RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/impeachment-resolution-democrats-pelosi-reporter

“It’s not an impeachment resolution,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Pelosi had just announced the House would, in fact, hold a vote to formalize the impeachment probe and establish parameters for the investigation late last month.

The House speaker had argued for weeks such a step wasn’t necessary. Congressional Republicans and members of the administration countered that the White House shouldn’t cooperate because the House never codified the inquiry.

“They would much rather discuss process,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., when asked about the GOP demand for a vote. “They can’t defend the president’s conduct.”

So, in mid-October, I asked Pelosi, “why not call the administration’s bluff?”

Pelosi was having none of it.

“Why?” replied an incredulous Pelosi. “Because we’re not here to call bluffs. We’re here to find the truth, to uphold the Constitution of the United States. This is not a game for us. This is deadly serious.”

When I followed up, Pelosi cut me off.

“We’re not going there,” Pelosi said of a prospective impeachment process vote.

Some moderate and conservative Democrats from battleground districts breathed a sigh of relief. Some have been skeptical of impeachment and would prefer to avoid the topic altogether. They’d rather discuss health care and infrastructure issues, maybe adoption of the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement [USMCA] trade package.

These Democrats wouldn’t deny they may have to vote on impeaching President Trump. But, these lawmakers seemed to know the less they’d have to deal with impeachment, the better off they were. So, holding off on impeachment as long as they could was fine with them.

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/topic/politics/

If, like me, you are an educated senior who watches the news on t.v. more than once a day, you may be as bewildered as I am at some big pharma commercials and their casual use of esoteric language. I used to pride myself on spelling and vocabulary but here are some examples that baffled me before I turned to google.

Ozempic, a drug for diabetes that sounds like a merger between Olympic and the miraculous land of Oz, warns against usage by anyone who has multiple neoplasia syndrome type 2. I hadn’t even heard of type 1 and wondered how many people were affected by this – turns out to be 1 in 35,000 or less than .0003% Humira, perhaps suggesting something to put you in a good mood, is a drug used for several diseases including psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis. If you use this, be sure not to take it if you also use orencia, kineret or cimzia. Another drug for similar use is Xeljanz, anomalously pronounced as if that Z was at the front of the word. It should never be used if you are allergic to tofacitinib, a tongue-twister I yearn to use the next time a waiter routinely asks “any food allergies?” Although I doubt it’s a food, who knows where it might originate or lurk?

My guess is that Big Pharm is well schooled in all sorts of advertising cues and that giving drugs exotic names turn basic ingredients into magical potions that are meant to justify inflated prices But I wonder, as our culture becomes more and more fixated on the evils of racism and sexism, why we tolerate ageism – discrimination against the elderly. Most of us struggle to remember where we put our keys and the names of our nephew’s twins – do we really need to contend with crazy spelling and unfamiliar language at the pharmacy? How about drugs called Fixit, Nopane or Mobetter? And how about eliminating the pretense of Pharma concern in favor of reminding people that all prescription drugs must be ordered by a doctor, someone who would know whether you had multiple neoplasia syndrome type 2 and would not be ordering Ozempic for you. Surely liability can’t be determined by a two minute fast-talking commercial with more information than a smart 30 year old could absorb.

Just tell the oldsters Fixit works well for diabetes unless you’ve got one of the 30 other diseases listed on the package. Ask your grandson to read those to you and if you do or think you do, call your doctor or ask google – despite her name, that lady is really smart.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/english-language-important-america-source-of-social-cohesion/

There’s no substitute as a source of social cohesion 

I  wouldn’t have thought the importance of the English language in America would be controversial, but our era is full of surprises.

When I was on Morning Joe the other day talking about my book, The Case for Nationalism, the Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson asked, in a skeptical tone, if we should be protecting the status of the English language in our culture.

My emphasis on English was also a bee in the bonnet of Charles King, the book’s reviewer at Foreign Affairs, who said I make “the strangest arguments, which collapse upon the slightest interrogation.” He includes in this category my statement that English is a “pillar of our national identity.”

He further says, accusingly, that one of the things I can’t imagine America without is a dominant role for the English language. In his view, a genuinely inclusive nationalism has to jettison “the idea that liberty is somehow less American if you call it la libertad.”

I never suggested, as you might expect, that saying the word “liberty” in a foreign language somehow negates the value of liberty or makes liberty less American, which would be absurd (I’ll return to all the other preposterous things in the King review at another time). I do, though, spend a lot of time discussing the importance of a common language as a source of social cohesion. Why?

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/09/move-washington-out-of-washington/

Anything that can be done to dismantle the Leviathan of administrative overreach should be done. A plan by Senators Marcia Blackburn and Josh Hawley to move federal departments to the states is not the end of the story. But it might mark the beginning of a sunny new chapter.

What do you suppose the Alliance for American Advertising has in common with the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists, the American Society of Civil Engineers, or American Apparel and Footwear? Apart from beginning with the letter “A,” they are among the nearly 3,500 trades or firms that have dedicated lobbying operations in Washington, D.C.

And that doesn’t count the union headquarters located in D.C., from AFSCME (“We make America Happen”) to SEIU (“the nation’s most diverse union”) and beyond, they’re all there, hands out, telephones working overtime to get a little bigger slice of the government pie, made with 100 percent locally sourced materials, namely your tax dollars.

Have you noticed the odd feeling you get when walking around downtown D.C.? I used to think that it was because of the stately government buildings, the imposing aura of edifices like the Supreme Court (with its ironic motto, “Equal Justice Under Law”) or the Capitol or the White House. That’s part of it, no doubt, but for the daily pedestrian, an essential reality of life in Washington is brought home by the ubiquity of the lobbying efforts. They’re all there, the people that want something, and the people who get paid to articulate those wants to lawmakers, their gargantuan staffs, and the media. (I say “lawmakers,” though the House has pretty much given up on making laws for the sake of continuing their hit mini-series, “At Home with Impeachment.”)

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/09/petri-dish-leftists/

As most of my Generation X cohorts were too young at the time to process fully the abysmal political reasons why the 1970s sucked, network television did its part to ensure we kids realized some of the pop-cultural reasons.

I enter into evidence Exhibit 3,471,983: ABC’s 1976 “made-for-television” movie, “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.”

“Based on a true story,” or so it was billed, the flick starred the most popular Sweathog in Mr. Kotter’s class, John Travolta, in the lead role with Mr. Brady (a.k.a., Robert Reed) as his dad; Glynnis O’Connor as his love interest; and, in the golden daze of disco and glitz, spaced out viewers rubbed their bloodshot eyes with Cheeto covered fingers at a cameo by none other than Buzz Aldrin. With a thank you to IMDB for dredging up from my memory hole where I buried it long ago, the fact that the storyline revolved around one Tod Lubitch (Travolta), being born with a deficient immune system. This causes Tod to “spend the rest of his life in a completely sterile environment. His room is completely hermetically sealed against bacteria and virus, his food is specially prepared, and his only human contact comes in the form of gloved hands.”

Talk about a feel-good movie. But, wait for it: “He falls in love with his next-door neighbor, Gina Biggs, and he must decide between following his heart and facing near-certain death, or remaining in his protective bubble forever.” And this being Hollywood, bubble boy meets girl; bubble boy loses girl; bubble boy ditches rubber suit and gets girl again, literally riding off with her on horseback into the sunset.

Some have decried the movie for advocating unprotected sex. I disagree. Instead, the flick was but another riff on breaking out of one’s self-imposed isolation to risk everything for love (which, in hindsight, may not have been the best advice given that we were on the cusp of a herpes outbreak).

https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/07/neverending-foreign-wars-are-keeping-the-united-states-from-fixing-the-border-crisis/

What good is our powerful military stationed all over the world if on our very border there is a failing state?

It’s time for an overhaul of the U.S. national security establishment. No subjects of failed policy are more evident than Afghanistan and our southern border.

Afghanistan cost us $45 billion last year with little to show for it. Meanwhile, our southern border is awash with desperate human beings trying to make a better life in our great country. All the while narcotics are flowing across to feed our insatiable habit.

An incident just this week illustrated the violence escalating across the border in Mexico — this time against Americans, when a drug cartel ambushed the LeBaron family in broad daylight, killing at least three women and six children. All the while, the Mexican government fails to act.

Abraham Lincoln said as a young man:

From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia … could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“Impeachment is a distraction to a people who must decide what sort of country they want – Socialism, with its costs in dollars and lost freedoms, or free market capitalism, which offers the social and economic escalator of opportunity that takes people up and down. For all of our sakes, I hope they choose the latter.”

The American journalist and satirist H.L. Mencken once wrote: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the people alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” And the granddaddy of all hobgoblins is impeachment, at least here in the fourth quarter of 2019, a year from a presidential election that will see the most vilified President we have ever had run against one of the most far-left leaning candidates ever nominated. “Fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be a bumpy night,” said Bette Davis in the 1951 movie “It’s All About Eve.”  For us Americans, it will be a bumpy year.

Cynicism fills the air. Politicians live by scruples known only to themselves. Their concern is their own welfare and that of their party. Their goal is power. That end justifies whatever means or processes are felt necessary to achieve it. Yet, they wrap themselves in cloaks of righteous indignation. “Every member should support allowing the American people to hear the facts for themselves…this is nothing less than our democracy.” Stirring but hypocritical words spoken by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as she allowed Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to conduct impeachment hearings – hearings held in secret, where Republicans were not allowed to call witnesses and to which Mr. Trump’s lawyers were banned from attending. Schiff and the media have made much of diplomats fired, like the former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Do they forget that elections have consequences? Foreign policy is the responsibility of the President and changing ambassadors is expected and common.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/11/

‘I assume force feeding children socialist nostrums and climate change has been going on for decades under the radar. Many are grown and have become teachers, university lecturers, broadcasters and journalists. But, even if true, this explanation is deficient. Why did teachers become bolshies? Mine weren’t.”

Eccentrics and extremists have always been around. Whether they rise to prominence depends upon them having a large audience. Adolf Hitler and Sir Oswald Mosley shared an extreme form of aggressive nationalism. One took off, the other didn’t. The nineteen-thirties Germans were nationalists to their boot heels. The nineteen-thirties Britons mixed their more sensible nationalism with large doses of common sense and scepticism. It’s the quality of the populace and their cultural norms that count in the end result.

Islamic fanatics threaten, as Churchill put it, because of the “the fanatical frenzy [and] fearful fatalistic apathy” which Islam inculcates. It is easy to whip up significant numbers into mobs, for example, as we saw across the world, including in Australia for goodness sake, when that poorly made 14-minute video surfaced in 2012 of Mohammed’s life. Obama, Hillary and Susan Rice were deceptive, it didn’t cause the attack on America’s embassy in Benghazi, but it did create worldwide riots and mayhem perpetrated by mobs of Muslim dolts.

Theses dolts weren’t born that way. Islam has made them dolts and we have to live on the same planet with legions of them. Insufferable.

Global warming has also given a platform to extremists and eccentrics. In normal times people like Tim Flannery, Roger Hallam, Al Gore, the aging David Attenborough and the callow Greta Thunberg would be given the same regard as ranters at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. But these are not normal times. Superstition has gripped large sections of the population who have put aside their common sense in order to accept scientistic codswallop. We have twelve years to save the planet? Really, and Elizabeth Warren is a Cherokee Indian because her papa had high cheek bones.

Something is going on that stretches beyond the global warming hoax. We are living in dangerous times. The aforementioned Pocahontas is the favourite among bookies to be the Democratic candidate for president. Here are just some (just some) of her mad policies. And this is not a spoof.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/05/morning-greatness-not-running-for-gop-reelection-get-off-the-impeachment-committees/

If you aren’t running for reelection, you need to be removed from any House “impeachment” adjacent committee

There are numerous members of the House sitting on the committees involved in the Democrats’ “impeachment” tribunal who are not running for reelection. They need to go. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy must send in reinforcements and move these congressmen somewhere else. He needs to send a message that the voters will be represented in this clown show assault on Trump and the best way to do that is to show the Democrats/resistance media and the public that the politicians in this process will be accountable for their actions by the voters who put them into power.

Let take a walk down memory lane. The House Democrats signed a secret Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the House Oversight Committee under the late Elijah Cummings and Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) and the batty Maxine Waters of the Financial Services Committee. There may be other Democrat committee chairs involved in some agreement, we don’t know because it’s secret. According to an official with knowledge of the MOU arrangement :“We’d describe (the MOUs) as an agreement to conspire and coordinate their efforts to attack and investigate POTUS. This is not how committee’s normally operate. Dems aren’t interested in legislating. Only attacking POTUS.” This description checks out. If you are not running for relection and you sit on these committees, it’s time to pack your bags. McCarthy needs to man up and send in the clean up team to fill these spots.

There are 15 GOPers in the House who have tapped out of 2020.  Here is a list of representatives who are candidates for redeployment to the House Underwater Basket Weaving Committee:

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) is on the Armed Services, Natural Resources committees
Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Georgia) is on the Budget, Transportation and Rules committees
Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Michigan) is on the Armed Services, Transportation committees
Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Indiana) is on the Energy and Commerce committee
Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas) is on the Energy and Commerce, Science committees
Rep. Martha Roby (R-Alabama) is on the Judiciary, Appropriations committees
Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) is on the Intelligence Committee (HPSCI), Armed Services, Agriculture committees
Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) is on the Intelligence Committee (HPSCI)
Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas) is on the Ethics, Joint Economic, Ways and Means committees
Rep. John Shimkus (R-Texas) Energy and Commerce committee
Rep. Bill Flores (T-Texas) Budget, Energy/Commerce committees
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) Judiciary, Foreign Affairs committees
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) Armed Services committee
Rep. Francis Rooney (R-Florida) Foreign Affairs, Education committees
Rep. Greg Walden (R-Oregon) Energy/Commerce committee

Let’s go, McCarthy. It’s the right thing to do.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/11/04/barack

To illustrate what sort of zealots now own the Democratic Party, realize that Barack Obama probably wouldn’t be the nominee if he were running for president. It’s a scathing commentary on the left.

It became obvious when, in this age of wokeness, the former president criticized today’s cancel culture, in which the outrage mob turns anyone who holds an unapproved opinion into an instant social and political outcast. Ostracism replaces discussion. There is no debate, the airing of differing opinions is not allowed.

“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically ‘woke’ and all that stuff,” Obama said last week at an Obama Foundation event, “you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids. And share certain things with you.”

Columnist Mollie Hemingway noted on Fox News that Obama’s “message does not play well in the Democratic primary,” as “the excitement is definitely with the wing of the party that does not want to be open or tolerant to a wide swath of voters.”

Granted, Obama was warning his party comrades about taking things too far, that their fanaticism will hurt them in elections. Yet one callow fellow writing in the NYT suggested Obama holds the same “regressive views” of older Americans who “stubbornly reject progress and refuse to show compassion.” Published comments largely went against the writer, who also caught a fair amount of criticism on his twitter account. But there were enough comments in the Times to show just how militant the left has become:

“I’m the same age as Obama, but he has clearly been influenced by right-wing propaganda and I suggest he should get away from the Wall Street enablers he has surrounded himself with and start talking to people instead of lecturing them.”
“He became a coward and now he wants others to follow his lead under the guise of some counterfeit ‘maturity.’”
“Shame on Obama for his obtuseness.”
“Obama is a pedantic scold. But he only seems to scold young people and people of color. Mr. Audacity of Hope showed no audacity at all when it came to punishing the crooked bankers.”
“I voted for that semi-empty suit and never stopped regretting it. Aside from half a medical insurance system named after him, he puttered and putted through eight years of impotence and irrelevance.”
“The biggest disappointment in my lifetime is Obama’s failure. He had the FDR moment in the palm of his hands and what did he do? Sold us all out and he’s every bit as responsible for Trump as is the DNC and the duplicitous meritocracy who sold our soul to the devil.”
“Thank you for this, Mr. Owens. … Work(ing) across the isle is nonsense when the Republican Party is founded on racist policies. The Dems aren’t much better, but maybe The Squad can get something done.”
“If fewer boomers ‘overlooked’ Donald Trump’s corruption, bigotry and narcissism — because he had lots of money and threw good parties — and instead ‘cancelled’ him, maybe we wouldn’t be stuck with this sorry excuse of a human being as our president.”