RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nysun.com/article/the-affordability-crisis-is-shaping-up-as-a-key-issue-in-the-election-and-trump-has-the-advantage?

It’s a kitchen table election. Heading toward the CNN Presidential Debate next Thursday, one would think President Trump would be pulling together a scathing critique of President Biden’s performance regarding that old political cliché, kitchen-table issues, which surfaced again in the form of today’s affordability crisis for working folks.

Things like inflation, groceries, gas prices, et cetera — and I’ll get to those. Yet there’s an underrated issue which is looming larger and larger. And that is unaffordable housing.

Existing home sales for May came in just more than 4 million units — which is the lowest in 30 years. During the Trump years, home sales were running around 6 million.

Meanwhile, average home prices came in at $419,300, and that is a record high going all the way back to the recorded data beginning in 1999.

Pre-pandemic, during Trump’s term, home prices were running $270,000-plus.

And one of the keys to the unaffordable housing affordability crisis is the mortgage rate that has been running pretty consistently around 7 percent during the Biden years compared to below 4 percent during the Trump years.

Yes, it’s quite true that all these zoning-related regulatory burdens imposed by blue-state Democrats have limited the available supply of homes.

And it’s also true that a lot of those same blue-state Democrats want to incorporate the suburbs into the cities in order to build public housing and force crazy climate change regulations. Anything to stop gas-powered autos and basically destroy the value of your home.

Yet even in the healthier red states, sky-rocketing mortgage rates and home prices have made it very difficult, if not impossible, for working folks of any color or stripe to afford to buy a home — and in particular that includes younger folks.

Not enough has been written about this from a political standpoint. Only it sure should come up in the CNN Presidential Debate next week.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/dems-already-prepping-anti-trump-resistance/

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that dissent is about to start being patriotic again. Those “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” bumper stickers will even make a comeback.

The bad news is dissent is only patriotic when anti-patriots do it.

And the Left is feeling shaky enough about the election that it’s trying to bring the treason band back together.

The Resistance to a New Trump Administration Has Already Started – NY Times

Beginning the insurrection before the election is really ambitious, but that’s how their side rolls. Last time around the Russiagate narrative had been long in place by the time a dazed Mueller lent his name to a fake investigation.

“What Trump and his acolytes are running on is an authoritarian playbook,” said Patrick Gaspard, the chief executive of the CAP Action Fund, the political arm of the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress. He added, “So now we have to democracy-proof our actual institutions and the values that we share.”

The irony that Gaspard, a Soros vet, is talking about ‘democracy-proofing’ institutions against democracy is as lost on him as it is on the New York Times.

https://nypost.com/2024/06/13/opinion/young-voters-are-leaning-republican-as-dems-try-to-sell-themselves-as-the-cool-thing/

Here’s a thought. What if the kids are all right?

New polling shows young voters in the US are shrugging off their habit of voting left and actually thinking of voting Republican in November. In almost equal numbers to their Democrat-voting contemporaries.All this despite the daily diet of Democrats trying to throw everything at young voters to woo them.

Anyone who gets daily messages in their inbox from the Biden- Harris campaign will know how hard they are trying to make voting Democrat “cool” to young voters. In the past few days alone this has included “direct messages” from George Clooney, Julia Roberts and — er — Jimmy Kimmel.

Which suggests the Biden-Harris campaigns idea of what the youth are after might be ever so slightly off.Close in the polls

Of course, this isn’t to say that a young voter has to be a Republican to be all right.

But it does suggest that voters in the 18-to-29 age-bracket might actually be thinking for themselves.

In particular they may be seeing through the vast fogs of leftist propaganda that gets pumped out from this country´s educational institutions, media, Hollywood and more.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/former-detroit-mayor-kwame-kilpatrick-endorses-trumps-presidential?utm_source=referral&utm_medium=offthepress&utm_campaign=home

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and other black American leaders endorsed former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign announced.

Trump commuted Kilpatrick’s prison sentence for fraud and racketeering on his last day in the Oval Office, and the former president’s campaign quoted Kilpatrick’s endorsement in an announcement Saturday, alongside the endorsements of other prominent black Americans.

“I can never thank President Trump enough for what he’s done for me and my family by giving me freedom. But I believe this election and the issues involved are personal to every family and every person in America,” Kilpatrick, who served as a Democrat in the Michigan House of Representatives, said.

The campaign also announced the creation of the “Black Americans for Trump” coalition. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/06/17/nearly-half-of-voters-say-biden-not-mentally-fit-for-a-second-term-ii-tipp-poll/

In recent weeks, after several very public signs of age-related issues, 81-year-old President Joe Biden’s physical and mental fitness for the White House have once again become a topic of debate. Is the oldest president ever to serve still fit for office? A plurality of voters say “no,” according to the latest I&I/TIPP Poll.

Overall, more American voters give Biden failing grades than passing ones when it comes to both his mental and physical health, according to the national online June I&I/TIPP Poll, taken from May 29-31, of 1,910 adults. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.4 percentage points.

Our first question asked: “President Biden is seeking a second term. How would you rate his mental acuity and physical fitness?” Participants were then given several possible answers, with a school-style grade assigned: A (excellent), B (good), C (average), D (poor), and F (unacceptable).

On mental acuity, or sharpness, the poll wasn’t close: For 47% of those who answered the poll, Biden earned either D (16%) or F (31)% grades. Just 33% gave him either A (14%) or B (19%). Another 16% rated him C — just average.

Overall, Biden’s “grade-point average” was 1.66, or roughly a D+ grade on the traditional “A-to-F” grading continuum.

But, not surprisingly, the answers weren’t uniform across all demographic groups.

For instance, Democrats were far more likely to give Biden high passing grades for mental acuity (67%) than failing ones (11%), while just 10% of Republicans gave Biden passing grades and 80% flunked him. Independents also were unimpressed: They delivered 55% D or F grades, versus just 18% high passing grades.

By race, white respondents were generally harsher on Biden than minorities.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/are-american-jews-moving-right

For much of modern history in both Europe and North America, Jews have been reliably left of center politically, backing Democrats in the United States, Labour in Britain, Canada’s Liberals, and France’s Socialists. In recent years, though, Jews are moving toward the center, and, somewhat tentatively, even the right.

The shift reflects Jews’ revulsion at the increasing popularity of anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic positions in most left-of-center parties. For the roughly 80 percent of Jews who back Israel’s war aims in Gaza, remaining reliably progressive will be hard. In Great Britain, a 2019 study showed Jews shifting substantially away from their traditional Labour orientation and largely embraced the conservatives. In France, Jews generally no longer affiliate with the Socialist Party but instead support the centrist government of Emmanuel Macron. Similarly, Canadian Jews seem to be severing their historic ties to Liberals and adopting a friendlier stance toward the Conservatives.

The change is also occurring in the U.S., albeit more slowly. Three-quarters of Orthodox Jews, whose numbers are growing due to their higher birthrate, identify as Republicans, up from 57 percent in 2013. In 2020, Donald Trump gained 30.5 percent of the Jewish vote, a 6.5 percent bump from 2016. A more recent Economist study found that roughly 37 percent of Jewish voters favor Trump, whose campaign just received $5 million from the increasingly influential Republican Jewish Coalition.

Jews generally have embraced progressive parties, seeing them as more committed to their well-being than those on the right. It was the Left, after all, that rallied to the Jewish cause during the Dreyfus affair in France, and in Germany, the Social Democrats represented the strongest counterweight to the Nazis. The “enemy” of Jewry was usually an adherent of a racialist ideology that wrote off Jews as less than fully European, white—or human.

But the roots of leftist anti-Semitism, particularly among the intelligentsia, are older than many realize, having emerged within the world’s first socialist state, the USSR. Marxism, the creation of a stridently secular Jew, considered religious Jews as well as practicing Christians as “enemies of the people.” In his Secret of Chabad, Rabbi David Eliezrie observes that, under Joseph Stalin, Orthodox Lubavitcher rabbis found themselves hunted, deported, and murdered in socialist pogroms, often carried out by zealous Jewish Communists.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/06/10/will-trumps-vice-presidential-pick-be-a-complete-surprise-to-voters-ii-tipp-poll/

The debate still rages among the GOP faithful, journalists, spin doctors, and talking heads: Who should be Donald Trump’s running mate? The question is especially valid since the former president stands convicted of 34 felonies in a highly controversial trial whose verdicts could be overturned. Will Trump’s pick be a surprise? I&I/TIPP Poll.

The May national online I&I/TIPP Poll asked Republican voters to reveal their first and second choices to be Trump’s No. 2. In its June poll, taken from May 29 through 31, I&I/TIPP once again asked a national sampling of registered Republicans (a total of 693 Republican and Republican-leaning voters, yielding a margin of error of +/-3.8 percentage points) the same questions.

The result: No major shifts in preference, but some minor ones that, if continued, could prove significant.

The first question is straightforward: “Who is your top choice for Trump’s vice president?”

In June, 14% selected Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as their No. 1 pick, down one point from May. Meanwhile, at No. 2, former U.N. Ambassador and North Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley jumped to 11% support, up three points from 8% in May. Author-entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy solidified his No. 3 spot with 8% backing, a 1-point rise.

The trio at the top were followed by No. 4 Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (7% in June, unchanged) and No. 5 South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott (up two points,) former Housing Secretary Ben Carson (5% unchanged from May), TV personality and political commentator Tucker Carlson (4%, up 1 point), former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (3%, down 2 points).

They were followed by a long list of other possible veep candidates at 2% or less.

They include Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, former Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin.

As of now, though, the top five are bunched a little tighter and no one is really surging from the rest of the pack, in terms of mainstream Republican support.

But those near the bottom can take heart: The most popular answer of all, at 26%, was “Not sure.”