RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/peter-schweizer-trump-is-right-to-call-for-probe-o

As Congress and the White House wrestle over a whistleblower’s complaint against President Trump, the story took a new turn late Friday when the Wall Street Journal reported that, in a July phone call, Trump “repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine” to investigate the dealings of Joe Biden’s family in Ukraine.

Trump’s call is reportedly the source of a complaint by a whistleblower against the president that has sparked a furor among Democrats in Congress, who are demanding to see the complaint.

If, as multiple news organizations are reporting, the whistleblower’s complaint centers on Ukraine, there is strong evidence that it relates to President Trump’s urging the Ukrainian government to investigate Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son.

The story behind that story is itself worthy of serious scrutiny.

The proposed investigation involves Hunter Biden’s involvement with a controversial Ukrainian natural gas company while then-Vice President Biden was overseeing America’s Ukraine policy.

Critics of the president have accused Trump of attempting to “extort” Ukrainian officials for “dirt” on Biden, the current front-runner for the Democratic nomination to run against Trump next year.

But why would Ukraine have dirt on Joe Biden? For answers, one must look at Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company which, until earlier this year, employed Hunter Biden.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

The title of this essay is silly. Of course, Connecticut has a future. The question is, will it be one that strengthens economic development and reassures residents, especially the retired, to continue to live within its borders. Will it still have, as Mr. Burghoff asks, “the people I’ve known,” or will my family and friends move to more favorable environs. Connecticut has been in the vanguard of those states marching to the tunes of “woke” progressives, who put identity politics and income and wealth distribution ahead of personal liberty, opportunity and individual responsibility. The consequence has seen an exodus of people and businesses, a slow-growth economy and per-capita state debt that is fourth highest in the nation.

Hatred permeates the political landscape: The ugly language of those in the media who have called for the decapitation of the President; elected Representatives who use their office to pursue personal vendettas against Mr. Trump and their influence to enrich themselves; presidential candidates who call for an end to all fossil fuels; the promise of free college, a basic income and socialized medicine – in short, President Obama’s 2012 “Life of Julia” – all to be paid for with a wealth tax and higher income taxes, which would stifle innovation and hamper economic growth. Is it possible progressives have overplayed their hand?

There have been signs of spring’s renewal against this bleak, wintery landscape. Michael Bloomberg recently penned an op-ed in the New York Post, “Rage is Destroying Us”: “…political rage seems to be crowding out political engagement.” His column concluded: “Restoring the ability to disagree without becoming mortal enemies is a new and urgent civic imperative.” Richard Cohen, a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, wrote a week ago that he felt “marooned” within the Democratic Party, that he was “…stuck with a party that would replace the segregation of the past with the segregation of the present.” He wrote of his ideal: “My political party would embrace the uniqueness of every individual and not consider him or her (or any other pronoun)[1] a member of a group first, an individual second and use the excuse of past prejudices to create a racial or ethnic patronage system.” My sentiments exactly; yet both he and Mr. Bloomberg are liberal Democrats who have soured on the progressive tilt of their Party.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/privileged-scolds-should-lead-by-example-before-lecturing-others/

Let them lead by example before they lecture the country on carbon emissions, gun ownership, and ‘white privilege.’

One theme of the Democratic debates is collective furor — at whom or what is not always clear, other than at Americans who voted for Trump. Or perhaps at America itself for failing the expectations of our moral betters? Yet such rage is so deeply embedded in hypocrisy that it is not merely hard to take; it’s even harder to believe it’s serious.

So upset are our woke progressive candidates that they insist that the rich, the privileged, the white, and the native-born must now pay ever more penance. Amid such acrimony is an inconvenient truth, though one that remains utterly unspoken: Most of those on stage who are so livid at the exploitive “system” have become wealthy and quite privileged through it — especially since they have spent so much of their adult lives gaming supposedly poorly compensated political service.

Multimillionaire, mansion-living, ethnic-identity-stealing, and formerly house-flipping Senator Elizabeth Warren talks nonstop about corporate greed, endemic racism, and the need for executive fiats to deal with right-wing American pathologies. In Warren’s reductionist world, every sin originates with some Snidely Whiplash corporate CEO with a black top hat and handlebar moustache who trumped the success of her own past cynical efforts several hundred times over.

Beto O’Rourke, born into privilege and wealth, and married into greater influence and riches, was so pampered and well connected as a teen that his prior burglary and drunk-driving arrests were either dismissed or white-privileged away. Otherwise, had he been treated as others — including poor working-class whites from southern Ohio or central California — he might now be an ex-felon, and certainly might not be eligible to buy or own a firearm under the regimens that he now blasts as too weak.

Naturally, the multimillionaire Beto lectures the country on its racism, its original and permanent sins of white supremacy, and the need to confiscate some models of guns and to restrict the ownership of most all others. As in the case of erstwhile Native American Elizabeth Warren, Beto is so concerned about the asymmetry between the haves and the have-nots that he pushed a fake ethnic identity to do something about it.