicuously, she was the usher. Whatever Biden does, wherever he goes, whomever he sees, Jill is right there by his side, in large part to ensure that he does what he’s supposed to do, so as to spare him more serious embarrassment and, just as importantly, to try to ensure that he does not give his political rivals any fodder for the campaign.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-democrats-faked-a-jobs-boom/

“Today’s report marks a milestone in America’s comeback,” Joe Biden bragged in March. “With today’s report of 303,000 new jobs in March, we have passed the milestone of 15 million jobs created since I took office.” Milestone or a millstone though might be a matter of opinion.

Politicians like to brag about “creating jobs” and for once it was literally true.

Of those 300,000 jobs, 71,000 or 1 in 4 were government jobs. Another 72,000 jobs came out of the healthcare industry which is heavily government funded. And 9,000 came from “employment in social assistance” or welfare. About 1 in 2 of Biden’s jobs were funded by taxpayers in one form or another. The only non-government industry showing significant job growth was the hospitality industry which was prepping temporary employment for vacation season.

An even more absurd story of government job growth came out of New York City where city officials boasted of having recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic. But aBloomberg article revealed that “virtually all of the jobs added in the 12 months ended in March were in home health care, a low-paying but rapidly swelling field. It’s technically classified as private employment, but home health care is actually paid for primarily through publicly funded health programs like Medicaid.” Meanwhile actual private sector jobs were vanishing in New York.

“It’s giving us this sense that our economy is growing when in fact it’s really just Medicaid that’s growing,”  Bill Hammond, a senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy, pointed out.

While the Education and Health and the Government job sectors boomed in New York, mostly everything else was contracting or struggling.

And it’s not just New York City.