RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/06/13/blue-dog-democrat-endangered-species/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=top-of-nav&utm_content=hero-module

It is easy to find Democrats who believe that their party’s problem is not runaway inflation, poor communication, or flawed candidates. The real problem, they contend, is that the structure of the U.S. government is biased against the Democratic Party and that the only solution is a sweeping, Constitution-busting rebuild from the ground up.

A certain kind of wonky Democrat will whine that it is just so unfair that Alaska gets as many Senate seats as California, or that Wyoming gets three Electoral College votes when it has only 576,000 people. (You rarely hear them making similar complaints about the District of Columbia, Vermont, or Delaware.)

The subtext is often that it is unfair that so many Senate seats and electoral votes are in the South and the Midwest — broad swaths of the country with majorities of white, culturally conservative voters. Never mind that recent history shows that a Democrat who deviates from party orthodoxy on abortion and guns gets a lot of leeway from culturally conservative voters on other issues. 

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/flag-under-foot-memorial-day-crime-anger/

On my way to work in Midtown Manhattan each day, I pass down 50th Street. Near the corner of Broadway, not long ago someone glued an American flag to the sidewalk and set fire to it. The scorched remnants cry out in resistance to the attempted insult and erasure.

I have no idea what protest prompted this indignity, or whether the person who sealed the flag to where pedestrians would trample it was the same who decided to set it on fire. I haven’t noticed any passersby taking special note of Old Glory reduced to such an inglorious state, surrounded by cigarette butts and other debris.

This isn’t New York City’s fault. We are amid more pressing crises. The subway entrance nearby — one of the main points of access to Midtown — reeks of urine and sometimes worse. We ride it knowing that at any moment some homeless turnstile jumper may try to push someone in front of a train, knife a stranger or, as happened last weekend, shoot a man dead for looking at his cell phone.

Most, but not all the perpetrators are young black men, but older black men and black women have gotten into the game as well. But we can’t talk about this except as a “mental health” crisis. Truth be told, it is an anger crisis.

https://nypost.com/2022/05/27/joe-biden-whispers-to-naval-academy-graduates/

President Biden revived his frequently ridiculed stage whisper Friday while addressing the US Naval Academy’s Class of 2022, stooping over his microphone to remind them that “I’m your commander-in-chief.”

Biden addressed the graduates for approximately 25 minutes during the outdoor ceremony at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, during which he slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin over his three-month-old invasion of Ukraine.

“The actions taken by Putin were an attempt to — to use my phrase — to Finlandize all of Europe, make it all neutral,” Biden said. “Instead, he NATO-ized all of Europe.”

The phrase “Finlandize,” which the president mispronounced as “Fingalize,” refers to Finland’s Cold War-era practice of treading lightly in international politics so as not to upset its near neighbors in Moscow.

The president was speaking about Finland and Sweden applying to join NATO in response to the Russian invasion, which began Feb. 24 and has been met with stiff resistance from Ukraine’s military.