RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“’Let the jury consider the verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day. ‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first – verdict afterwards.’” Alice in Wonderland, 1946 (my copy) Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

While the charges against Donald Trump were more severe than stealing tarts, there is no question that the trial was politicized. And there is a question as to whether he received due process, as explained by David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley[1] in the June 5, 2024 edition of The Wall Street Journal. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump was convicted by a jury of twelve ordinary people, seven men and five women, a panel of jurors agreed to by both prosecution and defense. Like it or not, their decision is something we should respect. As British Member of Parliament Daniel Hannani wrote recently in The Telegraph: “Laws on their own are not enough. A free society rests also on conventions, precedents, unwritten rules. Losers are expected to accept the result, winners to exercise restraint.”

But jurors are not omniscient and judges have biases, which is why our legal process allows for appeals, and one can certainly expect Mr. Trump’s lawyers to appeal the decision, and we are free to argue as to whether the charges should have been brought in the first place. The law is not perfect, but justice is supposed to be blind; it should not be weaponized for political gain. Regardless, a civilized society must accept a trial’s outcome, just as it must accept the decision of elections, else anarchy reigns and totalitarianism looms. There is a process that should be followed.

The outcome of the trial in “deep blue” Manhattan was predictable; though many of us hoped for a Henry Fonda-like character from 12 Angry Men to appear among the jurors, to at least create a hung jury. That did not happen.