RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trump-disruption-11598570719?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

When Donald Trump won the Presidency four years ago, half of America gnashed its teeth or cried and even supporters who cheered weren’t sure what to expect. Four years later our verdict is that he has been better on policy than we feared but worse on personal behavior than we hoped. Whether Americans re-elect him depends on how they assess that political balance sheet.

We realize that even considering the Trump Presidency in these conventional terms is offensive to some readers. Don’t we get that he’s a would-be authoritarian, a Russian plant, or at least so deeply flawed as a human being that he can’t be trusted with power? Yet our democracy survives, and the Constitution’s checks and balances are intact. Americans who heard him ask for a second term Thursday night were trying to make sense of what has been a raucous and disruptive Presidency.**

This week’s virtual GOP convention has spent hours educating voters about Trump Administration successes, and many are real, starting with the pre-Covid-19 economy that we examined this week. The political irony is that this success was due to Mr. Trump’s adoption of conventional GOP economics, not his trade or immigration agenda.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-cant-restore-normalcy-11598483215?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

Donald Trump Jr. described Joe Biden as the Loch Ness Monster, a lifelong swamp creature. That was patty-cake compared with what Democrats think of and won’t stop saying about Donald J. Trump. Wash away the neurotic personal animus, and the Democratic case for Joe Biden is that by ending the nonstop Trump disruption, or “chaos,” Mr. Biden will restore the country to normalcy. He won’t.

Only the most sound-asleep voters can believe that with one day’s voting in November they can melt the Wicked Witch of Trumpland and dance down the yellow-brick road to more temperate times. Returning to pre-2020 normality anytime soon, no matter which candidate wins, is impossible.

Most people aren’t thinking about the next four years; they’re thinking about the next 12 to 18 months. They are wondering each day when or whether the pandemic will end and what the post-coronavirus world will mean for them and their families.

The economic and personal disruption has been immeasurable. Within weeks, daily economic activity went from normal to nearly nothing—an event with no precedent in modern history.

What comes next for the daily work people took for granted isn’t clear. At first, salaried workers were OK, but then the ranks of people on paychecks were thinned with furloughs and layoffs. American Airlines said this week it would unload 19,000 people. JPMorgan Chase says rotational work is likely to become permanent. Laying off unseen remote workers will be easier in the next recession.

A significant migration is occurring out of urban centers into the more predictable calm of suburban life. Younger people are choosing to live closer to where they grew up.

Normalcy? Joe Biden is running in an election year when liberals are fleeing New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and other cities overwhelmed with protests, homelessness and spreading disorder.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/remember-the-trump-economy-11598396570?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Joe Biden is running on his record in the Obama Administration of staging a turnaround after an economic crisis, and last week we reminded readers there’s less to that record than the spin. Conversely, there’s more to President Trump’s economic achievements in his first three years than his detractors admit, and this debate is crucial to how well the economy recovers after Covid-19.

Mr. Biden and the economic left claim Mr. Trump inherited a long expansion, and nothing much changed. But recall that Mr. Trump was able to win in 2016 in part by running against the “secular stagnation” that liberals said was inevitable. The Obama-Biden recovery was the slowest in decades, and by the second half of 2015 it was losing steam and came close to a recession in 2016.

***

Mr. Trump promised to spur growth again, and his win immediately revived animal spirits. The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index, which had languished below 100 for all but one month of President Obama’s tenure, jumped 10 points to nearly 106 in December 2016. The OECD’s Business Confidence Index showed a similar flip from pessimism through most of 2015 and 2016 into growing optimism. The University of Michigan’s consumer confidence survey quickly exceeded its Obama-era high.

https://nypost.com/2020/08/25/the-rncs-aspirational-message-couldnt-be-more-different-from-dems-radicalism/

The Republican National Convention is underway, and it ­offers a hopeful, pro-American agenda that stands in stark contrast to the radicalism that radiated out of the Democratic National Convention last week.

The Democrats’ convention ­revealed a disturbing truth about the party’s November ticket. While Joe Biden’s name is inscribed there as a sort of nod to a moderate past, it is the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who are really on the ballot this November.

Time and again, Biden, the supposed moderate, has proved willing to embrace the radical leftists who now control his party. His electoral platform is really a Biden-Sanders Unity platform. It reflects the hard left’s top policy priorities, including government-controlled health care, the Green New Deal and a climate agenda that would kill millions of American jobs and dull America’s economic and energy edge.

While the platform doesn’t explicitly endorse Medicare for All, it calls for the creation of a “public-option plan” overseen by the government. It was no accident that Sanders — one of the ­architects of Medicare for All — was prominently featured on the opening night of the Democrats’ convention.

Meanwhile, as nihilistic rioters sow disorder in cities across the United States, Biden and the Democrats said not a word in condemnation. As violent crime spikes in blue states and cities, victimizing mostly poor people of color, Biden and the Democrats offered no solution

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/democrats-wish-upon-star-don-feder/

Last week, the Democrat Party had its national convention at the summit of the Big Rock Candy Mountain in the Happy Land of Make Believe – a place of magic and wonder where reality is shaped by whim and whatever you wish is true, just because you wish it. Joe Biden is now the Mayor. Kamala Harris provides hair-sniffing morale.

Democrats have been accused of lying. But to be guilty of that, you have to be able to distinguish between lies and the truth.

For the Democrat Party, reality is like the lyrics from “Pinocchio” — ”anything your heart desires will come to you.” As Slow Joe once said, his party chooses truth (that which confirms its ideology) over facts (that which contradicts it).

Here are a few of the truths Democrats cling to:

There is no rioting in Portland, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Denver, etc. just “peaceful protests” the President is trying to suppress with his “stormtroopers,” as Nancy Pelosi would have it.