RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/nancy-pelosis-obsession

On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced legislation to create what would be called the “Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office.” The bill, written by one of Pelosi’s fellow Democrats, Rep. Jamie Raskin, would provide for the implementation of the 25th Amendment to remove a president deemed too incapacitated to carry out his or her responsibilities.

Pelosi, of course, led the Democratic effort to impeach and remove President Trump 11 months ago. For his part, Raskin has wanted to remove Trump from the get-go. He introduced a 25th Amendment bill in 2017, the first year of Trump’s presidency. He also took part in a Democratic effort on Jan. 6, 2017, before Trump was sworn in, to block the certification of votes for Trump in the Electoral College. On Dec. 6, 2017, Raskin joined 57 other House Democrats to vote to impeach Trump on the basis of the president’s statements about Colin Kaepernick and the NFL, among other things. Raskin was one of the original impeachers and, of course, enthusiastically supported impeachment when Pelosi took it up in 2019.

Now, Pelosi and Raskin claim their new 25th Amendment bill has nothing, nothing at all, to do with Trump. “This is not about President Trump,” Pelosi said at a news conference Friday. “He will face the judgment of the voters, but he shows the need for us to create a process for future presidents.”

Pelosi conceded that the bill, if it were to become law, would apply to the president who will be elected next month. That could, of course, be Trump. It could also be Democrat Joe Biden. But it seems doubtful that Pelosi and Raskin, Democrats who have pursued Trump relentlessly, would have taken the time, 24 days before the election, to introduce this bill if they felt absolutely, positively, 100% sure that Trump would not be reelected. So perhaps it would be wise to apply the famous “it’s not about the money” aphorism to Friday’s news conference: When someone says it’s not about Trump — it’s about Trump.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/in_defense_of_columbus_day.html

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas and changed the course of world history forever.  In honor of this historic event, Columbus Day is observed in the United States, Latin America, Spain, and Italy.  In more recent years, however, there’s been increasing opposition to Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day.  According to the left’s narrative, the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World marked the beginning of one of the largest genocides in human history.  But was it really?

It’s true that many American Indians died after the Europeans discovered the Americas.  However, the vast majority of the native population, some 75 to 95 percent, were killed by Old World diseases to which they had no immunity.  While no less a tragedy, it does not constitute a genocide.  A genocide requires a calculated, deliberate intent to exterminate a whole group of people.  The Europeans were unaware that the natives didn’t have immunity to Old World diseases, let alone how infectious diseases even worked.  Germ theory was not fully developed and accepted until the latter half of the nineteenth century.  It should also be noted that in the United States, at least, there was never a government policy for extermination.  On the contrary, you don’t set up reservations and inoculate the people you are trying to exterminate.

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-aoc-is-an-anti-semite-its-time-to-say-it/

Last week’s revelation puts the nail in the coffin of Ocasio-Cortez’s anti-Semitism.

The Democrats’ new guard bodes ill for Jews and Israel.

The latest slight was reported last week. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has rebuffed meetings with local New York Jewish groups. At least one has been trying to arrange a sit-down with her for the last two years.

Neither the Jewish Community Relations Council, which represents 50 local Jewish groups, nor the New York Board of Rabbis has managed to pin down the freshman congresswoman.

There’s little doubt it’s because both are pro-Israel.

There’s nothing extremist about these two groups, in case there’s an AOC supporter out there looking for excuses. There’s plenty extremist about AOC, though.

As a member of The Squad, the four congresswomen of the apocalypse, AOC has largely dodged the anti-Semitic label so justifiably slapped onto two of its other members – Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). We can’t imagine why. The evidence keeps piling up.

Most recently, Ocasio-Cortez dropped out of a memorial for late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In late July, she praised the support of at least 10 anti-Semitic groups for a congressional letter she spearheaded calling for conditioning aid to Israel on its abandonment of its sovereignty plan in parts of Judea and Samaria.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/10/the-cultural-roots-of-conservatism/

Here in mid-October, we are at or even just past the apogee of that “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” John Keats celebrated in “To Autumn.” Harvests are arriving everywhere. The “maturing sun” has conspired “to load and bless / With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; / To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, / And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core.”

Which brings me to the word “cultural.” I remember the first time I noticed the legend “cultural instructions” on the brochure that accompanied some seedlings. “How quaint,” I thought, as I pursued the advisory: this much water and that much sun, certain tips about fertilizer, soil, and drainage. Planting one sort of flower nearby keeps the bugs away but proximity to another sort makes bad things happen. Young shoots might need stakes, and watch out for beetles, weeds, and unseasonable frosts . . . 

The more I pondered it, the less quaint and the more profound those cultural instructions seemed. I suppose I had once known that the word “culture” comes from the capacious Latin verb colo, which means everything from “live, dwell, inhabit,” to “observe a religious rite”—whence our word “cult”—to  “care, tend, nurture,” and “promote the growth or advancement of.” I never thought much about it. 

I should have done. There is a lot of wisdom in etymology. The noun cultūra (which derives from colo) means first of all “the tilling or cultivation of land” and “the care or cultivation of plants.” But it, too, has ambitious tentacles: there’s the bit about religious rites again and also “well groomed,” and “chic, polished, sophisticated.” 

Cicero’s Cultivation of the Soul

It was Cicero, in a famous passage of the Tusculan Disputations, who gave currency to the metaphor of culture as a specifically intellectual pursuit. “Just as a field, however good the ground, cannot be productive without cultivation,” Cicero wrote, “so the soul cannot be productive without education.” Philosophy, he said, is a sort of “cultura animi,” a cultivation of the mind or spirit: “it pulls out vices by the roots,” he said, “makes souls fit for the reception of seed,” and sows in order to bring forth “the richest fruit.”