RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.libertynation.com/the-canonization-of-joe-biden/

Even before the white puff of smoke could be seen rising above the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington, DC, members of the president’s party lined up to laud the man who had suffered their wrath only a day earlier. The Joe-Must-Go campaign finally came to its obvious denouement after a few weeks of pressuring the president to drop out of the 2024 presidential race. Joe Biden didn’t go willingly and didn’t go quickly, but, by God, he went – and that’s all that matters to the Democratic Party.

Without hesitation, Washington, DC’s prominent legacy newspaper and The New York Times invoked the H-word on their front pages. As they see it, Biden’s decision to remove himself from the Democratic ticket was “heroic” – and he may now don the mantle of American Hero. As the Roman triumphus got underway, The Times chose historian Jon Meacham to spread the word of their victorious, conquering hero. And he laid it on thick:

“Mr. Biden has spent a lifetime trying to do right by the nation, and he did so in the most epic of ways when he chose to end his re-election campaign. His decision is one of the most remarkable acts of leadership in our history, an act of self-sacrifice that places him in the company of George Washington, who also stepped away from the presidency. To put something ahead of one’s immediate desires — to give rather than to try to take — is perhaps the most challenging thing for any human being to do. And Mr. Biden has done just that.”

One wonders if Meacham will initiate a movement to put Biden’s face on the one-dollar bill. However, he might have to queue up behind columnist David Ignatius, who intoned, “Bravo to Biden for opening the curtain as he closes his own.” Dana Milbank breathed a sigh of relief, saying, “[I feel] heroic more than anything. Biden did what he has always done and put the country first.” Editor and commentator Ruth Marcus chimed in with, “It is hard to age — indeed, hard to accept our own frailties and limitations at any age — and Biden’s story, laced with tragedy throughout his career, ends on a note that is both tragic and, I hope, heroic.”

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-curious-case-of-the-missing-president?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=260347&post_

But first, a simple question about the leader of the free world. 

On Monday afternoon, Joe Biden’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor, composed a memo designed to reassure the American people. The president, who tested positive for Covid six days ago, has completed his tenth dose of Paxlovid, he wrote, and “his symptoms have almost completely resolved.” O’Connor reiterated that Biden “continues to perform all his presidential duties.”  

After that letter was released, everyone here at The Free Press still had the same question: Where the hell is the president?

If Joe Biden’s decision to step down was extraordinary, so was the manner of his announcement. At this dramatic denouement of his fifty-year career in Washington, he declared the end of his reelection bid by tweeting out a letter. Since then, nothing. Or almost nothing. Late on Monday afternoon, he phoned his former campaign headquarters, now Kamala Harris HQ. “I know yesterday’s news was surprising and hard for you to hear, but it was the right thing to do,” Biden said on the call. 

But we still haven’t seen the president in days. 

Last Wednesday, Biden flew from Las Vegas, where he had been campaigning, to his beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware. It was there that he isolated and stewed, alongside only his immediate family and closest advisers, and reportedly came to the decision to step down. According to the White House daily schedule, the president will reemerge this afternoon and return to Washington. 

https://www.steynonline.com/14465/unburdened-by-what-has-been

~Now that Kamala is unburdened by that has-been and before whoever’s holding Joe Biden releases another not-quite-proof-of-life audio recording, let’s go back less than a month to when this started – the June 27th debate and the formerly loyal press corps’ amazing synchronised-shivving routine. As I wrote back then about the sudden outbreak of “third-rate dinner theatre”:

So why weren’t they able, after a week-and-a-half of dosage experimentation, to shoot the stiff enough of the juice to pass him off as being back in his State of the Union top-of-the-game mode?

As my former GB News colleague Neil Oliver observed long ago on The Mark Steyn Show, formulating a useful rule of contemporary politics:

This is happening because they want it to happen.

Just so. Over at Powerline, Steven Hayward wonders:

Was Biden set up? For more than a year, quite a lot of observers have confidently predicted that Biden would not be the nominee, and that the Democratic establishment would swap him out at an opportune moment…

But the scheme needed a catalyst to work. That catalyst was obviously the June 27 debate. It was the earliest presidential debate ever, before either candidate was formally nominated… If that debate hadn’t happened until late September, as is typical, it would have been too late.

True. And throughout that debate every Deputy Assistant Under-Staffer of Media Liaison was texting and/or DM-ing his most biddable press hack:

WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: So how d’you think it’s going?

WORTHLESS HACK: Oh, I think His Majesty’s new suit is pretty sharp…

WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: Really? You didn’t notice that the Emperor has no clothes?

WORTHLESS HACK: Well, yeah, but don’t worry, I’m not going to be saying that…

WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: Actually, we’d like you to…

WORTHLESS HACK: Are you sure? You mean one of those tentative ‘Granted he may have lost a step since he first debated Robert C Byrd on Saturday Night Klanbake in 1943’-type pieces..?

WHITE HOUSE CONTACT: Nah, just go full train-wreck. I can give you Macron and Meloni’s direct lines if you need some deep background…

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/07/similarities_between_alexander_hamilton_and_jd_vance.html

The childhoods of Alexander Hamilton and JD Vance were quite similar, and the similarities don’t end there. Both had the strong writing skills, energy, industry, and intelligence which led others to take them under their wings and advance their careers. Both had stints in the American military and became proponents of peace through strength, and both became huge proponents of American manufacturing as a key to America’s future prosperity.

Their Childhoods

Both spent their early years in households with mothers who were involved in affairs, even when living with someone else. Hamilton’s mother was even imprisoned by her second husband for adultery. Similarly, Vance’s mother had drug-addiction-related affairs with one man after another.

Both were rescued from their chaotic households when they were in their early teens, and then bloomed in their stable new households. Alexander was rescued (after abandonment by his supposed father James Hamilton, the death of his mother, and suicide by his guardian cousin) by the man who, according to Ron Chernow author of the biography Alexander Hamilton, was likely his real father.

Vance was rescued by his family-centered grandmother whose tough love gave him a sense of determination and responsibility. In his vice-presidential acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on July 18, he told how his tough grandmother had ended one of his friendships:

She once told me, when she found out that I was spending too much time with a local kid who was known for dealing drugs, that if I ever hung out with that kid again, she would run him over with her car and she said, “JD, no one will ever find out about it!”

Literary Skills

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/23/the-big-divide/

Whether the economy is currently bubbling along or facing a slowdown, a slow-motion disaster is about to create a real crisis for the government, our future politics, and the shrinking middle class. Half of households have no retirement savings.

This is just one of many shifts in the economy that reflect the declining fortunes of the middle class. Wages have remained mostly flat for most workers—particularly those without a college degree—since the early 1970s. Recent high rates of inflation further cut into the ability of the self-identified middle class to make ends meet. But the biggest change has been the abolition of employer-provided pensions and their replacement with rickety and self-managed 401k savings plans.

All of this will only get worse over the next few decades. Social Security benefits are currently extremely modest. For those who do not own homes, rising rents will further cut into their ability to maintain a toehold on middle-class existence, assuming they can remain housed at all.

Who Gets to Retire?

It’s easy to think this is extreme, as retirement looks pretty good for most baby boomers. They are the wealthiest generational cohort, often benefiting from pensions, which are supplemented by real estate holdings, 401Ks, and IRAs. This prosperity is distributed unevenly, however.

For every retiree hitting the cruise ship circuit or playing golf, many others have learned too late that they may have to work much longer than they anticipated. The game changed abruptly during their lifetimes, as major companies shed defined benefit plans and replaced them with voluntary retirement accounts managed by workers. As this momentous change took place, the urgency of the moment was not impressed upon workers, and generational optimism blinded many to the difficult road ahead.