RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/three-assaults-against-jews-reported-in-new-york-just-over-24-hours

Two blocks from Grand Central it is no longer safe to wear a yarmulke — Three assaults against Jews reported in New York in just over 24 hours DPS

(JTA) — A Jewish man wearing a yarmulke was physically and verbally assaulted in Manhattan in one of three assaults against Jews in New York just over a 24-hour period.

A Miami man was arrested and charged with assault as a hate crime for the attack late Monday morning about two blocks from Grand Central Terminal, New York Police Sgt. Lee Jones told CNN.

The alleged assailant, Steven Jorge, 28, reportedly punched the 65-year-old victim in the face, knocking him to the ground, and then kicked him repeatedly. He also allegedly yelled “F*** you, Jew” at the victim, who was looking at his cellphone when the attack began, CBS New York reported.

The NYPD Bias Unit is investigating, according to CBS.

The attack was one of three assaults against Jews in New York in 24 hours, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/12/26/americas-critical-medical-device-industry-gets-a-needed-tax-cut/

Medical devices may not be as glamorous as blockbuster drugs, but they include some of the genuine miracles of modern medicine: pacemakers, artificial joints, replacement heart valves, scanners, and cancer radiation-therapy machines. The U.S. has been the global leader in medical devices, one of the few major industries that both boasts a net trade surplus and is a job creator. The sector employs 400,000 Americans directly and is indirectly responsible for almost 2 million more that supply and support the highly skilled workforce. Most important, its products are essential elements of modern medical care, including everything from CT scanners and pacemakers to blood pressure cuffs and robots used by surgeons.

But Washington politics has put this made-in-America success story at risk. For years, the medical device industry was ravaged by unwise public policy, including a devastating 2.3% excise tax that took effect at the beginning of 2013 as part of ObamaCare. It was included largely as an afterthought with little debate or consideration, as one of a grab bag of taxes, fees and fines used to finance the law’s litany of new spending programs.

After a decade, the omnibus spending bill just approved by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump has finally relegated the device excise tax to the dustbin of history.

The tax, which required the payment of billions of dollars by device manufacturers, was especially pernicious because it was assessed on gross sales, not profits. To put this in perspective, imagine that you’re a manufacturer of medical devices and had a profit of $100,000 on sales of $1 million after all your costs and expenses for everything from materials and labor to research. The excise tax would be $23,000, wiping out almost a quarter of your profits.  

Think that example is extreme? Well, Signus Medical, a small Minnesota company that makes cutting-edge devices used in spinal surgery, ended up paying an effective tax rate of 79%.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/it-hasnt-stopped-him-trump-rolls-up-wins-even-as-impeachment-grips-washington

President Trump enjoyed an extraordinary period of policy successes over the past two weeks, even as Democrats seeking to remove him from office moved articles of impeachment through the House.

As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrats damaged Trump politically, the two negotiated an update to the North American Free Trade Agreement, allowing the president to tout a previously elusive trade deal after three years of promising he would complete it. And he and House Democrats compromised on $1.4 trillion in spending that funds critical aspects of Trump’s immigration agenda and delivers on his vision for the Space Force, the first new U.S. military service branch in more than 70 years.

The House voted along party lines to impeach Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, an action the president had lamented would amount to a black mark on his legacy. A trial in the Senate, presumably in January, awaits. “But it hasn’t stopped him from having two of the best weeks of his presidency,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters.

Former congressman Jason Altmire, a Democrat from western Pennsylvania who now lives near Jacksonville, Florida, said the spate of deal-making that coincided with impeachment was advantageous to both Trump and congressional Democrats. In part to convince voters that impeachment was unwarranted, Trump needed legislative accomplishments. Democrats, especially in swing districts, needed to show constituents that impeaching Trump was not their only priority.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/chanukah_christmas_and_western_civilization.html

excerpt:

That Chanukah and Christmas are closely linked in the calendar is fitting for the message they each bring. The two faiths, Judaism and Christianity, taken together as the Judeo-Christian tradition, is the foundation of Western and American civilization.  Western nations are the greatest in the world because they are informed by Judeo-Christian principles.  It is in the West where human rights, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, music and the arts, science and technology have flourished and where slavery was ended. These are the nations that inhabitants from the rest of the world seek to live.  It is in Western nations where citizens are most free and enjoy the greatest prosperity.  It is not an accident. 

We must dedicate ourselves to preserving America, the West, and Western civilization, by preserving its Judeo-Christian tradition.  The light of Chanukah and Christmas must continue to burn, and illumine the night, pushing away the darkness that is always present, the norm for most of history. They should guide us and our nation and the West for all time.  It is what distinguishes us from the rest, our values, our devotion to truth, knowledge, goodness, beauty, and reason, the belief in the sanctity of the individual made in the image of God, rejecting the moral and cultural relativism of the post-modern left and the totalitarian threat of unreformed Islam.  We must rededicate ourselves in our current battle as the Maccabees did against the Greeks and as Israel did against the Arab armies that sought its destruction in 1948 and has done ever since against its many enemies.

The spirit of Chanukah and Christmas should inspire us.  Happy Chanukah and Merry Christmas to all.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/transitioning-american-foreign-policy/

For better or worse, we are returning to the mentality that followed Vietnam until the first Gulf War.

Both officially and unofficially, Trump’s foreign policy has been described as “principled realism.” What does that mean?

Neither nation building nor apologetic isolationism? Hurting Iran by not sending ground troops into the Middle East, but by ratcheting up sanctions and deterrent U.S. naval and air power in the region?

More often, proponents define that term as punishing enemies and helping friends, and thereby persuading observant neutrals to make the right choices. Principled realism is charitably described as an effort to enhance U.S. power, commercially and economically, but to use it sparingly abroad for U.S. interests — and with maximum effect when force is called upon.

Critics, on the other hand, lament that America has now become isolationist, and overly “nationalistic” in diminishing the role of idealism in its foreign policy. The United States is supposedly cynically resigned to the idea that the world is forever a dark and gloomy place and the U.S. can hardly lead a crusade to bring consumer capitalism, democracy, and human rights to 7 billion people.

Yet most would agree that the U.S. is not so much withdrawing from its 75-year postwar role of leadership of the free world as much as radically redefining it.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15331/democrats-impeachment-question

Under Laurence Tribe’s scenario, the House Democrats get to “obstruct” the Senate and “abuse” their power (to borrow terms from the articles of impeachment).

I believe that the Senate need not wait for articles of impeachment to be transmitted. Senators are empowered by the constitution to begin a trial now — with or without further action by the House. Just as the House has the “sole power of impeachment,” so too the Senate has the “sole power to try all impeachments.”

Tribe and the Democratic House majority, led by Speaker Pelosi, want to have their constitutional cake and eat it too: they want Trump impeached but not acquitted. Sorry, but the Constitution does not permit that partisan, result-oriented ploy. Either Trump has been impeached and is entitled to a Senate trial; or he has not been impeached and is entitled to a clean slate.

So there are only two constitutionally viable alternatives: either Pelosi must announce that Trump has not been impeached; or the Senate must initiate a trial. Preserving the status quo indefinitely — Trump remaining impeached without having a trial — is unconstitutional and should not be tolerated by the American people.

Speaker Pelosi’s unconstitutional decision to delay transmission of the articles of impeachment to the Senate in order to gain partisan advantage raises the following question: has President Trump been impeached, or did the House vote merely represent an authorization or intention to impeach — which becomes an actual impeachment only when the articles are transmitted?

This highly technical constitutional issue is being debated by two of my former Harvard Law School colleagues — Professors Laurence Tribe and Noah Feldman — both liberal Democrats who support President Trump’s impeachment.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/23/the-2019-lump-of-coal-awards/

It’s a good thing President Trump is making big, beautiful coal great again because Jolly Old St. Nick is going to need an ample supply this Christmas Eve. (See 2016, 2017, and 2018 for comparable supply-and-demand needs.)

This year’s naughty list is overflowing with bitter Foggy Bottom bureaucrats, silly female soccer players, a globetrotting teenaged climate change propagandist, a “squad” of freshman House Democrats, an anonymous “whistleblower,” sleepy prison guards, a TV celebrity hoaxster, and a native elder.

But since Santa is a busy guy, let’s help guide his coal-packed sleigh to 2019’s most deserving recipients:

Barack Obama’s FBI: Santa should leave the North Pole and head directly to a well-appointed mansion outside of Washington, D.C. to fill a stocking emblazoned with the name, “Chief Comey.” The bad behavior of the former FBI director has done irreparable damage to the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency, all while he enriches himself with lucrative book deals, primo punditry posts, and ego-feeding six-figure speaking gigs.

In the span of just a few years, Comey framed innocent Americans—including a three-star general—lied to a secret court, lied to the president of the United States, lied to the news media, and lied to the American people. Comey kept “memos” of his private conversations with President Trump then stole those documents from his own agency. As FBI director, he concealed from congressional leaders his bogus investigation into the Trump campaign and he told President Obama about it in the summer of 2016 even though he has repeatedly insisted he did not.

Despite his treachery, Comey somehow manages to portray himself as the victim—a victim of the Bad Orange Man, congressional Republicans, Attorney General Bill Barr, and Fox News. Comey’s poisonous conduct infected his top team, including Andrew McCabe, James Baker, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, among others. Big lumps of coal all around.

Adam Schiff: Santa doesn’t usually stop at the Schiff’s Los Angeles-area home, but this year he should make an exception. The wannabe screenwriter has savored his leading role in the political spotlight; Schiff cried on cue, overdramatized hackneyed monologues, and hogged the camera. Newsweek devoted its front page to #The Resistance star. During a recent Hollywood movie premiere, Schiff received a standing ovation from the B-list crowd. Legendary producer Norman Lear called him an “American hero.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/voters-love-the-trump-economy/

President Trump divides Americans, but the Trump economy unites them. The latest issue of the AEI Political Report, edited by my colleagues Karlyn Bowman and Eleanor O’Neil, is chockablock with positive assessments of the economic scene. More Americans (38 percent) say their personal financial situation is improving than getting worse (20 percent). A two-thirds majority says now is a good time to find a quality job, slightly down from the record 71 percent who said so last May. A similar majority says it’s “not very worried” about losing one’s job.

Seventy-one percent of registered voters say the economy is either “very” or “somewhat” strong. Seventy-three percent say it’s either “excellent” or “good.” And a 72-percent majority says the economy either will “get better” or “stay about the same” in the coming year. As Bowman and O’Neil point out, “Americans are almost always more optimistic about their personal lives than they are about the country.” Current economic conditions give Americans plenty of reasons to be optimistic. Along with President Trump.